Chapter I: Percival Has a Peep at the 'normous

I

Young Percival was seven--rising eight--when he first saw Burdon Old Manor. Miss Oxford had taken him for a walk, and they were in the direction of the Manor grounds, a locality she commonly avoided, when "There's a cart coming!" he warned her. He had lagged behind, exploring in a dry ditch; and he raced up to her with the news, catching her hand and drawing her to the hedge, for she had been walking in the middle of the road, occupied with her thoughts.

Percival had learnt to be accustomed to long silences in his Aunt Maggie and to rescue her from them when need arose. They were familiar, too, to all the villagers and to the "help" who was now required for the domestic work of "Post Offic." Not the same but a very different Miss Oxford had returned to "Post Offic" seven years ago, bringing the news of poor, pretty Miss Audrey's loss of husband and death, and bringing the little mite that was born orphan, bless him. A very different Miss Oxford, for whose characteristic alertness there was substituted a profound quietness, a notable air of absence, preoccupation. It was held by the villagers that she had gone a little bit strange-like. Her sister's death, it was thought, had made her a little touched-like. The "help," a gaunt and stern creature named Honor, who largely devoted herself to bringing up Percival on a system of copy-book and devotional maxims which had become considerably mixed in her mind, called her mistress's lapses into long silence symptoms of an "incline," and in kindly, rough fashion sought to rally her from them. Percival, nearest the truth, called them "thinking." When Aunt Maggie lapsed into such a mood, he would often stand by her, watching her face doubtfully and rather wistfully, with his head a little on one side. Presently he would give a little sigh and run off to his play. It was as though he puzzled to know what occupied her, as though he had some dim, unshaped idea which, while he stood watching, he tried to formulate--and the then little sigh: he could not discover it--yet.

What was clear was that nothing ever aroused Aunt Maggie from her strange habit of mind; and that at least is symptom of a dangerous melancholy. What was plain was that her fits of complete, of utter abstraction, embraced her like a sudden physical paralysis in the midst of even an energetic task or an absorbing conversation; and that at least is sign of a lesion somewhere in the faculty of self-control. She divided her time between those periods of "thinking" and an intense devotion to Percival; and the two phases acted directly one upon the other. It was in the midst of loving occupation with the child, that, perhaps at some look in his eyes, perhaps at some note in his voice, abstraction would suddenly strike down upon her; it was from the very depth of such abstraction that she would suddenly start awake and go to find Percival or, he being near her, would take him almost violently into her arms.

II

In characteristic keeping with this habit, her action when now he ran to her and drew her from the roadway with his cry, "There's a cart coming! A cart, Aunt Maggie!" Her grey, gentle face and her sad eyes irradiated with a sudden colour and sudden light that advertised the affection with which, standing behind him to let the cart pass, she stooped down to him and kissed his glowing cheek--"Would I have been run over, do you think?"

Percival was eagerly awaiting the excitement of seeing the cart come into view around the bend whence it sounded. But he stretched up his hands to fondle her face. "Well, I believe you would, you know," he declared. "Of course they'd have shouted, but suppose the horse was bobbery and wouldn't stop?"

Aunt Maggie feigned alarm at this dreadful possibility. "Oh, but you're all right with me," Percival reassured her. He had a quaint habit of using phrases of hers. "I keep an eye on you, you know, even when I'm far behind."

She laughed and looked at him proudly; and she had reason for her pride. At seven--rising eight--Percival had fairly won through the vicissitudes of a motherless infancy. He had come through a lusty babyhood and was sprung into an alert and beautiful childhood, dowered of his father's strong loins, of his mother's gentle fairness, that caused heads to turn after him as he raced about the village street.

Heads turned from the cart that now approached and passed. It proved to be a wagonette. Two women and a man sat among the many packages behind. On the box-seat, next the driver, was a lanky youth, peculiarly white and unhealthy of visage. Percival stared at him. In envy perhaps of the sturdy and glowing health of the starer, the lanky youth scowled back, and lowering his jaw pulled a grimace with an ease and repulsiveness that argued some practice. Turning in his seat, he allowed Percival to appreciate the distortion to the full.

