Nelly neither cried out nor fainted. When she had finished the reading she laid down the paper quietly. Her father watched her in mingled terror and relief. She was seeing it all—the rocky gorge with the inaccessible hills on either side, filled in with scrub and low trees; at the little neck of the gorge the dreadful tower; the small body of Britishers fighting their way step by step backward; the dazzling blue sky over all. Was Heaven empty that such things happened? She remembered in a kind of daze that she had been at a garden-party that very afternoon. She had worn for the first time her white silk frock with the roses on it and she had seen in many eyes how well it became her. That had happened in another world. A great gulf stretched between even the events of the afternoon and this time—this time, in which she knew that Godfrey Langrishe was dead or dying.
"I wish he might have known," she said quietly, "that after all I was not engaged to Robin."
Robin Drummond had heard from his cousin's own lips his dismissal. Her father would have spared her, but Nelly would not hear of that and he let her have her way.
She told Robin everything in a dull, unmodulated voice, with a dead-tiredness in it which revealed her unhappiness more eloquently than words could have done. She stood by the mantel-shelf, holding one hand over her eyes while she told him. When she had finished there was a momentary silence.
"You are not angry with me?" she asked, turning about and looking at him with eyes of suffering.
"My poor child! Could I have the heart to be angry with you?"
"Ah! that is right. You were always kind, Robin. I shouldn't have liked you to be unkind now. You must win me your mother's forgiveness."
"She will come round in time."
He had an idea his mother would take it badly. But, of course, she would have to come round. The whole bad business had been her fault in a way; and if she was hard on Nelly, he felt like telling her so.
"I am glad to think I have done you no great harm, Robin. Indeed, the harm would have been in marrying you. I have realised for some time that I was not essential to your happiness."
He opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again. He was not a diplomatist.
"I am very fond of you, Nelly," he said, after a pause.
"Yes, I know you are. So am I fond of you. It was not enough, of course; I ought to have known better."
"And I. I can't forgive myself, Nell, for having been in a way the cause of the mischief. Take courage, dear. All may yet be well. God knows what happiness is in store for you."
"God knows," she echoed; but there was no assurance in her tone.
The General, lying in wait for him, drew him into his own den. He put his hand on Robin's shoulder, leaning heavily on it, like an old man with his son.
"I'm sorry for this, so far as it concerns you, my lad," he said. "But my great trouble is for my girl. She is taking it too quietly. I don't know what is happening—inside. One knows so little about women—how they take those things. She ought to have a woman with her."
"His sister. She is a good little woman, and she adores him. She would be good to Nelly."
"You can't go tearing off to people's houses at this hour of the evening"—it was nine o'clock—"and asking them to come with you. To be sure, the sister knows. I don't want Nell talked about."
"Nor I. Let him come home well and then they can talk of the nine-days' happy wonder. I'm going to the sister. If she fails, there is Miss Gray."
The General snatched at the idea.
"She came to see Nell the other day and I liked her. I began with a prejudice—I've no liking for women who take up the trade of politics. Writing books, too! I'm glad my Nell doesn't write books. I shouldn't like to see her name stuck up in the papers. But this Miss Gray of yours. She overcame my prejudice. She looks clean, my lad, clean outside and within. Nell's fond of her. The dogs pawed her as if they had known her all her life. I trust a dog's judgment. She didn't mind it either, though she was fresh as a daisy. What do you propose to do? To ask her to come round and see Nell to-morrow, if the sister fails? You can't very well ask her to come to-night."
He looked wistfully at Robin.
"Miss Gray often works late," the other said, consulting his watch. "If she is at home, why shouldn't she come back with me? She may be out, of course; the world has begun to run after her. She is not much attracted by the world, but she gives kindness for what she takes to be kindness. She is not conventional. If she feels she is wanted she won't mind coming in at ten o'clock."
"I believe Nell would talk to her," the father said eagerly. "If Nell would talk to someone my mind would be at rest. Poor Nell! The purpose of my life was to keep her from pain and sorrow."
He went back to his room shaking his old head, and Robin Drummond went out into the night. He drove first to Mrs. Rooke's house, and found the mistress absent. She had gone off to an old mother who had to be consoled.
Fortunately it was not far to Mary Gray's little flat, not more than ten minutes' hansom drive. He told the driver to wait while he ran up the stone steps. To his relief, when he had rung the bell at the white door he heard someone stirring within. Mary herself opened the door.
"Forgive my coming at this hour," he began apologetically. Even as he spoke he remembered that he had had a chance of seeing those little rooms that held Mary and had relinquished it on that bygone Good Friday. He looked enviously beyond Mary herself to the glimpse of lamplit room. He could see a white wall with pictures on its panels, a bit of a dwarf bookcase, a chair drawn to a table heaped with books, a green-shaded reading-lamp. Against the lighted background Mary's cloudy hair stood out illumined.
"What is it?"
"It is my cousin. She is in great trouble. I will explain to you as we go along. Can you come to her? Her father is anxious about her."
She was a woman in ten thousand. She asked no questions, although it occurred to him that it must seem odd to her that she should be summoned, that Nelly should be in great trouble, seeing that he and her father were well.
"Shall I stay the night?" she asked. "Your cousin was so very anxious that I should come and stay with her. She showed me the room I should have—next to hers. Sir Denis seconded the invitation warmly. I said that I would try to come."
"It will be the best thing in the world. How long will you take to get ready? I have a hansom at the door."
"Five minutes."
She came down the stairs in four and a half minutes. Robin had been expeditious; it yet wanted twenty minutes to ten by his watch.
He helped her into the hansom, got in himself and placed her little bag at their feet. The hansom turned up the hill. She waited for him to speak.
"Nelly has found out that she made a mistake," he said quietly. "Her heart was not given to me, but to a Captain Langrishe of her father's old regiment. News has come that he has been badly wounded, so badly that in all probability he is dead by this time. He had exchanged into an Indian regiment, and almost as soon as he got out he was sent into the hills on the business of this wretched little war. Those conquests of ours, what they cost us! Why should we have all those thousands of miles of frontiers to defend? Why can't we stay at home and let the territories be for their own people?"
She smiled quietly to herself in the corner of the cab. The sudden excursion into politics was so characteristic of him.
The wind of the summer night came cool and friendly in their faces. The blue heaven was studded with stars. A little half-moon hung above the quiet shadows of the square through which they were passing. For the stillness they might have been miles away from London.
"What a Don Quixote you are!" she said. "I believe you would cede India if you had your way."
"I believe I should. Don't you wonder at me, Miss Gray? My forbears devoted their existence chiefly to extending the boundaries of the British Empire. Am I not their degenerate descendant?"
"Oh, you're a fighting man in other ways. You don't mind facing a hostile audience and saying unpalatable things to them. Mr. Ilbert says you'll have to fight for your seat at the next election."
"I wouldn't be bothered with a seat I hadn't to fight for. All the same, I'm obliged to Ilbert for his interest in my affairs. Do you know that he referred to me as a Little Englander the other night, as though there were only one way of loving one's country and that to rob other people of theirs?"
