William The Conqueror Page 17

  Mr Brown returned home on Monday morning shortly after breakfast.

  He saw at once that something had gone wrong.

  ‘Everything gone all right?’ he said tactfully to his wife.

  ‘Oh, no, John,’ said Mrs Brown tearfully. ‘Everything’s gone wrong.’

  ‘For instance?’ said Mr Brown, surreptitiously glancing through the morning paper.

  ‘Well, I just heard from old Jenks, and he can’t come and cut up those logs for us this morning, and we’ve none to be going on with and – oh, much worse than that—’

  ‘Yes?’ he prompted gently. ‘William—’

  ‘Oh!’ she gasped. ‘Have you heard?’

  ‘I’ve heard nothing,’ he said dryly. ‘I’m merely suggesting the most unlikely source of trouble I could think of.’

  ‘It’s awful, John,’ moaned Mrs Brown, ‘the most terrible thing happened yesterday. I’m afraid William’s got religious mania.’

  She told him the story, and just the flicker of a smile passed over Mr Brown’s countenance. He folded up his paper.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it sounds like the sort of religious mania that can be treated at home. Where is the Lion Heart?’

  ‘The Lion H – You mean William?’

  ‘I mean William.’

  ‘I think he’s upstairs.’

  Mr Brown stepped into the hall.

  ‘William!’ he called.

  ‘Yes, father,’ answered William meekly, with the old, old attempt to propitiate outraged Authority by a tone of deferential humility.

  But Mr Brown’s voice was suavely polite.

  ‘Can you spare me a minute?’

  William’s heart sank. Of his father suavely polite and his father furiously angry, he much preferred the latter. Of course, it hurt at the time, but it was soon over. He realised, however, that in the matter of parental manners, offenders can’t be choosers.

  He came slowly downstairs. His father led him out into the back garden where lay a pile of logs.

  ‘Here are some idols for you to demolish, William,’ he said pleasantly.

  ‘They’re not idols,’ said William.

  ‘No, but you can imagine they are. You can work off your crusading energy on them without, I may add, the assistance or the company of your friends. You know the size we have them chopped into, don’t you?’

  William glared furiously at the logs. Had chopping the logs been forbidden, William’s soul would have yearned to chop them. Had the chopping been an act of wanton destruction it would have appealed immeasurably to William’s barbarian spirit. But the chopping was a task enjoined on him by Authority. So William loathed it.

  ‘You mean chop ’em all up?’ he said at last in horror.

  ‘I see you’re beginning to get the idea, William,’ said his. father encouragingly. ‘Your brain works slowly but surely.’

  ‘B-but,’ said William, ‘it’ll take me all morning.’

  ‘That is precisely the idea, William,’ said Mr Brown. ‘As it happens, I’m not going to the office today, so I can keep a friendly eye on you from the morning-room window and see how you’re getting on.’

  And it did take him all morning. And all morning Mr Brown sat comfortably reading in an easy-chair at the morning-room window.

  That is why, when anyone mentions crusades or crusaders, a bitter, bitter look comes into William’s face.

  CHAPTER 11

  THE WRONG PARTY

  IT was arranged that William was to give a party. Neither William nor his parents particularly wanted to give a party, but it was demanded by the social code.

  Certain boys had asked William to their parties, and William, responding reluctantly to pressure applied by Authority, had attended those parties; therefore, whether William wanted to or not, William must have a party to ‘ask back’ the boys whose parties he had attended. As a matter of fact, he was more ready to fulfil his social duty this year than he generally was.

  Robert and Ethel, William’s elder brother and sister, had given a party, and so William was eager to show himself as good as they and have a party too. Robert’s and Ethel’s party certainly had not been an unqualified success, chiefly owing to the fact that William had mistaken one of their guests for a burglar and kept him imprisoned in the greenhouse for part of the evening, but William considered that his mistake had been quite justifiable and that it was silly to have let a little thing like that spoil a party.

