A very easy thing, the fall of Mr. Bostock. You will observe that he said nothing as to the contents of the telegram—not a word. Mrs. Bostock assumed that the message was the one expected, and her husband merely allowed her the assumption. Almost anybody might have done the same thing—accidentally, as it were. And, in fact, Mr. Bostock hardly realized what he had done till Mrs. Bostock had departed in search of Mrs. Berkeley Wiggs; the most recent accession to her acquaintance, and Socially Immense.
Even when he did fully realize the position of affairs Mr. Bostock betrayed no symptom of remorse. His behavior, indeed, for the next hour or so diverged every minute farther and farther from the precedent set by twenty-four years of strict regularity. He took a cab to the railway station, and during the short ride his demeanor so changed that the startled cabman scarcely recognized his fare as he emerged. Mr. Bostock’s hat had settled over at a jaunty angle, and Mr. Bostock’s face had acquired a joyous, almost a waggish, expression. A shade of apprehension crossed it as he approached the booking-office window and glanced nervously about him. Then he plunged his head deep in at the little hole, and demanded his ticket in a voice inaudible from without. He took his seat in the ten-thirteen train, just as he said he would; but—and here you may begin the measure of Mr. Bostock’s backsliding—he got out at Beachpool-on-Sea!
Not without some nervousness and trepidation, it is true; for the habit of twenty-four years is hard to shake off. But once out in the High Street of Beachpool, Mr. Bostock’s gradual expansion was a wonderful thing to see. He put his hands in his trousers pockets, he put his hat positively at the back of his head, and at the end of the street, by the sea, he bought a cane and swung it!
Mr. Bostock was taking a little holiday “on his own,” as the vulgar say. How long he was going to stay, what arrangements he should make, and all the rest of it he had as yet thought nothing of. Here he was, free and irresponsible, at Beachpool, where nobody knew him, and ready for a holiday after twenty-four years’ respectability. He went back to the shop where he bought the cane, and there bought a pipe and an ounce of tobacco. Mrs. Bostock had never allowed him to smoke anything less respectable than a cigar since they were married. Sometimes she had even bought the cigars herself. Perhaps I should not have mentioned this last circumstance, since it is far from my design to arouse sympathy for the perverted Bostock.
As for him, he grew wilder at every step along the beach. For he walked along the sands here like any low tripper, and once he actually “skated” an oyster-shell along the water—not very well. Then he stopped to listen to a group of niggers, and even laughed—laughed aloud—at a song about a “missis” and a mother-in-law, and put twopence in the tambourine rathen than go away before it was finished. And as he went on among the children digging sand and their elders devouring fruit and buns, he burst into little gasps of laughter at nothing whatever, and was barely able to repress an insane desire to dance in public. The desire grew so urgent, indeed, that he walked straight on along the beach, past the last of the family groups, and into the solitude beyond. Here the cliffs began, and the shore was strewn with large stones, which presently gave place to boulders.
Mr. Bostock was two miles from Beachpool, and absolutely alone with the cliffs, the boulders, and the sea. He took a cautious glance about him, laughed aloud twice, and burst into the most astonishing fandango ever executed by an elderly gentleman having no connection with the stage. Then he plucked the hat from his head, flung it at his feet, and kicked it over the nearest boulder. Mr. Bostock had utterly thrown off the mask!
He picked his hat up, however, with some solicitude, and sat on the boulder to restore its shape. Then he held it at arm’s length and laughed at it, loud and long. No hat of Mr. Bostock’s had endured such derision before.
He clapped it on the side of his head, stuck his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, and gazed out over the sea, chuckling. The great green water was beautiful and smooth and soft, and the day was warm. Mr. Bostock had not had a swim for years; Mrs. Bostock did not consider the exercise suitable to his dignity and his years, nor, indeed, the costume to his figure.
