CHAPTER 5. THE WATERWORKS
This is the story of one of the most far-reaching and influentiallynaughty things we ever did in our lives. We did not mean to do sucha deed. And yet we did do it. These things will happen with thebest-regulated consciences.
The story of this rash and fatal act is intimately involved--which meansall mixed up anyhow--with a private affair of Oswald's, and the onecannot be revealed without the other. Oswald does not particularly wanthis story to be remembered, but he wishes to tell the truth, and perhapsit is what father calls a wholesome discipline to lay bare the awfulfacts.
It was like this.
On Alice's and Noel's birthday we went on the river for a picnic. Beforethat we had not known that there was a river so near us. Afterwardsfather said he wished we had been allowed to remain on our pristineignorance, whatever that is. And perhaps the dark hour did dawn when wewished so too. But a truce to vain regrets.
It was rather a fine thing in birthdays. The uncle sent a box of toysand sweets, things that were like a vision from another and a brighterworld. Besides that Alice had a knife, a pair of shut-up scissors, asilk handkerchief, a book--it was The Golden Age and is Ai except whereit gets mixed with grown-up nonsense. Also a work-case lined with pinkplush, a boot-bag, which no one in their senses would use because ithad flowers in wool all over it. And she had a box of chocolates and amusical box that played 'The Man who broke' and two other tunes, and twopairs of kid gloves for church, and a box of writing-paper--pink--with'Alice' on it in gold writing, and an egg coloured red that said 'A.Bastable' in ink on one side. These gifts were the offerings of Oswald,Dora, Dicky, Albert's uncle, Daisy, Mr Foulkes (our own robber), Noel,H. O., father and Denny. Mrs Pettigrew gave the egg. It was a kindlyhousekeeper's friendly token.
I shall not tell you about the picnic on the river because the happiesttimes form but dull reading when they are written down. I will merelystate that it was prime. Though happy, the day was uneventful. The onlything exciting enough to write about was in one of the locks, wherethere was a snake--a viper. It was asleep in a warm sunny corner of thelock gate, and when the gate was shut it fell off into the water.
Alice and Dora screamed hideously. So did Daisy, but her screams werethinner.
The snake swam round and round all the time our boat was in the lock.It swam with four inches of itself--the head end--reared up out of thewater, exactly like Kaa in the Jungle Book--so we know Kipling is a trueauthor and no rotter. We were careful to keep our hands well inside theboat. A snake's eyes strike terror into the boldest breast.
When the lock was full father killed the viper with a boat-hook. I wassorry for it myself. It was indeed a venomous serpent. But it was thefirst we had ever seen, except at the Zoo. And it did swim most awfullywell.
Directly the snake had been killed H. O. reached out for its corpse,and the next moment the body of our little brother was seen wrigglingconclusively on the boat's edge. This exciting spectacle was not ofa lasting nature. He went right in. Father clawed him out. He is veryunlucky with water.
Being a birthday, but little was said. H. O. was wrapped in everybody'scoats, and did not take any cold at all.
This glorious birthday ended with an iced cake and ginger wine, anddrinking healths. Then we played whatever we liked. There had beenrounders during the afternoon. It was a day to be for ever marked bymemory's brightest what's-its-name.
I should not have said anything about the picnic but for one thing. Itwas the thin edge of the wedge. It was the all-powerful lever that movedbut too many events. You see, WE WERE NO LONGER STRANGERS TO THE RIVER.
And we went there whenever we could. Only we had to take the dogs, andto promise no bathing without grown-ups. But paddling in back waters wasallowed. I say no more.
I have not numerated Noel's birthday presents because I wish to leavesomething to the imagination of my young readers. (The best authorsalways do this.) If you will take the large, red catalogue of the Armyand Navy Stores, and just make a list of about fifteen of the things youwould like best--prices from 2s. to 25s.--you will get a very good ideaof Noel's presents, and it will help you to make up your mind in caseyou are asked just before your next birthday what you really NEED.
