“BILL BAILEY” COMES AGAIN
A year later I bought a new car. It possessed four cylinders and an
innumerable quantity of claims to perfection. The engine would start at
the pressure of a button; the foot-brake and accelerator never became
involved in an unholy alliance; it could climb any hill; and outlying
portions of its anatomy adhered faithfully to the parent body.
Pedestrians and domestic animals no longer took refuge in ditches at our
approach. On the contrary, we charmed them like Orpheus with his lute;
for the sound of our engine never rose above a sleek and comfortable
purr, while the note of the horn suggested the first three bars of
“Onward, Christian Soldiers!”
My wife christened the new arrival The Greyhound, but The Gruffin,
faithful to the memory of the late lamented Bill Bailey, never referred
to it as anything but The Egg-Boiler. This scornful denotation found
some justification in the car’s ornate nickel-plated radiator, whose
curving sides and domed top made up a far-away resemblance to the
heavily patented and highly explosive contrivance which daily terrorised
our breakfast-table.
Of Bill Bailey’s fate we knew little, but since Mr. Gootch once informed
us with some bitterness that he had had to sell him to a Scotchman, we
gathered that, for once in his life, our esteemed friend had “bitten off
more than he could chew.”
The Greyhound, though a sheer delight as a vehicle, was endowed with
somewhat complicated internal mechanism, and I was compelled in
consequence to retain the services of a skilled chauffeur, a Mr.
Richards, who very properly limited my dealings with the car to ordering
it round when I thought I should be likely to get it. Consequently my
connection with practical mechanics came to an end, and henceforth I
travelled with my friends in the back seat, The Gruffin keeping Mr.
Richards company in front, and goading that exclusive and haughty menial
to visible annoyance by her supercilious attitude towards the new car.
Finally we decided on a motor trip to Scotland. There was a
luggage-carrier on the back of the car which was quite competent to
contain my wife’s trunk and my own suit-case. The Gruffin, who was not
yet of an age to trouble about her appearance, carried her _batterie de
toilette_ in a receptacle of her own, which shared the front seat with
its owner, and served the additional purpose of keeping The Gruffin’s
slim person more securely wedged therein.
We joined the car at Carlisle, and drove the first day to Stirling. On
the second the weather broke down, and we ploughed our way through Perth
and the Pass of Killiecrankie to Inverness in a blinding Scotch mist.
The Greyhound behaved magnificently, and negotiated the Spittal of
Glenshee and other notorious nightmares of the bad hill-climber in a
manner which caused me to refer slightingly to what might have happened
had we entrusted our fortunes to Bill Bailey. The Gruffin tossed back to
me over her shoulder a recommendation to touch wood.
Next day broke fine and clear, and we rose early, for we intended to run
right across Scotland. I ate a hearty breakfast, inwardly congratulating
myself upon not having to accelerate its assimilation by performing
calisthenic exercises upon a starting-handle directly afterwards. At ten
o’clock The Greyhound slid round to the hotel door, and we embarked upon
our journey. Infatuated by long immunity from disaster, I dispatched a
telegram to an hotel fifty miles away, ordering luncheon at a
meticulously definite hour, and another to our destination—a hospitable
shooting-box on the west coast—mentioning the exact moment at which we
might be expected.
Certainly we were “asking for it,” as my Cassandra-like offspring did
not fail to remark. But for a while Fate answered us according to our
folly. We arrived at our luncheon hotel ten minutes before my advertised
time, an achievement which pleased me so much that I wasted some time in
exhibiting the engine to the courtly and venerable brigand who owned the
hotel, with the result that we got away half an hour late. But what was
half an hour to The Greyhound?
Blithely we sped across the endless moor beneath the September sun. The
road, straight and undulating, ran ahead of us like a white tape laid
upon the heather. The engine purred contentedly, and Mr. Richards,
lolling back in his seat, took a patronising survey of the surrounding
landscape. Evidently he rejoiced, in his benign and lofty fashion, to
think how this glittering vision was brightening the dull lives of the
grouse and sheep. Certainly the appearance of The Greyhound did him
credit. Not a speck of mud defiled its body; soot and oil were nowhere
obtrusive. Bill Bailey had been wont, during periods of rest outside
friends’ front doors, to deposit a small puddle of some black and greasy
liquid upon the gravel. The Greyhound was guilty of no such untidiness.
Mr. Richards, to quote his own respectfully satirical words, preferred
using his oil to oil the car instead of gentlemen’s front drives. Under
his administration my expenditure on lubricants alone had shrunk to half
of what it had been in Bill Bailey’s time.
But economy can be pushed to excess. Even as I dozed in the back seat,
sleepily observing The Gruffin’s flying mane and wondering whether we
ought not shortly to get out the Thermos containing our tea, there came
a grating, crackling sound. The Greyhound gave a swerve which nearly
deposited its occupants in a peat-hag; and after one or two zigzag and
epileptic gambols came to a full stop.
“Steering-gear gone wrong, Richards?” I inquired.
“I don’t think so, sir,” replied Mr. Richards easily. “Seems to me it
was a kind of a side sl—— Get out, sir! Get out, mum! The dam thing’s
afire!”
We cooled the fervid glowing of the back-axle with a patent
fire-extinguisher, and sat down gloomily to survey the wreck. Economy is
the foundation of riches, but you must discriminate in your choice of
economies. Axle-grease should not be included in the list. Mr. Richards,
whether owing to a saving disposition or an æsthetic desire to avoid
untidy drippings, had omitted—so we afterwards discovered—to lubricate
the back-axle or differential for several weeks, with the result that
the bearings of the off-side back wheel had “seized,” and most of the
appurtenances thereof had fused into a solid immovable mass.