This was that same Egbert Hunt, whose power of grimace opened, as it continues, our history.

Percival directed an interested face to Aunt Maggie. "Is that a clown sitting up there?" he asked her. He had accompanied Aunt Maggie into Great Letham on the previous day, and had been much engaged by the chalked countenance of a clown, grinning from posters of a coming circus.

Aunt Maggie answered him with her thoughts: "I think they must be going to the Manor, dear. I expect they are Lord Burdon's servants."

"Well, I'm sure he was a clown," Percival answered. But a few paces farther up the road, stepping into it from a footpath over the fields, a little old gentleman was met, whom Aunt Maggie greeted as Mr. Amber, and who verified her opinion.

"The family is coming down the day after to-morrow," Mr. Amber said, "as I was telling you last week. Servants are to arrive to-day. I think I saw them in the wagonette as I came down the path. And how are you, Master Percival? I hope you are very well."

Percival put his small hand into the extended palm. "I'm very well, Mr. Amber, thank you. One of them was a clown, you know. He made a face at me--like this."

"God bless my soul, did he indeed?" Mr. Amber exclaimed.

"Yes, he did," said Percival. "Just make it back again to me, will you please, so I can see if I showed you properly?"

But Mr. Amber declined the experiment. "The wind might change while I was doing it," he said, "and then I should be like that always."

"Oh, I shouldn't mind," Percival declared.

"But I should," said Mr. Amber, and poked Percival with his stick.

They were very close friends, Percival and this bent old librarian, permanently located at Burdon Old Manor in those days and a constant visitor at "Post Offic" for the purpose of enjoying the affection displayed in his silvery old face as it watched the glowing young countenance upturned to it. "But I should," said he; "and what would they think of me in there?"

Percival turned about. They had reached the boundary of the Manor grounds and he pointed through the trees. "Is that where you live, Mr. Amber?"

"Yes, I live in there. Look here, now, here's a nice thing! You're growing up nearly as big as me and you've never been to see me. That's not friendly, you know."

"Oh, but I've wanted to, you know," Percival cried. "We don't often come this way, you see, do we, Aunt Maggie?"

He bounded across the road to squint through the wooden paling that surrounds the Manor park, and Mr. Amber gave a little sigh and turned to Aunt Maggie.

"How Percival grows, Miss Oxford! And what a picture, what a picture! You know, he recalls to me walking these lanes twenty years ago, with just his counterpart in looks and spirits and charm--ah, well! dear me, dear me!" And he began to mumble to himself in the fashion of old people whose thoughts run more easily in the past than in the present, and to walk around poking with his stick in a fashion that was his own.

He referred to Roly, Aunt Maggie knew. "You never forget him, do you?" she said gently. She also was devoted to a memory. "You never forget him?"

"No--no," said Mr. Amber, poking around and not looking at her. "Certainly not--certainly not."

Percival's voice broke in upon them, announcing his observations through the fence. "I say, you've got a lovely garden to play in, you know," he called.

They turned from thoughts that had a common element to the bright young spirit in whom those thoughts found a not dissimilar relief.

"Well, it's not exactly my garden," Mr. Amber replied in his deliberate way. "I live there just like Honor lives with you. She looks after the cooking and I look after the books, eh? Would you like to see my books?"

"Picture books?"

"Why, yes, some have got pictures. Yes, there are pictures in some. And fine big rooms, Percival. You would like to see them."

Percival turned an excited face to Aunt Maggie, and Aunt Maggie smiled. He took Mr. Amber's hand. "Thank you very much indeed," he said. "I tell you what, then. I will see your books and then I think you will let me play in your garden, please, if you please?"

Mr. Amber declared that this was a very fair bargain. "Come in and have some tea, Miss Oxford. Mrs. Ferris will be glad to see you. She finds housekeeping very dull work, I am afraid, with only me to look after."

Aunt Maggie did not reply immediately. Percival looked at her anxiously. He observed signs of "thinking," and thinking might be fatal to this most engaging proposition. "If you possibly could, Aunt Maggie!" he pleaded.

