The Happy Warrior Part 6

They are interrupted here by the entrance of baby Rollo on his way to bed, for it is getting late. "The rummiest little beggar," says Lord Burdon, introducing his small son. "Not much more than eighteen months, and solemn enough for an archbishop, aren't you, Rollo?"

The solemn one, pale and noticeably quiet and far from strong looking, justifies this character by having no smiles, though Mr. Pemberton greets him cheerfully and says approvingly: "Rollo, eh? The Burdon name. _His_ name," he adds, and looks at Lady Burdon, who gives him a gentle smile of understanding.

IV

Mr. Pemberton looked after her very gratefully when she excused herself to take the child up-stairs. The door closed, he turned to Lord Burdon. "Nice--nice," he began in a stifled kind of voice, "to have a little son growing up--to watch. We watched young Lord Burdon--that poor boy--growing up--anxiously--so anxiously...."

He gave a nervous little laugh. "When I say 'we' you've no idea with what a terrible air of proprietorship the family is regarded by those, like myself, attached to it for generations, by those dependent on it.

We looked so eagerly, so eagerly as the time drew on, to his coming of age. He was wanted so."

"Wanted?" Lord Burdon asked. "Wanted?" He p.r.o.nounced the word heavily, as though he had an inkling of the answer and was apprehensive.

It started Mr. Pemberton on a recital that he spoke with seeming difficulty and yet as though he had prepared it. It occupied longer than either knew, and Lord Burdon, before it was finished, was sitting sunk low in his chair, as though what he heard oppressed him. The little old lawyer spoke of difficulties in connection with the estate; the diminished rent roll; the urgent necessity for comprehensive improvements essential to make the land pay its way; the long-urged necessity for the sale of Burdon House in Mount Street, heavily mortgaged and the interest an insupportable drain on the estate. It led him to why they had looked so anxiously for the coming of age.

Everything that was essential was impossible, he showed, in the reign of gentle Jane Lady Burdon, who felt that she held in sacred trust for her grandson and would suffer no risks in raising of loans, nor depredation of her charge by sale of the town property. He had no eloquence, this devoted little lawyer, but he had earnestness that seemed to him who listened to fill the room, as it were, with living shapes of duties, demands, traditions of a great heritage that marshalled before him and looked to him to be carried forward, as soldiers to a leader.

A change in Mr. Pemberton's tone aroused him.

"He was wanted so," Mr. Pemberton said jerkily, and stopped.

No response, and in a funny little cracked voice, "Well, he's dead,"

Mr. Pemberton said.

Lord Burdon raised his eyes, contracted with the trouble that had given him that drooped, oppressed appearance while the other spoke, dim, clouded as with looking at something that menaced; and their eyes met--two very simple men.

Mr. Pemberton stretched out fumbling hands. He cried blunderingly and appealingly, his mouth twisting: "It has affected me--this death, this change. I am only an old man--a devoted old man. As we looked to him, so now we look to you."

"Look to me!" Lord Burdon said slowly. "Look to me! Good G.o.d, Pemberton, I funk it!" he cried. "I funk it and I hate it. I'm not the sort. I wish I'd been left alone. I wish to G.o.d I had!"

There followed his words a silence of the intense nature caused by speech that has been intense. In that silence, consciousness of some other personality in the room caused Mr. Pemberton to turn suddenly in his chair. He turned to see Lady Burdon standing in the doorway. She was not in the act of entering. She was standing there; and for the briefest s.p.a.ce, while Mr. Pemberton looked at her and she at him, she just stood, erect, her head a trifle unduly high, with estimating eyes and with purposed mouth.

V

It had been an anxious Mr. Pemberton that came down to Miller's Field.

It was a rea.s.sured Mr. Pemberton that stayed there, but a gravely disturbed Mr. Pemberton that went back to town. He knew Lady Burdon had been listening, the look he had seen on her face informed him of her displeasure with what she had heard, and he knew that in his first estimate of her he had misread her.

For he read her look aright. In her husband's cry--his weak, contemptible cry--in what she had heard of the little lawyer's statements and proposals--his tears and prayers of duties--she knew hostility to her plans, to her dreams, to her pleasures. Her estimating eyes that met Mr. Pemberton's inquired the strength of that hostility; her purposed mouth was the mirror of her determination against it.

CHAPTER VI

MISCALCULATING A PEER

I

The little clock that is perched high over the vast fireplace in the library at Burdon House, Mount Street, marks a shade before ten of the evening. Its delicate ticking joins with the fluttering of the flames, and with the steady scratch of Mr. Librarian Amber's pen, to make the only sounds in this dignified apartment with its high-bred air, that has known many a Burdon and that shortly is to acknowledge another bearer of the t.i.tle and serenely give farewell to the lady seated before the fire.

