Mary Gray

K >> Katharine Tynan >> Mary Gray

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The General looked without seeing. He was thinking of Sayers' young
wife--to be sure, she was not so young now: she must be well over
thirty--an innocent-faced creature, sitting at the piano in a white
gown, singing, while he and poor Sayers paced the garden-walk in the
twilight. Poor woman! how was she to bear it? Those knives, too! The
General ground his teeth in fury.

Then suddenly another aspect of the matter flashed upon him, so suddenly
that he almost leaped in his seat. Why, the --th Madras Light
Infantry--he remembered now--it was Langrishe's regiment. How
extraordinary that he should not have remembered before! It was the
regiment sent in pursuit. Langrishe would fall in for some fighting--he
would find it ready-made to his hand. Those little frontier wars were
endless things once they started. And what toll they took of precious
human lives! In the last one more young fellows of the General's
acquaintance had been killed than he liked to remember. Such deaths,
too! Even the bravest soldier might well shrink from the fiendish things
the Wazees were capable of.

Suddenly the train pulled up abruptly, so abruptly that for a few
seconds it quivered as a horse will after being hard-driven. The General
went to the window and looked out. The houses had been left behind and
around them was a country of grey mud-flats with the river dragging its
sluggish length through it like a great serpent. There was a windmill on
the horizon, breaking the uniform grey of land and river and sky. The
sky was heavy with coming snow.

The guard of the train was standing on the line, beating his two arms
against his breast to warm them, and answering stolidly the impatient
questions of the passengers.

"Obstruction on the line in front, sir," he said, addressing nobody in
particular. "Waggon broke away from the siding and got on to our track.
There's a breakdown gang doing its level best to get us clear. How long?
Can't say, I'm sure, sir. Matter of half an hour, maybe."

The matter of half an hour became a matter of three-quarters, of an
hour, of an hour and a quarter. The train grumbled from end to end. Here
and there a particularly indignant passenger got out with the expressed
intention of walking to his destination. The officials bore it all
patiently. It was no fault of theirs. The breakdown gang, was doing its
best. It was a very lucky thing the runaway had been discovered just
before the train came round the corner. The train for the _Sutlej_ must
have had a narrow shave of meeting it.

The General sat in his compartment, which he had to himself, with his
watch in his hand. He was thinking of Sayers and Sayers' young wife.
Mordaunt was not married, but he had an old mother at home in England.
It was bad enough for the men, the brave fellows. But that women should
have to suffer such things through their love was intolerable.

The cold intensified. Philosophical passengers either wrapped themselves
in their rugs or got out and walked up and down, stamping their feet,
their hands in their coat-pockets. The General sat, quiet as a Fate,
staring at his watch. His thoughts were tending towards a certain
conclusion.

At first he had been merely impatient for the train to get on. As time
passed he became more impatient as it was borne in on him that he might
possibly be too late for the _Sutlej_. He might lose the chance of
looking in Langrishe's eyes and getting the lead he desired so that he
might say the words which would bring happiness to his Nelly. Still the
time went on. His moustache became little icicles. If anyone had been
looking at him they might have thought that he suggested being frozen
himself, so stiff and grey was he. They were within a few miles of
Tilbury. It was now half-past eleven. The _Sutlej_ was to sail at
twelve. Was there any chance of his being there in time? The guard had
said half an hour! If he had not, the General might have walked with
those other impatient passengers.

But if the General was a religious man--nay, rather because he was a
religious man--he looked for signs and portents from God for the
direction of his everyday life. He believed that God, amid all His
whirling world of stars and all His ages, had leisure to attend to every
unit of a life upon earth. He believed in special Providences.
Everything that was dear to him or near to his heart he commended to God
in his prayers. He had prayed for direction and guidance in this matter
of his girl and young Langrishe. He had thought to do his best. Well,
was not the breakdown of the train a sign that his best was not God's
best?

At ten minutes to twelve the track was free, and the train resumed its
journey. It was now one chance in a thousand that the General would not
be too late. If that chance came, if he saw Langrishe he would take it
as a sign that God approved his first intention. If the _Sutlej_ had
sailed--well, that, too, was the leading and the light.

As they ran into Tilbury Station a train was standing at the departure
platform. The General beckoned to a porter.

"Do you know if the _Sutlej_ has sailed?"

