‘Crumbs!’ said William, remembering the title of a book he had read lately. ‘Talk about Dogged by Fate!’
With that thought came the thought of the hero of the book, Dick the Dauntless. He’d have thought nothing of a thing like that. He’d have thought nothing of taking on Sam and Albert and Leopold all together and licking them. He’d have just walked up to them and let them see that they’d jolly well better leave him alone in future. He’d have just laughed at that dog eating up all the pie. William promptly uttered a harsh sound and Cæsar cocked an ear and looked up apologetically. William was not a romancist for nothing. He had ceased to be William. Dick the Dauntless swaggered down the path to the gate with a dark scowl on his face.
Sam peered through the dusk.
‘Well,’ he said, eagerly. ‘What ’v’ you got?’
Through the bushes Cæsar swallowed the last mouthful of veal and ham pie and sat back with an expression of seraphic happiness, and Jumble humbly came forward to lick the dish.
‘Nothin’, you – you ole varlets,’ cried Dick the Dauntless. ‘An’ I jolly well won’t get anything, ever – till death – so there – an’ you jus’ clear off from outside my house, or I’ll—’
He flung himself upon Sam. Sam, who was taken by surprise, rolled into the ditch. Albert and Leopold rushed upon William, Sam crawled out of the ditch to join them, and the battle began.
‘It’s gone,’ said Mrs Brown. ‘Simply gone.’ The three men looked at her in bewilderment.
‘The veal and ham pie,’ exclaimed Mrs Brown. ‘The one we were going to have for supper. Cook says she put it in the larder only two minutes ago, and now it’s gone – simply gone. No one’s been through the kitchen. Cook’s been near the larder door all the time. Some tramp must have seen it through the window and taken it and—’
‘He can’t have gone far,’ said Mr Brown.
Mr Beal sprang up.
‘Let’s catch him,’ he said. ‘He’s probably eating it in the shrubbery now.’
The three men went out and gazed upon the darkening garden. A faint cracking of twigs in the shrubbery reached them. In single file and on tiptoe they set out. At last they discerned a dim figure in front of them carrying something in its arms and accompanied by a dog.
‘There he is!’
‘Quietly! We’ll get him!’
‘He’s made friends with Cæsar!’
‘Quite a small man.’
Almost a boy.’
There was a horrible suspicion at the heart of William’s father, but he followed with the rest. The figure disappeared behind a laurel bush. They followed, still on tiptoe.
Behind the bush they found only Cæsar finishing the remains of the pie and Jumble watching him with wistful envy
‘Catch the old villain before he makes off,’ said Mr Beal, and they hastened on to the hedge at the end of the garden and looked over it. There a glorious sight met their eyes. Dick the Dauntless was fighting for his life against hundreds of foes. He punched and butted and dodged and closed. Thousands fell at each stroke. He was dimly aware of three heads watching him over the hedge, but he had no time to look at them. He heard vague sounds, such as:
‘Go it, William!’
‘Get one in now, old chap!’
‘Jolly good! Jolly good!’
‘Give it ’em strong!’
Albert, with a bewildered cry of ‘Oh, ’elp!’ and a bleeding nose, began to run off towards home. There was very little left of Dick the Dauntless, but with a desperate effort he flung Leopold into the ditch, whence Leopold crawled forth and followed Albert. Only Sam was left. Sam was large and no coward, and, in spite of a bruised eye, would have kept up the fight longer had not Cæsar appeared.
One glance at Cæsar was enough for Sam. Echoing Albert’s cry of ‘Oh, ’elp!’ he fled for dear life down the road. Then Dick the Dauntless vanished, and William, his collar burst, his tie streaming, his coat torn, his ear bleeding, turned to survey his audience of three from a quickly closing eye.
William, in his pyjamas, pondered for a moment over the mystery of human life as he bestowed those few perfunctory brushes upon his shock of hair that constituted its evening toilet. He had that day committed almost every crime known to boyhood.
He had brought ‘common’ boys home.
He had stolen a pie.
He had fought openly on the high road.
