CHAPTER XXIIAN INTERLUDE
Simms in his electric brougham passed through the gas-lit streets in the direction of the Strand, glancing at the night pageant of London, but seeing nothing.
I love to linger over Simms, but what pages of description could adequately describe him; buxom, sedate, plump and soothing, with the appearance of having been born and bred in a frock-coat, above all things discreet; you can fancy him stepping out of his brougham, passing into the hall of the hotel and presenting his card to the clerk with a request for an interview with the manager. The manager being away, his deputy supplied his place.
“Yes, an American gentleman of the name of Jones had stayed in the hotel and on the night of the first of June had met with ‘an accident’ on the underground railway. The police had taken charge of the business. What address had he given when booking his room? An address in Philadelphia. Walnut Street, Philadelphia.”
“Thanks,” said Simms, “I came to enquire because a patient of mine fancied, seeing the report, that it might be a relative. She must have been mistaken,for her relative resides in the city of New York. Thank you—quite so—good evening.”
In the hall Simms hesitated for a moment, then he asked a page boy for the American bar, found it and ordered a glass of soda water.
There were only one or two men in the bar and as Simms paid for his drink he had a word with the bar tender.
“Did he remember some days ago seeing two gentlemen in the bar who were very much alike?”
The bar tender did, and as an indication how in huge hotels dramatic happenings may pass unknown to the staff not immediately concerned, he had never connected Jones with the American gentleman of whose unhappy demise he had read in the papers.
He was quite free in his talk. The likeness had struck him forcibly, never seen two gentlemen so like one another, dressed differently, but still like. His assistant had seen them too.
“Quite so,” said Simms; “they are friends of mine and I hoped to see them again here this evening—perhaps they are waiting in the lounge.”
He finished his soda water and walked off. He sought the telephone office and rang up Curzon Street.
The Duke of Melford had dined at home but had gone out. He was at the Buffs’ Club in Piccadilly.
Simms drove to the Club.
The Duke was in the library.
His Grace had literary leanings. His “History of the Siege of Bundlecund,” of which seven hundred copies of the first edition remained unsold, had notdeterred him from attempting the “Siege of Jutjutpore.” He wrote a good deal in the library of the club, and to-night he was in the act of taking down some notes on the character of Fooze Ali, the leader of the besiegers, when Simms was announced.
The library was deserted by all save the historian, and getting together into a cosy corner, the two men talked.
“Your Grace,” said Simms, “we have made a mistake. Your nephew is dead and that man we have placed with Dr. Hoover is what he announced himself to be.”
“What! What! What!” cried the Duke.
“There can be no doubt at all,” said Simms. “I have made enquiries.”
He gave details. The Duke listened, his narrow brain incensed at this monstrous statement that had suddenly risen up to confront it.
“I don’t believe a word of it,” said he, when the recital was over, “and what’s more, I won’t believe it. Do you mean to tell me I don’t know my own nephew?”
“It’s not a question of that,” said Simms. “It’s just a question of the facts of the case. There is no doubt at all that a man exactly like the late—your nephew, in fact, stayed at this hotel, that he there met the—your nephew. There is no doubt that this man gave the address to the hotel people he gave to us, and there is no doubt in my mind that he could make out a very good case if he were free. That there would be a very great scandal—a world scandal. Even ifhe were not to prove his case, the character of—your nephew—would be held up for inspection. Then again, he would have very powerful backers. Now you told me of this man Mulhausen. How would that property stand were this man to prove his claim and prove that Lord Rochester was dead when the transfer of the property was made to him? I am not thinking of my reputation,” finished the ingenuous Simms, “but of your interests, and I tell you quite plainly, your Grace, that were this man to escape we would all be in a very unpleasant predicament.”
“Well, he won’t escape,” said the Duke. “I’ll see to that.”
“Quite so, but there is another matter. The Commissioners in Lunacy.”
“Well, what about them?”
“It is the habit of the Commissioners to visit every establishment registered under the act and unfortunately, they are men—I mean of course that, fortunately, they are men of the most absolute probity, but given to over-riding, sometimes, the considered opinion of those in close touch with the cases they are brought in contact with. They would undoubtedly make strict enquiries into the truth of the story that Lord Rochester has just put up, and the result—I can quite see it—would drift us into one of thoseexposés, those painful and interminable lawsuits, destructive alike to property, to dignity, and that ease of mind inseparable from health and the enjoyment of those positions to which my labours and your Grace’s lineage entitle us.”
“Damn the Commissioners,” suddenly broke out his Grace. “Do you mean to say they would doubt my word?”
“Unfortunately, it is not a question of that,” said Simms. “It is a question of what they call the liberty of the subject.”
“Damn the liberty of the subject—liberty of the subject. When a man’s mad what right has he to liberty—liberty to cut people’s throats maybe. Look at that fool Arthur, liberty! Look at the use he made of his liberty when he had it. Look what he did to Langwathby: sent a telegram leading him to believe that his wife had broken out again—you know how she drinks—and had been gaoled in Carlisle. And the thing was so artfully constructed, it said almost nothing. You couldn’t touch him on it. Simply said, ‘Go at once to police court Carlisle.’ See the art of it? Never mentioned the woman’s name. There was no libel. Langwathby, to prosecute, would have to explain all about his wife. He went. What happened! You know his temper. He went to Langwathby Castle before going to the police court, and the first person he saw was his wife. Before all the servants. Before all the servants, mind you, he said to her, ‘So they have let you out of prison and now you’d better get out of my house.’ You know her temper. Before all the servants. Before all the servants, mind you, she accused him of that disgraceful affair in Pont Street when he was turned out in his pyjamas—and they half ripped off him—by Lord Tango’s brother. Tango never knew anything of it.Never would, but he knows now, for Lucy Jerningham was at Langwathby when the scene occurred and she’s told him. The result is poor Langwathby will find himself in the D. C. Liberty! What right has a man like that to talk of liberty?”
“Quite so,” said Simms, utterly despairing of pressing home the truth of the horrible situation upon this brain in blinkers. “Quiteso. But facts are facts and the fact remains that this man—I mean—er—Lord Rochester, possesses on your own shewing great craft and subtlety. And he will use that with the Commissioners in Lunacy when they call.”
“When do they call?”
