III
Old friend wind was in tremendous fettle that night. Percival battled along Plowman's Ridge on his way back and had battled twenty minutes when he cried aloud, venting his grief, and answering the nurse's words, "He didn't recognise me!"
And old friend wind paused to listen; came in tremendous gusts, Ha! Ha! Ha! and hurled the words aloft and tossed and rushed them high along the Ridge.
"Something was wrong with me in there," Percival exclaimed. "Did I speak sense to him? What was happening to me? Was I dreaming? What was it?—oh, damn this wind!"
Ha! Ha! Ha! thundered old friend wind, staggering him anew—Ha! Ha! Ha!
An absolutely irrepressible party, old friend wind.
DORA REMEMBERS
I
Percival was not the only one that in this period was disturbed by uneasy dreams, by vague and strange half-thoughts, by "thinking without thinking," as though some other influence were temporarily in possession of the senses. Lady Burdon was thus disturbed; Aunt Maggie, too. But of the three Aunt Maggie only knew the cause. If Lady Burdon, if Percival, had brought their unrest to her for explanation she might have explained it as she was able to explain her own—the "fluttering" that very often came to her in these days of Percival's visit home. She might have told them, as she told herself, that it was occasioned for that the years were closing in now—the prepared doom gathering about them all and they responsive to its nearness as gathering storm gives vague unease, headaches, depression when its emanations fall.
For her own part Aunt Maggie had herself in hand again—was again possessed by the certitude that nothing could go amiss with her plans. It had supported her through all these long years. It had been shaken, but had recovered again, by fear of Percival's affection for Rollo. It tore at her frantically, like a strong horse against the bridle, now that only a few months remained for its release in her revenge's execution. In little less than a year Percival would be twenty-one. She no more minded—relative to her plans—the proof of the fondness still between him and Rollo shown in his leaving her to stay with Rollo in town, than she minded—relative to the same purpose—his determination to be with Japhra again when winter ended. She suffered distress both at the one and the other in that they robbed her of the object of her heart's devotion; she felt no qualm that either would hinder her revenge. "Strange-like?" "Touched-like?" The villagers, when she passed them without seeing them in these days, were more than ever sure of that, poor thing; but she was more than ever sure—lived in the past and in the near, near future and had scenes to watch there.
II
Rollo's return to town was delayed longer than Dora had supposed in her letter to Percival. It was not till February that his doctors and his mother gave way to his protestations that he would never get fit if he could not go and have a glimpse of old Percival while he had the chance, and then it was only for a week—a passage through town to get some things done and to pick up the Esparts for a spring sojourn in Italy.
Thus Percival was several weeks with Aunt Maggie before he left her for Rollo—and Dora. Pleasant weeks he found them, reclaiming all the old friends (save that one whose grave only was now to be visited) and in their company, and in the new affection that they gave him for his strong young manhood, retasting again the happy, happy time of earlier days. There were jolly teas with the Purdies, brother and sister; plump Mr. Purdie never tired of saying, with quite the most absurd of his shrill, ridiculous chuckles, "Why, you've grown into a regular man and I expected to see a swarthy gipsy with earrings and a red neckcloth!", birdlike little Miss Purdie, more birdlike than ever with her little hops and nods and her "Nowfancyyou coming to take me to the Great Letham Church Bazaar! I waswantingto go. But you'renotto be extravagant, Percival. At Christmas you weredreadful. Youdon'tknow the value of money!" And there were almost daily visits to Mr. Hannaford, Stingo with him now till the road was to be taken again, who found Percival a proper full-size marvel now, and blessed his eighteen stun proper if he didn't, whose little 'orse farm was developing amazingly, who displayed it and who discussed it with Percival to the tune of leg-and-cane cracks of almost incredible volume, and who placed at Percival's entire disposal a little riding 'orse, three parts blood and one part fire, that showed him to possess a seat and hands that any little 'orse oughter be proud to carry, "bless my eighteen stun proper if he didn't!" (Crack!)
And there were thoughts of Dora ... who soon must be met and whom to meet he burned (his darling!) and feared (his darling and his goddess!—too rare, too exquisite for him, as tracery of frost upon the window-pane that touch or breath will break or tarnish!). Thus he thought of her; thus to help his thoughts often walked over to closed Abbey Royal; thus never could approach the gates without the thought that if, by some miracle, he met her there he could not dare approach her. He would steal away at her approach, he knew. Watch her if, unseen, he might unseen adore her—mark her perfect beauty, breathless see her breathe; watch her poised to listen to some bird that hymned her coming; watch her stoop to greet some flower's fragrance with her own. Watch the happy grasses take her feet and watch those others, benisoned and scented by the border of her gown; watch the tumbling breezes give her path and only kiss her—see them race along the leaves to give her minstrelsy. Speak to her?—how should he dare?
III
What his condition then when at last in London he came face to face with her? Rollo and Lady Burdon stayed their week at a private hotel—Baxter's in Albemarle Street. He was immediately made their guest (against Lady Burdon's wish, who desired now in the approach of the consummation of her own plans—and Mrs. Espart's—to detach the friendship she had formerly encouraged; but he did not know that). Rollo met him at Waterloo station and took him direct to the hotel. Eager to meet old Rollo again he was touched by the pathetic devotion of Rollo's greeting, touched also at the frail and delicate figure that he presented. The emotions were violently usurped by others when Baxter's was reached and he was taken to the private sitting-room Lady Burdon had engaged.
