William the Fourth Read online

  ‘It is not raning today,’ he wrote, after much thought. Then, ‘It did not rane yesterday and we are hoppin’ it will not rane tomorrow’

  Having exhausted that topic, he scratched his head in despair, wrinkled up his brows, and chewed his penholder again.

  ‘I have a hole in my stokking,’ was his next effort. Then, ‘I have had my phottograf took and send it for a birthday present. Some people think it funny but to me it seems alrite. I hopp you will like it. Your loving godsun, William.’

  Mrs Adolphus Crane was touched, both by letter and photograph.

  ‘I must have been wrong,’ she said with penitence. ‘He looks so good. And there’s something rather sad about his face.’

  She asked William to her birthday tea-party. To William this was the climax of a long chain of insults.

  ‘But I don’t want to go to tea with her,’ he said in dismay.

  ‘But she wants you, darling,’ said Mrs Brown. ‘I expect she liked your photograph.’

  ‘I’m not going,’ said William testily, ‘if they’re all going to be laughing at my photograph all the time. I’m jus’ sick of people laughing at my photograph.’

  ‘Of course they won’t, dear,’ said Mrs Brown. ‘It’s a very nice photograph. You look a bit – depressed in it, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, that’s not funny,’ he said indignantly

  ‘Of course not, dear. You’ll behave nicely, won’t you?’

  ‘I’ll behave ordinary’ he said coldly, ‘but I don’t want to go. I don’t want to go ’cause – ’cause – ’cause—’ he sought silently for a reason that might appeal to a grown-up mind, then, with a brilliant inspiration, ‘ ’cause I don’t want my best clothes to get all wore out.’

  ‘I don’t think they will, dear,’ she said; ‘don’t worry about that.’

  William dejectedly promised not to.

  The afternoon of Mrs Adolphus Crane’s birthday dawned bright and clear, and William, resigned and martyred, set off. He arrived early and was shown into Mrs Adolphus Crane’s magnificent drawing-room. An air of magisterial magnificence shed gloom over Mrs Adolphus Crane’s whole house. Mrs Adolphus Crane, as magisterial, and magnificent and depressing and enormous as her house, entered.

  ‘Good afternoon, William. Now I’ve a pleasant little surprise for you.’ William’s gloomy countenance brightened. ‘I’ve put your photograph into my album. There! What an honour for a little boy!’ William’s countenance relapsed into gloom.

  ‘You can look at the album while I’m getting ready, and then when the guests come you can show it to them. Won’t that be nice?’ She departed.

  William was trapped – trapped in a huge and horrible drawing-room by a huge and horrible woman, and he would have to stay there at least two hours. And Ginger and Henry were bird-nesting! Oh, the horror of it. Why was he chosen by Fate for this penance? He felt a sudden fury against the art of photography in general. William’s sudden furies against anything demanded some immediate outlet.

  So William, with the aid of a pencil, looked at Mrs Adolphus Crane’s family album till Mrs Adolphus Crane was ready. Then she arrived, and soon after her the guests, or rather such of them as had not had the presence of mind to invent excuses for their absence. For funeral affairs were Mrs Adolphus Crane’s parties. Liveliness and hilarity dropped slain on the doorstep. The guests came sadly into the drawing-room, and Mrs Adolphus Crane dispensed gloom from the hearthrug. Her voice was low and deep.

  ‘How do you do . . . thank you so much . . . I doubt whether I shall live to see another . . . yes, my nerves! By the way – my little godson—’ They turned to look at William who was sitting in silent misery in a corner, his hands on his knees. He returned their interested stares with his best company frown. On the chair by him was the album. ‘Have you seen the family album?’ went on Mrs Adolphus Crane. ‘It’s most interesting. Do look at it.’ A group of visitors sadly gathered round it and one of them opened it. Mrs Adolphus Crane did not join them. She knew her album by heart. She took her knitting, sat down by the fire, and poured forth her knowledge.

  ‘The first one is great uncle Joshua,’ she said, ‘a splendid old man. Never touched tobacco or alcoholic drinks in his life.’

  They looked at great uncle Joshua. He sat, grim and earnest and respectable, with his hand on the table. But a lately added pipe, in pencil, adorned his mouth, and his hand seemed to encircle a tankard. Quite suddenly animation returned to the group by the album. They began to believe that they were going to enjoy it, after all.