“Ah, that’s just it. They visit asylums and registered houses at their own will, and the element of surprise is one of their methods. They may arrive at Hoover’s any time. I say, literally, any time. Sometimes they arrive at a house in the middle of the night; they may leave an asylum unvisited for a month and then come twice in one week, and they hold everyone concerned literally in the hollows of their hands. If denied admittance they would not hesitate to break the doors down. Their power is absolute.”
“But, good God, sir,” cried the Duke, “what you tell me is monstrous. It’s un-English. Break into a man’s house, spy upon him in the middle of the night! Why, such powers vested in a body of men make for terrorisation. This must be seen to. I will speak about it in the House.”
“Quite so, but, meanwhile, there is the danger, and it must be faced.”
“I’ll take him away from Hoover’s.”
“Ah,” said Simms.
“I’ll put him somewhere where these fellows won’t be able to interfere. How about my place at Skibo?”
Simms shook his head.
“He is under a certificate,” said he. “The Commissioners call at Hoover’s, inspect the books, find that Lord Rochester has been there, find him gone, find you have taken him away. They will simply call upon you to produce him.”
“How about my yacht?” asked the other.
“A long sea voyage for his health?”
“Ah,” said Simms, “that’s better, but voyages come to an end.”
“How about my villa at Naples? Properly looked after there he will be safe enough.”
“Of course,” said Simms, “that will mean he will always have to be there—always.”
“Of course, always. D’you think now I have got him in safety I will let him out?”
Simms sighed. The business was drifting into very dangerous waters. He knew for a matter of fact and also by intuition that Jones was Jones and that Rochester was dead and his unfortunate position was like this:
1. If Jones escaped from Hoover’s unsoothed and furious he might find his way to the American Consul or,horror!to some newspaper office. Then the band would begin to play.
2. If Jones were transferred on board the Duke’s yacht and sequestrated, the matter at once becamecriminal, and the prospect of long years of mental distress and dread lest the agile Jones should break free stood before him like a nightmare.
3. It was impossible to make the Duke believe that Jones was Jones and that Rochester was dead.
The only thing to be done was to release Jones, soothe him, bribe him and implore of him to get back to America as quick as possible.
This being clear before the mind of Simms, he at once proceeded to act.
“It is not so much the question of your letting him out,” he said, “as of his escaping. And now I must say this. My professional reputation is at stake and I must ask you to come with me to Curzon Street and put the whole matter before the family. I wish to have a full consultation.”
The Duke demurred for a moment. Then he agreed and the two men left the club.
At Curzon Street they found the Dowager Countess and Venetia Birdbrook about to retire for the night. Teresa, Countess of Rochester, had already retired, and, though invited to the conference, refused to leave her room.
Then, in the drawing-room with closed doors, Simms, relying on the intelligence of the women as a support, began, for the second time, his tale.
He convinced the women, and by one o’clock in the morning, still standing by his guns after the fashion of the defenders of Bundlecund, the Duke had toconfess that he had no more ammunition. Surrendered in fact.
“But what is to be done?” asked the distracted mother of the defunct. “What will this terrible man do if we release him?”
“Do,” shouted the Duke. “Do—why the impostor may well ask what will we do to him.”
“We can do nothing,” said Venetia. “How can we? How can we expose all this before the servants—and the public? It is all entirely Teresa’s fault. If she had treated Arthur properly none of this would ever have happened. She laughed and made light of his wickedness, she—”
“Quite so,” said Simms, “but, my dear lady, what we have to think of now is the man, Jones. We must remember that whilst being an extremely astute person, inasmuch as he recovered for you that large property from the man Mulhausen, he seems honest. Indeed, yes, it is quite evident that he is honest. I would suggest his release to-morrow and the tendering to him of an adequate sum, say one thousand pounds, on the condition that he retires to the States. Then, later, we can think of some means to account for the demise of the late Earl of Rochester or simply leave it that he has disappeared.”
The rest of this weird conclave remains unreported, Simms, however, carrying his point and departing next day, after having seen his patients, for Sandbourne-on-Sea, where he arrived late in the afternoon.
When the hired fly that carried him from SandbourneStation arrived at the Hoover establishment, it found the gate wide open, and at the gate one of the attendants standing in an expectant attitude glancing up and down the road as though he were looking for something, or waiting for somebody.
CHAPTER XXIIISMITHERS
Hoover, leading the way downstairs, shewed Jones the billiard-room on the first floor, the dining-room, the smoke-room. All pleasant places, with windows opening on the gardens. Then he introduced him to some gentlemen. To Colonel Hawker, just come in from an after breakfast game of croquet, to Major Barstowe, and to a young man with no chin to speak of, named Smithers. There were several others, very quiet people, the three mentioned are enough for consideration.
Colonel Hawker and Major Barstowe were having an argument in the smoking-room when Hoover and Jones entered.
“I did not say I did not believe you,” said Barstowe, “I said it was strange.”
“Strange,” cried the Colonel, “what do you mean by strange—it’s not the word I object to, it’s the tone you spoke in.”
“What’s the dispute?” asked Hoover.
“Why,” said Barstowe, “the Colonel was telling me he had seen pigs in Burmah sixteen feet long, and sunflowers twenty feet in diameter.”
“Oh, that story,” said Hoover; “yes, there’s nothing strange in that.”
“I’ll knock any man down that doubts my word,” said the Colonel, “that’s flat.”
Hoover laughed, Jones shivered.
Then the disputants went out to play another game of croquet, and Jones, picking up with Smithers, played a game of billiards, Hoover going off and leaving them alone.
After playing for about five minutes, Smithers, who had maintained an uncanny silence, broke off the game.
“Let’s play something better than this,” said he. “Did you know I was rich?”
“No,” said Jones.
“Well, I’m very rich—Look here,” he took five sovereigns from his pocket and shewed them with pride. “I play pitch and toss with these,” said he. “Hoover doesn’t mind so long as I don’t lose them. Pitch and toss with sovereigns is fine fun, let’s have a game?”
Jones agreed.
They sat on the divan and played pitch and toss. At the end of ten minutes, Jones had won twenty pounds.
“I think I will stop now,” said Smithers. “Give me back that sovereign I lent you to toss with.”
“But you owe me twenty pounds,” said Jones.
“I’ll pay you that to-morrow,” said Smithers; “these sovereigns are not to be spent, they are only for playing with.”
“Oh, that doesn’t matter,” said Jones, handing back the coin, and recognising that, penniless as he was,here was a small fund to be drawn upon by cunning, should he find a means of escape. “I’m rich. I’m worth ten millions.”
“Ten million sovereigns?”
“Yes.”
