CHAPTER III
Harris's one fault--Harris and the Angel--A patent bicycle lamp--Theideal saddle--The "Overhauler"--His eagle eye--His method--His cheeryconfidence--His simple and inexpensive tastes--His appearance--How to getrid of him--George as prophet--The gentle art of making oneselfdisagreeable in a foreign tongue--George as a student of human nature--Heproposes an experiment--His Prudence--Harris's support secured, uponconditions.
On Monday afternoon Harris came round; he had a cycling paper in hishand.
I said: "If you take my advice, you will leave it alone."
Harris said: "Leave what alone?"
I said: "That brand-new, patent, revolution in cycling, record-breaking,Tomfoolishness, whatever it may be, the advertisement of which you havethere in your hand."
He said: "Well, I don't know; there will be some steep hills for us tonegotiate; I guess we shall want a good brake."
I said: "We shall want a brake, I agree; what we shall not want is amechanical surprise that we don't understand, and that never acts when itis wanted."
"This thing," he said, "acts automatically."
"You needn't tell me," I said. "I know exactly what it will do, byinstinct. Going uphill it will jamb the wheel so effectively that weshall have to carry the machine bodily. The air at the top of the hillwill do it good, and it will suddenly come right again. Going downhillit will start reflecting what a nuisance it has been. This will lead toremorse, and finally to despair. It will say to itself: 'I'm not fit tobe a brake. I don't help these fellows; I only hinder them. I'm acurse, that's what I am;' and, without a word of warning, it will 'chuck'the whole business. That is what that brake will do. Leave it alone.You are a good fellow," I continued, "but you have one fault."
"What?" he asked, indignantly.
"You have too much faith," I answered. "If you read an advertisement,you go away and believe it. Every experiment that every fool has thoughtof in connection with cycling you have tried. Your guardian angelappears to be a capable and conscientious spirit, and hitherto she hasseen you through; take my advice and don't try her too far. She musthave had a busy time since you started cycling. Don't go on till youmake her mad."
He said: "If every man talked like that there would be no advancementmade in any department of life. If nobody ever tried a new thing theworld would come to a standstill. It is by--"
"I know all that can be said on that side of the argument," Iinterrupted. "I agree in trying new experiments up to thirty-five;_after_ thirty-five I consider a man is entitled to think of himself. Youand I have done our duty in this direction, you especially. You havebeen blown up by a patent gas lamp--"
He said: "I really think, you know, that was my fault; I think I musthave screwed it up too tight."
I said: "I am quite willing to believe that if there was a wrong way ofhandling the thing that is the way you handle it. You should take thattendency of yours into consideration; it bears upon the argument. Myself,I did not notice what you did; I only know we were riding peacefully andpleasantly along the Whitby Road, discussing the Thirty Years' War, whenyour lamp went off like a pistol-shot. The start sent me into the ditch;and your wife's face, when I told her there was nothing the matter andthat she was not to worry, because the two men would carry you upstairs,and the doctor would be round in a minute bringing the nurse with him,still lingers in my memory."
He said: "I wish you had thought to pick up the lamp. I should like tohave found out what was the cause of its going off like that."
I said: "There was not time to pick up the lamp. I calculate it wouldhave taken two hours to have collected it. As to its 'going off,' themere fact of its being advertised as the safest lamp ever invented wouldof itself, to anyone but you, have suggested accident. Then there wasthat electric lamp," I continued.
"Well, that really did give a fine light," he replied; "you said soyourself."
I said: "It gave a brilliant light in the King's Road, Brighton, andfrightened a horse. The moment we got into the dark beyond Kemp Town itwent out, and you were summoned for riding without a light. You mayremember that on sunny afternoons you used to ride about with that lampshining for all it was worth. When lighting-up time came it wasnaturally tired, and wanted a rest."
"It was a bit irritating, that lamp," he murmured; "I remember it."
I said: "It irritated me; it must have been worse for you. Then thereare saddles," I went on--I wished to get this lesson home to him. "Canyou think of any saddle ever advertised that you have _not_ tried?"
He said: "It has been an idea of mine that the right saddle is to befound."
