The Happy Warrior

by A. S. M. Hutchinson

BOOK TWO

A BOOK OF THE SAME SIZE, ILLUSTRATING
THE ELEMENT OF FOLLY

CHAPTER I

LOVE TRIMS WRECKERS' LAMPS

I

On a May morning, then, love in his heart, purpose in his eye, gathering in his careless hand the meshes that he is going to tug, shaking the unconsidered lives they bind—Rollo Percival Redpath Letham, twelfth Baron Burdon, "Roly" to his gay young comrades of the clubs and messes, was set down at Great Letham by the express from London.

Great Letham marks the nearest approach of the railway to the sequestered villages that touch their hats to the Burdon Old Manor folk. It stands at the head of a country that rolls away on either hand in down and valley. Roughly, Great Letham centres the high lands that bound this prospect on its nearer side, and from its outskirts there strikes away a great shoulder of down that thrusts like a massive viaduct straight and far to join the further hills. From a distance this natural viaduct admits to minds however stubbornly practical the similitude of a giant's arm. Rugged and brown and scarred it lies, not green in greenest summer; and the humped shoulder whence it springs, and the great mounds in which it swells along its path, present it as a mighty limb out-thrust to hold away the hills in which its fist is buried. Plowman's Ridge, they call it; and afoot upon it, it is kinder of aspect. Aloof, aloft, alone, the wayfarer stands here, and breathes or breasts the ceaseless wind that saunters or like a live thing thunders down its track; and has on either hand a spreading valley, whence curls the smoke of scattered hamlets, uprise the spires, come the faint sounds of creature life and gleam the fields, as spread upon a palette, coloured in obedience to this and that design of husbandry.

The railway skirts the eastward vale; along the tranquil westward slope the Burdon hamlets sleep. Viewed from the Ridge, they are ridiculously alike; ridiculously equidistant one from the next; ridiculously tethered, as it were, along the foot of the Ridge—like boats along a shore; ridiculously small to have separate names, but named in their order outwards from Great Letham: Market Roding and Abbess Roding and Nunford—linked by those names with the monastic ruins at Upabbot in the eastward vale; Shepwell and Burdon and Little Letham. They are tethered to the Ridge, and the Ridge is the most direct communication between them. Visitors from village to village, or from Great Letham to any, climb the slope and use the Ridge, rather than plod the winding roads that, as twelfth Baron Burdon has often declared, "take you about two miles from where you want to get before they let you loose to go there."

He struck out along the Ridge now.

Burdon village was his destination; and as he pressed his way towards it, putting up his face to snuff the familiar wind, speeding ahead his thoughts to what he came to seek, twelfth Baron Burdon showed himself a very personable young man. His tawny hair he wore closely cropped about his strong young head; beneath a straight nose he grew a little clump of fair moustache shaved bluntly away at the corners of a firm mouth. At a bold right-angle his jaw came cleanly from his throat; and his chin was thick and round, matching his open grey eyes to advertise purpose and command. A Burdon of Burdons Mr. Pemberton had named him. A high-spirited young man, vigorous, alert; very boyish in mind, very dominant of character. A Burdon of Burdons. Through a long line the bone of whose quality was their "I hold!" twelfth Baron Burdon inherited a spirit that, when crossed, was quick to be unsheathed as from their scabbards the eager swords of remote ancestors were quick,—dangerous as they. "Enormously high-spirited, difficult to handle," Mr. Pemberton had told new Lady Burdon. It was handling he could not brook. The lightest feel of the curb threw up his head as the fine-tempered colt's. Brow and lips would assume signs that spoke, even to one unacquainted with him, the imperious resolve of mastery.

He was in pursuit of mastery now.

II

As he came abreast of Burdon he edged down the Ridge, making towards a little copse that ran up from a garden behind the last cottage in the village street, the nearest to Little Letham. In the roadway this cottage displayed, suspended from its porch, the notice, painted in white letters on a black board:

POST OFFIC

(The painter had misjudged the space at his disposal but had added the missing E on the back of the board, "Case," as he explained, "unnybody be that dense as to turn her round to see what her do mean.")

The cottage served in those days for the reception and distribution of all the letters of the westward vale, a community little bothered with correspondence; and "Post Offic" was conducted by a slight little woman whom some called Postmum, some Miss Oxford. She was the daughter of a former vicar of Little Letham; to twelfth Baron Burdon she was Audrey's sister.

Deep in the trees, as he approached the copse, the sharp white of a skirt caught his eager eye. Taking a grassy path, he went noiselessly down and presently was separated from his Audrey by the dense thorn that hedged the tiny glade in which he found her. A basket of young fern roots was beside her and she was stooped, her back towards him, exploring in the undergrowth.

He thought to steal up to her, and tried. The dense thorn locked him, and she heard him and turned swiftly towards him.

She was flushed with her stooping. Now a deeper flush rose beneath her colour, sinking it in a warmer glow that stained her exquisitely from throat to brow. The dark violet's shade was in her eyes; when her colour abated, the pale rose's delicacy might have been shamed against the fairness of her skin. She wore no hat; her soft brown locks unruled the ribbon at her neck, and the breeze stirred her hair in little waves about her temples. Her arms were bare where she had thrust her sleeves beneath her elbows. She stood poised, as one might say, upon the feet of surprise; and her lips were slightly parted, her gentle bosom seeming to hold her breath as though she feared the smallest sigh would waft away the sudden gladness that had caught it.

She just whispered, "Roly!"

"I'm caught in this da—infernal bush," Roly cried, struggling.

"I wasn't to expect you for a week, you wrote."

He began to writhe and wrench. "You needn't. I shall stay here forever, I believe."

She gave the merriest laugh: "You're simply fixed!"

"Wait till I get at you!" He tried and was more firmly held. "I say, what the dickens has happened to me?"

She put her hands together, enjoying his plight as a child that bends forward at a play. "You'll never get through there, Roly. You'll have to go back."

He wrenched and struggled: "Go back! There's a great spike or something sticking into me!"

His struggles broke a network of branches at his waist. A thorny bough sprang loose and whipped beneath his chin, forcing up his head.

"Good Lord! Look here, Audrey, I shall cut my throat and bleed to death; or this dashed spike will come slick through my back in a minute and impale me!"

"Roly! If you knew how funny you look!"

Her tone, the way in which (as it presented itself to him) she "squirmed" with childlike glee, caused him to laugh the jolliest laugh. No quality of hers attracted him as this fresh and innocent and childlike happiness that was her first characteristic; in none he found so great delight as in the fount of innocence through whose fresh stream came all her thoughts and words like young things at play.

He laughed the jolliest laugh: "Well, I've not come all the way from town just to look funny. I tell you, it's serious. I've never imagined such a fix. I'm dashed if I can move a finger now. Audrey, if you've got a woman's heart that feels, you'll help me out. This infernal thing under my chin—just move that and I'll show you how we fight in the dear old regiment—Damn!"

"Oh, it has cut you!" she cried, all concern as a moment before she had been all glee.

A step brought her face within a hand of his. She found place for her fingers between the thorns of the bramble beneath his chin. She drew the branch downwards, and the action caused her to bend towards him until their brows and eyes and lips were level. She looked directly into his eyes and he directly into hers; and each read there those dear and ardent mysteries that love far better images than ever love can voice.

He no more than breathed, "Kiss me, Audrey."

She waited for the smallest part of a moment. Entranced, enthralled, they only heard a lark that was a speck above them send down a tiny melody, and far upon the down a sheep-bell's distant note. Love's thralldom and Love's music to his thrall. The oldest play that mortals play; and never know befooled were often meeter than enthralled, nor better an ass to bray than some hymn seem to rise in benison. She kissed him tenderly upon the lips; gave the smallest sigh and breathed, "Dear Roly!"

Comic were the word for such a thing.

III

Comic, and comic that which followed when he, released, was with her in the glade and, seated by her, took her hands and bent her to his purpose.

"Now, listen to me, Audrey. Put both your hands in mine."

She responded as he bade her, performing surely the most beautiful action in the world as she gave her hands to his. All human life has no act more beautiful than the weaker hand confided to the stronger, nor any nearer Godhood than when strong hand takes the weak.

He enclosed her hands within his own. "Listen to me, Audrey," he repeated; and, as her hands had been her spirit, he possessed and drew her spirit on.

Yet comic is the word: for here—he planning, she agreeing—they made the plans they thought should make all bliss, all happiness their own; here, in fact, trimmed wreckers' lamps to shipwreck happy lives. He had determined upon secret marriage with her, and had determined it as the perfect solution of difficulties whose consideration was in some degree creditable to him. For as he told himself, and told his Audrey now, nothing prevented him from openly declaring his intention of contracting a marriage that would cause a breach between himself and his grandmother; nothing but the impossibility of enduring such a breach; that was unthinkable.

