The Happy Warrior

by A. S. M. Hutchinson

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.