The Happy Warrior Part 19

"Oh, yes," Percival agreed. "This is just by the corner, you know."

"Well, then," said Egbert, halting, "you see, if I don't take 'em fair, can't expec' them to treat me fair, can I?"

Percival a.s.sented: "Oh, no."

"Sure you'll be all right?"

"Oh, yes. I'll be a horse, you see. Just say 'gee up!' will you?"

"Gee up!" said Egbert.

"Stead-_ey_!" cried Percival, prancing. "Stead-_ey_! Goodnight!" and bounded off.

"Nice little f'ler," commented Egbert; and hurried back to the vegules.

Where the lane turned to the village, horse Percival was made, as he declared, to shy dreff'ly. He galloped almost into the arms of two figures that stepped suddenly out of the dusk. "Oh, Percival!" Aunt Maggie cried and kissed him. "Oh, Percival, where _have_ you been?"

"Say 'whoa!" cried Percival. "Say 'whoa!' Aunt Maggie. I'm a horse--a white one, you know."

Two heavy hands pressed the white horse's shoulders, stilling its plunges. "You're a bad little boy, that's what you are," Honor exclaimed, "running off and frightening your Auntie, and not caring nor minding. Don't Care comes before a fall, as I've told you many times and--"

"_Pride_ comes before a fall," corrected Percival. "You've got it wrong _again_, Honor," and Honor's flow was checked with the suddenness that had become the established termination of attempts to reprove Percival since he had learnt the right phrasing of her store of confused maxims.

She took his hand while she pondered doubtfully upon the correction, and with Aunt Maggie holding the other, he skipped along, bubbling over with his adventures. "I've got bandages on both my legs, Aunt Maggie--oh, and Hunt has got one of his legs in the grave, just fancy that! I've been having tea with Rollo; and Lady Burdon put on these bandages and she wants me to go and play with Rollo every day. _Do_ let me, Aunt Maggie. I say, you are squeezing my hand most dreffly, you know."

Aunt Maggie relaxed the sudden contraction of her fingers. "Lady Burdon--yes?--tell from the very beginning, Percival dear."

"Well, she said 'Promise to tell your Aunt Maggie I will come and ask her to let you be Rollo's little friend and'--Aunt _Maggie_! You're _hurting_!"

She recollected herself again and patted the small fingers. "Tell from the very beginning, dear. How did you meet them?"

"Well, you understand, I was catching a frog--"

"Post Offic" was reached, supper was swallowed, his merry head beginning to droop and nod, while still he excitedly recounted all his adventures. He was almost asleep when Aunt Maggie undressed him and put him to bed.

She sat a long time beside him, watching him while he slept.

CHAPTER III

LADY BURDON COMES TO "POST OFFIC"

I

In the morning Lady Burdon came with Rollo to make her request that Percival might spend much of his time at the Old Manor as Rollo's playmate. In these seven years since the amazement at Miller's Field, this was but her third visit to the estate, her first for the purpose of staying any length of time, and the first that had seen Rollo with her. Two days had been spent here when Jane Lady Burdon had been brought to rest in Burdon churchyard; three when Mr. Maxwell, the agent, had been troublesome and importunate in the matter of expensive alterations on the property. Lady Burdon had come down then "to have an understanding with him;" as she expressed it--"to see for herself."

The result had been as unfortunate for Mr. Maxwell (to whom she had shown some temper) as it had been augmentative of the dislike she had always felt for the property and its greedy responsibilities. The result had been to filter over the countryside from Mr. Maxwell that she was the controlling partner in the new representatives of the house; that hers was the refusal to take up the urgently needed irrigation scheme; hers the scandal (as it became) of neglect to carry out improvements in the cottages over at Abbess Roding; hers the crime (as it was held) of the selling-up over at Shepwall that entailed eviction of tenants old on the land as the house of Burdon itself.

On the other hand the result had been to return Lady Burdon to the Mount Street life with at least a temporary stop put to the Maxwell whinings and at least a lighter drain from the Mount Street expenses.

Miss Oxford had not seen her on either of these visits. Miss Oxford had only smiled in an odd way when she heard of the behaviour that had set the countryside clacking. The better Lady Burdon flourished, the more Lady Burdon exercised the prerogatives of her usurped position, the riper she ripened for the blow, when there should be returned to her the son whose mother she had murdered; that was the entertainment Miss Oxford nursed through these years, living so gently and so quietly, "thinking" so much, poor dear.

"Strange-like?" "Silly-like?" Or dreadfully sane? For Miss Oxford's own part, she knew only one thing of her mental condition. At very rare intervals there seized her a state that was related to and that recalled the tremendous pressure in her brain when she had knelt, consumed with hate and desire for vengeance, by Audrey's death-bed. It took the form of a sudden violent fluttering in her brain, as though a live, winged thing were beating there, beating to be free. The pressure that came by Audrey's death-bed had ended in a snap--in something giving that left her extraordinarily, tinglingly calm, possessed by the plan and certainty of revenge to be taken by Audrey's son--one day. The fluttering, the winglike beating ended of its own volition, and outside any command she could put upon it--sweeping up all her senses in its beating, only leaving to her the terror that it would end--in what? Sometimes it came in just the tiniest flutter, without cause and gone as soon as come, just arresting her and frightening her like a swift shoot of pain in a nerve. Sometimes in the briefest flutter but with cause; such a case had been when Percival told her of his meeting with the Burdons and she had caused him to exclaim by clutching his hand. Once of much longer duration and of new effect, and with revelation to her of the end it threatened. That was when, a few days ago, she had stood alone with Percival in the great hall of Burdon Old Manor. It was the fluttering that had bade her make him put on his cap and cry 'I hold!' and she had been informed that if it did not stop--if it did not stop!--if it did not stop! she would scream out her secret--run through the house and cry to all that Lady Burdon was--

It had stopped. The beating wings ceased. She was returned to her quiet, gentle waiting.

