More William (7 page)

William, ready for all contingencies, marshalled his forces.

‘Follow me!’ he whispered and crept on all fours nearer the window. They could see a man now, an elderly man with white hair and a white beard.

‘And how long will you keep me in this vile prison,’ she was saying in a voice that trembled with anger, ‘base wretch that you are?’

‘Crumbs!’ ejaculated William.

‘Ha! Ha!’ sneered the man. ‘I have you in my power. I will keep you here a prisoner till you sign the paper which will make me master of all your wealth, and beware, girl, if
you do not sign, you may answer for it with your life!’

‘Golly!’ murmured William.

Then he crawled away into the bushes, followed by his attendant squire.

‘Well,’ said William, his face purple with excitement, ‘we’ve found someone to rescue all
right
. He’s a base wretch, wot she said, all
right
.’

‘Will you kill him?’ said the awed squire.

‘How big was he? Could you see?’ said William the discreet.

‘He was ever so big. Great big face he had, too, with a beard.’

‘Then I won’t try killin’ him – not straight off. I’ll think of some plan – somethin’ cunnin’.’

He sat with his chin on his hands, gazing into space, till they were surprised by the opening of the front door and the appearance of a tall, thick-set, elderly man. William quivered with
excitement. The man went along a path through the bushes. William and Ginger followed on all fours with elaborate caution. At every almost inaudible sound from Ginger, William turned his red,
frowning face on to him with a resounding ‘Shh!’ The path ended at a small shed with a locked door. The man opened the door – the key stood in the lock – and entered.

Promptly William, with a snarl expressive of cunning and triumph, hurled himself at the door and turned the key in the lock.

‘Here!’ came an angry shout from inside. ‘Who’s that? What the devil—’

‘You low ole caitiff!’ said William through the keyhole.

‘Who the deuce—’ exploded the voice.

‘You base wretch, like wot she said you was,’ bawled William, his mouth still applied closely to the keyhole.

WILLIAM AND GINGER FOLLOWED ON ALL FOURS WITH ELABORATE CAUTION.

‘Let me out at once, or I’ll—’

‘You mean ole oppressor!’

‘Who the deuce are you? What’s the tomfool trick? Let me
out
! Do you hear?’

A resounding kick shook the door.

‘I’ve gotter pistol,’ said William sternly. ‘I’ll shoot you dead if you kick the door down, you mangy ole beast!’

The sound of kicking ceased and a scrambling and scraping, accompanied by oaths, proceeded from the interior.

‘I’ll stay on guard,’ said William with the tense expression of the soldier at his post, ‘an’ you go an’ set her free. Go an’ blow the bugle at the
front door, then they’ll know something’s happened,’ he added simply.

Miss Priscilla Greene was pouring out tea in the drawing-room. Two young men and a maiden were the recipients of her hospitality.

‘Dad will be here in a minute,’ she said. ‘He’s just gone to the darkroom to see to some photos he’d left in toning or fixing, or something. We’ll get on with
the rehearsal as soon as he comes. We’d just rehearsed the scene he and I have together, so we’re ready for the ones where we all come in.’

‘How did it go off?’

‘Oh, quite well. We knew our parts, anyway.’

‘I think the village will enjoy it.’

‘Anyway, it’s never very critical, is it? And it loves a melodrama.’

‘Yes. I wonder if Father knows you’re here. He said he’d come straight back. Perhaps I’d better go and find him.’

‘Oh, let me go, Miss Greene,’ said one of the youths ardently.

‘Well, I’d don’t know whether you’d find the place. It’s a shed in the garden that he uses. We use it half as a darkroom and half as a coal-cellar.’

‘I’ll go—’

He stopped. A nightmare sound, as discordant as it was ear-splitting, filled the room. Miss Greene sank back into her chair, suddenly white. One of the young men let a cup of tea fall neatly
from his fingers on to the floor and there crash into fragments. The young lady visitor emitted a scream that would have done credit to a factory siren. Then at the open French window appeared a
small boy holding a bugle, purple-faced with the effort of his performance.

One of the young men was the first to recover speech. He stepped away from the broken crockery on the floor as if to disclaim all responsibility for it and said sternly:

‘Did you make that horrible noise?’

Miss Greene began to laugh hysterically.

‘Do have some tea now you’ve come,’ she said to Ginger.

Ginger remembered the pangs of hunger, of which excitement had momentarily rendered him oblivious, and, deciding that there was no time like the present, took a cake from the stand and began to
consume it in silence.

‘You’d better be careful,’ said the young lady to her hostess; ‘he might have escaped from the asylum. He looks mad. He had a very mad look, I thought, when he was
standing at the window.’

‘He’s evidently hungry, anyway. I can’t think why Father doesn’t come.’

Here Ginger, fortified by a walnut bun, remembered his mission.

‘It’s all right now,’ he said. ‘You can go home. He’s shut up. Me an’ William shut him up.’

‘You see!’ said the young lady, with a meaning glance around. ‘I
said
he was from the asylum. He looked mad. We’d better humour him and ring up the asylum. Have
another cake, darling boy,’ she said in a tone of honeyed sweetness.

Nothing loath, Ginger selected an ornate pyramid of icing.

At this point there came a bellowing and crashing and tramping outside and Miss Priscilla’s father, roaring fury and threats of vengeance, hurled himself into the room. Miss
Priscilla’s father had made his escape by a small window at the other end of the shed. To do this he had had to climb over the coals in the dark. His face and hands and clothes and once-white
beard were covered with coal. His eyes gleamed whitely.

