'"Here is your prize," said Oswald.'—Page 31.'"Here is your prize," said Oswald.'—Page 31.
'Well,' said my father, 'if Mr. Biggs will take a glass of wine with me, we'll follow you down to the greenhouse, and he can see for himself.'
Mr. Biggs said something about thanking father kindly, and about his duty. And presently they came down to the greenhouse. Father did not introduce Mr. Biggs to anyone—I suppose he forgot—but Oswald did while father was talking to Mrs. Leslie. And Mr. Biggs made himself very agreeable to all the ladies.
Then we had the lottery. Everyone had tickets, and Alice asked Mr. Biggs to buy one. She let him have it for a shilling, because it was the last, and we all hoped he would win the Goat. He seemed quite sure now that Oswald was not kidding, and that the prize was not money. Indeed, Oswald went so far as to tell him privately that the prize was too big to put in your pocket, and that if it was divided up it would be spoiled, which is true of Goats, but not of money.
Everyone was laughing and talking, and wondering anxiously whatever the prize couldpossibly be. Oswald carried round the hat, and everyone drew a number. The winning number was six hundred and sixty-six, and Albert's uncle said afterwards it was a curious coincidence. I don't know what it meant, but it made Mrs. Leslie laugh. When everyone had drawn a number, Oswald rang the dinner-bell to command silence, and there was a hush full of anxious expectation. Then Oswald said:
'The prize number is six hundred and sixty-six. Who has it?'
And Mr. Biggs took a step forward and held out his paper.
'The prize is yours! I congratulate you,' said Oswald warmly.
Then he went into the stovehouse, and hastily placing a wreath of paper roses on the Goat's head, that Alice had got ready for the purpose, he got out the Goat by secretly showing it a bit of cocoanut ice, and led it by the same means to the feet of the happy winner.
'Here is your prize,' said Oswald, with feelings of generous pride. 'I am very glad you've got him. He'll be a comfort to you, and make up for all the trouble you've had over our lottery—raffle, I mean.'
And he placed the ungoated end of the rope in the unresisting hand of the fortunate detective.
Neither Oswald nor any of the rest of us has ever been able to make out why everyone should have laughed so. But they did. They said the lottery was the success of the afternoon. And the ladies kept on congratulating Mr. Biggs.
At last people began to go, and the detective, so unexpectedly made rich beyond his wildest dreams, said he, too, must be going. He had tied the Goat to the greenhouse door, and now he moved away. But we all cried out:
'You've forgotten your Goat!'
'No, I haven't,' he said very earnestly; 'I shall never forget that Goat to my dying hour. But I want to call on my aunt just close by, and I couldn't very well take the Goat to see her.'
'I don't see why not,' H. O. said; 'it's a very nice Goat.'
'She's frightened of them,' said he. 'One ran at her when she was a little girl. But if you will allow me, sir'—and he winked at my father, which is not manners—'if you'll allow me, I'll call in for the Goat on my way to the station.'
We got five pounds thirteen and fivepence by the bazaar and the raffle. We should have hadanother ten shillings from father, but he had to give it to Mr. Biggs, because we had put him to the trouble of coming all the way from Scotland Yard, because he thought our circular was from some hardened criminal wishing to cheat his trustful fellow-creatures. We took the money to Augustus Victor Plunkett next morning, and I tell you hewaspleased.
We waited till long after dark for the detective to return for his rich prize. But he never came. I hope he was not set upon and stabbed in some dark alley. If he is alive, and not imprisoned, I can't see why he didn't come back. I often think anxiously of him. Because, of course, detectives have many enemies among felons, who think nothing of stabbing people in the back, so that being murdered in a dark alley is a thing all detectives are constantly liable to.
It was after we had had the measles, that fell and blighting disorder which we got from Alice picking up five deeply infected shillings that a bemeasled family had wrapped in a bit of paper to pay the doctor with and then carelessly dropped in the street. Alice held the packet hotly in her muff all through a charity concert. Hence these tears, as it says in Virgil. And if you have ever had measles you will know that this is not what is called figuring speech, because your eyes do run like mad all the time.
When we were unmeasled again we were sent to stay at Lymchurch with a Miss Sandal, and her motto was plain living and high thinking. She had a brother, and his motto was the same, and it was his charity concert that Alice held the fatal shillings in her muff throughout of. Later on he was giving tracts to a bricklayer, and fell off a scaffold in his giddy earnestness, and Miss Sandal had to go and nurse him. So the six of us stayedin the plain living, high thinking house by ourselves, and old Mrs. Beale from the village came in every day and did the housework. She was of humble birth, but was a true lady in minding her own affairs, which is what a great many ladies do not know how to do at all. We had no lessons to do, and we were thus free to attend to any adventures which came along. Adventures are the real business of life. The rest is only in-betweenness—what Albert's uncle calls padding. He is an author.
Miss Sandal's house was very plain and clean, with lots of white paint, and very difficult to play in. So we were out a good deal. It was seaside, so, of course, there was the beach, and besides that the marsh—big green fields with sheep all about, and wet dykes with sedge growing, and mud, and eels in the mud, and winding white roads that all look the same, and all very interesting, as though they might lead to almost anything that you didn't expect. Really, of course, they lead to Ashford and Romney and Ivychurch, and real live places like that. But they don't look it.
