Герберт Джордж Уэллс
The Wheels of Chance
XV. AN INTERLUDE
And now let us for a space leave Mr. Hoopdriver in the dusky Midhurst North Street, and return to the two folks beside the railway bridge between Milford and Haslemere. She was a girl of eighteen, dark, fine featured, with bright eyes, and a rich, swift colour under her warm-tinted skin. Her eyes were all the brighter for the tears that swam in them. The man was thirty three or four, fair, with a longish nose overhanging his sandy flaxen moustache, pale blue eyes, and a head that struck out above and behind. He stood with his feet wide apart, his hand on his hip, in an attitude that was equally suggestive of defiance and aggression. They had watched Hoopdriver out of sight. The unexpected interruption had stopped the flood of her tears. He tugged his abundant moustache and regarded her calmly. She stood with face averted, obstinately resolved not to speak first. “Your behaviour,” he said at last, “makes you conspicuous.”
She turned upon him, her eyes and cheeks glowing, her hands clenched. “You unspeakable CAD,” she said, and choked, stamped her little foot, and stood panting.
“Unspeakable cad! My dear girl! Possible I AM an unspeakable cad. Who wouldn’t be – for you?”
“‘Dear girl!’ How DARE you speak to me like that? YOU – ”
“I would do anything – ”
“OH!”
There was a moment’s pause. She looked squarely into his face, her eyes alight with anger and contempt, and perhaps he flushed a little. He stroked his moustache, and by an effort maintained his cynical calm. “Let us be reasonable,” he said.
“Reasonable! That means all that is mean and cowardly and sensual in the world.”
“You have always had it so – in your generalising way. But let us look at the facts of the case – if that pleases you better.”
With an impatient gesture she motioned him to go on.
“Well,” he said, – “you’ve eloped.”
“I’ve left my home,” she corrected, with dignity. “I left my home because it was unendurable. Because that woman – ”
“Yes, yes. But the point is, you have eloped with me.”
“You came with me. You pretended to be my friend. Promised to help me to earn a living by writing. It was you who said, why shouldn’t a man and woman be friends? And now you dare – you dare – ”
“Really, Jessie, this pose of yours, this injured innocence – ”
“I will go back. I forbid you – I forbid you to stand in the way – ”
“One moment. I have always thought that my little pupil was at least clear-headed. You don’t know everything yet, you know. Listen to me for a moment.”
“Haven’t I been listening? And you have only insulted me. You who dared only to talk of friendship, who scarcely dared hint at anything beyond.”
“But you took the hints, nevertheless. You knew. You KNEW. And you did not mind. MIND! You liked it. It was the fun of the whole thing for you. That I loved you, and could not speak to you. You played with it – ”
“You have said all that before. Do you think that justifies you?”
“That isn’t all. I made up my mind – Well, to make the game more even. And so I suggested to you and joined with you in this expedition of yours, invented a sister at Midhurst – I tell you, I HAVEN’T a sister! For one object – ”
“Well?”
“To compromise you.”
She started. That was a new way of putting it. For half a minute neither spoke. Then she began half defiantly: “Much I am compromised. Of course – I have made a fool of myself – ”
“My dear girl, you are still on the sunny side of eighteen, and you know very little of this world. Less than you think. But you will learn. Before you write all those novels we have talked about, you will have to learn. And that’s one point – ” He hesitated. “You started and blushed when the man at breakfast called you Ma’am. You thought it a funny mistake, but you did not say anything because he was young and nervous – and besides, the thought of being my wife offended your modesty. You didn’t care to notice it. But – you see; I gave your name as MRS. Beaumont.” He looked almost apologetic, in spite of his cynical pose. “MRS. Beaumont,” he repeated, pulling his flaxen moustache and watching the effect.
She looked into his eyes speechless. “I am learning fast,” she said slowly, at last.
He thought the time had come for an emotional attack. “Jessie,” he said, with a sudden change of voice, “I know all this is mean, isvillanous. But do you think that I have done all this scheming, all this subterfuge, for any other object – ”
She did not seem to listen to his words. “I shall ride home,” she said abruptly.
“To her?”
She winced.
“Just think,” said he, “what she could say to you after this.”
“Anyhow, I shall leave you now.”
“Yes? And go – ”
“Go somewhere to earn my living, to be a free woman, to live without conventionality – ”
“My dear girl, do let us be cynical. You haven’t money and you haven’t credit. No one would take you in. It’s one of two things: go back to your stepmother, or – trust to me.”
