Chapter 11

He bounced up and out and got into his carriage and drove away. It was not till he was finally gone quite beyond recall that Alice suddenly said--

"But if he has all the rooms where are _we_ to sleep?"

"He must be awfully rich," said H.O., "wanting all those rooms."

"Well, he can't sleep in more than one at once," said Dicky, "however rich he is. We might wait till he was bedded down and then sleep in the rooms he didn't want."

But Oswald was firm. He knew that if the man paid for the rooms he must have them to himself.

"He won't sleep in the kitchen," said Dora; "couldn't we sleep there?"

But we all said we couldn't and wouldn't.

Then Alice suddenly said--

"I know! The Mill. There are heaps and heaps of fishing-nets there, and we could each take a blanket like Indians and creep over under cover of the night after the Beale has gone, and get back before she comes in the morning."

It seemed a sporting thing to do, and we agreed. Only Dora said she thought it would be draughty.

Of course we went over to the Mill at once to lay our plans and prepare for the silent watches of the night.

There are three stories to a windmill, besides the ground-floor. The first floor is pretty empty; the next is nearly full of millstones and machinery, and the one above is where the corn runs down from on to the millstones.

We settled to let the girls have the first floor, which was covered with heaps of nets, and we would pig in with the millstones on the floor above.

We had just secretly got out the last of the six blankets from the house and got it into the Mill disguised in a clothes-basket, when we heard wheels, and there was the gentleman back again. He had only got one portmanteau after all, and that was a very little one.

Mrs. Beale was bobbing at him in the doorway when we got up. Of course we had told her he had rented rooms, but we had not said how many, for fear she should ask where we were going to sleep, and we had a feeling that but few grown-ups would like our sleeping in a mill, however much we were living the higher life by sacrificing ourselves to get money for Miss Sandal.

The gentleman ordered sheep's-head and trotters for dinner, and when he found he could not have that he said--

"Gammon and spinach!"

But there was not any spinach in the village, so he had to fall back on eggs and bacon. Mrs. Beale cooked it, and when he had fallen back on it she washed up and went home. And we were left. We could hear the gentleman singing to himself, something about woulding he was a bird that he might fly to thee.

Then we got the lanterns that you take when you go "up street" on a dark night, and we crept over to the Mill. It was much darker than we expected.

We decided to keep our clothes on, partly for warmness and partly in case of any sudden alarm or the fishermen wanting their nets in the middle of the night, which sometimes happens if the tide is favourable.

We let the girls keep the lantern, and we went up with a bit of candle Dicky had saved, and tried to get comfortable among the millstones and machinery, but it was not easy, and Oswald, for one, was not sorry when he heard the voice of Dora calling in trembling tones from the floor below.

"Oswald! Dicky!" said the voice, "I wish one of you would come down a sec."

Oswald flew to the assistance of his distressed sister.

"It's only that we're a little bit uncomfortable," she whispered. "I didn't want to yell it out because of Noël and H.O. I don't want to frighten them, but I can't help feeling that if anything popped out of the dark at us I should die. Can't you all come down here? The nets are quite comfortable, and I do wish you would."

Alice said she was not frightened, but suppose there were rats, which are said to infest old buildings, especially mills?

So we consented to come down, and we told Noël and H.O. to come down because it was more comfy, and it is easier to settle yourself for the night among fishing-nets than among machinery. There _was_ a rustling now and then among the heap of broken chairs and jack-planes and baskets and spades and hoes and bits of the spars of ships at the far end of our sleeping apartment, but Dicky and Oswald resolutely said it was the wind or else jackdaws making their nests, though, of course, they knew this is not done at night.

Sleeping in a mill was not nearly the fun we had thought it would be--somehow. For one thing, it was horrid not having a pillow, and the fishing-nets were so stiff you could not bunch them up properly to make one. And unless you have been born and bred a Red Indian you do not know how to manage your blanket so as to make it keep out the draughts. And when we had put out the light Oswald more than once felt as though earwigs and spiders were walking on his face in the dark, but when we struck a match there was nothing there.

