The Happy Warrior Part 34

j.a.phra turned his face up to her and the lamplight showed the twinkling with which he met the reproach in her voice. "Why, it is my trade," he said, "and thine. In two days thou'lt be taking the money at the door of my booth."

"Not his trade, though," she answered.

Percival said: "j.a.phra, would I be a likely one for your booth, do you think?"

He was holding out his hand in the action of farewell. j.a.phra got up and took it and held it. "Why, if I get as proper a build as thine for my third lad I will put a polish to it that would vex Foxy Pinsent himself. Keep up the boxing, master. Art thou going?"

Percival said abruptly, "Yes, I'm going." He released the hand and went away a step. "I'm going. I've a longish way home and things to do before bedtime. You'll be gone at daybreak?"

"At dawn, little master."

"On the Dorchester road?"

"Ay, to Dorchester."

"All the luck with you, j.a.phra. I'm better for seeing you." He spoke jerkily as though his throat were full and speech difficult. He stopped abruptly, and half turned away; then, recollecting Ima, went back to the van and stretched up his hand to where she stood: "Good night, Ima."

She stooped down to him. The action brought her face into the darkness and he noticed how her wide eyes, as she stooped, seemed actually to light it. "Farewell!" she said.

It was perhaps that he had so obviously only attended to her as an afterthought that her throat, for all the sound her word had, might have been as full as his. Some thought of the kind--that he had been churlish to her--crossed him. He said more kindly: "I say, though!

your hand is cold, Ima."

She withdrew her fingers, giving him no reply. But as he turned away and went a step, "What of thy way home?" she cried, and cried it on a sudden note as though it went against her will.

"By the Ridge," he told her. "By Plowman's Ridge and then along."

She answered him: "Yes, I am cold. I will warm me to the Ridge with thee--if thou wilt suffer me."

In the mood that was on him he had preferred to be alone. But under the same apprehension of having been churlish to her, "Why, that's jolly of you," he said.

III

She went within the van a few moments; and while he waited he had a last exchange with j.a.phra: "You've helped me, j.a.phra. But I shall disappoint you if I'm tried too hard. Content--I'll make a fight for it. But I shall not endure it very well if I am still to be idler."

He gave a hard little laugh. "When it's a fight for mastery of myself I shall disappoint you, I believe."

j.a.phra told him: "I have seen men, master, and know the fashion of them. Thou wilt not disappoint me."

"You can't say that of any one--for certain."

"I say it of thee. Though thou failest a score times thine is the mould that comes again--for that I shall look. Listen to me, little master--that name clings: I cannot shake it from me. Listen to me.

Thy type runneth hot through life till at last it cometh to the big fight. Send me news of that." He struck a match to relight his pipe and cupped the flame against his face. "Send only 'The Big Fight, j.a.phra,'" he said.

The flame of his match built up the dusky night in walls of immense blackness. In their heart Percival saw the kindly face with its tight lines and keen eyes. "I shall know the winner," j.a.phra said; and the cup of light within his hands shadowed and lit again his face as he nodded.

The Big Fight was drawing towards Percival. Aunt Maggie had the very date of it, and the articles reckoned and ready. When it rushed suddenly upon him and he was in its stress and agony, he remembered the lighted face, the confident nod and the message that was to be sent.

CHAPTER VI

WITH IMA ON PLOWMAN'S RIDGE

I

Ima had put on shoes and stockings when she reappeared from the van and joined Percival to accompany him to the Ridge. The two were come almost to the Down's skirt before they exchanged words. "I have things to do before bedtime," Percival had told j.a.phra; and as he walked he was too occupied by the thoughts of what he purposed--hunted by them as the tumult of his concerns had hunted him earlier in the day--to give attention to Ima who had come with him when he had preferred to be alone. She was perhaps aware of that. She followed the half of a pace behind the short, impatient steps that partnered--and signified--his mood, her eyes watching what of his face she could see and ever and again turning swiftly ahead, as though she feared he might catch her at it and feared that might offend him; so a dog that knows itself unwanted may be seen, wistful at its master's heels--with little wags of a timid tail and with beseeching glances; eager to communicate some succour to this angry mood; afraid to hazard what may further vex.

