Paucity of incidents so far—They often mean bad driving—Good driving and bad—The Grey Ghost in Berks—A burst tire—A warning—A puncture at Thame—Treasure trove—Meet mechanic at Aylesbury—Unready Hitchin—Royston—Advancing vegetation—Partridges paired—Tire blown off rim—An ancient dyke discovered—Plans changed by delays, but the motorist needs no plans—To Newmarket—Exit mechanic—To Bury St. Edmunds—A race with a train—Bury St. Edmunds and the "Angel"—Moderate charges—Spacious rooms—Memories of Pickwick—Mr. Weller's pump gone—Two hotel bills compared—Morning in Bury—The Abbey Garden—Norman tower—St. Mary's Church—The Square—Defoe at Bury—Start at noon—To Wortham—Fourth tire trouble—Pleasant children and a bye-election—Scole—Harleston—Fifth tire trouble—End of tire troubles and chapter.
Hitherto it may have been some cause for dissatisfaction to others, it has certainly been none to me, that with regard to the portion of this book which may be considered strictly narrative, there has been a monotonous immunity from accident of any kind. Yet so it was, and although, unlike George Washington, I do not profess that I cannot tell a lie, there would have been no point in telling one, and it would have been unfair. To touch a human being, another vehicle, or even a dog, with a motor-car, even in circumstances involving no culpability or legal responsibility in the driver of the motor-car, is in the vast majority of cases still not to his credit. The best drivers know it to be their duty never to expect that any other user of the road except a motorist has himself or his vehicle under absolute control. The good driver looks out for the signs of alarm in horses, realizes that cyclists, especially those of the female sex, "wobble" in their course when they hear the horn, knows that dogs will try to commit hari-kari, is aware that some men are blind, some deaf, some obstinate, and some drunk, feels that it is always best and safest to take stupidity for granted, and to give as wide a berth as possible to every living object on the high road. It is wiser to miss a horseless cart by half an inch than to try to pass a carriage and pair with a yard to spare. If these principles be borne in mind it is astonishing, at least it would be to the anti-motorist, to see how many thousands of miles may be travelled without harm done. How many thousands of miles I have travelled in motors of many kinds in England alone, to say nothing of Scotland and Ireland, I do not know; certainly a good many. In England, although I have sat beside some inconsiderate drivers, have I ever been at all near to hurting a human being; but I have sat beside considerate drivers in circumstances which, if one of the inconsiderate though skilful ones had been at the wheel, would have made it worse than a near thing for careless or frightened wayfarers.
Up to this time in the narrative, although at no period was any superstitious regard paid to the speed limit, I had not been caught in a police ambuscade (not that "ambuscade," except for its length, is a word in the least degree more dignified than "trap") during my travels in East Anglia; nor need I hesitate to write thus, for, in the first place, I am touching wood in the shape of a cork penholder, and, in the next, the narrative being but part accomplished, the travelling days which were its preliminary are, as the hymn says, o'er. In the journeys by motor-car from Colchester, which have been pressed into service during the preceding chapter, I was exempt from the speed limit. Again, so far as the narrative has gone, I can lay my hand on my heart and say that never, save once during the Essex manœuvres, through a burst tire, and then not in the Lanchester car, did I meet with tire trouble or suffer an involuntary stop through any failing of machinery.
On the expedition now to be recorded, in itself one of the most interesting and delightful ever taken by me, we had a whole series of troubles of different kinds—misfortunes of this kind never occur singly. But I hope to be able to show that these troubles were, some of them, providential, in other ways than that of supplying me with topics, which were abundant in any case, and that skill of hand and knowledge, combined with perfect imperturbability of temper in a gentleman who drives, and has all the trouble on his own hands, may convert trouble into sheer pleasure for the other persons delayed on the road.
