CHAPTER 7 THE BATTLE OF CREEMINSTER PART I Everybody was beginning to realize that running away from one 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 creminster. Within a mile of that place he had come upon the missing notice again stuck to the end of a barn. He had passed at a scance 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. Didn't one wait and be asked first to turn king's evidence? Suppose they said he had merely confessed. The creminster street had a picturesque, nutritious look. Halfway down it was the white heart 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 into the left a little comfortable sweet-stuff 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 sweet-stuff 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 five pence. 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 some port to save the fare.  I sent my luggage by post, ma'am, and I lost my way and didn't get it. And I don't much mind, ma'am, if you don't. Not washing. All that he thought he did quite neatly. But he wished there was not that bell in the baker's window 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 baker had noted him. Gilby's eyes, at first innately open above the tilting teacup, 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 flowery sleeve. The bill was drawn up and vanished and then behind a glass shelf, a 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 Gilby. Gilby's soul went faint. He had one inadequate idea. Might I go out, he said, by your back way.  There's a yard, if I might, said Gilby, 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 the baker was halfway across the road. Five pints, said Gilby, and gave the little old woman six pints. 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 Gilby 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 smoked Gilby'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 seemed probable to Gilby 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 admitted, stop him. In large whispers, away ahead there were only three builders men sitting under the wall beyond the white heart, consuming tea out of their teacans. But the boy who was trimming the top of the tall privé hedge outside the doctors 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 Gilby. A young man from anywhere, perhaps the grocer's shop, also started for Gilby. But the workmen were slow to rise to the occasion. Gilby 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-colored hat, which had recently been wetted and dried in the sun, was a swaying mop. The sight of Gilby seemed to rouse him from some disagreeable meditations. He grasped the situation with a terrible quickness. Regardless of the wisdom of the pastoral burbers, he extended his arms and stood prepared to intercept. Gilby thought at the rate of a hundred thoughts to the minute. He darted sideways, and was up the ladder, and among the beams and raptors 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 Gilby regarded him wickedly from the rafters above. Then as the good man made to ascend, Gilby 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 Gilby. 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 Gilby 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 parlayed. Who is he? asked the foreman builder. Where'd he come from? He's a brassed little thief, said the tramp. He's one of the worst characters on the road. The baker was recovering his voice now. There's a reward out for him, he said, and he butted me in the stomach. How much reward? asked the foreman builder. Five pound for the man who catches him. Eek! cried the foreman builder in an arresting voice to the tramp. Stand away from that ladder! Whatever else Bilby 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.  There is a joy in the mere fact of hunting. The sight of a scarlet coat and a hound will brighten a whole village.  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.  The only spark of human sympathy 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 Bilby 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. Part two. Considerable delay in delivering the assault on the house was caused by the foreman's insistence that he alone should ascend the ladder to capture Bilby. He was one of those regular featured men with large heads who seemed to have inflexible backbones. He was large and fair and full with a Swedish chest voice and in all his movements, authoritative and deliberate. Whenever he made to ascend, he discovered that people were straying into his building, and he had to stop and direct his men how to order them off. Inside his large head, he was trying to arrange everybody to cut off Bilby's line of retreat without risking that anybody but himself should capture the fugitive. It was none too easy, and it knitted his brows. Meanwhile, Bilby was able to reconnoiter the adjacent properties and to conceive plans for a possible line of escape. He also got a few tiles handy against when the rush of the ladder came. At the same time, two of the younger workmen were investigating the possibility of getting at him from inside the house. There was still no staircase, but there were ways of clamoring.  In their pockets, they had a number of stones, ammunition and reserve, if it came again to throwing. Bilby 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 and informal assembly of leading citizens, a little recovered now from their first nervousness about flying tiles, discussed the problem of Bilby. There was Mumby, the draper and vegetarian, with the base voice, and the big black beard. He advocated the fire engine. He was one of the volunteer fire brigade and never so happy as when he was wearing his helmet. He had come out of his shop at the shouting. Shock's the butcher and his boy were also in the street. Shock's yard, with its heap of manure and fodder, bounded the new house on the left. Raimel the vet emerged from the billiard room of the white heart, and with his head a little on one side was watching Bilby and replying attentively to the baker, who was asking him a number of questions that struck him as irrelevant. All the white-heart people were in the street. I suppose, Mr. Raimel, said the baker, there's a mort of dangerous things in a man's belly around about his stomach. Tile, said Mr. Raimel, loose bricks. It wouldn't do if he started dropping those. I was saying, Mr. Raimel, said the baker, after a pause for digestion, is a man likely to be injured badly by a blah in his stomach. Mr. Raimel stared at him for a moment with unresponsive eyes. More likely to get you in the head, he said, and then, here, what's that fool of a carpenter going to do? The tramp was hovering on the outskirts of the group of besiegers, vindictive but dispirited. He had been brought to from his fit and given a shilling by the old gentleman, but he was dreadfully wet between his shirt. He wore a shirt under three waistcoats and a coat, and his skin, because the old gentleman's method of revival had been to syringe him suddenly with cold water. It had made him weep with astonishment and misery. Now he saw no advantage in claiming Bilby publicly. His part, he felt, was rather a waiting one. What he had to say to Bilby could be best said without the assistance of a third person, and he wanted to understand more of this talk about a reward, if there was a reward out for Bilby. That's not a bad dodge, said Raimel, changing his opinion of the form, and 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, because of the extreme care he took to keep his head protected, but no tiles came. Bilby had discovered a more dangerous attack developing inside the house and was already in retreat down the other side of the building. He did a leap that might have hurt him badly, taking off from the corner of the house and jumping a good twelve feet onto a big heap of straw in the butchers yard. He went down on all fours and felt a little jarred for an instant, and then he was up again, and had scrambled up by a heap of manure to the top of the butchers wall. He was over that, and into McCollum's yard next door, before anyone in the front of the new house had realized that he was in flight. Then one of the two workmen who had been coming up inside the house saw him from the oblong opening that was some day to be the upstairs-bedroom window and gave tongue. It was thirty seconds later, and after Bilby had vanished from the butchers wall that the foreman still clinging to his hod appeared over the ridge of the roof. At the workmen's shout, the policeman, who, with the preventive disposition of his profession, had hitherto been stopping anyone from coming into the unfinished house, turned about and ran into its brick and plaster and timber-littered backyard, whereupon the crowd in the street, realizing that the quarry had gone away and no longer restrained, came pouring partly through the house and partly round through the butchers gate into his yard. Bilby had had a check. He had relied upon the tarred felt roof of the mushroom shed of McCollum, the tailor and breeches-maker, to get him to the wall that gave upon Mr. Bencho's strawberry fields, and he had not seen from his roof above the ramshackle-glazed outhouse, which McCollum called his workroom, and in which four industrious tailors were working in an easy disabeal. The roof of the shed was the nearest tarred touchwood. It had perished as felt long ago. It collapsed under Bilby. He went down into a confusion of mushrooms and mushroom bed. He blundered out, trailing mushrooms and spawn and rich matter.  