William in Trouble (9 page)

‘Mrs Franks sent you this, sir,’ he said in his most expressionless voice, staring in front of him fixedly.

Mr Markson’s face beamed with joy.

‘
Sent
it?’ he gasped.

‘Yes, sir,’ said William, speaking monotonously, as though he were repeating a lesson. ‘An’ she said please will you not write to her about it or thank her or ever
mention it to her please, sir.’

At the conclusion of this breathless speech William paled and blinked, still staring fixedly before him. But old Markie beamed with joy.

‘What delicacy of feeling that displays,’ he said. ‘A lesson indeed to the cruder manners of this age. How – how
exceptionally
kind!’ He held the china piece
on his hand. ‘The third! What almost incredible good fortune! The third! Now to put it with its two fellows.’

He walked across to the front room and entered it. He looked from the image in his hand to the empty table where that image had stood only a few hours ago. He looked from table to image, from
image to table, and again from table to image. Then he turned for an explanation from William.

But William was no longer there.

CHAPTER 4

C
ONTINUOUS rain had put a stop to the usual activities of the Outlaws. The game of Red Indians, if played in a perpetual downpour, palls after an
hour or two, and even the absorbing pastime of Pirates loses its savour when it has reached a certain pitch of dampness.

So the Outlaws assembled in the leaky old barn and from its inadequate shelter watched the rain despondently.

‘Seems ’s if it’s goin’ on for ever,’ said Ginger with gloomy interest.

‘P’raps it is,’ said Henry. ‘P’raps it’s the end of the world comin’.’

‘I bet I’m the last person left alive if it is,’ said William boastfully, ‘’cause I can float on my back for hours an’ hours, an’
hours
!’

‘
Floatin
’ won’t be no good,’ objected Douglas, ‘you’d get et up by fishes and things.’

‘Oh,
would I
!’ said William with scornful emphasis. ‘I’d take a big knife in one pocket an’ a pistol in the other an’—’

‘It wun’t shoot, all wet,’ said Ginger firmly.

‘It would. I’d have special bullets,’ said William pugnaciously. ‘I
bet
it would.’

‘Oh, shut up about bullets an’ fishes an’ things,’ said Henry, ‘let’s try ’n think of something to
do.
’

‘Well, what
is
there to do?’ said William irritably, annoyed by this interruption of his alluring description of himself as the sole survivor of a submerged world.
‘I’d swim to the highest mountain in the world what there’d be a teeny bit of the top still showin’ an’ I’d stay there till the rain stopped an’ then
I’d come down an’ walk all over the world in everyone’s houses an’ shops an’ take everything out of all the shops and use everyone’s things—’

‘Everything’d be
wet
’ objected Ginger.

‘It’d soon dry,’ said William optimistically. ‘I’d dry it. I’d light fires.’

‘You couldn’t. The coal’d be all wet,’ said Ginger.

‘Oh, shut
up –
what are we going to do now?’ said Henry again.

‘Let’s have a newspaper,’ said Douglas suddenly.

They looked at him with interest.

‘A newspaper?’ said William slowly, as though he were weighing the idea judicially.

‘Yes,’ said Douglas eagerly. ‘Write one, you know an’ someone be editor. The editor’s a sort of chief man—’

‘I’ll be that,’ put in William hastily.

‘An’ each write somethin’ for it jus’ like a real newspaper.’

‘An’ what about printin’?’ said Henry the practical.

‘Oh, we can settle all that later,’ said Douglas vaguely. ‘It’s gotter be
wrote
first.’

Henry looked somewhat sombrely round the barn with its bare walls and sodden floor and dripping roof. Its only furniture consisted of a few old packing-cases, which the Outlaws generally
utilised for their games on wet days, and an old coil of rope.

‘Doesn’t look much to write a newspaper
with
,’ he said gloomily.

‘Well, we c’d easily
get
things,’ said the newly-appointed editor, with an air of stern and frowning leadership. ‘’F you keep findin’
’
bjections
we shan’t ever get
anything
done.’

‘’
Bjections!
’ said Henry staring. ‘I like that! Me findin’ ’
bjections
when I only
jus
’ said there wasn’t anythin’ to
write a paper
with.
Well, look for yourself.
Is
there anything to write a newspaper with?’

