Mary Gray

K >> Katharine Tynan >> Mary Gray

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"There must be some news," Mrs. Rooke said under her breath.

"I shall come and see you to-morrow," Nelly said. "To-morrow I shall be
free to come and go where I like. Do you know that I was bidding this
room and you and Bunny a long good-bye five minutes ago? And if he never
comes back--well, he will know I waited for him."

So preoccupied was she with her intention that she never noticed the
newspaper boys and men fluttering their Stop Press editions like the
wings of some birds of evil omen. As she sat in the hansom she drew the
engagement ring off her finger and dropped it into her purse. Then she
sighed, as though an immense burden had fallen from her.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE NEWS IN THE _WESTMINSTER_

As Nelly's hansom drew up at her own door another hansom was just
turning away from it. She wondered with an impatient wonder who could
have come. At the moment she could not have endured any hindrance
between her and her project of telling her father that the engagement
with Robin was to come to an end. She was not in the least afraid of
what she had to do. The spirit of the Drummonds was thoroughly awake
now.

Beyond her announcement to her father lay something vaguely painful
which at the moment she did not consider. She would have to tell Lady
Drummond and Robin, of course, and it would hurt them: they would be
angry with her. She was going to make a scandal, a nine days' wonder.
Her father would be grieved--angry, too, perhaps; but that could not be
helped either.

And then--some resentment stirred in her heart against him for the first
time during all the years in which they had been together. He had kept
her in ignorance of her lover's peril. She was not a child that she
should have been kept in ignorance. For the moment she had no tender
excuses for him. If he had been candid with her, then all this trouble
about Robin might have been spared, for she could never have promised
herself as wife to another man while the one she loved was in daily and
hourly danger.

She went into the house with a look of stern accusation on her young
face. The dogs came shrieking down the stairs in vociferous welcome as
usual, but she took no notice of them. Being old dogs and wise, they
recognised a forbidding mood in her, and retired with deprecating
wrigglings of their bodies.

She asked Pat if there were a visitor in the drawing-room.

"No, then, Miss, only the master. I can't make out what came over him at
all to be comin' home in a hansom."

He was minded to tell her that the General was not looking himself, to
give her an affectionate, intimate warning; but she passed him by. He
stood watching her, holding the door open in his hand till she took the
bend of the staircase that hid her from his sight.

"Bedad, the Dowager couldn't have done it better," he said, "shweepin'
by me without a 'By your l'ave, Pat'; and the master, callin' me
'Murphy' to my face, what he's never done since he left the rig'ment. I
wonder what's the matter with Pat. 'Twill be 'Corporal' next."

Nelly looked into the drawing-room. Her father was not there. She turned
the handle of another door, the door of the General's own particular
den, and going in she found him.

She never thought of asking herself how he came to be there at this hour
of the day, he who lived by rule, the click of whose latch-key had
sounded in the hall-door every evening at a quarter to seven as long as
she could remember. The clock on the mantelpiece pointed to ten minutes
to five.

The General was sitting in an armchair by the fireplace as though he had
dropped into it on his entering the room. He was doing absolutely
nothing, and that was an alarming thing enough, if but she had noticed
it. A green evening paper was crumpled on his knee. If she had eyes to
see it there was calamity in his attitude and his looks. But she had no
eyes. She was too much absorbed in the thing she had to do.

"What, Nell!" he said, getting up as she entered. "We must have come
home almost together. Where have you been, child?"

To his own ear his voice rang false, but she did not notice it. She did
not meet his kiss. She did not see that he was looking at her with a
fearful apprehension.

"What is the matter, Nell?" he stammered, noticing the alteration in her
looks.

She came and stood beside him, seeming to tower above him.

"Father," she said, "I am not going to marry Robin. I want him to know
at once."

"Not marry Robin!" This was something the General was unprepared for.
"Not marry Robin! God bless my soul, Nell! It's very late for you to say
such a thing--within three weeks of your wedding! And all the
arrangements made! What will people say? What will the Dowager say? You
can't play fast and loose with a man like that, Nell. Why, it will be
the talk of the town."

He tried to work himself up to the old fretting and fuming, but there
was no heartiness in it. Under the projecting eyebrows his old
frostily-blue eyes had a scared look. But if he had been in such a
passion as he had shown on a certain historic occasion when the regiment
had nearly scattered before the approach of screaming Dervishes--a
passion which had rallied the men and won Sir Denis his V.C.--it would
have been all the same to Nelly.

"All that is perfectly immaterial," she said. "I am sorry for Robin and
for Aunt Matilda. But all that will pass. I was mad to consent to the
marriage. I am only glad that I came to my senses in time."

Was this Nelly?--this young, sure, inflexible creature! He stared at her
in utter amazement.

"Supposing I were to say that you must go on now since you have gone so
far, Nell?" he said, and felt at the same time the futility of the
saying. "I never thought my girl would play so shabby a trick on
Gerald's son. You know that people will laugh at Robin?"

"They won't. Robin is not the sort of person to be laughed at--at least,
not for long. Besides, if it is any consolation to you, father, I may
tell you that it will not hurt Robin much: Robin is not and never has
been in love with me."

