XXIV. THE MOONLIGHT RIDE

And so the twenty minutes' law passed into an infinity. We leave the

wicked Bechamel clothing himself with cursing as with a garment,--the

wretched creature has already sufficiently sullied our modest but

truthful pages,--we leave the eager little group in the bar of the

Vicuna Hotel, we leave all Bognor as we have left all Chichester and

Midhurst and Haslemere and Guildford and Ripley and Putney, and follow

this dear fool of a Hoopdriver of ours and his Young Lady in Grey out

upon the moonlight road. How they rode! How their hearts beat together

and their breath came fast, and how every shadow was anticipation and

every noise pursuit! For all that flight Mr. Hoopdriver was in the world

of Romance. Had a policeman intervened because their lamps were not lit,

Hoopdriver had cut him down and ridden on, after the fashion of a hero

born. Had Bechamel arisen in the way with rapiers for a duel, Hoopdriver

had fought as one to whom Agincourt was a reality and drapery a dream.

It was Rescue, Elopement, Glory! And she by the side of him! He had seen

her face in shadow, with the morning sunlight tangled in her hair, he

had seen her sympathetic with that warm light in her face, he had seen

her troubled and her eyes bright with tears. But what light is there

lighting a face like hers, to compare with the soft glamour of the

midsummer moon?

The road turned northward, going round through the outskirts of Bognor,

in one place dark and heavy under a thick growth of trees, then amidst

villas again, some warm and lamplit, some white and sleeping in the

121

The Wheels of Chance