But by a happy use of the top of the dustbin, he did just get away over the wall in time, and the red-slippered tailor, who was not good at walls, was left struggling to imitate an ascent that had looked easy enough until he came to try it. For a moment the little tailor struggled alone, and then both McCollum's little domain and the butcher's yard next door and the little patch of space behind the new house were violently injected with a crowd of active people, all confusedly on the Bilby trail. Someone he never knew who gave the little tailor a leg up, and then his red slippers twinkled over the wall, and he was leading the hunt into the market gardens of Mr. Benshaw. A collarless colleague in list slippers and conspicuous braces followed. The policeman, after he had completed the rack of Mr. McCollum's mushroom shed, came next, and then Mr. McCollum, with no sense of times and seasons, anxious to have a discussion at once upon the question of this damage. Mr. McCollum was out of breath, and he never got further with this projected conversation, then, here, this he repeated several times his opportunity seemed to offer. The remaining tailors got to the top of the wall more sedately with the help of the McCollum kitchen steps and dropped. Mr. Shocks followed, breathing hard, and then a fresh jet of humanity came squirting into the gardens through a gap in the fence at the back of the building site. This was led by the young workmen who had first seen Bilby go away. Hard behind him came Ramel, the vet, the grocer's assistant, the doctor's page-boy, and, lest briskly, the baker, then the tramp, then Mumbie and Shocks-boy, then a number of other people. The seeking of Bilby had assumed the dimensions of a hue and cry. The foreman with the large head and the upright back was still on the new roof. He was greatly distressed at the turn things had taken and shouted his claims to a major share in the capture of Bilby, mixed with his opinions of Bilby and a good deal of mere swearing, to a sunny but unsympathetic sky. Part III Mr. Benchow was a small holder, a sturdy English yeoman of the new school. He was an anti-socialist, a self-helper, an independent spirited man. He had a steadily growing banking account and a plain but sterile wife. And he was dark in complexion and so erect in his bearing as to seem a little to lean forward. Usually he were a sort of grey gamekeeper suit with brown gators, except on Sundays when the coat was black. He was addicted to bowler hats that accorded ill with his large, grey, coloured face, and he was altogether a very sound, strong man. His bowler hats did but accentuate that. He had no time for vanities, even the vanity of dressing consistently. He went into the nearest shop and just bought the cheapest hat he could. And so he got hats designed for the youthful and giddy, hats with flighty crowns and flippant bows and amorous brims that undulated attractively to set off lush and foolish young faces. It made his unrelenting face look rather like the Puritans under the Stuart monarchy. He was a horticulturist rather than a farmer. He had begun his career in cheap lodgings with a field of early potatoes and cabbages, supplemented by employment, but with increased prosperity his area of cultivation had extended and his methods intensified. He now grew considerable quantities of strawberries, raspberries, celery, sea kale, asparagus, early peas, late peas, and onions and consumed more stable manure than any other cultivator within ten miles of creminster. He was beginning to send cut flowers to London. He had half an acre of glass and he was rapidly extending it. He had built himself a cottage on lines of austere economy and a bony-looking dwelling house for some of his men. He also owned a number of useful sheds of which tar and corrugated iron were conspicuous features. His home was furnished with the utmost respectability and notably joyless even in a countryside where gaiety is regarded as an impossible quality and furniture. He was already in a small local way a mortgagee. Good fortune had not turned the head of Mr. Ben Shaw nor robbed him of the feeling that he was a particularly deserving person entitled to a preferential treatment from a country which in his plain, unsparing way he felt that he enriched. In many ways he thought that the country was careless of his needs and in none more careless than in the laws relating to trespass. Across his dominions ran three footpaths and one of these led to the public elementary school. That he should have to maintain this ladder and if he did not keep it in good order the children spread out and made parallel tracks among his cultivations seemed to him a thing almost intolerably unjust. He mended it with cinders, a settling refuse which he believed and hoped to be thoroughly bad for boots and a particularly slimy chalky clay and he put on a board at each end, keep to the footpaths. Trespassers will be prosecuted by order, which he painted himself to save expense when he was confined indoors by the influenza. Still more unjust it would be he felt for him to spend money upon effective fencing and he could find no fencing cheap enough and ugly enough and painful enough and impossible enough to express his feelings in the matter. Every day the children streamed to and fro, marking how his fruits ripened and his produce became more escalant and other people pursued these tracks. Many, Mr. Ben Shaw was convinced, went to and fro through his orderly crops who had no business whatever, no honest business to pass that way. Either he concluded they did it to annoy him or they did it to injure him. This continual invasion aroused in Mr. Ben Shaw all that stern anger against unrighteousness latent in our race which more than any other single force has made America and the Empire what they are today. Once already he had been robbed, arrayed upon his raspberries and he felt convinced that at any time he might be robbed again. He had made representations to the local authority to get the footpath closed but in vain. They defended themselves with the paltry excuse that the children would then have to go nearly a mile round to the school. It was not only the tyranny of these footpaths that offended Mr. Ben Shaw's highly developed sense of individual liberty all round his rather straggling dominions his neighbors displayed an ungenerous indisposition to maintain their fences to his satisfaction. In one or two places in abandonment of his clear rights in the matter he had at his own expense supplemented these lax defenses with light barbed wire defenses but it was not a very satisfactory sort of barbed wire.  He wanted barbed wire that would start out after nightfall and attack pastors by. This boundary trouble was universal. In a way it was worse than the footpaths which after all only affected the cage fields where his strawberries grew except for the yard and garden walls of McCollum and shocks and that side there was not really a satisfactory foot of enclosure all round Mr. Ben Shaw. On the one side rats and people's dogs and scratching cats came in on the other side rabbits. The rabbits were intolerable and recently there had been a rise of nearly 30% in the price of wire netting. Mr. Ben Shaw wanted to hurt rabbits. He did not want simply to kill them. He wanted so to kill them as to put the fear of death into the burrows.  I have made this lengthy statement of Mr. Ben Shaw's economic and moral difficulties in order that the reader should understand the peculiar tension that already existed upon this side of Kramerster. It has been necessary to do so now because in a few seconds there will be no further opportunity for such preparations. There had been trouble, I may add very hastily, about the shooting of Mr. Ben Shaw's gun. A shower of small shot had fallen out of the twilight upon the umbrella and basket of old Mrs. Frobisher and only a week ago an unsympathetic bench after a hearing of over an hour and in the face of overwhelming evidence had refused to convict little Lucy Mumby, aged eleven, of stealing fruit from Mr. Ben Shaw's fields. She had been caught red-handed. At the very moment that Bilby was butting the baker in the stomach, Mr. Ben Shaw was just emerging from his austere cottage after a wholesome but inexpensive high tea in which he had finished up two leftover cold sausages and he was considering very deeply the financial side of a furious black fence that he had at last decided should pen in the school children from further depredations. It should be of splintery, tarred deal and high, with well-pointed tops studded with sharp nails, and he believed that by making the path only two feet wide a real saving of ground for cultivation might be made and a very considerable discomfort for the public arranged to compensate for his initial expense. The thought of a narrow lane which would in winter be characterized by an excessive slimness and from which there would be no lateral escape was pleasing to a mind by no means absolutely restricted to considerations of pounds, shillings and pence. In his hand after his custom he carried a hole on the handle of which feet were marked so that it was available not only for destroying the casual weed but also for purposes of measurement. With this he now checked his estimate and found that here he would reclaim as much as three feet of trodden waste, hereofal too. Absorbed in these calculations he heated little the growth of a certain clamour from the backs of the houses bordering on the high street. It did not appear to concern him and Mr. Benchaw made it almost ostentatiously his rule to mind his own business. His eyes remained fixed on the lumpy dusty sun-baked track that with an intelligent foresight he saw already transformed into a deterrent slew of despond for the young. Then quite suddenly the shouting took on a new note. He glanced over his shoulder almost involuntarily and discovered that after all this uproar was his business. Amazingly his business. His mouth assumed a Cromwellian fierceness, his grip tightened on his hole that anyone should dare, but it was impossible. His dominions were being invaded with a peculiar boldness and violence.  