The Happy Warrior Part 54

The direction was that where Percival's gaze had been. "Yes, it is,"

Percival said. "I thought so. She's coming up. It's Dora."

CHAPTER X

TWO RIDE TOGETHER

I

Often in these weeks the three rode together; seldom Percival and Dora met out of Rollo's company. Brief moments while they waited him, brief moments when he rode ahead of them, these were the most frequent of their intimacies; more rarely came chance half-hours, and most rare of all half-hours planned when she admitted they could be contrived. He suffered nothing that their meetings should be thus fugitive and at caprice, in main, of Rollo's moods and movements. That none as yet should know their secret ministered to rather than chafed his ardour; that, when their eyes met, their eyes spoke what in all the world only they two knew, was of itself as darling a thing as when to all the world she should be known for his alone. Then she would be his own, but their secret the price of it; now he might not claim her, but ah, their secret, theirs!

So secret it was, and she so much her rare and chaste and frozen self, that even between them it was hardly spoken. He never had lost his first awe and wonder at her beauty; and it filmed all his intercourse with her and all his thoughts of her as with a gossamer veil that, forbidding rough movements, forbade him touch her with the close words of his pa.s.sion that might bruise her or give her alarm. More by signs than ever by words they spoke their secret. Words carried them over the pa.s.sing subjects that any might discuss; signs revealed the secret that was theirs alone. When they met the faintest deepening of her colour shades would show it, when they parted came a last glance and again those shades would glow; when he sometimes touched her hand, her hand would stay and speak it; when he sometimes held her eyes, ah, then their secret stirred! In those few half-hours when alone they came together, meeting near the Abbey, riding through the lanes, then with none to see them he would hold her hand and feel it tell him of their secret while their lips told empty words.

It was in these weeks, indeed, that he came to know he found it a little hard to make conversation with her. That something of her character was manifested in this difficulty he had no suspicion, nor that in his solution of it her disposition was clearer yet revealed.

He found she was not greatly interested to hear of himself; then found her most alert, and oftenest brought the little laugh he loved to hear, the deepening he loved to see of those strange shades of colour on her cheeks, by speaking to her of herself, or listening while of herself she told him. At first he gave her glimpses of the van life with j.a.phra on the road; her curiosity was not aroused. Something of the famous fight he told her, and in vigorous pa.s.sages of when the sticks came out, and of the wild scenes that followed the crime of poor old Hunt, whom she had known: he saw she was not greatly entertained.

Later, as events ran along, he gave them to her--told her of the day when it was found that his increasing activities with the dear old Rough 'Uns made it necessary he should live over there, no longer ride daily to and fro from "Post Offic," and of how jolly, jolly good they were to him and of the funny evenings in their company; told her of the day when the Rough 'Uns had announced they thought it proper to advancement of their business that a couple of hunters should be bought for him so that he might ride to hounds and keep among the horsey folk when the hunting season opened; told her of the day when he had from Aunt Maggie the news that the affection between herself and Ima had arranged that Ima was coming to spend the approaching winter--and likely every winter--with her; all these he brought to Dora, but slowly came to see they but little took her interest.

The discovery no more gave him suspicion that she was at fault in sympathy than of itself it vexed him, as one commonly might be vexed in such a case. It was himself he blamed when, recalling how he had talked and how little had been her response, he feared that he had tired her by his enthusiasms or, as reproaching himself he termed them, his meanderings. Clumsy he called himself, inept, dull-witted; and pictured her, his darling and his G.o.ddess, his frozen, rarest, perfect Snow-White-and-Rose-Red, and hated to have blundered all his dulness on so rare and exquisite a thing. Glad, then, the finding that he could entertain her by exercise of what a thousand-fold entranced himself--by encouraging her to speak of herself, her doings, her reflections, just as in the drive in that hour when first he knew he loved her she had spoken of her school. Lightest and most prattling what she told, and light and very pa.s.sing what she thought; but spoken in her quaintly precise mode of speech and in her cold, high tone, and bringing from her her cold little laugh, and on her cold white cheek lighting those flames of colour. When he watched her with others he saw her perfect face set in its strangely still, aloof expression; when she spoke with him, and spoke of herself, he was content only to listen so he might see it light and sometimes see their secret make it flame.

More than once while she so spoke and he so listened, "But I told you that," she would say; "I perfectly recollect telling you."

And he: "Well, tell me again;" and at the note of his voice she would seem to catch her breath as though some sharpness checked her breathing, and he would see their secret flutter in her eyes and see it stain its signal like a red rose on her cheeks.

