The Wouldbegoods (9 page)

‘You are an ungrateful beast. We gave you sixpence freely of our own will.’

The man did look a little bit ashamed, but he mumbled something about having his living to get. Then Oswald said –

‘Here you are. Catch!’ and he flung down the handkerchief with the money in it.

The man muffed the catch – butter-fingered idiot! – but he picked up the handkerchief and undid it, and when he saw what was in it he swore dreadfully. The cad!

‘Look here,’ he called out, ‘this won’t do, young shaver. I want those there shiners I see in your pus! Chuck ’em along!’

Then Oswald laughed. He said –

‘I shall know you again anywhere, and you’ll be put in prison for this. Here are the
shiners
.’ And he was so angry he chucked down purse and all. The shiners were not real ones, but only card-counters that looked like sovereigns on one side. Oswald used to carry them in his purse so as to look affluent. He does not do this now.

When the man had seen what was in the purse he disappeared under the tower, and Oswald was glad of what he had done about the bolts – and he hoped they were as strong as the ones on the other side of the door.

They were.

We heard the man kicking and pounding at the door, and I am not ashamed to say that we were all holding on to each other very tight. I am proud, however, to relate that nobody screamed or cried.

After what appeared to be long years, the banging stopped, and presently we saw the brute going away among the trees. Then Alice did cry, and I do not blame her. Then Oswald said –

‘It’s no use. Even if he’s undone the door, he may be in ambush. We must hold on here till somebody comes.’

Then Alice said, speaking chokily because she had not quite done crying –

‘Let’s wave a flag.’

By the most fortunate accident she had on one of her Sunday petticoats, though it was Monday. This petticoat is white. She tore it out at the gathers, and we tied it
to Denny’s stick, and took turns to wave it. We had laughed at his carrying a stick before, but we were very sorry now that we had done so.

And the tin dish the Lent pie was baked in we polished with our handkerchiefs, and moved it about in the sun so that the sun might strike on it and signal our distress to some of the outlying farms.

This was perhaps the most dreadful adventure that had then ever happened to us. Even Alice had now stopped thinking of Mr Richard Ravenal, and thought only of the lurker in ambush.

We all felt our desperate situation keenly. I must say Denny behaved like anything but a white mouse. When it was the others’ turn to wave, he sat on the leads of the tower and held Alice’s and Noel’s hands, and said poetry to them – yards and yards of it. By some strange fatality it seemed to comfort them. It wouldn’t have me.

He said ‘The Battle of the Baltic’, and ‘Gray’s Elegy’, right through, though I think he got wrong in places, and the ‘Revenge’, and Macaulay’s thing about Lars Porsena and the Nine Gods. And when it was his turn he waved like a man.

I will try not to call him a white mouse any more. He was a brick that day, and no mouse.

The sun was low in the heavens, and we were sick of waving and very hungry, when we saw a cart in the road below. We waved like mad, and shouted, and Denny screamed exactly like a railway whistle, a thing none of us had known before that he could do.

And the cart stopped. And presently we saw a figure with a white beard among the trees. It was our Pig-man.

We bellowed the awful truth to him, and when he had taken it in – he thought at first we were kidding – he came up and let us out.

He had got the pig; luckily it was a very small one – and we were not particular. Denny and Alice sat on the front of the cart with the Pig-man, and the rest of us got in with the pig, and the man drove us right home. You may think we talked it over on the way. Not us. We went to sleep, among the pig, and before long the Pig-man stopped and got us to make room for Alice and Denny. There was a net over the cart. I never was so sleepy in my life, though it was not more than bedtime.

Generally, after anything exciting, you are punished – but this could not be, because we had only gone for a walk, exactly as we were told.

There was a new rule made, though. No walks except on the highroads, and we were always to take Pincher and either Lady, the deerhound, or Martha, the bulldog. We generally hate rules, but we did not mind this one.

Father gave Denny a gold pencil case because he was first to go down into the tower. Oswald does not grudge Denny this, though some might think he deserved at least a silver one. But Oswald is above such paltry jealousies.

chapter five

the waterworks

This is the story of one of the most far-reaching and influentially naughty things we ever did in our lives. We did not mean to do such a deed. And yet we did do it. These things will happen with the best-regulated consciences.

The story of this rash and fatal act is intimately involved – which means all mixed up anyhow – with a private affair of Oswald’s, and the one cannot be revealed without the other. Oswald does not particularly want his story to be remembered, but he wishes to tell the truth, and perhaps it is what Father calls a wholesome discipline to lay bare the awful facts.

It was like this.

On Alice’s and Noel’s birthday we went on the river for a picnic. Before that we had not known that there was a river so near us. Afterwards Father said he wished we had been allowed to remain on our pristine ignorance, whatever that is. And perhaps the dark hour did dawn when we wished so too. But a truce to vain regrets.

