JAPHRA AND IMA. JAPHRA AND AUNT MAGGIE
I
The van brought Percival back to Aunt Maggie.
Japhra and Ima, waiting the doctor's arrival, watched and tended the signs of how, as Japhra had said, the night had struck Percival down. From the moment of his collapse in Japhra's arms, his vitality no longer withstood the strain to which it had been pressed. His mind gave way beneath the attack of the events of the past hours; marshalled now by fever's hand they returned to him in riot of delirium. "Don't, Ima! Don't! ... No! No! I'm all right! I'm better standing! ... Only a kiss in fun, Ima! O God, if I had only known! ... Murdered! Where's Hunt? Murder! Poor old Hunt! ... In-fighting! I must get in! If only I can stick out this round! ... Ge' back! Ge' back! What's Boss Maddox yelling about? ... In!—I must get in! I will get in! ... Ima! For me! O God, what a thing to happen! Only in fun! Only in fun, Ima! ... Follow him! Follow him! I must get in at him...."
When he was momentarily in silence Japhra looked a question at Ima.
She answered quite simply: "I told him that I loved him."
"And he?" Japhra said.
She arranged the bedclothes, and with a fond touch smoothed back Percival's hair; then looked at her father and smiled bravely and shook her head.
"I have known it these many days," Japhra told her. "I have watched thee." He placed his hand on hers where it caressed Percival's forehead. "What of comfort have I for thee?" he said. "My daughter, none. He is not of us. Hearken to this thought, Ima. Heaven shapeth its vessels for the storms they must meet. Some larger thing calleth that grace of form and that rareness of spirit that he hath. What profit then for us to sorrow?"
Because he saw her crying, he repeated: "What profit?"
"Well, I am a woman," she said. "My love is of a different sort from thine."
He stroked her hair. "My daughter, wouldst thou unlive the past?"
She replied: "Nay, it is all I have."
"So with me," he said. "This night endeth it. Thou and I—henceforward we will be alone, remembering him—happy to have loved him, happy that he hath been happy with us, happy to have been a port where he hath fitted himself a little for what sea he saileth to."
She pressed her father's hand. "As thou sayest," she said; and after a moment, bending over Percival like some mother above her child: "What awaiteth him?" she asked.
"Some strong thing," Japhra said. "I know no more—that much I know without mistake. From the first when he came to us with his quaint ways and fair face I knew it. A big fight, as I have told him."
As if she believed her father to have divination, "Will he win?" she asked him.
"He is the fighting type," Japhra replied. "Victory for him. This night in the tent. To-morrow—whatever will. Though it be death—always victory."
She remembered that.
II
The doctor, when he came, showed himself a tough gentleman—abrupt of speech, of the type that does its rounds in the saddle—who said "Stiff crowd, you! Regular hospital here. Cracked head in every van. Boss Maddox—he's in a bad way. Now this young man. Make me fortune if you stop."
After examination: "Nursing," he said; "it's a case for nursing. He's gone over the mark. Head—and hands, by the look of 'em! Not my business that. Stiff crowd, you! Nursing. You'll have to watch it pretty sharp. That girl's got a way with him. That's what he wants."
"I am taking him home," Japhra said; "two days from here—if that be wise."
"Wisest thing. Get him out of this. Stiff crowd, you! I'll look in again midday. Send you some stuff. Then you can move. He's badly over the mark. Look after him."
Thus, on the afternoon of that day, the train of tricks and chances had Percival on the road towards Aunt Maggie and Burdon village. The police, who had taken authority in the camp, made no objection to Japhra leaving. They knew now the man they wanted; half the Maddox crowd had heard Hunt's threat to stick a knife in Boss Maddox; the blade found was scratched with his name; a score had seen him edging through the press towards the Boss; there were not wanting those who, their imagination enlarged by these hints, had seen the very blow struck. Japhra might go, the police said, and Stingo Hannaford too. The only wanted vans were those in flight that might have the fugitive in hiding. So, while Boss Maddox, removed to the Infirmary, lay between life and death, while the Blue Boys from the police station and the tough boys from the vans scoured the country in thrill of man-hunt, Japhra harnessed up the van and struck away towards Burdon.
