by E. Nesbit
It was now Noël’s turn to disclose his idea, which proved most awful.
“Let’s be Would-be-Poets,” he said, “and solemnly vow and convenient to write one piece of poetry a day as long as we live.”
Most of us were dumb at the dreadful thought. But Alice said—
“That would never do, Noël dear, because you’re the only one of us who’s clever enough to do it.”
So Noël’s detestable and degrading idea was shelved without Oswald having to say anything that would have made the youthful poet weep.
“I suppose you don’t mean me to say what I thought of,” said H.O., “but I shall. I think you ought all to be in a Would-be-Kind Society, and vow solemn convents and things not to be down on your younger brother.”
We explained to him at once that he couldn’t be in that, because he hadn’t got a younger brother.
“And you may think yourself lucky you haven’t,” Dicky added.
The ingenious and felicitous Oswald was just going to begin about the council all over again, when the portable form of our Indian uncle came stoutly stumping down the garden path under the cedars.
“Hi, brigands!” he cried in his cheerful unclish manner. “Who’s on for the Hippodrome this bright day?”
And instantly we all were. Even Oswald—because after all you can have a council any day, but Hippodromes are not like that.
We got ready like the whirlwind of the desert for quickness, and started off with our kind uncle, who has lived so long in India that he is much more warm-hearted than you would think to look at him.
Half-way to the station Dicky remembered his patent screw for working ships with. He had been messing with it in the bath while he was waiting for Oswald to have done plunging cleanly in the basin. And in the desert-whirlwinding he had forgotten to take it out. So now he ran back, because he knew how its cardboardiness would turn to pulp if it was left.
“I’ll catch you up,” he cried.
The uncle took the tickets and the train came in and still Dicky had not caught us up.
“Tiresome boy!” said the uncle; “you don’t want to miss the beginning—eh, what? Ah, here he comes!” The uncle got in, and so did we, but Dicky did not see the uncle’s newspaper which Oswald waved, and he went running up and down the train looking for us instead of just getting in anywhere sensibly, as Oswald would have done. When the train began to move he did try to open a carriage door but it stuck, and the train went faster, and just as he got it open a large heavy porter caught him by the collar and pulled him off the train, saying —
“Now, young shaver, no susansides on this ere line, if you please.”
Dicky hit the porter, but his fury was vain. Next moment the train had passed away, and us in it. Dicky had no money, and the uncle had all the tickets in the pocket of his fur coat.
I am not going to tell you anything about the Hippodrome because the author feels that it was a trifle beastly of us to have enjoyed it as much as we did considering Dicky. We tried not to talk about it before him when we got home, but it was very difficult—especially the elephants.
I suppose he spent an afternoon of bitter thoughts after he had told that porter what he thought of him, which took some time, and the station-master interfered in the end.
When we got home he was all right with us. He had had time to see it was not our faults, whatever he thought at the time.
He refused to talk about it. Only he said—
“I’m going to take it out of that porter. You leave me alone. I shall think of something presently.”
“Revenge is very wrong,” said Dora; but even Alice asked her kindly to dry up. We all felt that it was simply piffle to talk copy-book to one so disappointed as our unfortunate brother.
“It is wrong, though,” said Dora.
“Wrong be blowed!” said Dicky, snorting; “who began it I should like to know! The station’s a beastly awkward place to take it out of any one in. I wish I knew where he lived.”
“I know that,” said Noël. “I’ve known it a long time—before Christmas, when we were going to the Moat House.”
“Well, what is it, then?” asked Dicky savagely.
“Don’t bite his head off,” remarked Alice. “Tell us about it, Noël. How do you know?”
“It was when you were weighing yourselves on the weighing machine. I didn’t because my weight isn’t worth being weighed for. And there was a heap of hampers and turkeys and hares and things, and there was a label on a turkey and brown-paper parcel; and that porter that you hate so said to the other porter——”
“Oh, hurry up, do!” said Dicky.
“I won’t tell you at all if you bully me,” said Noël, and Alice had to coax him before he would go on.
“Well, he looked at the label and said, ‘Little mistake here, Bill—wrong address; ought to be 3, Abel Place, eh?’
“And the other one looked, and he said, ‘Yes; it’s got your name right enough. Fine turkey, too, and his chains in the parcel. Pity they ain’t more careful about addressing things, eh?’ So when they had done laughing about it I looked at the label and it said, ‘James Johnson, 8, Granville Park.’ So I knew it was 3, Abel Place, he lived at, and his name was James Johnson.”
“Good old Sherlock Holmes!” said Oswald.
“You won’t really hurt him,” said Noël, “will you? Not Corsican revenge with knives, or poisoned bowls? I wouldn’t do more than a good booby-trap, if I was you.”
When Noël said the word “booby-trap,” we all saw a strange, happy look come over Dicky’s face. It is called a far-away look, I believe, and you can see it in the picture of a woman cuddling a photograph-album with her hair down, that is in all the shops, and they call it “The Soul’s Awakening.”
Directly Dicky’s soul had finished waking up he shut his teeth together with a click. Then he said, “I’ve got it.”
