It is a favourite maxim of my wife’s that _any_ woman can manage _any_
man, provided she takes the trouble to thoroughly _understand_ him. (The
italics and split infinitive are hers.) This formula, I soon found, is
capable of extension to the relations existing between a motor-car and
its owners. Bill Bailey and I soon got to understand one another
thoroughly. He was possessed of what can only be described as an impish
temperament. He seemed to know by instinct what particular idiosyncrasy
of his would prove most exasperating at a given moment, and he varied
his _répertoire_ accordingly. On the other hand, he never wasted his
energies upon an unprofitable occasion. For instance, he soon discovered
that I had not the slightest objection to his back-firing in a quiet
country road. Consequently he reserved that stunning performance for a
crowded street full of nervous horses. He nearly always broke down when
I took critical or expert friends for an outing; and the only occasions
which ever roused him to high speed were those upon which I was driving
alone, having dispatched the rest of the family by train to ensure their
safe arrival.
Gradually I acquired a familiarity with most of the complaints from
which Bill Bailey suffered—and their name was legion, for they were
many—together with the symptoms which heralded their respective
recurrences. In this connection I should like to set down, for the
benefit of those who may at any time find themselves in a similar
position, a few of the commonest causes of cessation of activity in a
motor-car, gradual or instantaneous, temporary or permanent:—
_A._ Breakdowns on the part of the engine. These may be due to—
(1) Absence of petrol. (Usually discovered after the
entire car has been dismantled.)
(2) Presence of a foreign body. _E.g._, a Teddy Bear in
the water-pump. (How it got there I cannot imagine. The animal
was a present from the superstitious Gruffin, and in the _rôle_
of Mascot adorned the summit of the radiator. It must have felt
dusty or thirsty, and dropped in one day when the cap was off.)
(3) Things in their wrong places. _E.g._, water in the
petrol-tank and petrol in the water-tank. This occurred on the
solitary occasion upon which I entrusted The Gruffin with the
preparation of the car for an afternoon’s run.
(4) Loss of some essential portion of the mechanism.
(_E.g._, the carburetter.) A minute examination of the road for
a few hundred yards back will usually restore it.
_B._ Intermediate troubles.
By this I mean troubles connected with the complicated apparatus which
harnesses the engine to the car—the clutch, the gears, the
driving-shaft, etc. Of these it is sufficient to speak briefly.
(1) The Clutch. This may either refuse to go in or
refuse to come out. In the first case the car cannot be started,
and in the second it cannot be stopped. The former contingency
is humiliating, the latter expensive.
(2) The Gears. These have a habit of becoming
entangled with one another. Persons in search of a novel
sensation are recommended to try getting the live axle
connected simultaneously with the top speed forward and the
reverse.
(3) The Driving-Shaft. The front end of this is
comparatively intelligible, but the tail is shrouded in mystery.
It merges into a thing called the Differential. I have no idea
what this is. It is kept securely concealed in a sort of
Bluebeard’s chamber attached to the back-axle. Inquiries of mine
as to its nature and purpose were always greeted by Mr. Gootch
with amused contempt or genuine alarm, according as I merely
displayed curiosity on the subject, or expressed a desire to
have the axle laid bare.
_C._ Trouble with the car. (With which is incorporated trouble
with the brakes and steering apparatus.)
It must not be imagined that the car will necessarily go because the
engine is running. One of the wheels may refuse to go round, possibly
because—
(1) You have omitted to take the brake off.
(2) Something has gone wrong with the differential. (I
have no further comment to offer on this head.)
(3) It has just dropped off. (_N.B._ This only happened
once.)
After a time, then, I was able not merely to foretell the coming of one
of Bill Bailey’s periods of rest from labour, but to diagnose the cause
and make up a prescription.
If the car came to a standstill for no outwardly perceptible reason, I
removed the bonnet and took a rapid inventory of Bill’s most vital
organs, sending The Gruffin back along the road at the same time, with
instructions to retrieve anything of a metallic nature which she might
discover there.
