William the Bad Read online

  The next night at an hour when the gardener might be supposed to have gone home after his day’s work William cautiously approached the disputed territory. In his pocket was a ginger beer bottle emptied of ginger beer, but containing the map and letter tightly screwed up. This he was going to drop into the middle of the pond. To enter the garden and throw it boldly into the pond would be to court detection and risk the failure of his deeply laid plot. So he had evolved a cunning plan. He was going to climb a tree that grew on the roadway outside the fence, creep along a branch shielded by its leafage till he was just over the middle of the pond and then drop the bottle into its depths.

  Fortunately the road was empty. William swarmed lightly up the tree and began to crawl along the branch that stretched to the middle of the pond. Then he looked down. The familiar pond lay beneath him covered by a thick green slime. It had always been covered by a thick green slime ever since William remembered it. It was one of its charms. Miss Dalrymple was going to spoil it completely by taking off its covering of thick green slime. He lifted the bottle out of his pocket and held it poised over the centre of the pond. Then—he never knew exactly how it happened. It might have been the wind or it might have been the effort of pulling the bottle out of his pocket or it might just have been pure bad luck but, whichever it was, he overbalanced and fell into the very centre of the green slime.

  He crawled out as best he could, having had the presence of mind to leave his bottle behind, and made his dripping and ignominious way homeward.

  The next morning he cautiously approached the scene of his adventure. The pond stood by the roadside as it had always stood till a week ago. The hurdle fence had been moved back to the farther side. The pond was in Miss Dalrymple’s garden no longer. He shut his eyes and opened them quickly. It was still there. They couldn’t surely have found the bottle in this short time. Still—there it was. He hurried back to the old barn where his supporters were waiting for him.

  ‘I’ve done it,’ he announced carelessly. ‘I’ve made her give it us back an’ move her ole fence.’

  They gazed at him incredulously.

  ‘Go on! You’ve not!’

  ‘All right,’ said William, ‘come an’ see for yourselves.’

  They followed him to the spot and gazed in amazement at their beloved pond standing once more by the road side.

  Inside the house, Miss Dalrymple was having breakfast with a cousin who was staying with her.

  ‘No, no toast, thank you,’ she was saying. ‘I’m not feeling at all well this morning. I’ve had a most terrible experience last night. A most shattering experience.’

  She paused, and so the cousin said obligingly:

  ‘What was it, dear?’

  ‘Well,’ said Miss Dalrymple, absentmindedly taking a piece of toast, ‘it was so terrible that at first I thought I’d never be able to tell anyone about it.’

  She paused again and the cousin, who had a genius for saying what she was expected to say, said:

  ‘I think that perhaps you’d feel better if you told me about it, dear.’

  ‘I don’t know that I can, said Miss Dalrymple with a shudder; ‘it’s—it’s about that pond.’

  ‘The pond that you’re going to turn into a water garden?’

  Miss Dalrymple shuddered again, and closing her eyes held out a hand as if to ward something off.

  ‘Not now,’ she said, ‘never now. Look out of the window.’

  The cousin looked out of the window.

  ‘Gracious!’ she said. ‘It’s gone.’

  ‘I’ve had it fenced off again,’ said Miss Dalrymple. ‘I gave the order as soon as I got up this morning. I insisted on its being done at once. I shouldn’t have slept another night under this roof if it hadn’t been done.’

  ‘Why, dear?’ said the cousin mildly.

  ‘I’ll try to tell you . . . though it was such a terrible, such a shattering experience that it’s not easy to talk about it. You remember that there was a story that our grandfather had the pond fenced off from his garden because someone committed suicide in it and the servants used to say it was haunted?’

  ‘I remember something like that vaguely.’

  ‘Well, I never gave the story a minute’s thought till last evening, and last evening—my dear, it was such a terrible experience that even now I tremble when I think of it. Last evening—I’d gone to bed early with a headache—you remember, and I—I happened to look out of the window and—my dear, I simply can’t describe what I saw—a slimy green THING crawling out of the pond.’

