by H. G. Wells
CHAPTER II. HOW BERT SMALLWAYS GOT INTO DIFFICULTIES
It did not occur to either Tom or Bert Smallways that this remarkableaerial performance of Mr. Butteridge was likely to affect either oftheir lives in any special manner, that it would in any way single themout from the millions about them; and when they had witnessed it fromthe crest of Bun Hill and seen the fly-like mechanism, its rotatingplanes a golden haze in the sunset, sink humming to the harbour of itsshed again, they turned back towards the sunken green-grocery beneaththe great iron standard of the London to Brighton mono-rail, and theirminds reverted to the discussion that had engaged them before Mr.Butteridge's triumph had come in sight out of the London haze.
It was a difficult and unsuccessful discussions. They had to carry iton in shouts because of the moaning and roaring of the gyroscopicmotor-cars that traversed the High Street, and in its nature it wascontentious and private. The Grubb business was in difficulties, andGrubb in a moment of financial eloquence had given a half-share in itto Bert, whose relations with his employer had been for some timeunsalaried and pallish and informal.
Bert was trying to impress Tom with the idea that the reconstructedGrubb & Smallways offered unprecedented and unparalleled opportunitiesto the judicious small investor. It was coming home to Bert, as thoughit were an entirely new fact, that Tom was singularly impervious toideas. In the end he put the financial issues on one side, and, makingthe thing entirely a matter of fraternal affection, succeeded inborrowing a sovereign on the security of his word of honour.
The firm of Grubb & Smallways, formerly Grubb, had indeed beensingularly unlucky in the last year or so. For many years the businesshad struggled along with a flavour of romantic insecurity in a small,dissolute-looking shop in the High Street, adorned with brilliantlycoloured advertisements of cycles, a display of bells, trouser-clips,oil-cans, pump-clips, frame-cases, wallets, and other accessories, andthe announcement of "Bicycles on Hire," "Repairs," "Free inflation,""Petrol," and similar attractions. They were agents for several obscuremakes of bicycle,--two samples constituted the stock,--and occasionallythey effected a sale; they also repaired punctures and did theirbest--though luck was not always on their side--with any other repairingthat was brought to them. They handled a line of cheap gramophones, anddid a little with musical boxes.
The staple of their business was, however, the letting of bicycles onhire. It was a singular trade, obeying no known commercial or economicprinciples--indeed, no principles. There was a stock of ladies' andgentlemen's bicycles in a state of disrepair that passes description,and these, the hiring stock, were let to unexacting and reckless people,inexpert in the things of this world, at a nominal rate of one shillingfor the first hour and sixpence per hour afterwards. But really therewere no fixed prices, and insistent boys could get bicycles and thethrill of danger for an hour for so low a sum as threepence, providedthey could convince Grubb that that was all they had. The saddle andhandle-bar were then sketchily adjusted by Grubb, a deposit exacted,except in the case of familiar boys, the machine lubricated, and theadventurer started upon his career. Usually he or she came back, but attimes, when the accident was serious, Bert or Grubb had to go out andfetch the machine home. Hire was always charged up to the hour of returnto the shop and deducted from the deposit. It was rare that a bicyclestarted out from their hands in a state of pedantic efficiency. Romanticpossibilities of accident lurked in the worn thread of the screw thatadjusted the saddle, in the precarious pedals, in the loose-knit chain,in the handle-bars, above all in the brakes and tyres. Tappings andclankings and strange rhythmic creakings awoke as the intrepid hirerpedalled out into the country. Then perhaps the bell would jam or abrake fail to act on a hill; or the seat-pillar would get loose, and thesaddle drop three or four inches with a disconcerting bump; or the looseand rattling chain would jump the cogs of the chain-wheel as the machineran downhill, and so bring the mechanism to an abrupt and disastrousstop without at the same time arresting the forward momentum of therider; or a tyre would bang, or sigh quietly, and give up the strugglefor efficiency.
When the hirer returned, a heated pedestrian, Grubb would ignore allverbal complaints, and examine the machine gravely.
"This ain't 'ad fair usage," he used to begin.
He became a mild embodiment of the spirit of reason. "You can't expect abicycle to take you up in its arms and carry you," he used to say. "Yougot to show intelligence. After all--it's machinery."
Sometimes the process of liquidating the consequent claims bordered onviolence. It was always a very rhetorical and often a trying affair, butin these progressive times you have to make a noise to get a living. Itwas often hard work, but nevertheless this hiring was a fairly steadysource of profit, until one day all the panes in the window and doorwere broken and the stock on sale in the window greatly damaged anddisordered by two over-critical hirers with no sense of rhetoricalirrelevance. They were big, coarse stokers from Gravesend. One wasannoyed because his left pedal had come off, and the other because histyre had become deflated, small and indeed negligible accidents by BunHill standards, due entirely to the ungentle handling of the delicatemachines entrusted to them--and they failed to see clearly how they putthemselves in the wrong by this method of argument. It is a poor way ofconvincing a man that he has let you a defective machine to throw hisfoot-pump about his shop, and take his stock of gongs outside in orderto return them through the window-panes. It carried no real convictionto the minds of either Grubb or Bert; it only irritated and vexed them.One quarrel makes many, and this unpleasantness led to a violent disputebetween Grubb and the landlord upon the moral aspects of and legalresponsibility for the consequent re-glazing. In the end Grubb andSmallways were put to the expense of a strategic nocturnal removal toanother position.
