"MEN'S MEAL, FIRST CALL"
Mrs Grantly was interested in Eloquent. He was quite unlike any of the
innumerable young men she had had to do with before. His simplicity
and directness appealed to her; she admired his high seriousness even
while she seemed to deride it, and though violently opposed to his
party, she shared that party's belief in his political future.
The General shook his head; not over what he and Mary called "Grannie's
infatuation for Mr Gallup," but over the possible results of this
friendliness and intimacy to Mr Gallup. For the General saw precisely
the same possibilities that Mr Ffolliot had seen, and didn't like what
he saw one whit better than did the Squire.
Eloquent never saw Mary alone. Generally he was wholly taken
possession of by Mrs Grantly, or such friends of hers as would be
bothered with him. Yet his golden dream was with him continually, and
in the dear oasis of his fancy he walked in an enchanted garden with
Mary. In his waking moments, his sane practical moments, he would
realise that it was sheer absurdity to imagine that she ever could care
for him. He did not expect her to care, but--and here he drifted
across the desert of plain possibilities into the merciful mirage of
things hoped for--if she would condescend to let him serve her, he
might take heart of grace.
He watched her carefully.
It did not seem to him that there was anybody else. There were crowds:
crowds of dreadful, well-dressed, good-looking, cheerful men, who
chaffed and laughed and quaffed any drinks that happened to be going;
but he did not fear the enemy in battalions, and so far it appeared
that her besiegers always attacked in companies.
Sometimes he was sure that she knew how he felt, and was trying in
gentle, delicately pitiful ways to show him that it was of no use.
Then again he would dismiss this thought as absurd and conceited. How
should Mary know? How could she try to show him she didn't care when
he had never shown her that he did? How could he show her?
It was this desire to show her, this hope of familiarising her with the
idea that caused Eloquent to resort to every possible place where he
might see her. He went down to Woolwich as often as decency would
permit, which wasn't often. He inundated Mrs Grantly with invitations
to the House, and he haunted the theatres, generally in vain, in the
hope of seeing her at the play. He would often reflect bitterly how
easy things were for the young shopman in these matters. He met his
girl and took her for a walk, and no one thought any the worse of
either of them. There was none of this nerve-racking, heartrending
uncertainty, this difficulty of access, this sense of futility, in
their relations.
Of the many mysterious attributes of the "classes," there was none to
be so heartily deplored as their entire success in secluding their
young women, while apparently they gave them every possible opportunity
for amusement of all kinds.
* * * * * *
Reggie went down to Woolwich once while Mary was with her grandparents,
but it was not, from her point of view, a very satisfactory visit.
Reggie was grumpy, and looked very tired and overworked. Moreover,
Mary, though she could not have confessed it for the world, was just a
trifle hurt that he never reminded her of that last ride together.
Just as he was leaving on the Sunday night, and they were all in the
garden, he walked with her a little way down a winding path that hid
them from the others, saying abruptly--
"Shall I let you know directly if they are going to send me to the
Shiny?"
"Of course I should like to know, but . . . India is a long way off,
Reggie, why do you want to go so far?"
"Because, my dear, it means work and promotion, and one's chance, and
lots of things; one being quite decent pay. Besides, I like India, I
shall be glad to go back, if . . ."
They had followed the path, and it led them out to the lawn again,
where the others were standing. He didn't finish his sentence--
"Say you want me to get out there, Mary."
"Of course I want you to go if you really wish it."
"I'll let you know then. I shall know myself early in July, I
fancy . . . perhaps I'll run down to Redmarley; you'll be back then?"
They joined the others; Reggie made his farewells and left.
Mary went and took her grandfather's arm, and made him walk round the
garden with her. She developed an intelligent interest in geography,
and made searching inquiries as to the healthiness of India generally.
It was comforting to walk arm and arm with grandfather. She didn't
know why, but she felt a little frightened, a little homesick. How
clearly one can see some people's faces when they are not there. What
unusual eyes Reggie had, so green in some lights. He was looking
dreadfully thin, poor boy, downright ill he looked, and yet everyone
said he was very strong. No one else shook hands quite like Reggie: he
had nice hands, strong and gentle; thin, but not hard and nubbly. Why
is a summer night often so sad? Night-scented stock has a sad smell,
though it is so sweet. He shouldn't work so hard. He was overdoing
it. Surely if he went to India they'd give him some leave . . . it
might be years before he came back. Three years he was away once.