  ‘Then comes my poor, dear mother.’ Poor, dear mother wore a large eye-glass with a black ribbon and a wild Indian head-dress. The group by the album grew large. There seemed to be some magnetic attraction about it.

  ‘Then comes my paternal uncle James, a very handsome man.’

  Paternal uncle James might have been a very handsome man before his nose had been elongated for several inches, and his lips curved into an enormous smile, showing gigantic teeth. He smoked a large, vulgar-looking pipe.

  ‘A beautiful character, too,’ said Mrs Adolphus Crane. She continued the family catalogue, and the visitors followed the photographs in the album. They were all embellished. Some had pipes, some had blue noses, some black eyes, some giant spectacles, some comic headdresses. Some had received more attention than others. Aunt Julia, ‘a most saintly woman’, positively leered from her ‘cabinet’, with a huge nose, and a black eye, and a cigar in her mouth. The album was handed from one to another. An unwonted hilarity and vivacity reigned supreme – and always there were crowds round the album.

  Mrs Adolphus Crane was surprised, but vaguely flattered. Her party seemed more successful than usual. People seemed to be taking quite a lot of notice of William, too. One young curate, who had wept tears over the album, pressed half a crown into William’s hand. By some unerring instinct they guessed the author of the outrage. As a matter of fact, Mrs Adolphus Crane did not happen to look at her album till several months later, and then it did not occur to her to connect it with William. But this afternoon she somehow connected the strange spirit of cheerfulness that pervaded her drawing-room with him, and was most gracious to him.

  ‘He’s been so good,’ she said to Mrs Brown when she arrived to take William home; ‘quite helped to make my little party a success.’

  Mrs Brown concealed her amazement as best she could.

  ‘But what did you do, William?’ she said on the way home as William plodded along beside her, his hands in his pockets lovingly fingering his half-crown.

  ‘Me?’ said William innocently. ‘Nothin’.’

  CHAPTER 3

  THE FÊTE – AND FORTUNE

  William took a fancy to Miss Tabitha Croft as soon as he saw her. She was small and inoffensive-looking. She didn’t look the sort of person to write irate letters to William’s parents. William was a great judge of character. He could tell at a glance who was likely to object to him, who was likely to ignore him, and who was likely definitely to encourage him. The last was a very rare class indeed. Most people belonged to the first class. But as he sat on the wall and watched Miss Tabitha Croft timidly and flutteringly superintending the unloading of her furniture at her little cottage gate, he came to the conclusion that she would be very inoffensive indeed. He also came to the conclusion that he was going to like her. William generally got on well with timid people. He was not timid himself. He was small and freckled and solemn and possessed of great tenacity of purpose for his eleven years.

  Miss Tabitha, happening to look up from the debris of a small table which one of the removers had carelessly and gracefully crushed against the wall, saw a boy perched on her wall, scowling at her. She did not know that the scowl was William’s ordinary normal expression. She smiled apologetically

  ‘Good afternoon,’ she said.

  ‘Arternoon,’ said William.

  There was silence for a time while another of the removers took the door off its hinges with little or no effort by means of
a small piano which he then placed firmly upon another remover’s foot. Then the silence was broken. During the breaking of silence, William’s scowl disappeared and a rapt smile appeared on his face.

  ‘Can’t they think of things to say? he said delightedly to Miss Tabitha when a partial peace was restored.

  Miss Tabitha raised a face of horror and misery

  ‘Oh, dear!’ she said in a voice that trembled, ‘it’s simply dreadful!’

  William’s chivalry (that curious quality) was aroused. He leapt heavily from the wall.

  ‘I’ll help,’ he said airily. ‘Don’t you worry’

  He helped.

  He staggered from the van to the house and from the house to the van. He worked till the perspiration poured from his freckled brow. He broke two candlesticks, a fender, a lamp, a statuette, and most of a breakfast service. After each breakage he said, ‘Never mind,’ comfortingly to Miss Tabitha and put the pieces tidily in the dustbin. When he had filled the dustbin he arranged them in a neat pile by the side of it. He was completely master of the situation. Miss Tabitha gave up the struggle and sat on a packing-case in the kitchen with some sal-volatile and smelling-salts. One of the removers gave William a drink of cold tea – another gave him a bit of cold sausage. William was blissfully, riotously happy. The afternoon seemed to fly on wings. He tore a large hole in his knickers and upset a tin of paint, which he found on a window sill, down his jersey. At last the removers departed and William proudly surveyed the scene of his labours and destruction.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I bet things would have been a lot different if I hadn’t helped.’

