Marjorie Read online

  CHAPTER II

  LANCELOT AMBER

  Mr. Davies was a wisp of a man, with a taste for snuff and forsnuff-coloured garments, and for books in snuffy bindings. His book-shopin Cliff Street was a dingy place enough, with a smell of leather andpaste about it, and if you stirred a book you brought enough snuffy dustinto the air to make you sneeze for ten minutes. But his own room, whichwas above the shop, was blithe enough, and it was there I had mylessons. Mr. Davies kept a piping bullfinch in it, and a linnet, andthere was a little window garden on the sill, where tulips bloomed intheir season, and under a glass case there was a plaster model of theArch of Titus in Rome, of which he was exceedingly proud, and which Ithought very pretty, and at one time longed to have.

  Mr. Davies was a smooth and decent scholar, and when he was dreamy hewould shove his scratch back from his forehead and shut his eyes andrecite Homer or Virgil by the page together, while Lancelot and Ilistened open-mouthed, and I wondered what pleasure he got out of allthat rigmarole. The heroes of Homer and of Virgil seemed to me verybloodless, boneless creatures after my kings and wizards out of Mr.Galland's book; even Ulysses, who was a thrifty, shifty fellow enough,with some touch of the sea-captain in him, was not a patch upon my hero,Sindbad of Bagdad, from whose tale I believe the Greek fellow stole halfhis fancies, and those the better half.

  I remember still clearly the very first afternoon when I presentedmyself at Mr. Davies's shop in Cliff Street. He told me I was verywelcome, assured me that on that day I crossed the threshold of theMuses' Temple, shook me warmly by the hand, and then, all of a sudden,as if recollecting himself, told me to greet my class-fellow. A lad ofabout mine own age came from the window and held out his hand, and thelad was Lancelot Amber.

  I have seen many gracious sights in my time, but only one so gracious asthat sudden flash of Lancelot Amber upon my boyish vision. As he cameforward with the afternoon sunlight strong upon him he looked like somemilitant saint. There is a St. George in our church, and there is a St.Michael too, both splendid in coat-armour and terrible with swords, butneither of them has ever seemed to me half so heroic or half so saintlyas the boy Lancelot did that morning in Mr. Davies's parlour. He wastall of his years, with fair hair curling about his head as I have sinceseen hair curling in some of the old Pagan statue-work.

  The boy came forward and shook hands with me in friendly fashion, with afriend's grip of the fingers. I gave him the squeeze again, and we bothstood for a moment looking at each other silently, as dogs over-eye oneanother on a first meeting. How little it entered into either of ourbrains that moment of the times that we should stand together, and theplaces and the trials and perils that we should endure together. We wereonly two lads standing there in a snug first-floor room, where yellowparrots sprawled on the painted wall, and a mild-mannered gentleman witha russet wig motioned us to sit down.

  Our life ran in current for long enough. We sat together at Mr. Davies'sfeet--I am speaking metaphorically, for in reality we sat opposite tohim--and we thumbed our Cordery and our Nepos together, and made suchprogress as our natures and our application permitted. Mine, to behonest, was little enough, for I hated my grammar cordially.

  Lancelot was not like me in this, any more than in bodily favour; he waskeen of wit and quick of memory; he was quick in learning, yet as modestas he was clever, for he never sought in any way to lord it over mebecause I, poor dunce, was not of such nimble parts as himself.

  It was the hardest task in the world for me to keep my eyes and my fancyupon the pages of my book. My eyes were always straying from the print,first to the painted parrots on the walls, and then, by naturalsuccession, to the window. Once there, my fancy would put on free wings,and my thoughts would stray joyously off among the salt marshes, wherethe pools shone in the sunlight and a sweet air blew. Or I would standupon the downs and look along the curve of cliffs, and note the shipssailing round the promontory, and the flashes of the sea beyond, andfeel in fancy the breeze blowing through my hair, and puffing away allthe nonsense I had been poring over in the room.

  At such times I would quite forget myself, and sit staring into vacancy,till Mr. Davies, lifting his nose from his volume, would note my absenceand call on me by name, and thump his desk, and startle me with somequestion on the matter we were supposed to have in hand. A mightymatter, truly, the name of some emperor or the date of somecampaign--matter infinitely less real than the name of the ship thatwas leaving the harbour or the sunlight on the incoming sail. And Iwould answer at random and amiss, and earn reproof. Yet there werethings which I knew well enough, too, and could have given him shrewdand precise answers concerning them.

  Lancelot Amber was never much my companion away from Mr. Davies's room.His father, whose name he perpetuated, had been a simple, gentlegentleman and scholar who had married, as one of his kin counted it,beneath him, because he had married the woman he loved. The woman heloved was indeed of humble birth, but she made him a fair wife and agood, and she bore him two children, boy Lancelot and girl Marjorie, anddied for the life of the lass. Her death, so I learned, was the doom ofLancelot Amber the elder, and there were two babes left in the wood ofthe world, with, like the children in the ballad, such claims upon twouncles as blood might urge and pity supplement. These two uncles, asLancelot imagined them to me, were men of vastly different stuff andspirit, as you may sometimes find such flaming contrasts in families.The elder, Marmaduke Amber, used the sea, and was, it seems, as fine aflorid piece of sea flesh as an island's king could wish to welcome. Hisbrother, Nathaniel, had been a city merchant, piling up moneys in theLevant trade, and now lived in a fine house out in the swelling countrybeyond Sendennis, with a fine sea-view. Him I had seen once or twice; alean monkey creature with a wrinkled walnut of a face and bright, unkindeyes. He was all for leaving the boy of three and the girl of two to thesmall mercies of some charity school, but the mariner brother gatheredthe two forlornlings to his great heart, and with him they had lived andthriven ever since. Now it seems Captain Marmaduke was on a voyage tothe Bermudas and taking the maid with him, while the boy, to better hisschooling and strengthen his body with sea air, was sent to Sendennis tostay with his other uncle, Nathaniel Amber, now, to all appearance,reconciled to the existence of his young relative. This uncle, as Igathered, did not at first approve overmuch of Lancelot taking lessonsin common with a single mercer's son, but Mr. Davies, I believe, spokeso well of me that the arrangement was allowed to hold.

  But after lesson hours were done Lancelot had always to go back to hisuncle's, and though I walked part of the way, or all the way, with himmost days of the week, I was never bidden inside those doors. Lancelottold me that he had more than once besought leave to bring me in, butthat the old gentleman was obdurate. So, save in those hours of study inthe parrot-papered room, I saw but little of Lancelot.

  I never expected to be asked inside the doors of the great house whereLancelot's days were passed, and I did not feel any injustice in thematter. I was only a mercer's son, while Lancelot derived of gentlefolk,and it never entered into my mind to question the existing order ofthings, or to wish to force my way into places where I was not wanted.Excellent gentlemen on the other side of the Atlantic have made verydifferent opinions popular from the opinions that prevailed with me inmy youth. Indeed, I myself have now been long used to associate with thegreat folk of the earth, and have found them in all essential mattersvery much like other men. I have had the honour of including more thanone king amongst my acquaintances, and have liked some and not likedothers, just as if they were plain Tom or Harry. But in the days of myyouth I should have as soon expected to be welcomed at St. James's as tobe welcomed in the great house where Lancelot's uncle lived.