H G Wells Omnibus, page 425
fu Surface, skin.
fv Eardrum.
fw An imaginary character.
fx Containing silica, which is the most abundant element on Earth, after oxygen, and is present in many plants and animals.
fy Stern, unyielding; flint also contains silica.
fz Invertebrate aquatic animal with a hollow, cylindrical body.
ga Small marine animals.
gb Like Humpty-Dumpty in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass (1871), the Martian’s body and head are all one.
gc Another imaginary anatomist.
gd Gliders, named for Otto Lilienthal (1848-1896), a German aviation pioneer.
ge Annoying begging.
gf Slag; stony matter fused by heat.
gg Mythical giant with a hundred arms and fifty heads.
gh Construction workers.
gi The narrator is following the river Thames east toward London.
gj Infected with sores that spread.
gk Not locked.
gl Decorated with a pattern.
gm Gorse and broom are flowering shrubs.
gn Machete.
go Shelter made of tree branches tied together.
gp Plural of the letter H.
gq Men who make passes at women.
gr Imitation of green turtle soup made of meat, wine, and spices.
gs Regent Street runs south from Regent’s Park to Piccadilly Circus, a major London intersection.
gt The Langham Hotel (1864) on Portland Place.
gu Water.
gv London is divided into church parishes.
gw Luck of the cards.
gx Chimney sweep.
gy The ancient center of London.
gz Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park form a large public green; south of the western end is the Natural History Museum. The parks share a large curved lake, whose Hyde Park portion is called the Serpentine.
ha North of Hyde Park.
hb Arch at the northeast corner of Hyde Park, where Oxford Street begins.
hc Northeast of Marble Arch.
hd District west of Regent’s Park.
he Primrose Hill is a green in the eastern section of Regent’s Park, London. The Zoo and Regent’s Canal are just north of Regent’s Park.
hf King of Assyria (c.705-681 B.C.) who, according to the Bible (2 Chronicles), lay waste to much of Judea.
hg Albert Hall, the Imperial Institute, and Brompton Road are all on the south side of Kensington Gardens.
hh Immense iron and glass exhibition hall erected in Hyde Park for the Great Exhibition of 1851; it was moved to Sydenham Hill (1852-1854) and destroyed by fire in 1936.
hi St. Paul’s Cathedral, in the City.
hj Wells refers to the post office located on this street in the City, where in 1896 Guglielmo Marconi demonstrated wireless communication—a fitting place for London to reestablish communication with the world.
hk Cheshire city northwest of London.
hl Wheat.
hm Dumb or daffy rhyme.
hn Typesetter.
ho Three-dimensional effects.
hp Kind of transparent crystal gypsum.
hq Fictitious scientist.
hr In the same degree of the zodiac.
hs Imaginary scientist.
The Wheels of Chance
H. G. Wells
Published: 1895
Categorie(s): Fiction, Humorous
Source: http://en.wikisource.org
About Wells:
Herbert George Wells, better known as H. G. Wells, was an English writer best known for such science fiction novels as The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man and The Island of Doctor Moreau. He was a prolific writer of both fiction and non-fiction, and produced works in many different genres, including contemporary novels, history, and social commentary. He was also an outspoken socialist. His later works become increasingly political and didactic, and only his early science fiction novels are widely read today. Wells, along with Hugo Gernsback and Jules Verne, is sometimes referred to as “The Father of Science Fiction”. Source: Wikipedia
Also available on Feedbooks Wells: The War of the Worlds (1898)
The Time Machine (1895)
A Modern Utopia (1905)
The Invisible Man (1897)
The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896)
Tales of Space and Time (1900)
The Sleeper Awakes (1910)
The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth (1904)
The Story of the Inexperienced Ghost (1902)
The First Men in the Moon (1901)
Copyright: This work is available for countries where copyright is Life+50 or in the USA (published before 1923).
Note: This book is brought to you by Feedbooks
http://www.feedbooks.com
Strictly for personal use, do not use this file for commercial purposes.
