§ 4
The Professor was remarkably active when at last the point he had chosen for the encampment was reached. Bealby was told to “look alive” twice, and William was assigned to his genus and species; “The man’s an absolute idiot,” was the way the Professor put it. William just shot a glance at him over his nose. The place certainly commanded a wonderful view. It was a turfy bank protected from the north and south by bushes of yew and the beech-bordered edge of a chalk pit; it was close beside the road, a road which went steeply down the hill into Winthorpe-Sutbury, with that intrepid decision peculiar to the hill-roads of the south of England. It looked indeed as though you could throw the rinse of your teacups into the Winthorpe-Sutbury street; as if you could jump and impale yourself upon the church spire. The hills bellied out east and west and carried hangers, and then swept round to the west in a long level succession of projections, a perspective that merged at last with the general horizon of hilly bluenesses, amidst which Professor Bowles insisted upon a “sapphire glimpse” of sea. “The Channel,” said Professor Bowles, as though that made it easier for them. Only Mr. Geedge refused to see even that mitigated version of the sea. There was something perhaps bluish and level, but he was evidently not going to admit it was sea until he had paddled in it and tested it in every way known to him....
“Good Lord!” cried the Professor. “What’s the man doing now?”
William stopped the struggles and confidential discouragements he was bestowing upon the white horse and waited for a more definite reproach.
“Putting the caravan alongside to the sun! Do you think it will ever get cool again? And think of the blaze of the sunset—through the glass of that door!”
William spluttered. “If I put’n tother way—goo runnin’ down t’hill like,” said William.
“Imbecile!” cried the Professor. “Put something under the wheels. Here!” He careered about and produced great grey fragments of a perished yew tree. “Now then,” he said. “Head up hill.”
William did his best.
“Oh! not like that! Here, you!”
Bealby assisted with obsequious enthusiasm.
It was some time before the caravan was adjusted to the complete satisfaction of the Professor. But at last it was done, and the end door gaped at the whole prospect of the Weald with the steps hanging out idiotically like a tongue. The hind wheels were stayed up very cleverly by lumps of chalk and chunks of yew, living and dead, and certainly the effect of it was altogether taller and better. And then the preparations for the midday cooking began. The Professor was full of acute ideas about camping and cooking, and gave Bealby a lively but instructive time. There was no stream handy, but William was sent off to the hotel to fetch a garden water-cart that the Professor with infinite foresight had arranged should be ready.
The Geedges held aloof from these preparations,—they were unassuming people; Miss Philips concentrated her attention upon the Weald—it seemed to Bealby a little discontentedly—as if it was unworthy of her—and Mrs. Bowles hovered smoking cigarettes over her husband’s activities, acting great amusement.
“You see it pleases me to get Himself busy,” she said. “You’ll end a Camper yet, Darlint, and us in the hotel.”
The Professor answered nothing, but seemed to plunge deeper into practicality.
Under the urgency of Professor Bowles Bealby stumbled and broke a glass jar of marmalade over some fried potatoes, but otherwise did well as a cook’s assistant. Once things were a little interrupted by the Professor going off to catch a cricket, but whether it was the right sort of cricket or not he failed to get it. And then with three loud reports—for a moment Bealby thought the mad butlers from Shonts were upon him with firearms—Captain Douglas arrived and got off his motor bicycle and left it by the roadside. His machine accounted for his delay, for those were the early days of motor bicycles. It also accounted for a black smudge under one of his bright little eyes. He was fair and flushed, dressed in oilskins and a helmet-shaped cap and great gauntlets that made him, in spite of the smudge, look strange and brave and handsome, like a Crusader—only that he was clad in oilskin and not steel, and his moustache was smaller than those Crusaders wore; and when he came across the turf to the encampment Mrs. Bowles and Mrs. Geedge both set up a cry of “A-Ah!” and Miss Philips turned an accusing face upon those two ladies. Bealby knelt with a bunch of knives and forks in his hand, laying the cloth for lunch, and when he saw Captain Douglas approaching Miss Philips, he perceived clearly that that lady had already forgotten her lowly adorer, and his little heart was smitten with desolation. This man was arrayed like a chivalrous god, and how was a poor Bealby, whose very collar, his one little circlet of manhood, had been reft from him, how was he to compete with this tremendousness? In that hour the ambition for mechanism, the passion for leather and oilskin, was sown in Bealby’s heart.
“I told you not to come near me for a month,” said Madeleine, but her face was radiant.
“These motor bicycles—very difficult to control,” said Captain Douglas, and all the little golden-white hairs upon his sunlit cheek glittered in the sun.
“And besides,” said Mrs. Bowles, “it’s all nonsense.”
The Professor was in a state of arrested administration; the three others were frankly audience to a clearly understood scene.
“You ought to be in France.”
“I’m not in France.”
“I sent you into exile for a month,” and she held out a hand for the captain to kiss.
He kissed it.
Someday, somewhere, it was written in the book of destiny Bealby should also kiss hands. It was a lovely thing to do.
“Month! It’s been years,” said the captain. “Years and years.”
“Then you ought to have come back before,” she replied and the captain had no answer ready....