Ben Sees It Through

by J. Jefferson Farjeon

  33

  Good and Bad

  The average nightmare is suffered horizontally. Most of Ben’s were endured vertically; and not even in the sense of merely standing up. He endured them, more frequently, running along, while others also ran along with outstretched hands to seize him. That was why he had to keep on running along.

  He ran along now, with nightmare seething around him. From every hedge, from every dark turning, from every black shadow, imaginary creatures leapt out, summoned by the police-whistle which he still unconsciously blew. It was a full minute before he realised that he was whistling to every constable in South-West London to come and arrest him.

  When, in a momentary pause in the nightmare, realisation dawned, he gasped, ‘’Strewth!’ and opened his mouth so wide in amazement that the whistle fell out. He picked it up again, lest lying in the road it should form a clue and should call to the finder, ‘Ben has passed by here—carry on!’ and put it in his pocket; but since his pocket was even wider open than his mouth the whistle promptly fell out into the road again.

  When our minds are fevered we revert to the simplicity of the savage, and everything in life becomes either good or evil. There are no subtle sums to work out, no complicated computations. Existence swings back to us from the multitudinous stars to be, once more, the Rule of Two. Half of it is with us, otherwise good; half of it is against us, otherwise bad. Our job is just to sort out which is which.

  Ben’s mind was fevered. Remember that, in addition to his mental and spiritual woes, he had had a physical ducking. And so the police-whistle, bounding for a second time into the road, first from the hole in his mouth and then from the hole in his pocket, now became definitely sinister. It was an enemy. A snake. Sent to trip him up, to thwart him. ‘Why, you’re even wasting valuable time looking at me!’ it grinned up to him. Yes, grinned. You couldn’t get away from it. ‘I’ll do you in!’

  ‘Will yer?’ said Ben. Yes, said it. He was talking to a whistle. He was in a bad way. ‘Will yer?’

  He lurched down upon it and seized it again. He expected it to struggle. To his surprise, it came quietly. But, as he thrust it into another pocket, this time keeping his hand in the pocket as a sort of extra lining, he heard the whistle’s little brothers and sisters shrieking ‘We’re coming—we’re coming’ in the distance, and he started to run again. One man against a thousand police-whistles isn’t fair!

  Presently he blundered into a little boy and knocked him over. In his primitive condition, all little children were Good. They were so small, and it was such damn bad luck on them, because everything else was so big. He stopped—real heroism, this, but the germs of Christianity live even in the savage, forming his most enduring part—and picked the little boy up again.

  ‘Lummy, ’ave I ’urt yer?’ he mumbled. ‘Wunner if I’ve got a penny fer a sweet?’

  Where was the little boy? He wasn’t there! He had never been there! It was the little boy Ben had knocked over the day before, or the century before, in Southampton during a similar flight from the police. His mind was working backwards.

  He had held conversations with a police-whistle and an imaginary child. ‘Am I goin’ potty?’ he inquired of himself. There was really a very good chance of it …

  Oi!

  He was off again.

  His hand, gripping the sinister police-whistle, was still in his pocket. While he had been speaking to the imaginary boy it had begun to grope for an imaginary penny, and had slightly changed its position. In so doing it had established a new contact. New contacts are our protection against the numbness of old ones. Ben’s hand had been numb. But this new thing that touched it with a new sensation in a new part tickled him, and broke through the monotone of lulled sensation; and, all at once, the dead hand became living again, and imparted life also to the brain.

  ‘Card-case!’ he muttered.

  That’s what it was! The little card-case! He’d stuck it into this pocket after taking it out of his boot, just before the policeman’s lamp had blinded his eyes. His mind rushed back to the moment.

  If the policeman hadn’t been there he would have taken the card-case to a light—not a policeman’s lamp!—and read the address on the card it contained. Yes, that was what he had been going to do, wasn’t it? Well, the policeman wasn’t here now. Ben could still do what he had been going to do. And, lummy, the need to do it had become trebled since the postponement!

  Ahead gleamed a lamp-post. Heath and common were still around him, but he had the sensation that he was nearing traffic. Traffic was Bad. The lamp-post he was Good. He tottered up to it, and, releasing the police-whistle (which had probably now learned to behave itself) he brought out the tiny case.

