The Happy Warrior Part 25

It's an improvement."

"Keeps them stiffer," says Percival, head on one side, rather proud.

"Just exactly what it does! Keeps them stiffer. Lessens the strain.

We ought to have thought of that, Percival. We reproach ourselves there, you know."

There is a tinge of the self-reproach in his voice, and Percival hastens with: "Of course you would have done it yourself, as you said, but you get into your ways, don't you?"

"Well, we do," agrees Mr. Amber, very comforted. "That's just what it is--we get into our ways."

At other times when Percival comes to the library, there is no answer to his knock on the door. He turns the handle very gently; pokes in his head very quietly; peers all about the apartment; cannot see Mr.

Amber; enters very cautiously; and presently espies him perched high aloft on one of the wheeled book-ladders, sitting cross-legged, catalogue on knee, pencil in hand, brow puckered in mental labour.

Then Percival closes the door behind him, so that there shall be scarcely the faintest click, and gives a tiny cough and says: "Very busy, Mr. Amber?"

"'M-'m," says Mr. Amber, wagging his head, waving the pencil and frowning horribly. "'M-'m!"

Percival tiptoes with enormous caution to the other ladder; wheels it to a shelf where he has found entertainment; selects his book; perches himself; and for an hour or more the two, each on his ladder, the child and the man, the lissom young form and the withered old figure, sit high among the books, entranced among the worlds that books discover.

"'M-'m!" says Mr. Amber at intervals, frantically waving.

"Only coughed," explains Percival. "Only that choking, you know. It--"

"'M-'m! 'M-'m!" and they bury themselves again.

That is the usual course. Once or twice there have been conversations across the room from the tops of the ladders. Percival has looked up from his book to find Mr. Amber turned towards him and regarding him with eyes that do not appear to see his smile of greeting. "Mr. Amber, is there anything funny about me that you look at me so?"

Mr. Amber will start as though he had been dreaming. "Funny? Eh?

Why, no, Percival; nothing funny at all."

"If it is my boots, they are quite clean. I gave them twelve wipes each, like you told me."

"It's not your boots."

Silence between them.

"Funny us two sitting up here like this, like two mountains in the sea.

Rather jolly, isn't it?"

"It recalls to me," says Mr. Amber, "another little boy who used to sit up there just as you sit.... In this dim light ... there are ways you have, Percival..."

Silence again. Twilight gathering in the corners of the vast room. A moth softly thudding the window-pane. There is something in the atmosphere that seems to hold Percival. At "Post Offic" he likes the lamps to be lit when dusk draws down; here there is a feeling of gentleness about him, with curious half-thoughts and with half-familiar gropings and stretchings of the shadows. "Thinking without thinking, as if I was in some one else who was thinking," he has described it to Aunt Maggie.

"Your voice, too," says Mr. Amber suddenly.

Percival knows what is in Mr. Amber's mind. "Thinking of your young lords.h.i.+p, aren't you, Mr. Amber?"

"He used to sit there," Mr. Amber replies. "In this dim light ...

seeing you there..."

Silence again. Twilight wreathing from the corners across the ceiling; shadows grouping and moving in new fantasies; soft thuddings of the moth as though a shadow beat to enter.

Percival stretches a hand, and against the window's light perceives a shadow he has watched drift caressingly about his fingers.

Mr. Amber, little above a whisper, peering through the gloom: "Why do you stretch your hand so, my lord?"

"I'm touching a shadow that's come right up to me;" and then Percival realises the last words, and laughs and says: "You called me 'my lord!'--you did really, Mr. Amber!"

"G.o.d bless me!" says Mr. Amber, shaking himself--"G.o.d bless me, we are getting the shadows in our brains. Come down and watch me light the lamps."

V

Happy, happy time! Best of all when the family is at the Old Manor and when the friends.h.i.+p with Rollo can be taken up where it was left, to be deepened and to be discovered more than ever fruitful of delights. The boys are older now. Childish games are done with; very serious talks (so they believe) take the place of the chatter and the "pretending" of earlier days: they discuss affairs, mostly arising from adventures in the books they read; there has been a general election, and they agree that the Liberals are awful rotters; there has been one of the little wars, and they kindle together to the glory of British arms and wish they might be Young Buglers and be thanked by the general before the whole regiment like the heroes of Mr. Henty's books.

