§ 1
bealby was beginning to realize that running away from one’s situation and setting up for oneself is not so easy and simple a thing as it had appeared during those first days with the caravan. three things he perceived had arisen to pursue him, two that followed in the daylight, the law and the tramp, and a third that came back at twilight, the terror of the darkness. and within there was a hollow faintness, for the afternoon was far advanced and he was extremely hungry. he had dozed away the early afternoon in the weedy corner of a wood. but for his hunger i think he would have avoided crayminster.
within a mile of that place he had come upon the ‘missing’ notice again stuck to the end of a barn. he had passed it askance, and then with a sudden inspiration returned and tore it down. somehow with the daylight his idea of turning king’s evidence against the tramp had weakened. he no longer felt sure.
mustn’t one wait and be asked first to turn king’s evidence?
suppose they said he had merely confessed....
227the crayminster street had a picturesque nutritious look. half-way down it was the white hart with cyclist club signs on its walls and geraniums over a white porch, and beyond a house being built and already at the roofing pitch. to the right was a baker’s shop diffusing a delicious suggestion of buns and cake and to the left a little comfortable sweetstuff window and a glimpse of tables and a board: ‘teas.’ tea! he resolved to break into his ninepence boldly and generously. very likely they would boil him an egg for a penny or so. yet on the other hand if he just had three or four buns, soft new buns. he hovered towards the baker’s shop and stopped short. that bill was in the window!
he wheeled about sharply and went into the sweetstuff shop and found a table with a white cloth and a motherly little woman in a large cap. tea? he could have an egg and some thick bread and butter and a cup of tea for fivepence. he sat down respectfully to await her preparations.
but he was uneasy.
he knew quite well that she would ask him questions. for that he was prepared. he said he was walking from his home in london to someport to save the fare. “but you’re so dirty!” said the motherly little woman. “i sent my luggage by post, ma’m, and i lost my way and didn’t get it. and i don’t much mind, ma’m, if you don’t. not washing....”
all that he thought he did quite neatly. but he wished there was not that bill in the baker’s 228window opposite and he wished he hadn’t quite such a hunted feeling. a faint claustrophobia affected him. he felt the shop might be a trap. he would be glad to get into the open again. was there a way out behind if for example a policeman blocked the door? he hovered to the entrance while his egg was boiling and then when he saw a large fat baker surveying the world with an afternoon placidity upon his face, he went back and sat by the table. he wondered if the baker had noted him.
he had finished his egg; he was drinking his tea with appreciative noises, when he discovered that the baker had noted him. bealby’s eyes, at first inanely open above the tilting tea cup, were suddenly riveted on something that was going on in the baker’s window. from where he sat he could see that detestable bill, and then slowly, feeling about for it, he beheld a hand and a floury sleeve. the bill was drawn up and vanished and then behind a glass shelf of fancy bread and a glass shelf of buns something pink and indistinct began to move jerkily.... it was a human face and it was trying to peer into the little refreshment shop that sheltered bealby....
bealby’s soul went faint.
he had one inadequate idea. “might i go out,” he said, “by your back way?”
“there isn’t a back way,” said the motherly little woman. “there’s a yard—.”
“if i might,” said bealby, and was out in it.
no way at all! high walls on every side. he was back like a shot in the shop, and now the 229baker was half-way across the road. “fivepence,” said bealby and gave the little old woman sixpence. “here,” she cried, “take your penny!”
he did not wait. he darted out of the door.
the baker was all over the way of escape. he extended arms that seemed abnormally long and with a weak cry bealby found himself trapped. trapped, but not hopelessly. he knew how to do it. he had done it in milder forms before, but now he did it with all his being. under the diaphragm of the baker smote bealby’s hard little head, and instantly he was away running up the quiet sunny street. man when he assumed the erect attitude made a hostage of his belly. it is a proverb among the pastoral berbers of the atlas mountains that the man who extends his arms in front of an angry ram is a fool.
