While Sir Robin and Mary Gray sat on that English hillside, Nelly and her father walked on a hilly road above Lugano. The April afternoon was Paradise. Below, the lake lay blue as a sapphire mirroring a sapphire sky. The space between them and the lake's edge was tinged with a bloom of bluish-rose, for all the almond groves were out in blossom. Below them were drifts of sweet-scented narcissi. All around them lay the mountains, Monte Rosa silver against the sapphire sky. Below the fantastic houses clustered to the lake's edge in their little groves and coppices of green.
They were talking of Robin's coming. The hour of his arrival was somewhat uncertain. They might find him at the hotel when they returned, going home in the evening quietness, when Monte Rosa would be flushed to rose-pink and the blue sky would die off in splendours of rose and orange.
Nelly was certainly looking better. Not a hint had come to her of the frontier war in which, by this time, her lover must be engaged. The General starved for his newspapers in these days, if he did not get the chance of a surreptitious peep at one at the English library, or when some friendly fellow-guest in the hotel would hand him a belated print two days old. Nelly had a wild rose bloom in her cheek and a light in her eye at this moment. Who could look upon such a scene and not praise the Designer? Not Nelly, certainly. As they paused for the hundredth time to look she breathed sighs of content and pressed her father's arm close to hers in a caress. Even though one's lover had been cruel and had gone away without speaking, it was good to be alive.
The appealing influence of the season was about them, too. They had just peeped into a little wayside chapel, where there was a small altar ablaze with lights set amid masses of flowers. The place was heavy with sweetness. Here and there knelt worshippers with bent heads. The General had bowed with a reverent knee, and Nelly had knelt with him before they had gone out into the blaze of the day again.
"There are only two armies, after all, Nell," the General had said, explaining himself. "The army of the Lord and the army of the Prince of Darkness. Let us rejoice that we have so many fellow-soldiers in the Lord's army, though we fight in different regiments."
"To-morrow," said Nelly dreamily, "the lights will be all out and the little chapel draped in black. There will be the service of the Three Hours' Agony. Do you think we might come?"
"I'm afraid the Dowager would be shocked," her father replied hastily. "She would look upon it as deserting the flag. Many excellent women are very narrow-minded."
They went along in silence. At intervals they sat down to enjoy at leisure the beautiful world about them. They did not say much. There was little need for talk between two who understood each other so thoroughly. While they dawdled, half-way round the lake from their hotel, the sun dropped behind the hills and left them in shadow. It was time for them to go home.
As they went along leisurely, Nelly's face, uplifted towards the sky, seemed to have caught an illumination from it. It was the eve of the Great Sacrifice. Already the shadow and the light of it lay over the world. Nelly was thrilled and touched. That visit to the wayside chapel had set chords vibrating in her heart. Sacrifice for love's sake appealed to her as it does to all generous, impressionable young souls. Though her own personal happiness had vanished, gone down under the world with theSutlej, there was yet the happiness possible of making those she loved happy. She had understood her father's wistful looks and tentative speeches. She knew that he desired her happiness to be in her cousin's keeping. The old days were over, the sweet days before that other had come, when she and her father had sufficed for each other. They could never come again, and he wanted her to marry Robin. Robin's mother, who was good to her, had suggested that she was trying Robin's patience too far. Why, if she could make them all happy—she was not in a state of mind to appreciate what marriage with one man while she loved another was going to cost her—if she could make them all happy, ought she not to do so?
"Father!" she whispered. "Father!"
"What is it, Nell?"
She rubbed her cheek slowly against his arm, not speaking for a second or two.
"Father, I am ready to marry Robin whenever you will."
The General's heart bounded up with an immense relief.
"Whenever I will?" he said, with an air of rallying her. "Is it not rather whenever you will? Poor Robin has been waiting long enough."
"You are quite sure he wants me: I mean soon?"
"He'd be a dull fellow if he didn't."
The General had suddenly a memory of the time when he had called Robin a dull fellow in his secret heart because he had been content to wait, endlessly to all appearances. He put the memory away hastily as an uncomfortable one.
"To be sure, he wants you soon, Nelly, my dear," he said. "As soon as your old father can give you up to him. You have always been Robin's little sweetheart from the time you were a child. He has never thought of any girl but you."
He made the speech with a gulp, as though it were distasteful to him.
"I never thought there was any girl," Nelly said simply. "Robin is not at all a young man for girls. Only he cares so much for politics. He has not seemed in any hurry."
"God bless my soul, to be sure, he is in a hurry. He must be in a hurry. When you get back to your looking-glass, little Nell, ask yourself whether it is likely that he should not be in a hurry!"
He was talking as much to reassure himself as Nelly. To be sure, Robin must be as eager a lover as it was in his capacity to be. There was nothing volcanic about Robin. He was steady, sensible, reliable! Yes, better let the affair be settled at once. June would be a good month for the wedding. He could go afterwards and take the cure at Vichy for his gout. Pat could go with him. Perhaps Nelly would take over Bridget and some of the other servants. Why shouldn't Robin and Nelly have the house just as it stood? He would make them a deed of gift of it. He could have a bachelor's flat somewhere near the Parks and the Clubs, with Pat to look after him. It would be easier for him if the old house sanctified by many memories were not to be broken up.
Nelly's exaltation carried her on to Saturday afternoon. Sir Robin had arrived on the morning of that day while the General and Nelly were out climbing the lower range of a hill. The Dowager was no climber. More than that, she had acquired tact and good feeling it seemed in her latter days, for she left father and daughter very much together. The General's heart had begun to soften towards her. He had begun to ask himself how it was that he could have so persistently misjudged her all those years. If Gerald had liked her well enough to marry her, surely he could have done her more justice than so to dislike her.
The Dowager had her son to herself for some hours of the Saturday forenoon. He had suggested following Nelly and her father up the mountain track, but she had detained him with a demonstrativeness unusual in her, which struck him like a jarring note. What had come over his mother? She had always been a woman of a cold and even harsh manner, at least to him. To be sure, he had noticed with amazement that she had been different to Nelly. She ought to have had a daughter instead of a son. He had no idea that if he had been a dashing soldier he might have been a far less dutiful son, a far less satisfactory member of society than he was and yet have awakened a feeling in his mother's breast which she had never given to him. Now he was embarrassed somewhat by her playful insistence on her mother's right to her boy for a time. Playfulness sat as ill on her as could well be imagined, and he was captious over her raillery on his hurry to be at his cousin's side, calling it atrocious taste in his irritable mind, he who had never been irritable, to whom it would have seemed the worst of taste to question good taste in his mother.
More than one person was irritable with the Dowager that day. The General was furiously irritable over the transparent man[oe]uvre by which she packed off the young people together.
"Enough to spoil the whole thing," he thought, pursing his lips and pushing out his eyebrows as he did when he was annoyed. "Indelicate! Stupid! I'd rather have her when she was disagreeable. My poor Nell! She did not look very happy as she went. I had a great mind to go with her and spoil things, after all."
