New Treasure Seekers; Or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune
were all being punished for what he had done. He was very affectionate
and tried to write pieces of poetry to us all, but he was so unhappy he
couldn't even write, and he went into the kitchen and sat on Jane's knee
and said his head ached.
Next day it was the day of the party and we were plunged in gloom.
Archibald got out his Etons and put his clean shirt ready, and a pair of
flashy silk socks with red spots, and then he went into the bath-room.
Noel and Jane were whispering on the stairs. Jane came up and Noel went
down, Jane knocked at the bath-room door and said--
"Here's the soap, Master Archerbald. I didn't put none in to-day."
He opened the door and put out his hand.
"Half a moment," said Jane, "I've got something else in my hand."
As she spoke the gas all over the house went down blue, and then went
out. We held our breaths heavily.
"Here it is," she said; "I'll put it in your hand. I'll go down and turn
off the burners and see about the gas. You'll be late, sir. If I was you
I should get on a bit with the washing of myself in the dark. I daresay
the gas'll be five or ten minutes, and it's five o'clock now."
It wasn't, and of course she ought not to have said it, but it was
useful all the same.
Noel came stumping up the stairs in the dark. He fumbled about and then
whispered, "I've turned the little white china knob that locks the
bath-room door on the outside."
The water was bubbling and hissing in the pipes inside, and the darkness
went on. Father and uncle had not come in yet, which was a fortunate
blessing.
"Do be quiet!" said Noel. "Just you wait."
We all sat on the stairs and waited. Noel said--
"Don't ask me yet--you'll see--you wait."
And we waited, and the gas did not come back.
At last Archibald tried to come out--he thought he had washed himself
clean, I suppose--and of course the door was fastened. He kicked and he
hammered and he shouted, and we were glad.
At last Noel banged on the door and screamed through the keyhole--
"If we let you out will you let us off our promise not to tell about you
and the pipes? We won't tell till you've gone back to school."
He wouldn't for a long time, but at last he had to.
"I shan't ever come to your beastly house again," he bellowed through
the keyhole, "so I don't mind."
"Turn off the gas-burners then," said Oswald, ever thoughtful, though he
was still in ignorance of the beautiful truth.
Then Noel sang out over the stairs, "Light up!" and Jane went round with
a taper, and when the landing gas was lighted Noel turned the knob of
the bath-room, and Archibald exited in his Indian red and yellow
dressing-gown that he thought so much of. Of course we expected his face
to be red with rage, or white with passion, or purple with mixed
emotions, but you cannot think what our feelings were--indeed, we hardly
knew what they were ourselves--when we saw that he was not red or white
or purple, but _black_. He looked like an uneven sort of bluish nigger.
His face and hands were all black and blue in streaks, and so were the
bits of his feet that showed between his Indian dressing-gown and his
Turkish slippers.
The word "Krikey" fell from more than one lip.
"What are you staring at?" he asked.
We did not answer even then, though I think it was less from
keep-your-wordishness than amazement. But Jane did.
"Nyang, Nyang!" she uttered tauntingly. "You thought it was soap I was
giving you, and all the time it was Maple's dark bright navy-blue
indelible dye--won't wash out." She flashed a looking-glass in his face,
and he looked and saw the depth of his dark bright navy-blueness.
Now, you may think that we shouted with laughing to see him done brown
and dyed blue like this, but we did not. There was a spellbound silence.
Oswald, I know, felt a quite uncomfortable feeling inside him.
When Archibald had had one good look at himself he did not want any
more. He ran to his room and bolted himself in.
"_He_ won't go to no parties," said Jane, and she flounced downstairs.
We never knew how much Noel had told her. He is very young, and not so
strong as we are, and we thought it better not to ask.
Oswald and Dicky and H.O.--particularly H.O.--told each other it served
him right, but after a bit Dora asked Noel if he would mind her trying
to get some of it off our unloved cousin, and he said "No."
But nothing would get it off him; and when Father came home there was an
awful row. And he said we had disgraced ourselves and forgotten the
duties of hospitality. We got it pretty straight, I can tell you. And we
bore it all. I do not say we were martyrs to the honour of our house and
to our plighted word, but I do say that we got it very straight indeed,
and we did not tell the provocativeness we had had from our guest that
drove the poet Noel to this wild and desperate revenge.
But some one told, and I have always thought it was Jane, and that is
why we did not ask too many questions about what Noel had told her,
because late that night Father came and said he now understood that we
had meant to do right, except perhaps the one who cut the pipe with a
chisel, and that must have been more silliness than naughtiness; and
perhaps the being dyed blue served our cousin rather right. And he gave
Archibald a few remarks in private, and when the dye began to come
off--it was not a fast dye, though it said so on the paper it was
wrapped in--Archibald, now a light streaky blue, really did seem to be
making an effort to be something like decent. And when, now merely a
pale grey, he had returned to school, he sent us a letter. It said:--
"_My dear Cousins_,--
"_I think that I was beastlier than I meant to
be, but I am not accustomed to young kids. And I
think uncle was right, and the way you stand up
for the honour of our house is not all nonsense,
like I said it was. If we ever meet in the future
life I hope you will not keep a down on me about
things. I don't think you can expect me to say
more. From your affectionate cousin,_
"_Archibald Bastable._"
So I suppose rays of remorse penetrated that cold heart, and now perhaps
he will be a reformed Bastable. I am sure I hope so, but I believe it is
difficult, if not impossible, for a leopard to change his skin.
