William in Trouble (20 page)

Robert rather sternly proposed a fine of sixpence for anyone who should fail to produce a poem. All notified their assent except George, who was not listening. George was beginning to have
horrible misgivings about his rabbit hutch. After all he’d never seen a hutch quite so freely ornamented with fretwork. Handsome it might be, but was it practicable? Would the rabbits like
it? Would the cousin like it? Though it would be nice and cool in the summer, it would certainly be draughty in the winter.

‘Do you agree, George?’ said Robert, sternly.

George tore his thoughts from his rabbit hutch problem.

‘Oh – er – yes,’ he said, hastily. He might, of course, make a felt covering for the winter.

It was Robert’s turn now. Robert took a paper from his pocket and arose. He looked very earnest and very much embarrassed.

‘Good old Robert!’ whispered William, from above.

‘Mine’s – er – very short,’ said Robert. ‘It’s – er – an Ode to a Snowdrop. The first verse is in
vers libre. Vers libre
,’ he
explained kindly, ‘is the French for “without any rhymes”.’ Then he began to read:

Robert stopped, blushing furiously. ‘Of course,’ he said modestly, ‘that sort of poetry’s quite easy to write because there aren’t any rules. It’s looked upon
as quite good poetry nowadays, though. Walt Whitman wrote it and a lot of the best poets write that sort of poetry just because it’s so easy to write and there aren’t any rules. But
I’ve written the other verse in the other way, I mean with rules and rhymes and that sort of thing. This is the second verse.

‘To make it scan,’ explained Robert, still blushing, you have to put the emphasis on the last syllable of winter. But you can. It’s all right. You can do anything like that.
It’s called poetic licence—’

The others were obviously impressed by this.

‘Good old Robert!’ again whispered William encouragingly from his lofty eyrie.

‘Sh!’ said the other Outlaws.

Then Oswald arose. Oswald’s face had worn a smile of mingled amusement and contempt as Robert read his poem. He now took a piece of paper out of his pocket. Oswald’s mother’s
poetical library contained a copy of Mrs Browning’s poems and Oswald had ascertained that Robert’s poetical library (which he rightly took to represent the whole of Robert’s
poetical knowledge) did not.

‘A Poet,’ he announced as his title, and then began to read.

Oswald stopped. There was a gasp of amazed surprise. Even George’s mind was drawn from its gloomy mental contemplation of the drawbacks of a fretworked rabbit hutch. There was a dead
silence. The Twentieth Century Poets sat and gazed at Oswald in stunned reverence. Like the Queen of Sheba there was no more spirit in them. Oswald smiled his superior smile at them.

Of course the voting was a mere farce. Everyone, as Robert, gathering together his stupefied faculties with an effort ascertained, was absolutely unanimous. There was no doubt at all that Oswald
was a great poet. Oswald produced an ornate badge and handed it to Robert, who then solemnly presented it to Oswald.

And that was the end of the first meeting of the Twentieth Century Poets.

The next day Bertie Franks, fat and pale and unpleasant-looking as ever, met the Outlaws with a whoop of exultant scorn.

‘Yah! My brother c’ write better po’try than yours. Yah! My brother got the badge ’n yours didn’t. Yah!’

He did not stay to receive their onslaught. He sped as fast as his fat legs would carry him to the refuge of his front gate. Then, leaning over it, he continued his pæon of triumph.

‘Yah. Your brothers think they c’ write po’try, an’ they can’t. Who won the badge? Yah! To a Snowdrop! Yah! Yes, an’
your
ole brother,’ to
William, ‘thinks he’s President, don’t he? Yes, a fine President, in’t he? Can’t write po’try for nuts, can’t—’

Disdaining the rights of public property, the Outlaws charged in at the gate, but already Bertie’s fat, short figure was entering the refuge of his front door. They retired in baffled
fury, pretending not to see Bertie’s pale face grimacing at them derisively from the drawing-room window.

