The Wheels of Chance: A Bicycling Idyll/Chapter 21
AT BOGNOR
XXI
That seductive gentleman, Bechamel, had been working up to a crisis. He had started upon this elopement in a vein of fine romance, immensely proud of his wickedness, and really as much in love as an artificial oversoul can be, with Jessie. But either she was the profoundest of coquettes or she had not the slightest element of Passion (with a large P) in her composition. It warred with all his ideas of himself and the feminine mind to think that under their flattering circumstances she really could be so vitally deficient. He found her persistent coolness, her more or less evident contempt for himself, exasperating in the highest degree. He put it to himself that she was enough to provoke a saint, and tried to think that was piquant and enjoyable, but the blisters on his vanity asserted themselves. The fact is, he was, under this standing irritation, getting down to the natural man in himself for once, and the natural man in himself, in spite of Oxford and the Junior Reviewers' Club, was a Palæolithic creature of simple tastes and violent methods. "I'll be level with you yet," ran like a plough through the soil of his thoughts.
Then there was this infernal detective. Bechamel had told his wife he was going to Davos to see Carter. To that he had fancied she was reconciled, but how she would take this exploit was entirely problematical. She was a woman of peculiar moral views, and she measured marital infidelity largely by its proximity to herself. Out of her sight, and more particularly out of the sight of the other women of her set, vice of the recognised description was, perhaps, permissible to those contemptible weaklings, men, but this was Evil on the High Roads. She was bound to make a fuss, and these fusses invariably took the final form of a tightness of money for Bechamel. Albeit, and he felt it was heroic of him to resolve so, it was worth doing if it was to be done. His imagination worked on a kind of matronly Valkyrie, and the noise of pursuit and vengeance was in the air. The idyll still had the front of the stage. That accursed detective, it seemed, had been thrown off the scent, and that, at any rate, gave a night's respite. But things must be brought to an issue forthwith.
By eight o'clock in the evening, in a little dining-room in the Vicuna Hotel, Bognor, the crisis had come, and Jessie, flushed and angry in the face and with her heart sinking, faced him again for her last struggle with him. He had tricked her this time, effectually, and luck had been on his side. She was booked as Mrs. Beaumont. Save for her refusal to enter their room, and her eccentricity of eating with unwashed hands, she had so far kept up the appearances of things before the waiter. But the dinner was grim enough. Now in turn she appealed to his better nature and made extravagant statements of her plans to fool him.
He was white and vicious by this time, and his anger quivered through his pose of brilliant wickedness.
"I will go to the station," she said. "I will go back—"
"The last train for anywhere leaves at 7.42."
"I will appeal to the police—"
"You don't know them."
"I will tell these hotel people."
"They will turn you out of doors. You're in such a thoroughly false position now. They don't understand—unconventionally, down here."
She stamped her foot. "If I wander about the streets all night—" she said.
"You who have never been out alone after dusk? Do you know what the streets of a charming little holiday resort are like—"
"I don't care," she said. "I can go to the clergyman here."
"He 's a charming man. Unmarried. And men are really more alike than you think. And anyhow—"
"Well?"
"How can you explain the last two nights to anyone now? The mischief is done, Jessie."
"You cur," she said, and suddenly put her hand to her breast. He thought she meant to faint, but she stood, with the colour gone from her face.
"No," he said. "I love you."
"Love!" said she.
Yes—love."
"There are ways yet," she said, after a pause.
"Not for you. You are too full of life and hope yet for, what is it?—not the dark arch nor the black flowing river. Don't you think of it. You'll only shirk it when the moment comes, and turn it all into comedy."
She turned round abruptly from him and stood looking out across the parade at the shining sea over which the afterglow of day fled before the rising moon. He maintained his attitude. The blinds were still up, for she had told the waiter not to draw them. There was silence for some moments.
At last he spoke in as persuasive a voice as he could summon. "Take it sensibly, Jessie. Why should we, who have so much in common, quarrel into melodrama? I swear I love you. You are all that is bright and desirable to me. I am stronger than you, older; man to your woman. To find you too—conventional!"
