Читать книгу The Happy Warrior - A. S. M. Hutchinson - Страница 10

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MISCALCULATING A PEER

I

The little clock that is perched high over the vast fireplace in the library at Burdon House, Mount Street, marks a shade before ten of the evening. Its delicate ticking joins with the fluttering of the flames, and with the steady scratch of Mr. Librarian Amber's pen, to make the only sounds in this dignified apartment with its high-bred air, that has known many a Burdon and that shortly is to acknowledge another bearer of the title and serenely give farewell to the lady seated before the fire.

A gracious lady of many sorrows, as the Vicar of Little Letham parish, in a surprising flight, had named Jane Lady Burdon on the previous Sunday—and rightly named her. Sorrow has companioned Jane Lady Burdon before; now again is called whence it has lightly slumbered—walks hand in hand with the gentle lady, is her bedfellow, crouches on the hearth beside her as she sits, drooping slightly, in the high-backed chair, fingers enlocked on lap, eyes dimly upon the flames.

Lord Burdon, who has stepped into the dead boy's shoes—(Ah, Sorrow, walk here and here with me. Look, Sorrow, where he used to sport and run!)—has paid his visit that afternoon; sympathetic little Mr. Pemberton, with his papers and documents, has occupied a part of her morning. It has been a trying day for her. Her only desire now is to be left alone with her thoughts. (Come away, come away, Sorrow, Sorrow; and hold me close, and open me his prattling lips, his strong young lips.)

II

Mr. Librarian Amber—very conscious of Sorrow crouching there, but busy, busy—is writing at a table behind the drooping figure in the high-backed chair. The bald top of Mr. Amber's narrow head, nose hard after his pen like a diligent bloodhound on a slow scent, shines between the splendid yellow candles in their tall, silver holders that light his work. Neat little packets of papers, neatly arranged, dot the polished surface of the table, like islands set in a still, dark sea about the greater island that is Mr. Amber's manuscript. On a chair by Mr. Amber's side is a large, slim volume held by a gilt clasp and lettered on its cover of white vellum:

Percival Rollo Redpath Letham

XIIth Baron Burdon

He is engaged, Mr. Librarian Amber, on that "Lives of the Barons Burdon" of which Lord Burdon had spoken to his wife, walking in the garden of Hillside.

Then that little clock perched over the mantelpiece tinkles the hour of ten.

"How do you progress, Mr. Amber?" Jane Lady Burdon inquires gently.

Mr. Amber—constitutionally nervous—starts, drops his pen, grabs at it as it rolls for the floor, misses it in the stress of a short-sighted fumble, makes a distressed Tch-tch! as it rattles to the boards, clears his throat, starts on one reply and, in the manner of nervous persons suddenly interrogated, strangles it at birth and has a shot at fortune with another.

"I have almost got—I am just concluding the newspaper reports of the fight, my lady. Very nearly at the end." He recollects a resolve to be bright in order to cheer my lady, so he adds with a funny little pop: "Almost done!" and then with a brisk little puff blows imaginary dust from his manuscript. "Almost done! Hoof!"

"I will read it over to-morrow, Mr. Amber, immediately after breakfast. To-day is Friday. By Monday you should have finished, I think, and the book will be ready to go into its place at the Manor. You will come with me when I go down there next week, Mr. Amber, and we will put it in its place together. I shall be glad to see it in its place before I leave: all the Lives finished—our little hobby, Mr. Amber;" and her gracious ladyship of many sorrows puts into the words the smile that faintly touches her lips.

Mr. Amber, desperately agitated and pleased by this coupling of himself with his dear mistress, takes from the warmth of his happiness courage sufficient to introduce to her a matter that has been troubling him. He gets awkwardly to his feet, a spare, stooping figure, mild of face, little over fifty but looking more, frowns horribly at his chair for the noise it makes upon the polished floor as he pushes it back, and comes forward, twisting the fingers of his hands about one another.

"My lady—yes, I will surely finish by Monday. Your ladyship will forgive me—intruding myself—your ladyship speaks of leaving—I am—if I may venture—so attached—I scarcely—"

He is quite painfully agitated. His fingers, tightly locked now by their twistings, present a figure of his halting sentences come to a final tangle, an ultimate and hopeless knot.

Her gracious ladyship of many sorrows smiles in her kind way. "Dear Mr. Amber, you should know, of course. I have been thoughtless of you in my sorrow. I am going to my sister in York, Mr. Amber—Mrs. Eresby, you remember. Here nor the Manor is no longer my home, you understand. Indeed, how should I stay in houses of sad memories only?"

