William the Good (3 page)

William glued his eye to the crack in the door and watched her.

She took a piece of silver from a table and slipped it into her handbag and then returned to the drawing-room, without noticing him. He stood for a minute motionless, amazed. Crumbs!
Crumbs!
She was like the girl in the book. She stole as well as being a secret drinker. He must do something at once. He must get the thing she’d stolen and put it back in its place
again. That was what the boy in the book had done.

He returned to the morning-room. They hadn’t begun the trial reading yet: they were all talking at once. They were discussing recent social happenings in the village. Mrs Jones, as a
newcomer, was feeling slightly out of it, and Mrs Jones had a lively sense of her own importance
and
did not like feeling out of it. She had previously, of course, been kept in countenance
by Mrs Morton, and she was still wondering what had made Mrs Morton go off like that. But there was no doubt at all that people weren’t making enough fuss of her, so she rose and said with an
air of great dignity:

‘Mrs Hawkins, I am suffering from a headache. May I go into your drawing-room and lie down?’

She had often found that that focused the attention of everyone upon her. It did in this instance. They all leapt to their feet solicitously, fussed about her, escorted her to the drawing-room,
drew down the blinds and left her well pleased with the stir she had made.

This, she thought, ought to assure the part of Rosalind for Blanche. They wouldn’t surely risk making her headache worse by giving the part to anyone else. Meanwhile, William was seated
upon the floor between Betty Hawkins and Ethel. His whole attention was focused upon Ethel’s bag which she had carelessly deposited upon the floor. Very slowly, very furtively, inch by inch,
William was drawing it towards him. At last he was able to draw it behind him. No one had seen. Betty and Ethel were talking about the play.

‘Do, I don’t really bind what I ab,’ Ethel was saying, untruthfully.

Very skilfully, William took the silver dish out of the bag, slipped it into his pocket and put back the bag where it had been before. Then, murmuring something about going to look at the books
again, he slipped from the room and went back to the drawing-room to replace it. He had quite forgotten Mrs Jones, but just as he was furtively replacing the dish upon the table, her stern,
accusing voice came from the dark corner of the room where the couch stood.

‘What are you doing, boy?’

William jumped violently.

‘I – I – I’m putting this back,’ he explained.

‘What did you take it away for?’ said Mrs Jones still more sternly. William hastened to excuse himself.

‘I din’ take it,’ he said. ‘Ethel took it,’ then, hastening to excuse Ethel. ‘She – she sort of can’t help taking things. I always,’ he
added virtuously, ‘try’n put back the things she’s took.’

Mrs Jones raised herself, tall and dignified, from her couch.

‘Do you mean to say,’ she said, ‘that your sister
stole
it.’

‘Yes,’ said William. ‘She does steal things. We always try’n put them back when we find things she’s stole. I found this just now in her bag.’

‘A kleptomaniac,’ exclaimed Mrs Jones, ‘and I am expected to allow my daughter to associate with such people!’

Quivering with indignation, she returned to the morning-room. William followed her.

‘Feeling better?’ said Mrs Hawkins brightly, ‘because if you are, I think we might begin the reading.’

‘I find,’ said Mrs Jones icily, ‘that I cannot, after all, stay for the reading. I must be getting home at once. Come, Blanche!’

When she’d gone, Mrs Hawkins looked about her in helpless amazement.

‘Isn’t it
extraordinary?
’ she said. ‘I simply can’t understand it. It’s an absolute mystery to me what’s come over them. Now, have I said a
single thing that could have annoyed them?’

They assured her that she hadn’t.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘it’s just as well to have no dealings with people as unaccountable as that, so, Ethel dear, you’d better take Rosalind after all.’

‘Thag you so buch,’ said Ethel gratefully.

‘You’ve got a little cold, haven’t you?’

‘Yes, I hab,’ admitted Ethel, ‘perhaps I’d better go hobe dow. Bother asked me to ask you kidly to led her a bodbod dish and Betty kidly let me hab this frob the
drawing-roob.’

She opened her bag.

‘It’s god,’ she gasped.

William was looking very inscrutable, but his mind was working hard. There was more in this, he decided, than had met his eye.

Betty had gone into the drawing-room and now returned with the bonbon dish.

‘You never took it,’ she said.

‘But I did,’ persisted Ethel. ‘I dow I did. It’s host bysterious.’

‘You’d better get home to bed, my dear,’ said Mrs Hawkins.

