The Happy Warrior Part 30

"Oh, no--no, not directly, anyway. It will come about naturally, I feel that. They are so much together. And in any case Dora--Dora is so wonderfully beautiful, Ella. I couldn't conceive any man not falling in love with her. In a year or so's time, developing as she is--why, you'll change your mind perhaps--when they're all worshipping her!"

She laughed, and her laugh was very rea.s.suringly returned. "But it is Rollo she will marry," Mrs. Espart smiled. "With her it is as you say with him--it will come naturally. In any case--well, she is being brought up as I was brought up. She is dutiful. You find so many girls encouraged in independence nowadays. Nothing is so harmful for a girl ultimately, I think."

Lady Burdon nodded her agreement. "How happy Rollo will be!" she said, and spoke with a little sigh so caressingly maternal and with eyes so fondly beaming that Mrs. Espart put out a hand to touch her and told her, "I love your devotion to Rollo, Nellie."

"He is everything to me," Lady Burdon said softly. "Everything!"

"I know he is. Why, you look different again when you speak of him even! Do you know, you were looking wretchedly ill when I came this morning, I thought."

"I had slept badly." Lady Burdon looked hesitatingly at her friend as though doubtful of the expediency of some further words she meditated.

Then, "I had my nightmare," she said; and at the question framed on Mrs. Espart's lips went on impulsively: "Ella, I've never told you about my nightmare. I think I shall. It worries me. Do you know, just after we came into the t.i.tle a girl came to see me and said she was the former Lord Burdon's wife."

"_No_! What happened?"

"Oh, nothing, of course--nothing serious. I sent her away. She said she would bring proofs; but I never saw her again."

"You wouldn't, of course. One of those creatures, I suppose," and Mrs.

Espart curled her lip distastefully and added: "I suppose some young men will do those things--no doubt that's what it was; but it's rather disgusting, isn't it? And how very horrible for you! But, Nellie, where does the nightmare come in?"

"With the girl," Lady Burdon said and gave a little uneasy movement as though even the recollection worried her. "With the girl. I dream of her whenever--that's the odd thing--whenever something particular happens. See her just as I saw her then and say 'I am Lady Burdon,'

and she says 'Oh, how can you be Lady Burdon?' Then I get that dreadful nightmare feeling--you know what it is--and say 'I hold!' and she says 'No, you do not--Nay, I hold!' It's too silly--but you know what nightmares are. And it only comes when something particular happens--or rather is going to happen. The night before we heard of old Lady Burdon's death, that was once. Then the night before we came down here for that stay when Rollo met his friend Percival and we began to come regularly. Then the night my husband died." She stopped, smiled because Mrs. Espart was smiling at her indulgently, as one smiles at another's unreasonable fears, but went on, "and now last night!"

Mrs. Espart laughed outright: "Why, what a hollow moan, Nellie!--'and now last night!' I'd no idea you were such a goose. You've let the silly thing get on your silly nerves."

"Only because things have always happened with it."

Her concern, however foolish, was clearly so genuine that Mrs. Espart changed banter for sympathetic rea.s.surance. "Why, Nellie, really you must be more sensible! Why, dreaming it last night proves how silly it is. What's happened to-day? Look, I'll tell you what's happened to-day, and it's something to settle your wretched girl and your omens once and for all. She nightmared you last night and to-day we've settled how happy we are all going to be with our young folk married!

There! Tell her that with my compliments if she ever comes again!"

Her air was so brisk and stimulating that Lady Burdon was made to laugh; and her facts were so convincing that the laugh was followed by a little sigh of happiness, and Lady Burdon said: "Why, Ella, it's funny, isn't it, how in this life some things _do_ go just as one wishes, for all that people say to the contrary?"

That was to be proved. Down at "Post Offic," while the ladies planned, a date was also being named.

