The Happy Warrior Part 8

Comic were the word for such a thing.

III

Comic, and comic that which followed when he, released, was with her in the glade and, seated by her, took her hands and bent her to his purpose.

"Now, listen to me, Audrey. Put both your hands in mine."

She responded as he bade her, performing surely the most beautiful action in the world as she gave her hands to his. All human life has no act more beautiful than the weaker hand confided to the stronger, nor any nearer G.o.dhood than when strong hand takes the weak.

He enclosed her hands within his own. "Listen to me, Audrey," he repeated; and, as her hands had been her spirit, he possessed and drew her spirit on.

Yet comic is the word: for here--he planning, she agreeing--they made the plans they thought should make all bliss, all happiness their own; here, in fact, trimmed wreckers' lamps to shipwreck happy lives. He had determined upon secret marriage with her, and had determined it as the perfect solution of difficulties whose consideration was in some degree creditable to him. For as he told himself, and told his Audrey now, nothing prevented him from openly declaring his intention of contracting a marriage that would cause a breach between himself and his grandmother; nothing but the impossibility of enduring such a breach; that was unthinkable.

"Pa.s.sionately devoted to his grandmother," Mr. Pemberton had told; "and she, for her part, making all the world of him." It was precisely this uncommon devotion between him and his dear "Gran" that drove him into torment of perplexity when first his heart informed him life without Audrey was insupportable. With utmost content he had surrendered himself into the object of Gran's adoring pride and, as such, into her control of her dear possession. As he grew older, that control had sometimes come to irk a little. "He sometimes chafed--chafed, if you follow me," Mr. Pemberton had said. But the quality of that chafing required better understanding than even Mr. Pemberton could give it.

It was not at conflict of will between himself and Gran that Roly chafed; he knew his own determined character well enough to know that if he liked he could override her will as he overrode that of others who thought to oppose him. Where he chafed was where his devotion to her p.r.i.c.ked him. He could not bear the thought of giving her distress; and he would sometimes chafe when--at this, at that, at some impulse or boyish fling of his--he thought her distress unreasonable; unreasonable because it shackled him unfairly; because either he would submit to it, or, taking his way, would suffer greatly, be robbed of his pleasure, at thought of having caused it.

But always, when the thing was over, be glad he had given way to her or most desperately grieved he had pained her. He knew that he was everything to her; how hurt her then?

With such the measure of his love for her, such the devotion between them, and such that devotion's price, what a situation was presented for his perplexity when Audrey came to occupy his heart! She had been his playmate in his childhood at Burdon Old Manor, she at the Vicarage.

When her father died, Gran had expressed her fondness for his daughters by using her influence to procure the establishment of a post-office at Burdon and persuading the elder sister to conduct it, thus keeping them, as she had said, "near us." That was one thing; a head of the house of Burdon's marriage into so humble a degree--and that her Roly--he knew to be unthinkably another. She had great plans for great alliance for him--at some future date. At some future date! At her great age and at his extreme youth she could scarcely think of him as man--always as boy. It was one of the things that sometimes chafed him. But when, as had happened, the subject of marriage came up between them, and he would laugh at her immense ideas of his value, she would always end so pathetically: "But, Roly, how shall I bear any one to come between us?"

Rehearsing it all, "How--how in G.o.d's name?" he had desperately cried to himself, "can I tell her of Audrey?" She whom he could never bear to distress--how give her this vital hurt? She from whom--for the suffering it would cause her--he could never endure to be parted, how deliberately put her away? He would tell her his intention; how endure what she would say, or not say? He would carry out his purpose and she would leave him and must shortly die; and how endure her death in such circ.u.mstances? Or, haply, he would prevail on her to stay with him; and she, supplanted, jealous of Audrey and gentle Audrey fearing her.

And how endure that?

No--to create such a breach insupportable, and insupportable life without Audrey. What then?

It came to him as complete solution, and as complete solution he pressed it now on Audrey, that he would marry Audrey first, then after a little while tell. The more he examined it, the more obvious, the less impossible of failure it seemed. "Gran, dear," he imagined himself saying, taking his opportunity in one of those frequent moments when, out driving with her or sitting alone with her in the evening, she loved just to sit silent, resting her hand on his,--"Gran, dear, I've something to tell you. I've done something and done it without telling you, so as to have you go on living with me like we've always lived together. Gran, I'm married--Audrey, Audrey Oxford; you remember, dear?"

Imagining it, he could imagine her arms about him. "Gran, I'm married"--easy and kind. "Gran, I'm going to marry, going to marry Audrey Oxford"--cruel, impossible!

The solution removed also an obstacle to their mating on Audrey's side--her sister. Their courtship had been carried on against her sister's disapproval. Maggie was twenty years older than Audrey, more mother to her than sister, and sharp-tongued in the matter of Roly's frequent visits, the more surely to avert the disaster in which she believed they must end.

"In time--it's only a question of time," she had once said to Audrey, "he will forget you, turn to his own position and responsibilities in life--leave you broken-hearted. How else can it end?"

And Audrey in tears: "What if I tell you he has asked me to marry him?"

"He has asked you that?"

"Maggie, he has."

"Has he told Lady Burdon?"

"Not yet, because--"

"Ah!"

And Audrey: "Oh, how can you say you love me?"

And Maggie: "Audrey! Audrey!"

And Audrey: "Maggie, I didn't mean that,"

And Maggie, steeling her heart: "But you think it: the first result of him. You are girl and boy; you don't understand. Why, I, who would die if you were to die, would rather see you dead than betrothed to him. If it ended in marriage, it would end in misery."

