The Happy Warrior

by A. S. M. Hutchinson

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!