II

"But when? When?" Percival was saying to Aunt Maggie. "I'm eighteen--eighteen, but you still treat me like a child. I ought to be doing something. I'm just growing up an idler that every one will soon be despising. But when I tell you, you ask me to wait and say I've no need to be anxious and that I shall be glad I waited when I know what it is you are planning for me."

"You will be, Percival," Aunt Maggie said.

But he made an impatient gesture and cried again: "But when? When?

That satisfied me when I was a boy. It doesn't now. I'm not a boy any longer. That's what you don't seem to see."

That indeed he was boy no more was written very clearly upon him as he stood there demanding his future--not for the first time in these days.

He was past his eighteenth birthday: his bearing and his expression graced him with a maturer air. The mould and the poise of head and body that as a child had caused a turning of heads after him were displayed with a tenfold greater attraction now that they adorned the frame of early manhood. There was about the modelling of his countenance that air of governance that is the first mark of high breeding. The outlines and the finish of his face were extraordinarily firm, as though delicate tools had cut them in firm wax that set to marble as each line was done. The chin was rounded from beneath and thrown forward; and to that firm upward round the lower jaw ran in a fine oval from where the small ears lay closely against the head; deeply beneath the jaw, cut cleanly back with an uncommon sweep, was set the powerfully modelled throat that denotes rare physical strength.

The eyes were widely opened, of a fine grey--unusually large and of a quality of light that seemed to diffuse its rays over all the brow.

The forehead was wide, with a clear, sound look. Outdoor life had tinted the face with the clean brown that only a fine skin will take; the hair was of a tawny hue and pressed closely to the scalp. He was of good height and he carried his trunk as though it were balanced on his hips--thrown up from the waist into a deep chest beneath powerful shoulders. He held his arms slightly away from his sides in the fashion of sailors and boxers whose arms are quick, tough weapons.

After all this and of it all was a gay, alert air, as though he were ever poised to spring away at the call of the first adventure that came whistling down the road. His face was not often in repose. Ardent life was forever footing it merrily up and down his veins, delighting in motion and in its strength, and his face was the mirror of its discoveries.

Just now, voiced in his "I'm growing up an idler that every one will soon be despising," it was discovering restrictions that his brow mirrored darkly. "It's not fair to me, Aunt Maggie," he said. "I ought to be doing something for myself. I must be doing something for myself. But you put me off like a child. You tell me to wait and won't even tell me what it is. You tell me to wait--when? when?"

Aunt Maggie said pleadingly: "Soon, Percival, soon."

"No, I've heard that--I've heard that!" he cried. "I want to know when."

She named her date. "When you are of age, dear. When you are twenty-one."

He cried: "Three years! Go on like this for three years more!"

He swung on his heel and she watched him go tremendously down the path and through the gate.

CHAPTER II

FEARS AND VISIONS AND DISCOVERIES

I

Percival took the highroad with the one desire to be alone--to walk far and to walk fast. The prodding of his mind that goaded him, "I'm growing--I'm losing time--I'm settling into a useless idler!" that tortured him he was in ap.r.o.n-strings and likely to remain there, produced a feverish desire to use all his muscles till he tired them.

His feet beat the time--"I must do something--I _must_ do something!"

and he swung them savagely and at their quickest. It was not sufficient. He was extraordinarily fit and hard; the level road, despite he footed it at his fiercest, could scarcely quicken his breathing. A mile from "Post Offic" he struck off to his right and breasted the Down, climbing its steepness with an energy that at last began to moisten his body and to give him the desired feeling that his strength was being exercised. "I must do something!" he spoke aloud.

"I must--I can't go on like this--I won't!" and taxed his limbs the harder. If he must feel the chains that bound him in idleness, let him at least make mastery of his body and rebuke it till it wearied.

At the crest of Plowman's Ridge he paused and drew breath and turned his face to the wind that ever boomed along here and that had come to be an old friend that greeted his ears with its jovial, gusty Ha! Ha!

Ha!