‘Yes. I’m
awfully
glad I’b goig to be Rosalid. Cub od, Williab.’

William did not speak till they’d reached the road. Then he said slowly:

‘She’d
lent
you that silver thing Ethel?’

‘Of course,’ said Ethel shortly.

‘An – an’ you’ve – you’ve got a bad cold?’ he continued.

Ethel did not consider this worth an answer, so they walked on in silence.

‘Well, dear?’ said Mrs Brown when they reached home.

‘I’b goig to be Rosalid,’ said Ethel, ‘but I’ve got a bit of co’d, so I think I’ll go to bed.’ In her relief at having been chosen as Rosalind,
she became expansive and confidential. ‘I knew I’d god a co’d this borning, an’ I sneaked up that boddle of co’d cure ad drank sobe id my bedroob, but it didn’t
do any good.’

William blinked.

‘Was it – was it the cold cure stuff you were drinkin’ in your room, Ethel?’

‘You’d better go to bed, too, William,’ said his mother. ‘The doctor said that you were to go to bed early this week.’

‘All right,’ said William with unexpected meakness. ‘I don’t mind going to bed.’

Still looking very thoughtful, William went to bed.

‘Was he all right at Mrs Hawkins?’ said his mother anxiously to Ethel.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Ethel, ‘he was quite good.’

‘I’m so glad,’ said Mrs Brown, relieved, ‘because you know he sometimes does such extraordinary things when he goes out.’

‘Oh, no,’ said Ethel, preparing to follow William up to bed, ‘he was quite all right.’ She was silent for a minute, as she remembered the abrupt departures of Mrs Morton
and Mrs Jones, and the mysterious disappearance of the bonbon dish from her bag.

‘Sobe rather fuddy things did happed,’ she said, ‘but Williab couldn’t possibly have beed respodsible for any of theb.’

CHAPTER 2

I
T was announced in the village that the Literary Society was going to give a play on Christmas Eve. It was a tradition that a play should be given
in the village every Christmas Eve. It did not much matter who gave it or what it was about or what it was in aid of, but the village had begun to expect a play of some sort on Christmas Eve.
William’s sister Ethel and her friends had at first decided to do scenes from
As You Like It
, but this had fallen through partly because Ethel had succumbed to influenza as soon as the
cast was arranged, and partly because of other complications too involved to enter into.

So the Literary Society had stepped into the breach, and had announced that it was going to act a play in aid of its Cinematograph Fund. The Literary Society was trying to collect enough money
to buy a cinematograph. Cinematographs, the President said, were so educational. But that was not the only reason. Membership of the Literary Society had lately begun to fall alarmingly, chiefly
because, as everyone freely admitted, the meetings were so dull. They had heard Miss Greene-Joanes read her paper on ‘The Influence of Browning’ five times, and they had had the Debate
on ‘That the Romantic School has contributed more to Literature than the Classical School’ three times, and they’d had a Sale of Work and a Treasure Hunt and a picnic and there
didn’t seem to be anything else to do in the literary line. Mrs Bruce Monkton-Bruce, the Secretary, said that it wasn’t her fault. She’d written to ask Bernard Shaw, Arnold
Bennett, E. Einstein, M. Coué and H. G. Wells to come down to address them and it wasn’t her fault that they hadn’t answered. She’d enclosed a stamped addressed envelope in
each case. More than once they’d tried reading Shakespeare aloud, but it only seemed to send the members to sleep and then they woke up cross.

But the suggestion of the cinematograph had put fresh life into the Society. There had been nearly six new members (the sixth hadn’t quite made up her mind) since the idea was first
mooted. The more earnest ones had dreams of watching improving films, such as those depicting Sunrise on the Alps or the Life of a Kidney Bean from the cradle to the grave, while the less earnest
ones considered that such films as the
Three Musketeers
and
Monsieur Beaucaire
were quite sufficiently improving. So far they had had a little Bring and Buy Sale in aid of it, and had
raised five and elevenpence three farthings, but as Mrs Bruce Monkton-Bruce had said that was not nearly enough because they wanted a really good one.

The play was the suggestion of one of the new members, a Miss Gwladwyn. ‘That ought,’ she said optimistically, ‘to bring us in another pound or two.’

