“Can you tie knots what can’t come untied?” he demanded.
“No,” she said, “I wish I could.”
“I can. I’ll show you. I’ll get a piece of string and show you afterwards. It’s easy but it wants practice, that’s all. An’ I’ll teach you how to make aeroplanes out of paper what fly in the air when it’s windy. That’s quite easy. Only you’ve gotter be careful to get ’em the right size. I can make ’em and I can make lots of things out of match boxes an’ things an’——”
The infuriated Robert interrupted.
“These are my father’s roses. He’s very proud of them.”
“They’re beautiful.”
“Well, wait till you see my Virginia Stock! that’s all. Wait——”
“Will you have this tea-rose, Miss Cannon?” Robert’s face was purple as he presented it. “It—it—er—it suits you. You—er—flowers and you—that is—I’m sure—you love flowers—you should—er—always have flowers. If I——”
“An’ I’ll get you those red ones and that white one,” broke in the equally infatuated William, determined not to be outshone. “An’ I’ll get you some of my Virginia Stock. An’ I don’t give my Virginia Stock to anyone,” he added with emphasis.
When they re-entered the drawing-room, Miss Cannon carried a large bouquet of Virginia Stock and white and red roses which completely hid Robert’s tea-rose. William was by her side, chatting airily and confidently. Robert followed—a pale statue of despair.
In answer to Robert’s agonised glance, Mrs. Brown summoned William to her corner, while Robert and Miss Cannon took their seat again upon the sofa.
“I hope—I hope,” said Robert soulfully, “I hope your stay here is a long one?”
“Well, why sha’n’t I jus’ speak to her?” William’s whisper was loud and indignant.
“’Sh, dear!” said Mrs. Brown.
“I should like to show you some of the walks around here,” went on Robert desperately with a fearful glance towards the corner where William stood in righteous indignation before his mother. “If I could have that—er—pleasure—er—honour?”
“I was only jus’ speaking to her,” went on William’s voice. “I wasn’t doin’ any harm, was I? Only speaking to her!”
The silence was intense. Robert, purple, opened his lips to say something, anything to drown that horrible voice, but nothing would come. Miss Cannon was obviously listening to William.
“Is no one else ever to speak to her.” The sibilant whisper, raised in indignant appeal, filled all the room. “Jus’ ’cause Robert’s fell in love with her?”
The horror of the moment haunted Robert’s nights and days for weeks to come.
Mrs. Brown coughed hastily and began to describe at unnecessary length the ravages of the caterpillars upon her husband’s favourite rose-tree.
William withdrew with dignity to the garden a minute later and Miss Cannon rose from the sofa.
“I must be going, I’m afraid,” she said with a smile.
Robert, anguished and overpowered, rose slowly.
“You must come again some time,” he said weakly but with passion undaunted.
“I will,” she said. “I’m longing to see more of William. I adore William!”
They comforted Robert’s wounded feelings as best they could, but it was Ethel who devised the plan that finally cheered him. She suggested a picnic on the following Thursday, which happened to be Robert’s birthday and incidentally the last day of Miss Cannon’s visit, and the picnic party was to consist of—Robert, Ethel, Mrs. Clive and Miss Cannon, and William was not even to be told where it was to be. The invitation was sent that evening and Robert spent the week dreaming of picnic lunches and suggesting impossible dainties of which the cook had never heard. It was not until she threatened to give notice that he reluctantly agreed to leave the arrangements to her. He sent his white flannels (which were perfectly clean) to the laundry with a note attached, hinting darkly at legal proceedings if they were not sent back, spotless, by Thursday morning. He went about with an expression of set and solemn purpose upon his frowning countenance. William he utterly ignored. He bought a book of poems at a second-hand bookshop and kept them on the table by his bed.
They saw nothing of Miss Cannon in the interval, but Thursday dawned bright and clear, and Robert’s anxious spirits rose. He was presented with a watch and chain by his father and with a bicycle by his mother and a tin of toffee (given not without ulterior motive) by William.
They met Mrs. Clive and Miss Cannon at the station and took tickets to a village a few miles away whence they had decided to walk to a shady spot on the river bank.
William’s dignity was slightly offended by his pointed exclusion from the party, but he had resigned himself to it, and spent the first part of the morning in the character of Chief Red Hand among the rhododendron bushes. He had added an ostrich feather found in Ethel’s room to his head-dress, and used almost a whole cork on his face. He wore the door-mat pinned to his shoulders.