But it was Mr. Amber's further argument that persuaded her. His words acutely entered the matter with which she was occupied. "You know, Percival must be the only soul in the countryside that hasn't seen the Manor," he urged. "It was the regular custom for any one who liked to come up in the old days. You recollect the Tenant Teas in the summer? Why, it's his right, I declare."

A little colour showed on her cheeks. "Yes, it is his right," she said.

III

Percival was to enjoy another right before the day was out. The decision to accept Mr. Amber's invitation once made, he had whooped ahead through the Manor gates and flashed up the long drive at play with a game of his own among the flanking trees. A noble turn in the avenue brought him within astonished gaze of the house, and, very flushed in the cheeks, he came racing back to his elders.

"I say, it's a perfectly 'normous house you live in, Mr. Amber."

"Aha!" cries old Mr. Amber, highly pleased. "I knew you would like it, Master Percival!"

"Why, I call it a _castle!_" Percival declares.

They turn the corner and Mr. Amber points with his stick. "Well, you're not quite wrong, either. That part--the East Wing we call that--you see how old that is? Almost a castle once, that. See those funny little marks? Used to be holes there to fire guns through. What do you think of that?"

Percival's face proclaims what he thinks--and his voice, deep with awe, says, "Fire them bang?"

"Bang? I should think so, indeed!"

"Who at?"

"Aha! Strange little boys, perhaps. I'll tell you all about it, if you'll come and see me sometimes."

Percival announces that he will come every single day, and runs eagerly up the five broad steps that lead to the great oak door, now standing ajar, and halts wonderingly upon the threshold to gaze around the spacious hall and up at the gallery that encircles it.

Aunt Maggie stops so abruptly and gives so strange a catch at her breath that Mr. Amber turns to look at her. Following her eyes, and reading what he fancies in them, "Why, he does make a brave little picture, standing there, doesn't he?" Mr. Amber says.

Her faint smile seems to assent. But she sees the child, framed in the fine doorway, as his father's son surveying for the first time the domain that is his own.

They join him on the threshold and he turns to them round-eyed. "Why, it's simply 'normous!" he declares. "Aunt Maggie, come and look with me. It's simply 'normous."

"Told you so!" cries Mr. Amber, vastly delighted. "Fine big rooms, I said, didn't I, now?"

"'Normous!" Percival breathes. "Per-feck-ly 'normous to me, you know;" and after a huge sigh of wonder, pointing to the gallery, "What's that funny little bridge up there for?"

"Bridge!" says Mr. Amber almost indignantly. "Gallery, we call that. Goes right around the hall, see? Except this end. Bridge! Bless my soul, bridge!" For the moment he is really almost put out at this slight done to a celebrated feature of the Manor, his concern betraying the profound devotion to the house, the sense of his own incorporation with it, that always characterises him when beneath its roof. That devotion and that sense have deepened greatly during these years in which the new Burdons have neglected the Manor and he, living in the past, has grown to feel himself the custodian of the memories as he is the author of the "Lives" of the house of Burdon. He has a trick, indeed, as Percival comes to know, of speaking of "we" when he talks of himself in connection with the Manor. He uses it now. "We are very proud of that gallery, I can tell you. Do you know we've had--well, well, never mind about that now. Come along, I'll take you all over and up there, too. Come along, Miss Oxford. We'll find Mrs. Ferris first."

Mr. Amber takes Percival's hand and starts up the hall; and then pulls him up short again, but with an exaggerated concern this time. "But here, I say, young man, what's this? Cap on! Good gracious, you can't wear your cap here, you know!"

Percival goes almost as red as the jolly red fisher cap he wears, and pulls it off, much abashed. He explains his breach of manners. "I always do take it off in a house. But this doesn't feel like a house to me, you know; it's simply 'normous!"

"Ah, but that's a strict rule of ours here. No one but a Burdon may be capped in the hall; a tradition we call it. There was a--a wicked man came here hundreds of years ago and kept on his hat and they didn't see his face properly and thought he was a good man; and the Lord Burdon that was then came to speak to him, and the wicked man took out his dagger and killed Lord Burdon. What do you think of that?"

