BEALBY AND THE TRAMP
§ 1
Bealby was loth to leave the caravan party even when by his own gross
negligence it had ceased to be a caravan party. He made off regretfully
along the crest of the hills through bushes of yew and box until the
clamour of the disaster was no longer in his ears. Then he halted for a
time and stood sorrowing and listening and then turned up by a fence
along the border of a plantation and so came into a little overhung
road.
His ideas of his immediate future were vague in the extreme. He was a
receptive expectation. Since his departure from the gardener’s cottage
circumstances had handed him on. They had been interesting but unstable
circumstances. He supposed they would still hand him on. So far as he
had any definite view about his intentions it was that he was running
away to sea. And that he was getting hungry.
It was also, he presently discovered, getting dark very gently and
steadily. And the overhung road after some tortuosities expired suddenly
upon the bosom of a great grey empty common with distant mysterious
hedges.
It seemed high time to Bealby that something happened of a comforting
nature.
Always hitherto something or someone had come to his help when the world
grew dark and cold, and given him supper and put him or sent him to bed.
Even when he had passed a night in the interstices of Shonts he had
known there was a bed at quite a little distance under the stairs. If
only that loud Voice hadn’t shouted curses whenever he moved he would
have gone to it. But as he went across this common in the gloaming it
became apparent that this amiable routine was to be broken. For the
first time he realized the world could be a homeless world.
And it had become very still.
Disagreeably still, and full of ambiguous shadows.
That common was not only an unsheltered place, he felt, but an
unfriendly place, and he hurried to a gate at the further end. He kept
glancing to the right and to the left. It would be pleasanter when he
had got through that gate and shut it after him.
In England there are no grey wolves.
Yet at times one thinks of wolves, grey wolves, the colour of twilight
and running noiselessly, almost noiselessly, at the side of their prey
for quite a long time before they close in on it.
In England, I say, there are no grey wolves.
Wolves were extinguished in the reign of Edward the Third; it was in the
histories, and since then no free wolf has trod the soil of England;
only menagerie captives.
Of course there may be _escaped_ wolves!
Now the gate!—sharp through it and slam it behind you, and a little
brisk run and so into this plantation that slopes down hill. This is a
sort of path; vague, but it must be a path. Let us hope it is a path.
_What was that among the trees?_
It stopped, surely it stopped, as Bealby stopped. Pump, pump—. Of
course! that was one’s heart.
Nothing there! Just fancy. Wolves live in the open; they do not come
into woods like this. And besides, there are no wolves. And if one
shouts—even if it is but a phantom voice one produces, they go away.
They are cowardly things—really. Such as there aren’t.
And there is the power of the human eye.
Which is why they stalk you and watch you and evade you when you look
and creep and creep and creep behind you!
Turn sharply.
Nothing.
How this stuff rustled under the feet! In woods at twilight, with
innumerable things darting from trees and eyes watching you everywhere,
it would be pleasanter if one could walk without making quite such a
row. Presently, surely, Bealby told himself, he would come out on a high
road and meet other people and say “good-night” as they passed. Jolly
other people they would be, answering, “Good-night.” He was now going at
a moistening trot. It was getting darker and he stumbled against things.
When you tumble down wolves leap. Not of course that there _are_ any
wolves.
It was stupid to keep thinking of wolves in this way. Think of something
else. Think of things beginning with a B. Beautiful things, boys, beads,
butterflies, bears. The mind stuck at bears. _Are there such things as
long grey bears?_ Ugh! Almost endless, noiseless bears?...
It grew darker until at last the trees were black. The night was
swallowing up the flying Bealby and he had a preposterous persuasion
that it had teeth and would begin at the back of his legs....
§ 2
“Hi!” cried Bealby weakly, hailing the glow of the fire out of the
darkness of the woods above.
The man by the fire peered at the sound; he had been listening to the
stumbling footsteps for some time, and he answered nothing.
In another minute Bealby had struggled through the hedge into the
visible world and stood regarding the man by the fire. The phantom
wolves had fled beyond Sirius. But Bealby’s face was pale still from the
terrors of the pursuit and altogether he looked a smallish sort of small
boy.
“Lost?” said the man by the fire.
“Couldn’t find my way,” said Bealby.
“Anyone with you?”
“No.”
The man reflected. “Tired?”
“Bit.”
“Come and sit down by the fire and rest yourself.
“I won’t ’urt you,” he added as Bealby hesitated.
So far in his limited experience Bealby had never seen a human
countenance lit from behind by a flickering red flame. The effect he
found remarkable rather than pleasing. It gave this stranger the most
active and unstable countenance Bealby had ever seen. The nose seemed to
be in active oscillation between pug and Roman, the eyes jumped out of
black caves and then went back into them, the more permanent features
appeared to be a vast triangle of neck and chin. The tramp would have
impressed Bealby as altogether inhuman if it had not been for the smell
of cooking he diffused. There were onions in it and turnips and
pepper—mouth-watering constituents, testimonials to virtue. He was
making a stew in an old can that he had slung on a cross stick over a
brisk fire of twigs that he was constantly replenishing.
“I won’t ’urt you, darn you,” he repeated. “Come and sit down on these
leaves here for a bit and tell me all abart it.”
Bealby did as he was desired. “I got lost,” he said, feeling too
exhausted to tell a good story.
The tramp, examined more closely, became less pyrotechnic. He had a
large loose mouth, a confused massive nose, much long fair hair, a broad
chin with a promising beard and spots—a lot of spots. His eyes looked
out of deep sockets and they were sharp little eyes. He was a lean man.