It was a position they had long considered. It was a small, shed-likeshop with a plate-glass window and one room behind, just at the sharpbend in the road at the bottom of Bun Hill; and here they struggledalong bravely, in spite of persistent annoyance from their formerlandlord, hoping for certain eventualities the peculiar situation of theshop seemed to promise. Here, too, they were doomed to disappointment.
The High Road from London to Brighton that ran through Bun Hill was likethe British Empire or the British Constitution--a thing that had grownto its present importance. Unlike any other roads in Europe the Britishhigh roads have never been subjected to any organised attempts tograde or straighten them out, and to that no doubt their peculiarpicturesqueness is to be ascribed. The old Bun Hill High Street drops atits end for perhaps eighty or a hundred feet of descent at an angleof one in five, turns at right angles to the left, runs in a curve forabout thirty yards to a brick bridge over the dry ditch that had oncebeen the Otterbourne, and then bends sharply to the right again rounda dense clump of trees and goes on, a simple, straightforward, peacefulhigh road. There had been one or two horse-and-van and bicycle accidentsin the place before the shop Bert and Grubb took was built, and, to befrank, it was the probability of others that attracted them to it.
Its possibilities had come to them first with a humorous flavour.
"Here's one of the places where a chap might get a living by keepinghens," said Grubb.
"You can't get a living by keeping hens," said Bert.
"You'd keep the hen and have it spatch-cocked," said Grubb. "The motorchaps would pay for it."
When they really came to take the place they remembered thisconversation. Hens, however, were out of the question; there was noplace for a run unless they had it in the shop. It would have beenobviously out of place there. The shop was much more modern than theirformer one, and had a plate-glass front. "Sooner or later," said Bert,"we shall get a motor-car through this."
"That's all right," said Grubb. "Compensation. I don't mind when thatmotor-car comes along. I don't mind even if it gives me a shock to thesystem."
"And meanwhile," said Bert, with great artfulness, "I'm going to buymyself a dog."
He did. He bought three in succession
. He surprised the people at theDogs' Home in Battersea by demanding a deaf retriever, and rejectingevery candidate that pricked up its ears. "I want a good, deaf,slow-moving dog," he said. "A dog that doesn't put himself out forthings."
They displayed inconvenient curiosity; they declared a great scarcity ofdeaf dogs.
"You see," they said, "dogs aren't deaf."
"Mine's got to be," said Bert. "I've HAD dogs that aren't deaf. All Iwant. It's like this, you see--I sell gramophones. Naturally I got tomake 'em talk and tootle a bit to show 'em orf. Well, a dog that isn'tdeaf doesn't like it--gets excited, smells round, barks, growls. Thatupsets the customer. See? Then a dog that has his hearing fanciesthings. Makes burglars out of passing tramps. Wants to fight every motorthat makes a whizz. All very well if you want livening up, but our placeis lively enough. I don't want a dog of that sort. I want a quiet dog."
In the end he got three in succession, but none of them turned out well.The first strayed off into the infinite, heeding no appeals; the secondwas killed in the night by a fruit motor-waggon which fled before Grubbcould get down; the third got itself entangled in the front wheel of apassing cyclist, who came through the plate glass, and proved to be anactor out of work and an undischarged bankrupt. He demanded compensationfor some fancied injury, would hear nothing of the valuable dog he hadkilled or the window he had broken, obliged Grubb by sheer physicalobduracy to straighten his buckled front wheel, and pestered thestruggling firm with a series of inhumanly worded solicitor's letters.Grubb answered them--stingingly, and put himself, Bert thought, in thewrong.
Affairs got more and more exasperating and strained under thesepressures. The window was boarded up, and an unpleasant altercationabout their delay in repairing it with the new landlord, a Bun Hillbutcher--and a loud, bellowing, unreasonable person at that--served toremind them of their unsettled troubles with the old. Things were atthis pitch when Bert bethought himself of creating a sort of debenturecapital in the business for the benefit of Tom. But, as I have said,Tom had no enterprise in his composition. His idea of investment was thestocking; he bribed his brother not to keep the offer open.
And then ill-luck made its last lunge at their crumbling business andbrought it to the ground.
2
It is a poor heart that never rejoices, and Whitsuntide had an air ofcoming as an agreeable break in the business complications of Grubb &Smallways. Encouraged by the practical outcome of Bert's negotiationswith his brother, and by the fact that half the hiring-stock wasout from Saturday to Monday, they decided to ignore the residuum ofhiring-trade on Sunday and devote that day to much-needed relaxation andrefreshment--to have, in fact, an unstinted good time, a beano on WhitSunday and return invigorated to grapple with their difficulties andthe Bank Holiday repairs on the Monday. No good thing was ever doneby exhausted and dispirited men. It happened that they had made theacquaintance of two young ladies in employment in Clapham, Miss FlossieBright and Miss Edna Bunthorne, and it was resolved therefore to makea cheerful little cyclist party of four into the heart of Kent, and topicnic and spend an indolent afternoon and evening among the trees andbracken between Ashford and Maidstone.
Miss Bright could ride a bicycle, and a machine was found for her, notamong the hiring stock, but specially, in the sample held for sale. MissBunthorne, whom Bert particularly affected, could not ride, and so withsome difficulty he hired a basket-work trailer from the big business ofWray's in the Clapham Road.