The day when what I am going to tell you about happened, we were all leaning on the stone wall looking at the pigs. The pigman is a great friendof ours—all except H. O., who is my youngest brother. His name is Horace Octavius, and if you want to know why we called him H. O. you had better read 'The Treasure Seekers' and find out. He had gone to tea with the schoolmaster's son—a hateful kid.
'Isn't that the boy you're always fighting?' Dora asked when H. O. said he was going.
'Yes,' said H. O., 'but, then, he keeps rabbits.'
So then we understood and let him go.
Well, the rest of us were gazing fondly on the pigs, and two soldiers came by.
We asked them where they were off to.
They told us to mind our own business, which is not manners, even if you are a soldier on private affairs.
'Oh, all right,' said Oswald, who is the eldest. And he advised the soldiers to keep their hair on. The little they had was cut very short.
'I expect they're scouts or something,' said Dicky; 'it's a field-day, or a sham-fight, or something, as likely as not.'
'Let's go after them and see,' said Oswald, ever prompt in his decidings. So we did.
We ran a bit at first, so as not to let the soldiers have too much of a lead. Their red coats made itquite easy to keep them in sight on the winding white marsh road. But we did not catch them up: they seemed to go faster and faster. So we ran a little bit more every now and then, and we went quite a long way after them. But they didn't meet any of their officers or regiments or things, and we began to think that perchance we were engaged in the disheartening chase of the wild goose. This has sometimes occurred.
There is a ruined church about two miles from Lymchurch, and when we got close to that we lost sight of the red coats, so we stopped on the little bridge that is near there to reconnoitre.
The soldiers had vanished.
'Well, here's a go!' said Dicky.
'Itisa wild-goose chase,' said Noël. 'I shall make a piece of poetry about it. I shall call the title the "Vanishing Reds, or, the Soldiers that were not when you got there."'
'You shut up!' said Oswald, whose eagle eye had caught a glimpse of scarlet through the arch of the ruin.
None of the others had seen this. Perhaps you will think I do not say enough about Oswald's quickness of sight, so I had better tell you that is only because Oswald is me, and very modest. Atleast, he tries to be, because he knows it is what a true gentleman ought to.
'They're in the ruins,' he went on. 'I expect they're going to have an easy and a pipe—out of the wind.'
'I think it's very mysterious,' said Noël. 'I shouldn't wonder if they're going to dig for buried treasure. Let's go and see.'
'No,' said Oswald, who, though modest, is thoughtful. 'If we do they'll stop digging, or whatever they're doing. When they've gone away, we'll go and see if the ground is scratched about.'
So we delayed where we were, but we saw no more scarlet.
In a little while a dull-looking man in brown came by on a bicycle. He stopped and got off.
'Seen a couple of Tommies about here, my lad?' he said to Oswald.
Oswald does not like being called anybody's lad, especially that kind of man's; but he did not want to spoil the review, or field-day, or sham-fight, or whatever it might be, so he said:
'Yes; they're up in the ruins.'
'You don't say so!' said the man. 'In uniform, I suppose? Yes, of course, or you wouldn't have known they were soldiers. Silly cuckoos!'
He wheeled his bicycle up the rough lane that leads to the old ruin.
'It can't be buried treasure,' said Dicky.
'I don't care if it is,' said Oswald. 'We'll see what's happening. I don't mind spoilinghissport. "My ladding" me like that!'
So we followed the man with the bicycle. It was leaning against the churchyard gate when we got there. The man off it was going up to the ruin, and we went after him.
He did not call out to the soldiers, and we thought that odd; but it didn't make us think where it might have made us if we had had any sense. He just went creeping about, looking behind walls and inside arches, as though he was playing at hide-and-seek. There is a mound in the middle of the ruin, where stones and things have fallen during dark ages, and the grass has grown all over them. We stood on the mound, and watched the bicycling stranger nosing about like a ferret.
There is an archway in that ruin, and a flight of steps goes down—only five steps—and then it is all stopped up with fallen stones and earth. The stranger stopped at last at this arch, and stooped forward with his hands on his knees, andlooked through the arch and down the steps. Then he said suddenly and fiercely:
'Come out of it, will you?'
And the soldiers came. I wouldn't have. They were two to his one. They came cringing out like beaten dogs. The brown man made a sort of bound, and next minute the two soldiers were handcuffed together, and he was driving them before him like sheep.
'Back you go the same way as what you come,' he said.
And then Oswald saw the soldiers' faces, and he will never forget what they looked like.
He jumped off the mound, and ran to where they were.
'What have they done?' he asked the handcuffer.
'Deserters,' said the man. 'Thanks to you, my lad, I got 'em as easy as kiss your hand.'
Then one of the soldiers looked at Oswald. He was not very old—about as big as a fifth-form boy. And Oswald answered what the soldier looked at him.
'I'mnota sneak,' he said. 'I wouldn't have told if I'd known. If you'd told me, instead of saying to mind my own business I'd have helped you.'
The soldier didn't answer, but the bicycle man did.
'Then you'd 'a helped yourself into the stone jug, my lad,' said he. 'Help a dirty deserter? You're young enough to know better. Come along, you rubbish!'
And they went.
When they were gone Dicky said:
'It's very rum. I hate cowards. And deserters are cowards. I don't see why we feel like this.'
Alice and Dora and Noël were now discovered to be in tears.