And empty mills do creak and rustle and move about in a very odd way. Oswald was not afraid, but he did think we might as well have slept in the kitchen, because the gentleman could not have wanted to use that when he was asleep. You see, we thought then that he would sleep all night like other people.

We got to sleep at last, and in the night the girls edged up to their bold brothers, so that when the morning sun "shone in bars of dusty gold through the chinks of the aged edifice" and woke us up we were all lying in a snuggly heap like a litter of puppies.

"Oh, I _am_ so stiff!" said Alice, stretching. "I never slept in my clothes before. It makes me feel as if I had been starched and ironed like a boy's collar."

We all felt pretty much the same. And our faces were tired too, and stiff, which was rum, and the author cannot account for it, unless it really was spiders that walked on us. I believe the ancient Greeks considered them to be venomous, and perhaps that's how their venom influences their victims.

"I think mills are merely beastly," remarked H.O. when we had woke him up. "You can't wash yourself or brush your hair or anything."

"You aren't always so jolly particular about your hair," said Dicky.

"Don't be so disagreeable," said Dora.

And Dicky rejoined, "Disagreeable yourself!"

There is certainly something about sleeping in your clothes that makes you feel not so kind and polite as usual. I expect this is why tramps are so fierce and knock people down in lonely roads and kick them. Oswald knows he felt just like kicking any one if they had happened to cheek him the least little bit. But by a fortunate accident nobody did.

The author believes there is a picture called "Hopeless Dawn." We felt exactly like that. Nothing seemed the least bit of good.

It was a pitiful band with hands and faces dirtier than any one would believe who had not slept in a mill or witnessed others who had done so, that crossed the wet, green grass between the Mill and the white house.

"I shan't ever put morning dew into my poetry again," Noël said; "it is not nearly so poetical as people make out, and it is as cold as ice, right through your boots."

We felt rather better when we had had a good splash in the brick-paved back kitchen that Miss Sandal calls the bath-room. And Alice made a fire and boiled a kettle and we had some tea and eggs. Then we looked at the clock and it was half-past five. So we hastened to get into another part of the house before Mrs. Beale came.

"I wish we'd tried to live the higher life some less beastly way," said Dicky as we went along the passage.

"Living the higher life always hurts at the beginning," Alice said. "I expect it's like new boots, only when you've got used to it you're glad you bore it at first. Let's listen at the doors till we find out where he isn't sleeping."

So we listened at all the bedroom doors, but not a snore was heard.

"Perhaps he was a burglar," said H.O., "and only pretended to want lodgings so as to get in and bone all the valuables."

"There aren't any valuables," said Noël, and this was quite true, for Miss Sandal had no silver or jewellery except a brooch of pewter, and the very teaspoons were of wood--very hard to keep clean and having to be scraped.

"Perhaps he sleeps without snoring," said Oswald, "some people do."

"Not old gentlemen," said Noël; "think of our Indian uncle--H.O. used to think it was bears at first."

"Perhaps he rises with the lark," said Alice, "and is wondering why brekker isn't ready."

So then we listened at the sitting-room doors, and through the keyhole of the parlour we heard a noise of some one moving, and then in a soft whistle the tune of the "Would I were a bird" song.

So then we went into the dining-room to sit down. But when we opened the door we almost fell in a heap on the matting, and no one had breath for a word--not even for "Krikey," which was what we all thought.

I have read of people who could not believe their eyes; and I have always thought it such rot of them, but now, as the author gazed on the scene, he really could not be quite sure that he was not in a dream, and that the gentleman and the night in the Mill weren't dreams too.

"Pull back the curtains," Alice said, and we did. I wish I could make the reader feel as astonished as we did.

The last time we had seen the room the walls had been bare and white. Now they were covered with the most splendid drawings you can think of, all done in coloured chalk--I don't mean mixed up, like we do with our chalks--but one picture was done in green, and another in brown, and another in red, and so on. And the chalk must have been of some fat radiant kind quite unknown to us, for some of the lines were over an inch thick.