To see our young men, brightly dressed and cigarettes alight, wheelingoff to the rendezvous, Grubb guiding the lady's machine beside him withone skilful hand and Bert teuf-teuffing steadily, was to realise howpluck may triumph even over insolvency. Their landlord, the butcher,said, "Gurr," as they passed, and shouted, "Go it!" in a loud, savagetone to their receding backs.
Much they cared!
The weather was fine, and though they were on their way southward beforenine o'clock, there was already a great multitude of holiday peopleabroad upon the roads. There were quantities of young men and women onbicycles and motor-bicycles, and a majority of gyroscopic motor-carsrunning bicycle-fashion on two wheels, mingled with old-fashionedfour-wheeled traffic. Bank Holiday times always bring out oldstored-away vehicles and odd people; one saw tricars and electricbroughams and dilapidated old racing motors with huge pneumatic tyres.Once our holiday-makers saw a horse and cart, and once a youth riding ablack horse amidst the badinage of the passersby. And there were severalnavigable gas air-ships, not to mention balloons, in the air. It wasall immensely interesting and refreshing after the dark anxieties ofthe shop. Edna wore a brown straw hat with poppies, that suited heradmirably, and sat in the trailer like a queen, and the eight-year-oldmotor-bicycle ran like a thing of yesterday.
Little it seemed to matter to Mr. Bert Smallways that a newspaperplacard proclaimed:-- --------------------------------------- GERMANYDENOUNCES THE MONROE DOCTRINE.
AMBIGUOUS ATTITUDE OF JAPAN.WHAT WILL BRITAIN DO? IS IT WAR?---------------------------------------
This sort of thing was alvays going on, and on holidays one disregardedit as a matter of course. Week-davs, in the slack time after the middaymeal, then perhaps one might worry about the Empire and internationalpolitics; but not on a sunny Sunday, with a pretty girl trailing behindone, and envious cyclists trying to race you. Nor did our young peopleattach any great importance to the flitting suggestions of militaryactivity they glimpsed ever and again. Near Maidstone they came ona string of eleven motor-guns of peculiar construction halted by theroadside, with a number of businesslike engineers grouped about themwatching through field-glasses some sort of entrenchment that was goingon near the crest of the downs. It signified nothing to Bert.
"What's up?" said Edna.
"Oh!--manoeuvres," said Bert.
"Oh! I thought they did them at Easter," said Edna, and troubled nomore.
The last great British war, the Boer war, was over and forgotten, andthe public had lost the fashion of expert military criticism.
Our four young people picnicked cheerfully, and were happy in the mannerof a happiness that was an ancient mode in Nineveh. Eyes were bright,Grubb was funny and almost witty, and Bert achieved epigrams; thehedges were full of honeysuckle and dog-roses; in the woods the distanttoot-toot-toot of the traffic on the dust-hazy high road might have beenno more than the horns of elf-land. They laughed and gossiped and pickedflowers and made love and talked, and the girls smoked cigarettes. Alsothey scuffled playfully. Among other things they talked aeronautics,and how thev would come for a picnic together in Bert's flying-machinebefore ten years were out. The world seemed full of amusingpossibilities that afternoon. They wondered what theirgreat-grandparents would have thought of aeronautics. In the evening,about seven, the party turned homeward, expecting no disaster, and itwas only on the crest of the downs between Wrotham and Kingsdown thatdisaster came.
They had come up the hill in the twilight; Bert was anxious to get asfar as possible before he lit--or attempted to light, for the issuewas a doubtful one--his lamps, and they had scorched past a number ofcyclists, and by a four-wheeled motor-car of the old style lamed by adeflated tyre. Some dust had penetrated Bert's horn, and the result wasa curious, amusing, wheezing sound had got into his "honk, honk." Forthe sake of merriment and glory he was making this sound as much aspossible, and Edna was in fits of laughter in the trailer. They made asort of rushing cheerfulness along the road that affected their fellowtravellers variously, according to their temperaments. She did notice agood lot of bluish, evil-smelling smoke coming from about thebearings between his feet, but she thought this was one of the naturalconcomitants of motor-traction, and troubled no more about it, untilabruptly it burst into a little yellow-tipped flame.
"Bert!" she screamed.
But Bert had put on the brakes with such suddenness that she foundherself involved with his leg as he dismounted. She got to the side ofthe road and hastily readjusted her hat, which had suffered.
"Gaw!" said Bert.
<
br /> He stood for some fatal seconds watching the petrol drip and catch, andthe flame, which was now beginning to smell of enamel as well as oil,spread and grew. His chief idea was the sorrowful one that he had notsold the machine second-hand a year ago, and that he ought to have doneso--a good idea in its way, but not immediately helpful. He turned uponEdna sharply. "Get a lot of wet sand," he said. Then he wheeled themachine a little towards the side of the roadway, and laid it down andlooked about for a supply of wet sand. The flames received this as ahelpful attention, and made the most of it. They seemed to brighten andthe twilight to deepen about them. The road was a flinty road in thechalk country, and ill-provided with sand.
Edna accosted a short, fat cyclist. "We want wet sand," she said, andadded, "our motor's on fire." The short, fat cyclist stared blankly fora moment, then with a helpful cry began to scrabble in the road-grit.Whereupon Bert and Edna also scrabbled in the road-grit. Other cyclistsarrived, dismounted and stood about, and their flame-lit faces expressedsatisfaction, interest, curiosity. "Wet sand," said the short, fat man,scrabbling terribly--"wet sand." One joined him. They threw hard-earnedhandfuls of road-grit upon the flames, which accepted them withenthusiasm.
