CHAPTER 7. BEING BANDITS
Noel was quite tiresome for ever so long after we found the Princess. Hewould keep on wanting to go to the Park when the rest of us didn't, andthough we went several times to please him, we never found that dooropen again, and all of us except him knew from the first that it wouldbe no go.
So now we thought it was time to do something to rouse him from thestupor of despair, which is always done to heroes when anything bafflinghas occurred. Besides, we were getting very short of money again--thefortunes of your house cannot be restored (not so that they will last,that is), even by the one pound eight we got when we had the 'goodhunting.' We spent a good deal of that on presents for Father'sbirthday. We got him a paper-weight, like a glass bun, with a pictureof Lewisham Church at the bottom; and a blotting-pad, and a box ofpreserved fruits, and an ivory penholder with a view of GreenwichPark in the little hole where you look through at the top. He was mostawfully pleased and surprised, and when he heard how Noel and Oswald hadearned the money to buy the things he was more surprised still. Nearlyall the rest of our money went to get fireworks for the Fifth ofNovember. We got six Catherine wheels and four rockets; two hand-lights,one red and one green; a sixpenny maroon; two Roman-candles--they costa shilling; some Italian streamers, a fairy fountain, and a tourbillonthat cost eighteen-pence and was very nearly worth it.
But I think crackers and squibs are a mistake. It's true you get a lotof them for the money, and they are not bad fun for the first two orthree dozen, but you get jolly sick of them before you've let off yoursixpenn'orth. And the only amusing way is not allowed: it is puttingthem in the fire.
It always seems a long time till the evening when you have got fireworksin the house, and I think as it was a rather foggy day we should havedecided to let them off directly after breakfast, only Father had saidhe would help us to let them off at eight o'clock after he had had hisdinner, and you ought never to disappoint your father if you can helpit.
You see we had three good reasons for trying H. O.'s idea of restoringthe fallen fortunes of our house by becoming bandits on the Fifth ofNovember. We had a fourth reason as well, and that was the best reasonof the lot. You remember Dora thought it would be wrong to be bandits.And the Fifth of November came while Dora was away at Stroud stayingwith her godmother. Stroud is in Gloucestershire. We were determined todo it while she was out of the way, because we did not think it wrong,and besides we meant to do it anyhow.
We held a Council, of course, and laid our plans very carefully. We letH. O. be Captain, because it was his idea. Oswald was Lieutenant. Oswaldwas quite fair, because he let H. O. call himself Captain; but Oswald isthe eldest next to Dora, after all.
Our plan was this. We were all to go up on to the Heath. Our house is inthe Lewisham Road, but it's quite close to the Heath if you cut up theshort way opposite the confectioner's, past the nursery gardens andthe cottage hospital, and turn to the left again and afterwards to theright. You come out then at the top of the hill, where the big guns arewith the iron fence round them, and where the bands play on Thursdayevenings in the summer.
We were to lurk in ambush there, and waylay an unwary traveller. We wereto call upon him to surrender his arms, and then bring him home and puthim in the deepest dungeon below the castle moat; then we were to loadhim with chains and send to his friends for ransom.
You may think we had no chains, but you are wrong, because we usedto keep two other dogs once, besides Pincher, before the fall of thefortunes of the ancient House of Bastable. And they were quite big dogs.
It was latish in the afternoon before we started. We thought we couldlurk better if it was nearly dark. It was rather foggy, and we waiteda good while beside the railings, but all the belated travellers wereeither grown up or else they were Board School children. We weren'tgoing to get into a row with grown-up people--especially strangers--andno true bandit would ever stoop to ask a ransom from the relations ofthe poor and needy. So we thought it better to wait.
As I said, it was Guy Fawkes Day, and if it had not been we should neverhave been able to be bandits at all, for the unwary traveller we didcatch had been forbidden to go out because he had a cold in his head.But he would run out to follow a guy, without even putting on a coat ora comforter, and it was a very damp, foggy afternoon and nearly dark, soyou see it was his own fault entirely, and served him jolly well right.
We saw him coming over the Heath just as we were deciding to go hometo tea. He had followed that guy right across to the village (we callBlackheath the village; I don't know why), and he was coming backdragging his feet and sniffing.
'Hist, an unwary traveller approaches!' whispered Oswald.
'Muffle your horses' heads and see to the priming of your pistols,'muttered Alice. She always will play boys' parts, and she makes Elliscut her hair short on purpose. Ellis is a very obliging hairdresser.
'Steal softly upon him,' said Noel; 'for lo! 'tis dusk, and no humaneyes can mark our deeds.'