The patient ranged wide in his delirium during the journey—often on his lips a name that once had fallen about him like petals of the bloomy rose, sweet as they; that now struck like blows in the face at her who ceaselessly watched him:
"I know this house! Up the stairs! down the stairs! I'm tired, tired! What am I looking for? What am I looking for? Not you, Dora!—not you! ... You are Snow-White-and-Rose-Red! I love you, Dora! Why do you look at me so strangely, Mr. Amber! ... Rollo! Rollo, old man!—Rollo, what are you doing? She is running away from me! Let me go, Rollo! let me go! ... In-fighting! I must get in! I will get in! ... Dora! Dora! How I have longed for you!..."
She that watched him appeared to have a wonderful influence over him. Of its own force it seemed to give her the quality of entering the wanderings of his mind and satisfying him by answering his cries.
"In-fighting! In-fighting!" he would cry. "I must get in! I will get in!"
And she: "You are winning! There—there; look, you have won! It is ended—you have won!"
"You are Snow-White-and-Rose-Red! Dora! Dora! My Dora!"
And she, steeling herself: "I am here, Percival! Your Dora is here! Hold Dora's hand! There, rest while I stay with you!"
So through the hours.
"Post Offic" was the evening of the second day distant. Japhra walked all the way, leading the horse—movement steadier, less chance of jolting, by leading than by driving, Japhra thought; and so trudged mile on mile—guiding away from ruts, down the steep hills holding back horse and van by force amain rather than use the drag that would have jarred noisily. For the rest he walked, one hand on the bridle, the other in his pocket, his whip beneath his arm, not with the keen look and alert step that was his usual habit, but with some air that made kindly folk say in passing: "Poor gipsies! They must have a hard life, you know!"
But it was that each step brought him nearer end of a companionship that had gone with deep roots into his heart that made life for the first time seem hard to this questioner.
He would not smoke. "The reek would carry back on this breeze and through the windows to him," he told Ima, come beside him while her patient slept.
She could never remember seeing her father without his pipe, and she was touched by his simple thought. She slipped her hand into the pocket of his long coat where his hand lay, and entwined their fingers. "Ah, we love him, thou and I," she said.
She felt his fingers embrace her own. He asked her quietly: "My daughter, is it bitter for thee when he crieth Dora?"
She answered him with that poor plea of hers. "Well, I am a woman," she said. But after a little while she spoke again. "Yet I am glad to suffer so," she told him. "Though he cries Dora, it is my hand that soothes him when he so cries. He sighs then, and is comforted. It is as if he wandered in pain, and wanted me, and finding me was happy. Well, how should I ask more? Often—many years I have prayed he should one day be mine, my own. It is not to be. But now—for a little while—when he cries and when I comfort him, why, my prayer is vouchsafed me. Mine then—my own."
III
Aunt Maggie saw that wonderful influence Ima exercised over his delirium. When Japhra had carried him up to his bedroom, and when Ima was bringing "his things" from the van, he broke out in raving and in tossing of the arms that utterly alarmed her and Honor, their efforts of no avail. She called in panic for Ima. Ima's touch and voice restored him to instant peace. "You must stay with me," Aunt Maggie said, tears running down her face. "My dear, I beg you stay with me. You are Ima. I know you well. He has often spoken of you. Oh, you will stay?"
Afterwards Aunt Maggie went down to thank Japhra for his agreement to this proposal. He would put up his van with the Hannafords, he told Ima—with Stingo, who would shortly be coming, and with Mr. Hannaford—and would stay there, whence he might come daily for news while Ima remained with Percival.
Aunt Maggie had grateful tears in her eyes when she thanked him. These, and those tears of panic when she called Ima's aid, were the first she had shed since suddenly the van had brought her Percival to her an hour before. Trembling but dry-eyed she had gone to him and seen his dangerous condition; shaking but tearless had made ready his bed.
"Strange-like"? "Touched-like"? It was fate had ordered him back to her, she told herself. Almost upon the eve—within four short months of the twenty-first birthday for which she had planned—he was brought back; and brought back, despite himself, by an agency stronger than his own strong spirit. Fate in that!—the same fate that by Audrey's death-bed had assured her that nothing would fail her, and that by a hundred seeming chances had justified its assurance through the years.
He was very ill. She was not afraid. Fate was here—and she told Japhra he would recover.
She found him in the van, his pipe alight again and staring in a dullish way at the vacant places whence Percival's belongings had been removed. He came down to her, and when she told him her belief he had a strange look and a long look into her eyes before he answered. He had marked the tearlessness that went curiously with her devotion when he had brought her to Percival; he marked now some strange appearance she had for him and some strange note in her voice when she told him "He will recover."
"Ay, mistress," he said. "Have no fear. He will recover."
For her own part she marked also some strange look in the strangely strong eyes that regarded her.
