William the Good (17 page)

‘Well,’ said the cross-eyed man, abandoning all attempts to solve the mystery of Clarence’s flight, ‘they told me that if I came along ’ere they’d give me
some cake.’

‘You can have all that’s left,’ said Miss Holding, ‘but who told you?’

One of the cross-eyed man’s eyes had espied a movement in the neighbouring bushes. He dived into it and emerged holding William by his collar.

‘This ’ere nipper,’ he said.

The cross-eyed man had departed with his booty.

William and Ginger sat on the river bank on either side of Miss Holding.

‘It’s a pity we gave him all the buns and plain cake,’ said Miss Holding, ‘because I’m sure you’d have liked some.’

‘No, thanks,’ said William politely, and added with perfect truth, ‘we – we’ve sort of had enough.’ A gleam of intelligence shone in Miss Holding’s
eyes.

‘How long have you been in that bush?’ she said.

‘Quite a long time,’ said William, ‘on and off.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Miss Holding, ‘you accounted for the two dozen iced cakes and the pound of biscuits.’

William assumed his guileless expression.

‘Well,’ he admitted, ‘Mr Bergson did kin’ly give us something to eat.’

‘Suppose,’ said Miss Holding, ‘that you tell me all about it.’ So they told her.

At the end she dried her eyes and said: ‘It’s perfectly priceless and the best part of it all is that I’m sure it will make him go home.’

‘IT’S A PITY WE GAVE HIM ALL THE BUNS,’ SAID MISS HOLDING, ‘BECAUSE I’M SURE YOU WOULD HAVE LIKED SOME.’

And it did.

They had a lovely journey home packed into Miss Holding’s two-seater, and the first person they saw in the village was Mrs Holding.

‘Whatever’s happened to Clarence?’ said Mrs Holding.

‘What has?’ said Miss Holding.

‘He came home in a most peculiar condition,’ went on Mrs Holding. ‘He said he’d been running all the way. And he took the first train back to town and wants his things
sent on after him. He told me not to give his address to anyone.’

‘I’m
so
glad,’ said Miss Holding serenely, ‘because I was getting bored even with pulling his leg.’

‘But what happened?’ said her mother.

‘He just got up and ran home, didn’t he, children?’ said Miss Holding dreamily. ‘I should think that he suffers from spasmodic insanity. These two little boys have been
such a help to me this afternoon, mother. Come and let’s find somewhere to have an ice cream, children.’

William hesitated.

‘We oughter g’n’ tell Douglas and Henry that we’ve avenged them first,’ he said.

‘Good,’ said Miss Holding. ‘Go and find them and bring them along too, and we’ll all go and have ices somewhere.’

And as William remarked blissfully that evening, it was one of the jolliest vengeances they’d ever had.

CHAPTER 6

T
HE Outlaws were depressed. Ordinary pursuits had lost their charms. They neither ran nor leapt nor played Red Indians nor ranged the countryside
nor carried on guerrilla warfare with the neighbouring farmers. Instead they held meetings in each other’s back gardens, in each other’s shrubberies and summer-houses and tool sheds,
eloquently discoursing on the gravity of the situation, but finding no remedy for it.

The cause of the whole trouble was the fatal attractiveness of William’s sister Ethel. Not that William or any of his friends actually admitted the fatal attractiveness. Ethel was to them
an ordinary disagreeable ‘grown up’ with a haughty manner and impossible standards of cleanliness, who happened also to possess a combination of red hair and blue eyes that had a
strange and unaccountable effect upon adult members of the opposite sex. They cherished always a stern and bitter contempt for Ethel’s admirers. And now Douglas’s brother George and
Ginger’s brother Hector had joined the number. It is impossible to describe the shame and horror the Outlaws felt at this. That any member of any family of theirs should stoop to the supreme
indignity of admiring Ethel. . . . William felt as deeply outraged as any of them. He felt that the infatuation of Douglas’s brother and Ginger’s brother for his sister exposed the
whole body of Outlaws to the scorn of their friends and the laughter of their foes.

