The Wouldbegoods (16 page)

Alice kicked Oswald under the table and said –

‘Don’t be waxy, Oswald. Really and truly Daisy and I
have
got a secret, only it’s Dora’s secret, and she wants to tell you herself. If it was mine or Daisy’s we’d tell you this minute, wouldn’t we, Mouse?’

‘This very second,’ said the White Mouse.

And Oswald consented to take their apologies.

Then the pudding came in, and no more was said except asking for things to be passed – sugar and water, and bread and things.

Then when the pudding was all gone, Alice said –

‘Come on.’

And we came on. We did not want to be disagreeable, though really we were keen on being detectives and sifting that perambulator to the very dregs. But boys have to try to take an interest in their sisters’ secrets, however silly. This is part of being a good brother.

Alice led us across the field where the sheep once fell into the brook, and across the brook by the plank. At the other end of the next field there was a sort of wooden house on wheels, that the shepherd sleeps in at the time of year when lambs are being born, so that
he can see that they are not stolen by gypsies before the owners have counted them.

To this hut Alice now led her kind brothers and Daisy’s kind brother. ‘Dora is inside,’ she said, ‘with the Secret. We were afraid to have it in the house in case it made a noise.’

The next moment the Secret was a secret no longer, for we all beheld Dora, sitting on a sack on the floor of the hut, with the Secret in her lap.

It was the High-born Babe!

Oswald was so overcome that he sat down suddenly, just like Betsy Trotwood did in
David Copperfield
, which just shows what a true author Dickens is.

‘You’ve done it this time,’ he said. ‘I suppose you know you’re a baby-stealer?’

‘I’m not,’ Dora said. ‘I’ve adopted him.’

‘Then it was you,’ Dicky said, ‘who scuttled the perambulator in the wood?’

‘Yes,’ Alice said; ‘we couldn’t get it over the stile unless Dora put down the Baby, and we were afraid of the nettles for his legs. His name is to be Lord Edward.’

‘But, Dora – really, don’t you think –’

‘If you’d been there you’d have done the same,’ said Dora firmly. ‘The gypsies had gone. Of course something had frightened them and they fled from justice. And the little darling was awake and held out his arms to me. No, he hasn’t cried a bit, and I know all about babies; I’ve often nursed Mrs Simpkins’s daughter’s baby when she brings it up on Sundays. They have bread and milk to eat. You take him, Alice, and I’ll go and get some bread and milk for him.’

Alice took the noble brat. It was horribly lively, and squirmed about in her arms, and wanted to crawl on the floor. She could only keep it quiet by saying things to it a boy would be ashamed even to think of saying, such as ‘Goo goo’, and ‘Did ums was’, and ‘Ickle ducksums, then’.

When Alice used these expressions the Baby laughed and chuckled and replied –

‘Daddadda’, ‘Bababa’, or ‘Glueglue’.

But if Alice stopped her remarks for an instant the thing screwed its face up as if it was going to cry, but she never gave it time to begin.

It was a rummy little animal.

Then Dora came back with the bread and milk, and they fed the noble infant. It was greedy and slobbery, but all three girls seemed unable to keep their eyes and hands off it. They looked at it exactly as if it was pretty.

We boys stayed watching them. There was no amusement left for us now, for Oswald saw that Dora’s Secret knocked the bottom out of the perambulator.

When the infant aristocrat had eaten a hearty meal it sat on Alice’s lap and played with the amber heart she wears that Albert’s uncle brought her from Hastings after the business of the bad sixpence and the nobleness of Oswald.

‘Now,’ said Dora, ‘this is a council, so I want to be business-like. The Duckums Darling has been stolen away; its wicked stealers have deserted the Precious. We’ve got it. Perhaps its ancestral halls are miles and miles away. I vote we keep the little Lovey Duck till it’s advertised for.’

‘If Albert’s uncle lets you,’ said Dicky darkly.

‘Oh, don’t say “you” like that,’ Dora said; ‘I want it to be all of our baby. It will have five fathers and three mothers, and a grandfather and a great Albert’s uncle, and a great grand-uncle. I’m sure Albert’s uncle will let us keep it – at any rate till it’s advertised for.’

‘And suppose it never is,’ Noel said.

‘Then so much the better,’ said Dora, ‘the little Duckyux.’

She began kissing the baby again. Oswald, ever thoughtful, said – ‘Well, what about your dinner?’