She asked "But why are you so confident?"
He noticed the "But." "Mistress, because his type is made for a bigger thing than he has yet met."
To that—meeting so strongly the truth she knew—she replied: "Yes!—yes!"
At her tone he came a sudden step to her. "Mistress, is it in thy hands, this thing he must meet?"
She, by the influence of this meeting, stood caught up and dizzy by return to her in dreadful violence of that old fluttering within her brain.
Japhra in stern and sudden voice: "Beware it!"
He thought her eyes questioned him and he answered them: "Why have I from the first known some big thing waited him?—it was somehow told me. Why beware?—I am somehow warned."
She turned and began to go away. Come out of the fluttering, she could not at once recall what had passed between her and this little man.
Japhra put a quick hand on her arm: "Mistress, beware lest thou betrayest him!"
She remembered that.
A COLD 'UN FOR EGBERT HUNT. ROUGH 'UNS FOR PERCIVAL
I
Ima's nursing, as that doctor had said, brought Percival back from where he had been driven beyond the mark by stress of events and put him firmly afoot along the road of convalescence. Only one circumstance arose to distress those days of his returning strength—the news of Egbert Hunt.
The assizes at Salisbury followed quick on the capture of the fugitive—run to earth in a wood by the Blue Boys and the tough boys and brought back like some wild creature trapped—soaked, soiled, bruised, faint, furious, terrified and struggling, for prompt committal by the magistrate.
A newspaper reporter at the assizes wrote of him as having again that appearance of some wild creature trapped when he stood in the dock before the Judge. The case attracted considerable local interest. There was first the fact that famous Boss Maddox had narrowly escaped death at the prisoner's hand: there was second the appearance of a noble lady of the county—Lady Burdon—as witness for the defence.
Gossips who attended the trial said it was precious little good she did the fellow. His conviction was a foregone conclusion. A solicitor with an eye to possibilities who attended Hunt during the police court proceedings learnt from him that he had been in Lady Burdon's service from boyhood and (in his own phrase) promptly "touched her" to see if she would undertake the expenses of a defence. Her reply was in a form to send him pretty sharply about his business and (a man of some humour) he thanked her courteously by having her subpoeaned on the prisoner's behalf—mitigation of sentence was to be earned by her testimony to the young man's irreproachable character during his long years in her service.
It was little of such testimony she gave. Angry at the trick played on her (as she considered it), angry at being dragged into a case of sordid aspect and of local sensation, she went angrier yet into the witness-box for the scene made at her expense by the prisoner as she passed the dock. The newspaper reporter who described him as presenting the appearance of a wild animal trapped, wrote of him as having a wolfish air as he glared about him—of his jaws that worked ceaselessly, of his blinking eyelids, and of the perspiration that streamed like raindrops down his face. As Lady Burdon passed him the emotions of the public were thrilled to see his arms come suppliant over the dock rail and to hear him scream to her: "Say a word for me, me lady! Say a good word for me! Love o' God, say—" A warder's rough hand jerked his cry out of utterance, and he listened to her during her evidence, watching her with that wolfish air of his and with those jaws ceaselessly at work.
A cold 'un, the gossips said of her when she stepped down. The Judge in passing his stereotyped form of sentence made more seemly reference to her testimony.
"The evidence," the judge addressed the prisoner, "of your former employer—come here reluctantly but with the best will in the world (as she has told us) to befriend you—has only been able to show that you have exhibited from your boyhood upward the traits—sullenness of temper, hatred of authority—that have led you directly to the place where now you stand. It has been made very clear that this crime—only by the mercy of God prevented from taking a more serious form—was wilful, premeditated, of a sort into which your whole character shows you might have been expected to burst at almost any period of your maturer years. You will be sent away now where you will have leisure, as I sincerely trust, to reflect and to repent.... Five years.... You will go to penal servitude for that term."
Most wolfishly the wolfish eyes watched the judge while these words were spoken; quicker the working jaws moved, lower the poor form crouched as nearer the sentence came. As a vicious dog trembles and threatens in every hair at the stick upraised to strike, so, by every aspect of his mien, Egbert Hunt trembled and threatened as the ultimate words approached. "Penal servitude for that term"—as the dog yelps and springs so he screamed and sprung: a dreadful wordless scream, a savage spring against the dock, arms outflung.