She looked at him over her shoulder, and he noticed with a twinge of delight how her little chin came out beneath the curve of her cheek.
"Man!" she said. "Man to my woman! Do men lie? Would a man use his five and thirty years' experience to outwit a girl of seventeen? Man to my woman indeed ! That surely is the last insult!"
"Your repartee is admirable, Jessie. I should say they do, though—all that and more also when their hearts were set on such a girl as yourself. For God's sake drop this shrewishness ! Why should you be so—difficult to me? Here am I with my reputation, my career, at your feet. Look here, Jessie—on my honour, I will marry you—"
"God forbid," she said, so promptly that she never learnt he had a wife, even then. It occurred to him then for the first time, in the flash of her retort, that she did not know he was married.
"'Tis only a pre-nuptial settlement," he said, following that hint.
"You must be sensible. The thing's your own doing. Come out on the beach now—the beach here is splendid, and the moon will soon be high."
"I won't," she said, stamping her foot.
"Well, well—"
"Oh! leave me alone. Let me think—"
"Think," he said, "if you want to. It's your cry always. But you can't save yourself by thinking, my dear girl. You can't save yourself in any way now. If saving it is—this parsimony—"
"Oh, go—go."
"Very well. I will go. I will go and smoke a cigar. And think of you, dear. . . . But do you think I should do all this if I did not care?"
"Go," she whispered, without glancing round. She continued to stare out of the window. He stood looking at her for a moment, with a strange light in his eyes. He made a step towards her. "I have you," he said. "You are mine. Netted—caught. But mine." He would have gone up to her and laid his hand upon her, but he did not dare to do that yet. "I have you in my hand," he said, "in my power. Do you hear—Power!"
She remained impassive. He stared at her for half a minute, and then, with a superb gesture that was lost upon her, went to the door. Surely the instinctive abasement of her sex before Strength was upon his side. He told himself that his battle was won. She heard the handle move and the catch click as the door closed behind him.
XXII
And now without in the twilight behold Mr. Hoopdriver, his cheeks hot, his eye bright! His brain is in a tumult. The nervous, obsequious Hoopdriver, to whom I introduced you some days since, has undergone a wonderful change. Ever since he lost that 'spoor' in Chichester, he has been tormented by the most horrible visions of the shameful insults that may be happening. The strangeness of new surroundings has been working to strip off the habitual servile from him. Here was moonlight rising over the memory of a red sunset, dark shadows and glowing orange lamps, beauty somewhere mysteriously rapt away from him, tangible wrong in a brown suit and an unpleasant face, flouting him. Mr. Hoopdriver for the time was in the world of Romance and Knight-errantry, divinely forgetful of his social position or hers; forgetting, too, for the time any of the wretched timidities that had tied him long since behind the counter in his proper place. He was angry and adventurous. It was all about him, this vivid drama he had fallen into, and it was eluding him. He was far too grimly in earnest to pick up that lost thread and make a play of it now. The man was living. He did not pose when he alighted at the coffee tavern even, nor when he made his hasty meal.
As Bechamel crossed from the Vicuna towards the esplanade, Hoopdriver, disappointed and exasperated, came hurrying round the corner from the Temperance Hotel. At the sight of Bechamel, his heart jumped, and the tension of his angry suspense exploded into, rather than gave place to, an excited activity of mind. They were at the Vicuna, and she was there now alone. It was the occasion he sought. But he would give Chance no chance against him. He went back round the corner, sat down on the seat, and watched Bechamel recede into the dimness up the esplanade, before he got up and walked into the hotel entrance. "A lady cyclist in grey," he asked for, and followed boldly on the waiter's heels. The door of the dining-room was opening before he felt a qualm. And then suddenly he was nearly minded to turn and run for it, and his features seemed to him to be convulsed.
She turned with a start, and looked at him with something between terror and hope in her eyes.
"Can I—have a few words—with you, alone?" said Mr. Hoopdriver, controlling his breath with difficulty. She hesitated, and then motioned the waiter to withdraw.
