William in Trouble

by Richmal Crompton

  But again Ginger’s watchful eye had spied something.

  ‘Look,’ he said in an awed voice, ‘they’re all goin’ into that room an’ sitting down. One of ’em’s goin’ to make a speech.’

  Impelled by curiosity the Outlaws drew near the window. The window was open. They crouched beneath it and listened. A very tall female dressed in a green sweater began to speak.

  THE OUTLAWS CROUCHED BENEATH THE WINDOW AND LISTENED.

  ‘Friends,’ she said, ‘I have summoned this meeting for a very special – a very serious – reason. We have agreed that no useful work can be done in a house where the spirits of the house are unfriendly to us. Friends,’ she made a dramatic pause, ‘the spirits of this house are unfriendly to us. It is with deep grief hut not without due consideration that I say it. The spirits of this house are unfriendly to us. We all know what valuable psychic powers Mrs Heron possesses. Mrs Heron’s psychic powers have been of the greatest assistance to us in our researches. Mrs Heron says that never has she had so clear, so unmistakable a revelation as she had last night. Mrs Heron will describe it to you herself.’

  ‘FRIENDS,’ SAID THE WOMAN IN THE GREEN SWEATER, ‘I HAVE SUMMONED THIS MEETING FOR A VERY SERIOUS REASON.’

  The lady in the green sweater sat down. A small intense-looking lady with a squint and a dramatic manner arose.

  ‘Friends,’ she said in a deep thrilling voice, ‘last night I went to bed as usual,’ dramatic pause. ‘I went to sleep,’ dramatic pause. ‘I awoke to hear a voice – very faint and in the distance, it seemed to summon me’ – dramatic pause. ‘I arose. It led me down, down, down, growing louder and clearer at every step.

  ‘I found myself in an underground place,’ dramatic pause. ‘Probably the cellars of this building. There’ – long, super-dramatic pause – ‘there I saw – saw more distinctly than I have ever seen a psychic revelation before, saw with my eyes as plainly as I see you all now – a long white figure,’ she was too much worked up now for dramatic pauses – ‘there I heard a voice – heard it more distinctly than I have ever heard a psychic revelation in my life – heard it as plainly as I hear my own voice now.

  ‘The voice said, ‘Stop.’ I turned in terror. I admit I was terrified. The voice pursued me up the stairs. It said, ‘Oh, beware!’ I fled upstairs in terror and there pursued me the sound of sinister menacing spirit laughter. Friends, I feel that the spirits of this house are actively hostile to us. I feel that some terrible calamity may result from our sojourn in this house – I – but before I continue let me ask whether anyone else had any psychic experience in the night.’

  A woman with an indeterminate nose and a lugubrious expression arose.

  ‘I did,’ she said, also in a deep thrilling voice. ‘I thought I heard some disturbance in the night. It may, of course, have been our friend, Mrs Heron, descending the stairs. I came out upon the landing. A door opposite mine was partly open. I opened it and at once something was violently flung into my face. I picked it up. It was a man’s top hat. I looked around the room. It was quite empty. The hat lay now at my feet. The room was a box-room. Obviously the hat had formed part of the collection of articles which I saw piled up about the room. But the important thing is that by no human agency but, friends, by spirit hands that hat had been hurled violently into my face with obviously hostile intent when I opened the door.’

  She sat down. The audience looked pale and tense. In a trembling voice the chairman continued:

  ‘I think that the evidence you have heard is clear and irrefutable. Before I proceed, has anyone else any psychic experience to recount?’

  A small lady with a pale round face and quite circular eyes arose.

  ‘I have,’ she said proudly, ‘though I must admit that it was terrifying at the time, still I cannot help feeling a certain pride as it is the first time that any psychic revelation has been vouchsafed to me – Like our two friends, I thought that I heard a sound in the night. I arose and went on to the landing. There was a closed door opposite. I opened it. The room was empty. I could see every corner of it. I gazed around. Then – I had done nothing except move a chair that stood in my way as I entered – I suddenly saw a – Thing – advancing towards me over the floor.’

  ‘What sort of a thing?’ said an hysterical voice.

