The carriage rolled off, leaving him bare-headed on the drive in front of the house.
"That's a good boy," said Lady Anne, emphatically. "He has his father's heart. He's getting the ways of the master about him, too. I can tell by Jennings' back that he's had a good tea. He'll be a good son, but the time will come when he'll choose for himself. Well, Mary, I hope you've enjoyed yourself. Matilda won't want to see me for a month of Sundays again. Nor I her, for the matter of that. Dear me, she can make herself unpleasant."
Mary sat in a conscience-stricken silence during that homeward drive. Yet Lady Anne was not angry with her—that was very obvious. She seemed to be enjoying herself, too, judging by the smile that played about her lips. Now and again she cast a humorous glance on Mary. Once she chuckled aloud.
"Never mind me, my dear," she said, in answer to Mary's glance. "I was only thinking of something Denis Drummond, Gerald Drummond's elder brother, said of her Ladyship. Ah, poor Denis! He'd face a charge of the guns more readily than he would her Ladyship. Odd, isn't it, Mary, how those thoroughly disagreeable women can make themselves feared?"
Sir Denis Drummond had been his brother Gerald's senior by some seven or eight years. He, too, was a soldier, and had inherited the baronetcy from his father, upon whom the title had been bestowed by a grateful country for services in the field. A second baronetcy in the family had been specially created for Sir Gerald. It would not have been easy to say which was the finer soldier of the two brothers; for while Sir Gerald had made his name famous by the most dare-devil and brilliant feats, Sir Denis was rather the old type of soldier—cool as well as daring, always reliable and steady. Worshipped by his men, his name was one to be held in constant regard by the British public, which calls its heroes by their Christian names abbreviated, if they do not happen, indeed, to have a nickname for them.
"Old Blood and Thunder" was the name by which Sir Denis was known to his men, and that from a certain violence of speech of which he had never been able, or perhaps had never desired, to divest himself. This violence had somewhat annoyed his brother Gerald, who could get as much exhortation out of a verse of Scripture as ever he needed. Sir Denis, like many old soldiers, was quite a devout man in his way; but he had none of the zealot passion of his younger brother. The hidden fires which had given Sir Gerald a certain haggardness of aspect, as though a sculptor had hewed him roughly in marble, had never burned in Sir Denis's breast. He was a red-faced, white-moustached veteran, as blustering as the west wind, but with a heart as soft as wax in the hands of his daughter Nelly, and, indeed, in the hands of anyone else who knew the way to it.
His servants adored him, as did the dogs and all animals and children. He was beautiful in his manner to women of high and low degree, with perhaps one exception. He was as simple as a child, and loved the popular applause which fell to him whenever he made any kind of public appearance, for he had been so long a Londoner that now the London crowd knew him and had a sense of possession in him. His rosy face would beam all over when the crowd shouted itself hoarse for "Old Blood and Thunder." He did not at all object to the name, which had filtered from regimental into common use. The crowd was always "Boys!" to him. He had a most amiable feeling towards it, were it ever so frowsy and undersized and sallow. But he loved a soldier-man, and could hardly bear to pass one in the street without stopping to speak to him.
One delightful thing about Sir Denis was the esteem in which he held his own calling of arms. It might be questioned whether he held the Church even in higher honour. He was no subscriber to the belief that the army must necessarily be a refuge of rapscallions. "Straighten your shoulders, sir; hold your head high; for, remember that you are now a soldier!" he would say to the newest recruit who had just scraped through with a margin of chest. His thunderous wrath and sorrow when one of his "boys" was guilty of conduct unbecoming a soldier were something which, in time, impressed even the least impressionable. His old regiment, which he delighted to talk about, he had left a model regiment.
"There's a deal of good in the soldier-man," he would say to his daughter Nelly. "The poor fellows, they're good boys, they're very good boys."
Sir Denis had married, as he was approaching middle age, a very beautiful young girl, who had fallen in love at first with the soldier, and afterwards with the man.
His Nell had left him in his daughter Nelly a replica of herself. During the years of service that remained to him the child was always as near to him as might be. Fortunately, by this time the period of his foreign service was all but at an end. Wherever he had his command the child and her nurse were always within riding distance. He did not believe in barracks and towns for the rearing of anything so fresh and tender. His Nelly must have the fields and the woods and the waters. In later years her milkmaid freshness owed, perhaps, something to this upbringing.
Later, she went to school. Sir Gerald's widow, to whom Sir Denis always referred as the Dowager, who had taken an unasked-for interest in the motherless child from her birth, had found the ideal school for Nelly—a school where the daughters of the aristocracy were kept in a conventual seclusion while they learnt as little as might be of the simpler virtues, but a deal of the way to step in and out of a carriage, to comport themselves with dignity, to bear themselves in the presence of their sovereign, and so on.
Sir Denis, who had not been consulted, made a pretence of interviewing the Misses de Crespigny, by whom this aristocratic preserve was safeguarded.
He had listened to Miss Selina de Crespigny's eloquent exposition of the system adopted at De Crespigny House. Then he had torn it all to pieces as one might the delicate fabric of a spider's web, constructed at infinite cost.
"And, tell me now, do you teach them to be good daughters and wives and mothers?" he asked, with his air of convincing simplicity. "Do you teach them their duties to their husbands and children, ma'am, may I ask?"
Miss de Crespigny positively gasped. There was an indelicacy about the General's speech, to her manner of thinking.
"We expect our young ladies' mothers to teach them all that," she said, stiffly.
"And they don't. In nine cases out of ten they don't. They've too much to do otherwise. Whether it is philanthropy or politics, or just amusing themselves, they've all got too much to do," Sir Denis said, with a simple air that made it doubtful if this criticism of Society's ways was adverse or not.
Nelly did not go to De Crespigny House. She went, instead, to a much less pretentious school, kept by a family of four sisters, for whom the dry bones of teaching had been clothed with life. The house was perched on a high, windy cliff. The sisters, Miss Stella and Miss Clara, Miss Lucy and Miss Marianne, did their own teaching, and did it in a perfectly unconventional way to the twenty or so girls who made up their school.
When Nelly came home to her father at seventeen years of age, it would not have been easy to find a fresher, franker specimen of young girlhood. In fact, to her father's eyes she was somewhat alarmingly bright and fair.
"The young fellows will be about her thick as bees," he said to himself in a frightened way. "I won't have any nonsense about Nelly. I want my girl to myself for a little while. Afterwards there is that arrangement of the Dowager's about Nelly and Robin. I don't care for the marriage of first cousins. And I'm not sure that I care for Robin; still, he is poor Gerald's son. There can be nothing against poor Gerald's son."
He was so afraid of possible lovers for Nelly that he actually suggested to her that she should go to a smart finishing school for the couple of years that separated him from the sixty-five limit.
"After that," he said, faintheartedly, for there was a sparkle in Nelly's eye which discouraged him, "we shall settle down in London, and you shall see all you want to see. There are quiet nooks and corners to be had, even in London. I think I know the one I shall choose. Be a good girl, Nelly, and go to Madame Celeste's. A garrison town is no place for you. Unless, indeed, you would like to go to the Dowager, as she wishes."
