II
So these fond women, perceiving him amiss, strove, as women will, to heal him with their sympathy; and reckoned nothing—as is woman's part—that he nothing responded to their gentleness nor anything abated his set and brooding air. The world may be chased up and down to find men conspired to soothe a woman's brow and scarcely will disclose a single case. Men weary or wax impatient of such a task. But every household at some time shows women gently engaged against a bearish man. It is the woman's part—womanly as we say: using a rare word for a beautiful virtue.
At another time—in the days before that evening's magic, in the life that preceded his present only by that hour in the drive with Dora—Percival had long been won from moodiness by their solicitude for him. Not now! Those days were only a single hour gone; its events sundered them from the present by an abyss that had a lifetime's depth, a lifetime's breadth from marge to marge. New feelings were his and they enveloped him against old appeals as a suit of mail against arrows. New prospects held his eyes and they blotted out homelier visions as the changed scene of a play is dropped across an earlier background. He was not preoccupied and therefore unaware of the loving sentences addressed to him. His case was this—that he was a new man, and as a stranger, therefore, listening to affections that did not concern him. That he found himself insensible to their appeal was not that he loved Aunt Maggie less or had suffered abatement of the affection he had for hot-tongued, warm-hearted Honor. None of these. It was this only—that he loved another more; this only—that the fires of his love had sprung out in a new place and there burned with heat infinitely more fierce than the flame where formerly his affections had warmed their hands.
III
Such of his meal as he required—and that was what habit, not appetite, demanded—he ate in silence. To silence also Aunt Maggie went, shortly after Honor had left them. She attempted once or twice to continue to persuade him from his mood—protested that he was eating nothing; sought to rally him with little scraps of gossip, with questions touching his afternoon. Of no avail. Presently she clasped her hands together on the table before him, and only watched him, and only sought to discover from his face what thing it was his face betided, and only felt her fears increase.
When he was done he pushed back his chair and she dropped her eyes, for his were now upon her and had the steady, reckoning look she had observed—and feared—when he regarded her for that moment at his entrance. She could not endure the feeling that he watched her, and watched her so. "You will go to bed soon, Percival," she said. "You do look so tired."
He replied: "I am not tired. I have something to ask you first, Aunt Maggie;" and after a pause he went on: "Aunt Maggie, I was telling you this afternoon that I thought I ought to be doing something. Well, more than that I thought I ought to be doing something, and more than merely telling you—because I know I was in a great state about it and went off in a great state."
She answered, "Yes, Percival?"
"You said there was plenty of time for that."
"Yes, Percival."
"There isn't, Aunt Maggie." And he went on quickly: "there isn't plenty of time to think about what I am going to do. I am not a boy any longer. Even if I started to-morrow I should be starting late. Every one at my age is doing something."
His tone was firm and quiet but was kind. She said that which made it take a harder note.
"Percival, you need only wait," she said, "till you are twenty-one."
She saw his face darken in a change as swift and chill as sudden shadow along the sea. "Oh, that!" he cried. "That! I don't want to hear that any more or ever again! Is that all you have for me?"
She clasped and unclasped her hands on the table before her. He waited several moments for her answer. Then he said: "And what am I to do till then?"
She told him: "Only wait with me, Percival."
He said very quietly: "No, I will not wait. I will not stay with you. I am going away."
The stress that each suffered was broken out of them by his announcement. The thought of losing him, the thought of how a word, revealing her secret, would keep him, broke from her in her cry: "No, no, Percival! Oh, Percival, no!"
Her sudden voice and its anguish smote him to his depths in his own stress as a sudden cry in the night that shocks the heart. He uttered in a voice she had never heard—most hoarse, most atremble: "Oh, understand! For pity's sake try to understand. I am so that I will never sleep again—never again till I have earned my sleep. Oh, understand that I am a man!"
She saw his dear face, his handsome face, his face that she loved so and was to lose unless she spoke, all twisted up as though he writhed in pain. She cried: "Percival, don't look like that. I can keep you. I cannot let you go."
He looked at her with eyes that told his anguish of this scene and of his spirit. "You cannot keep me," he said. "I am going."
She breathed: "By telling you I can keep you."
He said: "Tell me, then."'
She began, her tongue heavy as a key is rusty that is to turn in a lock closed eighteen years; "Rollo—" she began, and stopped.
He had for a moment believed that she intended to tell him this matter affecting his future that he knew must be delusion—some wonderful plan, as wonderful as impossible, such as a woman leading Aunt Maggie's retired life might have—whose delusion, having it before him, he could at last show her. But at her "Rollo," disappointed, he broke out, "Oh, what has old Rollo to do with it?"
Her voice was making a stumbling effort to hold on at turning the key. But his "Old Rollo" caused her to halt, afraid, as one turning a key in very fact might halt and draw back at a footstep.