  ‘I cannot describe it,’ said the speaker with a shudder. ‘You would have said at first sight that it was a small animal, but it was unlike any animal I have ever seen. The sight of it filled me with horror. It was coming towards me. I flung myself from the room and shut the door. Just in time. I heard it hurl itself against the closed door with a sickening thud – If I had not been in time I am convinced, friends, that I should not be here speaking to you now. One glance at the creature told me that it was something not of this world.’

  She sat down amidst a flutter of excitement. The chairman rose again.

  ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that you have heard enough to prove to you that we cannot with safety remain here. You know that we were offered The Limes in Lofton for our retreat and conference, and I propose that I write to say that we will go on there tomorrow. I will write to the headmistress, who so kindly lent us this school, to explain to her that the psychic conditions are not favourable. I will say no more than that to her. I have all the papers relating to the offer of The Limes in the box which I brought here yesterday when I came to look at the place and make final arrangements. It is, I think, on the table in the Library.’

  The lady of the sundial, looking pale with fright, but still amiable, kindly rose to fetch the box. She returned with it in a few minutes and put it upon the chairman’s desk. The chairman opened it.

  Whitey was rather annoyed by his long captivity. He had finished the Outlaws’ handkerchiefs last night and was feeling hungry again. He remembered the trick that always earned a biscuit. There was a button upon the chairman’s shoulder and it looked to Whitey just like a biscuit. He streaked up her dress to her shoulder, clawed at the button, found it was a button and not a biscuit, bit her ear in a burst of quite justifiable annoyance, became suddenly scared by the uproar on all sides, streaked down again and disappeared as suddenly as he had appeared.

  The unconscious form of the chairman was carried to the front door in order that she might revive the more quickly in the open air, and the meeting proceeded without her. The lady with the indeterminate nose arose again.

  ‘After what we have seen with our own eyes—’ she began in a trembling voice.

  ‘Oh, b-b-b-b-b-but,’ said the hysterical voice, ‘it was only an ordinary white rat.’

  ‘It was something,’ corrected the first speaker darkly and mysteriously, ‘something in the temporary form of a white rat.’

  ‘Oh, you don’t think—?’ panted the hysterical voice.

  ‘I do,’ said the speaker in the low thrilling voice, ‘and I propose that we leave this roof now at once as soon as we can pack up our things and escape while yet we can. We will go to Lofton and if necessary stay in the village till The Limes is ready. I think that we have received warnings it would be foolhardy to disregard.’

  There was a general bustle and flurry as the members of the Society for the Study of Psychical Philosophy arose to pack and escape while yet they could.

  It was the afternoon. The Society for the Study of Psychical Philosophy had departed. The caretaker had been summoned but could not return till late at night. Rose Mount School stood gloriously empty. But not quite empty. The Outlaws were there on the lawn before the house. They had retrieved the parrot (apparently highly amused by the whole proceedings) and the dressing-gown from the cellar. They had taken Whitey, scratching and biting, from beneath the bureau and assuaged his proud spirit with biscuits and cheese. They had fetched Monk and the top hat from the rooms where they had wrought such havoc on the nerves of the Students of Psychical Philosophy last night.

  Ginger had brought Rameses (still in a misanthropic frame of mind). Jumble had come on his own accord, and was at pres
ent engaged in chasing a wasp round a tree.

  William had made a fresh collection of insects and taught them tricks (William’s insects found it very easy to learn ‘tricks.’ Any movement of any sort on their part was explained by William as a ‘trick’). And William was gloriously dressed in the top hat and dressing-gown.

  Joan was there, sitting in a drawing-room chair which William had brought out for her, Joan who had made good her promise to come at all costs, Joan who gazed at William with bright adoring eyes and said ‘Oh, William, isn’t it all lovely!’

  William stood in front. The other Outlaws stood behind, each holding an exhibit. William ‘cracked’ his whip, got it caught inextricably in a neighbouring laurel bush and after a brief inglorious struggle relinquished it.

  ‘Ladies an’ gentlemen,’ said William, ‘you are now goin’ to see the one and only performin’ rat in the world.’

