THE COMPLETE DAVID BLAIZE TRILOGY (Illustrated Edition). Эдвард Бенсон

You’re changing your skin. What—oh, I forget that word of yours, the Marchester one.”

      “Piffle?” suggested David.

      “Yes. What piffle 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, æsthetic 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 prowl 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.”

      “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,