The Wouldbegoods (23 page)

‘Come, our chariots are ready, and our horses caparisoned.’

That is a first-rate word out of a book. It cheered Oswald up, and he liked her for using it, though he wondered why she said chariots. When we got back to the inn I saw her dogcart was there, and a grocer’s cart
too, with B. Munn, grocer, Hazelbridge, on it. She took the girls in her cart, and the boys went with the grocer. His horse was a very good one to go, only you had to hit it with the wrong end of the whip. But the cart was very bumpety.

The evening dews were falling – at least, I suppose so, but you do not feel dew in a grocer’s cart – when we reached home. We all thanked the lady very much, and said we hoped we should see her again some day. She said she hoped so.

The grocer drove off, and when we had all shaken hands with the lady and kissed her, according as we were boys or girls, or little boys, she touched up her horse and drove away.

She turned at the corner to wave to us, and just as we had done waving, and were turning into the house, Albert’s uncle came into our midst like a whirling wind. He was in flannels, and his shirt had no stud in at the neck, and his hair was all rumpled up and his hands were inky, and we knew he had left off in the middle of a chapter by the wildness of his eye.

‘Who was that lady?’ he said. ‘Where did you meet her?’

Mindful, as ever, of what he was told, Oswald began to tell the story from the beginning.

‘The other day, protector of the poor,’ he began, ‘Dora and I were reading about the Canterbury pilgrims…’

Oswald thought Albert’s uncle would be pleased to find his instructions about beginning at the beginning had borne fruit, but instead he interrupted.

‘Stow it, you young duffer! Where did you meet her?’

Oswald answered briefly, in wounded accents, ‘Hazelbridge.’

Then Albert’s uncle rushed upstairs three at a time, and as he went he called out to Oswald –

‘Get out my bike, old man, and blow up the back tyre.’

I am sure Oswald was as quick as anyone could have been, but long ere the tyre was thoroughly blowed Albert’s uncle appeared, with a collar-stud and tie and blazer, and his hair tidy, and wrenching the unoffending machine from Oswald’s surprised fingers.

Albert’s uncle finished pumping up the tyre, and then flinging himself into the saddle he set off, scorching down the road at a pace not surpassed by any highwayman, however black and high-mettled his steed. We were left looking at each other. ‘He must have recognised her,’ Dicky said.

‘Perhaps,’ Noel said, ‘she is the old nurse who alone knows the dark secret of his highborn birth.’

‘Not old enough, by chalks,’ Oswald said.

‘I shouldn’t wonder,’ said Alice, ‘if she holds the secret of the will that will make him rolling in long-lost wealth.’

‘I wonder if he’ll catch her,’ Noel said. ‘I’m quite certain all his future depends on it. Perhaps she’s his long-lost sister, and the estate was left to them equally, only she couldn’t be found, so it couldn’t be shared up.’

‘Perhaps he’s only in love with her,’ Dora said, ‘parted by cruel Fate at an early age, he has ranged the wide world ever since trying to find her.’

‘I hope to goodness he hasn’t – anyway, he’s not ranged since we knew him – never further than Hastings,’ Oswald said. ‘We don’t want any of that rot.’

‘What rot?’ Daisy asked. And Oswald said –

‘Getting married, and all that sort of rubbish.’

And Daisy and Dora were the only ones that didn’t agree with him. Even Alice owned that being bridesmaids must be fairly good fun. It’s no good. You may treat girls as well as you like, and give them every comfort and luxury, and play fair just as if they were boys, but there is something unmanly about the best of girls. They go silly, like milk goes sour, without any warning.

When Albert’s uncle returned he was very hot, with a beaded brow, but pale as the Dentist when the peas were at their worst.

‘Did you catch her?’ H.O. asked.

Albert’s uncle’s brow looked black as the cloud that thunder will presently break from. ‘No,’ he said.

‘Is she your long-lost nurse?’ H.O. went on, before we could stop him.

‘Long-lost grandmother! I knew the lady long ago in India,’ said Albert’s uncle, as he left the room, slamming the door in a way we should be forbidden to.

And that was the end of the Canterbury Pilgrimage.

As for the lady, we did not then know whether she was his long-lost grandmother that he had known in India or not, though we thought she seemed youngish for the part. We found out afterwards whether she was or not, but that comes in another part. His manner was not the one that makes you go on asking questions. The Canterbury Pilgriming did not exactly make us good, but then, as Dora said, we had not done anything wrong that day. So we were twenty-four hours to the good.

‘This is the Dean’s Chapel; it was the Lady Chapel in the wicked days when people used to worship the Virgin Mary.’

And H.O. said, ‘I suppose they worship the Dean now?’

Some strange people who were there laughed out loud. I think this is worse in church than not taking your cap off when you come in, as H.O. forgot to do, because the cathedral was so big he didn’t think it was a church.

