Chapter VI: With Ima on Plowman's Ridge

I

Ima had put on shoes and stockings when she reappeared from the van and joined Percival to accompany him to the Ridge. The two were come almost to the Down's skirt before they exchanged words. "I have things to do before bedtime," Percival had told Japhra; and as he walked he was too occupied by the thoughts of what he purposed--hunted by them as the tumult of his concerns had hunted him earlier in the day--to give attention to Ima who had come with him when he had preferred to be alone. She was perhaps aware of that. She followed the half of a pace behind the short, impatient steps that partnered--and signified--his mood, her eyes watching what of his face she could see and ever and again turning swiftly ahead, as though she feared he might catch her at it and feared that might offend him; so a dog that knows itself unwanted may be seen, wistful at its master's heels--with little wags of a timid tail and with beseeching glances; eager to communicate some succour to this angry mood; afraid to hazard what may further vex.

Yet he was pleasant when presently he spoke to her.

They stepped from a dense lane about whose mouth and overhead the arching brambles trailed as though to curtain a sanctuary from trespass by outer dust and breeze and light. Before them the Down ran smooth and grey to where, beneath the moon, it took a silver rim along the line of Plowman's Ridge. A harsher scent was here than briar and wild rose breathed within the lane and jealously entwined to hold there; the breeze came with a swifter touch to the face; the light challenged the eyes that the gloom had rested.

Together their effects aroused Percival's senses from his thoughts to his companion.

"Warmer now, Ima?" he asked.

"Warmer now, little master," and she smiled and added: "unseemly to call thee that, now thou hast grown so."

He moved with her to a gate that faced the Down. "Let's rest a bit," he said. "Why, we've both grown, Ima, since the last time I saw you. You've grown. You've put up your hair--properly grown up. I shall have to treat you with terrible respect."

She did not respond to his light tone. Her eyes that looked quietly at him had a grave air. "I am a gipsy girl to thee," she said. "I am not for thy respect--such as me. For ladies that." And before he could answer her she went on: "What of that little lady thou hast told me of--Snow-White-and-Rose-Red as thou didst name her to me?"

He did not notice a changed tone--to be described as stiff--in her voice. It did not occur to him that in the matter of his respect she made comparison between herself and her whom she named with his fond name for her; he was only surprised and only grateful to have that name spoken to him.

"Why, she's grown," he said. "Fancy you remembering her, Ima!"

Eagerness was in his voice. "I am cold again," she told him, and drew away. "Let us go up the Down."

He did not follow her movement or her words, but pursued his own "--remembering that I called her that, anyway," he said.

If it had been her purpose to dismiss the subject, at least she earned herself his full attention by the swiftness with which she turned upon him and by the swiftness of her reply. "It is thee I remember," she answered him. "Not her--or any such. Thou wast my friend when we played boy and girl together. All thou hast done with me, all thou hast told me, point me the way to thee as remembered marks along the road point to a camping-place--no more, and of themselves nothing."

She had his attention; but he attributed the quickness of her speech and her odd thought and simile only to the general oddness of her ways. "Well, you needn't go back to those days in future," he told her. "We're friends now just as much as then."

She shook her head and smiled. "Nay, after this day I must needs go farther back," she said, her voice smooth again. "Thou dost not understand--playmate days I seek. I lie in my bed on the fine nights with the van door wide, and watch the stars and play I walk among them--from star to star and round about among the stars, high to the van's roof and low to where the trees and hills stretch up to them: thou with me as when first I knew thee--in that wise I seek thee; not thus"--she broke off and changed the note of her voice. "What talk is this?" she smiled. "Childish fancies--they are not for thee," and she moved away and he followed her up the Down.

"Ima, they're pretty fancies, though," he said. "And, you know, you'll lose them all if you aren't careful--if you go making yourself stiff and proper with those extraordinary lessons of yours. What are they for, those lessons? They'll spoil you, Ima. They'll make you quite different. All that kind of thing is for--for the others--for what you'd call fine ladies."

"Even so," she said; and pronounced the words as if--though to his mind they explained nothing--everything was explained by them; and said no more until the crest of Plowman's Ridge was reached.

II

He was willing enough for his own part to relapse into his own thoughts. He went so deeply into them that, coming to the Ridge and involuntarily pausing there, he was twice told by her "Here I return," before he was aroused to her again. Bemused, he stared at her a moment as one stares that is aroused from sleep, and his mind jumped back in confusion to the last words that had passed between them. "Well, if you were so anxious for the lessons, why did you give them up when the winter was over?"

