Bealby; A Holiday — The Battle of Cratminister part two
The subsequent hour or so was an interval of tedious tension for Bealby.
After vast spaces of time he was suddenly aware of three vertical threads of light.
He stared at them with mysterious awe, until he realized that they were just the moonshine streaming through the cracks of the shed.
The tramp tossed and muttered in his sleep.
Footsteps?
Yes—Footsteps.
Then voices.
They were coming along by the edge of the field, and coming and talking very discreetly.
“Ugh!
” said the tramp, and then softly, “what’s that?
” Then he too became noiselessly attentive.
Bealby could hear his own heart beating.
The men were now close outside the shed.
“He wouldn’t go in there,” said Mr. Benshaw’s voice.
“He wouldn’t dare.
Anyhow we’ll go up by the glass first.
I’ll let him have the whole barrelful of oats if I get a glimpse of him.
If he’d gone away they’d have caught him in the road....
” The footsteps receded.
There came a cautious rustling on the part of the tramp and then his feet padded softly to the door of the shed.
He struggled to open it and then with a jerk got it open a few inches; a great bar of moonlight leapt and lay still across the floor of the shed.
Bealby advanced his head cautiously until he could see the black obscure indications of the tramp’s back as he peeped out.
“_Now_,” whispered the tramp and opened the door wider.
Then he ducked his head down and darted out of sight, leaving the door open behind him.
Bealby questioned whether he should follow.
He came out a few steps and then went back at a shout from away up the garden.
“There he goes,” shouted a voice, “in the shadow of the hedge.
” “Look out, Jim!
”—_Bang_—and a yelp.
“Stand away!
I’ve got another barrel!
” _Bang.
_ Then silence for a time, and then the footsteps coming back.
“That ought to teach him,” said Mr. Benshaw.
“First time, I got him fair, and I think I peppered him a bit the second.
Couldn’t see very well, but I heard him yell.
He won’t forget that in a hurry.
Not him.
There’s nothing like oats for fruit stealers.
Jim, just shut that door, will you?
That’s where he was hiding....
” It seemed a vast time to Bealby before he ventured out into the summer moonlight, and a very pitiful and outcast little Bealby he felt himself to be.
He was beginning to realize what it means to go beyond the narrow securities of human society.
He had no friends, no friends at all....
He caught at and arrested a sob of self-pity.
Perhaps after all it was not so late as Bealby had supposed.
There were still lights in some of the houses and he had the privilege of seeing Mr. Benshaw going to bed with pensive deliberation.
Mr. Benshaw wore a flannel night-shirt and said quite a lengthy prayer before extinguishing his candle.
Then suddenly Bealby turned nervously and made off through the hedge.
A dog had barked.
At first there were nearly a dozen lighted windows in Crayminster.
They went out one by one.
He hung for a long time with a passionate earnestness on the sole surviving one, but that too went at last.
He could have wept when at last it winked out.
He came down into the marshy flats by the river, but he did not like the way in which the water sucked and swirled in the vague moonlight; also he suddenly discovered a great white horse standing quite still in the misty grass not thirty yards away; so he went up to and crossed the high road and wandered up the hillside towards the allotments, which attracted him by reason of the sociability of the numerous tool sheds.
In a hedge near at hand a young rabbit squealed sharply and was stilled.
Why?
Then something like a short snake scrabbled by very fast through the grass.
Then he thought he saw the tramp stalking him noiselessly behind some currant bushes.
That went on for some time, but came to nothing.
Then nothing pursued him, nothing at all.
The gap, the void, came after him.
The bodiless, the faceless, the formless; these are evil hunters in the night....
What a cold still _watching_ thing moonlight can be!...
He thought he would like to get his back against something solid, and found near one of the sheds a little heap of litter.
He sat down against good tarred boards, assured at least that whatever came must come in front.
Whatever he did, he was resolved, he would not shut his eyes.
That would be fatal....
He awoke in broad daylight amidst a cheerful uproar of birds.
§ 6 And then again flight and pursuit were resumed.
As Bealby went up the hill away from Crayminster he saw a man standing over a spade and watching his retreat and when he looked back again presently this man was following.
It was Lady Laxton’s five pound reward had done the thing for him.
He was half minded to surrender and have done with it, but jail he knew was a dreadful thing of stone and darkness.
He would make one last effort.
So he beat along the edge of a plantation and then crossed it and forced his way through some gorse and came upon a sunken road, that crossed the hill in a gorse-lined cutting.
He struggled down the steep bank.
At its foot, regardless of him, unaware of him, a man sat beside a motor bicycle with his fists gripped tight and his head downcast, swearing.
A county map was crumpled in his hand.
“Damn!
” he cried, and flung the map to the ground and kicked it and put his foot on it.
Bealby slipped, came down the bank with a run and found himself in the road within a couple of yards of the blond features and angry eyes of Captain Douglas.
When he saw the Captain and perceived himself recognized, he flopped down—a done and finished Bealby....
§ 7 He had arrived just in time to interrupt the Captain in a wild and reprehensible fit of passion.
The Captain imagined it was a secret fit of passion.
He thought he was quite alone and that no one could hear him or see him.
So he had let himself shout and stamp, to work off the nervous tensions that tormented him beyond endurance.
In the direst sense of the words the Captain was in love with Madeleine.
He was in love quite beyond the bounds set by refined and decorous people to this dangerous passion.
The primordial savage that lurks in so many of us was uppermost in him.