And later she had said to him: "If you break Audrey's heart, I will never forgive you. That's a poor threat. I would find a way perhaps--"

So there was Maggie stood in the way; and the solution found a way round Maggie. And there was lastly all the clatter of his friends, all the active disapproval of his elders; and the solution found an easy way around that. He could not hurt Gran; he could not conciliate Maggie; he could not face himself gossiped of, implored, advised, reproved; and the solution offered an easy way around it all. Easily winning Audrey to it,--her hands in his, his spirit possessing hers--he came to details. He had examined and arranged everything. He had made inquiries as to Registry Office marriages. They were both of age.

There was a residence formality: well, she was coming on a visit to a girl friend in Kensington; he would take a room in a hotel in the district. They would meet at the Registry "one fine day." Long leave from his regiment was due. They would go on the continent--"all over the place, the most gorgeous time"--and afterwards--easy as all the rest was easy--Gran should be told.

He ended: "Audrey--married!"

And she: "Roly! ... Oh, Roly!"

Comic were the word for such a thing.

IV

Comic the word; but if, instead, you choose to judge them and to consider preposterous his arguments of the case between his Gran and his Audrey and preposterous his solution of it, beg you remember that life is going to be an impossible affair for us, a thing to drive us mad, if we are going to judge it by the standard of the correct and n.o.ble characters that you and I possess. By some means or another we must stoop down to the level of our neighbours and try to judge from there. Dowered with all the virtues, as you and I are, it is the easiest thing in the world to be impatient with another's folly, to despise him for it, to indicate how little moral courage will rid him of its effects; nay, to go further, and to declare it inconceivable that such blunders and follies and misbehaviours, as for example those upon which Roly and his Audrey were now embarked, can really have been committed. But that is a stage too far. We must not run our excusable intolerance of folly to the length of calling impossible even the most absurd actions, even the most incredible weakness of character. The whole history of mankind results precisely from these absurdities and these incredibilities. On the one hand, we should still and should all be in Eden if it were not so; on the other, there is the distinctly moving thought that you and I, faultless, are dependent for our entertainment on exactly these impossibilities of character in others: but for them we should never enjoy the delicious thrill of being shocked, never (the thing is unthinkable) be able to thank G.o.d we are not as others are.

No, we must accept these impossible follies on the part of our neighbours: but to understand them--nay, if we are too utterly high and they too utterly low for that, then merely to pay the poor devils for the entertainment they give us--let us try to see as they see, feel as they feel, become naked as they are naked to the bitter chill of cowardice, of temptation, of G.o.d knows what indeed that strikes them to the bone.

Let us try, and coming to these two, let it for Audrey at least be excused that she was the gentlest thing and all unschooled in any heavier book of life than the airy pamphlet that begins "I love;" with "I love" continues; with "I love" ends; and never asks, much less supplies, what "I love" means, or what demands, or whither leads, or how is paid.

CHAPTER II

LOVE LEADS AN EXPEDITION INTO THE UNFORESEEN

I

He married her--and wearied of her. Within two months of when he called her wife--and pressed her to him and kissed her for the fondness of that name, and chaffed her with "Wife" in place of Audrey at every lightest word--within two months of that tremendous day he was discovering himself checked and irritated by the vexations, the hindrances, the deceptions imposed by secret marriage upon his former free and buoyant way of life. Within three he was openly irked, not hiding from her that his temper was crossed when, stronger and more frequently, incidents arose to cross it. Within four months--and still their secret undeclared--he was often neglecting her, often silent in her presence for long periods; brooding; frowning at her where she sat or where she walked beside him; leaving her in a storm; returning to her in remorse; a.s.suring himself he did not love her less, nay, rather loved her more--_But_...! Every way he turned and everything she did and all the things she did not do, brought him and bruised him against the bars of which that _But_ was made.

All this most wretched and most pitiful, most excusable and most inexcusable business may best be examined in the incidents that stood out to mark its progress. Theirs was the oldest and most frequent of human errors. They had jumped into the delights of the foreseen, and behold! they found themselves in the swamp, in the jungle, in the desert, in the whirlpool of the unforeseen.

II

Audrey wrote and told Sister Maggie--a letter pledging her to secrecy, posted on the very moment of departure for the Continent ("at our wedding breakfast at the Charing Cross hotel, darling; and the train just going") and breathing ecstasy of happiness, and breathing love all atremble in its prayer for forgiveness. It informed Maggie that they were to be Mr. and Mrs. Redpath until everybody was told; and "O, darling Maggie, I shall not sleep until I get your letter--_Poste restante_, Paris, dear--telling me you forgive me and how glad you are."

Forgiveness was not to be discovered in the reply by the weeping eyes that read it. "You have made a most terrible mistake," Maggie wrote.

"You say that you are happy, but you will find you can only be miserable while you are living in deception."

The wounding sentences were written in a firm, clear penmanship that in itself was cold and bitter reprimand. As they appeared, so Audrey read them. She did not know that they were written while the hand that made them could be steadied from its trembling desire to send a message only of devotion, only of prayer for Audrey's happiness, only of blessing.

The letter brought to Audrey's eyes the tears that Maggie hoped to bring but ached to bring--forcing herself to be cruel in order to be kind; also it brought belief that Maggie was and wished to be estranged. It was never answered. Wisely intended, unwisely executed, misread, it added to the record of human perversity another of those immensely pitiful blunders that solely and alone are the cause of human unhappiness. When Heaven holds its rea.s.sembly, Heaven, as we seek out our loved, will surely ring with broken, loving greetings of: "I did not know! I did not understand!" No more will need be said. All tragedy, all sorrow is in those words; all tragedy, all sorrow removed by them.