"Here's mother!" Rollo cried, opening the door.
Here also were Mrs. Espart and Dora.
The elder ladies were seated. Percival greeted them and fancied their manner not very warm. He had a swift recollection of the letter's advice that they joined in estimating him "Very wild"; but while he shook hands, while he exchanged the conventional civilities, his mind, nothing concerned with them, was actively discussing how he should comport himself, what he should see, when he turned to the figure that had stood by the window, facing away from him, when he entered.
"Never in London before—no," he said. "I have passed through once, that is all."
Then he turned.
She had come down the room and was within two paces of him. Her dress was of some dark colour and she wore fine sables, thrown back so that they lay upon her shoulders and came across her arms. A large black hat faintly shadowed the upper part of her face; her left hand was in a muff, and when he turned towards her she had the muff nestled against her throat. She gave the appearance of having watched him while he spoke, reckoning what he was, with her face resting meditatively upon her muff, her tall and slim young figure upright upon her feet.
There was no perceptible pause between his turning to her and their speaking. Yet he had time for a long, long thought of her before he opened his lips. It took his breath. So still she stood, so serene and contemplative her look, that he thought of her, standing there, as some most rich and most rare picture, framed by the soft dusk that London rooms have, and surely framed and set apart from mortal things.
She dropped her muff to her arm's length with a sudden action, just as a portrait might stir to come to life. She raised her head so that the shadow went from her face and revealed her eyes, as a jealous leaf's shade might be stirred to reveal the dark and dew-crowned pansy. She had not removed her gloves and she gave him her small hand—that last he had held cold, trembling and uncovered—gloved in white kid. She spoke and her voice—that last he had heard aswoon—had the high, cold note he thrilled to hear.
"It is pleasant to see you again," she said.
He never could recall in what words he replied—nor if indeed he effected reply.
Conventional words went between them before she and her mother took their departure; conventional words again at a chance meeting on the following day and again when the parties met by arrangement at a matinee. His week drew to a close. As its end neared he began to resist the mute and distant adoration which he had felt must be his part when he had thought of meeting her again and which, without pang, he at first accepted as his part now that they were come together. But when the very hours could be counted that would see her gone from him again he felt that attitude could no longer be endured. Insupportable to pass into the future without a closer sign of her!—insupportable even though the sign proved one that should reward his temerity by sealing her forever from his lips. He nerved himself to the daring—the very opportunity was hard to seek. Rollo, in the slightly selfish habit that belongs to delicate persons accustomed, as he was accustomed, to their own way, was ever desirous of having Percival to himself alone. He saw plenty of Dora at other times, he said (deliberately avoiding a chance of meeting her on one occasion); and when Percival, not daring to do more, made scruples on grounds of mere politeness, "But, bless you, she'll think nothing of it," Rollo said carelessly: "She's made of ice—Dora. I like her all right, you know. But she's not keen on anything. She's got no more feeling than—well, ice," and he laughed and dismissed the subject.
Had she not? It was Percival's to challenge it.
The chance came on the eve of the morrow that was to see his friend's departure for Italy and his own for a farewell to Aunt Maggie and so back to Japhra again. The Esparts came over to dinner at Baxter's hotel—came in response to Lady Burdon's private and urgent request of Mrs. Espart. The week of Percival's visit had tried her sorely. Night by night and every night, as she told Mrs. Espart, she had had that dreadful nightmare of hers again—that girl to whom she cried "I am Lady Burdon," and who answered her: "Oh, how can you be Lady Burdon?;" to whom she cried "I hold," and, who answered her, "No, you do not—Nay, I hold."
Aunt Maggie might have explained it. Mrs. Espart laughed outright. "That? Good gracious, I thought you had forgotten that long ago."
"So I had—so I had. I never thought of it again from the day I told you until last Wednesday night—the day Percival came to us. Since then every night..."
She paused before the last words and stopped abruptly after them.
"Well, my dear! You're not putting down to poor Percival what must be the fault of Mr. Baxter's menus, surely?"
Lady Burdon said without conviction: "No—no, I'm not. Still, it began then—and I don't like him now—don't care for Rollo to be so attached to him now—and had words with Rollo about it—and perhaps that was the reason and is the reason. Anyway, do come to dinner to-night—distract my thoughts perhaps—I can't face that nightmare again. It's on my nerves."
Mrs. Espart permitted herself the tiniest yawn, but promised to come; and came, bringing Dora.
IV
So Percival's chance came, or so came, rather, his last opportunity—for he ran it to the final moment. Announcement of the Esparts' carriage brought their evening to an end, and he went down with Rollo to see them off. Baxter's preserved its exclusiveness by preserving its old fashions; the staircase was narrow, so the hall. Mrs. Espart went first, then Rollo. Percival followed Dora.
As she came to the pavement she turned to gather her skirts about her. In the action she looked full at him.
The end?
He said: "Dora—do you ever remember?"
