Part 4

Such a hill we soon reached. But as we began the descent I saw that it was steeper than I had supposed, and so began the descent slowly. But the car soon gained a greater speed than I wished, so I threw her into second and pressed on the foot-brake. Still she ran too fast, and I saw that this was a steeper hill than I had ever met, and much as I disliked doing so, knowing how ruinous it is to the tires, I put on the emergency brake. But what was my horror to find that we were now shooting down the hill at a speed greater than I had ever felt since the days when I tobogganed! However, there was nothing more to be done, and I could only hope that we should meet nothing in the way. But that hope was short-lived, for at the moment I saw, near the foot of the hill, a picnic party which had backed their pony-cart against the hedge, leaving the pony standing across the road while they leisurely unpacked a lunch-basket and other paraphernalia for a feast. It was true there was room to pass if one drove carefully and slowly, but we were not going slowly! Indeed, one glance at the speedometer brought my heart into my throat! I have read of men who were cool in moments of danger--I must be a hero, for I was _cold_! I could only hope that Ruth had not seen, or, if she had, had not understood. I blew the klaxon furiously; saw a boy run to the pony's head. I blew again two sharp blasts, and, fortunately, he had sense enough to see he should be struck, and so jumped clear. The pony threw back his head with a snort, and we shot by without an inch to spare between the cart and a solid stone post opposite. Ruth was as white as death but uttered no sound. The silence was broken by the voice of the child who had been so near death. But what he said seemed inadequate. It was: "Oh, I say!" James Freeman Clarke attributed the profanity of the kindly boatmen on the Ohio River to a lack of vocabulary. Perhaps that was the reason the boy did not swear!

Well, the longest lane has a turning and the steepest hill a bottom, so at length the car began to slow down as it struck the opposite rise, and finally came to a full stop.

Then Ruth spoke. But, angel as she is, all she said was: "Don't you think, dear, that was a little fast?"

I said I thought it was, and that I would go slower hereafter!

I could not imagine what had happened. The brakes were new, and while the chauffeur at the "Beeches" had warned me that they were too light, I thought that was because he did not understand the difference there is in weight between an English and an American car. As I say, I could not understand it. The car had behaved as if it were alive--like a high-spirited horse, "full of beans," who had taken the bit into its teeth and bolted.

I descended and took a good look at every part of the machine. I found that the foot-brake was in order, _but the emergency brake had not been touched_. I have no doubt that such a student of the "subconscious" as yourself has already discovered the answer to the riddle. Yes, you are right! It was Sir Thomas's foolishness in talking about the "fourth speed," as I was leaving, that had lodged in my subconscious mind and led me to pull, not the emergency brake, but the fourth-speed lever!

I asked a laborer, plodding home to his dinner, the name of the little hamlet at the top of the hill. He answered: "Sawley."

"Why, that can hardly be," I replied. "I passed Sawley soon after leaving Ripon."

"Ay," he replied, "there be two of 'em."

"Well, one is enough for me," I answered.

He made no reply; simply stared at me as if he thought I was a fool. I guess he was right!

The motor-car has completed the work begun by the bicycle of breaking down "the middle wall of partition" which divided Englishmen from strangers. The motor is a letter of introduction to every owner. At the inn where we stopped for lunch were a young couple who, like ourselves, were making a trip, and when I asked some question about roads they opened their maps and not only gave us the desired information but also a valuable "tip," from which I learned on authority what otherwise I could have learned only by experience--that is, by loss of time and labor.

My new friend, for such I must call him, was much interested on learning we had come so far, and expressed a wish to see an American car. He was greatly impressed by the "self-starter," but insisted--as did every other Englishman who spoke to me on the subject--that the car was too light to stand up as an English car does. He also said that he had been told that the American brakes were not to be depended upon.

This led to a confession of my folly of the morning. I should have thought twice before telling it to a fellow countryman, for he would have thought it a high joke, and have "rubbed it in." But this serious young man was filled with horror at our narrow escape from death, and was altogether sympathetic. This led him to give me the "tip" of which I have spoken. It was very simple: "In descending a hill," said he, "judge its angle of descent and adjust your gear accordingly, then switch off the current, let in the clutch, and the engine will act as a brake. You will always have the brakes in reserve, but seldom use them. I have been over the highest passes of the Alps, with the exception of the Stelvio, without touching the brake."

"All's well that ends well," but I wish I might have known this simple rule earlier in the day!

XII

"JAEL THE WIFE OF HEBER THE KENITE"

John has not written lately because the car has been running well! He says you care only for "thrillers," and that there have been none since he last wrote. "Laus Deo!" add I. So to-day, which is a Sunday, I am writing in his place.