  ‘Oh my dear!’ screamed the cousin, ‘was it a human being?’

  ‘All I can tell you,’ said Miss Dalrymple in a low sepulchral voice, ‘is that it was a THING in human shape covered with green slime crawling out of the pond as if to come straight up to the house. I need hardly tell you that I fainted. As soon as I came to myself, I looked out of the window again, but the figure had vanished. First thing this morning however I ordered the fence to be put back. I dread to think what might have happened to us all had I not acted promptly. One night it would have reached the house . . .’

  The cousin screamed again in horror, and Miss Dalrymple, feeling slightly fortified by the effect of her story, took another piece of toast.

  ‘But how did you get her to do it?’ said William’s supporters, crowding round him eagerly.

  William stood in the middle, his hands in his pockets.

  ‘I jus’ went to her,’ he said carelessly, ‘an’ I said that I was Prime Min’ster an’ she’d gotter give us back our pond. I said that if she didn’t I’d go to lor about it. So she said she would an’ told them to change the fence again.’

  His supporters cheered loudly and the red-headed boy spoke.

  ‘Well, I think it was jolly good,’ he said, approvingly, ‘an’ the next thing we want you to do for us—’

  ‘I’m not doin’ anythin’ else,’ interposed William hastily, ‘I’m sick of bein’ Prime Min’ster. I’m sick of pol’tics altogether. There isn’t any sense in ’em. I’d sooner be a Red Indian any day. I’ll give up bein’ Prime Min’ster to you an’ you c’n start doin’ things.’

  And he went off with his Outlaws to play Red Indians.

  CHAPTER 4

  WILLIAM GETS HIS OWN BACK

  As William said, they were always worst to you when you’d been trying to do something for them. He’d been trying to help Robert. He told them all that he’d been trying to help Robert. Robert ought to be grateful to him instead of going on at him like that. Well, he thought Robert wanted to marry her. He was always acting as if he did, anyway, and he’d been trying to help him. Well, no one would marry anyone—would they?—unless they asked them. And he’d never heard of anyone being in love without writing poems to the person. He’d been trying to help Robert . . . It was silly of Robert to go on like that saying he’d nearly ruined his life when he’d been helping him. You couldn’t ruin a person’s life by helping them, could you? It was ridic’lous.

  What had happened was this. Robert had evinced a sudden interest in a very pretty girl who lived in the next village. There was nothing, of course, exceptional in this. Robert was continually evincing sudden interest in pretty girls who lived in the villages around. (He had exhausted his own village long ago.) Each one in succession was the most beautiful girl in the world and in the case of each he was convinced that his life would be an arid desert unless he married her. It was not Robert’s fault that fresh suns were continually rising upon his horizon and that his inamoratas, too, were continually finding fresh and (for the moment) more attractive swains. Each affair was quite sincere while it lasted. William had watched these affairs with little emotion except a deep and all-consuming pity and contempt. Not thus would he, William, waste the golden hour of manhood when it arrived. He’d be too busy sailing the seas as a pirate or terrorising the countryside as a bandit or, at the very least, driving an engine. Certainly he wouldn’t be going on the river with soppy girls or writing lo
ng letters to them. No, all he’d be writing would be sinister warnings to his enemies (he meant to have innumerable bloodthirsty enemies whom he would continually foil), signed by his name in blood and a skull and crossbones. He’d practised the skull and crossbones and signing his name in blood till he was an expert at it.

  So, though he had a healthy respect for Robert’s right arm, he hadn’t much opinion of his intelligence. It wasn’t till Ginger’s grown-up brother got married that William began to see possibilities in that part of Robert’s character that before he had looked upon with unmixed contempt. For Ginger’s brother left home and went to live at least ten miles away from home. Ginger saw him only once a week and then on the terms of distant politeness that the presence of the new sister-in-law demanded. No longer did he claim to exercise elder brother tyranny over him. Moreover, upon marriage, he had presented Ginger with his old push bike, watch and a wireless set, all of which had been replaced by wedding presents. Ginger’s life seemed now to William to be one of vast possessions and untrammelled liberty and William had decided to leave no stone unturned to get Robert married as quickly as possible before his bicycle, watch and wireless should be completely worn out.