Her skirts seemed to have eluded her fingers and she must make another hold at them. He saw the colour flame where her fair face showed it, swiftly, deeply scarlet in that shade on either cheek. He saw her young breast rise as though that red flood drew and held it—saw her lips part for words, and held his breath to catch her voice.
"I have not forgotten," she whispered.
BOOK OF FIGHTS AND OF THE BIG FIGHT.THE ELEMENT OF COURAGE
BOSS MADDOX SHOWS HIS HAND
I
Ima asked: "Of what are you thinking, Percival?"
"Of when I shall leave you all—and how."
She replied: "Strange, then, how thoughts run. It was in my mind also."
Stranger how tricks and chances of life go! This trick and that—and this was to be his last night with the van folk. That chance and this—and within a few hours he was to be returned to Aunt Maggie, bade good-by at the close of his visit scarcely four months since. This trick and that, that chance and this, and he was to be put in the way of winning Dora—a way that never had seemed so obscure, never so impossible of attainment as when he came back to Japhra with her "I have not forgotten," at once shouting to him that she loved him and mocking him with the difference between her estate and his.
Already the tricks and chances were afoot. He was alone with Ima upon a rising bluff of common land. Considerably below them, so that they looked down as it were from a cliff to a valley, the fair was pitched and in full swing—that it was in full swing and he idle was the first step in the freakish hazards that were to encompass him this night.
II
A stifling evening had succeeded a burning day. Here on the bluff a breeze moved cool and soft as it had been waftings from the dusky cloak night dropped about them; below was heat and crowded life and clamour, rising in the waving reek of the naphtha flares; in shouts of the showmen; in shrill laughter from village girls at fun about the booths, or horseplay with their swains; in ceaseless rifle-cracks from the shooting-galleries—in drum-thumpings, in steam organs, in brazen instruments; occasionally, high above it all, in enormousoo-oo-oomphsfrom the caged lions in the huge marquee that housed Boss Maddox's Royal Circus and Monster Forest-bred Menagerie—a tremendous sound, as Percival thought when it came booming across the clamour, that was a brute's but that seemed, like some trump of protest against the din, to make brutish the human cries and shouts it governed.
Two crowds, leaving and entering, jostled one another at the entrance to the Royal Circus and Forest-bred Menagerie; stretching on either hand from where they pressed ran the minor shows under Boss Maddox's proprietorship, forming a noisy, flaring street that ended, facing the circus marquee, with "Foxy" Pinsent's Academy of Boxing and School of Arms. Maddox's Royal Circus and Forest Bred Menagerie at one end, Pinsent's fine booth at the other—between them Maddox's Living Pictures, Maddox's Wild-West Shooting Gallery, Maddox's Steam Switch-back and Aerial Railway, Maddox's Original Marionettes, Maddox's Premier Boatswings, Maddox's Monster Panorama, Maddox's Royal Theatre and Concert Divan, Maddox's Elite Refreshment Saloons, Maddox's American Freak Museum, and all Maddox's smaller fry—coker-nut shies, hoop-las, Living Mermaid, Hall of Strength, Cave of Mystery, Magic Mirrors, and the rest of them; owned by Boss Maddox, financed by Boss Maddox, or, if of independent ownership, having the Boss's favour and acknowledging the Boss's ownership.
No booths whose proprietors called Stingo Boss were open: and that was one step in the tricks and chances of the day.
The gaunt figure of Boss Maddox, watchful and urgent this night for the very reason that the Stingo booths were closed, passed now along the further side of lights towards Foxy Pinsent's pitch. Head bent towards his left shoulder; hands clasped behind his back; uncommonly tall; uncommonly spare—that was Boss Maddox anywhere.
A further mark, as he moved through his little kingdom, proclaimed him who he was and what he was. Frequent nods of his head he made in response to hat touchings or greetings in the crowd; frequent stoppings to exchange a few words with some figure that stepped into his path—and broke away from others or pushed others aside to step there: the local tradesmen these, or members of the local Borough Council, anxious to be in with Boss Maddox and so to secure the considerable patronage in victualling and provender he was able to distribute; or anxious to let fellow-townsmen observe on what familiar terms they were with the Boss, and concerned to know that he found his pitch to his liking. A mighty man, the Boss in these days, who bought up his pitches and paid handsomely for them a year in advance, who on a famous occasion had fallen into dispute with a Borough Council, refused their district the honour of his shows, and thereby—by loss of entertainment and loss of revenue—had caused the Borough Councillors to suffer defeat at the next election. Things like that were remembered up and down the west of England; Boss Maddox in the result was reckoned a man to be placated, to be done homage, and to have his interests preserved. Only the old Stingo gang resisted him, and this day he had paid them dear for their want of allegiance.
His parade brought him at length to "Foxy" Pinsent's Academy of Boxing and School of Arms. Foxy Pinsent had risen to be his lieutenant and right-hand man in the management of his business, and Boss Maddox was come to compare notes on how the Stingo crowd were taking their set-back.
Eight pugilists in flannels—two of them negroes—displayed themselves upon the raised platform outside the Academy of Boxing and School of Arms. Pinsent, in a long fawn coat reaching to his shoes, paced before them, crying to the assembled crowds their merits, their prowess, their achievements and their challenges. He swung a great bundle of boxing gloves in his right hand and, amid delighted shouts of the spectators, sent a pair flying to venturesome yokels here and there who pointed to one or other of the eight stalwarts in acceptance of combat.