I am sorry to say I am not at all pleased with him! You know how unconventional and outspoken he is; well, I have had to tell him more than once that while his way of talking is well enough at home, where people know and love him, and where, even if they do not know him, they are more or less like him, and so understand that what he says is not to be taken _au pied de la lettre_, here people are different--their yea is yea, and their nay nay. The English are not only matter of fact, but have an awful reverence for truth, and do not understand what John means when he says that "Lying can be the highest form of truth"! So when a man says a thing they not unnaturally think he means it.

Well, all this introduction leads to the events of the day. This morning we went to the cathedral. I must say it was a shock to find that there were less than a hundred people in the choir--where the service was held. However, all went well enough until the sermon: the preacher announced--no, _sung_--his text, "Blessed among women shall Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite be. Blessed shall she be among women in the tent," and then proceeded: "We will think of Jael, my dear brethren, not merely as the wife of Heber the Kenite, but rather as a type of the Blessed Virgin." What followed I shall never know, for at this moment John picked up his hat and umbrella and left, and I, fearing he might be faint, quickly followed. When we got outside, I said, "Are you sick, dear?" and he replied: "Not yet, but I should have been had I waited a moment longer."

"Was the air close?" I innocently asked.

"No, it was as damp and drafty as usual, but I could not have stood that creature another minute."

Then followed a diatribe on the Established Church, which I will spare you. Before he had finished, there was not one stone left upon another of the cathedral system! "Such an array of clergy, such a choir, such an organ, such everything to make the service glorious, and yet fewer people than could be found in a mission chapel--the extravagance of it, the futility of it--why, half the people there were American tourists! Why don't they take the money and use it for some good purpose?"

"'This ointment might have been sold for much,'" I quoted.

"No, you don't," he growled. "Was the 'whole house filled with the odor of the ointment'? Is England? Is this town? Was the great cathedral? Was the choir even? There was no odor of ointment. There was nothing but a _stench_!"

"John!" I protested.

"Well, perhaps that was too strong. But, honestly, was there any feeling of the majesty of God there? I say nothing of his love--any pity for poor struggling souls? 'A type of the Blessed Virgin,' forsooth! If he must talk of Jael, why did he not tell the truth and remind the people that if she were living to-day she would be in jail--no, that is not a pun--waiting for the report of the grand jury? Is it not due to Mary's Son that she can no longer be counted 'blessed'? It is not the blasphemy, it is the unreality of the whole performance which is so dreadful. The preacher no doubt is a decent, law-abiding Englishman, who would be horrified if he read such a story in the _Times_, but because it is embedded in the Bible he considers it his duty to find a mystic meaning in it. This sort of talk is what leads to moral confusion, and is one of the reasons why the church is losing its hold on thoughtful people. The day was when the 'world' was full of darkness and the church full of light, but now the 'world' has a clearer moral vision than the church--or, at any rate, than that preposterous creature has."

By this time, as you may believe, there was not much of the "joy of the sanctuary" left in me! We walked down to the river, and after a long silence John began to recite:

"O Mary, go and call the cattle home, And call the cattle home, And call the cattle home, Across the sands o' Dee."

The tears came to my eyes, and John said, now quietly and reverently: "He was a man"--meaning Kingsley--"and there must be some like him. But, not 'in king's houses'! Why did not the preacher call _that_ Mary a type of the Virgin? Why didn't he recite the 'Sands o' Dee'? Is it not as truly inspired as Judges?"

By this time my ill humor had passed, and I said: "Perhaps because he could not recite it as well as you."

John laughed, and then said, "I'm sorry. Let us try and forget him," meaning, I suppose, the preacher, who probably was at that moment eating his Sunday roast and listening to his wife's praises of the sermon!

In the afternoon I announced that I thought of going to even-song, and to my dismay John said he would go with me! I thought it was running into temptation, and intimated as much, but he said he was going to do penance. Well, it proved to be a lovely penance! The sermon was so beautiful and simple, on the words "I know where thou dwellest." It was about home--where we dwell. "Is it such," said the preacher, "as we should wish Our Lord to visit?" He was an old man, and the sermon was like the talk of a father to his children. It radiated love. Then came the anthem, "Love Divine," and as the voice of the tenor was lifted up the boy's soprano followed, rising still higher, till in one final "Love Divine" the great arches of the roof re-echoed with the melody. I confess that I wept, and John said softly: "How perfect it all was! I understand now why the townspeople--the nave was filled--come to such a service."

So we wended our way back to the hotel, feeling that the day had not been altogether lost.

XIII

"AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING"

I said that the day was not altogether lost, but, alas! it was not yet over. We were sitting in the garden after the cold supper always served in lieu of dinner on Sunday evenings. John was smoking his pipe and all was peaceful when a man sitting near us suddenly turned to John and said: "I saw you in the cathedral this morning, but as you left hurriedly I feared you might be ill. I hope not."

