V
At the end of August came their return to England, and immediately his full realisation of the ghastly delusion of the idea that it were easy to tell Gran—easy and kind—when the thing was done. Monstrous delusion, ghastly folly! Why, the very fates were arrayed against it. He returned to find Gran ailing, in bed. He went to the Mount Street house, bracing his warped resolution to the pitch of telling her, and it was to her bedroom he must go, and found her weak and stretching out her arms to him and overjoyed—O God! so overjoyed!—to have her Roly back. How tell her? Agony enough that she had no reproach for his neglect of her through the summer, nor any that he was come now with the news that he had run his leave to the last day and must at once rejoin the regiment at Canterbury. Agony enough that she nothing reproached, nothing questioned; unthinkable the agony of watching her while he said, "Gran—Gran, dear, I'm married. Audrey, Audrey Oxford, you know," and of hearing her poor lips falter, "Married? Married, Roly? Audrey Oxford? Married, Roly?"
Unthinkable! Impossible!
But it was another blunder committed, another step deeper into the coils, and he knew it for that when he left her, and ranged it with the similar torments that possessed him: the mad initial folly; the blunder of not proclaiming the marriage immediately he was married; the blunder of each hour delayed during the weeks on the Continent.
Now he was in the very jungle of the Unforeseen. Each step, every day, lost him deeper in its fastnesses; and like one so lost indeed, its dangers—encountered or suspected on every hand—preyed upon his mind, robbed his remaining courage, lost him his moral bearings that remained unwarped. His regimental duties kept him at Canterbury. He could not have Audrey there. He took a tiny furnished flat in the neighbourhood of Knightsbridge and there installed her, and there ran up to see her as often as might be. And the inevitable began. The inevitable—the chaff of his companions as to why he was forever "dodging up to town"; the meetings with his friends and their "Roly, where the devil do you get to these days?" the discovery that not only his men friends but his larger circle of acquaintances—Gran's friends—were beginning to gossip of his mysterious habits. The former put a man's interpretation on his conduct, baited him that they would track him down "to see what she was like." That thrice infuriated him: on Audrey's account; on the fear that they might do it and disclosure be forced, to relieve her from the horrible thing; and on the fact that what was implied was detestable to his nature. The larger circle of his friends were not more charitable, if more discreet. Gran, who was better again and had gone for her health to Burdon Old Manor, sent letters that failed to hide concern telling him of this, that and the other friend who had written saying he denied himself to everybody, was frequently in town, but never available and never to be found. Gran "hoped nothing was wrong, dear;" but erased her suspicion with her pen, but not so well that he could not read the words and picture the troubled thoughts that wrote them.
Ah! this was that grisly Unforeseen in shape new and most monstrous. How meet it? How meet it? Just as he had shrunk from announcing his intention of marriage because of the clatter of tongues and the opposition that it would loose upon him, so now, but a thousand, thousand times more, he shrank from the clatter that divulgement of his secret would cause; from the resentment of his world at its befoolment by him (as they would feel it); from the sneers and laughter at his turpitude; from the apologies with which he must go round on his knees to those he had deceived; from the interminable explanations he must make. The Unforeseen in shape most monstrous! It rushed him as a host of savage beasts that had snarled, that had threatened, that had come at him singly and torn him but been whipped, but that now was on him in the pack. How meet it? How meet it? God! What a lightsome, harmless, innocent, mad, wanton, reckless thing he had done, and what a turmoil he had loosed!
Bitter days, these, in the Knightsbridge flat. That pamphlet of "I love" all connoted now, written in tears, with what "I love" demands, where leads and must be paid.
A LOVERS' LITANY
I
Bitter days—but suddenly breaking to dawn. There came to him, on the rack of this torment, a thought that tortured him anew, yet made for healing. Audrey? Even if, as in his extremity he debated, he dared all and defied all—snatched himself out of this hell by publishing his position and crying to all concerned, "Now do and say your worst!"—even if he so made an end of it, to what would he bring her? How would she be received, suddenly proclaimed his wife when this ugly crop of suspicion and gossip was at its height? He knew, or through his distraught imagination he believed he knew; and he writhed to picture her—his gentle, unversed Audrey—thus introduced to the suspicious, uncharitable, malicious atmosphere that well he was aware his world could breathe. "Comes from a post-office somewhere, or a shop was it? Married at such and such a date—so he says!"