Warders closed about him; but he was at his full height, arms and wolfish face directed at Lady Burdon. "You done it on me!" he screamed. "You might ha' saved me! You—! You—cruel—! I'll do it back on yer! Wait till I'm out! I'll come straight for yer, you an' your—son! I'll do it on—"
A warder's hand came across his mouth. He bit through to the bone and had his head free before they could remove him. "I've never had a fair chance, not with you, you—Tyrangs!—tyrangs all of yer!—tyrangs! You're the worst! God help yer when I come for yer! Tyrangs! ... Tyrangs!..."
They carried him away.
II
"Oh, five years!—Five years!" Percival cried when he read the news. "Poor, poor old Hunt! Five years!"
He was sitting comfortably propped in a big chair in the garden behind "Post Offic," Aunt Maggie and Ima with him, and his weakness could not restrain the moisture that came to his eyes. "Five years, Aunt Maggie! He was one of my friends. I liked him—always liked him. He was always fond of me—jolly good to me. When I think of him with his vegules and his sick yedaches! Five years—poor old Hunt!"
He was very visibly distressed. "Everybody is fond of you, dear," Aunt Maggie said sympathetically.
"That's just it!" he said—"that's just it!" and he threw himself back in his chair and went into thoughts that were come upon him and that her words exactly suited: thoughts that were often his in the days of his sickness when he lay—was it waking or sleeping? he never quite knew. They presented the cheery group of all his friends, all so jolly, jolly good to him. Himself in their midst and they all smiling at him and stretching jolly hands. But a gap in the circle—Mr. Amber's place. Another gap now—Hunt. It appeared to him in those feverish hours—and now again with new reason and new force—that outside that jolly circle of friends there prowled, as a savage beast about a camp-fire, some dark and evil menace that reached cruel hands to snatch a member to itself and through the gap threatened him. Within the circle the happy, happy time; beyond it some other thing. Life was not always youth, then? not always ardour of doing, fighting, laughing, loving? Menace lurked beyond.... What?...
But those thoughts were swept away, and fate of poor old Hunt that had caused them temporarily forgotten, by footsteps that brought up the path three figures, of whom two were colossal of girth and bright red of face—one striking at his thigh as if his hand held an imaginary stick—and one that walked behind them lean and brown, with rare bright eyes in a face of many little lines.
"Why, Mr. Hannaford! Mr. Hannaford!" Percival cried delightedly. "Stingo! Good old Japhra!—you've actually brought them!"
They were actually brought; but in the alarming company of women folk—of Aunt Maggie, of Ima, and of Honor, who now, the visit having been expected, came out with a laden tea-table—the tremendous brothers exhibited themselves in a state of embarrassment that appeared to make it highly improbable that they would remain. First having shaken hands all round the circle, colliding heavily with one another before each, Mr. Hannaford declaring to each in turn "Warm—warm—bless my eighteen stun proper if it ain't!" and Stingo repeating some husky throatings of identical sound but no articulation; they then shook hands with one another; then proceeded round the circle again; simultaneously appeared to discover their mistake; collided with shocking violence; and finally relapsed into enormous nose-blowings, trumpeting one against the other, as it seemed, into handkerchiefs of the size of small towels.
It was to abate this tremendous clamour that Aunt Maggie handed a cup of tea to Mr. Hannaford, and it was without the remotest desire in the world to have it there that Mr. Hannaford in some extraordinary way found it on the side of his right hand and proceeded to go through an involved series of really admirable juggling feats with it, beginning with the cup and saucer and ending with the spoon alone, that came to a grand finale in cup, saucer and spoon shooting separately and at tolerable intervals in three different and considerable directions. It was to cover the amazement of the tremendous brothers at this extraordinary incident that Ima handed a piece of cake to Stingo, and it was the fact that Stingo had no sooner conveyed it to his mouth than he abandoned himself to a paroxysm of choking and for his relief was followed about the garden by Mr. Hannaford with positively stunning blows on the back that sent Percival at last from agonies of hopeless giggling to peals of laughter which established every one at their ease.
"Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!" from Percival. "I'm awfully sorry—I can't help it. Oh, Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!"
Impossible to resist it: "Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho!" thundered Mr. Hannaford.
"Oh, Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!" shook Percival, rolling on his pillows.
"He! He! He! He! He!" came Stingo, infection of mirth vanquishing the contrariness of the cake-crumb.
"Proper good joke!" bellowed Mr. Hannaford, not at all sure what the joke was, but carried away by Percival's ringing mirth. "Proper good joke! Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho!"; and was chorused in gentler key by Japhra—for once—by Aunt Maggie and by Ima.
