Bealby; A Holiday — The Seeking of Bealby Part Two
§ 7 This meeting was no exception to their other meetings.
The coming to her was a crescendo of poetical desire, the sight of her a climax, and then—an accumulation of irritations.
He had thought being with her would be pure delight, and as they went over the down straying after the Bowles and the Geedges towards the Redlake Hotel he already found himself rather urgently asking her to marry him and being annoyed by what he regarded as her evasiveness.
He walked along with the restrained movement of a decent Englishman; he seemed as it were to gesticulate only through his clenched teeth, and she floated beside him, in a wonderful blue dress that with a wonderful foresight she had planned for breezy uplands on the basis of Botticelli’s _Primavera_.
He was urging her to marry him soon; he needed her, he could not live in peace without her.
It was not at all what he had come to say; he could not recollect that he had come to say anything, but now that he was with her it was the only thing he could find to say to her.
“But, my dearest boy,” she said, “how are we to marry?
What is to become of _your_ career and _my_ career?
” “I’ve _left_ my career!
” cried Captain Douglas with the first clear note of irritation in his voice.
“Oh!
don’t let us quarrel,” she cried.
“Don’t let us talk of all those _distant_ things.
Let us be happy.
Let us enjoy just this lovely day and the sunshine and the freshness and the beauty....
Because you know we are snatching these days.
We have so few days together.
Each—each must be a gem....
Look, dear, how the breeze sweeps through these tall dry stems that stick up everywhere—low broad ripples.
” She was a perfect work of art, abolishing time and obligations.
For a time they walked in silence.
Then Captain Douglas said, “All very well—beauty and all that—but a fellow likes to know where he is.
” She did not answer immediately, and then she said, “I believe you are angry because you have come away from France.
” “Not a bit of it,” said the Captain stoutly.
“I’d come away from anywhere to be with you.
” “I wonder,” she said.
“Well,—haven’t I?
” “I wonder if you ever are with me....
Oh!
—I know you _want_ me.
I know you desire me.
But the real thing, the happiness,—love.
What is anything to love—anything at all?
” In this strain they continued until their footsteps led them through the shelter of a group of beeches.
And there the gallant captain sought expression in deeds.
He kissed her hands, he sought her lips.
She resisted softly.
“No,” she said, “only if you love me with all your heart.
” Then suddenly, wonderfully, conqueringly she yielded him her lips.
“Oh!
” she sighed presently, “if only you understood.
” And leaving speech at that enigma she kissed again....
But you see now how difficult it was under these mystically loving conditions to introduce the idea of a prompt examination and dispatch of Bealby.
Already these days were consecrated....
And then you see Bealby vanished—going seaward....
Even the crash of the caravan disaster did little to change the atmosphere.
In spite of a certain energetic quality in the Professor’s direction of the situation—he was a little embittered because his thumb was sprained and his knee bruised rather badly and he had a slight abrasion over one ear and William had bitten his calf—the general disposition was to treat the affair hilariously.
Nobody seemed really hurt except William,—the Professor was not so much hurt as annoyed,—and William’s injuries though striking were all superficial, a sprained jaw and grazes and bruises and little things like that; everybody was heartened up to the idea of damages to be paid for; and neither the internal injuries to the caravan nor the hawker’s estimate of his stock-in-trade proved to be as great as one might reasonably have expected.
Before sunset the caravan was safely housed in the Winthorpe-Sutbury public house, William had found a congenial corner in the bar parlour, where his account of an inside view of the catastrophe and his views upon Professor Bowles were much appreciated, the hawker had made a bit extra by carting all the luggage to the Redlake Royal Hotel and the caravanners and their menfolk had loitered harmoniously back to this refuge.
Madeleine had walked along the road beside Captain Douglas and his motor bicycle, which he had picked up at the now desolate encampment.
“It only remains,” she said, “for that thing to get broken.
” “But I may want it,” he said.
“No,” she said, “Heaven has poured us together and now He has smashed the vessels.
At least He has smashed one of the vessels.
And look!
—like a great shield, there is the moon.
It’s the Harvest Moon, isn’t it?
” “No,” said the Captain, with his poetry running away with him.
“It’s the Lovers’ Moon.
” “It’s like a benediction rising over our meeting.
” And it was certainly far too much like a benediction for the Captain to talk about Bealby.
That night was a perfect night for lovers, a night flooded with a kindly radiance, so that the warm mystery of the centre of life seemed to lurk in every shadow and hearts throbbed instead of beating and eyes were stars.
After dinner every one found wraps and slipped out into the moonlight; the Geedges vanished like moths; the Professor made no secret that Judy was transfigured for him.
Night works these miracles.
