The Lightning Conductor: The Strange Adventures of a Motor-Car. Williamson Charles Norris
the valley at something like thirty miles an hour, and Aunt Mary's hand had nervously grasped the rail when there came a kind of sigh inside the car, and it paused to rest.
Rattray jumped off and made puzzled inspection. "Can't see anything wrong, miss; must take off the luggage and look inside." It is a peculiarity that every working part is hidden modestly under the body of the car. This protects them from wet and dust, Mr. Cecil-Lanstown told me; but it seems a little inconvenient to have to haul off all the luggage every time you want to examine the machinery. It didn't take long to find out what was the matter. The "aspiration pipe," Rattray said, had worked loose (no doubt through the jolting over the Dieppe pavé) and the "vapour couldn't get from the carburetter to the explosion chamber."
I only partly understood, but I felt that the poor car wasn't to blame. How could it be expected to go on without aspirating? There was "no spanner to fit the union," and Rattray darkly hinted at further trouble. Three little French boys with a go-cart had come to stare. I Kodaked them and send you their picture in this letter as a sort of punctuation to my complaints.
Well, when Rattray had screwed up the "union" as well as he could (isn't that what our statesmen did after the confederate war?), off we started again, bustled through the town in the valley (which I found from Murray was Neufchâtel-en-Bray), and had a consoling run through beautiful country until, at noon, we shot into the market-place of Forges les Eaux. It was market-day, and we drove at a walking pace through the crowded place, all alive with booths, the cackling of turkeys, and the lowing of cows. There seemed to be only one decent inn, and the salle à manger was full of loud-talking peasants, with shrewd, brown, wrinkled faces like masks, who "ate out loud," as I used to say.
The place was so thronged that Rattray had to sit at the same table with us, and though as a good democrat I oughtn't to have minded, I did squirm a little, for his manners-well, "they're better not to dwell on." But the luncheon was good, so French and so cheap. We hurried over it, but it took Rattray half an hour to replenish the tanks of the car with water (of course he had to lift down the luggage to do this) and to oil the bearings. We sailed out of Forges les Eaux so bravely that my hopes went up. It seemed certain we should be in Paris quite in good time, but almost as soon as we had got out of the town one of the chains glided gracefully off on to the road.
You'd think it the simplest thing in the world to slip it on again, but that was just what it wasn't. Rattray worked over it half an hour (everything takes half an hour to do on this car, I notice, when it doesn't take more), saying things under his breath which Aunt Mary was too deaf and I too dignified to hear. Finally I was driven to remark waspishly, "You'd be a bad soldier; a good soldier makes the best of things, and bears them like a man. You make the worst."
"That's all very well, miss," retorted my gloomy goblin; "but soldiers have to fight men, not beasts."
"They get killed sometimes," said I.
"There's things makes a man want to die," groaned he. And that silenced me, even though I heard a ceaseless mumbling about "every bloomin' screw being loose; that he'd engaged as a mechanic, not a car-maker; that if he was a car-maker, he was hanged if he'd disgrace himself making one of this sort, anyhow."
You'll think I'm exaggerating, but I vow we had not gone more than ten miles further before that chain broke again. This time I believe Rattray shed tears. As for Aunt Mary, her attitude was that of cold, Christian resignation. She had sacrificed herself to me, and would continue to do so, since such was her Duty, with a capital D; indeed, she had expected this, and from the first she had told me, etc., etc. At last the chain was forced on again and fastened with a new bolt. We sped forward for a few deceitful moments, but-detail is growing monotonous. After that something happened to the car, on the average, every hour. Chains snapped or came off; if belts didn't break, they were too short or too long. Mysterious squeaks made themselves heard; the crank-head got hot (what head wouldn't?), and we had to wait until it thought fit to cool, a process which could scarcely be accelerated by Rattray's language. He now announced that this make of car, and my specimen in particular, was the vilest in the automobile world. If a worse could be made, it did not yet exist! When I ventured to inquire why he had not expressed this opinion before leaving London, he announced that it was not his business to express opinions, but to drive such vehicles as he was engaged to drive. I hoped that there must be something wrong with the automobile which Rattray didn't understand; that in Paris I could have it put right, and that even yet all might go well. For a few miles we went with reasonable speed, and no mishaps; but half-way up a long, long hill the mystic "power" vanished once more, and there we were stranded nearly opposite a forge, from which strolled three huge, black-faced men, adorned with pitying smiles.
"Hire them to push," I said despairingly to Rattray, and as he turned a sulky back to obey, I heard a whirring sound, and an automobile flew past us up the steep hill, going about fifteen miles an hour. That did seem the last straw; and with hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness in my breast, I was shaking my fist after the thing, when it stopped politely.
There were two men in it, both in leather caps and coats-I noticed that half unconsciously. Now one of them jumped out and came walking back to us. Taking off his cap, he asked me with his eyes and Aunt Mary with his voice-in English-if there was anything he could do. He was very good-looking, and spoke nicely, like a gentleman, but he seemed so successful that I couldn't help hating him and wishing he would go away. The only thing I wanted was that he and the other man and their car should be specks in the distance when Rattray came back with his blacksmiths to push us up the hill; so I thanked him hurriedly, and said we didn't need help. Perhaps I said it rather stiffly, I was so wild to have him gone. He stood for a minute as if he would have liked to say something else, but didn't know how, then bowed, and went back to his car. In a minute it was shooting up hill again, and I never was gladder at anything in my life than when I saw it disappear over the top-only just in time too, for it wasn't out of sight when our three blacksmiths had their shoulders to the task.
"There's a good car, if you like, miss," said that fiend Rattray. "It's a Napier. Some pleasure in driving that."
I could have boxed his ears.
Once on level ground again, the car seemed to recover a little strength. But night fell when we were still a long way from Paris, and our poor oil-lamps only gave light enough to make darkness visible, so that we daren't travel at high speed. There were uncountable belt-breakings and heart-achings before at last, after eleven at night, we crawled through the barriers of Paris and mounted up the Avenue de la Grande Armée to the Arc de Triomphe. We drove straight to the Élysée Palace Hotel, and let Rattray take the brute beast to a garage, which I wished had been a slaughter-house.
I couldn't sleep that night for thinking that I was actually in Paris, and for puzzling what to do next, since it was clear it would be no use going on with the car unless some hidden ailment could be discovered and rectified. Our plan had been to stop in Paris for a week, and then drive on to the beautiful château country of the Loire that I've always dreamed of seeing. Afterwards, I thought we might go across country to the Riviera; but now, unless light suddenly shone out of darkness, all that was knocked on the head. What was my joy, then, in the morning, when Rattray came and deigned to inform me that he had found out the cause of the worst mischief! "The connecting-rod that worked the magnet had got out of adjustment, and so the timing of the explosions was wrong." This could be made right, and he would see to the belts and chains. In a few days we might be ready to get away, with some hope of better luck.
I was so pleased I gave him a louis. Afterwards I wished I hadn't-but that's a detail. I sent you a cable, just saying, you'll remember: "Élysée Palace for a week; all well"; and Aunt Mary and I proceeded to drown our sorrows by draughts of undiluted Paris.
Crowds of Americans were at the hotel, a good many I knew; but Aunt Mary and I kept dark about the automobile-very different from that time in London, where I was always swaggering around talking of "my motor-car" and the trip I meant to take. Poor little me!
Mrs. Tom van Wyck was there, and she introduced me to an Englishwoman, Lady Brighthelmston, a viscountess, or something, and you pronounce her "Lady Brighton." She's near-sighted and looks at you through a lorgnette, which is disconcerting, and makes you feel as if your features