‘An abominable attack . . . utterly unprovoked . . . dastardly ruffians!’

Here he stopped to splutter because his mouth was full of coal dust. While he was spluttering, William, who had just discovered that his bird had flown, appeared at the window.

‘He’s got out,’ he said reproachfully. ‘Look at him. He’s got out. An’ all our trouble for nothing. Why di’n’t someone
stop
him
gettin’ out?’

William and Ginger sat on the railing that separated their houses.

‘It’s not really much
fun
bein’ a knight,’ said William slowly.

‘No,’ agreed Ginger. ‘You never know when folks
is
oppressed. An’ anyway, wot’s one afternoon away from school to make such a fuss about?’

‘HE’S GOT OUT,’ WILLIAM SAID REPROACHFULLY. ‘WHY DI’N’T SOMEONE STOP HIM GETTIN’ OUT?’

‘Seems to me from wot Father said,’ went on William gloomily, ‘you’ll have to wait a jolly long time for that drink of ginger ale.’

An expression of dejection came over Ginger’s face.

‘An’ you wasn’t even ever squire,’ he said. Then he brightened.

‘They were jolly good cakes, wasn’t they?’ he said.

William’s lips curved into a smile of blissful reminiscence.

‘
Jolly
good!’ he agreed.

CHAPTER 5

U
ncle George was William’s godfather, and he was intensely interested in William’s upbringing. It was an interest with which William
would gladly have dispensed. Uncle George’s annual visit was to William a purgatory only to be endured by a resolutely philosophic attitude of mind and the knowledge that sooner or later it
must come to an end. Uncle George had an ideal of what a boy should be, and it was a continual grief to him that William fell so short of this ideal. But he never relinquished his efforts to make
William conform to it.

His ideal was a gentle boy of exquisite courtesy and of intellectual pursuits. Such a boy he could have loved. It was hard that fate had endowed him with a godson like William. William was
neither quiet nor gentle, nor courteous nor intellectual – but William was intensely human.

The length of Uncle George’s visit this year was beginning to reach the limits of William’s patience. He was beginning to feel that sooner or later something must happen. For five
weeks now he had (reluctantly) accompanied Uncle George upon his morning walk, he had (generally unsuccessfully) tried to maintain that state of absolute quiet that Uncle George’s afternoon
rest required, he had in the evening listened wearily to Uncle George’s stories of his youth. His usual feeling of mild contempt for Uncle George was beginning to give way to one which was
much stronger.

‘Now, William,’ said Uncle George at breakfast, ‘I‘m afraid it’s going to rain today, so we’ll do a little work together this morning, shall we? Nothing like
work, is there? Your Arithmetic’s a bit shaky, isn’t it? We’ll rub that up. We
love
our work, don’t we?’

William eyed him coldly.

‘I don’t think I’d better get muddlin’ up my school work,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t like to be more on than the other boys next term. It wouldn’t be
fair to them.’

Uncle George rubbed his hands.

‘That feeling does you credit, my boy,’ he said, ‘but if we go over some of the old work, no harm can be done. History, now. There’s nothing like History, is
there?’

William agreed quite heartily that there wasn’t.

‘We’ll do some History, then,’ said Uncle George briskly. ‘The lives of the great. Most inspiring. Better than those terrible things you used to waste your time on,
eh?’

The ‘terrible things’ had included a trumpet, a beloved motor hooter, and an ingenious instrument very dear to William’s soul that reproduced most realistically the sound of
two cats fighting. These, at Uncle George’s request, had been confiscated by William’s father. Uncle George had not considered them educational. They also disturbed his afternoon
rest.

Uncle George settled himself and William down for a nice quiet morning in the library. William, looking round for escape, found none. The outside world was wholly uninviting. The rain came down
in torrents. Moreover, the five preceding weeks had broken William’s spirits. He realised the impossibility of evading Uncle George. His own family were not sympathetic. They suffered from
him considerably during the rest of the year and were not sorry to see him absorbed completely by Uncle George’s conscientious zeal.

So Uncle George seated himself slowly and ponderously in an armchair by the fire.

‘When I was a boy, William,’ he began, leaning back and joining the tips of his fingers together, ‘I loved my studies. I‘M sure you love your studies, don’t you?
Which do you love most?’

‘Me?’ said William. ‘I like shootin’ and playin’ Red Injuns.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Uncle George impatiently, ‘but those aren’t
studies
, William. You must aim at being
gentle
.’

‘It’s not much good bein’
gentle
when you’re playin’ Red Injuns,’ said William stoutly. ‘A
gentle
Red Injun wun’t get much
done.’

Ah, but why play Red Indians?’ said Uncle George. A nasty rough game. No, we’ll talk about History. You must mould your character upon that of the great heroes, William. You must be
a Clive, a Napoleon, a Wolfe.’

‘I’ve often been a wolf,’ said William. ‘That game’s nearly as good as Red Injuns. An’ Bears is a good game too. We might have Bears here,’ he went on
brightening. ‘Jus’ you an’ me. Would you sooner be bear or hunter? I’d sooner be hunter,’ he hinted gently

‘You misunderstand,’ said Uncle George. ‘I mean Wolfe the man, Wolfe the hero.’

William, who had little patience with heroes who came within the school curriculum, relapsed into gloom.

‘What lessons do we learn from such names, my boy?’ went on Uncle George.

William was on the floor behind Uncle George’s chair endeavouring to turn a somersault in a very restricted space.

‘History lessons an’ dates an’ things,’ he said shortly. An’ the things they ’spect you to remember—’ he added with disgust.