  ‘I’m sure they would,’ said Miss Tabitha with perfect truth.

  ‘Seems about tea-time, doesn’t it?’ went on William gently.

  Miss Tabitha gave a start and put aside the sal-volatile.

  ‘Yes; do stay and have some here.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said William simply, ‘I was thinking you’d most likely ask me.’

  Over the tea (to which he did full justice in spite of his previous repast of cold tea and sausage) William waxed very conversational. He told her of his friends and enemies (chiefly enemies) in the neighbourhood – of Farmer Jones who made such a fuss over his old apples, of the Rev. P. Craig who entered into a base conspiracy with parents to deprive quite well-meaning boys of their Sunday afternoon freedom. ‘If Sunday school’s so nice an’ good for folks as they say it is,’ said William bitterly, ‘why don’t they go? I wun’t mind them going.’

  He told her of Ginger’s air-gun and his own catapult, of the dead rat they found in the ditch and the house they had made of branches in the wood, of the dare-devil career of robber and outlaw he meant to pursue as soon as he left school. In short, he admitted her unreservedly into his friendship.

  And while he talked, he consumed large quantities of bread and jam and butter and cakes and pastry. At last he rose.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I s’pose I’d better be goin’.’

  Miss Tabitha was bewildered but vaguely cheered by him.

  ‘You must come again . . .’ she said.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said William cheerfully. ‘I’ll come again lots . . . an’ let me know when you’re moving again – I’ll come an’ help again.’

  Miss Tabitha shuddered slightly.

  ‘Thank you so much,’ she said.

  He arrived the next afternoon.

  ‘I’ve just come to see,’ he said, ‘how you’re gettin’ on.’

  Miss Tabitha was seated at a little table – with a row of playing cards spread out in front of her.

  She flushed slightly

  ‘I’m – I’m just telling my fortune, William,’ she said.

  ‘Oh,’ said William. He was impressed.

  ‘It does sometimes come true,’ she said eagerly, ‘I do it nearly every day. It’s curious – how it grows on one.’

  She began to turn up the covered cards and study them intently. William sat on a chair opposite her and watched with interest.

  ‘There was a letter in my cards yesterday’ she said, ‘and it came this morning. Sometimes it comes true like that, but often,’ she sighed, ‘it doesn’t.’

  ‘Wot’s in it today?’ said William, scowling at the cards.

  ‘A death,’ said Miss Tabitha in a sepulchral whisper, ‘and a letter from a dark man and jealousy of a fair woman and a present from across the sea and legal business and a legacy – but they’re none of them the sort of thing that comes true. I don’t know though,’ she went on dreamily, ‘the Income Tax man might be dark – I don’t know – and I may hear from him soon. It’s wonderful really – I mean that any of it should come out. It’s quite an absorbing pursuit. Shall I do yours?’

  ‘’Um,’ said William graciously.

  ‘You must wish first.’

  William wished with his eyes screwed up in silent concentration.

  ‘I’ve done it,’ he said.

  Miss Tabitha dealt out the cards. She shook her head sorrowfully

  ‘You’ll be treated badly by a fair woman,’ she said.

  William agreed gloomily

  ‘That’ll be Ethel – my sister,’ he said. ‘She thinks that jus’ cause she’s grown up . . .’ He relapsed into subterranean mutterings.

  ‘And you’ll have your wish,’ she said.

  William brightened. Then his eye roved round the room to a photograph on a bureau by the window.

  ‘Who’s he?’ he said.

  Miss Tabitha flushed again.

  ‘He was once going to marry me,’ she said. ‘And he went away and he never came back.’

  ‘ ’Speck he met someone he liked better an’ married her,’ suggested William cheerfully

  ‘I expect he did,’ said Miss Tabitha.

  He surveyed her critically.

  ‘Perhaps he didn’t like your hair not being curly’ he proceeded. ‘Some don’t. My brother Robert he says if a girl’s hair doesn’t curl she oughter curl it. P’raps you didn’t curl it.’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘My sister Ethel does, but she gets mad if I tell folks, an’ she gets mad when I use her old things for makin’ holes in apples and cardboard an’ things. She’s an awful fuss,’ he ended contemptuously

  When he got home he stood transfixed on the dining-room threshold, his mouth open, his eyes wide.