“Golden ones, like these?”
“Yes.”
“I say,” said Smithers, “could you lend me one or two?”
“Yes, rather.”
“But you mustn’t tell Hoover.”
“Of course I won’t.”
“When will you lend me them?”
“When I get my bag of sovereigns from London. They are coming down soon.”
“I like you,” said Smithers. “We’ll be great friends, won’t we?”
“Rather, come out in the garden.”
They went out.
The garden encircled the house, big wrought iron gates, locked, gave upon the road.
The tennis and croquet lawns lay at the back of the house, brick walls, covered in part with fruit trees, surrounded the whole place. The wall on the left of the house struck Jones as being practicable, and he noticed that none of the walls were spiked or glassed. Hoover’s patients were evidently not of the dangerous and agile type.
“What’s at the other side of this wall?” asked Jones, as they passed along by the left hand barrier. Smithers giggled.
“Girls,” said he.
“Girls! what sort of girls?”
“Little ones with long hair and bigger ones; they learn their lessons there, it’s a school. The gardener left his ladder there one day and I climbed up. There were a lot of girls there. I nodded to them, and they all came to the wall. I made them all laugh. I asked them to come over the wall and toss for sovereigns—then a lady came and told me to go away. She didn’t seem to like me.”
Jones, all during luncheon—the meal was served in his own apartments—revolved things in his mind, Smithers amongst others. Smithers’ mania for handling gold had evidently been satisfied by giving him these few coins to play with. They were real ones, Jones had satisfied himself of that. Smithers, despite his want of chin, was evidently not a person to be put off with counterfeit coin. Jones had come down from London dressed just as he had called at Curzon Street. That is to say in a black morning coat and grey trousers. His tall hat had evidently been forgotten by his deporters. After luncheon he asked for a cap to wear in the garden, and was supplied with a grey tweed shooting cap of Hoover’s.
With this on his head he took his seat in an arbour, an arbour which, he noticed, had its opening facing the house.
Here, smoking, he continued revolving his plans, and here afternoon tea was served to him.
Ten minutes later the colonel and the major began another game of croquet, and five minutes after that,came from the house Smithers, with a butterfly net in his hand.
Jones left the arbour and joined Smithers.
“The sovereigns have come,” said Jones.
“The bag of sovereigns?”
“Yes, with a big red seal from the bankers. I’m going to give you fifty.”
“Oh, Lord,” said Smithers, “but you haven’t said anything to Hoover?”
“Not a word—but you must do something for me before I give you them.”
“What’s that?”
“I want you to go up to Colonel Hawker and take him aside.”
“Yes?”
“And tell him that Major Barstowe says he’s a liar.”
“Yes.”
“That’s all.”
“That’s easy enough,” said Smithers.
“I’ll stand by the wall here, and if any of the girls look over, as they probably will, for I’m going to whistle to them, I’ll make them come over and toss for sovereigns.”
“That would be a lark,” said the unfortunate.
“Bother,” said Jones, “I’ve forgot.”
“What?”
“All my sovereigns are upstairs in the bag—I know—lend me yours whilst I’m waiting.”
“I—I never lend sovereigns,” said Smithers.
“Why, I’m going togiveyou fifty—and I only askyou to lend me five for a moment in case those girls—”
Smithers put his hand in his pocket and produced the coins; they were in a little chamois leather bag. “Don’t open the bag,” said he, “just shake it and they’ll know there are sovereigns in it by the noise.”
“Right,” said Jones. “Now go and tell Colonel Hawker that Major Barstowe says he’s a liar.”
Smithers went off, butterfly net in hand.
Jones was under no delusion. He reckoned that the garden was always under surveillance, and that a man getting over a wall would have little chance of reaching the street, unless he managed to distract the attention of watchers. He thought it probable that his conversation with Smithers had been watched, and possibly the handing over of some article noted.
There was a seat just here, close to the wall. He sat down on it, pulled his cap over his eyes, and stretched out his legs. Then under the peak of the cap, he watched Smithers approaching Colonel Hawker, interrupt him just as he was on the point of making a stroke, and lead him aside.
The effect on the colonel’s mind of the interruption to his stroke, followed by the sudden information that his veracity had been impeached, was miraculous and sudden as the slap on the side of the face that sent the butterfly hunter flying. The attack on Barstowe, who seemed to fight well, the cries, the shouts, the imprecations, the fact that half a dozen people, inmates and attendants, joined in the confusion as if by magic, all this was nothing to Jones,nor was the subsidiary fact that one of the inmates, a quiet mannered clergyman, with a taste for arson, had taken advantage of the confusion and was patiently and sedulously at work, firing the thatch of the summer house in six different places, with a long concealed box of matches.
Jones, on the stroke of the Colonel, had risen from the seat, and with the aid of a wall-trained plum tree, had reached the top of the wall and dropped on the other side into a bed of mignonette. It was a hockey day at the school, and there were no girls in the garden. He ran across it to the open front gate and reached the road, ran down the road, which was deserted, and burning in the late afternoon sunshine, reached a side road and slackened his pace. All the roads were of the same pattern, broad, respectable, and lined with detached and semi-detached houses set in gardens, and labelled according to the owner’s fancy. Old Anglo-Indian colonels and majors lived here, and one knew their houses by such names as “Lucknow,” “Cawnpore,” etc., just as one knows azaleas by their blossoms. Jones, like an animal making for cover, pushed on till he reached a street of shops. A long, long street, running north and south with the shop fronts on the eastern side, sun-blinded and sunlit. A peep of blue and perfect sea shewed at the end of the street, and on the sea the white sail of a boat. Sandbourne-on-Sea is a pleasant place to stay at, but Jones did not want to stay there.
His mind was working feverishly. There was sure to be a railway station somewhere, and, as surely, therailway station would be the first place they would hunt for him.
London was his objective. London and the National Provincial Bank, but of the direction or the distance to be travelled, he knew no more than the man in the moon.
CHAPTER XXIVHE RUNS TO EARTH
As the fox seeks an earth, he was seeking for a hole to hide in. Across the road a narrow house, set between a fishmonger’s shop and a sea-side library, displayed in one of its lower windows a card with the word “Apartments.” Jones crossed the road to this house and knocked at the hall door. He waited a minute and a half, ninety seconds, and every second a framed vision of Hoover in pursuit, Hoover and his assistants streaming like hounds on a hot scent. Then he found a decrepit bell and pulled it.