  William left all the arrangements of his party in his mother’s hands – except the invitations, upon which he kept an anxious and rather distrustful eye. He had a deep suspicion that his mother would sacrifice his pride on the altar of the social code by inviting some of his deadly enemies to his party just because their mothers had asked her to lunch or Ethel knew their elder sister, or some equally futile reason.

  Mothers never seem to realise the serious and deadly nature of a school feud. They say such things as, ‘Yes, dear, you may not like him, but I think you ought to try to love everyone,’ or ‘I think we must have him to tea, dear, because his mother sent in those nice flowers from her garden last week.’

  The origin of the feud between William and his supporters and Hubert Lane and his supporters was, as they say in history books, hidden in the mists of antiquity. No one knew exactly when or how it had arisen. It seemed to have been there from time immemorial – a heaven-sent institution to enliven the monotony of school life by fights and ambushes and guerilla warfare. School life would be dull indeed without such occasional relaxations.

  William kept an eye upon the invitation list for his party because he was afraid that a Hubert Lanite might somehow creep upon it unobserved – a Hubert Lanite whose parents, with mistaken zeal, would probably force him to attend the festivity – and then trouble would ensue.

  But the feud was a feud of many years’ standing, and Mrs Brown, who had suffered more than once in her well-intentioned attempts to act as peacemaker, was quite willing to humour William in this, and no Hubert Lanites were asked, though, to William’s horror, Mrs Lane sent in a pot of her home-made chutney to Mrs Brown just a week before the party.

  For a few hours, in which the fate of the world seemed to tremble in the balance, Mrs Brown hesitated, but on William’s hinting darkly that if Hubert Lane came to the party he, William, would not attend it in any circumstances or in any capacity, she decided to ask Mrs Lane to tea instead and explain to her how much they were all hoping to see darling Hubert at William’s party next year.

  When the week before the party arrived, William allowed his mind to set itself at rest. All the invitations had been sent out and the answers received, and the list remained pure and unspotted from the Hubert Lanites.

  William himself behaved with a certain amount of circumspection. When he met a Hubert Lanite he contented himself with a boxing match or merely the hurling of those primitive vituperations so dear to boyhood. (Such as, ‘Oh, it’s you, is it? Sorry – I thought jus’ at first it was a monkey!’) It was William’s prospective guests who made the mistake. They could not keep themselves from taunting the Hubert Lanites with the fact that they had not been invited to William’s party. They impressed the fact of William’s party so deeply on the Hubert Lanites that William’s party seemed to loom in their minds as the only important event of the year.

  William began to have an uneasy suspicion that the Hubert Lanites were planning some coup. They talked together in little groups. They laughed – nasty, sniggering, secret laughs, as if in anticipation of some future joyful triumph. William looked forward to his party with a certain amount of apprehension. A boy who is giving a party is at a disadvantage in dealing with his foes. ‘I hope it’ll go off all right,’ he muttered the night before.

  ‘Well, it’s got more chance than most people’s,’ said Robert bitterly. ‘I suppose you won’t mess up your own party as you mess up most things.’

  ‘No, but somebody else might,’ said William darkly.

  Ginger arrived first, and it
was Ginger who announced the fact that the Hubert Lanites were concealed among the bushes in William’s garden engaged in the enjoyable occupation of jeering from the darkness at each exquisitely dressed guest as he or she stood in the light of the porch on the front steps waiting to be admitted.

  Soft cries of, ‘Oh, my!’ ‘Oh, cripes! Look at him. Someone’s washed his face for him.’ ‘Oh, look at his hair. He’s been an’ put treacle on it.’ ‘Oh, isn’t she bee-utiful!’ ‘Watch this one! Isn’t he lovely! He’s got new shoes with bows on.’ ‘There’s old Douglas – Dun’t he look hungry? He’s wondering what they’ve got for supper. Not much, poor old Douglas – they’ve not got much. We’ve had a look through the window.’

  The guests entered one by one, embarrassed and indignant. They were only restrained from hurling themselves into the bushes to mortal combat by memories of frequently repeated maternal injunctions as to their party clothes and party manners. William made loud complaints to his family and insisted on the necessity of his leading his party out into the night to do battle with the enemy, but Mrs Brown was firm.