William looked round at the packing-cases, the leaking roof and the coil of rope.

‘Seems all right to start on,’ he said optimistically. ‘Anyway, we only want jus’ a bit of paper an’ a few pencils jus’ at first.’

‘Well, we haven’t gottem have we?’ said Henry simply.

‘No, but you can eas’ly run an’ gettem,’ said William.

‘Oh, I can, can I?’ said Henry indignantly. ‘Oh, an’ what about me getting all wet out in the rain?’

‘Don’t suppose it’ll do you any harm,’ said William callously.

‘No, an’ I don’t suppose it’d do
you
any harm,’ retorted Henry with spirit.

‘No, but I’m going to be busy gettin’ things ready here,’ said William.

‘So’m I,’ said Henry firmly.

It was finally agreed, however, that both Henry and William should go in search of material for the newspaper. The expedition was rendered more interesting by a realistic pretence that the
Outlaws were a besieged army and that Henry and William were two heroes who had volunteered to creep through the enemy’s lines in search of provender for their starving comrades.

Ginger, writhing about the floor of the barn, simulated to his own entire satisfaction the agonies of one suffering from the pangs of extreme hunger. No one took much notice of him, but he did
not mind. He was thoroughly enjoying his own performance.

Douglas set up a rival show by making a pretence of eating one of the packing-cases which he said was a dead horse.

William and Henry with great ostentation of secrecy crept through the hedge that represented the enemy’s lines and across the field to the road, where they separated.

William swung along the road. It was still raining. His gait alternated between swagger and caution, according as the rôle of world famous editor or creeper through an enemy’s lines
in search of provender for his starving comrades, was uppermost in his mind.

It was still raining. He looked up with a certain apprehension, not unmixed with interest, at the smoking chimneys of the Hall as he passed it. At the Hall lived Mr Bott of Bott’s Sauce,
with his wife and daughter. Mr and Mrs Bott were negligible in William’s eyes. Not so the daughter. Violet Elizabeth Bott was a maiden of six years, with a lisp, an angelic face and a will of
iron.

She cultivated and used for her own purpose a scream that would have put a factory siren to shame and which was guaranteed to reduce anyone within ten yards of it to quite an expensive nervous
breakdown. It had never yet been known to fail. William dreaded and respected Violet Elizabeth Bott. She had been away on a holiday with her family for the last month, but William knew that they
had returned yesterday.

He hoped that she would leave them in peace for that day at least. She cherished an affection for the Outlaws which was not reciprocated though they were helpless against her weapons. Then
William remembered that he was editor of a world-famous newspaper, and throwing a contemptuous laugh in the direction of the Hall chimneys, swaggered on scornfully down the road.

As he neared his house he met a young man with curly hair and a nice mouth walking slowly and despondently down the road with a fishing rod in his hand. He gave William a pleasant smile.

William’s stern countenance did not soften. He knew all about that young man and all about that smile. That young man was an undergraduate of Cambridge, who was staying at the village inn
for a week’s fishing.

For the first few days the fishing had given him complete satisfaction. On the third day he had seen William’s pretty nineteen-year-old sister Ethel, and, after that, he had spent most of
his time hanging about the road that led past the Browns’ house, trying to make friends with William (who did not respond) or taking unauthorised snapshots of Ethel whenever she passed him on
the road.

Today the young man looked excited, despite the rain. He had yesterday, by a master stroke of tact and persistence, made friends with the Vicar and had been invited to a party at the Vicarage
which was to take place that afternoon.

He was now anxious to know whether Ethel would be there.

‘Good afternoon,’ said the young man effusively to William.

‘G’afternoon,’ said William without enthusiasm and without stopping.

William had a hearty contempt for all Ethel’s admirers. As he frequently and bitterly remarked, he couldn’t see what people ‘saw in’ Ethel.

‘I say – wait a minute,’ said the young man desperately.

William, still scowling, slowed down ungraciously.

‘Is – I say – is your sister going to the Vicarage party this afternoon?’ said the young man blushing.

As he spoke his hand stole to his pocket.

William stopped and his scowl faded. A hand stealing to a pocket put quite a different complexion on the matter.

