Ainslee's Magazine/The Old Bligh

by E. F. Benson

 

The OLD BLIGH

By E. F. Benson

IT was about half-past four in the afternoon when Harry Wingate finally emerged from the motor-house into the stable-yard, covered with grime and grease and oil and all the essential juices of motors from head to foot, absolutely unrecognizable but completely happy. He and Alford, his chauffeur, had spent a memorable and blissful three days in taking the old Bligh car “really” to bits, properly cleaning it and putting it together again, and now the old Bligh stood there again, clean and in her right mind, after looking for three days like a complicated railway accident. “As good as ever she was,” Harry said, “and probably better.”

There was nothing particular known about cars that Harry did not know, and even if such chance detail existed, Alford would be able to supply the knowledge. For Harry was a real motorist, not a man who owns a dozen cars, of which he scarcely knows one from the other, but is content to be driven about the country in any that the chauffeur is so kind as to bring to the door. He owned but two, the old Bligh and the later Bertram, but he knew these as the trained doctor knows the nerves and arteries and glands and bones of the human body.

If the car was not running well, he would not say “What's the matter, Alford?” but by instinct, it almost seemed, though the instinct was the direct and legitimate result of intimate knowledge, he would say exactly what in the internal economy of the car was not fulfilling its proper function.

Indeed motoring could scarcely be called a hobby with him; it was more rightly described as his passion, and Madge, his wife, declared that Harry said his prayers looking toward the motor-house, even as the Mohammedan turns to Mecca.

The old Bligh, at any rate, occupied a very distinct place in Harry's heart, partly because it had been a good and faithful servant, and partly because of sentimental reasons connected with it. He had.bought it just before his marriage, and had gone off on his honeymoon with Madge in it directly after.

And the old Bligh had behaved like a perfect angel—as, indeed, it always did—on that occasion. It had not once got its engine overheated, nor had there been trouble with carburetter or sparking-plugs; it had permitted no envious stone or nail to puncture its tires; it had gone for a whole month with the regularity of the moon or stars.

And indeed that was the nature of the kind car; it was not very fast, for it was only a two-cylinder eight-horse-power, but it was rather like a stout-hearted cob, never ill, always ready to go out, and always getting to the place you wanted it to go to, if only you were reasonable. And for a car of its caliber its climbing power was certainly amazing; it had been up Birdlip Hill without once stopping to look at the view, and though it felt itself compelled to go backward when they took it out to climb Porlock Hill, it climbed it all right.

But six months ago now the new Bertram—fifteen-horse-power, four-cylinder—had made its appearance, and it was with a certain sense of compunction last week that Harry thought that the old Bligh had been slighted and neglected. Madge, who had no more feeling about motors than she had about earwigs—indeed, rather less—infinitely preferred the higher speed and greater smoothness of the Bertram, and as, whenever the weather was fine, and very often when it was wet, Harry drove his wife after lunch over to the golf-links, continued his drive, and called for her again before tea-time, it followed that the Bertram had been almost exclusively used.

Indeed, on the only occasion lately when Madge had been out in the Bligh, the poor thing had rather disgraced itself, for a sparking-plug had a dreadful sort of cold, and she had missed her train. Then compunction had seized Harry; he realized that even the most agreeable and gifted car cannot clean itself, and a thorough overhauling of the old Bligh was the result.

He found that it had begun to rain rather heavily when he came out, but Madge had to be fetched from her golf, and he determined to drive the renovated Bligh over for that purpose. There was a cape-hood to it with wings, so that they would keep perfectly dry, and Alford had clearly had about enough to-day.

“Just run her once or twice up and down the hill, Alford,” he said, “and I'll come round for her in half an hour, when I've got clean. She's fit to start off on a tour this minute, I feel sure, but you might just take her up and down that hill.”

Half an hour later Harry set off on his six-mile drive to the Woodcombe links. It was raining steadily, and there was a sort of uniform thickness about the low clouds that might mean either that it had been raining for some time, or that it intended to rain some time more. Of the two alternatives Harry distinctly hoped for the latter, for Madge—there was no use denying it—had asked him to send for her at once if it began to rain, as she had a slight cold, and had no intention of playing in the wet.

