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Mary Gray

by Katharine Tynan · English · Gutenberg #20201 · 428,890 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Mary Gray

Author: Katharine Tynan

Illustrator: C. H. Taffs


        
Release date: December 27, 2006 [eBook #20201]
                Most recently updated: January 1, 2021

Language: English

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Credits: Produced by David Edwards, Mary Meehan, and the Online Distributed
        Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced
        from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print
        project.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARY GRAY ***




Produced by David Edwards, Mary Meehan, and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced
from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print
project.)









                                MARY GRAY

                            BY KATHARINE TYNAN


_Author of "Julia," "The Story of Bawn," "Her Ladyship," "For Maisie,"
etc., etc._


WITH FOUR COLOURED ILLUSTRATIONS BY C. H. TAFFS

[Transcriber's note: This book was produced from scanned images of public
domain material from the Google Print project. Only the Frontispiece was
included in the scans.]


CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED
London, Paris, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
1909
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED




[Illustration: "The men would salute their old General, the General
salute his old regiment"]




CONTENTS


       CHAPTER I. Wistaria Terrace

      CHAPTER II. The Wall Between

     CHAPTER III. The New Estate

      CHAPTER IV. Boy and Girl

       CHAPTER V. "Old Blood and Thunder"

      CHAPTER VI. The Blue Ribbon

     CHAPTER VII. A Chance Meeting

    CHAPTER VIII. Groves of Academe

      CHAPTER IX. The Race with Death

       CHAPTER X. Dispossessed

      CHAPTER XI. The Lion

     CHAPTER XII. Her Ladyship

    CHAPTER XIII. The Heart of a Father

     CHAPTER XIV. Lovers' Parting

      CHAPTER XV. The General has an Idea

     CHAPTER XVI. The Leading and the Light

    CHAPTER XVII. A Night of Spring

   CHAPTER XVIII. Halcyon Weather

     CHAPTER XIX. Wild Thyme and Violets

      CHAPTER XX. Jealousy, Cruel as the Grave

     CHAPTER XXI. Two Women

    CHAPTER XXII. Light on the Way

   CHAPTER XXIII. The News in the _Westminster_

    CHAPTER XXIV. The Friend

     CHAPTER XXV. The One Woman

    CHAPTER XXVI. Golden Days

   CHAPTER XXVII. The Intermediary

  CHAPTER XXVIII. Noel! Noel!




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


"The men would salute their old General, the General salute his old
regiment"

"Sir Robin Drummond had come to Mary's side, and turned the page of
her music"

"'Do you know what I came here in the mind to ask you?'"

"'Miss Nelly is in the drawing-room, sir'"




MARY GRAY




CHAPTER I

WISTARIA TERRACE


The house where Mary Gray was born and grew towards womanhood was one of
a squat line of mean little houses that hid themselves behind a great
church. The roadway in front of the houses led only to the back entrance
of the church. Over against the windows was the playground of the church
schools, surrounded by a high wall that shut away field and sky from the
front rooms of Wistaria Terrace.

The houses were drab and ugly, with untidy grass-plots in front. They
presented an exterior of three windows and a narrow round-topped
hall-door which was a confession of poverty in itself. Five out of six
houses had a ramping plaster horse in the fanlight of the hall door, a
fixture which went with the house and was immune from breakage because
no one ever thought of cleaning the fanlights.

In the back gardens the family wash was put to dry. Some of the more
enterprising inhabitants kept fowls; but there was not much enterprise
in Wistaria Terrace.

Earlier inhabitants had planted the gardens with lilac and laburnum
bushes, with gooseberries and currants. There were no flowers there that
did not sow themselves year after year. They were damp, grubby places,
but even there an imaginative child like Mary Gray could find
suggestions of delight.

Mary's father, Walter Gray, was employed at a watchmaker's of repute. He
spent all his working life with a magnifying glass in his eye, peering
into the mechanism of watches, adjusting the delicate pivots and springs
on which their lives moved. His occupation had perhaps encouraged in him
a habit of introspection. Perhaps he found the human machine as worthy
of interest as the works of watches and clocks. Anyhow, in his leisure
moments, which were few, he would discuss curiously with Mary the hidden
springs that kept the human machine in motion, the strange workings and
convolutions of it. From the very early age when she began to be a
comfort and a companion to her father, Mary had been accustomed to such
speculations as would have written Walter Gray down a madman if he had
shared them with the grown people about him rather than with a child.

Mary was the child of his romance, of his first marriage, which had
lasted barely a year.

He never talked of her mother, even to Mary, though she had vague
memories of a time when he had not been so reticent. That was before the
stepmother came, the stepmother whom, honestly, Walter Gray had married
because his child was neglected. He had not anticipated, perhaps, the
long string of children which was to result from the marriage, whose
presence in the world was to make Mary's lot a more strenuous one than
would have been the case if she had been a child alone.

Not that Mary grumbled about the stepbrothers and sisters. Year after
year, from the time she could stagger under the weight of a baby, she
had received a new burden for her arms, and had found enough love for
each newcomer.

The second Mrs. Gray was a poor, puny, washed-out little rag of a woman,
whose one distinction was the number of her children. They had always
great appetites to be satisfied. As soon as they began to run about, the
rapidity with which they wore out their boots and the knees of their
trousers, and outgrew their frocks, was a subject upon which Mrs. Gray
could expatiate for hours. Mary had a tender, strong pity from the
earliest age for the down-at-heel, over-burdened stepmother, which
lightened her own load, as did the vicarious, motherly love which came
to her for each succeeding fat baby.

Mary was nurse and nursery-governess to all the family. Wistaria Terrace
had one great recompense for its humble and hidden condition. It was
within easy reach of the fields and the mountains. For an adventurous
spirit the sea was not at an insuperable distance. Indeed, but for the
high wall of the school playground, the lovely line of mountains had
been well in view. As it was, many a day in summer Mary would carry off
her train of children to the fields, with a humble refection of bread
and butter and jam, and milk for their mid-day meal; and these occasions
allowed Mrs. Gray a few hours of peace that were like a foretaste of
Paradise.

She never grumbled, poor little woman, because her husband shared his
thoughts with Mary and not with her. Whatever ambitions she had had to
rise to her Walter's level--she had an immense opinion of his
learning--had long been extinguished under the accumulation of toils and
burdens that made up her daily life. She was fond of Mary, and leant on
her strangely, considering their relative ages. For the rest, she toiled
with indifferent success at household tasks, and was grateful for having
a husband so absorbed in distant speculations that he was insensible of
the near discomfort of a badly-cooked dinner or a buttonless shirt.

The gardens of the houses opened on a lane which was a sort of
rubbish-shoot for the houses that gave upon it. Across the lane was a
row of stabling belonging to far more important houses than Wistaria
Terrace. Beyond the stables and stable yards were old gardens with shady
stretches of turf and forest trees enclosed within their walls. Beyond
the gardens rose the fine old-fashioned houses of the Mall, big Georgian
houses that looked in front across the roadway at the line of elm-trees
that bordered the canal. The green waters of the canal, winding placidly
through its green channel, with the elm-trees reflected greenly in its
green depths, had a suggestion of Holland.

The lane was something of an adventure to the children of Wistaria
Terrace. There, any day, you might see a coachman curry-combing his
satin-skinned horses, hissing between his teeth by way of encouragement,
after the time-honoured custom. Or you might see a load of hay lifted up
by a windlass into the loft above the stables. Or you might assist at
the washing of a carriage. Sometimes the gate at the farther side of the
stable was open, and a gardener would come through with a barrowful of
rubbish to add to the accumulation already in the lane.

Through the open gateway the children would catch glimpses of Fairyland.
A broad stretch of shining turf dappled with sun and shade. Tall
snapdragons and lilies and sweet-williams and phlox in the garden-beds.
A fruit tree or two, heavy with blossom or fruit.

Only old-fashioned people lived in the Mall nowadays, and the glimpses
the children caught of the owners of those terrestrial paradises fitted
in with the idea of fairyland. They were always old ladies and
gentlemen, and they were old-fashioned in their attire, but very
magnificent. There was one old lady who was the very Fairy Godmother of
the stories. She was the one who had the magnificent mulberry-tree in
her garden. One day in every year the children were called in to strip
the tree of its fruit; and that was a great day for Wistaria Terrace.

The children were allowed to bring basins to carry away what they could
not eat; and benevolent men-servants would ascend to the overweighted
boughs of the tree by ladders and pick the fruit and load up the
children's basins with it. Again, the apples would be distributed in
their season. While the distribution went on, the old lady would stand
at a window with her little white dog in her arms nodding her head in a
well-pleased way. The children called her Lady Anne. They had no such
personal acquaintance with the other gardens and their owners, so their
thoughts were very full of Lady Anne and her garden.

When Mary was about fourteen she made the acquaintance of Lady Anne--her
full name was Lady Anne Hamilton--and that was an event which had a
considerable influence on her fortunes. The meeting came about in this
way.

Mary had gone marketing one day, and for once had deserted the shabby
little row of shops which ran at the end of Wistaria Terrace, at right
angles to it. She had gone out into the great main thoroughfare, the
noise of which came dimly to Wistaria Terrace because of the huge mass
of the church blocking up the way.

She had done her shopping and was on her way home, when, right in the
track of the heavy tram as it came down the steep descent from the
bridge over the canal, she saw a helpless bit of white fur, as it might
well seem to anyone at a distance. The thing was almost motionless, or
stirring so feebly that its movements were not apparent. Evidently the
driver of the tram had not noticed it, or was not troubled to save its
life, for he stood with the reins in his hand, glancing from side to
side of the road for possible passengers as the tram swept down the long
incline.

Mary never hesitated. The tram was almost upon the thing when she first
saw it. "Why, it is Lady Anne's dog!" she cried, and launched herself
out in the roadway to save it. She was just in time to pick up the
blind, whimpering thing. The driver of the tram, seeing Mary in its
path, put on the brakes sharply. The tram lumbered to a stoppage, but
not before Mary had been flung down on her face and her arm broken by
the hoof of the horse nearest her.

It was likely to be an uncommonly awkward thing for the Gray household,
seeing that it was Mary's right arm that was injured. For one thing, it
would involve the dispossession of that year's baby. For another, it
would put Mrs. Gray's capable helper entirely out of action.

When Mary was picked up, and stood, wavering unsteadily, supported by
someone in the crowd which had gathered, hearing, as from a great
distance, the snarling and scolding of the tram-driver, who was afraid
of finding himself in trouble, she still held the blind and whimpering
dog in her uninjured arm.

She wanted to get away as quickly as possible from the crowd, but her
head swam and her feet were uncertain. Then she heard a quiet voice
behind her.

"Has there been an accident? I am a doctor," it said.

"A young woman trying to kill herself along of an old dog," said the
tram-driver indignantly. "As though there wasn't enough trouble for a
man already."

"Let me see," the doctor said, coming to Mary's side. "Ah, I can't make
an examination here. Better come with me, my child. I am on my way to
the hospital. My carriage is here."

"Not to hospital," said Mary faintly. "Let me go home; they would be so
frightened."

"I shan't detain you, I promise you. But this must be bandaged before
you can go home. Ah, is this basket yours, too?"

Someone had handed up the basket from the tram-track, where it had lain
disgorging cabbages and other articles of food.

"I will send you home as soon as I have seen to your arm," the doctor
said, pushing her gently towards his carriage. "And the little dog--is
he your own? I suppose he is, since you nearly gave your life for him?"

"He is not mine," said Mary faintly. "He belongs to Lady Anne--Lady Anne
Hamilton. She lives at No. 8, The Mall. She will be distracted if she
misses the little dog. She is so very fond of it."

"Ah! Lady Anne Hamilton. I have heard of her. We can leave the dog at
home on our way. Come, child."

The Mall was quite close at hand. They drove there, and just as the
carriage stopped at the gate of No. 8, which had a long strip of green
front garden, overhung by trees through which you could discern the old
red-brick house. Lady Anne herself came down the gravel path. Over her
head was a little shawl of old lace; it was caught by a seed-pearl
brooch with an amethyst centre. She was wearing a quilted red silk
petticoat and a bunched sacque of black flowered silk. She had
magnificent dark eyes and white hair. Under it her peaked little face
was the colour of old ivory. She was calling to her dog, "Fifine,
Fifine, where can you be?"

A respectable-looking elderly maid came hurrying after her.

"I've looked everywhere, my lady, and I cannot find the little thing,"
she said in a frightened voice.

Meanwhile, the doctor had got out of the carriage and had taken Fifine
gently from Mary's lap. Now that Mary was coming to herself she began to
discover that the doctor was young and kind-looking, but more careworn
than his youth warranted. He opened the garden gate and went up to Lady
Anne.

"Is this your little dog, madam?" he asked.

"My Fifine, my darling!" cried Lady Anne, embracing the trembling bit of
wool. "You don't know what she is to me, sir. My little grandson"--the
imperious old voice shook--"loved the dog. She was his pet. The child is
dead. You understand----"

"Perfectly," said the doctor. "I, too--I know what loss is. The little
dog strayed. She was found in the High Road. I am very glad to restore
her to you; but pray do not thank me. There is a young girl in my
carriage at the gate. She picked up your dog from under the wheels of a
tramcar, and broke her arm, I fear, in doing it. I am on my way to the
hospital, the House of Mercy, where I am doing work for a friend who is
on holiday. I am taking her with me so that I may set the arm where I
have all the appliances."

"She saved my Fifine? Heroic child! Let me thank her."

The old lady clutched her recovered treasure to her breast with fervour,
then handed the dog over to the maid.

"Take me to see Fifine's preserver," she said in a commanding voice.

Mary was almost swooning with the pain of her arm. She heard Lady Anne's
praises as though from a long distance off.

"Stay, doctor," the old lady said; "I cannot have her jolted over the
paving-stones of the city to the Mercy. Bring her in here. We need not
detain you very long. We can procure splints and bandages, all you
require, from a chemist's shop. There is one just round the corner.
What, do you say, child? They will be frightened about you at home! I
shall send word. Be quiet now; you must let us do everything for you."

So the doctor assisted Mary into the old house behind the trees. Lady
Anne walked the other side of her, pretending to assist Mary and really
imagining that she did.

The splints and the bandages were on, and Mary had borne the pain well.

"I'm afraid I must go," said the doctor, looking at his watch. "I am
half an hour behind my time. And where am I to visit my patient?"

"Where but here?" said Lady Anne with decision. "It is now half-past
eleven. I have lunch at half-past one. Could you return to lunch,
Dr.--ah, Dr. Carruthers. You are Dr. Carruthers, are you not? You took
the big house at the corner of Magnolia Road a year ago?"

"Yes, I am Dr. Carruthers; and I shall be very pleased to return to
lunch, Lady Anne. I don't think the little dog is any the worse for her
experience."

His face was flushed as he stood with his hat in his hand, bowing and
smiling. If only Lady Anne Hamilton would take him up! That big house at
the corner of Magnolia Road had been a daring bid for fortune. So had
the neat, single brougham, hired from a livery-stable. So had been the
three smart maids. But so far Fortune had not favoured him. He was one
of fifty or so waiters on Fortune. When people were ill in the smart
suburban neighbourhood they liked to be attended by Dr. Pownall, who
always drove a pair of hundred guinea horses. None of your hired
broughams for them.

"You are paying too big a rent for a young man," said Lady Anne. "You
can't have made it or anything like made it. Pownall grows careless. The
last time I sent for him he kept me two hours waiting. When I had him to
Stewart, my maid, he was in a hurry to be gone. Pownall has too much to
do--too much by half."

Her eyes rested thoughtfully on the agitated Dr. Carruthers.

"You shall tell me all about it when you come back to lunch," she said;
"and I should like to call on your wife."




CHAPTER II

THE WALL BETWEEN


"The child has brought us luck--luck at last, Mildred," Dr. Carruthers
was saying, a few hours later. "When I lifted her in my arms she was as
light as a feather. A poor little shabby, overworked thing, all eyes,
and too big a forehead. Her boots were broken, and I noticed that her
fingers were rough with hard work."

He was walking up and down his wife's drawing-room in a tremendous state
of excitement, while she smiled at him from the sofa.

"It is wonderful, coming just now, too, when I had made up my mind that
we couldn't keep afloat here much longer, and had resolved to give up
this house at the September quarter and retire into a dingier part of
the town. Once it is known that I am Lady Anne Hamilton's medical man
the snobs of the neighbourhood will all be sending for me."

"Poor Dr. Pownall!" said Mrs. Carruthers, laughing softly.

"Oh, Pownall is all right. They say he's immensely wealthy. He can
retire now and enjoy his money. If the public did not go back on him
he'd be a dead man in five or six years. He does the work of twenty men.
I pity the others, the poor devils who are waiting on fortune as I have
waited."

"There is no fear of Lady Anne disappointing you?" she asked, in a
hesitating voice. She did not like to seem to throw cold water on his
joyful mood.

"There is no fear," he answered, standing midway of the room with its
three large windows. "She is coming to see you, Milly. If I have failed
in anything you will succeed. You will see me at the top of the tree
yet. You will have cause to be proud of me."

"I am always proud of you. Kit," she said, in a low, impassioned voice.

Meanwhile, Lady Anne herself had made a pilgrimage to Wistaria Terrace
in the hour preceding the luncheon hour. She had left Mary in a deep
chair in the big drawing-room. Outside were the boughs of trees. From
the windows you could surprise the secrets of the birds if you would.
The room was very spacious, with chairs and sofas round the walls, a
great mirror at either end, a paper on its walls which pretended to be
panels wreathed in roses. The ceiling had a gay picture of gods and
goddesses reclining in a flowery mead. The mantelpiece was Carrara
marble, curiously inlaid with coloured wreaths. There was a fire in the
brass grate, although it was summer weather. The proximity of the trees
and the natural climate of the place meant damp. The fire sparkled in
the brass dogs and the brass jambs of the fireplace. The skin of a tiger
stretched itself along the floor. The terrible teeth grinned almost at
Mary's feet.

The child was sick and faint from the pain of having her arm set. She
lay in the deep sofa, covered with red damask, amid a bewildering
softness of cushions and rugs, and wondered what Lady Anne was saying to
Mamie. Mamie was Mrs. Gray. From the first Mary had not called her
Mother. Her name was Matilda, and Mamie was a sort of compromise.