“How CAN I?”
“Then you must go back to her.” He paused momentarily, to let this consideration have its proper weight. “Jessie, I did not mean to say the things I did. Upon my honour, I lost my head when I spoke so. If you will, forgive me. I am a man. I could not help myself. Forgive me, and I promise you – ”
“How can I trust you?”
“Try me. I can assure you – ”
She regarded him distrustfully.
“At any rate, ride on with me now. Surely we have been in the shadow of this horrible bridge long enough.”
“Oh! let me think,” she said, half turning from him and pressing her hand to her brow.
“THINK! Look here, Jessie. It is ten o’clock. Shall we call a truce until one?”
She hesitated, demanded a definition of the truce, and at last agreed.
They mounted, and rode on in silence, through the sunlight and the heather. Both were extremely uncomfortable and disappointed. She was pale, divided between fear and anger. She perceived she was in a scrape, and tried in vain to think of a way of escape. Only one tangible thing would keep in her mind, try as she would to ignore it. That was the quite irrelevant fact that his head was singularly like an albino cocoanut. He, too, felt thwarted. He felt that this romantic business of seduction was, after all, unexpectedly tame. But this was only the beginning. At any rate, every day she spent with him was a day gained. Perhaps things looked worse than they were; that was some consolation.
XVI. OF THE ARTIFICIAL IN MAN, AND OF THE ZEITGEIST
You have seen these two young people – Bechamel, by-the-bye, is the man’s name, and the girl’s is Jessie Milton – from the outside; you have heard them talking; they ride now side by side (but not too close together, and in an uneasy silence) towards Haslemere; and this chapter will concern itself with those curious little council chambers inside their skulls, where their motives are in session and their acts are considered and passed.
But first a word concerning wigs and false teeth. Some jester, enlarging upon the increase of bald heads and purblind people, has deduced a wonderful future for the children of men. Man, he said, was nowadays a hairless creature by forty or fifty, and for hair we gave him a wig; shrivelled, and we padded him; toothless, and lo! false teeth set in gold. Did he lose a limb, and a fine, new, artificial one was at his disposal; get indigestion, and to hand was artificial digestive fluid or bile or pancreatine, as the case might be. Complexions, too, were replaceable, spectacles superseded an inefficient eye-lens, and imperceptible false diaphragms were thrust into the failing ear. So he went over our anatomies, until, at last, he had conjured up a weird thing of shreds and patches, a simulacrum, an artificial body of a man, with but a doubtful germ of living flesh lurking somewhere in his recesses. To that, he held, we were coming.
How far such odd substitution for the body is possible need not concern us now. But the devil, speaking by the lips of Mr. Rudyard Kipling, hath it that in the case of one Tomlinson, the thing, so far as the soul is concerned, has already been accomplished. Time was when men had simple souls, desires as natural as their eyes, a little reasonable philanthropy, a little reasonable philoprogenitiveness, hunger, and a taste for good living, a decent, personal vanity, a healthy, satisfying pugnacity, and so forth. But now we are taught and disciplined for years and years, and thereafter we read and read for all the time some strenuous, nerve-destroying business permits. Pedagogic hypnotists, pulpit and platform hypnotists, book-writing hypnotists, newspaper-writing hypnotists, are at us all. This sugar you are eating, they tell us, is ink, and forthwith we reject it with infinite disgust. This black draught of unrequited toil is True Happiness, and down it goes with every symptom of pleasure. This Ibsen, they say, is dull past believing, and we yawn and stretch beyond endurance. Pardon! they interrupt, but this Ibsen is deep and delightful, and we vie with one another in an excess of entertainment. And when we open the heads of these two young people, we find, not a straightforward motive on the surface anywhere; we find, indeed, not a soul so much as an oversoul, a zeitgeist, a congestion of acquired ideas, a highway’s feast of fine, confused thinking. The girl is resolute to Live Her Own Life, a phrase you may have heard before, and the man has a pretty perverted ambition to be a cynical artistic person of the very calmest description. He is hoping for the awakening of Passion in her, among other things. He knows Passion ought to awaken, from the text-books he has studied. He knows she admires his genius, but he is unaware that she does not admire his head. He is quite a distinguished art critic in London, and he met her at that celebrated lady novelist’s, her stepmother, and here you have them well embarked upon the Adventure. Both are in the first stage of repentance, which consists, as you have probably found for yourself, in setting your teeth hard and saying’ “I WILL go on.”