  It was this resolve that made him turn his whole attention to Robert’s love affairs. He hadn’t been taking much notice of them lately, and so, naturally, the girl he thought Robert was in love with was already two or three back. It wasn’t Dolly Clavis, the girl with red hair, or even Molly Cotton, the girl with the arpeggio laugh or even Betty Donber, the girl with the turned-up nose. Those all belonged to the past. It was Peggy Barlow, who lived five or six miles away, and whom William had never even seen. It was evidently quite an intense affair, but then Robert’s affairs were always intense affairs. He met her or wrote to her every day. Having discovered this, William, who never let the grass grow under his feet, determined to ascertain tactfully whether there were any prospects of Robert’s immediate departure from home. He happened to discover it on a day when there was every reason for going carefully with Robert. Robert had promised William a shilling to clean his bicycle. William had cleaned it, and the shilling was to be paid before the afternoon. There was a fair in a field outside the meadow, and the Outlaws had arranged to visit this and spend the afternoon there upon Robert’s shilling, which was their sole capital. William therefore decided to go very carefully.

  He found Robert in the morning-room reading a novel called ‘The Corpse in the Thicket.’ William sat down on the empty chair opposite him, and looked at him in silence for a few minutes, considering his tactics. At last he said in a tone of casual interest:

  ‘How old are you, Robert?’

  Robert, who had just got to the point where the corpse was found in the thicket, was so deeply absorbed that he did not hear this question till it had been repeated three times. Then he said curtly: ‘Nineteen,’ and added still more curtly: ‘and shut up.’

  ‘Nineteen!’ repeated William with a note of surprise and concern in his voice.

  As Robert went on reading without taking any notice of this, William had to repeat it also several times, deepening the surprise and concern in his voice till it raised Robert’s curiosity despite himself. Leaving the corpse in the middle of the road where the police inspector had laid it, he returned to William.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he said curtly. ‘Why shouldn’t I be nineteen?’

  ‘I didn’t sort of think you were quite as old as that,’ said William. ‘Seems to me most people are married by the time they get to nineteen.’

  ‘Oh, it does, does it?’ said Robert, returning to the corpse which had proved to be that of a notorious international criminal; ‘well, you can jolly well shut up.’

  ‘Seems to me,’ went on William, undeterred by this permission, ‘seems to me that if anyone’s goin’ to get married they oughter be thinking about it when they get to nineteen. I mean, you don’t want to wait till you’re old before you get married, do you? Old people mus’ look jolly silly gettin’ married. An’ if you keep on waitin’ like this till you’re old there won’t be any girls left for you to marry. Look how they’re all marryin’ off. Look at Gladys Brewster. She’s got married last year. An’ Ann Sikes, she’s gettin’ married next month. It’s you I’m thinkin’ of, ’cause I think it would be nice for you to be married, an’ I’m afraid that if you wait much longer you won’t find anyone to marry you. I mean, girls don’ like marryin’ old people. Nineteen an’ not married! Gosh! Somehow I hadn’t thought you was as old as that.’

  ‘Shut up,’ said Robert, who, in the character of the hero, had just received a threatening note from the murderer forbidding him to continue his investigations into the murdered man’s death.

  ‘Peggy Barlow’s a nice girl, isn’t she?’ said William casually after a pause.

  Robert was hot foot in pursuit of the murderer, but the name of the beloved arrested him. He flushed and said with an unsuccessful attempt at nonchalance: ‘D’you know her?’

  ‘I’ve never spoke to her,’ said William, ‘but I’ve seen her. She’s jolly pretty, isn’t she? I mean, if I were grown up—say nineteen—I’d want to marry her before I got so old she wouldn’t have me.’

  ‘Oh, you would, would you?’ said Robert. ‘Well, you won’t get anyone to marry you ever, let me tell you, unless you look and behave a jolly sight different from what you do now.’