But then he had driven back and set to work again immediately on the Bligh, had forgotten all things else, and had no more notion of how long it had been raining than what he had had for dinner six months ago. He hoped Madge had not been sitting in the club-house all the afternoon.

He drove up past the window of the ladies' room, and saw Madge seated near the fire, and called her attention by a series of little hoots, which was a signal between them. She must have heard, but she did not look up, nor did she at once put down the paper she was reading. Instead she finished the page, and read for several minutes more.

Harry repeated the signal, though certain that she had heard him, and drew an inference that seemed sound, “It has been raining for a considerable time,” he said to himself.

He was a person of quiet leisurely humor, content to see the amusing side of a great deal that a man of less tranquillity might have passed by as trivial, or grumbled at and complained of as being irritating. In consequence he wasted not one ounce of annoyance at the fact that Madge had clearly been made aware of his presence, but chose to keep him waiting in the rain for a few minutes, because he had kept her waiting in the club-house for, he was afraid, a rather long period, owing to his absorption over the old Bligh, and his forgetfulness to observe whether it was raining or not.

He fully intended to express regret for that, and wondered with a sense of coming entertainment as to whether she would express regret for keeping him. But in the meantime, the cape-hood completely kept out the rain; he was cheerfully content to wait till Madge had finished her paper. What a lot of papers they must take in, he thought, at the ladies' club-room; one would have imagined that she would have had time to read them all since lunch.

He kept one eye on Madge, and was delighted to observe her presently get up with a moderately well-executed start of surprise, pick up her clubs, and come hurrying out. It was better than most plays to be married to Madge; you could not possibly guess what she was going to do.

“Darling Harry!” she said. “Why didn't you throw a stone at the window or shout? You stole up like a ghost. And I've been keeping you waiting in the rain! I hope you haven't been here long.”

Harry was delighted to play the game this way. He was not quite as quick as she, but on the whole sounder.

“I've only just this second come,” he said. “I literally hadn't time to tootle or shout or throw stones. And what sort of afternoon have you had? Did you play a good round?”

He had taken the wind out of Madge's sails with regard to his being kept waiting, and she could scarcely return to that.

“Oh, I didn't play at all,” she said. “It has been pouring all the afternoon. I sat by the fire and read the papers from the moment you left me after lunch till now.”

“I hope they have been interesting, then,” said he.

Madge yawned.

“I can't say they have,” she said. “There was nothing whatever in any of them. And there was only Golf Illustrated and the Daily Telegraph.”

“Advertisements contain a lot of humorous stuff sometimes,” observed he.

They drove on in silence a little way; the car was running excellently, and they took the long rise up to the Flats on top speed.

“Why, it's the old Bligh,” said Madge at length. “I thought we were crawling.”

“It's the old Bligh all right,” said he, “but we're not crawling at all. She's taking the hill as well as ever the Bertram did.”

“You know best, of course,” said Madge resignedly, and was silent again.

Really Harry was very annoying; he had entirely refused to be drawn by her having left him waiting in the rain, had even said that he had not been kept waiting, which was palpably false, as she knew quite well, but, by reason of the way things had gone was unable to tell him. Men were awfully unfair. And he had condemned her to be shut up all the afternoon in that dull, stuffy club-house by his stupid forgetfulness. It was really more than she could stand.

“Harry,” she said, “you are really too tiresome. You promised to come over and fetch me if it rained, and it poured, poured, poured, all the time, and you leave me to sit in that stuffy little room the whole afternoon. What have you been doing?”

“I've been finishing up the old Bligh with Alford,” he said, “and putting it in working order, as you see. I'm sorry, dear, I quite forgot. It never occurred to me to keep looking out to see if it was raining. I really am sorry.”

Madge had a cold, as has been said; she also felt ill-used.

“And what sense there is in your crawling in the dust like a serpent underneath the car——” she began.

“I wasn't. I was standing upright in the pit.”