So we ran out and surrounded the unwary traveller. It turned out to beAlbert-next-door, and he was very frightened indeed until he saw who wewere.
'Surrender!' hissed Oswald, in a desperate-sounding voice, as he caughtthe arm of the Unwary. And Albert-next-door said, 'All right! I'msurrendering as hard as I can. You needn't pull my arm off.'
We explained to him that resistance was useless, and I think he saw thatfrom the first. We held him tight by both arms, and we marched him homedown the hill in a hollow square of five.
He wanted to tell us about the guy, but we made him see that it was notproper for prisoners to talk to the guard, especially about guys thatthe prisoner had been told not to go after because of his cold.
When we got to where we live he said, 'All right, I don't want to tellyou. You'll wish I had afterwards. You never saw such a guy.'
'I can see _you_!' said H. O. It was very rude, and Oswald told him soat once, because it is his duty as an elder brother. But H. O. is veryyoung and does not know better yet, and besides it wasn't bad for H. O.
Albert-next-door said, 'You haven't any manners, and I want to go in tomy tea. Let go of me!'
But Alice told him, quite kindly, that he was not going in to his tea,but coming with us.
'I'm not,' said Albert-next-door; 'I'm going home. Leave go! I've gota bad cold. You're making it worse.' Then he tried to cough, which wasvery silly, because we'd seen him in the morning, and he'd told us wherethe cold was that he wasn't to go out with. When he had tried to cough,he said, 'Leave go of me! You see my cold's getting worse.'
'You should have thought of that before,' said Dicky; 'you're coming inwith us.'
'Don't be a silly,' said Noel; 'you know we told you at the verybeginning that resistance was useless. There is no disgrace in yielding.We are five to your one.'
By this time Eliza had opened the door, and we thought it best to takehim in without any more parlaying. To parley with a prisoner is not doneby bandits.
Directly we got him safe into the nursery, H. O. began to jump about andsay, 'Now you're a prisoner really and truly!'
And Albert-next-door began to cry. He always does. I wonder he didn'tbegin long before--but Alice fetched him one of the dried fruits wegave Father for his birthday. It was a green walnut. I have noticedthe walnuts and the plums always get left till the last in the box; theapricots go first, and then the figs and pears; and the cherries, ifthere are any.
So he ate it and shut up. Then we explained his position to him, so thatthere should be no mistake, and he couldn't say afterwards that he hadnot understood.
'There will be no violence,' said Oswald--he was now Captain of theBandits, because we all know H. O. likes to be Chaplain when weplay prisoners--'no violence. But you will be confined in a dark,subterranean dungeon where toads and snakes crawl, and but little of thelight of day filters through the heavily mullioned windows. You will beloaded with chains. Now don't begin again, Baby, there's nothing tocry about; straw will be your pallet; beside you the gaoler will s
et aewer--a ewer is only a jug, stupid; it won't eat you--a ewer with water;and a mouldering crust will be your food.'
But Albert-next-door never enters into the spirit of a thing. He mumbledsomething about tea-time.
Now Oswald, though stern, is always just, and besides we were all ratherhungry, and tea was ready. So we had it at once, Albert-next-door andall--and we gave him what was left of the four-pound jar of apricot jamwe got with the money Noel got for his poetry. And we saved our crustsfor the prisoner.
Albert-next-door was very tiresome. Nobody could have had a nicer prisonthan he had. We fenced him into a corner with the old wire nurseryfender and all the chairs, instead of putting him in the coal-cellaras we had first intended. And when he said the dog-chains were cold thegirls were kind enough to warm his fetters thoroughly at the fire beforewe put them on him.
We got the straw cases of some bottles of wine someone sent Fatherone Christmas--it is some years ago, but the cases are quite good. Weunpacked them very carefully and pulled them to pieces and scatteredthe straw about. It made a lovely straw pallet, and took ever so long tomake--but Albert-next-door has yet to learn what gratitude really is.We got the bread trencher for the wooden platter where the prisoner'scrusts were put--they were not mouldy, but we could not wait till theygot so, and for the ewer we got the toilet jug out of the spare-roomwhere nobody ever sleeps. And even then Albert-next-door couldn't behappy like the rest of us. He howled and cried and tried to get out, andhe knocked the ewer over and stamped on the mouldering crusts. Luckilythere was no water in the ewer because we had forgotten it, only dustand spiders. So we tied him up with the clothes-line from the backkitchen, and we had to hurry up, which was a pity for him. We might havehad him rescued by a devoted page if he hadn't been so tiresome. In factNoel was actually dressing up for the page when Albert-next-door kickedover the prison ewer.