Early in the morning of 6 April, a sunny morning worthy of the spring, Mr. Claude Johnson arrived at my Berkshire cottage with the Rolls-Royce owning the sobriquet of the Grey Ghost. I had ridden in the car first in Paris, outside the salon during the exhibition of 1904, and had been fascinated by its silence and controllability as Mr. Rolls at the wheel threaded the traffic in the Champs Élysées. Mr. Johnson had been expected overnight; the chamber in the wall had been prepared; but "he came not, for the ships were broken in Ezion-Geber." In other words, the back near tire came to grief on the Oxford Road. Taking it off with his own hands and substituting another, he had elected to sleep at a favourite inn and to come on to my house in the morning. This particular burst was simply the act of giving up the ghost accomplished by canvas which had reached the end of its natural life; and this, since the term of the natural life of canvas varies, is the kind of mishap which may occur at any time. Knowing that the tendency of troubles to come in groups is not mere matter of proverbial superstition, or, perhaps, being not entirely free from superstition, Mr. Johnson said, "You must be prepared for plenty more of these pleasant little interruptions. But, however, I have wired for a mechanic to meet us at Aylesbury, with more inner tubes and covers, and with luck we may last till then."
So at 9.35 we started in one of the first Rolls-Royces ever made, four cylinder and, I think, a 20-h.p. (but horse-power is a mere figure of speech, and the folks who prattle of it as a basis of taxation talk more nonsense than they realize). It had a cape hood, glass screens in front of the driving-seat and between it and the tonneau, and it carried my wife and younger daughter, with two suit-cases of fair size, in the tonneau, Mr. Johnson being at the wheel, and I by his side. We did not last so far as Aylesbury without trouble. On the contrary, just as we were leaving Thame a sharp whistle of escaping air gave notice that something was amiss, and the back off-side tire was found to be flabby. So we crawled back to a garage in that ancient town and wandered in the sun through its empty streets what time the defect was being made good. The process took the best part of an hour, and the delay proved to be providential in a small way for, in an old curiosity shop, we discovered an ancient "Bible box," of oak, curiously carved, and reputed to have belonged to the great Duke of Marlborough. It was acquired at no great price, and, whether it belonged to the great Duke of Marlborough or no, it was in the nature of a treasure, for these Bible boxes, made to contain family Bibles of large size, are rare, and little known because they are rare, and likely to become expensive when they are known because, besides rarity, they can boast substantial beauty.
From Thame we bowled on to Aylesbury without incident, and the scenery must not be touched upon now. At Aylesbury we had to wait again some time for the mechanic, whose train had not arrived; however, it came at last, and, with him on the step, and tire covers strapped on to all sorts of places, we fared onwards. But our arrangements for luncheon were marred. Mindful of the pie that vanished at Royston (ubi supra as the pedants would say), we had planned to take our luncheon there. At Hitchin Nature vowed that she would no longer be denied. Still Nature was very nearly compelled to take denial, for the hotel—it looked the best—professed itself destitute of cold meat; time did not permit of waiting for hot meat; and only after pressure did the waitress consent to produce some hacked fragments of discarded joints from which, with bread and butter and cheese, hungry motorists made a sufficient meal. True the process of finding the fragments that went to make it called to memory the supper in Tom Brown's School-days, and the wonderful deeds wrought by East with his pocket-knife. That was no matter. Fames est optimum condimentum, as the old Latin Grammar used to say, and no doubt it was good of the unready hotel-keeper to give us anything. But why, O why, are hotel-keepers so often found unready?
