The Wouldbegoods (19 page)

The pottery was easy. We had made a lot of it by the stream – which was the Nile when we discovered its source – and dried it in the sun, and then baked it under a bonfire, like in
Foul Play
. And most of the things were such queer shapes that they should have done for almost anything – Roman or Greek, or even Egyptian or antediluvian, or household milk-jugs of the cavemen, Albert’s uncle said. The pots were, fortunately, quite ready and dirty, because we had already buried them in mixed sand and river mud to improve the colour, and not remembered to wash it off.

So the Council at once collected it all – and some rusty hinges and some brass buttons and a file without a handle; and the girl Councillors carried it all concealed
in their pinafores, while the men members carried digging tools. H.O. and Daisy were sent on ahead as scouts to see if the coast was clear. We have learned the true usefulness of scouts from reading about the Transvaal War. But all was still in the hush of evening sunset on the Roman ruin.

We posted sentries, who were to lie on their stomachs on the walls and give a long, low, signifying whistle if aught approached.

Then we dug a tunnel, like the one we once did after treasure, when we happened to bury a boy. It took some time; but never shall it be said that a Bastable grudged time or trouble when a lark was at stake. We put the things in as naturally as we could, and shoved the dirt back, till everything looked just as before. Then we went home, late for tea. But it was in a good cause; and there was no hot toast, only bread-and-butter, which does not get cold with waiting.

That night Alice whispered to Oswald on the stairs, as we went up to bed –

‘Meet me outside your door when the others are asleep. Hist! Not a word.’

Oswald said, ‘No kid?’ And she replied in the affirmation.

So he kept awake by biting his tongue and pulling his hair – for he shrinks from no pain if it is needful and right.

And when the others all slept the sleep of innocent youth, he got up and went out, and there was Alice dressed.

She said, ‘I’ve found some broken things that look ever so much more Roman – they were on top of the
cupboard in the library. If you’ll come with me, we’ll bury them just to see how surprised the others will be.’

It was a wild and daring act, but Oswald did not mind.

He said –

‘Wait half a shake.’ And he put on his knickerbockers and jacket, and slipped a few peppermints into his pocket in case of catching cold. It is these thoughtful expedients which mark the born explorer and adventurer.

It was a little cold; but the white moonlight was very fair to see, and we decided we’d do some other daring moonlight act some other day. We got out of the front door, which is never locked till Albert’s uncle goes to bed at twelve or one, and we ran swiftly and silently across the bridge and through the fields to the Roman ruin.

Alice told me afterwards she should have been afraid if it had been dark. But the moonlight made it as bright as day is in your dreams.

Oswald had taken the spade and a sheet of newspaper.

We did not take all the pots Alice had found – but just the two that weren’t broken – two crooked jugs, made of stuff like flowerpots are made of. We made two long cuts with the spade and lifted the turf up and scratched the earth under, and took it out very carefully in handfuls on to the newspaper, till the hole was deepish. Then we put in the jugs, and filled it up with earth and flattened the turf over. Turf stretches like elastic. This we did a couple of yards from the place where the mound was dug into by the men, and we had been so careful with the newspaper that there was no loose earth about.

Then we went home in the wet moonlight – at least the grass was very wet – chuckling through the
peppermint, and got up to bed without anyone knowing a single thing about it.

The next day the Antiquities came. It was a jolly hot day, and the tables were spread under the trees on the lawn, like a large and very grand Sunday-school treat. There were dozens of different kinds of cake, and bread and butter, both white and brown, and gooseberries and plums and jam sandwiches. And the girls decorated the tables with flowers – blue larkspur and white Canterbury bells. And at about three there was a noise of people walking in the road, and presently the Antiquities began to come in at the front gate, and stood about on the lawn by twos and threes and sixes and sevens, looking shy and uncomfy, exactly like a Sunday-school treat. Presently some gentlemen came, who looked like the teachers; they were not shy, and they came right up to the door. So Albert’s uncle, who had not been too proud to be up in our room with us watching the people on the lawn through the netting of our short blinds, said –

‘I suppose that’s the Committee. Come on!’

So we all went down – we were in our Sunday things – and Albert’s uncle received the Committee like a feudal system baron, and we were his retainers.