He impressed Mr. Benchaw merely as a pioneer. Some thirty yards behind him was a little collarless short-sleeved man in red slippers running with great effrontery and behind him another still more denuded lunatic, also in list slippers and with braces, braces of inconceivable levity. And then wigs. The policeman, hotly followed by Mr. McCollum, then more distraught tailors and shocks the butcher, but a louder shout heralded the main attack and Mr. Benchaw turned his eyes. Already they were slightly bloodshot eyes, to the right and saw pouring through the broken hedge a disorderly crowd, Ramell whom he had counted his friend, the grocer's assistant, the doctor's boy, some strangers, Mumby. At the sight of Mumby Mr. Benchaw leapt at the conclusion. He saw it all. The whole place was rising against him. They were asserting some infernal new right of way. Mumby. Mumby had got them to do it. All the fruits of fifteen years of toil, all the care and accumulation of Mr. Benchaw's prime, were to be trampled and torn to please a draper's spite. Sturdy Yeoman, as Mr. Benchaw was, he resolved instantly to fight for his liberties. One moment he paused to blow the powerful police whistle he carried in his pocket and then rush forward in the direction of the hated Mumby, the leader of trespassers, the parent and a better and defender of the criminal Lucy. He took the hurrying, panting man, almost unawares, and with one wild sweep of the hoe felled him to the earth. Then he staggered about and smote again, but not quite in time to get the head of Mr. Ramell. This whistle he carried was part of a systematic campaign he had developed against trespassers and fruit-stealers. He and each of his assistants carried one, and at the first shrill note, it was his rule, everyone seized on every weapon that was handy and ran to pursue and capture. All his assistants were extraordinarily prompt in responding to these alarms, which were often the only break in long days of strenuous and strenuously directed toil. So now with an astonishing promptitude and animated faces, men appeared from sheds and greenhouses and distant patches of culture hastening to the assistance of their dour employer. It says much for the amiable relations that existed between employers and employed in those days before syndicalism became the creed of the younger workers that they did hurry to his assistance. But many rapid things were to happen before they came into action. For first a strange excitement seized upon the tramp. A fantastic delusive sense of social rehabilitation took possession of his soul. Here he was pitted against a formidable, whole-wielding man who for some inscrutable reason was resolved to cover the retreat of Bilby. And all the world it seemed was with the tramp and against this whole-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. The tramp had a vision of himself as a respectable man heroically leading respectable people against outcasts. He dashed the lank here from his eyes, waved his arms laterally, and then with a loud strange cry flung himself towards Mr. Benchah. Two pairs of superimposed coattails flapped behind him, and then the hoe whistled through the air and the tramp fell to the ground like a sack. But now Shock's boy had grasped his opportunity. He had been working discreetly around behind Mr. Benchah and as the hoe smote he leapt upon that hero's back and seized him about the neck with both arms and bore him staggering to the ground. And Raimel equally quick and used to the tackling of formidable creatures had snatched and twisted away the hoe and grappled Mr. Benchah almost before he was down. The first of Mr. Benchah's helpers to reach the fray found the issue decided. His master held down conclusively and a growing circle trampling down a wide area of strawberry plants about the panting group. Mr.  What do you mean? Gassed Mr. Raimel, hitting people about with that hoe. What do you mean? Grown Mr. Benchah, running across my strawberries. We were going after that boy. Pounds and pounds worth of damage. Mischief and wickedness. Mumby. Mr. Raimel suddenly realizing the true values of the situation released Mr. Benchah's hands and knelt up. Look here Mr. Benchah, he said. You seem to be under the impression we are trespassing. Mr. Benchah struggling into a sitting position was understood to inquire with some heat what Mr. Raimel called it. Shock's boy picked up the hat with the erotic brim and handed it to the horticulturist silently and respectfully. We were not trespassing. Said Mr. Raimel. We were following up that boy. He was trespassing if you like. By the by. Where is the boy? Has anyone caught him? At the question attention which had been focused upon Mr. Benchah and his hoe came around. Across the field in the direction of the sunlit half acre of glass the little tailor was visible standing gingerly and picking up his red slippers for the third time. They would come off in that loose good soil everybody else had left the trail to concentrate on Mr. Benchah and Bilby. Bilby was out of sight. He had escaped. Clean got away. What boy? asked Mr. Benchah.  Been committing all sorts of crimes about the country. Five pounds reward for him. Fruits dealing? asked Mr. Benchah. Yes. said Mr. Ramell. Chancing it. Mr. Benchah reflected slowly. His eyes surveyed his trampled crops. Oh lord he cried. Look at those strawberries. His voice gathered violence. And that loathe there. He said. Why? He's lying on them. That's the brute who went for me. You got him a pretty tidy one side the head. Said McCullum. The tram pulled over on some fresh strawberries and grown pitifully. He's hurt. Said Mr. Mumby. The tram flopped and lay still. Get some water. Said Ramell. Standing up. At the word water the tram started convulsively. Rolled over and sat up with a dazed expression. No water. He said weakly. No more water. And then catching Mr. Benchah's eye he got rather quickly to his feet. Everybody who wasn't already standing was getting up and everyone now was rather carefully getting himself off any strawberry plant. He had chance to find himself smashing in the excitement of the occasion. That's the man that started in on me. Said Mr. Benchah. What's he doing here? Who is he? Who are you, my man? What business have you to be careering over this field? Asked Mr. Ramell. I was only helping, said the tramp. Nice help, said Mr. Benchah. I thought that boy was a thief or something. And so you made a rush at me? I didn't exactly. Sir, I thought you was helping him. You be off anyhow, said Mr. Benchah. Whatever you thought. Yes. You be off, said Mr. Ramell. That's the way, my man, said Mr. Benchah. We haven't any jobs for you. The sooner we have you out of it, the better for everyone. Get right onto the path and keep it. And with a desolating sense of exclusion the tramp withdrew. There's pounds and pounds worth of damage here, said Mr. Benchah. This job will cost me a pretty penny. Look at them berries there. Why, they ain't fit for jam. And all done by one confounded boy. An evil light came into Mr. Benchah's eyes. You leave him to me in my chaps. If he's gone up among those sheds there, we'll settle with him. Anyhow, there's no reason why my fruit should be trampled worse than it has been. Fruit stealer you say he is. They live on the country this time of year, said Mr. Mumby. And catch them doing a day's work picking, said Mr. Benchah. I know this sort. There's a reward of five pounds for him already, said the baker. Part four. You perceive how humanitarian motives may sometimes defeat their own end and how little Lady Laxton's well-intentioned handbells were serving to rescue Bilby. Instead they were turning him into a scared and hunted animal. In spite of its manifest impossibility, he was convinced that the reward and this pursuit had to do with his burglary of the poultry farm and that his capture would be but the preliminary to prison, trial, and sentence. His one remaining idea was to get away, but his escape across the market gardens had left him so blown and spent that he was obliged to hide up for a time in this perilous neighborhood before going on. He saw a disused looking shed in the lowest corner of the gardens behind the greenhouses and by doubling sharply along a hedge he got to it unseen. It was not disused. Nothing in Mr. Benshaw's possession ever was absolutely disused, but it was filled with horticultural lumber, with old calcium carbide tins, with broken wheelbarrows and damaged ladders awaiting repair, with some ragged wheeling planks and surplus rolls of roofing felt. At the back were some unhinged shed doors leaning against the wall and between them Bilby tucked himself neatly and became still, glad of any respite from the chase. He would wait for twilight and then get away across the meadows at the back and then go— He didn't know wither, and now he had no confidence in the wild world any more. The quamapome sickness for the compact little gardener's cottage at Shantz came to Bilby. Why, as a matter of fact, wasn't he there now? He ought to have tried more at Shantz. He ought to have minded what they told him and not have taken up a toasting fork against Thomas. Then he wouldn't now have been a hunted burglar with a reward of five pounds on his head and nothing in his pocket but three pints and a pack of greasy playing-cards, a box of sulfur matches, and various objectionable sundries, none of which were properly his own. If only he could have his time over again. Such wholesome reflections occupied his thoughts until the onset of the dusk stirred him to departure. He crept out of his hiding place and stretched his limbs, which had got very stiff, and was on the point of reconnoitering from the door of the shed when he became aware of stealthy footsteps outside.  For a long time it seemed the unseen waited, listening. Had he heard Bilby? Then someone fumbled with the door of the shed. It opened, and there was a long pause of cautious inspection. Then the unknown had shuffled into the shed and sat down on a heap of matting. Gah! said a voice. The tramps. If I ever struck a left-handed mascot it was that boy, said the tramp. The little swine. For the better part of two minutes he went on from this mild beginning to a descriptive elaboration of Bilby. For the first time in his life Bilby learned how unfavorable 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? And then say you thought it bring him rand. Bring him rand.   