‘Bother dinner!’ Dora said – so like a girl. ‘Will you all agree to be his fathers and mothers?’

‘Anything for a quiet life,’ said Dicky, and Oswald said –

‘Oh, yes, if you like. But you’ll see we shan’t be allowed to keep it.’

‘You talk as if he was rabbits or white rats,’ said Dora, ‘and he’s not – he’s a little man, he is.’

‘All right, he’s no rabbit, but a man. Come on and get some grub, Dora,’ rejoined the kind-hearted Oswald, and Dora did, with Oswald and the other boys. Only Noel stayed with Alice. He really seemed to like the baby. When I looked back he was standing on his head to amuse it, but the baby did not seem to like him any better whichever end of him was up.

Dora went back to the shepherd’s house on wheels directly she had had her dinner. Mrs Pettigrew was very cross about her not being in to it, but she had kept her some mutton hot all the same. She is a decent sort. And there were stewed prunes. We had some to keep Dora
company. Then we boys went fishing again in the moat, but we caught nothing.

Just before teatime we all went back to the hut, and before we got half across the last field we could hear the howling of the Secret.

‘Poor little beggar,’ said Oswald, with manly tenderness. ‘They must be sticking pins in it.’

We found the girls and Noel looking quite pale and breathless. Daisy was walking up and down with the Secret in her arms. It looked like Alice in Wonderland nursing the baby that turned into a pig. Oswald said so, and added that its screams were like it too.

‘What on earth is the matter with it?’ he said.

‘
I
don’t know,’ said Alice. ‘Daisy’s tired, and Dora and I are quite worn out. He’s been crying for hours and hours.
You
take him a bit.’

‘Not me,’ replied Oswald, firmly, withdrawing a pace from the Secret.

Dora was fumbling with her waistband in the furthest corner of the hut.

‘I think he’s cold,’ she said. ‘I thought I’d take off my flannelette petticoat, only the horrid strings got into a hard knot. Here, Oswald, let’s have your knife.’

With the word she plunged her hand into Oswald’s jacket pocket, and next moment she was rubbing her hand like mad on her dress, and screaming almost as loud as the Baby. Then she began to laugh and to cry at the same time. This is called hysterics.

Oswald was sorry, but he was annoyed too. He had forgotten that his pocket was half full of the mealworms the miller had kindly given him. And, anyway, Dora
ought to have known that a man always carries his knife in his trousers pocket and not in his jacket one.

Alice and Daisy rushed to Dora. She had thrown herself down on the pile of sacks in the corner. The titled infant delayed its screams for a moment to listen to Dora’s, but almost at once it went on again.

‘Oh, get some water!’ said Alice. ‘Daisy, run!’

The White Mouse, ever docile and obedient, shoved the baby into the arms of the nearest person, who had to take it or it would have fallen a wreck to the ground. This nearest person was Oswald. He tried to pass it on to the others, but they wouldn’t. Noel would have, but he was busy kissing Dora and begging her not to. So our hero, for such I may perhaps term him, found himself the degraded nursemaid of a small but furious kid.

He was afraid to lay it down, for fear in its rage it should beat its brains out against the hard earth, and he did not wish, however innocently, to be the cause of its hurting itself at all. So he walked earnestly up and down with it, thumping it unceasingly on the back, while the others attended to Dora, who presently ceased to yell.

Suddenly it struck Oswald that the High-born also had ceased to yell. He looked at it, and could hardly believe the glad tidings of his faithful eyes. With bated breath he hastened back to the sheep-house.

The others turned on him, full of reproaches about the mealworms and Dora, but he answered without anger.

‘Shut up,’ he said in a whisper of imperial command. ‘Can’t you see it’s
gone to sleep
?’

As exhausted as if they had all taken part in all the events of a very long Athletic Sports, the youthful
Bastables and their friends dragged their weary limbs back across the fields. Oswald was compelled to go on holding the titled infant, for fear it should wake up if it changed hands, and begin to yell again. Dora’s flannelette petticoat had been got off somehow – how I do not seek to enquire – and the Secret was covered with it. The others surrounded Oswald as much as possible, with a view to concealment if we met Mrs Pettigrew. But the coast was clear. Oswald took the Secret up into his bedroom. Mrs Pettigrew doesn’t come there much, it’s too many stairs.

With breathless precaution Oswald laid it down on his bed. It sighed, but did not wake. Then we took it in turns to sit by it and see that it did not get up and fling itself out of bed, which, in one of its furious fits, it would just as soon have done as not.