Grubb arrived, riding hard. He was shouting something. He sprang offand threw his bicycle into the hedge. "Don't throw water on it!" hesaid--"don't throw water on it!" He displayed commanding presence ofmind. He became captain of the occasion. Others were glad to repeat thethings he said and imitate his actions.
"Don't throw water on it!" they cried. Also there was no water.
"Beat it out, you fools!" he said.
He seized a rug from the trailer (it was an Austrian blanket, andBert's winter coverlet) and began to beat at the burning petrol. For awonderful minute he seemed to succeed. But he scattered burning poolsof petrol on the road, and others, fired by his enthusiasm, imitated hisaction. Bert caught up a trailer-cushion and began to beat; there wasanother cushion and a table-cloth, and these also were seized. A younghero pulled off his jacket and joined the beating. For a moment therewas less talking than hard breathing, and a tremendous flapping.Flossie, arriving on the outskirts of the crowd, cried, "Oh, my God!"and burst loudly into tears. "Help!" she said, and "Fire!"
The lame motor-car arrived, and stopped in consternation. A tall,goggled, grey-haired man who was driving inquired with an Oxfordintonation and a clear, careful enunciation, "Can WE help at all?"
It became manifest that the rug, the table-cloth, the cushions, thejacket, were getting smeared with petrol and burning. The soul seemedto go out of the cushion Bert was swaying, and the air was full offeathers, like a snowstorm in the still twilight.
Bert had got very dusty and sweaty and strenuous. It seemed to him hisweapon had been wrested from him at the moment of victory. The fire laylike a dying thing, close to the ground and wicked; it gave a leap ofanguish at every whack of the beaters. But now Grubb had gone off tostamp out the burning blanket; the others were lacking just at themoment of victory. One had dropped the cushion and was running to themotor-car. "'ERE!" cried Bert; "keep on!"
He flung the deflated burning rags of cushion aside, whipped off hisjacket and sprang at the flames with a shout. He stamped into the ruinuntil flames ran up his boots. Edna saw him, a red-lit hero, and thoughtit was good to be a man.
A bystander was hit by a hot halfpenny flying out of the air. Then Bertthought of the papers in his pockets, and staggered back, trying toextinguish his burning jacket--checked, repulsed, dismayed.
Edna was struck by the benevolent appearance of an elderly spectator ina silk hat and Sabbatical garments. "Oh!" she cried to him. "Help thisyoung man! How can you stand and see it?"
A cry of "The tarpaulin!" arose.
An earnest-looking man in a very light grey cycling-suit had suddenlyappeared at the side of the lame motor-car and addressed the owner."Have you a tarpaulin?" he said.
"Yes," said the gentlemanly man. "Yes. We've got a tarpaulin."
"That's it," said the earnest-looking man, suddenly shouting. "Let'shave it, quick!"
The gentlemanly man, with feeble and deprecatory gestures, and in themanner of a hypnotised person, produced an excellent large tarpaulin.
"Here!" cried the earnest-looking man to Grubb. "Ketch holt!"
Then everybody realised that a new method was to be tried. A number ofwilling hands seized upon the Oxford gentleman's tarpaulin. The othersstood away with approving noises. The tarpaulin was held over theburning bicycle like a canopy, and then smothered down upon it.
"We ought to have done this before," panted Grubb.
There was a moment of triumph. The flames vanished. Every one who couldcontrive to do so touched the edge of the tarpaulin. Bert held downa corner with two hands and a foot. The tarpaulin, bulged up in thecentre, seemed to be suppressing triumphant exultation. Then itsself-approval became too much for it; it burst into a bright red smilein the centre. It was exactly like the opening of a mouth. It laughedwith a gust of flames. They were reflected redly in the observantgoggles of the gentleman who owned the tarpaulin. Everybody recoiled.
"Save the trailer!" cried some one, and that was the last round inthe battle. But the trailer could not be detached; its wicker-work hadcaught, and it was the last thing to burn. A sort of hush fell uponthe gathering. The petrol burnt low, the wicker-work trailer bangedand crackled. The crowd divided itself into an outer circle of critics,advisers, and secondary characters, who had played undistinguished partsor no parts at all in the affair, and a central group of heatedand distressed principals. A young man with an inquiring mind and aconsiderable knowledge of motor-bicycles fixed on to Grubb and wantedto argue that the thing could not have happened. Grubb wass short andinattentive with him, and the young man withdrew to the back of thecrowd, and there told the benevolent old gentleman in the silk hatthat people who went out with machines they didn't understand had onlythemselves to blame if things went wrong.
The old gentleman let him talk for some time, and then remarked, in atone of rapturous enjoyment: "Stone deaf," and added, "Nasty things."
A rosy-faced man in a straw hat claimed attention. "I DID save the frontwheel," he said; "you'd have had that tyre catch, too, if I hadn't keptturning it round." It became manifest that this was so. The front wheelhad retained its tyre, was intact, was still rotating slowly among theblackened and twisted ruins of the rest of the machine. It had somethingof that air of conscious virtue, of unimpeachable respectability, thatdistinguishes a rent collector in a low neighbourhood. "That wheel'sworth a pound," said the rosy-faced man, making a song of it. "I kep'turning it round."