"He! He! He! He! He! Looks as well as ever he did!" choked Stingo, catching his brother's eye and nodding towards the invalid's chair; and that as masterfully turned the laughter to practical use as the laughter itself had turned dreadful embarrassment into universal joviality. It was the chance for Mr. Hannaford to cry delightedly: "Why, that's just what I was athinking, bless my eighteen stun proper if it isn't!" the chance for the tremendous brothers to overwhelm Percival with the affection and the joy at his recovery with which they had come bursting; the beginning of highest good fellowship all round, of stupendous teas on the part of the tremendous brothers, and at last of explanation of the real project they had made this visit in order to discharge.
It took a very long time in the telling. On the part of Stingo there was first a detailed account (punctuated by much affectionately fraternal handshaking) of how he positively had settled down at last—sold out of the show trade after and on account of the events in which Percival and Japhra had shared, and henceforward was devoting his entire energies to the cultivation of the little 'orse farm. There was then from Mr. Hannaford, helped by a ledger that could have been carried in no pocket but his, a description of the flourishing state at which the little 'orse farm had arrived—"Orders for gentlefolks' little carts' little 'orses apourin' in quicker'n ever we can apour 'em out"—and in which it was monthly advancing more and more; and there was finally a prolonged discussion in fierce whispers between the brothers, interspersed with loud "Don't forget that's" and "Recollect for to tell him this's."
Then Mr. Hannaford turned to Percival, struck his thigh a terrible crack with his ledger, and in a very demanding tone said, "Well, now!"
"Well, I'm awfully—awfully glad," said Percival. "It's splendid—splendid. By Jove, it really is a big thing. But what?—but what—?"
"What of it is," said Mr. Hannaford very solemnly, "that what we want and the errand for what we've come is—we want you!" He turned to Stingo: "Now your bit."
"What of it is," responded Stingo with the huskiness of a lesson learnt by heart and to be repeated very carefully—"What of it is, he's wanted you, told me so, ever since you come over long ago with his late lordship and showed what a regular little pocket marvel you was, but didn't like for to have you until I'd settled down and taken my proper place and given my consent—which I have done and which I do, never having set eyes on your like and never wanting to. Now your bit."
"What of it is," said Mr. Hannaford, bringing himself to the point of these remarkable proceedings with a thigh-and-ledger-thump of astounding violence—"what of it is, we're Rough 'Uns, Stingo an' me. All right to be Rough 'Uns when it's only little circus 'orses and circus folk you're dealing with—no good being Rough 'Uns when it's gentlefolks' little carts' little 'orses, gentlefolks' little riding little 'orses, and gentlefolks' little polo little 'orses. Want a gentleman for to deal with the gentlefolk and a gentleman for to break and ride and show for the gentlefolk. Want you—an' always have wanted you, bless my eighteen stun proper if we ain't." (Thump!)
Percival was white and then red as the meaning of all the mysterious conduct of the tremendous brothers' errand was thus made clear to him—white and then red and with moisture of weakness in his eyes: why was everybody so jolly, jolly good to him?
"Why, Mr. Hannaford—Stingo—" he began.
But the tremendous brothers raised simultaneous shoulder-of-mutton fists to stop him, and fell into hurried preparations for departure. It was disappointment they feared. "Don't speak hasty!" Mr. Hannaford thundered. "Think over it—don't say a word—keep the ledger—proper good business in it—pay you what you like—make you a partner in it—set you up for life properly to rights." He wrung Aunt Maggie's hand. "Say a word for us, Mam! loved him more'n a son ever since—"; in great emotion backed down the path taking Japhra with him; and in tremendous excitement returned to wring the hand of Stingo who, after opening and shutting his mouth several times without sound, at length produced: "Set you up for life properly to rights—more'n that, too. You're young. We're bound to pop off one day. No one to leave nothing to. Rough 'Uns. You're young. Bound to go to you in the end. Rough 'Uns—"
"O' course! O' course! O' course!" joined Mr. Hannaford, wringing Stingo's hand in ecstasy and wringing it still as he led him down the path. "O' course! That was a good bit. Never thought of it. Bound to pop off! Bound to go to him!"
III
"Tears in your eyes, Percival," Ima said, smiling at him as immense trumpetings at the gate announced the Rough 'Uns' departure in a din of emotional nose-blowing.
"Well, dash it all, there always are, nowadays," Percival laughed. "Everybody's so jolly, jolly good to me."
