Chapter II: Fears and Visions and Discoveries

I

Percival took the highroad with the one desire to be alone--to walk far and to walk fast. The prodding of his mind that goaded him, "I'm growing--I'm losing time--I'm settling into a useless idler!" that tortured him he was in apron-strings and likely to remain there, produced a feverish desire to use all his muscles till he tired them. His feet beat the time--"I must do something--I _must_ do something!" and he swung them savagely and at their quickest. It was not sufficient. He was extraordinarily fit and hard; the level road, despite he footed it at his fiercest, could scarcely quicken his breathing. A mile from "Post Offic" he struck off to his right and breasted the Down, climbing its steepness with an energy that at last began to moisten his body and to give him the desired feeling that his strength was being exercised. "I must do something!" he spoke aloud. "I must--I can't go on like this--I won't!" and taxed his limbs the harder. If he must feel the chains that bound him in idleness, let him at least make mastery of his body and rebuke it till it wearied.

At the crest of Plowman's Ridge he paused and drew breath and turned his face to the wind that ever boomed along here and that had come to be an old friend that greeted his ears with its jovial, gusty Ha! Ha! Ha!

Far below him he could see "Post Offic" with its garden running to the wood. From his distance it had the appearance of a toy house enclosed by a toy hedge, the toy trees of the wood rigid and closely clipped like the painted absurdities of a child's Noah's Ark. As he looked, a tiny figure came from the house and went a pace or two up the garden and seemed to stand and stare towards him up the Ridge. Aunt Maggie, he was sure, and had a sudden wave of tenderness towards her, looking so tiny and forlorn down there. He remembered with a prick at heart that, even in the heat of his anger in the parlour half-an-hour ago, he had noticed how small she looked as she stood pathetically before him, gently replying to his impatience. He thought to wave to her with his handkerchief, but knew she could not see him. He remembered--and another prick was there--that she had said, seeking, no doubt, to win a moment from his violence, "Do you see my eyeglasses, dear? I'm getting so shortsighted, Percival." He flushed to recollect he had disregarded her words and had threshed ahead with his "It's not fair to me--not fair to me, keeping me here doing nothing!" He had been unkind--he was unkind--and she was so small, so gentle, so loving, so tender to his every mood.

But that very thought of her--how small she was, how gentle--that had begun to abate his warring mood, returned him suddenly to its conflicts. That was just it!--so small, so gentle, so different from him in every way that she could not understand his situation and could not be reasoned with. No one understood! No one seemed to realise how he was growing, and how blank the future, and hence what he was growing. They all laughed at him when he spoke of it.

They all laughed! Mr. Purdie laughed--Mr. Purdie had laughed and said, "Oh, you're not a man yet, Percival!" and had given his absurd, maddening chuckle.

"His silly, damned chuckle!" cried Percival to old friend wind at the top of a wilder burst of resentment against the world in general and for the moment against Mr. Purdie in particular.

Rollo laughed--Rollo had laughed and declared: "Oh, don't start on that, Percival! That'll be all right when the time comes."

"When the time comes! Good lord! The time has come," Percival told old friend wind. "It's slipping past every day. All very well for old Rollo--all cut and dried for him. For me! I'm to be idling here when he goes to Cambridge, am I? And idling like a great lout when he comes back!"

Lady Burdon laughed--they all laughed, thinking him foolish, not realising. Ah, they would laugh in another way--and rightly so--when they did realise, when they saw him standing among them idle, useless, helpless, dependent on Aunt Maggie. They would all laugh--they would all despise him then. Everybody....

II

As he came to that thought--visioned some distorted picture of himself, overgrown, hands in pockets in the village street, and all his friends going contemptuously past him--there came a sudden change in old friend wind that for a moment left him vacant, then somehow changed his thoughts anew. Old friend wind, that had been buffeting him strongly in keeping with his turbulent mood, dropped, and he was in silence; then came with a different note and bringing a scent he had not apprehended while it went rushing by. Nothing odd that he should be responsive to this change. The wind on Plowman's Ridge was old friend wind to him, and everybody who is friends with the wind knows it for the live thing that it is--the teller of strange secrets whispered in its breezes, the shouter of adventures thundered in its gales. Who lies awake can hear it call "Where are you? Oh, where are you?"--who climbs the hill to greet it, it welcomes "Welcome--ho!" Sometimes, to those who are friends with it, it comes lustily booming along in high excitement ("This way! This way! There's the very devil this way!"); sometimes softly and mysteriously tiptoeing along, finger on lip ("Listen! Listen! Listen! Hush--now here's a secret for you!").

In this guise it came to him now--dropped him down from the turbulence of spirit to which it had contributed, caught him up and led him away upon the cloudy paths of the scent it gave him. The fragrance it bore in this its whispering mood stirred, in that quick and certain manner that scents arouse, associations linked with such a fragrance. There was in the scent some hint of the perfume that was always about Dora; and immediately he was carried to thought of her....

She to see him idler! She to pass him by contemptuously! His mental vision presented her before him as clearly as if she were here beside him on the Ridge. He saw her perfect features, with their high, cold expression; the transparent fairness of her skin; that warm shade of colour on either cheek that, as though she saw him watch her, deepened with their strange attraction even as he visioned her. He visioned her clearly. He could have touched her had he stretched a hand. And he was caused--he knew no reason for it--a slight trembling and a slight quickening of his breath.