What's a shilling for wetting a man to his skin? Wet through I was. Running inside my shirt. Dripping. And then the blooming boy clears. I don't know what boys are coming to. Cried the tramp. These board schools it is. Gets old of everything he can and bunks. If I get my hands on him, I'll show him. I'll. For some time the tramp reveled in the details for the most part crudely surgical of his vengeance upon Bilby. Then there's that dog bite. How do I know how that's going to turn at? If I get hydrophobia, bloat if I don't bite some of them. Hydrophobia. Screaming and foaming. Nice death for a man. My time of life. Bark I shall. Bark and bite. And this is your world, said the tramp. This is the world you put people into and expect them to be happy.  I'd enjoy biting him. I'd spit it out, but I'd bite it right enough. Wiping a bat with his, ah, gah.  Be off with you. Slash.  Where's the justice of it? Showed at the tramp. Where's the right in the sense of it? What have I done that I should always get the underside? Why should I be stuck on the underside of everything? There's worse men than me in all sorts of positions. Judges there are. Horrible. Correctors. Ministers and people. I've read about them in the papers. Its weak tramps are the scapegoats. Somebody's got to suffer so as the police can show a face. Gah! Some of these days I'll do something. I'll do something. You'll drive me too far with it, I tell you. He stopped suddenly and listened. Bilby had creaked. Gah! What can one do? Said the tramp after a long interval. And then complaining more gently the tramp began to feel about to make his simple preparations for the night. Unt me out of this I expect, said the tramp. And many sleeping in feather beds that ain't fit too old a candle to me. Not a ordinary farthing candle. End of Section 11 Chapter 7 Of Bilby 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 Tracy Duckett Bilby a Holiday by H. G. Wells Chapter 7 The Battle of Kramernster Part 5 The subsequent hour or so was an interval of tedious tension for Bilby. After vast spaces of time he was suddenly aware of three vertical threads of light. He stared at them with mysterious awe until he realized that they were just the moonshines streaming through the cracks of the shed. The tramp tossed and muttered in his sleep. Footsteps? Yes, footsteps. Then voices. They were coming along by the edge of the field and coming and talking very discreetly. Ugh! said the tramp. And then softly, what's that? Then he too became noiselessly attentive. Bilby could hear his own heart beating. The men were now close outside the shed. He wouldn't go in there. Said Mr. Bencha's voice. He wouldn't dare. Anyhow, we'll go up by the glass first. I'll let him have the whole barrel full of oats if I get a glimpse of him. If he'd gone away they'd have caught him in the road. The footsteps receded. There came a cautious rustling on the part of the tramp and then his feet padded softly to the door of the shed. He struggled to open it and then with a jerk got it open a few inches. A great bar of moonlight leapt and lay still across the floor of the shed. Bilby advanced his head cautiously until he could see the black obscure indications of the tramp's back as he peeped out. Now, whispered the tramp and opened the door wider. Then he ducked his head down and darted out of sight leaving the door open behind him. Bilby questioned whether he should follow. He came out a few steps and then went back at a shout from away up the garden. There he goes. Shouted a voice. In the shadow of the hedge. Look out, Jim. Ping. And a yelp. Stand away. I've got another barrel. Ping. Then silence for a time and then the footsteps coming back. That off to teach him, said Mr. Benchaw. First time I got him fair and I think I peppered him a bit the second. Couldn't see very well but I heard him yell. He won't forget that in a hurry, not him. There's nothing like oats for fruit stealers.  That's where he was hiding. It seemed a vast time to Bilby before he ventured out into the summer moonlight and a very pitiful and outcast little Bilby he felt himself to be. He was beginning to realize what it means to go beyond the narrow securities of human society. He had no friends. No friends at all. He caught at and arrested a sob of self-pity. Perhaps after all it was not so late as Bilby had supposed. There were still lights in some of the houses and he had the privilege of seeing Mr. Benshaw going to bed with pence of deliberation. Mr. Benshaw wore a flannel night-shirt and said quite a lengthy prayer before extinguishing his candle. Then suddenly Bilby turned nervously and made off through the hedge. A dog had barked. At first there were nearly a dozen lighted windows in Kramernster. They went out one by one. He hung for a long time with a passionate earnestness on the sole surviving one but that too went at last. He could have wept when at last it winked out. He came down into the marshy flats by the river but he did not like the way in which the water sucked and swirled in the vague moonlight. Also he suddenly discovered a great white horse standing quite still in the misty grass not thirty yards away. So he went up to and crossed the high road and wandered up the hillside towards the allotments which attracted him by reason of the sociability of the numerous toolsheds. In a hedge near at hand a young rabbit squealed sharply and was stilled. Why? Then something like a short snake scrambled by very fast through the grass. Then he thought he saw the tramp stalking him noiselessly behind some current bushes. That went on for some time but came to nothing. Then nothing pursued him. Nothing at all. The gap, the void, came after him. The bodyless, the faceless, the formless. These are evil hunters in the night. What a cold, still, watching thing moonlight can be. He thought he would like to get his back against something solid and found near one of the sheds a little heap of litter. He sat down against good tarred boards assured at least that whatever came must come in front. Whatever he did he was resolved.  That would be fatal. He awoke in broad daylight amidst a cheerful uproar of birds. Part 6 And then again flight and pursuit were resumed. As Biltby went up the hill away from Crayminster he saw a man standing over a spade and watching his retreat and when he looked back again presently this man was following. It was Lady Laxton's five pound reward had done the thing for him. He was half-minded to surrender and have done with it but jail he knew was a dreadful thing of stone and darkness. He would make one last effort so he beat along the edge of a plantation and then crossed it and forced his way through some gorse and came upon a sunken road that crossed the hill in a gorse line cutting. He struggled down the steep bank at its foot regardless of him unaware of him a man sat beside a motor bicycle with his fist gripped tight and his head down cast swearing. A county map was crumpled in his hand. Damn! He cried and flung the map to the ground and kicked it and put his foot on it. Biltby slipped came down the bank with a run and found himself in the road within a couple of yards of the blonde features and angry eyes of Captain Douglas. When he saw the Captain and perceived himself recognized, he flopped down. A done and finished Biltby. Part 7 He had arrived just in time to interrupt the Captain in a wild and reprehensible fit of passion. The Captain imagined it was a secret fit of passion. He thought he was quite alone and that no one could hear him or see him. So he had let himself shout and stamp to work off the nervous tensions that tormented him beyond endurance. In the direest sense of the words the Captain was in love with Madeleine. He was in love quite beyond the bound set by refined and decorous people to this dangerous passion. The primordial savage that lurks in so many of us was uppermost in him. He was not in love with her prettily or delicately. He was in love with her violently and vehemently. He wanted to be with her. He wanted to be close to her. He wanted to possess her and nobody else to approach her. He was so inflamed now that no other interest in life had any importance except as it aided or interfered with this desire. He had forced himself in spite of this fever in his blood to leave her to pursue Bilby and now he was regretting this firmness furiously. He had expected to catch Bilby overnight and bring him back to the hotel in triumph. But Bilby had been elusive. There she was. Away there. Hurt and indignant. Neglected. A laggard in love. Cried the captain. A dastard in war. God I run away from everything. First I leave the maneuvers then her. Unstable as water thou shalt not prevail. Water. What does the confounded boy matter? What does he matter? And there she is. Alone. She'll flirt. Naturally she'll flirt. Don't I deserve it? Haven't I asked for it? Just the one little time we might have had together. I fling it in her face.  