I said: "You give up that idea; this is an imperfect world of joy andsorrow mingled. There may be a better land where bicycle saddles aremade out of rainbow, stuffed with cloud; in this world the simplest thingis to get used to something hard. There was that saddle you bought inBirmingham; it was divided in the middle, and looked like a pair ofkidneys."
He said: "You mean that one constructed on anatomical principles."
"Very likely," I replied. "The box you bought it in had a picture on thecover, representing a sitting skeleton--or rather that part of a skeletonwhich does sit."
He said: "It was quite correct; it showed you the true position of the--"
I said: "We will not go into details; the picture always seemed to meindelicate."
He said: "Medically speaking, it was right."
"Possibly," I said, "for a man who rode in nothing but his bones. I onlyknow that I tried it myself, and that to a man who wore flesh it wasagony. Every time you went over a stone or a rut it nipped you; it waslike riding on an irritable lobster. You rode that for a month."
"I thought it only right to give it a fair trial," he answered.
I said: "You gave your family a fair trial also; if you will allow me theuse of slang. Your wife told me that never in the whole course of yourmarried life had she known you so bad tempered, so un-Christian like, asyou were that month. Then you remember that other saddle, the one withthe spring under it."
He said: "You mean 'the Spiral.'"
I said: "I mean the one that jerked you up and down like a Jack-in-the-box; sometimes you came down again in the right place, and sometimes youdidn't. I am not referring to these matters merely to recall painfulmemories, but I want to impress you with the folly of trying experimentsat your time of life."
He said. "I wish you wouldn't harp so much on my age. A man at thirty-four--"
"A man at what?"
He said: "If you don't want the thing, don't have it. If your machineruns away with you down a mountain, and you and George get flung througha church roof, don't blame me."
"I cannot promise for George," I said; "a little thing will sometimesirritate him, as you know. If such an accident as you suggest happen, hemay be cross, but I will undertake to explain to him that it was not yourfault."
"Is the thing all right?" he asked.
"The tandem," I replied, "is well."
He said: "Have you overhauled it?"
I said: "I have not, nor is anyone else going to overhaul it. The thingis now in working order, and it is going to remain in working order tillwe start."
I have had experience of this "overhauling." There was a man atFolkestone; I used to meet him on the Lees. He proposed one evening weshould go for a long bicycle ride together on the following day, and Iagreed. I got up early, for me; I made an effort, and was pleased withmyself. He came half an hour late: I was waiting for him in the garden.It was a lovely day. He said:--
"That's a good-looking machine of yours. How does it run?"
"Oh, like most of them!" I answered; "easily enough in the morning; goesa little stiffly after lunch."
He caught hold of it by the front wheel and the fork and shook itviolently.
I said: "Don't do that; you'll hurt it."
I did not see why he should shake it; it had not done anything to him.Besides, if it wanted shaking, I was the proper p
erson to shake it. Ifelt much as I should had he started whacking my dog.
He said: "This front wheel wobbles."
I said: "It doesn't if you don't wobble it." It didn't wobble, as amatter of fact--nothing worth calling a wobble.
He said: "This is dangerous; have you got a screw-hammer?"
I ought to have been firm, but I thought that perhaps he really did knowsomething about the business. I went to the tool shed to see what Icould find. When I came back he was sitting on the ground with the frontwheel between his legs. He was playing with it, twiddling it roundbetween his fingers; the remnant of the machine was lying on the gravelpath beside him.
He said: "Something has happened to this front wheel of yours."
"It looks like it, doesn't it?" I answered. But he was the sort of manthat never understands satire.
He said: "It looks to me as if the bearings were all wrong."
I said: "Don't you trouble about it any more; you will make yourselftired. Let us put it back and get off."
He said: "We may as well see what is the matter with it, now it is out."He talked as though it had dropped out by accident.
Before I could stop him he had unscrewed something somewhere, and outrolled all over the path some dozen or so little balls.
"Catch 'em!" he shouted; "catch 'em! We mustn't lose any of them." Hewas quite excited about them.
We grovelled round for half an hour, and found sixteen. He said he hopedwe had got them all, because, if not, it would make a serious differenceto the machine. He said there was nothing you should be more carefulabout in taking a bicycle to pieces than seeing you did not lose any ofthe balls. He explained that you ought to count them as you took themout, and see that exactly the same number went back in each place. Ipromised, if ever I took a bicycle to pieces I would remember his advice.
