Young Phillip Maddison

by Henry Williamson

  Lenny was now crying, remembering the shouts at home, and his father’s angry face as he shook his fist at his mother.

  “Well, Old Prout’s at your house now, Lenny. Let’s come and see him. Only let me explain.”

  Phillip quivered as he said this, though he was not in the least frightened. He was rather enjoying the thought of standing up for Lenny Low. Perhaps Mr. Purley-Prout would see him, too, in a new light.

  The two boys walked down to the cemetery gates. As they turned the corner, they saw Mr. Purley-Prout cycling towards them. He swerved over the road, leapt off his bicycle, and stopped. He wore a tweed suit, without a hat. His fair hair was ruffled. Phillip thought that his face looked rocky. His forehead was wrinkled up as well as his cheeks. His eyes had a faraway look.

  “Good evening, boys,” he said hurriedly, “just the two I wanted to see. Phillip, can you spare me a minute or two? No, don’t go away, Lenny. Just wait here and guard my bike, will you? I want a word with your patrol leader.”

  Mr. Purley-Prout set the pedal of the Dursley-Pedersen upon the kerb. Then he took Phillip’s arm and walked with him along by the cemetery railings. With head bent down, he spoke in a low voice close to Phillip’s ear.

  “What’s the matter, Phillip, what’s the matter? Have you heard anything? My enemies are trying to ruin me, Phillip. They are jealous of the superiority of the Troop, you see.”

  Phillip trembled, but his mind remained apart. He knew Mr. Purley-Prout was just saying that. It was strange, and rather enjoyable, to feel upright and confident, while Mr. Purley-Prout was bent and afraid.

  “Is it about Lenny, Mr. Prout?”

  “What about Lenny, Phillip, what about him? Tell me, quick. The future of the Troop is at stake. What do you know about Lenny, Phillip?”

  “Well, you know, don’t you, Mr. Prout?” replied Phillip, in a kind of wonder that he seemed so weak and frightened.

  “What do you mean, Phillip? Why should I know anything? I gave Lenny that half-sovereign to help his poor Mother! I swear that was all! It was my good turn, Phillip. Don’t you believe me?”

  “Yes, Mr. Prout, I do.”

  Mr. Purley-Prout looked into his eyes. Even then, his eyes did not seem to be seeing him. “You are a good Scout, Phillip,” he said earnestly. He put his arm around Phillip’s shoulder. “Are you my friend?”

  “Yes, Mr. Prout.”

  “Then help me, Phillip! A man like me has many enemies! Tell me what they are saying? Has anyone been to see you?”

  “No, Mr. Prout. I heard about it from Lenny.”

  “What did Lenny say, Phillip? What did Lenny say?”

  “He said you wanked him, Mr. Prout, in your bivouac.”

  Mr. Purley-Prout held Phillip’s arm tighter, and bent his head more as he said, “I don’t quite follow you, Phillip. What does that expression mean?”

  Phillip felt awkward.

  “Well, it’s what they say—only no one believes it—well, you know—a long hair growing out of the middle of your hand, Mr. Prout.”

  “I am afraid I don’t understand, Phillip.”

  “It’s what’s supposed to be bad for your health,” said Phillip, lowering his gaze.

  Mr. Purley-Prout took his arm off Phillip’s shoulder. After a few paces he said. “Is that all Lenny said?”

  “Yes, Mr. Prout.”

  “I see. Now I want a frank reply to my question, please, Phillip. Do you think I would do such a thing as that, Phillip? On your Scout’s honour, now!”

  Mr. Purley-Prout was now upright.

  Remembering what Mother had told him—to be very careful what he said—Phillip began to feel anxious.

  “I don’t know, Mr. Prout.”

  “Lenny is imagining things, Phillip. He is younger than you, and probably got an idea into his head from someone else. Do you know if anyone has been questioning him?”

  “Only his Father, Mr. Prout.”

  Mr. Purley-Prout thought again. “Ah, I begin to see daylight at last! It was a very stormy night, and I was worried about more than one thing, if you remember, Phillip. We were liable to be attacked at any moment. The other Troops envy us, you see. Also, I wasn’t sure of the water supply, it had to be boiled before you scouts drank it. Then again, the heavy rain would mean no fires in the morning. All sorts of responsibilities weigh upon me, as Scoutmaster, Phillip. Knowing you were overcrowded, I offered a share of my bivvy to one of your patrol, hoping among other things, to keep you quiet! I expect as I tossed and turned in the flea-bag, half asleep, Lenny put a certain interpretation on it. So if anyone asks you questions, you will tell them the truth of our very disturbing night, won’t you?”