We sat in the declining rays of the sun and regarded The Greyhound. The
brass-work still shone, and the engine was in beautiful running order;
but the incontrovertible and humiliating fact remained that we were ten
miles from the nearest dwelling and The Greyhound’s career as a medium
of transport was temporarily closed. Even the biting reminder of The
Gruffin that we could still employ it to boil eggs in failed to cheer
us.
Restraining an impulse to give Mr. Richards a month’s warning on the
spot, I conferred with my wife and daughter. We might possibly be picked
up by a passing car, but the road was a lonely one and the contingency
unlikely. We must walk. Accordingly we sat down to a hasty tea, prepared
directly afterwards to tramp on towards our destination.
The wind had dropped completely, and the silence that lay upon the
sleepy, sunny moor was almost uncanny. Imbued with a gentle melancholy,
my wife and I partook of refreshment in chastened silence. Suddenly, as
The Gruffin (considerably more cheerful than I had seen her for some
days) was passing up her cup for the third time, a faint and irregular
sound came pulsing and vibrating across the moor. It might have been the
roar of a battle far away. One could almost hear the popping of rifles,
the clash of steel, and the shrieks of the wounded. Presently the noise
increased in intensity and volume. It appeared to come from beyond a
steep rise in the long straight road behind us. We pricked up our ears.
I became conscious of a vague sense of familiarity with the phenomenon.
The air seemed charged with some sympathetic influence.
“What is that noise, Richards?” I said.
“I rather _think_, sir,” replied Mr. Richards, peering down the road,
“that it might be some kind of a——”
Suddenly I was aware of a distinct rise of temperature in the
neighbourhood of my left foot. My daughter, with face flushed and lips
parted, was gazing feverishly down the road. An unheeded Thermos flask,
held limply in her hand, was directing a stream of scalding tea down my
leg. Before I could expostulate she wheeled round upon me, and I swear
there were tears in her eyes.
“It’s _Bill_!” she shrieked. “Bill Bailey! _My_ Bill!”
She was right. As she spoke a black object appeared upon the crown of
the hill, and, incredible to relate, Bill Bailey, puffing, snorting,
reeking, jingling, back-firing, came lumbering down the slope, in his
old hopeless but irresistible fashion, right upon our present
encampment.
His lamps and Stepney wheel were gone, his back tyres were solid, and
his erstwhile body of French-grey was now decked out in a rather
blistered coat of that serviceable red pigment which adorns most of the
farmers’ carts in the Highlands. But his voice was still unmistakably
the voice of Bill Bailey.
He was driven by a dirty-faced youth in a blue overall, who presented
the appearance of one who acts as general factotum in a country
establishment which supports two or three motors and generates its own
electric light. By his side sat a patriarchal old gentleman with a white
beard, in tweeds, hobnail boots, and a deerstalker cap—obviously a head
ghillie of high and ancient lineage.
The spider-seat at the back was occupied, in the fullest sense of the
word, by a dead stag about the size of a horse, lashed to this, its
temporary catafalque, with innumerable ropes.
The old gentleman was politeness itself, and on hearing of our plight
placed himself and Bill Bailey unreservedly at our disposal. His master,
The M‘Shin of Inversneishan, would be proud to house us for the night,
and the game-car should convey us to the hospitable walls of
Inversneishan forthwith. Tactfully worded doubts upon our part as to
Bill’s carrying capacity—we did not complicate matters by explaining
upon what good authority we spoke—were waved aside with a Highlander’s
indifference to mere detail. The car was a grand car, and the Castle was
no distance at all. Mr. Richards alone need be jettisoned. He could
remain with The Greyhound all night, and on the morrow succour should be
sent him.
Mr. Richards, utterly demoralised by his recent fall from the summit of
autocracy, meekly assented, and presently Bill Bailey, packed like the
last ’bus on a Saturday night, staggered off upon his homeward way. My
wife and I shared the front seat with the oleaginous youth in the
overall, while the patriarchal ghillie hung on precariously behind,
locked in the embrace of the dead stag. How or where The Gruffin
travelled I do not know. She may have perched herself upon some outlying
portion of the stag, or she may have attached herself to Bill Bailey’s
back-axle by her hair and sash, and been towed home. Anyhow, when, two
hours later, Bill Bailey, swaying beneath his burden and roaring like a
Bull of Bashan, drew up with all standing at the portals of
Inversneishan Castle, it was The Gruffin who, unkempt, scarlet, but
triumphant, rang the bell and bearded the butler while my wife and I
uncoiled ourselves from intimate association with the chauffeur, the
ghillie, and the stag.
Next morning, in returning thanks for the princely manner in which our
involuntary host had entertained us, I retailed to him the full story of
our previous acquaintance with Bill Bailey. I further added, with my
daughter’s hot hand squeezing mine in passionate approval, an intimation
that if ever Bill should again come into the market I thought I could
find a purchaser for him.
He duly came back to us, at a cost of five pounds and his sea-passage, a
few months later, and we have had him ever since.
Such is the tale of Bill Bailey. To-day he stands in a corner of my
coach-house, an occupier of valuable space, a stumbling-block to all and
sundry, and a lasting memorial to the omnipotence of human—especially
feminine—sentiment.