Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “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 Bomney, 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 down-stairs 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 earth is
good 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.

  CHAPTER VIII

  IT was the afternoon of such a November day as the pessimistic call typical: a cold, south-westerly gale drove streaming flocks of huddled cloud across the sky, like some fierce and boisterous shepherd, and the whole of the great court at Marchester stood ankle-deep in gravelly pools of wind-flecked, rain-beaten water. The gale had stripped bare of their few remaining leaves the avenue of lime-trees which ran between the gate and the in-boarders’ house at the far end of the court, and to-day they stood, stark pyramids of dripping branches and twigs, that whistled as the wind hissed through them. Though the day was Saturday, and in consequence a half-holiday, there were but few signs of outdoor animation, for the conditions of the weather were sufficiently diabolical to tinge with some touch of respect the contempt in which healthy boys hold the vagaries of climate. One occasionally, with collar turned up, fled splashing across the court from one house to another, or now and then a small company of drenched enthusiasts would trot in, in dripping shorts and sweaters, from their training run along the London Road, or a couple of figures, with racquets protected under their coats, would dash across from the racquet-court. But football had been officially announced to be “off,” since the field was neither more nor less than a morass, and without doubt the most comfortable conditions of life were to-day to be obtained in front of a fire with a novel to read, or, under stress of necessity, arrears of work to be overhauled and demolished.

  There was, however, in one of the open five-courts near the porter’s lodge a notable exception to this indoor tendency. There two boys, capless and streaming with water, were absorbingly engaged in playing squash, a most apt occupation, since they and the earth and the sky generally seemed to be in a condition of squash. Even in the drier parts of the court the ball, as it bounced, sent up a squirt of water; at other times it pitched in more definite puddles, and so did not bounce at all. But the two, David and Bags, were quite undeterred by such small drawbacks, and David talked without the least intermission.

  “Six all,” he said; “and, as I gave you six, I’ve caught you up before you’ve scored. Have some more points, won’t you? Very well, if you’re proud, you needn’t, but if I played squash at all like you, I should be damned humble. O Bags, you ass, I don’t believe you’ll ever be the slightest good. Why can’t you hit the ball with the middle of your racquet for a change? There, look at that: exactly one-eighth of an inch above the line. I like them like that. Seven, six. Oh, good shot, jolly well got up, but observe! You can’t get that, so what’s the use of throwing yourself against the wall? Eight, six... oh, damn! Puts you in: six, eight.... I’ll give you two hands if you like. Oh, you’ll take that, will you?... one hand out then... Oh, do get on: run, can’t you? it’s raining. There; suck it! You expected it the other side of the court, and that’s exactly why I didn’t send it there. Puts me in.... I’ll play you for sixpence if you like, next game, and give you eight and two hands.... No? Prudent fellow. I wish the rain wouldn’t get into my eyes, though it’s sweat as well, I expect. Lord, I am hot! Isn’t it ripping?”

  David paused a moment both from talk and athletics, a truce gladly accepted by the panting Bags, and pushed his dripping hair out of his eyes. He was a completely dishevelled and yet a very jolly object, and was quite altogether wet, his knickerbockers clinging like tights to his thighs, the skin of which showed pink through them, while the water trickled steadily down his bare calves into the dejected socks that lay limply round the tops of his shoes. They and his legs were stained with splashes of watery gravel, his shirt, open at the neck and slightly torn across the shoulder, lay like a wet bag glued to his back, and his hair was a mere yellow plaster from which the water could have been wrung in pints. Bags was in similar plight, except that he wore a thick woollen jersey over his shirt, which gave him a slightly less drowned aspect.

  The game, and with it David’s running comments, were resumed after a minute or two, and neither of the two saw a figure with trousers much turned up and a large golfing umbrella who had paused on his way to the gate, just behind them.

  “Yes, I’m going of play racquets for the school some time next century,” David was saying, “and squash is jolly good practice. Nine, six: that’s rather a sell, Bags! Oh, I say, look at that for a half-volley. Just a shade Maddoxy, I don’t think.”

  The half-volley in question, that clung close to the left wall of the court, finished the rally, and David turned to run to pick it up, and found that Maddox was the spectator.

  “David, you juggins, why haven’t you got a sweater on?” asked he.

  “Hullo!” said David. “Oh, because I couldn’t find mine. Some brute’s collared it, I suppose.”

  “Well, by rights you ought to get pneumonia, and be prayed for in chapel, and die in spite of it.”

  David pushed back his hair again and laughed.

  “Thanks awfully, but otherwise engaged,” he said.

  “Are you going up to house after you’ve finished being drowned?” asked Maddox.

  “No, I was going to have tea with a fellow in college,” said David. “But I’m rather wet, I’m afraid.”

  “You’ll go up to house and change first, do you see?” said Maddox. “And you might bring up a parcel there will be for me at the lodge. Hasn’t come yet, but it’ll come any minute.”

  “Right,” said David.

  The game was resumed, but Maddox still lingered. Both boys played with redoubled keenness before so honourable a spectator, but David’s artless and incessant conversation was felt by him to be unsuitable. Maddox watched in silence for a minute.

  “No, let the b
all drop more,” he said, Bags having made an egregiously futile return. “Don’t take an easy ball like that till it’s quite low. David, you play with your whole arm like a windmill, whereas you only want your wrist. Just keep flicking it: look here.”

  Maddox gave David the large umbrella to hold and, taking his racquet, knocked up down the left-hand wall of the court, sending each ball parallel and close to it, with easy accuracy. “Like that more or less,” he said. “Now I’m wet, blast you both.”

  He took his umbrella again, reminded David of the parcel, and splashed off across the quadrangle.

  Familiarity and closer acquaintance had not in the least made David get over the glory and wonder of Maddox.

  “By gad,” he said, “fancy his taking the trouble to coach two scugs like you and me. Isn’t he a ripper? Come on, let’s have one more game.”

  “Oh, I vote we stop, “ said Bags. “It’s too wet for anything.”

  “Rot! We can’t possibly get wetter than we are.”

  David, of course, had his way, and it was not till twenty minutes later that they trotted off down the Bath Road, on their way to Adams’s, David going by preference through the larger puddles. Bags’s mind, and no doubt David’s also, still ran upon Maddox.

  “Does he always call you David?” he asked at length.

  “Lord, yes, when we’re alone,” said David, “and I suppose he thought you didn’t count. I remember how sick I was when my father called me ‘David’ at Helmsworth. Sort of disgrace to have your Christian name known. What beastly little scugs we were, with smoking and keeping stag-beetles!”

  “I never did either,” said Bags, in a rather superior manner.

  David jumped with both feet in a particularly large puddle, and covered Bags with splashed water.

  “I know you didn’t,” he said. “You were such a scug, you see, that you didn’t do those things when it was scuggish not to. But now, when it’s scuggish to do them, I believe you do. I bet you smoke. You and Plugs went out smoking yesterday after hall.”