Fear

‘Oh! then I’ll come a bit of the way with you if you don’t walk too fast. It’s a bit lonesome walking this time of day.’ The tramp nodded his head, and the boy started limping along by his side.

‘I’m eighteen,’ he said casually. ‘I bet you thought I was younger.’

‘Fifteen, I’d have said.’

‘You’d have backed a loser. Eighteen last August, and I’ve been on the road six years. I ran away from home five times when I was a little ’un, and the police took me back each time. Very good to me, the police was. Now I haven’t got a home to run away from.’

‘Nor have I,’ the tramp said calmly.

‘Oh, I can see what you are,’ the boy panted; ‘you’re a gentleman come down. It’s harder for you than for me.’ The tramp glanced at the limping, feeble figure and lessened his pace.

‘I haven’t been at it as long as you have,’ he admitted.

‘No, I could tell that by the way you walk. You haven’t got tired yet. Perhaps you expect something the other end?’

The tramp reflected for a moment. ‘I don’t know,’ he said bitterly, ‘I’m always expecting things.’

‘You’ll grow out of that,’ the boy commented. ‘It’s warmer in London, but it’s harder to come by grub. There isn’t much in it really.’

‘Still, there’s the chance of meeting somebody there who will understand –’

‘Country people are better,’ the boy interrupted. ‘Last night I took a lease of a barn for nothing and slept with the cows, and this morning the farmer routed me out and gave me tea and toke because I was little. Of course, I score there; but in London, soup on the Embankment at night, and all the rest of the time coppers moving you on.’

‘I dropped by the roadside last night and slept where I fell. It’s a wonder I didn’t die,’ the tramp said. The boy looked at him sharply.

‘How do you know you didn’t?’ he said.

‘I don’t see it,’ the tramp said, after a pause.

‘I tell you,’ the boy said hoarsely, ‘people like us can’t get away from this sort of thing if we want to. Always hungry and thirsty and dog-tired and walking all the time. And yet if anyone offers me a nice home and work my stomach feels sick. Do I look strong? I know I’m little for my age, but I’ve been knocking about like this for six years, and do you think I’m not dead? I was drowned bathing at Margate, and I was killed by a gipsy with a spike; he knocked my head right in, and twice I was froze like you last night, and a motor cut me down on this very road, and yet I’m walking along here now, walking to London to walk away from it again, because I can’t help it. Dead! I tell you we can’t get away if we want to.’

The boy broke off in a fit of coughing, and the tramp paused while he recovered.

‘You’d better borrow my coat for a bit, Tommy,’ he said, ‘your cough’s pretty bad.’

‘You go to hell!’ the boy said fiercely, puffing at his cigarette; ‘I’m all right. I was telling you about the road. You haven’t got down to it yet, but you’ll find out presently. We’re all dead, all of us who’re on it, and we’re all tired, yet somehow we can’t leave it. There’s nice smells in the summer, dust and hay and the wind smack in your face on a hot day; and it’s nice waking up in the wet grass on a fine morning. I don’t know, I don’t know –’ he lurched forward suddenly, and the tramp caught him in his arms.

‘I’m sick,’ the boy whispered – ‘sick.’

The tramp looked up and down the road, but he could see no houses or any sign of help. Yet even as he supported the boy doubtfully in the middle of the road a motor-car suddenly flashed in the middle distance, and came smoothly through the snow.

‘What’s the trouble?’ said the driver quietly as he pulled up. ‘I’m a doctor.’ He looked at the boy keenly and listened to his strained breathing.

‘Pneumonia,’ he commented. ‘I’ll give him a lift to the infirmary, and you, too, if you like.’

The tramp thought of the workhouse and shook his head. ‘I’d rather walk,’ he said.

The boy winked faintly as they lifted him into the car.

‘I’ll meet you beyond Reigate,’ he murmured to the tramp. ‘You’ll see.’ And the car vanished along the white road.

All the morning the tramp splashed through the thawing snow, but at midday he begged some bread at a cottage door and crept into a lonely barn to eat it. It was warm in there, and after his meal he fell asleep among the hay. It was dark when he woke, and started trudging once more through the slushy road.

Two miles beyond Reigate a figure, a fragile figure, slipped out of the darkness to meet him.

‘On the road, guv’nor?’ said a husky voice. ‘Then I’ll come a bit of the way with you if you don’t walk too fast. It’s a bit lonesome walking this time of day.’

‘But the pneumonia!’ cried the tramp aghast.