William the Fourth (9 page)

‘There’s something quite rejuvenating about it all, William,’ she murmured. She had her fortune told by a Gipsy Queen, who prophesied an early marriage with one of her many
suitors.

She went again on the roundabout, she had another coconut-shy she went on the Switchback, the Fairy Boat, and the Wild Sea Waves. William trailed along behind her. He refused to venture on the
Wild Sea Waves, and watched her on them with a certain grudging admiration.

‘Crumbs!’ he murmured, ‘she must have gotter inside of
iron
!’

Finally Aunt Jane espied a stall at a distance. Under a flaring gas-flame a man in a white coat was pulling out long strings of soft candy. Aunt Jane approached.

‘What an appetising odour!’ commented Aunt Jane. ‘Do you think he’s
selling
it?’ William thought he was.

And the glorious climax of that strange night was the sight of Aunt Jane standing under the flaring gas-jet devouring soft pull-out candy

‘ ’Ullo! ’Ere’s the gime old bird,’ said a man passing.

‘I don’t see any bird, do you?’ said Aunt Jane to William, peering round with her short-sighted eyes, ‘but this is a very palatable confection, is it not?’

Then a clock struck, and into Aunt Jane’s face came the look that Cinderella’s face must have worn when the clock struck twelve.

‘William,’ she said, ‘that surely was not ten?’

‘Sounded
like ten,’ said William.

Aunt Jane put down her last stick of pull-out candy unfinished.

‘We – we ought to go,’ she said weakly.

‘Well,’ said William’s mother when they returned. ‘I do hope it wasn’t too tiring for you.’

Aunt Jane sat down on a chair and thought. She thought over the evening. No, she couldn’t really have done all that – have seen all that. It was impossible – quite impossible.
It must be imagination. She must have seen someone else doing all those things. She must have gone quietly round with William and watched him enjoy himself. Of course that was all she’d done.
It must have been. The other was unthinkable.

So she smiled, a patient, weary little smile.

‘Well, of course,’ she said, ‘I’m a little tired but I think William enjoyed it.’

CHAPTER 6

‘KIDNAPPERS’

T
here was quite a flutter in the village when the d’Arceys came to the Grange. A branch of
the
d’Arcey family, you know. Lord
d’Arcey and Lady d’Arcey and Lady Barbara d’Arcey. Lady Barbara was seven years of age. She was fair, frilly, fascinating. Lady d’Arcey engaged a dancing-master to come down
from London once a week to teach her dancing. They invited several of the children of the village to join. They invited William. His mother was delighted, but William – freckled, untidy, and
seldom clean – was horrified to the depth of his soul. No entreaties or threats could move him. He said he didn’t care what they did to him; he said they could kill him if they liked.
He said he’d rather be killed than go to an ole dancing class anyway, with that soft-looking kid. Well, he didn’t care who her father was. She
was
a soft-looking kid, and he
wasn’t going to
no
dancing class with her. Wildly ignoring the rules that govern the uses of the negative, he frequently reiterated that he
wasn’t
going to
no
dancing class with her. He wouldn’t be seen speaking to her, much less dancing with her.

His mother almost wept.

‘You see,’ she explained to Ethel, William’s grown-up sister, ‘it puts us at a sort of disadvantage. And Lady d’Arcey is so
nice,
and it’s
so
kind
of them to ask William!’

William’s sister, however, took a wholly different view of the matter.

‘It might put them,’ she said, ‘a good deal more against us if William
went
!’

William’s mother admitted that there was something in that.

William lay in the loft, reclining at length on his front, his chin resting on his hands. He was engaged in reading. On one side of him stood a bottle of liquorice water, which
he had made himself; on the other was a large slab of cake, which he had stolen from the larder. On his freckled face was the look of scowling ferocity that it always wore in any mental effort. The
fact that his jaws had ceased to work, though the cake was yet unfinished, testified to the enthralling interest of the story he was reading.

‘Black-hearted Dick dragged the fair maid by the wrist to the captain’s cave. A bottle of grog stood at the captain’s right hand. The captain slipped a mask over his eyes, and
smiled a sinister smile. He twirled his long black moustachios with one hand.

‘“Unhand the maiden, dog,” he said.

‘Then he swept her a stately bow.

‘“Fair maid,” he said, “unless thy father bring me sixty thousand crowns tonight, thy doom is sealed. Thou shalt swing from yon lone pine-tree!”

‘The maiden gave a piercing scream. Then she looked closely at the masked face.

‘“Who – who art thou?” she faltered.

‘Again the captain’s sinister smile flickered beneath the mask.

‘“Rudolph of the Red Hand,” he said.

‘At these terrible words the maiden swooned into the arms of Black-hearted Dick.

‘“A-ha,” said the grim Rudolph, with a sneer. “No man lives who does not tremble at those words.”

‘And again that smile curved his dread lips, as he looked at the yet unconscious maiden.

‘For well he knew that the sixty thousand crowns would be his that even.

‘ “Let her be treated with all courtesy – till tonight,” he said as he turned away’

William heaved a deep sigh and took a long draught of liquorice water.

It seemed an easy and wholly delightful way of earning money

‘They’re awfully nice people,’ said Ethel the next day at breakfast, ‘and it is so kind of them to ask us to tea.’

‘Very,’ said Mrs Brown, ‘and they say, “Bring the little boy”.’

The little boy looked up, with the sinister smile he had been practising.

‘Me?’ he said. ‘Ha!’