Thus the gate was slammed anew upon his resolution and locked and double-locked: the way must somehow be prepared for Audrey, the gossip by some means made to die, before he declared her. And with that there was unlocked and opened wide the gate that had barred up his love. Imagining the world's treatment of her, he realised his own.
It was in the tumult of these discoveries that he presented himself at the Knightsbridge flat and greeted his Audrey with a fondness that made her cry a little for happiness; she frequently cried in these days, not often for happiness. His fondness continued at that dear level through the evening. It emboldened her to urge again the step that she believed the best of all the many plans she ceaselessly revolved for curing the trouble she told herself she had brought upon him. She urged him to tell Gran. "Do tell her, dear. It will end all your worry. You're so worried, Roly. I see it—oh, how I see it! And I only add to it because I'm not—because I don't—because I vex you in so many ways. I know I do. You used to be so happy. You will be again directly this is all over. Do tell her, Roly! Roly,do!"
She had been seated on the floor, her head resting against him where he sat in a great armchair. Now, in this appeal of hers, she was turned about and on her knees, her hands enfondling his, her face lifted towards him.
He made a little choking sound, all his love for her surging; all his treatment of her wounding him; the thought of what he would bring her to if he took the course she urged filling him with remorse and with pity for her. He said in a strangled voice: "I can't; I can't," and stooping, he raised her to him so that they lay together in the big chair, their faces close, his arms about her....
For a little space, except that she was crying softly, they were silent—clasped thus, most dear to one another; and then proclaimed that dearness in scraps of murmured sentences, the gaps filled up by what their tones and their clasped arms instructed them....
Just murmurs, and dusky evening in the room—light, faint as their tones were faint, and in the shadows (how else seemed the air they breathed at every breath to thrill them?) spirits of true lovers that were winged down as, let us believe, lovers' spirits may when mortals love.
Just murmurs.
He said: "Audrey, Audrey, I've been so cruel—angry—thoughtless."
And she: "No ... no."
And she again: "Go to her, then, Roly. Don't tell, if you think not.... Just be with her for a little.... You'll be happy then.... Leave me alone a little, dear.... Not even write."
And he: "Audrey! ... Audrey!"
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 passed 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 rushing, 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 cumulative 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 passed 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 circumstances. "No, no! Roly, no! Together, Roly; not alone, not alone!" And then she began to assure 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. Ipromisenot lonely; I promise,promisenot unhappy! You can't think of me like that if you leave me with Lady Burdon. You don't knowwhatmay happen to me; how she may feel towards me or what I might imagine she felt and what I might not do. Icouldnot—Icouldnot!"
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 rehearse 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.
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 Saturday 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 amusement 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 apronwise 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 apron to come to rest.
PEERKILLED INFRONTIERFIGHTING
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 space 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 apron 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 apron 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!' anddahnshe goes plump—dahn like that!" explained Mrs. Erps from the floor, very nearly carrying her friend with her in the stress of dramatic illustration.
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,thereyou 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.
"Standaht of it!" said Mrs. Erps to the constable in a very sharp whisper. "Standaht of it, frightenin' her. 'E won't 'urt you, my pretty. 'E only carried of yer up.Dahnyou went, yer know, right dahn. Where's your 'usbing, my pretty?"
Her lips just parted. She moaned "Oh, dear! O God!"
Mrs. Erps communicated to the constable: "Jus' 'er very words.Dahnshe went—"
The eyes opened again.
"Your 'usbing, dear, I'm askin'. 'Usbing. Ain't you got a ma, my dear? Ain't you got a pa?"
She said: "Dead ... dead ... Oh, dear..."
"Orfing," communicated Mrs. Erps.
"Rambling in her mind," said the constable. "Not answering you, she wasn't."