His tone was an offended one. The name of Ilbert seemed to have power to irritate him. He resented the idea that Ilbert had talked to Mary of him, disparaged him; he supposed she saw Ilbert often. The idea was exceedingly distasteful to him.
"He has the highest opinion of your honesty and capacity, your patriotism too," Mary said.
He did not want Ilbert's commendation; he hated that Mary should quote his opinions. He lay back in the hansom, staring before him, and his expression was one of unmixed gloom. Even her neighbourhood had no power to cheer him, although at first he had had a sensation of delight in her nearness to him, the perfume as of flowers that hung about her, the soft folds of her dress which he had touched in the darkness.
They were driving along Sherwood Square now. Across the square itself Robin could see the lit windows of the General's house. Their time together was short, he thought; and perhaps the same thought occurred to Mary, for she touched his sleeve with a gesture of sympathy.
"Will you let me say," she said, "how sorry I am for the pain and trouble this must be to you?"
"You mean, because Nelly has—has chucked me?"
"Yes; I mean that."
For a moment he looked down in silence. He wondered if he had any right to tell the truth. Would it not be like a disparagement of Nelly if he were to confess that he had never loved her? A memory floated into his mind. It was of Lady Agatha Chenevix and something she had said to him once at a dinner-party.
"When I must be indiscreet——" she had begun. "Yes?" he had answered laughingly. "When was your ladyship ever anything but indiscreet? and who has made indiscretion adorable like you?" Her ladyship had bidden him hold his tongue with frank camaraderie, and had finished the speech. "When I am indiscreet, I am indiscreet to Mary. She is like a little well, into which one drops one's indiscretions and puts the lid on." "A very clear, transparent, honest well," he had said.
After the momentary pause he lifted his head. The rest of the world might think him heartbroken if it would; he wanted Mary to know the truth.
"As a matter of fact, Miss Gray," he said, "Nelly has not broken my heart. She had always been very dear to me, like a dear little sister. There was a time when I felt that it would be quite easy to fall in with my mother's plan and marry Nelly. But I had come to the conclusion that my feeling for her was not enough for marriage, before that time in the spring when my mother intimated to me that Nelly was ready to fulfil her engagement. I never considered it an engagement. I was actually about to make things clear when that intimation was given to me. Then, I was led to believe that Nelly had taken it as binding. What could I do only go on? If Nelly cared for me—I confess that I ought to have known it to be an unlikely thing—then my great concern in life was that Nelly should not suffer. It was all a pretty bad mistake, but I am glad it has gone no further."
He heard something like a sigh, so faint that he could be hardly sure he heard it. It was, in reality, Mary's thanksgiving and great relief; a burden which had lain at her heart for months past taking wings to itself and flying away. She had not acknowledged to herself that cold doubt about Robin Drummond, who had seemed to come so near to her, while all the time he belonged to another woman. She had pushed away the doubt with loyal refusal to hear it; but it had been there all the time. Now it was gone for ever. There was no more need of excuses or explanations to her own heart.
"Thank you for telling me," she said.
They were at the house-door and the hansom had pulled up. They went up the steps between the couchant lions and before they could knock Pat had opened the door, as though he had been listening for them.
"Miss Nelly is in the drawing-room, sir," he said in his privileged Irish way; "but the master has just gone into the study."
They went up to the drawing-room. Nelly was sitting in a chair by the open window as Robin had left her, tearless, her unemployed hands lying in her lap. The circle of dogs about her watching her with anxious eyes would have been humorous in other circumstances. The lamps were lit behind her, but there was no light on her face, except the dying light in the pale western sky.
"I have brought you a visitor, Nelly," Robin said.
She looked up indifferently. Then something of interest stirred in her face.
"You have heard what has happened?" she said in a half-whisper.
Mary knelt down beside her and put her arms round the little frozen figure.
"Why, you are cold!" she said. "Come away from the window. I am going to ask for a fire, and then you will talk to me about it."
Robin Drummond left them together, and went down to tell Pat to light the fire in the drawing-room, because Miss Nelly was cold.
Mary Gray's loving, capable care and sympathy carried Nelly through the worst days of her trouble. There were times when Mary had to hold the girl's hands, to fight with all her might against the acute suffering which menaced for a time her sanity and her health. The horrors into which Nelly fell when she thought upon the things which happened in such wars as this with cruel and cunning savages, were the worst things to fight. There were hours in which all the fears of the world seemed to be let loose on the unhappy child, when it seemed impossible to vanquish those powers of darkness with one poor woman's love and prayers. During these days Mary Gray hardly left Nelly's side. Fortunately she had ceased to direct the Bureau, and another capable, much more common-place, young woman had taken up her task. The official appointment was on its way, but had not yet arrived. So she was free to devote herself to her friend.
The doctor whom Sir Denis called in could do little for the patient except prescribe sleeping draughts to be taken at need. He understood that the girl had had a shock. He suggested a change, but Nelly would not hear of that. She must stay on in London where the first news would come. So stay on they did, through the torrid heats of July, when the dust was in arid drifts on the Square green gardens and blew in through the open windows, powdering everything with its faint grey.
"This young lady is better than my prescriptions," the doctor said handsomely of Mary Gray. And added, "Indeed, what can we do for sorrow except give the body a sedative?"
"If she could face her trouble clear-eyed," Mary said, "I should feel glad in spite of everything. It is these mists and shadows in her mind that it is so hard to fight against."
After a little while they were left pretty well to themselves in Sherwood Square. The Dowager was angry with Nelly as her son had anticipated; and, after a scene with Robin which prevented a scene with Sir Denis, she had gone off over the sea to the Court. Everybody went out of town: even Sherwood Square emptied itself away to the sea and the foreign spas. Only Robin Drummond stayed in town and came constantly. During the early days when Nelly kept the house and refused obstinately to go out of doors, he would leave Sir Denis in charge and carry Mary off for a walk in the Square.
The first sign of interest that Nelly showed in other things than her sorrow was when she indicated to her father the distant figures of Mary and Robin moving briskly along at the farther side of the Square.
"Do you notice anything there, papa?" she asked.
"What do you mean, my pet?"
Sir Denis was quite flurried at Nelly's suddenly coming out of her brooding silence.
"I mean Mary and Robin," she answered. "It has been borne in on me that that is why Robin was not in love with me. Poor Robin! He would have gone through it heroically. Never say again, papa, that he is not a true Drummond. And I should never have known if he could have helped it that I wasn't the only woman for him."
"You don't mean to say, Nell, that Robin is in love with Miss Gray?"
"That is it, papa."
The General turned very red. For a second his impulse was towards wrath; then he checked himself.
"To be sure, as you didn't want him, Nell, it would be the height of unreasonableness to expect poor Robin to be miserable for your sake. And Miss Gray is a fine creature—a fine, handsome, clever creature. Still, there is a great difference in their positions. It will be a blow to the Dowager."
"Mrs. Ilbert would not have minded."
"God bless my soul! You don't mean to say that Miss Gray could have had Ilbert?"