Still, I remember how indelibly black he looked when he came out of the
fatal bath-room; and it nearly all wore off. And perhaps spots on the
honourable inside parts of your soul come off with time. I hope so. The
dye never came off the inside of the bath though. I think that was what
annoyed our good great-uncle the most.
_OVER THE WATER TO CHINA_
OSWALD is a very modest boy, I believe, but even he would not deny that
he has an active brain. The author has heard both his Father and
Albert's uncle say so. And the most far-reaching ideas often come to him
quite naturally--just as silly notions that aren't any good might come
to you. And he had an idea which he meant to hold a council; about with
his brothers and sisters; but just as he was going to unroll his idea to
them our Father occurred suddenly in our midst and said a strange cousin
was coming, and he came, and he was strange indeed! And when Fate had
woven the threads of his dark destiny and he had been dyed a dark bright
navy-blue, and had gone from our midst, Oswald went back to the idea
that he had not forgotten. The words "tenacious of purpose" mean
sticking to things, and these words always make me think of the
character of the young hero of these pages. At least I suppose his
brothers Dicky and Noel and H.O. are heroes too, in a way, but somehow
the author of these lines knows more about Oswald's inside realness
than he does about the others. But I am getting too deep for words.
So Oswald went into the common-room. Every one was busy. Noel and H.O.
were playing Halma. Dora was covering boxes with silver paper to put
sweets in for a school treat, and Dicky was making a cardboard model of
a new screw he has invented for ocean steamers. But Oswald did not mind
interrupting, because Dora ought not to work too hard, and Halma always
ends in a row, and I would rather not say what I think of Dicky's screw.
So Oswald said--
"I want a council. Where's Alice?"
Every one said they didn't know, and they made haste to say that we
couldn't have a council without her. But Oswald's determined nature made
him tell H.O. to chuck that rotten game and go and look for her. H.O. is
our youngest brother, and it is right that he should remember this and
do as he was told. But he happened to be winning the beastly Halma game,
and Oswald saw that there was going to be trouble--"big trouble," as Mr.
Kipling says. And he was just bracing his young nerves for the conflict
with H.O., because he was not going to stand any nonsense from his young
brother about his not fetching Alice when he was jolly well told to,
when the missing maiden bounced into the room bearing upon her brow the
marks of ravaging agitatedness.
"Have any of you seen Pincher?" she cried, in haste.
We all said, "No, not since last night."
"Well, then, he's lost," Alice said, making the ugly face that means you
are going to blub in half a minute.
Every one had sprung to their feet. Even Noel and H.O. saw at once what
a doddering game Halma is, and Dora and Dicky, whatever their faults,
care more for Pincher than for boxes and screws. Because Pincher is our
fox-terrier. He is of noble race, and he was ours when we were poor,
lonely treasure-seekers and lived in humble hard-upness in the Lewisham
Road.
To the faithful heart of young Oswald the Blackheath affluent mansion
and all it contains, even the stuffed fox eating a duck in the glass
case in the hall that he is so fond of, and even the council he wanted
to have, seemed to matter much less than old Pincher.
"I want you all to let's go out and look for him," said Alice, carrying
out the meaning of the faces she had made and beginning to howl. "Oh,
Pincher, suppose something happens to him; you might get my hat and
coat, Dora. Oh, oh, oh!"
We all got our coats and hats, and by the time we were ready Alice had
conquered it to only sniffing, or else, as Oswald told her kindly, she
wouldn't have been allowed to come.
"Let's go on the Heath," Noel said. "The dear departed dog used to like
digging there."
So we went. And we said to every single person we met--
"Please have you seen a thorough-bred fox-terrier dog with a black patch
over one eye, and another over his tail, and a tan patch on his right
shoulder?" And every one said, "No, they hadn't," only some had more
polite ways of saying it than others. But after a bit we met a
policeman, and he said, "I see one when I was on duty last night, like
what you describe, but it was at the end of a string. There was a young
lad at the other end. The dog didn't seem to go exactly willing."
He also told us the lad and the dog had gone over Greenwich way. So we
went down, not quite so wretched in our insides, because now it seemed
that there was some chance, though we wondered the policeman _could_
have let Pincher go when he saw he didn't want to, but he said it wasn't
his business. And now we asked every one if they'd seen a lad and a
thoroughbred fox-terrier with a black patch, and cetera.
And one or two people said they had, and we thought it must be the same
the policeman had seen, because they said, too, that the dog didn't seem
to care about going where he was going.