THE BIG FIGHT OPENS
I
There had been one years before that had cried, "You are Lord Burdon!"
and one that had received it, first in light mock at its folly, then in
bewilderment at its truth. There was one cried the same words at "Post
Offic" on this night and one, groaning in torment of spirit, that put
it aside as a jest untimely, then, convinced of it, got to his feet and
heard as it were the world shattering to pieces in his ears.
The gathering storm had opened and was driving along the Ridge in its
first onset of rain when at last Percival turned where Dora had left
him, wrenched himself about as though his feet were rooted, and brought
to Aunt Maggie the dark and working face that had stared down upon the
Old Manor. Ima had told Aunt Maggie of his strange behaviour when he
had stopped the cart. When he arrived she was up-stairs in her room,
crying a little, wanting to be alone. Aunt Maggie, Ima's fears
communicated to her, awaited him alone in the parlour. He opened the
door fiercely and came in dripping from the streaming night. She gave
a little cry at sight of his face and rose and stretched her hands
towards him. The sudden peace in here, exchanged for the buffeting of
the night, reacted on the tumult of his mind and forced him to
discharge it.
"O Aunt Maggie! Aunt Maggie!" he said.
"My Percival! What is it?"
He took both her hands that were extended to him; then was acted upon
anew by her loving eyes, and clasped her to him and she felt sobs
shaking his strong frame.
"Percival! Percival! What has happened to you?"
He let her go and dropped into a chair against the table, put his hands
to his head and while she saw his shoulders heaving she saw the
raindrops running through his fingers from his hair. She went before
him, and stretching her arms across the table encircled his wrists with
her hands. They were burning to her touch. "Percival, it is torturing
to me to see you like this. Tell me, tell me!"
He took her hands. "Oh, I am in torture," he said, and she saw the
torture burning in his eyes. "Aunt Maggie, Aunt Maggie, I loved Dora.
I never told you. I was to tell you to-night. I had come back for
her."
She felt a sense go through her as of a sword turned within her.
"But Rollo!" she said.
His hands crushed hers so that she had pain. "Yes, Rollo!" he said.
"I nearly went to him to-night. I shall go yet. Rollo! Rollo!
Rollo!"
He ground the name between his teeth. The pressure of his hands on
hers became almost insufferable. She felt it as nothing to what shook
her brain. She was back at the bedside in the Holloway Road. She was
spun through the years of her waiting, waiting. She was fronted with
the torments when that for which she waited had seemed to be snatched
from her. There filled the room and stooped towards her the figure
that she envisaged as fate, that had stayed her hand, that she obeyed,
that had tried her, that had fought for her, that now was come to prove
itself fate indeed.
In one part she was dizzy and overcome with the shaking at her brain;
in the other she was listening to Percival and worse beset at every
word. "I have seen her," he said, "I have seen her to-night. They are
forcing her to this. They have arranged it for years--arranged it!
Bought her and sold her because he is what he is. Aunt Maggie, she
loved me for myself. He comes in! he comes in! he comes in! and takes
her because he is Lord Burdon."
The shaking at her brain pitched suddenly to a tensest balance like a
machine that rattles up to action then tunes to a level spinning.
"He is not Lord Burdon!" she said.
He was silent but he did not heed her.
"He is not Lord Burdon!"
At her repetition he moved quickly in his seat and relaxed his hands.
"Oh, why say that? Why say that?"
"You are Lord Burdon!"
He let her hands go and pressed his own again to his head. "Can you
only talk like that when you see me suffering?"
She rose to her feet. "Percival! Percival, listen to me. It is true.
It is what I have kept for you these years. It is what I have meant
when I told you I had something for you. You are Lord Burdon!"
He also stood. "Are you mad, Aunt Maggie? Are you mad?"
She staggered back against the wall. While he stared at her as he
questioned her sanity, while she saw the look in his eyes as he asked
her, there came to her with a shock of sudden fear, as to one that has
released a wild and mighty thing and shudders to have done it, the
words Japhra had said: "Mistress, beware lest thou betrayest him!"
He came swiftly to her and roughly caught her. "Are you mad? What is
this?"
She recovered herself. "Do you know that box in your room?"
The locked box was an old joke of his. "What has that to do with it?"
"The proofs are there. You shall see."
"Show me," he said, his voice not to be recognised for any he had
spoken with. "Show me!"
She steadied herself against a chair, and steadying herself by all her
hand came against as she walked, went across the room to the stairs, he
following. There came at that moment a loud knock upon the outer door.
He went dazedly to it and stared with unattending eyes at one who stood
there, the light shining on his heavy waterproof coat that streamed
with rain. It was the strange man whom they had overtaken as the cart
came out of Great Letham.
"The convict Hunt's been seen near by," said the man abruptly. "Me and
my mates thought it right to tell the village."
Percival closed the door upon him without a word. "Show me," he
repeated to Aunt Maggie, and followed her to her room.
II
He sat on the edge of her bed while she told him his story. He sat
motionless and with his face immobile. There was only one action that
betrayed he was under any emotion. His chin was forward on his hand,
elbow on knee. His fingers came across his mouth, and in the knuckle
of one he set his teeth. Blood was there when he drew his hand away.
She finished: "It is all here, letters, certificates. Your mother's
letters, Percival, and your father's. They are all in order from the
first. There is one here to his grandmother and one to his lawyer
telling them of his marriage. He left those with her when he went
away. Then the letters from India."