  He extracted the card from the case. For the second time he read the name ‘Violet Medway’ on it. For the first time he read the address: ‘Mallow Court, Mallow Road, Fulham.’

  Fulham! That wasn’t so far, was it? Just across the river, wasn’t it?

  A young man came round a corner.

  ‘That’s funny,’ thought the young man, a second or two later. ‘I thought I saw a fellow by this lamp-post!’

  The fellow was now by another lamp-post …

  Violet Medway. Mallow Court. Mallow Road. Fulham. And what would Violet Medway, of all that, say to a dirty, perspiring, panting scarecrow when he called upon her? More important, and claiming precedence, what would the scarecrow say to her?

  While his eyes darted up and down the road—for hunted humans, unlike hunted hares, cannot see both ways at once—he rehearsed a little speech.

  ‘’Ere, I got yer card-case, miss,’ ran the speech. ‘I fahnd it, see? Where’s yer farther? If it is yer farther?’

  ‘What do you want to see my father for?’ the lady would ask.

  ‘’Cos I got a letter for ’im—’

  Hallo! Had he? Ben clapped his hand to his head. The cap was not there.

  Ben leaned against the lamp-post and cried. A voice recalled him from his unmanly display.

  ‘Is this yours?’ inquired the voice.

  It was the young man, who had followed him from the last lamp-post.

  Ben seized the cap. The young man smiled.

  ‘Cheer up!’ he said, amiably. ‘The worst is yet to come!’

  The words, in Ben’s view, expressed an impossibility. But the amiability of the words was, for the moment, more important. In another of those primitive flashes it suddenly occurred to Ben that this young man was Good.

  ‘Can I do anything for you?’ asked the young man.

  His hand went into his pocket. Ben shook his head. Not that he objected to money, on principle, but just now he wasn’t thinking of it. Perhaps this young man could help him in another way.

  ‘Lorst me bearin’s, sir,’ murmured Ben.

  ‘Well, I’ve found your cap for you, which should remedy your upper bearings,’ answered the young man. ‘What other bearings need attending to?’

  Ben didn’t know what the young man was talking about, but he went on:

  ‘Could yer d’reck me ter Ful’am sir?’

  ‘Fulham,’ repeated the young man, and gazed north-eastwards. ‘It’s sort of over there,’ he said, waving in the direction of the gaze. ‘Keep onnish, and bear rightish, and you’ll come one day to a big wide road. It leads to Putney Bridge. On the other side lies Fulham.’

  ‘Thank ’e, sir. ’Ow fur is it?’

  ‘Not very fur. Say, one or two milesish—but more twoish than oneish. Hallo! Hark to the cuckoo! Or is it a police-whistle?’

  Only one thing in the whole world could have detained Ben at that instant. The young man produced it.

  ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘is this yours, too? It seemsish to be Spanish.’

  He held out the letter. Ben seized it with a sound inherited from an ancestor of the Cainozoic Age. The young man had never heard the sound before, and did not even know it existed. The next moment, scarecrow, cap, and letter had all three disappeared,

  ‘Poor be
ggar, if ever there was a poor beggar,’ mused the young man. ‘But I wonder, just the same, whether little Edward has been quite wise?’

  We will leave him to his wonder. He has served Ben’s purpose, and ours; and ours, now, is to follow Ben into the north-east, reflecting the young man’s friendliness because we know of Ben what he merely sensed.

  Soon the open country and the secluded lanes were behind the fugitive, and he joined the human current once more. He struck the wide road towards which he had been directed. Cars passed him, flashing by with yellow eyes. All the yellow eyes looked ominous to Ben. The cars were Bad.

  It may seem odd that, even yet, the police did not close their net around the man they had been hunting for so many hours. It may seem unreasonable and impossible. But there are a few people, and Ben was of these few, who lacking every other qualification for Life’s grim struggle, are granted gifts for running away quite unknown to the majority of folk who face the struggle with other weapons. A stag on Exmoor may evade all the combined craft of men and hounds who are especially trained for its capture. A large pike has lived in a small pond for many years, simply through its ability to evade. Without a trap, can you catch a mouse?

