It was the morning of the day before Helmsworth broke up; examinations were over, lists had been read out, and places and removes assigned to those who would reassemble in September, and just now the whole school was employed in the joyful task of packing play-boxes. This was not an affair that usually demanded anxious consideration: it consisted in shying your books into your box and shaking it until the lid consented to close or burst in the attempt. But David on this particular occasion was not sure that it was very joyful, and, as an outward and visible sign of his doubts, he was actually packing his books, fitting them in one with another, that is to say, instead of making salad. Glorious things had happened, and a dazzling future was no doubt to follow, but he was dimly aware that a chapter in life was closing, which in spite of its drawbacks and terrors and annoyances had been jolly. He had been happy, he was aware, without knowing it, and whatever the future held it would not hold this again. No such scruples afflicted Ferrers, who was emptying his locker into his play-box in the manner of a cheerful cataract, holding up for competition anything he did not want.
“Old Testament Maclear,” he said. “Quisfor an old Testament Maclear? List of kings of Israel and Judah in it, with lots of noughts and crosses over it. Lord, I’d like to make a parcel of it and send it to Dubs without any stamps on.”
David was considering the question of a catapult. In the famous visit to Marchester he had discovered that catapults were scuggy inventions, but he had at present been unable to bring himself to part with this one, so great was its calibre. The stag-beetles he had given to Ferrers Minor the day after his return, and their new owner had sat down on them with total loss of life, a few hours subsequently. And now he hardened himself again.
“Quisfor a catapult?” he said heroically, and a chorus of “Ego” answered him. He threw it to Stone, who had clearly been first with his “Ego.”
“Rotten things, catapults,” he said, to strengthen himself, “only scugs use them at Marchester.”
Then he came upon the Smoking Club badge. Since his return from Marchester he had broken with the S. C., but since, as a leaving gift, he had made the club a magnificent present of twenty-five cigarettes and a cherry-wood holder, his defection had not roused unpleasant comment. But the badge had still something of the preciousness of the past about it; he remembered the pride with which, by the assistance of a pair of tweezers, he had shaped the copper wire into the mystic letters. He slipped it into his play-box.
There was a loose cricket scoring-sheet, which he had craftily torn out of the book, because it showed his own analysis on the day of the Eagles match, and did not record the fact that he had missed the catch which lost them the game. Well, there was no use for that now, any more than for catapults or stag-beetles, since the fellows at Marchester would care precious little what his bowling-analysis had been against a private school of which nobody had ever heard. They had not heard of him either, and at that thought David saw just where his vague regrets and melancholy came from. He had to start all over again on a new page, to part with everything that for its own sake or from familiarity had become dear, to be a nobody again instead of being a big boy in his circle. He had been used to consider himself rather a swell, with an assured position; now he was nobody again, with no position at all. . . . The school sergeant, the minister of fate who brought round the slips of blue paper on which the Head had written the name of culprits whose attendance was required, looked in at this moment.
“Master Blaize to go to the Head at once,” he said.
David’s heart stood still, not with fear but with suspense. For the last three days he had hourly expected that news would come of the result of the Marchester scholarship examination, and perhaps this meant its arrival. But his friends thought otherwise, and Ferrers Major rattled his keys and slapped a book with suggestive resonance.
“Don’t bully me, sir,” he said. “The other hand, sir. Whack, whack, whack, all in the same place! The fellow who was going to take all the wickets in the old boys’ match won’t be able to bowl a ball. Whack, whack. Sobs and cries!”
“Oh, piffle,” said David getting up.
That was a word he had brought back from Marchester and was new to the Helmsworth vocabulary. He had distinctly overworked it, with the result that two days ago there had been a “piffle conspiracy” against him. Whatever question, that is to say, that David asked anybody was answered by “Piffle,” which became rather wearing to the nerves. But the conspiracy was short-lived; it had lasted, indeed, only a few hours, since David distinctly announced that he would firmly hit in the face the next fellow who said “Piffle” to him. That checked off the juniors at once; but, unfortunately there were others, and when David the moment after said to Stone, “Will you come and bathe?” Stone said “Piffle.” Immediately afterwards Stone had a black eye, and David a bleeding nose. But he went for the next piffler with undiminished zeal, and the thing had dropped, for it was not worth while fighting David over a little thing like that. He also had dropped the use of the word, and this time it slipped out by accident.
“And if anybody says ‘Piffle,’ ” he remarked cheerfully, “there’s heaps of time to smash him silly before I go to the Head.”
This was too high-handed.
“One, two, three,” said Stone, and the whole class-room simultaneously shouted “Piffle!” at the tops of their voices. That was a manœuvre previously agreed on, in case David used the word again, and he was scored off.
“Oh, funny asses,” he said witheringly, which was about the best thing that could be done under the circumstances.
