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diff --git a/1264-0.txt b/1264-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..00f8efc --- /dev/null +++ b/1264-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6593 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1264 *** +THE WHEELS OF CHANCE; +A BICYCLING IDYLL + +By H.G. Wells + +1896 + + + + +To +MY DEAR MOTHER + + + + +CONTENTS + + CHAPTER I. THE PRINCIPAL CHARACTER IN THE STORY + CHAPTER II + CHAPTER III + CHAPTER IV. THE RIDING FORTH OF MR. HOOPDRIVER + CHAPTER V. THE SHAMEFUL EPISODE OF THE YOUNG LADY IN GREY + CHAPTER VI. ON THE ROAD TO RIPLEY + CHAPTER VII. + CHAPTER VIII. + CHAPTER IX. HOW MR. HOOPDRIVER WAS HAUNTED + CHAPTER X. THE IMAGININGS OF MR. HOOPDRIVER’S HEART + CHAPTER XI. OMISSIONS + CHAPTER XII. THE DREAMS OF MR. HOOPDRIVER + CHAPTER XIII. HOW MR. HOOPDRIVER WENT TO HASLEMERE + CHAPTER XIV. HOW MR. HOOPDRIVER REACHED MIDHURST + CHAPTER XV. AN INTERLUDE + CHAPTER XVI. OF THE ARTIFICIAL IN MAN, AND OF THE ZEITGEIST + CHAPTER XVII. THE ENCOUNTER AT MIDHURST + CHAPTER XVIII. + CHAPTER XIX. + CHAPTER XX. THE PURSUIT + CHAPTER XXI. AT BOGNOR + CHAPTER XXII. + CHAPTER XXIII. + CHAPTER XXIV. THE MOONLIGHT RIDE + CHAPTER XXV. + CHAPTER XXVI. THE SURBITON INTERLUDE + CHAPTER XXVII. THE AWAKENING OF MR. HOOPDRIVER + CHAPTER XXVIII. THE DEPARTURE FROM CHICHESTER + CHAPTER XXIX. THE UNEXPECTED ANECDOTE OF THE LION + CHAPTER XXX. THE RESCUE EXPEDITION + CHAPTER XXXI. + CHAPTER XXXII. MR. HOOPDRIVER, KNIGHT ERRANT + CHAPTER XXXIII. THE ABASEMENT OF MR. HOOPDRIVER + CHAPTER XXXIV. + CHAPTER XXXV. + CHAPTER XXXVI. + CHAPTER XXXVII. IN THE NEW FOREST + CHAPTER XXXVIII. AT THE RUFUS STONE + CHAPTER XXXIX. + CHAPTER XL. + CHAPTER XLI. THE ENVOY + + + + +I. +THE PRINCIPAL CHARACTER IN THE STORY + + +If you (presuming you are of the sex that does such things)—if you had +gone into the Drapery Emporium—which is really only magnificent for +shop—of Messrs. Antrobus & Co.—a perfectly fictitious “Co.,” by the +bye—of Putney, on the 14th of August, 1895, had turned to the +right-hand side, where the blocks of white linen and piles of blankets +rise up to the rail from which the pink and blue prints depend, you +might have been served by the central figure of this story that is now +beginning. He would have come forward, bowing and swaying, he would +have extended two hands with largish knuckles and enormous cuffs over +the counter, and he would have asked you, protruding a pointed chin and +without the slightest anticipation of pleasure in his manner, what he +might have the pleasure of showing you. Under certain circumstances—as, +for instance, hats, baby linen, gloves, silks, lace, or curtains—he +would simply have bowed politely, and with a drooping expression, and +making a kind of circular sweep, invited you to “step this way,” and so +led you beyond his ken; but under other and happier +conditions,—huckaback, blankets, dimity, cretonne, linen, calico, are +cases in point,—he would have requested you to take a seat, emphasising +the hospitality by leaning over the counter and gripping a chair back +in a spasmodic manner, and so proceeded to obtain, unfold, and exhibit +his goods for your consideration. Under which happier circumstances you +might—if of an observing turn of mind and not too much of a housewife +to be inhuman—have given the central figure of this story less cursory +attention. + +Now if you had noticed anything about him, it would have been chiefly +to notice how little he was noticeable. He wore the black morning coat, +the black tie, and the speckled grey nether parts (descending into +shadow and mystery below the counter) of his craft. He was of a pallid +complexion, hair of a kind of dirty fairness, greyish eyes, and a +skimpy, immature moustache under his peaked indeterminate nose. His +features were all small, but none ill-shaped. A rosette of pins +decorated the lappel of his coat. His remarks, you would observe, were +entirely what people used to call _cliché_, formulae not organic to the +occasion, but stereotyped ages ago and learnt years since by heart. +“This, madam,” he would say, “is selling very well.” “We are doing a +very good article at four three a yard.” “We could show you something +better, of course.” “No trouble, madam, I assure you.” Such were the +simple counters of his intercourse. So, I say, he would have presented +himself to your superficial observation. He would have danced about +behind the counter, have neatly refolded the goods he had shown you, +have put on one side those you selected, extracted a little book with a +carbon leaf and a tinfoil sheet from a fixture, made you out a little +bill in that weak flourishing hand peculiar to drapers, and have bawled +“Sayn!” Then a puffy little shop-walker would have come into view, +looked at the bill for a second, very hard (showing you a parting down +the middle of his head meanwhile), have scribbled a still more +flourishing J. M. all over the document, have asked you if there was +nothing more, have stood by you—supposing that you were paying +cash—until the central figure of this story reappeared with the change. +One glance more at him, and the puffy little shop-walker would have +been bowing you out, with fountains of civilities at work all about +you. And so the interview would have terminated. + +But real literature, as distinguished from anecdote, does not concern +itself with superficial appearances alone. Literature is revelation. +Modern literature is indecorous revelation. It is the duty of the +earnest author to tell you what you would not have seen—even at the +cost of some blushes. And the thing that you would not have seen about +this young man, and the thing of the greatest moment to this story, the +thing that must be told if the book is to be written, was—let us face +it bravely—the Remarkable Condition of this Young Man’s Legs. + +Let us approach the business with dispassionate explicitness. Let us +assume something of the scientific spirit, the hard, almost +professorial tone of the conscientious realist. Let us treat this young +man’s legs as a mere diagram, and indicate the points of interest with +the unemotional precision of a lecturer’s pointer. And so to our +revelation. On the internal aspect of the right ankle of this young man +you would have observed, ladies and gentlemen, a contusion and an +abrasion; on the internal aspect of the left ankle a contusion also; on +its external aspect a large yellowish bruise. On his left shin there +were two bruises, one a leaden yellow graduating here and there into +purple, and another, obviously of more recent date, of a blotchy +red—tumid and threatening. Proceeding up the left leg in a spiral +manner, an unnatural hardness and redness would have been discovered on +the upper aspect of the calf, and above the knee and on the inner side, +an extraordinary expanse of bruised surface, a kind of closely stippled +shading of contused points. The right leg would be found to be bruised +in a marvellous manner all about and under the knee, and particularly +on the interior aspect of the knee. So far we may proceed with our +details. Fired by these discoveries, an investigator might perhaps have +pursued his inquiries further—to bruises on the shoulders, elbows, and +even the finger joints, of the central figure of our story. He had +indeed been bumped and battered at an extraordinary number of points. +But enough of realistic description is as good as a feast, and we have +exhibited enough for our purpose. Even in literature one must know +where to draw the line. + +Now the reader may be inclined to wonder how a respectable young +shopman should have got his legs, and indeed himself generally, into +such a dreadful condition. One might fancy that he had been sitting +with his nether extremities in some complicated machinery, a +threshing-machine, say, or one of those hay-making furies. But Sherlock +Holmes (now happily dead) would have fancied nothing of the kind. He +would have recognised at once that the bruises on the internal aspect +of the left leg, considered in the light of the distribution of the +other abrasions and contusions, pointed unmistakably to the violent +impact of the Mounting Beginner upon the bicycling saddle, and that the +ruinous state of the right knee was equally eloquent of the concussions +attendant on that person’s hasty, frequently causeless, and invariably +ill-conceived descents. One large bruise on the shin is even more +characteristic of the ’prentice cyclist, for upon every one of them +waits the jest of the unexpected treadle. You try at least to walk your +machine in an easy manner, and whack!—you are rubbing your shin. So out +of innocence we ripen. _Two_ bruises on that place mark a certain want +of aptitude in learning, such as one might expect in a person unused to +muscular exercise. Blisters on the hands are eloquent of the nervous +clutch of the wavering rider. And so forth, until Sherlock is presently +explaining, by the help of the minor injuries, that the machine ridden +is an old-fashioned affair with a fork instead of the diamond frame, a +cushioned tire, well worn on the hind wheel, and a gross weight all on +of perhaps three-and-forty pounds. + +The revelation is made. Behind the decorous figure of the attentive +shopman that I had the honour of showing you at first, rises a vision +of a nightly struggle, of two dark figures and a machine in a dark +road,—the road, to be explicit, from Roehampton to Putney Hill,—and +with this vision is the sound of a heel spurning the gravel, a gasping +and grunting, a shouting of “Steer, man, steer!” a wavering unsteady +flight, a spasmodic turning of the missile edifice of man and machine, +and a collapse. Then you descry dimly through the dusk the central +figure of this story sitting by the roadside and rubbing his leg at +some new place, and his friend, sympathetic (but by no means +depressed), repairing the displacement of the handle-bar. + +Thus even in a shop assistant does the warmth of manhood assert itself, +and drive him against all the conditions of his calling, against the +counsels of prudence and the restrictions of his means, to seek the +wholesome delights of exertion and danger and pain. And our first +examination of the draper reveals beneath his draperies—the man! To +which initial fact (among others) we shall come again in the end. + + + + +II + + +But enough of these revelations. The central figure of our story is now +going along behind the counter, a draper indeed, with your purchases in +his arms, to the warehouse, where the various articles you have +selected will presently be packed by the senior porter and sent to you. +Returning thence to his particular place, he lays hands on a folded +piece of gingham, and gripping the corners of the folds in his hands, +begins to straighten them punctiliously. Near him is an apprentice, +apprenticed to the same high calling of draper’s assistant, a ruddy, +red-haired lad in a very short tailless black coat and a very high +collar, who is deliberately unfolding and refolding some patterns of +cretonne. By twenty-one he too may hope to be a full-blown assistant, +even as Mr. Hoopdriver. Prints depend from the brass rails above them, +behind are fixtures full of white packages containing, as inscriptions +testify, _Lino, Hd Bk_, and _Mull_. You might imagine to see them that +the two were both intent upon nothing but smoothness of textile and +rectitude of fold. But to tell the truth, neither is thinking of the +mechanical duties in hand. The assistant is dreaming of the delicious +time—only four hours off now—when he will resume the tale of his +bruises and abrasions. The apprentice is nearer the long long thoughts +of boyhood, and his imagination rides _cap-à-pie_ through the chambers +of his brain, seeking some knightly quest in honour of that Fair Lady, +the last but one of the girl apprentices to the dress-making upstairs. +He inclines rather to street fighting against revolutionaries—because +then she could see him from the window. + +Jerking them back to the present comes the puffy little shop-walker, +with a paper in his hand. The apprentice becomes extremely active. The +shopwalker eyes the goods in hand. “Hoopdriver,” he says, “how’s that +line of g-sez-x ginghams?” + +Hoopdriver returns from an imaginary triumph over the uncertainties of +dismounting. “They’re going fairly well, sir. But the larger checks +seem hanging.” + +The shop-walker brings up parallel to the counter. “Any particular time +when you want your holidays?” he asks. + +Hoopdriver pulls at his skimpy moustache. “No—Don’t want them too late, +sir, of course.” + +“How about this day week?” + +Hoopdriver becomes rigidly meditative, gripping the corners of the +gingham folds in his hands. His face is eloquent of conflicting +considerations. Can he learn it in a week? That’s the question. +Otherwise Briggs will get next week, and he will have to wait until +September—when the weather is often uncertain. He is naturally of a +sanguine disposition. All drapers have to be, or else they could never +have the faith they show in the beauty, washability, and unfading +excellence of the goods they sell you. The decision comes at last. +“That’ll do me very well,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, terminating the pause. + +The die is cast. + +The shop-walker makes a note of it and goes on to Briggs in the +“dresses,” the next in the strict scale of precedence of the Drapery +Emporium. Mr. Hoopdriver in alternating spasms anon straightens his +gingham and anon becomes meditative, with his tongue in the hollow of +his decaying wisdom tooth. + + + + +III + + +At supper that night, holiday talk held undisputed sway. Mr. Pritchard +spoke of “Scotland,” Miss Isaacs clamoured of Bettws-y-Coed, Mr. Judson +displayed a proprietary interest in the Norfolk Broads. “_I?_” said +Hoopdriver when the question came to him. “Why, cycling, of course.” + +“You’re never going to ride that dreadful machine of yours, day after +day?” said Miss Howe of the Costume Department. + +“I am,” said Hoopdriver as calmly as possible, pulling at the +insufficient moustache. “I’m going for a Cycling Tour. Along the South +Coast.” + +“Well, all I hope, Mr. Hoopdriver, is that you’ll get fine weather,” +said Miss Howe. “And not come any nasty croppers.” + +“And done forget some tinscher of arnica in yer bag,” said the junior +apprentice in the very high collar. (He had witnessed one of the +lessons at the top of Putney Hill.) + +“You stow it,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, looking hard and threateningly at +the junior apprentice, and suddenly adding in a tone of bitter +contempt,—“Jampot.” + +“I’m getting fairly safe upon it now,” he told Miss Howe. + +At other times Hoopdriver might have further resented the satirical +efforts of the apprentice, but his mind was too full of the projected +Tour to admit any petty delicacies of dignity. He left the supper table +early, so that he might put in a good hour at the desperate gymnastics +up the Roehampton Road before it would be time to come back for locking +up. When the gas was turned off for the night he was sitting on the +edge of his bed, rubbing arnica into his knee—a new and very big +place—and studying a Road Map of the South of England. Briggs of the +“dresses,” who shared the room with him, was sitting up in bed and +trying to smoke in the dark. Briggs had never been on a cycle in his +life, but he felt Hoopdriver’s inexperience and offered such advice as +occurred to him. + +“Have the machine thoroughly well oiled,” said Briggs, “carry one or +two lemons with you, don’t tear yourself to death the first day, and +sit upright. Never lose control of the machine, and always sound the +bell on every possible opportunity. You mind those things, and nothing +very much can’t happen to you, Hoopdriver—you take my word.” + +He would lapse into silence for a minute, save perhaps for a curse or +so at his pipe, and then break out with an entirely different set of +tips. + +“Avoid running over dogs, Hoopdriver, whatever you do. It’s one of the +worst things you can do to run over a dog. Never let the machine +buckle—there was a man killed only the other day through his wheel +buckling—don’t scorch, don’t ride on the foot-path, keep your own side +of the road, and if you see a tramline, go round the corner at once, +and hurry off into the next county—and always light up before dark. You +mind just a few little things like that, Hoopdriver, and nothing much +can’t happen to you—you take my word.” + +“Right you are!” said Hoopdriver. “Good-night, old man.” + +“Good-night,” said Briggs, and there was silence for a space, save for +the succulent respiration of the pipe. Hoopdriver rode off into +Dreamland on his machine, and was scarcely there before he was pitched +back into the world of sense again.—Something—what was it? + +“Never oil the steering. It’s fatal,” a voice that came from round a +fitful glow of light, was saying. “And clean the chain daily with +black-lead. You mind just a few little things like that—” + +“Lord _love_ us!” said Hoopdriver, and pulled the bedclothes over his +ears. + + + + +IV. +THE RIDING FORTH OF MR. HOOPDRIVER + + +Only those who toil six long days out of the seven, and all the year +round, save for one brief glorious fortnight or ten days in the summer +time, know the exquisite sensations of the First Holiday Morning. All +the dreary, uninteresting routine drops from you suddenly, your chains +fall about your feet. All at once you are Lord of yourself, Lord of +every hour in the long, vacant day; you may go where you please, call +none Sir or Madame, have a lappel free of pins, doff your black morning +coat, and wear the colour of your heart, and be a Man. You grudge +sleep, you grudge eating, and drinking even, their intrusion on those +exquisite moments. There will be no more rising before breakfast in +casual old clothing, to go dusting and getting ready in a cheerless, +shutter-darkened, wrappered-up shop, no more imperious cries of, +“Forward, Hoopdriver,” no more hasty meals, and weary attendance on +fitful old women, for ten blessed days. The first morning is by far the +most glorious, for you hold your whole fortune in your hands. +Thereafter, every night, comes a pang, a spectre, that will not be +exorcised—the premonition of the return. The shadow of going back, of +being put in the cage again for another twelve months, lies blacker and +blacker across the sunlight. But on the first morning of the ten the +holiday has no past, and ten days seems as good as infinity. + +And it was fine, full of a promise of glorious days, a deep blue sky +with dazzling piles of white cloud here and there, as though celestial +haymakers had been piling the swathes of last night’s clouds into cocks +for a coming cartage. There were thrushes in the Richmond Road, and a +lark on Putney Heath. The freshness of dew was in the air; dew or the +relics of an overnight shower glittered on the leaves and grass. +Hoopdriver had breakfasted early by Mrs. Gunn’s complaisance. He +wheeled his machine up Putney Hill, and his heart sang within him. +Halfway up, a dissipated-looking black cat rushed home across the road +and vanished under a gate. All the big red-brick houses behind the +variegated shrubs and trees had their blinds down still, and he would +not have changed places with a soul in any one of them for a hundred +pounds. + +He had on his new brown cycling suit—a handsome Norfolk jacket thing +for 30/(sp.)—and his legs—those martyr legs—were more than consoled by +thick chequered stockings, “thin in the foot, thick in the leg,” for +all they had endured. A neat packet of American cloth behind the saddle +contained his change of raiment, and the bell and the handle-bar and +the hubs and lamp, albeit a trifle freckled by wear, glittered +blindingly in the rising sunlight. And at the top of the hill, after +only one unsuccessful attempt, which, somehow, terminated on the green, +Hoopdriver mounted, and with a stately and cautious restraint in his +pace, and a dignified curvature of path, began his great Cycling Tour +along the Southern Coast. + +There is only one phrase to describe his course at this stage, and that +is—voluptuous curves. He did not ride fast, he did not ride straight, +an exacting critic might say he did not ride well—but he rode +generously, opulently, using the whole road and even nibbling at the +footpath. The excitement never flagged. So far he had never passed or +been passed by anything, but as yet the day was young and the road was +clear. He doubted his steering so much that, for the present, he had +resolved to dismount at the approach of anything else upon wheels. The +shadows of the trees lay very long and blue across the road, the +morning sunlight was like amber fire. + +At the cross-roads at the top of West Hill, where the cattle trough +stands, he turned towards Kingston and set himself to scale the little +bit of ascent. An early heath-keeper, in his velveteen jacket, +marvelled at his efforts. And while he yet struggled, the head of a +carter rose over the brow. + +At the sight of him Mr. Hoopdriver, according to his previous +determination, resolved to dismount. He tightened the brake, and the +machine stopped dead. He was trying to think what he did with his right +leg whilst getting off. He gripped the handles and released the brake, +standing on the left pedal and waving his right foot in the air. +Then—these things take so long in the telling—he found the machine was +falling over to the right. While he was deciding upon a plan of action, +gravitation appears to have been busy. He was still irresolute when he +found the machine on the ground, himself kneeling upon it, and a vague +feeling in his mind that again Providence had dealt harshly with his +shin. This happened when he was just level with the heath-keeper. The +man in the approaching cart stood up to see the ruins better. + +“_That_ ain’t the way to get off,” said the heath-keeper. + +Mr. Hoopdriver picked up the machine. The handle was twisted askew +again. He said something under his breath. He would have to unscrew the +beastly thing. + +“_That_ ain’t the way to get off,” repeated the heath-keeper, after a +silence. + +“_I_ know that,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, testily, determined to overlook +the new specimen on his shin at any cost. He unbuckled the wallet +behind the saddle, to get out a screw hammer. + +“If you know it ain’t the way to get off—whaddyer do it for?” said the +heath-keeper, in a tone of friendly controversy. + +Mr. Hoopdriver got out his screw hammer and went to the handle. He was +annoyed. “That’s my business, I suppose,” he said, fumbling with the +screw. The unusual exertion had made his hands shake frightfully. + +The heath-keeper became meditative, and twisted his stick in his hands +behind his back. “You’ve broken yer ’andle, ain’t yer?” he said +presently. Just then the screw hammer slipped off the nut. Mr. +Hoopdriver used a nasty, low word. + +“They’re trying things, them bicycles,” said the heath-keeper, +charitably. “Very trying.” Mr. Hoopdriver gave the nut a vicious turn +and suddenly stood up—he was holding the front wheel between his knees. +“I wish,” said he, with a catch in his voice, “I wish you’d leave off +staring at me.” + +Then with the air of one who has delivered an ultimatum, he began +replacing the screw hammer in the wallet. + +The heath-keeper never moved. Possibly he raised his eyebrows, and +certainly he stared harder than he did before. “You’re pretty +unsociable,” he said slowly, as Mr. Hoopdriver seized the handles and +stood ready to mount as soon as the cart had passed. + +The indignation gathered slowly but surely. “Why don’t you ride on a +private road of your own if no one ain’t to speak to you?” asked the +heath-keeper, perceiving more and more clearly the bearing of the +matter. “Can’t no one make a passin’ remark to you, Touchy? Ain’t I +good enough to speak to you? Been struck wooden all of a sudden?” + +Mr. Hoopdriver stared into the Immensity of the Future. He was rigid +with emotion. It was like abusing the Lions in Trafalgar Square. But +the heath-keeper felt his honour was at stake. + +“Don’t you make no remarks to ’_im_,” said the keeper as the carter +came up broadside to them. “’E’s a bloomin’ dook, ’e is. ’E don’t +converse with no one under a earl. ’E’s off to Windsor, ’e is; that’s +why ’e’s stickin’ his be’ind out so haughty. Pride! Why, ’e’s got so +much of it, ’e has to carry some of it in that there bundle there, for +fear ’e’d bust if ’e didn’t ease hisself a bit—’_E_—” + +But Mr. Hoopdriver heard no more. He was hopping vigorously along the +road, in a spasmodic attempt to remount. He missed the treadle once and +swore viciously, to the keeper’s immense delight. “Nar! Nar!” said the +heath-keeper. + +In another moment Mr. Hoopdriver was up, and after one terrific lurch +of the machine, the heath-keeper dropped out of earshot. Mr. Hoopdriver +would have liked to look back at his enemy, but he usually twisted +round and upset if he tried that. He had to imagine the indignant +heath-keeper telling the carter all about it. He tried to infuse as +much disdain as possible into his retreating aspect. + +He drove on his sinuous way down the dip by the new mere and up the +little rise to the crest of the hill that drops into Kingston Vale; and +so remarkable is the psychology of cycling, that he rode all the +straighter and easier because the emotions the heath-keeper had aroused +relieved his mind of the constant expectation of collapse that had +previously unnerved him. To ride a bicycle properly is very like a love +affair—chiefly it is a matter of faith. Believe you do it, and the +thing is done; doubt, and, for the life of you, you cannot. + +Now you may perhaps imagine that as he rode on, his feelings towards +the heath-keeper were either vindictive or remorseful,—vindictive for +the aggravation or remorseful for his own injudicious display of ill +temper. As a matter of fact, they were nothing of the sort. A sudden, a +wonderful gratitude, possessed him. The Glory of the Holidays had +resumed its sway with a sudden accession of splendour. At the crest of +the hill he put his feet upon the footrests, and now riding moderately +straight, went, with a palpitating brake, down that excellent descent. +A new delight was in his eyes, quite over and above the pleasure of +rushing through the keen, sweet, morning air. He reached out his thumb +and twanged his bell out of sheer happiness. + +“‘He’s a bloomin’ Dook—he is!’” said Mr. Hoopdriver to himself, in a +soft undertone, as he went soaring down the hill, and again, “‘He’s a +bloomin’ Dook!”’ He opened his mouth in a silent laugh. It was having a +decent cut did it. His social superiority had been so evident that even +a man like that noticed it. No more Manchester Department for ten days! +Out of Manchester, a Man. The draper Hoopdriver, the Hand, had vanished +from existence. Instead was a gentleman, a man of pleasure, with a +five-pound note, two sovereigns, and some silver at various convenient +points of his person. At any rate as good as a Dook, if not precisely +in the peerage. Involuntarily at the thought of his funds Hoopdriver’s +right hand left the handle and sought his breast pocket, to be +immediately recalled by a violent swoop of the machine towards the +cemetery. Whirroo! Just missed that half-brick! Mischievous brutes +there were in the world to put such a thing in the road. Some blooming +’Arry or other! Ought to prosecute a few of these roughs, and the rest +would know better. That must be the buckle of the wallet was rattling +on the mud-guard. How cheerfully the wheels buzzed! + +The cemetery was very silent and peaceful, but the Vale was waking, and +windows rattled and squeaked up, and a white dog came out of one of the +houses and yelped at him. He got off, rather breathless, at the foot of +Kingston Hill, and pushed up. Halfway up, an early milk chariot rattled +by him; two dirty men with bundles came hurrying down. Hoopdriver felt +sure they were burglars, carrying home the swag. + +It was up Kingston Hill that he first noticed a peculiar feeling, a +slight tightness at his knees; but he noticed, too, at the top that he +rode straighter than he did before. The pleasure of riding straight +blotted out these first intimations of fatigue. A man on horseback +appeared; Hoopdriver, in a tumult of soul at his own temerity, passed +him. Then down the hill into Kingston, with the screw hammer, behind in +the wallet, rattling against the oil can. He passed, without +misadventure, a fruiterer’s van and a sluggish cartload of bricks. And +in Kingston Hoopdriver, with the most exquisite sensations, saw the +shutters half removed from a draper’s shop, and two yawning youths, in +dusty old black jackets and with dirty white comforters about their +necks, clearing up the planks and boxes and wrappers in the window, +preparatory to dressing it out. Even so had Hoopdriver been on the +previous day. But now, was he not a bloomin’ Dook, palpably in the +sight of common men? Then round the corner to the right—bell banged +furiously—and so along the road to Surbiton. + +Whoop for Freedom and Adventure! Every now and then a house with an +expression of sleepy surprise would open its eye as he passed, and to +the right of him for a mile or so the weltering Thames flashed and +glittered. Talk of your _joie de vivre!_ Albeit with a certain cramping +sensation about the knees and calves slowly forcing itself upon his +attention. + + + + +V. +THE SHAMEFUL EPISODE OF THE YOUNG LADY IN GREY + + +Now you must understand that Mr. Hoopdriver was not one of your fast +young men. If he had been King Lemuel, he could not have profited more +by his mother’s instructions. He regarded the feminine sex as something +to bow to and smirk at from a safe distance. Years of the intimate +remoteness of a counter leave their mark upon a man. It was an +adventure for him to take one of the Young Ladies of the establishment +to church on a Sunday. Few modern young men could have merited less the +epithet “Dorg.” But I have thought at times that his machine may have +had something of the blade in its metal. Decidedly it was a machine +with a past. Mr. Hoopdriver had bought it second-hand from Hare’s in +Putney, and Hare said it had had several owners. Second-hand was +scarcely the word for it, and Hare was mildly puzzled that he should be +selling such an antiquity. He said it was perfectly sound, if a little +old-fashioned, but he was absolutely silent about its moral character. +It may even have begun its career with a poet, say, in his glorious +youth. It may have been the bicycle of a Really Bad Man. No one who has +ever ridden a cycle of any kind but will witness that the things are +unaccountably prone to pick up bad habits—and keep them. + +It is undeniable that it became convulsed with the most violent +emotions directly the Young Lady in Grey appeared. It began an +absolutely unprecedented Wabble—unprecedented so far as Hoopdriver’s +experience went. It “showed off”—the most decadent sinuosity. It left a +track like one of Beardsley’s feathers. He suddenly realised, too, that +his cap was loose on his head and his breath a mere remnant. + +The Young Lady in Grey was also riding a bicycle. She was dressed in a +beautiful bluish-gray, and the sun behind her drew her outline in gold +and left the rest in shadow. Hoopdriver was dimly aware that she was +young, rather slender, dark, and with a bright colour and bright eyes. +Strange doubts possessed him as to the nature of her nether costume. He +had heard of such things of course. French, perhaps. Her handles +glittered; a jet of sunlight splashed off her bell blindingly. She was +approaching the high road along an affluent from the villas of +Surbiton. The roads converged slantingly. She was travelling at about +the same pace as Mr. Hoopdriver. The appearances pointed to a meeting +at the fork of the roads. + +Hoopdriver was seized with a horrible conflict of doubts. By contrast +with her he rode disgracefully. Had he not better get off at once and +pretend something was wrong with his treadle? Yet even the end of +getting off was an uncertainty. That last occasion on Putney Heath! On +the other hand, what would happen if he kept on? To go very slow seemed +the abnegation of his manhood. To crawl after a mere schoolgirl! +Besides, she was not riding very fast. On the other hand, to thrust +himself in front of her, consuming the road in his tendril-like +advance, seemed an incivility—greed. He would leave her such a very +little. His business training made him prone to bow and step aside. If +only one could take one’s hands off the handles, one might pass with a +silent elevation of the hat, of course. But even that was a little +suggestive of a funeral. + +Meanwhile the roads converged. She was looking at him. She was flushed, +a little thin, and had very bright eyes. Her red lips fell apart. She +may have been riding hard, but it looked uncommonly like a faint smile. +And the things were—yes!—_rationals!_ Suddenly an impulse to bolt from +the situation became clamorous. Mr. Hoopdriver pedalled convulsively, +intending to pass her. He jerked against some tin thing on the road, +and it flew up between front wheel and mud-guard. He twisted round +towards her. Had the machine a devil? + +At that supreme moment it came across him that he would have done wiser +to dismount. He gave a frantic ‘whoop’ and tried to get round, then, as +he seemed falling over, he pulled the handles straight again and to the +left by an instinctive motion, and shot behind her hind wheel, missing +her by a hair’s breadth. The pavement kerb awaited him. He tried to +recover, and found himself jumped up on the pavement and riding +squarely at a neat wooden paling. He struck this with a terrific impact +and shot forward off his saddle into a clumsy entanglement. Then he +began to tumble over sideways, and completed the entire figure in a +sitting position on the gravel, with his feet between the fork and the +stay of the machine. The concussion on the gravel shook his entire +being. He remained in that position, wishing that he had broken his +neck, wishing even more heartily that he had never been born. The glory +of life had departed. Bloomin’ Dook, indeed! These unwomanly women! + +There was a soft whirr, the click of a brake, two footfalls, and the +Young Lady in Grey stood holding her machine. She had turned round and +come back to him. The warm sunlight now was in her face. “Are you +hurt?” she said. She had a pretty, clear, girlish voice. She was really +very young—quite a girl, in fact. And rode so well! It was a bitter +draught. + +Mr. Hoopdriver stood up at once. “Not a bit,” he said, a little +ruefully. He became painfully aware that large patches of gravel +scarcely improve the appearance of a Norfolk suit. “I’m very sorry +indeed—” + +“It’s my fault,” she said, interrupting and so saving him on the very +verge of calling her ‘Miss.’ (He knew ‘Miss’ was wrong, but it was +deep-seated habit with him.) “I tried to pass you on the wrong side.” +Her face and eyes seemed all alive. “It’s my place to be sorry.” + +“But it was my steering—” + +“I ought to have seen you were a Novice”—with a touch of superiority. +“But you rode so straight coming along there!” + +She really was—dashed pretty. Mr. Hoopdriver’s feelings passed the +nadir. When he spoke again there was the faintest flavour of the +aristocratic in his voice. + +“It’s my first ride, as a matter of fact. But that’s no excuse for my +ah! blundering—” + +“Your finger’s bleeding,” she said, abruptly. + +He saw his knuckle was barked. “I didn’t feel it,” he said, feeling +manly. + +“You don’t at first. Have you any sticking-plaster? If not—” She +balanced her machine against herself. She had a little side pocket, and +she whipped out a small packet of sticking-plaster with a pair of +scissors in a sheath at the side, and cut off a generous portion. He +had a wild impulse to ask her to stick it on for him. Controlled. +“Thank you,” he said. + +“Machine all right?” she asked, looking past him at the prostrate +vehicle, her hands on her handle-bar. For the first time Hoopdriver did +not feel proud of his machine. + +He turned and began to pick up the fallen fabric. He looked over his +shoulder, and she was gone, turned his head over the other shoulder +down the road, and she was riding off. “_Orf!_” said Mr. Hoopdriver. +“Well, I’m blowed!—Talk about Slap Up!” (His aristocratic refinement +rarely adorned his speech in his private soliloquies.) His mind was +whirling. One fact was clear. A most delightful and novel human being +had flashed across his horizon and was going out of his life again. The +Holiday madness was in his blood. She looked round! + +At that he rushed his machine into the road, and began a hasty ascent. +Unsuccessful. Try again. Confound it, will he _never_ be able to get up +on the thing again? She will be round the corner in a minute. Once +more. Ah! Pedal! Wabble! No! Right this time! He gripped the handles +and put his head down. He would overtake her. + +The situation was primordial. The Man beneath prevailed for a moment +over the civilised superstructure, the Draper. He pushed at the pedals +with archaic violence. So Palaeolithic man may have ridden his simple +bicycle of chipped flint in pursuit of his exogamous affinity. She +vanished round the corner. His effort was Titanic. What should he say +when he overtook her? That scarcely disturbed him at first. How fine +she had looked, flushed with the exertion of riding, breathing a little +fast, but elastic and active! Talk about your ladylike, homekeeping +girls with complexions like cold veal! But what should he say to her? +That was a bother. And he could not lift his cap without risking a +repetition of his previous ignominy. She was a real Young Lady. No +mistake about that! None of your blooming shop girls. (There is no +greater contempt in the world than that of shop men for shop girls, +unless it be that of shop girls for shop men.) Phew! This was work. A +certain numbness came and went at his knees. + +“May I ask to whom I am indebted?” he panted to himself, trying it +over. That might do. Lucky he had a card case! A hundred a +shilling—while you wait. He was getting winded. The road was certainly +a bit uphill. He turned the corner and saw a long stretch of road, and +a grey dress vanishing. He set his teeth. Had he gained on her at all? +“Monkey on a gridiron!” yelped a small boy. Hoopdriver redoubled his +efforts. His breath became audible, his steering unsteady, his +pedalling positively ferocious. A drop of perspiration ran into his +eye, irritant as acid. The road really was uphill beyond dispute. All +his physiology began to cry out at him. A last tremendous effort +brought him to the corner and showed yet another extent of shady +roadway, empty save for a baker’s van. His front wheel suddenly +shrieked aloud. “Oh Lord!” said Hoopdriver, relaxing. + +Anyhow she was not in sight. He got off unsteadily, and for a moment +his legs felt like wisps of cotton. He balanced his machine against the +grassy edge of the path and sat down panting. His hands were gnarled +with swollen veins and shaking palpably, his breath came viscid. + +“I’m hardly in training yet,” he remarked. His legs had gone leaden. “I +don’t feel as though I’d had a mouthful of breakfast.” Presently he +slapped his side pocket and produced therefrom a brand-new cigarette +case and a packet of Vansittart’s Red Herring cigarettes. He filled the +case. Then his eye fell with a sudden approval on the ornamental +chequering of his new stockings. The expression in his eyes faded +slowly to abstract meditation. + +“She _was_ a stunning girl,” he said. “I wonder if I shall ever set +eyes on her again. And she knew how to ride, too! Wonder what she +thought of me.” + +The phrase ‘bloomin’ Dook’ floated into his mind with a certain flavour +of comfort. + +He lit a cigarette, and sat smoking and meditating. He did not even +look up when vehicles passed. It was perhaps ten minutes before he +roused himself. “What rot it is! What’s the good of thinking such +things,” he said. “I’m only a blessed draper’s assistant.” (To be +exact, he did not say blessed. The service of a shop may polish a man’s +exterior ways, but the ’prentices’ dormitory is an indifferent school +for either manners or morals.) He stood up and began wheeling his +machine towards Esher. It was going to be a beautiful day, and the +hedges and trees and the open country were all glorious to his +town-tired eyes. But it was a little different from the elation of his +start. + +“Look at the gentleman wizzer bicitle,” said a nursemaid on the path to +a personage in a perambulator. That healed him a little. “‘Gentleman +wizzer bicitle,’—‘bloomin’ Dook’—I can’t look so very seedy,” he said +to himself. + +“I _wonder_—I should just like to know—” + +There was something very comforting in the track of _her_ pneumatic +running straight and steady along the road before him. It must be hers. +No other pneumatic had been along the road that morning. It was just +possible, of course, that he might see her once more—coming back. +Should he try and say something smart? He speculated what manner of +girl she might be. Probably she was one of these here New Women. He had +a persuasion the cult had been maligned. Anyhow she was a Lady. And +rich people, too! Her machine couldn’t have cost much under twenty +pounds. His mind came round and dwelt some time on her visible self. +Rational dress didn’t look a bit unwomanly. However, he disdained to be +one of your fortune-hunters. Then his thoughts drove off at a tangent. +He would certainly have to get something to eat at the next public +house. + + + + +VI. +ON THE ROAD TO RIPLEY + + +In the fulness of time, Mr. Hoopdriver drew near the Marquis of Granby +at Esher, and as he came under the railway arch and saw the inn in +front of him, he mounted his machine again and rode bravely up to the +doorway. Burton and biscuit and cheese he had, which, indeed, is Burton +in its proper company; and as he was eating there came a middleaged man +in a drab cycling suit, very red and moist and angry in the face, and +asked bitterly for a lemon squash. And he sat down upon the seat in the +bar and mopped his face. But scarcely had he sat down before he got up +again and stared out of the doorway. + +“Damn!” said he. Then, “Damned Fool!” + +“Eigh?” said Mr. Hoopdriver, looking round suddenly with a piece of +cheese in his cheek. + +The man in drab faced him. “I called myself a Damned Fool, sir. Have +you any objections?” + +“Oh!