He saw her face go grey with the hue of ashes. "Aunt Maggie!" he cried, and got up quickly and went to her. "I don't mean to be unkind. I must go. I cannot stay. But I'm not going angry—not running away. I love you—love you, you know how I love you. Just think of it as going on a visit. It's no more than that. I'm going with old Japhra—that's not like going, being with him, is it?"
She just said: "When, dear?"
"Darling, in the morning. At daybreak."
IV
She began to cry, and clung to him. But it was more than losing him had made that ashy hue in her face that had wrung his heart. It was realisation of a sudden thing that menaced her revenge—a thing suddenly arisen in its long, long path whose end she now was reaching. Thinking, when the hour came, the more dreadfully to strike Lady Burdon, she had deliberately made possible and had encouraged the friendship between Percival and Rollo. Had she gone too far? What when she told Percival and he saw it was "Old Rollo" he was to displace, "Old Rollo" upon whom he was to bring disaster—what if—?
She dared not so much as finish that question.
WITH EGBERT IN FREEDOM
I
In the morning when he came early to her room, she was easier and able only to suffer her distress at losing him. Thoughts had come to her, helping her; and helping her the more in that they were of a part with the fatalism which had assured her at Audrey's death-bed that nothing could go wrong in her scheme. His resolve to go away was surely, she thought, fate's contribution to her success. Always she had planned for twenty-one—when he should be of age, and qualified himself to avenge his mother. Last night, in agony at losing him, she had nearly robbed herself of that. Fate, in guise of her panic realisation of his affection for Rollo, had interfered to stop her. Last night she had thought it insupportable to be left without him. While she lay sleepless—and heard her darling pacing his floor in the next room—fate had again encouraged her heart by showing her that this was well, not ill—that this was fate working for her; well that he should now, in the last period, be separated from Rollo.
Thus supported she was saved from the uttermost extremity of the collapse that came upon her when fondly he kissed her as she lay in bed, left her, returned to press her to him again.—"Think of it as a visit, Aunt Maggie, only that. Just a visit to give these idle whacking great hands something to do"—and then was gone.
One or two—up thus early—who saw him go by and came to Aunt Maggie when it was noised that he had gone away, told her how stern he looked—how strange. Miss Purdie, early in her garden, had noticed it. "Oh, Miss Oxford, if I hadknown! Oh, tothinkhe was going when I saw him! Oh, and Isuspectedsomething was wrong. There wassomethingin his face I hadneverseen there before. I thought to myself 'Nowwhatis the matter with you, I wonder?' And Istoodandlookedafter him, and dropped one of my garden gloves and neverknewI had lost it until I was back in the house and found I had onlyoneto take off. Oh, when Ithinkof all his sweet ways and his handsome face...."
II
Stern he looked and strange, and stern his thoughts and difficult. His plans ran to coming up with Japhra on the Dorchester Road and joining him. Beyond?—he could supply nothing beyond. His urgent desire went to being away from home, and for his own respect and for his mind's ease working to earn his food. Beyond?—he could see nothing beyond. His thoughts and all his heart and all his being went to his Dora, to her exquisite beauty, to the rapture of their kiss, to the divine ecstasy of her whisper, "I shall always love you;" beyond?—black, black beyond, most utter black, most utter hopeless; emptiness most utter, mock most shrill, most sharp.
He laughed, poor boy; and "Fool! Fool!" cried, "abject fool!" He groaned, poor boy, and "Dora! Dora!" cried, "oh! Dora!" He set his teeth, poor boy, and braced his strength; threw up his chin and clenched a fist, and "Somehow! Somehow!" cried, "Somehow!"
Most to be pitied then, poor boy, as old friend wind, in whose path now he came, knew and mocked, or might have known and surely mocked—buffeting him with "Ha! Ha! Ha!" tossing his "Somehow! Somehow!" from his lips and chasing it and tearing it as old friend wind had heard resolves and mocked and tossed and chased and torn them from end to end along its course since mankind first resolving came.
But he was helped by that strong "Somehow!" as by resolve mankind—and youth the most of all—is ever helped. More stern, not less, it made him, but launched a shaft of light into the darkness of that Beyond—showing the adventure, not the desert there; inspiring him that somehow stuff was to be found there that somehow he would wrest to himself, somehow shape and beat to win him fulfilment of all his hopes.
Thus he was in brighter mood when presently he brought the white riband of the Dorchester road into view, in mood bright enough to laugh when, striking towards the spot where he proposed to pick up the van, he saw on a gate there a lank figure, bundle over shoulder, that suggested to him it could be no one but Egbert Hunt. He laughed—then had a tender look in his eyes, for his thoughts, as he made along in the direction of gate and figure, went to Rollo.