This ends the Canterbury Pilgrims.

chapter thirteen

the dragon's teeth; or, army-seed

Albert's uncle was out on his bicycle as usual. After the day when we became Canterbury Pilgrims and were brought home in the dogcart with red wheels by the lady he told us was his long-lost grandmother he had known years ago in India, he spent not nearly so much of his time in writing, and he used to shave every morning instead of only when requisite, as in earlier days. And he was always going out on his bicycle in his new Norfolk suit. We are not so unobserving as grown-up people make out. We knew well enough he was looking for the long-lost. And we jolly well wished he might find her. Oswald, always full of sympathy with misfortune, however undeserved, had himself tried several times to find the lady. So had the others. But all this is what they call a digression; it has nothing to do with the dragon's teeth I am now narrating.

It began with the pig dying – it was the one we had for the circus, but it having behaved so badly that day had nothing to do with its illness and death, though the girls said they felt remorse, and perhaps if we hadn't made it run so that day it might have been spared to us. But Oswald cannot pretend that people were right just because they happen to be dead, and as long as that pig
was alive we all knew well enough that it was it that made us run – and not us it.

The pig was buried in the kitchen garden. Bill, that we made the tombstone for, dug the grave, and while he was away at his dinner we took a turn at digging, because we like to be useful, and besides, when you dig you never know what you may turn up. I knew a man once that found a gold ring on the point of his fork when he was digging potatoes, and you know how we found two half-crowns ourselves once when we were digging for treasure.

Oswald was taking his turn with the spade, and the others were sitting on the gravel and telling him how to do it.

‘Work with a will,' Dicky said, yawning.

Alice said, ‘I wish we were in a book. People in books never dig without finding something. I think I'd rather it was a secret passage than anything.'

Oswald stopped to wipe his honest brow ere replying.

‘A secret's nothing when you've found it out. Look at the secret staircase. It's no good, not even for hide-and-seek, because of its squeaking. I'd rather have the pot of gold we used to dig for when we were little.' It was really only last year, but you seem to grow old very quickly after you have once passed the prime of your youth, which is at ten, I believe.

‘How would you like to find the mouldering bones of Royalist soldiers foully done to death by nasty Ironsides?' Noel asked, with his mouth full of plum.

‘If they were really dead it wouldn't matter,' Dora said. ‘What I'm afraid of is a skeleton that can walk
about and catch at your legs when you're going upstairs to bed.'

‘Skeletons can't walk,' Alice said in a hurry; ‘you know they can't, Dora.'

And she glared at Dora till she made her sorry she had said what she had. The things you are frightened of, or even those you would rather not meet in the dark, should never be mentioned before the little ones, or else they cry when it comes to bedtime, and say it was because of what you said.

‘We shan't find anything. No jolly fear,' said Dicky.

And just then my spade I was digging with struck on something hard, and it felt hollow. I did really think for one joyful space that we had found that pot of gold. But the thing, whatever it was, seemed to be longish; longer, that is, than a pot of gold would naturally be. And as I uncovered it I saw that it was not at all pot-of-gold-colour, but like a bone Pincher has buried. So Oswald said –

‘It
is
the skeleton.'

The girls all drew back, and Alice said, ‘Oswald, I wish you wouldn't.'

A moment later the discovery was unearthed, and Oswald lifted it up, with both hands.

‘It's a dragon's head,' Noel said, and it certainly looked like it.

It was long and narrowish and bony, and with great yellow teeth sticking in the jaw.

Bill came back just then and said it was a horse's head, but H.O. and Noel would not believe it, and Oswald owns that no horse he has ever seen had a head at all that shape.

But Oswald did not stop to argue, because he saw a keeper who showed me how to set snares going by, and he wanted to talk to him about ferrets, so he went off and Dicky and Denny and Alice with him. Also Daisy and Dora went off to finish reading
Ministering Children
. So H.O. and Noel were left with the bony head. They took it away.

The incident had quite faded from the mind of Oswald next day. But just before breakfast Noel and H.O. came in, looking hot and anxious. They had got up early and had not washed at all – not even their hands and faces. Noel made Oswald a secret signal. All the others saw it, and with proper delicate feeling pretended not to have.

When Oswald had gone out with Noel and H.O. in obedience to the secret signal, Noel said –

‘You know that dragon's head yesterday?'

‘Well?' Oswald said quickly, but not crossly – the two things are quite different.

‘Well, you know what happened in Greek history when some chap sowed dragon's teeth?'

‘They came up armed men,' said H.O., but Noel sternly bade him shut up, and Oswald said, ‘Well,' again. If he spoke impatiently it was because he smelt the bacon being taken in to breakfast.

‘Well,' Noel went on, ‘what do you suppose would have come up if we'd sowed those dragon's teeth we found yesterday?'

‘Why, nothing, you young duffer,' said Oswald, who could now smell the coffee. ‘All that isn't History it's Humbug. Come on in to brekker.'

‘It's
not
humbug,' H.O. cried, ‘it is history. We
did
sow –'

‘Shut up,' said Noel again. ‘Look here, Oswald. We did sow those dragon's teeth in Randall's ten-acre meadow, and what do you think has come up?'

‘Toadstools, I should think,' was Oswald's contemptible rejoinder.