He had spoilt his collar and tie and coat, and acquired a thoroughly disreputable black eye.
Finally, turning from these crimes, fully expecting to meet with retribution at the hands of his family, he had been acclaimed as a hero. He was bewildered. He did not understand it. He did not know why he was a hero instead of a criminal. Anyway, it wasn’t worth bothering over, and, anyway, he was going to have a jolly fine black eye, he thought proudly. He turned a somersault from his chair to his bed, which was his normal manner of entering it, and drew the clothes up to his chin. Before he finally surrendered to the power of sleep, he summed up his chief impressions of the evening.
‘They’re jolly queer, grown-ups are,’ he said, sleepily. ‘Jolly queer!’
CHAPTER 8
THE NATIVE PROTÉGÉ
The person who was ultimately to blame was the secretary of the Dramatic Society of the school of which William was a humble member. The Dramatic Society had given an historical play in which Christopher Columbus was depicted among the aborigines of America. William was too unimportant a member of the institution which served him out his daily ration of education to figure on the stage, but he was a delighted spectator in the back row. Christopher Columbus interested him not at all. Christopher Columbus was white, and except for his rather curious and violently anachronistic costume, looked exactly as the postman or William’s own father might look. But the aborigines! William could not take his eyes from them. They were Jones Minor and Pinchin Major and Goggles, and all that crew. Of course he knew that. Yet how different – how rapturously different. Browned from head to foot – a lovely walnut brown. It made their eyes look queer and their teeth look queer. It set them in a world apart. It must feel ripping. William decided then and there that his life’s happiness could never be complete till he had browned himself like that. He wondered whether brown boot polish would do it. Knife polish might. Something must.
He went out with the stream of spectators at the end in a golden dream of happiness. He saw himself, browned from head to foot, brandishing some weapon and dancing on bare brown feet in a savage land. He was so rapt in his daydream that he collided with a tall lank sixth-form boy who was coming along the passage carrying a box.
‘Look out where you’re going, can’t you?’ said that superior individual coldly. ‘Do you want me to drop this stuff all over the place?’
He pointed with a languid hand to ‘this stuff.’ ‘This stuff’ was sticks of brown and red and black greasepaint, pots of cold cream, and tins of powder.
William’s eyes brightened.
‘Shall I carry it for you?’ he said meekly. ‘So’s to save you trouble?’
The sixth-form boy started. William’s attitude towards his intellectual superiors generally lacked that respect which is the due of intellectual superiors.
‘Er – all right,’ he said, handing the box to William and walking on down the passage.
William walked meekly behind with the box in his arms. Very neatly as he turned the corner he transferred two sticks of brown greasepaint from the tray to his own pocket. He sternly informed his conscience (never a very active force with William and quite easily subdued) as he did so that he’d helped to pay for the beastly things, hadn’t he, anyway, by paying (or getting his mother to pay) two shillings for a rotten seat in the rotten back row, where he could only see by squinting round the feather in Dawson’s mother’s hat, and anyway he’d like to know whose business it was but his. His conscience retired, completely crushed.
At the door of the sixth-form room he handed the box to the secretary of the Dramatic Society.<
br />
The secretary of the Dramatic Society entered the holy sanctum.
‘That young Brown’s manners,’ he remarked patronisingly to his peers, ‘seem to be improving.’
William surveyed the effect in the looking-glass. It was perfect. He had completely used up the two sticks of brown greasepaint upon the exposed parts of his person. He found the question of clothing rather a difficulty. He possessed no garment of the type that the aborigines had worn, but his ordinary suit was, of course, unthinkable. Football shorts seemed better – and a green football shirt that had been Robert’s. They partook in some way of the nature of fancy dress. Robed in them he surveyed himself again in the glass and a blissful smile stole over his cocoa-hued face. He was a perfect aborigine. It only remained to go out into the world to seek adventures.
Adventures came readily to William even when attired and coloured simply as a boy. He hardly dared to think what might happen to him as an aborigine – provided, of course, that he could get clear of the parental abode. Otherwise his mahogany career might come to an abrupt and untimely end. He looked cautiously out of the window. There was no one in sight. He lowered himself to earth by means of a tree that grew conveniently near his window.