"She has refused him, but I don't think he has given up hope."
"God bless my soul! Why, the Ilberts are connected with half the peerage. We Drummonds are only country squires beside them. Such a handsome fellow too, and with such a reputation! Why should she refuse Ilbert? Is the girl mad?"
"Robin was first in the field. But I happen to know that Mary refused Mr. Ilbert while yet Robin and I were engaged. What do you think of that?"
"Madder and madder. I don't understand women, Nell. Such a fellow as Ilbert! Why, he might marry anybody. We must make it easy for them with the Dowager, Nell—as easy as we can. We owe a good deal to Miss Gray."
"Oh, she'll come round—she'll have to come round."
"Do you suppose they understand each other, Nell?"
"I don't think Robin has spoken. He seems to be waiting for something. I have only noticed the last day or two. Before that I was absorbed in my troubles—such a selfish daughter, papa."
"My darling, we have all felt with you. It is so good to see you more yourself, Nell."
"Ah!" She turned away her head. "I have a feeling—there is no reason for it at all—that good news is coming. I felt it when I awoke this morning."
Meanwhile Robin Drummond and Mary had the Square almost to themselves, except for a gardener or two. All around the Square were shuttered and silent houses. It was the most torrid of early August days, and presently the heat drove them to a sheltered seat beneath a tree. In the mist of heat around them the bedding-plants, the scarlet geraniums, the lobelia and beet, made a vivid glare. Only in the forest trees, too dense for the dust to penetrate, were there shadow and relief.
They were talking of Nelly.
"She will be all right now," Mary said. "She has come out of the darkness. Even if she has his death to bear I think she will bear it. She reproaches herself for the pain she has caused her father."
"Poor Uncle Denis! He lives in terror about Nelly. She is all he has had since her mother died."
"I think he may rest easy now. Nelly is not going to die—not even of grief. Now that she is better, Sir Robin, why don't you go away? I know your yacht is waiting for you, and you have got the London look; you want change."
"I shan't go till there is news one way or another."
"There ought to be news soon. It is hard on you waiting from day to day."
"I don't feel it hard. Perhaps if the good news came I might induce them to come away with me on the yacht. It would be the best thing in the world for them. For the matter of that, why don't you go away? You also have the London look."
"Oh, I shall go gladly when I may. I am really longing to be off. Do you know what I shall hear when I go over there?—a sound I am longing for."
"What?"
"The rain. I close my eyes now and fancy I hear it pattering on the leaves. Oh, the music of it! One is never long without it at home. We've had six weeks without rain here. Can't you imagine the soft, delicious downpour of it? The music of the rain—my ears hunger for it."
"Oh, now indeed I see that it is time you went. You will probably have enough of the rain."
He spoke gloomily, and she laughed.
"It will probably rain all the time I am there. And I shall be able to forgive it because of its first delicious moments."
"What are you going to do?" He asked the question almost roughly.
"I am going to be with my father, in a mean, little two-storied house of six rooms. At least, it is mean outwardly; but no house could be mean inside where he lived and spread his light. He will have to be at his work every day till he gets his fortnight's holiday in September. If I get away in, say, a fortnight's time, I shall help my stepmother about the house while he is at business all day; I shall have a thousand things to do. They have only one servant; and my stepmother and sisters do the greater part of the work. They would treat me like a queen when I go over there, if I would let them; but I never do let them. I love dusting, and cooking, and mending, and helping the little ones with their lessons. Then as soon as my father is free I am going to carry them off to a hotel I know between the mountains and the sea. It is a big, old-fashioned house, and there is a lovely garden, full of roses and lilies, and phlox and stocks and hollyhocks and mignonette and sweet peas. I stayed there once with dear Lady Anne. We shall all have a lovely time. There is a trout-stream at the end of the garden and the trout sail by in it. There are hundreds of little streams running down from the mountains. They make golden pools in the road and they hang like gold and silver fringes from the crags that edge the road."
There had been a deliberation in what she told him about the little house. But she was mistaken if she thought to surprise him. He was picturing her there at her domestic duties and thinking that no small or mean surroundings could dwarf her soul's stature. Hadn't the hideous official room that held her been heaven to him?—the singing of the naked gas-jets the music of the spheres?
"It will be a great change from London," he said.
"I am going back to the old days. I have refused to see any of my fine new friends. The Ilberts will be staying over there with the Lord Lieutenant at the same time. I have forbidden Mr. Ilbert to call."
Again his mood changed to one of unreasonable irritation. What had she to do with the Ilberts, or they with her?
"If I find myself over there I shall certainly call," he said, with an air of doggedness.
"Oh, very well, then, you shall," she said merrily. "Youwon't embarrass us, not even if we have to ask you to dinner."
An hour or two later the good news came, brought by Mrs. Rooke in person. Captain Langrishe could hardly yet be considered out of danger, but he lived; he had been sent down in a litter to the nearest station, where there were appliances and comforts and white people all about him, outside the sights and sounds of war, beyond the danger of recapture by the enemy.
Nelly bore the better news well: she had been prepared for it, she said. Seeing her so quiet, Mrs. Rooke brought out a scrap of blue ribbon cut through and blood-stained. It was in a little case which had been hacked through by knives. It had been sent home to her at the first when there was no hope, when, practically, Godfrey Langrishe was a dead man.
"It is not mine, my dear," she said to Nelly, "and I think it must be yours. I did not dare show it to you before."
Nelly went pale and red. Yes, it was her ribbon, which had fallen from her hair that morning more than a year ago when Captain Langrishe had ridden by with the regiment and the wind had carried off her ribbon.
She received it with a trembling eagerness.
"Yes, it is mine," she said. "I knew he had it. He showed it to me before he went away."
"How furious Godfrey will be when he misses it!" Mrs. Rooke said. "Somebody will be having a bad quarter of an hour. And now, Nelly, when are you going to be well enough to come to see my mother? She longs to know you. She is the dearest old soul. She wanted me to bring you to her while yet we were in suspense. But I waited for news, one way or another."
"I should love to go," Nelly said.
"She has a room in a gable fitted up for you; the windows open on roses. The place is full of sweet sounds and sights. All through this trouble her thoughts have been with you. Will you come?"
"If papa can spare me."
"Then I shall ask him, and we can go down on Saturday. Won't he come for the day? When you know my mother I am going to leave you there with her. Poor Cyprian is off to Marienbad and I must go with him. He's dreadfully afraid of losing his figure. A fat lawyer, he says, is the one unpardonable thing. Will you look after my mother?"
The General was only too glad to give his consent to the plan which had brought the colour to Nelly's cheek and the light to her eye. After leaving Nelly in Sussex he and Robin would go down to Southampton, get out the yacht and cruise about the coast till Nelly felt inclined for a longer run.