Mr. Hoopdriver watched the door shut. He had intended to step out into the middle of the room, fold his arms and say, "You are in trouble. I am a Friend. Trust me." Instead of which he stood panting and then spoke with sudden familiarity, hastily, guiltily: "Look here. I don't know what the Juice is up, but I think there's something wrong. Excuse my intruding—if it isn't so. I'll do anything you like to help you out of the scrape—if you're in one. That's my meaning, I believe. What can I do? I would do anything to help you."
Her brow puckered, as she watched him make, with infinite emotion, this remarkable speech. "You!" she said. She was tumultuously weighing possibilities in her mind, and he had scarcely ceased when she had made her resolve.
She stepped a pace forward. "You are a gentleman," she said.
"Yes," said Mr. Hoopdriver.
"Can I trust you?"
She did not wait for his assurance. "I must leave this hotel at once. Come here."
She took his arm and led him to the window. "You can just see the gate. It is still open. Through that are our bicycles. Go down, get them out, and I will come down to you. Dare you?"
"Get your bicycle out in the road?"
"Both. Mine alone is no good. At once. Dare you?"
"Which way?"
"Go out by the front door and round. I will follow in one minute."
"Right!" said Mr. Hoopdriver, and went.
He had to get those bicycles. Had he been told to go out and kill Bechamel he would have done it. His head was a Maëlstrom now. He walked out of the hotel, along the front, and into the big, black-shadowed coach yard. He looked round. There were no bicycles visible. Then a man emerged from the dark, a short man in a short, black, shiny jacket. Hoopdriver was caught. He made no attempt to turn and run for it. "I've been giving your machines a wipe over, sir," said the man, recognising the suit, and touching his cap. Hoopdriver's intelligence now was a soaring eagle; he swooped on the situation at once. "That's right," he said, and added, before the pause became marked, "Where is mine? I want to look at the chain."
The man led him into an open shed, and went fumbling for a lantern. Hoopdriver moved the lady's machine out of his way to the door, and then laid hands on the man's machine and wheeled it out of the shed into the yard. The gate stood open and beyond was the pale road and a clump of trees black in the twilight. He stooped and examined the chain with trembling fingers. How was it to be done? Something behind the gate seemed to flutter. The man must be got rid of anyhow.
"I say," said Hoopdriver, with an inspiration, "can you get me a screwdriver?"
The man simply walked across the shed, opened and shut a box, and came up to the kneeling Hoopdriver with a screwdriver in his hand. Hoopdriver felt himself a lost man. He took the screwdriver with a tepid "Thanks," and incontinently had another inspiration.
"I say," he said again.
"Well?"
"This is Miles too big."
The man lit the lantern, brought it up to Hoopdriver and put it down on the ground. "Want a smaller screwdriver?" he said.
Hoopdriver had his handkerchief out and sneezed a prompt atichew. It is the orthodox thing when you wish to avoid recognition. "As small as you have," he said, out of his pocket handkerchief.
"I ain't got none smaller than that," said the ostler.
"Won't do, really," said Hoopdriver, still wallowing in his handkerchief.
"I'll see wot they got in the 'ouse, if you like, sir," said the man. "If you would," said Hoopdriver. And as the man's heavily nailed boots went clattering down the yard, Hoopdriver stood up, took a noiseless step to the lady's machine, laid trembling hands on its handle and saddle, and prepared for a rush.
The scullery door opened momentarily and sent a beam of warm, yellow light up the road, shut again behind the man, and forthwith Hoopdriver rushed the machines towards the gate. A dark grey form came fluttering to meet him. "Give me this," she said, "and bring yours."
He passed the thing to her, touched her hand in the darkness, ran back, seized Bechamel's machine, and followed.
The yellow light of the scullery door suddenly flashed upon the cobbles again. It was too late now to do anything but escape. He heard the ostler shout behind him, and came into the road. She was up and dim already. He got into the saddle without a blunder. In a moment the ostler was in the gateway with a full-throated "Hi! sir! That ain't allowed;" and Hoopdriver was overtaking the Young Lady in Grey. For some moments the earth seemed alive with shouts of, "Stop 'em!" and the shadows with ambuscades of police. The road swept round, and they were riding out of sight of the hotel, and behind dark hedges, side by side.