"You pop off, young man," commanded Mrs. Erps with sudden hostility. "Ramberling! Didn't I ask her, and didn't she give answer back to me? Ramberling! You pop off. I'll fine where she lives, and my old man 'll come to the station if so need be. 'E ain't afraid of yer, so don't you think it. Served on a joory, he has, before now. Ramberling! I'm going to rub 'er pore feet. That's what I'm goin' to do. Ramberling! She knows me as spoke 'er fair before ever you came. 'Excoose me,' I says to her, 'excoose me—'"
The policeman, from the door: "Yes, I've heard that."
Mrs. Erps, bending over the stairs: "Pop off! That's what I'm telling you. Pop off!"
III
Mrs. Erps rubbed the "pore feet," put a hot bottle to them, covered the poor, motionless form with two of the wool blenkits, called up her old man when he came in; and in his presence and in that of the lady second floor lodger and the young man first back lodger, trembling with witnessed honesty, she opened the pretty dear's purse and searched her pocket for any clue to her home. There was none. Mrs. Erps, having counted the money in the purse, written down the amount and had the paper signed by her old man, by second floor and by first back, bade them pop off, and sat beside her patient with soothing words and frequently a kiss to the reiterated "Oh, dear ... oh, dear ... O God!" that came in scarcely audible sighs as from one numbed with pain and utterly tired.
So, only now and then sighing, eyes closed, she lay for close upon three hours. Mrs. Erps stole away to cook up a nice bit of fried fish for 'er old man, revisiting the first front at intervals, waiting to hear that weary moan, and returning down-stairs increasingly troubled with: "I don't like to hear her. Fair wrings my 'art, it does."
A visit paid towards seven o'clock was better rewarded. Audrey opened her eyes, looked full and intelligently at Mrs. Erps, standing there with a lighted candle, and quite naturally addressed her. She questioned nothing. She seemed fully to understand where she was and why. In tones weak but quite clear and collected she made two requests. Please let her stay here for the night and leave her quite alone; she wanted nothing, just to be alone; and please send a telegram for her.
She dictated the message and it was sent—to Maggie, and with Mrs. Erps' address added, and running: "Please come at once. He is dead. Audrey."
IV
Miss Oxford arrived in the early afternoon of the next day. All the devotion of the years she had mothered Audrey, all the longing—longing—longing of the past months for news, all the agony of suspense in the train journey (the papers informing her as they informed new Lady Burdon at Miller's Field), all a breaking heart's distress was in the little cry she gave when she entered first front and saw that strangely white, strangely impassive face lying on the pillow.
"My darling! Oh, my darling"—arms about the still form, tears raining down.
No responsive movement; just "Dear Maggie—dear Maggie."
"Why did you never write?"
"Dear Maggie..."
There was no more of explanation between them.
"Maggie, I want to be quite, quite still. Not to talk, Maggie darling. Just hold my hand and let me lie here. Are you holding it?"
"Audrey! Audrey! Yes—yes. In both mine."
"I don't feel you."
She seemed to feel nothing, to want nothing, and, though she lay now with wide eyes, to see nothing. She just lay, scarcely seeming to breathe. Once she said, in a very fond voice, "Yes, Roly," as if she were in conversation with him. No other sound.
After a long time Maggie told her: "Darling, I'm going to bring a doctor to see you."
No reply nor movement when Maggie released the hand she held and left the room to seek Mrs. Erps. No interest nor response when the doctor came, or while he examined her. He took Maggie aside. "She's very young. How long has she been married?"
"In June—the first of June."
They spoke in whispers. When he was going, he repeated what he had most impressed. "No fear of it happening so far as I can see. She doesn't seem in pain. That numbness? Mental. Her mind is too occupied. I don't think movement would bring it on; but don't move her yet. We mustn't run risks. It would be fatal—almost certainly fatal if it happened. Another shock would do it; nothing else, I think. Well, there's no likelihood of shock, is there? You can guard against that. See to that and you've no need to worry. She couldn't possibly live through it in her present state. Otherwise—why, we'll soon be on the right road and getting strong for it. I'll look in to-night."
This was in the passage, and with Mrs. Erps in waiting at the front door rehearsing in her mind: "As I was telling you when you come, doctor, 'Excoose me,' I says to 'er, 'excoose me—'" But what Mrs. Erps overheard caused her to let him escape and to say instead to Miss Oxford, "Oh, the pore love! If any one makes a sahnd to shock 'er—not if I knows it, they don't."