Almost on the pull the door opened, disclosing a bustless, sharp-eyed and cheerful-looking little woman of fifty or so, wearing a cameo brooch and cornelian rings. She wore other things but you did not notice them.
“Have you rooms to let?” asked Jones.
“Well, sir, I have the front parlour unoccupied,” replied the landlady, “and two bed-rooms on the top floor. Are there any children?”
“No,” said Jones. “I came down here alone for a holiday. May I see the rooms?”
She took him to the top front bed-room first. It was clean and tidy, just like herself, and gave acheery view of the shop fronts on the opposite side of the street.
Jones, looking out of the window, saw something that held him for a moment fascinated and forgetful of his surroundings and his companion. Hoover, no less, walking hurriedly and accompanied by a man who looked like a gardener. They were passing towards the sea, looking about them as they went. Hoover had the appearance of a person who has lost a purse or some article of value, so Jones thought as he watched them vanish. He turned to the landlady.
“I like this room,” said he, “it is cheerful and quiet, just the sort of place I want. Now let’s see the parlour.”
The parlour boasted of a horsehair sofa, chairs to match, pictures to match, and a glass fronted bookcase containing volumes of the Sunday Companion, Sword and Trowel, Home Influence, and Ouida’s “Moths” in the old, yellow-back, two shilling edition.
“Very nice indeed,” said Jones. “What do you charge?”
“Well, sir,” said the landlady—her name was Henshaw—“it’s a pound a week for the two rooms without board, two pounds with.”
“Any extras?” asked the artful Jones.
“No, sir.”
“Well, that will do me nicely. I came along here right from the station, and my portmanteau hasn’t arrived, though it was labelled for here, and the porter told me he had put it on the train. I’ll have to go up to the station this evening again to see if it hasarrived. Meanwhile, seeing I haven’t my luggage with me, I’ll pay you in advance.”
She assured him that this was unnecessary, but he insisted.
When she had accepted the money she asked him what he would have for supper, or would he prefer late dinner.
“Supper,” replied Jones, “oh, anything. I’m not particular.”
Then he found himself alone. He sat down on the horsehair sofa to think. Would Hoover circularise his description and offer a reward? No, that was highly improbable. Hoover’s was a high class establishment, he would avoid publicity as much as possible, but he would be pretty sure to use the intelligence, such as it was, of the police, telling them to act with caution.
Would he make inquiries at all the lodging-houses? That was a doubtful point. Jones tried to fancy himself in Hoover’s position and failed.
One thing certainly Hoover would do. Have all the exits from Sandbourne-on-Sea watched. That was the logical thing to do, and Hoover was a logical man.
There was nothing to do but give the hunt time to cool off, and at this thought the prospect of days of lurking in this room of right angles and horsehair-covered furniture, rose up before him like a black billow. Then came the almost comforting thought, he could not lurk without creating suspicion on the part of Mrs. Henshaw. He would have to get out, somehow. The weather was glorious, and the stripof seaweed hanging by the mantelpiece dry as tinder. A sea-side visitor who sat all day in his room in the face of such weather, would create a most unhealthy interest in the mind of any sea-side landlady. No, whatever else he might do he could not lurk.
The most terrible things in dramatic situations are the little things that speak to one for once in their lives. The pattern of the carpet that tells you that there is no doubt of the fact that your wife has run away with all your money, and left you with seven children to look after, the form of the chair that tells you that Justice with a noose in her hand is waiting on the front door step. Jones, just now, was under the obsession ofthepicture of the room, whose place was above the mantelpiece.
It was an oleograph of a gentleman in uniform, probably the Prince Consort, correct, sane, urbane—a terrible comparison for a man in an insane situation, for insanity is not confined to the brain of man or its productions—though heaven knows she has a fine field of movement in both.
A thundering rat-tat-tat at the hall door brought Jones to his feet. He heard the door answered, a voice outside saying “N’k you” and the door shut. It was some parcel left in. Then he heard Mrs. Henshaw descending the kitchen stairs and all was quiet. He turned to the bookcase, opened it, inspected the contents, and chose “Moths.”
CHAPTER XXVMOTHS
In ill-health or convalescence, or worry or tribulation, the ordinary mind does not turn to Milton or Shakespeare, or even to the sermons of Charles Haddon Spurgeon. There are few classics that will stand the test of a cold in the head, or a fit of depression, or a worrying husband, or a minor tragedy. Here the writer of “light fiction” stands firm.
Jones had never been a great reader, he had read a cheap novel or two, but his browsings in the literary fields had been mainly confined to the uplands where the grass is improving.
Colour, poetry, and construction in fiction were unknown to him, and now—he suddenly found himself on the beach at Trouville.
On the beach at Trouville with Lady Dolly skipping before him in the sea.
He had reached the forced engagement of the beautiful heroine to the wicked Russian Prince, when the door opened and the supper tray entered, followed by Mrs. Henshaw. Left to honour and her own initiative she had produced a huge lobster, followed by cheese, and three little dull looking jam tarts on a willow pattern plate.
When Jones had ruined the lobster and devoured the tarts he went on with the book. The lovely heroine had become for him Teresa, Countess of Rochester, the Opera singer himself, and the Russian Prince Maniloff.
Then the deepening dusk tore him from the book. Work had to be done.
He rang the bell, told Mrs. Henshaw that he was going to the railway station to see after his luggage, took his cap, and went out. Strangely enough he did not feel nervous. The first flurry had passed, and he had adapted himself to the situation, the deepening darkness gave him a sense of security, and the lights of the shops cheered him somehow.
He turned to the left towards the sea.
Fifty yards down the street he came across a Gentlemen’s Outfitters, in whose windows coloured neckties screamed, and fancy shirts raised their discordant voices with Gent’s summer waistcoats and those panama hats, adored in the year of this story by the river and sea-side youth.
Jones, under the hands of Rochester’s valet, and forced by circumstances to use Rochester’s clothes, was one of the best dressed men in London. Left to himself in this matter he was lost. He had no idea of what to wear or what not to wear, no idea of the social damnation that lies in tweed trousers not turned up at the bottom, fancy waistcoats, made evening ties, a bowler worn with a black morning coat, or dog-skin gloves. Heinenberg and Obermann of Philadelphia had dressed him till Stultz unconsciouslytook the business over. He was barely conscious of the incongruity of his present get-up topped by the tweed shooting cap of Hoover’s, but he was quite conscious of the fact that some alteration in dress was imperative as a means towards escape from Sandbourne-on-Sea.