We expected Albert’s uncle every minute.

At last we heard the gate, but he did not come in, so we looked out and saw that there he was talking to a distracted-looking man on a piebald horse – one of the miller’s horses.

A shiver of doubt coursed through our veins. We could not remember having done anything wrong at the miller’s. But you never know. And it seemed strange his sending a man up on his own horse. But when we had looked a bit longer our fears went down and our curiosity got up. For we saw that the distracted one was a gentleman.

Presently he rode off, and Albert’s uncle came in. A deputation met him at the door – all the boys and Dora, because the baby was her idea.

‘We’ve found something,’ Dora said, ‘and we want to know whether we may keep it.’

The rest of us said nothing. We were not so very extra anxious to keep it after we had heard how much and how long it could howl. Even Noel had said he had no idea a baby could yell like it. Dora said it only cried because it was sleepy, but we reflected that it would certainly be sleepy once a day, if not oftener.

‘What is it?’ said Albert’s uncle. ‘Let’s see this treasure trove. Is it a wild beast?’

‘Come and see,’ said Dora, and we led him to our room.

Alice turned down the pink flannelette petticoat with silly pride, and showed the youthful heir fatly and pinkly sleeping.

‘A baby!’ said Albert’s uncle. ‘
The
Baby! Oh, my cat’s alive!’

That is an expression which he uses to express despair unmixed with anger.

‘Where did you –? But that doesn’t matter. We’ll talk of this later.’

He rushed from the room, and in a moment or two we saw him mount his bicycle and ride off.

Quite shortly he returned with the distracted horseman.

It was
his
baby, and not titled at all. The horseman and his wife were the lodgers at the mill. The nursemaid was a girl from the village.

She
said
she only left the Baby five minutes while she went to speak to her sweetheart who was gardener at the Red House. But we knew she left it over an hour, and nearly two.

I never saw anyone so pleased as the distracted horseman.

When we were asked we explained about having thought the Baby was the prey of gypsies, and the distracted horseman stood hugging the Baby, and actually thanked us.

But when he had gone we had a brief lecture on minding our own business. But Dora still thinks she was right. As for Oswald and most of the others, they agreed that they would rather mind their own business all their lives than mind a baby for a single hour.

If you have never had to do with a baby in the frenzied throes of sleepiness you can have no idea what its screams are like.

If you have been through such a scene you will understand how we managed to bear up under having no baby to adopt. Oswald insisted on having the whole thing written in the Golden Deed book. Of course his share could not be put in without telling about Dora’s generous adopting of the forlorn infant outcast, and Oswald could not and cannot forget that he was the one who did get that baby to sleep.

What a time Mr and Mrs Distracted Horseman must have of it, though – especially now they’ve sacked the nursemaid.

If Oswald is ever married – I suppose he must be some day – he will have ten nurses to each baby. Eight is not enough. We know that because we tried, and the whole eight of us were not enough for the needs of that deserted infant who was not so extra high-born after all.

chapter nine

hunting the fox

It is idle to expect everyone to know everything in the world without being told. If we had been brought up in the country we should have known that it is not done – to hunt the fox in August. But in the Lewisham Road the most observing boy does not notice the dates when it is proper to hunt foxes.

And there are some things you cannot bear to think that anybody would think you would do; that is why I wish to say plainly at the very beginning that none of us would have shot a fox on purpose even to save our skins. Of course, if a man were at bay in a cave, and had to defend girls from the simultaneous attack of a herd of savage foxes it would be different. A man is bound to protect girls and take care of them – they can jolly well take care of themselves really it seems to me – still, this is what Albert’s uncle calls one of the ‘rules of the game’, so we are bound to defend them and fight for them to the death, if needful. Denny knows a quotation which says –

He says this means that all great events come from three things – threefold, like the clover or trefoil, and the causes are always harmless. Trefoil is short for threefold.

There were certainly three things that led up to the adventure which is now going to be told you. The first was our Indian uncle coming down to the country to see us. The second was Denny’s tooth. The third was only our wanting to go hunting; but if you count it in it makes the thing about the trefoil come right. And all these causes were harmless.

It is a flattering thing to say, and it was not Oswald who said it, but Dora. She said she was certain our uncle missed us, and that he felt he could no longer live without seeing his dear ones (that was us).