"I shan't go to the Dowager, and I shan't go to Madame Celeste's," said Nelly, dimpling and sparkling. "I shall stay with my old Dad and take care of him."
"What, Nell? 'Shan't'! You forget you're talking to your commanding officer. Rank insubordination—that is what I call it!"
"Call it what you like," Miss Nelly replied. "I'm going to stay. A finishing school at seventeen! I never heard the like!"
With that she put her arms round the General's neck, and that was the final argument. Secretly, indeed, he was not altogether sorry to be worsted. He had done his best to ward off the things that might happen. Now he was going to trust in Providence and keep his little girl with him. To be sure, he had known that she would never go to the Dowager's. Nelly had never considered that possibility. After all, it was a relief that they were not going to be parted.
During the two years Nelly, indeed, had many admirers and lovers, but she was not attracted by any of them. She was kind and friendly and engaging; but she was unconscious with her lovers, or so it seemed to the jealous, fatherly eyes, to the verge of coldness.
He often said to himself that he could not understand Nell. None of the gay, handsome, gallant soldier lads seemed to have the least attraction in that way for her. To be sure, she was a child, and there was plenty of time. Why shouldn't her old father keep her for the years to come? Unless—unless, that fellow Robin had been beforehand with the others—Robin, who had refused point-blank to be a soldier, and had even, to the General's bitter offence, actually spoken at the Oxford Union "On the Waste and Wickedness of a Standing Army." The General had nearly had a fit over that. Good Heavens! Gerald's son, Sir Massey Drummond's grandson, to be found on the side of the Philistines like that! What chill was in the boy's blood? What crook in his character? What bee in his bonnet?
The General had sworn then that Robin never should have his Nelly. But the Dowager had been sapping and mining and laying plans to bring about the marriage almost from Nelly's infancy, when she had come in and altered the constituents of Nelly's baby bottles, and had infuriated Nelly's wholesome country nurse to the point of departure. The General had come just in time then to find Mrs. Loveday fastening the cherry-coloured strings of her bonnet with fingers that trembled, and had been put to the very edge of his simple diplomacy to undo the Dowager's work. He knew his own helplessness where women were concerned. Nelly might see something in Robin, confound him, that the General could not.
At this point he would remember that, after all, Robin was poor Gerald's son, if an unworthy one, and be contrite. But then the grievance would revive of a far-back Quaker ancestor of Lady Drummond, whom the General blamed for the peace-loving instincts of poor Gerald's boy; and once again he would be furious.
Meanwhile, Nelly's frank, innocent eyes, blue as gentians, had no consciousness of a lover. Her old father seemed to be enough for her. At one moment they gave him the fullest assurance; the next he was in heats and colds of apprehension about the lover, be it Robin or another, who would take his little girl from him.
The half-dozen years or so following Sir Denis's retirement were years of peace, in which he forgot for long periods, broken only by the Dowager's visits to London, his fear of losing his Nelly.
He had taken a house in Sherwood Square, where there is a space and breeziness that the fashionable districts could not possibly allow.
The square sits on top of one of the highest hills in London, and entrenches itself as a fortress against the poverty and squalor that are creeping up the hill towards it. Around the square there are still gardens and crescents and roads of consideration, but ever dwindling in social status as one goes down the hill, till the consideration vanishes in the degradation of cheap boarding-houses and the homes of Jews of the shopkeeping classes.
Sir Denis had discovered Sherwood Square for himself, and was uncommonly proud of it. He liked to point out to his friends that he rented a palatial mansion for what apied-à-terrein Mayfair would have cost him. The houses had been built by wealthy merchants and professional people in the eighteenth century. They had splendours of double doors and marble pavements, of frescoed walls and ceilings, and carved mantelpieces. They were entered from a quiet street which showed hardly a sign of life. There were lions couchant guarding the entrances. The walls on that side showed mostly blank, uninteresting windows. With an odd pride the great houses showed only their duller aspects to the world.
All the living-rooms except one looked on the other side; and what a difference! There was a great stretch of emerald-green turf such as one would never look to see in London; to be sure, gardeners had been watering and mowing and rolling it for over a century. In the turf were many flower-beds, and here and there were forest trees which had been there when the district was fields. Country birds came and built there year after year. You might hear the thrush begin about January. And in the spring it was a wilderness of sweet hyacinths and daffodils, lilac and may. The rooms were spacious and splendid within the big cream-coloured house; and the General used to say that in the early morning, when the smoke had cleared away, it was possible from the upper windows to see as far as the Surrey hills. However, that was something which nobody but himself had tested.
In the house love and friendliness and good-will reigned supreme. The General had insisted on engaging his own servants, much to the disgust of the Dowager, who had severalprotégésof her own practically engaged. When the General had outwitted Lady Drummond on this occasion by a flank movement, he was very gleeful in his confidential moments alone with Nelly.
"She wanted to put in her spies and satellites, did she, Nelly, my girl? Pretty stories of us they'd have carried to her Ladyship. The only womanly thing your aunt has, my girl, is an invincible curiosity. She'd like to know what we had for lunch and dinner, who came to see us, and what clothes we wore. I'm glad you wouldn't have that mantua-maker of hers. Cannot my girl have her frocks made where she likes? I'll tell you what, Nelly: your aunt is a presumptuous, meddling, overbearing, impertinent woman—that she is."
"Why don't you tell her to leave us alone, papa?"
But the General, whose courage had never been doubted during all the years of his strenuous life, had very little bravery when it came to a question of telling hard truths to a woman, and that woman the Dowager.
"We must remember, after all, Nelly," he would say then, "that she is your Uncle Gerald's widow. Poor Gerald! what a dear fellow he was! No matter what we say between ourselves, we can't quarrel with Gerald's widow."
And Sir Denis, who was becoming garrulous in old age, would slip off into some reminiscence of the younger brother to whom he had been tenderly attached, and for whom he had also a certain hero-worship because he had been so fine and heroic a soldier.
Certainly it said well for the servants whom Sir Denis and Nelly had chosen for themselves that they fell in so completely with the kindness and honesty and good-will of the house. Some credit was doubtless due also to Sir Denis's soldier servant, whom he had installed as butler; for Pat's loyalty and devotion to "Old Blood and Thunder" must have influenced the class of persons who are so susceptible of impressions from those of their own station, while the standards and exhortations of their social superiors are as though they were not. Pat was lynx-eyed for a malingerer in his Honour's service; and, indeed, where the rule was so easy and pleasant there was no excuse for malingering. Pat, too, was ably seconded by Bridget, the cook, who had come in originally as kitchen-maid, and had in time taken the place of the very important and pretentious functionary with whom they had started, and whose cookery did not at all suit Sir Denis's digestion, impaired somewhat by long years in India. The young kitchen-maid had taken the cook's place during the latter's holiday, and had sent up for Sir Denis's dinner a little clear soup, a bit of turbot with a sauce which was in itself genius, a bird roasted to the nicest golden brown, and a pudding which was only ground rice, but had an insubstantial delicacy about it quite unlike what one associates with the homely cereal.
"You've saved my life, my girl," said Sir Denis, meeting Bridget on the stairs the morning after this banquet, and presenting her with a golden sovereign, "and if you like to stay on as cook at forty pounds a year, why so you shall."