David walked down the path that led to the Head’s study with a suspended heart, feeling certain that this was scholarship news, and not one of his private misdeeds that was to be set before him, but yet hurriedly attempting to recollect the omissions and trespasses of which he had lately been guilty. But he credited himself with so stainless a record that he was really open to the damning imputation of having become a saint. For the effect of that glimpse of public school life had been magical on his conduct: he had literally not cared to do the sort of things any more that spelt trouble at Helmsworth. At Marchester, for example, only scugs smoked, and therefore the temptation of so doing (especially since he did not like it) had ceased to beckon him. The only reason for indulging in it had really been the notion that it was grand, and if by a higher standard it was not grand at all, the point of it was gone. Again, the fact that at Adams’s house it was the thing to work, had made industry a perfectly palatable mode of passing the time. Or where, when he had once seen a master like Adams, was the use of cheeking that dreary ass Dubs? You couldn’t cheek Dubs any more: it was beneath you to do any such thing. Dubs was pure piffle.
There had been a paralysing row in the school a few days before, at which the Head had appeared in his most terrific light; but David had had nothing to do with that. A series of small thefts had been going on, and the culprit had eventually been caught red-handed in a dormitory deserted for cricket, had been held up to public execration, and expelled. That scene had made David feel sick with terror: personally he did not in the least desire to steal other fellows’ things, but he quaked at the thought of being made the scorn of the assembled school as had happened to Anstruther. He supposed that his whole subsequent life would be cursed and blasted, as indeed the Head had assured Anstruther that his was.
David tapped at the door, and entered in obedience to a stern, gruff permission. The Head looked up, frowning.
“Blaize; yes, wait a moment.”
He finished a letter, reread it and directed it, and threw it on the floor. That was one of his great ways: he just threw letters on the floor, if he wanted them to be posted, and they were picked up and stamped.
“I have just heard from Marchester,” he said. “You have done well, but you have not got a scholarship. There were six given, and you were eighth on the list. Don’t be discouraged; you have done well. But I am recommending your father to send you to Mr. Adams’s house, anyhow. It is more expensive than an in-boarder’s, and I wish you had got a scholarship, so as to begin helping in your own education. But I think you may consider that you will go to Mr. Adams’s next September.”
The Head suddenly took his keys from his pocket, and rattled them in the lock of the drawer that held the canes. But he was doing it, so it seemed to David, in a sort of absence of mind and not to be thinking of what lay within. Then, leaving them there, he got up and rocked across to the fireplace, where he stood on the hearthrug, looking gigantic. He began a portentous, terror-breathing discourse.
“David,” he said, “a few days ago you saw a schoolfellow publicly expelled. I saw you turn white; I saw your horror at the task that was forced on me. Now you are on the point of going out into the bigger life of a public school, and when you have been a week at Marchester you will look back on the time you have passed here as a sort of babyhood, and wonder whether it was you who smoked half a cigarette now and then, and cheeked Mr. Dutton, and put—er—put resurrection pie into envelopes and burned it.”
(“Good Lord,” thought David. “Is it going to be a caning for sundries?”)
Apparently it wasn’t.
“But you will find,” continued the Head, “that there are worse things than smoking, and all the misdeeds you may or may not have been punished for, and you will find out that there are even worse things than stealing, and that many quite good chaps, as you would say, don’t think there is any harm in them. Do you know what I mean?”
David looked up in quite genuine bewilderment.
“No, sir,” he said.
“Thank God for it, then,” said the Head. Then he moved across the room to his cabinet of cigars, and broke his own rule, for he took one out and lit it and smoked it in silence for a moment in the sacred presence of one of the boys. Then he turned to David again.
“You don’t understand me now,” he said, “but you will. And when you do understand, try to remember for my sake, if that is anything to you, or for your own sake, which certainly is, or for God’s sake, which is best of all, that there are worse things than stealing. Things that damn the soul, David. And now, forget all I have said till the time comes for you to remember it. You will know when it comes. And don’t listen to any arguments about it. There is no argument possible.”
“Yes, sir,” said David blankly.
He could not understand why it was the Head had thanked God; but there was no time for wonder, for instantly the Head’s whole gravity and seriousness vanished.
“That is all I wanted to say to you,” he said, “and I feel sure you won’t forget it. Now when does the old boys’ match begin? Twelve, isn’t it? I hope you’ll be in form to-day with your bowling. We haven’t beaten the old boys for six years, but I don’t think we’ve ever had such a good chance as we have to-day. The wicket ought to suit you, if the sun comes out.”
Gradually the sense of this dawned on David, its tremendous import. He flushed with incredulous pride.
“Oh, but fellows like Hughes will hit me all round the clock, sir,” he said.
“They will if you think they are going to,” remarked the Head. “That’s all then, David. Hughes is staying with me over the night. You’ll sup with us.”
“Yes, sir; thank you, sir,” said David.
In spite of his failure to win a scholarship David walked on air as he went back to the packing of his play-box, for far more important, from his own point of view, than the getting of a scholarship was the fact that he was going to Adams’s. For a minute he wondered about what the Head had said concerning things that were worse than stealing; but, having been told to forget all about it, instantly proceeded to put the question out of his mind in favour of more agreeable topics. And there was no doubt that the Head implied that it was he who might win the old boys’ match for the school. Jolly decent of him, considering that it was he who had certainly lost the Eagles match for them.
