There is certainly something about sleeping in your clothes that makes
you feel not so kind and polite as usual. I expect this is why tramps
are so fierce and knock people down in lonely roads and kick them.
Oswald knows he felt just like kicking any one if they had happened to
cheek him the least little bit. But by a fortunate accident nobody did.
The author believes there is a picture called "Hopeless Dawn." We felt
exactly like that. Nothing seemed the least bit of good.
It was a pitiful band with hands and faces dirtier than any one would
believe who had not slept in a mill or witnessed others who had done so,
that crossed the wet, green grass between the Mill and the white house.
"I shan't ever put morning dew into my poetry again," Noel said; "it is
not nearly so poetical as people make out, and it is as cold as ice,
right through your boots."
We felt rather better when we had had a good splash in the brick-paved
back kitchen that Miss Sandal calls the bath-room. And Alice made a fire
and boiled a kettle and we had some tea and eggs. Then we looked at the
clock and it was half-past five. So we hastened to get into another part
of the house before Mrs. Beale came.
"I wish we'd tried to live the higher life some less beastly way," said
Dicky as we went along the passage.
"Living the higher life always hurts at the beginning," Alice said. "I
expect it's like new boots, only when you've got used to it you're glad
you bore it at first. Let's listen at the doors till we find out where
he isn't sleeping."
So we listened at all the bedroom doors, but not a snore was heard.
"Perhaps he was a burglar," said H.O., "and only pretended to want
lodgings so as to get in and bone all the valuables."
"There aren't any valuables," said Noel, and this was quite true, for
Miss Sandal had no silver or jewellery except a brooch of pewter, and
the very teaspoons were of wood--very hard to keep clean and having to
be scraped.
"Perhaps he sleeps without snoring," said Oswald, "some people do."
"Not old gentlemen," said Noel; "think of our Indian uncle--H.O. used to
think it was bears at first."
"Perhaps he rises with the lark," said Alice, "and is wondering why
brekker isn't ready."
So then we listened at the sitting-room doors, and through the keyhole
of the parlour we heard a noise of some one moving, and then in a soft
whistle the tune of the "Would I were a bird" song.
So then we went into the dining-room to sit down. But when we opened the
door we almost fell in a heap on the matting, and no one had breath for
a word--not even for "Krikey," which was what we all thought.
I have read of people who could not believe their eyes; and I have
always thought it such rot of them, but now, as the author gazed on the
scene, he really could not be quite sure that he was not in a dream, and
that the gentleman and the night in the Mill weren't dreams too.
"Pull back the curtains," Alice said, and we did. I wish I could make
the reader feel as astonished as we did.
The last time we had seen the room the walls had been bare and white.
Now they were covered with the most splendid drawings you can think of,
all done in coloured chalk--I don't mean mixed up, like we do with our
chalks--but one picture was done in green, and another in brown, and
another in red, and so on. And the chalk must have been of some fat
radiant kind quite unknown to us, for some of the lines were over an
inch thick.
"How perfectly _lovely_!" Alice said; "he must have sat up all night to
do it. He _is_ good. I expect he's trying to live the higher life,
too--just going about doing secretly, and spending his time making other
people's houses pretty."
"I wonder what he'd have done if the room had had a large pattern of
brown roses on it, like Mrs. Beale's," said Noel. "I say, _look_ at that
angel! Isn't it poetical? It makes me feel I must write something about
it."
It _was_ a good angel--all drawn in grey, that was--with very wide wings
going right across the room, and a whole bundle of lilies in his arms.
Then there were seagulls and ravens, and butterflies, and ballet girls
with butterflies' wings, and a man with artificial wings being fastened
on, and you could see he was just going to jump off a rock. And there
were fairies, and bats, and flying-foxes, and flying-fish. And one
glorious winged horse done in red chalk--and his wings went from one
side of the room to the other, and crossed the angel's. There were
dozens and dozens of birds--all done in just a few lines--but exactly
right. You couldn't make any mistake about what anything was meant for.
And all the things, whatever they were, had wings to them. How Oswald
wishes that those pictures had been done in his house!
While we stood gazing, the door of the other room opened, and the
gentleman stood before us, more covered with different-coloured chalks
than I should have thought he could have got, even with all those
drawings, and he had a thing made of wire and paper in his hand, and he
said--
"Wouldn't you like to fly?"
"Yes," said every one.
"Well then," he said, "I've got a nice little flying-machine here. I'll
fit it on to one of you, and then you jump out of the attic window. You
don't know what it's like to fly."
We said we would rather not.
"But I insist," said the gentleman. "I have your real interest at heart,
my children--I can't allow you in your ignorance to reject the chance of
a lifetime."
We still said "No, thank you," and we began to feel very uncomfy, for
the gentleman's eyes were now rolling wildly.
"Then I'll _make_ you!" he said, catching hold of Oswald.
[Illustration: "THEN I'LL _MAKE_ YOU!" HE SAID, CATCHING HOLD OF
OSWALD.]
"You jolly well won't," cried Dicky, catching hold of the arm of the
gentleman.
Then Dora said very primly and speaking rather slowly, and she was very
pale--
"I think it would be lovely to fly. Will you just show me how the
flying-machine looks when it is unfolded?"
The gentleman dropped Oswald, and Dora made "Go! go" with her lips
without speaking, while he began to unfold the flying-machine. We others
went, Oswald lingering last, and then in an instant Dora had nipped out
of the room and banged the door and locked it.
"To the Mill!" she cried, and we ran like mad, and got in and barred the
big door, and went up to the first floor, and looked out of the big
window to warn off Mrs. Beale.
And we thumped Dora on the back, and Dicky called her a Sherlock Holmes,
and Noel said she was a heroine.
