A week later--and in the meantime he had been far from idle--Richard
Redgrave arrived in Dunstable. It was a warm, sunshiny, sleepy day, such
as suited that sleepy town, and showed off its fine old church and
fine old houses to perfection. There is no theatre in Dunstable,
no concert-hall, and nothing ever excites this staid borough save a
Parliamentary election or the biennial visit of Bosco’s Circus.
On the morning of Richard’s arrival Dunstable was certainly excited, and
the occasion was Bosco, who, with his horses, camels, elephants, lions,
bears, acrobats, riders, trapezists, and pavilions, had encamped in
a large field to the south of the town. Along the whole of its length
Dunstable, which consists chiefly of houses built on either side of
Watling Street for a distance of about a mile and a half, was happily
perturbed by the appearance of Bosco’s gigantic, unrivalled, and
indescribable circus, which was announced to give two performances, at
two-thirty and at seven-thirty of the clock. And, after all, a circus
which travels with two hundred horses (chiefly piebald and cream), and
with a single tent capable of holding four thousand people, is perhaps
worthy to cause excitement.
Richard determined to patronize Mr. Bosco’s entertainment--he thought he
might pick up useful information in the crowd--and at two-thirty he
paid his shilling and passed up the gorgeous but rickety steps into the
pavilion.
A brass band was playing at its full power, but above the noise of the
trumpets could be heard the voice of the showman--not Bosco himself,
but an individual hired for his big voice--saying, ‘Step up, ladies and
gentlemen. Today happens to be the thirtieth anniversary of our first
visit to this town, and to celebrate the event we shall present to you
exactly the same performance as we had the honour of presenting, by
special command, to Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor last year. Step up,
step up, and see our great spectacle, the Relief of Mafeking! See the
talking horse! See Juana, the most beautiful rider in the world! Step
up!
Children half-price to morning performance only.’ The big voice made
precisely this speech every day of his life all over England.
The circus was well filled, and the audience enthusiastic. The clowns
had an enormous success. As for Richard, he was more interested in
Juana, the horsewoman. She was a tall and beautiful girl, apparently
of the Spanish type. She rode, in a strictly conventional park riding
costume, a superb strawberry-roan mare, which at her command waltzed,
circled, caracoled, and did everything except stand on its head. Mare
and rider were equally graceful, equally calm and self-contained. It
was a charming item in the programme, but somewhat over the heads of
the audience, save a few who knew a born rider when they saw one. An
elephant was brought in, a young man in Indian costume being perched on
its neck. The mare and the elephant went through a number of evolutions
together. Finally the mare reared and lodged her forepaws on the
elephant’s tremendous flank, and so situated the strange pair made an
exit which roused the house from apathy to wild enthusiasm. Juana was
vociferously recalled. She re-entered on foot, holding her habit up with
one hand, a light whip in the other. Richard could not help being struck
by the rather cold, sad, disdainful beauty of the girl’s face. It seemed
wrong that the possessor of such a face should have to go through a
series of tricks twice daily for the diversion of a rustic audience.
‘That wench is as like Craig’s girl as two peas.’ Richard turned quickly
at the remark, which was made by one of two women who sat behind him
industriously talking. The other agreed that there was some likeness
between ‘Craig’s girl’ and the lovely Juana, but not a very remarkable
one.
Richard left his seat, went out of the pavilion, and walked round the
outside of it towards the part where the performers entered the ring.
Attached to the pavilion by a covered way was a smaller tent, which was
evidently used as a sort of green-room by the performers. Richard could
see within, and it happened that he saw Juana chatting with a girl who
was very much like Juana, though rather less stately. The young man in
Indian costume, who had ridden the elephant, was also of the group.
Soon the young man went to another corner of the tent, and the two girls
began to talk more rapidly and more earnestly. Lastly, they shook hands
and kissed, Juana burst into tears, and her companion ran out of the
tent. Richard followed her at a safe distance through the maze of
minor tents, vans, poles, and loose horses, to the main road. A small,
exquisitely-finished motor-car stood by the footpath; the girl jumped
on board, pulled a lever, and was off in a northerly direction through
Dunstable up Watling Street.
