The Young Stagers/Concerning William Henry Winterbotham
V.
CONCERNING WILLIAM HENRY WINTERBOTHAM.
"You are sad, my Buster," quoth Mummy, as that man of war sat somewhat distrait, toying with his tea-spoon. "Second supper disagree with you at the Ball?"
"I am, Lady," was the reply, "for my young life is blighted, and though, apparently, I sit at tea in your delightful and hospitable drawing-room, in reality I sit among the shattered fragments of my wrecked and ruined career. . . . Second supper never disagrees with me."
"Who is she?" inquired Mummy forthwith.
"Mrs. Crickford-Crocker," confessed the youth.
"Buster! She's nearly old enough to be your mother," said Mummy, and laughed. To appreciate the joke one had to know the General's wife, Mrs. Crickford-Crocker, commonly known as Caledonia—because she was stern and wild. When a new-comer inquired who the local Brigadier was, waggish folk would reply, "Mrs. Crickford-Crocker ". Her husband commanded the Brigade, and she commanded her husband. In person Mrs. Crickford-Crocker was imposing not to say terrifying (unless really annoyed), being very tall, very broad, and very bony. Her cheek-bones were, like her thoughts, large and lofty, her hair was scant and sandy, her teeth obtrusive, and her eye bleak and piercing, a perfect gimlet.
The Brigade feared God and Mrs. Crickford-Crocker—save that in some cases it reversed the order of precedence. . . .
"Yes," agreed Buster, "and ferocious enough to be my grandfather. . . . I lived in ghastly terror of my grandfather when I was a child—of him and his black familiar, Woby Tijer."
"Wobitijer? " repeated Mummy, puzzled.
"Yes, Woby Tijer. He haunted my days and made my nights a terror and a night-mare. . . . My grandfather never struck me, never punished me in any way, never even threatened me—except to fix me with his awful eye (an eye like that of Mrs. Crickford-Crocker) and say, 'Do that again—and Wody Tijer,' and he'd shake his forefinger at me and I'd wilt in terror, and look round for Woby Tijer. I expected him to spring on my back every time I went upstairs in the dark, and, when I woke from a ghastly dream of him, I used to lie and hold my breath, quaking, while I waited for his cold cold claw to clutch my throat. . . ."
"Buster! How dramatic! . . . But what did the old gentleman mean?" asked Mummy.
"I have since realised that the worthy old General was merely saying, 'Do that again—and woe betide you’ . . . What? . . . Well, Mrs. Crickford-Crocker has got it in for me, and I feel like I did when Woby Tijer was on my track."
"Tell me all about it, my child."
"Well, 'twas thus, dear Lady. I knew something would happen to me when you and Burgoyne-Fitzwilliam would not come to the beastly Ball. Fancy Dress Balls ought to be held every Saturday night. Well, I rolled up, quite pleased with myself in my black velvet, as Hamlet, and who should I see before my astonished eyes but Mother Crickford-Crocker not in Fancy Dress, as I thought,—and she the very one who says that any man who goes to a Fancy Dress Ball in ordinary dress is a lazy hound, and any woman who does so is an unoriginal slut. Her own sweet words, I assure you. . . . Well, I was so flabbergasted at seeing her there in her usual dowdy, shabby style, only a bit worse than usual, that, like the silly Ass I am, I blurted out:—
"‘Hullo, Mrs. Crickford-Crocker, why aren't you in Fancy Dress?'
"‘She just gave me one fearful glare, lasting about five minutes, and then snorted:—
"‘Insolent puppy,' and marched off! And now I may as well chuck the Army, I s'pose."
"But what annoyed her so?" asked Mummy.
"Why—I asked the same thing of Lady Peggy Hillyer and she shrieked with laughter. When she could speak she mocked my simple ‘Why aren't you in Fancy Dress, and then squealed 'The woman has come as "My Grandmother"’ I thought she'd have a fit. . . . How was I to know the old thing was got up as her own grandmother? I thought the spring-side boots and cameo brooch and mittens and things were merely a slight accentuation of her usual up-to-date Paquin-cum-Worth style."
"My poor Buster—yow have done it this time," agreed Mummy, when she had finished laughing. "The stupid woman must have thought it was a carefully studied insult!"
"Yes. She did. Shall I go and explain?" asked the ingenuous subaltern.
"Do," was the reply. "Go and tell her that it was a very natural mistake. Say she always looks so like her own grandmother that the error was natural and inevitable."
Buster groaned.
"I must go and play with the kids till I feel better," he said at last, and sighed wearily, as he rose to go upstairs to the Club.