He entered the shop of Towler and Simpkinson, bought a six and elevenpenny panama, put it on and had the tweed cap done up in a parcel. Then a flannel coat attracted him, a grey flannel tennis coat price fifteen shillings. It fitted him to a charm, save for the almost negligible fact that the sleeves came down nearly to his knuckles. Then he bought a night shirt for three and eleven, and had the whole lot done up in one parcel.
At a chemist’s next door he bought a tooth brush. In the mirror across the counter he caught a glimpse of himself in the panama. It seemed to him that not only had he never looked so well in any other head gear, but that his appearance was completely altered.
Charmed and comforted he left the shop. Next door to the chemist’s and at the street corner was a public house.
Jones felt certain from his knowledge of Hoover that the very last place to come across one of his assistants would be a public house. He entered the public bar, took a seat by the counter and ordered a glass of beer and a packet of cigarettes. The place was rank with the fumes of cheap tobacco and cigarettes and the smell of beer. Hard gas light shewedno adornment, nothing but pitch pine panelling, spittoons, bottles on shelves and an almanac. The barmaid, a long-necked girl with red hands, and cheap rings and a rose in her belt, detached herself from earnest conversation with a youth in a bowler inhabiting the saloon bar, pulled a handle, dumped a glass of beer before Jones and gave him change without word or glance, returning to her conversation with the bowlered youth. She evidently had no eyes at all for people in the public bar. There are grades, even in the tavern.
Close to where Jones had taken his seat was standing a person in broken shoes, an old straw hat, a coat, with parcels evidently in the tail pockets, and trousers frayed at the heels. He had a red unshaven face, and was reading theEvening Courier.
Suddenly he banged the paper with the tips of the fingers of his right hand and cast it on the counter.
“Govinment! Govinment! nice sort of govinment, payin’ each other four hundred a year for followin’ Asquith and robbin’ the landowners to get the money—God lumme.”
He paused to light a filthy clay pipe. He had his eyes on Jones, and evidently considered him, for some occult reason, of the same way of political thinking as himself, and he addressed him in that impersonal way in which one addresses an audience.
“They’ve downed and outed the House o’ Lords, an’ now they’re scraggin’ the Welsh Church, after that they’ll go for the Landed Prepriotor and finishhim. And who’s to blame? the Radicals—no, theyain’t to blame, no more than rats for their instincts; we’re to blame, the Conservatives is to blame, we haven’t got a fightin’ man to purtect us. The Radicals has got all the tallant—you look at the fight Bonna Lor’s been makin’ this week. Fight! A blind Tom cat with his head in an old t’marter tin would make a better fight than Bonna Lor’s put up. Look at Churchill, that chap was one of us once, he was born to lead the clarses, an’ now look at him leadin’ the marses, up to his neck in Radical dirt and pretendin’ he likes it. He doesn’t, but he’s a man with an eye in his head and he knows what we are, a boneless lot without organisation. I say it myself, I said it only larst night in this here bar, and I say it again, for two pins I’d chuck my party. I would so. For two pins I’d chuck the country, and leave the whole lot to stew in their own grease.”
He addressed himself to his beer, and Jones, greatly marvelling, lit a cigarette.
“Do you live here?” asked he.
“Sh’d think I did,” replied the other. “Born here and bred here, and been watchin’ the place going down for the last twenty years, turnin’ from a decent residential neighbourhood to a collection of schools and lodgin’ houses, losin’ clarse every year. Why the biggest house here is owned by a chap that sells patent food, there’s two socialists on the town council, and the Mayor last year was Hoover, a chap that owns a lunatic ’sylum. One of his loonies got out last March and near did for a child on the SouthgateRoad before he was collared; and yet they make a Mayor of him.”
“Have another drink?” said Jones.
“I don’t mind if I do.”
“Well, here’s luck,” said he, putting his nose into the new glass.
“Luck!” said Jones. “Do Hoover’s lunatics often escape?”
“Escape—why I heard only an hour ago another of them was out. Gawd help him if the town folk catch him at any of his tricks, and Gawd help Hoover. A chap has no right comin’ down and settin’ up a business like that in a place like this full of nursemaids and children. People bring their innercent children down here to play on the sands, and any minit that place may break loose like a bum-shell.That’snot marked down on the prospectices they publish with pictures done in blue and yaller, and lies about the air and water, and the salubriarity of the South Coast.”
“No, I suppose not,” said Jones.
“Well, I must be goin’,” said the other, emptying his glass and wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. “Good night to you.”
“Good night.”
The upholder of Church and State shuffled out, leaving Jones to his thoughts. Wind of the business had got about the town, and even at that moment no doubt people were carefully locking back doors and looking in out houses.
It was unfortunate that the last man to escape from the Hoover establishment had been violently inclined, that was the one thing needed to stimulate Rumour and make her spread.
Having sat for ten minutes longer and consumed another glass of tepid beer, he took his departure.
Mrs. Henshaw let him in, and having informed her of his journey to the station, the fruitlessness of his quest, and his opinion of the railway company, its servants and its methods, he received his candle and went to bed.
CHAPTER XXVIA TRAMP, AND OTHER THINGS
He was awakened by a glorious morning, and, looking out of his window, he saw the street astir in the sunshine, stout men in white flannels with morning newspapers in their hands, children already on their way to the beach with spades and buckets, all the morning life of an English seacoast town in Summer.
Then he dressed. He had no razor, his beard was beginning to show, and to go about unshaved was impossible to his nature. For a moment the wild idea of letting his beard grow—that oldest form of disguise—occurred to him, only to be dismissed immediately. A beard takes a month to grow, he had neither the time nor the money to do it, nor the inclination.
At breakfast—two kippered herrings and marmalade—he held a council of war with himself.
Nature has equipped every animal with means for offence and defence. To man she has given daring, and that strange indifference in cool blood to danger, when danger has become familiar, which seems the attribute of man alone.
Jones determined to risk everything, go out, prospect, find some likely road of escape, and make a bolddash. The eight thousand pounds in the London Bank shone before him like a galaxy of eight stars; no one knew of its existence. What he was to do when he had secured it was a matter for future consideration. Probably he would return right away to the States.
One great thing about all this Hoover business was the fact that it had freed him from the haunting dread of those terrible sensations of duality and negation. Fighting is the finest antidote to nerve troubles and mental dreads, and he was fighting now for his liberty, for the fact stood clearly before him, that, whether the Rochester family believed him to be Rochester or believed him to be Jones, it was to their interest to hold him as a lunatic in peaceful retirement.