Far below him he could see "Post Offic" with its garden running to the wood. From his distance it had the appearance of a toy house enclosed by a toy hedge, the toy trees of the wood rigid and closely clipped like the painted absurdities of a child's Noah's Ark. As he looked, a tiny figure came from the house and went a pace or two up the garden and seemed to stand and stare towards him up the Ridge. Aunt Maggie, he was sure, and had a sudden wave of tenderness towards her, looking so tiny and forlorn down there. He remembered with a p.r.i.c.k at heart that, even in the heat of his anger in the parlour half-an-hour ago, he had noticed how small she looked as she stood pathetically before him, gently replying to his impatience. He thought to wave to her with his handkerchief, but knew she could not see him. He remembered--and another p.r.i.c.k was there--that she had said, seeking, no doubt, to win a moment from his violence, "Do you see my eyegla.s.ses, dear? I'm getting so shortsighted, Percival." He flushed to recollect he had disregarded her words and had threshed ahead with his "It's not fair to me--not fair to me, keeping me here doing nothing!" He had been unkind--he was unkind--and she was so small, so gentle, so loving, so tender to his every mood.

But that very thought of her--how small she was, how gentle--that had begun to abate his warring mood, returned him suddenly to its conflicts. That was just it!--so small, so gentle, so different from him in every way that she could not understand his situation and could not be reasoned with. No one understood! No one seemed to realise how he was growing, and how blank the future, and hence what he was growing. They all laughed at him when he spoke of it.

They all laughed! Mr. Purdie laughed--Mr. Purdie had laughed and said, "Oh, you're not a man yet, Percival!" and had given his absurd, maddening chuckle.

"His silly, d.a.m.ned chuckle!" cried Percival to old friend wind at the top of a wilder burst of resentment against the world in general and for the moment against Mr. Purdie in particular.

Rollo laughed--Rollo had laughed and declared: "Oh, don't start on that, Percival! That'll be all right when the time comes."

"When the time comes! Good lord! The time has come," Percival told old friend wind. "It's slipping past every day. All very well for old Rollo--all cut and dried for him. For me! I'm to be idling here when he goes to Cambridge, am I? And idling like a great lout when he comes back!"

Lady Burdon laughed--they all laughed, thinking him foolish, not realising. Ah, they would laugh in another way--and rightly so--when they did realise, when they saw him standing among them idle, useless, helpless, dependent on Aunt Maggie. They would all laugh--they would all despise him then. Everybody....

II

As he came to that thought--visioned some distorted picture of himself, overgrown, hands in pockets in the village street, and all his friends going contemptuously past him--there came a sudden change in old friend wind that for a moment left him vacant, then somehow changed his thoughts anew. Old friend wind, that had been buffeting him strongly in keeping with his turbulent mood, dropped, and he was in silence; then came with a different note and bringing a scent he had not apprehended while it went rushing by. Nothing odd that he should be responsive to this change. The wind on Plowman's Ridge was old friend wind to him, and everybody who is friends with the wind knows it for the live thing that it is--the teller of strange secrets whispered in its breezes, the shouter of adventures thundered in its gales. Who lies awake can hear it call "Where are you? Oh, where are you?"--who climbs the hill to greet it, it welcomes "Welcome--ho!" Sometimes, to those who are friends with it, it comes l.u.s.tily booming along in high excitement ("This way! This way! There's the very devil this way!"); sometimes softly and mysteriously tiptoeing along, finger on lip ("Listen! Listen! Listen! Hush--now here's a secret for you!").

In this guise it came to him now--dropped him down from the turbulence of spirit to which it had contributed, caught him up and led him away upon the cloudy paths of the scent it gave him. The fragrance it bore in this its whispering mood stirred, in that quick and certain manner that scents arouse, a.s.sociations linked with such a fragrance. There was in the scent some hint of the perfume that was always about Dora; and immediately he was carried to thought of her....