So Mary Gray was free to go. She went out in the afternoon, leaving Robin to look after his cousin. The General had gone off to the club with a lighter heart than he had known for many a month. Robin had suggested a drive, but Nelly would not hear of that. She was going to save up her pleasure, she said, for Sussex and Saturday. She consented to walk in the Square, where she had not been for quite a long time. He noticed that she looked delicate and languid and his manner to her was very tender. In fact, a new under-gardener in the Square, who was very susceptible to romance, put quite an erroneous interpretation on Robin's manner to his cousin, and hovered in their vicinity with eager curiosity till he was pulled up sharply by one of his superior officers.
"So we are all going to scatter, Nell," Drummond said, half regretfully.
She glanced at him.
"Poor Robin! It was too bad, keeping you in town."
"I haven't minded it at all, I assure you, Nell. Indeed, I couldn't have gone happily while you were in suspense."
"Robin," she said suddenly, "what are you waiting for?"
He started. "Waiting for?" he repeated. "What do you mean, Nell?"
"You're not going to let Mary go without speaking to her?" Under her light shawl her hand felt for and held the locket which contained the blood-stained blue ribbon. "Haven't you waited long enough? I believe she would wait an eternity for you, but don't try her. Speak now."
"My dear Nell," he stammered, "it is only a fortnight or so from the day that should have been our wedding day."
"I was thinking as much. What have you had in your mind? Some foolish Quixotic notion. What were you waiting for?"
"To tell the truth, Nell, till you should be happy."
"Don't take the chances of letting her go away without telling her. Do you think I haven't known that you were in love with her all the time? Why, that first day I saw her I said to myself in amazement, 'Where were his eyes that he could have chosen you before her?'"
"Nelly, how do I know that she will look at me?"
"She will never look at anyone else. Speak now, if only in fairness to the men who might be in love with her, who are in love with her and may have false hopes."
"She won't look at me, Nell."
"She has sent Mr. Ilbert about his business, but he will not let her be. He says that so long as she is not anybody else's she may yet be his. I didn't want to betray him, but I must make you understand."
Poor Ilbert! For a moment Drummond's mind was filled with a lordly compassion towards him. Ilbert rejected! And for him! To be sure, he knew Mary cared for him. She was not the girl to have admitted him to the intimacy of last winter unless she cared. She had borne with him exquisitely. She had even taken her successful rival to her breast. He had made her suffer, the magnanimous woman.
Suddenly he took fire. He had been a slow, dull fellow, he said to himself, and quaked at the thought that Ilbert might have robbed him of his jewel. Now, he felt as though he must follow her, and make her his without even the possible mischances of a few hours of absence.
"She comes back to dinner?" he asked.
"She comes back to tea," his cousin answered, "and you have made me tired, Robin. I am going to rest till tea-time."
They went back to the house and Nelly left him in the drawing-room while she went away to her own room. He knew that she was giving him his opportunity and was grateful for it. How could he have been so mad as to think of letting Mary go away with nothing settled between them?
He walked up and down restlessly, while the dogs watched him in amazement from their cushions. It was a topsy-turvy world in which the dogs found themselves of late. They had almost reached the point of being surprised at nothing. It was lucky the carpet was so faded and shabby, for of late the General had worn a path in it with his restless movements; and now here was his nephew behaving as though he were an untamed creature in a cage and not a sober, serious legislator.
At last he heard her knock, and her light foot ascending the stairs. She looked surprised to find him alone and asked rather anxiously for Nelly.
"You didn't let her get over-tired?" she asked, apprehensively.
"No; we walked very little. She said she would rest till tea-time. Well, have you packed?"
"I have put my things together. I am going to ask to be allowed off to-morrow. I shall sleep at the flat to-morrow night, if they can spare me, and be off the next morning."
"You are glad to be free?"
"Very glad. I was also glad to stay. And you?"
He rose up to his awkward length from the chair into which he had dropped on hearing her knock and went close to her.
"I shall never be free again in this world," he said. And then, with a change of tone: "Do you suppose I am going to let you go over there a free woman?"
He drew her almost roughly to him.
"I have always loved you," he said.
"And I," she answered, "I have loved you since I was sixteen."
"My one woman!" he cried in a rapture.
The time went peacefully with Nelly and the mother in the little house among the Sussex woods. And presently, since Nelly showed no indication of wishing to join them, and could not be spared indeed, and since Robin was plainly ill at ease yachting up and down the coast, the General declared his intention of going off to a grouse-moor in Scotland, rented by an old friend, over which he had shot year after year for many years back.
On hearing of this sudden change of plans Robin expressed a polite regretfulness, but the General looked at him with twinkling eyes—he and Robin had come to be on the best of terms of late—and bade him be off to Dublin without any confounded hypocrisy about it.
"You've been wishing me anywhere, my lad, this last week or two except aboard theSeagull," he said. "Not but what you've borne with me—oh, yes, you've borne with me; a lad of my own couldn't have done more: and now you've earned your reward."
So the General went off northward for what was left of the grouse season. Later, he was to go into Sussex for the partridge and pheasant shooting, not so far from where Nelly was living in a state of blissful peace, with excellent reports of Langrishe's recovery coming by every mail.
And be sure, theSeagullspread her white wings and flew, as fast as wind and wave could carry her, across the Irish Sea.
Sir Robin presented himself unannounced at the little house in Wistaria Terrace, where the youngest but two of the Miss Grays opened the door half-way to him, and was visibly alarmed at the sound of his title.
The little house smelt of cookery, perhaps of washing, although doors and windows were open. But little Robin Drummond cared for that. Beyond the demure child who had admitted him he caught sight of Mary sitting on the shabby little grass-plot, in a wicker-chair, with a Japanese umbrella over her head. And roses could not have been sweeter than the atmosphere.
The simplicity which belonged to his character came out in his dealings with Mary's family. Walter Gray came home to find his daughter's grand lover stretching his long figure on the grass at her feet, while the smaller Grays, their shyness quite departed, rolled and tumbled over him as confident as puppies. To be sure Walter Gray, with his disbelief in distinctions of rank as otherwise than accidental, was not unduly elated by the fine company in which he found himself. He looked hard and long at Robin Drummond as hand met hand. Then a bright look of reassurance came over his face. He could trust even Mary to the owner of those eyes.
They discovered a deal in common later on as they walked, with Mary for a third, in the long twilight and early moonlight. Walter Gray imparted his secret thoughts as to a spiritual brother. His dreams, his aspirations, his Utopia of a world as he would have made it, he laid bare to Robin Drummond in his slow, easy talk, with a hand through his arm.
"He was born to be a great man," Robin Drummond said to Mary later, in a generous enthusiasm, "and he shall not miss his vocation. He must have leisure and ease. When we are married he shall have a corner of the Court to himself, and he shall put his dreams into black and white. I know the room; it looks into an elm-tree, and the owner of the room has the key to the birds' secrets. There is an oriel window, and in the room is a little old organ, yet wonderfully sweet. You shall play to him when he lacks inspiration."
"He could do better with the young ones about him and the mother grumbling placidly in his ear," said Mary.
"Then they shall have the Cottage. It is within the walls and looks to the mountains. It is a roomy old place and has a big overgrown garden of its own."
"I wonder if he will take it from you?"
"He will have to," said the lover.