Newcomers kept arriving from the south with the question, "What's up?"until it got on Grubb's nerves. Londonward the crowd was constantlylosing people; they would mount their various wheels with the satisfiedmanner of spectators who have had the best. Their voices would recedeinto the twilight; one would hear a laugh at the memory of thisparticularly salient incident or that.
"I'm afraid," said the gentleman of the motor-car, "my tarpaulin's a bitdone for."
Grubb admitted that the owner was the best judge of that.
"Nothin, else I can do for you?" said the gentleman of the motor-car, itmay be with a suspicion of irony.
Bert was roused to action. "Look here," he said. "There's my young lady.If she ain't 'ome by ten they lock her out. See? Well, all my money wasin my jacket pocket, and it's all mixed up with the burnt stuff, andthat's too 'ot to touch. Is Clapham out of your way?"
"All in the day's work," said the gentleman with the motor-car, andturned to Edna. "Very pleased indeed," he said, "if you'll come with us.We're late for dinner as it is, so it won't make much difference for usto go home by way of Clapham. We've got to get to Surbiton, anyhow. I'mafraid you'll find us a little slow."
"But what's Bert going to do?" said Edna.
"I don't know that we can accommodate Bert," said the motor-cargentleman, "though we're tremendously anxious to oblige."
"You couldn't take the whole l
ot?" said Bert, waving his hand at thedeboshed and blackened ruins on the ground.
"I'm awfully afraid I can't," said the Oxford man. "Awfully sorry, youknow."
"Then I'll have to stick 'ere for a bit," said Bert. "I got to see thething through. You go on, Edna."
"Don't like leavin' you, Bert."
"You can't 'elp it, Edna."...
The last Edna saw of Bert was his figure, in charred and blackenedshirtsleeves, standing in the dusk. He was musing deeply by the mixedironwork and ashes of his vanished motor-bicycle, a melancholy figure.His retinue of spectators had shrunk now to half a dozen figures.Flossie and Grubb were preparing to follow her desertion.
"Cheer up, old Bert!" cried Edna, with artificial cheerfulness. "Solong."
"So long, Edna," said Bert.
"See you to-morrer."
"See you to-morrer," said Bert, though he was destined, as a matter offact, to see much of the habitable globe before he saw her again.
Bert began to light matches from a borrowed boxful, and search for ahalf-crown that still eluded him among the charred remains.
His face was grave and melancholy.
"I WISH that 'adn't 'appened," said Flossie, riding on with Grubb....
And at last Bert was left almost alone, a sad, blackened Prometheanfigure, cursed by the gift of fire. He had entertained vague ideas ofhiring a cart, of achieving miraculous repairs, of still snatching someresidual value from his one chief possession. Now, in the darkeningnight, he perceived the vanity of such intentions. Truth came to himbleakly, and laid her chill conviction upon him. He took hold of thehandle-bar, stood the thing up, tried to push it forward. The tyrelesshind-wheel was jammed hopelessly, even as he feared. For a minute or sohe stood upholding his machine, a motionless despair. Then with a greateffort he thrust the ruins from him into the ditch, kicked at it once,regarded it for a moment, and turned his face resolutely Londonward.
He did not once look back.
"That's the end of THAT game!" said Bert. "No more teuf-teuf-teuf forBert Smallways for a year or two. Good-bye 'olidays!... Oh! I ought to'ave sold the blasted thing when I had a chance three years ago."
3
The next morning found the firm of Grubb & Smallways in a stateof profound despondency. It seemed a small matter to them that thenewspaper and cigarette shop opposite displayed such placards as this:--
--------------------------------------- REPORTED AMERICAN ULTIMATUM.
BRITAIN MUST FIGHT.
OUR INFATUATED WAR OFFICE STILLREFUSES TO LISTEN TO MR. BUTTERIDGE.
GREAT MONO-RAIL DISASTER ATTIMBUCTOO.---------------------------------------
or this:-- --------------------------------------- WAR A QUESTION OFHOURS.
NEW YORK CALM.
EXCITEMENT IN BERLIN.---------------------------------------
or again:-- --------------------------------------- WASHINGTON STILLSILENT.
WHAT WILL PARIS DO?
THE PANIC ON THE BOURSE.
THE KING'S GARDEN PARTY TO THE MASKED TWAREGS.
MR. BUTTERIDGE TAKES AN OFFER.
LATEST BETTING FROM TEHERAN.---------------------------------------
or this:-- --------------------------------------- WILL AMERICA FIGHT?
ANTI-GERMAN RIOT IN BAGDAD.
THE MUNICIPAL SCANDALS AT DAMASCUS.
MR. BUTTERIDGE'S INVENTION FORAMERICA.---------------------------------------
Bert stared at these over the card of pump-clips in the pane in thedoor with unseeing eyes. He wore a blackened flannel shirt, and thejacketless ruins of the holiday suit of yesterday. The boarded-up shopwas dark and depressing beyond words, the few scandalous hiring machineshad never looked so hopelessly disreputable. He thought of their fellowswho were "out," and of the approaching disputations of the afternoon. Hethought of their new landlord, and of their old landlord, and of billsand claims. Life presented itself for the first time as a hopeless fightagainst fate....
"Grubb, o' man," he said, distilling the quintessence, "I'm fair sick ofthis shop."
"So'm I," said Grubb.
"I'm out of conceit with it. I don't seem to care ever to speak to acustomer again."