—None. None,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. “I thought you spoke to me. I +didn’t hear what you said.” + +“To have a contemplative disposition and an energetic temperament, sir, +is hell. Hell, I tell you. A contemplative disposition and a phlegmatic +temperament, all very well. But energy and philosophy—!” + +Mr. Hoopdriver looked as intelligent as he could, but said nothing. + +“There’s no hurry, sir, none whatever. I came out for exercise, gentle +exercise, and to notice the scenery and to botanise. And no sooner do I +get on the accursed machine, than off I go hammer and tongs; I never +look to right or left, never notice a flower, never see a view, get +hot, juicy, red,—like a grilled chop. Here I am, sir. Come from +Guildford in something under the hour. _why_, sir?” + +Mr. Hoopdriver shook his head. + +“Because I’m a damned fool, sir. Because I’ve reservoirs and reservoirs +of muscular energy, and one or other of them is always leaking. It’s a +most interesting road, birds and trees, I’ve no doubt, and wayside +flowers, and there’s nothing I should enjoy more than watching them. +But I can’t. Get me on that machine, and I have to go. Get me on +anything, and I have to go. And I don’t want to go a bit. _Why_ should +a man rush about like a rocket, all pace and fizzle? Why? It makes me +furious. I can assure you, sir, I go scorching along the road, and +cursing aloud at myself for doing it. A quiet, dignified, philosophical +man, that’s what I am—at bottom; and here I am dancing with rage and +swearing like a drunken tinker at a perfect stranger— + +“But my day’s wasted. I’ve lost all that country road, and now I’m on +the fringe of London. And I might have loitered all the morning! Ugh! +Thank Heaven, sir, you have not the irritable temperament, that you are +not goaded to madness by your endogenous sneers, by the eternal +wrangling of an uncomfortable soul and body. I tell you, I lead a cat +and dog life—But what _is_ the use of talking?—It’s all of a piece!” + +He tossed his head with unspeakable self-disgust, pitched the lemon +squash into his mouth, paid for it, and without any further remark +strode to the door. Mr. Hoopdriver was still wondering what to say when +his interlocutor vanished. There was a noise of a foot spurning the +gravel, and when Mr. Hoopdriver reached the doorway, the man in drab +was a score of yards Londonward. He had already gathered pace. He +pedalled with ill-suppressed anger, and his head was going down. In +another moment he flew swiftly out of sight under the railway arch, and +Mr. Hoopdriver saw him no more. + + + + +VII. + + +After this whirlwind Mr. Hoopdriver paid his reckoning and—being now a +little rested about the muscles of the knees—resumed his saddle and +rode on in the direction of Ripley, along an excellent but undulating +road. He was pleased to find his command over his machine already +sensibly increased. He set himself little exercises as he went along +and performed them with variable success. There was, for instance, +steering in between a couple of stones, say a foot apart, a deed of +little difficulty as far as the front wheel is concerned. But the back +wheel, not being under the sway of the human eye, is apt to take a +vicious jump over the obstacle, which sends a violent concussion all +along the spine to the skull, and will even jerk a loosely fastened hat +over the eyes, and so lead to much confusion. And again, there was +taking the hand or hands off the handlebar, a thing simple in itself, +but complex in its consequences. This particularly was a feat Mr. +Hoopdriver desired to do, for several divergent reasons; but at present +it simply led to convulsive balancings and novel and inelegant modes of +dismounting. + +The human nose is, at its best, a needless excrescence. There are those +who consider it ornamental, and would regard a face deprived of its +assistance with pity or derision; but it is doubtful whether our esteem +is dictated so much by a sense of its absolute beauty as by the +vitiating effect of a universally prevalent fashion. In the case of +bicycle students, as in the young of both sexes, its inutility is +aggravated by its persistent annoyance—it requires constant attention. +Until one can ride with one hand, and search for, secure, and use a +pocket handkerchief with the other, cycling is necessarily a constant +series of descents. Nothing can be further from the author’s ambition +than a wanton realism, but Mr. Hoopdriver’s nose is a plain and salient +fact, and face it we must. And, in addition to this inconvenience, +there are flies. Until the cyclist can steer with one hand, his face is +given over to Beelzebub. Contemplative flies stroll over it, and trifle +absently with its most sensitive surfaces. The only way to dislodge +them is to shake the head forcibly and to writhe one’s features +violently. This is not only a lengthy and frequently ineffectual +method, but one exceedingly terrifying to foot passengers. And again, +sometimes the beginner rides for a space with one eye closed by +perspiration, giving him a waggish air foreign to his mood and ill +calculated to overawe the impertinent. However, you will appreciate now +the motive of Mr. Hoopdriver’s experiments. He presently attained +sufficient dexterity to slap himself smartly and violently in the face +with his right hand, without certainly overturning the machine; but his +pocket handkerchief might have been in California for any good it was +to him while he was in the saddle. + +Yet you must not think that because Mr. Hoopdriver was a little +uncomfortable, he was unhappy in the slightest degree. In the +background of his consciousness was the sense that about this time +Briggs would be half-way through his window dressing, and Gosling, the +apprentice, busy, with a chair turned down over the counter and his +ears very red, trying to roll a piece of huckaback—only those who have +rolled pieces of huckaback know quite how detestable huckaback is to +roll—and the shop would be dusty and, perhaps, the governor about and +snappy. And here was quiet and greenery, and one mucked about as the +desire took one, without a soul to see, and here was no wailing of +“Sayn,” no folding of remnants, no voice to shout, “Hoopdriver, +forward!” And once he almost ran over something wonderful, a little, +low, red beast with a yellowish tail, that went rushing across the road +before him. It was the first weasel he had ever seen in his cockney +life. There were miles of this, scores of miles of this before him, +pinewood and oak forest, purple, heathery moorland and grassy down, +lush meadows, where shining rivers wound their lazy way, villages with +square-towered, flint churches, and rambling, cheap, and hearty inns, +clean, white, country towns, long downhill stretches, where one might +ride at one’s ease (overlooking a jolt or so), and far away, at the end +of it all,—the sea. + +What mattered a fly or so in the dawn of these delights? Perhaps he had +been dashed a minute by the shameful episode of the Young Lady in Grey, +and perhaps the memory of it was making itself a little lair in a +corner of his brain from which it could distress him in the retrospect +by suggesting that he looked like a fool; but for the present that +trouble was altogether in abeyance. The man in drab—evidently a +swell—had spoken to him as his equal, and the knees of his brown suit +and the chequered stockings were ever before his eyes. (Or, rather, you +could see the stockings by carrying the head a little to one side.) And +to feel, little by little, his mastery over this delightful, +treacherous machine, growing and growing! Every half-mile or so his +knees reasserted themselves, and he dismounted and sat awhile by the +roadside. + +It was at a charming little place between Esher and Cobham, where a +bridge crosses a stream, that Mr. Hoopdriver came across the other +cyclist in brown. It is well to notice the fact here, although the +interview was of the slightest, because it happened that subsequently +Hoopdriver saw a great deal more of this other man in brown. The other +cyclist in brown had a machine of dazzling newness, and a punctured +pneumatic lay across his knees. He was a man of thirty or more, with a +whitish face, an aquiline nose, a lank, flaxen moustache, and very fair +hair, and he scowled at the job before him. At the sight of him Mr. +Hoopdriver pulled himself together, and rode by with the air of one +born to the wheel. “A splendid morning,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, “and a +fine surface.” + +“The morning and you and the surface be everlastingly damned!” said the +other man in brown as Hoopdriver receded. Hoopdriver heard the mumble +and did not distinguish the words, and he felt a pleasing sense of +having duly asserted the wide sympathy that binds all cyclists +together, of having behaved himself as becomes one of the brotherhood +of the wheel. The other man in brown watched his receding aspect. +“Greasy proletarian,” said the other man in brown, feeling a prophetic +dislike. “Got a suit of brown, the very picture of this. One would +think his sole aim in life had been to caricature me. It’s Fortune’s +way with me. Look at his insteps on the treadles! Why does Heaven make +such men?” + +And having lit a cigarette, the other man in brown returned to the +business in hand. + +Mr. Hoopdriver worked up the hill towards Cobham to a point that he +felt sure was out of sight of the other man in brown, and then he +dismounted and pushed his machine; until the proximity of the village +and a proper pride drove him into the saddle again. + + + + +VIII. + + +Beyond Cobham came a delightful incident, delightful, that is, in its +beginning if a trifle indeterminate in the retrospect. It was perhaps +half-way between Cobham and Ripley. Mr. Hoopdriver dropped down a +little hill, where, unfenced from the road, fine mossy trees and +bracken lay on either side; and looking up he saw an open country +before him, covered with heather and set with pines, and a yellow road +running across it, and half a mile away perhaps, a little grey figure +by the wayside waving something white. “Never!” said Mr. Hoopdriver +with his hands tightening on the handles. + +He resumed the treadles, staring away before him, jolted over a stone, +wabbled, recovered, and began riding faster at once, with his eyes +ahead. “It can’t be,” said Hoopdriver. + +He rode his straightest, and kept his pedals spinning, albeit a limp +numbness had resumed possession of his legs. “It _can’t_ be,” he +repeated, feeling every moment more assured that it _was_. “Lord! I +don’t know even now,” said Mr. Hoopdriver (legs awhirling), and then, +“Blow my legs!” + +But he kept on and drew nearer and nearer, breathing hard and gathering +flies like a flypaper. In the valley he was hidden. Then the road began +to rise, and the resistance of the pedals grew. As he crested the hill +he saw her, not a hundred yards away from him. “It’s her!” he said. +“It’s her—right enough. It’s the suit’s done it,”—which was truer even +than Mr. Hoopdriver thought. But now she was not waving her +handkerchief, she was not even looking at him. She was wheeling her +machine slowly along the road towards him, and admiring the pretty +wooded hills towards Weybridge. She might have been unaware of his +existence for all the recognition he got. + +For a moment horrible doubts troubled Mr. Hoopdriver. Had that +handkerchief been a dream? Besides which he was deliquescent and +scarlet, and felt so. It must be her coquetry—the handkerchief was +indisputable. Should he ride up to her and get off, or get off and ride +up to her? It was as well she didn’t look, because he would certainly +capsize if he lifted his cap. Perhaps that was her consideration. Even +as he hesitated he was upon her. She must have heard his breathing. He +gripped the brake. Steady! His right leg waved in the air, and he came +down heavily and staggering, but erect. She turned her eyes upon him +with admirable surprise. + +Mr. Hoopdriver tried to smile pleasantly, hold up his machine, raise +his cap, and bow gracefully. Indeed, he felt that he did as much. He +was a man singularly devoid of the minutiæ of self-consciousness, and +he was quite unaware of a tail of damp hair lying across his forehead, +and just clearing his eyes, and of the general disorder of his +coiffure. There was an interrogative pause. + +“What can I have the pleasure—” began Mr. Hoopdriver, insinuatingly. “I +mean” (remembering his emancipation and abruptly assuming his most +aristocratic intonation), “can I be of any assistance to you?” + +The Young Lady in Grey bit her lower lip and said very prettily, “None, +thank you.” She glanced away from him and made as if she would proceed. + +“Oh!” said Mr. Hoopdriver, taken aback and suddenly crestfallen again. +It was so unexpected. He tried to grasp the situation. Was she +coquetting? Or had he—? + +“Excuse me, one minute,” he said, as she began to wheel her machine +again. + +“Yes?” she said, stopping and staring a little, with the colour in her +cheeks deepening. + +“I should not have alighted if I had not—imagined that you—er, waved +something white—” He paused. + +She looked at him doubtfully. He _had_ seen it! She decided that he was +not an unredeemed rough taking advantage of a mistake, but an innocent +soul meaning well while seeking happiness. “I _did_ wave my +handkerchief,” she said. “I’m very sorry. I am expecting—a friend, a +gentleman,”—she seemed to flush pink for a minute. “He is riding a +bicycle and dressed in—in brown; and at a distance, you know—” + +“Oh, quite!” said Mr. Hoopdriver, bearing up in manly fashion against +his bitter disappointment. “Certainly.” + +“I’m awfully sorry, you know. Troubling you to dismount, and all that.” + +“No trouble. ’Ssure you,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, mechanically and bowing +over his saddle as if it was a counter. Somehow he could not find it in +his heart to tell her that the man was beyond there with a punctured +pneumatic. He looked back along the road and tried to think of +something else to say. But the gulf in the conversation widened rapidly +and hopelessly. “There’s nothing further,” began Mr. Hoopdriver +desperately, recurring to his stock of _clichés_. + +“Nothing, thank you,” she said decisively. And immediately, “This _is_ +the Ripley road?” + +“Certainly,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. “Ripley is about two miles from here. +According to the mile-stones.” + +“Thank you,” she said warmly. “Thank you so much. I felt sure there was +no mistake. And I really am awfully sorry—” + +“Don’t mention it,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. “Don’t mention it.” He +hesitated and gripped his handles to mount. “It’s me,” he said, “ought +to be sorry.” Should he say it? Was it an impertinence? Anyhow!—“Not +being the other gentleman, you know.” + +He tried a quietly insinuating smile that he knew for a grin even as he +smiled it; felt she disapproved—that she despised him, was overcome +with shame at her expression, turned his back upon her, and began (very +clumsily) to mount. He did so with a horrible swerve, and went +pedalling off, riding very badly, as he was only too painfully aware. +Nevertheless, thank Heaven for the mounting! He could not see her +because it was so dangerous for him to look round, but he could imagine +her indignant and pitiless. He felt an unspeakable idiot. One had to be +so careful what one said to Young Ladies, and he’d gone and treated her +just as though she was only a Larky Girl. It was unforgivable. He +always _was_ a fool. You could tell from her manner she didn’t think +him a gentleman. One glance, and she seemed to look clear through him +and all his presence. What rot it was venturing to speak to a girl like +that! With her education she was bound to see through him at once. + +How nicely she spoke too! nice clear-cut words! She made him feel what +slush his own accent was. And that last silly remark. What was it? ‘Not +being the other gentleman, you know!’ No point in it. And +‘_gentleman!_’ What _could_ she be thinking of him? + +But really the Young Lady in Grey had dismissed Hoopdriver from her +thoughts almost before he had vanished round the corner. She had +thought no ill of him. His manifest awe and admiration of her had given +her not an atom of offence. But for her just now there were weightier +things to think about, things that would affect all the rest of her +life. She continued slowly walking her machine Londonward. Presently +she stopped. “Oh! Why _doesn’t_ he come?” she said, and stamped her +foot petulantly. Then, as if in answer, coming down the hill among the +trees, appeared the other man in brown, dismounted and wheeling his +machine. + + + + +IX. +HOW MR. HOOPDRIVER WAS HAUNTED + + +As Mr. Hoopdriver rode swaggering along the Ripley road, it came to +him, with an unwarrantable sense of comfort, that he had seen the last +of the Young Lady in Grey. But the ill-concealed bladery of the +machine, the present machinery of Fate, the _deus ex machina_, so to +speak, was against him. The bicycle, torn from this attractive young +woman, grew heavier and heavier, and continually more unsteady. It +seemed a choice between stopping at Ripley or dying in the flower of +his days. He went into the Unicorn, after propping his machine outside +the door, and, as he cooled down and smoked his Red Herring cigarette +while the cold meat was getting ready, he saw from the window the Young +Lady in Grey and the other man in brown, entering Ripley. + +They filled him with apprehension by looking at the house which +sheltered him, but the sight of his bicycle, propped in a drunk and +incapable attitude against the doorway, humping its rackety mud-guard +and leering at them with its darkened lantern eye, drove them away—so +it seemed to Mr. Hoopdriver—to the spacious swallow of the Golden +Dragon. The young lady was riding very slowly, but the other man in +brown had a bad puncture and was wheeling his machine. Mr. Hoopdriver +noted his flaxen moustache, his aquiline nose, his rather bent +shoulders, with a sudden, vivid dislike. + +The maid at the Unicorn is naturally a pleasant girl, but she is jaded +by the incessant incidence of cyclists, and Hoopdriver’s mind, even as +he conversed with her in that cultivated voice of his—of the weather, +of the distance from London, and of the excellence of the Ripley +road—wandered to the incomparable freshness and brilliance of the Young +Lady in Grey. As he sat at meat he kept turning his head to the window +to see what signs there were of that person, but the face of the Golden +Dragon displayed no appreciation of the delightful morsel it had +swallowed. As an incidental consequence of this distraction, Mr. +Hoopdriver was for a minute greatly inconvenienced by a mouthful of +mustard. After he had called for his reckoning he went, his courage +being high with meat and mustard, to the door, intending to stand, with +his legs wide apart and his hands deep in his pockets, and stare boldly +across the road. But just then the other man in brown appeared in the +gateway of the Golden Dragon yard—it is one of those delightful inns +that date from the coaching days—wheeling his punctured machine. He was +taking it to Flambeau’s, the repairer’s. He looked up and saw +Hoopdriver, stared for a minute, and then scowled darkly. + +But Hoopdriver remained stoutly in the doorway until the other man in +brown had disappeared into Flambeau’s. Then he glanced momentarily at +the Golden Dragon, puckered his mouth into a whistle of unconcern, and +proceeded to wheel his machine into the road until a sufficient margin +for mounting was secured. + +Now, at that time, I say, Hoopdriver was rather desirous than not of +seeing no more of the Young Lady in Grey. The other man in brown he +guessed was her brother, albeit that person was of a pallid fairness, +differing essentially from her rich colouring; and, besides, he felt he +had made a hopeless fool of himself. But the afternoon was against him, +intolerably hot, especially on the top of his head, and the virtue had +gone out of his legs to digest his cold meat, and altogether his ride +to Guildford was exceedingly intermittent. At times he would walk, at +times lounge by the wayside, and every public house, in spite of Briggs +and a sentiment of economy, meant a lemonade and a dash of bitter. (For +that is the experience of all those who go on wheels, that drinking +begets thirst, even more than thirst begets drinking, until at last the +man who yields becomes a hell unto himself, a hell in which the fire +dieth not, and the thirst is not quenched.) Until a pennyworth of acrid +green apples turned the current that threatened to carry him away. Ever +and again a cycle, or a party of cyclists, would go by, with glittering +wheels and softly running chains, and on each occasion, to save his +self-respect, Mr. Hoopdriver descended and feigned some trouble with +his saddle. Each time he descended with less trepidation. + +He did not reach Guildford until nearly four o’clock, and then he was +so much exhausted that he decided to put up there for the night, at the +Yellow Hammer Coffee Tavern. And after he had cooled a space and +refreshed himself with tea and bread and butter and jam,—the tea he +drank noisily out of the saucer,—he went out to loiter away the rest of +the afternoon. Guildford is an altogether charming old town, famous, so +he learnt from a Guide Book, as the scene of Master Tupper’s great +historical novel of Stephen Langton, and it has a delightful castle, +all set about with geraniums and brass plates commemorating the +gentlemen who put them up, and its Guildhall is a Tudor building, very +pleasant to see, and in the afternoon the shops are busy and the people +going to and fro make the pavements look bright and prosperous. It was +nice to peep in the windows and see the heads of the men and girls in +the drapers’ shops, busy as busy, serving away. The High Street runs +down at an angle of seventy degrees to the horizon (so it seemed to Mr. +Hoopdriver, whose feeling for gradients was unnaturally exalted), and +it brought his heart into his mouth to see a cyclist ride down it, like +a fly crawling down a window pane. The man hadn’t even a brake. He +visited the castle early in the evening and paid his twopence to ascend +the Keep. + +At the top, from the cage, he looked down over the clustering red roofs +of the town and the tower of the church, and then going to the southern +side sat down and lit a Red Herring cigarette, and stared away south +over the old bramble-bearing, fern-beset ruin, at the waves of blue +upland that rose, one behind another, across the Weald, to the lazy +altitudes of Hindhead and Butser. His pale grey eyes were full of +complacency and pleasurable anticipation. Tomorrow he would go riding +across that wide valley. + +He did not notice any one else had come up the Keep after him until he +heard a soft voice behind him saying: “Well, _Miss Beaumont_, here’s +the view.” Something in the accent pointed to a jest in the name. + +“It’s a dear old town, brother George,” answered another voice that +sounded familiar enough, and turning his head, Mr. Hoopdriver saw the +other man in brown and the Young Lady in Grey, with their backs towards +him. She turned her smiling profile towards Hoopdriver. “Only, you +know, brothers don’t call their sisters—” + +She glanced over her shoulder and saw Hoopdriver. “Damn!” said the +other man in brown, quite audibly, starting as he followed her glance. + +Mr. Hoopdriver, with a fine air of indifference, resumed the Weald. +“Beautiful old town, isn’t it?” said the other man in brown, after a +quite perceptible pause. + +“Isn’t it?” said the Young Lady in Grey. + +Another pause began. + +“Can’t get alone anywhere,” said the other man in brown, looking round. + +Then Mr. Hoopdriver perceived clearly that he was in the way, and +decided to retreat. It was just his luck of course that he should +stumble at the head of the steps and vanish with indignity. This was +the third time that he’d seen _him_, and the fourth time _her_. And of +course he was too big a fat-head to raise his cap to her! He thought of +that at the foot of the Keep. Apparently they aimed at the South Coast +just as he did. He’d get up betimes the next day and hurry off to avoid +her—them, that is. It never occurred to Mr. Hoopdriver that Miss +Beaumont and her brother might do exactly the same thing, and that +evening, at least, the peculiarity of a brother calling his sister +“Miss Beaumont” did not recur to him. He was much too preoccupied with +an analysis of his own share of these encounters. He found it hard to +be altogether satisfied about the figure he had cut, revise his +memories as he would. + +Once more quite unintentionally he stumbled upon these two people. It +was about seven o’clock. He stopped outside a linen draper’s and peered +over the goods in the window at the assistants in torment. He could +have spent a whole day happily at that. He told himself that he was +trying to see how they dressed out the brass lines over their counters, +in a purely professional spirit, but down at the very bottom of his +heart he knew better. The customers were a secondary consideration, and +it was only after the lapse of perhaps a minute that he perceived that +among them was—the Young Lady in Grey! He turned away from the window +at once, and saw the other man in brown standing at the edge of the +pavement and regarding him with a very curious expression of face. + +There came into Mr. Hoopdriver’s head the curious problem whether he +was to be regarded as a nuisance haunting these people, or whether they +were to be regarded as a nuisance haunting him. He abandoned the +solution at last in despair, quite unable to decide upon the course he +should take at the next encounter, whether he should scowl savagely at +the couple or assume an attitude eloquent of apology and propitiation. + + + + +X. +THE IMAGININGS OF MR. HOOPDRIVER’S HEART + + +Mr. Hoopdriver was (in the days of this story) a poet, though he had +never written a line of verse. Or perhaps romancer will describe him +better. Like I know not how many of those who do the fetching and +carrying of life,—a great number of them certainly,—his real life was +absolutely uninteresting, and if he had faced it as realistically as +such people do in Mr. Gissing’s novels, he would probably have come by +way of drink to suicide in the course of a year. But that was just what +he had the natural wisdom not to do. On the contrary, he was always +decorating his existence with imaginative tags, hopes, and poses, +deliberate and yet quite effectual self-deceptions; his experiences +were mere material for a romantic superstructure. If some power had +given Hoopdriver the ‘giftie’ Burns invoked, ‘to see oursels as ithers +see us,’ he would probably have given it away to some one else at the +very earliest opportunity. His entire life, you must understand, was +not a continuous romance, but a series of short stories linked only by +the general resemblance of their hero, a brown-haired young fellow +commonly, with blue eyes and a fair moustache, graceful rather than +strong, sharp and resolute rather than clever (cp., as the scientific +books say, p. 2). Invariably this person possessed an iron will. The +stories fluctuated indefinitely. The smoking of a cigarette converted +Hoopdriver’s hero into something entirely worldly, subtly rakish, with +a humorous twinkle in the eye and some gallant sinning in the +background. You should have seen Mr. Hoopdriver promenading the +brilliant gardens at Earl’s Court on an early-closing night. His +meaning glances! (I dare not give the meaning.) Such an influence as +the eloquence of a revivalist preacher would suffice to divert the +story into absolutely different channels, make him a white-soured hero, +a man still pure, walking untainted and brave and helpful through miry +ways. The appearance of some daintily gloved frockcoated gentleman with +buttonhole and eyeglass complete, gallantly attendant in the rear of +customers, served again to start visions of a simplicity essentially +Cromwell-like, of sturdy plainness, of a strong, silent man going +righteously through the world. This day there had predominated a fine +leisurely person immaculately clothed, and riding on an unexceptional +machine, a mysterious person—quite unostentatious, but with accidental +self-revelation of something over the common, even a “bloomin’ Dook,” +it might be incognito, on the tour of the South Coast. + +You must not think that there was any _telling_ of these stories of +this life-long series by Mr. Hoopdriver. He never dreamt that they were +known to a soul. If it were not for the trouble, I would, I think, go +back and rewrite this section from the beginning, expunging the +statements that Hoopdriver was a poet and a romancer, and saying +instead that he was a playwright and acted his own plays. He was not +only the sole performer, but the entire audience, and the entertainment +kept him almost continuously happy. Yet even that playwright comparison +scarcely expresses all the facts of the case. After all, very many of +his dreams never got acted at all, possibly indeed, most of them, the +dreams of a solitary walk for instance, or of a tramcar ride, the +dreams dreamt behind the counter while trade was slack and mechanical +foldings and rollings occupied his muscles. Most of them were little +dramatic situations, crucial dialogues, the return of Mr. Hoopdriver to +his native village, for instance, in a well-cut holiday suit and natty +gloves, the unheard asides of the rival neighbours, the delight of the +old ‘mater,’ the intelligence—“A ten-pound rise all at once from +Antrobus, mater. Whad d’yer think of that?” or again, the first +whispering of love, dainty and witty and tender, to the girl he served +a few days ago with sateen, or a gallant rescue of generalised beauty +in distress from truculent insult or ravening dog. + +So many people do this—and you never suspect it. You see a tattered lad +selling matches in the street, and you think there is nothing between +him and the bleakness of immensity, between him and utter abasement, +but a few tattered rags and a feeble musculature. And all unseen by you +a host of heaven-sent fatuities swathes him about, even, maybe, as they +swathe you about. Many men have never seen their own profiles or the +backs of their heads, and for the back of your own mind no mirror has +been invented. They swathe him about so thickly that the pricks of fate +scarce penetrate to him, or become but a pleasant titillation. And so, +indeed, it is with all of us who go on living. Self-deception is the +anaesthetic of life, while God is carving out our beings. + +But to return from this general vivisection to Mr. Hoopdriver’s +imaginings. You see now how external our view has been; we have had but +the slightest transitory glimpses of the drama within, of how the +things looked in the magic mirror of Mr. Hoopdriver’s mind. On the road +to Guildford and during his encounters with his haunting +fellow-cyclists the drama had presented chiefly the quiet gentleman to +whom we have alluded, but at Guildford, under more varied stimuli, he +burgeoned out more variously. There was the house agent’s window, for +instance, set him upon a charming little comedy. He would go in, make +inquires about that thirty-pound house, get the key possibly and go +over it—the thing would stimulate the clerk’s curiosity immensely. He +searched his mind for a reason for this proceeding and discovered that +he was a dynamiter needing privacy. Upon that theory he procured the +key, explored the house carefully, said darkly that it might suit his +special needs, but that there were _others_ to consult. The clerk, +however, did not understand the allusion, and merely pitied him as one +who had married young and paired himself to a stronger mind than his +own. + +This proceeding in some occult way led to the purchase of a note-book +and pencil, and that started the conception of an artist taking notes. +That was a little game Mr. Hoopdriver had, in congenial company, played +in his still younger days—to the infinite annoyance of quite a number +of respectable excursionists at Hastings. In early days Mr. Hoopdriver +had been, as his mother proudly boasted, a ‘bit of a drawer,’ but a +conscientious and normally stupid schoolmaster perceived the incipient +talent and had nipped it in the bud by a series of lessons in art. +However, our principal character figured about quite happily in old +corners of Guildford, and once the other man in brown, looking out of +the bay window of the Earl of Kent, saw him standing in a corner by a +gateway, note-book in hand, busily sketching the Earl’s imposing +features. At which sight the other man in brown started back from the +centre of the window, so as to be hidden from him, and crouching +slightly, watched him intently through the interstices of the lace +curtains. + + + + +XI. +OMISSIONS + + +Now the rest of the acts of Mr. Hoopdriver in Guildford, on the great +opening day of his holidays, are not to be detailed here. How he +wandered about the old town in the dusk, and up to the Hogsback to see +the little lamps below and the little stars above come out one after +another; how he returned through the yellow-lit streets to the Yellow +Hammer Coffee Tavern and supped bravely in the commercial room—a Man +among Men; how he joined in the talk about flying-machines and the +possibilities of electricity, witnessing that flying-machines were +“dead certain to come,” and that electricity was “wonderful, +wonderful”; how he went and watched the billiard playing and said, +“Left ’em” several times with an oracular air; how he fell a-yawning; +and how he got out his cycling map and studied it intently,—are things +that find no mention here. Nor will I enlarge upon his going into the +writing-room, and marking the road from London to Guildford with a +fine, bright line of the reddest of red ink. In his little cyclist +hand-book there is a diary, and in the diary there is an entry of these +things—it is there to this day, and I cannot do better than reproduce +it here to witness that this book is indeed a true one, and no lying +fable written to while away an hour. + +At last he fell a-yawning so much that very reluctantly indeed he set +about finishing this great and splendid day. (Alas! that all days must +end at last! ) He got his candle in the hall from a friendly +waiting-maid, and passed upward—whither a modest novelist, who writes +for the family circle, dare not follow. Yet I may tell you that he +knelt down at his bedside, happy and drowsy, and said, “Our Father +‘chartin’ heaven,” even as he had learnt it by rote from his mother +nearly twenty years ago. And anon when his breathing had become deep +and regular, we may creep into his bedroom and catch him at his dreams. +He is lying upon his left side, with his arm under the pillow. It is +dark, and he is hidden; but if you could have seen his face, sleeping +there in the darkness, I think you would have perceived, in spite of +that treasured, thin, and straggling moustache, in spite of your memory +of the coarse words he had used that day, that the man before you was, +after all, only a little child asleep. + + + + +XII. +THE DREAMS OF MR. HOOPDRIVER + + +In spite of the drawn blinds and the darkness, you have just seen Mr. +Hoopdriver’s face peaceful in its beauty sleep in the little, plain +bedroom at the very top of the Yellow Hammer Coffee Tavern at +Guildford. That was before midnight. As the night progressed he was +disturbed by dreams. + +After your first day of cycling one dream is inevitable. A memory of +motion lingers in the muscles of your legs, and round and round they +seem to go. You ride through Dreamland on wonderful dream bicycles that +change and grow; you ride down steeples and staircases and over +precipices; you hover in horrible suspense over inhabited towns, vainly +seeking for a brake your hand cannot find, to save you from a headlong +fall; you plunge into weltering rivers, and rush helplessly at +monstrous obstacles. Anon Mr. Hoopdriver found himself riding out of +the darkness of non-existence, pedalling Ezekiel’s Wheels across the +Weald of Surrey, jolting over the hills and smashing villages in his +course, while the other man in brown cursed and swore at him and +shouted to stop his career. There was the Putney heath-keeper, too, and +the man in drab raging at him. He felt an awful fool, a—what was it?—a +juggins, ah!