"How perfectly _lovely_!" Alice said; "he must have sat up all night to do it. He _is_ good. I expect he's trying to live the higher life, too--just going about doing secretly, and spending his time making other people's houses pretty."

"I wonder what he'd have done if the room had had a large pattern of brown roses on it, like Mrs. Beale's," said Noël. "I say, _look_ at that angel! Isn't it poetical? It makes me feel I must write something about it."

It _was_ a good angel--all drawn in grey, that was--with very wide wings going right across the room, and a whole bundle of lilies in his arms. Then there were seagulls and ravens, and butterflies, and ballet girls with butterflies' wings, and a man with artificial wings being fastened on, and you could see he was just going to jump off a rock. And there were fairies, and bats, and flying-foxes, and flying-fish. And one glorious winged horse done in red chalk--and his wings went from one side of the room to the other, and crossed the angel's. There were dozens and dozens of birds--all done in just a few lines--but exactly right. You couldn't make any mistake about what anything was meant for.

And all the things, whatever they were, had wings to them. How Oswald wishes that those pictures had been done in his house!

While we stood gazing, the door of the other room opened, and the gentleman stood before us, more covered with different-coloured chalks than I should have thought he could have got, even with all those drawings, and he had a thing made of wire and paper in his hand, and he said--

"Wouldn't you like to fly?"

"Yes," said every one.

"Well then," he said, "I've got a nice little flying-machine here. I'll fit it on to one of you, and then you jump out of the attic window. You don't know what it's like to fly."

We said we would rather not.

"But I insist," said the gentleman. "I have your real interest at heart, my children--I can't allow you in your ignorance to reject the chance of a lifetime."

We still said "No, thank you," and we began to feel very uncomfy, for the gentleman's eyes were now rolling wildly.

"Then I'll _make_ you!" he said, catching hold of Oswald.

"You jolly well won't," cried Dicky, catching hold of the arm of the gentleman.

Then Dora said very primly and speaking rather slowly, and she was very pale--

"I think it would be lovely to fly. Will you just show me how the flying-machine looks when it is unfolded?"

The gentleman dropped Oswald, and Dora made "Go! go" with her lips without speaking, while he began to unfold the flying-machine. We others went, Oswald lingering last, and then in an instant Dora had nipped out of the room and banged the door and locked it.

"To the Mill!" she cried, and we ran like mad, and got in and barred the big door, and went up to the first floor, and looked out of the big window to warn off Mrs. Beale.

And we thumped Dora on the back, and Dicky called her a Sherlock Holmes, and Noël said she was a heroine.

"It wasn't anything," Dora said, just before she began to cry, "only I remember reading that you must pretend to humour them, and then get away, for of course I saw at once he was a lunatic. Oh, how awful it might have been! He could have made us all jump out of the attic window, and there would have been no one left to tell Father. Oh! oh!" and then the crying began.

But we were proud of Dora, and I am sorry we make fun of her sometimes, but it is difficult not to.

We decided to signal the first person that passed, and we got Alice to take off her red flannel petticoat for a signal.

The first people who came were two men in a dog-cart. We waved the signalising petticoat and they pulled up, and one got out and came up to the Mill.

We explained about the lunatic and the wanting us to jump out of the windows.

"Right oh!" cried the man to the one still in the cart; "got him." And the other hitched the horse to the gate and came over, and the other went to the house.

"Come along down, young ladies and gentlemen," said the second man when he had been told. "He's as gentle as a lamb. He does not think it hurts to jump out of windows. He thinks it really is flying. He'll be like an angel when he sees the doctor."

We asked if he had been mad before, because we had thought he might have suddenly gone so.

"Certainly he has!" replied the man; "he has never been, so to say, himself since tumbling out of a flying-machine he went up in with a friend. He was an artist previous to that--an excellent one, I believe. But now he only draws objects with wings--and now and then he wants to make people fly--perfect strangers sometimes, like yourselves. Yes, miss, I am his attendant, and his pictures often amuse me by the half-hours together, poor gentleman."

"How did he get away?" Alice asked.