After melting some treacle toffee in rain-water over his smoking fire, adding orange juice and drinking the resulting liquid, he tired of the game and wandered upstairs to Robert’s bedroom to inspect his birthday presents. The tin of toffee was on the table by Robert’s bed. William took one or two as a matter of course and began to read the love-poems. He was horrified a few minutes later to see the tin empty, but he fastened the lid with a sigh, wondering if Robert would guess who had eaten them. He was afraid he would. Anyway he’d given him them. And anyway, he hadn’t known he was eating them.
He then went to the dressing-table and tried on the watch and chain at various angles and with various postures. He finally resisted the temptation to wear them for the rest of the morning and replaced them on the dressing-table.
Then he wandered downstairs and round to the shed, where Robert’s new bicycle stood in all its glory. It was shining and spotless and William gazed at it in awe and admiration. He came to the conclusion that he could do it no possible harm by leading it carefully round the house. Encouraged by the fact that Mrs. Brown was out shopping, he walked it round the house several times. He much enjoyed the feeling of importance and possession that it gave him. He felt loth to part with it. He wondered if it was very hard to ride. He had tried to ride one once when he was staying with an aunt. He stood on a garden bench and with difficulty transferred himself from that to the bicycle seat. To his surprise and delight he rode for a few yards before he fell off. He tried again and fell off again. He tried again and rode straight into a holly bush. He forgot everything in his determination to master the art. He tried again and again. He fell off or rode into the holly bush again and again. The shining black paint of the bicycle was scratched, the handle bars were slightly bent and dulled; William himself was bruised and battered but unbeaten.
At last he managed to avoid the fatal magnet of the holly bush, to steer an unsteady ziz-zag course down the drive and out into the road. He had had no particular intention of riding into the road. In fact he was still wearing his befeathered headgear, blacked face, and the mat pinned to his shoulders. It was only when he was actually in the road that he realised that retreat was impossible, that he had no idea how to get off the bicycle.
What followed was to William more like a nightmare than anything else. He saw a motor-lorry coming towards him and in sudden panic turned down a side street and from that into another side street. People came out of their houses to watch him pass. Children booed or cheered him and ran after him in crowds. And William went on and on simply because he could not stop. His iron nerve had failed him. He had not even the presence of mind to fall off. He was quite lost. He had left the town behind him and did not know where he was going. But wherever he went he was the centre of attraction. The strange figure with blackened, streaked face, mat flying behind in the wind and a head-dress of feathers from which every now and then one floated away, brought the population to its doors. Some said he had escaped from an asylum, some that he was an advertisement of something. The children were inclined to think he was part of a circus. William himself had passed beyond despair. His face was white and set. His first panic had changed to a dull certainty that this would go on for ever. He would never know how to stop. He supposed he would go right across England. He wondered if he were near the sea now. He couldn’t be far off. He wondered if he would ever see his mother and father again. And his feet pedalled mechanically along. They did not reach the pedals at their lowest point; they had to catch them as they came up and send them down with all their might.
It was very tiring; William wondered if people would be sorry if he dropped down dead.
I have said that William did not know where he was going.
The picnickers walked down the hill from the little station to the river bank. It was a beautiful morning. Robert, his heart and hopes high, walked beside his goddess, revelling in his nearness to her though he could think of nothing to say to her. But Ethel and Mrs. Clive chattered gaily.
“We’ve given William the slip,” said Ethel with a laugh. “He’s no idea where we’ve gone even!”
“I’m sorry,” said Miss Cannon, “I’d have loved William to be here.”
“You don’t know him,” said Ethel fervently.
“What a beautiful morning it is!” murmured Robert, feeling that some remark was due from him. “Am I walking too fast for you—Miss Cannon?”
“Oh, no.”
“May I carry your parasol for you?” he enquired humbly.
“Oh, no, thanks.”
He proposed a boat on the river after lunch, and it appeared that Miss Cannon would love it, but Ethel and Mrs. Clive would rather stay on the bank.
His cup of bliss was full. It would be his opportunity of sealing lifelong friendship with her, of arranging a regular correspondence, and hinting at his ultimate intentions. He must tell her that, of course, while he was at college he was not in a position to offer his heart and hand, but if she could wait—— He began to compose speeches in his mind.
