More William (18 page)

Peggy stood upon the seat and obeyed. Their victim made no protest. He seemed to himself to be in some horrible dream. The only thing of which he was conscious was the dimly descried weapon that
William held out at him in the darkness. He was hardly aware of the waste-paper basket thrust over his head. He watched William anxiously through the basketwork.

‘Be careful,’ he murmured. ‘Be careful, boy!’

He hardly felt the skin which was fastened tightly round his unresisting form by Peggy, the tail tied to one front paw. Unconsciously he still clasped a bottle of brandy in each arm.

Then came the irate summons of Peggy’s nurse through the dusk.

‘Oh, William,’ she said panting with excitement, ‘I don’t want to leave you. Oh, William, he might
kill
you!’

‘You go on. I’m all right,’ he said with conscious valour. ‘He can’t do nothin’ ’cause I’ve got a gun an’ I can shoot him dead’
– Mr Percival Jones shuddered afresh – ‘an’ he’s all tied up an’ I’ve took him prisoner an’ I’m goin’ to take him home.’

‘Oh, William, you
are
brave!’ she whispered in the darkness as she flitted away to her nurse.

William blushed with pride and embarrassment.

Mr Percival Jones was convinced that he had to deal with a youthful lunatic, armed with a dangerous weapon, and was anxious only to humour him till the time of danger was over and he could be
placed under proper restraint.

Unconscious of his peculiar appearance, he walked before his captor, casting propitiatory glances behind him.

‘It’s all right, little boy,’ he said soothingly, ‘quite all right. I’m – er – your friend. Don’t – ah – get annoyed, little boy.
Don’t – ah – get annoyed. Won’t you put your – gun down, little man? Won’t you let me carry it for you?’

William walked behind still pointing his popgun.

‘I’ve took you prisoner for smugglin’,’ he repeated doggedly. ‘I’m takin’ you home. You’re my prisoner. I’ve took you.’

They met no one on the road, though Mr Percival Jones threw longing glances around, ready to appeal to any passer-by for rescue. He was afraid to raise his voice in case it should rouse his
youthful captor to murder. He saw with joy the gate of his boarding house and hastened up the walk and up the stairs. The drawing-room door was open. There was help and assistance, there was
protection against this strange persecution. He entered, followed closely by William. It was about the time he had promised to read his ‘little effort’ on the Coming of Spring to his
circle of admirers. A group of elderly ladies sat round the fire awaiting him. Ethel was writing. They turned as he entered and a gasp of horror and incredulous dismay went up. It was that gasp
that called him to a realisation of the fact that he was wearing a waste-paper basket over his head and shoulders, and that a mangy fur was tied round his arms.

‘Mr
Jones
!’ they gasped.

He gave a wrench to his shoulders and the rug fell to the floor, revealing a bottle of brandy clasped in either arm.

‘Mr
Jones
!’ they repeated.

‘I caught him smugglin’,’ said William proudly. ‘I caught him smugglin’ beer by the sea an’ he was drinking those two bottles he’d smuggled an’ he
had thousands an’
thousands
of cigars all over him, an’ I caught him, an’ he’s a smuggler, an’ I brought him up here with my gun. He’s a smuggler
an’ I took him prisoner.’

Mr Jones, red and angry, his hair awry, glared through the wickerwork of the basket. He moistened his lips. ‘This is an outrage,’ he spluttered.

Horrified elderly eyes stared at the incriminating bottles.

‘He was drinkin’ ’em by the sea,’ said William.

‘Mr
Jones
!’ they chorused again.

He flung off his waste-paper basket and turned upon the proprietress of the establishment who stood by the door.

‘I will not brook such treatment,’ he stammered in fury. ‘I leave your roof tonight. I am outraged – humiliated. I – I disdain to explain. I – leave your roof
tonight.’

‘Mr
Jones
!’ they said once more.

Mr Jones, still clasping his bottles, withdrew, pausing to glare at William on his way.

‘You
wicked
boy! You
wicked
little,
untruthful
boy,’ he said.

William looked after him. ‘He’s my prisoner an’ they’ve let him go,’ he said aggrievedly.

Ten minutes later he wandered into the smoking-room. Mr Brown sat miserably in a chair by a dying fire beneath a poor light.

‘Is he still bleating there?’ he said. ‘Is this still the only corner where I can be sure of keeping my sanity? Is he reading his beastly poetry upstairs? Is
he—’

‘I CAUGHT HIM SMUGGLIN’,’ WILLIAM EXPLAINED PROUDLY. ‘HE HAD THOUSANDS AN’ THOUSANDS OF CIGARS AND THAT BEER!’

‘He’s goin’,’ said William moodily. ‘He’s goin’ before dinner. They’ve sent for his cab. He’s mad ’cause I said he was a smuggler. He
was a smuggler ’cause I saw him doin’ it, an’ I took him prisoner an’ he got mad an’ he’s goin’. An’ they’re mad at me ’cause I took him
prisoner. You’d think they’d be glad at me catchin’ smugglers, but they’re not,’ bitterly. ‘An’ Mother says she’ll tell you an’ you’ll be
mad too an’—’

Mr Brown raised his hand.

‘One minute, my son,’ he said. ‘Your story is confused. Do I understand that Mr Jones is going and that you are the cause of his departure?’

‘Yes, ’cause he got mad ’cause I said he was a smuggler an’ he was a smuggler an’ they’re mad at me now, an’—’

Mr Brown laid a hand on his son’s shoulder.

‘There are moments, William,’ he said, ‘when I feel almost affectionate towards you.’

