The Happy Warrior Part 38

He kissed her hands again--fragile and white and cold and scented, like crushed, cold flowers in his grasp. He told her: "From the very first I loved you--but could not know it then. From that day when I first saw you! Look how I must have been born to love you--you'll not be frightened then. Snow-White-and-Rose-Red I called you. Smile, darling Dora, as you smiled when I told you in the muddy lane that day. Do you remember?"

She had no smile: still seemed aswoon, still scarcely breathed, as some bewildered dove--captured, past fluttering--which only quivers in the hands that hold it.

"If only you can sometimes think of me. You will understand then and think again perhaps, and know all my life is changed, and know that everything I do I shall do for you. I'll not see you again. I'll not be here when you come back."

At that he felt her fingers move within his hands.

"I cannot stay here now--now that I love you. I shall go."

He felt her tremble, and she breathed: "Oh, why? Oh, where?"

"How could I face you again and still be idling here? I don't know where, Dora. I only know why--because I love you so. Anywhere, anything to get me something that will give you to me!"

She whispered "Percival!" and stopped as though she had not strength for more. And he breathed "Dora!" as though he knew what she would say and by intensity of love would draw it from her.

She slowly drew her hands from his. She took them to her breast, and faltered again--again as she were wounded, afraid, struck, threatened, atremble at some fearful brink, robbed of some vital virtue: "Oh, Percival!" and caught her breath and said "Oh, Percival, what is it--this?"

"It is love!" he cried. "Dora, it is love!"

She gave a little sigh; she unclasped her hands; seemed to relax in all her spirit; suffered her hands, like cold white flowers floating earthwards, lovewards to float to his.

"Tell me!" he breathed.

Soft as her hands fell, "I always shall think of you," she told him.

He besought her "Tell me!"

She whispered "Always!"

In a man's voice, out of a sudden and terrible review of his condition--possessed of nothing, chained to do nothing--and of her high estate: "Others will love you!" he cried.

As they would nestle there and there abide, her fingers moved within his hands.

In a man's voice, full man as full love makes, "Tell me," he besought her.

Scarcely perceptible her answer came; scarcely her lips moved for it--faint as the timid breeze ventured to the innermost thicket, soft as the hushed caress of summer rain along the hedgerows, "I shall always love you," she breathed.

Shortly he left her.

CHAPTER IX

WITH AUNT MAGGIE IN FAREWELL

I

It was past eleven when Percival got back to "Post Offic." He had been absent seven hours. He felt himself removed by thrice as many years from the moment when he had flung away from Aunt Maggie to work off by active exercise the feelings aroused in him when, to his demands that he must be doing something with his life, she had prayed him only wait.

Day then, night now, and he as changed.

The mood he brought her was unlike any he had proposed should be his case. On Plowman's Ridge before he saw j.a.phra he had imagined for his return a petulant, a trying-to-be-calm scene in which he should repeat his purpose that an end must be made of the purposeless way of life in which she was keeping him. By Fir-Tree Pool, with wise j.a.phra propounding how a man must encourage his spirit and defeat his flesh, he had imagined himself gentle with dear Aunt Maggie; gently showing her what restlessness had him, persuading her to his ends, or, of his love for her, accepting her wishes. Now he was come back and neither case was his. Day then, night now, and he as changed. Now he had lived that hour with Dora in the drive; now he had kissed her; now had heard her breathe "I shall always love you." Gone every thought of petulant distress; gone j.a.phra's counsels--gone boyhood, manhood come!

The change was stamped upon his face, figured in his air. Aunt Maggie looked up eagerly as he entered. She had waited him anxiously. He stood a moment on the threshold of the room and looked at her with steady, reckoning eyes. She saw; and she greeted him fearfully. "Why, Percival, dear, how very late you are," she said.

He replied: "It took me longer to get back than I expected."

His tone matched his aspect and the look in his eyes. Aunt Maggie's voice trembled a little: "You must have been a long way, dear?"

"A good many miles," he said, and came forward and went to his place at the table where supper was laid, and sat down.

"Are you very tired, dear?--you look tired."

"No--no, thank you, Aunt Maggie."

His voice was absent--or stern; and absently--or sternly--he looked at her across the table.

She caught her breath and hesitated, and began pathetically to try by brightness to rally him from his mood.

"At least you must be terribly hungry," she smiled. "Here comes Honor with just what you like."

A tray tanged against the door, and was borne in by Honor, uncommonly grim of the face.

"Now wasn't that clever of Honor!" Aunt Maggie went on. "Five minutes ago--after waiting since seven--she said she knew you would be just in time if she began to cook the trout then; and here it is ready, and most delicious, I'm sure, just as you arrive."

Honor's actual words had been: "Time and tide wait for no dangerous delays, Miss Oxford, and I don't neither--not a single instant longer.

I'll put these troutses on now which ought to have been on at ten minutes to seven, and I'll cook 'em, and cook 'em and cook 'em till I drop fainting on my own kitchen carpet and till they're nasty black cinders that will serve him right. Lost his way! lost his nasty bold temper! It's no good talking different to me, Miss, not if your voice was tinkling trumpets, it isn't!" She had burst in with her tray prepared to repeat her wrath to Percival's face, but caught the appealing look in Aunt Maggie's eyes, perceived that something was seriously amiss with Percival, and exchanged her heat for the affection he had won in her from the first moment, years before, of his arrival--the sweetest bundle of shawls--at "Post Offic."

"Cooked to a turn, Master Percival, dear," Honor said, uncovering before him the steaming dish.

"And only just caught," Aunt Maggie smiled. "Rollo brought them in just before supper time."

And Honor: "And want it you do, as I can see. Nasty pinched look you've got, Master Percival."

And Aunt Maggie: "And look at that beer, dear. You'd scarcely think it was a new cask, would you? As clear as crystal."

And Honor: "Ah, 'Pitch that cask about,' I says to the man when he delivered it. 'Pitch that cask about, my beauty, and you can pitch it back into your waggin', I says. 'Young master don't want to eat his beer with a knife and fork, not if you do,' I says sharp."

And Aunt Maggie: "You see what care we take of you, Percival, although you leave us all day long."

And Honor: "And now I'll just get your slippers down for you. Nothing like slippers when you're tired. And then you'll be to rights."

II

So these fond women, perceiving him amiss, strove, as women will, to heal him with their sympathy; and reckoned nothing--as is woman's part--that he nothing responded to their gentleness nor anything abated his set and brooding air. The world may be chased up and down to find men conspired to soothe a woman's brow and scarcely will disclose a single case. Men weary or wax impatient of such a task. But every household at some time shows women gently engaged against a bearish man. It is the woman's part--womanly as we say: using a rare word for a beautiful virtue.

At another time--in the days before that evening's magic, in the life that preceded his present only by that hour in the drive with Dora--Percival had long been won from moodiness by their solicitude for him. Not now! Those days were only a single hour gone; its events sundered them from the present by an abyss that had a lifetime's depth, a lifetime's breadth from marge to marge. New feelings were his and they enveloped him against old appeals as a suit of mail against arrows. New prospects held his eyes and they blotted out homelier visions as the changed scene of a play is dropped across an earlier background. He was not preoccupied and therefore unaware of the loving sentences addressed to him. His case was this--that he was a new man, and as a stranger, therefore, listening to affections that did not concern him. That he found himself insensible to their appeal was not that he loved Aunt Maggie less or had suffered abatement of the affection he had for hot-tongued, warm-hearted Honor. None of these.