Penny Plain Part 40

They got back into the car and it sprang away as if suddenly endowed with new life. In a trice they had pa.s.sed the wagonette, leaving it in a whirl of scornful dust. They ate the miles as a giant devours sheep.

They pa.s.sed the Devil's Beef Tub--Jock would have liked to tarry there and investigate, but Jean dared not ask Stark to stop in case they could not start again--and soon went sliding down the hill to Moffat. Hot puffs of scented air rose from the valley, they had left the moorlands and the winds, and the town was holding out arms to welcome them. They drove along the sunny, sleepy, midday High Street and stopped at a hotel.

Except David, no member of the Jardine family had ever been inside a hotel, and it was quite an adventure for them to go up the steps from the street, enter the swinging doors, and ask a polite woman with elaborately done hair if they might have luncheon. Yes, they might, and Peter, at present held tightly in Mhor's arms, could be fed in the kitchen if that would suit.

Stark had meantime taken the car to a motor-repairing place.

It was half-past three before the car came swooping up to the hotel doors. Jean gazed at it with a sort of fearful pride. It looked very well if only it didn't play them false. Stark, too, looked well--a fine, impa.s.sive figure.

"Will it be all right, Stark?" she ventured to inquire, but Stark, who rarely committed himself, merely said, "Mebbe."

Stark had no manners, Jean reflected, but he had a nice face and was a teetotaller, and one can't have everything.

To Mhor's joy the road now ran for a bit by the side of the railway line where thundered great express trains such as there never were in Priorsford. They were spinning along the fine level road, making up for lost time, when a sharp report startled them and made Mhor, who was watching a train, lose his balance and fall forward on to Peter, who was taking a sleep on the rug at their feet.

It was a tyre gone, and there was no time to mend it if they were to be at Carlisle in time for tea. Stark put on the spare wheel and they started again.

Fortune seemed to have got tired of persecuting them, and there were no further mishaps. They ran without a pause through village after village, s.n.a.t.c.hing glimpses of lovely places where they would fain have lingered, forgetting them as each place offered new beauties.

The great excitement to Jock and Mhor was the crossing of the Border.

"I did it once," said Mhor, "when I came from India, but I didn't notice it."

"Rather not," said Jock; "you were only two. I was four, wasn't I, Jean?

when I came from India, and I didn't notice it."

"Is there a line across the road?" Mhor asked. "And do the people speak Scots on one side and English on the other? I suppose we'll go over with a b.u.mp."

"There's nothing to show," Jock told him, "but there's a difference in the air. It's warmer in England."

"It's very uninterested of Peter to go on sleeping," Mhor said in a disgusted tone. "You would think he would feel there was something happening. And he's a Scots dog, too."

The Border was safely crossed, and Jock professed to notice at once a striking difference in air and landscape.

"There's an English feel about things now," he insisted, sniffing and looking all round him; "and I hear the English voices.... Mhor, this is how the Scots came over to fight the English, only at night and on horseback--into Carlisle Castle."

"And I was English," said Mhor dreamily, "and I had a big black horse and I pranced on the Castle wall and killed everyone that came."

"You needn't boast about being English," Jock said, looking at Mhor coldly. "I don't blame you, for you can't help it, but it's a pity."

Mhor's face got very pink and there was a tremble in his voice, though he said in a bragging tone, "I'm glad I'm English. The English are as brave as--as--"

"Of course they are," said Jean, holding Mhor's hand tight under the rug. She knew how it hurt him to be, even for a moment, at variance with Jock, his idol. "Mhor has every right to be proud of being English, Jock. His father was a soldier and he has ancestors who were great fighting men. And you know very well that it doesn't matter what side you belong to so long as you are loyal to that side. You two would have had some great fights if you had lived a few hundred years ago."

"Yes," said Mhor. "I'd have killed a great many Scots--but not Jock."

"Ho," said Jock, "a great many Scots would have killed you first."

"Well, it's all past," said Jean; "and England and Scotland are one and fight together now. This is Carlisle. Not much romance about it now, is there? We're going to the Station Hotel for tea, so you will see the train, Mhor, old man."

"Mhor," said Jock, "that's one thing you would have missed if you'd lived long ago--trains."

The car had to have a tyre repaired and that took some time, so after tea the Jardines stood in the station and watched trains for what was, to Mhor at least, a blissful hour. It was thrilling to stand in the half-light of the big station and see great trains come in, and the pa.s.sengers jump out and tramp about the platform and buy books and papers from the bookstall, or fruit, or chocolate, or tea and buns from the boys in uniform, who went about crying their wares. And then the wild scurrying of the pa.s.sengers--like hens before a motor, Jock said--when the flag was waved and the train about to start. Mhor hoped fervently, and a little unkindly, that at least one might be left behind, but they all got in, though with some it was the last second of the eleventh hour. There seemed to be hundreds of porters wheeling luggage on trolleys, guards walked about looking splendid fellows, and Mhor's eyes as he beheld them were the eyes of a lover on his mistress.

