The Wheels of Chance

“It’s a juiced nuisance.”

“Money,” said Jessie. “Is it possible – Surely! Conventionality! May only people of means – Live their own Lives? I never thought …”

Pause.

“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 lank black figure in a piebald straw hat, riding a tricycle of antiquated pattern with two large wheels in front. The man in grey remained 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 dogcart driven by a man in a billycock hat and containing a lady in dark green.

“Looks like some sort of excursion,” said Hoopdriver.

Jessie did not answer. She was still peering under her hand. “Surely,” she said.

The clergyman’s efforts were becoming convulsive. 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 dogcart, 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 became 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 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. Involuntarily 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 appeared, making frightful exertions, at the foot, while the chase was still climbing. Then, thank Heaven! 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 they were already near some trees and a good mile away.

“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 grained upon them steadily. At the Rufus Stone, it was scarcely a hundred yards behind. Then one desperate spurt, 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 moment 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 downhill. “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 over his shoulder, going on downhill. “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 realized his possibilities, slacked up with the brake, and let the thing go over 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 addressing 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 dismounted at the hotel entrance, the tandem overtook them, and immediately afterwards the dogcart came into view in pursuit. Dangle jumped off.

“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 entrance. Hoopdriver remained in the hotel entrance, limp but defiant.

XXXVIII. AT THE RUFUS STONE

He folded his arms as Dangle and Phipps returned 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.

“AND not to be disturved,” 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 immediately,” 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 withdrew both, returned one and pulled at the insufficient 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!”

“You will permit me to observe,” began Mr. Hoopdriver, with a splendid drawl, seeing himself, 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 Dangle’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.”

He and Phipps stood, legs apart and both looking 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 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 repugnance he passed on into the dining-room from which the voice of Miss Mergle was distinctly audible remarking that the weather was extremely hot even for the time of year.

This expression of extreme disapprobation had a very demoralizing effect upon Hoopdriver, a demoralization 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!”