The cousins found their way to Nelly's favourite haunt, the little coppice of low almond trees with the troops of narcissi and violets and primroses colouring all the brown earth. They went into the little chapel together. It smelt of incense after the ceremonies of the morning. The mournful black had been removed. There were flowers on a side-table, and the sacristan was setting the candlesticks on the fair white cloth which he had just laid along the altar. The scents in the woods at home had been thin and faint by these. Standing with his hat in his hand at the threshold of the little chapel, Robin Drummond had a memory of the scent of wild thyme.
He was not one to hesitate when he had made up his mind. His mother had told him that Nelly was waiting, ready for the word which might have been hers any time those two or three years back. Her father thought the time had come to arrange a date for their marriage. His mother, too, was anxious to see him settled. Neither she nor the General was young any longer. They had a right to look upon their children's happiness for the years that were left to them of life.
The young people were high on a mountain path, where few were to be met with except an occasional Englishman climbing like themselves, or the goatherds with their little flocks. He had helped her up a steep bit of climbing. The exertion had brought an unwonted colour to her face. Her hand lay in his, soft and warm. His closed on it and held it. It was the hand of one who had never done anything toilsome in her life, the hand of a petted darling. He remembered another hand, thin, brown, capable. None of Mary's later years of ease had given her the hand of a woman of leisure. It was the hand of a comrade, a helpmate. Nelly's hand fluttered in his and was suddenly cold.
"Well, Nell," he said, "do you know what I came here in the mind to ask you?"
"Yes." He saw the quick rise and fall of her bosom; he noticed the almost terrified look of her eyes. Was that how women showed their happy agitation when their lovers claimed them? Poor little Nell! How easily frightened she was! She had turned quite pale. He would have to be very good to her in the days to come.
"Haven't you kept me waiting long enough, little girl?" he went on with a tenderness which might easily have passed for a lover's. "I've been very patient, haven't I? But now my patience has come to an end. When are you going to fix a date for our marriage?"
"We have been very happy," began Nelly with trembling lips.
"Not so happy as we are going to be. God knows, Nell, I will do my best to make you happy, and may God bless my best!"
As he said it the scent of some little plant, bruised beneath his feet, rose to his nostrils, sharply aromatic. It was the wild thyme, the fragrance of which had hung about him those few days back, no matter how he tried to banish it.
"I will be very good to you, Nelly, if you can trust me with yourself."
It was not the least bit in the world like the love-making of Nelly's dreams. To be sure, he was good and kind, the dear, kind old Robin he had always been. She was grateful that he was not more lover-like according to her ideals. If he had taken her in his arms and kissed her passionately like that other—she smelt lilies of the valley where Robin Drummond smelt the wild thyme—she could not have endured it. As it was, she answered him sweetly.
"I know you will be good to me, Robin. When were you ever anything but good?"
Then he kissed her, a light kiss that brushed her lips. He felt his own shortcomings as a lover when he saw the blood rush tumultuously to her face, cover even her neck. Why, she must care for him with some passion to blush like that for his kiss. He had no idea that it was the memory of another kiss which had caused that wild flush of colour.
"Well, Nell, when is it to be?" he asked, trying to galvanise himself out of his coldness, trying to make the pity and tenderness which she awoke in him take the place of passion.
"When you will, Robin."
"You will never repent it, God helping me," he said again.
They came back, as they were expected to, with things settled between them. Robin had consulted a calendar in his pocket-book and named a date—Thursday, 23rd of July. He would be free then. The House would have risen and he would be able to devote himself to his honeymooning with a clear mind. He had not asked for an earlier date, but it did not occur to Nelly to wonder at that. She was relieved to find it so far off. Already she thought of the time between as a respite, the "Long day, my Lord!" of those condemned to death.
The Dowager saw nothing wrong with the date. They could wander about the Continent leisurely, coming home early in June to prepare Nelly's wedding-clothes. The General, after his first irritation had passed, had brought himself to tell her of his plan about the house. She approved graciously as she thought. It was very generous of the General. To be sure, Robin must have a town house now he was married. Sherwood Square was a little out of the way and quite unfashionable. Still, it was a fine house in an excellent situation to balance those drawbacks. And of course it must be new-papered and painted and modern conveniences placed in it. That could be done while the young couple were away honeymooning. Robin must be on the telephone, of course. That was indispensable. And the furniture must be fresh-covered, so much of it as they decided to keep. A deal of it was old-fashioned and had better go to a sale-room. New carpets too. Already the Dowager was making calculations of what it was going to cost the General. She was capable of a certain grim enjoyment in the spending of other people's money.
"Do you propose to live with them, ma'am?" the General asked at last, in a constrained voice.
She looked at him in amazement.
"Why, to be sure. Poor child, she will need someone beside her. Those servants of yours, Denis, they've had their own way too much. I've no doubt there's a terrible leakage in the establishment."
"If you propose to live with them, ma'am," the General went on, bursting with fury, "I don't give up my house at all. Robin can find his own town-house. The servants have done very well for me and Nelly. So have the chairs and tables and carpets. I'd nearly as soon send my own flesh and blood to an auction-room."
The Dowager was alarmed. She tried to propitiate the General after her usual manner towards him. It was as though she tried to distract a froward child.
"Dear me," she said, "dear me! I didn't mean to offend you, Denis. The house is shabby. Those dogs have always sat in the chairs and on the carpets. I only thought that we might put our heads together for the good of the young people."
"I'm a Dutchman if we will, ma'am!" shouted the General. "As for the dogs, did you intend to exclude them, too, from the fine new house? You'd never teach them not to sit in chairs at this time of their lives."
This outbreak was followed by the usual fit of repentance, in which the General reproached himself for his hastiness. To be sure, he had been annoyed that the wedding should have been put off for so long. In his haste he had said derogatory things about Robin in his heart, which was unreasonable. The fellow was a Member of Parliament and had to stick to his post, to stick to his post like a soldier. Yet, there would be all those weeks of June and July when bad news might come any day about Langrishe: and Nell would be in London and would hear of it.
So, although the thing had come about which he desired, the General was not happy.
It was the latter end of April when Sir Robin Drummond presented himself again in the big bare room where Mary Gray transacted the business of her Bureau. The windows were wide open now, and the dull roar of the distant street traffic came in. It had been a showery day, and he had noticed as he came up the stairs the many marks of muddy feet which showed that business at the Bureau was brisk. The women were coming at last to be organised, to learn a spirit ofcamaraderie, to see that their good was the common good, to have hope for a future which would not be always starvation and deprivation, sufferings in cold and heats, intolerable miseries crowding upon each other.
He came up the stairs, looking sadder and sterner than was his wont. He remembered how all last winter he had run up those stairs like a school-boy, being so glad at last to get to the hour he had desired all day. As he passed up the staircase now he looked at the walls, distempered a dirty pink. Outside Mary's door they were adorned by the effusions of amateur artists, the children of the working women, messenger boys, casual urchins, with the desire of their kind for scribbling. It was all quite unlovely, yet it had made him happy to come there. It was a happiness that he had had no right to and now it must be relinquished. This was the last time he should come after this intimate fashion.
He turned the handle of the door and went in, rather dreading to find Mary engaged with other visitors; but she was alone. She turned round from her desk as he came in, and, jumping up at sight of him, she came to meet him with an outstretched hand.
