Chapter VII: Japhra and Ima. Japhra and Aunt Maggie

I

The van brought Percival back to Aunt Maggie.

Japhra and Ima, waiting the doctor's arrival, watched and tended the signs of how, as Japhra had said, the night had struck Percival down. From the moment of his collapse in Japhra's arms, his vitality no longer withstood the strain to which it had been pressed. His mind gave way beneath the attack of the events of the past hours; marshalled now by fever's hand they returned to him in riot of delirium. "Don't, Ima! Don't! ... No! No! I'm all right! I'm better standing! ... Only a kiss in fun, Ima! O God, if I had only known! ... Murdered! Where's Hunt? Murder! Poor old Hunt! ... In-fighting! I must get in! If only I can stick out this round! ... Ge' back! Ge' back! What's Boss Maddox yelling about? ... In!--I must get in! I will get in! ... Ima! For me! O God, what a thing to happen! Only in fun! Only in fun, Ima! ... Follow him! Follow him! I must get in at him...."

When he was momentarily in silence Japhra looked a question at Ima.

She answered quite simply: "I told him that I loved him."

"And he?" Japhra said.

She arranged the bedclothes, and with a fond touch smoothed back Percival's hair; then looked at her father and smiled bravely and shook her head.

"I have known it these many days," Japhra told her. "I have watched thee." He placed his hand on hers where it caressed Percival's forehead. "What of comfort have I for thee?" he said. "My daughter, none. He is not of us. Hearken to this thought, Ima. Heaven shapeth its vessels for the storms they must meet. Some larger thing calleth that grace of form and that rareness of spirit that he hath. What profit then for us to sorrow?"

Because he saw her crying, he repeated: "What profit?"

"Well, I am a woman," she said. "My love is of a different sort from thine."

He stroked her hair. "My daughter, wouldst thou unlive the past?"

She replied: "Nay, it is all I have."

"So with me," he said. "This night endeth it. Thou and I--henceforward we will be alone, remembering him--happy to have loved him, happy that he hath been happy with us, happy to have been a port where he hath fitted himself a little for what sea he saileth to."

She pressed her father's hand. "As thou sayest," she said; and after a moment, bending over Percival like some mother above her child: "What awaiteth him?" she asked.

"Some strong thing," Japhra said. "I know no more--that much I know without mistake. From the first when he came to us with his quaint ways and fair face I knew it. A big fight, as I have told him."

As if she believed her father to have divination, "Will he win?" she asked him.

"He is the fighting type," Japhra replied. "Victory for him. This night in the tent. To-morrow--whatever will. Though it be death--always victory."

She remembered that.

II

The doctor, when he came, showed himself a tough gentleman--abrupt of speech, of the type that does its rounds in the saddle--who said "Stiff crowd, you! Regular hospital here. Cracked head in every van. Boss Maddox--he's in a bad way. Now this young man. Make me fortune if you stop."

After examination: "Nursing," he said; "it's a case for nursing. He's gone over the mark. Head--and hands, by the look of 'em! Not my business that. Stiff crowd, you! Nursing. You'll have to watch it pretty sharp. That girl's got a way with him. That's what he wants."

"I am taking him home," Japhra said; "two days from here--if that be wise."

"Wisest thing. Get him out of this. Stiff crowd, you! I'll look in again midday. Send you some stuff. Then you can move. He's badly over the mark. Look after him."

Thus, on the afternoon of that day, the train of tricks and chances had Percival on the road towards Aunt Maggie and Burdon village. The police, who had taken authority in the camp, made no objection to Japhra leaving. They knew now the man they wanted; half the Maddox crowd had heard Hunt's threat to stick a knife in Boss Maddox; the blade found was scratched with his name; a score had seen him edging through the press towards the Boss; there were not wanting those who, their imagination enlarged by these hints, had seen the very blow struck. Japhra might go, the police said, and Stingo Hannaford too. The only wanted vans were those in flight that might have the fugitive in hiding. So, while Boss Maddox, removed to the Infirmary, lay between life and death, while the Blue Boys from the police station and the tough boys from the vans scoured the country in thrill of man-hunt, Japhra harnessed up the van and struck away towards Burdon.

The patient ranged wide in his delirium during the journey--often on his lips a name that once had fallen about him like petals of the bloomy rose, sweet as they; that now struck like blows in the face at her who ceaselessly watched him:

"I know this house! Up the stairs! down the stairs! I'm tired, tired! What am I looking for? What am I looking for? Not you, Dora!--not you! ... You are Snow-White-and-Rose-Red! I love you, Dora! Why do you look at me so strangely, Mr. Amber! ... Rollo! Rollo, old man!--Rollo, what are you doing? She is running away from me! Let me go, Rollo! let me go! ... In-fighting! I must get in! I will get in! ... Dora! Dora! How I have longed for you!..."