III
On his way home, when he had left Dora on the previous night, he had called in at Burdon Old Manor to bid Rollo good-by. Lady Burdon had gone to bed. He found Rollo in the billiard room, Egbert Hunt marking for him, and it was what had passed between them that had emphasised the endearment in his tone when he had said "Old Rollo" to Aunt Maggie.
Tender his look when he recalled how "Old Rollo," hearing he was going away, had dropped his cue and stared at him in blank dismay, then questioned him, and then had listened with twitching mouth when he had cried, "Oh, Rollo, things are so steep for me, old man. I can't explain. I must get out of this, that's all!"
For the first time—and the only time—in all their friendship it had been Rollo's to play the supporter. "Why, Percival, dear, dear old chap," he had cried, "don't look like that. For God's sake, don't. Whatever's wrong I can help you. We are absolute, absolute pals. No one ever had such a pal as you've been to me—now it's my turn. Stay here with us a bit, old man. Yes, that's what you'll do. Let's fix that, old man. That will make everything right. Everything I've got is yours—you know that, don't you, old man?"
And when he had shaken his head and had explained that it was work—work for his hands he wanted, and was going to find with Japhra, Rollo had vented his feelings on Egbert Hunt with "What the devil are you standing there listening for, Hunt? Get out of this! Didn't I tell you to go? Get out!" And when they were alone, and when he had seen that Percival was not to be moved, had revealed his affection in last words that brought a dimness to Percival's eyes as he recalled them.
"Men don't talk about these things," Rollo had said, "so I've never told you all you are to me—but it's a fact, Percival, that I'm never really happy except when I'm with you. I've been like that ever since we met, and in all the jolly days we've had together. You know the sort of chap I am—quite different from you. I don't get on with other people. I've always hated the idea of going to Cambridge this October because it means mixing with men I shan't like and leaving you. You're everything to me, old man. It's always been my hope—I don't mind telling you now you're going—that when I settle down, after I come of age—you know what I mean—it's always been my hope that we'll be able to fix it up together somehow. I shall have business and things to look after—you know what I mean—that you can manage a damn sight better than I can. And I'll want some one to look after me—the kind of chap I am; a shy ass, and delicate. And you're the one, the only, only one. Just remember that, won't you, old man?..."
IV
Percival was aroused from his warm recollection of it by the figure on the gate hailing him. Egbert Hunt it was. "Good lord!" Percival cried. "What on earth are you doing here—this time in the morning and with that bundle?"
"Coming with you," said Hunt.
"With me! Do you know where I'm going?"
Egbert Hunt pointed up the road where Japhra's van came plodding. "In that. Heard you tell Lord Burdon last night. Heard you say that Mr. Stingo's crowd was short of hands. The life for me. Fac'."
Percival stared at him—a grown man now, lanky, unhealthy, white of face.
"Does Rollo—does Lord Burdon know? Did he say you might go?"
"Told me to go to 'ell."
Percival laughed. "You'll find it that—you frightful ass."
"I'll be free," said Egbert darkly. "No man's slave I won't be any more. Every man's as good as the next where you're bound, I reckon. No more tyrangs for me. You're my sort, and always have been."
The van was up to them and pulled up with Japhra's surprised hail of greeting. Percival went to him where he sat on the forward platform. "Japhra, here's a hand for one of your crowd—a friend of mine. Is there work for him?"
Japhra looked at Egbert with unveiled belittlement. "There's work for all sorts," he said drily. "For him perhaps. Get up behind," he addressed Egbert. "I'll let old One Eye have a look at thee. He wants a hand."
Percival swung up beside Japhra and smiled good morning at Ima, who had come to the door. "Go on, Japhra."
"That's a poor lot, that friend of thine," said Japhra, clicking his tongue at Pilgrim. "How far dost thou come with us, little master?"
"All the way, Japhra."
Japhra looked at him keenly. "To Dorchester?"
"Farther than that. I'm going to be third lad in your boxing booth, Japhra. Go on; I'll explain."
WITH JAPHRA ON THE ROAD
I
It was two years—near enough—before Percival came again to Burdon Village. Egbert Hunt found work with old One Eye who had the Wild West Rifle Range. Percival became "Japhra's Gentleman" (as the van folk called him), living with Japhra and Ima in the van, and earning his way in Japhra's booth.