Meanwhile, Lady Anne had gone out by her garden, through the stable, and
into the lane at the back. There was a little door open in the opposite
wall; beyond it was a shabby trellis with scarlet-runners clambering
upon it.

Lady Anne peeped within. A disheartened-looking woman was hanging a
child's frock on the line which was stretched from wall to wall. Three
children, ranging in age from two to five, were sitting on the grass
plot. Two were playing with white stones. The third was surveying its
own small feet with great interest, sucking at a fat thumb as though it
conveyed some delicious nourishment.

"Do I speak to Mrs. Gray?" asked Lady Anne, advancing. She had a
sunshade over her head, a deep-fringed thing with a folding handle. She
had bought it in Paris in the days of the Second Empire.

Mrs. Gray stared at the stranger within her gates, whom she knew by
sight. There was some perturbation in her face. She had been worried
about the unusual duration of Mary's absence. Mary had not come back
with the market basket which contained the children's dinner. At one
o'clock the four elder ones would be upon her, ravening. What on earth
had become of Mary? The poor woman had not realised how much she
depended on Mary, since Mary was always present and always willing to
take the burdens off her stepmother's thin, stooped shoulders on to her
own.

Now she caught sight of the market-basket. One of Lady Anne's
white-capped maids had come in and deposited it quietly.

"Mary?" she gasped. "What has become of Mary?"

"Pray don't frighten yourself," said Lady Anne. "I have a message
from Mary. She is at my house. As a matter of fact, she met with an
accident. There--don't go so pale. It is only a matter of time. Her arm
is broken. She got it broken in saving the life of my little Maltese,
who had strayed out and had got in the way of the tram. I always said
that those trams should not be allowed. The tracks are so very
unpleasant--dangerous even, for the carriages of gentlefolk. There is
far too much traffic allowed on the public highways nowadays, far too
much. People ought to walk if they cannot keep carriages."

She broke off abruptly and looked at the three small children.

"These are yours?" she asked. "They seem very close together in age."

"A year and a half, three years, four years and three months," said Mrs.
Gray, forgetting in her special cause for pride her awe of Lady Anne.

"Dear me, I should have thought they were all twins," said the old lady.
"How very remarkable! Have you any more?"

"Four at school. The eldest is nine. You see, they came so quickly, my
lady. Only for Mary I don't know how I should have reared them."

"H'm! Mary is very stunted. It struck me that she would have been tall
if she had had a chance. Those heavy babies, doubtless. Well, I am going
to keep Mary for a while. How will you do without her?"

Mrs. Gray's faded eyes filled with tears.

"I can't imagine, my lady. You see, we have never kept a servant. When I
lived at home with my Mamma we always had three. Mr. Gray has literary
attainments, my lady. He is not practical."

"I can send you an excellent charwoman," Lady Anne broke in, "for the
present. I will see what is to be done about Mary. The child has
rendered me an inestimable service. I must do something for her in
return. By the way, she is not your daughter?"

"My stepdaughter."

"Ah, I thought so. Well, the charwoman shall come in at once. She can
cook. Later on, we shall see--we shall see."

"By the way," said Lady Anne, coming back with a rustle of silks while
Mrs. Gray yet stood in bewilderment, holding the baby's frock in her
limp fingers. "By the way, Mary is very anxious about her father--how he
will take her accident. Will you tell your husband that I shall be glad
to see him when he comes home this evening?"

"I will, my lady," said Mrs. Gray; "and, my lady, would you please not
to mention to Mr. Gray about the charwoman? He's that proud; it would
hurt him, I'm sure. If he isn't told he'll never know she's there. A
child isn't as easily deceived as Walter."

"I shall certainly not tell him," Lady Anne said graciously. She did not
object to the honest pride in Walter Gray. He was probably a superior
man for his station, being Mary's father. As for that poor slattern,
Lady Anne had lived too long in the world to be amazed by the marriages
men made, either in her own exalted circle or in those below it.

Walter Gray came, in a flutter of tender anxiety, at half-past six in
the evening, to Lady Anne's garden, where Mary was sitting in her wicker
chair under the mulberry tree. Lady Anne had given orders that he was to
be shown out to the garden when he called.

"My poor little girl!" he said, with an arm about Mary's shoulder.

Then he took off his hat to Lady Anne. There was respect in his manner,
but nothing over-humble, nothing to say that they were not equals in a
sense. His eyes, at once bright and dreamy, rested on her with a
friendly regard.

"The man has gentle blood in him somewhere," said the old lady to
herself. She had a sense of humour which kept her knowledge of her own
importance from becoming overweening. "I believe his respect is for my
age, not for my rank. I wonder what the world is coming to!"

She went away then and left the father and daughter together. Walter,
who had taken a chair by Mary's, looked with a half-conscious pleasure
round the velvet sward on which the shadows of the trees lay long. The
trees were at their full summer foliage, dark as night, mysterious,
magnificent.

"What a very pleasant place!" Walter Gray said, with grave enjoyment.
"How sweet the evening smells are! How quiet everything is! Who could
believe that Wistaria Terrace was over the wall?"

"I have been missing Wistaria Terrace," Mary said. "You don't know how
lonesome it feels for the children. I wonder how Mamie is getting on
without me. I want to go home. Indeed, I feel quite able to. I don't
know how I shall do without going home."

"If you went home," said Walter Gray, unexpectedly practical, "your arm
would never set, Mary. You'd be forgetting and doing all manner of
things you oughtn't to do. If Lady Anne is kind enough to ask you to
visit her, stay a while and rest, dear. Indeed, you do too much for your
size."

"You will all miss me so dreadfully."

"Indeed, I don't think we shall miss you--in that way. Oddly enough--I
suppose Matilda was on her mettle--the house seemed quieter when I came
home. The children were in bed. I smelt something good from the kitchen.
Don't imagine that we shall not be able to do without you, child."

Mary, who knew no more of the capable charwoman than Walter Gray did,
looked on this speech of her father's as a mere string of tender
subterfuges. She said nothing, but her eyes rested on her grey woollen
skirt, faded by wear and the weather, and she had an unchildish sense of
the incongruity of her presence as a visitor in Lady Anne's house.
Walter Gray's glance roamed over his young daughter. He saw nothing of
her dreary attire. He saw only the spiritual face, over-pale, the
slender, young, unformed body, graceful as a half-opened flower in its
ill-fitting covering, the slender feet that had a suggestion of race,
the toil-worn hands the fingers of which tapered to fine points.

"You have always done too much, child," he said, with sudden, tender
compunction.

When he rose to go Mary clung to him as though their parting was to be
for years.

"I will come in again to-morrow," he said. "I shall sleep better
to-night for thinking of you in this quiet, restful place. Get some
roses in your cheeks, little girl, before you come back to us."

"I wish I were going back now," said Mary piteously. She looked round
the old walls with their climbing fruit trees as though they were the
walls of a prison. "It is awful not to be able to come and go. And Mamie
will never be able to do without me. The children will be ill----"

He left her in tears. As he re-entered the house by its iron steps up to
a glass door Lady Anne came out from her morning-room and called him
within. He looked about him at the room, walled in with books, with
yellowed marble busts of great men on top of the book-cases. His feet
sank in soft carpets. The smell of a pot of lilies mingled with the
smell of leather bindings. The light in the room, filtered through the
leaves of an overhanging creeper, was green and gold. It seemed to him
that he must have known such a room in some other world, where he had
not had to make watches all day with a glass screwed in his eye, but had
abundant leisure for books and beautiful things. Not but that there
might be worse things than the watchmaking. Over the works of the
watches, the fine little wheels and springs, Walter Gray thought hard,
thought incessantly. He thought, perhaps, the harder that he had neither
the leisure nor opportunity for putting down his thoughts on paper or
imparting them to another like-minded with himself. How his fellows
would have stared if they could have known the things that went on
inside Walter Gray's mind as he leant above his table, peering into the
interior of the watch-cases!

"Sit down, Mr. Gray," said Lady Anne graciously; "I want to talk to you
about Mary."

She approached the matter delicately, having wit enough to see that
Walter Gray was no common person. While she talked she looked with frank
admiration at his face: the fine, high, delicate nose; the arched brows,
like Mary's own; the over-development of the forehead. The dust of years
and worries lay thick upon his face, yet Lady Anne said to herself that
it was a beautiful face beneath the dust.

"I want to talk to you about Mary," she went on. "The child interests me
strongly. She is a fine vessel, this little daughter of yours. Pray
excuse me if I speak plainly. She has been doing far too much for her
age and her strength. Haven't you noticed that she is pulled down to
earth? Those babies, Mr. Gray--they are remarkably fat and heavy; they
are killing Mary."

"Her mother died of consumption," Walter Gray said, his face whitening
with terror.

"Ah!" the old lady thought; "she is the child of his heart. Those three
twins are merely the children of his home. That poor drudge of a mother
of theirs! Mary is the child of her father's heart and mind."

Then aloud: "You had better let me have her, Mr. Gray."

"Let you have her, Lady Anne? What would you do with my Mary?"

He looked scarcely less aghast than he had done a moment before at the
suggestion of consumption.

"Not separate her from you, Mr. Gray. This house is my home, and I am
not likely to leave it, except for a month or two at a time, at my age.
I think the child will be a companion to me. I have no romantic
suggestions to make. I am not proposing to adopt Mary. I shall pay her a
salary, and give her opportunities for education that you cannot. She
interests me, as I have said. Let me have her. When I no longer need
her--I am an old woman, Mr. Gray--she will be fit to earn her own
living. Everything I have goes back to my nephew Jarvis Lord Iniscrone.
But Mary will not suffer. Think! What have you to give her but a life of
drudgery under which she will break down--die, perhaps?"

She watched the emotion in his face with her little keen, bright eyes.

"It is not a fine lady's caprice?" he said. "You won't make my Mary
accustomed to better things than I could give her and then send her back
to be a drudge?"

"The Lord judge between thee and me," she answered solemnly.

"Then I trust you, Lady Anne Hamilton," he said.

The strange thing was that the proud old lady was gratified, almost
flattered, by the confidence in Walter Gray's unworldly eyes.

"Thank you, Mr. Gray," she said; then, as he took up his hat to go, she
laid a detaining hand on his shabby coat sleeve.

"Why not have dinner with Mary in the garden?" she suggested. "Do, pray.
I want you to tell her what we have agreed upon. I can send word to Mrs.
Gray."

Walter Gray was pleased enough to go back to his little girl whom he had
left in tears for the comfortless house and the burden of the young
stepbrothers and stepsisters. It was pleasure, half pain, to see the
uplifted face with which Mary regarded him when she saw him return. How
was he going to put the barrier between them that this plan to which he
had given his consent would surely mean? He had no illusions. Over the
wall, Lady Anne had said. But the wall that separated Wistaria Terrace
and the Mall was in reality a high and a great wall. He would never have
Mary in the old close communion again. All passes. How good the old
times were that were only a few hours away, yet seemed worlds! Never
again! They would never be all and all to each other in a solitude which
took no count of the others. Yet it was for Mary's sake. For Mary's sake
the wall was to rise between them. As he began to tell her the strange,
wonderful thing, his heart was heavy within him because a chapter of his
life was closed. He had come to the end of an epoch. Henceforth things
might be conceivably better, but--they would be different.




CHAPTER III

THE NEW ESTATE


Mary took the news of her great promotion in an unthankful spirit.

"Lady Anne is very kind," she said tearfully; "but I don't want to stay
with her. I couldn't bear to live anywhere but in Wistaria Terrace. It
is absurd that you should say you have given your consent, papa. How
could you possibly have consented when the house could not get on
without me? You know it could not. Why, even for a day things would be
all topsy-turvy without me."

"And so you have not gone to school," the father answered, with an
accent of self-reproach. "You have been weighed down with
responsibilities and cares that you ought to have been free of for years
to come. You have even been stunted in your growth, as Lady Anne said.
It is time things were altered. I don't know how I was so blind. We
ought to be grateful to the accident that has opened a door to us."

When he had gone, Lady Anne came and comforted Mary. There was a deal of
kindness in the old lady's heart.

"You shall help them," she said. "Dear me, how much help you will be
able to give them! Imagine beginning with a salary at fifteen! You are
to leave things to me, Mary. I have sent help to your stepmother--an
excellent woman, Mrs. Devine, whom I have known for many years. She is
very capable. I will tell her that she must remain with your stepmother.
It is amazing what one really capable woman can do. And afterwards there
will be the salary."

The salary, and perhaps a quick, warm feeling for Lady Anne which sprang
up suddenly in Mary's heart, settled the question. After all, as Lady
Anne said, despite her greatness she was very lonely. She had lost her
son and her grandson, and she could not endure her nephew or his family.
She had only a few old cronies. As a matter of fact, although she had
taken a fancy to Mary Gray and captured the child's susceptible heart,
she was not a particularly amiable or lovable old lady to the rest of
the world. She was too keen-sighted and sharp-tongued to be popular.

Mary slept that night in such a room as she had never dreamt of. There
was a little bed in the corner of it with a flowing veil of white,
lace-trimmed muslin like a baby's cot. There was white muslin tied with
blue ribbons at the window, and the dressing-table was as gaily and
innocently adorned. There was a work-box on a little table, a
writing-desk on another; a shelf of books hung on the wall. The room had
really been made ready for a dear young cousin of Lady Anne's, who had
not lived to enjoy it. If Mary had only known, she owed something of
Lady Anne's interest to the fact that her eyes were grey, like Viola's,
her cheek transparent like Viola's.

Apart from the discomfort of the broken arm, as she lay in the soft,
downy little bed, she was ill at ease, wondering how they were getting
on without her at Wistaria Terrace. Her breast had an ache for the baby
who was used to lie warm against it. Her good arm felt strange and
lonely for the familiar little body. She kept putting it out in a panic
during her sleep because she missed the baby.

In the morning Simmons, Lady Anne's maid, came to help her dress. It was
very difficult, Mary found, to do things for one's self with a broken
arm. Her head ached because of the disturbed sleep and the pain of the
broken limb. Simmons had come to her in a somewhat hostile frame of
mind. She did not hold with picking up gutter-children from no one knew
where and setting people as were respectable to wait upon them. But at
heart she was a good-natured woman, and her indignation disappeared
before the unchildish pain and weariness of Mary's face.

"There," she said, "I wouldn't be fretting, if I were you. Lor' bless
you, there's fine treats in store for you. Her ladyship sent only last
night for a roll of grey cashmere. I'm to fit you after your breakfast
and make it up as quick as I can. Then you'll be fit to go out with her
ladyship in the carriage and get your other things."

It was the last day of the ugly linsey. Simmons got through her task
with great quickness. She was a woman of taste, else she had not been
Lady Anne's maid. Lady Anne was more particular about her garments than
most young women. And, having once made up her mind to like Mary,
Simmons took an interest in her task.

"You are so kind, Mrs. Simmons," Mary said gratefully, feeling the
gentleness and dexterity with which the woman tried on her new garments
without once jarring the broken arm.

"I'm kind enough to those who take me the proper way," said Simmons,
greatly pleased with Mary's prefix of Mrs., which was brevet rank, since
Simmons had never married. It would have made a great difference to
Mary's comfort at this time if she had been sufficiently ill-advised to
call Simmons without a prefix, as Lady Anne did.

Dr. Carruthers had called to see Mary the morning after the accident. He
had interviewed his patient in the morning-room, and was passing out
through the hall when Lady Anne's voice over the banisters summoned him
to her presence.

"You can give me a little while, Dr. Carruthers?" she said. "I shall not
be interfering with your work?"

"I am quite free"--a little colour came into his cheeks. "The friend
whose work I was doing at the House of Mercy returned last night.
Yesterday was my last day."

"Ah! and yesterday brought you an unexpected patient. How do you find
her?"

"She has less physique than she ought to have."

"Yes, she has been underfed and overworked. I am going to alter all
that. I have taken her into my house as my little companion."

Dr. Carruthers stared in spite of himself.

"You think it very odd of me? Well, I _am_ odd, and I can afford to do
what pleases me. Mary Gray is going to live here. You should know her
father. A quite remarkable man, I consider him. Now, about yourself. I
have heard of you, Dr. Carruthers. I have heard that you are a very
clever young man and devoted to your work, that you have all the
knowledge of the schools at your fingertips, but very little experience,
and no practice to speak of."

"Excuse me, Lady Anne. I was three years house surgeon at the Good
Samaritan; and I have done a great deal of work since I have been here.
I will confess that my patients have been of a poor class."

"Who have not paid you a penny. I don't know whether you do it for
philanthropy or to keep your hand in----"

"A little of both," the young man said with a faint smile.

"But it is a good thing to do," the old lady went on, without noticing
his interpellation. "You're spoken well of by the poor, if the rich have
not heard anything about you. I know you're living beyond your means in
a big house, hoping that a paying practice will come to you. My dear
man, it never will, so long as people think you are in need of it. They
like Dr. Pownall at their doors with his carriage and pair, even if he
can only give them five minutes. Pownall forgot himself with me. I
remember his father--a very decent, respectable man who used to grow
cabbages. That's nothing against Pownall--creditable to him, I should
say. Still, he hadn't time to listen to my symptoms, and he was rude. 'A
woman of your age,' he said. I should like to know who told Dr. Pownall
my age. A lady has no age. 'It's time you retired,' I said to him. 'I
don't think of it,' said he; 'not for ten years yet. My patients won't
hear of it.' 'You're greedy,' said I; 'if you weren't your patients
might go to Hong Kong.' He thought it was a joke--hadn't time to find
out whether I was serious or not. I made him, Dr. Carruthers. It's time
for him to retire now. I shall mention to all my friends that you are my
body-physician."

She spoke like one of the Royal Family. But Dr. Carruthers had no
inclination to laugh. His eyes were dim as he murmured his
acknowledgments. It was fame, it was fortune, in those parts to be
approved by Lady Anne Hamilton. Hitherto she had been understood to
swear by Dr. Pownall.

"It means a deal to us, Lady Anne," he said, stumbling over his words.
"We had made up our minds to give up the big house and look for a slum
practice. The children--I have two living--are not very strong, any more
than Mildred. We put all we could into the venture of taking the house.
It was our bid for fortune."

"I wouldn't approve of it in a general way," said Lady Anne. "Still, it
has turned out well. Will your wife be at home to-morrow afternoon? I
should like to call upon her."

"She will be delighted."