One of Noel's birthday presents was a cricket ball. He cannot bowl fornuts, and it was a first-rate ball. So some days after the birthdayOswald offered him to exchange it for a coconut he had won at the fair,and two pencils (new), and a brand-new note-book. Oswald thought, andhe still thinks, that this was a fair exchange, and so did Noel at thetime, and he agreed to it, and was quite pleased till the girls said itwasn't fair, and Oswald had the best of it. And then that young beggarNoel wanted the ball back, but Oswald, though not angry, was firm.
'You said it was a bargain, and you shook hands on it,' he said, and hesaid it quite kindly and calmly.
Noel said he didn't care. He wanted his cricket ball back. And the girlssaid it was a horrid shame.
If they had not said that, Oswald might yet have consented to let Noelhave the beastly ball, but now, of course, he was not going to. Hesaid--
'Oh, yes, I daresay. And then you would be wanting the coconut andthings again the next minute.'
'No, I shouldn't,' Noel said. It turned out afterwards he and H. O.had eaten the coconut, which only made it worse. And it made them worsetoo--which is what the book calls poetic justice.
Dora said, 'I don't think it was fair,' and even Alice said--
'Do let him have it back, Oswald.'
I wish to be just to Alice. She did not know then about the coconuthaving been secretly wolfed up.
We were in the garden. Oswald felt all the feelings of the hero whenthe opposing forces gathered about him are opposing as hard as ever theycan. He knew he was not unfair, and he did not like to be jawed at justbecause Noel had eaten the coconut and wanted the ball back. ThoughOswald did not know then about the eating of the coconut, but he feltthe injustice in his soul all the same.
Noel said afterwards he meant to offer Oswald something else to make upfor the coconut, but he said nothing about this at the time.
'Give it me, I say,' Noel said.
And Oswald said, 'Shan't!'
Then Noel called Oswald names, and Oswald did not answer back butjust kept smiling pleasantly, and carelessly throwing up the ball andcatching it again with an air of studied indifference.
It was Martha's fault that what happened happened. She is the bull-dog,and very stout and heavy. She had just been let loose and she camebounding along in her clumsy way, and jumped up on Oswald, who isbeloved by all dumb animals. (You know how sagacious they are.) Well,Martha knocked the ball out of Oswald's hands, and it fell on the grass,and Noel pounced on it like a hooded falcon on its prey. Oswald wouldscorn to deny that he was not going to stand this, and the next momentthe two were rolling over on the grass, and very soon Noel was made tobite the dust. And serve him right. He is old enough to know his ownmind.
Then Oswald walked slowly away with the ball, and the others picked Noelup, and consoled the beaten, but Dicky would not take either side.
And Oswald went up into his own room and lay on his bed, and reflectedgloomy reflections about unfairness.
Presently he thought he would like to see what the others were doingwithout their knowing he cared. So he went into the linen-room andlooked out of its window, and he saw they were playing Kings andQueens--and Noel had the biggest paper crown and the longest sticksceptre.
Oswald turned away without a word, for it really was sickening.
Then suddenly his weary eyes fell upon something they had not beforebeheld. It was a square trap-door in the ceiling of the linen-room.
Oswald never hesitated. He crammed the cricket ball into his pocket andclimbed up the shelves and unbolted the trap-door, and shoved it up,and pulled himself up through it. Though above all was dark and smeltof spiders, Oswald fearlessly shut the trap-door down again before hestruck a match. He always carries matches. He is a boy fertile in everysubtle expedi
ent. Then he saw he was in the wonderful, mysterious placebetween the ceiling and the roof of the house. The roof is beamsand tiles. Slits of light show through the tiles here and there. Theceiling, on its other and top side, is made of rough plaster and beams.If you walk on the beams it is all right--if you walk on the plaster yougo through with your feet. Oswald found this out later, but some fineinstinct now taught the young explorer where he ought to tread and wherenot. It was splendid. He was still very angry with the others and he wasglad he had found out a secret they jolly well didn't know.
He walked along a dark, narrow passage. Every now and then cross-beamsbarred his way, and he had to creep under them. At last a small doorloomed before him with cracks of light under and over. He drew back therusty bolts and opened it. It opened straight on to the leads, a flatplace between two steep red roofs, with a parapet two feet high back andfront, so that no one could see you. It was a place no one could haveinvented better than, if they had tried, for hiding in.