it seemed probable to bealby that he would get away up the street. the baker was engaged in elaborately falling backward, making the most of sitting down in the road, and the wind had been knocked out of him so that he could not shout. he emitted “stop him!” in large whispers. away ahead there were only three builder’s men sitting under the wall beyond the white hart, consuming tea out of their tea cans. but the boy who was trimming the top of the tall privet hedge outside the doctor’s saw the assault of the baker and incontinently uttered the shout that the baker could not. also he fell off his steps with great alacrity and started in pursuit of bealby. a young man from anywhere—perhaps the grocer’s shop—also started for 230bealby. but the workmen were slow to rise to the occasion. bealby could have got past them. and then, abruptly at the foot of the street ahead the tramp came into view, a battered disconcerting figure. his straw-coloured hat which had recently been wetted and dried in the sun was a swaying mop. the sight of bealby seemed to rouse him from some disagreeable meditations. he grasped the situation with a terrible quickness. regardless of the wisdom of the pastoral berbers he extended his arms and stood prepared to intercept.
bealby thought at the rate of a hundred thoughts to the minute. he darted sideways and was up the ladder and among the beams and rafters of the unfinished roof before the pursuit had more than begun. “here, come off that,” cried the foreman builder, only now joining in the hunt with any sincerity. he came across the road while bealby regarded him wickedly from the rafters above. then as the good man made to ascend bealby got him neatly on the hat, it was a bowler hat, with a tile. this checked the advance. there was a disposition to draw a little off and look up at bealby. one of the younger builders from the opposite sidewalk got him very neatly in the ribs with a stone. but two other shots went wide and bealby shifted to a more covered position behind the chimney stack.
from here, however, he had a much less effective command of the ladder, and he perceived that his tenure of the new house was not likely to be a long one.
231below, men parleyed. “who is ’e?” asked the foreman builder. “where’d ’e come from?” “’e’s a brasted little thief,” said the tramp. “’e’s one of the wust characters on the road.” the baker was recovering his voice now. “there’s a reward out for ’im,” he said, “and ’e butted me in the stummick.”
“’ow much reward?” asked the foreman builder.
“five pound for the man who catches him.”
“’ere!” cried the foreman builder in an arresting voice to the tramp. “just stand away from that ladder....”
whatever else bealby might or might not be, one thing was very clear about him and that was that he was a fugitive. and the instinct of humanity is to pursue fugitives. man is a hunting animal, enquiry into the justice of a case is an altogether later accretion to his complex nature, and that is why, whatever you are or whatever you do, you should never let people get you on the run. there is a joy in the mere fact of hunting, the sight of a scarlet coat and a hound will brighten a whole village, and now crayminster was rousing itself like a sleeper who wakes to sunshine and gay music. people were looking out of windows and coming out of shops, a policeman appeared and heard the baker’s simple story, a brisk hatless young man in a white apron and with a pencil behind his ear became prominent. bealby, peeping over the ridge of the roof, looked a thoroughly dirty and unpleasant little creature to all these people. the only spark of human 232sympathy for him below was in the heart of the little old woman in the cap who had given him his breakfast. she surveyed the roof of the new house from the door of her shop, she hoped bealby wouldn’t hurt himself up there, and she held his penny change clutched in her hand in her apron pocket with a vague idea that perhaps presently if he ran past she could very quickly give it him.
§ 2
considerable delay in delivering the assault on the house was caused by the foreman’s insistence that he alone should ascend the ladder to capture bealby. he was one of those regular-featured men with large heads who seem to have inflexible backbones, he was large and fair and full with a sweetish chest voice and in all his movements authoritative and deliberate. whenever he made to ascend he discovered that people were straying into his building, and he had to stop and direct his men how to order them off. inside his large head he was trying to arrange everybody to cut off bealby’s line of retreat without risking that anybody but himself should capture the fugitive. it was none too easy and it knitted his brows. meanwhile bealby was able to reconnoitre the adjacent properties and to conceive plans for a possible line of escape. he also got a few tiles handy against when the rush up the ladder came. at the same time two of the younger workmen were investigating the possibility of getting at him from inside the house. there was still no 233staircase, but there were ways of clambering. they had heard about the reward and they knew that they must do this before the foreman realized their purpose, and this a little retarded them. in their pockets they had a number of stones, ammunition in reserve, if it came again to throwing.