The possibility of it had hitherto never even occurred to them. Douglas’s brother George and Ginger’s brother Hector, though objectionable in every other way as only elder brothers
can be, had at least been satisfactory in that, almost as much as the Outlaws themselves, they held the female sex in scorn. It was Ethel’s influenza that seemed to have made the difference.
Ethel had withdrawn from public life for a term of fourteen days or so with the high temperature, the streaming eyes and the settled pessimism which, taken together, constitute influenza. Evidently
the sudden absence of Ethel’s familiar figure from the lanes and roads of her native village awoke strange feelings in the breast of George and Hector, and the emergence of Ethel from her
sick room at the end of the fortnight with, as it seemed by contrast with her absence, redoubled beauty, completed their enslavement. They abandoned their old manner of cold indifference to her.
They smiled at her ingratiatingly, they bought new ties and new socks, they waited at spots that it was probable that Ethel would pass. Their old friendship with each other cooled. When waiting at
the same spot for a word or a glance from Ethel they affected not to see each other. They passed each other in the village street with no other recognition than a scornful curl of the lip. They no
longer discussed the football results with each other. In the privacy of their home circle they naturally vented all the bitterness of the pangs of love upon their younger brothers.

The Outlaws had met in the summer-house of William’s garden. Henry was away staying with an aunt and only the three deeply involved parties – William, Douglas and
Ginger – were present.

‘People
laughin
’ at ’em,’ said Douglas bitterly. ‘I know they are from somethin’ someone said to me yesterday. S’nice for
me
,’ he
added with an air of impersonal bitterness, ‘s’nice for
me
havin’ a brother what everyone’s laughin’ at.’

‘’S jus’ as bad for me,’ retorted Ginger. ‘An’ ’s not only that. It’s makin’ Hector crabbier an’ crabbier at home.’

This reminded Douglas of his latest grievance.

‘Took it off me,’ he said fiercely, ‘took it off me and threw it away. An’ it was new too. ’S no good at all now. Threw it into the ditch an’ it’s full
of mud now an’ won’t play anyway whatever I do. It’s ru’ned. An’ it was the best mouth-organ I’ve ever had. It made a noise you could hear for miles and miles.
And he took it off me ’n’ threw it away. An’ I wasn’t makin’ much noise. I was only practisin’ – practisin’ jus’ outside his room. Well,
I
din’ know he was makin’ up po’try about Ethel. He needn’t ’ve come out roarin’ mad at me like that. I bet I’ve got’s much right to practise
my mouth-organ as he’s got writin’ po’try to Ethel.’

‘Jus’ ’
xactly
what Hector did to me ’n my trumpet last night,’ said Ginger, torn between impersonal interest in the coincidence and a personal sense of
grievance at the memory of his wrongs. ‘Came out ravin’ mad at me jus’ ’cause I was sittin’ on the top of the stairs practisin’ a trumpet. Came ravin’ mad
out of his room an’ took it off me an’ broke it.
D’lib’rately
broke it. I bet
he
he was writin’ po’try ’bout Ethel too.’ He threw
William a cold glance. ‘Seems to me,’ he said, ‘a pity some people can’t stop their sisters going’ about the world makin’ all this mis’ry. Breakin’
people’s trumpets an’ throwin’ people’s mouth-organs away.’

‘
Ethel
din’t break your trumpets an’ throw your mouth-organs away,’ said William with spirit. ‘Pity some people can’t stop their brothers actin’
so stupid whenever they see a girl.’

‘They don’t,’ retorted Ginger, ‘they’ve never done it before. They’ve always acted to girls same as we do – till this set-out with Ethel,’ he
ended gloomily.

‘Well,’ said William with odious complacency, ‘that only proves that Ethel’s nicer ’n all the other girls.’

Their attitude seemed to be inexplicably deteriorating from a common, lofty scorn of the work of the blind god to a partisanship each of his particular family.

‘Oh, it does, does it?’ said Ginger aggressively.

But William was not to be drawn into personal combat on behalf of Ethel. He was, as a matter of fact, a little bored with the whole proceedings. He disapproved of the situation no less than he
had always disapproved of it, but meeting in summer-houses and tool sheds and discoursing on it did not seem to make it any better and meanwhile the days of the holidays were slipping by wasted.
Moreover, the day before an uncle of William’s had taken him up to London, and so William was taking for the time being a broader perspective of life than his friends.

