William The Outlaw (22 page)

‘Gottim a job,’ swaggered William.

‘What as?’

‘Bein’ drawed. He’s got to have special clothes. Any of you gotta Charles the First dress? He’s got to have one.’

‘Crumbs, no!’ said the Outlaws.

‘Well,’ said William, ‘we’ve got to get him one. I’ve got him the job an’ the rest of you got to get him the dress.’

‘He might have one already,’ said Ginger the optimist. ‘He might’ve been to a fancy dress dance in one.’

The other Outlaws looked doubtful.

‘No harm goin’ to see anyway,’ said William.

So they went to see.

The little girl with blue eyes and auburn curls was sitting on the doorstep. She looked prettier than ever. And she was still crying.

‘Cheer up,’ said William, ‘we’ve got your father a job.’

She continued to cry.

‘Has he got a Charles the First dress?’ asked William. ‘If he has he can come to the job straight away.’

‘He can’t come to no job at all,’ said the little girl mopping her blue eyes languidly with the corner of her pinafore, ‘he’s ill.’

The Outlaws stared at her.

‘Crumbs!’ said William appalled.

She stared at the Outlaws.

‘Go away,’ she said, ‘I don’t like you.’

The Outlaws went away, but despite her professed dislike of them it never occurred to them to relax their efforts on her behalf.

‘We’ll jus’ have to get a Charles the First dress an’ do it for her an’ take him the money,’ said William.

‘How’ll we get a Charles the First dress?’ said Douglas.

‘Oh, we will somehow,’ said William, cheerfully, ‘somehow we will. See if we don’t.’

With this they separated and went to their respective homes for tea.

William was rather silent at tea. He was silent because he was thinking about the Charles the First costume. He was rather vague as to what a Charles the First costume was like, but he had a
well-founded suspicion that the only fancy costume he possessed – a much-worn Red Indian costume – would not pass muster in its stead. He wondered whether they could transform it in
some way to a Charles the First costume by adding an old lace curtain for instance, or wearing a waste-paper basket as a headdress instead of the feathered band. . . . His sister, he knew, had a
fairy queen dress. Mentally he considered the picture of the fairy queen dress superimposed upon the Red Indian costume. It would look sort of queer and after all historical dresses had to look
sort of queer – that was the most important thing about them – so it might do. Robert seemed to be talking a good deal. William began to listen idly.

‘I’ve seen her again,’ Robert was saying, ‘she was looking out of a window upstairs. I heard him call to her. She’s called Gloria. . . . Haven’t you really
seen her, mother?’

‘No,’ said Mrs Brown mildly, ‘I’ve not seen either of them.’

A glorious blush overspread Robert’s face.

‘She’s wonderful,’ he said, ‘marvellous. I simply can’t describe her. But it seems so strange that one never sees her in the village. One just catches accidental
glimpses of her as one passes the house by chance. . . . It seems so strange that one doesn’t see her about . . . Gloria, that’s her name. I heard him call her that. I think it’s
such a beautiful name, don’t you?’

‘Perhaps,’ agreed Mrs Brown doubtfully; ‘somehow it suggests to me the name of a gas cooker or a furniture polish, but I daresay that it is beautiful really.’

‘She’s beautiful anyway,’ said Robert hotly.

William was listening intently. Mrs Brown, perceiving this, hastily changed the conversation. She was aware that William took an active and not always a kindly interest in his brother’s
frequently changing love affairs.

‘You’re going to the fancy dress dance tonight, aren’t you, dear?’ she said to Robert.

‘Yes,’ said Robert.

‘Did you decide on the pierrot’s costume, after all?’

‘Oh, no,’ said Robert, ‘didn’t I tell you? Victor’s going to lend me his Charles the First costume. He’d meant to go in it but his cold’s so bad that he
can’t go at all, so he’s sending it over to me.’

‘How kind,’ said Mrs Brown. ‘William, dear, do stop staring at your brother and get on with your tea.’

William obligingly began to demolish a slice of cake in a way that argued a rhinoceros’s capacity of mouth and an ostrich’s capacity for digestion. Having assuaged the pangs of
hunger for the time being, he turned to Robert.