  With that, resplendent in top hat and dressing-gown, glorious, irresistible, monarch of his kingdom, William, the Pirate, the Smuggler, the Red Indian, the Robber Chief, the Ring-master, William the Victorious, William the Ever-Come-Out-On-Top swaggered across the lawn for Whitey.

  CHAPTER 6

  THE MAGIC MONKEY

  ROSE Mount School was really responsible for the whole thing. Rose Mount School was a girls’ school situated near the Outlaws’ native village, and as a girls’ school it was, of course, worthy of only scorn and derision. Yet the sight of the Rose Mount girls dashing about a field in hot pursuit of a ball, armed with curiously shaped sticks, attracted the Outlaws despite themselves, and they would frequently wander round by way of Rose Mount School playing-fields on their way to afternoon school.

  Not that they admitted the slightest interest in Rose Mount hockey. Far from it. They only went that way because they happened to have set out for school rather early, or because they wanted to get some conkers from the wood on the hill, or because they wanted to have a look at Farmer Luton’s pig or – or anything but that despite their manly and heroic natures they were beginning to take an interest in what was in their eyes essentially a girls’ school game. The Outlaws did not yield to this weakness without a struggle. Hockey was not a game played in any self-respecting boys’ school. It was confined to girls’ schools. It was a game suited to inferior beings with inferior powers and an inferior outlook on life. It was unworthy of even a glance from the Outlaws’ manly eyes. And yet – and yet it seemed an interesting sort of game.

  It drew the Outlaws again and again to the road over the hill where from a large gap in the hedge they could furtively watch its progress. Furtively, of course. They still pretended to take no interest in the maidenly sport. But in time they found the attitude of aloof indifference difficult to maintain, and it was a relief to all of them when Ginger announced one afternoon: ‘I say, men play hockey. My cousin told me. They have matches an’ play it same as football.’

  The game having been thus raised to a manly status, they began to discuss openly and eagerly the rules and the procedure of it. They argued fiercely over the capacity of each individual member of the Rose Mount School eleven. In fact, the game became the staple subject of their conversation and the absorbing interest of their lives.

  They would stand crouching together at the gap in the hedge and cheer on the players lustily till an irate mistress came to send them away. Then they found a gate from which they could watch and cheer equally well and when sent away from there would reappear at the gap in the hedge. The irate mistress finally grew tired of sending them away from one place only to see them reappear at another, and, though still irate, began to leave them alone. Hence the dishevelled figures of the four Outlaws, shouting encouragement, cheering excitedly, became a familiar and even gratifying sight to the Rose Mount hockey eleven.

  But it was not likely that merely watching other people play a game would for long satisfy the deeper needs of the Outlaws’ souls. It was while they were discussing the exact nature of ‘offside’ that Ginger said suddenly:

  ‘Their sticks are only sort of walking-sticks upside down an’ – an’ there needn’t be so many of ’em playin’. Any number’d do.’

  That was the last time that Rose Mount eleven had their Outlaw audience, and more than one of them missed the applause that a good shot would win from those four young ruffians crouching together in the gap in the hedge or suspending themselves recklessly over the gate.

  Douglas’s father and Ginger’s father, meeting by accident the next Sunday afternoon, confided to each other that on taking their walking-sticks from the hat-stand they had found the handles deeply encrusted with mud and the varnish entirely worn away. They agreed that it was a curious coincidence.

  The scene where the Outlaws began to practise their new game was the field behind the Old Barn. The game as played by the Outlaws did not conform to the rules of any County Hockey Club, but it appealed to the Outlaws far more than the more conventional game would have done. Caps or coats represented the goals. They ‘bullied’ in correct style as learnt from Rose Mount School, then the real game began.

  They leapt and yelled and brandished their sticks, and hurled themselves upon the ball and tripped each other up and kicked the ball and each other indiscriminately. There were practically no rules. To an impartial observer it was more suggestive of a permanent Rugger scrimmage than anything else, but it was – the Outlaws agreed emphatically – a jolly good game. They played it on every possible occasion. They met early before school to play it, they played it between school, they played it after school.