The only other visitors there, a brace of couples, resorted to the boats upon the little lake.
Two enormous waiters removing the coffee cups from the small tables upon the verandah heard Madeleine’s beautiful voice for a little while and then it was stilled....
§ 8 The morning found Captain Douglas in a state of reaction.
He was anxious to explain quite clearly to Madeleine just how necessary it was that he should go in search of Bealby forthwith.
He was beginning to realize now just what a chance in the form of Bealby had slipped through his fingers.
He had dropped Bealby and now the thing to do was to pick up Bealby again before he was altogether lost.
Her professional life unfortunately had given Miss Philips the habit of never rising before midday, and the Captain had to pass the time as well as he could until the opportunity for his explanation came.
A fellow couldn’t go off without an explanation....
He passed the time with Professor Bowles upon the golf links.
The Professor was a first-rate player and an unselfish one; he wanted all other players to be as good as himself.
He would spare no pains to make them so.
If he saw them committing any of the many errors into which golfers fall, he would tell them of it and tell them why it was an error and insist upon showing them just how to avoid it in future.
He would point out any want of judgment, and not confine himself, as so many professional golf teachers do, merely to the stroke.
After a time he found it necessary to hint to the Captain that nowadays a military man must accustom himself to self-control.
The Captain kept Pishing and Tushing, and presently, it was only too evident, swearing softly; his play got jerky, his strokes were forcible without any real strength, once he missed the globe altogether and several times he sliced badly.
The eyes under his light eyelashes were wicked little things.
He remembered that he had always detested golf.
And the Professor.
He had always detested the Professor.
And his caddie; at least he would have always detested his caddie if he had known him long enough.
His caddie was one of those maddening boys with no expression at all.
It didn’t matter what he did or failed to do, there was the silly idiot with his stuffed face, unmoved.
Really, of course overjoyed—but apparently unmoved....
“Why did I play it that way?
” the Captain repeated.
“Oh!
because I like to play it that way.
” “_Well_,” said the Professor.
“It isn’t a recognized way anyhow....
” Then came a moment of evil pleasures.
He’d sliced.
Old Bowles had sliced.
For once in a while he’d muffed something.
Always teaching others and here he was slicing!
Why, sometimes the Captain didn’t slice!...
He’d get out of that neatly enough.
Luck!
He’d get the hole yet.
What a bore it all was!...
Why couldn’t Madeleine get up at a decent hour to see a fellow?
Why must she lie in bed when she wasn’t acting?
If she had got up all this wouldn’t have happened.
The shame of it!
Here he was, an able-bodied capable man in the prime of life and the morning of a day playing this blockhead’s game—!
Yes—blockhead’s game!
“You play the like,” said the Professor.
“_Rather_,” said the Captain and addressed himself to his stroke.
“That’s not your ball,” said the Professor.
“Similar position,” said the Captain.
“You know, you might _win_ this hole,” said the Professor.
“Who cares?
” said the Captain under his breath and putted extravagantly.
“That saves me,” said the Professor, and went down from a distance of twelve yards.
The Captain, full of an irrational resentment, did his best to halve the hole and failed.
“You ought to put in a week at nothing but putting,” said the Professor.
“It would save you at least a stroke a hole.
I’ve noticed that on almost every green, if I haven’t beaten you before I pull up in the putting.
” The Captain pretended not to hear and said a lot of rococo things inside himself.
It was Madeleine who had got him in for this game.
A beautiful healthy girl ought to get up in the mornings.
Mornings and beautiful healthy girls are all the same thing really.
She ought to be _dewy_—positively dewy....
There she must be lying, warm and beautiful in bed—like Catherine the Great or somebody of that sort.
No. It wasn’t right.
All very luxurious and so on but not _right_.
She ought to have understood that he was bound to fall a prey to the Professor if she didn’t get up.
Golf!
Here he was, neglecting his career; hanging about on these _beastly_ links, all the sound men away there in France—it didn’t do to think of it!
—and he was playing this retired tradesman’s consolation!
(Beastly the Professor’s legs looked from behind.
The uglier a man’s legs are the better he plays golf.
It’s almost a law.
) That’s what it was, a retired tradesman’s consolation.
A decent British soldier has no more business to be playing golf than he has to be dressing dolls.
It’s a game at once worthless and exasperating.
If a man isn’t perfectly fit he cannot play golf, and when he is perfectly fit he ought to be doing a man’s work in the world.
If ever anything deserved the name of vice, if ever anything was pure, unforgivable dissipation, surely golf was that thing....
And meanwhile that boy was getting more and more start.
Anyone with a ha’porth of sense would have been up at five and after that brat—might have had him bagged and safe and back to lunch.