Having breakfasted he lit a cigarette, asked Mrs. Henshaw for a latch key so that he might not trouble her, put on his panama and went out. There was a barber’s shop across the way, he entered it, found a vacant chair and was shaved. Then he bought a newspaper and strolled in the direction of the beach. The idea had come to him that he might be able to hire a sailing boat and reach London that way, a preposterous and vague idea that still, however, led him till he reached the esplanade, and stood with the sea wind blowing in his face.
The only sailing boats visible were excursion craft, guarded by longshoremen, loading up with trippers, and showing placards to allure the innocent.
The sands were swarming, and the bathing machines crawling towards the sea.
He came on to the beach and took his seat on the warm, white sands, with freedom before him had he been a gull or a fish. To take one of those cockleshell row boats and scull a few miles down the coast would lead him where? Only along the coast, rock-strewn beyond the sands and faced with cliffs. Of boat craft he had no knowledge, the sea was choppy, and the sailing boats now out seemed going like race horses over hurdles.
No, he would wait till after luncheon, then in that somnolent hour when all men’s thoughts are a bit dulled, and vigilance least awake, he would find some road, on good hard land, and make his dash.
He would try and get a bicycle map of this part of Wessex. He had noticed a big stationers’ and book-sellers’ near the beach, and he would call there on his way back.
Then he fell to reading his paper, smoking cigarettes, and watching the crowd.
Watching, he was presently rewarded with the sight of the present day disgrace of England. Out of a bathing tent, and into the full sunlight, came a girl with nothing on, for skin tight blue stockinette is nothing in the eyes of Modesty; every elevation, every depression, every crease in her shameless anatomy exposed to a hundred pairs of eyes, she walked calmly towards the water. A young man to match followed. Then they wallowed in the sea.
Jones forgot Hoover. He recalled Lady Dolly in “Moths”—Lady Dolly, who, on the beach of Sandbourne-on-Sea would have been the pink of propriety,and the inhabitants of this beach were not wicked society people, but respectable middle class folk.
“That’s pretty thick,” said Jones to an old gentleman like a goat sitting close to him, whose eyes were fixed in contemplation on the bathers.
“What?”
“That girl in blue. Don’t any of them wear decent clothes?”
“The scraggy ones do,” replied the other, speaking in a far away and contented manner.
At about half past eleven Jones left the beach, tired of the glare and the bathers, and the sand digging children. He called at the book shop, and for a shilling obtained a bicycle map of the coast, and sitting on a seat outside the shop scanned it.
There were three roads out of Sandbourne-on-Sea; the London road; a road across the cliffs to the west; and a road across the cliffs to the east. The easterly road led to Northbourne, a sea-side town some six or seven miles away, the westerly road to Southbourne, some fifteen miles off. London lay sixty miles to the north. The railway touched the London road at Houghton Admiral, a station some nine miles up the line.
That was the position. Should he take the London road and board a train at Houghton Admiral, or take the road to Northbourne and get a train from there?
The three ways lay before him like the three Fates, and he determined on the London road.
However, Man proposes and God disposes.
He folded up the map, put it in his pocket and started for home—or at least Mrs. Henshaw’s.
Just at the commencement of the street he paused before a photographer’s to inspect the pictures exposed for view. Groups, family parties, children, and girls with undecided features. He turned from the contemplation of these things and found himself face to face with Hoover.
Hoover must have turned into the street from a bye way, for only sixty seconds before the street had been Hooverless. He was dressed in a Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers, and his calves showed huge.
“Hello!” said Jones.
The exclamation was ejected from him so to speak, by the mental shock.
Hoover’s hand shot out to grasp his prey. What happened then was described by Mr. Shonts, the German draper across the way, to a friend.
“The thin man hit Mr. Hoover in the stomack, who sat down, but lifted himself at wance and pursued him.”
Jones ran. After him followed a constable, sprung from nowhere, boys, a dog that seemed running for exercise, and Hoover.
He reached the house of Mrs. Henshaw, pulled the latch key from his pocket, plunged it in the lock, opened the door and shut it. So close was the pursuit on him that the “bang-bang” of the knocker followed at once on the bang of the door.
Then the bell went, peal after peal.
Jones made for the kitchen stairs and bolted downthem, found a passage leading to the back door, and, disregarding the bewildered Mrs. Henshaw, who was coming out of the kitchen with her hands all over flour, found the back yard.
A blank wall lay before him, another on the right, and another on the left. The left and right walls divided the Henshaw back yard from the yards of the houses on either side, the wall immediately before him divided it from the back yard of a house in Minerva Terrace, which was parallel to the High Street.
Jones chose this wall. A tenantless dog kennel standing before it helped him, and next moment he was over, shaken up with a drop of twelve feet and facing a clothes line full of linen. He dived under a sheet and almost into the back of a broad woman hanging linen on a second clothes line, found the back door of the house, which the broad woman had left open, ran down a passage, up a kitchen stairs and into a hall. An old gentleman in list slippers, coming out of a room on the right, asked him what he wanted. Jones, recalling the affair later, could hear the old gentleman’s voice and words.
He did not pause to reply. He opened the hall door, and the next moment he was in Minerva Terrace. It was fortunately deserted. He ran to the left, found a bye way and a terrace of artisans’ dwellings, new, hideous, and composed of yellow brick. In front of the terrace lay fields. A gate in the hedge invited him, he climbed over it, crossed a field, found another gate which led him to another field, and found himselfsurrounded by the silence of the country, a silence pierced and thrilled by the songs of larks. Larks make the sea lands of the south and east coasts insufferable. One lark in a suitable setting, and, for a while, is delightful, but twenty larks in all grades of ascent and descent, some near, some distant, make for melancholy.
Jones crouched in a hedge for a while to get back his breath. He was lost. Road maps were not much use to him here. The larks insisted on that, jubilantly or sorrowfully according to the stage of their flight.
Then something or someone immediately behind him on the other side of the hedge breathed a huge sigh, as if lamenting over his fate. He jumped up. It was a cow. He could see her through the brambles and smell her too, sweet as a Devonshire dairy.
Then he sat down again to think and examine the map, which he had fortunately placed in his pocket. The roads were there but how to reach them was the problem, and the London road, to which he had pinned his faith, was now impossible. It would be surely watched. He determined, after a long consultation with himself, to make for Northbourne, striking across the fields straight ahead, and picking up the cliff road somewhere on its course.