He had no bathing costume now, but did that really matter? There was not a soul in sight, nor likely to be one. The nearest person at Beachpool was two miles off, and Scarbourne was quite seven miles away. There was the towel difficulty, of course; but Mr. Bostock had a mind above difficulties just now, and a towel was a trifle beneath his soaring notice. As a boy he had run about to get dry, and now he chanced to have two big, clean pocket-handkerchiefs. Mr. Bostock was tuned up for a wild adventure, and this was the wildest he could think of. He took one more look along the deserted shore and up at the silent cliffs, and began to pull off his clothes.
There never was such a delightful swim as Mr. Bostock indulged in from that deserted shore. There were cool, transparent pools among the rocks that dotted the shore, and farther out there was just enough motion in the water to save monotony. The air was warm and the water of a pleasant coolness, for as yet the sun had not brought it to its full summer-day temperature. And all the while not a soul came in sight along the shore. From time to time Mr. Bostock glanced back to the solitary dark speck among the boulders which he knew to be his heap of clothes, and he saw it always quite safe.
So time went, while Mr. Bostock, from time to time floating on his back and gazing thoughtfully into the blue of the sky above, revolved in his mind scandalous fraudulent plans for the future, whereby forged telegrams from the office should procure him more holidays like this. Thus does fancied impunity embolden the evil-doer.
Still, delightful as that swim was, Mr. Bostock realized that he must come out of the water sooner or later, and at length he turned and headed for the shore, marking his course by the little dark spot where he had left his clothes. He came in slowly and easily, dreading no evil. The tide had risen a little, and he congratulated himself on getting in in time to save his clothes a possible wetting, a danger he had not considered, in the excitement of the adventure. He rose from the water’s edge, grasped the boulder, took two tender steps on the shingle—and instantly rushed back into the sea and swam off as hard as he could go.
In the whole course of his hitherto exemplary life Mr. Bostock had never had such a shock—such a horrible, stunning surprise. The clothes were not his!
But this alone was a comparative trifle. For what had sent Mr. Bostock staggering back as from the charge of a bull, what had propelled him headlong into the sea and set him swimming as though the bull had turned into a shark, was the appalling fact that he had found himself confronted with a heap of female garments!
There seemed to be no possible mistake. It was a black, rusty-looking heap, with a rather disorganized bonnet and a pair of cloth-topped boots of the sort called “jemimas,” down at heel, bulgy at the toes, and very loose and frilly about the elastic sides. It seemed, in short, the outfit of the sort of elderly female for whom the only word is “geezer.”
A little way out from the shore Mr. Bostock ventured to turn about and tread water. Surely that was the boulder on which he had left his clothes? They had been quite visible from the sea, as he distinctly remembered, and now the only heap of clothes in sight was the heap he had just fled from, lying precisely in the same spot. There was not a soul in sight, nor any human belonging except that heap of clothes on the boulder. Nobody was visible on the water, nobody on the shore. Mr. Bostock swam in a little way, till he could stand on the sandy bottom, with his head and shoulders above water, and then, remembering the expedient of Mr. Pickwick in the wrong bedroom at Ipswich, called out very loudly, “Ha—hum!”
Mr. Bostock waited for an answer, but heard nothing but the sea, and saw nothing but that and the shore and the dark heap of clothes before him.
There was certainly not another pile of clothes anywhere in sight, and Mr. Bostock, his first fright over, began to grow very anxious. He walked a step or two farther in and called ag
ain, this time very loudly indeed, “Ha—hum!” And then, when no sound answered him, he proceeded—“Anybody there?”
Nobody was there, it would seem, so presently, Mr. Bostock, staring wildly and anxiously in all directions, crept out of the water again. Was it possible that his eyes had deceived him?
No; the clothes were exactly what he had taken them to be, and no others were in sight. He snatched hastily at a grubby old plaid shawl that crowned the heap, and, wrapping it about him, began to explore the beach.
It was all useless. Nobody was near him, and not a scrap of his own clothing was to be seen. Mr. Bostock’s mind did not work with great rapidity, but now that he had got dry by his boyhood’s method of running about the beach, with some assistance from the grubby plaid shawl, he realized that he was faced by the dreadful prospect of returning to civilization disguised as a “geezer.”