His hands were large and long and they kept on with the feeding of the
fire as he sat and talked to Bealby. Once or twice he leant forward and
smelt the pot judiciously, but all the time the little eyes watched
Bealby very closely.
“Lose yer collar?” said the tramp.
Bealby felt for his collar. “I took it orf,” he said.
“Come far?”
“Over there,” said Bealby.
“Where?”
“Over there.”
“What place?”
“Don’t know the name of it.”
“Then it ain’t your ’ome?”
“No.”
“You’ve run away,” said the man.
“Pr’aps I ’ave,” said Bealby.
“Pr’aps you ’ave! Why pr’aps? You _’ave_! What’s the good of telling
lies abart it? When’d you start?”
“Monday,” said Bealby.
The tramp reflected. “Had abart enough of it?”
“Dunno,” said Bealby truthfully.
“Like some soup?”
“Yes.”
“’Ow much?”
“I could do with a lot,” said Bealby.
“Ah yah! I didn’t mean that. I meant, ’ow much for some? ’Ow much will
you pay for a nice, nice ’arf can of soup? I ain’t a darn charity. See?”
“Tuppence,” said Bealby.
The tramp shook his head slowly from side to side and took out the
battered iron spoon he was using to stir the stuff and tasted the soup
lusciously. It was—jolly good soup and there were potatoes in it.
“Thrippence,” said Bealby.
“’Ow much you got?” asked the tramp.
Bealby hesitated perceptibly. “Sixpence,” he said weakly.
“It’s sixpence,” said the tramp. “Pay up.”
“’Ow big a can?” asked Bealby.
The tramp felt about in the darkness behind him and produced an empty
can with a jagged mouth that had once contained, the label witnessed—I
quote, I do not justify—‘_Deep Sea Salmon_.’ “That,” he said, “and this
chunk of bread.... Right enough?”
“You _will_ do it?” said Bealby.
“Do I look a swindle?” cried the tramp, and suddenly a lump of the
abundant hair fell over one eye in a singularly threatening manner.
Bealby handed over the sixpence without further discussion. “I’ll treat
you fairly, you see,” said the tramp, after he had spat on and pocketed
the sixpence, and he did as much. He decided that the soup was ready to
be served and he served it with care. Bealby began at once. “There’s a
nextry onion,” said the tramp, throwing one over. “It didn’t cost me
much and I gives it you for nothin’. That’s all right, eh? Here’s
’ealth!”
Bealby consumed his soup and bread meekly with one eye upon his host. He
would, he decided, eat all he could and then sit a little while, and
then get this tramp to tell him the way to—anywhere else. And the tramp
wiped soup out of his can with gobbets of bread very earnestly and
meditated sagely on Bealby.
“You better pal in with me, matey, for a bit,” he said at last. “You
can’t go nowhere else—not to-night.”
“Couldn’t I walk perhaps to a town or sumpthing?”
“These woods ain’t safe.”
“’Ow d’you mean?”
“Ever ’eard tell of a gurrillia?—sort of big black monkey thing.”
“Yes,” said Bealby faintly.
“There’s been one loose abart ’ere—oh week or more. Fact. And if you
wasn’t a grown up man quite and going along in the dark, well—’e might
say something _to_ you.... Of course ’e wouldn’t do nothing where there
was a fire or a man—but a little chap like you. I wouldn’t like to let
you do it, ’strewth I wouldn’t. It’s risky. Course I don’t want to
_keep_ you. There it is. You go if you like. But I’d rather you didn’t.
’Onest.”
“Where’d he come from?” asked Bealby.
“M’nagery,” said the tramp.
“’E very near bit through the fist of a chap that tried to stop ’im,”
said the tramp.
Bealby after weighing tramp and gorilla very carefully in his mind
decided he wouldn’t and drew closer to the fire—but not too close—and
the conversation deepened.
§ 3
It was a long and rambling conversation and the tramp displayed himself
at times as quite an amiable person. It was a discourse varied by
interrogations, and as a thread of departure and return it dealt with
the life of the road and with life at large and—life, and with matters
of ‘must’ and ‘may.’
Sometimes and more particularly at first Bealby felt as though a
ferocious beast lurked in the tramp and peeped out through the fallen
hank of hair and might leap out upon him, and sometimes he felt the
tramp was large and fine and gay and amusing, more particularly when he
lifted his voice and his bristling chin. And ever and again the talker
became a nasty creature and a disgusting creature, and his red-lit face
was an ugly creeping approach that made Bealby recoil. And then again he
was strong and wise. So the unstable needle of a boy’s moral compass
spins.
The tramp used strange terms. He spoke of the ‘deputy’ and the
‘doss-house,’ of the ‘spike’ and ‘padding the hoof,’ of ‘screevers’ and
‘tarts’ and ‘copper’s narks.’ To these words Bealby attached such
meanings as he could, and so the things of which the tramp talked
floated unsurely into his mind and again and again he had to readjust
and revise his interpretations. And through these dim and fluctuating
veils a new side of life dawned upon his consciousness, a side that was
strange and lawless and dirty—in every way dirty—and dreadful
and—attractive. That was the queer thing about it, that attraction. It
had humour. For all its squalor and repulsiveness it was lit by defiance
and laughter, bitter laughter perhaps, but laughter. It had a gaiety
that Mr. Mergleson for example did not possess, it had a penetration,
like the penetrating quality of onions or acids or asafœtida, that made
the memory of Mr. Darling insipid.
