The Happy Warrior Part 31

She to see him idler! She to pa.s.s him by contemptuously! His mental vision presented her before him as clearly as if she were here beside him on the Ridge. He saw her perfect features, with their high, cold expression; the transparent fairness of her skin; that warm shade of colour on either cheek that, as though she saw him watch her, deepened with their strange attraction even as he visioned her. He visioned her clearly. He could have touched her had he stretched a hand. And he was caused--he knew no reason for it--a slight trembling and a slight quickening of his breath.

She to see him idler! ... In rebuke of such a thought he released his mind to wild and undisciplined flights that showed himself the champion of tremendous feats--of arms, of heroism, of physical prowess--performing them beneath the benison of her eyes, returning from them to receive her smiles....

For a considerable s.p.a.ce he stood lost among these clouds. They had drifted upon him suddenly. He found them delectable. Then he began to find them strange and puzzling--scenes that were meaningless, sensations that could not be determined. It is to be remembered of him that, though he was now advanced to the period when the sap is up in youth and quickening in his veins, he did not pursue the life nor was he of the nature that encourages the amorous designs. A sluggish habit of mind and body is the soil to nurture these: he was alert and braced, eager and sound from foot to brain--a thing all fibre and fearless, whose only quest was what should give him the challenge of movement, of light, and ring back tough and true when he taxed it. No room was here, then, for the disturbances that s.e.x throws up; and yet these very qualities that such disturbance could not undermine conspired to arouse him very mightily when he should turn him to enquire what this disturbance was, and discovering, should launch himself upon it.

He was near to the brink of that launching now. Dora with her rare beauty always had exercised upon him a feeling different from any he commonly knew; he never yet had troubled to suppose that it was caused by any emotion outside his normal life. She had astonished him by her grace of form and feature on that day when he had discovered her to be Snow-White-and-Rose-Red of the fairy book. Thereafter she had remained to him a delicately beautiful object--set apart from the ordinary fas.h.i.+on of persons he knew; not to be treated quite as he treated them; a very dainty thing, making him aware of the contrast that his own st.u.r.dy figure, strong limbs, brown face, and hard young hands presented. As a boy he had always been caused a manner of awe in her presence; as he grew older the awe went back to the sheer admiration that she had caused in him at their first meeting. Out of her company, in the long months that frequently separated her visits, he rarely thought of her; though sometimes--and he had no reason for it--he would find her pretty figure in his mind or in his dreams. When he reencountered her, the admiration sprang afresh; he liked to watch her face, to stand unnoticed and expect, then see, her cold smile part her lips, or those strange shades of colour deepen and glow upon her cheeks; he liked in little un.o.bserved ways to protect her as he had protected her that day in the muddy lane; it caused him a strange rapture to have her thank him for any service.

III

These were his relations to her through the years. He never had thought to a.n.a.lyse them nor question why he so regarded her--never till now. Now for the first time as he stood on Plowman's Ridge he mused among the misty tangle of the sensations that old friend wind had brought, lost and astray among the visions presented to his mind by estimate of how Dora would consider his idle plight--now for the first time he suddenly questioned himself what she was to him.

He was all unused to the sensations in which, by an effort recalling himself from his musings, he found himself suffused. They were all--that slight trembling and that slight quickening of his breath that possessed him--foreign to his nature, and he made a sharp movement as though they were tangible and visible things that he would shake from about him. Useless!--they had him wrapped.... Quicker his trembling, and his breath quicker. What was she to him? Up sprang the answer, answering with a triple voice that demanded his acknowledgment.

Up sprang the answer, causing him a physical thrill as though indeed there burst at last from within him some essence that had been too long held and now was loosed like fire through his veins. With a triple voice, clamouring he should recognise it! What was she to him? Her face and figure stood in all their beauty before his mental eye--that was one voice and he trembled anew to hear it. What was she to him?

Memory of a light speech of Rollo on the previous day came flaming to his mind: "And mother, I believe, has a plot with Mrs. Espart that I shall marry Dora then and settle down"--that was a second voice and stung him so that he knit his brow. What was she to him? Of them all--of all who would laugh and have him in scorn when he was taskless idler--bitterest, most intolerably goading, that she should hold him so--that was the third voice and drew from him a sharp intake of the breath as of one that has touched hot iron.