He lifted the shabby garments gingerly, and shuddered. They had that peculiar gritty griminess that makes any sensitive person shudder, and they smelt damp, like a rag-shop. Mr. Bostock shrank and groaned, but there was no help for it. With an infinitude of shivers and squirms he began to put them on.
He felt about the skirt for pockets, and grew conscious of a new terror. There was a pocket—a torn, clammy bag dangling by one corner—and it was empty! In the pockets of Mr. Bostock’s vanished suit were nearly ten pounds in gold and silver, a pocket-book with several notes in it, a gold watch and chain, and some other valuables, to say nothing of his railway-ticket. He broke into a cold sweat. Not only must he go among his fellow-creatures as a “geezer,” but as a “geezer” absolutely penniless!
The prospect was more terrible than anything Mr. Bostock had imagined in his life. He broke into a fit of savage indignation at the callous depravity of the wretched female who had stolen his clothes, and must now be masquerading in them as a man—in itself a scandalous offence against the law. And at that reflection Mr. Bostock’s distress became, if possible, still more acute. For it struck him that he too, arrayed in the horrible clothes he was struggling with, would be committing the same scandalous offence, and liable to the same penalty!
At length the dismal toilet was complete, and Mr. Bostock, miserable enough, but ignorant even now of the amazing figure he was making by reason of his unskilful management of the unaccustomed garments, addressed himself to the next step. Beachpool was two miles in one direction, Scarbourne more than seven the other way. Pulling nervously at the strings of the battered bonnet, which all too scantily covered his lack of tresses, he turned first one way and then the other. Which way should he go?
The rising tide answered the question for him.
Long before he could traverse the seven rocky miles under the cliffs he would be caught by the tide; so perforce he turned back to Beach-pool. He did it with some vague sense of relief, too, for he had not yet invented a means of dodging Mrs. Bostock. He did not even know where she might be encountered. The capture of Mrs. Berkeley Wiggs had been the object of some ambition, and now that it was effected, Mrs. Bostock would probably keep her as long as possible—for a drive inland—to lunch—anything convenient. But even supposing Mrs. Bostock safely out of the way, how could her wretched husband possibly enter the select boarding establishment undetected in the guise of a “geezer?”
The way to Beachpool was filled with perplexity, and Mr. Bostock grew desperate as he went. What could he do? Whose help could he ask? Who would lend money to an apparently and obviously disreputable old woman, who told a cock-and-bull tale of being a gentleman of substance, much respected in the City, in need of a little temporary assistance? The very best he could hope for from such a course was that inquiries would be made, which was the last thing he wanted; for, in his mind’s eye, he saw the terrible figure of Mrs. Bostock, stern, suspicious, and incredulous, standing at the other end of those inquiries. But it would be far more likely that he would be given in charge of the police straightway.
Mr. Bostock was convinced that to beg would not only be difficult, but useless; and in his dire extremity he began to consider the possibility of stealing—of stealing clothes, money, anything that would get him out of this horrible mess. So low had the principles of the hitherto blameless Mr. Bostock been brought in the course of a mere hour or two from his tiny, almost involuntary, departure from the path of rectitude. (Refer to moral, ut supra.)
As a man of business it had, of course, occurred to him to wire to his office for a telegraphic money-order, to be sent to the nearest post-office. But, as a man of business also, he remembered that any person applying for the money must produce complete proof of his identity. Proof of his identity in this amazing rig! But, to begin with, the telegram to the office must cost at least sixpence. And where was the sixpence?
And so Mr. Bostock crept into Beachpool in a very different state of mind from that in which he had left it; meditating theft. He was ready to steal the pennies from a blind man’s hat. Indeed, he would have preferred that proverbial form of larceny before any other, from its comparative safety and simplicity; but blind men have far too little in their hats.
He slunk about the back streets, sweating with terror at the notice he was attracting. It was only because of his clean-shaven face that he had dared to come into the town at all, and now he began to wish himself back on the empty beach. But something must be done, and desperation forced him far beyond his natural courage, which was not very great. He found himself in a street leading directly into the High Street, and straight before him in the High. Street was a cheap tailor’s, where dummy figures, labelled “This style, thirty shillings,” stood by the door.