The tramp assumed from the outset that Bealby had ‘done something’ and
run away, and some mysterious etiquette prevented his asking directly
what was the nature of his offence. But he made a number of insidious
soundings. And he assumed that Bealby was taking to the life of the road
and that, until good cause to the contrary appeared, they were to remain
together. “It’s a tough life,” he said, “but it has its points, and you
got a toughish look about you.”
He talked of roads and the quality of roads and countryside. This was a
good countryside; it wasn’t overdone and there was no great hostility to
wanderers and sleeping out. Some roads—the London to Brighton for
example, if a chap struck a match, somebody came running. But here
unless you went pulling the haystacks about too much they left you
alone. And they weren’t such dead nuts on their pheasants, and one had a
chance of an empty cowshed. “If I’ve spotted a shed or anything with a
roof to it I stay out,” said the tramp, “even if it’s raining cats and
dogs. Otherwise it’s the doss-’ouse or the ‘spike.’ It’s the rain is the
worst thing—getting wet. You haven’t been wet yet, not if you only
started Monday. Wet—with a chilly wind to drive it. Gaw! I been blown
out of a holly hedge. You _would_ think there’d be protection in a holly
hedge....
“Spike’s the last thing,” said the tramp. “I’d rather go bare-gutted to
a doss-’ouse anywhen. Gaw!—you’ve not ’ad your first taste of the spike
yet.”
But it wasn’t heaven in the doss-houses. He spoke of several of the
landladies in strange but it would seem unflattering terms. “And there’s
always such a blamed lot of washing going on in a doss-’ouse. Always
washing they are! One chap’s washing ’is socks and another’s washing ’is
shirt. Making a steam drying it. Disgustin’. Carn’t see what they want
with it all. Barnd to git dirty again....”
He discoursed of spikes, that is to say of work-houses, and of masters.
“And then,” he said, with revolting yet alluring adjectives, “there’s
the bath.”
“That’s the worst side of it,” said the tramp.... “’Owever, it doesn’t
always rain, and if it doesn’t rain, well, you can keep yourself dry.”
He came back to the pleasanter aspects of the nomadic life. He was all
for the outdoor style. “Ain’t we comfortable ’ere?” he asked. He
sketched out the simple larcenies that had contributed and given zest to
the evening’s meal. But it seemed there were also doss-houses that had
the agreeable side. “Never been in one!” he said. “But where you been
sleeping since Monday?”
Bealby described the caravan in phrases that seemed suddenly thin and
anæmic to his ears.
“You hit it lucky,” said the tramp. “If a chap’s a kid he strikes all
sorts of luck of that sort. Now ef _I_ come up against three ladies
travellin’ in a van—think they’d arst me in? Not it!”
He dwelt with manifest envy on the situation and the possibilities of
the situation for some time. “You ain’t dangerous,” he said; “that’s
where you get in....”
He consoled himself by anecdotes of remarkable good fortunes of a
kindred description. Apparently he sometimes travelled in the company of
a lady named Izzy Berners—“a fair scorcher, been a regular, slap-up
circus actress.” And there was also “good old Susan.” It was a little
difficult for Bealby to see the point of some of these flashes by a
tendency on the part of the tramp while his thoughts turned on these
matters to adopt a staccato style of speech, punctuated by brief, darkly
significant guffaws. There grew in the mind of Bealby a vision of the
doss-house as a large crowded place, lit by a great central fire, with
much cooking afoot and much jawing and disputing going on, and then “me
and Izzy sailed in....”
The fire sank, the darkness of the woods seemed to creep nearer. The
moonlight pierced the trees only in long beams that seemed to point
steadfastly at unseen things, it made patches of ashen light that looked
like watching faces. Under the tramp’s direction Bealby skirmished round
and got sticks and fed the fire until the darkness and thoughts of a
possible gorilla were driven back for some yards and the tramp
pronounced the blaze a “fair treat.” He had made a kind of bed of leaves
which he now invited Bealby to extend and share, and lying feet to the
fire he continued his discourse.
He talked of stealing and cheating by various endearing names; he made
these enterprises seem adventurous and facetious; there was it seemed a
peculiar sort of happy find one came upon called a “flat,” that it was
not only entertaining but obligatory to swindle. He made fraud seem so
smart and bright at times that Bealby found it difficult to keep a firm
grasp on the fact that it was—fraud....
Bealby lay upon the leaves close up to the prone body of the tramp, and
his mind and his standards became confused. The tramp’s body was a dark
but protecting ridge on one side of him; he could not see the fire
beyond his toes but its flickerings were reflected by the tree stems
about them, and made perplexing sudden movements that at times caught
his attention and made him raise his head to watch them.... Against the
terrors of the night the tramp had become humanity, the species, the
moral basis. His voice was full of consolation; his topics made one
forget the watchful silent circumambient. Bealby’s first distrusts
faded. He began to think the tramp a fine, brotherly, generous fellow.
He was also growing accustomed to a faint something—shall I call it an
olfactory bar—that had hitherto kept them apart. The monologue ceased to
devote itself to the elucidation of Bealby; the tramp was lying on his
back with his fingers interlaced beneath his head and talking not so
much to his companion as to the stars and the universe at large. His
theme was no longer the wandering life simply but the wandering life as
he had led it, and the spiritedness with which he had led it and the
real and admirable quality of himself. It was that soliloquy of
consolation which is the secret preservative of innumerable lives.
He wanted to make it perfectly clear that he was a tramp by choice. He
also wanted to make it clear that he was a tramp and no better because
of the wicked folly of those he had trusted and the evil devices of
enemies. In the world that contained those figures of spirit; Isopel
Berners and Susan, there was also it seemed a bad and spiritless person,
the tramp’s wife, who had done him many passive injuries. It was clear
she did not appreciate her blessings. She had been much to blame.