He judged, and rightly enough, that Hoover would hunt for him, not along the coast but inland. Northbourne was not the road to London, even though a train might be caught from Northbourne. The whole business was desperate, but this course seemed the least desperate way out of it. And he need not hurry,speed would be of no avail in this race against Fate.
He took the money from his pocket and counted it. Out of the nine pounds he started with from Hoover’s there remained only five pounds eleven and ninepence.
He had spent as follows:
He went over these accounts and checked them in his head. Then he put the money back in his pocket and started on his way across the fields.
Despite all his worries this English country interested him, it also annoyed him. Fields, the size of pocket handkerchiefs, divided one from the other by monstrous hedges and deep ditches. To cross this country in a straight line one would want to be a deer or a bounding kangaroo. Gates, always at corners and always diagonal to his path, gave him access from one field to the other. Trees there were none. The English tree has an antipathy to the sea, and keeps away from it, but the hedge has no sensitiveness of this sort. These hedges seemed to love the sea, to judge by their size.
He was just in the act of clambering over one of the innumerable gates when a voice hailed him. He looked back. A young man in leggings, who had evidently been following him unperceived, raised a hand. Jones finished his business with the gate, and then, with it between him and the stranger, waited. He was well dressed in a rough way, evidently a superior sort of farmer, and physically a person to be reckoned with. He was also an exceedingly cantankerous looking individual.
“Do you know that you are trespassing?” asked he, when they were within speaking distance.
“No,” said Jones.
“Well, you are. I must ask you for your name and address, please.”
“What on earth for—what harm am I doing your old fields?” Jones had forgotten his position, everything, before the outrage on common sense.
“You are trespassing, that’s all. I must ask you for your name and address.”
Now to Jones came the recollection of something he had read somewhere. A statement, that in England there was no law of trespass in the country places, and that a person might go anywhere to pick mushrooms or wild flowers, and no landlord could interfere so long as no damage was done.
“Don’t you know the law?” asked Jones. He recited the law accordingly, to the Unknown.
The other listened politely.
“I ask you for your name and address,” said he. “Our lawyers will settle the other matter.”
Then anger came to Jones.
“I am the Earl of Rochester,” said he, “and my address is Carlton House Terrace, London. I have no cards on me.”
Then the queerest sensation came to Jones, for he saw that the other had recognised him. Rochester was evidently as well known to the ordinary Englishman, by picture and repute, as Lloyd George.
“I beg your pardon,” said the other, “but the fact is that my land is over-run with people from Sandbourne—sorry.”
“Oh, don’t mention it,” replied the Earl of Rochester. “I sha’n’t do any damage. Good day.” They parted and he pursued his way.
A mile farther on he came upon a person with broken boots, a beery face, and clothes to match his boots. This person was seated in the sunshine under a hedge, a bundle and a tin can beside him.
He hailed Jones as “Guvernor” and requested a match.
Jones supplied the match, and they fell into conversation.
“Northbourne,” said the tramp. “I’m goin’ that way meself. I’ll shew you the quickest way when I’ve had a suck at me pipe.”
Jones rested for a moment by the hedge whilst the pipe was lit. The trespass business was still hot in his mind. The cave-in of the Landlord had not entirely removed the sense of outrage.
“Aren’t you afraid of being held up for trespass?” asked he.
“Trespass,” replied the other, “not me. I ain’t afeared of no farmers.”
Jones gave his experience.
“Don’t you be under no bloomin’ error,” said the tramp, when the recital was finished. “That chap was right enough. That chap couldn’t touch the likes of me, unless he lied and swore I’d broke fences, but he could touch the likes of you. I know the Lor. I know it in and out. Landlords don’t know it as well as me. That chap knows the lor, else he wouldn’t a’ been so keen on gettin’ your name and where you lived.”
“But how could he have touched me if he cannot touch you?”
The tramp chuckled.
“I’ll tell you,” said he, “and I’ll tell you what he’ll do now he’s got where you live. He’ll go to the Co’t o’ Charncery and arsk for a ’junction against you to stop you goin’ over his fields. You don’t want to go over his fields any more, that don’t matter. He’ll get his ’junction and you’ll have to pay the bloomin’ costs—see—the bloomin’ costs, and what will that amahnt to? Gawd knows, maybe a hundred pound. Lots of folks take it into their silly heads they can go where they want. They carnt, not if the Landlord knows his Lor, not unless they’re hoofin’ it like me. Lot o’ use bringin’meup to the Co’t o’ Charncery.”
“Do you mean to say that just for walking over a field a man can be had up to the court of Chancery and fined a hundred pounds?”
“He ain’t fined, it’s took off him in costs.”
“You seem to know a lot about the law,” said Jones, calling up the man of the public house last night, and coming to the conclusion that amongst the English lower orders there must be a vast fund of a peculiar sort of intelligence.
“Yes,” said the tramp. “I told you I did.” Then interestedly, “What might your name be?”
Jones repeated the magic formula to see the effect.
“I am the Earl of Rochester.”
“Lord Rochester. Thought I knew your face. Lost half a quid over your horse runnin’ at Gatwood Park last Spring twel’ months. ‘White Lady’ came in second to ‘The Nun,’ half a quid. I’d made a bit on ‘Champane Bottle’ in the sellin’ plate. Run me eye over the lists and picked out ‘White Lady.’ Didn’t know nothin’ abaht her, said to a fren’, ‘here’s my fancy. Don’t know nothin’ abaht her, but she’s one of Lord Rawchester’s, an’ his horses run stright’—That’s what I said—‘His horses run stright’ and give me a stright run boss with a wooden leg before any of your fliers with a dope in his belly or a pullin’ jockey on his back. But the grown’ did her, she was beat on the post by haff an ’eck, you’ll remember. She’d a won be two lengths, on’y for that bit o’ soggy grown’ be the post. That grown’ want over-haulin’, haff a shower o’ rain, and boss wants fins and flippers instead o’ hoofs.”
“Yes,” said Jones, “that’s so.”
“A few barra’ loads o’ gravel would put it rite,” continued the other, “it ain’t fair on the hosses, and it ain’t fair on the backers, ’arf a quid I dropped onthat mucky bit o’ grown’. Last Doncaster meetin’ I was sayin’ the very same thing to Lor’ Lonsdale over the Doncaster Course. I met him, man to man like, outside the ring, and he handed me out a cigar. We talked same as you and me might be talkin’ now, and I says to him: ‘What we want’s more money put into drains on the courses. Look at them mucky farmers they way they drains their land,’ said I, ‘and look at us runnin’ hosses and layin’ our bets and let down, hosses and backers and all, for want of the courses bein’ looked after proper.’”
