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.