"Why?" she asked again. "I"d much sooner stay here at Easter. Truly I would!... With you!"
The episode ended with an embrace. She had won.
"Very well! Very well!" said Louis. "Easter in the coal-cellar if you like. I"m on for anything."
"But don"t you _see_, dearest?" she said.
And he imitated her emphasis, full of teasing good humour--
"Yes, I _see_, dearest."
She breathed relief, and asked--
"Are you going to give me my bicycle lesson?"
III
Louis had borrowed a bicycle for Rachel to ruin while learning to ride. He said that a friend had lent it to him--a man in Hanbridge whose mother had given up riding on account of stoutness--but who exactly this friend was Rachel knew not, Louis" information being characteristically sketchy and incomplete; and with his air of candour and good humour he had a strange way of warding off questions; so that already Rachel had grown used to a phrase which she would utter only in her mind, "I don"t like to ask him--"
It pleased Louis to ride this bicycle out of the back yard, down the sloping entry, and then steer it through another narrow gateway, across the pavement, and let it solemnly b.u.mp, first with the front wheel and then with the back wheel, from the pavement into the road.
During this feat he stood on the pedals. He turned the machine up Bycars Lane, and steadily climbed the steep at Rachel"s walking pace.
And Rachel, hurrying by his side, watched in the obscurity the play of his ankles as he put into practice the principles of pedalling which he had preached. He was a graceful rider; every movement was natural and elegant. Rachel considered him to be the most graceful cyclist that ever was. She was fascinated by the revolutions of his feet.
She felt ecstatically happy. The episode of his caprice for the seaside was absolutely forgotten; after all, she asked for nothing more than possession of him, and she had that, though indeed it seemed too marvellous to be true. The bicycle lesson was her hour of magic; and more so on this night than on previous nights.
"I must change my dress," she had said. "I can"t go in this one."
"Quick, then!"
His impatience could not wait. He had helped her. He undid hooks, and fastened others.... The rich blue frock lay across the bed and looked lovely on the ivory-coloured counterpane. It seemed indeed to be a part of that in her which was Louise. Then she was in a short skirt which she had devised herself, and he was pushing her out of the room, his hand on her back. And she had feigned reluctance, resisting his pressure, while laughing with gleeful eagerness to be gone. No delay had been allowed. As they pa.s.sed through the kitchen, not one instant for parley with Mrs. Tams as to the domestic organization of the evening! He was still pushing her.... Thus she had had to confide her precious house and its innumerable treasures to Mrs. Tams. And in this surrender to Louis" whim there was a fearful joy.
When Louis turned at last into Park Road, and stepped from between the wheels, she exclaimed, a little breathless from quick walking level with him up the hill--
"I can"t bear to see you ride so well. Oh!" She crunched her teeth with a loving, cruel gesture. "I should like to hurt you frightfully!"
"What for?"
"Because I shall never, never be able to ride as well as you do!"
He winked.
"Here! Take hold."
"I"m not ready! I"m not ready!" she cried.
But he loosed the machine, and she was obliged to seize it as it fell.
That was his teasing.
Park Road had been the scene of the lesson for three nights. It was level, and it was unfrequented. "And the doctor"s handy in case you break your neck," Louis had said. Dr. Yardley"s red lamp shone amicably among yellow lights, and its ray with theirs was lost in the mysterious obscurities of the closed park. Not only was it socially advisable for Rachel to study the perverse nature of the bicycle at night--for not to know how to ride the bicycle was as shameful as not to know how to read and write--but she preferred the night for the romantic feeling of being alone with Louis, in the dark and above the glow of the town. She loved the sharp night wind on her cheek, and the faint clandestine rustling of the low evergreens within the park palisade, and the invisible and almost tangible soft sky, revealed round the horizon by gleams of fire. She had longed to ride the bicycle as some girls long to follow the hunt or to steer an automobile or a yacht. And now her ambition was being attained amid all circ.u.mstances of bliss.
And yet she would shrink from beginning the lesson.
"The lamp! You"ve forgotten to light the lamp!" she said.
"Get on," said he.
"But suppose a policeman comes?"
"Suppose you get on and start! Do you think I don"t know you?
Policemen are my affair. Besides, all nice policemen are in bed....
Don"t be afraid. It isn"t alive. I"ve got hold of the thing. Sit well down. No! There are only two pedals. You seem to think there are about nineteen. Right! No, no, _no_! Don"t--do not--cling to those blooming handle-bars as if you were in a storm at sea. Be a nice little cat in front of the fire--all your muscles loose. Now! Are you ready?"
"Yes," she murmured, with teeth set and dilated eyes staring ahead at the hideous dangers of Park Road.
He impelled. The pedals went round. The machine slid terribly forward.
And in a moment Louis said, mischievously--
"I told you you"d have to go alone to-night. There you are!"
His footsteps ceased.
"Louis!" she cried, sharply and yet sadly upbraiding his unspeakable treason. Her fingers gripped convulsively the handle-bars. She was moving alone. It was inconceivably awful and delightful. She was on the back of a wild pony in the forest. The miracle of equilibrium was being accomplished. The impossible was done, and at the first attempt.
She thought very clearly how wondrous was life, and how perfectly happy fate had made her. And then she was lying in a tangle amid dozens of complex wheels, chains, and bars.
"Hurt?" shouted Louis, as he ran up.
She laughed and said "No," and sat up stiffly, full of secret dolours.
Yet he knew and she knew that the accidents of the previous two nights had covered her limbs with blue discolorations, and that the latest fall was more severe than any previous one. Her courage enchanted Louis and filled him with a sense of security. She was not graceful in these exercises. Her ankles were thick and clumsy. Not merely had she no natural apt.i.tude for physical feats--apparently she was not lissom, nor elegant in motion. But what courage! What calm, bright endurance!
What stoicism! Most girls would have reproached him for betraying them to destruction, would have pouted, complained, demanded petting and apologies. But not she! She was like a man. And when he helped her to pick herself up he noticed that after all she was both lissom and agile, and exquisitely, disturbingly girlish in her short dusty skirt; and that she did trust him and depend on him. And he realized that he was safe for life with her. She was created for him.
Work was resumed.
"Now don"t let go of me till I tell you," she enjoined lightly.
"I won"t," he answered. And it seemed to him that his loyalty to her expanded and filled all his soul.
Later, as she approached the other end of Park Road, near Moorthorne Road, a tram-car hurled itself suddenly down Moorthorne Road and overthrew her. It is true that the tram-car was never less than twenty yards away from her. But even at twenty yards it could overthrow.
Rachel sat dazed in the road, and her voice was uncertain as she told Louis to examine the bicycle. One of the pedals was bent, and prevented the back wheel from making a complete revolution.
"It"s nothing," said Louis. "I"ll have it right in the morning."
"Who"s that?" Rachel, who had risen, gasping, turned to him excitedly as he was bending over the bicycle. Conscious that somebody had been standing at the corner of the street, he glanced up. A figure was moving quickly down Moorthorne Road in the direction of the station.
"I dun"no," said he.