Three Speeds Forward/Chapter 6
VI
THE G. R. A. T. TO THE RESCUE
VI
THE G. R. A. T. TO THE RESCUE
APA said a swear, unbuckled his sword, and then got out to crank. He cranked and cranked, and still nothing happened to speak of, except a poor little cough when once or twice she started. I suspected it meant too little gasoline, and told him so; a thin mixture always stops with a cough, and an over-rich one with a dull, heavy sound. But papa, with the dreary thoroughness of a railroad president, tried out the primary circuit, then the secondary, then the buzzer, and by that time anything you said to him he took as an insult. It was disturbing not to be certain whether this was part of Mr. Marsden's plan, or a horrible accident that might spoil everything. Anyway, we were stuck sure, and I was made to get out and hold a horrid lamp while papa fumed and swore.
The simplest adjustments are troublesome to make at night, and take ten times longer. You lose your tools, burn your fingers, and gradually work up to a state of fiendish exasperation. Papa took out the four plugs, connected them up, and then thought the batteries had given out because they didn't spark. It was as much as my life was worth to tell him he hadn't ground them properly, and at first he nearly snapped my head off. Don't think I'm blaming him. A gas engine would try a saint; and there he was, all trussed up in shining armor, and, as he said, feeling forty different kinds of a damn fool.
But he was immensely impressed when, with the aid of a big wrench, I had the four plugs sparking nicely. He was just recovering some of his usual geniality, when he laid a finger on that wrench, and got thirty thousand volts through him! What he said can't be repeated, though part of it was lost by his leaping in the air. But the shock did him good, and I went up ten points as a gas engineer. He said quite humbly to tell him what to do, and he'd do it, and rolled up his sleeves, and got out a wad of cotton waste as though he was in for an all night job. I kept him there for an hour—the longest hour of his life, as he said afterwards—and he was so willing and patient and obedient that it almost brought the tears to my eyes.
I was right about that cough, and an examination of the carburetor showed that it wouldn't flood, and that consequently the engine was getting no gas. I made poor papa take it all to pieces, and run hairpins through the spray nozzle, and sandpaper the guides of the float. Then he put it back, and still there was nothing doing. The next stage was to order papa underneath the car, and make him break all the gasoline connections to see if there wasn't a stoppage somewhere in the line. He had to do this in the dark, of course, because it wasn't safe to hold a lighted lamp too close; and it was a most bumpy and depressing performance for a Bothwell at 2.30 a.m. Then he ran wires through the silly tubes, and blew through them, and screwed them back; and there, if you please, was the carburetor stone dry, and not a penny the better for his work. Then mamma, who was shivering with a lap robe around her like an Indian, said she was sure that the tank was empty. And papa said, "By Jove, perhaps it is!" And I said, "What idiots we are never to have looked!"
But it wasn't empty. Papa put his finger in and drew it out, all wet. It was only down about four inches from the top, and there were gallons and gallons. Mamma asked us why we didn't turn the handle some more, and I was just on the point of explaining that there was no good cranking when your carburetor was out of whack, when papa took her at her word, and the miserable old engine started. Yes, and ran beautifully, chump-chumping like an '06.
"I don't know anything about them," said mamma complacently, "but I felt sure Albert would have turned that handle, and that's why I suggested it. Why, I've seen Albert turn it for an hour at a time, till I waited for him to drop dead!"
It did not seem worth while to argue with her while the engine was so evidently on her side, and I didn't even try. Besides, I was too tired and sleepy to care very much. It was running, that was the great thing, and if it chose to defy all the laws of mechanics, why should I make a fuss about it? By this time poor papa was half dead with worry and exhaustion, and it showed how chewed up he was that he asked me to take the wheel.
"I've had all the automobiling I can stand," he said. "For Heaven's sake, let me lie back and smoke a cigar, and get the taste of that filthy stuff out of my gullet!"
So we all hopped in, and I speeded her up with an uneasy feeling that it was all too good to last. Sure enough, we hadn't gone fifty yards, when we began to miss and splutter and die all over again. Then the engine gave a dreadful cough, and went finally and completely out of business.
I was for getting out and having another fight with it, but papa laid his hand on my arm and said No, he'd be hanged if he'd monkey with the blankety-blank thing again, or allow me to do it, either. Said we'd just wait there till the ball broke up, and somebody happened along to tow us, or give us a lift. I never saw the bounce so taken out of papa; even his voice was changed and dreary, as though he had suddenly grown twenty years older in an hour. So we all sat there in the most awful gloom, and said things about that engine that ought to have made it squirm. Papa swore he had never liked autos, had never approved of them, and had only bought one under an insane compulsion. Said he had known only one human being who could make a car go, and that was Albert; and rubbed in horse, horse, horse, and gave a list of the things he'd eat, from his hat to a pair of gum boots, if he'd ever allow himself to be caught out again without Albert.
We were in these depths of misery and depression when we heard the sound of a car coming along behind us. Papa jumped out and swung the lantern in the middle of the road, so as to stop it. There was a glare of lamps, a whir of gears, and then a man's voice asking through the dark, "What's the matter?" As far as we could judge, he seemed most friendly and accommodating, though at a ten yards' distance, and with his engine running idle it was impossible to follow the conversation. But a moment after, we saw papa leading him up to us, and lo and behold, it was Mr. Marsden! Yes, in evening dress, and a fur coat with a big collar, and so concerned and helpful and kind, that, if he had been Albert, papa would scarcely have been more delighted.
