THE UNOBTRUSIVE PARTING
§ 1
Monday was a happy day for Bealby.
The caravan did seventeen miles and came to rest at last in a sloping
field outside a cheerful little village set about a green on which was a
long tent professing to be a theatre.... At the first stopping-place
that possessed a general shop Mrs. Bowles bought Bealby a pair of boots.
Then she had a bright idea. “Got any pocket money, Dick?” she asked.
She gave him half a crown, that is to say she gave him two shillings and
sixpence, or five sixpences or thirty pennies—according as you choose to
look at it—in one large undivided shining coin.
Even if he had not been in love, here surely was incentive to a generous
nature to help and do distinguished services. He dashed about doing
things. The little accident on Sunday had warned him to be careful of
the plates, and the only flaw upon a perfect day’s service was the
dropping of an egg on its way to the frying pan for supper. It remained
where it fell and there presently he gave it a quiet burial. There was
nothing else to be done with it....
All day long at intervals Miss Philips smiled at him and made him do
little services for her. And in the evening, after the custom of her
great profession when it keeps holiday, she insisted on going to the
play. She said it would be the loveliest fun. She went with Mrs. Bowles
because Mrs. Geedge wanted to sit quietly in the caravan and write down
a few little things while they were still fresh in her mind. And it
wasn’t in the part of Madeleine Philips not to insist that both William
and Bealby must go too; she gave them each a shilling—though the prices
were sixpence, threepence, two-pence and a penny—and Bealby saw his
first real play.
It was called _Brothers in Blood, or the Gentleman Ranker_. There was a
poster—which was only very slightly justified by the performance—of a
man in khaki with a bandaged head proposing to sell his life dearly over
a fallen comrade.
One went to the play through an open and damaged field gate and across
trampled turf. Outside the tent were two paraffin flares illuminating
the poster and a small cluster of the impecunious young. Within on grass
that was worn and bleached were benches, a gathering audience, a piano
played by an off-hand lady, and a drop scene displaying the Grand Canal,
Venice. The Grand Canal was infested by a crowded multitude of zealous
and excessive reflections of the palaces above and by peculiar
crescentic black boats floating entirely out of water and having no
reflections at all. The off-hand lady gave a broad impression of the
wedding march in Lohengrin, and the back seats assisted by a sort of
gastric vocalization called humming and by whistling between the teeth.
Madeleine Philips evidently found it tremendous fun, even before the
curtain rose.
And then—illusion....
The scenery was ridiculous; it waved about, the actors and actresses
were surely the most pitiful of their tribe and every invention in the
play impossible, but the imagination of Bealby, like the loving kindness
of God, made no difficulties; it rose and met and embraced and gave life
to all these things. It was a confused story in the play, everybody was
more or less somebody else all the way through, and it got more confused
in Bealby’s mind, but it was clear from the outset that there was vile
work afoot, nets spread and sweet simple people wronged. And never were
sweet and simple people quite so sweet and simple. There was the
wrongful brother who was weak and wicked and the rightful brother who
was vindictively, almost viciously, good, and there was an ingrained
villain who was a baronet, a man who wore a frock coat and a silk hat
and carried gloves and a stick in every scene and upon all
occasions—that sort of man. He looked askance, always. There was a dear
simple girl, with a vast sweet smile, who was loved according to their
natures by the wrongful and the rightful brother, and a large wicked
red-clad, lip-biting woman whose passions made the crazy little stage
quiver. There was a comic butler—very different stuff from old
Mergleson—who wore an evening coat and plaid trousers and nearly choked
Bealby. Why weren’t all butlers like that? Funny. And there were
constant denunciations. Always there were denunciations going on or
denunciations impending. That took Bealby particularly. Never surely in
all the world were bad people so steadily and thoroughly scolded and
told what. Everybody hissed them; Bealby hissed them. And when they were
told what, he applauded. And yet they kept on with their wickedness to
the very curtain. They retired—askance to the end. Foiled but pursuing.
“A time will come,” they said.
There was a moment in the distresses of the heroine when Bealby dashed
aside a tear. And then at last most wonderfully it all came right. The
company lined up and hoped that Bealby was satisfied. Bealby wished he
had more hands. His heart seemed to fill his body. Oh _prime! prime!..._
And out he came into the sympathetic night. But he was no longer a
trivial Bealby; his soul was purged, he was a strong and silent man,
ready to explode into generous repartee or nerve himself for high
endeavour. He slipped off in the opposite direction from the caravan
because he wanted to be alone for a time and _feel_. He did not want to
jar upon a sphere of glorious illusion that had blown up in his mind
like a bubble....
He was quite sure that he had been wronged. Not to be wronged is to
forego the first privilege of goodness. He had been deeply wronged by a
plot,—all those butlers were in the plot or why should they have chased
him,—he was much older than he really was, it had been kept from him,
and in truth he was a rightful earl. “Earl Shonts,” he whispered; and
indeed, why not? And Madeleine too had been wronged; she had been
reduced to wander in this uncomfortable caravan; this Gipsy Queen; she
had been brought to it by villains, the same villains who had wronged
Bealby....
Out he went into the night, the kindly consenting summer night, where
there is nothing to be seen or heard that will contradict these
delicious wonderful persuasions.
He was so full of these dreams that he strayed far away along the dark
country lanes and had at last the utmost difficulty in finding his way
back to the caravan. And when ultimately he got back after hours and
hours of heroic existence it did not even seem that they had missed him.