They reached the bank and opened the luncheon baskets. Unhampered by Robert the cook had surpassed herself. They spread the white cloth and took up their position around it under the shade of the trees.
Just as Robert was taking up a plate of sandwiches to hand them with a courteous gesture to Miss Cannon, his eyes fell upon the long, white road leading from the village to the riverside and remained fixed there, his face frozen with horror. The hand that held the plate dropped lifelessly back again on to the table-cloth. Their eyes followed his. A curious figure was cycling along the road—a figure with blackened face and a few drooping feathers on its head, and a door-mat flying in the wind. A crowd of small children ran behind cheering. It was a figure vaguely familiar to them all.
“It can’t be,” said Robert hoarsely, passing a hand over his brow.
No one spoke.
It came nearer and nearer. There was no mistaking it.
“William!” gasped four voices.
William came to the end of the road. He did not turn aside to either of the roads by the riverside. He did not even recognise or look at them. With set, colourless face he rode on to the river bank, and straight amongst them. They fled from before his charge. He rode over the table-cloth, over the sandwiches, patties, rolls and cakes, down the bank and into the river.
They rescued him and the bicycle. Fate was against Robert even there. It was a passing boatman who performed the rescue. William emerged soaked to the skin, utterly exhausted, but feeling vaguely heroic. He was not in the least surprised to see them. He would have been surprised at nothing. And Robert wiped and examined his battered bicycle in impotent fury in the background while Miss Cannon pillowed William’s dripping head on her arm, fed him on hot coffee and sandwiches and called him “My poor darling Red Hand!”
She insisted on going home with him. All through the journey she sustained the character of his faithful squaw. Then, leaving a casual invitation to Robert and Ethel to come over to tea, she departed to pack.
Mrs. Brown descended the stairs from William’s room with a tray on which reposed a half-empty bowl of gruel, and met Robert in the hall.
“Robert,” she remonstrated, “you really needn’t look so upset.”
Robert glared at her and laughed a hollow laugh.
“Upset!” he echoed, outraged by the inadequacy of the expression. “You’d be upset if your life was ruined. You’d be upset. I’ve a right to be upset.”
He passed his hand desperately through his already ruffled hair.
“You’re going there to tea,” she reminded him.
“Yes,” he said bitterly, “with other people. Who can talk with other people there? No one can. I’d have talked to her on the river. I’d got heaps of things ready in my mind to say. And William comes along and spoils my whole life—and my bicycle. And she’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen in my life. And I’ve wanted that bicycle for ever so long and it’s not fit to ride.”
“But poor William has caught a very bad chill, dear, so you oughtn’t to feel bitter to him. And he’ll have to pay for your bicycle being mended. He’ll have no pocket money till it’s paid for.”
“You’d think,” said Robert with a despairing gesture in the direction of the hall table and apparently addressing it, “you’d think four grown-up people in a house could keep a boy of William’s age in order, wouldn’t you? You’d think he wouldn’t be allowed to go about spoiling people’s lives and—and ruining their bicycles. Well, he jolly well won’t do it again,” he ended darkly.
Mrs. Brown, proceeded in the direction of the kitchen.
“Robert,” she said soothingly over her shoulder, “you surely want to be at peace with your little brother, when he’s not well, don’t you?”
“Peace?” he said. Robert turned his haggard countenance upon her as though his ears must have deceived him. “Peace! I’ll wait. I’ll wait till he’s all right and going about; I won’t start till then. But—peace! It’s not peace, it’s an armistice—that’s all.”
