The Happy Warrior

by A. S. M. Hutchinson

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!"