“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!”
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 stepmother. 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 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 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 unreasonable 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 everyone 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. “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 himself up to the very edge of the Most Wonderful Day of all. It had begun early, you will remember, 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 stranger, of low extraction and uncertain accent, unchaperoned and unabashed; indeed, now she fancies she is safe, she is, if anything,