CHAPTER III
WILLIAM BELOW STAIRS
William was feeling embittered with life in general. He was passing through one of his not infrequent periods of unpopularity. The climax had come with the gift of sixpence bestowed on him by a timid aunt, who hoped thus to purchase his goodwill. With the sixpence he had bought a balloon adorned with the legs and head of a duck fashioned in cardboard. This could be blown up to its fullest extent and then left to subside. It took several minutes to subside, and during those minutes it emitted a long-drawn-out and high-pitched groan. The advantage of this was obvious. William could blow it up to its fullest extent in private and leave it to subside in public concealed beneath his coat. While this was going on William looked round as though in bewildered astonishment. He inflated it before he went to breakfast. He then held it firmly and secretly so as to keep it inflated till he was sitting at the table. Then he let it subside. His mother knocked over a cup of coffee, and his father cut himself with the bread knife. Ethel, his elder sister, indulged in a mild form of nervous breakdown. William sat with a face of startled innocence. But nothing enraged his family so much as William’s expression of innocence. They fell upon him, and he defended himself as well as he could. Yes, he was holding the balloon under the table. Well, he’d blown it up some time ago. He couldn’t keep it blown up for ever. He had to let the air out some time. He couldn’t help it making a noise when the air went out. It was the way it was made. He hadn’t made it. He set off to school with an air of injured innocence—and the balloon. Observing an elderly and irascible-looking gentleman in front of him, he went a few steps down a back street, blew up his balloon and held it tightly under his coat. Then, when abreast of the old gentleman, he let it off. The old gentleman gave a leap into the air and glared fiercely around. He glanced at the small virtuous-looking schoolboy with obviously no instrument of torture at his lips, and then concentrated his glare of fury and suspicion on the upper windows. William hastened on to the next pedestrian. He had quite a happy walk to school.
School was at first equally successful. William opened his desk, hastily inflated his balloon, closed his desk, then gazed round with his practised expression of horrified astonishment at what followed. He drove the French master to distraction.
“Step out ’oo makes the noise,” he screamed.
No one stepped out, and the noise continued at intervals.
The mathematics master finally discovered and confiscated the balloon.
“I hope,” said the father at lunch, “that they’ve taken away that infernal machine of yours.”
William replied sadly that they had. He added that some people didn’t seem to think it was stealing to take other people’s things.
“Then we may look forward to a little peace this evening?” said the father politely. “Not that it matters to me, as I’m going out to dinner. The only thing that relieves the tedium of going out to dinner is the fact that for a short time one has a rest from William.”
William acknowledged the compliment by a scowl and a mysterious muttered remark to the effect that some people were always at him.
During preparation in afternoon school he read a story-book kindly lent him by his next-door neighbour. It was not because he had no work to do that William read a story-book in preparation. It was a mark of defiance to the world in general. It was also a very interesting story-book. It opened with the hero as a small boy misunderstood and ill-treated by everyone around him. Then he ran away. He went to sea, and in a few years made an immense fortune in the goldfields. He returned in the last chapter and forgave his family and presented them with a noble mansion and several shiploads of gold. The idea impressed William—all except the end part. He thought he’d prefer to have the noble mansion himself and pay rare visits to his family, during which he would listen to their humble apologies, and perhaps give them a nugget or two, but not very much—certainly not much to Ethel. He wasn’t sure whether he’d ever really forgive them. He’d have rooms full of squeaky balloons and trumpets in his house anyway, and he’d keep caterpillars and white rats all over the place too—things they made such a fuss about in their old house—and he’d always go about in dirty boots, and he’d never brush his hair or wash, and he’d keep dozens of motor-cars, and he wouldn’t let Ethel go out in any of them. He was roused from this enthralling day-dream by the discovery and confiscation of his story-book by the master in charge, and the subsequent fury of its owner. In order adequately to express his annoyance, he dropped a little ball of blotting-paper soaked in ink down William’s back. William, on attempting retaliation, was sentenced to stay in half an hour after school. He returned gloomily to his history book (upside down) and his misanthropic view of life. He compared himself bitterly with the hero of the story-book and decided not to waste another moment of his life in uncongenial surroundings. He made a firm determination to run away as soon as he was released from school.
He walked briskly down the road away from the village. In his pocket reposed the balloon. He had made the cheering discovery that the mathematics master had left it on his desk, so he had joyfully taken it again into his possession. He thought he might reach the coast before night, and get to the goldfields before next week. He didn’t suppose it took long to make a fortune there. He might be back before next Christmas and—crumbs! he’d jolly well make people sit up. He wouldn’t go to school, for one thing, and he’d be jolly careful who he gave nuggets to for another. He’d give nuggets to the butcher’s boy and the postman, and the man who came to tune the piano, and the chimney-sweep. He wouldn’t give any to any of his family, or any of the masters at the school. He’d just serve people out the way they served him. He just would. The road to the coast seemed rather long, and he was growing rather tired. He walked in a ditch for a change, and then scraped through a hedge and took a short cut across a ploughed field. Dusk was falling fast, and even William’s buoyant spirits began to flag. The fortune part was all very well, but in the meantime he was cold and tired and hungry. He hadn’t yet reached the coast, much less the goldfields. Something must be done. He remembered that the boy in the story had “begged his way” to the coast. William determined to beg his. But at present there seemed nothing to beg it from, except a hawthorn hedge and a scarecrow in the field behind it. He wandered on disconsolately deciding to begin his career as a beggar at the first sign of human habitation.
