by Edith Nesbit
However, we forbore to chide, and when she had a newspaper cape and apron and was a Puritan Maiden and we were Royalists in despair, she liked it better.
Of course “Mon Abri” was ripping for all sorts of games. Sieges, or Children of the New Forest, and everything you can think of. There were green wooden shutters outside the windows, that fastened with a hook inside and also with a hook outside. Thus you could make the house almost dark even on the brightest day, but some light always came down the chimney.
It was a ripping place to read aloud in. We got heaps of books down there quite soon. And we kept grub there. It was a jolly house.
“I wonder,” Clifford once pensively said, “how such a house could be deserted?”
“Damp, I expect,” Olive said so quickly that I knew she was thinking of ghosts.
“I’d be afraid to sleep here, I know,” said Madeline, who never notices hints and little things like that.
“I expect it’s too small really for grownups,” said Olive in haste, “but it’s just the right size for us, isn’t it?”
It was.
Besides our own books we sometimes had Father’s. And it was Father’s Hereward the Wake in the tree-calf binding, which really we oughtn’t to have taken without asking, that got left down there one day, and Clifford never thought of it until eight o’clock, and Father was coming home that night. So Clifford, ever a slave to duty, and besides it was his fault it was taken down there at all, and he would have caught it hot if discovered, said he’d go and get it. And Martin said he’d come too. Clifford owns he was not sorry. He is not afraid of the dark any more than you are, but woods are very lonely at night if you are alone in them. And they are dark too.
We got down to the house and Clifford collared the book — he knew just where to lay his hand on it — and he and Martin were just going out when there was a step outside Clifford thought it was the others trying to take a rise out of us, so he said “Hist!” and pulled Martin into the corner cupboard and we held our breaths there, intending to jump out on the others if they were trying to frighten us, but otherwise just to emerge gently and reasonably with biscuits in our hands.
Judge of our horror and dismay when we heard through the dark the deep base voice of a perfect stranger.
“Why, ‘ere is the key, and the door’s open,” it said in hoarse tones, that must have convicted the least observing hearer of his being a criminal. Now Clifford is very observing. Martin is too, of course. So they held each other — and their breaths — in the cupboard till I thought we should have burst.
“Strike a light, Bill,” the voice now said.
“Not till we’ve got the shutters to,” said another base voice. Bill, I suppose.
“‘E said there was shutters.”
They blundered out again, and I said to Martin, “Fly!” Because I knew they must be tramps, even if they weren’t the criminals I was sure they were. And, anyhow, you never know.
But before we could get to the door to begin our flying they were back, and they came in and shut the door — and we went on holding our breaths in the cupboard. It made me think of the master-genius of Mr. Paul Neumann, who wrote that thrilling book, A Villain of Parts, and I tell you I did not half like it, because I hadn’t a geological hammer like the chap in the book, or, indeed, any means of self-defence except fists — and we knew by the base voices of them that we should not be up to their weight.
“‘E said upstairs,” said one of the men, and then it came to Clifford what they were after. “Light up, can’t ye?”
There was no doubt in Clifford’s mind that these criminals had come to the deserted cottage after booty, the fruit of some bandit like crime committed by one of their gang — most likely the one they meant when they said “‘E.”
A match was struck; we heard it, but it was as they went upstairs. There was no furniture upstairs, you remember. “Hope ‘e wasn’t kiddin’ of us,” the basest one said. We both heard that.
“Fly!” I said.
And Martin flew (or is it fled?).
Now it is an odd thing that the criminals, for such there seemed no doubt they must be, came in the dark and couldn’t have known all about the furniture — yet they never knocked against a single thing. Yet Martin, who knew in daylight exactly where every table and chair was, went blundering into the settle with his boots with a noise like the thunders of Jove, and knocked a chair over with a noise words fail the author about. The present writer owns that having caused these rash acts Martin now showed the greatest presence of mind. Instead of considering concealment to be at an end, as too many boys would have done, and cutting off with the noise of boots and a yell, he stole out of the house on tiptoe, and in a perfectly noiseless manner crept round the house and concealed himself under the lean-to shed formed by the boards of the chicken-house, that we had piled up against the side of the house in the wood. Of course I only knew this afterwards.
Clifford did not follow him because the noise of Martin and the furniture fetched the criminals down in a winking.
They struck a match and saw the overturned chair.
“We best be making a bunk,” said the basest.
“Sst! Listen,” said the one who was not so base.
They listened, and owing to Clifford’s holding his breath almost unbearably in the cupboard and Martin’s masterly and silent retreat, not a sound was heard.
“’Twasn’t nothing,” said he whom I will now call Mr. Base.
“What about that, then?” said Mr. Other, as we will now term him. And the match went out as he pointed to a fallen chair.
“A fox. You may lay to it it was an ole fox,” said Mr. Base, “come in for shelterlike, and smelt human flesh and went out again.”
“Good thing ‘e didn’t go for us then,” said Mr. Other. “My father’s cousin was bit by a wild cat once, something chronic.”
