HOW BEALBY EXPLAINED
§ 1
Lord Chickney was only slightly older than Lord Moggeridge, but he had
not worn nearly so well. His hearing was not good, though he would never
admit it, and the loss of several teeth greatly affected his
articulation. One might generalize and say that neither physically nor
mentally do soldiers wear so well as lawyers. The army ages men sooner
than the law and philosophy; it exposes them more freely to germs, which
undermine and destroy, and it shelters them more completely from
thought, which stimulates and preserves. A lawyer must keep his law
highly polished and up-to-date or he hears of it within a fortnight, a
general never realizes he is out of training and behind the times until
disaster is accomplished. Since the magnificent retreat from
Bondy-Satina in eighty-seven and his five weeks defence of Barrowgast
(with the subsequent operations) the abilities of Lord Chickney had
never been exercised seriously at all. But there was a certain
simplicity of manner and a tall drooping grizzled old-veteran
picturesqueness about him that kept him distinguished; he was easy to
recognize on public occasions on account of his long moustaches, and so
he got pointed out when greater men were ignored. The autograph
collectors adored him. Every morning he would spend half an hour writing
autographs, and the habit was so strong in him that on Sundays, when
there was no London post and autograph writing would have been wrong
anyhow, he filled the time in copying out the epistle and gospel for the
day. And he liked to be well in the foreground of public affairs—if
possible wearing his decorations. After the autographs he would work,
sometimes for hours, for various patriotic societies and more
particularly for those which would impose compulsory training upon every
man, woman and child in the country. He even belonged to a society for
drilling the butchers’ ponies and training big dogs as scouts. He did
not understand how a country could be happy unless every city was
fortified and every citizen wore side-arms, and the slightest error in
his dietary led to the most hideous nightmares of the Channel Tunnel or
reduced estimates and a land enslaved. He wrote and toiled for these
societies, but he could not speak for them on account of his teeth. For
he had one peculiar weakness; he had faced death in many forms but he
had never faced a dentist. The thought of dentists gave him just the
same sick horror as the thought of invasion.
He was a man of blameless private life, a widower and childless. In
later years he had come to believe that he had once been very deeply in
love with his cousin, Susan, who had married a rather careless husband
named Douglas; both she and Douglas were dead now, but he maintained a
touching affection for her two lively rather than satisfying sons. He
called them his nephews, and by the continuous attrition of affection he
had become their recognized uncle. He was glad when they came to him in
their scrapes, and he liked to be seen about with them in public places.
They regarded him with considerable confidence and respect and an
affection that they sometimes blamed themselves for as not quite warm
enough for his merits. But there is a kind of injustice about affection.
He was really gratified when he got a wire from the less discreditable
of these two bright young relations, saying, “Sorely in need of your
advice. Hope to bring difficulties to you to-day at twelve.”
He concluded very naturally that the boy had come to some crisis in his
unfortunate entanglement with Madeleine Philips, and he was flattered by
the trustfulness that brought the matter to him. He resolved to be
delicate but wily, honourable, strictly honourable, but steadily,
patiently separative. He paced his spacious study with his usual
morning’s work neglected, and rehearsed little sentences in his mind
that might be effective in the approaching interview. There would
probably be emotion. He would pat the lad on his shoulder and be himself
a little emotional. “I understand, my boy,” he would say, “I understand.
“Don’t forget, my boy, that I’ve been a young man too.”
He would be emotional, he would be sympathetic, but also he must be a
man of the world. “Sort of thing that won’t do, you know, my boy; sort
of thing that people will _not_ stand.... A soldier’s wife has to be a
soldier’s wife and nothing else.... Your business is to serve the king,
not—not some celebrity. Lovely, no doubt. I don’t deny the charm of
her—but on the hoardings, my boy.... Now don’t you think—don’t you
_think_?—there’s some nice pure girl somewhere, sweet as violets, new as
the dawn, and ready to be _yours_; a girl, I mean, a maiden fancy free,
not—how shall I put it?—a woman of the world. Wonderful, I admit—but
seasoned. Public. My dear, dear boy, I knew your mother when she was a
girl, a sweet pure girl—a thing of dewy freshness. Ah! Well I remember
her! All these years, my boy—Nothing. It’s difficult....”