"Congratulate me," she said. "The book is finished and accepted. Strangmans have taken it. They took only a week to decide. I am wild with pride and joy. Maurice Ilbert is one of their readers. He got it to read and recommended it enthusiastically. They are to publish it in June. Wasn't it generous of him, because there is so little of it he can agree with?"
"Oh, Ilbert's conscience is pretty elastic, I should say, and he can agree with many things," Sir Robin answered. He felt vaguely annoyed that Ilbert should have had anything to do with Mary or her book. Ilbert was one of the younger school of Tories, a free-lance he called himself, handsome, conceited, immensely clever, a golden youth with an air of Oxford and the Schools added to him. He was one of the youngest members of Parliament, and was gifted with a dazzling and impertinent wit. Sir Robin had occasionally smarted under Ilbert's sallies. He was a target for them, with his serious and simple views, his lean air of Don Quixote.
Mary looked at him reproachfully, as though the speech grieved her.
"He is very generous," she repeated. "He has come to see me. I found him most sympathetic. It is not a question of parties. He thinks awfully well of the book. He says it will stir the public conscience. To be sure, it is written out of experience, just the plain story of things as they are. I have learned so much since I began this work."
He had got over his first ill-temper, and now he spoke gently.
"I am sure it is a good book," he said. "I have always felt that you would make a good book of it because you know. Ilbert is a very capable critic."
He did Ilbert justice with some difficulty. He had a sharp thought of Ilbert coming in and out as he had been used to, when he should come no more. For the first time in his life, which had had no room for self-consciousness, he compared himself with another man, handsome, debonair, and remembered the lean visage over which mornings he passed the razor, dark, lantern-jawed, almost grotesque. It was the only aspect of himself he knew, the one which was presented to him when he shaved.
"Now you are like yourself," Mary said sweetly. "It was not like you to throw cold water on my pleasure."
He turned away his head from her reconciled eyes. She was making what he had come to say doubly hard for him.
"I want to tell you something," he said. "I should like you to hear it from me first, because you have been so good a friend to me. I have spoken to you of my cousin, Nelly. I wanted you to be her friend. Well—I am to marry my cousin in July."
There was silence for a moment after he had said it, a silence broken only by the ticking of the noisy clock on the mantelpiece, by the sounds of the street outside.
"There has been an implicit engagement between my cousin and myself," he went on as though he set his teeth to it. "I couldn't tell you when it began. It was made for us. I was always ready to be bound by it. She is as sweet a thing as ever lived; but sometimes I have thought that perhaps, perhaps, the cousinly closeness would make the other tie a difficult thing for Nelly to accept. I was wrong. She has no desire to break through that implicit bond."
He was making an explanation, and Mary Gray was not the girl to misunderstand him.
"I am very glad," she said cheerfully, "very glad. I hope you will be very happy. I am sure that you will be."
He looked at her with relief, which was not altogether agreeable. He had not done her any wrong after all. She was not angry with him. But, to be sure, why should she be? It was unlikely that she would have taken more than a friendly interest in him. He mocked at himself, and thought of his harsh uncomeliness. If he had been Ilbert now his conduct of all this winter past would have been unpardonable. But Ilbert and he were made in a different mould. Oddly, the thought did not comfort him—was a bitter one, rather.
"Won't you sit down and tell me about it?" Mary said, her eyes looking at him frankly and kindly. "I am not at all busy. The business of the Bureau is pretty well over for the day, and I can finish my proofs at home. Do, Sir Robin."
She pushed a chair towards him, and he sat down in it. He felt that he ought to go. It was a concession to his own weakness that he stayed. And he had no inclination at all to talk about his engagement. He tried to say something, tried to imagine what a man happily engaged to be married would find to say to a sympathetic woman-friend about it. He could think of nothing, only that so far as he could see there was no consciousness in the serious bright eyes that watched him. To be sure he ought to be glad. He would be the most miserable hound on earth if he wished her to be unhappy because he was marrying his cousin. Yet he was not glad of that ready sympathy.
"Well," she said at last, "you have nothing to tell me."
"What can I say"—he laughed awkwardly—"that I have not already said? We have been brought up like brother and sister, but our elders always expected us to marry when we should be old enough. We have been taking it easy, Nell and I; thought there was plenty of time, you know."
"And at last you have decided that the plenty of time is up?" she said, filling the gap in his speech. Her eyes were wondering now. It was a strange thing to her that lovers should take it easy.
"Yes, that was it."
"Of course, I understand now why you felt you had to go that Thursday in Holy Week. It was very good of you to give us so much of your time."
"You didn't tell me how you got on, what you did," he said eagerly. He was glad to escape from the discussion of his too intimate affairs. "What did you do on Good Friday, after all?"
"Mrs. Morres spent the day with me. It was a lovely day. We went to the service at St. Hugh's. The music was wonderful. Afterwards we sat by the open window and talked. My window-box was full of daffodils. They are just over now. Mrs. Morres said it was like the country. Afterwards I locked up the flat, put the key in my pocket, discovered a hansom—it wasn't easy, but 'Tilda, who comes in to tidy up for me every day, managed it. Her young man is a hansom-driver. I stayed the night at the Square, and we went down to Hazels next morning."
"Was it good?"
"Exquisite. I finished the book there. We had miraculous weather. I was able to work out of doors in the very same green garden where her Ladyship and I worked at the novel last year. The dogs used to sit all around me: and I believe the birds remembered me. I am sure I recognised one robin. I came back like a lion refreshed, with the full copy of the book done up in my portmanteau. Since then I have been enjoying the sweets of a mind at ease."
"You look it."
She did, indeed, look like a flower refreshed. She was wearing a soft grey gown with a little good, yellowed lace about the shoulders. The lace had been a gift from Lady Anne. It gave the final touch of distinction to Mary's air. She had the warm, pale complexion that goes well, with grey, and her hair seemed to have more than usual of gold in it. Standing against the light it was blown out like a little aureole full of stars. He had thought that he could like her in nothing so well as her dark blue frock, but now he thought that grey should be her only wear.
"What time do you leave?" he asked, glancing at the clock.
"Not for a long time yet. It is only half-past five. People come in and out here up to quite late. I foresee that my hours will be later and later."
"You mustn't let them take too much of your time. You must have time for exercise, for meals, for rest, for your friends——"
"I am so profoundly interested in the work that I don't grumble. As for my friends, they can see me here. For exercise I walk most of the way between Kensington and this, either coming or going. Society is not likely to claim me—at least, not in her Ladyship's absence. My few friends can find me here."
It was on his lips to ask her to let him walk part of the way home with her. He might have this last pleasure since he was coming here no more, at least not in the old way. But, as though her words had been a challenge, there was a clatter of wheels and horses in the narrow street below.
"A carriage," Mary said. "It will be one of the fine ladies who are interested in philanthropy and politics."
There was a rustle of silks and murmur of voices coming up the stairs. Sir Robin sat holding his hat in one hand, vaguely annoyed. Why should one of those meddlesome fine ladies choose for the hour of her empty, unimportant visit his last hour with Mary Gray?