"Yes, sir--sailed at ten minutes to twelve. Might catch her at
Southampton, sir, perhaps. There's a good many people as well as you
disappointed in this 'ere train. There's another train back in three
minutes."

"When is the next train?"

"Three hours' time."

The General went to the door of the carriage and looked out; then
retired hastily. He had caught sight of Grogan and Mrs. Grogan and a
number of boys and girls of all ages. Not for worlds would he have let
Grogan see him. The amazement at seeing him, the questions about his
presence there, Grogan's laugh, Grogan's slap on the back, would be more
than the General could bear at this moment.

"I shall wait for the next train," he said to the astonished porter. The
porter had not thought of Tilbury as a place where the casual visitor
desired to wait for three hours.

The General remained in the train till the other had steamed out of the
station. When all danger was over he alighted and walked to the hotel of
many partings. He ordered his lunch, a chop and a vegetable, biscuits
and cheese. While his chop was cooking he would stretch his legs,
cramped by that long time in the train.

He walked along the docks, dodging lorries and waggons, getting out at
the side of a basin, with a clear walk along its edge. It was empty--the
_Sutlej_ had left it only three-quarters of an hour ago. He paced up and
down by the grey water, lost in thought.

The _Sutlej_ had sailed, ten minutes before the time anticipated. God
had given him the sign. He had turned him from his presumptuous attempt
to be Providence to his Nelly. The General never had been, never could
be, passive. He was made for the activities of life. Yet his religious
ideal was passivity--to be in the hands of God expecting, accepting, His
Will for all things. It was an ideal he had never attained to, and it
was, perhaps, therefore the dearer.

He was oblivious of the cold, of the creeping water, of the thickening
flakes in the air which nearly blotted out the silent ship the other
side of the basin. He saw nothing but the pointing Finger, the Finger
that pointed away from the course he had marked out for himself. He felt
uplifted, glad, as one who has escaped a great peril. Was his Nelly to
suffer the torture of an engagement to a man who would presently be
every hour in danger of a horrible death? Was she, poor child, to suffer
like Mrs. Sayers? like poor old Mrs. Mordaunt? No. She must be saved
from the possibility of that.

He would say nothing. He would have to endure the looks she would send
him from under her white eyelids, the looks of wistful entreaty. After
all, he had not _said_ he was going to do anything. He had implied it,
to be sure, but he had not committed himself to anything very definite.
Perhaps Nelly would not discover, for a time at least, the dangerous
service Langrishe had gone on. She was no more fond of the newspapers
than any other young girl. For the moment he was grateful to the Dowager
that she claimed so much of Nelly's time.

He began to look forward with a fearful anticipation to Nelly's marriage
to her cousin. Something must be settled at once, before she could begin
to grieve over Langrishe. He would be alone, of course, but Nelly would
be in harbour. He did so much justice to Robin that he believed her
happiness would be safe with him. He felt as if he must go home and put
matters in train at once. He was impatient till Nelly was safe. It did
not occur to him that he was, perhaps, once more wresting the conduct of
his daughter's happiness from the Hand in Whose guidance he humbly
trusted.

He awoke with a start to the fact that he had been more than half an
hour pacing along by the water's edge. He hurried back to the hotel.
Fortunately, his chop was not put on the grill till he returned, and it
was served to him piping hot, with tomatoes and a bottle of Burton.
Rather to his amazement, he enjoyed it thoroughly, but when he had
finished it he had still more than an hour to wait.

He drove across country to another station, and arrived home early in
the afternoon. During the return journey his mind was quite calm and
unperturbed. He had had the guidance he needed, and now he had only to
let things be--as though it were in his character to let things be!

He dreaded meeting Nelly's eyes and welcomed the Dowager's presence with
effusion. He suggested to the lady that she should dine, and afterwards
they would visit a theatre--_A Soldier's Love_ at the Adelphi was well
worth seeing, he believed. Lady Drummond accepted, flattered by this
unwonted friendliness. He would hardly let her out of his sight all that
afternoon. She was his safeguard against Nelly's wondering, reproachful
eyes.

He had to endure those eyes all the next day. Then--the eyes retired in
on themselves, became introspective. It was hardly easier for the
General, that look of a suffering woman in his Nelly's eyes.

To be sure, poor Nelly had known of that journey to Tilbury just as well
as if she had accompanied him. The only thing she did not know was that
he had failed to see Captain Langrishe. And his silence--the looks of
tender pity he sent her when he thought he was unobserved, what could
they mean but that his mediation had been in vain? For some strange,
cruel reason, although he loved her and he must know he was breaking her
heart, her lover would have none of her. Even the knowledge that he
loved her ceased to be an anodyne in those days.

Everyone was so good to her. She seemed to have found a way to the
Dowager's arid heart, as her own son had not. The Dowager seemed dimly
aware that Nelly was suffering in some way, and was tender to her. She
came to the General with a proposal. Why should they not all go abroad
together and escape the east winds of spring? The General leaped at it.
Once get Nelly abroad and she would know nothing of what was happening
on the Indian frontier. He, and Nelly and the Dowager. He had not
imagined the Dowager in such a party--yet, he shrank from the prolonged
_tete-a-tete_ with Nell which the trip would have been without the
Dowager's presence. Robin would join them at Easter. They could all
travel home together.

There was a time of bustle when Nelly and the Dowager were getting their
travelling outfits. A spark of excitement, of anticipation, lit up
Nelly's sad eyes. The General could have hugged the Dowager.

"Your dear father," the Dowager said to Nelly one day, "how calm he
grows as he turns round to old age! I see in him more and more the
brother my dear Gerald looked up to and reverenced."

The peacefulness, the good understanding, had their effect, too, on
Nelly. It was good that those she loved should dwell together in amity.
She was in that state that she could not have endured sharpness or
rancour.

Only Pat shook his head disapprovingly.

"If he goes on like this," he said, "he'll be goin' to Heaven before his
time. I'd a deal sooner hear him grumblin' about her Ladyship as he used
to do. It 'ud be more natural-like, so it would. Why would we be callin'
him 'Old Blood and Thunder' if 'twas to be like an image he was? Och,
the ould times were ever the best!"

"He'll come to himself yet," said Bridget more hopefully.

CHAPTER XVII

A NIGHT OF SPRING

The room was a long bare one, with three deep windows. They were all
open so that the fog and the noises of the street came in freely. It had
for furniture a long office table, an American desk, several
cupboards--the door of one of these last stood open, revealing lettered
pigeon-holes inside. Everywhere there were files, letter-baskets, all
manner of receptacles for papers. There were a number of hard, painted
chairs. An American clock ticked on the mantel-shelf, a fire burned in
the grate behind a high wire screen. The unshaded gas-lights gave the
room a dreary aspect it need not have had otherwise.

The only occupant of the room was Mary Gray, who sat at a small table
working a typewriter. She had pulled a gas-jet down low over her head,
and the light of it was on her hair, bringing out bronze lights in it,
on her neck, showing its whiteness and roundness. The machine clicked
away busily. Sheet after sheet was pulled from it and dropped into a
basket. The basket was half-filled with the pile of papers that had
fallen into it.

Suddenly there came a little tap at the door. Mary raised her head and
looked towards it expectantly as she said, "Come in."

Someone came in, someone whom she had expected to see, although she had
said to herself that she supposed the caretaker of the building had
grown tired of waiting, and was coming to remind her that the church
clock had just struck seven.

"Ah, Sir Robin," she said, turning about to shake hands with him. "Who
would have thought of seeing you? I am just going home."

"As I came past this way I looked up and saw your light through the fog.
I thought you would be going home, and that you would let me escort you
to your own door. There is a bit of a fog really."

"I am glad you did not come out of your way. Thank you. I shall be ready
in a few minutes. You don't mind waiting?"

"Not at all. May I smoke?"

"Do. It will be pleasanter than the smell of the fog."

"Ah! I hadn't noticed the smell. I have a delusion, or do I really
smell--violets?"

"There are some violets by your elbow. I was wearing them, but they
drooped, so I put them into water to revive them."

She turned back again to her work, and the clicking of the machine began
anew. He leant to inhale the smell of the violets. Then, with a glance
at her bent head, he drew one from the bunch, and, taking a pocket-book
out of his coat-pocket, he opened it, and laid the violet between two of
its pages.

While he waited he looked about him. The ugliness of the room did not
affect him. The flaring gas, the business-like furniture, the unhomely
aspect of the place, did not depress him. On the contrary, in his eyes
it was pleasant. He always came to it with a sensation of happiness,
which was not lessened because he felt half-guilty about it. To him the
room was the room which for certain hours of every day contained Mary
Gray. What did it matter if the case was unlovely since it held her?