Then they went back to supper: and he was introduced to Gerald, the young bank-clerk, whose mind was not yet cured of the fever for the sea, who had a roving eye in his smooth young face; and Marcella, the eldest one of the young Grays, who was a typist in the same employment as her father. And though at first the young people were shy of Mary's lover they were quickly at home with him. The fine breeding of Walter Gray had passed on, to some extent, to every one of his children.
"It will be my privilege to look after them," Robin Drummond said to Mary. "As for the lad, he will never be a financier. He is too old for the Navy, but why should he not learn the seaman's trade on the yacht? He has a pining look which I don't altogether like."
"It will be said that you are marrying all my people," Mary said uneasily.
"We shall not hear it said," her lover answered placidly. "We shall be out of hearing of that sort of thing."
When their friendship had the ratification of weeks upon it he broached the matter of the cottage to Walter Gray. They were walking together as they usually did of evenings; and Walter Gray walked with a stick, leaning on him, with the other hand thrust through his arm. He had a groping way of walking, which Drummond had noticed and ascribed to his abstraction from the things about him. After Drummond had unfolded his plans there was a silence, during which he watched Walter Gray curiously. Was he going to refuse, as Mary had suggested?
They were near a lamp on the suburban road which stood up in the boughs of a lime, making a green flame of the tree. Walter Gray pulled up suddenly and lifted his eyes to the light.
"Do you notice anything?" he asked.
Drummond peered down into the eyes. Yes, there was a slight film upon the pupil of one.
"Cataract," said Walter Gray cheerfully. "I shall never be fit for my work any more, even if an operation should be successful. Marcella knows. Good girl, she has kept her own counsel. I have not been working for some time at the watches. Mr. Gordon, kind soul, continues my salary. I have been learning type-writing against the days that are to come. I confess I have a desire to write a book. I have saved nothing, Sir Robin Drummond. How is it possible, with fifty shillings a week and eight children? I have no pride about accepting your offer. If my scrip is empty and yours is full I don't object to receiving from a fellow-pilgrim what I should give if our cases were reversed."
"Ah! that is right," said Robin Drummond. "As for cataract, in its early stages it is easily curable. Sir George Osborne——"
"I will do whatever you and Mary wish. But I anticipate blindness. I shall not mind very much if I have the light within. There will be the book to solace my age; and after a time I shall not be so helpless."
The Dowager came round after all sooner than was expected. The reconciliation was hastened by a letter she received from Mrs. Ilbert congratulating her on her prospective daughter-in-law. "My poor Maurice," she wrote. "I don't mind telling you, dear Lady Drummond, that Maurice was head-over-ears in love with your charming and distinguished daughter-in-law that is to be. The boy takes it very well, says that the better man has won, which is exactly like Maurice. Since your son has chosen a political career I congratulate him on having such a woman as Miss Gray by his side. She will be a force in political life, so says Maurice. And she will be the noblest inspiration. Though I am grieved that she is to be your son's Egeria and not mine yet I offer you and Sir Robin my heartiest congratulations. I may add that I also congratulate the party to which your son belongs."
Lady Drummond had rubbed her eyes over this letter. Congratulateher—was it possible?—on being the prospective mother-in-law of Mary Gray, the daughter of a man who worked for his living at repairing the insides of watches! She, the widow of a hero, a rich woman of social importance! Congratulateherand Robin and Robin's party! And not one word of congratulating Mary Gray! Was Caroline Ilbert mad?
However, the thing impressed her. It worked by slow degrees into her mind. She had listened often to such foolish heresies as that which declared brains more important than rank or wealth. In a general way she had not dissented. Brains were very important. Gerald had thought a good deal of brains. If he had lived he had meditated a book on Napoleon's Wars. She had often met writing and painting and musical people in her friends' drawing-rooms. They had not appealed to her nor she to them. But she had grown accustomed to their presence there and to meeting them on an equality to which in her heart she had never subscribed.
However, she had the wisdom to see that there was no use in holding out against her son and to console herself with the idea that Mary was going to be a personage, even apart from the incredible social promotion of marrying Sir Robin Drummond. So she actually reached the point of coming in person to Wistaria Terrace to make a formal recantation of her opposition to the marriage, and to take Mary to her imposing, black-bugled breast.
To be sure the little house had almost driven her back from its threshold. She filled the small shabby hall, she fell over the brushes left by the general servant who had been scrubbing the oilcloth, not expecting her ladyship; she sat uncomfortably on the green rep chairs of the drawing-room staring at a Berlin-wool banner-screen which represented a poodle with beads for his eyes, at the silver shavings in the grate, and the school drawings, finished by the nuns, of the younger Misses Gray. There were certain aspects of that drawing-room dear to Mrs. Gray which Mary had been too tenderhearted to try to alter.
There Mary had found her and had been moved in her innermost humorous sense; but she had been glad to be friends with Robin's mother, and so had done her best to advance the reconciliation.
Lady Drummond had a surprising proposal to make. It seemed that her friend, Lady Iniscrone, had placed at Miss Gray's disposal for the wedding the big house on the Mall formerly occupied by Lady Anne Hamilton. Lady Iniscrone wrote that they had heard of Miss Gray from a friend of Lady Agatha Chenevix, and had felt interested in her progress ever since. Of course, remembering the tie which had existed between Lord Iniscrone's aunt and Miss Gray, Lord and Lady Iniscrone could never be without interest in Miss Gray's progress.
Mary smiled a smile of fine humour over the reading of the letter. At first she was in the mood to refuse. But, being her father's daughter, and so endowed with that sense of the comedy as well as the tragedy of life which makes it easy to regard things and persons equably, she consented at last. She would have preferred to be married from Wistaria Terrace, but she had no difficulty in making a concession to Robin's mother.
So the wedding-breakfast was spread in the dining-room where she and Lady Anne used to have their meals together. Mrs. Gray held a terrified reception of the few fine folk whom Lady Drummond had declared it necessary to ask in the long drawing-room with the three windows where Lady Anne used to sit with little Fifine in her lap.
Mary had wished to be married from the poor little house where she had grown up, but on her wedding day she felt that she had done as Lady Anne would have wished. There was nothing changed in the house: the old-fashioned substantial furniture, the faded carpets and curtains, were just the same. There were one or two familiar faces among the servants. After all, Lord and Lady Iniscrone had used the house little, since Lord Iniscrone had developed a chest affection which kept him following the sun round the world for three-fourths of the year.
The marriage had taken place earlier at the big, dim old church behind which Wistaria Terrace hid itself away, and the few fine folk were not bidden to the wedding but to the reception. A great many glittering things were spread out on the tables in the long drawing-room. It was surprising how many well-wishers the new Lady Drummond seemed to have in the great world. Sir Denis Drummond had come over for the wedding, and Nelly was a bridesmaid, with Mary's type-writing sister, Marcella. She was a different Nelly from her of a couple of months earlier, her delicacy gone, her old pretty bloom come back, her eyes bright as of old.