"It wasn't anything," Dora said, just before she began to cry, "only I
remember reading that you must pretend to humour them, and then get
away, for of course I saw at once he was a lunatic. Oh, how awful it
might have been! He could have made us all jump out of the attic window,
and there would have been no one left to tell Father. Oh! oh!" and then
the crying began.
But we were proud of Dora, and I am sorry we make fun of her sometimes,
but it is difficult not to.
We decided to signal the first person that passed, and we got Alice to
take off her red flannel petticoat for a signal.
The first people who came were two men in a dog-cart. We waved the
signalising petticoat and they pulled up, and one got out and came up to
the Mill.
We explained about the lunatic and the wanting us to jump out of the
windows.
"Right oh!" cried the man to the one still in the cart; "got him." And
the other hitched the horse to the gate and came over, and the other
went to the house.
"Come along down, young ladies and gentlemen," said the second man when
he had been told. "He's as gentle as a lamb. He does not think it hurts
to jump out of windows. He thinks it really is flying. He'll be like an
angel when he sees the doctor."
We asked if he had been mad before, because we had thought he might have
suddenly gone so.
"Certainly he has!" replied the man; "he has never been, so to say,
himself since tumbling out of a flying-machine he went up in with a
friend. He was an artist previous to that--an excellent one, I believe.
But now he only draws objects with wings--and now and then he wants to
make people fly--perfect strangers sometimes, like yourselves. Yes,
miss, I am his attendant, and his pictures often amuse me by the
half-hours together, poor gentleman."
"How did he get away?" Alice asked.
"Well, miss, the poor gentleman's brother got hurt and Mr.
Sidney--that's him inside--seemed wonderfully put out and hung over the
body in a way pitiful to see. But really he was extracting the cash from
the sufferer's pockets. Then, while all of us were occupied with Mr.
Eustace, Mr. Sidney just packs his portmanteau and out he goes by the
back door. When we missed him we sent for Dr. Baker, but by the time he
came it was too late to get here. Dr. Baker said at once he'd revert to
his boyhood's home. And the doctor has proved correct."
We had all come out of the Mill, and with this polite person we went to
the gate, and saw the lunatic get into the carriage, very gentle and
gay.
"But, Doctor," Oswald said, "he did say he'd give nine pounds a week for
the rooms. Oughtn't he to pay?"
"You might have known he was mad to say that," said the doctor. "No. Why
should he, when it's his own sister's house? Gee up!"
And he left us.
It was sad to find the gentleman was not a Higher Life after all, but
only mad. And I was more sorry than ever for poor Miss Sandal. As Oswald
pointed out to the girls they are much more blessed in their brothers
than Miss Sandal is, and they ought to be more grateful than they are.
_THE SMUGGLER'S REVENGE_
THE days went on and Miss Sandal did not return. We went on being very
sorry about Miss Sandal being so poor, and it was not our fault that
when we tried to let the house in lodgings, the first lodger proved to
be a lunatic of the deepest dye. Miss Sandal must have been a fairly
decent sort, because she seems not to have written to Father about it.
At any rate he didn't give it us in any of our letters, about our good
intentions and their ending in a maniac.
Oswald does not like giving up a thing just because it has once been
muffed. The muffage of a plan is a thing that often happens at first to
heroes--like Bruce and the spider, and other great characters. Beside,
grown-ups always say--
"If at first you don't succeed,
Try, try, try again!"
And if this is the rule for Euclid and rule-of-three and all the things
you would rather not do, think how much more it must be the rule when
what you are after is your own idea, and not just the rotten notion of
that beast Euclid, or the unknown but equally unnecessary author who
composed the multiplication table. So we often talked about what we
could do to make Miss Sandal rich. It gave us something to jaw about
when we happened to want to sit down for a bit, in between all the
glorious wet sandy games that happen by the sea.
Of course if we wanted real improving conversation we used to go up to
the boat-house and talk to the coastguards. I do think coastguards are
A1. They are just the same as sailors, having been so in their youth,
and you can get at them to talk to, which is not the case with sailors
who are at sea (or even in harbours) on ships. Even if you had the luck
to get on to a man-of-war, you would very likely not be able to climb to
the top-gallants to talk to the man there. Though in books the young
hero always seems able to climb to the mast-head the moment he is told
to. The coastguards told us tales of Southern ports, and of shipwrecks,
and officers they had _not_ cottoned to, and messmates that they _had_,
but when we asked them about smuggling they said there wasn't any to
speak of nowadays.
"I expect they think they oughtn't to talk about such dark crimes before
innocent kids like us," said Dicky afterwards, and he grinned as he said
it.
"Yes," said Alice; "they don't know how much we know about smugglers,
and bandits, and highwaymen, and burglars, and coiners," and she sighed,
and we all felt sad to think that we had not now any chance to play at
being these things.
"We might play smugglers," said Oswald.
But he did not speak hopefully. The worst of growing up is that you seem
to want more and more to have a bit of the real thing in your games.
Oswald could not now be content to play at bandits and just capture
Albert next door, as once, in happier days, he was pleased and proud to
do.
It was not a coastguard that told us about the smugglers. It was a very
old man that we met two or three miles along the beach. He was leaning
against a boat that was wrong way up on the shingle, and smoking the
strongest tobacco Oswald's young nose has ever met. I think it must have
been Black Jack. We said, "How do you do?" and Alice said, "Do you mind
if we sit down near you?"
"Not me," replied the aged seafarer. We could see directly that he was
this by his jersey and his sea-boots.
The girls sat down on the beach, but we boys leaned against the boat
like the seafaring one. We hoped he would join in conversation, but at
first he seemed too proud. And there was something dignified about him,
bearded and like a Viking, that made it hard for us to begin.