"There's that trailer," said Grubb, after a pause.
"Blow the trailer!" said Bert. "Anyhow, I didn't leave a deposit on it.I didn't do that. Still--"
He turned round on his friend. "Look 'ere," he said, "we aren't gettin'on here. We been losing money hand over fist. We got things tied up infifty knots."
"What can we do?" said Grubb.
"Clear out. Sell what we can for what it will fetch, and quit. See?It's no good 'anging on to a losing concern. No sort of good. Jestfoolishness."
"That's all right," said Grubb--"that's all right; but it ain't yourcapital been sunk in it."
"No need for us to sink after our capital," said Bert, ignoring thepoint.
"I'm not going to be held responsible for that trailer, anyhow. Thatain't my affair."
"Nobody arst you to make it your affair. If you like to stick on here,well and good. I'm quitting. I'll see Bank Holiday through, and then I'mO-R-P-H. See?"
"Leavin' me?"
"Leavin' you. If you must be left."
Grubb looked round the shop. It certainly had become distasteful. Onceupon a time it had been bright with hope and new beginnings and stockand the prospect of credit. Now--now it was failure and dust. Verylikely the landlord would be round presently to go on with the row aboutthe window.... "Where d'you think of going, Bert?" Grubb asked.
Bert turned round and regarded him. "I thought it out as I was walking'ome, and in bed. I couldn't sleep a wink."
"What did you think out?"
"Plans."
"What plans?"
"Oh! You're for stickin, here."
"Not if anything better was to offer."
"It's only an ideer," said Bert.
"You made the girls laugh yestiday, that song you sang."
"Seems a long time ago now," said Grubb.
"And old Edna nearly cried--over that bit of mine."
"She got a fly in her eye," said Grubb; "I saw it. But what's this gotto do with your plan?"
"No end," said Bert.
"'Ow?"
"Don't you see?"
"Not singing in the streets?"
"Streets! No fear! But 'ow about the Tour of the Waterin' Places ofEngland, Grubb? Singing! Young men of family doing it for a lark? Youain't got a bad voice, you know, and mine's all right. I never see achap singing on the beach yet that I couldn't 'ave sung into a cockedhat. And we both know how to put on the toff a bit. Eh? Well, that's myideer. Me and you, Grubb, with a refined song and a breakdown. Like wewas doing for foolery yestiday. That was what put it into my 'ead. Easymake up a programme--easy. Six choice items, and one or two for encoresand patter. I'm all right for the patter anyhow."
Grubb remained regarding his darkened and disheartening shop; he thoughtof his former landlord and his present landlord, and of the generaldisgustingness of business in an age which re-echoes to The Bitter Cryof the Middle Class; and then it seemed to him that afar off he heardthe twankle, twankle of a banjo, and the voice of a stranded sirensinging. He had a sense of hot sunshine upon sand, of the children of atleast transiently opulent holiday makers in a circle round about him, ofthe whisper, "They are really gentlemen," and then dollop, dollop camethe coppers in the hat. Sometimes even silver. It was all income; nooutgoings, no bills. "I'm on, Bert," he said.
"Right O!" said Bert, and, "Now we shan't be long."
"We needn't start without capital neither," said Grubb. "If we take thebest of these machines up to the Bicycle Mart in Finsbury we'd raise sixor seven pounds on 'em. We could easy do that to-morrow before anybodymuch was about...."
"Nice to think of old Suet-and-Bones coming round to make his usual rowwith us, and finding a card up 'Closed for Repairs.'"
"We'll do that," said Grubb with zest--"we'll do that. And we'll putup anot
her notice, and jest arst all inquirers to go round to 'im andinquire. See? Then they'll know all about us."
Before the day was out the whole enterprise was planned. They decided atfirst that they would call themselves the Naval Mr. O's, a plagiarism,and not perhaps a very good one, from the title of the well-known troupeof "Scarlet Mr. E's," and Bert rather clung to the idea of a uniform ofbright blue serge, with a lot of gold lace and cord and ornamentation,rather like a naval officer's, but more so. But that had to be abandonedas impracticable, it would have taken too much time and money toprepare. They perceived they must wear some cheaper and more readilyprepared costume, and Grubb fell back on white dominoes. Theyentertained the notion for a time of selecting the two worst machinesfrom the hiring-stock, painting them over with crimson enamel paint,replacing the bells by the loudest sort of motor-horn, and doing a rideabout to begin and end the entertainment. They doubted the advisabilityof this step.
"There's people in the world," said Bert, "who wouldn't recognise us,who'd know them bicycles again like a shot, and we don't want to go onwith no old stories. We want a fresh start."
"I do," said Grubb, "badly."
"We want to forget things--and cut all these rotten old worries. Theyain't doin' us good."
Nevertheless, they decided to take the risk of these bicycles, and theydecided their costumes should be brown stockings and sandals, and cheapunbleached sheets with a hole cut in the middle, and wigs and beards oftow. The rest their normal selves! "The Desert Dervishes," they wouldcall themselves, and their chief songs would be those popular ditties,"In my Trailer," and "What Price Hair-pins Now?"
They decided to begin with small seaside places, and gradually, as theygained confidence, attack larger centres. To begin with they selectedLittlestone in Kent, chiefly because of its unassuming name.
So they planned, and it seemed a small and unimportant thing to themthat as they clattered the governments of half the world and more weredrifting into war. About midday they became aware of the first ofthe evening-paper placards shouting to them across the street:-------------------------------------------------
THE WAR-CLOUD DARKENS-----------------------------------------------
Nothing else but that.