II

It was by one definite step--not observed as such by him at the time nor any significance in it apprehended--that they pa.s.sed from this stage of reserve on the matter between them and came towards its open entertainment. The afternoon following Rollo's departure with Lady Burdon on the long foreign tour marked the event, and Percival, meeting Dora by chance, was in some loss of spirits at the fact. He found her in very different case. Her mood was high. She had the air of one who has made a success or who has escaped some shadowing mischief. He could suppose no cause for such a thing or he would have said her bearing signified relief, removal of some oppression, freedom from some weight that had burdened her mind and that now, displaced, suffered her mind to run up, made her tread lighter.

"There's something different about you to-day," he told her; then, while she laughed, and while he caught more glee than commonly he knew in the little sound he loved to hear, found the exact expression for the change he saw, and named the new step in their relations--"You are as if you'd suddenly got a holiday."

"Well, it is true that I somehow feel like that," she declared, "though why I should, I am sure I cannot imagine."

Yet dimly she knew, dimly in these later days had felt closing about her the purpose of her training, and when Percival spoke of the two years--the "frightfully long time"--for which old Rollo was gone, knew it half unknowingly for the period of her holiday. Another, more freely schooled than she, had known it clearly, had questioned, revolved, examined the sudden lightness that was hers, had realised it came of freedom from constant reminder of an end that seemed to wait her, and had inquired of herself, Why then glad?--Is that end unwelcome?

It was not hers so to examine; or examining, so to realise; or realising, so to ask; nor asking, and being answered "Yes, unwelcome,"

to think to make resistance and crush the end before it came. Not hers whose schooling in her mother's hands had made for and had won the stifling of such processes of thought; not hers who was caparisoned and trained for certain purpose; not hers who had responded in faultless beauty and in cloistered mind. Hers, if she stretched her hands and on a sudden found that purpose walled about her, only to follow on between the walls, not to break through them; to glance at them or run them with her fingers and see them silk and proper to her life, not beat against them, find them steel behind the silk, cry "Trapped! Trapped!"

and wildly beat for outlet. Hers, if she raised her eyes and saw her purposed end far down the narrow way, only to accept and move towards it, not to halt, doubt, fear; hers to glance, and know, and think it meet and proper to her life, not start and shrink, cry "No! No! No!"

and seek escape while yet escape might be.

So she was circ.u.mstanced; yet there remains, be restraint never so firmly chilled into the bones, the purely primeval instinct of delight in freedom; so she was trained, but scarcely yet had recognised purpose, walls, or end. She only, as she told Percival, "somehow felt"

that she had holiday, and holiday her mood in the months that went.

Why she felt so, she was sure, as she said, she could not imagine; but as the b.u.t.terfly, content to live among the flowers of a hothouse and never know itself prisoner, will airily toss aloft through the open door yet scarcely think itself escaped, so, content to have remained, but gaily floating free, blithe and new her mood when now they met.

Less frequent their meetings, the common excuse of Rollo being denied, but ah, more fond! Fewer their secret exchanges, but ah, more dear!

Holiday her mood, and fluttering she came to him, and was swinging in his ardour from her prison to his heart; from his heart to her prison, swinging in his ardour, and had no more than glimpses--transient tremors--of her prison's walls.

III

He had her engaged in such a glimpse--a little fearfully suspicious that there were walls about her--on a day when they were hunting together. Mrs. Espart changed her earlier intention of returning to town in the Autumn after Rollo and his mother had left. To encourage her position in the country-side formed part of her own share of the plans for the young people that were to crystallise when the return was made to Burdon Old Manor, and she began to centre Abbey Royal in the social round of the neighbourhood. Her daughter's betrothal to Lord Burdon, when it was done and announced, should thus, as she schemed, lose nothing that was possible to the stir it would make. She was able to use the local Hunt as a prominent part of these intentions, did not ride herself, but horsed Dora well, subscribed handsomely and was gladly taken up by the Master in her suggestion of a bi-monthly meet at the Abbey.

Thus it was after hounds that Percival and Dora were given best chance to meet. The Rough 'Uns' idea of mounting Percival for the field proved successful to them as happy to him; Dora, in pursuance of her mother's plans, had encouragement--and wanted none--rarely to miss a meet. Hounds had run far on that day when she was caught by Percival engaged in one of those transient glimpses of her state that sometimes in these days came to puzzle her. He threw her into it, and that at a moment most unlikely, for circ.u.mstances had it that she was uncomfortable and out of temper. A bold fox carried the few who could follow him--they two among them--to a point fifteen miles from the Abbey before hounds ran into him. It was late afternoon, rain falling, when Percival and Dora started to hack the long stretch home, and they were little advanced on the road, and she feeling the wet, when she p.r.o.nounced her feelings by telling him petulantly: "You should not have made me come on. I would have turned back long ago."

But it had been a rare run, and he was beneath the vigour of it.

"Come, it was a great run," he said. "It was worth it, Dora."

"Nothing is worth getting wet like this. You know how I hate getting wet."