—a Juggernaut. The villages went off one after another with +a soft, squashing noise. He did not see the Young Lady in Grey, but he +knew she was looking at his back. He dared not look round. Where the +devil was the brake? It must have fallen off. And the bell? Right in +front of him was Guildford. He tried to shout and warn the town to get +out of the way, but his voice was gone as well. Nearer, nearer! it was +fearful! and in another moment the houses were cracking like nuts and +the blood of the inhabitants squirting this way and that. The streets +were black with people running. Right under his wheels he saw the Young +Lady in Grey. A feeling of horror came upon Mr. Hoopdriver; he flung +himself sideways to descend, forgetting how high he was, and forthwith +he began falling; falling, falling. + +He woke up, turned over, saw the new moon on the window, wondered a +little, and went to sleep again. + +This second dream went back into the first somehow, and the other man +in brown came threatening and shouting towards him. He grew uglier and +uglier as he approached, and his expression was intolerably evil. He +came and looked close into Mr. Hoopdriver’s eyes and then receded to an +incredible distance. His face seemed to be luminous. “_Miss Beaumont_,” +he said, and splashed up a spray of suspicion. Some one began letting +off fireworks, chiefly Catherine wheels, down the shop, though Mr. +Hoopdriver knew it was against the rules. For it seemed that the place +they were in was a vast shop, and then Mr. Hoopdriver perceived that +the other man in brown was the shop-walker, differing from most +shop-walkers in the fact that he was lit from within as a Chinese +lantern might be. And the customer Mr. Hoopdriver was going to serve +was the Young Lady in Grey. Curious he hadn’t noticed it before. She +was in grey as usual,—rationals,—and she had her bicycle leaning +against the counter. She smiled quite frankly at him, just as she had +done when she had apologised for stopping him. And her form, as she +leant towards him, was full of a sinuous grace he had never noticed +before. “What can I have the pleasure?” said Mr. Hoopdriver at once, +and she said, “The Ripley road.” So he got out the Ripley road and +unrolled it and showed it to her, and she said that would do very +nicely, and kept on looking at him and smiling, and he began measuring +off eight miles by means of the yard measure on the counter, eight +miles being a dress length, a rational dress length, that is; and then +the other man in brown came up and wanted to interfere, and said Mr. +Hoopdriver was a cad, besides measuring it off too slowly. And as Mr. +Hoopdriver began to measure faster, the other man in brown said the +Young Lady in Grey had been there long enough, and that he WAS her +brother, or else she would not be travelling with him, and he suddenly +whipped his arm about her waist and made off with her. It occurred to +Mr. Hoopdriver even at the moment that this was scarcely brotherly +behaviour. Of course it wasn’t! The sight of the other man gripping her +so familiarly enraged him frightfully; he leapt over the counter +forthwith and gave chase. They ran round the shop and up an iron +staircase into the Keep, and so out upon the Ripley road. For some time +they kept dodging in and out of a wayside hotel with two front doors +and an inn yard. The other man could not run very fast because he had +hold of the Young Lady in Grey, but Mr. Hoopdriver was hampered by the +absurd behaviour of his legs. They would not stretch out; they would +keep going round and round as if they were on the treadles of a wheel, +so that he made the smallest steps conceivable. This dream came to no +crisis. The chase seemed to last an interminable time, and all kinds of +people, heath-keepers, shopmen, policemen, the old man in the Keep, the +angry man in drab, the barmaid at the Unicorn, men with +flying-machines, people playing billiards in the doorways, silly, +headless figures, stupid cocks and hens encumbered with parcels and +umbrellas and waterproofs, people carrying bedroom candles, and +such-like riffraff, kept getting in his way and annoying him, although +he sounded his electric bell, and said, “Wonderful, wonderful!” at +every corner.... + + + + +XIII. +HOW MR. HOOPDRIVER WENT TO HASLEMERE + + +There was some little delay in getting Mr. Hoopdriver’s breakfast, so +that after all he was not free to start out of Guildford until just +upon the stroke of nine. He wheeled his machine from the High Street in +some perplexity. He did not know whether this young lady, who had +seized hold of his imagination so strongly, and her unfriendly and +possibly menacing brother, were ahead of him or even now breakfasting +somewhere in Guildford. In the former case he might loiter as he chose; +in the latter he must hurry, and possibly take refuge in branch roads. + +It occurred to him as being in some obscure way strategic, that he +would leave Guildford not by the obvious Portsmouth road, but by the +road running through Shalford. Along this pleasant shady way he felt +sufficiently secure to resume his exercises in riding with one hand off +the handles, and in staring over his shoulder. He came over once or +twice, but fell on his foot each time, and perceived that he was +improving. Before he got to Bramley a specious byway snapped him up, +ran with him for half a mile or more, and dropped him as a terrier +drops a walkingstick, upon the Portsmouth again, a couple of miles from +Godalming. He entered Godalming on his feet, for the road through that +delightful town is beyond dispute the vilest in the world, a mere +tumult of road metal, a way of peaks and precipices, and, after a +successful experiment with cider at the Woolpack, he pushed on to +Milford. + +All this time he was acutely aware of the existence of the Young Lady +in Grey and her companion in brown, as a child in the dark is of +Bogies. Sometimes he could hear their pneumatics stealing upon him from +behind, and looking round saw a long stretch of vacant road. Once he +saw far ahead of him a glittering wheel, but it proved to be a +workingman riding to destruction on a very tall ordinary. And he felt a +curious, vague uneasiness about that Young Lady in Grey, for which he +was altogether unable to account. Now that he was awake he had +forgotten that accentuated Miss Beaumont that had been quite clear in +his dream. But the curious dream conviction, that the girl was not +really the man’s sister, would not let itself be forgotten. Why, for +instance, should a man want to be alone with his sister on the top of a +tower? At Milford his bicycle made, so to speak, an ass of itself. A +finger-post suddenly jumped out at him, vainly indicating an abrupt +turn to the right, and Mr. Hoopdriver would have slowed up and read the +inscription, but no!—the bicycle would not let him. The road dropped a +little into Milford, and the thing shied, put down its head and bolted, +and Mr. Hoopdriver only thought of the brake when the fingerpost was +passed. Then to have recovered the point of intersection would have +meant dismounting. For as yet there was no road wide enough for Mr. +Hoopdriver to turn in. So he went on his way—or to be precise, he did +exactly the opposite thing. The road to the right was the Portsmouth +road, and this he was on went to Haslemere and Midhurst. By that error +it came about that he once more came upon his fellow travellers of +yesterday, coming on them suddenly, without the slightest preliminary +announcement and when they least expected it, under the Southwestern +Railway arch. “It’s horrible,” said a girlish voice; “it’s +brutal—cowardly—” And stopped. + +His expression, as he shot out from the archway at them, may have been +something between a grin of recognition and a scowl of annoyance at +himself for the unintentional intrusion. But disconcerted as he was, he +was yet able to appreciate something of the peculiarity of their mutual +attitudes. The bicycles were lying by the roadside, and the two riders +stood face to face. The other man in brown’s attitude, as it flashed +upon Hoopdriver, was a deliberate pose; he twirled his moustache and +smiled faintly, and he was conscientiously looking amused. And the girl +stood rigid, her arms straight by her side, her handkerchief clenched +in her hand, and her face was flushed, with the faintest touch of red +upon her eyelids. She seemed to Mr. Hoopdriver’s sense to be indignant. +But that was the impression of a second. A mask of surprised +recognition fell across this revelation of emotion as she turned her +head towards him, and the pose of the other man in brown vanished too +in a momentary astonishment. And then he had passed them, and was +riding on towards Haslemere to make what he could of the swift picture +that had photographed itself on his brain. + +“Rum,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. “It’s _dashed_ rum!” + +“They were having a row.” + +“Smirking—” What he called the other man in brown need not trouble us. + +“Annoying her!” That any human being should do that! + +“_Why?_” + +The impulse to interfere leapt suddenly into Mr. Hoopdriver’s mind. He +grasped his brake, descended, and stood looking hesitatingly back. They +still stood by the railway bridge, and it seemed to Mr. Hoopdriver’s +fancy that she was stamping her foot. He hesitated, then turned his +bicycle round, mounted, and rode back towards them, gripping his +courage firmly lest it should slip away and leave him ridiculous. “I’ll +offer ’im a screw ’ammer,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. Then, with a wave of +fierce emotion, he saw that the girl was crying. In another moment they +heard him and turned in surprise. Certainly she had been crying; her +eyes were swimming in tears, and the other man in brown looked +exceedingly disconcerted. Mr. Hoopdriver descended and stood over his +machine. + +“Nothing wrong, I hope?” he said, looking the other man in brown +squarely in the face. “No accident?” + +“Nothing,” said the other man in brown shortly. “Nothing at all, +thanks.” + +“But,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, with a great effort, “the young lady is +crying. I thought perhaps—” + +The Young Lady in Grey started, gave Hoopdriver one swift glance, and +covered one eye with her handkerchief. “It’s this speck,” she said. +“This speck of dust in my eye.” + +“This lady,” said the other man in brown, explaining, “has a gnat in +her eye.” + +There was a pause. The young lady busied herself with her eye. “I +believe it’s out,” she said. The other man in brown made movements +indicating commiserating curiosity concerning the alleged fly. Mr. +Hoopdriver—the word is his own—stood flabber-gastered. He had all the +intuition of the simple-minded. He knew there was no fly. But the +ground was suddenly cut from his feet. There is a limit to +knighterrantry—dragons and false knights are all very well, but flies! +Fictitious flies! Whatever the trouble was, it was evidently not his +affair. He felt he had made a fool of himself again. He would have +mumbled some sort of apology; but the other man in brown gave him no +time, turned on him abruptly, even fiercely. “I hope,” he said, “that +your curiosity is satisfied?” + +“Certainly,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. + +“Then we won’t detain you.” + +And, ignominiously, Mr. Hoopdriver turned his machine about, struggled +upon it, and resumed the road southward. And when he learnt that he was +not on the Portsmouth road, it was impossible to turn and go back, for +that would be to face his shame again, and so he had to ride on by +Brook Street up the hill to Haslemere. And away to the right the +Portsmouth road mocked at him and made off to its fastnesses amid the +sunlit green and purple masses of Hindhead, where Mr. Grant Allen +writes his Hill Top Novels day by day. + +The sun shone, and the wide blue hill views and pleasant valleys one +saw on either hand from the sandscarred roadway, even the sides of the +road itself set about with grey heather scrub and prickly masses of +gorse, and pine trees with their year’s growth still bright green, +against the darkened needles of the previous years, were fresh and +delightful to Mr. Hoopdriver’s eyes But the brightness of the day and +the day-old sense of freedom fought an uphill fight against his +intolerable vexation at that abominable encounter, and had still to win +it when he reached Haslemere. A great brown shadow, a monstrous hatred +of the other man in brown, possessed him. He had conceived the +brilliant idea of abandoning Portsmouth, or at least giving up the +straight way to his fellow-wayfarers, and of striking out boldly to the +left, eastward. He did not dare to stop at any of the inviting +public-houses in the main street of Haslemere, but turned up a side way +and found a little beer-shop, the Good Hope, wherein to refresh +himself. And there he ate and gossipped condescendingly with an aged +labourer, assuming the while for his own private enjoyment the +attributes of a Lost Heir, and afterwards mounted and rode on towards +Northchapel, a place which a number of finger-posts conspired to boom, +but which some insidious turning prevented him from attaining. + + + + +XIV. +HOW MR. HOOPDRIVER REACHED MIDHURST + + +It was one of my uncle’s profoundest remarks that human beings are the +only unreasonable creatures. This observation was so far justified by +Mr. Hoopdriver that, after spending the morning tortuously avoiding the +other man in brown and the Young Lady in Grey, he spent a considerable +part of the afternoon in thinking about the Young Lady in Grey, and +contemplating in an optimistic spirit the possibilities of seeing her +again. Memory and imagination played round her, so that his course was +largely determined by the windings of the road he traversed. Of one +general proposition he was absolutely convinced. “There’s something +Juicy wrong with ’em,” said he—once even aloud. But what it was he +could not imagine. He recapitulated the facts. “Miss Beaumont—brother +and sister—and the stoppage to quarrel and weep—” it was perplexing +material for a young man of small experience. There was no exertion he +hated so much as inference, and after a time he gave up any attempt to +get at the realities of the case, and let his imagination go free. +Should he ever see her again? Suppose he did—with that other chap not +about. The vision he found pleasantest was an encounter with her, an +unexpected encounter at the annual Dancing Class ‘Do’ at the Putney +Assembly Rooms. Somehow they would drift together, and he would dance +with her again and again. It was a pleasant vision, for you must +understand that Mr. Hoopdriver danced uncommonly well. Or again, in the +shop, a sudden radiance in the doorway, and she is bowed towards the +Manchester counter. And then to lean over that counter and murmur, +seemingly _àpropos_ of the goods under discussion, “I have not +forgotten that morning on the Portsmouth road,” and lower, “I never +shall forget.” + +At Northchapel Mr. Hoopdriver consulted his map and took counsel and +weighed his course of action. Petworth seemed a possible resting-place, +or Pullborough; Midhurst seemed too near, and any place over the Downs +beyond, too far, and so he meandered towards Petworth, posing himself +perpetually and loitering, gathering wild flowers and wondering why +they had no names—for he had never heard of any—dropping them furtively +at the sight of a stranger, and generally ‘mucking about.’ There were +purple vetches in the hedges, meadowsweet, honeysuckle, belated +brambles—but the dog-roses had already gone; there were green and red +blackberries, stellarias, and dandelions, and in another place white +dead nettles, traveller’s-joy, clinging bedstraw, grasses flowering, +white campions, and ragged robins. One cornfield was glorious with +poppies, bright scarlet and purple white, and the blue corn-flowers +were beginning. In the lanes the trees met overhead, and the wisps of +hay still hung to the straggling hedges. In one of the main roads he +steered a perilous passage through a dozen surly dun oxen. Here and +there were little cottages, and picturesque beer-houses with the vivid +brewers’ boards of blue and scarlet, and once a broad green and a +church, and an expanse of some hundred houses or so. Then he came to a +pebbly rivulet that emerged between clumps of sedge loosestrife and +forget-me-nots under an arch of trees, and rippled across the road, and +there he dismounted, longing to take off shoes and stockings—those +stylish chequered stockings were now all dimmed with dust—and paddle +his lean legs in the chuckling cheerful water. But instead he sat in a +manly attitude, smoking a cigarette, for fear lest the Young Lady in +Grey should come glittering round the corner. For the flavour of the +Young Lady in Grey was present through it all, mixing with the flowers +and all the delight of it, a touch that made this second day quite +different from the first, an undertone of expectation, anxiety, and +something like regret that would not be ignored. + +It was only late in the long evening that, quite abruptly, he began to +repent, vividly and decidedly, having fled these two people. He was +getting hungry, and that has a curious effect upon the emotional +colouring of our minds. The man was a sinister brute, Hoopdriver saw in +a flash of inspiration, and the girl—she was in some serious trouble. +And he who might have helped her had taken his first impulse as +decisive—and bolted. This new view of it depressed him dreadfully. What +might not be happening to her now? He thought again of her tears. +Surely it was merely his duty, seeing the trouble afoot, to keep his +eye upon it. + +He began riding fast to get quit of such selfreproaches. He found +himself in a tortuous tangle of roads, and as the dusk was coming on, +emerged, not at Petworth but at Easebourne, a mile from Midhurst. “I’m +getting hungry,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, inquiring of a gamekeeper in +Easebourne village. “Midhurst a mile, and Petworth five!—Thenks, I’ll +take Midhurst.” + +He came into Midhurst by the bridge at the watermill, and up the North +Street, and a little shop flourishing cheerfully, the cheerful sign of +a teapot, and exhibiting a brilliant array of tobaccos, sweets, and +children’s toys in the window, struck his fancy. A neat, bright-eyed +little old lady made him welcome, and he was presently supping +sumptuously on sausages and tea, with a visitors’ book full of the most +humorous and flattering remarks about the little old lady, in verse and +prose, propped up against his teapot as he ate. Regular good some of +the jokes were, and rhymes that read well—even with your mouth full of +sausage. Mr. Hoopdriver formed a vague idea of drawing “something”—for +his judgment on the little old lady was already formed. He pictured the +little old lady discovering it afterwards—“My gracious! One of them +_Punch_ men,” she would say. The room had a curtained recess and a +chest of drawers, for presently it was to be his bedroom, and the day +part of it was decorated with framed Oddfellows’ certificates and +giltbacked books and portraits, and kettle-holders, and all kinds of +beautiful things made out of wool; very comfortable it was indeed. The +window was lead framed and diamond paned, and through it one saw the +corner of the vicarage and a pleasant hill crest, in dusky silhouette +against the twilight sky. And after the sausages had ceased to be, he +lit a Red Herring cigarette and went swaggering out into the twilight +street. All shadowy blue between its dark brick houses, was the street, +with a bright yellow window here and there and splashes of green and +red where the chemist’s illumination fell across the road. + + + + +XV. +AN INTERLUDE + + +And now let us for a space leave Mr. Hoopdriver in the dusky Midhurst +North Street, and return to the two folks beside the railway bridge +between Milford and Haslemere. She was a girl of eighteen, dark, fine +featured, with bright eyes, and a rich, swift colour under her +warm-tinted skin. Her eyes were all the brighter for the tears that +swam in them. The man was thirty three or four, fair, with a longish +nose overhanging his sandy flaxen moustache, pale blue eyes, and a head +that struck out above and behind. He stood with his feet wide apart, +his hand on his hip, in an attitude that was equally suggestive of +defiance and aggression. They had watched Hoopdriver out of sight. The +unexpected interruption had stopped the flood of her tears. He tugged +his abundant moustache and regarded her calmly. She stood with face +averted, obstinately resolved not to speak first. “Your behaviour,” he +said at last, “makes you conspicuous.” + +She turned upon him, her eyes and cheeks glowing, her hands clenched. +“You unspeakable _cad_,” she said, and choked, stamped her little foot, +and stood panting. + +“Unspeakable cad! My dear girl! Possible I _am_ an unspeakable cad. Who +wouldn’t be—for you?” + +“‘Dear girl!’ How _dare_ you speak to me like that? _You_—” + +“I would do anything—” + +“_Oh!_” + +There was a moment’s pause. She looked squarely into his face, her eyes +alight with anger and contempt, and perhaps he flushed a little. He +stroked his moustache, and by an effort maintained his cynical calm. +“Let us be reasonable,” he said. + +“Reasonable! That means all that is mean and cowardly and sensual in +the world.” + +“You have always had it so—in your generalising way. But let us look at +the facts of the case—if that pleases you better.” + +With an impatient gesture she motioned him to go on. + +“Well,” he said,—“you’ve eloped.” + +“I’ve left my home,” she corrected, with dignity. “I left my home +because it was unendurable. Because that woman—” + +“Yes, yes. But the point is, you have eloped with me.” + +“You came with me. You pretended to be my friend. Promised to help me +to earn a living by writing. It was you who said, why shouldn’t a man +and woman be friends? And now you dare—you dare—” + +“Really, Jessie, this pose of yours, this injured innocence—” + +“I will go back. I forbid you—I forbid you to stand in the way—” + +“One moment. I have always thought that my little pupil was at least +clear-headed. You don’t know everything yet, you know. Listen to me for +a moment.” + +“Haven’t I been listening? And you have only insulted me. You who dared +only to talk of friendship, who scarcely dared hint at anything +beyond.” + +“But you took the hints, nevertheless. You knew. You _knew_. And you +did not mind. _Mind!_ You liked it. It was the fun of the whole thing +for you. That I loved you, and could not speak to you. You played with +it—” + +“You have said all that before. Do you think that justifies you?” + +“That isn’t all. I made up my mind—Well, to make the game more even. +And so I suggested to you and joined with you in this expedition of +yours, invented a sister at Midhurst—I tell you, I _haven’t_ a sister! +For one object—” + +“Well?” + +“To compromise you.” + +She started. That was a new way of putting it. For half a minute +neither spoke. Then she began half defiantly: “Much I am compromised. +Of course—I have made a fool of myself—” + +“My dear girl, you are still on the sunny side of eighteen, and you +know very little of this world. Less than you think. But you will +learn. Before you write all those novels we have talked about, you will +have to learn. And that’s one point—” He hesitated. “You started and +blushed when the man at breakfast called you Ma’am. You thought it a +funny mistake, but you did not say anything because he was young and +nervous—and besides, the thought of being my wife offended your +modesty. You didn’t care to notice it. But—you see; I gave your name as +_Mrs_. Beaumont.” He looked almost apologetic, in spite of his cynical +pose. “_Mrs_. Beaumont,” he repeated, pulling his flaxen moustache and +watching the effect. + +She looked into his eyes speechless. “I am learning fast,” she said +slowly, at last. + +He thought the time had come for an emotional attack. “Jessie,” he +said, with a sudden change of voice, “I know all this is mean, is +villanous. But do you think that I have done all this scheming, all +this subterfuge, for any other object—” + +She did not seem to listen to his words. “I shall ride home,” she said +abruptly. + +“To her?” + +She winced. + +“Just think,” said he, “what she could say to you after this.” + +“Anyhow, I shall leave you now.” + +“Yes? And go—” + +“Go somewhere to earn my living, to be a free woman, to live without +conventionality—” + +“My dear girl, do let us be cynical. You haven’t money and you haven’t +credit. No one would take you in. It’s one of two things: go back to +your stepmother, or—trust to me.” + +“How _can_ I?” + +“Then you must go back to her.” He paused momentarily, to let this +consideration have its proper weight. “Jessie, I did not mean to say +the things I did. Upon my honour, I lost my head when I spoke so. If +you will, forgive me. I am a man. I could not help myself. Forgive me, +and I promise you—” + +“How can I trust you?” + +“Try me. I can assure you—” + +She regarded him distrustfully. + +“At any rate, ride on with me now. Surely we have been in the shadow of +this horrible bridge long enough.” + +“Oh! let me think,” she said, half turning from him and pressing her +hand to her brow. + +“_Think!_ Look here, Jessie. It is ten o’clock. Shall we call a truce +until one?” + +She hesitated, demanded a definition of the truce, and at last agreed. + +They mounted, and rode on in silence, through the sunlight and the +heather. Both were extremely uncomfortable and disappointed. She was +pale, divided between fear and anger. She perceived she was in a +scrape, and tried in vain to think of a way of escape. Only one +tangible thing would keep in her mind, try as she would to ignore it. +That was the quite irrelevant fact that his head was singularly like an +albino cocoanut. He, too, felt thwarted. He felt that this romantic +business of seduction was, after all, unexpectedly tame. But this was +only the beginning. At any rate, every day she spent with him was a day +gained. Perhaps things looked worse than they were; that was some +consolation. + + + + +XVI. +OF THE ARTIFICIAL IN MAN, AND OF THE ZEITGEIST + + +You have seen these two young people—Bechamel, by-the-bye, is the man’s +name, and the girl’s is Jessie Milton—from the outside; you have heard +them talking; they ride now side by side (but not too close together, +and in an uneasy silence) towards Haslemere; and this chapter will +concern itself with those curious little council chambers inside their +skulls, where their motives are in session and their acts are +considered and passed. + +But first a word concerning wigs and false teeth. Some jester, +enlarging upon the increase of bald heads and purblind people, has +deduced a wonderful future for the children of men. Man, he said, was +nowadays a hairless creature by forty or fifty, and for hair we gave +him a wig; shrivelled, and we padded him; toothless, and lo! false +teeth set in gold. Did he lose a limb, and a fine, new, artificial one +was at his disposal; get indigestion, and to hand was artificial +digestive fluid or bile or pancreatine, as the case might be. +Complexions, too, were replaceable, spectacles superseded an +inefficient eye-lens, and imperceptible false diaphragms were thrust +into the failing ear. So he went over our anatomies, until, at last, he +had conjured up a weird thing of shreds and patches, a simulacrum, an +artificial body of a man, with but a doubtful germ of living flesh +lurking somewhere in his recesses. To that, he held, we were coming. + +How far such odd substitution for the body is possible need not concern +us now. But the devil, speaking by the lips of Mr. Rudyard Kipling, +hath it that in the case of one Tomlinson, the thing, so far as the +soul is concerned, has already been accomplished. Time was when men had +simple souls, desires as natural as their eyes, a little reasonable +philanthropy, a little reasonable philoprogenitiveness, hunger, and a +taste for good living, a decent, personal vanity, a healthy, satisfying +pugnacity, and so forth. But now we are taught and disciplined for +years and years, and thereafter we read and read for all the time some +strenuous, nerve-destroying business permits. Pedagogic hypnotists, +pulpit and platform hypnotists, book-writing hypnotists, +newspaper-writing hypnotists, are at us all. This sugar you are eating, +they tell us, is ink, and forthwith we reject it with infinite disgust. +This black draught of unrequited toil is True Happiness, and down it +goes with every symptom of pleasure. This Ibsen, they say, is dull past +believing, and we yawn and stretch beyond endurance. Pardon! they +interrupt, but this Ibsen is deep and delightful, and we vie with one +another in an excess of entertainment. And when we open the heads of +these two young people, we find, not a straightforward motive on the +surface anywhere; we find, indeed, not a soul so much as an oversoul, a +zeitgeist, a congestion of acquired ideas, a highway’s feast of fine, +confused thinking. The girl is resolute to Live Her Own Life, a phrase +you may have heard before, and the man has a pretty perverted ambition +to be a cynical artistic person of the very calmest description. He is +hoping for the awakening of Passion in her, among other things. He +knows Passion ought to awaken, from the text-books he has studied. He +knows she admires his genius, but he is unaware that she does not +admire his head. He is quite a distinguished art critic in London, and +he met her at that celebrated lady novelist’s, her stepmother, and here +you have them well embarked upon the Adventure. Both are in the first +stage of repentance, which consists, as you have probably found for +yourself, in setting your teeth hard and saying’ “I _will_ go on.” + +Things, you see, have jarred a little, and they ride on their way +together with a certain aloofness of manner that promises ill for the +orthodox development of the Adventure. He perceives he was too +precipitate. But he feels his honour is involved, and meditates the +development of a new attack. And the girl? She is unawakened. Her +motives are bookish, written by a haphazard syndicate of authors, +novelists, and biographers, on her white inexperience. An artificial +oversoul she is, that may presently break down and reveal a human being +beneath it. She is still in that schoolgirl phase when a talkative old +man is more interesting than a tongue-tied young one, and when to be an +eminent mathematician, say, or to edit a daily paper, seems as fine an +ambition as any girl need aspire to. Bechamel was to have helped her to +attain that in the most expeditious manner, and here he is beside her, +talking enigmatical phrases about passion, looking at her with the +oddest expression, and once, and that was his gravest offence, offering +to kiss her. At any rate he has apologised. She still scarcely +realises, you see, the scrape she has got into. + + + + +XVII. +THE ENCOUNTER AT MIDHURST + + +We left Mr. Hoopdriver at the door of the little tea, toy, and tobacco +shop. You must not think that a strain is put on coincidence when I +tell you that next door to Mrs. Wardor’s—that was the name of the +bright-eyed, little old lady with whom Mr. Hoopdriver had stopped—is +the Angel Hotel, and in the Angel Hotel, on the night that Mr. +Hoopdriver reached Midhurst, were ‘Mr.’ and ‘Miss’ Beaumont, our +Bechamel and Jessie Milton. Indeed, it was a highly probable thing; for +if one goes through Guildford, the choice of southward roads is +limited; you may go by Petersfield to Portsmouth, or by Midhurst to +Chichester, in addition to which highways there is nothing for it but +minor roadways to Petworth or Pulborough, and cross-cuts Brightonward. +And coming to Midhurst from the north, the Angel’s entrance lies +yawning to engulf your highly respectable cyclists, while Mrs. Wardor’s +genial teapot is equally attractive to those who weigh their means in +little scales. But to people unfamiliar with the Sussex roads—and such +were the three persons of this story—the convergence did not appear to +be so inevitable. + +Bechamel, tightening his chain in the Angel yard after dinner, was the +first to be aware of their reunion. He saw Hoopdriver walk slowly +across the gateway, his head enhaloed in cigarette smoke, and pass out +of sight up the street. Incontinently a mass of cloudy uneasiness, that +had been partly dispelled during the day, reappeared and concentrated +rapidly into definite suspicion. He put his screw hammer into his +pocket and walked through the archway into the street, to settle the +business forthwith, for he prided himself on his decision. Hoopdriver +was merely promenading, and they met face to face. + +At the sight of his adversary, something between disgust and laughter +seized Mr. Hoopdriver and for a moment destroyed his animosity. “’Ere +we are again!” he said, laughing insincerely in a sudden outbreak at +the perversity of chance. + +The other man in brown stopped short in Mr. Hoopdriver’s way, staring. +Then his face assumed an expression of dangerous civility. “Is it any +information to you,” he said, with immense politeness, “when I remark +that you are following us?” + +Mr. Hoopdriver, for some occult reason, resisted his characteristic +impulse to apologise. He wanted to annoy the other man in brown, and a +sentence that had come into his head in a previous rehearsal cropped up +appropriately. “Since when,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, catching his breath, +yet bringing the question out valiantly, nevertheless,—“since when ’ave +you purchased the county of Sussex?” + +“May I point out,” said the other man in brown, “that I object—we +object not only to your proximity to us. To be frank—you appear to be +following us—with an object.” + +“You can always,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, “turn round if you don’t like +it, and go back the way you came.” + +“Oh-o!” said the other man in brown. “_That’s_ it! I thought as much.” + +“Did you?” said Mr. Hoopdriver, quite at sea, but rising pluckily to +the unknown occasion. What was the man driving at? + +“I see,” said the other man. “I see. I half suspected—” His manner +changed abruptly to a quality suspiciously friendly. “Yes—a word with +you. You will, I hope, give me ten minutes.” + +Wonderful things were dawning on Mr. Hoopdriver. What did the other man +take him for? Here at last was reality! He hesitated. Then he thought +of an admirable phrase. “You ’ave some communication—” + +“We’ll call it a communication,” said the other man. + +“I can spare you the ten minutes,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, with dignity. + +“This way, then,” said the other man in brown, and they walked slowly +down the North Street towards the Grammar School. There was, perhaps, +thirty seconds’ silence. The other man stroked his moustache nervously. +Mr. Hoopdriver’s dramatic instincts were now fully awake. He did not +quite understand in what _rôle_ he was cast, but it was evidently +something dark and mysterious. Doctor Conan Doyle, Victor Hugo, and +Alexander Dumas were well within Mr. Hoopdriver’s range of reading, and +he had not read them for nothing. + +“I will be perfectly frank with you,” said the other man in brown. + +“Frankness is always the best course,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. + +“Well, then—who the devil set you on this business?” + +“Set me _on_ this business?” + +“Don’t pretend to be stupid. Who’s your employer? Who engaged you for +this job?” + +“Well,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, confused. “No—I can’t say.” + +“Quite sure?” The other man in brown glanced meaningly down at his +hand, and Mr. Hoopdriver, following him mechanically, saw a yellow +milled edge glittering in the twilight. Now your shop assistant is just +above the tip-receiving class, and only just above it—so that he is +acutely sensitive on the point. + +Mr. Hoopdriver flushed hotly, and his eyes were angry as he met those +of the other man in brown. “Stow it!” said Mr. Hoopdriver, stopping and +facing the tempter. + +“What!” said the other man in brown, surprised. “Eigh?” And so saying +he stowed it in his breeches pocket. + +“D’yer think I’m to be bribed?” said Mr. Hoopdriver, whose imagination +was rapidly expanding the situation. “By Gosh! I’d follow you now—” + +“My dear sir,” said the other man in brown, “I beg your pardon. I +misunderstood you. I really beg your pardon. Let us walk on. In your +profession—” + +“What have you got to say against my profession?” + +“Well, really, you know. There are detectives of an inferior +description—watchers. The whole class. Private Inquiry—I did not +realise—I really trust you will overlook what was, after all—you must +admit—a natural indiscretion. Men of honour are not so common in the +world—in any profession.” + +It was lucky for Mr. Hoopdriver that in Midhurst they do not light the +lamps in the summer time, or the one they were passing had betrayed +him. As it was, he had to snatch suddenly at his moustache and tug +fiercely at it, to conceal the furious tumult of exultation, the +passion of laughter, that came boiling up. Detective! Even in the +shadow Bechamel saw that a laugh was stifled, but he put it down to the +fact that the phrase “men of honour” amused his interlocutor. “He’ll +come round yet,” said Bechamel to himself. “He’s simply holding out for +a fiver.” He coughed. + +“I don’t see that it hurts you to tell me who your employer is.” + +“Don’t you? I do.” + +“Prompt,” said Bechamel, appreciatively. “Now here’s the thing I want +to put to you—the kernel of the whole business. You need not answer if +you don’t want to. There’s no harm done in my telling you what I want +to know. Are you employed to watch me—or Miss Milton?” + +“I’m not the leaky sort,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, keeping the secret he +did not know with immense enjoyment. Miss Milton! That was her name. +Perhaps he’d tell some more. “It’s no good pumping. Is that all you’re +after?” said Mr. Hoopdriver. + +Bechamel respected himself for his diplomatic gifts. He tried to catch +a remark by throwing out a confidence. “I take it there are two people +concerned in watching this affair.” + +“Who’s the other?” said Mr. Hoopdriver, calmly, but controlling with +enormous internal tension his self-appreciation. “Who’s the other?” was +really brilliant, he thought. + +“There’s my wife and _her_ stepmother.” + +“And you want to know which it is?” + +“Yes,” said Bechamel. + +“Well—arst ’em!” said Mr. Hoopdriver, his exultation getting the better +of him, and with a pretty consciousness of repartee. “Arst ’em both.” + +Bechamel turned impatiently. Then he made a last effort. “I’d give a +five-pound note to know just the precise state of affairs,” he said. + +“I told you to stow that,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, in a threatening tone. +And added with perfect truth and a magnificent mystery, “You don’t +quite understand who you’re dealing with. But you will!” He spoke with +such conviction that he half believed that that defective office of his +in London—Baker Street, in fact—really existed. + +With that the interview terminated. Bechamel went back to the Angel, +perturbed. “Hang detectives!” It wasn’t the kind of thing he had +anticipated at all. Hoopdriver, with round eyes and a wondering smile, +walked down to where the mill waters glittered in the moonlight, and +after meditating over the parapet of the bridge for a space, with +occasional murmurs of, “Private Inquiry” and the like, returned, with +mystery even in his paces, towards the town. + + + + +XVIII. + + +That glee which finds expression in raised eyebrows and long, low +whistling noises was upon Mr. Hoopdriver. For a space he forgot the +tears of the Young Lady in Grey. Here was a new game!—and a real one. +Mr. Hoopdriver as a Private Inquiry Agent, a Sherlock Holmes in fact, +keeping these two people ‘under observation.’ He walked slowly back +from the bridge until he was opposite the Angel, and stood for ten +minutes, perhaps, contemplating that establishment and enjoying all the +strange sensations of being this wonderful, this mysterious and +terrible thing. Everything fell into place in his scheme. He had, of +course, by a kind of instinct, assumed the disguise of a cyclist, +picked up the first old crock he came across as a means of pursuit. ‘No +expense was to be spared.’ + +Then he tried to understand what it was in particular that he was +observing. “My wife”—“_Her_ stepmother!” Then he remembered her +swimming eyes. Abruptly came a wave of anger that surprised him, washed +away the detective superstructure, and left him plain Mr. Hoopdriver. +This man in brown, with his confident manner, and his proffered half +sovereign (damn him!) was up to no good, else why should he object to +being watched? He was married! She was not his sister. He began to +understand. A horrible suspicion of the state of affairs came into Mr. +Hoopdriver’s head. Surely it had not come to _that_. He was a +detective!