Just William (3 page)

‘Ethel, dear,’ interrupted Mrs Brown, ‘do go and see what he wants and get rid of him as soon as you can.’

Ethel entered the library, carefully closing the door behind her to keep out the sound of her father’s comments, which were plainly audible across the hall.

She noticed something wan and haggard-looking on Mr Morgan’s face as he rose to greet her.

‘Er — good evening, Miss Brown.’

‘Good evening, Mr Morgan.’

Then they sat in silence, both awaiting some explanation of the visit. The silence became oppressive. Mr Morgan, with an air of acute misery and embarrassment, shifted his feet and coughed.
Ethel looked at the clock. Then –

‘Was it raining when you came, Mr Morgan?’

‘Raining? Er — no. No — not at all.’

Silence.

‘I thought it looked like rain this afternoon.’

‘Yes, of course. Er – no, not at all.’

Silence.

‘It does make the roads so bad round here when it rains.’

‘Yes.’ Mr Morgan put up a hand as though to loosen his collar. ‘Er – very bad.’

‘Almost impassable.’

‘Er – quite.’

Silence again.

Inside the drawing-room, Mr Brown was growing restive.

‘Is dinner to be kept waiting for that youth all night? Quarter past seven! You know it’s just what I can’t stand – having my meals interfered with. Is my digestion to be
ruined simply because this young nincompoop chooses to pay his social calls at seven o’clock at night?’

‘Then we must ask him to dinner,’ said Mrs Brown, desperately. ‘We really must.’

‘We must
not
,’ said Mr Brown. ‘Can’t I stay away from the office for one day with a headache, without having to entertain all the young jackasses for miles
around?’ The telephone bell rang. He raised his hands above his head.

‘Oh—’

‘I’ll go, dear,’ said Mrs Brown hastily.

She returned with a worried frown on her brow.

‘It’s Mrs Clive,’ she said. ‘She says Joan has been very sick because of some horrible sweets William gave her, and she said she was so sorry to hear about William and
hoped he’d be better soon. I couldn’t quite make it out, but it seems that William has been telling them that he had to go and see a doctor about his lungs and the doctor said they were
very weak and he’d have to be careful.’

Mr Brown sat up and looked at her. ‘But – why – on – earth?’ he said slowly.

‘I don’t know, dear,’ said Mrs Brown, helplessly. ‘I don’t know anything about it.’

‘He’s mad,’ said Mr Brown with conviction. ‘Mad. It’s the only explanation.’

Then came the opening and shutting of the front door and Ethel entered. She was very flushed.

‘He’s gone,’ she said. ‘Mother, it’s simply horrible! He didn’t tell me much, but it seems that William actually went to his house and told him that I wanted
to see him alone at seven o’clock this evening. I’ve hardly spoken to William today. He couldn’t have misunderstood anything I said. And he actually took a flower with him –
a dreadful-looking rosebud – and said I’d sent it. I simply didn’t know where to look or what to say. It was horrible!’

Mrs Brown sat gazing weakly at her daughter.

Mr Brown rose with the air of a man goaded beyond endurance.

‘Where
is
William?’ he said shortly.

‘I don’t know, but I thought I heard him go upstairs some time ago.’

William
was
upstairs. For the last twenty minutes he had been happily and quietly engaged upon his bedroom door with a lighted taper in one hand and penknife in the other. There was no
doubt about it. By successful experiment he had proved that that was the way you got old paint off. When Mr Brown came upstairs he had entirely stripped one panel of its paint.

An hour later William sat in the back garden on an upturned box sucking, with a certain dogged defiance, the last and dirtiest of the Gooseberry Eyes. Sadly he reviewed the
day. It had not been a success. His generosity to the little girl next door had been misconstrued into an attempt upon her life, his efforts to help on his only sister’s love affair had been
painfully misunderstood, lastly because (among other things) he had discovered a perfectly scientific method of removing old paint, he had been brutally assaulted by a violent and unreasonable
parent. Suddenly William began to wonder if his father drank. He saw himself, through a mist of pathos, as a Drunkard’s child. He tried to imagine his father weeping over him in Hospital and
begging his forgiveness. It was a wonder he wasn’t there now, anyway. His shoulders drooped – his whole attitude became expressive of extreme dejection.

