The Wheels of Chance

“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. Milton 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 beyond 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 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, removing his handkerchief in his excitement, and leaving the piece of meat over his eye, an extraordinary 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. 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 evening sun, was driving (as well as he could) a large, black horse harnessed into a thing called a gig, northwestward towards Winchester. Dangle, barring 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 irritated him somehow, though he had started with the noblest intentions, and he seemed glad to find 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 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 rumbling 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 roadway, 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 momentarily, and vanish, and after a moment’s pause came a heart-rending smash. Then two black heads running swiftly.

“Better get out,” said Phipps to Mrs. Milton, who stood fascinated in the doorway.

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 inhabitants holding the big, black horse. Even at that distance they could see the expression of conscious 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. 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 intensity, turning towards Widgery.

“Certainly,” said Widgery, suddenly becoming active. “How far is it, Dangle?”

“Mile and a half or two miles. I was determined 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.”

“There’s a harse all right,” said one of the small boys with a movement of the head.

“Don’t you know where we can hire traps?” asked Widgery. “Or a cart or – anything?” asked Mrs. Milton.

“John Ooker’s gart a cart, but no one can’t ‘ire’n,” said the larger of the small boys, partially averting his face and staring down the road and making a song of it. “And so’s my feyther, for’s leg us broke.”

“Not a cart even! Evidently. What shall we do?”

It occurred to Mrs. Milton that if Widgery 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 feeling 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 abandoned 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 tired and weather-worn, to flick us off at last, mere mud from her wheel, into this detestable village beer-house 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 reprobate, but just for a Freak, just for a fantastic Idea; for nothing, in fact, but the outraging of Common Sense. Yet withal, 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 different from those dear old talks at Surbiton, somehow. 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 sympathetic as to be visible in the dark. “Deliberately misunderstood.”

“Don’t say that,” said the lady. “Not deliberately. I try and think that critics are honest. After their lights. I was not thinking of critics. But she – I mean – ” She paused, an interrogation.

“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 Widgery. “It is Those Others. They must begin first.”

“And meanwhile you go on banking – ”