At last he discovered a pair of iron gates through the dusk and, assuming an expression of patient suffering calculated to melt a heart of stone, walked up the drive. At the front door he smoothed down his hair (he had lost his cap on the way), pulled up his stockings, and rang the bell. After an interval a stout gentleman in the garb of a butler opened the door and glared ferociously up and down William.
“Please——” began William plaintively.
The stout gentleman interrupted.
“If you’re the new Boots,” he said majestically, “go round to the back door. If you’re not, go away.”
He then shut the door in William’s face. William, on the top step, considered the question for a few minutes. It was dark and cold, with every prospect of becoming darker and colder. He decided to be the new Boots. He found his way round to the back door and knocked firmly. It was opened by a large woman in a print dress and apron.
“What y’ want?” she said aggressively.
“He said,” said William firmly, “to come round if I was the new Boots.”
The woman surveyed him in grim disapproval.
“You bin round to the front?” she said. “Nerve!”
Her disapproval increased to suspicion.
“Where’s your things?” she said.
“Comin’,” said William without a moment’s hesitation.
“Too tired to bring ’em with you?” she said sarcastically. “All right. Come in!”
William came in gratefully. It was a large, warm, clean kitchen. A small kitchen-maid was peeling potatoes at a sink, and a housemaid in black, with a frilled cap and apron, was powdering her nose before a glass on the wall. They both turned to stare at William.
“’Ere’s the new Boots,” announced Cook, “’is valet’s bringin’ ’is things later.”
The housemaid looked up William from his muddy boots to his untidy hair, then down William from his untidy hair to his muddy boots.
“Imperdent-lookin’ child,” she commented haughtily, returning to her task.
William decided inwardly that she was to have no share at all in the nuggets.
The kitchen-maid giggled and winked at William, with obviously friendly intent. William mentally promised her half a ship-load of nuggets.
“Now, then, Smutty,” said the house-maid with out turning round, “none of your sauce!”
“’Ad your tea?” said the cook to William. William’s spirits rose.
“No,” he said plaintively.
“All right. Sit down at the table.”
William’s spirits soared sky high.
He sat at the table and the cook put a large plate of bread and butter before him.
William set to work at once. The house-maid regarded him scornfully.
“Learnt ’is way of eatin’ at the Zoo,” she said pityingly.
The kitchen-maid giggled again and gave William another wink. William had given himself up to whole-hearted epicurean enjoying of his bread and butter and took no notice of them. At this moment the butler entered.
He subjected the quite unmoved William to another long survey.
“When next you come a-hentering of this ’ouse, my boy,” he said, “kindly remember that the front door is reserved for gentry an’ the back for brats.”
William merely looked at him coldly over a hunk of bread and butter. Mentally he knocked him off the list of nugget-receivers.
The butler looked sadly round the room.
“They’re all the same,” he lamented. “Eat, eat, eat. Nothin’ but eat. Eat all day an’ eat all night. ’E’s not bin in the ’ouse two minutes an’ ’e’s at it. Eat! eat! eat! ’E’ll ’ave all the buttons bust off his uniform in a week like wot the larst one ’ad. Like eatin’ better than workin’, don’t you?” he said sarcastically to William.
“Yes, I do, too,” said William with firm conviction.
The kitchen-maid giggled again, and the housemaid gave a sigh expressive of scorn and weariness as she drew a thin pencil over her eyebrows.
“Well, if you’ve quite finished, my lord,” said the butler in ponderous irony, “I’ll show you to your room.”
William indicated that he had quite finished, and was led up to a very small bed-room. Over a chair lay a page’s uniform with the conventional row of brass buttons down the front of the coat.
“Togs,” explained the butler briefly. “Your togs. Fix ’em on quick as you can. There’s company to dinner to-night.”