A tough life, a quick life, a good life; and he "trained on," as they said in the vans of beast or man or show that, starting fresh, slipped into stride and did well. He trained on. Little room for trouble or for brooding thoughts. Up while yet the day was grey; stiff work in boots and vest and trousers in taking down the booth and loading-up, harnessing and getting your van away before too many kept the dust stirring ahead of you. Keen appetite for the breakfasts Ima cooked, eaten on the forward platform with the van wheels grinding the road beneath. The long, long trail to the next pitch,—now with Ima as she sat, one eye on the horse, the other on her needle, sewing, darning, making; now plodding alongside with Japhra, drinking his quaint philosophy, hearing his strange tales of men and countries, fights and hard trades he had seen. Now forward along the long line of waggons, now dropping back where they trailed a mile down the road; joining this party or that, chaffing with the brown-faced girls or walking with the men and listening to their tales of their craft and of their lives. Sometimes the road from pitch to pitch was short; then the midday meal would be taken at the new site and there would be an hour's doze before the booths were set up and business begun. Usually the journey took the greater part of the day—frequently without a halt—and work must begin immediately on arrival; the boxing booth built up—first the platform on which Percival and Japhra, Ginger Cronk and Snowball White paraded to attract the crowd—a thing of boards and trestles, the platform, that by sheer sweating labour must be made to lie even and stable whatever the character of the ground; three uprights at either end that sometimes must be forced into soil iron hard and sometimes must be coaxed to hold firm in marshy bog. The booth itself to be rigged then—the wooden framework that must be lashed and nailed and screwed; the wide lengths of canvas eyeletted for binding together; stakes for the ring to be driven in; seats to be bolted together and covered—and all at top, top speed with a mouthful of nails and screws and "Who in hell's got that mallet?" and "A hand here! a hand sharp! Blast her! she's slipped again!" and many a bruised finger and always a sweating back. And then sharp, sharp into the flannels, and out with the gloves; and parade till the booth was full; and spar exhibition rounds alleged to be for weighty purses; and fight all the challengers from the crowd four rounds apiece, any weight; and top-up with a stiff six rounds announced by Snowball White: "A sporting gentleman having put up a purse for knock-out or win on points match between Ginger Cronk, ten stun champion of the west,—who beat Curly Hawkins in eight rounds, knocked out Alf Jacobs after a desperate ding-dong o' fourteen rounds, defeated Young Philipps in five rounds, and Jew Isaacs in sixteen,—and Gentleman Percival, a lad with a future before him, whom you'll be proud to have seen, gentlemen, discovered this summer by Gipsy Japhra, the man who held the lightweight champion belt for four years in America and who has trained with all the great ring heroes, bare-knuckle men, gentlemen, of a glorious Prize Ring period of the past. You are requested to pass no remarks during the progress of this desperate encounter, but to signify appreciation in the usual manner. Gentlemen, Mr. Ginger Cronk, Mr. Gentleman Percival—TIME!—" And so on; and winding up with "a remarkable exhibition in which Gipsy Japhra, partnered by Gentleman Percival, will show the style and methods of the old P. R. gentlemen"—and then back to the platform again, to parade, to fill the booth, to fight—and so till the last visitor had left the fair to night and to its hoarse and worn-out workers.
A tough life, a quick life, a good life; ... and Percival trained on. At first he had been considerably tasked by the rough and tumble, ding-dong work in the boxing booth following the strenuous labour of the day, with no time lost between pitch and pitch. Aching limbs he had dropped on his couch when at last rest came, and tender face, bruised from six or seven hours' punching, that even the soft pillow seemed to hurt. But he trained on. In a few weeks it was tired to bed but unaching, unhurt—only deliciously weary with the wearyness of perfect muscles and nerves relaxed to delicious rest; early afoot, keen, and sound, and vigorous; brisk, ready smiling to jump into the ring for the last P. R. exhibition with old Japhra as for the first spar with Ginger Cronk or Snowball White. "Thou art the fighting type," wise Japhra had told him years before; and those exhibition rounds with the old man were each of them lessons that brought him to rare skill with his fists.
While they sat together before their turn Japhra would instruct what was to be learnt this time, and while they sparred "Remember!" Japhra would call, "Remember! Good! Good!—Weak! Weak!—Follow it! Follow it!—Speed's thy game!—Quick as thou canst sling them!—See how that hook leaves thee unguarded!—Again!—All open to me again!—Again!—ah, take it, then!" andclip!to the unprotected stomach, savage as he could drive it, would come old Japhra's left; and Percival go gasping, and Ginger Cronk to the spectators: "With that terrible punch, gentlemen, Gipsy Japhra knocked out Boy Duggan and took the championship belt at Los Angeles. Put your hands together, gentlemen, and give 'em a 'earty clap." When the round was ended Japhra would go over it point by point. When they sat or walked together, at meals or on the road, he was forever imparting his advice, his knowledge, his experience. He waas never tired of teaching ... and Percival trained on.
II
There came a day when "Thou must go slow with me," Japhra said after they had finished their round. "I have put skill to thy youth and strength. Thou must go slow with me or the folks will see nothing of the parts I am to show them." There came a day when he was given demonstration—if he had cared to recognise it for such—that the van folk knew him for a clever one with his fists. Foxy Pinsent supplied it.
