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.