As Boss Maddox pushed his way to the front the eight turned and filed into the booth. He raised a hand. Foxy Pinsent tossed a last pair of gloves to the crowd, came down the steps from the platform and joined him.
"How are they taking it, Boss?"
"Pretty tough. Move round with me and let 'em see we're watching. In a while I'm to have a word with Stingo and Japhra—you with me, boy."
Foxy Pinsent spat on the ground. "We've fixed the ——s this time," he said venomously.
III
The fixing of the Stingo crowd had been Boss Maddox's culminating stroke in the heavy hand he had pressed these many seasons upon those who named Stingo Boss. The bad blood between the two factions of which Japhra had told Percival years before had steadily increased with Boss Maddox's increasing dominance and position. Waxing more and more determined to crush under his rule the little knot of Stingo followers—or to crush them out—Boss Maddox had this day given them an extra twist—and they had made protest by refusing to erect their booths.
A new Fair ground had been marked out here since the last visit of the showmen. A broad stream marked one boundary, bridged only by the highroad bridge a mile up from the new ground. The new ground was small. Maddox's would require it all, the Boss announced. Beyond the stream was common land, free to all. "Yonder, you!" said Boss Maddox to the Stingo crowd. "Yonder, you!" and pointed across the stream with his stick.
It meant going back a mile and a mile down again so as to come to the common land. It meant worse than that, with a discovery that changed the first demur to loud and bitter protest: "No bridge except the highroad bridge? Then how were folk going to get over from the Fair Ground? No bridge? What game's this, Boss?"
"Your game," Boss Maddox told them in his stern and callous way. "Naught to do with me that the Fair Ground's changed. Your game. Get out and play it."
The angry crowd went to Stingo and Stingo to Boss Maddox. Boss Maddox could not refuse parley with Stingo, and gave it where the great pole of his circus marquee was being fixed—his own followers grouped about, enjoying the fun; Stingo's packed in a murmuring throng behind Stingo's broad back.
The interview was very short. "You're going too far, Boss Maddox," Stingo said in his husky whisper. "This ain't fair to the boys. Grant you the ground's too small. After your tent and Pinsent's there the rest should fall by lot. That's fair to all. It was done on the road Boss Parnell's time when you and me were boys."
"It's not done in mine," said Boss Maddox, and his words called up two murmurs—approval and mocking behind him, wrath before.
Stingo waited while it died away, then went close with words for Boss Maddox's private ear. "You've been out to make bad blood these three summers, Maddox," he said. "Have a care of it. I'll not be answerable for my boys here."
His tone was of grave warning, as between men of responsible position. But it was Foxy Pinsent, standing with Maddox, who replied to him. "We'll drink all we may brew," Foxy Pinsent said, and sneered: "We're not fat old women this side, Stingo."
The flag of a temper kept in control but now burst from his command came in violent purple into old Stingo's face. His huskiness went to its most husky pitch, "By God, Foxy! I'll stuff it into ye, if need be," he throated.
He took a calmer and wiser mood back to his followers, joining with Japhra in counselling a making the best of it across the stream to-night and a deputation to Boss Maddox, when heads on both sides were cooler, on the morrow. They would not listen to him. They would stay where they were, they told him. They could not open their booths here—they would not open them there; here, to assert their rights, they would stay. What was Boss Maddox's game?—to rid himself of them altogether?—they who had worked the West Country boy and man, girl and woman, in this company before Boss Maddox was heard of? Were they going to be turned adrift from it—from the roads they knew and the company they knew? Not they!—not if Boss Maddox and his crowd came at 'em with sticks! Let 'em come! Ah, let Boss Muddy Maddox and his crowd try 'em a bit further and the sticks would come out in their own hands as they came in their fathers' in the big fight that sent the Telfer crowd north in '30....
IV
So the Stingo vans remained where they had been driven up on the edge of the Fair ground. The men for the most part shared their afternoon meal in groups that sullenly discussed their hurt. Some broodingly watched the erection of their rivals' booths. A few gathered about Egbert Hunt, who had oratory to deliver on this act of oppression. The winters Hunt had spent with "unemployed" malcontents had given a flow of language to a character that from boyhood had shaped away from honest work and towards hostility against authority. In the vans, among men who sweated as they toiled, and worked in the main for their own hands, he was commonly an object of contempt. To-day he found audience. He had words and ranted his best—"Tyrang!" the burden of it; rising, as he tossed his arms and worked himself up, to "'Boss' Maddox is he? 'Oo appointed 'im boss over you or over me? 'Boss' Maddox? Tyrang Maddox—that's what I name 'im."
He observed a titter run round those who listened to him; turned to seek its cause; with Tyrang Maddox found himself face to face; and before he could make movement of escape was sent to the ground with a stunning box on the ear. He shouted a stream of filthy abuse and made to spring to his feet. Boss Maddox's hand pinned him down and Boss Maddox's whip came about his writhing form in a rain of blows that, when they were done and he had taken the kick that concluded them, left him cowering.