_Ass_ one was at times!
“You’re here, sir,” said the caddie.
The captain perceived he was in a nasty place, open green ahead but with some tumbled country near at hand and to the left, a rusty old gravel pit, furze at the sides, water at the bottom.
Nasty attractive hole of a place.
Sort of thing one gets into.
He must pull himself together for this.
After all, having undertaken to play a game one must play the game.
If he hit the infernal thing, that is to say the ball, if he hit the ball so that if it didn’t go straight it would go to the right rather—clear of the hedge it wouldn’t be so bad to the right.
Difficult to manage.
Best thing was to think hard of the green ahead, a long way ahead,—with just the slightest deflection to the right.
Now then,—heels well down, club up, a good swing, keep your eye on the ball, keep your eye on the ball, keep your eye on the ball just where you mean to hit it—far below there and a little to the right—and _don’t_ worry....
_Rap.
_ “In the pond I _think_, sir.
” “The water would have splashed if it had gone in the pond,” said the Professor.
“It must be over there in the wet sand.
You hit it pretty hard, I thought.
” Search.
The caddie looked as though he didn’t care whether he found it or not.
_He_ ought to be interested.
It was his profession, not just his game.
But nowadays everybody had this horrid disposition towards slacking.
A Tired generation we are.
The world is too much with us.
Too much to think about, too much to do, Madeleines, army manœuvres, angry lawyers, lost boys—let alone such exhausting foolery as this game....
“_Got_ it, sir!
” said the caddie.
“Where?
” “Here, sir!
Up in the bush, sir!
” It was resting in the branches of a bush two yards above the slippery bank.
“I doubt if you can play it,” said the Professor, “but it will be interesting to try.
” The Captain scrutinized the position.
“I can play it,” he said.
“You’ll slip, I’m afraid,” said the Professor.
They were both right.
Captain Douglas drove his feet into the steep slope of rusty sand below the bush, held his iron a little short and wiped the ball up and over and as he found afterwards out of the rough.
All eyes followed the ball except his.
The Professor made sounds of friendly encouragement.
But the Captain was going—going.
He was on all fours, he scrabbled handfuls of prickly gorse, of wet sand.
His feet, his ankles, his calves slid into the pond.
How much more?
No. He’d reached the bottom.
He proceeded to get out again as well as he could.
Not so easy.
The bottom of the pond sucked at him....
When at last he rejoined the other three his hands were sandy red, his knees were sandy red, his feet were of clay, but his face was like the face of a little child.
Like the face of a little fair child after it has been boiled red in its bath and then dusted over with white powder.
His ears were the colour of roses, Lancaster roses.
And his eyes too had something of the angry wonder of a little child distressed....
“I was afraid you’d slip into the pond,” said the Professor.
“I didn’t,” said the Captain.
“!
” “I just got in to see how deep it was and cool my feet—I hate warm feet.
” He lost that hole but he felt a better golfer now, his anger he thought was warming him up so that he would presently begin to make strokes by instinct, and do remarkable things unawares.
After all there is something in the phrase “getting one’s blood up.
” If only the Professor wouldn’t dally so with his ball and let one’s blood get down again.
Tap!
—the Professor’s ball went soaring.
Now for it.
The Captain addressed himself to his task, altered his plans rather hastily, smote and topped the ball.
The least one could expect was a sympathetic silence.
But the Professor thought fit to improve the occasion.
“You’ll never drive,” said the Professor; “you’ll never drive with that _irritable_ jerk in the middle of the stroke.
You might just as well smack the ball without raising your club.
If you think—” The Captain lost his self-control altogether.
“Look here,” he said, “if _you_ think that _I_ care a single rap about how I hit the ball, if you think that I really want to win and do well at this beastly, silly, elderly, childish game—.
” He paused on the verge of ungentlemanly language.
“If a thing’s worth doing at all,” said the Professor after a pause for reflection, “it’s worth doing well.
” “Then it isn’t worth doing at all.
As this hole gives you the game—if you don’t mind—” The Captain’s hot moods were so rapid that already he was acutely ashamed of himself.
“O _certainly_, if you wish it,” said the Professor.
With a gesture the Professor indicated the altered situation to the respectful caddies and the two gentlemen turned their faces towards the hotel.
For a time they walked side by side in silence, the caddies following with hushed expressions.
“Splendid weather for the French manœuvres,” said the Captain presently in an off-hand tone, “that is to say if they are getting this weather.
” “At present there are a series of high pressure systems over the whole of Europe north of the Alps,” said the Professor.
“It is as near set fair as Europe can be.
” “Fine weather for tramps and wanderers,” said the Captain after a further interval.