‘You got that costume upstairs, Robert?’ he said guilelessly.

‘Perhaps I have and perhaps I haven’t,’ said Robert.

Thoughtfully William demolished another piece of cake.

Then he said, still thoughtfully, and to no one in particular:

‘I’d sort of like to see a Charles the First dress. I sort of think it might be good for my history. I think,’ with a burst of inspiration, ‘that I’d sort of learn
the dates of him better if I’d seen his clothes. It’s history, an’ my report said I din’t take enough int’rest in history. Well, I’d sort’ve take a better
int’rest in it if I’d seen his clothes. It’d sort of make it more int’resting. I bet I’d get an ever so much better hist’ry report next term if I could only see
the Charles the First dress what Robert’s got.’

‘Well, you can’t,’ said Robert firmly.

‘And you’ve had quite enough cake, dear,’ said his mother.

William turned to the buns, picked out the largest he could see and returned to the attack.

‘I’m not doin’ anythin’ particular this evenin’, Robert,’ he said, ‘I’ll help you dress if you like.’

‘Thanks, I don’t,’ said Robert.

‘And don’t talk with your mouth full, William,’ said his mother.

William finished the bun in silence, then returned yet again to the attack.

‘I bet I could show you how to put it on, Robert. They’re awful hard to put on are Charles the First dresses. I don’t s’pose you could do it alone. I’d be able to
show you the way the things went on. Prob’ly you’ll have ’em all laughin’ at you if you try to put ’em on alone. I’ll go up now if you like an’ put them
out ready for you the way they ought to go on.’

‘Well, I don’t like,’ said Robert, ‘and you can shut up.’

William took another very large bun for consolation. Robert looked at him dispassionately.

‘To watch him eating,’ he remarked, ‘you’d think he was something out of the Zoo.’

That remark destroyed any compunction that William might otherwise have had on Robert’s behalf in the events that followed.

Robert, fully attired in his Charles the First costume discreetly covered by an overcoat, came downstairs. He wore a look of pleasure and triumph.

The pleasure was caused by his appearance which he imagined to be slightly more romantic than it really was. The triumph was triumph over William. He knew that William had been anxious to see
the costume, from what Robert took to be motives of idle curiosity with a not improbable view to jeering at him afterwards. Robert, who considered that he owed William a good deal for one thing and
another (notably for a watch which William had dismembered in the interests of Science the week before), had determined to frustrate that object. Directly after tea he had locked his bedroom door
and pocketed the key, and a few minutes later he had had the satisfaction of seeing William furtively trying the handle. William, however, was not about the hall as he descended the stairs.

The costume had proved satisfactorily magnificent, but the drawback to the whole affair was that SHE would not be there to see it. At that moment he would have given almost anything in exchange
for the certainty that SHE would see him in his glory. For Robert considered that the costume made him look very handsome indeed. He did not see how any girl could look at him in it and remain
completely heart whole. . . . If only SHE were to be there. . . .

He took down his hat, bade farewell to his mother and set off down the drive. A small boy whom he could not see, but who, he satisfied himself, was not William (it was Henry) stepped out of the
bushes, handed him a note and disappeared. He went down to the end of the drive and, standing beneath the lamp-post in the road, read it. It was typewritten.

The letter was the result of arduous toil on the part of the Outlaws. Every word had been laboriously looked up in the dictionary and then laboriously typed in secret by Henry on his
father’s typewriter.

Robert stood reading it, his face paling, his mouth and eyes opening wide with astonishment. He looked down at the costume which was visible beneath his coat.

‘Charles the First costume,’ he gasped. ‘
Well
. . . By Jove . . . of all the
coincidences
!’

Then, with an air of courage and daring, he set off towards The Limes.

William entered the studio unannounced. The artist looked up from his easel.

‘Hello,’ he said, ‘you back?’

‘Yes,’ said William, ‘that man I told you about’s comin’.’

‘Costume and all?’ said the man.

‘Yes,’ said William, ‘but I’d better explain to you a bit about him first. He’s queer in the head.’