Oswald spent the whole afternoon there. He happened to have a volume ofPercy's Anecdotes in his pocket, the one about lawyers, as well as afew apples. While he read he fingered the cricket ball, and presently itrolled away, and he thought he would get it by-and-by.
When the tea-bell rang he forgot the ball and went hurriedly down, forapples do not keep the inside from the pangs of hunger.
Noel met him on the landing, got red in the face, and said--
'It wasn't QUITE fair about the ball, because H. O. and I had eaten thecoconut. YOU can have it.'
'I don't want your beastly ball,' Oswald said, 'only I hate unfairness.However, I don't know where it is just now. When I find it you shallhave it to bowl with as often as you want.'
'Then you're not waxy?'
And Oswald said 'No' and they went in to tea together. So that was allright. There were raisin cakes for tea.
Next day we happened to want to go down to the river quite early. Idon't know why; this is called Fate, or Destiny. We dropped in at the'Rose and Crown' for some ginger-beer on our way. The landlady is afriend of ours and lets us drink it in her back parlour, instead of inthe bar, which would be improper for girls.
We found her awfully busy, making pies and jellies, and her two sisterswere hurrying about with great hams, and pairs of chickens, and roundsof cold beef and lettuces, and pickled salmon and trays of crockery andglasses.
'It's for the angling competition,' she said.
We said, 'What's that?'
'Why,' she said, slicing cucumber like beautiful machinery while shesaid it, 'a lot of anglers come down some particular day and fish oneparticular bit of the river. And the one that catches most fish gets theprize. They're fishing the pen above Stoneham Lock. And they all comehere to dinner. So I've got my hands full and a trifle over.'
We said, 'Couldn't we help?'
But she said, 'Oh, no, thank you. Indeed not, please. I really am so Idon't know which way to turn. Do run along, like dears.'
So we ran along like these timid but graceful animals.
Need I tell the intellectual reader that we went straight off to the penabove Stoneham Lock to see the anglers competing? Angling is the samething as fishing.
I am not going to try and explain locks to you. If you've never seena lock you could never understand even if I wrote it in words of onesyllable and pages and pages long. And if you have, you'll understandwithout my telling you. It is harder than Euclid if you don't knowbeforehand. But you might get a grown-up person to explain it to youwith books or wooden bricks.
I will tell you what a pen is because that is easy. It is the bit ofriver between one lock and the next. In some rivers 'pens' are called'reaches', but pen is the proper word.
We went along the towing-path; it is shady with willows, aspens,alders, elders, oaks and other trees. On the banks are flowers--yarrow,meadow-sweet, willow herb, loosestrife, and lady's bed-straw. Oswaldlearned the names of all these trees and plants on the day of thepicnic. The others didn't remember them, but Oswald did. He is a boy ofwhat they call relenting memory.
The anglers were sitting here and there on the shady bank among thegrass and the different flowers I have named. Some had dogs with them,and some umbrellas, and some had only their wives and families.
We should have liked to talk to them and ask how they liked their lot,and what kinds of fish there were, and whether they were nice to eat,but we did not like to.
Denny had seen anglers before and he knew they liked to be talked to,but though he spoke to them quite like to equals he did not ask thethings we wanted to know. He just asked whether they'd had any luck, andwhat bait they used.
And they answered him back politely. I am glad I am not an angler.
It is an immovable amusement, and, as often as not, no fish to speak ofafter all.
Daisy and Dora had stayed at home: Dora's foot was nearly well but theyseem really to like sitting still. I think Dora likes to have a littlegirl to order about. Alice never would stand it. When we got to StonehamLock Denny said he should go home and fetch his fishing-rod. H. O. wentwith him. This left four of us--Oswald, Alice, Dicky, and Noel. We wenton down the towing-path. The lock shuts up (that sounds as if it waslike the lock on a door, but it is very otherwise) between one pen ofthe river and the next; the pen where the anglers were was full rightup over the roots of the grass and flowers. But the pen below was nearlyempty.
