And she replied in the affirmation.
So he kept awake by biting his tongue and pulling his hair--for he
shrinks from no pain if it is needful and right.
And when the others all slept the sleep of innocent youth, he got up and
went out, and there was Alice dressed.
She said, "I've found some broken things that look ever so much more
Roman--they were on top of the cupboard in the library. If you'll come
with me, we'll bury them--just to see how surprised the others will be."
It was a wild and daring act, but Oswald did not mind.
He said:
"Wait half a shake." And he put on his knickerbockers and jacket, and
slipped a few peppermints into his pocket in case of catching cold. It
is these thoughtful expedients which mark the born explorer and
adventurer.
It _was_ a little cold; but the white moonlight was very fair to see,
and we decided we'd do some other daring moonlight act some other day.
We got out of the front door, which is never locked till Albert's uncle
goes to bed at twelve or one, and we ran swiftly and silently across the
bridge and through the fields to the Roman ruin.
Alice told me afterwards she should have been afraid if it had been
dark. But the moonlight made it as bright as day is in your dreams.
Oswald had taken the spade and a sheet of newspaper.
We did not take all the pots Alice had found--but just the two that
weren't broken--two crooked jugs, made of stuff like flower-pots are
made of. We made two long cuts with the spade and lifted the turf up and
scratched the earth under, and took it out very carefully in handfuls on
to the newspaper, till the hole was deepish. Then we put in the jugs,
and filled it up with earth and flattened the turf over. Turf stretches
like elastic. This we did a couple of yards from the place where the
mound was dug into by the men, and we had been so careful with the
newspaper that there was no loose earth about.
Then we went home in the wet moonlight--at least, the grass was very
wet--chuckling through the peppermint, and got up to bed without any one
knowing a single thing about it.
[Illustration: "THEN WE PUT IN THE JUGS AND FILLED IT UP WITH EARTH"]
The next day the Antiquities came. It was a jolly hot day, and the
tables were spread under the trees on the lawn, like a large and very
grand Sunday-school treat. There were dozens of different kinds of cake,
and bread-and-butter, both white and brown, and gooseberries and plums
and jam sandwiches. And the girls decorated the tables with
flowers--blue larkspur and white canterbury bells. And at about three
there was a noise of people walking in the road, and presently the
Antiquities began to come in at the front gate, and stood about on the
lawn by twos and threes and sixes and sevens, looking shy and uncomfy,
exactly like a Sunday-school treat. Presently some gentlemen came, who
looked like the teachers; they were not shy, and they came right up to
the door. So Albert's uncle, who had not been too proud to be up in our
room with us watching the people on the lawn through the netting of our
short blinds, said:
"I suppose that's the Committee. Come on!"
So we all went down--we were in our Sunday things--and Albert's uncle
received the Committee like a feudal system baron, and we were his
retainers.
He talked about dates, and king-posts and gables, and mullions, and
foundations, and records, and Sir Thomas Wyatt, and poetry, and Julius
Caesar, and Roman remains, and lych-gates and churches, and dog's-tooth
moulding till the brain of Oswald reeled. I suppose that Albert's uncle
remarked that all our mouths were open, which is a sign of reels in the
brain, for he whispered:
"Go hence, and mingle unsuspected with the crowd!"
So we went out on to the lawn, which was now crowded with men and women
and one child. This was a girl; she was fat, and we tried to talk to
her, though we did not like her. (She was covered in red velvet like an
arm-chair.) But she wouldn't. We thought at first she was from a
deaf-and-dumb asylum, where her kind teachers had only managed to teach
the afflicted to say "Yes" and "No." But afterwards we knew better, for
Noel heard her say to her mother, "I wish you hadn't brought me, mamma.
I didn't have a pretty teacup, and I haven't enjoyed my tea one bit."
And she had had five pieces of cake, besides little cakes and nearly a
whole plate of plums, and there were only twelve pretty teacups
altogether.
Several grown-ups talked to us in a most uninterested way, and then the
President read a paper about the Moat House, which we couldn't
understand, and other people made speeches we couldn't understand
either, except the part about kind hospitality, which made us not know
where to look.