She answered him--sadness in her voice rather than reproach--"We have done that talk long since. Thou dost not heed me. It is that I am going that I am telling thee."

He knew he had been careless of her again, and sought to laugh it off. "Well, it is why you stopped your lessons that I am asking thee," he mimicked her. "Woman's reasons, Ima?"

She threw out her hands towards him in a gesture of appeal. "Ah, do not toy me woman's reasons," she said. "Think me less light than that--if thou thinkest of me. Not woman's reasons bade me back to the van when winter broke. Not woman's reasons. I knew me there were green buds in the ditches beneath the dead wet leaves. I had discovered them to the sun and the breezes many years--turning back the leaves and smelling the smell they have. How could I stay beneath a roof when I had thoughts of such?"

She drew a deep and tremulous breath of the mild night air as though she inhaled the scents of which she spoke, and he watched her gaze across the eastward vale with those starry eyes that, as she went on, never the lids unstarred, and she said: "Thoughts of such--of green buds in the ditches beneath the moulding leaves that waited for me to uncover them and knew me when I came; of the first cloud of dust along the road--dust, ah! of tiny sprigs on every bough that I might run to see; of busy birds stealing the straws and coming for the bits of cloth and wool they know I place for them; of early light with all the trees and fields wet and aglisten; of gentle evenings when the new stars come dropping down the sky; of the road--the road, ah!--I sitting on the shafts; of the cool brooks, and leading Pilgrim in and hearing him suck the water and hearing him tear the grass; of the running stream about my feet and the soft grass that sinks a little--these bade me back."

She turned to him and said in the low voice in which she had been speaking: "Not women's reasons these." She changed her voice to one that cried: "Remember me that if I am not like fine ladies I cannot help be what I am with these things speaking to me. Now I am going," and she went swiftly from him and was a dozen paces gone before he called her back.

III

"Ima!" While she spoke he had envisaged what she told, setting its freedom and its elemental note to his own desires as one sets music that stirs the breast. Shaking himself from the spell, "Ima!" he called, and went to her. "Don't go like that. Say good-by properly."

She stopped short and put her hand to her side as though his call had launched a shaft that struck her. She did not turn--as though she dared not turn--until he was close up to her, touching her. Then she turned, and he saw her eyes amazingly lit, and as they met his, saw the light pass like a star extinguished. It was as if she had expected much and had found nothing; and it was so pronounced that he said: "Ima! Why, what did you think I was going to say?"

There was a wild rose in the bosom of her dress that she had plucked as they came through the lane. She bent her head to it and put her hands to it in the action of one that seeks to cover lack of words by some occupation. She drew the flower from her breast and placed it in his coat, pinning it there.

"That's right," he smiled. "I'll keep that to remember you by. What did you think I was going to say? You seemed as though you expected something--then as if you were disappointed. What was it?"

She was very careful in settling the flower. Then she dropped her hands and looked up at him. "I asked nothing," she said. "How should I be disappointed?"

"Asked! No! I saw it in your eyes."

She answered swiftly, almost as one speaking in menace of offending words: "What in mine eyes?"

"Why, what I tell you. As though you expected something and were disappointed."

"No more?" she inquired, and repeated it--"No more?"

"No more--no. But I want to know why--or what?"

She gave a gentle laugh and relaxed her attitude that had been strained, in keeping with her voice. She seemed to have feared he had derived some secret that she had; and she seemed glad and yet a little sad her eyes had not betrayed her. She gave a gentle laugh and threw her hands apart as if to show how small a thing was here.

"Why, little master, there is nothing in that," she said. "The eyes light for that the heart runneth to peep through them as a child to the window."

He laughed at the pleasant fancy: "Well, what did your heart run to see?"

"Nay, I have not done," she told him. "Look also how one may see a child run happily past the window--from the van I have seen it: so sometimes the heart but passeth across the eyes with a glad face, singing from one happy thought to where another waits. I think my heart passed so and thou didst catch the gleam."

He heard her take in a quick breath as her words ended. Then, "Suffer me to go now," she said. "Keep my pretty flowers;" and turned and went swiftly from him down the slope; and was dim where the moonlight faded; and was gone in the further darkness.