The Wouldbegoods (25 page)

It was true. The footsteps of the approaching foe were now to be heard quite audibly, even by ears in their natural position. The wicked enemy approached. They were marching with a careless swaggeringness that showed how little they suspected the horrible doom which was about to teach them England's might and supremeness.

Just as the enemy turned the corner so that we could see them, the Colonel shouted – ‘Right section, fire!' and there was a deafening banging.

The enemy's officer said something, and then the enemy got confused and tried to get into the fields through the hedges. But all was vain. There was firing now from our men, on the left as well as the right. And then our Colonel strode nobly up to the enemy's Colonel and demanded surrender. He told me so afterwards. His exact words are only known to himself and the other Colonel. But the enemy's Colonel said, ‘I would rather die than surrender,' or words to that effect.

Our Colonel returned to his men and gave the order to fix bayonets, and even Oswald felt his manly cheek turn pale at the thought of the amount of blood to be shed. What would have happened can never now be revealed. For at this moment a man on a piebald horse came clattering over a hedge – as carelessly as if the air was not full of lead and steel at all. Another man rode behind him with a lance and a red pennon on it. I think he must have been the enemy's General coming to
tell his men not to throw away their lives on a forlorn hope, for directly he said they were captured the enemy gave in and owned that they were. The enemy's Colonel saluted and ordered his men to form quarter column again. I should have thought he would have had about enough of that myself.

He had now given up all thought of sullen resistance to the bitter end. He rolled a cigarette for himself, and had the foreign cheek to say to our Colonel –

‘By Jove, old man, you got me clean that time! Your scouts seem to have marked us down uncommonly neatly.'

It was a proud moment when our Colonel laid his military hand on Oswald's shoulder and said –

‘This is my chief scout,' which were high words, but not undeserved, and Oswald owns he felt red with gratifying pride when he heard them.

‘So you are the traitor, young man,' said the wicked Colonel, going on with his cheek.

Oswald bore it because our Colonel had, and you should be generous to a fallen foe, but it is hard to be called a traitor when you haven't.

He did not treat the wicked Colonel with silent scorn as he might have done, but he said –

‘We aren't traitors. We are the Bastables and one of us is a Foulkes. We only mingled unsuspected with the enemy's soldiery and learned the secrets of their acts, which is what Baden-Powell always does when the natives rebel in South Africa; and Denis Foulkes thought of altering the signposts to lead the foe astray. And if we did cause all this fighting, and get Maidstone threatened
with capture and all that, it was only because we didn't believe Greek things could happen in Great Britain and Ireland, even if you sow dragon's teeth, and besides, some of us were not asked about sowing them.'

Then the Cocked-Hatted One led his horse and walked with us and made us tell him all about it, and so did the Colonel. The wicked Colonel listened too, which was only another proof of his cheek.

And Oswald told the tale in the modest yet manly way that some people think he has, and gave the others all the credit they deserved. His narration was interrupted no less than four times by shouts of ‘Bravo!' in which the enemy's Colonel once more showed his cheek by joining. By the time the story was told we were in sight of another camp. It was the British one this time. The Colonel asked us to have tea in his tent, and it only shows the magnanimosity of English chivalry in the field of battle that he asked the enemy's Colonel too. With his usual cheek he accepted. We were jolly hungry.

When everyone had had as much tea as they possibly could, the Colonel shook hands with us all, and to Oswald he said –

‘Well, goodbye, my brave scout. I must mention your name in my dispatches to the War Office.'

H.O. interrupted him to say, ‘His name's Oswald Cecil Bastable, and mine is Horace Octavius.' I wish H.O. would learn to hold his tongue. No one ever knows Oswald was christened Cecil as well, if he can possibly help it.
You
didn't know it till now.

‘Mr Oswald Bastable,' the Colonel went on – he had the decency not to take any notice of the ‘Cecil' – ‘you
would be a credit to any regiment. No doubt the War Office will reward you properly for what you have done for your country. But meantime, perhaps, you'll accept five shillings from a grateful comrade-in-arms.' Oswald felt heart-felt sorry to wound the good Colonel's feelings, but he had to remark that he had only done his duty, and he was sure no British scout would take five bob for doing that. ‘And besides,' he said, with that feeling of justice which is part of his young character, ‘it was the others just as much as me.'

