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 Library 
 
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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013568906 
 
The Wheels of Chance 
 
By the Author ot "The Wheels of Chance." 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth, gilt top. Third Edition, s^- net- 
 
 THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 
 
 By H. G. wells. 
 
 AUTHOR OF "the TIME MACHINE,'' ETC. 
 
 W. L. COURTNEY, in the Daily Telegraph. 
 
 " It would be indeed difficult to overpraise the grace, the deli- 
 cacy, and the humour with which the author has accomplished his 
 task. It is all so piquantty fresh, so charmingly unconventional, 
 that it carries one away with it from start to finish in a glow of 
 pleasurable sentiment. Rarely, amidst all the floods of conventional 
 fiction-spinning and latter-day psychological analysis, does one 
 come across such a pure jet of romantic fancy as that with which 
 Mr. Wells refieshes our spirits." 
 
, , ,.v, .'■■.,{■ Sffi!,, \u 
 
 The i^'^'^^ ^%i>-^ '^; ^^"" ^ 
 
 Wheels of Chanqe^ 
 
 A Holiday Adventure"' 
 
 By 
 
 H. G. Wells 
 
 Author of 
 'The Wonderful Visit," "The Time Machine," etc 
 
 With 40 Illustrations by 
 
 J. Ayton Symington 
 
 5j(.R3i.'V ■.>-\'..^'-'-*- 
 
 London 
 J. M. Dent and Co. 
 
 New York : 
 
 The Macmillan Co, 
 
 
 1896 
 
 l" \ 
 
 
 fc 
 
 1 l,.l(AI;y 
 
[All rights reserved] 
 
 Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson &' Co. 
 At the Ballantyne Press 
 
Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE PRINCIPAL CHARACTER IN THE STORY . 3 
 
 THE RIDING FORTH OF MR. HOOPDRIVER . . 20 
 
 THE SHAMEFUL EPISODE OF THE YOUNG LADY IN 
 
 GREY . ... 32 
 
 ON THE ROAD TO RIPLEY .... 43 
 
 HOW MR. HOOPDRIVER WAS HAUNTED. . 6 1 
 
 THE IMAGININGS OF MR. HOOPDRIVER'S HEART . 7 1 
 
 OMISSIONS . . . - 78 
 
 THE DREAMS OF MR. HOOPDRIVER . 81 
 
 HOW MR. HOOPDRIVER WENT TO HASLEMERE 85 
 
 HOW MR. HOOPDRIVER REACHED MIDHURST 94 
 
 AN INTERLUDE . . lOI 
 
 OF THE ARTIFICIAL IN MAN, AND OF THE ZEITGEIST I07 
 
 THE ENCOUNTER AT MIDHURST III 
 
X 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 THE PURSUIT 
 
 AT BOGNOR 
 
 THE MOONLIGHT RIDE . . . . 
 
 THE SURBITON INTERLUDE . . . . 
 
 THE AWAKENING OF MR. HOOPDRIVER 
 
 THE DEPARTURE FROM CHICHESTER . 
 
 THE UNEXPECTED ANECDOTE OF THE LION 
 
 THE RESCUE EXPEDITION . . . . 
 
 MR. HOOPDRIVER, KNIGHT-ERRANT 
 
 THE ABASEMENT OF MR. HOOPDRIVER 
 
 IN THE NEW FOREST .... 
 
 AT THE RUFUS STONE 
 
 THE ENVOY ... 
 
 PAGE 
 
 160 
 
 180 
 187 
 197 
 207 
 230 
 252 
 
 275 
 292 
 
 310 
 
List of Illustrations 
 
 " Here we can talk'' Frontispiece 
 
 PAGE 
 
 He would have come forward, bowing and swaying 5 
 He was sitting on the edge of his bed, rubbing 
 
 arnica into his knee 17 
 
 " I wish you'd leave off staring at me " . . -25 
 
 He was hopping vigorously along the road . . 28 
 
 A sitting position on the gravel .... 36 
 
 Sat down . . . and mopped his face ... 43 
 Mr. Hoopdriver came across the other cyclist in 
 
 brown 50 
 
 A little grey figure by the wayside waving some- 
 thing white 54 
 
 "No trouble. 'Ssureyou" 59 
 
 The Golden Dragon 63 
 
 Guildford is an altogether charming old town . 66 
 
 Promenading the brilliant gardens at Earl's Court . 73 
 
 In the diary there is this entry .... 79 
 
xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The other man in brown's attitude . . . was a 
 
 deliberate pose 88 
 
 Paddle his lean legs in the chuckling cheerful 
 
 water 97 
 
 He came into Midhurst by the bridge at the water- 
 mill 99 
 
 " Stow it ! " said Mr. Hoopdriver . . . • ii5 
 " I can't think what girls is comin' to" . . .124 
 A number of chubby innocents . . . watched him 
 
 quietly but firmly 132 
 
 " I've lost the spoor " 137 
 
 " I have you," he said. " You are mine " . . 146 
 
 The ostler . . . rushed violently down the road . 153 
 She looked at his face in its light . .166 
 
 " At least let me help you '' . ... 177 
 
 " What the juice do they want with cream-pans in 
 
 a bedroom?" 183 
 
 He settled the fate of that lion in his mind . . 204 
 
 With a pocket-handkerchief held to his right eye . 214 
 
 There whirled a great black mass . . . and Dangle 
 
 in transit from front to back .... 220 
 
 Dangle swaying and gesticulating behind a cory- 
 
 bantic black horse 231 
 
 " Some dirty cad . . . made a remark as we went 
 
 by this door" 241 
 
 Mr. Hoopdriver, still solemnly squaring . . . 250 
 
 "Miss Milton — I'm a liar" 261 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 xm 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Now they hung limply over his knees . . . 269 
 
 " A bicycle is considered too . . .flippant" . . 277 
 
 " Hold it ! " cried Phipps over his shoulder . . 288 
 
 Mr. Hoopdriver was seated on a rustic seat . . 297 
 
 With a sudden impulse lifted it to his lips . , 308 
 
 A lonely-looking little figure, in a dusty brown suit. 311 
 
 The apprentice with the high collar holds them 
 
 open 313 
 
The Wheels of Chance 
 
 THE PRINCIPAL CHARACTER IN 
 THE STORY 
 
 I 
 
 If you (presuming you are of the sex that does 
 such things) — if you had gone into the Drapery 
 Emporium — which is really only magnificent for 
 shop — of Messrs. Antrobus & Co. — a perfectly 
 fictitious " Co.," by-the-bye — of Putney, on the 
 14th of August 1895, had turned to the right- 
 hand side, where the blocks of white linen and 
 piles of blankets rise up to the rail from which 
 the pink and blue prints depend, you might have 
 been served by the central figure of this story 
 that is now beginning. He would have come 
 forward, bowing and swaying ; he would have 
 extended two hands with largish knuckles and 
 enormous cuffs over the counter ; and he would 
 have asked you, protruding a pointed chin and 
 without the slightest anticipation of pleasure in 
 his manner, what he might have the pleasure of 
 
4 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 showing you. Under certain circumstances — 
 as, for instance, hats, baby-hnen, gloves, silks, 
 lace, or curtains — he would simply have bowed 
 politely, and with a drooping expression, and 
 making a kind of circular sweep, invited you 
 to "step this way," and so led you beyond his 
 ken ; but under other and happier conditions 
 —huckaback, blankets, dimity, cretonne, linen, 
 calico, are cases in point — he would have re- 
 quested you to take a seat, emphasising the 
 hospitality by leaning over the counter and 
 gripping a chair back in a spasmodic manner, 
 and so proceeded to obtain, unfold, and exhibit 
 his goods for your consideration. Under which 
 happier circumstances you might — if of an 
 observing turn of mind, and not too much of 
 a housewife to be inhuman — have given the cen- 
 tral^figure of this story less cursory attention, 
 y^^ow if you had noticed anything about him, it 
 /would have been chiefly to notice how little he 
 Viji&s noticeable. He wore the black morning coat, 
 the black tie, and the speckled grey nether parts 
 (descending into shadow and mystery below the 
 counter) of his craft. He was of a pallid com- 
 
 Cplexion, hair of a kind of dirty fairness, greyish 
 eyes, and a skimpy, immature moustache under 
 his peaked, indeterminate nose. His features 
 were all small, but none ill-shaped. A rosette 
 of pins decorated the lappel of his coat. His 
 remarks, you would observe, were entirely what 
 people used to call dichJ, formulae not organic to 
 the occasion, but stereotyped ages ago, and learnt 
 
^-1^ 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 7 
 
 years since by heart. " This, madam," he would 
 say, " is selling very well." " We are doing a very 
 good article at four three a yard." "We could 
 show you something better, of course." "No 
 trouble, madam, I assure you." Such were the 
 simple counters of his intercourse. So, I say, he 
 would have presented himself to your superficial 
 observation. He would have danced about be- 
 hind the counter, have neatly refolded the goods 
 he had shown you, have put on one side those 
 you selected, extracted a little book with a carbon 
 leaf and a tinfoil sheet from a fixture, made you 
 out a little bill in that weak flourishing hand 
 peculiar to drapers, and have bawled " Sayn ! " 
 Then a puffy little shop-walker would have come 
 into view, looked at the bill for a second, very 
 hard (showing you a parting down the middle of 
 his head meanwhile), have scribbled a still more 
 flourishing J. M. all over the document, have 
 asked you if there was nothing more, have stood 
 by you — supposing that you were paying cash — 
 until the central figure of this story reappeared 
 with the change. One glance more at him, and 
 the puffy little shop-walker would have been bow- 
 ing you out, with fountains of civilities at work 
 all about you. And so the interview would have 
 terminated. 
 
 But real literature, as distinguished from anec- 
 dote, does not concern itself with superficial 
 appearances alone. Literature is revelation. 
 Modern literature is indecorous revelation. It 
 is the duty of the earnest author to tell you what 
 
8 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 you would not have seen — even at the cost of 
 some blushes. And the thing that you vi^ould 
 not have seen about this young man, and the 
 thing of the greatest moment to this story, the 
 thing that must be told if the book is to be 
 written, was— let us face it bravely — the Remark- 
 able Condition of this Young Man's Legs. 
 
 Let us approach the business with dispassionate 
 explicitness. Let us assume something of the 
 scientific spirit, the hard, almost professorial tone 
 of the conscientious realist. Let us treat this 
 young man's legs as a mere diagram, and indicate 
 the points of interest with the unemotional preci- 
 sion of a lecturer's pointer. And so to our revela- 
 tion. On the internal aspect of the right ankle of 
 this young man, you would have observed, ladies 
 and gentlemen, a contusion and an abrasion ; on 
 the internal aspect of the left ankle a contusion 
 also; on its external aspect a large yellowish 
 bruise. On his left shin there were two bruises, 
 one a leaden yellow graduating here and there 
 into purple, and another, obviously of more recent 
 date, of a blotchy red — tumid and threatening. 
 Proceeding up the left leg in a spiral manner, 
 an unnatural hardness and redness would have 
 been discovered on the upper aspect of the calf ; 
 and above the knee and on the inner side, an 
 extraordinary expanse of bruised surface, a kind 
 of closely stippled shading of contused points. 
 The right leg would be found to be bruised in 
 a marvellous manner all about and under the 
 knee, and particularly on the interior aspect of 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 9 
 
 the knee. So far we may proceed with our 
 details. Fired by these discoveries, an investi- 
 gator might perhaps have pursued his inquiries 
 further — to bruises on the shoulders, elbows, 
 and even the finger-joints, of the central figure 
 of our story. He had indeed been bumped and 
 battered at an extraordinary number of points. 
 But enough of realistic description is as good 
 as a feast, and we have exhibited sufficient for 
 our purpose. Even in literature one must know 
 where to draw the line. 
 
 Now the reader may be inclined to wonder 
 how a respectable young shopman could have 
 got his legs, and indeed himself generally, into 
 such a dreadful condition. One might fancy 
 that he had been sitting with his nether ex- 
 tremities in some complicated machinery, a 
 threshing-machine, say, or one of those hay- 
 making furies. But Sherlock Holmes (now, 
 after a glorious career, happily and decently 
 dead) would have fancied nothing of the kind. 
 He would have recognised at once that the 
 bruises on the internal aspect of the left leg, 
 considered in the light of the distribution of the 
 other abrasions and contusions, pointed unmis- 
 takably to the violent impact of the Mounting 
 Beginner upon the bicycling saddle, and that 
 the ruinous state of the right knee was equally 
 eloquent of the concussions attendant on that 
 person's hasty, frequently causeless, and invari- 
 ably ill-conceived descents. One large bruise 
 on the shin is even more characteristic of the 
 
ro THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 'prentice cyclist, for upon every one of them 
 waits the jest of the unexpected treadle. You 
 try at least to walk your machine in an easy 
 manner, and whack ! — you are rubbing your 
 shin. So out of innocence we ripen. Two 
 bruises on that place mark a certain want of 
 aptitude in learning, such as one might expect 
 in a person unused to muscular exercise. Blisters 
 on the hands are eloquent of the nervous clutch 
 of the wavering rider. And so forth, until 
 Sherlock is presently explaining, by the help of 
 the minor injuries, that the machine ridden is 
 an old-fashioned affair with a fork instead of the 
 diamond frame, a cushioned tire, well worn on 
 the hind wheel, and a gross weight all on of 
 perhaps three-and-forty pounds. 
 
 The revelation is made. Behind the decorous 
 figure of the attentive shopman that I had the 
 honour of showing you at first, rises a vision 
 of a nightly struggle, of two dark figures and a 
 machine in a dark road — the road, to be explicit, 
 from Roehampton to Putney Hill — and with this 
 vision is the sound of a heel spurning the gravel, 
 a gasping and grunting, a shouting of "Steer, 
 man, steer ! " a wavering unsteady flight, a spas- 
 modic turning of the missile edifice of man and 
 machine, and a collapse. Then you descry dimly 
 through the dusk the central figure of this story 
 sitting by the roadside and rubbing his leg at 
 some new place, and his friend, sympathetic (but 
 by no means depressed), repairing the displace- 
 ment of the handle-bar. 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 II 
 
 '' Thus even in a shop assistant does the warmth 
 of manhood assert itself, and drive him against 
 all the conditions of his calling, against the 
 counsels of prudence and the restrictions of his 
 means, to seek the wholesome delights of exertion 
 and danger and pain. And our first, examination 
 <jf^e draper reveals beneath his draperies — the 
 man ! To which initial fact (among others) we 
 shall come again in the end. 
 
 
II 
 
 But enough of these revelations. The central 
 figure of our story is now going along behind 
 the counter, a draper indeed, with your purchases 
 in his arms, to the warehouse, where the various 
 articles you have selected will presently be packed 
 by the senior porter and sent to you. Returning 
 thence to his particular place, he seizes a folded 
 piece of gingham, and, gripping the corners 
 of the folds in his hands, begins to straighten 
 them punctiliously. Near him is an apprentice, 
 apprenticed to the same high calling of draper's 
 assistant, a ruddy, red-haired lad in a very short, 
 tailless black coat and a very high collar, who is 
 deliberately unfolding and refolding some pat- 
 terns of cretonne. By twenty-one he, too, may 
 hope to be a full-blown assistant, even as Mr. 
 Hoopdriver. Prints depend from the brass rails 
 above them, behind are fixtures full of white 
 packages of Lino, Hd Bk, and Mull. You might 
 imagine to see them that the two were both in- 
 tent upon nothing but smoothness of textile and 
 rectitude of fold. But to tell the truth, neither is 
 thinking of the mechanical duties in hand. The 
 assistant is dreaming of the delicious time — only 
 four hours off now — when he will resume the tale 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 13 
 
 of his bruises and abrasions. The apprentice is 
 nearer the long, long thoughts of boyhood, and 
 his imagination rides cap-a-pie through the cham- 
 bers of his brain, seeking some knightly quest in 
 honour of that Fair Lady, the last but one of the 
 girl apprentices to the dressmaking upstairs. He 
 inclines rather to street fighting against revolu- 
 tionaries — because then she could see him from 
 the window. 
 
 Jerking them back to the present comes the 
 puffy little shop-walker, with a paper in his hand. 
 The apprentice becomes extremely active. The 
 shop-walker eyes the goods in hand. "Hoop- 
 driver," he says, "how's that line of g-sez-x 
 ginghams ? " 
 
 Hoopdriver returns from an imaginary triumph 
 over the uncertainties of dismounting. " They're 
 going fairly well, sir. But the larger checks seem 
 hanging." 
 
 The shop -walker brings up parallel to the 
 counter. "Any particular time when you want 
 your holidays ? " he asks. 
 
 Hoopdriver pulls at his skimpy moustache. 
 " No — Don't want them too late, sir, of course." 
 
 " How about this day week ? " 
 
 Hoopdriver becomes rigidly meditative, grip- 
 ping the corners of the gingham folds in his 
 hands. His face is eloquent of conflicting con- 
 siderations. Can he learn it in a week ? That's 
 the question. Otherwise Briggs will get next 
 week, and he will have to wait until September 
 — when the weather is often uncertain. He is 
 
14 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 naturally of a sanguine disposition. All drapers 
 have to be, or else they could never have the 
 faith they show in the beauty, washability, and 
 unfading excellence of the goods they sell you. 
 The decision comes at last. " That'll do me very 
 well," says Mr. Hoopdriver, terminating the pause. 
 The die is cast. ' The shop-walker makes a note 
 of it and goes on to Briggs in the " dresses," the 
 next in the strict scale of precedence of the 
 Drapery Emporium. Mr. Hoopdriver in alter- 
 nating spasms anon straightens his gingham and 
 anon becomes meditative, with his tongue in the 
 hollow of his decaying wisdom tooth. 
 
Ill 
 
 At supper that night, holiday talk held undisputed 
 sway. Mr. Pritchard spoke of " Scotland," Miss 
 Isaacs clamoured of Bettws-y-Coed, Mr. Judson 
 displayed a proprietary interest in the Norfolk 
 Broads. " T?" said Hoopdriver, when the ques- 
 tion came to him. " Why, cycling, of course." 
 
 "You're never going to ride that dreadful 
 machine of yours, day after day ? " said Miss 
 Howe of the Costume Department. 
 
 " I am," said Hoopdriver, as calmly as possible, 
 
 ^-.^Uing at the insufficient moustache. " I'm going 
 
 ( for a Cycling Tour. Along the South Coast." 
 
 — '"Well, all I hope, Mr. Hoopdriver, is that you'll 
 
 get fine weather," said Miss Howe. " And not 
 
 come any nasty croppers." 
 
 "And done forget some tinscher of arnica in 
 yer bag," said the junior apprentice in the very 
 high collar. (He had witnessed one of the lessons 
 at the top of Putney Hill.) 
 
 "You stow it," said Mr. Hoopdriver, looking 
 hard and threateningly at the junior apprentice, 
 and suddenly adding in a tone of bitter contempt, 
 "Jampot." 
 
 " I'm getting fairly safe upon it now," he told 
 Miss Howe. 
 
i6 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 At other times Hoopdriver might have further 
 resented the satirical efforts of the apprentice, but 
 his mind was too full of the projected Tour to 
 admit any petty delicacies of dignity. He left 
 the supper-table early, so that he might put in 
 a good hour at the desperate gymnastics up the 
 Roehampton Road before it would be time to 
 come back for locking up. When the gas was 
 turned off for the night, he was sitting on the 
 edge of his bed, rubbing arnica into his knee — 
 a new and very big place — and studying a Road 
 Map of the South of England. Briggs of the 
 "dresses," who shared the room with him, was 
 sitting up in bed and trying to smoke in the 
 dark. Briggs had never been on a cycle in his 
 life, but he felt Hoopdriver's inexperience, and 
 offered such advice as occurred to him. 
 
 " Have the machine thoroughly well oiled," said 
 Briggs; "carry one or two lemons with you; don't 
 tear yourself to death the first day, and sit upright. 
 Never lose control of the machine, and always 
 sound the bell on every possible opportunity. 
 You mind those things, and nothing very much 
 can't happen to you, Hoopdriver — you take my 
 word." 
 
 He would lapse into silence for a minute, save 
 perhaps for a curse or so at his pipe, and then 
 break out with an entirely different set of tips. 
 
 "Avoid running over dogs, Hoopdriver, what- 
 ever you do. It's one of the worst things you 
 can do to run over a dog. Never let the machine 
 buckle — there was a man killed only the other day 
 

THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 19 
 
 through his wheel buckUng ; don't scorch, don't 
 ride on the foot-path, keep your own side of the 
 road, and if you see a tram-line, go round the 
 corner at once, and hurry off into the next county 
 — and always light up before dark. You mind 
 just a few little things like that, Hoopdriver, and 
 nothing much can't happen to you — you take my 
 word." 
 
 "Right you are!" said Hoopdriver. "Good 
 night, old man." 
 
 "Good night," said Briggs, and there was 
 silence for a space, save for the succulent re- 
 spiration of the pipe. Hoopdriver rode off into 
 Dreamland on his machine, and was scarcely 
 there before he was pitched back into the world 
 of sense again. Something — what was it ? 
 
 "Never oil the steering. It's fatal," a voice 
 that came from round a fitful glow of light was 
 saying. "And clean the chain daily with black- 
 lead. You mind just a few little things like 
 that " 
 
 " Lord love us ! " said Hoopdriver, and pulled 
 the bedclothes over his ears. 
 
THE RIDING FORTH OF MR. 
 HOOPDRIVER 
 
 IV 
 
 n3NLY those who toil six long days out of the 
 seven, and all the year round, save for one brief 
 glorious fortnight or ten days in the summer 
 tirpe, know the exquisite sensations of the First 
 
 /fioliday Morning. All the dreary, uninteresting 
 routine drops from you suddenly, your chains 
 fall about your feet. All at once you are Lord 
 of yourself. Lord of every hour in the long, 
 vacant day ; you may go where you please, call 
 none Sir or Madam, have a lappel free of pins, 
 doff your black morning coat and wear the 
 colour of your heart, and be a Man. .W'ou grudge 
 sleep, you grudge eating and drinking even, their 
 
 .''intrusion on those exquisite moments. There 
 will be no more rising before breakfast in casual 
 old clothing, to go dusting and getting ready in a 
 
 ''cheerless, shutter-darkened, wrappered-up shop ; 
 no more imperious cries of, "Forward, Hoop- 
 driver," no more hasty meals, and weary attendance 
 on fitful old women, for ten blessed days. The 
 first morning is by far the most glorious, for you 
 
 20 I 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 21 
 
 hold your whole fortune in your hands. There- 
 
 ,, after, every night, comes a pang, a spectre, that 
 
 I will not be exorcised — the premonition of the 
 
 / return. The shadow of going back, of being put 
 
 i in the cage again for another twelve months, lies 
 
 V, blacker and blacker across the sunlight. But on 
 
 the first morning of the ten the holiday has no 
 
 past, and ten days seems as good as infinity. 
 
 And it was fine, full of a promise of glorious 
 days, a deep blue sky, with dazzling piles of 
 white cloud here and there, as though celestial 
 haymakers had been piling the swathes of last 
 night's clouds into cocks for a coming cartage. 
 There were thrushes in the Richmond Road, 
 and a lark on Putney Heath. The freshness 
 of dew was in the air ; dew or the relics of 
 an overnight shower glittered on the leaves and 
 grass. Hoopdriver had breakfasted early by Mrs. 
 Gunn's complaisance. He wheeled his machine 
 up Putney Hill, and his heart sang within him. 
 Half-way up, a dissipated-looking black cat rushed 
 home across the road and vanished under a gate. 
 All the big red-brick houses behind the variegated 
 shrubs and trees had their blinds down still, and 
 he would not have changed places with a soul 
 in any one of them for a hundred pounds. 
 
 He had on his new brown cycling suit — a 
 handsome Norfolk jacket thing for 30s. — and 
 his legs — those martyr legs — were more than 
 consoled by thick chequered stockings, "thin 
 in the foot, thick in the leg," for all they had 
 endured. A neat packet of American cloth 
 
22 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 behind the saddle contained his change of 
 raiment, and the bell, and the handle-bar, and 
 the hubs and lamp, albeit a trifle freckled by 
 wear, glittered blindingly in the rising sunlight. 
 And at the top of the hill, after only one un- 
 successful attempt, which, somehow, terminated 
 on the green, Hoopdriver mounted, and, with 
 a stately and cautious restraint in his pace, and 
 a dignified curvature of path, began his great 
 Cycling Tour along the Southern Coast. 
 
 There is only one phrase to describe his course 
 at this stage, and that is — voluptuous curves. 
 He did not ride fast, he did not ride straight, an 
 exacting critic might say he did not ride well 
 — but he rode generously, opulently, using the 
 whole road and even nibbling at the footpath. 
 The excitement never flagged. So far he had 
 never passed or been passed by anything, but 
 as yet the day was young and the road was 
 clear. He doubted his steering so much that, 
 for the present, he had resolved to dismount at 
 the approach of anything else upon wheels. The 
 shadows of the trees lay very long and blue 
 across the road ; the morning sunlight was like 
 amber fire. At the cross-roads at the top of 
 West Hill, where the cattle trough stands, he 
 turned towards Kingston and set himself to scale 
 the little bit of ascent. An early heath-keeper, 
 in his velveteen jacket, marvelled at his efforts; 
 and while he yet struggled the head of a carter 
 rose over the brow. 
 
 At the sight of him Mr. Hoopdriver, according 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 23 
 
 to his previous determination, resolved to dis- 
 mount. He tightened the brake, and the machine 
 stopped dead. He was trying to think what he 
 did with his right leg whilst getting off. He 
 gripped the handles and released the brake, 
 standing on the left pedal and waving his right 
 foot in the air. Then — these things take so long 
 in the telling — he found the machine was falling 
 over to the right. While he was deciding upon 
 a plan of action, gravitation appears to have 
 been busy. He was still irresolute when he 
 found the machine on the ground, himself kneel- 
 ing upon it, and a vague feeling in his mind 
 that again Providence had dealt harshly with 
 his shin. This happened when he was just level 
 with the heath-keeper. The man in the approach- 
 ing cart stood up to see the ruins better. 
 
 " TMi ain't the way to get off," said the heath- 
 keeper. 
 
 Mr. Hoopdriver picked up the machine. The 
 handle was twisted askew again. He said some- 
 thing under his breath. He would have to un- 
 screw the beastly thing. 
 
 " Tkat ain't the way to get off," repeated the 
 heath-keeper, after a silence. 
 
 "/ know that," said Mr. Hoopdriver testily, 
 determined to overlook the new specimen on 
 his shin at any cost. He unbuckled the wallet 
 behind the saddle, to get out a screw-hammer. 
 
 " If you know it ain't the way to get off — 
 whaddyer do it for ? " said the heath-keeper, in a 
 tone of friendly controversy. 
 
24 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 Mr. Hoopdriver got out his screw-hammer and 
 went to the handle. He was annoyed. " That's 
 my business, I suppose," he said, fumbhng with 
 the screw. The unusual exertion had made his 
 hands shake frightfully. 
 
 The heath -keeper became meditative, and 
 twisted his stick in his hands behind his back. 
 " You've broken yer 'andle, ain't yer ? " he said 
 presently. Just then the screw-hammer slipped 
 off the nut. Mr. Hoopdriver used a nasty, low 
 word. 
 
 "They're trying things, them bicycles," said 
 the heath-keeper charitably. " Very trying." Mr. 
 Hoopdriver gave the nut a vicious turn, and sud- 
 denly stood up — he was holding the front wheel 
 between his knees. "I wish," said he, with a 
 catch in his voice, " I wish you'd leave off staring 
 at me." Then with the air of one who has 
 delivered an ultimatum, he began replacing the 
 screw-hammer in the wallet. 
 
 The heath-keeper never moved. Possibly he 
 raised his eyebrows, and certainly he stared 
 harder than he did before. " You're pretty un- 
 sociable," he said slowly, as Mr. Hoopdriver 
 seized the handles and stood ready to mount as 
 soon as the cart had passed. 
 
 The indignation gathered slowly but surely. 
 " Why don't you ride on a private road of your 
 own if no one ain't to speak to you ? " asked the 
 heath-keeper, perceiving more and more clearly 
 the bearing of the matter. " Can't no one make 
 a passin' remark to you. Touchy ? Ain't I good 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 27 
 
 enough to speak to you ? Been struck wooden 
 all of a sudden ? " 
 
 Mr. Hoopdriver stared into the Immensity of 
 the Future. He was rigid with emotion. It was 
 like abusing the Lions in Trafalgar Square. But 
 the heath-keeper felt his honour was at stake. 
 
 " Don't you make no remarks to 'im" said the 
 keeper as the carter came up broadside to them. 
 "'E's a bloomin' dook, 'e is. 'E don't converse 
 with no one under a earl. 'E's off to Windsor, 
 'e is ; that's why 'e's stickin' his be'ind out so 
 haughty. Pride ! Why, 'e's got so much of it, 'e 
 has to carry some of it in that there, bundle there, 
 for fear 'e'd bust if 'e didn't ease hisself a bit — 
 'E " 
 
 But Mr. Hoopdriver heard no more. He was 
 hopping vigorously along the road, in a spas- 
 modic attempt to remount. He missed the 
 treadle once, and swore viciously, to the keeper's 
 immense delight. " Nar ! Nar ! " said the heath- 
 keeper. 
 
 In another moment Mr. Hoopdriver was up, 
 and after one terrific lurch of the machine, the 
 heath-keeper dropped out of earshot. 
 
 Mr. Hoopdriver would have liked to look back 
 at his enemy, but he usually twisted round and 
 upset if he tried that. He had to imagine the 
 indignant heath-keeper telling the carter all about 
 it. He tried to infuse as much disdain as possible 
 into his retreating aspect. 
 
 He drove on his sinuous way down the dip by 
 the new mere and up the little rise to the crest of 
 
28 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 the hill that drops into Kingston Vale ; and so 
 remarkable is the psychology of cycling, that he 
 
 
 rode all the straighter and easier because the 
 emotions the heath-keeper had aroused relieved 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 29 
 
 his mind of the constant expectation of collapse 
 that had previously unnerved him. To ride a 
 bicycle properly is very like a love affair ; chiefly 
 it is a matter of faith. Believe you do it, and the 
 thing is done ; doubt, and, for the life of you, 
 you cannot. 
 
 Now you may perhaps imagine that as he rode 
 on, his feelings towards the heath-keeper were 
 either vindictive or remorseful — vindictive for 
 the aggravation or remorseful for his own injudi- 
 cious display of ill-temper. As a matter of fact, 
 they were nothing of the sort. A sudden, a 
 wonderful gratitude, possessed him. The Glory 
 of the Holidays had resumed its sway with a 
 sudden accession of splendour. At the crest of 
 the hill he put his feet upon the foot-rests, and 
 now riding moderately straight, went, with a pal- 
 pitating brake, down that excellent descent. A 
 new delight was in his eyes, quite over and above 
 the pleasure of rushing through the keen, sweet, 
 morning air. He reached out his thumb and 
 twanged his bell out of sheer happiness. ^ 
 
 "'He's a bloomin' dook — he is!'" said Mr. 
 Hoopdriver to himself, in a soft undertone, as he 
 went soaring down the hill, and again, " ' He's a 
 bloomin' dook ! ' " He opened his mouth in a 
 silent laugh. It was having a decent cut did ifc. 
 .His social superiority had been so evident that | 
 eVen a man like that noticed it. No more Man- / 
 Chester DepartmenLfor ten days ! Out of Man/ 
 Chester, a Man. //The draper Hoopdriver, the 
 Hand, had vani9h^d-4rom existence\ Instead was 
 
30 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 a gentleman, a man of pleasure, with a five-pound 
 note, two sovereigns, and some silver at various 
 convenient points of his person. At any rate as 
 good as a dook, if not precisely in the peerage. 
 Involuntarily at the thought of his funds Hoop- 
 driver's right hand left the handle and sought 
 his breast pocket, to be immediately recalled by 
 a violent swoop of the machine towards the 
 cemetery. Whirroo ! Just missed that half-brick ! 
 Mischievous brutes there were in the world to 
 put such a thing in the road. Some blooming 
 'Arry or other ! Ought to prosecute a few of 
 these roughs, and the rest would know better. 
 That must be the buckle of the wallet was rattling 
 on the mud-guard. How cheerfully the wheels 
 buzzed ! 
 
 The cemetery was very silent and peaceful, but 
 the Vale was waking, and windows rattled and 
 squeaked up, and a white dog came out of one 
 of the houses and yelped at him. He got off, 
 rather breathless, at the foot of Kingston Hill, and 
 pushed up. Halfway up, an early milk chariot 
 rattled by him ; two dirty men with bundles came 
 hurrying down. Hoopdriver felt sure they were 
 burglars, carrying home the swag. 
 
 It was up Kingston Hill that he first noticed a 
 peculiar feeling, a slight tightness at his knees; 
 but he noticed, too, at the top that he rode 
 straighter than he did before. The pleasure of 
 riding straight blotted out these first intimations 
 of fatigue. A man on horseback appeared ; 
 Hoopdriver, in a tumult of soul at his own 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANGE 31 
 
 temerity, passed him ; then down the hill into 
 Kingston, with the screw-hammer, behind in the 
 wallet, rattling against the oil-can. He passed, 
 without misadventure, a fruiterer's van and a 
 sluggish cartload of bricks. And in Kingston, 
 Hoopdriver, with the most exquisite sensations, 
 saw the shutters half removed from a draper's 
 shop, and two yawning youths, in dusty old 
 black jackets and with dirty white comforters 
 about their necks, clearing up the planks and 
 boxes and wrappers in the window, preparatory 
 to dressing it out. Even so had Hoopdriver 
 been on the previous day. But now, was he 
 not a bloomin' dook, palpably in the sight of 
 common men ? Then round the corner to the 
 right — bell banged furiously — and so along the 
 road to Surbiton. 
 
 Whoop for Freedom and Adventure ! Every 
 now and then a house with an expression of 
 sleepy surprise would open its eye as he passed, 
 and to the right of him for a mile or so the 
 weltering Thames flashed and glittered. Talk 
 of your joie de vivre ! Albeit with a certain 
 cramping sensation about the knees and calves 
 slowly forcing itself upon his attention. 
 
THE SHAMEFUL EPISODE OF THE 
 YOUNG LADY IN GREY 
 
 V 
 
 / Now you must understand that Mr. Hoopdriver 
 I was not one of your fast young men. If he had 
 Vbeen King Lemuel, he could not have profited 
 more by his mother's instructions. He regarded 
 the feminine sex as something to bow to and 
 smirk at from a safe distance. Years of the 
 intimate remoteness of a counter leave their 
 mark upon a man. It was an adventure for him 
 to take one of the Young Ladies of the establish- 
 ment to church on a Sunday. Few modern 
 young men could have merited less the epithet 
 "Dorg." But I have thought at times that his 
 machine may have had something of the blade 
 in its metal. Decidedly it was a machine with 
 a past. Mr. Hoopdriver had bought it second- 
 hand from Hare's in Putney, and Hare said it 
 had had several owners. Second-hand was 
 scarcely the word for it, and Hare was mildly 
 puzzled that he should be selling such an 
 antiquity. He said it was perfectly sound, if a 
 
 little old-fashioned, but he was absolutely silent 
 
 32 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 33 
 
 about its moral character. It may even have 
 begun its career with a poet, say in his glorious 
 youth. It may have been the bicycle of a Really 
 Bad Man. No one who had ever ridden a cycle 
 of any kind but will witness that the things are 
 unaccountably prone to pick up bad habits — 
 and keep them. 
 
 It is undeniable that it became convulsed with 
 the most violent emotions directly the Young 
 Lady in Grey appeared. It began an absolutely 
 unprecedented Wabble — unprecedented so far as-^ 
 Hoopdriver's experience went. It "showed off/ 
 — the most decadent sinuosity. It left a track 
 like one of Beardsley's feathers. He suddenly 
 realised, too, that his cap was loose on his head 
 and his breath a mere remnant. 
 
 The Young Lady in Grey was also riding a 
 bicycle. She was dressed in a beautiful bluish- 
 grey, and the sun behind her drew her outline 
 in gold and left the rest in shadow. Hoopdriver 
 was dimly aware that she was young, rather 
 slender, dark, and with a bright colour and 
 bright eyes. Strange doubts possessed him as 
 to the nature of her nether costume. He had 
 heard of such things of course — French perhaps. 
 Her handles glittered ; a jet of sunlight splashed 
 off her bell blindingly. She was approaching 
 the high road along an affluent from the villas 
 of Surbiton. The roads converged slantingly. 
 She was travelling at about the same pace as 
 Mr. Hoopdriver. Appearances pointed to a 
 meeting at the fork of the roads. 
 
34 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 Hoopdriver was seized with a horrible con- 
 flict of doubts. By contrast with her he rode 
 disgracefully. Had he not better get off at once 
 and pretend something was wrong with his 
 treadle ? Yet even the end of getting off was 
 an uncertainty. That last occasion on Putney 
 Heath ! On the other hand, what would happen 
 if he kept on ? To go very slow seemed the 
 abnegation of his manhood. To crawl after a 
 mere schoolgirl ! Besides, she was not riding 
 very fast. On the other hand, to thrust himself 
 in front of her, consuming the road in his tendril- 
 like advance, seemed an incivility — greed. He 
 would leave her such a very little. His business 
 training made him prone to bow and step aside. 
 If only one could take one's hands off the handles, 
 one might pass with a silent elevation of the hat, 
 of course. But even that was a little suggestive 
 of a funeral. 
 