She to see him idler! ... In rebuke of such a thought he released his mind to wild and undisciplined flights that showed himself the champion of tremendous feats--of arms, of heroism, of physical prowess--performing them beneath the benison of her eyes, returning from them to receive her smiles....

For a considerable space he stood lost among these clouds. They had drifted upon him suddenly. He found them delectable. Then he began to find them strange and puzzling--scenes that were meaningless, sensations that could not be determined. It is to be remembered of him that, though he was now advanced to the period when the sap is up in youth and quickening in his veins, he did not pursue the life nor was he of the nature that encourages the amorous designs. A sluggish habit of mind and body is the soil to nurture these: he was alert and braced, eager and sound from foot to brain--a thing all fibre and fearless, whose only quest was what should give him the challenge of movement, of light, and ring back tough and true when he taxed it. No room was here, then, for the disturbances that sex throws up; and yet these very qualities that such disturbance could not undermine conspired to arouse him very mightily when he should turn him to enquire what this disturbance was, and discovering, should launch himself upon it.

He was near to the brink of that launching now. Dora with her rare beauty always had exercised upon him a feeling different from any he commonly knew; he never yet had troubled to suppose that it was caused by any emotion outside his normal life. She had astonished him by her grace of form and feature on that day when he had discovered her to be Snow-White-and-Rose-Red of the fairy book. Thereafter she had remained to him a delicately beautiful object--set apart from the ordinary fashion of persons he knew; not to be treated quite as he treated them; a very dainty thing, making him aware of the contrast that his own sturdy figure, strong limbs, brown face, and hard young hands presented. As a boy he had always been caused a manner of awe in her presence; as he grew older the awe went back to the sheer admiration that she had caused in him at their first meeting. Out of her company, in the long months that frequently separated her visits, he rarely thought of her; though sometimes--and he had no reason for it--he would find her pretty figure in his mind or in his dreams. When he reencountered her, the admiration sprang afresh; he liked to watch her face, to stand unnoticed and expect, then see, her cold smile part her lips, or those strange shades of colour deepen and glow upon her cheeks; he liked in little unobserved ways to protect her as he had protected her that day in the muddy lane; it caused him a strange rapture to have her thank him for any service.

III

These were his relations to her through the years. He never had thought to analyse them nor question why he so regarded her--never till now. Now for the first time as he stood on Plowman's Ridge he mused among the misty tangle of the sensations that old friend wind had brought, lost and astray among the visions presented to his mind by estimate of how Dora would consider his idle plight--now for the first time he suddenly questioned himself what she was to him.

He was all unused to the sensations in which, by an effort recalling himself from his musings, he found himself suffused. They were all--that slight trembling and that slight quickening of his breath that possessed him--foreign to his nature, and he made a sharp movement as though they were tangible and visible things that he would shake from about him. Useless!--they had him wrapped.... Quicker his trembling, and his breath quicker. What was she to him? Up sprang the answer, answering with a triple voice that demanded his acknowledgment. Up sprang the answer, causing him a physical thrill as though indeed there burst at last from within him some essence that had been too long held and now was loosed like fire through his veins. With a triple voice, clamouring he should recognise it! What was she to him? Her face and figure stood in all their beauty before his mental eye--that was one voice and he trembled anew to hear it. What was she to him? Memory of a light speech of Rollo on the previous day came flaming to his mind: "And mother, I believe, has a plot with Mrs. Espart that I shall marry Dora then and settle down"--that was a second voice and stung him so that he knit his brow. What was she to him? Of them all--of all who would laugh and have him in scorn when he was taskless idler--bitterest, most intolerably goading, that she should hold him so--that was the third voice and drew from him a sharp intake of the breath as of one that has touched hot iron.

What was she to him? In triple voice he had the answer, demanding his acknowledgment, clamouring for his recognition. By a single word he signed the bond. None was by to listen, and yet he flushed; there was none to overhear, and yet he spoke scarcely above a whisper. He just breathed her name--"Dora!"

An intense stillness came about him. He stood enraptured, all his senses thrilled. Out of the stillness, echo of his whisper, seemed to come her name of Dora! Dora! Dora! floating about him as petals from the bloomy rose. He raised his face to their caress and was caught up in sudden ecstasy--believed he was with her, touching her; and saw and felt her stoop towards him, bringing her perfume to him as the may-tree stoops and sheds its fragrance when first at dawn the morning breathes in spring.

IV

So for a space he stood etherealised--awed and atremble; youth brought suddenly through the gates and into the courts of love where the strong air at every tremulous breath runs like wine to the brain, to the heart like some quick essence. For a space he stood so; then was aware that old friend wind was up again and drumming Ha! Ha! Ha! upon his ears as one that mocks.

What was she to him? The answer, now he had it, stirred to wilder tumult the feelings that had brought him turbulently breasting up the Ridge. He looked again towards "Post Offic," toylike below, and had no tender thought for it--bitter vexation instead, as of the captive who goes to fury at the chains that bind him.

That he should submit to be thus chained, thus apron-stringed! That Dora should laugh! That she should know him idler! Goading thoughts--maddening thoughts, and he flung himself, bruising himself, against them as the captive against his prison walls. That she should laugh! It should not be! It was not to be endured! He threw up his head in determination's action, his hands clenched, his body braced, resolve upon his angry brow.

Ha! Ha! Ha! drummed old friend wind--Ha! Ha! Ha!

He gave a half cry and turned and strode away along the Ridge, taking the direction that led him from home, and exerting himself under new impulse of the desire to rebuke his body and haply ease his mind.