Things, you see, have jarred a little, and they ride on their way together with a certain aloofness of manner that promises ill for the orthodox development of the Adventure. He perceives he was too precipitate. But he feels his honour is involved, and meditates the development of a new attack. And the girl? She is unawakened. Her motives are bookish, written by a haphazard syndicate of authors, novelists, and biographers, on her white inexperience. An artificial oversoul she is, that may presently break down and reveal a human being beneath it. She is still in that schoolgirl phase when a talkative old man is more interesting than a tongue-tied young one, and when to be an eminent mathematician, say, or to edit a daily paper, seems as fine an ambition as any girl need aspire to. Bechaniel was to have helped her to attain that in the most expeditious manner, and here he is beside her, talking enigmatical phrases about passion, looking at her with the oddest expression, and once, and that was his gravest offence, offering to kiss her. At any rate he has apologised. She still scarcely realises, you see, the scrape she has got into.
XVII. THE ENCOUNTER AT MIDHURST
We left Mr. Hoopdriver at the door of the little tea, toy, and tobacco shop. You must not think that a strain is put on coincidence when I tell you that next door to Mrs. Wardor’s – that was the name of the bright-eyed, little old lady with whom Mr. Hoopdriver had stopped – is the Angel Hotel, and in the Angel Hotel, on the night that Mr. Hoopdriver reached Midhurst, were ‘Mr.’ and ‘Miss’ Beaumont, our Bechamel and Jessie Milton. Indeed, it was a highly probable thing; for if one goes through Guildford, the choice of southward roads is limited; you may go by Petersfield to Portsmouth, or by Midhurst to Chichester, in addition to which highways there is nothing for it but minor roadways to Petworth or Pulborough, and cross-cuts Brightonward. And coming to Midhurst from the north, the Angel’s entrance lies yawning to engulf your highly respectable cyclists, while Mrs. Wardor’s genial teapot is equally attractive to those who weigh their means in little scales. But to people unfamiliar with the Sussex roads – and such were the three persons of this story – the convergence did not appear to be so inevitable.
Bechamel, tightening his chain in the Angel yard after dinner, was the first to be aware of their reunion. He saw Hoopdriver walk slowly across the gateway, his head enhaloed in cigarette smoke, and pass out of sight up the street. Incontinently a mass of cloudy uneasiness, that had been partly dispelled during the day, reappeared and concentrated rapidly into definite suspicion. He put his screw hammer into his pocket and walked through the archway into the street, to settle the business forthwith, for he prided himself on his decision. Hoopdriver was merely promenading, and they met face to face.
At the sight of his adversary, something between disgust and laughter seized Mr. Hoopdriver and for a moment destroyed his animosity. “‘Ere we are again!” he said, laughing insincerely in a sudden outbreak at the perversity of chance.
The other man in brown stopped short in Mr. Hoopdriver’s way, staring. Then his face assumed an expression of dangerous civility. “Is it any information to you,” he said, with immense politeness, “when I remark that you are following us?”
Mr. Hoopdriver, for some occult reason, resisted his characteristic impulse to apologise. He wanted to annoy the other man in brown, and a sentence that had come into his head in a previous rehearsal cropped up appropriately. “Since when,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, catching his breath, yet bringing the question out valiantly, nevertheless, – “since when ‘ave you purchased the county of Sussex?”
“May I point out,” said the other man in brown, “that I object – we object not only to your proximity to us. To be frank – you appear to be following us – with an object.”
“You can always,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, “turn round if you don’t like it, and go back the way you came.”
“Oh-o!” said the other man in brown. “THAT’S it! I thought as much.”
“Did you?” said Mr. Hoopdriver, quite at sea, but rising pluckily to the unknown occasion. What was the man driving at?
“I see,” said the other man. “I see. I half suspected – ” His manner changed abruptly to a quality suspiciously friendly. “Yes – a word with you. You will, I hope, give me ten minutes.”
Wonderful things were dawning on Mr. Hoopdriver. What did the other man take him for? Here at last was reality! He hesitated. Then he thought of an admirable phrase. “You ‘ave some communication – ”
“We’ll call it a communication,” said the other man.
“I can spare you the ten minutes,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, with dignity.