Mary clasped both her hands over her grandfather's arm. "I do love you
so, Ganpy," she said; "there's nobody like you in the world, no one at
all."
The General smiled in the twilight, and pressed the arm in his against
his side. He said nothing at all, yet Mary felt vaguely comforted.
In the beginning of July she went back to Redmarley, and everyone was
very glad to see her again. One Saturday morning when the Squire and
Mrs Ffolliot had started in the victoria to lunch with neighbours on
the other side of Marlehouse, Mary called Parker and went to walk in
the woods. It was a grey morning, warm and sunless and still. She
wandered about quite aimlessly. She was restless and unsettled, and
had a good deal to think over.
Just before she left Woolwich, Eloquent Gallup had called one afternoon
when both the General and Mrs Grantly were out; but he asked boldly for
Mary. She was at home, and he was shown into the cool, shady garden,
where she was lying in a hammock reading a novel.
This was Eloquent's chance and he took it. He did not stay long. He
left before tea, but during the time he did stay he contrived to let
Mary see . . . what it must be confessed she had already suspected. He
said nothing definite. He was immensely distant in his reverence, but
a much humbler girl than Mary could hardly have mistaken his meaning.
He was so pathetically diffident it was impossible to snub him, and she
had no desire to snub him. Always she was immensely sorry for
him--why, she did not know.
He was plain. He was insignificant. He was not a gentleman by birth,
but he was--and Mary's standard was fairly high--so far as she could
see, a thorough gentleman in feeling and in action. Moreover, he had
ability, and an immense capacity for hard work, both of them qualities
that appealed to Mary.
So she allowed herself to dally vaguely with the idea. It was very
pleasant to be set in a shrine; to be worshipped; to be served in a
prayerful attitude of adoration. To be able by a kind word, a kind
glance, to raise a fellow creature to a dizzy height of happiness. How
could anyone be unkind to that excellent little man? Suppose . . .
this was a daring supposition, and Mary grew hot all over as she
entertained it--suppose, in the dim and distant future, when
Reggie . . . Reggie had never written after he went back to Chatham,
nothing had happened then about India; but suppose he did go for years
and years, and forgot her . . . perhaps he had never wanted to remember
her in that particular way, and she had magnified quite little things
that meant nothing at all. . . . Suppose she ultimately, years hence,
could bring herself to marry Mr Gallup. How angry her father would be!
But that was a prospective contingency that only amused Mary. He would
be angry whoever she married. He would be exceedingly angry if she got
engaged to . . . that young man at Chatham who was so taciturn and
neglectful . . . who didn't seem to want to get engaged to anyone.
Clara Bax said it would be dreadfully dull to marry anyone you'd known
all your life. Would it? Clara Bax said it would be tiresome in the
extreme to marry anybody. But about that Mary was not sure.
Westminster is certainly the nicest part of London; there are bits of
it that remind one of Redmarley. It would be pleasant to be rich and
important, and feel that you are helping to pull the wires that control
destinies; helping to make history. Ah, that was what Reggie called
it. He would do it. She was sure of that; but Reggie's wife would
have no hand in it.
With clear intuition she saw that of these two men, only one could be
influenced by his wife in anything that concerned his work. Reggie's
wife would be outside all that. Eloquent's wife, _if she were the
right woman_, would share everything: and at that moment Parker began
to bark, and Mary found that she had walked into a part of the wood
called the Forty Firs, and that Eloquent Gallup was standing right on
the very same spot, where seven months ago she had assisted him to rise
from a puddle.
Parker didn't like Eloquent upright a bit better than he had liked
Eloquent prone, and he made a great yapping and growling and bouncing
and skirmishing around about the two of them, until he finally subsided
into suspicious sniffing at Eloquent's ankles.
"Has Parliament risen then?" Mary asked, when she had soothed Parker to
quiescence.
"No, Miss Ffolliot, I came down"--Eloquent's eyes were fixed hungrily
on her face, and she noticed that his was nothing like so round as it
used to be, and that he was very pale--"because I couldn't keep away."