You laggard. You dastard. And here's this map. A breathing moment. How the devil cried the captain. Am I to find a little beast on this map? And twice he's been within reach of my hand. No decision cried the captain. No instant grip. What good is a soldier without it? What good is any man who will not leap at opportunity? I ought to have chased out last night after that fool in his oats. Then I might have had a chance. Chuck it. Chuck the whole thing. Go back to her. Kneel to her. Kiss her. Compel her. And what sort of reception am I likely to get? He crumpled the flapping map in his fist. And then suddenly out of nowhere Bilby came rolling down to his feet. A disheveled and earthy Bilby. But Bilby. Good Lord. Cried the captain. Starting to his feet and holding the map like a sword sheath. What do you want? For a second Bilby was a silent spectacle of misery. Oh, I want my breakfast. He burst out at last. Reduced to tears. Are you young Bilby? Asked the captain. Seizing him by the shoulder. There after me. Cried Bilby. If they catch me they'll put me in prison where they don't give you anything. It wasn't me did it. And I haven't had anything to eat. Not since yesterday. The captain came rapidly to a decision. There should be no more faltering. He saw his way clear before him. He would act like a whistling sword. Here. Jump up behind. He said. Hold on tight to me. Part 8 For a time there was a more than Napoleonic swiftness in the captain's movements. When Bilby's pursuer came up to the hedge that looks down into the sunken road there was no Bilby. No captain. Nothing but a torn and disheveled county map an almost imperceptible odor of petrol and a faint sound like a distant mowing machine and the motor bicycle was a mile away on the road to Beckenstone. Eight miles. Eight rather sickening miles Bilby did to Beckenstone in eleven minutes. And there in a little coffee house he was given breakfast with eggs and bacon and marmalade. Prime. And his spirit was restored to him while the captain raided a bicycle and repairing shop and negotiated the hire of an experienced but fairly comfortable wicker work trailer. And so to London through the morning sunshine leaving tramps, pursuers, policemen, handbills, bakers, market gardeners, terrors of the darkness and everything upon the road behind and further behind and remote and insignificant and so to the vanishing point. Some few words of explanation the captain had vouched safe and that was all. Don't be afraid about it. He said, Don't be in the least bit afraid. You tell them about it just simply and truthfully exactly what you did exactly how you got into it and out of it and all about it. You're going to take me up to a magistrate, sir?  Nothing at all, Bilby. You trust me. All you've got to do is to tell the simple truth. It was pretty rough going in the trailer but very exciting. If you grip the sides very hard and sat quite tight nothing very much happened and also there was a strap across your chest and you went past everything. There wasn't a thing on the road the captain didn't pass lowing deeply with his great horn when they seemed likely to block his passage. And as for the burglary and everything it will all be settled. The captain also found that ride to London exhilarating. At least he was no longer hanging about. He was getting to something. He would be able to go back to her and all his being now yearn to go back to her with things achieved with successes to show. He'd found the boy. He would go straight to dear old Uncle Chickney and Uncle Chickney would put things right with Maugridge. The boy would bear his testimony. Maugridge would be convinced and all would be well again. He might be back with Madeleine that evening. He would go back to her and she would see the wisdom and energy of all he had done and she would lift that dear chin of hers and smile that dear smile of hers and hold out her hand to be kissed and the lights and reflections would play on that strong soft neck of hers. They buzzed along stretches of common and stretches of straight edged metal land by woods and orchards by pleasant ends and slumbering villages and the gates and lodges of country houses. These latter grew more numerous and presently they skirted a town and then more road more villages and at last signs of a nearness to London more frequent houses more frequent ends hoardings and advertisements an asphalted sidewalk lamps a gasworks laundries a stretch of suburban villadom a suburban railway station a suburbanized old town an omnibus the head of a tram line a stretch of public commons thick with notice boards a broad pavement something or other parade with a row of shops London end of section 12 much older than Lord Mogerich but he had not worn nearly so well his hearing was not good though he would never admit it and the loss of several teeth greatly affected his articulation one might generalize and say that neither physically nor mentally do soldiers wear so well as lawyers the army ages men sooner than the law and philosophy it exposes them more freely to germs which undermine and destroy and it shelters them more completely from thought which stimulates and preserves a lawyer must keep his law highly polished and up-to-date or he hears of it within a fortnight a general never realizes he is out of training and behind the times until disaster is accomplished since the magnificent retreat from Bondi Satina in 87 and his five weeks defense of Barogast with the subsequent operations the abilities of Lord Chickney had never been exercised seriously at all but there was a certain simplicity of manner and a tall drooping grizzled old veteran picturesqueness about him that kept him distinguished he was easy to recognize on public occasions on account of his long mustaches and so he got pointed out when greater men were ignored the autograph collectors adored him every morning he would spend half an hour writing autographs and the habit was so strong in him that on Sundays when there was no London Post and autograph writing would have been wrong anyhow he filled the time and copying out the epistle and gospel for the day and he liked to be well in the foreground of public affairs if possible wearing his decorations after the autographs he would work sometimes for hours for various patriotic societies and more particularly for those who would impose compulsory training upon every man woman and child in the country he even belonged to a society for drilling the butcher's ponies and training big dogs as scouts he did not understand how a country could be happy unless every city was fortified and every citizen wore sidearms and the slightest air in his dietary led to the most hideous nightmares of the Channel Tunnel or reduced estimates in a land enslaved he wrote and toiled for these societies but he could not speak for them on account of his teeth for he had one peculiar weakness he had faced death in many forms but he had never faced a dentist the thought of dentists gave him just the same sick horror as the thought of invasion he was a man of blameless private life a widower and childless in later years he had come to believe that he had once been very deeply in love with his cousin Susan who had married a rather careless husband named Douglas both she and Douglas were dead now but he maintained a touching affection for her two lively rather than satisfying sons he called them his nephews and by the continuous attrition of affection he had become the recognized uncle he was glad when they came to him in their scrapes and he liked to be seen about with them in public places they regarded him with considerable confidence and respect and an affection that they sometimes blamed themselves for as not quite warm enough for his merits but there was a kind of injustice about affection he was really gratified when he got a wire from the less discreditable of these two bright young relations saying sorely in need of your advice hope to bring difficulties to you today at twelve he concluded very naturally that the boy had come to some crisis in his unfortunate entanglement with Madeline Phillips and he was flattered by the trustfulness that brought the matter to him he resolved to be delicate but wily honorable strictly honorable but steadily patiently separative he paced his spacious study with his usual warnings work neglected and rehearsed little sentences in his mind that might be effective in the approaching interview there would probably be emotion he would pat the lad on his shoulder and be himself a little emotional I understand my boy he would say I understand don't forget my boy that I've been a young man too he would be emotional he would be sympathetic but also he must be a man of the world sort of thing that won't do you know my boy sort of thing that people will not stand a soldier's wife has to be a soldier's wife and nothing else your business is to serve the king not to some celebrity lovely no doubt I don't deny the charm of her but on the hoardings my boy now don't you think don't you think there's some nice pure girl somewhere sweet as violets new as the dawn and ready to be yours a girl I mean a maiden fancy free not how shall I put it a woman of the world wonderful I admit but seasoned public my dear dear boy I knew your mother when she was a girl a sweet pure girl a thing of dewy freshness ah well I remember her all these years my boy nothing it's difficult tears stood in his brave old blue eyes as he elaborated such phrases he went up and down mumbling them through the defective teeth and the long mustache and waving an eloquent hand sub-chapter two when Lord Chickney's thoughts had once started in any direction it was difficult to turn them aside no doubt that concealed and repudiated deafness helped his natural perplexity of mind truth comes to some of us as a still small voice but Lord Chickney needed shouting and prods and Douglas did not get to him until he was finishing lunch moreover it was the weakness of Captain Douglas to talk and jerky fragments and undertones rather than clearly and fully in the American fashion tell me all about it my boy said Lord Chickney tell me all about it don't apologize for your clothes I understand motor bicycle and just come up but have you had any lunch Eric Alan uncle not Eric my brother is Eric well I called him Alan tell me all about it tell me what has happened what are you thinking of doing just put the positions before me to tell you the truth I've been worrying over this business for some time didn't know you'd heard of it uncle he can't have talked about it already anyhow you see all the awkwardness of the situation they say the old chap's a thundering spiteful old devil when he's roused and there's no doubt he was roused tremendously Lord Chickney was not listening very attentively indeed he was also talking not clear to me there was another man in it he was saying that makes it more complicated my boy makes the row acuter old fellow eh who they came to a pause at the same moment you speak so