Dr. Carruthers was regaining his self-control. He knew that the presence
of Lady Anne's barouche at his door for an hour in the afternoon would
be more potent in opening doors to him than if he had made the most
brilliant cure on record.

Mary was with Lady Anne next day when she went to call on Mrs.
Carruthers. It was characteristic of Lady Anne that she thought to tell
Jennings, the coachman, to drive up and down in front of the house and
round the sides, for Dr. Carruthers' house was a corner one with a
frontage to three sides. It was a hot summer day, and Jennings wondered
disrespectfully what bee the old lady had got in her bonnet. Such a
jangling of harness, such a flashing of polished surfaces! Every window
that commanded the three sides of Dr. Carruthers' house had an eye at
the pane. The tidings flew from one to another that Lady Anne Hamilton
was visiting Mrs. Carruthers, and was making a very long call.

Mildred was still on her sofa. She would have risen when Lady Anne came
in, but the old lady prevented her. Lady Anne could be royally kind when
it pleased her.

She drew a chair by the sofa and sat down. Mary, who had come in with
her, listened in some wonder to Lady Anne's sympathetic questions about
the children. That was something in which Mary was interested, in which
Mary had knowledge and experience; but though she listened she would not
have spoken a word for worlds.

As she sat there on the edge of one of Mrs. Carruthers' chairs--the
drawing-room furniture was of the sparsest; a chair or small table
dotted here and there on the wilderness of polished floor--she could see
herself in a pier-glass at the other end of the room. It was a quite
unfamiliar presentment she saw. This Mary was dressed in soft dove-grey.
She had a little white muslin folded fichu about her shoulders. She had
a wide black hat, with one long white ostrich feather. Her good hand was
gloved in delicate grey kid. There was something quaint about her
aspect; for that artist, Simmons, had discovered that Mary, for all her
fifteen years, looked her best with her soft fine brown hair piled on
top of her head. When she presented Mary so to Lady Anne the old lady
was fain to acknowledge that Simmons was right. There was a quaint and
delightful stateliness about Mary which made Lady Anne say to herself
once more that the child had gentle blood in her.

"Dear me," Mildred Carruthers thought, as her eyes wandered again and
again to the elegant little figure, "Kit said nothing of this. I
expected to find a rather interesting child of the humbler classes. I
remember particularly that he said she looked as though she had had a
hard time."

Mary's changed aspect had one unforeseen result. When she presented
herself at Wistaria Terrace the baby did not know her. Her stepmother
shed a few tears, which were half-gratification. The elder children were
already a bit shy of her, the baby's immediate predecessor even
murmuring of her as "the yady," and surveying her from afar, finger in
mouth. But the baby could in no way be brought to recognise her, and
only shouted lustily when she tried to force herself upon his
recognition.

"I shall come to-morrow in my old frock," Mary said, bitterly hurt by
this lack of perception on the baby's part. "I hate these hideous
things; so I do. To-morrow he will come to his Mary, so he will."

But when the morrow came, and she sought for her old work-a-day garments
in that pretty white and blue wardrobe where she had hung them when she
had discarded them for the grey frock and hat, they were not to be
found. There were numbers of things such as Mary had never dreamed of.
Lady Anne had provided her with an outfit, simple according to her
thoughts, but splendid in Mary's eyes. A white cashmere dressing-gown,
trimmed with lace, hung on the peg where the grey linsey had been.

Mary flew to Simmons to know where her old frock had gone to. The good
woman, who by this time had taken Mary under her wing to uphold her
against the rest of the household if it were inclined to resent the new
inmate, looked at her reprovingly.

"You never wanted that old frock, and you her ladyship's companion? No,
Miss Mary--for so I shall call you, as by her ladyship's orders, let
some people say what they like--that frock you never will see, for gone
it has to a poor child that'll maybe find it a comfort when winter
comes. I wonder at you for thinking on it, so I do, seeing as how I've
taken so much trouble with your clothes."

Mary turned away with a desolate feeling. The grey linsey might have
been like the feathers of the enchanted bird that became a woman for the
love of a mortal, the feathers which, if she wore them again, had the
power of transporting her back to her kindred and her old estate. The
old life was indeed closed to Mary with the disappearance of the grey
linsey; and it was long before she lost the feeling that if she could
only have kept her old garments she need not have been so separated from
the old life.




CHAPTER IV

BOY AND GIRL


It was during those early days that Mary made the acquaintance of Robin
Drummond. She had a comfortless feeling afterwards about the meeting;
but it was not because of Sir Robin or anything he did: he was always a
kind boy in her memory of him. It was because of his mother, Lady
Drummond. Mary knew from Lady Anne, who always thought aloud, that Lady
Drummond made a good many people feel uncomfortable.

They had driven out all the way from the city to the Court, the big
house on its wide plain below the mountains. It was a long drive--quite
twenty miles there and back--and Jennings, who liked to have a good deal
of his time to himself, had been rather cross about it. Not that he
dared show any temper to Lady Anne, who was easy and kindly with her
servants, as a rule, but could reduce an insubordinate one to humble
submission as well as any old lady ever could. But Mary, who knew the
household pretty well by this time, knew that Jennings was out of temper
by the set of his shoulders, as she surveyed them from her seat in the
barouche. It was a road, too, he never liked to take, because of a
certain steam tram which ran along it and made the horses uncomfortable
when they met it face to face. And there his mistress was unsympathetic
towards him. She had been a brilliant and daring horsewoman in her youth
and middle age.

"I never thought I should live to amble along like this," she confided
to Mary as they drove between golden harvest fields. "Rheumatic gout is
a great humbler of the spirit. Ah! here comes one of those black
monsters to make the pair curvet a little. They are too fat, Mary. They
have too easy a life. It is only on such an occasion as this that they
remember their hot youth."

They reached the Court without mishap, although once or twice the horses
behaved as though they meditated a mild runaway.

"You shall take the other road home, Jennings," Lady Anne said
graciously, as she alighted in front of the great square, imposing
house, amid its flower-beds of all shapes, its ornamental fountains
flinging high jets of golden water in the sun.

"It's time we gave up the horses, my lady," Jennings said, with
bitterness, "with the likes o' them black beasts on the road."

Later, as she and Mary waited in the great drawing-room for Lady
Drummond, she returned to the subject of Jennings and his grievance.

"He is always bad-tempered when we come to the Court," she said. "For
all its grandeur it is not a hospitable house. Jennings will have to go
without his tea this afternoon."

Mary looked with wonder down the great length of the magnificent room.
Her feet sank in the Turkey carpet. The walls, which were papered in
deep red, were lined with full-length portraits, some of them
equestrian. The place had an air of rich comfort. Was it possible that
the mistress of so much magnificence could grudge a visitor's coachman
his tea?

"Her ladyship looks after the bawbees," Lady Anne went on, thinking
aloud as usual, rather than talking to Mary. "And those who are in her
employment must think of them too, or they go. Ah! you are looking at
Gerald Drummond's portrait. What do you think of it, child?"

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.

At this point he would remember that, after all, Robin was poor Gerald's
son, if an unworthy one, and be contrite. But then the grievance would
revive of a far-back Quaker ancestor of Lady Drummond, whom the General
blamed for the peace-loving instincts of poor Gerald's boy; and once
again he would be furious.

Meanwhile, Nelly's frank, innocent eyes, blue as gentians, had no
consciousness of a lover. Her old father seemed to be enough for her. At
one moment they gave him the fullest assurance; the next he was in heats
and colds of apprehension about the lover, be it Robin or another, who
would take his little girl from him.




CHAPTER VI

THE BLUE RIBBON


The half-dozen years or so following Sir Denis's retirement were years
of peace, in which he forgot for long periods, broken only by the
Dowager's visits to London, his fear of losing his Nelly.

He had taken a house in Sherwood Square, where there is a space and
breeziness that the fashionable districts could not possibly allow.

The square sits on top of one of the highest hills in London, and
entrenches itself as a fortress against the poverty and squalor that are
creeping up the hill towards it. Around the square there are still
gardens and crescents and roads of consideration, but ever dwindling in
social status as one goes down the hill, till the consideration vanishes
in the degradation of cheap boarding-houses and the homes of Jews of the
shopkeeping classes.

Sir Denis had discovered Sherwood Square for himself, and was uncommonly
proud of it. He liked to point out to his friends that he rented a
palatial mansion for what a _pied-à-terre_ in Mayfair would have cost
him. The houses had been built by wealthy merchants and professional
people in the eighteenth century. They had splendours of double doors
and marble pavements, of frescoed walls and ceilings, and carved
mantelpieces. They were entered from a quiet street which showed hardly
a sign of life. There were lions couchant guarding the entrances. The
walls on that side showed mostly blank, uninteresting windows. With an
odd pride the great houses showed only their duller aspects to the
world.

All the living-rooms except one looked on the other side; and what a
difference! There was a great stretch of emerald-green turf such as one
would never look to see in London; to be sure, gardeners had been
watering and mowing and rolling it for over a century. In the turf were
many flower-beds, and here and there were forest trees which had been
there when the district was fields. Country birds came and built there
year after year. You might hear the thrush begin about January. And in
the spring it was a wilderness of sweet hyacinths and daffodils, lilac
and may. The rooms were spacious and splendid within the big
cream-coloured house; and the General used to say that in the early
morning, when the smoke had cleared away, it was possible from the upper
windows to see as far as the Surrey hills. However, that was something
which nobody but himself had tested.

In the house love and friendliness and good-will reigned supreme. The
General had insisted on engaging his own servants, much to the disgust
of the Dowager, who had several _protégés_ of her own practically
engaged. When the General had outwitted Lady Drummond on this occasion
by a flank movement, he was very gleeful in his confidential moments
alone with Nelly.

"She wanted to put in her spies and satellites, did she, Nelly, my girl?
Pretty stories of us they'd have carried to her Ladyship. The only
womanly thing your aunt has, my girl, is an invincible curiosity. She'd
like to know what we had for lunch and dinner, who came to see us, and
what clothes we wore. I'm glad you wouldn't have that mantua-maker of
hers. Cannot my girl have her frocks made where she likes? I'll tell you
what, Nelly: your aunt is a presumptuous, meddling, overbearing,
impertinent woman--that she is."

"Why don't you tell her to leave us alone, papa?"

But the General, whose courage had never been doubted during all the
years of his strenuous life, had very little bravery when it came to a
question of telling hard truths to a woman, and that woman the Dowager.

"We must remember, after all, Nelly," he would say then, "that she is
your Uncle Gerald's widow. Poor Gerald! what a dear fellow he was! No
matter what we say between ourselves, we can't quarrel with Gerald's
widow."

And Sir Denis, who was becoming garrulous in old age, would slip off
into some reminiscence of the younger brother to whom he had been
tenderly attached, and for whom he had also a certain hero-worship
because he had been so fine and heroic a soldier.

Certainly it said well for the servants whom Sir Denis and Nelly had
chosen for themselves that they fell in so completely with the kindness
and honesty and good-will of the house. Some credit was doubtless due
also to Sir Denis's soldier servant, whom he had installed as butler;
for Pat's loyalty and devotion to "Old Blood and Thunder" must have
influenced the class of persons who are so susceptible of impressions
from those of their own station, while the standards and exhortations of
their social superiors are as though they were not. Pat was lynx-eyed
for a malingerer in his Honour's service; and, indeed, where the rule
was so easy and pleasant there was no excuse for malingering. Pat, too,
was ably seconded by Bridget, the cook, who had come in originally as
kitchen-maid, and had in time taken the place of the very important and
pretentious functionary with whom they had started, and whose cookery
did not at all suit Sir Denis's digestion, impaired somewhat by long
years in India. The young kitchen-maid had taken the cook's place during
the latter's holiday, and had sent up for Sir Denis's dinner a little
clear soup, a bit of turbot with a sauce which was in itself genius, a
bird roasted to the nicest golden brown, and a pudding which was only
ground rice, but had an insubstantial delicacy about it quite unlike
what one associates with the homely cereal.

"You've saved my life, my girl," said Sir Denis, meeting Bridget on the
stairs the morning after this banquet, and presenting her with a golden
sovereign, "and if you like to stay on as cook at forty pounds a year,
why so you shall."

"You could shave yourself in her sauce-pans, your Honour," said Pat,
when he heard of this amazing promotion. It was Pat's way of saying that
Bridget polished her utensils till they reflected like a mirror. "She's
a rale good little girsha, that's what she is, the same Bridget; and I'm
rale glad, your Honour, that ould consiquince isn't comin' back again."

After that there were few changes. The servants were in clover, and
since Pat and Bridget knew it, and impressed it on their subordinates,
it came to be a generally recognised fact. To be sure, it made it
pleasanter for everyone in the house when, thanks to Bridget's excellent
plain cooking. Sir Denis forgot he had such a thing as a liver, and had
no more of the gouty attacks which made his temper east-windy instead of
west-windy. During those peaceful years he forgot to be choleric. He was
overflowing with kindness and helpfulness to those about him, and took a
paternal interest in the affairs of his household.

"Sure," Pat would say to Bridget, "'tis for marrying us he'd be, if he
knew how it was with us, same as he married off Rose to the postman and
gave them a cottage; and that new girl isn't up to Rose's work yet, nor
ever will be, unless I'm mistaken."

"'Twould be a sin to take advantage of him," Bridget would answer. "And
we're both young enough to wait a bit, Pat. There'll be new ways when
Miss Nelly marries Sir Robin. Maybe 'tis going to live with them he'd
be."

"He never will, so long as her Ladyship's alive," said Pat,
emphatically.

"Then maybe we'd be havin' him for a furnished lodger," said Bridget.
"I'd rather it 'ud be something in the country. Why wouldn't you be his
coachman as well, Pat? Sure, anything you don't know about horses isn't
worth the knowin'."

"True for you. We might have a little lodge," said Pat.

They were really the quietest and most peaceful years--unless the
Dowager happened to be in town. Then something went dreadfully wrong
with the General's temper, and he would come roaring downstairs and
along the corridors like a winter storm. The servants' hall used to take
a tender interest in those bad days.

"Somebody ought to spake to her," said Bridget. "Supposin' the gout was
to go to his heart! He was bad enough after the last time she was here."

"She'll never lave hoult of him," said Pat, solemnly. "The sort of her
Ladyship houlds on the tighter the more you wriggle. He's preparing a
quare bed of repentance for himself, so he is, the langwidge he's usin'
about her all over the house. By-and-by he'll be rememberin' she's Sir
Gerald's widdy, and'll be askin' me ashamed-like, 'I hope I didn't say
too much about her Ladyship in my timper, Pat. She's a tryin' woman, a
very tryin' woman. I'm afraid I'm apt to forget now an' agin that she's
my dear brother's widdy, so I am.'"

Pat's imitation of Sir Denis was really admirable.

"'Tis a pity he doesn't run her out of the house," said Bridget,
"instead of lettin' her bother the heart out of him like that."

"He couldn't say a rough word to a woman, not if it was to save his
life," said Pat. "Nothin' rougher thin 'No, ma'am,' and 'Yes, ma'am,' I
ever heard him say to her. Whirroo, Bridget, you should ha' heard him
whin his timper was up givin' it to us long ago in the barrack square. I
hope it isn't the suppressed gout she'll be giving him the next time!
'Tisn't half as bad whin it's out."

However, the storms were few and far between. The household lived by
rule. Every morning, winter and summer, the horses were at the door by
eight o'clock for the morning canter of the General and Miss Nelly in
the park. At nine o'clock the household assembled for prayers. After
breakfast Sir Denis walked to his club in Pall Mall, wet or dry. He
would read the papers and discuss the cheeseparing policy of the
Government with some of his old chums, lunch at the club, play a game of
dominoes or draughts, and return home in time for dinner. Frequently
they entertained a friend or two quietly at dinner. But, company or no
company, there were prayers at ten o'clock, after which the General took
his candle and went to his bedroom.

There were times, of course, when Nelly went out to balls and
entertainments, and then Sir Denis was to be seen on duty, even though
there were a good many ladies who would be willing to take the
chaperonage of his daughter off his hands. But that was an office he
would relinquish to no one. He was the most patient of chaperons, too,
and never grumbled if the daylight found him still at the whist-table,
although he would rise at the same hour as usual and carry out his
appointed round for the day as if he had not lost his sleep over-night.
Of course, Nelly might stay a-bed. He wouldn't have Nelly's roses
spoilt, and the young needed their proper amount of sleep. As for
himself, he couldn't sleep a wink after seven, no matter how late he had
been up the night before.

But, on the whole, they lived a quiet life. Nelly was too unselfish, too
fond of her father, to cost him many nights without his usual sleep. She
had really the quietest tastes. Her few friends, her books, her music,
her dogs and birds, sufficed for her happiness. They had a houseful of
dogs, by the way, and any description of the way of life in Sherwood
Square which made no mention of dogs would be quite insufficient. Duke
the Irish terrier and Bonaparte the pug, usually Boney, and Nelson the
bull terrier, were as important and characteristic members of the
household as anyone else, except, perhaps, Sir Denis and Miss Nelly.
Nelly used to explain her stay-at-home ways to her friends by saying
that the dogs were offended with her if she went out for a walk without
them. The dogs had many tricks. They knew the terms of drill as well as
any soldier, and were always ready for parade, or to die for their
country, or groan for their country's enemies, at the General's word of
command. Nelly had to be much out-of-doors, as the dogs were clamorous
for walks, and she kept her roses in London with the old milkmaid
sweetness.

There was one happening of the quiet day that stood out for Sir Denis,
and, although he did not know it, for his daughter also.

Sir Denis's old regiment happened to be stationed at a barracks in the
immediate neighbourhood. To reach their parade-ground it was possible
for the troops, by making a little detour, to pass along the quiet
street on which the houses in Sherwood Square opened. It became an
established thing that they should pass every morning about nine
o'clock. How that came Sir Denis did not trouble to ask. He was quite
satisfied and delighted that "the boys" should do him honour.

The breakfast-room was one of the few rooms that did not overlook the
square but the street. Every morning, just as Sir Denis concluded
prayers, there would come the steady trot of cavalry and the jingle of
accoutrements. If he had not quite finished, he would say "Amen" in a
reverent hurry. "Come now, boys and girls," he would say to the
servants, "I want you to see my old regiment."

