§ 5
The subsequent hour or so was an interval of tedious tension for Bealby.
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 moonshine 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.
Bealby could hear his own heart beating.
The men were now close outside the shed. “He wouldn’t go in there,” said Mr. Benshaw’s voice. “He wouldn’t dare. Anyhow we’ll go up by the glass first. I’ll let him have the whole barrelful 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. Bealby 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.
Bealby 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!”—Bang—and a yelp.
“Stand away! I’ve got another barrel!”
Bang.
Then silence for a time, and then the footsteps coming back.
“That ought to teach him,” said Mr. Benshaw. “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. Jim, just shut that door, will you? That’s where he was hiding....”
It seemed a vast time to Bealby before he ventured out into the summer moonlight, and a very pitiful and outcast little Bealby 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 Bealby had supposed. There were still lights in some of the houses and he had the privilege of seeing Mr. Benshaw going to bed with pensive deliberation. Mr. Benshaw wore a flannel night-shirt and said quite a lengthy prayer before extinguishing his candle. Then suddenly Bealby turned nervously and made off through the hedge. A dog had barked.
At first there were nearly a dozen lighted windows in Crayminster. 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 tool sheds. In a hedge near at hand a young rabbit squealed sharply and was stilled. Why?
Then something like a short snake scrabbled by very fast through the grass.
Then he thought he saw the tramp stalking him noiselessly behind some currant 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 bodiless, 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, he would not shut his eyes.
That would be fatal....
He awoke in broad daylight amidst a cheerful uproar of birds.