'You can see the poor river's bones,' Noel said.
And so you could.
Stones and mud and dried branches, and here and there an old kettle or atin pail with no bottom to it, that some bargee had chucked in.
From walking so much along the river we knew many of the bargees.Bargees are the captains and crews of the big barges that are pulled upand down the river by slow horses. The horses do not swim. They walkon the towing-path, with a rope tied to them, and the other end to thebarge. So it gets pulled along. The bargees we knew were a good friendlysort, and used to let us go all over the barges when they were in a goodtemper. They were not at all the sort of bullying, cowardly fiendsin human form that the young hero at Oxford fights a crowd of,single-handed, in books.
The river does not smell nice when its bones are showing. But we wentalong down, because Oswald wanted to get some cobbler's wax in Faldingvillage for a bird-net he was making.
But just above Falding Lock, where the river is narrow and straight, wesaw a sad and gloomy sight--a big barge sitting flat on the mud becausethere was not water enough to float her.
There was no one on board, but we knew by a red flannel waistcoat thatwas spread out to dry on top that the barge belonged to friends of ours.
Then Alice said, 'They have gone to find the man who turns on the waterto fill the pen. I daresay they won't find him. He's gone to his dinner,I shouldn't wonder. What a lovely surprise it would be if they came backto find their barge floating high and dry on a lot of water! DO let'sdo it. It's a long time since any of us did a kind action deserving ofbeing put in the Book of Golden Deeds.'
We had given that name to the minute-book of that beastly 'Society ofthe Wouldbegoods'. Then you could think of the book if you wanted towithout remembering the Society. I always tried to forget both of them.
Oswald said, 'But how? YOU don't know how. And if you did we haven't gota crowbar.'
I cannot help telling you that locks are opened with crowbars. You pushand push till a thing goes up and the water runs through. It is ratherlike the little sliding door in the big door of a hen-house.
'I know where the crowbar is,' Alice said. 'Dicky and I were down hereyesterday when you were su--' She was going to say sulking, I know, butshe remembered manners ere too late so Oswald bears her no malice. Shewent on: 'Yesterday, when you were upstairs. And we saw the water-tenderopen the lock and the weir sluices. It's quite easy, isn't it, Dicky?'
'As easy as kiss your hand,' said Dicky; 'and what's more, I know wherehe keeps the other thing he opens the sluices with. I votes we do.'
'Do let's, if we
can,' Noel said, 'and the bargees will bless the namesof their unknown benefactors. They might make a song about us, and singit on winter nights as they pass round the wassail bowl in front of thecabin fire.'
Noel wanted to very much; but I don't think it was altogether forgenerousness, but because he wanted to see how the sluices opened. Yetperhaps I do but wrong the boy.
We sat and looked at the barge a bit longer, and then Oswald said, well,he didn't mind going back to the lock and having a look at the crowbars.You see Oswald did not propose this; he did not even care very muchabout it when Alice suggested it.
But when we got to Stoneham Lock, and Dicky dragged the two heavycrowbars from among the elder bushes behind a fallen tree, and began topound away at the sluice of the lock, Oswald felt it would not be manlyto stand idly apart. So he took his turn.
It was very hard work but we opened the lock sluices, and we did notdrop the crowbar into the lock either, as I have heard of being done byolder and sillier people.
The water poured through the sluices all green and solid, as if it hadbeen cut with a knife, and where it fell on the water underneath thewhite foam spread like a moving counterpane. When we had finished thelock we did the weir--which is wheels and chains--and the water poursthrough over the stones in a magnificent waterfall and sweeps out allround the weir-pool.
The sight of the foaming waterfalls was quite enough reward for ourheavy labours, even without the thought of the unspeakable gratitudethat the bargees would feel to us when they got back to their barge andfound her no longer a stick-in-the-mud, but bounding on the free bosomof the river.
When we had opened all the sluices we gazed awhile on the beauties ofNature, and then went home, because we thought it would be more trulynoble and good not to wait to be thanked for our kind and devotedaction--and besides, it was nearly dinner-time and Oswald thought it wasgoing to rain.
On the way home we agreed not to tell the others, because it would belike boasting of our good acts.