He would step out on the balcony above the hall-door with a beaming
face, and his arm around his Nelly's waist. The servants would press
behind him, the dogs push to the front with the curiosity of their kind.
Down the street the soldiers would come, all flashing in scarlet and
gold, the sleek horses shining in the morning sun with a deeper lustre
than their polished accoutrements. There would be a halt for a second in
front of the house. The men would salute their old General, the General
salute his old regiment. Then the cavalcade would sweep on its way and
the street be duller than before.

One morning--it was a bright, breezy morning of March--the wind had
caught Nelly's golden hair and blown it in a halo about her face. She
was wearing a blue ribbon in it. She was fond of blue, and the
simplicity of it became her fresh youth. Just as the soldiers halted the
wind caught Nelly's blue bow, and, having played with it a little, sent
it drifting down like a little blue flower among the men on horseback.

It was such a slight thing that the General might not have noticed it.
Anyhow, he made no comment, but watched the troops out of sight as
usual. The odd thing was that Nelly passed over her loss in silence,
although she must have missed her blue ribbon, since without it her hair
had become loose in the wind.

At breakfast, when the servants had left the room, the General made a
remark.

"That young Langrishe sits his horse well," he said. "He's a good
soldier, Nelly, my girl. A very good soldier, or I'm much mistaken."

But Nelly was apparently too absorbed in her duty of making the tea to
answer the remark. For an instant she was redder than a rose. No one
would have suspected Sir Denis of slyness, but the look he shot at the
girl was certainly sly. Under the white tablecloth he rubbed his hands
softly together.




CHAPTER VII

A CHANCE MEETING


It was worse for the General when Sir Robin Drummond left Oxford and
settled in London, with an avowed intention of reading for the Bar, and
at the same time making politics his real career.

"A man ought to do something in the world," he said to his irate uncle.
"The Bar is always a stepping-stone. I confess I don't look to practice
very much; my real bent is for politics. But the law interests me, and
it is always a stepping-stone."

"I should have thought that the profession of arms, which your father
and your grandfather adorned, as well as a good many of your forbears,
might serve you as well," Sir Denis said, hotly.

"You leave out my uncle, sir," the young man replied, with urbane good
humour. "Yes, the Drummonds have done very well for the profession of
arms. Still, with my beliefs on the subject of war----"

"Pray don't air them, don't air them. You know what I think about them.
Your father's son ought to be ashamed of professing such sentiments."

"One must abide by one's sentiments, one's convictions, if one is to be
good for anything. Uncle Denis," Sir Robin said, patiently.

"You'll have no chance in politics. No constituency will return you.
What we want now is a strong Government that will strengthen us, through
our Army and Navy, sir, against our enemies. Such a Government will come
in at the next election a-top of the wave. The people, or I am much
mistaken, are not going to see the bulwarks of our power tampered with.
The country is all for war. Where do you come in?"

Sir Robin smiled ever so slightly. It was that smile of his, with its
faintest hint of intellectual superiority, that riled the General to
bursting point.

"I don't believe there is a war feeling, Uncle Denis," he said. "The
country has had enough of war. However, I should not come in on top of a
wave of war feeling in any case. You would be quite right in asking
where I should come in. To be sure, I look to come in on top of the
anti-war wave. My side is pledged against war. The working man----"

"You don't mean to say that you're going to appeal to _him_!" Sir Denis
shouted. "You don't mean to say that you're going to side with the
Radicals! I've lived to see many strange things, but--Gerald's son a
Radical!"

He brought out the ejaculations with the sound of guns popping. His face
was red with indignation, his eyes leaping at his degenerate nephew. The
next words did not tend to calm him.

"Do you know, Uncle Denis, I believe that if my father had been a
politician he would have been a Radical? His profound feeling for
Christianity, his adherence to the creed of its Founder, Whose whole
life was a glorification of toil----"

"Spare me, spare me!" cried the General, restraining himself with
difficulty. "So a man can't be a Christian and a gentleman! And you
think your father would have been a Radical! I can tell you, young
gentleman----"

At this moment Nelly came into the room, charming in her short-waisted
frock of white satin, with a little cap of pearls on her hair. Both men
turned and stared at her, pleasure and affection in their eyes.

"So you've been heckling poor Robin as usual," she said, stroking her
father's cheek. "Heckling poor Robin and getting your hair on end like a
fretful porcupine. I'll never be able to make you into a nice, sweet,
quiet old gentleman."

"Turn your attention to him," said the General, indicating his nephew by
an unfriendly nod. "What do you think, Nell? He's a Radical. He's going
to contest a seat for the Radicals. What do you say now?"

"Pooh!" said Nelly, with her pretty chin in the air. "Pooh! Why
shouldn't he? Lots of nice people are Radicals. If he feels that way, of
course he ought to do it."

Robin's unpractical eyes thanked her mutely. He was as plain-looking a
man as he had been a boy, more hatchet-faced than ever. He was long and
lean and angular, and his positions were ungraceful. But his eyes were
the eyes of Don Quixote. The eyes had appealed to Nelly as long as she
could remember.

"Oh, if you're against me, Nell!" said Sir Denis, lamely. "Ah! there's
the bell! And a good thing, too. I couldn't eat my lunch to-day for old
Grogan of the Artillery. He's a man with a grievance. It soured my wine
and spoilt my food. Well, well, Robin, if you're under Nelly's
protection you may do what you like--join the Peace Society, if you
like."

"I mean to, sir," Sir Robin said, placidly. "In fact, I'm speaking on
'The Ideal of a Universal Peace' on Monday evening at the Finsbury
Democratic Debating Club."

When Sir Robin came to town there had been an apprehension in his
uncle's breast, too well-founded, that the Dowager would follow him. She
was devoted to her son, and not at all disposed to take the General's
views about his recreancy in politics.

"A good many good people are on the Radical side, after all," she said,
"and there is, perhaps, more room, too, for a young man of Robin's
ambitions in the Radical party."

"So far as I can see," said the General, acidly, "his ambitions are
rather to succeed at the bottom than at the top. The applause of the
multitude appeals to him more than the praise of his equals or
superiors."

Lady Drummond glanced coldly at his heated face.

"I fancy you've an attack of gout coming on, Denis," she said. "I should
send for Sir Harley Dix, if I were you."

She had stopped the General just as he was on his own doorstep, setting
his face cheerfully eastwards on his way to Pall Mall. He had come back
with her. He knew his duty to his brother's widow better than to do
anything else. It was Wednesday, and on Wednesday there was always a
particular curry at lunch which he much affected. He was a connoisseur
in curries, and the _chef_ always made this with an eye to Sir Denis's
approval. He would have to shorten his walk and 'bus part of the way, or
the curry would be cold. He hated to be put out in his daily routine.

"I never was freer from gout in my life, Matilda," he said, with
indignation. "I don't trouble the doctors much. When I want their advice
I shall ask for it. I always ask for advice when I want it."

She looked at him with unconcern.

"Do you think Nelly will soon be back?" she asked.

"I don't know. When she takes the dogs for a walk she is often out for a
couple of hours. Perhaps it would be too long a time to wait."

In his mind he could see the curry disappearing before the other men who
liked it as much as he did. Grogan would always eat curry--that special
curry--to the General's indignation. Why, curry was the last thing
Grogan ought to eat! Wasn't he as yellow as the curry itself with
chronic liver? Grogan was greedy over that curry--a greedy fellow, the
General said to himself, remembering the many occasions when it had been
impossible for him to break away from Grogan and his grievances. If her
Ladyship was going to sit on endlessly! The General's manners were too
good to leave her to sit by herself. And she was untying her bonnet
strings! He might as well lunch at home. No, he wouldn't do that, not if
her Ladyship was going to stay to lunch. He supposed he could have lunch
somewhere, if not at his club.

"Pray, don't put yourself out for me, Denis," her Ladyship was saying,
with what passed for graciousness in her. "I know your usual habits. At
your age a man doesn't like to be put out of his habits. Don't mind me,
pray. I can amuse myself very well till Nelly comes in. Plenty of books
and papers, I see. You subscribe to Mudie's. I thought no one subscribed
to Mudie's now that we have so many Free Libraries. I have never been
able to afford myself a library subscription, even although we lived in
the country. Now that I am going to settle in town----"

"Settle in town!" The General's eyes were almost starting from his head.
"I'd no idea, Matilda, you were going to settle in town. What's going to
become of the Court?"

"I have an idea of letting it for a few years. Mr. Higbid, the very rich
hide merchant, has taken a fancy to the place. I have yet to hear what
Robin will say. Mr. Higbid is prepared to pay a fancy price----"

"He'd have to before I'd let him into my drawing-room," said the
General, with disgust. "Imagine letting the Court! And to a man who
sells hides!"

"His money is as good as anybody else's. And he is received everywhere.
You are really too old-fashioned, Denis. Your ways need altering."

"I am too old to change, ma'am," said the General, getting up and giving
himself a shake like a dog. "If you don't really mind being left----" He
wanted to get away to think over the fact that the Dowager was going to
settle in town. He could hardly keep himself from groaning. His peace
was all at an end. If he had not been too old to change, he would have
fled from London and left it to the Dowager. But big as it was, it was
too little to contain himself and the Dowager with any prospect of
peace.

"I'll stay and have lunch with Nelly," the Dowager went on, quite
ignorant of his perturbation. "Afterwards, I'm going to take her to see
houses with me. _Of course_, I shall settle in your immediate
neighbourhood, if I can find anything suitable. I'm going to take Nelly
off your hands a bit, take her about and advise her as to her frocks.
She was wearing white chiffon the last time we dined here--a most
perishable material. I don't think your purse is long enough for white
chiffon, Denis. Then the young people ought to see more of each other.
We ought to be talking about trousseaux----"

But at this point the General fled. If he had stayed another second he
would have said things that his kind and chivalrous heart would have
grieved over later. He fled, and left her Ladyship staring after him in
amazement.

He clean forgot about the curry in the fretting and fuming of his mind,
or it occurred to him only to be consigned to Grogan, as though Grogan
were a synonym for something much stronger. His fiery indignation
between Sherwood Square and Pall Mall was quite amazing. The Dowager in
the next street! Why, he might as well order his coffin. And talking
about taking Nelly from him. That muff, Robin, too! When had the fellow
shown any impatience? He didn't want the girl to marry an oyster. He
remembered the glory and glamour of his own love affair, of that golden
year of marriage. His Nelly ought to be loved as her mother had been
before her, as her mother's daughter deserved to be. He wasn't going to
yield her to a fellow who would only give her half his tepid heart, who
would leave her to spend her evenings alone while he spouted in Radical
clubs or in that big talking shop, the House of Commons. He wouldn't
have it. And still----Robin was poor Gerald's son, and there was nothing
against him but his politics. Somewhere, at the back of his mind, the
General recognised the fact that he could have forgiven the politics if
it had not been for the Dowager.

He had almost reached the doors of his club--Grogan might eat the curry
for him, and be hanged to him!--when he saw advancing towards him the
spare, elegant figure that sat its horse in front of the regiment below
the General's window every morning. The oddest gleam came into his eyes.
The young man had recognised him, and was blushing like a girl as he
came towards him. He had velvety brown eyes and regular features, was a
handsome lad, the General said to himself as young Langrishe lifted his
hat from his sleek, well-shaped head. He had the barest acquaintance
with Sir Denis, and he would have passed by if the old soldier had not
stopped him.

"How do you do, Captain Langrishe?" he said. "I am very much obliged to
you for the pleasure you give me every morning. I take it as uncommonly
kind of you to bring 'the boys' past my house. I assure you I quite look
forward to it--I quite look forward to it."

Langrishe stammered something about the regiment delighting to do honour
to its old General, growing redder and redder as he did so. His
confusion became him in the General's eyes. He was certainly a
pleasant-looking, well-mannered boy, the General decided, and the
confusion of the young soldier in the presence of the old soldier an
entirely natural and creditable thing.

"I'll tell you what, my lad," said Sir Denis, putting his arm within the
other's: "if you've nothing better to do, supposing you come and lunch
with me. I'm just going in to the club. And you--on your way to it? I
thought so. You'll give me the pleasure of your company?"

The General was half an hour late, yet he found a small table in a
window recess unappropriated. It was set for two, and a screen was drawn
about it so that the two could be as retired as they wished. More--the
General had not been forgotten in the distribution of the curry. Their
portions came up piping hot. From where they sat the General could see
Sir Rodney Vivash and Grogan button-holing each other. They were the
bores of the club, and for once they had foregathered, willingly or
unwillingly.

After all, there were compensations--there were compensations; and the
General was hungry. His manner towards young Langrishe had an air of
fatherly kindness. There was a gratified flush on the young fellow's
lean, dark cheek. What was it the General had heard about Langrishe? Oh,
yes, that he had had rough luck--that his old uncle. Sir Peter--the
General remembered him for a curmudgeon--had married and had a son,
after rearing the young fellow as his heir. No wonder the lad looked
careworn. The regiment was an expensive one; not too expensive for Sir
Peter Langrishe's heir, but much too expensive for a poor man.

However, it was no business of the General's--not just yet.

"You have met my daughter, I think?" he said. They were at the cheese by
this time, and the General was apparently divided between the merits of
Gruyère and Stilton. He did not glance at Captain Langrishe, but he knew
quite as well as if he had that the colour came again to his cheek, that
the brown eyes looked unhappily conscious.

"I have met Miss Drummond several times," he answered.

"Ah, you must dine with us one evening."

Young Langrishe looked at him in a startled way.

"Thank you very much, sir," he said, "but, as a matter of fact, I am
negotiating a change into an Indian regiment. I don't know how long I
shall be here. And I shall be very busy, I'm afraid."

"Ah! Just as you like--just as you like." The General, by the easiest of
transitions, passed on to the subject of soldiering in India. He had an
unwontedly exhilarated feeling which later had its reaction in a
consciousness of guilt.

"What would poor Gerald have said?" he thought, as he walked homewards
that evening. "And I've nothing against Robin--I've nothing really
against Robin, except his Peace Societies and all the rest of it. And
the Dowager--yes, there's always the Dowager. I should like to know what
on earth ever induced poor Gerald to marry the Dowager."




CHAPTER VIII

GROVES OF ACADEME


After that keen disappointment about the baby's forgetting her, although
she excused it to herself, arguing that at twenty months one cannot be
expected to have a long memory, Mary was more reconciled to the changed
conditions of her life.

"I hope we are going to be together for a good many years," Lady Anne
said, "and presently you must be able to play and sing to me, to read to
me and take an interest in the things in which I am interested. You are
to go to school, Mary."

So Mary went to school, first to the Queen's Preparatory School, then to
the Queen's College. Her years there were very happy ones, especially
those years at the College, after she had found her feet and made
friends, and gained confidence in herself and the world.

"She sucks up knowledge as a sponge sucks up water," was the report of
the Principal, Miss Merton, to the delighted Lady Anne. "I hope Lady
Anne, that you will permit her to go in for her B.A. I should not be
surprised, indeed, if she captured a fellowship."

"No fellowships," Lady Anne said, firmly. "What would she do with a
fellowship? I propose, as soon as she has done with you, to take her
abroad. I have a mind to see the world again through young eyes. And it
will put the coping-stone on her education. I shouldn't dare leave her
too long with you. Learning so often destroys a woman's imagination.
They work too hard, I suppose. It doesn't seem to come natural to them
yet as it does to men."

"There's no question of Mary's working too hard," the Lady Principal
said, bearing these hard sayings of Lady Anne's with composure. "She has
fine brains. Whatever she wants in an intellectual way she can come at
easily."

Mary, indeed, took her B.A. without over-much burning of the midnight
oil. Afterwards she always spoke with the tenderest affection of her old
school-days. She recalled with delight the spacious class-rooms, the old
garden with its great woodland trees, and the tiny rooms of the girls
who were in residence at the College, with their quaint and pretty
adornments--the place of so much young _camaraderie_ and soaring
ambition and happy emulation. "I can hardly remember that anyone was
ever unkind," she used to say long afterwards.

As a matter of fact, the band of elder students with whom Mary was
connected in her latter days at the College had a generous enthusiasm
for her beauty, taking it as in a sense a credit to themselves.

"You will be a living answer to them," said Jessie Baynes, who was small
and plain-looking, "when they say that learned women are always ugly."

And the whole of the class applauded her speech.

"I shall love to see you in your cap and gown," Jessie went on, firing
at the picture in her own imagination. "Very few of the men will be
taller than you, Mary. How they will shout!"

Jessie had no thought at all of her own lack of height and grace, as she
had no idea of how pleasant her little brown face was despite its
plainness. She was going to earn her living by teaching, and, what was
more, going to make living easier and pleasanter for her mother and her
young sister. To get her mother out of stuffy town lodgings to a seaside
cottage, which was an unattainable heaven to the mother's thoughts, to
educate Edie and give her a chance in life--these were the things that
filled Jessie's mind to the exclusion of fear whenever she thought of
her ordeal at the conferring of the University degrees. To be sure, she
trembled a little when she thought of the long, brilliantly lighted
Hall, and all the fine ladies, and the scarlet robes of the Senators,
and the young barbarians in the gallery, and all the thousands of eyes
fixed on the one little dumpling of a woman going up to receive her
degree. If she might only win the fellowship! She would not care what
ordeal she passed through for that. So she put away the fear from her
mind. If she could only win the fellowship! But she was too humble about
her own attainments to have more than a little, little hope of that.

How generous they all were, Mary thought, with an impulse of gratitude
towards those dear class-fellows that brought the tears to her eyes.

"When we are photographed in our caps and gowns," said another, "you
must stand up in the middle of us, Mary, so that they will see how tall
you are."

Mary reported their generosity to Lady Anne, with whom, by this time,
she was on the loving terms that cast out fear.

"Very creditable to them," the old lady said, twinkling. "Don't let it
make you vain, Mary. You're well enough, but you aren't half as pretty
as a rose, or half as tall as a tree, and there are thousands of trees
and roses in the world."

"I don't think myself pretty," Mary said, in a hurt voice. "There are
several of the girls far prettier. As for being tall, it is no pleasure.
I would much rather be little."

"Your skirts will always cost you more than other girls'."

"It is only because they are so kind and generous that they think well
of me," Mary went on. "And, oh! I do hope that Jessie will win the
fellowship. Everyone does, even----"

"Even her opponents," the old lady said, drily. It was always Lady
Anne's way to seem cynical over things, even with those she loved best.

"She has worked so hard for it," said Mary, "and Alice Egerton, who is
in the running, too, has shaken hands with Jessie, and told her that if
she wins it will only prove she is the better man."