Yet he was pleasant when presently he spoke to her.

They stepped from a dense lane about whose mouth and overhead the arching brambles trailed as though to curtain a sanctuary from trespa.s.s by outer dust and breeze and light. Before them the Down ran smooth and grey to where, beneath the moon, it took a silver rim along the line of Plowman's Ridge. A harsher scent was here than briar and wild rose breathed within the lane and jealously entwined to hold there; the breeze came with a swifter touch to the face; the light challenged the eyes that the gloom had rested.

Together their effects aroused Percival's senses from his thoughts to his companion.

"Warmer now, Ima?" he asked.

"Warmer now, little master," and she smiled and added: "unseemly to call thee that, now thou hast grown so."

He moved with her to a gate that faced the Down. "Let's rest a bit,"

he said. "Why, we've both grown, Ima, since the last time I saw you.

You've grown. You've put up your hair--properly grown up. I shall have to treat you with terrible respect."

She did not respond to his light tone. Her eyes that looked quietly at him had a grave air. "I am a gipsy girl to thee," she said. "I am not for thy respect--such as me. For ladies that." And before he could answer her she went on: "What of that little lady thou hast told me of--Snow-White-and-Rose-Red as thou didst name her to me?"

He did not notice a changed tone--to be described as stiff--in her voice. It did not occur to him that in the matter of his respect she made comparison between herself and her whom she named with his fond name for her; he was only surprised and only grateful to have that name spoken to him.

"Why, she's grown," he said. "Fancy you remembering her, Ima!"

Eagerness was in his voice. "I am cold again," she told him, and drew away. "Let us go up the Down."

He did not follow her movement or her words, but pursued his own "--remembering that I called her that, anyway," he said.

If it had been her purpose to dismiss the subject, at least she earned herself his full attention by the swiftness with which she turned upon him and by the swiftness of her reply. "It is thee I remember," she answered him. "Not her--or any such. Thou wast my friend when we played boy and girl together. All thou hast done with me, all thou hast told me, point me the way to thee as remembered marks along the road point to a camping-place--no more, and of themselves nothing."

She had his attention; but he attributed the quickness of her speech and her odd thought and simile only to the general oddness of her ways.

"Well, you needn't go back to those days in future," he told her.

"We're friends now just as much as then."

She shook her head and smiled. "Nay, after this day I must needs go farther back," she said, her voice smooth again. "Thou dost not understand--playmate days I seek. I lie in my bed on the fine nights with the van door wide, and watch the stars and play I walk among them--from star to star and round about among the stars, high to the van's roof and low to where the trees and hills stretch up to them: thou with me as when first I knew thee--in that wise I seek thee; not thus"--she broke off and changed the note of her voice. "What talk is this?" she smiled. "Childish fancies--they are not for thee," and she moved away and he followed her up the Down.

"Ima, they're pretty fancies, though," he said. "And, you know, you'll lose them all if you aren't careful--if you go making yourself stiff and proper with those extraordinary lessons of yours. What are they for, those lessons? They'll spoil you, Ima. They'll make you quite different. All that kind of thing is for--for the others--for what you'd call fine ladies."

"Even so," she said; and p.r.o.nounced the words as if--though to his mind they explained nothing--everything was explained by them; and said no more until the crest of Plowman's Ridge was reached.

II

He was willing enough for his own part to relapse into his own thoughts. He went so deeply into them that, coming to the Ridge and involuntarily pausing there, he was twice told by her "Here I return,"

before he was aroused to her again. Bemused, he stared at her a moment as one stares that is aroused from sleep, and his mind jumped back in confusion to the last words that had pa.s.sed between them. "Well, if you were so anxious for the lessons, why did you give them up when the winter was over?"