I can remember some things upon that evening most distinctly, and others are like some vague, broken dreams.  That is what makes it so difficult to tell a connected story.  I have no idea now what it was that had taken me to London and brought me back so late.  It just merges¹ into all my other visits to London.  But from the time that I got out at the little country station everything is extraordinarily² clear.  I can live it again—every instant of it.

 

I remember so well walking down the platform and looking at the illuminated³ clock at the end which told me that it was half-past eleven.  I remember also my wondering whether I could get home before midnight.  Then I remember the big motor, with its glaring head-lights and glitter of polished brass⁴, waiting for me outside.  It was my new thirty-horse-power Robur, which had only been delivered that day.  I remember also asking Perkins, my chauffeur⁵, how she had gone, and his saying that he thought she was excellent.

 

“I’ll try her myself,” said I, and I climbed into the driver’s seat.

 

“The gears are not the same,” said he.  “Perhaps, sir, I had better drive.”

 

“No; I should like to try her,” said I.

 

And so we started on the five-mile drive for home.

 

My old car had the gears as they used always to be in notches⁶ on a bar.  In this car you passed the gear-lever through a gate to get on the higher ones.  It was not difficult to master, and soon I thought that I understood it.  It was foolish, no doubt, to begin to learn a new system in the dark, but one often does foolish things, and one has not always to pay the full price for them.  I got along very well until I came to Claystall Hill.  It is one of the worst hills in England, a mile and a half long and one in six in places, with three fairly sharp curves.  My park gates stand at the very foot of it upon the main London road.

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