Chapter 1
The Pricipal Character in the Story
If you (presuming you are of the sex that does such things)—if you had gone into the Drapery Emporium—which is really only magnificent for shop-of Messrs. Antrobus & Co.—a perfectly fictitious “Co.,” by the bye—of Putney, on the 14th of August, 1895, had turned to the right-hand side, where the blocks of white linen and piles of blankets rise up to the rail from which the pink and blue prints depend, you might have been served by the central figure of this story that is now beginning. He would have come forward, bowing and swaying, he would have extended two hands with largish knuckles and enormous cuffs over the counter, and he would have asked you, protruding a pointed chin and without the slightest anticipation of pleasure in his manner, what he might have the pleasure of showing you. Under certain circumstances—as, for instance, hats, baby linen, gloves, silks, lace, or curtains—he would simply have bowed politely, and with a drooping expression, and making a kind of circular sweep, invited you to “step this way,” and so led you beyond his ken; but under other and happier conditions,—huckaback, blankets, dimity, cretonne, linen, calico, are cases in point,—he would have requested you to take a seat, emphasising the hospitality by leaning over the counter and gripping a chair back in a spasmodic manner, and so proceeded to obtain, unfold, and exhibit his goods for your consideration. Under which happier circumstances you might—if of an observing turn of mind and not too much of a housewife to be inhuman—have given the central figure of this story less cursory attention.
Now if you had noticed anything about him, it would have been chiefly to notice how little he was noticeable. He wore the black morning coat, the black tie, and the speckled grey nether parts (descending into shadow and mystery below the counter) of his craft. He was of a pallid complexion, hair of a kind of dirty fairness, greyish eyes, and a skimpy, immature moustache under his peaked indeterminate nose. His features were all small, but none ill-shaped. A rosette of pins decorated the lappel of his coat. His remarks, you would observe, were entirely what people used to call cliché, formulæ not organic to the occasion, but stereotyped ages ago and learnt years since by heart. “This, madam,” he would say, “is selling very well” “We are doing a very good article at four three a yard.” “We could show you some. thing better, of course.” “No trouble, madam, I assure you.” Such were the simple counters of his intercourse. So, I say, he would have presented himself to your superficial observation. He would have danced about behind the counter, have neatly refolded the goods he had shown you, have put on one side those you selected, extracted a little book with a carbon leaf and a tinfoil sheet from a fixture, made you out a little bill in that weak flourishing hand peculiar to drapers, and have bawled “Sayn!” Then a puffy little shop-walker would have come into view, looked at the bill for a second, very hard (showing you a parting down the middle of his head meanwhile), have scribbled a still more flourishing J. M. all over the document, have asked you if there was nothing more, have stood by you—supposing that you were paying cash—until the central figure of this story reappeared with the change. One glance more at him, and the puffy little shop-walker would have been bowing you out, with fountains of civilities at work all about you. And so the interview would have terminated.
But real literature, as distinguished from anecdote, does not concern itself with superficial appearances alone. Literature is revelation. Modern literature is indecorous revelation. It is the duty of the earnest author to tell you what you would not have seen—even at the cost of some blushes. And the thing that you would not have seen about this young man, and the thing of the greatest moment to this story, the thing that must be told if the book is to be written, was—let us face it bravely—the Remarkable Condition of this Young Man’s Legs.
Let us approach the business with dispassionate explicitness. Let us assume something of the scientific spirit, the hard, almost professorial tone of the conscientious realist. Let us treat this young man’s legs as a mere diagram, and indicate the points of interest with the unemotional precision of a lecturer’s pointer. And so to our revelation. On the internal aspect of the right ankle of this young man you would have observed, ladies and gentlemen, a contusion and an abrasion; on the internal aspect of the left ankle a contusion also; on its external aspect a large yellowish bruise. On his left shin there were two bruises, one a leaden yellow graduating here and there into purple, and another, obviously of more recent date, of a blotchy red—tumid and threatening. Proceeding up the left leg in a spiral manner, an unnatural hardness and redness would have been discovered on the upper aspect of the calf, and above the knee and on the inner side, an extraordinary expanse of bruised surface, a kind of closely stippled shading of contused points. The right leg would be found to be bruised in a marvellous manner all about and under the knee, and particularly on the interior aspect of the knee. So far we may proceed with our details. Fired by these discoveries, an investigator might perhaps have pursued his inquiries further—to bruises on the shoulders, elbows, and even the finger joints, of the central figure of our story. He had indeed been bumped and battered at an extraordinary number of points. But enough of realistic description is as good as a feast, and we have exhibited enough for our purpose. Even in literature one must know where to draw the line.