'Of course we did right to tell. Only when the soldier looked at me ...' said Oswald.
'Yes,' said Dicky, 'that's just it.'
In deepest gloom the party retraced its steps.
As we went, Dora said with sniffs:
'I suppose it was the bicycle man's duty.'
'Of course,' said Oswald, 'but it wasn'tourduty. And I jolly well wish we hadn't!'
'And such a beautiful day, too,' said Noël, sniffing in his turn.
Itwasbeautiful. The afternoon had been dull, but now the sun was shining flat across the marshes, making everything look as if it had been coveredall over with the best gold-leaf—marsh and trees, and roofs and stacks, and everything.
That evening Noël wrote a poem about it all. It began:
'Poor soldiers, why did you run awayOn such a beautiful, beautiful day?If you had run away in the rain,Perhaps they would never have found you again,Because then Oswald would not have been thereTo show the hunter the way to your lair.'
Oswald would have licked him for that—only Noël is not very strong, and there is something about poets, however young, that makes it rather like licking a girl. So Oswald did not even say what he thought—Noël cries at the least thing. Oswald only said, 'Let's go down to our pigman.'
And we all went except Noël. He never will go anywhere when in the midst of making poetry. And Alice stayed with him, and H. O. was in bed.
We told the pigman all about the deserters, and about our miserable inside remorsefulness, and he said he knew just how we felt.
'There's quite enough agin a pore chap that's made a bolt of it without the rest of us a-joinin' in,' he said. 'Not as I holds with deserting—mean trick I call it. But all the same, when theodds is that heavy—thousands to one—all the army and the navy and the pleece and Parliament and the King agin one pore silly bloke. You wouldn't 'a done it a purpose, I lay.'
'Not much,' said Oswald in gloomy dejection. 'Have a peppermint? They're extra strong.'
When the pigman had had one he went on talking.
'There's a young chap, now,' he said, 'broke out of Dover Gaol. I 'appen to know what he's in for—nicked a four-pound cake, he did, off of a counter at a pastrycook's—Jenner's it was, in the High Street—part hunger, part playfulness. But even if I wasn't to know what he was lagged for, do you think I'd put the coppers on to him? Not me. Give a fellow a chance is what I say. But don't you grizzle about them there Tommies. P'raps it'll be the making of 'em in the end. A slack-baked pair as ever wore boots.Iseed 'em. Only next time just you take and think afore you pipes up—see?'
We said that we saw, and that next time we would do as he said. And we went home again. As we went Dora said:
'But supposing it was a cruel murderer that had got loose, you ought to tell then.'
'Yes,' said Dicky; 'but before you do tell you ought to be jolly sure itisa cruel murderer, and not a chap that's taken a cake because he was hungry. How do you know whatyou'ddo if you were hungry enough?'
'I shouldn't steal,' said Dora.
'I'm not so sure,' said Dicky; and they argued about it all the way home, and before we got in it began to rain in torrents.
Conversations about food always make you feel as though it was a very long time since you had had anything to eat. Mrs. Beale had gone home, of course, but we went into the larder. It is a generous larder. No lock, only a big wooden latch that pulls up with a string, like in Red Riding Hood. And the floor is clean damp red brick. It makes ginger-nuts soft if you put the bag on this floor. There was half a rhubarb pie, and there were meat turnovers with potato in them. Mrs. Beale is a thoughtful person, and I know many people much richer that are not nearly so thoughtful.
We had a comfortable feast at the kitchen table, standing up to eat, like horses.
Then we had to let Noël read us his piece of poetry about the soldier; he wouldn't have slept ifwe hadn't. It was very long, and it began as I have said, and ended up:
'Poor soldiers, learn a lesson from to-day,It is very wrong to run away;It is better to stayAnd serve your King and Country—hurray!'
Noël owned that Hooray sounded too cheerful for the end of a poem about soldiers with faces like theirs were.
'But I didn't mean it about the soldiers. It was about the King and Country. Half a sec. I'll put that in.' So he wrote:
'P.S.—I do not mean to be unkind,Poor soldiers, to you, so never mind.When I say hurray or sing,It is because I am thinking of my Country and my King.'
'You can't sing Hooray,' said Dicky. So Noël went to bed singing it, which was better than arguing about it, Alice said. But it was noisier as well.
Oswald and Dicky always went round the house to see that all the doors were bolted and the shutters up. This is what the head of the house always does, and Oswald is the head when father is not there. There are no shutters upstairs, only curtains. The White House, whichis Miss Sandal's house's name, is not in the village, but 'quite a step' from it, as Mrs. Beale says. It is the first house you come to as you come along the road from the marsh.
We used to look in the cupboard and under the beds for burglars every night. The girls liked us to, though they wouldn't look themselves, and I don't know that it was much good. If thereisa burglar, it's sometimes safer for you not to know it. Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to find a burglar, especially as he would be armed to the teeth as likely as not. However, there is not much worth being a burglar about, in houses where the motto is plain living and high thinking, and there never was anyone in the cupboards or under the beds.
Then we put out all the lights very carefully in case of fire—all except Noël's. He does not like the dark. He says there are things in it that go away when you light a candle, and however much you talk reason and science to him, it makes no difference at all.
