CHAPTER VIITHE BATTLE OF CRAYMINSTER
Bealby was beginning to realize that running away from one’s situation and setting up for oneself is not so easy and simple a thing as it had appeared during those first days with the caravan. Three things he perceived had arisen to pursue him, two that followed in the daylight, the law and the tramp, and a third that came back at twilight, the terror of the darkness. And within there was a hollow faintness, for the afternoon was far advanced and he was extremely hungry. He had dozed away the early afternoon in the weedy corner of a wood. But for his hunger I think he would have avoided Crayminster.
Within a mile of that place he had come upon the ‘Missing’ notice again stuck to the end of a barn. He had passed it askance, and then with a sudden inspiration returned and tore it down. Somehow with the daylight his idea of turning King’s Evidence against the tramp had weakened. He no longer felt sure.
Mustn’t one wait and be asked first to turn King’s Evidence?
Suppose they said he had merely confessed....
The Crayminster street had a picturesque nutritious look. Half-way down it was the White Hart with cyclist club signs on its walls and geraniums over a white porch, and beyond a house being built and already at the roofing pitch. To the right was a baker’s shop diffusing a delicious suggestion of buns and cake and to the left a little comfortable sweetstuff window and a glimpse of tables and a board: ‘Teas.’ Tea! He resolved to break into his ninepence boldly and generously. Very likely they would boil him an egg for a penny or so. Yet on the other hand if he just had three or four buns, soft new buns. He hovered towards the baker’s shop and stopped short. That bill was in the window!
He wheeled about sharply and went into the sweetstuff shop and found a table with a white cloth and a motherly little woman in a large cap. Tea? He could have an egg and some thick bread and butter and a cup of tea for fivepence. He sat down respectfully to await her preparations.
But he was uneasy.
He knew quite well that she would ask him questions. For that he was prepared. He said he was walking from his home in London to Someport to save the fare. “But you’re so dirty!” said the motherly little woman. “I sent my luggage by post, ma’m, and I lost my way and didn’t get it. And I don’t much mind, ma’m, if you don’t. Not washing....”
All that he thought he did quite neatly. But he wished there was not that bill in the baker’swindow opposite and he wished he hadn’t quite such a hunted feeling. A faint claustrophobia affected him. He felt the shop might be a trap. He would be glad to get into the open again. Was there a way out behind if for example a policeman blocked the door? He hovered to the entrance while his egg was boiling and then when he saw a large fat baker surveying the world with an afternoon placidity upon his face, he went back and sat by the table. He wondered if the baker had noted him.
He had finished his egg; he was drinking his tea with appreciative noises, when he discovered that the bakerhadnoted him. Bealby’s eyes, at first inanely open above the tilting tea cup, were suddenly riveted on something that was going on in the baker’s window. From where he sat he could see that detestable bill, and then slowly, feeling about for it, he beheld a hand and a floury sleeve. The bill was drawn up and vanished and then behind a glass shelf of fancy bread and a glass shelf of buns something pink and indistinct began to move jerkily.... It was a human face and it was trying to peer into the little refreshment shop that sheltered Bealby....
Bealby’s soul went faint.
He had one inadequate idea. “Might I go out,” he said, “by your back way?”
“There isn’t a back way,” said the motherly little woman. “There’s a yard—.”
“If I might,” said Bealby, and was out in it.
No way at all! High walls on every side. He was back like a shot in the shop, and now thebaker was half-way across the road. “Fivepence,” said Bealby and gave the little old woman sixpence. “Here,” she cried, “take your penny!”
He did not wait. He darted out of the door.
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. 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. 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 forBealby. 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. His straw-coloured hat which had recently been wetted and dried in the sun was a swaying mop. The sight of Bealby seemed to rouse him from some disagreeable meditations. He grasped the situation with a terrible quickness. Regardless of the wisdom of the pastoral Berbers he extended his arms and stood prepared to intercept.
Bealby thought at the rate of a hundred thoughts to the minute. He darted sideways and was up the ladder and among the beams and rafters of the unfinished roof before the pursuit had more than begun. “Here, come off that,” cried the foreman builder, only now joining in the hunt with any sincerity. He came across the road while Bealby regarded him wickedly from the rafters above. Then as the good man made to ascend Bealby got him neatly on the hat, it was a bowler hat, with a tile. This checked the advance. There was a disposition to draw a little off and look up at Bealby. One of the younger builders from the opposite sidewalk got him very neatly in the ribs with a stone. But two other shots went wide and Bealby shifted to a more covered position behind the chimney stack.
From here, however, he had a much less effective command of the ladder, and he perceived that his tenure of the new house was not likely to be a long one.
Below, men parleyed. “Whois’e?” asked the foreman builder. “Where’d ’e come from?” “’E’s a brasted little thief,” said the tramp. “’E’s one of the wust characters on the road.” The baker was recovering his voice now. “There’s a reward out for ’im,” he said, “and ’e butted me in the stummick.”
“’Ow much reward?” asked the foreman builder.
“Five pound for the man who catches him.”
“’Ere!” cried the foreman builder in an arresting voice to the tramp. “Just stand away from that ladder....”
Whatever else Bealby might or might not be, one thing was very clear about him and that was that he was a fugitive. And the instinct of humanity is to pursue fugitives. Man is a hunting animal, enquiry into the justice of a case is an altogether later accretion to his complex nature, and that is why, whatever you are or whatever you do, you should never let people get you on the run. 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. The only spark of humansympathy for him below was in the heart of the little old woman in the cap who had given him his breakfast. She surveyed the roof of the new house from the door of her shop, she hoped Bealby wouldn’t hurt himself up there, and she held his penny change clutched in her hand in her apron pocket with a vague idea that perhaps presently if he ran past she could very quickly give it him.