Then Dora and Alice and Daisy and Mrs. Pettigrew poured out the tea, and
we handed cups and plates.
Albert's uncle took me behind a bush to see him tear what was left of
his hair when he found there were one hundred and twenty-three
Antiquities present, and I heard the President say to the Secretary that
"tea always fetched them."
Then it was time for the Roman ruin, and our hearts beat high as we took
our hats--it was exactly like Sunday--and joined the crowded procession
of eager Antiquities. Many of them had umbrellas and overcoats, though
the weather was fiery and without a cloud. That is the sort of people
they were. The ladies all wore stiff bonnets, and no one took their
gloves off, though, of course, it was quite in the country, and it is
not wrong to take your gloves off there.
We had planned to be quite close when the digging went on; but Albert's
uncle made us a mystic sign and drew us apart.
Then he said: "The stalls and dress-circle are for the guests. The hosts
and hostesses retire to the gallery, whence, I am credibly informed, an
excellent view may be obtained."
So we all went up on the Roman walls, and thus missed the cream of the
lark; for we could not exactly see what was happening. But we saw that
things were being taken from the ground as the men dug, and passed round
for the Antiquities to look at. And we knew they must be our Roman
remains: but the Antiquities did not seem to care for them much, though
we heard sounds of pleased laughter. And at last Alice and I exchanged
meaning glances when the spot was reached where we had put in the
extras. Then the crowd closed up thick, and we heard excited talk and we
knew we really _had_ sold the Antiquities this time.
Presently the bonnets and coats began to spread out and trickle towards
the house, and we were aware that all would soon be over. So we cut home
the back way, just in time to hear the President saying to Albert's
uncle:
"A genuine find--most interesting. Oh, really, you ought to have _one_.
Well, if you insist--"
And so, by slow and dull degrees, the thick sprinkling of Antiquities
melted off the lawn; the party was over, and only the dirty teacups and
plates, and the trampled grass and the pleasures of memory were left.
We had a very beautiful supper--out-of-doors, too--with jam sandwiches
and cake and things that were over; and as we watched the setting
monarch of the skies--I mean the sun--Alice said:
"Let's tell."
We let the Dentist tell, because it was he who hatched the lark, but we
helped him a little in the narrating of the fell plot, because he has
yet to learn how to tell a story straight from the beginning.
When he had done, and we had done, Albert's uncle said, "Well, it amused
you; and you'll be glad to learn that it amused your friends the
Antiquities."
"Didn't they think they were Roman?" Daisy said; "they did in _The Daisy
Chain_."
"Not in the least," said Albert's uncle; "but the Treasurer and
Secretary were charmed by your ingenious preparations for their
reception."
"We didn't want them to be disappointed," said Dora.
"They weren't," said Albert's uncle. "Steady on with those plums, H. O.
A little way beyond the treasure you had prepared for them they found
two specimens of _real_ Roman pottery which sent every man-jack of them
home thanking his stars he had been born a happy little Antiquary
child."
"Those were _our_ jugs," said Alice, "and we really _have_ sold the
Antiquities." She unfolded the tale about our getting the jugs and
burying them in the moonlight, and the mound; and the others listened
with deeply respectful interest. "We really have done it this time,
haven't we?" she added in tones of well-deserved triumph.
But Oswald had noticed a queer look about Albert's uncle from almost the
beginning of Alice's recital; and he now had the sensation of something
being up, which has on other occasions frozen his noble blood. The
silence of Albert's uncle now froze it yet more Arcticly.
"Haven't we?" repeated Alice, unconscious of what her sensitive
brother's delicate feelings had ahead got hold of. "We have done it this
time, haven't we?"
"Since you ask me thus pointedly," answered Albert's uncle at last, "I
cannot but confess that I think you have indeed done it. Those pots on
the top of the library cupboard _are_ Roman pottery. The amphorae which
you hid in the mound are probably--I can't say for certain,
mind--priceless. They are the property of the owner of this house. You
have taken them out and buried them. The President of the Maidstone
Antiquarian Society has taken them away in his bag. Now what are you
going to do?"