It was rather a fine thing in birthdays. The uncle sent a box of toys and sweets, things that were like a vision from another and a brighter world. Besides that Alice had a knife, a pair of shut-up scissors, a silk handkerchief,
a book – it was
The Golden Age
and is A1 except where it gets mixed with grown-up nonsense. Also a work case lined with pink plush, a boot-bag, which no one in their senses would use because it had flowers in wool all over it. And she had a box of chocolates and a musical box that played ‘The Man who Broke’ and two other tunes, and two pairs of kid gloves for church, and a box of writing-paper – pink – with ‘Alice’ on it in gold writing, and an egg coloured red that said ‘A. Bastable’ in ink on one side. These gifts were the offerings of Oswald, Dora, Dicky, Albert’s uncle, Daisy, Mr Foulkes (our own robber), Noel, H.O., Father and Denny. Mrs Pettigrew gave the egg. It was a kindly housekeeper’s friendly token.

I shall not tell you about the picnic on the river because the happiest times form but dull reading when they are written down. I will merely state that it was prime. Though happy, the day was uneventful. The only thing exciting enough to write about was in one of the locks, where there was a snake – a viper. It was asleep in a warm sunny corner of the lock gate, and when the gate was shut it fell off into the water.

Alice and Dora screamed hideously. So did Daisy, but her screams were thinner.

The snake swam round and round all the time our boat was in the lock. It swam with four inches of itself – the head end – reared up out of the water, exactly like Kaa in the
Jungle Book
– so we know Kipling is a true author and no rotter. We were careful to keep our hands well inside the boat. A snake’s eyes strike terror into the boldest breast.

When the lock was full Father killed the viper with a boathook. I was sorry for it myself. It was indeed a venomous serpent. But it was the first we had ever seen, except at the Zoo. And it did swim most awfully well.

Directly the snake had been killed H.O. reached out for its corpse, and the next moment the body of our little brother was seen wriggling conclusively on the boat’s edge. This exciting spectacle was not of a lasting nature. He went right in. Father clawed him out. He is very unlucky with water.

Being a birthday, but little was said. H.O. was wrapped in everybody’s coats, and did not take any cold at all.

This glorious birthday ended with an iced cake and ginger wine, and drinking healths. Then we played whatever we liked. There had been rounders during the afternoon. It was a day to be forever marked by memory’s brightest what’s-its-name.

I should not have said anything about the picnic but for one thing. It was the thin edge of the wedge. It was the all-powerful lever that moved but too many events. You see,
we were no longer strangers to the river
.

And we went there whenever we could. Only we had to take the dogs, and to promise no bathing without grown-ups. But paddling in back waters was allowed. I say no more.

I have not numerated Noel’s birthday presents because I wish to leave something to the imagination of my young readers. (The best authors always do this.) If you will take the large, red catalogue of the Army and Navy Stores, and just make a list of about fifteen of the things you would like best – prices from 2s. to 25s. – you will
get a very good idea of Noel’s presents, and it will help you to make up your mind in case you are asked just before your next birthday what you really
need
.

One of Noel’s birthday presents was a cricket ball. He cannot bowl for nuts, and it was a first-rate ball. So some days after the birthday Oswald offered him to exchange it for a coconut he had won at the fair, and two pencils (new), and a brand-new notebook. Oswald thought, and he still thinks, that this was a fair exchange, and so did Noel at the time, and he agreed to it, and was quite pleased till the girls said it wasn’t fair, and Oswald had the best of it. And then that young beggar Noel wanted the ball back, but Oswald, though not angry, was firm.

‘You said it was a bargain, and you shook hands on it,’ he said, and he said it quite kindly and calmly.

Noel said he didn’t care. He wanted his cricket ball back. And the girls said it was a horrid shame.

If they had not said that, Oswald might yet have consented to let Noel have the beastly ball, but now, of course, he was not going to. He said –

‘Oh, yes, I daresay. And then you would be wanting the coconut and things again the next minute.’

‘No, I shouldn’t,’ Noel said. It turned out afterwards he and H.O. had eaten the coconut, which only made it worse. And it made them worse too – which is what the book calls poetic justice.

Dora said, ‘I don’t think it was fair,’ and even Alice said –

‘Do let him have it back, Oswald.’

I wish to be just to Alice. She did not know then about the coconut having been secretly wolfed up.

We were in the garden. Oswald felt all the feelings of the hero when the opposing forces gathered about him are opposing as hard as ever they can. He knew he was not unfair, and he did not like to be jawed at just because Noel had eaten the coconut and wanted the ball back. Though Oswald did not know then about the eating of the coconut, but he felt the injustice in his soul all the same.

Noel said afterwards he meant to offer Oswald something else to make up for the coconut, but he said nothing about this at the time.

‘Give it me, I say,’ Noel said.

And Oswald said, ‘Shan’t!’

