Bertram Mitford - The Red Derelict

“They oughtn’t to leave a thing like that,” said Wagram. “Why didn’t your captain stop and blow it up, Haldane?”

“I asked him, and he said his company didn’t contract for hulk-hunting on dark nights; it contracted to carry Her Majesty’s mails. Probably the skipper of the Rhodesian reasoned in exactly the same way about this one.”

“It’s as bad as an infernal machine.”

“It is an infernal machine,” said Haldane.

“Now I’ll race you, Mr Wagram.”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort. When I consented to take charge of you – a weighty responsibility in itself – I did so on condition that it was at your own risk. In short, the average railway company couldn’t have contracted itself out of its liabilities more completely.”

They were skimming along at the rate of about ten miles an hour, and that on an ideal road, smooth, dustless, and shaded by overhanging woods. Yvonne was trying how far she could ride with both hands off the handlebars, and performing various reckless feats, to the no small anxiety of her escort.

“Slow down here,” said the latter. “This pace isn’t safe; too many rabbits.”

“Too many rabbits?” echoed the girl. Then she gave forth a peal of laughter.

“Yes; it’s a screaming joke, isn’t it? But it may surprise you to hear that I’ve known of more than one bad spill caused by a fool of a rabbit dodging under the wheel, especially at night.”

“Really? You’re not stuffing me?”

“Well, can’t you see for yourself how easily the thing might happen? They’re crossing the road in gangs in both directions, and a rabbit is sometimes as great a fool as a human being in crossing a road, in that it is liable to change its mind and run back again. Result in either case, a bad spill for the bicyclist. You needn’t go far for an instance. Saunders, the chemist’s assistant in Bassingham, was nearly killed that way. He was coasting down Swanton Hill in the moonlight, and a rabbit ran under his wheel. He was chucked off, and got concussion of the brain.”

“Fancy being killed by a rabbit!”

“Yes. Sounds funny, doesn’t it? Here’s Pritchett’s.”

They had emerged from the woods into an open road, beside which stood a large farmhouse. The farmer was somewhere about the place; he couldn’t be very far off, they were informed. His wife was away, but might be back any minute. Should Mr Pritchett be sent for?

“No, no,” said Wagram; “just find a boy to show me where he is. I’ll go to him. Yvonne, you’d better wait here for me; a rest will do you no harm.”

“All safe. Don’t be longer than you can help.”

But Yvonne could not sit still for long, being of a restless temperament. She was soon outside again, and, promptly tiring of the ducks and fowls, she wandered down the shady road they had just come along.

Not far along this she came to a five-barred gate, opening into a broad green lane with high hedges, leading into the wood at right angles to the main road. In these hedges several whitish objects caught her glance.

“Honeysuckles,” she said to herself. “Beauties, too, if only I can reach them.”

In a moment she had opened the gate and was in the lane. But the coveted blossoms grew high, badly needing the aid of a hooked stick. She looked around for something approximating to one and found it. Then followed a good deal of scrambling, and at last, hot and flushed and a little scratched, Yvonne made her way back to the gate, trying to reduce into portable size and shape the redundant stems of the fragrant creeper. Being thus intent she did not look up until she had reached the gate, and then with a slight start, for she discovered that she was no longer alone.

Standing on the other side of the gate, but facing her, with both elbows lounged over the top bar, was a pasty-faced, loosely-hung youth, clad in a bicycle suit of cheap build and loud design. This precious product nodded to her with a familiar grin but made no attempt to move.

“Will you make way for me, please? I wish to pass,” she said crisply.

This time the fellow winked.

“Not until you’ve paid toll, dear,” he said, with nauseous significance.

It was well for him that Yvonne’s hands held nothing more formidable than a couple of bunches of honeysuckle. Had they held a whip or a switch it is possible that the pasty face of this cowardly cur might have been wealed in such wise as to last him for quite an indefinite time.

“Will you stand away from that gate, please? I repeat that I want to pass,” she said in even more staccato tone than before. Her blue eyes had grown steely, and there was a red flush in the centre of each cheek. She glanced furtively on the ground; if even she could find a stone for a weapon of defence; but the lane was soft and grassy, and stones there were none. But all the fellow did was to drop his elbows farther down over the top bar, so as to hold the gate more effectually.

“Not until you’ve paid toll, dear,” he repeated. “Come, now, don’t be disagreeable. It’s the rule of the road to take toll of a pretty girl when you let her through a gate. You’re only a kid, too, and I won’t give it away. Ooh – hah – hah!”

It would be impossible to convey an idea of the combined terror and anguish conveyed in the above shout. Equally impossible would it be, we fear, to convey the attitude struck, in sudden and swift transition, by him who uttered it. He bounded back from the gate like an india-rubber ball thrown against it, and with like velocity, for a tough and supple ground-ash stick had descended upon that part of his person which his forward lounge over the gate had left peculiarly suggestive of the purpose; and with lightning-like swiftness again the stick came down, conveying to the recipient some such sensation as that of being cut in half by a red-hot bar. One appalled glimpse of Wagram’s face, blazing with white wrath above him, and the terrified bounder, ducking just in time to avoid being seized by the collar, turned and fled down the road, quite regardless, in his blind panic, of abandoning his bicycle, which leaned against the hedge a few yards from the gate.

But for himself no more disastrous plan could he have conceived. Wagram had no intention of letting him down so easily, and sprang in pursuit, with the result that in about a moment he was flogging his victim along the road at the best pace that either could by any possibility put forward. At last the fellow lay down, and howled for mercy.

Giving him one final, pitiless, cutting “swish” as he rolled over, Wagram ceased.

“You crawling cur,” he said, still white with anger, and rather breathless with his exertion, “I won’t even give you the privilege of apologising. That is one reserved for some slight semblance of a man; but for a thing like you – Faugh!”

The thought seemed to sting him to such a degree of renewed ferocity that his face changed again. Fearing a renewal of the chastisement the cringing one fairly whimpered.

“You’ve nearly killed me,” he groaned. “I didn’t mean any harm, sir; it was only a bit of fun.”

“Fun!” Wagram turned away. He could not trust himself until he had put a dozen yards between them. Then he turned again.

“Get your bicycle, and take yourself off,” he said – “if you can still sit on it, that is.” Then he returned to Yvonne.

“I am not pleased with you,” he said. “You should not have gone wandering off on your own account like that. And I’m responsible for you to your father. What’ll he say? The only bright side to it is that I was in time to thrash that unutterable young brute within an inch of his life. No, though; I didn’t give him half enough,” with a vicious swish of the ground-ash through the air.