Now the reader may be inclined to wonder how a respectable young shopman should have got his legs, and indeed himself generally, into such a dreadful condition. One might fancy that he had been sitting with his nether extremities in some complicated machinery, a threshing-machine, say, or one of those hay-making furies. But Sherlock Holmes (now happily dead) would have fancied nothing of the kind. He would have recognised at once that the bruises on the internal aspect of the left leg, considered in the light of the distribution of the other abrasions and contusions, pointed unmistakably to the violent impact of the Mounting Beginner upon the bicycling saddle, and that the ruinous state of the right knee was equally eloquent of the concussions attendant on that person’s hasty, frequently causeless, and invariably ill- conceived descents. One large bruise on the shin is even more characteristic of the ‘prentice cyclist, for upon every one of them waits the jest of the unexpected treadle. You try at least to walk your machine in an easy manner, and whack!—you are rubbing your shin. So out of innocence we ripen. Two bruises on that place mark a certain want of aptitude in learning, such as one might expect in a person unused to muscular exercise. Blisters on the hands are eloquent of the nervous clutch of the wavering rider. And so forth, until Sherlock is presently explaining, by the help of the minor injuries, that the machine ridden is an old-fashioned affair with a fork instead of the diamond frame, a cushioned tire, well worn on the hind wheel, and a gross weight all on of perhaps three-and-forty pounds.
The revelation is made. Behind the decorous figure of the attentive shopman that I had the honour of showing you at first, rises a vision of a nightly struggle, of two dark figures and a machine in a dark road,—the road, to be explicit, from Roehampton to Putney Hill,—and with this vision is the sound of a heel spurning the gravel, a gasping and grunting, a shouting of “Steer, man, steer!” a wavering unsteady flight, a spasmodic turning of the missile edifice of man and machine, and a collapse. Then you descry dimly through the dusk the central figure of this story sitting by the roadside and rubbing his leg at some new place, and his friend, sympathetic (but by no means depressed), repairing the displacement of the handle-bar.
Thus even in a shop assistant does the warmth of manhood assert itself, and drive him against all the conditions of his calling, against the counsels of prudence and the restrictions of his means, to seek the wholesome delights of exertion and danger and pain. And our first examination of the draper reveals beneath his draperies—the man! To which initial fact (among others) we shall come again in the end.
Chapter 2
The Pricipal Character in the Story (Continued)
But enough of these revelations. The central figure of our story is now going along behind the counter, a draper indeed, with your purchases in his arms, to the warehouse, where the various articles you have selected will presently be packed by the senior porter and sent to you. Returning thence to his particular place, he lays hands on a folded piece of gingham, and gripping the corners of the folds in his hands, begins to straighten them punctiliously. Near him is an apprentice, apprenticed to the same high calling of draper’s assistant, a ruddy, red–haired lad in a very short tailless black coat and a very high collar, who is deliberately unfolding and refolding some patterns of cretonne. By twenty–one he too may hope to be a full–blown assistant, even as Mr. Hoopdriver. Prints depend from the brass rails above them, behind are fixtures full of white packages containing, as inscriptions testify, Lino, Hd Bk, and Mull. You might imagine to see them that the two were both intent upon nothing but smoothness of textile and rectitude of fold. But to tell the truth, neither is thinking of the mechanical duties in hand. The assistant is dreaming of the delicious time–only four hours off now—when he will resume the tale of his bruises and abrasions. The apprentice is nearer the long long thoughts of boyhood, and his imagination rides cap–a–pie through the chambers of his brain, seeking some knightly quest in honour of that Fair Lady, the last but one of the girl apprentices to the dress–making upstairs. He inclines rather to street fighting against revolutionaries–because then she could see him from the window.
Jerking them back to the present comes the puffy little shop–walker, with a paper in his hand. The apprentice becomes extremely active. The shopwalker eyes the goods in hand. “Hoopdriver,” he says, “how’s that line of g–sez–x ginghams ? ”
Hoopdriver returns from an imaginary triumph over the uncertainties of dismounting. “They’re going fairly well, sir. But the larger checks seem hanging.”
The shop–walker brings up parallel to the counter. “Any particular time when you want your holidays?” he asks.
Hoopdriver pulls at his skimpy moustache. “No–Don’t want them too late, sir, of course.”
“How about this day week?”
Hoopdriver becomes rigidly meditative, gripping the corners of the gingham folds in his hands. His face is eloquent of conflicting considerations. Can he learn it in a week? That’s the question. Otherwise Briggs will get next week, and he will have to wait until September–when the weather is often uncertain. He is naturally of a sanguine disposition. All drapers have to be, or else they could never have the faith they show in the beauty, washability, and unfading excellence of the goods they sell you. The decision comes at last. “That’ll do me very well,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, terminating the pause.