William fixed them on.
“You’re smaller than wot the last one was,” said the butler critically. “They ’ang a bit loose. Never mind. With a week or two of stuffin’ you’ll ’ave most probable bust ’em, so it’s as well to ’ang loose first. Now, come on. ’Oo’s bringing over your things?”
“E—a friend,” explained William.
“I suppose it is a bit too much to expeck you to carry your own parcels,” went on the butler, “in these ’ere days. Bloomin’ Bolshevist, I speck, aren’t you?”
William condescended to explain himself.
“I’m a gold-digger,” he said.
“Criky!” said the butler.
William was led down again to the kitchen.
The butler threw open a door that led to a small pantry.
“This ’ere is where you work, and this ’ere,” pointing to a large kitchen, “is where you live. You ’ave not,” he ended haughtily “the hentry into the servants’ ’all.”
“Crumbs!” said William.
“You might has well begin at once,” went on the butler, “there’s all this lunch’s knives to clean. ’Ere’s a hapron, ’ere’s the knife-board an’ ’ere’s the knife-powder.”
He shut the bewildered William into the small pantry and turned to the cook.
“What do you think of ’im?” he said.
“’E looks,” said the cook gloomily, “the sort of boy we’ll ’ave trouble with.”
“Not much clarse,” said the house-maid, arranging her frilled apron. “It surprises me ’ow any creature like a boy can grow into an experienced, sensible, broad-minded man like you, Mr. Biggs.”
Mr. Biggs simpered and straightened his necktie.
“Well,” he admitted, “as a boy, of course, I wasn’t like ’im.”
Here the pantry-door opened and William’s face, plentifully adorned with knife-powder came round.
“I’ve done some of the knives,” he said, “shall I be doin’ something else and finish the others afterwards?”
“’Ow many ’ave you done?” said Mr. Biggs.
“One or two,” said William vaguely, then with a concession to accuracy, “well, two. But I’m feeling tired of doin’ knives.”
The kitchen-maid emitted a scream of delight and the cook heaved a deep sigh.
The butler advanced slowly and majestically towards William’s tousled head, which was still craned around the pantry door.
“You’ll finish them knives, my boy,” he said, “or——”
William considered the weight and size of Mr. Biggs.
“All right,” he said pacifically. “I’ll finish the knives.”
He disappeared, closing the pantry door behind him.
“’E’s goin’ to be a trile,” said the cook, “an’ no mistake.”
“Trile’s ’ardly the word,” said Mr. Biggs.
“Haffliction,” supplied the housemaid.
“That’s more like it,” said Mr. Biggs.
Here William’s head appeared again.
“Wot time’s supper?” he said.
He retired precipitately at a hysterical shriek from the kitchen-maid and a roar of fury from the butler.
“You’d better go an’ do your potatoes in the pantry,” said the cook to the kitchenmaid, “and let’s ’ave a bit of peace in ’ere and see ’e’s doin’ of ’is work all right.”
The kitchenmaid departed joyfully to the pantry.
William was sitting by the table, idly toying with a knife. He had experimented upon the knife powder by mixing it with water, and the little brown pies that were the result lay in a row on the mantelpiece. He had also tasted it, as the dark stains upon his lips testified. His hair was standing straight up on his head as it always did when life was strenuous. He began the conversation.
“You’d be surprised,” he said, “if you knew what I really was.”
She giggled.
“Go on!” she said. “What are you?”
“I’m a gold-digger,” he said. “I’ve got ship-loads an’ ship-loads of gold. At least, I will have soon. I’m not goin’ to give him,” pointing towards the door, “any, nor any of them in there.”
“Wot about me?” said the kitchenmaid, winking at the cat as the only third person to be let into the joke.
“You,” said William graciously, “shall have a whole lot of nuggets. Look here.” With a princely flourish he took up a knife and cut off three buttons from the middle of his coat and gave them to her. “You keep those and they’ll be kind of tokens. See? When I come home rich you show me the buttons an’ I’ll remember and give you the nuggets. See? I’ll maybe marry you,” he promised, “if I’ve not married anyone else.”
The kitchenmaid put her head round the pantry door.
“’E’s loony,” she said. “It’s lovely listening to ’im talkin.’”
Further conversation was prevented by the ringing of the front-door bell and the arrival of the “company.”
