Lady Bobbin said ‘Pooh!’ and rose to leave the table. She was trembling with fury.
The afternoon was so wet and foggy, so extremely unseasonable, in fact, that Lady Bobbin was obliged with the utmost reluctance to abandon the paper chase which she had organized. Until four o’clock, therefore, the house party was left to enjoy in peace that exquisite discomfort which can only be produced by overfed slumberings in arm-chairs. At four punctually everybody assembled in the ballroom while for nearly an hour the Woodford school children mummed. It was the Woodford school children’s annual burden to mum at Christmas; it was the annual burden of the inhabitants of Compton Bobbin to watch the mumming. Both sides, however, bore this infliction with fortitude, and no further awkwardness took place until after tea, when Lord Leamington Spa, having donned once more his dressing-gown and wig, was distributing gifts from the laden branches of the Christmas Tree. This was the big moment of the day. The tree, of course, immediately caught fire, but this was quite a usual occurrence, and the butler had no difficulty in putting it out. The real crisis occurred when Lady Bobbin opened the largish, square parcel which had ‘To darling mummy from her very loving little Bobby’ written on it, and which to Lady Bobbin’s rage and horror was found to contain a volume entitled The Sexual Life of Savages in Northern Melanesia. This classic had been purchased at great expense by poor Bobby as a present for Paul; and had somehow changed places with Tally Ho! Songs of Horse and Hound, which was intended for his mother, and which, unluckily, was a volume of very similar size and shape. Bobby, never losing his head for an instant, explained volubly and in tones of utmost distress to his mother and the company in general that the shop must have sent the wrong book by mistake, and this explanation was rather ungraciously accepted. Greatly to Bobby’s disgust, however, The Sexual Life of Savages in Northern Melanesia was presently consigned to the stoke-hole flames by Lady Bobbin in person.
The remaining time before dinner, which was early so that the children could come down, was spent by Bobby and Héloïse rushing about the house in a state of wild excitement. Paul suspected, and rightly as it turned out, that this excess of high spirits boded no good to somebody. It was quite obvious to the student of youthful psychology that some practical joke was on hand. He wondered rather nervously where the blow would fall.
It fell during dinner. Captain Chadlington was in the middle of telling Lady Bobbin what the P.M. had said to him about pig-breeding in the West of England when a loud whirring noise was heard under his chair. He looked down, rather startled, turned white to the lips at what he saw, sprang to his feet and said, in a voice of unnatural calm: ‘Will the women and children please leave the room immediately. There is an infernal machine under my chair.’ A moment of panic ensued. Bobby and Héloïse, almost too swift to apprehend his meaning, rushed to the door shrieking, ‘A bomb, a bomb, we shall all be blown up,’ while everyone else stood transfixed with horror, looking at the small black box under Captain Chadlington’s chair as though uncertain of what they should do next. Paul alone remained perfectly calm. With great presence of mind he advanced towards the box, picked it up and conveyed it to the pantry sink, where he left it with the cold water tap running over it. This golden deed made him, jointly with Captain Chadlington, the hero of the hour. Lady Bobbin shook hands with him and said he was a very plucky young fellow and had saved all their lives, and he was overwhelmed with thanks and praise on every side. Captain Chadlington, too, was supposed to have shown wonderful fortitude in requesting the women and children to leave the room before mentioning his own danger. Only Bobby and Héloïse received no praise from anybody for their behaviour and were, indeed, more or less, sent to Coventry for the rest of the evening.
Captain Chadlington, secretly delighted to think that he was now of such importance politically that attempts were made on his life (he never doubted for a moment that this was the doing of Bolshevik agents) went off to telephone to the police. Bobby and Héloïse, listening round the corner, heard him say: ‘Hullo, Woodford police? It is Captain Chadlington, M.P., speaking from Compton Bobbin. Look here, officer, there has just been an attempt to assassinate me. The Bolsheviks, I suppose. An infernal machine under my chair at dinner. Would you send somebody along to examine it at once, please, and inform Scotland Yard of what has happened?’
Lady Brenda said: ‘I have always been afraid of something like this ever since Charlie made that speech against Bolshevism at Moreton-in-Marsh. Anyhow, we must be thankful that it was no worse.’