The die is cast.
The shop–walker makes a note of it and goes on to Briggs in the “dresses,” the next in the strict scale of precedence of the Drapery Emporium. Mr. Hoopdriver in alternating spasms anon straightens his gingham and anon becomes meditative, with his tongue in the hollow of his decaying wisdom tooth.
Chapter 3
The Pricipal Character in the Story (Continued)
At supper that night, holiday talk held undisputed sway. Mr. Pritchard spoke of “Scotland,” Miss Isaacs clamoured of Bettws–y–Coed, Mr. Judson displayed a proprietary interest in the Norfolk Broads. “I?” said Hoopdriver when the question came to him. “Why, cycling, of course.”
“You’re never going to ride that dreadful machine of yours, day after day?” said Miss Howe of the Costume Department.
“I am,” said Hoopdriver as calmly as possible, pulling at the insufficient moustache. “I’m going for a Cycling Tour. Along the South Coast.”
“Well, all I hope, Mr. Hoopdriver, is that you’ll get fine weather,” said Miss Howe. “And not come any nasty croppers.”
“And done forget some tinscher of arnica in yer bag,” said the junior apprentice in the very high collar. (He had witnessed one of the lessons at the top of Putney Hill.)
“You stow it,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, looking hard and threateningly at the junior apprentice, and suddenly adding in a tone of bitter contempt,— “ Jampot.”
“I’m getting fairly safe upon it now,” he told Miss Howe.
At other times Hoopdriver might have further resented the satirical efforts of the apprentice, but his mind was too full of the projected Tour to admit any petty delicacies of dignity. He left the supper table early, so that he might put in a good hour at the desperate gymnastics up the Roehampton Road before it would be time to come back for locking up. When the gas was turned off for the night he was sitting on the edge of his bed, rubbing arnica into his knee—a new and very big place—and studying a Road Map of the South of England. Briggs of the “dresses,” who shared the room with him, was sitting up in bed and trying to smoke in the dark. Briggs had never been on a cycle in his life, but he felt Hoopdriver’s inexperience and offered such advice as occurred to him.
fv Eardrum.
fw An imaginary character.
fx Containing silica, which is the most abundant element on Earth, after oxygen, and is present in many plants and animals.
fy Stern, unyielding; flint also contains silica.
fz Invertebrate aquatic animal with a hollow, cylindrical body.
ga Small marine animals.
gb Like Humpty-Dumpty in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass (1871), the Martian’s body and head are all one.
gc Another imaginary anatomist.
gd Gliders, named for Otto Lilienthal (1848-1896), a German aviation pioneer.
ge Annoying begging.
gf Slag; stony matter fused by heat.
gg Mythical giant with a hundred arms and fifty heads.
gh Construction workers.
gi The narrator is following the river Thames east toward London.
gj Infected with sores that spread.
gk Not locked.
gl Decorated with a pattern.
gm Gorse and broom are flowering shrubs.
gn Machete.
go Shelter made of tree branches tied together.
gp Plural of the letter H.
gq Men who make passes at women.
gr Imitation of green turtle soup made of meat, wine, and spices.
gs Regent Street runs south from Regent’s Park to Piccadilly Circus, a major London intersection.
gt The Langham Hotel (1864) on Portland Place.
gu Water.
gv London is divided into church parishes.
gw Luck of the cards.
gx Chimney sweep.
gy The ancient center of London.
gz Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park form a large public green; south of the western end is the Natural History Museum. The parks share a large curved lake, whose Hyde Park portion is called the Serpentine.
ha North of Hyde Park.
hb Arch at the northeast corner of Hyde Park, where Oxford Street begins.
hc Northeast of Marble Arch.
hd District west of Regent’s Park.
he Primrose Hill is a green in the eastern section of Regent’s Park, London. The Zoo and Regent’s Canal are just north of Regent’s Park.
hf King of Assyria (c.705-681 B.C.) who, according to the Bible (2 Chronicles), lay waste to much of Judea.
hg Albert Hall, the Imperial Institute, and Brompton Road are all on the south side of Kensington Gardens.
hh Immense iron and glass exhibition hall erected in Hyde Park for the Great Exhibition of 1851; it was moved to Sydenham Hill (1852-1854) and destroyed by fire in 1936.
hi St. Paul’s Cathedral, in the City.
hj Wells refers to the post office located on this street in the City, where in 1896 Guglielmo Marconi demonstrated wireless communication—a fitting place for London to reestablish communication with the world.
hk Cheshire city northwest of London.
hl Wheat.
hm Dumb or daffy rhyme.
hn Typesetter.
ho Three-dimensional effects.
hp Kind of transparent crystal gypsum.
hq Fictitious scientist.
hr In the same degree of the zodiac.
hs Imaginary scientist.