"You could shave yourself in her sauce-pans, your Honour," said Pat, when he heard of this amazing promotion. It was Pat's way of saying that Bridget polished her utensils till they reflected like a mirror. "She's a rale good little girsha, that's what she is, the same Bridget; and I'm rale glad, your Honour, that ould consiquince isn't comin' back again."
After that there were few changes. The servants were in clover, and since Pat and Bridget knew it, and impressed it on their subordinates, it came to be a generally recognised fact. To be sure, it made it pleasanter for everyone in the house when, thanks to Bridget's excellent plain cooking. Sir Denis forgot he had such a thing as a liver, and had no more of the gouty attacks which made his temper east-windy instead of west-windy. During those peaceful years he forgot to be choleric. He was overflowing with kindness and helpfulness to those about him, and took a paternal interest in the affairs of his household.
"Sure," Pat would say to Bridget, "'tis for marrying us he'd be, if he knew how it was with us, same as he married off Rose to the postman and gave them a cottage; and that new girl isn't up to Rose's work yet, nor ever will be, unless I'm mistaken."
"'Twould be a sin to take advantage of him," Bridget would answer. "And we're both young enough to wait a bit, Pat. There'll be new ways when Miss Nelly marries Sir Robin. Maybe 'tis going to live with them he'd be."
"He never will, so long as her Ladyship's alive," said Pat, emphatically.
"Then maybe we'd be havin' him for a furnished lodger," said Bridget. "I'd rather it 'ud be something in the country. Why wouldn't you be his coachman as well, Pat? Sure, anything you don't know about horses isn't worth the knowin'."
"True for you. We might have a little lodge," said Pat.
They were really the quietest and most peaceful years—unless the Dowager happened to be in town. Then something went dreadfully wrong with the General's temper, and he would come roaring downstairs and along the corridors like a winter storm. The servants' hall used to take a tender interest in those bad days.
"Somebody ought to spake to her," said Bridget. "Supposin' the gout was to go to his heart! He was bad enough after the last time she was here."
"She'll never lave hoult of him," said Pat, solemnly. "The sort of her Ladyship houlds on the tighter the more you wriggle. He's preparing a quare bed of repentance for himself, so he is, the langwidge he's usin' about her all over the house. By-and-by he'll be rememberin' she's Sir Gerald's widdy, and'll be askin' me ashamed-like, 'I hope I didn't say too much about her Ladyship in my timper, Pat. She's a tryin' woman, a very tryin' woman. I'm afraid I'm apt to forget now an' agin that she's my dear brother's widdy, so I am.'"
Pat's imitation of Sir Denis was really admirable.
"'Tis a pity he doesn't run her out of the house," said Bridget, "instead of lettin' her bother the heart out of him like that."
"He couldn't say a rough word to a woman, not if it was to save his life," said Pat. "Nothin' rougher thin 'No, ma'am,' and 'Yes, ma'am,' I ever heard him say to her. Whirroo, Bridget, you should ha' heard him whin his timper was up givin' it to us long ago in the barrack square. I hope it isn't the suppressed gout she'll be giving him the next time! 'Tisn't half as bad whin it's out."
However, the storms were few and far between. The household lived by rule. Every morning, winter and summer, the horses were at the door by eight o'clock for the morning canter of the General and Miss Nelly in the park. At nine o'clock the household assembled for prayers. After breakfast Sir Denis walked to his club in Pall Mall, wet or dry. He would read the papers and discuss the cheeseparing policy of the Government with some of his old chums, lunch at the club, play a game of dominoes or draughts, and return home in time for dinner. Frequently they entertained a friend or two quietly at dinner. But, company or no company, there were prayers at ten o'clock, after which the General took his candle and went to his bedroom.
There were times, of course, when Nelly went out to balls and entertainments, and then Sir Denis was to be seen on duty, even though there were a good many ladies who would be willing to take the chaperonage of his daughter off his hands. But that was an office he would relinquish to no one. He was the most patient of chaperons, too, and never grumbled if the daylight found him still at the whist-table, although he would rise at the same hour as usual and carry out his appointed round for the day as if he had not lost his sleep over-night. Of course, Nelly might stay a-bed. He wouldn't have Nelly's roses spoilt, and the young needed their proper amount of sleep. As for himself, he couldn't sleep a wink after seven, no matter how late he had been up the night before.
But, on the whole, they lived a quiet life. Nelly was too unselfish, too fond of her father, to cost him many nights without his usual sleep. She had really the quietest tastes. Her few friends, her books, her music, her dogs and birds, sufficed for her happiness. They had a houseful of dogs, by the way, and any description of the way of life in Sherwood Square which made no mention of dogs would be quite insufficient. Duke the Irish terrier and Bonaparte the pug, usually Boney, and Nelson the bull terrier, were as important and characteristic members of the household as anyone else, except, perhaps, Sir Denis and Miss Nelly. Nelly used to explain her stay-at-home ways to her friends by saying that the dogs were offended with her if she went out for a walk without them. The dogs had many tricks. They knew the terms of drill as well as any soldier, and were always ready for parade, or to die for their country, or groan for their country's enemies, at the General's word of command. Nelly had to be much out-of-doors, as the dogs were clamorous for walks, and she kept her roses in London with the old milkmaid sweetness.
There was one happening of the quiet day that stood out for Sir Denis, and, although he did not know it, for his daughter also.
Sir Denis's old regiment happened to be stationed at a barracks in the immediate neighbourhood. To reach their parade-ground it was possible for the troops, by making a little detour, to pass along the quiet street on which the houses in Sherwood Square opened. It became an established thing that they should pass every morning about nine o'clock. How that came Sir Denis did not trouble to ask. He was quite satisfied and delighted that "the boys" should do him honour.
The breakfast-room was one of the few rooms that did not overlook the square but the street. Every morning, just as Sir Denis concluded prayers, there would come the steady trot of cavalry and the jingle of accoutrements. If he had not quite finished, he would say "Amen" in a reverent hurry. "Come now, boys and girls," he would say to the servants, "I want you to see my old regiment."
He would step out on the balcony above the hall-door with a beaming face, and his arm around his Nelly's waist. The servants would press behind him, the dogs push to the front with the curiosity of their kind. Down the street the soldiers would come, all flashing in scarlet and gold, the sleek horses shining in the morning sun with a deeper lustre than their polished accoutrements. There would be a halt for a second in front of the house. The men would salute their old General, the General salute his old regiment. Then the cavalcade would sweep on its way and the street be duller than before.
One morning—it was a bright, breezy morning of March—the wind had caught Nelly's golden hair and blown it in a halo about her face. She was wearing a blue ribbon in it. She was fond of blue, and the simplicity of it became her fresh youth. Just as the soldiers halted the wind caught Nelly's blue bow, and, having played with it a little, sent it drifting down like a little blue flower among the men on horseback.
It was such a slight thing that the General might not have noticed it. Anyhow, he made no comment, but watched the troops out of sight as usual. The odd thing was that Nelly passed over her loss in silence, although she must have missed her blue ribbon, since without it her hair had become loose in the wind.
At breakfast, when the servants had left the room, the General made a remark.
"That young Langrishe sits his horse well," he said. "He's a good soldier, Nelly, my girl. A very good soldier, or I'm much mistaken."
But Nelly was apparently too absorbed in her duty of making the tea to answer the remark. For an instant she was redder than a rose. No one would have suspected Sir Denis of slyness, but the look he shot at the girl was certainly sly. Under the white tablecloth he rubbed his hands softly together.
It was worse for the General when Sir Robin Drummond left Oxford and settled in London, with an avowed intention of reading for the Bar, and at the same time making politics his real career.
"A man ought to do something in the world," he said to his irate uncle. "The Bar is always a stepping-stone. I confess I don't look to practice very much; my real bent is for politics. But the law interests me, and it is always a stepping-stone."
"I should have thought that the profession of arms, which your father and your grandfather adorned, as well as a good many of your forbears, might serve you as well," Sir Denis said, hotly.
"You leave out my uncle, sir," the young man replied, with urbane good humour. "Yes, the Drummonds have done very well for the profession of arms. Still, with my beliefs on the subject of war——"
"Pray don't air them, don't air them. You know what I think about them. Your father's son ought to be ashamed of professing such sentiments."
"One must abide by one's sentiments, one's convictions, if one is to be good for anything. Uncle Denis," Sir Robin said, patiently.
"You'll have no chance in politics. No constituency will return you. What we want now is a strong Government that will strengthen us, through our Army and Navy, sir, against our enemies. Such a Government will come in at the next election a-top of the wave. The people, or I am much mistaken, are not going to see the bulwarks of our power tampered with. The country is all for war. Where do you come in?"
Sir Robin smiled ever so slightly. It was that smile of his, with its faintest hint of intellectual superiority, that riled the General to bursting point.
"I don't believe there is a war feeling, Uncle Denis," he said. "The country has had enough of war. However, I should not come in on top of a wave of war feeling in any case. You would be quite right in asking where I should come in. To be sure, I look to come in on top of the anti-war wave. My side is pledged against war. The working man——"
"You don't mean to say that you're going to appeal tohim!" Sir Denis shouted. "You don't mean to say that you're going to side with the Radicals! I've lived to see many strange things, but—Gerald's son a Radical!"
He brought out the ejaculations with the sound of guns popping. His face was red with indignation, his eyes leaping at his degenerate nephew. The next words did not tend to calm him.
"Do you know, Uncle Denis, I believe that if my father had been a politician he would have been a Radical? His profound feeling for Christianity, his adherence to the creed of its Founder, Whose whole life was a glorification of toil——"
"Spare me, spare me!" cried the General, restraining himself with difficulty. "So a man can't be a Christian and a gentleman! And you think your father would have been a Radical! I can tell you, young gentleman——"
At this moment Nelly came into the room, charming in her short-waisted frock of white satin, with a little cap of pearls on her hair. Both men turned and stared at her, pleasure and affection in their eyes.
"So you've been heckling poor Robin as usual," she said, stroking her father's cheek. "Heckling poor Robin and getting your hair on end like a fretful porcupine. I'll never be able to make you into a nice, sweet, quiet old gentleman."
"Turn your attention to him," said the General, indicating his nephew by an unfriendly nod. "What do you think, Nell? He's a Radical. He's going to contest a seat for the Radicals. What do you say now?"
"Pooh!" said Nelly, with her pretty chin in the air. "Pooh! Why shouldn't he? Lots of nice people are Radicals. If he feels that way, of course he ought to do it."
Robin's unpractical eyes thanked her mutely. He was as plain-looking a man as he had been a boy, more hatchet-faced than ever. He was long and lean and angular, and his positions were ungraceful. But his eyes were the eyes of Don Quixote. The eyes had appealed to Nelly as long as she could remember.
"Oh, if you're against me, Nell!" said Sir Denis, lamely. "Ah! there's the bell! And a good thing, too. I couldn't eat my lunch to-day for old Grogan of the Artillery. He's a man with a grievance. It soured my wine and spoilt my food. Well, well, Robin, if you're under Nelly's protection you may do what you like—join the Peace Society, if you like."
"I mean to, sir," Sir Robin said, placidly. "In fact, I'm speaking on 'The Ideal of a Universal Peace' on Monday evening at the Finsbury Democratic Debating Club."
When Sir Robin came to town there had been an apprehension in his uncle's breast, too well-founded, that the Dowager would follow him. She was devoted to her son, and not at all disposed to take the General's views about his recreancy in politics.
"A good many good people are on the Radical side, after all," she said, "and there is, perhaps, more room, too, for a young man of Robin's ambitions in the Radical party."
"So far as I can see," said the General, acidly, "his ambitions are rather to succeed at the bottom than at the top. The applause of the multitude appeals to him more than the praise of his equals or superiors."
Lady Drummond glanced coldly at his heated face.
"I fancy you've an attack of gout coming on, Denis," she said. "I should send for Sir Harley Dix, if I were you."
She had stopped the General just as he was on his own doorstep, setting his face cheerfully eastwards on his way to Pall Mall. He had come back with her. He knew his duty to his brother's widow better than to do anything else. It was Wednesday, and on Wednesday there was always a particular curry at lunch which he much affected. He was a connoisseur in curries, and thechefalways made this with an eye to Sir Denis's approval. He would have to shorten his walk and 'bus part of the way, or the curry would be cold. He hated to be put out in his daily routine.
"I never was freer from gout in my life, Matilda," he said, with indignation. "I don't trouble the doctors much. When I want their advice I shall ask for it. I always ask for advice when I want it."
She looked at him with unconcern.
"Do you think Nelly will soon be back?" she asked.
"I don't know. When she takes the dogs for a walk she is often out for a couple of hours. Perhaps it would be too long a time to wait."
In his mind he could see the curry disappearing before the other men who liked it as much as he did. Grogan would always eat curry—that special curry—to the General's indignation. Why, curry was the last thing Grogan ought to eat! Wasn't he as yellow as the curry itself with chronic liver? Grogan was greedy over that curry—a greedy fellow, the General said to himself, remembering the many occasions when it had been impossible for him to break away from Grogan and his grievances. If her Ladyship was going to sit on endlessly! The General's manners were too good to leave her to sit by herself. And she was untying her bonnet strings! He might as well lunch at home. No, he wouldn't do that, not if her Ladyship was going to stay to lunch. He supposed he could have lunch somewhere, if not at his club.
"Pray, don't put yourself out for me, Denis," her Ladyship was saying, with what passed for graciousness in her. "I know your usual habits. At your age a man doesn't like to be put out of his habits. Don't mind me, pray. I can amuse myself very well till Nelly comes in. Plenty of books and papers, I see. You subscribe to Mudie's. I thought no one subscribed to Mudie's now that we have so many Free Libraries. I have never been able to afford myself a library subscription, even although we lived in the country. Now that I am going to settle in town——"
"Settle in town!" The General's eyes were almost starting from his head. "I'd no idea, Matilda, you were going to settle in town. What's going to become of the Court?"
"I have an idea of letting it for a few years. Mr. Higbid, the very rich hide merchant, has taken a fancy to the place. I have yet to hear what Robin will say. Mr. Higbid is prepared to pay a fancy price——"
"He'd have to before I'd let him into my drawing-room," said the General, with disgust. "Imagine letting the Court! And to a man who sells hides!"