'They will know all about it,' Noel said, 'when they hear us beingblessed by the grateful bargees, and the tale of the Unknown Helpers isbeing told by every village fireside. And then they can write it in theGolden Deed book.'
So we went home. Denny and H. O. had thought better of it, and they werefishing in the moat. They did not catch anything.
Oswald is very weather-wise--at least, so I have heard it said, and hehad thought there would be rain. There was. It came on while we wereat dinner--a great, strong, thundering rain, coming down in sheets--thefirst rain we had had since we came to the Moat House.
We went to bed as usual. No presentiment of the coming awfulness cloudedour young mirth. I remember Dicky and Oswald had a wrestling match, andOswald won.
In the middle of the night Oswald was awakened by a hand on his face.It was a wet hand and very cold. Oswald hit out, of course, but a voicesaid, in a hoarse, hollow whisper--
'Don't be a young ass! Have you got any matches? My bed's full of water;it's pouring down from the ceiling.'
Oswald's first thoughts was that perhaps by opening those sluices wehad flooded some secret passage which communicated with the top of MoatHouse, but when he was properly awake he saw that this could not be, onaccount of the river being so low.
He had matches. He is, as I said before, a boy full of resources. Hestruck one and lit a candle, and Dicky, for it was indeed he, gazed withOswald at the amazing spectacle.
Our bedroom floor was all wet in patches. Dicky's bed stood in a pond,and from the ceiling water was dripping in rich profusion at a dozendifferent places. There was a great wet patch in the ceiling, and thatwas blue, instead of white like the dry part, and the water dripped fromdifferent parts of it.
In a moment Oswald was quite unmanned.
'Krikey!' he said, in a heart-broken tone, and remained an instantplunged in thought.
'What on earth are we to do?' Dicky said.
And really for a short time even Oswald did not know. It was ablood-curdling event, a regular facer. Albert's uncle had gone to Londonthat day to stay till the next. Yet something must be done.
The first thing was to rouse the unconscious others from their deepsleep, because the water was beginning to drip on to their beds, andthough as yet they knew it not, there was quite a pool on Noel's bed,just in the hollow behind where his knees were doubled up, and one ofH. O.'s boots was full of water, that surged wildly out when Oswaldhappened to kick it over.
We woke them--a difficult task, but we did not shrink from it.
Then we said, 'Get up, there is a flood! Wake up, or you will be drownedin your beds! And it's half past two by Oswald's watch.'
They awoke slowly and very stupidly. H. O. was the slowest andstupidest.
The water poured faster and faster from the ceiling.
We looked at each other and turned pale, and Noel said--
'Hadn't we better call Mrs Pettigrew?'
But Oswald simply couldn't consent to this. He could not get rid of thefeeling that this was our fault somehow for meddling with the river,though of course the clear star of reason told him it could not possiblybe the case.
We all devoted ourselves, heart and soul, to the work before us. Weput the bath under the worst and wettest place, and the jugs and basinsunder lesser streams, and we moved the beds away to the dry end of theroom. Ours is a long attic that runs right across the house.
But the water kept coming in worse and worse. Our nightshirts werewet through, so we got into our other shirts and knickerbockers, butpreserved bareness in our feet. And the floor kept on being half an inchdeep in water, however much we mopped it up.
We emptied the basins out of the window as fast as they filled, and webaled the bath with a jug without pausing to complain how hard thework was. All the same, it was more exciting than you can think. But inOswald's dauntless breast he began to see that they would HAVE to callMrs Pettigrew.
A new waterfall broke out between the fire-grate and the mantelpiece,and spread in devastating floods. Oswald is full of ingenious devices.I think I have said this before, but it is quite true; and perhaps eventruer this time than it was last time I said it.
He got a board out of the box-room next door, and rested one end in thechink between the fireplace and the mantelpiece, and laid the other endon the back of a chair, then we stuffed the rest of the chink with ournightgowns, and laid a towel along the plank, and behold, a noble streampoured over the end of the board right into the bath we put there ready.It was like Niagara, only not so round in shape. The first lot of waterthat came down the chimney was very dirty. The wind whistled outside.Noel said, 'If it's pipes burst, and not the rain, it will be nice forthe water-rates.' Perhaps it was only natural after this for Denny tobegin with his everlasting poetry. He stopped mopping up the water tosay:
'By this the storm grew loud apace, The water-rats were shrieking, And in the howl of Heaven each face Grew black as they were speaking.'
