Mary Gray

K >> Katharine Tynan >> Mary Gray

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It was one of the equestrian portraits. The subject, a man in the
thirties, dressed in a lancer uniform, stood by his horse's head. His
helmet was off, lying on the ground at his feet; and it was easy to see
why the artist had chosen to paint the sitter with his head uncovered.
The upper part of the face--the forehead and eyes--was strikingly
handsome. The sweep of golden hair, despite its close military cut, was
beautiful also. For the rest, the nose was too large and not
particularly well-shaped, the chin was rugged, the mouth stern.
Lantern-jawed was the epithet one thought of when looking at the
portrait of the man whose deeds were written in his country's history.

It was an epithet Mary Gray would not have thought of. Indeed, she
stared at the hero in fascinated awe, but would not have known how to
express an opinion regarding his looks. Fortunately, Lady Anne did not
wait for an answer to her question--had not, perhaps, ever intended that
it should be answered.

"It is very like," she went on. "Half Greek god, half fanatic. He led
his charges with Bible words on his lips. He spent the night before a
battle in prayer and fasting. He was as stern as John Knox, and as sweet
as Francis de Sales. The only time his light deserted him was when he
married Matilda Stewart. We were all in love with him. I was, although I
ought to have had sense, being ten years his senior and a widow. He
picked the worst of the bunch. Luckily, he could get away from Matilda,
for he was always fighting somewhere, and perhaps he never found out. He
kept his simplicity to the day he died. Some people thought he married
Matilda because she was one of the Stewart heiresses, and the Drummonds
were as poor as church mice. They didn't know him. It was more likely
he'd marry her because she was plain, with a face like a horse, and was
head over ears in love with him. I will say that for Matilda. She was
desperately in love with her husband, although no one would believe now
that she had ever been in love with anybody."

Lady Drummond delayed about coming to her guests. Lady Anne tapped an
impatient small foot on the floor.

"She's heckling someone now--take my word for it," she said.

Then her face wrinkled up, shrewdly humorous.

"What are you thinking, child?" she asked. "Thinking of how oddly we in
the world talk of the friends we go to visit? I don't trouble the Court
much. But I am interested in Gerald's boy. I should like to know how he
is going to turn out. Not much of her Ladyship in him, I fancy."

However, there was no question of Mary's judging her benefactress; and
Lady Anne smiled as she noticed that the girl had not heard her
question, and watched the innocent, tender, worshipping look with which
she was gazing at Sir Gerald's portrait. The smile faded off into a
sigh. "_Ah, le beau temps passe!_" The expression on Mary's face
recalled to Lady Anne the one romantic passion of her life, which had
come to her after widowhood had put an end to a marriage in which esteem
and liking for an elderly husband had taken the place of love.

"You must excuse me, Anne."

A monotonous, important voice broke into Lady Anne's dream like a harsh
discord, shattering it to atoms.

"You must excuse me. I've been interviewing my gardener. In your town
life you are spared much. Considering the size of the gardens here and
the labour I pay for, the yield is far too little. I expect the gardens
to pay for themselves, and send the fruit to market. This year there is
a great falling-off."

"It has been a wet summer," said Lady Anne.

"Ah! and who is this young lady?"

Lady Drummond's voice told that she had no need to ask the question. She
had heard of Anne Hamilton's extraordinary freak and had suggested that
for the protection of the interests of Anne's relatives she had better
be put under proper restraint. Still, she asked the question. One would
have said from the deadly monotony of Lady Drummond's voice that she
could not get any expression into it. Yet she could on occasion; and the
chilling disapproval in it now made Mary look up in a frightened
surprise.

"This young lady, Miss Gray, is my companion," Lady Anne said, with a
stiffening of herself for battle and a light in her eye which showed
that she had not mistaken Lady Drummond's challenge, and had no
objection to take it up.

"Ah!" Lady Drummond again lifted the lorgnette that hung at her belt and
stared at Mary through it. "The young lady is very young for the post,
and a companion is a new thing--is it not, Anne?--for you to require."

"You mean that I never could get one to live with me," Lady Anne said
good-humoredly. "Well, Mary and I get on very well together--don't we,
Mary?"

"Miss Gray is very young."

"If we are going to discuss her, need she stay?" Lady Anne asked. "I am
sure she is longing to see the gardens. I couldn't get round myself. The
damp has made me stiff."

"Can you find your way, Miss Gray?"

Lady Drummond was plainly anxious to be rid of Mary, and made an effort
at politeness which was only awkward and discouraging.