Lady Bobbin said that perhaps now the Government would do something about the Bolsheviks at last.
Lord Leamington Spa said that he didn’t like it at all, which was quite true, he didn’t, because on Christmas night after dinner he always sang ‘The Mistletoe Bough’ with great feeling and now it looked as though the others would be too busy talking about the bomb to listen to him.
Michael Lewes and Squibby Almanack dared to wonder whether it was really an infernal machine at all, but they only imparted this scepticism to each other.
The duchess said that of course it would be very good publicity for Charlie Chadlington, and she wondered – but added that perhaps, on the whole, he was too stupid to think of such a thing.
Captain Chadlington said that public men must expect this sort of thing and that he didn’t mind for himself, but that it was just like those cowardly dagoes to attempt to blow up a parcel of women and children as well.
Everybody agreed that the tutor had behaved admirably.
‘Where did you get it from?’ Paul asked Bobby, whom he presently found giggling in the schoolroom with the inevitable Héloïse.
‘A boy in my house made it for me last half; he says nobody will be able to tell that it’s not a genuine bomb. In fact, it is a genuine one, practically, that’s the beauty of it. Poor old Charlie Chad., he’s most awfully pleased about the whole thing, isn’t he, fussing about with those policemen like any old turkey cock. Oh! It all went off too, too beautifully, egI cegouldn’t thegink egit fegunnegier, cegould yegou?’
‘I think you’re an odious child,’ said Paul, ‘and I’ve a very good mind to tell your mother about you.’
‘That would rather take the gilt off your heroic action, though, wouldn’t it, old boy?’ said Bobby comfortably.
The local police, as Bobby’s friend had truly predicted, were unable to make up their minds as to whether the machine was or was not an infernal one. Until this pretty point should be settled Captain Chadlington was allotted two human bulldogs who were instructed by Scotland Yard that they must guard his life with their own. A camp bed was immediately made up for one of these trusty fellows in the passage, across the captain’s bedroom door, and the other was left to prowl about the house and garden all night, armed to the teeth.
‘Darling,’ said the Duchess to Bobby, as they went upstairs to bed after this exhausting day, ‘have you seen the lovely man who’s sleeping just outside my room? I don’t know what your mother expects to happen, but one is only made of flesh and blood after all.’
‘Well, for goodness sake, try to remember that you’re a duchess again now,’ said Bobby, kissing his aunt good night.
13
The two children of Captain and Lady Brenda Chadlington took a tremendous fancy to Paul, and he, although in the first place he had been completely put off by the fact that their names were Christopher Robin and Wendy, decided after a day or two that he would overlook this piece of affectation, which was, after all, not their own fault. He addressed them as George and Mabel (his lips refusing to utter their real names) and became very much attached to them.
‘You see, it’s not as though the poor things had chosen those names themselves,’ he said to Bobby, ‘and I should like to do what little I can to help them towards some form of self-respect. It is really tragic to see children surrounded by such an atmosphere of intellectual dishonesty. Poor George and Mabel.’
‘What d’you mean?’ asked Bobby, yawning. He was both bored and pique
d, as Héloïse had gone off for the whole day with Squibby.
‘In every respect,’ went on Paul, ‘they are treated as congenital half-wits by their parents. It is really shocking. They tell me,’ he added disgustedly, ‘that their Sussex house is called “The Cottage in the Wood”. Well, I mean to say! I always refer to it as The Cedars when mentioning it to them. “The Cottage in the Wood” indeed; it’s nearly as good as “Mulberrie Farm”. I don’t know what the English-speaking race is coming to.’
‘Oh, of course, Brenda is the most affected woman in the world, we all know that, but she seems to be bringing them up quite nicely, I must say. They aren’t at all spoilt or naughty.’
‘They may not be. All I know is that their poor little minds are simply drowning in a welter of falsehood and pretence.’
‘I s’pose you mean,’ said Bobby, lighting a cigarette, ‘that they are made to say their prayers and discouraged from seeing Brenda and Charlie naked in the bath. Personally, I’m rather old-fashioned about these things, too.’
