from Marchester, he had often told himself that this was only a scuggy little private school, this was a moment worth living for, for not only did the scuggy little private school roar at him as he came to the pavilion with the rest of the team, but the disgraced and vanquished giants of public schools, people of sixteen and seventeen, came out shouting “Well bowled, Blaize,” with the most generous appreciation. The Head was there, too, clapping his hands, and Goggles was there, beaming through her large round spectacles, and Carrots, with her hair shining in the sun . . . they were all there.
David came up the steps to the pavilion all alone, for the rest of the eleven suddenly stood away from him and shoved him forward, crimson in the face with exertion and joy.
“Oh, ’twasn’t me, sir,” he said to the Head, who patted his shoulder. “It was just the ground: it played awfully queer.”
And he buried his delightful confusion in a quart of lemonade.
So in delicious triumph the last hours of David’s school-life passed, and from the train next morning he saw between the trees the fleeting glances of the roofs which for three years had been his home.
Chapter VII
David’s father lived in a grey, rambling house in the close at Baxminster, a plan of his that, as far as David went, had something to be said both for and against it. In its favour was the fact that the house contained a whole top-story of dusky and mysterious attics, roofed in the dimness by cobwebby beams, and used only for lumber-places and cisterns. Here it had been delightful in years gone by to find pleasing terrors in these dark and doubtful corners, amid the gurgles of water-pipes. Here he and his sister (in those years gone by, or in other words until a few months ago) had often passed entrancing wet afternoons, daring each other, particularly at the closing in of dusk, to explore the farthest recesses even to that last attic of all, which contained a large coffin-like box and a cistern that unexpectedly gave sudden and mirthless goblin-chuckles to itself, most harrowing to nerves already keenly on edge. The rules generally in force were that one of them had to go and sit alone in that very spooky chamber, with face turned honestly away from the door, while the other dressed up in any horrific garb that might suggest itself to a fevered imagination, and, having stealthily entered, frightened the watcher with this hideous apparition, accompanying it by any such noise of screaming or groaning that might appear suitable. With the victim looking steadily away from the door, these noises might go on, like an artillery attack, until his nerves were thoroughly shaken, though he had not yet seen what the apparition was to be. David had once frightened Margery into hysterics here, having entered the room in silence, swathed in a sheet, and wriggling snake-wise along the floor. He had coloured his face purple from Margery’s paint-box, and, having serpentined along till he was in front of her, suddenly yelled and disclosed the horrors of that apoplectic countenance. On that occasion the gurgling cistern had been useful, for he swiftly washed his own face to reassure her. But, by a variation of the rules, it having been ordained that the frightener should enter the room first and get himself up to receive the frightened on entry, Margery had got back her own again, for she had chalked her face and put her tongue out, and lain down in the coffin-shaped box, closing the lid as usual. David had looked for her with quaking tremors behind the cistern, and found her not; he had peered into the darkest of all corners, where an empty bookcase concealed a dangerous recess, when suddenly the lid of the coffin-box, which he had not suspected, flew open, disclosing Margery lying quite still, with white face and protruding tongue. . . . David had run as far as the nursery-landing before he could master the panic of his legs.
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