  ‘Oh, won’t I?’ said William, stung by the reflection upon his manners and appearance. ‘Well, that’s all you know about it. Well, let me tell you that there won’t be a girl in the world that won’t be proud to marry me when I’m grown up. I bet I’ll be famous all over the world by the time I’m your age.’

  ‘Yes, famous for your dirty collars, perhaps,’ said Robert crushingly.

  ‘Well, it was clean on this morning,’ said William. ‘Nothing’s touched it but the air. I can’t help air being dirty, can I?’

  But Robert was again lost to the world around him. He was confronting the murderer in a dingy underground cellar lit only by a candle in a bottle.

  After another short silence William said casually: ‘Have you asked this Peggy Barlow to marry you, Robert?’

  The name of the beloved again drew Robert out of his underground cellar. He fixed a dreamy sentimental gaze on William, and then, realising that it was William and not the beloved, glared at him fiercely and said: ‘You mind your own business and shut up.’ From this William rightly concluded that he had not yet proposed to her.

  Robert returned to the underground cellar and William to his meditations. Finally, William said:

  ‘Have you wrote any poems to this Peggy Barlow, Robert?’

  Robert, who was holding a pistol to the murderer’s head, dropped it on hearing the beloved’s name and returned to the morning-room.

  ‘What d’you say?’ he demanded curtly.

  ‘I say have you written any poems to Peggy Barlow?’ repeated William.

  ‘No,’ said Robert fiercely, ‘and you can jolly well get out.’

  Robert here made quite a convincing movement as of one about to arise from his chair, and William got out with alacrity while Robert returned to the underground cellar.

  William walked slowly down the garden path. Evidently the affair wasn’t getting on as quickly as he had hoped. Robert hadn’t proposed to her or even written a poem to her. William knew, of course, that every serious love affair included the writing of poems to the beloved. And it was certainly high time that Robert proposed to her. He’d been going about with her for nearly a week. A sudden misgiving came to William. Suppose this affair fizzled out as so many of Robert’s affairs fizzled out, and that tomorrow or the day after Robert had almost forgotten her and was taking some other girl on the river while Peggy Barlow’s blue eyes were smiling upon another swain. It had happened so often . . . William had a further horrible vision of Robert’s staying at home for years and years and years, still engaged in his swiftly-changing kaleidoscopic love affairs with the neighbouring damsel
s, till the bicycle, watch and wireless set were completely worn out. Something must be settled, and the sooner the better. There was no doubt at all that Robert was in love with Peggy Barlow, and someone must strike while the iron was hot. It was absurd that Robert hadn’t written a poem to her yet. William returned to the house, found pencil and paper, and went upstairs to his bedroom.

  There for over an hour he wrestled in the throes of creation, stopping at intervals to refresh himself from a bottle of liquorice water that he carried in his pocket. William was not a born poet and (unlike many people who are not born poets) he didn’t enjoy writing poetry. He was upheld, however, in his laborious task by a pleasant vision of a house empty of Robert and by the thought of Robert’s bicycle, watch and wireless set. And, of course, as he frequently told himself when he stopped for refreshment, he was helping Robert. He’d be jolly grateful to anyone that helped him like he was helping Robert. The result of his labours, though not perhaps in the highest traditions of poetry, was, at any rate, clear enough in its meaning, which is more than can always be said of the highest traditions of poetry. It ran as follows:

  To PEGGY BARLOW.

  Your hair is gold,

  Your eyes are a sort of blue.

  Some people might not think you butiful,

  But I do.

  Your teeth are wite,

  Your eyes are blue and round.

  I should like to marry you,

  Your loving Robert Brown.

  William gazed at the finished production with whole-hearted satisfaction. He considered that he had very neatly combined an eulogy of the lady’s personal charms with an unmistakable proposal of marriage. He’d spent a long time trying to find a word to rhyme with Robert Brown. Robert ought to be jolly grateful to him . . .