§ 3
It was a long and rambling conversation and the tramp displayed himself at times as quite an amiable person. It was a discourse varied by interrogations, and as a thread of departure and return it dealt with the life of the road and with life at large and—life, and with matters of ‘must’ and ‘may.’
Sometimes and more particularly at first Bealby felt as though a ferocious beast lurked in the tramp and peeped out through the fallen hank of hair and might leap out upon him, and sometimes he felt the tramp was large and fine and gay and amusing, more particularly when he lifted his voice and his bristling chin. And ever and again the talker became a nasty creature and a disgusting creature, and his red-lit face was an ugly creeping approach that made Bealby recoil. And then again he was strong and wise. So the unstable needle of a boy’s moral compass spins.
The tramp used strange terms. He spoke of the ‘deputy’ and the ‘doss-house,’ of the ‘spike’ and ‘padding the hoof,’ of ‘screevers’ and ‘tarts’ and ‘copper’s narks.’ To these words Bealby attached such meanings as he could, and so the things of which the tramp talked floated unsurely into his mind and again and again he had to readjust and revise his interpretations. And through these dim and fluctuating veils a new side of life dawned upon his consciousness, a side that was strange and lawless and dirty—in every way dirty—and dreadful and—attractive. That was the queer thing about it, that attraction. It had humour. For all its squalor and repulsiveness it was lit by defiance and laughter, bitter laughter perhaps, but laughter. It had a gaiety that Mr. Mergleson for example did not possess, it had a penetration, like the penetrating quality of onions or acids or asafœtida, that made the memory of Mr. Darling insipid.
The tramp assumed from the outset that Bealby had ‘done something’ and run away, and some mysterious etiquette prevented his asking directly what was the nature of his offence. But he made a number of insidious soundings. And he assumed that Bealby was taking to the life of the road and that, until good cause to the contrary appeared, they were to remain together. “It’s a tough life,” he said, “but it has its points, and you got a toughish look about you.”
He talked of roads and the quality of roads and countryside. This was a good countryside; it wasn’t overdone and there was no great hostility to wanderers and sleeping out. Some roads—the London to Brighton for example, if a chap struck a match, somebody came running. But here unless you went pulling the haystacks about too much they left you alone. And they weren’t such dead nuts on their pheasants, and one had a chance of an empty cowshed. “If I’ve spotted a shed or anything with a roof to it I stay out,” said the tramp, “even if it’s raining cats and dogs. Otherwise it’s the doss-’ouse or the ‘spike.’ It’s the rain is the worst thing—getting wet. You haven’t been wet yet, not if you only started Monday. Wet—with a chilly wind to drive it. Gaw! I been blown out of a holly hedge. You would think there’d be protection in a holly hedge....
“Spike’s the last thing,” said the tramp. “I’d rather go bare-gutted to a doss-’ouse anywhen. Gaw!—you’ve not ’ad your first taste of the spike yet.”
But it wasn’t heaven in the doss-houses. He spoke of several of the landladies in strange but it would seem unflattering terms. “And there’s always such a blamed lot of washing going on in a doss-’ouse. Always washing they are! One chap’s washing ’is socks and another’s washing ’is shirt. Making a steam drying it. Disgustin’. Carn’t see what they want with it all. Barnd to git dirty again....”
He discoursed of spikes, that is to say of work-houses, and of masters. “And then,” he said, with revolting yet alluring adjectives, “there’s the bath.”
“That’s the worst side of it,” said the tramp.... “’Owever, it doesn’t always rain, and if it doesn’t rain, well, you can keep yourself dry.”
He came back to the pleasanter aspects of the nomadic life. He was all for the outdoor style. “Ain’t we comfortable ’ere?” he asked. He sketched out the simple larcenies that had contributed and given zest to the evening’s meal. But it seemed there were also doss-houses that had the agreeable side. “Never been in one!” he said. “But where you been sleeping since Monday?”
Bealby described the caravan in phrases that seemed suddenly thin and anæmic to his ears.
“You hit it lucky,” said the tramp. “If a chap’s a kid he strikes all sorts of luck of that sort. Now ef I come up against three ladies travellin’ in a van—think they’d arst me in? Not it!”
He dwelt with manifest envy on the situation and the possibilities of the situation for some time. “You ain’t dangerous,” he said; “that’s where you get in....”