bealby was no longer fatigued nor depressed; anxiety for the future was lost in the excitement of the present, and his heart told him that, come what might, getting on to the roof was an extraordinarily good dodge.
and if only he could bring off a certain jump he had in mind, there were other dodges—....
in the village street an informal assembly of leading citizens, a little recovered now from their first nervousness about flying tiles, discussed the problem of bealby. there was mumby, the draper and vegetarian, with the bass voice and the big black beard. he advocated the fire engine. he was one of the volunteer fire brigade and never so happy as when he was wearing his helmet. he had come out of his shop at the shouting. schocks the butcher, and his boy were also in the street. schocks’s yard, with its heap of manure and fodder, bounded the new house on the left. rymell the vet emerged from the billiard room of the white hart, and with his head a little on one side was watching bealby and replying attentively to the baker, who was asking him a number of questions that struck him as irrelevant. all the white hart people were in the street.
234“i suppose, mr. rymell,” said the baker, “there’s a mort of dangerous things in a man’s belly round about ’is stummick?”
“tiles,” said mr. rymell. “loose bricks. it wouldn’t do if he started dropping those.”
“i was saying, mr. rymell,” said the baker, after a pause for digestion, “is a man likely to be injured badly by a blaw in his stummick?”
mr. rymell stared at him for a moment with unresponsive eyes. “more likely to get you in the head,” he said, and then, “here! what’s that fool of a carpenter going to do?”
the tramp was hovering on the outskirts of the group of besiegers, vindictive but dispirited. he had been brought to from his fit and given a shilling by the old gentleman, but he was dreadfully wet between his shirt—he wore a shirt, under three waistcoats and a coat—and his skin, because the old gentleman’s method of revival had been to syringe him suddenly with cold water. it had made him weep with astonishment and misery. now he saw no advantage in claiming bealby publicly. his part, he felt, was rather a waiting one. what he had to say to bealby could be best said without the assistance of a third person. and he wanted to understand more of this talk about a reward. if there was a reward out for bealby—
“that’s not a bad dodge!” said rymell, changing his opinion of the foreman suddenly as that individual began his ascent of the ladder with a bricklayer’s hod carried shield-wise above his head. he went up with difficulty and slowly 235because of the extreme care he took to keep his head protected. but no tiles came. bealby had discovered a more dangerous attack developing inside the house and was already in retreat down the other side of the building.
he did a leap that might have hurt him badly, taking off from the corner of the house and jumping a good twelve feet on to a big heap of straw in the butcher’s yard. he came down on all fours and felt a little jarred for an instant, and then he was up again and had scrambled up by a heap of manure to the top of the butcher’s wall. he was over that and into maccullum’s yard next door before anyone in the front of the new house had realized that he was in flight. then one of the two workmen who had been coming up inside the house saw him from the oblong opening that was some day to be the upstairs bedroom window, and gave tongue.
it was thirty seconds later, and after bealby had vanished from the butcher’s wall that the foreman, still clinging to his hod, appeared over the ridge of the roof. at the workman’s shout the policeman, who with the preventive disposition of his profession, had hitherto been stopping anyone from coming into the unfinished house, turned about and ran out into its brick and plaster and timber-littered backyard, whereupon the crowd in the street realizing that the quarry had gone away and no longer restrained, came pouring partly through the house and partly round through the butcher’s gate into his yard.
bealby had had a check.
236he had relied upon the tarred felt roof of the mushroom shed of maccullum the tailor and breeches-maker to get him to the wall that gave upon mr. benshaw’s strawberry fields and he had not seen from his roof above the ramshackle glazed outhouse which maccullum called his workroom and in which four industrious tailors were working in an easy dishabille. the roof of the shed was the merest tarred touchwood, it had perished as felt long ago, it collapsed under bealby, he went down into a confusion of mushrooms and mushroom-bed, he blundered out trailing mushrooms and spawn and rich matter, he had a nine-foot wall to negotiate and only escaped by a hair’s-breadth from the clutch of a little red-slippered man who came dashing out from the workroom. but by a happy use of the top of the dustbin he did just get away over the wall in time, and the red-slippered tailor, who was not good at walls, was left struggling to imitate an ascent that had looked easy enough until he came to try it.
