Chapter XII: Letters of Recall

I

The first winter of this life Percival spent with Japhra in the van; the second took him, for the first time since he had broken away, back to "Post Offic." Ima left them, when the circus broke up in that first October, to go to her doctor friend in Norfolk, there to continue the education she had imposed upon herself. Egbert Hunt took her place, and the three started to tour the country till Spring and the reassembly of Maddox's should be round again. But winter on the road proved inclement to Mr. Hunt's nature. A week of frost in early December that had them three days snow-bound and on pinching short commons decided him for less arduous ways of life. He left them for London, his pockets well enough lined by his season's apprenticeship to old One Eye; they had news of him once as a socialist open air speaker in company with some organisation of malcontents of his kidney; once as prominent in an "unemployed" disturbance and in prison for seven days as the price of his activities.

"He will know gaol a longer term ere he has done," was Japhra's comment. "A weak, bad streak in him."

Percival laughed. "Poor old Hunt. More bitter than ever against 'tyrangs' now, Japhra. He's been shaping that way since I first knew him--often made me laugh with his outbursts."

"Best keep clear of that kind," Japhra said. "The stick for such."

They pushed North. Neither had a feeling for roofs or fireside that winter. The tinkering and the Punch and Judy kept them in enough funds scarcely to draw upon the season's profits. Japhra plied him at the one; Percival took chief hand in the other. A tough life, a quiet life, a good life. With only their two selves for company they talked much and read much of the three fighting books that were Japhra's library. Percival was almost sorry when Maddox's was picked up again and Ima rejoined them. He welcomed the second winter when it came; chance fell that it had him scarcely a month alone with Japhra when it saw him leave the van, and homeward bound to Burdon.

II

Two letters gave him this sudden impulse. Both were from "Post Offic"--one forwarded thence--and seemed to have partnered one another on a long and devious search before finding him. One was from Aunt Maggie. The other he opened first and opened with hands that trembled a little. Well he knew that regular, clear writing! He had only seen it in notes to Rollo, invitations to tea, in the days gone by, but it was as memorized to him as in him every memory of her was graven--Dora's!

His hands trembled that held this the first sign of her since he had left her in the drive at Abbey Royal on that night eighteen months before, and his breath ran quick. The first sign! He had urged her at their parting he might write to her. She had desired he should not. Letters at the French school might only come, it appeared, from parents, or in handwriting authorised by parents, and only to such quarters might be addressed. He had accepted the fate. Nay, well it should be so, he had told her. He would not--could not, for he loved her so!--see her again, be the time never so long, till somehow he had won some place in the world; very well, not even write to her. Their hearts alone should bind them: "For, Dora, you are to be mine. Somehow I shall do it--not see you till I have. You will remember--that is all, remember."

How had she remembered? He broke the seal and held his breath to read.

She wrote from Burdon House in Mount Street: explaining the address as though he had not known Mrs. Espart had taken it on lease at the time of Lord Burdon's death:--

DEAR PERCIVAL,

We returned here yesterday from the South of France, where we have been with Rollo and Lady Burdon. Did you know that Mother has taken Rollo's house here until he wants it and turns us out? I am writing for Rollo. I think you will be distressed to learn that he has been very ill--beginning with pneumonia. But we left him better, and they are following us to London soon. He most urgently desired me to tell you this, and that you must come and see him then. He says that he must see you again; and, indeed, he is forever talking of you. As to that, I must tell you that when I was with him we saw in an illustrated paper some pictures entitled "Life among the Showmen;" and in one, on a tent was to be seen "Gentleman Percival." From what Rollo told us, that was your tent. He was very excited about it; and to me it was very singular to have come upon it like that.

Well, I have written his address on the back of this, and you must certainly write to him or he will think that I have not told you and that I side with Lady Burdon and Mother in estimating that you are "very wild," which I do not.

I address this to your home; but it is hard to know if it will ever reach you.

Yours sincerely,
DORA ESPART.

