The E. Nesbit Megapack: 26 Classic Novels and Stories (197 page)

Oswald was awakened by Dicky thumping him hard in the back, and saying in accents of terror—at least, he says not, but Oswald knows what they sounded like:

‘What’s that?’

Oswald reared up on his elbow and listened, but there was nothing to listen to except Dicky breathing like a grampus, and the giggle-guggle of the rain-water overflowing from the tub under the window.

‘What’s what?’ said Oswald.

He did not speak furiously, as many elder brothers would have done when suddenly awakened by thumps.

‘That!’ said Dicky. ‘There it is again!’

And this time, certainly, there it was, and it sounded like somebody hammering on the front-door with his fists. There is no knocker to the plain-living, high-thinking house.

Oswald controlled his fears, if he had any (I am not going to say whether he had or hadn’t), and struck a match. Before the candle had had time to settle its flame after the first flare up that doesn’t last, the row began again.

Oswald’s nerves are of iron, but it would have given anybody a start to see two white figures in the doorway, yet so it was. They proved to be Alice and Dora in their nighties; but no one could blame anyone for not being sure of this at first.

‘Is it burglars?’ said Dora; and her teeth did chatter, whatever she may say.

‘I think it’s Mrs. Beale,’ said Alice. ‘I expect she’s forgotten the key.’

Oswald pulled his watch out from under his pillow.

‘It’s half-past one,’ he said.

And then the knocking began again. So the intrepid Oswald went to the landing window that is over the front-door. The others went too. And he opened the window in his pyjamas and said, ‘Who’s there?’

There was the scraping sound of boots on the doorstep, as somebody down there stepped back.

‘Is this the way to Ashford?’ said the voice of a man.

‘Ashford’s thirteen miles off,’ said Oswald. ‘You get on to the Dover road.’

‘I don’t want to get on the Dover road,’ said the voice; ‘I’ve had enough of Dover.’

A thrill ran through every heart. We all told each other so afterwards.

‘Well,’ said Dicky, ‘Ashford’s thirteen miles——’

‘Anybody but you in the house?’

‘Say we’ve got men and dogs and guns,’ whispered Dora.

‘There are six of us,’ said Oswald, ‘all armed to the teeth.’

The stranger laughed.

‘I’m not a burglar,’ he said; ‘I’ve lost my way, that’s all. I thought I should have got to Ashford before dusk, but I missed the way. I’ve been wandering all over these marshes ever since, in the rain. I expect they’re out after me now, but I’m dead beat. I can’t go on. Won’t you let me in? I can sit by the kitchen fire.’

Oswald drew his head back through the window, and a hasty council took place on the landing.

‘It is,’ said Alice.

‘You heard what he said about Dover, and their being out after him?’

‘I say, you might let a chap in,’ said the voice outside. ‘I’m perfectly respectable. Upon my word I am.’

‘I wish he hadn’t said that,’ whispered Dora. Such a dreadful story! And we didn’t even ask him if he was.’

‘He sounds very tired,’ said Alice.

‘And wet,’ said Oswald. ‘I heard the water squelching in his boots.’

‘What’ll happen if we don’t let him in?’ said Dicky.

‘He’ll be caught and taken back, like the soldiers,’ said Oswald. ‘Look here, I’m going to chance it. You others can lock yourselves into your rooms if you’re frightened.’

Then Oswald put his brave young head out of the window, and the rain dripped on to the back of his bold young neck off the roof, like a watering-pot on to a beautiful flower, and he said:

‘There’s a porch to the side door. Just scoot round there and shelter, and I’ll come down in half a sec.’

A resolve made in early youth never to face midnight encounters without boots was the cause of this delay. Oswald and Dicky got into their boots and jackets, and told the girls to go back to bed.

Then we went down and opened the front-door. The stranger had heard the bolts go, and he was outside waiting.

We held the door open politely, and he stepped in and began at once to drip heavily on the doormat.

We shut the door. He looked wildly round.

‘Be calm! You are safe,’ said Oswald.

‘Thanks,’ said the stranger; ‘I see I am.’

All our hearts were full of pity for the outcast. He was, indeed, a spectacle to shock the benevolent. Even the prison people, Oswald thought, or the man he took the cake from, would have felt their fierceness fade if they could have seen him then. He was not in prison dress. Oswald would have rather liked to see that, but he remembered that it was safer for the man that he had found means to rid himself of the felon’s garb. He wore a gray knickerbocker suit, covered with mud. The lining of his hat must have been blue, and it had run down his face in streaks like the gentleman in Mr. Kipling’s story. He was wetter than I have ever seen anyone out of a bath or the sea.

‘Come into the kitchen,’ said Oswald; ‘you can drip there quite comfortably. The floor is brick.’