"Well, miss, the poor gentleman's brother got hurt and Mr. Sidney--that's him inside--seemed wonderfully put out and hung over the body in a way pitiful to see. But really he was extracting the cash from the sufferer's pockets. Then, while all of us were occupied with Mr. Eustace, Mr. Sidney just packs his portmanteau and out he goes by the back door. When we missed him we sent for Dr. Baker, but by the time he came it was too late to get here. Dr. Baker said at once he'd revert to his boyhood's home. And the doctor has proved correct."

We had all come out of the Mill, and with this polite person we went to the gate, and saw the lunatic get into the carriage, very gentle and gay.

"But, Doctor," Oswald said, "he did say he'd give nine pounds a week for the rooms. Oughtn't he to pay?"

"You might have known he was mad to say that," said the doctor. "No. Why should he, when it's his own sister's house? Gee up!"

And he left us.

It was sad to find the gentleman was not a Higher Life after all, but only mad. And I was more sorry than ever for poor Miss Sandal. As Oswald pointed out to the girls they are much more blessed in their brothers than Miss Sandal is, and they ought to be more grateful than they are.

_THE SMUGGLER'S REVENGE_

THE days went on and Miss Sandal did not return. We went on being very sorry about Miss Sandal being so poor, and it was not our fault that when we tried to let the house in lodgings, the first lodger proved to be a lunatic of the deepest dye. Miss Sandal must have been a fairly decent sort, because she seems not to have written to Father about it. At any rate he didn't give it us in any of our letters, about our good intentions and their ending in a maniac.

Oswald does not like giving up a thing just because it has once been muffed. The muffage of a plan is a thing that often happens at first to heroes--like Bruce and the spider, and other great characters. Beside, grown-ups always say--

"If at first you don't succeed, Try, try, try again!"

And if this is the rule for Euclid and rule-of-three and all the things you would rather not do, think how much more it must be the rule when what you are after is your own idea, and not just the rotten notion of that beast Euclid, or the unknown but equally unnecessary author who composed the multiplication table. So we often talked about what we could do to make Miss Sandal rich. It gave us something to jaw about when we happened to want to sit down for a bit, in between all the glorious wet sandy games that happen by the sea.

Of course if we wanted real improving conversation we used to go up to the boat-house and talk to the coastguards. I do think coastguards are A1. They are just the same as sailors, having been so in their youth, and you can get at them to talk to, which is not the case with sailors who are at sea (or even in harbours) on ships. Even if you had the luck to get on to a man-of-war, you would very likely not be able to climb to the top-gallants to talk to the man there. Though in books the young hero always seems able to climb to the mast-head the moment he is told to. The coastguards told us tales of Southern ports, and of shipwrecks, and officers they had _not_ cottoned to, and messmates that they _had_, but when we asked them about smuggling they said there wasn't any to speak of nowadays.

"I expect they think they oughtn't to talk about such dark crimes before innocent kids like us," said Dicky afterwards, and he grinned as he said it.

"Yes," said Alice; "they don't know how much we know about smugglers, and bandits, and highwaymen, and burglars, and coiners," and she sighed, and we all felt sad to think that we had not now any chance to play at being these things.

"We might play smugglers," said Oswald.

But he did not speak hopefully. The worst of growing up is that you seem to want more and more to have a bit of the real thing in your games. Oswald could not now be content to play at bandits and just capture Albert next door, as once, in happier days, he was pleased and proud to do.

It was not a coastguard that told us about the smugglers. It was a very old man that we met two or three miles along the beach. He was leaning against a boat that was wrong way up on the shingle, and smoking the strongest tobacco Oswald's young nose has ever met. I think it must have been Black Jack. We said, "How do you do?" and Alice said, "Do you mind if we sit down near you?"

"Not me," replied the aged seafarer. We could see directly that he was this by his jersey and his sea-boots.

The girls sat down on the beach, but we boys leaned against the boat like the seafaring one. We hoped he would join in conversation, but at first he seemed too proud. And there was something dignified about him, bearded and like a Viking, that made it hard for us to begin.