It did not seem that he had been away half an hour.
§ 2
Tuesday was not so happy a day for Bealby as Monday.
Its shadows began when Mrs. Bowles asked him in a friendly tone when it
was clean-collar day.
He was unready with his answer.
“And don’t you ever use a hair brush, Dick?” she asked. “I’m sure now
there’s one in your parcel.”
“I do use it _sometimes_, Mum,” he admitted.
“And I’ve never detected you with a toothbrush yet. Though that perhaps
is extreme. And Dick—soap? I think you’d better be letting me give you a
cake of soap.”
“I’d be very much obliged, Mum.”
“I hardly dare hint, Dick, at a clean handkerchief. Such things are
known.”
“If you wouldn’t mind—when I’ve got the breakfast things done, Mum....”
The thing worried him all through breakfast. He had not
expected—personalities from Mrs. Bowles. More particularly personalities
of this kind. He felt he had to think hard.
He affected modesty after he had cleared away breakfast and carried off
his little bundle to a point in the stream which was masked from the
encampment by willows. With him he also brought that cake of soap. He
began by washing his handkerchief, which was bad policy because that
left him no dry towel but his jacket. He ought, he perceived, to have
secured a dish-cloth or a newspaper. (This he must remember on the next
occasion.) He did over his hands and the more exposed parts of his face
with soap and jacket. Then he took off and examined his collar. It
certainly was pretty bad....
“Why!” cried Mrs. Bowles when he returned, “that’s still the same
collar.”
“They all seem to’ve got crumpled ’m,” said Bealby.
“But are they all as dirty?”
“I ’ad some blacking in my parcel,” said Bealby, “and it got loose, Mum.
I’ll have to get another collar when we come to a shop.”
It was a financial sacrifice, but it was the only way, and when they
came to the shop Bealby secured a very nice collar indeed, high with
pointed turn-down corners, so that it cut his neck all round, jabbed him
under the chin and gave him a proud upcast carriage of the head that led
to his treading upon and very completely destroying a stray plate while
preparing lunch. But it was more of a man’s collar, he felt, than
anything he had ever worn before. And it cost sixpence halfpenny, six
dee and a half.
(I should have mentioned that while washing up the breakfast things he
had already broken the handle off one of the breakfast cups. Both these
accidents deepened the cloud upon his day.)
And then there was the trouble of William. William having meditated upon
the differences between them for a day had now invented an activity. As
Bealby sat beside him behind the white horse he was suddenly and
frightfully pinched. _Gee!_ One wanted to yelp.
“Choc’late,” said William through his teeth and very very savagely.
“_Now_ then.”
After William had done that twice Bealby preferred to walk beside the
caravan. Thereupon William whipped up the white horse and broke records
and made all the crockery sing together and forced the pace until he was
spoken to by Mrs. Bowles....
It was upon a Bealby thus depressed and worried that the rumour of
impending “men-folk” came. It began after the party had stopped for
letters at a village post office; there were not only letters but a
telegram, that Mrs. Bowles read with her spats far apart and her head on
one side. “Ye’d like to know about it,” she said waggishly to Miss
Philips, “and you just shan’t.”
She then went into her letters.
“You’ve got some news,” said Mrs. Geedge.
“I have that,” said Mrs. Bowles, and not a word more could they get from
her....
“I’ll keep my news no longer,” said Mrs. Bowles, lighting her cigarette
after lunch as Bealby hovered about clearing away the banana skins and
suchlike vestiges of dessert. “To-morrow night as ever is, if so be we
get to Winthorpe-Sutbury, there’ll be Men among us.”
“But Tom’s not coming,” said Mrs. Geedge.
“He asked Tim to tell me to tell you.”
“And you’ve kept it these two hours, Judy.”
“For your own good and peace of mind. But now the murther’s out. Come
they will, your Man and my Man, pretending to a pity because they can’t
do without us. But like the self-indulgent monsters they are, they must
needs stop at some grand hotel, Redlake he calls it, the Royal, on the
hill above Winthorpe-Sutbury. The Royal! The very name describes it.
Can’t you see the lounge, girls, with its white cane chairs? And
saddlebacks! No other hotel it seems is good enough for them, and we if
you please are asked to go in and have—what does the man call it—the
‘comforts of decency’—and let the caravan rest for a bit.”
“Tim promised me I should run wild as long as I chose,” said Mrs.
Geedge, looking anything but wild.
“They’re after thinking we’ve had enough of it,” said Mrs. Bowles.
“It sounds like that.”
“Sure I’d go on like this for ever,” said Judy. “’Tis the Man and the
House and all of it that oppresses me. Vans for Women....”
“Let’s not go to Winthorpe-Sutbury,” said Madeleine.
(The first word of sense Bealby had heard.)
“Ah!” said Mrs. Bowles archly, “who knows but what there’ll be a Man for
you? Some sort of Man anyhow.”
(Bealby thought that a most improper remark.)
“I want no man.”
“Ah!”
“Why do you say _Ah_ like that?”
“Because I mean _Ah_ like that.”
“Meaning?”
“Just that.”
Miss Philips eyed Mrs. Bowles and Mrs. Bowles eyed Miss Philips.
“Judy,” she said, “you’ve got something up your sleeve.”
“Where it’s perfectly comfortable,” said Mrs. Bowles.
And then quite maddeningly, she remarked, “Will you be after washing up
presently, Dick?” and looked at him with a roguish quiet over her
cigarette. It was necessary to disabuse her mind at once of the idea
that he had been listening. He took up the last few plates and went off
to the washing place by the stream. All the rest of that conversation
_had_ to be lost.