In all the crowd of tough characters that made up Maddox's Royal Circus and Monster Menagerie with its attendant booths Foxy Pinsent alone gave him a supercilious lip or darkling scowl where others gave him smile and welcome. Foxy Pinsent had an old grudge against him—as Japhra had said—and lost no opportunity to rub it. The fact that "Japhra's Gentleman" was in the way of becoming a rival attraction to his own fame among the crowds that flocked to the fairs sharpened his spleen. The ever increasing bad blood between the two factions—Maddox's and Stingo's—gave him chance to exercise it.
Percival came hot to Japhra one day: "Damn that man Pinsent, Japhra. He's going too far with me. He's been putting it about the vans that I am too much the gentleman to go with a Maddox man—that I said in his hearing I refused to go with Dingo Spain to buy bread yesterday because I would not be seen in his company by decent people."
Japhra looked up at the angry face: "Let him bide. Let him bide."
"I'm not afraid of him."
"Nor I of adders, but I do not disturb their nests—nor lie in their ways."
On a day the reason came for Percival to cross the adder's way. Egbert Hunt knocked over a bucket in which one of Pinsent's negro pugilists was about to wash. The man used his fists, then his boots, on Hunt, sending him back brutally used. Percival sought out the black, outfought him completely, and administered a punishing that appeared to him to meet the case. Then came Pinsent.
"You've put your hands to one of my men, I hear—to Buck Osborn?"
"An infernal bully," said Percival.
"You've put your hands to one of my men!"
"And will again if he gives me cause!"
Foxy Pinsent came nearer, thin mouth and narrow eyes contracted in his ring expression. "Watch me, my gentleman; my lads' quarrels are mine. Watch out how you go your ways."
Percival glanced behind to see he had room: "You can leave that to me. I'll not have my friends knocked about."
"It's you in danger of the knocking about, my gentleman! That fine face of yours would take a bloody mark."
Percival slipped back his right foot six inches and glanced behind him again: "Try it, Pinsent."
Foxy Pinsent noticed the action. He moved his left fist upwards a trifle, then dropped it to his side and turned away with a laugh: "I don't fight boys; I thrash 'em."
"You know where to find me," Percival said.
III
So and in this wise he trained on to the tough, quick, good life; and in spirit developed as in body. The deeper he knew Japhra, the wider became his comprehension of life. He had failed once in the struggle with self, and that on the very night of Japhra's instruction of how that struggle should be fought: he was training on now not to fail again if ever the Big Fight should come. "What, art thou vexed again?" Japhra would say when sometimes he fell to brooding. "Get at the littleness of it—get at the littleness of it. It will pass. Remember what endureth. Not man nor man's work—only the green things that fade but come again Spring by Spring; only the brown earth that to-day humbly supports thee, to-morrow obscurely covers thee; only the hills yonder that shoulder aside the wind; only the sea that changeth always but changeth never; only the wind on our cheeks here, that to-day suffers itself to go in harness to yonder mill and to-morrow will wreck it and encourage the grass where it stood. Lay hold on that when aught vexeth thee; all else passeth...."
He trained on. Trifle by trifle and more and more he received and held, understood and stored for profit the little man's philosophy; trifle by trifle, more and more, developed qualities that made for the quality of self-restraint that ripened within him. Whatever his mood there was always peace and balm for him in the van. Many signs discovered to him that he was not merely an accepted part of Japhra's life and Ima's but a very active part; the little stir of welcome told him that—the little stir that always greeted him when he came on them sitting together.
They called him "Percival" now, at his desire. To Japhra he was still sometimes Little Master; to Ima never. But in Ima's ways and in her speech he noticed altogether a change in these days. The "Thou" and "Thee" and "Thine" of her former habit were gone: she never appeared now with naked feet, but always neatly hosed and shod. Gentle in her movements too, and seemly in her dress, Percival noticed, and he came to find her strange—a thing apart—in her rough surroundings; strange to them and remote from them when she sat plying her needle, attending to his hungry wants and Japhra's, or mothering some baby from a neighbour's van. He came to think her—contrasted thus with all the sights and sounds about her—the gentlest creature that could be; her voice wonderfully soft, her touch most kind when she dressed a bruise or nursed him, as once when he lay two days sick. She mended his clothes; made some shirts for him; passed all his things through her hands before he might wear them; and never permitted him clothes soiled, or lacking buttons, or wanting the needle.
He was leaving the van once to go into the town against which they were pitched. She called him back. The scarf he wore was soiled, she said, and she came to him with a clean one.
He laughed at her: "It's absolutely good enough."
"No, soiled," she said, and took it from his neck and placed the other.
He playfully prevented her fingers. "I'm like a child with a strict nurse—the way you look after me."