What was she to him? In triple voice he had the answer, demanding his acknowledgment, clamouring for his recognition. By a single word he signed the bond. None was by to listen, and yet he flushed; there was none to overhear, and yet he spoke scarcely above a whisper. He just breathed her name--"Dora!"

An intense stillness came about him. He stood enraptured, all his senses thrilled. Out of the stillness, echo of his whisper, seemed to come her name of Dora! Dora! Dora! floating about him as petals from the bloomy rose. He raised his face to their caress and was caught up in sudden ecstasy--believed he was with her, touching her; and saw and felt her stoop towards him, bringing her perfume to him as the may-tree stoops and sheds its fragrance when first at dawn the morning breathes in spring.

IV

So for a s.p.a.ce he stood etherealised--awed and atremble; youth brought suddenly through the gates and into the courts of love where the strong air at every tremulous breath runs like wine to the brain, to the heart like some quick essence. For a s.p.a.ce he stood so; then was aware that old friend wind was up again and drumming Ha! Ha! Ha! upon his ears as one that mocks.

What was she to him? The answer, now he had it, stirred to wilder tumult the feelings that had brought him turbulently breasting up the Ridge. He looked again towards "Post Offic," toylike below, and had no tender thought for it--bitter vexation instead, as of the captive who goes to fury at the chains that bind him.

That he should submit to be thus chained, thus ap.r.o.n-stringed! That Dora should laugh! That she should know him idler! Goading thoughts--maddening thoughts, and he flung himself, bruising himself, against them as the captive against his prison walls. That she should laugh! It should not be! It was not to be endured! He threw up his head in determination's action, his hands clenched, his body braced, resolve upon his angry brow.

Ha! Ha! Ha! drummed old friend wind--Ha! Ha! Ha!

He gave a half cry and turned and strode away along the Ridge, taking the direction that led him from home, and exerting himself under new impulse of the desire to rebuke his body and haply ease his mind.

CHAPTER III

A FRIEND UNCHANGED--AND A FRIEND GROWN

I

An hour at that pace brought him above Great Letham, cl.u.s.tered below.

He paused irresolutely. From among the roofs, as it were, a crawling train emerged. He watched it worm its way along the eastward vale, then abruptly turned his back upon it as upon a thing more fortunate than he--not bound down here, as he was bound. Brooding upon the landscape, he suddenly became aware of a thin wisp of smoke that pointed up like a grey finger from the valley beneath him. It mounted in a steady, wand-like line from the belt of trees that marked Fir-Tree Pool, and its site and its appearance braced him to an alert attention.

It had signalled him before. Only one person he had ever known lit a fire down there: only one hand in his experience contrived a flame which gave quite that steady, grey finger. He remembered j.a.phra showing him how to get the heart of a fire concentrated in a compact centre; he remembered Ima laughing at the sprawling heap, burning in desultory patches, that had come of his first attempt at imitation.

"If only it is j.a.phra!" he said aloud; and he struck down the Ridge-side for a straight line across country to where the smoke proposed that j.a.phra might be.

More than a year had pa.s.sed since last the van had visited the district. Even Stingo, met sometimes over at Mr. Hannaford's, could give him no better news of it than that j.a.phra had not taken the road with Maddox's these two seasons. The disturbed state of mind that now vexed Percival could be soothed in no other way, he suddenly felt, than by the restful atmosphere that j.a.phra always communicated to him.

j.a.phra would not laugh at him. j.a.phra would understand how he felt.

j.a.phra would advise in that quiet way of his that made one see things as altogether different from the appearance they seemed to present. If only it were j.a.phra!

II

It was j.a.phra!

As Percival came quickly through the trees that enclosed the water he caught a glimpse of the yellow van. As he emerged he heard j.a.phra's voice: "Watch where he comes!" and he pulled up short and cried delightedly: "You knew! You were expecting me!"