Except that as he came back for the Hudson’s soap he heard Miss Philips
say, “Keep your old Men. I’ll just console myself with Dick, my dears.
Making such a Mystery!”
To which Mrs. Bowles replied darkly, “She _little_ knows....”
A kind of consolation was to be got from that.... But what was it she
little knew?...
§ 3
The men-folk when they came were nothing so terrific to the sight as
Bealby had expected. And thank Heaven there were only two of them and
each assigned. Something he perceived was said about someone else, he
couldn’t quite catch what, but if there was to have been someone else,
at any rate there now wasn’t. Professor Bowles was animated and Mr.
Geedge was gracefully cold, they kissed their wives but not offensively,
and there was a chattering pause while Bealby walked on beside the
caravan. They were on the bare road that runs along the high ridge above
Winthorpe-Sutbury, and the men had walked to meet them from some hotel
or other—Bealby wasn’t clear about that—by the golf links. Judy was the
life and soul of the encounter, and all for asking the men what they
meant by intruding upon three independent women who, sure-alive, could
very well do without them. Professor Bowles took her pretty calmly, and
seemed on the whole to admire her.
Professor Bowles was a compact little man wearing spectacles with
alternative glasses, partly curved, partly flat; he was hairy and
dressed in that sort of soft tweedy stuff that ravels out—he seemed to
have been sitting among thorns—and baggy knickerbockers with straps and
very thick stockings and very sensible, open air, in fact quite
mountainous, boots. And yet though he was short and stout and active he
had a kind of authority about him, and it was clear that for all her
persuasiveness his wife merely ran over him like a creeper without
making any great difference to him. “I’ve found,” he said, “the perfect
place for your encampment.” She had been making suggestions. And
presently he left the ladies and came hurrying after the caravan to take
control.
He was evidently a very controlling person.
“Here, you get down,” he said to William. “That poor beast’s got enough
to pull without _you_.”
And when William mumbled he said, “Hey?” in such a shout that William
for ever after held his peace.
“Where d’you come from, you boy, you?” he asked suddenly, and Bealby
looked to Mrs. Bowles to explain.
“Great silly collar you’ve got,” said the Professor, interrupting her
reply. “Boy like this ought to wear a wool shirt. Dirty too. Take it
off, boy. It’s choking you. Don’t you _feel_ it?”
Then he went on to make trouble about the tackle William had rigged to
contain the white horse.
“This harness makes me sick,” said Professor Bowles. “It’s worse than
Italy....”
“Ah!” he cried and suddenly darted off across the turf, going
inelegantly and very rapidly, with peculiar motions of the head and neck
as he brought first the flat and then the curved surface of his glasses
into play. Finally he dived into the turf, remained scrabbling on all
fours for a moment or so, became almost still for the fraction of a
minute and then got up and returned to his wife, holding in an exquisite
manner something that struggled between his finger and his thumb.
“That’s the third to-day,” he said, triumphantly. “They swarm here. It’s
a migration.”
Then he resumed his penetrating criticism of the caravan outfit.
“That boy,” he said suddenly with his glasses oblique, “hasn’t taken off
his collar yet.”
Bealby revealed the modest secrets of his neck and pocketed the
collar....
Mr. Geedge did not appear to observe Bealby. He was a man of the
super-aquiline type with a nose like a rudder, he held his face as if it
was a hatchet in a procession, and walked with the dignity of a man of
honour. You could see at once he was a man of honour. Inflexibly,
invincibly, he was a man of honour. You felt that anywhen, in a fire, in
an earthquake, in a railway accident when other people would be running
about and doing things he would have remained—a man of honour. It was
his pride rather than his vanity to be mistaken for Sir Edward Grey. He
now walked along with Miss Philips and his wife behind the disputing
Bowleses, and discoursed in deep sonorous tones about the healthiness of
healthy places and the stifling feeling one had in towns when there was
no air.
§ 4
The Professor was remarkably active when at last the point he had
chosen for the encampment was reached. Bealby was told to “look alive”
twice, and William was assigned to his genus and species; “The man’s
an absolute idiot,” was the way the Professor put it. William just
shot a glance at him over his nose. The place certainly commanded a
wonderful view. It was a turfy bank protected from the north and south
by bushes of yew and the beech-bordered edge of a chalk pit; it was
close beside the road, a road which went steeply down the hill into
Winthorpe-Sutbury, with that intrepid decision peculiar to the
hill-roads of the south of England. It looked indeed as though you
could throw the rinse of your teacups into the Winthorpe-Sutbury
street; as if you could jump and impale yourself upon the church
spire. The hills bellied out east and west and carried hangers, and
then swept round to the west in a long level succession of
projections, a perspective that merged at last with the general
horizon of hilly bluenesses, amidst which Professor Bowles insisted
upon a “sapphire glimpse” of sea. “The Channel,” said Professor
Bowles, as though that made it easier for them. Only Mr. Geedge
refused to see even that mitigated version of the sea. There was
something perhaps bluish and level, but he was evidently not going to
admit it was sea until he had paddled in it and tested it in every way
known to him....
“Good _Lord_!” cried the Professor. “What’s the man doing now?”
William stopped the struggles and confidential discouragements he was
bestowing upon the white horse and waited for a more definite reproach.