Mrs. Erps knew quite well the meaning of that recurrent "it" in the doctor's words.
V
But it was not in Mrs. Erps's power to prevent the shock that came.
It came in direct train of action from that "Yes, Roly" that Maggie had heard, separated from it by the days of high fever, the mind wandering, that almost immediately supervened. As one that falls asleep upon a resolution and wakes at once to remember it and to act upon it, so, the fever releasing her to her senses, Audrey took up immediately that which lay in those words of hers.
She had fallen into a natural sleep that promised the end of her fever. She awoke, and directly she awoke sat up in bed. She was alone. Only the one thought was in her mind; she got up and began to dress.
The resolution of her mind governed the extreme weakness of her body. She was no more aware of her feebleness than one strung up in battle notices a wound not immediately crippling. She knew exactly what she must do. She found her purse on the mantelpiece and took it and left the house without being noticed—or thinking to escape or to give notice. Only that one thought occupied her; a few yards down the street she met a cab and hailed it. "Burdon House, Mount Street," she directed the driver.
"Yes, Roly," had been when Roly, visiting her more clearly, more real than any other figure about her during that numb and impassive period when she desired to be quiet in order to talk with him, had told her to go to Gran, to comfort Gran, and to be comforted.
VI
Old butler Noble admitted her. Events had caused old butler Noble to be considerably shaken in his wits. A week ago the door would have been closed to a young woman who asked for Lady Burdon and refused her name. To-day, on the explanation, "The name does not matter. Lady Burdon will be glad to see me," it was held open and the visitor taken to the library.
This was the second day of new Lord and Lady Burdon's visit for the latter to make Jane Lady Burdon's acquaintance. Only that morning old butler Noble had made the mistake of turning away a Miller's Field friend who had called to see new Lady Burdon, carrying out a promise to report how baby Rollo, left behind, was getting on. "Her ladyship is seeing no one," Noble had informed her. The excellent Miller's Field friend had been too overawed by his manner to explain exactly whom it was she wished to see. She sent a note of explanation by messenger. Noble delivered it to his mistress, who read it and sent him with it to new Lady Burdon. The note was foolishly worded. New Lady Burdon, ill at ease in this house, crimsoned to think it had been read. From the outset, hostile and prepared for hostility, she had taken a sharp dislike to this old man-servant; angry and mortified, she questioned him and spoke to him as he was unaccustomed to be addressed.
It was beneath the lesson of this incident that he admitted Audrey without question. She was none of his mistress's friends. In the first place he knew all such; in the second they did not call at the impossible hour of half-past six in the evening, nor present the strange appearance—white, not very steady, faltering in voice—that she bore.
He took the news of her arrival to new Lady Burdon.
"Gave no name, do you say?"
"She said your ladyship would be glad to see her."
Lady Burdon hesitated a moment. She tingled with fresh hostility against this man because she wondered whether he expected her to accept that statement or to send him again for the name. She did not know and hated him the more, and hated all the fancied resentment for which he stood, because she did not know.
Her mind sought a way out. She said with a little laugh: "Oh, I think I know. Very well."
She went to the library.
WHAT AUDREY BROUGHT LADY BURDON
I
It was very dim in the library. Above the centre of the room light stood in soft points upon a high chandelier. A fire burnt low within the shelter of the great hearth. The rest was shadow.
Lady Burdon came easily into the room, but in the doorway stopped; and Audrey, who had made a forward movement, prepared words on her lips, also stopped. There was something odd about this girl who stood there, Lady Burdon thought, and her mind ran questing the cause of some strange apprehension that somehow was communicated to it. There was something wrong, Audrey thought; and she began to tremble. For a briefest space, that was a world's space to Audrey's mind bewildered and to Lady Burdon's mind suspicious, as they went hunting through it, these two stood thus, and thus regarded one another.
It was told of this library at Burdon House—Mr. Amber's "Lives" record it—that in the days when gentlemen wore swords against their thighs, a duel was fought here, that the thing went in three fierce assaults, each ended by a bloody thrust on this side or on that, and that between the bouts the rivals panted, sick with fatigue and hurt.
