The Wheels of Chance; A Bicycling Idyll by H.G. Wells

THE WHEELS OF CHANCE; A BICYCLING IDYLL

by H.G. Wells

1896

THE PRINCIPAL CHARACTER IN THE STORY

I.

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 cliche, formulae 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.

II

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."