Then we got into our pyjamas. It was Oswald who asked father to let us have pyjamas instead of nightgowns; they are so convenient for dressing up when you wish to act clowns, or WestIndian planters, or any loose-clothed characters. Then we got into bed, and then we got into sleep.
Little did the unconscious sleepers reck of the strange destiny that was advancing on them by leaps and bounds through the silent watches of the night.
Although we were asleep, the rain went on raining just the same, and the wind blowing across the marsh with the fury of a maniac who has been transformed into a blacksmith's bellows. And through the night, and the wind, and the rain, our dreadful destiny drew nearer and nearer. I wish this to sound as if something was going to happen, and I hope it does. I hope the reader's heart is now standing still with apprehensionness on our account, but I do not want it to stop altogether, so I will tell you that we were not all going to be murdered in our beds, or pass peacefully away in our sleeps with angel-like smiles on our young and beautiful faces. Not at all. What really happened was this. Some time must have elapsed between our closing our eyes in serene slumber and the following narrative:
Oswald was awakened by Dicky thumping him hard in the back, and saying in accents of terror—at least, he says not, but Oswald knows what they sounded like:
'What's that?'
Oswald reared up on his elbow and listened, but there was nothing to listen to except Dicky breathing like a grampus, and the giggle-guggle of the rain-water overflowing from the tub under the window.
'What's what?' said Oswald.
He did not speak furiously, as many elder brothers would have done when suddenly awakened by thumps.
'That!' said Dicky. 'There it is again!'
And this time, certainly, there it was, and it sounded like somebody hammering on the front-door with his fists. There is no knocker to the plain-living, high-thinking house.
Oswald controlled his fears, if he had any (I am not going to say whether he had or hadn't), and struck a match. Before the candle had had time to settle its flame after the first flare up that doesn't last, the row began again.
Oswald's nerves are of iron, but it would have given anybody a start to see two white figures in the doorway, yet so it was. They proved to be Alice and Dora in their nighties; but no onecould blame anyone for not being sure of this at first.
'Is it burglars?' said Dora; and her teeth did chatter, whatever she may say.
'Ithink it's Mrs. Beale,' said Alice. 'I expect she's forgotten the key.'
Oswald pulled his watch out from under his pillow.
'It's half-past one,' he said.
And then the knocking began again. So the intrepid Oswald went to the landing window that is over the front-door. The others went too. And he opened the window in his pyjamas and said, 'Who's there?'
There was the scraping sound of boots on the doorstep, as somebody down there stepped back.
'Is this the way to Ashford?' said the voice of a man.
'Ashford's thirteen miles off,' said Oswald. 'You get on to the Dover road.'
'I don't want to get on the Dover road,' said the voice; 'I've had enough of Dover.'
A thrill ran through every heart. We all told each other so afterwards.
'Well,' said Dicky, 'Ashford's thirteen miles——'
'Anybody but you in the house?'
'Say we've got men and dogs and guns,' whispered Dora.
'There are six of us,' said Oswald, 'all armed to the teeth.'
The stranger laughed.
'I'm not a burglar,' he said; 'I've lost my way, that's all. I thought I should have got to Ashford before dusk, but I missed the way. I've been wandering all over these marshes ever since, in the rain. I expect they're out after me now, but I'm dead beat. I can't go on. Won't you let me in? I can sit by the kitchen fire.'
Oswald drew his head back through the window, and a hasty council took place on the landing.
'Itis,' said Alice.
'You heard what he said about Dover, and their being out after him?'
'I say, you might let a chap in,' said the voice outside. 'I'm perfectly respectable. Upon my word I am.'
'I wish he hadn't said that,' whispered Dora. [** ']Such a dreadful story! And we didn't even ask him if he was.'
'He sounds very tired,' said Alice.
'And wet,' said Oswald. 'I heard the water squelching in his boots.'
'What'll happen if we don't let him in?' said Dicky.
'He'll be caught and taken back, like the soldiers,' said Oswald. 'Look here, I'm going to chance it. You others can lock yourselves into your rooms if you're frightened.'
Then Oswald put his brave young head out of the window, and the rain dripped on to the back of his bold young neck off the roof, like a watering-pot on to a beautiful flower, and he said:
'There's a porch to the side door. Just scoot round there and shelter, and I'll come down in half a sec.'
A resolve made in early youth never to face midnight encounters without boots was the cause of this delay. Oswald and Dicky got into their boots and jackets, and told the girls to go back to bed.
Then we went down and opened the front-door. The stranger had heard the bolts go, and he was outside waiting.
We held the door open politely, and he stepped in and began at once to drip heavily on the doormat.
We shut the door. He looked wildly round.
'Be calm! You are safe,' said Oswald.
'Thanks,' said the stranger; 'I see I am.'
'"Come into the kitchen," said Oswald, "you can drip there quite comfortably."'—Page 52'"Come into the kitchen," said Oswald, "you can drip there quite comfortably."'—Page 52
All our hearts were full of pity for the outcast. He was, indeed, a spectacle to shock the benevolent. Even the prison people, Oswald thought, or the man he took the cake from, would have felt their fierceness fade if they could have seen him then. He was not in prison dress. Oswald would have rather liked to see that, but he remembered that it was safer for the man that he had found means to rid himself of the felon's garb. He wore a gray knickerbocker suit, covered with mud. The lining of his hat must have been blue, and it had run down his face in streaks like the gentleman in Mr. Kipling's story. He was wetter than I have ever seen anyone out of a bath or the sea.