“There’s a drawback to everything,” said the Professor.
“But it’s very lovely weather.
” § 9 They got back to the hotel about half-past eleven and the Captain went and had an unpleasant time with one of the tyres of his motor bicycle which had got down in the night.
In replacing the tyre he pinched the top of one of his fingers rather badly.
Then he got the ordnance map of the district and sat at a green table in the open air in front of the hotel windows and speculated on the probable flight of Bealby.
He had been last seen going south by east.
That way lay the sea, and all boy fugitives go naturally for the sea.
He tried to throw himself into the fugitive’s mind and work out just exactly the course Bealby _must_ take to the sea.
For a time he found this quite an absorbing occupation.
Bealby probably had no money or very little money.
Therefore he would have to beg or steal.
He wouldn’t go to the workhouse because he wouldn’t know about the workhouse, respectable poor people never know anything about the workhouse, and the chances were he would be both too honest and too timid to steal.
He’d beg.
He’d beg at front doors because of dogs and things, and he’d probably go along a high road.
He’d be more likely to beg from houses than from passers-by, because a door is at first glance less formidable than a pedestrian and more accustomed to being addressed.
And he’d try isolated cottages rather than the village street doors, an isolated wayside cottage is so much more confidential.
He’d ask for food—not money.
All that seemed pretty sound.
Now this road on the map—into it he was bound to fall and along it he would go begging.
No other?...
No. In the fine weather he’d sleep out.
And he’d go—ten, twelve, fourteen—thirteen, thirteen miles a day.
So now, he ought to be about here.
And to-night,—here.
To-morrow at the same pace,—here.
But suppose he got a lift!...
He’d only get a slow lift if he got one at all.
It wouldn’t make much difference in the calculation....
So if to-morrow one started and went on to these cross roads marked _Inn_, just about twenty-six miles it must be by the scale, and beat round it one ought to get something in the way of tidings of Mr. Bealby.
Was there any reason why Bealby shouldn’t go on south by east and seaward?...
None.
And now there remained nothing to do but to explain all this clearly to Madeleine.
And why didn’t she come down?
Why didn’t she come down?
But when one got Bealby what would one do with him?
Wring the truth out of him—half by threats and half by persuasion.
Suppose after all he hadn’t any connexion with the upsetting of Lord Moggeridge?
He had.
Suppose he hadn’t. He had.
He had.
He had.
And when one had the truth?
Whisk the boy right up to London and confront the Lord Chancellor with the facts.
But suppose he wouldn’t be confronted with the facts.
He was a touchy old sinner....
For a time Captain Douglas balked at this difficulty.
Then suddenly there came into his head the tall figure, the long moustaches of that kindly popular figure, his adopted uncle Lord Chickney.
Suppose he took the boy straight to Uncle Chickney, told him the whole story.
Even the Lord Chancellor would scarcely refuse ten minutes to General Lord Chickney....
The clearer the plans of Captain Douglas grew the more anxious he became to put them before Madeleine—clearly and convincingly....
Because first he had to catch his boy....
Presently, as Captain Douglas fretted at the continued eclipse of Madeleine, his thumb went into his waistcoat pocket and found a piece of paper.
He drew it out and looked at it.
It was a little piece of stiff note-paper cut into the shape of a curved V rather after the fashion of a soaring bird.
It must have been there for months.
He looked at it.
His care-wrinkled brow relaxed.
He glanced over his shoulder at the house and then held this little scrap high over his head and let go.
It descended with a slanting flight curving round to the left and then came about and swept down to the ground to the right....
Now why did it go like that?
As if it changed its mind.
He tried it again.
Same result....
Suppose the curvature of the wings was a little greater?
Would it make a more acute or a less acute angle?
He did not know....
Try it.
He felt in his pocket for a piece of paper, found Lady Laxton’s letter, produced a stout pair of nail scissors in a sheath from a waistcoat pocket, selected a good clear sheet, and set himself to cut out his improved V....
As he did so his eyes were on V number one, on the ground.
It would be interesting to see if this thing turned about to the left again.
If in fact it would go on zig-zagging.
It ought, he felt, to do so.
But to test that one ought to release it from some higher point so as to give it a longer flight.
Stand on the chair?...
Not in front of the whole rotten hotel.
And there was a beastly looking man in a green apron coming out of the house,—the sort of man who looks at you.
He might come up and watch; these fellows are equal to anything of that sort.
Captain Douglas replaced his scissors and scraps in his pockets, leaned back with an affectation of boredom, got up, lit a cigarette—sort of thing the man in the green apron would think all right—and strolled off towards a clump of beech trees, beyond which were bushes and a depression.
There perhaps one might be free from observation.