"Dear me, we are cultivating the manly virtues, too," said Lady Anne.
"Let me see: there are twenty young ladies in your class, and not a
spiteful one among them. I have never heard of so low a percentage."

"If women were given something to think of besides petty interests,"
Mary began hotly. "If they were educated, if they were given ideals----"

"You are only on your trial yet, child," Lady Anne suggested. "We
produced very good women before Women's Colleges were heard of. I'm glad
they've not spoilt you, anyhow. No stooped shoulders, no narrow chest,
no dimmed eyes. I couldn't have forgiven them if they had made you pay a
price for your learning."

When Mary received her B.A. degree she was applauded more rapturously
from the gallery than even the new Fellow, Miss Jessica Baynes, B.A.,
who knew little enough about her own reception, since, as she left the
daïs, she had glanced up and made out her mother's little nutcracker
face, so like her own, in one of the circles of faces overhead.

There was a little group in the balcony watching Mary with fond pride.
Lady Anne Hamilton's face shone again as the tall, slender young figure
went up amid the furious applause of the undergraduates, through which
the general clapping of hands could hardly be heard. Behind Lady Anne
were Mary's father and stepmother. Lady Anne had taken care that they
should not be forgotten in the distribution of tickets. Walter Gray
looked on quietly. He was very proud of his girl; but he had, perhaps,
too great a wisdom to set much store by the plaudits of the many. Mrs.
Gray, in a bonnet Mary had made for her and a mantle which had been
Mary's gift, was in a timid rapture. She was older by some years than
she had been when Mary went to Lady Anne first, but she was far more
comely. Her family seemed to have reached its limits, for one thing, and
she was no more the helpless drudge she had been. Several of the
children were at school, and that wonderfully elastic salary of Mary's
had done miraculous things in the way of bringing comfort and even
refinement to Walter Gray's home.

"Well," said Lady Anne, turning round, and touching Walter Gray's arm,
"I have not made too bad a fairy godmother, have I, now?"

"She would never have grown so tall," Walter Gray said, with absent
eyes. He had yielded up Mary for her good, but he had never ceased to
miss her.

One person who sat among the most distinguished group in the Hall looked
at Mary with a lively interest.

"What a charming girl!" she said to her host, a very great person.

"I believe she has been adopted as a sort of companion by old Lady Anne
Hamilton, who is a cousin of my wife's," he responded. "The girl has
been educated at her expense. Yes, it's a pretty thing. I only hope it
won't become a blue-stocking."

"I must positively know her," said the lady. "She interests me."

"You make me jealous," returned the great person, with playful
gallantry.

Lady Agatha had been a peeress in her own right since she had attained
the tender age of two years. Her father and mother had died too early
for her to miss them, and she had shown from her childhood a capacity to
think for herself, which nurses and governesses and all such persons
looked on as absolutely shocking. She had had a guardian, a soft,
woolly, comfortable gentleman whose will she had brushed aside and
replaced by her own from the time she was eight years old. Legally, she
was not of age till twenty-one; in reality, she was of age at fifteen or
thereabouts. She consulted Colonel St. John, her guardian, about her
affairs, as an act of grace, because she was so fond of him and wouldn't
hurt his feelings for anything; but she made no secret of the fact that
at twenty-one she was going to be absolutely her own mistress.

"You are your own mistress now," Colonel St. John said once, a little
ruefully. "You never do what I wish--you make me do what _you_ wish.
Don't go too fast, Agatha, my dear. At twenty-one one is not wiser than
old people, though one may feel so."

But he knew that he was talking to empty air. She was so eager to lay
hold on life. And she was equipped for it--there was no doubt of that.
Mr. Grainger, of Grainger, Ellison and Wells, who had had charge of the
business of the estate from time immemorial, whose trade it was to be
cautious, was cheerful over the Colonel's misgivings.

"You wouldn't feel anxious if she was a lad," he said. "I'd set her
against nine hundred and ninety lads out of a thousand for sound
common-sense. She won't do anything foolish. Take my word for it, she
won't do anything foolish."

She did not do anything foolish. She took her own way about some things
against Colonel St. John, and even against Mr. Grainger, but she turned
out to be right in the end. She had a good many people dependent in one
way or another upon her for their well-being, and she insisted on coming
face to face with these--on dealing with them without an intermediary.
And she made no mistakes. She could see through shifty dishonesty as
well as if she had had three times her years and a wide knowledge of the
seamy side of human nature. She had always been an outdoor girl, and now
she displayed a knowledgeable interest in her own Home Farm and in the
affairs of her tenants.

She used to say that the days were not long enough for all she had to
do. Certainly, she contrived to cram into them three times as much
pleasure, business, and philanthropy as her neighbours.

She had an idea of the obligations of her position as lady of the soil
which made poor Colonel St. John gasp when she talked about it. There
was so much to be done for the people--churches to be built, or chapels,
if they preferred them, and school-houses, industries to be fostered--so
much encouragement to be given to honest endeavour. Her idea was that
the land should afford all the people wished for. She was going to stop
the terrible drifting of the people into the towns. Their lives were to
be made gayer. There should be entertainments. The farmers' wives and
daughters were to make butter and cheese like their forbears, to grow
fruit and vegetables, to rear poultry and sell eggs; but they were not,
therefore, to lead a life of narrow toil. They were to be rewarded for
their skill and industry. The fruit of their labours was to make life
sweeter and pleasanter for them. There were to be libraries and
reading-rooms, debating clubs, social gatherings.

"Stuff and nonsense!" Colonel St. John said, with his cotton-wool
eyebrows puffed out. "She'll dip the estate, and then she'll be coming
to ask us to pull her out. Worse, she'll only make them discontented."

"She'll come out all right," Mr. Grainger said, rubbing his hands softly
together. "If she blunders, she'll learn wisdom from the experiment.
You'll see she'll come out all right, Colonel. The only thing that
troubles me is that she may have no time to get married. We don't want
her to be a spinster, hey? I confess I should like to see the succession
assured."

It was this notable young lady who came in not so long after to Queen's
College, where a distinguished woman of letters was giving a series of
lectures on "The Poetry of the Sixteenth Century." Her entrance created
somewhat of a flutter. She was as tall as Mary Gray, but much more
opulently built. She had short, curling, dark hair, irregular features,
and violet eyes--not a bit handsome, but big and bonny and lovesome. Her
dress fluttered even these students. It was of purple velvet, with a
great stole of sables, and her sable muff had a big bunch of real
violets, which brought an odour of the quickening and burgeoning earth.

She sat by the Lady Principal, and afterwards had tea with the students.
She asked especially for an introduction to Mary Gray, and then she
insisted on driving her as far as the Mall in her motor-car, which she
drove herself, while the chauffeur sat with folded arms behind. On the
way she talked poetry and politics with the same fervour she brought to
all her pursuits.

"It has been borne in on me," she said vehemently, "that in working
among my own people as I have been doing I have been only tinkering at
things, just tinkering. One has to go to the root of the matter, to
abolish unjust laws, to replace them by good ones. Supposing I made my
estate, as I hope to make it, a Utopia, still there would be hundreds of
estates where the people would be in misery. It ought not to be left to
our good will to do things. We should be compelled to do them."

Mary watched the flashing eyes with the greatest admiration. She felt
that Lady Agatha was a glorious creature, for whom she could do
anything. The hero-worship which is latent in the heart of all young
people worth their salt sprang into sudden life. Lady Agatha glanced at
her, noticed her expression, and smiled a rich, sweet, gratified smile.
She had made a disciple. To make a disciple was very pleasant to one of
her temperament. Like most women, she was a thorough propagandist.

As she swept up to the gate of Lady Anne's house, the old lady herself
was standing just within it. She had come in from driving her little
pony phaeton, which she liked to drive herself. She had a little wild,
bright-eyed mountain pony, which would eat sugar and apples from her
hands, and was as much of a pet as a dog.

"Well, Mary," she said, "introduce me. How do you do, Lady Agatha? I
know you by sight already. Won't you come inside and have some tea? I'm
very glad my Chloe didn't meet that uncanny monster of yours. I have
something to do to get her past the trams, I can tell you, much less the
motorcars."

"You shouldn't go out alone," Mary said, with tender concern. "Her
little pony is very wild, Lady Agatha, and she won't take the carriage,
unless she goes visiting."

"You want to make me out an old woman," Lady Anne said, "and I shall
never be that. Come along in, Lady Agatha. I've been hearing about you.
What do you mean by making my tenants discontented? They're very well as
they are. We shall have to form a league against you, we indolent ones."

Her Ladyship had a way of winning her welcome wherever she went. Lady
Anne had begun, like a good many other people, with a certain distrust
of the brilliant young woman who desired to conquer so many kingdoms. In
the end she yielded unreservedly.

"A fine, big-hearted, generous creature," she said. "It makes me young
to look at her and hear her talk. And so she has taken a huge fancy to
my Mary. Very well, then, she can come and go; but she's not to have my
Mary for all that, for I want her for myself."

"No one really wants me," said Mary, with suddenly dimmed eyes, "except
you and papa. But if they did they couldn't have me. I belong to you and
papa."




CHAPTER IX

THE RACE WITH DEATH


It might have been considered great promotion for the daughter of Walter
Gray, who attended all day to the ailments of watches with a magnifying
glass stuck in his eye, to be the friend of Lady Agatha Chenevix as well
as the adopted child almost of Lady Anne Hamilton. Indeed, in the early
days, when Lady Agatha's friendship for Mary brought her into the finest
society the country provided, Lady Anne sometimes watched Mary narrowly,
to see how she was taking it. The result of these observations must have
been quite satisfactory to the old lady, judging by the energetic
shaking of her head after one or two of these occasions when she was
alone and thought over things. Once she spoke her thoughts to Lady
Agatha, to whom, indeed, she found herself often talking in a way that
surprised herself. There was something about the minx that forced even a
suspicious and reticent old lady into trust and confidence, and as her
trust and confidence increased so did her affection for the brilliant
young peeress.

"People said I was mad," she remarked, "when I took Mary Gray into my
house, and into my heart. Matilda Drummond even said--and I have never
forgotten it to her--that if she was my nephew, Jarvis, she'd have my
condition of mind inquired into. Yet see how it has turned out! Is she
spoilt? Is she an upstart? Is she set above her family? She's over there
this minute with that poor little drab stepmother of hers. She worships
her father. The joys and sorrows of the poor little household are as
much to her to-day as the day she left them."

"I know," said Lady Agatha. "She's pure gold. I saw it in her face the
first day I laid eyes on her. The only quarrel I have with her is that
so many people push me out with her. I don't mean you, of course, Lady
Anne. But yesterday I could not have her because she must go to your
doctor's wife, and to-day she was going for a long walk with that little
Miss Baynes. To-morrow it will be her father. It is his free afternoon."

"I heard an amusing thing about the father the other day," said Lady
Anne. "Of course, Mary knows nothing about it. I called at
Gordon's--that is where Mr. Gray is employed--about a new catch for my
amethyst bracelet. I have known Mr. Gordon for years. He is a thoroughly
respectable man. It seems there is a very ill-conditioned person who
works in the same room as Mr. Gray--a good workman, but most
ill-conditioned. When he is especially bad-tempered he vents his anger
on his quiet room-fellow, who never seems to hear him but works away as
though he were a thousand miles distant from the grumbling and scolding.
Well, it seems that the other day, despairing, perhaps, of rousing Mr.
Gray by any other methods, he made a reference to Mary as having got
into fine society and looking down on her father. It's a little place,
after all, my dear, and you and your motor-car are known as well as the
Town Hall. Mr. Gray got up very quietly and threw the man downstairs;
then went back to his work without a word. Gordon saw it in quite the
right way. He said that the person thoroughly well deserved it, but that
the next time he mightn't get off with a few bruises, and that would be
awkward for Mr. Gray. So he has given him another room."

"Ah, bravo!" Lady Agatha clapped her hands together. "That's where Mary
gets it. I've seen the light of battle in her eye--haven't you?"

"Sometimes--when she has heard of cruelty and injustice."

Now that Mary's schooling was over, she was to see the world under Lady
Anne's auspices. They were to go abroad soon after Christmas, to be in
Rome for Easter, to dawdle about the Continent where they would and for
as long as they would. Everything was planned and mapped out. Mary had
her neat travelling-dress of grey cloth, tailor-made, her close-fitting
toque, her veil and gloves, all her equipment, lying ready to put on.
Her old friend, Simmons, had packed her travelling trunk. It had come to
almost the last day.

And, to be sure, Mary must be much with her father and the others during
those last hours. She had gone with her father for a long country walk.

"I wish you were coming, too," said Mary, clinging closely to his arm.

"You will be bringing me back fine stories," her father said, patting
her hand. "I shall be seeing the world through your eyes, child."

"I shall write to you every day."

"I shan't expect that, Mary. You will be moving from place to place. I
know you will write when you can, and I am always sure of your love."

While they talked Lady Anne was receiving Dr. Carruthers professionally.
She had had symptoms, weaknesses, pangs, of which she had told nobody.

"I was inclined to go without telling you anything about it, doctor,"
she said. "I was as keen upon it as the child. I am more disappointed
than she will be. I have been wilful all my life, but I am glad I did
not take my own way this time. It would have been a nice thing for poor
Mary if I had been taken ill in some of those foreign places."

"You will be much better in your own comfortable home."

Dr. Carruthers spoke cheerfully, but he could not keep the anxiety out
of his face.

"You must have suffered a deal lately," he said pityingly. He had not
forgotten what Lady Anne had done for him and his Mildred. She had been
their faithful and kind friend from that propitious day when he had
picked Mary Gray from under the feet of the tram-horses. His position
was now an assured one, and he and his wife had a tender affection for
their benefactress.

"I'm an obstinate old woman," said Lady Anne, with very bright eyes. The
doctor's visit had been an ordeal to her. "I have had the pain off and
on for the last few months, but I assured myself that it was merely
indigestion, which mimics so many things. I am glad my common-sense came
to the rescue at last. Do you think I shall go off suddenly, or shall I
have to lie, panting, like those poor creatures I've seen at the
hospital, labouring for breath? I shouldn't like that."

The doctor shook his head. How was he to know when the worn-out heart
would cease to perform its functions, and after what manner?

"We must hope that you will not suffer," he said gently. "I will do my
best to save you that."

"And I've plenty of spirit for whatever the good God sends," Lady Anne
said, her face lighting up. "I've always had great spirit. They said I
pulled through my childish illnesses twice as well because of my spirit.
I remember my dear mother telling me that when I had croup at two years
old I mimicked the cows and sheep and cats and dogs between the
paroxysms. I was just the same later on. I ought to have married a
soldier. My poor husband was a man of peace. He couldn't bear a loud
voice. Have a glass of wine before you go, doctor. I've just had a
bottle of Comet port opened. Try it. There's very little like it left in
the world."

After Dr. Carruthers had taken his departure she went to her desk and
set about writing a letter. But she paused after she had written a few
lines, looked at the clock, and sat for a minute thinking.

"No," she said aloud. "I won't wait till to-morrow. Mary shan't take the
chances. Who knows if I shall be here to-morrow? If I drive out to
Marleigh I shall just catch Buckton. He will be pottering round that
orchid-house of his. He will just be home from the office. He can make
me a new will there as well as here. Indeed, I ought not to have
postponed it for so long."

She ordered her little pony phaeton. It was nearly five o'clock. There
would be plenty of time to drive to Marleigh Abbey, where her lawyer
lived, to interview him, and get back again before it was dark. She
would make Mary's interests safe. She had come to care for the child
more than she had ever expected to care. She was going to make a
provision for her, so that she should be secure against the chances and
changes of this life. Nothing very startling, nothing that need make
Jarvis grumble to any great extent; just a modest provision which would
not keep Mary from making use of the talents with which God had endowed
her and the education her fairy godmother had given her.

It was not long before she had left the town behind, and was driving
along the winding road that ran by the foot of the mountains. The road
was very lonely.

Chloe was rather nervous, not to say hysterical, on this particular
afternoon. Her mistress had not considered her as was her wont. She had
taken the shortest road, forcing her to meet a black monster of a
steam-tram which she had sometimes seen at a distance, a thing which was
her special abomination. Chloe had made a bolt for it, and had passed
the tram safely and got away on to the back road. She had been
accustomed, when she had made her small runaways before, to be petted
and soothed afterwards. Indeed, as soon as her terror had calmed a
little, and she was on the road she knew to be harmless, she slackened
down, expecting to hear her mistress's voice of tender scolding, to have
her mistress alight and stroke her with soft words. Instead of that she
was touched up pretty sharply.

"Get me there, my girl," said Lady Anne. "Get me there quickly. You can
take your time going home, and we'll go the lower road. I feel as though
Death and I were running a race. I could never forgive myself if I died
before I'd provided for Mary."

The pony gave her head a shake as though in answer to her mistress's
words, pricked up her ears and set off at a sharp canter.

Suddenly something happened. Lady Anne had at first no realisation of
what it was. Jennings, the coachman, said afterwards that it must have
been the work of one of the mischievous lads whom he had driven with his
whip from staring in at his stable door. What happened was that the
pony's bridle, which had been snipped with a knife, had come apart,
fallen about her neck and then under her feet. She was off like the
wind.

As for poor Lady Anne, suddenly rendered helpless, she caught at the
side of the little carriage, which was being dragged violently at the
pony's heels. She had need of all her spirit. Fortunately, the road was
a straight one, but there was not a soul in sight to help her, not a
sower in the fields, not a ploughman, not even a boy herding cattle
along the road. Her right hand still grasped the useless rein. She
stared before her, while the rocking of the little carriage grew more
and more violent, and the hedges and trees flew past them. How long
would it be before the terrified pony shook herself free of the carriage
altogether, or upset it on one of those mud-banks?

The old spirit kept wonderfully calm and collected. There was just one
chance--that Chloe might keep the middle of the road, and presently pull
up of herself, being exhausted. If only the phaeton would not rock so
much. It was swaying from side to side at a terrific rate. The few
seconds of the runaway seemed æons of time to Lady Anne. She was holding
on now to both sides of the carriage, but her arm was through the reins.
Thank Heaven, the road seemed absolutely open and Chloe must exhaust
herself soon.

