Bealby

“ The dog was quick. But Bealby was quicker. He went up the netting of a hen run and gave the dog no more than an ineffectual snap at his heels. And then dashing from the cottage door came the tramp. Under one arm was a brass-bound workbox and in the other was a candlestick and some smaller articles. He did not instantly grasp the situation of his treed companion, he was too anxious to escape the tall woman, and then with a yelp of dismay he discovered himself between woman and dog. All too late he sought to emulate Bealby. ”

“ The baker was all over the way of escape. He extended arms that seemed abnormally long and with a weak cry Bealby found himself trapped. Trapped, but not hopelessly. He knew how to do it. He had done it in milder forms before, but now he did it with all his being. Under the diaphragm of the baker smote Bealby’s hard little head, and instantly he was away running up the quiet sunny street. Man when he assumed the erect attitude made a hostage of his belly. ”

“ There is a joy in the mere fact of hunting, the sight of a scarlet coat and a hound will brighten a whole village, and now Crayminster was rousing itself like a sleeper who wakes to sunshine and gay music. People were looking out of windows and coming out of shops, a policeman appeared and heard the baker’s simple story, a brisk hatless young man in a white apron and with a pencil behind his ear became prominent. Bealby, peeping over the ridge of the roof, looked a thoroughly dirty and unpleasant little creature to all these people. ”

“ Bealby hadn’t much time to attend, though the laughter that followed various sallies from Judy Bowles was very tantalizing, and it had come to the pears before his attention wasn’t so much caught as felled by the word “Shonts.”... It was as if the sky had suddenly changed to vermilion. All these people were talking of Shonts!...
“Went there,” said Captain Douglas, “in perfect good faith. Wanted to fill up Lucy’s little party. One doesn’t go to Shonts nowadays for idle pleasure. ”

“ How swift are the changes of the human soul! At the moment of his thrust young Bealby was a primordial savage; so soon as he saw this incredible piercing of Thomas’s chin—for all the care that Bealby had taken it might just as well have been Thomas’s eye—he moved swiftly through the ages and became a simple Christian child. ”

“ Bealby lay upon the leaves close up to the prone body of the tramp, and his mind and his standards became confused. The tramp’s body was a dark but protecting ridge on one side of him; he could not see the fire beyond his toes but its flickerings were reflected by the tree stems about them, and made perplexing sudden movements that at times caught his attention and made him raise his head to watch them.... Against the terrors of the night the tramp had become humanity, the species, the moral basis. His voice was full of consolation; his topics made one forget the watchful silent circumambient. ”

“ Professor Bowles was animated and Mr. Geedge was gracefully cold, they kissed their wives but not offensively, and there was a chattering pause while Bealby walked on beside the caravan. They were on the bare road that runs along the high ridge above Winthorpe-Sutbury, and the men had walked to meet them from some hotel or other—Bealby wasn’t clear about that—by the golf links. Judy was the life and soul of the encounter, and all for asking the men what they meant by intruding upon three independent women who, sure-alive, could very well do without 105them. ”

“ It was a head,—a ruffled human head. It remained still for a moment contemplating the calm spaciousness of terrace and garden and countryside. Then it emerged further and rotated and surveyed the 57house above it. Its expression was one of alert caution. Its natural freshness and innocence were a little marred by an enormous transverse smudge, a bar-sinister of smut, and the elfin delicacy of the left ear was festooned with a cobweb—probably a genuine antique. It was the face of Bealby.
He was considering the advisability of leaving Shonts—for good. ”

“ After William had done that twice Bealby preferred to walk beside the caravan. Thereupon William whipped up the white horse and broke records and made all the crockery sing together and forced the pace until he was spoken to by Mrs. Bowles....
It was upon a Bealby thus depressed and worried that the rumour of impending “men-folk” 102came. It began after the party had stopped for letters at a village post office; there were not only letters but a telegram, that Mrs. Bowles read with her spats far apart and her head on one side. ”

“ It was a splendid chance for any boy to begin his knowledge of service in so great an establishment, and only the natural perversity of human nature can explain the violent objection young Bealby took to anything of the sort. He did. He said he did not want to be a servant, and that he would not go and be a good boy and try his very best in that state of life to which it had pleased God to call him at Shonts. On the contrary.
He communicated these views suddenly to his mother as she was preparing a steak and kidney pie in the bright little kitchen of the gardener’s cottage. ”

“ And in the evening, after the custom of her great profession when it keeps holiday, she insisted on going to the play. She said it would be the loveliest fun. She went with Mrs. Bowles because Mrs. Geedge wanted to sit quietly in the caravan and write down a few little things while they were still fresh in her mind. And it wasn’t in the part of Madeleine Philips not to insist that both William and Bealby must go too; she gave them each a shilling—though the prices were sixpence, threepence, two-pence and a penny—and Bealby saw his first real play. ”

“ It is a proverb among the pastoral Berbers of the Atlas mountains that the man who extends his arms in front of an angry ram is a fool.
It seemed probable to Bealby that he would get away up the street. The baker was engaged in elaborately falling backward, making the most of sitting down in the road, and the wind had been knocked out of him so that he could not shout. He emitted “Stop him!” in large whispers. Away ahead there were only three builder’s men sitting under the wall beyond the White Hart, consuming tea out of their tea cans. ”

“ For the better part of two minutes he went on from this mild beginning to a descriptive elaboration of Bealby. For the first time in his life Bealby learnt how unfavourable was the impression he might leave on a fellow creature’s mind.
“Took even my matches!” cried the tramp, and tried this statement over with variations.
“First that old fool with his syringe!” The tramp’s voice rose in angry protest. “Here’s a chap dying epilepsy on your doorstep and all you can do is to squirt cold water at him! Cold water! Why you might kill a man doing that! ”