The Wheels of Chance
H. G. Wells
Published: 1895
Categorie(s): Fiction, Humorous
Source: http://en.wikisource.org
About Wells:
Herbert George Wells, better known as H. G. Wells, was an English writer best known for such science fiction novels as The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man and The Island of Doctor Moreau. He was a prolific writer of both fiction and non-fiction, and produced works in many different genres, including contemporary novels, history, and social commentary. He was also an outspoken socialist. His later works become increasingly political and didactic, and only his early science fiction novels are widely read today. Wells, along with Hugo Gernsback and Jules Verne, is sometimes referred to as “The Father of Science Fiction”. Source: Wikipedia
Also available on Feedbooks Wells: The War of the Worlds (1898)
The Time Machine (1895)
A Modern Utopia (1905)
The Invisible Man (1897)
The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896)
Tales of Space and Time (1900)
The Sleeper Awakes (1910)
The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth (1904)
The Story of the Inexperienced Ghost (1902)
The First Men in the Moon (1901)
Copyright: This work is available for countries where copyright is Life+50 or in the USA (published before 1923).
Note: This book is brought to you by Feedbooks
http://www.feedbooks.com
Strictly for personal use, do not use this file for commercial purposes.
Chapter 1
The Pricipal Character in the Story
If you (presuming you are of the sex that does such things)—if you had gone into the Drapery Emporium—which is really only magnificent for shop-of Messrs. Antrobus & Co.—a perfectly fictitious “Co.,” by the bye—of Putney, on the 14th of August, 1895, had turned to the right-hand side, where the blocks of white linen and piles of blankets rise up to the rail from which the pink and blue prints depend, you might have been served by the central figure of this story that is now beginning. He would have come forward, bowing and swaying, he would have extended two hands with largish knuckles and enormous cuffs over the counter, and he would have asked you, protruding a pointed chin and without the slightest anticipation of pleasure in his manner, what he might have the pleasure of showing you. Under certain circumstances—as, for instance, hats, baby linen, gloves, silks, lace, or curtains—he would simply have bowed politely, and with a drooping expression, and making a kind of circular sweep, invited you to “step this way,” and so led you beyond his ken; but under other and happier conditions,—huckaback, blankets, dimity, cretonne, linen, calico, are cases in point,—he would have requested you to take a seat, emphasising the hospitality by leaning over the counter and gripping a chair back in a spasmodic manner, and so proceeded to obtain, unfold, and exhibit his goods for your consideration. Under which happier circumstances you might—if of an observing turn of mind and not too much of a housewife to be inhuman—have given the central figure of this story less cursory attention.
Now if you had noticed anything about him, it would have been chiefly to notice how little he was noticeable. He wore the black morning coat, the black tie, and the speckled grey nether parts (descending into shadow and mystery below the counter) of his craft. He was of a pallid complexion, hair of a kind of dirty fairness, greyish eyes, and a skimpy, immature moustache under his peaked indeterminate nose. His features were all small, but none ill-shaped. A rosette of pins decorated the lappel of his coat. His remarks, you would observe, were entirely what people used to call cliché, formulæ not organic to the occasion, but stereotyped ages ago and learnt years since by heart. “This, madam,” he would say, “is selling very well” “We are doing a very good article at four three a yard.” “We could show you some. thing better, of course.” “No trouble, madam, I assure you.” Such were the simple counters of his intercourse. So, I say, he would have presented himself to your superficial observation. He would have danced about behind the counter, have neatly refolded the goods he had shown you, have put on one side those you selected, extracted a little book with a carbon leaf and a tinfoil sheet from a fixture, made you out a little bill in that weak flourishing hand peculiar to drapers, and have bawled “Sayn!” Then a puffy little shop-walker would have come into view, looked at the bill for a second, very hard (showing you a parting down the middle of his head meanwhile), have scribbled a still more flourishing J. M. all over the document, have asked you if there was nothing more, have stood by you—supposing that you were paying cash—until the central figure of this story reappeared with the change. One glance more at him, and the puffy little shop-walker would have been bowing you out, with fountains of civilities at work all about you. And so the interview would have terminated.