  ‘Crumbs!’ he ejaculated.

  He had wished that there might be ginger cake for tea.

  And there was.

  At tea was the Vicar’s wife. The Vicar’s wife was afflicted with the Sale of Work mania. It is a disease to which Vicars’ wives are notoriously susceptible. She was always thinking out the next but one Sale of Work before the next one was over. She was always praised in the local press and she felt herself to be a very happy woman.

  ‘I’m going to call the next one a Fête,’ she said. ‘It will seem more of a change.’

  ‘Fake?’ said William with interest.

  ‘YOU’LL BE TREATED BADLY BY A FAIR WOMAN,’ SHE SAID. WILLIAM AGREED GLOOMILY ‘THAT’LL BE ETHEL,’ HE SAID.

  She murmured ‘Dear boy,’ vaguely.

  ‘We’ll advertise it widely. I’m thinking of calling it the King of Fêtes. Such an arresting title. We’ll have donkey rides and coconut shies, so democratic – and we ought to have fortune-telling. One doesn’t – h’m – of course, believe in it – but it’s what people expect. Some quite harmless fortune-telling – by cards, for instance—’

  William gasped.

  ‘She did mine – wonderful,’ he said excitedly, ‘it came – just wot I wished. There was it for tea!’

  ‘Who? What?’ said the Vicar’s wife.

  ‘The new one – at the cottage – I did all her furniture for her an’ got paint on my clothes an’ she told me about him not coming back ’cause of her hair p’raps an’ I got some of her things broke but not many an’ she gave me tea an,’ said to come again.’

  Gradually they elicited details.

  ‘I�
�ll call,’ said the Vicar’s wife. ‘It would be so nice to have someone one knows how to do it – someone respectable. Fortune-tellers are so often not quite – you know what I mean, dear,’ she cooed to William’s mother.

  ‘Of course,’ murmured William abstractedly, ‘it mayn’t have been her hair. It may have been jus’ anything . . . ’

  William was having a strenuous time. Fate was making one of her periodic assaults on him. Everything went wrong. Miss Drew, his form mistress at school, had taken an altogether misguided and unsympathetic view of his zeal for nature study. In fact, when the beetle which William happened to be holding lovingly in his hand as he did his sums by her desk, escaped and made its way down her neck, her piercing scream boded no good to William. The further discovery of a caterpillar and two woodlice in his pencil-box, a frog in his satchel, and earwigs in his pocket, annoyed her still more, and William stayed in school behind his friends to write out one hundred times, ‘I must not bring insects into school.’ His addition ‘because they friten Miss Drew’ made relations still more strained. He met with no better luck at home. His unmelodious and penetrating practices on a mouth-organ in the early hours of the morning had given rise to a coldness that changed to actual hostility when it was discovered that he had used Ethel’s new cape as the roof of his wigwam in the garden and Robert’s new expensive brown shoe polish to transform himself to a Red Indian chief. He was distinctly unpopular at home. There was some talk of not allowing him to attend the King of Fêtes, but as the rest of the family were going and the maids had refused to be left with William on the premises it was considered safer to allow him to go.

  ‘But any of your tricks—’ said his father darkly, leaving the sentence unfinished.

  The day of the King of Fêtes was fine. The stalls were bedecked in the usual bright and inharmonious colours. A few donkeys with their attendants surveyed the scene contemptuously. Ethel was wearing the new cape (brushed and cleaned to a running accompaniment of abuse of William), Mrs Brown was presiding at a stall. Robert, wearing a large buttonhole, with his shoes well browned (with a new tin of polish purchased with William’s pocket-money) presided at a miniature rifle range. William, having been given permission to attend, and money for his entrance, hung round the gateway glaring at them scornfully. He always disliked his family intensely upon public occasions. He had not yet paid his money and was wondering whether it was worth it after all, and would it not be wiser to spend it on bulls’ eyes and gingerbreads, and his afternoon in the fields as a solitary outlaw and hunter of cats or whatever other live prey Fate chose to send him. In a tent at the farther end of the Fête ground was Miss Tabitha Croft, arrayed in a long and voluminous garment covered with strange signs. They were supposed to be mystic Eastern signs, but were in reality the invention of the Vicar’s wife, suggested by the freehand drawing of her youngest son, aged three. It completely enveloped Miss Tabitha from head to foot, leaving only two holes for her eyes and two holes for her arms. She had shown it to William the day before.