William the Good (14 page)

The young man was on the look-out when Ethel and Mrs Brown went to the tea tent. He accompanied them, walking on the other side of Ethel, talking, and smiling amicably. William walked behind.
They entered the tea tent. They approached the row of chairs. They began to sit down on three chairs, Mrs Brown at one end, Ethel in the middle and – it wasn’t till the young man was in
the act of sitting down that he saw that William was on the seat. William was sitting between Ethel and him. Ethel was staring at William in amazement. William was gazing in front of him
unperturbed and sphinxlike, as though in a trance. The young man asked William to change placed with him. William refused. He said that he’d better sit there so that he could pass things to
his sister and his mother and Mrs Brown said that that was very nice of him, and thought how William’s manners were improving, and that she must remember to tell his father.

Ethel was very silent. She continued to gaze at William with mingled amazement and bewilderment and anxiety. The fortune teller had said ‘he’ – William had given her a present
and here he was sitting next to her at tea – most curious, She was so silent that the young man finally gave up all attempts to entertain her and contented himself with glaring balefully at
William. William continued to gaze blankly in front of him as if unaware of their presence and to make a very good tea.

People were going home now. Mrs Brown was staying to help dismantle the stalls but Ethel had set off home by herself. She was going the short cut home across the fields. She
climbed over a stile. She saw the young man at the other end of the field standing by the further stile obviously waiting for her. She walked demurely and daintily towards him. Then suddenly as if
he had sprung up from a ditch (which as a matter of fact he had) William appeared.

‘Please, Ethel,’ he said meekly, ‘will you give me eight and six?’

She stared at him open-mouthed with amazement at the request – the cheek of it! And then her thoughts travelled suddenly back to the crystal gazer . . . ‘meet on your way home’
. . . ‘request’ . . . ‘happiness of your whole life depends upon your saying yes.’

Ethel was superstitious. Dreadful things might happen to her if she refused and yet –
eight and six.
Still – no, she daren’t refuse.
Anything
might happen to her
if she refused. . . . Furiously she opened her purse . . .
eight and six –
it would only leave her a pound till the end of the month.

Angrily she flung the coins at William and walked on. She felt so angry that when she reached the young man at the further stile she walked straight past him without looking at him or answering
him when he spoke to her. . . .

Mr Brown sat in his chair in the drawing-room holding his head. On one side of him was Ethel and on the other side the ladies from next door. Ethel was feeling especially
bitter at the thought of the eight and six. She had long ago repented of giving it to William. She’d never go to a crystal gazer again. She’d been an absolute idiot. It was all rubbish
. . . making her give William eight and six. . . . She felt she could almost kill William. But as she couldn’t do that she contented herself with expatiating on his horticultural failures.

‘He hadn’t
touched
the bed with it,’ she was saying.

‘It
deluged
us,’ said the ladies from next door.

‘He’d pulled up
everything
,’ said Ethel.

‘Came over in a perfect fountain and
deluged
us,’ said the ladies next door.

‘And he simply ate every one – every single one in the bed,’ said Ethel, ‘there wasn’t
one
left.’

‘Must have been done deliberately,’ said the ladies next door, ‘it absolutely
deluged
us.’

Mr Brown removed his head from his hands.

‘Where
is
he?’ he groaned.

But no one knew where he was.

He was a matter of fact at the other end of the village. He was swaggering up to the Outlaws with the brand new eight and six stumps under his arm. The Outlaws were gaping at him stupefied with
amazement and admiration.

‘Said I’d get the money,’ said William airily, ‘so I – jus’ got it. Thought I might as well get the things an’ bring ’em along with me. Here they
are.’

It was a moment worth living for.

William felt that he really didn’t care
what
happened to him after that.

CHAPTER 5

T
HE Outlaws had noticed and disliked him long before the unforgivable outrage took place.

He had a toothbrush moustache, a receding chin, an objectionable high-pitched laugh and a still more objectionable swagger. He admired himself immensely.

Somehow the Outlaws sensed trouble from him as soon as they saw him, even before they had found out anything about him. The Outlaws, of course, always made it their business to find out all
about any strangers who appeared in the village. His name, they discovered, was Clarence Bergson, and he was staying at the Holdings’, who were renting the Hall.