He sat irritated, shy, awkward, his feelings faithfully reflected in his face. The door opened. A lady came in whom he had occasionally met in drawing-rooms, a slight, tall woman, with a brilliant brunette face. A delicate perfume came with her entrance. She was finely dressed, as fine as a humming-bird, and it became her. She looked incredibly young to be the mother of the slim youth who followed her. The youth was Maurice Ilbert. His mother, Mrs. Ilbert, was well known as one of the most brilliant and exclusive hostesses in fine London circles. Now she was holding Mary's two hands in her own grey-gloved ones.
"I insisted that my son should bring me to see you, Miss Gray," she was saying withempressement. "I hope you will excuse my descending on you like this. But I positively had to. This wonderful book of yours—my boy has been talking of it every hour we have been alone. It is such a pleasure to meet you. Ah—Sir Robin Drummond, how do you do? Are you also privileged to know about the wonderful book?"
To Robin Drummond's mind Ilbert's smile and nod had something amused, mocking in them. He had acknowledged the greeting with the curtest of nods.
Now he got up, shook hands awkwardly with Mrs. Ilbert, and made his farewells to Mary Gray. It was sheer ill-temper drove him out as soon as they had come. He had wanted to ask Mary if he might bring Nelly when she returned to town. He had wanted ... a good many other things. But now he stalked away from her presence with fury in his heart. If the Ilberts were going to take her up!—to exploit the book! The Ilberts belonged to the young Tory party which his soul detested, or he said so in his wrath; as a matter of fact, he had not many detestations, and in the matter of politics he had no personal rancours. Yet at the moment he thought he had, and fancied that a part of his indignation was because Mary Gray, who had learnt in the Radical school, was going to be made much of by advanced Tories. As he sat in his hansom, "stepping westward" into the heart of the sunset, he bit the ends of his moustache, and it was like chewing the cud of bitterness. Mary Gray had expanded to answer the genial warmth of Mrs. Ilbert's manner as a flower opens to the sun. It was not in her to be ungracious, and Mrs. Ilbert was a charming woman.
And now he asked himself what was he going to do for the next month or six weeks till his mother and Nelly came home? All the winter he had been in the habit of seeing Mary Gray two or three times a week. He had been home a week from Lugano, and he had kept away; and all the time something stronger than himself had seemed to be tugging at him to take the old familiar road. He had found it a hard struggle to keep away for those ten days. And how was he going to do it for all those weeks to come? He had always had so much to say to her—or, at least, there had always been things he wanted to say, for in his most intimate moments he was naturally rather silent.
For a second his thoughts escaped his control, and settled on the pleasantness that bare ugly work-a-day room had meant to him all the winter through. The sodden winter streets, swept by bitter winds, horrible in fog and snow, through which he had hurried on his way had had something heavenly about them. "Ah, le beau temps passé!"
He pulled himself together with a sharp shock of reproach. He was to marry Nelly in less than three months' time, and he was an honourable man. When Nelly was his wife he meant that every thought of his heart should belong to her. He must see Mary Gray no more. Yet as he pushed the thought of her away from him it came to him that another man might find the ugly gas-lit room, the wet winter streets with their bawling crowds and flaring lights, something of the same magical world that he had found them. Supposing that man were Ilbert? Well, supposing it were so, what business had he to resent it? But however he might ask himself rhetorical questions, the jealousy of the natural man swept over him in passion and fury. He said to himself that now he knew why he had always hated Ilbert. It was a prevision of this hour.
And at the moment the General was offering up his heartfelt thanks that Nelly's happiness was secure in the keeping of one so steady and reliable, if rather dull and slow, as Robin Drummond.
The travellers came home the first week of June. During the weeks that had come and gone since Easter they had wandered about as the fancy took them. Rome, Florence, Genoa, Venice. They followed a path of wonders; but, somewhat to her father's dismay, Nelly did not prove the passionate pilgrim he had expected. She looked on listlessly at the wonder-world. Now that her first exaltation had died away it did not seem so simple a matter to make others happy. There was no royal road, she discovered, to the happiness of others any more than to her own.
Her father said to himself that Nell would be all right as soon as the wedding was over. He had not come to the point of thinking yet that marriage with Robin Drummond was not the way the Finger of God had pointed out to him. It was impossible not to notice Nelly's listless step and heavy eyes. The Dowager put down these things to ordinary delicacy, something the girl would outgrow.
"She wants a husband's care," she said. "To be sure, my dear Denis, you have done your best for her. But what, after all, could you know about girls?"
"As much as Robin Drummond, ma'am," the General said, with a growl; and was not placated by the Dowager's tolerant smile.
He was at once glad and sorry when the weeks were over. He dreaded, for one thing, going back to London where Nelly might hear news of Godfrey Langrishe. To be sure, he had acted entirely for her happiness, yet he had an idea that Nell might be angry with him for keeping things from her if she found out that Langrishe's regiment was engaged in the deadly frontier war. He had been so used to being perfectly frank with her that his reservation galled him.
He had studied with attentiveness the columns of such papers as had come his way, dreading to find Langrishe's name among the casualties. Hitherto it had not occurred, and for that he was deeply grateful. If there had been news he must have betrayed it to Nelly by his eyes and his voice.
"I wish we could have stayed longer," she said to him on the eve of their departure from Italy.
"And I, Nell."
"Oh," she looked at him in wonder. "I thought you were keen to be gone."
"Is it likely?" he asked with playful tenderness, "that I should be anxious to shorten the time in which you are mine and not Robin Drummond's?"
They were alone, and she turned and put her head on his shoulder.
"I shall always be yours," she said. "And I think marriage and giving in marriage a weariness of the spirit."
"Not really, Nell?" The General looked at her golden head in alarm, but already she was reproaching herself.
"Never mind, dear papa," she said. "I didn't altogether mean it. Poor, kind Robin! What a very ungrateful girl I am to you all!"
As soon as they got back the Dowager engaged her in a whirl of shops and dressmakers, and for that the General was grateful. He resorted to man[oe]uvres in those days to keep the newspapers out of Nelly's way that revealed to himself hitherto unsuspected depths of cunning. He opened the papers with a tremor. The orange and green and pink bills of the evening newspapers stuck up where Nelly could see them, laid on the pavement almost under her feet, brought his heart into his mouth. If they could only tide over the dangerous time, and Nelly be married and gone off on her leisurely honeymoon! Langrishe might almost fade out of her mind, become at least a gentle memory, before anything could happen to him: or the deadly little dragging war might be over and Langrishe have carried out a whole skin.
It was the height of the season and Nelly had her social engagements as well as the preparations for her wedding. As often as was possible Robin Drummond put in an appearance, but the House was sitting and much of his time was taken up. He looked rather more hatchet-faced than of old. Once, sitting in the Strangers' Gallery of the House, the General heard someone say as Robin was about to speak: "Who is that careworn-looking young man?" Careworn, indeed! The General fumed and fretted over it, the more because it fell in with a certain secret thought he had had once or twice. Robin had always been somewhat too much of an old head on young shoulders to please his uncle. To be sure, he had fed on Blue Books and slept on statistics, yet his engagement to a lovely girl like Nelly ought to have made him look happier. It was indecent in the circumstances, that's what it was, that anybody, with the remotest justification for the epithet, could call him careworn.
