The Happy Warrior Part 10

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 pa.s.sed 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 rus.h.i.+ng, 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 c.u.mulative 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 pa.s.sed 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 circ.u.mstances. "No, no! Roly, no! Together, Roly; not alone, not alone!" And then she began to a.s.sure 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 rehea.r.s.e 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 ap.r.o.nwise 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 ap.r.o.n 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 s.p.a.ce 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 ap.r.o.n 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 ap.r.o.n 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 ill.u.s.tration.

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 G.o.d!"