 Chapter 5, Part 2 of Bilby, A Holiday This meeting was no exception to their other meetings. The coming to her was a crescendo of poetical desire, the sight of her a climax, and then an accumulation of irritations. He had thought being with her would be pure delight, and as they went over the down, straying after the bowls and the geages toward the Red Lake Hotel, he already found himself rather urgently asking her to marry him, and being annoyed by what he regarded as her evasiveness. He walked along with the restrained movement of a decent Englishman. He seemed, as it were, to gesticulate only through his clenched teeth, and she floated beside him in a wonderful blue dress that, with a wonderful foresight, she had planned for breezy uplands on the basis of Botticelli's primavera. He was urging her to marry him soon. He needed her. He could not live in peace without her. It was not at all what he had come to say. He could not recollect that he had come to say anything, but now that he was with her, it was the only thing he could find to say to her. But, my dearest boy, she said, how are we to marry? What is to become of your career and my career? I've left my career, cried Captain Douglas, with the first clear note of irritation in his voice. Oh, don't let us quarrel, she cried. Don't let us talk of all those distant things. Let us be happy. Let us enjoy just this lovely day and the sunshine and the freshness and the beauty. Because you know we are snatching these days. We have so few days together. Each, each must be a gem. Look, dear, how the breeze sweeps through these tall, dry stems that stick up everywhere. Low, broad ripples. She was a perfect work of art, abolishing time and obligations. For a time they walked in silence. Then Captain Douglas said, all very well, beauty and all that, but a fellow likes to know where he is. She did not answer immediately, and then she said, I believe you are angry because you have come away from France. Not a bit of it, said the Captain Stoutly, I'd come away from anywhere to be with you. I wonder, she said. Well, haven't I? I wonder if you are ever with me. Oh, I know you want me. I know you desire me. But the real thing, the happiness, love. What is anything to love, anything at all? In this strain they continued until their footsteps led them through the shelter of a group of beaches. And there the gallant Captain sought expression in deeds. He kissed her hands, he sought her lips. She resisted softly. No, she said, only if you love me with all your heart. Then suddenly, wonderfully, conqueringly, she yielded him her lips. Oh, she sighed presently, if only you understood. And leaving speech at that enigma, she kissed again. But you see now how difficult it was under these mystically loving conditions to introduce the idea of a prompt examination and dispatch of Bilby. Already these days were consecrated. And then you see Bilby vanished, going seaward. Even the crash of the caravan disaster did little to change the atmosphere. In spite of a certain energetic quality in the professor's direction of the situation, he was a little embittered because his thumb was sprained and his knee bruised rather badly. And he had a slight abrasion over one ear. And William had bitten his calf. The general disposition was to treat the affair hilariously. Nobody seemed really hurt except William. The professor was not so much hurt as annoyed. And William's injuries, though striking, were all superficial, a sprained jaw, and grazes and bruises, and little things like that. Everybody was heartened up to the idea of damages to be paid for. And neither the internal injuries to the caravan, nor the hawker's estimate of his stock and trade, proved to be as great as one might reasonably have expected. Before sunset, the caravan was safely housed in the Winthorpe-Sutbury Public House. William had found a congenial corner in the bar parlor, where his account of an inside view of the catastrophe and his views upon Professor Bowles were much appreciated. The hawker had made a bit extra by carting all the luggage to the Red Lake Royal Hotel. And the caravanners and their menfolk had loitered harmoniously back to this refuge. Madeline had walked along the road beside Captain Douglas and his motor-bicycle, which he had picked up at the now desolate encampment. It only remains, she said, for that thing to get broken. But I may want it, he said. No, she said, Heaven has poured us together, and now he has smashed the vessels. At least he has smashed one of the vessels, and look, like a great shield, there is the moon. It's the harvest moon, isn't it? No, said the Captain, with his poetry running away with him. It's the lover's moon. It's like a benediction rising over our meeting. And it was certainly far too much like a benediction for the Captain to talk about Bilby. That night was a perfect night for lovers. A night flooded with a kindly radiance so that the warm mystery of the center of life seemed to lurk in every shadow, and hearts throbbed instead of beating, and eyes were stars. After dinner, everyone found wraps and slipped out into the moonlight. The gieges vanished like moths. The Professor made no secret that Judy was transfigured for him. Night works these miracles. The only other visitors there, a brace of couples, resorted to the boats upon the little lake. Two enormous waiters, removing the coffee cups from the small tables upon the veranda, heard Madeline's beautiful voice for a little while, and then it was stilled. The morning found Captain Douglas in a state of reaction. He was anxious to explain quite clearly to Madeline just how necessary it was that he should go in search of Bilby forthwith. He was beginning to realize now just what a chance in the form of Bilby had slipped through his fingers. He had dropped Bilby, and now the thing to do was to pick up Bilby again before he was altogether lost. Her professional life unfortunately had given Miss Phillips the habit of never rising before midday, and the Captain had to pass the time as well as he could until the opportunity for his explanation came. A fellow couldn't go off without an explanation. He passed the time with Professor Bowles upon the golf links. The Professor was a first rate player and an unselfish one. He wanted all other players to be as good as himself. He would spare no pains to make them so. If he saw them committing any of the many errors into which golfers fall, he would tell them of it and tell them why it was an error, and insist upon showing them just how to avoid it in the future. He would point out any want of judgment and not confine himself as so many professional golf teachers do merely to the stroke. After a time he found it necessary to hint to the Captain that nowadays a military man must accustom himself to self-control. The Captain kept pishing and touching, and presently it was only too evident, swearing softly. His play got jerky. His strokes were forcible without any real strength. Once he missed the globe altogether, and several times he sliced badly. The eyes under his light eyelashes were wicked little things. He remembered that he had always detested golf and the Professor. He had always detested the Professor and his caddy. At least he would have always detested his caddy if he had known him long enough. His caddy was one of those maddening boys with no expression at all. It didn't matter what he did or failed to do. There was the silly idiot with his stuffed face unmoved. Really, of course, overjoyed, but apparently unmoved. Why did I play it that way? The Captain repeated, oh, because I like to play it that way. Well, said the Professor, it isn't a recognized way anyhow. Then came a moment of evil pleasures. He had sliced, old bowls had sliced. For once in a while he had muffed something, always teaching others, and here he was slicing. Why, sometimes the Captain didn't slice. He'd get out of that neatly enough. Luck, he'd get the hole yet. What a bore it all was. Why couldn't Madeleine get up at a decent hour to see a fellow? Why must she lie in bed when she wasn't acting? If she had got up all this wouldn't have happened. The shame of it. Here he was, an able-bodied, capable man in the prime of life, and the morning of a day playing this blockhead's game. Yes, blockhead's game. You play the like, said the Professor. Rather, said the Captain, and addressed himself to his stroke. That's not your ball, said the Professor. Similar position, said the Captain. You know, you