for a moment the little tailor struggled alone and then both maccullum’s little domain and the butcher’s yard next door and the little patch of space behind the new house, were violently injected with a crowd of active people, all confusedly on the bealby trail. someone, he never knew who, gave the little tailor a leg-up and then his red slippers twinkled over the wall and he was leading the hunt into the market gardens of mr. benshaw. a collarless colleague in list slippers and conspicuous braces followed. the policeman, 237after he had completed the wreck of mr. maccullum’s mushroom shed, came next, and then mr. maccullum, with no sense of times and seasons, anxious to have a discussion at once upon the question of this damage. mr. maccullum was out of breath and he never got further with this projected conversation than “here!” this he repeated several times as opportunity seemed to offer. the remaining tailors got to the top of the wall more sedately with the help of the maccullum kitchen steps and dropped; mr. schocks followed, breathing hard, and then a fresh jet of humanity came squirting into the gardens through a gap in the fence at the back of the building site. this was led by the young workman who had first seen bealby go away. hard behind him came rymell, the vet, the grocer’s assistant, the doctor’s page-boy and, less briskly, the baker. then the tramp. then mumby and schocks’s boy. then a number of other people. the seeking of bealby had assumed the dimensions of a hue and cry.
the foreman with the large head and the upright back was still on the new roof; he was greatly distressed at the turn things had taken and shouted his claims to a major share in the capture of bealby, mixed with his opinions of bealby and a good deal of mere swearing, to a sunny but unsympathetic sky....
§ 3
mr. benshaw was a small holder, a sturdy english yeoman of the new school. he was 238an anti-socialist, a self-helper, an independent-spirited man. he had a steadily growing banking account and a plain but sterile wife, and he was dark in complexion and so erect in his bearing as to seem a little to lean forward. usually he wore a sort of grey gamekeeper’s suit with brown gaiters (except on sundays when the coat was black), he was addicted to bowler hats that accorded ill with his large grave grey-coloured face, and he was altogether a very sound strong man. his bowler hats did but accentuate that. he had no time for vanities, even the vanity of dressing consistently. he went into the nearest shop and just bought the cheapest hat he could, and so he got hats designed for the youthful and giddy, hats with flighty crowns and flippant bows and amorous brims that undulated attractively to set off flushed and foolish young faces. it made his unrelenting face look rather like the puritans under the stuart monarchy.
he was a horticulturist rather than a farmer. he had begun his career in cheap lodgings with a field of early potatoes and cabbages, supplemented by employment, but with increased prosperity his area of cultivation had extended and his methods intensified. he now grew considerable quantities of strawberries, raspberries, celery, seakale, asparagus, early peas, late peas, and onions, and consumed more stable manure than any other cultivator within ten miles of crayminster. he was beginning to send cut flowers to london. he had half an acre of glass and he was rapidly extending it. he had built 239himself a cottage on lines of austere economy, and a bony-looking dwelling house for some of his men. he also owned a number of useful sheds of which tar and corrugated iron were conspicuous features. his home was furnished with the utmost respectability, and notably joyless even in a countryside where gaiety is regarded as an impossible quality in furniture. he was already in a small local way a mortgagee. good fortune had not turned the head of mr. benshaw nor robbed him of the feeling that he was a particularly deserving person, entitled to a preferential treatment from a country which in his plain unsparing way he felt that he enriched.
in many ways he thought that the country was careless of his needs. and in none more careless than in the laws relating to trespass. across his dominions ran three footpaths, and one of these led to the public elementary school. that he should have to maintain this latter—and if he did not keep it in good order the children spread out and made parallel tracks among his cultivations—seemed to him a thing almost intolerably unjust. he mended it with cinders, acetylene refuse, which he believed and hoped to be thoroughly bad for boots, and a peculiarly slimy chalky clay, and he put on a board at each end “keep to the footpaths, trespassers will be prosecuted, by order,” which he painted himself to save expense when he was confined indoors by the influenza. still more unjust it would be, he felt, for him to spend money upon effective fencing, and he could find no fencing cheap enough 240and ugly enough and painful enough and impossible enough to express his feelings in the matter. every day the children streamed to and fro, marking how his fruits ripened and his produce became more esculent. and other people pursued these tracks; many, mr. benshaw was convinced, went to and fro through his orderly crops who had no business whatever, no honest business, to pass that way. either, he concluded, they did it to annoy him, or they did it to injure him. this continual invasion aroused in mr. benshaw all that stern anger against unrighteousness latent in our race which more than any other single force has made america and the empire what they are to-day. once already he had been robbed—a raid upon his raspberries—and he felt convinced that at any time he might be robbed again. he had made representations to the local authority to get the footpath closed, but in vain. they defended themselves with the paltry excuse that the children would then have to go nearly a mile round to the school.