‘Your sentiments, Sir,' said the Colonel, who was one of the politest and most discerning colonels I ever saw, ‘your sentiments do you honour. But, Bastables all, and – and non-Bastables' (he couldn't remember Foulkes; it's not such an interesting name as Bastable, of course) – ‘at least you'll accept a soldier's pay?'

‘Lucky to touch it, a shilling a day!' Alice and Denny said together. And the Cocked-Hatted Man said something about knowing your own mind and knowing your own Kipling.

‘A soldier,' said the Colonel, ‘would certainly be lucky to touch it. You see there are deductions for rations. Five shillings is exactly right, deducting twopence each for six teas.'

This seemed cheap for the three cups of tea and the three eggs and all the strawberry jam and bread-and-butter Oswald had had, as well as what the others ate, and Lady's and Pincher's teas, but I suppose soldiers get things cheaper than civilians, which is only right.

Oswald took the five shillings then, there being no longer any scruples why he should not.

Just as we had parted from the brave Colonel and the rest we saw a bicycle coming. It was Albert's uncle. He got off and said –

‘What on earth have you been up to? What were you doing with those volunteers?'

We told him the wild adventures of the day, and he listened, and then he said he would withdraw the word volunteers if we liked.

But the seeds of doubt were sown in the breast of Oswald. He was now almost sure that we had made jolly fools of ourselves without a moment's pause throughout the whole of this eventful day. He said nothing at the time, but after supper he had it out with Albert's uncle about the word which had been withdrawn.

Albert's uncle said, of course, no one could be sure that the dragon's teeth hadn't come up in the good old-fashioned way, but that, on the other hand, it was barely possible that both the British and the enemy were only volunteers having a field-day or sham fight, and he rather thought the Cocked-Hatted Man was not a general, but a doctor. And the man with a red pennon carried behind him
might
have been the umpire.

Oswald never told the others a word of this. Their young breasts were all panting with joy because they had saved their country; and it would have been but heartless unkindness to show them how silly they had been. Besides, Oswald felt he was much too old to have been so taken in – if he
had
been. Besides, Albert's uncle did say that no one could be sure about the dragon's teeth.

The thing that makes Oswald feel most that, perhaps, the whole thing was a beastly sell, was that we didn't
see any wounded. But he tries not to think of this. And if he goes into the army when he grows up, he will not go quite green. He has had experience of the arts of war and the tented field. And a real colonel has called him ‘Comrade-in-Arms', which is exactly what Lord Roberts called his own soldiers when he wrote home about them.

chapter fourteen

albert's uncle's grandmother; or the long-lost

The shadow of the termination now descended in sable thunderclouds upon our devoted nobs. As Albert's uncle said, ‘School now gaped for its prey'. In a very short space of time we should be wending our way back to Blackheath, and all the variegated delightfulness of the country would soon be only preserved in memory's faded flowers. (I don't care for that way of writing very much. It would be an awful swot to keep it up – looking out the words and all that.)

To speak in the language of everyday life, our holiday was jolly nearly up. We had had a ripping time, but it was all but over. We really did feel sorry – though, of course, it was rather decent to think of getting back to Father and being able to tell the other chaps about our raft, and the dam, and the Tower of Mystery, and things like that.

When but a brief time was left to us, Oswald and Dicky met by chance in an apple tree. (That sounds like ‘consequences', but it is mere truthfulness.) Dicky said –

‘Only four more days.'

Oswald said, ‘Yes.'

‘There's one thing,' Dicky said, ‘that beastly society. We don't want that swarming all over everything when we get home. We ought to dissolve it before we leave here.'

The following dialogue now took place:

Oswald – ‘Right you are. I always said it was piffling rot.'

Dicky – ‘So did I.'

Oswald – ‘Let's call a council. But don't forget we've jolly well got to put our foot down.'

Dicky assented, and the dialogue concluded with apples.

The council, when called, was in but low spirits. This made Oswald's and Dicky's task easier. When people are sunk in gloomy despair about one thing, they will agree to almost anything about something else. (Remarks like this are called philosophic generalizations, Albert's uncle says.) Oswald began by saying –

‘We've tried the society for being good in, and perhaps it's done us good. But now the time has come for each of us to be good or bad on his own, without hanging on to the others.'

