The Happy Warrior Part 5

She gave a little sigh of relief and she made a little laugh at the mood she had permitted to beset her--that sigh we give and that laugh we make when we shake ourselves from vague fears, or open our eyes from disturbing dreams. Folly to be fearful! Life is a biggish field; easy to give those fears the slip! The day is here, night ridiculous! She laughed and turned smiling to her husband and proposed they should go in. "I've got an extra special little dinner for you--to celebrate,"

she told him.

He pressed her arm against his side. "And I've got an extra special little appet.i.te for it," he said. "Makes me feel fearfully fit to see you so happy."

"Well, I am," she replied, and sighed her content and said again "I am!"

IV

The night ridiculous! But when night came it caught her unstrung, too excited for immediate sleep, and visited her with vague resentments, with vague but chilly fears. They came gradually. Long, long she lay awake, visioning the gleaming future. Her Rollo trod it with her--its golden paths, limitless of delights--her little son rejoicing into manhood as he walked them. She was intensely devoted to her baby Rollo, born two years before. Marriage had disappointed her; from its outset, directly she began to realise Maurice, she accounted herself robbed of all it ought to have given her. Motherhood had recompensed her; from Rollo's birth she had begun to dream dreams for him. Now!

She got out of bed and went to his cradle and bent above him, most happily, most adoringly, as he slept. It was there and so occupied that the first vague, unreasonable fear came to disturb her night. It was gone as soon as it had come, and it had neither shape nor meaning.

Yet its discomfort made her frown. She had frowned in the midst of happiness when Maurice was telling her of Burdon traditions, and the repet.i.tion of the action returned her mind to what had occupied it then.

At once resentments began to stir. She found herself resentful of Jane Lady Burdon, as drawn by Maurice; of the tenantry at Burdon Old Manor, who were regarded as a trust--a greedy, expensive trust on his showing; nay, of the Old Manor itself, if saturated in traditions such as he described. Why resentful? At first she could not say, and worried.

Then the reason came to her. It was the feeling that this old lady, not proud but having pride, a ridiculous distinction, this old lady, these tenantry, those traditions would resent her. Resent her? She could not get away from the thought, and it irritated her and tired her. Yes, and rob her, and that irritated and tired her the more. She began to desire sleep and could not sleep for these resentments.

Resent her? Rob her? She grew angry that she could not sleep, and then suddenly calmed herself by deliberately setting herself to see how grotesque such thoughts were. After all, what could they do, even suppose they desired her hurt? It came to her, with a grim sense of the humour of it, that their own motto was against them. "I hold!" It was she who held!

"I hold!" The old motto did its new mistress its first service. It charmed her, at last, to sleep. Immediately, as it seemed to her, she pa.s.sed into dreams of her amazing happiness; and in their midst the motto rose against her. In their midst the vague fear that had troubled her while she bent over her Rollo--but vague no longer--became definite and horrible. She was taunted, she was terrified by some force that told her it was all untrue; that tortured her she was befooled and did not hold and should never hold the amazement she fancied hers. Terrified and struggling, "I hold!" she cried. It became the delirium of her sleep. Again and again "I hold! I hold!"

and always from that force the answer, quiet but most terribly a.s.sured: "No, you do not! Nay, I hold!" Horror and panic overcame her. She was so nearly awake that she tried to awake but could not. "I hold! I hold!" "No, you do not. Nay, I hold!" There was no escape, no escape.... When at last her fevered brain broke out of sleep, she awoke to hear her own voice cry it aloud in agony: "I hold!" and shaking, unnerved, thanked G.o.d for young morning stealing about the room, and none and nothing to rebuke or contradict that waking cry.

CHAPTER V

MISREADING A PEERESS

I

We will give them their t.i.tle now.

Events fell out much as the new Lady Burdon had planned. On the day following the news, the new Lord Burdon wrote a few sympathetic lines to Jane Lady Burdon; two days later he received an acknowledgment from the house in Mount Street. She would like to see him, Jane Lady Burdon, wrote, but she would like a little time in which to accommodate herself to her sad affliction. Perhaps he would arrange to call on that day week; and meanwhile, if he could see Mr. Pemberton, they would be spared much explanation relative to the sudden change.

"Rather cold," was Lady Burdon's comment; but her attention was taken by another letter brought in with Jane Lady Burdon's by Egbert Hunt, as they sat at early breakfast, and overlooked in the excitement. "And Mr. Pemberton--who is Mr. Pemberton?" she asked, but had opened this other envelope while she spoke, taken the gist of its letter at a glance, and herself answered her question, looking up with flushed face and sparkling eyes. "He's the solicitor," she said.

Lord Burdon nodded. "So he is. The name comes back to me."

