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.