"I think so," said Mary, looking round with an air of flight.

Lady Drummond's disapproval chilled her. She was not accustomed to be
disapproved of, and it filled her with a vague terror as though she had
done something wrong ignorantly.

She glided out of the room like a shadow. As she went, Lady Drummond's
unlowered voice followed her.

"Your choice is a very odd one, Anne Hamilton. That gawky child, all
eyes and forehead. I remember I wanted you to have my excellent Miss
Bradley."

"I wouldn't have your excellent Bradley for an hour...."

But Mary had fled beyond the hearing of the voices. She had no curiosity
to hear any more of Lady Drummond's unflattering remarks concerning her.

Once again she longed for Wistaria Terrace. There was no place for her
in _this_ world, she said to herself; and sent a tender reproach in her
own mind to the father who had given her up for her good. Then she felt
contrite about Lady Anne. How good the old lady was to her, and how she
stood up for her, would stand up for her, even to the terrible Lady
Drummond! Still, it was not her world; it never would be. She thought,
with sudden childish tears filling her eyes, that the next time Lady
Anne went to see any of her fine friends she would pray to be left at
home.

The great suite of rooms opened one into the other. Mary was in the last
of them--a library walled in books from floor to ceiling. The heavy
velvet curtains that draped the arched entrance by which she had come
had fallen behind her. The silence in the room where the feet fell so
softly could be felt. There was not a sound but the ticking of a clock
on the mantel-shelf.

Suddenly she came to a standstill. She had entered the room, but how was
she to leave it? The doors were constructed of a piece with the
book-shelves. The backs of them were dummy books. Mary did not know in
the least how to discover the doors. In fact, she supposed that there
were not any. She would have to retrace the way she came--perhaps even
ask the terrible Lady Drummond how to get out.

She looked up at the long windows with the eye of a bird who has strayed
in and cannot find the way out. The elusive air of flight that was hers
was more pronounced at the moment.

Suddenly there was a sound, and, as Mary thought, the book-shelves
opened. She saw light through the opening. A tall boy came in,
whistling, and pulled up short as his eyes fell on her. He was about her
own age, or a little older.

Mary never forgot in after years the kindness and friendliness of his
face as his eyes rested upon her. He came forward slowly, putting out
his hand. The colour flooded his face to the roots of his fair hair.

"You came with Lady Anne Hamilton," he said. "I found the carriage
outside. I have sent it round to the stables and told the man to put up
the horses for a while. He will want some refreshment; and they need a
rest."

Mary put a limp hand into the frankly extended one.

"I couldn't find my way out," she said, with a sigh of relief. "I
thought there were no doors. I was going to see the gardens while Lady
Anne and Lady Drummond talked."

"Let me come with you," the boy said eagerly. "I don't know how anybody
stays in the house on such a day. Do you like puppies? I have a
beautiful litter of Clumber spaniels. And I should like you to see my
pony. I have just been out on him. It's a bit slow here, all alone,
after so many fellows at school. I'm at Eton, you know. I am going back
next Thursday. Shan't be altogether sorry, either, though I'll miss some
things."

They went out together into the golden autumn afternoon. First they went
round the gardens, where the boy picked some roses and made them into a
little bunch for Mary. He took a peach from a red wall and gave it to
her. They sat down together on a seat to eat their fruit. Gardeners and
gardeners' assistants passing by touched their hats respectfully. It
was, "Yes, Sir Robin," and "No, Sir Robin." The young master had a good
many questions to ask of the gardeners. He was evidently well liked, to
judge by the smiles with which they greeted him.

"They're no end of good fellows," he confided to Mary. "The mater's
rather down on them; thinks they don't do enough. It's a mistake, a
woman trying to run a place like this. She can't understand as a man
does. Now, if you've finished your peach, Miss Gray, we'll go round to
the stable yard and see the puppies. After that I'll show you the pony.
His name's Ajax, and he's rather rippin'. Do you like Kerry cows? The
mater has a herd of them--jolly little beasts, but a bit wicked, some of
them. You needn't be afraid of them. They wouldn't touch you while I'm
there."

Mary inspected the Clumber puppies, and was promised the pick of the
litter if Lady Anne would allow her to accept it.

"She won't refuse," said the boy, confidently. "She thinks no end of
me."

"Unless the puppy might worry Fifine."

"The puppy wouldn't take any notice of that thing--the old dog, I mean.
Besides, she lives in her basket, doesn't she? You might keep the puppy
in the stables and take him for walks whenever you can. He'll have a
beautiful coat like his mother, and if he's half as clever as she
is...!"