Anyway, he came down, without warning, which is one of the few bad habits that excellent Indian man has, and this habit has ended in unpleasantness more than once, as when we played jungles.

However, this time it was all right. He came on rather a dull kind of day, when no one had thought of anything particularly amusing to do. So that, as it happened to be dinnertime and we had just washed our hands and faces, we were all spotlessly clean (compared with what we are sometimes, I mean, of course).

We were just sitting down to dinner, and Albert’s uncle was just plunging the knife into the hot heart of the steak pudding, when there was the rumble of wheels, and the station fly stopped at the garden gate. And in the fly, sitting very upright, with his hands on his knees, was our Indian relative so much beloved. He looked very smart, with a rose in his buttonhole.
How different from what he looked in other days when he helped us to pretend that our currant pudding was a wild boar we were killing with our forks. Yet, though tidier, his heart still beat kind and true. You should not judge people harshly because their clothes are tidy. He had dinner with us, and then we showed him round the place, and told him everything we thought he would like to hear, and about the Tower of Mystery, and he said –

‘It makes my blood boil to think of it.’

Noel said he was sorry for that, because everyone else we had told it to had owned, when we asked them, that it froze their blood.

‘Ah,’ said the Uncle, ‘but in India we learn how to freeze our blood and boil it at the same time.’

In those hot longitudes, perhaps, the blood is always near boiling-point, which accounts for Indian tempers, though not for the curry and pepper they eat. But I must not wander; there is no curry at all in this story. About temper I will not say.

Then Uncle let us all go with him to the station when the fly came back for him; and when we said goodbye he tipped us all half a quid, without any insidious distinctions about age or considering whether you were a boy or a girl. Our Indian uncle is a true-born Briton, with no nonsense about him.

We cheered him like one man as the train went off, and then we offered the fly-driver a shilling to take us back to the four crossroads, and the grateful creature did it for nothing because, he said, the gent had tipped him something like. How scarce is true gratitude! So
we cheered the driver too for this rare virtue, and then went home to talk about what we should do with our money. I cannot tell you all that we did with it, because money melts away ‘like snow-wreaths in thaw-jean’, as Denny says, and somehow the more you have the more quickly it melts. We all went into Maidstone, and came back with the most beautiful lot of brown-paper parcels, with things inside that supplied long-felt wants. But none of them belongs to this narration, except what Oswald and Denny clubbed to buy.

This was a pistol, and it took all the money they both had, but when Oswald felt the uncomfortable inside sensation that reminds you who it is and his money that are soon parted he said to himself –

‘I don’t care. We ought to have a pistol in the house, and one that will go off, too – not those rotten flintlocks. Suppose there should be burglars and us totally unarmed?’

We took it in turns to have the pistol, and we decided always to practise with it far from the house, so as not to frighten the grown-ups, who are always much nervouser about firearms than we are.

It was Denny’s idea getting it; and Oswald owns it surprised him, but the boy was much changed in his character. We got it while the others were grubbing at the pastry cook’s in the High Street, and we said nothing till after tea, though it was hard not to fire at the birds on the telegraph wires as we came home in the train.

After tea we called a council in the straw loft, and Oswald said –

‘Denny and I have got a secret.’

‘I know what it is,’ Dicky said contemptibly. ‘You’ve found out that shop in Maidstone where peppermint rock is four ounces a penny. H.O. and I found it out before you did.’

Oswald said, ‘You shut up. If you don’t want to hear the secret you’d better bunk. I’m going to administer the secret oath.’

This is a very solemn oath, and only used about real things, and never for pretending ones, so Dicky said –

‘Oh, all right; go ahead! I thought you were only rotting.’

So they all took the secret oath. Noel made it up long before, when he had found the first thrush’s nest we ever saw in the Blackheath garden:

It is a little wrong about the poetry, but it is a very binding promise. They all repeated it, down to H.O.

‘Now then,’ Dicky said, ‘what’s up?’

Oswald, in proud silence, drew the pistol from his breast and held it out, and there was a murmur of awful amazement and respect from every one of the council. The pistol was not loaded, so we let even the girls have it to look at. And then Dicky said, ‘Let’s go hunting.’

And we decided that we would. H.O. wanted to go down to the village and get penny horns at the shop for the huntsmen to wind, like in the song, but we thought
it would be more modest not to wind horns or anything noisy, at any rate not until we had run down our prey. But his talking of the song made us decide that it was the fox we wanted to hunt. We had not been particular which animal we hunted before that.