—he would find out. How was it to be done? He began to submit +sketches on approval to himself. It required an effort before he could +walk into the Angel bar. “A lemonade and bitter, please,” said Mr. +Hoopdriver. + +He cleared his throat. “Are Mr. and Mrs. Bowlong stopping here?” + +“What, a gentleman and a young lady—on bicycles?” + +“Fairly young—a married couple.” + +“No,” said the barmaid, a talkative person of ample dimensions. +“There’s no married couples stopping here. But there’s a Mr. and Miss +_Beaumont_.” She spelt it for precision. “Sure you’ve got the name +right, young man?” + +“Quite,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. + +“Beaumont there is, but no one of the name of—What was the name you +gave?” + +“Bowlong,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. + +“No, there ain’t no Bowlong,” said the barmaid, taking up a glasscloth +and a drying tumbler and beginning to polish the latter. “First off, I +thought you might be asking for Beaumont—the names being similar. Were +you expecting them on bicycles?” + +“Yes—they said they _might_ be in Midhurst tonight.” + +“P’raps they’ll come presently. Beaumont’s here, but no Bowlong. Sure +that Beaumont ain’t the name?” + +“Certain,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. + +“It’s curious the names being so alike. I thought p’raps—” + +And so they conversed at some length, Mr. Hoopdriver delighted to find +his horrible suspicion disposed of. The barmaid having listened awhile +at the staircase volunteered some particulars of the young couple +upstairs. Her modesty was much impressed by the young lady’s costume, +so she intimated, and Mr. Hoopdriver whispered the badinage natural to +the occasion, at which she was coquettishly shocked. “There’ll be no +knowing which is which, in a year or two,” said the barmaid. “And her +manner too! She got off her machine and give it ’im to stick up against +the kerb, and in she marched. ‘I and my brother,’ says she, ‘want to +stop here to-night. My brother doesn’t mind what kind of room ’e ’as, +but I want a room with a good view, if there’s one to be got,’ says +she. He comes hurrying in after and looks at her. ‘I’ve settled the +rooms,’ she says, and ’e says ‘damn!’ just like that. I can fancy my +brother letting me boss the show like that.” + +“I dessay you do,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, “if the truth was known.” + +The barmaid looked down, smiled and shook her head, put down the +tumbler, polished, and took up another that had been draining, and +shook the drops of water into her little zinc sink. + +“She’ll be a nice little lot to marry,” said the barmaid. “She’ll be +wearing the—well, b-dashes, as the sayin’ is. I can’t think what girls +is comin’ to.” + +This depreciation of the Young Lady in Grey was hardly to Hoopdriver’s +taste. + +“Fashion,” said he, taking up his change. “Fashion is all the go with +you ladies—and always was. You’ll be wearing ’em yourself before a +couple of years is out.” + +“Nice they’d look on my figger,” said the barmaid, with a titter. “No—I +ain’t one of your fashionable sort. Gracious no! I shouldn’t feel as if +I’d anything on me, not more than if I’d forgot—Well, there! I’m +talking.” She put down the glass abruptly. “I dessay I’m old +fashioned,” she said, and walked humming down the bar. + +“Not you,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. He waited until he caught her eye, then +with his native courtesy smiled, raised his cap, and wished her good +evening. + + + + +XIX. + + +Then Mr. Hoopdriver returned to the little room with the lead-framed +windows where he had dined, and where the bed was now comfortably made, +sat down on the box under the window, stared at the moon rising on the +shining vicarage roof, and tried to collect his thoughts. How they +whirled at first! It was past ten, and most of Midhurst was tucked away +in bed, some one up the street was learning the violin, at rare +intervals a belated inhabitant hurried home and woke the echoes, and a +corncrake kept up a busy churning in the vicarage garden. The sky was +deep blue, with a still luminous afterglow along the black edge of the +hill, and the white moon overhead, save for a couple of yellow stars, +had the sky to herself. + +At first his thoughts were kinetic, of deeds and not relationships. +There was this malefactor, and his victim, and it had fallen on Mr. +Hoopdriver to take a hand in the game. _He_ was married. Did she know +he was married? Never for a moment did a thought of evil concerning her +cross Hoopdriver’s mind. Simple-minded people see questions of morals +so much better than superior persons—who have read and thought +themselves complex to impotence. He had heard her voice, seen the frank +light in her eyes, and she had been weeping—that sufficed. The rights +of the case he hadn’t properly grasped. But he would. And that +smirking—well, swine was the mildest for him. He recalled the +exceedingly unpleasant incident of the railway bridge. “Thin we won’t +detain yer, thenks,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, aloud, in a strange, +unnatural, contemptible voice, supposed to represent that of Bechamel. +“Oh, the _beggar!_ I’ll be level with him yet. He’s afraid of us +detectives—that I’ll _swear_.” (If Mrs. Wardor should chance to be on +the other side of the door within earshot, well and good.) + +For a space he meditated chastisements and revenges, physical +impossibilities for the most part,—Bechamel staggering headlong from +the impact of Mr. Hoopdriver’s large, but, to tell the truth, ill +supported fist, Bechamel’s five feet nine of height lifted from the +ground and quivering under a vigorously applied horsewhip. So pleasant +was such dreaming, that Mr. Hoopdriver’s peaked face under the +moonlight was transfigured. One might have paired him with that +well-known and universally admired triumph, ‘The Soul’s Awakening,’ so +sweet was his ecstasy. And presently with his thirst for revenge +glutted by six or seven violent assaults, a duel and two vigorous +murders, his mind came round to the Young Lady in Grey again. + +She was a plucky one too. He went over the incident the barmaid at the +Angel had described to him. His thoughts ceased to be a torrent, +smoothed down to a mirror in which she was reflected with infinite +clearness and detail. He’d never met anything like her before. Fancy +that bolster of a barmaid being dressed in that way! He whuffed a +contemptuous laugh. He compared her colour, her vigour, her voice, with +the Young Ladies in Business with whom his lot had been cast. Even in +tears she was beautiful, more beautiful indeed to him, for it made her +seem softer and weaker, more accessible. And such weeping as he had +seen before had been so much a matter of damp white faces, red noses, +and hair coming out of curl. Your draper’s assistant becomes something +of a judge of weeping, because weeping is the custom of all Young +Ladies in Business, when for any reason their services are dispensed +with. She could weep—and (by Gosh!) she could smile. _He_ knew that, +and reverting to acting abruptly, he smiled confidentially at the +puckered pallor of the moon. + +It is difficult to say how long Mr. Hoopdriver’s pensiveness lasted. It +seemed a long time before his thoughts of action returned. Then he +remembered he was a ‘watcher’; that to-morrow he must be busy. It would +be in character to make notes, and he pulled out his little note-book. +With that in hand he fell a-thinking again. Would that chap tell her +the ’tecks were after them? If so, would she be as anxious to get away +as _he_ was? He must be on the alert. If possible he must speak to her. +Just a significant word, “Your friend—trust me!”—It occurred to him +that to-morrow these fugitives might rise early to escape. At that he +thought of the time and found it was half-past eleven. “Lord!” said he, +“I must see that I wake.” He yawned and rose. The blind was up, and he +pulled back the little chintz curtains to let the sunlight strike +across to the bed, hung his watch within good view of his pillow, on a +nail that supported a kettle-holder, and sat down on his bed to +undress. He lay awake for a little while thinking of the wonderful +possibilities of the morrow, and thence he passed gloriously into the +wonderland of dreams. + + + + +XX. +THE PURSUIT + + +And now to tell of Mr. Hoopdriver, rising with the sun, vigilant, +active, wonderful, the practicable half of the lead-framed window stuck +open, ears alert, an eye flickering incessantly in the corner panes, in +oblique glances at the Angel front. Mrs. Wardor wanted him to have his +breakfast downstairs in her kitchen, but that would have meant +abandoning the watch, and he held out strongly. The bicycle, +_cap-à-pie_, occupied, under protest, a strategic position in the shop. +He was expectant by six in the morning. By nine horrible fears +oppressed him that his quest had escaped him, and he had to reconnoitre +the Angel yard in order to satisfy himself. There he found the ostler +(How are the mighty fallen in these decadent days!) brushing down the +bicycles of the chase, and he returned relieved to Mrs. Wardor’s +premises. And about ten they emerged, and rode quietly up the North +Street. He watched them until they turned the corner of the post +office, and then out into the road and up after them in fine style! +They went by the engine-house where the old stocks and the whipping +posts are, and on to the Chichester road, and he followed gallantly. So +this great chase began. + +They did not look round, and he kept them just within sight, getting +down if he chanced to draw closely upon them round a corner. By riding +vigorously he kept quite conveniently near them, for they made but +little hurry. He grew hot indeed, and his knees were a little stiff to +begin with, but that was all. There was little danger of losing them, +for a thin chalky dust lay upon the road, and the track of her tire was +milled like a shilling, and his was a chequered ribbon along the way. +So they rode by Cobden’s monument and through the prettiest of +villages, until at last the downs rose steeply ahead. There they +stopped awhile at the only inn in the place, and Mr. Hoopdriver took up +a position which commanded the inn door, and mopped his face and +thirsted and smoked a Red Herring cigarette. They remained in the inn +for some time. A number of chubby innocents returning home from school, +stopped and formed a line in front of him, and watched him quietly but +firmly for the space of ten minutes or so. “Go away,” said he, and they +only seemed quietly interested. He asked them all their names then, and +they answered indistinct murmurs. He gave it up at last and became +passive on his gate, and so at length they tired of him. + +The couple under observation occupied the inn so long that Mr. +Hoopdriver at the thought of their possible employment hungered as well +as thirsted. Clearly, they were lunching. It was a cloudless day, and +the sun at the meridian beat down upon the top of Mr. Hoopdriver’s +head, a shower bath of sunshine, a huge jet of hot light. It made his +head swim. At last they emerged, and the other man in brown looked back +and saw him. They rode on to the foot of the down, and dismounting +began to push tediously up that long nearly vertical ascent of blinding +white road. Mr. Hoopdriver hesitated. It might take them twenty minutes +to mount that. Beyond was empty downland perhaps for miles. He decided +to return to the inn and snatch a hasty meal. + +At the inn they gave him biscuits and cheese and a misleading pewter +measure of sturdy ale, pleasant under the palate, cool in the throat, +but leaden in the legs, of a hot afternoon. He felt a man of substance +as he emerged in the blinding sunshine, but even by the foot of the +down the sun was insisting again that his skull was too small for his +brains. The hill had gone steeper, the chalky road blazed like a +magnesium light, and his front wheel began an apparently incurable +squeaking. He felt as a man from Mars would feel if he were suddenly +transferred to this planet, about three times as heavy as he was wont +to feel. The two little black figures had vanished over the forehead of +the hill. “The tracks’ll be all right,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. + +That was a comforting reflection. It not only justified a slow progress +up the hill, but at the crest a sprawl on the turf beside the road, to +contemplate the Weald from the south. In a matter of two days he had +crossed that spacious valley, with its frozen surge of green hills, its +little villages and townships here and there, its copses and +cornfields, its ponds and streams like jewelery of diamonds and silver +glittering in the sun. The North Downs were hidden, far away beyond the +Wealden Heights. Down below was the little village of Cocking, and +half-way up the hill, a mile perhaps to the right, hung a flock of +sheep grazing together. Overhead an anxious peewit circled against the +blue, and every now and then emitted its feeble cry. Up here the heat +was tempered by a pleasant breeze. Mr. Hoopdriver was possessed by +unreasonable contentment; he lit himself a cigarette and lounged more +comfortably. Surely the Sussex ale is made of the waters of Lethe, of +poppies and pleasant dreams. Drowsiness coiled insidiously about him. + +He awoke with a guilty start, to find himself sprawling prone on the +turf with his cap over one eye. He sat up, rubbed his eyes, and +realised that he had slept. His head was still a trifle heavy. And the +chase? He jumped to his feet and stooped to pick up his overturned +machine. He whipped out his watch and saw that it was past two o’clock. +“Lord love us, fancy that!—But the tracks’ll be all right,” said Mr. +Hoopdriver, wheeling his machine back to the chalky road. “I must +scorch till I overtake them.” + +He mounted and rode as rapidly as the heat and a lingering lassitude +permitted. Now and then he had to dismount to examine the surface where +the road forked. He enjoyed that rather. “Trackin’,” he said aloud, and +decided in the privacy of his own mind that he had a wonderful instinct +for ‘spoor.’ So he came past Goodwood station and Lavant, and +approached Chichester towards four o’clock. And then came a terrible +thing. In places the road became hard, in places were the crowded +indentations of a recent flock of sheep, and at last in the throat of +the town cobbles and the stony streets branching east, west, north, and +south, at a stone cross under the shadow of the cathedral the tracks +vanished. “O Cricky!” said Mr. Hoopdriver, dismounting in dismay and +standing agape. “Dropped anything?” said an inhabitant at the kerb. +“Yes,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, “I’ve lost the spoor,” and walked upon his +way, leaving the inhabitant marvelling what part of a bicycle a spoor +might be. Mr. Hoopdriver, abandoning tracking, began asking people if +they had seen a Young Lady in Grey on a bicycle. Six casual people +hadn’t, and he began to feel the inquiry was conspicuous, and desisted. +But what was to be done? + +Hoopdriver was hot, tired, and hungry, and full of the first gnawings +of a monstrous remorse. He decided to get himself some tea and meat, +and in the Royal George he meditated over the business in a melancholy +frame enough. They had passed out of his world—vanished, and all his +wonderful dreams of some vague, crucial interference collapsed like a +castle of cards. What a fool he had been not to stick to them like a +leech! He might have thought! But there!—what WAS the good of that sort +of thing now? He thought of her tears, of her helplessness, of the +bearing of the other man in brown, and his wrath and disappointment +surged higher. “What CAN I do?” said Mr. Hoopdriver aloud, bringing his +fist down beside the teapot. + +What would Sherlock Holmes have done? Perhaps, after all, there might +be such things as clues in the world, albeit the age of miracles was +past. But to look for a clue in this intricate network of cobbled +streets, to examine every muddy interstice! There was a chance by +looking about and inquiry at the various inns. Upon that he began. But +of course they might have ridden straight through and scarcely a soul +have marked them. And then came a positively brilliant idea. “’Ow many +ways are there out of Chichester?” said Mr. Hoopdriver. It was really +equal to Sherlock Holmes—that. “If they’ve made tracks, I shall find +those tracks. If not—they’re in the town.” He was then in East Street, +and he started at once to make the circuit of the place, discovering +incidentally that Chichester is a walled city. In passing, he made +inquiries at the Black Swan, the Crown, and the Red Lion Hotel. At six +o’clock in the evening, he was walking downcast, intent, as one who had +dropped money, along the road towards Bognor, kicking up the dust with +his shoes and fretting with disappointed pugnacity. A thwarted, +crestfallen Hoopdriver it was, as you may well imagine. And then +suddenly there jumped upon his attention—a broad line ribbed like a +shilling, and close beside it one chequered, that ever and again split +into two. “Found!” said Mr. Hoopdriver and swung round on his heel at +once, and back to the Royal George, helter skelter, for the bicycle +they were minding for him. The ostler thought he was confoundedly +imperious, considering his machine. + + + + +XXI. +AT BOGNOR + + +That seductive gentleman, Bechamel, had been working up to a crisis. He +had started upon this elopement in a vein of fine romance, immensely +proud of his wickedness, and really as much in love as an artificial +oversoul can be, with Jessie. But either she was the profoundest of +coquettes or she had not the slightest element of Passion (with a large +P) in her composition. It warred with all his ideas of himself and the +feminine mind to think that under their flattering circumstances she +really could be so vitally deficient. He found her persistent coolness, +her more or less evident contempt for himself, exasperating in the +highest degree. He put it to himself that she was enough to provoke a +saint, and tried to think that was piquant and enjoyable, but the +blisters on his vanity asserted themselves. The fact is, he was, under +this standing irritation, getting down to the natural man in himself +for once, and the natural man in himself, in spite of Oxford and the +junior Reviewers’ Club, was a Palaeolithic creature of simple tastes +and violent methods. “I’ll be level with you yet,” ran like a plough +through the soil of his thoughts. + +Then there was this infernal detective. Bechamel had told his wife he +was going to Davos to see Carter. To that he had fancied she was +reconciled, but how she would take this exploit was entirely +problematical. She was a woman of peculiar moral views, and she +measured marital infidelity largely by its proximity to herself. Out of +her sight, and more particularly out of the sight of the other women of +her set, vice of the recognised description was, perhaps, permissible +to those contemptible weaklings, men, but this was Evil on the High +Roads. She was bound to make a fuss, and these fusses invariably took +the final form of a tightness of money for Bechamel. Albeit, and he +felt it was heroic of him to resolve so, it was worth doing if it was +to be done. His imagination worked on a kind of matronly Valkyrie, and +the noise of pursuit and vengeance was in the air. The idyll still had +the front of the stage. That accursed detective, it seemed, had been +thrown off the scent, and that, at any rate, gave a night’s respite. +But things must be brought to an issue forthwith. + +By eight o’clock in the evening, in a little dining-room in the Vicuna +Hotel, Bognor, the crisis had come, and Jessie, flushed and angry in +the face and with her heart sinking, faced him again for her last +struggle with him. He had tricked her this time, effectually, and luck +had been on his side. She was booked as Mrs. Beaumont. Save for her +refusal to enter their room, and her eccentricity of eating with +unwashed hands, she had so far kept up the appearances of things before +the waiter. But the dinner was grim enough. Now in turn she appealed to +his better nature and made extravagant statements of her plans to fool +him. + +He was white and vicious by this time, and his anger quivered through +his pose of brilliant wickedness. + +“I will go to the station,” she said. “I will go back—” + +“The last train for anywhere leaves at 7.42.” + +“I will appeal to the police—” + +“You don’t know them.” + +“I will tell these hotel people.” + +“They will turn you out of doors. You’re in such a thoroughly false +position now. They don’t understand unconventionality, down here.” + +She stamped her foot. “If I wander about the streets all night—” she +said. + +“You who have never been out alone after dusk? Do you know what the +streets of a charming little holiday resort are like—” + +“I don’t care,” she said. “I can go to the clergyman here.” + +“He’s a charming man. Unmarried. And men are really more alike than you +think. And anyhow—” + +“Well?” + +“How _can_ you explain the last two nights to anyone now? The mischief +is done, Jessie.” + +“You _cur_,” she said, and suddenly put her hand to her breast. He +thought she meant to faint, but she stood, with the colour gone from +her face. + +“No,” he said. “I love you.” + +“Love!” said she. + +“Yes—love.” + +“There are ways yet,” she said, after a pause. + +“Not for you. You are too full of life and hope yet for, what is +it?—not the dark arch nor the black flowing river. Don’t you think of +it. You’ll only shirk it when the moment comes, and turn it all into +comedy.” + +She turned round abruptly from him and stood looking out across the +parade at the shining sea over which the afterglow of day fled before +the rising moon. He maintained his attitude. The blinds were still up, +for she had told the waiter not to draw them. There was silence for +some moments. + +At last he spoke in as persuasive a voice as he could summon. “Take it +sensibly, Jessie. Why should we, who have so much in common, quarrel +into melodrama? I swear I love you. You are all that is bright and +desirable to me. I am stronger than you, older; man to your woman. To +find _you_ too—conventional!” + +She looked at him over her shoulder, and he noticed with a twinge of +delight how her little chin came out beneath the curve of her cheek. + +“_Man!_” she said. “Man to _my_ woman! Do _men_ lie? Would a _man_ use +his five and thirty years’ experience to outwit a girl of seventeen? +Man to my woman indeed! That surely is the last insult!” + +“Your repartee is admirable, Jessie. I should say they do, though—all +that and more also when their hearts were set on such a girl as +yourself. For God’s sake drop this shrewishness! Why should you be +so—difficult to me? Here am I with _my_ reputation, _my_ career, at +your feet. Look here, Jessie—on my honour, I will marry you—” + +“God forbid,” she said, so promptly that she never learnt he had a +wife, even then. It occurred to him then for the first time, in the +flash of her retort, that she did not know he was married. + +“’Tis only a pre-nuptial settlement,” he said, following that hint. + +He paused. + +“You must be sensible. The thing’s your own doing. Come out on the +beach now—the beach here is splendid, and the moon will soon be high.” + +“_I won’t_” she said, stamping her foot. + +“Well, well—” + +“Oh! leave me alone. Let me think—” + +“Think,” he said, “if you want to. It’s your cry always. But you can’t +save yourself by thinking, my dear girl. You can’t save yourself in any +way now. If saving it is—this parsimony—” + +“Oh, go—go.” + +“Very well. I will go. I will go and smoke a cigar. And think of you, +dear.... But do you think I should do all this if I did not care?” + +“Go,” she whispered, without glancing round. She continued to stare out +of the window. He stood looking at her for a moment, with a strange +light in his eyes. He made a step towards her. “I _have_ you,” he said. +“You are mine. Netted—caught. But mine.” He would have gone up to her +and laid his hand upon her, but he did not dare to do that yet. “I have +you in my hand,” he said, “in my power. Do you hear—_Power!_” + +She remained impassive. He stared at her for half a minute, and then, +with a superb gesture that was lost upon her, went to the door. Surely +the instinctive abasement of her sex before Strength was upon his side. +He told himself that his battle was won. She heard the handle move and +the catch click as the door closed behind him. + + + + +XXII. + + +And now without in the twilight behold Mr. Hoopdriver, his cheeks hot, +his eye bright! His brain is in a tumult. The nervous, obsequious +Hoopdriver, to whom I introduced you some days since, has undergone a +wonderful change. Ever since he lost that ‘spoor’ in Chichester, he has +been tormented by the most horrible visions of the shameful insults +that may be happening. The strangeness of new surroundings has been +working to strip off the habitual servile from him. Here was moonlight +rising over the memory of a red sunset, dark shadows and glowing orange +lamps, beauty somewhere mysteriously rapt away from him, tangible wrong +in a brown suit and an unpleasant face, flouting him. Mr. Hoopdriver +for the time, was in the world of Romance and Knight-errantry, divinely +forgetful of his social position or hers; forgetting, too, for the time +any of the wretched timidities that had tied him long since behind the +counter in his proper place. He was angry and adventurous. It was all +about him, this vivid drama he had fallen into, and it was eluding him. +He was far too grimly in earnest to pick up that lost thread and make a +play of it now. The man was living. He did not pose when he alighted at +the coffee tavern even, nor when he made his hasty meal. + +As Bechamel crossed from the Vicuna towards the esplanade, Hoopdriver, +disappointed and exasperated, came hurrying round the corner from the +Temperance Hotel. At the sight of Bechamel, his heart jumped, and the +tension of his angry suspense exploded into, rather than gave place to, +an excited activity of mind. They were at the Vicuna, and she was there +now alone. It was the occasion he sought. But he would give Chance no +chance against him. He went back round the corner, sat down on the +seat, and watched Bechamel recede into the dimness up the esplanade, +before he got up and walked into the hotel entrance. “A lady cyclist in +grey,” he asked for, and followed boldly on the waiter’s heels. The +door of the dining-room was opening before he felt a qualm. And then +suddenly he was nearly minded to turn and run for it, and his features +seemed to him to be convulsed. + +She turned with a start, and looked at him with something between +terror and hope in her eyes. + +“Can I—have a few words—with you, alone?” said Mr. Hoopdriver, +controlling his breath with difficulty. She hesitated, and then +motioned the waiter to withdraw. + +Mr. Hoopdriver watched the door shut. He had intended to step out into +the middle of the room, fold his arms and say, “You are in trouble. I +am a Friend. Trust me.” Instead of which he stood panting and then +spoke with sudden familiarity, hastily, guiltily: “Look here. I don’t +know what the juice is up, but I think there’s something wrong. Excuse +my intruding—if it isn’t so. I’ll do anything you like to help you out +of the scrape—if you’re in one. That’s my meaning, I believe. What can +I do? I would do anything to help you.” + +Her brow puckered, as she watched him make, with infinite emotion, this +remarkable speech. “_You!_” she said. She was tumultuously weighing +possibilities in her mind, and he had scarcely ceased when she had made +her resolve. + +She stepped a pace forward. “You are a gentleman,” she said. + +“Yes,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. + +“Can I trust you?” + +She did not wait for his assurance. “I must leave this hotel at once. +Come here.” + +She took his arm and led him to the window. + +“You can just see the gate. It is still open. Through that are our +bicycles. Go down, get them out, and I will come down to you. Dare you? + +“Get your bicycle out in the road?” + +“Both. Mine alone is no good. At once. Dare you?” + +“Which way?” + +“Go out by the front door and round. I will follow in one minute.” + +“Right!” said Mr. Hoopdriver, and went. + +He had to get those bicycles. Had he been told to go out and kill +Bechamel he would have done it. His head was a maelstrom now. He walked +out of the hotel, along the front, and into the big, black-shadowed +coach yard. He looked round. There were no bicycles visible. Then a man +emerged from the dark, a short man in a short, black, shiny jacket. +Hoopdriver was caught. He made no attempt to turn and run for it. “I’ve +been giving your machines a wipe over, sir,” said the man, recognising +the suit, and touching his cap. Hoopdriver’s intelligence now was a +soaring eagle; he swooped on the situation at once. “That’s right,” he +said, and added, before the pause became marked, “Where is mine? I want +to look at the chain.” + +The man led him into an open shed, and went fumbling for a lantern. +Hoopdriver moved the lady’s machine out of his way to the door, and +then laid hands on the man’s machine and wheeled it out of the shed +into the yard. The gate stood open and beyond was the pale road and a +clump of trees black in the twilight. He stooped and examined the chain +with trembling fingers. How was it to be done? Something behind the +gate seemed to flutter. The man must be got rid of anyhow. + +“I say,” said Hoopdriver, with an inspiration, “can you get me a +screwdriver?” + +The man simply walked across the shed, opened and shut a box, and came +up to the kneeling Hoopdriver with a screwdriver in his hand. +Hoopdriver felt himself a lost man. He took the screwdriver with a +tepid “Thanks,” and incontinently had another inspiration. + +“I say,” he said again. + +“Well?” + +“This is miles too big.” + +The man lit the lantern, brought it up to Hoopdriver and put it down on +the ground. “Want a smaller screwdriver?” he said. + +Hoopdriver had his handkerchief out and sneezed a prompt _atichew_. It +is the orthodox thing when you wish to avoid recognition. “As small as +you have,” he said, out of his pocket handkerchief. + +“I ain’t got none smaller than that,” said the ostler. + +“Won’t do, really,” said Hoopdriver, still wallowing in his +handkerchief. + +“I’ll see wot they got in the ’ouse, if you like, sir,” said the man. +“If you would,” said Hoopdriver. And as the man’s heavily nailed boots +went clattering down the yard, Hoopdriver stood up, took a noiseless +step to the lady’s machine, laid trembling hands on its handle and +saddle, and prepared for a rush. + +The scullery door opened momentarily and sent a beam of warm, yellow +light up the road, shut again behind the man, and forthwith Hoopdriver +rushed the machines towards the gate. A dark grey form came fluttering +to meet him. “Give me this,” she said, “and bring yours.” + +He passed the thing to her, touched her hand in the darkness, ran back, +seized Bechamel’s machine, and followed. + +The yellow light of the scullery door suddenly flashed upon the cobbles +again. It was too late now to do anything but escape. He heard the +ostler shout behind him, and came into the road. She was up and dim +already. He got into the saddle without a blunder. In a moment the +ostler was in the gateway with a full-throated “_Hi!_! sir! That ain’t +allowed;” and Hoopdriver was overtaking the Young Lady in Grey. For +some moments the earth seemed alive with shouts of, “Stop ’em!” and the +shadows with ambuscades of police. The road swept round, and they were +riding out of sight of the hotel, and behind dark hedges, side by side. + +She was weeping with excitement as he overtook her. “Brave,” she said, +“brave!” and he ceased to feel like a hunted thief. He looked over his +shoulder and about him, and saw that they were already out of +Bognor—for the Vicuna stands at the very westernmost extremity of the +sea front—and riding on a fair wide road. + + + + +XXIII. + + +The ostler (being a fool) rushed violently down the road vociferating +after them. Then he returned panting to the Vicuna Hotel, and finding a +group of men outside the entrance, who wanted to know what was _up_, +stopped to give them the cream of the adventure. That gave the +fugitives five minutes. Then pushing breathlessly into the bar, he had +to make it clear to the barmaid what the matter was, and the ‘gov’nor’ +being out, they spent some more precious time wondering ‘what—_ever_’ +was to be done! in which the two customers returning from outside +joined with animation. There were also moral remarks and other +irrelevant contributions. There were conflicting ideas of telling the +police and pursuing the flying couple on a horse. That made ten +minutes. Then Stephen, the waiter, who had shown Hoopdriver up, came +down and lit wonderful lights and started quite a fresh discussion by +the simple question “_Which?_?” That turned ten minutes into a quarter +of an hour. And in the midst of this discussion, making a sudden and +awestricken silence, appeared Bechamel in the hall beyond the bar, +walked with a resolute air to the foot of the staircase, and passed out +of sight. You conceive the backward pitch of that exceptionally shaped +cranium? Incredulous eyes stared into one another’s in the bar, as his +paces, muffled by the stair carpet, went up to the landing, turned, +reached the passage and walked into the dining-room overhead. + +“It wasn’t that one at all, miss,” said the ostler, “I’d _swear_.” + +“Well, that’s Mr. Beaumont,” said the barmaid, “—anyhow.” + +Their conversation hung comatose in the air, switched up by Bechamel. +They listened together. His feet stopped. Turned. Went out of the +diningroom. Down the passage to the bedroom. Stopped again. + +“Poor chap!” said the barmaid. “She’s a wicked woman!” + +“Sssh!” said Stephen. + +After a pause Bechamel went back to the dining-room. They heard a chair +creak under him. Interlude of conversational eyebrows. + +“I’m going up,” said Stephen, “to break the melancholy news to him.” + +Bechamel looked up from a week-old newspaper as, without knocking, +Stephen entered. Bechamel’s face suggested a different expectation. +“Beg pardon, sir,” said Stephen, with a diplomatic cough. + +“Well?” said Bechamel, wondering suddenly if Jessie had kept some of +her threats. If so, he was in for an explanation. But he had it ready. +She was a monomaniac. “Leave me alone with her,” he would say; “I know +how to calm her.” + +“Mrs. Beaumont,” said Stephen. + +“_Well?_” + +“Has gone.” + +He rose with a fine surprise. “Gone!” he said with a half laugh. + +“Gone, sir. On her bicycle.” + +“On her bicycle! Why?” + +“She went, sir, with Another Gentleman.” + +This time Bechamel was really startled. “An—other Gentlemen! _Who?_” + +“Another gentleman in brown, sir. Went into the yard, sir, got out the +two bicycles, sir, and went off, sir—about twenty minutes ago.” + +Bechamel stood with his eyes round and his knuckle on his hips. +Stephen, watching him with immense enjoyment, speculated whether this +abandoned husband would weep or curse, or rush off at once in furious +pursuit. But as yet he seemed merely stunned. + +“Brown clothes?” he said. “And fairish?” + +“A little like yourself, sir—in the dark. The ostler, sir, Jim Duke—” + +Bechamel laughed awry. Then, with infinite fervour, he said—But let us +put in blank cartridge—he said, “———!” + +“I might have thought!” + +He flung himself into the armchair. + +“Damn her,” said Bechamel, for all the world like a common man. “I’ll +chuck this infernal business! They’ve gone, eigh?” + +“Yessir.” + +“Well, let ’em GO,” said Bechamel, making a memorable saying. “Let ’em +GO. Who cares? And I wish him luck. And bring me some Bourbon as fast +as you can, there’s a good chap. I’ll take that, and then I’ll have +another look round Bognor before I turn in.” + +Stephen was too surprised to say anything but “Bourbon, sir?” + +“Go on,” said Bechamel. “Damn you!” + +Stephen’s sympathies changed at once. “Yessir,” he murmured, fumbling +for the door handle, and left the room, marvelling. Bechamel, having in +this way satisfied his sense of appearances, and comported himself as a +Pagan should, so soon as the waiter’s footsteps had passed, vented the +cream of his feelings in a stream of blasphemous indecency. Whether his +wife or _her_ stepmother had sent the detective, _she_ had evidently +gone off with him, and that little business was over. And he was here, +stranded and sold, an ass, and as it were, the son of many generations +of asses. And his only ray of hope was that it seemed more probable, +after all, that the girl had escaped through her stepmother. In which +case the business might be hushed up yet, and the evil hour of +explanation with his wife indefinitely postponed. Then abruptly the +image of that lithe figure in grey knickerbockers went frisking across +his mind again, and he reverted to his blasphemies. He started up in a +gusty frenzy with a vague idea of pursuit, and incontinently sat down +again with a concussion that stirred the bar below to its depths. He +banged the arms of the chair with his fist, and swore again. “Of all +the accursed fools that were ever spawned,” he was chanting, “I, +Bechamel—” when with an abrupt tap and prompt opening of the door, +Stephen entered with the Bourbon. + + + + +XXIV. +THE MOONLIGHT RIDE + + +And so the twenty minutes’ law passed into an infinity. We leave the +wicked Bechamel clothing himself with cursing as with a garment,—the +wretched creature has already sufficiently sullied our modest but +truthful pages,—we leave the eager little group in the bar of the +Vicuna Hotel, we leave all Bognor as we have left all Chichester and +Midhurst and Haslemere and Guildford and Ripley and Putney, and follow +this dear fool of a Hoopdriver of ours and his Young Lady in Grey out +upon the moonlight road. How they rode! How their hearts beat together +and their breath came fast, and how every shadow was anticipation and +every noise pursuit! For all that flight Mr. Hoopdriver was in the +world of Romance. Had a policeman intervened because their lamps were +not lit, Hoopdriver had cut him down and ridden on, after the fashion +of a hero born. Had Bechamel arisen in the way with rapiers for a duel, +Hoopdriver had fought as one to whom Agincourt was a reality and +drapery a dream. It was Rescue, Elopement, Glory! And she by the side +of him! He had seen her face in shadow, with the morning sunlight +tangled in her hair, he had seen her sympathetic with that warm light +in her face, he had seen her troubled and her eyes bright with tears. +But what light is there lighting a face like hers, to compare with the +soft glamour of the midsummer moon? + +The road turned northward, going round through the outskirts of Bognor, +in one place dark and heavy under a thick growth of trees, then amidst +villas again, some warm and lamplit, some white and sleeping in the +moonlight; then between hedges, over which they saw broad wan meadows +shrouded in a low-lying mist. They scarcely heeded whither they rode at +first, being only anxious to get away, turning once westward when the +spire of Chichester cathedral rose suddenly near them out of the dewy +night, pale and intricate and high. They rode, speaking little, just a +rare word now and then, at a turning, at a footfall, at a roughness in +the road. + +She seemed to be too intent upon escape to give much thought to him, +but after the first tumult of the adventure, as flight passed into mere +steady riding his mind became an enormous appreciation of the position. +The night was a warm white silence save for the subtile running of +their chains. He looked sideways at her as she sat beside him with her +ankles gracefully ruling the treadles. Now the road turned westward, +and she was a dark grey outline against the shimmer of the moon; and +now they faced northwards, and the soft cold light passed caressingly +over her hair and touched her brow and cheek. + +There is a magic quality in moonshine; it touches all that is sweet and +beautiful, and the rest of the night is hidden. It has created the +fairies, whom the sunlight kills, and fairyland rises again in our +hearts at the sight of it, the voices of the filmy route, and their +faint, soul-piercing melodies. By the moonlight every man, dull clod +though he be by day, tastes something of Endymion, takes something of +the youth and strength of Endymion, and sees the dear white goddess +shining at him from his Lady’s eyes. The firm substantial daylight +things become ghostly and elusive, the hills beyond are a sea of +unsubstantial texture, the world a visible spirit, the spiritual within +us rises out of its darkness, loses something of its weight and body, +and swims up towards heaven. This road that was a mere rutted white +dust, hot underfoot, blinding to the eye, is now a soft grey silence, +with the glitter of a crystal grain set starlike in its silver here and +there. Overhead, riding serenely through the spacious blue, is the +mother of the silence, she who has spiritualised the world, alone save +for two attendant steady shining stars. And in silence under her benign +influence, under the benediction of her light, rode our two wanderers +side by side through the transfigured and transfiguring night. + +Nowhere was the moon shining quite so brightly as in Mr. Hoopdriver’s +skull. At the turnings of the road he made his decisions with an air of +profound promptitude (and quite haphazard). “The Right,” he would say. +Or again “The Left,” as one who knew. So it was that in the space of an +hour they came abruptly down a little lane, full tilt upon the sea. +Grey beach to the right of them and to the left, and a little white +cottage fast asleep inland of a sleeping fishing-boat. “Hullo!” said +Mr. Hoopdriver, _sotto voce_. They dismounted abruptly. Stunted oaks +and thorns rose out of the haze of moonlight that was tangled in the +hedge on either side. + +“You are safe,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, sweeping off his cap with an air +and bowing courtly. + +“Where are we?” + +“_Safe_.” + +“But _where?