Of course we all knew that.
“Any one who thinks revenge is wrong is asked to leave now.”
Dora said he was very unkind, and did he really want to turn her out?
“There’s a jolly good fire in Father’s study,” he said. “No, I’m not waxy with you, but I’m going to have my revenge, and I don’t want you to do anything you thought wrong. You’d only make no end of a fuss afterwards.”
“Well, it is wrong, so I’ll go,” said Dora. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you, that’s all!”
And she went.
Then Dicky said, “Now, any more conscious objectors?”
And when no one replied he went on: “It was you saying ‘Booby-trap’ gave me the idea. His name’s James Johnson, is it? And he said the things were addressed wrong, did he? Well, I’ll send him a Turkey-and-chains.”
“A Turk in chains,” said Noël, growing owley-eyed at the thought—“a live Turk—or—no, not a dead one, Dicky?”
“The Turk I’m going to send won’t be a live one nor yet a dead one.”
“How horrible! Half dead. That’s worse than anything,” and Noël became so green in the face that Alice told Dicky to stop playing the goat, and tell us what his idea really was.
“Don’t you see yet?” he cried; “I saw it directly.”
“I daresay,” said Oswald; “it’s easy to see your own idea. Drive ahead.”
“Well, I’m going to get a hamper and pack it full of parcels and put a list of them on the top—beginning Turk-and-chains, and send it to Mister James Johnson, and when he opens the parcels there’ll be nothing inside.”
“There must be something, you know,” said H.O., “or the parcels won’t be any shape except flatness.”
“Oh, there’ll be something right enough,” was the bitter reply of the one who had not been to the Hippodrome, “but it won’t be the sort of something he’ll expect
it to be. Let’s do it now. I’ll get a hamper.”
He got a big one out of the cellar and four empty bottles with their straw cases. We filled the bottles with black ink and water, and red ink and water, and soapy water, and water plain. And we put them down on the list—
1 bottle of port wine.
1 bottle of sherry wine.
1 bottle of sparkling champagne.
1 bottle of rum.
The rest of the things we put on the list were—
1 turkey-and-chains.
2 pounds of chains.
1 plum-pudding.
4 pounds of mince-pies.
2 pounds of almonds and raisins.
1 box of figs.
1 bottle of French plums.
1 large cake.
And we made up parcels to look outside as if their inside was full of the delicious attributes described in the list. It was rather difficult to get anything the shape of a turkey but with coals and crushed newspapers and firewood we did it, and when it was done up with lots of string and the paper artfully squeezed tight to the firewood to look like the Turk’s legs it really was almost lifelike in its deceivingness. The chains, or sausages, we did with dusters—and not clean ones—rolled tight, and the paper moulded gently to their forms. The plum-pudding was a newspaper ball. The mince-pies were newspapers too, and so were the almonds and raisins. The box of figs was a real fig-box with cinders and ashes in it damped to keep them from rattling about. The French-plum bottle was real too. It had newspaper soaked in ink in it, and the cake was half a muff-box of Dora’s done up very carefully and put at the bottom of the hamper. Inside the muff-box we put a paper with—
“Revenge is not wrong when the other people begin. It was you began, and now you are jolly well served out.”
We packed all the bottles and parcels into the hamper, and put the list on the very top, pinned to the paper that covered the false breast of the imitation Turk.
Dicky wanted to write—“From an unknown friend,” but we did not think that was fair, considering how Dicky felt.
So at last we put—“From one who does not wish to sign his name.”
And that was true, at any rate.
Dicky and Oswald lugged the hamper down to the shop that has Carter Paterson’s board outside.
“I vote we don’t pay the carriage,” said Dicky, but that was perhaps because he was still so very angry about being pulled off the train. Oswald had not had it done to him, so he said that we ought to pay the carriage. And he was jolly glad afterwards that this honourable feeling had arisen in his young bosom, and that he had jolly well made Dicky let it rise in his.
We paid the carriage. It was one-and-five-pence, but Dicky said it was cheap for a high-class revenge like this, and after all it was his money the carriage was paid with.
So then we went home and had another go in of grub—because tea had been rather upset by Dicky’s revenge.
The people where we left the hamper told us that it would be delivered next day. So next morning we gloated over the thought of the sell that porter was in for, and Dicky was more deeply gloating than any one.
“I expect it’s got there by now,” he said at dinner-time; “it’s a first class booby-trap; what a sell for him! He’ll read the list and then he’ll take out one parcel after another till he comes to the cake. It was a ripping idea! I’m glad I thought of it!”
“I’m not,” said Noël suddenly. “I wish you hadn’t—I wish we hadn’t. I know just exactly what he feels like now. He feels as if he’d like to kill you for it, and I daresay he would if you hadn’t been a craven, white-feathered skulker and not signed your name.”
It was a thunderbolt in our midst Noël behaving like this. It made Oswald feel a sick inside feeling that perhaps Dora had been right. She sometimes is—and Oswald hates this feeling.