might win this hole, said the Professor. Who cares, said the Captain under his breath, and putted extravagantly. That saves me, said the Professor, and went down from a distance of twelve yards. The Captain, full of an irrational resentment, did his best to have the hole and failed. You ought to put in a week at nothing but putting, said the Professor. It would save you at least a stroke a hole. I've noticed that on almost every green, if I haven't beaten you before I pull up in the putting. The Captain pretended not to hear, and said a lot of Rococo things inside himself. It was Madeleine who had got him in for this game. A beautiful, healthy girl ought to get up in the mornings. Mornings and beautiful, healthy girls are all the same thing, really. She ought to be dewy, positively dewy. There she must be lying warm and beautiful in bed, like Catherine the Great or somebody of that sort. No, it wasn't right. All very luxurious and so on, but not right. She ought to have understood that he was bound to fall a prey to the Professor if she didn't get up. Golf. Here he was, neglecting his career, hanging about on these beastly links. All the sound men away there in France. It didn't do to think of it. And he was playing this retired tradesman's consolation. Beastly, the Professor's legs looked from behind. The uglier a man's legs are, the better he plays golf. It's almost a law. That's what it was, a retired tradesman's consolation. A decent British soldier has no more business to be playing golf than he has to be dressing dolls. It's a game at once worthless and exasperating. If a man isn't perfectly fit, he cannot play golf. And when he is perfectly fit, he ought to be doing a man's work in the world. If ever anything deserved the name of vice, if ever anything was pure, unforgivable dissipation, surely golf was that thing. And meanwhile, that boy was getting more and more start. Anyone with a half-worth of sense would have been up at five, and after that brat might have had him bagged and safe and back to lunch. As one was at times, your hear, sir, said the caddy. The captain perceived he was in a nasty place, open green ahead, but with some tumbled country near at hand and to the left, a rusty old gravel pit, furs at the sides, water at the bottom, nasty attractive hole of a place, sort of thing one gets into. He must pull himself together for this. After all, having undertaken to play a game, one must play the game. If he hit the infernal thing, that is to say the ball, if he hit the ball, so that if it didn't go straight it would go to the right rather, clear of the hedge, it wouldn't be so bad to the right. Difficult to manage. Best thing was to think hard of the green ahead, a long way ahead, with just the slightest deflection to the right. Now then, heels well down, club up, a good swing, keep your eye on the ball, keep your eye on the ball, keep your eye on the ball, just where you mean to hit it, far below there and a little to the right, and don't worry. Wrap. In the pond, I think, sir. The water would have splashed it if it had gone in the pond, said the professor. It must be over there in the wet sand. You hit it pretty hard, I thought. Search. The caddy looked as though he didn't care whether he found it or not. He ought to be interested. It was his profession, not just his game. But nowadays everybody had this hard disposition towards slacking. A tired generation we are. The world is too much with us. Too much to think about. Too much to do. Madolanes, army maneuvers, angry lawyers, lost boys, let alone such exhausting foolery as this game. Got it, sir, said the caddy. Where? Here, sir, up in the bush, sir. It was resting in the branches of a bush, two yards above the slippery bank. I doubt if you can play it, said the professor, but it will be interesting to try. The captain scrutinized the position. I can play it, he said. You'll slip, I'm afraid, said the professor. They were both right. Captain Douglas drove his feet into the steep slope of rusty sand below the bush, held his iron a little short, and wiped the ball up and over, and as he found afterwards out of the rough, all eyes followed the ball except his. The professor made sounds of friendly encouragement. But the captain was going, going. He was on all fours. He scrambled handfuls of prickly gorse of wet sand. His feet, his ankles, his calves slid into the pond. How much more? No. He'd reached the bottom. He proceeded to get out again, as well as he could. Not so easy. The bottom of the pond sucked at him. When at last he rejoined the other three. His hands were sandy red, his knees were sandy red, his feet were of clay, but his face was like the face of a little child, like the face of a little fair child after it has been boiled red in its bath and then dusted over with white powder. His ears were the color of roses, Lancaster roses, and his eyes, too, had something of the angry wonder of a little child distressed. I was afraid you'd slip into the pond, said the professor. I didn't, said the captain. I just got in to see how deep it was and cool my feet. I hate warm feet. He lost that hole, but he felt a better golfer now, his anger he thought was warming him up so that he would presently begin to make strokes by instinct and do remarkable things unawares. After all, there was something in the phrase, getting one's blood up. If only the professor wouldn't dally so with his ball and let one's blood get down again. Tap. The professor's ball went soaring. Now for it. The captain addressed himself to his task, altered his plans rather hastily, smote, and topped the ball. The least one could expect was a sympathetic silence, but the professor thought fit to improve the occasion. You'll never drive, said the professor. You'll never drive with that irritable jerk in the middle of the stroke. You might just as well smack the ball without raising your club. If you think, the captain lost his self-control altogether, look here he said, if you think that I care a single rap about how I hit the ball, if you think that I really want to win and do well at this beastly, silly, elderly, childish game, he paused on the verge of un-gentlemanly language. If a thing's worth doing at all, said the professor after a pause for a reflection, it's worth doing well. Then it isn't worth doing at all, as this whole gives you the game, if you don't mind. The captain's hot moods were so rapid that already he was acutely ashamed of himself. Oh, certainly, if you wish it, said the professor. With a gesture, the professor indicated the altered situation to the respectful caddies, and the two gentlemen turned their faces towards the hotel. For a time they walked side by side in silence, the caddies following with hushed expressions. Splendid weather for the French maneuvers, said the captain presently, in an offhand tone, that is to say if they are getting this weather. At present there are a series of high-pressure systems over the whole of Europe north of the Alps, said the professor. It is as near-set fare as Europe can be. Fine weather for tramps and wanderers, said the captain, after a further interval. There's a drawback to everything, said the professor, but it's very lovely weather. They got back to the hotel about half-past eleven, and the captain went and had an unpleasant time with one of the tires of his motor-bicycle which had got down in the night. In replacing the tire he pinched the top of one of his fingers rather badly. Then he got the ordinance map of the district and sat at a green table in the open air in front of the hotel windows and speculated on the probable flight of Bilby. He had been last seen going south by east. That way lay the sea, and all boy fugitives go naturally for the sea. He tried to throw himself into the fugitive's mind and work out just exactly the course Bilby must take to the sea. For a time he found this quite an absorbing occupation. Bilby probably had no money or very little money. Therefore he would have to beg or steal. He wouldn't go to the workhouse because he wouldn't know about the workhouse. Respectable poor people never know anything about the workhouse. And the chances were he would be both too honest and too timid to steal. He'd beg. He'd beg at front doors because of dogs and things, and he'd probably go along a high road. He'd be more likely to beg from houses than from passersby because a door is at first glance less formidable than a pedestrian and more accustomed to being addressed. And