  And so Ben reached the bridge and crossed the Thames to Fulham because he was the world’s best dodger. He was the D’Artagnan of running, not through, but away.

  In Fulham, with London now buzzing all around him, he risked one more human contact. It would have been impossible to find Mallow Road without it—and precious time was flowing on. He chose an old lady, because she might not be able to see him, and she certainly would not be able to catch him. Touching his cap, he asked her,

  ‘Beggin’ yer pardon, mum, but could yer d’reck me ter Maller Court, Maller Road?’

  ‘Eh? This is Mallow Road,’ answered the old lady.

  And then her grip suddenly tightened on a black bead bag she was holding, and she hurried away.

  Not only was Ben in Mallow Road, but only a few feet distant was an imposing brick post with ‘Mallow Court’ written on it. For a moment his heart quailed. How was it possible for a man in his condition to gain a hearing in that impressive edifice, where, he noticed, beggars and hawkers were not welcomed—or Bens, apparently, either?

  ‘Yus, but I got somethink!’ he thought, to counteract the impotent sensation that was running up and down between his stomach and his heart. ‘And if I don’t git Molly aht o’ that ’ouse afore ten o’clock, wot’s it matter if they set a ’undred dawgs on me?’

  A church clock chimed the half-hour. Half-past nine. Lummy! He shoved the gate open.

  The gate he shoved open was the front gate. By all the social rules he should have shoved open the side gate. He was not in a side-gate mood, however, for people who receive you through side gates have no imagination, and his business was with their superiors. If necessary, he was going to fight his way fistically into Mallow Court, and the nearer he began to his goal, the better.

  So he mounted a brilliantly illuminated white flight till he reached a marble step at the top, closed his eyes, and rang the front-door bell.

  The front-door bell was Bad.

  34

  At Mallow Court

  Violet Medway, daughter of Joseph Medway, M.P., heard the bell from her sitting-room on the first floor, but did not pay much attention to it. She was absorbed in the contemplation of a cheap grey unused envelope.

  Beside the cheap grey envelope, on a little walnut table the reverse of cheap, lay a packet of similar unused envelopes. The packet had a band round it, and was complete. The single envelope had not come out of the packet.

  Another envelope also claimed attention. It was of the same family, being identical in shape, size, colour, and quality, but it had this difference: unlike the others—the single envelope and the envelopes in the packet—it had been through the post. It bore stamp, postmark, and writing.

  The stamp was a penny-halfpenny stamp. The postmark was Wimbledon. The writing was block writing, and ran, ‘Very urgent. Joseph Medway, M.P., Mallow Court, Mallow Road, Fulham, S.W.’

  The flap of this envelope was still stuck down, and it had not been opened.

  In the middle of her contemplation she raised her head and called, ‘Come in,’ in response to a knock on her door. A maid entered, with rather a flushed face.

  ‘What is it, Maud?’ asked Miss Medway.

  ‘If you please,’ answered the maid, ‘there’s a man brought this.’

  ‘Brought what?’ queried Miss Medway vaguely.

  But all at once her vagueness vanished, and her eyes grew bright. They were blue-grey eyes, and their brightness had dazzled many people. The brightness was due at the moment, however, to the tiny card-case extended to her by the maid.

  ‘Where did he find it?’ she cried, jumping up.

  ‘I don’t know, miss,’ replied the maid. ‘He wouldn’t say.’

  ‘Wouldn’t say?’

  ‘No, miss.’

  ‘But, surely—’

  ‘He wouldn’t even give it up till Procter got it away from him, miss! There was quite a scene. He said he must give it to you personal! Talk about mad!’

  And, while Miss Medway continued to stare at the card-case, the maid ran on,

  ‘Come to the front door! Fancy that! And when Procter told him to go round to the back he said—well, what didn’t he say! One of them bag-snatchers, I expeck. They snatch your bag, and then have the cheek to call and ask for a reward—’

  ‘Where is he now?’ exclaimed Miss Medway, interposing swiftly.

