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

smile.

      “Thanks very much,” he said, “and I will then sell it you, if you like, for ten pounds.”

      Then he laughed again.

      “I’m a greedy brute,” he said, “but there are limits. Take it back quick, or it will grow on to my fingers. You are a lucky chap.”

      “Ten pounds?” said David incredulously.

      “I should think about that, but I don’t really know I’m not in the habit of buying second editions of Keats. Let’s look again a minute; I’ll try to give it you back. Yes, it’s quite complete.”

      Suddenly David remembered that the find was not his but Margery’s.

      “I bang forgot,” he said. “Margery, you found it. Congrats.”

      For a moment his face grew troubled.

      “And I offered it you, not remembering,” he said to Maddox. “I really did mean it. Do take it. Margery, you understand, don’t you?”

      Maddox laid his hand on David’s shoulder and looked at him.

      “It’s quite ripping of you, David,” he said (and at that moment David loved his Christian name), “but whether it’s your sister’s or yours, I couldn’t possibly. But thanks, most awfully.”

      “But are you sure?” asked David.

      He laughed.

      “Why, of course I am. What do you take me for? Oh, I can’t bother about these beastly books, now I know what’s come out of that tray. Shall we go, then?”

      But on the way the question of the rightful possessor of this treasure had to be laid before him. Margery’s contention was that David had suggested going to see if they could find a Keats, and that she had merely accompanied him, and therefore the book was his. David, on the other hand, had contended that she had found it, and you couldn’t get over that. They both referred the decision to Maddox with his seventeen years’ experience of the world.

      “Depends on what you are going to do with it,” he said. “If you mean to sell it, I really think I should divide the proceeds. If not—well, I should have a box made for it, with two keys, one for each of you. Anyhow, I shouldn’t suggest the Solomon-trick, and cut it in half!”

      The immenseness of all this momentarily obscured the honour and glory of taking Maddox home to tea, and the fate of the Keats was warmly debated. David was rather inclined to sell it, and revel in gold, but Margery hinted that if they were each possessed of five pounds, it certainly would not be they who revelled in gold, but the savings-bank. Before the question was settled they had got back to the close, and David pointed out his father’s house, a little way ahead of them.

      Maddox clicked his teeth with his tongue, in a show of impatience.

      “This is rather too much,” he said. “You find a second edition of Keats, and bring it home to the most beautiful house in Baxminster. I call it rotten. May I see all over it before tea, and the garden?”

      David felt he must apologise for the garden. “Oh, the garden’s an awful hole,” he said, “though Margery doesn’t think so. There’s no room for anything, as you’ll see.”

      So the Fairy Prince was led in and taken all over the house, and as they went merits and glories undreamed of dawned on David. What had been dark, ugly wood turned out to be A1 Jacobean panelling, and a frowsy old picture of David’s great-grandmother in a mob-cap was pronounced the most ripping Romney, who in his line appeared to be up to the high standard already set by Keats. And, most astounding of all, was Maddox’s verdict on the attics, which David had abandoned as a proper playground for anybody who was going to Marchester in September. But the Fairy Prince thought otherwise.

      “What awful fun you could have playing horrible games like hide and seek up here,” he said. “I hope you do. Lord, what’s that groan? Oh, a cistern, is it? I thought it must be a ghost. How ripping!”

      David instantly dismissed his resolution of not playing games here any more.

      “Oh, there’s a worse room yet,” he said. “Do come and look at it. There’s a box like a coffin in it. Margery and I used to play gorgeous games up here, dressing up and frightening each other, you know. Wasn’t it fun, Margery?”

      Margery was the soul of loyalty. She would no more have reminded David that only to-day he had come to the conclusion that these games were silly than she would have had him led out to instant execution.

      “Yes, when it begins to get dark it’s awful up here,” she said. “You can’t see anything distinctly, and the cistern suddenly groans, and you can’t tell what’s coming next!”

      Maddox, in spite of his seventeen years and Olympian elevation, did not seem to be unbending. David, in fact, if his utterances this afternoon were to be taken literally, had to unbend to him.

      “I love being frightened,” said Maddox. “You ought to read ghost stories to each other here, and the one who reads may make any sort of noise he chooses at any moment. Just when the ghost is going to appear, you know. Lord, I hope I shall never get beyond that sort of thing!”

      He, Margery, and David were standing in a row opposite the coffin-shaped box. Just then the cistern in the room behind gave one of its best goblin-groans, and Maddox looked awfully round.

      “Oh, what’s that?” he said. “That’s not the cistern. That’s a man bleeding to death in there, that is. His throat’s cut from ear to ear.”

      “No,” said David. “I’m sure it was the cistern.”

      “Are you? It may have been the cistern before, but I don’t believe it was that time. Pity it’s not a little darker. There’s too much light really just now.”

      Already to David the attic bristled again with entrancing possibilities, under this stimulus. It was queer that any one of Maddox’s age and attainments should see sport in what a few hours ago had seemed childish and savourless to himself, but since this was so, it was clear there must be something in it. But school-boy hero-worship made him see through his hero’s eyes, and all that Maddox did or said was invested with authority. True, he had seen him perhaps half a dozen times altogether, but that was quite sufficient to make this matchless glamour. In all the world there was no one so instinct with romance and glory as this boy three years his senior who realised for him all he wanted to be.

      Of course they went downstairs again on the pronouncement that it was not dark enough.

      “I’m afraid you’ll think the garden is rot,” said David. “There’s a beastly mulberry-tree bang in the middle of the lawn. But it’s not so bad to have tea in: Margery, can’t we have tea out there?”

      So the Fairy Prince was escorted downstairs and out into the garden, to give his verdict on that despised spot, and looked round with those quick movements of his eye from side to side without turning his head, which again seemed now the only possible way of looking at things.

      “But what on earth is good enough for you, David?” he said. “You can’t read Keats except out of a second edition, and you told me the attics were rather fun once, and you say the garden is rotten! Look at those brick walls, look at the house, look at the mulberry-tree! Oh, I say, what are those stones in the corner? Isn’t that a Roman altar?”

      “Yes, I believe so,” said David. “Do you care about those things?”

      Maddox and he walked down to the collection of old stones which had appeared to David the dullest of the antique things of Baxminster. Some of the lettering on one of these was still distinguishable.

      “Yes, ‘Optimo Maximo,’ ” said Maddox. “I expect that gap is ‘Jovi.’ Then, lower down, do you see, ‘P. Aelius’: that must be the chap who dedicated it. Funny that it should stand here now for you and me to read, while the cathedral tower squints at us over the attics where the ghosts live.”

      Maddox