it was not only the tyranny of these footpaths that offended mr. benshaw’s highly developed sense of individual liberty. all round his rather straggling dominions his neighbours displayed an ungenerous indisposition to maintain their fences to his satisfaction. in one or two places, in abandonment of his clear rights in the matter, he had, at his own expense, supplemented these lax defences with light barbed wire defences. but it was not a very satisfactory sort of barbed wire. he wanted barbed wire with extra spurs like a fighting 241cock; he wanted barbed wire that would start out after nightfall and attack passers-by. this boundary trouble was universal; in a way it was worse than the footpaths which after all only affected the cage fields where his strawberries grew. except for the yard and garden walls of maccullum and schocks and that side, there was not really a satisfactory foot of enclosure all round mr. benshaw. on the one side rats and people’s dogs and scratching cats came in, on the other side rabbits. the rabbits were intolerable and recently there had been a rise of nearly thirty per cent in the price of wire netting.
mr. benshaw wanted to hurt rabbits; he did not want simply to kill them, he wanted so to kill them as to put the fear of death into the burrows. he wanted to kill them so that scared little furry survivors with their tails as white as ghosts would go lolloping home and say, “i say, you chaps, we’d better shift out of this. we’re up against a strong determined man....”
i have made this lengthy statement of mr. benshaw’s economic and moral difficulties in order that the reader should understand the peculiar tension that already existed upon this side of crayminster. it has been necessary to do so now because in a few seconds there will be no further opportunity for such preparations.
there had been trouble, i may add very hastily, about the shooting of mr. benshaw’s gun; a shower of small shot had fallen out of the twilight upon the umbrella and basket of old mrs. frobisher. and only a week ago an unsympathetic 242bench after a hearing of over an hour and in the face of overwhelming evidence had refused to convict little lucy mumby, aged eleven, of stealing fruit from mr. benshaw’s fields. she had been caught red-handed....
at the very moment that bealby was butting the baker in the stomach, mr. benshaw was just emerging from his austere cottage after a wholesome but inexpensive high tea in which he had finished up two left-over cold sausages, and he was considering very deeply the financial side of a furious black fence that he had at last decided should pen in the school children from further depredations. it should be of splintery tarred deal, and high, with well-pointed tops studded with sharp nails, and he believed that by making the path only two feet wide, a real saving of ground for cultivation might be made and a very considerable discomfort for the public arranged, to compensate for his initial expense. the thought of a narrow lane which would in winter be characterized by an excessive slimness and from which there would be no lateral escape was pleasing to a mind by no means absolutely restricted to considerations of pounds, shillings and pence. in his hand after his custom he carried a hoe, on the handle of which feet were marked, so that it was available not only for destroying the casual weed but also for purposes of measurement. with this he now checked his estimate and found that here he would reclaim as much as three feet of trodden waste, here a full two.
absorbed in these calculations, he heeded little 243the growth of a certain clamour from the backs of the houses bordering on the high street. it did not appear to concern him and mr. benshaw made it almost ostentatiously his rule to mind his own business. his eyes remained fixed on the lumpy, dusty, sunbaked track, that with an intelligent foresight he saw already transformed into a deterrent slough of despond for the young....
then quite suddenly the shouting took on a new note. he glanced over his shoulder almost involuntarily and discovered that after all this uproar was his business. amazingly his business. his mouth assumed a cromwellian fierceness. his grip tightened on his hoe. that anyone should dare! but it was impossible!
