The Happy Warrior Part 27

He learnt the sharp and growing difference between Stingo's crowd and Boss Maddox's men. Boss Maddox was boss and of increasing wealth and weight: attracting showmen to his following from many parts of the country and incorporating them in his business, but unable to win the allegiance of the little knot of independents who called Stingo "Boss,"

and hating them for it. Rough, odd men who made an immense deal of Percival and had rough, odd names: Old Four-Eyes, who wore spectacles and had a Mermaid and a Mummified Man; Old One-Eye, whose left eye was gone and had a Wild West Rifle Range; Old 'Ave One, who was given to drink ("'Ave one, mate?") and had the Ring 'em where Yer Like--A Prize fer All; and the rest of them. Percival never mixed with the Maddox crowd but once, when he boxed, and to the immense delight of j.a.phra and all the Stingo men, defeated, a red-haired, skinny youth of his own age, whom Boss Maddox was introducing to the public as the Boy Wonder Pugilist. "Looks like a fox to me," Percival said aloud, when he first saw the Boy Wonder. The Boy Wonder heard, and the men who stood about heard and laughed; there certainly was a foxy look about the Juvenile Wonder's cunning face with its red head. The Wonder furiously resented the remark and the laughter; expressed a desire to shut Percival's mouth; succeeded in shutting one of his eyes, but was certainly beaten.

He became Percival's first enemy--and chance set aside the first enemy for further use.

II

Ima, when the van came Lethamwards, was Percival's first girl friend, and chance had use also in store for her. She was a strange, quiet, very gentle thing, but one that could run, as she had told him, and bold and active stuff for any ramble. With odd ways, though.

"Ima, you do look at me an awful lot," Percival told her in the early days, catching her large eyes fixed upon him.

"Well, thou art not like other boys I see," she told him; and a little while after she asked him, "Dost thou know little ladies with white skins like thine, little master?"

"I'm brown!" said Percival indignantly.

She shook her head. "But little ladies?"

"I know one," said Percival. "White! Well, you'd stare if you saw her, Ima. Snow-White-and-Rose-Red, I call her," and in his tone was something akin to the mingled admiration and awe with which small schoolboys speak of their cricket captain.

She was silent for a moment; then, "Well, tell me, little master," she said.

It was of Dora that he told her.

When Lady Burdon had returned that call paid on her by Mrs. Espart from Abbey Royal she had been as greatly captivated by Dora as she had been taken by Dora's mother. She found in Mrs. Espart a curiously cold and high-bred air that appealed to her--being a quality she was at pains to cultivate in herself--and appealed the more in that it very graciously unbent towards her. Its unbending was explainable by the quality that, for her own part, she presented to Mrs. Espart--that of her rank and station.

Mrs. Espart had been married in her teens, brought from school for the purpose, by a mother whose whole conception of duty in regard to her daughters was wealthy marriage, and who had fastened upon it in this case in the person of Mr. Espart--a nice little man, an indifferently bred little man, but a most obviously well-possessed little man. The girl was hurriedly fetched from her finishing school, whirled through a headachy fortnight of corseting and costuming, and put in Mr. Espart's way and then in his possession with the docility of one educated from childhood for such a purpose. Used as a woman who never had realised there was a life beyond the cloisters bounded by lessons in deportment, in the nice languages and the nice arts; as a wife who never yet had been a child but always a young lady, Mrs. Espart discovered that she was mated with a vulgarian, Mr. Espart that he had married, as he expressed it, "a frozen statue." She thought of him and despised him as the one; he thought of her, feared her, and adored her as the other.

The chill she struck into his mind communicated itself in some way to his bones, and very shortly after he had bought Abbey Royal--her command being that he should nurse the local political interests, enrich the Party from his coffers and so win her the social status her sisters had--he began to shrivel and incontinently died--frozen.

Mrs. Espart proceeded to bring up the child born of this marriage precisely as she had herself been brought up,--in narrow cloisters, that is to say, in dutiful obedience and for the ultimate purpose of suitable marriage. She repeated in Dora's training the training she had received from her own mother, its object the same, with this difference--that whereas in her case that object was a wealthy match, in Dora's--Mr. Espart having made wealth unnecessary--it was position.

Time was absurdly young for any plans when Mrs. Espart first met Lady Burdon, but plans had crossed her mind when she drove out to leave cards at the Manor: she had heard of Rollo. She made Lady Burdon very welcome when Lady Burdon came.

Dora was two years younger than Rollo, Lady Burdon found. When, on the occasion of this visit, she was brought to the drawing-room--a strikingly pretty child in a curiously unchildish way--she already showed marks of the machinery that ordered her life. She was curiously prim, that is to say, of noticeably trained deportment; curiously self-a.s.sured and yet not childishly frank; curiously correct of speech and with a dutiful trick of adding "Mamma" to every sentence she addressed to her mother.

She was her mother's child; similarly trained; similarly developing.

"A very well brought-up child," as Lady Burdon afterwards commented to her husband, and noted in her also the strong promise of the beauty that later years were to realise. She was to be notably tall and was already slim and shot-up for her years; she was to be notably fair of complexion and showed already a wonderful mildness and whiteness of skin, curiously heightened by the little flush of colour that warmed in a sharply defined spot on either cheek. Lady Burdon rallied her once during their conversation--the subject was French lessons, which it appeared she found "Terribly puzzling, Lady Burdon, do I not, Mamma?"

and her face responded by a curious deepening of the red shades, her cheeks and brow gaining a hue almost of transparency by contrast.

It was that quality and that characteristic that made Percival--meeting her when she was brought over to tea with Rollo--call her, as he told Ima, Snow-White-and-Rose-Red.