I put the balls for safety in my hat, and I put my hat upon the doorstep.It was not a sensible thing to do, I admit. As a matter of fact, it wasa silly thing to do. I am not as a rule addle-headed; his influence musthave affected me.
He then said that while he was about it he would see to the chain for me,and at once began taking off the gear-case. I did try to persuade himfrom that. I told him what an experienced friend of mine once said to mesolemnly:--
"If anything goes wrong with your gear-case, sell the machine and buy anew one; it comes cheaper."
He said: "People talk like that who understand nothing about machines.Nothing is easier than taking off a gear-case."
I had to confess he was right. In less than five minutes he had the gear-case in two pieces, lying on the path, and was grovelling for screws. Hesaid it was always a mystery to him the way screws disappeared.
We were still looking for the screws when Ethelbertha came out. Sheseemed surprised to find us there; she said she thought we had startedhours ago.
He said: "We shan't be long now. I'm just helping your husband tooverhaul this machine of his. It's a good machine; but they all wantgoing over occasionally."
Ethelbertha said: "If you want to wash yourselves when you have done youmight go into the back kitchen, if you don't mind; the girls have justfinished the bedrooms."
She told me that if she met Kate they would probably go for a sail; butthat in any case she would be back to lunch. I would have given asovereign to be going with her. I was getting heartily sick of standingabout watching this fool breaking up my bicycle.
Common sense continued to whisper to me: "Stop him, before he does anymore mischief. You have a right to protect your own property from theravages of a lunatic. Take him by the scruff of the neck, and kick himout of the gate!"
But I am weak when it comes to hurting other people's feelings, and I lethim muddle on.
He gave up looking for the rest of the screws. He said screws had aknack of turning up when you least expected them; and that now he wouldsee to the chain. He tightened it till it would not move; next heloosened it until it was twice as loose as it was before. Then he saidwe had better think about getting the front wheel back into its placeagain.
I held the fork open, and he worried with the wheel. At the end of tenminutes I suggested he should hold the forks, and that I should handlethe wheel; and we changed places. At the end of his first minute hedropped the machine, and took a short walk round the croquet lawn, withhis hands pressed together between his thighs. He explained as he walkedthat the thing to be careful about was to avoid getting your fingerspinched between the forks and the spokes of the wheel. I replied I wasconvinced, from my own experience, that there was much truth in what hesaid. He wrapped himself up in a couple of dusters, and we commencedagain. At length we did get the thing into position; and the moment itwas in position he burst out laughing.
I said: "What's the joke?"
He said: "Well, I am an ass!"
It was the first thing he had said that made me respect him. I asked himwhat had led him to the discovery.
He said: "We've forgotten the balls!"
I looked for my hat; it was lying topsy-turvy in the middle of the path,and Ethelbertha's favourite hound was swallowing the balls as fast as hecould pick them up.
"He will kill himself," said Ebbson--I have never met him since that day,thank the Lord; but I think his name was Ebbson--"they are solid steel."
I said: "I am not troubling about the dog. He has had a bootlace and apacket of needles already this week. Nature's the best guide; puppiesseem to require this kind of stimulant. What I am thinking about is mybicycle."
He was of a cheerful disposition. He said: "Well, we must put back allwe can find, and trust to Providence."
We found eleven. We fixed six on one side and five on the other, andhalf an hour later the wheel was in its place again. It need hardly beadded that it really did wobble now; a child might have noticed it.Ebbson said it would do for the present. He appeared to be getting a bittired himself. If I had let him, he would, I believe, at this point havegone home. I was determined now, however, that he should stop andfinish; I had abandoned all thoughts of a ride. My pride in the machinehe had killed. My only interest lay now in seeing him scratch and bumpand pinch himself. I revived his drooping spirits with a glass of beerand some judicious praise. I said:
"Watching you do this is of real use to me. It is not only your skilland dexterity that fascinates me, it is your cheery confidence inyourself, your inexplicable hopefulness, that does me good."
