Striding Folly (11 page)

    ‘I should like to meet your father. The only thing I do not thoroughly understand is the reason of this elaborate plot. Were you by any chance executing a burglary round the corner, and keeping the police in play while you did it?’

    ‘I never thought of that,’ said the young man, with regret in his voice. ‘No. The bobby was not the pre-destined victim. He happened to be present at a full-dress rehearsal, and the joke was too good to be lost. The fact is, my uncle is Sir Lucius Preston, the R.A.’

    ‘Ah!’ said Peter, ‘the light begins to break.’

    ‘My own style of draughtsmanship,’ pursued Mr O’Halloran, ‘is modern. My uncle has on several occasions informed me that I draw like that only because I do not know how to draw. The idea was that he should be invited to dinner tomorrow and regaled with a story of the mysterious “Number 13”, said to appear from time to time in this street and to be haunted by strange noises. Having thus detained him till close upon midnight, I should have set out to see him to the top of the street. As we went along, the cries would have broken out. I should have led him back—’

    ‘Nothing,’ said Peter, ‘could be more clear. After the preliminary shock, he would have been forced to confess that your draughtsmanship was a triumph of academic accuracy.’

    ‘I hope,’ said Mr O’Halloran, ‘the performance may still go forward as originally intended.’ He looked with some anxiety at Peter, who replied:

    ‘I hope so, indeed. I also hope that your uncle’s heart is a strong one. But may I, in the meantime, signal to my unfortunate policeman and relieve his mind? He is in danger of losing his promotion, through a suspicion that he was drunk on duty.’

    ‘Good God!’ said Mr O’Halloran. ‘No – I don’t want that to happen. Fetch him in.’

    The difficulty was to make P.C. Burt recognise in the daylight what he had seen by night through the letter-flap. Of the framework of painted canvas, with its forms and figures oddly foreshortened and distorted, he could make little. Only when the thing was set up and lighted in the curtained studio was he at length reluctantly convinced.

    ‘It’s wonderful,’ he said. ‘It’s like Maskelyne and Devant. I wish the sergeant could a’ seen it.’

    ‘Lure him down here tomorrow night,’ said Mr O’Halloran. ‘Let him come as my uncle’s bodyguard. You—’ he turned to Peter – ‘you seem to have a way with policemen. Can’t you inveigle the fellow along? Your impersonation of starving and disconsolate Bloomsbury is fully as convincing as mine. How about it?’

    ‘I don’t know,’ said Peter. ‘The costume gives me pain. Besides, is it kind to a p.b. policeman? I give you the R.A., but when it comes to the guardians of the law – Damn it all! I’m a family man, and I must have
some
sense of responsibility.’

Talboys

A LORD PETER WIMSEY STORY

‘Father!’

    ‘Yes, my son.’

    ‘You know those peaches of Mr Puffett’s, the whacking great big ones you said I wasn’t to take?’

    ‘Well?’

    ‘Well, I’ve tooken them.’

    Lord Peter Wimsey rolled over on his back and stared at his offspring in consternation. His wife laid down her sewing.

    ‘Oh, Bredon, how naughty! Poor Mr Puffett was going to exhibit them at the Flower-Show.’

    ‘Well, Mummy, I didn’t mean to. It was a dare.’

    Having offered this explanation for what it was worth, Master Bredon Wimsey again turned candid eyes upon his father, who groaned and sat up.

    ‘And
must
you come and tell me about it? I hope, Bredon, you are not developing into a prig.’

    ‘Well, Father, Mr Puffett saw me. An’ he’s coming up to have a word with you when he’s put on a clean collar.’

    ‘Oh, I see,’ said his lordship, relieved. ‘And you thought you’d better come and get it over before my temper became further inflamed by hearing his version of the matter?’

    ‘Yes, please, sir.’

    ‘That is rational, at any rate. Very well, Bredon. Go up into my bedroom and prepare for execution. You will find the cane behind the dressing-table.’

    ‘Yes, Father. You won’t be long, will you, sir?’

    ‘I shall allow precisely the right time for apprehension and remorse. Off with you!’

    The culprit vanished hastily in the direction of the house; the executioner heaved himself to his feet and followed at a leisurely pace, rolling up his sleeves as he went with a certain grimness.

    ‘My dear!’ exclaimed Miss Quirk. She gazed in horror through her spectacles at Harriet, who had placidly returned to her patchwork. ‘Surely,
surely
you don’t allow him to cane that mite of a child.’

    ‘Allow?’ said Harriet, amused. ‘That’s hardly the right word, is it?’

    ‘But Harriet, dear, he oughtn’t to do it. You don’t realise how dangerous it is. He may ruin the boy’s character for life. One must reason with these little people, not break their spirits by brutality. When you inflict pain and humiliation on a child like that, you make him feel helpless and inferior, and all that suppressed resentment will break out later in the most extraordinary and shocking ways.’

    ‘Oh, I don’t think he resents it,’ said Harriet. ‘He’s devoted to his father.’

    ‘Well, if he is,’ retorted Miss Quirk, ‘it must be a sort of masochism, and it ought to be stopped – I mean, it ought to be led gently into some other direction. It’s unnatural. How could any one feel a
healthy
devotion for a person who beats him?’

    ‘I can’t think; but it often seems to happen. Peter’s mother used to lay into him with a slipper, and they’ve always been the best of friends.’

