William The Outlaw (6 page)

‘A
donkey
!’ said Mrs Hopkins, Treasurer of the Anti-vivisection Society (that is to say, she collected their sixpences and bought the cakes for tea). ‘I thought they
used monkeys or rabbits.’

‘They use different animals for different experiments,’ said the Vicar’s wife with an air of deep knowledge. ‘I expect that a donkey is the most suitable animal for some
experiments.’

‘How
terrible
!’ said Mrs Gerald Fitzgerald, covering her face with her hands. ‘How truly terrible . . . Poor, patient, suffering, dumb beast.’

Maria laid back her ears and rolled her wicked eyes at them.

Mrs Hopkins and the Vicar’s wife began to wander about the room.

They stopped simultaneously before the row of bottled frogs.

‘Poor creatures!’ said Mrs Hopkins unsteadily. ‘Poor, patient, suffering creatures – once so beautiful and lovable and free.’

(It was only the week before that Mrs Hopkins had screamed for help on meeting a frog in her larder.)

Mrs Gerald Fitzgerald had by this time discovered the skeleton. She adjusted her glasses and looked slowly and closely up and down it several times. Then she pronounced in a sepulchral whisper:
‘Human remains!’

The Outlaws held their breath in their retreat, but a resonant ‘Hee-haw!’ from Maria drew the members of the local Anti-vivisection Society from any further exploring.

‘The patient creature,’ said the Vicar’s wife brokenly, ‘seems to be asking for our help.’

Maria assumed again her attitude of deceptive meekness.

‘We certainly must
do
something,’ said Mrs Gerald Fitzgerald, ‘we can’t leave our dear dumb friend to torture. Look at the signs of struggle all around us. Look at
its air of suffering. The foul work has evidently already begun. Let’s – let’s take it away with us.’

‘On the other hand,’ said the Vicar’s wife slowly, ‘there are the laws of private property to be considered. Mr Simpkins doubtless purchased this creature and the law
will hold it to belong to him.’

‘We can
buy
it from him then,’ said Mrs Gerald Fitzgerald brightly. ‘That would be a noble work indeed. How much money have we in hand, Mrs Hopkins?’

‘Only threepence-halfpenny,’ said Mrs Hopkins gloomily, ‘we’ve been having iced cakes lately, you know. They’re more expensive.’

‘They cost more than that,’ said the Vicar’s wife, ‘donkeys, I mean. But,’ with a flash of inspiration, ‘we can get up a bazaar for it or a concert for
it.’

Their spirits rose at the prospect.

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Hopkins. ‘Why, it’s nearly a month since we had a bazaar. And
such
a good cause. Rescuing the poor dumb suffering creature from the hands of the
torturer – How sad it looks and yet grateful as though it understood all that we were going to do for it.’

Maria rolled her eyes again and drooped her head still further.

‘I’m going to take it
straight
home,’ said the Vicar’s wife, ‘and give it a good meal and nurse it back to health and strength. I’ll go to the police
station and tell them that I have taken it and why. I’ll just fix up something to lead it home by.’

She took down a picture and divested it of its picture cord, which she then tied round the neck of the still meekly unprotesting Maria. The others gazed at her in silent admiration. There was
really no one like the Vicar’s wife in a crisis.

Then, with the air of a general who has now marshalled her forces, she led out Maria, followed by her faithful band. The Outlaws, weakly wondering what was going to happen, crept out of their
hiding place and followed at a distance.

‘They don’t know it’s
him
,’ said Joan in a thrilled whisper.

Maria behaved quite well till they got to the hill. Then her familiar devil returned to her. She did not kick or bite. She ran. She ran at top speed up the steep hill, dragging the panting,
gasping Vicar’s wife after her at the end of the cord. Maria’s neck seemed to be made of iron. The weight of the Vicar’s wife did not seem to trouble it at all. The picture cord,
too, must have been pretty strong. The Vicar’s wife did not let go. With dogged British determination she clung to her end of the cord. She lost her footing, her hat came off, she gasped and
panted and gurgled and choked and sputtered. She dropped her bag. But she did not let go her end of the picture cord. Behind her – far behind her – ran her little crowd of followers,
clucking in dismayed horror. Mrs Hopkins picked up the Vicar’s wife’s hat and Mrs Gerald Fitzgerald her bag.