Thus encouraged, he set to work to refix the gear-case. He stood thebicycle against the house, and worked from the off side. Then he stoodit against a tree, and worked from the near side. Then I held it forhim, while he lay on the ground with his head between the wheels, andworked at it from below, and dropped oil upon himself. Then he took itaway from me, and doubled himself across it like a pack-saddle, till helost his balance and slid over on to his head. Three times he said:
"Thank Heaven, that's right at last!"
And twice he said:
"No, I'm damned if it is after all!"
What he said the third time I try to forget.
Then he lost his temper and tried bullying the thing. The bicycle, I wasglad to see, showed spirit; and the subsequent proceedings degeneratedinto little else than a rough-and-tumble fight between him and themachine. One moment the bicycle would be on the gravel path, and he ontop of it; the next, the position would be reversed--he on the gravelpath, the bicycle on him. Now he would be standing flushed with victory,the bicycle firmly fixed between his legs. But his triumph would beshort-lived. By a sudden, quick movement it would free itself, and,turning upon him, hit him sharply over the head with one of its handles.
At a quarter to one, dirty and dishevelled, cut and breeding, he said: "Ithink that will do;" and rose and wiped his brow.
The bicycle looked as if it also had had enough of it. Which hadreceived most punishment it would have been difficult to say. I took himinto the back kitchen, where, so far as was possible without soda andproper t
ools, he cleaned himself, and sent him home.
The bicycle I put into a cab and took round to the nearest repairingshop. The foreman of the works came up and looked at it.
"What do you want me to do with that?" said he.
"I want you," I said, "so far as is possible, to restore it."
"It's a bit far gone," said he; "but I'll do my best."
He did his best, which came to two pounds ten. But it was never the samemachine again; and at the end of the season I left it in an agent's handsto sell. I wished to deceive nobody; I instructed the man to advertiseit as a last year's machine. The agent advised me not to mention anydate. He said:
"In this business it isn't a question of what is true and what isn't;it's a question of what you can get people to believe. Now, between youand me, it don't look like a last year's machine; so far as looks areconcerned, it might be a ten-year old. We'll say nothing about date;we'll just get what we can."
I left the matter to him, and he got me five pounds, which he said wasmore than he had expected.
There are two ways you can get exercise out of a bicycle: you can"overhaul" it, or you can ride it. On the whole, I am not sure that aman who takes his pleasure overhauling does not have the best of thebargain. He is independent of the weather and the wind; the state of theroads troubles him not. Give him a screw-hammer, a bundle of rags, anoil-can, and something to sit down upon, and he is happy for the day. Hehas to put up with certain disadvantages, of course; there is no joywithout alloy. He himself always looks like a tinker, and his machinealways suggests the idea that, having stolen it, he has tried to disguiseit; but as he rarely gets beyond the first milestone with it, this,perhaps, does not much matter. The mistake some people make is inthinking they can get both forms of sport out of the same machine. Thisis impossible; no machine will stand the double strain. You must make upyour mind whether you are going to be an "overhauler" or a rider.Personally, I prefer to ride, therefore I take care to have near menothing that can tempt me to overhaul. When anything happens to mymachine I wheel it to the nearest repairing shop. If I am too far fromthe town or village to walk, I sit by the roadside and wait till a cartcomes along. My chief danger, I always find, is from the wanderingoverhauler. The sight of a broken-down machine is to the overhauler as awayside corpse to a crow; he swoops down upon it with a friendly yell oftriumph. At first I used to try politeness. I would say:
"It is nothing; don't you trouble. You ride on, and enjoy yourself, Ibeg it of you as a favour; please go away."
Experience has taught me, however, that courtesy is of no use in such anextremity. Now I say:
"You go away and leave the thing alone, or I will knock your silly headoff."
And if you look determined, and have a good stout cudgel in your hand,you can generally drive him off.
George came in later in the day. He said:
"Well, do you think everything will be ready?"
I said: "Everything will be ready by Wednesday, except, perhaps, you andHarris."
He said: "Is the tandem all right?"
"The tandem," I said, "is well."
He said: "You don't think it wants overhauling?"
I replied: "Age and experience have taught me that there are few mattersconcerning which a man does well to be positive. Consequently, thereremain to me now but a limited number of questions upon which I feel anydegree of certainty. Among such still-unshaken beliefs, however, is theconviction that that tandem does not want overhauling. I also feel apresentiment that, provided my life is spared, no human being between nowand Wednesday morning is going to overhaul it."