Once Robin on an afternoon when the House was not sitting called for his cousin and carried her off in a hansom without saying where he was taking her to. That was something of which the General heartily approved. If Robin had done it oftener his opinion of him would have gone up immensely. He rubbed his hands while he asked the Dowager what Mrs. Grundy would say to such doings. "Supposing they made a runaway match of it, ma'am, where should we be?" he asked cheerfully. To which the Dowager replied that Robin would never think of anything so silly. Why should he, when the wedding was fixed for the twenty-third and everything ordered, even the bridesmaids' dresses and the wedding-cake? "Perhaps for that reason," replied the General. But this was a dark saying to the Dowager.
The visit that afternoon was to Mary Gray. Even Nelly had heard of the book which Sir Michael Auberon had praised so highly, which the newspapers had declared to be more interesting than any novel. She had roused herself to be interested in the visit, to talk, to ask questions, to look about her, as they drove into the east, instead of gazing inwards with that introspective glance which had given her eyes of late the beauty of mystery, making them larger and darker than they had been in the old days.
She was exquisitely dressed, in a long cloak of cream lace over an Indian muslin frock, and an airy hat of chiffon and feathers. She had put on her best for her outing with Robin, her visit to Robin's friend. It was one of the sweet things she was always doing, with an intention in her own mind to make up for some lack or other which certainly her lover had not felt. When she alighted in the busy street people stared as though they had seen a white bird of Paradise; and coming into Mary Gray's room with a basket of roses in her hand she looked like a bride.
Now, at least, she wore the pilgrim air. She looked curiously about the unlikely place which housed the wonderful woman as she set down her roses, then back at Mary herself. Mary had come to meet her with outstretched hands. Her bright look at Robin Drummond was full of sympathetic admiration, of felicitation. She kissed Nelly warmly. She was not an effusive person, and nothing had been further from her thoughts than kissing, but her heart went out at once to this charming girl.
"Howgood of you to come to see me!" she said, pressing Nelly's hands in hers. "Into the east, too! And you must be so busy just now."
"I have been longing to see you," Nelly responded. "Robin has talked so much about you." At that moment Nelly had no doubt that he had talked. "And I wanted to see you here, in your ordinary life. Robin says you will not be here much longer—that there will be an official position found for you. And it was here that 'Creatures of Burden' was written!"
"Nearly all here," Mary said, smiling down at the young enthusiast.
Robin Drummond stood aside, in one of his characteristically awkward attitudes, his hat in his hand, watching them. He was not thinking sufficiently of himself to feel awkward, although he looked it. He was thinking of those two dear women, as he called them to himself, objurgating himself for his unworthiness to be the kinsman and lover of one, the friend of the other.
He had never seen Nelly look like that before. Her air of worship was charming. Now she let Mary Gray's hands fall while she went swiftly to the table on which she had deposited her beautiful red roses. "I brought them for you," she said, offering them to Mary Gray.
"How delicious! How sweet of you!"
The smell of the roses was in the room. It might have been the aura of the two exquisite women, he thought. Nelly had come in carrying a little whiff of scent that went with her, as much a part of her as the soft rustling of her garments. He closed his eyes and there came to his memory, sweet and sharp, the odour of wild thyme. Not a second of time had passed when he opened them again. Mary was still praising her roses. She was holding them to her face, leaning towards Nelly as she did so. Her expression was more than kind: it was tender. She put down her basket of roses and took Nelly's hands between hers. For a moment she held them against her breast before she relinquished them. She spoke with a little tremor in her voice. Why was it that Robin Drummond thought suddenly of the nightingale who leans his breast upon a thorn?
In an instant the thrill in the atmosphere had passed. She was bustling about to make them tea, if her soft, quiet movements could be called bustling. She brought a kettle from the unpainted deal cupboard which housed her utensils of every day. She disappeared for a few seconds and returned with the kettle full of water and set it on the gas-stove. She pushed the papers away from one end of the table and covered it with a dainty tea-cloth. She brought out cups and saucers of thin Japanese porcelain, some sugar, a loaf and butter, a box of biscuits. While she set her table she went on talking and smiling at them. The kettle began to sing on the fire.
"Ah!" she said, with a sudden thought. "The milkman will not call for an hour yet. What are we to do?"
"Let me go and forage," said Drummond eagerly.
"The nearest dairy is a good bit off."
"Trust me to find one."
When he had gone the two girls sat down and looked at each other. No wonder she was beloved, Mary thought to herself, gloating over Nelly's golden head, her blue eyes with the dark lashes, her lovely colouring, her innocent mouth. She had a poor opinion of her own beauty and rarely looked in a glass, but she was none the less generous to beauty in others.
"And you are very happy?" she asked.
She had an inclination to put her arms about Nelly Drummond as though she were a beautiful child. She was so glad Robin had remembered to bring her at last. It had been strange and lonely when he had ceased to come as he had been used to. It had been so pleasant to look up when his tap came at the door and to see his plain, pleasant face looking at her with a friendly smile. She had grown used to his visits all that winter through; and when they had ceased abruptly she had missed them more than she cared to acknowledge to herself. She had an impulse to take Nelly's hand to her breast and hold it there for comfort.
"And you are very happy?" she said again.
She was prepared for a happy girl's outpourings. What she was not prepared for was the sudden shadow that fell on Nelly's face, the weariness, as though she had been brought back to the thought of something disagreeable. A sudden wintriness went over her charming face. The eyes drooped, the lips trembled and were steadied with an effort.
"I ought to be very happy," she said. "Everyone is good to me. I have the dearest old father in the world and Robin is so kind and good. I ought to be very happy and to make other people happy."
But she was not happy! Mary stared at the golden head with incredulity. For the moment Nelly's mask—a transparent one enough at best—with which she faced the world was down. No happy girl had ever spoken so, looked so. And it wanted only a few weeks to her marriage!
Mary, no more logical than women less intellectual than she, felt as her first impulse a coldness, chilling her heart that had been so warm towards the girl Robin Drummond had chosen. The chill must have reached Nelly's delicate apprehension, for she looked up in a startled way.
"Robin promised me your friendship," she began.
"And, to be sure, it is yours," Mary Gray said, still wondering at the inexplicable thing that Robin Drummond's promised wife could have secret cause for unhappiness. She had no further inclination to caress the girl for whom she had been passed by. "We are going to be great friends," she said with a cold sweetness.
Then the kettle boiled over and created a diversion. While Mary was still mopping up the pool it had made on the floor Sir Robin returned. His voyage of discovery had not been in vain. He had indeed chartered a hansom to make it, and had brought back fascinating things in the way of cream and tea-cakes and other dainties. As he came in he glanced at the two whom he hoped to see friends. A shadow rested on Nelly's face. He saw nothing amiss with Mary Gray as she went to and fro, busy with the little meal, and had no fault to find with her words as they parted.
"We are going to be great friends, Miss Drummond and I," she said.
But the note of the nightingale that leans his breast on the thorn, the note of self-sacrifice and yearning tenderness had gone out of her voice.
It wanted three weeks to her wedding when one day Nelly suddenly came upon Mrs. Rooke in one of the narrow, fashionable streets south of Oxford Street. Mrs. Rooke was coming out of a florist's shop, and she was carrying a sheaf of lilies in her hand. For one second she looked as though she would have turned aside and avoided Nelly. Then she came straight on with a little unfriendly uplifting of her white chin.