Mr. Biggs and the housemaid departed to do the honours. The kitchenmaid ran to help with the dishing up, and William was left sitting on the pantry table, idly making patterns in knife powder with his finger.
“Wot was ’e doin’?” said the cook to the kitchenmaid.
“Nothin’—’cept talkin’,” said the kitchenmaid. “’E’s a cure, ’e is,” she added.
“If you’ve finished the knives,” called out the cook, “there’s some boots and shoes on the floor to be done. Brushes an’ blacking on the shelf.”
William arose with alacrity. He thought boots would be more interesting than knives. He carefully concealed the pile of uncleaned knives behind the knife-box and began on the shoes.
The butler returned.
“Soup ready?” he said. “The company’s just goin’ into the dining-room—a pal of the master’s. Decent-lookin’ bloke,” he added patronisingly.
William, in his pantry, had covered a brush very thickly with blacking, and was putting it in heavy layers on the boots and shoes. A large part of it adhered to his own hands. The butler looked in at him.
“Wot’s ’appened to your buttons?” he said sternly.
“Come off,” said William.
“Bust off,” corrected the butler. “I said so soon as I saw you. I said you’d ’ave eat your buttons bust off in a week. Well, you’ve eat ’em bust off in ten minutes.”
“Eatin’ an’ destroyin’ of ’is clothes,” he said gloomily, returning to the kitchen. “It’s all boys ever do—eatin’ an’ destroyin’ of their clothes.”
He went out with the soup and William was left with the boots. He was getting tired of boots. He’d covered them all thickly with blacking, and he didn’t know what to do next. Then suddenly he remembered his balloon in his pocket upstairs. It might serve to vary the monotony of life. He slipped quietly upstairs for it, and then returned to his boots.
Soon Mr. Biggs and the housemaid returned with the empty soup-plates. Then through the kitchen resounded a high-pitched squeal, dying away slowly and shrilly.
The housemaid screamed.
“Lawks!” said the cook, “someone’s atorchurin’ of the poor cat to death. It’ll be that blessed boy.”
The butler advanced manfully and opened the pantry door. William stood holding in one hand an inflated balloon with the cardboard head and legs of a duck.
The butler approached him.
“If you let off that there thing once more, you little varmint,” he said, “I’ll——”
Threateningly he had advanced his large expanse of countenance very close to William’s. Acting upon a sudden uncontrollable impulse William took up the brush thickly smeared with blacking and pushed back Mr. Biggs’s face with it.
There was a moment’s silence of sheer horror, then Mr. Biggs hurled himself furiously upon William....
In the dining-room sat the master and mistress of the house and their guest.
“Did the new Boots arrive?” said the master to his wife.
“Any good?” he said.
“He doesn’t seem to have impressed Biggs very favourably,” she said, “but they never do.”
“The human boy,” said the guest, “is given us as a discipline. I possess one. Though he is my own son, I find it difficult to describe the atmosphere of peace and relief that pervades the house when he is out of it.”
“I’d like to meet your son,” said the host.
“You probably will, sooner or later,” said the guest gloomily. “Everyone in the neighbourhood meets him sooner or later. He does not hide his light under a bushel. Personally, I prefer people who haven’t met him. They can’t judge me by him.”
At this moment the butler came in with a note.
“No answer,” he said, and departed with his slow dignity.
“Excuse me,” said the lady as she opened it, “it’s from my sister. ‘I hope,’ she read, ‘that you aren’t inconvenienced much by the non-arrival of the Boots I engaged for you. He’s got “flu.”’ But he’s come,” she said wonderingly.
There came the sound of an angry shout, a distant scream and the clattering of heavy running footsteps ... growing nearer....
“A revolution, I expect,” said the guest wearily. “The Reds are upon us.”
At that moment the door was burst open and in rushed a boy with a blacking brush in one hand and an inflated balloon in the other. He was much dishevelled, with three buttons off the front of his uniform, and his face streaked with knife powder and blacking. Behind him ran a fat butler, his face purple with fury beneath a large smear of blacking. The boy rushed round the table, slipped on the polished floor, clutched desperately at the neck of the guest, bringing both guest and chair down upon the floor beside him. In a sudden silence of utter paralysed horror, guest and boy sat on the floor and stared at each other. Then the boy’s nerveless hand relaxed its hold upon the balloon, which had somehow or other survived the vicissitudes of the flight, and a shrill squeak rang through the silence of the room.