‘Is that the road to Hockliffe?’ he asked a policeman.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘It’s Raphael Craig’s daughter, I bet,’ he said to himself, and for some
reason or other smiled a satisfied smile. Then he added, half aloud,
‘But who is Juana?’
He went back to see the rest of the performance, and he had scarcely
sat down before he had cause to wish that he had remained outside. The
famous strawberry-roan mare, formerly ridden by Juana, was making a
second appearance as the talking horse, in charge of the young man
who had shone before in Indian costume, but who now wore the dress of a
riding-master. An attendant was walking along the front benches with
a bundle of numbered cards. He offered one to Richard, and Richard
thoughtlessly accepted the offer. From that moment the eyes of the
entire assemblage were upon him.
‘The gentleman,’ said the young man in charge of the mare, ‘has chosen
a card. Now, this wonderful animal will tell you the number of the card,
and a lot of other interesting information. I shall put questions to the
animal, which will answer “Yes” by nodding its head, and “No” by shaking
its head, and will count by stamping its off fore-foot on the ground.’
Richard was disgusted at being thus made the centre of a trick, but
there was no help for it.
‘What is the number of the card drawn by the gentleman?’ the young man
demanded of the mare.
She stamped her foot ten times on the tan.
‘Number ten,’ said the young man. ‘Is that so, sir?’
It was so. Richard nodded. Loud applause.
‘Is the holder of the card a married man?’
The mare shook her head. Laughter.
‘He is a bachelor?’
The mare lowered her head. More laughter.
‘Will he ever be married?’
The mare lowered her head again. Loud laughter.
‘Soon?’
Again the mare signed an affirmative. Shrieks of laughter.
‘To a pretty girl?’
The mare nodded decisively.
‘Will they be blessed with many children?’
The mare kicked out with her hindlegs, and ran as if horror-struck from
the ring, amid roars of rustic delight. This simple trick and joke,
practised for years and years with all kinds of horses, had helped as
much as anything to make the fortune of Bosco’s circus. It never failed
of its effect.
The final ‘turn’ of the show was the Relief of Mafeking. Under cover of
the noise and smoke of gunpowder, Richard contrived to make a stealthy
exit; he was still blushing. As he departed he caught a last glimpse of
Juana, who came into the ring in the character of a Red Cross nurse on
the field of battle.
That evening at midnight Richard issued forth from the Old Sugar Loaf
Hotel on a motor-car. Bosco’s circus was already leaving the town, and
as the straggling procession of animals and vehicles wandered up
Watling Street under the summer moon it made a weird and yet attractive
spectacle--such a spectacle as can be seen only on the high-roads
of England. Its next halting-place was eighteen miles north--a long
journey. The cavalcade was a hindrance to Richard, for he particularly
desired to have Watling Street between Dunstable and Hockliffe to
himself that night. He waited, therefore, until the whole of Bosco had
vanished ahead out of sight. The elephants, four in number, brought up
the rear of the procession, and they were under control of the young man
whose trick with the strawberry-roan mare had put Richard to the blush.
There was no sign of the mare nor of Juana.
Watling Street runs through a deep chalk-cutting immediately to the north
of Dunstable, and then along an embankment. This region at the foot of
the Chiltern Hills is famous for its chalk, which is got from immense
broad pits to the west of the high-road. As Richard’s car ran through
the cutting--it was electrical, odourless, and almost noiseless--he
perceived in front of him the elephant herd standing in the road. A
little further on he descried the elephant-keeper, who was engaged in
converse with a girl. Leaving his motor-car to take care of itself,
Richard climbed transversely up the side of the cutting, and thus
approached nearer to the pair. He saw now, in the brilliant white
radiance of the moon, that the girl was the same girl who had kissed
Juana in the circus tent. She was apparently urging the man to some
course of action at which he hesitated. Then the elephant-keeper called
aloud to his elephants, and the man and the girl, followed by the
elephants, and followed also by Richard, passed through an open gate
at the northern end of the cutting, and so crossed a very large
uncultivated field. The extremity of the field descended steeply into a
huge chalk-pit, perhaps a hundred yards in circumference and sixty feet
deep, by means of a rough cart-track. At the end of the cart-track,
in the bottom of the pit, was a motorcar. Richard watched the
elephant-keeper single out one of the elephants and attach it by ropes
to the motor-car. Slowly the ponderous and docile creature dragged the
vehicle up the steep cart-track. The girl clapped her hands with joy.