A gracious lady of many sorrows, as the Vicar of Little Letham parish, in a surprising flight, had named Jane Lady Burdon on the previous Sunday--and rightly named her. Sorrow has companioned Jane Lady Burdon before; now again is called whence it has lightly slumbered--walks hand in hand with the gentle lady, is her bedfellow, crouches on the hearth beside her as she sits, drooping slightly, in the high-backed chair, fingers enlocked on lap, eyes dimly upon the flames.

Lord Burdon, who has stepped into the dead boy's shoes--(Ah, Sorrow, walk here and here with me. Look, Sorrow, where he used to sport and run!)--has paid his visit that afternoon; sympathetic little Mr.

Pemberton, with his papers and doc.u.ments, has occupied a part of her morning. It has been a trying day for her. Her only desire now is to be left alone with her thoughts. (Come away, come away, Sorrow, Sorrow; and hold me close, and open me his prattling lips, his strong young lips.)

II

Mr. Librarian Amber--very conscious of Sorrow crouching there, but busy, busy--is writing at a table behind the drooping figure in the high-backed chair. The bald top of Mr. Amber's narrow head, nose hard after his pen like a diligent bloodhound on a slow scent, shines between the splendid yellow candles in their tall, silver holders that light his work. Neat little packets of papers, neatly arranged, dot the polished surface of the table, like islands set in a still, dark sea about the greater island that is Mr. Amber's ma.n.u.script. On a chair by Mr. Amber's side is a large, slim volume held by a gilt clasp and lettered on its cover of white vellum:

Percival Rollo Redpath Letham XIIth Baron Burdon

He is engaged, Mr. Librarian Amber, on that "Lives of the Barons Burdon" of which Lord Burdon had spoken to his wife, walking in the garden of Hillside.

Then that little clock perched over the mantelpiece tinkles the hour of ten.

"How do you progress, Mr. Amber?" Jane Lady Burdon inquires gently.

Mr. Amber--const.i.tutionally nervous--starts, drops his pen, grabs at it as it rolls for the floor, misses it in the stress of a short-sighted fumble, makes a distressed _Tch-tch!_ as it rattles to the boards, clears his throat, starts on one reply and, in the manner of nervous persons suddenly interrogated, strangles it at birth and has a shot at fortune with another.

"I have almost got--I am just concluding the newspaper reports of the fight, my lady. Very nearly at the end." He recollects a resolve to be bright in order to cheer my lady, so he adds with a funny little pop: "Almost done!" and then with a brisk little puff blows imaginary dust from his ma.n.u.script. "Almost done! _Hoof!_"

"I will read it over to-morrow, Mr. Amber, immediately after breakfast.

To-day is Friday. By Monday you should have finished, I think, and the book will be ready to go into its place at the Manor. You will come with me when I go down there next week, Mr. Amber, and we will put it in its place together. I shall be glad to see it in its place before I leave: all the Lives finished--our little hobby, Mr. Amber;" and her gracious ladyship of many sorrows puts into the words the smile that faintly touches her lips.

Mr. Amber, desperately agitated and pleased by this coupling of himself with his dear mistress, takes from the warmth of his happiness courage sufficient to introduce to her a matter that has been troubling him.

He gets awkwardly to his feet, a spare, stooping figure, mild of face, little over fifty but looking more, frowns horribly at his chair for the noise it makes upon the polished floor as he pushes it back, and comes forward, twisting the fingers of his hands about one another.

"My lady--yes, I will surely finish by Monday. Your ladyship will forgive me--intruding myself--your ladyship speaks of leaving--I am--if I may venture--so attached--I scarcely--"

He is quite painfully agitated. His fingers, tightly locked now by their twistings, present a figure of his halting sentences come to a final tangle, an ultimate and hopeless knot.

Her gracious ladyship of many sorrows smiles in her kind way. "Dear Mr. Amber, you should know, of course. I have been thoughtless of you in my sorrow. I am going to my sister in York, Mr. Amber--Mrs. Eresby, you remember. Here nor the Manor is no longer my home, you understand.

Indeed, how should I stay in houses of sad memories only?"

Mr. Amber murmurs "Ah--my lady!" and she continues: "I intend a last visit to the Manor--to take leave of our dear friends, Mr. Amber, and to collect a few--memories. I would go now, but I have first to meet Lady Burdon. Lord and Lady Burdon will very kindly come here for that purpose on Monday so that we may know one another for a few days."

She pauses and smiles inquiringly as though to ask Mr. Amber if he is now sufficiently informed. He blinks considerably, starts to work at his hands again, and suddenly says with a mouth all twisted: "It will be very--strange--to me to be parted from your ladyship."

She extends a gentle hand towards his that twist and twist, touching them softly: "Dear Mr. Amber. It has been the pleasantest friendship."

He says stupidly and brokenly, "What will I do?"

"You must go on living with the books," she tells him. "Why, what would they do without you, or you without them? I will speak to Lord Burdon. You must live on just the same in the Manor library where we have been together so often--all of us. I shall like to think of you there. It is my wish, Mr. Amber."

She says gently, "There!" as he clutches her hand to his lips. "I will go to bed now. I think I hear Colden coming for me," and as her maid enters, she rises.