Presently the clicking of the machine ceased, and she looked up at him
with a smile.

"You are very good to wait for me," she said.

"Am I?" he answered, smiling back at her. "There is not very much to do
to-day. The House is not sitting, and my constituency has been less
exacting than usual."

She put the cover on her machine, locked up her desk, and then retired
into a corner, where she changed her shoes, putting her slippers away
tidily in a cupboard. She put on her hat, setting it straight before a
little glass that hung in one corner. She got into her little blue
jacket, with its neat collar and cuffs of astrachan. Then she came to
him, drawing on her gloves.

"I am quite ready now," she said.

They lowered the gas, and went down the stone steps side by side. At the
foot of the stairs Mary stopped to call into the depths of the back
premises that she was going home, and a woman's voice bade her
good-night.

It was cold in the street, and there was a light brown fog through which
the street lamps shone yellowly.

The omnibuses crept by quietly, in a long string, making a muffled sound
in the fog. As they went towards the nearest station a wind suddenly
blew in their faces.

"It is the west wind," she said. "And it breathes of the spring."

"There will be no fog to-night," he answered. "See, it is lifting. The
west wind will blow it away."

"It comes from fields and woods and mountains and the sea," she said
dreamily.

The fog was indeed disappearing. The gas-jets shone more clearly; the
'buses broke into a decorous trot. The long line of lights came out
suddenly, crossing each other like a string of many-coloured gems.

Outside the Tube station they paused as though the same thought had
struck both of them.

"It is like the washing of the week before last," Mary said, as the
indescribable odour floated out to them.

"Why not take a 'bus?" said he. "The air grows more delicious."

"Why not, indeed?" she answered. "Except that I shall be so late getting
home. And it will keep you late for your dinner."

"So it will," he said. "To say nothing of your dinner. I know you had
only sandwiches and tea for lunch. You have told me that when you go
home you make yourself a chafing-dish supper. You must need a meal at
this moment. Supposing--Miss Gray, will you do me the honour of dining
with me?"

"Will you let me pay for my dinner? I am a working-woman, and expect to
be treated like a man."

"If you insist. But I hope you will not insist."

She looked at him for a moment hesitatingly. There was no prudery about
Mary Gray. She had become a woman of the world, and she had had no
reason to distrust the _camaraderie_ of men or to think it less than
honest.

"Very well, then," she said, "if you will let me pay for your lunch
another time."

"Why, so you shall," he answered. For a usually grave young man he
laughed with an uncommon joyousness. "You shall give me one day a French
lunch with a bottle of wine thrown in at one-and-sixpence. Mind, I must
have the wine."

"You shall have the wine. But it isn't good form to talk about the price
of a lunch you are invited to."

Laughing light-heartedly, they plunged into a labyrinth of dark streets.
The west wind had brought a gentle rain with it now. It was benignant
upon their faces, with a suggestion of grasses and spring flowers
pushing their heads above the earth. They passed by the Soho
restaurants, crowded to the doors. They found one at last in a more
pretentious street.

Over the dinner they laughed and talked. There was something
intoxicating to Robin Drummond's somewhat phlegmatic nature in their
being together after this friendly fashion.

"You have a crease in your forehead, just above your nose," he said,
while they waited for their salmon, the waiter having removed the plates
from which they had eaten their _bisque_. "Have the Working Women been
more unsatisfactory than usual to-day?"

"I was not thinking of the Working Women," she answered. "It is family
cares that are on my mind. Supposing you had seven young brothers and
sisters whom you wanted to help to place out in the world----"

"Heaven forbid! It's no wonder you look worried. What do you want to do
for them, Miss Gray?"

"There's Jim. He's seventeen years old. I think he'd make a very good
bank-clerk, but at present he wants to go to sea. There isn't the
remotest chance of his being able to go to sea. The question is whether
he can get a nomination to a bank. It will be quite a step in the social
scale if we can manage it for Jim."

She looked at Drummond with her frank, direct gaze, and he blushed
awkwardly.