he'd try isolated cottages rather than the village street doors. An isolated wayside cottage is so much more confidential. He'd ask for food, not money. All that seemed pretty sound. Now this road on the map, into it he was bound to fall and along it he would go begging. No other? No. In the fine weather he'd sleep out and he'd go 10, 12, 14, 13, 13 miles a day. So now he ought to be about here and tonight here. Tomorrow at the same pace here. But suppose he got a lift. He'd only get a slow lift if he got one at all. It wouldn't make much difference in the calculation. So if tomorrow one started and went on to these crossroads marked in, just about 26 miles it must be by this scale and beat round it, one ought to get something in the way of tidings of Mr. Bealby. Was there any reason why Bealby shouldn't go on south by east and seaward? None. And now there remained nothing to do but to explain all this clearly to Mr. Madeleine. And why didn't she come down? Why didn't she come down? But when one got Bealby what would one do with him? Ring the truth out of him, half by threats and half by persuasion. Suppose after all he hadn't any connection with the upsetting of Lord Mogeridge. He had. Suppose he hadn't. He had. He had. And when one had the truth, whisk the boy right up to London and confront the Lord Chancellor with the facts. But suppose he wouldn't be confronted with the facts. He was a touchy old sinner. For a time Captain Douglas balked at this difficulty. Then suddenly there came into his head the tall figure, the long mustaches of that kindly popular figure, his adopted Uncle Lord Chickney. Suppose he took the boy straight to Uncle Chickney, told him the whole story. Even the Lord Chancellor would scarcely refuse 10 minutes to General Lord Chickney. The clearer the plans of Captain Douglas grew, the more anxious he became to put them before Madeleine, clearly and convincingly. Because first he had to catch his boy. Presently as Captain Douglas fretted at the continued eclipse of Madeleine. His thumb went into his waistcoat pocket and found a piece of paper. He drew it out and looked at it. It was a little piece of stiff note paper cut into the shape of a curved V, rather after the fashion of a soaring bird. It must have been there for months. He looked at it. His care wrinkled brow relaxed. He glanced over his shoulder at the house and then held this little scrap high over his head and let go. It descended with a slanting flight curving round to the left and then came about and swept down to the ground to the right. Now why did it go like that? As if it changed its mind. He tried it again. Same result. Suppose the curvature of the wings was a little greater. Would it make a more acute or a less acute angle? He did not know. Try it. He felt in his pocket for a piece of paper, found Lady Laxton's letter, produced a stout pair of nail scissors in a sheath from a waistcoat pocket, selected a good clear sheet, and set himself to cut out his improved V. As he did so, his eyes were on V number one on the ground. It would be interesting to see if this thing turned about to the left again. If in fact it would go on zigzagging. It ought he felt to do so. But to test that, one ought to release it from some higher point so as to give it a longer flight. Stand on the chair? Not in front of the whole rotten hotel and there was a beastly looking man in a green apron coming out of the house, the sort of man who looks at you. He might come up and watch. These fellows are equal to anything of that sort. Captain Douglas replaced his scissors and scraps in his pockets, leaned back with an affectation of boredom, got up, lit a cigarette, sort of thing the man in the green apron would think all right, and strolled off towards a clump of beach trees, beyond which were bushes and a depression. There, perhaps one might be free from observation. Just try these things for a bit. That point about the angle was a curious one. It made one feel one's ignorance not to know that. Sub Chapter 10. The ideal king has a care-worn look. He rules. He has to do things. But the ideal queen is radiant happiness, tall and sweetly dignified. Simply she has to be things. And when at last, towards midday, Queen Madeleine dispelled the clouds of the morning, and came shining back into the world that waited outside her door. She was full of thankfulness for herself and for the empire that was given her. She knew she was a delicious and wonderful thing. She knew she was well done, her hands, the soft folds of her dress as she held it up. The sweep of her hair from her forehead pleased her. She lifted her chin, but not too high, for the almost unenvious homage in the eyes of the housemaid on the staircase. Her descent was well timed for the lunch gathering of the hotel guests. There was, ah, here she comes at last. And there was her own particular court out upon the veranda before the entrance. Gige and the professor and Mrs. Bowles and Mrs. Gige coming across the lawn. And the lover? She came on down and out into the sunshine. She betrayed no surprise. The others met her with flattering greetings that she returned smilingly. But the lover? He was not there. It was as if the curtain had gone up on almost empty stalls. He ought to have been worked up and waiting tremendously. He ought to have spent the morning in writing a poem to her or in writing a delightful poetical love letter she could carry away and read or in wandering alone and thinking about her. He ought to be feeling now like the end of a vigil. He ought to be standing now a little in the background and with that pleasant flush of his upon his face and that shy, subdued, reluctant look that was so infinitely more flattering than any boldness of admiration. And then she would go towards him, for she was a giving type and hold out both hands to him, and he, as though he couldn't help it, in spite of all his British reserve, would take one and hesitate, which made it all the more marked and kiss it, instead of which he was just not there. No visible disappointment dashed her bravery. She knew that at the slightest flicker, Judy and Mrs. Gage would guess and that anyhow the men would guess nothing. I've rested, she said. I've rested delightfully. What have you all been doing? Judy told of great conversations Mr. Gage had been looking for trout in the stream. Mrs. Gage, with a thin little smile, said she had been making a few notes and she added the word with deliberation, observations, and Professor Bowles said he had had a round of golf with the captain and he lost, asked Madeline. He's careless in his drive and impatient at the greens, said the Professor modestly. And then he vanished, said the Professor, recognizing the true orientation of her interest. There was a little pause and Mrs. Gage said, you know, and stopped short. Interrogative looks focused upon her. It's so odd, she said. Curiosity increased. I suppose one ought not to say, said Mrs. Gage. And yet why shouldn't one? Exactly, said Professor Bowles and everyone drew a little nearer to Mrs. Gage. One can't help being amused, she said. It was so extraordinary. Is it something about the captain? Asked Madeline. Yes, you see, he didn't see me. Is he, is he writing poetry? Madeline was much entertained and relieved at the thought that would account for everything. The poor dear, he hadn't been able to find some rhyme. But one gathered from the mysterious heirs of Mrs. Gage that he was not writing poetry. You see, she said, I was lying out there among the bushes just trotting down a few little things and he came by and he went down into the hollow out of sight. And what do you think he's doing? You'd never guess. He's been at it for twenty minutes. They didn't guess. He's playing with little bits of paper. Oh, like a kitten plays with dead leaves. He throws them up and they flutter to the ground and then he pounces on them. But, said Madeline, and then very brightly, let's go and see. She was amazed. She couldn't understand. She hid it under a light playfulness that threatened to become distraught even when presently after a very careful stalking of the Dell under the guidance of Mrs. Gage with the others in support she came in sight of him. She still found him incredible. There was her lover, her devoted lover, standing on the top bar of a fence his legs wide apart and his body balanced with difficulty. And in his fingers poised high was a little scrap of paper. This was the man who should have been waiting in the