When Bill Bailey without previous warning suddenly charged a hedge or
passing pedestrian, or otherwise exhibited a preference for the footpath
as opposed to the roadway, I gathered that the steering-gear had gone
wrong again. The Gruffin, who had developed an aptness for applied
mechanics most unusual in her sex, immediately produced from beneath the
seat a suit of blue overalls of her own construction, of which she was
inordinately proud—I hope I shall be able to dress her as cheaply in ten
years’ time—and proceeded to squirm beneath the car. Here, happy as a
queen, she lay upon her back on the dusty road, with oil and petrol
dripping in about equal proportions into her wide grey eyes and open
mouth, adjusting a bit of chronically refractory worm-and-wheel gear
which I, from reasons of _embonpoint_ and advancing years, found myself
unable to reach.
Finally, if my nose was assailed by a mingled odour of blistering paint,
melted indiarubber, and frizzling metal, I deduced that the cooling
apparatus had gone wrong, and that the cylinders were red-hot. The
petrol tap was hurriedly turned off, and The Gruffin and I retired
gracefully, but without undue waste of time, to a distance of about
fifty yards, where we sat down behind the highest and thickest wall
available, and waited for a fall of temperature, a conflagration, or an
explosion, as the case might be.
* * * * *
Bill Bailey remained in my possession for nearly two years. During that
time he covered three thousand miles, consumed more petrol and oil than
I should have thought possible, ran through two sets of tyres, and cost
a sum of money in repairs which would have purchased a small steam
yacht.
There were moments when I loved him like a brother; others, more
frequent, when he was an offence to my vision. The Gruffin, on the other
hand, having fallen in love with him on sight, worshipped him with
increasing ardour and true feminine perversity the dingier and more
repulsive he grew.
Not that we had not our great days. Once we overtook and inadvertently
ran over a hen—an achievement which, while it revolted my humanitarian
instincts and filled the radiator with feathers, struck me as dirt cheap
at half a crown. Again, there was the occasion upon which we were caught
in a police-trap. Never had I felt so proud of Bill Bailey as when I
stood in the dock listening to a policeman’s Homeric description of our
flight, over a measured quarter of a mile. At the end of the recital,
despite my certain knowledge that Bill’s limit was about twenty-three
miles an hour, I felt that I must in common fairness enter him at
Brooklands next season. The Gruffin, who came to see me through,
afterwards assured her mother that I thanked the Magistrate who fined me
and handed my accusing angel five shillings.
But there was another side to the canvas. Many were the excursions upon
which we embarked, only to tramp home in the rain at the end of the day,
leaving word at Mr. Gootch’s to send out and tow Bill Bailey home. Many
a time, too, have Bill and I formed the nucleus of an interested crowd
in a village street, Bill inert and unresponsive, while I, perspiring
vigorously and studiously ignoring inquiries as to whether I could play
“The Merry Widow Waltz,” desolately turned the starting-handle, to evoke
nothing more than an inferior hurdy-gurdy melody syncopated by
explosions at irregular intervals. Once, too, when in a fit of
overweening presumption I essayed to drive across London, we broke down
finally and completely exactly opposite “The Angel” at Islington, where
Bill Bailey, with his back wheels locked fast in some new and
incomprehensible manner,—another vagary of the differential, I
suppose,—despite the urgent appeals of seven policemen, innumerable
errand-boys, and the drivers, conductors, and passengers of an
increasing line of London County Council electric tramcars, stood his
ground in the fairway for nearly a quarter of an hour. Finally, he was
lifted up and carried bodily, by a self-appointed Committee of Public
Safety, to the side of the road, to be conveyed home in a trolley.
But all flesh is as grass. Bill Bailey’s days drew to an end. The
French-grey in his complexion was becoming indistinguishable from the
red; his joints rattled like dry bones; his fanfare horn was growing
asthmatic. Old age was upon him, and I, with the ingratitude of man to
the faithful servant who has outlived his period of usefulness, sold him
to Mr. Gootch for fifteen sovereigns and a small lady’s bicycle.
Only The Gruffin mourned his passing. She said little, but accepted the
bicycle (which I had purchased for her consolation) with becoming
meekness.
At ten o’clock on the night before Bill Bailey’s departure—he was to be
sent for early in the morning—the nurse announced with some concern that
Miss Alethea (The Gruffin) was not in her bed. She was ultimately
discovered in the coach-house, attired in a pink dressing-gown and bath
slippers. She was kneeling with her arms round as much of Bill Bailey as
they could encompass; her long hair flowed and rippled over his
scratched and dinted bonnet; and she was crying as if her very heart
would break.