"I don't know anything at all about your people, or anything of that
sort, Miss Gray, but if I could help----"

"I don't think you could help." Mary's big mysterious eyes under their
dark lashes, under their beautiful brows, looked at him reflectively.
"You see, you don't know anything about us. I am the eldest of a large
family. The others are my stepbrothers and sisters. I love them dearly,
and I love my stepmother, too. But not like my father--oh, not at all
like my father. I would never have left him only he sent me away. Lady
Agatha was very good to me. She paid me a disproportionate salary. And
besides--after I had been away from them for a time they could really do
very well without me. Cis and Minnie grew up so fast. To be sure, none
of them make up to father for me. But he was really anxious that I
should go. He thought I would be cramped at home, after----" She paused,
and then went on: "He would never think of himself when it was a
question of me."

What she was saying did not greatly enlighten him. But, without a doubt,
something would come out of the desultory talk by-and-by.

As he watched her in the light of the electric candle-lamps on the
table, which, sending their shaded light upwards reflected from the
white cloth, made her face luminous in the shadow of her cloudy hair, he
was struck again by a baffling resemblance to someone he had known. Now
and again during the months since they had known each other her face had
seemed familiar; then the likeness had disappeared; he had forgotten to
be curious about it. At this moment the suggestion was very strong.

They had the top of the 'bus to themselves as they went on westward. At
this hour the traffic was eastward, and the mist of rain saved them from
fellow-travellers. They were as much alone as though they were in a
desert, up there in the darkness at the back of the bus, with the long
line of blurred jewels that were the street lamps stretching away before
them.

They passed close to the trees overhanging a square, and the branches
brushed them.

"The sap is stirring in the trees to-night," she said. "Can't you smell
the sap and the earth?"

"I associate you with the country and green things," he answered
irrelevantly. "Can you tell me, Miss Gray, how it is that I who have
always seen you in London yet always think of you in fields and woods?"

She laughed with a fresh sound of mirth.

"We met long ago, Sir Robin," she said. "I have always been wondering
how long it would be before you found out."

"Where?"

"Think!"

A sudden light broke over him.

"You were the little girl who came with old Lady Anne Hamilton to the
Court. It is nine years ago. I never knew your name. Lady Anne died one
Long Vacation when I was abroad. I did not hear of it for a long time
afterwards. I asked my mother once if she knew what had become of you,
but she did not. Why, to be sure, you are that little girl."

"Lady Anne was very good to me. She gave me an education. Only for her
the thing I am would not be possible. And I mean to be more than that.
Do you know that I am writing a book?"

"A novel? Poems?"

"That is what my father's daughter ought to be doing. No--it is a book
on the Economic Conditions of Women's Work."

"It is sure to be good, _citoyenne_."

"I am a revolutionary," she said seriously. "I have learnt so much since
I have been at this work. I have things to tell. Oh, you will see."

"I remember Lady Anne as the staunchest of Conservatives."

"Yes, yet she was tolerant of other opinions in her friends. She was
very good to me, dear old Lady Anne."

"To think I should not have remembered!"

"I knew you all the time. To be sure, there was your name. I don't think
you ever knew my name. You called me Mary all the afternoon. Do you
remember the puppy you sent me--the Clumber spaniel? He died in
distemper. He had a happy little life. I wept bitter tears over him."

"Why didn't you tell me before?"

"I thought I'd leave you to find out."

"I am a stupid fellow." He leant towards her, and inhaled the scent of
her violets.

"I don't think I should have guessed it now," he said, "only for the
spring. To think you are Mary!" He lingered over the name.

"I am sorry about the Clumber. You shall have another when you ask for
it."

It was a long drive westward. They got down at Kensington Church, and
went up the hill. Close by the Carmelites they turned into a little
alley. The lit doorway of a high building of flats faced them.

"Now, you must come no farther," she said, turning to him and holding
out her hand.

"Let me see you to your door," he pleaded.

"If you will, but it is a climb for nothing."

"What a barrack you live in!" he said, as they went up the stone steps.

"It was built for working men originally, but perhaps there is none
hereabouts. It is now chiefly occupied by working women. They are
extremely pleasant and friendly. To be sure, they are West-End working
women. Now, Sir Robin, I must bid you good-bye."

They were at the very top of the house. The staircase window was wide
open, and the sweet smell of wet earth came in. She had put the
latch-key in the door and opened it--she had turned on the electric
light. Now, as she held out her hand to him in farewell, he caught sight
of the pleasant little room beyond. He had the strongest wish to cross
the threshold on which she was standing; but, of course, it was
impossible.

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