No peri ever gazed at the portals of Paradise with half the ardent longing with which Mr. Bostock stared at the door of that cheap tailor’s shop. Very gladly would he have given a cheque for fifty pounds for one of those shoddy suits and a ticket to London. He had no chequebook, and if he had, what would any sane tailor think of such a proposition from a disreputable-looking old woman?
But the shop, with its possible salvation, attracted him. Perhaps he might make an arrangement with the tailor. He drew nearer, eyeing the dummies at the door with an affectionate interest which might well have aroused the notice of any observer, and, in fact, did attract the atteniton of the shopkeeper, lurking like a spider in the recesses of his shop. Even in his present excitement, Mr. Bostock was sane enough to see the impossibility of either stealing a suit off a dummy, or eloping with the dummy complete, clothes and all, under his arm. But as he neared the doorway he could not resist the impulse to extend his hand to the coveted garments; and at that moment the shopkeeper appeared.
He was a shiny, stout, frock-coated Jew, and he said, very peremptorily: “Here, vat you vant? Out o’ dis here!”
Mr. Bostock thrust all his resolution into his voice; it was a rather large, round, rolling voice, very impressive from a confident middle-aged gentleman in the right clothes, but startlingly out of character with his present outfit.
“I—ah—wish to see you privately on a matter of business,” said Mr. Bostock.
“Ah, I dessey,” replied the shopkeeper; “ve got nodden to give avay here. Hook it, misses; sharp!”
“But I assure you—if you will only listen—”
“Got no dime to stand talkin’ mit you. If you von’t go—then pht! B’leesman!”
Mr. Bostock had not noticed that two policemen were inspecting him with some curiosity from the nearest corner. Now he saw them with a sudden twinge of alarm, and straightway began a hurried retreat across the road.
“Hi! You there! Here—come here!” cried one of the policemen, starting smartly after him.
At that Mr. Bostock lost all hold of his wits, and, snatching up his skirts in both hands, ran madly up the street he had come by, followed by both the policemen and the beginnings of a joyful crowd.
With no more thought of disguise, no more plans or schemes, nothing but a frantic desire
to get away, anywhere, anyhow, Mr. Bostock scampered up one narrow street and down another, with a gathering hunt behind him. The bonnet dangled over his shoulders by the strings round his neck, and the bulgy “jemimas” threatened to fly off his feet as he ran. Blind instinct taught him to turn each corner as he came to it, and so keep out of view of his pursuers as much as possible; and fortunately his way led him through the old town, where the fishermen’s alleys favored his flight. But Mr. Bostock was a poor runner, and it was the mere spur of terror that kept him ahead. He caught at a post and swung into a street leading down to the sea, and as he did it he met a gust of wind that took the bonnet clean away up the street behind him. There was an alley to the right, and into that he plunged, bonnetless and somewhat bald; and farther still, growing slower and more “blown” as he went, till he emerged at the back of a row of unfinished houses in the outskirts of the town. And here he trod on a brickbat, which twisted the “jemima” sideways on his foot and flung him headlong.
He could run no more. His little remaining breath was clean knocked out of him, and he lay where he fell, beaten and done for. But presently, as the first shock of the fall wore off, he became aware that the noise of pursuit had ceased, and that, as a fact, he was alone behind the unfinished houses, and comparatively safe. The lost bonnet had saved him, for the hunters naturally kept on up the street along which they found the thing bowling, and so off on the wrong track.
Mr. Bostock climbed painfully to his feet, and crawled, panting, behind a broken fence. Why he had been chased with such persistence he could not divine, but, at any rate, it was clear that he must get out of Beachpool with no more delay. He put the plaid shawl over his head, and made shift to pull the rest of his dress into some sort of order. Then he started out, with much timid reconnoitring to tramp to Scar-bourne by road.
The Arthur Morrison Mystery Page 162