  Now the Outlaws, whatever they did, were watched and if possible emulated by their schoolmates. Though in the eyes of the grown-up world the Outlaws were the very dregs of boyhood, in the boy world the Outlaws were aristocrats. So by the end of a week innumerable little groups of boys were playing ‘hockey’ with their fathers’ walking-sticks – yelling and leaping and brandishing their sticks, and tripping each other up after the manner of the Outlaws. Gradually these groups began to coalesce.

  The Outlaws found that a game of hockey with six was more exciting than a game of hockey with four, and that a game of hockey with eight was even more exciting than a game of hockey with six. So the Outlaws accepted any kindred souls to swell their ‘team’. Fathers in the locality were mystified that week by an epidemic of mutilation or complete disappearance among walking-sticks.

  The only people whom the Outlaws refused to admit to their team were the Hubert Laneites. Hubert Lane was an enemy of William’s, and the friends of Hubert Lane were enemies of the friends of William. It was an ancient enmity, and no one knew in what it had originated. Hubert Lane was fat and pale, easily moved to tears, slow to endanger his personal safety, given to complaining to his parents and masters when annoyed. ‘I’ll tell my father of you,’ was Hubert’s invariable answer to any verbal or bodily insult. And Mr Lane was in every way worthy of his son, and that is all that need be said about him.

  But, strange to say, Hubert had his following. Hubert had endless pecuniary resources. Hubert’s pockets were always full of sweets, and his larder at home was always full of rich and unhealthy-looking pastries. And there were boys who were willing to swallow Hubert, so to speak, for the sake of these things.

  So by the end of the week the various small hockey groups had resolved themselves into two large rival teams – William’s and Hubert’s. Hubert’s hockey was of a less violent nature than William’s, but the Hubert Laneites were unexpectedly keen. They played in the field behind Hubert’s house. Occasionally they hung over the stile leading to the Outlaws’ field and hurled insults and abuse at the Outlaws, turning to flee to the near and safe refuge of the Lane homestead when the Outlaws started in pursuit.

  Yet nothing might have happened if it hadn’t been for Mrs Lane. Mrs Lane was notoriously lacking in any sort of sense. Mrs Lane had always refused to acknowledge the existence of the Outlaws v. Laneites feud. She was always meeting William’s mother and saying: ‘Our little boys are such friends, Mrs
Brown, you must come in and have tea with me sometime.’ Or she would meet William in the village and pat his head and say: ‘You’re one of my little boy’s school friends, dear, aren’t you?’ She was fat and smiling and placid and incredibly stupid. So it was really Mrs Lane who brought about the whole thing by stopping Mrs Brown in the village and saying smilingly: ‘Our little boys are such friends, aren’t they? And they’re both so keen on this wonderful new game, aren’t they? And they’ve both got teams, haven’t they? Don’t you think it would be a sweet idea for their teams to have a match against each other?’

  Mrs Brown didn’t, but she didn’t say so.

  ‘And you must come in and have tea with me sometime,’ went on Mrs Lane, ‘because our little boys are such friends.’

  And even then nothing might have come of it, but Mr Lane happened to come along at that moment, and his wife said: ‘I’ve just been saying to Mrs Brown that it would be such a sweet idea if Huby’s and Willie’s hockey teams could have a match against each other.’

  Now, Mr Lane, as I have said, was only a more odious edition of his son. But he imagined himself a fine sporting fellow whom all boys adore, and he happened to be in a good temper. So he rubbed his hands and gave a great booming laugh and said, ‘Splendid! A top-hole idea! Huby shall write the challenge tonight.’

  And Huby did. Or rather, Huby’s father did.

  The Outlaws received the challenge with mixed feelings. They welcomed the thought of a scrap with the Laneites. But not a scrap organised and presided over by Mr Lane, who would be sure to write letters of complaint to all their fathers if they happened to lay hands upon Hubert’s sacred person, except with the utmost tenderness and respect.

  William, with the help of the other Outlaws, answered the challenge.

  DEAR SIR

  ‘We have reseeved your letter, and will be very glad to play a hocky match against you on Satday, and we bet you anything you like we will beet you.