The Happy Warrior Part 39

It was this only--that he loved another more; this only--that the fires of his love had sprung out in a new place and there burned with heat infinitely more fierce than the flame where formerly his affections had warmed their hands.

III

Such of his meal as he required--and that was what habit, not appet.i.te, demanded--he ate in silence. To silence also Aunt Maggie went, shortly after Honor had left them. She attempted once or twice to continue to persuade him from his mood--protested that he was eating nothing; sought to rally him with little sc.r.a.ps of gossip, with questions touching his afternoon. Of no avail. Presently she clasped her hands together on the table before him, and only watched him, and only sought to discover from his face what thing it was his face betided, and only felt her fears increase.

When he was done he pushed back his chair and she dropped her eyes, for his were now upon her and had the steady, reckoning look she had observed--and feared--when he regarded her for that moment at his entrance. She could not endure the feeling that he watched her, and watched her so. "You will go to bed soon, Percival," she said. "You do look so tired."

He replied: "I am not tired. I have something to ask you first, Aunt Maggie;" and after a pause he went on: "Aunt Maggie, I was telling you this afternoon that I thought I ought to be doing something. Well, more than that I thought I ought to be doing something, and more than merely telling you--because I know I was in a great state about it and went off in a great state."

She answered, "Yes, Percival?"

"You said there was plenty of time for that."

"Yes, Percival."

"There isn't, Aunt Maggie." And he went on quickly: "there isn't plenty of time to think about what I am going to do. I am not a boy any longer. Even if I started to-morrow I should be starting late.

Every one at my age is doing something."

His tone was firm and quiet but was kind. She said that which made it take a harder note.

"Percival, you need only wait," she said, "till you are twenty-one."

She saw his face darken in a change as swift and chill as sudden shadow along the sea. "Oh, that!" he cried. "That! I don't want to hear that any more or ever again! Is that all you have for me?"

She clasped and unclasped her hands on the table before her. He waited several moments for her answer. Then he said: "And what am I to do till then?"

She told him: "Only wait with me, Percival."

He said very quietly: "No, I will not wait. I will not stay with you.

I am going away."

The stress that each suffered was broken out of them by his announcement. The thought of losing him, the thought of how a word, revealing her secret, would keep him, broke from her in her cry: "No, no, Percival! Oh, Percival, no!"

Her sudden voice and its anguish smote him to his depths in his own stress as a sudden cry in the night that shocks the heart. He uttered in a voice she had never heard--most hoa.r.s.e, most atremble: "Oh, understand! For pity's sake try to understand. I am so that I will never sleep again--never again till I have earned my sleep. Oh, understand that I am a man!"

She saw his dear face, his handsome face, his face that she loved so and was to lose unless she spoke, all twisted up as though he writhed in pain. She cried: "Percival, don't look like that. I can keep you.

I cannot let you go."

He looked at her with eyes that told his anguish of this scene and of his spirit. "You cannot keep me," he said. "I am going."

She breathed: "By telling you I can keep you."

He said: "Tell me, then."'

She began, her tongue heavy as a key is rusty that is to turn in a lock closed eighteen years; "Rollo--" she began, and stopped.

He had for a moment believed that she intended to tell him this matter affecting his future that he knew must be delusion--some wonderful plan, as wonderful as impossible, such as a woman leading Aunt Maggie's retired life might have--whose delusion, having it before him, he could at last show her. But at her "Rollo," disappointed, he broke out, "Oh, what has old Rollo to do with it?"

Her voice was making a stumbling effort to hold on at turning the key.

But his "Old Rollo" caused her to halt, afraid, as one turning a key in very fact might halt and draw back at a footstep.

He saw her face go grey with the hue of ashes. "Aunt Maggie!" he cried, and got up quickly and went to her. "I don't mean to be unkind.

I must go. I cannot stay. But I'm not going angry--not running away.

I love you--love you, you know how I love you. Just think of it as going on a visit. It's no more than that. I'm going with old j.a.phra--that's not like going, being with him, is it?"

She just said: "When, dear?"

"Darling, in the morning. At daybreak."

IV

She began to cry, and clung to him. But it was more than losing him had made that ashy hue in her face that had wrung his heart. It was realisation of a sudden thing that menaced her revenge--a thing suddenly arisen in its long, long path whose end she now was reaching.