“Anybody’s opinion is better than ’er ’usband’s,” said the tramp.
“Always ’as been.” Bealby had a sudden memory of Mr. Darling saying
exactly the same thing of his mother. “She’s the sort,” said the tramp,
“what would rather go to a meetin’ than a music ’all. She’d rather drop
a shilling down a crack than spend it on anything decent. If there was a
choice of jobs going she’d ask which ’ad the lowest pay and the longest
hours and she’d choose _that_. She’d feel safer. She was born scared.
When there wasn’t anything else to do she’d stop at ’ome and scrub the
floors. Gaw! it made a chap want to put the darn’ pail over ’er ’ed,
so’s she’d get enough of it....
“I don’t hold with all this crawling through life and saying _Please_,”
said the tramp. “I say it’s _my_ world just as much as it’s _your_
world. You may have your ’orses and carriages, your ’ouses and country
places and all that and you may think Gawd sent me to run abart and work
for you; but _I_ don’t. See?”
Bealby saw.
“I seek my satisfactions just as you seek your satisfactions, and if you
want to get me to work you’ve jolly well got to make me. I don’t choose
to work. I choose to keep on my own and a bit loose and take my chance
where I find it. You got to take your chances in this world. Sometimes
they come bad and sometimes they come good. And very often you can’t
tell which it is when they ’ave come....”
Then he fell questioning Bealby again and then he talked of the
immediate future. He was beating for the seaside. “Always something
doing,” he said. “You got to keep your eye on for cops; those seaside
benches, they’re ’ot on tramps—give you a month for begging soon as look
at you—but there’s flats dropping sixpences thick as flies on a sore
’orse. You want a there for all sorts of jobs. You’re just the chap for
it, matey. Saw it soon’s ever I set eyes on you....”
He made projects....
Finally he became more personal and very flattering.
“Now you and me,” he said, suddenly shifting himself quite close to
Bealby, “we’re going to be downright pals. I’ve took a liking to you. Me
and you are going to pal together. See?”
He breathed into Bealby’s face, and laid a hand on his knee and squeezed
it, and Bealby, on the whole, felt honoured by his protection....
§ 4
In the unsympathetic light of a bright and pushful morning the tramp was
shorn of much of his overnight glamour. It became manifest that he was
not merely offensively unshaven, but extravagantly dirty. It was not
ordinary rural dirt. During the last few days he must have had dealings
of an intimate nature with coal. He was taciturn and irritable, he
declared that this sleeping out would be the death of him and the
breakfast was only too manifestly wanting in the comforts of a refined
home. He seemed a little less embittered after breakfast, he became even
faintly genial, but he remained unpleasing. A distaste for the tramp
arose in Bealby’s mind and as he walked on behind his guide and friend,
he revolved schemes of unobtrusive detachment.
Far be it from me to accuse Bealby of ingratitude. But it is true that
that same disinclination which made him a disloyal assistant to Mr.
Mergleson was now affecting his comradeship with the tramp. And he was
deceitful. He allowed the tramp to build projects in the confidence of
his continued adhesion, he did not warn him of the defection he
meditated. But on the other hand Bealby had acquired from his mother an
effective horror of stealing. And one must admit, since the tramp
admitted it, that the man stole.
And another little matter had at the same time estranged Bealby from the
tramp and linked the two of them together. The attentive reader will
know that Bealby had exactly two shillings and twopence-halfpenny when
he came down out of the woods to the fireside. He had Mrs. Bowles’
half-crown and the balance of Madeleine Philips’ theatre shilling, minus
sixpence halfpenny for a collar and sixpence he had given the tramp for
the soup overnight. But all this balance was now in the pocket of the
tramp. Money talks and the tramp had heard it. He had not taken it away
from Bealby, but he had obtained it in this manner: “We two are pals,”
he said, “and one of us had better be Treasurer. That’s Me. I know the
ropes better. So hand over what you got there, matey.”
And after he had pointed out that a refusal might lead to Bealby’s
evisceration the transfer occurred. Bealby was searched, kindly but
firmly....
It seemed to the tramp that this trouble had now blown over completely.
Little did he suspect the rebellious and treacherous thoughts that
seethed in the head of his companion. Little did he suppose that his
personal appearance, his manners, his ethical flavour—nay, even his
physical flavour—were being judged in a spirit entirely unamiable. It
seemed to him that he had obtained youthful and subservient
companionship, companionship that would be equally agreeable and useful;
he had adopted a course that he imagined would cement the ties between
them; he reckoned not with ingratitude. “If anyone arsts you who I am,
call me uncle,” he said. He walked along, a little in advance, sticking
his toes out right and left in a peculiar wide pace that characterized
his walk, and revolving schemes for the happiness and profit of the day.
To begin with—great draughts of beer. Then tobacco. Later perhaps a
little bread and cheese for Bealby. “You can’t come in ’ere,” he said at
the first public house. “You’re under age, me boy. It ain’t my doing,
matey; it’s ’Erbert Samuel. You blame ’im. ’E don’t objec’ to you going
to work for any other Mr. Samuel there may ’appen to be abart or
anything of that sort, that’s good for you, that is; but ’e’s most
particular you shouldn’t go into a public ’ouse. So you just wait abart
outside ’ere. _I’ll_ ’ave my eye on you.”
“You going to spend my money?” asked Bealby.
“I’m going to ration the party,” said the tramp.
“You—you got no right to spend my money,” said Bealby.