Tears stood in his brave old blue eyes as he elaborated such phrases. He
went up and down mumbling them through the defective teeth and the long
moustache and waving an eloquent hand.
§ 2
When Lord Chickney’s thoughts had once started in any direction it was
difficult to turn them aside. No doubt that concealed and repudiated
deafness helped his natural perplexity of mind. Truth comes to some of
us as a still small voice, but Lord Chickney needed shouting and prods.
And Douglas did not get to him until he was finishing lunch. Moreover,
it was the weakness of Captain Douglas to talk in jerky fragments and
undertones, rather than clearly and fully in the American fashion. “Tell
me all about it, my boy,” said Lord Chickney. “Tell me all about it.
Don’t apologize for your clothes. I understand. Motor bicycle and just
come up. But have you had any lunch, Eric?”
“Alan, uncle,—not Eric. My brother is Eric.”
“Well, I called him Alan. Tell me all about it. Tell me what has
happened. What are you thinking of doing? Just put the positions before
me. To tell you the truth I’ve been worrying over this business for some
time.”
“Didn’t know you’d heard of it, uncle. He can’t have talked about it
already. Anyhow,—you see all the awkwardness of the situation. They say
the old chap’s a thundering spiteful old devil when he’s roused—and
there’s no doubt he was roused.... Tremendously....”
Lord Chickney was not listening very attentively. Indeed he was also
talking. “Not clear to me there was another man in it,” he was saying.
“That makes it more complicated, my boy, makes the row acuter. Old
fellow, eh? Who?”
They came to a pause at the same moment.
“You speak so indistinctly,” complained Lord Chickney. “_Who_ did you
say?”
“I thought you understood. Lord Moggeridge.”
“Lord—! Lord Moggeridge! My dear Boy! But how?”
“I thought you understood, uncle.”
“He doesn’t want to marry her! Tut! Never! Why, the man must be sixty if
he’s a day....”
Captain Douglas regarded his distinguished uncle for a moment with
distressed eyes. Then he came nearer, raised his voice and spoke more
deliberately.
“I don’t know whether you quite understand, uncle. I am talking about
this affair at Shonts last week-end.”
“My dear boy, there’s no need for you to shout. If only you don’t mumble
and clip your words—and turn head over heels with your ideas. Just tell
me about it plainly. Who is Shonts? One of those Liberal peers? I seem
to have heard the name....”
“Shonts, uncle, is the house the Laxtons have; you know,—Lucy.”
“Little Lucy! I remember her. Curls all down her back. Married
the milkman. But how does _she_ come in, Alan? The story’s
getting—complicated. But that’s the worst of these infernal
affairs,—they always do get complicated. Tangled skeins—
“‘Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we venture to deceive.’
“And now, like a sensible man, you want to get out of it.”
Captain Douglas was bright pink with the effort to control himself and
keep perfectly plain and straightforward. His hair had become like tow
and little beads of perspiration stood upon his forehead.
“I spent last week-end at Shonts,” he said. “Lord Moggeridge, also
there, week-ending. Got it into his head that I was pulling his leg.”
“Naturally, my boy, if he goes philandering. At his time of life. What
else can he expect?”
“It wasn’t philandering.”
“Fine distinctions. Fine distinctions. Go on—anyhow.”
“He got it into his head that I was playing practical jokes upon him.
Confused me with Eric. It led to a rather first-class row. I had to get
out of the house. Nothing else to do. He brought all sorts of
accusations—”
Captain Douglas stopped short. His uncle was no longer attending to him.
They had drifted to the window of the study and the general was staring
with an excitement and intelligence that grew visibly at the spectacle
of Bealby and the trailer outside. For Bealby had been left in the
trailer, and he was sitting as good as gold waiting for the next step in
his vindication from the dark charge of burglary. He was very
travel-worn and the trailer was time-worn as well as travel-worn, and
both contrasted with the efficient neatness and newness of the motor
bicycle in front. The contrast had attracted the attention of a tall
policeman who was standing in a state of elucidatory meditation
regarding Bealby. Bealby was not regarding the policeman. He had the
utmost confidence in Captain Douglas, he felt sure that he would
presently be purged of all the horror of that dead old man and of the
brief unpremeditated plunge into crime, but still for the present at any
rate he did not feel equal to staring a policeman out of countenance....
From the window the policeman very largely obscured Bealby....
