"I conclude it is because our national point of view is different from yours," he said. "These cars aren't meant to be repaired. We make it as difficult as possible to do so. You in this country like to build a car that will last—like Westminster Abbey. Over there we say: 'What is the use of sinking good money in a design that will be out of date in two years anyway? Make it good if you can, but make it cheap, and when it wears out, make another. And whatever you do, don't fool around tinkering. Life's too short.' At least it is in our country," he added, smiling. "Over here you seem to make it go a bit further, like your automobiles. Unscrew that nut some more."
They were full and profitable years, those at the Britannia Works. As Philip gradually emancipated himself from the hard manual labour of the shops and rose from practical to theoretical problems, his old mathematical and scientific ability cropped out again. His inventive genius began to stir. Petrol was going steadily up in price, so Philip set himself to experiment with substitutes. The result was the Meldrum Paraffin Carburettor, now a standard adjunct of the commercial motor. Later on came the Meldrum Fool-proof Automatic Lubricator, which achieved high favour with absent-minded amateurs who made a hobby of allowing their engines to seize. And later, in fulness of time, came the Meldrum Automatic Electro-magnetic Brake, which was destined to play a tremendous part in Philip's history, as you shall hear.
With all these burning interests to occupy him, Philip had little time for amusement. He played Rugby Football regularly for Coventry City; and any one who has had experience of that gentle pastime as cultivated in the Midland counties will realise the testimonial to Philip's muscle and general fitness involved in his selection. Every Saturday he fared forth with his colleagues to do battle with the men of Moseley and Leicester, or even penetrated to London, there to indulge in feats of personal but friendly violence at the expense of Blackheath or the London Scottish. He particularly enjoyed the occasional visits of the team to Oxford and Cambridge, for there he usually encountered some old friend—Lemaire, now a scholar of Balliol, or Desborough, coaching a crew upon the tortuous Cam.
But Rugby football was no fetish with Philip—which would have pleased Mr. Brett. All his heart was centred on his work. To Philip in those days Work was Life—a point of view which in due course Time would correct, or rather supplement. Each night when he said his prayers,—he had contracted the habit at the age of sixteen, after a certain Sunday evening sermon from the Head, backed by a particular hymn, which had awakened in his rapidly developing little soul the knowledge that there were more things in heaven and earth than were included in Uncle Joseph's scheme of education,—he asked his Maker, tout court, for work, and work, and more work, and health wherewith to perform it. Only that.
In addition to Collier, the American, he made other friends about the Works. Some were of humble station; others—like himself—premium apprentices who had paid to be taught their business, and hoped one day to direct businesses of their own, or at the worst lounge immaculately in a showroom in Bond Street or Pall Mall, intimidating wealthy but plebeian patrons into buying more expensive cars than had been their original intention. They were a rowdy, sociable, good-hearted crew, addicted to what they called "jags" on Saturday nights. Then there were the salaried staff of the Works. One, Bilston, director of the drawing-office, conceived a strong liking for the capable Meldrum, and it was mainly through his representations that Philip, when he emerged from his apprenticeship and began to pass examinations, was kept on at the Works and given a post which combined increased responsibility with further opportunities to perfect himself in his craft.
Occasionally Philip took a holiday. Sometimes he went to Cheltenham, where Uncle Joseph, roaring like any sucking dove, was devoting his reclaimed existence to Territorial Associations and Boy Scouts. To be quite frank, Philip was secretly conscious of a feeling of slight boredom at Cheltenham. A perfectly happy couple are undeniably just a little dull, and Uncle Joseph and the Beautiful Lady were so entirely wrapped up in one another and their daughter—an infant of quite phenomenal wisdom and beauty—that the ordinary pleasures of life were not for them. They held, rightly, that pleasure is the resource of those who have failed to find happiness, and consequently had no need of it; but their nephew, who had not yet arrived at the period when a man begins to ask himself whether he is happy or not, and possessed a frank and healthy appetite for the usual diversions of a young man on holiday, found existence at Cheltenham a trifle too idyllic to be satisfying.
He enjoyed himself more at Red Gables. Mr. Mablethorpe remained as incorrigibly Peter Pannish as ever. Although his hair was whitening and his figure becoming more spherical, he declined to grow up. His levity was a perpetual sorrow to his sensitive spouse. Once, in response to a more than usually tearful appeal, he made a resolute effort to reform. He read the "Times" at breakfast, supplements and all. He dressed himself in tight garments and accompanied his wife to tea-parties. He began to talk of engaging a chauffeur instead of indulging in personal bear-fights with Boanerges. In short, he became so unspeakably dull that Mrs. Mablethorpe grew more tearful than ever, and said it was breaking her spirit to have to keep on smiling and being cheerful for two. Whereupon Mr. Mablethorpe, removing his tongue from his cheek, reverted to his former state, to the great comfort of Red Gables.
Of the Dumpling, Philip did not see much. She was usually at school; but when they met during the holidays she always appeared to her former playmate to have lost yet more of her adiposity and to have shot up another six inches. But they continued to be firm allies; and though in time the dumpling grew reserved and gauche, after the manner of adolescent maidens, their old joyous camaraderie over such things as Boanerges and birds' nests was never suffered to die out.
One other haunt of his youth Philip visited—the house on Hampstead Heath.
He went twice. The first visit was paid during one of his school holidays, a trial trip on a new bicycle affording a pretext. (Philip was too much of a schoolboy by this time to admit even to himself that he proposed to ride forty miles just to see a girl.) It was midsummer. He arrived on the Heath about two in the afternoon, and, leaving his bicycle leaning against the trysting-gate of happy memory, cruised methodically about, stealthily watching the house in the hope that a certain slim figure would emerge from the side door and come skipping down the road.