Clearly they had known! Not surprise, but welcome all ready for him, was in j.a.phra's keen little eyes that glinted merrily, and on Ima's face, that was flushed beneath its dusky skin, her lips parted expectantly. Even old Pilgrim, the big white horse that drew the van, had its head up from its cropping and looked with stretched neck and seemed to know. Even tiny Toby, that was Dog Toby when the Punch and Judy show was out, was hung forward on his short legs like a pointer at mark, and now came bounding forward in a whirl of noisy joy.

j.a.phra was astride of a box, a piece of harness between his legs, a cobbler's needle in his right hand, and the short pipe still the same fixture in the corner of his mouth. Ima was on one knee, about to rise from the fire whose smoke had signalled.

"You knew! You were expecting me!" Percival cried again, and went eagerly to them as they rose to greet him, his hands outstretched.

"Father knew thee before I heard thy footsteps," Ima told him. "The fire crackled at my ears or I had known."

She seemed to be excusing herself, as though not to have heard were short of courtesy; and j.a.phra, who had Percival's hand, gave a twist of his face as if to bid him see fun, and teased her with: "Thou didst doubt, though, Ima, for look how I had to bid thee 'watch where he comes.'"

Percival thought she would toss her head and protest indignantly as when he used to tease her when they had trifled together. Instead, her eyes steadily upon his face, "Nay, for I knew it was he," she replied simply.

He no more than heard her. At a later period he found that the words had gone to the backwaters of his mind, where trifles lie up to float unexpectedly into the main stream. Years after he recalled distinctly her tone, her words, and the look in her eyes when she spoke them.

Now he laughed. "You two can hear the world go round, I believe." He turned to j.a.phra: "But how on earth you could tell--"

"Footsteps are voices, little master, when a man has lived in the stillness."

Percival laughed again--laughed for pure happiness to hear himself still given that familiar t.i.tle, and for pure happiness to be again with j.a.phra's engaging ideas. "You're the same as ever, j.a.phra--the same ideas that other people don't have."

"Ah, but 'tis true," j.a.phra answered him. "Footsteps have tongues, and cleaner tongues than ever the mouth holds. Look how a man may oil his voice to mask his purpose--never his feet. Thine called to me, how eagerly they brought thee."

"Eagerly!--I should think they did! You're just the one I want. I've not seen you for a year--more. Eagerly--oh, eagerly!"

j.a.phra's bright eyes showed his delight. "And we were eager, too. We have spoken often of little master, eh, Ima? Not right to call him that now, though. Scarcely reckoned to see him so grown. Why, thou'rt a full man, little master--there slips the name again!"

He twinkled appreciatively at Percival's protest that to no other name would he answer, and he went on: "A full man. Ten stone in the chair, I would wager to it. What of the boxing?"

"Pretty good, j.a.phra. The gloves you gave me are worn, I can tell you."

"That's well. Never lose the boxing. It is the man's game. Ay, thou hast the boxer's build, ripe on thee now as I knew would be when I saw it in thee as a boy. The man's game--never lose it."

"I'm keener than ever on it," Percival told him. "I'm glad you think I've grown. I've got a punch in my left hand, I believe." His spirits were run high from his former despondency, and he hit with his left and sparkled to see j.a.phra nod approvingly and to hear him: "Ay, the look of a punch there."

"Yes, I've grown," he said. "You've not changed, j.a.phra--not a sc.r.a.p."

j.a.phra nodded his head towards the fir trees. "Nor are the old limbs yonder. They stay so till the sap dries, then drop. Nary change.

Only the young shoots change. What of Ima?"

She had turned away while they talked. She was back at the fire, and Percival turned towards where she stood, about to lift from its hook the cooking pot that hung from the tripod of iron rods. As he looked, she swung it with an easy action to the gra.s.s. The pot was heavy: she stooped from the waist, lifted and swung it to the gra.s.s with a graceful action that belonged to her supple form, and, as the steam came pouring up and was taken by a puff of breeze to her face, went back a step and looked down at her cooking from beneath her left forearm, bare to the elbow, raised to s.h.i.+eld her eyes.