“This way, then,” said the other man in brown, and they walked slowly down the North Street towards the Grammar School. There was, perhaps, thirty seconds’ silence. The other man stroked his moustache nervously. Mr. Hoopdriver’s dramatic instincts were now fully awake. He did not quite understand in what role he was cast, but it was evidently something dark and mysterious. Doctor Conan Doyle, Victor Hugo, and Alexander Dumas were well within Mr. Hoopdriver’s range of reading, and he had not read them for nothing.
“I will be perfectly frank with you,” said the other man in brown.
“Frankness is always the best course,” said Mr. Hoopdriver.
“Well, then – who the devil set you on this business?”
“Set me ON this business?”
“Don’t pretend to be stupid. Who’s your employer? Who engaged you for this job?”
“Well,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, confused. “No – I can’t say.”
“Quite sure?” The other man in brown glanced meaningly down at his hand, and Mr. Hoopdriver, following him mechanically, saw a yellow milled edge glittering in the twilight. Now your shop assistant is just above the tip-receiving class, and only just above it – so that he is acutely sensitive on the point.
Mr. Hoopdriver flushed hotly, and his eyes were angry as he met those of the other man in brown. “Stow it!” said Mr. Hoopdriver, stopping and facing the tempter.
“What!” said the other man in brown, surprised. “Eigh?” And so saying he stowed it in his breeches pocket.
“D’yer think I’m to be bribed?” said Mr. Hoopdriver, whose imagination was rapidly expanding the situation. “By Gosh! I’d follow you now – ”
“My dear sir,” said the other man in brown, “I beg your pardon. I misunderstood you. I really beg your pardon. Let us walk on. In your profession – ”
“What have you got to say against my profession?”
“Well, really, you know. There are detectives of an inferior description – watchers. The whole class. Private Inquiry – I did not realise – I really trust you will overlook what was, after all – you must admit – a natural indiscretion. Men of honour are not so common in the world – in any profession.”
It was lucky for Mr. Hoopdriver that in Midhurst they do not light the lamps in the summer time, or the one they were passing had betrayed him. As it was, he had to snatch suddenly at his moustache and tug fiercely at it, to conceal the furious tumult of exultation, the passion of laughter, that came boiling up. Detective! Even in the shadow Bechamel saw that a laugh was stifled, but he put it down to the fact that the phrase “men of honour” amused his interlocutor. “He’ll come round yet,” said Bechamel to himself. “He’s simply holding out for a fiver.” He coughed.
“I don’t see that it hurts you to tell me who your employer is.”
“Don’t you? I do.”
“Prompt,” said Bechamel, appreciatively. “Now here’s the thing I want to put to you – the kernel of the whole business. You need not answer if you don’t want to. There’s no harm done in my telling you what I want to know. Are you employed to watch me – or Miss Milton?”
“I’m not the leaky sort,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, keeping the secret he did not know with immense enjoyment. Miss Milton! That was her name. Perhaps he’d tell some more. “It’s no good pumping. Is that all you’re after?” said Mr. Hoopdriver.
Bechamel respected himself for his diplomatic gifts. He tried to catch a remark by throwing out a confidence. “I take it there are two people concerned in watching this affair.”
“Who’s the other?” said Mr. Hoopdriver, calmly, but controlling with enormous internal tension his self-appreciation. “Who’s the other?” was really brilliant, he thought.
“There’s my wife and HER stepmother.”
“And you want to know which it is?”
“Yes,” said Bechamel.
“Well – arst ‘em!” said Mr. Hoopdriver, his exultation getting the better of him, and with a pretty consciousness of repartee. “Arst ‘em both.”
Bechamel turned impatiently. Then he made a last effort. “I’d give a five-pound note to know just the precise state of affairs,” he said.
“I told you to stow that,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, in a threatening tone. And added with perfect truth and a magnificent mystery, “You don’t quite understand who you’re dealing with. But you will!” He spoke with such conviction that he half believed that that defective office of his in London – Baker Street, in fact – really existed.
With that the interview terminated. Bechamel went back to the Angel, perturbed. “Hang detectives!” It wasn’t the kind of thing he had anticipated at all. Hoopdriver, with round eyes and a wondering smile, walked down to where the mill waters glittered in the moonlight, and after meditating over the parapet of the bridge for a space, with occasional murmurs of, “Private Inquiry” and the like, returned, with mystery even in his paces, towards the town.