‘In other words you’re bringing me the village idiot.’

‘Yes,’ said William relieved at having the matter put so succinctly.

‘It’s sort of like that. He’s not dangerous, but he dresses up in Charles the First costume (that’s why I thought he’d do for you) an’ he thinks it
is
Charles the First time an’ so you’ve got to talk to him as if it was Charles the First time jus’ to keep him quiet. He’ll get mad if you don’t. He’ll be drawed
all right ’cause he likes bein’ drawed but the minute he sees any girls he always wants to start rescuin’ them an’ takin’ them up to their aunts in
Scotland.’

‘Why Scotland?’ said the artist mildly.

‘’Cause that’s part of his madness,’ explained William.

‘Well, there’s only one girl on the premises,’ said the artist, ‘and that’s my daughter . . . been in quarantine for mumps . . . just out of it today . . . and I
don’t suppose he’ll see her . . . so that’s all right.’

‘You’ll give me the money, won’t you?’ said William. ‘’Cause – ’cause I keep his money for him. . . . See?’

‘We’ll talk about that later,’ said the man, ‘if he comes and when he comes. Are you his keeper, by the way?’

‘Well,’ said William guardedly, ‘I sort of am and I’m sort of not.’

But just then he heard the sound of the opening of the front gate and discreetly retired again through the open window.

Robert walked up the garden path, his face stern and set with resolve. Robert was a voracious reader of romantic fiction and had often longed for something like this to happen
to him. Its only drawback in his eye was that he hadn’t enough money to take the heroine of the drama to Scotland, but he could not imagine the hero of a story being baffled by a little thing
like that. They always seemed to have enough money to take the heroine anywhere. But the first thing to do was to rescue her. Then he’d pawn something or other, pawn his Charles the First
costume perhaps . . . but then he’d have nothing to go to Scotland in . . . though in any case one couldn’t travel to Scotland wearing a Charles the First costume. It was all very
baffling . . . but the first thing to do was to rescue her. She might have some jewels or heirlooms that they could pawn. Heroines in books always had jewels and heirlooms. . . .

‘Oh, there you are. . . . Come in.’

The voice came from one of the open French windows. It was the madman standing at one end of the room at an easel. He evidently thought he was an artist just as the girl had warned him. Hastily
Robert flung his overcoat over a garden seat and entered in all the glory of his Charles the First costume.

‘Good evening,’ said the artist. ‘You’ve come to sit for me?’

Robert assumed the simpering expression of one who humours a madman.

‘Oh, yes,’ he said, ‘I’ve come to sit for you.’

Certainly the effect of the simper superimposed upon the stern set expression of resolve would have justified anyone regarding Robert in his bizarre costume as mentally though not dangerously
deranged. The artist posed him appropriately and then proceeded to test the sanity or insanity of his sitter.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘how’s Charles the First today?’

Robert went paler and gathered his forces together. At all costs he must humour him.

‘His Majesty,’ he said solemnly, ‘seems of a truth well today.’

Rather good that, he thought.

The artist looked at him keenly . . . but the pallid earnestness of Robert’s expression beneath the humouring simper convinced him . . . it was true . . . he
was
potty. Well, he
must just humour him . . . he
had
to get those sketches off today . . . and he didn’t look dangerous.

‘I’m glad to hear that,’ he said, and added with a burst of inspiration, ‘gadzooks.’

For a minute or two he worked in silence. Then – he found the pose he had chosen rather difficult, and for a few seconds he stood frowning at Robert meditatively. The artist’s bushy
eyebrows made him look very ferocious when he frowned. Robert began to tremble. The man might fly at him or something. He must say something about Charles the First to soothe him . . . at once . .
. What a pity he knew so little about Charles the First . . . except that he was executed . . . or was he executed? . . . Better avoid that part of it perhaps, especially as presumably he was
supposed to be still alive. . . . He didn’t even know whom Charles the First had married. He might, of course, have been a bachelor. . . . He must say something quickly. . . . The man’s
stare was growing positively murderous. . . . With a ghastly smile he said: