Chapter VII: Burdon House Leased: the Old Manor Occupied

I

It happened that within a very short time of that wish it was granted. Burdon House in Mount Street was let; Burdon Old Manor was permanently occupied.

This began in a visit that Lady Burdon, very decidedly out of temper, paid to Mr. Pemberton at the office in Bedford Row. Relations between Lady Burdon and the little old lawyer had radically altered since that occasion of their first meeting at Miller's Field. Mr. Pemberton, who in these years had relinquished to his son all the business save the cherished Burdon affairs, had long been aware that the misgivings which had clouded his first happy impression of Lady Burdon had been the juster estimate of her character. He had perceived the dominance she exercised over her indulgent husband; he had accepted, after what protest he dared, that the management of the estate was in her hands. He had foreseen the fruits of the wilfulness of a woman thrown out of balance by the sudden acquisition of place and possessions; it was because these fruits were now being plucked that he preferred to keep the Burdon affairs in his own hands. He could not bear the thought of handing over to his son this honoured trust in shape that would cause a lifting of the eyebrows: "Father, I've been going through the Burdon papers. I say, they seem in a precious bad way ... I don't understand...."

He could not endure the thought of that.

On this day when Lady Burdon came angrily--and defiantly--to Bedford Row, the position was raised very acutely between them.

"I know--I know," Mr. Pemberton was saying. "But, Lady Burdon, you must perceive the possibility--nay, in the circumstances, the extreme probability--that though Lord Burdon countenances in the smallest particular all you find it necessary to spend--and on the property not to spend--he yet may not appreciate the state of affairs--the imperative necessity that a halt be called. I have written to him frequently. The replies come from you."

She parted her lips to speak, but he had already had sufficient taste of her mood to make him hasten with: "I know. I know. Lord Burdon has told us both that he hates business and that he likes to encourage you in the pleasure you find in it. That is admitted, Lady Burdon. We have no quarrel there. My point is--how far is Lord Burdon to be suffered to indulge his dislike? how long is he to be kept in ignorance? I think no longer. That is why I purpose making a call on him. I purpose it, again, because I believe Lord Burdon's influence--when he understands--may join with mine to move you, where mine alone causes you annoyance."

He indicated the papers that littered the table. "You see the position. I tell you again--I tell you with all the seriousness of which I am capable--that the crash is as near to you as I am near to you sitting here. I tell you that it is not to be averted unless for a period--a mere few years--Burdon House is given up. It will let immediately on a short lease. There, alone, will be more than relief--assistance. It will save you much that you now find necessary--there is the relief of the whole situation."

She broke out: "It would never have come to this but for the cost of this irrigation scheme on the Burdon property. That is your doing--yours and Mr. Maxwell's. I tell you again I was amazed--amazed when I heard of it."

"And I have reminded you, Lady Burdon, that when I approached you in the matter you desired not to be troubled with it. I had often and often urged it upon you. This time you said it was to be left entirely to our discretion--Maxwell's and mine."

"I shall repudiate the contract. The work is not begun. You can get out of it as best you can."

He said very quietly, "That is open to you--of course." He paused and she did not speak, and he went on. "You would have no case, I think. The authority is too clear. But I do not mind saying I would try to get out of the contract or--. Our firm could not be involved in a lawsuit against the house we have served these generations." He dropped his voice and said more to himself than to her: "No--no. Never that!" He looked up at her and assumed a cheerful note: "You have to think of your son, you know, Lady Burdon. What is he to come into? This irrigation scheme will be the making of the property--the land cries for it. If you can cut off the Burdon House establishment for a few years, young Mr. Rollo will have reason to bless you when in process of time he assumes the title. If you decide--"

She rose abruptly: "I must be going."

Mr. Pemberton hobbled after her down the stairs to attend her to her carriage. A bitter wind was blowing. The coachman was walking the horses up and down. The footman who waited in the doorway, rugs on arm, ran into the street and beckoned to him. Lady Burdon watched the carriage, tapping her foot on the ground and frowning impatiently. A large piece of pink paper came blowing down the pavement, somersaulting along in a ridiculous fashion--heels over head, heels over head, grotesquely like a performing tumbler.

"Cold!" said Mr. Pemberton, briskly, rubbing his hands together. "Very cold!"

She made no reply. She was much out of temper. She was considerably beset. She was stiffening with an angry determination against abandoning her life in town. She was freshly aroused against Mr. Pemberton for his devoted loyalty to her husband's house--he had stung her by the manner of his acceptance of her threat to repudiate the contract; and by his reference to Rollo--he had hit her there.

The tumbling paper--a newspaper contents bill she could see--flung itself flat a few yards from them, throwing out its upper corners as it came to rest, for all the world like an exhausted tumbler throwing out his arms. The carriage drew up.

With a foot on the step: "You need not call on Lord Burdon till I have written to you--to arrange a date," she said.

Mr. Pemberton replied: "I certainly will not. I will await your letter, Lady Burdon."

She settled herself in her seat, drawing her furs about her. He was certainly a doddering old figure as he stood there--shrunken in the face, bent in the body, his few white hairs tumbled in the wind.

"Your house is very dear to me, Lady Burdon," he went on. "You must believe I act only in your best interests--in what I believe to be--"

She nodded to the footman, turned towards her from the box, and the carriage began to move. The tumbler contents bill leapt up with an absurd scurry, somersaulted down to them, and flung itself flat with a ridiculous air of exhaustion.

"Tragedy in the House of Lords," she read idly, and drove away.

II

Lady Burdon drove straight home. She arrived to be apprised she was concerned in the "Tragedy in the House of Lords" that the tumbler bill had brought somersaulting down the street. As the carriage drew up, a maid hurried down the steps and gave her the news: "His lordship"--the girl was scared and breathless--"His lordship, my lady--taken ill in the House of Lords--fell out of his seat in a faint--brought him home in Lord Colwyn's carriage--carried him up-stairs, my lady--fainted or--a doctor is with him, my lady."

Lady Burdon wrestled with the confused sentences, staring at the girl, not moving. "Fainted or--"

She threw back the rug from about her lap and sprang from the carriage. A newsboy rushing down the street almost ran into her, and she had to stand aside to give him passage. Her eye caught the pink bill fluttering against him where he held it: "Tragedy in the House of Lords."

God! The tragedy was here. She ran swiftly up the steps and up the stairs. At the door of Lord Burdon's room terror leapt at her like a live thing so that she staggered back a step and could not turn the handle. "Fainted or--?" She caught her hand to her bosom, her poor heart beat so. She had a vision of him dead, being carried up the steps. There flashed with it a vision that showed him tired after lunch and her saying: "If you knew how elegant you look, lounging there! You ought to go to the House. You never go. You can sleep there;" and he saying, "Right-o, old girl."

Sleep there? Had she driven him to die there? Fainted or--?

She entered the room. A man wearing a frock-coat stood by the dressing-table. She stared, and stared beyond him to the bed. She put her hand to her throat and strangled out the word "Maurice!" The man turned to her and began to speak. She ran past him and flung herself beside the bed and took Lord Burdon's hand and pressed it to her face. She burst into a terrible sobbing, raining tears upon the hand she held. From the threshold she had seen the eyes open, the faint twist of a smile of greeting upon the white, pained face.

Alive! That was sufficient! For the moment, in the first agony of her distress, she required nothing more. Between the recovery from her first shock at the news, and the terror that had held her back when she reached his door, remorse, like bellows at the forge, quicked her every memory of him to burning irons within her. Happen what might, she was to be suffered to slake their torture.

She felt the hand she held move in her grasp. It was his signal of response to her sympathy. He said very weakly, in an attempt at the old tone: "Made an--awful ass--of--myself, old--girl." He groaned and breathed: "O God! Pain--pain!"

She would not speak to the doctor. She desired nothing but to be left there holding that hand, feeling it move for her and pressing it against her face that was buried upon it when it moved. She desired to be told nothing, to do nothing. This was between him and her--let them be left to it while yet they could be left! A procession of pictures was marching through her mind. In each she saw herself in a scene of her neglect of him or her impatience with him. She had the feeling that while she might hold that hand and feel it move, each picture would pass--atoned for, forgiven, erased. This was between him and her--let them be left to it while yet they could be left!

Movements, the opening and closing of the door, whispering voices, came to her. Some one touched her. She shook herself at the touch and crouched lower. This was between him and her!--for pity's sake!--if you have pity, let us be left to it while yet we can be left!

The movements continued. They seemed to be closing about her--impatiently waiting for her. They began to force themselves upon her attention so that her mind must leave its pictures and distinguish them. She crouched lower ... if you have pity! She heard stiff rustlings and fancied a nurse was in the room. She heard a heavier step and presently felt a touch that seemed to command obedience.

She raised her head--A nurse, the man she had first seen, another man--older. He pointed at the figure on the bed and motioned with his head towards the door. Maurice seemed to sleep. She rose with a little shuddering gasp and looked at them, twisting her hands together--if they had pity! ... what did they require of her?

The older man was bending over the bed, whispering with the younger. The nurse came to her, smiling gently, and nodded towards him: "Sir Mervyn Aston. He will speak to you outside. Will you not leave us just a moment? Quite all right."

