Chapter II: Ima Shows Her Heart

I

Percival suggested to Ima that they should use in a stroll the leisure evening that the trouble in the vans had given him. Some drink had been passing as the day wore on, and the heat between the two factions was not better for it. Here and there bickerings were assuming an ugly note.--"Let's get out of it," Percival said. "Come along, Ima, up to the top over there--Bracken Down they call it."

It was close upon nine o'clock as they left the Fair. They picked their way along the paths through the tall bracken that gave the place its name--reaching a clearing in the thick growth, by mutual accord they dropped down for a glad rest.

Very still and cool here among the fern, the Fair a nest of tossing lights, faint cries and that lion's trump of _oo-oo-oomph_ beneath them; a remote place of silence, and silence communicated itself to them until Ima broke it by her question "Of what are you thinking, Percival?" and to his reply--that he thought of when he should leave them all, and how--told him "Strange then how thoughts run. It was in my mind also."

Stranger how tricks and chances of life go! Looking back afterwards, recalling her words, Percival realised how events had run from one to another upon the most brittle thread of hazards. The trouble in the vans had sent him out here with Ima; that was the merest chance; that was the beginning of the thread.

Very cool and remote here among the bracken. He had gone back to silence after her last words. It was she who spoke again.

"Are you weary of it?" she asked.

He was lying at his full length, face downwards, his chin upon his clasped fingers. She sat upright beside him, one knee raised and her hands about it.

He turned his cheek to where his chin had been and looked up lazily at her: "Why, no, not weary of it, Ima. I like the life. I've been at it a long time. When the day comes I shall be sorry to go."

She was looking straight before her. "A sorry day for us, also," she said.

"Will you be sorry, Ima?"

"Of course I shall be sorry."

He gave a sound of mischievous laughter. Lying idly stretched out there, the warm night and the unusual sense of laziness he was enjoying stirred in him some prankish spirit, or some spirit of more warm desire, that he had never felt in Ima's company. "Yet you are always trying to get rid of me," he said; and he laughed again on that mischievous note, and snuggled his cheek closer against his hands, and felt that spirit run amicably through him as he stretched and then released his muscles.

She looked down at him, smiling. "Unkind to return my conduct so," she said. "No, I have but reminded you you are not always for the rough ways."

He had watched her face as he lay there, seen how her hair, her brow, her eyes, alone in all the shadow about Bracken Down caught the light from where the light was starred across the sky, and how her lips seemed also to attract it. Now when she looked down and smiled, it was as if some gentle radiance were bent upon him, or as if Night, in visible embodiment, gracious as Summer night, starred, tranquil, cool, stooped to his couch.

He got quickly to his feet, that spirit tingling now.

"Going?" she asked, and the lamp of her face was turned up to him so that he looked full into it.

"No," he said, pronouncing the word as he had made his laugh--as if some inward excitement pressed its escape.

"No." He came in front of her, went on his knees and sat back on his heels. That brought him close to her, facing her.

"Ima," he said, "you've got six--seven stars on your face, do you know that?"

She smiled, unaware of his mood.

Himself he was scarcely aware of it: "Well, you have, though," he said. He approached a finger towards her and pointed, and almost touched her while he spoke. "You have, though. Two on your hair--there and there. One on your forehead--there. One in each eye--that's five. Two on your mouth--one here, one there: seven stars!"

"Foolish talk," she smiled. "We had a Romany woman once with us who told fortunes. Just so have I heard her speak to village girls. When--"

His eyes betrayed him. Concern and worse leapt into hers. She thrust out a hand to stop him, but he bent forward swiftly and strongly. Urged by the spirit that laziness and the warm, still night had put into him, that had led him on in mischief and that now suddenly engulfed him--"Stars on your mouth!" he cried, and caught his arms about her to kiss her.

II

He felt her twist as she were made of vibrant steel and strong as steel. His lips missed hers, and scarcely brushed her face. He tried for her lips again, laughing while he tried, and pressed her to him and felt her twist and strain away with a strength that surprised him while he laughed.