 Meanwhile the roads converged. She was 
 looking at him. She was flushed, a little thin, 
 and had very bright eyes. Her red lips fell 
 apart. She may have been riding hard, but it 
 looked uncommonly like a faint smile. And 
 the things were — yes ! — rationals ! Suddenly an 
 impulse to bolt from the situation became clamo- 
 rous. Mr. Hoopdriver pedalled convulsively, in- 
 tending to pass her. He jerked against some 
 tin thing on the road, and it flew up between 
 front wheel and mud-guard. He twisted round 
 towards her. Had the machine a devil ? 
 
 At that supreme moment it came across him 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 37 
 
 that he would have done wiser to dismount. He 
 gave a frantic " whoop " and tried to get round ; 
 then, as he seemed falHng over, he pulled the 
 handles straight again and to the left by an in- 
 stinctive motion, and shot behind her hind wheel, 
 missing her by a hair's breadth. The pavement 
 kerb awaited him. He tried to recover, and 
 found himself jumped up on the pavement and 
 riding squarely at a neat wooden • paling. He 
 struck this with a terrific impact and shot for- 
 ward off his saddle into a clumsy entanglement. 
 Then he began to tumble over sideways, and 
 completed the entire figure in a sitting position 
 on the gravel, with his feet between the fork and 
 the stay of the machine. The concussion on 
 the gravel shook his entire being. He remained 
 in that position, wishing that he had broken 
 his neck, wishing even more heartily that he 
 had never been born. TJie glory of life had 
 departed. Bloomin' dook, indeed ! These un- 
 womanly women ! 
 
 There was a soft whirr, the click of a brake, 
 two footfalls, and the Young Lady in Grey stood 
 holding her machine. She had turned round and 
 come back to him. The warm sunlight now was 
 in her face. " Are you hurt ? " she said. She 
 had a pretty, clear, girlish voice. She was really 
 very young — quite a girl, in fact. And rode so 
 well ! It was a bitter draught. 
 
 Mr. Hoopdriver stood up at once. "Not a 
 bit," he said, a little ruefully. He became pain- 
 fully aware that large patches of gravel scarcely 
 
38 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 improve the appearance of a Norfolk suit. " I'm 
 very sorry indeed " 
 
 " It's my fault," she said, interrupting, and so 
 saving him on the very verge of calling her 
 " Miss." (He knew " Miss " was vsrrong, but it 
 was deep-seated habit with him.) " I tried to 
 pass you on the wrong side." Her face and 
 eyes seemed all alive. "It's my place to be 
 sorry." 
 
 " But it was my steering " 
 
 " 1 ought to have seen you were a novice " — 
 
 with a touch of superiority. " But you rode so 
 
 straight coming along there ! " 
 
 ^ She really was — dashed pretty. Mr. Hoop- 
 
 /^ driver's feelings passed the nadir. When he 
 
 ( spoke again there was the faintest flavour of the 
 
 ^■--aristocratic in his voice. 
 
 " It's my first ride, as a matter of fact. But 
 that's no excuse for my — ah ! blundering " 
 
 " Your finger's bleeding," she said abruptly. 
 
 He saw his knuckle was barked. " I didn't feel 
 it," he said, feeling manly. 
 
 "You don't at first. Have you any sticking- 
 plaster ? If not " She balanced her machine 
 
 against herself. She had a little side pocket, and 
 she whipped out a small packet of sticking-plaster 
 with a pair of scissors in a sheath at the side, 
 and cut off a generous portion. He had a wild 
 impulse to ask her to stick it on for him. Con- 
 trolled. " Thank you," he said. 
 
 " Machine all right ? " she asked, looking past 
 him at the prostrate vehicle, her hands on her 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 39 
 
 handle-bar. For the first time Hoopdriver did 
 not feel proud of his machine. 
 
 He turned and began to pick up the fallen 
 fabric. He looked over his shoulder, and she 
 was gone ; turned his head over the other shoulder 
 down the road, and she was riding off. " Orf! " 
 said Mr. Hoopdriver. " Well, I'm blowed ! Talk 
 about Slap Up ! " (His aristocratic refinement 
 rarely adorned his speech in his private soliloquies.) 
 His mind was whirling. One fact was clear. A' 
 most delightful and novel human being had 
 flashed across his horizon and was going out of 
 his life again. The Holiday madness was in his 
 blood. She looked round ! 
 
 At that he rushed his machine into the road, 
 and began a hasty ascent. Unsuccessful. Try 
 again. Confound it, will he never be able to get 
 up on the thing again ? She will be round the 
 corner in a minute. Once more. Ah ! Pedal ! 
 Wabble ! No ! Right this time ! He gripped 
 the handles and put his head down. He would 
 overtake her. 
 
 The situation was primordial. The Man beneath 
 prevailed for a moment over the civilised super- 
 structure, the Draper. He pushed at the pedals 
 with archaic violence. So Palaeolithic man may 
 have ridden his simple bicycle of chipped flint in 
 pursuit of his exogamous affinity. She vanished 
 round the corner. His effort was Titanic. What 
 should he say when he overtook her ? That 
 scarcely disturbed him at first. How fine she 
 had looked, flushed with the exertion of riding. 
 
40 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 breathing a little fast, but elastic and active ! 
 Talk about your ladylike, home-keeping girls with 
 complexions like cold veal ! But what should 
 he say to her ? That was a bother. And he 
 ■ could not lift his cap without risking a repetition 
 of his previous ignominy She was a real Young 
 "Lady. No mistake about that ! None of your 
 Slooming shop girls. (There is no greater con- 
 tempt in the world than that of shop men for 
 shop girls, unless it be that of shop girls for shop 
 men.) Phew ! This was work. A certain numb- 
 ness came and went at his knees. 
 
 " May I ask to whom I am indebted ? " he 
 panted to himself, trying it over. That might do. 
 Lucky he had a card-case ! A hundred a shilling 
 — while you wait. He was getting winded. The 
 road was certainly a bit uphill. He turned the 
 corner and saw a long stretch of road, and a grey 
 dress vanishing. He set his teeth. Had he 
 gained on her at all ? " Monkey on a gridiron ! " 
 yelped a small boy. Hoopdriver redoubled his 
 efforts. His breath became audible, his steering 
 unsteady, his pedalling positively ferocious. A 
 drop of perspiration ran into his eye, irritant as 
 acid. The road really was uphill beyond dispute. 
 All his physiology began to cry out at him. A 
 last tremendous effort brought him to the corner 
 and showed yet another extent of shady road- 
 way, empty save for a baker's van. His front 
 wheel suddenly shrieked aloud. " O Lord ! " 
 said Hoopdriver, relaxing. 
 
 Anyhow she was not in sight. He got off un- 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 41 
 
 steadily, and for a moment his legs felt like wisps 
 of cotton. He balanced his machine against the 
 grassy edge of the path and sat down panting. 
 His hands were gnarled with swollen veins and 
 shaking palpably, his breath came viscid. 
 
 " I'm hardly in training yet," he remarked. His 
 legs had gone leaden. " 1 don't feel as though 
 I'd had a mouthful of breakfast." Presently he 
 slapped his side pocket and produced therefrom ) 
 a brand-new cigarette case and a packet of Van^ 
 sittart's Red Herring cigarettes. He filled the 
 case. Then his eye fell with a sudden approval 
 on the ornamental chequering of his new stock- 
 ings. The expression in his eyes faded slowly to 
 abstract meditation. 
 
 " She was a stunning girl," he said. " I wonder 
 if I shall ever set eyes on her again. And she^ 
 knew how to ride, too ! Wonder what she 
 thought of me." 
 
 The phrase "Bloomin' Dook" floated into his J 
 mind with a certain flavour of comfort. 
 
 He lit a cigarette, and sat smoking and medi- 
 tating. He did not even look up when vehicles 
 passed. It was perhaps ten minutes before he 
 roused himself. "What rot it is ! What's the 
 good of thinking such things," he said. " I'm 
 only a blessed draper's assistant." (To be exact, 
 he did not say blessed. The service of a shop 
 may polish a man's exterior ways, but the 'pren- 
 tices' dormitory is an indifferent school for either 
 manners or morals.) He stood up and began 
 wheeling his machine towards Esher. It was 
 
42 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 going to be a beautiful day, and the hedges and 
 trees and the open country were all glorious to 
 his town-tired eyes. But it was a little different 
 from the elation of his start, 
 
 " Look at the gentleman wizzer bicitle," said a 
 
 nursemaid on the path to a personage in a per- 
 
 y'ambulator. That healed him a little. " ' Gentle- 
 
 / man wizzer bicitle ' — ' bloomin' Dook ' — I can't 
 
 ( look so very seedy," he said to himself. 
 
 " I wonder — I should just like to know " 
 
 There was something very comforting in the 
 track of her pneumatic running straight and 
 steady along the road before him. It must 
 be hers. No other pneumatic had been along 
 the road that morning. It was just possible, of 
 course, that he might see her once more — coming 
 back. Should he try and say something smart ? 
 He speculated what manner of girl she might be. 
 Probably she was one of these here New Women. 
 He had a persuasion the cult had been maligned. 
 Anyhow she was a lady. And rich people, too ! 
 Her machine couldn't have cost much under 
 twenty pounds. His mind came round and 
 dwelt some time on her visible self. Rational 
 dress didn't look a bit unwomanly. However, 
 he disdained to be one of your fortune-hunters. 
 Then his thoughts drove off at a tangent. He 
 would certainly have to get something to eat at 
 the next public-house. 
 
ON THE ROAD TO RIPLEY 
 
 VI 
 
 In the fulness of time, Mr. Hoopdriver drew 
 near the Marquis of Granby at Esher, and as he 
 came under the rail- 
 way arch and saw the 
 inn in front of him, 
 he mounted his ma- 
 chine again and rode 
 bravely up to the 
 doorway. Burton 
 and biscuit and cheese 
 he had, which, indeed, 
 is Burton in its pro- 
 per company ; and as 
 he was eating there 
 came a middle-aged 
 man in a drab cycling 
 suit, very red and 
 moist and angry in 
 the face, and asked 
 bitterly for a lemon 
 
 squash ; and he sat down upon the seat in the 
 bar and mopped his face. But scarcely had he 
 sat down before he got up again and stared out 
 of the doorway. 
 
44 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 " Damn ! " said he. Then, " Damned fool ! " 
 
 " Eigh ? " said Mr. Hoopdriver, looking round 
 suddenly with a piece of cheese in his cheek. 
 
 The man in drab faced him, " I called myself 
 a damned fool, sir. Have you any objection ? " 
 
 "Oh! — none — none," said Mr. Hoopdriver. 
 " I thought you spoke to me. I didn't hear 
 what you said." 
 
 "To have a contemplative disposition and an 
 energetic temperament, sir, is hell. Hell, I tell 
 you. A contemplative disposition and a phleg- 
 matic temperament, all very well. But energy 
 
 and philosophy 1" 
 
 Z' Mr. Hoopdriver looked as intelligent as he 
 \could, but said nothing. 
 
 "There's no hurry, sir, none whatever, I came 
 out for exercise, gentle exercise, and to notice 
 the scenery and to botanise. And no sooner do 
 I get on that accursed machine than off I go 
 hammer and tongs ; I never look to right or left, 
 never notice a flower, never see a view — get hot, 
 juicy, red — like a grilled chop. Here I am, sir. 
 Come from Guildford in something under the 
 hour. Why, sir ? " 
 
 Mr. Hoopdriver shook his head. 
 " Because I'm a damned fool, sir. Because I've 
 reservoirs and reservoirs of muscular energy, and 
 one or other of them is always leaking. It's a 
 most interesting road, birds and trees, I've no 
 doubt, and wayside flowers, and there's nothing 
 I should enjoy more than watching them. But 
 I can't. Get me on that machine, and I have to 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 45 
 
 go. Get me on anything, and I have to go. And 
 I don't want to go a bit. Why should a man rush 
 about Hke a rocket, all pace and fizzle ? Why ? 
 It makes me furious. I can assure you, sir, I go 
 scorching along the road, and cursing aloud at 
 myself for doing it. A quiet, dignified, philo- 
 sophical man, that's what I am — at bottom ; and 
 here I am dancing with rage and swearing like a 
 drunken tinker at a perfect stranger " 
 
 "But my day's wasted. I've lost all that 
 country road, and now I'm on the fringe of 
 London. And I might have loitered all the 
 morning ! Ugh ! Thank Heaven, sir, you have 
 not the irritable temperament, that you are not 
 goaded to madness by your endogenous sneers, 
 by the eternal wrangling of an uncomfortable 
 soul and body. I tell you, I lead a cat-and-dog 
 life. But what is the use of talking ? It's all of 
 a piece ! " 
 
 He tossed his head with unspeakable self- 
 disgust, pitched the lemon squash into his mouth, 
 paid for it, and without any further remark strode 
 to the door. Mr. Hoopdriver was still wonder- 
 ing what to say when his interlocutor vanished. 
 There was a noise of a foot spurning the gravel, 
 and when Mr. Hoopdriver reached the doorway 
 the man in drab was a score of yards London- 
 ward. He had already gathered pace. He 
 pedalled with ill-suppressed anger, and his head 
 was going down. In another moment he flew 
 swiftly out of sight under the railway arch, and 
 Mr. Hoopdriver saw him no more. 
 
VII 
 
 After this whirlwind Mr. Hoopdriver paid his 
 reckoning, and being now a little rested about 
 the muscles of the knees, resumed his saddle 
 and rode on in the direction of Ripley, along an 
 excellent but undulating road. He was pleased 
 to find his command over his machine already 
 sensibly increased. He set himself little exercises 
 as he went along, and performed them with 
 varying success. There was, for instance, steering 
 in between a couple of stones, say a foot apart, 
 a deed of little difficulty so far as the front wheel 
 is concerned ; but the back wheel, not being 
 under the sway of the human eye, is apt to take 
 a vicious jump over the obstacle, which sends 
 a violent concussion all along the spine to the 
 skull, and will even jerk a loosely fastened hat 
 over the eyes, and so lead to much confusion. 
 And again, there was taking the hand or hands 
 off the handle-bar, a thing simple in itself, but 
 complex in its consequences. This particularly 
 was a feat Mr. Hoopdriver desired to do, for 
 several divergent reasons ; but at present it simply 
 led to convulsive balancings and novel and in- 
 elegant modes of dismounting. 
 
 The human nose is at its best a needless ex- 
 
 46 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 47 
 
 crescence. There are those who consider it 
 ornamental, and would regard a face deprived of 
 its assistance with pity or derision ; but it is doubt- 
 ful whether our esteem is dictated so much by a 
 sense of its absolute beauty as by the vitiating 
 effect of a universally prevalent fashion. In the 
 case of bicycle students, as in the young of both 
 sexes, its inutility is aggravated by its persistent 
 annoyance — it requires constant attention. Until 
 one can ride with one hand, and search for, 
 secure, and use a pocket-handkerchief with the 
 other, cycling is necessarily a constant series of 
 descents. Nothing can be further from the author's 
 ambition than a wanton realism, but Mr. Hoop- 
 driver's nose is a plain and salient fact, and face it 
 we must. And, in addition to this inconvenience, 
 there are flies. Until the cyclist can steer with 
 one hand, his face is given over to Beelzebub. 
 Contemplative flies stroll over it, and trifle absently 
 with its most sensitive surfaces. The only way to 
 dislodge them is to shake the head forcibly and to 
 writhe one's features violently. This is not only 
 a lengthy and frequently ineffectual method, but 
 one exceedingly terrifying to foot passengers. 
 And again, sometimes the beginner rides for a 
 space with one eye closed by perspiration, giving 
 him a waggish air foreign to his mood, and ill 
 calculated to overawe the impertinent. However, 
 you will appreciate now the motive of Mr. Hoop- 
 driver's experiments. He presently attained suffi- 
 cient dexterity to slap himself smartly and violently 
 in the face with his right hand, without certainly 
 
\ 
 
 48 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 overturning the machine ; but his pocket-hand- 
 kerchief might have been in Cahfornia for any 
 good it was to him while he was in the saddle. 
 
 Yet you must not think that because Mr. Hoop- 
 driver was a little uncomfortable, he was unhappy 
 in the slightest degree. In the background of his 
 consciousness was the sense that about this time 
 Briggs would be half-way through his window- 
 dressing, and Gosling, the apprentice, busy, with 
 a chair turned down over the counter, and his 
 ears very red, trying to roll a piece of huckaback 
 — only those who have rolled pieces of huckaback 
 know quite how detestable huckaback is to roll — 
 and the shop would be dusty, and, perhaps, the 
 governor about and snappy. And here was quiet 
 and greenery, and one mucked about as the desire 
 took one, without a soul to see ; and here was no 
 wailing of "Sayn," no folding of remnants, no 
 voice to shout, " Hoopdriver, forward ! " And 
 once he almost ran over something wonderful, a 
 little, low, red beast with a yellowish tail, that 
 went rushing across the road before him. It was 
 Jiie first weasel he had ever seen in his cockney 
 life. There were miles of this, scores of miles 
 of this before him, pinewood and oak forest, 
 purple, heathery moorland and grassy down, lush 
 meadows, where shining rivers wound their lazy 
 way, villages with square-towered, flint churches, 
 and rambling, cheap, and hearty inns, clean, white, 
 country towns, long downhill stretches, where one 
 might ride at one's ease (overlooking a jolt or so), 
 and far away, at the end of it all — the sea. 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 51 
 
 What mattered a fly or so in the dawn of these 
 delights ? Perhaps he had been dashed a minute 
 by the shameful episode of the Young Lady in 
 Grey, and perhaps the memory of it was making 
 itself a little lair in a corner of his brain from 
 which it could distress him in the retrospect by 
 suggesting that he looked like a fool ; but for the 
 present that trouble was altogether in abeyancq. 
 The man in drab — evidently a swell — had spokenX 
 to him as his equal, and the knees of his brown \ 
 suit and the chequered stockings were ever before / 
 his eyes. (Or, rather, you could see the stockings^ 
 by carrying the head a little to one side.) And to 
 feel, little by little, his mastery over this delightful, 
 treacherous machine, growing and growing ! — 
 Every half-mile or so his knees reasserted them- 
 selves, and he dismounted and sat awhile by the 
 roadside. 
 
 It was at a charming little place between Esher 
 and Cobham, where a bridge crosses a stream, 
 that Mr. Hoopdriver came across the other cyclist 
 in brown. It is well to notice the fact here, 
 although the interview was of the slightest, be- 
 cause it happened that subsequently Hoopdriver 
 saw a great deal more of this other man in brown. 
 The other cyclist in brown had a machine of 
 dazzling newness, and a punctured pneumatic lay 
 across his knees. He was a man of thirty or 
 more, with a whitish face, an aquiline nose, a 
 lank, flaxen moustache, and very fair hair, and he 
 scowled at the job before him. At the sight of 
 him Mr. Hoopdriver pulled himself together, and 
 
52 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 rode by with the air of one born to the wheel. 
 "A splendid morning," said Mr. Hoopdriver, 
 " and a fine surface." 
 
 "The morning and you and the surface be 
 everlastingly damned!" said the other man in 
 brown as Hoopdriver receded. Hoopdriver heard 
 the mumble and did not distinguish the words, 
 and he felt a pleasing sense of having duly asserted 
 the wide sympathy that binds all cyclists together, 
 of having behaved himself as becomes one of the 
 brotherhood of the wheel. The other man in 
 brown watched his receding aspect. " Greasy pro- 
 letarian," said the other man in brown, feeling a 
 prophetic dislike. "Got a suit of brown, the 
 very picture of this. One would think his sole 
 aim in life had been to caricature me. It's For- 
 tune's way with me. Look at his insteps on the 
 treadles ! Why does Heaven make such men ? " 
 
 And having lit a cigarette, the other man in 
 brown returned to the business in hand. 
 
 Mr. Hoopdriver worked up the hill towards 
 Cobham to a point that he felt sure was out of 
 sight of the other man in brown, and then he 
 dismounted and pushed his machine, until the 
 proximity of the village and a proper pride drove 
 him into the saddle again. 
 
V- V^' 
 
VIII 
 
 Beyond Cobham came a delightful incident, de- 
 lightful, that is, in its beginning, if a trifle indeter- 
 minate in the retrospect. It was perhaps half-way 
 between Cobham and Ripley. Mr. Hoopdriver 
 dropped down a little hill, where, unfenced from 
 the road, fine mossy trees and bracken lay on 
 either side ; and looking up he saw an open 
 country before him, covered with heather and 
 set with pines, and a yellow road running across 
 it, and half a mile away, perhaps, a little grey 
 figure by the wayside waving something white. 
 " Never ! " said Mr. Hoopdriver, with his hands 
 tightening on the handles. 
 
 He resumed the treadles, staring away before 
 him, jolted over a stone, wabbled, recovered, and 
 began riding faster at once, with his eyes ahead. 
 " It can't be," said Hoopdriver. 
 
 He rode his straightest, and kept his pedals 
 spinning, albeit a limp numbness had resumed 
 possession of his legs. " It can't be," he repeated, 
 feeling every moment more assured that it was. 
 " Lord ! I don't know even now," said Mr. 
 Hoopdriver (legs awhirling) ; and then, " Blow 
 my legs ! " 
 
 But he kept on and drew nearer and nearer, 
 breathing hard, and gathering flies like a fly- 
 
56 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 paper. In the valley he was hidden. Then the 
 road began to rise, and the resistance of the 
 pedals grew. As he crested the hill he saw her, 
 not a hundred yards away from him. "It's 
 ['~her!" he said. "It's her— right enough. It's 
 1 the suit's done it" — which was truer even than 
 Tilr. Hoopdriver thought. But now she was not 
 waving her handkerchief, she was not even look- 
 ing at him. She was wheeling her machine 
 slowly along the road towards him, and admir- 
 ing the pretty wooded hills towards Weybridge. 
 She might have been unaware of his existence 
 for all the recognition he got. 
 
 For a moment horrible doubts troubled Mr. 
 Hoopdriver. Had that handkerchief been a 
 dream ? Besides which he was deliquescent and 
 scarlet, and felt so. It must be her coquetry — 
 the handkerchief was indisputable. Should he 
 ride up to her and get off, or get off and walk up 
 to her ? It was as well she didn't look, because 
 he would certainly capsize if he lifted his cap. 
 Perhaps that was her consideration. Even as he 
 hesitated he was upon her. She must have heard 
 his breathing. He gripped the brake. Steady ! 
 His right leg waved in the air, and he came down 
 heavily and staggering, but erect. She turned her 
 eyes upon him with admirable surprise. 
 
 Mr. Hoopdriver tried to smile pleasantly, hold 
 up his machine, raise his cap, and bow grace- 
 fully. Indeed he felt that he did as much. He 
 was a man singularly devoid of the minutiae of self- 
 consciousness, and he was quite unaware of a tail 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 57 
 
 of damp hair lying across his forehead, and just 
 clearing his eyes, and of the general disorder of 
 his coiffure. There was an interrogative pause. 
 
 " What can I have the pleasure ? " began Mr. 
 Hoopdriver insinuatingly. " I mean " (remem- 
 bering his emancipation, and abruptly assuming 
 his most arrsiocraiic mtonation), "Can I be of 
 any assistance to you ? " 
 
 The Young Lady in Grey bit her lower lip and 
 said very prettily, " None, thank you." She glanced 
 away from him and made as if she would proceed. 
 
 " Oh ! " said Mr. Hoopdriver, taken aback and 
 suddenly crestfallen again. It was so unex- 
 pected. He tried to grasp the situation. Was 
 she coquetting ? Or had he ? 
 
 " Excuse me, one minute," he said, as she 
 began to wheel her machine again. 
 
 " Yes ? " she said, stopping and staring a little, 
 with the colour in her cheeks deepening. 
 
 " I should not have alighted if 1 had not 
 — imagined that you — er, waved something 
 white " He paused. 
 
 She looked at him doubtfully. He had seen 
 it ! She decided that he was not an unredeemed 
 rough taking advantage of a mistake, but an inno- 
 cent soul meaning well while seeking happiness. 
 " I did wave my handkerchief," she said. " I'm 
 very sorry. I am expecting — a friend, a gentle- 
 man " — she seemed to flush pink for a moment. 
 " He is riding a bicycle and dressed in — in brown ; 
 and at a distance, you know " 
 
 " Oh, quite ! " said Mr. Hoopdriver, bearing up 
 
S8 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 in manly fashion against his bitter disappointment. 
 "Certainly." 
 
 " I'm awfully sorry, you know. Troubling you 
 to dismount and all that." 
 
 "No trouble. 'Ssure you," said Mr. Hoop- 
 driver mechanically, and bowing over his saddle 
 as if it was a counter. Somehow he could not 
 find it in his heart to tell her that the man was 
 beyond there with a punctured pneumatic. He 
 looked back along the road, and tried to think of 
 something else to say. But the gulf in the conver- 
 sation widened rapidly and hopelessly. "There's 
 nothing further," began Mr. Hoopdriver despe- 
 rately, recurring to his stock of clichh. 
 
 " Nothing, thank you," she said decisively. And 
 immediately, " This is the Ripley road ? " 
 
 " Certainly," said Mr. Hoopdriver. " Ripley is 
 about two miles from here — according to the 
 mile-stones." 
 
 " Thank you," she said warmly. " Thank you 
 so much. I felt sure there was no mistake. And 
 I really am awfully sorry " 
 
 " Don't mention it," said Mr. Hoopdriver. 
 " Don't mention it." He hesitated and gripped 
 his handles to mount. " It's me," he said, 
 " ought to be sorry." Should he say it ? Was 
 it an impertinence ? Anyhow ! — " Not being the 
 ojher gentleman, you know." 
 
 He tried a quietly insinuating smile that he 
 knew for a grin even as he smiled it; felt she 
 disapproved — that she despised him, was over- 
 come with shame at her expression, turned his 
 
THjE WHEELS OF CHANCE 59 
 
 back upon her, and began (very clumsily) to 
 mount. He did so with a horrible swerve, and 
 
 
 went pedalling off, riding very badly, as he was 
 only too painfully aware. Nevertheless, thank 
 
6o THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 Heaven for the mounting ! He could not see 
 
 her because it was so dangerous for him to look 
 
 round, but he could imagine her indignant and 
 
 pitiless. He felt an unspeakable idiot. One had 
 
 to be so careful what one said to young ladies, 
 
 and he'd gone and treated her just as though she 
 
 was only a larky girl. It was unforgivable. He 
 
 always was a fool. You could tell from her 
 
 manner she didn't think him a gentleman. One 
 
 glance, and she seemed to look clear through 
 
 him and all his pretence. What rot it was ven- 
 
 / turing to speak to a girl like that ! With her 
 
 education she was bound to see through him at 
 
 once. How nicely she spoke too ! nice clear-cut 
 
 ""^words ! She made him feel what slush his own 
 
 accent was. And that last silly remark. What 
 
 /'was it ? — " Not being the other gentleman, you 
 
 *^4cnow ! " No point in it. And "gentleman ! " 
 
 What could she be thinking of him. 
 
 But really the Young Lady in Grey had dis- 
 missed Hoopdriver from her thoughts almost 
 before he had vanished round the corner. She 
 had thought no ill of him. His manifest awe and 
 admiration of her had given her not an atom of 
 offence. But for her just now there were weightier 
 things to think about, things that would affect all 
 the rest of her life. She continued slowly walk- 
 ing her machine Londonward. Presently she 
 stopped. "Oh! why doesn't he come?" she said, 
 and stamped her foot petulantly. Then, as if in 
 answer, coming down the hill among the trees, 
 appeared the other man in brown, dismounted 
 and wheeling his machine. 
 
HOW MR. HOOPDRIVER WAS 
 HAUNTED 
 
 IX 
 
 As Mr. Hoopdriver rode swaggering along the 
 Ripley road, it came to him, with an unwarrant- 
 able sense of comfort, that he had seen the last of 
 the Young Lady in Grey. But the ill-concealed 
 bladery of the machine, the present machinery of 
 Fate, the deus ex machina, so to speak, was against 
 him. The bicycle, torn from this attractive young 
 woman, grew heavier and heavier, and continually 
 more unsteady. It seemed a choice . between 
 stopping at Ripley or dying in the flower of his 
 days. He went into the Unicorn, after propping 
 his machine outside the door ; and, as he cooled 
 down and smoked his Red Herring cigarette 
 while the cold meat was getting ready, he saw 
 from the window the Young Lady in Grey and 
 the other man in brown, entering Ripley. 
 
 They filled him with apprehension by looking 
 at the house which sheltered him ; but the sight 
 of his bicycle, propped in a drunk and incapable 
 attitude against the doorway, humping its racketty 
 mud-guard and leering at them with its darkened 
 lantern eye, drove them away — so it seemed to 
 
 6i 
 
62 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 Mr. Hoopdriver — ^to the spacious swallow of the 
 Golden Dragon. The young lady was riding very 
 slowly, but the other man in brown had a bad 
 puncture and was wheeling his machine. Mr. 
 Hoopdriver noted his flaxen moustache, his 
 aquiline nose, his rather bent shoulders, with a 
 sudden, vivid dislike. 
 
 The maid at the Unicorn is naturally a pleasant 
 girl, but she is jaded by the incessant incidence 
 of cyclists, and Hoopdriver's mind, even as he 
 conversed with her in that cultivated voice of his 
 — of the weather, of the distance from London, 
 and of the excellence of the Ripley road — 
 wandered to the incomparable freshness and 
 brilliance of the Young Lady in Grey. As he 
 sat at meat he kept turning his head to the 
 window to see what signs there were of that 
 person, but the face of the Golden Dragon dis- 
 played no appreciation of the delightful morsel 
 it had swallowed. As an incidental consequence 
 of this distraction, Mr. Hoopdriver was for a 
 minute greatly inconvenienced by a mouthful of 
 mustard. After he had called for his reckoning 
 he went, his courage being high with meat and 
 mustard, to the door, intending to stand, with his 
 legs wide apart and his hands deep in his pockets, 
 and stare boldly across the road. But just then 
 the other man in brown appeared in the gateway 
 of the Golden Dragon yard — it is one of those 
 delightful inns that date from the coaching days 
 — wheeling his punctured machine. He was 
 taking it to Flambeau's, the repairers. He looked 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 63 
 
 up and saw Hoopdriver, stared for a minute, and 
 then scowled darkly. 
 
 But Hoopdriver remained stoutly in the door- 
 
 way until the other man in brown had disappeared 
 into Flambeau's. Then he glanced momentarily 
 at the Golden Dragon, puckered his mouth into 
 a whistle of unconcern, and proceeded to wheel 
 
64 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 his machine into the road until a sufficient margin 
 for mounting was secured. 
 
 Now, at that time, I say, Hoopdriver was rather 
 desirous than not of seeing no more of the Young 
 Lady in Grey. The other man in brown he 
 guessed was her brother, albeit that person was 
 of a pallid fairness, differing essentially from her 
 rich colouring ; and, besides, he felt he had made 
 a hopeless fool of himself. But the afternoon 
 was against him, intolerably hot, especially on 
 the top of his head, and the virtue had gone 
 out of his legs to digest his cold meat, and alto- 
 gether his ride to Guildford was exceedingly 
 intermittent. At times he would walk, at times 
 lounge by the wayside ; and every public-house, 
 in spite of Briggs and a sentiment of economy, 
 meant a lemonade and a dash of bitter — (For 
 that is the experience of all those who go on 
 wheels, that drinking begets thirst, even more 
 than thirst begets drinking, until at last the man 
 who yields becomes a hell unto himself, a hell 
 in which the fire dieth not, and the thirst is not 
 quenched) — until a pennyworth of acrid green 
 apples turned the current that threatened to carry 
 him away. Ever and again a cycle, or a party of 
 cyclists, would go by, with glittering wheels and 
 softly running chains ; and on each occasion, to 
 save his self-respect, Mr. Hoopdriver descended 
 and feigned some trouble with his saddle. Each 
 time he descended with less trepidation. 
 
 He did not reach Guildford until nearly four 
 o'clock, and then he was so much exhausted that 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE ey 
 
 he decided to put up there for the night, at the 
 Yellow Hammer Coffee Tavern. And after he had 
 cooled a space and refreshed himself with tea and 
 bread and butter and jam — the tea he drank noisily 
 out of the saucer — he went out to loiter away th 
 rest of the afternoon. Guildford is an altogether 
 charming old town, famous, so he learnt from a 
 Guide-Book, as the scene of Martin Tupper's great 
 historical novel of " Stephen Langton," and it has 
 a delightful castle, all set about with geraniums 
 and brass plates commemorating the gentlemen 
 who put them up, and its Guildhall is a Tudor 
 building, very pleasant to see, and in the afternoon 
 the shops are busy, and the people going to and 
 fro make the pavements look bright and pros- 
 perous. It was nice to peep in the windows and 
 see the heads of the men and girls in the drapers' 
 shops, busy as busy, serving away. The High 
 Street runs down at an angle of seventy degrees 
 to the horizon (so it seemed to Mr. Hoopdriver, 
 whose feeling for gradients was unnaturally ex- 
 alted), and it brought his heart into his mouth to 
 see a cyclist ride down it, like a fly crawling down 
 a window-pane. The man hadn't even a brake. 
 He visited the castle early in the evening, and paid 
 his twopence to ascend the Keep. 
 
 At the top, from the cage, he looked down over 
 the clustering red roofs of the town and the tower 
 of the church, and then going to the southern 
 side sat down and lit a Red Herring cigarette, and 
 stared away south over the old bramble-bearing, 
 fern-beset ruin, at the waves of blue upland that 
 
68 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 rose, one behind another, across the Weald, to the 
 hazy altitudes of Hindhead and Butser. His pale 
 grey eyes were full of complacency and pleasure- 
 able anticipation. To-morrow he would go riding 
 across that wide valley. 
 
 He did not notice any one else had come up 
 the Keep after him, until he heard a soft voice 
 behind him saying : " Well, Miss Beaumont, here's 
 the view." Something in the accent pointed to a 
 jest in the name. 
 
 " It's a dear old town, brother George," answered 
 another voice that sounded familiar enough, and 
 turning his head, Mr. Hoopdriver saw the other 
 man in brown and the Young Lady in Grey, with 
 their backs towards him. She turned her smiling 
 profile towaids Hoopdriver. "Only, you know, 
 brothers don't call their sisters " 
 
 She glanced over her shoulder and saw Hoop- 
 driver. " Damn ! " said the other man in brown, 
 quite audibly, starting as he followed her glance. 
 
 Mr. Hoopdriver, with a fine air of indifference, 
 resumed the Weald. " Beautiful old town, isn't 
 it ? " said the other man in brown, after a quite 
 perceptible pause. 
 
 " Isn't it ? " said the Young Lady in Grey. 
 
 Another pause began. 
 
 " Can't get alone anywhere," said the other man 
 in brown, looking round. 
 
 Then Mr. Hoopdriver perceived clearly that he 
 was in the way, and decided to retreat. It was 
 just his luck of course that he should stumble at 
 the head of the steps and vanish with indignity. 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 69 
 
 This was the third time that he'd seen him, and 
 the fourth time her. And of course he was too 
 big a fat-head to raise his cap to her ! He thought 
 of that at the foot of the Keep. Apparently they 
 aimed at the South Coast just as he did. He'd 
 get up betimes the next day and hurry off to 
 avoid her — them, that is. It never occurred to 
 Mr. Hoopdriver that Miss Beaumont and her 
 brother might do exactly the same thing, and 
 that evening, at least, the peculiarity of a brother 
 calling his sister " Miss Beaumont " did not recur 
 to him. He was much too preoccupied with an 
 analysis of his own share of these encounters. He 
 found it hard to be altogether satisfied about the 
 figure he had cut, revise his memories as he would, j 
 Once more quite unintentionally he stumbled^ 
 upon these two people. It was about seven o'clock. 
 He stopped outside a linen draper's and peered 
 over the goods in the window at the assistants 
 in torment. He could have spent a whole day 
 happily at that. He told himself that he was 
 trying to see how they dressed out the brass lines 
 over their counters, in a purely professional spirit, 
 but down at the very bottom of his heart he 
 knew better. The customers were a secondary 
 consideration, and it was only after the lapse of 
 perhaps a minute that he perceived that among 
 them was — the Young Lady in Grey ! He turned 
 away from the window at once, and saw the 
 other man in brown standing at the edge of the 
 pavement and regarding him with a very curious 
 expression of face. 
 
70 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 There came into Mr. Hoopdriver's head the 
 perjplexing problem whether he was to be regarded 
 as a nuisance haunting these people, or whether 
 they were to be regarded as a nuisance haunting 
 him. He abandoned the solution at last in 
 despair, quite unable to decide upon the course 
 he should take at the next encounter, whether he 
 should scowl savagely at the couple or assume an 
 attitude eloquent of apology and propitiation. 
 