"His money is as good as anybody else's. And he is received everywhere. You are really too old-fashioned, Denis. Your ways need altering."
"I am too old to change, ma'am," said the General, getting up and giving himself a shake like a dog. "If you don't really mind being left——" He wanted to get away to think over the fact that the Dowager was going to settle in town. He could hardly keep himself from groaning. His peace was all at an end. If he had not been too old to change, he would have fled from London and left it to the Dowager. But big as it was, it was too little to contain himself and the Dowager with any prospect of peace.
"I'll stay and have lunch with Nelly," the Dowager went on, quite ignorant of his perturbation. "Afterwards, I'm going to take her to see houses with me.Of course, I shall settle in your immediate neighbourhood, if I can find anything suitable. I'm going to take Nelly off your hands a bit, take her about and advise her as to her frocks. She was wearing white chiffon the last time we dined here—a most perishable material. I don't think your purse is long enough for white chiffon, Denis. Then the young people ought to see more of each other. We ought to be talking about trousseaux——"
But at this point the General fled. If he had stayed another second he would have said things that his kind and chivalrous heart would have grieved over later. He fled, and left her Ladyship staring after him in amazement.
He clean forgot about the curry in the fretting and fuming of his mind, or it occurred to him only to be consigned to Grogan, as though Grogan were a synonym for something much stronger. His fiery indignation between Sherwood Square and Pall Mall was quite amazing. The Dowager in the next street! Why, he might as well order his coffin. And talking about taking Nelly from him. That muff, Robin, too! When had the fellow shown any impatience? He didn't want the girl to marry an oyster. He remembered the glory and glamour of his own love affair, of that golden year of marriage. His Nelly ought to be loved as her mother had been before her, as her mother's daughter deserved to be. He wasn't going to yield her to a fellow who would only give her half his tepid heart, who would leave her to spend her evenings alone while he spouted in Radical clubs or in that big talking shop, the House of Commons. He wouldn't have it. And still——Robin was poor Gerald's son, and there was nothing against him but his politics. Somewhere, at the back of his mind, the General recognised the fact that he could have forgiven the politics if it had not been for the Dowager.
He had almost reached the doors of his club—Grogan might eat the curry for him, and be hanged to him!—when he saw advancing towards him the spare, elegant figure that sat its horse in front of the regiment below the General's window every morning. The oddest gleam came into his eyes. The young man had recognised him, and was blushing like a girl as he came towards him. He had velvety brown eyes and regular features, was a handsome lad, the General said to himself as young Langrishe lifted his hat from his sleek, well-shaped head. He had the barest acquaintance with Sir Denis, and he would have passed by if the old soldier had not stopped him.
"How do you do, Captain Langrishe?" he said. "I am very much obliged to you for the pleasure you give me every morning. I take it as uncommonly kind of you to bring 'the boys' past my house. I assure you I quite look forward to it—I quite look forward to it."
Langrishe stammered something about the regiment delighting to do honour to its old General, growing redder and redder as he did so. His confusion became him in the General's eyes. He was certainly a pleasant-looking, well-mannered boy, the General decided, and the confusion of the young soldier in the presence of the old soldier an entirely natural and creditable thing.
"I'll tell you what, my lad," said Sir Denis, putting his arm within the other's: "if you've nothing better to do, supposing you come and lunch with me. I'm just going in to the club. And you—on your way to it? I thought so. You'll give me the pleasure of your company?"
The General was half an hour late, yet he found a small table in a window recess unappropriated. It was set for two, and a screen was drawn about it so that the two could be as retired as they wished. More—the General had not been forgotten in the distribution of the curry. Their portions came up piping hot. From where they sat the General could see Sir Rodney Vivash and Grogan button-holing each other. They were the bores of the club, and for once they had foregathered, willingly or unwillingly.
After all, there were compensations—there were compensations; and the General was hungry. His manner towards young Langrishe had an air of fatherly kindness. There was a gratified flush on the young fellow's lean, dark cheek. What was it the General had heard about Langrishe? Oh, yes, that he had had rough luck—that his old uncle. Sir Peter—the General remembered him for a curmudgeon—had married and had a son, after rearing the young fellow as his heir. No wonder the lad looked careworn. The regiment was an expensive one; not too expensive for Sir Peter Langrishe's heir, but much too expensive for a poor man.
However, it was no business of the General's—not just yet.
"You have met my daughter, I think?" he said. They were at the cheese by this time, and the General was apparently divided between the merits of Gruyère and Stilton. He did not glance at Captain Langrishe, but he knew quite as well as if he had that the colour came again to his cheek, that the brown eyes looked unhappily conscious.
"I have met Miss Drummond several times," he answered.
"Ah, you must dine with us one evening."
Young Langrishe looked at him in a startled way.
"Thank you very much, sir," he said, "but, as a matter of fact, I am negotiating a change into an Indian regiment. I don't know how long I shall be here. And I shall be very busy, I'm afraid."
"Ah! Just as you like—just as you like." The General, by the easiest of transitions, passed on to the subject of soldiering in India. He had an unwontedly exhilarated feeling which later had its reaction in a consciousness of guilt.
"What would poor Gerald have said?" he thought, as he walked homewards that evening. "And I've nothing against Robin—I've nothing really against Robin, except his Peace Societies and all the rest of it. And the Dowager—yes, there's always the Dowager. I should like to know what on earth ever induced poor Gerald to marry the Dowager."
After that keen disappointment about the baby's forgetting her, although she excused it to herself, arguing that at twenty months one cannot be expected to have a long memory, Mary was more reconciled to the changed conditions of her life.
"I hope we are going to be together for a good many years," Lady Anne said, "and presently you must be able to play and sing to me, to read to me and take an interest in the things in which I am interested. You are to go to school, Mary."
So Mary went to school, first to the Queen's Preparatory School, then to the Queen's College. Her years there were very happy ones, especially those years at the College, after she had found her feet and made friends, and gained confidence in herself and the world.
"She sucks up knowledge as a sponge sucks up water," was the report of the Principal, Miss Merton, to the delighted Lady Anne. "I hope Lady Anne, that you will permit her to go in for her B.A. I should not be surprised, indeed, if she captured a fellowship."
"No fellowships," Lady Anne said, firmly. "What would she do with a fellowship? I propose, as soon as she has done with you, to take her abroad. I have a mind to see the world again through young eyes. And it will put the coping-stone on her education. I shouldn't dare leave her too long with you. Learning so often destroys a woman's imagination. They work too hard, I suppose. It doesn't seem to come natural to them yet as it does to men."
"There's no question of Mary's working too hard," the Lady Principal said, bearing these hard sayings of Lady Anne's with composure. "She has fine brains. Whatever she wants in an intellectual way she can come at easily."
Mary, indeed, took her B.A. without over-much burning of the midnight oil. Afterwards she always spoke with the tenderest affection of her old school-days. She recalled with delight the spacious class-rooms, the old garden with its great woodland trees, and the tiny rooms of the girls who were in residence at the College, with their quaint and pretty adornments—the place of so much youngcamaraderieand soaring ambition and happy emulation. "I can hardly remember that anyone was ever unkind," she used to say long afterwards.