“Well, standing in the pit then, hammering and screwing and covering yourself with dirt and grease. What sense is there in it? You say Alford is a good mechanician; why not let him take things to bits and put them together again?”

“But I happen to enjoy it,” he said.

“Oh, then, I understand; you were enjoying yourself, and so you let me spend the whole of this dreadful afternoon in a little pitch-pine room, without taking the trouble to see whether it was raining or not.”

“Enjoying a thing is a very good reason for doing it,” said Harry. “You enjoy hitting a silly golf-ball into a pit, and then digging at it.”

“Oh, that is the war-cry of people who don't care about golf,” said she.

“And yours the whine of people who don't care about motors. You don't mind going in them, though, when it happens to be convenient. I take you every day to the links.”

“And forget to bring me back. And don't say you are sorry until I remind you.”

Harry had remained perfectly imperturbable throughout this; here his quiet smile grew a shade more pronounced.

“I thought it would be rude to change the subject too abruptly,” he said, “when you were assuring me that you didn't hear me hoot for you when I came to fetch you.”

Madge was silent a moment; then her surface-irritation, which had been considerable, suddenly gave way, and she threw back her head with that little tossing gesture of the chin that was so adorable, and laughed.

“Oh, dear, you've won,” she said. “You did it better than I. But I don't for a moment go back on all that I have said apart from that. You are a perfect brute to have been so forgetful, and left me in that awful little hole all the afternoon. I've had a miserable time, and all the papers were fifty years old.”

Harry laughed.

“What was the last one you read, dear, that appeared to absorb you so? You turned the page and then looked back again, to make sure you remembered the beginning of the sentence.”

“Oh, I don't know,” she said. “Harry, I did that rather well.”

“Pretty well. I thought it a shade too studied.”

Easter had fallen late this year, and they had, with the exception of to-day, enjoyed a fortnight of heavenly spring weather, and hoped for another ten days of it, before Harry had to return to town to take up his Parliamentary work again. They had stumbled upon this cottage, where they were at present, in some magazine dealing with affairs of the country, and had taken it for a month at Easter, and another ten days, should it be still unlet, at Whitsuntide.

It stood high on the heathery uplands north of Byfleet, and though very small, was as much as our young couple wanted. For some reason best known to its builder there was attached to it a big stable with a motor-house, and that had clinched matters. Harry could bring down both motors, and career wildly all day over the country, while Madge could with less wildness—for she was a very steady player—hit golf-balls “all over”—so Harry expressed it—the excellent links at Woodcombe some six miles away.

It suited them both, in fact, quite admirably, and to each of them, secretly, without communication with the other, had come the delicious day-dream that they might perhaps be able to buy it. They were both Northerners, and both loved the heather and pines of that salubrious place, while the extreme remoteness from any station, where anything that could without irony be called a train stopped, was discounted by the existence of the beloved motors.

Eleven hundred pounds would buy cottage and stable, and the little pocket-handkerchief of a garden that lay between their door and the broad firm sandy road that ran over the top of the Flats. All round them were heather and gorse that came, like a wave ready to break, up to the wire-fence that enclosed them from the open heath, and on stuffy and broiling days in town it would be heavenly to think that at a moment's notice they could run down here, dine in the garden, and wake up in the morning to the freshness that was like that of the moors and the piping of birds.

But for this year, anyhow, all question of purchase was outside the bounds of possibility. Madge in one fit of recklessness had persuaded Harry to take her to Biarritz for a month in the winter, and he, in another, as if to seal and confirm the hopelessness of their financial position, had bought this Bertram car, whereas, really, the old Bligh, as was plain from its admirable conduct this afternoon, was fit for many miles yet.

But motors, as has been said, were a passion of his, and even with the heat and dust of the London summer getting nearer, it was a consolation, when he thought that if he had not been extravagant Woodcombe Cottage might have been theirs, to know that that beautiful monster was gleaming in the stables.

A train of thought, parallel and corresponding to this, was passing through Madge's mind, as she sat by the fire in her bedroom, for the damp had turned the air chilly, and rested before dinner. Harry, no doubt, had been extremely extravagant over this Bertram, and she remembered, with a little spasm of impatience against him, that only two days ago he had spoken of selling the Bertram again should the old Bligh come up to his expectations, when overhauled, as it had done, and saving up to get a really first-rate car.