"Always rottin' about war now," said Bert.
"They'll get it in the neck in real earnest one of these days, if theyain't precious careful."
4
So you will understand the sudden apparition that surprised rather thandelighted the quiet informality of Dymchurch sands. Dymchurch was one ofthe last places on the coast of England to be reached by the mono-rail,and so its spacious sands were still, at the time of this story, thesecret and delight of quite a limited number of people. They went thereto flee vulgarity and extravagances, and to bathe and sit and talk andplay with their children in peace, and the Desert Dervishes did notplease them at all.
The two white figures on scarlet wheels came upon them out of theinfinite along the sands from Littlestone, grew nearer and larger andmore audible, honk-honking and emitting weird cries, and generallythreatening liveliness of the most aggressive type. "Good heavens!" saidDymchurch, "what's this?"
Then our young men, according to a preconcerted plan, wheeled round fromfile to line, dismounted and stood it attention. "Ladies and gentlemen,"they said, "we beg to present ourselves--the Desert Dervishes." Theybowed profoundly.
The few scattered groups upon the beach regarded them with horror forthe most part, but some of the children and young people were interestedand drew nearer. "There ain't a bob on the beach," said Grubb in anundertone, and the Desert Dervishes plied their bicycles with comic"business," that got a laugh from one very unsophisticated little boy.Then they took a deep breath and struck into the cheerful strain of"What Price Hair-pins Now?" Grubb sang the song, Bert did his best tomake the chorus a rousing one, and it the end of each verse they dancedcertain steps, skirts in hand, that they had carefully rehearsed.
"Ting-a-ling-a-ting-a-ling-a-ting-a-ling-a-tang... What Price Hair-pins Now?"
So they chanted and danced their steps in the sunshine on Dymchurchbeach, and the children drew near these foolish young men, marvellingthat they should behave in this way, and the older people looked coldand unfriendly.
All round the coasts of Europe that morning banjos were ringing,voices were bawling and singing, children were playing in the sun,pleasure-boats went to and fro; the common abundant life of the time,unsuspicious of all dangers that gathered darkly against it, flowedon its cheerful aimless way. In the cities men fussed about theirbusinesses and engagements. The newspaper placards that had cried"wolf!" so often, cried "wolf!" now in vain.
5
Now as Bert and Grubb bawled their chorus for the third time, theybecame aware of a very big, golden-brown balloon low in the sky to thenorth-west, and coming rapidly towards them. "Jest as we're gettin' holdof 'em," muttered Grubb, "up comes a counter-attraction. Go it, Bert!"
"Ting-a-ling-a-ting-a-ling-a-ting-a-ling-a-tang What Price Hair-pins Now?"
The balloon rose and fell, went out of sight--"landed, thank goodness,"said Grubb--re-appeared with a leap. "'ENG!" said Grubb. "Step it, Bert,or they'll see it!"
They finished their dance, and then stood frankly staring.
"There's something wrong with that balloon," said Bert.
Everybody now was looking at the balloon, drawing rapidly nearer beforea brisk north-westerly breeze. The song and dance were a "dead frost."Nobody thought any more about it. Even Bert and Grubb forgot it, andignored the next item on the programme altogether. The balloon wasbumping as though its occupants were trying to land; it would approach,sinking slowly, touch the ground, and instantly jump fifty feet or so inthe air and immediately begin to fall again. Its car touched a clump oftrees, and the black figure that had been struggling in the ropes fellback, or jumped back, into the car. In another moment it was quiteclose. It seemed a huge affair, as big as a house, and it floated downswiftly towards the sands; a long rope trailed behind it, and enormousshouts came from the man in the car. He seemed to be taking off hisclothes, then his head came over the side of the car. "Catch hold of therope!" they heard, quite plain.
"Salvage, Bert!" cried Grubb, and started to head off the rope.
Bert followed him, and collided, without upsetting, with a fishermanbent upon a similar errand. A woman carrying a baby in her arms, twosmall boys with toy spades, and a stout gentleman in flannels all got tothe trailing rope at about the same time, and began to dance over itin their attempts to secure it. Bert came up to this wriggling, elusiveserpent and got his foot on it, went down on all fours and achieved agrip. In half a dozen seconds the whole diffused population of the beachhad, as it were, crystallised on the rope, and was pulling against theballoon under the vehement and stimulating directions of the man in thecar. "Pull, I tell you!" said the man in the car--"pull!"
For a second or so the balloon obeyed its momentum and the wind andtugged its human anchor seaward. It dropped, touched the water, and madea flat, silvery splash, and recoiled as one's finger recoils when onetouches anything hot. "Pull her in," said the man in the car. "SHE'SFAINTED!"
He occupied himself with some unseen object while the people on therope pulled him in. Bert was nearest the balloon, and much excited andinterested. He kept stumbling over the tail of the Dervish costume inhis zeal. He had never imagined before what a big, light, wallowingthing a balloon was. The car was of brown coarse wicker-work,and comparatively small. The rope he tugged at was fastened to astout-looking ring, four or five feet above the car. At each tug he drewin a yard or so of rope, and the waggling wicker-work was drawn so muchnearer. Out of the car came wrathful bellowings: "Fainted, she has!" andthen: "It's her heart--broken with all she's had to go through."