He wished he had a mask, because, though he felt he could manage the smile quite well, the narrative had said nothing about the expression of the upper part of Rudolph of the Red Hand’s
face. However, he felt that his customary scowl would do quite well.

‘You’ll come, dear, won’t you?’ said Mrs Brown sweetly.

‘I wouldn’t make him,’ said Ethel nervously. ‘You know what he’s like sometimes.’

Mrs Brown knew. William – a mute, scowling protest – was no ornament to a drawing-room.

‘But wouldn’t you like to meet the little girl?’ said Mrs Brown persuasively.

‘Huh!’ ejaculated William.

The monosyllable looks weak and meaningless in print. As William pronounced it, it was pregnant with scorn and derision and sinister meaning. He curled imaginary moustachios as he uttered it. He
looked round upon his assembled family. Then he uttered the monosyllable again with a yet more sinister smile and scowl. He wondered if Rudolph of the Red Hand had a mother who tried to make him go
out to tea. He decided that he probably hadn’t. Life would be much simpler if you hadn’t.

With another short, sharp ‘Ha!’ he left the room.

William sat on an old packing-case in a disused barn.

Before him stood Ginger, who shared the same classroom in school and pursued much the same occupations and recreations out of school. They were not a popular couple in the neighbourhood.

William was wearing a mask. The story had not stated what sort of mask Rudolph of the Red Hand had worn, but William supposed it was an ordinary sort of mask. He had one that he’d bought
last Fifth of November, and it seemed a pity to waste it. Moreover, it had the advantage of having moustachios attached. It covered his nose and cheeks, leaving holes for his eyes. It represented
fat, red, smiling cheeks, an enormous red nose, and fluffy grey whiskers. William, on looking at himself in the glass, had felt a slight misgiving. It had been appropriate to the festive season of
November 5th, but he wondered whether it was sufficiently sinister to represent Rudolph of the Red Hand. However, it was a mask, and he could turn his lips into a sinister smile under it, and that
was the main thing. He had definitely and finally embraced a career of crime. On the table before him stood a bottle of liquorice water with an irregularly printed label: GROG. He looked round at
his brave.

‘Black-hearted Dick,’ he said, ‘you gotter say, “Present”.’

He was rather vague as to how outlaws opened their meetings, but this seemed the obvious way

‘Present,’ said Ginger, ‘an’ it’s not much fun if it’s all goin’ to be like school.’

‘Well, it’s
not,’
said William firmly, ‘an’ you can have a drink of grog – only one swallow,’ he added anxiously, as he saw Black-hearted Dick
throwing his head well back preparatory to the draught.

‘That was a jolly big one,’ he said, torn between admiration at the feat and annoyance at the disappearance of his liquorice water.

‘All right,’ said Ginger modestly. ‘I’ve gotter big throat. Well, what we goin’ to do first?’

William adjusted his mask, which was not a very good fit, and performed the sinister smile.

‘We gotter kidnap someone first,’ he said.

‘Well, who?’ said Ginger.

‘Someone who can pay us money for ’em.’

‘Well, who?’ said Ginger irritably.

William took a deep draught of liquorice water.

‘Well, you can think of someone.’

‘I like that,’ said Ginger, in tones of deep dissatisfaction. ‘I
like
that. You set up to be captain and wear that thing, and drink up all the liquorice
water—’

‘Grog,’ William corrected him, wearily.

‘Well, grog, an’ then you don’t know who we’ve gotter kidnap. I like that. Might as well be rat hunting or catching tadpoles or chasin’ cats, if you don’t
know what we’ve gotter do.’

William snorted and smiled sneeringly beneath his bilious-looking mask.

‘Huh!’ he said. ‘You come with me and I’ll find someone for you to kidnap right enough.’

Ginger cheered up at this news, and William took another draught of liquorice water. Then he hung up his mask behind the barn door and took out of his pocket a battered penknife.

‘We may want arms,’ he said; ‘keep your dagger handy’

He pulled his school cap low down over his eyes. Ginger did the same, then looked at the one broken blade of his penknife.

‘I don’t think mine would
kill
anyone,’ he said. ‘Does it matter?’

‘You’ll have to knock yours on the head with something,’ said Rudolph of the Red Hand grimly. ‘You know we may be imprisoned, or hung, or somethin’, for
this.’

‘Rather!’ said Ginger, with the true spirit of the bravado, ‘an’ I don’t care.’

They tramped across the fields in silence, William leading. In spite of his occasional exasperation, Ginger had infinite trust in William’s capacity for attracting adventure.

They walked down the road and across a stile. The stile led to a field that bordered the Grange. Suddenly they stopped. A small white figure was crawling through a gap in the hedge from the park
into the field. William had come out with no definite aim, but he began to think that Fortune had placed in his way a tempting prize. He turned round to his follower with a resonant
‘Shh!’, scowled at him, placed his finger on his lips, twirled imaginary moustachios, and pulled his cap low over his eyes. Through the trees inside the park he could just see the
figure of a nurse on a seat leaning against a tree trunk in an attitude of repose. Suddenly Lady Barbara looked up and espied William’s fiercely scowling face.

She put out her tongue.

William’s scowl deepened.

She glanced towards her nurse on the other side of the hedge. Her nurse still slumbered. Then she accosted William.

‘Hello, funny boy!’ she whispered. Rudolph of the Red Hand froze her with a glance.

‘Quick!’ he said. ‘Seize the maiden and run!’

With a dramatic gesture he seized the maiden by one hand, and Ginger seized the other. The maiden was not hard to seize. She ran along with little squeals of joy.