We got a sheet of paper out of an old exercise-book, and we made H. O.prick his own thumb, because he is our little brother and it is our dutyto teach him to be brave. We none of us mind pricking ourselves; we'vedone it heaps of times. H. O. didn't like it, but he agreed to do it,and I helped him a little because he was so slow, and when he saw thered bead of blood getting fatter and bigger as I squeezed his thumb hewas very pleased, just as I had told him he would be.
This is what we wrote with H. O.'s blood, only the blood gave out whenwe got to 'Restored', and we had to write the rest with crimson lake,which is not the same colour, though I always use it, myself, forpainting wounds.
While Oswald was writing it he heard Alice whispering to the prisonerthat it would soon be over, and it was only play. The prisoner left offhowling, so I pretended not to hear what she said. A Bandit Captain hasto overlook things sometimes. This was the letter--
'Albert Morrison is held a prisoner by Bandits. On payment of three thousand pounds he will be restored to his sorrowing relatives, and all will be forgotten and forgiven.'
I was not sure about the last part, but Dicky was certain he had seen itin the paper, so I suppose it must have been all right.
We let H. O. take the letter; it was only fair, as it was his blood itwas written with, and told him to leave it next door for Mrs Morrison.
H. O. came back quite quickly, and Albert-next-door's uncle came withhim.
'What is all this, Albert?' he cried. 'Alas, alas, my nephew! Do I findyou the prisoner of a desperate band of brigands?'
'Bandits,' said H. O; 'you know it says bandits.'
'I beg your pardon, gentlemen,' said Albert-next-door's uncle, 'banditsit is, of course. This, Albert, is the direct result of the pursuit ofthe guy on an occasion when your doting mother had expressly warned youto forgo the pleasures of the chase.'
Albert said it wasn't his fault, and he hadn't wanted to play.
'So ho!' said his uncle, 'impenitent too! Where's the dungeon?'
We explained the dungeon, and showed him the straw pallet and the ewerand the mouldering crusts and other things.
'Very pretty and complete,' he said. 'Albert, you are more highlyprivileged than ever I was. No one ever made me a nice dungeon when Iwas your age. I think I had better leave you where you are.'
Albert began to cry again and said he was sorry, and he would be a goodboy.
'And on this old familiar basis you expect me to ransom you, do you?Honestly, my nephew, I doubt whether you are worth it. Besides, the summentioned in this document strikes me as excessive: Albert really is_not_ worth three thousand pounds. Also by a strange and unfortunatechance I haven't the money about me. Couldn't you take less?'
We said perhaps we could.
'Say eightpence,' suggested Albert-next-door's uncle, 'which is all thesmall change I happen to have on my person.'
'Thank you very much,' said Alice as he held it out; 'but are you sureyou can spare it? Because really it was only play.'
'Quite sure. Now, Albert, the game is over. You had better run home toyour mother and tell her how much you've enjoyed yourself.'
When Albert-next-door had gone his uncle sat in the Guy Fawkes armchairand took Alice on his knee, and we sat round the fire waiting till itwould be time to let off our fireworks. We roasted the chestnuts hesent Dicky out for, and he told us stories till it was nearly seven. Hisstories are first-rate--he does all the parts in different voices. Atlast he said--
'Look here, young-uns. I like to see you play and enjoy yourselves, andI don't think it hurts Albert to enjoy himself too.'
'I don't think he did much,' said H. O. But I knew whatAlbert-next-door's uncle meant because I am much older than H. O. Hewent on--
'But what about Albert's mother? Didn't you think how anxious she wouldbe at his not coming home? As it happens I saw him come in with you, sowe knew it was all right. But if I hadn't, eh?'
He only talks like that when he is very serious, or even angry. Othertimes he talks like people in books--to us, I mean.
We none of us said anything. But I was thinking. Then Alice spoke.
Girls seem not to mind saying things that we don't say. She put her armsround Albert-next-door's uncle's neck and said--
'We're very, very sorry. We didn't think about his mother. You see wetry very hard not to think about other people's mothers because--'
Just then we heard Father's key in the door and Albert-next-door's unclekissed Alice and put her down, and we all went down to meet Father. Aswe went I thought I heard Albert-next-door's uncle say something thatsounded like 'Poor little beggars!'
He couldn't have meant us, when we'd been having such a jolly time, andchestnuts, and fireworks to look forward to after dinner and everything!