"Whose hand are you, you whelp?" Boss Maddox demanded.
Egbert Hunt looked up at him. He was gasping with sobs of pain and sobs of rage. He looked up, hate and murder in his eye, and pressed his lips between his sobs.
The whip went up. "Whose hand?"
Egbert cowered back: "Old One-Eye's."
"Keep to his heel. Cross my sight again and the same is waiting for you."
Boss Maddox stalked away. A crowd had gathered from all parts of the camp, attracted by Egbert's screams. Egbert raised himself on one arm and looked at the grinning faces before him. He got stiffly to his feet, mumbling to himself, his breast still heaving with sobs. "Me, a full-grown man, to be used like a dog! Cross his path!—ill day for him when I do!"
He went a few paces, walking parallel to those assembled. Suddenly he turned to them, tears running down his face, and threw up his clenched hands. "I'll put a knife in 'im!" he cried. "By God, I'll put a knife in 'im!"
The crowd laughed.
IMA SHOWS HER HEART
I
Percival suggested to Ima that they should use in a stroll the leisure evening that the trouble in the vans had given him. Some drink had been passing as the day wore on, and the heat between the two factions was not better for it. Here and there bickerings were assuming an ugly note.—"Let's get out of it," Percival said. "Come along, Ima, up to the top over there—Bracken Down they call it."
It was close upon nine o'clock as they left the Fair. They picked their way along the paths through the tall bracken that gave the place its name—reaching a clearing in the thick growth, by mutual accord they dropped down for a glad rest.
Very still and cool here among the fern, the Fair a nest of tossing lights, faint cries and that lion's trump ofoo-oo-oomphbeneath them; a remote place of silence, and silence communicated itself to them until Ima broke it by her question "Of what are you thinking, Percival?" and to his reply—that he thought of when he should leave them all, and how—told him "Strange then how thoughts run. It was in my mind also."
Stranger how tricks and chances of life go! Looking back afterwards, recalling her words, Percival realised how events had run from one to another upon the most brittle thread of hazards. The trouble in the vans had sent him out here with Ima; that was the merest chance; that was the beginning of the thread.
Very cool and remote here among the bracken. He had gone back to silence after her last words. It was she who spoke again.
"Are you weary of it?" she asked.
He was lying at his full length, face downwards, his chin upon his clasped fingers. She sat upright beside him, one knee raised and her hands about it.
He turned his cheek to where his chin had been and looked up lazily at her: "Why, no, not weary of it, Ima. I like the life. I've been at it a long time. When the day comes I shall be sorry to go."
She was looking straight before her. "A sorry day for us, also," she said.
"Will you be sorry, Ima?"
"Of course I shall be sorry."
He gave a sound of mischievous laughter. Lying idly stretched out there, the warm night and the unusual sense of laziness he was enjoying stirred in him some prankish spirit, or some spirit of more warm desire, that he had never felt in Ima's company. "Yet you are always trying to get rid of me," he said; and he laughed again on that mischievous note, and snuggled his cheek closer against his hands, and felt that spirit run amicably through him as he stretched and then released his muscles.
She looked down at him, smiling. "Unkind to return my conduct so," she said. "No, I have but reminded you you are not always for the rough ways."
He had watched her face as he lay there, seen how her hair, her brow, her eyes, alone in all the shadow about Bracken Down caught the light from where the light was starred across the sky, and how her lips seemed also to attract it. Now when she looked down and smiled, it was as if some gentle radiance were bent upon him, or as if Night, in visible embodiment, gracious as Summer night, starred, tranquil, cool, stooped to his couch.
He got quickly to his feet, that spirit tingling now.
"Going?" she asked, and the lamp of her face was turned up to him so that he looked full into it.
"No," he said, pronouncing the word as he had made his laugh—as if some inward excitement pressed its escape.
"No." He came in front of her, went on his knees and sat back on his heels. That brought him close to her, facing her.
"Ima," he said, "you've got six—seven stars on your face, do you know that?"
She smiled, unaware of his mood.
Himself he was scarcely aware of it: "Well, you have, though," he said. He approached a finger towards her and pointed, and almost touched her while he spoke. "You have, though. Two on your hair—there and there. One on your forehead—there. One in each eye—that's five. Two on your mouth—one here, one there: seven stars!"
"Foolish talk," she smiled. "We had a Romany woman once with us who told fortunes. Just so have I heard her speak to village girls. When—"
His eyes betrayed him. Concern and worse leapt into hers. She thrust out a hand to stop him, but he bent forward swiftly and strongly. Urged by the spirit that laziness and the warm, still night had put into him, that had led him on in mischief and that now suddenly engulfed him—"Stars on your mouth!" he cried, and caught his arms about her to kiss her.
II
He felt her twist as she were made of vibrant steel and strong as steel. His lips missed hers, and scarcely brushed her face. He tried for her lips again, laughing while he tried, and pressed her to him and felt her twist and strain away with a strength that surprised him while he laughed.
"Only a kiss, Ima! Only a kiss!"
She was of steel, but he held her. She spoke, and the strangeness of her words made him release her. "Ah, ah, Percival!" she gasped. "How you despise me!"