She replied, smiling but serious: "It is not for you to get into rough ways."
"They're good enough for me."
She shook her head. "You are not always for such."
LETTERS OF RECALL
I
The first winter of this life Percival spent with Japhra in the van; the second took him, for the first time since he had broken away, back to "Post Offic." Ima left them, when the circus broke up in that first October, to go to her doctor friend in Norfolk, there to continue the education she had imposed upon herself. Egbert Hunt took her place, and the three started to tour the country till Spring and the reassembly of Maddox's should be round again. But winter on the road proved inclement to Mr. Hunt's nature. A week of frost in early December that had them three days snow-bound and on pinching short commons decided him for less arduous ways of life. He left them for London, his pockets well enough lined by his season's apprenticeship to old One Eye; they had news of him once as a socialist open air speaker in company with some organisation of malcontents of his kidney; once as prominent in an "unemployed" disturbance and in prison for seven days as the price of his activities.
"He will know gaol a longer term ere he has done," was Japhra's comment. "A weak, bad streak in him."
Percival laughed. "Poor old Hunt. More bitter than ever against 'tyrangs' now, Japhra. He's been shaping that way since I first knew him—often made me laugh with his outbursts."
"Best keep clear of that kind," Japhra said. "The stick for such."
They pushed North. Neither had a feeling for roofs or fireside that winter. The tinkering and the Punch and Judy kept them in enough funds scarcely to draw upon the season's profits. Japhra plied him at the one; Percival took chief hand in the other. A tough life, a quiet life, a good life. With only their two selves for company they talked much and read much of the three fighting books that were Japhra's library. Percival was almost sorry when Maddox's was picked up again and Ima rejoined them. He welcomed the second winter when it came; chance fell that it had him scarcely a month alone with Japhra when it saw him leave the van, and homeward bound to Burdon.
II
Two letters gave him this sudden impulse. Both were from "Post Offic"—one forwarded thence—and seemed to have partnered one another on a long and devious search before finding him. One was from Aunt Maggie. The other he opened first and opened with hands that trembled a little. Well he knew that regular, clear writing! He had only seen it in notes to Rollo, invitations to tea, in the days gone by, but it was as memorized to him as in him every memory of her was graven—Dora's!
His hands trembled that held this the first sign of her since he had left her in the drive at Abbey Royal on that night eighteen months before, and his breath ran quick. The first sign! He had urged her at their parting he might write to her. She had desired he should not. Letters at the French school might only come, it appeared, from parents, or in handwriting authorised by parents, and only to such quarters might be addressed. He had accepted the fate. Nay, well it should be so, he had told her. He would not—could not, for he loved her so!—see her again, be the time never so long, till somehow he had won some place in the world; very well, not even write to her. Their hearts alone should bind them: "For, Dora, you are to be mine. Somehow I shall do it—not see you till I have. You will remember—that is all, remember."
How had she remembered? He broke the seal and held his breath to read.
She wrote from Burdon House in Mount Street: explaining the address as though he had not known Mrs. Espart had taken it on lease at the time of Lord Burdon's death:—
DEAR PERCIVAL,
We returned here yesterday from the South of France, where we have been with Rollo and Lady Burdon. Did you know that Mother has taken Rollo's house here until he wants it and turns us out? I am writing for Rollo. I think you will be distressed to learn that he has been very ill—beginning with pneumonia. But we left him better, and they are following us to London soon. He most urgently desired me to tell you this, and that you must come and see him then. He says that he must see you again; and, indeed, he is forever talking of you. As to that, I must tell you that when I was with him we saw in an illustrated paper some pictures entitled "Life among the Showmen;" and in one, on a tent was to be seen "Gentleman Percival." From what Rollo told us, that was your tent. He was very excited about it; and to me it was very singular to have come upon it like that.
Well, I have written his address on the back of this, and you must certainly write to him or he will think that I have not told you and that I side with Lady Burdon and Mother in estimating that you are "very wild," which I do not.
I address this to your home; but it is hard to know if it will ever reach you.
Yours sincerely,DORA ESPART.
How had she remembered? No trace of any memory of love was in the lines he carried to his lips and read again and many times again. He reckoned nothing of that. He read what he had expected to find. He read herself, as in the months that separated that magic hour in the drive he had come again to think of her—as one as purely, rarely, chastely different from her sisters as driven snow upon the Downside from snow that thaws along the road; as one that he should never have dared terrify by his rough ardour into that swooning "Oh, Percival, what is it, this?" Realising that moment of his passion, he sometimes writhed in self-reproach to think how violently he must have distressed her: sometimes hoped she had forgotten it—else surely shame of how her delicacy had been ravished at his hands would make her shrink at meeting him again. So this letter that had no hint of memory of love rejoiced and moved him to his depths. Unchanged from his boyish adoration of her, it revealed her, and unchanged he would have her be. Its precise air, its selected words, its stilted phrases, spoke to him as with her very voice—"It was very singular to me;" "It is hard to know:" as icicles broken in the hand! Snow-White-and-Rose-Red—and frozen snow and frozen red!
