But that very thought of her—how small she was, how gentle—that had begun to abate his warring mood, returned him suddenly to its conflicts. That was just it!—so small, so gentle, so different from him in every way that she could not understand his situation and could not be reasoned with. No one understood! No one seemed to realise how he was growing, and how blank the future, and hence what he was growing. They all laughed at him when he spoke of it.
They all laughed! Mr. Purdie laughed—Mr. Purdie had laughed and said, "Oh, you're not a man yet, Percival!" and had given his absurd, maddening chuckle.
"His silly, damned chuckle!" cried Percival to old friend wind at the top of a wilder burst of resentment against the world in general and for the moment against Mr. Purdie in particular.
Rollo laughed—Rollo had laughed and declared: "Oh, don't start on that, Percival! That'll be all right when the time comes."
"When the time comes! Good lord! The time has come," Percival told old friend wind. "It's slipping past every day. All very well for old Rollo—all cut and dried for him. For me! I'm to be idling here when he goes to Cambridge, am I? And idling like a great lout when he comes back!"
Lady Burdon laughed—they all laughed, thinking him foolish, not realising. Ah, they would laugh in another way—and rightly so—when they did realise, when they saw him standing among them idle, useless, helpless, dependent on Aunt Maggie. They would all laugh—they would all despise him then. Everybody....
II
As he came to that thought—visioned some distorted picture of himself, overgrown, hands in pockets in the village street, and all his friends going contemptuously past him—there came a sudden change in old friend wind that for a moment left him vacant, then somehow changed his thoughts anew. Old friend wind, that had been buffeting him strongly in keeping with his turbulent mood, dropped, and he was in silence; then came with a different note and bringing a scent he had not apprehended while it went rushing by. Nothing odd that he should be responsive to this change. The wind on Plowman's Ridge was old friend wind to him, and everybody who is friends with the wind knows it for the live thing that it is—the teller of strange secrets whispered in its breezes, the shouter of adventures thundered in its gales. Who lies awake can hear it call "Where are you? Oh, where are you?"—who climbs the hill to greet it, it welcomes "Welcome—ho!" Sometimes, to those who are friends with it, it comes lustily booming along in high excitement ("This way! This way! There's the very devil this way!"); sometimes softly and mysteriously tiptoeing along, finger on lip ("Listen! Listen! Listen! Hush—now here's a secret for you!").
In this guise it came to him now—dropped him down from the turbulence of spirit to which it had contributed, caught him up and led him away upon the cloudy paths of the scent it gave him. The fragrance it bore in this its whispering mood stirred, in that quick and certain manner that scents arouse, associations linked with such a fragrance. There was in the scent some hint of the perfume that was always about Dora; and immediately he was carried to thought of her....
She to see him idler! She to pass him by contemptuously! His mental vision presented her before him as clearly as if she were here beside him on the Ridge. He saw her perfect features, with their high, cold expression; the transparent fairness of her skin; that warm shade of colour on either cheek that, as though she saw him watch her, deepened with their strange attraction even as he visioned her. He visioned her clearly. He could have touched her had he stretched a hand. And he was caused—he knew no reason for it—a slight trembling and a slight quickening of his breath.