Our faces were black, and our hands too, but we did not take any notice;we only told him not to gas but to go on mopping. And he did. And we alldid.
But more and more water came pouring down. You would not believe so muchcould come off one roof.
When at last it was agreed that Mrs Pettigrew must be awakened at allhazards, we went and woke Alice to do the fatal errand.
When she came back, with Mrs Pettigrew in a nightcap and red flannelpetticoat, we held our breath.
But Mrs Pettigrew did not even say, 'What on earth have you childrenbeen up to NOW?' as Oswald had feared.
She simply sat down on my bed and said--
'Oh, dear! oh, dear! oh, dear!' ever so many times.
Then Denny said, 'I once saw holes in a cottage roof. The man told meit was done when the water came through the thatch. He said if the waterlies all about on the top of the ceiling, it breaks it down, but if youmake holes the water will only come through the holes and you can putpails under the holes to catch it.'
So we made nine hole
s in the ceiling with the poker, and put pails,baths and tubs under, and now there was not so much water on the floor.But we had to keep on working like niggers, and Mrs Pettigrew and Aliceworked the same.
About five in the morning the rain stopped; about seven the water didnot come in so fast, and presently it only dripped slowly. Our task wasdone.
This is the only time I was ever up all night. I wish it happenedoftener. We did not go back to bed then, but dressed and went down. Weall went to sleep in the afternoon, though. Quite without meaning to.
Oswald went up on the roof, before breakfast, to see if he could findthe hole where the rain had come in. He did not find any hole, buthe found the cricket ball jammed in the top of a gutter pipe which heafterwards knew ran down inside the wall of the house and ran into themoat below. It seems a silly dodge, but so it was.
When the men went up after breakfast to see what had caused the floodthey said there must have been a good half-foot of water on the leadsthe night before for it to have risen high enough to go above the edgeof the lead, and of course when it got above the lead there was nothingto stop it running down under it, and soaking through the ceiling. Theparapet and the roofs kept it from tumbling off down the sides ofthe house in the natural way. They said there must have been someobstruction in the pipe which ran down into the house, but whatever itwas the water had washed it away, for they put wires down, and the pipewas quite clear.
While we were being told this Oswald's trembling fingers felt at the wetcricket ball in his pocket. And he KNEW, but he COULD not tell. He heardthem wondering what the obstruction could have been, and all the time hehad the obstruction in his pocket, and never said a single word.
I do not seek to defend him. But it really was an awful thing to havebeen the cause of; and Mrs Pettigrew is but harsh and hasty. But this,as Oswald knows too well, is no excuse for his silent conduct.
That night at tea Albert's uncle was rather silent too. At last helooked upon us with a glance full of intelligence, and said--
'There was a queer thing happened yesterday. You know there was anangling competition. The pen was kept full on purpose. Some mischievousbusybody went and opened the sluices and let all the water out. Theanglers' holiday was spoiled. No, the rain wouldn't have spoiled itanyhow, Alice; anglers LIKEe rain. The 'Rose and Crown' dinner was halfof it wasted because the anglers were so furious that a lot of them tookthe next train to town. And this is the worst of all--a barge, that wason the mud in the pen below, was lifted and jammed across the river andthe water tilted her over, and her cargo is on the river bottom. It wascoals.'
During this speech there were four of us who knew not where to turn ouragitated glances. Some of us tried bread-and-butter, but it seemed dryand difficult, and those who tried tea choked and spluttered and weresorry they had not let it alone. When the speech stopped Alice said, 'Itwas us.'
And with deepest feelings she and the rest of us told all about it.
Oswald did not say much. He was turning the obstruction round and roundin his pocket, and wishing with all his sentiments that he had ownedup like a man when Albert's uncle asked him before tea to tell him allabout what had happened during the night.