Thinking, when the hour came, the more dreadfully to strike Lady Burdon, she had deliberately made possible and had encouraged the friends.h.i.+p between Percival and Rollo. Had she gone too far? What when she told Percival and he saw it was "Old Rollo" he was to displace, "Old Rollo" upon whom he was to bring disaster--what if--?

She dared not so much as finish that question.

CHAPTER X

WITH EGBERT IN FREEDOM

I

In the morning when he came early to her room, she was easier and able only to suffer her distress at losing him. Thoughts had come to her, helping her; and helping her the more in that they were of a part with the fatalism which had a.s.sured her at Audrey's death-bed that nothing could go wrong in her scheme. His resolve to go away was surely, she thought, fate's contribution to her success. Always she had planned for twenty-one--when he should be of age, and qualified himself to avenge his mother. Last night, in agony at losing him, she had nearly robbed herself of that. Fate, in guise of her panic realisation of his affection for Rollo, had interfered to stop her. Last night she had thought it insupportable to be left without him. While she lay sleepless--and heard her darling pacing his floor in the next room--fate had again encouraged her heart by showing her that this was well, not ill--that this was fate working for her; well that he should now, in the last period, be separated from Rollo.

Thus supported she was saved from the uttermost extremity of the collapse that came upon her when fondly he kissed her as she lay in bed, left her, returned to press her to him again.--"Think of it as a visit, Aunt Maggie, only that. Just a visit to give these idle whacking great hands something to do"--and then was gone.

One or two--up thus early--who saw him go by and came to Aunt Maggie when it was noised that he had gone away, told her how stern he looked--how strange. Miss Purdie, early in her garden, had noticed it.

"Oh, Miss Oxford, if I had _known_! Oh, to _think_ he was going when I saw him! Oh, and I _suspected_ something was wrong. There was _something_ in his face I had _never_ seen there before. I thought to myself 'Now _what_ is the matter with you, I wonder?' And I _stood_ and _looked_ after him, and dropped one of my garden gloves and never _knew_ I had lost it until I was back in the house and found I had only _one_ to take off. Oh, when I _think_ of all his sweet ways and his handsome face...."

II

Stern he looked and strange, and stern his thoughts and difficult. His plans ran to coming up with j.a.phra on the Dorchester Road and joining him. Beyond?--he could supply nothing beyond. His urgent desire went to being away from home, and for his own respect and for his mind's ease working to earn his food. Beyond?--he could see nothing beyond.

His thoughts and all his heart and all his being went to his Dora, to her exquisite beauty, to the rapture of their kiss, to the divine ecstasy of her whisper, "I shall always love you;" beyond?--black, black beyond, most utter black, most utter hopeless; emptiness most utter, mock most shrill, most sharp.

He laughed, poor boy; and "Fool! Fool!" cried, "abject fool!" He groaned, poor boy, and "Dora! Dora!" cried, "oh! Dora!" He set his teeth, poor boy, and braced his strength; threw up his chin and clenched a fist, and "Somehow! Somehow!" cried, "Somehow!"

Most to be pitied then, poor boy, as old friend wind, in whose path now he came, knew and mocked, or might have known and surely mocked--buffeting him with "Ha! Ha! Ha!" tossing his "Somehow!

Somehow!" from his lips and chasing it and tearing it as old friend wind had heard resolves and mocked and tossed and chased and torn them from end to end along its course since mankind first resolving came.

But he was helped by that strong "Somehow!" as by resolve mankind--and youth the most of all--is ever helped. More stern, not less, it made him, but launched a shaft of light into the darkness of that Beyond--showing the adventure, not the desert there; inspiring him that somehow stuff was to be found there that somehow he would wrest to himself, somehow shape and beat to win him fulfilment of all his hopes.

Thus he was in brighter mood when presently he brought the white riband of the Dorchester road into view, in mood bright enough to laugh when, striking towards the spot where he proposed to pick up the van, he saw on a gate there a lank figure, bundle over shoulder, that suggested to him it could be no one but Egbert Hunt. He laughed--then had a tender look in his eyes, for his thoughts, as he made along in the direction of gate and figure, went to Rollo.