The Happy Warrior Part 13

And Audrey in a little cry: "Because he is dead!"

Then Lady Burdon said dully: "You had better go," and at the bewilderment that came into Audrey's eyes repeated more strongly: "You had better go--quickly;" and then "Quickly!" with her voice run up on the word, and her hands that had been plucking flung apart.

Her mind was over its numbness and through the whirl of nightmare meanings in that "I am Roly's wife;" and it came out of them as one shaken by a fall and strung up for vengeance. Marriage! Impossible!

And she a fool to be frightened by it--at worst a horrid aftermath of disgusting conduct.

"Quickly!" she cried and then burst out with: "I see what you are--to come at such a time--to this house of mourning--he scarcely dead--with such a story--wicked--infamous--I know, I see now why you were surprised to see me--an old lady you expected--grief-stricken--"

She stopped, achoke for breath, and Audrey said: "Oh, please--please."

Misgiving, that subtle, coward spy that spies the way for fear, cast its net over Lady Burdon. The pleading, gentle air--no flush of shame, no note of defiance hunted her mind back to its alarms. And Audrey said: "He did not wish our marriage known;" and at "marriage" misgiving turned and shouted fear to follow.

She said slowly: "You persist marriage? There are proofs of marriage.

Where are your proofs?"

The pleading look only deepened: "But I never thought--" Audrey said, "--but I never thought--" She swayed, and swayed against the chair she held. It supported her. "I never thought I would not be believed.

Lady Burdon will understand. I know she will understand. If I may see her, please..."

"If you were married--proofs."

There was a considerable s.p.a.ce before Audrey answered. Presently she said very faintly:

"I am very ill ... I am very ill ... I can bring proofs.... But she will understand.... Please let me see her.... Please, please..."

In advertis.e.m.e.nt of her state her eyelids fluttered and fell upon her eyes while she spoke. Her voice was scarcely to be heard.

Her condition made no appeal to Lady Burdon. The simplicity of her words, her simple acceptance of the challenge to bring proofs, returned Lady Burdon to that dull plucking at her hands; and presently she turned and went heavily across the room and through the door, closed it behind her and went a few paces down the hall--to what? At that question she stopped, and at the answer her mind gave went quickly back to the door and stood there breathing fast. What was shut in here? A monstrous thing come to strike her down as suddenly as miracle had come to s.n.a.t.c.h her up? And where had she been going? To publish it? To impel the horrible fate it might have for her? To say to old Lady Burdon and to Maurice: "There is a woman here who says she was married to Lord Burdon?" To say what would spring into their minds as it tore like a wild thing at hers:--"Yes, if marriage, a child ... an heir?"

At thought of how narrowly she had escaped the results of that action, she trembled as one trembles that in darkness has come to the edge of a cliff and by a single further step had plunged to destruction; and at imagination of the bitterness, the humiliation that would be hers if the worst were realised and she returned from what she had become to worse than she had been, she writhed in torture of spirit that was like twisting poison in her vitals. All her plans, all her dreams, all her sweet foretasting sprang up before her, mocking her; all the intolerable sympathy of her friends, all the secret laughter it would hide, came at her, twisting her.

Somewhere in the house a door opened and shut. She put a hand violently to her throat, as though the shock of the sound were a blow that struck her there. She found herself braced against the door, guarding it; listening for footsteps, and strung up to keep away whoever came. Silence! But the att.i.tude into which she had sprung informed her of the determination that had shaped unperceived beneath the tumult of her thoughts. She was not going to fall beneath the blow that threatened her! When she knew that, she was calmer, and set herself to satisfy her fears. What was shut in here? A wanton....

Wanton? Who never flushed, never railed, defied? A betrayed, then.

Well, what was that to her, and how was she concerned? A betrayed?

Who came with no story of betrayal that might or might not be, but with a.s.sertion of marriage that was capable of definite proof or disproof?

Marriage? Impossible! A lie! Impossible? There came to her recollection of that strange disappearance of which Mr. Pemberton had told; was marriage the secret of it? There swept back to her that vivid and hideous nightmare on the very night of the news when she had cried "I hold!" and had been answered: "No, you do not--nay, I hold."

Was that foreboding? There flamed before her again the mock of her plans, the humiliation of her downfall. She struck her clenched hands together; and as if the violent action caused an a.s.sembly of her arguments, she reduced her position to this: either the thing was true, in which case it could be proved; or it was a lie, in which case no consideration recommended her to do other than keep it to herself and herself stamp upon it.

That satisfied her and she reentered the room to act upon it.

Audrey was on her knees by the chair. The sight shook her satisfaction. Wanton? Betrayed? A lie?

Audrey turned towards her: "I have been praying," she said. She got to her feet and came forward a step: "She is coming to see me?"

Lady Burdon said: "I have told her. She will not see you."

She was committed. She stood agonisingly strung up in every fibre, as one that waits an appalling catastrophe. She saw Audrey wring her hands and heard her moan "Oh ... Oh!"

She heard her own voice say: "You can bring your proofs." She had, as it were, a vision of herself opening the street door and watching Audrey pa.s.s her and go down the steps and out of sight. She was only actually returned to herself when she found herself, as one awaking who has walked in sleep, striving to make her trembling hands close the latch of the door.

CHAPTER VI

ARRIVAL OF THE HAPPY WARRIOR

I

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 a.s.sist 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 G.o.d ... my G.o.d!"

She did what she could while Mrs. Erps was gone. She was praying, when her prayer was so far answered that Audrey recognised her. "Maggie..."

and then "I am dying--forgive," and then caught up in her pains again while Maggie cried: "Don't! Don't! It is for you to forgive me; you will be all right soon--very soon." The pains drew off a little.

Audrey began to speak very faintly. "I went to Lady Burdon--" Very feebly she told what had happened and Maggie, who had begged her, "Darling, don't talk--don't worry," listened as one that is held aghast. When the slow words failed, she did not at once realise that Audrey's voice had stopped. Mrs. Erps and the doctor found her kneeling by the still form with strangely staring, unweeping eyes.

"She has had a shock," the doctor began.

"They have killed her," Miss Oxford said.

Bending over the patient he did not notice her words nor the intensity of their tone; and there began to come very quickly a dreadful urgency that caused agony of grief to override the agony of hate that had possessed her.

There was a thin, new cry went up in the room: and that was life newly come. And there was heavy breathing with dreadful pause at each expiration's end and then the straining upward climb: and that was life fluttering to be gone. Longer the pauses grew and harsher the upward breath. Loud the thin cry struck in, and as though it called that fleeting life, and as though that fleeting life, in the act of springing away, turned its head at the sound, Audrey opened her eyes.

There seemed to be a question in them. Miss Oxford bent closely over her: "A boy, my darling."

She seemed to smile before she died.