hall with feverish anxiety. His fingers released the little model and down it went drifting. He seemed to be thinking of nothing else in the world. She might never have been born. Some noise, some rustle, caught his ear. He turned his head quickly, guiltily, and saw her and her companions. And then he crowned her astonishment. No love-light leapt to his eyes. He uttered no cry of joy. Instead he clutched wildly at the air, shouted, oh damn, and came down with a complicated inelegance on all fours upon the ground. He was angry with her, angry. She could see that he was extremely angry. Sub Chapter 11. So it was that the incompatibilities of man and woman arose again in the just recovering love dream of Madeline Phillips. But now the discord was far more evident than it had been at the first breach. Suddenly her dear lover, her flatterer, her worshipper, had become a strange, averted man. He scrabbled up two of his paper scraps before he came towards her, still with no love-light in his eyes. He kissed her hand, as if it was a matter of course, and said almost immediately, I've been hoping for you all the endless morning. I've had to amuse myself as best I can. His tone was resentful. He spoke as if he had a claim upon her, upon her attentions, as if it wasn't entirely upon his side that obligations lay. She resolved that shouldn't deter her from being charming. And all through the lunch she was as charming as she could be and under such treatment that rebellious ruffled quality vanished from his manner vanished so completely that she could wonder if it had really been evident at any time. The alert servitor returned. She was only too pleased to forget the disappointment of her dissent and forgive him, and it was with a puzzled incredulity that she presently saw his difficult expression returning. It was an odd little knitting of the brows, a faint absent-mindedness, a filming of the brightness of his worship. He was just perceptibly indifferent to the charmed and charming things she was saying. It seemed best to her to open the question herself. Is there something on your mind dot? Dot was his old school nickname. Well, no, not exactly on my mind, but it's a bother, of course. There's that confounded boy. Were you trying some sort of divination about him with those pieces of paper? No, that was different. That was just something else. But you see that boy probably clear up the whole of the magridge bother, and you know it is a bother. Might turn out beastly awkward. It was extraordinarily difficult to express. He wanted so much to stay with her, and he wanted so much to go. But all reason, all that was expressible, all that found vent in words and definite suggestions, was on the side of an immediate pursuit of Bilby, so that it seemed to her he wanted and intended to go much more definitely than he actually did. That divergence of purpose flawed a beautiful afternoon, cast chill shadows of silence over their talk, arrested endearments. She was irritated. About six o'clock she urged him to go. She did not mind. Anyhow she had things to see to, letters to write, and she left him with an effect of leaving him forever. He went and overhauled his motor bicycle thoroughly, and then an aching dread of separation from her arrested him. Dinner, the late June sunset and the moon seemed to bring them together again. Almost harmoniously he was able to suggest that he should get up very early the next morning, pursue and capture Bilby, and return for lunch. You'd get up at dawn, she cried. But how perfectly splendid the mid-summer dawn must be. Then she had an inspiration. Dot, she cried, I will get up at dawn also and come with you. Yes, but as you say he cannot be more than 13 miles away, we'd catch him warm in his little bed somewhere. And the freshness, the dewy freshness. And she laughed, her beautiful laugh, and said it would be such fun entering as she supposed into his secret desires and making the most perfect of reconciliations. They were to have tea first, which she would prepare with the caravan lamp and kettle. Mrs. Gage would hand it over to her. She broke into song, a hunting we will go, oh, she sang, a hunting we will go. But she could not conquer the churlish underside of the captain's nature even by such efforts. She threw a glamour of vigor and fun over the adventure, but some cold streak in his composition was insisting all the time that as a boy hunt the attempt failed. Various little delays in her preparations prevented a start before half past seven. He let that weigh with him, and when sometimes she clapped her hands and ran, and she ran like a deer, and sometimes she sang, he said something about going at an even pace. At a quarter past one Mrs. Gage observed them returning. They were walking abreast and about six feet apart. They bore themselves grimly after the manner of those who have delivered ultimatta, and they conversed no more. In the afternoon Madeline kept her own room exhausted, and Captain Douglas sought opportunities of speaking to her in vain. His face expressed distress and perplexity, with momentary lapses into wrathful resolution, and he evaded Judy and her leading questions, and talked about the weather with Gage. He declined a proposal of the professors to go round the links with a special reference to his neglected putting. You ought to, you know, said the professor. About half past three, and without any publication of his intention, Captain Douglas departed upon his motor bicycle. Madeline did not reappear until dinnertime, and then she was clad in lace and gaiety that impressed the naturally very good observation of Mrs. Gage as unreal. Sub Chapter 12 The Captain, a confusion of motives that was, as it were, a mind returning to chaos, started. He had seen tears in her eyes, just for one instant, but certainly they were tears, tears of vexation, or sorrow, which is the worst thing for a lover to arouse, grief or resentment. But this boy must be caught, because if he was not caught, a perpetually developing story of imbecile practical joking upon eminent and influential persons would eat like a cancer into the captain's career. And if his career was spoiled, what sort of thing would he be as a lover? Not to mention that he might never get a chance then to try flying for military purposes. So anyhow, anyhow, this boy must be caught. But quickly, for women's hearts are tender, they will not stand exposure to hardship. There is a kind of unreasonableness natural to goddesses. Unhappily, this was an expedition needing wariness, deliberation, and one brought to it a feverish hurry to get back. There must be self-control, there must be patience. Such occasions try the soldierly quality of a man. It added nothing to the captain's self-control, that after he had traveled ten miles, he found he had forgotten his quite indispensable map and had to return for it. Then he was seized again with doubts about his inductions and went over them again, sitting by the roadside. There must be patience. He went on at a pace of thirty-five miles an hour to the inn he had marked upon his map as Bilby's limit for the second evening. It was a beastly little inn, it stewed tea for the captain atrociously, and it knew nothing of Bilby. In the adjacent cottages also they had never heard of Bilby. Captain Douglas revised his deductions for the third time and came to the conclusion that he had not made a proper allowance for Wednesday afternoon. Then there was all Thursday and the longer lengthening part of Friday. He might have done thirty miles or more already, and he might have crossed this corner inconspicuously. Suppose he hadn't after all come along this road. He had a momentary vision of Madeleine with eyes brightly tearful. You left me for a wild goose chase, he fancied her saying. One must stick to one's job. A soldier more particularly must stick to his job. Consider Balaclava. He decided to go on along this road and try the incidental cottages that his reasoning led him to suppose were the most likely places at which Bilby would ask for food. It was a business demanding patience and politeness. So a number of cottagers, for the greater part they were elderly women past the fiercer rush and hurry of life. Grandmothers and ancient dames or wives at leisure with their children away at the council schools, had a collar that afternoon. Cottages are such lonely places in the daytime that even district visitors and canvases are godsends and only tramps ill-received. Captain Douglas