The Happy Warrior Part 15

Percival turned about. They had reached the boundary of the Manor grounds and he pointed through the trees. "Is that where you live, Mr.

Amber?"

"Yes, I live in there. Look here, now, here's a nice thing! You're growing up nearly as big as me and you've never been to see me. That's not friendly, you know."

"Oh, but I've wanted to, you know," Percival cried. "We don't often come this way, you see, do we, Aunt Maggie?"

He bounded across the road to squint through the wooden paling that surrounds the Manor park, and Mr. Amber gave a little sigh and turned to Aunt Maggie.

"How Percival grows, Miss Oxford! And what a picture, what a picture!

You know, he recalls to me walking these lanes twenty years ago, with just his counterpart in looks and spirits and charm--ah, well! dear me, dear me!" And he began to mumble to himself in the fas.h.i.+on of old people whose thoughts run more easily in the past than in the present, and to walk around poking with his stick in a fas.h.i.+on that was his own.

He referred to Roly, Aunt Maggie knew. "You never forget him, do you?"

she said gently. She also was devoted to a memory. "You never forget him?"

"No--no," said Mr. Amber, poking around and not looking at her.

"Certainly not--certainly not."

Percival's voice broke in upon them, announcing his observations through the fence. "I say, you've got a lovely garden to play in, you know," he called.

They turned from thoughts that had a common element to the bright young spirit in whom those thoughts found a not dissimilar relief.

"Well, it's not exactly my garden," Mr. Amber replied in his deliberate way. "I live there just like Honor lives with you. She looks after the cooking and I look after the books, eh? Would you like to see my books?"

"Picture books?"

"Why, yes, some have got pictures. Yes, there are pictures in some.

And fine big rooms, Percival. You would like to see them."

Percival turned an excited face to Aunt Maggie, and Aunt Maggie smiled.

He took Mr. Amber's hand. "Thank you very much indeed," he said. "I tell you what, then. I will see your books and then I think you will let me play in your garden, please, if you please?"

Mr. Amber declared that this was a very fair bargain. "Come in and have some tea, Miss Oxford. Mrs. Ferris will be glad to see you. She finds housekeeping very dull work, I am afraid, with only me to look after."

Aunt Maggie did not reply immediately. Percival looked at her anxiously. He observed signs of "thinking," and thinking might be fatal to this most engaging proposition. "If you possibly could, Aunt Maggie!" he pleaded.

But it was Mr. Amber's further argument that persuaded her. His words acutely entered the matter with which she was occupied. "You know, Percival must be the only soul in the countryside that hasn't seen the Manor," he urged. "It was the regular custom for any one who liked to come up in the old days. You recollect the Tenant Teas in the summer?

Why, it's his right, I declare."

A little colour showed on her cheeks. "Yes, it is his right," she said.

III

Percival was to enjoy another right before the day was out. The decision to accept Mr. Amber's invitation once made, he had whooped ahead through the Manor gates and flashed up the long drive at play with a game of his own among the flanking trees. A n.o.ble turn in the avenue brought him within astonished gaze of the house, and, very flushed in the cheeks, he came racing back to his elders.

"I say, it's a perfectly 'normous house you live in, Mr. Amber."

"Aha!" cries old Mr. Amber, highly pleased. "I knew you would like it, Master Percival!"

"Why, I call it a _castle!_" Percival declares.

They turn the corner and Mr. Amber points with his stick. "Well, you're not quite wrong, either. That part--the East Wing we call that--you see how old that is? Almost a castle once, that. See those funny little marks? Used to be holes there to fire guns through. What do you think of that?"

Percival's face proclaims what he thinks--and his voice, deep with awe, says, "Fire them bang?"

"Bang? I should think so, indeed!"

"Who at?"

"Aha! Strange little boys, perhaps. I'll tell you all about it, if you'll come and see me sometimes."

Percival announces that he will come every single day, and runs eagerly up the five broad steps that lead to the great oak door, now standing ajar, and halts wonderingly upon the threshold to gaze around the s.p.a.cious hall and up at the gallery that encircles it.