He followed us into the kitchen.

‘Are you kids alone in the house?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said Oswald.

‘Then I suppose it’s no good asking if you’ve got a drop of brandy?’

‘Not a bit,’ said Dicky.

‘Whisky would do, or gin—any sort of spirit,’ said the smeared stranger hopefully.

‘Not a drop,’ said Oswald; ‘at least, I’ll look in the medicine cupboard. And, I say, take off your things and put them in the sink. I’ll get you some other clothes. There are some of Mr. Sandal’s.’

The man hesitated.

‘It’ll make a better disguise,’ said Oswald in a low, significant whisper, and turned tactfully away, so as not to make the stranger feel awkward.

Dicky got the clothes, and the stranger changed in the back-kitchen. The only spirit Oswald could find was spirits of salts, which the stranger said was poison, and spirits of camphor. Oswald gave him some of this on sugar; he knows it is a good thing when you have taken cold. The stranger hated it. He changed in the back-kitchen, and while he was doing it we tried to light the kitchen fire, but it would not; so Dicky went up to ask Alice for some matches, and finding the girls had not gone to bed as ordered, but contrarily dressed themselves, he let them come down. And then, of course, there was no reason why they should not light the fire. They did.

When the unfortunate one came out of the back-kitchen he looked quite a decent chap, though still blue in patches from the lining of his hat. Dicky whispered to me what a difference clothes made.

He made a polite though jerky bow to the girls, and Dora said:

‘How do you do? I hope you are quite well.’

‘As well as can be expected,’ replied the now tidy outcast, ‘considering what I’ve gone through.’

‘Tea or cocoa?’ said Dora. ‘And do you like cheese or cold bacon best?’

‘I’ll leave it to you entirely,’ he answered. And he added, without a pause, ‘I’m sure I can trust you.’

‘Indeed you can,’ said Dora earnestly; ‘you needn’t be a bit afraid. You’re perfectly safe with us.’

He opened his eyes at this.

‘He didn’t expect such kindness,’ Alice whispered. ‘Poor man! he’s quite overcome.’

We gave him cocoa, and cheese, and bacon, and butter and bread, and he ate a great deal, with his feet in Mr. Sandal’s all-wool boots on the kitchen fender.

The girls wrung the water out of his clothes, and hung them on the clothes-horse on the other side of the fire.

‘I’m sure I’m very much obliged to you,’ he said; ‘real charity I call this. I shan’t forget it, I assure you. I ought to apologise for knocking you up like this, but I’d been hours tramping through this precious marsh of yours wet to the skin, and not a morsel of food since mid-day. And yours was the first light I’d seen for a couple of hours.’

‘I’m very glad it was us you knocked up,’ said Alice.

‘So am I,’ said he; ‘I might have knocked at a great many doors before I got such a welcome. I’m quite aware of that.’

He spoke all right, not like a labouring man; but it wasn’t a gentleman’s voice, and he seemed to end his sentences off short at the end, as though he had it on the tip of his tongue to say ‘Miss’ or ‘Sir.’

Oswald thought how terrible it must be to be out alone in the rain and the dark, with the police after you, and no one to be kind to you if you knocked at their doors.

‘You must have had an awful day,’ he said.

‘I believe you,’ said the stranger, cutting himself more bacon. ‘Thank you, miss (he really did say it that time), just half a cup if you don’t mind. I believe you! I never want to have such a day again, I can tell you. I took one or two little things in the morning, but I wasn’t in the mood or something. You know how it is sometimes.’

‘I can fancy it,’ said Alice.

‘And then the afternoon clouded over. It cleared up at sunset, you remember, but then it was too late. And then the rain came on. Not half! My word! I’ve been in a ditch. Thought my last hour had come, I tell you. Only got out by the skin of my teeth. Got rid of my whole outfit. There’s a nice thing to happen to a young fellow! Upon my Sam, it’s enough to make a chap swear he’ll never take another thing as long as he lives.’

‘I hope you never will,’ said Dora earnestly; ‘it doesn’t pay, you know.’

‘Upon my word, that’s nearly true, though I don’t know how you know,’ said the stranger, beginning on the cheese and pickles.

‘I wish,’ Dora was beginning, but Oswald interrupted. He did not think it was fair to preach at the man.

‘So you lost your outfit in the ditch,’ he said; ‘and how did you get those clothes?’

He pointed to the steaming gray suit.

‘Oh,’ replied the stranger, ‘the usual way.’

Oswald was too polite to ask what was the usual way of getting a gray suit to replace a prison outfit. He was afraid the usual way was the way the four-pound cake had been got.

Alice looked at me helplessly. I knew just how she felt.