Percival calls the tune, starts the discussions, constructs the adventures. Rollo follows the lead, leaning on the quicker mind just as he relies on the stronger arm and the speedier foot when they are on their rambles together. It is Rollo who throws the acorn that hits the stout farm boy driving a milk cart beneath them, as they perch in a tree. It is Percival who scrambles down responsive to the insults of the enraged boy, and takes a most fearful battering that the stout boy's stout arms are able to inflict.

"I ought to have fought him," Rollo says half-tearfully, with shamed and shuddering glances at the b.l.o.o.d.y handkerchief held to the suffering nose, the lumped forehead and the blackened eye. "He said the one that hit him. It was my shot."

Percival, in terrible fury, m.u.f.fled from behind the handkerchief: "How could you fight him? Dash those great clodhopping arms of his! A mile long! I'll have another go at him, I swear I will."

It is Rollo who cries: "Percival, it will kill us!" when the ram they have annoyed comes with a fourth shattering crash against the boards of the pigsty to which they have fled for safety. It is Percival who cries: "Run, when he sees us!" whips over the palisade, springs across the field, and takes the tail-end of an appalling batter as he hurls himself through the far gate.

"How ever could you dare?" Rollo asks, joining him in the road. "Has he hurt you frightfully?"

"How could you have escaped?" says Percival, limping. "He'd have got you in that sty. I knew I could beat him. Dash the brute, it stings!

There's the kind of stick I want! I'll teach him manners!"

It is Rollo who gives an appealing look at Percival when Lord Burdon starts them in a race for sixpence. It is Percival who whispers as they run: "We'll make it a dead heat."

"It was awfully decent of you, Percival," Rollo exclaims, as they go to spend the prize at Mrs. Minnifie's sweet shop.

"Oh, it's rotten beating one another when people are looking on,"

Percival replies. "I vote for lemonade as well, don't you?"

It is the spirit between them that had its first evidence on the day when the visit was made to Mr. Hannaford to purchase the little black 'orse. Then Rollo hung back while Percival jumped to ride; then Percival brought him forward, encouraging him, to taste the fun. So now, as the years sunder their natures more sharply, and as affection more strongly bridges the gulf, the more sharply does the one lead, the other follow; the more naturally does the one support, the other rely.

Everybody notices it: Aunt Maggie, who only smiles; Lady Burdon, who says: "Rollo, Percival's a regular little father to you, it seems to me. Don't let him rule you, you know. Remember what you are, Rollo mine." Even Egbert Hunt notices it. Mr. Hunt is still attached to Rollo's person. Sick yedaches trouble him less frequently; but his hatred of tyrangs has deepened with the increasing tenure of his servitude. He spends less of his wages on vegules; much of it on socialistic literature of an inflammatory nature; but he never forgets the sympathy of Percival in the vegule days, and he is strongly joined with all those who, meeting the boy, have a note stirred by his sunny nature.

"Always does me good to see you," Mr. Hunt says one day. "Something about you. He'll never be a slave who works for you."

"Well, who's going to work for me?" Percival inquires.

"The point!" says Mr. Hunt with impressive gloom. "The very point."

He fumbles in his pocket and produces thumbed papers, just as he fumbled and produced vegules at an earlier day. "It's in the lowlier"--he consults a paper--"in the lowlier strata that you find the men a man can follow, but the men that can't lead owing to the heel of the tyrang. It's the Bloodsuckers we got to serve." He indicates the paper: "Bloodsuckers, they call 'em here."

"Silly rot," says Percival.

"Ah, you're young," Mr. Hunt returns. "You're young. You'll learn different when they begin to sap your blood for you. You're a higher strata than me, Master Percival. Benificent influence of education, you've had. But you're under the Bloodsuckers. Squeeze you out like an orindge, they will, and throw yer away. Me one day, you another."