She was much wetter, and would give him no words, before a new trial necessitated that she should speak again. Her saddle was slipping, she said, and when he alighted and found the girths had loosened and then that she must get down: "No, I'll try it a little farther," she told him very vexedly. "We're nearly there now. To move is hateful. The wet is touching me right through."

She gave him no answer to his "I'm awfully sorry, Dora;" but presently said: "It's no good, I must get down, I suppose."

He looked up at her as he stood to help her from the saddle.

"You're angry, Dora?"

"Well, of course I am angry."

He acted upon an impulse that swept out her temper and put her to that transient glimpse that vaguely showed her vague misgivings. He had watched her as they rode in silence, watched the rain that swept against her face run down her face that was like marble in her chill and in her loss of temper. Cold as it her eyes that met his now, and he had a sudden impression of her--all marble, all frozen snow, his darling!--that seemed to embody all his every thought of her frozen beauty and frozen quality since first he knew her, and that taxed beyond his power the restraint that frozen quality ever had set upon him. Beyond his power!--and as he brought her down he not released her, almost roughly turned her to him; and with no word almost roughly clasped her to him; and with "Dora!" kissed her wet face and held her while startled she protested; and kissed again, again, again, again.

"No, I will not let you go! No, you have been cold to me! No, you shall not go! I have never kissed you since that once I kissed you. I will kiss you now. No, I will not let you go. I love you, love you, love you!"

She bent her face away. He felt her panting in his arms and pressed her to him; and with his hands could feel how wet she was, and with his body felt her warm against him through her soaking clothes; and pa.s.sion of love broke from him in words, as pa.s.sion of love he pressed upon her face.

"Turn your face to me, Dora. You shall. I have endured enough. Turn your face to me--your wet, cold, sweet face that I love. Give me your lips. Give me your lips. I will kiss your lips and you shall kiss me.

Put your arms round me. Dora, put your arms round me. Now kiss me, kiss me-- Ah! I love you, I love you--my darling, my beautiful, my Snow-White-and-Rose-Red. Keep your arms there, Dora, Dora, my Dora!"

His voice had run hoa.r.s.e and broken in his pa.s.sion; now, when obedient she gave him her lips, obedient clung to him--her will, her physical discomfort and her natural impa.s.sivity burnt up as in a flame by this sudden a.s.sault--deep his voice went and strong:--

"That is all done now--all those days when I have been afraid to touch my darling, afraid to tell her every hour, every moment, how I love her for fear of frightening her. You are in my arms, my darling, and I can feel my darling's heart, and those days can never come again. You shall remember when you see me how I have held you here. You shall remember how you lie in my arms and that they hold you strongly, strongly, and that it is your safe, safe place. Look up at me! Ah, ah, how beautiful you are--your eyes, your lips, your cold, sweet face with the rain all wet on it. Kiss me! Ah, Dora--we were meant to meet, meant to love."

She answered him more by the abandonment with which she lay in his arms than by the faltering sentences in which she sometimes whispered while they stood there. She was whispering, "I never meant you should think I was afraid. Percival, I never meant you should think I did not want to speak about our love. Only--" when she shivered violently, and he chid himself for keeping her there, and for warmth's sake, he leading the horses, they walked the last mile to the Abbey. Ardently then he talked to her of future plans. He told her that late in the next year it was arranged he was to go out to the Argentine with some ponies. A big business was like to be established there, arising out of a sale to a South American syndicate, and he was to arrange it and to select and bring back ponies of a native strain for the development of a likely type. When he returned--"This is why I am telling you, darling,"--the good old Rough 'Uns had declared he should formally be made partner in what had now become a great enterprise. "I shall claim you then, my darling. I shall be able to claim you then."

She surprised him--and, not aware of her reason, thrilled him--by halting suddenly and clasping his hands that had been holding hers.

"Oh, don't leave me, Percival! Percival, don't go away!"

He kissed her adoringly. "Do you love me so?"

She clung to him and only said: "Don't leave me, Percival. Percival, you must not," and while he sought to soothe her plea--and still was thrilled to hear it--suddenly went into a tempest of weeping, changing his tender happiness to tenderest concern.

"Dora! Why, what is it? What is it, my darling? Tell me, tell me--ah, don't, don't cry, don't tremble like that."

She had not controlled herself to answer him when sound of wheels came down the road, lamps through the gloom. She checked herself, and was at her horse's head when there drew up a carriage sent from the Abbey to meet her and bring her back in shelter from the rain. A groom took her horse and, standing by the door as she entered, prevented explanation she might have made--had she been able to explain.

IV

Had she been able--for the thing that caused her sudden tears and sudden plea was no more than a glimpse, one of those transient glimpses of the walls, of the purpose, of the end of her training; differing from other glimpses that sometimes came in that it caught her unstrung.