Harbouring a criminal when people are ‘out after him’ gives you a very chilly feeling in the waistcoat—or, if in pyjamas, in the part that the plaited cotton cord goes round. By the greatest good luck there were a few of the extra-strong peppermints left. We had two each, and felt better.

The girls put the sheets off Oswald’s bed on to the bed Miss Sandal used to sleep in when not in London nursing the shattered bones of her tract-distributing brother.

‘If you will go to bed now,’ Oswald said to the stranger, ‘we will wake you in good time. And you may sleep as sound as you like. We’ll wake you all right.’

‘You might wake me about eight,’ he said; ‘I ought to be getting on. I’m sure I don’t know what to say in return for the very handsome reception you’ve given me. Good-night to you all, I’m sure.’

‘Good-night,’ said everyone. And Dora added, ‘Don’t you bother. While you’re asleep we’ll think what’s best to be done.’

‘Don’t you bother,’ said the stranger, and he absently glanced at his own clothes. ‘What’s big enough to get out of’s big enough to get into.’

Then he took the candle, and Dicky showed him to his room.

‘What’s big enough to get out of,’ repeated Alice. ‘Surely he doesn’t mean to creep back into prison, and pretend he was there all the time, only they didn’t notice him?’

‘Well, what are we to do?’ asked Dicky, rejoining the rest of us. ‘He told me the dark room at Dover was a disgrace. Poor chap!’

‘We must invent a disguise,’ said Dora.

‘Let’s pretend he’s our aunt, and dress him up—like in “Hard Cash,”’ said Alice.

It was now three o’clock, but no one was sleepy. No one wanted to go to sleep at all till we had taken our candles up into the attic and rummaged through Miss Sandal’s trunks, and found a complete disguise exactly suited to an aunt. We had everything—dress, cloak, bonnet, veil, gloves, petticoats, and even boots, though we knew all the time, in our hearts, that these were far too small. We put all ready on the parlour sofa, and then at last we began to feel in our eyes and ears and jaws how late it was. So we went back to bed. Alice said she knew how to wake exact to the minute, and we had known her do it before, so we trusted her, and agreed that she was to wake us at six.

But, alas! Alice had deemed herself cleverer than she was, by long chalks, and it was not her that woke us.

We were aroused from deep slumber by the voice of Mrs. Beale.

‘Hi!’ it remarked,’wake up, young gentlemen! It’s gone the half after nine, and your gentleman friend’s up and dressed and a-waiting for his breakfast.’

We sprang up.

‘I say, Mrs. Beale,’ cried Oswald, who never even in sleep quite loses his presence of mind, ‘don’t let on to anyone that we’ve got a visitor.’

She went away laughing. I suppose she thought it was some silly play-secret. She little knew.

We found the stranger looking out of the window.

‘I wouldn’t do that,’ said Dora softly; ‘it isn’t safe. Suppose someone saw you?’

‘Well,’ said he, ‘suppose they did?’

‘They might take you, you know,’ said Dora; ‘it’s done in a minute. We saw two poor men taken yesterday.’

Her voice trembled at the gloomy recollection.

‘Let ’em take me,’ said the man who wore the clothes of the plain-living and high-thinking Mr. Sandal; ‘I don’t mind so long as my ugly mug don’t break the camera!’

‘We want to save you,’ Dora was beginning; but Oswald, far-sighted beyond his years, felt a hot redness spread over his youthful ears and right down his neck. He said:

‘Please, what were you doing in Dover? And what did you take yesterday?’

‘I was in Dover on business,’ said the man, ‘and what I took was Hythe Church and Burmarsh Church, and——’

‘Then you didn’t steal a cake and get put into Dover Gaol, and break loose, and——’ said Dicky, though I kicked him as a sign not to.

‘Me?’ said our friend. ‘Not exactly!’

‘Then, what are you? If you’re not that poor escaped thief, what are you?’ asked Dora fiercely, before Oswald could stop her.

‘I’m a photographer, miss,’ said he—‘a travelling photographer.’

Then slowly but surely he saw it all, and I thought he would never have done laughing.

* * * *

‘Breakfast is getting cold,’ said Oswald.

‘So it is,’ said our guest. ‘Lordy, what a go! This’ll be something to talk about between friends for many a year.’

‘No,’ said Alice suddenly; ‘we thought you were a runaway thief, and we wanted to help you whatever you were.’ She pointed to the sofa, where the whole costume of the untrue aunt was lying in simple completeness. ‘And you’re in honour bound never to tell a soul. Think,’ she added in persuading tones—‘think of the cold bacon and the cheese, and all those pickles you had, and the fire and the cocoa, and us being up all night, and the dry all-wool boots.’