“I—’Ang it!—I’ll get you some acid drops,” said the tramp in tones of
remonstrance. “I tell you, blame you,—it’s ‘Erbert Samuel.’ I can’t ’elp
it! I can’t fight against the lor.”
“You haven’t any right to spend my money,” said Bealby.
“_Downt_ cut up crusty. ’Ow can _I_ ’elp it?”
“I’ll tell a policeman. You gimme back my money and lemme go.”
The tramp considered the social atmosphere. It did not contain a
policeman. It contained nothing but a peaceful kindly corner public
house, a sleeping dog and the back of an elderly man digging.
The tramp approached Bealby in a confidential manner. “’Oo’s going to
believe you?” he said. “And besides, ’ow did you come by it?
“Moreover, _I_ ain’t going to spend _your_ money. I got money of my own.
_’Ere!_ See?” And suddenly before the dazzled eyes of Bealby he held and
instantly withdrew three shillings and two coppers that seemed familiar.
He had had a shilling of his own....
Bealby waited outside....
The tramp emerged in a highly genial mood, with acid drops, and a short
clay pipe going strong. “’Ere,” he said to Bealby with just the faintest
flavour of magnificence over the teeth-held pipe and handed over not
only the acid drops but a virgin short clay. “Fill,” he said, proffering
the tobacco. “It’s yours jus’ much as it’s mine. Be’r not let ’Erbert
Samuel see you, though; that’s all. ’E’s got a lor abart it.”
Bealby held his pipe in his clenched hand. He had already smoked—once.
He remembered it quite vividly still, although it had happened six
months ago. Yet he hated not using that tobacco. “No,” he said, “I’ll
smoke later.”
The tramp replaced the screw of red Virginia in his pocket with the air
of one who has done the gentlemanly thing....
They went on their way, an ill-assorted couple.
All day Bealby chafed at the tie and saw the security in the tramp’s
pocket vanish. They lunched on bread and cheese and then the tramp had a
good sustaining drink of beer for both of them and after that they came
to a common where it seemed agreeable to repose. And after a due meed of
repose in a secluded hollow among the gorse the tramp produced a pack of
exceedingly greasy cards and taught Bealby to play Euchre. Apparently
the tramp had no distinctive pockets in his tail coat, the whole lining
was one capacious pocket. Various knobs and bulges indicated his cooking
tin, his feeding tin, a turnip and other unknown properties. At first
they played for love and then they played for the balance in the tramp’s
pocket. And by the time Bealby had learnt Euchre thoroughly, that
balance belonged to the tramp. But he was very generous about it and
said they would go on sharing just as they had done. And then he became
confidential. He scratched about in the bagginess of his garment and
drew out a little dark blade of stuff, like a flint implement, regarded
it gravely for a moment and held it out to Bealby. “Guess what this is.”
Bealby gave it up.
“Smell it.”
It smelt very nasty. One familiar smell indeed there was with a
paradoxical sanitary quality that he did not quite identify, but that
was a mere basis for a complex reek of acquisitions. “What is it?” said
Bealby.
“_Soap!_”
“But what’s it for?”
“I thought you’d arst that.... What’s soap usually for?”
“Washing,” said Bealby guessing wildly.
The tramp shook his head. “Making a foam,” he corrected. “That’s what I
has my fits with. See? I shoves a bit in my mouth and down I goes and I
rolls about. Making a sort of moaning sound. Why, I been given brandy
often—neat brandy.... It isn’t always a cert—nothing’s absolutely a
cert. I’ve ’ad some let-downs.... Once I was bit by a nasty little
dog—that brought me to pretty quick—and once I ’ad an old gentleman go
through my pockets. ‘Poor chap!’ ’e ses, ‘very likely ’e’s destitoot,
let’s see if ’e’s _got_ anything.’... I’d got all sorts of things, I
didn’t want _’im_ prying about. But I didn’t come to sharp enough to
stop ’im. Got me into trouble that did....
“It’s an old lay,” said the tramp, “but it’s astonishing ’ow it’ll go in
a quiet village. Sort of amuses ’em. Or dropping suddenly in front of a
bicycle party. Lot of them old tricks are the best tricks, and there
ain’t many of ’em Billy Bridget don’t know. That’s where you’re lucky to
’ave met me, matey. Billy Bridget’s a ’ard man to starve. And I know the
ropes. I know what you _can_ do and what you can’t do. And I got a
feeling for a policeman—same as some people ’ave for cats. I’d know if
one was ’idden in the room....”
He expanded into anecdotes and the story of various encounters in which
he shone. It was amusing and it took Bealby on his weak side. Wasn’t he
the Champion Dodger of the Chelsome playground?
The tide of talk ebbed. “Well,” said the tramp, “time we was up and
doing....”
They went along shady lanes and across an open park and they skirted a
breezy common from which they could see the sea. And among other things
that the tramp said was this, “Time we began to forage a bit.”
He turned his large observant nose to the right of him and the left.
§ 5
Throughout the afternoon the tramp discoursed upon the rights and wrongs
of property, in a way that Bealby found very novel and unsettling. The
tramp seemed to have his ideas about owning and stealing arranged quite
differently from those of Bealby. Never before had Bealby thought it
possible to have them arranged in any other than the way he knew. But
the tramp contrived to make most possession seem unrighteous and honesty
a code devised by those who have for those who haven’t. “They’ve just
got ’old of it,” he said. “They want to keep it to themselves.... Do I
look as though I’d stole much of anybody’s? It isn’t me got ’old of this
land and sticking up my notice boards to keep everybody off. It isn’t me
spends my days and nights scheming ’ow I can get ’old of more and more
of the stuff....