He was not in love with her prettily or delicately, he was in love with her violently and vehemently.
He wanted to be with her, he wanted to be close to her, he wanted to possess her and nobody else to approach her.
He was so inflamed now that no other interest in life had any importance except as it aided or interfered with this desire.
He had forced himself in spite of this fever in his blood to leave her to pursue Bealby, and now he was regretting this firmness furiously.
He had expected to catch Bealby overnight and bring him back to the hotel in triumph.
But Bealby had been elusive.
There she was, away there, hurt and indignant—neglected!
“A laggard in love,” cried the Captain, “a dastard in war!
God!
—I run away from everything.
First I leave the manœuvres, then her.
Unstable as water thou shalt not prevail.
Water!
What does the confounded boy matter?
What does he matter?
“And there she is.
Alone!
She’ll flirt—naturally she’ll flirt.
Don’t I deserve it?
Haven’t I asked for it?
Just the one little time we might have had together!
I fling it in her face.
You fool, you laggard, you dastard!
And here’s this map!
” A breathing moment.
“How the _devil_,” cried the Captain, “am I to find the little beast on this map?
“And twice he’s been within reach of my hand!
“No decision!
” cried the Captain.
“No instant grip!
What good is a soldier without it?
What good is any man who will not leap at opportunity?
I ought to have chased out last night after that fool and his oats.
Then I might have had a chance!
“Chuck it!
Chuck the whole thing!
Go back to her.
Kneel to her, kiss her, compel her!
“And what sort of reception am I likely to get?
” He crumpled the flapping map in his fist.
And then suddenly out of nowhere Bealby came rolling down to his feet, a dishevelled and earthy Bealby.
But Bealby.
“Good Lord!
” cried the Captain, starting to his feet and holding the map like a sword sheath.
“What do you want?
” For a second Bealby was a silent spectacle of misery.
“Oooh!
I want my _breckfuss_,” he burst out at last, reduced to tears.
“Are you young Bealby?
” asked the Captain, seizing him by the shoulder.
“They’re after me,” cried Bealby.
“If they catch me they’ll put me in prison.
Where they don’t give you anything.
It wasn’t me did it—and I ’aven’t had anything to eat—not since yesterday.
” The Captain came rapidly to a decision.
There should be no more faltering.
He saw his way clear before him.
He would act—like a whistling sword.
“Here!
jump up behind,” he said ...
“hold on tight to me....
” § 8 For a time there was a more than Napoleonic swiftness in the Captain’s movements.
When Bealby’s pursuer came up to the hedge that looks down into the sunken road, there was no Bealby, no Captain, nothing but a torn and dishevelled county map, an almost imperceptible odour of petrol and a faint sound—like a distant mowing machine—and the motor bicycle was a mile away on the road to Beckinstone.
Eight miles, eight rather sickening miles, Bealby did to Beckinstone in eleven minutes, and there in a little coffee house he was given breakfast with eggs and bacon and marmalade (Prime!
), and his spirit was restored to him while the Captain raided a bicycle and repairing shop and negotiated the hire of an experienced but fairly comfortable wickerwork trailer.
And so, to London through the morning sunshine, leaving tramps, pursuers, policemen, handbills, bakers, market gardeners, terrors of the darkness and everything upon the road behind—and further behind and remote and insignificant—and so to the vanishing point.
Some few words of explanation the Captain had vouchsafed, and that was all.
“Don’t be afraid about it,” he said.
“Don’t be in the least bit afraid.
You tell them about it, just simply and truthfully, exactly what you did, exactly how you got into it and out of it and all about it.
” “You’re going to take me up to a Magistrate, sir?
” “I’m going to take you up to the Lord Chancellor himself.
” “And then they won’t do anything?
” “Nothing at all, Bealby; you trust me.
All you’ve got to do is to tell the simple truth....
” It was pretty rough going in the trailer, but very exciting.
If you gripped the sides very hard, and sat quite tight, nothing very much happened and also there was a strap across your chest.
And you went past everything.
There wasn’t a thing on the road the Captain didn’t pass, lowing deeply with his great horn when they seemed likely to block his passage.
And as for the burglary and everything, it would all be settled....
The Captain also found that ride to London exhilarating.
At least he was no longer hanging about; he was getting to something.
He would be able to go back to her—and all his being now yearned to go back to her—with things achieved, with successes to show.
He’d found the boy.
He would go straight to dear old uncle Chickney, and uncle Chickney would put things right with Moggeridge, the boy would bear his testimony, Moggeridge would be convinced and all would be well again.
He might be back with Madeleine that evening.
He would go back to her, and she would see the wisdom and energy of all he had done, and she would lift that dear chin of hers and smile that dear smile of hers and hold out her hand to be kissed and the lights and reflections would play on that strong soft neck of hers....
They buzzed along stretches of common and stretches of straight-edged meadowland, by woods and orchards, by pleasant inns and slumbering villages and the gates and lodges of country houses.
These latter grew more numerous, and presently they skirted a town, and then more road, more villages and at last signs of a nearness to London, more frequent houses, more frequent inns, hoardings and advertisements, an asphalted sidewalk, lamps, a gasworks, laundries, a stretch of suburban villadom, a suburban railway station, a suburbanized old town, an omnibus, the head of a tramline, a stretch of public common thick with noticeboards, a broad pavement, something-or-other parade, with a row of shops....
London.
CHAPTER VIII HOW BEALBY EXPLAINED