"He's a lovely thing," said Mary, hugging the puppy, who was licking her
face energetically and patting her with tremendous paws.

They visited the paddock next; and Sir Robin, springing on Ajax's back,
trotted him up and down for Mary's inspection. He had a good seat in the
saddle, and he looked his best on horseback. To be sure, Mary had not
discovered that Sir Robin was plain, his mother's plainness militating
in him against what share of beauty he might have inherited from his
father. There was something so exhilarating to Mary in the afternoon's
experience, after its beginning so badly, that she forgot what had gone
before. She thought Sir Robin a kind and delightful boy. They saw the
Kerries, and afterwards there were the rabbits, and the ferrets, and the
guinea-pigs to be visited. Intimacy advanced by leaps and bounds. Before
the inspection had concluded she was "Mary" to her new-found friend,
although she was too reticent by nature to think of addressing him so
familiarly.

They had forgotten the time till half-past five struck from a clock in
the stable-yard. At this time they were down by a pond in the shrubbery,
where there was an islet with a water-hen's nest and a couple of swans
sailing on the water. There was a boat, too, and Sir Robin was just
getting it out preparatory to rowing Mary round the pond.

"Oh!" she said, with a little start. "What time is that?"

"Half-past five. I'd no idea it was so late."

"Nor I. I must go back at once. Lady Anne said we should be returning
about five. I hope she will not be very angry with me."

Mary had begun to tremble. She always trembled in moments of agitation,
as a slender young poplar might shiver in the wind.

The boy jumped out of the boat hastily.

"There, don't be frightened," he said. He had caught a glimpse of Mary's
face. "Lady Anne won't mind. She's a good sort. You should see the
hampers she sends me. The mater doesn't approve of school hampers. You
must put the blame on me. It was my fault entirely, for I had a watch."

They hurried along the path leading back to the open space in front of
the house. When they emerged into the open a breathless maid came
towards them.

"I've been looking everywhere for you and the young lady, Sir Robin,"
she said. "Lady Anne Hamilton is waiting for Miss Gray."

Poor Mary! When they arrived in the drawing-room it was not with Lady
Anne she had to count. Lady Anne sat with an air of humorous patience on
her face, but Lady Drummond's brow was thunderous. The haughty
indignation in her pale eyes terrified the very soul in Mary. She shrank
away from it in terror.

"I had no idea you were with Miss Gray, Robin," she heard the lady say
in glacial accents.

"I discovered Miss Gray trying to find her way out of the library. No
one could find those doors without knowing something about them. And we
went to see the puppies and the pony and the other beasts."

"We'd better be going, Mary," Lady Anne said, standing up. "You and
Robin have made my visit quite a visitation."

"The horses had to rest and the coachman to have his tea," said Sir
Robin, sturdily.

"You take too much care of your horses, Anne," Lady Drummond said. "They
are too fat; they can't be healthy. And your coachman is very fat, too."

"Oh, they take it easy, they take it easy," Lady Anne said, laughing;
"they've only my temper to worry them."

They left Lady Drummond looking as black as thunder in the drawing-room.
Sir Robin escorted them to their carriage.

"So sorry, Lady Anne," he said, apologetically. "It was my fault. I hope
you won't be angry with Miss Gray."

"It is your mother's annoyance has to be considered, my dear boy,"
answered Lady Anne, while he tucked the rug about her.

"All the same, Miss Gray and I had a rippin' time," he said, flinging
back his head with an air of humorous defiance. "And--I say--you're too
good to me, you know, you really are." Lady Anne had pressed something
into his palm. "The mater doesn't see what boys want with so much
pocket-money. Sometimes I don't know what I'd do only for you. There are
so many things a fellow has to subscribe to."

The carriage rolled off, leaving him bare-headed on the drive in front
of the house.

"That's a good boy," said Lady Anne, emphatically. "He has his father's
heart. He's getting the ways of the master about him, too. I can tell by
Jennings' back that he's had a good tea. He'll be a good son, but the
time will come when he'll choose for himself. Well, Mary, I hope you've
enjoyed yourself. Matilda won't want to see me for a month of Sundays
again. Nor I her, for the matter of that. Dear me, she can make herself
unpleasant."

Mary sat in a conscience-stricken silence during that homeward drive.
Yet Lady Anne was not angry with her--that was very obvious. She seemed
to be enjoying herself, too, judging by the smile that played about her
lips. Now and again she cast a humorous glance on Mary. Once she
chuckled aloud.