“Putting the caravan alongside to the sun! Do you think it will ever get
cool again? And think of the blaze of the sunset—through the glass of
that door!”
William spluttered. “If I put’n tother way—goo runnin’ down t’hill
like,” said William.
“Imbecile!” cried the Professor. “Put something under the wheels.
_Here!_” He careered about and produced great grey fragments of a
perished yew tree. “Now then,” he said. “Head up hill.”
William did his best.
“Oh! _not_ like that! Here, _you_!”
Bealby assisted with obsequious enthusiasm.
It was some time before the caravan was adjusted to the complete
satisfaction of the Professor. But at last it was done, and the end door
gaped at the whole prospect of the Weald with the steps hanging out
idiotically like a tongue. The hind wheels were stayed up very cleverly
by lumps of chalk and chunks of yew, living and dead, and certainly the
effect of it was altogether taller and better. And then the preparations
for the midday cooking began. The Professor was full of acute ideas
about camping and cooking, and gave Bealby a lively but instructive
time. There was no stream handy, but William was sent off to the hotel
to fetch a garden water-cart that the Professor with infinite foresight
had arranged should be ready.
The Geedges held aloof from these preparations,—they were unassuming
people; Miss Philips concentrated her attention upon the Weald—it seemed
to Bealby a little discontentedly—as if it was unworthy of her—and Mrs.
Bowles hovered smoking cigarettes over her husband’s activities, acting
great amusement.
“You see it pleases me to get Himself busy,” she said. “You’ll end a
Camper yet, Darlint, and us in the hotel.”
The Professor answered nothing, but seemed to plunge deeper into
practicality.
Under the urgency of Professor Bowles Bealby stumbled and broke a glass
jar of marmalade over some fried potatoes, but otherwise did well as a
cook’s assistant. Once things were a little interrupted by the Professor
going off to catch a cricket, but whether it was the right sort of
cricket or not he failed to get it. And then with three loud reports—for
a moment Bealby thought the mad butlers from Shonts were upon him with
firearms—Captain Douglas arrived and got off his motor bicycle and left
it by the roadside. His machine accounted for his delay, for those were
the early days of motor bicycles. It also accounted for a black smudge
under one of his bright little eyes. He was fair and flushed, dressed in
oilskins and a helmet-shaped cap and great gauntlets that made him, in
spite of the smudge, look strange and brave and handsome, like a
Crusader—only that he was clad in oilskin and not steel, and his
moustache was smaller than those Crusaders wore; and when he came across
the turf to the encampment Mrs. Bowles and Mrs. Geedge both set up a cry
of “A-_Ah_!” and Miss Philips turned an accusing face upon those two
ladies. Bealby knelt with a bunch of knives and forks in his hand,
laying the cloth for lunch, and when he saw Captain Douglas approaching
Miss Philips, he perceived clearly that that lady had already forgotten
her lowly adorer, and his little heart was smitten with desolation. This
man was arrayed like a chivalrous god, and how was a poor Bealby, whose
very collar, his one little circlet of manhood, had been reft from him,
how was he to compete with this tremendousness? In that hour the
ambition for mechanism, the passion for leather and oilskin, was sown in
Bealby’s heart.
“I told you not to come near me for a month,” said Madeleine, but her
face was radiant.
“These motor bicycles—very difficult to control,” said Captain Douglas,
and all the little golden-white hairs upon his sunlit cheek glittered in
the sun.
“And besides,” said Mrs. Bowles, “it’s all nonsense.”
The Professor was in a state of arrested administration; the three
others were frankly audience to a clearly understood scene.
“You ought to be in France.”
“I’m not in France.”
“I sent you into exile for a month,” and she held out a hand for the
captain to kiss.
He kissed it.
Someday, somewhere, it was written in the book of destiny Bealby should
also kiss hands. It was a lovely thing to do.
“Month! It’s been years,” said the captain. “Years and years.”
“Then you ought to have come back before,” she replied and the captain
had no answer ready....
§ 5
When William arrived with the water-cart, he brought also further proofs
of the Professor’s organizing ability. He brought various bottles of
wine, red Burgundy and sparkling hock, two bottles of cider, and
peculiar and meritorious waters; he brought tinned things for _hors
d’œuvre_; he brought some luscious pears. When he had a moment with
Bealby behind the caravan he repeated thrice in tones of hopeless
sorrow, “They’ll eat um all. I _knows_ they’ll eat um all.” And then
plumbing a deeper deep of woe, “Ef they _don’t_ they’ll count um. Ode
Goggles’ll bag um.... E’s a _bagger_, ’e is.”
It was the brightest of luncheons that was eaten that day in the
sunshine and spaciousness above Winthorpe-Sutbury. Everyone was gay, and
even the love-torn Bealby, who might well have sunk into depression and
lethargy, was galvanized into an activity that was almost cheerful by
flashes from the Professor’s glasses. They talked of this and that;
Bealby hadn’t much time to attend, though the laughter that followed
various sallies from Judy Bowles was very tantalizing, and it had come
to the pears before his attention wasn’t so much caught as felled by the
word “Shonts.”... It was as if the sky had suddenly changed to
vermilion. _All these people were talking of Shonts!..._
“Went there,” said Captain Douglas, “in perfect good faith. Wanted to
fill up Lucy’s little party. One doesn’t go to Shonts nowadays for idle
pleasure. And then—I get ordered out of the house, absolutely Told to
Go.”
(This man had been at Shonts!)
“That was on Sunday morning?” said Mrs. Geedge.