"Passionately devoted to his grandmother," Mr. Pemberton had told; "and she, for her part, making all the world of him." It was precisely this uncommon devotion between him and his dear "Gran" that drove him into torment of perplexity when first his heart informed him life without Audrey was insupportable. With utmost content he had surrendered himself into the object of Gran's adoring pride and, as such, into her control of her dear possession. As he grew older, that control had sometimes come to irk a little. "He sometimes chafed—chafed, if you follow me," Mr. Pemberton had said. But the quality of that chafing required better understanding than even Mr. Pemberton could give it. It was not at conflict of will between himself and Gran that Roly chafed; he knew his own determined character well enough to know that if he liked he could override her will as he overrode that of others who thought to oppose him. Where he chafed was where his devotion to her pricked him. He could not bear the thought of giving her distress; and he would sometimes chafe when—at this, at that, at some impulse or boyish fling of his—he thought her distress unreasonable; unreasonable because it shackled him unfairly; because either he would submit to it, or, taking his way, would suffer greatly, be robbed of his pleasure, at thought of having caused it.

But always, when the thing was over, be glad he had given way to her or most desperately grieved he had pained her. He knew that he was everything to her; how hurt her then?

With such the measure of his love for her, such the devotion between them, and such that devotion's price, what a situation was presented for his perplexity when Audrey came to occupy his heart! She had been his playmate in his childhood at Burdon Old Manor, she at the Vicarage. When her father died, Gran had expressed her fondness for his daughters by using her influence to procure the establishment of a post-office at Burdon and persuading the elder sister to conduct it, thus keeping them, as she had said, "near us." That was one thing; a head of the house of Burdon's marriage into so humble a degree—and that her Roly—he knew to be unthinkably another. She had great plans for great alliance for him—at some future date. At some future date! At her great age and at his extreme youth she could scarcely think of him as man—always as boy. It was one of the things that sometimes chafed him. But when, as had happened, the subject of marriage came up between them, and he would laugh at her immense ideas of his value, she would always end so pathetically: "But, Roly, how shall I bear any one to come between us?"

Rehearsing it all, "How—how in God's name?" he had desperately cried to himself, "can I tell her of Audrey?" She whom he could never bear to distress—how give her this vital hurt? She from whom—for the suffering it would cause her—he could never endure to be parted, how deliberately put her away? He would tell her his intention; how endure what she would say, or not say? He would carry out his purpose and she would leave him and must shortly die; and how endure her death in such circumstances? Or, haply, he would prevail on her to stay with him; and she, supplanted, jealous of Audrey and gentle Audrey fearing her. And how endure that?

No—to create such a breach insupportable, and insupportable life without Audrey. What then?

It came to him as complete solution, and as complete solution he pressed it now on Audrey, that he would marry Audrey first, then after a little while tell. The more he examined it, the more obvious, the less impossible of failure it seemed. "Gran, dear," he imagined himself saying, taking his opportunity in one of those frequent moments when, out driving with her or sitting alone with her in the evening, she loved just to sit silent, resting her hand on his,—"Gran, dear, I've something to tell you. I've done something and done it without telling you, so as to have you go on living with me like we've always lived together. Gran, I'm married—Audrey, Audrey Oxford; you remember, dear?"

Imagining it, he could imagine her arms about him. "Gran, I'm married"—easy and kind. "Gran, I'm going to marry, going to marry Audrey Oxford"—cruel, impossible!

The solution removed also an obstacle to their mating on Audrey's side—her sister. Their courtship had been carried on against her sister's disapproval. Maggie was twenty years older than Audrey, more mother to her than sister, and sharp-tongued in the matter of Roly's frequent visits, the more surely to avert the disaster in which she believed they must end.

"In time—it's only a question of time," she had once said to Audrey, "he will forget you, turn to his own position and responsibilities in life—leave you broken-hearted. How else can it end?"

And Audrey in tears: "What if I tell you he has asked me to marry him?"

"He has asked you that?"

"Maggie, he has."

"Has he told Lady Burdon?"

"Not yet, because—"

"Ah!"

And Audrey: "Oh, how can you say you love me?"

And Maggie: "Audrey! Audrey!"

And Audrey: "Maggie, I didn't mean that,"

And Maggie, steeling her heart: "But you think it: the first result of him. You are girl and boy; you don't understand. Why, I, who would die if you were to die, would rather see you dead than betrothed to him. If it ended in marriage, it would end in misery."

And later she had said to him: "If you break Audrey's heart, I will never forgive you. That's a poor threat. I would find a way perhaps—"

So there was Maggie stood in the way; and the solution found a way round Maggie. And there was lastly all the clatter of his friends, all the active disapproval of his elders; and the solution found an easy way around that. He could not hurt Gran; he could not conciliate Maggie; he could not face himself gossiped of, implored, advised, reproved; and the solution offered an easy way around it all. Easily winning Audrey to it,—her hands in his, his spirit possessing hers—he came to details. He had examined and arranged everything. He had made inquiries as to Registry Office marriages. They were both of age. There was a residence formality: well, she was coming on a visit to a girl friend in Kensington; he would take a room in a hotel in the district. They would meet at the Registry "one fine day." Long leave from his regiment was due. They would go on the continent—"all over the place, the most gorgeous time"—and afterwards—easy as all the rest was easy—Gran should be told.

He ended: "Audrey—married!"

And she: "Roly! ... Oh, Roly!"

Comic were the word for such a thing.

IV

Comic the word; but if, instead, you choose to judge them and to consider preposterous his arguments of the case between his Gran and his Audrey and preposterous his solution of it, beg you remember that life is going to be an impossible affair for us, a thing to drive us mad, if we are going to judge it by the standard of the correct and noble characters that you and I possess. By some means or another we must stoop down to the level of our neighbours and try to judge from there. Dowered with all the virtues, as you and I are, it is the easiest thing in the world to be impatient with another's folly, to despise him for it, to indicate how little moral courage will rid him of its effects; nay, to go further, and to declare it inconceivable that such blunders and follies and misbehaviours, as for example those upon which Roly and his Audrey were now embarked, can really have been committed. But that is a stage too far. We must not run our excusable intolerance of folly to the length of calling impossible even the most absurd actions, even the most incredible weakness of character. The whole history of mankind results precisely from these absurdities and these incredibilities. On the one hand, we should still and should all be in Eden if it were not so; on the other, there is the distinctly moving thought that you and I, faultless, are dependent for our entertainment on exactly these impossibilities of character in others: but for them we should never enjoy the delicious thrill of being shocked, never (the thing is unthinkable) be able to thank God we are not as others are.

No, we must accept these impossible follies on the part of our neighbours: but to understand them—nay, if we are too utterly high and they too utterly low for that, then merely to pay the poor devils for the entertainment they give us—let us try to see as they see, feel as they feel, become naked as they are naked to the bitter chill of cowardice, of temptation, of God knows what indeed that strikes them to the bone.

Let us try, and coming to these two, let it for Audrey at least be excused that she was the gentlest thing and all unschooled in any heavier book of life than the airy pamphlet that begins "I love;" with "I love" continues; with "I love" ends; and never asks, much less supplies, what "I love" means, or what demands, or whither leads, or how is paid.

CHAPTER II

LOVE LEADS AN EXPEDITION INTO THE UNFORESEEN

I

He married her—and wearied of her. Within two months of when he called her wife—and pressed her to him and kissed her for the fondness of that name, and chaffed her with "Wife" in place of Audrey at every lightest word—within two months of that tremendous day he was discovering himself checked and irritated by the vexations, the hindrances, the deceptions imposed by secret marriage upon his former free and buoyant way of life. Within three he was openly irked, not hiding from her that his temper was crossed when, stronger and more frequently, incidents arose to cross it. Within four months—and still their secret undeclared—he was often neglecting her, often silent in her presence for long periods; brooding; frowning at her where she sat or where she walked beside him; leaving her in a storm; returning to her in remorse; assuring himself he did not love her less, nay, rather loved her more—But...! Every way he turned and everything she did and all the things she did not do, brought him and bruised him against the bars of which that But was made.

All this most wretched and most pitiful, most excusable and most inexcusable business may best be examined in the incidents that stood out to mark its progress. Theirs was the oldest and most frequent of human errors. They had jumped into the delights of the foreseen, and behold! they found themselves in the swamp, in the jungle, in the desert, in the whirlpool of the unforeseen.