Whenever hearts are simple there lurks romance. Age cannot wither nor
custom stale her infinite diversity. Suddenly out of your low kindly
diplomacies, your sane man-of-the-world intentions, leaps the
imagination like a rocket, flying from such safe securities bang into
the sky. So it happened to the old general. He became deaf to everything
but the appearances before him. The world was jewelled with dazzling and
delightful possibilities. His face was lit by a glow of genuine romantic
excitement. He grasped his nephew’s arm. He pointed. His grizzled cheeks
flushed.
“That isn’t,” he asked with something verging upon admiration in his
voice and manner, “a Certain Lady in disguise?”
§ 3
It became clear to Captain Douglas that if ever he was to get to Lord
Moggeridge that day he must take his uncle firmly in hand. Without even
attempting not to appear to shout he cried, “That is a little Boy. That
is my Witness. It is Most Important that I should get him to Lord
Moggeridge to tell his Story.”
“What story?” cried the old commander, pulling at his moustache and
still eyeing Bealby suspiciously....
It took exactly half an hour to get Lord Chickney from that enquiry to
the telephone and even then he was still far from clear about the matter
in hand. Captain Douglas got in most of the facts, but he could not
eliminate an idea that it all had to do with Madeleine. Whenever he
tried to say clearly that she was entirely outside the question, the
general patted his shoulder and looked very wise and kind and said, “My
dear Boy, I quite understand; I _quite_ understand. Never mention a
lady. _No._”
So they started at last rather foggily—so far as things of the mind
went, though the sun that day was brilliant—and because of engine
trouble in Port Street the general’s hansom reached Tenby Little Street
first and he got in a good five minutes preparing the Lord Chancellor
tactfully and carefully before the bicycle and its trailer came upon the
scene....
§ 4
Candler had been packing that morning with unusual solicitude for a
week-end at Tulliver Abbey. His master had returned from the catastrophe
of Shonts, fatigued and visibly aged and extraordinarily cross, and
Candler looked to Tulliver Abbey to restore him to his former self.
Nothing must be forgotten; there must be no little hitches, everything
from first to last must go on oiled wheels, or it was clear his Lordship
might develop a desperate hostility to these excursions, excursions
which Candler found singularly refreshing and entertaining during the
stresses of the session. Tulliver Abbey was as good a house as Shonts
was bad; Lady Checksammington ruled with the softness of velvet and the
strength of steel over a household of admirably efficient domestics, and
there would be the best of people there, Mr. Evesham perhaps, the
Loopers, Lady Privet, Andreas Doria and Mr. Pernambuco, great silken
mellow personages and diamond-like individualities, amidst whom Lord
Moggeridge’s mind would be restfully active and his comfort quite
secure. And as far as possible Candler wanted to get the books and
papers his master needed into the trunk or the small valise. That habit
of catching up everything at the last moment and putting it under his
arm and the consequent need for alert picking up, meant friction and
nervous wear and tear for both master and man.
Lord Moggeridge rose at half-past ten—he had been kept late overnight by
a heated discussion at the Aristotelian—and breakfasted lightly upon a
chop and coffee. Then something ruffled him; something that came with
the letters. Candler could not quite make out what it was, but he
suspected another pamphlet by Dr. Schiller. It could not be the chop,
because Lord Moggeridge was always wonderfully successful with chops.
Candler looked through the envelopes and letters afterwards and found
nothing diagnostic, and then he observed a copy of _Mind_ torn across
and lying in the waste-paper basket.
“When I went out of the room,” said Candler, discreetly examining this.
“Very likely it’s that there Schiller after all.”
But in this Candler was mistaken. What had disturbed the Lord Chancellor
was a coarsely disrespectful article on the Absolute by a Cambridge
Rhodes scholar, written in that flighty facetious strain that spreads
now like a pestilence over modern philosophical discussion. “Does the
Absolute, on Lord Moggeridge’s own showing, mean anything more than an
eloquent oiliness uniformly distributed through space?” and so on.
Pretty bad!
Lord Moggeridge early in life had deliberately acquired a quite
exceptional power of mental self-control. He took his perturbed mind now
and threw it forcibly into the consideration of a case upon which he had
reserved judgment. He was to catch the 3.35 at Paddington, and at two he
was smoking a cigar after a temperate lunch and reading over the notes
of this judgment. It was then that the telephone bell became audible,
and Candler came in to inform him that Lord Chickney was anxious to see
him at once upon a matter of some slight importance.