    ‘If I had a child belonging to me,’ said Miss Quirk, ‘I would never permit anybody to lay a hand on him. All my little nephews and nieces have been brought up on enlightened modern lines. They never even hear the word, Don’t. Now, you see what happens. Just
because
your boy was told
not
to pick the peaches, he picked them. If he hadn’t been forbidden to do it, he wouldn’t have been disobedient.’

    ‘No,’ said Harriet. ‘I suppose that’s quite true. He would have picked the peaches just the same, but it wouldn’t have been disobedience.’

    ‘Exactly,’ cried Miss Quirk, triumphantly. ‘You see – you manufacture a crime and then punish the poor child for it. Besides, if it hadn’t been for the prohibition, he’d have left the fruit alone.’

    ‘You don’t know Bredon. He never leaves anything alone.’

    ‘Of course not,’ said Miss Quirk, ‘and, he never will, so long as you surround him with prohibitions. His meddling with what doesn’t belong to him is just an act of defiance.’

    ‘He’s not defiant very often,’ said Harriet, ‘but of course it’s very difficult to refuse a dare from a big boy like George Waggett. I expect it was George; it usually is.’

    ‘No doubt,’ observed Miss Quirk, ‘the village children are all brought up in an atmosphere of faultfinding and defiance. That kind of thing is contagious. Democratic principles are all very well, but I should scarcely have thought it wise to expose your little boy to contamination.’

    ‘Would you forbid him to play with George Waggett?’

    ‘I should never
forbid
anything. I should endeavour to suggest some more suitable companion. Bredon could be encouraged to look after his little brother; that would give him a useful outlet for his energies and allow him to feel himself important.’

    ‘Oh, but he’s really very good with Roger,’ said Harriet, equably. She looked up, to see chastiser and chastised emerging from the house, hand in hand. ‘They seem to be quite good friends. Bredon was rather uplifted when he was promoted to a cane; he thinks it dignified and grown-up . . . Well, ruffian, how many did you get?’

    ‘Three,’ said Master Bredon, confidentially. ‘Awful hard ones. One for being naughty, an’ one for being young ass enough to be caught, and one for making a ’fernal nuisance of myself on a hot day.’

    ‘Oh, dear,’ said Miss Quick, appalled by the immorality of all this. ‘And are you sorry for having taken poor Mr. Puffett’s peaches, so that he can’t get a prize at the Show.’

    Bredon looked at her in astonishment.

    ‘We’ve done all that,’ he said, with a touch of indignation. His father thought it well to intervene.

    ‘It’s a rule in this household,’ he announced, ‘that once we’ve been whacked, nothing more can be said. The topic is withdrawn from circulation.’

    ‘Oh,’ said Miss Quirk. She still felt that something ought to be done to compensate the victim of brutality and relieve his repressions. ‘Well, as you’re a good boy, would you like to come and sit on my knee?’

    ‘No thank you,’ said Bredon. Training, or natural politeness, prompted him to amplify the refusal. ‘Thank you very much all the same.’

    ‘A more tactless suggestion,’ said Peter, ‘I never heard.’ He dropped into a deck-chair, picked up his son and heir by the waist-belt and slung him face downwards across his knees. ‘You’ll have to eat your tea on all-fours, like Nebuchadnezzar.’

    ‘Who was Nebuchadnezzar?’

    ‘Nebuchadnezzar, the King of the Jews—’ began Peter. His version of that monarch’s inquities was interrupted by the appearance, from behind the house, of a stout figure, unsuitably clad for the season in sweater, corduroy trousers and bowler hat. ‘The curse is come upon me, cried the Lady of Shalott.’

    ‘Who was the Lady of Shalott?’

    ‘I’ll tell you at bedtime. Here is Mr. Puffett, breathing out threatenings and slaughter. We must now stand up and face the music. ’Afternoon, Puffett.’

    ‘Arternoon, me lord and me lady,’ said Mr Puffett. He removed his bowler and mopped his streaming brow. ‘And miss,’ he added, with a vague gesture in Miss Quirk’s direction. ‘I made bold, me lord, to come round—’

    ‘That,’ said Peter, ‘was very kind of you. Otherwise, of course, we should have come to see you and say we were sorry. We were overcome by a sudden irresistible impulse, attributable, we think, to the beauty of the fruit and the exciting nature of the enterprise. We hope very much that we have left enough for the Flower-Show, and we will be careful not to do it again. We should like to mention that a measure of justice has already been done, in the shape of three of the juiciest, but if there is anything further coming to us, we shall try to receive it in a becoming spirit of penitence.’

    ‘Well, there!’ said Mr Puffett. ‘If I didn’t say to Jinny, “Jinny,” I says, “I ’ope the young gentleman doesn’t tell ’is lordship. He’ll be main angry,” I says, “and I wouldn’t wonder if ’e didn’t wallop ’im.” “Oh Dad,” she says, “run up quick, never mind your Sunday coat, and tell ’is lordship as ’e didn’t take only two peaches and there’s plenty left,” she says. So I comes as quick as I can, only I ’ad ter wash, what with doin’ out the pigstyes, and jest to put on a clean collar; but not bein’ as young as I was, and gettin’ stout-like, I don’t get up the ’ill as quick as I might. There wasn’t no call to thrash the young gentleman, me lord, me ’avin’ caught ’im afore much ’arm was done. Boys will be boys – and I’ll lay what you like it was some of them other young devils put ’im up to it, begging your pardon, me lady.’

    ‘Well, Bredon,’ said his father; ‘it’s very kind of Mr Puffett to take that view of it. Suppose you go with him up to the house and ask Bunter to draw him a glass of beer. And on the way, you may say whatever your good feeling may suggest.’