But real literature, as distinguished from anecdote, does not concern itself with superficial appearances alone. Literature is revelation. Modern literature is indecorous revelation. It is the duty of the earnest author to tell you what you would not have seen—even at the cost of some blushes. And the thing that you would not have seen about this young man, and the thing of the greatest moment to this story, the thing that must be told if the book is to be written, was—let us face it bravely—the Remarkable Condition of this Young Man’s Legs.
Let us approach the business with dispassionate explicitness. Let us assume something of the scientific spirit, the hard, almost professorial tone of the conscientious realist. Let us treat this young man’s legs as a mere diagram, and indicate the points of interest with the unemotional precision of a lecturer’s pointer. And so to our revelation. On the internal aspect of the right ankle of this young man you would have observed, ladies and gentlemen, a contusion and an abrasion; on the internal aspect of the left ankle a contusion also; on its external aspect a large yellowish bruise. On his left shin there were two bruises, one a leaden yellow graduating here and there into purple, and another, obviously of more recent date, of a blotchy red—tumid and threatening. Proceeding up the left leg in a spiral manner, an unnatural hardness and redness would have been discovered on the upper aspect of the calf, and above the knee and on the inner side, an extraordinary expanse of bruised surface, a kind of closely stippled shading of contused points. The right leg would be found to be bruised in a marvellous manner all about and under the knee, and particularly on the interior aspect of the knee. So far we may proceed with our details. Fired by these discoveries, an investigator might perhaps have pursued his inquiries further—to bruises on the shoulders, elbows, and even the finger joints, of the central figure of our story. He had indeed been bumped and battered at an extraordinary number of points. But enough of realistic description is as good as a feast, and we have exhibited enough for our purpose. Even in literature one must know where to draw the line.
Now the reader may be inclined to wonder how a respectable young shopman should have got his legs, and indeed himself generally, into such a dreadful condition. One might fancy that he had been sitting with his nether extremities in some complicated machinery, a threshing-machine, say, or one of those hay-making furies. But Sherlock Holmes (now happily dead) would have fancied nothing of the kind. He would have recognised at once that the bruises on the internal aspect of the left leg, considered in the light of the distribution of the other abrasions and contusions, pointed unmistakably to the violent impact of the Mounting Beginner upon the bicycling saddle, and that the ruinous state of the right knee was equally eloquent of the concussions attendant on that person’s hasty, frequently causeless, and invariably ill- conceived descents. One large bruise on the shin is even more characteristic of the ‘prentice cyclist, for upon every one of them waits the jest of the unexpected treadle. You try at least to walk your machine in an easy manner, and whack!—you are rubbing your shin. So out of innocence we ripen. Two bruises on that place mark a certain want of aptitude in learning, such as one might expect in a person unused to muscular exercise. Blisters on the hands are eloquent of the nervous clutch of the wavering rider. And so forth, until Sherlock is presently explaining, by the help of the minor injuries, that the machine ridden is an old-fashioned affair with a fork instead of the diamond frame, a cushioned tire, well worn on the hind wheel, and a gross weight all on of perhaps three-and-forty pounds.
The revelation is made. Behind the decorous figure of the attentive shopman that I had the honour of showing you at first, rises a vision of a nightly struggle, of two dark figures and a machine in a dark road,—the road, to be explicit, from Roehampton to Putney Hill,—and with this vision is the sound of a heel spurning the gravel, a gasping and grunting, a shouting of “Steer, man, steer!” a wavering unsteady flight, a spasmodic turning of the missile edifice of man and machine, and a collapse. Then you descry dimly through the dusk the central figure of this story sitting by the roadside and rubbing his leg at some new place, and his friend, sympathetic (but by no means depressed), repairing the displacement of the handle-bar.
Thus even in a shop assistant does the warmth of manhood assert itself, and drive him against all the conditions of his calling, against the counsels of prudence and the restrictions of his means, to seek the wholesome delights of exertion and danger and pain. And our first examination of the draper reveals beneath his draperies—the man! To which initial fact (among others) we shall come again in the end.