Dicky was so surprised at the unheard-of cheek of his young brother that for a moment he was speechless, and before he got over his speechlessness Noël was crying and wouldn’t have any more dinner. Alice spoke in the eloquent language of the human eye and begged Dicky to look over it this once. And he replied by means of the same useful organ that he didn’t care what a silly kid thought. So no more was said. When Noël had done crying he began to write a piece of poetry and kept at it all the afternoon. Oswald only saw just the beginning. It was called
“THE DISAPPOINTED PORTER’S FURY
Supposed to be by the Porter himself,”
and it began:—
“When first I opened the hamper fair
And saw the parcel inside there
My heart rejoiced like dry gardens when
It rains—but soon I changed and then
I seized my trusty knife and bowl
Of poison, and said ‘Upon the whole
I will have the life of the man
Or woman who thought of this wicked plan
To deceive a trusting porter so.
No noble heart would have thought of it. No.’”
There were pages and pages of it. Of course it was all nonsense—the poetry, I mean. And yet… (I have seen that put in books when the author does not want to let out all he thought at the time.)
That evening at tea-time Jane came and said—
“Master Dicky, there’s an old aged man at the door inquiring if you live here.”
So Dicky thought it was the bootmaker perhaps; so he went out, and Oswald went with him, because he wanted to ask for a bit of cobbler’s wax.
But it was not the shoemaker. It was an old man, pale in the face and white in the hair, and he was so old that we asked him into Father’s study by the fire, as soon as we had found out it was really Dicky he wanted to see.
When we got him there he said—
“Might I trouble you to shut the door?”
This is the way a burglar or a murderer might behave, but we did not think he was one. He looked too old for these professions.
When the door was shut, he said—
“I ain’t got much to say, young gemmen. It’s only to ask was it you sent this?”
He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket, and it was our list. Oswald and Dicky looked at each other.
“Did you send it?” said the old man again.
So then Dicky shrugged his shoulders and said, “Yes.”
Oswald said, “How did you know and who are you?”
The old man got whiter than ever. He pulled out a piece of paper—it was the greenish-grey piece we’d wrapped the Turk and chains in. And it had a label on it that we hadn’t noticed, with Dicky’s name and address on it. The new bat he got at Christmas had come in it.
“That’s how I know,” said the old man. “Ah, be sure your sin will find you out.”
“But who are you, anyway!” asked Oswald again.
“Oh, I ain’t nobody in particular,” he said. “I’m only the father of the pore gell as you took in with your cruel, deceitful, lying tricks. Oh, you may look uppish, young sir, but I’m here to speak my mind, and I’ll speak it if I die for it. So now!”
“But we didn’t send it to a girl,” said Dicky. “We wouldn’t do such a thing. We sent it for a—for a——” I think he tried to say for a joke, but he couldn’t with the fiery way the old man looked at him—“for a sell, to pay a porter out for stopping me getting into a train when it was just starting, and I missed going to the Circus with the others.” Oswald was glad Dicky was not too proud to explain to the old man. He was rather afraid he might be.
“I never sent it to a girl,” he said again.
“Ho,” said the aged one. “An’ who told you that there porter was a single man? It was his wife—my pore gell—as opened your low parcel, and she sees your lying list written out so plain on top, and, sez she to
me, ‘Father,’ says she, ’ere’s a friend in need! All these good things for us, and no name signed, so that we can’t even say thank you. I suppose it’s some one knows how short we are just now, and hardly enough to eat with coals the price they are,’ says she to me. ‘I do call that kind and Christian,’ says she, ‘and I won’t open not one of them lovely parcels till Jim comes ‘ome,’ she says, ‘and we’ll enjoy the pleasures of it together, all three of us,’ says she. And when he came home—we opened of them lovely parcels. She’s a cryin’ her eyes out at home now, and Jim, he only swore once, and I don’t blame him for that one—though never an evil speaker myself—and then he set himself down on a chair and puts his elbows on it to hide his face like—and ‘Emmie,’ says he, ‘so help me. I didn’t know I’d got an enemy in the world. I always thought we’d got nothing but good friends,’ says he. An’ I says nothing, but I picks up the paper, and comes here to your fine house to tell you what I think of you. It’s a mean, low-down, dirty, nasty trick, and no gentleman wouldn’t a-done it. So that’s all—and it’s off my chest, and good-night to you gentlemen both!”
He turned to go out. I shall not tell you what Oswald felt, except that he did hope Dicky felt the same, and would behave accordingly. And Dicky did, and Oswald was both pleased and surprised.
Dicky said—
“Oh, I say, stop a minute. I didn’t think of your poor girl.”
“And her youngest but a bare three weeks old,” said the old man angrily.
“I didn’t, on my honour I didn’t think of anything but paying the porter out.”
“He was only a doing of his duty,” the old man said.
“Well, I beg your pardon and his,” said Dicky; “it was ungentlemanly, and I’m very sorry. And I’ll try to make it up somehow. Please make it up. I can’t do more than own I’m sorry. I wish I hadn’t—there!”
“Well,” said the old man slowly, “we’ll leave it at that. Next time p’r’aps you’ll think a bit who it’s going to be as’ll get the benefit of your payings out.”