THE IMAGININGS OF MR. HOOP- 
 DRIVER'S HEART 
 
 X 
 
 Mr. Hoopdriver was (in the days of this story) 
 a poet, though he had never written a line of 
 verse. Or perhaps romancer will describe hitn"^ 
 better. Like I know not how many of those who 
 do the fetching and carrying of life, — a great 
 number of them certainly, — his real life was^ 
 absolutely uninteresting, and if he had faced it; 
 as realistically as such people do in Mr. Gissing's 
 novels, he would probably have come by way of 
 drink to suicide in the course of a year. But 
 that was just what he had the natural wisdom 
 not to do. On the contrary, he was always^ 
 decorating his existence with imaginative tags, 
 hopes and poses, deliberate and yet quite effec- 
 tual self-deceptions ; his experiences were mere 
 material for a romantic superstructure. If some\ 
 power had given Hoopdriver the "giftie" Burns \ 
 invoked, "to see oursels as ithers see us," he j 
 would probably have given it away to some one- 
 else at the very earliest opportunity. His entire 
 life, you must understand, was not a continuous 
 romance, but a series of short stories linked only ) 
 
72 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 /I5y the general resemblance of their hero, a brown- 
 haired young fellow commonly, with blue eyes 
 and a fair moustache, graceful rather than strong, 
 sharp and resolute rather than clever (Cp., as the 
 scientific books say, p. 4). Invariably this person 
 possessed an iron will. The stories fluctuated 
 indefinitely. The smoking of a cigarette con- 
 verted Hoopdriver's hero into something entirely 
 worldly, subtly rakish, with a humorous twinkle 
 in the eye and some gallant sinning in the back- 
 ground. You should have seen Mr. Hoopdriver 
 promenading the brilliant gardens at Earl's Court 
 on an early-closing night. His meaning glances ! 
 (1 dare not give the meaning.) Such an influence 
 as the eloquence of a revivalist preacher would 
 suffice to divert the story into absolutely different 
 channels, make him a white-souled hero, a man 
 still pure, walking untainted and brave and help- 
 ful through miry ways. The appearance of 
 some daititily gloved frock-coated gentleman with 
 buttonhole and eyeglass complete, gallantly atten- 
 dant in the rear of customers, served again to 
 start visions of a simplicity essentially Cromwell- 
 llike, of sturdy plainness, of a strong, silent man 
 / going righteously through the world. This day 
 ' there had predominated a fine leisurely person 
 immaculately clothed, and riding on an unex- 
 ceptional machine, a mysterious person — quite 
 unostentatious, but with accidental self-revelation 
 of something over the common, even a " bloomin' 
 dook," it might be incognito, on the tour of the 
 South Coast. 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 75 
 
 You must not think that there was any telling 
 of the stories of this life-long series by Mr. 
 Hoopdriver. He never dreamt that they were 
 known to a soul. If it were not for the trouble, 
 I would, I think, go back and rewrite this section 
 from the beginning, expunging the statements 
 that Hoopdriver was a poet and a romancer, and 
 saying instead that he was a playwright and acted) 
 his own plays. He was not only the sole pei<^ 
 former, but the entire audience, and the enter- 
 tainment kept him almost continuously happy. 
 Yet even that playwright comparison scarcely ex- 
 presses all the facts of the case. After all, very 
 many of his dreams never got acted at all, pos- 
 sibly indeed most of them, the dreams of a soli- 
 tary walk for instance, or of a tramcar ride, the 
 dreams dreamt behind the counter while trade 
 was slack, and mechanical foldings and rollinga^ 
 occupied his muscles. Most of them were little j 
 dramatic situations, crucial dialogues, the return/ 
 of Mr. Hoopdriver to his native village, for in- 
 stance, in a well-cut holiday suit and natty gloves, \ 
 the unheard asides of the rival neighbours, the \ 
 delight of the old " mater," the intelligence — " A ] 
 ten-pound rise all at once from Antrobus, mater. \ 
 Whad d'yer think of that ? " or again, the first 
 whispering of love, daint}' and witty and tender, 
 to the girl he served a few days ago with sateen, 
 or a gallant rescue of generalised beauty in dis- ! 
 tress from truculent insult or ravening dog. } 
 
 So many people do this — and you never sus- / 
 pect it. You see a tattered lad selling matches 
 
76 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 in the street, and you think there is nothing 
 between him and the bleakness of immensity, 
 between him and utter abasement, but a few 
 tattered rags and a feeble musculature. And all 
 unseen by you a host of heaven-sent fatuities 
 swathes him about, even, maybe, as they swathe 
 ^ybu about. Many men have never seen their 
 ' own profiles or the backs of their heads, and for 
 the back of your own mind no mirror has been 
 invented. They swathe him about so thickly 
 that the pricks of fate scarce penetrate to him, 
 or become but a pleasant titillation. And so, 
 : indeed, it is with all of us who go on living. 
 Self-decept;pn,„jLs,.Jhe anaesthetic of life, while 
 God is carving oyj^^Qur beings^ -"-"""""— '~^~'~«-^'* 
 But to return from this general vivisection to 
 Mr. Hoopdriver's imaginings. You see now how 
 external our view has been ; we have had but the 
 slightest transitory glimpses of the drama within, 
 of how the things looked in the magic mirror of 
 Mr. Hoopdriver's mind. On the road to Guildford, 
 and during his encounters with his haunting 
 fellow-cyclists, the drama had presented chiefly 
 the quiet gentleman to whom we have alluded, 
 but at Guildford, under more varied stimuli, he 
 burgeoned out more variously. There was the 
 house agent's window, for instance, set him upon 
 a charming little comedy. He would go in, make 
 inquiries about that thirty-pound house, get the 
 key possibly and go over it — the thing would 
 stimulate the clerk's curiosity immensely. He 
 searched his mind for a reason for this proceed- 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE ^^ 
 
 ing, and discovered that he was a dynamiter need- 
 ing privacy. Upon that theory he procured the 
 key, explored the house carefully, said darkly that 
 it might suit his special needs, but that there were 
 others to consult. The clerk, however, did not 
 understand the allusion, and merely pitied him 
 as one who had married young and paired him- 
 self to a stronger mind than his own. 
 
 This proceeding in some occult way led to the 
 purchase of a note-book and pencil, and that 
 started the conception of an artist taking notes. 
 That was a little game Mr. Hoopdriver had, v^ 
 congenial company, played in his still younger 
 days— to the infinite annoyance of quite a number 
 of respectable excursionists at Hastings. In early 
 days Mr. Hoopdriver had befen, as his mother 
 proudly boasted, a " bit of a drawer," but a con- 
 scientious and normally stupid schoolmaster per- 
 ceived the incipient talent, and had nipped it in 
 the bud by a series of lessons in art. However, 
 our principal character figured about quite happily 
 in old corners of Guildford, and once the other 
 man in brown, looking out of the bay window of 
 the Earl of Kent, saw him standing in a corner 
 by a gateway, note-book in hand, busily sketch- 
 ing the Earl's imposing features. At which sight 
 the other man in brown started back from the 
 centre of the window, so as to be hidden from 
 him, and crouchmg slightly, watched him intently 
 through the interstices of the lace curtains. 
 
OMISSIONS 
 
 XI 
 
 Now the rest of the acts of Mr. Hoopdriver in 
 Guildford, on the great opening day of his 
 holidays, are not to be detailed here. How he 
 wandered about the old town in the dusk, and 
 up to the Hogsback to see the little lamps below 
 and the little stars above come out one after 
 another ; how he returned through the yellow- 
 lit streets to the Yellow Hammer Coffee Tavern, 
 and supped bravely in the commercial room — a 
 Man among Men ; how he joined in the talk 
 about flying-machines and the possibilities of 
 electricity, witnessing that flying-machines were 
 " dead certain to come," and that electricity was 
 "Wonderful, wonderful;" how he went and 
 watched the billiard-playing, and said " Left 'em," 
 several times, with an oracular air ; how he fell 
 a-yawning ; and how he got out his cycling map 
 and studied it intently — are things that find no 
 mention here. Nor will I enlarge upon his going 
 into the writing-room, and marking the road from 
 London to Guildford with a fine bright line of the 
 reddest of red ink. In his little cyclist's hand- 
 book there is a diary, and in the diary there is 
 
 this entry I have reproduced on the opposite page 
 
 78 
 
8o THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 — it is there to this day to witness that this book 
 is no lying fable written to while away an 
 hour. 
 
 All these things I pass over. At last he fell 
 a-yawning so much that very reluctantly indeed 
 he set about finishing his great and splendid day. 
 (Alas ! that all days must end at last ! ) He got 
 his candle in the hall from a friendly waiting- 
 maid, and passed upward — whither a modest 
 novelist, who writes for the family circle, dare 
 not follow. Yet I may tell you that he knelt 
 down at his bedside, happy and drowsy, and 
 said, " Our Father 'chartin' heaven," even as he 
 had learnt it by rote from his mother nearly 
 twenty years ago. And anon when his breath- 
 ing had become deep and regular, we may creep 
 into his bedroom and catch him at his dreams. 
 He is lying upon his left side, with his arm 
 under the pillow. It is dark, and he is hidden ; 
 but if you could have seen his face, sleeping 
 there in the darkness, I think you would have 
 .perceived, in spite of that treasured, thin, and 
 straggling moustache, in spite of your memory 
 of the coarse words he had used that day, that 
 the man before you was, after all, only a little 
 child asleep. 
 
THE DREAMS OF MR. HOOPDRIVER 
 
 XII 
 
 In spite of the drawn blinds and the darkness, 
 you have just seen Mr. Hoopdriver's face, peace- 
 ful in its beauty-sleep, in the little plain bedroom 
 at the very top of the Yellow Hammer Coffee 
 Tavern at Guildford. That was before midnight. 
 As the night progressed, he was disturbed by 
 dreams. 
 
 After your first day of cycling one dream is 
 inevitable. A memory of motion lingers in the 
 muscles of your legs, and round and round they 
 seem to go. You ride through Dreamland on 
 wonderful dream bicycles that change and grow ; 
 you ride down steeples and staircases and over 
 precipices ; you hover in horrible suspense over 
 inhabited towns, vainly seeking for a brake your 
 hand cannot find, to save you from a headlong 
 fall ; you plunge into weltering rivers, and rush 
 helplessly at monstrous obstacles. Anon Mr. 
 Hoopdriver found himself riding out of the dark- 
 ness of non-existence, pedalling Ezekiel's Wheels 
 across the Weald of Surrey, jolting over the hills 
 and smashing villages in his course, while the 
 other man in brown cursed and swore at him. 
 
 Si F 
 
82 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 and shouted to stop his career. There was the 
 Putney heath-keeper, too, and the man in drab 
 raging at him. He felt an awful fool, a — what 
 was it ? — a juggins, ah !— a Juggernaut. The 
 villages went off one after another with a soft, 
 squashing noise. He did not see the Young 
 Lady in Grey, but he knew she was looking at 
 his back. He dared not look round. Where the 
 devil was the brake ? It must have fallen off. 
 And the bell ? Right in front of him was Guild- 
 ford. He tried to shout and warn the town to 
 get out of the way, but his voice was gone as well. 
 Nearer, nearer ! it was fearful ! and in another 
 moment the houses were cracking like nuts, and 
 the blood of the inhabitants squirting this way 
 and that. The streets were black with people 
 running. Right under his wheels he saw the 
 Young Lady in Grey. A feeling of horror came 
 upon Mr. Hoopdriver ; he flung himself sideways 
 to descend, forgetting how high he was, and forth- 
 with he began falling, falling, falling. 
 
 He woke up, turned over, saw the new moon 
 on the window, wondered a little, and went to 
 sleep again. 
 
 This second dream went back into the first 
 somehow, and the other man in brown came 
 threatening and shouting towards him. He grew 
 uglier and uglier as he approached, and his ex- 
 pression was intolerably evil. He came and 
 looked close into Mr. Hoopdriver's eyes, and 
 then receded to an incredible distance. His 
 face seemed to be luminous. " Miss Beaumont," 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 83 
 
 he said, and splashed up a spray of suspicion. 
 Some one began letting off fireworks, chiefly 
 Catherine wheels, down the shop, though Mr. 
 Hoopdriver knew it was against the rules ; for 
 it seemed that the place they were in was a vast 
 shop, and then Mr. Hoopdriver perceived that 
 the other man in brown was the shop-walker, 
 differing from most shop-walkers in the fact that 
 he was lit from within as a Chinese lantern might 
 be. And the customer Mr. Hoopdriver was 
 going to serve was the Young Lady in Grey. 
 Curious he hadn't noticed it before. She was 
 in grey as usual, — rationals, — and she had her 
 bicycle leaning against the counter. She smiled 
 quite frankly at him, just as she had done when 
 she had apologised for stopping him. And her 
 form, as she leant towards him, was full of a 
 sinuous grace he had never noticed before. 
 " What can I have the pleasure ? " said Mr. 
 Hoopdriver at once, and she said, "The Ripley 
 road." So he got out the Ripley road and un- 
 rolled it and showed it to her, and she said that 
 would do very nicely, and kept on looking at him 
 and smiling ; and he began measuring off eight 
 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, 
 
84 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 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 counter forth- 
 with 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. Hoop- 
 driver was hampered by the absurd behaviour 
 of his legs. They would not stretch out ; they 
 would keep going round and round 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 — heath-keepers, 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 
 ths doorways, silly, headless figures, stupid cocks 
 and hens encumbered with parcels and um- 
 brellas and waterproofs, people carrying bedroom 
 candles, and suchlike 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. Hoop- 
 driver'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 some- 
 where 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 sufficiently 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. 
 
86 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 Before he got to Bramley a specious by-way 
 snapped him up, ran with him for half a mile 
 or more, and dropped him as a terrier drops a 
 walking-stick, upon the Portsmouth road 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 ex- 
 periment with cider at the Woolpack, he pushed 
 on to Milford. 
 
 AH this time he was as 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 working-man 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 altogether unable 
 to account. Now that he was awake he had for- 
 gotten 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 itself. A finger-post suddenly jumped out at 
 him, vainly indicating an abrupt turn to the right ; 
 
(<pAr'^"^ 
 
 ^'"/r^^> 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 89 
 
 and Mr. Hoopdriver would have slowed up and 
 read the inscription, but no ! — the bicycle would 
 not let him. The road dropped a little into Mil- 
 ford, and the thing shied, put down its head, and 
 bolted, and Mr. Hoopdriver only thought of the 
 brake when the finger-post was passed. Then to 
 have recovered the point of intersection would 
 have meant dismounting ; for as yet there was 
 no road wide enough for Mr. Hoopdriver to 
 turn in. So he went on his way — or to be pre- 
 cise, he did exactly the opposite thing. The road 
 to the right was the Portsmouth road, and this 
 he was on went to Haslemere and Midhurst. By 
 that en^or it came about that he once more came 
 upon his fellow-travellers of yesterday, coming 
 on them suddenly, without the slightest prelimi- 
 nary announcement, and when they least expected 
 it, under the South-Western Railway arch. " It's 
 hon-ible," said a girlish voice ; " it's brutal — 
 
 cowardly " And stopped. 
 
 His expression, as he shot out from the arch- 
 way at them, may have been something between 
 a grin of recognition and a scowl of annoyance 
 at himself for the unintentional intrusion. But 
 disconcerted as he was, he was yet able to 
 appreciate something of the peculiarity of their 
 mutual attitudes. The bicycles were lying by 
 the roadside, and the two riders stood face to 
 face. The other man in brown's attitude, as it 
 flashed upon Hoopdriver, was a deliberate pose ; 
 he twirled his moustache and smiled faintly, and 
 he was conscientiously looking amused. And the 
 
90 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 girl stood rigid, her arms straight by her side, her 
 handkerchief clenched in her hand, and her face 
 was flushed with the faintest touch of red upon 
 her eyelids. She seemed to Mr. Hoopdriver's 
 sense to be indignant. But that was the impres- 
 sion of a second. A mask of surprised recognition 
 fell across this revelation of emotion as she turned 
 her head towards him, and the pose of the other 
 man in brown vanished too in a momentary 
 astonishment. And then he had passed them, 
 and was riding on towards Haslemere, to make 
 what he could of the swift picture that had photo- 
 graphed itself on his brain. 
 
 " Rum," said Mr. Hoopdriver. " It's dashed 
 rum ! " 
 
 "They were having a row." 
 
 "Smirking " What he called the other 
 
 man in brown need not trouble us. 
 
 " Annoying her ! " That any human being 
 should do that ! 
 
 "Whyf" 
 
 The impulse to interfere leapt suddenly into 
 Mr. Hoopdriver's mind. He grasped his brake, 
 descended, and stood looking hesitatingly back. 
 They still stood by the railway bridge, and it 
 seemed to Mr. Hoopdriver's fancy that she was 
 stamping her foot. He hesitated, then turned his 
 bicycle round, mounted, and rode back towards 
 them, gripping his courage firmly, lest it should 
 slip away and leave him ridiculous. " I'll offer 
 'im a screw 'ammer," said Mr. Hoopdriver. Then, 
 with a wave of fierce emotion, he saw that the 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 91 
 
 girl was crying. In another moment they heard 
 him and turned in surprise. Certainly she had 
 been crying ; her eyes were swimming in tears, 
 and the other man in brown looked exceedingly 
 disconcerted. Mr. Hoopdriver descended and 
 stood over his machine. 
 
 " Nothing wrong, I hope ? " he said, looking 
 the other man in brown squarely in the face. 
 " No accident ? " 
 
 "Nothing," said the other man in brown shortly. 
 " Nothing at all, thanks." 
 
 "But," said Mr. Hoopdriver, with a great 
 effort, "the young lady is crying. I thought 
 perhaps " 
 
 The Young Lady in Grey started, gave Hoop- 
 driver one swift glance, and covered one eye with 
 her handkerchief. " It's this speck," she said. 
 " This speck of dust in my eye." 
 
 " This lady," said the other man in brown, ex- 
 plaining, " has a gnat in her eye." 
 
 There was a pause. The young lady busied 
 herself with her eye. " I beHeve it's out," she 
 said. The other man in brown made movements 
 indicating commiserating curiosity concerning 
 the alleged fly. Mr. Hoopdriver — the word is his 
 own — stood flabber-gastered. He had all the 
 intuition of the simple-minded. He knew there 
 was no fly. But the ground was suddenly cut 
 from his feet. There is a limit to knight-errantry 
 — dragons and false knights are all very well, but 
 flies ! Fictitious flies 1 Whatever the trouble 
 was, it was evidently not his affair. He felt he 
 
92 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 had made a fool of himself again. He would 
 have mumbled some sort of apology; but the 
 other man in brown gave him no time, turned 
 on him abruptly, even fiercely. "I hope," he 
 said, " that your curiosity is satisfied ? " 
 
 " Certainly," said Mr. Hoopdriver. 
 
 " Then we won't detain you." 
 
 And, ignominiously, Mr. Hoopdriver turned his 
 machine about, struggled upon it, and resumed 
 the road southward. When he learnt that he was 
 not on the Portsmouth road, it was impossible to 
 turn and go back, for that would be to face his 
 shame again, and so he had to ride on by Brook 
 Street up the hill to Haslemere. Away to the 
 right the Portsmouth road mocked at him, and 
 made off to its fastnesses amid the sunlit green 
 and purple masses of Hindhead. 
 
 The sun shone, and the wide, blue hill views 
 and pleasant valleys one saw on either hand 
 from the sand-scarred roadway, even the sides 
 of the road itself, set about with grey heather 
 scrub and prickly masses of gorse, and pine trees 
 with their year's growth still bright green against 
 the darkened needles of the previous years, was 
 fresh and delightful to Mr. Hoopdriver's eyes. 
 But the brightness of the day and the day-old 
 sense of freedom fought an uphill-fight against 
 his intolerable vexation at that abominable en- 
 counter, and had still to win it when he reached 
 Haslemere. A great brown shadow, a monstrous 
 hatred of the other man in brown, possessed him. 
 He had conceived the brilliant idea of abandoning 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 93 
 
 Portsmouth, or at least giving up the straight way 
 to his fellow-wayfarers, and of striking out boldly 
 to the left, eastward. He did not dare to stop 
 at any of the inviting public-houses in the main 
 street of Haslemere, but turned up a side way 
 and found a little beer-shop, the Good Hope, 
 wherein to refresh himself. And there he ate 
 and gossiped condescendingly with an aged\ 
 labourer, assuming the while for his own private ) 
 enjoyment the attributes of a Lost Heir, and^ 
 afterwards mounted and rode on towards North- 
 chapel, a place which a number of finger-posts 
 conspired to boom, but which some insidious 
 turning prevented him from attaining for some 
 considerable time. 
 
HOW MR. HOOPDRIVER REACHED 
 MIDHURST 
 
 XIV 
 
 It was one of my uncle's profoundest remarks 
 that human beings are the only unreasonable 
 creatures. This observation was so far justified 
 by Mr. Hoopdriver that, after spending the 
 morning tortuously avoiding the other man in 
 brown and the Young Lady in Grey, he spent 
 a considerable part of the afternoon in thinking 
 about the Young Lady in Grey, and contem- 
 plating in an optimistic spirit the possibilities 
 of seeing her again. Memory and imagination 
 played round her, so that his course was largely 
 determined by the windings of the road he 
 traversed. Of one general proposition he was 
 absolutely convinced. " There's something juicy 
 wrong with 'em," said he — once even aloud. But 
 what it was he could not imagine. He recapitu- 
 lated the facts. " Miss Beaumont " — brother and 
 sister — and the stoppage to quarrel and weep — 
 it was perplexing material for a young man of 
 small experience. There was no exei'tion he ' 
 hated so much as inference, and after a time 
 
L'tit: WHEELS OF CHANCE 95 
 
 he gave up any attempt to get at the realities of 
 the case, and let his imagination go free. Should 
 he ever see her again ? Suppose he did — with 
 that other chap not about. The vision he found 
 pleasantest was an encounter with her, an un- 
 expected encounter at the annual Dancing Class 
 "Do" at the Putney Assembly Rooms. Some- 
 how they would drift together, and he would 
 dance with her again and again. It was a 
 pleasant vision, for you must understand that 
 Mr. Hoopdriver danced uncommonly well. Or 
 again, in the shop, a sudden radiance in the door- 
 way, and she is bowed towards the Manchester 
 counter. And then to lean over that counter and 
 murmur, seemingly apropos of the goods under 
 discussion, " I have not forgotten that morning 
 on the Portsmouth road," and lower, " I never 
 shall forget." 
 
 At Northchapel Mr. Hoopdriver consulted his 
 map and took counsel, and weighed his course of 
 action. Petworth seemed a possible resting-place, 
 or Pullborough ; Midhurst seemed too near, and 
 any place over the Downs beyond too far ; and so 
 he meandered towards Petworth, posing himself""^ 
 perpetually and loitering ; gathering wild flowers,/ 
 and wondering why they had no names — for l>e 
 had never heard of any— dropping them fur- 
 tively at the sight of a stranger, and generally 
 " mucking about." There were purple vetches 
 in the hedges, meadowsweet, honeysuckle, belated 
 brambles — but the dog-roses had already gone ; 
 there were green and red blackberries, stellarias 
 
96 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 and dandelions, and in another place white dead 
 nettles, traveller's joy, clinging bedstraw, grasses 
 flowering, white campions, and ragged robins. 
 One cornfield was glorious with poppies, bright 
 scarlet and purple white, and the blue corn- 
 flowers were beginning. In the lanes the trees 
 met overhead, and the wisps of hay still hung to 
 the straggling hedges. In one of the main roads 
 he steered a perilous passage through a dozen 
 surly dun oxen. Here and there were little cot- 
 tages, and picturesque beer-houses with the vivid 
 brewers' boards of blue and scarlet, and once a 
 broad green and a church, and an expanse of 
 some hundred houses or so. Then he came to a 
 pebbly rivulet that emerged between clumps of 
 sedge, loosestrife, and forget-me-nots under an 
 arch of trees, and rippled across the road, and 
 there he dismounted, longing to take off shoes 
 and stockings — those stylish, chequered stockings 
 were now all dimmed with dust — and paddle his 
 lean legs in the chuckling cheerful water ; but 
 instead he sat in a manly attitude, smoking a 
 cigarette, for fear lest the Young Lady in Grey 
 should come glittering round the corner. For 
 the flavour of the Young Lady in Grey was 
 present through it all, mixing with the flowers 
 and all the delight of it a touch that made this 
 second day quite different from the first, an 
 undertone of expectation, anxiety, and something 
 like regret that would not be ignored. 
 
 It was only late in the long evening that, quite 
 abruptly, he began to repent, vividly and de- 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 97 
 
 cidedly, having fled these two people. He was 
 getting hungry, and that has a curious effect 
 upon the emotional colouring of our minds. 
 
 The man was a sinister brute, Hoopdriver saw 
 in a flash of inspiration ; and the girl — she was 
 in some serious trouble. And he who might 
 
 G 
 
98 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 have helped her had taken his first impulse as 
 decisive — and bolted. This new view of it de- 
 pressed him dreadfully. What might not be 
 happening to her now ? He thought again of 
 her tears. Surely it was merely his duty, seeing 
 the trouble afoot, to keep his eye upon it. 
 
 He began riding fast to get quit of such self- 
 reproaches. He found himself in a tortuous 
 tangle of roads, and as the dusk was coming on, 
 emerged, not at Petworth, but at Easebourne, a 
 mile from Midhurst. " I'm getting hungry," said 
 Mr. Hoopdriver, inquiring of a gamekeeper in 
 Easebourne village. " Midhurst a mile, and Pet- 
 worth five ! Thenks, I'll take Midhurst." 
 
 He came into Midhurst by the bridge at the 
 water-mill, and up the North Street ; and a little 
 shop flourishing cheerfully the cheerful sign of 
 a teapot, and exhibiting a brilliant array of 
 tobaccos, sweets, and children's toys in the win- 
 dow, struck his fancy. A neat, bright-eyed little 
 old lady made him welcome, and he was pre- 
 sently supping sumptuously on sausages and tea, 
 with a visitors' book full of the most humorous 
 and flattering remarks about the little old lady, 
 in verse and prose, propped up against his teapot 
 as he ate. Regular good some of the jokes were, 
 and rhymes that read well even with your mouth 
 full of sausage. Mr. Hoopdriver formed a vague 
 idea of drawing " something " — for his judgment 
 on the little old lady was already formed. He 
 pictured the little old lady discovering it after- 
 r^wards — " My gracious ! One of them Punch 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 99 
 
 men," she would say. The room had a curtained 
 recess and a chest of drawers, for presently it 
 
 
 was to be his bedroom ; and the day part of it 
 was decorated with framed Oddfellows' certifi- 
 cates and gilt-backed books and portraits, and 
 
100 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 kettle-holders, and all kinds of beautiful things 
 made out of wool ; very comfortable it was in- 
 deed. The window was lead framed and diamond 
 paned, and through it one saw the corner of the 
 vicarage and a pleasant hill crest, in dusky sil- 
 houette against the twilight sky. And after the 
 sausages had ceased to be, he lit a Red Herring 
 cigarette and went swaggering out into the twilight 
 street. All shadowy blue between its dark brick 
 houses was the street, with a bright yellow window 
 here and there, and splashes of green and red 
 where the chemist's illumination fell across the 
 road. 
 
AN INTERLUDE 
 
 XV 
 
 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 stuck 
 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 
 
I02 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 glowing, her hands clenched. " You unspeakable 
 cad" she said, and choked, stamped her little 
 foot, and stood panting. 
 
 " Unspeakable cad ! My dear girl ! Possibly I 
 am an unspeakable cad — who wouldn't be ? For 
 you." J 
 
 " 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 reason- 
 able," he said. 
 
 " Reasonable ! That means all that is mean 
 and cowardly and sensual in the world." 
 
 " You have always had it so— in your generalis- 
 ing 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 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 103 
 
 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 any- 
 thing beyond." 
 
 "But you took the hints, nevertheless. You 
 knew. You knew. And you did not mind. 
 Mind I 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^idhurst^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 " 
 
104 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 " 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 ; 1 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, is villainous. 
 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 " 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 105 
 
 " 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 mari, 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 ex- 
 tremely 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 
 
io6 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 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 cocoa- 
 nut. He, too, felt thwarted. He felt that this 
 romantic business of seduction was, after all, 
 unexpectedly tame. But this was only the begin- 
 ning. At any rate, every day she spent with him 
 was a day gained. Perhaps things looked worse 
 than they were ; that was some consolation. 
 
OF THE ARTIFICIAL IN MAN, AND OF 
 THE ZEITGEIST 
 
 XVI 
 
 You have seen these two young people — Becha- 
 mel, 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 
 quite unnecessary 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 diges- 
 tive fluid or bile or pancreatine, as the case 
 
io8 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 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 simula- 
 crum, 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 a substitution of 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 Tomlin- 
 son, 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 hypno- 
 tists, 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 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 109 
 
 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, con- 
 fused thinking. The girl is resolute to Live Her 
 Own Life, a phrase you may have heard before, 
 and the man has a pretty pei-verted 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 con- 
 sists, 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 aloof- 
 ness 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 so, with much of the gilt off his 
 
no THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 romantic villainy, he meditates the development 
 of a new attack. 
 
 And the girl ? She is unawakened. Her 
 motives are bookish, written by a haphazard syn- 
 dicate of authors, novelists, 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. Bechamel was to have 
 helped to attain that in the most expeditious 
 manner, and here he is beside her, talking enig- 
 matical 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. 
 
THE ENCOUNTER AT MIDHURST 
 
 XVII 
 
 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 
 
112 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 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. In- 
 continently 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 him- 
 self on his decision. Hoopdriver was merely 
 promenading, and they met face to face. 
 
 At the sight of his adversary, something be- 
 tween disgust and laughter seized Mr. Hoop- 
 driver, and for a moment destroyed his animosity. 
 "'Ere we are again!" he said, laughing insin- 
 cerely 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, re- 
 sisted 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. 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 113 
 
 "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. 
 " Thafs 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. Hoop- 
 driver. 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 
 
 H 
 
114 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 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 
 rdle 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, stop- 
 ping and facing the tempter. 
 
 " What 1 " said the other man in brown, sur- 
 

 ^/"-■"/y^. 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 117 
 
 prised. " 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 ex- 
 panding 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 pro- 
 fession ? " 
 
 " 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 Mid- 
 hurst 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 inter- 
 locutor. " He'll come round yet," said Bechamel 
 to himself. " He's simply holding out for a 
 fiver." He coughed. 
 
ii8 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 " 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 im- 
 mense 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 ex- 
 ultation 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. 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 119 
 
 " 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 detective office of his 
 in London — Baker Street, in fact — ^really existed. 
 
 With that the interview terminated. Bechamel 
 went back to the Angel, perturbed. " Hang de- 
 tectives ! " 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 eye- 
 brows 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 observa- 
 tion." He walked slowly back from the bridge 
 until he was opposite the Angel, and stood for 
 ten minutes, perhaps, contemplating that estab- 
 lishment, 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, 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 121 
 
 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 Beau- 
 mont:' 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 bar- 
 maid, taking up a glass-cloth 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 ? " 
 
122 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 "Yes — they said they might be in Midhurst 
 to-night." 
 
 "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 sus- 
 picion disposed of. The barmaid having listened 
 awhile at the staircase, volunteered some par- 
 ticulars 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 
 

THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 125 
 
 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 be- 
 fore a couple of years is out." 
 
 " Nice they'd look on my figger," said the bar- 
 maid, 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. 
 
XIX 
 
 Then Mr. Hoopdriver returned to the little room 
 with the lead-framed windows where he had 
 dined, and where the bed was now comfortably 
 made ; sat down on the box under the window, 
 stared at the moon rising on the shining vicarage 
 roof, and tried to collect his thoughts. How 
 they whirled at first ! It was past ten, and most 
 of Midhurst was tucked away in bed ; some one 
 up the street was learning the violin ; at rare 
 intervals a belated inhabitant hurried home and 
 woke the echoes, and a corncrake kept up a busy 
 churning in the vicarage garden. The sky was 
 deep blue, with a still luminous afterglow along 
 the black edge of the hill, and the white moon 
 overhead, save for a couple of yellow stars, had 
 the sky to herself. 
 
 At first his thoughts were kinetic — of deeds and 
 not relationships. There was this malefactor, 
 and his victim, and it had fallen on Mr. Hoop- 
 driver to take a hand in the game. He was 
 married. Did she know he was married ? Never 
 for a moment did a thought of evil concerning 
 her cross Hoopdriver's mind. Simple-minded 
 people see questions of morals so much better 
 than superior persons — who have read and 
 
THJi WHEELS OF CHANCE 127 
 
 thought themselves complex to impotence. He 
 had heard her voice, seen the frank light in her 
 eyes, and she had been weeping — that sufficed. 
 The rights of the case he hadn't properly grasped. 
 But he would. And that smirking — well, swine 
 was the mildest for him. He recalled the ex- 
 ceedingly unpleasant incident of the railway 
 bridge. "Thin we won't detain yer, thenks," 
 said Mr. Hoopdriver, aloud, in a strange, un- 
 natural, contemptible voice, supposed to repre- 
 sent that of Bechamel. "Oh the beggar I I'll 
 be level with him yet. He's afraid of us detec- 
 tives — that I'll swear." (If Mrs. Wardor should 
 chance to be on the other side of the door within 
 earshot, well and good.) 
 
 For a space he meditated chastisements and 
 revenges, physical impossibilities for the most 
 part — Bechamel staggering headlong from the 
 impact of Mr. Hoopdriver's large, but, to tell the 
 truth, ill -supported fist ; Bechamel's five feet 
 nine of height lifted from the ground and quiver- 
 ing under a vigorously applied horsewhip. So 
 pleasant was such dreaming, that Mr. Hoop- 
 driver's peaked face under the moonlight was 
 transfigured. One might have paired him with 
 that well-known and universally admired triumph, 
 " The Soul's Awakening," so sweet was his ecstasy. 
 And presently, with his thirst for revenge glutted 
 by six or seven violent assaults, a duel, and two 
 vigorous murders, his mind came round to the 
 Young Lady in Grey again. 
 
 She was a plucky one too. He went over the 
 
128 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 incident the barmaid at the Angel had described 
 to him. His thoughts ceased to be a torrent, 
 smoothed down to a mirror in which she was 
 reflected with infinite clearness and detail. He'd 
 never met anything like her before. Fancy that 
 bolster of a barmaid being dressed in that way ! 
 He whuffed a contemptuous laugh. He com- 
 pared her colour, her vigour, her voice, with the 
 Young Ladies in Business with whom his lot had 
 been cast. Even in tears she was beautiful, more 
 beautiful indeed to him, for it made her seem 
 softer and weaker, more accessible. And such 
 weeping as he had seen before had been so much 
 a matter of damp white faces, red noses, and hair 
 coming out of curl. Your draper's assistant be- 
 comes something of a judge of weeping, because 
 weeping is the custom of all Young Ladies in 
 Business, when for any reason their services are 
 dispensed with. She could weep — and (by Gosh !) 
 she could smile. He knew that, and reverting to 
 acting abruptly, he smiled confidentially at the 
 puckered pallor of the moon. 
 
 It is difficult to say how long Mr. Hoopdriver's 
 pensiveness lasted. It seemed a long time before 
 his thoughts of action returned. Then he remem- 
 bered he was a " watcher " ; that to-morrow he 
 must be busy. It would be in character to make 
 notes, and he pulled out his little note-book. 
 With that in hand he fell a-thinking again. Would 
 that chap tell her the 'tecs were after them ? If 
 so, would she be as anxious to get away as he 
 was ? He must be on the alert. If possible, he 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 129 
 
 must speak to her. Just a significant word, "Your 
 friend — trust me ! " It occurred to him that to- 
 morrow these fugitives might rise early to escape. 
 At that he thought of the time, and found it was 
 half-past eleven. " Lord ! " said he, " I must see 
 that I wake." He yawned and rose. The blind 
 was up, and he pulled back the little chintz cur- 
 tains to let the sunlight strike across to the bed, 
 hung his watch within good view of his pillow, 
 on a nail that supported a kettle-holder, and sat 
 down on his bed to undress. He lay awake for 
 a little while, thinking of the wonderful possibilities 
 of the morrow, and thence he passed gloriously 
 into the wonderland of dreams. 
 
THE PURSUIT 
 
 XX 
 
 And now to tell of Mr. Hoopdriver, rising with 
 the sun, vigilant, active, wonderful, the practic- 
 able half of the lead-framed window stuck open, 
 ears alert, an eye flickering incessantly in the 
 corner panes, in oblique glances at the Angelic 
 front. Mrs. Wardor wanted him to have his 
 breakfast downstairs in her kitchen, but that 
 would have meant abandoning the watch, and 
 he held out strongly. The bicycle, cap-d-pie^ 
 occupied, under protest, a strategic position in 
 the shop. He was expectant by six in the morn- 
 ing. By nine horrible fears oppressed him that 
 his quest had escaped him, and he had to recon- 
 noitre the Angel yard in order to satisfy himself. 
 There he found the ostler (How are the mighty 
 fallen in these decadent days !) brushing down 
 the bicycles of the chase, and he returned re- 
 lieved to Mrs. Wardor's premises. And about 
 ten they emerged, and rode quietly up the North 
 Street. He watched them until they turned the 
 corner of the post-office, and then out into the 
 road, and up after them in fine style ! They 
 

THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 133 
 
 went by the engine-house, where the old stocks 
 and the whipping-posts are, and on to the Chi- 
 chester road, and he followed gallantly. So this 
 great chase began. 
 
 They did not look round, and he kept them 
 just within sight, getting down if he chanced to 
 draw closely upon them round a corner. By 
 riding vigorously he kept quite conveniently near 
 them, for they made but little hurry. He grew 
 hot indeed, and his knees were a little stiff to 
 begin with, but that was all. There was little 
 danger of losing them, for a thin chalky dust lay 
 upon the road, and the track of her tire was 
 milled like a shilling, and his was a chequered 
 ribbon along the way. So they rode by Cobden's 
 monument and through the prettiest of villages, 
 until at last the downs rose steeply ahead. There 
 they stopped awhile at the only inn in the place, 
 and Mr. Hoopdriver took up a position which 
 commanded the inn door, and mopped his face 
 and thii'sted, and smoked a Red Herring cigarette. 
 They remained in the inn for some time. A 
 number of chubby innocents returning home 
 from school, stopped and formed a line in front 
 of him, and watched him quietly but firmly for 
 the space of ten minutes or so. " Go away," said 
 he, and they only seemed quietly interested. He 
 asked them all their names then, and they 
 answered indistinct murmurs. He gave it up at 
 last, and became passive on his gate, and so at 
 length they tired of him. 
 
