Chapter V: The Seeking of Bealby (2)

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, furze 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....

_Rap._

“In the pond I _think_, sir.”

“The water would have splashed 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 caddie 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 horrid disposition towards slacking. A Tired generation we are. The world is too much with us. Too much to think about, too much to do, Madeleines, army manœuvres, angry lawyers, lost boys—let alone such exhausting foolery as this game....

“_Got_ it, sir!” said the caddie.

“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 scrabbled 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 colour 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 is 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 ungentlemanly language.

“If a thing’s worth doing at all,” said the Professor after a pause for reflection, “it’s worth doing well.”

“Then it isn’t worth doing at all. As this hole 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.

“O _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 manœuvres,” said the Captain presently in an off-hand 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 fair 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.”

§ 9

They got back to the hotel about half-past eleven and the Captain went and had an unpleasant time with one of the tyres of his motor bicycle which had got down in the night. In replacing the tyre he pinched the top of one of his fingers rather badly. Then he got the ordnance 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 Bealby. 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 Bealby _must_ take to the sea.

For a time he found this quite an absorbing occupation.

Bealby 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 passers-by, 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—ten, twelve, fourteen—thirteen, thirteen miles a day.

So now, he ought to be about here. And to-night,—here.

To-morrow 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 to-morrow one started and went on to these cross roads marked _Inn_, just about twenty-six miles it must be by the 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 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?

Wring the truth out of him—half by threats and half by persuasion. Suppose after all he hadn’t any connexion with the upsetting of Lord Moggeridge? He had. Suppose he hadn’t. He had. 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 moustaches 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 ten 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 zig-zagging. 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 beech 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....

§ 10

The ideal King has a careworn 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 verandah before the entrance, Geedge and the Professor and Mrs. Bowles—and Mrs. Geedge 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. Geedge 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. Geedge had been looking for trout in the stream, Mrs. Geedge 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 Madeleine.

“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. Geedge said, “You know—” and stopped short.

Interrogative looks focussed upon her.

“It’s so odd,” she said.

Curiosity increased.

“I suppose one ought not to say,” said Mrs. Geedge, “and yet—why shouldn’t one?”

“Exactly,” said Professor Bowles, and every one drew a little nearer to Mrs. Geedge.

“One can’t help being amused,” she said. “It was so—extraordinary.”

“Is it something about the Captain?” asked Madeleine.

“Yes. You see,—he didn’t see me.”

“Is he—is he writing poetry?” Madeleine 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 airs of Mrs. Geedge that he was not writing poetry. “You see,” she said, “I was lying out there among the bushes, just jotting 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 is 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 Madeleine. 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. Geedge, 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 lovelight 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.

§ 11

So it was that the incompatibilities of man and woman arose again in the just recovering love dream of Madeleine Philips. 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 lovelight 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 descent 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 absentmindedness, 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 Moggeridge 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 Bealby. 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 for ever. 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 Bealby and return for lunch.

“You’d get up at dawn!” she cried. “But how perfectly Splendid the midsummer 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 thirteen 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. Geedge would hand it over to her.

She broke into song. “A Hunting we will go-ooh,” 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 vigour 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. Geedge observed them returning. They were walking abreast and about six feet apart, they bore themselves grimly, after the manner of those who have delivered ultimata, and they conversed no more....

In the afternoon Madeleine 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 Geedge. He declined a proposal of the Professor’s to go round the links, with especial 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....

Madeleine did not reappear until dinner-time, and then she was clad in lace and gaiety that impressed the naturally very good observation of Mrs. Geedge as unreal.

§ 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 worse 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 spoilt 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 travelled 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 Bealby’s limit for the second evening. It was a beastly little inn, it stewed tea for the Captain atrociously and it knew nothing of Bealby. 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. 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 Bealby 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 caller that afternoon. Cottages are such lonely places in the daytime that even district visitors and canvassers 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 colour, 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 Bealby’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 Bealby 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 Bealby’s vanished prototype.

(Fellow cannot rush away, you know; still all this sort of thing, accumulating, means a 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 Bealby....

After all the old fellow was deaf....

The sunset found the Captain on a breezy common forty miles away from the Redlake 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 Redlake 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 Redlake between the twenty-fifth and the thirty-fifth milestone....

It was night and high moonlight when at last the Captain reached Crayminster, that little old town decayed to a village, in the Crays 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 Bealby.

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 thirteen—wandering about? He’s a sturdy resolute little fellow with a high colour, short wiry hair, rather dark....”

The White Hart at Crayminster, after some negotiations, produced mutton cutlets and Australian hock. 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 parlour. It must certainly he felt be the bar parlour....

He could not hear distinctly, and yet it seemed to him that the conversational style of Crayminster was abnormally rich in expletive. And the tone was odd. It had a steadfast quality of commination.

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 parlours that are so infinitely more pleasant to the eye than the tawdry decorations of the genteel 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 floury tweeds, with a floury 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 ruddy-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 hearthrug 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 thirteen. Sturdy, resolute-looking little fellow with a high colour, 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 ’im,” the man with the big head managed to say at last.

“We seen ’im 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 ’im 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?”

“Thunderin’ vicious little varmint,” said the butcher. “Owdacious.”

“Mr. Benshaw,” said the voice from the shadows, “’E’s arter ’im now with a shot gun loaded up wi’ oats. ’E’ll pepper ’im if ’e gets ’im, Bill will, you bet your ’at. And serve ’im jolly well right _tew_.”

“I doubt,” said the baker, “I doubt if I’ll ever get my stummik—not thoroughly proper again. It’s a Blow I’ve ’ad. ’E give me a Blow. Oh! Mr. ’Orrocks, _could_ I trouble you for another thimbleful of brandy? Just a thimbleful neat. It eases the ache....”