"Mrs. Langrishe wants me to return to her!" she confided to Mary, "but we are going to Sherwood Square. You know,heis on his way home. In a week or two he will be on the sea. He must come to me, not find me there waiting for him. Do you know, Mary, that though his mother and sister have taken me to their hearts, he has not written me a line? You don't suppose, Mary, that he could be going to keep silencenow?"
"Of course not," said Mary. "Seeing what you have suffered for him——"
"He must never know that," Nelly said, with gentle dignity, "until he has spoken. What should I do, Mary, if he never spoke? But I think everyone would keep my secret, even his sister and mother. I asked them not to speak of me in their letters. I am in suspense, Mary."
"It will not be for long," the happy bride assured her. As though she were wiser than another in knowing the way of any particular man with any particular maid!
Some time in December Captain Langrishe came home.
Nelly knew the day and the hour that he was expected, but she was as terrified of meeting him as though she had not had so much assurance of his love for her. She knew the events of the day as though she had been present at their happening. Cyprian Rooke's brother, a young, distinguished doctor well on his way to Harley Street although only a few discriminating people had found him out, had gone down to Southampton with Mrs. Rooke and her mother to meet the invalid, who even yet must bear traces of the terrible illness through which he had passed. Nelly could see it all, from the moment the big boat came into Southampton Docks till the arrival in London. Captain Langrishe was going down to his sister's cottage in Sussex. The mother and sister, who already claimed Nelly as their own, had been eager for her to be there on their arrival, or to come later. But Nelly was adamant.
"He must come to me," she said. "And I think the one thing I could not forgive is that anyone should interfere:anyone, even you two whom I dearly love. Promise me that you will not."
They had promised her. They were women of discretion; and they felt that now he was come back to them things might safely be left to take their own course. To be sure, as soon as he could he would go to Nelly as to his mate, naturally, joyfully. In an early letter, written before Nelly's embargo, Mrs. Rooke had told him that Nelly's engagement had been broken off. Later, she had conveyed the news that Robin Drummond had consoled himself with rapidity, and was to be married to the Miss Gray whose book on the conditions of women's labour among the poor had made such a stir, and not only in political circles. Godfrey Langrishe in his letters had not commented on these communications.
"Let Godfrey be!" said the sister, who knew him with the thoroughness of a nursery companion. "He will do his own wooing. He would not thank us for doing it for him."
All next day Nelly waited. After the very early morning she did not dare go outdoors lest he should come in her absence. The General went off to his club to be out of the way. At a quarter to seven he opened the door with his latch-key and came in, more than half-expecting to find an overcoat which did not belong to him in the hall. There was none; and he went on to the drawing-room with a vague sense of disappointment. Langrishe must have been and gone.
In the drawing-room he found Nelly alone.
"Well, papa," she said, as he came in, and offered no further remark.
"No one been, Nell?" he asked, with a little foreboding.
"No one."
"Ah, well, to be sure the boat must have arrived late. They may not have got back to town till to-day."
The next day passed in the same way, and the next day. The fourth day Nelly went out and did her Christmas shopping. She held her head high now, in a spirited way which hurt her father to see, for her face was very pale. That evening she put on a little scarlet silk dinner-jacket, in which the General declared that she looked every inch a soldier's daughter. But the brilliant colour only made her look paler by contrast.
On the fifth day the General, instead of going to his club, went to see Mrs. Rooke and fortunately found her at home. He hardly knew the little woman, but she was a friend of Nell's and had been good to her. Besides, he was so bent upon getting to the root of the business about Langrishe and Nell that he felt no embarrassment on the subject of his errand.
"My dear," he said, bowing over Mrs. Rooke's pretty hand—he had a charming way with women—"I have come without my daughter knowing. Perhaps she would never forgive me if she knew. Tell me: what is the mystery about your brother? Why has he not been to see us?"
"I am so glad you came to ask me, Sir Denis," Mrs. Rooke replied. "I was just about to go to Nelly. Godfrey is so obstinate. The doctors cannot say yet if he is going to be a cripple or not. His sword-arm was almost slashed through. Jerome Rooke, my brother-in-law, says it will be all right. On the other hand, Sir Simon Gresham shakes his head over it. Godfrey is to see him again in a few weeks' time. He is waiting for his verdict before he speaks to Nelly. My opinion is that if the verdict is adverse he will never speak at all."
"Why, God bless my soul, then!" shouted the General in his most thunderous voice, "he must speak before! he must speak before! Everything must be settled. They shall hear Sir Simon's verdict together."
Those people had been right who had called Sir Denis unworldly. Mrs. Rooke blinked her pretty eyes before his outburst.
"You know, of course, Sir Denis, that his profession will be closed to him in case his arm doesn't get well. Godfrey has always felt that he had too little to offer your daughter. But now—it will be a maimed life if the worst happens. Both my mother and I appreciated Godfrey's reasons. We could not say that he was not right. Poor Godfrey! I don't know what he will do if he loses his profession. You know he was devoted to his work."
"I know, ma'am." The old soldier's eye lit up with a sudden spark. "In any case, with the help of God, he will have Nell to comfort him. Your brother's address is——"
"You are going to him?"
"It seems the one thing to do. I've no pride about offering my girl where I know she is deeply loved."
"You are a trump, General!" Mrs. Rooke said, with sparkling eyes.
"Thank you, ma'am," the General answered, blushing like a school-boy. "I was never one to sit with folded hands. The Lord didn't make me like it. And I've asked His direction, ma'am; I've asked His direction humbly, and I hope humbly that He is granting it to me."
"Well, God speed you!" Mrs. Rooke said. "Godfrey will be good to Nelly, Sir Denis. He has always been so trustworthy. And he has had so many hard knocks. He deserves happiness in the end."
"He shall have it, with the help of God."
The General never made any forecast without the latter proviso, although that was often said only in the silence of his heart.
The railway journey, unlike the last made in the cause of Nelly's happiness, went without a hitch. The day was a beautiful, bright, sunshiny one, with clear skies overhead. The General had the carriage to himself, so that he was able to sit with both windows open as he liked it. He felt the winter air quite invigorating as the train rushed through the pale golden landscape. Robins were singing in the bare trees, which showed their every twig outlined delicately against the pale sky. The brown coppices and hedges by which the train hurried were bright with the scarlet of many berries.
The General, sitting up spare and erect—he had never lolled in his life, and held all such soft ways only suitable for ladies—contrasted the journey with the last; and took the radiant day like a good omen. He wished Nell could have been with him to have the roses blown in her cheeks by the delicious fresh wind. However, he was going to bring her home roses, pink roses; the white rose in his Nelly's cheek did not at all please him.
The little house was quite near the railway, a gabled, two-storied cottage with diamond-paned windows, and creepers and roses all over its walls. Even yet on the sheltered side there was a monthly rose or two on the leafless bushes. The house basked in the sun; and Mrs. Langrishe's red-and-white collie came to meet the General, wagging his tail with a friendly greeting.
The maid who opened the door smiled on him. She knew him for Miss Nelly's father; and Nelly had a way of making herself beloved by servants wherever she went, and not only because she was ready always to empty her little purse among them.