He was ardent and atremble in the resolve that he must get to London on Rollo's return and make old Rollo the excuse to see her again—touch her, perhaps; speak to her, ah!—then, and not till then, bethought him of his second letter. From Aunt Maggie; and he drew it from his pocket with prick of shame at his neglect of it. He had from time to time written to Aunt Maggie. Her letters were less frequent; easier to write to "Post Offic" than for "Post Offic" to write to him, ever on the move.
Three closely-written sheets came from the envelope. They contained many paragraphs, each of a different date—Aunt Maggie waited, as she explained, until she could be sure of an address to which to post her letter. There was much gossip of a very intimately domestic nature, each piece of news beginning with "I think this will interest you, dear." Before he was through with the letter the recurrence of the phrase, speaking so much devotion, caused a moisture to come to his eyes. "I think this will interest you, dear"—and the matter was that Honor burnt a hole in a new saucepan yesterday. "I think this will interest you, dear"—and "fancy! fourteen letters were posted in the box to-day." "I think this will interest you, dear"—and would he believe it! "one of the ducks hatched out sixteen eggs yesterday."
The more trivial the fact, the more Percival found himself affected. He was touched with the profound pathos of Aunt Maggie's revelation of how he centered each smallest detail of her remote and lonely life; he was rendered instantly responsive to the appeal with which at the end of her letter she cried to him to come home to see her—if only for a night. "This will be the second Christmas that you have been away. The days are, oh! so very, very long for me without my darling boy."
He told Japhra that he must go—not for long, and if for longer than he thought, at least the first of the new year would see him back. They were in Essex. Urgent with this sudden determination that had him, he took train for London on the next morning, and before midday was set down at Liverpool Street Station. Holiday mood seized him now that he had taken holiday. He counted again and again the sixty-five pounds that, to his amazed joy,—he, who till now had never earned a penny!—Japhra paid him for two seasons' wage and share. It seemed a fortune—forced up the holiday spirit as bellows at a forge; and on the way to Waterloo he ridded his burning pockets of a portion of it in clothes and swagger kit-bag for this his holiday, and in presents that brought parcels of many shapes and sizes into his cab—for Aunt Maggie, for Honor, for Mr. Amber, for Mr. Hannaford, for all to whom his heart bounded now that he was to see them again.
III
In these delights he missed his train. Two hours were on his hands before the next, and as he contemplated them a daring thought (so he considered it) came to him. He took a hansom cab and bade the man drive him to Mount Street,—through Mount Street and so back again. He would see where she lived!
"Drive slowly up here," he told the man when the cab turned into the street for which he watched. "Do you know Burdon House?"
It was pointed out ahead of him. "Set down there many a time. Lord Burdon's 'ouse it was. Another party's got it now."
Percival leant back, not to be seen—not daring to be seen!—and stared, his pulses drumming, as he was slowly carried past.
Might there have troubled him some vague, secret feeling of association between himself and that brown, massive front of Burdon House with its broad steps leading to the heavy double doors, with its tall, wrought-iron railings above the area, with its old torch extinguishers on either side the entrance, with its quiet, impassive air that large old houses have, as of guardians that know much and have seen much—brides come and coffins go, birth and death, gay nights and sad, glad hours and sorry—and look to know more and see more? Might he have felt, as he told Aunt Maggie he had felt at Burdon Old Manor, "thinking without thinking, as if some one else were thinking," as he passed those steps where one that he might have called Father often had gaily passed, where one he might have called Mother had gone wearily up and come fainting, dizzily down?
He felt, nor was disturbed, by none of those. He only gazed, gazed as he would pierce them, at all its solemn windows, riveted its every feature on his mind; but only because it was where she must have looked, because it sheltered her where she must be. It was a new setting against which he might envisage her; he only thought of it as that.
MR. AMBER DOES NOT RECOGNISE
I
It was in dreams that night that vague, secret influences of his sight of Burdon House came stealing about him—if such they were; he attributed them to the disturbance of an event that greeted him within a few hours of his gay arrival at "Post Offic."
He had announced his coming by telegram. He took Plowman's Ridge on leaving the train at Great Letham, old friend wind greeting him with most boisterous Ha! Ha! Ha! and as he came down the slope two figures broke from the little copse and came fluttering up the Downside towards him—one slight with running tears, and outstretched, eager arms; the other gaunt and grim, uncompromising of visage, but with eyes aglisten.