Soon after the great men from Eton and Harrow and Marchester began to arrive, and each appeared more enormous than the last. To-day, however, there was no baleful father to trouble David’s peace, and in the half-hour before the match began he went and bowled to Hughes at the nets, who incontinently hit him three times running out of the field. But David had the true temper of the slow bowler who expects to be hit, while he studies the hitter, and observed that Hughes was not nearly so comfortable with a slightly faster ball pitched a little outside the leg stump, and (if luck accompanied the intention) breaking in. He quite mistimed two that David sent down, upon which, having got this valuable hint, David bowled no more of that variety, lest Hughes should get used to them. Then, as there were plenty of bowlers at Hughes’s net, he went on to the next, where Cookson, who had left two years before, was batting. There, again, the wily David tried the ball which Hughes did not care about, but found that Cookson had a special affection for it, and hit it juicily to square leg. But he was less confident with a very slow ball, such as Hughes had hit so contemptuously; so here was a second bit of information. David committed that to memory, and tried a third net, where he had no success of any sort or kind.
There had been six school matches before this; Stone had lost the toss on five occasions, and on the sixth, when he had won, had put the other side in with disastrous results. To-day, however, having, contrary to all expectation, won the toss, he took the innings, and by lunch-time six wickets were down for a hundred and three, while Cookson, the only bowler of any real merit, was losing his sting, and David, in the last over before lunch, had hit him impertinently for twelve, thus bringing his own contribution up to twenty. During lunch he made a beautiful plan that he would really go in for hitting hard afterwards; but this miscarried, and he lost his wicket off the first ball he received, owing to his hitting hard at it at the moment when his bails were already whizzing like driven partridges through the air. Three quarters of an hour later the innings closed for a hundred and thirty-five, a total which might have easily been worse, but undeniably should have been better.
David’s heart sank when he saw two immense figures coming out of the pavilion to open the innings of the old boys, and found that he had to begin bowling to one with a moustache and a forearm that seemed about as big as his own leg. But, as the Head had augured might happen, the sun had come out during lunch-time, and this, after the rain of the night before, which had rendered the wicket easy this morning, might render it very difficult (and also very suitable for his mode of attack) during the afternoon. Without doubt the turf would cake, and a ball, if judiciously handled, might do very odd things indeed. He felt as if the Head had ordered the sun on purpose for him, which was a kind thought, and, suddenly glowing with optimism again, pranced up to the crease with his usual extravagant action, and was immediately hit clean out of the ground. The Head had appeared in front of the pavilion just in time to see this done, and David candidly reflected that it was worth seeing. It didn’t often happen that the first ball of an innings was slogged for six. Juicy hit, too!
David approached the crease again in a much more staid manner, and delivered a second ball exactly like the first. There was really no reason why it should not have been treated in exactly the same way, but the giant carefully blocked it instead, for it looked different. That thoroughly pleased David: he was creating an atmosphere. He did not use that phrase to himself, he merely thought that the batsman suspected something.
Again he altered his action, and took hardly any run at all. But this time he delivered the slightly faster ball which had puzzled Hughes during the practice at the nets. And it was feebly returned straight into his hands, where it remained till he buzzed it vertically into the air.
“Gosh, I’m devilish deep,” said David to himself in a spasm of odious pride.
By six it was all over. Helmsworth had won by twenty runs, and David had taken eight wickets. And though, since his return from Marchester, he had often told himself that this was only a scuggy little private school, this was a moment worth living for, for not only did the scuggy little private school roar at him as he came to the pavilion with the rest of the team, but the disgraced and vanquished giants of public schools, people of sixteen and seventeen, came out shouting “Well bowled, Blaize,” with the most generous appreciation. The Head was there, too, clapping his hands, and Goggles was there, beaming through her large round spectacles, and Carrots, with her hair shining in the sun . . . they were all there.
David came up the steps to the pavilion all alone, for the rest of the eleven suddenly stood away from him and shoved him forward, crimson in the face with exertion and joy.
“Oh, ’twasn’t me, sir,” he said to the Head, who patted his shoulder. “It was just the ground: it played awfully queer.”
And he buried his delightful confusion in a quart of lemonade.
So in delicious triumph the last hours of David’s school-life passed, and from the train next morning he saw between the trees the fleeting glances of the roofs which for three years had been his home.
