A Knight on Wheels Part 19

"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 pa.s.s 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 s.e.x 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 astonis.h.i.+ng 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 compa.s.s. 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.

CHAPTER XI

RED GABLES

AN hour later, shopping commissions having been executed, they clanked majestically homeward. The journey was completed without further mishap, though a frisky calf, encountered by the way, almost wrecked its own prospects of ever becoming veal by an untimely indulgence in the game of "Come to Mother, or Last Across the Road,"--that was how Mr. Mablethorpe described it,--gambolling unexpectedly under the very bows of Boanerges in response to the ill-judged appeal of an anxious parent on the opposite side of the highway.

Presently the long red wall, with its polite notice to motorists, came into view on their left, and the car slowed down. Philip realised with pleasure that this was his destination.

"Did you put up that notice, sir?" he enquired.