As a matter of fact, the band of elder students with whom Mary was connected in her latter days at the College had a generous enthusiasm for her beauty, taking it as in a sense a credit to themselves.
"You will be a living answer to them," said Jessie Baynes, who was small and plain-looking, "when they say that learned women are always ugly."
And the whole of the class applauded her speech.
"I shall love to see you in your cap and gown," Jessie went on, firing at the picture in her own imagination. "Very few of the men will be taller than you, Mary. How they will shout!"
Jessie had no thought at all of her own lack of height and grace, as she had no idea of how pleasant her little brown face was despite its plainness. She was going to earn her living by teaching, and, what was more, going to make living easier and pleasanter for her mother and her young sister. To get her mother out of stuffy town lodgings to a seaside cottage, which was an unattainable heaven to the mother's thoughts, to educate Edie and give her a chance in life—these were the things that filled Jessie's mind to the exclusion of fear whenever she thought of her ordeal at the conferring of the University degrees. To be sure, she trembled a little when she thought of the long, brilliantly lighted Hall, and all the fine ladies, and the scarlet robes of the Senators, and the young barbarians in the gallery, and all the thousands of eyes fixed on the one little dumpling of a woman going up to receive her degree. If she might only win the fellowship! She would not care what ordeal she passed through for that. So she put away the fear from her mind. If she could only win the fellowship! But she was too humble about her own attainments to have more than a little, little hope of that.
How generous they all were, Mary thought, with an impulse of gratitude towards those dear class-fellows that brought the tears to her eyes.
"When we are photographed in our caps and gowns," said another, "you must stand up in the middle of us, Mary, so that they will see how tall you are."
Mary reported their generosity to Lady Anne, with whom, by this time, she was on the loving terms that cast out fear.
"Very creditable to them," the old lady said, twinkling. "Don't let it make you vain, Mary. You're well enough, but you aren't half as pretty as a rose, or half as tall as a tree, and there are thousands of trees and roses in the world."
"I don't think myself pretty," Mary said, in a hurt voice. "There are several of the girls far prettier. As for being tall, it is no pleasure. I would much rather be little."
"Your skirts will always cost you more than other girls'."
"It is only because they are so kind and generous that they think well of me," Mary went on. "And, oh! I do hope that Jessie will win the fellowship. Everyone does, even——"
"Even her opponents," the old lady said, drily. It was always Lady Anne's way to seem cynical over things, even with those she loved best.
"She has worked so hard for it," said Mary, "and Alice Egerton, who is in the running, too, has shaken hands with Jessie, and told her that if she wins it will only prove she is the better man."
"Dear me, we are cultivating the manly virtues, too," said Lady Anne. "Let me see: there are twenty young ladies in your class, and not a spiteful one among them. I have never heard of so low a percentage."
"If women were given something to think of besides petty interests," Mary began hotly. "If they were educated, if they were given ideals——"
"You are only on your trial yet, child," Lady Anne suggested. "We produced very good women before Women's Colleges were heard of. I'm glad they've not spoilt you, anyhow. No stooped shoulders, no narrow chest, no dimmed eyes. I couldn't have forgiven them if they had made you pay a price for your learning."
When Mary received her B.A. degree she was applauded more rapturously from the gallery than even the new Fellow, Miss Jessica Baynes, B.A., who knew little enough about her own reception, since, as she left the daïs, she had glanced up and made out her mother's little nutcracker face, so like her own, in one of the circles of faces overhead.
There was a little group in the balcony watching Mary with fond pride. Lady Anne Hamilton's face shone again as the tall, slender young figure went up amid the furious applause of the undergraduates, through which the general clapping of hands could hardly be heard. Behind Lady Anne were Mary's father and stepmother. Lady Anne had taken care that they should not be forgotten in the distribution of tickets. Walter Gray looked on quietly. He was very proud of his girl; but he had, perhaps, too great a wisdom to set much store by the plaudits of the many. Mrs. Gray, in a bonnet Mary had made for her and a mantle which had been Mary's gift, was in a timid rapture. She was older by some years than she had been when Mary went to Lady Anne first, but she was far more comely. Her family seemed to have reached its limits, for one thing, and she was no more the helpless drudge she had been. Several of the children were at school, and that wonderfully elastic salary of Mary's had done miraculous things in the way of bringing comfort and even refinement to Walter Gray's home.
"Well," said Lady Anne, turning round, and touching Walter Gray's arm, "I have not made too bad a fairy godmother, have I, now?"
"She would never have grown so tall," Walter Gray said, with absent eyes. He had yielded up Mary for her good, but he had never ceased to miss her.
One person who sat among the most distinguished group in the Hall looked at Mary with a lively interest.
"What a charming girl!" she said to her host, a very great person.
"I believe she has been adopted as a sort of companion by old Lady Anne Hamilton, who is a cousin of my wife's," he responded. "The girl has been educated at her expense. Yes, it's a pretty thing. I only hope it won't become a blue-stocking."
"I must positively know her," said the lady. "She interests me."
"You make me jealous," returned the great person, with playful gallantry.
Lady Agatha had been a peeress in her own right since she had attained the tender age of two years. Her father and mother had died too early for her to miss them, and she had shown from her childhood a capacity to think for herself, which nurses and governesses and all such persons looked on as absolutely shocking. She had had a guardian, a soft, woolly, comfortable gentleman whose will she had brushed aside and replaced by her own from the time she was eight years old. Legally, she was not of age till twenty-one; in reality, she was of age at fifteen or thereabouts. She consulted Colonel St. John, her guardian, about her affairs, as an act of grace, because she was so fond of him and wouldn't hurt his feelings for anything; but she made no secret of the fact that at twenty-one she was going to be absolutely her own mistress.
"You are your own mistress now," Colonel St. John said once, a little ruefully. "You never do what I wish—you make me do whatyouwish. Don't go too fast, Agatha, my dear. At twenty-one one is not wiser than old people, though one may feel so."
But he knew that he was talking to empty air. She was so eager to lay hold on life. And she was equipped for it—there was no doubt of that. Mr. Grainger, of Grainger, Ellison and Wells, who had had charge of the business of the estate from time immemorial, whose trade it was to be cautious, was cheerful over the Colonel's misgivings.
"You wouldn't feel anxious if she was a lad," he said. "I'd set her against nine hundred and ninety lads out of a thousand for sound common-sense. She won't do anything foolish. Take my word for it, she won't do anything foolish."
She did not do anything foolish. She took her own way about some things against Colonel St. John, and even against Mr. Grainger, but she turned out to be right in the end. She had a good many people dependent in one way or another upon her for their well-being, and she insisted on coming face to face with these—on dealing with them without an intermediary. And she made no mistakes. She could see through shifty dishonesty as well as if she had had three times her years and a wide knowledge of the seamy side of human nature. She had always been an outdoor girl, and now she displayed a knowledgeable interest in her own Home Farm and in the affairs of her tenants.
She used to say that the days were not long enough for all she had to do. Certainly, she contrived to cram into them three times as much pleasure, business, and philanthropy as her neighbours.
