THE ECCENTRIC GENTLEMAN

It was a lovely morning. Philip, tramping vigorously along a Hertfordshire highway, felt that if all his adventures were to be conducted under such a kindly sun as this he would have little to complain of. But at present his most pressing desire was to get as far away from the residence of Mr. Montagu Falconer as possible.

He had quitted that restful establishment some three hours previously, escaping from durance by the simple expedient of opening the French window and walking out on to the lawn. He had caught an early morning train into the country; and having travelled as far as one-and-ninepence would carry him, had also covered a considerable distance upon two sturdy legs. But he was uneasily conscious of the avenging power of the Law, which, goaded into activity by his late host,—Heaven only knew on what charges,—might be interesting itself on his behalf over all the countryside.

Still, he felt that he had no alternative. If he had accepted Mr. Falconer's pressing invitation to remain and be arrested at nine o'clock that morning, a still more involved situation would have arisen. For one thing Pegs and Mrs. Falconer would have been dragged into the fray, which would have been a most unnecessary complication; for apparently their choleric but obtuse protector had not scented their presence in the plot at all. They would certainly have confessed complicity and taken Philip's side; and this would have led to a domestic upheaval of a most monumental character. So Philip had cut the Gordian knot by running away.

It was eleven o'clock. He had breakfasted off the very inconsiderable remains of his supper, and was now acutely conscious of the existence of an excellent digestion clamouring for employment. He tramped resolutely along the wide country road, fingering the sum of elevenpence which remained in his right-hand trouser pocket, and wishing he could come to a shop.

He also speculated as to his future. He was a clear-headed little boy, and though he had led a secluded life, he had spent it almost entirely with grown-up people, and was accustomed to marshalling facts and weighing probabilities. He ran over the list of his accomplishments and limitations.

He had no Latin or Greek, but was a good stenographer and typewriter. He could keep accounts and file correspondence with method and neatness. He was a promising mathematician, with a useful but unsystematic acquaintance with mechanics and physics. He had read and re-read some twenty of Shakespeare's plays. He knew long passages of Milton and Tennyson by heart, and was well up in the history of ancient chivalry. His favourite book was Sir Thomas Malory's "Morte d'Arthur"; next in order ranked a string of well-thumbed science manuals. It may be added that he had never read a novel in his life. The foundation-stone of nine novels out of ten is a woman, and the coping-stone thereof is love made perfect; so naturally such works had found no place upon Uncle Joseph's shelves.

He was fairly expert with singlestick and rapier, and could play piquet and double-dummy bridge with more than average skill. But he knew nothing of cricket and football; and the ordinary joys of the schoolboy's holidays—pantomimes, parties, and the like—were a sealed book to him.

His labours on behalf of the Kind Young Hearts and Thomas Smith had introduced him to a large and varied, if unusual, circle of acquaintance, and he possessed a knowledge of human nature and the world in general that a seasoned man about town might have envied.

For some time back his thoughts had been occupied with the contemplation of a suitable career. The profession of Knight Errantry having apparently fallen into desuetude, he had been compelled to resign himself to the prospect of a more humdrum occupation. With the true instinct for the surviving possibilities of romance, he had decided to become an engineer. Like all boys of the present age he was consumed with the desire to understand, direct, and control machinery—especially the machinery of the automobile. The numerous cars which whizzed up and down the Finchley Road were an abiding joy to him. He could tell the make of any of them—just as a woman can tell the make of another woman—by the cut of its bonnet. Number plates attracted him especially, for they stimulated his imagination. When a mud-splashed car displaying the letters "S.B." stole silently past him in the gathering darkness, he realised with a thrill the bigness of the world; for this weary giant, now slipping into the roaring heart of London, had come all the way from the fastnesses of Argyllshire. He paid a penny a week for a small but highly technical journal which dealt with the latest mode in such things as sleeve-valves and detachable rims. He even executed designs of his own, inventing tyres which never punctured and carburettors that never choked. So now, with the choice of a career suddenly thrust upon him, he had no difficulty in making up his mind. It had been made up for some time. At this very moment he was on his way to Coventry, whence he knew that vast numbers of motor-cars emanated. What he was going to do when he got there he had not definitely settled. He felt that he already possessed certain saleable merchandise in the form of clerical skill: this he proposed to barter for technical instruction. He would arrange details when he reached Coventry. Philip was essentially one of those people who decline to think of the Vistula until they have crossed the Rhine.

Presently he came to an old, lofty, and warmly tinted brick wall, skirting the road for nearly a quarter of a mile on his right, and evidently sheltering some venerable house and garden. As he approached, Philip observed a large notice-board, jutting out for all to see.