his dominions were being invaded with a peculiar boldness and violence.
ahead of everyone else and running with wild wavings of the arms across his strawberries was a small and very dirty little boy. he impressed mr. benshaw merely as a pioneer. some thirty yards behind him was a little collarless, short-sleeved man in red slippers running with great effrontery and behind him another still more denuded lunatic, also in list slippers and with braces—braces of inconceivable levity. and then wiggs, the policeman, hotly followed by mr. maccullum. then more distraught tailors and schocks the butcher. but a louder shout heralded the main attack, and mr. benshaw turned his eyes—already they were slightly blood-shot eyes—to the right, and saw, pouring through the broken hedge, a disorderly crowd, rymell whom 244he had counted his friend, the grocer’s assistant, the doctor’s boy, some strangers—mumby!
at the sight of mumby, mr. benshaw leapt at a conclusion. he saw it all. the whole place was rising against him; they were asserting some infernal new right-of-way. mumby—mumby had got them to do it. all the fruits of fifteen years of toil, all the care and accumulation of mr. benshaw’s prime, were to be trampled and torn to please a draper’s spite!...
sturdy yeoman as mr. benshaw was he resolved instantly to fight for his liberties. one moment he paused to blow the powerful police whistle he carried in his pocket and then rushed forward in the direction of the hated mumby, the leader of trespassers, the parent and abetter and defender of the criminal lucy. he took the hurrying panting man almost unawares, and with one wild sweep of the hoe felled him to the earth. then he staggered about and smote again, but not quite in time to get the head of mr. rymell.
this whistle he carried was part of a systematic campaign he had developed against trespassers and fruit stealers. he and each of his assistants carried one, and at the first shrill note—it was his rule—everyone seized on every weapon that was handy and ran to pursue and capture. all his assistants were extraordinarily prompt in responding to these alarms, which were often the only break in long days of strenuous and strenuously directed toil. so now with an astonishing promptitude and animated faces men appeared from sheds and greenhouses and distant 245patches of culture, hastening to the assistance of their dour employer.
it says much for the amiable relations that existed between employers and employed in those days before syndicalism became the creed of the younger workers that they did hurry to his assistance.
but many rapid things were to happen before they came into action. for first a strange excitement seized upon the tramp. a fantastic delusive sense of social rehabilitation took possession of his soul. here he was pitted against a formidable hoe-wielding man, who for some inscrutable reason was resolved to cover the retreat of bealby. and all the world, it seemed, was with the tramp and against this hoe-wielder. all the tremendous forces of human society, against which the tramp had struggled for so many years, whose power he knew and feared as only the outlaw can, had suddenly come into line with him. across the strawberries to the right there was even a policeman hastening to join the majority, a policeman closely followed by a tradesman of the blackest, most respectable quality. the tramp had a vision of himself as a respectable man heroically leading respectable people against outcasts. he dashed the lank hair from his eyes, waved his arms laterally, and then with a loud strange cry flung himself towards mr. benshaw. two pairs of superimposed coat-tails flapped behind him. and then the hoe whistled through the air and the tramp fell to the ground like a sack.
246but now schocks’s boy had grasped his opportunity. he had been working discreetly round behind mr. benshaw, and as the hoe smote he leapt upon that hero’s back and seized him about the neck with both arms and bore him staggering to the ground, and rymell, equally quick, and used to the tackling of formidable creatures, had snatched and twisted away the hoe and grappled mr. benshaw almost before he was down. the first of mr. benshaw’s helpers to reach the fray found the issue decided, his master held down conclusively and a growing circle trampling down a wide area of strawberry plants about the panting group....
mr. mumby, more frightened than hurt, was already sitting up, but the tramp with a glowing wound upon his cheekbone and an expression of astonishment in his face, lay low and pawed the earth.
“what d’you mean,” gasped mr. rymell, “hitting people about with that hoe?”
“what d’you mean,” groaned mr. benshaw, “running across my strawberries?”
“we were going after that boy.”