‘If she is Craig’s daughter----’ Richard exclaimed softly, and then
stopped.
Silhouetted sharply against the night-sky was the figure of Juana on
the strawberry-roan. Mare and rider stood motionless at the top of the
cart-track, and Richard, from his place of concealment, could see that
Juana was gazing fixedly into the chalk-pit The man with the elephants
and the girl with the motor-car had not perceived her, and before
they could do so she had ridden off down the field. It was a wonderful
apparition, a wonderful scene--the moon, the vast hemisphere of the
purple sky, the glittering and immense whiteness of the chalk-pit,
the exotic forms of the elephants contrasted with the motor-car, and,
lastly, the commanding and statuesque equestrian on the brow. Richard
was quite impressed by the mere beauty and strangeness, as well as by
the mystery, of it all. What did it mean? Why should Juana, an expert
who would certainly receive a generous salary, be riding at one o’clock
a.m., seeing that the principal performers, as Richard knew, usually
travelled by train from one town to the next? And why should she have
followed these other two--the elephant-keeper and the young girl who
so remarkably resembled herself? And having followed them and observed
their movements, why should she silently depart, without making known
her presence? He had been able to examine Juana’s face in the strong
moonlight, and again he was moved by its sad, calm, cold dignity. Juana
seemed as though, at the age of twenty-five or so--she could not be
more--she had suffered all the seventy and seven different sorrows which
this world is said to contain, and had emerged from them resolute and
still lovely, but with a withered heart. Her face almost frightened
Richard.
With infinite deliberation the elephants and the motor-car arrived at
the top of the cart-track. The three elephants not engaged in hauling
appeared to have formed a prejudice against the motor-car; the fourth,
the worker, who had been used to dragging logs of teak in India,
accepted his rôle with indifference. He pulled nonchalantly, as if he
was pulling a child’s go-cart, thus, happily, leaving the keeper free
to control the other beasts. At length the cortège--it had all the
solemnity of a funeral pageant--passed safely into the field and out
of Richard’s sight towards the highroad. He heard the spit, spit of the
petrol-engine of the motor-car, now able to move of itself on the easy
gradient, and simultaneously a startling snort and roar from one of the
elephants. It occurred to him to hope that the leviathan had not taken
it into his gigantic head to wreck the machine. The notion was amusing,
and he laughed when he thought how frail a thing a motor-car would prove
before the attack of an elephant’s trunk. Then he proceeded duly towards
the road, hugging the hedge. Once more he heard the snort and the roar,
and then a stern cry of command from the keeper, a little scream from
the girl, and an angry squeak from the elephant. The spit, spit of the
motor-car at the same moment ceased.
When, after some minutes of scouting, he reached the gate and had a view
of the road, he rather expected to see the motor-car lying in fragments
in Watling Street, with, possibly, a couple of mangled corpses in
the near neighbourhood, and a self-satisfied elephant dominating the
picture. But his horrid premonitions were falsified.. The keeper had
clearly proved the superiority of man over the brute creation; he
was astride the neck of the obstreperous elephant, and the herd were
trampling, with their soft, flabby footfalls, down Watling Street, along
the sloping embankment, into the deep, broad valley which separates
Dunstable from the belt of villages to the north of it. The lady with
the motor-car stood quiescent in the road. She had got safely out of
her chalk-pit, and was now waiting for the elephants to disappear before
proceeding on her journey. Richard hesitated whether to return and
examine the chalk-pit or to keep in touch with the lady. What any
creature--especially a woman, and a young woman--could be doing with a
motor-car in a chalk-pit in the middle of the night passed his wit to
conceive. Nor could he imagine how any sane driver of a motor-car could
take his car down such a steep slope as that cart-track with the least
hope of getting it up again without the assistance of an elephant, or
at least a team of horses. She must surely have been urged by the very
strongest reasons to descend into the pit. What were those reasons? He
wanted badly to examine the chalk-pit at once, but he decided ultimately
that it would be better to watch the lady--‘Craig’s girl.’ The chalk-pit
would always remain where it was, whereas the lady, undoubtedly an
erratic individuality, might be at the other end of the world by
breakfast-time. He crept back to his own car, found it unharmed in the
deep shadow where he had left it, and mounted.