II

It always took the same form--the presentation of a picture.

"They're coming! They're coming!" cried Percival, bursting into the parlour with tossing arms, aflame with excitement, hopping on lively toes, to announce Lady Burdon and Rollo. "They're coming, Aunt Maggie!" and he was away to greet them at the gate.

Aunt Maggie was at the table where post-office business was conducted.

The open door gave directly on to the garden path; and she heard voices and then a step on the threshold and bent over the papers before her; and then a pleasant tone that said "Good morning, I am Lady Burdon,"

and immediately the beating wings, wild, savage, whirling, and she transported from where she sat to watch herself in the picture that the fluttering always brought.

Immense beating of the wings, the sound drumming in her ears; seven years rolled up as a stage-curtain discloses a scene, and she saw the room in the Holloway road, herself kneeling there and Audrey's voice: "... and then said 'I am Lady Burdon' ... O Maggie! O Maggie! ... and I said 'Oh, how can you be Lady Burdon?' ... Maggie! Maggie!" The beating wings drove up to a pitch they had never before reached.

Through their tumult--buffeted, as it were, by their fury--and from the scene in which she saw herself, she looked up and saw Lady Burdon smiling there, and heard Lady Burdon's voice: "Good morning, I am Lady Burdon." Again, as in the great hall with Rollo, if it did not stop!--if it did not stop!--if it did not stop! she must cry out: "You are not! You said that to Audrey and killed her! Now--"

And again, and this time when the terrible fluttering had almost beaten itself free and she had formed her lips to release it, it suddenly stopped. As at the bedside, seven years before, she fell from paroxysm of pa.s.sion to unnatural calm, so now she was returned to her normal, quiet self, content to wait, and she said quite quietly: "Percival told me to expect you."

Lady Burdon advanced pleasantly. "Ah, and I hope he also remembered to tell you of my apologies. I am afraid we kept him with us much too long last night."

She looked around the room with the air of one willing to chat and to be entertained, and Miss Oxford, murmuring there was no occasion for apology, advanced a chair with: "Please sit down, if you will. This is very humble, I am afraid. It is only the post-office, you know; and only a toy post-office at that."

She was quite herself again. Through this interview, and always thereafter when she met Lady Burdon or thought of her, she was invested with the calmness that had come to her by the death-bed. She knew quite certainly that she had only to wait. She was not at all anxious.

She knew she could wait. She only feared--now for the first time, and increasingly as the attacks became more frequent--that an onset of that dreadful fluttering might descend upon her and might not go before it had driven her to wreck the plan for which she waited--Percival, not she, to avenge his mother.

The fear caused in her a noticeable nervousness of manner. Lady Burdon attributed it to natural embarra.s.sment at this gracious visit, and that made her more gracious yet. Miller's Field would have perceived in Lady Burdon, as she sat talking pleasantly, a considerable change from the Mrs. Letham it had known. She was very becomingly dressed. She had grown a trifle rounder in the figure and fuller in the face since Miller's Field gave her good-by, and that advantaged her. Her olive complexion was warmer in shade, healthier in tinting than it had been.

The walk from the Manor had touched her freshly, and she had been pleased by the respectful greetings of the villagers. Rollo, completely in love with Percival, was brighter than she had ever known him. She had hated the idea of burying herself down here for a month; but she was beginning to entertain an agreeable view of taking up her neglected position and dignity in this pleasant countryside. She was very happy as she faced Miss Oxford: her happiness and all that contributed to it made her very comely to the eye; and she was aware of that.

She spoke enthusiastically of Percival. "Such a splendid young man.

Such charming manners." She spoke most graciously of knowing all about Miss Oxford and of how plucky of her it was to take up the post-office.

She said smilingly that Miss Oxford was not to take advantage of the post-office by keeping herself to herself as the saying was; and when Miss Oxford replied; "You are kind; we have no society here, of course; with the one or two families the post-office makes no difference; we are all old friends; with you, it is different;" she said very winningly: "Not kind, in any case--selfish. It is Percival I am after.

We have taken so much to him. He and my Rollo have struck up the greatest friends.h.i.+p, and that is such a pleasure to me. Rollo as a rule is so shy and reserved with children. He has no child friends.

It will do him a world of good if Percival may play with him. Percival will be the making of him."

She smiled in confident and happy belief of her words, and Miss Oxford smiled, too. It was not for Lady Burdon to know--yet--that Percival was being brought up to be not Rollo's making but his undoing.

But Miss Oxford only said that the friends.h.i.+p would be capital for Percival also, since Lady Burdon permitted it. "There are no boys here in Little Letham that he can make close companions," she said. "We seem short of children--except among the villagers. I think Mrs.

Espart's little girl at Upabbot over the Ridge is the nearest."

Lady Burdon nodded. "Mrs. Espart--yes, I am to go over there. She left cards, thinking we had arrived. Abbey Royal, she lives at, doesn't she?"

"Abbey Royal, yes. One of our show places, you know. What Percival would call 'normous," and Miss Oxford related the "'normous; simply 'normous to me, you know," of Percival's visit to the Manor. "We came to 'enormous' when I was reading to him shortly afterwards," she said, "and he exclaimed: 'I know! 'Normous, like Mr. Amber's house!' Mr.