He let her go and she sprang away and upright, as a bow stick released. He let her go, and stared at her where she stood panting fiercely, and stared in more surprise when, checking her sobbing breaths, she spoke again.
In their struggle her hair had loosened and it fell, half-bound, in a heavy cascade upon one shoulder and down her breast. The starlight gleamed on it and on her dark face framed against it. She had a wild look, as if her mild beauty had suddenly gone gipsy; her sobbing voice had a wild tone, and he noticed the drop back to the "thee" long absent from her speech: "Ah, this to happen!" she cried. "This! Ah, what a thing I must be to thee!"
The strangeness and the violence of her distress astonished him. What had he done? Tried for a kiss? In the name of all the kisses snatched from pretty girls—! "Why, Ima?" was all he could say. "Ima?"
She dropped to the ground with a collapsed action as though, oppressed as she was, standing were insupportable. She covered her face with her hands, ceased her sobbing breaths; but he saw her trembling in all her frame.
Rising, he went to her, put a hand on her shoulder, and, at the convulsive movements he felt, made deeper the contrition for his careless act that her distress now caused him. "Ima, what have I done? Only tried to kiss you in fun. A sudden, silly thing—I don't know why—I never meant it—but only a kiss in fun."
He waited a moment, grieved for her, half-vexed with her—then had his answer and was faced with emotions as sudden and unexpected as when a moment before, without premeditation, he had her struggling in his arms.
She drew a deep breath and answered him. "That is it—in fun!" she said. She threw out her arms across her raised knees—the palms upward, the fingers curved in a most desolate action. "In fun!" she said intensely. "I would to God—I would to God thou hadst done it in passion."
He came in front of her. "Tell me what it is I have done to you," he said firmly.
The intensity went from her voice. She spoke then and thenceforward very softly, as if she were making explanation to a child, and in her answer she used again the term that went with the days of the "thee" and "thou" now returned to her.
"Used me," she answered him softly, "used me as any wanton is to be used, little master."
He cried, "Ima! After all these years we have known each other—a kiss in fun!"
But she went on: "What maids are kissed in fun? That a man weds does he use so? That the sisters of such as thou art does he so use? That give him cause for regard does he so use? What maids, then?" and answered herself, "Such as I am!"
"Oh!" he cried, wounded with pity for her, "Oh, Ima—Ima, dear, don't talk like that. What can you mean? I am sorry—sorry! Forgive me!"
Her sad eyes almost smiled at him. "I have nothing to forgive thee," she said. "It was but a foolish fancy that I had. Well that it should be broken—ended that;" and she looked again across the dark bracken, her arms extended upon her knees in that desolate pose.
It wrung him with pity—his dear Ima! "But tell me!" he pressed her, anxious to soothe her. "Tell me what you mean by fancy—by saying 'ended that!'"
She answered: "That all I had tried should be broken suddenly—suddenly as a star falls. I had not minded if I had been warned."
"What have you tried, Ima?—I want to know—to show you how sorry I am."
She was silent for a considerable space. When she began to speak she spoke without pause, without modulations of her low tone, without notice of the stammered exclamations that her words broke from him.
"Hear me, then," she said. "The thing is no more mine—thou mayst know it. To what shall I go back for when I first knew that I loved thee?—"
"Ima!"
"Why, from the first I knew it and began to try to fit me for thee. Why went I to shut myself in roofs and walls, to learn hard books and gentle ways and how to speak in thy fashion?—so thou shouldst not scorn me, so I might make me to be seemly in thy sight—"
"Ima! I never dreamt—!"
"—Why have I gone my ways so—winter by winter leaving my father's van? Because I loved thee since I first saw thee—"
"Don't! Don't!" he cried. There was something completely terrible to him in this avowal from a woman—immodest, shameful, horrible—that must cause her violation of her most sacred feelings as they would be violated were she thrust naked before him; that caused him agony for her suffering, and agony that he should see it, as he would endure agony for her and for himself if made to see her nudity. "Don't, Ima! Don't! I understand—I see everything now. I ought to have known!"
But she went on—it might have been some requiem she made to some poor treasured thing now dead in her extended arms. She went on: "Because I loved thee—ah, worshipped all thy doings, all thy looks—loved thee with all the love that men and women love—as mothers love, as lovers love, as friends love, as brothers love,—there is no love but I have loved thee with it, and I have thought them all and loved thee with each one the better to enjoy my love—"
"Ima!"
"—Why cried I 'this to happen!' Because by thy kiss I saw that I was nothing to thee—and less than nothing. All my poor trying suddenly proved of no avail. All my poor fancy that haply thou mightst turn to me if I could be worthy of thee suddenly gone to dust that the winds sport. Why cried I 'ended that!'—"
She sighed very deeply. Her trembling had in some degree communicated itself to him. He trembled for the shame he knew she must be suffering, and for the effect upon him that her gentle, even voice had, crooning its tragedy in the darkness of their remote and silent situation, and for the effect upon him of that long sigh—rising and then falling away to tiniest sound, as it had been the passing of some spirit released to glide away across the bracken.
"—Why cried I 'ended that'?" and then her long, sad sigh; and then: "Because all is nought, little master;" and he saw her fingers extend and her head bow a little....