‘Never mind,’ he said pacifically. ‘There’s other things to do than keep talkin’ about it an’ there’s other people in the world ’sides Ethel
an’ your ole George an’ Hector.’

‘Yes,’ said Douglas bitterly, ‘you’d say that if it was
your
mouth-organ, wun’t you?’

‘An’ you’d say that if it was
your
trumpet,’ said Ginger. ‘Huh! I bet I’ve not got other things to do than forget about that trumpet.’

‘Come to that,’ said William, ‘Ethel took my bow an’ arrer off me yesterday ’cause it accident’ly came through her window and broke an ole vase, but I
don’ keep talkin’ about it.’

But Ginger refused to be drawn from his grievance.

‘He oughter be made to give me a new one,’ he said, and added with a melancholy sigh, ‘An’ jus’ to think that wherever there’s grown-up brothers there’s
things like this hap’nin’ all over the country what never get into the newspaper an’ England supposed to be a free country – people’s trumpets bein’ took off
them an’
broke
for no reason at all. What’s that if it’s not tyranny what the history books talk about? All I c’n say is,’ he added darkly, ‘that all
those Magna Charter an’ things what the history books say brought lib’ty to England don’ seem to’ve done
me
much good.’

But Douglas had at last, like William, tired of the subject.

‘What did your uncle take you to see yesterday, William?’ he said.

‘He took me to a place with a lot of dead animals – stuffed mostly – but some skeletons – an’ a man givin’ lectures on ’em – tellin’ us
about them an’ what they were like an’ what they did.’

‘Was he int’restin’?’ said Ginger temporarily relinquishing his grievance, as no one would listen to it any longer.

‘Yes,’ said William simply, ‘he’d got a loose tooth what you could see movin’ when he talked, an’ there was a boy there what thought he could make faces
better’n me, but he found out in the end he jolly well couldn’t.’

The atmosphere was certainly lightened by this breath from the outside world. The Outlaws began to think that perhaps they had discussed the Ethel-George-Hector affair to satiety and the
description of William’s excursion of yesterday might afford a little more interest.

‘Did he give you a nice dinner, William?’ said Douglas.

‘Crumbs, yes!’ said William. ‘He let me choose what I’d have for dinner an’ I had six ices an’ then there were some things like cakes with heaps
’n’ heaps of cream on an’ I had twelve of them an’ then I had a bottle of orange squash an’ then I had two plates of trifle.’

‘No meat nor potatoes?’ said Ginger.

‘No,’ said William, and added in simple explanation, ‘I c’n get meat an’ potatoes at home.’

There was a silence during which the Outlaws wistfully contemplated the mental vision of William’s dinner. Then Ginger said bitterly: ‘That’s the best of uncles. You’d
never catch an aunt letting you have a dinner like that,’ and he added plaintively, ‘all mine seem to be aunts.’

‘What sort of animals were they, William?’ asked Douglas.

‘All sorts,’ said William, ‘an’’ – slowly – ‘I’ve been thinkin’. It’d be quite easy to get up a show like that but with live
animals ’stead of stuffed ones. I know,’ he said quickly, forestalling possible objection, ‘that we’ve often tried shows
somethin
’ like that but not
quite
like. We’ve never tried lecturin’ on ’em. We’ve tried havin’ ’em for a circus and we’ve tried sellin’ ’em but we’ve never
tried
lecturin
’ on ’em.’

‘Well, who can lecture on ’em?’ said Douglas.

‘I can,’ said William promptly. ‘I heard that man doin’ it an’ so I bet I know how to do it now.’

‘Can you woggle your teeth?’ said Douglas

‘It’s not
ne’ssary
to woggle your teeth lecturin’ on animals,’ said William coldly. ‘’Sides, I bet I could if I wanted to.’

‘I could bring my dormouse,’ said Ginger.

‘An’ there’s my insecks,’ said William, ‘an’ Jumble an’ – all our cats.’

‘That’s not
much
,’ said Douglas. ‘How do they get animals for the big places like the zoo?’

‘People lend ’em,’ said Ginger, ‘or give ’em. I’ve often heard of people givin’ ’em. When the Roy’l Fam’ly goes abroad for its holiday
people give ’em animals an’ they bring ’em home and give ’em to the Zoo.’