A quarter of a mile farther on, where the wall ended, came another board, which said, simply:—

Philip's comment on this pretty device was characteristic.

"What a beast you would feel," he said to himself, "if you didn't drive slowly and then found that 'Thank You!' sticking out at the end!"

He made a mental note that if ever he possessed a car of his own and came to this wall, he would comply punctiliously with the request upon the first board and so earn the right to read the second. He added a rider to the effect that if ever he possessed a house of his own like that he would put out a similar board.

He had scarcely passed the second of the concealed gates—the first was a mere kitchen door—when there was a grinding of bolts, and the gates were dragged open, slowly but resolutely, first one and then the other, by a small but intensely fat girl of seven or eight. This proceeding exposed to view the front of an ancient and ivy-clad house. Exactly opposite to the front door stood a motorcar of antique design and dilapidated appearance. From beneath the car projected a pair of human feet, attached to a pair of lengthy legs. The owner of the legs was apparently doing something painful to the underbody of the car, from beneath which came a stream of objurations of a bloodthirsty but innocuous type, punctuated by the clink of a spanner.

The small girl, breathing heavily, stooped down to inspect these operations. Presently, adopting a more comfortable but somewhat reptilian attitude, she crawled bodily under the car. Here she encountered the head of the mechanic, who was lying on his back, engaged apparently in the task of removing mud-stalactites from the bottom of the car with a spanner. As fast as the stalactites were dislodged they fell into the excavator's eyes or mouth.

"What are you doin' of, Daddy?" enquired a husky but interested voice in his ear.

"Eating mud," replied the mechanic. "Splendid thing for the digestion, Dumps. Have some?"

"No, thank you," was the dignified reply. "I shall be havin' a glass of milk soon. But I will watch you," added Miss Dumps indulgently.

She rolled over with some difficulty on to her back, and lay staring solemnly at the mud-encrusted vault above her, while her harassed parent resumed his task of digging with the spanner for a buried nut.

"I've opened the gates, Daddy," announced the small lady presently, in tones which were intended not so much to convey information as to remind her companion that he was forgetting his duties as a conversationalist.

"Thank you, madam," replied Mr. Mablethorpe. "Is the road clear?"

"I seen a little boy."

"Trust you for that! Well, we must contrive not to run over him. Just look in my left ear and see if you can find a nut, there's a good girl. I rather fancy I heard it drop in just now. No, don't bother. Here it is in my eye. Now we are really getting on!"

He adjusted the nut to the now exhumed bolt, and began to screw it tight with the spanner. The recumbent Dumps turned her head and regarded him admiringly.

"You are clever, Daddy!" she said.

"You are right," admitted her parent modestly. "I am a wonder. People simply come miles to—Dash and confound the rotten thing! Run your finger round the inside of my collar, Daniel Lambert. I think I can feel it lying somewhere round at the back."

Once more the fugitive nut was recaptured and replaced—this time permanently. Mr. Julius Mablethorpe wriggled painfully from under the car on the gravel drive, and then, rising to his legs, politely dragged his daughter out by the heels, and having first stood her upon her head (in order, as he explained, to give her feet a rest) restored her to an upright position, and surveyed her doubtfully.

"We shall get into trouble with Mother, Dumpling," was his first remark.

He was right. At that moment the front door opened, and Mrs. Mablethorpe appeared.

"I can only say, Julius," she began at once,—as a matter of fact, no one had invited her to say anything.—"that I am not in the least surprised at anything you may do; but I think"—her voice quavered tearfully—"that you might have had the sense to prevent that child from crawling about in the mud too. Baby, go into the house and ask nurse to give you a bath at once. Your hands and face are black!"

"But I am quite white, Mummy," replied Miss Dumpling soothingly (one soon picked up the habit of speaking soothingly to Mrs. Mablethorpe), "all over the rest of myself. Look, I'll show you!"

Before any one could stop her, the infant detached a stocking from its moorings and rolled it down to her ankle.

"There!" she said triumphantly.

Mrs. Mablethorpe, fearing further enterprise, hurriedly reiterated her ultimatum on the subject of a bath.

"A good hot one," she added.

"The kiddie would do much better to wash her hands and face in cold water," said Mr. Mablethorpe. "What she is covered with is chiefly oil, and hot water will only open her little pores and drive it in."

Mrs. Mablethorpe put her hand to her head, dizzily.

"You know I cannot bear argument, Julius," she said, with a little moan.

"Sorry!" said Mr. Mablethorpe humbly. "We must do as we are told, Dumps. We will go upstairs and wash in hot water. Then we shall have black hands and faces for months and months, and Mother won't be able to take us to Church. Hurrah!"