“On Sunday morning,” said Mrs. Bowles suddenly, “we were almost within
sight of Shonts.”
(This man had been at Shonts even at the time when Bealby was there!)
“Early on Sunday morning. Told to go. I was fairly flabbergasted. What
the deuce is a man to do? Where’s he to go? Sunday? One doesn’t go to
places, Sunday morning. There I’d been sleeping like a lamb all night
and suddenly in came Laxton and said, ‘Look here, you know,’ he said,
‘you’ve got to oblige me and pack your bag and go. Now.’ ‘Why?’ said I.
‘Because you’ve driven the Lord Chancellor stark staring mad!’”
“But how?” asked the Professor, almost angrily, “how? I don’t see it.
Why should he ask you to go?”
“_I_ don’t know!” cried Captain Douglas.
“Yes, but—!” said the Professor, protesting against the unreasonableness
of mankind.
“I’d had a word or two with him in the train. Nothing to speak of. About
occupying two corner seats—always strikes me as a cad’s trick—but on my
honour I didn’t rub it in. And then he got it into his head we were
laughing at him at dinner—we were a bit, but only the sort of thing one
says about anyone—way he works his eyebrows and all that—and then he
thought I was ragging him.... I _don’t_ rag people. Got it so strongly
he made a row that night. Said I’d made a ghost slap him on his back.
Hang it!—what _can_ you say to a thing like that? In my room all the
time.”
“You suffer for the sins of your brother,” said Mrs. Bowles.
“Heavens!” cried the captain, “I never thought of that! Perhaps he
mistook me....”
He reflected for a moment and continued his narrative. “Then in the
night, you know, he heard noises.”
“They always do,” said the Professor nodding confirmation.
“Couldn’t sleep.”
“A sure sign,” said the Professor.
“And finally he sallied out in the early morning, caught the butler in
one of the secret passages—”
“How did the butler get into the secret passage?”
“Going round, I suppose. Part of his duties.... Anyhow he gave the poor
beggar an awful doing—awful—_brutal_—black eye,—all that sort of thing;
man much too respectful to hit back. Finally declared I’d been getting
up a kind of rag,—squaring the servants to help and so forth.... Laxton,
I fancy, half believed it.... Awkward thing, you know, having it said
about that you ragged the Lord Chancellor. Makes a man seem a sort of
mischievous idiot. Injures a man. Then going away, you see, seems a kind
of admission....”
“Why did you go?”
“Lucy,” said the captain compactly. “Hysterics.”
“Shonts would have burst,” he added, “if I hadn’t gone.”
Madeleine was helpful. “But you’ll have to do _something_ further,” she
said.
“What is one to _do_?” squealed the captain.
“The sooner you get the Lord Chancellor certified a lunatic,” said the
Professor soundly, “the better for your professional prospects.”
“He went on pretty bad after I’d gone.”
“You’ve heard”
“Two letters. I picked ’em up at Wheatley Post Office this morning. You
know he hadn’t done with that butler. Actually got out of his place and
scruffed the poor devil at lunch. Shook him like a rat, she says. Said
the man wasn’t giving him anything to drink—nice story, eh? Anyhow he
scruffed him until things got broken....
“I had it all from Minnie Timbre—you know, used to be Minnie Flax.” He
shot a propitiating glance at Madeleine. “Used to be neighbours of ours,
you know, in the old time. Half the people, she says, didn’t know what
was happening. Thought the butler was apoplectic and that old Moggeridge
was helping him stand up. Taking off his collar. It was Laxton thought
of saying it was a fit. Told everybody, she says. Had to tell ’em
Something, I suppose. But she saw better and she thinks a good many
others did. Laxton ran ’em both out of the room. Nice scene for Shonts,
eh? Thundering awkward for poor Lucy. Not the sort of thing the county
expected. Has her both ways. Can’t go to a house where the Lord
Chancellor goes mad. One alternative. Can’t go to a house where the
butler has fits. That’s the other. See the dilemma?...”
“I’ve got a letter from Lucy, too. It’s here”—he struggled—“See? Eight
sheets—pencil. No Joke for a man to read that. And she writes worse than
any decent self-respecting illiterate woman has a right to do. Quivers.
Like writing in a train. Can’t read half of it. But _she’s_ got
something about a boy on her mind. Mad about a boy. Have I taken away a
boy? They’ve lost a boy. Took him in my luggage, I suppose. She’d better
write to the Lord Chancellor. Likely as not he met him in some odd
corner and flew at him. Smashed him to atoms. Dispersed him. Anyhow
they’ve lost a boy.”
He protested to the world. “_I_ can’t go hunting lost boys for Lucy.
I’ve done enough coming away as I did....”
Mrs. Bowles held out an arresting cigarette.
“What sort of boy was lost?” she asked.
“_I_ don’t know. Some little beast of a boy. I daresay she’d only
imagined it. Whole thing been too much for her.”
“Read that over again,” said Mrs. Bowles, “about losing a boy. We’ve
found one.”
“That _little_ chap?”
“We found that boy”—she glanced over her shoulder, but Bealby was
nowhere to be seen—“on Sunday morning near Shonts. He strayed into us
like a lost kitten.”
“But I thought you said you knew his father, Judy,” objected the
Professor.
“Didn’t verify,” said Mrs. Bowles shortly, and then to Captain Douglas,
“read over again what Lady Laxton says about him....”
§ 6
Captain Douglas struggled with the difficulties of his cousin’s
handwriting.