The balloon ceased to struggle, and sank downward. Bert dropped therope, and ran forward to catch it in a new place. In another moment hehad his hand on the car. "Lay hold of it," said the man in the car, andhis face appeared close to Be
rt's--a strangely familiar face, fierceeyebrows, a flattish nose, a huge black moustache. He had discarded coatand waistcoat--perhaps with some idea of presently having to swim forhis life--and his black hair was extraordinarily disordered. "Willall you people get hold round the car?" he said. "There's a lady herefainted--or got failure of the heart. Heaven alone knows which! My nameis Butteridge. Butteridge, my name is--in a balloon. Now please, allon to the edge. This is the last time I trust myself to one of thesepaleolithic contrivances. The ripping-cord failed, and the valvewouldn't act. If ever I meet the scoundrel who ought to have seen--"
He stuck his head out between the ropes abruptly, and said, in a noteof earnest expostulation: "Get some brandy!--some neat brandy!" Some onewent up the beach for it.
In the car, sprawling upon a sort of bed-bench, in an attitude ofelaborate self-abandonment, was a large, blond lady, wearing a furcoat and a big floriferous hat. Her head lolled back against the paddedcorner of the car, and her eyes were shut and her mouth open. "Me dear!"said Mr. Butteridge, in a common, loud voice, "we're safe!"
She gave no sign.
"Me dear!" said Mr. Butteridge, in a greatly intensified loud voice,"we're safe!"
She was still quite impassive.
Then Mr. Butteridge showed the fiery core of his soul. "If she isdead," he said, slowly lifting a fist towards the balloon above him,and speaking in an immense tremulous bellow--"if she is dead, I willr-r-rend the heavens like a garment! I must get her out," he cried, hisnostrils dilated with emotion--"I must get her out. I cannot have herdie in a wicker-work basket nine feet square--she who was made forkings' palaces! Keep holt of this car! Is there a strong man among ye totake her if I hand her out?"
He swept the lady together by a powerful movement of his arms, andlifted her. "Keep the car from jumping," he said to those who clusteredabout him. "Keep your weight on it. She is no light woman, and when sheis out of it--it will be relieved."
Bert leapt lightly into a sitting position on the edge of the car. Theothers took a firmer grip upon the ropes and ring.
"Are you ready?" said Mr. Butteridge.
He stood upon the bed-bench and lifted the lady carefully. Then he satdown on the wicker edge opposite to Bert, and put one leg over to dangleoutside. A rope or so seemed to incommode him. "Will some one assistme?" he said. "If they would take this lady?"
It was just at this moment, with Mr. Butteridge and the lady balancedfinely on the basket brim, that she came-to. She came-to suddenly andviolently with a loud, heart-rending cry of "Alfred! Save me!" And shewaved her arms searchingly, and then clasped Mr. Butteridge about.
It seemed to Bert that the car swayed for a moment and then buck-jumpedand kicked him. Also he saw the boots of the lady and the right leg ofthe gentleman describing arcs through the air, preparatory to vanishingover the side of the car. His impressions were complex, but they alsocomprehended the fact that he had lost his balance, and was going tostand on his head inside this creaking basket. He spread out clutchingarms. He did stand on his head, more or less, his tow-beard came offand got in his mouth, and his cheek slid along against padding. His noseburied itself in a bag of sand. The car gave a violent lurch, and becamestill.
"Confound it!" he said.
He had an impression he must be stunned because of a surging in hisears, and because all the voices of the people about him had becomesmall and remote. They were shouting like elves inside a hill.
He found it a little difficult to get on his feet. His limbs were mixedup with the garments Mr. Butteridge had discarded when that gentlemanhad thought he must needs plunge into the sea. Bert bawled out halfangry, half rueful, "You might have said you were going to tipthe basket." Then he stood up and clutched the ropes of the carconvulsively.
Below him, far below him, shining blue, were the waters of the EnglishChannel. Far off, a little thing in the sunshine, and rushing down as ifsome one was bending it hollow, was the beach and the irregular clusterof houses that constitutes Dymchurch. He could see the little crowd ofpeople he had so abruptly left. Grubb, in the white wrapper of a DesertDervish, was running along the edge of the sea. Mr. Butteridge wasknee-deep in the water, bawling immensely. The lady was sitting up withher floriferous hat in her lap, shockingly neglected. The beach, eastand west, was dotted with little people--they seemed all heads andfeet--looking up. And the balloon, released from the twenty-five stoneor so of Mr. Butteridge and his lady, was rushing up into the sky at thepace of a racing motor-car. "My crikey!" said Bert; "here's a go!"
He looked down with a pinched face at the receding beach, and reflectedthat he wasn't giddy; then he made a superficial survey of the cords andropes about him with a vague idea of "doing something." "I'm not goingto mess about with the thing," he said at last, and sat down upon themattress. "I'm not going to touch it.... I wonder what one ought to do?"
Soon he got up again and stared for a long time it the sinking worldbelow, at white cliffs to the east and flattening marsh to the left, ata minute wide prospect of weald and downland, at dim towns and harboursand rivers and ribbon-like roads, at ships and ships, decks andforeshortened funnels upon the ever-widening sea, and at the greatmono-rail bridge that straddled the Channel from Folkestone to Boulogne,until at last, first little wisps and then a veil of filmy cloud hid theprospect from his eyes. He wasn't at all giddy nor very much frightened,only in a state of enormous consternation.