He talked about dates, and king posts and gables, and mullions, and foundations, and records, and Sir Thomas Wyatt, and poetry, and Julius Caesar, and Roman remains, and lych gates and churches, and dog’s-tooth moulding till the brain of Oswald reeled. I suppose that Albert’s uncle remarked that all our mouths were open, which is a sign of reels in the brain, for he whispered –

‘Go hence, and mingle unsuspected with the crowd!’

So we went out on to the lawn, which was now crowded with men and women and one child. This was a girl; she was fat, and we tried to talk to her, though we did not like her. (She was covered in red velvet like an armchair.) But she wouldn’t. We thought at first she was from a deaf-and-dumb asylum, where her kind teachers had only managed to teach the afflicted to say ‘Yes’ and ‘No’. But afterwards we knew better, for Noel heard her say to her mother, ‘I wish you hadn’t brought me, mamma. I didn’t have a pretty teacup, and I haven’t enjoyed my tea one bit.’ And she had had five pieces of cake, besides little cakes and nearly a whole plate of plums, and there were only twelve pretty teacups altogether.

Several grown-ups talked to us in a most uninterested way, and then the President read a paper about the Moat House, which we couldn’t understand, and other people made speeches we couldn’t understand either, except the part about kind hospitality, which made us not know where to look.

Then Dora and Alice and Daisy and Mrs Pettigrew poured out the tea, and we handed cups and plates.

Albert’s uncle took me behind a bush to see him tear what was left of his hair when he found there were 123 Antiquities present, and I heard the President say to the Secretary that ‘tea always fetched them’.

Then it was time for the Roman ruin, and our hearts beat high as we took our hats – it was exactly like Sunday – and joined the crowded procession of eager Antiquities. Many of them had umbrellas and overcoats,
though the weather was fiery and without a cloud. That is the sort of people they were. The ladies all wore stiff bonnets, and no one took their gloves off, though, of course, it was quite in the country, and it is not wrong to take your gloves off there.

We had planned to be quite close when the digging went on; but Albert’s uncle made us a mystic sign and drew us apart.

Then he said: ‘The stalls and dress circle are for the guests. The hosts and hostesses retire to the gallery, whence, I am credibly informed, an excellent view may be obtained.’

So we all went up on the Roman walls, and thus missed the cream of the lark; for we could not exactly see what was happening. But we saw that things were being taken from the ground as the men dug, and passed round for the Antiquities to look at. And we knew they must be our Roman remains; but the Antiquities did not seem to care for them much, though we heard sounds of pleased laughter. And at last Alice and I exchanged meaning glances when the spot was reached where we had put in the extras. Then the crowd closed up thick, and we heard excited talk and we knew we really
had
sold the Antiquities this time.

Presently the bonnets and coats began to spread out and trickle towards the house and we were aware that all would soon be over. So we cut home the back way, just in time to hear the President saying to Albert’s uncle –

‘A genuine find – most interesting. Oh, really, you ought to have
one
. Well, if you insist –’

And so, by slow and dull degrees, the thick sprinkling of Antiquities melted off the lawn; the party was over, and only the dirty teacups and plates, and the trampled grass and the pleasures of memory were left.

We had a very beautiful supper – out of doors, too – with jam sandwiches and cakes and things that were over; and as we watched the setting monarch of the skies – I mean the sun – Alice said –

‘Let’s tell.’

We let the Dentist tell, because it was he who hatched the lark, but we helped him a little in the narrating of the fell plot, because he has yet to learn how to tell a story straight from the beginning.

When he had done, and we had done, Albert’s uncle said, ‘Well, it amused you; and you’ll be glad to learn that it amused your friends the Antiquities.’

‘Didn’t they think they were Roman?’ Daisy said; ‘they did in
The Daisy Chain
.’

‘Not in the least,’ said Albert’s uncle; ‘but the Treasurer and Secretary were charmed by your ingenious preparations for their reception.’

‘We didn’t want them to be disappointed,’ said Dora.

‘They weren’t,’ said Albert’s uncle. ‘Steady on with those plums, H.O. A little way beyond the treasure you had prepared for them they found two specimens of
real
Roman pottery which sent every man-jack of them home thanking his stars he had been born a happy little Antiquary child.’