Everybody drew together over the fragments of the dessert with an eager
curiosity, and helped to weigh Lady Laxton’s rather dishevelled
phrases....
§ 7
“We’ll call the principal witness,” said Mrs. Bowles at last, warming to
the business. “Dick!”
“Di-ick!”
“_Dick!_”
The Professor got up and strolled round behind the caravan. Then he
returned. “No boy there.”
“He _heard_!” said Mrs. Bowles in a large whisper and making round
wonder-eyes.
“She _says_,” said Douglas, “that the chances are he’s got into the
secret passages....”
The Professor strolled out to the road and looked up it and then down
upon the roofs of Winthorpe-Sutbury. “No,” he said. “He’s mizzled.”
“He’s only gone away for a bit,” said Mrs. Geedge. “He does sometimes
after lunch. He’ll come back to wash up.”
“He’s probably taking a snooze among the yew bushes before facing the
labours of washing up,” said Mrs. Bowles. “He _can’t_ have mizzled. You
see — in there — He can’t by any chance have taken his luggage!”
She got up and clambered—with a little difficulty because of its
piled-up position, into the caravan. “It’s all right,” she called out of
the door. “His little parsivel is still here.”
Her head disappeared again.
“I don’t think he’d go away like this,” said Madeleine. “After all, what
is there for him to go to—even if he is Lady Laxton’s missing boy....”
“I don’t believe he heard a word of it,” said Mrs. Geedge....
Mrs. Bowles reappeared, with a curious-looking brown paper parcel in her
hand. She descended carefully. She sat down by the fire and held the
parcel on her knees. She regarded it and her companions waggishly and
lit a fresh cigarette. “Our link with Dick,” she said, with the
cigarette in her mouth.
She felt the parcel, she poised the parcel, she looked at it more and
more waggishly. “I _wonder_,” she said.
Her expression became so waggish that her husband knew she was committed
to behaviour of the utmost ungentlemanliness. He had long ceased to
attempt restraint in these moods. She put her head on one side and tore
open the corner of the parcel just a little way.
“A tin can,” she said in a stage whisper.
She enlarged the opening. “Blades of grass,” she said.
The Professor tried to regard it humorously. “Even if you have ceased to
be decent you can still be frank.... I think, now, my dear, you might
just straightforwardly undo the parcel.”
She did. Twelve unsympathetic eyes surveyed the evidences of Bealby’s
utter poverty.
“He’s coming,” cried Madeleine suddenly.
Judy repacked hastily, but it was a false alarm.
“I said he’d mizzled,” said the Professor.
“And without washing up!” wailed Madeleine, “I couldn’t have thought it
of him....”
§ 8
But Bealby had not “mizzled,” although he was conspicuously not in
evidence about the camp. There was neither sight nor sound of him for
all the time they sat about the vestiges of their meal. They talked of
him and of topics arising out of him, and whether the captain should
telegraph to Lady Laxton, “Boy practically found.” “I’d rather just find
him,” said the captain, “and anyhow until we get hold of him we don’t
know it’s her particular boy.” Then they talked of washing-up and how
detestable it was. And suddenly the two husbands, seeing their
advantage, renewed their proposals that the caravanners should put up at
the golflinks hotel, and have baths and the comforts of civilization for
a night or so—and anyhow walk thither for tea. And as William had now
returned—he was sitting on the turf afar off smoking a nasty-looking
short clay pipe—they rose up and departed. But Captain Douglas and Miss
Philips for some reason did not go off exactly with the others, but
strayed apart, straying away more and more into a kind of solitude....
First the four married people and then the two lovers disappeared over
the crest of the downs....
§ 9
For a time, except for its distant sentinel, the caravan seemed
absolutely deserted, and then a clump of bramble against the wall of the
old chalk pit became agitated and a small rueful disillusioned
white-smeared little Bealby crept back into the visible universe again.
His heart was very heavy.
The time had come to go.
And he did not want to go. He had loved the caravan. He had adored
Madeleine.
He would go, but he would go beautifully—touchingly.
He would wash up before he went, he would make everything tidy, he would
leave behind him a sense of irreparable loss....
With a mournful precision he set about this undertaking. If Mergleson
could have seen, Mergleson would have been amazed....
He made everything look wonderfully tidy.
Then in the place where she had sat, lying on her rug, he found her
favourite book, a small volume of Swinburne’s poems very beautifully
bound. Captain Douglas had given it to her.
Bealby handled it with a kind of reverence. So luxurious it was, so
unlike the books in Bealby’s world, so altogether of her quality....
Strange forces prompted him. For a time he hesitated. Then decision came
with a rush. He selected a page, drew the stump of a pencil from his
pocket, wetted it very wet and, breathing hard, began to write that
traditional message, “Farewell. Remember Art Bealby.”
To this he made an original addition: “I washt up before I went.”
Then he remembered that so far as this caravan went he was not Art
Bealby at all. He renewed the wetness of his pencil and drew black lines
athwart the name of “Art Bealby” until it was quite unreadable; then
across this again and pressing still deeper so that the subsequent pages
re-echoed it he wrote these singular words “Ed rightful Earl Shonts.”
Then he was ashamed, and largely obliterated this by still more forcible
strokes. Finally above it all plainly and nakedly he wrote “Dick
Mal-travers....”
He put down the book with a sigh and stood up.
Everything was beautifully in order. But could he not do something yet?