By this time the elephant herd had accomplished a good quarter of a mile
down the gradual declivity of the embankment. ‘Craig’s girl’ started
her car and followed gently. It seemed, in the profound silence of the
night, that the spit, spit of her engine must be heard for miles and
miles around. Richard started his own car, and rolled noiselessly in the
traces of his forerunner. The surface of the road was perfect--for the
Bedfordshire County Council takes a proper pride in its share of this
national thoroughfare--and the vehicles moved with admirable ease,
Richard’s being about a couple of hundred yards in the rear. Just at
the top of the embankment is a tiny village, appropriately called Chalk
Hill, and this village possesses a post pillar-box, a Wesleyan chapel of
the size of a cottage, and an inn--the Green Man. As Richard swung past
the Green Man a head popped out of one of its windows.
‘Anything wrong?’ asked a man.
‘No,’ said Richard, stopping his car and lowering his voice to a
whisper, lest the girl in front should hear and turn round. ‘Go back to
bed,’ he added.
‘Go to bed yourself,’ the man said, apparently angry at this injunction.
‘You circus-folk, you’ve got motor-cars now; as if camels and alligators
wasn’t enough, you’ve got motorcars a-grunting and a-rattling. Three
blessed hours you’ve been a-passing this house, and my wife down with
erysipelas.’
Grumbling, the man closed the window. Richard laughed at being
identified with the retinue of Bosco’s circus. He felt that it was an
honour, for in the eyes of the village these circus-folk move always in
an atmosphere of glory and splendour and freedom.
He passed on. The girl in front was gradually overtaking the elephants,
which were scattered across the width of the road. Suddenly one of
them turned--the one ridden by the keeper--and charged furiously back,
followed more slowly by the others. Evidently the sound of the spit,
spit of the motor-car had renewed the animal’s anger. Perhaps it
thought: ‘I will end this spit, spit once for all.’ Whatever the brute’s
thoughts, the keeper could not dissuade it from its intentions, though
Richard could see him prodding it behind the ear with a goad. The
girl, ‘Craig’s girl,’ perceived the danger which she ran, and, after a
moment’s vacillation, began to wheel round, with the object of flying
before this terrible elephantine wrath. But that moment’s vacillation
was her undoing. Ere she could get the machine headed straight in
the opposite direction the elephant was upon her and her car. Richard
trembled with apprehension, for the situation was in truth appalling.
With a single effort the elephant might easily have pitched both girl
and car down the steep side of the embankment, which was protected only
by a thin iron rail. Richard stopped his own car and waited. He could do
nothing whatever, and he judged that the presence of himself and another
car in the dreadful altercation might lead even to further disasters.
[Illustration: 0053]
The elephant stood over the car, waving his trunk, seemingly undecided
how to go about his work of destruction; the keeper on his neck called
and coaxed in vain. The girl... Richard could see only the girl’s back;
he was thankful that he could not see her face. The other elephants
waited in a semicircle behind. Then, after an interval that was like
a hundred years, the leading elephant seized the steering-wheel of the
motor-car, and, twisting it off the rod as though it had been made of
putty, flung it into the road. That action seemed to appease the brute.
He turned quietly away and slouched off; his keeper had now ceased to
prod him. The other elephants followed meekly enough. The girl on the
motor-car did not stir. The peril was past, but Richard found his
foot trembling against the foot-brake of his car--such had been his
agitation.
The elephant herd was five hundred yards away before the girl gave the
slightest sign of life. Then she slowly dismounted, and waved a hand to
the keeper, who had also dismounted from the elephant’s neck--a wave of
the hand that was evidently intended to convey an assurance that she was
unharmed and able to take care of herself. The keeper gave an answering
signal, and--wisely, as Richard thought--continued his way up the
opposite hill.
Richard pulled over the starting-lever of his car and leisurely
approached the girl. She had already seen him, since her own car was
more than half turned round, and therefore there could be no object
in his attempting any further concealment. He drew up by her side and
raised his peaked cap.
‘That was a nasty position for you to be in,’ he said, with genuine
sympathy.
‘Oh, those elephants!’ she began gaily; ‘their trunks are so thick and
hairy, you’ve no idea----’
Then she stopped, and, without the least warning, burst into tears.