Oswald let Denny have first go with the pistol, and when we went to bed he slept with it under his pillow, but not loaded, for fear he should have a nightmare and draw his fell weapon before he was properly awake.

Oswald let Denny have it, because Denny had toothache, and a pistol is consoling though it does not actually stop the pain of the tooth. The toothache got worse, and Albert’s uncle looked at it, and said it was very loose, and Denny owned he had tried to crack a peach-stone with it. Which accounts. He had creosote and camphor, and went to bed early, with his tooth tied up in red flannel.

Oswald knows it is right to be very kind when people are ill, and he forbore to wake the sufferer next morning by buzzing a pillow at him, as he generally does. He got up and went over to shake the invalid, but the bird had flown and the nest was cold. The pistol was not in the nest either, but Oswald found it afterwards under the looking glass on the dressing table. He had just awakened the others (with a hairbrush because they had not got anything the matter with their teeth), when he heard wheels, and, looking out, beheld Denny and Albert’s uncle being driven from the door in the farmer’s high cart with the red wheels.

We dressed extra quick, so as to get downstairs to the bottom of the mystery. And we found a note from Albert’s uncle. It was addressed to Dora, and said –

‘Denny’s toothache got him up in the small hours. He’s off to the dentist to have it out with him, man to man. Home to dinner.’

Dora said, ‘Denny’s gone to the dentist.’

‘I expect it’s a relation,’ H.O. said. ‘Denny must be short for Dentist.’

I suppose he was trying to be funny – he really does try very hard. He wants to be a clown when he grows up. The others laughed.

‘I wonder,’ said Dicky, ‘whether he’ll get a shilling or half-a-crown for it.’

Oswald had been meditating in gloomy silence, now he cheered up and said –

‘Of course! I’d forgotten that. He’ll get his tooth money, and the drive too. So it’s quite fair for us to have the fox hunt while he’s gone. I was thinking we should have to put it off.’

The others agreed that it would not be unfair.

‘We can have another one another time if he wants to,’ Oswald said.

We know foxes are hunted in red coats and on horseback – but we could not do this – but H.O. had the old red football jersey that was Albert’s uncle’s when he was at Loretto. He was pleased.

‘But I do wish we’d had horns,’ he said grievingly. ‘I should have liked to wind the horn.’

‘We can pretend horns,’ Dora said; but he answered, ‘I didn’t want to pretend. I wanted to wind something.’

‘Wind your watch,’ Dicky said. And that was unkind, because we all know H.O.’s watch is broken, and when you wind it, it only rattles inside without going in the least.

We did not bother to dress up much for the hunting expedition – just cocked hats and lath swords; and we tied a card on to H.O.’s chest with ‘Moat House Fox-Hunters’ on it; and we tied red flannel round all the dogs’ necks to show they were foxhounds. Yet it did not seem to show it plainly; somehow it made them look as if they were not foxhounds, but their own natural breeds – only with sore throats.

Oswald slipped the pistol and a few cartridges into his pocket. He knew, of course, that foxes are not shot; but as he said –

‘Who knows whether we may not meet a bear or a crocodile.’

We set off gaily. Across the orchard and through two cornfields, and along the hedge of another field, and so we got into the wood, through a gap we had happened to make a day or two before, playing ‘follow my leader’.

The wood was very quiet and green; the dogs were happy and most busy. Once Pincher started a rabbit. We said, ‘View Halloo!’ and immediately started in pursuit; but the rabbit went and hid, so that even Pincher could not find him, and we went on. But we saw no foxes. So at last we made Dicky be a fox, and chased him down the green rides. A wide walk in a wood is called a ride, even if people never do anything but walk in it.

We had only three hounds – Lady, Pincher and Martha – so we joined the glad throng and were being hounds as hard as we could, when we suddenly came barking round a corner in full chase and stopped short, for we saw that our fox had stayed his hasty flight. The fox was
stooping over something reddish that lay beside the path, and he cried –

‘I say, look here!’ in tones that thrilled us throughout.

Our fox – whom we must now call Dicky, so as not to muddle the narration – pointed to the reddy thing that the dogs were sniffing at.

‘It’s a real live fox,’ he said. And so it was. At least it was real – only it was quite dead – and when Oswald lifted it up its head was bleeding. It had evidently been shot through the brain and expired instantly. Oswald explained this to the girls when they began to cry at the sight of the poor beast; I do not say he did not feel a bit sorry himself.