At the top of the hill Maria stopped abruptly and reassumed her air of weary patience. The Vicar’s wife sat down in the dust by her side, gasping but still undaunted, holding on to the end
of the cord. The others arrived and the Vicar’s wife, still sitting in the road, put on her hat and wiped the dust out of her eyes.

‘What happened?’ panted Mrs Hopkins. ‘Did it – bolt or something?’

But the Vicar’s wife was past speech.

‘Poor creature!’ said Mrs Gerald Fitzgerald in an effort to restore the atmosphere, ‘poor dumb creature.’

She put out her hand to stroke Maria and Maria very neatly bit her elbow.

The Vicar’s wife arose from the dust and wearily but determinedly led Maria through the gate on to the Vicarage lawn. The Outlaws came cautiously up the hill and watched proceedings
through the Vicarage gate.

The members of the local Anti-vivisection Society stood round Maria and gazed at her. A close observer might have noticed that their glances held less affection and pity than they had held a
short time before.

‘It doesn’t seem at all – er –
cowed
,’ said Mrs Hopkins at last. ‘It seems quite – er as –
fresh. . . .
And it hasn’t any
wounds
or anything.’

‘Sometimes,’ said Mrs Gerald Fitzgerald, ‘they just use them for diseases. They just inject disease germs into them.’

‘Do you mean,’ said Mrs Hopkins, turning pale, ‘that it may be infected with a deadly disease?’

‘
Quite
possibly,’ said Mrs Gerald Fitzgerald.

They looked at the Vicar’s wife for advice and help. And again the Vicar’s wife showed her capacities for dealing with a crisis. Though still dusty and shaken from her inglorious
career up the hill at Maria’s heels she took command of affairs once more.

‘One minute,’ she said, and disappeared into the house.

The members of the Anti-vivisection Society stood timorously in the porch, eyes fixed apprehensively upon Maria who stood motionless in the middle of the lawn looking as if butter would not melt
in her mouth.

And the Outlaws still watched proceedings with interest through the Vicarage gate.

Then the Vicar’s wife came out staggering beneath the weight of a large pail.

‘Disinfectant,’ she explained shortly to her audience.

She approached Maria who was still standing in maiden meditation fancy free on the lawn, and with a sudden swift movement threw over her the entire pail of carbolic solution, soaking her from
head to foot. Then Maria went mad. She leapt, she kicked, she reared. Dripping with carbolic she dashed round the lawn. She trampled over the flower beds. She broke two dozen flower pots and
destroyed their contents. She kicked the greenhouse door in. She put her back hoof through the Vicar’s study window. She tried to climb an apple tree. She wrecked the summer-house. . . .

The members of the local Anti-vivisection Society withdrew into the Vicarage and bolted all the doors. Mrs Gerald Fitzgerald, after explaining that she wasn’t used to this sort of thing,
went into hysterics that rivalled Maria’s outburst in intensity.

And still the Outlaws watched spellbound through the gate.

It was the Outlaws who first saw Mr Simpkins’ housekeeper coming up the hill. She entered the Vicarage gate without looking at them. To her they were merely four inoffensive small boys and
one inoffensive small girl looking through a gate. She little knew that they held the key to a situation that was becoming more complicated every minute. Mr Simpkins’ housekeeper looked
upset. She rang at the Vicarage front door and demanded to see the Vicar. The Vicar was out, but the Vicar’s wife, looking very pale and keeping well within the doorway and casting
apprehensive glances round the garden, where Maria, temporarily breathless and exhausted, was standing motionless – the picture of mute patience – on the lawn, interviewed her. From
within the house came the unmelodious strains of Mrs Gerald Fitzgerald’s hysterics. Mr Simpkins’ housekeeper said that Mr Simpkins had vanished. He was nowhere to be found. The book he
had been reading had been discovered in the field near the garden and his lab was in such a state as to suggest a violent struggle, and Mr Simpkins’ housekeeper suspected foul play of which
Mr Simpkins was the victim.

The Vicar’s wife, who was a woman of one idea, only pointed sternly to Maria and said:

‘What do you know about
that
, my good woman?’

Her good woman looked, saw a mournful-looking and very wet donkey and shook her head.

‘Nothing ’m,’ she said primly. ‘But what I want to know is, where is Mr Simpkins? I thought the Vicar might advise me what to do, but as he’s not in, ’m,
p’raps I’d better go to the police straight.’