“ In the playground of the village school Bealby had been preëminent for his dodging; he moved as quickly as a lizard. His little hands, his head, poised with the skill of a practised butter, came against that mighty back, and then Bealby had dodged into the study....
But it seemed to Lord Moggeridge, staggering over his broken glass and circling about defensively, that this fearful indignity could come only from Captain Douglas. Foolery.... Blup, blup.... Sham Poltergeist. Imbeciles.... ”

“ Bealby was no longer fatigued nor depressed; anxiety for the future was lost in the excitement of the present, and his heart told him that, come what might, getting on to the roof was an extraordinarily good dodge.
And if only he could bring off a certain jump he had in mind, there were other dodges—....
In the village street an informal assembly of leading citizens, a little recovered now from their first nervousness about flying tiles, discussed the problem of Bealby. There was Mumby, the draper and vegetarian, with the bass voice and the big black beard. He advocated the fire engine. ”

“ And after a due meed of repose in a secluded hollow among the gorse the tramp produced a pack of exceedingly greasy cards and taught Bealby to play Euchre. Apparently the tramp had no distinctive pockets in his tail coat, the whole lining was one capacious pocket. Various knobs and bulges indicated his cooking tin, his feeding tin, a turnip and other unknown properties. At first they played for love and then they played for the balance in the tramp’s pocket. And by the time Bealby had learnt Euchre thoroughly, that balance belonged to the tramp. ”

“ Bealby was told to “look alive” twice, and William was assigned to his genus and species; “The man’s an absolute idiot,” was the way the Professor put it. William just shot a glance at him over his nose. The place certainly commanded a wonderful view. It was a turfy bank protected from the north and south by bushes of yew and the beech-bordered edge of a chalk pit; it was close beside the road, a road which went steeply down the hill into Winthorpe-Sutbury, with that intrepid decision peculiar to the hill-roads of the south of England. ”

“ Here he was pitted against a formidable hoe-wielding man, who for some inscrutable reason was resolved to cover the retreat of Bealby. And all the world, it seemed, was with the tramp and against this hoe-wielder. All the tremendous forces of human society, against which the tramp had struggled for so many years, whose power he knew and feared as only the outlaw can, had suddenly come into line with him. Across the strawberries to the right there was even a policeman hastening to join the majority, a policeman closely followed by a tradesman of the blackest, most respectable quality. ”

“ Bowles’ half-crown and the balance of Madeleine Philips’ theatre shilling, minus sixpence halfpenny for a collar and sixpence he had given the tramp for the soup overnight. But all this balance was now in the pocket of the tramp. Money talks and the tramp had heard it. He had not taken it away from Bealby, but he had obtained it in this manner: “We two are pals,” he said, “and one of us had better be Treasurer. That’s Me. I know the ropes better. ”

“ Geedge did not appear to observe Bealby. He was a man of the super-aquiline type with a nose like a rudder, he held his face as if it was a hatchet in a procession, and walked with the dignity of a man of honour. You could see at once he was a man of honour. Inflexibly, invincibly, he was a man of honour. You felt that anywhen, in a fire, in an earthquake, in a railway accident when other people would be running 107about and doing things he would have remained—a man of honour. ”

“ How good a thing is appreciation! Here he was doing, with joy and pride and an eager excellence, the very services he had done so badly under the cuffings of Mergleson and Thomas....
§ 4 And now Bealby, having been regarded with approval for some moments and discussed in tantalizing undertones, was called upon to explain himself.
“Boy,” said the lady in the deerstalker, who was evidently the leader and still more evidently the spokeswoman of the party, “come here.”
“Yes, miss.” He put down the boot he was cleaning on the caravan step. ”

“ There was a comic butler—very different stuff 98from old Mergleson—who wore an evening coat and plaid trousers and nearly choked Bealby. Why weren’t all butlers like that? Funny. And there were constant denunciations. Always there were denunciations going on or denunciations impending. That took Bealby particularly. Never surely in all the world were bad people so steadily and thoroughly scolded and told what. Everybody hissed them; Bealby hissed them. ”

“ In the adjacent cottages also they had never heard of Bealby. 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. ”

“ Oh! Cam up, y’old Runt. We don’t want you to stop and lissen. Cam up, I tell you!”
§ 8 They found the ladies rather, it seemed, by accident than design, waiting upon a sandy common rich with purple heather and bordered by woods of fir and spruce. They had been waiting some time, and it was clear that the sight of the yellow caravan relieved an accumulated anxiety. Bealby rejoiced to see them. His soul glowed with the pride of chocolate resisted and William overcome. He resolved to distinguish himself over the preparation of the midday meal. ”

“ But the boy who was trimming the top of the tall privet hedge outside the doctor’s saw the assault of the baker and incontinently uttered the shout that the baker could not. Also he fell off his steps with great alacrity and started in pursuit of Bealby. A young man from anywhere—perhaps the grocer’s shop—also started for 230Bealby. But the workmen were slow to rise to the occasion. Bealby could have got past them. And then, abruptly at the foot of the street ahead the tramp came into view, a battered disconcerting figure. ”

“ If there was a reward out for Bealby—
“That’s not a bad dodge!” said Rymell, changing his opinion of the foreman suddenly as that individual began his ascent of the ladder with a bricklayer’s hod carried shield-wise above his head. He went up with difficulty and slowly 235because of the extreme care he took to keep his head protected. But no tiles came. Bealby had discovered a more dangerous attack developing inside the house and was already in retreat down the other side of the building. ”