“Slight importance?” asked Lord Moggeridge.
“Some slight importance, my lord.”
“Some? Slight?”
“’Is Lordship, my lord, mumbles rather now ’is back teeth ’ave gone,”
said Candler, “but so I understand ’im.”
“These apologetic assertive phrases annoy me, Candler,” said Lord
Moggeridge over his shoulder. “You see,” he turned round and spoke very
clearly, “either the matter is of importance or it is not of importance.
A thing must either be or not be. I wish you would manage—when you get
messages on the telephone—.... But I suppose that is asking too much....
Will you explain to him, Candler, when we start, and—ask him,
Candler—ask him what sort of matter it is.”
Candler returned after some parleying.
“So far as I can make ’is Lordship out, my lord, ’e says ’e wants to set
you right about something, my lord. He says something about a _little_
misapprehension.”
“These diminutives, Candler, kill sense. Does he say what sort—what
sort—of _little_ misapprehension?”
“He says something—I’m sorry, my lord, but it’s about Shonts, me lord.”
“Then I don’t want to hear about it,” said Lord Moggeridge.
There was a pause. The Lord Chancellor resumed his reading with a
deliberate obviousness; the butler hovered.
“I’m sorry, my lord, but I can’t think exactly what I ought to say to
’is lordship, my lord.”
“Tell him—tell him that I do not wish to hear anything more about Shonts
for ever. Simply.”
Candler hesitated and went out, shutting the door carefully lest any
fragment of his halting rendering of this message to Lord Chickney
should reach his master’s ears.
Lord Moggeridge’s powers of mental control were, I say, very great—He
could dismiss subjects from his mind absolutely. In a few instants he
had completely forgotten Shonts and was making notes with a silver-cased
pencil on the margins of his draft judgment.
§ 5
He became aware that Candler had returned.
“’Is lordship, Lord Chickney, my lord, is very persistent, my lord. ’E’s
rung up twice. ’E says now that ’e makes a personal matter of it. Come
what may, ’e says, ’e wishes to speak for two minutes to your lordship.
Over the telephone, my lord, ’e vouchsafes no further information.”
Lord Moggeridge meditated over the end of his third after lunch cigar.
His man watched the end of his left eyebrow as an engineer might watch a
steam gauge. There were no signs of an explosion. “He must come,
Candler,” his lordship said at last....
“Oh, Candler!”
“My lord?”
“Put the bags and things in a conspicuous position in the hall, Candler.
Change yourself, and see that you look thoroughly like trains. And in
fact have everything ready, _prominently_ ready, Candler.”
Then once more Lord Moggeridge concentrated his mind.
§ 6
To him there presently entered Lord Chickney.
Lord Chickney had been twice round the world and he had seen many
strange and dusky peoples and many remarkable customs and peculiar
prejudices, which he had never failed to despise, but he had never
completely shaken off the county family ideas in which he had been
brought up. He believed that there was an incurable difference in spirit
between quite good people like himself and men from down below like
Moggeridge, who was the son of an Exeter chorister. He believed that
these men from nowhere always cherished the profoundest respect for the
real thing like himself, that they were greedy for association and
gratified by notice, and so for the life of him he could not approach
Lord Moggeridge without a faint sense of condescension. He saluted him
as “my _dear_ Lord Moggeridge,” wrung his hand with effusion, and asked
him kind, almost district-visiting, questions about his younger brother
and the aspect of his house. “And you are just off, I see, for a
week-end.”
These amenities the Lord Chancellor acknowledged by faint gruntings and
an almost imperceptible movement of his eyebrows. “There was a matter,”
he said, “some _little_ matter, on which you want to consult me?”
“Well,” said Lord Chickney, and rubbed his chin. “_Yes._ Yes, there
_was_ a little matter, a little trouble—”
“Of an urgent nature.”
“Yes. Yes. Exactly. Just a little complicated, you know, not quite
simple.” The dear old soldier’s manner became almost seductive. “One of
these difficult little affairs, where one has to remember that one is a
man of the world, you know. A little complication about a lady, known to
you both. But one must make concessions, one must understand. The boy
has a witness. Things are not as you supposed them to be.”