‘Those were our jugs,’ said Alice, ‘and we really
have
sold the Antiquities.’ She unfolded the tale about our getting the jugs and burying them in the moonlight,
and the mound; and the others listened with deeply respectful interest. ‘We really have done it this time, haven’t we?’ she added in tones of well-deserved triumph.

But Oswald had noticed a queer look about Albert’s uncle from almost the beginning of Alice’s recital; and he now had the sensation of something being up, which has on other occasions frozen his noble blood. The silence of Albert’s uncle now froze it yet more Arcticly.

‘Haven’t we?’ repeated Alice, unconscious of what her sensitive brother’s delicate feelings had already got hold of. ‘We have done it this time, haven’t we?’

‘Since you ask me thus pointedly,’ answered Albert’s uncle at last, ‘I cannot but confess that I think you have indeed done it. Those pots on the top of the library cupboard
are
Roman pottery. The amphorae which you hid in the mound are probably – I can’t say for certain, mind – priceless. They are the property of the owner of this house. You have taken them out and buried them. The President of the Maidstone Antiquarian Society has taken them away in his bag. Now what are you going to do?’

Alice and I did not know what to say, or where to look. The others added to our pained position by some ungenerous murmurs about our not being so jolly clever as we thought ourselves.

There was a very far from pleasing silence. Then Oswald got up. He said –

‘Alice, come here a sec; I want to speak to you.’

As Albert’s uncle had offered no advice, Oswald disdained to ask him for any.

Alice got up too, and she and Oswald went into the garden, and sat down on the bench under the quince tree, and wished they had never tried to have a private lark of their very own with the Antiquities – ‘A Private Sale’, Albert’s uncle called it afterwards. But regrets, as nearly always happens, were vain. Something had to be done.

But what?

Oswald and Alice sat in silent desperateness, and the voices of the gay and careless others came to them from the lawn, where, heartless in their youngness, they were playing tag. I don’t know how they could. Oswald would not like to play tag when his brother and sister were in a hole, but Oswald is an exception to some boys.

But Dicky told me afterwards he thought it was only a joke of Albert’s uncle’s.

The dusk grew dusker, till you could hardly tell the quinces from the leaves, and Alice and Oswald still sat exhausted with hard thinking, but they could not think of anything. And it grew so dark that the moonlight began to show.

Then Alice jumped up – just as Oswald was opening his mouth to say the same thing – and said, ‘Of course – how silly! I know. Come on in, Oswald.’ And they went on in.

Oswald was still far too proud to consult anyone else. But he just asked carelessly if Alice and he might go into Maidstone the next day to buy some wire-netting for a rabbit-hutch, and to see after one or two things.

Albert’s uncle said certainly. And they went by train with the bailiff from the farm, who was going in about some sheep-dip and to buy pigs. At any other time Oswald
would not have been able to bear to leave the bailiff without seeing the pigs bought. But now it was different. For he and Alice had the weight on their bosoms of being thieves without having meant it – and nothing, not even pigs, had power to charm the young but honourable Oswald till that stain had been wiped away.

So he took Alice to the Secretary of the Maidstone Antiquities’ house, and Mr Turnbull was out, but the maidservant kindly told us where the President lived, and ere long the trembling feet of the unfortunate brother and sister vibrated on the spotless gravel of Camperdown Villa.

When they asked, they were told that Mr Longchamps was at home. Then they waited, paralysed with undescribed emotions, in a large room with books and swords and glass bookcases with rotten-looking odds and ends in them. Mr Longchamps was a collector. That means he stuck to anything, no matter how ugly and silly, if only it was old.

He came in rubbing his hands, and very kind. He remembered us very well, he said, and asked what he could do for us.

Oswald for once was dumb. He could not find words in which to own himself the ass he had been. But Alice was less delicately moulded. She said –

‘Oh, if you please, we are most awfully sorry, and we hope you’ll forgive us, but we thought it would be such a pity for you and all the other poor dear Antiquities to come all that way and then find nothing Roman – so we put some pots and things in the barrow for you to find.’