There came to him the idea of wreathing the entire camping place with
boughs of yew. It would look lovely—and significant. He set to work. At
first he toiled zealously, but yew is tough to get and soon his hands
were painful. He cast about for some easier way, and saw beneath the
hind wheels of the caravan great green boughs—one particularly a
splendid long branch.... It seemed to him that it would be possible to
withdraw this branch from the great heap of sticks and stones that
stayed up the hind wheels of the caravan. It seemed to him that that was
so. He was mistaken, but that was his idea.
He set to work to do it. It was rather more difficult to manage than he
had supposed; there were unexpected ramifications, wider resistances.
Indeed, the thing seemed rooted.
Bealby was a resolute youngster at bottom.
He warmed to his task.... He tugged harder and harder....
§ 10
How various is the quality of humanity!
About Bealby there was ever an imaginative touch; he was capable of
romance, of gallantries, of devotion. William was of a grosser clay,
slave of his appetites, a materialist. Such men as William drive one to
believe in born inferiors, in the existence of a lower sort, in the
natural inequality of men.
While Bealby was busy at his little gentle task of reparation, a task
foolish perhaps and not too ably conceived, but at any rate morally
gracious, William had no thought in the world but the satisfaction of
those appetites that the consensus of all mankind has definitely
relegated to the lower category. And which Heaven has relegated to the
lower regions of our frame. He came now slinking towards the vestiges of
the caravanners’ picnic, and no one skilled in the interpretation of the
human physiognomy could have failed to read the significance of the
tongue tip that drifted over his thin oblique lips. He came so softly
towards the encampment that Bealby did not note him. Partly William
thought of remnants of food, but chiefly he was intent to drain the
bottles. Bealby had stuck them all neatly in a row a little way up the
hill. There was a cider bottle with some heel-taps of cider, William
drank that; then there was nearly half a bottle of hock and William
drank that, then there were the drainings of the Burgundy and
Apollinaris. It was all drink to William.
And after he had drained each bottle William winked at the watching
angels and licked his lips, and patted the lower centres of his being
with a shameless base approval. Then fired by alcohol, robbed of his
last vestiges of self-control, his thoughts turned to the delicious
chocolates that were stored in a daintily beribboned box in the little
drawers beneath the sleeping bunk of Miss Philips. There was a new
brightness in his eye, a spot of pink in either cheek. With an
expression of the lowest cunning he reconnoitred Bealby.
Bealby was busy about something at the back end of the caravan, tugging
at something.
With swift stealthy movements of an entirely graceless sort, William got
up into the front of the caravan.
Just for a moment he hesitated before going in. He craned his neck to
look round the side at the unconscious Bealby, wrinkled the vast nose
into an unpleasant grimace and then—a crouching figure of appetite—he
crept inside.
Here they were! He laid his hand in the drawer, halted listening....
What was that?...
Suddenly the caravan swayed. He stumbled, and fear crept into his craven
soul. The caravan lurched. It was moving.... Its hind wheels came to the
ground with a crash....
He took a step doorward and was pitched sideways and thrown upon his
knees.... Then he was hurled against the dresser and hit by a falling
plate. A cup fell and smashed and the caravan seemed to leap and
bound....
Through the little window he had a glimpse of yew bushes hurrying
upward. The caravan was going down hill....
“Lummy!” said William, clutching at the bunks to hold himself
upright....
“Ca-arnt be that drink!” said William, aspread and aghast....
He attempted the door.
“Crikey! Here! Hold in! My shin!” ... “’Tis thut Brasted Vool of a Boy!”
“....” said William. “....——....
[Illustration: —— —— ——.” “——.”]
§ 11
The caravan party soon came to its decision. They would stay the night
in the hotel. And so as soon as they had had some tea they decided to go
back and make William bring the caravan and all the ladies’ things round
to the hotel. With characteristic eagerness, Professor Bowles led the
way.
And so it was Professor Bowles who first saw the release of the caravan.
He barked. One short sharp bark. “Whup!” he cried, and very quickly,
“Whatstheboydoing?”
Then quite a different style of noise, with the mouth open “Wha—hoop!”
Then he set off running very fast down towards the caravan, waving his
arms and shouting as he ran, “Yaaps! You _Idiot_. Yaaps!”
The others were less promptly active.
Down the slope they saw Bealby, a little struggling active Bealby,
tugging away at a yew branch until the caravan swayed with his efforts,
and then—then there was a movement as though the thing tossed its head
and reared, and a smash as the heap of stuff that stayed up its hind
wheels collapsed....
It plunged like a horse with a dog at its heels, it lurched sideways,
and then with an air of quiet deliberation started down the grass slope
to the road and Winthorpe-Sutbury....
Professor Bowles sped in pursuit like the wind, and Mrs. Bowles after a
gasping moment set off after her lord, her face round and resolute. Mr.
Geedge followed at a more dignified pace, making the only really sound
suggestion that was offered on the occasion. “Hue! Stop it!” cried Mr.
Geedge, for all the world like his great prototype at the Balkan
Conference. And then like a large languid pair of scissors he began to
run. Mrs. Geedge after some indefinite moments decided to see the humour
of it all, and followed after her lord, in a fluttering rush, emitting
careful little musical giggles as she ran, giggles that she had learnt
long ago from a beloved schoolfellow. Captain Douglas and Miss Philips
were some way behind the others, and the situation had already developed
considerably before they grasped what was happening. Then obeying the
instincts of a soldier the captain came charging to support the others,
and Miss Madeleine Philips after some wasted gestures realized that
nobody was looking at her, and sat down quietly on the turf until this
paralyzing state of affairs should cease.