‘William!’
The voice came from the drawing-room.
William beat a hasty retreat into a clump of laurel and remained motionless.
‘I’m sure I heard that boy . . . William!’
He decided to take the bull by the horns.
‘Yes, Mother!’ he called obediently.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m jus’ sittin’ in the garden an’ thinkin’, Mother,’ said William, in a voice of honeyed wistfulness.
Mrs Brown, deeply touched, sought out her husband.
WILLIAM SURVEYED HIMSELF AGAIN IN THE GLASS, AND A BLISSFUL SMILE STOLE OVER HIS COCOA-HUED FACE.
‘You know, dear,’ she said, ‘there’s something awfully sweet about William sometimes.’
William, having gained the open field, felt a sensation of extreme relief. For some time he crawled about in ditches tracking imaginary wild animals and scalping imaginary white men. Then the occupation began to pall, and he began to regret having carried off the coup in solitude. A few more aborigines might have been jollier. However, the brown was staying on all right, and that was a comfort. He left the fields and went into the woods. There he ran and leapt and climbed trees for a blissful half-hour. He also shot an entire menagerie of animals and slaughtered innumerable hosts of white men unaided. He went along the woods, then across three fields (by way of the ditches), and then down the valley, and then close by the side of a garden with which he was not previously acquainted. And it looked an interesting garden – just the sort of garden for an aborigine intent upon enjoying life to the full. He saw a shrubbery, an orchard, a stream, and some very climbable trees. He scrambled through a hole in the hedge to the detriment of the green football shirt and shorts. Then he ran riot in the jungle and along the sides of the raging torrent. In a fierce encounter caused by the joint attack of a lion and elephant and a rhinoceros (William did things upon a large scale) he ran (in pursuit, not in flight) to the further end of the shrubbery. There he was surprised to find an open lawn and a large concourse of people. The people sat in rows in chairs. There was something expectant in their expression. A tall man in black was standing in front of them with a watch in his hand. They were obviously waiting for something. When they saw William they rose as one man.
‘There he is,’ they said.
Before the bewildered William could realise what was happening they surrounded him on all sides and drew him on to the lawn. The clergyman held him by the hand.
‘Don’t be frightened, little boy,’ he said kindly.
‘I don’t suppose he understands English,’ said a tall, thin lady in a small sailor hat. ‘They don’t, you know – out there.’
A large motherly woman bore down upon him with a glass of milk and a bun. William was hungry. In moments of uncertainty his rule was to lie low and take the good things provided by the gods without question. Moreover, it was perhaps safer in the circumstances not to understand English – at any rate, not till he had consumed the bun and milk. They led him to a table facing the audience and put the bun and milk before him. People in the farther rows of chairs craned their necks to see him. He gave them his inscrutable frown in the intervals of drinking and consuming large mouthfuls of bun. The man stood up and addressed the gathering in a high-pitched, drawling voice.
‘I need not inform my friends that we – er – see before us our – er – little protégé from Borneo and – er – let me say that he – er – does us credit.’ He placed his hand upon William’s head and looked down at William with a proud smile.
Meeting William’s unflinching, unsmiling glare, his smile faded and he quickly drew back his hand.
‘Er – credit,’ he resumed, putting a hand to his collar as he moved a step farther from William, ‘to – er – those who may be strangers here this afternoon let me say that we – er – of this – er – parish have – er – for the past two years – made ourselves responsible for the – er – rearing and – er – education of a little native of Borneo.’
He paused for applause, which was set going by the Vicar’s wife, who was the tall, thin lady in the small sailor hat.
‘The Reverend Habbakuk Jones, who is – er – at the native mission school, has come – er – over to see us – bringing – er – our little native protégé.’ Again he smiled lovingly and drew near to William. William, whose mouth was fuller of currant bun than European etiquette would have sanctioned, raised his face, and, without interrupting the process of mastication, gave Mr Theophilus Mugg such a look as sent him precipitately to the farther end of the table.