He lay back with new and most wonderful visions before his eyes; set his gaze on the dear, familiar line of distant Plowman's Ridge and peopled it with the scenes of his new and wonderful prospects. His hand in his pocket closed about letters received from Dora between that night at Baxter's and the night of the fight. Black and impossible his outlook then; limitless of opportunity now. Set up for life properly to rights! by a miracle, nay, by a chain of tricks and chances—and he ran through the amazing sequence of them—he suddenly was that! Dora no longer immeasurably beyond him; Snow-White-and-Rose-Red possible to be claimed.
Aunt Maggie broke into his thoughts. "Are you glad, dear—about the Hannafords?"
"Glad! Aunt Maggie, I was just thinking I seem to be a sort of—sort of thing for other people's plans. Old Japhra planned a fighter of me and, my goodness! I had a dose of it. Here's old Hannaford always been planning to have me with him, and here I am going sure enough!" He laughed at an almost forgotten recollection. "Why, even you—even you had a wonderful plan for me. Don't you remember? I say, it's in hot company, your plan, Aunt Maggie. All come out right except yours. You'll have to hurry up!"
"Mine will come out right," she said.
ONE COMES OVER THE RIDGE
I
"Mine will come out right." But Percival's twenty-first birthday, that was to have seen the consummation of Aunt Maggie's plan, came—and Aunt Maggie held her hand and let it go.
A double reason commanded her. Percival's coming of age arrived with the Old Manor closed and Rollo and his mother far afield on that two years' travel which Lady Burdon had long before projected for her son to introduce his "settling-down." It were an empty revenge, Aunt Maggie thought, that could be taken in such case; robbed of its sting, sapped of all its meaning, unless it were delivered to Lady Burdon face to face, as face to face with Audrey she had struck Audrey down.
That was one reason that found Percival's twenty-first birthday gone, and still the blow not struck. The other was in tribute to the fate that had carried forward Aunt Maggie's plan through many hilly places and that, fatalistic, she dared not hasten when the promised land drew into sight. When she heard during the three months of Percival's zestful life on the little horse farm leading to his birthday that Rollo, before that birthday dawned, would be shipped and away on his leisurely journey round the world, she was at first strongly tempted to make end of her long waiting; at last to Audrey's murderer send Audrey's son. Her superstitious reliance on fate prevented her. With fate she had worked hand in hand through these long years. Vengeance had been nothing had she taken it at the outset when Audrey lay cold and still in the room in the Holloway Road. Under fate's guidance it was become a vengeance now indeed—Lady Burdon twenty years secured in her comfortable possessions; her husband by fate removed, and the blow to be struck through her cherished son; a friendship by fate designed suddenly to turn against her and drive her forth as she had driven Audrey. Fate in it all, in each moment and each measure of it, and Aunt Maggie had the fear that now to dismiss fate and anticipate the hour that she and fate had chosen would be to risk by fate's aid being dismissed.
Fate gave her hint of it—gave her warning. She was in one moment being told by Percival of Rollo's intended departure and long absence; and seeing herself robbed, her plan for his twenty-first birthday defeated, was urging herself with "Now—now. No need to wait longer—now;" she was in the next hearing Percival's desolation at the thought of losing "old Rollo" for so long—of their plans for closest companionship during the few weeks that remained to them; and hearing it, was warned by the same question she once before had asked herself and dared not finish, much less answer then, and dared not finish now: "What, when I tell him, if—"
Fate in it. Fate warning her, Aunt Maggie thought. Fate threatening her. Fate had been so real, so living a thing to her, its hand so plain a hundred times, that she had come to envisage it as a personality, an actuality—a grim and stern and all-powerful companion who companioned her on her way and who now stooped to her ear and told her: "Go your own way—if you dare. Seek to take your revenge now without my aid and short of the time that you and I have planned—if you dare. Abandon me and tell him now." Then the threat: "What, when you tell him, if—"
"Strange-like"? "Touched-like"? Thus, at least, she held her hand, paying tribute to fate; thus when the birthday came, and Rollo and Lady Burdon across the sea, and empty her vengeance made to seem if she then took it, she turned to fate and asked of fate "What now?"
"Strange-like"? "Touched-like"? Again to her ear that strong companion stooped—not threatening now; encouraging, supporting....
"Why, Aunt Maggie," Percival cried, "you do look well—fit, this morning. Fifty times as bright as you've been looking these past days. Younger, I swear!"
"Well, it is your birthday, dearest," she told him.