“I don’t _envy_ it ’em,” said the tramp. “Some ’as one taste and some
another. But when it comes to making all this fuss because a chap who
_isn’t_ a schemer ’elps ’imself to a mäthful,—well, it’s Rot....
“It’s them makes the rules of the game and nobody ever arst me to play
it. I don’t blame ’em, mind you. Me and you might very well do the same.
But brast me if I see where the sense of _my_ keeping the rules comes
in. This world ought to be a share out, Gawd meant it to be a share out.
And me and you—we been done out of our share. That justifies us.”
“It isn’t right to steal,” said Bealby.
“It isn’t right to steal—certainly. It isn’t right—but it’s universal.
Here’s a chap here over this fence, ask ’im where ’e got ’is land.
Stealing! What you call stealing, matey, _I_ call restitootion. You
ain’t probably never even ’eard of socialism.”
“I’ve ’eard of socialists right enough. Don’t believe in Gawd and
’aven’t no morality.”
“Don’t you believe it. Why!—’Arf the socialists are parsons. What I’m
saying _is_ socialism—practically. _I’m_ a socialist. I know all abart
socialism. There isn’t nothing you can tell me abart socialism. Why!—for
three weeks I was one of these here Anti-Socialist speakers. Paid for
it. And I tell you there ain’t such a thing as property left; it’s all a
blooming old pinch. Lords, commons, judges, all of them, they’re just a
crew of brasted old fences and the lawyers getting in the stuff. Then
you talk to me of stealing! _Stealing!_”
The tramp’s contempt and his intense way of saying ‘stealing’ were very
unsettling to a sensitive mind.
They bought some tea and grease in a village shop and the tramp made tea
in his old tin with great dexterity and then they gnawed bread on which
two ounces of margarine had been generously distributed. “Live like
fighting cocks, we do,” said the tramp wiping out his simple cuisine
with the dragged-out end of his shirt sleeve. “And if I’m not very much
mistaken we’ll sleep to-night on a nice bit of hay....”
But these anticipations were upset by a sudden temptation, and instead
of a starry summer comfort the two were destined to spend a night of
suffering and remorse.
A green lane lured them off the road, and after some windings led them
past a field of wire-netted enclosures containing a number of perfect
and conceited-looking hens close beside a little cottage, a vegetable
garden and some new elaborate outhouses. It was manifestly a poultry
farm, and something about it gave the tramp the conviction that it had
been left, that nobody was at home.
These realizations are instinctive, they leap to the mind. He knew it,
and an ambition to know further what was in the cottage came with the
knowledge. But it seemed to him desirable that the work of exploration
should be done by Bealby. He had thought of dogs, and it seemed to him
that Bealby might be unembarrassed by that idea. So he put the thing to
Bealby. “Let’s have a look round ere,” he said. “You go in and see
what’s abart....”
There was some difference of opinion. “I don’t ask you to take
anything,” said the tramp.... “Nobody won’t catch you.... I tell you
nobody won’t catch you.... I tell you there ain’t nobody here to catch
you.... Just for the fun of seeing in. I’ll go up by them outhouses. And
I’ll see nobody comes.... Ain’t afraid to go up a garden path, are
you?... I tell you, I don’t want you to steal.... You ain’t got much
guts to funk a thing like that.... I’ll be abät too.... Thought you’d be
the very chap for a bit of scarting.... Thought Boy Scarts was all the
go nowadays.... Well, if you ain’t afraid you’d do it.... Well, why
didn’t you say you’d do it at the beginning?...”
Bealby went through the hedge and up a grass track between poultry runs,
made a cautious inspection of the outhouses and then approached the
cottage. Everything was still. He thought it more plausible to go to the
door than peep into the window. He rapped. Then after an interval of
stillness he lifted the latch, opened the door and peered into the room.
It was a pleasantly furnished room, and before the empty summer
fireplace a very old white man was sitting in a chintz-covered
arm-chair, lost it would seem in painful thought. He had a peculiar grey
shrunken look, his eyes were closed, a bony hand with the shiny texture
of alabaster gripped the chair arm.... There was something about him
that held Bealby quite still for a moment.
And this old gentleman behaved very oddly.
His body seemed to crumple into his chair, his hands slipped down from
the arms, his head nodded forwards and his mouth and eyes seemed to open
together. And he made a snoring sound....
For a moment Bealby remained rigidly agape and then a violent desire to
rejoin the tramp carried him back through the hen runs....
He tried to describe what he had seen.
“Asleep with his mouth open,” said the tramp. “Well, that ain’t anything
so wonderful! You _got_ anything? That’s what I want to know.... Did
anyone ever see such a boy? ’Ere! I’ll go....
“You keep a look out here,” said the tramp.
But there was something about that old man in there, something so
strange and alien to Bealby, that he could not remain alone in the
falling twilight. He followed the cautious advances of the tramp towards
the house. From the corner by the outhouses he saw the tramp go and peer
in at the open door. He remained for some time peering, his head hidden
from Bealby....
Then he went in....
Bealby had an extraordinary desire that somebody else would come. His
soul cried out for help against some vaguely apprehended terror. And in
the very moment of his wish came its fulfilment. He saw advancing up the
garden path a tall woman in a blue serge dress, hatless and hurrying and
carrying a little package—it was medicine—in her hand. And with her came
a big black dog. At the sight of Bealby the dog came forward barking and
Bealby after a moment’s hesitation turned and fled.
The dog was quick. But Bealby was quicker. He went up the netting of a
hen run and gave the dog no more than an ineffectual snap at his heels.