Lord Moggeridge had a clean conscience about ladies; he drew out his
watch and looked at it—aggressively. He kept it in his hand during his
subsequent remarks.
“I must confess,” he declared, “I have not the remotest idea.... If you
will be so good as to be—elementary. What _is_ it all about?”
“You see, I knew the lad’s mother,” said Lord Chickney. “In fact—” He
became insanely confidential—“Under happier circumstances—don’t
misunderstand me, Moggeridge; I mean no evil—but he might have been my
son. I feel for him like a son....”
§ 7
When presently Captain Douglas, a little heated from his engine trouble,
came into the room—he had left Bealby with Candler in the hall—it was
instantly manifest to him that the work of preparation had been
inadequately performed.
“One minute more, my dear Alan,” cried Lord Chickney.
Lord Moggeridge with eyebrows waving and watch in hand was of a
different opinion. He addressed himself to Captain Douglas.
“There _isn’t_ a minute more,” he said. “What is all this—this
philoprogenitive rigmarole about? Why have you come to me? My cab is
outside _now_. All this about ladies and witnesses;—what _is_ it?”
“Perfectly simple, my lord! You imagine that I played practical jokes
upon you at Shonts. I didn’t. I have a witness. The attack upon you
downstairs, the noise in your room—”
“Have I any guarantee—?”
“It’s the steward’s boy from Shonts. Your man outside knows him. Saw him
in the steward’s room. He made the trouble for you—and me, and then he
ran away. Just caught him. Not exchanged thirty words with him. Half a
dozen questions. Settle everything. Then you’ll know—nothing for you but
the utmost respect.”
Lord Moggeridge pressed his lips together and resisted conviction.
“In consideration,” interpolated Lord Chickney, “feelings of an old
fellow. Old soldier. Boy means no harm.”
With the rudeness of one sorely tried the Lord Chancellor thrust the old
general aside. “Oh!” he said, “Oh!” and then to Captain Douglas. “One
minute. Where’s your witness?...”
The Captain opened a door. Bealby found himself bundled into the
presence of two celebrated men.
“Tell him,” said Captain Douglas. “And look sharp about it.”
“Tell me plainly,” cried the Lord Chancellor, “and be—_quick_.”
He put such a point on “quick” that it made Bealby jump.
“Tell him,” said the general more gently. “Don’t be afraid.”
“Well,” began Bealby after one accumulating pause, “it was ’im told me
to do it. ’E said you go in there—”
The Captain would have interrupted but the Lord Chancellor restrained
him by a magnificent gesture of the hand holding the watch.
“He told you to do it!” he said. “I knew he did. Now listen! He told you
practically to go in and do anything you could.”
“Yessir.” Woe took possession of Bealby. “I didn’t do any ’arm to the
ole gentleman.”
“But _who_ told you?” cried the Captain. “_Who_ told you?”
Lord Moggeridge annihilated him with arm and eyebrows. He held Bealby
fascinated by a pointing finger.
“Don’t do more than answer the questions. I have thirty seconds more. He
told you to go in. He _made_ you go in. At the earliest possible
opportunity you got away?”
“I jest nipped out—”
“Enough! And now, sir, how dare you come here without even a plausible
lie? How dare you after your intolerable tomfoolery at Shonts confront
me again with fresh tomfoolery? How dare you drag in your gallant and
venerable uncle in this last preposterous—I suppose you would call
it—_lark_! I suppose you had prepared that little wretch with some fine
story. Little you know of False Witness! At the first question, he
breaks down! He does not even begin his lie. He at least knows the
difference between my standards and yours. Candler! Candler!”
Candler appeared.
“These—these _gentlemen_ are going. Is everything ready?”
“The cab is at the door, m’lord. The usual cab.”
Captain Douglas made one last desperate effort. “Sir!” he said. “My
lord—”
The Lord Chancellor turned upon him with a face that he sought to keep
calm, though the eyebrows waved and streamed like black smoke in a gale.
“Captain Douglas,” he said, “you are probably not aware of the demands
upon the time and patience of a public servant in such a position as
mine. You see the world no doubt as a vastly entertaining fabric upon
which you can embroider your—your facetious arrangements. Well, it is
not so. It is real. It is earnest. You may sneer at the simplicity of an
old man, but what I tell you of life is true. Comic effect is not,
believe me, its goal. And you, sir, you, sir, you impress me as an
intolerably foolish, flippant and unnecessary young man. Flippant.
