The Happy Warrior Part 16

"I hold!" breathes Percival, mightily impressed.

"Why, I tell you--I tell you," cries Mr. Amber, "there's a story in every inch of this house. Better stories than all your picture books.

I'll just tell Mrs. Ferris about tea and then we'll go round. I know all the stories; no one knows them like I do." And he toddles off to Mrs. Ferris, absorbed in his lore and congratulating himself upon it, and Aunt Maggie and Percival are left alone.

It is then that Percival enjoys his second right of that day.

Aunt Maggie calls him to her. "Put on your cap again a minute, Percival--just for a minute."

"Oh, but I mustn't, Aunt Maggie."

She takes the cap from his hand and holds it above his cl.u.s.tering curls.

He protests. "Mr. Amber said so, you know."

"What did he say, dear?"

"Only Burdons, Aunt Maggie."

She placed the cap on his head and took his face between her hands and kissed him. She looked up, and all about the hall, and high to where, around the gallery, portraits of bygone Burdons looked steadily down upon her; and her lips moved as if she spoke some message that she signalled with her eyes.

"Whoever are you talking to, Aunt Maggie?"

She put her hands on his shoulders as he stood st.u.r.dily there, the jolly red fisher cap on the back of his head, a puzzled expression in his face, and she held him a pace from her. "Say the motto, Percival, dear--the Burdon motto. Do you remember it? Say it while you have your cap on--out loud!"

"Is it a game, Aunt Maggie?"

"Say it quickly, dear--out loud!"

"I hold!" says Percival, clear and sharp.

In the gallery behind him there was a sound of movement. He turned quickly and saw a man's figure step hastily away.

"Some one was watching us, Aunt Maggie."

But Aunt Maggie was gone into her "thinking."

IV

There followed for Percival the most delightful two hours. There was first a prodigal tea in the housekeeper's room, where motherly Mrs.

Ferris set him to work on scones and cream and strawberry jam, and where, as the meal progressed, he gladly gave himself over to Mr.

Amber's entrancing stories of Burdon lore, while Aunt Maggie and Mrs.

Ferris gossiped together.

Mrs. Ferris confirmed the arrival of servants in advance of Lord and Lady Burdon and gave some details of the visit. Her ladyship had written to say they expected to stay about a month. They came for the purpose of seeing if the fine air, for a holiday of that length, would pick up Rollo. "An ailing child," said Mrs. Ferris. "Just the opposite of that young gentleman, from all accounts," and she nodded towards the young gentleman, who beamed back at her as cheerfully as a prodigiously distended mouth would permit. "A lazy-looking lot," Mrs.

Ferris thought the servants were, and ought to have come earlier, too, for there was work to be done getting the house ready, Miss Oxford might take her word for it--all the furniture and the pictures in dusting sheets--made her quite creepylike to look into the rooms sometimes. Not right, she thought it, to neglect the Manor like these were doing. She knew her place, mind you, but she meant to have a word with her ladyship before her ladyship went off again.

But the rooms had no creeps for Percival when at last the tea was done, the jam wiped off, and the promised tour of inspection started. He put a sticky hand confidingly into Mr. Amber's palm and breathed "'Normous!

Simply 'normous to me, you know," as each apartment was discovered to him; and stood absorbed, the most gratifying of listeners, while Mr.

Amber, comfortably astride his hobby, poured forth the stories and the legends that had gone into his cherished "Lives" and that he had by heart and could tell with an air which called up the actors out of their frames and out of the very walls to play their parts before the child. Yet once or twice he stopped in the midst of a recital and stood frowning as though something puzzled him, and once for so long that Percival asked: "Are you thinking of something else, Mr. Amber?"

"Eh?" said Mr. Amber. "Thinking? I'm afraid I was. Let me see, where was I?" But he turned away, leaving the story unfinished; and as they walked from the room Percival said politely: "I don't mind if you were, you know. I only asked. Aunt Maggie does it and I just run away and play."

Mr. Amber pressed his old fingers closer about the young hand they held. "Don't run away when I do it," he said. "Just wake me up. It keeps coming over me that I've done all this before--held a little boy's hand and told him all this just like I hold yours and tell you.

Well, that's a very funny feeling, you know."

"'Strordinary!" Percival agreed in his interested way; and Mr. Amber was caused to laugh and to forget the stirring in his mind of recollections buried there twenty years down. Twenty years is deep water. It was to be more disturbed, causing much frowning, much "funny feeling," before ever it should clear and show the old librarian, looking into the pool of his own mind over Percival's shoulder, Percival's reflection cast up from the depths.

The tour finished in the library. "Now this is the library!" announced Mr. Amber at the threshold, much as St. Peter, coming with a new spirit to the last gate, might say: "Now this is Paradise."

"Now this is the library. This is my room. Now, we'll just wipe our feet once again--sideways, too--that's right. And I think our fingers are still a little sticky, eh? that's better--_there_!"

"'Normous!" breathed Percival. "Simply 'normous, to me, you know."

No dust sheets here, everything mellow with the deep sheen of age carefully attended. Tier upon tier of books, every hue of binding--dark red to brown, brown to deep blue, deep blue to white--and all, however worn, however aged, exquisitely responsive to Mr. Amber's soft chamois leather.

Mr. Amber waved a proud hand at them. "I expect you'll live a long time before you see another collection like this, Master Percival. And I know every one of them--every single one just like you know your toys. In the pitch dark--in the pitch dark, mind you--I could put my hand on any one I wanted without touching another. What do you think of that, eh?"

Percival has no better thought for it than the old one.

"'Normous!" he declares. "Simply 'normous to me, you know, Mr. Amber!"

"And the care I take of them!" Mr. Amber continues, as pleased with his audience as if Percival were the librarians of the House of Lords, the Bodleian and the British Museum rolled into one. "You wouldn't find enough dust on those books, _anywhere_, to cover the head of a pin!"

He points to the highest and furthest shelves: "You'd think there might be dust right up there, wouldn't you? Well, you just choose one of those books--any one, anywhere you like."

"To keep for my own?"

"Keep! Bless my soul, no! Keep! Dear me! dear me! No, just point to a book."

"That one!" says Percival, stretching an arm. "That one in the corner!"

Mr. Amber accepts the challenge with a triumphant rubbing together of his hands. "That brown one, eh? Very well. That's a rare volume--Black Letter--Latimer's 'Fruitfull Sermons'--London, 1584.

Now, you see." He trots excitedly to a high, wheeled ladder, runs it beneath the "Fruitfull Sermons," climbs up shakily, fetches down the volume and presents it for Percival's inspection: "There! Run your finger over the top of it; that's where dust collects. Ah, not that finger; got a cleaner one? That'll do. Now!"

It is getting dusk in the library, so Mr. Amber clutches the small finger that has rubbed over the "Fruitfull Sermons," and they go to a deep window where young head and old peer anxiously at the pink skin.

"Not a speck!" Mr. Amber cries triumphantly. "Not a speck of dust!

What did I tell you?"

And Percival, holding the finger carefully apart from its fellows: "'Strordinary! Simply 'strordinary to me, you know!"

Mr. Amber climbs laboriously up the steps again, and seats himself at the top, and starts dusting all around the "Fruitfull Sermons," and completely forgets Percival, who wanders about for a little and then, hearing a sound, goes to the door.

V

Here was the white-faced youth, our Egbert Hunt, who had grimaced at him from the box of the wagonette. The white-faced youth stood on the further side of the pa.s.sage, paused beneath a window by whose light he seemed to be examining a small phial held in his hand.