Chapter XII: Prelude to the Big Fight

I

Percival said in a quiet voice, "Put me down. Put me down--I'm going to walk."

"So you're no hand at guessing, partner. Own up to that," was Mr. Hannaford's response. Then he cried, "Hi, what's up with 'ee? What be doing?" for Percival had stretched a sudden hand to the reins and the horse swerved sharply. "Whoa!" bellowed Mr. Hannaford, and dragged up with a wheel on the brink of a ditch. "Might ha' had us out!" he turned on Percival. "Bless my eighteen stun proper if 'ee mightn't!"

It was a wild face that fronted him, blotchy in red and white as it were freshly bruised. "Well, put me down!" Percival cried at him fiercely. "Put me down when I ask you!" and as he slowly drew the rug from his knees and put out a foot to the step he turned back on Mr. Hannaford and flamed "I suppose I can walk if I want to?" and dropped heavily to the road. His feet landed on the edge of the ditch. He blundered forward and came with hands and knees against the hedge. The stumble shook his hat from his head and he turned and went hatless past the tail of the cart and a few paces down the road.

Mr. Hannaford released with a rushing explosion the immense breath that he had been sustaining during the whole of these proceedings. He turned amazed eyes on Ima: "What's happened to him?"

She sprang to the road. "Percival!" and followed him.

He turned at the sound of her feet; and at the look on his face she stopped.

"Well?" he demanded. "Well? What is it now?"

"You have left your hat," she said. "I will bring it to you."

Some wit that came to her gave her these ordinary words in place of questioning him, and he came back to her quickly. "I don't want my hat," he told her. He looked up towards Mr. Hannaford. "I'm sorry I pulled you up like that. I want to walk, that's all. I'm going along the Ridge--to stretch my legs."

"There's something wrong with 'ee," said Mr. Hannaford. "What is it, boy?"

"Nothing. I want a walk, that's all."

Mr. Hannaford pointed across the Ridge. "There's a storm coming up. Best ride."

"I'll be home before that." He turned and went slowly towards a gate that gave to the fields approaching the downside. Ima hesitated and then went swiftly after him as he fumbled with the latch.

"Percival, I will walk with you."

He turned upon her a face from which the gentler mood was gone.

"Oh, for God's sake let me alone," he cried, and passed through the gate and left her.

II

He found that he kept stumbling as he pressed along.

He tried to give attention to lifting his feet but stumbled yet. He found that he could not think clearly. He tried to take a grasp of his thoughts and place them where he would have them go, but they persisted in form of words that Mr. Hannaford had spoken, in swift gleams of pictures that answered the words and then round about the words again. "Ever heard o' Upabbot?" Ah, every well-remembered street of it arose before his mind! "Got any sort of a glimmering recollection of Abbey Royal?" Ah, he could scent the very flowers banked along the drive! "Why, Miss Espart." Blankness then--some thick oppressive darkness suddenly shutting down upon him; some bewildering, vaguely sinister blanket of dread that stifled thought--then suddenly out of it and back again to "Ever heard o' Upabbot?"

The ground beneath him flattened abruptly under his feet. He stumbled more violently than before, and was jolted to recognition that Plowman's Ridge was gained. Of long habit he straightened himself to meet the wind. It suited the unreal conditions that seemed to surround him, it was a part of the dream in which he seemed to be, that something that should have been here seemed to be missing. What? He stood a moment looking dully about him. The question merged into and was lost in the circle of thought that beset him as he followed his right hand and turned along the Ridge. He had stumbled a full mile and more when there struck his face that which informed him what had been missing when first he reached the crest. Wind came against him, and he realised there had been no wind where, ever and like an old friend, wind ran to greet him. Aroused, he pulled up short. He had come far. That was Little Letham lying beneath him, Burdon Old Manor in those trees. Late afternoon gave before evening down the valley. Heavy the wind and close. He turned his head and saw against the further sky great storm clouds pressing down upon the Ridge. He raised his eyes and saw a figure come towards him, crossing the Ridge and walking fast from Little Letham, turning towards him as he gave a cry.

"Dora!"

He went forward some swift paces, the stumbling gone from his feet and his mind sprung tensely out of its dull circling; then he stopped. She too was halted. She had turned sharply about at his cry and was poised towards him where she turned. There were perhaps twenty yards between them, and the quickly deepening gloom admitted him her face whitely and without clear outline through the dusk. He did not move, nor she. There came from her to him a rattle of breeze, presage of the storm that gathered, and he saw her skirts fan out upon it. There struck his face a heavy raindrop, skirmishing before the gale, and he drew a quick breath and went forward to her--nearer, and saw her faultless face and felt the blood drum in his ears; nearer, and her clear voice came to him and he could hear his heart.

She said: "Percival!"

"Dora, I have come back."

Her face, that he watched with eyes whose burning he could feel, was as emotionless as motionless she fronted him. It might have been frozen, so still it was; and she a carven thing, so still she stood; and her eyes set jewels, so still were they. His breathing was to be heard as of one that breathes beneath a heavy load. When she did not answer--and when answered he knew himself by her silence--"There is only one thing I want to hear from you," he said. "Tell me it."

Her voice was a whisper. "Oh, must you ask me that already?"

He said stupidly: "But I have come back."

She said: "O Percival, it is a long time."

He had known her voice precise and cold--as icicles broken in a cold hand!--as was its habit and as he thrilled to hear it. He had known it faltering and atremble and scarcely to be heard when she was in his arms. Now there was a new note in it that he heard. There was a weary droop, as though she were tired. "But it is a long time," she said again. "I asked you not to leave me."

