The Happy Warrior Part 37

The piquancy of it delighted him, and he laughed delightedly, and for some reason had a stronger sense of her rare beauty. Not yet, not yet the truth, but nearer yet, even as such truth advances by the strangest and most secret steps.

"Tell me, though, Dora!"

"Oh, how it can interest you I am puzzled to imagine! Pleasant enough things, then. There are twelve of us there, all English, I am glad to say. We never speak English, though--always French; and then there are German and Italian days; they make us laugh very much."

As icicles broken in the hand!

Her laughter had caused the shades on her cheek to glow. He gazed at her in sheerest admiration; felt a new stirring of his blood; felt his breath quicken. She was close, close to him. The little breezes that had attended her, and had gone as if asulk at his intrusion, came with a sudden little fury to win her back again, and smote him full with all the fragrance that she had, and tossed her scarf and tossed her skirt against him.

She drew back her skirt, using the hand that held the pansies she had gathered. The action brushed his hand with hers and with her flowers.

Not yet, not yet the truth, but almost come! He slipped his fingers about her wrist, holding her hand mid-breast between them. "Give me those flowers, Dora."

She slower in approaching it, but suspicious again of some strange element in the air, as a fawn that lifts a doubtful head to question a new thing in the breeze. "You have one b.u.t.tonhole already," she told him, her voice not very easy.

He looked down at Ima's wild rose in his coat. "That's nothing," he said, and began to remove it whence it was pinned.

He was clumsy, for his hand trembled--the other still had hers. He was clumsy. Thoughts, thoughts, were at hammer in his brain--new to him, fierce to him and, as from iron in a forge, striking a glow that glowed within his eyes.

She saw the glow, saw how his hand shook. "It is well fastened," she said.

He broke off the rose at its head, jerked it aside and drew down the stalk. She suffered him to take her flowers, and very carefully then he placed them where the rose had been--hers! hers! That she had plucked! That she had held! He was at the truth and he looked at her.

She almost there.

The glow in his eyes was turned full upon her and she stepped back from it. The secret thing the night had was full about her and she had alarm of it. "I find it rather chilly standing here," she said, "--and late. I must be going in."

He watched her take the veil about her shoulders another turn about her throat, and watched her move away a pace. He started after her as though he burst through bonds that held him. He walked beside her, moving his tongue in his mouth as though it were locked from words and sought them; and he could hear his heart knock.

So, without words--in silence that shouted louder than speech--they came to where the drive bent towards the house. She paused, and he knew his dismissal.

His face was red, as a child reddens when control of tears is on the edge of breaking. His voice, when he spoke, had a strained note as the voice is caused to strain when only one thought can be spoken and a hundred press for speech. And strange--as between them--the words at last he found: "Dora, you'd hate a man--wouldn't you?--with nothing--who just poked along and did nothing?"

It was the door that should introduce her to the knowledge wherein he struggled. But she was only surprised, not recognising it; and surprised, relieved indeed. "Any one would," she said.

He flung wide the door. "Ah! Do you suppose I am going to?"

IV

Love is an instinct and is played by instinct. Struggling in the knowledge, in the mystery, that had drawn him here and that now engulfed him, he scarcely yet was aware that he loved, but by instinct was put in command of all the cunning of the game. His question fronted her with personal issue between them; it is the first, the last, the essential strategy.

"Why, Percival!" she said and stopped--saw the door wide; and he saw the colour deepen where her colour lay. "Why, Percival, why ever should I suppose it of you?"

He could control his voice no more. The strained note went. He said thickly: "But you'll begin to think it. In time you're bound to--if I let you. And then scorn me. If I just idled here you're bound to scorn me. Any one would--you said it."

Nervous her breathing. "But you--you never could be like that, Percival. I've always thought of you as doing things. Every one thinks it. I have noticed how they do."

All the distress he had suffered earlier in the day was back with him now, joined in fiercest tumult with what caused his heart to knock. He cried "They soon won't!" and cried it on a bitter note that made her go an unthinking step towards what waited her. "Percival, they always will," she said. "I always will, Percival."

The redness went from his face. His own clear voice came back to him.

All, all his being braced from storm to his control. He breathed "Dora! Will you?"

The stress that had been his was hers. She found no words; she only nodded--moved her lips for "yes" but made no sound. He had come slowly to the truth, by blundering ways that sometimes brought him near and sometimes went astray. She was suddenly come--and come, not of herself, but of as it were a flame that his voice as he spoke, his ardour as he bent towards her, seemed to communicate. She was suddenly come, was a degree bewildered, wanted even yet some further light. She only nodded.

"Dora, you are going for a long time. I heard you tell--"

She said very low: "For a year."

"Dora! A year!"

"I am to be a year away. It is the last time. It is to finish."

"A year! A year! Oh, Dora, a year!"

Her face was close to his, her lips a shade apart, her wide eyes lifted to him. Rare, rare he had thought her; perfect he knew her. That mystic thing the night had held, held them mute, magnetised, privy from all the world, alone. They stood so close the air he drew had first caressed her. They stood so close that her young bosom almost told him how she breathed. Slowly, as he were drawn to it, he stooped towards her; steadily, as she were held, she suffered his face to approach.

Their lips touched, stayed for a s.p.a.ce--smaller, infinitely less, than mind can conceive; wider, immeasurably more, as their joined spirits reckoned time, and rushed through time in bliss of ecstasy, than mind can reckon s.p.a.ce.

And then he kissed her.

Crimson she flamed in the places of her colour--flaming and more flaming and deeper yet their flame. Their sharp limitations drove her driven white about them; from throat to flame and flame to brow as lily was her hue. She did not move nor speak, and he, amazed before her rareness, drew back a step. She might have been a statue, so still she stood. She might not have breathed, nor thought, so motionless her breast, her eyes so wide, so still her gaze. Only that glowing scarlet on her cheeks, only her skin's transparency--soft, deep, as if beneath it some jewel gave a secret light--declared her mortal and proclaimed she lived.

A s.p.a.ce pa.s.sed. She came from the trance in which she seemed to be.

She gave a little sigh. As if she had been struck, not kissed; as if she had been robbed, not possessed. "Oh! Percival!" she said.

And he: "Oh! Dora!"

He sprung to her, took both her hands; clasped them in his and adored her with his eyes; bent his head to them and raised them to his lips.

"Oh, Dora, have I hurt you? Oh, Dora, I love you so!"

"Let me go in, Percival!"

He held her hands against his breast. "I could not help it! I could not help it! I love you, Dora! I've always loved you! I suddenly knew I'd always loved you!"

She spoke so low he scarcely could hear her voice: "Percival, let me go in!"

"Oh, Dora, have I hurt you? Dear, dear Dora, you are all the world to me. I love you so, I love you so!"

The faintest movement of her head gave him his answer and gave him ecstasy.

"I have not hurt you? You are not angry? I knew--or I would not have kissed you. Speak to me, dear Dora."

She only whispered: "Percival, I would like to go in. I am afraid."

He cried: "I know. You are so beautiful--so beautiful; not meant for me to love you."

"You are hurting my hands, Percival."