THE
BURGLARS
It was much too fine a night to think of going to
bed at once, and so, although the witching hour of nine P.M. had struck, Edward
and I were still leaning out of the open window in our nightshirts, watching
the play of the cedar-branch shadows on the moonlit lawn, and planning schemes
of fresh devilry for the sunshiny morrow. From below, strains of the jocund
piano declared that the Olympians were enjoying themselves in their listless,
impotent way; for the new curate had been bidden to dinner that night, and was
at the moment unclerically proclaiming to all the world that he feared no foe.
His discordant vociferations doubtless started a train of thought in Edward’s
mind, for the youth presently remarked, a propos of nothing that had been said
before, “I believe the new curate’s rather gone on Aunt Maria.”
I scouted the
notion. “Why, she’s quite old,” I said. (She must have seen some
five-and-twenty summers.)
“Of course she
is,” replied Edward, scornfully. “It’s not her, it’s her money he’s after, you
bet!”
“Didn’t know she
had any money,” I observed timidly.
“Sure to have,”
said my brother, with confidence. “Heaps and heaps.”
Silence ensued,
both our minds being busy with the new situation thus presented,—mine, in
wonderment at this flaw that so often declared itself in enviable natures of
fullest endowment,—in a grown-up man and a good cricketer, for instance, even
as this curate; Edward’s (apparently), in the consideration of how such a state
of things, supposing it existed, could be best turned to his own advantage.
“Bobby Ferris
told me,” began Edward in due course, “that there was a fellow spooning his
sister once—”
“What’s
spooning?” I asked meekly.
“Oh, I dunno,”
said Edward, indifferently. “It’s—it’s—it’s just a thing they do, you know. And
he used to carry notes and messages and things between ‘em, and he got a
shilling almost every time.”
“What, from each
of ‘em?” I innocently inquired.
Edward looked at
me with scornful pity. “Girls never have any money,” he briefly explained. “But
she did his exercises and got him out of rows, and told stories for him when he
needed it—and much better ones than he could have made up for himself. Girls are
useful in some ways. So he was living in clover, when unfortunately they went
and quarrelled about something.”
“Don’t see what
that’s got to do with it,” I said.
“Nor don’t I,”
rejoined Edward. “But anyhow the notes and things stopped, and so did the shillings.
Bobby was fairly cornered, for he had bought two ferrets on tick, and promised
to pay a shilling a week, thinking the shillings were going on for ever, the
silly young ass. So when the week was up, and he was being dunned for the
shilling, he went off to the fellow and said, ‘Your broken-hearted Bella
implores you to meet her at sundown,—by the hollow oak, as of old, be it only
for a moment. Do not fail!’ He got all that out of some rotten book, of course.
The fellow looked puzzled and said,—
“‘What hollow
oak? I don’t know any hollow oak.’
“‘Perhaps it was
the Royal Oak?’ said Bobby promptly, ‘cos he saw he had made a slip, through
trusting too much to the rotten book; but this didn’t seem to make the fellow
any happier.”
“Should think
not,” I said, “the Royal Oak’s an awful low sort of pub.”
“I know,” said
Edward. “Well, at last the fellow said, ‘I think I know what she means: the
hollow tree in your father’s paddock. It happens to be an elm, but she wouldn’t
know the difference. All right: say I’ll be there.’ Bobby hung about a bit, for
he hadn’t got his money. ‘She was crying awfully,’ he said. Then he got his
shilling.”
“And wasn’t the
fellow riled,” I inquired, “when he got to the place and found nothing?”
“He found Bobby,”
said Edward, indignantly. “Young Ferris was a gentleman, every inch of him. He
brought the fellow another message from Bella: ‘I dare not leave the house. My
cruel parents immure me closely If you only knew what I suffer. Your
broken-hearted Bella.’ Out of the same rotten book. This made the fellow a
little suspicious, ’cos it was the old Ferrises who had been keen about the
thing all through: the fellow, you see, had tin.”
“But what’s that
got to—” I began again.
“Oh, I dunno,”
said Edward, impatiently. “I’m telling you just what Bobby told me. He got
suspicious, anyhow, but he couldn’t exactly call Bella’s brother a liar, so
Bobby escaped for the time. But when he was in a hole next week, over a stiff
French exercise, and tried the same sort of game on his sister, she was too
sharp for him, and he got caught out. Somehow women seem more mistrustful than
men. They’re so beastly suspicious by nature, you know.”
“I know,” said I.
“But did the two—the fellow and the sister—make it up afterwards?”
“I don’t remember
about that,” replied Edward, indifferently; “but Bobby got packed off to school
a whole year earlier than his people meant to send him,—which was just what he
wanted. So you see it all came right in the end!”
I was trying to
puzzle out the moral of this story—it was evidently meant to contain one
somewhere—when a flood of golden lamplight mingled with the moon rays on the
lawn, and Aunt Maria and the new curate strolled out on the grass below us, and
took the direction of a garden seat that was backed by a dense laurel shrubbery
reaching round in a half-circle to the house. Edward mediated moodily. “If we
only knew what they were talking about,” said he, “you’d soon see whether I was
right or not. Look here! Let’s send the kid down by the porch to reconnoitre!”
“Harold’s
asleep,” I said; “it seems rather a shame—”
“Oh, rot!” said
my brother; “he’s the youngest, and he’s got to do as he’s told!”