Unnecessary. Foolish.”
As he said these words Candler approached him with a dust coat of a
peculiar fineness and dignity, and he uttered the last words over his
protruded chest while Candler assisted his arms into his sleeves.
“My lord,” said Captain Douglas again, but his resolution was deserting
him.
“_No_,” said the Lord Chancellor, leaning forward in a minatory manner
while Candler pulled down the tail of his jacket and adjusted the collar
of his overcoat.
“Uncle,” said Captain Douglas.
“_No_,” said the general, with the curt decision of a soldier, and
turned exactly ninety degrees away from him. “You little know how you
have hurt me, Alan! You little know. I couldn’t have imagined it. The
Douglas strain! False Witness—and insult. I am sorry, my dear
Moggeridge, beyond measure.”
“I quite understand—you are as much a victim as myself. Quite. A more
foolish attempt—I am sorry to be in this hurry—”
“Oh! You damned little fool,” said the Captain, and advanced a step
towards the perplexed and shrinking Bealby. “You imbecile little
trickster! What do you mean by it?”
“I didn’t mean anything—!”
Then suddenly the thought of Madeleine, sweet and overpowering, came
into the head of this distraught young man. He had risked losing her, he
had slighted and insulted her, and here he was—entangled. Here he was in
a position of nearly inconceivable foolishness, about to assault a dirty
and silly little boy in the presence of the Lord Chancellor and Uncle
Chickney. The world, he felt, was lost, and not well lost. And she was
lost too. Even now while he pursued these follies she might be consoling
her wounded pride....
He perceived that love is the supreme thing in life. He perceived that
he who divides his purposes scatters his life to the four winds of
heaven. A vehement resolve to cut the whole of this Bealby business
pounced upon him. In that moment he ceased to care for reputation, for
appearances, for the resentment of Lord Moggeridge or the good
intentions of Uncle Chickney.
He turned, he rushed out of the room. He escaped by unparalleled
gymnastics the worst consequences of an encounter with the Lord
Chancellor’s bag which the under-butler had placed rather tactlessly
between the doors, crossed the wide and dignified hall, and in another
moment had his engine going and was struggling to mount his machine in
the street without. His face expressed an almost apoplectic
concentration. He narrowly missed the noses of a pair of horses in the
carriage of Lady Beach Mandarin, made an extraordinary curve to spare a
fishmonger’s tricycle, shaved the front and completely destroyed the
gesture of that eminent actor manager, Mr. Pomegranate, who was crossing
the road in his usual inadvertent fashion, and then he was popping and
throbbing and banging round the corner and on his way back to the lovely
and irresistible woman who was exerting so disastrous an influence upon
his career....
§ 8
The Captain fled from London in the utmost fury and to the general
danger of the public. His heart was full of wicked blasphemies,
shoutings and self-reproaches, but outwardly he seemed only pinkly
intent. And as he crossed an open breezy common and passed by a
milestone bearing this inscription, “To London Thirteen Miles,” his hind
tyre burst conclusively with a massive report....
§ 9
In every life there are crucial moments, turning points, and not
infrequently it is just such a thing as this, a report, a sudden waking
in the night, a flash upon the road to Damascus, that marks and
precipitates the accumulating new. Vehemence is not concentration. The
headlong violence of the Captain had been no expression of a
single-minded purpose, of a soul all gathered together to an end. Far
less a pursuit had it been than a flight, a flight from his own
dissensions. And now—now he was held.
After he had attempted a few plausible repairs and found the tyre
obdurate, after he had addressed ill-chosen remonstrances to some
unnamed hearer, after he had walked some way along the road and back in
an indecision about repair shops in some neighbouring town, the last
dregs of his resistance were spent. He perceived that he was in the
presence of a Lesson. He sat down by the roadside, some twenty feet from
the disabled motor bicycle and, impotent for further effort, frankly
admitted himself overtaken. He had not reckoned with punctures.
The pursuing questions came clambering upon him and would no longer be
denied; who he was and what he was and how he was, and the meaning of
this Rare Bate he had been in, and all those deep questions that are so
systematically neglected in the haste and excitement of modern life.
In short, for the first time in many headlong days he asked himself
simply and plainly what he thought he was up to?
