The Man Who Lost Himself Part 38

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' cla.r.s.e 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 Southgate Road 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 gla.s.s.

"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 b.u.m-sh.e.l.l. _That's_ not 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 XXVI

A 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 bold dash. 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 longsh.o.r.emen, 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 c.o.c.klesh.e.l.l 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 Wess.e.x. 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 cla.s.s 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 G.o.d 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.

"h.e.l.lo!" said Jones.

The exclamation was ejected from him so to speak, by the mental shock.