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The Wheels of Chance-Part7_H. G. WELLS (1866-1946)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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miles by means of the yard measure on the counter, eight miles



being a dress length, a rational dress length, that is; and then

the other man in brown came up and wanted to interfere, and said



Mr. Hoopdriver was a cad, besides measuring it off too slowly.

And as Mr. Hoopdriver began to measure faster, the other man in



brown said the Young Lady in Grey had been there long enough, and

that he WAS her brother, or else she would not be travelling with



him, and he suddenly whipped his arm about her waist and made off

with her. It occurred to Mr. Hoopdriver even at the moment that



this was scarcely brotherly behaviour. Of course it wasn't! The

sight of the other man gripping her so familiarly enraged him



frightfully; he leapt over the counterforthwith and gave chase.

They ran round the shop and up an iron staircase into the Keep,



and so out upon the Ripley road. For some time they kept dodging

in and out of a wayside hotel with two front doors and an inn



yard. The other man could not run very fast because he had hold

of the Young Lady in Grey, but Mr. Hoopdriver was hampered by the



absurd behaviour of his legs. They would not stretch out; they

would keep going round and round as if they were on the treadles



of a wheel, so that he made the smallest steps conceivable. This

dream came to no crisis. The chase seemed to last an interminable



time, and all kinds of people, heathkeepers, shopmen, policemen,

the old man in the Keep, the angry man in drab, the barmaid at



the Unicorn, men with flying-machines, people playing billiards

in the doorways, silly, headless figures, stupid cocks and hens



encumbered with parcels and umbrellas and waterproofs, people

carrying bedroom candles, and such-like riffraff, kept getting in



his way and annoying him, although he sounded his electric bell,

and said, "Wonderful, wonderful!" at every corner....



HOW MR. HOOPDRIVER WENT TO HASLEMERE

XIII



There was some little delay in getting Mr. Hoopdriver's

breakfast, so that after all he was not free to start out of



Guildford until just upon the stroke of nine. He wheeled his

machine from the High Street in some perplexity. He did not know



whether this young lady, who had seized hold of his imagination

so strongly, and her unfriendly and possibly menacing brother,



were ahead of him or even now breakfasting somewhere in

Guildford. In the former case he might loiter as he chose; in the



latter he must hurry, and possibly take refuge in branch roads.

It occurred to him as being in some obscure way strategic, that



he would leave Guildford not by the obvious Portsmouth road, but

by the road running through Shalford. Along this pleasant shady



way he felt suffficiently secure to resume his exercises in

riding with one hand off the handles, and in staring over his



shoulder. He came over once or twice, but fell on his foot each

time, and perceived that he was improving. Before he got to



Bramley a specious byway snapped him up, ran with him for half a

mile or more, and dropped him as a terrier drops a walkingstick,



upon the Portsmouth again, a couple of miles from Godalming. He

entered Godalming on his feet, for the road through that



delightful town is beyond dispute the vilest in the world, a mere

tumult of road metal, a way of peaks and precipices, and, after a



successful experiment with cider at the Woolpack, he pushed on to

Milford.



All this time he was acutely aware of the existence of the Young

Lady in Grey and her companion in brown, as a child in the dark



is of Bogies. Sometimes he could hear their pneumatics stealing

upon him from behind, and looking round saw a long stretch of



vacant road. Once he saw far ahead of him a glittering wheel, but

it proved to be a workingman riding to destruction on a very tall



ordinary. And he felt a curious, vague uneasiness about that

Young Lady in Grey, for which he was altogetherunable to



account. Now that he was awake he had forgotten that accentuated

"Miss Beaumont that had been quite clear in his dream. But the



curious dream conviction, that the girl was not really the man's

sister, would not let itself be forgotten. Why, for instance,



should a man want to be alone with his sister on the top of a

tower? At Milford his bicycle made, so to speak, an ass of






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