The Happy Warrior

by A. S. M. Hutchinson

He saw the bright look he had observed shade, as it were, to one very earnest. The symbol of their two hands so strongly different quickened in Percival the appeal that he always felt in Rollo's company, that went back to the early years of their play together, that was vital part of this happy, lucky period, and that was warmed again in the thoughts that came to him as he had looked over the eastward valley. "Why, Rollo," he said earnestly, "it is good to think of. It is going to be good. We two down there. It's wonderful to me how it's all come out. It makes me 'tingly,' too, when I think of it—and of what it's going to be. Help you—why, we two—" He pressed the brown fist about the delicate hand. "There!—just like this good old Plowman's Ridge that shuts us off from everybody! Nothing comes past that to interfere with us."

They were a moment silent, each in his different way occupied by this close exchange of their friendship; and Rollo's way made him almost at once put his horse about, concerned lest his face should betray his feelings, and made him say with an attempt at lightness: "No, nothing, with the good old Ridge to shut us off," and then, "Is that some one riding up from Upabbot?"

The direction was that where Percival's gaze had been. "Yes, it is," Percival said. "I thought so. She's coming up. It's Dora."

CHAPTER X

TWO RIDE TOGETHER

I

Often in these weeks the three rode together; seldom Percival and Dora met out of Rollo's company. Brief moments while they waited him, brief moments when he rode ahead of them, these were the most frequent of their intimacies; more rarely came chance half-hours, and most rare of all half-hours planned when she admitted they could be contrived. He suffered nothing that their meetings should be thus fugitive and at caprice, in main, of Rollo's moods and movements. That none as yet should know their secret ministered to rather than chafed his ardour; that, when their eyes met, their eyes spoke what in all the world only they two knew, was of itself as darling a thing as when to all the world she should be known for his alone. Then she would be his own, but their secret the price of it; now he might not claim her, but ah, their secret, theirs!

So secret it was, and she so much her rare and chaste and frozen self, that even between them it was hardly spoken. He never had lost his first awe and wonder at her beauty; and it filmed all his intercourse with her and all his thoughts of her as with a gossamer veil that, forbidding rough movements, forbade him touch her with the close words of his passion that might bruise her or give her alarm. More by signs than ever by words they spoke their secret. Words carried them over the passing subjects that any might discuss; signs revealed the secret that was theirs alone. When they met the faintest deepening of her colour shades would show it, when they parted came a last glance and again those shades would glow; when he sometimes touched her hand, her hand would stay and speak it; when he sometimes held her eyes, ah, then their secret stirred! In those few half-hours when alone they came together, meeting near the Abbey, riding through the lanes, then with none to see them he would hold her hand and feel it tell him of their secret while their lips told empty words.

It was in these weeks, indeed, that he came to know he found it a little hard to make conversation with her. That something of her character was manifested in this difficulty he had no suspicion, nor that in his solution of it her disposition was clearer yet revealed. He found she was not greatly interested to hear of himself; then found her most alert, and oftenest brought the little laugh he loved to hear, the deepening he loved to see of those strange shades of colour on her cheeks, by speaking to her of herself, or listening while of herself she told him. At first he gave her glimpses of the van life with Japhra on the road; her curiosity was not aroused. Something of the famous fight he told her, and in vigorous passages of when the sticks came out, and of the wild scenes that followed the crime of poor old Hunt, whom she had known: he saw she was not greatly entertained. Later, as events ran along, he gave them to her—told her of the day when it was found that his increasing activities with the dear old Rough 'Uns made it necessary he should live over there, no longer ride daily to and fro from "Post Offic," and of how jolly, jolly good they were to him and of the funny evenings in their company; told her of the day when the Rough 'Uns had announced they thought it proper to advancement of their business that a couple of hunters should be bought for him so that he might ride to hounds and keep among the horsey folk when the hunting season opened; told her of the day when he had from Aunt Maggie the news that the affection between herself and Ima had arranged that Ima was coming to spend the approaching winter—and likely every winter—with her; all these he brought to Dora, but slowly came to see they but little took her interest.