“We won’t have any more of these ‘ere foxes in ‘ere, anyhow.” said Mr. Base, and he bolted the door. More, he bolted it at the top. It is a bolt that we never use because it is very rusty, and it sticks so that human aid is despaired of, and you have to use the hammer to it.
Then they went upstairs, and I heard them grunting and moving about.
Now, gentle reader, what would you have done if you had been Martin? And what would you have done if you had been me?
I never was one of those that called Martin a sneak, because he did the only sensible thing and bunked off home to fetch help. Nor was I one of those who considered it cowardly of Clifford to seek escape from his desperate situation by the only means possible. Some people did, but I will not say who, only pausing to add that before you begin to be down on people for things, you should consider what you would do yourself if it had happened to happen to you.
Clifford was perfectly sick of holding his breath in that beastly cupboard. It was very stuffy, besides which it smelt of paraffin and putty and the herring we had meant to toast for tea the Thursday before last and then forgotten all about. Clifford remembered the herring now, enough to make up for all the forgettings of all of us.
He listened. Dead silence reigned above. He lit a match and cautiously lighted a candle end that he knew was on the shelf somewhere. He had to feel among the herring for it, but no matter. Then, very cautiously, like a spy or a gentleman-adventurer, and not in the least like a sneak, he crept across the room and examined the door.
Too true. The top bolt was shot home with all the brutal force of a strong man’s arm. The windows were all shuttered fast, and the shutters only undid from the outside!
“Shades of heroes,” he said, or would have said if there had been anyone to say it to—”shades of heroes, what on earth am I to do?”
He looked around for means of egressing himself. He had not the least idea what Martin was doing. Martin might be just waiting outside, or he might have gone to fetch help. Even if the latter, help might not come for ages, and Clifford felt that he simply could not go on holding his breath for ever, espec
ially near that herring.
He saw quite plainly that these men were desperate characters: they had come to this house to search for something which a third man had said was upstairs.
“It might be almost anything,” Clifford told himself, “a missing will, or a hoard of jewels — pot of gold, or kegs of smuggled tobacco.”
You may blame Clifford; you may think he ought boldly to have gone upstairs in the dark and asked the Bases what they were doing, and defied the false traitors in their teeth. All I can say is, I wish it had been you there instead of Clifford.
What he did do required all the courage of our boy hero. He very quietly picked up the fallen chair and set it near the door without making the slightest noise. Then he took off his boots. Then he mounted, sock-footed, up on the chair and tried the bolt earnestly. It wasn’t the least good; he had known it wouldn’t be.
Then the great idea came to him. He remembered how the light had come down the chimney, and how he and the others had squinted up and seen quite a large hole at the top where a lamented chimney-pot had fallen off and now lay among the nettles on the estate below. I once got up the hall chimney at home after a cricket ball that happened to go slick down when we were playing catch on the roof. The ball had stuck on a ledge and we got it all right. But that was by daylight with the sympathizing others below and not, as now, with criminals of the deepest die within a yard or two of the bold climber.
But Clifford did it. He went up that chimney with knees and elbows, and he got to the top with no noise at all I am certain. And it was a tight fit, but just not too tight. But when the dauntless climber (braver, believe me, than many a roped guide on an Alp that so much fuss is made about in the papers) got to the part of the chimney where it gets narrow, he found that though his head went through easily enough, his shoulders refused to follow. At least his shoulders did their best, but the masonry stood firm. So he tried to get his head back and it wouldn’t come, twist and turn as he would, and he was afraid to twist and turn too generously for fear his feet would give way and him be left hanging by his head in the chimney, a fate that all, I am sure, would shun. But he didn’t lose his head even when he found he couldn’t get it back. He simply decided that he must follow it at all costs. So he got his foot on a brick and shoved for all he was worth. He felt something giving, and shoved harder, and next moment his shoulders shot up out of the chimney. But an awful weight on them made him put his hand up as soon as he could get it clear. And he found that the weight was bricks. The top course had come away with his shoving, and there he was with a solid collar of bricks round his neck and a noise of falling mortar rustling down the thatch and bumping on the planks below with a row that would have betrayed his presence even to the deafest. Unless of course, stone. And under the thatch he heard movement and voices.
“They shan’t get my legs, anyway,” he said, and drew them up and got into the cool open air, which was very dark and quiet in the wood and the night.
Clifford now cautiously endeavoured, by every means in his power, to remove his collar. This is very difficult when the collar is of brick. Also it hurts. And anyhow his efforts were quite vain. He sat astride of the roof with the ends of the thatch pricking his stockinged feet and that fatal brick collar holding his young throat in its heavy embrace, and wondered what would happen next. He could still hear from under the thatch the stealthy murmurings and movings of the two desperate characters from which he was seeking to escape. All too well he knew that such characters stick at nothing.
He turned on the roof ridge — as well as he could for the weight of the collar — and wondered whether it would break his neck if he slid down that part of the roof which reaches nearly to the ground. He could not decide the question, and it was as he sat irresolute that he heard the terrible sound of the key turning in the door. And he thought he had left the key outside when he went in! A slight rustling sound below and next moment a dark head appeared above the bottom line of the thatch.