David’s father lived in a grey, rambling house in the close at Baxminster, a plan of his that, as far as David went, had something to be said both for and against it. In its favour was the fact that the house contained a whole top-story of dusky and mysterious attics, roofed in the dimness by cobwebby beams, and used only for lumber-places and cisterns. Here it had been delightful in years gone by to find pleasing terrors in these dark and doubtful corners, amid the gurgles of water-pipes. Here he and his sister (in those years gone by, or in other words until a few months ago) had often passed entrancing wet afternoons, daring each other, particularly at the closing in of dusk, to explore the farthest recesses even to that last attic of all, which contained a large coffin-like box and a cistern that unexpectedly gave sudden and mirthless goblin-chuckles to itself, most harrowing to nerves already keenly on edge. The rules generally in force were that one of them had to go and sit alone in that very spooky chamber, with face turned honestly away from the door, while the other dressed up in any horrific garb that might suggest itself to a fevered imagination, and, having stealthily entered, frightened the watcher with this hideous apparition, accompanying it by any such noise of screaming or groaning that might appear suitable. With the victim looking steadily away from the door, these noises might go on, like an artillery attack, until his nerves were thoroughly shaken, though he had not yet seen what the apparition was to be. David had once frightened Margery into hysterics here, having entered the room in silence, swathed in a sheet, and wriggling snake-wise along the floor. He had coloured his face purple from Margery’s paint-box, and, having serpentined along till he was in front of her, suddenly yelled and disclosed the horrors of that apoplectic countenance. On that occasion the gurgling cistern had been useful, for he swiftly washed his own face to reassure her. But, by a variation of the rules, it having been ordained that the frightener should enter the room first and get himself up to receive the frightened on entry, Margery had got back her own again, for she had chalked her face and put her tongue out, and lain down in the coffin-shaped box, closing the lid as usual. David had looked for her with quaking tremors behind the cistern, and found her not; he had peered into the darkest of all corners, where an empty bookcase concealed a dangerous recess, when suddenly the lid of the coffin-box, which he had not suspected, flew open, disclosing Margery lying quite still, with white face and protruding tongue. . . . David had run as far as the nursery-landing before he could master the panic of his legs.
Clearly, then, there was, or rather had been, advantages in this house, but to-day as Margery and David sat idly beneath the mulberry-tree in the garden, from which every now and then a fat sun-ripened fruit plopped on to the grass, David announced that there was no more savour in these childish things. Margery was a year older than he, but, being a girl, and already turned fifteen, and he a boy who had but last week celebrated his fourteenth birthday (his father had given him a copy of the “Christian Year,” for which he had very little use) she was essentially some five years his senior, and knew how David felt.
“Yes, it used to be ripping,” he said discontentedly, in allusion to those years, “and I used to be awfully excited, but I don’t care now. You see the point was that wewerefrightened: that was the ripping part of it. Besides, you know, if any of the fellows at Adams’s asked me what sort of games we played at home, it would be sickening to have to say that we just hid behind boxes in a frowsty attic. ’Tain’t no use any more! So what are we to do all this afternoon and to-morrow and the next day? It’s funny that you can’t suggest something else.”
Margery gave a long sigh and ate one of the fallen mulberries. She would have given anything to be able to suggest something else. In appearance she was so like David that if brother and sister had dressed in the other’s clothes, and corrected the discrepancy of hair and broken front tooth, either might have passed a frontier with the passport of the other.
“Well, I’ve suggested heaps of things, and you say they are all rot,” she said. “I’ll play anything you like. We used to have rather fun playing cricket. Wouldn’t you like to play cricket?”
“Oh, what’s the use?” said David. “I should hit you into the Deanery garden all afternoon, and always bowl you first ball. I took eight wickets against——”
Margery had a good deal of David’s spirit, as well as his bodily aspect.
“I know, you told me that,” she said. “Twice.”
David had a certain sense of being ill-used, common to his sex at his age.
“Oh, all right,” he said with dignity. “But youusedto be interested in my things.”
Margery had probably never heard of women’s rights; she only knew that her beloved David was rather unfair sometimes. On these occasions she never by any chance took refuge in pathos.
“Silly gubbins,” she said. “You told me twice, and I was interested even the second time. David, do buck up! Go and smoke a cigarette, won’t you? It’s quite disgusting of you to smoke, and some day father will smell it and there’ll be trouble. But it used to make you feel—feel starched.”
“Given up smoking,” said David morosely. “Ages ago.”
“Hurrah! Did it make you feel extra-special unwell?”
“No, you ass. But it’s scuggish to smoke. Only scugs smoke at Marchester.”
Margery nodded at him approvingly.
“I always told you you would cease to think it grand when you got with nice boys,” she said.
“Oh, shut up,” said David.
Margery melted completely under this. She felt that he was only a little boy, in spite of all the wickets he had taken, and that she was a woman. Instinctively she took up the glory and burden of her sex.
“Oh, David, what’s the matter?” she said. “I am sorry you feel beastly. What is it?”
David slid off his chair, and lay down flat on the grass, staring up into the thick green leaves, chinked with blue sky. Almost immediately a ripe mulberry dropped on his nose and burst, and though it was immensely funny, Margery continued quite grave. David said “Damn,” and solemnly wiped it off. Then she sat down on the grass by him.
“What is the matter, David?” she repeated.
David blew away a fly that wished to settle on his face.