Then--her eyes were distended in her face. They had swung round a little
incline, with a miraculous escape of running on a heap of shingle
intended for mending the roads. Just ahead of them were the lodge gates
and lodge of a big house. The gates were open. Out through them there
toddled a small child about three years old. The child set out to cross
the road. His attention was arrested by the noise of the runaway. He
stood in the middle of the road staring.

Lady Anne uttered a loud, sharp cry. The child moved a few steps, fell,
and lay directly in the path of Chloe's feet. A woman ran out of the
lodge, screaming "Patsy, Patsy; where are you, Patsy?" Then she began to
wring her hands and call on all the saints.

The pony, however, had of herself come to a standstill. The child was
under her feet, between her four little hoofs. She was shaking and
sweating and looking down. As for the child, after a second or so he
broke into a lusty roar. He was only frightened, not hurt, but it took a
little time for the mother to find that out by reason of the mud on his
face and the noise he was making. When she had reassured herself, she
carried him inside and closed the door of the lodge upon him. Then she
returned to the pony-carriage.

Chloe was still standing there, in a piteous state of terror. Someone
was coming along the road--a policeman. Someone else was running from
the opposite direction.

As for Lady Anne, the little figure had fallen forward. Her forehead was
down on the reins. Her eyes were wide open, and had a mortal terror in
their gaze. She would never set things right for Mary in this world. She
and Death had run a race together, and she had been beaten.




CHAPTER X

DISPOSSESSED


Lady Anne's nephew and heir, Lord Iniscrone, showed no friendly face to
Mary. He came as soon as possible, and took possession of the premises.
Lady Iniscrone was with him. She was a lady with a wide, flat, doughy
face. Her eyes were little and pale and cold. Mary thought afterwards
that if it had not been for Lady Iniscrone, Lord Iniscrone might have
been kinder. She remembered that Lady Anne had detested Lady Iniscrone
to the extent that she would never have her inside the house. She had an
idea, which she could not put away, while she hated it, that Lady
Iniscrone remembered that fact. She took possession of everything
thoroughly, as though she revenged herself on the dead woman. In her
cold speech she disparaged the things Lady Anne had held dear.

Their attitude towards Mary was as though she were a servant no longer
necessary. She was not to eat at their table; she was to eat in her own
room or in the servants' hall.

"Is it Miss Gray, my lady?" Saunders, the elderly parlourmaid, asked,
aghast. "Her Ladyship thought the world of Miss Gray. She might have
been her own child. And I will say, though we didn't hold with it at
first, yet----"

Lady Iniscrone closed the discussion haughtily.

"Miss Gray will have her meals in the servants' hall, or in her own room
if she prefers it, till after the funeral. We shall make other
arrangements then, of course."

Saunders flounced out of the room. Although she was elderly and had
lived in Lady Anne Hamilton's house since she was fourteen, when she had
come as a between-maid, she had not forgotten how to flounce.

"Mark my words," she said in the kitchen, "she'll make a clean sweep of
us, same as Miss Mary, as soon as ever the funeral is over. Supposing as
how _we_ gives the notice!"

And they did, to Lady Iniscrone's discomfiture, for she had intended to
stay on at the Mall and to keep the staff as it stood till she had
supplied its place. However, she showed her dismay only by her bad
temper.

"I suppose you've all pretty well feathered your nests," she said
acridly, "and can afford to retire."

Nor was her bitterness lessened by the fact that Lady Anne had left
handsome legacies to each of the servants, annuities to the elder ones,
sums of money to the younger. But the will, dated some years back, made
no mention at all of Mary Gray.

"It seems clear to me," said Mr. Buckton, talking the matter over with
Lord Iniscrone, her Ladyship being present, "that Lady Anne intended to
make some provision for her _protégée_. In fact, the letter which she
had begun writing to me, which was found in her blotter after her death,
plainly indicates that. She was, apparently, on her way to my house when
the lamentable accident happened. Dr. Carruthers had seen her that
afternoon, and had told her that her heart was in a bad way. I believe
she grew alarmed about the unprovided state in which she would leave
Miss Gray if she had a sudden seizure, and hurried off to me. In the
circumstances----"

"Of course, we could not think of doing anything more for Miss Gray,"
Lady Iniscrone put in, anticipating her lord. "She has already been
dealt with very handsomely out of the estate. She has had a most
unsuitable education for a person in her rank of life. She has lived
like a lady; been clothed like one. When I saw her she was wearing
ornaments--a brooch of amethysts, with pearls around it, I remember,
which, I am sure, ought to belong to the estate. I can't see that Lord
Iniscrone is called upon to do anything more for the young person. What
with those absurd legacies to the servants and the way Lady Anne
lived--a big house and a staff of servants and carriages and horses for
one old lady!--the estate has been impoverished."

"Lady Anne had a great sense of her own dignity," the lawyer put in.
"And this house had been her home for more than fifty years."

"Everything needs replacing," Lady Iniscrone grumbled, with a
disparaging look around. "Those curtains and carpets----"

"Your Lordship will, I am sure, feel that, in making some little
provision for Miss Gray, you will be doing what Lady Anne wished and
intended to do," Mr. Buckton said earnestly, turning from the lady to
her husband.

Lord Iniscrone's eyes fluttered nervously. He was not a bad little man
at heart, but he was entirely ruled by his wife.

"I don't think the estate will bear it, Mr. Buckton," he said in a
peevish voice. "It is heavily burdened as it is. If a five-pound note
would be of any use----"

"I can't see that we are called upon to do anything, Jarvis," his wife
put in again. "In fact, Mr. Buckton, you may take it that we do not
intend to do anything more for Miss Gray."

"Very well, Lady Iniscrone."

Mr. Buckton turned away and busied himself with his papers. He could not
trust himself at the moment to speak lest he should forget his
professional discretion.

But Mary had not waited for the result of his intercession on her
behalf, of which, indeed, she knew nothing. Mary, who was sensitive to
every breath of praise and blame, had fled out of the dear house, the
atmosphere of which had become suddenly unfriendly. A good many friends
would have been glad to have had her. Lady Agatha Chenevix was away,
else she would have been by her friend's side to take her part with
passionate generosity and indignation. She was away, but Jessie Baynes's
little house on the edge of the sea, a bare little homely place, full of
sunlight and the sea-wind, had its doors open to her. One could not
imagine a better place for a sad and sorrowful heart than Jessie's
little spare room, with its balcony opening like the deck of a ship on
to the blue floor of the sea. Mildred Carruthers had come at once, in
the first hour of the girl's grief, to carry her off to the big house,
which was now amply justified by the size of the doctor's practice.

Only, where would Mary go to but home? In all those years in the great
house on the Mall she had never come to find Wistaria Terrace too little
and lowly for her. Indeed, there was a wonderful wholesomeness and
sweetness to her mind about the little house. The transfiguring mists of
her love lay rosily over even the drudgery of her childish days. To be
sure, there had been hard work and short commons. She had been
insufficiently clad in winter, too heavily clad in summer. Her people
had gone without fires and many other things which some would have
considered essential. But there had always been love. Looking back on
those days, Mary saw with the eyes of the spirit which miss out
immaterial material things.

She fled back home. She took nothing with her but what she stood up in.
Only her friend, Simmons, while Lady Iniscrone was absent from the
house, packed up all Mary's belongings, and conveyed them, with the
assistance of the coachman, across the lane to Wistaria Terrace. The
servants had made up their minds that Mary was not coming back.

Lady Iniscrone had hoped, in conversation with Lord Iniscrone, that Mary
would not give them any trouble. Never was anyone less inclined to give
trouble than Mary. Not for worlds would she have gone back to the house
where the new cold rule was, to meet Lady Iniscrone's unfriendly eyes.
Only while the body of her benefactress was yet above ground she had
stolen across at quiet hours, in the absence of the enemy, to look for
the last time on the quiet face. She had carried away little Fifine.
Fifine was seventeen years old now, and shook incessantly and moaned in
a lost way in her darkness. But she knew Mary's voice. Mary was the one
that could comfort her. At Wistaria Terrace they went to the unheard-of
extravagance of having a fire in Mary's room, day after day, so that
Fifine might lie before it in a basket, and feel the warmth in her
little bones, and hear Mary's voice.

The day of the funeral came. Mary stood by the graveside quietly, with a
veil down over her face. Walter Gray was by her side. She had come in
the doctor's carriage, and she had no leisure or thought for the
insolence with which Lady Iniscrone stared at her, as though her
presence there required explanation.

She was going to work, to begin at once. Her dear, kind old friend, who
had meant to do so well by her, had at least equipped her for earning
her own bread. The Lady Principal of Queen's College had found her
work--temporary work, to be sure, but something to go on with till she
could look about her. The Lady Principal and Dr. Carruthers were against
her making any definite plans till Lady Agatha Chenevix should
return--she was in America, arranging for a display of her industries at
a forthcoming exhibition. They had an idea that Lady Agatha would expect
to be consulted in any plan that affected her friend's future.

Returning home after the funeral Mary found that all her attention would
be required for a short time for Fifine. The little dog had had a fit or
something of the kind, and had rallied wonderfully, considering her
great age. She had missed her one friend during that hour of absence.
Dr. Carruthers came in and looked at the dog, stooping to examine it
with as much tender care as though it had been human and a paying
patient. "Keep her warm," he said. "There isn't much else possible.
There is nothing the matter, only old age. She seems to know you, Mary.
She is positively wagging her tail."

"She is miserable without me," Mary said, wondering what she was to do
about Fifine when she took up that temporary work which the Lady
Principal of Queen's College had found for her. Meanwhile she devoted
herself to the little creature. But about three days after Lady Anne's
funeral Fifine solved all difficulties concerning her by dying quietly
in the night.

Mary slipped in stealthily to the garden of the old house when the new
owners were not likely to be about, and placed the little rigid body in
the grave Jennings had dug for it, lined with a few flowers that had
come up in the beds, snowdrops and wallflowers and little pale mauve
double primroses. She wept a few bitter tears above the grave. The death
of the little dog was like her last link with her dear old friend. The
day had the bright, clear, strong sunshine of March. There were yet
drifts of snow in the valleys among the hills, but spring was coming,
and the bare boughs would soon be thick with the buds of leafage. She
took one look at the sunny, green place and the old house which had
harboured her so kindly. Then she went away with a drooping head.

That very afternoon Lady Agatha came. She rushed in on Mary like the
March wind, big and beautiful, in her long cloak of orange-tawny velvet,
breathing fire and fury over the unkindness to Mary. She had interviewed
Lady Iniscrone, and had gathered from her what had been happening.

"In one way I am selfishly glad, Mary, because you will belong so much
more to me. I am going to take possession of you. For the first time for
many years Chenevix House is to be opened this season. I am going to be
among the political hostesses. I shall do all sorts of things. I have
found a dear old lady to live with us, my father's twenty-second cousin,
Mrs. Morres. She will make it possible for me to do the things I want
without running tilt against all the windmills of prejudice. I shall
respect your mourning. You will have your own room to which you can
retire. Chenevix House looks over a quiet, green square. You shall see
the spring come even there. Afterwards, when the season is at an end, we
shall bury ourselves in the green country."

She paused for breath, and Mary smiled at her. She was so big and bonny
and generous it was impossible not to smile at her.

"Where do I come in?" she asked. "I want to earn my bread."

"And so you shall. You shall earn it hard. You are to be my secretary,
Mary. I am going to be a leading Radical lady. They want hostesses.
There are things a woman can do for a cause much better than a man. I
consider my wealth, at least, my comparative wealth, my rank and youth
and energy and brains, and my splendid health, as so many weapons given
to me by God so that I may help the right."

"You forget your charm," Mary reminded her. "It is the most potent of
all."

Lady Agatha suddenly blushed. It was the first time Mary had seen her
blush.

"Charm--oh, come, Mary! Why not beauty if you are inclined to flatter?"

"Yes, indeed; why not beauty?" Mary repeated, looking at her with loving
eyes of admiration.

"A big, black, bounding beggar!" Lady Agatha quoted against herself
merrily.

But Mary was not inclined to make any further excursions from home. The
soul in her was chilled by her recent experiences. In her hurt and
unhappy state the little house at Wistaria Terrace seemed most
desirable. It gave her satisfaction to note the discomforting things
about her--the bare floor, the windows that shook and rattled, the
ill-fitting doors, the ugliness of the painted dressing-table from which
the paint had long departed, the chipped jug and basin that did not
match each other. She liked it all, even the carelessness about meals,
for there was love with it. Her younger sisters growing up had a kind of
worship for Mary. They served her out of pure love. She was not allowed
to do anything for herself. Yes, for the present, at least, home was
best. She could go out and earn money and bring it home to them. She
would stay henceforth in the world into which she had been born. She
would make no more excursions.

However, these thoughts of hers were rendered vain by the fact that
Walter Gray positively took Lady Agatha's part against her. There was no
room for Mary in the cramped life of Wistaria Terrace. She had brains
and beauty and sympathy. The opportunity to make use of these gifts was
given her. She must not reject it.

The thing was put on a business basis. Mary was to be Lady Agatha's
secretary, with a handsome salary. "I shall work you till you cry out,"
her Ladyship promised, and it seemed like enough to be true. She was
talking already of writing a novel when they should retire to the
country. Her energy overflowed. She was perpetually seeking new outlets
for it. Her secretary was not likely to enjoy a sinecure.

"No one but you could have sent me from you again," Mary said to her
father, in tender reproach.

"It is for your good, Moll. You have outgrown Wistaria Terrace. We could
not long have contented you."

But Mary shook her head. She thought she would have been very well
content at home. She could have got plenty of teaching to do. She
thought of the little house as of a resting place from which she was to
be debarred. But she would not dispute her father's will for her. He
rallied her, saying that if they kept her her head and shoulders would
presently be pushing themselves above the slates.

"It was big enough for you," she said indignantly, "and your mind rises
to greater heights than mine ever will. You cramped yourself into it, if
it were a question of cramping. Why should not I?"

"Sometimes it was not big enough, Moll," he answered. "Sometimes it was
sore cramping, and at other times it was big enough to contain the
heaven and all the stars. Perhaps the ambition I flung away for myself I
keep for you. I would not have you at microscopic work all your days."

So it was settled. For a little while longer Mary stayed on at home.
Then, when the leaves were just opening out in pale green silk, and all
the world was fragrant and full of the joy of birds, she went,
unwillingly, and turning back many times to make her sorrowful
farewells.

"I don't want you to stay till you begin to feel cramped," Walter Gray
had said. "I had rather you went away with your illusions."

She did carry away her illusions. It was a happy and blessed thing for
her that she could make illusions about common things all the days she
was to live. Yet somewhere, in her hidden heart, she knew her father was
right.




CHAPTER XI

THE LION


Mary was established, high up in Chenevix House. She was amazed at the
spaciousness of the rooms, the feeling in them as though the streets
were far away. The square was a wonder of waving and tossing green,
across which Mary looked from her window and saw other stately old
houses like the one she was in. At first she was never tired of admiring
the miracle of spring in London. She realised that no country greenness
is equal to the glory of the new leaf against the dingy house-fronts,
the green freshness about the black stems and boughs and branches.

Lady Agatha was in a perpetual whirl of affairs and gaiety. All her
days, and her nights into the small hours, seemed to be filled. At this
time Mary had a great deal of her time to herself. In the morning she
wrote her Ladyship's letters, and selected from the newspapers such
things as her Ladyship ought to read. By-and-by she would be much
busier. She was taking lessons in short-hand and type-writing in the
afternoons. Her Ladyship would come in only in time to dress for dinner.
She had been driving in the park, she had been calling, she had been at
a concert, or a matinée, or an "At Home." She had been attending this or
that meeting. She was never in bed before the summer dawn, yet she would
be at the breakfast-table as fresh as a milkmaid, smiling at Mary and
telling her this and that bit of news or event of the time since they
had met.

Mrs. Morres, who had to accompany her to many places, slept every hour
of the day she could. She confessed to Mary in her dry way, that did not
ask for pity, that she found her Ladyship's energy superhuman. Sometimes
there was an interesting debate in the House of Commons, and Lady Agatha
must drop in after dinner to sit for an hour behind the gilded grille.
Afterwards she would go on to a political reception. Later to a ball,
where she would dance as though there had been nothing in all the long
day to tire her.

Once or twice she had a quiet dinner-party, to which Mary came down in
her frock of filmy black, which made a delightful setting for her fair
paleness. At these dinners she encountered famous men and women, and
looked at them from afar off with wistful interest. In the drawing-room
afterwards she saw Lady Agatha the centre of a brilliant group. Someone
said of her that she was likely to be the spoilt child of politics,
since she could be audacious with even the greatest, and move them to
speak when no one else could. The great men shook their heads at her and
smiled. They warned her that she went too fast for them, that
impulsiveness, charming as it was in a woman, was not to be permitted in
politics. "If you would but learn diplomacy, my dear lady!" Sir Michael
Auberon sighed. But diplomacy seemed likely to be the last thing Lady
Agatha Chenevix would learn.

Mary used to sit under Mrs. Morres's wing, and listen, through her witty
and wise talk, to the utterances of the great. She felt very shy of
these companies of distinguished men and women. Lady Agatha made one or
two attempts to draw her closer. Then, perceiving that she was happier
in her corner, she let her be.

In her corner Mary listened. She listened with all her ears. Her cheeks
would flush and her eyes shine as she listened. There was a younger
school of politicians which was well represented at Lady Agatha's
parties. Their theories had the generosity of youth. Sir Michael Auberon
would listen to them, nodding his head, his fine, beautiful old face lit
up with as great a generosity as warmed theirs. He was very fond of his
"boys." If he must show them what was impracticable in their views he
did it gently. He rallied them with tenderness. He had none of the
mockery which is so searing and blighting a thing to hot youth.

One night Mary, looking down the dinner-table, saw a face she
remembered. The owner of the face--a tall, loosely-built, plain-looking
young man--glanced her way at the moment, and stared--stared and looked
away again with a baffled air. Mary knew him at once for the boy she had
met seven or eight years before at the Court. He had aged considerably.
Men like him have a way of falling into their manhood all at once. His
hair was even a little thin on top--with that and his lean, hatchet face
he might have been thirty-five.

Afterwards in the drawing-room he was one of those who stood nearest to
Sir Michael. Some of the others laughed at him, calling him Don Quixote,
and she heard Sir Michael say that the young man's theories were those
of the Gironde. "The Revolution devours her own children," he said, with
his fine old ironic smile. "And a good many of us have to eat our own
professions before we're forty. The great thing would be if we could
keep our youthful generosity with the wisdom of our prime."