“pounds and pounds’ worth of damage. mischief and wickedness.... mumby!”
mr. rymell, suddenly realizing the true values of the situation, released mr. benshaw’s hands and knelt up. “look here, mr. benshaw,” he said, “you seem to be under the impression we are trespassing.”
mr. benshaw, struggling into a sitting position was understood to enquire with some heat what 247mr. rymell called it. schocks’s boy picked up the hat with the erotic brim and handed it to the horticulturist silently and respectfully.
“we were not trespassing,” said mr. rymell. “we were following up that boy. he was trespassing, if you like.... by the bye,—where is the boy? has anyone caught him?”
at the question, attention which had been focussed upon mr. benshaw and his hoe, came round. across the field in the direction of the sunlit half acre of glass the little tailor was visible standing gingerly and picking up his red slippers for the third time—they would come off in that loose good soil, everybody else had left the trail to concentrate on mr. benshaw—and bealby—. bealby was out of sight. he had escaped, clean got away.
“what boy?” asked mr. benshaw.
“ferocious little beast who’s fought us like a rat. been committing all sorts of crimes about the country. five pounds reward for him.”
“fruit stealing?” asked mr. benshaw.
“yes,” said mr. rymell, chancing it.
mr. benshaw reflected slowly. his eyes surveyed his trampled crops. “gooo lord!” he cried. “look at those strawberries!” his voice gathered violence. “and that lout there!” he said. “why!—he’s lying on them! that’s the brute who went for me!”
“you got him a pretty tidy one side the head!” said maccullum.
the tramp rolled over on some fresh strawberries and groaned pitifully.
248“he’s hurt,” said mr. mumby.
the tramp flopped and lay still.
“get some water!” said rymell, standing up.
at the word water, the tramp started convulsively, rolled over and sat up with a dazed expression.
“no water,” he said weakly. “no more water,” and then catching mr. benshaw’s eye he got rather quickly to his feet.
everybody who wasn’t already standing was getting up, and everyone now was rather carefully getting himself off any strawberry plant he had chanced to find himself smashing in the excitement of the occasion.
“that’s the man that started in on me,” said mr. benshaw. “what’s he doing here? who is he?”
“who are you, my man? what business have you to be careering over this field?” asked mr. rymell.
“i was only ’elping,” said the tramp.
“nice help,” said mr. benshaw.
“i thought that boy was a thief or something.”
“and so you made a rush at me.”
“i didn’t exactly—sir—i thought you was ’elping ’im.”
“you be off, anyhow,” said mr. benshaw. “whatever you thought.”
“yes, you be off!” said mr. rymell.
“that’s the way, my man,” said mr. benshaw. “we haven’t any jobs for you. the sooner we have you out of it the better for everyone. get right on to the path and keep it.” and with a 249desolating sense of exclusion the tramp withdrew. “there’s pounds and pounds’ worth of damage here,” said mr. benshaw. “this job’ll cost me a pretty penny. look at them berries there. why, they ain’t fit for jam! and all done by one confounded boy.” an evil light came into mr. benshaw’s eyes. “you leave him to me and my chaps. if he’s gone up among those sheds there—we’ll settle with him. anyhow there’s no reason why my fruit should be trampled worse than it has been. fruit stealer, you say, he is?”
“they live on the country this time of year,” said mr. mumby.
“and catch them doing a day’s work picking!” said mr. benshaw. “i know the sort.”
“there’s a reward of five pounds for ’im already,” said the baker....
§ 4
you perceive how humanitarian motives may sometimes defeat their own end, and how little lady laxton’s well-intentioned handbills were serving to rescue bealby. instead, they were turning him into a scared and hunted animal. in spite of its manifest impossibility he was convinced that the reward and this pursuit had to do with his burglary of the poultry farm, and that his capture would be but the preliminary to prison, trial and sentence. his one remaining idea was to get away. but his escape across the market gardens had left him so blown and spent, that he was obliged to hide up for a time in this perilous 250neighbourhood, before going on. he saw a disused-looking shed in the lowest corner of the gardens behind the greenhouses, and by doubling sharply along a hedge he got to it unseen. it was not disused—nothing in mr. benshaw’s possession ever was absolutely disused, but it was filled with horticultural lumber, with old calcium carbide tins, with broken wheelbarrows and damaged ladders awaiting repair, with some ragged wheeling planks and surplus rolls of roofing felt. at the back were some unhinged shed doors leaning against the wall, and between them bealby tucked himself neatly and became still, glad of any respite from the chase.