_” + +“Chichester Harbour.” He waved his arm seaward as though it was a goal. + +“Do you think they will follow us?” + +“We have turned and turned again.” + +It seemed to Hoopdriver that he heard her sob. She stood dimly there, +holding her machine, and he, holding his, could go no nearer to her to +see if she sobbed for weeping or for want of breath. “What are we to do +now?” her voice asked. + +“Are you tired?” he asked. + +“I will do what has to be done.” + +The two black figures in the broken light were silent for a space. “Do +you know,” she said, “I am not afraid of you. I am sure you are honest +to me. And I do not even know your name!” + +He was taken with a sudden shame of his homely patronymic. “It’s an +ugly name,” he said. “But you are right in trusting me. I would—I would +do anything for you.... This is nothing.” + +She caught at her breath. She did not care to ask why. But compared +with Bechamel!—“We take each other on trust,” she said. “Do you want to +know—how things are with me?” + +“That man,” she went on, after the assent of his listening silence, +“promised to help and protect me. I was unhappy at home—never mind why. +A stepmother—Idle, unoccupied, hindered, cramped, that is enough, +perhaps. Then he came into my life, and talked to me of art and +literature, and set my brain on fire. I wanted to come out into the +world, to be a human being—not a thing in a hutch. And he—” + +“I know,” said Hoopdriver. + +“And now here I am—” + +“I will do anything,” said Hoopdriver. + +She thought. “You cannot imagine my stepmother. No! I could not +describe her—” + +“I am entirely at your service. I will help you with all my power.” + +“I have lost an Illusion and found a Knight-errant.” She spoke of +Bechamel as the Illusion. + +Mr. Hoopdriver felt flattered. But he had no adequate answer. + +“I’m thinking,” he said, full of a rapture of protective +responsibility, “what we had best be doing. You are tired, you know. +And we can’t wander all night—after the day we’ve had.” + +“That was Chichester we were near?” she asked. + +“If,” he meditated, with a tremble in his voice, “you would make _me_ +your brother, _Miss Beaumont_.” + +“Yes?” + +“We could stop there together—” + +She took a minute to answer. “I am going to light these lamps,” said +Hoopdriver. He bent down to his own, and struck a match on his shoe. +She looked at his face in its light, grave and intent. How could she +ever have thought him common or absurd? + +“But you must tell me your name—brother,” she said, + +“Er—Carrington,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, after a momentary pause. Who +would be Hoopdriver on a night like this? + +“But the Christian name?” + +“Christian name? _My_ Christian name. Well—Chris.” He snapped his lamp +and stood up. “If you will hold my machine, I will light yours,” he +said. + +She came round obediently and took his machine, and for a moment they +stood face to face. “My name, brother Chris,” she said, “is Jessie.” + +He looked into her eyes, and his excitement seemed arrested. +“_Jessie_,” he repeated slowly. The mute emotion of his face affected +her strangely. She had to speak. “It’s not such a very wonderful name, +is it?” she said, with a laugh to break the intensity. + +He opened his mouth and shut it again, and, with a sudden wincing of +his features, abruptly turned and bent down to open the lantern in +front of her machine. She looked down at him, almost kneeling in front +of her, with an unreasonable approbation in her eyes. It was, as I have +indicated, the hour and season of the full moon. + + + + +XXV. + + +Mr. Hoopdriver conducted the rest of that night’s journey with the same +confident dignity as before, and it was chiefly by good luck and the +fact that most roads about a town converge thereupon, that Chichester +was at last attained. It seemed at first as though everyone had gone to +bed, but the Red Hotel still glowed yellow and warm. It was the first +time Hoopdriver had dared the mysteries of a ‘first-class’ hotel. But +that night he was in the mood to dare anything. + +“So you found your Young Lady at last,” said the ostler of the Red +Hotel; for it chanced he was one of those of whom Hoopdriver had made +inquiries in the afternoon. + +“Quite a misunderstanding,” said Hoopdriver, with splendid readiness. +“My sister had gone to Bognor. But I brought her back here. I’ve took a +fancy to this place. And the moonlight’s simply dee-vine.” + +“We’ve had supper, thenks, and we’re tired,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. “I +suppose you won’t take anything,—Jessie?” + +The glory of having her, even as a sister! and to call her Jessie like +that! But he carried it off splendidly, as he felt himself bound to +admit. “Good-night, Sis,” he said, “and pleasant dreams. I’ll just ’ave +a look at this paper before I turn in.” But this was living indeed! he +told himself. + +So gallantly did Mr. Hoopdriver comport himself up to the very edge of +the Most Wonderful Day of all. It had begun early, you will remember, +with a vigil in a little sweetstuff shop next door to the Angel at +Midhurst. But to think of all the things that had happened since then! +He caught himself in the middle of a yawn, pulled out his watch, saw +the time was halfpast eleven, and marched off, with a fine sense of +heroism, bedward. + + + + +XXVI. +THE SURBITON INTERLUDE + + +And here, thanks to the glorious institution of sleep, comes a break in +the narrative again. These absurd young people are safely tucked away +now, their heads full of glowing nonsense, indeed, but the course of +events at any rate is safe from any fresh developments through their +activities for the next eight hours or more. They are both sleeping +healthily you will perhaps be astonished to hear. Here is the girl—what +girls are coming to nowadays only Mrs. Lynn Linton can tell!—in company +with an absolute stranger, of low extraction and uncertain accent, +unchaperoned and unabashed; indeed, now she fancies she is safe, she +is, if anything, a little proud of her own share in these transactions. +Then this Mr. Hoopdriver of yours, roseate idiot that he is! is in +illegal possession of a stolen bicycle, a stolen young lady, and two +stolen names, established with them in an hotel that is quite beyond +his means, and immensely proud of himself in a somnolent way for these +incomparable follies. There are occasions when a moralising novelist +can merely wring his hands and leave matters to take their course. For +all Hoopdriver knows or cares he may be locked up the very first thing +to-morrow morning for the rape of the cycle. Then in Bognor, let alone +that melancholy vestige, Bechamel (with whom our dealings are, thank +Goodness! over), there is a Coffee Tavern with a steak Mr. Hoopdriver +ordered, done to a cinder long ago, his American-cloth parcel in a +bedroom, and his own proper bicycle, by way of guarantee, carefully +locked up in the hayloft. To-morrow he will be a Mystery, and they will +be looking for his body along the sea front. And so far we have never +given a glance at the desolate home in Surbiton, familiar to you no +doubt through the medium of illustrated interviews, where the unhappy +stepmother— + +That stepmother, it must be explained, is quite well known to you. That +is a little surprise I have prepared for you. She is ‘Thomas +Plantagenet,’ the gifted authoress of that witty and daring book, “A +Soul Untrammelled,” and quite an excellent woman in her way,—only it is +such a crooked way. Her real name is Milton. She is a widow and a +charming one, only ten years older than Jessie, and she is always +careful to dedicate her more daring works to the ‘sacred memory of my +husband’ to show that there’s nothing personal, you know, in the +matter. Considering her literary reputation (she was always speaking of +herself as one ‘martyred for truth,’ because the critics advertised her +written indecorums in column long ‘slates’),—considering her literary +reputation, I say, she was one of the most respectable women it is +possible to imagine. She furnished correctly, dressed correctly, had +severe notions of whom she might meet, went to church, and even at +times took the sacrament in some esoteric spirit. And Jessie she +brought up so carefully that she never even let her read “A Soul +Untrammelled.” Which, therefore, naturally enough, Jessie did, and went +on from that to a feast of advanced literature. Mrs. Milton not only +brought up Jessie carefully, but very slowly, so that at seventeen she +was still a clever schoolgirl (as you have seen her) and quite in the +background of the little literary circle of unimportant celebrities +which ‘Thomas Plantagenet’ adorned. Mrs. Milton knew Bechamel’s +reputation of being a dangerous man; but then bad men are not bad +women, and she let him come to her house to show she was not afraid—she +took no account of Jessie. When the elopement came, therefore, it was a +double disappointment to her, for she perceived his hand by a kind of +instinct. She did the correct thing. The correct thing, as you know, is +to take hansom cabs, regardless of expense, and weep and say you do not +know _what_ to do, round the circle of your confidential friends. She +could not have ridden nor wept more had Jessie been her own +daughter—she showed the properest spirit. And she not only showed it, +but felt it. + +Mrs. Milton, as a successful little authoress and still more successful +widow of thirty-two,—“Thomas Plantagenet is a charming woman,” her +reviewers used to write invariably, even if they spoke ill of +her,—found the steady growth of Jessie into womanhood an unmitigated +nuisance and had been willing enough to keep her in the background. And +Jessie—who had started this intercourse at fourteen with abstract +objections to stepmothers—had been active enough in resenting this. +Increasing rivalry and antagonism had sprung up between them, until +they could engender quite a vivid hatred from a dropped hairpin or the +cutting of a book with a sharpened knife. There is very little +deliberate wickedness in the world. The stupidity of our selfishness +gives much the same results indeed, but in the ethical laboratory it +shows a different nature. And when the disaster came, Mrs. Milton’s +remorse for their gradual loss of sympathy and her share in the losing +of it, was genuine enough. + +You may imagine the comfort she got from her friends, and how West +Kensington and Notting Hill and Hampstead, the literary suburbs, those +decent penitentiaries of a once Bohemian calling, hummed with the +business, Her ‘Men’—as a charming literary lady she had, of course, an +organised corps—were immensely excited, and were sympathetic; helpfully +energetic, suggestive, alert, as their ideals of their various +dispositions required them to be. “Any news of Jessie?” was the +pathetic opening of a dozen melancholy but interesting conversations. +To her Men she was not perhaps so damp as she was to her women friends, +but in a quiet way she was even more touching. For three days, +Wednesday that is, Thursday, and Friday, nothing was heard of the +fugitives. It was known that Jessie, wearing a patent costume with +buttonup skirts, and mounted on a diamond frame safety with Dunlops, +and a loofah covered saddle, had ridden forth early in the morning, +taking with her about two pounds seven shillings in money, and a grey +touring case packed, and there, save for a brief note to her +stepmother,—a declaration of independence, it was said, an assertion of +her Ego containing extensive and very annoying quotations from “A Soul +Untrammelled,” and giving no definite intimation of her plans—knowledge +ceased. That note was shown to few, and then only in the strictest +confidence. + +But on Friday evening late came a breathless Man Friend, Widgery, a +correspondent of hers, who had heard of her trouble among the first. He +had been touring in Sussex,—his knapsack was still on his back,—and he +testified hurriedly that at a place called Midhurst, in the bar of an +hotel called the Angel, he had heard from a barmaid a vivid account of +a Young Lady in Grey. Descriptions tallied. But who was the man in +brown? “The poor, misguided girl! I must go to her at once,” she said, +choking, and rising with her hand to her heart. + +“It’s impossible to-night. There are no more trains. I looked on my +way.” + +“A mother’s love,” she said. “I bear her _that_.” + +“I know you do.” He spoke with feeling, for no one admired his +photographs of scenery more than Mrs. Milton. “It’s more than she +deserves.” + +“Oh, don’t speak unkindly of her! She has been misled.” + +It was really very friendly of him. He declared he was only sorry his +news ended there. Should he follow them, and bring her back? He had +come to her because he knew of her anxiety. “It is _good_ of you,” she +said, and quite instinctively took and pressed his hand. “And to think +of that poor girl—tonight! It’s dreadful.” She looked into the fire +that she had lit when he came in, the warm light fell upon her dark +purple dress, and left her features in a warm shadow. She looked such a +slight, frail thing to be troubled so. “We must follow her.” Her +resolution seemed magnificent. “I have no one to go with me.” + +“He must marry her,” said the man. + +“She has no friends. We have no one. After all—Two women.—So helpless.” + +And this fair-haired little figure was the woman that people who knew +her only from her books, called bold, prurient even! Simply because she +was great-hearted—intellectual. He was overcome by the unspeakable +pathos of her position. + +“Mrs. Milton,” he said. “Hetty!” + +She glanced at him. The overflow was imminent. “Not now,” she said, +“not now. I must find her first.” + +“Yes,” he said with intense emotion. (He was one of those big, fat men +who feel deeply.) “But let me help you. At least let me help you.” + +“But can you spare time?” she said. “For _me_.” + +“For you—” + +“But what can I do? what can _we_ do?” + +“Go to Midhurst. Follow her on. Trace her. She was there on Thursday +night, last night. She cycled out of the town. Courage!” he said. “We +will save her yet!” + +She put out her hand and pressed his again. + +“Courage!” he repeated, finding it so well received. + +There were alarms and excursions without. She turned her back to the +fire, and he sat down suddenly in the big armchair, which suited his +dimensions admirably. Then the door opened, and the girl showed in +Dangle, who looked curiously from one to the other. There was emotion +here, he had heard the armchair creaking, and Mrs. Milton, whose face +was flushed, displayed a suspicious alacrity to explain. “You, too,” +she said, “are one of my good friends. And we have news of her at +last.” + +It was decidedly an advantage to Widgery, but Dangle determined to show +himself a man of resource. In the end he, too, was accepted for the +Midhurst Expedition, to the intense disgust of Widgery; and young +Phipps, a callow youth of few words, faultless collars, and fervent +devotion, was also enrolled before the evening was out. They would +scour the country, all three of them. She appeared to brighten up a +little, but it was evident she was profoundly touched. She did not know +what she had done to merit such friends. Her voice broke a little, she +moved towards the door, and young Phipps, who was a youth of action +rather than of words, sprang and opened it—proud to be first. + +“She is sorely troubled,” said Dangle to Widgery. “We must do what we +can for her.” + +“She is a wonderful woman,” said Dangle. “So subtle, so intricate, so +many faceted. She feels this deeply.” + +Young Phipps said nothing, but he felt the more. + +And yet they say the age of chivalry is dead! + +But this is only an Interlude, introduced to give our wanderers time to +refresh themselves by good, honest sleeping. For the present, +therefore, we will not concern ourselves with the starting of the +Rescue Party, nor with Mrs. Milton’s simple but becoming grey dress, +with the healthy Widgery’s Norfolk jacket and thick boots, with the +slender Dangle’s energetic bearing, nor with the wonderful chequerings +that set off the legs of the golf-suited Phipps. They are after us. In +a little while they will be upon us. You must imagine as you best can +the competitive raidings at Midhurst of Widgery, Dangle, and Phipps. +How Widgery was great at questions, and Dangle good at inference, and +Phipps so conspicuously inferior in everything that he felt it, and +sulked with Mrs. Milton most of the day, after the manner of your +callow youth the whole world over. Mrs. Milton stopped at the Angel and +was very sad and charming and intelligent, and Widgery paid the bill in +the afternoon of Saturday, Chichester was attained. But by that time +our fugitives—As you shall immediately hear. + + + + +XXVII. +THE AWAKENING OF MR. HOOPDRIVER + + +Mr. Hoopdriver stirred on his pillow, opened his eyes, and, staring +unmeaningly, yawned. The bedclothes were soft and pleasant. He turned +the peaked nose that overrides the insufficient moustache, up to the +ceiling, a pinkish projection over the billow of white. You might see +it wrinkle as he yawned again, and then became quiet. So matters +remained for a space. Very slowly recollection returned to him. Then a +shock of indeterminate brown hair appeared, and first one watery grey +eye a-wondering, and then two; the bed upheaved, and you had him, his +thin neck projecting abruptly from the clothes he held about him, his +face staring about the room. He held the clothes about him, I hope I +may explain, because his night-shirt was at Bognor in an American-cloth +packet, derelict. He yawned a third time, rubbed his eyes, smacked his +lips. He was recalling almost everything now. The pursuit, the hotel, +the tremulous daring of his entry, the swift adventure of the inn yard, +the moonlight—Abruptly he threw the clothes back and rose into a +sitting position on the edge of the bed. Without was the noise of +shutters being unfastened and doors unlocked, and the passing of hoofs +and wheels in the street. He looked at his watch. Half-past six. He +surveyed the sumptuous room again. + +“Lord!” said Mr. Hoopdriver. “It wasn’t a dream, after all.” + +“I wonder what they charge for these Juicèd rooms!” said Mr. +Hoopdriver, nursing one rosy foot. + +He became meditative, tugging at his insufficient moustache. Suddenly +he gave vent to a noiseless laugh. “What a rush it was! Rushed in and +off with his girl right under his nose. Planned it well too. Talk of +highway robbery! Talk of brigands! Up and off! How juicèd _sold_ he +must be feeling! It was a shave too—in the coach yard!” + +Suddenly he became silent. Abruptly his eyebrows rose and his jaw fell. +“I sa-a-ay!” said Mr. Hoopdriver. + +He had never thought of it before. Perhaps you will understand the +whirl he had been in overnight. But one sees things clearer in the +daylight. “I’m hanged if I haven’t been and stolen a blessed bicycle.” + +“Who cares?” said Mr. Hoopdriver, presently, and his face supplied the +answer. + +Then he thought of the Young Lady in Grey again, and tried to put a +more heroic complexion on the business. But of an early morning, on an +empty stomach (as with characteristic coarseness, medical men put it) +heroics are of a more difficult growth than by moonlight. Everything +had seemed exceptionally fine and brilliant, but quite natural, the +evening before. + +Mr. Hoopdriver reached out his hand, took his Norfolk jacket, laid it +over his knees, and took out the money from the little ticket pocket. +“Fourteen and six-half,” he said, holding the coins in his left hand +and stroking his chin with his right. He verified, by patting, the +presence of a pocketbook in the breast pocket. “Five, fourteen, +six-half,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. “Left.” + +With the Norfolk jacket still on his knees, he plunged into another +silent meditation. “That wouldn’t matter,” he said. “It’s the bike’s +the bother. + +“No good going back to Bognor. + +“Might send it back by carrier, of course. Thanking him for the loan. +Having no further use—” Mr. Hoopdriver chuckled and lapsed into the +silent concoction of a delightfully impudent letter. “Mr. J. Hoopdriver +presents his compliments.” But the grave note reasserted itself. + +“Might trundle back there in an hour, of course, and exchange them. +_My_ old crock’s so blessed shabby. He’s sure to be spiteful too. Have +me run in, perhaps. Then she’d be in just the same old fix, only worse. +You see, I’m her Knight-errant. It complicates things so.” + +His eye, wandering loosely, rested on the sponge bath. “What the juice +do they want with cream pans in a bedroom?” said Mr. Hoopdriver, _en +passant_. + +“Best thing we can do is to set out of here as soon as possible, +anyhow. I suppose she’ll go home to her friends. That bicycle is a +juicy nuisance, anyhow. Juicy nuisance!” + +He jumped to his feet with a sudden awakening of energy, to proceed +with his toilet. Then with a certain horror he remembered that the +simple necessaries of that process were at Bognor! “Lord!” he remarked, +and whistled silently for a space. “Rummy go! profit and loss; profit, +one sister with bicycle complete, wot offers?—cheap for tooth and ’air +brush, vests, night-shirt, stockings, and sundries. + +“Make the best of it,” and presently, when it came to hair-brushing, he +had to smooth his troubled locks with his hands. It was a poor result. +“Sneak out and get a shave, I suppose, and buy a brush and so on. Chink +again! Beard don’t show much.” + +He ran his hand over his chin, looked at himself steadfastly for some +time, and curled his insufficient moustache up with some care. Then he +fell a-meditating on his beauty. He considered himself, three-quarter +face, left and right. An expression of distaste crept over his +features. “Looking won’t alter it, Hoopdriver,” he remarked. “You’re a +weedy customer, my man. Shoulders narrow. Skimpy, anyhow.” + +He put his knuckles on the toilet table and regarded himself with his +chin lifted in the air. “Good Lord!” he said. “_What_ a neck! Wonder +why I got such a thundering lump there.” + +He sat down on the bed, his eye still on the glass. “If I’d been +exercised properly, if I’d been fed reasonable, if I hadn’t been shoved +out of a silly school into a silly shop—But there! the old folks didn’t +know no better. The schoolmaster ought to have. But he didn’t, poor old +fool!—Still, when it comes to meeting a girl like this—It’s ’_ard_. + +“I wonder what Adam’d think of me—as a specimen. Civilisation, eigh? +Heir of the ages! I’m nothing. I know nothing. I can’t do +anything—sketch a bit. Why wasn’t I made an artist? + +“Beastly cheap, after all, this suit does look, in the sunshine.” + +“No good, Hoopdriver. Anyhow, you don’t tell yourself any lies about +it. Lovers ain’t your game,—anyway. But there’s other things yet. You +can help the young lady, and you will—I suppose she’ll be going +home—And that business of the bicycle’s to see to, too, my man. +_Forward_, Hoopdriver! If you ain’t a beauty, that’s no reason why you +should stop and be copped, is it?” + +And having got back in this way to a gloomy kind of self-satisfaction, +he had another attempt at his hair preparatory to leaving his room and +hurrying on breakfast, for an early departure. While breakfast was +preparing he wandered out into South Street and refurnished himself +with the elements of luggage again. “No expense to be spared,” he +murmured, disgorging the half-sovereign. + + + + +XXVIII. +THE DEPARTURE FROM CHICHESTER + + +He caused his ‘sister’ to be called repeatedly, and when she came down, +explained with a humorous smile his legal relationship to the bicycle +in the yard. “Might be disagreeable, y’ know.” His anxiety was obvious +enough. “Very well,” she said (quite friendly); “hurry breakfast, and +we’ll ride out. I want to talk things over with you.” The girl seemed +more beautiful than ever after the night’s sleep; her hair in comely +dark waves from her forehead, her ungauntleted finger-tips pink and +cool. And how decided she was! Breakfast was a nervous ceremony, +conversation fraternal but thin; the waiter overawed him, and he was +cowed by a multiplicity of forks. But she called him “Chris.” They +discussed their route over his sixpenny county map for the sake of +talking, but avoided a decision in the presence of the attendant. The +five-pound note was changed for the bill, and through Hoopdriver’s +determination to be quite the gentleman, the waiter and chambermaid got +half a crown each and the ostler a florin. “’Olidays,” said the ostler +to himself, without gratitude. The public mounting of the bicycles in +the street was a moment of trepidation. A policeman actually stopped +and watched them from the opposite kerb. Suppose him to come across and +ask: “Is that your bicycle, sir?” Fight? Or drop it and run? It was a +time of bewildering apprehension, too, going through the streets of the +town, so that a milk cart barely escaped destruction under Mr. +Hoopdriver’s chancy wheel. That recalled him to a sense of erratic +steering, and he pulled himself together. In the lanes he breathed +freer, and a less formal conversation presently began. + +“You’ve ridden out of Chichester in a great hurry,” said Jessie. + +“Well, the fact of it is, I’m worried, just a little bit. About this +machine.” + +“Of course,” she said. “I had forgotten that. But where are we going?” + +“Jest a turning or two more, if you don’t mind,” said Hoopdriver. + +“Jest a mile or so. I have to think of you, you know. I should feel +more easy. If we was locked up, you know—Not that I should mind on my +own account—” + +They rode with a streaky, grey sea coming and going on their left hand. +Every mile they put between themselves and Chichester Mr. Hoopdriver +felt a little less conscience-stricken, and a little more of the +gallant desperado. Here he was riding on a splendid machine with a +Slap-up girl beside him. What would they think of it in the Emporium if +any of them were to see him? He imagined in detail the astonishment of +Miss Isaacs and of Miss Howe. “Why! It’s Mr. Hoopdriver,” Miss Isaacs +would say. “_Never!_” emphatically from Miss Howe. Then he played with +Briggs, and then tried the ‘G.V.’ in a shay. “Fancy introducing ’em to +her—My sister _pro tem_.” He was her brother Chris—Chris what?—Confound +it! Harringon, Hartington—something like that. Have to keep off that +topic until he could remember. Wish he’d told her the truth now—almost. +He glanced at her. She was riding with her eyes straight ahead of her. +Thinking. A little perplexed, perhaps, she seemed. He noticed how well +she rode and that she rode with her lips closed—a thing he could never +manage. + +Mr. Hoopdriver’s mind came round to the future. What was she going to +do? What were they both going to do? His thoughts took a graver colour. +He had rescued her. This was fine, manly rescue work he was engaged +upon. She ought to go home, in spite of that stepmother. He must insist +gravely but firmly upon that. She was the spirited sort, of course, but +still—Wonder if she had any money? Wonder what the second-class fare +from Havant to London is? Of course he would have to pay that—it was +the regular thing, he being a gentleman. Then should he take her home? +He began to rough in a moving sketch of the return. The stepmother, +repentant of her indescribable cruelties, would be present,—even these +rich people have their troubles,—probably an uncle or two. The footman +would announce, Mr.—(bother that name!) and Miss Milton. Then two women +weeping together, and a knightly figure in the background dressed in a +handsome Norfolk jacket, still conspicuously new. He would conceal his +feeling until the very end. Then, leaving, he would pause in the +doorway in such an attitude as Mr. George Alexander might assume, and +say, slowly and dwindlingly: “Be kind to her—_be_ kind to her,” and so +depart, heartbroken to the meanest intelligence. But that was a matter +for the future. He would have to begin discussing the return soon. +There was no traffic along the road, and he came up beside her (he had +fallen behind in his musing). She began to talk. “Mr. Denison,” she +began, and then, doubtfully, “That _is_ your name? I’m very stupid—” + +“It is,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. (Denison, was it? Denison, Denison, +Denison. What was she saying?) + +“I wonder how far you are willing to help me?” Confoundedly hard to +answer a question like that on the spur of the moment, without steering +wildly. “You may rely—” said Mr. Hoopdriver, recovering from a violent +wabble. “I can assure you—I want to help you very much. Don’t consider +me at all. Leastways, consider me entirely at your service.” (Nuisance +not to be able to say this kind of thing right.) + +“You see, I am so awkwardly situated.” + +“If I can only help you—you will make me very happy—” There was a +pause. Round a bend in the road they came upon a grassy space between +hedge and road, set with yarrow and meadowsweet, where a felled tree +lay among the green. There she dismounted, and propping her machine +against a stone, sat down. “Here, we can talk,” she said. + +“Yes,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, expectant. + +She answered after a little while, sitting, elbow on knee, with her +chin in her hand, and looking straight in front of her. “I don’t know—I +am resolved to Live my Own Life.” + +“Of course,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. “Naturally.” + +“I want to Live, and I want to see what life means. I want to learn. +Everyone is hurrying me, everything is hurrying me; I want time to +think.” + +Mr. Hoopdriver was puzzled, but admiring. It was wonderful how clear +and ready her words were. But then one might speak well with a throat +and lips like that. He knew he was inadequate, but he tried to meet the +occasion. “If you let them rush you into anything you might repent of, +of course you’d be very silly.” + +“Don’t _you_ want to learn?” she asked. + +“I was wondering only this morning,” he began, and stopped. + +She was too intent upon her own thoughts to notice this insufficiency. +“I find myself in life, and it terrifies me. I seem to be like a little +speck, whirling on a wheel, suddenly caught up. ‘What am I here for?’ I +ask. Simply to be here at a time—I asked it a week ago, I asked it +yesterday, and I ask it to-day. And little things happen and the days +pass. My stepmother takes me shopping, people come to tea, there is a +new play to pass the time, or a concert, or a novel. The wheels of the +world go on turning, turning. It is horrible. I want to do a miracle +like Joshua and stop the whirl until I have fought it out. At home—It’s +impossible.” + +Mr. Hoopdriver stroked his moustache. “It _is_ so,” he said in a +meditative tone. “Things _will_ go on,” he said. The faint breath of +summer stirred the trees, and a bunch of dandelion puff lifted among +the meadowsweet and struck and broke into a dozen separate threads +against his knee. They flew on apart, and sank, as the breeze fell, +among the grass: some to germinate, some to perish. His eye followed +them until they had vanished. + +“I can’t go back to Surbiton,” said the Young Lady in Grey. + +“_Eigh?_” said Mr. Hoopdriver, catching at his moustache. This was an +unexpected development. + +“I want to write, you see,” said the Young Lady in Grey, “to write +Books and alter things. To do Good. I want to lead a Free Life and Own +myself. I can’t go back. I want to obtain a position as a journalist. I +have been told—But I know no one to help me at once. No one that I +could go to. There is one person—She was a mistress at my school. If I +could write to her—But then, how could I get her answer?” + +“H’mp,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, very grave. + +“I can’t trouble you much more. You have come—you have risked things—” + +“That don’t count,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. “It’s double pay to let me do +it, so to speak.” + +“It is good of you to say that. Surbiton is so Conventional. I am +resolved to be Unconventional—at any cost. But we are so hampered. If I +could only burgeon out of all that hinders me! I want to struggle, to +take my place in the world. I want to be my own mistress, to shape my +own career. But my stepmother objects so. She does as she likes +herself, and is strict with me to ease her conscience. And if I go back +now, go back owning myself beaten—” She left the rest to his +imagination. + +“I see that,” agreed Mr. Hoopdriver. He _must_ help her. Within his +skull he was doing some intricate arithmetic with five pounds six and +twopence. In some vague way he inferred from all this that Jessie was +trying to escape from an undesirable marriage, but was saying these +things out of modesty. His circle of ideas was so limited. + +“You know, Mr.—I’ve forgotten your name again.” + +Mr. Hoopdriver seemed lost in abstraction. “You can’t go back of +course, quite like that,” he said thoughtfully. His ears waxed suddenly +red and his cheeks flushed. + +“But what _is_ your name?” + +“Name!” said Mr. Hoopdriver. “Why!—Benson, of course.” + +“Mr. Benson—yes it’s really very stupid of me. But I can never remember +names. I must make a note on my cuff.” She clicked a little silver +pencil and wrote the name down. “If I could write to my friend. I +believe she would be able to help me to an independent life. I could +write to her—or telegraph. Write, I think. I could scarcely explain in +a telegram. I know she would help me.” + +Clearly there was only one course open to a gentleman under the +circumstances. “In that case,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, “if you don’t mind +trusting yourself to a stranger, we might continue as we are perhaps. +For a day or so. Until you heard.” (Suppose thirty shillings a day, +that gives four days, say four thirties is hun’ and twenty, six +quid,—well, three days, say; four ten.) + +“You are very good to me.” + +His expression was eloquent. + +“Very well, then, and thank you. It’s wonderful—it’s more than I +deserve that you—” She dropped the theme abruptly. “What was our bill +at Chichester?” + +“Eigh?” said Mr. Hoopdriver, feigning a certain stupidity. There was a +brief discussion. Secretly he was delighted at her insistence in +paying. She carried her point. Their talk came round to their immediate +plans for the day. They decided to ride easily, through Havant, and +stop, perhaps, at Fareham or Southampton. For the previous day had +tried them both. Holding the map extended on his knee, Mr. Hoopdriver’s +eye fell by chance on the bicycle at his feet. “That bicycle,” he +remarked, quite irrelevantly, “wouldn’t look the same machine if I got +a big, double Elarum instead of that little bell.” + +“Why?” + +“Jest a thought.” A pause. + +“Very well, then,—Havant and lunch,” said Jessie, rising. + +“I wish, somehow, we could have managed it without stealing that +machine,” said Hoopdriver. “Because it IS stealing it, you know, come +to think of it.” + +“Nonsense. If Mr. Bechamel troubles you—I will tell the whole world—if +need be.” + +“I believe you would,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, admiring her. “You’re +plucky enough—goodness knows.” + +Discovering suddenly that she was standing, he, too, rose and picked up +her machine. She took it and wheeled it into the road. Then he took his +own. He paused, regarding it. “I say!” said he. “How’d this bike look, +now, if it was enamelled grey?” She looked over her shoulder at his +grave face. “Why try and hide it in that way?” + +“It was jest a passing thought,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, airily. “Didn’t +_mean_ anything, you know.” + +As they were riding on to Havant it occurred to Mr. Hoopdriver in a +transitory manner that the interview had been quite other than his +expectation. But that was the way with everything in Mr. Hoopdriver’s +experience. And though his Wisdom looked grave within him, and Caution +was chinking coins, and an ancient prejudice in favour of Property +shook her head, something else was there too, shouting in his mind to +drown all these saner considerations, the intoxicating thought of +riding beside Her all to-day, all to-morrow, perhaps for other days +after that. Of talking to her familiarly, being brother of all her +slender strength and freshness, of having a golden, real, and wonderful +time beyond all his imaginings. His old familiar fancyings gave place +to anticipations as impalpable and fluctuating and beautiful as the +sunset of a summer day. + +At Havant he took an opportunity to purchase, at a small hairdresser’s +in the main street, a toothbrush, a pair of nail scissors, and a little +bottle of stuff to darken the moustache, an article the shopman +introduced to his attention, recommended highly, and sold in the +excitement of the occasion. + + + + +XXIX. +THE UNEXPECTED ANECDOTE OF THE LION + + +They rode on to Cosham and lunched lightly but expensively there. +Jessie went out and posted her letter to her school friend. Then the +green height of Portsdown Hill tempted them, and leaving their machines +in the village they clambered up the slope to the silent red-brick fort +that crowned it. Thence they had a view of Portsmouth and its cluster +of sister towns, the crowded narrows of the harbour, the Solent and the +Isle of Wight like a blue cloud through the hot haze. Jessie by some +miracle had become a skirted woman in the Cosham inn. Mr. Hoopdriver +lounged gracefully on the turf, smoked a Red Herring cigarette, and +lazily regarded the fortified towns that spread like a map away there, +the inner line of defence like toy fortifications, a mile off perhaps; +and beyond that a few little fields and then the beginnings of Landport +suburb and the smoky cluster of the multitudinous houses. To the right +at the head of the harbour shallows the town of Porchester rose among +the trees. Mr. Hoopdriver’s anxiety receded to some remote corner of +his brain and that florid half-voluntary imagination of his shared the +stage with the image of Jessie. He began to speculate on the impression +he was creating. He took stock of his suit in a more optimistic spirit, +and reviewed, with some complacency, his actions for the last four and +twenty hours. Then he was dashed at the thought of her infinite +perfections. + +She had been observing him quietly, rather more closely during the last +hour or so. She did not look at him directly because he seemed always +looking at her. Her own troubles had quieted down a little, and her +curiosity about the chivalrous, worshipping, but singular gentleman in +brown, was awakening. She had recalled, too, the curious incident of +their first encounter. She found him hard to explain to herself. You +must understand that her knowledge of the world was rather less than +nothing, having been obtained entirely from books. You must not take a +certain ignorance for foolishness. + +She had begun with a few experiments. He did not know French except +‘_sivverplay_,’ a phrase he seemed to regard as a very good light table +joke in itself. His English was uncertain, but not such as books +informed her distinguished the lower classes. His manners seemed to her +good on the whole, but a trifle over-respectful and out of fashion. He +called her ‘Madam’ once. He seemed a person of means and leisure, but +he knew nothing of recent concerts, theatres, or books. How did he +spend his time? He was certainly chivalrous, and a trifle simpleminded. +She fancied (so much is there in a change of costume) that she had +never met with such a man before. What _could_ he be? + +“Mr. Benson,” she said, breaking a silence devoted to landscape. + +He rolled over and regarded her, chin on knuckles. + +“At your service.” + +“Do you paint? Are you an artist?” + +“Well.” Judicious pause. “I should hardly call myself a Nartist, you +know. I _do_ paint a little. And sketch, you know—skitty kind of +things.” + +He plucked and began to nibble a blade of grass. It was really not so +much lying as his quick imagination that prompted him to add, “In +Papers, you know, and all that.” + +“I see,” said Jessie, looking at him thoughtfully. Artists were a very +heterogeneous class certainly, and geniuses had a trick of being a +little odd. He avoided her eye and bit his grass. “I don’t do _much_, +you know.” + +“It’s not your profession? + +“Oh, no,” said Hoopdriver, anxious now to hedge. “I don’t make a +regular thing of it, you know. Jest now and then something comes into +my head and down it goes. No—I’m not a _regular_ artist.” + +“Then you don’t practise any regular profession?” Mr. Hoopdriver looked +into her eyes and saw their quiet unsuspicious regard. He had vague +ideas of resuming the detective _rôle_. “It’s like this,” he said, to +gain time. “I have a sort of profession. Only there’s a kind of +reason—nothing much, you know.” + +“I beg your pardon for cross-examining you.” + +“No trouble,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. “Only I can’t very well—I leave it +to you, you know. I don’t want to make any mystery of it, so far as +that goes.” Should he plunge boldly and be a barrister? That anyhow was +something pretty good. But she might know about barristry. + +“I think I could guess what you are.” + +“Well—guess,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. + +“You come from one of the colonies?” + +“Dear me!” said Mr. Hoopdriver, veering round to the new wind. “How did +you find out _that?