"Only a kiss, Ima! Only a kiss!"

She was of steel, but he held her. She spoke, and the strangeness of her words made him release her. "Ah, ah, Percival!" she gasped. "How you despise me!"

He let her go and she sprang away and upright, as a bow stick released. He let her go, and stared at her where she stood panting fiercely, and stared in more surprise when, checking her sobbing breaths, she spoke again.

In their struggle her hair had loosened and it fell, half-bound, in a heavy cascade upon one shoulder and down her breast. The starlight gleamed on it and on her dark face framed against it. She had a wild look, as if her mild beauty had suddenly gone gipsy; her sobbing voice had a wild tone, and he noticed the drop back to the "thee" long absent from her speech: "Ah, this to happen!" she cried. "This! Ah, what a thing I must be to thee!"

The strangeness and the violence of her distress astonished him. What had he done? Tried for a kiss? In the name of all the kisses snatched from pretty girls--! "Why, Ima?" was all he could say. "Ima?"

She dropped to the ground with a collapsed action as though, oppressed as she was, standing were insupportable. She covered her face with her hands, ceased her sobbing breaths; but he saw her trembling in all her frame.

Rising, he went to her, put a hand on her shoulder, and, at the convulsive movements he felt, made deeper the contrition for his careless act that her distress now caused him. "Ima, what have I done? Only tried to kiss you in fun. A sudden, silly thing--I don't know why--I never meant it--but only a kiss in fun."

He waited a moment, grieved for her, half-vexed with her--then had his answer and was faced with emotions as sudden and unexpected as when a moment before, without premeditation, he had her struggling in his arms.

She drew a deep breath and answered him. "That is it--in fun!" she said. She threw out her arms across her raised knees--the palms upward, the fingers curved in a most desolate action. "In fun!" she said intensely. "I would to God--I would to God thou hadst done it in passion."

He came in front of her. "Tell me what it is I have done to you," he said firmly.

The intensity went from her voice. She spoke then and thenceforward very softly, as if she were making explanation to a child, and in her answer she used again the term that went with the days of the "thee" and "thou" now returned to her.

"Used me," she answered him softly, "used me as any wanton is to be used, little master."

He cried, "Ima! After all these years we have known each other--a kiss in fun!"

But she went on: "What maids are kissed in fun? That a man weds does he use so? That the sisters of such as thou art does he so use? That give him cause for regard does he so use? What maids, then?" and answered herself, "Such as I am!"

"Oh!" he cried, wounded with pity for her, "Oh, Ima--Ima, dear, don't talk like that. What can you mean? I am sorry--sorry! Forgive me!"

Her sad eyes almost smiled at him. "I have nothing to forgive thee," she said. "It was but a foolish fancy that I had. Well that it should be broken--ended that;" and she looked again across the dark bracken, her arms extended upon her knees in that desolate pose.

It wrung him with pity--his dear Ima! "But tell me!" he pressed her, anxious to soothe her. "Tell me what you mean by fancy--by saying 'ended that!'"

She answered: "That all I had tried should be broken suddenly--suddenly as a star falls. I had not minded if I had been warned."

"What have you tried, Ima?--I want to know--to show you how sorry I am."

She was silent for a considerable space. When she began to speak she spoke without pause, without modulations of her low tone, without notice of the stammered exclamations that her words broke from him.

"Hear me, then," she said. "The thing is no more mine--thou mayst know it. To what shall I go back for when I first knew that I loved thee?--"

"_Ima!_"

"Why, from the first I knew it and began to try to fit me for thee. Why went I to shut myself in roofs and walls, to learn hard books and gentle ways and how to speak in thy fashion?--so thou shouldst not scorn me, so I might make me to be seemly in thy sight--"

"_Ima! I never dreamt--!_"

"--Why have I gone my ways so--winter by winter leaving my father's van? Because I loved thee since I first saw thee--"

"Don't! Don't!" he cried. There was something completely terrible to him in this avowal from a woman--immodest, shameful, horrible--that must cause her violation of her most sacred feelings as they would be violated were she thrust naked before him; that caused him agony for her suffering, and agony that he should see it, as he would endure agony for her and for himself if made to see her nudity. "Don't, Ima! Don't! I understand--I see everything now. I ought to have known!"