 The couple under observation occupied the inn 
 
134 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 so long that Mr. Hoopdriver, at the thought of 
 their possible employment, hungered as well as 
 thirsted. Clearly they were lunching. It was a 
 cloudless day, and the sun at the meridian beat 
 down upon the top of Mr. Hoopdriver's head, a 
 shower-bath of sunshine, a huge jet of hot light. 
 It made his head swim. At last they emerged, 
 and the other man in brown looked back and 
 saw him. They rode on to the foot of the down, 
 and dismounting, began to push tediously up that 
 long, nearly vertical ascent of blinding white road. 
 Mr. Hoopdriver hesitated. It might take them 
 twenty minutes to mount that. Beyond was 
 empty downland perhaps for miles. He decided 
 to return to the inn and snatch a hasty meal. 
 
 At the inn they gave him biscuits and cheese, 
 and a misleading pewter measure of sturdy ale, 
 pleasant under the palate, cool in the throat, but 
 leaden in the legs, of a hot afternoon. He felt a 
 man of substance as he emerged in the blinding 
 sunshine, but even by the foot of the down the 
 sun was insisting again that his skull was too 
 small for his brains. The hill had gone steeper, 
 the chalky road blazed like a magnesium light, 
 and his front wheel began an apparently incurable 
 squeaking. He felt as a man from Mars would 
 feel if he were suddenly transferred to this planet, 
 about three times as heavy as he was wont to 
 feel. The two little black figures had vanished 
 over the forehead of the hill. " The tracks'll be 
 all right," said Mr. Hoopdriver. 
 
 That was a comforting reflection. It not only 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 135 
 
 justified a slow progress up the hill, but at the 
 crest a sprawl on the turf beside the road, to 
 contemplate the Weald from the south. In a 
 matter of two days he had crossed that spacious 
 valley, with its frozen surge of green hills, its 
 little villages and townships here and there, its 
 copses and cornfields, its ponds and streams like 
 jewellery of diamonds and silver glittering in the 
 sun. The North Downs were hidden, far away 
 beyond the Wealden Heights. Down below was 
 the little village of Cocking, and half-way up the 
 hill, a mile perhaps to the right, hung a flock of 
 sheep grazing together. Overhead an anxious 
 peewit circled against the blue, and every now 
 and then emitted its feeble cry. Up here the heat 
 was tempered by a pleasant breeze. Mr. Hoop- 
 driver was possessed by an unreasonable con- 
 tentment ; he lit himself a cigarette and lounged 
 more comfortably. Surely the Sussex ale is made 
 of the waters of Lethe, of poppies and pleasant 
 dreams. Drowsiness coiled insidiously about him. 
 He awoke with a guilty start, to find himself 
 sprawling prone on the turf with his cap over 
 one eye. He sat up, rubbed his eyes, and realised 
 that he had slept. His head was still a trifle 
 heavy. And the chase ? He jumped to his feet 
 and stooped to pick up his overturned machine. 
 He whipped out his watch, and saw that it was 
 past two o'clock. " Lord love us, fancy that ! — 
 But the tracks'll be all right," said Mr. Hoop- 
 driver, wheeling his machine back to the chalky 
 road. " I must scorch till I overtake them." 
 
136 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 He mounted and rode as rapidly as the heat 
 and a lingering lassitude permitted. Now and 
 then he had to dismount to examine the surface 
 where the road forked. He enjoyed that rather. 
 "Trackin'," he said aloud, and decided in the 
 privacy of his own mind that he had a wonderful 
 instinct for "spoor." So he came past Goodwood 
 station and Lavant, and approached Chichester 
 towards four o'clock. And then came a terrible 
 thing. In places the road became hard ; in places 
 were the crowded indentations of a recent flock 
 of sheep, and at last in the throat of the town 
 cobbles and the stony streets branching east, 
 west, north, and south, at a stone cross under the 
 shadow of the cathedral the tracks vanished. " O 
 Cricky ! " said Mr. Hoopdriver, dismounting in 
 dismay and standing agape. " Dropped any- 
 thing ? " said an inhabitant at the kerb. " Yes,'' 
 said Mr. Hoopdriver, " I've lost the spoor," and 
 walked upon his way, leaving the inhabitant 
 marvelling what part of a bicycle a spoor might 
 be. Mr. Hoopdriver, abandoning tracking, began 
 asking people if they had seen a Young Lady in 
 Grey on a bicycle. Six casual people hadn't, and 
 he began to feel the inquiry was conspicuous, and 
 desisted. But what was to be done ? 
 
 Hoopdriver was hot, tired, and hungry, and 
 full of the first gnawings of a monstrous remorse. 
 He decided to get himself some tea and meat, 
 and in the Royal George he meditated over the 
 business in a melancholy frame enough. They 
 had passed out of his world — vanished, and all 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 139 
 
 his wonderful dreams of some vague, crucial 
 interference collapsed like a castle of cards. 
 What a fool he had been not to stick to them 
 like a leech ! He might have thought ! But 
 there ! — what was the good of that sort of thing 
 now ? He thought of her tears, of her help- 
 lessness, of the bearing of the other man in 
 brown, and his wrath and disappointment surged 
 higher. " What can I do ? " said Mr. Hoopdriver 
 aloud, bringing his fist down beside the teapot. 
 
 What would Sherlock Holmes have done ? 
 Perhaps, after all, there might be such things 
 as clues in the world, albeit the age of miracles 
 was past. But to look for a clue in this intricate 
 network of cobbled streets, to examine every 
 muddy interstice ! There was a chance by look- 
 ing about, and inquiry at the various inns. Upon 
 that he began. But of course they might have 
 ridden straight through, and scarcely a soul have 
 marked them. And then came a positively bril- 
 liant idea. "'Ow many ways are there out of 
 Chichester ? " said Mr. Hoopdriver. It was really 
 equal to Sherlock Holmes — that. " If they've 
 made tracks, I shall find those tracks. If not — 
 they're in the town." He was then in East 
 Street, and he started at once to make the circuit 
 of the place, discovering incidentally that Chi- 
 chester is a walled city. In passing, he made 
 inquiries at the Black Swan, the Crown, and 
 the Red Lion Hotel. At six o'clock in the 
 evening, he was walking downcast, intent, as one 
 who had dropped money, along the road towards 
 
140 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 Bognor, kicking up the dust with his shoes and 
 fretting with disappointed pugnacity. A thwarted, 
 crestfallen Hoopdriver it was, as you may well 
 imagine. And then suddenly there jumped upon 
 his attention — a broad line ribbed like a shilling, 
 and close beside it one chequered, that ever and 
 again spHt into two. " Found ! " said Mr. Hoop- 
 driver, and swung round on his heel at once, 
 and back to the Royal George, helter skelter, 
 for the bicycle they were minding for him. The 
 ostler thought he was confoundedly imperious, 
 considering his machine. 
 
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, im- 
 mensely 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 de- 
 ficient. He found her persistent coolness, her 
 more or less evident contempt for himself, exas- 
 perating 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 enjoy- 
 able, 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 Palaeolithic creature of 
 
142 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 simple tastes and violent methods. " I'll be level 
 vifith you yet," ran like a plough through the 
 soil of his thoughts. 
 
 Then there was this infernal detective. Be- 
 chamel 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 Be- 
 chamel. 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 de- 
 tective, 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 forth- 
 with. 
 
 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 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 143 
 
 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 un- 
 washed 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 extra- 
 vagant 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 — unconventionality, 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?" 
 
1-44 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 " How can you explain the last two nights to 
 any one 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 1 " 
 
 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. 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 145 
 
 "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 — diflBicult 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. 
 
 He paused. 
 
 "You must be sensible. The thing's your 
 own doing. Come out on the beach now — the 
 beach here is splendid, and the moon soon will 
 be high." 
 
 " / 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 think- 
 ing, my dear girl. You can't save yourself in any 
 way now. If saving it is — this parsimony " 
 
 "Oh, go-go." 
 
 K 
 
146 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 " 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. 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 147 
 
 " 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 hap- 
 pening. 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 glow- 
 ing 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. 
 
 148 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 149 
 
 He did not pose when he aHghted at the coffee- 
 tavern even, nor when he made his hasty meal. 
 
 As Bechamel crossed fi-om the Vicuna toward 
 the esplanade, Hoopdriver, disappointed and ex- 
 asperated, 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 open- 
 ing 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 fami- 
 
ISO THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 liarity, 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 beheve. 
 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 weigh- 
 ing 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 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 151 
 
 done it. His head was a Maelstrom 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 situa- 
 tion 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 exa- 
 mined 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 "Thenks," and in- 
 continently had another inspii'ation. 
 
152 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 " 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 Hoop- 
 driver. 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 Hoop- 
 driver 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 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 153 
 
 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 
 
154 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 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 over- 
 took 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 re- 
 turned 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 iirelevant contributions. There were 
 conflicting ideas of telling the police and pur- 
 suing 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 awe-stricken silence, ap- 
 peared Bechamel in the hall beyond the bar, 
 walked with a resolute air to the foot of the 
 
IS6 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 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 swearr 
 
 "Well, that's Mr. Beaumont!" said the bar- 
 maid, "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. In- 
 terlude of conversational eyebrows. 
 
 " I'm going up," said Stephen, " to break the 
 melancholy news to him." 
 
 Bechamel looked up from a week -old news- 
 paper as, without knocking, Stephen entered. 
 Bechamel's face suggested a different expecta- 
 tion. "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. 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 157 
 
 She was a monomaniac. " Leave me alone with 
 her," he would say ; " I know how to calm her." 
 
 " Mrs. Beaumont," said Stephen. 
 
 "Weli:?" 
 
 " 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 Gentleman ! WAo ? " 
 
 "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 ? " 
 
IS8 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 "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. " Yes, 
 sir," he murmured, fumbling for the door handle, 
 ■ and left the room, mai-velling. 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 blas- 
 phemous indecency. Whether his wife or her 
 stepmother had sent the detective, she had evi- 
 dently 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 genera- 
 tions 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 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 159 
 
 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. 
 
THE MOONLIGHT RIDE 
 
 XXIV 
 
 And so the twenty minutes' law passed into an 
 infinity. We leave the wicked Bechamel clothing 
 himself with cursing as with a garment — the 
 wretched creature has already sufficiently sullied 
 our modest but truthful pages — we leave the 
 eager little group in the bar of the Vicuna Hotel, 
 we leave all Bognor as we have left all Chichester 
 and Midhurst and Haslemere and Guildford and 
 Ripley and Putney, and follow this dear fool of a 
 Hoopdriver of ours and his Young Lady in Grey 
 out upon the moonlight road. How they rode ! 
 How their hearts beat together and their breath 
 came fast, and how every shadow was anticipa- 
 tion and every noise pursuit ! For all that flight 
 Mr. Hoopdriver was in the world of Romance. 
 Had a policeman intervened because their lamps 
 were not lit, Hoopdriver had cut him down and 
 ridden on, after the fashion of a hero born. Had 
 Bechamel arisen in the way with rapiers for a 
 duel, Hoopdriver had fought as one to whom 
 Agincourt was a reality and drapery a dream. 
 It was Rescue, Elopement, Glory ! And she by 
 
 the side of him ! He had seen her face in shadow, 
 
 160 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE i6i 
 
 with the morning sunlight tangled in her hair ; 
 he had seen her sympathetic with that warm 
 light in her face ; he had seen her troubled, and 
 her eyes bright with tears. But what light is 
 there lighting a face like hers, to compare with 
 the soft glamour of the midsummer moon ? 
 
 The road turned northward, going round 
 through the outskirts of Bognor, in one place 
 dark and heavy under a thick growth of trees ; 
 then amidst villas again, some warm and lamp- 
 lit, some white and sleeping in the moonlight ; 
 then between hedges, over which they saw broad 
 wan meadows shrouded in a low-lying mist. 
 They scarcely heeded whither they rode at first, 
 being only anxious to get away, turning once 
 westward when the spire of Chichester cathedral 
 rose suddenly near them out of the dewy night, 
 pale and intricate and high. They rode, speaking 
 little, just a rare word now and then at a turning, 
 at a footfall, at a roughness in the road. 
 
 She seemed to be too intent upon escape to 
 give much thought to him ; but after the first 
 tumult of the adventure, as flight passed into 
 mere steady riding, his mind became an enor- 
 mous appreciation of the position. The night 
 was a warm white silence, save for the subtle 
 running of their chains. He looked sideways at 
 her as she sat beside him with her ankles grace- 
 fully ruling the treadles. Now the road turned 
 westward, and she was a dark grey outline against 
 the shimmer of the moon ; and now they faced 
 northwards, and the soft cold light passed caress- 
 
 L 
 
i62 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 ingly over her hair and touched her brow and 
 cheek. 
 
 There is a magic quality in moonshine ; it 
 touches all that is sweet and beautiful, and the 
 rest of the night is hidden. It has created the 
 fairies, whom the sunlight kills, and fairyland 
 rises again in our hearts at the sight of it, the 
 voices of the filmy route, and their faint, soul- 
 piercing melodies. By the moonlight every man, 
 dull clod though he be by day, tastes something 
 of Endymion, takes something of the youth and 
 strength of Endymion, and sees the dear white 
 goddess shining at him from his Lady's eyes. 
 The firm substantial daylight things become 
 ghostly and elusive, the hills beyond are a sea 
 of unsubstantial texture, the world a visible spirit ; 
 the spiritual within us rises out of its darkness, 
 loses something of its weight and body, and 
 swims up towards heaven. This road that was 
 a mere rutted white dust, hot underfoot, blinding 
 to the eye, is now a soft grey silence, with the 
 glitter of a crystal grain set starlike in its silver 
 here and there. Overhead, riding serenely through 
 the spacious blue, is the mother of the silence, 
 she who has spiritualised the world, alone save 
 for two attendant steady shining stars. And in 
 silence under her benign influence, under the 
 benediction of her light, rode our two wanderers 
 side by side through the transfigured and trans- 
 figuring night. 
 
 Nowhere was the moon shining quite so 
 brightly as in Mr. Hoopdriver's skull. At the 
 
' ^-T i ri ssssssmaaaa^ ;. 
 
 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 163 
 
 ttirnings of the road he made his decisions with 
 an air of profound promptitude (and quite hap- 
 hazard). " The Right," he would say. Or again 
 " The Left," as one who knew. So it was that in 
 the space of an hour they came abruptly down 
 a little lane, full tilt upon the sea. Grey beach 
 to the right of them and to the left, and a little 
 white cottage fast asleep inland of a sleeping 
 fishing-boat. " 'Ullo ! " said Mr. Hoopdriver soUo 
 voce. They dismounted abruptly. Stunted oaks 
 and thorns rose out of the haze of moonhght 
 that was tangled in the hedge on either side. 
 
 " You are safe," said Mr. Hoopdriver, sweeping 
 off his cap with an air and bowing courtly. 
 
 " Where are we ? " 
 
 " Safer 
 
 " But where ? " 
 
 "Chichester Harbour." He waved his arm 
 seaward as though it was a goal. 
 
 " Do you think they will follow us ? " 
 
 " We have turned and turned again." 
 
 It seemed to Hoopdriver that he heard her sob. 
 She stood dimly there, holding her machine, and 
 he, holding his, could go no nearer to her to see 
 if she sobbed for weeping or for want of breath. 
 " What are we to do now ? " her voice asked. 
 
 " Are you tired ? " he asked. 
 
 " I will do what has to be done." 
 
 The two black figures in the broken light were 
 silent for a space. " Do you know," she said, " I 
 am not afraid of you, I am sure you are honest 
 to me. And I do not even know your name ! " 
 
i64 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 He was taken with a sudden shame of his 
 homely patronymic. "It's an ugly name," he 
 said. "But you are right in trusting me. I 
 would — I would do anything for you. . . . This 
 is nothing." 
 
 She caught at her breath. She did not care to 
 ask why. But compared, with Bechamel ! — "We 
 take each other on trust," she said. "Do you 
 want to know — how things are with me ? " 
 
 "That man," she went on, after the assent 
 of his listening silence, "promised to help and 
 protect me. I was unhappy at home — never 
 
 mind why. A stepmother- Idle, unoccupied, 
 
 hindered, cramped, that is enough, perhaps. 
 Then he came into my life, and talked to me 
 of art and literature, and set my brain on fire. 
 I wanted to come out into the world, to be a 
 human being — not a thing in a hutch. And 
 he " 
 
 " I know," said Hoopdriver. 
 
 " And now, here I am " 
 
 " I will do anything," said Hoopdriver. 
 
 She thought. " You cannot imagine my step- 
 mother. No ! I could not describe her " 
 
 " I am entirely at your service. I will help you 
 with all my power." 
 
 " I have lost an Illusion and found a Knight- 
 errant." She spoke of Bechamel as the Illusion. 
 
 Mr. Hoopdriver felt flattered. But he had no 
 adequate answer. 
 
 " I'm thinking," he said, full of a rapture of 
 protective responsibility, "what we had best be 
 

THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 167 
 
 doing. You are tired, you know ; and we can't 
 wander all night — after the day we've had." 
 
 " That was Chichester we were near ? " she 
 asked. 
 
 " If," he meditated, with a tremble in his 
 voice, "you would make me your brother. Miss 
 Beaumont." 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 " We could stop there together " 
 
 She took a minute to answer. " I am going 
 to light these lamps," said Hoopdriver. He bent 
 down to his own, and struck a match on his shoe. 
 She looked at his face in its light, grave and 
 intent. How could she ever have thought him 
 common or absurd ? 
 
 " But you must tell me your name — brother," 
 she said. 
 
 " Er — Carrington," said Mr. Hoopdriver, after 
 a momentary pause. Who would be Hoopdriver 
 on a night like this ? 
 
 " But the Christian name ? " 
 
 " Christian name ? My Christian name. Well, 
 — Chris," He snapped his lamp and stood up. 
 " If you will hold my machine, I will light yours," 
 he said. 
 
 She came round obediently and took his 
 machine, and for a moment they stood face to 
 face. "My name, brother Chris," she said, "is 
 Jessie." 
 
 He looked into her eyes, and his excitement 
 seemed arrested. "Jessie" he repeated slowly. 
 The mute emotion of his face affected her 
 
1 68 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 strangely. She had to speak. " It's not such a 
 very wonderful name, is it ? " she said, with a 
 laugh to break the intensity. 
 
 He opened his mouth and shut it again, and 
 with a sudden wincing of his features, abruptly 
 turned and bent down to open the lantern in 
 front of her machine. She looked down at him, 
 almost kneeling in front of her, with an unreason- 
 able approbation in her eyes. It was, as I have 
 indicated, the hour and season of the full moon. 
 
XXV 
 
 Mr. Hoopdriver conducted the rest of that 
 night's journey with the same confident dignity 
 as before, and it was chiefly by good luck and 
 the fact that most roads about a town converge 
 thereupon, that Chichester was at last attained. 
 It seemed at first as though every one had gone 
 to bed, but the Red Hotel still glowed yellow 
 and warm. It was the first time Hoopdriver had 
 dared the mysteries of a " first-class '' hotel ; but 
 that night he was in the mood to dare anything. 
 
 " So you found your Young Lady at last," said 
 the ostler of the Red Hotel ; for it chanced he 
 was one of those of whom Hoopdriver had made 
 inquiries in the afternoon. 
 
 "Quite a misunderstanding," said Hoopdriver, 
 with splendid readiness. " My sister had gone 
 to Bognor. But I brought her back here. I've 
 took a fancy to this place. And the moonlight's 
 simply dee-vine." 
 
 "We've had supper, thenks, and we're tired," 
 said Mr. Hoopdriver. "I suppose you won't 
 take anything — Jessie ? " 
 
 The glory of having her, even as a sister ! and 
 to call her Jessie like that ! But he carried it off 
 
 splendidly, as he felt himself bound to admit. 
 
 169 
 
I70 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 "Good night, Sis," he said, "and pleasant dreams. 
 I'll just 'ave a look at this paper before I turn in," 
 But this was living indeed ! he told himself. 
 
 So gallantly did Mr. Hoopdriver comport him- 
 self up to the very edge of the Most Wonderful 
 Day of all. It had begun early, you will re- 
 member, with a vigil in a little sweetstuff shop 
 next door to the Angel at Midhurst. But to 
 think of all the things that had happened since 
 then ! He caught himself in the middle of a 
 yawn, pulled out his watch, saw the time was 
 half-past eleven, and marched off, with a fine 
 sense of heroism, bedward. 
 
THE SURBITON INTERLUDE 
 
 XXVI 
 
 And here, thanks to the glorious institution of 
 sleep, comes a break in the narrative again. 
 These absurd young people are safely tucked 
 away now, their heads full of glowing nonsense, 
 indeed, but the course of events at any rate is 
 safe from any fresh developments through their 
 activities for the next eight hours or more. They 
 are both sleeping — healthily, you will perhaps be 
 astonished to hear. Here is the girl — what girls 
 are coming to nowadays only Mrs. Lynn Linton 
 can tell ! — in company with an absolute stran- 
 ger, of low extraction and uncertain accent, un- 
 chaperoned and unabashed — indeed, now she 
 fancies she is safe, she is, if anything, a little 
 proud of her own share in these transactions. 
 Then this Mr. Hoopdriver of yours, roseate idiot 
 that he is ! is in illegal possession of a stolen 
 bicycle, a stolen young lady, and two stolen 
 names, established with them in an hotel that is 
 quite beyond his means, and immensely proud 
 of himself in a somnolent way for these incom- 
 parable follies. There are occasions when a 
 moralising novelist can merely wring his hands 
 
172 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 and leave matters to take their course. For all 
 Hoopdriver knows or cares he may be locked up 
 the very first thing to-morrow morning for the 
 rape of the cycle. Then in Bognor, let alone 
 that melancholy vestige, Bechamel, with whom 
 our dealings are over, thank Goodness ! there 
 is a Coffee Tavern with a steak Mr. Hoopdriver 
 ordered, done to a cinder long ago, his American 
 cloth parcel in a bedroom, and his own proper 
 bicycle, by way of guarantee, carefully locked 
 up in the hayloft. To-morrow he will be a 
 Mystery, and they will be looking for his body 
 along the sea front. And so far we have never 
 given a glance at the desolate home in Surbiton, 
 familiar to you no doubt through the medium of 
 illustrated interviews, where the unhappy step- 
 mother 
 
 That stepmother, it must be explained, is quite 
 well known to you. That is a little surprise I 
 have prepared for you. She is "Thomas Plan- 
 tagenet," the gifted authoress of that witty and 
 daring book, " A Soul Untrammelled," and quite 
 an excellent woman in her way. Only it was such 
 a crooked way. Her real name was Milton. She 
 was a widow and a charming one, only ten years 
 older than Jessie, and she was always careful to 
 dedicate her more daring works to the "sacred 
 memory of my husband" to show that there's 
 nothing personal, you know, in the matter. Con- 
 sidering her literary reputation, she was one of 
 the most respectable women it is possible to 
 imagine. She furnished correctly, dressed cor- 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 173 
 
 rectly, had severe notions of whom she might 
 meet, went to church, and even at times took 
 the sacrament in some esoteric spirit. And Jessie 
 she brought up so carefully that she never even 
 let her read "A Soul Untrammelled." Which 
 therefore, naturally enough, Jessie did, and went 
 on from that to a feast of advanced literature. 
 Mrs. Milton not only brought up Jessie carefully, 
 but very slowly, so that at seventeen she was still 
 a clever, bookish school-girl (as you have seen 
 her), pretty, only girlishly, and quite in the back- 
 ground of the little literary circle of unimportant 
 celebrities which "Thomas Plantagenet " adorned. 
 Mrs. Milton knew Bechamel's reputation of being 
 a dangerous man ; but then bad men are not 
 bad women, and she let him come to her house 
 to show she was not afraid^she took no account 
 of Jessie. When the elopement came, therefore, 
 it was a double disappointment to her, for she 
 perceived his hand by a kind of instinct. She 
 did the correct thing. The correct thing, as 
 you know, is to take hansom cabs, regardless of 
 expense, and weep and say you do not know 
 what to do, round the circle of your confidential 
 friends. She could not have ridden nor wept 
 more had Jessie been her own daughter — she 
 showed the properest spirit. And she not only 
 showed it, but felt it. 
 
 Mrs. Milton, as a successful little authoress 
 and still more successful widow of thirty-two — • 
 "Thomas Plantagenet is a charming woman," 
 her reviewers used to write invariably, even if 
 
174 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 they spoke ill of her — found the steady growth 
 of Jessie into womanhood an unmitigated nuis- 
 ance, and had been willing enough to keep her 
 in the background ; and Jessie — ^who had started 
 their intercourse at fourteen with abstract objec- 
 tions to stepmothers — had been active enough in 
 resenting this. Increasing rivalry and antagonism 
 had sprung up between them, until they could 
 engender quite a vivid hatred from a dropped 
 hairpin or the cutting of a book with a sharpened 
 knife. There is very little deliberate wickedness 
 in the world. The stupidity of our selfishness 
 gives much the same results indeed, but in the 
 ethical laboratory it shows a different nature. 
 And when the disaster came, Mrs. Milton's re- 
 morse for their gradual loss of sympathy and her 
 share in the losing of it was genuine enough. 
 
 You may imagine the comfort she got from 
 her friends, and how West Kensington and Not- 
 ting Hill and Hampstead, the literary suburbs, 
 those decent penitentiaries of a once Bohemian 
 calling, hummed with the business. Her " Men " 
 — as a charming literary lady she had, of course, 
 an organised corps — were immensely excited, 
 and were sympathetic, helpfully energetic, sug- 
 gestive, alert, as their ideals of their various 
 dispositions required them to be. "Any news 
 of Jessie ? " was the pathetic opening of a 
 dozen melancholy but interesting conversations. 
 To her Men she was not perhaps so damp as 
 she was to her women friends, but in a quiet 
 way she was even more touching. For three 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 17s 
 
 days, Wednesday that is, Thursday, and Friday, 
 nothing was heard of the fugitives. It was 
 known that Jessie, wearing a patent costume 
 with button-up skirts, and mounted on a dia- 
 mond-frame safety with Dunlops, and a loofah 
 covered saddle, had ridden forth early in the 
 morning, taking with her about two pounds 
 seven shillings in money, and a grey touring- 
 case packed and there, save for a brief note to 
 her stepmother — a declaration of independence, 
 it was said, an assertion of her Ego containing 
 extensive and very annoying quotations from " A 
 Soul Untrammelled," and giving no definite inti- 
 mation of her plans — knowledge ceased. That 
 note was shown to few, and then only in the 
 strictest confidence. 
 
 But on Friday evening late came a breathless 
 Man Friend, Widgery, a correspondent of hers, 
 who had heard of her trouble among the first. 
 He had been touring in Sussex — his knapsack 
 was still on his back — and he testified hurriedly 
 that at a place called Midhurst, in the bar of an 
 hotel called the Angel, he had heard from a bar- 
 maid a vivid account of a Young Lady in Grey. 
 Descriptions tallied. But who was the man in 
 brown ? " The poor misguided girl ! I must go 
 to her at once," she said, choking, and rising with 
 her hand to her heart. 
 
 " It's impossible to-night. There are no more 
 trains. I looked on my way." 
 
 " A mother's love," she said. " I bear her that!' 
 
 " I know you do." He spoke with feeling, for 
 
176 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 no one admired his photographs of scenery more 
 than Mrs. Milton. " It's more than she deserves." 
 
 " Oh, don't speak unkindly of her ! She has 
 been misled." 
 
 It was really very friendly of him. He declared 
 he was only sorry his news ended there. Should 
 he follow them, and bring her back ? He had 
 come to her because he knew of her anxiety, 
 " It is good of you," she said, and quite instinc- 
 tively took and pressed his hand. " And to think 
 of that poor girl — to-night ! It's dreadful." She 
 looked into the fire that she had lit when he came 
 in ; the warm light fell upon her dark purple dress, 
 and left her features in a warm shadow. She 
 looked such a slight, frail thing to be troubled so. 
 " We must follow her." Her resolution seemed 
 magnificent. " I have no one to go with me." 
 
 " He must marry her," said the man. 
 
 " She has no friends. We have no one. After 
 all — two women. So helpless." 
 
 And this fair-haired little figure was the woman 
 that people who knew her only from her books 
 called bold, prurient even ! Simply because she 
 was great-hearted — intellectual. He was over- 
 come by the unspeakable pathos of her position. 
 
 " Mrs. Milton," he said. " Hetty ! " 
 
 She glanced at him. The overflow was immi- 
 nent. " Not now," she said, " not now. I must 
 find her first." 
 
 " Yes," he said, with intense emotion. (He was 
 one of those big, fat men who feel deeply.) 
 " But let me help you. At least let me help you." 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 177 
 
 " But can you spare time ?" she said. " For me " 
 " For you " 
 
 J/^^ 
 
 " But what can I do ? what can we do ? " 
 " Go to Midhurst. Follow her on. Trace her. 
 
 M 
 
178 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 She was there on Thursday night, last night. She 
 cycled out of the town. Courage ! " he said. 
 " We will save her yet ! " 
 
 She put out her hand and pressed his again. 
 
 "Courage ! " he repeated, finding it so well 
 received. 
 
 There were alarms and excursions without. 
 She turned her back to the fire, and he sat down 
 suddenly in the big armchair, which suited his 
 dimensions admirably. Then the door opened, 
 and the girl showed in Dangle, who looked curi- 
 ously from one to the other. There was emotion 
 here — he had heard the armchair creaking ; and 
 Mrs. Milton, whose face was flushed, displayed a 
 suspicious alacrity to explain. "You, too," she 
 said, "are one of my good friends. And we have 
 news of her at last." 
 
 It was decidedly an advantage to Widgery, but 
 Dangle determined to show himself a man of 
 resource. In the end he, too, was accepted for 
 the Midhurst Expedition, to the intense disgust 
 of Widgery ; and young Phipps, a callow youth 
 of few words, faultless collars, and fervent devo- 
 tion, was also enrolled before the evening was 
 out. They would scour the country, all three of 
 them. She appeared to brighten up a little, but 
 it was evident she was profoundly touched. She 
 did not know what she had done to merit such 
 friends. Her voice broke a little ; she moved 
 towards the door, and young Phipps, who was 
 a youth of action rather than of words, sprang 
 and opened it — proud to be first. 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 179 
 
 "liShe is sorely troubled," said Dangle to 
 Widgery. 
 
 " We must do what we can for her." 
 
 "She is a wonderful woman," said Dangle. 
 "So subtle, so intricate, so many faceted. She 
 feels this deeply." 
 
 Young Phipps said nothing, but he felt the 
 more. 
 
 And yet they say the age of chivalry is dead ! 
 
 But this is only an Interlude, introduced to 
 give our wanderers time to refresh themselves by 
 good honest sleeping. For the present, therefore, 
 we will not concern ourselves with the starting of 
 the Rescue Party, nor with Mrs. Milton's simple 
 but becoming grey dress, with the healthy Wid- 
 gery's Norfolk jacket and thick boots, with the 
 slender Dangle's energetic bearing, nor with the 
 wonderful chequerings that set off the legs of 
 the golf-suited Phipps. They are after us. In a 
 little while they will be upon us. You must ima- 
 gine as you best can the competitive raidings at 
 Midhurst of Widgery, Dangle, and Phipps — how 
 Widgery was great at questions, and Dangle good 
 at inference, and Phipps so conspicuously inferior 
 in everything, that he felt it and sulked with Mrs. 
 Milton most of the day, after the manner of your 
 callow youth the whole world over. Mrs. Milton 
 stopped at the Angel, and was very sad, and 
 charming, and intelligent, and Widgery paid the 
 bill. In the afternoon of Saturday, Chichester 
 was attained. But by that time our fugutives — 
 as you shall immediately hear. 
 
THE AWAKENING OF MR, HOOPDRIVER 
 
 XXVII 
 
 Mr. Hoopdriver stirred on his pillow, opened 
 his eyes, and, staring unmeaningly, yawned. The 
 bed-clothes were soft and pleasant. He turned 
 the peaked nose that overrides the insufl&cient 
 moustache up to the ceiling, a pinkish projection 
 over the billow of white. You might see it wrinkle 
 as he yawned again, and then become quiet. So 
 matters remained for a space. Very slowly re- 
 collection returned to him. Then a shock of 
 indeterminate brown hair appeared, and first one 
 watery grey eye a-wondering, and then two ; the 
 bed upheaved, and you had him, his thin neck 
 projecting abruptly from the clothes he held 
 about him, his face staring about the room. He 
 held the clothes about him, I hope I may ex- 
 plain, because his night-shirt was at Bognor in 
 an American cloth packet, derelict. He yawned 
 a third time, rubbed his eyes, smacked his lips. 
 He was recalling almost everything now — the 
 pursuit, the hotel, the tremulous daring of his 
 entry, the swift adventure of the inn yard, the 
 moonlight. Abruptly he threw the clothes back, 
 and rose into a sitting position on the edge of the 
 bed. Without was the noise of shutters being 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE i8i 
 
 unfastened and doors unlocked, and the passing 
 of hoofs and wheels in the street. He looked 
 at his watch. Half-past six. He surveyed the 
 sumptuous room again. 
 
 " Lord ! " said Mr. Hoopdriver. " It wasn't a 
 dream, after all." 
 
 " I wonder what they charge for these juiced 
 rooms ! " said Mr. Hoopdriver, nursing one rosy 
 foot. 
 
 He became meditative, tugging at his insufficient 
 moustache. Suddenly he gave vent to a noise- 
 less laugh. "What a rush it was ! Rushed in and 
 off with his girl right under his nose. Planned 
 it well too. Talk of highway robbery ! Talk of 
 brigands ! Up and off ! How juiced sold he 
 must be feeling ! It was a shave too — in the 
 coach-yard ! " 
 
 Suddenly he became silent. Abruptly his eye- 
 brows rose and his jaw fell. " I sa — a — ay ! " said 
 Mr. Hoopdriver. 
 
 He had never thought of it before. Perhaps 
 you will understand the whirl he had been in 
 overnight. But one sees things clearer in the 
 daylight. " I'm hanged if I haven't been and 
 stolen a blessed bicycle." 
 
 " Who cares ? " said Mr. Hoopdriver presently, 
 and his face supplied the answer. 
 
 Then he thought of the Young Lady in Grey 
 again, and tried to put a more heroic complexion 
 on the business. But of an early morning, on 
 an empty stomach (as medical men put it, with 
 characteristic coarseness), heroics are of a more 
 
1 82 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 difficult growth than by moonlight. Everything 
 had seemed exceptionally fine and brilliant, but 
 quite natural, the evening before. 
 
 Mr. Hoopdriver reached out his hand, took his 
 Norfolk jacket, laid it over his knees, and took 
 out the money from the little ticket - pocket. 
 " Fourteen and six-half," he said, holding the 
 coins in his left hand, and stroking his chin with 
 his right. He verified, by patting, the presence 
 of a pocket-book in the breast pocket. " Five, 
 fourteen, six-half," said Mr. Hoopdriver. " Left." 
 
 With the Norfolk jacket still on his knees, he 
 plunged into another silent meditation. "That 
 wouldn't matter," he said. " It's the bike's the 
 bother." 
 
 " No good going back to Bognor." 
 
 " Might send it back by carrier, of course. 
 Thanking him for the loan. Having no fuither 
 
 use " Mr. Hoopdriver chuckled and lapsed into 
 
 the silent concoction of a delightfully impudent 
 letter. " Mr. J. Hoopdriver presents his compli- 
 ments." But the grave note reasserted itself. 
 
 " Might trundle back there in an hour, of 
 course, and exchange them. My old crock's 
 so blessed shabby. He's sure to be spiteful too. 
 Have me run in, perhaps. Then she'd be in 
 just the same old fix, only worse. You see, I'm 
 her Knight-errant. It complicates things so." 
 
 His eye, wandering loosely, rested on the 
 sponge-bath. "What the juice do they want 
 with cream-pans in a bedroom ? " said Mr. Hoop- 
 driver, en passant. 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 185 
 
 " Best thing we can do is to set out of here as 
 soon as possible, anyhow. I suppose she'll go 
 home to her friends. That bicycle is a juicy 
 nuisance anyhow. Juicy nuisance." 
 
 He jumped to his feet with a sudden awaken- 
 ing of energy to proceed with his toilette. Then 
 with a certain horror he remembered that the 
 simple necessaries of that process were at Bognor! 
 " Lord ! " he remarked, and whistled silently for 
 a space. " Rummy go, profit and loss ; profit, 
 one sister with bicycle complete, wot offers ? — 
 cheap for tooth and 'air brush, vests, night-shirt, 
 stockings, and sundries." 
 
 " Make the best of it ; " and presently, when it 
 came to hair-brushing, he had to smooth his 
 troubled locks with his hands. It was a poor 
 result. " Sneak out and get a shave, I suppose, 
 and buy a brush, and so on. Chink again ! 
 Beard don't show much." 
 
 He ran his hand over his chin, looked at him- 
 self steadfastly for some time, and curled his 
 insufficient moustache up with some care. Then 
 he fell a-meditating on his beauty. He con- 
 sidered himself, three-quarter face, left and right. 
 An expression of distaste crept over his features. 
 " Looking won't alter it, Hoopdriver," he re- 
 marked. "You're a weedy customer, my man. 
 Shoulders narrow. Skimpy, somehow." 
 
 He put his knuckles on the toilet-table and 
 regarded himself with his chin lifted in the air. 
 " Good Lord ! " he said. " What a neck ! Wonder 
 why I got such a thundering lump there." 
 