‘They are treated insanely. Not only are their brains being warped by constant application to the most sterile and insidiously unmoral forms of child literature – Barrie, A. A. Milne, Kenneth Grahame, Kipling, and so on – but they are being sternly repressed in every way. Just at this age when they should be opening out to life, assimilating new experiences of every sort, learning to care for truth and beauty in every form, they are subjected to constant humiliations, constant thwarting and hindering. Each little instinct has to be fought back as soon as it appears. How can they be expected to develop? Look at what happened to poor George on Christmas Day!’
‘I didn’t then and I should simply hate to now,’ said Bobby, wondering when was the soonest that he could expect Héloïse back from her outing.
‘Poor child, what could be more natural though? It was obviously the first time in his stunted little life that he had had the chance to eat as much chocolate as he really wanted. That incident told a tale of wanton cruelty.’
‘Wanton greediness, I should call it. Dirty little pig.’
‘As for Mabel, it is tragic to see the way she is chivvied about from pillar to post all day. “Have you washed your hands, Wendy? Did you clean your teeth? Take off your outdoor shoes. Get on with your knitting. Why haven’t you brushed your hair? Put on your coat. Go for a walk.” And all this, I would have you observe, to a child of inherently contemplative nature, a philosopher, probably, in the making. How can she develop properly? Every time she sits down to commune within herself, to think out some abstruse problem or to register some new experience, she is hounded off to perform dreary and perfunctory tasks. My heart bleeds for Mabel.’
‘Wendy’s the laziest little beast I know. She’d never do a thing if she were left to herself. It’s pure idleness with her.’
‘I entirely disagree with you, Bobby. That child has ideas and perceptions far beyond her age, and naturally they tire her out. She needs time and leisure in which to tabulate the impressions which she is always receiving from the outer world. Another thing very sad to see is the way her emotional life is threatened.’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘The poor child has a most distinct father-fixation, haven’t you realized that? Very marked indeed.’
‘Oh, nonsense, Paul; what extraordinary ideas you do have.’
‘Nonsense, is it? My dear Bobby, just you notice the way she copies him in everything – she sits, walks, eats and talks exactly like him. Why, in another year or two she’ll be the living image of him, always a sign of morbid affection, you know.’
‘Really, you do surprise me. I suppose heredity could have nothing to do with it?’ said Bobby sarcastically.
‘Oh, no, nothing whatever. Nobody believes in hereditary influences nowadays. No, it’s all the result of this mad passion she has, subconsciously, of course, for her father. Most dangerous.’
‘Well,’ said Bobby, ‘I expect you know best. Anyhow, here comes one of the little cherubs, bless his tiny heart.’
‘Mr. Fisher,’ said Christopher Robin, putting his head round the schoolroom door. ‘Please will you come out with us? Mother says we must go up the drive and back before lunch.’
‘Must, must, always that word “must”,’ sighed Paul. ‘So unwholesome, so stifling. Yes, I’d like to come out with you, George. Where’s Mabel, then?’
‘She’s just looking for still-borns in The Times,’ said Christopher Robin. ‘I’ll fetch her – oh, here she comes though.’ Wendy Chadlington kept a little red pocket-book in which she wrote down the numbers of still-born babies every day as announced in the Births column of The Times. This lugubrious hobby seemed to afford her the deepest satisfaction.
‘Any luck today?’ asked Christopher Robin casually.
‘Not today. One lot of triplets though. I keep a separate page for them, and there were two still-borns yesterday. One mustn’t expect too much, you know.’
‘Now George and Mabel,’ said Paul, ‘if you are quite ready let’s go, shall we? There isn’t much time, really, before lunch.’
Wendy looked at Christopher Robin and they both giggled. They were not, as yet, accustomed to their new names, and thought that Paul, though both amiable and entertaining, was undoubtedly a little mad.
Paul carefully replaced a volume of Lady Maria’s journal behind the radiator, a practice that had but little meaning since Lady Bobbin, for whose deception it had been invented, never came near the schoolroom by any chance.
‘What story are you going to tell us today?’ asked Wendy as they started out.
‘Please, Mr. Fisher, tell us a story about animals.’