Certain things became clear, and so minutely and exactly clear that it
was incredible that they had ever for a moment been obscure. Of course
Bealby had been a perfectly honest little boy, under some sort of
misconception, and of course he ought to have been carefully coached and
prepared and rehearsed before he was put before the Lord Chancellor.
This was so manifest now that the Captain stared aghast at his own
inconceivable negligence. But the mischief was done. Nothing now would
ever propitiate Moggeridge, nothing now would ever reconcile Uncle
Chickney. That was—settled. But what was not settled was the amazing
disorder of his own mind. Why had he been so negligent, what had come
over his mind in the last few weeks?
And this sudden strange illumination of the Captain’s mind went so far
as perceiving that the really important concern for him was not the
accidents of Shonts but this epilepsy of his own will. Why now was he
rushing back to Madeleine? Why? He did not love her. He knew he did not
love her. On the whole, more than anything else he resented her.
But he was excited about her, he was so excited that these other
muddles, fluctuations, follies, came as a natural consequence from that.
Out of this excitement came those wild floods of angry energy that made
him career about—
“Like some damned Cracker,” said the Captain.
“For instance,” he asked himself, “_now!_ what am I going for?
“If I go back she’ll probably behave like an offended Queen. Doesn’t
seem to understand anything that does not focus on herself. Wants a sort
of Limelight Lover....
“She _relies_ upon exciting me!
“She relies upon exciting everyone!—she’s just a woman specialized for
excitement.”
And after meditating through a profound minute upon this judgment, the
Captain pronounced these two epoch-making words: “_I won’t!_”
§ 10
The Captain’s mind was now in a state of almost violent lucidity.
“This sex stuff,” he said; “first I kept it under too tight and now I’ve
let it rip too loose.
“I’ve been just a distracted fool, with my head swimming with meetings
and embraces and—frills.”
He produced some long impending generalizations.
“Not a man’s work, this Lover business. Dancing about in a world of
petticoats and powder puffs and attentions and jealousies. Rotten game.
Played off against some other man....
“I’ll be hanged if I am....
“Have to put women in their places....
“Make a hash of everything if we don’t....”
Then for a time the Captain meditated in silence and chewed his knuckle.
His face darkened to a scowl. He swore as though some thought twisted
and tormented him. “Let some other man get her! Think of her with some
other man.”
“I don’t care,” he said, when obviously he did.
“There’s other women in the world.
“A man—a man mustn’t care for _that_....
“It’s this or that,” said the Captain, “anyhow....”
§ 11
Suddenly the Captain’s mind was made up and done.
He arose to his feet and his face was firm and tranquil and now nearer
pallor than pink. He left his bicycle and trailer by the wayside even as
Christian left his burden. He asked a passing nurse-girl the way to the
nearest railway station, and thither he went. Incidentally, and because
the opportunity offered, he called in upon a cyclist’s repair shop and
committed his abandoned machinery to its keeping. He went straight to
London, changed at his flat, dined at his club, and caught the night
train for France—for France and whatever was left of the grand
manœuvres.
He wrote a letter to Madeleine from the Est train next day, using their
customary endearments, avoiding any discussion of their relations and
describing the scenery of the Seine valley and the characteristics of
Rouen in a few vivid and masterly phrases.
“If she’s worth having, she’ll understand,” said the Captain, but he
knew perfectly well she would not understand.
Mrs. Geedge noted this letter among the others, and afterwards she was
much exercised by Madeleine’s behaviour. For suddenly that lady became
extraordinarily gay and joyous in her bearing, singing snatches of song
and bubbling over with suggestions for larks and picnics and wild
excursions. She patted Mr. Geedge on the shoulder and ran her arm
through the arm of Professor Bowles. Both gentlemen received these
familiarities with a gawky coyness that Mrs. Geedge found contemptible.
And moreover Madeleine drew several shy strangers into their circle. She
invited the management to a happy participation.
Her great idea was a moonlight picnic. “We’ll have a great camp-fire and
afterwards we’ll dance—this very night.”
“But wouldn’t it be better to-morrow?”
“To-night!”
“To-morrow perhaps Captain Douglas may be back again. And he’s so good
at all these things.”
Mrs. Geedge knew better because she had seen the French stamp on the
letter, but she meant to get to the bottom of this business, and thus it
was she said this.