  “Yes, Mr. Prout,” said Phillip, thinking that Lenny’s side of the case was the true one, all the same. He had seen it in Mr. Prout’s face. Mr. Prout was not really what he pretended to be.

  They went back to Lenny Low, who was subduedly standing on guard by the two bicycles.

  “I would like to give every one of my scouts a bike like your new Swift, Phillip, if I had the money. But I suppose that good action would be misconstrued, without the shadow of a doubt! Well, Lenny, I have told your patrol leader the truth, and he believes me, so don’t—for you are only one against many, you know!—please don’t, for all our sakes, repeat what you have been saying any more. Some people might misconstrue it as blackmail, you know, and that is a very serious thing, indeed. Now if you, Phillip, had exercised proper judgment in buying your tent, we would all have enjoyed a good night’s sleep in camp that first night, and none of this storm in a teacup would have happened!”

  Turning to Lenny Low, Mr. Purley-Prout said, “Now, Lenny, we have a duty to your parents. This is a moment for courage of a high order. You must come with me to your Father and Mother, and tell them that you imagined the whole story, then we can all forget it. Phillip here will bear me out, won’t you, Phillip?”

  “Will I get into trouble, please, sir?” said Lenny Low, scarce above a whisper.

  “No! For I will, of course, as your friend and Scoutmaster, stand by you. Come on, a mistake has been made, so let’s all face it with true British grit! Like having a bad tooth out, that’s all! And when it’s all over, we’ll forget the whole business!”

  Mr. Purley-Prout was like his old self again. Phillip could not look at his face. He could not look at Father’s face either—Father said it was because he was shifty. Phillip felt that if he was shifty, so was Mr. Purley-Prout.

  They walked in silence to Lenny Low’s house.

  In the front room, Mr. Purley-Prout said that he had thought the whole matter out, and really, it was all a storm in a teacup. Boys, he said, sometimes dreamed, and, when awakening, felt great relief that it was, after all, only a bad dream. The human mind had been a mystery to even the greatest savants; men knew little about the human mind even in the present advanced age, when the ether had been pierced by wireless telegraphy, and the air conquered by flying machines and dirigibles. Illusions were common amongst the most intelligent as well as among ordinary, everyday sort of people like themselves. People would swear to their beliefs, and sincerely, even though they were proved to be based on imagination. There was the case of William Blake, the great metaphysical poet, who was thrashed as a child for saying he saw angels on a tree. The eighteenth century was a barbarous age, but today men knew better than to punish little children for the fantasies of their minds.

  Then, looking up from the carpet of the front room, Mr. Purley-Prout said earnestly, holding his hands before him.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Low! I swear to you on my honour as a Scoutmaster, as I am prepared to swear my oath in court to defend the good name of the Troop—and I most sincerely hope it will not be necessary—I swear to you that I gave your son money simply and solely because of a humble Christian impulse to do a good turn to others. Now Lenny dear, answer me this before your parents. Did I, or did I not, promise you the money before, or after, you had told me about the debt that hung like a dark cloud
over your home?”

  “After, Mr. Prout.”

  “Thank you, Lenny, for your courage in telling the truth. I am far from being a rich man,” went on Mr. Purley-Prout. “Indeed, I am a poor man, but when I decided to form the North West Kent Troop of Baden-Powell’s Boy Scouts, it was with a determination to do all in my power, to spend every penny I possessed to help the youth of England. God knows I am no paragon, indeed in many ways I consider myself a failure, but when I heard from Lenny the sad story, it——”

  Mr. Prout’s voice broke. He turned away, and blew his nose with two trumpet notes. He dabbed his eyes.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Low, I have opened my heart to you! I can only hope, humbly, for your understanding. I ask you to consider just this one thing more. Would a man in my position, were he guilty of the unspeakable crime that has been whispered abroad simply and solely because of this money—I ask you, as I would ask any British court of justice should it be necessary to clear my good name—I repeat, I ask you, would any man in his senses, any guilty man that is, give any boy he had injured a half-sovereign, knowing that such an act would suggest the very thing that, if he were guilty, he would want to hush up?”