II

Audrey wrote and told Sister Maggie—a letter pledging her to secrecy, posted on the very moment of departure for the Continent ("at our wedding breakfast at the Charing Cross hotel, darling; and the train just going") and breathing ecstasy of happiness, and breathing love all atremble in its prayer for forgiveness. It informed Maggie that they were to be Mr. and Mrs. Redpath until everybody was told; and "O, darling Maggie, I shall not sleep until I get your letter—Poste restante, Paris, dear—telling me you forgive me and how glad you are."

Forgiveness was not to be discovered in the reply by the weeping eyes that read it. "You have made a most terrible mistake," Maggie wrote. "You say that you are happy, but you will find you can only be miserable while you are living in deception."

The wounding sentences were written in a firm, clear penmanship that in itself was cold and bitter reprimand. As they appeared, so Audrey read them. She did not know that they were written while the hand that made them could be steadied from its trembling desire to send a message only of devotion, only of prayer for Audrey's happiness, only of blessing. The letter brought to Audrey's eyes the tears that Maggie hoped to bring but ached to bring—forcing herself to be cruel in order to be kind; also it brought belief that Maggie was and wished to be estranged. It was never answered. Wisely intended, unwisely executed, misread, it added to the record of human perversity another of those immensely pitiful blunders that solely and alone are the cause of human unhappiness. When Heaven holds its reassembly, Heaven, as we seek out our loved, will surely ring with broken, loving greetings of: "I did not know! I did not understand!" No more will need be said. All tragedy, all sorrow is in those words; all tragedy, all sorrow removed by them.

Roly also had his letter. "If you cause her one single moment's unhappiness—" and other wild words. He did not show it to Audrey. Cause his darling unhappiness! He kissed away the tears her own letter had brought and laughingly cheered her with an amusing account of an incident in the hotel lobby. "We'll have to get out of this place, Audrey. There's a man staying here and his wife that I know well. Great pals of Gran's. I near as a toucher ran bang into them."

It was the first glimpse of the Unforeseen.

III

The first glimpse of the Unforeseen! At the moment neither recognised it for such. At the moment it was merely "A dickens of a squeak. I say, we'll have to look out for that kind of thing, old girl." Later, and that before very long, incidents of the kind began to be realised as the Unforeseen indeed. "That kind of thing" became, or seemed to become, extraordinarily and exasperatingly frequent. What had promised to be the fun of looking out for it became the strain of avoiding it.

There came a day—in Vienna, an original item of their programme but reached much earlier than intended owing to "That kind of thing's" persistence—there came a day when signs of the strain were suddenly evidenced, when, like a disturbed snake, unsuspected and sharply alarming, the Unforeseen upstarted and hissed at them. Audrey had struck up a pleasant hotel acquaintance, the matter of an hour's chat, but related rather enthusiastically to Roly. At dinner that night she pointed out her friend. "Right at the far end—look! By that statue sort of thing. In pink, with that tall man; d'you see, dear?"

He saw; and with concern she saw him set down the glass he was raising to his lips and saw his face darken. He said: "Damnation! It's Lady Ashington. It's maddening, this kind of thing. By God, it is. I'm going. She'll spot me in a minute. I'm going."

His violent words hurt her and frightened her. He got to his feet and she made to rise also. That worsened the incident. "Stop where you are," he said angrily. "Both of us getting up—making people look! I can slip out behind here. Damn this business!"

When she followed him to their room, she found his temper no better that he had gone without his dinner. He had made arrangements, he told her, for them to leave early in the morning, and he named their destination. She tried to pretend not to notice his mood; but her voice trembled a little as she said, "I've never heard of the place, dear."

He grunted, a little ashamed of himself: "I don't suppose anybody has. I hope not. We must get off the beaten track. Badgered about like this from pillar to post. It's getting on my nerves."

She faltered, "I'm so sorry, Roly."

Her tone pricked him. But these men hate above all things to feel in the wrong when they are in the wrong. The effect of her humility was to make him explain: "I don't know what possessed you, Audrey, 'pon my soul I don't, to go palling up with that woman."

Again she blundered. His reproach was so absurd that she laughed quite naturally at it: "O Roly! how ridiculous! How was I to know you knew her?"

He turned on her, alarming her utterly. "You ought to have known!"

Foolish, exasperating tears in her eyes: "How could I? How could I?"

"I've told you—I've warned you; that's what I mean. I've told you that every dashed soul I ever knew seems to be all over the Continent. I've warned you to be careful. Asked you not to get in with people. You absolutely don't care, seems to me. Perhaps you think it funny dodging about like this—perhaps you enjoy it. Well, I don't. That's enough. Let's drop the subject."

IV

So and in this wise the miserable business jolted towards its climax; deeper blunders at every step and every blunder additional to the load that stumbled them into the next. Here was a young man that had taken to himself pleasures, and lo! they were chains, rattling whensoever he moved most grimly to remind him that now limits were imposed upon his movements; that he who, by virtue of his rank, of the blood in his veins, of his own high, careless, fearless air, that he who by virtue of these was wont to look every man in the face more boldly than the most of us, must now hide, dodge, shift, dissemble, or betray the secret that, as to his torment he found, every day and every covering deception made more impossible to discover to the world.

Of all mankind's infirmities nothing than deception so quickly, so deeply and so surely turns the quality of his behaviour; nothing so cruelly tears, so acidly pierces his nerves; nothing so saps his resolution, destroys his moral fibre. Honesty is sword and armour, bread and wine; deception a voracious canker in the vitals, a clutch out of hell dragging through fog of fear, through slough of sin, into mire unspeakable. He was in its torments, he was writhing from them into deeper blunders; he began to shudder at the thought of proclaiming his marriage—yet.

She saw his plight and, all unschooled in life, she contributed to the disaster. Here was the gentlest creature, adoring and mated with an impetuous mate that now was as a free beast trapped, goaded by the sudden bars that caged him on every side, wildly seeking an outlet, panicked at finding none. She searched her miserable pamphlet of "I love," stained now with tears. It had nothing to give her. She read into it that in marrying her Roly she thought to have brought him nectar, and lo! it was a cup of poison she had given him, tormenting him utterly. She blamed herself. Through wakeful nights she watched him where he lay beside her—troubled often now in his sleep—and sought and sought, fumbling her pamphlet, to know what amends she could make him; and chid herself she was a burden to him; and would sit up in the darkness and wring her poor young hands in her distracted grief.

He noted the results that these distresses of her mind introduced to her appearance and her behaviour. They did not aid the difficulties with which he found himself beset. This was the beginning of the period of neglect of her; of silence in her presence for long periods; of brooding; of frowning at her where she sat or when she walked beside him; of leaving her in a storm, returning in remorse; of assuring himself he did not love her less, nay, rather loved her more—But!

V

At the end of August came their return to England, and immediately his full realisation of the ghastly delusion of the idea that it were easy to tell Gran—easy and kind—when the thing was done. Monstrous delusion, ghastly folly! Why, the very fates were arrayed against it. He returned to find Gran ailing, in bed. He went to the Mount Street house, bracing his warped resolution to the pitch of telling her, and it was to her bedroom he must go, and found her weak and stretching out her arms to him and overjoyed—O God! so overjoyed!—to have her Roly back. How tell her? Agony enough that she had no reproach for his neglect of her through the summer, nor any that he was come now with the news that he had run his leave to the last day and must at once rejoin the regiment at Canterbury. Agony enough that she nothing reproached, nothing questioned; unthinkable the agony of watching her while he said, "Gran—Gran, dear, I'm married. Audrey, Audrey Oxford, you know," and of hearing her poor lips falter, "Married? Married, Roly? Audrey Oxford? Married, Roly?"

Unthinkable! Impossible!

But it was another blunder committed, another step deeper into the coils, and he knew it for that when he left her, and ranged it with the similar torments that possessed him: the mad initial folly; the blunder of not proclaiming the marriage immediately he was married; the blunder of each hour delayed during the weeks on the Continent.

Now he was in the very jungle of the Unforeseen. Each step, every day, lost him deeper in its fastnesses; and like one so lost indeed, its dangers—encountered or suspected on every hand—preyed upon his mind, robbed his remaining courage, lost him his moral bearings that remained unwarped. His regimental duties kept him at Canterbury. He could not have Audrey there. He took a tiny furnished flat in the neighbourhood of Knightsbridge and there installed her, and there ran up to see her as often as might be. And the inevitable began. The inevitable—the chaff of his companions as to why he was forever "dodging up to town"; the meetings with his friends and their "Roly, where the devil do you get to these days?" the discovery that not only his men friends but his larger circle of acquaintances—Gran's friends—were beginning to gossip of his mysterious habits. The former put a man's interpretation on his conduct, baited him that they would track him down "to see what she was like." That thrice infuriated him: on Audrey's account; on the fear that they might do it and disclosure be forced, to relieve her from the horrible thing; and on the fact that what was implied was detestable to his nature. The larger circle of his friends were not more charitable, if more discreet. Gran, who was better again and had gone for her health to Burdon Old Manor, sent letters that failed to hide concern telling him of this, that and the other friend who had written saying he denied himself to everybody, was frequently in town, but never available and never to be found. Gran "hoped nothing was wrong, dear;" but erased her suspicion with her pen, but not so well that he could not read the words and picture the troubled thoughts that wrote them.