ranked high in the scale of visitors. There was something about him, his fairness, a certain handsomeness, his quick color, his active speech, which interested women at all times and now an indefinable flow of romantic excitement conveyed itself to his interlocutors. He encountered the utmost civility everywhere. Doors at first tentatively ajar opened wider at the sight of him and there was a kindly disposition to enter into his troubles lengthily and deliberately. People listened attentively to his demands and before they testified to Bilby's sustained absence from their perception they would for the most part ask numerous questions in return. They wanted to hear the captain's story, the reason for his research, the relationship between himself and the boy. They wanted to feel something of the sentiment of the thing. After that was the season for negative facts. Perhaps when everything was stated they might be able to conjure up what he wanted. He was asked in to have tea twice, for he looked not only pink and dusty but dry. And one old lady said that years ago she had lost just such a boy as Bilby seemed to be. Ah, not in the way you have lost him. And she wept, poor old dear, and was only comforted after she had told the captain three touching but extremely lengthy and detailed anecdotes of Bilby's vanished prototype. Fellow cannot rush away you know. Still all this sort of thing accumulating means all confounded lot of delay. And then there was a deaf old man, a very very tiresome deaf old man who said at first he had seen Bilby. After all the old fellow was deaf. The sunset found the captain on a breezy common 40 miles away from the Red Lake Royal Hotel and by this time he knew that fugitive boys cannot be trusted to follow the lines even of the soundest inductions. This business meant a search. Should he pelt back to Red Lake and start again more thoroughly on the morrow? A moment of temptation. If he did he knew she wouldn't let him go. No. No. He must make a sweeping movement through the country to the left trying up and down the roads that, roughly speaking, radiated from Red Lake between the 25th and the 35th milestone. It was night and high moonlight when at last the captain reached Kremenster that little old town decayed to a village in the craze valley. He was hungry, dispirited, quite unsuccessful and here he resolved to eat and rest for the night. He would have a meal for by this time he was ravenous and then go and talk in the bar or the tap about Bilby. Until he had eaten he felt he could not endure the sound of his own voice repeating what had already become a tiresome stereotyped formula. You haven't, I suppose, seen or heard anything during the last two days of a small boy. Little chap of about 13, wandering about. He's a sturdy resolute little fellow with a high color, short, wiry hair, rather dark. The white heart at Kremenster after some negotiations produced mutton cutlets and Australian hawk. As he sat at his meal in the small ambiguous respectable dining room of the inn, adorned with framed and glazed beer advertisements, crinkled paper fringes and insincere sporting prints, he became aware of a murmurous confabulation going on in the bar parlor. It must certainly he felt be the bar parlor. He could not hear distinctly and yet it seemed to him that the conversational style of Kremenster was abnormally rich and expletive and the tone was odd. It had a steadfast quality of combination. He brushed off a crumb from his jacket, lit a cigarette and stepped across the passage to put his hopeless questions. The talk ceased abruptly at his appearance. It was one of those deep-toned bar parlors that are so infinitely more pleasant to the eye than the tawdry decorations of the gentile accommodation. It was brown with a trimming of green paper hops and it had a mirror and glass shelves sustaining bottles and tankards. Six or seven individuals were sitting about the room. They had a numerous effect. There was a man in very light flowery tweeds with a flowery bloom on his face and hair and an anxious depressed expression. He was clearly a baker. He sat forward as though he nursed something precious under the table. Next him was a respectable looking regular featured fair man with a large head and a ready-faced butcher-like individual smoked a clay pipe by the side of the fireplace. A further individual with an alert intrusive look might have been a grocer's assistant associating above himself. Evening said the captain. Evening said the man with the large hand guardedly. The captain came to the hearth rug with an affectation of ease. I suppose he began that you haven't any of you seen anything of a small boy wandering about. He's a little chap about 13 sturdy resolute little fellow with a high color short wiry hair rather dark. He stopped short arrested by the excited movements of the butcher's pipe and by the changed expressions of the rest of the company. We we seen him. The man with the big head managed to say it last. We seen him all right. Said a voice out of the darkness beyond the range of the lamp. The baker with the melancholy expression interjected. I don't care if I don't ever see him again. Ah, said the captain, astonished to find himself suddenly beyond hoping on a hot fresh scent. Now all that's very interesting. Where did you see him? Thundering vicious little varmint, said the butcher, audacious. Mr. Ben Shaw, said the voice from the shadows, is after him now with a shotgun loaded up with oats. He'll pepper him if he gets him Bill Will. You bet you're at. And serve him Jollywell right to you. I doubt, said the baker, I doubt if I'll ever get my stomach not thoroughly proper again. It's a blow I've had. Hey, give me a blow. Oh, Mr. R. X. Could I trouble you for another thimbleful of brandy? Just a thimbleful neat. It eases the ache. End of chapter five, part two. Chapter six of Bealby. A holiday. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Kelly Taylor. Bealby. A holiday. By H. G. Wells. Chapter six, Bealby and the Tramp. Part one, sub-chapter one. Bealby was loath 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 low bushes of ewe and box, until the clamor 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 Gardner'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 definitive 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 very dark, very gently and steadily. And the overhung road, after some tortuosities, expired suddenly upon the bosom of a great grey empty common, with some distant mysterious hedges. It seemed high time to beelve that something happened of a comforting nature. Always hither to, some thing or some one, had come to his help when the world grew dark and cold, and had given him supper, or put him or sent him to bed. Even when he had passed a night in the intercesses of chants, he had known that 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 that 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 got through that gate and shut it after him. In England there are no grey wolves. Yet at time one thinks of wolves, grey wolves, the color 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 III. 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 and through it and slimmit behind you, and a little brisk run, and so into this plantation that sloped down the hill. This is the 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 will be stopped. Pump, pump. Of course. That was one's heart. Nothing there. Just fancy. Wolves live in the open. They do not come into the 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 yet 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 wrestled under the feet. In woods at twilight with innumerable things, darting from trees and eyes, washing you everywhere. It would be pleasanter if one could walk without the human eye. If one could walk without making quite such a row. Presently, surely, Bilby told himself he would come out onto the high road and meet some 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 this way. Think of something else. Think of things beginning with 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 Bilby and he had a preposterous persuasion that it had teeth and it would begin at the back of his legs. Sub-Chapter Two cried Bilby 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 Bilby had struggled through the hedge into the visible world and stood regarding the man by the fire. The phantom wolves had fled beyond Cirrus but Bilby's face was pale still