Mrs. Langrishe? Mrs. Langrishe was out, but was expected in to lunch. The Captain had just come in. Would Sir Denis see him?
Sir Denis would see the Captain. He followed the maid through the clean, orderly little house, every inch of it shining with the perfection of cleanliness, to the study at the back which opened on the garden. Captain Langrishe was sitting in a chair in a dejected attitude at the moment the General first caught sight of him. He sprang to his feet, turning red and pale when he saw who his visitor was.
"Well, my lad," the General said, taking the uninjured left hand in a cordial grip. "And how do you feel?"
Langrishe looked up at him with shy eyes.
"To tell the truth, Sir Denis, not very cheerful. I have been, in fact, keeping company with the blue devils pretty well since I came home. You know——"
"Yes, I know. We must hope for the best. But, if you can't carry a sword any longer, why it must mean that the Master of us all has another post for you. And now, why didn't you come to Sherwood Square?"
"I couldn't, with this in suspense," Langrishe stammered. "It is most kind of you to come to see me."
"My dear boy," the General put his hand on Langrishe's shoulder, "you must come, with this in suspense. Do you know that my girl has looked for you day after day?"
The young man flushed and stared at the General's kind face in bewilderment.
"I would rather die than cause her a minute's pain," he said, with quiet fervour.
"You have caused her a good many," the General said grimly. "Not willingly, I am sure of that, or I wouldn't be here. Haven't you heard how she suffered? Why, God bless my soul, I was afraid at one time that I might be going to lose her; and all through you, young man—all through you. Now I'll have no more shilly-shally. If Nell is fond of you and you are fond of Nell——"
"God knows how I love her!" Langrishe cried out, a glow of passion lighting up his worn, dark face. "But you don't understand, Sir Denis. I feel sure you don't understand. I have nothing in the world but my sword. My uncle, Sir Peter, gave me that. He gave me nothing else. Lady Langrishe, who nursed my uncle through an attack of the gout before he married her, has just presented him with an heir. I have no hopes from my uncle. If I lose my sword-arm I lose everything. I am likely to lose my sword-arm, Sir Denis."
"Whether you do or whether you do not is in the hands of God," the General said. "I don't think Nell will mind very much if your sword-arm is ineffectual or not. You've done enough for honour, anyhow. And I'm not going to betray any more of the child's secrets. You'd better come and hear them yourself. I'll tell you what: come on Christmas Day. Come to lunch and bring your bag with you. I daresay you won't want to cut your visit short?"
"You really mean it, Sir Denis?"
"Mean it, my lad? I've meant it for a long time. I've watched your career, Langrishe. I know pretty well all about you. You'd never give me credit for half the cunning I've got." The General rubbed his hands softly together and tried to look Machiavellian, failing ludicrously in the attempt. "There's no man I would more willingly trust my girl to. Why, I went after you to Tilbury when you were going out—to find out what you meant. I'll tell you about it."
For the moment the General forgot completely how he had man[oe]uvred in the second place to marry Nelly to Robin Drummond. In fact, he didn't remember about it till he was going home, and then, after a momentary shamefacedness about his unintentional disingenuousness, he decided, like a sensible man, that there was no use talking about that now.
Before that time, however, he had lunched with Mrs. Langrishe and her son after a talk with the latter. Now that he had succeeded in breaking down the lover's scruples, Godfrey Langrishe was only too anxious to fling himself into the next train and be carried off to his love. But the General would not have it so, though he was pleased at the young man's impatience.
"It wants but five days to Christmas Day," he said. "Come then. You can spare him, ma'am?" to Mrs. Langrishe.
"I have had to spare him for less happy things," the mother responded cheerfully.
There was no happier old soldier in all his Majesty's dominions than was Sir Denis Drummond on his homeward journey. In fact, he found himself several times displaying his gratification so evidently in his face that people smiled and looked significantly at each other. One lady whispered to another of the Christmas spirit.
It was by a stern effort of his will that he composed his face as he went up the stairs of his own house. He didn't deceive Pat, who had admitted him—for once the General had forgotten his latch-key. Pat reported to Bridget:
"Sorra wan o' me knows what's come to the master; he's gone up the stairs, and the heart of him that light that his foot is only touchin' the ground in an odd place."
"'Twill be somethin' good for Miss Nelly then," Bridget replied sagely.
The General schooled his face to wear an absurdly transparent look of gloom as he entered the drawing-room, but it was quite wasted on Nelly, who didn't look at him. She had a screen between her face and the fire as she sat in her fireside chair, and her little pale, hurt, haughty profile showed up clearly against the peacock's feathers of the screen.
The General had meant to have some play with Nell, but that forlorn look of hers went to his heart.
"I saw Langrishe to-day, Nell," he said. "He's coming for Christmas. We can put him up—hey?"
"Papa!"
He heard the incredulously joyful half-whisper, and he felt the pang that comes to all fathers at such a moment. Nell was not going to be only his ever again. He had been enough for her once on a time; yet, here she was, come to womanhood, breaking her heart for a stranger.
"If I were you, Nell," he said gently, "I'd be seeing about my wedding-clothes."
Captain Langrishe arrived only just in time for lunch on the Christmas Day. By the time he had been shown his room and had deposited his bag and returned to the drawing-room it was time for the luncheon-bell.
The meeting between Nelly and himself would have seemed to outsiders a cold one. To be sure, it took place under the General's eye. One might have supposed that the General would have absented himself from that lovers' meeting, but as a matter of fact he did not. Nelly's flush, the shy, burning look which Langrishe sent her from his dark eyes, were enough for the two principals. For the rest, all seemed to be of the most ordinary. No one could have supposed that for the two persons mainly concerned this was the most wonderful Christmas Day there ever had been since the beginning.
During lunch Langrishe talked mainly to the General. They had plenty to talk about. The General found it necessary to apologise to Nelly for "talking shop," an apology which was tendered in a whimsical spirit and received in the same. Pat, waiting at table, quite forgot that he was Sir Denis Drummond's manservant, listening to the stirring tale; and was once again Corporal Murphy, back in "th' ould rig'mint." In fact, he once almost forgot himself so far as to put in an eager comment, but fortunately pulled himself up in time. He mentioned afterwards to Bridget that the Captain's talk had nearly brought him to the point of "joinin'" again. "Only that I remembered that at last you'd consinted to my spakin' to Sir Denis I couldn't have held myself in, Bridget, my jewel," he said. "But the thought of gettin' kilt before ever I'd made you Mrs. Murphy was too much for me."
There was considerable excitement in the servants' hall over Captain Langrishe's presence. Pat, of course, knew all about him since he belonged to "th' ould rig'mint"; but it was through Bridget's feminine perspicacity that it broke on the amazed couple that it was for him Miss Nelly had been breaking her heart all the time.
"It 'ud do you good," said Pat, "to see the way she carries her little sojer's jacket, and the holly berries on her pretty head like a crown."