Percival seeks the proper touch. He asks: "With blug?"

"Blug--blood!" Mr. Amber exclaims testily, a trifle injured that his legends adapted to the use of children should lack conviction. "Why, bless my soul, of course there was blug--blood. Blug--dear me--blood!" and he puts so fierce an eye round where they stand, as if expecting a stain to ooze through the floor and corroborate him, that Percival draws back in haste lest he should be standing in the pool.

That makes Mr. Amber laugh and he pats Percival's golden head and concludes. "So ever since then, you see, we never let any but a Burdon wear his hat in the hall here. It would be a sign of coming disaster to the house, the tradition says."

He turns to Aunt Maggie. "My lady was very particular about it," he says. "She made a great point of observing all the traditions."

Jane Lady Burdon, though she has been dead these four years, is always "my lady" to Mr. Amber, as Roly remains to him "my lord" or "my young lord." Aunt Maggie, standing a little aside, looking at Percival, replies in her quiet voice: "I know--I remember. They are not so foolish--traditions--as some people think, Mr. Amber."

He nods his head in very weighty agreement, then turns again to Percival who, gazing round, discovers a new amazement. "But _two_ fireplaces!" Percival cries.

"Big as a small room, too, aren't they?" says Mr. Amber, important and gratified again. "Now, look at that! There's another story for you!" He leads Percival to one vast hearth, high over which the Burdon arms are carved in oak. "See those letters around there? That's our motto. That's the Burdon motto: 'I hold!' That was the message a Burdon sent to the king's troops when Cromwell's men--another wicked man, Cromwell--were trying to get in. 'I hold!' he told his messenger to say--just that, 'I hold!' and afterwards, when Cromwell was dead and another king came back, the king changed the Burdon motto to that. 'I hold!' Fine? Eh?"

"I hold!" breathes Percival, mightily impressed.

"Why, I tell you--I tell you," cries Mr. Amber, "there's a story in every inch of this house. Better stories than all your picture books. I'll just tell Mrs. Ferris about tea and then we'll go round. I know all the stories; no one knows them like I do." And he toddles off to Mrs. Ferris, absorbed in his lore and congratulating himself upon it, and Aunt Maggie and Percival are left alone.

It is then that Percival enjoys his second right of that day.

Aunt Maggie calls him to her. "Put on your cap again a minute, Percival--just for a minute."

"Oh, but I mustn't, Aunt Maggie."

She takes the cap from his hand and holds it above his clustering curls.

He protests. "Mr. Amber said so, you know."

"What did he say, dear?"

"Only Burdons, Aunt Maggie."

She placed the cap on his head and took his face between her hands and kissed him. She looked up, and all about the hall, and high to where, around the gallery, portraits of bygone Burdons looked steadily down upon her; and her lips moved as if she spoke some message that she signalled with her eyes.

"Whoever are you talking to, Aunt Maggie?"

She put her hands on his shoulders as he stood sturdily there, the jolly red fisher cap on the back of his head, a puzzled expression in his face, and she held him a pace from her. "Say the motto, Percival, dear--the Burdon motto. Do you remember it? Say it while you have your cap on--out loud!"

"Is it a game, Aunt Maggie?"

"Say it quickly, dear--out loud!"

"I hold!" says Percival, clear and sharp.

In the gallery behind him there was a sound of movement. He turned quickly and saw a man's figure step hastily away.

"Some one was watching us, Aunt Maggie."

But Aunt Maggie was gone into her "thinking."

IV

There followed for Percival the most delightful two hours. There was first a prodigal tea in the housekeeper's room, where motherly Mrs. Ferris set him to work on scones and cream and strawberry jam, and where, as the meal progressed, he gladly gave himself over to Mr. Amber's entrancing stories of Burdon lore, while Aunt Maggie and Mrs. Ferris gossiped together.