from the terrors of the pursuit and altogether he looked a smallish sort of small boy. Ghost, said the man by the fire. Couldn't find my way, said Bilby. Anyone with you? No, the man reflected. Tired, bit. Come sit down by the fire and rest yourself. I won't hurt you, he added as Bilby hesitated. So far in his limited experience Bilby 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 Bilby 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 Bilby as altogether inhuman if he 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 hurt you, dawn you, he repeated. Come and sit down on these here for a bit and tell me all about it, Bilby did as he was desired. I got lost, he said, too exhausted to tell a good story. The tramp, examined more closely, became less pyrotechnic. He had a large loose mouth, a confused mass of 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 Bilby. Once or twice he linked forward and smelt the pot judiciously. But all the time his little eyes watched Bilby very closely. Lose your collar, said the tramp. Bilby felt for his collar. I took it off, he said. Come fall. Over there, said Bilby. Where? Over there. What place? Don't know the name of it. Then it ain't your home. No. You've run away, said the man. Perhaps I have, said Bilby. Perhaps you have? Why, perhaps you have. What's the good of telling lies about it? Where'd you stop? Monday, said Bilby. The tramp reflected. Far enough of it. Don't know, said Bilby, truthfully. Like some soup. Yes. How much? I could do with a lot, said Bilby. Ah, yeah. I didn't mean that. How much for some? How much will you pay for a nice, a nice off kind of soup? I ain't a darn charity, see? Tappence, said Bilby. The tramp shook his head slowly side to side and took out a battered iron spoon he was using to stir the stuff and tasted the soup lusciously. It was jolly good soup and there was potatoes in it. Threpence, said Bilby. How much you got, asked the tramp. Bilby hesitated perceptively. Sixth pence, he said weakly. It's sixth pence, said the tramp. Fire up. How big a can, asked Bilby. 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. Va, he said, and this chunk of bread, right enough. You will do it, said Bilby. Do I look like a swindle, cried the tramp, and suddenly a lump of abundant hair fell over one eye in a singularly threatening manner. Bilby handed over the six pence without further discussion. I'll try you fairly, you see, said the tramp. After that he spat on the pocketed six pence and did as much. He decided that the soup was ready to be served and served it with care. Bilby began at once. Those next three onions, said the tramp, throwing one over, it didn't cost me much and I give it to you for nothing. That's all right, eh, there's help. Bilby consumed his soup and bread meekly with one eye upon his host. He would, he decided, eat all he could and then sit awhile and then get this tramp to tell him the way to anywhere else. And the tramp wiped the soup out of his can with goblets of bread, very earnestly and meditated sagely on Bilby. You better pal in with me, matey, for a bit, he said at last. You can't go nowhere else, not tonight. Couldn't I walk perhaps to a town or something? These woods ain't safe. How do you mean? Ever heard tell of a gorilla? Sort of a big black monkey thing. Yes, said Bilby, faintly. There's been one loot I bought here. Oh, a week or more. Fact. And if you wasn't a grown-up man quite and going along in the dark, well, he might say something to you. Of course he 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, but the truth I wouldn't. It's risky. Of course I don't want to keep you. There it is. You can go if you like, but I'd rather you wouldn't, honest. Where'd he come from? asked Bilby. Najri, said the tramp. Every near bit through the fist of a chap to try to stop him, said the tramp. Bilby, 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. Sub-Chapter 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 life of the road with life at large and life and with matters of must and may. Sometimes and more particularly at first Bilby 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-lipped face was an ugly creeping approach that made Bilby recoil and then again he was strong and wise and so the unstable needle of a boy's moral compass spins. The tramp used strange terms he spoke of the deputy and the Doth's house and of the spike and patting the hoof and of screvers and tarts and cuppers and narcs. To these words Bilby 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 humor for all its squalor and repulsiveness it was lit by defiance and laughter bitter laughter perhaps but laughter it had gaiety that Mr. Murgelsen for example did not possess it had a penetration like the penetrating quality of onions or acids or asephiosha that made the memory of Mr. Darling insipid. The tramp assumed from the outset that Bilby had done something and run away and some mysterious etiquette preventing his asking directly what was the nature of his offence but he made a number of insidious soundings and he assumed that Bilby 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've got a toughish look about you. He talked of the 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 there weren't such dead nuts on the pheasants and one had a chance of an empty cow shed 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 door souse or the spike it's the rain that's 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 goh I've been blown out of the holly hedge you would think there would be protection in a holly hedge spikes the last thing said the tramp I'd rather go bare-gutted to the door souse anyway goh you've not had your first taste of the spike yet but it wasn't heaven in the door souses he spoke of several of the landlady's in strange but it would seem unflattering terms as there's always the blame for a washing going on in the door souse always washing they are one chaps washing his socks and another washing his shirt making a steam dry in it disgusting hearts saying what they want with it at all barred to get dirty again he's discoursed of spikes that is to say of work houses and of masters and then he said with revolting yet alluring agitus there's the bath that's the worst side of it said the tramp however it doesn't always rhyme and if it doesn't rhyme well you can keep yourself dry he came back to the pleasanter aspects of the nomadic life he was all for the outdoor style aren't we comfortable here? then he sketched out the simple larcenies that have contributed and given zest to the evening's meal but it seemed there were also dos houses that had the agreeable side never been in one he said well have you been sleeping since Monday? bill B described the caravan in phrases that seemed thin and anemic to his ears you and it lucky said the tramp if a chap's a kid he strikes all sorts of luck of that sort now if I had come up against three ladies travelling in a van think they'd asked me in? not yet 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 Burners a fair scorcha been a regular slap of circus actress and there was also good ol' Susan it was a little difficult for Bill B to see the point of some of these flashes by a tendency on the part of the tramp while his thoughts turned on these manners to adopt a staccato style of speech punctuated by brief, darkly, significant gaffaws there grew in the mind of Bill B a vision of the dos house as a large crowded place lit by a great central fire with much cooking afoot much jawing and disputing going on and then Mayan is a sile then 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 Bill B scrumptured around to get sticks and fed the fire until the darkness and thoughts of 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 now he invited Bill B to extend and share and lying feet to the fire he continued his discourse he talked as stealing and cheating by various endearing names he made these enterprises seem adventurous and facetious there walls 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 Bill B found it difficult to affirm grasp on the fact that it was fraud Bill B 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 flickering 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 Bill B's first distrust faded he began to think the tramp a fine brotherly generous fellow he was growing accustomed to a faint something shall I call it an old factory bar that had hitherto kept them apart the monologue