It was a very natural reaction, and no one could wonder at such an
exhibition. Nevertheless, Richard felt excessively awkward; excessively
at a loss what to do under the circumstances. He could scarcely take her
in his arms and soothe her like a child; yet that was just the thing he
wished to do.
‘Come, come,’ he said, and his spectacles gleamed paternally at her in
the moonlight; ‘it is all over now.’
She pulled out a microscopic lace handkerchief, wiped her eyes, and
looked at him.
‘Forgive me,’ she exclaimed; and then, smiling: ‘It shan’t occur again.’
‘You are a brave woman,’ he said sincerely--‘a very brave woman.’
‘How?’ she asked simply. ‘I did nothing.’
‘Most women would have fainted or screamed, and then there is no knowing
what might not have happened.’ He added, as she made no remark: ‘Can
I be of any assistance? Have you far to go? I suppose you must have
miscalculated your distances.’
‘Why?’ she asked, in reference to the last remark.
‘Oh, it’s so late, that’s all.’
‘It is,’ she said, as though the fact had just struck her. ‘Yes, I must
have miscalculated my distances. Fortunately, I have only about a mile
more. You see the yellow house on the hill towards Hockliffe? That is my
destination.’
‘You are Miss Craig?’ he said inquiringly.
‘I am. You belong, then, to these parts?’
‘I happen to know the name of the owner of Queen’s Farm, that is all,’
he admitted cautiously.
‘I am much obliged for your sympathy,’ she said. ‘I shall walk home, and
send a horse for the car to-morrow morning.’
‘I could tow it behind my car,’ he suggested.
‘Pardon me, you couldn’t,’ she said flatly; ‘the steering is smashed.’
‘I had thought of that,’ he replied quietly, as he picked up the small
broken wheel out of the road. ‘If we tie a rope to either end of your
front axle, and join them at the rear of my car, your car would steer
itself automatically.’
‘So it would,’ she said; ‘you are resourceful.
I will accept your offer.’ Then she examined his car with the rapid
glance of an expert.
‘Well I never!’ she murmured.
He looked a question.
‘It is a curious coincidence,’ she explained, ‘but we have recently
ordered an electric car precisely like yours, and were expecting it to
arrive to-morrow--my father and I, I mean. Yours is one of the
Williamson Motor Company’s vehicles, is it not?’
Richard bowed.
‘There is no coincidence,’ he said. ‘This car is destined for Mr. Craig.
I am bringing it up to Hockliffe. You will remember that Mr. Craig asked
that it should be sent by road in charge of a man?’
‘A man!’ she repeated; and, after a pause:
‘You are, perhaps, a partner in the Williamson Company?’
‘Not a partner,’ he said.
It may be explained here that the aforesaid Williamson Company had
supplied Lord Dolmer with his motor-car. Richard had visited their
office in order to ascertain if, by chance, Mr. Raphael Craig was a
customer of theirs, and had been told that he was, and, further, that
there was an electric car then on order for him. It was a matter of but
little difficulty for Richard to persuade Williamson’s manager to allow
him to pose for a few days as an employe of the company, and to take the
car up to Hockliffe himself. He foresaw that in the rôle of a motor-car
expert he might gain a footing at Craig’s house which could not be
gained in any other way.
When the two cars had been attached, and the journey--necessarily a slow
one--began, a rather desultory conversation sprang up between Richard
and Miss Craig, who sat by his side in the leading car.
‘You, too, must have miscalculated your distances,’ she said suddenly,
after they had discussed the remarkable beauty of the moon.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I like travelling at night. I admit that I thought
Hockliffe considerably further on. I expected to deliver the car about
breakfast-time.’
‘You will permit us to offer you a bed?’ she said. ‘You will be able to
get at least five hours’ sleep. We breakfast at seven. It is early, but
that is my father’s custom.’
He thanked her.
‘Take the little road on the right,’ she directed him later. ‘It leads
only to our house In Ireland we call such a road a boreen.’
It was then that he noted a faint Irish accent in her voice.
Richard brought the two cars to a standstill in front of a green gate.
Leaning over the gate was an old man.
‘Teresa!’ the old man murmured.
She rushed at him and kissed him passionately.