And then dashing from the cottage door came the tramp. Under one arm was
a brass-bound workbox and in the other was a candlestick and some
smaller articles. He did not instantly grasp the situation of his treed
companion, he was too anxious to escape the tall woman, and then with a
yelp of dismay he discovered himself between woman and dog. All too late
he sought to emulate Bealby. The workbox slipped from under his arm, the
rest of his plunder fell from him, for an uneasy moment he was clinging
to the side of the swaying hen run and then it had caved in and the dog
had got him.
The dog bit, desisted and then finding itself confronted by two men
retreated. Bealby and the tramp rolled and scrambled over the other side
of the collapsed netting into a parallel track and were halfway to the
hedge before the dog,—but this time in a less vehement fashion,—resumed
his attack.
He did not close with them again and at the hedge he halted altogether
and remained hacking the gloaming with his rage.
The woman it seemed had gone into the house, leaving the tramp’s
scattered loot upon the field of battle.
“This means mizzle,” said the tramp, leading the way at a trot.
Bealby saw no other course but to follow.
He had a feeling as though the world had turned against him. He did not
dare to think what he was nevertheless thinking of the events of these
crowded ten minutes. He felt he had touched something dreadful; that the
twilight was full of accusations.... He feared and hated the tramp now,
but he perceived something had linked them as they had not been linked
before. Whatever it was they shared it.
§ 6
They fled through the night; it seemed to Bealby for interminable hours.
At last when they were worn out and footsore they crept through a gate
and found an uncomfortable cowering place in the corner of a field.
As they went they talked but little, but the tramp kept up a constant
muttering to himself. He was troubled by the thought of hydrophobia.
“I know I’ll ’ave it,” he said, “I know I’ll get it.”
Bealby after a time ceased to listen to his companion. His mind was
preoccupied. He could think of nothing but that very white man in the
chair and the strange manner of his movement.
“Was ’e awake when you saw ’im?” he asked at last.
“Awake—who?”
“That old man.”
For a moment or so the tramp said nothing. “’E wasn’t awake, you young
silly,” he said at last.
“But—wasn’t he?”
“Why!—don’t you know! ’E’d croaked,—popped off the ’ooks—very moment you
saw ’im.”
For a moment Bealby’s voice failed him.
Then he said quite faintly, “You mean—he’d —. Was dead?”
“Didn’t you know?” said the tramp. “Gaw! What a kid you are!”
In that manner it was Bealby first saw a dead man. Never before had he
seen anyone dead. And after that for all the night the old white man
pursued him, with strange slowly-opening eyes, and a head on one side
and his mouth suddenly and absurdly agape....
All night long that white figure presided over seas of dark dismay. It
seemed always to be there, and yet Bealby thought of a score of other
painful things. For the first time in his life he asked himself, “Where
am I going? What am I drifting to?” The world beneath the old man’s
dominance was a world of prisons.
Bealby believed he was a burglar and behind the darkness he imagined the
outraged law already seeking him. And the terrors of his associate
reinforced his own.
He tried to think what he should do in the morning. He dreaded the dawn
profoundly. But he could not collect his thoughts because of the tramp’s
incessant lapses into grumbling lamentation. Bealby knew he had to get
away from the tramp, but now he was too weary and alarmed to think of
running away as a possible expedient. And besides there was the matter
of his money. And beyond the range of the tramp’s voice there were
darknesses which to-night at least might hold inconceivable forms of
lurking evil. But could he not appeal to the law to save him? Repent?
Was there not something called turning King’s Evidence?
The moon was no comfort that night. Across it there passed with
incredible slowness a number of jagged little black clouds, blacker than
any clouds Bealby had ever seen before. They were like velvet palls,
lined with snowy fur. There was no end to them. And one at last most
horribly gaped slowly and opened a mouth....
§ 7
At intervals there would be uncomfortable movements and the voice of the
tramp came out of the darkness beside Bealby lamenting his approaching
fate and discoursing—sometimes with violent expressions—on watch-dogs.
“I know I shall ’ave ’idrophobia,” said the tramp. “I’ve always ’ad a
disposition to ’idrophobia. Always a dread of water—and now it’s got me.
“Think of it!—keeping a beast to set at a ’uman being. Where’s the
brotherhood of it? Where’s the law and the humanity? Getting a animal to
set at a brother man. And a poisoned animal, a animal with death in his
teeth. And a ’orrible death too. Where’s the sense and brotherhood?
“Gaw! when I felt ’is teeth coming through my träsers—!
“Dogs oughtn’t to be allowed. They’re a noosance in the towns and a
danger in the country. They oughtn’t to be allowed anywhere—not till
every blessed ’uman being ’as got three square meals a day. Then if you
like, keep a dog. And see ’e’s a clean dog....
“Gaw! if I’d been a bit quicker up that ’en roost—!
“I ought to ’ave landed ’im a kick.
“It’s a man’s duty to ’urt a dog. When ’e sees a dog ’e ought to ’urt
’im. It’s a natural ’atred. If dogs were what they ought to be, if dogs
understood ’ow they’re situated, there wouldn’t be a dog go for a man
ever.
“And if one did they’d shoot ’im....
“After this if ever I get a chance to land a dog a oner with a stone
I’ll land ’im one. I been too sorft with dogs....”
Towards dawn Bealby slept uneasily, to be awakened by the loud snorting
curiosity of three lively young horses. He sat up in a blinding sunshine
and saw the tramp looking very filthy and contorted, sleeping with his
mouth wide open and an expression of dismay and despair on his face.
§ 8
Bealby took his chance to steal away next morning while the tramp was
engaged in artificial epilepsy.