"Here's an angel from heaven," said papa genially, by way of introduction, "and we are going to be tied on behind and towed home."
Mr. Marsden raised his hat, and begged permission to ask a few questions about our car.
"I've had a great deal of experience," he said, "and if she hasn't a fracture anywhere, perhaps I can find out what's the matter, and put it right."
Papa gazed at him with grateful incredulity, and then talked carburetor and gasoline line for a solid five minutes. He had learned an awful lot in that hour, and rattled it off like an expert.
"Permit me to look at the carburetor," said Mr. Marsden, as though he was asking the greatest favor. Papa graciously said he might, and held the lamp while Mr. Marsden jumped the plunger up and down, and thought and thought. Then he put his knife in the commutator, and sampled the buzz on each contact. Then with his hands he traced the gasoline line underneath the wagon.
"Would you mind getting out?" he said to me, as though he had never seen me in his whole life before, and looking wonderfully handsome and distinguished in his white waistcoat. "I'd like to see the tank—if you really don't mind, and if it is not too much trouble."
I didn't mind, and it wasn't too much trouble; and then he lifted off the seat, with the same quiet, resourceful doctor-manner that he had shown all through. He undid the screw-top, and, carrying it well away from the car, examined it carefully by the flicker of papa's lantern.
"Here's your trouble," he said.
"I don't see anything wrong with it," remarked papa, gazing at it as though it might suddenly jump up and bite him.
"No air aperture—that's all," said Mr. Marsden. "The air aperture is choked with dirt. Your tank feeds by gravity, doesn't it? Well, then, it can't flow without air, any more than a kerosene can, if you don't jab a hole in the corner. Same thing precisely."
"Great Scott!" cried papa.
"Why, if you'd only asked me I could have told you that myself," spoke up mamma.
"Oh, how simple!" cried I. "And yet we might have stayed here a week and never found it out!"
"It cost me a lot of time myself, once," said Mr. Marsden deprecatorily, as though he didn't want to shame us by his superiority. "It's about the most effective way of killing a gas engine I can think of."
"Let's put it back and make sure you are right," said papa, still unable to believe the good news.
Well, of course, with a little tickling she went off like a shot—with a great big honest chug-chug that warmed one's heart to hear it. After you have been stuck for hours, I don't know any sweeter music than an engine that has suddenly made up its mind to reform, and take you home. You are a horse person, I know, and this doesn't appeal to you. Well, suppose every now and then your horse fell dead, and it was up to you to revive it! Wouldn't it be a blessed moment when the corpse would stagger to its feet and neigh? Laugh, if you like, but I guess you'd call it music, too, wouldn't you?
Papa was so grateful to Mr. Marsden that he hardly knew how to say it. He wrung his hand again and again and overflowed; and anybody looking on would have thought he had just saved all our lives—Mr. Marsden, I mean. And so he had, of course, and more, too; for papa was morbidly conscious of his armor and pirate boots, and knew what a figure he had cut before a whole dragful of people home from the ball. Mr. Marsden had rescued him from a horrible mortification, because no one could have helped laughing, you know—what with his having a big lick of grease over one eye, and rattling when he walked, and covered with tin daggers!
"May I not come part of the way with you?" asked Mr. Marsden. "It isn't right to expose these ladies to another breakdown, and possibly I might again be of assistance."
He hadn't got the words out of his mouth before papa had closed with his offer. It was snapped up like lightning. Papa had no shame left, and held on to him like a life belt. He'd hardly let him go back to his own car to order his chauffeur to follow, and was on pins and needles lest he'd never come back. And the things he said in that interval! Mr. Marsden's ears must have tingled. I never saw papa so worked up over anybody in his life, and naturally I added my little mite, and mamma threw in hers. It was a regular Marsden boom, with all of us trying to outdo the other, as though there was a prize for the one who could say the nicest things about him. Papa won easily by talking the loudest and banging on the mud guard to emphasize his 
"'You and I have got to be friends!'"
remarks, indicating that he was going to spend the rest of his life in being good to Mr. Marsden.
"I didn't know there were men like that left!" he exclaimed. "It makes you feel that human nature has been misrepresented; and he's so unaffected and generous that you'd almost think the favor was on our side. A perfect stranger who will be good to you at four o'clock in the morning, and put himself to no end of trouble for people he doesn't know from Adam—I'd like to give him a house and lot!"
Then Mr. Marsden came back, so brisk and kind and jolly and full of fun, that the contagion of it seemed to spread, and we all began to laugh ourselves. Papa gave Mr. Marsden the driving seat, and said he could have the sword, too, if he wanted it, not to speak of the breastplate. Perhaps it doesn't sound very funny now, but we roared over it at the time, because we were all keyed up, and in the humor to make a joke of anything. And it was most exhilarating to whiz through the pitchy black roads, and think how, only a few minutes before, we had been shivering like lost souls beside two tons of refractory iron.
Well, so we all got home, and as we stood there on the gravel, hardly knowing how to separate, nor very much wanting to, mamma said she hoped our acquaintance wouldn't end there, and that her day was Friday. And papa said, "You bet, of course you must come," and demanded his card, explaining that he was Mr. Tillinghast, of the K. and O.
"I'm afraid to give it to you," said Mr. Marsden, reluctantly drawing a card from his pocket, and smiling queerly as he held on to it tight, and wouldn't let papa take it. "I've been unfortunate enough to incur—Well, it has to come out sooner or later, Mr. Tillinghast, and why not now? I am George Marsden."
