The Happy Warrior Part 12

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.

CHAPTER V

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 s.p.a.ce, that was a world's s.p.a.ce 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 a.s.saults, each ended by a b.l.o.o.d.y 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 subst.i.tuted:

"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?"