She arose then, slowly, and he went back to give her room. Her hair had slipped the last coil that held it, and was in a black sheen to her waist before one shoulder and in a black sheen to her waist behind her back. She began to loop it up with deft but tired fingers and looked at him while she twined it. Her face was very kind to him; the stars caught it, and he saw those stars upon her mild mouth that had tricked him to his wanton act: they seemed to show her almost smiling at him.
He asked: "Are we going now?"
She smiled then, gently. "Nay," she said. "I have left my poor secrets here—suffer me to go alone." Then turned and left him; and he watched her form swiftly merging to the darkness—now high among the bracken, now lower and lower yet, as though it were a deepening pool she entered. Now gone.
III
It seemed to Percival, left alone, as if some horrible and most oppressive trouble had befallen him. This piteous thing had struck so suddenly that for some moments he remained only numbed by it, as numbness precedes the onset of pain from a blow. When the full meaning returned to him, "Good God!" he cried aloud, "What a thing to have happened!" and most tenderly—with increasing tenderness, with increasing grief—he went through all she had revealed and how she had revealed it. It was surely the most monstrous pitiful thing that ever could be, her secret plots and strivings to fit herself for what she yearned—tasking herself in "gentle ways," in speech of his fashion, in hard books, in the life between walls and under roofs; he ached for her in every bone as he thought of her thus schooling herself—for him. "Oh, horrible, horrible!" he muttered, writhing for her to remember all her little cares for him—her attention to his clothes, her concern that he should not get into "rough ways"; horrible! horrible! now that he knew their loving purpose. And then her revelation of it! He must rise and pace, the better to endure the recollection of that. How terribly she struggled in his arms! "God, what a beast a man can be!" he cried. What agony must have wrung that cry, "Ah, Percival, how you must despise me!" What agony that "This to happen!" What pain, what bleeding of her heart, that lamentable ending—"Because all is naught, little master!" Happy, happy time when first she used to call him by that quaint endearment; in what travail, in what blackness, it had come from her now! What had she done? Why fastened such a love upon him whose love was utterly pledged away? Nay, the torment was What had he done? What vile and brutal ends had he used to knock her to her senses? What manner of sympathy had he given her when she lay bleeding?
"I must go to her," he said abruptly; and at the best speed the darkness would admit he twisted his way through the paths among the bracken towards the distant nest of lights.
PERCIVAL SHOWS HIS FISTS
I
He ran in two moods. First he was earnest above all things to hold her hands and comfort her—to explain, to soothe, to endear. To hold her hands and tell her how fond, how very, very fond he was of her, of how they should be sister and brother, and the happiest and fondest sister and brother that ever were. To thank her, thank her for all her sweet, devoted ways. To tell her how good she was, how he admired her. That was one mood. The other was a savage and burning anger at himself, partly for his wanton act towards her, partly born of his agony of discomfort at the revelation she had made. The moods were intermingled. He yearned to comfort her for her suffering, he writhed to think he had witnessed that suffering. He was in the one part utter tenderness towards her—in the other flame, furious flame, most eager for vent.
The tricks and chances of life had fuel for the flame, not outlet for the tenderness, as he came to the nest of lights.
He went quickly to Japhra's van. It was end-on to him as he approached; and as he came to the shafts he saw a group of men there talking,—Japhra, Stingo, Boss Maddox. He supposed—and was confirmed by the words he caught as he passed them—that they were discussing the dispute. "I'll ask Pinsent," he heard Boss Maddox say, and saw and heard him turn and call "Pinsent! Here, Foxy, where are you?" as though Foxy Pinsent had been of the group a moment before.
He passed quickly to the tail of the van and himself found Pinsent. "Angry, my pretty duck?" Foxy Pinsent was saying. "Angry? Chuck! chuck!"
It was to Ima that he was saying it; and with his last words, lolling against the entrance steps, he put out a hand to chuck her chin. She stepped out of his reach, and in relief cried, "Ah, Percival!" as Percival approached.
Flame, furious flame most eager for vent!
Choked for words by the flame's fierce leap and burn, "Clear out of this!" Percival said.
Foxy Pinsent turned his head slowly from Ima to Percival and looked Percival coolly up and down with the foxy smile. He put his elbows back to lean against the van, and very deliberately crossed one foot over the other. "Go to hell, won't you?" he said mildly.
It was a double smart he took to wipe the studied insolence from his face and to plant venom there. Percival's open hand that struck his mouth—a tough, vicious jolt with the arm half-crooked, a boxer's hit—drove his head against the van; and his "Ah, curse you!" followed the sharp smack and thud quick as if the three sounds—clip, thud, hiss—belonged to some instrument discharged.
He sprang forward, head back, hitting quickly with both hands, like the rare boxer he was—feinted with his right, drove his left against Percival's forehead, took a sharpone-two!on mouth and throat, and they were engaged, fighting close, fighting hard, and savage and glad, and fierce and exultant, each of them, at last to spring their common hate.