ceased to devote itself to the elucidation of Bill B 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 in 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 Isville Pernors 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 her husband said the tramp always has been Bill B 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 mating than a musical 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 had 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 home and scrub the floors it made a chap want to put a darn pail over her head so 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 horses and carriages your houses and country places and all that you may think God sent me to run a bar and work for you but I don't see Bill B saw I seek my satisfactions just as you seek your satisfactions and if you want to get me to work you jolly well gotta 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 gotta 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 have come then he fell questioning Bill B again and then he talked of the immediate future he was beating for the seaside always something doing he said you gotta keep your eye out for the cops those seaside benches they're off on tramps they give you a muck for begging as soon as look at you but there's flats dropping six pincers as thick as flies on a sore horse you want there for all sorts of jobs you're just a chap for it mighty saw it soon as I set eyes on you he had projects finally he became more personal and very flattering now you and me he said suddenly shifting himself quite close to Bill B we're gonna be downright pals I took a liking to you me and you are gonna pal it together see he breathed into Bill B's face and laid a hand on his knee and squeezed it and Bill B on the whole felt honored by his protection sub-chapter four 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 intractable 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 rose in Bill B's mind and he walked on behind his guide and friend he revolved schemes of unobtrusive detachment far be it from me to accuse Bill B of ingratitude but it is true that that same disinclination which made him a disloyal assistant to Mr. Mervilsson 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 Bill B had acquired from his mother an effective horror of stealing and one must admit since the tramp admitted it the man stole and another little matter had at the same time estranged Bill B from the tramp and linked the two of them together the attentive reader will know that Bill B had exactly two shillings and two pints half-penny when he came down out of the woods to the fireside he had Mrs. Bowles half-crown and the balance of Madeleine Phillips theater shilling minus six pints half-penny for the collar and six pints 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 Bill B but 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, Mighty and after he had pointed out that a refusal might lead to Bill B's evisceration the transfer occurred Bill B was searched kindly but firmly it seemed to the tramp that this trouble had blown over completely little did he suspect the rebellious and treacherous thoughts that sieved in the head of his companion little did he suppose that his personal appearance his manners, his ethical flavor nay even his physical flavor 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 youthful he had adopted a course that he imagined would submit ties between them he reckoned not with ingratitude if anyone asks 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 happiness and profit for the day to begin with great drafts of beer then tobacco later perhaps a little bread and cheese for Bill B you can't come in here, he said at the first public house you're underage me boy it ain't my doing matey it's Herbert Samuel, you blame him he don't object to you going to work for any other Mr. Samuel, there may be a bar or anything of that sort that's good for you that is but he's most particular you don't go into a public house so you just wait about outside here I'll have me eye on you you're going to spend my money said Bill B I'm going to ration the party said the tramp you've got no right to spend my money said Bill B I ain't it, I'll get you some acid drops said the tramp in tones of remonstras I'll tell you, blame you it's Herbert Samuel, I can't help it I can't fight against the law you have it any right to spend my money said Bill B don't cut it up trusty how can I help it I'll tell a policeman you give me back my money and let me 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 Bill B in a confidential manner who's going to believe you he said and besides how did you come by it moreover I ain't going to spend your money I got money on my own and suddenly before the dazzled eyes of Bill B he held and instantly withdrew three shillings and two coppers that seemed familiar he had a shilling of his own Bill B waited outside the tramp emerged in a highly genial mood with acid drops and a short clay pipe going strong eh he said to Bill B with just the faintest flavor of magnificence over the teeth held pipe and handed over not only the acid drips but a virgin short clay still he said proffering the tobacco it's yours just as much it's mine bear not let Herbert Samuel see you though that's all he's got a lore about it Bill B held his pipe in his clinched hand he had already smoked once he remembered it quite vividly still although it had happened six months ago yet he hated not using the tobacco no he said I'll smoke it later the tramp replaced the screw of the 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 Bill B chafed at the tie and saw the security in the tramp's pocket vanish they launched 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 mead of repose and a secluded hollow among a begorice the tramp produced a pack of exceedingly greasy card and taught Bill B to play Uker apparently the tramp had no distinctive pockets in his tailcoat the whole lining was one capricious 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 Bill B had learnt Uker thoroughly the 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 then held it out to Bill B guess what this is Bill B smell it it smelled very nasty one familiar smell indeed there was with a paradoxical sanitary quality about it that he could not quite identify but that was a mere basis for a complex reek of acquisitions what is it said Bill B soap but what's it for I thought you'd ask that what's soap usually for washing said Bill B guessing wildly the tramp shook his head making a foamy corrected that's what I has my fits with see I shoved a bit in my mouth and it goes down and rolls about making sort of a moaning sound why I've been given the orphan neat brandy it isn't always assert nothing's absolutely assert I've had some let downs once I was bit by a nasty little dog that brought me to pretty quick and once I had an old gentleman go through my pockets poor chap says he very likely he's dead too let's see if he's got anything I got all sorts of things I didn't want him prying about but I didn't come too sharp enough to stop him got me in trouble that did it's an old lay said the tramp but it's astonishing how it will go in a quiet village sort of amuses him or dropping suddenly in front of a bicycle party lots of them old trips are the best tricks and there ain't many of them Billy Bridget don't know that's where you're lucky to have me matey Billy Bridget's an odd man to starve and I know the ropes I know what you can do and what you can't do and I've got a feeling for a policeman same as some people have for cats I know one was hidden in a room he expanded into anecdotes and the story of various encounters in which he's shown it was amusing and it took bilby on his weak side wasn't he the champion darger of the Chelsea 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 end of sub-chapter four For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Michael Fosio Throughout the afternoon the tramp discourse upon the rights and wrongs of property in a way that bilby found very novel and unsettling the tramp seemed to have his ideas about owning and stealing arranged quite differently from those of bilby never before had bilby thought it possible to have them arranged in any other than the way he knew but the tramp contrived to make most possessions 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 how I can get old more and more of the stuff I don't envy at him