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
superbgesture 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 cof
ee
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 MaeIstrom now. He
walked out of the hotel, along the front, and into the big,
blackshadowed 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
The ostler (being a fool) rushed
violently down the road
vociferating after them. Then he returned panting to the Vicuna
Hotel, and
finding a group of men outside the entrance, who
wanted to know what was UP, stopped to give them the cream of the
adventure. That gave the fugitives five minutes. Then pushing
breathlessly into the bar, he had to make it clear to the barmaid
what the matter was, and the 'gov'nor' being out , they spent
some more precious time wondering 'what--EVER' was to be done! in
which the two customers returning from outside joined with
animation. There were also moral remarks and other irrelevant
contributions. There were conflicting ideas of telling the police
and pursuing the flying couple on a horse. That made ten minutes.
Then Stephen, the
waiter, who had shown Hoopdriver up, came down
and lit wonderful lights and started quite a fresh
discussion by
the simple question "WHICH?" That turned ten minutes into a
quarter of an hour. And in the midst of this
discussion, making a
sudden and awestricken silence, appeared Bechamel in the hall
beyond the bar, walked with a
resolute air to the foot of the
staircase, and passed out of sight. You
conceive the backward
pitch of that
exceptionally shaped cranium? Incredulous eyes
stared into one another's in the bar, as his paces, muffled by
the stair
carpet, went up to the
landing, turned, reached the
passage and walked into the dining-room overhead.
"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 diningroom. 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