Why can't John be good all the time? Or, if that is not possible, why can't he tell a lie? Surely the latter would have been better than to blurt out: "No, thank you. I was quite well, but when I found the talk was to be about Jael, I thought it best to take my wife out. I don't think Jael is a proper person to be spoken about in the presence of decent people."

"God bless me!" exclaimed the other, "how extraordinary!"

Fortunately, at that moment the man in charge of the garage appeared with the information that he had succeeded in getting the distilled water needed for the batteries, as the chemist's shop was now open, and John departed with him to see to dropping it in.

There was a long silence, and then the stranger said: "Are you an American?"

When I told him, he said: "Really, I should never have suspected it!"

How thankful I was that the chemist had opened his shop just when he did, for that "compliment"--for such of course it was intended to be--affects John as "sheeny" does an Irishman.

"Of course," continued my neighbor, "I saw at once that your husband was an American. But how does it happen that you speak without an accent?"

I laughed and said: "Probably because I had lived until my marriage in Boston, and am of pure English stock, whereas my husband is of mixed race, possibly having no English blood at all in him."

"Dear me! You don't mean to say Indian or negro, do you?"

Thank goodness that distilled water has to be put in drop by drop, or John would have been in the place he said the wife of Heber should be in! I explained that my husband's ancestors on one side had come from Ulster, and on the other from Wales, so that he did not have quite the same feeling about England that I have, whose people came from Norfolk and Devon.

He remarked it was a pity--I suppose for John, not for me--but I did not inquire. It is, however, a funny thing that while the English speak of curiosity as an American characteristic, they never seem to think there is any reason they should not ask us any questions which come into their heads. John, to whom, I need not say, I am indebted for this observation, says that it is because they look on us as freaks! And that just as children at the circus will pinch the legs of those unfortunate creatures called freaks--a thing they would never dream of doing to "humans"--so the English take liberties with us which they would never take with their own countrymen. But you know how he talks!

My new acquaintance was evidently not yet satisfied, for he continued: "You know that was rather an original remark of your husband's about the sermon this morning."

I replied that he was rather an original person.

"But," he said, "if you once begin that sort of thing, where will it end?"

"What sort of thing?" I asked.

"Why, talking about those people in the Bible as if they were real people living to-day, don't you know."

"Don't you think of them as real?"

"I don't think of them at all."

"But when they are spoken of in a sermon, what do you think?"

"Why, to tell you the truth, I am apt to take a little snooze. I have done my part in the service, made the responses and that sort of thing, you know, and when it comes to the sermon, that's parson's job. He has to do something, and I take it for granted he knows his business and pay no attention to him. But if I once started in to consider whether he was right or wrong, where should I end? I know jolly well that Sunday would be no day of rest! Look at your husband, now--he is all worked up over the sermon this morning, but it did me no harm. To tell you the truth, I don't think I ever met a man before who cared what a parson says. Well, perhaps I don't quite mean that, but what surprised me was that he talked as if he had been listening to a speech by Lloyd George or Asquith, or one of those men, on a subject that really matters."

"But you think the clergy ought to talk on things that really matter?"

"In a way, yes. But not as a regular thing. That is the mistake the Non-conformists make. I have a son-in-law who goes to chapel, and at Sunday dinner the family talk over the sermon as if they had been to a political meeting. I don't call that making Sunday a day of rest. Why should I want to have a parson tell me what to think or what to do? What does he know about the life of _men_? I expect I know what I ought to do as well as he does."

"Why then have a sermon at all?"

"Well, it's the custom, and I believe in keeping up the old customs. And, besides, the parson ought to have something to do. Of course in a large town where there are working people, with a lot of drunkenness and fighting and that sort of thing, the parsons are pretty busy. As I said to my son-in-law a fortnight ago, when he was saying the Established Church ought to go, the money ought to be taken for other purposes, and all that sort of thing which the radicals are always saying, well, I said to him, 'You don't look deep enough. Think what the church saves the country every year in police alone! The Established Church is the bulwark of society,' I said, 'and if you break that down, what will take its place? The people who need it least will build churches for themselves, and those who need it most will have none. And, let me tell you, when that day comes, you will soon learn whether you are paying less or more to maintain order. And that is not all,' I said, for by this time I was pretty hot, 'the Established Church keeps alive the spirit of the empire. But in your chapels your ministers talk as if there were other countries as good as England. They are a lot of radicals and have no respect for land, yet it is on the land England depends, and the church knows that and never offends the landlord.' He didn't like this over-much, and I doubt if I go there soon again. No, I am all for the church; what I say is: 'As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end, Amen!'"

And with that confession of faith he knocked the ashes out of his pipe and stumped off to bed.