That was so like Harry; the old Bligh had been a first-rate car until he had got it, then—also till its arrival—had been the Bertram, but now apparently the Bertram must give way in his mind to something faster and more expensive yet. Harry did not scorch; she did him that justice, but he liked to go very fast indeed when the road was clear.

Personally she did not; she liked to go about eighteen miles an hour, and did not like to go at all unless she wanted to get to some place at the other end of those miles. She regarded motors only as a rather convenient sort of train, which you could order, and which came to the door.

Madge pushed back her hair from her forehead, and poked the fire rather viciously. Harry was incorrigible; if Woodcombe Cottage was to be bought, she must buy it herself somehow. She realized the fairness of that; if they bought it it was for her chiefly that the purchase would be made, so that she could be near these Woodcombe links, which she liked more than any in the country. Often before she had tried motoring down for the day from town and playing, then motoring back, but that double long drive made just the whole difference to pleasure. She had to breakfast early, rush off before Harry was down probably, and in the winter anyhow have a long dark drive home. It was not worth while going down for half the day, which she liked best, whereas here you could go over after lunch and be back for tea. And what heavenly week-ends they could have!

Yes; she would be the greater gainer of the two, for any place did for Harry so long as there were a good road and a stable, and she cursed her extravagance in having persuaded him to go out to Biarritz for a month in the winter. She had had a windfall last spring in the shape of a legacy, and she would willingly have put down that eight hundred pounds, if Harry would put down three. But Harry was already saving up for the purchase of a “really first-rate car.” She would have to squeeze and squeeze to get the extra three hundred, and besides, it wasn't fair that she should pay it all. Harry must take some share in it, and he wanted a new car now!

Madge gave a little shrug of her shoulders, and dismissed the subject from her mind. Whenever she dismissed any subject from her mind, golf instantly and automatically took its place. Perhaps poor old Harry felt about motors as she did about golf, though it was-quite inexplicable that he could feel about anything exactly that absorption that she felt.

It was all—all that was possible for a woman, that is to say—within her reach. There were limitations, imposed by her strength, on the length of her drive, but her drive, to do it justice, was usually an admirable performance, except when occasionally she hit the top of the ball, or the county in which she was playing, or looked up very long before she hit it. And all such things were eradicable by taking pains. She had an excellent eye, a quick wrist, and there was no reason why she should not always play a scratch game.

3ut one did such humiliating things, not from ignorance, but from a sort of innate perversity. All yesterday, for instance, she had been beset by the hideous sin—it seemed no less—of moving her head; she had ruined half the round by doing this with dreadful regularity each time she took her mashie in hand, with the effect that after a good drive or two, as the case might be, she dribbled the ball into a bunker, lost all the advantage she had already gained, and probably the hole as well.

That sort of thing could be avoided; it need never be done. It was only a question of taking trouble, and heaven knew she was willing to take all the trouble that the world held, if only she could eradicate a fault like that. But it was even as Harry had said; she spent her worthless, if not wicked, days in hitting balls into a pit and then digging them out. That was kind of Harry, for she did not always dig them out.

Putting, too! What horrors she committed, calling them by that hallowed name. She was capable of lying—after a good mashie shot, for once in a way—three or four yards from the hole, and fully believing she was going to get down in one. Instead she would be four feet short after her first put, three feet too strong on her second, and siddle into the hole by some dreadful back door, some curve in the ground she had not observed, in her third! Or determining to be up she would be as far nearly beyond the hole after her first put as she was short of it before.

There again it was only trouble and thought that had to be taken; you had but to hit the ball as you meant, after taking the pains to estimate what you did mean, and you would never take more than two puts on those not very extensive, but admirably true Woodcombe greens.

