The complete works, p.38
The Complete Works, page 38
Then two black heads running swiftly.
"Better get out," said Phipps to Mrs. Milton, who stood fascinated in the doorway.
In another moment all three were hurrying up the steps. They found Dangle, hatless, standing up with cut hands extended, having his hands brushed by an officious small boy. A broad, ugly road ran downhill in a long vista, and in the distance was a little group of Botley inhabitants holding the big, black horse.
Even at that distance they could see the expression of conscious pride on the monster's visage. It was as wooden-faced a horse as you can imagine. The beasts in the Tower of London, on which the men in armour are perched, are the only horses I have ever seen at all like it. However, we are not concerned now with the horse, but with Dangle. " Hurt?" asked Phipps, eagerly, leading.
"Mr. Dangle!" cried Mrs. Milton, clasping her hands.
"Hullo!" said Dangle, not surprised in the slightest. "Glad you've come. I may want you. Bit of a mess I'm in--eigh? But I've caught 'em. At the very place I expected, too."
"Caught them!" said Widgery. Where are they?"
"Up there," he said, with a backward motion of his head. "About a mile up the hill. I left 'em. I HAD to."
"I don't understand," said Mrs. Milton, with that rapt, painful look again. "Have you found Jessie?"
"I have. I wish I could wash the gravel out of my hands somewhere. It was like this, you know. Came on them suddenly round a corner. Horse shied at the bicycles. They were sitting by the roadside botanising flowers. I just had time to shout,
'Jessie Milton, we've been looking for you,' and then that confounded brute bolted. I didn't dare turn round. I had all my work to do to save myself being turned over, as it was--so long as I did, I mean. I just shouted, 'Return to your friends. All will be forgiven.' And off I came, clatter, clatter. Whether they heard--"
"TAKE ME TO HER," said Mrs. Milton, with intensity, turning towards Widgery.
"Certainly," said Widgery, suddenly becoming active. "How far is it, Dangle?"
"Mile and a half or two miles. I was determined to find them, you know. I say though--Look at my hands! But I beg your pardon, Mrs.
Milton." He turned to Phipps. "Phipps, I say, where shall I wash the gravel out? And have a look at my knee?"
"There's the station," said Phipps, becoming helpful. Dangle made a step, and a damaged knee became evident. "Take my arm," said Phipps.
"Where can we get a conveyance?" asked Widgery of two small boys.
The two small boys failed to understand. They looked at one another.
"There's not a cab, not a go-cart, in sight," said Widgery. "It's a case of a horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse."
"There's a harse all right," said one of the small boys with a movement of the head.
"Don't you know where we can hire traps? asked Widgery. "Or a cart or-- anything?" asked Mrs. Milton.
"John Ooker's gart a cart, but no one can't 'ire'n," said the larger of the small boys, partially averting his face and staring down the road and making a song of it. "And so's my feyther, for's leg us broke."
"Not a cart even! Evidently. What shall we do?"
It occurred to Mrs. Milton that if Widgery was the man for courtly devotion, Dangle was infinitely readier of resource. "I suppose--" she said, timidly. "Perhaps if you were to ask Mr.
Dangle--"
And then all the gilt came off Widgery. He answered quite rudely.
"Confound Dangle! Hasn't he messed us up enough? He must needs drive after them in a trap to tell them we're coming, and now you want me to ask him--"
Her beautiful blue eyes were filled with tears. He stopped abruptly. "I'll go and ask Dangle," he said, shortly. "If you wish it." And went striding into the station and down the steps, leaving her in the road under the quiet inspection of the two little boys, and with a kind of ballad refrain running through her head, "Where are the Knights of the Olden Time?" and feeling tired to death and hungry and dusty and out of curl, and, in short, a martyr woman.
XXXI
It goes to my heart to tell of the end of that day, how the fugitives vanished into Immensity; how there were no more trains how Botley stared unsympathetically with a palpable disposition to derision, denying conveyances how the landlord of the Heron was suspicious, how the next day was Sunday, and the hot summer's day had crumpled the collar of Phipps and stained the skirts of Mrs. Milton, and dimmed the radiant emotions of the whole party.