‘Er – protégé,’ said Mr Theophilus Mugg uncomfortably. ‘The Reverend Habbakuk Jones wrote this – er – morning to say that he would call with the – er – child’ – he looked distrustfully at William – ‘and leave him in our – er – loving care – while he – er – visited a relative in the – er – vicinity. He – er – promised to be – er – with us – by half past three to – er – deliver his address. He – er – evidently dropped his address. He – er – evidently dropped the – er – little boy – at the gate and – er – will soon be – er – present himself.’
He sat down as far away from William’s eye as possible and wiped his brow. A crowd with a large preponderance of the feminine element gathered round William as he drained the last drop of milk. A fat, motherly woman handed him a piece of chocolate gingerly, as though he were a strange sort of wild animal.
‘I wonder if he’ll speak,’ said someone wistfully.
‘I expect he’ll make some sort of thanks for the bun and milk and chocolates,’ suggested someone else.
‘Not in English, I expect,’ said a third hopefully.
William rose to the occasion.
‘Blinkely men ong,’ he said clearly. There was a murmur of rapt admiration.
‘Hindustani, I believe,’ said the Vicar’s wife doubtfully. ‘My father was in India several years.’
William soared to further heights.
‘Clemmeny fal tog,’ he said.
‘The darling!’ said the old lady. ‘I’m sure he’s saying something beautiful.’ She held out a second slab of chocolate. ‘I love those Eastern languages, so – musical.’
WILLIAM ROSE TO THE OCCASSION. ‘BLINKELY MEN ONG,’ HE SAID CLEARLY.
‘It’s certainly Hindustani,’ said the Vicar’s wife. ‘It all comes back to me.’
‘Oh, what was he saying?’
‘He was saying,’ said the Vicar’s wife, ‘ “Thank you for your kindness and food.” ’
‘How beautiful!’ said the fat lady, handing him a third slab of chocolate. ‘I was taking this home for my son,’ she explained, ‘but I’d much rather give it to our dear little native protégé. Isn’t it a beautiful thought that we reared
and clothed him all this time?’
‘I distinctly remember making that little green shirt,’ said the Vicar’s wife.
‘Bluff iffn,’ said William, who was growing bold.
‘The angel!’ said the fat lady. ‘Doesn’t it make you feel you’d do anything for him? What’s his name?’ she said to Mr Theophilus Mugg. ‘I’d love to call him by his name.’
‘I – er – am not sure of his name,’ said Mr Theophilus Mugg with dignity.
‘But wasn’t it mentioned in the letter?’
‘It was spelt,’ said Mr Theophilus Mugg with increasing dignity. ‘Needless to say, it was not pronounced. I have no wish to make myself ridiculous in the boy’s eyes.’
‘The mystery of these dark-skinned races,’ said the Vicar’s wife. ‘The beautiful inscrutable faces of them. The knowledge, the wisdom they seem to hold.’
‘Certainly it is not an English cast of countenance,’ said Mr Theophilus Mugg.
‘Bunkum allis lippis,’ said William, feeling that something further was expected of him.
‘Most certainly Hindustani,’ said the Vicar’s wife.
It was here that a small voice piped from the back row, ‘It’s William Brown!’
William, who was enjoying himself intensely, glared fiercely in the direction of the voice.
‘Hush, hush, dear!’ said the shocked voice of a parent. ‘Of course it isn’t William Brown. It’s a poor little boy from a distant land over the sea – or India’s coral strand,’ she murmured vaguely.
‘It is William Brown,’ persisted the shrill voice.
‘He may bear a resemblance to William Brown,’ said the parent, ‘but William Brown is white, I suppose, and this little boy is black.’
‘Yes,’ said a small, half-convinced voice, ‘I s’pose so.’
They approached the table.
‘My little girl,’ said the parent pleasantly, ‘sees a resemblance in the child to one of her schoolfellows.’
‘Would you like to talk to the little boy?’
William Again Page 10