'Come into the kitchen,' said Oswald; 'you can drip there quite comfortably. The floor is brick.'
He followed us into the kitchen.
'Are you kids alone in the house?' he said.
'Yes,' said Oswald.
'Then I suppose it's no good asking if you've got a drop of brandy?'
'Not a bit,' said Dicky.
'Whisky would do, or gin—any sort of spirit,' said the smeared stranger hopefully.
'Not a drop,' said Oswald; 'at least, I'll look in the medicine cupboard. And, I say, take off your things and put them in the sink. I'll get you some other clothes. There are some of Mr. Sandal's.'
The man hesitated.
'It'll make a better disguise,' said Oswald in a low, significant whisper, and turned tactfully away, so as not to make the stranger feel awkward.
Dicky got the clothes, and the stranger changed in the back-kitchen. The only spirit Oswald could find was spirits of salts, which the stranger said was poison, and spirits of camphor. Oswald gave him some of this on sugar; he knows it is a good thing when you have taken cold. The stranger hated it. He changed in the back-kitchen, and while he was doing it we tried to light the kitchen fire, but it would not; so Dicky went up to ask Alice for some matches, and finding the girls had not gone to bed as ordered, but contrarily dressed themselves, he let them come down. And then, of course, there was no reason why they should not light the fire. They did.
When the unfortunate one came out of the back-kitchen he looked quite a decent chap, though still blue in patches from the lining of his hat. Dicky whispered to me what a difference clothes made.
He made a polite though jerky bow to the girls, and Dora said:
'How do you do? I hope you are quite well.'
'As well as can be expected,' replied the now tidy outcast, 'considering what I've gone through.'
'Tea or cocoa?' said Dora. 'And do you like cheese or cold bacon best?'
'I'll leave it to you entirely,' he answered. And he added, without a pause, 'I'm sure I can trust you.'
'Indeed you can,' said Dora earnestly; 'you needn't be a bit afraid. You're perfectly safe with us.'
He opened his eyes at this.
'He didn't expect such kindness,' Alice whispered. 'Poor man! he's quite overcome.'
We gave him cocoa, and cheese, and bacon, and butter and bread, and he ate a great deal, with his feet in Mr. Sandal's all-wool boots on the kitchen fender.
The girls wrung the water out of his clothes, and hung them on the clothes-horse on the other side of the fire.
'I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you,' he said; 'real charity I call this. I shan't forget it, I assure you. I ought to apologise for knocking you up like this, but I'd been hours tramping through this precious marsh of yours wet to the skin, and not a morsel of food since mid-day. And yours was the first light I'd seen for a couple of hours.'
'I'm very glad itwasus you knocked up,' said Alice.
'So am I,' said he; 'I might have knocked at a great many doors before I got such a welcome. I'm quite aware of that.'
He spoke all right, not like a labouring man; but it wasn't a gentleman's voice, and he seemed to end his sentences off short at the end, as though he had it on the tip of his tongue to say 'Miss' or 'Sir.'
Oswald thought how terrible it must be to be out alone in the rain and the dark, with the police after you, and no one to be kind to you if you knocked at their doors.
'You must have had an awful day,' he said.
'I believe you,' said the stranger, cutting himself more bacon. 'Thank you, miss (he really did say it that time), just half a cup if you don't mind. I believe you! I never want to have such a day again, I can tell you. I took one or two little things in the morning, but I wasn't in the mood or something. You know how it is sometimes.'
'I can fancy it,' said Alice.
'And then the afternoon clouded over. It cleared up at sunset, you remember, but then it was too late. And then the rain came on. Not half! My word! I've been in a ditch. Thought my last hour had come, I tell you. Only got out by the skin of my teeth. Got rid of my whole outfit. There's a nice thing to happen to a young fellow! Upon my Sam, it's enough to make a chap swear he'll never take another thing as long as he lives.'
'I hope you never will,' said Dora earnestly; 'it doesn't pay, you know.'
'Upon my word, that's nearly true, though I don't know howyouknow,' said the stranger, beginning on the cheese and pickles.
'I wish,' Dora was beginning, but Oswald interrupted. He did not think it was fair to preach at the man.
'So you lost your outfit in the ditch,' he said; 'and how did you get those clothes?'
He pointed to the steaming gray suit.
'Oh,' replied the stranger, 'the usual way.'
Oswald was too polite to ask what was the usual way of getting a gray suit to replace a prison outfit. He was afraid the usual way was the way the four-pound cake had been got.
Alice looked at me helplessly. I knew just how she felt.
Harbouring a criminal when people are 'out after him' gives you a very chilly feeling in the waistcoat—or, if in pyjamas, in the part that the plaited cotton cord goes round. By the greatest good luck there were a few of the extra-strong peppermints left. We had two each, and felt better.
The girls put the sheets off Oswald's bed on to the bed Miss Sandal used to sleep in when not in London nursing the shattered bones of her tract-distributing brother.
'If you will go to bed now,' Oswald said to the stranger, 'we will wake you in good time. And you may sleep as sound as you like. We'll wake you all right.'
'You might wake me about eight,' he said;'I ought to be getting on. I'm sure I don't know what to say in return for the very handsome reception you've given me. Good-night to you all, I'm sure.'