She had an idea of the obligations of her position as lady of the soil which made poor Colonel St. John gasp when she talked about it. There was so much to be done for the people—churches to be built, or chapels, if they preferred them, and school-houses, industries to be fostered—so much encouragement to be given to honest endeavour. Her idea was that the land should afford all the people wished for. She was going to stop the terrible drifting of the people into the towns. Their lives were to be made gayer. There should be entertainments. The farmers' wives and daughters were to make butter and cheese like their forbears, to grow fruit and vegetables, to rear poultry and sell eggs; but they were not, therefore, to lead a life of narrow toil. They were to be rewarded for their skill and industry. The fruit of their labours was to make life sweeter and pleasanter for them. There were to be libraries and reading-rooms, debating clubs, social gatherings.
"Stuff and nonsense!" Colonel St. John said, with his cotton-wool eyebrows puffed out. "She'll dip the estate, and then she'll be coming to ask us to pull her out. Worse, she'll only make them discontented."
"She'll come out all right," Mr. Grainger said, rubbing his hands softly together. "If she blunders, she'll learn wisdom from the experiment. You'll see she'll come out all right, Colonel. The only thing that troubles me is that she may have no time to get married. We don't want her to be a spinster, hey? I confess I should like to see the succession assured."
It was this notable young lady who came in not so long after to Queen's College, where a distinguished woman of letters was giving a series of lectures on "The Poetry of the Sixteenth Century." Her entrance created somewhat of a flutter. She was as tall as Mary Gray, but much more opulently built. She had short, curling, dark hair, irregular features, and violet eyes—not a bit handsome, but big and bonny and lovesome. Her dress fluttered even these students. It was of purple velvet, with a great stole of sables, and her sable muff had a big bunch of real violets, which brought an odour of the quickening and burgeoning earth.
She sat by the Lady Principal, and afterwards had tea with the students. She asked especially for an introduction to Mary Gray, and then she insisted on driving her as far as the Mall in her motor-car, which she drove herself, while the chauffeur sat with folded arms behind. On the way she talked poetry and politics with the same fervour she brought to all her pursuits.
"It has been borne in on me," she said vehemently, "that in working among my own people as I have been doing I have been only tinkering at things, just tinkering. One has to go to the root of the matter, to abolish unjust laws, to replace them by good ones. Supposing I made my estate, as I hope to make it, a Utopia, still there would be hundreds of estates where the people would be in misery. It ought not to be left to our good will to do things. We should be compelled to do them."
Mary watched the flashing eyes with the greatest admiration. She felt that Lady Agatha was a glorious creature, for whom she could do anything. The hero-worship which is latent in the heart of all young people worth their salt sprang into sudden life. Lady Agatha glanced at her, noticed her expression, and smiled a rich, sweet, gratified smile. She had made a disciple. To make a disciple was very pleasant to one of her temperament. Like most women, she was a thorough propagandist.
As she swept up to the gate of Lady Anne's house, the old lady herself was standing just within it. She had come in from driving her little pony phaeton, which she liked to drive herself. She had a little wild, bright-eyed mountain pony, which would eat sugar and apples from her hands, and was as much of a pet as a dog.
"Well, Mary," she said, "introduce me. How do you do, Lady Agatha? I know you by sight already. Won't you come inside and have some tea? I'm very glad my Chloe didn't meet that uncanny monster of yours. I have something to do to get her past the trams, I can tell you, much less the motorcars."
"You shouldn't go out alone," Mary said, with tender concern. "Her little pony is very wild, Lady Agatha, and she won't take the carriage, unless she goes visiting."
"You want to make me out an old woman," Lady Anne said, "and I shall never be that. Come along in, Lady Agatha. I've been hearing about you. What do you mean by making my tenants discontented? They're very well as they are. We shall have to form a league against you, we indolent ones."
Her Ladyship had a way of winning her welcome wherever she went. Lady Anne had begun, like a good many other people, with a certain distrust of the brilliant young woman who desired to conquer so many kingdoms. In the end she yielded unreservedly.
"A fine, big-hearted, generous creature," she said. "It makes me young to look at her and hear her talk. And so she has taken a huge fancy to my Mary. Very well, then, she can come and go; but she's not to have my Mary for all that, for I want her for myself."
"No one really wants me," said Mary, with suddenly dimmed eyes, "except you and papa. But if they did they couldn't have me. I belong to you and papa."
It might have been considered great promotion for the daughter of Walter Gray, who attended all day to the ailments of watches with a magnifying glass stuck in his eye, to be the friend of Lady Agatha Chenevix as well as the adopted child almost of Lady Anne Hamilton. Indeed, in the early days, when Lady Agatha's friendship for Mary brought her into the finest society the country provided, Lady Anne sometimes watched Mary narrowly, to see how she was taking it. The result of these observations must have been quite satisfactory to the old lady, judging by the energetic shaking of her head after one or two of these occasions when she was alone and thought over things. Once she spoke her thoughts to Lady Agatha, to whom, indeed, she found herself often talking in a way that surprised herself. There was something about the minx that forced even a suspicious and reticent old lady into trust and confidence, and as her trust and confidence increased so did her affection for the brilliant young peeress.
"People said I was mad," she remarked, "when I took Mary Gray into my house, and into my heart. Matilda Drummond even said—and I have never forgotten it to her—that if she was my nephew, Jarvis, she'd have my condition of mind inquired into. Yet see how it has turned out! Is she spoilt? Is she an upstart? Is she set above her family? She's over there this minute with that poor little drab stepmother of hers. She worships her father. The joys and sorrows of the poor little household are as much to her to-day as the day she left them."
"I know," said Lady Agatha. "She's pure gold. I saw it in her face the first day I laid eyes on her. The only quarrel I have with her is that so many people push me out with her. I don't mean you, of course, Lady Anne. But yesterday I could not have her because she must go to your doctor's wife, and to-day she was going for a long walk with that little Miss Baynes. To-morrow it will be her father. It is his free afternoon."
"I heard an amusing thing about the father the other day," said Lady Anne. "Of course, Mary knows nothing about it. I called at Gordon's—that is where Mr. Gray is employed—about a new catch for my amethyst bracelet. I have known Mr. Gordon for years. He is a thoroughly respectable man. It seems there is a very ill-conditioned person who works in the same room as Mr. Gray—a good workman, but most ill-conditioned. When he is especially bad-tempered he vents his anger on his quiet room-fellow, who never seems to hear him but works away as though he were a thousand miles distant from the grumbling and scolding. Well, it seems that the other day, despairing, perhaps, of rousing Mr. Gray by any other methods, he made a reference to Mary as having got into fine society and looking down on her father. It's a little place, after all, my dear, and you and your motor-car are known as well as the Town Hall. Mr. Gray got up very quietly and threw the man downstairs; then went back to his work without a word. Gordon saw it in quite the right way. He said that the person thoroughly well deserved it, but that the next time he mightn't get off with a few bruises, and that would be awkward for Mr. Gray. So he has given him another room."
"Ah, bravo!" Lady Agatha clapped her hands together. "That's where Mary gets it. I've seen the light of battle in her eye—haven't you?"
"Sometimes—when she has heard of cruelty and injustice."
Now that Mary's schooling was over, she was to see the world under Lady Anne's auspices. They were to go abroad soon after Christmas, to be in Rome for Easter, to dawdle about the Continent where they would and for as long as they would. Everything was planned and mapped out. Mary had her neat travelling-dress of grey cloth, tailor-made, her close-fitting toque, her veil and gloves, all her equipment, lying ready to put on. Her old friend, Simmons, had packed her travelling trunk. It had come to almost the last day.