“Oh, it’s so dull,” he said. “I am so bored! And fancy being stuck here all August, as father’s in residence. You’re a ripper, all right, but then you’re a girl. I expect you can’t help. I’ll come and play cricket if you like.”
“I don’t,” said Margery. “Go on.”
“I don’t suppose you would understand,” said the superior sex, “but you see I’ve got to start again. It’s scuggish to smoke or to keep stag-beetles, and I shan’t see any of the chaps I was friends with again (and some of them were jolly decent, in spite of what you say about smoking) except Bags. It’s . . . it’s like emigrating. Of course, it’s perfectly ripping going to Marchester, but . . . oh, well, I feel rotten this afternoon.”
“Oh, is Bags going to Marchester?” asked Margery.
“Yes. I heard from him this morning. He’s going to Adams’s too.”
David’s tone was not that of one who finds a consoling circumstance, and Margery felt her way.
“But you’re tremendous friends with him, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Oh, yes, I suppose so. He was jolly decent to me last half when a lot of the fellows were against me. But he doesn’t play games, you know, and has got a weak heart, and he’s rather an ass in some ways . . . and he says he has persuaded his governor to let him go to Marchester, just because of me.”
“Well then, he’s very fond of you,” said Margery.
“I know he is. That makes me feel rather a cad. Of course it’ll be awfully nice to have Bags there and all that, but . . . oh, I can’t explain, and you can’t understand.”
But Margery, being a child herself, could completely understand the unfathomable mind of childhood.
“I shouldn’t worry about that, David,” she said. “Even if Bags can’t play cricket, perhaps you’ll find he can do something else that’ll make him all right.”
David regarded the roof of mulberry-leaves severely.
“Well, I suppose I’ve just got the hump,” he said. “I don’t care for the old things, and I haven’t got any new ones yet. Look at these holidays! I hate cathedrals, and we’re going to stop here all August. I don’t want to grub in the attics any more, or to play pirates, and there’s no cricket except one match against those rotten little choirboys. And father talks the most awful tosh about cricket. Says he never wore pads when he was a boy—I dare say they weren’t invented—and, anyhow, he could never have played for nuts. I can’t argue with him; it isn’t any use, because he doesn’t know!”
David sat up in a despair of indignation.
“Only the other day,” he said, “at the county match, he asked me where Jessop was fielding. So of course I said, ‘At cover-point,’ which he was. And father said, ‘Perhaps.’ It wasn’t ‘perhaps’; it was cover-point. There wasn’t a ‘perhaps’ in the whole blooming show. Why, even you know that! That makes it so unfair. If father tells me that dog-tooth ornament comes in Norman architecture I don’t say ‘Perhaps.’ ”
The wise Margery continued her course of consolation.
“Oh, but David,” she said. “There are a lot of things you like besides cricket. There’s that ripping poem you read me the other day, Keats’s ‘Ode to the Nightingale.’ I loved it. Was he head master of Eton?”
David wiped the final remains of the burst mulberry from his face in a magisterial manner.
“Head master of Eton!” he said. “Why, he was in a sort of doctor’s shop, where you might have got something for stomach-ache, the Head said. And all the time he was writing that ode. Isn’t it rummy?”
The boy is father to the man, so also is the girl to the woman. Margery, with secret glee, saw that David was feeling better, and inclined to be interested.
“Yes, you did tell me,” she said penitently; “but I forgot. Sorry, David.”
“Oh, that’s all right. I forget lots of things. I say, it’s an awful pity you’re a girl, Margery. You would have been such a ripping boy.”
“I dare say I should have got on all right,” said she. “Or perhaps you might have been a girl.”
“Me a girl?” said David. “But I couldn’t. Think of the things girls have to do. It’s ridiculous.”
Margery felt she must stand up for her sex.
“I don’t see that the things we have to do are more ridiculous than your smoking, or keeping those beastly stag-beetles,” said she, for she shared Bags’s horror of that which crawled.
David got up with extraordinary dignity.
“Those are the things I told you in confidence,” he said.
“Well, and whom have I told?” demanded Margery.
“Besides, they’re all finished,” said David. “You shouldn’t bring them up against me.”
“I didn’t; I was only arguing.”
“Then let’s stop arguing,” said David. “Lord, it’s only just three. There’s that beastly cathedral clock striking. I suppose that’s Norman, too, isn’t it? What are we to do?”
Margery made a little sympathetic grimace at David.
“Oh, David, I do understand,” she said, “and I’m so sorry you’re bored. I know exactly what’s the matter with you.”
“Wish you’d tell me,” said David.
“You know, too, really. You’ve dropped one lot of things and haven’t got the next lot yet. Then there’s this. Do you remember that green snake you used to keep, and how, when it was changing its skin, it used to lie quite still, not eating or drinking, and seeming awfully depressed? I expect that sort of thing is happening to you. I shouldn’t a bit wonder if our minds changed their skins now and then, just like snakes.”
David was interested in this, but it was necessary, in his present humour, to be rather depreciatory.
“Girls do have such rum notions,” he said. “I can’t think where you get them from. But what then?”