CHAPTER 12

T
o William the idea of reform was new and startling and not wholly unattractive. It originated with the housemaid whose brother was a reformed
burglar now employed in a grocer’s shop.

‘’E’s got conversion,’ she said to William. ‘’E got it quite sudden, like, an’ ’e give up all ’is bad ways straight off. ’E’s
bin like a heavenly saint ever since.’

William was deeply interested. The point was all innocently driven in later by the Sunday-school mistress. William’s family had no real faith in the Sunday school as a corrective to
William’s inherent wickedness, but they knew that no Sabbath peace or calm was humanly possible while William was in the house. So they brushed and cleaned and tidied him at 2.45 and sent
him, pained and protesting, down the road every Sunday afternoon. Their only regret was that Sunday school did not begin earlier and end later.

Fortunately for William, most of his friends’ parents were inspired by the same zeal, so that he met his old cronies of the weekdays – Henry, Ginger, Douglas and all the rest –
and together they beguiled the monotony of the Sabbath.

But this Sunday the tall, pale lady who, for her sins, essayed to lead William and his friends along the straight and narrow path of virtue, was almost inspired. She was like some prophetess of
old. She was so emphatic that the red cherries that hung coquettishly over the edge of her hat rattled against it as though in applause.

‘We must all
start afresh
,’ she said. ‘We must all be
turned
– that’s what
conversion
means.’

William’s fascinated eye wandered from the cherries to the distant view out of the window. He thought suddenly of the noble burglar who had turned his back upon the mysterious, nefarious
tools of his trade and now dispensed margarine to his former victims.

Opposite him sat a small girl in a pink and white checked frock. He often whiled away the dullest hours of Sunday school by putting out his tongue at her or throwing paper pellets at her
(manufactured previously for the purpose). But today, meeting her serious eye, he looked away hastily.

‘And we must all
help someone
,’ went on the urgent voice. ‘If we have
turned
ourselves, we must help someone else to
turn
. . .’

Determined and eager was the eye that the small girl turned upon William, and William realised that his time had come. He was to be converted. He felt almost thrilled by the prospect. He was so
enthralled that he received absent-mindedly, and without gratitude, the mountainous bull’s eye passed to him from Ginger, and only gave a half-hearted smile when a well-aimed pellet from
Henry’s hand sent one of the prophetess’s cherries swinging high in the air.

After the class the pink-checked girl (whose name most appropriately was Deborah) stalked William for several yards and finally cornered him.

‘William,’ she said, ‘are you going to
turn
?’

‘I’m goin’ to think about it,’ said William guardedly.

‘William, I think you ought to turn. I’ll help you,’ she added sweetly.

William drew a deep breath. ‘All right, I will,’ he said.

She heaved a sigh of relief.

‘You’ll begin
now,
won’t you?’ she said earnestly.

William considered. There were several things that he had wanted to do for some time, but hadn’t managed to do yet. He had not tried turning off the water at the main, and hiding the key
and seeing what would happen; he hadn’t tried shutting up the cat in the hen house; he hadn’t tried painting his long-suffering mongrel Jumble with the pot of green paint that was in
the tool shed; he hadn’t tried pouring water into the receiver of the telephone; he hadn’t tried locking the cook into the larder. There were, in short, whole fields of crime entirely
unexplored. All these things – and others – must be done before the reformation.

‘I can’t begin
jus’
yet,’ said William. ‘Say day after tomorrow.’

She considered this for a minute.

‘Very well,’ she said at last reluctantly, ‘day after tomorrow.’

The next day dawned bright and fair. William arose with a distinct sense that something important had happened. Then he thought of the reformation. He saw himself leading a
quiet and blameless life, walking sedately to school, working at high pressure in school, doing his homework conscientiously in the evening, being exquisitely polite to his family, his instructors,
and the various foolish people who visited his home for the sole purpose (apparently) of making inane remarks to him. He saw all this, and the picture was far from unattractive – in the
distance. In the immediate future, however, there were various quite important things to be done. There was a whole normal lifetime of crime to be crowded into one day. Looking out of his window he
espied the gardener bending over one of the beds. The gardener had a perfectly bald head. William had sometimes idly imagined the impact of a pea sent violently from a pea-shooter at the
gardener’s bald head. Before there had been a lifetime of experiment before him, and he had put off this one idly in favour of something more pressing. Now there was only one day. He took up
his pea-shooter and aimed carefully. The pea did not embed itself deeply into the gardener’s skull as William had sometimes thought it would. It bounced back. It bounced back quite hard. The
gardener also bounced back with a yell of anger, shaking his fist at William’s window. But William had discreetly retired. He hid the pea-shooter, assumed his famous expression of innocence,
and felt distinctly cheered. The question as to what exactly would happen when the pea met the baldness was now for ever solved. The gardener retired grumbling to the potting shed, so, for the
present, all was well. Later in the day the gardener might lay his formal complaint before authority, but later in the day was later in the day. It did not trouble William. He dressed briskly and
went down to breakfast with a frown of concentration upon his face. It was the last day of his old life.

No one else was in the dining-room. It was the work of a few minutes to remove the bacon from beneath the big pewter cover and substitute the kitten, to put a tablespoonful of salt into the
coffee, and to put a two-day’s-old paper in place of that morning’s. They were all things that he had at one time or another vaguely thought of doing, but for which he had never yet
seemed to have time or opportunity. Warming to his subject he removed the egg from under the egg cosy on his sister’s plate and placed in its stead a worm which had just appeared in the
window box in readiness for the early bird.