"All very well! But every time we've mentioned my birthday, my twenty-first—even last night—you've been—I've thought it has made you sad, as if you didn't want me to have it!—growing too old, or something!"
For answer she only shook her head and smiled at him. But her reason for the stronger air he noticed in her, for her rescue from her depression of the days that led to his birthday, was that to her question of "What now?" she was somehow assured that she had but to wait, but to have a little more patience, and her opportunity would come. Fate was shaping it for her; fate in due time would present it....
II
Percival for his own part was also in some dealing with fate in these days. As one that is forever feasting his eyes on a prized and newly won possession, the more fully to realise it and enjoy it, so frequently in these days he was telling himself "I'm the happiest and luckiest beggar in the world!" and was marvelling at the train of tricks and chances by which fate—luck as he called it—had brought him to this happy, lucky period.
Every human life falls into periods reckoned and divided not by years but by events. Sometimes these events are recognised as milestones immediately they fall; a death, a birth, a marriage, a new employment, a journey, a sickness—we know at once that a new phase is begun, we take a new lease of interest in life; not necessarily a better or a brighter lease, a worse, maybe—but new and recognised as different. More frequently the milestone is not perceived as such until we look back along the road, see the event clearly upstanding and realise that we were one man as we approached it and have become another since we left it behind; again not necessarily a better or a happier man—a worse, maybe; and maybe one that often cries with outstretched arms to resume again that former figure. It cannot be. Life goes forward, and we, once started, like draughtsmen on a board, may not move back. Beside each event that marks a milestone we leave a self as the serpent sheds a skin—all dead; some better dead; some we would give all, all to bring again to life. It may not be.
Percival in these happy, happy months as right-hand man to the Rough 'Uns on the famously prospering little horse farm often told himself that his life had been—as he expressed it—in three absolutely different periods. He found a wonderful pleasure in dividing them off and reviewing them. Daily, and often more than once in a day, when he had a pony out at exercise, he would pull up on the summit of rising ground and release his thoughts to wander over those periods as his eyes reviewed from point to point the landscape stretched beneath him; his mind aglow with what it tasted just as his body glowed from his exercise of schooling the pony in the saddle. Three periods, as he would tell himself. The first had ended with that night when he came to Dora in the drive. Everything was different after that. Then all his life with Japhra and with Ima in the van—the tough, hard, good life that ended with the fight. The third—he now was in the third! Two had been lived and left, and in review had for their chief burthen the picture of how, as he had said during his convalescence, every one had been so jolly, jolly good to him. Two had been lived and had shaped him—"a sort ofthingfor other people's plans"; and what kind plans! and what dear planners! and he, of their fondness, how happy a thing!—to this third period that sung to him in every hour and that went mistily into the future whose mists were rosy, rosy, rose-red and snow-white, Snow-White-and-Rose-Red....
III
In the first few months, before Rollo and Lady Burdon took their departure for the two years' travel, he was daily, in the intervals from his work, with "old Rollo"; Dora often with them. Nothing would satisfy Rollo for the few weeks that lay between Percival's beginning of his duties with the Hannafords and his own start for the foreign tour but that they must be spent at Burdon Old Manor, nothing would please him to fill in those days but to pass them in Percival's company. He made no concealment of his affection for his friend. Men not commonly declare to one another the liking or the deeper feeling they may mutually entertain. The habit belongs to women, and that it was indulged by Rollo was mark in him of the woman element that is to be observed in some men. It is altogether a different quality from effeminacy, this woman element. Sex is a chemical compound, as one might say, and often are to be met men on the one hand and women on the other in whom one might believe the male or female form that has precipitated came very nearly on the opposite side of the division—women who are attracted by women and to whom women are attracted; and men, manly enough but curiously unmannish, who are noticeably sensible to strongly male qualities and who arouse something of a brotherly affection in men in whom the male attributes ring sharp and clear as a touch on true bell.
There were thrown together in Rollo and Percival very notable examples of these hazards in nature's crucibles. The complete and most successful male was precipitated in him of whom Japhra had said long days before: "I know the fighting type. Mark me when the years come. A fighter thou." Qualities of woman were alloyed in him who once had cried: "Men don't talk about these things, Percival, so I've never told you all you are to me—but it's a fact that I'm never really happy except when I'm with you." Strongly their natures therefore cleaved, devotedly and with a clinging fondness on the weaker part; on the bolder, protectively and with the tenderness that comes responsive from knowledge of the other's dependence.