When they had told all, Albert's uncle told us four still more plainly,and exactly, what we had done, and how much pleasure we had spoiled, andhow much of my father's money we had wasted--because he would have topay for the coals being got up from the bottom of the river, if theycould be, and if not, for the price of the coals. And we saw it ALL.
And when he had done Alice burst out crying over her plate and said--
'It's no use! We HAVE tried to be good since we've been down here.
You don't know how we've tried! And it's all no use. I believe we arethe wickedest children in the whole world, and I wish we were all dead!'
This was a dreadful thing to say, and of course the rest of us were allvery shocked. But Oswald could not help looking at Albert's uncle to seehow he would take it.
He said very gravely, 'My dear kiddie, you ought to be sorry, and I wishyou to be sorry for what you've done. And you will be punished for it.'(We were; our pocket-money was stopped and we were forbidden to go nearthe river, besides impositions miles long.) 'But,' he went on, 'youmustn't give up trying to be good. You are extremely naughty andtiresome, as you know very well.'
Alice, Dicky, and Noel began to cry at about this time.
'But you are not the wickedest children in the world by any means.'
Then he stood up and straightened his collar, and put his hands in hispockets.
'You're very unhappy now,' he said, 'and you deserve to be. But I willsay one thing to you.'
Then he said a thing which Oswald at least will never forget (though butlittle he deserved it, with the obstruction in his pocket, unowned up toall the time).
He said, 'I have known you all for four years--and you know as well asI do how many scrapes I've seen you in and out of--but I've never knownone of you tell a lie, and I've never known one of you do a mean ordishonourable action. And when you have done wrong you are always sorry.Now this is something to stand firm on. You'll learn to be good in theother ways some day.'
He took his hands out of his pockets, and his face looked different, sothat three of the four guilty creatures knew he was no longer adamant,and they threw themselves into his arms. Dora, Denny, Daisy, and H. O.,of course, were not in it, and I think they thanked their stars.
Oswald did not embrace Albert's uncle. He stood there and made up hismind he would go for a soldier. He gave the wet ball one last squeeze,and took his hand out of his pocket, and said a few words before goingto enlist. He said--
'The others may deserve what you say. I hope they do, I'm sure. But Idon't, because it was my rotten cricket ball that stopped up the pipeand caused the midnight flood in our bedroom. And I knew it quite earlythis morning. And I didn't own up.'
Oswald stood there covered with shame, and he could feel the hatefulcricket ball heavy and cold against the top of his leg, through thepocket.
Albert's uncle said--and his voice made Oswald hot all over, but notwith shame--he said--
I shall not tell you what he said. It is no one's business but Oswald's;only I will own it made Oswald not quite so anxious to run away for asoldier as he had been before.
That owning up was the hardest thing I ever did. They did put that inthe Book of Golden Deeds, though it was not a kind or generous act, anddid no good to anyone or anything except Oswald's own inside feelings.I must say I think they might have let it alone. Oswald would ratherforget it. Especially as Dicky wrote it in and put this:
'Oswald acted a lie, which, he knows, is as bad as telling one. But heowned up when he needn't have, and this condones his sin. We think hewas a thorough brick to do it.'
Alice scratched this out afterwards and wrote the record of the incidentin more flattering terms. But Dicky had used Father's ink, and she usedMrs Pettigrew's, so anyone can read his underneath the scratching outs.
The others were awfully friendly to Oswald, to show they agreed withAlbert's uncle in thinking I deserved as much share as anyone in anypraise there might be going.
It was Dora who said it all came from my quarrelling with Noel aboutthat rotten cricket ball; but Alice, gently yet firmly, made her shutup.
I let Noel have the ball. It had been thoroughly soaked, but it driedall right. But it could never be the same to me after what it had doneand what I had done.
I hope you will try to agree with Albert's uncle and not think foulscorn of Oswald because of this story. Perhaps you have done thingsnearly as bad yourself sometimes. If you have, you will know how 'owningup' soothes the savage breast and alleviates the gnawings of remorse.
If you have never done naughty acts I expect it is only because younever had the sense to think of anything.