Reaching Royston without further mishap we entered our manor, for the purposes of this book, and glided on at a fine speed along the road, already traversed, towards Newmarket. Vegetation was more alive, hedges were growing green, partridges, a heavy stock of them, were paired; that was all the difference, or seemed to be all. But two miles short of Six Mile Bottom, or thereabouts, there was not merely a whistle from below but a loud report. The front off-side Dunlop tire had been blown out of the rim, the cause being that it was a "retreaded" tire which had stretched until it was no longer held in its place. This burst also turned out to be providential. While the mechanic, who was a blessing, was engaged in attending to the off front wheel, I wandered up and down the road, thinking at first that this was a dull piece of country. Then my eye was caught by a bank running from the road on the more southerly side up a gentle slope until it was lost on the horizon. The bank was several feet above the level of the ground to the eastward; on the western side was a deep ditch. Both were clearly visible, were indeed large and unmistakable on the southern side of the road, which seemed to be old pasture. On the north side they were traceable, and no more, having been obscured on the east side by trees and brushwood, and having yielded on the western side to the plough. If trouble we were to have it was surely lucky to meet it here for, beyond question, we were at one of those ancient ramparts piled up in the days of long ago to enable the warriors of Eastern Britain to keep out their foes of the West. In all probability it was Haydon Ditch, which runs from Melbourn to Haydon. It really does not matter what its particular name was, or is. To give it a name teaches one no more than my friend the antiquary taught me by calling the excavations at Grays "dene-holes." Some race, at some time long ago, piled up this vast mound with immense labour. It was an Eastern race, that is certain from the relation of mound and ditch, making provision against enemies from the West, whom they might harry with stones and javelins as they strove to climb from the ditch, whose shock heads they might hammer, with stone axes or clubs perhaps, from above, as they swarmed up from below. So much is certain inference; the rest is absolute mystery, and to delay at the rampart for a day would not solve the outermost wrapper of it. Indeed, so much as a halt is not advised, unless an involuntary one should occur conveniently, or an excuse for prudent adjustment to avoid future trouble be desired. Slow down to five miles an hour, or even to ten, and look towards the off-side when you are approaching Six Mile Bottom. Then shall you see as much as is necessary, or indeed possible, of this ancient rampart and its fosse, and understand all that can be understood about it, to wit that is there, and has been there since prehistoric times.
Those who worked over the substitution of a new tire and cover were skilful and expeditious; but it is a task which even in the most competent hands is tiresome and must not be hurried over unduly. At the best it means dirt and perspiration; before it reaches the worst it is very likely to involve broken nails and barked knuckles; and the least excess of haste is likely to bring in its train a subsequent nip as Nemesis, when all the dusty labour becomes vain. So, by this time, our plans as to a resting-place for the night were receding into the distance, or rather our place of abode was coming nearer to us, if we were not getting appreciably nearer to it. That is to say the plans of other people in the like circumstances would have been suffering thus, but ours were not quite definite. We had debated in an easy-going way the question whether we should dine and sleep at Lowestoft or at Yarmouth; whether perhaps we might not even push on to Norwich whither the memories of the "Maid's Head" beckoned us. This was out of the question now, but the beauty of motoring is that, unless one has made a definite arrangement to meet friends, nothing of this kind matters. As a matter of fact we took our tea at Newmarket—we have travelled the intervening piece of road in print before—and, then deciding where to sleep, went no farther than Bury St. Edmunds that night and, greatly daring, having regard to our run of ill-luck up to that time, we shed the mechanic, as a snake sheds his skin, instructing him to telegraph for yet another tire and cover to be sent to Bury that night if possible, but at any rate by the earliest train in the morning.
So on to Bury by the same road as we had followed on the Panhard in January; but Phœbus! how marked was the difference between the late afternoon of a mild day in April and the fading light of a frosty evening in January! Few of the trees were yet showing much green, but the buds were swelling and we could enjoy the stateliness of the trunks. "Joy runs high, between English earth and sky" on such afternoons as this. The road was clear and good, it invited speed, and for a space we raced a train which, it must be admitted, beat us in the long run pretty handsomely. So a second time we entered Bury, and this time made no mistake in the selection of our inn. Let there be no misunderstanding here. Lord Montagu's Road Book, which is good as any other, and strongly bound to stand the hardships of travelling (with a flap to fold over the front edges of the pages, which reminds one of Archbold's Criminal Pleadings armed against the rough usage of circuit), specifies the "Suffolk"; and the "Suffolk" may be a very good hotel, but to the pilgrim who has a spark of sentiment in his composition, the "Angel" addresses a more compelling invitation. One line of German poetry do I know—no more—and the luxury of quoting it (candidly confessing that it was got by heart by way of punishment for inattention, with some others now passed out of mind), shall not be denied to me—