Now this was unfortunate because William liked the Holdings, or rather William liked Miss Holding, and for Miss Holding’s sake accepted Mr and Mrs Holding – large and pompous and
dignified, and disapproving of all small boys.

William admired Miss Holding because she was very young and very, very pretty and had a twinkle in her eye and a nice smile. He admired her in fact so much that when first he heard that Clarence
Bergson was a friend of hers and staying at the Hall, he had been quite willing to overlook the receding chin and the high-pitched laughter and the objectionable swagger.

Clarence, however, rushed on to his doom. He began by kicking William’s dog, Jumble, in the village street. Technically, of course, he had some justification, because Jumble made what
appeared to be an entirely unprovoked attack on him, barking furiously and pretending to bite his plus-fours. In reality, it was not unprovoked. They were very loud plus-fours, and Jumble, although
generally of the meekest and mildest disposition possible, could not endure loud plus-fours. He always barked at them and pretended to bite them. They roused him to fury. Jumble perhaps looked upon
himself as the sartorial censor of the village. Anyway, on the day on which Clarence appeared in a pair of green and mauve plus-fours (very green and very mauve) with red tabs, Jumble, after one
glance at them, made his usual feint of attacking them, barking in shrill disapprobation till Clarence’s foot sent him flying into the ditch.

The Outlaws met to consider what reprisals should be taken to avenge this insult to William’s dog. It was William, curiously enough, who minimised the whole affair.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I don’t
like
him, but – but I guess we’d better let him alone. You see, Jumble did bark at his trousers, an’ – well,
anyway, I guess we’d better let him alone.’

The Outlaws were disappointed. William’s attitude was felt to be unworthy of a leader with a reputation for avenging to the full any insult offered to him or his dog or
to a member of his band. Ginger had a dark suspicion of the shameful truth. He had long been troubled by a secret suspicion that William admired Miss Holding – William, the leader, the
scornful despiser of all women. The suspicion had depressed him very much.

The meeting broke up gloomily. William was aware that his prestige was dimmed, but he clung to his decision. Clarence, as guest and friend of Miss Holding, must not be harmed. Little did
Clarence think, as he swaggered about the village with his receding chin and high-pitched laugh and general objectionableness, how narrowly he had been saved. Meeting William in the village he did
not even recognise him as the master of the dog whom he had kicked into the ditch. And, not knowing how narrowly he had escaped retribution, he proceeded to rush on madly to his doom.

The Outlaws – William and Ginger and Douglas and Henry – were playing at Red Indians. They were playing at Red Indians in one of Farmer Jenks’ fields. They were doing this
because to play the game in Farmer Jenks’ field lent it a certain excitement which it would otherwise have lacked.

Farmer Jenks hated the Outlaws with that bitter hatred which the landowner always bears to the habitual trespasser, and pursued them determinedly but unavailingly, whenever he caught sight of
them. Therefore, Farmer Jenks, all unknown to himself, took an important part in the game. He represented a hostile tribe of especially ferocious redskins. However much the normal activities of the
Red Indians as enacted by the Outlaws should pall, there was always the stimulating knowledge that at any minute the hostile tribe, as enacted by Farmer Jenks, might appear upon the scene, and this
knowledge gave to the whole affair the spice of danger and excitement without which the Outlaws found life so barren. The game this afternoon was proceeding rather flatly.

A chestnut tree represented a tent. The Indians Eagle Eye, Red Hand, Lion Heart and Swiftfoot (otherwise William, Ginger, Douglas and Henry) were engaged in various pursuits. Eagle Eye was out
killing wild animals for supper, Red Hand was climbing a tree so as to be on the look-out for enemies, Lion Heart was examining the ‘spoor’ near the tent, and had just announced the
recent passage of a herd of elephants and of hundreds of lions and tigers. Swiftfoot had gone out to collect twigs for a fire, but had soon tired of the pastime and was practising cartwheels by
himself in a corner of the field.

Suddenly from Ginger’s vantage ground came the shrill cry, ‘The Black Hearts,’ and the stout purple-faced form of Farmer Jenks was seen bearing down upon them in the distance,
while Ginger himself was seen to shin down the tree trunk with almost incredible rapidity.

