She named her date. "When you are of age, dear. When you are twenty-one."
He cried: "Three years! Go on like this for three years more!"
He swung on his heel and she watched him go tremendously down the path and through the gate.
CHAPTER II
FEARS AND VISIONS AND DISCOVERIES
I
Percival took the highroad with the one desire to be alone—to walk far and to walk fast. The prodding of his mind that goaded him, "I'm growing—I'm losing time—I'm settling into a useless idler!" that tortured him he was in apron-strings and likely to remain there, produced a feverish desire to use all his muscles till he tired them. His feet beat the time—"I must do something—I must do something!" and he swung them savagely and at their quickest. It was not sufficient. He was extraordinarily fit and hard; the level road, despite he footed it at his fiercest, could scarcely quicken his breathing. A mile from "Post Offic" he struck off to his right and breasted the Down, climbing its steepness with an energy that at last began to moisten his body and to give him the desired feeling that his strength was being exercised. "I must do something!" he spoke aloud. "I must—I can't go on like this—I won't!" and taxed his limbs the harder. If he must feel the chains that bound him in idleness, let him at least make mastery of his body and rebuke it till it wearied.
At the crest of Plowman's Ridge he paused and drew breath and turned his face to the wind that ever boomed along here and that had come to be an old friend that greeted his ears with its jovial, gusty Ha! Ha! Ha!
Far below him he could see "Post Offic" with its garden running to the wood. From his distance it had the appearance of a toy house enclosed by a toy hedge, the toy trees of the wood rigid and closely clipped like the painted absurdities of a child's Noah's Ark. As he looked, a tiny figure came from the house and went a pace or two up the garden and seemed to stand and stare towards him up the Ridge. Aunt Maggie, he was sure, and had a sudden wave of tenderness towards her, looking so tiny and forlorn down there. He remembered with a prick at heart that, even in the heat of his anger in the parlour half-an-hour ago, he had noticed how small she looked as she stood pathetically before him, gently replying to his impatience. He thought to wave to her with his handkerchief, but knew she could not see him. He remembered—and another prick was there—that she had said, seeking, no doubt, to win a moment from his violence, "Do you see my eyeglasses, dear? I'm getting so shortsighted, Percival." He flushed to recollect he had disregarded her words and had threshed ahead with his "It's not fair to me—not fair to me, keeping me here doing nothing!" He had been unkind—he was unkind—and she was so small, so gentle, so loving, so tender to his every mood.