  ‘No, William, you’re most certainly not to,’ she said. ‘I shan’t think of it. I never heard such an idea. Going out fighting in the garden, indeed, at a party. Well I can’t help it. They’re very rude little boys, that’s all I can say, but you must take no notice of them. Simply behave as if they weren’t there. That’s the only dignified thing to do.’

  ‘But I don’t wanter do anything dignified,’ persisted William. ‘I wanter fight ’em.’

  ‘Most certainly not, William,’ said Mrs Brown. ‘If your father were here, of course—’

  Her tone implied that Mr Brown would have made short work of the Hubert Lanites. But Mr Brown was a wise man, and when any of his offspring were giving parties went out to spend the evening with a friend.

  William appealed to Robert, but Robert was unsympathetic.

  ‘It’s a pity,’ he said, ‘if someone messes up your party, but, when all’s said and done, you messed up ours.’

  ‘Yes, but I thought he was a burglar,’ said William, with exasperation in his voice.

  When Robert, however, showed himself at the front door for a minute he was greeted with loud murmurs of mock admiration and ribald derision from the darkness. Robert’s dress suit was not of long standing, and he still felt self-conscious in it. He flung himself furiously in the direction of the murmur, tripped over something, and fell full length into a laurel bush. The murmur changed to a muffled pæan of joy and triumph.

  Robert went indoors and slammed the door, and then went upstairs to change his shirt. He felt that he disliked his younger brother’s friends more than he had ever disliked them in his life before.

  Downstairs William and his friends were making a sincere effort to forget the presence of their enemies outside, but it happened that the drawing-room curtains had been taken down because the conjuror who was to perform afterwards in the morning-room, wanted them, and so William and his guests in the drawing-room felt themselves exposed to the unsympathetic and mocking gaze of countless Hubert Lanites lurking in the bushes.

  Over the proceedings there was a strange air of constraint. In every youthful breast seethed only a bloodthirsty desire to sally forth into the night in search of vengeance. Failing this, they didn’t want to do anything else. They were certainly not going to play silly games or dance silly dances or do anything that might give their watching enemies outside further handles against them.

  They, were painfully conscious of unseen but all-seeing eyes outside noting their every movement for possible derisive reproduction on future occasions. The safest thing was to disappoint them by having no movements and speaking as little as possible. They refused to play games or dance at all.

  ‘I can’t get any go into it!’ almost sobbed Mrs Brown to Ethel.

  ‘Well, let’s turn the conjuror on,’ said Ethel, ‘and see if that melts the ice.’

  The conjuror was therefore dragged, much against his will, from the dining-room, where he was comfortably consuming a very satisfactory meal, to the morning-room, where his outfit awaited him, and the guests were summoned from the drawing-room. They came with joy and relief, glad to get anywhere where they felt that their every movement was not watched by hostile mocking eyes.

  ‘I wish they’d begin to get rough,’ whispered Mrs Brown pathetically to Ethel as they filed in.

  ‘You said you hoped they wouldn’t,’ said Ethel.

  ‘Yes, but I didn’t know they’d be like this,’ said Mrs Brown.

  The guests had thrown anxious glances at the window curtains as they entered. To their partial relief they found them partially drawn. The heavy curtains did not quite meet and the window was open, so that there was a distinct, if small, space through which unseen enemies might watch the scene. The guests fixed their gaze on that space with mingled apprehension and ferocity.

  Then gradually they forgot it.

  He was a very good conjuror. He drew yards of coloured paper out of an empty tumbler. He turned a penny into a half-crown and – a less exciting transformation – a half-crown into a penny. He did wonderful things with a pack of cards. He gave a card to Ginger and then found it inside his own watch, having shrunk to an eighth of its size. Then he took a box and put a table-napkin into it. He put it on his magic table under his magic cloth. Then he whipped away the cloth and took up the box again.

  ‘I believe it’s changed to a rabbit,’ said the conjuror with a smile.

  But it hadn’t.

  It had changed to a dead cat.