George said: "I should not show temper over the matter, if I were you.There will come a day, perhaps not far distant, when that bicycle, with acouple of mountains between it and the nearest repairing shop, will, inspite of your chronic desire for rest, _have_ to be overhauled. Then youwill clamour for people to tell you where you put the oil-can, and whatyou have done with the screw-hammer. Then, while you exert yourselfholding the thing steady against a tree, you will suggest that somebodyelse should clean the chain and pump the back wheel."
I felt there was justice in George's rebuke--also a certain amount ofprophetic wisdom. I said:
"Forgive me if I seemed unresponsive. The truth is, Harris was roundhere this morning--"
George said: "Say no more; I understand. Besides, what I came to talk toyou about was another matter. Look at that."
He handed me a small book bound in red cloth. It was a guide to Englishconversation for the use of German travellers. It commenced "On a Steam-boat," and terminated "At the Doctor's"; its longest chapter beingdevoted to conversation in a railway carriage, among, apparently, acompartment load of quarrelsome and ill-mannered lunatics: "Can you notget further away from me, sir?"--"It is impossible, madam; my neighbour,here, is very stout"--"Shall we not endeavour to arrange ourlegs?"--"Please have the goodness to keep your elbows down"--"Pray do notinconvenience yourself, madam, if my shoulder is of any accommodation toyou," whether intended to be said sarcastically or not, there was nothingto indicate--"I really must request you to move a little, madam, I canhardly breathe," the author's idea being, presumably, that by this timethe whole party was mixed up together on the floor. The chapterconcluded with the phrase, "Here we are at our destination, God bethanked! (_Gott sei dank_!)" a pious exclamation, which under thecircumstances must have taken the form of a chorus.
At the end of the book was an appendix, giving the German traveller hintsconcerning the preservation of his health and comfort during his sojournin English towns, chief among such hints being advice to him to alwaystravel with a supply of disinfectant powder, to always lock his bedroomdoor at night, and to always carefully count his small change.
"It is not a brilliant publication," I remarked, handing the book back toGeorge; "it is not a book that personally I would recommend to any Germanabout to visit England; I think it would get him disliked. But I haveread books published in London for the use of English travellers abroadevery whit as foolish. Some educated idiot, misunderstanding sevenlanguages, would appear to go about writing these books for themisinformation and false guidance of modern Europe."
"You cannot deny," said George, "that these books are in large request.They are bought by the thousand, I know. In every town in Europe theremust be people going about talking this sort of thing."
"Maybe," I replied; "but fortunately nobody understands them. I havenoticed, myself, men standing on railway platforms and at street cornersreading aloud from such books. Nobody knows what language they arespeaking; nobody has the slightest knowledge of what they are saying.This is, perhaps, as well; were they understood they would probably beassaulted."
George said: "Maybe you are right; my idea is to see what would happen ifthey were understood. My proposal is to get to London early on Wednesdaymorning, and spend an hour or two going about and shopping with the aidof this book. There are one or two little things I want--a hat and apair of bedroom slippers, among other articles. Our boat does not leaveTilbury till twelve, and that just gives us time. I want to try thissort of talk where I can properly judge of its effect. I want to see howthe foreigner feels when he is talked to in this way."
It struck me as a sporting idea. In my enthusiasm I offered to accompanyhim, and wait outside the shop. I said I thought that Harris would liketo be in it, too--or rather outside.
George said that was not quite his scheme. His proposal was that Harrisand I should accompany him into the shop. With Harris, who looksformidable, to support him, and myself at the door to call the police ifnecessary, he said he was willing to adventure the thing.
We walked round to Harris's, and put the proposal before him. Heexamined the book, especially the chapters dealing with the purchase ofshoes and hats. He said:
"If George talks to any bootmaker or any hatter the things that are putdown here, it is not support he will want; it is carrying to the hospitalthat he will need."
"You talk," said George, "as though I were a foolhardy boy without anysense. I shall select from the more polite and less irritating speeches;the grosser insults I shall avoid."
This being clearly understood, Harris gave in his adhesion; and our startwas fixed for early Wednesday morning.
Three Men on the Bummel Page 4