Ah! this was that grisly Unforeseen in shape new and most monstrous. How meet it? How meet it? Just as he had shrunk from announcing his intention of marriage because of the clatter of tongues and the opposition that it would loose upon him, so now, but a thousand, thousand times more, he shrank from the clatter that divulgement of his secret would cause; from the resentment of his world at its befoolment by him (as they would feel it); from the sneers and laughter at his turpitude; from the apologies with which he must go round on his knees to those he had deceived; from the interminable explanations he must make. The Unforeseen in shape most monstrous! It rushed him as a host of savage beasts that had snarled, that had threatened, that had come at him singly and torn him but been whipped, but that now was on him in the pack. How meet it? How meet it? God! What a lightsome, harmless, innocent, mad, wanton, reckless thing he had done, and what a turmoil he had loosed!

Bitter days, these, in the Knightsbridge flat. That pamphlet of "I love" all connoted now, written in tears, with what "I love" demands, where leads and must be paid.

CHAPTER III

A LOVERS' LITANY

I

Bitter days—but suddenly breaking to dawn. There came to him, on the rack of this torment, a thought that tortured him anew, yet made for healing. Audrey? Even if, as in his extremity he debated, he dared all and defied all—snatched himself out of this hell by publishing his position and crying to all concerned, "Now do and say your worst!"—even if he so made an end of it, to what would he bring her? How would she be received, suddenly proclaimed his wife when this ugly crop of suspicion and gossip was at its height? He knew, or through his distraught imagination he believed he knew; and he writhed to picture her—his gentle, unversed Audrey—thus introduced to the suspicious, uncharitable, malicious atmosphere that well he was aware his world could breathe. "Comes from a post-office somewhere, or a shop was it? Married at such and such a date—so he says!"

Thus the gate was slammed anew upon his resolution and locked and double-locked: the way must somehow be prepared for Audrey, the gossip by some means made to die, before he declared her. And with that there was unlocked and opened wide the gate that had barred up his love. Imagining the world's treatment of her, he realised his own.

It was in the tumult of these discoveries that he presented himself at the Knightsbridge flat and greeted his Audrey with a fondness that made her cry a little for happiness; she frequently cried in these days, not often for happiness. His fondness continued at that dear level through the evening. It emboldened her to urge again the step that she believed the best of all the many plans she ceaselessly revolved for curing the trouble she told herself she had brought upon him. She urged him to tell Gran. "Do tell her, dear. It will end all your worry. You're so worried, Roly. I see it—oh, how I see it! And I only add to it because I'm not—because I don't—because I vex you in so many ways. I know I do. You used to be so happy. You will be again directly this is all over. Do tell her, Roly! Roly, do!"

She had been seated on the floor, her head resting against him where he sat in a great armchair. Now, in this appeal of hers, she was turned about and on her knees, her hands enfondling his, her face lifted towards him.

He made a little choking sound, all his love for her surging; all his treatment of her wounding him; the thought of what he would bring her to if he took the course she urged filling him with remorse and with pity for her. He said in a strangled voice: "I can't; I can't," and stooping, he raised her to him so that they lay together in the big chair, their faces close, his arms about her....

For a little space, except that she was crying softly, they were silent—clasped thus, most dear to one another; and then proclaimed that dearness in scraps of murmured sentences, the gaps filled up by what their tones and their clasped arms instructed them....

Just murmurs, and dusky evening in the room—light, faint as their tones were faint, and in the shadows (how else seemed the air they breathed at every breath to thrill them?) spirits of true lovers that were winged down as, let us believe, lovers' spirits may when mortals love.

Just murmurs.

He said: "Audrey, Audrey, I've been so cruel—angry—thoughtless."

And she: "No ... no."

And she again: "Go to her, then, Roly. Don't tell, if you think not.... Just be with her for a little.... You'll be happy then.... Leave me alone a little, dear.... Not even write."

And he: "Audrey! ... Audrey!"

Her voice: "I shall be happy ... if only you are happy..."

And his: "I have been mad ... mad to treat you so.... Forgive.... Forgive."

Her voice—and close, close, all those lovers' spirits to hear this lovers' litany: "When you are happy ... I am happy."

And his—and all these murmurs chorused from lover's wraith to lover's wraith, as watchers handing flame from hand to hand to instruct heaven love still is here: "Audrey! ... Audrey!"

And she: "My dear ... my dear!"

II

Happy for her, happy for him, for all that have a smile and tear for true love, to remember that from that moment never a hasty word or thought passed between them. In that lovers' litany all such were purged, the past wiped out as if it had never been. And, as if in reward, into the night that surrounded Roly came a ray like a miraculous rope thrown to one in a pit.

The way must somehow be prepared for Audrey, he had said; the gossip somehow be made to die before he could declare her.

Sir Wryford Sheringham supplied the way.

General Sir Wryford Sheringham had been his father's close friend, was Gran's much-trusted nephew and her adviser in Roly's training. Gran was sending him appealing letters in these days, imploring him to find out what it was that was wrong with her dear Roly. Chance enabled him suddenly to reply that, on the eve of his return to India, he was now returning to take command of the Frontier Expedition that the government of India had been saving up for a long time against three Border tribes, and that he purposed taking Roly with him. He could invent a corner to shove the boy into, he wrote; and she must not break her heart nor shed a single tear except for joy that the chance had come to get the boy away and to work. "Whatever it is he's been up to," Sir Wryford wrote, "this'll pull him out of it and send him back to you his father's son again."

They walked into this last and supreme blunder as blindly as they had gone into the first. Roly presented it as the opportunity more wonderful than any that he could have invented to give this gossiping the slip. When he returned ("loaded with medals, old girl," as, aflame with excitement, he told her) it would all be forgotten; open arms for him and open arms for her.

Audrey's contribution to the folly was as characteristic. The news struck her like a blow; but instantly with the shock came its anodyne. He planned for her; every word of his rushing, thoughtless words was drafted to scale of "Because I love you so;" though they had been actual knives she would gladly have clasped such to her heart.

Credit him that the night before the day on which he sailed he had a sudden realisation of his madness. Credit him, at least, that now for the first time in their misguided chapter, he saw a blunder before he was irrevocably in it, and seeing it, tried to halt. He realised. He told her it was impossible that he should leave her thus. He must leave her in her right place. He must leave her with Gran. Gran was in town to bid him good-by. He must—he would tell her that very night of their marriage: in the morning take Audrey to her.

But at that she broke down utterly—betraying for the first time the flood and tempest of her agony at losing him and, while he strove to soothe her, imploring him not to put upon her this last trial of her strength. "I couldn't bear it, Roly!" she sobbed. "Roly, I couldn't bear it!" Overwrought by the cumulative effects of the past months, culminating in the sleepless agony of this last week and now in the unendurable torture of good-by, she became hysterical at his proposal; sobbed as if her reason were gone, shaking with dreadful spasms of emotion that terrified him lest she would be unable to retake her breath. His arms about her, and his loving pleadings, his earnest promises to withdraw what he had said, joined with the sheer weariness of her convulsive distress at last to relieve her. She passed into a still, exhausted state and thence—utterly alarming him by her deathly pallor and by the faintness of her voice—into imploring him in whispers into the last, worst folly of all their pitiable blunders. She could not be left, she implored him, with Gran—left alone with her, left in such circumstances. "No, no! Roly, no! Together, Roly; not alone, not alone!" And then she began to assure him of her happiness if she might just wait here. "You can always think of me and imagine me here: just waiting for you, and thinking of you and praying for you; and not lonely, not unhappy. I promise not lonely; I promise, promise not unhappy! You can't think of me like that if you leave me with Lady Burdon. You don't know what may happen to me; how she may feel towards me or what I might imagine she felt and what I might not do. I could not—I could not!"