indistinctly complained Lord Chickney who did you say I thought you understood Lord Moggaridge Lord Lord Moggaridge my dear boy but how I thought you understood uncle he doesn't want to marry her Tut never why the man must be 60 if he's a day captain Douglas regarded his distinguished uncle for a moment with the stressed eyes then he came nearer raised his voice and spoke more deliberately I don't know whether you quite understand uncle I am talking about this affair at Sean's last weekend my dear boy there's no need for you to shout if only you don't mumble and clip your words and turn head over heels with your ideas just tell me about it plainly who is Sean's one of those liberal peers I seem to have heard the name Sean's uncle is the house the Laxton's have you know Lucy little Lucy I remember her curls all down her back married the milkman but how does she come in Alan the story is getting complicated but that's the worst of these infernal affairs they always do get complicated tangled skeins oh what a tangled web we weave when we first venture to deceive and now like a sensible man you want to get out of it Captain Douglas was bright pink with the effort to control himself and keep perfectly plain and straightforward his hair had become like toe and little beads of perspiration stood upon his forehead I spent last weekend at Sean's he said Lord Mageridge also there weak ending got it into his head that I was pulling his leg naturally my boy if he goes flandering at his time of life what else can he expect it wasn't flandering fine distinctions fine distinctions go on anyhow he got it into his head that I was playing practical jokes upon him confused me with Eric it led to a rather first class row I had to get out of the house nothing else to do he brought all sorts of accusations Captain Douglas stopped short his uncle was no longer attending to him they had drifted to the window of the study and the general was staring with an excitement and intelligence that grew visibly at the spectacle of Bealby and the trailer outside for Bealby had been left in the trailer and he was sitting as good as gold waiting for the next step in his vindication from the dark charge of burglary he was very travel worn and the trailer was time worn as well as travel worn and both contrasted with the efficient neatness and newness of the motor bicycle in front the contrast had attracted the attention of a tall policeman who was standing in a state of a lucatory meditation regarding Bealby Bealby was not regarding the policeman he had the utmost confidence in Captain Douglas he felt sure that he would presently be purged of all the horror of that dead old man and of the brief unpremeditated plunge into crime but still for the present at any rate he did not feel equal to staring a policeman out of countens from the window the policeman very largely obscured Bealby whenever hearts are simple there are lurks romance age cannot wither nor custom stale her infinite diversity suddenly out of your low kindly diplomacy your sane man of the world intentions leaps the imagination like a rocket flying from such safe securities bang into the sky so it happened to the old general he became deaf to everything but the appearances before him the world was jeweled with dazzling and delightful possibilities his face was lit by a glow of genuine romantic excitement he grasped his nephew's arm he pointed his grizzled cheeks flushed that isn't he asked with something verging upon admiration and his voice and manner a certain lady in disguise sub-chapter three it became clear to Captain Douglas that if ever he was to get to Lord Mogheridge that day he must take his uncle firmly in hand without even attempting not to appear to shout he cried that is a little boy that is my witness it is most important that I should get him to Lord Mogheridge to tell his story what's story cried the old commander pulling at his mustache and still eyeing Bealby suspiciously it took exactly half an hour to get Lord Chickney from that inquiry to the telephone and even then he was still far from clear about the matter in hand Captain Douglas got in most of the facts but he could not eliminate an idea that it all had to do with Madeline whenever he tried to say clearly that she was entirely outside the question the general patted his shoulder and looked very wise and kind and said my dear boy I quite understand I quite understand never mention a lady no so they started at last rather foggily so far as things of the mind went though the sun that day was brilliant and because of engine trouble in Port Street the general's handsome reached Tenby Little Street first and he got in a good five minutes preparing the Lord Chancellor tactfully and carefully before the bicycle in its trailer came upon the scene sub-chapter four Candler had been packing that morning with unusual solicitude for a weekend at Tulliver Abbey his master had returned from the catastrophe of Sean's fatigued invisibly aged and extraordinarily cross and Chandler looked to Tulliver Abbey to restore him to his former self nothing must be forgotten there must be no little hitches everything from first to last must go on oiled wheels or it was clear his lordship might develop a desperate hostility to these excursions excursions which Candler found singularly refreshing and entertaining during the stresses of the session Tulliver Abbey was as good a house as Sean's was bad Lady Czech Samington ruled with the softness of velvet and the strength of steel over a household of admirably efficient domestics and there would be the best of people there Mr. Ivisham perhaps the Loopers Lady Privet Andrea Storia and Mr. Pernambuco great silken mellow personages and diamond-like individualities amidst tomb lord Moggaridge's mind would be restfully active and his comfort quite secure and as far as possible Candler wanted to get the books and papers his master needed into the trunk or the small valise that habit of catching up everything at the last moment and putting it under his arm and the consequent need for alert picking up meant friction and nervous wear and tear for both master and man Lord Moggaridge rose at half past ten he had been kept late overnight by a heated discussion at the Aristotelian and breakfasted lightly upon a chop and coffee then something ruffled him something that came with letters Candler could not quite make out what it was but he suspected another pamphlet by Dr. Schiller it could not be the chop because Lord Moggaridge was always wonderfully successful with chops Candler looked through the envelopes and letters afterwards and found nothing diagnostic and then he observed a copy of mind torn across and lying in the waste paper basket when I went out to the room said Candler discreetly examining this very likely it's that there Schiller after all but in this Candler was mistaken what had disturbed the Lord Chancellor was a coarsely disrespectful article on the absolute by a Cambridge Rhodes Scholar written in that flighty facetious strain that spreads now like a pestilence of our modern philosophical discussion does the absolute on Lord Moggaridge's own showing mean anything more than an eloquent oiliness uniformly distributed through space and so on pretty bad Lord Moggaridge early in life had deliberately acquired a quite exceptional power of mental self-control he took his perturbed mind now and threw it forcibly into the consideration of a case upon which he had reserved judgment he was to catch the 335 at Paddington and at two he was smoking a cigar after a temperate lunch and reading over the notes of this judgment it was then that the telephone bell became audible and Candler came in to inform him that Lord Chickney was anxious to see him at once upon a matter of some slight importance slight importance asked Lord Moggaridge some slight importance my lord some slight his lordship my lord mumbles rather now his back teeth have gone said Candler but so I understand him these apologetic assertive phrases annoy me Candler said Lord Moggaridge over his shoulder you see he turned round and spoke very clearly either the matter is of importance or it is not of importance a thing must either be or not be I wish you would manage when you get messages on the telephone but I suppose that is asking too much will you explain to him Candler when we start and ask him Candler ask him what sort of matter it is Candler returned after some parlaying so far as I can make his lordship out my lord he says he wants to set you right about something my lord he says something about a little misapprehension these diminutives Candler kill sense does he say what sort what sort of little misapprehension he says something I'm sorry my lord but it's about chance my lord that I don't want to hear about it said Lord Moggaridge there was pause the Lord Chancellor resumed his reading with a deliberate obviousness the butler hovered I'm sorry my lord but I can't think exactly what I ought to say to his lordship my lord tell him tell him that I do not wish to hear anything more about chance forever simply Candler hesitated and went out shutting the door carefully lest any fragment of his halting rendering of this message to Lord Chickney should reach his master's ears Lord Moggaridge's powers of mental control were I say very great he could dismiss subjects from his mind absolutely in a few instance he had completely forgotten chance and was making notes with a silver cased pencil on the margins of his draft judgment sub chapter five he became aware that Candler had returned his lordship Lord Chickney my lord is very persistent my lord he's rung up twice he says now that he makes a personal matter of it come up May he says he wishes to speak for two minutes to your lordship over the telephone my lord he vouchsafes no further information Lord Moggaridge meditated over the end of his third after lunch cigar his man watched the end of his left eyebrow as an engineer might watch a steam gauge there were no signs of an explosion he must come Candler