Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  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 we were frightened: 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 you used to 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 th
at 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 pifflle 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, aesthetic 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 prow
l 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.”