Try to understand him that he suffered himself to be convinced against himself. So placed; so implored; so loved and so loving; so shackled by the train of blunders he had committed, a hundred times more wise, more strong a man than twelfth Baron Burdon would have given way as he gave way. This was their farewell, and not to rob its fleeting hours more he agreed, and turned with her to rehearse the plans for her comfort in his absence. The flat was taken for six months ahead. "Back in four! Now I bet you any money I'm back in four!" There was money banked for her. Finally he wrote and gave her two letters, one addressed to a Mr. Pemberton—"One of the best, old Pemberton"—the other to Gran. He began to say, "If anything happens to me," but went on: "If ever you get—you know—down on your luck—that kind of thing—or feel you'd like to make it known about us before I come back, just send those letters—just as they are; you needn't write or take them yourself. They explain everything, they ... oh, don't cry.... Audrey ... Audrey!"

Within a few hours he was gone. Within four months they were building a cairn of stones above him to keep the jackals from his body.

CHAPTER IV

WHAT THE TOOO-FIRTY WINNER BROUGHT MRS. ERPS

I

Come to her in the month of January. Bridge those long weeks wherein she lived from mail day to mail day—as one not strong that has a weary mile to cover and walks from seat to seat—and come to her there.

She was at this time not in good health, suffered much from headaches and was oppressed with a constant fatigue. In this condition fresh air without exertion had become very desirable to her, and she formed the daily habit of long rides outside the leisurely horsed tramcars of those days. Study of a guide acquainted her with their routes. She had a particular one for each day of the week, counting from Saturday to Friday, and arranged on a little plan by which (as she made believe) each journey was part of a long journey whose end was Friday's ride, whence she returned home to find the Indian mail. Not only fresh air was obtained by this means, but a sense of actively advancing towards the day that brought the letters, round which she lived.

On an afternoon of this January her ride was from Holborn, through Islington and Holloway, to Highgate Archway. On the near side of the Holloway road, half a mile perhaps below the stopping place, there is a group of houses approached by shallow steps that have resisted the overpowering inclination of the district to become shops and instead support their tenants by providing apartments. The car that carried her had stopped here. She had learnt to eke out the amusement of these rides by attention to all manner of little incidents, and—employed with one such—was wondering if her car would restart before it was reached by a newsboy who ran towards them from the distance, his pink contents-bill fluttering apronwise before him. Some one was a terribly long time over the business of alighting or entering. The newsboy won. A few yards from where she sat above him he stopped to sell a paper and to fumble for change. The halt caused his fluttering pink apron to come to rest.

PEER
KILLED IN
FRONTIER
FIGHTING

Had something actually struck her throat? Was a hand actually strangling there? Could they see she was fighting for breath? Was the car really rocking—right up so she could not see the street, right down and all the street circling? Could others hear that shrill and enormous din that threatened to split her brain?

Through the tremendous hubbub and the dizzy rocking she got down. If this strangle at her throat did not relax, if this dizzy whirling did not cease, this immense din silence....

A curious voice, leagues away, said: "Yer've got ter pye fer it, y'know."

She put her fingers in her purse and held out what she could gather. A figure that had been going up and down in front of her seemed to take a tremendous sidelong sweep and vanished. She was left with a paper in her hands and knew what she must do. But if this din, this giddy circling....

It suddenly stopped. Everything stopped. There was not a sound, there was not a movement.

II

London stands stock still in the middle of a windy, crowded pavement to open its evening paper and to peer at the stop-press space for only one particular purpose. While she thus stood and peered (and suddenly knew this icy silence was the gathering of an immense tide that was coming—coming) a woman who wore an apron over a capitally developed figure, and a rakish cloth cap over a headful of curl papers, opened the door of the house immediately beside her (appearing with the air of one shot at immense velocity out of a trap) and called "I! Piper!" She then exclaimed nearly as loudly "Ennoyin'!" and then saw Audrey.

This lady's name was Mrs. Erps, and she knew perfectly well, and rejoiced to observe an example of, the peculiarity in regard to London's evening paper that has been noted above. Mrs. Erps rolled her solid hands in her apron and came down ingratiatingly. A model of correctness. "Excoose me, my dear," she began, "Excoose me, wot 'orse won the tooo-firty? My old man—Ho, thenks, I'm sure—Ho, gryshus!"

Relating the incident later in the evening to a lady friend, and acting it with considerable dramatic power: "'Ands me the piper she does," said Mrs. Erps, "as natural as I 'ands this apring to you and then looks at me jus' as if I mightn't had been there, and then she says in a whissiper 'Oh, dear!' she says. 'O Gawd!' and dahn she goes plump—dahn like that!" explained Mrs. Erps from the floor, very nearly carrying her friend with her in the stress of dramatic illustration.

But Mrs. Erps was more than a great tragedy actress; she was also a kindly soul and there is to be added to this quality the genial warmth aroused in her by the fact that the tooo-firty winner was Lollipop, that Lollipop had cantered home at what she called sevings, and that her old man was seving times arf a dollar the richer for the performance. "Carry 'er in there," said Mrs. Erps in a very loud voice to a policeman in particular and to a considerable area of the street in general. "Young man, that's my 'ouse, and Mrs. Elbert Erps my nime, and dahn in front of it the pore young thing's fell jus' as she was 'anding me this very piper wot 'ad come aht to see the tooo-firty winner. 'Excoose me,' I says to 'er, 'excoose me—'"

The policeman: "All right, mother. Now, then, you boys."

Mrs. Elbert Erps, going backwards up the steps, hands beneath the arms of that poor stricken creature: "There's a cleeng, sweet bed in my first front, well-haired and wool blenkits, that lets eight and six and find yer own, and could ask ten, and there she'll rest, the poor pretty thing, dropped on me very doorstep, as yer might say, and standin' there with the piper same as you might. 'Excoose me,' I says to 'er, 'excoose me—'"

Mrs. Erps shot open her front door with a backward plunge of her foot, the policeman closed it with a backward kick of his foot; and to the continued recital in great detail of how it all happened, their burden was carried to the first front and laid upon the cleeng, sweet bed, well-haired, wool blenkits, eight and six and find yer own.

They loosened her dress at her throat; beneath the constable's direction made use of water and chafed her hands. "Marrit," said Mrs. Erps, denoting the wedding ring. "Marrit, she is."

Presently Audrey opened her eyes.

"Why, there you are!" cried Mrs. Erps in high delight. "There you are, my pretty. Safe and sahnd as ever you was. There you are! You recolleck me, don't you, my love? Wot you gave the piper to? 'Excoose me,' I says to yer, 'excoose me,' I says—"

Audrey's eyes went meaninglessly from Mrs. Erps to the constable, her eyelids fluttered above them and closed.

"Stand aht of it!" said Mrs. Erps to the constable in a very sharp whisper. "Stand aht of it, frightenin' her. 'E won't 'urt you, my pretty. 'E only carried of yer up. Dahn you went, yer know, right dahn. Where's your 'usbing, my pretty?"

Her lips just parted. She moaned "Oh, dear! O God!"

Mrs. Erps communicated to the constable: "Jus' 'er very words. Dahn she went—"

The eyes opened again.

"Your 'usbing, dear, I'm askin'. 'Usbing. Ain't you got a ma, my dear? Ain't you got a pa?"

She said: "Dead ... dead ... Oh, dear..."

"Orfing," communicated Mrs. Erps.

"Rambling in her mind," said the constable. "Not answering you, she wasn't."

"You pop off, young man," commanded Mrs. Erps with sudden hostility. "Ramberling! Didn't I ask her, and didn't she give answer back to me? Ramberling! You pop off. I'll fine where she lives, and my old man 'll come to the station if so need be. 'E ain't afraid of yer, so don't you think it. Served on a joory, he has, before now. Ramberling! I'm going to rub 'er pore feet. That's what I'm goin' to do. Ramberling! She knows me as spoke 'er fair before ever you came. 'Excoose me,' I says to her, 'excoose me—'"

The policeman, from the door: "Yes, I've heard that."

Mrs. Erps, bending over the stairs: "Pop off! That's what I'm telling you. Pop off!"

III

Mrs. Erps rubbed the "pore feet," put a hot bottle to them, covered the poor, motionless form with two of the wool blenkits, called up her old man when he came in; and in his presence and in that of the lady second floor lodger and the young man first back lodger, trembling with witnessed honesty, she opened the pretty dear's purse and searched her pocket for any clue to her home. There was none. Mrs. Erps, having counted the money in the purse, written down the amount and had the paper signed by her old man, by second floor and by first back, bade them pop off, and sat beside her patient with soothing words and frequently a kiss to the reiterated "Oh, dear ... oh, dear ... O God!" that came in scarcely audible sighs as from one numbed with pain and utterly tired.