"Never mind me, my dear," she said, in answer to Mary's glance. "I was
only thinking of something Denis Drummond, Gerald Drummond's elder
brother, said of her Ladyship. Ah, poor Denis! He'd face a charge of the
guns more readily than he would her Ladyship. Odd, isn't it, Mary, how
those thoroughly disagreeable women can make themselves feared?"

CHAPTER V

"OLD BLOOD AND THUNDER"

Sir Denis Drummond had been his brother Gerald's senior by some seven or
eight years. He, too, was a soldier, and had inherited the baronetcy
from his father, upon whom the title had been bestowed by a grateful
country for services in the field. A second baronetcy in the family had
been specially created for Sir Gerald. It would not have been easy to
say which was the finer soldier of the two brothers; for while Sir
Gerald had made his name famous by the most dare-devil and brilliant
feats, Sir Denis was rather the old type of soldier--cool as well as
daring, always reliable and steady. Worshipped by his men, his name was
one to be held in constant regard by the British public, which calls its
heroes by their Christian names abbreviated, if they do not happen,
indeed, to have a nickname for them.

"Old Blood and Thunder" was the name by which Sir Denis was known to his
men, and that from a certain violence of speech of which he had never
been able, or perhaps had never desired, to divest himself. This
violence had somewhat annoyed his brother Gerald, who could get as much
exhortation out of a verse of Scripture as ever he needed. Sir Denis,
like many old soldiers, was quite a devout man in his way; but he had
none of the zealot passion of his younger brother. The hidden fires
which had given Sir Gerald a certain haggardness of aspect, as though a
sculptor had hewed him roughly in marble, had never burned in Sir
Denis's breast. He was a red-faced, white-moustached veteran, as
blustering as the west wind, but with a heart as soft as wax in the
hands of his daughter Nelly, and, indeed, in the hands of anyone else
who knew the way to it.

His servants adored him, as did the dogs and all animals and children.
He was beautiful in his manner to women of high and low degree, with
perhaps one exception. He was as simple as a child, and loved the
popular applause which fell to him whenever he made any kind of public
appearance, for he had been so long a Londoner that now the London crowd
knew him and had a sense of possession in him. His rosy face would beam
all over when the crowd shouted itself hoarse for "Old Blood and
Thunder." He did not at all object to the name, which had filtered from
regimental into common use. The crowd was always "Boys!" to him. He had
a most amiable feeling towards it, were it ever so frowsy and undersized
and sallow. But he loved a soldier-man, and could hardly bear to pass
one in the street without stopping to speak to him.

One delightful thing about Sir Denis was the esteem in which he held his
own calling of arms. It might be questioned whether he held the Church
even in higher honour. He was no subscriber to the belief that the army
must necessarily be a refuge of rapscallions. "Straighten your
shoulders, sir; hold your head high; for, remember that you are now a
soldier!" he would say to the newest recruit who had just scraped
through with a margin of chest. His thunderous wrath and sorrow when one
of his "boys" was guilty of conduct unbecoming a soldier were something
which, in time, impressed even the least impressionable. His old
regiment, which he delighted to talk about, he had left a model
regiment.

"There's a deal of good in the soldier-man," he would say to his
daughter Nelly. "The poor fellows, they're good boys, they're very good
boys."

Sir Denis had married, as he was approaching middle age, a very
beautiful young girl, who had fallen in love at first with the soldier,
and afterwards with the man.

His Nell had left him in his daughter Nelly a replica of herself. During
the years of service that remained to him the child was always as near
to him as might be. Fortunately, by this time the period of his foreign
service was all but at an end. Wherever he had his command the child and
her nurse were always within riding distance. He did not believe in
barracks and towns for the rearing of anything so fresh and tender. His
Nelly must have the fields and the woods and the waters. In later years
her milkmaid freshness owed, perhaps, something to this upbringing.

Later, she went to school. Sir Gerald's widow, to whom Sir Denis always
referred as the Dowager, who had taken an unasked-for interest in the
motherless child from her birth, had found the ideal school for Nelly--a
school where the daughters of the aristocracy were kept in a conventual
seclusion while they learnt as little as might be of the simpler
virtues, but a deal of the way to step in and out of a carriage, to
comport themselves with dignity, to bear themselves in the presence of
their sovereign, and so on.

Sir Denis, who had not been consulted, made a pretence of interviewing
the Misses de Crespigny, by whom this aristocratic preserve was
safeguarded.

He had listened to Miss Selina de Crespigny's eloquent exposition of the
system adopted at De Crespigny House. Then he had torn it all to pieces
as one might the delicate fabric of a spider's web, constructed at
infinite cost.