In its suddenness and fury, in its briefness and the manner of its check, the thing was like the suddenwoof!of flame of a spark to a handful of gunpowder. There is the belch and blinding flash of heat, then the thick cloud of smoke. There was the swift drum of blows, then the rush of feet—Stingo, Japhra, Boss Maddox, men from here, men from there, in that trap-door swiftness with which commotion throws up a crowd—and the two were grasped and pulled apart and held apart, struggling like terriers that have had the first taste of blood and to collect the glut are gone blind to blows or authority.
Stingo from behind threw his two immense arms about Percival and leant with all his weight the better to lock them. Boss Maddox thrust his tall form before Pinsent, and snatched a wrist and gripped it in his long fingers. Japhra was at Percival's hands that tore at Stingo's.
"Lay on here, some of you!" Boss Maddox called, struggling with Pinsent's arm. "Get that other arm!—Dago! Frenchy! Jackson! Darkie! Look alive with it! Drop it, Foxy! Drop it! What the devil's up with you?"
And Stingo's strained whispers, in jerks and gusts by reason of his exertions: "Easy, Percival! Easy with it! Easy, I say! You can't shift me, boy! Get that hand, Japhra! Get that hand!"
Then the smoke clears and there remains only the acrid smell of the burning, and the sense of heat.
The two were dragged apart till a safe space separated them and they fronted each other before the groups about them—their faces furious, their bodies still, but their hands plucking at the hands that held them as they made their answers.
"Struck me!" Foxy Pinsent shouted. "Struck me! By God! I'll teach him! I've been saving it up for him a long time. Let me go, Boss! What's the sense of holding me like this? Struck me, the whelp, I tell you! I've got to have him first or last! Let me go!"
And Percival: "And more to give you, Pinsent! Teach me, eh? If I could get!—Japhra! Stingo! It's no business of yours, this! Damn your interference! Japhra! Japhra! Let go my hands!"
They cooled a little as the hands still held them and their explanations were demanded. Boss Maddox left Pinsent to other constraint and came and stood in the little space between the two groups, hands behind his back in the familiar posture, shoulders slightly hunched, head on one side, and turning it this way and that as Percival or Pinsent spoke.
Presently he looked at Stingo. "That boy's right," he said, with a jerk back at Pinsent. "He's been struck. He's Foxy. This can't end here. He's got to have his rights."
"He'll get 'em," Stingo said, with as much grimness as his huskiness could convey. "He'll get 'em if I let this lot loose. Don't you let him worry, Boss."
Boss Maddox turned squarely on Pinsent. "Give it a rest till the morning, Foxy. You boys can't fight in this darkness—not you two."
Pinsent laughed: "I'm not going to fight him. I'm going to thrash him."
"Let me go, Japhra! Boss, let's have hands off! It's our show—no one else's."
Boss Maddox went back to his first contention. "This can't end here, Stingo," and Japhra answered him: "Nay, there's blood to be let, Boss. We can't stop it—nor have call to." He released Percival while he spoke, but kept a hand on him, and motioned Stingo's arms away. He spoke in his slow habit, and with seeming reluctance, but there was a glimmer of relish in his voice. "They've to settle it, Boss."
"Will you fight him, Pinsent?" Boss Maddox asked.
Pinsent shook off the clutches upon him. He came forward two deliberate paces, and with great deliberation stretched himself, and with great deliberation spat upon the ground. Then fixed his eye on Percival. "If he likes to get out of it with a whipping," Pinsent said, "I'll learn him the manners he wants with your whip and let him off at that. If he's got the guts to stand up, I'll roast him till he lays down." He thrust forward his body towards Percival and said mockingly: "Which way? Which way, my pretty gentleman?"
Percival's face was a white lamp in the dusky night. "Give us room!" he said.
Then Pinsent's voice lost its deliberate drawl and rasped out in a rasp that showed his breeding and showed his hate: "I want light to serve you up, my gentleman! Light and a pair of shoes! Christ! I've waited too long for this to spoil it. I've a pattern to put on that pretty face of yours—not in this dark. Where'll I fight him, Boss? Where?"
"Along the road in the morning."
Percival came up. "I'll not wait, Boss. You've heard him. I'll not wait."
Pinsent rasped: "Morning be withered! Now! Now, while I'm hot. Where'll I fight him?"
Boss Maddox peered at his watch, then looked across the booths. "Nigh midnight—few left yonder. We'll be shut down in twenty minutes. At one o'clock."
And Japhra, a strange tremble in his voice: "In your tent, Boss. The boys will want to watch this. Room there, and good light."
Boss Maddox turned to Pinsent: "Good for you? The circus tent?"
"The place for it," Pinsent said. "Sharp at one. Japhra, you and me are ring men; come and settle a point."
"Come thou to me," Japhra answered him sturdily. "Thou and I!—I knew the ring, the knuckle ring, before thou sucked."
"Come to the tent," Boss Maddox interposed. "Best settle there."
Japhra took Percival a space away. "Lay thee down," he said. His voice was frankly trembling now, and he pressed both Percival's hands in his. "Bide by my words; bide by them. Lay thee down till I return to thee. Forget thy spite against yonder fox. Ima!"
She was at his side, her hands clasped together, her face white and strained.
"Forget him his spite, and what comes, Ima. While he lies, with a rug and with his boots from his feet, bide thou there and read to him—Crusoe, eh? Stingo and I will make for thee, master. I am not long gone."