“I feel like fits this morning,” said the tramp. “I could do it well. I
want a bit of human kindness again. After that brasted dog.
“I expect soon I’ll ’ave the foam all right withat any soap.”
They marked down a little cottage before which a benevolent-looking
spectacled old gentleman in a large straw hat and a thin alpaca jacket
was engaged in budding roses. Then they retired to prepare. The tramp
handed over to Bealby various compromising possessions, which might
embarrass an afflicted person under the searching hands of charity.
There was for example the piece of soap after he had taken sufficient
for his immediate needs, there was ninepence in money, there were the
pack of cards with which they had played Euchre, a key or so and some
wires, much assorted string, three tins, a large piece of bread, the end
of a composite candle, a box of sulphur matches, list slippers, a pair
of gloves, a clasp knife, sundry grey rags. They all seemed to have the
distinctive flavour of the tramp....
“If you do a bunk with these,” said the tramp. “By Gawd—.”
He drew his finger across his throat.
(King’s Evidence.)
Bealby from a safe distance watched the beginnings of the fit and it
impressed him as a thoroughly nasty kind of fit. He saw the elderly
gentleman hurry out of the cottage and stand for a moment looking over
his little green garden gate, surveying the sufferings of the tramp with
an expression of intense yet discreet commiseration. Then suddenly he
was struck by an idea; he darted in among his rose bushes and reappeared
with a big watering-can and an enormous syringe. Still keeping the gate
between himself and the sufferer he loaded his syringe very carefully
and deliberately....
Bealby would have liked to have seen more but he felt his moment had
come. Another instant and it might be gone again. Very softly he dropped
from the gate on which he was sitting and made off like a running
partridge along the hedge of the field.
Just for a moment did he halt—at a strange sharp yelp that came from the
direction of the little cottage. Then his purpose of flight resumed its
control of him.
He would strike across country for two or three miles, then make for the
nearest police station and give himself up. (Loud voices. Was that the
tramp murdering the benevolent old gentleman in the straw hat or was it
the benevolent old gentleman in the straw hat murdering the tramp? No
time to question. Onward, Onward!) The tramp’s cans rattled in his
pocket. He drew one out, hesitated a moment and flung it away and then
sent its two companions after it....
He found his police station upon the road between Someport and
Crayminster, a little peaceful rural station, a mere sunny cottage with
a blue and white label and a notice board covered with belated bills
about the stealing of pheasants’ eggs. And another bill—.
It was headed MISSING and the next most conspicuous words were £5 REWARD
and the next ARTHUR BEALBY.
He was fascinated. So swift, so terribly swift is the law. Already they
knew of his burglary, of his callous participation in the robbing of a
dead man. Already the sleuths were upon his trail. So surely did his
conscience strike to this conclusion that even the carelessly worded
offer of a reward that followed his description conveyed no different
intimation to his mind. “To whomsoever will bring him back to Lady
Laxton, at Shonts near Chelsmore,” so it ran.
“And out of pocket expenses.”
And even as Bealby read this terrible document, the door of the police
station opened and a very big pink young policeman came out and stood
regarding the world in a friendly, self-approving manner. He had
innocent, happy, blue eyes; thus far he had had much to do with order
and little with crime; and his rosebud mouth would have fallen open, had
not discipline already closed it and set upon it the beginnings of a
resolute expression that accorded ill with the rest of his open
freshness. And when he had surveyed the sky and the distant hills and
the little rose bushes that occupied the leisure of the force, his eyes
fell upon Bealby....
Indecision has ruined more men than wickedness. And when one has slept
rough and eaten nothing and one is conscious of a marred unclean
appearance, it is hard to face one’s situations. What Bealby had
intended to do was to go right up to a policeman and say to him, simply
and frankly: “I want to turn King’s Evidence, please. I was in that
burglary where there was a dead old man and a workbox and a woman and a
dog. I was led astray by a bad character and I did not mean to do it.
And really it was him that did it and not me.”
But now his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, he felt he could not
speak, could not go through with it. His heart had gone down into his
feet. Perhaps he had caught the tramp’s constitutional aversion to the
police. He affected not to see the observant figure in the doorway. He
assumed a slack careless bearing like one who reads by chance idly. He
lifted his eyebrows to express unconcern. He pursed his mouth to whistle
but no whistle came. He stuck his hands into his pockets, pulled up his
feet as one pulls up plants by the roots and strolled away.
He quickened his stroll as he supposed by imperceptible degrees. He
glanced back and saw that the young policeman had come out of the
station and was reading the notice. And as the young policeman read he
looked ever and again at Bealby like one who checks off items.
Bealby quickened his pace and then, doing his best to suggest by the
movements of his back a more boyish levity quite unconnected with the
law, he broke into a trot.
Then presently he dropped back into a walking pace, pretended to see
something in the hedge, stopped and took a sidelong look at the young
policeman.
He was coming along with earnest strides; every movement of his
suggested a stealthy hurry!
Bealby trotted and then becoming almost frank about it ran. He took to
his heels.
From the first it was not really an urgent chase; it was a stalking
rather than a hunt, because the young policeman was too young and shy
and lacking in confidence really to run after a boy without any definite
warrant for doing so. When anyone came along he would drop into a smart
walk and pretend not to be looking at Bealby but just going somewhere
briskly. And after two miles of it he desisted, and stood for a time
watching a heap of mangold wurzel directly and the disappearance of
Bealby obliquely, and then when Bealby was quite out of sight he turned
back thoughtfully towards his proper place.
On the whole he considered he was well out of it. He might have made a
fool of himself....
And yet,—five pounds reward!