But she went on--it might have been some requiem she made to some poor treasured thing now dead in her extended arms. She went on: "Because I loved thee--ah, worshipped all thy doings, all thy looks--loved thee with all the love that men and women love--as mothers love, as lovers love, as friends love, as brothers love,--there is no love but I have loved thee with it, and I have thought them all and loved thee with each one the better to enjoy my love--"

"_Ima!_"

"--Why cried I 'this to happen!' Because by thy kiss I saw that I was nothing to thee--and less than nothing. All my poor trying suddenly proved of no avail. All my poor fancy that haply thou mightst turn to me if I could be worthy of thee suddenly gone to dust that the winds sport. Why cried I 'ended that!'--"

She sighed very deeply. Her trembling had in some degree communicated itself to him. He trembled for the shame he knew she must be suffering, and for the effect upon him that her gentle, even voice had, crooning its tragedy in the darkness of their remote and silent situation, and for the effect upon him of that long sigh--rising and then falling away to tiniest sound, as it had been the passing of some spirit released to glide away across the bracken.

"--Why cried I 'ended that'?" and then her long, sad sigh; and then: "Because all is nought, little master;" and he saw her fingers extend and her head bow a little....

She arose then, slowly, and he went back to give her room. Her hair had slipped the last coil that held it, and was in a black sheen to her waist before one shoulder and in a black sheen to her waist behind her back. She began to loop it up with deft but tired fingers and looked at him while she twined it. Her face was very kind to him; the stars caught it, and he saw those stars upon her mild mouth that had tricked him to his wanton act: they seemed to show her almost smiling at him.

He asked: "Are we going now?"

She smiled then, gently. "Nay," she said. "I have left my poor secrets here--suffer me to go alone." Then turned and left him; and he watched her form swiftly merging to the darkness--now high among the bracken, now lower and lower yet, as though it were a deepening pool she entered. Now gone.

III

It seemed to Percival, left alone, as if some horrible and most oppressive trouble had befallen him. This piteous thing had struck so suddenly that for some moments he remained only numbed by it, as numbness precedes the onset of pain from a blow. When the full meaning returned to him, "Good God!" he cried aloud, "What a thing to have happened!" and most tenderly--with increasing tenderness, with increasing grief--he went through all she had revealed and how she had revealed it. It was surely the most monstrous pitiful thing that ever could be, her secret plots and strivings to fit herself for what she yearned--tasking herself in "gentle ways," in speech of his fashion, in hard books, in the life between walls and under roofs; he ached for her in every bone as he thought of her thus schooling herself--for him. "Oh, horrible, horrible!" he muttered, writhing for her to remember all her little cares for him--her attention to his clothes, her concern that he should not get into "rough ways"; horrible! horrible! now that he knew their loving purpose. And then her revelation of it! He must rise and pace, the better to endure the recollection of that. How terribly she struggled in his arms! "God, what a beast a man can be!" he cried. What agony must have wrung that cry, "Ah, Percival, how you must despise me!" What agony that "This to happen!" What pain, what bleeding of her heart, that lamentable ending--"Because all is naught, little master!" Happy, happy time when first she used to call him by that quaint endearment; in what travail, in what blackness, it had come from her now! What had she done? Why fastened such a love upon him whose love was utterly pledged away? Nay, the torment was What had he done? What vile and brutal ends had he used to knock her to her senses? What manner of sympathy had he given her when she lay bleeding?

"I must go to her," he said abruptly; and at the best speed the darkness would admit he twisted his way through the paths among the bracken towards the distant nest of lights.