And, to be sure, Mary must be much with her father and the others during those last hours. She had gone with her father for a long country walk.
"I wish you were coming, too," said Mary, clinging closely to his arm.
"You will be bringing me back fine stories," her father said, patting her hand. "I shall be seeing the world through your eyes, child."
"I shall write to you every day."
"I shan't expect that, Mary. You will be moving from place to place. I know you will write when you can, and I am always sure of your love."
While they talked Lady Anne was receiving Dr. Carruthers professionally. She had had symptoms, weaknesses, pangs, of which she had told nobody.
"I was inclined to go without telling you anything about it, doctor," she said. "I was as keen upon it as the child. I am more disappointed than she will be. I have been wilful all my life, but I am glad I did not take my own way this time. It would have been a nice thing for poor Mary if I had been taken ill in some of those foreign places."
"You will be much better in your own comfortable home."
Dr. Carruthers spoke cheerfully, but he could not keep the anxiety out of his face.
"You must have suffered a deal lately," he said pityingly. He had not forgotten what Lady Anne had done for him and his Mildred. She had been their faithful and kind friend from that propitious day when he had picked Mary Gray from under the feet of the tram-horses. His position was now an assured one, and he and his wife had a tender affection for their benefactress.
"I'm an obstinate old woman," said Lady Anne, with very bright eyes. The doctor's visit had been an ordeal to her. "I have had the pain off and on for the last few months, but I assured myself that it was merely indigestion, which mimics so many things. I am glad my common-sense came to the rescue at last. Do you think I shall go off suddenly, or shall I have to lie, panting, like those poor creatures I've seen at the hospital, labouring for breath? I shouldn't like that."
The doctor shook his head. How was he to know when the worn-out heart would cease to perform its functions, and after what manner?
"We must hope that you will not suffer," he said gently. "I will do my best to save you that."
"And I've plenty of spirit for whatever the good God sends," Lady Anne said, her face lighting up. "I've always had great spirit. They said I pulled through my childish illnesses twice as well because of my spirit. I remember my dear mother telling me that when I had croup at two years old I mimicked the cows and sheep and cats and dogs between the paroxysms. I was just the same later on. I ought to have married a soldier. My poor husband was a man of peace. He couldn't bear a loud voice. Have a glass of wine before you go, doctor. I've just had a bottle of Comet port opened. Try it. There's very little like it left in the world."
After Dr. Carruthers had taken his departure she went to her desk and set about writing a letter. But she paused after she had written a few lines, looked at the clock, and sat for a minute thinking.
"No," she said aloud. "I won't wait till to-morrow. Mary shan't take the chances. Who knows if I shall be here to-morrow? If I drive out to Marleigh I shall just catch Buckton. He will be pottering round that orchid-house of his. He will just be home from the office. He can make me a new will there as well as here. Indeed, I ought not to have postponed it for so long."
She ordered her little pony phaeton. It was nearly five o'clock. There would be plenty of time to drive to Marleigh Abbey, where her lawyer lived, to interview him, and get back again before it was dark. She would make Mary's interests safe. She had come to care for the child more than she had ever expected to care. She was going to make a provision for her, so that she should be secure against the chances and changes of this life. Nothing very startling, nothing that need make Jarvis grumble to any great extent; just a modest provision which would not keep Mary from making use of the talents with which God had endowed her and the education her fairy godmother had given her.
It was not long before she had left the town behind, and was driving along the winding road that ran by the foot of the mountains. The road was very lonely.
Chloe was rather nervous, not to say hysterical, on this particular afternoon. Her mistress had not considered her as was her wont. She had taken the shortest road, forcing her to meet a black monster of a steam-tram which she had sometimes seen at a distance, a thing which was her special abomination. Chloe had made a bolt for it, and had passed the tram safely and got away on to the back road. She had been accustomed, when she had made her small runaways before, to be petted and soothed afterwards. Indeed, as soon as her terror had calmed a little, and she was on the road she knew to be harmless, she slackened down, expecting to hear her mistress's voice of tender scolding, to have her mistress alight and stroke her with soft words. Instead of that she was touched up pretty sharply.
"Get me there, my girl," said Lady Anne. "Get me there quickly. You can take your time going home, and we'll go the lower road. I feel as though Death and I were running a race. I could never forgive myself if I died before I'd provided for Mary."
The pony gave her head a shake as though in answer to her mistress's words, pricked up her ears and set off at a sharp canter.
Suddenly something happened. Lady Anne had at first no realisation of what it was. Jennings, the coachman, said afterwards that it must have been the work of one of the mischievous lads whom he had driven with his whip from staring in at his stable door. What happened was that the pony's bridle, which had been snipped with a knife, had come apart, fallen about her neck and then under her feet. She was off like the wind.
As for poor Lady Anne, suddenly rendered helpless, she caught at the side of the little carriage, which was being dragged violently at the pony's heels. She had need of all her spirit. Fortunately, the road was a straight one, but there was not a soul in sight to help her, not a sower in the fields, not a ploughman, not even a boy herding cattle along the road. Her right hand still grasped the useless rein. She stared before her, while the rocking of the little carriage grew more and more violent, and the hedges and trees flew past them. How long would it be before the terrified pony shook herself free of the carriage altogether, or upset it on one of those mud-banks?
The old spirit kept wonderfully calm and collected. There was just one chance—that Chloe might keep the middle of the road, and presently pull up of herself, being exhausted. If only the phaeton would not rock so much. It was swaying from side to side at a terrific rate. The few seconds of the runaway seemed æons of time to Lady Anne. She was holding on now to both sides of the carriage, but her arm was through the reins. Thank Heaven, the road seemed absolutely open and Chloe must exhaust herself soon.
Then—her eyes were distended in her face. They had swung round a little incline, with a miraculous escape of running on a heap of shingle intended for mending the roads. Just ahead of them were the lodge gates and lodge of a big house. The gates were open. Out through them there toddled a small child about three years old. The child set out to cross the road. His attention was arrested by the noise of the runaway. He stood in the middle of the road staring.
Lady Anne uttered a loud, sharp cry. The child moved a few steps, fell, and lay directly in the path of Chloe's feet. A woman ran out of the lodge, screaming "Patsy, Patsy; where are you, Patsy?" Then she began to wring her hands and call on all the saints.
The pony, however, had of herself come to a standstill. The child was under her feet, between her four little hoofs. She was shaking and sweating and looking down. As for the child, after a second or so he broke into a lusty roar. He was only frightened, not hurt, but it took a little time for the mother to find that out by reason of the mud on his face and the noise he was making. When she had reassured herself, she carried him inside and closed the door of the lodge upon him. Then she returned to the pony-carriage.
Chloe was still standing there, in a piteous state of terror. Someone was coming along the road—a policeman. Someone else was running from the opposite direction.
As for Lady Anne, the little figure had fallen forward. Her forehead was down on the reins. Her eyes were wide open, and had a mortal terror in their gaze. She would never set things right for Mary in this world. She and Death had run a race together, and she had been beaten.