  There came a muffled snigger from the window.

  Slowly the truth dawned on William and his guests. The Hubert Lanites had actually dared to tamper with the conjuror’s outfit.

  Wild beasts could not have restrained them then.

  They rose in a body and surged out into the night.

  The sally, of course, was a failure. The Hubert Lanites had wisely not awaited vengeance, but had beat a strategic retreat immediately on seeing the successful result of their coup. The rabbit was discovered a few minutes later by the frantic conjuror underneath the bureau, where Hubert Lane had provided it with a little pile of assorted greens, which it was sampling with appreciation.

  It was decided by William’s family that on the whole his party had not been a success. This belief was shared by the mothers of the guests. The mothers of the guests based their belief chiefly on the state of the guests’ toilets when the guests returned to the bosom of their families.

  ‘His dancing pumps simply covered with mud,’ wailed one.

  ‘His suit all messed up as if he’d been falling about among bushes,’ said another.

  The Outlaws went about for the next few days looking grimly determined. It was extraordinary how elusive and self-effacing the Hubert Lanites had become all of a sudden. Though the Outlaws searched the village from end to end with murder in their hearts they met not a single one.

  The Hubert Lanites went into the village, when they did go into the village, in bands and took to flight on sight of the Outlaws. They had met the Outlaws in deadly combat before and had no false pride about admitting that discretion is the better part of valour.

  It was William who first heard the rumour that Hubert Lane was going to give a party. The Outlaws abandoned the idea then of vengeance by pitched battle. They still wanted an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but they decided that it was meeter that the punishment should fit the crime.

  The first thing to do, of course, was to discover the date of Hubert Lane’s party. But this was less easy than at first it seemed. For Hubert Lane had not invited a single one of William’s supporters and had furthermore sworn all his guests to secrecy. The Outlaws exercised all their ingenuity in various attempts to discover the all-important date. It was, of course, almost impossible to plan any sort of coup before they heard when the party was to take place and what was to happen at it.

  They held several meetings at which the chief ite
m on the agenda seemed to be mutual recrimination for the non-discovery of the date of Hubert’s party.

  Ginger lived nearest to Hubert Lane, so he came in for the lion’s share of abuse.

  ‘I simply can’t think why you don’ find out when he’s havin’ his ole party,’ said William scathingly.

  ‘An’ I simply can’t think why you don’,’ retorted Ginger with spirit.

  ‘Well, aren’t I doin’ all I can,’ said William with righteous indignation.

  ‘What’re you doin’?’ said Ginger pugnaciously.

  ‘I’m – er – well, I’m goin’ about askin’ folks,’ said William.

  ‘So’m I,’ said Ginger.

  But there came a day when Ginger entered the meeting place his face wreathed in proud smiles.

  ‘I’ve found out,’ he said simply.

  ‘Tell us! How? When?’ gasped the Outlaws excitedly.

  ‘I was in the cake-shop,’ explained Ginger breathlessly, ‘buyin’ some humbugs – the big sort – the kind they make there, you know—’

  ‘Got any left?’ put in Douglas tentatively.

  ‘Oh, never mind about the old humbugs,’ said William. ‘Get on!’

  ‘I finished ’em all,’ said Ginger apologetically to Douglas. ‘They don’ last long that sort, an’ I only got two penn’oth.’

  ‘Get ON!’ repeated William.

  Ginger got on.

  ‘Well jus’ when she’d finished weighin’ ’em an’ I was watchin’ her jolly hard, I can tell you. They’re jolly mean in that shop, you know. They don’t stop till the scales get right down. They just get ’em movin’ a bit an’ then they take ’em off an’ put ’em in the paper, an’ often’s not they wun’t go right down. I think they oughter lettem go right down with a bang an’ if they don’ they oughter put some more on. Why, once when they was weighin’ me somethin’ it only jus’ woggled a teeny bit an’ they began takin’ ’em off to put in the bag and I said—’

  ‘What were they? Humbugs?’ said Douglas with interest.

  ‘What’d you say to ’em, Ginger?’ said Henry.