_” (the man was born in a London suburb, dear +Reader.) + +“I guessed,” she said. + +He lifted his eyebrows as one astonished, and clutched a new piece of +grass. + +“You were educated up country.” + +“Good again,” said Hoopdriver, rolling over again into her elbow. +“You’re a _clairvoy_ ant.” He bit at the grass, smiling. “Which colony +was it?” + +“That I don’t know.” + +“You must guess,” said Hoopdriver. + +“South Africa,” she said. “I strongly incline to South Africa.” + +“South Africa’s quite a large place,” he said. + +“But South Africa is right?” + +“You’re warm,” said Hoopdriver, “anyhow,” and the while his imagination +was eagerly exploring this new province. + +“South Africa _is_ right?” she insisted. + +He turned over again and nodded, smiling reassuringly into her eyes. + +“What made me think of South Africa was that novel of Olive +Schreiner’s, you know—‘The Story of an African Farm.’ Gregory Rose is +so like you.” + +“I never read ‘The Story of an African Farm,’” said Hoopdriver. “I +must. What’s he like?” + +“You must read the book. But it’s a wonderful place, with its mixture +of races, and its brand-new civilisation jostling the old savagery. +Were you near Khama?” + +“He was a long way off from our place,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. “We had a +little ostrich farm, you know—Just a few hundred of ’em, out +Johannesburg way.” + +“On the Karroo—was it called?” + +“That’s the term. Some of it was freehold though. Luckily. We got along +very well in the old days.—But there’s no ostriches on that farm now.” +He had a diamond mine in his head, just at the moment, but he stopped +and left a little to the girl’s imagination. Besides which it had +occurred to him with a kind of shock that he was lying. + +“What became of the ostriches?” + +“We sold ’em off, when we parted with the farm. Do you mind if I have +another cigarette? That was when I was quite a little chap, you know, +that we had this ostrich farm.” + +“Did you have Blacks and Boers about you?” + +“Lots,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, striking a match on his instep and +beginning to feel hot at the new responsibility he had brought upon +himself. + +“How interesting! Do you know, I’ve never been out of England except to +Paris and Mentone and Switzerland.” + +“One gets tired of travelling (_puff_) after a bit, of course.” + +“You must tell me about your farm in South Africa. It always stimulates +my imagination to think of these places. I can fancy all the tall +ostriches being driven out by a black herd—to graze, I suppose. How do +ostriches feed?” + +“Well,” said Hoopdriver. “That’s rather various. They have their +fancies, you know. There’s fruit, of course, and that kind of thing. +And chicken food, and so forth. You have to use judgment.” + +“Did you ever see a lion?” “They weren’t very common in our district,” +said Hoopdriver, quite modestly. “But I’ve seen them, of course. Once +or twice.” + +“Fancy seeing a lion! Weren’t you frightened?” + +Mr. Hoopdriver was now thoroughly sorry he had accepted that offer of +South Africa. He puffed his cigarette and regarded the Solent languidly +as he settled the fate on that lion in his mind. “I scarcely had time,” +he said. “It all happened in a minute.” + +“Go on,” she said. + +“I was going across the inner paddock where the fatted ostriches were.” + +“Did you _eat_ ostriches, then? I did not know—” + +“Eat them!—often. Very nice they _are_ too, properly stuffed. Well, +we—I, rather—was going across this paddock, and I saw something +standing up in the moonlight and looking at me.” Mr. Hoopdriver was in +a hot perspiration now. His invention seemed to have gone limp. +“Luckily I had my father’s gun with me. I _was_ scared, though, I can +tell you. (_Puff._) I just aimed at the end that I thought was the +head. And let fly. (_Puff._) And over it went, you know.” + +“Dead?” + +“_As_ dead. It was one of the luckiest shots I ever fired. And I wasn’t +much over nine at the time, neither.” + +“_I_ should have screamed and run away.” + +“There’s some things you can’t run away from,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. “To +run would have been Death.” + +“I don’t think I ever met a lion-killer before,” she remarked, +evidently with a heightened opinion of him. + +There was a pause. She seemed meditating further questions. Mr. +Hoopdriver drew his watch hastily. “I say,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, +showing it to her, “don’t you think we ought to be getting on?” + +His face was flushed, his ears bright red. She ascribed his confusion +to modesty. He rose with a lion added to the burthens of his +conscience, and held out his hand to assist her. They walked down into +Cosham again, resumed their machines, and went on at a leisurely pace +along the northern shore of the big harbour. But Mr. Hoopdriver was no +longer happy. This horrible, this fulsome lie, stuck in his memory. Why +_had_ he done it? She did not ask for any more South African stories, +happily—at least until Porchester was reached—but talked instead of +Living One’s Own Life, and how custom hung on people like chains. She +talked wonderfully, and set Hoopdriver’s mind fermenting. By the +Castle, Mr. Hoopdriver caught several crabs in little shore pools. At +Fareham they stopped for a second tea, and left the place towards the +hour of sunset, under such invigorating circumstances as you shall in +due course hear. + + + + +XXX. +THE RESCUE EXPEDITION + + +And now to tell of those energetic chevaliers, Widgery, Dangle, and +Phipps, and of that distressed beauty, ‘Thomas Plantagenet,’ well known +in society, so the paragraphs said, as Mrs. Milton. We left them at +Midhurst station, if I remember rightly, waiting, in a state of fine +emotion, for the Chichester train. It was clearly understood by the +entire Rescue Party that Mrs. Milton was bearing up bravely against +almost overwhelming grief. The three gentlemen outdid one another in +sympathetic expedients; they watched her gravely—almost tenderly. The +substantial Widgery tugged at his moustache, and looked his unspeakable +feelings at her with those dog-like, brown eyes of his; the slender +Dangle tugged at _his_ moustache, and did what he could with +unsympathetic grey ones. Phipps, unhappily, had no moustache to run any +risks with, so he folded his arms and talked in a brave, indifferent, +bearing-up tone about the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway, +just to cheer the poor woman up a little. And even Mrs. Milton really +felt that exalted melancholy to the very bottom of her heart, and tried +to show it in a dozen little, delicate, feminine ways. + +“There is nothing to do until we get to Chichester,” said Dangle. +“Nothing.” + +“Nothing,” said Widgery, and aside in her ear: “You really ate scarcely +anything, you know.” + +“Their trains are always late,” said Phipps, with his fingers along the +edge of his collar. Dangle, you must understand, was a sub-editor and +reviewer, and his pride was to be Thomas Plantagenet’s intellectual +companion. Widgery, the big man, was manager of a bank and a mighty +golfer, and his conception of his relations to her never came into his +mind without those charming old lines, “Douglas, Douglas, tender and +true,” falling hard upon its heels. His name was Douglas-Douglas +Widgery. And Phipps, Phipps was a medical student still, and he felt +that he laid his heart at her feet, the heart of a man of the world. +She was kind to them all in her way, and insisted on their being +friends together, in spite of a disposition to reciprocal criticism +they displayed. Dangle thought Widgery a Philistine, appreciating but +coarsely the merits of “A Soul Untrammelled,” and Widgery thought +Dangle lacked humanity—would talk insincerely to say a clever thing. +Both Dangle and Widgery thought Phipps a bit of a cub, and Phipps +thought both Dangle and Widgery a couple of Thundering Bounders. + +“They would have got to Chichester in time for lunch,” said Dangle, in +the train. “After, perhaps. And there’s no sufficient place in the +road. So soon as we get there, Phipps must inquire at the chief hotels +to see if any one answering to her description has lunched there.” + +“Oh, _I’ll_ inquire,” said Phipps. “Willingly. I suppose you and +Widgery will just hang about—” + +He saw an expression of pain on Mrs. Milton’s gentle face, and stopped +abruptly. + +“No,” said Dangle, “we shan’t _hang about_, as you put it. There are +two places in Chichester where tourists might go—the cathedral and a +remarkably fine museum. I shall go to the cathedral and make an inquiry +or so, while Widgery—” + +“The museum. Very well. And after that there’s a little thing or two +I’ve thought of myself,” said Widgery. + +To begin with they took Mrs. Milton in a kind of procession to the Red +Hotel and established her there with some tea. “You are so kind to me,” +she said. “All of you.” They signified that it was nothing, and +dispersed to their inquiries. By six they returned, their zeal a little +damped, without news. Widgery came back with Dangle. Phipps was the +last to return. “You’re quite sure,” said Widgery, “that there isn’t +any flaw in that inference of yours?” + +“Quite,” said Dangle, rather shortly. + +“Of course,” said Widgery, “their starting from Midhurst on the +Chichester road doesn’t absolutely bind them not to change their +minds.” + +“My dear fellow!—It does. Really it does. You must allow me to have +enough intelligence to think of cross-roads. Really you must. There +aren’t any cross-roads to tempt them. Would they turn aside here? No. +Would they turn there? Many more things are inevitable than you fancy.” + +“We shall see at once,” said Widgery, at the window. “Here comes +Phipps. For my own part—” + +“Phipps!” said Mrs. Milton. “Is he hurrying? Does he look—” She rose in +her eagerness, biting her trembling lip, and went towards the window. + +“No news,” said Phipps, entering. + +“Ah!” said Widgery. + +“None?” said Dangle. + +“Well,” said Phipps. “One fellow had got hold of a queer story of a man +in bicycling clothes, who was asking the same question about this time +yesterday.” + +“What question?” said Mrs. Milton, in the shadow of the window. She +spoke in a low voice, almost a whisper. + +“Why—Have you seen a young lady in a grey bicycling costume?” + +Dangle caught at his lower lip. “What’s that?” he said. “Yesterday! A +man asking after her then! What can _that_ mean?” + +“Heaven knows,” said Phipps, sitting down wearily. “You’d better +infer.” + +“What kind of man?” said Dangle. + +“How should I know?—in bicycling costume, the fellow said.” + +“But what height?—What complexion?” + +“Didn’t ask,” said Phipps. + +“_Didn’t ask!_ Nonsense,” said Dangle. + +“Ask him yourself,” said Phipps. “He’s an ostler chap in the White +Hart,—short, thick-set fellow, with a red face and a crusty manner. +Leaning up against the stable door. Smells of whiskey. Go and ask him.” + +“Of course,” said Dangle, taking his straw hat from the shade over the +stuffed bird on the chiffonier and turning towards the door. “I might +have known.” + +Phipps’ mouth opened and shut. + +“You’re tired, I’m sure, Mr. Phipps,” said the lady, soothingly. “Let +me ring for some tea for you.” It suddenly occurred to Phipps that he +had lapsed a little from his chivalry. “I was a little annoyed at the +way he rushed me to do all this business,” he said. “But I’d do a +hundred times as much if it would bring you any nearer to her.” Pause. +“I _would_ like a little tea.” + +“I don’t want to raise any false hopes,” said Widgery. “But I do _not_ +believe they even came to Chichester. Dangle’s a very clever fellow, of +course, but sometimes these Inferences of his—” + +“Tchak!” said Phipps, suddenly. + +“What is it?” said Mrs. Milton. + +“Something I’ve forgotten. I went right out from here, went to every +other hotel in the place, and never thought—But never mind. I’ll ask +when the waiter comes.” + +“You don’t mean—” A tap, and the door opened. “Tea, m’m? yes, m’m,” +said the waiter. + +“One minute,” said Phipps. “Was a lady in grey, a cycling lady—” + +“Stopped here yesterday? Yessir. Stopped the night. With her brother, +sir—a young gent.” + +“Brother!” said Mrs. Milton, in a low tone. “Thank God!” + +The waiter glanced at her and understood everything. “A young gent, +sir,” he said, “very free with his money. Give the name of Beaumont.” +He proceeded to some rambling particulars, and was cross-examined by +Widgery on the plans of the young couple. + +“Havant! Where’s Havant?” said Phipps. “I seem to remember it +somewhere.” + +“Was the man tall?” said Mrs. Milton, intently, “distinguished looking? +with a long, flaxen moustache? and spoke with a drawl?” + +“Well,” said the waiter, and thought. “His moustache, m’m, was scarcely +long—scrubby more, and young looking.” + +“About thirty-five, he was?” + +“No, m’m. More like five and twenty. Not that.” + +“Dear me!” said Mrs. Milton, speaking in a curious, hollow voice, +fumbling for her salts, and showing the finest self-control. “It must +have been her _younger_ brother—must have been.” + +“That will do, thank you,” said Widgery, officiously, feeling that she +would be easier under this new surprise if the man were dismissed. The +waiter turned to go, and almost collided with Dangle, who was entering +the room, panting excitedly and with a pocket handkerchief held to his +right eye. “Hullo!” said dangle. “What’s up?” + +“What’s up with _you?_” said Phipps. + +“Nothing—an altercation merely with that drunken ostler of yours. He +thought it was a plot to annoy him—that the Young Lady in Grey was +mythical. Judged from your manner. I’ve got a piece of raw meat to keep +over it. You have some news, I see?” + +“Did the man hit you?” asked Widgery. + +Mrs. Milton rose and approached Dangle. “Cannot I do anything?” + +Dangle was heroic. “Only tell me your news,” he said, round the corner +of the handkerchief. + +“It was in this way,” said Phipps, and explained rather sheepishly. +While he was doing so, with a running fire of commentary from Widgery, +the waiter brought in a tray of tea. “A time table,” said Dangle, +promptly, “for Havant.” Mrs. Milton poured two cups, and Phipps and +Dangle partook in passover form. They caught the train by a hair’s +breadth. So to Havant and inquiries. + +Dangle was puffed up to find that his guess of Havant was right. In +view of the fact that beyond Havant the Southampton road has a steep +hill continuously on the right-hand side, and the sea on the left, he +hit upon a magnificent scheme for heading the young folks off. He and +Mrs. Milton would go to Fareham, Widgery and Phipps should alight one +each at the intermediate stations of Cosham and Porchester, and come on +by the next train if they had no news. If they did not come on, a wire +to the Fareham post office was to explain why. It was Napoleonic, and +more than consoled Dangle for the open derision of the Havant street +boys at the handkerchief which still protected his damaged eye. + +Moreover, the scheme answered to perfection. The fugitives escaped by a +hair’s breadth. They were outside the Golden Anchor at Fareham, and +preparing to mount, as Mrs. Milton and Dangle came round the corner +from the station. “It’s her!” said Mrs. Milton, and would have +screamed. “Hist!” said Dangle, gripping the lady’s arm, removing his +handkerchief in his excitement, and leaving the piece of meat over his +eye, an extraordinary appearance which seemed unexpectedly to calm her. +“Be cool!” said Dangle, glaring under the meat. “They must not see us. +They will get away else. Were there flys at the station?” The young +couple mounted and vanished round the corner of the Winchester road. +Had it not been for the publicity of the business, Mrs. Milton would +have fainted. “_Save her!_” she said. + +“Ah! A conveyance,” said Dangle. “One minute.” + +He left her in a most pathetic attitude, with her hand pressed to her +heart, and rushed into the Golden Anchor. Dog cart in ten minutes. +Emerged. The meat had gone now, and one saw the cooling puffiness over +his eye. “I will conduct you back to the station,” said Dangle; “hurry +back here, and pursue them. You will meet Widgery and Phipps and tell +them I am in pursuit.” + +She was whirled back to the railway station and left there, on a hard, +blistered, wooden seat in the sun. She felt tired and dreadfully +ruffled and agitated and dusty. Dangle was, no doubt, most energetic +and devoted; but for a kindly, helpful manner commend her to Douglas +Widgery. + +Meanwhile Dangle, his face golden in the evening sun, was driving (as +well as he could) a large, black horse harnessed into a thing called a +gig, northwestward towards Winchester. Dangle, barring his swollen eye, +was a refined-looking little man, and he wore a deerstalker cap and was +dressed in dark grey. His neck was long and slender. Perhaps you know +what gigs are,—huge, big, wooden things and very high and the horse, +too, was huge and big and high, with knobby legs, a long face, a hard +mouth, and a whacking trick of pacing. Smack, smack, smack, smack it +went along the road, and hard by the church it shied vigorously at a +hooded perambulator. + +The history of the Rescue Expedition now becomes confused. It appears +that Widgery was extremely indignant to find Mrs. Milton left about +upon the Fareham platform. The day had irritated him somehow, though he +had started with the noblest intentions, and he seemed glad to find an +outlet for justifiable indignation. “He’s such a spasmodic creature,” +said Widgery. “Rushing off! And I suppose we’re to wait here until he +comes back! It’s likely. He’s so egotistical, is Dangle. Always wants +to mismanage everything himself.” + +“He means to help me,” said Mrs. Milton, a little reproachfully, +touching his arm. Widgery was hardly in the mood to be mollified all at +once. “He need not prevent ME,” he said, and stopped. “It’s no good +talking, you know, and you are tired.” + +“I can go on,” she said brightly, “if only we find her.” “While I was +cooling my heels in Cosham I bought a county map.” He produced and +opened it. “Here, you see, is the road out of Fareham.” He proceeded +with the calm deliberation of a business man to develop a proposal of +taking train forthwith to Winchester. “They _must_ be going to +Winchester,” he explained. It was inevitable. To-morrow Sunday, +Winchester a cathedral town, road going nowhere else of the slightest +importance. + +“But Mr. Dangle?” + +“He will simply go on until he has to pass something, and then he will +break his neck. I have seen Dangle drive before. It’s scarcely likely a +dog-cart, especially a hired dog-cart, will overtake bicycles in the +cool of the evening. Rely upon me, Mrs. Milton—” + +“I am in your hands,” she said, with pathetic littleness, looking up at +him, and for the moment he forgot the exasperation of the day. + +Phipps, during this conversation, had stood in a somewhat depressed +attitude, leaning on his stick, feeling his collar, and looking from +one speaker to the other. The idea of leaving Dangle behind seemed to +him an excellent one. “We might leave a message at the place where he +got the dog-cart,” he suggested, when he saw their eyes meeting. There +was a cheerful alacrity about all three at the proposal. + +But they never got beyond Botley. For even as their train ran into the +station, a mighty rumbling was heard, there was a shouting overhead, +the guard stood astonished on the platform, and Phipps, thrusting his +head out of the window, cried, “There he goes!” and sprang out of the +carriage. Mrs. Milton, following in alarm, just saw it. From Widgery it +was hidden. Botley station lies in a cutting, overhead was the roadway, +and across the lemon yellows and flushed pinks of the sunset, there +whirled a great black mass, a horse like a long-nosed chess knight, the +upper works of a gig, and Dangle in transit from front to back. A +monstrous shadow aped him across the cutting. It was the event of a +second. Dangle seemed to jump, hang in the air momentarily, and vanish, +and after a moment’s pause came a heart-rending smash. Then two black +heads running swiftly. + +“Better get out,” said Phipps to Mrs. Milton, who stood fascinated in +the doorway. + +In another moment all three were hurrying up the steps. They found +Dangle, hatless, standing up with cut hands extended, having his hands +brushed by an officious small boy. A broad, ugly road ran downhill in a +long vista, and in the distance was a little group of Botley +inhabitants holding the big, black horse. Even at that distance they +could see the expression of conscious pride on the monster’s visage. It +was as wooden-faced a horse as you can imagine. The beasts in the Tower +of London, on which the men in armour are perched, are the only horses +I have ever seen at all like it. However, we are not concerned now with +the horse, but with Dangle. “Hurt?” asked Phipps, eagerly, leading. + +“Mr. Dangle!” cried Mrs. Milton, clasping her hands. + +“Hullo!” said Dangle, not surprised in the slightest. “Glad you’ve +come. I may want you. Bit of a mess I’m in—eigh? But I’ve caught ’em. +At the very place I expected, too.” + +“Caught them!” said Widgery. “Where are they?” + +“Up there,” he said, with a backward motion of his head. “About a mile +up the hill. I left ’em. I _had_ to.” + +“I don’t understand,” said Mrs. Milton, with that rapt, painful look +again. “Have you found Jessie?” + +“I have. I wish I could wash the gravel out of my hands somewhere. It +was like this, you know. Came on them suddenly round a corner. Horse +shied at the bicycles. They were sitting by the roadside botanising +flowers. I just had time to shout, ‘Jessie Milton, we’ve been looking +for you,’ and then that confounded brute bolted. I didn’t dare turn +round. I had all my work to do to save myself being turned over, as it +was—so long as I did, I mean. I just shouted, ‘Return to your friends. +All will be forgiven.’ And off I came, clatter, clatter. Whether they +heard—” + +“_Take me to her_,” said Mrs. Milton, with intensity, turning towards +Widgery. + +“Certainly,” said Widgery, suddenly becoming active. “How far is it, +Dangle?” + +“Mile and a half or two miles. I was determined to find them, you know. +I say though—Look at my hands! But I beg your pardon, Mrs. Milton.” He +turned to Phipps. “Phipps, I say, where shall I wash the gravel out? +And have a look at my knee?” + +“There’s the station,” said Phipps, becoming helpful. Dangle made a +step, and a damaged knee became evident. “Take my arm,” said Phipps. + +“Where can we get a conveyance?” asked Widgery of two small boys. + +The two small boys failed to understand. They looked at one another. + +“There’s not a cab, not a go-cart, in sight,” said Widgery. “It’s a +case of a horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse.” + +“There’s a harse all right,” said one of the small boys with a movement +of the head. + +“Don’t you know where we can hire traps?” asked Widgery. “Or a cart +or—anything?” asked Mrs. Milton. + +“John Ooker’s gart a cart, but no one can’t ’ire’n,” said the larger of +the small boys, partially averting his face and staring down the road +and making a song of it. “And so’s my feyther, for’s leg us broke.” + +“Not a cart even! Evidently. What shall we do?” + +It occurred to Mrs. Milton that if Widgery was the man for courtly +devotion, Dangle was infinitely readier of resource. “I suppose—” she +said, timidly. “Perhaps if you were to ask Mr. Dangle—” + +And then all the gilt came off Widgery. He answered quite rudely. +“Confound Dangle! Hasn’t he messed us up enough? He must needs drive +after them in a trap to tell them we’re coming, and now you want me to +ask him—” + +Her beautiful blue eyes were filled with tears. He stopped abruptly. +“I’ll go and ask Dangle,” he said, shortly. “If you wish it.” And went +striding into the station and down the steps, leaving her in the road +under the quiet inspection of the two little boys, and with a kind of +ballad refrain running through her head, “Where are the Knights of the +Olden Time?” and feeling tired to death and hungry and dusty and out of +curl, and, in short, a martyr woman. + + + + +XXXI. + + +It goes to my heart to tell of the end of that day, how the fugitives +vanished into Immensity; how there were no more trains; how Botley +stared unsympathetically with a palpable disposition to derision, +denying conveyances; how the landlord of the Heron was suspicious, how +the next day was Sunday, and the hot summer’s day had crumpled the +collar of Phipps and stained the skirts of Mrs. Milton, and dimmed the +radiant emotions of the whole party. Dangle, with sticking-plaster and +a black eye, felt the absurdity of the pose of the Wounded Knight, and +abandoned it after the faintest efforts. Recriminations never, perhaps, +held the foreground of the talk, but they played like summer lightning +on the edge of the conversation. And deep in the hearts of all was a +galling sense of the ridiculous. Jessie, they thought, was most to +blame. Apparently, too, the worst, which would have made the whole +business tragic, was not happening. Here was a young woman—young woman +do I say? a mere girl!—had chosen to leave a comfortable home in +Surbiton, and all the delights of a refined and intellectual circle, +and had rushed off, trailing us after her, posing hard, mutually +jealous, and now tired and weather-worn, to flick us off at last, mere +mud from her wheel, into this detestable village beer-house on a +Saturday night! And she had done it, not for Love and Passion, which +are serious excuses one may recognise even if one must reprobate, but +just for a Freak, just for a fantastic Idea; for nothing, in fact, but +the outraging of Common Sense. Yet withal, such was our restraint, that +we talked of her still as one much misguided, as one who burthened us +with anxiety, as a lamb astray, and Mrs. Milton having eaten, continued +to show the finest feelings on the matter. + +She sat, I may mention, in the cushioned basket-chair, the only +comfortable chair in the room, and we sat on incredibly hard, horsehair +things having antimacassars tied to their backs by means of +lemon-coloured bows. It was different from those dear old talks at +Surbiton, somehow. She sat facing the window, which was open (the night +was so tranquil and warm), and the dim light—for we did not use the +lamp—suited her admirably. She talked in a voice that told you she was +tired, and she seemed inclined to state a case against herself in the +matter of “A Soul Untrammelled.” It was such an evening as might live +in a sympathetic memoir, but it was a little dull while it lasted. + +“I feel,” she said, “that I am to blame. I have Developed. That first +book of mine—I do not go back upon a word of it, mind, but it has been +misunderstood, misapplied.” + +“It has,” said Widgery, trying to look so deeply sympathetic as to be +visible in the dark. “Deliberately misunderstood.” + +“Don’t say that,” said the lady. “Not deliberately. I try and think +that critics are honest. After their lights. I was not thinking of +critics. But she—I mean—” She paused, an interrogation. + +“It is possible,” said Dangle, scrutinising his sticking-plaster. + +“I write a book and state a case. I want people to _think_ as I +recommend, not to _do_ as I recommend. It is just Teaching. Only I make +it into a story. I want to Teach new Ideas, new Lessons, to promulgate +Ideas. Then when the Ideas have been spread abroad—Things will come +about. Only now it is madness to fly in the face of the established +order. Bernard Shaw, you know, has explained that with regard to +Socialism. We all know that to earn all you consume is right, and that +living on invested capital is wrong. Only we cannot begin while we are +so few. It is Those Others.” + +“Precisely,” said Widgery. “It is Those Others. They must begin first.” + +“And meanwhile you go on banking—” + +“If I didn’t, some one else would.” + +“And I live on Mr. Milton’s Lotion while I try to gain a footing in +Literature.” + +“_Try!_” said Phipps. “You _have_ done so.” And, “That’s different,” +said Dangle, at the same time. + +“You are so kind to me. But in this matter. Of course Georgina +Griffiths in my book lived alone in a flat in Paris and went to life +classes and had men visitors, but then she was over twenty-one.” + +“Jessica is only seventeen, and girlish for that,” said Dangle. + +“It alters everything. That child! It is different with a woman. And +Georgina Griffiths never flaunted her freedom—on a bicycle, in country +places. In this country. Where every one is so particular. Fancy, +_sleeping_ away from home. It’s dreadful—If it gets about it spells +ruin for her.” + +“Ruin,” said Widgery. + +“No man would marry a girl like that,” said Phipps. + +“It must be hushed up,” said Dangle. + +“It always seems to me that life is made up of individuals, of +individual cases. We must weigh each person against his or her +circumstances. General rules don’t apply—” + +“I often feel the force of that,” said Widgery. “Those are my rules. Of +course my books—” + +“It’s different, altogether different,” said Dangle. “A novel deals +with typical cases.” + +“And life is not typical,” said Widgery, with immense profundity. + +Then suddenly, unintentionally, being himself most surprised and +shocked of any in the room, Phipps yawned. The failing was infectious, +and the gathering having, as you can easily understand, talked itself +weary, dispersed on trivial pretences. But not to sleep immediately. +Directly Dangle was alone he began, with infinite disgust, to +scrutinise his darkling eye, for he was a neat-minded little man in +spite of his energy. The whole business—so near a capture—was horribly +vexatious. Phipps sat on his bed for some time examining, with equal +disgust, a collar he would have thought incredible for Sunday +twenty-four hours before. Mrs. Milton fell a-musing on the mortality of +even big, fat men with dog-like eyes, and Widgery was unhappy because +he had been so cross to her at the station, and because so far he did +not feel that he had scored over Dangle. Also he was angry with Dangle. +And all four of them, being souls living very much upon the appearances +of things, had a painful, mental middle distance of Botley derisive and +suspicious, and a remoter background of London humorous, and Surbiton +speculative. Were they really, after all, behaving absurdly? + + + + +XXXII. +MR. HOOPDRIVER, KNIGHT ERRANT + + +As Mr. Dangle had witnessed, the fugitives had been left by him by the +side of the road about two miles from Botley. Before Mr. Dangle’s +appearance, Mr. Hoopdriver had been learning with great interest that +mere roadside flowers had names,—star-flowers, wind-stars, St. John’s +wort, willow herb, lords and ladies, bachelor’s buttons,—most curious +names, some of them. “The flowers are all different in South Africa, +y’know,” he was explaining with a happy fluke of his imagination to +account for his ignorance. Then suddenly, heralded by clattering sounds +and a gride of wheels, Dangle had flared and thundered across the +tranquillity of the summer evening; Dangle, swaying and gesticulating +behind a corybantic black horse, had hailed Jessie by her name, had +backed towards the hedge for no ostensible reason, and vanished to the +accomplishment of the Fate that had been written down for him from the +very beginning of things. Jessie and Hoopdriver had scarcely time to +stand up and seize their machines, before this tumultuous, this swift +and wonderful passing of Dangle was achieved. He went from side to side +of the road,—worse even than the riding forth of Mr. Hoopdriver it +was,—and vanished round the corner. + +“He knew my name,” said Jessie. “Yes—it was Mr. Dangle.” + +“That was our bicycles did that,” said Mr. Hoopdriver simultaneously, +and speaking with a certain complacent concern. “I hope he won’t get +hurt.” + +“That was Mr. Dangle,” repeated Jessie, and Mr. Hoopdriver heard this +time, with a violent start. His eyebrows went up spasmodically. + +“What! someone you know?” + +“Yes.” + +“Lord!” + +“He was looking for me,” said Jessie. “I could see. He began to call to +me before the horse shied. My stepmother has sent him.” + +Mr. Hoopdriver wished he had returned the bicycle after all, for his +ideas were still a little hazy about Bechamel and Mrs. Milton. Honesty +_is_ the best policy—often, he thought. He turned his head this way and +that. He became active. “After us, eigh? Then he’ll come back. He’s +gone down that hill, and he won’t be able to pull up for a bit, I’m +certain.” + +Jessie, he saw, had wheeled her machine into the road and was mounting. +Still staring at the corner that had swallowed up Dangle, Hoopdriver +followed suit. And so, just as the sun was setting, they began another +flight together,—riding now towards Bishops Waltham, with Mr. +Hoopdriver in the post of danger—the rear—ever and again looking over +his shoulder and swerving dangerously as he did so. Occasionally Jessie +had to slacken her pace. He breathed heavily, and hated himself because +his mouth fell open. After nearly an hour’s hard riding, they found +themselves uncaught at Winchester. Not a trace of Dangle nor any other +danger was visible as they rode into the dusky, yellow-lit street. +Though the bats had been fluttering behind the hedges and the evening +star was bright while they were still two miles from Winchester, Mr. +Hoopdriver pointed out the dangers of stopping in such an obvious +abiding-place, and gently but firmly insisted upon replenishing the +lamps and riding on towards Salisbury. From Winchester, roads branch in +every direction, and to turn abruptly westward was clearly the way to +throw off the chase. As Hoopdriver saw the moon rising broad and yellow +through the twilight, he thought he should revive the effect of that +ride out of Bognor; but somehow, albeit the moon and all the +atmospheric effects were the same, the emotions were different. They +rode in absolute silence, and slowly after they had cleared the +outskirts of Winchester. Both of them were now nearly tired out,—the +level was tedious, and even a little hill a burden; and so it came +about that in the hamlet of Wallenstock they were beguiled to stop and +ask for accommodation in an exceptionally prosperous-looking village +inn. A plausible landlady rose to the occasion. + +Now, as they passed into the room where their suppers were prepared, +Mr. Hoopdriver caught a glimpse through a door ajar and floating in a +reek of smoke, of three and a half faces—for the edge of the door cut +one down—and an American cloth-covered table with several glasses and a +tankard. And he also heard a remark. In the second before he heard that +remark, Mr. Hoopdriver had been a proud and happy man, to +particularize, a baronet’s heir _incognito_. He had surrendered their +bicycles to the odd man of the place with infinite easy dignity, and +had bowingly opened the door for Jessie. “Who’s that, then?” he +imagined people saying; and then, “Some’n pretty well orf—judge by the +bicycles.” Then the imaginary spectators would fall a-talking of the +fashionableness of bicycling,—how judges and stockbrokers and actresses +and, in fact, all the best people rode, and how that it was often the +fancy of such great folk to shun the big hotels, the adulation of urban +crowds, and seek, _incognito_, the cosy quaintnesses of village life. +Then, maybe, they would think of a certain nameless air of distinction +about the lady who had stepped across the doorway, and about the +handsome, flaxen-moustached, blue-eyed Cavalier who had followed her +in, and they would look one to another. “Tell you what it is,” one of +the village elders would say—just as they do in novels—voicing the +thought of all, in a low, impressive tone: “There’s such a thin’ as +entertaining barranets unawares—not to mention no higher things—” + +Such, I say, had been the filmy, delightful stuff in Mr. Hoopdriver’s +head the moment before he heard that remark. But the remark toppled him +headlong. What the precise remark was need not concern us. It was a +casual piece of such satire as Strephon delights in. Should you be +curious, dear lady, as to its nature, you have merely to dress yourself +in a really modern cycling costume, get one of the feeblest-looking of +your men to escort you, and ride out, next Saturday evening, to any +public house where healthy, homely people gather together. Then you +will hear quite a lot of the kind of thing Mr. Hoopdriver heard. More, +possibly, than you will desire. + +The remark, I must add, implicated Mr. Hoopdriver. It indicated an +entire disbelief in his social standing. At a blow, it shattered all +the gorgeous imaginative fabric his mind had been rejoicing in. All +that foolish happiness vanished like a dream. And there was nothing to +show for it, as there is nothing to show for any spiteful remark that +has ever been made. Perhaps the man who said the thing had a gleam of +satisfaction at the idea of taking a complacent-looking fool down a +peg, but it is just as possible he did not know at the time that his +stray shot had hit. He had thrown it as a boy throws a stone at a bird. +And it not only demolished a foolish, happy conceit, but it wounded. It +touched Jessie grossly. + +She did not hear it, he concluded from her subsequent bearing; but +during the supper they had in the little private dining-room, though +she talked cheerfully, he was preoccupied. Whiffs of indistinct +conversation, and now and then laughter, came in from the inn parlor +through the pelargoniums in the open window. Hoopdriver felt it must +all be in the same strain,—at her expense and his. He answered her +abstractedly. She was tired, she said, and presently went to her room. +Mr. Hoopdriver, in his courtly way, opened the door for her and bowed +her out. He stood listening and fearing some new offence as she went +upstairs, and round the bend where the barometer hung beneath the +stuffed birds. Then he went back to the room, and stood on the +hearthrug before the paper fireplace ornament. “Cads!” he said in a +scathing undertone, as a fresh burst of laughter came floating in. All +through supper he had been composing stinging repartee, a blistering +speech of denunciation to be presently delivered. He would rate them as +a nobleman should: “Call themselves Englishmen, indeed, and insult a +woman!” he would say; take the names and addresses perhaps, threaten to +speak to the Lord of the Manor, promise to let them hear from him +again, and so out with consternation in his wake. It really ought to be +done. + +“Teach ’em better,” he said fiercely, and tweaked his moustache +painfully. What was it? He revived the objectionable remark for his own +exasperation, and then went over the heads of his speech again. + +He coughed, made three steps towards the door, then stopped and went +back to the hearthrug. He wouldn’t—after all. Yet was he not a Knight +Errant? Should such men go unreproved, unchecked, by wandering baronets +_incognito?