1 86 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 He sat down on the bed, his eye still on the 
 glass. "If I'd been exercised properly, if I'd 
 been fed reasonable, if I hadn't been shoved out 
 of a silly school into a silly shop — But there ! the 
 old folks^didn't know no better. The schoolmaster 
 ought to have. But he didn't, poor old fool ! — 
 Still, when it comes to meeting a girl like this — 
 it's 'ardr 
 
 " I wonder what Adam'd think of me — as a speci- 
 men. Civilisation, eigh ? Heir of the ages ! I'm 
 nothing. I know nothing. I can't do anything, 
 — Sketch a bit. Why wasn't I made an artist ? " 
 
 "Beastly cheap, after all, this suit does look in 
 the sunshine." 
 
 "No good, Hoopdriver. Anyhow, you don't 
 tell yourself any lies about it. Lovers ain't your 
 • game — anyway. But there's other things yet. 
 You can help the young lady, and you will — I 
 suppose she'll be going home. — And that busi- 
 ness of the bicycle's to see to, too, my man. 
 Forward, Hoopdriver ! If you ain't a beauty, 
 that's no reason why you should stop and be 
 copped, is it ? " 
 
 And having got back in this way to a gloomy 
 kind of self-satisfaction, he had another attempt 
 at his hair preparatory to leaving his room and 
 hurrying on breakfast for an early departure. 
 While breakfast was preparing, he wandered out 
 into South Street and refurnished himself with 
 the elements of luggage again. " No expense to 
 be spared," he murmured, disgorging the half- 
 sovereign. 
 
THE DEPARTURE FROM CHICHESTER 
 
 XXVIII 
 
 He caused his " sister " to be called repeatedly, 
 and when she came down, explained with a 
 humorous smile his legal relationship to the 
 bicycle in the yard. " Might be disagreeable, y' 
 know." His anxiety was obvious enough. " Very 
 well," she said (quite friendly) ; " hurry breakfast, 
 and we'll ride out. I want to talk things over 
 with you." The girl seemed more beautiful than 
 ever after the night's sleep ; her hair in comely 
 dark waves from her forehead, her ungauntleted 
 finger-tips pink and cool. And how decided she 
 was ! Breakfast was a nervous ceremony, con- 
 versation fraternal but thin ; the waiter overawed 
 him, and he was cowed by a multiplicity of forks. 
 But she called him " Chris." They discussed 
 their route over his sixpenny county map for the 
 sake of talking, but avoided a decision in the pre- 
 sence of the attendant. The five-pound note was 
 changed for the bill, and through Hoopdriver's 
 determination to be quite the gentleman, the 
 waiter and chambermaid got half-a-crown each, 
 and the ostler a florin. " 'Olidays," said the ostler 
 
 to himself, without gratitude. The public mount- 
 
 187 
 
1 88 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 ing of the bicycles in the street was a moment of 
 trepidation. A policeman actually stopped and 
 watched them from the opposite kerb. Suppose 
 him to come across and ask, " Is that your bicycle, 
 sir ? " Fight ? Or drop it and run ? It was a 
 time of bewildering apprehension, too, going 
 through the streets of the town, so that a milk- 
 cart barely escaped destruction under Mr. Hoop- 
 driver's chancy wheel. That recalled him to a 
 sense of erratic steering, and he pulled himself 
 together. In the lanes he breathed freer, and a 
 less formal conversation presently began. 
 
 "You've ridden out of Chichester in a great 
 hurry," said Jessie. 
 
 " Well, the fact of it is, I'm worried, just a little 
 bit, about this machine." 
 
 " Of course," she said. " I had forgotten that. 
 But where are we going ? " 
 
 "Jest a turning or two more, if you don't 
 mind," said Hoopdriver. " Jest a mile or so. I 
 have to think of you, you know. I should feel 
 more easy. If we was locked up, you know — 
 not that I should mind on my own account." 
 
 They rode with a streaky, grey sea coming and 
 going on their left hand. Every mile they put 
 between themselves and Chichester Mr. Hoop- 
 driver felt a little less conscienga^ricken, and a 
 little more of the gal'lantdesperad^. Here he 
 was riding on a splendldTnacfeitiewith a Slap-up 
 girl beside him. What would they think of it in 
 the Emporium if any of them were to see him ? 
 He imagined in detail the astonishment of Miss 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 189 
 
 Isaacs and of Miss Howe. " Why ! It's Mr. 
 Hoopdriver," Miss Isaacs would say. '^ Never I" 
 emphatically from Miss Howe. Then he played 
 with Briggs, and then tried the " G. V." in a shay. 
 " Fancy introjuicing 'em to her — my sister pro 
 tern'' He was her brother Chris — Chris what ? 
 Confound it ! — Harringon, Hartington — some- 
 thing like that. Have to keep off that topic until 
 he could remember. Wish he'd told her the 
 truth now — almost. He glanced at her. She 
 was riding with her eyes straight ahead of her. 
 Thinking. A little perplexed she seemed. He 
 noticed how well she rode, and that she rode with 
 her lips closed — a thing he could never manage. 
 Mr. Hoopdriver's mind came round to the 
 future. What was she going to do ? What were 
 they both going to do ? His thoughts took a 
 graver colour. He had rescued her. This was 
 fine, manly rescue work he was engaged upon. 
 She ought to go home, in spite of that step- 
 mother. He must insist gravely but firmly upon 
 that. She was the spirited sort, of course, but 
 still — wonder if she had any money ? Wonder 
 what the second-class fare from Havant to London 
 is ? Of course he would have to pay that — it was 
 the regular thing, he being a gentleman. Then 
 should he take her home ? He began to rough 
 in a moving sketch of the return. The step- 
 mother, repentant of her indescribable cruelties, 
 would be present — even these rich people have 
 their troubles — probably an uncle or two. The 
 footman would announce, Mr. — bother that 
 
ipo THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 name ! — and Miss Milton. Then two women 
 weeping together, and a knightly figure in the 
 background dressed in a handsome Norfolk 
 jacket, still conspicuously new. He would con- 
 ceal his feeling until the very end. Then, leaving, 
 he would pause in the doorway in such an attitude 
 as Mr. George Alexander might assume, and say, 
 slowly and dwindlingly, " Be kind to her — be kind 
 to her," and so depart, heartbroken to the meanest 
 intelligence. But that was a matter for the future. 
 He would have to begin discussing the return 
 soon. There was no traffic along the road, and 
 he came up beside her (he had fallen behind in 
 his musing). She began to talk. " Mr. Denison," 
 she began, and then, doubtfully, "that is your 
 
 name ? I'm very stupid " 
 
 " It is," said Mr. Hoopdriver. (Denison, was 
 it ? Denison, Denison, Denison. What was she 
 saying ?) 
 
 " I wonder how far you are willing to help me ?" 
 Confoundedly hard to answer a question like 
 that on the spur of the moment, without steering 
 wildly. "You may rely," said Mr. Hoopdriver, 
 recovering from a violent wabble. " I can assure 
 you — I want to help you very much. Don't 
 consider me at all. Leastways, consider me en- 
 tirely at your service." (Nuisance not to be able 
 to say this kind of thing right.) 
 
 " You see, I am so awkwardly situated." 
 
 "If I can only help you — you will make me 
 
 very happy " There was a pause. Round a 
 
 bend in the road they came upon a grassy space 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 191 
 
 between hedge and road, set with yarrow and 
 meadowsweet, where a felled tree lay among the 
 green. There she dismounted, and propping her 
 machine against a stone, sat down. " Here we 
 can talk," she said. 
 
 "Yes," said Mr. Hoopdriver, expectant. 
 
 She answered after a little while, sitting, elbow 
 on knee, with her chin in her hand, and looking 
 straight in front of her. " I don't know — I am 
 resolved to Live my Own Life." 
 
 " Of course," said Mr. Hoopdriver. " Naturally." 
 
 " I want to Live, and I want to see what life 
 means. I want to learn. Every one is hurrying 
 me ; everything is hurrying me ; I want time to 
 think." 
 
 Mr. Hoopdriver was puzzled, but admiring. It 
 was wonderful how clear and ready her words 
 were. But then one might well speak well with 
 a throat and lips like that. He knew he was 
 inadequate, but he tried to meet the occasion. 
 " If you let them rush you into anything you 
 might repent of, of course you'd be very silly," 
 he said. 
 
 " Don't you want to learn ? " she asked. 
 
 " I was wondering only this morning," he be- 
 gan, and stopped. 
 
 She was too intent upon her own thoughts to 
 notice this insufificiency. " I find myself in life, 
 and it terrifies me. I seem to be like a little speck 
 whirling on a wheel, suddenly caught up. ' What 
 am I here for ? ' I ask. Simply to be here a time 
 — I asked it a week ago, I asked it yesterday, and 
 
192 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 I ask it to-day. And little things happen and the 
 days pass. My stepmother takes me shopping, 
 people come to tea, there is a new play to pass 
 the time, or a concert, or a novel. The wheels of 
 the world go on turning, turning. It is horrible. 
 I want to do a miracle like Joshua and stop the 
 whirl until I have fought it out. At home — it's 
 impossible." 
 
 Mr. Hoopdriver stroked his moustache. " It is 
 so," he said, in a meditative tone. "Things will 
 go on." The faint breath of summer stirred the 
 trees, and a bunch of dandelion puff lifted among 
 the meadowsweet and struck and broke into a 
 dozen separate threads against his knee. They 
 flew on apart, and sank, as the breeze fell, among 
 the grass : some to germinate, some to perish. 
 His eye followed them until they had vanished. 
 
 " I can't go back to Surbiton," said the Young 
 Lady in Grey. 
 
 " Eigh?" said Mr. Hoopdriver, catching at 
 his moustache. This was an unexpected de- 
 velopment. 
 
 " I want to write, you see," said the Young 
 Lady in Grey, " to write Books and alter things. 
 To do Good. I want to lead a Free Life and Own 
 myself. I can't go back. I want to obtain a posi- 
 tion as a Journalist. I have been told — but I 
 know no one to help me at once. No one that I 
 could go to. There is one person — she was a 
 mistress at my school. If I could write to her — 
 but then, how could I get her answer ? " 
 
 " H'mp," said Mr. Hoopdriver, very grave. 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 193 
 
 " I can't trouble you much more. You have 
 come — you have risked things " 
 
 "That don't count," said Mr. Hoopdriver. 
 " It's double pay to let me do it, so to speak." 
 
 " It is good of you to say that. Surbiton is so 
 Conventional. I am resolved to be Unconventional 
 — at any cost. But we are so hampered. If I 
 could only burgeon out of all that hinders me ! 
 I want to struggle, to take my place in the world. 
 I want to be my own mistress, to shape my own 
 career. But my stepmother objects so. She does 
 as she likes herself, and is strict with me to ease 
 her conscience. And if I go back now, go back 
 
 owning myself beaten " She left the rest to 
 
 his imagination. 
 
 "I see that," agreed Mr. Hoopdriver. He 
 must help her. Within his skull he was doing 
 some intricate arithmetic with five pounds six 
 and twopence. In some vague way he inferred 
 from all this that Jessie was trying to escape from 
 an undesirable marriage, but was saying these 
 things out of modesty. His circle of ideas was 
 so limited. 
 
 " You know, Mr. I've forgotten your name 
 
 again." 
 
 Mr. Hoopdriver seemed lost in abstraction. 
 " You can't go back of course, quite like that," he 
 said thoughtfully. His ears were suddenly red 
 and his cheeks flushed. 
 
 " But what is your name ? " 
 
 " Name ! " said Mr. Hoopdriver. " Why ! — 
 Benson, of course." 
 
 N 
 
194 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 "Mr. Benson — yes— it's really very stupid of 
 me. But I can never remember names. I must 
 make a note on my cuff." She clicked a little 
 silver pencil and wrote the name down. " If I 
 could write to my friend, I believe she would be 
 able to help me to an independent hfe. I could 
 write to her — or telegraph. Write, I think. I 
 could scarcely explain in a telegram. I know she 
 would help me." 
 
 Clearly there was only one course open to a 
 gentleman under the circumstances. "In that 
 case," said Mr. Hoopdriver, " if you don't mind 
 trusting yourself to a stranger, we might continue 
 as we are perhaps — for a day or so ; until you 
 heard." (Suppose thirty shillings a day, that 
 gives four days, say four thirties is hun' and 
 twenty, six quid — well, three days, say ; four 
 ten.) 
 
 " You are very good to me." 
 
 His expression was eloquent. 
 
 " Very well, then, and thank you. It's wonder- 
 ful — it's more than I deserve that you " She 
 
 dropped the theme abruptly. "What was our 
 bill at Chichester ? " 
 
 " Eigh ? " said Mr. Hoopdriver, feigning a cer- 
 tain stupidity. There was a brief discussion. 
 Secretly he was delighted at her insistence in 
 paying. She carried her point. Their talk came 
 round to their immediate plans for the day. 
 They decided to ride easily, through Havant, and 
 stop, perhaps, at Fareham or Southampton ; for 
 the previous day had tried them both. Holding 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 195 
 
 the map extended on his knee, Mr. Hoopdriver's 
 eye fell by chance on the bicycle at his feet. 
 "That bicycle," he remarked, quite irrelevantly, 
 " wouldn't look the same machine if I got a big, 
 double Elarum instead of that little bell." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " Jest a thought." A pause. 
 
 "Very well, then — Havant and lunch," said 
 Jessie, rising. 
 
 " I wish, somehow, we could have managed it 
 without stealing that machine," said Hoopdriver. 
 " Because it is stealing it, you know, come to 
 think of it." 
 
 "Nonsense. If Mr. Bechamel troubles you — 
 I \yill tell the whole world — if need be." 
 
 " I believe you would," said Mr. Hoopdriver, 
 admiring her. "You're plucky enough — good- 
 ness knows." 
 
 Discovering suddenly that she was standing, 
 he, too, rose and picked up her machine. She 
 took it and wheeled it into the road. Then he 
 took his own. He paused, regarding it. " I 
 say ! " said he. " How'd this bike look, now, if it 
 was enamelled grey ? " 
 
 She looked over her shoulder at his grave face. 
 " Why try and hide it in that way ? " 
 
 " It was jest a passing thought," said Mr. 
 Hoopdriver airily. 
 
 As they were riding on to Havant it occurred 
 to Mr. Hoopdriver in a transitory manner that 
 the interview had been quite other than his ex- 
 pectation. But that was the way with everything 
 
196 THE WHEELS OP CHANCE 
 
 in Mr. Hoopdriver's experience. And though 
 his Wisdom looked grave within him, and Caution 
 was chinking coins, and an ancient prejudice in 
 favour of Property shook her head, something 
 else was there too, shouting in his mind to drown 
 all these saner considerations, the intoxicating 
 thought of riding beside Her all to-day, all to- 
 morrow, perhaps for other days after that. Of 
 talking to her familiarly, being brother of all her 
 slender strength and freshness, of having a golden, 
 real, and wonderful time beyond all his imagin- 
 ings. His old familiar fancyings gave place to 
 anticipations as impalpable and fluctuating and 
 beautiful as the sunset of a summer day. 
 
 At Havant he took an opportunity to purchase, 
 at a small hairdresser's in the main street, a tooth- 
 brush, a pair of nail scissors, and a little bottle 
 of stuff to darken the moustache, an article the 
 shopman introduced to his attention, recom- 
 mended highly, and sold in the excitement of 
 the occasion. 
 
THE UNEXPECTED ANECDOTE 
 OF THE LION 
 
 XXIX 
 
 They rode on to Cosham, and lunched lightly but 
 expensively there. Jessie went out and posted 
 her letter to her schoolmistress. Then the green 
 height of Portsdown Hill tempted them, and leav- 
 ing their machines in the village, they clambered 
 up the slope to the silent red-brick fort that 
 crowned it. Thence they had a view of Ports- 
 mouth and its cluster of sister towns, the crowded 
 narrows of the harbour, the Solent, and the Isle 
 of Wight like a blue cloud through the hot haze. 
 Jessie by some miracle had become a skirted 
 woman in the Cosham inn. Mr. Hoopdriver 
 lounged gracefully on the turf, smoked a Red 
 Herring cigarette, and lazily regarded the fortified 
 town that spread like a map away there, the inner 
 line of defence like toy fortifications, a mile off 
 perhaps ; and beyond that a few little fields and 
 then the beginnings of Landport suburb and the 
 smoky cluster of the multitudinous houses. To 
 the right, at the head of the harbour shallows, the 
 town of Porchester rose among the trees. Mr. 
 
 197 
 
198 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 Hoopdriver's anxiety receded to some remote 
 corner of his brain and that florid, half-voluntary 
 imagination of his shared the stage with the image 
 of Jessie. He began to speculate on the impres- 
 sion he was creating. He took stock of his suit 
 optimistically again, and reviewed, with some 
 complacency, his actions for the last four and 
 twenty hours. Then he was dashed at the thought 
 of her infinite perfections. 
 
 She had been observing him quietly, rather 
 more closely during the last hour or so. She 
 did not look at him directly, because he seemed 
 always looking at her. Her own troubles had 
 quieted down a little, and her curiosity about the 
 chivalrous, worshipping, but singular gentleman 
 in brown, was awakening. She had recalled, too, 
 the curious incident of their first encounter. She 
 found him hard to explain to herself. You must 
 understand that her knowledge of the world was 
 rather less than nothing, having been obtained 
 entirely from books. You must not take a cer- 
 tain ignorance for foolishness. 
 
 She had begun with a few experiments. He 
 did not know French except " sivverplay," a phrase 
 he seemed to regard as a very good light table 
 joke in itself. His Enghsh was uncertain, but 
 not such as books informed her distinguished the 
 lower classes. His manners seemed to her good 
 on the whole, but a trifle over-respectful and 
 out of fashion. He called her " Madam " once. 
 He seemed a person of means and leisure, but 
 he knew nothing of recent concerts, theatres, or 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 199 
 
 books. How did he spend his time ? He was 
 certainly chivalrous, and a trifle simple-minded. 
 She fancied (so much is there in a change of 
 costume) that she had never met with such a man 
 before. What could he be ? 
 
 " Mr. Benson," she said, breaking a silence 
 devoted to landscape. 
 
 He rolled over and regarded her, chin on 
 knuckles. 
 
 "At your service." 
 
 " Do you paint ? Are you an artist ? " 
 
 "Well." Judicious pause. "T should hardly 
 call myself a Nartist, you know. I do paint a 
 little. And sketch, you know — skitty kind of 
 things." 
 
 He plucked and began to nibble a blade of 
 grass. It was really not so much lying as his 
 quick imagination that prompted him to add, 
 " In Papers, you know, and all that." 
 
 " I see," said Jessie, looking at him thought- 
 fully. Artists were a very heterogeneous class 
 certainly, and geniuses had a trick of being a 
 little odd. He avoided her eye and bit his grass. 
 " I don't do much, you know." 
 
 " It's not your profession ? " 
 
 "Oh no," said Hoopdriver, anxious now to 
 hedge. " I don't make a regular thing of it, you 
 know. Jest now and then something comes into 
 my head and down it goes. No — I'm not a 
 regular artist." 
 
 "Then you don't practise any regular profes- 
 sion ? " 
 
200 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 Mr. Hoopdriver looked into her eyes and saw 
 their quiet unsuspicious regard. He had vague 
 ideas of resuming the detective rdle. "It's Hke 
 this," he said, to gain time. " I have a sort of 
 profession. Only there's a kind of reason — 
 nothing much, you know " 
 
 " I beg your pardon for cross-examining you." 
 
 " No trouble," said Mr. Hoopdriver. " Only I 
 can't very well — I leave it to you, you know. 
 I don't want to make any mystery of it, so far 
 as that goes." Should he plunge boldly and be 
 a barrister ? That anyhow was something pretty 
 good. But she might know about barristry. 
 
 " I think I could guess what you are." 
 
 "Well — guess," said Mr. Hoopdriver. 
 
 " You come from one of the colonies ? " 
 
 " Dear me ! " said Mr. Hoopdriver, veering 
 round to the new wind. " How did you find 
 out that?" (The man was born in a London 
 suburb, dear Reader.) 
 
 " I guessed," she said. 
 
 He lifted his eyebrows as one astonished, and 
 clutched a new piece of grass. 
 
 " You were educated up country." 
 
 " Good again," said Hoopdriver, rolling over 
 again upon his elbow. " You're a clairvoy ant." 
 He bit at the grass, smihng. "Which colony 
 was it ? " 
 
 "That I don't know." 
 
 " You must guess," said Hoopdriver. 
 
 " South Africa," she said. " I strongly inchne 
 to South Africa." 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 201 
 
 " South Africa's quite a large place," he said. 
 
 "But South Africa is right ?" 
 
 "You're warm," said Hoopdriver, "anyhow;" 
 and the while his imagination was eagerly explor- 
 ing this new province. 
 
 " South Africa is right ? " she insisted. 
 
 He turned over again and nodded, smiling 
 reassuringly into her eyes. 
 
 "What made me think of South Africa was 
 that novel of Olive Schreiner's, you know — ' The 
 Story of an African Farm.' Gregory Rose is 
 so like you." 
 
 " I never read the ' Story of an African Farm,' " 
 said Hoopdriver. " I must. What's he like ? " 
 
 "You must read the book. But it's a wonderful 
 place, with its mixture of races, and its brand- 
 new civilisation jostling the old savagery. Were 
 you near Khama ? " 
 
 " He was a long way off from our place," said 
 Mr. Hoopdriver. "We had a little ostrich 
 farm, you know — just a few hundred of 'em, 
 out Johannesburg way." 
 
 " On the Karroo — was it called ? " 
 
 "That's the term. Some of it was freehold 
 though. Luckily. We got along very well in 
 the old days. But there's no ostriches on that 
 farm now." He had a diamond mine in his 
 head, just at the moment, but he stopped and 
 left a little to the girl's imagination. Besides 
 which it had occurred to him with a kind of 
 shock that he was lying. 
 
 " What became of the ostriches ? " 
 
202 THE WHEELS OP CHANCE 
 
 "We sold 'em off, when we parted with the 
 farm. Do you mind if I have another cigarette ? 
 That was when I was quite a Httle chap, you 
 know, that we had this ostrich farm." 
 
 " Did you have blacks and Boers about you ? " 
 
 " Lots," said Mr. Hoopdriver, striking a match 
 on his instep and beginning to feel hot at the 
 new responsibility he had brought upon himself. 
 
 " How interesting 1 Do you know, I've never 
 been out of England except to Paris and Mentone 
 and Switzerland." 
 
 " One gets tired of travelling {puff) after a bit, 
 of course." 
 
 " You must tell me about your farm in South 
 Africa. It always stimulates my imagination to 
 think of these places. I can fancy all the tall 
 ostriches being driven out by a black herd to — 
 graze, I suppose. How do ostriches feed ? " 
 
 "Well," said Hoopdriver. "That's rather 
 various. They have their fancies, you know. 
 There's fruit, of course, and that kind of thing ; 
 and chicken food, and so forth. You have to 
 use judgment." 
 
 " Did you ever see a lion ? " 
 
 " They weren't very common in our district," 
 said Hoopdriver, quite modestly. " But I've 
 seen them, of course. Once or twice." 
 
 " Fancy seeing a lion ! Weren't you fright- 
 ened ? " 
 
 Mr. Hoopdriver was now thoroughly sorry he 
 had accepted that offer of South Africa. He 
 puffed his cigarette and regarded the Solent 
 
J-v< 
 
THE WHEELS OP CHANCE 205 
 
 languidly as he settled the fate of that lion in 
 his mind. " I scarcely had time," he said. " It 
 all happened in a minute." 
 
 " Go on," she said. 
 
 " I was going across the inner paddock where 
 the fatted ostriches were." 
 
 "Did you eat ostriches, then ? I did not 
 know " 
 
 " Eat them ! — often. Very nice they are too, 
 properly stuffed. Well, we — I, rather — was 
 going across this paddock, and I saw something 
 standing up in the moonlight and looking at 
 me." Mr. Hoopdriver was in a hot perspiration 
 now. His invention seemed to have gone limp. 
 " Luckily I had my father's gun with me. I was 
 scared, though, I can tell you. {Puff.) I just 
 aimed at the end that I thought was the head. 
 And let fly. {Puff.) And over it went, you 
 know." 
 
 " Dead ? " 
 
 " As dead. It was one of the luckiest shots I 
 ever fired. And I wasn't much over nine at the 
 time, neither." 
 
 " / should have screamed and run away." 
 
 "There's some things you can't run away 
 from," said Mr. Hoopdriver. "To run would 
 have been Death." 
 
 " I don't think I ever met a lion-killer before," 
 she remarked, evidently with a heightened opinion 
 of him. 
 
 There was a pause. She seemed meditating 
 further questions. Mr. Hoopdriver drew his 
 
2o6 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 watch hastily. " I say," said Mr, Hoopdriver, 
 showing it to her, "don't you think we ought 
 to be getting on ? " 
 
 His face was flushed, his ears bright red. She 
 ascribed his confusion to modesty. He rose 
 with a lion added to the burthens of his con- 
 science, and held out his hand to assist her. 
 They walked down into Cosham again, resumed 
 their machines, and went on at a leisurely pace 
 along the northern shore of the big harbour. 
 But Mr. Hoopdriver was no longer happy. This 
 horrible, this fulsome lie, stuck in his memory. 
 Why had he done it ! She did not ask for any 
 more South African stories, happily — at least until 
 Porchester was reached — but talked instead of 
 Living One's Own Life, and how custom hung 
 on people like chains. She talked wonderfully, 
 and set Hoopdriver's mind fermenting. By the 
 Castle, Mr. Hoopdriver caught several crabs in 
 little shore pools. At Fareham they stopped for 
 a second tea, and left the place towards the hour 
 of sunset, under such invigorating circumstances 
 as you shall in due course hear. 
 
THE RESCUE EXPEDITION 
 
 XXX 
 
 And now to tell of those energetic chevaliers, 
 Widgery, Dangle, and Phipps, and of that dis- 
 tressed beauty, "Thomas Plantagenet," well known 
 in society, so the paragraphs said, as Mrs. Milton. 
 We left them at Midhurst station, if I remember 
 rightly, waiting, in a state of fine emotion, for 
 the Chichester train. It was clearly understood 
 by the entire Rescue Party that Mrs. Milton was 
 bearing up bravely against almost overwhelming 
 grief. The three gentlemen outdid one another 
 in sympathetic expedients ; they watched her 
 gravely — almost tenderly. The substantial Wid- 
 gery tugged at his moustache, and looked his 
 unspeakable feelings at her with those dog-like, 
 brown eyes of his ; the slender Dangle tugged at 
 his moustache, and did what he could with un- 
 sympathetic grey ones. Phipps, unhappily, had 
 no moustache to run any risks with, so he 
 folded his arms and talked in a brave, indifferent, 
 bearing-up tone about the London, Brighton, 
 and South Coast Railway, just to cheer the poor 
 
 woman up a little. And even Mrs. Milton really 
 
 207 
 
2o8 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 felt that exalted melancholy to the very bottom 
 of her heart, and tried to show it in a dozen 
 little delicate, feminine ways. 
 
 " There is nothing to do until we get to Chiches- 
 ter," said Dangle, " Nothing." 
 
 "Nothing," said Widgery, and aside in her ear: 
 " You really ate scarcely anything, you know." 
 
 " Their trains are always late," said Phipps, with 
 his fingers along the edge of his collar. 
 
 Dangle, you must understand, was a sub-editor 
 and reviewer, and his pride was to be Thomas 
 Plantagenet's intellectual companion. Widgery, 
 the big man, was manager of a bank and a mighty 
 golfer, and his conception of his relations to her 
 never came into his mind without those charming 
 old lines, "Douglas, Douglas, tender and true," 
 falling hard upon its heels. His name was 
 Douglas — Douglas Widgery. And Phipps, Phipps 
 was a medical student still, and he felt that he 
 laid his heart at her feet, the heart of a man of the 
 world. She was kind to them all in her way, and 
 insisted on their being friends together, in spite 
 of a disposition to reciprocal criticism they dis- 
 played. Dangle thought Widgery a Philistine, 
 appreciating but coarsely the merits of " A Soul 
 Untrammelled," and Widgery thought Dangle 
 lacked humanity — would talk insincerely to say a 
 clever thing. Both Dangle and Widgery thought 
 Phipps a bit of a cub, and Phipps thought both 
 Dangle and Widgery a couple of Thundering 
 Bounders. 
 
 "They would have got to Chichester in time 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 209 
 
 for lunch," said Dangle, in the train. "After, 
 perhaps. And there's no sufficient place on the 
 road. So soon as we get there, Phipps must in- 
 quire at the chief hotels to see if any one answer- 
 ing to her description has lunched there." 
 
 "Oh, /'// inquire," said Phipps. "Willingly. 
 I suppose you and Widgery will just hang 
 about " 
 
 He saw an expression of pain on Mrs. Milton's 
 gentle face, and stopped abruptly. 
 
 " No," said Dangle, " we shan't hang about, as you 
 put it. There are two places in Chichester where 
 tourists might go — the cathedral and a remarkably 
 fine museum. I shall go to the cathedral, and 
 make an inquiry or so, while Widgery " 
 
 "The museum. Very well. And after that 
 there's a little thing or two I've thought of my- 
 self," said Widgery. 
 
 To begin with they took Mrs. Milton in a kind of 
 procession to the Red Hotel and established her 
 there with some tea. " You are so kind to me," 
 she said. "All of you." They signified that it 
 was nothing, and dispersed to their inquiries. 
 By six they returned, their zeal a little damped, 
 without news. Widgery came back with Dangle. 
 Phipps was the last to return. "You're quite 
 sure," said Widgery, " that there isn't any flaw in 
 that inference of yours ? " 
 
 " Quite," said Dangle, rather shortly. 
 
 " Of course," said Widgery, " their starting from 
 Midhurst on the Chichester road doesn't abso- 
 lutely bind them not to change their minds." 
 
 
 
2IO THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 " My dear fellow ! It does. Really it does. You 
 must allow me to have enough intelligence to 
 think of cross-roads. Really you must. There 
 aren't any cross-roads to tempt them. Would 
 they turn aside here ? No. Would they turn 
 there ? Many more things are inevitable than 
 you fancy." 
 
 " We shall see at once," said Widgery, at the 
 window. " Here comes Phipps. For my own 
 part " 
 
 " Phipps ! " said Mrs. Milton. " Is he hurrying? 
 
 Does he look " She rose in her eagerness, 
 
 biting her trembling lip, and went towards the 
 window. 
 
 " No news," said Phipps, entering. 
 
 "Ah!" said Widgery. 
 
 " None ? " said Dangle. 
 
 "Well," said Phipps. "One fellow had got 
 hold of a queer story of a man in bicychng 
 clothes, who was asking the same question about 
 this time yesterday." 
 
 "What question?" said Mrs. Milton, in the 
 shadow of the window. She spoke in a low voice, 
 almost a whisper. 
 
 " Why — have you seen a young lady in a grey 
 bicycling costume ? " 
 
 Dangle caught at his lower lip. " What's that ? " 
 he said. " Yesterday ! A man asking after her 
 then ! What can that mean ? " 
 
 " Heaven knows," said Phipps, sitting down 
 wearily. " You'd better infer." 
 
 " What kind of man ? " said Dangle. 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 211 
 
 " How should I know ? — in bicycling costume, 
 the fellow said." 
 
 " But what height ? — What complexion ? " 
 
 " Didn't ask," said Phipps. 
 
 " Didn't ask ! Nonsense," said Dangle. 
 
 " Ask him yourself," said Phipps. " He's an 
 ostler chap in the White Hart — short, thick-set 
 fellow, with a red face and a crusty manner. 
 Leaning up against the gate post. Smells of 
 whisky. Go and ask him." 
 
 " Of course," said Dangle, taking his straw hat 
 from the shade over the stuffed bird on the 
 cheffonier, and turning towards the door. " I 
 might have known." 
 
 Phipps' mouth opened and shut. 
 
 "You're tired, I'm sure, Mr. Phipps," said the 
 lady soothingly. " Let me ring for some tea for 
 you." It suddenly occurred to Phipps that he had 
 lapsed a little from his chivalry. " I was a little 
 annoyed at the way he rushed me to do all this 
 business," he said. " But I'd do a hundred times 
 as much if it would bring you any nearer to her." 
 Pause. " I would like a little tea." 
 
 " I don't want to raise any false hopes," said 
 Widgery. " But I do not believe they even 
 came to Chichester. Dangle's a very clever 
 fellow, of course, but sometimes these Inferences 
 of his " 
 
 " Tchak ! " said Phipps suddenly. 
 
 " What is it ? " said Mrs. Milton. 
 
 "Something I've forgotten. I went right out 
 from here, went to every other hotel in the place, 
 
212 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 and never thought. But never mind. I'll ask 
 when the waiter comes." 
 
 " You don't mean " 
 
 A tap, and the door opened. " Tea, m'm ? yes, 
 m'm," said the waiter. 
 
 "One minute," said Phipps. "Was a lady in 
 grey, a cycling lady " 
 
 " Stopped here yesterday ? Yessir. Stopped 
 the night. With her brother, sir — a young gent." 
 
 " Brother ! " said Mrs. Milton, in a low tone. 
 " Thank God ! " 
 
 The waiter glanced at her and understood 
 everything. " A young gent, sir," he said, " very 
 free with his money. Give the name of Beau- 
 mont." He proceeded to some rambHng parti- 
 culars, and was cross-examined by Widgery on 
 the plans of the young couple 
 
 " Havant ! Where's Havant ? " said Phipps. 
 " I seem to remember it somewhere." 
 
 " Was the man tall ? " said Mrs. Milton intently, 
 " distinguished looking ? with a long flaxen mous- 
 tache ? and spoke with a drawl ? " 
 
 "Well," said the waiter, and thought. "His 
 moustache, m'm, was scarcely long — scrubby 
 more, and young looking." 
 
 " About thirty-five, he was ? " 
 
 "No, m'm. More like five-and-twenty. Not 
 that." 
 
 " Dear me ! " said Mrs. Milton, speaking in a 
 curious, hollow voice, fumbling for her salts, and 
 showing the finest self-control. " It must have 
 been her younger brother — must have been." 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 215 
 
 "That will do, thank you," said Widgery offi- 
 ciously, feeling that she would be easier under 
 this new surprise if the man were dismissed. The 
 waiter turned to go, and almost collided with 
 Dangle, who was entering the room, panting excit- 
 edly, and with a pocket-handkerchief held to his 
 right eye. " Hullo ! " said Dangle. " What's up ? " 
 
 " What's up with you ? " said Phipps. 
 
 " Nothing — an altercation merely with that 
 drunken ostler of yours. He thought it was a 
 plot to annoy him — that the Young Lady in Grey 
 was mythical. Judged from your manner. I've 
 got a piece of raw meat to keep over it. You 
 have some news, I see ? " 
 
 " Did the man hit you ? " asked Widgery. 
 
 Mrs. Milton rose and approached Dangle. 
 " Cannot I do anything ? " 
 
 Dangle was heroic. " Only tell me your news," 
 he said, round the corner of the handkerchief. 
 
 " It was in this way," said Phipps, and explained 
 rather sheepishly. While he was doing so, with 
 a running fire of commentary from Widgery, the 
 waiter brought in a tray of tea. " A time-table," 
 said Dangle promptly, "for Havant." Mrs. Mil- 
 ton poured two cups, and Phipps and Dangle 
 partook in passover form. They caught the train 
 by a hair's-breadth. So to Havant and inquiries. 
 
 Dangle was puffed up to find that his guess of 
 Havant was right. In view of the fact that be- 
 yond Havant the Southampton road has a steep 
 hill continuously on the right-hand side, and the 
 sea on the left, he hit upon a magnificent scheme 
 
2i6 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 for heading the young folks off. He and Mrs. 
 Milton would go to Fareham, Widgery and Phipps 
 should alight one each at the intermediate stations 
 of Cosham and Porchester, and come on by the 
 next train if they had no news. If they did not 
 come on, a wire to the Fareham post-office was 
 to explain why. It was Napoleonic, and more 
 than consoled Dangle for the open derision of 
 the Havant street boys at the handkerchief which 
 still protected his damaged eye. 
 
 Moreover, the scheme answered to perfection. 
 The fugitives escaped by a hair's-breadth. They 
 were outside the Golden Anchor at Fareham, and 
 preparing to mount, as Mrs. Milton and Dangle 
 came round the corner from the station. " It's 
 her ! " said Mrs. Milton, and would have screamed. 
 " Hist ! " said Dangle, gripping the lady's arm, re- 
 moving his handkerchief in his excitement, and 
 leaving the piece of meat over his eye, an extraor- 
 dinary appearance which seemed unexpectedly to 
 calm her. " Be cool ! " said Dangle, glaring under 
 the meat. " They must not see us. They will get 
 away else. Were there flys at the station ? " The 
 young couple mounted and vanished round the 
 corner of the Winchester road. Had it not been 
 for the publicity of the business, Mrs. Milton 
 would have fainted. " Save her! " she said. 
 
 " Ah ! A conveyance," said Dangle. " One 
 minute." 
 
 He left her in a most pathetic attitude, with 
 her hand pressed to her heart, and rushed into 
 the Golden Anchor. Dog-cart in ten minutes. 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 217 
 
 Emerged. The meat had gone now, and one saw 
 the cooling puffiness over his eye. " I will conduct 
 you back to the station," said Dangle ; " hurry back 
 here, and pursue them. You will meet Widgery 
 and Phipps, and tell them I am in pursuit." 
 
 She was whirled back to the railway-station and 
 left there, on a hard, blistered, wooden seat in 
 the sun. She felt tired, and dreadfully ruffled and 
 agitated and dusty. Dangle was, no doubt, most 
 energetic and devoted ; but for a kindly, helpful 
 manner commend her to Douglas Widgery. 
 