Mrs. Ferris confirmed the arrival of servants in advance of Lord and Lady Burdon and gave some details of the visit. Her ladyship had written to say they expected to stay about a month. They came for the purpose of seeing if the fine air, for a holiday of that length, would pick up Rollo. "An ailing child," said Mrs. Ferris. "Just the opposite of that young gentleman, from all accounts," and she nodded towards the young gentleman, who beamed back at her as cheerfully as a prodigiously distended mouth would permit. "A lazy-looking lot," Mrs. Ferris thought the servants were, and ought to have come earlier, too, for there was work to be done getting the house ready, Miss Oxford might take her word for it--all the furniture and the pictures in dusting sheets--made her quite creepylike to look into the rooms sometimes. Not right, she thought it, to neglect the Manor like these were doing. She knew her place, mind you, but she meant to have a word with her ladyship before her ladyship went off again.

But the rooms had no creeps for Percival when at last the tea was done, the jam wiped off, and the promised tour of inspection started. He put a sticky hand confidingly into Mr. Amber's palm and breathed "'Normous! Simply 'normous to me, you know," as each apartment was discovered to him; and stood absorbed, the most gratifying of listeners, while Mr. Amber, comfortably astride his hobby, poured forth the stories and the legends that had gone into his cherished "Lives" and that he had by heart and could tell with an air which called up the actors out of their frames and out of the very walls to play their parts before the child. Yet once or twice he stopped in the midst of a recital and stood frowning as though something puzzled him, and once for so long that Percival asked: "Are you thinking of something else, Mr. Amber?"

"Eh?" said Mr. Amber. "Thinking? I'm afraid I was. Let me see, where was I?" But he turned away, leaving the story unfinished; and as they walked from the room Percival said politely: "I don't mind if you were, you know. I only asked. Aunt Maggie does it and I just run away and play."

Mr. Amber pressed his old fingers closer about the young hand they held. "Don't run away when I do it," he said. "Just wake me up. It keeps coming over me that I've done all this before--held a little boy's hand and told him all this just like I hold yours and tell you. Well, that's a very funny feeling, you know."

"'Strordinary!" Percival agreed in his interested way; and Mr. Amber was caused to laugh and to forget the stirring in his mind of recollections buried there twenty years down. Twenty years is deep water. It was to be more disturbed, causing much frowning, much "funny feeling," before ever it should clear and show the old librarian, looking into the pool of his own mind over Percival's shoulder, Percival's reflection cast up from the depths.

The tour finished in the library. "Now this is the library!" announced Mr. Amber at the threshold, much as St. Peter, coming with a new spirit to the last gate, might say: "Now this is Paradise."

"Now this is the library. This is my room. Now, we'll just wipe our feet once again--sideways, too--that's right. And I think our fingers are still a little sticky, eh? that's better--_there_!"

"'Normous!" breathed Percival. "Simply 'normous, to me, you know."

No dust sheets here, everything mellow with the deep sheen of age carefully attended. Tier upon tier of books, every hue of binding--dark red to brown, brown to deep blue, deep blue to white--and all, however worn, however aged, exquisitely responsive to Mr. Amber's soft chamois leather.

Mr. Amber waved a proud hand at them. "I expect you'll live a long time before you see another collection like this, Master Percival. And I know every one of them--every single one just like you know your toys. In the pitch dark--in the pitch dark, mind you--I could put my hand on any one I wanted without touching another. What do you think of that, eh?"

Percival has no better thought for it than the old one.

"'Normous!" he declares. "Simply 'normous to me, you know, Mr. Amber!"

"And the care I take of them!" Mr. Amber continues, as pleased with his audience as if Percival were the librarians of the House of Lords, the Bodleian and the British Museum rolled into one. "You wouldn't find enough dust on those books, _anywhere_, to cover the head of a pin!" He points to the highest and furthest shelves: "You'd think there might be dust right up there, wouldn't you? Well, you just choose one of those books--any one, anywhere you like."

"To keep for my own?"

"Keep! Bless my soul, no! Keep! Dear me! dear me! No, just point to a book."

"That one!" says Percival, stretching an arm. "That one in the corner!"

Mr. Amber accepts the challenge with a triumphant rubbing together of his hands. "That brown one, eh? Very well. That's a rare volume--Black Letter--Latimer's 'Fruitfull Sermons'--London, 1584. Now, you see." He trots excitedly to a high, wheeled ladder, runs it beneath the "Fruitfull Sermons," climbs up shakily, fetches down the volume and presents it for Percival's inspection: "There! Run your finger over the top of it; that's where dust collects. Ah, not that finger; got a cleaner one? That'll do. Now!"