Inside the house, his father, reclining at length in an armchair, discoursed to his wife on the subject of his son. One hand was pressed to his aching brow, and the other gesticulating freely.
‘He’s insane,’ he said, ‘stark, raving insane. You ought to take him to a doctor and get his brain examined. Look at him today. He begins by knocking me into the middle of
the rhododendron bushes – under no provocation, mind you. I hadn’t spoken to him. Then he tries to poison that nice little thing next door with some vile stuff I thought I’d
thrown away. Then he goes about telling people he’s consumptive. He looks it, doesn’t he? Then he takes extraordinary messages and love tokens from Ethel to strange young men and brings
them here just when we’re going to begin dinner, and then goes round burning and hacking at the doors. Where’s the sense in it – in any of it? They’re the acts of a lunatic
– you ought to have his brain examined.’

Mrs Brown cut off her darning wool and laid aside the sock she had just finished darning.

‘It certainly sounds very silly, dear,’ she said mildly. ‘But there might be some explanation of it all, if only we knew. Boys are such funny things.’

She looked at the clock and went over to the window. ‘William!’ she called. ‘It’s your bedtime, dear.’

William rose sadly and came slowly into the house.

‘Good night, Mother,’ he said; then he turned a mournful and reproachful eye upon his father.

‘Good night, Father,’ he said. ‘Don’t think about what you’ve done, I for—’

He stopped and decided, hastily but wisely, to retire with all possible speed.

CHAPTER 2

‘S
he’s different from everybody else in the world,’ stammered Robert ecstatically. ‘You simply couldn’t describe her.
No one could!’

His mother continued to darn his socks and made no comment.

Only William, his young brother, showed interest.

‘
How’s
she different from anyone else?’ he demanded. ‘Is she blind or lame or sumthin’?’

Robert turned on him with exasperation.

‘Oh, go and play at trains!’ he said. ‘A child like you can’t understand anything.’

William retired with dignity to the window and listened, with interest unabated, to the rest of the conversation.

‘Yes, but who is she, dear?’ said their mother. ‘Robert, I can’t
think
how you get these big holes in your heels!’

Robert ran his hands wildly through his hair.

‘I’ve
told
you who she is, Mother,’ he said. ‘I’ve been talking about her ever since I came into the room.’

‘Yes, I know, dear, but you haven’t mentioned her name or anything about her.’

‘Well,’ Robert spoke with an air of superhuman patience, ‘she’s a Miss Cannon and she’s staying with the Clives and I met her out with Mrs Clive this morning and
she introduced me and she’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen and she—’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Brown hastily, ‘you told me all that.’

‘Well,’ went on the infatuated Robert, ‘we must have her to tea. I know I can’t marry yet – not while I’m still at college – but I could get to know
her. Not that I suppose she’d look at me. She’s miles above me – miles above anyone. She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. You can’t imagine her. You
wouldn’t believe me if I described her. No one could describe her. She—’

Mrs Brown interrupted him with haste.

‘I’ll ask Mrs Clive to bring her over one afternoon. I’ve no more of this blue wool, Robert. I wish you didn’t have your socks such different colours. I shall have to use
mauve. It’s right on the heel; it won’t show.’

Robert gave a gasp of horror.

‘You
can’t,
Mother. How do you know it won’t show? And even if it didn’t show, the thought of it –! It’s – it’s a crisis of my life now
I’ve met her. I can’t go about feeling ridiculous.’

‘I say,’ said William open-mouthed. ‘Are you spoony on her?’

‘William, don’t use such vulgar expressions,’ said Mrs Brown. ‘Robert just feels a friendly interest in her, don’t you, Robert?’