At once Eagle Eye leapt from his slaughter of wild animals, Lion Heart from his examinations of ‘spoor’, and Swiftfoot from his cartwheels, and they set off across the field in
headlong flight, two in either direction. They always split up into parties when fleeing from Farmer Jenks.

Farmer Jenks, of course, could not bear the thought that any of his quarry should elude him, and those fatal few moments during which he stood in the middle wondering which to follow, generally
just enabled the Outlaws to escape. They would have escaped this time, too, if it hadn’t been for Clarence.

Farmer Jenks stood hesitating as usual for those few fatal seconds in the middle of the field, then decided to pursue Douglas and Henry, who (despite Henry’s tribal name) were slightly
less fleet of foot than William and Ginger. And as I have said he would not have caught them if it hadn’t been for Clarence.

Clarence happened to be passing down the road at the moment and witnessed the rout of the braves by the Black Hearts. Clarence was highly amused by the spectacle and decided to play a little
joke on them on his own account.

So he stood at the stile, which was their only means of exit, and caught them. He then handed over Douglas to the perspiring and purple-faced Farmer Jenks and held the wriggling Henry till
Farmer Jenks had quite finished with Douglas. Then he handed him Henry. And all the while he stood by, laughing his high-pitched laugh.

Farmer Jenks was, as matter of fact, too breathless to do himself full justice in the chastisement of his captures, but he did the best he could and then went panting and grunting back to his
desecrated territory. Clarence, still laughing his high-pitched laugh, walked down the road. Douglas and Henry slowly and painfully rejoined William and Ginger in the old barn which was their usual
meeting-place.

‘
Well!
’ began Douglas, in a tone of great bitterness and anguish.

‘Yes,’ said William grimly, ‘we saw. We jolly well
saw.
’

‘Comes of lettin’ him off when he kicked Jumble,’ went on Henry gloomily.

The silence that followed showed that the Outlaws considered this last outrage to be due solely to William’s unwarrantable clemency on the former occasion. It was clear that even William
himself felt guilty.

‘Well,’ he said sternly, ‘we jolly well won’t let him off
this
time.’

‘What’ll we do to him?’ said Henry as he sat down uneasily. (Douglas more wisely did not attempt sitting down.) ‘I’d like to push him off a high precipice into the
sea.’

‘Well, you can’t,’ said Douglas the literal, ‘because there aren’t any precipices here an’ there isn’t any sea. I’d like to kill him,
shootin’ arrows into him, same as they did Saint Someone or other in a picture.’

‘Well, that’s silly,’ said William impatiently, ‘you’d only get hung for murd’rin’ him. Besides,
you
can’t do
anything
! He saw you
an’ he’d know you by now. You leave this to me an’ Ginger. We’ll avenge you all right. Don’t you worry. We’ll jolly well avenge you. But you leave it all to us,
’cause he knows you, an’ he don’t know us. We were too far off for him to see us prop’ly.’

‘What’ll you do?’ said Douglas in the tone of one who thirsts for blood.

But William was a good tactician, forming no plans till he had surveyed the enemy’s territory.

‘We’ve gotter look round a bit first,’ he said. ‘You jus’ leave it all to Ginger an’ me.’

Little did the smiling Clarence think, as he sat with his beloved by the river bank, that two boys were concealed in the bushes just behind him listening to his conversation.
He had, of course, no eyes or ears for any but the beloved and he was finding it quite up-hill work because, although he’d been paying her attention now for nearly a fortnight, she
didn’t seem impressed or responsive.

She seemed, on the contrary, frankly bored, yawned frequently, and quite often forgot even to pretend that she was listening to him.

Clarence, who had a very good opinion of himself, thought that she was merely shy and diffident, and she was, of course, frightfully pretty.

So, unmoved by her silence and inadequate responses, he continued to address his attentions to her.

‘May I take you for a drive tomorrow?’ he pleaded.

‘No,’ said Miss Holding very firmly. ‘I shan’t be at home tomorrow. I’m going to some friends at Beechtop. I’m going to have lunch with them. Then we’re
going to take out our tea to the river bank and picnic there.’