CHAPTER IVTHE UNOBTRUSIVE PARTING
Monday was a happy day for Bealby.
The caravan did seventeen miles and came to rest at last in a sloping field outside a cheerful little village set about a green on which was a long tent professing to be a theatre.... At the first stopping-place that possessed a general shop Mrs. Bowles bought Bealby a pair of boots. Then she had a bright idea. “Got any pocket money, Dick?” she asked.
She gave him half a crown, that is to say she gave him two shillings and sixpence, or five sixpences or thirty pennies—according as you choose to look at it—in one large undivided shining coin.
Even if he had not been in love, here surely was incentive to a generous nature to help and do distinguished services. He dashed about doing things. The little accident on Sunday had warned him to be careful of the plates, and the only flaw upon a perfect day’s service was the dropping of an egg on its way to the frying pan for supper. It remained where it fell and there presently he gave it a quiet burial. There was nothing else to be done with it....
All day long at intervals Miss Philips smiled at him and made him do little services for her. 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 was calledBrothers in Blood, or the Gentleman Ranker. There was a poster—which was only very slightly justified by the performance—of a man in khaki with a bandaged head proposing to sell his life dearly over a fallen comrade.
One went to the play through an open and damaged field gate and across trampled turf. Outside the tent were two paraffin flares illuminating the poster and a small cluster of the impecunious young. Within on grass that was worn and bleached were benches, a gathering audience, a piano played by an off-hand lady, and a drop scene displaying the Grand Canal, Venice. The Grand Canal was infested by a crowded multitude of zealous and excessive reflections of the palaces above and by peculiar crescentic black boats floating entirely out of water and having no reflections at all. The off-hand lady gave abroad impression of the wedding march in Lohengrin, and the back seats assisted by a sort of gastric vocalization called humming and by whistling between the teeth. Madeleine Philips evidently found it tremendous fun, even before the curtain rose.
And then—illusion....
The scenery was ridiculous; it waved about, the actors and actresses were surely the most pitiful of their tribe and every invention in the play impossible, but the imagination of Bealby, like the loving kindness of God, made no difficulties; it rose and met and embraced and gave life to all these things. It was a confused story in the play, everybody was more or less somebody else all the way through, and it got more confused in Bealby’s mind, but it was clear from the outset that there was vile work afoot, nets spread and sweet simple people wronged. And never were sweet and simple people quite so sweet and simple. There was the wrongful brother who was weak and wicked and the rightful brother who was vindictively, almost viciously, good, and there was an ingrained villain who was a baronet, a man who wore a frock coat and a silk hat and carried gloves and a stick in every scene and upon all occasions—that sort of man. He looked askance, always. There was a dear simple girl, with a vast sweet smile, who was loved according to their natures by the wrongful and the rightful brother, and a large wicked red-clad, lip-biting woman whose passions made the crazy little stage quiver. There was a comic butler—very different stufffrom 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. And when they were told what, he applauded. And yet they kept on with their wickedness to the very curtain. They retired—askance to the end. Foiled but pursuing. “A time will come,” they said.
There was a moment in the distresses of the heroine when Bealby dashed aside a tear. And then at last most wonderfully it all came right. The company lined up and hoped that Bealby was satisfied. Bealby wished he had more hands. His heart seemed to fill his body. Ohprime! prime!...
And out he came into the sympathetic night. But he was no longer a trivial Bealby; his soul was purged, he was a strong and silent man, ready to explode into generous repartee or nerve himself for high endeavour. He slipped off in the opposite direction from the caravan because he wanted to be alone for a time andfeel. He did not want to jar upon a sphere of glorious illusion that had blown up in his mind like a bubble....
He was quite sure that he had been wronged. Not to be wronged is to forego the first privilegeof goodness. He had been deeply wronged by a plot,—all those butlers were in the plot or why should they have chased him,—he was much older than he really was, it had been kept from him, and in truth he was a rightful earl. “Earl Shonts,” he whispered; and indeed, why not? And Madeleine too had been wronged; she had been reduced to wander in this uncomfortable caravan; this Gipsy Queen; she had been brought to it by villains, the same villains who had wronged Bealby....
Out he went into the night, the kindly consenting summer night, where there is nothing to be seen or heard that will contradict these delicious wonderful persuasions.
He was so full of these dreams that he strayed far away along the dark country lanes and had at last the utmost difficulty in finding his way back to the caravan. And when ultimately he got back after hours and hours of heroic existence it did not even seem that they had missed him. It did not seem that he had been away half an hour.