‘The race is run by one and one, But never by two and two,' the Dentist said.

The others said nothing.

Oswald went on: ‘I move that we chuck – I mean dissolve – the Wouldbegoods Society; its appointed task is done. If it's not well done, that's
its
fault and not ours.'

Dicky said, ‘Hear! Hear! I second this prop.'

The unexpected Dentist said, ‘I third it. At first I thought it would help, but afterwards I saw it only made you want to be naughty, just because you were a Wouldbegood.'

Oswald owns he was surprised. We put it to the vote at once, so as not to let Denny cool. H.O. and Noel and Alice voted with us, so Daisy and Dora were what is called a hopeless minority. We tried to cheer their hopelessness by letting them read the things out of the Golden Deed book aloud. Noel hid his face in the straw so that we should not see the faces he made while he made poetry instead of listening, and when the Wouldbegoods was by vote dissolved for ever he sat up, straws in his hair, and said –

N is for Noel, that makes the rhyme and the sense both right. O, W, N, own; do you see?'

We saw it, and said so, and the gentle poet was satisfied. And the council broke up. Oswald felt that a weight had been lifted from his expanding chest, and it is curious that he never felt so inclined to be good and a model youth as he did then. As he went down the ladder out of the loft he said –

‘There's one thing we ought to do, though, before we go home. We ought to find Albert's uncle's long-lost grandmother for him.'

Alice's heart beat true and steadfast. She said, ‘That's just exactly what Noel and I were saying this morning. Look out, Oswald, you wretch, you're kicking chaff into my eyes.' She was going down the ladder just under me.

Oswald's younger sister's thoughtful remark ended in another council. But not in the straw loft. We decided to have a quite new place, and disregarded H.O.'s idea of the dairy and Noel's of the cellars. We had the new council on the secret staircase, and there we settled exactly what we ought to do. This is the same thing, if you really wish to be good, as what you are going to do. It was a very interesting council, and when it was over Oswald was so pleased to think that the Wouldbegoods was unrecoverishly dead that he gave Denny and Noel, who were sitting on the step below him, a good-humoured, playful, gentle, loving, brotherly shove, and said, ‘Get along down, it's teatime!'

No reader who understands justice and the real rightness of things, and who is to blame for what, will ever think it could have been Oswald's fault that the two other boys got along down by rolling over and over each other, and bursting the door at the bottom of the stairs open by their revolving bodies. And I should like to know whose fault it was that Mrs Pettigrew was just on the other side of that door at that very minute? The door burst open, and the Impetuous bodies of Noel and Denny rolled out of it into Mrs Pettigrew, and upset her and the tea tray. Both revolving boys were soaked with tea and milk, and there were one or two cups and things smashed. Mrs Pettigrew was knocked over, but none of her bones were broken. Noel and Denny were
going to be sent to bed, but Oswald said it was all his fault. He really did this to give the others a chance of doing a refined golden deed by speaking the truth and saying it was not his fault. But you cannot really count on anyone. They did not say anything, but only rubbed the lumps on their late-revolving heads. So it was bed for Oswald, and he felt the injustice hard.

But he sat up in bed and read
The Last of the Mohicans
, and then he began to think. When Oswald really thinks he almost always thinks of something. He thought of something now, and it was miles better than the idea we had decided on in the secret staircase, of advertising in the
Kentish Mercury
and saying if Albert's uncle's long-lost grandmother would call at the Moat House she might hear of something much to her advantage.

What Oswald thought of was that if we went to Hazelbridge and asked Mr B. Munn, Grocer, that drove us home in the cart with the horse that liked the wrong end of the whip best, he would know who the lady was in the red hat and red wheels that paid him to drive us home that Canterbury night. He must have been paid, of course, for even grocers are not generous enough to drive perfect strangers, and five of them too, about the country for nothing. Thus we may learn that even unjustness and sending the wrong people to bed may bear useful fruit, which ought to be a great comfort to everyone when they are unfairly treated. Only it most likely won't be. For if Oswald's brothers and sisters had nobly stood by him as he expected, he would not have had the solitary reflections that led to the great scheme for finding the grandmother.