And this undutiful parent and callous husband caught up his daughter on his shoulder and carried her, shrieking joyfully, to the nursery. Five minutes later he descended, clean and smiling, and after caressing his hypochondriacal spouse, set to work to start up his engine. After three back-fires this feat was accomplished, and the car, with much burring of gear-wheels and slipping of the clutch, started off upon its deafening career. The vehicle in question was an old friend, and like most old friends felt privileged to speak its mind on all occasions, which it did with no uncertain voice.

Mr. Mablethorpe, having safely negociated the gateway,—no light feat, considering the amount of play on his steering-wheel,—turned sharp to the right and proceeded northward. Presently he came to four cross-roads. At the foot of the signpost sat a small, sturdy, and well-dressed boy, with short, curly, red hair and hazel-green eyes.

As the car slowed down in case of cross traffic the boy rose to his feet, and ranging up alongside asked a polite question.

Mr. Mablethorpe leaned over as far as he could.

"Is it very important?" he yelled above the din. "If I stop this engine to listen to you I may never be able to start it again."

Philip replied with the full pressure of his lungs, but the only distinguishable word was "Coventry." The amiable Mr. Mablethorpe accordingly switched off the current, and the engine clanked itself into a state of coma.

"Now let us hear all about it," he said.

"Can you please tell me the way to Coventry?" enquired Philip.

"Coventry—eh? Have you been sent there?" Mr. Mablethorpe's eye twinkled.

"No. I'm going of my own accord," said Philip innocently.

"First time I have heard of a man sending himself to Coventry," mused Mr. Mablethorpe. He surveyed Philip's bewildered face with interest. "Perhaps you don't catch the allusion, though. Don't you ever send any one to Coventry at school?"

"I have never been to school, sir," replied Philip.

"That's a pity," said Mr. Mablethorpe. "But to resume. Coventry must be a good eighty miles from here. Do you propose to walk?"

"Yes."

Mr. Mablethorpe eyed the pedestrian curiously. "Running away?" he asked.

"Sort of," admitted Philip.

"Well, I have only one motto in life," said Mr. Mablethorpe, "and that is, 'Mind your own business!' So I will refrain from comment. I don't know where Coventry is, but I should think you would not go far wrong if you kept along this road, and asked again later. Now, with your permission, I must be getting on."

Mr. Mablethorpe had not proceeded far on his way—to his surprise and gratification the engine had come to life almost immediately—when his conscience smote him.

"I might have offered the little beggar a lift," he said to himself. "Silly not to have thought of it. He has a longish journey before him—that is, if Papa doesn't lay him by the heels. I might stop and let him overtake me. I wonder where he is."

He leaned over the side of the car and surveyed the road behind him.

The car, which had been waiting for some such opportunity as this all morning, promptly mounted the footpath and charged a hedge. Fortunately it was climbing a hill on its first speed at the time, so the results of the impact were not serious.

Mr. Mablethorpe, who was quite accustomed to mishaps of this kind, stopped his engine, and descended to earth to review the situation.

The first object which met his eye was Philip—a little blown and obviously taken by surprise—standing in the road with one hand still upon the Cape-cart hood.

"Hallo!" remarked Mr. Mablethorpe genially. "Still here?"

"Yes," replied Philip. "I thought I would run behind."

"Better come and sit in front," advised Mr. Mablethorpe. "But first of all we must get Boanerges out of the hedge."

"Who?"

"Boanerges. Let me introduce you. I present Boanerges—my superb, four-seated, two-cylinder, one dog-power reaping machine—to—to—Mr.—"

"Philip Meldrum."

"—To Mr. Philip Meldrum. Now you know one another. (At least, Boanerges knows you: you don't know Boanerges.) Come and help to shove his ugly face in!"

Philip assisted his new and eccentric friend to disentangle Boanerges from the hedge and push him back into the roadway, and then obediently took his seat. He was trembling with pure ecstasy. He was in a motor-car! At last he had stepped from textbooks into the realms of reality.

He surveyed the various appliances on the dingy dashboard. There were two switches of the electric light variety, one marked "M" and the other "A," which Philip knew stood for Magneto and Accumulator respectively. There was an oil-reservoir, with a piston-rod protruding from the top, and a glass gauge at one side to show the level of the oil. Last of all, suspended from its tail by a drawing pin, came a clockwork mouse, which had originally been the property of the Dumpling and was now spending its declining years as a motor-mascot. Meanwhile Mr. Mablethorpe, with the assistance of the starting-handle, had been playing a monotonous and unmelodious tune upon his hurdy-gurdy-like engine. Presently he paused for breath.