Aunt Maggie stops so abruptly and gives so strange a catch at her breath that Mr. Amber turns to look at her. Following her eyes, and reading what he fancies in them, "Why, he does make a brave little picture, standing there, doesn't he?" Mr. Amber says.

Her faint smile seems to a.s.sent. But she sees the child, framed in the fine doorway, as his father's son surveying for the first time the domain that is his own.

They join him on the threshold and he turns to them round-eyed. "Why, it's simply 'normous!" he declares. "Aunt Maggie, come and look with me. It's simply 'normous."

"Told you so!" cries Mr. Amber, vastly delighted. "Fine big rooms, I said, didn't I, now?"

"'Normous!" Percival breathes. "Per-f.e.c.k-ly 'normous to me, you know;"

and after a huge sigh of wonder, pointing to the gallery, "What's that funny little bridge up there for?"

"Bridge!" says Mr. Amber almost indignantly. "Gallery, we call that.

Goes right around the hall, see? Except this end. Bridge! Bless my soul, bridge!" For the moment he is really almost put out at this slight done to a celebrated feature of the Manor, his concern betraying the profound devotion to the house, the sense of his own incorporation with it, that always characterises him when beneath its roof. That devotion and that sense have deepened greatly during these years in which the new Burdons have neglected the Manor and he, living in the past, has grown to feel himself the custodian of the memories as he is the author of the "Lives" of the house of Burdon. He has a trick, indeed, as Percival comes to know, of speaking of "we" when he talks of himself in connection with the Manor. He uses it now. "We are very proud of that gallery, I can tell you. Do you know we've had--well, well, never mind about that now. Come along, I'll take you all over and up there, too. Come along, Miss Oxford. We'll find Mrs. Ferris first."

Mr. Amber takes Percival's hand and starts up the hall; and then pulls him up short again, but with an exaggerated concern this time. "But here, I say, young man, what's this? Cap on! Good gracious, you can't wear your cap here, you know!"

Percival goes almost as red as the jolly red fisher cap he wears, and pulls it off, much abashed. He explains his breach of manners. "I always do take it off in a house. But this doesn't feel like a house to me, you know; it's simply 'normous!"

"Ah, but that's a strict rule of ours here. No one but a Burdon may be capped in the hall; a tradition we call it. There was a--a wicked man came here hundreds of years ago and kept on his hat and they didn't see his face properly and thought he was a good man; and the Lord Burdon that was then came to speak to him, and the wicked man took out his dagger and killed Lord Burdon. What do you think of that?"

Percival seeks the proper touch. He asks: "With blug?"

"Blug--blood!" Mr. Amber exclaims testily, a trifle injured that his legends adapted to the use of children should lack conviction. "Why, bless my soul, of course there was blug--blood. Blug--dear me--blood!"

and he puts so fierce an eye round where they stand, as if expecting a stain to ooze through the floor and corroborate him, that Percival draws back in haste lest he should be standing in the pool.

That makes Mr. Amber laugh and he pats Percival's golden head and concludes. "So ever since then, you see, we never let any but a Burdon wear his hat in the hall here. It would be a sign of coming disaster to the house, the tradition says."

He turns to Aunt Maggie. "My lady was very particular about it," he says. "She made a great point of observing all the traditions."

Jane Lady Burdon, though she has been dead these four years, is always "my lady" to Mr. Amber, as Roly remains to him "my lord" or "my young lord." Aunt Maggie, standing a little aside, looking at Percival, replies in her quiet voice: "I know--I remember. They are not so foolish--traditions--as some people think, Mr. Amber."

He nods his head in very weighty agreement, then turns again to Percival who, gazing round, discovers a new amazement. "But _two_ fireplaces!" Percival cries.

"Big as a small room, too, aren't they?" says Mr. Amber, important and gratified again. "Now, look at that! There's another story for you!"

He leads Percival to one vast hearth, high over which the Burdon arms are carved in oak. "See those letters around there? That's our motto.

That's the Burdon motto: 'I hold!' That was the message a Burdon sent to the king's troops when Cromwell's men--another wicked man, Cromwell--were trying to get in. 'I hold!' he told his messenger to say--just that, 'I hold!' and afterwards, when Cromwell was dead and another king came back, the king changed the Burdon motto to that. 'I hold!' Fine? Eh?"