Part 27

“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—”

“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.