  ‘Procter was still trying to get rid of him when I left them, miss,’ responded the maid, ‘but when Procter gives me the case, because that rascal, you never saw anyone so dirty, really, he was trying to get it back again, well, miss, I thought I’d better bring it to you at once before he—’

  But Miss Medway did not stay to hear any more. She ran quickly out into the passage and towards the main staircase.

  From the hall below rose strange sounds. Such sounds had never been heard in Mallow Court before. They were the vocal accompaniments of a delirious human windmill, and as Miss Medway reached the highly-polished balustrade and stared down the human windmill was carrying all before it. The ‘all’ was a portly butler who, a couple of minutes earlier, had been immaculate.

  ‘Procter!’ cried Miss Medway.

  Procter did not reply. He was too busy ducking. He ducked to the floor. The human windmill sprayed forward over his back. And now Proctor rose, having resolutely secured the windmill’s two feet, and began conveying his unusual burden towards the front-door. His attitude resembled that of a man carrying a sack of coal. It was live coal.

  ‘Put him down!’ ordered Miss Medway.

  Procter hesitated, and the hesitation proved fatal. The sack of coal escaped and bounded towards the staircase. At the curved half-landing Miss Medway met it.

  The meeting, apparently desired by both, produced nothing for a few seconds. They merely stared at each other, the one in the perfection of evening toilet, the other fit for the scrap-heap. Above them and below them panted domestics, their chests heaving with spiritual and physical emotion, while from a wall the picture of a former Medway gazed down with obvious disapproval.

  Then Miss Medway spoke.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked.

  ‘I got ter tork ter yer, miss!’ gasped the gate-crasher.

  ‘Haven’t I seen you before?’ demanded Miss Medway.

  ‘That’s right,’ muttered the gate-crasher. ‘Pillar-box. Oh, Gawd, I am feelin’ ill!’

  The next moment proved that Miss Medway was one of the Good things. She grabbed the visitor by the arm, held him firmly for a second while he became limp—‘Funny,’ thought Ben, ‘’ow yer ’its people when they’re narsty, but goes orl jelly when they’re nice’—and then lugged him upwards towards her room despite the combined consternation of a butler, a parlourmaid, and a deceased baronet.

  Ben’s limpness lasted for the complete journey to th
e doorway of Miss Medway’s sitting-room. When he spied the room itself through the doorway, he stiffened. A latent social instinct stirred, whispering that this was no place for him. Shaded lights. Elegant chairs. Dazzling cushions. A desk good enough for a Pope …

  But she led him in, and before he knew it she had closed the door and he found himself standing bashfully in the presence of a lady whom he only had a right, strictly speaking, to meet in books.

  ‘Yer know,’ he heard himself saying, ‘I feels sorter faint like.’

  He discovered a chair being pushed under him. Yes, this lady was undoubtedly one of the Good things.

  ‘Now, can you talk?’ she asked, kindly.

  ‘Yus,’ murmured Ben. ‘That’s wot I come for.’

  ‘You came to return my card-case.’

  ‘Yus.’

  ‘Where did you find it?’

  ‘Ahtside a ’ouse called Greystones—’ He saw her eyes flicker, and he added, ‘Yer knows it, doncher?’

  ‘How do you know I know it?’ she demanded, rather sharply.

  But then she went on, her voice softening, and her eyes watchful, ‘Oh—of course—by the card-case.’

  ‘No,’ answered Ben. ‘By the chimbley.’

  ‘By the—’

  ‘Chimbley. I was up it, see?’

  She did not see. He tried to explain.

  ‘That’s right. It was when yer called this arternoon. and pertended ter be goin’ orf inter a faint, like. Well, I was up the chimbley, and—and I know wot yer was lookin’ for. Now d’yer see?’

  Whether she did or not, he perceived that his information had gripped her interest. After all, why try and explain things? There wasn’t time, even if there was ability. The only thing that mattered was to keep her interest alive, and to bring it up to the point he wanted. So he ran on, unconscious that her interest was rendering her less friendly.

  ‘But yer didn’t find wot yer was lookin’ for, did yer?’

  ‘I found something,’ she retorted, and glanced towards the single, unused, cheap grey envelope. She seized it, and now Ben found that she was challenging him. ‘Who are you? You haven’t told me yet! Are you that man’s servant? Because, if you are—’