She might have passed with a bow if Nelly had not stopped straight in her path.
"How d'ye do?" she said coldly. "What a delightful day! I had no idea you were back. But to be sure ... I must congratulate you. It is next month, is it not?"
"Yes; it is next month," Nelly said with stiff lips. "The twenty-third of July, to be accurate. I have wondered about you. I hope Mr. Rooke is well and Cuckoo and Bunny."
Bunny was the youngest hope of the Rooke household, a wise, fat, golden-haired child, who had taken a huge fancy to Nelly. At the mention of his name his mother faltered. She had been used to swear by Bunny's sagacity. Bunny had been fond of Nelly Drummond; and there had been a time when Bunny's mother had referred to that fact as though it were Nelly's patent of nobility.
"Cuckoo is at school. Bunny hasn't been very well. Those east winds in May caught him. I had a horrible fright about him. Imagine Bunny—Bunny—choking with croup! I thought I should have gone mad!"
For the moment she had forgotten Nelly's offences, and only remembered that she had been Bunny's friend. Nelly looked back at her as aghast as herself.
"Croup! I never thought of such a thing," she responded. "He has never had it before, has he?"
"Never. That was why I was so terrified. I didn't know what to do. There, don't look so frightened about it! It is over—weeks ago. Indeed, the next day he was about, as well as ever. I should never be so frightened again. It was the horrible novelty of it."
That frightened look in Nelly's eyes had softened the little woman's not very hard heart.
"I wish I had known," said Nelly. "I have wanted to come to see Bunny. I brought him a toy from Paris—a lamb that walks about by itself."
"Ah! you were thinking of him!"
There was complete reconciliation now in the mother's voice and eyes. How could she hate the girl who loved Bunny and had remembered to bring him from Paris a lamb that walked about by itself? She put an impulsive hand on Nelly's arm.
"Come home with me and see him. You are not very busy? You can spare the time?"
Nelly was on her way to keep a dress-making appointment, but she felt that not for worlds would she have said so. She flushed up quite happily. That moment of hostility on Mrs. Rooke's part had chilled her sensitive soul.
"Might I call at Sherwood Square for the lamb, do you think?" she asked diffidently.
"To be sure you may. And I'll tell you what—stay to lunch with me. There'll be nobody but ourselves, of course. It comes to me now that I haven't seen you for centuries."
"Yes; I should like to stay for lunch, thank you."
Mrs. Rooke rather wondered at the pale determination which came over Nelly's soft face, succeeding the flush of a minute before. It did not occur to her that Nelly had been pushing away from her with both hands during the weeks since her return the temptation which at this moment was offered to her. Nelly was only too conscious of the strength of her desire to hear something of Godfrey Langrishe.
It was a feeling she did not dare look in the face. If she had had any idea at the time she agreed to marry Robin that she was going to be haunted by the thought of another man she would never have agreed. Even of late there had been moments when her common-sense had whispered in her ears, protesting against the folly of marrying one man when another had so taken possession of her thoughts. But day by day the net had been drawn closer about her feet. The wedding-clothes, the wedding-breakfast, the bridesmaids, the wedding-cake, the hundred and one arrangements for the wedding, had all been strands of the net that held her ever tighter and tighter. How could she, at this stage, contemplate the breaking of her engagement? How could she? The courage of her race had not risen to that.
Mrs. Rooke suggested a 'bus, and Nelly agreed. Now that she had done the thing against which her conscience protested she did not want to think over-much. She even wanted to postpone the hearing of the name which she had been hungry to hear for so long. The news she had desired too. How was she going to listen to his name, to talk of him calmly? She wanted time to gain courage. A 'bus did not give one opportunities for talking, hardly for thinking.
She knew perfectly well that she should find a clear coast at Sherwood Square. The General had come part of the journey into town with her on his way to the club. Poor Sir Denis! If he could only have seen his Nelly now he would not have been so easy in his mind. Lady Drummond was engaged during the morning hours; she had to lunch with an old friend. Nelly had been contemplating lunch in a quiet Regent Street restaurant rather than the going back to the lonely meal at home. She had known that a telegram to Robin would have brought him to her side, but she had not meditated sending that telegram. She had been glad, in her innermost guilty, repentant heart of her morning of freedom from mother and son.
The 'bus rumbled along as that vehicle of the middle ages does, making a prodigious screaming in the ears, filling one with horrible electric thrills as the brake was jammed down. Neither conversation nor thinking was possible. Nelly closed her eyes a little wearily in her corner. The other people in the 'bus had stared as she got in at the fresh daintiness of her attire, conspicuous in the dingy vehicle. Now, as she leant back with closed eyes, the tired lines came out in her face. Mrs. Rooke, from the other side of the 'bus, glanced at her with pitying wonder.
"Dear me!" she thought to herself. "It isn't the Nelly Drummond I knew. What has she been doing to herself? She must have been racketting a deal. She doesn't look in the least like a happy bride should. Poor child! I wonder if she is marrying against her will?"
Arrived at Sherwood Square the lamb was brought down and displayed to Bunny's delighted mother. Pat whistled for a hansom, and when the two ladies were in he carried out the animal and placed it in front of them, where it created some excitement in its passage through the street.
Behold Nelly, then, presently seated on the nursery floor, winding up the lamb for Bunny and forgetting all about her beautiful lavender muslin frock. The mother and nurse stood by as eager as Nelly herself. Bunny, indeed, was the least interested of the party. To be sure in the wonder-world of Bunny's mind baa-lambs that went of themselves and bleated were no great wonder, even though it was a pleasing novelty to find one in his nursery. He was more excited over the reappearance of Nelly herself and stood by her with one fat affectionate arm about her neck in a contented silence. In vain his mother asked him if he wasn't pleased.
"He is always like that," she said at last. "We took him to the Hippodrome and he only yawned, even when Seeth's lions came on. He didn't take the smallest interest."
"Begging your pardon, ma'am, that he did," the nurse interposed. "He were flinging 'imself on his precious 'ead twenty times a day for a week after. 'Twas a wonder he had any 'ead left, the precious lamb. Them there dratted clowns, I don't 'old with them nohow!"
The reconciliation between Bunny's mother and Bunny's friend and admirer was complete by the time they went down to lunch. Nelly had begged for Bunny's presence at the meal, and so the young monarch of all he surveyed was seated opposite to her in his high chair, with a napkin tucked under his chin, playing a fandango with a spoon and fork on the little table in front of him. Bunny filled the lunch-hour, Bunny's sayings and doings—there were not many of the former, but his mother managed to extract gems of wit and wisdom from his taciturnity—Bunny's likes and dislikes, Bunny's amazing development.
Only once was Langrishe's name mentioned. He had sent home a beautiful mug of beaten silver for Bunny. At the sound of his name Nelly's eyes were suddenly startled: she caught her breath; the colour swept over her face and ebbed away, leaving her paler than before.
Presently the luncheon-hour was over and Bunny had been carried off for his afternoon's outing. The half-hour or so in the drawing-room was over. Nelly was drawing on her gloves, standing by the window which over-looked the narrow slip of square, invisible now for the flowers on the balcony. The fateful visit was nearly at an end and Godfrey Langrishe's name had been mentioned only once.
