"Mine will come out right," she said.
CHAPTER IX
ONE COMES OVER THE RIDGE
I
"Mine will come out right." But Percival's twenty-first birthday, that was to have seen the consummation of Aunt Maggie's plan, came—and Aunt Maggie held her hand and let it go.
A double reason commanded her. Percival's coming of age arrived with the Old Manor closed and Rollo and his mother far afield on that two years' travel which Lady Burdon had long before projected for her son to introduce his "settling-down." It were an empty revenge, Aunt Maggie thought, that could be taken in such case; robbed of its sting, sapped of all its meaning, unless it were delivered to Lady Burdon face to face, as face to face with Audrey she had struck Audrey down.
That was one reason that found Percival's twenty-first birthday gone, and still the blow not struck. The other was in tribute to the fate that had carried forward Aunt Maggie's plan through many hilly places and that, fatalistic, she dared not hasten when the promised land drew into sight. When she heard during the three months of Percival's zestful life on the little horse farm leading to his birthday that Rollo, before that birthday dawned, would be shipped and away on his leisurely journey round the world, she was at first strongly tempted to make end of her long waiting; at last to Audrey's murderer send Audrey's son. Her superstitious reliance on fate prevented her. With fate she had worked hand in hand through these long years. Vengeance had been nothing had she taken it at the outset when Audrey lay cold and still in the room in the Holloway Road. Under fate's guidance it was become a vengeance now indeed—Lady Burdon twenty years secured in her comfortable possessions; her husband by fate removed, and the blow to be struck through her cherished son; a friendship by fate designed suddenly to turn against her and drive her forth as she had driven Audrey. Fate in it all, in each moment and each measure of it, and Aunt Maggie had the fear that now to dismiss fate and anticipate the hour that she and fate had chosen would be to risk by fate's aid being dismissed.
Fate gave her hint of it—gave her warning. She was in one moment being told by Percival of Rollo's intended departure and long absence; and seeing herself robbed, her plan for his twenty-first birthday defeated, was urging herself with "Now—now. No need to wait longer—now;" she was in the next hearing Percival's desolation at the thought of losing "old Rollo" for so long—of their plans for closest companionship during the few weeks that remained to them; and hearing it, was warned by the same question she once before had asked herself and dared not finish, much less answer then, and dared not finish now: "What, when I tell him, if—"
Fate in it. Fate warning her, Aunt Maggie thought. Fate threatening her. Fate had been so real, so living a thing to her, its hand so plain a hundred times, that she had come to envisage it as a personality, an actuality—a grim and stern and all-powerful companion who companioned her on her way and who now stooped to her ear and told her: "Go your own way—if you dare. Seek to take your revenge now without my aid and short of the time that you and I have planned—if you dare. Abandon me and tell him now." Then the threat: "What, when you tell him, if—"