'Good-night,' said everyone. And Dora added, 'Don't you bother. While you're asleep we'll think what's best to be done.'
'Don'tyoubother,' said the stranger, and he absently glanced at his own clothes. 'What's big enough to get out of's big enough to get into.'
Then he took the candle, and Dicky showed him to his room.
'What's big enough to get out of,' repeated Alice. 'Surely he doesn't mean to creep back into prison, and pretend he was there all the time, only they didn't notice him?'
'Well, what are we to do?' asked Dicky, rejoining the rest of us. 'He told me the dark room at Dover was a disgrace. Poor chap!'
'We must invent a disguise,' said Dora.
'Let's pretend he's our aunt, and dress him up—like in "Hard Cash,"' said Alice.
It was now three o'clock, but no one was sleepy. No one wanted to go to sleep at all till we had taken our candles up into the attic and rummaged through Miss Sandal's trunks, and found a completedisguise exactly suited to an aunt. We had everything—dress, cloak, bonnet, veil, gloves, petticoats, and even boots, though we knew all the time, in our hearts, that these were far too small. We put all ready on the parlour sofa, and then at last we began to feel in our eyes and ears and jaws how late it was. So we went back to bed. Alice said she knew how to wake exact to the minute, and we had known her do it before, so we trusted her, and agreed that she was to wake us at six.
But, alas! Alice had deemed herself cleverer than she was, by long chalks, and it was not her that woke us.
We were aroused from deep slumber by the voice of Mrs. Beale.
'Hi!' it remarked,'wake up, young gentlemen! It's gone the half after nine, and your gentleman friend's up and dressed and a-waiting for his breakfast.'
We sprang up.
'I say, Mrs. Beale,' cried Oswald, who never even in sleep quite loses his presence of mind, 'don't let on to anyone that we've got a visitor.'
She went away laughing. I suppose she thought it was some silly play-secret. She little knew.
We found the stranger looking out of the window.
'I wouldn't do that,' said Dora softly; 'it isn't safe. Suppose someone saw you?'
'Well,' said he, 'suppose they did?'
'They might take you, you know,' said Dora; 'it's done in a minute. We saw two poor men taken yesterday.'
Her voice trembled at the gloomy recollection.
'Let 'em take me,' said the man who wore the clothes of the plain-living and high-thinking Mr. Sandal; 'Idon't mind so long as my ugly mug don't break the camera!'
'We want to save you,' Dora was beginning; but Oswald, far-sighted beyond his years, felt a hot redness spread over his youthful ears and right down his neck. He said:
'Please, what were you doing in Dover? And what did you take yesterday?'
'I was in Dover on business,' said the man, 'and what I took was Hythe Church and Burmarsh Church, and——'
'Then you didn't steal a cake and get put into Dover Gaol, and break loose, and——' said Dicky, though I kicked him as a sign not to.
'Me?' said our friend. 'Not exactly!'
'Then,whatare you? If you're not that poor escaped thief, what are you?' asked Dora fiercely, before Oswald could stop her.
'I'm a photographer, miss,' said he—'a travelling photographer.'
Then slowly but surely he saw it all, and I thought he would never have done laughing.
'Breakfast is getting cold,' said Oswald.
'So it is,' said our guest. 'Lordy, what a go! This'll be something to talk about between friends for many a year.'
'No,' said Alice suddenly; 'we thought you were a runaway thief, and we wanted to help you whatever you were.' She pointed to the sofa, where the whole costume of the untrue aunt was lying in simple completeness. 'And you're in honour bound never to tell a soul. Think,' she added in persuading tones—'think of the cold bacon and the cheese, and all those pickles you had, and the fire and the cocoa, and us being up all night, and the dry all-wool boots.'
'Say no more, miss,' said the photographer (for such he indeed was) nobly. 'Your will is my law; I won't never breathe a word.'
And he sat down to the ham and eggs as though it was weeks since he had tasted bacon.
But we found out afterwards he went straight up to the Ship, and told everybody all about it. I wonder whether all photographers are dishonourable and ungrateful. Oswald hopes they are not, but he cannot feel at all sure.
Lots of people chaffed us about it afterwards, but the pigman said we were jolly straight young Britons, and it is something to be called that by a man you really respect. It doesn't matter so much what the other people say—the people you don't really care about.
When we told our Indian uncle about it he said, 'Nonsense! you ought never to try and shield a criminal.' But that was not at all the way we felt about it at the time when the criminal was there (or we thought he was), all wet, and hunted, and miserable, with people 'out after him.' He meant his friends who were expecting him, but we thought he meant police. It is very hard sometimes to know exactly what is right. If whatfeelsrightisn'tright, how are you to know, I wonder.
The only comforting thing about it all is that we heard next day that the soldiers had got away from the brown bicycle beast after all. I suppose it came home to them suddenly that theyweretwo to one, and they shoved him into a ditch and got away. They were never caught; I am very glad. And I supposethat'swrong too—so many things are. But Iam.
It was Mrs. Beale who put it into our heads that Miss Sandal lived plain because she was poor. We knew she thought high, because that is what you jolly well have to do if you are a vegetationist and an all-wooler, and those sort of things.
And we tried to get money for her, like we had once tried to do for ourselves. And we succeeded by means that have been told alone in another place in getting two golden pounds.