“Just that. You have been a little boy up till now, although you were no end of a swell at Helmsworth, and you’re just beginning to see it. You know you would have been furious with me if I had told you, even only last holidays, that you were only a little boy. But you don’t mind now because you know it yourself. You’re changing your skin. What—oh, I forget that word of yours, the Marchester one.”
“Piffle?” suggested David.
“Yes. What piffle you would have thought the Keats Ode only a few months ago, and at that time you thought it grand and grown-up to smoke.”
David sat down again, thoroughly interested in his own metamorphosis.
“Yes, that’s rum,” he said.
“No, not really. It’s just growing up.”
“It sounds sort of philosophical,” said he.
Margery picked up two or three fallen mulberries, and put them into her mouth absently, one after the other.
“I dare say,” she said. “Oh, David, do be quick about changing your skin, and let me see the new one. And now let’s go and do something. I vote we go and look at that old bookstall by the Priory Gate. We might find a Keats among the cheap lots in the tray. You asked me to come and look for one this morning.”
She held out her hands to her brother, and he pulled her up.
“Right oh!” he said. “I say, Margery, you’re not a bad sort.”
And Margery was extremely content.
The garden where they had been sitting was one of peculiar charm, though to David it ranked rather high among the disadvantages of the place, for the lawn was not big enough to play any game into which hitting hard or kicking hard entered, and, as that was the paramount requirement demanded of pieces of grass, there was really very little to be said in favour of this garden. Balls always went into bushes or flower-beds; it was a very second-rate arena. The house itself, rambling and grey-stoned, lay between it and the road that circled round the close, and to north and south the garden on its longer sides was bounded by brick-walls which centuries of sun and wintry weather had mellowed to an inimitable softness of hue. Below the southern-facing wall a deep flower-bed, the grave of many balls, ran the whole length of the grass, which on the other side came up to the wall, flush as a carpet to a wainscotting. A few rose-beds sunned themselves below the low stone terrace that bordered the house, but the most distressing thing, from David’s standpoint, was that this kindly thick-leaved mulberry-tree, propped and strutted like a very old man taking the air, stood “bang” in the centre of the lawn, so that lawn-tennis was out of the question. Along the far end of the garden was a collection of sculptured stones (“Roman or something beastly,” was his verdict there) probably unearthed when the garden was first made. Here a gate in the middle of the third brick-wall led into the kitchen-garden, which, of course, from the orthodox athletic view of gardens, was also quite futile.
But to the unorthodox nothing could have been more charming. The brick-walls were starred with stone-crop and self-sown wallflower, and over the grey-tiled roof of the house rose the Norman tower of the cathedral, grave and gracious against the sky. The care of the flower-beds had lately been given into Margery’s hands, who had adopted radical measures against the dreadful rows of geraniums, calceolarias, and lobelias with which the gardener had been accustomed to make gay the long border, and she had gone back to happier jungle-methods. Sweet-peas stood in clumps like stooks of flowering corn, pansies and heliotrope and love-in-mist were lowlier citizens, and behind hollyhocks and sunflowers kept sentinel. And over all, pervasive and mellow as the August sunshine, brooded that atmosphere of studious serenity which belongs to such ancient homes of peace as cathedrals and monastic places. But, æsthetic as such an atmosphere is, it is not greatly appreciated by the young, nor indeed is there the smallest reason why it should be. Everybody and everything (such was David’s view) was old here, and for some inscrutable reason age was considered an advantage. An old Bishop lived in an old palace, and the venerableness of both appeared to the inhabitants of the close to be equally admirable. Elderly rooks (at least they talked in an elderly and boring way) cawed in immemorial elms. Roman remains were constantly being dug up, and put in the museum, or, if not worthy of that fate, carefully grouped, as here, into the form of an outrageous rockery. And now for seven weeks, since this year the Archdeacon was in residence in August and September, the monotony of six deadly week-days was only to be broken by the even deadlier monotony of Sunday.
Such was the pessimistic outlook over life that David took to-day, and, since pessimism was of uncommonly infrequent occurrence with him, it was more than possible that Margery’s reference of it to skin-changing was a correct one. This “sort of philosophical” explanation on her part had already done something towards restoring him to more normal levels, and the inspection of the boxes of books outside the window of the second-hand shop, with the events that followed, completed the process. For there, by the most apt dispensation of Providence, they found (Margery actually found it, and instantly passed it on to David) a rather battered and dog-eared copy of Keats. This was a triumphant affair, showing that good could come even out of Baxminster, and they hurried inside to complete the sixpenny purchase. Coming out again into the street, they saw outside a straw-hatted figure turning over the boxes they had just left, and suddenly David’s heart leaped, for he saw that the colours on it were those of Adams’s house. The moment after—wonder upon wonder!—he saw who it was.
Maddox turned round as they came out, and frowned for a second, wondering where he had seen David before. Then he remembered.
“Why—why, you’re Topknot’s pal, aren’t you?” he said.