XVIII
That glee which finds expression in raised eyebrows and long, low whistling noises was upon Mr. Hoopdriver. For a space he forgot the tears of the Young Lady in Grey. Here was a new game! – and a real one. Mr. Hoopdriver as a Private Inquiry Agent, a Sherlock Holmes in fact, keeping these two people ‘under observation.’ He walked slowly back from the bridge until he was opposite the Angel, and stood for ten minutes, perhaps, contemplating that establishment and enjoying all the strange sensations of being this wonderful, this mysterious and terrible thing. Everything fell into place in his scheme. He had, of course, by a kind of instinct, assumed the disguise of a cyclist, picked up the first old crock he came across as a means of pursuit. ‘No expense was to be spared.’
Then he tried to understand what it was in particular that he was observing. “My wife” – “HER stepmother!” Then he remembered her swimming eyes. Abruptly came a wave of anger that surprised him, washed away the detective superstructure, and left him plain Mr. Hoopdriver. This man in brown, with his confident manner, and his proffered half sovereign (damn him!) was up to no good, else why should he object to being watched? He was married! She was not his sister. He began to understand. A horrible suspicion of the state of affairs came into Mr. Hoopdriver’s head. Surely it had not come to THAT. He was a detective! – he would find out. How was it to be done? He began to submit sketches on approval to himself. It required an effort before he could walk into the Angel bar. “A lemonade and bitter, please,” said Mr. Hoopdriver.
He cleared his throat. “Are Mr. and Mrs. Bowlong stopping here?”
“What, a gentleman and a young lady – on bicycles?”
“Fairly young – a married couple.”
“No,” said the barmaid, a talkative person of ample dimensions. “There’s no married couples stopping here. But there’s a Mr. and Miss BEAUMONT.” She spelt it for precision. “Sure you’ve got the name right, young man?”
“Quite,” said Mr. Hoopdriver.
“Beaumont there is, but no one of the name of – What was the name you gave?”
“Bowlong,” said Mr. Hoopdriver.
“No, there ain’t no Bowlong,” said the barmaid, taking up a glasscloth and a drying tumbler and beginning to polish the latter. “First off, I thought you might be asking for Beaumont – the names being similar. Were you expecting them on bicycles?”
“Yes – they said they MIGHT be in Midhurst tonight.”
“P’raps they’ll come presently. Beaumont’s here, but no Bowlong. Sure that Beaumont ain’t the name?”
“Certain,” said Mr. Hoopdriver.
“It’s curious the names being so alike. I thought p’raps – ”
And so they conversed at some length, Mr. Hoopdriver delighted to find his horrible suspicion disposed of. The barmaid having listened awhile at the staircase volunteered some particulars of the young couple upstairs. Her modesty was much impressed by the young lady’s costume, so she intimated, and Mr. Hoopdriver whispered the badinage natural to the occasion, at which she was coquettishly shocked. “There’ll be no knowing which is which, in a year or two,” said the barmaid. “And her manner too! She got off her machine and give it ‘im to stick up against the kerb, and in she marched. ‘I and my brother,’ says she, ‘want to stop here to-night. My brother doesn’t mind what kind of room ‘e ‘as, but I want a room with a good view, if there’s one to be got,’ says she. He comes hurrying in after and looks at her. ‘I’ve settled the rooms,’ she says, and ‘e says ‘damn!’ just like that. I can fancy my brother letting me boss the show like that.”
“I dessay you do,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, “if the truth was known.”
The barmaid looked down, smiled and shook her head, put down the tumbler, polished, and took up another that had been draining, and shook the drops of water into her little zinc sink.
“She’ll be a nice little lot to marry,” said the barmaid. “She’ll be wearing the – well, b-dashes, as the sayin’ is. I can’t think what girls is comin’ to.”
This depreciation of the Young Lady in Grey was hardly to Hoopdriver’s taste.
“Fashion,” said he, taking up his change. “Fashion is all the go with you ladies – and always was. You’ll be wearing ‘em yourself before a couple of years is out.”
“Nice they’d look on my figger,” said the barmaid, with a titter. “No – I ain’t one of your fashionable sort. Gracious no! I shouldn’t feel as if I’d anything on me, not more than if I’d forgot – Well, there! I’m talking.” She put down the glass abruptly. “I dessay I’m old fashioned,” she said, and walked humming down the bar.
“Not you,” said Mr. Hoopdriver. He waited until he caught her eye, then with his native courtesy smiled, raised his cap, and wished her good evening.