"Boanerges takes a lot of starting-up," he explained. "I'll have one more go, and if that fails we will run him backwards down the hill and let the reverse in. That ought to do it."

"Are you running on magneto or accumulator, sir?" enquired Philip.

Mr. Mablethorpe left the starting-handle and came thoughtfully round to the side of the car.

"I don't seem to be running on either," he remarked. "My mistake! Let us try this little fellow."

He turned down the switch marked "A," and returned to his labours. The immediate result was a stunning explosion immediately under Philip's feet.

"That is the first gun," explained Mr. Mablethorpe. "He always gives us three before we start. The first is a protest; the second means 'Drop it, or there will be trouble!' and the third usually ushers in a conflagration. After that I blow the flames out, and off we go!"

But this was too sanguine an estimate. After five resounding back-fires the engine still failed to exhibit any signs of abiding vitality, although the accumulator had been reinforced by the magneto. Mr. Mablethorpe accordingly took his seat at the wheel and, releasing the brakes, allowed the car to slide rapidly backward down the hill. At the same time he performed some complicated evolutions with his feet.

Instantly the engine sprang into life, and Boanerges, with a playful swerve, shot stern foremost into a bank at the other side of the highway, with a bump which nearly sent Philip back-somersaulting into the seat behind. The engine immediately stopped again.

That resourceful but unconventional mechanic, the owner of the car, abandoned his pedal-work, descended once more into the road, and after dispassionately kicking Boanerges three times in the pit of his stomach—the radiator—seized the starting-handle and gave it another resolute twirl.

This time his efforts were successful beyond all expectation. Boanerges promptly charged forward, nearly pinning his tormentor beneath his off-front wheel, and proceeded smartly up the hill once more, Mr. Mablethorpe running frantically alongside and endeavouring to climb into the driver's seat over the spare wheel.

"Another little mistake of mine," he panted, as he finally hopped on board and took the wobbly steering-wheel over from Philip. "I left the gears in the first speed instead of the neutral. But it is all right now. We are off like an Arab steed. Let me oil him up."

He leaned forward and began to agitate the piston in the oil-reservoir, with the result that Boanerges, emitting dense fumes of black smoke from his exhaust, was soon breasting the slope with quite remarkable vigour.

"So you know something about motors?" said Mr. Mablethorpe, as they reached the top of the hill and began to slide comfortably down the other side.

"Only out of books," said Philip. "I have never been in a car before, but I think I understand the way the engine works, and the ignition."

Mr. Mablethorpe surveyed him admiringly.

"Wonderful!" he said—"wonderful! Fancy any human creature being able to understand textbooks! They simply prostrate me. I dare say," he added enviously, "that you know what poppet-valves are! And worm-drives, and differential sprockets! Prodigious!"

"Only by what I have read about them in a book," explained Philip modestly.

"Well," continued Mr. Mablethorpe. "I know of one thing you never read about in a book, and that was a car like this. Boanerges was built before the printing-press was invented—in the dark ages—in the days of the Black Art. Look at those two switches, marked 'M' and 'A.' They stand for 'Mephistopheles and Apollyon'—the name of the firm who supplied the engine. Oh, it's an eerie vehicle, this. Observe this pedal. You wouldn't think a pedal could do more than just go up and down, would you?"

"It might take out the clutch, or put on the brake, sir," hazarded Philip respectfully.

Mr. Mablethorpe waved his hand contemptuously.

"That's nothing," he said. "Steady, old man!" (This to Boanerges, who, feeling his owner's grip of the wheel relax, had swerved quite thirty degrees out of his course.) "This car was designed by a man without hands or arms—only feet and teeth. At least, I think so. His idea was to steer with his teeth and do everything else with his feet. So he started by abolishing gear-handles and side-brakes, and applied all his ingenuity to the pedals. Look at this one,—the left. If I push it half-down the car stops. If I push it two thirds down, the car starts again—in the opposite direction—and the engine plays I wish I was an Angel, instead of Hitchy Koo! We have a lot of fun in close traffic that way. If I push it seven eighths down, the radiator boils over, and I can have a shave or a cup of tea; and if I put it right down, the car turns inside out and becomes a portable camp bedstead. I won't do that at present, because I am not sleepy."

All this surprising information was communicated with an air of solemn and confidential conviction; and Philip, who had never previously encountered any one endowed with Mr. Mablethorpe's peculiar brand of humour, merely gaped dumbly.