‘“A friendly interest”!’ groaned Robert in despair. ‘No one ever
tries
to understand what I feel. After all I’ve told you about her and that
she’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen and miles above me and above anyone and you think I feel a “friendly interest” in her. It’s — it’s the one
great passion of my life! It’s—’

‘Well,’ put in Mrs Brown mildly, ‘I’ll ring up Mrs Clive and ask if she’s doing anything tomorrow afternoon.’

Robert’s tragic young face lit up, then he stood wrapped in thought, and a cloud of anxiety overcast it.

‘Ellen can press the trousers of my brown suit tonight, can’t she? And, Mother, could you get me some socks and a tie before tomorrow? Blue, I think – a bright blue, you know,
not too bright, but not so as you don’t notice them. I wish the laundry was a decent one. You know, a man’s collar ought to
shine
when it’s new on. They never put a shine
on to them. I’d better have some new ones for tomorrow. It’s so important, how one looks. She – people
judge
you on how you look. They—’

Mrs Brown laid her work aside.

‘I’ll go and ring up Mrs Clive now,’ she said.

When she returned, William had gone and Robert was standing by the window, his face pale with suspense, and a Napoleonic frown on his brow.

‘Mrs Clive can’t come,’ announced Mrs Brown in her comfortable voice, ‘but Miss Cannon will come alone. It appears she’s met Ethel before. So you needn’t
worry any more, dear.’

Robert gave a sardonic laugh.

‘
Worry!
’ he said, ‘There’s plenty to worry about still. What about William?’

‘Well, what about him?’

‘Well, can’t he go away somewhere tomorrow? Things never go right when William’s there. You know they don’t.’

‘The poor boy must have tea with us, dear. He’ll be very good, I’m sure. Ethel will be home then and she’ll help. I’ll tell William not to worry you. I’m sure
he’ll be good.’

William had received specific instructions. He was not to come into the house till the tea-bell rang, and he was to go out and play in the garden again directly after tea. He
was perfectly willing to obey them. He was thrilled by the thought of Robert in the role of the lovelorn hero. He took the situation quite seriously.

He was in the garden when the visitor came up the drive. He had been told not to obtrude himself upon her notice, so he crept up silently and peered at her through the rhododendron bushes. The
proceeding also happened to suit his character of the moment, which was that of a Red Indian chief.

Miss Cannon was certainly pretty. She had brown hair, brown eyes, and dimples that came and went in her rosy cheeks. She was dressed in white and carried a parasol. She walked up the drive,
looking neither to right nor left, till a slight movement in the bushes arrested her attention. She turned quickly and saw a small boy’s face, smeared black with burnt cork and framed in
hens’ feathers tied on with tape. The dimples peeped out.

‘Hail, O great chief!’ she said.

William gazed at her open-mouthed. Such intelligence on the part of a grown-up was unusual.

‘Chief Red Hand,’ he supplied with a fierce scowl.

She bowed low, brown eyes alight with merriment.

‘And what death awaits the poor white face who has fallen defenceless into his hand?’

‘You better come quiet to my wigwam an’ see,’ said Red Hand darkly.

She threw a glance to the bend in the drive behind which lay the house and with a low laugh followed him through the bushes. From one point the drawing-room window could be seen, and there the
anxious Robert stood, pale with anxiety, stiff and upright in his newly creased trousers (well turned up to show the new blue socks), his soulful eyes fixed steadfastly on the bend in the drive
round which the beloved should come. Every now and then his nervous hand wandered up to touch the new tie and gleaming new collar, which was rather too high and too tight for comfort, but which the
shopkeeper had informed his harassed customer was the ‘latest and most correct shape’.

Meanwhile the beloved had reached William’s ‘dugout’. William had made this himself of branches cut down from the trees and spent many happy hours in it with one or other of
his friends.

‘Here is the wigwam, Pale-face,’ he said in a sepulchral voice. ‘Stand here while I decide with Snake Face and the other chiefs what’s goin’ to be done to you.
There’s Snake Face an’ the others,’ he added in his natural voice, pointing to a small cluster of shrubs.