The Happy Warrior

by A. S. M. Hutchinson

"It is steep, you see,"—she smiled down at him,—"and rough. It ought to be rolled, but we have the idlest gardener boy in the world. You are Mr. Pemberton, aren't you? I am—I am Lady Burdon."

He halted in his nice little steps and looked full up at her. "I am very glad to know that," he said simply, and put himself again to the task of making the house.

III

Mr. Pemberton was more than pleased; he was intensely relieved and intensely happy. His thoughts, as he came down in the train to Miller's Field, had caused his face to wear a nervous, a wistful, almost an appealing, look. Bound up in inherited devotion to the noble house whose service was handed down in his firm as the title itself was handed down, he had feared, he had dreaded what manner of people the tragic break in the famous direct succession might have brought to the name he loved. Nothing could so well have reassured him as that most womanly action of Lady Burdon when she ran to his assistance at the gate; nothing could so well have affirmed the confidence with which he turned to her husband, come to the door to meet them, as the simple honesty of character imprinted on Lord Burdon's face and expressed in his greeting. Both impressions were sharpened as they sat talking at tea. Mr. Pemberton had come to talk business; he found himself drawn by this sympathetic atmosphere into speaking intimately of the gay young life whose cruel termination had caused his visit.

Clearly he had been deeply attached to that young life; he speaks of it in the jerky, disconnected sentences of one that does not trust his voice too long, for fear it may betray him; and when he comes to his subject's young manhood, after eulogy of childhood and youth, clearly Lady Burdon is interested. She draws her chair a trifle towards him, and with her elbow on the low tea-table, cups her chin in the palm of her hand, the fingers against her lips, watches him and attends him closely. Her throat and face are dusky, her wrist and hand are white against them. Her eyes have a deep and kind look. She makes a gentle picture.

Encouraged by her sympathy, "He was a little wild," says Mr. Pemberton. "I am afraid a little inclined to be wild.... Always so full of spirits, you see ... eager ... careless, reckless perhaps, impetuous ... lovable—ah, me, very lovable....

"I was very fond of him, Lady Burdon," he says apologetically, "very fond;" and he stumbles into an example of what he is pleased to call the young man's impetuous carelessness. It is of his last months in England, before he sailed for India, that this deals. Between June and August, having leave from his regiment, he disappeared, it seems; was completely lost sight of by his grandmother and his friends. Towards the end of August he appeared again. "Not himself—not quite himself," says Mr. Pemberton, shaking his head as though over some recollection that troubled him, "and no explanation of his absence, and, when the chance came—General Sheringham was a relation, you know—wild to get out to this frontier 'show,' as he called it.

"Typical of him," says Mr. Pemberton after a pause, and smiling sadly at Lady Burdon. "Typical. A law to himself he would always be, and not responsible to any one for what he chose to do. A Burdon trait that; and he was a Burdon of Burdons."

Lady Burdon asks a question, breaking into Mr. Pemberton's history for the first time. "But that really is extraordinary, Mr. Pemberton," she says. "Wouldn't Lady Burdon—wouldn't his grandmother—have felt anxious during that disappearance, and wouldn't she have questioned him when he came back?"

"Not unless he seemed disposed to tell her. In a way—in a way, you know, relations between them were a little difficult. Poor boy"—and Mr. Pemberton gives a sad little laugh—"poor boy, he often came to me in a great way, and her ladyship, too, has had occasion. He, on his side, passionately devoted to her, hating to hurt her, but enormously high-spirited, difficult to handle. And she, on hers, making all the world of him and a little apt on that account to claim too much from him, if you follow me. He sometimes chafed—chafed, you know; hating to hurt her but restless of her control, her claim. Latterly she had to be very tactful with him. No, she wouldn't have questioned him unless he seemed disposed to tell her."