Then, of course, we began to wonder what we had better do with the two pounds now we had got them.
'Put them in the savings-bank,' Dora said.
Alice said:
'Why, when we could have them to look at?'
Noël thought we ought to buy her something beautiful to adorn Miss Sandal's bare dwelling.
H. O. thought we might spend it on nicetinned and potted things from the stores, to make the plain living and high thinking go down better.
But Oswald knew that, however nice the presents are that other people buy for you, it is really more satisfying to have the chink to spend exactly as you like.
Then Dicky said:
'I don't believe in letting money lie idle. Father always says it's bad business.'
'They give interest at the bank, don't they?' Dora said.
'Yes; tuppence a year, or some rot like that! We ought to go into trade with it, and try to make more of it. That's what we ought to do.'
'If it's Miss Sandal's money, do you think we ought to do anything with it without asking her?'
'It isn't hers till she's got it, and it is hers because it's not ours to spend. I think we're—what is it?—in loco parentisto that two quid, because anyone can see poor Miss Sandal doesn't know how to manage her money. And it will be much better if we give her ten pounds than just two.'
This is how Dicky argued.
We were sitting on the sands when this council took place, and Alice said, 'Suppose we bought a shrimping-net, and sold shrimps from our window in red handkerchiefs and white French caps.' But we asked her how she would like going into the sea nearly up to her neck in all weathers, and she had to own she had not thought of that. Besides, shrimps are so beastly cheap—more than you can eat for twopence.
The conversation was not interesting to anyone but Dicky, because we did not then believe we could do it, though later we thought differently. But I dare say we should have gone on with it just out of politeness to him, only at this moment we saw a coastguard, who is a great friend of ours, waving to us from the sea-wall. So we went up. And he said:
'You take my tip and cut along home. There's something come for you.'
'Perhaps it's heaps of things, like I said, to eat with the plain living,' said H. O.
And bright visions of hampers full of the most superior tuck winged our young legs as we cut along home.
It was not, however, a hamper that we found awaiting us. It was a large box. And besidesthat there were two cases addressed to Dicky and me, and through the gaps in the boards we could see twisted straw, and our hearts leapt high in our breasts, because we knew that they were bikes.
And such, indeed, they proved to be—free-wheels of the most unspotted character, the noble gift of our Indian uncle, ever amiable, generous, and esteemed.
While we were getting the glorious bikes from their prison bars, the others were undoing the box which had their names on it.
It contained cakes and sweets, a work-basket for Dora, lined with red satin, and dressed up with silver thimbles, and all sorts of bodkins and scissors, and knives with silver handles. There was a lovely box of paints for Alice.
Noël had a paint-box too, and H. O. had a very good Aunt Sally. And there were lots of books—not the sawdusty, dry kind that Miss Sandal had in her house, but jolly good books, the kind you can't put down till you've finished. But just now we hardly looked at them. For who with a spark of manly spirit would think twice about a book with a new free-wheel champing the oil like a charger in a ballad?
Dicky and I had a three-mile spin before dinner, and only fell off five times between us. Three spills were Dicky's, one was Oswald's, and one was when we ran into each other. The bikes were totally uninjured.
As time ran its appointed course we got a bit used to the bikes, and, finding that you cannot ride all day and all night, we began to look at the books. Only one of them comes into this story. It was called 'The Youth's Manual of Scientific and Mechanical Recreation,' and, of course, we none of us read it till we'd read everything else, and then we found it wasn't half bad. It taught you how to make all sorts of things—galvanic batteries, and kites, and mouse-traps, and how to electroplate things, and how to do wood-carving and leather-work. We tried as many of the things as we had money for, and some of them succeeded. Then we made a fire-balloon.
It took a long time to make, and then it caught fire and blazed away before we could get it launched.
So we made another, and Noël dropped it near the water-butt, where there was a puddle, and, being tissue-paper, it was unable to stand the strain.
So we made another. But the paste was bad, and it did not stick.
So we made another.
Then, at last, when all was ready, Oswald climbed on to the pigsty at Mrs. Beales', and held the balloon very steady while Dicky lighted the cotton-wool, soaked in spirits of wine, which hangs from the end (where cars are in larger sizes), and causes it to be called a fire-balloon. A taper is burned inside the balloon, and then, according to the book, 'it readily ascends, and is carried away by the wind, sometimes to a considerable distance.'
Well, this time everything happened just as the book said, which is not always the case.
It was a clear, dark night, bright stars only. And, to our relief and agreeable surprise, our balloon rose up and sailed away, dragging its lighted tail like a home-made comet.
It sailed away over the marshes, getting smaller and smaller, and at last it was, though lost to sight, to memory dear. Some of us thought it wasn't worth doing, but Oswald was glad he had persevered. He does hate to be beaten. However, we none of us cared to make another, so we went to bed.
Dicky always goes to sleep directly on these occasions, but Oswald, more thoughtful for his years, sometimes reviews the events of the day. He must have been nearly asleep, because he was just reviewing an elephant that flew with a lamp inside, so that it looked like a fire-balloon, when Alice suddenly came and woke him up completely.
'Beware!' she said in tones of awe.
And he said, but not crossly:
'Well, what on earth's up now?'
'The fire-balloon!' replied Alice.
'What about it?' he rejoined, still calm and kind, though roused from his reviews.