Then he saw that David was with a girl.
“I beg your pardon,” he added quickly, raising the enviable hat.
David took his courage in his hands: probably it was awful cheek, but after all it was in the holidays, and they were not at school.
“Oh, this is my sister,” he said. “Margery, this is Mr. Maddox.”
Maddox shook hands, and turned to David again.
“Do tell me your name,” he said, “for the only piece of it I can remember is ‘David.’ You came down to try for a scholarship and stayed at Adams’s.”
It seemed wonderful to David that anybody so great should remember anything.
“Blaize,” he said.
“Of course. And so you and David live here, Miss Blaize, in this ripping town. I never saw such a jolly place. I could prowl about the close and the cathedral for weeks.”
“Yes, my pater’s Archdeacon,” said David.
“I wish mine was,” said Maddox. “But I’ve got some right here. I came down two days ago to stay with my uncle, who’s Bishop. I expect you know him, don’t you? He’s got one of those gorgeous houses in the close.”
David again made a stupendous call on his courage.
“I say, won’t you come to tea?” he blurted out, “if you like these houses in the close. We live in one, you know. Margy, do ask him.”
“David and I would like it awfully if you would come,” she said.
Maddox laughed, and he tilted his head back a little as he laughed, and on the moment that appeared to David the only possible way to laugh.
“Thank you, very much,” he said. “We should all three like it awfully then, so why shouldn’t we do it? But may I just look through this box? I love looking through old book-trays. You never know what you mayn’t find, though personally I never find anything but volumes of antique sermons printed by request of a few friends. Have you been buying something?”
“Yes, but only an old Keats,” said David, holding it out to him.
Maddox looked at the title-page, which was intact, and his eyes grew round.
“My goodness, you lucky beggar!” he said. “And you bought it just this minute?”
“Yes, why?”
“Only because it’s a book that a book-lover would give a lot for. Second edition of Keats, that’s all. O Lord, if I hadn’t sat down doing nothing after lunch, instead of coming here!”
“Oh, I say, please take it then,” said David. “I didn’t know anything about it. I just thought I would like a Keats. Any other one would be all the same to me.”
Maddox looked at him gravely a moment, and then began to smile.
“Thanks very much,” he said, “and I will then sell it you, if you like, for ten pounds.”
Then he laughed again.
“I’m a greedy brute,” he said, “but there are limits. Take it back quick, or it will grow on to my fingers. You are a lucky chap.”
“Ten pounds?” said David incredulously.
“I should think about that, but I don’t really know I’m not in the habit of buying second editions of Keats. Let’s look again a minute; I’ll try to give it you back. Yes, it’s quite complete.”
Suddenly David remembered that the find was not his but Margery’s.
“I bang forgot,” he said. “Margery, you found it. Congrats.”
For a moment his face grew troubled.
“And I offered it you, not remembering,” he said to Maddox. “I really did mean it. Do take it. Margery, you understand, don’t you?”
Maddox laid his hand on David’s shoulder and looked at him.
“It’s quite ripping of you, David,” he said (and at that moment David loved his Christian name), “but whether it’s your sister’s or yours, I couldn’t possibly. But thanks, most awfully.”
“But are you sure?” asked David.
He laughed.
“Why, of course I am. What do you take me for? Oh, I can’t bother about these beastly books, now I know what’s come out of that tray. Shall we go, then?”
But on the way the question of the rightful possessor of this treasure had to be laid before him. Margery’s contention was that David had suggested going to see if they could find a Keats, and that she had merely accompanied him, and therefore the book was his. David, on the other hand, had contended that she had found it, and you couldn’t get over that. They both referred the decision to Maddox with his seventeen years’ experience of the world.
“Depends on what you are going to do with it,” he said. “If you mean to sell it, I really think I should divide the proceeds. If not—well, I should have a box made for it, with two keys, one for each of you. Anyhow, I shouldn’t suggest the Solomon-trick, and cut it in half!”
The immenseness of all this momentarily obscured the honour and glory of taking Maddox home to tea, and the fate of the Keats was warmly debated. David was rather inclined to sell it, and revel in gold, but Margery hinted that if they were each possessed of five pounds, it certainly would not be they who revelled in gold, but the savings-bank. Before the question was settled they had got back to the close, and David pointed out his father’s house, a little way ahead of them.
Maddox clicked his teeth with his tongue, in a show of impatience.
“This is rather too much,” he said. “You find a second edition of Keats, and bring it home to the most beautiful house in Baxminster. I call it rotten. May I see all over it before tea, and the garden?”
David felt he must apologise for the garden. “Oh, the garden’s an awful hole,” he said, “though Margery doesn’t think so. There’s no room for anything, as you’ll see.”
So the Fairy Prince was led in and taken all over the house, and as they went merits and glories undreamed of dawned on David. What had been dark, ugly wood turned out to be A1 Jacobean panelling, and a frowsy old picture of David’s great-grandmother in a mob-cap was pronounced the most ripping Romney, who in his line appeared to be up to the high standard already set by Keats. And, most astounding of all, was Maddox’s verdict on the attics, which David had abandoned as a proper playground for anybody who was going to Marchester in September. But the Fairy Prince thought otherwise.