This incident depressed the Outlaws. The Twentieth Century Poets had, they felt, considerably lowered their prestige.

And Bertie revelled in it. He swaggered, he swanked, he preened himself, he plumed himself, he put on side, he jeered, he taunted them, he collected his friends around him (Hubert Lane and other
kindred spirits) and they all exulted over the Outlaws. ‘Yah! Whose brothers think they c’n write po’try? Yah!’

The Outlaws’ pride suffered indescribably during all this. The Outlaws were used to triumphing over their enemies. They were not used to being triumphed over. They felt aggrievedly that
Robert and the others might have made a better show. And Oswald swanked about wearing his badge and his superior smile.

But the spirits of the Outlaws rose as the day of the next meeting of the Twentieth Century Poets approached, Surely, they thought, Oswald’s poem would not be the best again. Surely the
others would have made a special effort. Surely they would not be exposed again to the laughter of their enemies—

They concealed themselves in the loft in good time. They looked very anxious. If Oswald won the badge again today they felt that life would not be endurable.

The Twentieth Century Poets assembled by degrees. They also looked rather anxious. They also recognised the solemnity of the occasion. They also did not wish the all-conquering Oswald to conquer
yet again. Robert looked especially nervous, as though wrought up to do or die. He had spent all the previous night over his poem. Oswald came in last, wearing the badge and smiling. He took the
conduct of affairs from Robert’s hands entirely. He evidently considered himself President now as well as Treasurer and Secretary and Vice-President.

George read his poem first. George was feeling gloomy. He had had to begin the rabbit hutch all over again. The attractive female cousin had scornfully refused the fretwork. She said her rabbits
would catch their deaths and did he think he was being funny or what?

So he had written a poem about a blighted lover who ended his life by hanging himself from the top of a tall pine tree and whose bleached bones were found dangling there by the maiden in the
morning. He received Hector’s comment, ‘He’d bleached and skeletoned pretty quick’ in dignified silence and sat down, staring moodily in front of him.

Either the threat of the sixpence fine or the intolerably superior mien of Oswald had had effect upon the Twentieth Century Poets. All had brought a contribution. They read their efforts
nervously, one eye fixed the while upon Oswald to see if his superior smile should fade at all as he listened. It did not.

Their gloom increased except in the case of George. A sudden brilliant idea had occurred to George; he’d turn the abortive rabbit hutch into a work-box for the attractive female cousin.
Line it with red satin or something. She’d like that, surely. His spirits rose considerably.

Robert was reading his poem. It was entitled ‘To Spring’ and, though it contained many time-honoured and therefore doubtless true sentiments, it somehow did not read as well as
Robert had hoped it would when he had sat composing it through the midnight hours. It was better than the others, but it quite evidently did not cause the superior Oswald one moment’s
uneasiness.

Then came Oswald’s turn. Oswald, this time, had rather a narrow squeak. Relying rather too confidently upon his readers’ poetic ignorance he had borrowed a poem of Lord Byron’s
and was just beginning to read in stirring tones:

when Jameson Jameson interrupted.

‘I say,’ he said, frowning thoughtfully, ‘I’m almost
sure
I learnt that at school – something awfully like it, anyway.’

Oswald, however, had made preparations for this contingency. He looked at the paper more closely, then smiled:

‘Of
course
!’ he said. ‘I’ve made a mistake. This is a poem of Byron’s I’d brought to read to you after the meeting.’ He put it away and took
another paper from his pocket. The second paper was a sonnet of Matthew Arnold’s with which he was more fortunate. The only poem of Matthew Arnold’s with which the poets were familiar
was the ‘Forsaken Merman,’ which they had all learnt at their Preparatory schools. They listened in a gloomy silence; at the end every one of them, as Robert morosely ascertained, was
unanimous. Oswald again solemnly handed the badge to Robert and Robert solemnly handed it back to Oswald.