_ Magnanimity? Look at it in that way? Churls beneath one’s +notice? No; merely a cowardly subterfuge. He _would_ after all. + +Something within him protested that he was a hot-headed ass even as he +went towards the door again. But he only went on the more resolutely. +He crossed the hall, by the bar, and entered the room from which the +remark had proceeded. He opened the door abruptly and stood scowling on +them in the doorway. “You’ll only make a mess of it,” remarked the +internal sceptic. There were five men in the room altogether: a fat +person, with a long pipe and a great number of chins, in an armchair by +the fireplace, who wished Mr. Hoopdriver a good evening very affably; a +young fellow smoking a cutty and displaying crossed legs with gaiters; +a little, bearded man with a toothless laugh; a middle-aged, +comfortable man with bright eyes, who wore a velveteen jacket; and a +fair young man, very genteel in a yellowish-brown ready-made suit and a +white tie. + +“H’m,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, looking very stern and harsh. And then in a +forbidding tone, as one who consented to no liberties, “Good evening.” + +“Very pleasant day we’ve been ’aving,” said the fair young man with the +white tie. + +“Very,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, slowly; and taking a brown armchair, he +planted it with great deliberation where he faced the fireplace, and +sat down. Let’s see—how did that speech begin? + +“Very pleasant roads about here,” said the fair young man with the +white tie. + +“Very,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, eyeing him darkly. Have to begin somehow. +“The roads about here are all right, and the weather about here is all +right, but what I’ve come in here to say is—there’s some damned +unpleasant people—damned unpleasant people!” + +“Oh!” said the young man with the gaiters, apparently making a mental +inventory of his pearl buttons as he spoke. “How’s that?” + +Mr. Hoopdriver put his hands on his knees and stuck out his elbows with +extreme angularity. In his heart he was raving at his idiotic folly at +thus bearding these lions,—indisputably they _were_ lions,—but he had +to go through with it now. Heaven send, his breath, which was already +getting a trifle spasmodic, did not suddenly give out. He fixed his eye +on the face of the fat man with the chins, and spoke in a low, +impressive voice. “I came here, sir,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, and paused +to inflate his cheeks, “with a lady.” + +“Very nice lady,” said the man with the gaiters, putting his head on +one side to admire a pearl button that had been hiding behind the +curvature of his calf. “Very nice lady indeed.” + +“I came here,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, “with a lady.” + +“We saw you did, bless you,” said the fat man with the chins, in a +curious wheezy voice. “I don’t see there’s anything so very +extraordinary in that. One ’ud think we hadn’t eyes.” + +Mr. Hoopdriver coughed. “I came, here, sir—” + +“We’ve ’eard that,” said the little man with the beard, sharply and +went off into an amiable chuckle. “We know it by ’art,” said the little +man, elaborating the point. + +Mr. Hoopdriver temporarily lost his thread. He glared malignantly at +the little man with the beard, and tried to recover his discourse. A +pause. + +“You were saying,” said the fair young man with the white tie, speaking +very politely, “that you came here with a lady.” + +“A lady,” meditated the gaiter gazer. + +The man in velveteen, who was looking from one speaker to another with +keen, bright eyes, now laughed as though a point had been scored, and +stimulated Mr. Hoopdriver to speak, by fixing him with an expectant +regard. + +“Some dirty cad,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, proceeding with his discourse, +and suddenly growing extremely fierce, “made a remark as we went by +this door.” + +“Steady on!” said the old gentleman with many chins. “Steady on! Don’t +you go a-calling us names, please.” + +“One minute!” said Mr. Hoopdriver. “It wasn’t I began calling names.” +(“Who did?” said the man with the chins.) “I’m not calling any of you +dirty cads. Don’t run away with that impression. Only some person in +this room made a remark that showed he wasn’t fit to wipe boots on, +and, with all due deference to such gentlemen as _are_ gentlemen” (Mr. +Hoopdriver looked round for moral support), “I want to know which it +was.” + +“Meanin’?” said the fair young man in the white tie. + +“That I’m going to wipe my boots on ’im straight away,” said Mr. +Hoopdriver, reverting to anger, if with a slight catch in his +throat—than which threat of personal violence nothing had been further +from his thoughts on entering the room. He said this because he could +think of nothing else to say, and stuck out his elbows truculently to +hide the sinking of his heart. It is curious how situations run away +with us. + +“’Ullo, Charlie!” said the little man, and “My eye!” said the owner of +the chins. “You’re going to wipe your boots on ’im?” said the fair +young man, in a tone of mild surprise. + +“I am,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, with emphatic resolution, and glared in +the young man’s face. + +“That’s fair and reasonable,” said the man in the velveteen jacket; “if +you can.” + +The interest of the meeting seemed transferred to the young man in the +white tie. “Of course, if you can’t find out which it is, I suppose +you’re prepared to wipe your boots in a liberal way on everybody in the +room,” said this young man, in the same tone of impersonal question. +“This gentleman, the champion lightweight—” + +“Own up, Charlie,” said the young man with the gaiters, looking up for +a moment. “And don’t go a-dragging in your betters. It’s fair and +square. You can’t get out of it.” + +“Was it this—gent?” began Mr. Hoopdriver. + +“Of course,” said the young man in the white tie, “when it comes to +talking of wiping boots—” + +“I’m not talking; I’m going to do it,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. + +He looked round at the meeting. They were no longer antagonists; they +were spectators. He would have to go through with it now. But this tone +of personal aggression on the maker of the remark had somehow got rid +of the oppressive feeling of Hoopdriver _contra mundum_. Apparently, he +would have to fight someone. Would he get a black eye? Would he get +very much hurt? Pray goodness it wasn’t that sturdy chap in the +gaiters! Should he rise and begin? What would she think if he brought a +black eye to breakfast to-morrow? “Is this the man?” said Mr. +Hoopdriver, with a business-like calm, and arms more angular than ever. + +“Eat ’im!” said the little man with the beard; “eat ’im straight orf.” + +“Steady on!” said the young man in the white tie. “Steady on a minute. +If I did happen to say—” + +“You did, did you?” said Mr. Hoopdriver. + +“Backing out of it, Charlie?” said the young man with the gaiters. + +“Not a bit,” said Charlie. “Surely we can pass a bit of a joke—” + +“I’m going to teach you to keep your jokes to yourself,” said Mr. +Hoopdriver. + +“Bray-vo!” said the shepherd of the flock of chins. + +“Charlie _is_ a bit too free with his jokes,” said the little man with +the beard. + +“It’s downright disgusting,” said Hoopdriver, falling back upon his +speech. “A lady can’t ride a bicycle in a country road, or wear a dress +a little out of the ordinary, but every dirty little greaser must needs +go shouting insults—” + +“_I_ didn’t know the young lady would hear what I said,” said Charlie. +“Surely one can speak friendly to one’s friends. How was I to know the +door was open—” + +Hoopdriver began to suspect that his antagonist was, if possible, more +seriously alarmed at the prospect of violence than himself, and his +spirits rose again. These chaps ought to have a thorough lesson. “Of +_course_ you knew the door was open,” he retorted indignantly. “Of +_course_ you thought we should hear what you said. Don’t go telling +lies about it. It’s no good your saying things like that. You’ve had +your fun, and you meant to have your fun. And I mean to make an example +of you, Sir.” + +“Ginger beer,” said the little man with the beard, in a confidential +tone to the velveteen jacket, “is regular up this ’ot weather. Bustin’ +its bottles it is everywhere.” + +“What’s the good of scrapping about in a public-house?” said Charlie, +appealing to the company. “A fair fight without interruptions, now, I +_wouldn’t_ mind, if the gentleman’s so disposed.” + +Evidently the man was horribly afraid. Mr. Hoopdriver grew truculent. + +“Where you like,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, “jest wherever you like.” + +“You insulted the gent,” said the man in velveteen. + +“Don’t be a bloomin’ funk, Charlie,” said the man in gaiters. “Why, you +got a stone of him, if you got an ounce.” + +“What I say, is this,” said the gentleman with the excessive chins, +trying to get a hearing by banging his chair arms. “If Charlie goes +saying things, he ought to back ’em up. That’s what I say. I don’t mind +his sayin’ such things ’t all, but he ought to be prepared to back ’em +up.” + +“I’ll _back_ ’em up all right,” said Charlie, with extremely bitter +emphasis on ‘back.’ “If the gentleman likes to come Toosday week—” + +“Rot!” chopped in Hoopdriver. “Now.” + +“’Ear, ’ear,” said the owner of the chins. + +“Never put off till to-morrow, Charlie, what you can do to-day,” said +the man in the velveteen coat. + +“You got to do it, Charlie,” said the man in gaiters. “It’s no good.” + +“It’s like this,” said Charlie, appealing to everyone except +Hoopdriver. “Here’s me, got to take in her ladyship’s dinner to-morrow +night. How should I look with a black eye? And going round with the +carriage with a split lip?” + +“If you don’t want your face sp’iled, Charlie, why don’t you keep your +mouth shut?” said the person in gaiters. + +“Exactly,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, driving it home with great fierceness. +“Why don’t you shut your ugly mouth?” + +“It’s as much as my situation’s worth,” protested Charlie. + +“You should have thought of that before,” said Hoopdriver. + +“There’s no occasion to be so thunderin’ ’ot about it. I only meant the +thing joking,” said Charlie. “_As_ one gentleman to another, I’m very +sorry if the gentleman’s annoyed—” + +Everybody began to speak at once. Mr. Hoopdriver twirled his moustache. +He felt that Charlie’s recognition of his gentlemanliness was at any +rate a redeeming feature. But it became his pose to ride hard and heavy +over the routed foe. He shouted some insulting phrase over the tumult. + +“You’re regular abject,” the man in gaiters was saying to Charlie. + +More confusion. + +“Only don’t think I’m afraid,—not of a spindle-legged cuss like him,” +shouted Charlie. “Because I ain’t.” + +“Change of front,” thought Hoopdriver, a little startled. “Where are we +going?” + +“Don’t sit there and be abusive,” said the man in velveteen. “He’s +offered to hit you, and if I was him, I’d hit you now.” + +“All right, then,” said Charlie, with a sudden change of front and +springing to his feet. “If I must, I must. Now, then!” At that, +Hoopdriver, the child of Fate, rose too, with a horrible sense that his +internal monitor was right. Things had taken a turn. He had made a mess +of it, and now there was nothing for it, so far as he could see, but to +hit the man at once. He and Charlie stood six feet apart, with a table +between, both very breathless and fierce. A vulgar fight in a +public-house, and with what was only too palpably a footman! Good +Heavens! And this was the dignified, scornful remonstrance! How the +juice had it all happened? Go round the table at him, I suppose. But +before the brawl could achieve itself, the man in gaiters intervened. +“Not here,” he said, stepping between the antagonists. Everyone was +standing up. + +“Charlie’s artful,” said the little man with the beard. + +“Buller’s yard,” said the man with the gaiters, taking the control of +the entire affair with the easy readiness of an accomplished +practitioner. “If the gentleman _don’t_ mind.” Buller’s yard, it +seemed, was the very place. “We’ll do the thing regular and decent, +_if_ you please.” And before he completely realized what was happening, +Hoopdriver was being marched out through the back premises of the inn, +to the first and only fight with fists that was ever to glorify his +life. + +Outwardly, so far as the intermittent moonlight showed, Mr. Hoopdriver +was quietly but eagerly prepared to fight. But inwardly he was a chaos +of conflicting purposes. It was extraordinary how things happened. One +remark had trod so closely on the heels of another, that he had had the +greatest difficulty in following the development of the business. He +distinctly remembered himself walking across from one room to the +other,—a dignified, even an aristocratic figure, primed with considered +eloquence, intent upon a scathing remonstrance to these wretched +yokels, regarding their manners. Then incident had flickered into +incident until here he was out in a moonlit lane,—a slight, dark figure +in a group of larger, indistinct figures,—marching in a quiet, +business-like way towards some unknown horror at Buller’s yard. Fists! +It was astonishing. It was terrible! In front of him was the pallid +figure of Charles, and he saw that the man in gaiters held Charles +kindly but firmly by the arm. + +“It’s blasted rot,” Charles was saying, “getting up a fight just for a +thing like that; all very well for ’im. ’E’s got ’is ’olidays; ’e +’asn’t no blessed dinner to take up to-morrow night like I ’ave.—No +need to numb my arm, _is_ there?” + +They went into Buller’s yard through gates. There were sheds in +Buller’s yard—sheds of mystery that the moonlight could not solve—a +smell of cows, and a pump stood out clear and black, throwing a clear +black shadow on the whitewashed wall. And here it was his face was to +be battered to a pulp. He knew this was the uttermost folly, to stand +up here and be pounded, but the way out of it was beyond his imagining. +Yet afterwards—? Could he ever face her again? He patted his Norfolk +jacket and took his ground with his back to the gate. How did one +square? So? Suppose one were to turn and run even now, run straight +back to the inn and lock himself into his bedroom? They couldn’t make +him come out—anyhow. He could prosecute them for assault if they did. +How did one set about prosecuting for assault? He saw Charles, with his +face ghastly white under the moon, squaring in front of him. + +He caught a blow on the arm and gave ground. Charles pressed him. Then +he hit with his right and with the violence of despair. It was a hit of +his own devising,—an impromptu,—but it chanced to coincide with the +regulation hook hit at the head. He perceived with a leap of exultation +that the thing his fist had met was the jawbone of Charles. It was the +sole gleam of pleasure he experienced during the fight, and it was +quite momentary. He had hardly got home upon Charles before he was +struck in the chest and whirled backward. He had the greatest +difficulty in keeping his feet. He felt that his heart was smashed +flat. “Gord darm!” said somebody, dancing toe in hand somewhere behind +him. As Mr. Hoopdriver staggered, Charles gave a loud and +fear-compelling cry. He seemed to tower over Hoopdriver in the +moonlight. Both his fists were whirling. It was annihilation coming—no +less. Mr. Hoopdriver ducked perhaps and certainly gave ground to the +right, hit, and missed. Charles swept round to the left, missing +generously. A blow glanced over Mr. Hoopdriver’s left ear, and the +flanking movement was completed. Another blow behind the ear. Heaven +and earth spun furiously round Mr. Hoopdriver, and then he became aware +of a figure in a light suit shooting violently through an open gate +into the night. The man in gaiters sprang forward past Mr. Hoopdriver, +but too late to intercept the fugitive. There were shouts, laughter, +and Mr. Hoopdriver, still solemnly squaring, realized the great and +wonderful truth—Charles had fled. He, Hoopdriver, had fought and, by +all the rules of war, had won. + +“That was a pretty cut under the jaw you gave him,” the toothless +little man with the beard was remarking in an unexpectedly friendly +manner. + +“The fact of it is,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, sitting beside the road to +Salisbury, and with the sound of distant church bells in his ears, “I +had to give the fellow a lesson; simply had to.” + +“It seems so dreadful that you should have to knock people about,” said +Jessie. + +“These louts get unbearable,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. “If now and then we +didn’t give them a lesson,—well, a lady cyclist in the roads would be +an impossibility.” + +“I suppose every woman shrinks from violence,” said Jessie. “I suppose +men _are_ braver—in a way—than women. It seems to me—I can’t +imagine—how one could bring oneself to face a roomful of rough +characters, pick out the bravest, and give him an exemplary thrashing. +I quail at the idea. I thought only Ouida’s guardsmen did things like +that.” + +“It was nothing more than my juty—as a gentleman,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. + +“But to walk straight into the face of danger!” + +“It’s habit,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, quite modestly, flicking off a +particle of cigarette ash that had settled on his knee. + + + + +XXXIII. +THE ABASEMENT OF MR. HOOPDRIVER + + +On Monday morning the two fugitives found themselves breakfasting at +the Golden Pheasant in Blandford. They were in the course of an +elaborate doubling movement through Dorsetshire towards Ringwood, where +Jessie anticipated an answer from her schoolmistress friend. By this +time they had been nearly sixty hours together, and you will understand +that Mr. Hoopdriver’s feelings had undergone a considerable +intensification and development. At first Jessie had been only an +impressionist sketch upon his mind, something feminine, active, and +dazzling, something emphatically “above” him, cast into his company by +a kindly fate. His chief idea, at the outset, as you know, had been to +live up to her level, by pretending to be more exceptional, more +wealthy, better educated, and, above all, better born than he was. His +knowledge of the feminine mind was almost entirely derived from the +young ladies he had met in business, and in that class (as in military +society and among gentlemen’s servants) the good old tradition of a +brutal social exclusiveness is still religiously preserved. He had an +almost intolerable dread of her thinking him a ‘bounder.’ Later he +began to perceive the distinction of her idiosyncracies. Coupled with a +magnificent want of experience was a splendid enthusiasm for abstract +views of the most advanced description, and her strength of conviction +completely carried Hoopdriver away. She was going to Live her Own Life, +with emphasis, and Mr. Hoopdriver was profoundly stirred to similar +resolves. So soon as he grasped the tenor of her views, he perceived +that he himself had thought as much from his earliest years. “Of +course,” he remarked, in a flash of sexual pride, “a man is freer than +a woman. End in the Colonies, y’know, there isn’t half the +Conventionality you find in society in this country.” + +He made one or two essays in the display of unconventionality, and was +quite unaware that he impressed her as a narrow-minded person. He +suppressed the habits of years and made no proposal to go to church. He +discussed church-going in a liberal spirit. “It’s jest a habit,” he +said, “jest a custom. I don’t see what good it does you at all, +really.” And he made a lot of excellent jokes at the chimney-pot hat, +jokes he had read in the _Globe_ ‘turnovers’ on that subject. But he +showed his gentle breeding by keeping his gloves on all through the +Sunday’s ride, and ostentatiously throwing away more than half a +cigarette when they passed a church whose congregation was gathering +for afternoon service. He cautiously avoided literary topics, except by +way of compliment, seeing that she was presently to be writing books. + +It was on Jessie’s initiative that they attended service in the +old-fashioned gallery of Blandford church. Jessie’s conscience, I may +perhaps tell you, was now suffering the severest twinges. She perceived +clearly that things were not working out quite along the lines she had +designed. She had read her Olive Schreiner and George Egerton, and so +forth, with all the want of perfect comprehension of one who is still +emotionally a girl. She knew the thing to do was to have a flat and to +go to the British Museum and write leading articles for the daily +papers until something better came along. If Bechamel (detestable +person) had kept his promises, instead of behaving with unspeakable +horridness, all would have been well. Now her only hope was that +liberal-minded woman, Miss Mergle, who, a year ago, had sent her out, +highly educated, into the world. Miss Mergle had told her at parting to +live fearlessly and truly, and had further given her a volume of +Emerson’s Essays and Motley’s “Dutch Republic,” to help her through the +rapids of adolescence. + +Jessie’s feelings for her stepmother’s household at Surbiton amounted +to an active detestation. There are no graver or more solemn women in +the world than these clever girls whose scholastic advancement has +retarded their feminine coquetry. In spite of the advanced tone of +‘Thomas Plantagenet’s’ antimarital novel, Jessie had speedily seen +through that amiable woman’s amiable defences. The variety of pose +necessitated by the _corps_ of ‘Men’ annoyed her to an altogether +unreasonable degree. To return to this life of ridiculous +unreality—unconditional capitulation to ‘Conventionality’ was an +exasperating prospect. Yet what else was there to do? You will +understand, therefore, that at times she was moody (and Mr. Hoopdriver +respectfully silent and attentive) and at times inclined to eloquent +denunciation of the existing order of things. She was a Socialist, +Hoopdriver learnt, and he gave a vague intimation that he went further, +intending, thereby, no less than the horrors of anarchism. He would +have owned up to the destruction of the Winter Palace indeed, had he +had the faintest idea where the Winter Palace was, and had his +assurance amounted to certainty that the Winter Palace was destroyed. +He agreed with her cordially that the position of women was +intolerable, but checked himself on the verge of the proposition that a +girl ought not to expect a fellow to hand down boxes for her when he +was getting the ‘swap’ from a customer. It was Jessie’s preoccupation +with her own perplexities, no doubt, that delayed the unveiling of Mr. +Hoopdriver all through Saturday and Sunday. Once or twice, however, +there were incidents that put him about terribly—even questions that +savoured of suspicion. + +On Sunday night, for no conceivable reason, an unwonted wakefulness +came upon him. Unaccountably he realised he was a contemptible liar. +All through the small hours of Monday he reviewed the tale of his +falsehoods, and when he tried to turn his mind from that, the financial +problem suddenly rose upon him. He heard two o’clock strike, and three. +It is odd how unhappy some of us are at times, when we are at our +happiest. + + + + +XXXIV. + + +“Good morning, Madam,” said Hoopdriver, as Jessie came into the +breakfast room of the Golden Pheasant on Monday morning, and he smiled, +bowed, rubbed his hands together, and pulled out a chair for her, and +rubbed his hands again. + +She stopped abruptly, with a puzzled expression on her face. “Where +_have_ I seen that before?” she said. + +“The chair?” said Hoopdriver, flushing. + +“No—the attitude.” + +She came forward and shook hands with him, looking the while curiously +into his face. “And—Madam?” + +“It’s a habit,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, guiltily. “A bad habit. Calling +ladies Madam. You must put it down to our colonial roughness. Out there +up country—y’know—the ladies—so rare—we call ’em all Madam.” + +“You _have_ some funny habits, brother Chris,” said Jessie. “Before you +sell your diamond shares and go into society, as you say, and stand for +Parliament—What a fine thing it is to be a man!—you must cure yourself. +That habit of bowing as you do, and rubbing your hands, and looking +expectant.” + +“It’s a habit.” + +“I know. But I don’t think it a good one. You don’t mind my telling +you?” + +“Not a bit. I’m grateful.” + +“I’m blessed or afflicted with a trick of observation,” said Jessie, +looking at the breakfast table. Mr. Hoopdriver put his hand to his +moustache and then, thinking this might be another habit, checked his +arm and stuck his hand into his pocket. He felt juiced awkward, to use +his private formula. Jessie’s eye wandered to the armchair, where a +piece of binding was loose, and, possibly to carry out her theory of an +observant disposition, she turned and asked him for a pin. + +Mr. Hoopdriver’s hand fluttered instinctively to his lappel, and there, +planted by habit, were a couple of stray pins he had impounded. + +“What an odd place to put pins!” exclaimed Jessie, taking it. + +“It’s ’andy,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. “I saw a chap in a shop do it once.” + +“You must have a careful disposition,” she said, over her shoulder, +kneeling down to the chair. + +“In the centre of Africa—up country, that is—one learns to value pins,” +said Mr. Hoopdriver, after a perceptible pause. “There weren’t over +many pins in Africa. They don’t lie about on the ground there.” His +face was now in a fine, red glow. Where would the draper break out +next? He thrust his hands into his coat pockets, then took one out +again, furtively removed the second pin and dropped it behind him +gently. It fell with a loud ‘ping’ on the fender. Happily she made no +remark, being preoccupied with the binding of the chair. + +Mr. Hoopdriver, instead of sitting down, went up to the table and stood +against it, with his finger-tips upon the cloth. They were keeping +breakfast a tremendous time. He took up his rolled serviette, looked +closely and scrutinisingly at the ring, then put his hand under the +fold of the napkin and examined the texture, and put the thing down +again. Then he had a vague impulse to finger his hollow wisdom +tooth—happily checked. He suddenly discovered he was standing as if the +table was a counter, and sat down forthwith. He drummed with his hand +on the table. He felt dreadfully hot and self-conscious. + +“Breakfast is late,” said Jessie, standing up. + +“Isn’t it?” + +Conversation was slack. Jessie wanted to know the distance to Ringwood. +Then silence fell again. + +Mr. Hoopdriver, very uncomfortable and studying an easy bearing, looked +again at the breakfast things and then idly lifted the corner of the +tablecloth on the ends of his fingers, and regarded it. “Fifteen +three,” he thought, privately. + +“Why do you do that?” said Jessie. + +“_What?_” said Hoopdriver, dropping the tablecloth convulsively. + +“Look at the cloth like that. I saw you do it yesterday, too.” + +Mr. Hoopdriver’s face became quite a bright red. He began pulling his +moustache nervously. “I know,” he said. “I know. It’s a queer habit, I +know. But out there, you know, there’s native servants, you know, +and—it’s a queer thing to talk about—but one has to look at things to +see, don’t y’know, whether they’re quite clean or not. It’s got to be a +habit.” + +“How odd!” said Jessie. + +“Isn’t it?” mumbled Hoopdriver. + +“If I were a Sherlock Holmes,” said Jessie, “I suppose I could have +told you were a colonial from little things like that. But anyhow, I +guessed it, didn’t I?” + +“Yes,” said Hoopdriver, in a melancholy tone, “you guessed it.” + +Why not seize the opportunity for a neat confession, and add, +“unhappily in this case you guessed wrong.” Did she suspect? Then, at +the psychological moment, the girl bumped the door open with her tray +and brought in the coffee and scrambled eggs. + +“I am rather lucky with my intuitions, sometimes,” said Jessie. + +Remorse that had been accumulating in his mind for two days surged to +the top of his mind. What a shabby liar he was! + +And, besides, he must sooner or later, inevitably, give himself away. + + + + +XXXV. + + +Mr. Hoopdriver helped the eggs and then, instead of beginning, sat with +his cheek on his hand, watching Jessie pour out the coffee. His ears +were a bright red, and his eyes bright. He took his coffee cup +clumsily, cleared his throat, suddenly leant back in his chair, and +thrust his hands deep into his pockets. “I’ll do it,” he said aloud. + +“Do what?” said Jessie, looking up in surprise over the coffee pot. She +was just beginning her scrambled egg. + +“Own up.” + +“Own what?” + +“Miss Milton—I’m a liar.” He put his head on one side and regarded her +with a frown of tremendous resolution. Then in measured accents, and +moving his head slowly from side to side, he announced, “Ay’m a +deraper.” + +“You’re a draper? I thought—” + +“You thought wrong. But it’s bound to come up. Pins, attitude, +habits—It’s plain enough. + +“I’m a draper’s assistant let out for a ten-days holiday. Jest a +draper’s assistant. Not much, is it? A counter-jumper.” + +“A draper’s assistant isn’t a position to be ashamed of,” she said, +recovering, and not quite understanding yet what this all meant. + +“Yes, it is,” he said, “for a man, in this country now. To be just +another man’s hand, as I am. To have to wear what clothes you are told, +and go to church to please customers, and work—There’s no other kind of +men stand such hours. A drunken bricklayer’s a king to it.” + +“But why are you telling me this now?” + +“It’s important you should know at once.” + +“But, Mr. Benson—” + +“That isn’t all. If you don’t mind my speaking about myself a bit, +there’s a few things I’d like to tell you. I can’t go on deceiving you. +My name’s not Benson. _Why_ I told you Benson, I _don’t_ know. Except +that I’m a kind of fool. Well—I wanted somehow to seem more than I was. +My name’s Hoopdriver.” + +“Yes?” + +“And that about South Africa—and that lion.” + +“Well?” + +“Lies.” + +“Lies!” + +“And the discovery of diamonds on the ostrich farm. Lies too. And all +the reminiscences of the giraffes—lies too. I never rode on no +giraffes. I’d be afraid.” + +He looked at her with a kind of sullen satisfaction. He had eased his +conscience, anyhow. She regarded him in infinite perplexity. This was a +new side altogether to the man. “But _why_,” she began. + +“Why did I tell you such things? _I_ don’t know. Silly sort of chap, I +expect. I suppose I wanted to impress you. But somehow, now, I want you +to know the truth.” + +Silence. Breakfast untouched. “I thought I’d tell you,” said Mr. +Hoopdriver. “I suppose it’s snobbishness and all that kind of thing, as +much as anything. I lay awake pretty near all last night thinking about +myself; thinking what a got-up imitation of a man I was, and all that.” + +“And you haven’t any diamond shares, and you are not going into +Parliament, and you’re not—” + +“All Lies,” said Hoopdriver, in a sepulchral voice. “Lies from +beginning to end. ’Ow I came to tell ’em I _don’t_ know.” + +She stared at him blankly. + +“I never set eyes on Africa in my life,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, +completing the confession. Then he pulled his right hand from his +pocket, and with the nonchalance of one to whom the bitterness of death +is passed, began to drink his coffee. + +“It’s a little surprising,” began Jessie, vaguely. + +“Think it over,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. “I’m sorry from the bottom of my +heart.” + +And then breakfast proceeded in silence. Jessie ate very little, and +seemed lost in thought. Mr. Hoopdriver was so overcome by contrition +and anxiety that he consumed an extraordinarily large breakfast out of +pure nervousness, and ate his scrambled eggs for the most part with the +spoon that belonged properly to the marmalade. His eyes were gloomily +downcast. She glanced at him through her eyelashes. Once or twice she +struggled with laughter, once or twice she seemed to be indignant. + +“I don’t know what to think,” she said at last. “I don’t know what to +make of you—brother Chris. I thought, do you know? that you were +perfectly honest. And somehow—” + +“Well?” + +“I think so still.” + +“Honest—with all those lies!” + +“I wonder.” + +“I don’t,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. “I’m fair ashamed of myself. But +anyhow—I’ve stopped deceiving you.” + +“I _thought_,” said the Young Lady in Grey, “that story of the lion—” + +“Lord!” said Mr. Hoopdriver. “Don’t remind me of _that_.” + +“I thought, somehow, I _felt_, that the things you said didn’t ring +quite true.” She suddenly broke out in laughter, at the expression of +his face. “Of _course_ you are honest,” she said. “How could I ever +doubt it? As if _I_ had never pretended! I see it all now.” + +Abruptly she rose, and extended her hand across the breakfast things. +He looked at her doubtfully, and saw the dancing friendliness in her +eyes. He scarcely understood at first. He rose, holding the marmalade +spoon, and took her proffered hand with abject humility. “Lord,” he +broke out, “if you aren’t enough—but there!” + +“I see it all now.” A brilliant inspiration had suddenly obscured her +humour. She sat down suddenly, and he sat down too. “You did it,” she +said, “because you wanted to help me. And you thought I was too +Conventional to take help from one I might think my social inferior.” + +“That was partly it,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. + +“How you misunderstood me!” she said. + +“You don’t mind?” + +“It was noble of you. But I am sorry,” she said, “you should think me +likely to be ashamed of you because you follow a decent trade.” + +“I didn’t know at first, you see,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. + +And he submitted meekly to a restoration of his self-respect. He was as +useful a citizen as could be,—it was proposed and carried,—and his +lying was of the noblest. And so the breakfast concluded much more +happily than his brightest expectation, and they rode out of ruddy +little Blandford as though no shadow of any sort had come between them. + + + + +XXXVI. + + +As they were sitting by the roadside among the pine trees half-way up a +stretch of hill between Wimborne and Ringwood, however, Mr. Hoopdriver +reopened the question of his worldly position. + +“Ju think,” he began abruptly, removing a meditative cigarette from his +mouth, “that a draper’s shopman _is_ a decent citizen?” + +“Why not?” + +“When he puts people off with what they don’t quite want, for +instance?” + +“Need he do that?” + +“Salesmanship,” said Hoopdriver. “Wouldn’t get a crib if he +didn’t.—It’s no good your arguing. It’s not a particularly honest nor a +particularly useful trade; it’s not very high up; there’s no freedom +and no leisure—seven to eight-thirty every day in the week; don’t leave +much edge to live on, does it?—real workmen laugh at us and educated +chaps like bank clerks and solicitors’ clerks look down on us. You look +respectable outside, and inside you are packed in dormitories like +convicts, fed on bread and butter and bullied like slaves. You’re just +superior enough to feel that you’re not superior. Without capital +there’s no prospects; one draper in a hundred don’t even earn enough to +marry on; and if he _does_ marry, his G.V. can just use him to black +boots if he likes, and he daren’t put his back up. That’s drapery! And +you tell me to be contented. Would _you_ be contented if you was a shop +girl?” + +She did not answer. She looked at him with distress in her brown eyes, +and he remained gloomily in possession of the field. + +Presently he spoke. “I’ve been thinking,” he said, and stopped. + +She turned her face, resting her cheek on the palm of her hand. There +was a light in her eyes that made the expression of them tender. Mr. +Hoopdriver had not looked in her face while he had talked. He had +regarded the grass, and pointed his remarks with redknuckled hands held +open and palms upwards. Now they hung limply over his knees. + +“Well?” she said. + +“I was thinking it this morning,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. + +“Yes?” + +“Of course it’s silly.” “Well?” + +“It’s like this. I’m twenty-three, about. I had my schooling all right +to fifteen, say. Well, that leaves me eight years behind.—Is it too +late? I wasn’t so backward. I did algebra, and Latin up to auxiliary +verbs, and French genders. I got a kind of grounding.” + +“And now you mean, should you go on working?” + +“Yes,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. “That’s it. You can’t do much at drapery +without capital, you know. But if I could get really educated. I’ve +thought sometimes...” + +“Why not?” said the Young Lady in Grey. + +Mr. Hoopdriver was surprised to see it in that light. “You think?” he +said. “Of course. You are a Man. You are free—” She warmed. “I wish I +were you to have the chance of that struggle.” + +“Am I Man _enough?_” said Mr. Hoopdriver aloud, but addressing himself. +“There’s that eight years,” he said to her. + +“You can make it up. What you call educated men—They’re not going on. +You can catch them. They are quite satisfied. Playing golf, and +thinking of clever things to say to women like my stepmother, and +dining out. You’re in front of them already in one thing. They think +they know everything. You don’t. And they know such little things.” + +“Lord!” said Mr. Hoopdriver. “How you encourage a fellow!” + +“If I could only help you,” she said, and left an eloquent hiatus. He +became pensive again. + +“It’s pretty evident you don’t think much of a draper,” he said +abruptly. + +Another interval. “Hundreds of men,” she said, “have come from the very +lowest ranks of life. There was Burns, a ploughman; and Hugh Miller, a +stonemason; and plenty of others. Dodsley was a footman—” + +“But drapers! We’re too sort of shabby genteel to rise. Our coats and +cuffs might get crumpled—” + +“Wasn’t there a Clarke who wrote theology? He was a draper.” + +“There was one started a sewing cotton, the only one I ever heard tell +of.” + +“Have you ever read ’Hearts Insurgent’?” + +“Never,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. He did not wait for her context, but +suddenly broke out with an account of his literary requirements. “The +fact is—I’ve read precious little. One don’t get much of a chance, +situated as I am. We have a library at business, and I’ve gone through +that. Most Besant I’ve read, and a lot of Mrs. Braddon’s and Rider +Haggard and Marie Corelli—and, well—a Ouida or so. They’re good +stories, of course, and first-class writers, but they didn’t seem to +have much to do with me. But there’s heaps of books one hears talked +about, I _haven’t_ read.” + +“Don’t you read any other books but novels?” + +“Scarcely ever. One gets tired after business, and you can’t get the +books. I have been to some extension lectures, of course, ‘Lizabethan +Dramatists,’ it was, but it seemed a little high-flown, you know. And I +went and did wood-carving at the same place. But it didn’t seem leading +nowhere, and I cut my thumb and chucked it.” + +He made a depressing spectacle, with his face anxious and his hands +limp. “It makes me _sick_,” he said, “to think how I’ve been fooled +with. My old schoolmaster ought to have a juiced _hiding_. He’s a +thief. He pretended to undertake to make a man of me, and he’s stole +twenty-three years of my life, filled me up with scraps and sweepings. +Here I am! I don’t _know_ anything, and I can’t _do_ anything, and all +the learning time is over.” + +“Is it?” she said; but he did not seem to hear her. “My o’ people +didn’t know any better, and went and paid thirty pounds premium—thirty +pounds down to have me made _this_. The G.V. promised to teach me the +trade, and he never taught me anything but to be a Hand. It’s the way +they do with draper’s apprentices. If every swindler was locked +up—well, you’d have nowhere to buy tape and cotton. It’s all very well +to bring up Burns and those chaps, but I’m not that make. Yet I’m not +such muck that I might not have been better—with teaching. I wonder +what the chaps who sneer and laugh at such as me would be if they’d +been fooled about as I’ve been. At twenty-three—it’s a long start.” + +He looked up with a wintry smile, a sadder and wiser Hoopdriver indeed +than him of the glorious imaginings. “It’s _you_ done this,” he said. +“You’re real. And it sets me thinking what I really am, and what I +might have been. Suppose it was all different—” + +“_Make_ it different.” + +“How?” + +“_Work_. Stop playing at life. Face it like a man.” + +“Ah!” said Hoopdriver, glancing at her out of the corners of his eyes. +“And even then—” + +“No! It’s not much good. I’m beginning too late.” + +And there, in blankly thoughtful silence, that conversation ended. + + + + +XXXVII. +IN THE NEW FOREST + + +At Ringwood they lunched, and Jessie met with a disappointment. There +was no letter for her at the post office. Opposite the hotel, The +Chequered Career, was a machine shop with a conspicuously second-hand +Marlborough Club tandem tricycle displayed in the window, together with +the announcement that bicycles and tricycles were on hire within. The +establishment was impressed on Mr. Hoopdriver’s mind by the +proprietor’s action in coming across the road and narrowly inspecting +their machines. His action revived a number of disagreeable +impressions, but, happily, came to nothing. While they were still +lunching, a tall clergyman, with a heated face, entered the room and +sat down at the table next to theirs. He was in a kind of holiday +costume; that is to say, he had a more than usually high collar, +fastened behind and rather the worse for the weather, and his long-tail +coat had been replaced by a black jacket of quite remarkable brevity. +He had faded brown shoes on his feet, his trouser legs were grey with +dust, and he wore a hat of piebald straw in the place of the customary +soft felt. He was evidently socially inclined. + +“A most charming day, sir,” he said, in a ringing tenor. + +“Charming,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, over a portion of pie. + +“You are, I perceive, cycling through this delightful country,” said +the clergyman. + +“Touring,” explained Mr. Hoopdriver. “I can imagine that, with a +properly oiled machine, there can be no easier nor pleasanter way of +seeing the country.” + +“No,” said Mr. Hoopdriver; “it isn’t half a bad way of getting about.” + +“For a young and newly married couple, a tandem bicycle must be, I +should imagine, a delightful bond.” + +“Quite so,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, reddening a little. + +“Do you ride a tandem?” + +“No—we’re separate,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. + +“The motion through the air is indisputably of a very exhilarating +description.” With that decision, the clergyman turned to give his +orders to the attendant, in a firm, authoritative voice, for a cup of +tea, two gelatine lozenges, bread and butter, salad, and pie to follow. +“The gelatine lozenges I must have. I require them to precipitate the +tannin in my tea,” he remarked to the room at large, and folding his +hands, remained for some time with his chin thereon, staring fixedly at +a little picture over Mr. Hoopdriver’s head. + +“I myself am a cyclist,” said the clergyman, descending suddenly upon +Mr. Hoopdriver. + +“Indeed!” said Mr. Hoopdriver, attacking the moustache. “What machine, +may I ask?” + +“I have recently become possessed of a tricycle. A bicycle is, I regret +to say, considered too—how shall I put it?