Looking towards Mary, he caught the flame of enthusiasm in her eyes, and
again he smiled. But this time it was a smile without irony, rather an
understanding and, one might have said, a grateful smile. All the world
knew that Sir Michael's private sorrows were heavy ones, and that he
leant the more on the alleviations and consolations his public life
brought him.

Afterwards he asked to be introduced to Mary and talked with her for a
little while, making her the envy of the room.

"She has a clear mind as well as a sound heart," he said. "She is on
fire with the passion for humanity. Take her about with you"--this to
Lady Agatha. "Let her see how the people live--what serfs we have under
our free banner. There is fine material in her. She should do good
work."

Meanwhile Mrs. Morres sat by Mary, doing crochet, with a quiet smile.
Her tongue dripped cold water on all the enthusiasms.

"Believe me, my dear, they will do nothing," she said placidly in Mary's
ear. That placidity of hers gave her the air of being as relentless as a
Fate. "Parties are Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Let Sir Michael get into
office and he'll do nothing. Those fine young gentlemen over there will
be the office-holders of twenty years to come, the fat sinecurists and
pluralists. The people were better off when, like the lower animals,
they had no souls. They were protected by their betters. Now they are at
war with them and they are more soulless than before. Dear me, how much
fine talk I have heard that never came to anything!"

She would go on till the company had departed, and Lady Agatha would
come to her side, laughing, and ask her what horrible feudal theories
she had been propounding. The two differed on every point but one, and
that was in the mere matter of loving each other. Lady Agatha delighted
in her cousin's conservatism; and always said she would not have it
otherwise if she could. It was a _sauce piquante_ to the dish of their
daily lives.

"You shan't lead Mary astray," she would say with pretended indignation.
"If she knew the things Sir Michael has been saying about her!"

"My dear Agatha, don't _you_ go leading her astray. Politics are no
_métier_ for a woman, or they should be subservient to something else.
Go marry, Agatha, and bring children into the world, and when you have
reared them you can set up a political salon and theorise about the
regeneration of humanity. Let Miss Gray do likewise. You play with these
things when you are young--later on you will find them dry bones."

"Dear me!" Lady Agatha said, with admiration. "What a pity she isn't
with us, Mary! What a pity she is only a destructive critic! Don't
listen to her, child!"

That first evening of their meeting Sir Robin Drummond had come to
Mary's side and turned the page of her music while she sang. She had a
fresh and sweet voice, although of no great range or compass, and she
could sing, without music, song after song of the old English masters,
of Arne and Purcell and Bishop, and their delightful school.

"She brings strawberries and cream to town," said someone who was not
particularly imaginative.

Mary was conscious of the young man's scrutiny as he turned her pages,
and it embarrassed her, but she made no sign.

Afterwards she met Sir Robin many times. He was at this time the adopted
candidate for an East-End constituency, and was becoming well known as
an advanced politician. He went further than his party, indeed, and
somewhat offended even his particular _clientèle_ by the breadth of his
views. He and Lady Agatha were at this time engaged in the work of
organising labour, especially amongst the girls and women of the
worst-paid and most dangerous trades. It brought them often together
amid forlorn habitations and hopeless humanity. One of the difficulties
was the question of whether the alien women should be brought in. "They
will join the Union and they will go on underselling all the same," said
someone. But Sir Robin was of those who held that the alien should have
equal rights with her English sister, and that it was possible to teach
her to stand on her feet like one of the free-born. He was not chary of
his denunciations of certain methods among the Trade Unions and the
Trade Unionists, and therefore a crowd sometimes howled him down. But
there was always a minority at least to stand by him, and the minority
included the industrious and sober, the honest and thinking, among those
he desired to help.

By-and-by he fell into a quiet friendliness with Mary Gray. He used to
take charge of the ladies when they went into the East End. Lady Agatha
used to say that he was a drag on the wheel, because he would not let
her do imprudent things, because he would veto it when a question of
their going into dangerous streets or houses or rooms, because he
insisted on their leaving by a side door a meeting which was becoming
turbulent, because he was always forbidding some extravagance or other
of her Ladyship's.

"There is one thing about that young man," said Mrs. Morres, who was
chary of praise of her Ladyship's party: "he has excellent common-sense,
and I thank Heaven for it."

"Ah, yes; he has excellent common-sense," Lady Agatha echoed, with a
ruefulness which made Mary laugh suddenly.

"You ought to marry him, my dear," Mrs. Morres went on, looping another
stitch of the endless crochet.

"Marry Bob Drummond!" Lady Agatha repeated. "Marry Bob Drummond! Why, it
is the last thing in the world I should dream of doing."

One evening, just at the end of the season, someone brought the latest
lion to a small reception at Lady Agatha Chenevix's. He was a very
modest and retiring lion, a quiet, very bronzed young man, who wore his
arm in a sling. He had had his shoulder torn in an encounter with an
African leopard. He had fought almost hand to hand with the beast over
the body of a Kaffir servant, and had rescued the man at the cost of his
own life, it seemed at first, later on of his right arm. It was doubtful
whether the strength and vitality of it would ever be restored.

He was not merely a brave man, however, this Mr. Jardine. He had gone to
the Gold Coast, and from there into Central Africa, inspired, in the
first place, by the desire of knowledge and love of adventure. But, amid
the thrilling adventures and hairbreadth escapes, there had grown up in
his heart the liveliest interest in and sympathy with the people he
found himself amongst. He discovered that they had an ancient
civilisation of their own. To be sure, what remained of it hung in
shreds and patches on some of them; but there were others, civilised
after a fashion, which was not the Western one. He discovered
traditions, folk-lore, ancient poetry, laws, a wealth of customs.
Understanding the people, he came to love them. They interested him
profoundly. He was going back to them as soon as he could.

He stayed after the other guests, and was yet talking eagerly to his
hostess when the dressing-bell rang.

"We dine alone," Lady Agatha said to the old friend who had brought Mr.
Jardine. "And I go nowhere afterwards: I am fagged out. How glad I am
that next week sees us at Hazels! If you and Mr. Jardine could dine,
Colonel Brind?"

The old friend answered her wistful look.

"Our lodgings are not far off; we have only to jump into a hansom; we
should be back before the dinner-bell rings. Only--this fellow has a
host of engagements."

"Ah!"

Lady Agatha had hardly sighed when Jardine woke up as if from a dream.

"Have I engagements?" he asked. "I do not remember any. Anyhow, I am a
convalescent, and the privileges of convalescence are mine. I vote for
that hansom, Brind."

After dinner they sat around the fire and talked. Although it was June,
it had been a sunless day of arid east wind, and Lady Agatha, who always
snatched at the least excuse for a fire because it was so beautiful, had
ordered one to be lit. The three long windows were open beyond the red
leather screen that made a cosy corner of the fireplace, and the scent
of flowers came in from the balcony.

Paul Jardine talked as much as they desired him to talk. He started on
his hobby about those West African peoples, and rode it with spirit and
energy. His friend laughed at him.

"Why, Jardine," he said, "I can never again call you the lion that will
not roar."

"Am I horribly loquacious?" The hero smiled, but was not more silent. He
had great things to tell, and he told them well and modestly. Lady
Agatha sat with her cheek shaded by a peacock-feather fan. There was a
deep glow in her eyes. Glancing across at her from the opposite corner,
Mary thought it must be the reflection of the firelight.

She came to Mary's room after the guests had departed, when Mary was
preparing for bed, and sat down in the chair by the open window.

"What do you think of him, Mary?" she asked.

"Of whom?" Mary said sleepily. They had met a good many people during
the day, so the question was a pardonable one.

"Of whom! Why, of Mr. Jardine! Who else could it be?"

She lifted her arms about her head, and the loose white sleeves of her
gown fell away from their roundness and softness.

"What a man!" she said, with a long sigh. "What a man! That is life, if
you like. How tame the others seem beside him!"

"He roared very gently," said Mary, "but it was very exciting."

"Yes, wasn't it? That sail in the canoe down the river, with the jungle
on each side of them alive with wild beasts and venomous reptiles, to
say nothing of cannibals, and deadly sicknesses worse than any of those.
He said so little about the danger. One got an impression of the
extraordinary languorous beauty of the tropical vegetation; one smelt
it, that African night, with its enormous moon beyond the mists. There
was death on every side of him, in every breath he drew. He found what
he went for, the antidote to the bite of the death's-head spider.
Henceforth life in those latitudes will be robbed of one of its terrors.
What a man!"

"It is a pity that we could not have heard him at the Royal Society,"
Mary said, with a little yawn--they had been keeping late hours. "If it
had been a day or two earlier!"

"But I am going," said Lady Agatha. "Why, Mary, it is only to alter our
arrangements by a day. Hazels--the dear place--will keep for a day
longer."




CHAPTER XII

HER LADYSHIP


At Hazels Mary found her duties more onerous than they had been in town.
It was delightful to see Lady Agatha among her own people. She had made
life easier for them. Mary marvelled at the prettiness of the red-brick
farmhouses, with roses and honeysuckle to their eaves. She could never
get over the feeling that it was only a picture. They would walk or
drive to them, and the farmer's wife would come out and beg her Ladyship
to come in for a glass of cowslip wine; and she and Mary would go in to
a rather dark parlour--to be sure, the windows were smothered in
jessamine and roses and honeysuckle--and sit down in chairs covered in
flowery chintz, and sip the fragrant wine and eat the home-made cake,
while the topics of interest between landlord and tenant were discussed.
Then the farmer would come in himself, hat in hand, and his eyes would
light up at the sight of the visitor, and there would be more pleasant
homely talk of cattle and crops, and the harvest and the plans for the
autumn sowing, and the state of fairs and markets.

There was Nuthatch Village, which seemed to have stepped out of
Morland's pictures. It was all so pretty and peaceful, with its red
gabled cottages sending up their blue spirals of smoke into the
overhanging boughs of great trees. Mary cried out in delight at the
quaint dormers, with their diamond panes, at the wooden fronts, at the
gardens chockfull of the gayest and most old-fashioned flowers.

"As for prettiness," said Lady Agatha, "it isn't a patch on Highercombe,
a mile away, and, what is more, I've done more than anyone else to spoil
its prettiness. I've filled in the pond and driven the swan and the
water-hen to other haunts. I've given them a new water-supply and done
away with the most picturesque pump, which was sunk in 1770 by Dame
Elizabeth Chenevix. I've put new grates and new floors into the houses,
and I've seen to it that all windows open and shut. The pity of it is
that I can't compel them to make use of their privilege of opening.
Also, I've introduced cowls on the chimneys. My friend, Lionel Armytage,
the painter, lifted his hands in horror at my doings. I'd have liked to
get at the chimneys, but I'd have had to pull down every cottage in the
place to rectify them. Oh, I've spoilt Nuthatch, there's not a doubt of
it. You must see Highercombe."

"The children seem healthy," Mary said thoughtfully, "and the old people
walk straighter than one sees them often."

"Ah, yes, that is it." Lady Agatha's face flushed and lit up. "I've made
it healthy for them. Highercombe is a painted lie--a pest-house, a
charnel-house, full of unwholesome miasmas from its pretty green, its
pond covered with water-lilies. Death lurks in that pond. There is bad
drainage and bad water; the damp oozes through the old brick floors of
the houses. The whole place is as deadly in its way as those West
African jungles of which Mr. Jardine told us."

They were to see Mr. Jardine later. At present he was on a round of
visiting at the houses of the great. The names of the people who had
elected to do honour to Paul Jardine would have been a list of pretty
well the most illustrious persons in the kingdom. When Lady Agatha had
suggested to him that he might give a week to Hazels before the summer
was done, he had been eager about it, had even suggested dropping some
of his other engagements. But that she would not hear of. She seemed to
take an odd pride and pleasure in the way he had conquered the world
best worth conquering.

"What!" she had said. "Drop Sir Richard Greville and Lord Overbury! Not
for worlds! You may find it dull. Sir Richard lives the life of a
hermit, and you won't get anything fit to eat at Lord Overbury's. He
never knows what he's eating, and his cook has long given up trying to
do credit to herself. I believe that only for his dining-out he'd be
starved. Even as it is, he's been known to take mustard with his soup
and red-currant jelly with his cheese. Still--he's Lord Overbury!"

They led a very quiet life at Hazels, seeing hardly anyone. Lady Agatha
had declared that she was going to make up for her rackety life in town,
as well as to prepare for the winter. She had looked as fresh as a rose
through all the racketing, and when she talked about the need for rest
she had smiled.

As a matter of fact, her energy was too overflowing to permit of her
resting as other folk rested. A change of occupation was about as much
as one could hope for. And now she was restless as she had not been
before, for, energetic as she had always been, she had never driven
others. Indeed, many people had found absolute restfulness in her
Ladyship's big, wholesome presence.

"The life in town has only stimulated me, Mary," she confessed; "just
stimulated me and excited my brain. I must work it off somehow. Let us
begin at the novel to-morrow."

They began at the novel. Lady Agatha dictated it, and Mary took it down
in short-hand. They worked out of doors. Mary had her seat under the
boughs of a splendid chestnut tree on a little green lawn. The lawn was
at the side of the house, not over-looked, enclosed on three sides by a
splendid yew hedge. The dogs would lie at Mary's feet. There were Roy
the St. Bernard, and Brian the bull-dog, a toy Pomeranian, and a little
Chow. The dogs always stayed at Hazels. "If I took them up to town,"
Lady Agatha said, "they would see more of me, to be sure, but then they
would always be losing me, for, of course, I couldn't take them out in
town. And they always know I'll come back--they're so wise. The parting
is dreadful, but they know I'll come back."

Mary sometimes wondered how her Ladyship had found time to think out her
novel. For it seemed all ready and prepared in her mind. She would sweep
up and down the grass while she dictated. Mary used to say that it meant
a ten-mile walk of a morning. The train of her white morning-dress
lopped the daisies in their places; the incessant passage of her feet
made a track in the grass. Sometimes she would pass out of her
secretary's hearing and have to be recalled by Mary's laughing voice of
remonstrance.

"Am I afflicting you, Mary?" she asked on one of these occasions. "Am I
overwhelming you? It's a horrible flood, isn't it?"

"You are very fluent," Mary answered, looking down at the queer little
dots and spirals on her paper. "I daresay we'll have to prune it before
it's printed. But it is a good fluency, a rich fluency. To me it is
irresistible--like a spring freshet, like the sap rushing madly through
all the veins of spring."

"Ah, you feel it?--you feel it like that, Mary? I feel it so myself; I
riot in it."

"It will have no sense of effort--it is vital. I hope we shall be able
to keep it up."

"Why not, O Cassandra?"

She stood with one hand on the back of Mary's chair, and looked up into
the tree.

"The book should have been written in spring," she went on. "I feel the
spring in my blood. Why should I, Mary, now when it is full summer, and
the trees are dark?"

"I don't know, unless that you were so busy in spring that you had not
time to enjoy it. Come, let us get on; perhaps presently you will flag.
We must get the book done before anyone comes to interrupt us."

"Never was there such a willing co-worker. You mustn't overdo it, Mary.
How many words did I dictate to you yesterday?"

"Six thousand."

"And you gave them to me typewritten this morning."

"I wanted to see how they looked in type. It is all right, Agatha. Even
you cannot go on for long, dictating six thousand words a day. We must
take the tide at the flow."

"Afterwards I shall do a play--after I have given you a rest."

"More kingdoms to conquer," Mary laughed. "There is only one person like
you--the Kaiser."

"I have an immense admiration for him."

Mrs. Morres meanwhile sat and smiled to herself. She had given up the
crochet for point-lace, which, as it had more intricate stitches,
necessitated the more care. Sometimes she knitted and read with a book
in her lap. But when she was not reading, she smiled quietly to herself.
It was a curious smile, half-satisfied as one whose prognostications
have come true, half-dissatisfied as though there was no great cause for
congratulation.

Once Mary was curious enough to ask her why she smiled. Lady Agatha at
the piano was playing Wagner like a professional musician. Mrs. Morres's
smile grew more inscrutable.

"It amuses me," she said, talking loudly, so that her words might reach
Mary through the storm of the music, "to find that Agatha is just a
woman, after all. It amuses me--and yet--it had been happier for you and
me if she had contented herself with the unrealities of life a little
longer."

Mary did not understand at the moment. She began to understand a little
later when Mr. Jardine came. The novel, after all, had not been
finished. For the last week or so before the visitor arrived her
Ladyship had apparently lost interest in it.

"My brain has dried up, Mary," she said. "I should only spoil it if I
went on. Put it away in a drawer, and when I feel like it we can go on
again. You want a rest. I've over-tired you."

"I felt I couldn't rest till it was done," Mary said, with a little
sigh. "I wanted to know what became of them all. And it is such an
interesting point. Tell me, does Clotilde marry Mark, after all?"

"How should I know? I have nothing to do with what she does. Clotilde
knows her own mind. I do not. Wait till we get back to it."

"Ah! you should finish it--you should finish it. You'll never get that
young green world in it again. It was an inspiration. We should have
held on to it like Jacob to the angel's robe."

But for the time Lady Agatha's literary energy was exhausted.

"I daresay there's a deal of fustian in it. There's sure to be," she
said. "I don't think anything could be really good that was produced
with so little pain. I daresay I'll be for tearing it up, so you'd
better lock it away. Do you feel equal to walking ten miles? If not, get
your bicycle and I'll walk beside you. I've been cramped up too long."

This time it was a mood of physical restlessness. She walked and rode
and went out golfing, and played tennis, and rowed on the river, and did
a thousand things, while Mrs. Morres made her delicate wheels and
trefoils, and smiled a more Sibylline smile than ever.

At last he came. When the sound of his footstep and of his voice reached
them where they stood in the drawing-room awaiting him, her Ladyship
turned to Mary, and her face was full of an immense relief.

"I didn't really believe he'd come," she said. "I've been feeling quite
sure that something would occur to prevent his coming."

"The weeks have been endless," Paul Jardine said, coming in and taking
her Ladyship's two hands. "How could you put me off till September? I've
had a heavy time. I don't like being made much of by other folk, so I am
going out again after Christmas."

Then, to be sure, Mary knew. The pair leaped to each other as though
they had been two halves of one whole separated long ago, and now drawn
together in a magnetic rush. Mary had always known that when Lady Agatha
attracted she attracted irresistibly; there was no half-way, no
haltings, no looking back possible.