To be sure, the younger ones of the servants' hall were talking too, and they even approached Pat, who outside the duties of his office was not awesome, for the satisfaction of their curiosity.
"Just wait," said Pat oracularly, "an' ye'll see what ye'll see."
The speech meant nothing to Pat's own mind except that they would be all wiser later on. However, it went nearer the mark than he had intended.
The afternoon of Christmas Day was always the occasion for a Christmas Tree. Everyone in the house was remembered in the distribution of presents, even the dogs. The tree was set up in the servants' hall and the General had never omitted to distribute the presents himself in all the years they had been at Sherwood Square. He had mentioned the tree to Langrishe at lunch, apologising for asking his assistance at so homely an occasion. His eye twinkled as he said it; and rather to Nelly's bewilderment the young man blushed like a girl. Apparently he had heard of the Christmas Tree before, for he made no comment.
After lunch the lovers were a little while alone. Sir Denis had his secrecies about the Tree, gifts which had to go on at the last moment and to be placed there by himself. When he came back to the drawing-room he was aware from the looks of the young couple that everything had been satisfactorily arranged between them. He looked as cheerful himself as anyone could desire. While he put those last touches to the Tree he had been thinking how good it was that he was going to have his children to himself, no troublesome Dowager with her claims and exactions to come between them. For a long time to come, anyhow, Langrishe must be off active service; and they would all be together in the kind, spacious old house. And presently there would be Nelly's children. Please God he would live to deck the Tree for the delight of Nelly's children! It was the thought of the golden heads of the little lads and lasses yet to be dancing about the Tree that brought the dimness to his eyes, the look of happy dreams to his face.
The Tree was far from being a perfunctory, haphazard affair. Everything had been thought out and planned beforehand. The servants sat in a circle with eager, expectant faces. In front of them was a circle of dogs. The dogs' presents were not much of a novelty. A new collar for one, a new basket for another, a medal for the oldest of the dogs; the possible gifts were very soon exhausted, but they made hilarity, and the dogs barked as they received their gifts as though they understood and enjoyed it all, as no doubt they did.
There was a delightful sensation for the servants' hall when the gold watch which had been hanging near the top of the tree was handed down, and its inscription proved to be: "To Bridget Burke, on the occasion of her marriage to Patrick Murphy, with the affection and esteem of the master and Miss Nelly." The servants' hall broke into cheers. They had all known that there was something between Bridget and Pat, but the thing had hung fire so long that it might well have hung fire for ever. Pat's present was a ten-pound note for the honeymoon. Mr. and Mrs. Murphy were to have a fortnight together after their marriage in some seaside place, before settling down to their old duties. Sir Denis had made Pat the offer of a cottage in the country, but this Pat had refused, to his master's great relief. "Sure, what would you do without me?" he said. "I was thinking the same myself," responded the General.
The General had it in his mind that presently, when those children came, it might be necessary to give up Sherwood Square and live in the country for their sakes. A little place in Ireland now, the General thought, where there was always plenty of sport and good-fellowship. However, that might wait. But the thought was a sweet one, to be turned over in the old man's mind.
Sometimes the present took odd shapes. There was a young housemaid whose eyes were ringed about with black circles, eyes pale with much weeping. Her mother was ill among the Essex marshes, and the only chance for her life, said the doctors, was to get her away to a mild, bracing place for some months. Bournemouth would do very well. Bournemouth? Why, Heaven was much more accessible, it seemed, than Bournemouth for the poor mother of many children.
"Emma Brooks," said the General. "I wonder what's in this envelope for Emma Brooks."
Poor Emma came up, smiling a wavering smile that was on the edge of tears. She took the envelope, peered within it, and then cried out, "Oh, God bless you, sir!" It contained a letter of admission to a convalescent home at Bournemouth for six months, and the money for the expenses of getting there. "It's my mother's life, sir," cried Emma. "You shall go home to-morrow, my girl, and take her there," said the General. "I'll pay whatever is necessary."
At last the Tree was stripped of nearly everything but its candles and its bright dingle-dangles. There was a little basket at the foot of the Tree addressed to the General, which had been moving about in a peculiar way during the proceedings, and had been a source of much fascinated interest to the dogs. On its being opened a fat, waddling, brindle bull-dog puppy sidled himself out of a warm bed, and made straight for the General's feet. A puppy was something Sir Denis never could resist, and though there were already several dogs at Sherwood Square, all desperately jealous at the moment and being held in by the servants, he discovered that he had wanted a brindled bull-dog all his life.
"But what is that," he asked, "up there at the top of the Tree? Why, I was near forgetting it. Come here, Pat, you rascal, and hand it down to me. It's a pretty, shining thing for my Nelly, as bright as her eyes. Hand it down to me, Pat. I want to put it on her pretty neck."
The gift was a beautiful flexible snake of opals in gold, with diamonds for its eyes and its forked tongue, such a jewel as the heart of woman could not resist. The General himself clasped the ornament on Nelly's neck, where it lay emitting soft fires of milky rose and emerald.
There was a little pause. The Tree seemed to be finished. The women-folk began to clear their throats for theAdeste Fideleswith which the festivity concluded. Afterwards there was to be a glass of champagne all round.
The pause, however, was a device of the General's to give more effect to what was to follow. Captain Langrishe had been standing apart, his shy and modest air commending him the more to the women who thought him so handsome and the men who knew him for heroic; for had not Pat sung his praises? And to be sure, the women's hearts swelled at beholding a hero taking part in their own particular festivity of the year, a hero that is to say with his heroism brand-new upon him and from the outside world, so to speak. They were so accustomed to a hero for a master all the year round, that in that particular connection they hardly thought upon him.
"I believe, after all," said Sir Denis, as though he were talking to children—it was his way with women and children and dependents and animals—"I believe there's something for my girl which she'll think more of than anything else. It's hidden just down here at the foot of the Tree, and might very easily be over-looked if one didn't know beforehand that it was there. Captain Langrishe, will you give this little packet to my Nelly? It's your gift. She'll like it from you."
Langrishe came forward, looking radiantly happy and handsome, and wearing withal that look of becoming shyness. He extracted from somewhere near the roots of the Tree a white paper-covered packet, very tiny and tied with blue ribbon, which he undid with quick, nervous fingers. When he had laid the covering aside it revealed itself as a little ring-case. Opening it, he took out a beautiful old-fashioned ring, a large pearl surrounded by diamonds. He held it for a second between his fingers; and turning round he went to Nelly's side and taking her hand lifted it to his lips. Then he slipped the ring on to her third finger.
"My dear friends," said the General in an agitated voice, "I am very happy to announce to you the engagement of my daughter to Captain Langrishe."
At that the cheering broke out, led by Pat. As the dogs joined in, and even the brindle puppy added his shrill note, there was the happiest, merriest uproar lasting over several minutes, during which the General stood, looking proudly from the shy and smiling lovers to those dependants whom he had really made his friends.
And at last, when the pause came, the General spoke:
"And now, my friends," he said, "to show that God is not forgotten in our happiness and in our grateful hearts, we will sing theAdeste Fideles."