The master and mistress of the house sat looking round in dazed astonishment.
As the guest looked at the boy there appeared on his countenance amazement, then incredulity, and finally frozen horror. As the boy looked at the guest there appeared on his countenance amazement, then incredulity and finally blank dejection.
“Good Lord!” said the guest, “it’s William!”
“Oh, crumbs!” said the Boots, “it’s father!”
CHAPTER IV
THE FALL OF THE IDOL
William was bored. He sat at his desk in the sunny schoolroom and gazed dispassionately at a row of figures on the blackboard.
“It isn’t sense,” he murmured scornfully.
Miss Drew was also bored, but, unlike William, she tried to hide the fact.
“If the interest on a hundred pounds for one year is five pounds,” she said wearily, then, “William Brown, do sit up and don’t look so stupid!”
William changed his position from that of lolling over one side of his desk to that of lolling over the other, and began to justify himself.
“Well, I can’t unnerstand any of it. It’s enough to make anyone look stupid when he can’t unnerstand any of it. I can’t think why people go on givin’ people bits of money for givin’ ’em lots of money and go on an’ on doin’ it. It dun’t seem sense. Anyone’s a mug for givin’ anyone a hundred pounds just ’cause he says he’ll go on givin’ him five pounds and go on stickin’ to his hundred pounds. How’s he to know he will? Well,” he warmed to his subject, “what’s to stop him not givin’ any five pounds once he’s got hold of the hundred pounds an’ goin’ on stickin’ to the hundred pounds——”
Miss Drew checked him by a slim, upraised hand.
“William,” she said patiently, “just listen to me. Now suppose,” her eyes roved round the room and settled on a small red-haired boy, “suppose that Eric wanted a hundred pounds for something and you lent it to him——”
“I wun’t lend Eric a hundred pounds,” he said firmly, “’cause I ha’n’t got it. I’ve only got 3½d., an’ I wun’t lend that to Eric, ’cause I’m not such a mug, ’cause I lent him my mouth-organ once an’ he bit a bit off an’——”
Miss Drew interrupted sharply. Teaching on a hot afternoon is rather trying.
“You’d better stay in after school, William, and I’ll explain.”
William scowled, emitted his monosyllable of scornful disdain “Huh!” and relapsed into gloom.
He brightened, however, on remembering a lizard he had caught on the way to school, and drew it from its hiding-place in his pocket. But the lizard had abandoned the unequal struggle for existence among the stones, top, penknife, bits of putty, and other small objects that inhabited William’s pocket. The housing problem had been too much for it.
William in disgust shrouded the remains in blotting paper, and disposed of it in his neighbour’s ink-pot. The neighbour protested and an enlivening scrimmage ensued.
Finally the lizard was dropped down the neck of an inveterate enemy of William’s in the next row, and was extracted only with the help of obliging friends. Threats of vengeance followed, couched in blood-curdling terms, and written on blotting-paper.
Meanwhile Miss Drew explained Simple Practice to a small but earnest coterie of admirers in the front row. And William, in the back row, whiled away the hours for which his father paid the education authorities a substantial sum.
But his turn was to come.
At the end of afternoon school one by one the class departed, leaving William only nonchalantly chewing an india-rubber and glaring at Miss Drew.
“Now, William.”
Miss Drew was severely patient.
William went up to the platform and stood by her desk.
“You see, if someone borrows a hundred pounds from someone else——”
She wrote down the figures on a piece of paper, bending low over her desk. The sun poured in through the window, showing the little golden curls in the nape of her neck. She lifted to William eyes that were stern and frowning, but blue as blue above flushed cheeks.
“Don’t you see, William?” she said.
There was a faint perfume about her, and William the devil-may-care pirate and robber-chief, the stern despiser of all things effeminate, felt the first dart of the malicious blind god. He blushed and simpered.
“Yes, I see all about it now,” he assured her. “You’ve explained it all plain now. I cudn’t unnerstand it before. It’s a bit soft—in’t it—anyway, to go lending hundred pounds about just ’cause someone says they’ll give you five pounds next year. Some folks is mugs. But I do unnerstand now. I cudn’t unnerstand it before.”