Chapter 2
The Pricipal Character in the Story (Continued)
But enough of these revelations. The central figure of our story is now going along behind the counter, a draper indeed, with your purchases in his arms, to the warehouse, where the various articles you have selected will presently be packed by the senior porter and sent to you. Returning thence to his particular place, he lays hands on a folded piece of gingham, and gripping the corners of the folds in his hands, begins to straighten them punctiliously. Near him is an apprentice, apprenticed to the same high calling of draper’s assistant, a ruddy, red–haired lad in a very short tailless black coat and a very high collar, who is deliberately unfolding and refolding some patterns of cretonne. By twenty–one he too may hope to be a full–blown assistant, even as Mr. Hoopdriver. Prints depend from the brass rails above them, behind are fixtures full of white packages containing, as inscriptions testify, Lino, Hd Bk, and Mull. You might imagine to see them that the two were both intent upon nothing but smoothness of textile and rectitude of fold. But to tell the truth, neither is thinking of the mechanical duties in hand. The assistant is dreaming of the delicious time–only four hours off now—when he will resume the tale of his bruises and abrasions. The apprentice is nearer the long long thoughts of boyhood, and his imagination rides cap–a–pie through the chambers of his brain, seeking some knightly quest in honour of that Fair Lady, the last but one of the girl apprentices to the dress–making upstairs. He inclines rather to street fighting against revolutionaries–because then she could see him from the window.
Jerking them back to the present comes the puffy little shop–walker, with a paper in his hand. The apprentice becomes extremely active. The shopwalker eyes the goods in hand. “Hoopdriver,” he says, “how’s that line of g–sez–x ginghams ? ”
Hoopdriver returns from an imaginary triumph over the uncertainties of dismounting. “They’re going fairly well, sir. But the larger checks seem hanging.”
The shop–walker brings up parallel to the counter. “Any particular time when you want your holidays?” he asks.
Hoopdriver pulls at his skimpy moustache. “No–Don’t want them too late, sir, of course.”
“How about this day week?”
Hoopdriver becomes rigidly meditative, gripping the corners of the gingham folds in his hands. His face is eloquent of conflicting considerations. Can he learn it in a week? That’s the question. Otherwise Briggs will get next week, and he will have to wait until September–when the weather is often uncertain. He is naturally of a sanguine disposition. All drapers have to be, or else they could never have the faith they show in the beauty, washability, and unfading excellence of the goods they sell you. The decision comes at last. “That’ll do me very well,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, terminating the pause.
The die is cast.
The shop–walker makes a note of it and goes on to Briggs in the “dresses,” the next in the strict scale of precedence of the Drapery Emporium. Mr. Hoopdriver in alternating spasms anon straightens his gingham and anon becomes meditative, with his tongue in the hollow of his decaying wisdom tooth.
Chapter 3
The Pricipal Character in the Story (Continued)
At supper that night, holiday talk held undisputed sway. Mr. Pritchard spoke of “Scotland,” Miss Isaacs clamoured of Bettws–y–Coed, Mr. Judson displayed a proprietary interest in the Norfolk Broads. “I?” said Hoopdriver when the question came to him. “Why, cycling, of course.”
“You’re never going to ride that dreadful machine of yours, day after day?” said Miss Howe of the Costume Department.
“I am,” said Hoopdriver as calmly as possible, pulling at the insufficient moustache. “I’m going for a Cycling Tour. Along the South Coast.”
“Well, all I hope, Mr. Hoopdriver, is that you’ll get fine weather,” said Miss Howe. “And not come any nasty croppers.”
“And done forget some tinscher of arnica in yer bag,” said the junior apprentice in the very high collar. (He had witnessed one of the lessons at the top of Putney Hill.)
“You stow it,” said Mr. Hoopdriver, looking hard and threateningly at the junior apprentice, and suddenly adding in a tone of bitter contempt,— “ Jampot.”
“I’m getting fairly safe upon it now,” he told Miss Howe.
At other times Hoopdriver might have further resented the satirical efforts of the apprentice, but his mind was too full of the projected Tour to admit any petty delicacies of dignity. He left the supper table early, so that he might put in a good hour at the desperate gymnastics up the Roehampton Road before it would be time to come back for locking up. When the gas was turned off for the night he was sitting on the edge of his bed, rubbing arnica into his knee—a new and very big place—and studying a Road Map of the South of England. Briggs of the “dresses,” who shared the room with him, was sitting up in bed and trying to smoke in the dark. Briggs had never been on a cycle in his life, but he felt Hoopdriver’s inexperience and offered such advice as occurred to him.