She that watched him appeared to have a wonderful influence over him. Of its own force it seemed to give her the quality of entering the wanderings of his mind and satisfying him by answering his cries.

"In-fighting! In-fighting!" he would cry. "I must get in! I will get in!"

And she: "You are winning! There--there; look, you have won! It is ended--you have won!"

"You are Snow-White-and-Rose-Red! Dora! Dora! My Dora!"

And she, steeling herself: "I am here, Percival! Your Dora is here! Hold Dora's hand! There, rest while I stay with you!"

So through the hours.

"Post Offic" was the evening of the second day distant. Japhra walked all the way, leading the horse--movement steadier, less chance of jolting, by leading than by driving, Japhra thought; and so trudged mile on mile--guiding away from ruts, down the steep hills holding back horse and van by force amain rather than use the drag that would have jarred noisily. For the rest he walked, one hand on the bridle, the other in his pocket, his whip beneath his arm, not with the keen look and alert step that was his usual habit, but with some air that made kindly folk say in passing: "Poor gipsies! They must have a hard life, you know!"

But it was that each step brought him nearer end of a companionship that had gone with deep roots into his heart that made life for the first time seem hard to this questioner.

He would not smoke. "The reek would carry back on this breeze and through the windows to him," he told Ima, come beside him while her patient slept.

She could never remember seeing her father without his pipe, and she was touched by his simple thought. She slipped her hand into the pocket of his long coat where his hand lay, and entwined their fingers. "Ah, we love him, thou and I," she said.

She felt his fingers embrace her own. He asked her quietly: "My daughter, is it bitter for thee when he crieth Dora?"

She answered him with that poor plea of hers. "Well, I am a woman," she said. But after a little while she spoke again. "Yet I am glad to suffer so," she told him. "Though he cries Dora, it is my hand that soothes him when he so cries. He sighs then, and is comforted. It is as if he wandered in pain, and wanted me, and finding me was happy. Well, how should I ask more? Often--many years I have prayed he should one day be mine, my own. It is not to be. But now--for a little while--when he cries and when I comfort him, why, my prayer is vouchsafed me. Mine then--my own."

III

Aunt Maggie saw that wonderful influence Ima exercised over his delirium. When Japhra had carried him up to his bedroom, and when Ima was bringing "his things" from the van, he broke out in raving and in tossing of the arms that utterly alarmed her and Honor, their efforts of no avail. She called in panic for Ima. Ima's touch and voice restored him to instant peace. "You must stay with me," Aunt Maggie said, tears running down her face. "My dear, I beg you stay with me. You are Ima. I know you well. He has often spoken of you. Oh, you will stay?"

Afterwards Aunt Maggie went down to thank Japhra for his agreement to this proposal. He would put up his van with the Hannafords, he told Ima--with Stingo, who would shortly be coming, and with Mr. Hannaford--and would stay there, whence he might come daily for news while Ima remained with Percival.

Aunt Maggie had grateful tears in her eyes when she thanked him. These, and those tears of panic when she called Ima's aid, were the first she had shed since suddenly the van had brought her Percival to her an hour before. Trembling but dry-eyed she had gone to him and seen his dangerous condition; shaking but tearless had made ready his bed.

"Strange-like"? "Touched-like"? It was fate had ordered him back to her, she told herself. Almost upon the eve--within four short months of the twenty-first birthday for which she had planned--he was brought back; and brought back, despite himself, by an agency stronger than his own strong spirit. Fate in that!--the same fate that by Audrey's death-bed had assured her that nothing would fail her, and that by a hundred seeming chances had justified its assurance through the years.

He was very ill. She was not afraid. Fate was here--and she told Japhra he would recover.

She found him in the van, his pipe alight again and staring in a dullish way at the vacant places whence Percival's belongings had been removed. He came down to her, and when she told him her belief he had a strange look and a long look into her eyes before he answered. He had marked the tearlessness that went curiously with her devotion when he had brought her to Percival; he marked now some strange appearance she had for him and some strange note in her voice when she told him "He will recover."

"Ay, mistress," he said. "Have no fear. He will recover."

For her own part she marked also some strange look in the strangely strong eyes that regarded her.

She asked "But why are you so confident?"

He noticed the "But." "Mistress, because his type is made for a bigger thing than he has yet met."

To that--meeting so strongly the truth she knew--she replied: "Yes!--yes!"

At her tone he came a sudden step to her. "Mistress, is it in thy hands, this thing he must meet?"

She, by the influence of this meeting, stood caught up and dizzy by return to her in dreadful violence of that old fluttering within her brain.

Japhra in stern and sudden voice: "Beware it!"

He thought her eyes questioned him and he answered them: "Why have I from the first known some big thing waited him?--it was somehow told me. Why beware?--I am somehow warned."

She turned and began to go away. Come out of the fluttering, she could not at once recall what had passed between her and this little man.

Japhra put a quick hand on her arm: "Mistress, beware lest thou betrayest him!"

She remembered that.