How will it all end? Will the church set its face against the rising tide of democracy and make Canute its patron saint? I don't dare ask John. I wish you were here that we might talk things over! You would be so sympathetic, for you love England dearly, which I fear John does not, and therefore, I feel, cannot understand her. Well, I comfort myself by thinking what I believe you would say: "England has the 'root of the matter' in her, and if a great crisis were to arise, Englishmen will show that they are to-day what they have always been, and the church will follow the higher call. England will never do penance and sit in a sheet, in the face of the nations confessing the 'sins and offenses of her youth,' but she will set her house in order and meet the new age with courage and faith and hope, as she has ever done, and the 'glory of the latter house will be greater than that of the former'! 'As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be,' embodies a great truth which your muddle-headed friend was trying to express. He thought, and alas! he is not alone in so thinking, that the _form_ makes the stability, whereas it is the eternal stability of the English character in which he believes, and so do I."

So with these comforting thoughts I am going to bed. My Tory friend was right in one respect--it has not been a restful day!

XIV

RURAL ENGLAND

On leaving "Barchester" we took the road to Gloucester. I think it safe to say that it is the finest road for motoring in England, which is equivalent to saying in the world. The French roads, I am told, are in some ways superior, but so straight and hard and white that travelling on them soon becomes monotonous. Then they are so artificial, running like the road the Tsar is said to have laid out with a ruler, between Petersburg and Moscow! But the English roads run naturally, with many a turn from town to town, just as man first found it easy to walk. Of course we now have roads at home equal to any--for the first year or two--but think how many generations have used these roads, and always, I imagine, kept them in repair. The difference is like that between a granite bridge and one of our new concrete ones. At first there seems nothing to choose between them; but when the rain and frost of a few seasons have done their work, the one has begun to look dingy and shabby, while the other has gained in dignity.

Of course it is not only the surface of the road which makes motoring on it so delightful; it is the continuous succession of lovely rural scenes. For example, we had not gone many miles when we met a horseman--an ancient groom we supposed--riding along the grass by the roadside and followed by a pack of hounds, which he was "walking." Ruth jumped from the car and begged to be allowed to take a kodak of them. He smilingly called them together, the older ones looking up into his face and the pups still nosing about the grass. The light was good and the promise of a satisfactory picture excellent.

The "groom" asked if he might have a picture when the film had been developed, which Ruth said she would be delighted to send if he would give her his address.

"Just address it, ma'am, to 'James the Huntsman, The Kennels, Blankshire.'"

"But your last name?" she asked.

"That is my name, ma'am, James the Huntsman."

So we learned that not only was he not a groom but that we were not in the twentieth century but still in feudal England, where a man's occupation was his designation--the individual not having yet emerged! That his status should be fixed for life was evidently as satisfactory to "James the Huntsman" as, it is to be presumed, was his master's, whether knight or baronet, to him.

"It is like a scene from 'Ivanhoe,'" said Ruth, when we were again under way. "If we were a little farther to the east, in Northamptonshire, where Sherwood Forest lies, I have no doubt we should meet Gurth the serf, or Robin Hood!"

"No," said I, "the serfs are working in factories, and Robin Hood is in the 'city.'"

"You talk like William Jennings Bryan," mocked Ruth.

A few miles farther on we came to another England. Again we met a horseman. I said this time a "groom," but Ruth said she was sure he would call himself "chevalier."

Whoever he was he looked noble enough to be a duke. He was riding a seal-brown horse whose coat shone like a chestnut in the sunlight. I noticed that the horse was restive, and so shut off the engine till he should pass. The rider thanked me, touching his cap--so I suppose he could not have been a duke--and remarked that the horse was "full of beans."

I said it was a superb animal, and the groom, leaning forward to pat his neck, for the horse was still nervous, replied: "He ought to be, sir, for he's own brother to"--I am sorry to say I have forgotten the name--"winner of the Derby." So we had met the aristocracy, after all!

Not long after this we met a flock of sheep. Again we stopped. But we got no thanks from the surly shepherd--Ruth said because he was so tired--but the panting dog, who ran from side to side on the road, gave us a grateful glance, as much as to say: "I am glad you did that, for had you kept on, these fools would have been all over the road, and I should have been beaten."

But it was not only the passengers on the "king's highway" who kept us entertained--not to say entranced--but houses and gardens on either side made it hard to keep the tenth commandment!

When I said this to Ruth, she replied that it could hardly be my neighbor's wife whom I coveted, which was true, if cattish, for the ones we saw were more worthy than alluring! The ox and the ass were not in evidence, but I suspect Ruth coveted the man servant, and specially the maid servant, of whom we caught glimpses from time to time, flitting across the well-trimmed lawns or standing at the servants' entrance, gossiping with the butcher or the baker or the candlestick-maker--what difference can it make to a young woman who is forbidden to have "followers"?