The meeting, however, did not end in a reading of poetry by Oswald, though Oswald was evidently quite willing that it should. Oswald was enjoying his glorious career of badge-winning and poetry
reading. But Hector had a suggestion. Hector had come across a paper for young people called
The Young Crusader
, which was making its appearance. The first number had only just been
published, and a prize was to be given for the best poem, and he proposed that they should all compete and see whether any of them won the prize.

The secret hope of Hector’s was not that any of them should win the prize, but rather that Oswald should not win it. He thought that Oswald was finding things too easy. He suspected that
in a large newspaper competition the great Oswald might find himself among the also rans. Oswald himself, apparently, had the same suspicions.

‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘but what it wouldn’t be best to
wait
a bit before we start going in for outside competitions.’

But rather to his surprise the others did not agree with him. They were beginning to find the proceedings of the Society of the Twentieth Century Poets a little monotonous. An outside
competition might vary that monotony.

Oswald yielded with his superior smile.

‘Very well,’ he said in a kind and condescending tone of voice, ‘if it gives you any pleasure—’

‘I put the matter to the vote,’ said Robert, who, in a noble effort to save the rags of the dignity of his Presidential position, had taken a book called
The Conduct of Public
Meetings
out of the library, and had been studying it in secret.

The matter was put to the vote and duly carried.

Hector had brought a copy of the paper, and Robert began to read out the rules of the Poetry Competition. Only began – for once more, when Robert who still found his position as President
glorious but embarrassing, stopped for his nervous cough, Oswald again expressed concern for his throat, took the paper from him and finished reading it.

The poem was to be a sonnet. It could be on any subject (Oswald’s smile may have been seen to widen at this news), and it must be the unaided work of the competitor. The poets listened
with interest. They made little notes on the backs of envelopes.

‘What is a sonnet, anyway?’ asked George.

The others affected not to hear him. Robert decided to go to the library at once after the meeting before the others should have time and get out some sort of a book that would explain to him
the exact nature of a sonnet.

The Outlaws walked home in a gloomy silence.

‘Well, he got it again,’ said Ginger at last in a tone that voiced the general feeling of despondency.

‘They’ll be worse than ever,’ said Douglas.

‘Yes,’ said Henry, ‘an’ he’ll go an’ get the big prize an’
then
there’ll be no doin’ anythin’ with them.’

‘It isn’t as if they’d have a proper fight,’ said William.

‘An’
him
goin’ about wearing the old badge all day,’ groaned Ginger.

‘Well, I think,’ said William sternly, voicing the inevitable resentment of the backer against the unsuccessful backed, ‘I think they might
try
a bit harder. Why, I
could write po’try better than some of them write it. An’ anyway, I think Robert’s po’try
jolly
good, an’ if I was one of ’em I’d vote for it.
’S only ’cause they can’t understand that Oswald’s po’try an’ so it sounds sort of grand to them. That’s all. I
bet
Robert could do it as well if he
wanted to. Pers’n’ly,’ with dogged loyalty, ‘I like Robert’s sort of po’try better’n
his.
’

‘Why shou’n’t
we
make a Po’try Society?’ suggested Ginger.

As a matter of fact, William had already thought of this.

‘We
could
,’ he said stoutly, ‘an’ I bet we’d make up better po’try than
any
of ’em. But – well, we can’t jus’ yet. Not
while Bertie Franks an’ the others are carryin’ on like this. We’ve got to go on watchin’ Robert’s Society an’ perhaps we can
help
them sometime. I bet I
could help Robert to make up a reely
fine
poem, but,’ sadly, ‘I know he wun’t let me. I c’ make up pages an’
pages
of po’try.’

‘Well, we c’
practise
makin’ po’try,’ said Ginger.

They agreed that they could.

‘I c’ make up
all
sorts of po’try,’ said William with a swagger. ‘I can make up the nachur sort, like—