"What!" The General now was genuinely indignant. He had forgotten for
the moment his other perturbation, whatever it might be. "What do you
mean, Nell? Your cousin not in love with you! After all the years during
which you have been meant for each other! Impossible, Nell! Robin _must_
be in love with you."

"He is not; he never has been. That is my consolation, so far as he is
concerned. Father, why did you keep from me the fact that Captain
Langrishe was fighting the Wazees? Why did you?"

The General's colour deserted his cheeks once again.

"Poor Langrishe! What was the good of letting you know, Nell? You used
to be--interested in the poor fellow."

"You shouldn't have kept it from me. I didn't read the newspapers, or I
should have known. Do you know why I didn't read them? Because if I had
I must have turned to the army news. I was fighting that as a
temptation. I was trying to drive him from my mind. I kept away from his
sister, although she had been kind to me; I went nowhere where I might
hear his name. Then to-day I met her by accident. I went home with her.
She told me--do you know what she told me?"

"What, Nell?"

"That her brother went away under the impression that I was engaged to
Robin Drummond. Aunt Matilda had told her so and she had told him. So
that is why he left me."

"I see," the General groaned. "A nice lot of trouble has come out of
that scheme of your Aunt Matilda's for marrying you and Robin. I never
would agree to it; I used to say: 'Let it be till the children are old
enough to choose for themselves.' I wish I had taken a stronger stand. I
only wished for your happiness, Nell. I always liked poor Langrishe, and
felt I could trust him with even what I held dearest on earth. I did my
best for you, Nell. If I kept his danger from you, it was only that I
hoped to keep you from suffering like those other poor women."

She did not notice the haggardness of his face, nor the repetition of
"Poor Langrishe." She was too much absorbed in getting to the root of
things. She was determined to know everything.

"What happened when you went to Tilbury?"

Was this young inquisitor his Nell?

"I didn't see him. The boat had gone."

"And I thought you had offered me to him, and that he had rejected me!
Oh, I know you would have done it in the most delicate way. There need
not have been a word spoken. But it would have been the same thing in
the end. I thought his love was not great enough to conquer his pride."

"My train broke down, Nell; I came ten minutes too late. I thought the
hand of God was in it."

"It was a mere accident. God had nothing to do with it. I am only
grateful that it has not ended worse. If I had married Robin and then
discovered these things----"

"Don't say that you couldn't have forgiven me, Nell." The General took
out a big white silk handkerchief and wiped his forehead with it. "Don't
say that you couldn't have forgiven me! I meant it all for the best. My
little Nell couldn't be hard with her old father."

She stooped suddenly and caught his hand to her lips. She noticed with a
tender contraction of her heart that it was an old hand--knotted, with
purple stains.

"I should be a brute if I could be angry with you," she said; and the
tenseness of her face relaxed to its old softness.

"Ah, that's right, Nell--that's right. We couldn't do without each
other. You've always your old father, you know--haven't you, dearie?--no
matter what happens. I'll stand by you, Nell. I'll take you away. No one
shall be angry with my Nell."

"You are too good to me," she said. "And I've been angry with you! What
a wretch I was to be angry with you! On my way here I telegraphed to
Robin to come this evening. I must get it over. You shall take me away
if you will afterwards. I would stay and face it if it would do any
good, but it wouldn't. After all, there is no great harm done. Robin's
heart will not be broken."

"And afterwards, Nell?"

"Afterwards? Oh, you and I shall be together."

"Yes; we did very well when we were together. Listen, Nell." He put his
arm about her. "I want you to be strong and brave. I came home to tell
you, lest you should hear by accident. His poor sister did not know----"

The General's den looked out on the Square gardens. It was quite a long
way across them to the road; yet through the quietness of the golden
afternoon there came the shouting of the newsboys. It all flashed on
Nelly with a blinding suddenness. To be sure, they had been calling the
same thing while she stood with his sister and learned why he had left
her, only she had not known.

"He is dead," she said, with an immense quietness. It was as though she
had known it always.

"No; not dead, Nell--terribly wounded, but not dead. He is in English
hands."

He stopped, shuddering. If he had been in those black devils' hands to
be tortured to death! He had been only saved by a sudden rush of his
men. Even his wounds would not have saved him from torture if God had
not delivered him out of their hands.

"Show it to me."

All of a sudden she saw the newspaper which had been lying crumpled on
his knee. That had contained the news all the time while they had been
talking about things that mattered so much less.

He did not try to keep it from her. He turned over the paper and found
the page of it which had the latest news. There it was, with its staring
headlines. She seemed to have seen it just so, in another life.

She read it through to the end. It had been an ambush. The small
detachment of troops had been led by the guide into the midst of a large
body of the enemy--it had been surrounded. Captain Langrishe had fallen,
as had a young lieutenant. The men had stood shoulder to shoulder,
fighting desperately. By the most desperate courage they had rescued the
bodies of their officers, which were being carried by the tribesmen into
one of their towers among the hills. They had fought their way back with
the bodies strapped to their horses. Lieutenant Foley proved to be dead.
He had been hacked and hewed with knives. Captain Langrishe had been
more fortunate; the life was still in him when the last intelligence had
been sent down. There was very little hope of his recovery.

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."

CHAPTER XXIV

THE FRIEND

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.

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