The tradition of the Christmas Eve plays in the village included a silver collection at the door, but did not include tickets. It was rightly felt that if the village had to pay for its tickets,
it would not come at all. The silver collection at the door, too, was not as lucrative as one would think because the village had no compunction at all about walking past the plate as if it did not
see it even if it was held out right under its nose. It was felt generally that ‘a pound or two’ was a rather too hopeful estimate. But still a pound, as Mrs Bruce Monkton-Bruce so
unanswerably pointed out, was a pound, and anyway it would be good for the Literary Society to get up a play. It would, she said, with her incurable optimism, ‘draw them together.’ As a
matter of fact, experience had frequently proved the acting of a play to have precisely the opposite effect. . . . They held a meeting to discuss the nature of the play. There was an uneasy feeling
that they ought to do one of Shakespeare’s or Sheridan’s, or, as Miss Formester put it, vaguely, ‘something of Shelley’s or Keats’,’ but the more modest ones
thought that though literary, they were not quite as literary as that, and the less modest ones, as represented by Mrs Bruce Monkton-Bruce, said quite boldly and openly that though those authors
had doubtless suited their own generations, things had progressed since then. She added that she’d once tried to read
She Stoops to Conquer
, and hadn’t been able to see what
people saw in it.

‘Of course,’ admitted Miss Georgine Hemmersley, ‘the men characters will be the difficulty.’ (The membership of the Literary Society was entirely feminine.) ‘I have
often thought that perhaps it would be a good thing to try to interest the men of the neighbourhood in our little society.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Miss Featherstone doubtfully, thinking of those pleasant little meetings of the Literary Society, which were devoted to strong tea, iced cakes, and
interchanges of local scandal. ‘I don’t know. Look at it how you will as soon as you begin to have men in a thing, it complicates it at once. I’ve often noticed it. There’s
something
restless
about men. And they aren’t literary. It’s no good pretending they are.’

The Society sighed and agreed.

‘Of course it has its disavantages at a time like this,’ went on Miss Featherstone, ‘not having any men, I mean, because, of course, it means that we can’t act any modern
plays. It means we have to fall back on plays of historical times. I mean wigs and things.’

‘I know,’ said Miss Gwladwyn demurely, ‘a perfectly sweet little historical play.’

‘What period is it, dear?’ said Mrs Bruce Monkton-Bruce.

‘It’s the costume period,’ said Miss Gwladwyn simply. ‘You know. Wigs and ruffles and swords. Tudor. Or is it Elizabethan? It’s about the Civil War, anyway, and
it’s really awfully sweet.’

‘What’s the plot of it?’ said the Literary Society with interest.

‘Well,’ said Miss Gwladwyn, ‘the heroine’ (a certain modest bashfulness in Miss Gwladwyn’s mien at this moment showed clearly that she expected to be the heroine),
‘the heroine is engaged to a Roundhead, but she isn’t really in love with him. At least she thinks she is, but she isn’t. And a wounded Cavalier comes to her house to take refuge
in a terrible storm, and she takes him in meaning to hand him over to her fiancé, you know. Her father’s a Roundhead, of course, you see. And then she falls in love with him, with the
Cavalier, I mean, and hides him, and then the fiancé finds him and she tells him that she doesn’t love him, but she loves the other. That’s an awfully sweet scene. There’s
a snow-storm. I’ve forgotten exactly how the snow-storm comes in, but I know that there is one, and it’s awfully effective. You do it with tiny bits of paper dropped from above. It
makes an awfully sweet scene. There are heaps of characters too,’ she went on eagerly, ‘we could
all
have quite good parts. There’s a comic aunt and a comic uncle and
awfully sweet parts for my – I mean her parents and quite a lot of servants with really
good
parts. There’d be parts and to spare for
everyone.
Some of us could even take
two. It’s an awfully sweet thing altogether.’

Mrs Bruce Monkton-Bruce looked doubtful.

‘Is it
literary
enough, do you think,’ she said uncertainly.

‘Oh
yes
,’ said Miss Gwladwyn earnestly. ‘It
must
be. If it’s historical it
must
be literary, mustn’t it? I mean, it
follows
,
doesn’t it?’

Apparently the majority of the Literary Society thought it did.

‘Anyway,’ said Miss Gwladwyn brightly, ‘I’ll get the book and we’ll have a reading and then vote on it. All I can say is that I’ve
seen
it and
I’ve seen a good many of Shakespeare’s plays too, and I consider this a much sweeter thing than any of Shakespeare’s, and if that doesn’t prove that it’s Literary I
don’t know what does.’