'Why, it came to me all in a minute! Oh, Oswald—when it comes down—there are lots of farms in the march. Suppose it comes down and sets light to something! It's a crime—arsenic or something—and you can be hanged for it!'
'Don't be an idiot!' said Oswald kindly. 'The book wouldn't have told youths how to make them if they were crimes. Go back to bed, for goodness' sake!'
'I wish we hadn't—oh, I do!' said Alice.
But she did as she was told. Oswald has taught her this.
Next day her fears had stopped, like silentwatches in the night, and we began to make a trap for badgers—in case we ever found one.
But Dicky went to the top of the mill with some field-glasses he had borrowed from Mr. Carrington to look at distant ships with, and he burst into the busy circle of badger-trap makers, and said:
'I say, come and look! There's a fire in the marsh!'
'There!' said Alice, dropping the wire pliers on her good elder brother's foot. 'What did I tell you?'
We all tore to the top of the mill, and sure enough, far across the sunny green marshes rose a little cloud of smoke, and blue and yellow flames leaped out every now and then. We all took turns to look through the glasses.
Then Oswald said:
'This is no time for looking through field-glasses with your mouths open. We must go and help. We might fetch the fire-engines or something. The bikes, Dicky!'
Almost instantly we were in the saddle and tearing along the level marsh towards the direction of the fire. At first we got down at every crossroad and used the field-glasses to see which wayto go; but as we got nearer, or the fire got bigger, or perhaps both, we could see it quite plainly with the naked eye. It was much further off than we had thought, but we rode on undaunted, regardless of fatigue and of dinner-time, being now long gone by.
We got to the fire at last. It was at Crown Ovender Farm, and we had to lift the bikes over fences and wheel them over ploughed fields to get there, because we did not know the right way by road.
Crown Ovender is a little farmhouse, and a barn opposite, and a great rick-yard, and two of the ricks were alight. They smoked horribly, and the wind blew the hot smoke into your eyes, and every now and then you saw great flames—yards long they seemed—leap out as if they were crying to get to the house.
We had put our bikes in a ditch a field away, and now we went all round about to ask if we could help; but there wasn't a soul to be seen.
We did not know what to do. Even Oswald—always full of resource—almost scratched his head, which seems to help some people to think, though I don't think it ever would me, besides not looking nice.
'I wish we'd told them in the village,' said Dicky.
We had not done this, and the reason, the author is ashamed to say, was because we wanted to get there before anyone else. This was very selfish, and the author has often regretted it.
The flames were growing larger and fiercer, and the tar on the side of the barn next the rick-yard was melting and running down like treacle.
'There's a well!' said Dicky suddenly. 'It isn't a deep well, and there are two buckets.'
Oswald understood. He drew up the water, and Dicky took the buckets as they came up full and dripping and dashed the water on to the tarry face of the barn. It hissed and steamed. We think it did some good. We took it in turns to turn the well-wheel. It was hard work, and it was frightfully hot. Then suddenly we heard a horrid sound, a sort of out-of-breath scream, and there was a woman, very red in the face and perspiring, climbing over the fence.
'Hallo!' said Oswald.
'Oh!' the woman said, panting, 'it's not the house, then? Thank them as be it's not the house! Oh, my heart alive, I thought it was the house!'
'It isn't the house,' said Oswald; 'but it jolly soon will be!'
'Oh, my pore Lily!' said the woman. 'With this 'ere wind the house 'll be alight in a minute. And her a-bed in there! Where's Honeysett?'
'There's no one here but us. The house is locked up,' we said.
'Yes, I know, 'cause of tramps. Honeysett's got the key. I comes in as soon as I've cleared dinner away. She's ill a-bed, sleeping like a lamb, I'll be bound, all unknowing of her burning end.'
'Wemustget her out,' said Oswald.
But the woman didn't seem to know what to do. She kept on saying, 'Where's Honeysett? Oh, drat him! where's that Honeysett?'
So then Oswald felt it was the time to be a general, like he always meant to if he got the chance. He said, 'Come on!' and he took a stone and broke the kitchen window, and put his hand through the jagged hole and unfastened the catch, and climbed in. The back-door was locked and the key gone, but the front-door was only bolted inside. But it stuck very tight, from having been painted and shut before the paint was dry, and never opened again.
Oswald couldn't open it. He ran back to the kitchen window and shouted to the others.
'Go round to the other door and shove for all you're worth!' he cried in the manly tones that all must obey.
So they went; but Dicky told me afterwards that the woman didn't shove for anything like all she was worth. In fact, she wouldn't shove at all, till he had to make a sort of battering-ram of her, and then she seemed to awake from a dream, and they got the door open.
We followed the woman up the stairs and into a bedroom, and there was another woman sitting up in bed trembling, and her mouth opening and shutting.
'Oh, it's you, Eliza,' she said, falling back against the pillows. 'I thought it were tramps.'
Eliza did not break things to the sufferer gently, like we should have done, however hurried.
'Mercy you aren't burnt alive in your bed, Lily!' she merely remarked. 'The place is all ablaze!'
Then she rolled her sick sufferer in a blanket and took hold of her shoulders, and told us to take her feet.
But Oswald was too calm to do this suddenly. He said:
'Where are you going to put her?'
'Anywheres!' said Eliza wildly—'anywheres is better than this here.'