He drew his hand from his mouth, the blood on his fist. "Leave me
alone," he said. "Go away, Aunt Maggie, and leave me to look at them
alone."
There was that in his voice which smote terribly across her spinning
brain and caused her to obey him.
III
An hour he was occupied in reading the yellowed sheets whose heritage
he was; for long thereafter sat and stared upon them. These devoted
lines in that round hand were his mother's: his father's those ardent
passions in those bold characters; he their son. He felt himself a
shameless listener to penetrate these tender secrets; he felt himself a
little child that hears his parents' voices. Sometimes, in that first
mood, the blood ran hotly to his cheeks; sometimes, in that second,
there came sobs to his throat and great trembling. Memories of
thoughts, impulses, happenings that had been strange, returned to him,
crowding upon him; here was their meaning, their interpretation here.
In the library with Mr. Amber, "thinking without thinking as if I was
in some one else who was thinking," shadows about the room and a moth
thudding the window-pane--here the secret of it! In the library with
Mr. Amber and the old man's cry: "Why do you stretch your hand so, my
lord?"--here the answer! In presence of death with Mr. Amber, and
"Hold my hand, my lord"--here what had opened Mr. Amber's eyes. In
dreams in Burdon House, and searching, searching, and all the rooms
familiar, and a voice that had cried, "My son, my son! Oh, we have
waited for you!"--here, here, the key to it--here that voice in those
yellowed sheets--here, here, what he had searched, streaming from those
papers, tingling his skin, filling his throat as though from the faded
lines strong essences rushed and pressed about him. His mother!--he
spoke the word aloud, "Mother!" His father!--"Father!" Their son, "I
am your son!..."
Of a sudden he was returned to the present. Of a sudden he was
snatched up from realisation of what had been, and what was, and
pitched into battle of what was now to be. Out of a churchyard, out of
a graveside where gentle thoughts arise, into the street, into the
business where the din goes up! So he was hurled, and as one that
gasps on sudden immersion in icy water, as one gripped in panic's hold
that comes out of sleep to sudden peril, so, as he faced the thing that
was come to him, he cried out hoarsely, knew horror upon him, and shut
his eyes and pressed his hands against them as though his lids alone
could not blind what picture was before him. In one instant fierce,
fierce, exultant triumph; in the next torment that reeled him where he
stood. In one instant himself that an hour before had stood looking
balefully down upon Burdon Old Manor; that had cried to Aunt Maggie:
"Rollo! Rollo! Rollo!" and knew it for a thrice-repeated curse; that
had cried: "I was going to him! I shall go to him yet!" and knew his
hands tingle and his brain leap at the thought; in the next, nay,
immediate with the flash and flame of it, Rollo that from childhood's
days had leant upon him; that he had brothered, fathered, loved; that
had cried to him--ah, God, God! how the words came back!--"Everything
I've got is yours--you know that, don't you, old man?" That had cried,
"I'm never really happy except when I'm with you;" that had said, "I
want some one to look after me--the kind of chap I am; a shy ass and
delicate."
He dropped on the bed in the tumult of his torment. He writhed to his
knees and flung himself against the bed, his fingers twisting in the
quilt, his face between his outstretched arms. He had burned with fury
to face Rollo and crush him down. The weapon was in his hands. Ah,
ah, too strong, too sharp, too cruel! New thoughts brought him to his
feet. Strongly he arose and shook himself. What, was he weakening
toward a sentiment? "Everything I've got is yours"--but Dora taken
from him! "Everything I've got is yours!"--it was! it was! and Dora
with it! Always arranged because he was Lord Burdon! His darling sold
to Rollo and bought by Rollo because Rollo was what he was! And he was
not it! He was not it! This night, this hour he should know it!
This night? There came to him the vision of Rollo he had had when they
told him Rollo could not come to the station to meet him but begged he
would go up to him directly he arrived. He had pictured old Rollo
coming to him with eager, outstretched hands. Rollo was waiting for
him now, expecting him every moment, would so come to him if he went,
would so come to him if he waited till to-morrow; and how would look
when he spoke and told? The years ran back and answered him. There
came to him clearly as yesterday that first visit to Mr. Hannaford's
when he had been flushed with excitement and praise at riding the
little black horse and had turned to see Rollo shrinking as he stood
away, distress and tears working in his face. So he would look now.
Then he had encouraged Rollo--as all through life thereafter he had
heartened him. Now? Now he was to strike the appealing face that then
and ever had looked to him for aid....
How do it? How do it? Why hesitate? Why hesitate? How strike him?
Why spare him? How break him? Why let him go? Like live wild things
the questions came at him and tore him; as one in direst torment there
broke from his lips "O God, my God!": as one pursued he burst from the
room, through the parlour where Aunt Maggie stretched hands and cried
to him, out into the night where tempest raged and blackness
was--fierce as his own, black as the thoughts he sought to race.
Out, out, as one pursued! Away, away, to shake pursuit! And caught as
he ran, screamed at as he stumbled on, by all the howling pack that
gathered strength and fury as he fled. His feet took the Down; full
the tempest struck him as he breasted it; ah, ah, more violent the
furies fought within! Thunder broke sheer above him out of heaven with
detonation like a thousand guns; he staggered at the immensity of it;
on, on, for furious more what joined in shock of battle in his brain!
A sword of lightning showed him the Ridge and seemed to shake it where
it lay. He gained the crest and turned along it and knew in his ears
old friend wind in howling mock of ha! ha! ha! to see this fruitless
race.