Alice and I did not know what to say, or where to look. The others added
to our pained position by some ungenerous murmurs about our not being
so jolly clever as we thought ourselves.
There was a very far from pleasing silence. Then Oswald got up. He said:
"Alice, come here a sec., I want to speak to you."
As Albert's uncle had offered no advice, Oswald disdained to ask him for
any.
Alice got up too, and she and Oswald went into the garden, and sat down
on the bench under the quince-tree, and wished they had never tried to
have a private lark of their very own with the Antiquities--"A Private
Sale," Albert's uncle called it afterwards. But regrets, as nearly
always happens, were vain. Something had to be done.
But what?
Oswald and Alice sat in silent desperateness, and the voices of the gay
and careless others came to them from the lawn, where, heartless in
their youngness, they were playing tag. I don't know how they could.
Oswald would not like to play tag when his brother and sister were in a
hole, but Oswald is an exception to some boys. But Dicky told me
afterwards he thought it was only a joke of Albert's uncle's.
The dusk grew dusker, till you could hardly tell the quinces from the
leaves, and Alice and Oswald still sat exhausted with hard thinking, but
they could not think of anything. And it grew so dark that the moonlight
began to show.
Then Alice jumped up--just as Oswald was opening his mouth to say the
same thing--and said, "Of course--how silly! I know. Come on in,
Oswald."
And they went on in.
Oswald was still far too proud to consult any one else. But he just
asked carelessly if Alice and he might go into Maidstone the next day to
buy some wire-netting for a rabbit-hutch, and to see after one or two
things.
Albert's uncle said certainly. And they went by train with the bailiff
from the farm, who was going in about some sheep-dip and to buy pigs. At
any other time Oswald would not have been able to bear to leave the
bailiff without seeing the pigs bought. But now it was different. For he
and Alice had the weight on their bosoms of being thieves without having
meant it--and nothing, not even pigs, had power to charm the young but
honorable Oswald till that stain had been wiped away.
So he took Alice to the Secretary of the Maidstone Antiquities' house,
and Mr. Turnbull was out, but the maid-servant kindly told us where the
President lived, and ere long the trembling feet of the unfortunate
brother and sister vibrated on the spotless gravel of Camperdown Villa.
When they asked, they were told that Mr. Longchamps was at home. Then
they waited, paralyzed with undescribed emotions, in a large room with
books and swords and glass book-cases with rotten-looking odds and ends
in them. Mr. Longchamps was a collector. That means he stuck to
anything, no matter how ugly and silly, if only it was old.
He came in rubbing his hands, and very kind. He remembered us very well,
he said, and asked what he could do for us.
Oswald for once was dumb. He could not find words in which to own
himself the ass he had been.
But Alice was less delicately moulded. She said:
"Oh, if you please, we are most awfully sorry, and we hope you'll
forgive us, but we thought it would be such a pity for you and all the
other poor dear Antiquities to come all that way and then find nothing
Roman--so we put some pots and things in the barrow for you to find."
"So I perceived," said the President, stroking his white beard and
smiling most agreeably at us; "a harmless joke, my dear! Youth's the
season for jesting. There's no harm done--pray think no more about it.
It's very honorable of you to come and apologize, I'm sure."
His brow began to wear the furrowed, anxious look of one who would fain
be rid of his guests and get back to what he was doing before they
interrupted him.
Alice said, "We didn't come for that. It's _much_ worse. Those were two
_real_ true Roman jugs you took away; we put them there; they aren't
ours. We didn't know they were real Roman. We wanted to sell the
Antiquities--I mean Antiquaries--and we were sold ourselves."
"This is serious," said the gentleman. "I suppose you'd know the--the
'jugs' if you saw them again?"
"Anywhere," said Oswald, with the confidential rashness of one who does
not know what he is talking about.
Mr. Longchamps opened the door of a little room leading out of the one
we were in, and beckoned us to follow. We found ourselves amid shelves
and shelves of pottery of all sorts; and two whole shelves--small
ones--were filled with the sort of jug we wanted.
"Well," said the President, with a veiled, menacing sort of smile, like
a wicked cardinal, "which is it?"