"Yes, Boanerges is a car of mystery," continued this excellent but frivolous man presently. "There is a little handle-arrangement down here, in the corner of the dashboard. I don't know who put it there: I just noticed it one day, after I had owned the car for some time. I have only turned it three times. The first time the whole of the back axle dropped off into the road. The second time Boanerges turned right round and ran over a duck which was asleep on a cottage doorstep behind us. The third time a policeman with a notebook shot straight up out of the roadway in front of the car, and took my name and address for obstructing a funeral which had been trying to pass me for two hours. That was about seventeen years ago, just after I bought the car. At least, I didn't buy it: it was left to me by my great-grandmother. I have never meddled with that handle since."

Philip, who had lived in serious company hitherto, and had no idea that grown-up people ever descended to imbecility of this description, began to like this strange gentleman. But he made no attempt to maintain a conversation with him. After the dictatorial austerity of Uncle Joseph he felt pleasantly intoxicated by his present companion's frothy effervescence, and was well content to lean back in his seat and listen.

"Of course," resumed Mr. Mablethorpe presently, "I may be wrong about the designer of this car having had no arms. He may have required them—one of them, at any rate—for other purposes. For instance, he may have been engaged to be married. Are you engaged to be married, by any chance?"

"No," said Philip.

"Ah!"

Mr. Mablethorpe appeared to fall into a fresh train of thought, and after a little while enquired:—

"What is your opinion of the female sex as a whole?"

Not long ago Philip could have given his opinion on this subject clearly and concisely. Now he was content to quote the words of another.

"I don't quite know," he said, "but Uncle Joseph thinks—"

He hesitated. Mr. Mablethorpe might not be interested in Uncle Joseph.

But this astonishing gentleman appeared to be interested in everybody.

"Tell me all that Uncle Joseph thinks," he commanded.

"Uncle Joseph," began Philip, "used to wonder why women were ever created."

Mr. Mablethorpe turned and regarded his small companion sharply.

"Aha! Uncle Joseph used to wonder that, did he? Why?"

"He said," continued Philip, warming to his subject as the familiar phrases came back to him, "that there is no parallel to the female mind in any other branch of Nature."

"That is true," remarked Mr. Mablethorpe approvingly. "I should like to meet Uncle Joseph. Go on."

"It seems incredible," pursued Philip, with a curiously incongruous expression of intense wisdom upon his honest and ingenuous features, "that Providence should handicap its own beautifully designed human engines by placing them in daily contact with such a piece of uncontrolled and ill-balanced mechanism as Woman."

"Oho!" said Mr. Mablethorpe, manipulating the oil-pump, to the noisome satisfaction of Boanerges; "Uncle Joseph said that, did he?"

"Yes; and he said putting women near a man was like putting a lot of bar-magnets round a compass. And he said they were parasites, too, actuated by predatory instincts. They—"

But Mr. Mablethorpe interrupted him.

"Uncle Joseph, I take it," he said, "is a married man."

"Oh, no," replied Philip, "he is a bachelor. He never allows a woman into his house, even to wash,—at least, he never did until the other day, when the Beautiful Lady came. And then—well, I didn't know what to think, sir," he concluded helplessly.

"This," commented Mr. Mablethorpe, "is elliptical but interesting. Proceed, my infant misogynist. Who was the Beautiful Lady, and why did she call?"

"Well, sir," said Philip, knitting his brows, "it was like this. No woman is ever—was ever—allowed into our house, because—because of what Uncle Joseph thinks—thought—about them. Yesterday a lady called when he was out, and got in."

"Who let her in?" enquired the accusing voice of Mr. Mablethorpe.

"I'm afraid I did, sir," replied Philip apologetically.

"I am not in the least surprised to hear it," said Mr. Mablethorpe. "What was she like?"

"She was all in black, and she sat and talked to me for a long time, and told me she had lost her little girl. Then Uncle Joseph came in, and—and—and they seemed to know each other quite well, sir."

Mr. Mablethorpe deliberately switched off his engine and slowed down to a stop at the roadside.

"Now we can talk without shouting," he said. "I scent copy. This is a real live Romance. Continue. How well did Uncle Joseph and the Beautiful Lady appear to know one another?"

"Pretty well," faltered Philip, with boylike reserve.

Mr. Mablethorpe, who had once been a boy himself,—there were some who said that he had never grown up,—nodded understandingly.

"And what happened after that?" he asked.

"I ran away," said Philip.

"Why?"

"They did not seem to need me any more," said Philip simply.

Mr. Mablethorpe produced a pipe, and filled it with great care. He appeared to be thinking deeply about something. Presently, after lighting the pipe, he turned to Philip, and said:—

"Are you in a pressing hurry to get to Coventry?"

Philip thought not, and said so.

"Then why not come and stay with me for a bit?" suggested this amazing man.