Dangle, with sticking-plaster and a black eye, felt the absurdity of the pose of the Wounded Knight, and abandoned it after the faintest efforts. Recriminations never, perhaps, held the foreground of the talk, but they played like summer lightning on the edge of the conversation. And deep in the hearts of all was a galling sense of the ridiculous. Jessie, they thought, was most to blame. Apparently, too, the worst, which would have made the whole business tragic, was not happening. Here was a young woman
--young woman do I say? a mere girl!--had chosen to leave a comfortable home in Surbiton, and all the delights of a refined and intellectual circle, and had rushed off, trailing us after her, posing hard, mutually jealous, and now tired and weather-worn, to flick us off at last, mere mud from her wheel, into this detestable village beer-house on a Saturday night! And she had done it, not for Love and Passion, which are serious excuses one may recognise even if one must reprobate, but just for a Freak, just for a fantastic Idea ; for nothing, in fact, but the outraging of Common Sense. Yet withal, such was our restraint, that we talked of her still as one much misguided, as one who burthened us with anxiety, as a lamb astray, and Mrs.
Milton having eaten, continued to show the finest feelings on the matter.
She sat, I may mention, in the cushioned basket-chair, the only comfortable chair in the room, and we sat on incredibly hard, horsehair things having antimacassars tied to their backs by means of lemon-coloured bows. It was different from those dear old talks at Surbiton, somehow. She sat facing the window, which was open (the night was so tranquil and warm), and the dim light-
-for we did not use the lamp--suited her admirably. She talked in a voice that told you she was tired, and she seemed inclined to state a case against herself in the matter of "A Soul Untrammelled." It was such an evening as might live in a sympathetic memoir, but it was a little dull while it lasted.
"I feel," she said, "that I am to blame. I have Developed. That first book of mine--I do not go back upon a word of it, mind, but it has been misunderstood, misapplied."
"It has," said Widgery, trying to look so deeply sympathetic as to be visible in the dark. "Deliberately misunderstood."
"Don't say that," said the lady. "Not deliberately. I try and think that critics are honest. After their lights. I was not thinking of critics. But she--I mean--" She paused, an interrogation.
"It is possible," said Dangle, scrutinising his sticking-plaster.
"I write a book and state a case. I want people to THINK as I recommend, not to DO as I recommend. It is just Teaching. Only I make it into a story. I want to Teach new Ideas, new Lessons, to promulgate Ideas. Then when the Ideas have been spread abroad--Things will come about. Only now it is madness to fly in the face of the established order. Bernard Shaw, you know, has explained that with regard to Socialism. We all know that to earn all you consume is right, and that living on invested capital is wrong. Only we cannot begin while we are so few. It is Those Others."
"Precisely," said Widgery. "It is Those Others. They must begin first."
"And meanwhile you go on banking--"
"If I didn't, some one else would."
"And I live on Mr. Milton's Lotion while I try to gain a footing in Literature."
"TRY!" said Phipps. "You HAVE done so." And, "That's different,"
said Dangle, at the same time.
"You are so kind to me. But in this matter. Of course Georgina Griffiths in my book lived alone in a flat in Paris and went to life classes and had men visitors, but then she was over twenty-one."
"Jessica is only seventeen, and girlish for that," said Dangle.
"It alters everything. That child! It is different with a woman.
And Georgina Griffiths never flaunted her freedom-- on a bicycle, in country places. In this country. Where every one is so particular. Fancy, SLEEPING away from home. It's dreadful-- If it gets about it spells ruin for her."
"Ruin," said Widgery.
"No man would marry a girl like that," said Phipps.
"It must be hushed up," said Dangle.
"It always seems to me that life is made up of individuals, of individual cases. We must weigh each person against his or her circumstances. General rules don't apply--"
"I often feel the force of that," said Widgery. "Those are my rules. Of course my books--"
"It's different, altogether different," said Dangle. "A novel deals with typical cases."
"And life is not typical," said Widgery, with immense profundity.
Then suddenly, unintentionally, being himself most surprised and shocked of any in the room, Phipps yawned. The failing was infectious, and the gathering having, as you can easily understand, talked itself weary, dispersed on trivial pretences.
But not to sleep immediately. Directly Dangle was alone he began, with infinite disgust, to scrutinise his darkling eye, for he was a neat-minded little man in spite of his energy. The whole business--so near a capture--was horribly vexatious. Phipps sat on his bed for some time examining, with equal disgust, a collar he would have thought incredible for Sunday twenty-four hours before. Mrs. Milton fell a-musing on the mortality of even big, fat men with dog-like eyes, and Widgery was unhappy because he had been so cross to her at the station, and because so far he did not feel that he had scored over Dangle. Also he was angry with Dangle. And all four of them, being souls living very much upon the appearances of things, had a painful, mental middle distance of Botley derisive and suspicious, and a remoter background of London humorous, and Surbiton speculative. Were they really, after all, behaving absurdly?
MR. HOOPDRIVER, KNIGHT ERRANT
XXXII
As Mr. Dangle bad 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 thehedges 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
prosperouslooking 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 thinas 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 parloiir through the pelargoniums in the open window.