"Men don't talk about these things—but I'm never really happy except when I'm with you." That diffidence at sentiment and that self-exposure despite it, made when Percival, off to join Japhra, seemed to be passing out of his life, were repeated fondly and many times by Rollo now that Percival looked to be back in his life again. "Hearing me talk like this," he told Percival, "it makes you rather squirm, I expect—the sort of chap you are. But I can't help it and I don't care," and he laughed—"the sort of chap I am. You don't know—you can't come near guessing, old man, what it means to me to think you've chucked all that mad gipsy life of yours that might have ended in anything, the rummy thing it was, and that kept you utterly away from me; to think you've chucked all that and are settled down in a business that really is a good thing, every one says it is, and any one can see it. It means to me—well, I can't tell you what, you'd only laugh. But I can tell you this much, that I do nothing but think, and all the time I'm away shall be thinking, of how we'll both be down here always now when I get back, and of all the things we'll do together."
They were riding as he spoke, their horses at a walk up the steady climb of the down to Plowman's Ridge from Market Roding. His voice on his last sentence had taken an eager, impulsive note, and as though he had a sudden suspicion that it was betraying an undue degree of sentiment he stopped abruptly, his face a trifle red. It was his confusion, not any excess of sentiment, that Percival—quick as of old in sympathy with another's feelings—noticed. He edged his horse nearer Rollo's and touched Rollo with his whip. "Yes, we're going to have a great, great time, aren't we?" he said. "I'm only just beginning to realise it—great, Rollo!"
The affectionate touch and the responsive words caused Rollo to turn to him as abruptly as he had broken off. "I've planned it," Rollo said. "I'm forever planning it. When I get back—fit—I'm going to settle down here for good. I loathe all that, you know," and he jerked his head vaguely to where "all that" might lie, and said, "London and that kind of thing. I'm going to take up things here. I've never had any interests so far. My rotten health, partly, and partly not getting on with people, and I've let everything drift along and let mother make all the programmes. That's how it's been ever since you went off. Now you're back again and I'm keen as anything. I'm going to work up all this property, going to get to know all the people intimately and help them with all sorts of schemes. Going to run my own show—you know what I mean, no agent or any one between me and the tenants and the land. And you're going to help me—that's the germ of it and the secret of it and the beginning and the end of it."
Percival laughed and said: "Help you! You won't want any help from me. I can see myself touching-my-hat-to-the-squire sort of thing as you go hustling about the country-side."
But Rollo was too serious for banter. "You know what I mean," he said. "And you—you're going to be a big man in these parts, as they say, the way you're going, before very long."
They had gained the Ridge and by common consent of their horses were halted on the summit. Rollo turned in his saddle and pointed below them. "Percival, that's what I mean," he said, and carried his whip from end to end along the Burdon hamlets. "That's what I think of. Look how peaceful and remote it all looks, shut away from everything by the Ridge. We two together down there, planning and doing and living—"
Percival's gaze had travelled on from Burdon Old Manor where the whip had taken it and over the Ridge into the eastward vale. He turned again to Rollo, recalled by the stopping of his voice; and Rollo saw his strong face bright and said: "You'll think me a frightful ass, you'll think me a girl, but you know I get quite 'tingly' when I anticipate it all. And not want your help!—Why, only look at that for instance," and he laughed and put his hand against Percival's where it lay before his saddle. The delicate white, the veins showing, against the strong brown fist was illustration enough of his meaning. "And you're not long out of an illness that would have outed me in two days," he said.
He saw the bright look he had observed shade, as it were, to one very earnest. The symbol of their two hands so strongly different quickened in Percival the appeal that he always felt in Rollo's company, that went back to the early years of their play together, that was vital part of this happy, lucky period, and that was warmed again in the thoughts that came to him as he had looked over the eastward valley. "Why, Rollo," he said earnestly, "it is good to think of. It is going to be good. We two down there. It's wonderful to me how it's all come out. It makes me 'tingly,' too, when I think of it—and of what it's going to be. Help you—why, we two—" He pressed the brown fist about the delicate hand. "There!—just like this good old Plowman's Ridge that shuts us off from everybody! Nothing comes past that to interfere with us."
They were a moment silent, each in his different way occupied by this close exchange of their friendship; and Rollo's way made him almost at once put his horse about, concerned lest his face should betray his feelings, and made him say with an attempt at lightness: "No, nothing, with the good old Ridge to shut us off," and then, "Is that some one riding up from Upabbot?"
The direction was that where Percival's gaze had been. "Yes, it is," Percival said. "I thought so. She's coming up. It's Dora."