At last he took his pipe out of his mouth and said--

"Here's a precious Quakers' meeting! You didn't set down here just for to look at me?"

"I'm sure you look very nice," Dora said.

"Same to you, miss, I'm sure," was the polite reply.

"We want to talk to you awfully," said Alice, "if you don't mind?"

"Talk away," said he.

And then, as so often happens, no one could think of anything to say.

Suddenly Noël said, "_I_ think you look nice too, but I think you look as though you had a secret history. Have you?"

"Not me," replied the Viking-looking stranger. "I ain't got no history, nor jog-graphy neither. They didn't give us that much schooling when I was a lad."

"Oh!" replied Noël; "but what I really meant was, were you ever a pirate or anything?"

"Never in all my born," replied the stranger, now thoroughly roused; "I'd scorn the haction. I was in the navy, I was, till I lost the sight of my eye, looking too close at gunpowder. Pirates is snakes, and they ought to be killed as such."

We felt rather sorry, for though of course it is very wrong to be a pirate, it is very interesting too. Things are often like this. That is one of the reasons why it is so hard to be truly good.

Dora was the only one who was pleased. She said--

"Yes, pirates _are_ very wrong. And so are highwaymen and smugglers."

"I don't know about highwaymen," the old man replied; "they went out afore my time, worse luck; but my father's great-uncle by the mother's side, he see one hanged once. A fine upstanding fellow he was, and made a speech while they was a-fitting of the rope. All the women was snivelling and sniffing and throwing bokays at him."

"Did any of the bouquets reach him?" asked the interested Alice.

"Not likely," said the old man. "Women can't never shy straight. But I shouldn't wonder but what them posies heartened the chap up a bit. An afterwards they was all a-fightin' to get a bit of the rope he was hung with, for luck."

"Do tell us some more about him," said all of us but Dora.

"I don't know no more about him. He was just hung--that's all. They was precious fond o' hangin' in them old far-away times."

"Did you ever know a smuggler?" asked H.O.--"to speak to, I mean?"

"Ah, that's tellings," said the old man, and he winked at us all.

So then we instantly knew that the coastguards had been mistaken when they said there were no more smugglers now, and that this brave old man would not betray his comrades, even to friendly strangers like us. But of course he could not know exactly how friendly we were. So we told him.

Oswald said--

"We _love_ smugglers. We wouldn't even tell a word about it if you would only tell us."

"There used to be lots of smuggling on these here coasts when my father was a boy," he said; "my own father's cousin, his father took to the smuggling, and he was a doin' so well at it, that what does he do, but goes and gets married, and the Preventives they goes and nabs him on his wedding-day, and walks him straight off from the church door, and claps him in Dover Jail."

"Oh, his poor wife," said Alice, "whatever did she do?"

"_She_ didn't do nothing," said the old man. "It's a woman's place not to do nothing till she's told to. He'd done so well at the smuggling, he'd saved enough by his honest toil to take a little public. So she sets there awaitin' and attendin' to customers--for well she knowed him, as he wasn't the chap to let a bit of a jail stand in the way of his station in life. Well, it was three weeks to a day after the wedding, there comes a dusty chap to the 'Peal of Bells' door. That was the sign over the public, you understand."

We said we did, and breathlessly added, "Go on!"

"A dusty chap he was; got a beard and a patch over one eye, and he come of a afternoon when there was no one about the place but her.

"'Hullo, missis,' says he; 'got a room for a quiet chap?'

"'I don't take in no men-folks,' says she; 'can't be bothered with 'em.'

"'You'll be bothered with _me_, if I'm not mistaken,' says he.

"'Bothered if I will,' says she.

"'Bothered if you won't,' says he, and with that he ups with his hand and off comes the black patch, and he pulls off the beard and gives her a kiss and a smack on the shoulder. She always said she nearly died when she see it was her new-made bridegroom under the beard.

"So she took her own man in as a lodger, and he went to work up at Upton's Farm with his beard on, and of nights he kept up the smuggling business. And for a year or more no one knowd as it was him. But they got him at last."

"What became of him?" We all asked it.