"Aunt Maggie! Aunt Maggie!"
"My boy! My Percival!"
Her boy's arms went about her: for a space neither moved after that first cry. He only held her—close, close to him; she only clung to him, her face to his, and felt his dear face stop her flowing tears.
He held her from him then at arm's length, the better to gaze at her; and she overcame her foolish tears and told him: "How you have grown! How handsome you have grown!"
And Honor grimly, with grimness spoilt by chokey utterance: "Ah, handsome is as handsome don't make fine birds!"
"You've got it wrong, you frightful old goose!" cried Percival; and there was Honor's bony cheek to be kissed, her bony hug to take.
Then the disturbing even:—
Mr. Amber, Aunt Maggie told him, was dying. He had been told Percival was coming and had begged to see him. There had only been a brief interval of consciousness in the last twenty-four hours; Percival had better go at once.
II
Percival went immediately. The Old Manor had the deserted aspect he remembered when, as a little boy, he used to seek Mr. Amber in the library; and it was to the library he now was taken. Mr. Amber had been carried there. He knew he was to die. He had begged to die in the apartment he loved—among his books.
There Percival found him. He lay on a bed that had been placed in the centre of the room. He was asleep, breathing with a harsh, unnatural sound. A nurse sent over from Great Letham attended him, and Percival inquired of her: "I am Percival; has he been asking for me?"
She shook her head: "Since this morning only for Lord Burdon. Before that, frequently."
Percival went on one knee by the bedside. The mild old face that he had always known silvery and smiling seemed white as the pillow where it lay, pathetically lined and hollowed. On a sudden the eyes very slowly opened and looked full into Percival's bending above him. Percival experienced a shock of horror at what followed. Burning intelligence flamed into the dim eyes; the blood rushed in a crimson cloud to the white face; the thin form struggled where it lay.
"My lord! my lord!" Mr. Amber whispered; and "lift me—lying down before my lord!"
"Mr. Amber! I am Percival! You remember me!"
The nurse raised him, and with practised hand the pillows also, so that he reclined against them. "It is your friend Percival. Lord Burdon will soon come, perhaps."
He gave her no attention. He smiled at Percival in something of his mild old way. "We are very weak, my lord," he said. "Very weak."
"Mr. Amber! I am Percival! You remember what friends we were. You will get strong, and we will have some more reading together—you remember?"
Mr. Amber still smiling, his eyes closed again. "On the ladders."
"Yes—yes. On the ladders. You remember now—Percival."
Mr. Amber's smile seemed to settle upon his face as though his lips were made so. "Hold my hand, my lord."
He began to slip down in the bed. The nurse eased his position. He seemed back to unconsciousness again, his breathing very laboured. Night had drawn about the room and was held dusky by the candles. There stole about Percival, as he knelt, atmosphere of the memories he had recalled in vain attempt to arouse Mr. Amber's recognition. Again dusk here, and he with mild, old Mr. Amber. Again shadows wreathing about the high ceiling, stealing from the corners. Again a soft thudding on the window-pane, as of some shadow seeking to enter—death? Again the strange feeling of "thinking without thinking as if some one else were thinking"—and on that, worn out perhaps with his long day, perhaps carried by some other agency, he went into a dream-state in which vague, secret influences of his ride through Mount Street came upon him. He thought he was in Mount Street again and come to Burdon House, and that the door opened as he ascended the steps. He found the interior completely familiar to him, and for some reason was frightened and trembled to find it so. He went from familiar room to familiar room, afraid at their familiarity as though it was some wrong thing he was doing, and knew himself searching—searching—searching. What he searched he did not know. He just opened a door, and looked, and closed it and passed on. There were persons in some rooms—once Dora, once Rollo, once Lady Burdon. They stretched hands to him or spoke. He shook his head and told them "I am not looking for you," and closed the doors upon them. He climbed the completely familiar stairs and searched each floor. The fear that attended him suddenly increased. He had a sudden and most eerie feeling that some presence was come about him as he searched. He heard a voice cry: "My son! My son! We have waited for you. Oh, we have waited for you!" Fear changed to a flood of yearning emotion. He tried to cry, "It is you—you I am looking for!" He could not speak, and wrestled for speech; and wrestling, came back to consciousness of his surroundings. He was streaming with perspiration, he found. He saw next that Mr. Amber's eyes were open and looking at him, and heard him say, "Percival!"
Had that been the voice in that frightful dream?
"Mr. Amber! I knew you would know me!"
Recognition was in the eyes, but they were filming.
"Yes, he knows you," the nurse whispered.
Quite firmly, firmer than he had yet spoken: "Hold my hand—my lord," Mr. Amber said, and ended the words and ended life with a little throaty sound.
The nurse disengaged their hands. "But I am so glad he did just recognise you," she said kindly.