—_flippant_ by my +parishioners. So I have a tricycle. I have just been hauling it +hither.” + +“Hauling!” said Jessie, surprised. + +“With a shoe lace. And partly carrying it on my back.” + +The pause was unexpected. Jessie had some trouble with a crumb. Mr. +Hoopdriver’s face passed through several phases of surprise. Then he +saw the explanation. “Had an accident?” + +“I can hardly call it an accident. The wheels suddenly refused to go +round. I found myself about five miles from here with an absolutely +immobile machine.” + +“Ow!” said Mr. Hoopdriver, trying to seem intelligent, and Jessie +glanced at this insane person. + +“It appears,” said the clergyman, satisfied with the effect he had +created, “that my man carefully washed out the bearings with paraffin, +and let the machine dry without oiling it again. The consequence was +that they became heated to a considerable temperature and jammed. Even +at the outset the machine ran stiffly as well as noisily, and I, being +inclined to ascribe this stiffness to my own lassitude, merely +redoubled my exertions.” + +“’Ot work all round,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. + +“You could scarcely put it more appropriately. It is my rule of life to +do whatever I find to do with all my might. I believe, indeed, that the +bearings became red hot. Finally one of the wheels jammed together. A +side wheel it was, so that its stoppage necessitated an inversion of +the entire apparatus,—an inversion in which I participated.” + +“Meaning, that you went over?” said Mr. Hoopdriver, suddenly much +amused. + +“Precisely. And not brooking my defeat, I suffered repeatedly. You may +understand, perhaps, a natural impatience. I expostulated—playfully, of +course. Happily the road was not overlooked. Finally, the entire +apparatus became rigid, and I abandoned the unequal contest. For all +practical purposes the tricycle was no better than a heavy chair +without castors. It was a case of hauling or carrying.” + +The clergyman’s nutriment appeared in the doorway. + +“Five miles,” said the clergyman. He began at once to eat bread and +butter vigorously. “Happily,” he said, “I am an eupeptic, energetic +sort of person on principle. I would all men were likewise.” + +“It’s the best way,” agreed Mr. Hoopdriver, and the conversation gave +precedence to bread and butter. + +“Gelatine,” said the clergyman, presently, stirring his tea +thoughtfully, “precipitates the tannin in one’s tea and renders it easy +of digestion.” + +“That’s a useful sort of thing to know,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. + +“You are altogether welcome,” said the clergyman, biting generously at +two pieces of bread and butter folded together. + +In the afternoon our two wanderers rode on at an easy pace towards +Stoney Cross. Conversation languished, the topic of South Africa being +in abeyance. Mr. Hoopdriver was silenced by disagreeable thoughts. He +had changed the last sovereign at Ringwood. The fact had come upon him +suddenly. Now too late he was reflecting upon his resources. There was +twenty pounds or more in the post office savings bank in Putney, but +his book was locked up in his box at the Antrobus establishment. Else +this infatuated man would certainly have surreptitiously withdrawn the +entire sum in order to prolong these journeyings even for a few days. +As it was, the shadow of the end fell across his happiness. Strangely +enough, in spite of his anxiety and the morning’s collapse, he was +still in a curious emotional state that was certainly not misery. He +was forgetting his imaginings and posings, forgetting himself +altogether in his growing appreciation of his companion. The most +tangible trouble in his mind was the necessity of breaking the matter +to her. + +A long stretch up hill tired them long before Stoney Cross was reached, +and they dismounted and sat under the shade of a little oak tree. Near +the crest the road looped on itself, so that, looking back, it sloped +below them up to the right and then came towards them. About them grew +a rich heather with stunted oaks on the edge of a deep ditch along the +roadside, and this road was sandy; below the steepness of the hill, +however, it was grey and barred with shadows, for there the trees +clustered thick and tall. Mr. Hoopdriver fumbled clumsily with his +cigarettes. + +“There’s a thing I got to tell you,” he said, trying to be perfectly +calm. + +“Yes?” she said. + +“I’d like to jest discuss your plans a bit, y’know.” + +“I’m very unsettled,” said Jessie. “You are thinking of writing Books?” + +“Or doing journalism, or teaching, or something like that.” + +“And keeping yourself independent of your stepmother?” + +“Yes.” + +“How long’d it take now, to get anything of that sort to do?” + +“I don’t know at all. I believe there are a great many women +journalists and sanitary inspectors, and black-and-white artists. But I +suppose it takes time. Women, you know, edit most papers nowadays, +George Egerton says. I ought, I suppose, to communicate with a literary +agent.” + +“Of course,” said Hoopdriver, “it’s very suitable work. Not being heavy +like the drapery.” + +“There’s heavy brain labour, you must remember.” + +“That wouldn’t hurt _you_,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, turning a compliment. + +“It’s like this,” he said, ending a pause. “It’s a juiced nuisance +alluding to these matters, but—we got very little more money.” + +He perceived that Jessie started, though he did not look at her. “I was +counting, of course, on your friend’s writing and your being able to +take some action to-day.” ‘Take some action’ was a phrase he had learnt +at his last ‘swop.’ + +“Money,” said Jessie. “I didn’t think of money.” + +“Hullo! Here’s a tandem bicycle,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, abruptly, and +pointing with his cigarette. + +She looked, and saw two little figures emerging from among the trees at +the foot of the slope. The riders were bowed sternly over their work +and made a gallant but unsuccessful attempt to take the rise. The +machine was evidently too highly geared for hill climbing, and +presently the rearmost rider rose on his saddle and hopped off, leaving +his companion to any fate he found proper. The foremost rider was a man +unused to such machines and apparently undecided how to dismount. He +wabbled a few yards up the hill with a long tail of machine wabbling +behind him. Finally, he made an attempt to jump off as one does off a +single bicycle, hit his boot against the backbone, and collapsed +heavily, falling on his shoulder. + +She stood up. “Dear me!” she said. “I hope he isn’t hurt.” + +The second rider went to the assistance of the fallen man. + +Hoopdriver stood up, too. The lank, shaky machine was lifted up and +wheeled out of the way, and then the fallen rider, being assisted, got +up slowly and stood rubbing his arm. No serious injury seemed to be +done to the man, and the couple presently turned their attention to the +machine by the roadside. They were not in cycling clothes Hoopdriver +observed. One wore the grotesque raiment for which the Cockney +discovery of the game of golf seems indirectly blamable. Even at this +distance the flopping flatness of his cap, the bright brown leather at +the top of his calves, and the chequering of his stockings were +perceptible. The other, the rear rider, was a slender little man in +grey. + +“Amatoors,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. + +Jessie stood staring, and a veil of thought dropped over her eyes. She +no longer regarded the two men who were now tinkering at the machine +down below there. + +“How much have you?” she said. + +He thrust his right hand into his pocket and produced six coins, +counted them with his left index finger, and held them out to her. +“Thirteen four half,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. “Every penny.” + +“I have half a sovereign,” she said. “Our bill wherever we stop—” The +hiatus was more eloquent than many words. + +“I never thought of money coming in to stop us like this,” said Jessie. + +“It’s a juiced nuisance.” + +“Money,” said Jessie. “Is it possible—Surely! Conventionality! May only +people of means—Live their own Lives? I never thought ...” + +Pause. + +“Here’s some more cyclists coming,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. + +The two men were both busy with their bicycle still, but now from among +the trees emerged the massive bulk of a ‘Marlborough Club’ tandem, +ridden by a slender woman in grey and a burly man in a Norfolk jacket. +Following close upon this came a lank black figure in a piebald straw +hat, riding a tricycle of antiquated pattern with two large wheels in +front. The man in grey remained bowed over the bicycle, with his +stomach resting on the saddle, but his companion stood up and addressed +some remark to the tricycle riders. Then it seemed as if he pointed up +hill to where Mr. Hoopdriver and his companion stood side by side. A +still odder thing followed; the lady in grey took out her handkerchief, +appeared to wave it for a moment, and then at a hasty motion from her +companion the white signal vanished. + +“Surely,” said Jessie, peering under her hand. “It’s never—” + +The tandem tricycle began to ascend the hill, quartering elaborately +from side to side to ease the ascent. It was evident, from his heaving +shoulders and depressed head, that the burly gentleman was exerting +himself. The clerical person on the tricycle assumed the shape of a +note of interrogation. Then on the heels of this procession came a +dogcart driven by a man in a billycock hat and containing a lady in +dark green. + +“Looks like some sort of excursion,” said Hoopdriver. + +Jessie did not answer. She was still peering under her hand. “Surely,” +she said. + +The clergyman’s efforts were becoming convulsive. With a curious +jerking motion, the tricycle he rode twisted round upon itself, and he +partly dismounted and partly fell off. He turned his machine up hill +again immediately and began to wheel it. Then the burly gentleman +dismounted, and with a courtly attentiveness assisted the lady in grey +to alight. There was some little difference of opinion as to +assistance, she so clearly wished to help push. Finally she gave in, +and the burly gentleman began impelling the machine up hill by his own +unaided strength. His face made a dot of brilliant colour among the +greys and greens at the foot of the hill. The tandem bicycle was now, +it seems, repaired, and this joined the tail of the procession, its +riders walking behind the dogcart, from which the lady in green and the +driver had now descended. + +“Mr. Hoopdriver,” said Jessie. “Those people—I’m almost sure—” + +“Lord!” said Mr. Hoopdriver, reading the rest in her face, and he +turned to pick up his machine at once. Then he dropped it and assisted +her to mount. + +At the sight of Jessie mounting against the sky line the people coming +up the hill suddenly became excited and ended Jessie’s doubts at once. +Two handkerchiefs waved, and some one shouted. The riders of the tandem +bicycle began to run it up hill, past the other vehicles. But our young +people did not wait for further developments of the pursuit. In another +moment they were out of sight, riding hard down a steady incline +towards Stoney Cross. + +Before they had dropped among the trees out of sight of the hill brow, +Jessie looked back and saw the tandem rising over the crest, with its +rear rider just tumbling into the saddle. “They’re coming,” she said, +and bent her head over her handles in true professional style. + +They whirled down into the valley, over a white bridge, and saw ahead +of them a number of shaggy little ponies frisking in the roadway. +Involuntarily they slackened. “Shoo!” said Mr. Hoopdriver, and the +ponies kicked up their heels derisively. At that Mr. Hoopdriver lost +his temper and charged at them, narrowly missed one, and sent them +jumping the ditch into the bracken under the trees, leaving the way +clear for Jessie. + +Then the road rose quietly but persistently; the treadles grew heavy, +and Mr. Hoopdriver’s breath sounded like a saw. The tandem appeared, +making frightful exertions, at the foot, while the chase was still +climbing. Then, thank Heaven! a crest and a stretch of up and down +road, whose only disadvantage was its pitiless exposure to the +afternoon sun. The tandem apparently dismounted at the hill, and did +not appear against the hot blue sky until they were already near some +trees and a good mile away. + +“We’re gaining,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, with a little Niagara of +perspiration dropping from brow to cheek. “That hill—” + +But that was their only gleam of success. They were both nearly spent. +Hoopdriver, indeed, was quite spent, and only a feeling of shame +prolonged the liquidation of his bankrupt physique. From that point the +tandem grained upon them steadily. At the Rufus Stone, it was scarcely +a hundred yards behind. Then one desperate spurt, and they found +themselves upon a steady downhill stretch among thick pine woods. +Downhill nothing can beat a highly geared tandem bicycle. Automatically +Mr. Hoopdriver put up his feet, and Jessie slackened her pace. In +another moment they heard the swish of the fat pneumatics behind them, +and the tandem passed Hoopdriver and drew alongside Jessie. Hoopdriver +felt a mad impulse to collide with this abominable machine as it passed +him. His only consolation was to notice that its riders, riding +violently, were quite as dishevelled as himself and smothered in sandy +white dust. + +Abruptly Jessie stopped and dismounted, and the tandem riders shot +panting past them downhill. “Brake,” said Dangle, who was riding +behind, and stood up on the pedals. For a moment the velocity of the +thing increased, and then they saw the dust fly from the brake, as it +came down on the front tire. Dangle’s right leg floundered in the air +as he came off in the road. The tandem wobbled. “Hold it!” cried Phipps +over his shoulder, going on downhill. “I can’t get off if you don’t +hold it.” He put on the brake until the machine stopped almost dead, +and then feeling unstable began to pedal again. Dangle shouted after +him. “Put out your foot, man,” said Dangle. + +In this way the tandem riders were carried a good hundred yards or more +beyond their quarry. Then Phipps realized his possibilities, slacked up +with the brake, and let the thing go over sideways, dropping on to his +right foot. With his left leg still over the saddle, and still holding +the handles, he looked over his shoulder and began addressing +uncomplimentary remarks to Dangle. “You only think of yourself,” said +Phipps, with a florid face. + +“They have forgotten us,” said Jessie, turning her machine. + +“There was a road at the top of the hill—to Lyndhurst,” said +Hoopdriver, following her example. + +“It’s no good. There’s the money. We must give it up. But let us go +back to that hotel at Rufus Stone. I don’t see why we should be led +captive.” + +So to the consternation of the tandem riders, Jessie and her companion +mounted and rode quietly back up the hill again. As they dismounted at +the hotel entrance, the tandem overtook them, and immediately +afterwards the dogcart came into view in pursuit. Dangle jumped off. + +“Miss Milton, I believe,” said Dangle, panting and raising a damp cap +from his wet and matted hair. + +“I _say_,” said Phipps, receding involuntarily. “Don’t go doing it +again, Dangle. _Help_ a chap.” + +“One minute,” said Dangle, and ran after his colleague. + +Jessie leant her machine against the wall, and went into the hotel +entrance. Hoopdriver remained in the hotel entrance, limp but defiant. + + + + +XXXVIII. +AT THE RUFUS STONE + + +He folded his arms as Dangle and Phipps returned towards him. Phipps +was abashed by his inability to cope with the tandem, which he was now +wheeling, but Dangle was inclined to be quarrelsome. “Miss Milton?” he +said briefly. + +Mr. Hoopdriver bowed over his folded arms. + +“Miss Milton within?” said Dangle. + +“_And_ not to be disturved,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. + +“You are a scoundrel, sir,” said Mr. Dangle. + +“Et your service,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. “She awaits ’er stepmother, +sir.” + +Mr. Dangle hesitated. “She will be here immediately,” he said. “Here is +her friend, Miss Mergle.” + +Mr. Hoopdriver unfolded his arms slowly, and, with an air of immense +calm, thrust his hands into his breeches pockets. Then with one of +those fatal hesitations of his, it occurred to him that this attitude +was merely vulgarly defiant; he withdrew both, returned one and pulled +at the insufficient moustache with the other. Miss Mergle caught him in +confusion. “Is this the man?” she said to Dangle, and forthwith, “How +_dare_ you, sir? How dare you face me? That poor girl!” + +“You will permit me to observe,” began Mr. Hoopdriver, with a splendid +drawl, seeing himself, for the first time in all this business, as a +romantic villain. + +“Ugh,” said Miss Mergle, unexpectedly striking him about the midriff +with her extended palms, and sending him staggering backward into the +hall of the hotel. + +“Let me pass,” said Miss Mergle, in towering indignation. “How dare you +resist my passage?” and so swept by him and into the dining-room, +wherein Jessie had sought refuge. + +As Mr. Hoopdriver struggled for equilibrium with the umbrella-stand, +Dangle and Phipps, roused from their inertia by Miss Mergle’s activity, +came in upon her heels, Phipps leading. “How dare you prevent that lady +passing?” said Phipps. + +Mr. Hoopdriver looked obstinate, and, to Dangle’s sense, dangerous, but +he made no answer. A waiter in full bloom appeared at the end of the +passage, guardant. “It is men of your stamp, sir,” said Phipps, “who +discredit manhood.” + +Mr. Hoopdriver thrust his hands into his pockets. “Who the juice are +you?” shouted Mr. Hoopdriver, fiercely. + +“Who are _you_, sir?” retorted Phipps. “Who are you? That’s the +question. What are _you_, and what are you doing, wandering at large +with a young lady under age?” + +“Don’t speak to him,” said Dangle. + +“I’m not a-going to tell all my secrets to any one who comes at me,” +said Hoopdriver. “Not Likely.” And added fiercely, “And that I tell +you, sir.” + +He and Phipps stood, legs apart and both looking exceedingly fierce at +one another, and Heaven alone knows what might not have happened, if +the long clergyman had not appeared in the doorway, heated but +deliberate. “Petticoated anachronism,” said the long clergyman in the +doorway, apparently still suffering from the antiquated prejudice that +demanded a third wheel and a black coat from a clerical rider. He +looked at Phipps and Hoopdriver for a moment, then extending his hand +towards the latter, he waved it up and down three times, saying, +“Tchak, tchak, tchak,” very deliberately as he did so. Then with a +concluding “Ugh!” and a gesture of repugnance he passed on into the +dining-room from which the voice of Miss Mergle was distinctly audible +remarking that the weather was extremely hot even for the time of year. + +This expression of extreme disapprobation had a very demoralizing +effect upon Hoopdriver, a demoralization that was immediately completed +by the advent of the massive Widgery. + +“Is this the man?” said Widgery very grimly, and producing a special +voice for the occasion from somewhere deep in his neck. + +“Don’t hurt him!” said Mrs. Milton, with clasped hands. “However much +wrong he has done her—No violence!” + +“’Ow many more of you?” said Hoopdriver, at bay before the umbrella +stand. “Where is she? What has he done with her?” said Mrs. Milton. + +“I’m not going to stand here and be insulted by a lot of strangers,” +said Mr. Hoopdriver. “So you needn’t think it.” + +“Please don’t worry, Mr. Hoopdriver,” said Jessie, suddenly appearing +in the door of the dining-room. “I’m here, mother.” Her face was white. + +Mrs. Milton said something about her child, and made an emotional +charge at Jessie. The embrace vanished into the dining-room. Widgery +moved as if to follow, and hesitated. “You’d better make yourself +scarce,” he said to Mr. Hoopdriver. + +“I shan’t do anything of the kind,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, with a +catching of the breath. “I’m here defending that young lady.” + +“You’ve done her enough mischief, I should think,” said Widgery, +suddenly walking towards the dining-room, and closing the door behind +him, leaving Dangle and Phipps with Hoopdriver. + +“Clear!” said Phipps, threateningly. + +“I shall go and sit out in the garden,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, with +dignity. “There I shall remain.” + +“Don’t make a row with him,” said Dangle. + +And Mr. Hoopdriver retired, unassaulted, in almost sobbing dignity. + + + + +XXXIX. + + +So here is the world with us again, and our sentimental excursion is +over. In the front of the Rufus Stone Hotel conceive a remarkable +collection of wheeled instruments, watched over by Dangle and Phipps in +grave and stately attitudes, and by the driver of a stylish dogcart +from Ringwood. In the garden behind, in an attitude of nervous +prostration, Mr. Hoopdriver was seated on a rustic seat. Through the +open window of a private sitting-room came a murmur of voices, as of +men and women in conference. Occasionally something that might have +been a girlish sob. + +“I fail to see what status Widgery has,” says Dangle, “thrusting +himself in there.” + +“He takes too much upon himself,” said Phipps. + +“I’ve been noticing little things, yesterday and to-day,” said Dangle, +and stopped. + +“They went to the cathedral together in the afternoon.” + +“Financially it would be a good thing for her, of course,” said Dangle, +with a gloomy magnanimity. + +He felt drawn to Phipps now by the common trouble, in spite of the +man’s chequered legs. “Financially it wouldn’t be half bad.” + +“He’s so dull and heavy,” said Phipps. + +Meanwhile, within, the clergyman had, by promptitude and dexterity, +taken the chair and was opening the case against the unfortunate +Jessie. I regret to have to say that my heroine had been appalled by +the visible array of public opinion against her excursion, to the pitch +of tears. She was sitting with flushed cheeks and swimming eyes at the +end of the table opposite to the clergyman. She held her handkerchief +crumpled up in her extended hand. Mrs. Milton sat as near to her as +possible, and occasionally made little dabs with her hand at Jessie’s +hand, to indicate forgiveness. These advances were not reciprocated, +which touched Widgery very much. The lady in green, Miss Mergle (B. +A.), sat on the opposite side near the clergyman. She was the +strong-minded schoolmistress to whom Jessie had written, and who had +immediately precipitated the pursuit upon her. She had picked up the +clergyman in Ringwood, and had told him everything forthwith, having +met him once at a British Association meeting. He had immediately +constituted himself administrator of the entire business. Widgery, +having been foiled in an attempt to conduct the proceedings, stood with +his legs wide apart in front of the fireplace ornament, and looked +profound and sympathetic. Jessie’s account of her adventures was a +chary one and given amidst frequent interruptions. She surprised +herself by skilfully omitting any allusion to the Bechamel episode. She +completely exonerated Hoopdriver from the charge of being more than an +accessory to her escapade. But public feeling was heavy against +Hoopdriver. Her narrative was inaccurate and sketchy, but happily the +others were too anxious to pass opinions to pin her down to +particulars. At last they had all the facts they would permit. + +“My dear young lady,” said the clergyman, “I can only ascribe this +extravagant and regrettable expedition of yours to the wildest +misconceptions of your place in the world and of your duties and +responsibilities. Even now, it seems to me, your present emotion is due +not so much to a real and sincere penitence for your disobedience and +folly as to a positive annoyance at our most fortunate interference—” + +“Not that,” said Mrs. Milton, in a low tone. “Not that.” + +“But _why_ did she go off like this?” said Widgery. “That’s what _I_ +want to know.” + +Jessie made an attempt to speak, but Mrs. Milton said “Hush!” and the +ringing tenor of the clergyman rode triumphantly over the meeting. “I +cannot understand this spirit of unrest that has seized upon the more +intelligent portion of the feminine community. You had a pleasant home, +a most refined and intelligent lady in the position of your mother, to +cherish and protect you—” + +“If I _had_ a mother,” gulped Jessie, succumbing to the obvious snare +of self-pity, and sobbing. + +“To cherish, protect, and advise you. And you must needs go out of it +all alone into a strange world of unknown dangers-” + +“I wanted to learn,” said Jessie. + +“You wanted to learn. May you never have anything to UNlearn.” + +“_Ah!_” from Mrs. Milton, very sadly. + +“It isn’t fair for all of you to argue at me at once,” submitted +Jessie, irrelevantly. + +“A world full of unknown dangers,” resumed the clergyman. “Your proper +place was surely the natural surroundings that are part of you. You +have been unduly influenced, it is only too apparent, by a class of +literature which, with all due respect to distinguished authoress that +shall be nameless, I must call the New Woman Literature. In that +deleterious ingredient of our book boxes—” + +“I don’t altogether agree with you there,” said Miss Mergle, throwing +her head back and regarding him firmly through her spectacles, and Mr. +Widgery coughed. + +“What _has_ all this to do with me?” asked Jessie, availing herself of +the interruption. + +“The point is,” said Mrs. Milton, on her defence, “that in my books—” + +“All I want to do,” said Jessie, “is to go about freely by myself. +Girls do so in America. Why not here?” + +“Social conditions are entirely different in America,” said Miss +Mergle. “Here we respect Class Distinctions.” + +“It’s very unfortunate. What I want to know is, why I cannot go away +for a holiday if I want to.” + +“With a strange young man, socially your inferior,” said Widgery, and +made her flush by his tone. + +“Why not?” she said. “With anybody.” + +“They don’t do that, even in America,” said Miss Mergle. + +“My dear young lady,” said the clergyman, “the most elementary +principles of decorum—A day will come when you will better understand +how entirely subservient your ideas are to the very fundamentals of our +present civilisation, when you will better understand the harrowing +anxiety you have given Mrs. Milton by this inexplicable flight of +yours. We can only put things down at present, in charity, to your +ignorance—” + +“You have to consider the general body of opinion, too,” said Widgery. + +“Precisely,” said Miss Mergle. “There is no such thing as conduct in +the absolute.” “If once this most unfortunate business gets about,” +said the clergyman, “it will do you infinite harm.” + +“But _I’ve_ done nothing wrong. Why should I be responsible for other +people’s—” + +“The world has no charity,” said Mrs. Milton. + +“For a girl,” said Jessie. “No.” + +“Now do let us stop arguing, my dear young lady, and let us listen to +reason. Never mind how or why, this conduct of yours will do you +infinite harm, if once it is generally known. And not only that, it +will cause infinite pain to those who care for you. But if you will +return at once to your home, causing it to be understood that you have +been with friends for these last few days—” + +“Tell lies,” said Jessie. “Certainly not. Most certainly not. But I +understand that is how your absence is understood at present, and there +is no reason—” + +Jessie’s grip tightened on her handkerchief. “I won’t go back,” she +said, “to have it as I did before. I want a room of my own, what books +I need to read, to be free to go out by myself alone, Teaching—” + +“Anything,” said Mrs. Milton, “anything in reason.” + +“But will you keep your promise?” said Jessie. + +“Surely you won’t dictate to your mother!” said Widgery. + +“My stepmother! I don’t want to dictate. I want definite promises now.” + +“This is most unreasonable,” said the clergyman. “Very well,” said +Jessie, swallowing a sob but with unusual resolution. “Then I won’t go +back. My life is being frittered away—” + +“_Let_ her have her way,” said Widgery. + +“A room then. All your Men. I’m not to come down and talk away half my +days—” + +“My dear child, if only to save you,” said Mrs. Milton. “If you don’t +keep your promise—” + +“Then I take it the matter is practically concluded,” said the +clergyman. “And that you very properly submit to return to your proper +home. And now, if I may offer a suggestion, it is that we take tea. +Freed of its tannin, nothing, I think, is more refreshing and +stimulating.” + +“There’s a train from Lyndhurst at thirteen minutes to six,” said +Widgery, unfolding a time table. “That gives us about half an hour or +three-quarters here—if a conveyance is obtainable, that is.” + +“A gelatine lozenge dropped into the tea cup precipitates the tannin in +the form of tannate of gelatine,” said the clergyman to Miss Mergle, in +a confidential bray. + +Jessie stood up, and saw through the window a depressed head and +shoulders over the top of the back of a garden seat. She moved towards +the door. “While you have tea, mother,” she said, “I must tell Mr. +Hoopdriver of our arrangements.” + +“Don’t you think I—” began the clergyman. + +“No,” said Jessie, very rudely; “I don’t.” + +“But, Jessie, haven’t you already—” + +“You are already breaking the capitulation,” said Jessie. + +“Will you want the whole half hour?” said Widgery, at the bell. + +“Every minute,” said Jessie, in the doorway. “He’s behaved very nobly +to me.” + +“There’s tea,” said Widgery. + +“I’ve had tea.” + +“He may not have behaved badly,” said the clergyman. “But he’s +certainly an astonishingly weak person to let a wrong-headed young +girl—” + +Jessie closed the door into the garden. + +Meanwhile Mr. Hoopdriver made a sad figure in the sunlight outside. It +was over, this wonderful excursion of his, so far as she was concerned, +and with the swift blow that separated them, he realised all that those +days had done for him. He tried to grasp the bearings of their +position. Of course, they would take her away to those social altitudes +of hers. She would become an inaccessible young lady again. Would they +let him say good-bye to her? + +How extraordinary it had all been! He recalled the moment when he had +first seen her riding, with the sunlight behind her, along the +riverside road; he recalled that wonderful night at Bognor, remembering +it as if everything had been done of his own initiative. “Brave, +brave!” she had called him. And afterwards, when she came down to him +in the morning, kindly, quiet. But ought he to have persuaded her then +to return to her home? He remembered some intention of the sort. Now +these people snatched her away from him as though he was scarcely fit +to live in the same world with her. No more he was! He felt he had +presumed upon her worldly ignorance in travelling with her day after +day. She was so dainty, so delightful, so serene. He began to +recapitulate her expressions, the light of her eyes, the turn of her +face.. . + +He wasn’t good enough to walk in the same road with her. Nobody was. +Suppose they let him say good-bye to her; what could he say? That? But +they were sure not to let her talk to him alone; her mother would be +there as—what was it? _Chaperone_. He’d never once had a chance of +saying what he felt; indeed, it was only now he was beginning to +realise what he felt. Love! he wouldn’t presume. It was worship. If +only he could have one more chance. He must have one more chance, +somewhere, somehow. Then he would pour out his soul to her eloquently. +He felt eloquently, and words would come. He was dust under her feet... + +His meditation was interrupted by the click of a door handle, and +Jessie appeared in the sunlight under the verandah. “Come away from +here,” she said to Hoopdriver, as he rose to meet her. “I’m going home +with them. We have to say good-bye.” + +Mr. Hoopdriver winced, opened and shut his mouth, and rose without a +word. + + + + +XL. + + +At first Jessie Milton and Mr. Hoopdriver walked away from the hotel in +silence. He heard a catching in her breath and glanced at her and saw +her lips pressed tight and a tear on her cheek. Her face was hot and +bright. She was looking straight before her. He could think of nothing +to say, and thrust his hands in his pockets and looked away from her +intentionally. After a while she began to talk. They dealt disjointedly +with scenery first, and then with the means of self-education. She took +his address at Antrobus’s and promised to send him some books. But even +with that it was spiritless, aching talk, Hoopdriver felt, for the +fighting mood was over. She seemed, to him, preoccupied with the +memories of her late battle, and that appearance hurt him. + +“It’s the end,” he whispered to himself. “It’s the end.” + +They went into a hollow and up a gentle wooded slope, and came at last +to a high and open space overlooking a wide expanse of country. There, +by a common impulse, they stopped. She looked at her watch—a little +ostentatiously. They stared at the billows of forest rolling away +beneath them, crest beyond crest, of leafy trees, fading at last into +blue. + +“The end” ran through his mind, to the exclusion of all speakable +thoughts. + +“And so,” she said, presently, breaking the silence, “it comes to +good-bye.” + +For half a minute he did not answer. Then he gathered his resolution. +“There is one thing I _must_ say.” + +“Well?” she said, surprised and abruptly forgetting the recent +argument. “I ask no return. But—” + +Then he stopped. “I won’t say it. It’s no good. It would be rot from +me—now. I wasn’t going to say anything. Good-bye.” + +She looked at him with a startled expression in her eyes. “No,” she +said. “But don’t forget you are going to work. Remember, brother Chris, +you are my friend. You will work. You are not a very strong man, you +know, now—you will forgive me—nor do you know all you should. But what +will you be in six years’ time?” + +He stared hard in front of him still, and the lines about his weak +mouth seemed to strengthen. He knew she understood what he could not +say. + +“I’ll work,” he said, concisely. They stood side by side for a moment. +Then he said, with a motion of his head, “I won’t come back to _them_. +Do you mind? Going back alone?” + +She took ten seconds to think. “No.” she said, and held out her hand, +biting her nether lip. “_Good-bye_,” she whispered. + +He turned, with a white face, looked into her eyes, took her hand +limply, and then with a sudden impulse, lifted it to his lips. She +would have snatched it away, but his grip tightened to her movement. +She felt the touch of his lips, and then he had dropped her fingers and +turned from her and was striding down the slope. A dozen paces away his +foot turned in the lip of a rabbit hole, and he stumbled forward and +almost fell. He recovered his balance and went on, not looking back. He +never once looked back. She stared at his receding figure until it was +small and far below her, and then, the tears running over her eyelids +now, turned slowly, and walked with her hands gripped hard together +behind her, towards Stoney Cross again. + +“I did not know,” she whispered to herself. “I did not understand. Even +now—No, I do not understand.” + + + + +XLI. +THE ENVOY + + +So the story ends, dear Reader. Mr. Hoopdriver, sprawling down there +among the bracken, must sprawl without our prying, I think, or +listening to what chances to his breathing. And of what came of it all, +of the six years and afterwards, this is no place to tell. In truth, +there is no telling it, for the years have still to run. But if you see +how a mere counter-jumper, a cad on castors, and a fool to boot, may +come to feel the little insufficiencies of life, and if he has to any +extent won your sympathies, my end is attained. (If it is not attained, +may Heaven forgive us both!) Nor will we follow this adventurous young +lady of ours back to her home at Surbiton, to her new struggle against +Widgery and Mrs. Milton combined. For, as she will presently hear, that +devoted man has got his reward. For her, also, your sympathies are +invited. + +The rest of this great holiday, too—five days there are left of it—is +beyond the limits of our design. You see fitfully a slender figure in a +dusty brown suit and heather mixture stockings, and brown shoes not +intended to be cycled in, flitting Londonward through Hampshire and +Berkshire and Surrey, going economically—for excellent reasons. Day by +day he goes on, riding fitfully and for the most part through +bye-roads, but getting a few miles to the north-eastward every day. He +is a narrow-chested person, with a nose hot and tanned at the bridge +with unwonted exposure, and brown, red-knuckled fists. A musing +expression sits upon the face of this rider, you observe. Sometimes he +whistles noiselessly to himself, sometimes he speaks aloud, “a juiced +good try, anyhow!” you hear; and sometimes, and that too often for my +liking, he looks irritable and hopeless. “I know,” he says, “I know. +It’s over and done. It isn’t _in_ me. You ain’t man enough, Hoopdriver. +Look at yer silly hands!... Oh, my God!” and a gust of passion comes +upon him and he rides furiously for a space. + +Sometimes again his face softens. “Anyhow, if I’m not to see her—she’s +going to lend me books,” he thinks, and gets such comfort as he can. +Then again; “Books! What’s books?” Once or twice triumphant memories of +the earlier incidents nerve his face for a while. “I put the ky-bosh on +_his_ little game,” he remarks. “I _did_ that,” and one might even call +him happy in these phases. And, by-the-bye, the machine, you notice, +has been enamel-painted grey and carries a sonorous gong. + +This figure passes through Basingstoke and Bagshot, Staines, Hampton, +and Richmond. At last, in Putney High Street, glowing with the warmth +of an August sunset and with all the ’prentice boys busy shutting up +shop, and the work girls going home, and the shop folks peeping abroad, +and the white ’buses full of late clerks and city folk rumbling home to +their dinners, we part from him. He is back. To-morrow, the early +rising, the dusting, and drudgery, begin again—but with a difference, +with wonderful memories and still more wonderful desires and ambitions +replacing those discrepant dreams. + +He turns out of the High Street at the corner, dismounts with a sigh, +and pushes his machine through the gates of the Antrobus stable yard, +as the apprentice with the high collar holds them open. There are words +of greeting. “South Coast,” you hear; and “splendid weather—splendid.” +He sighs. “Yes—swapped him off for a couple of sovs. It’s a juiced good +machine.” + +The gate closes upon him with a slam, and he vanishes from our ken. +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1264 *** |