Words for swords, and the first bout:—
Lady Burdon closed the door. She went a step towards Audrey and said, "Yes?"
Audrey, with fumbling hands, swaying a little where she stood: "I think—I came to see Lady Burdon."
Odd her look, and odd her tone, and strange the trembling that visibly possessed her. Lady Burdon was about to explain. Her mind came back from its questing like one that cries alarm by night through silent streets. "Beware!" it cried to her. "Beware!" and for her explanation she substituted:
"I am Lady Burdon."
The first thrust.
Audrey put a hand against a chair that stood beside her. The trembling that had taken her when, expecting to see Roly's Gran, this stranger had appeared, began to shake her terribly in all her frame. This Lady Burdon? For the first time since her will had got her from her bed and brought her here, she was informed how weak she was. A dreadful physical sickness came over her and all the room became unsteady.
Respite enough, and the second bout:—
Lady Burdon demanded: "Who are you, please?"
No reply, and that augmented her suspicion, and she came on again: "Who are you, please?"
Wave upon wave that dreadful sickness swept over Audrey and set her brain aswim. Bewildered thoughts, like frantic arms of one that drowns, tossed up upon the flood, and like such arms that gesticulate and vanish, spun there a dizzy moment and spun away: This Lady Burdon? ... then this not Roly's house ... then what? ... then where? This Lady Burdon? ... then all her life with Roly was dream ... had never been ... none of her life had ever been ... what had been then?
A third time: "Who are you, please? Why do you not answer me?"
She made an effort. She said very pitiably: "Oh, how—oh, how can you be Lady Burdon?"
No wound—only the merest scratch, but increasing in Lady Burdon the dis-ease that had come to her on entering the room and had heightened at every moment.
In her turn it was hers to give pause, but she engaged quickly for the third bout.
"I see you do not understand," she said.
And Audrey: "Oh, please forgive me. No, I do not understand; I have been ill. I am ill."
"But I am afraid I do not understand you. I do not understand your manner. If you will tell me who you are—what it is you want—I can perhaps explain."
But Audrey only looked at her. Only most pitiable inquiry was in her eyes. Lady Burdon read their inquiry, that same "Oh, how can you be Lady Burdon?" and the question and the silence brought vague, unreasoning alarm in violent collision with her suspicions. Anger was struck out of their conjunction. She said sharply:
"You must answer me, please. You must answer me. What is the matter? I am asking you who you are."
Mr. Amber's account of the duel says that one contestant drove the other the length of the room and had him pinned against the wall:—
Into Audrey's bewilderment, the dreadful sickness and the trembling she could not control, these sharp demands came like numbing blows upon one in the trough of the sea grappling for life. When Roly had come to her as she lay stupefied and she had answered him "Yes, Roly," he had told her clearly as if in fact he had stood beside her, what she should say to Gran. She had come with the words prepared. They suddenly returned to her now.
The words she had made ready: "I am Audrey—" she said.
Mr. Amber's account of the duel says that the one contestant, having his rival pinned, was too impetuous and ran upon the other's sword:—
Lady Burdon said: "Audrey? Do you say Audrey? Are you known here?"
And ran upon the other's sword:—
"I am Audrey—I am Roly's wife."
II
As a dreadful blow sends the stricken, hands to face, staggering this way and that on nerveless, aimless legs; or as a tipsy man, unbalanced by fresh air, will blunder into any open door, so, at that "I am Audrey—I am Roly's wife"—Lady Burdon's mind was sent reeling, fumbling through a maze of spinning scenes—marriage? and what then?—before it could fix itself to realisation.
She stood plucking with one hand at the fingers of the other; and when the whirl subsided and she came dizzily out of it her mind was leaden and the first words she could get from it were none she wanted.
Her voice all thick: "He was not married," she said.
The reply, very gentle: "We did not tell any one."
And to that nothing better than "Why?"
"Roly did not wish it."
Thick and heavy still: "Why do you come now?"
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 space 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 advertisement 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 snatch 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 attitude 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 assertion 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 assembly 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 reëntered 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 pass 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.