Just William (17 page)

Life became very full. It was passed chiefly in the avenging of insults. William cherished a secret hope that the result of this would be to leave him disfigured for life and so unable to attend
the wedding. However, except for a large lump on his forehead, he was none the worse. He eyed the lump thoughtfully in his looking-glass and decided that with a little encouragement it might render
his public appearance in an affair of romance an impossibility. But the pain which resulted from one heroic effort at banging it against the wall caused him to abandon the plan.

Dorita arrived the next week, and with her her small brother, Michael, aged three. Dorita was slim and graceful, with a pale little oval face and dark curling hair.

Miss Grant received her on the doorstep.

‘Well, my little maid of honour?’ she said in her flute-like tones. ‘Welcome! We’re going to be such friends — you and me and William – the bride’ (she
blushed and bridled becomingly) ‘and her little page and her little maid of honour. William’s a boy, and he’s just a
leetle
bit thoughtless and doesn’t realise the
romance of it all. I’m sure you will. I see it in your dear little face. We’ll have some lovely talks together.’ Her eyes fell upon Michael and narrowed suddenly.
‘He’d look sweet, too, in white satin, wouldn’t he?’ turning to Mrs Brown. ‘He could walk between them . . . We could buy some more white satin . . .’

When they had gone the maid of honour turned dark, long-lashed, demure eyes upon William.

‘Soft mug, that,’ she said in clear refined tones, nodding in the direction of the door through which the tall figure of Miss Grant had just disappeared.

William was vaguely cheered by her attitude.

‘Are you keen on this piffling wedding affair?’ she went on carelessly, ‘’cause I jolly well tell you I’m not.’

William felt that he had found a kindred spirit. He unbent so far as to take her to the stable and show her a field mouse he had caught and was keeping in a cardboard box.

‘I’m teachin’ it to dance,’ he confided, ‘an’ it oughter fetch a jolly lot of money when it can dance proper. Dancin’ mice do, you know. They show
’em on the stage, and people on the stage get pounds an’ pounds every night, so I bet mice do, too – at least the folks the mice belong to what dance on the stage. I’m
teachin’ it to dance by holdin’ a biscuit over its head and movin’ it about. It bit me twice yesterday.’ He proudly displayed his mutilated finger. ‘I only caught it
yesterday. It oughter learn all right today,’ he added hopefully.

Her intense disappointment, when the only trace of the field mouse that could be found was the cardboard box with a hole gnawed at one corner, drew William’s heart to her still more.

He avoided Henry, Douglas and Ginger. Henry, Douglas and Ginger had sworn to be at the church door to watch William descend from the carriage in the glory of his white satin apparel, and William
felt that friendship could not stand the strain.

He sat with Dorita on the cold and perilous perch of the garden wall and discussed Cousin Sybil and the wedding. Dorita’s language delighted and fascinated William.

‘She’s a soppy old luny,’ she would remark sweetly, shaking her dark curls. ‘The soppiest old luny you’d see in any old place on
this
old earth, you betcher
life! She’s made of sop. I wouldn’t be found dead in a ditch with her – wouldn’t touch her with the butt end of a bargepole. She’s an assified cow, she is.
Humph!’

‘Those children are a
leetle
disappointing as regards character – to a child lover like myself,’ confided Miss Grant to her intellectual fiance. ‘I’ve tried
to sound their depths, but there are no depths to sound. There is none of the mystery, the glamour, the “clouds of glory” about them. They are so – so material.’

The day of the ordeal drew nearer and nearer, and William’s spirits sank lower and lower. His life seemed to stretch before him – youth, manhood, and old age – dreary and
desolate, filled only with humiliation and shame. His prestige and reputation would be blasted for ever. He would no longer be William – the Red Indian, the pirate, the daredevil. He would
simply be the Boy Who Went to a Wedding Dressed in White Satin. Evidently there would be a surging crowd of small boys at the church door. Every boy for miles round who knew William even by sight
had volunteered the information that he would be there. William was to ride with Dorita and Michael in the bride’s carriage. In imagination he already descended from the carriage and heard
the chorus of jeers. His cheeks grew hot at the thought. His life for years afterwards would consist solely in the avenging of insults. He followed the figure of the blushing bride-to-be with a
baleful glare. In his worst moments he contemplated murder. The violence of his outburst when his mother mildly suggested a wedding present to the bride from her page and maid of honour horrified
her.

‘I’m bein’ made look ridiclus all the rest of my life,’ he ended. ‘I’m not givin’ her no present. I know what I’d
like
to give her,’
he added darkly.

‘Yes, and
I
do, too.’

Mrs Brown forebore to question further.

The day of the wedding dawned coldly bright and sunny. William’s expressions of agony and complaints of various startling symptoms of serious illnesses were ignored by his experienced
family circle.

Michael was dressed first of the three in his minute white satin suit and sent down into the morning-room to play quietly. Then an unwilling William was captured from the darkest recess of the
stable and dragged pale and protesting to the slaughter.

‘Yes, an’ I’ll
die
pretty soon, prob’ly,’ he said pathetically, ‘and then p’r’aps you’ll be a bit sorry, an’ I shan’t
care.’