his lordship said at last oh Candler my lord put the bags and things in a conspicuous position in the hall Candler change yourself and see that you look thoroughly like trains and in fact have everything ready prominently ready Candler then once more Lord Moggaridge concentrated his mind sub chapter six to him there presently entered Lord Chickney Lord Chickney had been twice around the world and he had seen many strange and dusky peoples and many remarkable customs and peculiar prejudices which he had never failed to despise but he had never completely shaken off the county family ideas in which he had been brought up he believed that there was an incurable difference in spirit between quite good people like himself and men from down below like Moggaridge who was the son of an Exeter Chorister he believed that these men from nowhere always cherished the profoundest respect for the real thing like himself that they were greedy for association and gratified by notice and so for the life of him he could not approach Lord Moggaridge without a faint sense of condescension he saluted him as my dear Lord Moggaridge wrung his hand with a fusion and asked him kind almost district visiting questions about his younger brother and the aspect of his house and you are just off I see for a weekend these amenities the Lord Chancellor acknowledged by faint gruntings and an almost imperceptible movement of his eyebrows there was a matter he said some little matter on which he wanted to consult me well said Lord Chickney and rubbed his chin yes yes there was a little matter a little trouble of an urgent nature yes yes exactly just a little complicated you know not quite simple the dear old soldier's manner became almost seductive one of these difficult little affairs where one has to remember that one is a man of the world you know a little complication about a lady known to you both but one must make concessions one must understand the boy has a witness things are not as you suppose them to be Lord Moggaridge had a clean conscience about ladies he drew out his watch and looked at it aggressively he kept it in his hand during his subsequent remarks I must confess he declared I have not the remotest idea if you will be so good as to be elementary what is it all about you see I knew the lads mother said Lord Chickney in fact he became insanely confidential under happier circumstances don't misunderstand me Moggaridge I mean no evil but he might have been my son I feel for him like a son sub-chapter seven when presently Captain Douglas a little heated from his engine trouble came into the room he had left B.L.B. with Candler in the hall it was instantly manifest to him that the work of preparation had been inadequately performed one minute more my dear Alan cried Lord Chickney Lord Moggaridge with eyebrows waving and watching hand was of a different opinion he addressed himself to Captain Douglas there isn't a minute more he said what is all this this fellow progenitive rigamarole about why have you come to me my cab is outside now all this about ladies and witnesses what is it perfectly simple my lord you imagine that I played practical jokes upon you at Sean's I didn't I have a witness the attack upon you downstairs the noise in your room have I any guarantee it's the stewards boy from Sean's your man outside knows him saw him in the stewards room he made the trouble for you and me and he ran away just caught him not exchanged 30 words with him half a dozen questions settle everything then you'll know nothing for you but the utmost respect Lord Moggaridge pressed his lips together and resisted conviction in consideration interpolated Lord Chickney feelings of an old fellow old soldier boy means no harm with the rudeness of one sorely tried the Lord Chancellor thrust the old general aside oh he said oh and then the captain Douglas one minute where's your witness the captain opened the door Bealby found himself bundled into the presence of two celebrated men tell him said captain Douglas and look sharp without it tell me plainly cried Lord Chancellor and be quick he put such a point on quick that it made Bealby jump tell him to the general more gently don't be afraid well began Bealby after one accumulating pause it was him told me to do it he said you could go in there the captain would have interrupted but the Lord Chancellor restrained him by a magnificent gesture of the hand holding the watch he told you to do it he said I knew he did now listen he told you practically to go in and do anything you could yes sir whoa took possession of Bealby I didn't do any arm to the old gentleman but who told you cried the captain who told you Lord Moggaridge annihilated him with arm and eyebrows he held Bealby fascinated by a pointing finger don't do more than answer the questions I have 30 seconds more he told you to go in he made you go in at the earliest possible opportunity you got away I just nipped out enough and now sir how dare you come here without even a plausible lie how dare you after your intolerable tomfoolery at chance confront me again with fresh tomfoolery how dare you drag in your gallant and venerable uncle in this last preposterous I suppose you would call it lark I suppose you would prepare that little wrench with some fine story little you know a false witness at the first question he breaks down he does not even begin his lie he at least knows the difference between my standards and yours candler candler candler appeared these these gentlemen are going is everything ready the cab is at the door my lord the usual cab captain douglas made one last desperate effort sir he said my lord the lord chancellor turned upon him with a face that he sought to keep calm though the eyebrows waved and streamed like black smoke in a gale captain douglas he said you are probably not aware of the demands upon the time and patience of a public servant in such a position as mine you see the world no doubt as a vastly entertaining fabric upon which you can embroider your your facetious arrangements well it is not so it is real it is earnest you may sneer at the simplicity of an old man but what I tell you of life is true comic effect is not believe me its goal and you sir you sir you impress me as an intolerably foolish flippant and a necessary young man flippant unnecessary foolish as he said these words candler approached him with a dust coat of a peculiar fineness and dignity and he uttered the last words over his protruded chest while candler assisted his arms into his sleeves my lord said captain douglas again but his resolution was deserting him no said the lord chancellor leaning forward in a mandatory manner while candler pulled down the tail of his jacket and adjusted the collar of his overcoat uncle said captain douglas no said the general with the curt decision of a soldier and turned exactly 90 degrees away from him you little know how you have hurt me alan you little know I couldn't have imagined it the douglas strain false witness and insult I am sorry my dear muggeridge beyond measure I quite understand you are as much a victim as myself quite a more foolish attempt I'm sorry to be in this hurry oh you damned little fool so the captain and advances step toward the perplexed and shrinking B.O.B. you imbecile little trickster what do you mean by it I didn't mean anything then suddenly the thought of metaline sweet and overpowering came into the head of this distraught young man he had risked losing her he had slighted and insulted her and here he was entangled here he was in a position of nearly inconceivable foolishness about to assault a dirty and silly little boy in the presence of the lord chancellor and uncle chickney the world he felt was lost and not well lost and she was lost too even now while he pursued these follies she might be consoling her wounded pride he perceived that love is a supreme thing in life he perceived that he who divides his purposes scatters his life to the four winds of heaven a vehement resolve to cut the whole of this beelbie business pounced upon him in that moment he ceased to care for reputation for appearances for the resentment of lord magarage or the good intentions of uncle chickney he turned he rushed out of the room he escaped by unparalleled gymnastics the worst consequences of an encounter with the lord chancellor's bag which the underbutler had placed rather tactlessly between the doors cross the wide and dignified hall and in another moment had his engine going and was struggling to mount his machine in the street without his face expressed in almost a apoplectic concentration he narrowly missed the noses of a pair of horses in the carriage of lady beach mandarin made an extraordinary curve to spare a fishmonger's tricycle shaved the front and completely destroyed the gesture of that eminent actor manager mr. pomegranate who was crossing the road in his usual inadvertent fashion and then he was popping and throbbing and banging around the corner and on his way back to the lovely and irresistible woman who was exerting so disastrous an influence upon his career sub-chapter eight the captain fled from london in the utmost fury and to the general danger of the public his heart was full of wicked blasphemies shoutings and self-reproaches but outwardly he seemed only pinkly intent and as he crossed an open breezy common and passed by a milestone bearing this inscription to london 13 miles his hind tire burst conclusively with a massive report sub-chapter nine in every life there are crucial moments turning points and not infrequently it is just such a thing as this a report a sudden waking in the night a flash upon the road to demascus that marks and precipitates the accumulating new vehemence is not concentration the headlong violence of the captain had been no expression of a single-minded purpose of a soul all gathered together to an end far less a pursuit had it been than a flight from his own dissensions and now now he was held after he had attempted a few plausible repairs and found the