He tapped the dottle out of his pipe, picked up the bundle, and rose grumbling.
Then he led the way in the direction of Northbourne.
It was a little after three o’clock now, and the day was sultry. Jones, despite his other troubles, was vastly interested in his companion. The height of Rochester’s position had never appeared truly till shown him by the farmer and this tramp. They knew him. To them, without any doubt, the philosophers and poets of the world were unknown, but they knew the Earl of Rochester, and not unfavourably.
Millions upon millions of the English world were equally acquainted with his lordship, he was most evidently a National figure. His unconventionality, his “larks,” his lavishness, and his horse racing propensities, however they might pain his family, would be meat to the legions who loved a lord, who loved a bet, who loved a horse, and a picturesque spendthrift.
To be Rochester was not only to be a lord, it was more than that. It was to be famous, a national character, whose picture was printed on the retina of the million. Never had Jones felt more inclined to stick to his position than now, with the hounds on his traces, a tramp for his companion, and darkness ahead. He felt that if he could once get to London, once lay his hands on that eight thousand pounds lying in the National Provincial Bank, he could fight. Fight for freedom, get lawyers to help him, and retain his phantom coronet.
He had ceased to fear madness; all that dread of losing himself had vanished, at least for the moment. Hoover had cured him.
Meanwhile they talked as they went, the tramp laying down the law as to rights over commons and waste lands, seeming absolutely to forget that he was talking to, or supposed to be talking to, a landed proprietor. At last they reached the white ribbon that runs over the cliffs from Sandbourne to Northbourne and beyond.
“Here’s the road,” said the tramp, “and I’ll be takin’ leave of your lor’ship. I’ll take it easy for a bit amongst them bushes, there’s no call for me to hurry. I shawnt forget meetin’ your lor’ship. Blimy if I will. Me sittin’ there under that hedge an’ thinkin’ of that half quid I dropped over ‘White Lady’ and your lor’ship comin’ along—It gets me!”
Up to this moment of parting he had not once Lordshipped Jones.
Jones, feeling in his pocket, produced the halfsovereign, which, with five pounds one and nine pence made up his worldly wealth at the moment.
He handed it over, and the tramp spat on it for luck.
Then they parted, and the fugitive resumed his way with a lighter pocket but a somewhat lighter heart.
There are people who increase and people who reduce one’s energy, it is sometimes enough to look at them without even talking to them. The tramp belonged to the former class. He had cheered Jones. There was nothing particularly cheery in his conversation, all the same the effect had been produced.
Now, along the cliff road and coming from the direction of Northbourne a black speck developed, resolving itself at last into the form of an old man carrying a basket. The basket was filled with apples and Banbury cakes. Jones bought eight Banbury cakes and two apples with his one and nine pence, and then took his seat on the warm turf by the way to devour them. He lay on his side as he ate and cursed Hoover.
To lie here for an hour on this idyllic day, to watch the white gulls flying, to listen to the whisper of the sea far below, what could be better than that? He determined if ever he should win freedom and money to return here for a holiday.
He was thinking this, when, raised now on his elbow, he saw something moving amongst the bushes and long grass of the waste lands bordering the cliff road.
It was a man, a man on all fours, yet moving swiftly, a sight natural enough in the deer-stalking Highlands, but uncanny on these Wessex downs.
Jones leaving four Banbury cakes uneaten on the grass, sprang to his feet, so did the crawling one.
Then the race began.
The pursuer was handicapped.
Any two sides of a triangle are longer than the third. A right line towards Jones would save many yards, but the going would be bad on account of the brambles and bushes, a straight line to the road would lenghten the distance to be covered, but would give a much better course when the road was reached. He chose the latter.
The result was, that when the race really started the pursuer was nearly half a mile to the bad. But he had not recently consumed four Banbury cakes and two apples. Super-Banbury cakes of the dear old days, when margarine was ninepence a pound, flour unlimited, and currants unsought after by the wealthy.
Jones had not run for years. And in this connection it is quite surprising how Society pursues a man once he gets over the barrier—and especially when he has to run for his liberty.
The first mile was bad, then he got his second wind handed to him, despite everything, by a fair constitution and a fairly respectable life, but the pursuer was now only a quarter of a mile behind. Up to this the course had been clear with no spectators, but now came along from the direction of Northbourne an invalid on the arm of an attendant, andbehind them a boy on a bicycle. The bicycle was an inspiration.
It was also yellow painted, and bore a carrier in front blazoned with the name of a Northbourne Italian Warehouseman. It contained parcels, evidently intended for one of the few bungalows that strewed the cliff.
The boy fought to defend his master’s property, briefly, but still he fought, till a happy stroke in the wind laid him on the sun-warmed turf. The screams of the invalid—it was a female—sounded in the ears of Jones like part of some fantastic dream, so seemed the bicycle. It had no bell, the saddle wanted raising at least two inches, still it went, and the wind was behind.
On the right was a sheer drop of two hundred feet, and the road here skirted the cliff edge murderously close, for the simple reason that cliff falls had eaten the bordering grass to within a few feet of the road. This course on an unknown and questionable bicycle laden with parcels of tea and sugar, was open to a good many objections; they did not occur to Jones; he was making good speed, or thought he was till the long declivity leading to Northbourne was reached. Here he began to know what speed really was, for he found on pressing the lever that the brake would not act. Fortunately it was a free wheel.
This declivity runs between detached villas and stone walls, sheltering prim gardens, right on to the west end of the esplanade, which is, in fact, a continuation of it. For the first few hundred yards Jonesthought that nothing could go quicker than the houses and walls rushing past him, towards the end he was not thinking.
The esplanade opened out, a happy band of children with buckets and wooden spades, returning home to tea, opened out, gave place to rushing apartment houses with green balconies on the left, rushing sea scape and bathing machines on the right. Then the speed slackened.
He got off shaking, and looked behind him. He had reached the east end of the promenade. It lay, as it always lies towards five o’clock, absolutely deserted by visitors. In the distance and just stepped out of a newspaper kiosk a woman was standing, shading her eyes and looking towards him. Two boatmen near her were looking in the same direction. They did not seem excited, just mildly interested.