He could hardly be torn away when David came to say that Stark was waiting with the car and that they could not hope to get farther than Penrith that night.

The dusk was falling and the vesper-bell ringing as they drove into the town and stopped before a very comfortable-looking inn.

It was past Mhor's bedtime, and it seemed to that youth a fit ending for the most exciting day of his whole seven years of life, to sit up and partake of mutton chops and apple-tart at an hour when he should have been sound asleep.

He saw Peter safely away in charge of a sympathetic "boots" before he and Jock ascended to a bedroom with three small windows in the most unexpected places, a bright, cheery paper, and two small white beds.

Next morning the sun peeped in at all the odd-shaped windows on the two boys sprawled over their beds in the att.i.tudes in which they said they best enjoyed slumber.

It was another crystal-clear morning, with mist in the hollows and the hilltops sharp against the sky. When Stark, taciturn as ever, came to the door at nine o'clock, he found his party impatiently awaiting him on the doorstep, eager for another day of new roads and fresh scenes.

Jean asked him laughingly if Wilfred the Gazelle would live up to its name this run, but Stark received the pleasantry coldly, having no use for archness in any form.

It was wonderful to rush through the morning air still sharp from a touch of frost in the night, ascending higher and higher into the hills.

Mhor sang to himself in sheer joy of heart, and though no one knew what were the words he sang, and Jock thought poorly of the tune, Peter snuggled up to him and seemed to understand and like it.

The day grew hot and dusty as they ran down from the Lake district, and they were glad to have their lunch beside a noisy little burn in a green meadow, from the well-stocked luncheon-basket provided by the Penrith inn. Then they dipped into the black country, where tall chimneys belched out smoke, and car-lines ran along the streets, and pale-faced, hurrying people looked enviously at the big car with its load of youth and good looks. Everything was grim and dirty and spoiled. Mhor looked at the grimy place and said solemnly:

"It reminds me of h.e.l.l."

"Haw, haw!" laughed Jock. "When did you see h.e.l.l last?"

"In the _Pilgrim's Progress_," said Mhor.

One of the black towns provided tea in a cafe which purported to be j.a.panese, but the only things about it that recalled that sunny island overseas were the paper napkins, the china, and two fans nailed on the wall; the linoleum-covered floor, the hard wooden chairs, the fly-blown buns being peculiarly and bleakly British.

Before evening the grim country was left behind. In the soft April twilight they crossed wide moorlands (which Jock was inclined to resent as being "too Scots to be English") until, as it was beginning to get dark, they slid softly into Shrewsbury.

The next day was as fine as ever. "Really," said Jean, as they strolled before breakfast, watching the shops being opened and studying the old timbered houses, "it's getting almost absurd: like Father's story of the soldier who greeted his master every morning in India with 'Another hot day, sirr.' We thought if we got one good day out of the three we were to be on the road we wouldn't grumble, and here it goes on and on.... We must come back to Shrewsbury, Davie. It deserves more than just to be slept in...."

"Aren't English breakfasts the best you ever tasted?" David asked as they sat down to rashers of home-cured ham, corpulent brown sausages, and eggs poached to a nicety.

So far David had made an excellent guide. They had never once diverged from the road they meant to take, but this third day of the run turned out to be somewhat confused. They started off almost at once on the wrong road and found themselves riding up a deep green lane into a farmyard. Out again on the highway David found the number of cross-roads terribly perplexing. Once he urged Stark to ask directions from a cottage. Stark did so and leapt back into his seat.

"Which road do we take?" David asked, as five offered themselves.

"Didna catch what they said," Stark remarked as he chose a road at random.

"Didna catch it," was Stark's favourite response to everything. Later on they came to the top of a steep hill ornamented by an enormous warning-post with this alarming notice--"Cyclists dismount. Many accidents. Some fatal." Stark went on unconcernedly, and Jean shouted at him, holding desperately to the side of the car, as if her feeble strength would help the brakes. "Stark! Stark! Didn't you see that placard?"

"Didna catch it," said Stark, as he swung light-heartedly down an almost perpendicular hill into the valley of the Severn.

"I do think Stark's a fool," said Jean bitterly, wrathful in the reaction from her fright. "He does no damage on the road, and of course I'm glad of that. I've seen him stop dead for a hen, and the wayfaring man, though a fool, is safe from him; but he cares nothing for what happens to the poor wretched people _inside_ the car. As nearly as possible he had us over the parapet of that bridge."

And later, when they found from the bill at lunch-time that Stark's luncheon had consisted of "one mineral," she thought that the way he had risked all their lives must have taken away his appet.i.te.