In Michael there survived two of the instincts of primitive man, the instinct of foraging for food and that of concealing it from his enemies when found. Earlier in the day he had paid a visit
to the kitchen and found it empty Upon the table lay a pound of butter and a large bag of oranges. These he had promptly confiscated and, with a fear of interruption born of experience, he had
retired with them under the table in the morning-room. Before he could begin his feast he had been called upstairs to be dressed for the ceremony. On his return (immaculate in white satin) he found
to his joy that his treasure trove had not been discovered. He began on the butter first. What he could not eat he smeared over his face and curly hair. Then he felt a sudden compunction and tried
to remove all traces of the crime by rubbing his face and hair violently with a woolly mat. Then he sat down on the Chesterfield and began the oranges. They were very yellow and juicy and rather
overripe. He crammed them into his mouth with both little fat hands at once. He was well aware, even at his tender years, that life’s sweetest joys come soonest to an end. Orange juice
mingled with wool fluff and butter on his small round face. It trickled down his cheeks and fell on to his white lace collar. His mouth and the region round it were completely yellow. He had
emptied the oranges out of the bag all around him on the seat. He was sitting in a pool of juice. His suit was covered with it, mingled with pips and skin, and still he ate on.

His first interruption was William and Dorita, who came slowly downstairs holding hands in silent sympathy, two gleaming figures in white satin. They walked to the end of the room. They also had
been sent to the morning-room with orders to ‘play quietly’ until summoned.

‘
Play?
’ William had echoed coldly. ‘I don’t feel much like
playing.
’

They stared at Michael, open-mouthed and speechless. Lumps of butter and bits of wool stuck in his curls and adhered to the upper portion of his face. They had been washed away from the lower
portion of it by orange juice. His suit was almost covered with it. Behind he was saturated with it.

‘
Crumbs!
’ said William at last.

‘
You’ll
catch it,’ remarked his sister.

Michael retreated hastily from the scene of his misdeeds.

‘Mickyth good now,’ he lisped deprecatingly.

They looked at the seat he had left – a pool of crushed orange fragments and juice. Then they looked at each other.

‘
He’ll
not be able to go,’ said Dorita slowly.

Again they looked at the empty orange-covered Chesterfield and again they looked at each other.

‘Heth kite good now,’ said Michael hopefully.

Then the maid of honour, aware that cold deliberation often kills the most glorious impulses, seized William’s hand.

‘Sit down.
Quick!
’ she whispered sharply.

Without a word they sat down. They sat till they felt the cold moisture penetrate to their skins. Then William heaved a deep sigh.

‘We can’t go now,’ he said.

Through the open door they saw a little group coming – Miss Grant in shining white, followed by William’s mother, arrayed in her brightest and best, and William’s father, whose
expression revealed a certain weariness mingled with a relief that the whole thing would soon be over.

‘Here’s the old sardine all togged up,’ whispered Dorita.

‘William! Dorita! Michael!’ they called.

Slowly William, Dorita and Michael obeyed the summons.

When Miss Grant’s eyes fell upon the strange object that was Michael, she gave a loud scream.

‘
Michael!
Oh, the
dreadful
child!’

She clasped the centre of the door and looked as though about to swoon.

Michael began to sob.

‘
Poor
Micky,’ he said through his tears. ‘He feelth tho thick.’

They removed him hastily.

‘Never mind, dear,’ said Mrs Brown soothingly, ‘the other two look sweet.’

But Mr Brown had wandered further into the room and thus obtained a sudden and startling view of the page and maid of honour from behind.

‘What? Where?’ he began explosively.

William and Dorita turned to him instinctively, thus providing Mrs Brown and the bride with the spectacle that had so disturbed him.

The bride gave a second scream – shriller and wilder than the first.

‘Oh, what have they done? Oh, the
wretched
children! And just when I wanted to feel
calm.
Just when all depends on my feeling
calm.
Just when—’

‘We was walkin’ round the room an’ we sat down on the Chesterfield and there was this stuff on it an’ it came on our clothes,’ explained William stonily and
monotonously and all in one breath.

‘
Why
did you sit down?’ said his mother.

‘We was walkin’ round an’ we jus’ felt tired and we sat down on the Chesterfield and there was this stuff on it an’ it came on—’

‘Oh,
stop
! Didn’t you
see
it there?’

William considered.

‘Well, we was jus’ walkin’ round the room,’ he said, ‘an’ we jus’ felt tired and we sat—’

‘
Stop
saying that.’

‘Couldn’t we make
cloaks
,’ wailed the bride, ‘to hang down and cover them all up behind? It wouldn’t take long—’

Mr Brown took out his watch.

‘The carriage has been waiting a quarter of an hour already,’ he said firmly. ‘We’ve no time to spare. Come along, my dear. We’ll continue the investigation after
the service. You can’t go, of course, you must stay at home now,’ he ended, turning a stern eye upon William. There was an unconscious note of envy in his voice.

‘And I did so
want
to have a page,’ said Miss Grant plaintively as she turned away.

Joy and hope returned to William with a bound. As the sound of wheels was heard down the drive he turned head over heels several times on the lawn, then caught sight of his long-neglected
alpenstock leaning against a wall.

‘Come on,’ he shouted joyfully. ‘I’ll teach you a game I made up. It’s mountaineerin’.’

She watched him place a plank against the wall and begin his perilous ascent.

‘You’re a mug,’ she said in her clear, sweet voice. ‘I know a mountaineering game worth ten of that old thing.’

And it says much for the character and moral force of the maid of honour that William meekly put himself in the position of pupil.