How had she remembered? No trace of any memory of love was in the lines he carried to his lips and read again and many times again. He reckoned nothing of that. He read what he had expected to find. He read herself, as in the months that separated that magic hour in the drive he had come again to think of her--as one as purely, rarely, chastely different from her sisters as driven snow upon the Downside from snow that thaws along the road; as one that he should never have dared terrify by his rough ardour into that swooning "Oh, Percival, what is it, this?" Realising that moment of his passion, he sometimes writhed in self-reproach to think how violently he must have distressed her: sometimes hoped she had forgotten it--else surely shame of how her delicacy had been ravished at his hands would make her shrink at meeting him again. So this letter that had no hint of memory of love rejoiced and moved him to his depths. Unchanged from his boyish adoration of her, it revealed her, and unchanged he would have her be. Its precise air, its selected words, its stilted phrases, spoke to him as with her very voice--"It was very singular to me;" "It is hard to know:" as icicles broken in the hand! Snow-White-and-Rose-Red--and frozen snow and frozen red!

He was ardent and atremble in the resolve that he must get to London on Rollo's return and make old Rollo the excuse to see her again--touch her, perhaps; speak to her, ah!--then, and not till then, bethought him of his second letter. From Aunt Maggie; and he drew it from his pocket with prick of shame at his neglect of it. He had from time to time written to Aunt Maggie. Her letters were less frequent; easier to write to "Post Offic" than for "Post Offic" to write to him, ever on the move.

Three closely-written sheets came from the envelope. They contained many paragraphs, each of a different date--Aunt Maggie waited, as she explained, until she could be sure of an address to which to post her letter. There was much gossip of a very intimately domestic nature, each piece of news beginning with "I think this will interest you, dear." Before he was through with the letter the recurrence of the phrase, speaking so much devotion, caused a moisture to come to his eyes. "I think this will interest you, dear"--and the matter was that Honor burnt a hole in a new saucepan yesterday. "I think this will interest you, dear"--and "fancy! fourteen letters were posted in the box to-day." "I think this will interest you, dear"--and would he believe it! "one of the ducks hatched out sixteen eggs yesterday."

The more trivial the fact, the more Percival found himself affected. He was touched with the profound pathos of Aunt Maggie's revelation of how he centered each smallest detail of her remote and lonely life; he was rendered instantly responsive to the appeal with which at the end of her letter she cried to him to come home to see her--if only for a night. "This will be the second Christmas that you have been away. The days are, oh! so very, very long for me without my darling boy."

He told Japhra that he must go--not for long, and if for longer than he thought, at least the first of the new year would see him back. They were in Essex. Urgent with this sudden determination that had him, he took train for London on the next morning, and before midday was set down at Liverpool Street Station. Holiday mood seized him now that he had taken holiday. He counted again and again the sixty-five pounds that, to his amazed joy,--he, who till now had never earned a penny!--Japhra paid him for two seasons' wage and share. It seemed a fortune--forced up the holiday spirit as bellows at a forge; and on the way to Waterloo he ridded his burning pockets of a portion of it in clothes and swagger kit-bag for this his holiday, and in presents that brought parcels of many shapes and sizes into his cab--for Aunt Maggie, for Honor, for Mr. Amber, for Mr. Hannaford, for all to whom his heart bounded now that he was to see them again.

III

In these delights he missed his train. Two hours were on his hands before the next, and as he contemplated them a daring thought (so he considered it) came to him. He took a hansom cab and bade the man drive him to Mount Street,--through Mount Street and so back again. He would see where she lived!

"Drive slowly up here," he told the man when the cab turned into the street for which he watched. "Do you know Burdon House?"

It was pointed out ahead of him. "Set down there many a time. Lord Burdon's 'ouse it was. Another party's got it now."

Percival leant back, not to be seen--not daring to be seen!--and stared, his pulses drumming, as he was slowly carried past.

Might there have troubled him some vague, secret feeling of association between himself and that brown, massive front of Burdon House with its broad steps leading to the heavy double doors, with its tall, wrought-iron railings above the area, with its old torch extinguishers on either side the entrance, with its quiet, impassive air that large old houses have, as of guardians that know much and have seen much--brides come and coffins go, birth and death, gay nights and sad, glad hours and sorry--and look to know more and see more? Might he have felt, as he told Aunt Maggie he had felt at Burdon Old Manor, "thinking without thinking, as if some one else were thinking," as he passed those steps where one that he might have called Father often had gaily passed, where one he might have called Mother had gone wearily up and come fainting, dizzily down?

He felt, nor was disturbed, by none of those. He only gazed, gazed as he would pierce them, at all its solemn windows, riveted its every feature on his mind; but only because it was where she must have looked, because it sheltered her where she must be. It was a new setting against which he might envisage her; he only thought of it as that.