The Wheels of Chance [29]
"Yes--they said they MIGHT be in Midhurst tonight."
"P'raps they'll come presently. Beaumont's here, but no Bowlong. Sure that Beaumont ain't the name?"
"Certain," said Mr. Hoopdriver.
"It's curious the names being so alike. I thought p'raps--"
And so they conversed at some length, Mr. Hoopdriver delighted to find his horrible suspicion disposed of. The barmaid having listened awhile at the staircase volunteered some particulars of the young couple upstairs. Her modesty was much impressed by the young lady's costume, so she intimated, and Mr. Hoopdriver whispered the badinage natural to the occasion, at which she was coquettishly shocked. "There'll be no knowing which is which, in a year or two," said the barmaid. "And her manner too! She got off her machine and give it 'im to stick up against the kerb, and in she marched. 'I and my brother,' says she, 'want to stop here to-night. My brother doesn't mind what kind of room 'e 'as, but I want a room with a good view, if there's one to be got,' says she. He comes hurrying in after and looks at her. 'I've settled the rooms,' she says, and 'e says 'damn!' just like that. I can fancy my brother letting me boss the show like that."
"I dessay you do," said Mr. Hoopdriver, "if the truth was known."
The barmaid looked down, smiled and shook her head, put down the tumbler, polished, and took up another that had been draining, and shook the drops of water into her little zinc sink.
"She'll be a nice little lot to marry," said the barmaid. "She'll be wearing the--well, b-dashes, as the sayin' is. I can't think what girls is comin' to."
This depreciation of the Young Lady in Grey was hardly to Hoopdriver's taste.
"Fashion," said he, taking up his change. "Fashion is all the go with you ladies--and always was. You'll be wearing 'em yourself before a couple of years is out."
"Nice they'd look on my figger," said the barmaid, with a titter. "No--I ain't one of your fashionable sort. Gracious no! I shouldn't feel as if I'd anything on me, not more than if I'd forgot-- Well, there! I'm talking." She put down the glass abruptly. "I dessay I'm old fashioned," she said, and walked humming down the bar.
"Not you," said Mr. Hoopdriver. He waited until he caught her eye, then with his native courtesy smiled, raised his cap, and wished her good evening.
XIX
Then Mr. Hoopdriver returned to the little room with the lead-framed windows where he had dined, and where the bed was now comfortably made, sat down on the box under the window, stared at the moon rising on the shining vicarage roof, and tried to collect his thoughts. How they whirled at first! It was past ten, and most of Midhurst was tucked away in bed, some one up the street was learning the violin, at rare intervals a belated inhabitant hurried home and woke the echoes, and a corncrake kept up a busy churning in the vicarage garden. The sky was deep blue, with a still luminous afterglow along the hlack edge of the hill, and the white moon overhead, save for a couple of yellow stars, had the sky to herself.
At first his thoughts were kinetic, of deeds and not relationships. There was this malefactor, and his victim, and it had fallen on Mr. Hoopdriver to take a hand in the game. HE was married. Did she know he was married? Never for a moment did a thought of evil concerning her cross Hoopdriver's mind. Simple- minded people see questions of morals so much better than superior persons--who have read and thought themselves complex to impotence. He had heard her voice, seen the frank light in her eyes, and she had been weeping--that sufficed. The rights of the case he hadn't properly grasped. But he would. And that smirking- -well, swine was the mildest for him. He recalled the exceedingly unpleasant incident of the railway bridge. "Thin we won't detain yer, thenks," said Mr. Hoopdriver, aloud, in a strange, unnatural, contemptible voice, supposed to represent that of Bechamel. "Oh, the BEGGAR! I'll be level with him yet. He's afraid of us detectives--that I'll SWEAR." (If Mrs. Wardor should chance