Of course when the others came up to roost they all came and squatted on Oswald's bed and said how sorry they were. He waived their apologies with noble dignity, because there wasn't much time, and said he had an idea that would knock the council's plan into a cocked hat. But he would not tell them what it was. He made them wait till next morning. This was not sulks, but kind feeling. He wanted them to have something else to think of besides the way they hadn't stood by him in the bursting of the secret staircase door and the tea tray and the milk.

Next morning Oswald kindly explained, and asked who would volunteer for a forced march to Hazelbridge. The word volunteer cost the young Oswald a pang as soon as he had said it, but I hope he can bear pangs with any man living. ‘And mind,' he added, hiding the pang under a general-like severeness, ‘I won't have anyone in the expedition who has anything in his shoes except his feet.'

This could not have been put more delicately and decently. But Oswald is often misunderstood. Even Alice said it was unkind to throw the peas up at Denny. When this little unpleasantness had passed away (it took some time because Daisy cried, and Dora said, ‘There now, Oswald!') there were seven volunteers, which, with Oswald, made eight, and was, indeed, all of us. There were no cockleshells, or tape-sandals, or staves, or scrips, or anything romantic and pious about the eight persons who set out for Hazelbridge that morning, more earnestly wishful to be good and deedful – at least Oswald, I know, was – than ever they had been in the
days of the beastly Wouldbegood Society. It was a fine day. Either it was fine nearly all last summer, which is how Oswald remembers it, or else nearly all the interesting things we did came on fine days.

With hearts light and gay, and no peas in anyone's shoes, the walk to Hazelbridge was perseveringly conducted. We took our lunch with us, and the dear dogs. Afterwards we wished for a time that we had left one of them at home. But they did so want to come, all of them, and Hazelbridge is not nearly as far as Canterbury, really, so even Martha was allowed to put on her things – I mean her collar – and come with us. She walks slowly, but we had the day before us so there was no extra hurry.

At Hazelbridge we went into B. Munn's grocer's shop and asked for ginger beer to drink. They gave it us, but they seemed surprised at us wanting to drink it there, and the glass was warm – it had just been washed. We only did it, really, so as to get into conversation with B. Munn, grocer, and extract information without rousing suspicion. You cannot be too careful. However, when we had said it was first-class ginger beer, and paid for it, we found it not so easy to extract anything more from B. Munn, grocer; and there was an anxious silence while he fiddled about behind the counter among the tinned meats and sauce bottles, with a fringe of hobnailed boots hanging over his head.

H.O. spoke suddenly. He is like the sort of person who rushes in where angels fear to tread, as Denny says (say what sort of person that is). He said –

‘I say, you remember driving us home that day. Who paid for the cart?'

Of course B. Munn, grocer, was not such a nincompoop (I like that word, it means so many people I know) as to say right off. He said –

‘I was paid all right, young gentleman. Don't you terrify yourself.'

People in Kent say terrify when they mean worry. So Dora shoved in a gentle oar. She said –

‘We want to know the kind lady's name and address, so that we can write and thank her for being so jolly that day.'

B. Munn, grocer, muttered something about the lady's address being goods he was often asked for. Alice said, ‘But do tell us. We forgot to ask her. She's a relation of a second-hand uncle of ours, and I do so want to thank her properly. And if you've got any extra-strong peppermints at a penny an ounce, we should like a quarter of a pound.'

This was a master-stroke. While he was weighing out the peppermints his heart got soft, and just as he was twisting up the corner of the paper bag, Dora said, ‘What lovely fat peppermints! Do tell us.'

And B. Munn's heart was now quite melted, he said –

‘It's Miss Ashleigh, and she lives at The Cedars – about a mile down the Maidstone Road.'

We thanked him, and Alice paid for the peppermints. Oswald was a little anxious when she ordered such a lot, but she and Noel had got the money all right, and when we were outside on Hazelbridge Green (a good deal of it is gravel, really), we stood and looked at each other. Then Dora said –

‘Let's go home and write a beautiful letter and all sign it.'

Oswald looked at the others. Writing is all very well, but it's such a beastly long time to wait for anything to happen afterwards.