 Meanwhile Dangle, his face golden in the even- 
 ing sun, was driving (as well as he could) a large, 
 black horse harnessed into a thing called a gig, 
 northwestward towards Winchester. Dangle, bar- 
 ring his swollen eye, was a refined-looking little 
 man, and he wore a deerstalker cap, and was 
 dressed in dark grey. His neck was long and 
 slender. Perhaps you know what gigs are — 
 huge, big, wooden things and very high ; and 
 the horse, too, was huge and big and high, with 
 knobby legs, a long face, a hard mouth, and 
 a whacking trick of pacing. Smack, smack, 
 smack, smack it went along the road, and hard 
 by the church it shied vigorously at a hooded 
 perambulator. 
 
 The history of the Rescue Expedition now 
 becomes confused. It appears that Widgery was 
 extremely indignant to find Mrs. Milton left about 
 upon the Fareham platform. The day had irri- 
 tated him somehow, though he had started with 
 the noblest intentions, and he seemed glad to find 
 
2i8 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 an outlet for justifiable indignation. " He's such 
 a spasmodic creature," said Widgery. " Rushing 
 off ! And I suppose we're to wait here until he 
 comes back ! It's likely. He's so egotistical, is 
 Dangle. Always wants to mismanage everything 
 himself." 
 
 " He means to help me," said Mrs. Milton, a 
 little reproachfully, touching his arm. 
 
 Widgery was hardly in the mood to be mollified 
 all at once. " He need not prevent me" he said, 
 and stopped. " It's no good talking, you know, 
 and you are tired." 
 
 " I can go on," she said brightly ; " if only we 
 find her." 
 
 "While I was cooling my heels in Cosham I 
 bought a county map." He produced and opened 
 it. " Here, you see, is the road out of Fareham." 
 He proceeded with the calm deliberation of a 
 business man to develop a proposal of taking 
 train forthwith to Winchester. "They must be 
 going to Winchester," he explained. It was 
 inevitable. To-morrow Sunday, Winchester a 
 cathedral town, road going nowhere else of the 
 slightest importance. 
 
 " But Mr. Dangle ? " 
 
 " He will simply go on until he has to pass 
 something, and then he will break his neck. I 
 have seen Dangle drive before. It's scarcely 
 likely a dog-cart, especially a hired dog-cart, will 
 overtake bicycles in the cool of the evening. 
 Rely upon me, Mrs. Milton " 
 
 " I am in your hands," she said, with pathetic 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 221 
 
 littleness, looking up at him ; and for the moment 
 he forgot the exasperation of the day. 
 
 Phipps, during this conversation, had stood in 
 a somewhat depressed attitude, leaning on his 
 stick, feeling his collar, and looking from one 
 speaker to the other. The idea of leaving Dangle 
 behind seemed to him an excellent one. " We 
 might leave a message at the place where he got 
 the dog-cart," he suggested, when he saw their 
 eyes meeting. There was a cheerful alacrity about 
 all three at the proposal. 
 
 But they never got beyond Botley. For even 
 as their train ran into the station, a mighty rum- 
 bling was heard ; there was a shouting overhead, 
 the guard stood astonished on the platform, and 
 Phipps, thrusting his head out of the window, 
 cried, "There he goes!" and sprang out of the 
 carriage. Mrs. Milton, following in alarm, just 
 saw it. From Widgery it was hidden. Botley 
 station lies in a cutting ; overhead was the road- 
 way, and across the lemon yellows and flushed 
 pinks of the sunset there whirled a great black 
 mass, a horse like a long-nosed chess knight, the 
 upper works of a gig, and Dangle in transit from 
 front to back. A monstrous shadow aped him 
 across the cutting. It was the event of a second. 
 Dangle seemed to jump, hang in the air momen- 
 tarily, and vanish, and after a moment's pause 
 came a heartrending smash. Then two black 
 heads running swiftly. 
 
 " Better get out," said Phipps to Mrs. Milton, 
 who stood fascinated in the doorway. 
 
222 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 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 inhabi- 
 tants holding the big, black horse. Even at that 
 distance they could see the expression of con- 
 scious 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. 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 223 
 
 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 inten- 
 sity, turning towards Widgery. 
 
 " Certainly," said Widgery, suddenly becoming 
 active. " How far is it. Dangle ? " 
 
 " Mile and a half or two miles. I was deter- 
 mined 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." 
 
 "Thu's a horse a' rayt — yarnder," sang one of 
 the small boys with a movement of the hand. 
 
224 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 " Don't you know where we can hire traps ? " 
 asked Widgery, after glaring harshly at the boy 
 for ten seconds or so. 
 
 " Or a cart, or — anything ? " asked Mrs, Milton. 
 
 "John Ooker's gart a cart, but no one can't 
 'ire'n, cars he gart drunk and smashed the sharves 
 arf 'em," said,^the larger of the small boys, par- 
 tially averting his face and staring down the road 
 and making a song of it. " And so ud my feyther, 
 for's leg us broke." 
 
 " Not a cart even ! Evidently. What shall we 
 do?" 
 
 It occurred to Mrs. Milton that if Widgeiy 
 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 feehng 
 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 aban- 
 doned 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 
 
226 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 tired and weather-worn, to flick us off at last, 
 mere mud from her wheel, into this detestable 
 village 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 re- 
 probate, but just for a Freak, just for a fantastic 
 Idea ; for nothing, in fact, but the outraging of 
 Common Sense. Yetwithal, 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 diffe- 
 rent from those dear old talks at Surbiton, some- 
 how. 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 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 227 
 
 sympathetic as to be visible in the dark. " DeH- 
 berately misunderstood." 
 
 " Don't say that," said the lady. " Not delibe- 
 rately. I try and think that critics are honest — 
 after their lights. I was not thinking of critics. 
 But she, I mean " She paused, an interro- 
 gation. 
 
 " 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 Widgeiy. " 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. 
 
228 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 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 vi^as over 
 twenty-one." 
 
 " Jessica is only eighteen, and girlish for that," 
 said Dangle. 
 
 " It alters everything. That child ! It is diffe- 
 rent 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 
 the most surprised and shocked of any in the 
 room, Phipps yawned. The failing was infec- 
 tious ; and the gathering having, as you can easily 
 understand, talked itself weary, dispersed on 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 229 
 
 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. And going back to Fareham 
 was certain to be disagreeable. Phipps sat on 
 his bed for some time, examining, with equal 
 disgust, a collar he would have thought incre- 
 dible 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 un- 
 happy 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 back- 
 ground of London humorous, and Surbiton 
 speculative. Were they really, after all, behaving 
 absurdly ? If they were not behaving absurdly, 
 why was it they were all so irritated and 
 ashamed ? 
 
MR. HOOPDRIVER, KNIGHT-ERRANT 
 
 XXXII 
 
 As Mr. Dangle had witnessed, the fugitives had 
 been left by him by the side of the road about 
 two miles from Botley. Before Mr. Bangle's ap- 
 pearance, Mr. Hoopdriver had been learning with 
 great interest that mere roadside flowers have 
 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 imagi- 
 nation to account for his ignorance. Then sud- 
 denly, 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 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 233 
 
 — ^worse even than the riding forth of Mr. Hoop- 
 driver 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 ! some one 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, Hoop- 
 driver followed suit. And so, just as the sun 
 was setting, they began another flight together — 
 riding now towards Bishop's Waltham, with Mr. 
 Hoopdriver in the post of danger — the rear — ever 
 
234 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 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 the 
 hedges, 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 ex- 
 ceptionally prosperpus-looking village inn. A 
 plausible landlady rose to the occasion. 
 
 Now, as they passed into the room where their 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 235 
 
 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 particularise, 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 thing as 
 entertaining barranets unawares — not to mention 
 no higher things " 
 
236 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 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, arid ride out, next Satur- 
 day evening, to any public-house where healthy, 
 homely people gather together. Then you will 
 hear quite a lot of the kind of thing Mr. Hoop- 
 driver heard — more, possibly, than you will desire. 
 
 The remark, I must add, implicated Mr, Hoop- 
 driver. 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 van- 
 ished 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 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 237 
 
 had in the Httle private dining-room, though she 
 talked cheerfully, he was preoccupied. Whiffs 
 of indistinct conversation, and now and then 
 laughter, came in from the inn parlour through 
 the pelargoniums in the open window. Hoop- 
 driver felt it must all be in the same strain — 
 at her expense and his. He answered her ab- 
 stractedly. She was tired, she said, and presently 
 went to her room. Mr. Hoopdriver, in his courtly 
 way, opened the door for her and bowed her out. 
 He stood listening and fearing some new offence 
 as she went upstairs, and round the bend where 
 the barometer hung beneath the stuffed birds. 
 Then he went back to the room, and stood on 
 the hearthrug before the paper fireplace orna- 
 ment. " Cads ! " he said, in a scathing undertone, 
 as a fresh burst of laughter came floating in. All 
 through supper he had been composing stinging 
 repartee, a blistering speech of denunciation to 
 be prese^ntly delivered. He would rate them as 
 a nobleman should : " Call themselves English- 
 men, indeed, and insult a woman ! " he would 
 say ; take their names and addresses perhaps, 
 threaten to speak to the Lord of the Manor, 
 promise to let them hear from him again, and 
 so out with consternation in his wake. It really 
 ought to be done. 
 
 "Teach 'em better," he said fiercely, and 
 tweaked his moustache painfully. What was 
 it ? He revived the objectionable remark for 
 his own exasperation, and then went over the 
 heads of his speech again. 
 
238 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 He coughed, made three steps towards the 
 door, then stopped and went back to the hearth- 
 rug. He wouldn't — after all. Yet was he not a 
 Knight - Errant ? Should such men go unre- 
 proved, unchecked, by wandering baronets incog- 
 nito ? Magnanimity ? Look at it in that way ? 
 Churls beneath one's notice ? No ; merely a 
 cowardly subterfuge. He would — after all. 
 
 Something within him protested that he was a 
 hot-headed ass even as he went towards the door 
 again. But he only went on the more resolutely. 
 He crossed the hall by the bar, and entered the 
 room from which the remark had proceeded. He 
 opened the door abruptly and stood scowling on 
 them in the doorway. " You'll only make a mess 
 of it," remarked the internal sceptic. There were 
 five men in the room altogether : a fat person, with 
 a long pipe and a great number of chins, in an 
 armchair by the fireplace, who wished Mr. Hoop- 
 driver a good evening very affably ; a young fellow 
 smoking a cutty and displaying crossed legs with 
 gaiters; a little, bearded man with a toothless 
 laugh ; a middle-aged, comfortable man with 
 bright eyes, who wore a velveteen jacket; and a 
 fair young man, very genteel in a yellowish-brown 
 ready-made suit and a white tie. 
 
 " H'm," said Mr. Hoopdriver, looking very stern 
 and harsh. And then in a forbidding tone, as one 
 who consented to no liberties, " Good evening." 
 
 " Very pleasant day we've been 'aving," said the 
 fair young man with the white tie. 
 
 " Very," said Mr. Hoopdriver slowly ; and taking 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 239 
 
 a brown armchair, he planted it with great de- 
 Uberation where he faced the fireplace, and sat 
 down. Let's see — how did that speech begin ? 
 
 " Very pleasant roads about here," said the fair 
 young man with the white tie. 
 
 "Very," said Mr. Hoopdriver, eyeing him darkly. 
 (Have to begin somehow.) " The roads about here 
 are all right, and the weather about here is all right, 
 but what I've come in here to say is — there's some 
 damned unpleasant people — damned unpleasant 
 people ! " 
 
 " Oh ! " said the young man with the gaiters, 
 apparently making a mental inventory of his pearl 
 buttons as he spoke. " How's that ? " 
 
 Mr. Hoopdriver put his hands on his knees and 
 stuck out his elbows with extreme angularity. In 
 his heart he was raving at his idiotic folly at thus 
 bearding these lions — indisputably they were 
 lions — but he had to go through with it now. 
 Heaven send, his breath, which was already getting 
 a trifle spasmodic, did not suddenly give out. He 
 fixed his eye on the face of the fat man with the 
 chins, and spoke in a low, impressive voice. " I 
 came here, sir," said Mr. Hoopdriver, and paused 
 to inflate his cheeks, " with a lady." 
 
 " Very nice lady," said the man with the gaiters, 
 putting his head on one side to admire a pearl 
 button that had been hiding behind the curvature 
 of his calf. " Very nice lady indeed." 
 
 "I came here," said Mr. Hoopdriver, "with a 
 lady." 
 
 " We saw you did, bless you," said the fat man 
 
240 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 with the chins, in a curious wheezy voice. " 1 
 don't see there's anything so very extraordinary 
 in that. One u'd think we hadn't eyes." 
 
 Mr. Hoopdriver coughed. " I came here, sir " 
 
 " We've 'eard that," said the little man with the 
 beard sharply, and went off into an amiable 
 chuckle. "We know it by 'art," said the little 
 man, elaborating the point. 
 
 Mr. Hoopdriver temporarily lost his thread. He 
 glared malignantly at the little man with the beard, 
 and tried to recover his discourse. A pause. 
 
 "You were saying," said the fair young man 
 with the white tie, speaking very politely, "that 
 you came here with a lady." 
 
 " A lady," meditated the gaiter gazer. 
 
 The man in velveteen, who was looking from 
 one speaker to another with keen, bright eyes, 
 now laughed as though a point had been scored, 
 and stimulated Mr. Hoopdriver to speak, by fixing 
 him with an expectant regard. 
 
 "Some dirty cad," said Mr. Hoopdriver, pro- 
 ceeding with his discourse, and suddenly growing 
 extremely fierce, " made a remark as we went by 
 this door." 
 
 " Steady on ! " said the old gentleman with 
 many chins. " Steady on ! Don't you go a-call- 
 ing us names, please." 
 
 " One minute ! " said Mr. Hoopdriver. " It 
 wasn't I began calling names." (" Who did ? " 
 said the man with the chins.) " I'm not calling 
 any of you dirty cads. Don't run away with 
 that impression. Only some person in this room 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 241 
 
 made a remark that showed he wasn't fit to wipe 
 boots on, and, with all due deference to such 
 gentlemen as are gentlemen" (Mr. Hoopdriver 
 
 
 looked round for moral support), " I want to 
 know which it was." 
 
 " Meanin' ? " said the fair young man in the 
 white tie. 
 
 Q 
 
242 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 "That I'm going to wipe my boots on 'im straight 
 away," said Mr. Hoopdriver, reverting to anger, if 
 with a shght catch in his throat — than which threat 
 of personal violence nothing had been further 
 from his thoughts on entering the room. He said 
 this because he could think of nothing else to say, 
 and stuck out his elbows truculently to hide the 
 sinking of his ,heart. It is curious how situations 
 run away with us. 
 
 " 'Ullo, Charlie ! " said the little man, and " My 
 eye ! " said the owner of the chins. " You're 
 going to wipe your boots on 'im ? " said the fair 
 young man, in a tone of mild surprise. 
 
 " I am," said Mr. Hoopdriver, with emphatic 
 resolution, and glared in the young man's face. 
 
 " That's fair and reasonable," said the man in 
 the velveteen jacket ; " if you can." 
 
 The interest of the meeting seemed transferred 
 to the young man in the white tie. " Of course, 
 if you can't find out which it is, I suppose you're 
 prepared to wipe your boots in a liberal way on 
 eveiybody in the room," said this young man, in 
 the same tone of impersonal question. " This 
 gentleman, the champion lightweight " 
 
 "Own up, Charlie," said the young man with 
 the gaiters, looking up for a moment. "And 
 don't go a-dragging in your betters. It's fair and 
 square. You can't get out of it." 
 
 " Was it this — gent ? " began Mr. Hoopdriver. 
 
 "Of course," said the young man in the 
 white tie, "when it comes to talking of wiping 
 boots " 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 243 
 
 " I'm not talking ; I'm going to do it," said 
 Mr. Hoopdriver. 
 
 He looked round at the meeting. They were 
 no longer antagonists ; they were spectators. He 
 would have to go through with it now. But this 
 tone of personal aggression on the maker of the 
 remark had somehow got rid of the oppressive 
 feeling of Hoopdriver contra mundum. Appa- 
 rently, he would have to fight some one. Would 
 he get a black eye ? Would he get very much 
 hurt ? Pray goodness it wasn't that sturdy chap 
 in the gaiters ! Should he rise and begin ? What 
 would she think if he brought a black eye to 
 breakfast to-morrow ? 
 
 " Is this the man ? " said Mr. Hoopdriver, with 
 a business-like calm, and arms more angular than 
 ever. 
 
 " Eat 'im ! " said the little man with the beard ; 
 " eat 'im straight orf." 
 
 " Steady on ! " said the young man in the white 
 tie. " Steady on a minute. If I did happen to 
 say " 
 
 " You did, did you ? " said Mr. Hoopdriver. 
 
 " Backing out of it, Charlie ? " said the young 
 man with the gaiters. 
 
 " Not a bit," said Charlie. " Surely we can pass 
 a bit of a joke " 
 
 " I'm going to teach you to keep your jokes to 
 yourself," said Mr. Hoopdriver. 
 
 "Bray-vo !" saidtheshepherdof the flock of chins. 
 
 " Charlie is a bit too fi-ee with his jokes," said 
 the little man with the beard. 
 
244 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 "It's downright disgusting," said Hoopdriver, 
 falling back upon his speech. " A lady can't ride 
 a bicycle in a country road, or wear a dress a little 
 out of the ordinary, but every dirty little greaser 
 must needs go shouting insults " 
 
 "/didn't know the young lady would hear what 
 I said," said Charlie. " Surely one can speak 
 friendly to one's friends. How was I to know 
 
 the door was open " 
 
 • Hoopdriver began to suspect that his antagonist 
 was, if possible, more seriously alarmed at the 
 prospect of violence than himself, and his spirits 
 I'ose again. These chaps ought to have a thorough 
 lesson. " Of course you knew the door was open," 
 he retorted indignantly. " Of course you thought 
 we should hear what you said. Don't go telling 
 lies about it. It's no good your saying things 
 like that. You've had your fun, and you meant 
 to have your fun. And I mean to make an ex- 
 ample of you, Sir." 
 
 " Ginger-beer," said the little man with the 
 beard, in a confidential tone to the velveteen 
 jacket, " is regular up this 'ot weather. Bustin' 
 its bottles it is everywhere." 
 
 "What's the good of scrapping about in a public- 
 house ? " said Charlie, appealing to the company. 
 " A fair fight without interruptions, now, I wouldrit 
 mind, if the gentleman's so disposed." 
 
 Evidently the man was horribly afraid. Mr. 
 Hoopdriver grew truculent. 
 
 " Where you like," said Mr. Hoopdriver. " Jest 
 wherever you like." 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 245 
 
 " You insulted the gent," said the man in vel- 
 veteen. 
 
 " Don't be a bloomin' funk, Charlie," said the 
 man in gaiters. " Why, you got a stone of him, 
 if you got an ounce." 
 
 " What I say is this," said the gentleman with 
 the excessive chins, trying to get a hearing by 
 banging his chair-arms. " If Charlie goes saying 
 things, he ought to back 'em up. That's what I 
 say. I don't mind his sayin' such things 'tall, but 
 he ought to be prepared to back 'em up." 
 
 " I'll back 'em up all right," said Charlie, with 
 extremely bitter emphasis on " back." " If the 
 gentleman likes to come Toosday week " 
 
 " Rot ! " chopped in Hoopdriver. " Now." 
 
 " 'Ear, 'ear," said the owner of the chins. 
 
 " Never put off till to-morrow, Charlie, what 
 you can do to-day," said the man in the velveteen 
 coat. 
 
 " You got to do it, Charlie," said the man in 
 gaiters. " It's no good." 
 
 " It's like this," said Charlie, appealing to every- 
 one except Hoopdriver. " Here's me, got to take 
 in her ladyship's dinner to-morrow night. How 
 should I look with a black eye ? And going round 
 with the carriage with a split lip ? " 
 
 " If you don't want your face sp'iled, Charlie, 
 why don't you keep your mouth shut ? " said the 
 person in gaiters. 
 
 "Exactly," said Mr. Hoopdriver, driving it 
 home with great fierceness. "Why don't you 
 shut your ugly mouth ? " 
 
246 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 " It's as much as my situation's worth," pro- 
 tested Charlie. 
 
 "You should have thought of that before," 
 said Hoopdriver. 
 
 "There's no occasion to be so thunderin' 'ot 
 about it. I only meant the thing joking," said 
 Charlie. "As one gentleman to another, I'm 
 very sorry if the gentleman's annoyed " 
 
 Everybody began to speak at once. Mr. 
 Hoopdriver twirled his moustache. He felt that 
 Charlie's recognition of his gentlemanliness was 
 at any rate a redeeming feature. But it became 
 his pose to ride hard and heavy over the routed 
 foe. He shouted some insulting phrase over the 
 tumult. 
 
 "You're regular abject," the man in gaiters 
 was saying to Charlie. 
 
 More confusion. 
 
 " Only don't think I'm afraid — not of a spindle- 
 legged cuss like him!" shouted Charlie, "Be- 
 cause I ain't." 
 
 "Change of front," thought Hoopdriver, a 
 little startled. " Where are we going ? " 
 
 " Don't sit there and be abusive," said the man 
 in velveteen. " He's offered to hit you, and if I 
 was him, I'd hit you now." 
 
 " All right, then," said Charlie, with a sudden 
 change of front and springing to his feet. " If I 
 must, I must. Now, then ! " At that, Hoop- 
 driver, the child of Fate, rose too, with a horrible 
 sense that his internal monitor was right. Things 
 had taken a turn. He had made a mess of it, 
 
rtiE WtiKELS OF CHANCE 24; 
 
 and now there was nothing for it, so far as he 
 could see, but to hit the man at once. He and 
 CharHe stood six feet apart, with a table between, 
 both very breathless and fierce. A vulgar light 
 in a public-house, and with what was only too 
 palpably a footman ! Good Heavens ! And this 
 was the dignified, scornful remonstrance ! How 
 the juice had it all happened ? Go round the 
 table at him, I suppose. But before the brawl 
 could achieve itself, the man in gaiters intervened. 
 " Not here," he said, stepping between the an- 
 tagonists. Every one was standing up. 
 
 " Charlie's artful," said the little man with the 
 beard. 
 
 " Buller's yard," said the man with the gaiters, 
 taking the control of the entire affair with the 
 easy readiness of an accomplished practitioner. 
 " If the gentleman don'^ mind." Buller's yard, it 
 seemed, was the very place. " We'll do the thing 
 regular and decent, if you please." And before 
 he completely realised what was happening, 
 Hoopdriver was being marched out through the 
 back premises of the inn, to the first and only 
 fight with fists that was ever to glorify his life. 
 
 Outwardly, so far as the intermittent moon- 
 light showed, Mr. Hoopdriver was quietly but 
 eagerly prepared to fight. But inwardly he was 
 a chaos of conflicting purposes. It was extra- 
 ordinary how things happened. One remark had 
 trod so closely on the heels of another, that he 
 had had the greatest difficulty in following the 
 development of the business. He distinctly re- 
 
248 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 membered himself walking across from one room 
 to the other — a dignified, even an aristocratic 
 figure, primed with considered eloquence, intent 
 upon a scathing remonstrance to these wretched 
 yokels, regarding their manners. Then incident 
 had flickered into incident until here he was out 
 in a moonlit lane — a slight, dark figure in a group 
 of larger, indistinct figures — marching in a quiet, 
 business-like way towards some unknown horror 
 at BuUer's yard. Fists ! It was astonishing. It 
 was terrible ! In front of him was the pallid 
 figure of Charles, and he saw that the man in 
 gaiters held Charles kindly but firmly by the 
 arm. 
 
 " It's blasted rot," Charles was saying, " getting 
 up a fight just for a thing like that ; all very well 
 for 'im. 'E's got 'is 'olidays ; 'e 'asn't no blessed 
 dinner to take up to-morrow night like I 'ave. 
 No need to numb my arm, is there ? " 
 
 They went into Buller's yard through gates. 
 There were sheds in Buller's yard — sheds of 
 mystery that the moonlight could not solve — a 
 smell of cows, and a pump stood out clear and 
 black, throwing a clear black shadow on the 
 whitewashed wall. And here it was his face was 
 to be battered to a pulp. He knew this was the 
 uttermost folly, to stand up here and be pounded, 
 but the way out of it was beyond his imagining. 
 
 Yet afterwards ? Could he ever face her again ? 
 
 He patted his Norfolk jacket and took his ground 
 with his back to the gate. How did one square ? 
 So ? Suppose one were to turn and run even 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 249 
 
 now, run straight back to the inn and lock him- 
 self into his bedroom ? They couldn't make him 
 come out — anyhow. He could prosecute them 
 for assault if they did. How did one set about 
 prosecuting for assault ? He saw Charles, with 
 his face ghastly white under the moon, squaring 
 in front of him. 
 
 He caught a blow on the arm and gave ground. 
 Charles pressed him. Then he hit with his right 
 and with the violence of despair. It was a hit of 
 his own devising — an impromptu — but it chanced 
 to coincide with the regulation hook hit at the head. 
 He perceived with a leap of exultation that the 
 thing his fist had met was the jawbone of Charles. 
 It was the sole gleam of pleasure he experienced 
 during the fight, and it was quite momentary. 
 He had hardly got home upon Charles before he 
 was struck in the chest and whirled backward. 
 He had the greatest difficulty in keeping his feet. 
 He felt that his heart was smashed flat. " Gord 
 darm ! " said somebody, dancing toe in hand 
 somewhere behind him. As Mr. Hoopdriver stag- 
 gered, Charles gave a loud and fear-compelling 
 cry. He seemed to tower over Hoopdriver in the 
 moonlight. Both his fists were whirling. It was 
 annihilation coming — no less. Mr. Hoopdriver 
 ducked perhaps, and certainly gave ground to the 
 right, hit, and missed. Charles swept round to 
 the left, missing generously. A blow glanced over 
 Mr. Hoopdriver's left ear, and the flanking move- 
 ment was completed. Another blow behind the 
 ear. Heaven and earth spun furiously round Mr. 
 
2SO 
 
 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 Hoopdriver, and then he became aware of a figure 
 in a hght suit shooting violently through an open 
 gate into the night. The man in gaiters sprang 
 forward past Mr. Hoopdriver, but too late to inter- 
 cept the fugitive. There were shouts, laughter, 
 
 -•-/ 
 
 and Mr. Hoopdriver, still solemnly squaring, real- 
 ised the great and wonderful truth — Charles had 
 fled. He, Hoopdriver, had fought and, by all the 
 rules of war, had won. 
 
 " That was a pretty cut under the jaw you gave 
 him," the toothless little man with the beard was 
 remarking in an unexpectedly friendly manner. 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 251 
 
 " The fact of it is," said Mr. Hoopdriver, sitting 
 beside the road to Salisbury, and with the sound 
 of distant church bells in his ears, " I had to give 
 the fellow a lesson ; simply had to." 
 
 " It seems so dreadful that you should have to 
 knock people about," said Jessie. 
 
 " These louts get unbearable," said Mr. Hoop- 
 driver. " If now and then we didn't give them a 
 lesson — well, a lady cyclist in the roads would 
 be an impossibility." 
 
 " I suppose every woman shrinks from violence," 
 said Jessie. " I suppose men are braver — in a way 
 — than women. It seems to me — I can't imagine 
 — how one could bring oneself to face a roomful 
 of rough characters, pick out the bravest, and give 
 him an exemplary thrashing. I quail at the idea. 
 I thought only Ouida's guardsmen did things like 
 that." 
 
 "It was nothing more than my duty — as a 
 gentleman," said Mr. Hoopdriver. 
 
 " But to walk straight into the face of danger ! " 
 
 " It's habit," said Mr. Hoopdriver, quite mod- 
 estly, flicking off a particle of cigarette ash that 
 had settled on his knee. 
 
THE ABASEMENT OF MR, HOOPDRIVER 
 
 XXXIII 
 
 On Monday morning the two fugitives found 
 themselves breakfasting at the Golden Pheasant 
 in Blandford. They were in the course of an 
 elaborate doubling movement through Dorset- 
 shire towards Ringwood, where Jessie anticipated 
 an answer from her schoolmistress friend. By 
 this time they had been nearly sixty hours to- 
 gether, and you will understand that Mr. Hoop- 
 driver's feelings had undergone a considerable 
 intensification and development. At first Jessie 
 had been only an impressionist sketch upon his 
 mind, something feminine, active, and dazzling, 
 something emphatically "above" him, cast into 
 his company by a kindly fate. His chief idea, 
 at the outset, as you know, had been to live up 
 to her level, by pretending to be more excep- 
 tional, more wealthy, better educated, and, above 
 all, better born than he was. His knowledge of 
 the feminine mind was almost entirely derived 
 from the young ladies he had met in business, 
 and in that class (as in military society and among 
 gentlemen's servants) the good old tradition of a 
 brutal social ^clusiveness is still religiously pre- 
 served. He Had an almost intolerable dread of 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 253 
 
 her thinking him a " bounder." Later he began 
 to perceive the distinction of her idiosyncrasies. 
 Coupled with a magnificent want of experience 
 was a splendid enthusiasm for abstract views of 
 the most advanced description, and her strength 
 of conviction completely carried Hoopdriver away. 
 She was going to Live her Own Life, with em- 
 phasis, and Mr. Hoopdriver was profoundly stirred 
 to similar resolves. So soon as he grasped the 
 tenor of her views, he perceived that he himself 
 had thought as much from his earliest years. 
 " Of course," he remarked, in a flash of sexual 
 pride, "a man is freer than a woman. End in 
 the Colonies, y'know, there isn't half the Conven- 
 tionality you find in society in this country." 
 
 It was pleasant to find she had formed the 
 highest opinion of his physical courage ; it 
 reassured him so. 
 
 He made one or two essays in the display of 
 unconventionality, and was quite unaware that 
 he impressed her as a narrow-minded person. 
 He suppressed the habit of years and made no 
 proposal to go to church. He discussed church- 
 going in a liberal spirit. " It's jest a habit," he 
 said, "jest a custom. I don't see what good it 
 does you at all, really." And he made a lot of 
 excellent jokes at the chimney-pot hat, jokes 
 he had read in the Globe "turnovers" on that 
 subject. But he showed his gentle breeding by 
 keeping his gloves on all through the Sunday's 
 ride, and ostentatiously throwing away more than 
 half a cigarette when they passed a church whose 
 
254 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 congregation was gathering for afternoon service. 
 He cautiously avoided literary topics, except by 
 way of light and playful compliment, seeing that 
 she was presently to be writing books. 
 
 It was on Jessie's initiative that they attended 
 service in the old-fashioned gallery of Blandford 
 church. Jessie's conscience, I may perhaps tell 
 you, was now suffering the severest twinges. She 
 perceived clearly that things were not working 
 out quite along the lines she had designed. She 
 had read her Olive Schreiner and George Eger- 
 ton, and so forth, with all the want of perfect 
 comprehension of one who is still emotionally a 
 girl. She knew the thing to do was to have a 
 flat and go to the British Museum and write lead- 
 ing articles for the daily papers until something 
 better came along. If Bechamel (detestable per- 
 son) had kept his promises, instead of behaving 
 with unspeakable horridness, all would have been 
 well. Now, her only hope was that liberal-minded 
 woman. Miss Mergle, who, a year ago, had sent 
 her out, highly educated, into the world. Miss 
 Mergle had told her at parting to live fearlessly 
 and truly, and had further given her a volume of 
 Emerson's Essays, and Motley's " Dutch Republic" 
 to help her through the rapids of adolescence. 
 
 Jessie's feelings for her stepmother's household 
 at Surbiton amounted to an active detestation. 
 There are no graver or more solemn women in 
 the world than these clever girls whose schol- 
 astic advancement has retarded their feminine 
 coquetry. In spite of the advanced tone of 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 255 
 
 "Thomas Plantagenet's " anti-marital novel, Jessie 
 had speedily seen through that amiable woman's 
 amiable defences. The variety of pose neces- 
 sitated by the corps of " Men " annoyed her to 
 an altogether unreasonable degree. So flatly 
 unmeaning ! To return to this life of ridiculous 
 unreality — unconditional capitulation to " Con- 
 ventionality " was an exasperating prospect. Yet 
 what else was there to do ? 
 
 You will understand, therefore, that at times 
 she was moody (and Mr. Hoopdriver respectfully 
 silent and attentive), and at times inclined to 
 eloquent denunciation of the existing order of 
 things. She was a Socialist, Hoopdriver learnt, 
 and he gave a vague intimation that he went 
 further, intending, thereby, no less than the 
 horrors of Anarchism. He would have owned 
 up to the destruction of the Winter Palace 
 indeed, had he had the faintest idea where the 
 Winter Palace was, and had his assurance 
 amounted to certainty that the Winter Palace 
 was destroyed. He agreed with her cordially that 
 the present position of women was intolerable, but 
 checked himself on the verge of the proposition 
 that a girl ought not to expect a fellow to hand 
 down boxes for her when he was getting the 
 "swap" from a customer. It was Jessie's pre- 
 occupation with her own perplexities, no doubt, 
 and her feeling of being pursued and overtaken, 
 that delayed the unveiling of Mr. Hoopdriver all 
 through Saturday and Sunday. There was a 
 vague sense of incongruity about him, but an 
 
256 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 exhaustive analysis of him was outside her pre- 
 sent mental possibilities altogether. 
 
 Once or twice, however, there were incidents 
 that put him about terribly — even questions that 
 savoured of suspicion. Three times he lapsed 
 into South African reminiscences that were full 
 of crevasses, and escaped by a miracle. One 
 horrible account in particular he blundered into, 
 of natives attacking "home," and of their rape 
 of all the ostriches and cattle, and the hens, and 
 all his mother's washing — " everything they could 
 lay their hands on" — and of a night-long pursuit 
 of the robbers by himself and his father and 
 brother, opportunely arriving, guided by the mis- 
 cellaneous gleam of the white garments the robbers 
 had miscellaneously assumed. She had thought 
 it " strange." Strange ! Yet one thing had led 
 to another somehow, and the washing, casually 
 touched on at first, had come in handy when she 
 had asked how one could track black men at night. 
 " You can't usually," he had said, faltering, and 
 then the washing saved him. But if she thought 
 it over how wickedly foolish it would seem ! 
 
 On Sunday night, for no conceivable reason, 
 an unwonted wakefulness came upon him. Un- 
 accountably he realised he was a contemptible 
 liar. All through the small hours of Monday 
 he reviewed the tale of his falsehoods, and fled 
 before an impi of reproachful Matabele, washing 
 clad ; and when he tried to turn his mind from 
 that, the financial problem suddenly rose upon 
 him. He heard two o'clock strike, and three. 
 
XXXIV 
 
 "Good morning, madam," said Hoopdriver, as 
 Jessie came into the breakfast-room of the Golden 
 Pheasant on Monday morning, and he smiled, 
 bowed, rubbed his hands together, and pulled 
 out a chair for her, and rubbed his hands again. 
 
 She stopped abruptly, with a puzzled expres- 
 sion on her face. "Where have I seen that 
 before ? " she said. 
 
 " The chair ? " said Hoopdriver, flushing. 
 
 " No— the attitude." 
 ■ She came forward and shook hands with him, 
 looking the while curiously into his face. " And 
 — madam ? " 
 
 " It's a habit," said Mr. Hoopdriver guiltily. 
 "A bad habit. Calling ladies Madam. You 
 must put it down to our Colonial roughness. 
 Out there — up country — y'know — the ladies — so 
 rare — we call 'em all Madam." 
 
 " You have some funny habits, brother Chris," 
 said Jessie. " Before you sell your diamond 
 shares and go into society, as you say, and stand 
 for Parliament — what a fine thing it is to be a 
 man ! — you must cure yourself. That habit of 
 bowing as you do, and rubbing your hands, and 
 looking expectant." 
 
 257 R 
 
258 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 " It's a habit." 
 
 "I know. But I don't think it a good one. 
 You don't mind my telling you ? " 
 
 " Not a bit. I'm grateful." 
 
 " I'm blessed or afflicted with a trick of obser- 
 vation," said Jessie, looking at the breakfast-table. 
 Mr. Hoopdriver put his hand to his moustache, 
 and then, thinking this might be another habit, 
 checked his arm and stuck his hand into his 
 pocket. He felt juiced awkward, to use his 
 private formula. Jessie's eye wandered to the 
 armchair, where a piece of binding was loose, 
 and possibly to carry out her theory of an obser- 
 vant disposition, she turned and asked him for 
 a pin. 
 
 Mr. Hoopdriver's hand fluttered instinctively 
 to his lappel, and there, planted by habit, were 
 a couple of stray pins he had impounded. 
 
 " What an odd place to put pins ! " exclaimed 
 Jessie, taking it. 
 
 " It's 'andy," said Mr. Hoopdriver. " I saw a 
 chap in a shop do it once." 
 
 "You must have a careful disposition," she 
 said, over her shoulder, kneeling down to the 
 chair. 
 
 "In the centre of Africa — up country, that is — 
 one learns to value pins," said Mr. Hoopdriver, 
 after a perceptible pause. " There weren't over 
 many pins in Africa. They don't lie about on 
 the ground there." His face was now in a line 
 red glow. Where would the draper break out 
 next ? He thrust his hands into his coat pockets, 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 259 
 
 then took one out again, furtively removed the 
 second pin, and dropped it behind him gently. It 
 fell with a loud " ping " on the fender. Happily 
 she made no remark, being preoccupied with the 
 binding of the chair. 
 