And then, partly from depression from her cold, partly from the undoubted fact that she had played quite abominably yesterday in a ladies' club-match, and partly from a much more admirable reason than either of these, Madge had a rather dreary quarter of an hour. Her cold was bad, she had been five holes down yesterday, but—and here was the more admirable reason—she had been horrid to Harry to-day. True he had been tiresome and forgetful, but that did not warrant her ill-temper.

It was golf that got on her nerves and made her like that; till she had taken to the odious game with the seriousness with which she now practised it, it had been a delightful pastime, and what merry times she and Harry used to have playing together. He always played badly, though Willis, the club professional, said he had an excellent style, and could play well if he chose; and, though he never talked when she was on her stroke, often continued talking right through his own, and called the ball names for not being correctly hit. How they used to laugh over it!

Then she had taken seriously to her hobby, making a passion of it, and it would have been no fun, for she improved very rapidly, in playing with her husband now. Nor indeed did he care for it; every outdoor hour at his command he spent in or around a car. Fancy, for instance, spending three whole days over patching up that little rattletrap of a Bligh.

Certainly there was less gaiety in their intercourse than there used to be; they saw little of each other during the day, and when they met he was full of carburetters, so to speak, and she of mashies. No doubt it was partly his fault, but it was assuredly partly hers. Perhaps if she thought a little less about golf, and tried to take a little more interest in his hobby, they might do better.

And at that moment the Great Idea struck Madge, and she sat up with eye rekindled after her depressing reflections. Was she big enough, generous enough to make a reality of it? She hardly knew; for she wanted this cottage very badly.

She went to bed early that night, as she wished to be well enough for another match against the ladies of Bidcombe next day, and she was captaining the side playing against a perfect terror of a woman, who had been in for the ladies' championship. She had not, it is true, proved herself a champion, for she had been dismissed—six down and five to play in the first tie. Still, it argued caliber or confidence, both of which are useful, to have entered at all; but Willis had told her that she had a very good chance of beating this redoubtable Mrs. Parke, if only she would not put her mashie-shots into bunkers.

But in spite of the fiery ordeal that lay in front of her, she gave but little thought this evening to golf, but gradually drew from Harry the account of this new motor which he was contemplating. This had to be done insinuatingly and carefully, for Harry—the old angel—was, thanks to previous experience, very shy of inflicting motor talk on her. But eventually she got sufficient details; it was a 30-40 car, six-cylindered. The price, too, she got from him; ready to start it cost one thousand pounds. Then she sneezed continuously for a few minutes, and went to bed.

Harry, left alone, lit another pipe and pondered. His pass-book had come in with the post before dinner, and it had been unexpectedly pleasant. Without sailing too near the wind, he found he could put down five hundred pounds toward the new car, and if, as seemed quite possible, he could sell the Bertram for another five hundred pounds, he could reckon the coveted Thornhill as his own. The Bertram should easily fetch that; indeed it might even fetch up to six hundred pounds, for it was still practically new, and there was a tremendous run on the type, and it might not be difficult to find a purchaser who would pay the higher figure in order to get immediate delivery. It had cost him, as it now stood, seven hundred and fifty pounds. To allow for depreciation at one hundred and fifty pounds was quite reasonably liberal. He must talk to Alford about it to-morrow.

There was a somewhat pronounced smell of eucalyptus in the room; Madge was an advocate of disinfectants, and she flooded her pocket-handkerchief with the odious oil, if she had the slightest inclination toward a cold. It had been more than an inclination to-night; smell and taste, poor girl, had both vanished, and all that was left of her voice was an exiguous croaking sound.

Yet she still hoped to play golf to-morrow, and certain it was that she would unless he, backed by the doctor, absolutely forbade her. He had reserved his right to send for the doctor if she was not much better in the morning, but had promised to take a fair and impartial view of her health. And she would fret so if she could not play; it was strange what a hold the game had got over her.

Harry shifted his position, as if his chair was not quite comfortable. Somehow the last six months had not been a brilliant success; they had been rather full of little frictions and disagreements. His own motor-excursions would have been so delightful if Madge had been with him, but she so seldom had. Whenever there was an off-day in town, she always wanted to be driven out to play golf, and down here it was an established part of the day, as invariable as breakfast or dinner, that he should take her to the links, and either call for her himself or send Alford for her in the other car.

