Follow My Dust. Jessica Hawke
the playing fields, and over all the then great British Empire.
Illiterate and backward children made a ready effort to read these papers, when learning at the national schools was a trial to be endured.
When the new and free library was built, a goodly proportion of borrowers were boys who sought after the works of Fenn, Henty, Marryat, and later still the science novels of the great new writer, H. G. Wells. And there was a decided revival of Jules Veme. There must have been thousands of young men who might never have met these last-named authors had it not been for the boys’ papers published by Alfred Harmsworth. Where the schools failed to create silk purses from sow’s ears, he did.
5
Arthur became the leader of five boys, a cell within the family, as the family was a cell within the strong heart of a truly great nation. The boys were made independent by the necessity of their parents’ business obligations. If one of the boys was abed sick, Arthur would tell him stories, even relating a story serial fashion, continuing for a week or more. When all was well, there was hide and seek, which developed into something like melodrama.
Now the house was of three storeys, and there were two sets of
stairs, and all the upper regions were unlighted, some rooms being used as additional store-rooms, others as workrooms for the milliners, and a few as bedrooms. Those rooms occupied by the assistants were in a wing off one of the staircases.
It was a fine house for hide and seek, it being possible for the hunted to keep ahead of the hunters by constantly moving. The only places barred were the bedrooms occupied by the parents, the staff and the assistants, and, after one experience, the roof, which was gained up steps and through skylights.
By day even the youngest, John, could join in this game. By night John could also join with the hunters, who might carry a hurricane lamp, or, when fortunate, an electric torch. Then came the ultimate of the game.
Only two boys engaged in this phase, the hunted and the hunter. No lights were to be carried. Neither wore footwear. The hunted was given five minutes’ start, and he would wait somewhere on those upper floors in pitch darkness and silence. The hunter would then start up one of the two flights of stairs, and his success or failure depended on which of them made a betraying noise.
As time went on, the participants learned the position of every creaking floorboard. They learned how to pass before a window, crawling below it, how to open a creaking door without noise. They learned how to control breathing, how to prevent the rustle clothes, or the soft swish of cloth brushing an obstacle. When complete familiarity with every item of furniture in particular rooms was gained, the boys not participating were first sent up to haul and rearrange the furniture.
Read a good thriller, or study the details of a particularly gruesome murder, and then try this out in a large house.
Stand and wait, and torture your ears to catch a sound when there is no sound other than noises from the street miles away. Move without sound from room to room, dark rooms, vacant rooms, dead rooms, and then shrink inward from a sound which isn’t human, or shrink away from a Thing which is blacker than the prevailing darkness. And suddenly feel a hand against your face when you have been playing this game for half an hour and longer. And go away back, and play it when you were nine or ten. Reaction will depend, of course, on your imagination, or lack of it.
6
There was an enemy. His name was Budd. The boys called him Prodigal Budd. He was tall and staid and about seventy. His long white beard and his hair needed washing. He wore a black half-topper and a grimy frock-coat. For amusement, he informed on boys.
Edward was with Arthur and Frank on the top floor when they saw Prodigal Budd standing at the kerb on the far side of the street, leaning gracefully on his stick and watching the traffic. Edward was an expert with a catapult, and with stones.
The boys raced down the stairs and out to the stables, where, on bags, the large store of potatoes was sometimes gone over for rotten ones. This day there was plenty of ammunition. They sped back to the top room, agonised by the thought that Prodigal Budd might have moved on.
Glory be! He was still there.
Brother Frank nominated Edward, but Arthur asserted his unjust claims. There was almost a fight. Standing before the open window, Arthur measured the range whilst holding a potato so rotten that the fluid within would break out under the slightest violence.
The dastardly missile sailed out over the street. The line of its flight was a thing of beauty, and the certainty grew that Prodigal Budd was for it.
The potato missed by a beautiful fraction the brim of the top-hat, missed by another wondrous fraction the tip of the long red nose, exploded grandly in the dead centre of his white beard. The stuff flew upward, outward, and downward. Prodigal Budd dug it out of his eyes, looked about with genuine astonishment, finally looked upward, to see Arthur almost overbalancing on the window-sill, helpless with laughter. It cost the father two shillings, and the son a severe thrashing.
However, all ended well because it was the only bull’s eye Arthur ever scored, save with a rifle. Subsequent triumphs were many, but he paid dearly for them all, with the exception of one glorious episode.
7
At one of the several schools at which Arthur blighted the hopes of his parents, the masters who taught French and history were fast friends, united in a passion for photography. Often they were seen tramping the countryside, loaded with large cameras and equipment.
The history master was tall and severe, but just. He was feared but respected, whereas the French master was hated with a deadly thing. He was sarcastic; he for ever praised the few boys who could assimilate his teaching, and sneered and jibed at those who were dense, including Arthur and the son of the Inspector of the Harbour Police.
As often happened, one Saturday afternoon the two boys were in a rowing skiff, fishing at the entrance to the harbour of Haslar Ceek, and within a few yards of H.M.S. Vernon, the submarine depot ship.
A little way up Haslar Creek were a dozen or so submarines moored to the stone jetty, and there was nothing to prevent anyone from walking on to that jetty. As the boys were fishing, they saw the photographers set up their cameras with the intention of taking pictures of the creek and the ships.
Then around the stem of H.M.S. Vernon there swept the police launch in command of the father of Arthur’s fishing companion. The launch went astern, and the inspector hailed the boys and wanted to know what luck. Luck had been good and he was given most of the fish as he was due to go off duty, and would be home much before the boy. Then up spoke Arthur:
“I say, Inspector! See those two men along there, with those cameras and things? Looks like they’re German spies. Been there a long time, and taking heaps of pictures.”
The inspector shaded his eyes, stiffened, ejaculated a nasty word, shouted for ‘Go ahead’. Off swept the launch, the two boys alternately watching and grinning at each other. The launch went on past the photographers, who appeared to take no notice of it. Then it abruptly headed for the stone-lined bank, stopped with its bow just touching the bank, and men sprang from it. They ran up to the road, converged on the ‘spies’, surrounded them. One camera seemed to rise in the air, tripod and all. Then followed what appeared to be an interrogation.
Arthur was now all for rowing the boat to the far side of the Vernon, but his friend pointed out that he would have to go home some time, so let trouble, if any, come soon.
The men regained the launch, and the photographers moved off. The launch came down the creek, powerful and fast, sending up quite a wash; it passed the rowing-boat, and when the inspector waved a cheerful au revoir, the boys regarded each other with slow smiles of relief. After the removal of plates, exposed and otherwise, and a severe reprimand, the photographers were permitted to leave. It was fully a week later when the inspector casually asked his son if he knew those ‘spies’ were his schoolmasters.
The son admitting to it, the inspector said:
“Lucky for you and young