 Mr. Hoopdriver, instead of sitting down, went 
 up to the table and stood against it, with his 
 finger-tips upon the cloth. They were keeping 
 breakfast a tremendous time. He took up his 
 rolled serviette, looked closely and scrutinisingly 
 at the ring, then put his hand under the fold of 
 the napkin, and examined the texture, and put 
 the thing down again. Then he had a vague 
 impulse to finger his hollow wisdom tooth — 
 happily checked. He suddenly discovered he 
 was standing as if the table was a counter, and 
 sat down forthwith. He drummed with his hand 
 on the table. He felt dreadfully hot and self- 
 conscious. 
 
 " Breakfast is late," said Jessie, standing up. 
 
 " Isn't it ? " 
 
 Conversation was slack. Jessie wanted to 
 know the distance to Ringwood. Then silence 
 fell again. Mr. Hoopdriver, very uncomfortable, 
 and studying an easy bearing, looked again at 
 the breakfast things, and then idly lifted the 
 corner of the tablecloth on the ends of his 
 fingers, and regarded it. " Fifteen three," he 
 thought privately. 
 
 " Why do you do that ? " said Jessie. 
 
 " What? " said Hoopdriver, dropping the table- 
 cloth convulsively. 
 
26o THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 " Look at the cloth like that. I saw you do it 
 yesterday, too." 
 
 Mr. Hoopdriver's face became quite a bright 
 red. He began pulling his moustache nervously. 
 " I know," he said, " I know. It's a queer habit, 
 I know. But out there, you know, there's native 
 servants, you know, and — it's a queer thing to 
 talk about — but one has to look at things to see, 
 don't y'know, whether they're quite clean or not. 
 It's got to be a habit." 
 
 " How odd ! " said Jessie. 
 
 " Isn't it ? " mumbled Hoopdriver. 
 
 " If I were a Sherlock Holmes," said Jessie, " I 
 suppose I could have told you were a Colonial 
 from little things like that. But anyhow I guessed 
 it, didn't I?" 
 
 "Yes," said Hoopdriver, in a melancholy tone, 
 " you guessed it." 
 
 Why not seize the opportunity for a neat con- 
 fession, and add, " Unhappily in this case you 
 guessed wrong ? " Did she suspect ? Then, at 
 the psychological moment, the girl bumped the 
 door open with her tray and brought in the coffee 
 and scrambled eggs. 
 
 " I am rather lucky with my intuitions, some- 
 times," said Jessie. 
 
 Remorse that had been accumulating in his 
 mind for two days surged up. What a shabby 
 liar he was ! 
 
 And, besides, he must sooner or later, inevit- 
 ably, give himself away. 
 
XXXV 
 
 Mr. Hoopdriver helped the eggs, and then, 
 instead of beginning, sat with his cheek on his 
 hand, watching Jessie pour out the coffee. His 
 ears were a bright red, and his eyes bright. He 
 took his coffee-cup chimsily, cleared his throat, 
 
 suddenly leant back in his chair, and thrust his 
 hands deep into his pockets. " I'll do it," he 
 said aloud. 
 
 "Do what?" said Jessie, looking up in sur- 
 prise over the coffee-pot. She was just beginning 
 her scrambled egg. 
 
 " Own up," 
 
 261 
 
262 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 "Own what?" 
 
 " Miss Milton — I'm a liar." 
 
 He put his head on one side and regarded her 
 with a frown of tremendous resolution. Then in 
 measured accents, and moving his head slowly 
 from side to side, he announced, "Ay'm a 
 dei^aper," 
 
 " You're a draper ? I thought " 
 
 " You thought wrong. But it's bound to come 
 up. Pins, attitude, habits — it's plain enough. 
 
 " I'm a draper's assistant let out for a ten-days' 
 holiday. Jest a draper's assistant. Not much, 
 is it ? A counter-jumper." 
 
 "A draper's assistant's isn't a position to be 
 ashamed of," she said, recovering, and not quite 
 understanding yet what this all meant. 
 
 " Yes, it is," he said, " for a man, in this country, 
 now. To be just another man's hand, as I am. 
 To have to wear what clothes you are told, and 
 go to church to please customers, and work. 
 There's no other kind of men stand such hours. 
 A drunken bricklayer's a king to it." 
 
 " But why are you telling me this now ? " 
 
 " It's important you should know at once." 
 
 " But, Mr. Benson " 
 
 " That isn't all. If you don't mind my speak- 
 ing about myself a bit, there's a few things I'd 
 like to tell you. I can't go on deceiving you. 
 My name's not Benson. Why I told you Benson, 
 I don't know. Except that I'm a kind of fool. 
 Well — I wanted somehow to seem more than I 
 was. My name's Hoopdriver." 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 263 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 " And that about South Africa— and that Lion." 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " Lies." 
 
 " Lies ! " 
 
 " And the discovery of diamonds on the ostrich 
 farm. And the attack on the home. Lies too. 
 And all the reminiscences of the giraffes — lies 
 too. I never rode on no giraffes. I'd be afraid." 
 
 He looked at her with a kind of sullen satis- 
 faction. He had eased his conscience, anyhow. 
 She regarded him in infinite perplexity. This 
 was a new side altogether to the man. " But 
 why — " she began. 
 
 " Why did I tell you such things ? / don't 
 know. Silly sort of chap, I expect. I suppose 
 I wanted to impress you. But somehow, now, 1 
 want you to know the truth." 
 
 Silence. Breakfast untouched. " I thought 
 I'd tell you," said Mr. Hoopdriver. " I suppose 
 it's snobbishness and all that kind of thing, as 
 much as anything. I lay awake pretty near all 
 last night thinking about myself ; thinking what 
 a got-up imitation of a man I was, and all 
 that." 
 
 "And you haven't any diamond shares, and 
 you are not going into Parliament, and you're 
 not " 
 
 "All Lies," said Hoopdriver, in a sepulchral 
 voice. "Lies from beginning to end. 'Ow I 
 came to tell 'em I don't know." 
 
 She stared at him blankly. 
 
264 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 " I never set eyes on Africa in my life," said Mr. 
 Hoopdriver, completing the confession. Then 
 he pulled his right hand from his pocket, and 
 with the nonchalance of one to whom the bitter- 
 ness of death is past, began to drink his coffee. 
 
 " It's a little surprising," began Jessie vaguely. 
 
 " Think it over," said Mr. Hoopdriver. " I'm 
 sorry from the bottom of my heart." 
 
 And then breakfast proceeded in silence. Jessie 
 ate veiy little, and seemed lost in thought. Mr. 
 Hoopdriver was so overcome by contrition and 
 anxiety that he consumed an extraordinarily 
 large breakfast out of pure nervousness, and ate 
 his scrambled eggs for the most part with the 
 spoon that belonged properly to the marmalade. 
 His eyes were gloomily downcast. She glanced 
 at him through her eyelashes. Once or twice 
 she struggled with laughter, once or twice she 
 seemed to be indignant. 
 
 " I don't know what to think," she said at last. 
 " I don't know what to make of you — brother 
 Chris. I thought, do you know ? that you were 
 perfectly honest. And somehow " 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " I think so still." 
 
 " Honest — with all those lies ! " 
 
 " I wonder." 
 
 "I don't," said Mr. Hoopdriver. "I'm fair 
 ashamed of myself. But, anyhow — I've stopped 
 deceiving you." 
 
 "I thought" said the Young Lady in Grey, 
 " that story of the lion " 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 265 
 
 "Lord!" said Mr. Hoopdriver. "Don't remind 
 me of that'' 
 
 " I thought, somehow, I felt that the things you 
 said didn't ring quite true." She suddenly broke 
 out in laughter, at the expression of his face. 
 " Of course you are honest," she said. " How 
 could I ever doubt it ? As if / had never pre- 
 tended ! I see it all now." 
 
 Abruptly she rose, and extended her hand 
 across the breakfast things. He looked at her 
 doubtfully, and saw the dancing friendliness 
 in her eyes. He scaixely understood at first. 
 He rose, holding the marmalade spoon, and 
 took her proffered hand with abject humility. 
 " Lord ! " he broke out, " if you aren't enough 
 —but there ! " 
 
 " I see it all now." A brilliant inspiration has 
 suddenly obscured her humour. She sat down 
 suddenly, and he sat down too. "You did it," 
 she said, " because you wanted to help me. And 
 you thought I was too Conventional to take help 
 from one I might think my social inferior." 
 
 "That was partly it," said Mr. Hoopdriver. 
 
 " How you misunderstood me ! " she said. 
 
 " You don't mind ? " 
 
 " It was noble of you. But I am sorry," she 
 said, " you should think me likely to be ashamed 
 of you because you follow a decent trade." 
 
 " I didn't know at first, you see," said Mr. Hoop- 
 driver. 
 
 It amazed him. He submitted passively to a 
 restoration of his self-respect. He was as useful 
 
266 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 a citizen as could be — it was proposed and carried 
 — and his lying was of the noblest. He began to 
 see it in that light. Moreover, she alluded again 
 to his desperate personal courage. Certainly he 
 admitted to himself he was brave. And so the 
 breakfast concluded much more happily than 
 his brightest expectation, even indeed gloriously, 
 and they rode out of ruddy little Blandford as 
 though no shadow of any sort had come between 
 them. 
 
XXXVI 
 
 But as they were sitting by the roadside among 
 the pine trees half-way up a stretch of hill between 
 Wimborne and Ringwood, however, the spirit of 
 truth reasserted itself in a curiously sudden man- 
 ner, and Mr. Hoopdriver reopened the question 
 of his worldly position. 
 
 "Ju think," he began abruptly, removing a 
 meditative cigarette from his mouth, "that a 
 draper's shopman is a decent citizen ? " 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " When he puts people off with what they don't 
 quite want, for instance ? " 
 
 " Need he do that ? " 
 
 "Salesmanship," said Hoopdriver. "Wouldn't 
 get a crib if he didn't. It's no good your arguing. 
 It's not a particularly honest nor a particularly 
 useful trade ; it's not very high up ; there's no 
 freedom and no leisure — seven to eight-thirty 
 every day in the week ; don't leave much edge to 
 live on, does it ? — real workmen laugh at us, and 
 educated chaps like bank clerks and solicitors' 
 clerks look down on us. You look respectable 
 outside, and inside you are packed in dormitories 
 
 like convicts, fed on bread and butter, and bullied 
 
 267 
 
268 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 like slaves. You're just superior enough to feel 
 that you're not superior. Without capital there's 
 no prospects ; one draper in a hundred don't even 
 earn enough to marry on ; and if he does marry, 
 his G. V. can just use him to black boots if he 
 likes, and he daren't put his back up. That's 
 drapery. And you tell me to be contented. 
 Would you be contented if you was a shop- 
 girl?" 
 
 She did not answer, and he remained gloomily 
 in possession of the field. 
 
 Presently he spoke. " I've been thinking," he 
 said, and stopped. 
 
 She turned her face, resting her cheek on the 
 palm of her hand. There was a light in her eyes 
 that made the expression of them tender. " You 
 are so modest," she said ; " you think so little of 
 yourself." Mr. Hoopdriver had not looked in her 
 face while he had talked. He had regarded the 
 grass, and pointed his remarks with red-knuckled 
 hands held open and palms upwards. Now they 
 hung limply over his knees. " I've been thinking," 
 he repeated. 
 
 " Well ? " she said. 
 
 " I was thinking it this morning," said Mr. Hoop- 
 driver. 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 " Of course it's silly.'' 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " It's like this. I'm twenty-three, about. I had 
 my schooling all right to fifteen, say. Well, that 
 leaves me eight years behind. Is it too late ? I 
 

THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 271 
 
 wasn't so backward. I did algebra, and Latin up 
 to auxiliary verbs, and French genders. I got a 
 kind of grounding." 
 
 "And now you mean, should you go on 
 working ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Mr. Hoopdriver. " That's it. You 
 can't do much at drapery without capital, you 
 know. But if I could get really educated." 
 
 " Why not ? " said the Young Lady in Grey. 
 
 Mr. Hoopdriver was surprised to see it in that 
 light. " You think ? " he said. 
 
 " Of course. You are a Man. You are free." 
 She warmed. " I wish I were you to have the 
 chance of that struggle." 
 
 "Am I Man enough?" said Mr. Hoopdriver 
 aloud, but addressing himself. "There's that 
 eight years," he said to her. 
 
 " You can make it up. You, certainly, can 
 make it up. What you call educated men — 
 they're not going on. You can catch them. 
 They are quite satisfied. Playing golf, and think- 
 ing of clever things to say to women like my 
 stepmother, and dining out. You're in front of 
 them already. in one thing. They think they 
 know everything. You don't. And they know 
 such little 'things. And you are determined — 
 prompt " 
 
 " Lord ! " said Mr. Hoopdriver. " How you 
 encourage a fellow ! " 
 
 "It is your modesty hinders you. And if I 
 could only help you," she said, and left an elo- 
 quent hiatus. He became pensive again. 
 
272 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 " It's pretty evident you don't think much of a 
 draper's position," he said abruptly. 
 
 " Not for you, perhaps, to stay in," she said. 
 "But hundreds of great men have come from 
 the very lowest ranks of life. There was Burns, 
 a ploughman ; and Hugh Miller, a stonemason ; 
 and plenty of others. Dodsley was a footman 
 even " 
 
 " But drapers ! We're too — sort of shabby 
 genteel to rise. Our coats and cuffs might get 
 crumpled " 
 
 " Wasn't there a Clarke who wrote theology ? 
 He was a draper." 
 
 "There was one started a sewing cotton, the 
 only one I ever heard tell of." 
 
 " Have you ever read ' Hearts Insurgent ' ? " 
 
 "Never," said Mr. Hoopdriver. He did not 
 wait for her context, but suddenly broke out with 
 an account of his literary acquirements. "The 
 fact is — I've read precious little. One don't get 
 much of a chance, situated as I am. We have a 
 library at business, and I've gone through that. 
 Most Besant I've read, and a lot of Mrs. Braddon's 
 and Rider Haggard and Marie Corelli — and, well 
 — a Ouida or so. They're good stories, of course, 
 and first-class writers, but they didn't seem to 
 have much to do with me. But there's heaps of 
 books one hears talked about, I haven't read." 
 
 " Don't you read any other books but novels ?" 
 
 " Scarcely ever. One gets tired after business, 
 and you can't get the books. I have been to some 
 extension lectures, of course, ' 'Lizabethan Dra- 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 273 
 
 matists,' it was ; but it seemed a little high-flown, 
 you know ; and I went and did wood-carving at 
 the same place. But it didn't seem leading no- 
 where, and I cut my thumb and chucked it." 
 
 He made a depressing spectacle, with his 
 face anxious and his hands limp. She felt a 
 momentary doubt. It needed an effort for her 
 to remind herself that this was the man who 
 had faced the ribald roughs like an angry lion ! 
 And thought nothing of it ! How contradictory 
 men were ! " It makes me sick" he said, " to 
 think how I've been fooled with. My old school- 
 master ought to have a juiced hiding. He's a 
 thief. He pretended to undertake to make a man 
 of me, and he's stole twenty-three years of my 
 life, filled me up with scraps and sweepings. Here 
 I am ! I don't know anything, and 1 can't do any- 
 thing, and all the learning time is over." 
 
 " Is it ? " she said. " Why should it be ? " But 
 he did not seem to hear her. 
 
 " My o' people didn't know any better, and went 
 and paid thirty pounds premium — thirty pounds 
 down — to have me made this. The G. V. pro- 
 mised to teach me the trade, and he never taught 
 me anything but to be a Hand. It's the way they 
 do with drapers' apprentices. If every swindler 
 was locked up — well, you'd have nowhere to buy 
 tape and cotton. It's all very well to bring up 
 Burns and those chaps, but I'm not that make. 
 Yet I'm not such muck that I might not have 
 been better — with teaching. I wonder what the 
 chaps who sneer and laugh at such as me would 
 
 s 
 
274 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 be if they'd been fooled about as I've been. At 
 twenty-three — it's a long start." 
 
 He looked up with a wintry smile, a sadder and 
 wiser Hoopdriver indeed than him of the glorious 
 imaginings. " It's^oa done this," he said. "You're 
 real. And it sets me thinking what I really am, 
 and what I might have been. Suppose it was all 
 different " 
 
 His modesty really might be misinterpreted 
 by any one who understood him less clearly 
 than she did, she thought, and answered, " Make 
 it different." 
 
 "How?" 
 
 " Work. Stop trifling with life. You have 
 proved you have courage — resolution. Begin ! " 
 
 " Ah ! " said Hoopdriver, glancing at her out of 
 the corners of his eyes. " And even then :- " 
 
 " No ! It's not much good. I'm beginning 
 too late." 
 
 And there in a thoughtful silence the conver- 
 sation ended. 
 
IN THE NEW FOREST 
 
 XXXVII 
 
 At Ringwood they lunched, and Jessie met with 
 a disappointment. There was no letter for her 
 at the post-office. Opposite the hotel, "The 
 Chequered Career," was a machine shop with a 
 conspicuously second-hand Marlborough Club 
 tandem tricycle displayed in the window, together 
 with the announcement that bicycles and tricycles 
 were on hire within. The establishment was 
 impressed on Mr. Hoopdriver's mind by the 
 proprietor's action in coming across the road and 
 narrowly inspecting their machines. His action 
 revived a number of disagreeable impressions, 
 but, happily, came to nothing. While they were 
 still lunching, a tall clergyman, with a heated face, 
 entered the room and sat down at the table next 
 to theirs. He was in a kind of holiday costume, 
 that is to say, he had a more than usually high 
 collar, fastened behind, and rather the worse for 
 the weather; and his long-tail coat had been 
 replaced by a black jacket of quite remarkable 
 brevity. He had faded brown shoes on his feet, 
 his trouser legs were grey with dust, and he 
 wore a hat of piebald straw in the place of the 
 
2;6 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 customary soft felt. He was evidently socially 
 inclined. 
 
 " A most charming day, sir," he said, in a ring- 
 ing tenor. 
 
 " Charming," said Mr. Hoopdriver, over a por- 
 tion of pie. 
 
 " You are, I perceive, cycling through this de- 
 lightful country," said the clergyman. 
 
 "Touring," explained Mr. Hoopdriver. 
 
 " I can imagine that, with a properly oiled 
 machine, there can be no easier nor pleasanter 
 way of seeing the country." 
 
 "No," said Mr. Hoopdriver; "it isn't half a 
 bad way of getting about." 
 
 "For a young and newly married couple, a 
 tandem bicycle must be, I should imagine, a 
 delightful bond." 
 
 " Quite so," said Mr. Hoopdriver, reddening a 
 little. 
 
 " Do you ride a tandem ? " 
 
 " No — we're separate," said Mr. Hoopdriver. 
 
 " The motion through the air is indisputably of 
 a very exhilarating description." With that deci- 
 sion, the clergyman turned to give his orders to 
 the attendant, in a firm, authoritative voice, for a 
 cup of tea, two gelatine lozenges, bread and butter, 
 salad, and pie to follow. " The gelatine lozenges 
 I must have. I require them to precipitate the 
 tannin in my tea," he remarked to the room at 
 large, and folding his hands, remained for some 
 time with his chin thereon, staring fixedly at a 
 little picture over Mr. Hoopdriver's head. 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 277 
 
 "I myself am a cyclist," said the clergyman, 
 descending suddenly upon Mr. Hoopdriver, 
 "We are all cyclists nowadays," with a broad 
 smile. 
 
 " Indeed ! " said Mr. Hoopdriver, attacking the 
 
 moustache. " What machine, may I ask, in your 
 case ? " 
 
 "I have recently become possessed of a tri- 
 cycle. A bicycle is, I regret to say, considered 
 too — how shall I put it 1— flippant by my parish- 
 ioners. One must consider the weaker brethren 
 
278 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 — nowadays in particular, when the Church is in 
 need of every helper. So I have a tricycle. I 
 have just been hauling it hither." 
 
 " Hauling ! " said Jessie, surprised. 
 
 " With a shoe lace. And partly carrying it on 
 my back." 
 
 The pause was unexpected, Jessie had some 
 trouble with a crumb. Mr. Hoopdriver's face 
 passed through several phases of surprise. Then 
 he saw the explanation. " Had an accident ? " 
 
 " I can hardly call it an accident. The wheels 
 suddenly refused to go round. I found myself 
 about five miles from here with an absolutely 
 immobile machine." 
 
 "'Ow!" said Mr. Hoopdriver, trying to seem 
 intelligent, and Jessie glanced at this insane person. 
 
 " It appears," said the clergyman, satisfied with 
 the effect he had created, " that my man carefully 
 washed out the bearings with paraffin, and let the 
 machine dry without oiling it again. The conse- 
 quence was that they became heated to a con- 
 siderable temperature and jammed. Even at the 
 outset the machine ran stiffly as well as noisily, and 
 I, being inclined to ascribe this stiffness to my 
 own lassitude, merely redoubled my exertions." 
 
 " 'Ot work all round," said Mr. Hoopdriver. 
 
 " You could scarcely put it more appropriately. 
 It is my rule of life to do whatever I find to do 
 with all my might. I believe, indeed, that the 
 bearings became red hot. Finally one of the 
 wheels jammed altogether. A side wheel it was, 
 so that its stoppage necessitated an inversion of 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 279 
 
 the entire apparatus — an inversion in which I 
 participated." 
 
 " Meaning that you went over ? " said Mr. Hoop- 
 driver, suddenly much amused. 
 
 " Precisely. And not brooking my defeat, I suf- 
 fered repeatedly. You may understand, perhaps, 
 a natural impatience. I expostulated — playfully, 
 of course. Happily the road was not overlooked. 
 Finally, the entire apparatus became rigid, and I 
 abandoned the unequal contest. For all practical 
 purposes the tricycle was no better than a heavy 
 chair without castors. It was a case of hauling 
 or carrying." 
 
 The clergyman's nutriment appeared in the 
 doorway. " Five miles," said the clergyman. 
 
 He began at once to eat bread and butter vigo- 
 rously. " Happily," he said, " I am an eupeptic, 
 energetic sort of person — on principle. I would 
 all men were likewise." 
 
 " It's the best way," agreed Mr. Hoopdriver ; 
 and the conversation gave precedence to bread- 
 and-butter. 
 
 " Gelatine," said the clergyman presently, stir- 
 ring his tea thoughtfully, " precipitates the tannin 
 in one's tea and renders it easy of digestion." 
 
 "That's a useful sort of thing to know," said 
 Mr. Hoopdriver. 
 
 " You are altogether welcome," said the clei-gy- 
 man, biting generously at two pieces of bread- 
 and-butter folded together. 
 
 In the afternoon our two wanderers rode on at 
 an easy pace towards Stoney Cross. Conversation 
 
28o THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 languished, the topic of South Africa being in 
 abeyance. Mr. Hoopdriver was silenced by dis- 
 agreeable thoughts. He had changed the last 
 sovereign at Ringwood. The fact had come upon 
 hina suddenly. Now too late he was reflecting 
 upon his resources. There was twenty pounds or 
 more in the Post Ofifice Savings Bank in Putney, 
 but his book was locked up in his box at the 
 Antrobus establishment, else this infatuated man 
 would certainly have surreptitiously withdrawn the 
 entire sum, in order to prolong these journeyings 
 even for a few days. As it was, the shadow of the 
 end fell across his happiness. Strangely enough, 
 in spite of his anxiety and the morning's collapse, 
 he was still in a curious emotional state that was 
 certainly not misery. He was forgetting his ima- 
 ginings and posings, forgetting himself altogether 
 in his growing appreciation of his companion. 
 The most tangible trouble in his mind was the 
 necessity of breaking the matter to her. 
 
 A long stretch up hill tired them long before 
 Stoney Cross was reached, and they dismounted 
 and sat under the shade of a little oak tree. Near 
 the crest the road looped on itself, so that, looking 
 back, it sloped below them up to the right and 
 then came towards them. About them grew a 
 rich heather with stunted oaks on the edge of a 
 deep ditch along the roadside, and this road was 
 sandy ; below the steepness of the hill, however, 
 it was grey and barred with shadows, for there 
 the trees clustered thick and tall. Mr, Hoop- 
 driver fumbled clumsily with his cigarettes. 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 281 
 
 "There's a thing I got to tell you," he said, try- 
 ing to be perfectly calm. 
 
 " Yes ?'" she said. 
 
 " I'd like to jest discuss your plans a bit, y'know." 
 
 " I'm very unsettled," said Jessie. 
 
 " You are thinking of writing Books ? " 
 
 " Or doing Journahsm, or Teaching, or some- 
 thing like that." 
 
 "And keeping yourself independent of your 
 stepmother ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " How long'd it take now, to get anything of 
 that sort to do ? " 
 
 "I don't know at all. I believe there are a 
 great many women journalists, and sanitary in- 
 spectors, and black-and-white artists. But I sup- 
 pose it takes time. Women, you know, edit 
 most papers nowadays, George Egerton says. I 
 ought, I suppose, to communicate with a lite- 
 rary agent." 
 
 " Of course," said Hoopdriver, " it's very suit- 
 able work, not being heavy like the drapery." 
 
 "There's heavy brain labour, you must re- 
 member." 
 
 "That wouldn't hurt j/ou," said Mr. Hoopdriver, 
 turning a compliment. 
 
 " It's like this," he said, ending a pause. " It's 
 a juiced nuisance alluding to these matters, but — 
 we got very little more money." 
 
 He perceived that Jessie started, though he did 
 not look at her. " I was counting, of course, on 
 your friend's writing and your being able to take 
 
283 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 some action to-day." " Take some action " was a 
 phrase he had learnt at his last " swop." 
 
 "Money," said Jessie. " I didn't think of money." 
 
 " Hullo ! Here's a tandem bicycle," said 
 Mr. Hoopdriver abruptly, and pointing with his 
 cigarette. 
 
 She looked, and saw two little figures emerging 
 from among the trees at the foot of the slope. The 
 riders were bowed sternly over their work and 
 made a gallant but unsuccessful attempt to take 
 the rise. The machine was evidently too highly 
 geared for hill climbing, and presently the rear- 
 most rider rose on his saddle and hopped off, 
 leaving his companion to any fate he found proper. 
 The foremost rider was a man unused to such 
 machines, and apparently undecided how to dis- 
 mount. He wobbled a few yards up the hill with 
 a long tail of machine wobbling behind him. 
 Finally, he made an attempt to jump off as one 
 does off a single bicycle, hit his boot against the 
 backbone, and collapsed heavily, falling on his 
 shoulder. 
 
 She stood up. " Dear me ! " she said. " I hope 
 he isn't hurt." 
 
 The second rider went to the assistance of the 
 fallen man. 
 
 Hoopdriver stood up too. 
 
 The lank, shaky machine was lifted up and 
 wheeled out of the way, and then the fallen rider, 
 being assisted, got up slowly and stood rubbing 
 his arm. No serious injury seemed to be done to 
 the man, and the couple presently turned their 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 283 
 
 attention to the machine by the roadside. They 
 were not in cycling clothes, Hoopdriver observed. 
 One wore the grotesque raiment for which the 
 Cockney discovery of the game of golf seems in- 
 directly blamable. Even at this distance the 
 flopping flatness of his cap, the bright brown 
 leather at the top of his calves, and the chequer- 
 ing of his stockings, were perceptible. The 
 other, the rear rider, was a slender little man in 
 grey. 
 
 "Amatoors," said Mr. Hoopdriver. 
 
 Jessie stood staring, and a veil of thought 
 dropped over her eyes. She no longer regarded 
 the two men who were now tinkering at the 
 machine down below there. 
 
 " How much have you ? " she said. 
 
 He thrust his right hand into his pocket and 
 produced six coins, counted them with his left 
 index finder, and held them out to her. " Thii-- 
 teen four half," said Mr. Hoopdriver. "Every 
 penny." 
 
 " I have half a sovereign," she said. 
 
 "Our bill wherever we stop ■" The hiatus 
 
 was more eloquent than many words. 
 
 " I never thought of money coming in to stop 
 us like this," said Jessie. 
 
 " It's a juiced nuisance." 
 
 " Money ! " said Jessie. " Is it possible ? 
 
 Surely ! Conventionality ! May only people of 
 assured means Live their own Lives ? What a 
 curious light ! " 
 
 Pause. 
 
284 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 " Here's some more cyclists coming," said Mr. 
 Hoopdriver. 
 
 The two men were both busy with their bicycle 
 still, but now from among the trees emerged the 
 massive bulk of a " Marlborough Club " tandem, 
 ridden by a slender woman in grey and a burly 
 man in a Norfolk jacket. Following close upon 
 this came a lank black figure in a piebald straw 
 hat, riding a tricycle of antiquated pattern with 
 two large wheels in front. The man in grey re- 
 mained bowed over the bicycle, with his stomach 
 resting on the saddle, but his companion stood 
 up and addressed some remark to the tricycle 
 riders. Then it seemed as if he pointed up hill to 
 where Mr. Hoopdriver and his companion stood 
 side by side. A still odder thing followed ; the 
 lady in grey took out her handkerchief, appeared 
 to wave it for a moment, and then at a hasty motion 
 from her companion the white signal vanished. 
 
 " Surely," said Jessie, peering under her hand. 
 " It's never " 
 
 The tandem tricycle began to ascend the hill, 
 quartering elaborately from side to side to ease 
 the ascent. It was evident, from his heaving 
 shoulders and depressed head, that the burly 
 gentleman was exerting himself. The clerical 
 person on the tricycle assumed the shape of a 
 note of interrogation. Then on the heels of this 
 procession came a dog-cart driven by a man in a 
 billycock hat and containing a lady in dark green. 
 
 " Looks like some sort of excursion," said 
 Hoopdriver. 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 285 
 
 Jessie did not answer. She was still peering 
 under her hand. " Surely," she said. 
 
 The clergyman's efforts were becoming convul- 
 sive. With a curious jerking motion, the tricycle 
 he rode twisted round upon itself, and he partly 
 dismounted and partly fell off. He turned his 
 machine up hill again immediately and began to 
 wheel it. Then the burly gentleman dismounted, 
 and with a courtly attentiveness assisted the lady 
 in grey to alight. There was some little difference 
 of opinion as to assistance, she so clearly wished 
 to help push. Finally she gave in, and the burly 
 gentleman began impelling the machine up hill 
 by his own unaided strength. His face made a 
 dot of brilliant colour among the greys and greens 
 at the foot of the hill. The tandem bicycle was 
 now, it seems, repaired, and this joined the tail 
 of the procession, its riders walking behind the 
 dog-cart, from which the lady in green and the 
 driver had now descended. 
 
 " Mr. Hoopdriver," said Jessie. " Those people 
 — I'm almost sure " 
 
 " Lord ! " said Mr. Hoopdriver, reading the rest 
 in her face, and he turned to pick up his machine 
 at once. Then he dropped it, and assisted her to 
 mount. 
 
 At the sight of Jessie mounting against the sky 
 line, the people coming up the hill suddenly be- 
 came excited, and ended Jessie's doubts at once. 
 Two handkerchiefs waved, and some one shouted. 
 The riders of the tandem bicycle began to run it 
 up hill, past the other vehicles. But our young 
 
286 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 people did not wait for further developments of 
 the pursuit. In another moment they were out of 
 sight, riding hard down a steady incline towards 
 Stoney Cross. 
 
 Before they had dropped among the trees out 
 of sight of the hill brow, Jessie looked back and 
 saw the tandem rising over the crest, with its rear 
 rider just tumbling into the saddle. "They're 
 coming," she said, and bent her head over her 
 handles in true professional style. 
 
 They whirled down into the valley, over a white 
 bridge, and saw ahead of them a number of 
 shaggy little ponies frisking in the roadway. In- 
 voluntarily they slackened. " Shoo ! " said Mr. 
 Hoopdriver, and the ponies kicked up their heels 
 derisively. At that Mr. Hoopdriver lost his 
 temper, and charged at them, narrowly missed 
 one, and sent them jumping the ditch into the 
 bracken under the trees, leaving the way clear for 
 Jessie. 
 
 Then the road rose quietly but persistently ; 
 the treadles grew heavy, and Mr. Hoopdriver's 
 breath sounded like a saw. The tandem ap- 
 peared, making frightful exertions, at the foot, 
 while the chase was still climbing. Then, thank 
 Heaven 1 a crest and a stretch of up and down 
 road, whose only disadvantage was its pitiless 
 exposure to the afternoon sun. The tandem 
 apparently dismounted at the hill, and did not 
 appear against the hot blue sky until the fugitives 
 were already near some trees and a good mile 
 away. 
 

 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 289 
 
 "We're gaining," said Mr. Hoopdriver, with a 
 little Niagara of perspiration dropping from brow 
 to cheek. "That hill " 
 
 But that was their only gleam of success. They 
 were both nearly spent. Hoopdriver, indeed, was 
 quite spent, and only a feeling of shame prolonged 
 the liquidation of his bankrupt physique. From 
 that point the tandem gained upon them steadily. 
 At the Rufus Stone, it was scarcely a hundred 
 yards behind. Then one desperate spirt, and 
 they found themselves upon a steady downhill 
 stretch among thick pine woods. Downhill 
 nothing can beat a highly geared tandem bicycle. 
 Automatically Mr. Hoopdriver put up his feet, 
 and Jessie slackened her pace. In another mo- 
 ment they heard the swish of the fat pneumatics 
 behind them, and the tandem passed Hoopdriver 
 and drew alongside Jessie. Hoopdriver felt a mad 
 impulse to collide with this abominable machine 
 as it passed him. His only consolation was to 
 notice that its riders, riding violently, were quite 
 as dishevelled as himself, and smothered in sandy 
 white dust. 
 
 Abruptly Jessie stopped and dismounted, and 
 the tandem riders shot panting past them down 
 hill. " Brake ! " said Dangle, who was riding 
 behind, and stood up on the pedals. For a 
 moment the velocity of the thing increased, and 
 then they saw the dust fly from the brake as it 
 came down on the front tire. Dangle's right leg 
 floundered in the air as he came off in the road. 
 The tandem wobbled. " Hold it ! " cried Phipps 
 
 T 
 
290 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 over his shoulder, going on down hill. " I can't 
 get off if you don't hold it." He put on the brake 
 until the machine stopped almost dead, and then 
 feeling unstable, began to pedal again. Dangle 
 shouted after him. " Put out your foot, man," 
 said Dangle. 
 
 In this way the tandem riders were carried a 
 good hundred yards or more beyond their quarry. 
 Then Phipps realised his possibilities, slacked up 
 with the brake, and let the thing go on sideways, 
 dropping on to his right foot. With his left leg 
 still over the saddle, and still holding the handles, 
 he looked over his shoulder, and began address- 
 ing uncomplimentary remarks to Dangle. " You 
 only think of yourself," said Phipps, with a florid 
 face. 
 
 " They have forgotten us," said Jessie, turning 
 her machine. 
 
 "There was a road at the top of the hill — 
 to Lyndhurst," said Hoopdriver, following her 
 example. 
 
 " It's no good. There's the money. We must 
 give it up. But let us go back to that hotel at 
 Rufus Stone. I don't see why we should be led 
 captive." 
 
 So, to the consternation of the tandem riders, 
 Jessie and her companion mounted and rode 
 quietly back up the hill again. As they dis- 
 mounted at the hotel entrance, the tandem 
 overtook them, and immediately afterwards the 
 dog-cart came into view in pursuit. Dangle 
 jumped off. 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 291 
 
 " Miss Milton, I believe," said Dangle, panting 
 and raising a damp cap from his wet and matted 
 hair. 
 
 "I say" said Phipps, receding involuntarily. 
 " Don't go doing it again. Dangle. Help a chap." 
 
 " One minute," said Dangle, and ran after his 
 colleague. 
 
 Jessie leant her machine against the wall, and 
 went into the hotel. Hoopdriver remained in the 
 entrance, limp but defiant. 
 
AT THE RUFUS STONE 
 
 XXXVIII 
 
 He folded his arms as Dangle and Phipps re- 
 turned towards him. Phipps was abashed by 
 his inability to cope with the tandem, which he 
 was now wheeling, but Dangle was inclined to be 
 quarrelsome. " Miss Milton ? " he said briefly. 
 
 Mr. Hoopdriver bowed over his folded arms. 
 
 " Miss Milton within ? " said Dangle. 
 
 "Andnot to be disturbed," said Mr. Hoopdriver. 
 
 " You are a scoundrel, sir," said Mr. Dangle. 
 
 " Et your service," said Mr. Hoopdriver. " She 
 awaits 'er stepmother, sir." 
 
 Mr. Dangle hesitated. " She will be here im- 
 mediately," he said. "Here is her friend. Miss 
 Mergle." 
 
 Mr. Hoopdriver unfolded his arms slowly, and 
 with an air of immense calm thrust his hands into 
 his breeches pockets. Then with one of those 
 fatal hesitations of his, it occurred to him that 
 this attitude was merely vulgarly defiant ; he with- 
 drew both, returned one, and pulled at the in- 
 sufficient moustache with the other. Miss Mergle 
 caught him in confusion. " Is this the man ? " she 
 said to Dangle, and forthwith, "How dare you, sir ? 
 
 How dare you face me ? That poor girl ! " 
 
 292 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 293 
 
 "You will permit me to obsei-ve," began Mr. 
 Hoopdriver, with a splendid drawl, seeing him- 
 self, for the first time in all this business, as a 
 romantic villain. 
 
 " Ugh," said Miss Mergle, unexpectedly striking 
 him about the midriff with her extended palms, 
 and sending him staggering backward into the 
 hall of the hotel. 
 
 " Let me pass ! " said Miss Mergle, in towering 
 indignation. " How dare you resist my passage ? " 
 and so swept by him and into the dining-room, 
 wherein Jessie had sought refuge. 
 
 As Mr. Hoopdriver struggled for equilibrium 
 with the umbrella-stand. Dangle and Phipps, 
 roused from their inertia by Miss Mergle's activity, 
 came in upon her heels, Phipps leading. " How 
 dare you prevent that lady passing ?" said Phipps. 
 