Then Noel called Oswald names, and Oswald did not answer back but just kept smiling pleasantly, and carelessly throwing up the ball and catching it again with an air of studied indifference.

It was Martha’s fault that what happened happened. She is the bulldog, and very stout and heavy. She had just been let loose and she came bounding along in her clumsy way, and jumped up on Oswald, who is beloved by all dumb animals. (You know how sagacious they are.) Well, Martha knocked the ball out of Oswald’s hands, and it fell on the grass, and Noel pounced on it like a hooded falcon on its prey. Oswald would scorn to deny that he was not going to stand this, and the next moment the two were rolling over on the grass, and very soon Noel was made to bite the dust. And serve him right. He is old enough to know his own mind.

Then Oswald walked slowly away with the ball, and the others picked Noel up, and consoled the beaten, but Dicky would not take either side.

And Oswald went up into his own room and lay on his bed, and reflected gloomy reflections about unfairness.

Presently he thought he would like to see what the others were doing without their knowing he cared. So he went into the linen room and looked out of its window, and he saw they were playing Kings and Queens – and Noel had the biggest paper crown and the longest stick sceptre.

Oswald turned away without a word, for it really was sickening.

Then suddenly his weary eyes fell upon something they had not before beheld. It was a square trapdoor in the ceiling of the linen room.

Oswald never hesitated. He crammed the cricket ball into his pocket and climbed up the shelves and unbolted the trapdoor, and shoved it up, and pulled himself up through it. Though above all was dark and smelt of spiders, Oswald fearlessly shut the trapdoor down again before he struck a match. He always carries matches. He is a boy fertile in every subtle expedient. Then he saw he was in the wonderful, mysterious place between the ceiling and the roof of the house. The roof is beams and tiles. Slits of light show through the tiles here and there. The ceiling, on its other and top side, is made of rough plaster and beams. If you walk on the beams it is all right – if you walk on the plaster you go through with your feet. Oswald found this out later, but some fine instinct now taught the young explorer where he ought to tread and where not. It was splendid. He was still very angry with the others and he was glad he had found out a secret they jolly well didn’t know.

He walked along a dark, narrow passage. Every now and then cross-beams barred his way, and he had to creep under them. At last a small door loomed before him with cracks of light under and over. He drew back the rusty bolts and opened it. It opened straight on to the leads, a flat place between two steep red roofs, with a parapet two feet high back and front, so that no one could see you. It was a place no one could have invented better than, if they had tried, for hiding in.

Oswald spent the whole afternoon there. He happened to have a volume of Percy’s
Anecdotes
in his pocket, the one about lawyers, as well as a few apples. While he read he fingered the cricket ball, and presently it rolled away, and he thought he would get it by-and-by.

When the tea-bell rang he forgot the ball and went hurriedly down, for apples do not keep the inside from the pangs of hunger.

Noel met him on the landing, got red in the face, and said –

‘It wasn’t
quite
fair about the ball, because H.O. and I had eaten the coconut.
You
can have it.’

‘I don’t want your beastly ball,’ Oswald said, ‘only I hate unfairness. However, I don’t know where it is just now. When I find it you shall have it to bowl with as often as you want.’

‘Then you’re not waxy?’

And Oswald said ‘No’ and they went in to tea together. So that was all right. There were raisin cakes for tea.

Next day we happened to want to go down to the river quite early. I don’t know why; this is called Fate, or Destiny. We dropped in at the ‘Rose and Crown’ for
some ginger beer on our way. The landlady is a friend of ours and lets us drink it in her back parlour, instead of in the bar, which would be improper for girls.

We found her awfully busy, making pies and jellies, and her two sisters were hurrying about with great hams, and pairs of chickens, and rounds of cold beef and lettuces, and pickled salmon and trays of crockery and glasses.

‘It’s for the angling competition,’ she said.

We said, ‘What’s that?’

‘Why,’ she said, slicing cucumber like beautiful machinery while she said it, ‘a lot of anglers come down some particular day and fish one particular bit of the river. And the one that catches most fish gets the prize. They’re fishing the pen above Stoneham Lock. And they all come here to dinner. So I’ve got my hands full and a trifle over.’

We said, ‘Couldn’t we help?’

But she said, ‘Oh, no, thank you. Indeed not, please. I really am so I don’t know which way to turn. Do run along, like dears.’

So we ran along like these timid but graceful animals.

Need I tell the intellectual reader that we went straight off to the pen above Stoneham Lock to see the anglers competing? Angling is the same thing as fishing.

I am not going to try and explain locks to you. If you’ve never seen a lock you could never understand even if I wrote it in words of one syllable and pages and pages long. And if you have, you’ll understand without my telling you. It is harder than Euclid if you don’t know beforehand. But you might get a grown-up person to explain it to you with books or wooden bricks.

I will tell you what a pen is because that is easy. It is the bit of river between one lock and the next. In some rivers ‘pens’ are called ‘reaches’, but pen is the proper word.