Chapter VIII: The End of the North Road

I suppose my mind was full of Fielding and the essential immobility of the English character, which illustrates so well Goethe's saying, "Men change but Man remains the same," when I was jerked as it were out of the eighteenth century into the twentieth by the violent blowing of a motor-horn. Looking up I saw a large touring-car, driven at great speed and heading straight for me. I blew my horn in reply, and expected to see the approaching car swerve to the other side of the road. But, instead, it came rushing on, and a head-on collision seemed inevitable. It was now too late to escape by turning out, and so, not knowing what to do, I did what proved to be the best thing possible, I brought my car to a sudden stop and waited for the impact! I supposed the driver of the other car was drunk. But evidently he was not so drunk as to plunge into another car, for, with a frightful grinding of brakes he checked his car, the headlights of the two almost touching.

I was too confused to say anything, and so we sat for a moment gazing at one another. He spoke first, and you may imagine my surprise when he said, in a tolerant tone: "Drunk?" To have my suspicion of him so quickly thrown back upon me so paralyzed me that I was speechless, and simply continued to stare.

"I say," finally remarked my opponent, "are you going to turn out, or are you looking for trouble?"

There was a lady, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say a female, sitting in the tonneau, and she suddenly called out: "Henry, it is an American, and he is on the wrong side of the road!"

It was true! In spite of warnings and good intentions, I had left the car in charge of what De Maistre calls one's _bête_, but what we think it more elegant to call the "subconscious," while my "self" had slipped back into the past to hold converse with the mighty.

It was a foolish-looking "_bête_" which smiled at the lady. But there was no answering smile. Indeed, she was quite enraged, and while her husband--I hope it was her husband--backed his car and crossed to the other side of the road, much as one would go round a sweep rather than touch him, she stood up in the car and, in a tone worthy of Mrs. Raddles, told me what she thought of me and of my unhappy country. It was not "hands," it was "_claws_," across the sea!

Well, I learned a good deal that day: first, that in England the right side of the road is the wrong side, and, second, that while a "soft answer may turn away wrath," there is nothing that so exasperates an angry woman as to sit silent and smile like an imbecile!

I had intended to pass the night at Grantham, but finding it would make too long a day at the rate at which I was travelling, I turned aside to Peterborough.

My education in motoring progressed by learning something about the rate of travelling. I had been told that twenty miles an hour was a safe and comfortable speed, and consequently seldom allowed the speedometer to rise above that figure. But when I found how often I had to slow down in passing through a village, and to stop altogether in towns on account of traffic, I found that one must keep pretty steadily at "thirty" to average twenty miles an hour.

To this rule ought to be added the remark that the driver who has an instinct for getting off the road loses more time in a day than is expected!

The entrance to the stable-yard at the inn in Peterborough, as is frequently the case in old inns, leads under a narrow archway. These were built when the farmer's two-wheeled gigs were the vogue and were no inconvenience to the driver. But it requires skilful management to turn a motor into one without touching the brickwork on either side. If the hub of a gig collided with the masonry, it was the brickwork which gave way. But the mud-guard of a motor is about as pliable as metal can well be. If an archway could speak it would doubtless have many a joyful thing to say about these new-fangled machines! How proudly they roll up the High Street! How timidly they turn the corner into the narrow way! How fearfully they crawl toward the opening in the yard! The reckless gigs took the turning with a careless swing and, not infrequently, nipped the buttress, as the deep groove in the brickwork shows. Alas! I had not yet learned caution, and a crumpled mud-guard was the penalty. The grinning ostler did what he could to bend it into shape, but never again would it have the smart appearance it once had, and every chauffeur would look with scorn on the foolish man who had tried to do what the natty gigs had often done and been none the worse for! We are a swifter race than our fathers, but a motor will no more stand what the old carts did than a chauffeur can drink as did those old Jehus, without paying a heavy penalty.

There was still time to see the cathedral before the doors would be closed for the night, and thither I took my way. You know the great church too well for me to dwell upon it. It is not one of the greatest of the English cathedrals; it lacks the majesty of the great fortress at Durham; it has not the intricate--I had almost said self-conscious--beauty of Lincoln; it is not so vast as Ely, which, as I once heard you say, "rises out of the Fens as if typifying the conquest of heathendom by the Cross"; nor is it so rich in architectural treasures as Gloucester--but how impressive is its simple dignity! Here, I think, one feels less than in the others that it was intended for another service--that is for the worship of another God! Here is enshrined the block-like solidity of the English character. When, next morning, I listened to the familiar words, "Our fathers have told us what thou hast done, in their time of old," I felt that the setting was perfect for that liturgy which has been the most successful in building a bridge by which the souls of men might pass from a Ptolemaic to a Darwinian universe.

The car "pulled" well, and there were no exciting incidents to report for the next two days. The road runs through Grantham and then through Newark, where the beautiful spire of the parish church rises from the market-place. Here, too, a fine bridge crosses the Trent. But I looked in vain for the "monstrous cantle" which Hotspur complained the river "cranking in" had cut out! Perhaps it was not here but at some other part of the river, or perhaps _it was not true at all_, and Hotspur was only trying to get a "rise" out of Glendower! It is no matter. It only came to my mind as I saw the Trent for the first time.

Donchester comes next, but as I did not pass by the race-course, I can give you no tips!

After this the road enters the rolling Yorkshire hills, where, if the surface were not so good, changes of gear would be frequent, so sharp are the rises of the short hills.

In the early afternoon the towers of Fountain's Abbey rose above the tree-tops, but I did not stop, for I was more than ready for tea, and, moreover, I hasted to reach the "Beeches," where I knew a cordial English welcome, mixed with a dash of American "gush," awaited me.