The Outlaws, who felt that with the advent of Mr Simpkins’ housekeeper the plot was thickening, and who were consumed with curiosity as to why Mr Simpkins’ housekeeper had followed
the metamorphosed Mr Simpkins, crept up to the Vicarage door and listened. The mention of ‘police’ made them rather uncomfortable. The Vicar’s wife saw them and frowned.

The Vicar’s wife was a good Christian woman, but she could never learn to like the Outlaws.

‘Go away, little boys,’ she said tartly, ‘how dare you come up to the door listening to conversation that is not meant for you? Go away at once. Or, wait one minute . . . Have
any of you seen Mr Simpkins this afternoon?’

It was Joan who answered. She pointed across the lawn to Maria who was now placidly nibbling the Vicar’s hedge and said:

‘That’s Mr Simpkins.’

There was a moment’s tense silence. Then the Vicar’s wife said sternly:

‘Do you imagine that to be funny, you impertinent little girl?’

‘No,’ said Joan.

There was an innocence in Joan’s face that convinced even the Vicar’s wife.

‘Perhaps,’ she said more kindly, ‘you are shortsighted, little girl. That,’ pointing to Maria, ‘is a donkey.’

‘It’s Mr Simpkins really,’ said Joan earnestly, ‘we turned him into a donkey and we can’t turn him back.’

The Vicar’s wife gasped, Mr Simpkins’ housekeeper gasped, the other members of the Anti-vivisection Society came out to see what it was all about and all gasped. Mrs Gerald
Fitzgerald for the time being abandoned her hysterics to gasp with them.

‘PERHAPS,’ SAID THE VICAR’S WIFE, ‘YOU ARE SHORT-SIGHTED, LITTLE GIRL. THAT IS A DONKEY.’ ‘IT’S MR SIMPKINS, REALLY,’ SAID JOAN
EARNESTLY.

‘
What?
’ said all the rest of them.

‘It’s true,’ affirmed William, ‘we’ve turned him into a donkey and we can’t turn him back again.’

At that moment there was a sound of great commotion outside and in at the gate rushed Mr Simpkins, followed by Farmer Jenks.

Farmer Jenks was not pursuing Mr Simpkins. Farmer Jenks and Mr Simpkins were coming on independent missions. Farmer Jenks had come to his field for Maria and found Maria gone.
The jobbing gardener’s youngest child had told him that four boys and a girl had taken the donkey out of the field. It took only a few words to make Farmer Jenks recognise his old enemies,
the Outlaws, as the invaders of his domain and thieves of his donkey, and Farmer Jenks saw red. He had traced the donkey to the Vicarage garden. He didn’t know how it had got there, but he
knew how it had got out of his field, and he was out for his donkey and vengeance on the Outlaws. . . .

Mr Simpkins had reached town, to be met at the station by a telegram telling him that his great-aunt was better, so with feelings of deep disgust with life in general and great-aunts in
particular, he had returned to his rural retreat – to find his housekeeper vanished and his laboratory wrecked. Again the jobbing gardener’s youngest child had brightly come forward
with all the information it could produce. It had seen four boys and a girl turn a donkey into his lab through the window and then let the donkey break things. Then more people had come and then
they’d all gone up to the Vicarage. So Mr Galileo Simpkins had gone up to the Vicarage in search of more light on the situation, and in search of the Outlaws.

He and Farmer Jenks caught sight of the Outlaws simultaneously and neither could resist the temptation to make the most of the opportunity. Both flung themselves upon the
Outlaws. The Outlaws fled round the lawn, pursued by Farmer Jenks and Mr Galileo Simpkins. Mrs Gerald Fitzgerald went back to the drawing-room to have a few more hysterics, the Vicar’s wife
dashed into the hall for the fire extinguisher and Maria watched proceedings with interest as she meditatively chewed the Vicar’s hedge.

Farmer Jenks caught hold of William, lost his balance and fell with him to the ground. Mr Galileo Simpkins fell over Farmer Jenks and caught hold of Maria’s tail as he fell. Maria, annoyed
at this familiarity, went mad again. The Vicar’s wife, with vague ideas of pouring oil on troubled waters, turned the fire extinguisher on to them all. Mrs Hopkins ran into the road shouting
‘Murder’ and Mr Simpkins’ housekeeper went to fetch the police.