She was weeping with excitement as he overtook her. "Brave," she said, "brave!" and he ceased to feel like a hunted thief. He looked over his shoulder and about him, and saw that they were already out of Bognor—for the Vicuna stands at the very westernmost extremity of the sea front—and riding on a fair wide road.
XXIII
"It wasn't that one at all, miss," said the ostler, "I'd swear."
"Well, that's Mr. Beaumont," said the barmaid, "—anyhow."
Their conversation hung comatose in the air, switched up by Bechamel. They listened together. His feet stopped. Turned. Went out of the dining-room. Down the passage to the bedroom. Stopped again.
"Poor chap!" said the barmaid. "She's a wicked woman!"
"Sssh!" said Stephen.
After a pause Bechamel went back to the dining-room. They heard a chair creak under him. Interlude of conversational eyebrows.
"I'm going up," said Stephen, "to break the melancholy news to him."
Bechamel looked up from a week-old newspaper as, without knocking, Stephen entered. Bechamel's face suggested a different expectation. "Beg pardon, sir," said Stephen, with a diplomatic cough.
"Well?" said Bechamel, wondering suddenly if Jessie had kept some of her threats. If so, he was in for an explanation. But he had it ready. She was a monomaniac. "Leave me alone with her," he would say; "I know how to calm her."
"Mrs. Beaumont," said Stephen.
"Well?"
"Has gone."
He rose with a fine surprise. "Gone!" he said with a half laugh.
"Gone, sir. On her bicycle."
"On her bicycle! Why?"
"She went, sir, with Another Gentleman."
This time Bechamel was really startled. "An—other Gentlemen! Who?"
"Another gentleman in brown, sir. Went into the yard, sir, got out the two bicycles, sir, and went off, sir about twenty minutes ago."
Bechamel stood with his eyes round and his knuckle on his hips. Stephen, watching him with immense enjoyment, speculated whether this abandoned husband would weep or curse, or rush off at once in furious pursuit. But as yet he seemed merely stunned.
"Brown clothes?" he said. "And fairish?"
"A little like yourself, sir,—in the dark. The ostler, sir, Jim Duke—"
Bechamel laughed awry. Then, with infinite fervour, he said—But let us put in blank cartridge—he said, " !"
"I might have thought!"
He flung himself into the armchair.
"Damn her," said Bechamel, for all the world like a common man. "I'll chuck this infernal business! They've gone, eigh?"
"Yessir."
"Well, let 'em go," said Bechamel, making a memorable saying. "Let 'em go. Who cares? And I wish him luck. And bring me some Bourbon as fast as you can, there's a good chap. I'll take that, and then I'll have another look round Bognor before I turn in."
Stephen was too surprised to say anything but "Bourbon, sir?"
"Go on," said Bechamel. "Damn you!"
Stephen's sympathies changed at once. "Yessir," he murmured, fumbling for the door handle, and left the room, marvelling. Bechamel, having in this way satisfied his sense of appearances, and comported himself as a Pagan should, so soon as the waiter's footsteps had passed, vented the cream of his feelings in a stream of blasphemous indecency. Whether his wife or her stepmother had sent the detective, she had evidently gone off with him, and that little business was over. And he was here, stranded and sold, an ass, and as it were, the son of many generations of asses. And his only ray of hope was that it seemed more probable, after all, that the girl had escaped through her stepmother. In which case the business might be hushed up yet, and the evil hour of explanation with his wife indefinitely postponed. Then abruptly the image of that lithe figure in grey knickerbockers went frisking across his mind again, and he reverted to his blasphemies. He started up in a gusty frenzy with a vague idea of pursuit, and incontinently sat down again with a concussion that stirred the bar below to its depths. He banged the arms of the chair with his fist, and swore again. "Of all the accursed fools that were ever spawned," he was chanting, "I, Bechamel—" when with an abrupt tap and prompt opening of the door, Stephen entered with the Bourbon.