“Would you like to come for half an hour’s drive?” he asked, in his unattractive voice, high and oily. The girls raised no difficulty whatever about falling in with this suggestion. There was not even any giggling to speak of. They jumped in immediately, one of them sitting in front, on Brent’s knee; the other joining the three of us at the back, where there was already little enough room to spare. They answered to the names of Pauline and Ena. Ena sat sideways, mainly on Duport, but with her legs stretched across my own knees: her feet, in tight high-heeled shoes, on Stringham’s lap. This was a situation similar to many I had heard described, though never previously experienced. In spite of its comparative discomfort, I could not help feeling interest — and some slight excitement — to see how matters would develop. Stringham was obviously not very pleased by the additional company, which left him without the doubtful advantage of any substantial share in either of the girls; but he made the best of things, even attempting some show of pinching Ena’s ankles. Neither of the girls had much conversation. However, they began to squeal a little when the car arrived on a more open piece of road, and the engine gathered speed.
“You must admit it was a good buy,” shouted Peter, as we did about seventy-five or eighty.
“All the same we might be returning soon,” said Stringham. “My physician is insistent that I should not stay up late after my riding accident — especially with anyone, or part of anyone, on my knee.”
“We ought to be getting back, too,” said Duport, freeing himself, apparently dissatisfied, from Ena’s long embrace. “Otherwise it will be tomorrow before we get to London.”
“All right,” said Peter,” we will turn at the next crossroads.”
It was on the homeward journey, after making this turn, that the mishap occurred. Peter was not driving specially fast, but the road, which was slippery from rain fallen earlier in the evening, took two hairpin bends; and, as we reached the second of these, some kind of upheaval took place within the car. No one afterwards could explain exactly what happened, though the accepted supposition was that Brent, engaged in kissing Pauline, had disturbed her susceptibilities in some manner, so that she had drawn herself unexpectedly away from him; and, in his effort to maintain their equilibrium, Brent had thrust her against Peter’s elbow, in such a way that her head obscured the view. That, at least, was one of the main theories afterwards propounded. Whatever the root of the trouble, the memorable consequence was that Peter — in order to avoid a large elm tree — drove into the ditch: where the car stopped abruptly, making a really horrible sound like a dying monster; remaining stuck at an angle of forty-five degrees to the road.
This was an unpleasant surprise for everyone. The girls could not have made more noise if they had been having their throats cut. Brent, too, swore loudly, in his almost falsetto voice, natural or assumed to meet the conditions of the moment; though, as it happened, he and Pauline, perhaps owing to their extreme proximity to each other, were the only two members of the party who, when we had at last all succeeded in making our way out of the Vauxhall, turned out to be quite unhurt. Stringham was kicked in the face by Ena, who also managed to give Duport a black-eye by concussion between the back of her head and his forehead. Peter bruised his knuckles against the handle of the door. Ena complained of a broken arm from the violence with which Duport had seized her as the car went over the edge. My own injuries were no worse than a sharp blow on the nose from Ena’s knee. However, we were all shaken up more than a little; and, as one of the wheels had buckled, the car clearly could not be driven back that night. There had been some difficulty in getting out of the ditch, and, as I stepped up on to the road, I felt the first drop of rain. Now it began to pour. This was an exceedingly inconvenient occurrence from everyone’s point of view. Probably Stringham and I were in the most awkward position, as there seemed no prospect of either of us reaching college by the required hour; and it would not be easy to convince the authorities that nothing of which they might disapprove had taken place to make us late: or even to keep us out all night, if things should turn out so badly. The girls were, presumably, accustomed to late hours if they were in the habit of accepting lifts at that time of night; but for them, too, this was an uncomfortable situation. Such recrimination that took place was about equally divided between Peter’s two friends and Ena and Pauline: although I knew that, in fact, Stringham was far the angriest person present. Rain now began to fall in sheets. We moved in a body towards the elm tree.
“Of all the bloody silly things to do,” said Brent. “You might have killed the lot of us.”
“I might easily,” said Peter, who was always well equipped for dealing with friends of Brent’s kind. “I wonder I didn’t with a lout like you in the boat. Haven’t you ever had a girl sitting on your knee before, that you have to heave her right across the car, just because there is a slight bump in the road?”
“What did you want to get a lot of girls in the car for, anyway?” asked Duport, who was holding a rolled-up handkerchief to his eye. “If you weren’t capable of steering?”
“I didn’t ask for them.”
“You ought to have some driving lessons.”
Peter replied with a reference to the time when Duport was alleged to have collided with a lamp-post at Henley; and they both went on like this for some minutes. Pauline and Ena, the former of whom was crying, also made a good deal of noise, while they lamented the difficulty of getting home, certainly an insoluble problem as matters stood.
“How far out are we?” Stringham asked, “and what is the time?”
The hour was a quarter-past eleven; the general view, that we had come about a dozen miles. There was a chance that a car might pass, but we were a large party to be accommodated. In any case, there was no sign of a car. Stringham said: “We had better make plans for camping out. Brent, you look good at manual labour — will you set to work and construct a palisade?”
“You didn’t ought to have brought us here,” said Pauline.
Ena, still complaining of a torn stocking, and bruises on her arm, cried into her handbag. Peter and Duport moved round the car, pulling and pushing its outer surface, or opening the bonnet to inspect the engine. Brent sat panting to himself on the bank.
Peter said: “The rain seems to be stopping. We may as well walk in the right direction. There is no point in staying here.”
There was not much enthusiasm for this suggestion; and, when attempted, the heel came off one of Ena’s shoes, in any case not adapted to a twelve-mile march.
“Can’t we change the wheel?” said Duport. We struggled with the problem of the wheel from different angles of approach. It was impossible to wind the jack into position under the axle. We only managed to embed the car more firmly than ever in the side of the ditch. While we were engaged in these labours, rain began to fall again, a steady, soaking downpour. Once more we retired to the tree, and waited for the shower to clear.
“What a bloody silly thing to do,” said Duport.
“Almost as brilliant as the time you fell into the orchestra on Boat-Race Night.”
Stringham said: “For my part, I am now in a perfect condition to be received into one of those oriental religions whose only tenet is complete submission to Fate.”
He joined Brent on the bank, and sat with his head in his hands. A minute or two after this, the miracle happened.