  Mr. Purley-Prout looked from Mrs. Low’s face to Mr. Low’s face, then quickly back to Mrs. Low’s face again.

  “I can only say to you, Mrs. Low, that if my generosity were misdirected, I am humbly sorry, and well have I paid for my impulsiveness. In future I shall think twice before I leap, in a world which so easily can miscontrue a generous act. And if this little storm in a teacup has served to allow us to know one another better, well then, it only fulfils the old adage, that it’s an ill wind which blows nobody any good! Phillip, thank you for standing by your Scoutmaster! Mrs. Low, I hope you are now in some way less a prey to anxiety. Mr. Low, I hope you will not think too hardly of Lenny, who will, I am sure, grow out of his functional hysteria—I had some training as a medical student before I decided I could serve humanity in other ways—and develop into a fine young man.”

  “I’m sure I don’t quite know what to say, Mr. Prout,” began Mrs. Low; but Mr. Low interrupted and said, his jaw almost clenched,

  “I do! Here is your half-sovereign back! I thank you for that part of your actions which were concerned with your good intentions.”

  Mr. Purley-Prout looked at Mr. Low, as though puzzled. Mr. Purley-Prout seemed about to say something. Then he held out his hand to Mr. Low.

  Mr. Low looked Mr. Purley-Prout in the eye, ignoring his hand. Then Mr. Low went to open the door. Mr. Low looked very grim, thought Phillip. He looked as though he would never speak to anyone ever again. Mrs. Low was crying, so was Lenny Low.

  Mr. Purley-Prout rode away on his Dursley-Pedersen. Feeling lost for a moment, Phillip wandered into the cemetery, then he went to tell Mrs. Neville all about it.

  The patrols scattered when the North West Kent Troop came to an end. It was said that Mr. Prout had gone to Rome, to live in a monastery.

  *

  Phillip decided to join the troop attached to St. Mary’s church. They had two buglers, a drum, and the parish hall every Thursday for lectures, games and soirees. Thither he went, and met a tall, dark, tight-lipped scoutmaster called Oscar Blackman, whose sallow face was adorned with an incipient moustache. With hardly a word of greeting, unsmiling, this authority ordered him to report with his patrol at the next Saturday afternoon parade.

  When Phillip turned up, with Cranmer and Desmond, Mr. Blackman said, as Phillip saluted him, “Is this your patrol? What do you call yourselves?”

  “The Bloodhounds, sir,” replied Phillip, standing to attention.

  “Oh,” murmured Mr. Blackman, through pursed lips. Then he muttered, “Shades of Sherlock Holmes.”

  Phillip thought that perhaps it was not a very favourable remark. Mr. Oscar Blackman, who was an Old Boy of his school, somehow seemed to be different from other scoutmasters he had seen. Cranmer remarked, when Mr. Blackman had gone away, that he looked “a bit of a black ’isself, wiv ’is gloomy fissog, bloomin’ great cape and sewerman’s boots.”

  The new scoutmaster’s uniform was rather different, certainly. Mr. Oscar Blackman wore the same sort of cape that the Bloodhounds had, but not cut down. It was fastened by a chain at his throat, and when he cycled fast along the High Street on his Humber bicycle, in top gear, pushing with his black leather riding boots, the cape fluttered behind him.

  “This bloke fancies ’isself as Dick Turpin,” said Cranmer, adding that he must have swiped the boots from a mounted copper. In this Cranmer was not far wrong, for the boots, together with the cape, had been bought at Murrage’s, old City of London mounted police gear.

  “Dick Turpin” became his nickname among the three friends. After the first day, Dick Turpin said that they would have to join the other patrols, and become either Wolves or Kestrels. That was devastating news; but before Phillip could decide for himself, an occurrence at the next Thursday evening meeting in the Parish Hall decided for him.

  The senior patrol leader, a younger brother of the Scout-master, a big, red-faced, curly-haired boy who went to Phillip’s school, took the meeting. He addressed them all, saying that his brother was very ill. Very ill indeed. He walked up and down dramatically on the platform, before the scouts waiting in silence to hear the news.

  “Worn out by constant work for St. Mary’s Troop, on top of his day’s work in London,” declared the patrol leader of the Wolves, “my brother Oscar has finally succumbed to what at first was feared to be brain fever.”

  The boys listened in silence.