 Mr. Hoopdriver looked obstinate, and, to 
 Bangle's sense, dangerous," but he made no 
 answer. A waiter in full bloom appeared at the 
 end of the passage, guardant. " It is men of your 
 stamp, sir," said Phipps, "who discredit manhood." 
 
 Mr. Hoopdriver thrust his hands into his 
 pockets. " Who the juice are you ? " shouted 
 Mr. Hoopdriver fiercely. 
 
 " Who are you, sir ? " retorted Phipps. " Who 
 are you ? That's the question. What are you, 
 and what are you doing, wandering at large with 
 a young lady under age ? " 
 
 " Don't speak to him," said Dangle. 
 
 " I'm not a-going to tell all my secrets to any one 
 who comes at me," said Hoopdriver. "Not Likely." 
 And added fiercely, " And that I tell you, sir." 
 
294 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 He and Phipps stood legs apart, and both look- 
 ing exceedingly fierce at one another, and Heaven 
 alone knows what might not have happened, if 
 the long clergyman had not appeared in the 
 doorway, heated but deliberate. "Petticoated 
 anachronism," said the long clergyman privately 
 in the doorway, apparently still suffering from 
 the antiquated prejudice that demanded a third 
 wheel and a black coat from a clerical rider. He 
 looked at Phipps and Hoopdriver for a moment, 
 then extending his hand towards the latter, he 
 waved it up and down three times, saying, "Tchak, 
 tchak, tchak," very deliberately as he did so. Then 
 with a concluding " Ugh ! " and a gesture of re- 
 pugnance he passed on into the dining-room, from 
 which the voice of Miss Mergle was distinctly 
 audible, remarking that she could not understand 
 anything of the kind. 
 
 This expression of extreme disapprobation had 
 a very demoralising effect upon Hoopdriver, a 
 demoralisation that was immediately completed 
 by the advent of the massive Widgery. 
 
 " Is this the man ? " said Widgery, very grimly, 
 and producing a special voice for the occasion 
 from somewhere deep in his neck. 
 
 " Don't hurt him ! " said Mrs. Milton, with 
 clasped hands. " However much wrong he has 
 done her No violence ! " 
 
 " 'Ow many more of you ? " said Hoopdriver, 
 at bay before the umbrella-stand. 
 
 " Where is she ? What has he done with her ? " 
 said Mrs. Milton. 
 
 " I'm not going to stand here and be insulted 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 295 
 
 by a lot of sti-angers," said Mr. Hoopdriver, " So 
 you needn't think it. One 'ud think I'd eat the 
 girl." 
 
 " I'm here, mother," said Jessie, suddenly ap- 
 pearing in the door of the dining-room. Her 
 face was white. 
 
 Mrs. Milton said something about her child, 
 and made an emotional charge at Jessie. The 
 embrace vanished into the dining-room. Widgery 
 moved as if to follow, and hesitated. "You'd better 
 make yourself scarce," he said to Mr. Hoopdriver, 
 " unless you're disposed to answer some very un- 
 pleasant questions." 
 
 "I shan't do anything of the kind," said Mr. 
 Hoopdriver, with a catching of the breath. " I'm 
 here defending that young lady." 
 
 "You've done her enough mischief, I should 
 think," said Widgery. 
 
 " Clear ! " said Phipps threateningly. 
 
 "I shall go and sit out in the garden," said 
 Mr. Hoopdriver, with dignity. "There I shall 
 remain." 
 
 " Don't make a row with him," said Dangle. 
 
 The clergyman came out of the room and 
 closed the door softly. 
 
 Mr. Hoopdriver glared defiance for a moment, 
 and then marched gardenward. Behind this 
 gallant front he was a tumult of apprehension. 
 What did they take him for ? Could they do 
 anything to him ? Surely he had done nothing 
 wrong ! Was she a ward in Chancery ? From 
 her mother, at any rate, he had expected gratitude. 
 
XXXIX 
 
 So here is the world with us again, and our sen- 
 timental excursion is over. In the front of the 
 Rufus Stone Hotel conceive a remarkable collec- 
 tion of wheeled instruments, watched over by 
 Dangle and Phipps in grave and stately attitudes, 
 and by the driver of a stylish dog-cart from Ring- 
 wood. Widgery and the clergyman were visible 
 in the hall, apparently listening to the muffled 
 sounds within. In the garden behind, in an 
 attitude of nervous prostration, Mr. Hoopdriver 
 was seated on a rustic seat. Through the open 
 window of a private sitting-room came a murmur 
 of voices, rising and falling, as of women in con- 
 ference. Occasionally something that might have 
 been a girlish sob. 
 
 " I can't understand where the deuce she picked 
 him up ! " protests Phipps to Dangle. 
 
 " Who is this man in brown ? " says the clergy- 
 man to Widgery. " I don't quite understand." 
 
 Within they were asking the same thing. 
 
 The lady in green, I must explain, was Jessie's 
 schoolmistress. Miss Mergle, who by means of 
 a coruscation of sixpenny telegrams had precipi- 
 tated the pursuit upon her. The clergyman, by 
 the greatest good fortune, was known to Miss 
 
 2g6 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 297 
 
 Mergle, and she came upon him even as they 
 left Ringwood station. It is scarcely necessary 
 
 ,-^A^' 
 
 to explain that the prompt seizure of the offer of 
 the cycle shop is to the credit of Bangle's Napo- 
 leonic mind. 
 
298 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 Mrs. Milton at first had been all for an emo- 
 tional climax, but Jessie had gently but firmly 
 eluded an embrace, and opened the controversy. 
 "Why have I been chased in this ridiculous 
 way ? " she asked, as the clergyman made for the 
 door. 
 
 "Why have you behaved in this ridiculous 
 way ? " said Miss Mergle. 
 
 " Jessie," said Mrs. Milton. " Tell me " 
 
 "What girls are coming to," said Miss Mergle, 
 " I cannot conceive. Or where they get these 
 extraordinary ideas. One can understand them 
 in books " 
 
 " But who is this man ? " asked Mrs. Milton. 
 " Where did you meet him ? Why have you 
 eloped with him in this way ? " 
 
 "A more fantastic and absurd travesty of all 
 my teaching I never heard," said Miss Mergle. 
 " I cannot conceive how you can pretend to find 
 a justification " 
 
 " He seems an absolutely commonplace vulgar 
 young man." 
 
 "Wandering at large about the country " 
 
 " Have you nothing to say for yourself ? " 
 
 " If," said Jessie, " you will let me speak " 
 
 " Speak," said Mrs. Milton. 
 
 " It is too dreadful ! " said Miss Mergle. 
 
 "This young man," said Jessie, "is one of the 
 bravest, most unselfish, and most delicate " 
 
 " Yes, yes," said Mrs. Milton. " But how did 
 you ever come to meet such a person ? " 
 
 " This paragon ? " said Miss Mergle. 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 299 
 
 " He rescued me." 
 
 " Pshaw ! " 
 
 " From your friend Mr. Bechamel ! " And 
 Jessie's emotions got the better of her and the 
 tears came. 
 
 "Mr. Bechamel!" said Mrs. Milton, jumping at 
 the worst. " Oh 1 " 
 
 "What's that?" said Miss Mergle. "Surely 
 that dreadful person " 
 
 " Mr. Bechamel found out I was discontented 
 at home. He persuaded me — the kind of non- 
 sense " Jessie paused. 
 
 "Well ?" said Mrs. Milton. 
 
 "Women write in books about being free, and 
 living our own life, and all that kind of thing. 
 — No one is free, free even from working for a 
 living, unless at the expense of some one else. I 
 did not think of that. I wanted to do some- 
 thing in the world, to be something in the world, 
 something vaguely noble, self-sacrificing, and 
 dignified." 
 
 " You enlarge in the most egotistical way," be- 
 gan Miss Mergle, " on your own sentiments " 
 
 "Mr. Bechamel?" said Mrs. Milton, with in- 
 tensity. 
 
 " He lent me books, set me against the idle 
 life I was leading, persuaded me to come away 
 with him; said he would help me to gain a 
 position." 
 
 She paused. 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " He wanted to force me to marry him ! " 
 
300 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 "But, bless me!" said Miss Mergle, "why? 
 The man — bigamy ! " 
 
 " Go on," said Mrs. Milton, tearing her hand- 
 kerchief. "Go on. Tell us what happened— he 
 abandoned you ! " 
 
 " We travelled as brother and sister." 
 
 "Yes, yes!" 
 
 "But — this commonplace man, as you call 
 him, who is sitting outside, saw us, and guessed 
 something." 
 
 " Well ? " 
 
 " And when at last I thought I was — trapped, 
 he interfered. If you knew how bravely, how 
 resolutely, how unassumingly he has behaved. 
 — Chivalry ! " 
 
 " So that Mr. Bechamel," began Mrs. Milton. 
 
 " But why did you not come straight home ? 
 Why didn't he bring you straight home ? " asked 
 Miss Mergle — " when he got you away from that 
 —Man?" 
 
 " Because I was — ashamed, I suppose, as much 
 as anything. Because I hated to come home 
 beaten. I did not understand these things. I 
 thought it might still be possible for me to live 
 independently " » 
 
 " But /le knew better, this heroic mechanic of 
 yours," objected Miss Mergle. " Surely he knew 
 better. Don't tell me " 
 
 " He studied me." 
 
 " He must be an amazingly weak young man 
 to allow a wilful girl, scarcely seventeen, to trail 
 him all over the country " 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 301 
 
 " I can't understand ! " said Mrs. Milton. 
 
 " Of all the wild and extravagant adventures," 
 said Miss Mergle, overflowing with commentary. 
 " I can only ascribe your action to that spirit of 
 unrest " 
 
 " I have done everything to shield you, Jessie," 
 said Mrs. Milton. 
 
 " Shield me ! What do you mean ? " asked 
 Jessie. 
 
 " I have told every one you were visiting — 
 friends at a distance. No one in Surbiton " 
 
 "That spirit of unrest," continued Miss Mergle, 
 " that has seized so many women in these busily 
 idle Latter Days " 
 
 "Why should we tell people — lies?" asked 
 Jessie. "Why should not people know the truth 
 of what I have done ? I don't see anything so 
 very " 
 
 " My dear ! " cried Mrs. Milton, " you would be 
 ruined I " 
 
 " But wAy ? " 
 
 " Read ' Sesame and Lilies,' " Miss Mergle 
 continued. " Read Shakespear — and Christina 
 Rossetti. There, at least, you have pure-hearted 
 ideals " 
 
 Neither of them took the slightest notice of her. 
 
 " How should I be ruined ? What is being 
 ruined ? " 
 
 "No one in Surbiton would ask you any- 
 where!" said Mrs. Milton. "You would be an 
 outcast. You would find doors closed against 
 you " 
 
302 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 "But I've done nothing wrong," said Jessie. 
 
 " It's just a Convention " 
 
 " But every one will think you have." 
 " Am I to tell lies because other people think ? 
 — stupids ! And besides — who wants to know 
 people like that ? " 
 
 " My dear child, you do not understand " 
 
 All this time, quite unheeded. Miss Mergle 
 continued her copious outpourings about Ideals, 
 True Womanliness, Necessary Class Distinctions, 
 Healthy Literature, and the like. "A simple, 
 healthy, wholesome life," she was saying. " Miss 
 Mergle will tell you," said Mrs. Milton, appealing 
 to her, and Miss Mergle stopped abruptly to 
 witness how necessary it was to conceal the facts 
 of Jessie's excursion. " People think you have 
 gone on a visit," said Miss Mergle, "and unless 
 you arouse their suspicions they will not cross- 
 examine you. There is no reason why any one 
 should know, there are a thousand why they 
 
 should not know " 
 
 " And this is living fearlessly and honestly ! " 
 " If you really want to live fearlessly and 
 honestly, you should avoid doing such extrava- 
 gant things," said Miss Mergle, with a flash of 
 blinding illumination. 
 
 Meanwhile Mr. Hoopdriver made a sad figure 
 in the sunlight outside. It was over, this wonder- 
 ful excursion of his, so far as she was concerned ; 
 and with the swift blow that separated them, 
 he realised all these days had done for him. He 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 303 
 
 tried to grasp the bearings of their position. Of 
 course they would take her away to those social 
 altitudes of hers. She would become an inacces- 
 sible Young Lady again. 
 
 " Would they let him say good-bye to her ? " 
 How extraordinary it had all been ! He re- 
 called the moment when he had first seen her 
 riding with the sunlight behind her along the 
 riverside road ; he recalled that wonderful night 
 at Bognor, remembering it as if . everything had 
 been done of his own initiative. He had done 
 well there. " Brave, brave ! " she had called him. 
 And afterwards, when she came down to him in 
 the morning, kindly, self-possessed — she always 
 seemed to be self-possessed. But ought he to 
 have persuaded her then to return to her home ? 
 He remembered some intention of the sort. Now 
 these people snatched her away from him as 
 though he was scarcely fit to live on the same 
 world with her. No more he was ! He felt he 
 had presumed upon her worldly ignorance in 
 travelling with her day after day. She was so 
 dainty, so delightful, so serene. He began to 
 recapitulate her expressions, the light of her eyes, 
 the turn of her face. 
 
 Dash it all ! He wasn't good enough to walk 
 in the same road with her. Nobody was. Sup- 
 pose they let him say good-bye to her ; what 
 could he say? That? He would. But they 
 were sure not to let her talk to him alone ; her 
 mother would be there as, what was it ? — Chape- 
 rone. What opportunities he'd lost. He'd never 
 
304 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 once had a chance of saying what he felt, indeed 
 it was only now he was beginning to realise what 
 he felt. Love ! — he wouldn't dare. It was wor- 
 ship. If only he could have one more chance. 
 He must have one more chance — somewhere, 
 somehow. Then he would pour out his soul to 
 her — eloquently. He felt eloquently, and words 
 would come. He was dust under her feet 
 
 His meditation was interrupted by the click of 
 a door handle. The door under the verandah 
 opened, and Jessie appeared in the shadow. 
 
 "Come away from here," she said to Hoop- 
 driver, as he rose to meet her. " I'm going home 
 with them. We have to say good-bye." 
 
 Mr. Hoopdriver opened and shut his mouth, 
 and rose without a word. 
 
XL 
 
 At first they walked away from the hotel in 
 silence. He heard a catching in her breath, and 
 glanced at her and saw her lips pressed tight and 
 a tear on her cheek. Her face was hot and 
 bright. She was looking straight before her. 
 He could think of nothing to say, and thrust his 
 hands in his pockets and looked away from her 
 intentionally. After a while she began to talk. 
 They dealt disjointedly with scenery first, and 
 then with the means of self-education. She took 
 his address at Antrobus's, and promised to send 
 him some books. But even with that it was 
 spiritless, aching talk, Hoopdriver felt, for the 
 fighting mood was over. She seemed to him 
 preoccupied with the memories of her late battle, 
 and that appearance hurt him. 
 
 " It's the end," he whispered to himself. " She's 
 done with you, Hoopdriver, old man." 
 
 They went into a hollow and up a gentle 
 wooded slope, and came at last to a high and 
 open space overlooking a wide expanse of 
 country. There, by a common impulse, they 
 stopped. They stared at the billows of forest 
 rolling away beneath them, crest beyond crest 
 of leafy trees, fading at last into blue. 
 
 She stood on ground a little higher than he, 
 305 U 
 
3o6 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 so that he had to look up to her when at last 
 she spoke. She stood bathed in the sunlight, 
 grey and light and graceful, with her hand 
 drawn a little back. She seemed to look down 
 at him. Of course she looked down at him, he 
 thought. 
 
 " And so," she said, " it comes to good-bye." 
 
 For half a minute he did not answer. Then he 
 gathered his resolution. He cleared his throat. 
 "There is one thing I must say." He stopped. 
 
 " Well ? " she said, surprised. 
 
 " I ask no return. But " 
 
 Then he stopped. Their eyes met. " I won't 
 say it. It's no good. It would be rot from 
 me — now. I wasn't going to say anything. 
 Good-bye." 
 
 She had looked at him with a startled expres- 
 sion in her eyes. " No," she said softly. " But 
 don't forget you are going to work. Remember, 
 brother Chris, you are my friend. You will 
 work. . . . What will you be — what can a man 
 make of himself in six years' time ? " 
 
 He stared hard in front of him still ; something 
 stirred within him, and the lines about his weak 
 mouth seemed to strengthen. He knew she 
 understood what he could not say. He knew 
 that six years had the value of a promise. 
 
 " I'll work," he said concisely. 
 
 They stood side by side for a moment. Then 
 he said, with a motion of his head, "I won't 
 come back to them. Do you mind ? Going 
 back alone ? " 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 309 
 
 She took ten seconds to think. "No," she 
 said, and held out her hand, biting her nether 
 hp. " Good-bye" she whispered. 
 
 He turned, with a white face, looked into her 
 eyes, took her hand limply, and then with a 
 sudden impulse lifted it to his lips. She would 
 have snatched it away, but his grip tightened to 
 her movement. She felt the touch of his lips, 
 and then he had dropped her fingers and turned 
 from her and was striding down the slope. A 
 dozen paces away his foot turned in the hp of 
 a rabbit hole, and he stumbled forward and 
 almost fell. 
 
 He never once looked back. She stared at 
 his receding figure until it was small and far 
 below her, and then, turned slowly and walked, 
 with her hands gripped hard together behind 
 her, towards Stoney Cross again. 
 
 " I did not know," she whispered to herself, 
 with white lips. " I did not understand. Even 
 now — No, I do not understand." 
 
THE ENVOY 
 
 XLI 
 
 So the story ends, dear Readers. Mr. Hoop- 
 driver, sprawling down there among the bracken, 
 must sprawl without our prying, I think, or 
 listening to what chances to his breathing. And 
 of what came of it all, of the six years and 
 afterwards, this is no place to tell. In truth, 
 there is no telling it, for by a comparison of 
 dates you will readily perceive that the years 
 have still to run. But if you see how a mere 
 counter-jumper, a cad on castors, and a fool to 
 boot, may come to feel the little insufficiencies 
 of life, and if he has to any extent won your sym- 
 pathies, my end is attained. (If it is not attained, 
 may Heaven forgive us both !) Nor will we follow 
 this adventurous young lady of his back to her 
 home at Surbiton, to her new struggle against Wid- 
 gery and Mrs. Milton combined. For, as she will 
 presently hear, that devoted man has got his re- 
 ward. For her, also, your sympathies are invited. 
 The rest of this great holiday, too — five days 
 there are left of it — is beyond the limits of our 
 design. You see fitfully a slender figure, a 
 lonely-looking little figure, in a dusty brown suit, 
 and heather mixture stockings, and brown shoes 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 311 
 
 not intended to be cycled in, flitting Londonward 
 through Hampshire and Berkshire and Surrey, 
 going economically — for excellent reasons. Day 
 by day it goes on, moving a little fitfully, but 
 on the whole north-eastward each day. He is 
 a narrow-chested person, with a nose hot and 
 tanned at the bridge with unwonted exposure, 
 and brown, red-knuckled fists. A musing ex- 
 
 pression sits upon the face of this rider, you 
 observe. Sometimes he whistles noiselessly to 
 himself; sometimes he speaks aloud; "a juiced 
 good try, anyhow ! " you hear ; and sometimes, 
 and that too often for my liking, he looks irri- 
 table and hopeless. " I know," he says, "I know. 
 It's over and done. It isn't m me. Youam'tman 
 enough, Hoopdriver. Look at yer silly hands ! 
 
312 THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 Oh my God!" and a gust of passion comes upon 
 him and he rides furiously for a space. 
 
 Sometimes again his face softens. "Anyhow, 
 if I'm not to see her — she's going to lend me 
 books," he thinks, and gets such comfort as he 
 can. And then again, "Books ! What's books ? " 
 Once or twice triumphant memories of the earlier 
 incidents nerve his face for awhile. " I put the 
 ky-bosh on his little game," he remarks. " I did 
 that," and one might even call him happy in these 
 phases. Then there are speculative moments. 
 " Suppose a chap was to drive himself jest as 
 hard as he could — ^what then ? " It's a chaotic 
 mood the man's in, and Heaven alone can say 
 what will come of it all. He is much too thought- 
 ful to pose any more, and talks but rarely with 
 the people he comes upon in his way. And the 
 machine, you notice, has been enamel painted 
 grey, and carries a sonorous gong. 
 
 'This figure passes through Basingstoke and 
 Bagshot, Staines, Hampton, and Richmond. At 
 last, in Putney High Street, glowing with the 
 warmth of an August sunset and with all the 
 'prentice boys busy shutting up shop, and the 
 work girls going home, and the shop folks peep- 
 ing abroad, and the white busses full of late clerks 
 and city folk rumbling home to their dinners, we 
 part from him. He is back. To-morrow, the 
 early rising, the dusting, and drudgery, begin 
 again — but with a difference, with wonderful 
 memories and still more wonderful desires and 
 ambitions replacing those discrepant dreams. 
 
 He turns out of the High Street at the corner, 
 
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE 
 
 313 
 
 dismounts with a sigh, and pushes his machine 
 through the gates of the Antrobus stable-yard, as 
 the apprentice with the high collar holds them 
 open. There are words of greeting. " South 
 Coast," you hear ; and " splendid weather — splen- 
 did." He sighs. "Yes — swapped him off for a 
 couple of sovs. It's a juiced good machine. It's 
 
 a pity some idiot has painted " 
 
 The gate clos es upon him with a slam, and he 
 vanisnes irom our ken. 
 
Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co. 
 Edinburgh and London 
 
Aldinb House, 
 6q Great Eastern Street, E.C., 
 
 AND 
 
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 October i8g6. 
 
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 THE WONDERFUL VISIT. 
 
 By H. G. wells, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "the TIME MACHINE," ETC. 
 
 W. L. COURTNEY, in the Daily Telegraph. 
 
 " It would be indeed difficult to overpraise the grace, the delicacy, and 
 the humour with which the author has accomplished his task. It is all 
 so piquantly fresh, so charmingly unconventional, that it carries one away 
 with it from start to finish in a glow of pleasurable sentiment. Rarely, 
 amidst all the floods of conventional fiction-spinning and latter-day psycho- 
 logical analysis, does one come across such a pure jet of romantic fancy 
 as that with which Mr. Wells refreshes onr spirits." 
 
 Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 "Enthusiastic we own that we are; no book could be more prodigal 
 of honest delight, and its promise leaves hardly any literary accomplish- 
 ment beyond the aspiration of its author." 
 
 Saturday Review. 
 
 "A striking fantasia, wrought with infinite tact, charm, and wit. . . . 
 The conversations are full of light and delicate (rather than full-bodied) 
 wit, and it becomes sufficiently pungent at times ; but underlying the 
 sweet or acid wit, or even the pure fun (for fun abounds), there is a vein 
 of seriousness and sadness which, with the beautiful descriptive miniatures 
 scattered here and there, justify us in calling the story a piece of literature." 
 
 Referee. 
 
 "So fresh and imaginative a piece of work, that Mr. Wells, we begin 
 to think, is the new man in fiction. Not only the ingenuity of the story, 
 but the logic of it is such that we know no writer since the author of 
 'Gulliver's Travels' who could show such amazing power in sustaining 
 the illusion of truth under like conditions." 
 
 Scotsman. 
 
 "The whole story is so delightfully coherent that, whether in the 
 amusing or in the touching passages, it pleases always. So much that 
 is clever, comical, tender, whimsical, and of healthy fancy." 
 
 3 
 
Crown 8vo, 4s. 6d. net. 
 
 IN THE VALLEY OF TOPHET. 
 
 By H. W. NE VINSON, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "neighbours OF OURS." 
 
 Daily Chronicle. 
 
 ■ ' Mr. Nevinson's keenness and clearness of observation of his characters 
 comes of his deep sympathy with them. Through the mirk and mire, 
 the folly, the ignorance, and the superstition, he sees the good human 
 stuff. Hence his humoiur has always in it something of pathos, and his 
 pathos is just hghtened by a touch of humour. He plumbs profound 
 depths. He not infrequently brings a lump to the throat." 
 
 Athenseum. 
 
 " In a series of a dozen epistles, more or less connected, he has set 
 forth, with a vividness which one would suppose can only be the result 
 of careful personal study, the grim humour and the grimmer pathos of 
 the lives that are lived about Cradley, Dudley, and Walsall. It is to the 
 author's credit that in depicting these lives he has been able, while in no 
 way ignoring the lawless animal traits natural to a swarming and neglected 
 population, to steer almost wholly clear of the Zolaesque crudities in which 
 some writers whom one could name would probably have revelled. Take 
 it all in all, this is the strongest book of short stories which we have come 
 across for some time. . . . One feels that it would have taken a good 
 many critics to write one of these stories. " 
 
 Scotsman. 
 
 "The atmosphere of the book is as hard and grimy as a coal-mine 
 itself; but the charm lies in this, and it is true to the nature of its subject. 
 Its pathos — and there is plenty of it — ^is never forced or mawkish ; and 
 the stories never fail to be impressive. The book will enhance the reputa- 
 tion its author gained by his ' Neighbours of Ours,' and will no doubt be 
 widely read." 
 
 Qlasgow Herald. 
 
 *' Mr. Nevinson has succeeded in exacting the marrow from his subject 
 in a fashion that should place him at once high amongst our contemporary 
 writers of fiction. His vein of romance, his slow but delicate humour, and 
 his strong humanity of touch remind us more of Miss Mary Wilkins than 
 of any other living writer that we can call to mind. His book is one to 
 read and re-read, and then to lay aside for future enjoyment." 
 
 4 
 
l^rown 8vo, cloth, 4s. 6d. net. 
 
 THE TOUCH OF SORROW. 
 
 By EDITH HAMLET. 
 
 (EDITH LYTTELTON.) 
 
 Times. 
 
 " The style is good and the observations are keen enough." 
 
 Daily Clironicle. 
 
 ' ' ' The Touch of Sorrow ' appears to be the author's first novel, and 
 as such she may safely congratulate herself both upon its promise and its 
 performance." 
 
 Daily Telegraph. 
 
 " Miss Hamlet's powerful story." 
 
 Dundee Advertiser. 
 
 " The course of the story is simple and free from complication, yet it 
 is written with freshness and engrossing charm. At some points, indeed, 
 the interest of the reader is strained almost to intensity. Miss Hamlet has 
 studied human nature, and particularly her own sex, to advantage, and 
 more of her wholesome and pleasing studies will be welcomed." 
 
 Daily Mail. 
 
 ■ ' ' Edith Hamlet ' — under which designation is veiled the identity of 
 the Hon. Mrs. Alfred Lyttelton — has set forth this main theme with much 
 tenderness, insight, and emotional power. The character of Stella is per- 
 fectly natural, and is consistent throughout. The book is intensely womanly, 
 in the best sense of the word, and many of the writer's ' thoughts by the 
 way ■ are fresh and striking." 
 
 Westminster Gazette. 
 
 "It is extraordinarily refreshing, by turns jaded and perplexed as we 
 are with sex problems and complications arising out of the married state, 
 to watch, absolutely without their aid, the birth and development in this 
 joyous, radiant being of the Sorrow Soul." 
 
 Glasgow Herald. 
 
 "This thoughtful and able story." 
 
 Liverpool Post. 
 
 "A charming literary effort and clever study." 
 
 The Guardian. 
 
 "Stella Morecombe is one of those rare heroines whose charm is felt 
 by the reader as well as described by the writer." 
 
 5 
 
Crown 8vo, 4s. 6d. net. 
 
 IN THE WAKE OF KING JAMES. 
 
 By STANDISH O'GRADY, 
 
 AUTHOR OF ** ULRICK THE READY." 
 
 Athensum. 
 
 " No one now living writes a better story of adventure than Mr. Standish 
 O'Grady. ... It has every quality that is of value in such a story. . . . 
 It ought to be devoured for pure delight by all the young. people in the 
 kingdom." 
 
 The Speaker. 
 
 "A robust and excellent piece of work. . . . Mr. Standish O'Grady 
 must be warmly congratulated upon so unequivocal a success as he has 
 achieved in this thrilling romance." 
 
 Manchester Guardian. 
 
 " A striking and powerful romance of love and adventitfous peril. . . . 
 Mr. O'Grady is to be congratulated and thanked for a spirited piece of 
 imagination, full of swing and vigour. This story, at any rate, does not 
 ' buckle and bow the mind to the nature of things,' but quickens the pulse 
 and stirs the blood in the name of chivalry." 
 
 Scotsman. 
 
 "The tale is vivid and vigorous above most, and there is about it a 
 fine briny flavour of the Atlantic. . . . Old Thomas is certainly a villain 
 of the first water, and what is more to the purpose, a villain of a new type. " 
 
 Freeman's Journal. 
 
 "Without any disparagement to the power and brilliancy of any of 
 Mr. O'Grady's work, we think that we have here perhaps the most interest- 
 ing and finished of his novels. . . . The hero's adventures, mishaps, and 
 captivity in the grim old hold of his malevolent cousin, and his final rescue 
 by the quick-witted and courageous Lady Sheela, will be read in the 
 volume before us, and we will not spoil the reader's enjoyment of the full 
 flavour of those startling adventures by any attempted foretaste. ' In the 
 Wake of King James ' will undoubtedly do much to increase the already ' 
 high reputation of its author." 
 
 Weekly Irish Times. 
 
 "Do you want to read a thoroughly fresh and stirring romance? If 
 you do, get Mr. Standish O'Grady's last novel, ' In the Wake of King 
 James.' . . . The wild work that goes on in the old castle, and the hair- 
 breadth escapes . . . should be enough to quicken the pulses of the most 
 sluggish-blooded reader." 
 
 6 
 
Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. net. 
 
 DR. VERMONT'S FANTASY, 
 
 AND OTHER STORIES. 
 
 By HANNAH LYNCH. 
 
 Athensum. 
 
 " Original observation and a rare reticence of detail." 
 
 Daily Chronicle. 
 
 " Miss Lynch has proved in previous work that she has at command 
 the most precious of gifts, the gift of charm. These stories are all, more 
 or less, interpenetrated by it. Nor is the working of it in us merely while 
 we read. It recurs unbidden in the ' sessions of sweet, silent thought.' " 
 
 Vanity Fair, 
 
 "Miss Hannah Lynch's new volume, 'Dr. Vermont's Fantasy,' is the 
 finest piece of feminine literary work, take it all in all, that has been accom- 
 plished in Great Britain duririg the present generation. Miss Lynch belongs 
 to no school ; she has chosen the best models here, there, and everywhere, 
 and formed her own style. I cannot say what model has been dearest 
 to her.; but the general effect is Greek — the massive dignity, the repose — 
 with the exception of the story ' Erases,' which is supposed to be viritten 
 by an excitable Frenchman — the cold simplicity keeping in check but never 
 conquering the rich warm temperament of the Irish author. . . . Her 
 matter in the average cheap and skilful hands would win immediate 
 recognition, so abundant and full of interest is it." 
 
 Dundee Advertiser. 
 
 "The cUmax, great because of its very simplicity, shows that the 
 authoress has a very rare gift as a writer of fiction. In its entirety the 
 collection offers not only something new, but something that will remain 
 attractive. It might be the work of any one of the best French viriters. 
 Not that the style is copied. It is the work of one who has not only studied 
 French fiction as a scholar, but who has herself marked and pondered over 
 the life from which she has drawn her men and women." 
 
 Scotsman. 
 
 "This writer's work is distinguished among the host of similar produc- 
 tions that clamour for public attention to-day by being much stronger than 
 the ruck. The pictures of life of to-day are recognisable . . . they have 
 no mawkishness in tone, and, while laymg the shadows heavily m, do not 
 forget that the prime office of the hterary. as of the other arts, is to please. 
 The skill thw show in giving literary shape to the less obvious moods and 
 phases of feeUng that a present-day reader must recognise as pecuhar to 
 his own generation is remarkable ; and there is not one of the stones tliat 
 has not its own peculiar variation of this consistently maintained interest. 
 
 7 X 
 
Crown 8vo, 4s. 6d. net. 
 
 IN THE HEART OF THE HILLS: 
 
 A NEW ENGLAND STORY. 
 
 By SHERWIN CODY. 
 
 Scotsman. 
 
 "The tale is told in a simple, straightforward way, and the peace that 
 is in the everlasting hills pervades and inspires it," 
 
 Glasgow Herald. 
 
 " An extremely pretty and natural story quaintly and simply told, and 
 has a rural atmosphere that is very alluring to the jaded palate, " 
 
 Illustrated London News. 
 
 " A delightful story. ... It is some time since we have read a sweeter 
 love-scene than that with which the book happily closes ; and, indeed, 
 throughout you feel yourself in Arden." 
 
 Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. net. 
 
 VENUS AND CUPID; 
 
 Or, A TRIP FROM MOUNT OLYMPUS TO LONDON. 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF 
 "THE FIGHT AT DAME EUROPA'S SCHOOL," 
 
 Nottingham Express. 
 
 "This fantastic romance is calculated to offer delightful amusement to 
 a multitude of readers, and ought to have a great run of popularity. It is 
 a long time since we have read anything so provocative of laughter. The 
 idea of the book is most happy and humorous ; and its development leaves 
 nothing to be desired. Every chapter is full of fun and frolic, and it is 
 impossible to find a dull page from the beginning to the end of the story. 
 It would be unfair to disclose the particulars of this unique ' personally 
 conducted tour ' ; but we warmly recommend holiday - makers and all 
 others who are on the look-out for a lively and entertaining book to secure 
 a copy of ' Venus and Cupid,' and if they do not find in it magic to brighten 
 a wet day at the seaside, they are quite free to anathematise the reviewer. 
 Our verdict is that a more mirth-provoking romance has seldom if ever 
 been published." 
 
 Birmingham Post. 
 
 " The story is thoroughly consistent, that having accepted the position 
 — the visit of these august personages to earth — all the details are worked 
 out in harmony with this conception, with abundant fun and humour and 
 fancy. Cupid — or Q, as he is called — is the most delectable little rogue, 
 and we were quite sorry to say gdod-bye to him. " 
 
 8 
 
Crown 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d. net each volume. 
 
 EMANUEL. 
 
 By HENRIK PONTOPPIDAN. 
 
 Translated from the Danish by Mrs. Edgar Lucas. 
 Illustrated by Miss NELLY ERICHSEN. 
 
 Daily Chronicle. 
 
 "Extremely interesting story . . . most delicately deUneated, and 
 charms us by its idyllic grace and purity." 
 
 Manchester Guardian. 
 
 "As a novel pure and simple the book is altogether out of the common, 
 and the firmness of its character-drawing, the sympathetic rendering of 
 nature s background, and the prominence given to the life of the clergy it 
 reminds one not a little of the work of Ferdinand Fabre, the novelist *ar 
 excellence of French clerical life. " 
 
 Glasgow Herald. 
 
 " Among the many Scandinavian works that have of late appeared in 
 an English dress, few have worn it with a more charming air than this tale 
 of Henrik Pontoppidan's, for a really excellent version of which we have to 
 thank Mrs. Lucas. . . . The tale is told in a fashion that recalls, among our 
 own writers, the intimate knowledge and loving descriptions of Miss Mitford 
 or Mrs. GaskelL It is not very far from being a work of real genius." 
 
 UNIFORM WITH THE ABOVE. 
 
 THE PROMISED LAND. 
 
 Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 "A story simple and strong, with much quiet pathos, keen analytic 
 power, and graphic picturing of character and place. It is a book to read, 
 enjoy, and muse over, both for its domestic and political interest. " 
 
 Scotsman. 
 
 " It is told with .so equable an art and with so much fidelity, both to 
 the general life which a reader of any nationahty can understand, and to 
 the local conditions to Denmark, that it is always full of a quiet intense 
 interest. The English version is throughout well done, and it has the 
 advantage of a series of pleasant illustrations from the pen of Miss Nelly 
 Erichsen." 
 
 Manchester Guardian. 
 
 " It is impossible to read it without feeling that Henrik Pontoppidan is 
 an artist of the first rank." 
 
 9 
 
Crown 8vo, cloth. 3s. 6d. net. 
 
 THE STORY OF A MARRIAGE. 
 
 By Mrs. ALFRED BALDWIN, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "where TOWN AND COUNTRY MEET," ETC. 
 
 Illustrated by J. AYTON SYMINGTON. 
 Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 " We have not seen for some time anything that, without any sugges- 
 tion of imitation, more vividly recalls the manner of George Eliot than do 
 some of Mrs. Baldwin's characters." 
 
 National Observer. 
 
 ' ' Mrs. Baldwin has a very pleasant humour of her ovm, and a rare gift 
 of characterisation." 
 
 Athenaeum. 
 
 ' ' ' The Story of a Marriage ' shows considerable promise for the 
 future of its author. It contains several excellent character-sketches, 
 drawn with real humour and insight." 
 
 5t. James's Gazette. 
 
 " Uncommonly well written." 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth, gilt top. 3s. 6d. net. 
 
 THE SHADOW ON THE BLIND, 
 
 AND OTHER GHOST STORIES. 
 
 By Mrs. ALFRED BALDWIN, 
 
 -AUTHOR OF " THE STOHV OF a MARRIAGE," ETC. 
 
 Illustrated by J. AYTON SYMINGTON. 
 Leeds Mercury. 
 
 ' ' For those who love a good, downright, thrilling tale of the super- 
 natural, just the thing." 
 
 Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 ' ' A handful of weird stories, as calculated to ' freeze our blood ' as 
 were the Fat Boy's revelations to the Maiden Aunt. Are a welcome 
 collection for the lovers of the supernatural." 
 
 Scotsman. 
 
 " Believe or disbelieve it as you like ; at least you cannot deny that it is 
 a capital story and well told. " 
 
 Athenteum. 
 
 "The author shows considerable skill in working up to a climax."