Clifford is glad that he was not able to loosen his brick collar. He tried to fervently, and if success had crowned his efforts he would certainly have let it slide down the roof on to the approaching head and perhaps been a brothericide. For next moment the head said “Hullo!” in a mysterious whisper and began climbing up the thatch. And it was Martin. The collar remained firm.
Clifford was never so glad to see anyone before, though if it had been Martin with bricks round his neck I do not suppose Clifford would have choked with laughter and nearly fallen off the roof on account of it, even if the moon did choose that moment for coming out and illuminating the brick collar with Dianistic splendour.
“Shut up, you duffer!” whispered Clifford with his stiff neck. “Have you fetched anyone?”
“I met William — I told him — he’s gone to fetch the police. They’ll be here in a sec.”
“Did you come back alone?”
“Yes,” whispered Martin. “I thought if I could get you out we could lock them in, and when I heard all that row and saw you on the roof I just turned the key. And we’ve got ‘em, old chap, we’ve got ‘em!” Clifford could not help thinking that it was jolly decent of Martin to come back like that all on his own. Many boys would not have. And as Clifford has an open, generous nature he told Martin what he thought of him. And there are boys who would not have done that either. And through the woods in the dark, too. The more Clifford thought of it afterwards the more he thought of it. That looks like nonsense, doesn’t it? But it’s all right really if you think a bit.
So there we were hanging on to that roof beneath which the baffling criminals surged.
“Remember the first-floor windows have all got bars,” Martin said, and I am almost sure he winked, though you can’t be quite so certain by moonlight.
“Rather,” Clifford responded.
And then there were voices and lanterns, and the rescue party arrived. There were William and Bilson, who is our coachman, and the Police, whose private name is Jackson. The Police had got his truncheon, and William had got an old gun that hadn’t been let off for twenty years — for he told me afterwards — and Bilson had got Father’s revolver out of his shaving-stand drawer — and behind them came the person who had given him the revolver, and this person was a woman. And the woman was Miss Knox.
“Jolly plucky of her too, I call it,” Martin murmured, and then Clifford called out with presence of mind:
“Don’t shoot — it’s us up here, Clifford and Martin.”
So they didn’t shoot, but halted on the other side of the house where there are no windows.
“The criminals are safe inside,” said Clifford, calm on the roof ridge as Lord Nelson on the soon-to-be-bloodstained deck of the Victory.
“All shutters and doors are fastened outside. I wish someone would come up here and get these bricks off my neck.”
“Terrible!” cried the voice of Miss Knox, “they’ve tied bricks round the dear child’s neck. Thank Heaven, we’re in time. In another moment they might have drowned the darling in a pond like they do with puppies.”
Have you ever been called a dear child and a darling by a person you don’t like? And in public. The present author has been. He knows.
“Assist the poor dear,” cried Miss Knox, who would come out with them, William told me afterwards. “Nothin’ short of laying her out would ‘a stopped her,” he said. But her words were needless, as so often happens to be.
Already William was up at the thatch and Jackson after him. And when they saw the brick collar round Clifford’s neck they laughed! With criminals eminent below, and Clifford having gone through what he had they could laugh! Such, alas, is poor human nature. But they got the bricks off all right, and then we all got down — on the windowless side, and then Bilson said: “Now for these ‘ere criminals. Surrender, or I fire!” The revolver was not loaded, some people think, but strict truth is wasted on the truly vicious.
“Criminal yourself,” was the unexpected reply from inside the house; “�
��ere, you let us out and ha’ done with it.”
“Not much we don’t,” William answered, keeping well against the wall, and Miss Knox screamed.
“Oh, don’t let them out! For my sake, don’t let them out!”
“What are you doing here?” the Police said, and the astonishing answer was:
“I’ve ‘ad my fill of Charry Table gents, to last me all my time, so I ‘as. Let us out, guvner.”
“There’s a large body of persons here,” said Bilson, “and all highly armed” — I don’t know how he could. “Do you surrender?”
“Course we do, if you will ‘ave it. Hannythink you like. Let us out o’ this.”
“How did you get into it?” said the thin voice of Miss Knox. “You breast make a clean best of it,” said William muddlingly.
“There ain’t nothing to breast about, you silly cuckoo,” said the base voice from inside of our house. “Your parson, we asked him fourpence for a doss — and you can lag us for begging, so you can, and do it and be blessed to you. And ‘e give us this ‘ere key — an’ ‘e says, ‘You’ll find two rugs under the loose board number four from the window in the front room upstairs, ‘e says—’and welcome,’ says ‘e. ‘Good-night, brothers, and bring back the key in the morning,’ ‘e says. ‘I’ve lent that key a many times, and it alius comes ‘ome to roost as regular as the milk in the morning,”e says. And now, look at you,” said the base voice, getting angrier. “First, foxes in the furniture, and then ghostes round the walls with howls in the chimbley to follow, toppin’ up with ostriches roostin’ on the roof and spittin’ out the stones what they eats all down the thatch. And then you.”
“Ostriches don’t...” Miss Knox began, even at that moment ready to contradict.