He was trembling. "Tell me what has happened."

Her reply was, "I asked you not to leave me, Percival."

"You and--" There was a name he had difficulty in saying. He turned away and went a step, fighting for it among the scenes in which her words surrounded it. Then came to her again and pronounced it. "You and Rollo. Is it true?"

"Yes, it is true."

He said brokenly: "But I have held you in my arms. How can it be true? I have kissed you and you have kissed me and clung to me. You have loved me. I have come back for you. How can it be true?"

Her face answered him. Beneath his words the crimson flamed as though in crimson blood it would burst upon her cheeks--flamed in those strange pools of colour where her colour lay, and drove her white as driven snow about them--flamed and called his own blood as flame bursts out of flame. He caught her in his arms. "You are mine! What has he done to you? Mine, mine, what has he dared?"

She struggled and pressed her face away from his that approached it. "You must not! You must not! Percival, you must not!"

"Ah, your voice, your voice tells me that you are mine!" he cried: and cried it again in revulsion of triumph over the unthinkable torment that had possessed him. "Your voice tells me!" and again in savagery of heat at a thought of Rollo, "Mine--your voice tells me you are mine!"

The colour was gone from her face. She was so white and so still in his arms that he desisted the action of his face towards her, but held her close, close. There came from her lips: "No, no! you must not. It is wrong."

"How can it be wrong? You say No, but your voice tells me. I have come back for you, my Dora."

"Ah, be kind to me, Percival."

"How should I be unkind to my darling?"

He felt a tremor run through her. "You must not call me that, Percival. It should never have been. I thought you would forget."

What, had he not triumphed then? Torment came ravening back at him again like a wild thing, and with a sudden burst and clamour, shaking him where he stood, old friend wind with that old hail--or mock?--of ha! ha! ha! in his ears. He said intensely: "You thought I would forget? While I was away you thought I would forget? Dora, you never thought it!"

She stirred in his clasp to disengage herself: "No, no--before that. When we were together."

He broke out: "Explain! Explain!" He let her from his arms and she stood away from him, stress on her face. "Oh, there is something I do not understand in this," he cried. "Explain--tell me."

She told it him. "Percival, I was always to marry Rollo," she said.

He stared at her. "How can you mean--always?"

"I should have told you. I knew it."

He pronounced in a terrible voice "Rollo!" Then he said thickly: "What, when you were with me--in those days, those days! You knew it? He had spoken to you then?"

She caught her hands to her bosom in an action of despair. "No, no!" she cried; and then, "Oh, how can I explain?" and then found the word that helped her with force of a thousand words to name her meaning. "It was--holiday," she said.

He remembered it. He remembered, and its memory came like a lamp to guide him. He said slowly, "When Rollo went--I remember you were different. Dora, do you mean it was always arranged you were to marry Rollo?"

She said, "Always--always!"

He cried, "But you loved me!"

She wrung her hands at that, and cried in the most pitiful way, "I thought you would forget. I don't know what I thought. It was holiday. It should not have been. Oh, why must we talk of it?"

"Dora, they are forcing you to marry him."

"I was always to, Percival. I was always to."

"You want to?"

"Well, I was always to."

Her voice was that of a child whose young intelligence by no means can take a lesson. Sufficient to one such that the thing is so as he sees it and cannot be otherwise; and to her sufficient--trained and schooled and cloistered for that sufficiency--that, as she said, she was always to. Ah, she had had holiday, but not enough to loose her; she had tossed among the flowers, but had fluttered home at nights. Now the mate she toyed with was knocking at her prison; she could see and could remember, but she could not fly. Quickly after the end of their months together, and very certainly after Rollo's return, she had discovered what long she had dimly seen. Clearly the purpose and the walls and the end of her training had been presented to her. Passively she had accepted them.

But how explain it? How explain what herself she did not know? She looked from night that came stealing up the valley to his face that had a shade of night. She heard the wind that now was in gusty beat against them, and above the sound could hear his breathing. She could only wring her hands and say again: "Percival, I was always to;" and when he did not answer, "Let me go now, Percival."

He answered her then. "You loved me. How can you do this? You loved me. Why did you not tell me?"

She cried as if she were distracted, "Oh, oh! I asked you not to leave me. It was a long time. You were not here."

He caught on to that. "I am here now. It shall not be. Dora, I am here now!"

"It is done," she said. "It is done!"

He seemed for the first time to realise the complete abandonment, the unresisting resignation to her fate, that was in her every word and tone. His voice went very low.

"Dora, are you going to marry him?"

"I was always to." It was the beginning and the end of her will. "I was always to." She had no question of it.

He threw up his arms in wild despair at its repetition. "O my God! What a thing to tell me! What a thing to be! Why? Why? Do you love him? Is he anything to you? Why were you always to marry him?"

She gave the reason her mother had never concealed from her. "He is Lord Burdon. It was arranged long ago. My mother--"

The sound he made stopped her. As if he had been stabbed and choked his life out on the blow, "Ah!" he cried. "That is it. Because he is what he is. If he were like me this would never have happened. If he were not what he is it would be ended."

She appealed "Percival! Percival!" wrung her hands and turned and went a step. When she looked again she saw his face as none had ever seen it, twisted in pain and dark with worse than pain. He was not looking at her, but down upon Little Letham where Burdon Old Manor lay. She approached him and spoke his name, touched him, but he did not move.

She left him there and once looked back. He still stood as she had left him.