The Happy Warrior

by A. S. M. Hutchinson

III

In the first few months, before Rollo and Lady Burdon took their departure for the two years' travel, he was daily, in the intervals from his work, with "old Rollo"; Dora often with them. Nothing would satisfy Rollo for the few weeks that lay between Percival's beginning of his duties with the Hannafords and his own start for the foreign tour but that they must be spent at Burdon Old Manor, nothing would please him to fill in those days but to pass them in Percival's company. He made no concealment of his affection for his friend. Men not commonly declare to one another the liking or the deeper feeling they may mutually entertain. The habit belongs to women, and that it was indulged by Rollo was mark in him of the woman element that is to be observed in some men. It is altogether a different quality from effeminacy, this woman element. Sex is a chemical compound, as one might say, and often are to be met men on the one hand and women on the other in whom one might believe the male or female form that has precipitated came very nearly on the opposite side of the division—women who are attracted by women and to whom women are attracted; and men, manly enough but curiously unmannish, who are noticeably sensible to strongly male qualities and who arouse something of a brotherly affection in men in whom the male attributes ring sharp and clear as a touch on true bell.

There were thrown together in Rollo and Percival very notable examples of these hazards in nature's crucibles. The complete and most successful male was precipitated in him of whom Japhra had said long days before: "I know the fighting type. Mark me when the years come. A fighter thou." Qualities of woman were alloyed in him who once had cried: "Men don't talk about these things, Percival, so I've never told you all you are to me—but it's a fact that I'm never really happy except when I'm with you." Strongly their natures therefore cleaved, devotedly and with a clinging fondness on the weaker part; on the bolder, protectively and with the tenderness that comes responsive from knowledge of the other's dependence.

"Men don't talk about these things—but I'm never really happy except when I'm with you." That diffidence at sentiment and that self-exposure despite it, made when Percival, off to join Japhra, seemed to be passing out of his life, were repeated fondly and many times by Rollo now that Percival looked to be back in his life again. "Hearing me talk like this," he told Percival, "it makes you rather squirm, I expect—the sort of chap you are. But I can't help it and I don't care," and he laughed—"the sort of chap I am. You don't know—you can't come near guessing, old man, what it means to me to think you've chucked all that mad gipsy life of yours that might have ended in anything, the rummy thing it was, and that kept you utterly away from me; to think you've chucked all that and are settled down in a business that really is a good thing, every one says it is, and any one can see it. It means to me—well, I can't tell you what, you'd only laugh. But I can tell you this much, that I do nothing but think, and all the time I'm away shall be thinking, of how we'll both be down here always now when I get back, and of all the things we'll do together."

They were riding as he spoke, their horses at a walk up the steady climb of the down to Plowman's Ridge from Market Roding. His voice on his last sentence had taken an eager, impulsive note, and as though he had a sudden suspicion that it was betraying an undue degree of sentiment he stopped abruptly, his face a trifle red. It was his confusion, not any excess of sentiment, that Percival—quick as of old in sympathy with another's feelings—noticed. He edged his horse nearer Rollo's and touched Rollo with his whip. "Yes, we're going to have a great, great time, aren't we?" he said. "I'm only just beginning to realise it—great, Rollo!"

The affectionate touch and the responsive words caused Rollo to turn to him as abruptly as he had broken off. "I've planned it," Rollo said. "I'm forever planning it. When I get back—fit—I'm going to settle down here for good. I loathe all that, you know," and he jerked his head vaguely to where "all that" might lie, and said, "London and that kind of thing. I'm going to take up things here. I've never had any interests so far. My rotten health, partly, and partly not getting on with people, and I've let everything drift along and let mother make all the programmes. That's how it's been ever since you went off. Now you're back again and I'm keen as anything. I'm going to work up all this property, going to get to know all the people intimately and help them with all sorts of schemes. Going to run my own show—you know what I mean, no agent or any one between me and the tenants and the land. And you're going to help me—that's the germ of it and the secret of it and the beginning and the end of it."

Percival laughed and said: "Help you! You won't want any help from me. I can see myself touching-my-hat-to-the-squire sort of thing as you go hustling about the country-side."

But Rollo was too serious for banter. "You know what I mean," he said. "And you—you're going to be a big man in these parts, as they say, the way you're going, before very long."

They had gained the Ridge and by common consent of their horses were halted on the summit. Rollo turned in his saddle and pointed below them. "Percival, that's what I mean," he said, and carried his whip from end to end along the Burdon hamlets. "That's what I think of. Look how peaceful and remote it all looks, shut away from everything by the Ridge. We two together down there, planning and doing and living—"

Percival's gaze had travelled on from Burdon Old Manor where the whip had taken it and over the Ridge into the eastward vale. He turned again to Rollo, recalled by the stopping of his voice; and Rollo saw his strong face bright and said: "You'll think me a frightful ass, you'll think me a girl, but you know I get quite 'tingly' when I anticipate it all. And not want your help!—Why, only look at that for instance," and he laughed and put his hand against Percival's where it lay before his saddle. The delicate white, the veins showing, against the strong brown fist was illustration enough of his meaning. "And you're not long out of an illness that would have outed me in two days," he said.