The caravan remained the centre of interest.
Without either indecent haste or any complete pause it pursued its way
down the road towards the tranquil village below. Except for the
rumbling of its wheels and an occasional concussion it made very little
sound: once or twice there was a faint sound of breaking crockery from
its interior and once the phantom of an angry yell, but that was all.
There was an effect of discovered personality about the thing. This
vehicle, which had hitherto been content to play a background part, a
yellow patch amidst the scenery, was now revealing an individuality. It
was purposeful and touched with a suggestion of playfulness, at once
kindly and human; it had its thoughtful instants, its phases of quick
decision, yet never once did it altogether lose a certain mellow
dignity. There was nothing servile about it; never for a moment, for
example, did it betray its blind obedience to gravitation. It was rather
as if it and gravitation were going hand in hand. It came out into the
road, butted into the bank, swept round, meditated for a full second,
and then shafts foremost headed downhill, going quietly faster and
faster and swaying from bank to bank. The shafts went before it like
arms held out....
It had a quality—as if it were a favourite elephant running to a beloved
master from whom it had been over-long separated. Or a slightly
intoxicated and altogether happy yellow guinea-pig making for some
coveted food....
At a considerable distance followed Professor Bowles, a miracle of
compact energy, running so fast that he seemed only to touch the ground
at very rare intervals....
And then, dispersedly, in their order and according to their natures,
the others....
There was fortunately very little on the road.
There was a perambulator containing twins, whose little girl guardian
was so fortunate as to be high up on the bank gathering blackberries.
A ditcher, ditching.
A hawker lost in thought.
His cart, drawn by a poor little black screw of a pony and loaded with
the cheap flawed crockery that is so popular among the poor.
A dog asleep in the middle of the village street.... Amidst this choice
of objects the caravan displayed a whimsical humanity. It reduced the
children in the perambulator to tears, but passed. It might have reduced
them to a sort of red-currant jelly. It lurched heavily towards the
ditcher and spared him, it chased the hawker up the bank, it whipped off
a wheel from the cart of crockery (which after an interval of
astonishment fell like a vast objurgation) and then it directed its
course with a grim intentness towards the dog.
It just missed the dog.
He woke up not a moment too soon. He fled with a yelp of dismay.
And then the caravan careered on a dozen yards further, lost energy
and—the only really undignified thing in its whole career—stood on its
head in a wide wet ditch. It did this with just the slightest lapse into
emphasis. _There!_ It was as if it gave a grunt—and perhaps there was
the faintest suggestion of William in that grunt—and then it became
quite still....
For a time the caravan seemed finished and done. Its steps hung from its
upper end like the tongue of a tired dog. Except for a few minute noises
as though it was scratching itself inside, it was as inanimate as death
itself.
But up the hill road the twins were weeping, the hawker and the ditcher
were saying raucous things, the hawker’s pony had backed into the ditch
and was taking ill-advised steps, for which it was afterwards to be
sorry, amidst his stock-in-trade, and Professor Bowles, Mrs. Bowles, Mr.
Geedge, Captain Douglas and Mrs. Geedge were running—running—one heard
the various patter of their feet.
And then came signs of life at the upward door of the caravan, a hand,
an arm, an active investigating leg seeking a hold, a large nose, a
small intent vicious eye; in fact—William.
William maddened.
Professor Bowles had reached the caravan. With a startling agility he
clambered up by the wheels and step and confronted the unfortunate
driver. It was an occasion for mutual sympathy rather than anger, but
the Professor was hasty, efficient and unsympathetic with the lower
classes, and William’s was an ill-regulated temperament.
“You consummate _ass_!” began Professor Bowles....
When William heard Professor Bowles say this, incontinently he smote him
in the face, and when Professor Bowles was smitten in the face he
grappled instantly and very bravely and resolutely with William.
For a moment they struggled fearfully, they seemed to be endowed
instantaneously with innumerable legs, and then suddenly they fell
through the door of the caravan into the interior, their limbs seemed to
whirl for a wonderful instant and then they were swallowed up....
The smash was tremendous. You would not have thought there was nearly so
much in the caravan still left to get broken....
A healing silence....
At length smothered noises of still inadequate adjustment within....
The village population in a state of scared delight appeared at a score
of points and converged upon the catastrophe. Sounds of renewed
dissension between William and the Professor inside the rearing yellow
bulk, promised further interests and added an element of mystery to this
manifest disaster.
§ 12
As Bealby, still grasping his great branch of yew, watched these events,
a sense of human futility invaded his youthful mind. For the first time
he realized the gulf between intention and result. He had meant so
well....
He perceived it would be impossible to explain....
The thought of even attempting to explain things to Professor Bowles was
repellent to him....
He looked about him with round despairful eyes. He selected a direction
which seemed to promise the maximum of concealment with the minimum of
conversational possibility, and in that direction and without needless
delay he set off, eager to turn over an entirely fresh page in his
destiny as soon as possible....
To get away, the idea possessed all his being.
From the crest of the downs a sweet voice floated after his retreating
form and never overtook him.
“Di-ick!”
§ 13
Then presently Miss Philips arose to her feet, gathered her skirts in
her hand and with her delicious chin raised and an expression of
countenance that was almost businesslike, descended towards the
gathering audience below. She wore wide-flowing skirts and came down the
hill in Artemesian strides.
It was high time that somebody looked at her.