he would wait for twilight and then get away across the meadows at the back and then go—he didn’t know whither. and now he had no confidence in the wild world any more. a qualm of home-sickness for the compact little gardener’s cottage at shonts, came to bealby. why, as a matter of fact, wasn’t he there now?
he ought to have tried more at shonts.
he ought to have minded what they told him and not have taken up a toasting fork against thomas. then he wouldn’t now have been a hunted burglar with a reward of five pounds on his head and nothing in his pocket but threepence and a pack of greasy playing cards, a box of sulphur matches and various objectionable sundries, none of which were properly his own.
if only he could have his time over again!
such wholesome reflections occupied his thoughts until the onset of the dusk stirred him 251to departure. he crept out of his hiding-place and stretched his limbs which had got very stiff, and was on the point of reconnoitring from the door of the shed when he became aware of stealthy footsteps outside.
with the quickness of an animal he shot back into his hiding-place. the footsteps had halted. for a long time it seemed the unseen waited, listening. had he heard bealby?
then someone fumbled with the door of the shed; it opened, and there was a long pause of cautious inspection.
then the unknown had shuffled into the shed and sat down on a heap of matting.
“gaw!” said a voice.
the tramp’s!
“if ever i struck a left-handed mascot it was that boy,” said the tramp. “the little swine!”
for the better part of two minutes he went on from this mild beginning to a descriptive elaboration of bealby. for the first time in his life bealby learnt how unfavourable was the impression he might leave on a fellow creature’s mind.
“took even my matches!” cried the tramp, and tried this statement over with variations.
“first that old fool with his syringe!” the tramp’s voice rose in angry protest. “here’s a chap dying epilepsy on your doorstep and all you can do is to squirt cold water at him! cold water! why you might kill a man doing that! and then say you’d thought’d bring ’im r?nd! bring ’im r?nd! you be jolly glad i didn’t stash your silly face in. you [misbegotten] old 252fool! what’s a shilling for wetting a man to ’is skin. wet through i was. running inside my shirt,—dripping.... and then the blooming boy clears!
“i don’t know what boys are coming to!” cried the tramp. “these board schools it is. gets ’old of everything ’e can and bunks! gaw! if i get my ’ands on ’im, i’ll show ’im. i’ll—”
for some time the tramp revelled in the details, for the most part crudely surgical, of his vengeance upon bealby....
“then there’s that dog bite. ’ow do i know ’ow that’s going to turn ?t? if i get ’idrophobia, blowed if i don’t bite some of ’em. ’idrophobia. screaming and foaming. nice death for a man—my time o’ life! bark i shall. bark and bite.
“and this is your world,” said the tramp. “this is the world you put people into and expect ’em to be ’appy....
“i’d like to bite that dough-faced fool with the silly ’at. i’d enjoy biting ’im. i’d spit it out but i’d bite it right enough. wiping ab?t with ’is ’o. gaw! get off my ground! be orf with you. slash. ’e ought to be shut up.
“where’s the justice of it?” shouted the tramp. “where’s the right and the sense of it? what ’ave i done that i should always get the under side? why should i be stuck on the under side of everything? there’s worse men than me in all sorts of positions.... judges there are. ’orrible kerecters. ministers and people. i’ve read ab?t ’em in the papers....
“it’s we tramps are the scapegoats. somebody’s 253got to suffer so as the police can show a face. gaw! some of these days i’ll do something. i’ll do something. you’ll drive me too far with it, i tell you—”
he stopped suddenly and listened. bealby had creaked.
“gaw! what can one do?” said the tramp after a long interval.
and then complaining more gently, the tramp began to feel about to make his simple preparations for the night.
“’unt me out of this, i expect,” said the tramp. “and many sleeping in feather beds that ain’t fit to ’old a candle to me. not a hordinary farthing candle....”
§ 5
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.
254bealby 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 255him 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 256to 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 257again 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.
258in 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 man?uvres, 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.
259“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 260clear 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, 261just 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 262smile 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.