“What awful fun you could have playing horrible games like hide and seek up here,” he said. “I hope you do. Lord, what’s that groan? Oh, a cistern, is it? I thought it must be a ghost. How ripping!”
David instantly dismissed his resolution of not playing games here any more.
“Oh, there’s a worse room yet,” he said. “Do come and look at it. There’s a box like a coffin in it. Margery and I used to play gorgeous games up here, dressing up and frightening each other, you know. Wasn’t it fun, Margery?”
Margery was the soul of loyalty. She would no more have reminded David that only to-day he had come to the conclusion that these games were silly than she would have had him led out to instant execution.
“Yes, when it begins to get dark it’s awful up here,” she said. “You can’t see anything distinctly, and the cistern suddenly groans, and you can’t tell what’s coming next!”
Maddox, in spite of his seventeen years and Olympian elevation, did not seem to be unbending. David, in fact, if his utterances this afternoon were to be taken literally, had to unbend to him.
“I love being frightened,” said Maddox. “You ought to read ghost stories to each other here, and the one who reads may make any sort of noise he chooses at any moment. Just when the ghost is going to appear, you know. Lord, I hope I shall never get beyond that sort of thing!”
He, Margery, and David were standing in a row opposite the coffin-shaped box. Just then the cistern in the room behind gave one of its best goblin-groans, and Maddox looked awfully round.
“Oh, what’s that?” he said. “That’s not the cistern. That’s a man bleeding to death in there, that is. His throat’s cut from ear to ear.”
“No,” said David. “I’m sure it was the cistern.”
“Are you? It may have been the cistern before, but I don’t believe it was that time. Pity it’s not a little darker. There’s too much light really just now.”
Already to David the attic bristled again with entrancing possibilities, under this stimulus. It was queer that any one of Maddox’s age and attainments should see sport in what a few hours ago had seemed childish and savourless to himself, but since this was so, it was clear there must be something in it. But school-boy hero-worship made him see through his hero’s eyes, and all that Maddox did or said was invested with authority. True, he had seen him perhaps half a dozen times altogether, but that was quite sufficient to make this matchless glamour. In all the world there was no one so instinct with romance and glory as this boy three years his senior who realised for him all he wanted to be.
Of course they went downstairs again on the pronouncement that it was not dark enough.
“I’m afraid you’ll think the garden is rot,” said David. “There’s a beastly mulberry-tree bang in the middle of the lawn. But it’s not so bad to have tea in: Margery, can’t we have tea out there?”
So the Fairy Prince was escorted downstairs and out into the garden, to give his verdict on that despised spot, and looked round with those quick movements of his eye from side to side without turning his head, which again seemed now the only possible way of looking at things.
“But what on earthisgood enough for you, David?” he said. “You can’t read Keats except out of a second edition, and you told me the attics were rather fun once, and you say the garden is rotten! Look at those brick walls, look at the house, look at the mulberry-tree! Oh, I say, what are those stones in the corner? Isn’t that a Roman altar?”
“Yes, I believe so,” said David. “Do you care about those things?”
Maddox and he walked down to the collection of old stones which had appeared to David the dullest of the antique things of Baxminster. Some of the lettering on one of these was still distinguishable.
“Yes, ‘Optimo Maximo,’ ” said Maddox. “I expect that gap is ‘Jovi.’ Then, lower down, do you see, ‘P. Aelius’: that must be the chap who dedicated it. Funny that it should stand here now for you and me to read, while the cathedral tower squints at us over the attics where the ghosts live.”
Maddox had seated himself cross-legged on the grass to examine the altar, and David leaned over him following the letters as he traced them with his smooth brown finger. And at once the subject even of Roman altars leaped into interest. Maddox shaded the lowest line of the inscription with his hand to catch the shape of the weather-worn letters.
“Can’t read any more,” he said. “But anyhow one day, long before the cathedral was built, Publius Aelius set that up, because the gods had been good to him. What a lot of jolly things there are! And some fellows go mooning along never looking at anything.”
“I’m afraid you mean me,” suggested David modestly.
Maddox looked up at him over his shoulder.
“Well, I don’t,” he said. “And there’s a bit of an arch. Perhaps that came from the temple where P. Aelius put his altar.”
Maddox asked for (and was given) another look at the Keats before he left, and proposed to David that he should walk with him as far as the old palace.
“Best afternoon I’ve spent for ages,” said the Idol, as they parted. “I wish I wasn’t going away to-morrow, or I should ask to be allowed to come again. Anyhow, we meet at Adams’s in September.”
A haunting doubt had been present in David’s mind at intervals all that heavenly afternoon. Now it had to find expression.
“I say, I hope it hasn’t been awful cheek of me to have asked you to have tea, and all that?” he said.
“I can stand lots of that sort of cheek,” said the other.