So the luckless
Harold was hauled out of bed and given his sailing-orders. He was naturally
rather vexed at being stood up suddenly on the cold floor, and the job had no
particular interest for him; but he was both staunch and well disciplined. The
means of exit were simple enough. A porch of iron trellis came up to within
easy reach of the window, and was habitually used by all three of us, when
modestly anxious to avoid public notice. Harold climbed deftly down the porch
like a white rat, and his night gown glimmered a moment on the gravel walk ere
he was lost to sight in the darkness of the shrubbery. A brief interval of
silence ensued, broken suddenly by a sound of scuffle, and then a shrill,
long-drawn squeal, as of metallic surfaces in friction. Our scout had fallen
into the hands of the enemy!
Indolence alone
had made us devolve the task of investigation on our younger brother. Now that
danger had declared itself, there was no hesitation. In a second we were down
the side of the porch, and crawling Cherokee-wise through the laurels to the
back of the garden-seat. Piteous was the sight that greeted us. Aunt Maria was
on the seat, in a white evening frock, looking—for an aunt—really quite nice.
On the lawn stood an incensed curate, grasping our small brother by a large
ear, which—judging from the row he was making—seemed on the point of parting
company with the head it adorned. The gruesome noise he was emitting did not
really affect us otherwise than aesthetically. To one who has tried both, the
wail of genuine physical anguish is easy distinguishable from the pumped-up ad
misericordiam blubber. Harold’s could clearly be recognised as belonging to the
latter class. “Now, you young—” (whelp, I think it was, but Edward stoutly
maintains it was devil), said the curate, sternly; “tell us what you mean by
it!”
“Well, leggo of
my ear then!” shrilled Harold, “and I’ll tell you the solemn truth!”
“Very well,”
agreed the curate, releasing him; “now go ahead, and don’t lie more than you
can help.”
We abode the
promised disclosure without the least misgiving; but even we had hardly given
Harold due credit for his fertility of resource and powers of imagination.
“I had just
finished saying my prayers,” began that young gentleman, slowly, “when I
happened to look out of the window, and on the lawn I saw a sight which froze
the marrow in my veins! A burglar was approaching the house with snake-like
tread! He had a scowl and a dark lantern, and he was armed to the teeth!”
We listened with
interest. The style, though unlike Harold’s native notes, seemed strangely
familiar.
“Go on,” said the
curate, grimly.
“Pausing in his
stealthy career,” continued Harold, “he gave a low whistle. Instantly the
signal was responded to, and from the adjacent shadows two more figures glided
forth. The miscreants were both armed to the teeth.”
“Excellent,” said
the curate; “proceed.”
“The robber chief,”
pursued Harold, warming to his work, “joined his nefarious comrades, and
conversed with them in silent tones. His expression was truly ferocious, and I
ought to have said that he was armed to the t—”
“There, never
mind his teeth,” interrupted the curate, rudely; “there’s too much jaw about
you altogether. Hurry up and have done.”
“I was in a
frightful funk,” continued the narrator, warily guarding his ear with his hand,
“but just then the drawing-room window opened, and you and Aunt Maria came
out—I mean emerged. The burglars vanished silently into the laurels, with
horrid implications!”
The curate looked
slightly puzzled. The tale was well sustained, and certainly circumstantial.
After all, the boy might have really seen something. How was the poor man to
know—though the chaste and lofty diction might have supplied a hint—that the
whole yarn was a free adaptation from the last Penny Dreadful lent us by the
knife-and-boot boy?
“Why did you not
alarm the house?” he asked.
“‘Cos I was
afraid,” said Harold, sweetly, “that p’raps they mightn’t believe me!”
“But how did you
get down here, you naughty little boy?” put in Aunt Maria.
Harold was hard
pressed—by his own flesh and blood, too!
At that moment
Edward touched me on the shoulder and glided off through the laurels. When some
ten yards away he gave a low whistle. I replied by another. The effect was
magical. Aunt Maria started up with a shriek. Harold gave one startled glance
around, and then fled like a hare, made straight for the back door, burst in
upon the servants at supper, and buried himself in the broad bosom of the cook,
his special ally. The curate faced the laurels—hesitatingly. But Aunt Maria
flung herself on him. “O Mr. Hodgitts!” I heard her cry, “you are brave! for my
sake do not be rash!” He was not rash. When I peeped out a second later, the
coast was entirely clear.
By this time
there were sounds of a household timidly emerging; and Edward remarked to me
that perhaps we had better be off. Retreat was an easy matter. A stunted laurel
gave a leg up on to the garden wall, which led in its turn to the roof of an
out-house, up which, at a dubious angle, we could crawl to the window of the
box-room. This overland route had been revealed to us one day by the domestic
cat, when hard pressed in the course of an otter-hunt, in which the
cat—somewhat unwillingly—was filling the title role; and it had proved
distinctly useful on occasions like the present. We were snug in bed—minus some
cuticle from knees and elbows—and Harold, sleepily chewing something sticky,
had been carried up in the arms of the friendly cook, ere the clamour of the
burglar-hunters had died away.
The curate’s
undaunted demeanour, as reported by Aunt Maria, was generally supposed to have
terrified the burglars into flight, and much kudos accrued to him thereby. Some
days later, however, when he hid dropped in to afternoon tea, and was making a
mild curatorial joke about the moral courage required for taking the last piece
of bread-and-butter, I felt constrained to remark dreamily, and as it were to
the universe at large, “Mr. Hodgitts! you are brave! for my sake, do not be
rash!”
Fortunately for
me, the vicar was also a caller on that day; and it was always a comparatively
easy matter to dodge my long-coated friend in the open.
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