‘A true story about animals, please, Mr. Fisher.’
Yesterday’s ‘story’, a homily on the life history of eels, had not really gone with much of a swing, and it was felt that a true story would be preferable to one which he had palpably invented himself.
‘Well, let me think,’ said Paul. ‘I don’t know many stories about animals. What kind of animal?’
‘Any kind. Please, Mr. Fisher. You told us a lovely one yesterday,’ said Christopher Robin encouragingly.
‘I really don’t know any,’ said Paul, at his wits’ end. ‘Unless you’d like to hear one that I read in Country Life the other day. That was supposed to be true, I believe.’
‘What’s Country Life?’
‘It’s a paper your Aunt Gloria takes in.’
‘I know,’ said Wendy in tones of superiority, and added in a stage whisper: ‘Christopher Robin can’t read, you know, so of course papers aren’t very interesting to him.’
‘Pig,’ said Christopher Robin. ‘I can read. Anyway, you – ’
Paul had been treated to arguments of this kind before, and hastily said: ‘I’ll tell you the story then, if you’ll be quiet. A man was walking across a farm-yard – ’
‘A farmer?’ asked Wendy, ‘or a labourer?’
‘If you interrupt I shan’t go on. The man who wrote this story to Country Life – I don’t know who he may have been – was walking across a farm-yard when he saw two rats running along in front of him. He threw a stick which he had in his hand at the first rat and killed it dead. To his great surprise the second rat, instead of running away, stood quite still as though it were waiting for something. The man thought this was so odd that he went over to look at it, and when he got quite near he saw that it was stone blind and had a straw in its mouth. The rat he had killed had been leading it along by the straw, you see, and the poor blind one thought it had stopped to have a drink or something, I suppose, and was just patiently waiting there for it to go on.’
‘Well?’ said Wendy after a pause.
‘That’s the end of the story.’
‘But what did the man do with the blind rat?’
‘I don’t know. He didn’t say in Country Life.
‘I should have kept it for a pet,’ said Christopher Robin, ‘and led it about on a straw.’
‘I should love a dear l
ittle blind rat,’ said Wendy, and added in a contemplative voice: ‘I sometimes wish I were blind you know, so that I needn’t see my tooth water after I’ve spat it.’
‘I know what,’ said Christopher Robin, ‘let’s pretend you’re a blind rat, Wendy. Shut your eyes, you see, and put this straw in your mouth, and I’ll put the other end of it in mine, and I’ll lead you along by it.’
That evening Lady Brenda said to Paul: ‘I think it is so kind of you to take my wee things out for walks (I’m afraid they must bore you rather, don’t they?) but – please don’t mind me saying this – don’t you think that game you taught them with the straw is perhaps just the least little bit unhygienic? Of course if the straw could be sterilized I wouldn’t mind, but you see one can’t be certain where it came from, and I am so frightened always of T.B. So I’ve strictly forbidden them to play it any more, I hope you won’t be angry; it’s too sweet of you to bother with them,’ and with a vague smile she drifted away.
*
Héloïse Potts took Squibby Almanack for a ride. She did this mainly in order to annoy Bobby, because she knew that she would be fearfully bored by Squibby before the day was over. They went, in the duchess’s black Rolls-Royce, to visit Bunch Tarradale, whose ancestral home, Cracklesford Castle, was some thirty miles away, in Warwickshire.
Bunch was more than pleased to see them, and quickly led off Squibby to the downstairs lavatory so that they could have a good gossip.
‘Have you heard from Biggy?’ said Bunch, with more than a hint of malice in his voice. ‘He’s in love again.’
‘Not again! Who is it this time?’
‘A girl called Susan Alveston. However, she’s refused him, which is all to the good. Very ugly and stupid I hear she is, and only sixteen.’
‘Biggy always likes them young though, doesn’t he? How d’you know she’s ugly and stupid?’
‘He said so in his letter. He said “You might not call her strictly beautiful, but she has a most fascinating and expressive little face”. That means she must be ugly, doesn’t it, and all girls of sixteen are stupid. All the ones I’ve met are, anyhow. Besides, she must be, to refuse Biggy.’