She had a wild thought that her one opportunity was slipping out of her grasp. She had come here to have news of him. She must not come again. She must try and forget that he existed till such time at least as she could think of him calmly. Now shemustknow, shemusthear, what was happening to him away there at the end of the world.
She glanced furtively around the pretty room, to which she would not come again. It was as though she said farewell to its comfort and pleasantness. She was not going to see Bunny and his mother again, not for a long time at least. Her gaze came back to the window, pausing ever so slightly on its way to glance at a portrait of Langrishe which hung on the wall, a portrait painted in the days when he had been his uncle's heir, by a great painter. She had been conscious all the time she had been in the room of the presence of the portrait although she had not looked its way. The picture had caught the quiet passion and intensity of Godfrey Langrishe's gaze, as though he looked on deeds of glory and fought his way towards them. The face was less stern than she remembered it; it had yet some of the bloom and bonniness of his boyhood; renunciation had not written its deeper meaning in lines about the lips and eyes.
She opened her mouth to speak of him, but at first no words would come. The fastening of her glove took all her attention it seemed. She had turned to the light for it, away from Mrs. Rooke's sympathetic glances.
She had almost controlled her voice to speak without trembling when the thing was taken out of her hands.
"I must not let you go," Mrs. Rooke said, "without giving you a message from Godfrey. A message and gift. It came a week ago. See—here it is. I was going to post it to you." She took up a packet from the side-table.
"How is he?"
At last it was said. Nelly's hand closed over the little packet. She would open it when she got home. To think that he remembered—that he had chosen a gift for her! Was there a word with it, perhaps? Her first letter—and her last letter—from him was lying perhaps in her hand.
But what was it Mrs. Rooke was saying? She bent her ears greedily to listen.
"He was well when he wrote, but the letter was written some time ago. Where he is, it is not easy to get letters carried in safety. One never knows what may be happening. It is, of course, a terrible anxiety."
The tears came into her eyes. There had been a little shadow over her brightness even while she had watched Bunny. Nelly had been aware of it dimly. What did she mean?
"Anxiety!" Nelly repeated falteringly. "Why should you be anxious? He is not ill, is he?"
Her heart had sunk, heavy as lead. Her soul cried out in fear.
"You know he is with the punitive expedition against the Wazees for the murder of Major Sayers and his companions? You never can tell what dreadful thing may be happening to him. It isn't possible you didn't know? And I had been thinking you hardhearted! Ah!"
Her arms went round Nelly.
"It isn't possible you didn't know?Don'tlook like that! Do you care so much as all that, Nelly? Why, then, why, in the name of Heaven, did you let him go? Why are you marrying your cousin? My poor Godfrey!"
She was conscious of a strident voice shouting the evening papers in the street outside. Indeed, even while she spoke to Nelly, half her brain was listening in a strained way to that voice as it came nearer. What was it the creature was shouting? Before she could hear distinctly the voice died away again in the distance.
"Why did I let him go?" Nelly repeated after her. "Because, because, he would not stay. He knew that I loved him, but he would not stay. He never seemed to think of staying. When he had broken my heart it seemed that I might as well make others happy. My father, Lady Drummond, my cousin; they have been so good to me always."
"But you were engaged to your cousin, weren't you, when Godfrey left?"
Little Mrs. Rooke's dark eyes looked black in her frightened face.
"You were engaged to your cousin, were you not, just as you are to-day?"
"I never accepted my cousin till—till Captain Langrishe had gone. It was understood that when we grew up we should marry to please our parents if we saw nothing against it. No one would have wanted to bind me if I did not wish to be bound."
Mrs. Rooke flung up her hands with a dramatic gesture.
"Heaven forgive me, my poor Nelly, for it was I who sent Godfrey from you! I told him you were engaged to your cousin. I had been told so explicitly by Lady Drummond herself. How could I doubt that it was true?"
Nelly turned a white face towards her. Oddly enough, in spite of its pallor the face had a certain illumination.
"So he went away because of that. Only that stood between us. Do you think I am going to let that—a lie, a mistake—stand between us? I am going to break off my engagement, even at the eleventh hour."
The daughter of the Drummonds had found the courage of her race. She stared uncomprehendingly at the alarm in Mrs. Rooke's expression.
"Don't do anything rash," the little woman said, in a frightened voice. "Supposing Godfrey did not come back. Supposing——"
Again there sounded in the distance the voices of the vendors of evening papers. The voices came nearer, one, two, half a dozen of them. They were all shouting together.
"There must be some news," Mrs. Rooke said under her breath.
"I shall come and see you to-morrow," Nelly said. "To-morrow I shall be free to come and go where I like. Do you know that I was bidding this room and you and Bunny a long good-bye five minutes ago? And if he never comes back—well, he will know I waited for him."
So preoccupied was she with her intention that she never noticed the newspaper boys and men fluttering their Stop Press editions like the wings of some birds of evil omen. As she sat in the hansom she drew the engagement ring off her finger and dropped it into her purse. Then she sighed, as though an immense burden had fallen from her.
As Nelly's hansom drew up at her own door another hansom was just turning away from it. She wondered with an impatient wonder who could have come. At the moment she could not have endured any hindrance between her and her project of telling her father that the engagement with Robin was to come to an end. She was not in the least afraid of what she had to do. The spirit of the Drummonds was thoroughly awake now.
Beyond her announcement to her father lay something vaguely painful which at the moment she did not consider. She would have to tell Lady Drummond and Robin, of course, and it would hurt them: they would be angry with her. She was going to make a scandal, a nine days' wonder. Her father would be grieved—angry, too, perhaps; but that could not be helped either.
And then—some resentment stirred in her heart against him for the first time during all the years in which they had been together. He had kept her in ignorance of her lover's peril. She was not a child that she should have been kept in ignorance. For the moment she had no tender excuses for him. If he had been candid with her, then all this trouble about Robin might have been spared, for she could never have promised herself as wife to another man while the one she loved was in daily and hourly danger.
She went into the house with a look of stern accusation on her young face. The dogs came shrieking down the stairs in vociferous welcome as usual, but she took no notice of them. Being old dogs and wise, they recognised a forbidding mood in her, and retired with deprecating wrigglings of their bodies.
She asked Pat if there were a visitor in the drawing-room.
"No, then, Miss, only the master. I can't make out what came over him at all to be comin' home in a hansom."
He was minded to tell her that the General was not looking himself, to give her an affectionate, intimate warning; but she passed him by. He stood watching her, holding the door open in his hand till she took the bend of the staircase that hid her from his sight.
"Bedad, the Dowager couldn't have done it better," he said, "shweepin' by me without a 'By your l'ave, Pat'; and the master, callin' me 'Murphy' to my face, what he's never done since he left the rig'ment. I wonder what's the matter with Pat. 'Twill be 'Corporal' next."
Nelly looked into the drawing-room. Her father was not there. She turned the handle of another door, the door of the General's own particular den, and going in she found him.
She never thought of asking herself how he came to be there at this hour of the day, he who lived by rule, the click of whose latch-key had sounded in the hall-door every evening at a quarter to seven as long as she could remember. The clock on the mantelpiece pointed to ten minutes to five.
