After the strange encounter at the inn, Hoopdriver paid his bill.
His knees had recovered a little, so he climbed back onto his bicycle and continued toward Ripley.
The road was excellent, although it rose and fell constantly.
To his delight, Hoopdriver was beginning to feel more confident on the machine.
He even started inventing little exercises for himself.
One of them was riding between two stones placed about a foot apart.
The front wheel usually managed this without much trouble.
The back wheel was another matter.
Hoopdriver couldn’t see it properly, and it often jumped sideways over the stone.
The result was a violent shock that traveled straight up his spine and into his head.
Sometimes it was strong enough to knock his loose cap down over his eyes.
That usually left him fighting with the bicycle while trying to see where he was going.
Another exercise was taking one hand off the handlebars.
It sounded simple.
It wasn’t.
Hoopdriver desperately wanted to master it.
There were several reasons.
For one thing, he wanted to be able to greet people properly.
For another, he needed to learn how to do ordinary things while riding.
But whenever he took a hand away from the handlebars, the bicycle immediately became unstable.
His arms flew about.
His body twisted in every direction.
And more than once, his attempt ended with him climbing off the bicycle in a way that was neither graceful nor dignified.
There was another problem he had not considered.
His nose.
A cyclist who cannot ride with one hand has a serious problem whenever he needs a handkerchief.
Hoopdriver’s nose had become an unexpected enemy.
If he wanted to wipe his nose, he had to stop the bicycle.
The same thing happened whenever a fly landed on his face.
And there were plenty of flies.
They seemed to regard his face as an excellent place to rest.
One crawled across his cheek.
Another wandered near his nose.
Hoopdriver couldn’t brush them away because both hands were needed to keep the bicycle under control.
So he shook his head violently and twisted his face in every possible direction.
Unfortunately, this made him look extremely strange to anyone walking along the road.
Sometimes sweat ran into one of his eyes.
He would ride along with one eye closed, giving him the appearance of a man making a foolish joke.
He wasn’t joking.
He was fighting for his life.
Eventually, Hoopdriver became good enough to slap himself in the face with one hand without immediately falling over.
This was a major achievement.
Unfortunately, he still couldn’t reach his handkerchief while riding.
For all the difference it made, the handkerchief might as well have been in another country.
But none of this made him unhappy.
Not in the slightest.
He was free.
That was all that mattered.
Somewhere back in the shop, Briggs was probably busy dressing the display window.
The apprentice, Gosling, was probably struggling with a large piece of huckaback.
Hoopdriver knew exactly how miserable that job was.
Rolling huckaback was one of the worst tasks in the entire shop.
Perhaps the manager was there too, shouting orders.
Someone would probably be hearing the familiar cry:
“Hoopdriver, forward!”
But Hoopdriver wasn’t there.
He was surrounded by trees and fields.
There were no customers.
No shopkeeper.
No dusty counters.
No endless folding of cloth.
No one was watching him.
He could stop whenever he wanted.
He could ride wherever he wanted.
He could make as many mistakes as he pleased.
And then, suddenly, something small and red rushed across the road.
Hoopdriver nearly rode straight over it.
He stopped and stared.
It was a tiny animal with reddish fur and a yellowish tail.
A weasel.
He had never seen one before.
Growing up in London, he had lived most of his life without ever seeing such a creature.
Now he was seeing things he had never imagined.
And there were miles of countryside ahead.
Pine forests.
Oak woods.
Purple heath covered in flowers.
Wide green hills.
Rich meadows.
Rivers winding slowly through the landscape.
Small villages with old stone churches.
Clean country towns.
Simple inns where travelers could stop for food and rest.
Long downhill roads where he could simply sit back and enjoy the ride.
And somewhere beyond all of it was the sea.
The sea!
What did a few flies matter compared with that?
For a moment, the memory of the girl in gray returned.
He still felt embarrassed about his ridiculous fall.
Perhaps she had thought him an absolute fool.
Perhaps she had laughed about him afterward.
But he didn’t want to think about that now.
The man in the brown cycling suit had spoken to him as if he were an equal.
That mattered too.
Hoopdriver looked down at his new brown suit and checked his stockings again.
They made him feel almost respectable.
More importantly, he was getting better.
Every few hundred yards, he could feel himself gaining more control over the bicycle.
The machine was still dangerous.
But it was becoming less mysterious.
He was learning its habits.
He was learning how to balance.
He was beginning to trust himself.
Of course, every so often his knees reminded him that he was still a beginner.
Whenever they began to ache badly, he stopped.
He would get off the bicycle and sit beside the road for a while.
Then he would rest and continue.
Later, between Esher and Cobham, he came to a beautiful little spot where a bridge crossed a stream.
There he saw the other cyclist again.
It was the same man in the brown suit whom he had noticed earlier.
This time, the man had stopped beside the road.
His bicycle looked almost brand-new.
Across his knees lay a punctured pneumatic tire.
The man was working on it with an expression of deep irritation.
He appeared to be around thirty.
He had a pale face, a sharp nose, light blond hair, and a long, pale mustache.
He looked thoroughly unhappy.
Hoopdriver immediately straightened himself.
He wanted to appear like an experienced cyclist.
He rode past with what he imagined was the confident manner of a man who had been riding for years.
“Beautiful morning,” Hoopdriver called out.
“And a fine road, too.”
The other man didn’t even look pleased.
“The morning, you, and this cursed road can all go to hell!”
Hoopdriver heard the angry mumbling behind him but couldn’t make out the exact words.
He smiled to himself.
He assumed the man had been responding warmly.
After all, cyclists were supposed to have a special understanding of one another.
They were members of the same brotherhood.
Hoopdriver felt that he had behaved exactly as a fellow cyclist should.
Behind him, however, the other man watched him disappear up the road.
“Greasy little working-class fellow,” he muttered.
“What an irritating man.”
“He’s even wearing a brown suit.”
“Almost exactly the same color as mine.”
“It’s as though his entire purpose in life is to make me look ridiculous.”
He stared at Hoopdriver’s awkward feet on the pedals.
“Just look at the way he rides.”
“Why does the world produce men like that?”
He shook his head.
Then he lit a cigarette and returned to repairing his tire.
Hoopdriver continued toward Cobham.
He rode until he was sure the other cyclist could no longer see him.
Only then did he climb off.
He pushed the bicycle up the hill for a while.
But as he approached the village, his pride returned.
He couldn’t possibly walk into the village pushing his bicycle.
A gentleman should ride.
So he climbed back into the saddle and continued toward Cobham.