“I’ve sent him back to his soldiering,” said Madeleine serenely. “He has
better things to do.”
§ 12
For some moments after the unceremonious departure of Captain Douglas
from the presence of Lord Moggeridge, it did not occur to anyone, it did
not occur even to Bealby, that the Captain had left his witness behind
him. The general and the Lord Chancellor moved into the hall, and
Bealby, under the sway of a swift compelling gesture from Candler,
followed modestly. The same current swept them all out into the portico,
and while the under-butler whistled up a hansom for the General, the
Lord Chancellor, with a dignity that was at once polite and rapid, and
Candler gravely protective and little reproving, departed. Bealby,
slowly apprehending their desertion, regarded the world of London with
perplexity and dismay. Candler had gone. The last of the gentlemen was
going. The under-butler, Bealby felt, was no friend. Under-butlers never
are.
Lord Chickney in the very act of entering his cab had his coat-tail
tugged. He looked enquiringly.
“Please, sir, there’s me,” said Bealby.
Lord Chickney reflected. “Well?” he said.
The spirit of Bealby was now greatly abased. His face and voice betrayed
him on the verge of tears. “I want to go ’ome to Shonts, sir.”
“Well, my boy, go ’ome—go home, I mean, to Shonts.”
“’E’s gone, sir,” said Bealby....
Lord Chickney was a good-hearted man, and he knew that a certain public
kindliness and disregard of appearances looks far better and is
infinitely more popular than a punctilious dignity. He took Bealby to
Waterloo in his hansom, got him a third class ticket to Chelsome, tipped
a porter to see him safely into his train and dismissed him in the most
fatherly manner.
§ 13
It was well after tea-time, Bealby felt, as he came once more within the
boundaries of the Shonts estate.
It was a wiser and a graver Bealby who returned from this week of
miscellaneous adventure. He did not clearly understand all that had
happened to him; in particular he was puzzled by the extreme annoyance
and sudden departure of Captain Douglas from the presence of Lord
Moggeridge; but his general impression was that he had been in great
peril of dire punishment and that he had been rather hastily and
ignominiously reprieved. The nice old gentleman with the long grey
moustaches had dismissed him to the train at last with a quality of
benediction. But Bealby understood now better than he had done before
that adventures do not always turn out well for the boy hero, and that
the social system has a number of dangerous and disagreeable holes at
the bottom. He had reached the beginnings of wisdom. He was glad he had
got away from the tramp and still gladder that he had got away from
Crayminster; he was sorry that he would never see the beautiful lady
again, and perplexed and perplexed. And also he was interested in the
probability of his mother having toast for tea....
It must, he felt, be a long time after tea-time, quite late....
He had weighed the advisability of returning quietly to his windowless
bedroom under the stairs, putting on his little green apron and emerging
with a dutiful sang-froid as if nothing had happened, on the one hand,
or of going to the gardens on the other. But tea—with eatables—seemed
more probable at the gardens....
He was deflected from the direct route across the park by a long deep
trench, that someone had made and abandoned since the previous Sunday
morning. He wondered what it was for. It was certainly very ugly. And as
he came out by the trees and got the full effect of the façade, he
detected a strangely bandaged quality about Shonts. It was as if Shonts
had recently been in a fight and got a black eye. Then he saw the reason
for this; one tower was swathed in scaffolding. He wondered what could
have happened to the tower. Then his own troubles resumed their sway.
He was so fortunate as not to meet his father in the gardens, and he
entered the house so meekly that his mother did not look up from the
cashmere she was sewing. She was sitting at the table sewing some newly
dyed black cashmere.
He was astonished at her extreme pallor and the drooping resignation of
her pose.
“Mother!” he said, and she looked up convulsively and stared, stared
with bright round astonished eyes.
“I’m sorry, mother, I’aven’t been quite a good steward’s-room boy,
mother. If I could ’ave another go, mother....”
He halted for a moment, astonished that she said nothing, but only sat
with that strange expression and opened and shut her mouth.
“Reely—I’d _try_, mother....”
Printed in the United States of America.
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. P. 145, changed “extremely riding breeches” to “extreme riding
breeches”.
2. P. 180, changed “things he was saying” to “things she was saying”.
3. Some ‘§’ subheading numbers are duplicated.
4. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
5. Retained anachronistic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as
printed.
6. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.