said the tramp some is one taste and some another but when it comes to making all this fuss because a chap who isn't a schemer helps himself to a mouthful well, it's wrought it's them makes the rules of the game no one ever asked me to play it I don't blame him, mind you me and you might very well do the same but brass me if I see where this sense of my keeping the rules comes in this world ought to be a share out God meant it to be a share out and me and you we've been done out of our share that justifies us it isn't right to steal said bilby it isn't right to steal certainly it isn't right but it's universal here's a chap here over this fence asking where he got his land stealing what you call stealing, matey I call restitution you ain't probably never even heard of socialism I've heard of socialists right enough don't believe in God and have it no morality don't believe it why? or if the socialists are Parsons what I'm saying is socialism, practically I'm a socialist I know all about socialism there isn't nothing you can tell me about socialism why, for three weeks I was one of these here antisocialist speakers paid for it and I tell you there ain't such a thing as property left it's all a blue and old pinch lords, commons, judges, all of them they're just a crew of brassed old fences and the lawyers getting in on the stuff then you talk to me of stealing stealing the tramps contempt in his intense way of saying stealing were very unsettling to insensitive mind they bought some tea in Greece in a village shop and the tramp made tea in his old tin with great dexterity and then they nod bred on which two ounces of margarine had been generously distributed lived like fat and cocks we do said the tramp wiping out his simple cuisine with the drag it out end of his shirt sleeved and if I'm not very much mistaken we'll sleep tonight 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 around here he said you go in and see what it's about 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 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 ya 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 a bait too thought you'd be the very chap for a bit of scartin 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 chins-covered armchair lost it would seem in painful thought he had a peculiar gray shrunken look his eyes were closed a bony hand with a 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 hand slipped down from the arms his head knotted forward 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 a sleep with his mouth open well that ain't anything so wonderful you got anything that's what I want to know did anyone ever see such a boy here 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 to the 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 fulfillment he saw advancing up the garden path a tall woman in a blue surged 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 site 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 to the work-box 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 work-box slipped from under his arm the rest of his plunder fell from him for an uneasy moment Bealby had a long 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 he 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 missile so 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 had watched 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 they fled through the night it seemed to Bealby for interminable hours at last when they were worn out and foot sore 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 have 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 he awake when you saw him he asked at last awake who that old man for a moment or so the tramp said nothing he wasn't awake you young silly he said at last but wasn't he why don't you know he croaked popped off the hooks very moment you saw him for a moment Bealby's voice failed him then he said quite faintly you mean was dead didn't you know so the tramp God 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 a 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 tonight 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 they're passed with incredible slowness a number of jagged little black clouds blacker than any clouds Bealby had ever seen before they were like velvet paws lined with snowy fur there was no end to them and one at last most horribly gaped slowly and opened a mouth sub-chapter 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 of watchdogs I know I shall have idrophobia said the tramp I've always added disposition to idrophobia always a dread of water now it's got me think of it keeping a beast to set out a human being where's the brotherhood of it where's the law on the humanity getting an animal to set out a brother man and a poisoned animal an animal with death in his teeth and a horrible death too where's the sense in brotherhood God when I felt his teeth coming through my trousers dogs oughtn't to be allowed there are nuisance in the towns and a danger in the country they oughtn't to be allowed anywhere not till every blessed human being has got three square meals a day then if you like keep a dog and sees he's a clean dog God if I'd been a bit quicker up in that roost I ought to have landed him a kick it's a man's duty to hurt a dog when he sees a dog he ought to hurt him it's a natural hatred if dogs were what they ought to be if dogs understood how they're situated there wouldn't be a dog go for a man ever and if one did they'd shoot him after this if I ever get a chance to land a dog an owner with a stone I'll end him one I've been too short with dogs towards dawn B.O.B. 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 an expression of dismay and despair on his face sub-chapter 8 B.O.B. took his chance to steal away next morning while the tramp was engaged in artificial epilepsy I feel like Fitz this morning said the tramp I could do it well I want a bit of human kindness again after that blasted dog I expect soon I'll have the foam all right without any soap they marked down a little cottage before which a benevolent looking spectacled old gentleman in his large straw hat and a thin alpaca jacket was engaged in buddy roses then they retired to prepare the tramp handed over to B.O.B. various compromising possessions which might embarrass an inflicted 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 nine pence in money there were the pack of cards with which they had played yooker 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 sulfur matches list slippers sundry gray rags they all seem to have the distinctive flavor of the tramp if you do a bonk with these said the tramp, by God he drew his finger across his throat King's evidence B.O.B. 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 over his little green garden gate surveying the sufferings of the tramp with an expression of intense yet discreet commissuration then suddenly he was struck by an idea he darted in among his rose bushes and reappeared with a big watering can an enormous syringe still keeping the gate between himself and the sufferer he loaded his syringe very carefully and deliberately B.O.B. 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 he found his police station upon the road between some port and Kramernster 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 pheasant's eggs and another bill it was headed missing and the next most conspicuous words were five pound 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 near Chelsmoor 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 at 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 rosebushes 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 work-box and a woman and a dog I was let 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 he could not go through with it his heart had gone down into his feet perhaps he had caught the tramps of constitutional aversion to the police he effected 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 is 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 over and again at Bealby like one who checks off items Bealby quickened his pace and then doing his best to suggest 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 side long 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 mangled wordsle 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 conserved he was well out of it he might have made a fool of himself and yet five pounds reward End of Chapter 6