The General was sitting in an armchair by the fireplace as though he had dropped into it on his entering the room. He was doing absolutely nothing, and that was an alarming thing enough, if but she had noticed it. A green evening paper was crumpled on his knee. If she had eyes to see it there was calamity in his attitude and his looks. But she had no eyes. She was too much absorbed in the thing she had to do.
"What, Nell!" he said, getting up as she entered. "We must have come home almost together. Where have you been, child?"
To his own ear his voice rang false, but she did not notice it. She did not meet his kiss. She did not see that he was looking at her with a fearful apprehension.
"What is the matter, Nell?" he stammered, noticing the alteration in her looks.
She came and stood beside him, seeming to tower above him.
"Father," she said, "I am not going to marry Robin. I want him to know at once."
"Not marry Robin!" This was something the General was unprepared for. "Not marry Robin! God bless my soul, Nell! It's very late for you to say such a thing—within three weeks of your wedding! And all the arrangements made! What will people say? What will the Dowager say? You can't play fast and loose with a man like that, Nell. Why, it will be the talk of the town."
He tried to work himself up to the old fretting and fuming, but there was no heartiness in it. Under the projecting eyebrows his old frostily-blue eyes had a scared look. But if he had been in such a passion as he had shown on a certain historic occasion when the regiment had nearly scattered before the approach of screaming Dervishes—a passion which had rallied the men and won Sir Denis his V.C.—it would have been all the same to Nelly.
"All that is perfectly immaterial," she said. "I am sorry for Robin and for Aunt Matilda. But all that will pass. I was mad to consent to the marriage. I am only glad that I came to my senses in time."
Was this Nelly?—this young, sure, inflexible creature! He stared at her in utter amazement.
"Supposing I were to say that you must go on now since you have gone so far, Nell?" he said, and felt at the same time the futility of the saying. "I never thought my girl would play so shabby a trick on Gerald's son. You know that people will laugh at Robin?"
"They won't. Robin is not the sort of person to be laughed at—at least, not for long. Besides, if it is any consolation to you, father, I may tell you that it will not hurt Robin much: Robin is not and never has been in love with me."
"What!" The General now was genuinely indignant. He had forgotten for the moment his other perturbation, whatever it might be. "What do you mean, Nell? Your cousin not in love with you! After all the years during which you have been meant for each other! Impossible, Nell! Robinmustbe in love with you."
"He is not; he never has been. That is my consolation, so far as he is concerned. Father, why did you keep from me the fact that Captain Langrishe was fighting the Wazees? Why did you?"
The General's colour deserted his cheeks once again.
"Poor Langrishe! What was the good of letting you know, Nell? You used to be—interested in the poor fellow."
"You shouldn't have kept it from me. I didn't read the newspapers, or I should have known. Do you know why I didn't read them? Because if I had I must have turned to the army news. I was fighting that as a temptation. I was trying to drive him from my mind. I kept away from his sister, although she had been kind to me; I went nowhere where I might hear his name. Then to-day I met her by accident. I went home with her. She told me—do you know what she told me?"
"What, Nell?"
"That her brother went away under the impression that I was engaged to Robin Drummond. Aunt Matilda had told her so and she had told him. So that is why he left me."
"I see," the General groaned. "A nice lot of trouble has come out of that scheme of your Aunt Matilda's for marrying you and Robin. I never would agree to it; I used to say: 'Let it be till the children are old enough to choose for themselves.' I wish I had taken a stronger stand. I only wished for your happiness, Nell. I always liked poor Langrishe, and felt I could trust him with even what I held dearest on earth. I did my best for you, Nell. If I kept his danger from you, it was only that I hoped to keep you from suffering like those other poor women."
She did not notice the haggardness of his face, nor the repetition of "Poor Langrishe." She was too much absorbed in getting to the root of things. She was determined to know everything.
"What happened when you went to Tilbury?"
Was this young inquisitor his Nell?
"I didn't see him. The boat had gone."
"And I thought you had offered me to him, and that he had rejected me! Oh, I know you would have done it in the most delicate way. There need not have been a word spoken. But it would have been the same thing in the end. I thought his love was not great enough to conquer his pride."
"My train broke down, Nell; I came ten minutes too late. I thought the hand of God was in it."
"It was a mere accident. God had nothing to do with it. I am only grateful that it has not ended worse. If I had married Robin and then discovered these things——"
"Don't say that you couldn't have forgiven me, Nell." The General took out a big white silk handkerchief and wiped his forehead with it. "Don't say that you couldn't have forgiven me! I meant it all for the best. My little Nell couldn't be hard with her old father."
She stooped suddenly and caught his hand to her lips. She noticed with a tender contraction of her heart that it was an old hand—knotted, with purple stains.
"I should be a brute if I could be angry with you," she said; and the tenseness of her face relaxed to its old softness.
"Ah, that's right, Nell—that's right. We couldn't do without each other. You've always your old father, you know—haven't you, dearie?—no matter what happens. I'll stand by you, Nell. I'll take you away. No one shall be angry with my Nell."
"You are too good to me," she said. "And I've been angry with you! What a wretch I was to be angry with you! On my way here I telegraphed to Robin to come this evening. I must get it over. You shall take me away if you will afterwards. I would stay and face it if it would do any good, but it wouldn't. After all, there is no great harm done. Robin's heart will not be broken."
"And afterwards, Nell?"
"Afterwards? Oh, you and I shall be together."
"Yes; we did very well when we were together. Listen, Nell." He put his arm about her. "I want you to be strong and brave. I came home to tell you, lest you should hear by accident. His poor sister did not know——"
The General's den looked out on the Square gardens. It was quite a long way across them to the road; yet through the quietness of the golden afternoon there came the shouting of the newsboys. It all flashed on Nelly with a blinding suddenness. To be sure, they had been calling the same thing while she stood with his sister and learned why he had left her, only she had not known.
"He is dead," she said, with an immense quietness. It was as though she had known it always.
"No; not dead, Nell—terribly wounded, but not dead. He is in English hands."
He stopped, shuddering. If he had been in those black devils' hands to be tortured to death! He had been only saved by a sudden rush of his men. Even his wounds would not have saved him from torture if God had not delivered him out of their hands.
"Show it to me."
All of a sudden she saw the newspaper which had been lying crumpled on his knee. That had contained the news all the time while they had been talking about things that mattered so much less.
He did not try to keep it from her. He turned over the paper and found the page of it which had the latest news. There it was, with its staring headlines. She seemed to have seen it just so, in another life.
She read it through to the end. It had been an ambush. The small detachment of troops had been led by the guide into the midst of a large body of the enemy—it had been surrounded. Captain Langrishe had fallen, as had a young lieutenant. The men had stood shoulder to shoulder, fighting desperately. By the most desperate courage they had rescued the bodies of their officers, which were being carried by the tribesmen into one of their towers among the hills. They had fought their way back with the bodies strapped to their horses. Lieutenant Foley proved to be dead. He had been hacked and hewed with knives. Captain Langrishe had been more fortunate; the life was still in him when the last intelligence had been sent down. There was very little hope of his recovery.