So, only now and then sighing, eyes closed, she lay for close upon three hours. Mrs. Erps stole away to cook up a nice bit of fried fish for 'er old man, revisiting the first front at intervals, waiting to hear that weary moan, and returning down-stairs increasingly troubled with: "I don't like to hear her. Fair wrings my 'art, it does."

A visit paid towards seven o'clock was better rewarded. Audrey opened her eyes, looked full and intelligently at Mrs. Erps, standing there with a lighted candle, and quite naturally addressed her. She questioned nothing. She seemed fully to understand where she was and why. In tones weak but quite clear and collected she made two requests. Please let her stay here for the night and leave her quite alone; she wanted nothing, just to be alone; and please send a telegram for her.

She dictated the message and it was sent—to Maggie, and with Mrs. Erps' address added, and running: "Please come at once. He is dead. Audrey."

IV

Miss Oxford arrived in the early afternoon of the next day. All the devotion of the years she had mothered Audrey, all the longing—longing—longing of the past months for news, all the agony of suspense in the train journey (the papers informing her as they informed new Lady Burdon at Miller's Field), all a breaking heart's distress was in the little cry she gave when she entered first front and saw that strangely white, strangely impassive face lying on the pillow.

"My darling! Oh, my darling"—arms about the still form, tears raining down.

No responsive movement; just "Dear Maggie—dear Maggie."

"Why did you never write?"

"Dear Maggie..."

There was no more of explanation between them.

"Maggie, I want to be quite, quite still. Not to talk, Maggie darling. Just hold my hand and let me lie here. Are you holding it?"

"Audrey! Audrey! Yes—yes. In both mine."

"I don't feel you."

She seemed to feel nothing, to want nothing, and, though she lay now with wide eyes, to see nothing. She just lay, scarcely seeming to breathe. Once she said, in a very fond voice, "Yes, Roly," as if she were in conversation with him. No other sound.

After a long time Maggie told her: "Darling, I'm going to bring a doctor to see you."

No reply nor movement when Maggie released the hand she held and left the room to seek Mrs. Erps. No interest nor response when the doctor came, or while he examined her. He took Maggie aside. "She's very young. How long has she been married?"

"In June—the first of June."

They spoke in whispers. When he was going, he repeated what he had most impressed. "No fear of it happening so far as I can see. She doesn't seem in pain. That numbness? Mental. Her mind is too occupied. I don't think movement would bring it on; but don't move her yet. We mustn't run risks. It would be fatal—almost certainly fatal if it happened. Another shock would do it; nothing else, I think. Well, there's no likelihood of shock, is there? You can guard against that. See to that and you've no need to worry. She couldn't possibly live through it in her present state. Otherwise—why, we'll soon be on the right road and getting strong for it. I'll look in to-night."

This was in the passage, and with Mrs. Erps in waiting at the front door rehearsing in her mind: "As I was telling you when you come, doctor, 'Excoose me,' I says to 'er, 'excoose me—'" But what Mrs. Erps overheard caused her to let him escape and to say instead to Miss Oxford, "Oh, the pore love! If any one makes a sahnd to shock 'er—not if I knows it, they don't."

Mrs. Erps knew quite well the meaning of that recurrent "it" in the doctor's words.

V

But it was not in Mrs. Erps's power to prevent the shock that came.

It came in direct train of action from that "Yes, Roly" that Maggie had heard, separated from it by the days of high fever, the mind wandering, that almost immediately supervened. As one that falls asleep upon a resolution and wakes at once to remember it and to act upon it, so, the fever releasing her to her senses, Audrey took up immediately that which lay in those words of hers.

She had fallen into a natural sleep that promised the end of her fever. She awoke, and directly she awoke sat up in bed. She was alone. Only the one thought was in her mind; she got up and began to dress.

The resolution of her mind governed the extreme weakness of her body. She was no more aware of her feebleness than one strung up in battle notices a wound not immediately crippling. She knew exactly what she must do. She found her purse on the mantelpiece and took it and left the house without being noticed—or thinking to escape or to give notice. Only that one thought occupied her; a few yards down the street she met a cab and hailed it. "Burdon House, Mount Street," she directed the driver.

"Yes, Roly," had been when Roly, visiting her more clearly, more real than any other figure about her during that numb and impassive period when she desired to be quiet in order to talk with him, had told her to go to Gran, to comfort Gran, and to be comforted.

VI

Old butler Noble admitted her. Events had caused old butler Noble to be considerably shaken in his wits. A week ago the door would have been closed to a young woman who asked for Lady Burdon and refused her name. To-day, on the explanation, "The name does not matter. Lady Burdon will be glad to see me," it was held open and the visitor taken to the library.

This was the second day of new Lord and Lady Burdon's visit for the latter to make Jane Lady Burdon's acquaintance. Only that morning old butler Noble had made the mistake of turning away a Miller's Field friend who had called to see new Lady Burdon, carrying out a promise to report how baby Rollo, left behind, was getting on. "Her ladyship is seeing no one," Noble had informed her. The excellent Miller's Field friend had been too overawed by his manner to explain exactly whom it was she wished to see. She sent a note of explanation by messenger. Noble delivered it to his mistress, who read it and sent him with it to new Lady Burdon. The note was foolishly worded. New Lady Burdon, ill at ease in this house, crimsoned to think it had been read. From the outset, hostile and prepared for hostility, she had taken a sharp dislike to this old man-servant; angry and mortified, she questioned him and spoke to him as he was unaccustomed to be addressed.

It was beneath the lesson of this incident that he admitted Audrey without question. She was none of his mistress's friends. In the first place he knew all such; in the second they did not call at the impossible hour of half-past six in the evening, nor present the strange appearance—white, not very steady, faltering in voice—that she bore.

He took the news of her arrival to new Lady Burdon.

"Gave no name, do you say?"

"She said your ladyship would be glad to see her."

Lady Burdon hesitated a moment. She tingled with fresh hostility against this man because she wondered whether he expected her to accept that statement or to send him again for the name. She did not know and hated him the more, and hated all the fancied resentment for which he stood, because she did not know.

Her mind sought a way out. She said with a little laugh: "Oh, I think I know. Very well."

She went to the library.

CHAPTER V

WHAT AUDREY BROUGHT LADY BURDON

I

It was very dim in the library. Above the centre of the room light stood in soft points upon a high chandelier. A fire burnt low within the shelter of the great hearth. The rest was shadow.

Lady Burdon came easily into the room, but in the doorway stopped; and Audrey, who had made a forward movement, prepared words on her lips, also stopped. There was something odd about this girl who stood there, Lady Burdon thought, and her mind ran questing the cause of some strange apprehension that somehow was communicated to it. There was something wrong, Audrey thought; and she began to tremble. For a briefest space, that was a world's space to Audrey's mind bewildered and to Lady Burdon's mind suspicious, as they went hunting through it, these two stood thus, and thus regarded one another.

It was told of this library at Burdon House—Mr. Amber's "Lives" record it—that in the days when gentlemen wore swords against their thighs, a duel was fought here, that the thing went in three fierce assaults, each ended by a bloody thrust on this side or on that, and that between the bouts the rivals panted, sick with fatigue and hurt.

Words for swords, and the first bout:—

Lady Burdon closed the door. She went a step towards Audrey and said, "Yes?"

Audrey, with fumbling hands, swaying a little where she stood: "I think—I came to see Lady Burdon."

Odd her look, and odd her tone, and strange the trembling that visibly possessed her. Lady Burdon was about to explain. Her mind came back from its questing like one that cries alarm by night through silent streets. "Beware!" it cried to her. "Beware!" and for her explanation she substituted:

"I am Lady Burdon."

The first thrust.

Audrey put a hand against a chair that stood beside her. The trembling that had taken her when, expecting to see Roly's Gran, this stranger had appeared, began to shake her terribly in all her frame. This Lady Burdon? For the first time since her will had got her from her bed and brought her here, she was informed how weak she was. A dreadful physical sickness came over her and all the room became unsteady.

Respite enough, and the second bout:—

Lady Burdon demanded: "Who are you, please?"

No reply, and that augmented her suspicion, and she came on again: "Who are you, please?"

Wave upon wave that dreadful sickness swept over Audrey and set her brain aswim. Bewildered thoughts, like frantic arms of one that drowns, tossed up upon the flood, and like such arms that gesticulate and vanish, spun there a dizzy moment and spun away: This Lady Burdon? ... then this not Roly's house ... then what? ... then where? This Lady Burdon? ... then all her life with Roly was dream ... had never been ... none of her life had ever been ... what had been then?

A third time: "Who are you, please? Why do you not answer me?"