Mr. Amber murmurs "Ah—my lady!" and she continues: "I intend a last visit to the Manor—to take leave of our dear friends, Mr. Amber, and to collect a few—memories. I would go now, but I have first to meet Lady Burdon. Lord and Lady Burdon will very kindly come here for that purpose on Monday so that we may know one another for a few days."

She pauses and smiles inquiringly as though to ask Mr. Amber if he is now sufficiently informed. He blinks considerably, starts to work at his hands again, and suddenly says with a mouth all twisted: "It will be very—strange—to me to be parted from your ladyship."

She extends a gentle hand towards his that twist and twist, touching them softly: "Dear Mr. Amber. It has been the pleasantest friendship."

He says stupidly and brokenly, "What will I do?"

"You must go on living with the books," she tells him. "Why, what would they do without you, or you without them? I will speak to Lord Burdon. You must live on just the same in the Manor library where we have been together so often—all of us. I shall like to think of you there. It is my wish, Mr. Amber."

She says gently, "There!" as he clutches her hand to his lips. "I will go to bed now. I think I hear Colden coming for me," and as her maid enters, she rises.

Mr. Amber tries for words. That twisting mouth forbids them, and he turns to hold the door open.

"Thank you. Good night, Mr. Amber. Here is our kind Colden so thoughtful for my sleep. I am ready, Colden. Yes, I will take your arm. Good night, Mr. Amber." And as Mr. Amber stands watching, there comes to him faintly across the great hall: "We'll rest a moment here, Colden. A little trying, these stairs. Do you remember how he used to take me up? He never missed a night when he was home, did he? Do you remember how he made us laugh about this seat … ?"

Then Mr. Amber returns to the library, closes the door and eases emotion by a trumpet blast upon his nose.

III

Mr. Amber took a seat before the fire. He was unsettled, he found, for further progress that night upon the work that had engaged him at the table. But his mind turned to it and from it to the eleven fine volumes into whose company it would go, completing the lives of the Barons Burdon that were the fruits of many years of loving labour—result of "our little hobby." In memory he trod again those happy days—saw himself installed librarian at Burdon Old Manor, a bookish youth, weak-backed, weak-eyed, son and despair of a tenant farmer; rehearsed again that youth's aimless, browsing years among the books, acquiring strange and various knowledge from the shelves, developing affections, habits, tastes that, as with tentacles, anchored him by heart and mind to the house of Burdon. Mr. Amber moved restlessly in his chair and came to the beginning of the great scheme, propounded by her gracious ladyship, that was to become "our little hobby," as immediately it became the purpose and enthusiasm of his life. Well, it was done—or almost done. The results of desperately exciting scratching about the library—among distressed old books, among family trees, among deeds, letters, parchments, rolls, records—were in eleven fine manuscript volumes—only the twelfth to finish.

A leisurely volume this twelfth, now lying on the table behind Mr. Amber's chair. Written up during its subject's short life—dear and most well-beloved to Mr. Amber every moment of it—the volume is as naturally detailed as some of the earlier volumes are naturally scrappy. Pettily detailed, perhaps. Mr. Amber starts with the precise hour and moment—6:15-½ A.M.—of the birth of the Hon. Rollo Percival Redpath Letham; notes his colouring—fair; his weight at successive infantile months—lusty beyond the average, it would appear; date of his first articulate speech; date of first stumbling run across the nursery floor—and suchlike small beer. His father's death is chronicled ("cf. vol. XI, pp. 196 et seq.") and he is shown to be yet in his third year when he becomes twelfth Baron Burdon. … Date of measles. … Date of whooping cough. … First riding lesson. … Preparatory school. … First holidays. … First shooting lesson. … Puts a charge of shot into a keeper. It is all very closely detailed. It is detailed so closely that a gap towards the end is made conspicuous: and this is precisely that gap occupied by the "disappearance" of which Mr. Pemberton had spoken in the drawing-room at Hillside. The chronicle, that is to say, is brought very fully up to the May in which, as it shows, my lord suddenly went down to Burdon Old Manor from London, his grandmother being at Mount Street, and thence for a long holiday. It jumps to October and at once begins again to be remarkably detailed, "Our Own Correspondent's" account of the frontier engagement waiting on the table there to conclude it. But of this May to October period, covering the June to August of which Mr. Pemberton had spoken, Mr. Amber, like Mr. Pemberton, for the good reason that he knew nothing of how my lord occupied it, has nothing to say. Let it be said. My lord was in that June secretly married in London: a matter closely germane to this history, and now to be examined.