She remembered the name. It was the specialist Maurice had sometimes consulted. She had not bothered much about it: but she remembered the name. Sir Mervyn looked towards her and moved across the room. She looked again at the bed. The nurse nodded brightly. She followed Sir Mervyn to the door.

"Down-stairs," he said, and trod heavily down before her. He was a great man and took the privilege of bad manners. In the library he turned to her: "Did you send for me?" She had not expected that. She had expected sympathy--at least information. She stared at him, momentarily surprised out of her grief. His face was stern; she believed his manner accused her.

"No," she said.

"You expected this?"

Expected it! Of what could he be thinking?

"I've told Lord Burdon repeatedly that this life--I've warned him again and again to get out of it. Hasn't he told you?"

Now she knew that he was accusing her. She never had cared to listen when Maurice told her he had been to Harley Street. She stood twisting her hands together, nervous before this brusque man.

"Hasn't he told you?"

"No."

He looked sharply at her. He was a great man and had learned to read between the lines that his fashionable patients presented him. "A pity," he said briefly. "This might have been averted for many years."

"Tell me"--she said, and could say no more: "tell me--"

His tone became a little kinder. "We must hope for the best, you know. There is always that. I will look in again at midnight. They are making him quite comfortable up-stairs."

He said a little more that she did not catch. Presently she realised that he had left her. "This might have been averted for many years!" She ran to a bureau and fumbled frantically for pen and paper. She was in a sudden panic to do one thing that she believed would soften that dreadful sentence if the worst came. She was in a panic to get it done before there might be a sound from above and a horrid running down the stairs. She found her writing materials. Pen in hand she listened, trembling violently. No sound! As quickly as she could write she scrawled to Mr. Pemberton: "I have decided. We are going to Burdon Old Manor at once. Make arrangements to let the house, please."

Whatever happened now, she had begun her share of the bargain she prayed to press on death. If death would spare him, she would devote her life to him!

As she was sealing the letter Rollo came in. He had been to a matinee with Mrs. Espart and Dora, at home for her holidays. Lady Burdon gave a little motherly cry at the sight of him and took him in her arms.

They went up-stairs together.

The doctor had gone. The nurse told her Lord Burdon was asleep; but when she went to her former position on her knees beside the bed and took his hand again, he opened his eyes and his eyes smiled at her; and then closed; he seemed desperately weary.

She did not cry now. There was this bargain to be forced on death; and, as with the letter, so now with her promises, she was in a panic to get them done, believing that if death--God, as she named it--might know all she offered to pay, he must accept the price and hold his hand.

She was not the first that has believed death--or heaven--is open to a deal.

Through the long evening she knelt there, Rollo with her. Thus and thus she promised--thus and thus would she do--thus and thus--thus and thus! Mostly she bargained, frantically reiterating. At intervals she would turn to protest--protesting that her sin was very light for so heavy a threat. What had she done? She had done no wrong. She had no flagrant faults--she was serenely good, as goodness is judged. She was devout--she was charitable. Only one little failing, heaven! She had desired to enjoy herself, and enjoying herself had neglected him. But he did not care for the things she liked. Indeed he did not! He was happiest when she was happy. Indeed he was! Yet she saw the error of her way. If he might be spared, heaven--thus and thus--thus and thus--thus and thus!

Physical weariness overcame her as she heaped her promises, leading her mind astray and tricking it into nightmare dreams whence she would struggle with trembling limbs. The dreams took gross or strange forms. She would be running down the street pursued by the tumbler contents-bill, somersaulting behind. It caught her and fell flat, flinging out its armlike corners, and she saw it was Maurice. She stooped to him, and it was the bill again, gone from her on the wind. She pursued it, and saw it take semblance of Maurice, and pursued it with stumbling feet and could not catch it.

She struggled from these horrors and found her mind again. She was intensely cold, she found. Sir Mervyn had come and was bending over her husband. Sir Mervyn nodded to her and sat down by the bed. She dared ask no questions. She crouched lower where she knelt. The night went on--Sir Mervyn still there. She prayed on--thus and thus! thus and thus! She was tricked into the nightmare dreams. She was with Rollo's friend, Percival, and running to Rollo, who seemed in distress. A woman stopped them. She recognised in her the girl who had come with that claim to be Lady Burdon years before. The girl caught Percival and held him and Percival held her. She struggled to be free, for Rollo was calling her wildly. His cries grew louder, louder, louder, and burst as a real cry suddenly upon her.

"Mother! Mother!"

She started up. Rollo was on his feet, bending towards his father.

"Lift! Lift!" Lord Burdon murmured.

Sir Mervyn raised him. She clutched his hand. He rallied upon the strength of life's last pulse and flutter, and smiled, and murmured, "Poor old girl!"

Then she saw death come; and she turned and threw her arms about her son.