"This is from him--to you. It's all right. He says it's all right, Maurice. He's the lawyer. He knows. He admits it."

"Sounds as though he'd committed a crime. What does he admit?"

She was very happy, so she laughed. "Listen!" and she read him the letter in which, in stilted, lawyer like terms, Matthew Pemberton (as it was signed) formally advised him of the death in action on the northwestern frontier of India, and of his succession to the barony and entailed estates. The firm of Pemberton, it appeared, had for many generations enjoyed the honour of acting for the house of Burdon, and, acting on Jane Lady Burdon's instructions, Matthew Pemberton desired to propose an interview "here or at your lords.h.i.+p's residence, as may be most convenient to your lords.h.i.+p."

"Maurice!" Lady Burdon exclaimed, and handed him the letter; and when he had read it, "There! There's no doubt now, is there?"

He had frowned over it as though it troubled him. At her words he looked up and smiled at her beaming face and patted her hand. "Why, you never had any doubt, had you?" he asked.

She gave the slightest possible s.h.i.+ver; but with it shook off the recollection that had caused it. "Oh, I don't know," she answered. "I do believe I had; yes, I had. I couldn't realise it sometimes. There was nothing--nothing to go on. Now there is, though!" And she touched the letters that were the magic carpet arrived to wing her from the delirium of that night toward the amazement that night had threatened.

She exclaimed again, "Now there is!" and, pus.h.i.+ng back her chair, rose vigorously to her feet, casting aside forever (so she told herself) that nightmare dream and animatedly breaking into "plans." Too animated to be still, too excited to eat, gaily, and with a commanding banter that rendered him utterly happy, she easily influenced her husband, against his purpose, to bid Mr. Pemberton make the proposed interview at Miller's Field, not Bedford Row. "'At your lords.h.i.+p's residence,'" she laughed. "It's his place to do the running about, not yours. And tell him--I'll help you to write the letter--tell him to come the day after to-morrow, not to-morrow. Don't let him think we're bursting with eagerness."

"By gum, he'd better not see you, then," Lord Burdon said grimly.

She gave him a playful pinch. "Oh, I'll do the high and haughty stare all right," she told him, and she laughed again and ran gaily humming to the Hon. Rollo Letham in the garden.

II

Mr. Pemberton, on arrival, proved incapable of much of that running about, in the literal sense of the term, that Lady Burdon had p.r.o.nounced to be his place.

"Here he is!" Lady Burdon said, watching through the drawing-room window from where she sat, as a closed station-fly drew up before the gate. "Here he is!" There was a longish pause before the cab door opened, and then a walking-stick came out and tapped about in a fumbling sort of way until it hit the step. A very thin leg came groping down the stick, its foot poking about nervously as though to make sure that the step was stable. "Good gracious!" Lady Burdon exclaimed. "The poor old man!"

She forgot the high and haughty stare premeditated for the interview, and she crossed to the window, womanly and womanishly alarmed. The knee above the trembling leg took a jerky shot or two at stiffening, then stiffened suddenly and took the weight of a little wisp of an old man, who swung suddenly out upon it, whirled half around as the gusty breeze took him and, clutching frantically against the side of the cab with one hand, with the other made agitated prods of his stick at the road desperately far beneath.

"Oh, goodness!" Lady Burdon cried. "He'll kill himself! And that idiot like a frozen pig on the box! Maurice!" But she was quicker than her husband and, the high and haughty stare completely abandoned, was swiftly from the room, down the path, through the gate, and with firm young hands under a shaky old arm, just as the little old man, unable to balance longer, was dropping stick and leg towards the ground and in danger of collapsing tremendously upon them.

She landed him safe. "The road slopes so frightfully here, doesn't it?" she said. "I am afraid you are shaken."

The little old man, very visibly shaken by the fearful adventure, essayed to straighten his bent old frame. He raised his silk hat and stood bareheaded before her. "You saved me from that," he said. "It was very, very kind of you. I am clumsy and stupid at moving about."

She was flushed by her run, the breeze was in her hair; she looked pretty and she was quite natural. "Oh, I saw you," she smiled. "I ought to have come before. Let me take your arm. The path is steep; we are on the side of a hill, as you see."

She swung open the gate with one hand and put the other beneath his arm.

He seemed to hesitate, looking at her curiously. "Oh, I am all right when I am on my legs," he said, with a little laugh. "Well, well--it is very, very kind of you," and he accepted the aid she offered.

"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 n.o.ble house whose service was handed down in his firm as the t.i.tle 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 rea.s.sured him as that most womanly action of Lady Burdon when she ran to his a.s.sistance 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 ladys.h.i.+p, too, has had occasion. He, on his side, pa.s.sionately 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."