And even when they were together in the evening, though Madge sometimes, as she had done to-night, made violent efforts to appear to be interested in cars, it was hard to talk naturally to her, knowing that she only wanted to appear interested for his sake. At other times, he would throw himself with simulated zest into her golf, and she would say that she played the short thirteenth badly, but got up at the much longer eleventh in two, and holed the put.

Then he would say: “How splendid, darling! That was at the eleventh, was it? Ah!” And be quite unable to think of any other question.

How she loved the game! How childishly happy it made her to play well! But she must not go down from town so often, play the whole day, and come back tired in the evening. For all her physical strength, she easily got overdone. It was a thousand pities that these links, which she loved so, were not nearer town.

Then Harry suddenly got up. “By Jove!” he said. “Ha!” And sat quite silent for a quarter of an hour afterward.

It was within a day or two of the Whitsuntide holidays, and Madge came down to breakfast on her birthday, on a morning of broiling airlessness, For the last week or so she had felt vaguely ill-used; she had seen Harry hardly at all, and when she saw him he seemed to be outwardly preoccupied and inwardly amused. He could give no account of himself; he had been busy, and discouraged detailed questions.

This morning he was late for breakfast, and as she waited, Madge thought over the causes of her disquietude. They had begun some time ago, while they were still at Woodcombe; he had driven her as usual every day to the links, and had called for her again, but he had no motor-talk, no tale of excellent roads or admirable hill-climbing on the part of the car to recount to her, though she had every evening tried to talk “motor-shop.” He had nothing to tell her, apparently; he had been “for a bit of a spin,” and there was no more.

Then he, too, had been tactful; he had answered her motor-questions with inquiries about niblicks. She had seen through that, she thought; he only asked in order to appear to be interested.

Then he entered, and she wondered if he would remember the fact that it was her birthday.

“Madge, darling,” he said, “many happy returns!”

“Ah, thanks,” she said. Up till this year he had always bought some little gift for her. Now, it seemed, there was none.

He fumbled at side-dishes.

“I've got a present for you,” he said, “but I couldn't exactly bring it. Guess.”

“Oh, I can't,” said she.

“Well, Woodcombe Cottage. It's yours.”

Madge drew a long, deep breath. The thing was so utter a surprise that she could not speak at once.

“Oh, Harry!” she said. “Do you mean you've bought it?”

“Yes, dear.”

“But I never heard of anything so lovely! Oh, how I have longed for it! You mean we can go down there now, and find it's ours?”

“No, not exactly; you must wait till to-morrow, if we want to go there together.”

“But why? Let's drive down there this afternoon. Why not?”

“Well, the fact is, I've sold that silly Bertram car, which was never any good, and the old Bligh would take rather long getting there. Let's go down to-morrow by train, and I'll send the Blight on, and it will meet us.”

Madge choked with some sudden secret emotion, but quickly recovered.

“It was a bit of mustard,” she said.

And with truly masculine stupidity he believed her.

 

Later in the day, a further bit of birthday present from him to her arrived. His absences were explained. The wretch had been playing golf every day for the last three weeks, taking lessons and practising.

“I don't suppose I'm much good, dear,” he said, “but we might have a game together when we get down, if it wouldn't bore you.”

 

But all that day Madge, with truly feminine secretiveness, held her tongue about her own affair. They were to start early next morning by train, and she had promised to see to the cab. But just as Harry was getting train-fever, and was looking out of the window, a great car drew up opposite the front door.

“Why, it's that new build of Thornhill,” he said. “I wonder whose it is. Funny, calling at this door.”

“No, dear, not very,” she said. “It's—it's yours. Oh, come quick, Harry, and we'll have a round before lunch. Darling, I'm not mad. It's yours; and it's got Bosch magneto-ignition, and—and leather-to-metal cone-clutch, and, oh, yes, live axle with torque-rods; I have such a good memory. It's all right; it is really. And, Harry, do beat me at golf. It would be so splendid if you did!”

He did. It was splendid!