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 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 reentered 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.