‘They have come up a camp of soldiers,' said Noel, ‘–
armed men
. So you see it
was
history. We have sowed army-seed, just like Cadmus, and it has come up. It was a very wet night. I daresay that helped it along.'

Oswald could not decide which to disbelieve – his brother or his ears. So, disguising his doubtful emotions without a word, he led the way to the bacon and the banqueting hall.

He said nothing about the army-seed then, neither did Noel and H.O. But after the bacon we went into the garden, and then the good elder brother said –

‘Why don't you tell the others your cock-and-bull story?'

So they did, and their story was received with warm expressions of doubt. It was Dicky who observed –

‘Let's go and have a squint at Randall's ten-acre, anyhow. I saw a hare there the other day.'

We went. It is some little way, and as we went, disbelief reigned superb in every breast except Noel's and H.O.'s, so you will see that even the ready pen of the present author cannot be expected to describe to you his variable sensations when he got to the top of the hill and suddenly saw that his little brothers had spoken the truth. I do not mean that they generally tell lies, but people make mistakes sometimes, and the effect is the same as lies if you believe them.

There
was
a camp there with real tents and soldiers in grey and red tunics. I daresay the girls would have said coats. We stood in ambush, too astonished even to think of lying in it, though of course we know that this is customary. The ambush was the wood on top of the little hill, between Randall's ten-acre meadow and Sugden's Waste Wake pasture.

‘There would be cover here for a couple of regiments,' whispered Oswald, who was, I think, gifted by Fate with the far-seeingness of a born general.

Alice merely said ‘Hist', and we went down to mingle with the troops as though by accident, and seek for information.

The first man we came to at the edge of the camp was cleaning a sort of cauldron thing like witches brew bats in.

We went up to him and said, ‘Who are you? Are you English, or are you the enemy?'

‘We're the enemy,' he said, and he did not seem ashamed of being what he was. And he spoke English with quite a good accent for a foreigner.

‘The enemy!' Oswald echoed in shocked tones. It is a terrible thing to a loyal and patriotic youth to see an enemy cleaning a pot in an English field, with English sand, and looking as much at home as if he was in his foreign fastnesses.

The enemy seemed to read Oswald's thoughts with deadly unerringness. He said –

‘The English are somewhere over on the other side of the hill. They are trying to keep us out of Maidstone.'

After this our plan of mingling with the troops did not seem worth going on with. This soldier, in spite of
his unerringness in reading Oswald's innermost heart, seemed not so very sharp in other things, or he would never have given away his secret plans like this, for he must have known from our accents that we were Britons to the backbone. Or perhaps (Oswald thought this, and it made his blood at once boil and freeze, which our uncle had told us was possible, but only in India), perhaps he thought that Maidstone was already as good as taken and it didn't matter what he said. While Oswald was debating within his intellect what to say next, and how to say it so as to discover as many as possible of the enemy's dark secrets, Noel said –

‘How did you get here? You weren't here yesterday at teatime.'

The soldier gave the pot another sandy rub, and said –

‘I daresay it does seem quick work – the camp seems as if it had sprung up in the night, doesn't it? – like a mushroom.'

Alice and Oswald looked at each other, and then at the rest of us. The words ‘sprung up in the night' seemed to touch a string in every heart.

‘You see,' whispered Noel, ‘he won't tell us how he came here.
Now
, is it humbug or history?'

Oswald, after whisperedly requesting his young brother to dry up and not bother, remarked, ‘Then you're an invading army?'

‘Well,' said the soldier, ‘we're a skeleton battalion, as a matter of fact, but we're invading all right enough.'

And now indeed the blood of the stupidest of us froze, just as the quick-witted Oswald's had done earlier in the interview. Even H.O. opened his mouth and went the colour of mottled soap; he is so fat that this is the
nearest he can go to turning pale. Denny said, ‘But you don't look like skeletons.'

The soldier stared, then he laughed and said, ‘Ah, that's the padding in our tunics. You should see us in the grey dawn taking our morning bath in a bucket.' It was a dreadful picture for the imagination. A skeleton, with its bones all loose most likely, bathing anyhow in a pail. There was a silence while we thought it over.

Now, ever since the cleaning-cauldron soldier had said that about taking Maidstone, Alice had kept on pulling at Oswald's jacket behind, and he had kept on not taking any notice. But now he could not stand it any longer, so he said –

‘Well, what is it?'

Alice drew him aside, or rather, she pulled at his jacket so that he nearly fell over backwards, and then she whispered, ‘Come along, don't stay parlaying with the foe. He's only talking to you to gain time.'

‘What for?' said Oswald.

‘Why, so that we shouldn't warn the other army, you silly,' Alice said, and Oswald was so upset by what she said, that he forgot to be properly angry with her for the wrong word she used.

‘But we ought to warn them at home,' she said – ‘suppose the Moat House was burned down, and all the supplies commandeered for the foe?'

Alice turned boldly to the soldier. ‘
Do
you burn down farms?' she asked.

‘Well, not as a rule,' he said, and he had the cheek to wink at Oswald, but Oswald would not look at him. ‘We've not burned a farm since – oh, not for years.'