The name was from his fairy book, and to his mind fitted exactly this fragile and well-behaved and reserved Miss who he thought was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. It fitted her more surely yet when he came to know her when she was fourteen and just returned, Rollo also having come to the Manor, for her first holidays from the highly exclusive school to which she was sent.

By then the friendship between Lady Burdon and Mrs. Espart had grown to closest intimacy. They met, and Dora and Rollo met, intimately in London; and Abbey Royal was rarely closed when Burdon Old Manor was opened. Mrs. Espart had suffered to lapse that att.i.tude towards the little post office boy which Lady Burdon had termed "ridiculous." She never liked, and certainly never encouraged, Percival, but she accepted him as undetachable from Rollo, whom by now she encouraged greatly in friendship with Dora, and it was thus that Dora at rare intervals contributed to these days of the happy, happy time.

At fourteen she was actively advanced in her first term at the exclusive school by the machine that was shaping her. Strikingly now she promised, as always she had hinted, what should be hers when full maidenhood was hers. The singular fairness of her complexion was the grace that first struck the observer; and with it was to be noticed immediately the curious shade on either cheek that flushed to a warm redness when she was animated, and, flushing sharply within its limitations, sharply threw into relief the transparent fairness of her skin. Her head, small and most shapely, was poised with the light and perfect balance of a flower on its stem. Her features were small, proportioned as a sculptor would chisel the cla.s.sic face--having the straight nose, the delicate nostrils, and the short upper lip of high beauty. Her eyes were well-opened, strangely dark for her fair colouring, well-lit, with the light and shade and softness of dew on a dark pansy when the sun first challenges the flowers at daybreak. Her abundant hair, soberly dressed in a soft plait that reached her waist, was of a dull gold that in some lights went to burnished bra.s.s. She was poised upon her feet with the flower-grace of her head upon her throat. She was of such a quality and an air that you might believe the very winds would divide to give her pa.s.sage, afraid to touch and haply soil so rare a thing.

Percival in these days went beyond even his first wonder at her. He had never believed there could be such a beautiful thing, and at their meetings he was very shy--regarding her with an admiration that was very apparent in his manner. He, certainly, if not the winds, had in her presence a feeling of necessity to be gentle with so rare and strange a thing. He could cla.s.s her nowhere except with Snow-White-and-Rose-Red; and to him that was her meetest cla.s.s--belonging to a different race and to be indulged as an honoured guest should be; permitted to have caprices; expected to be strange.

She came occasionally to tea at the Old Manor. The boys would take her then for a walk in the grounds--sometimes further afield. Percival, never free from the wonder she caused in him, always had much concern for her on these occasions. He constantly inquired if they were not going too far for her; he would always propose they should turn back if they came to a muddy lane. It happened once that a lane desperate in mud could not be avoided. He showed her the drier path against the hedge, but this was so narrow as to require some balancing to keep it.

"You must hold my hand," he said.

To shake hands with her had always been a matter of some diffidence.

Now he was to support her while she picked her way. He took her little gloved hand in his. It lay warmly within his grasp; and concerned lest he should hurt so delicate a thing, he let it rest in his palm, pa.s.sing his fingers about her wrist where there was bone to feel.

"Tell me if I hurt you," he said. "I'm trying not to--and not to splash"--and he trod carefully, above his boot soles in the mire.

She told him: "You're not, thank you. These lanes are wretched. I hate them."

Much of her weight was on him. There was a perfume about her person, and it came to him pleasantly: he had never walked so close to her before. The soft plait of her hair was about her further shoulder, hanging down her breast. With her free hand she held her skirt raised and closely against her legs for fear of brambles in the hedge.

Percival looked at her daintily-shod feet, picking their way, and he gave a funny little laugh.

"What are you laughing at?" she asked him.

"My boots--and yours. You must have funny little feet."

She half withdrew her hand.

"I think you are the rudest boy I have ever met," she said.

"Oh, I didn't mean to be rude," Percival declared.

She told him in her precise way: "You are rude, although you are nice in some ways. I think I have never known any one stare at me so frightfully as you stare. I have seen you often staring."

Percival gave for explanation: "If I stare, it's because I've never seen any one like you."

She gave the slightest toss of her chin.

He went on: "Do you know what I call you? I call you Snow-White-and-Rose-Red."

He saw the blush shades on her cheek very slightly darken. It sounded a pleasant thing to be called. But she said: "It sounds stupid; what is it?"

"From a fairy tale. Don't you know it?"

"I don't care about reading."

"What do you like doing best of all?"

"I think I like going for drives--and that;" she half slipped and added, "I simply hate this."

"I've got you perfectly safe," Percival a.s.sured her.

She said nothing to that, either of doubt or thanks; and they finished the lane in silence. But when dry ground was reached and she withdrew her hand, she thanked him prettily. With Rollo--who had no wonder of her and whom she saw more frequently--she was on easy terms; and now the three walked back to the Old Manor more companionably than was usual with them. When Dora left, she surprised Percival by thanking him again; she surprised him more by showing him a little mark on her hand he had held and playfully protesting his grasp had caused it.

Thereafter when they met she had a smile for him.

He liked that.

She came to be very frequently in his mind, though why he did not know.

Once he came to Aunt Maggie with a dream he had had of her. "The rummiest dream, Aunt Maggie. I dreamt I was chasing her, and chasing her, and calling her: 'Snow-White! Snow-White! Rose-Red! Rose-Red!'

and every time I nearly caught her Rollo came up and caught hold of me, and away she went. And fancy! I fought Rollo! Aren't dreams absurd?"