"And, tell me now, do you teach them to be good daughters and wives and
mothers?" he asked, with his air of convincing simplicity. "Do you teach
them their duties to their husbands and children, ma'am, may I ask?"

Miss de Crespigny positively gasped. There was an indelicacy about the
General's speech, to her manner of thinking.

"We expect our young ladies' mothers to teach them all that," she said,
stiffly.

"And they don't. In nine cases out of ten they don't. They've too much
to do otherwise. Whether it is philanthropy or politics, or just amusing
themselves, they've all got too much to do," Sir Denis said, with a
simple air that made it doubtful if this criticism of Society's ways was
adverse or not.

Nelly did not go to De Crespigny House. She went, instead, to a much
less pretentious school, kept by a family of four sisters, for whom the
dry bones of teaching had been clothed with life. The house was perched
on a high, windy cliff. The sisters, Miss Stella and Miss Clara, Miss
Lucy and Miss Marianne, did their own teaching, and did it in a
perfectly unconventional way to the twenty or so girls who made up their
school.

When Nelly came home to her father at seventeen years of age, it would
not have been easy to find a fresher, franker specimen of young
girlhood. In fact, to her father's eyes she was somewhat alarmingly
bright and fair.

"The young fellows will be about her thick as bees," he said to himself
in a frightened way. "I won't have any nonsense about Nelly. I want my
girl to myself for a little while. Afterwards there is that arrangement
of the Dowager's about Nelly and Robin. I don't care for the marriage of
first cousins. And I'm not sure that I care for Robin; still, he is poor
Gerald's son. There can be nothing against poor Gerald's son."

He was so afraid of possible lovers for Nelly that he actually suggested
to her that she should go to a smart finishing school for the couple of
years that separated him from the sixty-five limit.

"After that," he said, faintheartedly, for there was a sparkle in
Nelly's eye which discouraged him, "we shall settle down in London, and
you shall see all you want to see. There are quiet nooks and corners to
be had, even in London. I think I know the one I shall choose. Be a good
girl, Nelly, and go to Madame Celeste's. A garrison town is no place for
you. Unless, indeed, you would like to go to the Dowager, as she
wishes."

"I shan't go to the Dowager, and I shan't go to Madame Celeste's," said
Nelly, dimpling and sparkling. "I shall stay with my old Dad and take
care of him."

"What, Nell? 'Shan't'! You forget you're talking to your commanding
officer. Rank insubordination--that is what I call it!"

"Call it what you like," Miss Nelly replied. "I'm going to stay. A
finishing school at seventeen! I never heard the like!"

With that she put her arms round the General's neck, and that was the
final argument. Secretly, indeed, he was not altogether sorry to be
worsted. He had done his best to ward off the things that might happen.
Now he was going to trust in Providence and keep his little girl with
him. To be sure, he had known that she would never go to the Dowager's.
Nelly had never considered that possibility. After all, it was a relief
that they were not going to be parted.

During the two years Nelly, indeed, had many admirers and lovers, but
she was not attracted by any of them. She was kind and friendly and
engaging; but she was unconscious with her lovers, or so it seemed to
the jealous, fatherly eyes, to the verge of coldness.

He often said to himself that he could not understand Nell. None of the
gay, handsome, gallant soldier lads seemed to have the least attraction
in that way for her. To be sure, she was a child, and there was plenty
of time. Why shouldn't her old father keep her for the years to come?
Unless--unless, that fellow Robin had been beforehand with the
others--Robin, who had refused point-blank to be a soldier, and had
even, to the General's bitter offence, actually spoken at the Oxford
Union "On the Waste and Wickedness of a Standing Army." The General had
nearly had a fit over that. Good Heavens! Gerald's son, Sir Massey
Drummond's grandson, to be found on the side of the Philistines like
that! What chill was in the boy's blood? What crook in his character?
What bee in his bonnet?

The General had sworn then that Robin never should have his Nelly. But
the Dowager had been sapping and mining and laying plans to bring about
the marriage almost from Nelly's infancy, when she had come in and
altered the constituents of Nelly's baby bottles, and had infuriated
Nelly's wholesome country nurse to the point of departure. The General
had come just in time then to find Mrs. Loveday fastening the
cherry-coloured strings of her bonnet with fingers that trembled, and
had been put to the very edge of his simple diplomacy to undo the
Dowager's work. He knew his own helplessness where women were concerned.
Nelly might see something in Robin, confound him, that the General could
not.

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