She made an effort. She said very pitiably: "Oh, how—oh, how can you be Lady Burdon?"

No wound—only the merest scratch, but increasing in Lady Burdon the dis-ease that had come to her on entering the room and had heightened at every moment.

In her turn it was hers to give pause, but she engaged quickly for the third bout.

"I see you do not understand," she said.

And Audrey: "Oh, please forgive me. No, I do not understand; I have been ill. I am ill."

"But I am afraid I do not understand you. I do not understand your manner. If you will tell me who you are—what it is you want—I can perhaps explain."

But Audrey only looked at her. Only most pitiable inquiry was in her eyes. Lady Burdon read their inquiry, that same "Oh, how can you be Lady Burdon?" and the question and the silence brought vague, unreasoning alarm in violent collision with her suspicions. Anger was struck out of their conjunction. She said sharply:

"You must answer me, please. You must answer me. What is the matter? I am asking you who you are."

Mr. Amber's account of the duel says that one contestant drove the other the length of the room and had him pinned against the wall:—

Into Audrey's bewilderment, the dreadful sickness and the trembling she could not control, these sharp demands came like numbing blows upon one in the trough of the sea grappling for life. When Roly had come to her as she lay stupefied and she had answered him "Yes, Roly," he had told her clearly as if in fact he had stood beside her, what she should say to Gran. She had come with the words prepared. They suddenly returned to her now.

The words she had made ready: "I am Audrey—" she said.

Mr. Amber's account of the duel says that the one contestant, having his rival pinned, was too impetuous and ran upon the other's sword:—

Lady Burdon said: "Audrey? Do you say Audrey? Are you known here?"

And ran upon the other's sword:—

"I am Audrey—I am Roly's wife."

II

As a dreadful blow sends the stricken, hands to face, staggering this way and that on nerveless, aimless legs; or as a tipsy man, unbalanced by fresh air, will blunder into any open door, so, at that "I am Audrey—I am Roly's wife"—Lady Burdon's mind was sent reeling, fumbling through a maze of spinning scenes—marriage? and what then?—before it could fix itself to realisation.

She stood plucking with one hand at the fingers of the other; and when the whirl subsided and she came dizzily out of it her mind was leaden and the first words she could get from it were none she wanted.

Her voice all thick: "He was not married," she said.

The reply, very gentle: "We did not tell any one."

And to that nothing better than "Why?"

"Roly did not wish it."

Thick and heavy still: "Why do you come now?"

And Audrey in a little cry: "Because he is dead!"

Then Lady Burdon said dully: "You had better go," and at the bewilderment that came into Audrey's eyes repeated more strongly: "You had better go—quickly;" and then "Quickly!" with her voice run up on the word, and her hands that had been plucking flung apart.

Her mind was over its numbness and through the whirl of nightmare meanings in that "I am Roly's wife;" and it came out of them as one shaken by a fall and strung up for vengeance. Marriage! Impossible! And she a fool to be frightened by it—at worst a horrid aftermath of disgusting conduct.

"Quickly!" she cried and then burst out with: "I see what you are—to come at such a time—to this house of mourning—he scarcely dead—with such a story—wicked—infamous—I know, I see now why you were surprised to see me—an old lady you expected—grief-stricken—"

She stopped, achoke for breath, and Audrey said: "Oh, please—please."

Misgiving, that subtle, coward spy that spies the way for fear, cast its net over Lady Burdon. The pleading, gentle air—no flush of shame, no note of defiance hunted her mind back to its alarms. And Audrey said: "He did not wish our marriage known;" and at "marriage" misgiving turned and shouted fear to follow.

She said slowly: "You persist marriage? There are proofs of marriage. Where are your proofs?"

The pleading look only deepened: "But I never thought—" Audrey said, "—but I never thought—" She swayed, and swayed against the chair she held. It supported her. "I never thought I would not be believed. Lady Burdon will understand. I know she will understand. If I may see her, please..."

"If you were married—proofs."

There was a considerable space before Audrey answered. Presently she said very faintly:

"I am very ill ... I am very ill ... I can bring proofs.... But she will understand.... Please let me see her.... Please, please..."

In advertisement of her state her eyelids fluttered and fell upon her eyes while she spoke. Her voice was scarcely to be heard.

Her condition made no appeal to Lady Burdon. The simplicity of her words, her simple acceptance of the challenge to bring proofs, returned Lady Burdon to that dull plucking at her hands; and presently she turned and went heavily across the room and through the door, closed it behind her and went a few paces down the hall—to what? At that question she stopped, and at the answer her mind gave went quickly back to the door and stood there breathing fast. What was shut in here? A monstrous thing come to strike her down as suddenly as miracle had come to snatch her up? And where had she been going? To publish it? To impel the horrible fate it might have for her? To say to old Lady Burdon and to Maurice: "There is a woman here who says she was married to Lord Burdon?" To say what would spring into their minds as it tore like a wild thing at hers:—"Yes, if marriage, a child ... an heir?" At thought of how narrowly she had escaped the results of that action, she trembled as one trembles that in darkness has come to the edge of a cliff and by a single further step had plunged to destruction; and at imagination of the bitterness, the humiliation that would be hers if the worst were realised and she returned from what she had become to worse than she had been, she writhed in torture of spirit that was like twisting poison in her vitals. All her plans, all her dreams, all her sweet foretasting sprang up before her, mocking her; all the intolerable sympathy of her friends, all the secret laughter it would hide, came at her, twisting her.

Somewhere in the house a door opened and shut. She put a hand violently to her throat, as though the shock of the sound were a blow that struck her there. She found herself braced against the door, guarding it; listening for footsteps, and strung up to keep away whoever came. Silence! But the attitude into which she had sprung informed her of the determination that had shaped unperceived beneath the tumult of her thoughts. She was not going to fall beneath the blow that threatened her! When she knew that, she was calmer, and set herself to satisfy her fears. What was shut in here? A wanton.... Wanton? Who never flushed, never railed, defied? A betrayed, then. Well, what was that to her, and how was she concerned? A betrayed? Who came with no story of betrayal that might or might not be, but with assertion of marriage that was capable of definite proof or disproof? Marriage? Impossible! A lie! Impossible? There came to her recollection of that strange disappearance of which Mr. Pemberton had told; was marriage the secret of it? There swept back to her that vivid and hideous nightmare on the very night of the news when she had cried "I hold!" and had been answered: "No, you do not—nay, I hold." Was that foreboding? There flamed before her again the mock of her plans, the humiliation of her downfall. She struck her clenched hands together; and as if the violent action caused an assembly of her arguments, she reduced her position to this: either the thing was true, in which case it could be proved; or it was a lie, in which case no consideration recommended her to do other than keep it to herself and herself stamp upon it.

That satisfied her and she reëntered the room to act upon it.

Audrey was on her knees by the chair. The sight shook her satisfaction. Wanton? Betrayed? A lie?

Audrey turned towards her: "I have been praying," she said. She got to her feet and came forward a step: "She is coming to see me?"

Lady Burdon said: "I have told her. She will not see you."

She was committed. She stood agonisingly strung up in every fibre, as one that waits an appalling catastrophe. She saw Audrey wring her hands and heard her moan "Oh ... Oh!"

She heard her own voice say: "You can bring your proofs." She had, as it were, a vision of herself opening the street door and watching Audrey pass her and go down the steps and out of sight. She was only actually returned to herself when she found herself, as one awaking who has walked in sleep, striving to make her trembling hands close the latch of the door.

CHAPTER VI

ARRIVAL OF THE HAPPY WARRIOR

I

The driver of a four-wheeled cab, crawling down Mount Street, pushed along his horse when he saw Audrey walking with very slow and uncertain steps ahead of him. He drew into pace alongside her and began to repeat: "Keb? Keb, miss—keb,—keb?" with a persistence and regularity that suggested it was the normal sound of his breathing.

She stopped and stared at him in a dazed way. He pulled up and went on quite contentedly: "Keb?—Keb, miss—keb,—keb?" His voice and his keb came presently into her realisation. There returned to her knowledge of what she purposed. Her thoughts seemed to her to be drifting shapes, and this one had floated away and she had been trying to reach it—hanging there just above her—while she stared at him. She gave him the address of the Knightsbridge flat and presently was driving there and presently going up the stairs, very slowly, taking her key from her purse, and then entering.

The flat was in extraordinary confusion. She did not notice. The woman who came daily to attend her wants had come twice to find her not returned, and a third time with a gentleman friend (on tiptoe), taking a stealthy and permanent departure an hour later with everything that could be conveniently carried. The back of a drawer in a bureau had not received this lady's attention. It contained all that Audrey had come to seek: a box of carved wood, picked up on the Continent. Those two letters Roly had given her for Mr. Pemberton and Gran were here. Her mind had turned to them when she had realised the thing that had never occurred to her: that she would not be believed. Here also was her marriage certificate and all the letters Roly had written her—before marriage and from India.