‘Uh-huh?’ said William with his eye on the hand.

‘I say, is your sister coming to the Vicarage party this afternoon?’ said the young man.

William had enough knowledge of the young man’s state of mind to realise that in this case an affirmative answer would be better paid than a negative one.

‘Yuh,’ he said.

‘You mean she is?’ said the young man.

‘Yuh,’ said William.

The young man brought out a half-crown and pressed it rapturously into William’s hand.

William, clasping it firmly, retreated into the house.

William’s task was to collect pencils. Henry’s was to supply the paper. William collected pencils, and in collecting pencils as in everything else he was very thorough. He seemed to
attract pencils like a magnet. They left their hiding-places of bureaus and davenports and attaché cases and pockets and boxes and flocked into his possession. For days afterwards the adult
members of the Brown family were indignantly accusing each other of having taken each other’s pencils, nor was peace restored till Mr Brown brought back a large supply of fresh pencils from
the City.

In the drawing-room William found Ethel reading a novel.

‘I say, Ethel!’ said William, ‘you are goin’ to the Vicarage party this afternoon, aren’t you?’

‘No,’ said Ethel.

‘I thought you were,’ said William.

‘Well, I’m not. I said I’d got another engagement. I don’t want to go to a beastly dull Vicarage party. And, anyway,’ with sisterly ungraciousness,
‘what’s it got to do with you?’

‘Oh, nothin’,’ said William airily, looking round the room to make sure that it concealed no more pencils.

Then, with a reassuring ‘All right, I won’t,’ to his mother, whose voice was now heard entreating him plaintively from upstairs not to get wet, he went out into the rain once
more, his ‘bag’ of pencils concealed in his pockets.

The young man was still in the lane, but with his back to him. William had an uneasy suspicion that a course of absolute probity demanded a report of the fact that Ethel would not be at the
party and a return (or, at any rate, an offer of the return) of the half-crown which had obviously been obtained under false pretences.

William, however, remembered suddenly and with relief that he was a disguised spy bringing aid to a beleagured army through the lines of the enemy (one of whom, of course, was the young man with
curly hair) and crouching low in the shadow of the hedge, he managed to pass the young man without attracting his attention.

Henry was at the barn with his ‘bag’ of paper when William reached it. Henry, too, had done well. He had brought an unused drawing book that belonged by rights to his younger sister,
the four middle pages from all his school exercise books (more than four invites comment and demands for explanations), all the envelopes and foolscap he could find, and a piece of very elegant
mauve note-paper stamped with his address that he had found on his mother’s bureau.

William had brought, as well as his pencils, a false moustache and a wig, chiefly consisting of baldness, which belonged to his elder brother Robert. These were meant to shed lustre on his
editorial rôle. He donned them immediately on entering the barn. Then, with an air of businesslike concentration, he dealt out paper and pencil. The editorial staff (late Outlaws) fought each
other for the best packing-cases and the dryest spots on the floor of the barn, and finally took their places and what remained of the paper and pencils after the fight.

‘Well,’ said Henry rather gloomily, ‘how’re we goin’ to
start?
’

‘Gotter think of a name first, I s’pose.’

There was silence while the Outlaws thought.

‘
Outlaws
’
Daily Times
,’ said Ginger at last.

‘That means doin’ it every day whether it rains or not!’ jeered Douglas. ‘Not likely.’

‘
Outlaws
’
Weekly Times
, then,’ said Ginger.

‘
Not
every week, neither,’ said Douglas very firmly.

‘Why not
Outlaws
’
Telegraph?
’ said Henry.

‘’Cause it’s
not
a telegraph, silly,’ said William, ‘it’s a
newspaper
.’

‘Well, why not have
Outlaws
’
and District Times?
’ said Douglas, ‘same as the one we take in at home?’

This title met with no objection. The name
Outlaws
’
and District Times
was adopted.

‘Now we’ve gotter write news,’ said William cheerfully. William sat, moustached and wigged, at the biggest packing-case.

‘But there
isn’t
any news,’ objected Henry, ‘nothin’s happened ’cept rain.’

‘Well, say it’s been rainin’ then,’ said Douglas encouragingly.