The H.G. Wells Reader (10 page)

‘Don't
you
want to learn?' she asked.

‘I was wondering only this morning,' he began, and stopped.

She was too intent upon her own thoughts to notice this insufficiency. ‘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 I ask it to-day. And mother 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 thought 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 Gray.

‘
Eigh?
' said Mr. Hoopdriver, catching at his moustache. This was an unexpected development.

‘I want to write, you see,' said the Young Lady in Gray, ‘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 position 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.

‘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 step-mother 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.'

‘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 life. 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 wonderful—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 certain 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 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 will tell the world—if need be.'

‘I believe you would,' said Mr. Hoopdriver, admiring her. ‘You're plucky enough—goodness 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 enameled gray?'

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 expectation. But that was the way with everything in Mr. Hoopdriver's experience. And though his Wisdom looked grave within him, and Caution was chinking coins, and an ancient prejudice in favor of Property shook her head, something else was there too, shouting in his mind to drown all these saner consideration, 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 imaginings. 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 shop man introduced to his attention, recommended highly, and sold in the excitement of the occasion.

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 leaving 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 Portsmouth and its cluster of sister towns, the crowded narrows of the harbor, 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 defense 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 harbor shallows, the town of Porchester rose among the trees. Mr. 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 impression 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 certain 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 English 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 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. ‘I 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 thoughtfully. 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 practice any regular profession?'

Mr. Hoopdriver looked into her eyes and saw their quiet unsuspicious regard. He had vague ideas of resuming the detective role. ‘It's like 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, smiling. ‘Which colony was it?'

‘That I don't know.'

‘You must guess,' said Hoopdriver.

‘South Africa,' she said ‘I strongly incline to South Africa.'

‘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 exploring 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 civilization 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 occurred to him with a kind of shock that he was lying.

‘What became of the ostriches?'

‘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 little 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! Do you know, I've never been out of England except to Paris and Mentone and Switzerland.'

‘One gets tired of traveling (
puff
) after a bit, of course.'