It is getting dusk in the library, so Mr. Amber clutches the small finger that has rubbed over the "Fruitfull Sermons," and they go to a deep window where young head and old peer anxiously at the pink skin.

"Not a speck!" Mr. Amber cries triumphantly. "Not a speck of dust! What did I tell you?"

And Percival, holding the finger carefully apart from its fellows: "'Strordinary! Simply 'strordinary to me, you know!"

Mr. Amber climbs laboriously up the steps again, and seats himself at the top, and starts dusting all around the "Fruitfull Sermons," and completely forgets Percival, who wanders about for a little and then, hearing a sound, goes to the door.

V

Here was the white-faced youth, our Egbert Hunt, who had grimaced at him from the box of the wagonette. The white-faced youth stood on the further side of the passage, paused beneath a window by whose light he seemed to be examining a small phial held in his hand.

Percival ran forward: "Hallo! Are you a clown, please?"

The white-faced youth bit a pale lip and stared resentfully: "Do you live here?"

"No, I don't," Percival told him. "I've been having tea with Mrs. Ferris."

The white-faced youth developed the sudden heat characteristic of Egbert Hunt in the Miller's Field days. "Well, don't you call me no names, then," said Egbert Hunt fiercely.

"I'm not," Percival protested. "You made a face at me when you were driving in the road, and I thought you were a clown, you see."

Egbert Hunt breathed hotly through his nose. "Saucing me, ain't you?" he demanded.

Percival had heard the expression in the village. "Oh, no," he said in his earnest way. "I thought you had a funny face, that was all."

His engaging tone and air mollified the sour Egbert. "I've got a sick yedache," said Egbert. "That's what I've got--crool!"

Percival looked sorry and sought to give comfort with a phrase of Aunt Maggie. "It will _soon_ go," he said soothingly.

"Not mine," Egbert declared. "Not my sort won't. I'm a living martyr to 'em. Fac'." He nodded with impressive gloom and took three tabloids from the phial he held in his hand. "Vegules," he explained; and swallowed them with a very loud gulping sound.

"What are you, please?" Percival inquired, vastly interested.

"Slave," said Egbert briefly.

"But you're not black," argued Percival, recalling the picture of a chained negro on a missionary almanac in Honor's kitchen.

"Thenk Gord, no!" said Egbert piously. "White slaves are worse," he added.

"And were those slaves in the carriage with you?"

"Tyrangs," said Egbert Hunt. "Tyrangs and sickopants of tyrangs."

Percival started a question; then, as a sound came: "That's my Aunt Maggie calling me. Good-by! I hope your poor head will soon be better."

Egbert smiled the wan smile of one not to be deluded into hope: "You've been kind to me," he said. "I like you. You ain't like all the rest. What's your name?"

"Percival. I really must go now, if you please. My Aunt Maggie--"

He started to run in the direction of Aunt Maggie's voice; but Egbert recalled him with a very mysterious and compelling "H'st!" and wag of the head.

"Was that your Aunt Maggie in the hall with you just now?" Egbert inquired.

A sudden recollection came to Percival. "You mean before tea? Was that you?"

"What she make you put your cap on for, and say 'I hold'? That was a funny bit, that was."

"Why, I don't know," said Percival. "Was that you up on the bridge?"

Egbert did not answer the question. "You ask her," he said, "an' tell me. Odd bit, that was."

"Yes, I will," Percival agreed. "I say, I must go. What's your name, if you please?"

"Mr. Unt. Run along; you're a nice little chap; I like you."

"I like you, too," said Percival, very interested in this strange character. "I'm sorry I thought you were a clown. Good-by, Mr. Unt. I say, there is my Aunt Maggie! Isn't this a 'normous house?" and he scampered brightly to the sound of Aunt Maggie's voice.

"Abode of tyrangs," said Mr. Hunt, moving swiftly in the opposite direction. "Boil um!"