Oswald Bastable and Others Part 5

'Of course we did right to tell. Only when the soldier looked at me ...'

said Oswald.

'Yes,' said d.i.c.ky, 'that's just it.'

In deepest gloom the party retraced its steps.

As we went, Dora said with sniffs:

'I suppose it was the bicycle man's duty.'

'Of course,' said Oswald, 'but it wasn't _our_ duty. And I jolly well wish we hadn't!'

'And such a beautiful day, too,' said Noel, sniffing in his turn.

It _was_ beautiful. The afternoon had been dull, but now the sun was shining flat across the marshes, making everything look as if it had been covered all over with the best gold-leaf--marsh and trees, and roofs and stacks, and everything.

That evening Noel wrote a poem about it all. It began:

'Poor soldiers, why did you run away On such a beautiful, beautiful day?

If you had run away in the rain, Perhaps they would never have found you again, Because then Oswald would not have been there To show the hunter the way to your lair.'

Oswald would have licked him for that--only Noel is not very strong, and there is something about poets, however young, that makes it rather like licking a girl. So Oswald did not even say what he thought--Noel cries at the least thing. Oswald only said, 'Let's go down to our pigman.'

And we all went except Noel. He never will go anywhere when in the midst of making poetry. And Alice stayed with him, and H. O. was in bed.

We told the pigman all about the deserters, and about our miserable inside remorsefulness, and he said he knew just how we felt.

'There's quite enough agin a pore chap that's made a bolt of it without the rest of us a-joinin' in,' he said. 'Not as I holds with deserting--mean trick I call it. But all the same, when the odds is that heavy--thousands to one--all the army and the navy and the pleece and Parliament and the King agin one pore silly bloke. You wouldn't 'a done it a purpose, I lay.'

'Not much,' said Oswald in gloomy dejection. 'Have a peppermint? They're extra strong.'

When the pigman had had one he went on talking.

'There's a young chap, now,' he said, 'broke out of Dover Gaol. I 'appen to know what he's in for--nicked a four-pound cake, he did, off of a counter at a pastrycook's--Jenner's it was, in the High Street--part hunger, part playfulness. But even if I wasn't to know what he was lagged for, do you think I'd put the coppers on to him? Not me. Give a fellow a chance is what I say. But don't you grizzle about them there Tommies. P'raps it'll be the making of 'em in the end. A slack-baked pair as ever wore boots. _I_ seed 'em. Only next time just you take and think afore you pipes up--see?'

We said that we saw, and that next time we would do as he said. And we went home again. As we went Dora said:

'But supposing it was a cruel murderer that had got loose, you ought to tell then.'

'Yes,' said d.i.c.ky; 'but before you do tell you ought to be jolly sure it _is_ a cruel murderer, and not a chap that's taken a cake because he was hungry. How do you know what _you'd_ do if you were hungry enough?'

'I shouldn't steal,' said Dora.

'I'm not so sure,' said d.i.c.ky; and they argued about it all the way home, and before we got in it began to rain in torrents.

Conversations about food always make you feel as though it was a very long time since you had had anything to eat. Mrs. Beale had gone home, of course, but we went into the larder. It is a generous larder. No lock, only a big wooden latch that pulls up with a string, like in Red Riding Hood. And the floor is clean damp red brick. It makes ginger-nuts soft if you put the bag on this floor. There was half a rhubarb pie, and there were meat turnovers with potato in them. Mrs. Beale is a thoughtful person, and I know many people much richer that are not nearly so thoughtful.

We had a comfortable feast at the kitchen table, standing up to eat, like horses.

Then we had to let Noel read us his piece of poetry about the soldier; he wouldn't have slept if we hadn't. It was very long, and it began as I have said, and ended up:

'Poor soldiers, learn a lesson from to-day, It is very wrong to run away; It is better to stay And serve your King and Country--hurray!'

Noel owned that Hooray sounded too cheerful for the end of a poem about soldiers with faces like theirs were.

'But I didn't mean it about the soldiers. It was about the King and Country. Half a sec. I'll put that in.' So he wrote:

'P.S.--I do not mean to be unkind, Poor soldiers, to you, so never mind.

When I say hurray or sing, It is because I am thinking of my Country and my King.'

'You can't sing Hooray,' said d.i.c.ky. So Noel went to bed singing it, which was better than arguing about it, Alice said. But it was noisier as well.

Oswald and d.i.c.ky always went round the house to see that all the doors were bolted and the shutters up. This is what the head of the house always does, and Oswald is the head when father is not there. There are no shutters upstairs, only curtains. The White House, which is Miss Sandal's house's name, is not in the village, but 'quite a step' from it, as Mrs. Beale says. It is the first house you come to as you come along the road from the marsh.

We used to look in the cupboard and under the beds for burglars every night. The girls liked us to, though they wouldn't look themselves, and I don't know that it was much good. If there _is_ a burglar, it's sometimes safer for you not to know it. Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to find a burglar, especially as he would be armed to the teeth as likely as not. However, there is not much worth being a burglar about, in houses where the motto is plain living and high thinking, and there never was anyone in the cupboards or under the beds.

Then we put out all the lights very carefully in case of fire--all except Noel's. He does not like the dark. He says there are things in it that go away when you light a candle, and however much you talk reason and science to him, it makes no difference at all.

Then we got into our pyjamas. It was Oswald who asked father to let us have pyjamas instead of nightgowns; they are so convenient for dressing up when you wish to act clowns, or West Indian planters, or any loose-clothed characters. Then we got into bed, and then we got into sleep.

Little did the unconscious sleepers reck of the strange destiny that was advancing on them by leaps and bounds through the silent watches of the night.

Although we were asleep, the rain went on raining just the same, and the wind blowing across the marsh with the fury of a maniac who has been transformed into a blacksmith's bellows. And through the night, and the wind, and the rain, our dreadful destiny drew nearer and nearer. I wish this to sound as if something was going to happen, and I hope it does. I hope the reader's heart is now standing still with apprehensionness on our account, but I do not want it to stop altogether, so I will tell you that we were not all going to be murdered in our beds, or pa.s.s peacefully away in our sleeps with angel-like smiles on our young and beautiful faces. Not at all. What really happened was this. Some time must have elapsed between our closing our eyes in serene slumber and the following narrative:

Oswald was awakened by d.i.c.ky thumping him hard in the back, and saying in accents of terror--at least, he says not, but Oswald knows what they sounded like:

'What's that?'

Oswald reared up on his elbow and listened, but there was nothing to listen to except d.i.c.ky breathing like a grampus, and the giggle-guggle of the rain-water overflowing from the tub under the window.

'What's what?' said Oswald.

He did not speak furiously, as many elder brothers would have done when suddenly awakened by thumps.

'_That!_' said d.i.c.ky. 'There it is again!'

And this time, certainly, there it was, and it sounded like somebody hammering on the front-door with his fists. There is no knocker to the plain-living, high-thinking house.

Oswald controlled his fears, if he had any (I am not going to say whether he had or hadn't), and struck a match. Before the candle had had time to settle its flame after the first flare up that doesn't last, the row began again.

Oswald's nerves are of iron, but it would have given anybody a start to see two white figures in the doorway, yet so it was. They proved to be Alice and Dora in their nighties; but no one could blame anyone for not being sure of this at first.

'Is it burglars?' said Dora; and her teeth did chatter, whatever she may say.

'_I_ think it's Mrs. Beale,' said Alice. 'I expect she's forgotten the key.'

Oswald pulled his watch out from under his pillow.

'It's half-past one,' he said.