  “On Monday morning,” went on the Wolf leader, dramatically, “we found Oscar in his bedroom, wandering about in his woollen combinations. He had a dazed look in his eye, and a thermometer in his mouth, upside down.”

  At this, Phillip could not help laughing.

  The Wolf leader scowled as he pointed at the offender.

  “Oh, it’s you!” he said, sarcastically. “It would be, you bloody little hound!” He looked so angry that Phillip was scared. “Get out!” he shouted, in sudden rage. “Clear off, before I boot you up the backside, you little rough, you scholarship kid!”

  Phillip hurried to get out. At the door he turned and said, “Coming, Cranmer?”

  “Yes, take your guttersnipe pal with you. We don’t want you, either!” pointing to Desmond. Desmond hastened after Phillip.

  “Brain fever my eye!” taunted Cranmer, at the door. “Dick Turpin ain’t got no brains to get ’ot!”

  “I’ll smash you for that!” shouted the Wolf, leaping off the platform. “My brother is to have an operation for appendix tonight!”

  “That won’t put in what wor never there!” retorted Cranmer, before he darted off among the tombstones.

  “They’re all sissies in that there lot, if you arst my opinion,” he remarked, when Phillip and Desmond met him in the Rec. a few minutes later. “Good riddince ter bad rubbage!”

  Which was, it must impartially be recorded, more or less what the senior patrol leader had just remarked about the Bloodhounds.

  *

  Despite his experiences, Phillip still dreamed of ideal scouting. At school he heard of a troop on the Heath that wanted recruits. Milton gave him the name and address of the headquarters. There he went the next Wednesday night, for the mid-week meeting. It was held in a house in Tranquil Vale, near a pub called The Three Tuns. Phillip remembered the name of the pub because Uncle Hugh was sitting outside it, in the dogcart he sometimes hired from the publican who kept the Randiswell. Uncle Hugh’s man, called Bob, who came from a family living in Railway Terrace, was with him. Uncle Hugh offered Phillip a bottle of pop, but Phillip said he was going to a patrol leaders’ meeting, and must not be late.

  Determined to make a good impression, he put on a happy face as he sat with the other patrol leaders—including Milton of the Peacocks—round a big mahogany table. He paid the closest attention to what the presiding scoutmaster said. The others wore their everyday clothes, b
ut Phillip had changed into his Eton suit, with gloves. He listened with apparent great attention, a wide smile fixed across his over-soaped face. He wore a new collar and tie, both borrowed from his cousin Hubert. Determined not to make a fool of himself by talking too much—his mother had often told him that he had no reserve—Phillip sat silent during the entire discussion, except to say “Yes”, or “No”, as occasion demanded.

  At the end of it, the scoutmaster said to Phillip that he could join the troop if he cared to, but not as a patrol leader.

  “We have enough patrols for the present.”

  Concealing his disappointment, Phillip continued to smile widely.

  “By the way,” said Mr. Peacock. “Do you attend Dulwich College?”

  “No, sir,” replied Phillip, surprised. Milton winked at him.

  “Oh, I see. I asked only because you are wearing the school tie. You see, I happen to be an Old Alleynian.”

  “Oh, this one?” said Phillip, pointing with a gloved hand. “My cousin Hubert Cakebread lent me this, as mine had a greasy mark on it, sir.” He smiled at Milton. He would not mind being in his patrol. He would do his very best, if Milton would have him. Was he not a friend of Helena Rolls?

  *

  What was left of the Bloodhounds—Phillip, Cranmer, and Desmond—paraded with the new troop on the following Saturday. Alas, there was no room in the Peacocks. But the Rattlesnakes needed men. Their call was a pebble in a small potted-meat tin. The other Rattlesnakes did not like Cranmer. Cranmer made the rattle with his throat. They looked at him as though he were quite different from themselves. To Phillip the new troop seemed tame after Mr. Purley-Prout’s way of doing things. They marched about and scouted over the Heath, signalling with flags, or pretended to be hiding in the open, with golfers moving past them, or calling “Fore!” from the distance. Worst of all, there were no camp fires. And as they obviously looked down on Cranmer, Phillip said, “I votes we don’t turn up in the mouldy old Rattlesnakes again.”

  Anyoldhow, declared Cranmer, he had to start work on Monday, in a tanning yard at Bermondsey; which left only Phillip and Desmond.