"We are out of it, Mary, we two," Mrs. Morres said, and the smile had
become a trifle weak and wavering. "What do you suppose is going to
become of us? Hazels is a pleasant place, and there has always been
something of assurance and comfort about Agatha. I had a hard life, my
dear, before I came here. Yet what would she do with us? She can't very
well take us out to Africa. I, at least, should not know what to do in
those places."

It was a wooing that was not long a-doing. Her Ladyship and Mr. Jardine
came in one evening in time for afternoon tea. The days were closing in
by this time, and a fire was welcome. There had been rain, and the fire
sparkled on her Ladyship's black curls and her eyelashes as she stood by
the fire, taking off the long cloak in which she wrapped herself when
she went out walking in bad weather. Her eyes were at once bright and
shy.

"Congratulate me," she said. "He has consented to take me with him. He
held out for a long time, but I was determined to go. As though I should
take the chances!"

"It is I who am to be congratulated," said Paul Jardine, and the
happiness in his voice thrilled his listeners. "Of course, I wouldn't
have listened to her if she wasn't so splendidly strong. It will be an
odd place for a honeymoon. Do you think I ought not to have consented to
take her, Mrs. Morres?"

"For how long?"

Mrs. Morres's voice shook. All the Sibylline quality was gone from it
now.

"For a year. I must fulfil my engagements. Afterwards I must do my best
for them over here. I never thought that I could do as I would as a
married man. Do you think I ought not to have consented?"

"She would have gone without your consent."

Lady Agatha came over and put a hand on her shoulder, a kind, caressing
hand.

"You are quite right," she said. "Oh, he has wriggled, but it had to be.
It had to be, from the first minute we met."

"I knew it."

"You did, you wise woman. And you will keep house for me when I am gone?
You will take care of the dogs for me? You will oscillate between Hazels
and town? You will keep the places ready against our return? You are
never to leave us."

Mrs. Morres's eyes overflowed.

"My dear," she said, "it would have broken my heart to have left you.
And Mary--what is to become of Mary?"

"I have a plan for Mary, unless she will stay here with you."

"I must earn my bread," said Mary.

"For all the bread you eat, I eat four times as much as you. Still, you
have talents to be used for the many, as Sir Michael Auberon said. I
have no right to keep you from them. You will talk to Robin Drummond
about that. He is starting a bureau for purposes of organisation amongst
the women. He has had his eye on you. I told him he could not have you.
Now, it will fill a gap, perhaps. I shall need you again."

"The funny thing," said Mrs. Morres, and the amusement had come back in
her voice--"is that Colonel St. Leger won't like your marriage at all.
He has always wanted you to be married. But now--this African
marriage--he will talk about it as though you were marrying a man of
colour, Agatha, my dear. How his eyebrows will go out!"

"To think," said Mary, with a little sigh, "that the novel is
unfinished, after all."

"A novel is so much more interesting," said Lady Agatha, "when you live
it, Mary. Besides, it has troubled me that if I published the novel I
must come into competition with the legitimate workers. They should form
a Trades' Union against us, women of leisure and money, to keep us from
poaching on their preserves. They really should. My dears, I have a
presentiment that the novel never will be finished."




CHAPTER XIII

THE HEART OF A FATHER


Oddly enough, seeing the General's feeling towards his sister-in-law,
seeing, too, that he and Nelly had hardly ever had a thought or taste
that was not in common, a certain affection grew up on Nelly's part for
Lady Drummond. An acute observer would have said that the affection had
something conscience-stricken about it. There were times when Nelly's
eyes asked pardon of the Dowager for some offence committed against her,
and this usually happened when the Dowager was making much of her, as of
a daughter-in-law who would be dearly welcome when the time came.
Something of the love Lady Drummond had borne for her husband had passed
on to his niece. She was immensely proud, in her secret heart, of the
deeds of the Drummonds. Despite her hectoring ways, she looked up to and
admired the General, although he had been too simple to discern the fact
and profit by it. Robin's divergence from his father's ways was,
secretly, an acute disappointment to her. When she caressed Nelly with a
warmth which none of her friends would have credited her with
possessing, there was compunction with the tenderness. The child ought
to have had the delight of marrying a soldier, a hero whom she could
adore, as she herself had adored her Gerald. When she pressed the golden
head to her angular bosom she was asking the girl's pardon for her son's
shortcomings.

"I shall have heroic grandchildren," she said to herself. "Although
Robin is a throwback to the Quaker, the grandsons of Gerald and Denis
Drummond must be fighting men."

She pondered long over those grandchildren, and derived a grim pleasure
from the thought of them. She even spoke of them to the General, when
Nelly was out of hearing.

"It was a disappointment to both of us that Robin is a man of peace,"
she said, acknowledging the fact for the first time. "Not but that he is
a good boy--a very good boy. The fighting strain will recur in the next
generation. We shall have soldiers among our grandchildren."

"Grandchildren!" growled the General, turning very crimson in the face.
"I call it indelicate to discuss such subjects. As for Nelly's marrying,
why, she's only a child. I should feel very little obliged to the man
who would want to take her from me at her age."

"Nelly is nineteen," the Dowager reminded him, "and the marriage can't
be delayed much longer. It ought to be a source of satisfaction to us
that the young people are so pleased with the arrangement. I know that
Robin has never thought of anyone but his cousin, and I am sure it is
just the same with the dear child."

The General grew red again--not this time with anger, but rather as
though the Dowager's words had stirred some sense of guilt in his
breast. He muttered something grumpily, and, discovering that his
favourite pipe must have been left in his own den, he escaped from Lady
Drummond for a while.

As a matter of fact, his mind had been plotting mischief. He did not
care so much that it was against the Dowager, if it had not been that
the memory of his dead brother came in to complicate things. And, after
all, his plotting seemed to have come to naught. He had gone so far as
to invite young Langrishe to dinner for a specific occasion, without
result. The young man had written to say that he had effected his
exchange into the --th Madras Light Infantry, and would be so very much
occupied up to the time of his departure that he feared dining out was
out of the question.

The General had known he was going away. He had known it before he
received that letter, before he had seen it in the Gazette. He had known
from the day the regiment had gone by without Captain Langrishe in his
wonted place. He had felt with his arm about his girl's shoulders the
sudden shock that had passed through her. So she had not known either.
He had not prepared her. There was not an understanding between them. He
saluted as light-heartedly as ever to all appearance, but he did not
look at Nelly. Nor did he make any remark on the change in the regiment.

After that day the passing of his "boys" ceased to be the old joy to
him. Something was gone out of the ceremonial. It took all his _esprit
de corps_ to pretend to himself as well as to others that he felt no
difference. He felt the limpness and dejection in Nelly. He saw that her
roses had faded, that she walked without the old joyous spring. He heard
her no longer talking to the dogs, trilling to the canary. It was
January now, and raw, cold weather. It seemed as though the sunshine had
vanished from the house for good. The General had been wont to say that
the cheerfulness of his house was within it, not without it. He had come
home from London fog and rain with a happy sense of its bright fires and
spaciousness, its carpets and furniture, not so new that a muddy foot or
a stray shower of tobacco-ash was a thing to be feared--old friends
every one of them. The love and loyalty within his doors were something
that came out to welcome the General's home-coming like a sudden
firelight streaming out into the black night.

Now his little girl was unhappy, and the shadow of her unhappiness was
over his nights and days. It was when he felt this that he had written
to Captain Langrishe, saying nothing to her about it, stealing out, in
fact, at night to post the letter secretly, he whose correspondence,
such as it was--he was no great penman--had always lain in the
letter-basket on the hall table for the servants to scrutinise the
addresses if they would before it was posted.

When the answer came he congratulated himself on his forethought.
Luckily, that morning he was first at the breakfast-table. Of late
Nelly, who had been wont to rise as cheerfully as a waking bird, was
tardy occasionally. The General suspected broken sleep, and had bidden
the servants tenderly not to call her, although the breakfast-table was
not the same thing with no bright face and golden head opposite to him.

When he had read the letter he thrust it into an inner pocket. The
servant, who was attending, went away at the moment, and the General got
up quickly, and with a stealthy glance at the door, buried the letter in
the heart of the fire, raked the coals over it, and was in his place
before the servant returned.

"Confound the fellow!" he said under his breath.

Plainly, there was nothing more to be done. The child had to go through
it. People had to endure such things. Yet he was miserable, watching
furtively her dimmed roses and the circles about her eyes. His little
Nell, who had lived in the sunshine all her days!

It was, perhaps, not to be wondered at that, in the perturbation of his
mind, the pendulum should have swung towards Robin. "Confound the
fellow!"--(meaning Captain Langrishe)--"What did he mean by making Nelly
unhappy?" A still, small voice whispered to the General that the young
man was acting on some foolish, overstrained, honourable scruple just as
he would have done himself in his youth--nay, to-day, for the matter of
that. But he would not listen to the voice. He fretted and fumed, puffed
himself up into a great rage as men of his temperament will. Confound
the fellow! He had gone half-way to meet him, for Nelly's sake, and the
fellow had refused to budge. Confound him and be hanged to him! The
General would have used much worse language if the simple piety which
hid behind his blusterousness had not come in to restrain him.

He blamed himself--to be sure, he blamed himself. What a selfish old
curmudgeon he had been, always thinking of himself and his own likes and
dislikes! Where could his Nelly find greater security for happiness than
in the keeping of Gerald's son? Everybody thought well of Robin. There
had never been anything against him. Why, not a week ago, one of the
finest soldiers in the army, a field-marshal, a household word in the
homes of England, had button-holed the General to congratulate him on a
speech of Robin's.

"That young man will be a credit to you, Drummond," he had said. "Mark
my words, that young man will be a credit to you."

And the General had been oddly impressed by the opinion, coming from his
old comrade in arms, and one of the finest soldiers that ever stepped.
And, to be sure, he had been trying to set Nelly against Robin all the
days of her life.

When he had come to this point in his meditations he groaned aloud. A
thought had come to him of how little Nelly would be really his, married
to Robin Drummond. He would have no need for the house then. He would
have to dismiss the servants, the old servants of whom he was fond, who
adored him, and go into lodgings. He might keep Pat, perhaps. Even the
dogs would go with Nelly. He would never have his girl any more. The
Dowager would be always there. The Dowager would know better than anyone
how to set up an invisible barrier between Nelly and her father. Why,
since she had been their neighbour things had not been the same. She had
carried Nelly hither and thither, to concerts and At Homes and
picture-galleries and what-not. She talked of presenting her at Court,
with an air of significance which the General loathed. The question in
her eye and smile--the General called it a smirk--the very transparent
question was as to whether it was not better to wait and present Nelly
on her marriage.

When the Dowager was sly she made the General furious. Was his little
girl to be married out of hand to Robin Drummond without being given the
chance to see the world and other men? He asked the question hotly,
pacing up and down the faded Persian rug in his den. Then a chill came
on his heat. He had not been able to keep Nelly from choosing, and she
had chosen unwisely. He had had a dream of himself and young Langrishe
and Nelly and the babies in the big happy house. They would belong to
him--no one would push him away from his girl. They would be together
till they closed his eyes. The thought of it now was like a green oasis
in the desert; but it was a mirage, only a mirage!

And Nelly must not suffer. Langrishe had rejected her--rejected that
sweet thing, confound him! And there was her cousin Robin, patient and
faithful, waiting to make her happy. He forgot that once upon a time he
had been furious with Robin for his patience. Robin was a kind fellow, a
good fellow. He seemed to be always at the beck and call of his mother
and Nelly, always ready to escort them. Why, only yesterday Nelly had
said that there was no one so comfortable as Robin to go about with, and
then, in a fit of compunction, had flown to her father and hugged him
hard.

"Never mind, Nell, never mind," the General had said. "I never took you
about much, did I? We were great home-keepers, you and I. Never seemed
to want to gad about, did we? I ought to have taken you about more. It
was a dull life for a young girl--a dull life. I ought to be obliged to
your aunt for showing me the error of my ways, for making life
pleasanter for you."

He gulped over the end of the speech.

"It was a lovely life," cried Nelly wildly, and then burst into tears.

The General was terribly distressed. He had had no experience of Nelly
in tears. She had never wept or fainted or done any of the interesting
things young ladies were supposed to do in his time. She had been always
the light of the house, always happy and healthy and gay.

While he looked at the bell uncertainly, being half of a mind to summon
assistance, Nelly relieved him from his doubt by running away out of the
room, and when they met again he did not remind her of the scene. That
discretion of his went to her heart. It was so strange and pitiful for
him to be discreet, so unlike him.

After that he began to praise Robin Drummond, not too suddenly nor too
effusively at first, but by degrees, so as not to awaken Nelly's
suspicions. He amazed Robin Drummond by his cordiality in those days,
and the young fellow commented on it whimsically to Nelly herself.

"He has been telling me all my life that I am a poor creature," he said,
"and here he is, to all intents and purposes, eating his own words. Just
fancy his wading through that speech of mine on the estimates and
pretending to be interested in it, even praising it, Nell. Seeing that
the speech was all against our maintaining our big standing army, on a
motion to cut down the expenditure, it is bewildering. Is it a mild
joke, Nell dear?"

"You may call it a joke if you like," she said, her eyes filling with
tears. "I call it heart-breaking, heart-breaking. If he would only abuse
you as he used to do!"

"Dear Nell, what's up?" asked Robin, in great penitence. "I had no idea
I was saying anything to hurt you. The dear old man! Why, I never
resented his abuse. I'd rather he'd abuse me, like a dog, as they
say--though I don't see why anyone should want to abuse a dog--if it
made you happier."

Certainly, all Nelly's world was very good to her in those days. As for
Robin Drummond, he thought of women with a chivalrous tenderness
somewhat strange considering that the Dowager was his mother. To him
they were something delicate, mysterious, inexplicable. If he had had a
sister he would have adored her. Not having one, he lavished on Nelly
the feeling he would have given a sister; and hitherto he had been
content with the ardour of his feelings. What could a man wish for
sweeter and prettier beside his hearth than little Nelly? He had fallen
in love with that plan of his mother's for him and Nell with lazy
contentment. He liked Nelly's society, and it did not occur to him that
he would be just as well pleased with her daily companionship if he
could have it without the tie between them becoming more than cousinly.




CHAPTER XIV

LOVERS' PARTING


It might have been better for Nelly if her father had told her of those
tentative advances to Captain Langrishe, for then her pride might have
come to her aid. As it was, she had nothing to go upon but those looks
of his, and his manner to her when they had met at the houses of
friends. For they had met, and that was something the General did not
know. More, Nelly had engineered, with the cleverness of a girl in love,
an acquaintance with Captain Langrishe's sister, a Mrs. Rooke, who lived
in one of the Bayswater squares. Mrs. Rooke was a vivacious little dark
woman, with a cheek like a peach's rosy side. She was perfectly happy in
her own married life, and she had the happily-married woman's desire to
bring lovers together. She had taken a prodigious fancy to Nelly. While
Captain Langrishe yet remained in England that house in the Bayswater
square had an overwhelming attraction for Nelly.

She had gone there first under the Dowager's wing. Cyprian Rooke, K.C.,
belonged to an unexceptionable family, and even the proud Dowager could
find no fault with Nelly's friendship for his wife.

In those days poor Nelly used to feel a perfect monster of deceit. For,
first of all, she was deceiving her dear old father. The name of Rooke
signified nothing one way or the other to him. Then there was the
Dowager, who had proved the most patient and considerate of chaperons,
sitting wide-eyed and cheerful till her charge had danced through the
programme if it so pleased her; going hither and thither to crowded At
Homes, attending first nights at the play--doing, in fact, everything to
give Nelly a good time. To be sure, the Dowager attached no importance
to the name of Langrishe any more than the General did to that of Rooke.

Mrs. Rooke gave a good many dances after Christmas, and Nelly was at
them all. Sometimes Robin was there, sometimes that was not possible.
And Robin was out of his element at such gatherings, since he did not
dance and could find no conversation to his mind while he leant against
the wall of the ball-room or hung about the doors. Life was so full of
work for him that it seemed unreasonable to keep him where there was
nothing he could do.

Captain Langrishe turned up at the dances as unfailingly as Nelly
herself. He came in spite of many resolutions to the contrary, as the
moth comes to singe its wings in the flame of the candle. He did not
make Nelly conspicuous for the Dowager or anyone else to see. Sometimes
he asked her for several dances. Again, he would be merely polite in
asking her for one; and would yield her up coldly to her next partner
and never come to her side again for the rest of the evening. Unlike Sir
Robin, he danced conspicuously well. Nelly had thrilled to a speech of
Robin's: "One cannot despise the art of dancing for a man when a fellow
like that thinks it worth his while to excel in it."

One night, when the guests had departed, Mrs. Rooke had something to
tell her husband.

"That little wretch, Nelly Drummond!" she said. "I thought she was as
innocent and candid as a child. Would you believe it that all the time
she has been engaged to that gawky cousin of hers?"

"My dear Belinda, all what time?"

"Well, for a lawyer, Cyprian----"

"I know I'm obtuse, but the law doesn't favour deductions. All what
time?"

"Why, all the time poor Godfrey's been falling head over ears in love
with her."

Mr. Rooke whistled. He was fond of his wife's brother.

"Are you sure, Bel? I noticed particularly that he was dancing with the
wallflowers to-night. He's a good fellow, so that didn't surprise me.
Now you mention it, I caught sight of the little girl dancing with Jack
Menzies. She didn't look particularly happy."

"She hasn't been looking particularly happy. I have been imagining that
Godfrey's poverty stood between them. He is so impracticable. And I have
been making opportunities for them to meet. After all, she is Sir Denis
Drummond's only child, and is sure to be sufficiently well off. And
here, after all my trouble, I find she is engaged to her cousin. I
wonder what she can see in that ugly stick to prefer him to Godfrey!"

"She may not prefer him, my dear. It may be a marriage of convenience.
And Drummond is not a stick. That is your feminine prejudice. He is a
very clever fellow, although he has got the Socialistic bee in his
bonnet. However, he's young, and has time to mend his ways."

"I don't want to discuss him. How coldblooded you are, Cyprian! I can
only think of my poor Godfrey going off to the ends of the earth, and
his being deceived and hurt by that heartless girl."

"You will let him know?"

"I certainly shall. He ought to know. It may be the quickest way to make
him forget her."

"Since he seem

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