•••••
"Venus is getting fat and lazy," remarked Boodle to Buster as they rested after winning the Derby—Boodle in the rôle of the King's Jockey and Buster in that of Favourite—the Vice and Amir representing the Also Ran fraternity. "He simply wouldn't take part in that Derby, and he understood perfectly well what he had to do. He doesn't try. He grins when you show him his part, and when the time comes for him to do it, he just grins again and lies down and wumps his tail—and looks awfully pleased with himself."
"He's gettin' on, y'know, President Sahib," was the reply. "He isn't the lad he was. I don't know when his birthday comes round—but he's gettin' a bit long in the tooth."
"How old do dogs live to be?" inquired the King's Jockey, peering from under Daddy's cap, which represented the correct silk confection of the royal colours.
"Oh—some more, some less, some about as old as you," replied the Favourite. "We had a big black retriever, when I was a boy, who lived to be a frightful age. His name was William Henry Winterbotham, known as W. H. Freeze-me-tail for short. He simply wouldn't die—and he wouldn't be put out of his misery either. Simply hated the idea. My grandfather thought he ought to be put out of his misery, but not he,—he preferred to stay in it."
"Tell uth all about it—like a thtory, pleathe Buthter," panted the Vice, who had just been "placed" in the Derby (six times round the Club premises on all fours).
"Well—William Henry Winterbotham had been a grand sporting dog of my Grandfather's for I don't know how many years—and Grandfather loved him better than anything on earth, I think. He'd never been out shooting, or for a ride or walk, or drive, never been outside the house in fact, for about twenty years, without old William Henry Winterbotham. Then suddenly the poor old chap crocked up, went deaf, dumb, blind, and silly, and began to lose his teeth, hair, and temper. Grandfather was upset. He worried over that dog a sight more than he would have done over me, If I'd begun to crock up. He used to get a fresh doctor to him every day—and they all said the same thing—'We can't cure old age'. Fact was, old W. H. W. ought to have died long ago.
"At last Grandfather realised the truth—that nothing could be done for William Henry, and that it would be true kindness to put him out of his misery. Sometimes a doctor would offer to do it. Sort of 'Dogs Painlessly Extracted' idea, but Grandfather would get purple at the mere thought of it.
"‘Sir!' he would say to the doctor who dared to suggest such a thing. 'This hand has fed that faithful hound for twenty years. This hand has fondled him and cherished him;—and no other hand but this shall—er—help him over his last stile.' That was the sort of way the old boy talked, y'know. . . . Pompous. . . ."
"What'th ‘pompottth’?" inquired the Vice.
"That is," replied Buster, evading explanations.
"As a matter of fact, it was a groom's hand that had done the feeding, but that's a detail."
"A dog's tail?" queried the Vice intelligently.
"Sit on your head, Vice," requested the President.
"Anyhow, this is a dog's tale, Mr. Vice," replied Buster, and the end of it is this:—
"At last poor old Grandfather screwed himself to the point of doing the dreadful deed, and he decided that as W. H. Freeze-me-tail had been a sporting-dog all his life, and a fine gun-dog, he ought to die by being shot, and not by being poisoned like a beastly sewer-rat. It preyed on poor Grandfather's nerves so that he lost his sleep and his appetite—until, one dark and stormy night, he crept forth to do the awful deed of blood. He took his old army-revolver, loaded it in all six chambers, and, with tearful eyes and shaking hand, crept on tip-toe toward the stables where was the kennel of his faithful old friend. . . ."
"Why did he crep' on tip-toe?" inquired the Vice.
"So that he should not wake William Henry Winterbotham if he were asleep," was the reply. "He felt, in the first place, that if the noble hound came out, wagging its tail with pleasure, to lick the hand of its beloved master—that hand would fall in palsied impotence before it could do the awful deed. In the second place—if W. H. W. were asleep, how much better that he should never wake again. How much better that he should pass painlessly away as the merciful bullet crashed into his unconscious brain.
"Nearer and nearer crept Grandfather, and still no sound broke upon the stilly watches of the night. . . ."
"Had it thtopped?" inquired the Vice.
"Had what stopped?"
"His stilly watch?"
"No, my son—it's a manner o' speakin', a figure of speech, like. I mean there was no noise. No rattle of poor Freeze-me-tail's chain. He was asleep.
"Averting his face, closing his eyes, holding his breath, my anguished Grandfather thrust the revolver into the kennel, fired six times, and, then, sobbing, with bursting heart, he fled from that unhallowed spot. . . .
"But he was a man with a high and stern sense of duty. He would see the thing through properly. He would give poor William H. Winterbotham a proper funeral and attend it himself. So in the morning he arose, dressed himself, and went to take his last look at the dead body of his poor dear old faithful friend in the kennel. As he stooped with a tragic groan to look into it, W. Henry Winterbotham rushed out and bit him. Grandfather had missed him every time. William Henry Winterbotham is alive still. . . ."