She took up the box and began to retrace her steps. She had scarcely got down the stairs when dizziness seized her again. The dreadful sickness and the trembling that the shock of her first encounter with Lady Burdon had caused her had been stamped out by the final blow that made her wring her hands and cry "Oh ... oh!" and had sent her numbed from the house and carried her numbed to this point. Her physical senses had been drugged, just as they had been hypnotised by the instruction to which she had answered "Yes, Roly." Now they were suddenly released from the kindness of the drug. Dizziness—and while all things spun about her—pain. It caught her with a violence so immense that she believed her body could not contain it and would go asunder. It drove her, as it seemed to her, through unconsciousness and into a state in which she met it again with a quality in its sharpness that she knew for death, as if she recognised death. It dropped her back from where she had seen death, through the degree of its first immensity, and down to a gnawing that told her it was gathering force to rush up again and this time leave her there—gone. In that respite she got to the cab. She would die at the next onslaught—Maggie! If Maggie could hold her when it came! She did not know the address in the Holloway Road; but knew it was there, and a butcher's with a strange name—Utter—had caught her attention opposite when she left the house. She tried to tell the driver, but her condition overcame her speech. He saw her state and jumped down to her, and she called tremendously upon herself and effected the words. He more lifted than helped her in, and she continued to hold herself until he got back to his box, then collapsed groaning.

The cabman pulled up opposite the establishment of Mr. Utter and had scarcely stopped his horse when from Mrs. Erps's house came Mrs. Erps, plunging down the steps, and Miss Oxford, who stopped at the entrance, not daring to come on. Mrs. Erps peered through the cab window and then called back to Miss Oxford. "Told yer it was. Safe and sahnd!" and began to tug at the handle and sharply addressed the cabman: "Ho, ain't you got a nasty stiff door!" and cried through the window: "Why, there you are, my dear! Popping off like you hadn't ought to, give us a fair ole turn!" and flung open the door and said, "Ho, dear!" and turned a frightened face to Maggie, come beside her.

The open door revealed how Audrey was collapsed, and showed the hue of ashes that her face had, and gave the groaning that came from her.

Miss Oxford went to her. "Audrey! ... dying! She is dying!"

By common understanding they began to try to carry her out. The cabman leant over from his box and presently saw Mrs. Erps come backing out with violent movements and suddenly had her fist shaken in his surprised face. "'Old your old 'orse, carng yer!" Mrs. Erps cried furiously. "Joltin' of us! 'Old your old catsmeat, carng yer!" She plunged round to the further door, and through that they lifted her whose groaning terrified them utterly, carried her up-stairs, and for the second time she was laid on the cleeng blenkits, well haired, eight an six and find yer own.

All Mrs. Erps's breath—no policeman to assist her—was this time required for the exertion. But when their burden was laid she voiced the extremity to which it was clearly come. "'Ad er shock, she 'as," said Mrs. Erps. "Some one's done it on 'er."

"Oh, bring the doctor," Miss Oxford cried. "Quick! Quick! Oh, my God ... my God!"

She did what she could while Mrs. Erps was gone. She was praying, when her prayer was so far answered that Audrey recognised her. "Maggie..." and then "I am dying—forgive," and then caught up in her pains again while Maggie cried: "Don't! Don't! It is for you to forgive me; you will be all right soon—very soon." The pains drew off a little. Audrey began to speak very faintly. "I went to Lady Burdon—" Very feebly she told what had happened and Maggie, who had begged her, "Darling, don't talk—don't worry," listened as one that is held aghast. When the slow words failed, she did not at once realise that Audrey's voice had stopped. Mrs. Erps and the doctor found her kneeling by the still form with strangely staring, unweeping eyes.

"She has had a shock," the doctor began.

"They have killed her," Miss Oxford said.

Bending over the patient he did not notice her words nor the intensity of their tone; and there began to come very quickly a dreadful urgency that caused agony of grief to override the agony of hate that had possessed her.

There was a thin, new cry went up in the room: and that was life newly come. And there was heavy breathing with dreadful pause at each expiration's end and then the straining upward climb: and that was life fluttering to be gone. Longer the pauses grew and harsher the upward breath. Loud the thin cry struck in, and as though it called that fleeting life, and as though that fleeting life, in the act of springing away, turned its head at the sound, Audrey opened her eyes.

There seemed to be a question in them. Miss Oxford bent closely over her: "A boy, my darling."

She seemed to smile before she died.

CHAPTER VII

ENLISTMENT OF THE HAPPY WARRIOR

I

That day of Audrey's death was in two minds at two breakfasts in different quarters of London on a morning some while later. In the Mount Street house Jane Lady Burdon, starting in an hour to make her home with her sister in York, was reading to Lord and Lady Burdon a letter just received from India. It was a sympathetic note from the officer who had been with her Roly when he fell. "'His last words,'" she read aloud with faltering lips, "'were: Tell Gran to love Audrey. It was difficult to catch them, but I think that was it.'"

Jane Lady Burdon laid down the letter and smiled feebly. "They have no meaning for me," she said.

And Lord Burdon: "Nellie! What's up, old girl?"

Lady Burdon struggled with the dreadful agitation the words had caused her. They had meaning for her. "I am Audrey—I am Roly's wife."

"So sad," she exclaimed, "so sad—excuse me—I—" She rose shakily and went from the room. After two days of suspense she had thought that hideous alarm defeated and disproved. What now? And what had she done?

The other breakfast was at Mrs. Erps's—also immediately before a journey. "No one," Mrs. Erps had said, "no one hadn't oughter travel on a nempty stomach," and had forced Miss Oxford to the table before the start for Little Letham and "Post Offic." "I know you've had bitter trouble as loved the pretty dear meself ever since 'Excoose me,' I says to 'er, 'excoose me,' as I've told yer. An' Gord alone knows I know what trouble is, as 'ad twings of me own pop off in one mumf. But you've got the living for to think of. Same as I 'ad my ole man, you've got this blessed ingfang what never know'd a muvver's breast and took to the bottle like nothing I never did see."

And to the blessed "infang" reposing in her arms while she talked: "Didn't yer, yer saucy sossidge? That's what you are, yer know—a saucy sossidge. Ho, yes yer are. No use yer giving answer back ter me, yer know. A saucy, saucy sossidge, wot I should cook up with mashed if I had me way with yer, bless yer."

Maggie scarcely heard; but there was one sentence of Mrs. Erps that joined her thoughts: "You've got the living for to think of." Yes, she had that—and the dead to revenge. "They have killed her," she had cried to the doctor. Through the long night, when she knelt beside the still figure, that thought had burned within her and refused her tears. It grew to an intolerable agony that pressed upon her brain as though a band of steel were there. She understood what had bewildered Audrey—who it had been that had said "I am Lady Burdon." Her imagination pictured the woman. An orgasm of most terrible hate possessed her, increasing that dreadful pressure on her brain, and suddenly something seemed to her to have given way beneath the pressure.

Hate or passion of that degree never filled her again. She was strangely quiet in manner when Mrs. Erps came to her in the morning, strangely quiet at the funeral in Highgate Cemetery while Mrs. Erps wept in loud emotion, and always quite quiet in mind. The child was going to live, she was somehow fully assured of that, and she was not going to give him up—her Audrey's child—as, if she spoke, she might have to give him up. He was going to live with her at "Post Offic" and take his mother's place; and one day.... They had taken Audrey from her. One day she would return to them Audrey's son. "I am Lady Burdon" had murdered Audrey. One day, when "I am Lady Burdon" was secure and comfortable in her possessions, and had forgotten Audrey, Audrey's son should avenge his mother....

Nothing could go wrong, Miss Oxford thought. She went through all the proofs in the carved box. Nothing was wanting. One day she would hand them to him—and then!

She wrote to her friend, Miss Purdie, at Little Letham, who had been taking care of "Post Offic" for her and told her—for the village information—that Audrey had lost her husband, and, on the shock, had died, in giving birth to a son. "I have called him Percival—his father's name—Percival Redpath."

"Look arter yerself," cried Mrs. Erps, as the train drew out of Waterloo. "Look arter yerself. Can't not look arter him if yer don't—and 'e 'll want lookin' arter, 'e will. 'E's going ter be a knockaht, that's what 'e's going to be, ain't yer, yer saucy sossidge! Sossidge! Goo'by, sossidge. Goo'by...."