He consoled himself by anecdotes of remarkable good fortunes of a kindred description. Apparently he sometimes travelled in the company of a lady named Izzy Berners—“a fair scorcher, been a regular, slap-up circus actress.” And there was also “good old Susan.” It was a little difficult for Bealby to see the point of some of these flashes by a tendency on the part of the tramp while his thoughts turned on these matters to adopt a staccato style of speech, punctuated by brief, darkly significant guffaws. There grew in the mind of Bealby a vision of the doss-house as a large crowded place, lit by a great central fire, with much cooking afoot and much jawing and disputing going on, and then “me and Izzy sailed in....”
The fire sank, the darkness of the woods seemed to creep nearer. The moonlight pierced the trees only in long beams that seemed to point steadfastly at unseen things, it made patches of ashen light that looked like watching faces. Under the tramp’s direction Bealby skirmished round and got sticks and fed the fire until the darkness and thoughts of a possible gorilla were driven back for some yards and the tramp pronounced the blaze a “fair treat.” He had made a kind of bed of leaves which he now invited Bealby to extend and share, and lying feet to the fire he continued his discourse.
He talked of stealing and cheating by various endearing names; he made these enterprises seem adventurous and facetious; there was it seemed a peculiar sort of happy find one came upon called a “flat,” that it was not only entertaining but obligatory to swindle. He made fraud seem so smart and bright at times that Bealby found it difficult to keep a firm grasp on the fact that it was—fraud....
Bealby lay upon the leaves close up to the prone body of the tramp, and his mind and his standards became confused. The tramp’s body was a dark but protecting ridge on one side of him; he could not see the fire beyond his toes but its flickerings were reflected by the tree stems about them, and made perplexing sudden movements that at times caught his attention and made him raise his head to watch them.... Against the terrors of the night the tramp had become humanity, the species, the moral basis. His voice was full of consolation; his topics made one forget the watchful silent circumambient. Bealby’s first distrusts faded. He began to think the tramp a fine, brotherly, generous fellow. He was also growing accustomed to a faint something—shall I call it an olfactory bar—that had hitherto kept them apart. The monologue ceased to devote itself to the elucidation of Bealby; the tramp was lying on his back with his fingers interlaced beneath his head and talking not so much to his companion as to the stars and the universe at large. His theme was no longer the wandering life simply but the wandering life as he had led it, and the spiritedness with which he had led it and the real and admirable quality of himself. It was that soliloquy of consolation which is the secret preservative of innumerable lives.
He wanted to make it perfectly clear that he was a tramp by choice. He also wanted to make it clear that he was a tramp and no better because of the wicked folly of those he had trusted and the evil devices of enemies. In the world that contained those figures of spirit; Isopel Berners and Susan, there was also it seemed a bad and spiritless person, the tramp’s wife, who had done him many passive injuries. It was clear she did not appreciate her blessings. She had been much to blame. “Anybody’s opinion is better than ’er ’usband’s,” said the tramp. “Always ’as been.” Bealby had a sudden memory of Mr. Darling saying exactly the same thing of his mother. “She’s the sort,” said the tramp, “what would rather go to a meetin’ than a music ’all. She’d rather drop a shilling down a crack than spend it on anything decent. If there was a choice of jobs going she’d ask which ’ad the lowest pay and the longest hours and she’d choose that. She’d feel safer. She was born scared. When there wasn’t anything else to do she’d stop at ’ome and scrub the floors. Gaw! it made a chap want to put the darn’ pail over ’er ’ed, so’s she’d get enough of it....
“I don’t hold with all this crawling through life and saying Please,” said the tramp. “I say it’s my world just as much as it’s your world. You may have your ’orses and carriages, your ’ouses and country places and all that and you may think Gawd sent me to run abart and work for you; but I don’t. See?”
Bealby saw.
“I seek my satisfactions just as you seek your satisfactions, and if you want to get me to work you’ve jolly well got to make me. I don’t choose to work. I choose to keep on my own and a bit loose and take my chance where I find it. You got to take your chances in this world. Sometimes they come bad and sometimes they come good. And very often you can’t tell which it is when they ’ave come....”
Then he fell questioning Bealby again and then he talked of the immediate future. He was beating for the seaside. “Always something doing,” he said. “You got to keep your eye on for cops; those seaside benches, they’re ’ot on tramps—give you a month for begging soon as look at you—but there’s flats dropping sixpences thick as flies on a sore ’orse. You want a there for all sorts of jobs. You’re just the chap for it, matey. Saw it soon’s ever I set eyes on you....”
He made projects....
Finally he became more personal and very flattering.
“Now you and me,” he said, suddenly shifting himself quite close to Bealby, “we’re going to be downright pals. I’ve took a liking to you. Me and you are going to pal together. See?”
He breathed into Bealby’s face, and laid a hand on his knee and squeezed it, and Bealby, on the whole, felt honoured by his protection....