The Happy Warrior

by A. S. M. Hutchinson

She gave a little catch at her breath. He exasperated her—exasperated! Here was the most amazing fortune suddenly theirs, and he was blind to it! Often Mrs. Letham flamed against her husband those outbursts of almost ungovernable exasperation that a dull intelligence, fumbling with an idea, arouses in the quick-witted. They are the more violent, these outbursts, if the stupid fumbling, fumbling with some moral issue, conveys a reproach to the quicker wit. She was made to feel such a reproach by that reiterated "Poor young beggar! Poor, plucky young beggar!" It intensified the outbreak of exasperation that threatened her; and she told herself the reproach was unmerited, and that intensified her anger more. It was nothing to her and less than nothing, this boy's death; but she had rushed up to her husband the better to enjoy her natural joy by sharing it with him, and ready, if he had met her excitement, to compassionate the fate of young Lord Burdon. He greeted her, instead, only with "Poor young beggar! Poor, plucky young beggar!" She caught her breath. Exasperation surged like a live thing within her. If he said it again! If he said it again, she would break out! She could not bear it! She would dash the paper from his hands. She would cry in his startled face—his doltish face: "What! What! What! What! Don't you see? Don't you understand? Lord Burdon! Lady Burdon! Are you a fool? Are you an utter, utter fool?"

IV

He opened his lips and she trembled. It is natural to judge her harshly, natural to misjudge her, to consider her incredibly snobbish, cruel, common. She was none of these. Given time, given warning, she would have received her great news, received her husband's reception of it, gently and kindly. But life pays us no consideration of that kind. Events come upon us not as the night merges from the day, but as highway robbers clutch at and grapple with us before we can free our weapons.

Happily, for the first time since he had taken the paper, Mr. Letham seemed to remember her. He glanced up, flushed, damp in the eyes, stupidly droll with the dabs of drying soap: "I say, Nellie, did you read this:

"The boy—he was absolutely no more than a boy—poked this way and that on the little ridge we had gained, trying, whimpering just like a keen terrier at a thick hedge, to find a way up through the rocks and thorns above us. We were a dozen yards behind him, blowing and cursing. 'Damn it! we've taken a bad miss in balk on this line!' he cried, turning round at us, laughing. Next moment he had struck an opening and was scrambling, on hands and knees. 'This way, Sergeant-major!' he shouted...."

Portly Mr. Letham, carried away by the grip of the thing, drew himself up and squared his shoulders. He repeated "'This way, Sergeant-major!'" and stuck, and stopped, and swallowed, and turned shining eyes on his wife (she stood there brooding at him) and exclaimed: "Can't you imagine it, Nellie? Listen: 'This way, Sergeant-major!' he shouted, jumped on his feet, gave a hand to his sergeant; cried 'Come on! Come on! Whoop! Forward! Forward!' and then staggered, twisted a bit on his toes, dropped. I saw another officer-boy jump up to him with 'Burdon! Burdon, old buck, have you got it?'..."

Portly Mr. Letham's voice cracked off into a high squeak, and he lowered the paper and said huskily: "I say, Nellie, eh? I say, Nellie, though? That's the stuff, eh? Poor boy! Brave boy!"

With unseeing eyes he blinked a moment at his wife's face. Brooding, she watched him. Then he turned to the washstand and began to remove the signs of shaving from his cheeks, holding the sponge scarcely above the water as he squeezed it out, as though a noise were unseemly in the presence of the scene his thoughts pictured.

And she just stood there, that brooding look upon her face. Ah! again! He was off again!

"And his grandmother," Mr. Letham said, wiping his face in a towel, sniffing a little, paying particular attention to the drying of his eyes. "I say, Nellie, his poor grandmother, eh? How she will be suffering! Think of her picking up her paper and reading that! ... Only saw him once," he mumbled on, brushing his thin hair. "Took him across town when he was going home for his first holidays from Eton. Remember it like yesterday. I remember—"