tire up-dure it after he had addressed ill-chosen remonstrances to some undenamed hearer after he had walked some way along the road and back and an indecision about repair shops in some neighboring town the last dregs of his resistance were spent he perceived that he was in the presence of a lesson he sat down by the roadside some 20 feet from the disabled motor bicycle and impotent for further effort frankly admitted himself overtaken he had not reckoned with punctures the pursuing questions came clamoring upon him and would no longer be denied who he was and what he was and how he was and the meaning of this rare bait he had been in and all those deep questions that are so systematically neglected in the haste and excitement of modern life in short for the first time in many headlong days he asked himself simply and plainly what he thought he was up to certain things became clear and so minutely and exactly clear that it was incredible that they had ever for a moment been obscure of course billby had been a perfectly honest little boy under some sort of misconception and of course he ought to have been carefully coached and prepared and rehearsed before he was put before the lord chancellor this was so manifest now that the captain stared aghast at his own inconceivable negligence but the mischief was done nothing now would ever propitiate magerage nothing now would ever reconcile uncle chickney that was settled but what was not settled was the amazing disorder of his own mind why had he been so negligent what had come over his mind in the last few weeks in this sudden strange illumination of the captain's mind went so far as perceiving that the really important concern for him was not the accidents of shots but this epilepsy of his own will why now was he rushing back to madeline why he did not love her he knew he did not love her on the whole more than anything else he resented her but he was excited about her he was so excited that these other models fluctuations follies came as a natural consequence from that out of this excitement came those wild floods of angry energy that made him career about like some damn cracker said the captain for instance he asked himself now what am i going for if i go back she'll probably behave like an offended queen doesn't seem to understand anything that does not focus on herself wants a sort of limelight lover she relies upon exciting me she relies upon exciting everyone she's just a woman specialized for excitement and after meditating through a profound minute upon this judgment the captain pronounced these two epoch making words i won't sub chapter 10 the captain's mind was now in a state of almost violent lucidity this sex stuff he said first i kept it under too tight and now i've let it rip too loose i've been just a distracted fool with my head swimming with meetings and embraces and frills he produced some long impending generalizations not a man's work this lover business dancing about in a world of petticoats and powder puffs and attentions and jealousies rotten game played off against some other man i'll be hanged if i am have to put women in their places make a hash of everything if we don't then for a time the captain meditated in silence and chewed his knuckle his face darkened to a scowl he swore as though some thought twisted and tormented him let some other man get her think of her with some other man i don't care he said when obviously he did there's other women in the world a man a man mustn't care for that it's this or that said the captain anyhow sub chapter 11 suddenly the captain's mind was made up and done he rose to his feet and his face was firm and tranquil and now nearer pallor than pink he left his bicycle and trailer by the wayside even as christian left his burden he asked a passing nurse girl the way to the nearest railway station and thither he went incidentally and because the opportunity offered he called in upon a cyclist's repair shop and committed his abandoned machinery to its keeping he went straight to london changed at his flat dined at his club and caught the night train for france for france and whatever was left of the grand maneuvers he wrote a letter to metaline from the est train next day using their customary endurements avoiding any discussion of their relations and describing the scenery of the sen valley and the characteristics of ron in a few vivid and masterly phrases if she's worth having she'll understand said the captain but he knew perfectly well she would not understand mrs. greege noted this letter among the others and afterwards she was must exercised by matt align's behavior for suddenly that line became extraordinarily gay and joyous in her bearing singing snatches of song and bubbling over with suggestions for larks and picnics and wild excursions she padded mr. jeege on the shoulder and ran her arm through the arm of professor bowls both gentlemen received these familiarities with the gawky coinus that mrs. jeege found contemptible and moreover matt align drew several shy strangers into their circle she invited the management to a happy participation her great idea was a moonlight picnic we'll have a great campfire and afterwards we'll dance this very night but wouldn't it be better tomorrow tonight tomorrow perhaps captain douglas may be back again and he's so good at all these things mrs. jeege knew better because she had seen the french stamp on the letter but she meant to get to the bottom of this business and thus it was she said this i sent him back to a soldiering said madeline serenely he has better things to do sub chapter 12 for some moments after the unceremonious departure of captain douglas from the presence of lord mongerage it did not occur to anyone it did not occur even to billby that the captain had left his witness behind him the general and the lord chancellor moved into the hall and billby under the sway of a swift compelling gesture from candler followed modestly the same current swept them all out into the portico and while the underbutler whistled up a handsome for the general the lord chancellor with a dignity that was at once polite and rapid and candler gravely protective and little reproving departed billby slowly apprehending their desertion regarded the world of london with perplexity and dismay candler had gone the last of the gentlemen was going the underbutler billby felt was no friend under butlers never are lord chicney in the very act of entering his cab had his coat tail tugged he looked inquiringly please sir there's me said billby lord chicney reflected well he said the spirit of billby was now greatly abased his face and voice betrayed him on the verge of tears i want to go home to chance sir well my boy go home go home i mean to chance he's gone sir said billby lord chicney was a good-hearted man and he knew that a certain public kindness and disregard of appearances looks far better and is infinitely more popular than a punctilious dignity he took billby to waterloo in his handsome got him a third class ticket to chelsea tipped a porter to see him safely into his train and dismissed him in the most fatherly manner sub chapter 13 it was well after tea time billby felt as he came once more within the boundaries of the chances state it was a wiser and a graver billby who returned from this week of miscellaneous adventure he did not clearly understand all that had happened to him in particular he was puzzled by the extreme annoyance and sudden departure of captain douglas from the presence of lord magarage but this general impression was that he had been in great peril of dire punishment and that he had been rather hastily and ignominiously reprieved the nice old gentleman with the long gray mustaches had dismissed him to the train at last with a quality of benediction the billby understood now better than he had done before that adventures do not always turn out well for the boy hero and that the social system has a number of dangerous and disagreeable holes at the bottom he had reached the beginnings of wisdom he was glad he had got away from the tramp and still gladder that he had got away from creminster he was glad he had got away from the tramp and still gladder that he had got away from creminster he was sorry that he would never see the beautiful lady again and perplexed and perplexed and also he was interested in the probability of his mother having toast for tea it must he felt be a long time after tea time quite late he had weighed the advisability of returning quietly to his windowless bedroom under the stairs putting on his little green apron and emerging with a dutiful song fried as if nothing had happened on the one hand or of going to the gardens on the other but tea with eatables seemed more probable at the gardens he was deflected from the direct route across the park by a long deep trench that someone had made an abandon since the previous sunday morning he wondered what it was for he was certainly very ugly and as he came out by the trees and got the full effect of the facade he detected a strangely bandaged quality about shots it was as if shots had recently been in a fight and got a black eye then he saw the reason for this one tower was swathed and scaffolding he wondered what could have happened to the tower then his own troubles resumed their sway he was so fortunate as to not meet his father in the gardens and he entered the house so meekly that his mother did not look up from the cashmere she was sewing she was sitting at the table sewing some newly died black cashmere he was astonished at her extreme pallor and the drooping resignation of her pose mother he said and she looked up convulsively and stared stared with bright round astonished eyes i'm sorry mother i haven't been quite a good stewards room boy mother if i could have another go mother he halted for a moment astonished that she said nothing but only sat with that strange expression and opened and shut her mouth really i'd try mother end of chapter eight end of bill be a holiday by hg wells