Mary said nothing. There seemed nothing to say.
"Miss Ffolliot," Eloquent said again, "I think you must know why I have
come down, what I feel about you, what I have felt about you since the
first minute I saw you in this very place, when I was so ridiculous and
you so beautiful and kind. I have travelled a good way since then, but
I know that in caring for you as I do I am still ridiculous, and it is
only because you are so beautiful and kind, although you are so far
above me, that I dare to tell you what I feel . . . but I would like
your leave to think about you. Somehow, without it, it seems an
impertinence, and, God knows, no man ever felt more worship for a woman
than I feel for you. Do you give me that leave?"
Mary was very much touched, very much shaken. Eloquent's power lay in
his immense earnestness. She no longer saw him small and insignificant
and common. She saw the soul of him, and recognised that it was a
great soul. For one brief moment she wondered if she could . . .
Through the woods rang the notes of a bugle. Ger was playing "Come to
the cook-house door." Mary's heart seemed to leap up and turn right
over.
"Come to the cook-house door" is not by any means one of the most
beautiful of the bugle sounds of the British Army. It is rather jerky
at the best of times, and as performed by Ger it was wheezy as well.
But for Mary just then it was a clear call to consciousness.
Pity and sympathy and admiration are not love: and Mary knew it, and in
that moment she became a woman.
Eloquent had taken her hand, taken it with a respect and gentleness
that affected her unspeakably. She gave a little sob. She did not try
to draw it away. "Oh dear," she sighed, "I am so sorry, for it's all
no use," and the tears ran down her cheeks.
Eloquent lifted her hand and kissed it.
"Don't cry, my dear," he said, "don't cry. I'm glad I've known you and
loved you. . . ."
Again through the woods there rang that "first call" so dear to the
heart of Ger.
"Good-bye, Mr Gallup, I mustn't stay . . . try to forgive me, and . . ."
"Forgive," Eloquent repeated scornfully, "what have I to forgive?
_That_ is for you."
Mary turned and walked swiftly away, and Eloquent watched her till she
was out of sight.
Parker kept close at her side, but every now and then he jumped up and
tried to lick her face. Parker knew all was not right with Mary and he
was uneasy.
Mary knew full well that it was to no comfortable cook-house door that
Ger had summoned her. That wheezy bugle called her to the outposts of
the world; to a life of incessant acerbating change, where there was no
certainty, no stability, no sweet home peace, or that proud fixity of
tenure that is the heritage of those who own the land on which they
live. She had no illusions. Not in vain had she lived with her
grandmother at Woolwich and heard the lamentations of the officers'
wives when plans were changed at the last moment, and the fair prospect
of a few years at home was blotted out by the inexorable orders for
foreign service. And the Sappers were worst of all, for except at a
very few stations they hadn't even a mess, and there was not the
friendly fellowship of "the Regiment" to count upon.
The yard was quite deserted, for the men had gone to dinner. She
paused at the gate and looked long and lovingly at the clustering
chimneys, and lichened, grey-green roofs she loved: and as she looked a
new sound broke the stillness. Three loud reports and then the
touf-touf, spatter-dash-spatter-dash of a motor bicycle.
Mary opened the gate, went through, shut it behind her and leant
against it, for her knees were as water.
The noise came on, it passed the house, turned into the back drive,
came round, and someone in overalls, covered with dust from head to
foot, swept into the deserted yard; saw Mary, pulled up short, and
pushed the bike against a wall.
This dusty person tore off his goggles. It was Captain Reginald Peel,
R.E., and he came across the yard towards her.
"Hullo, Mary," he said, "I told you I'd let you know whenever I heard.
The A.A.G.'s a brick, I'm going to India. Marching orders came last
night."
Mary's lips trembled and her voice died in her throat. Reggie took out
a large silk handkerchief and mopped his dusty face.
He came on towards her and took both her hands.
"Mary," he said, "can you leave all this? Can you face it? Will you
come with me and help me to build bridges and make roads and dig
drains. . . . Will you come so that we can have the rest of our
lives . . . together?"
They looked straight into one another's eyes.
"I will," said Mary, and she said it as solemnly as if she were
repeating a response in the Marriage Service.
Reggie loosed one of her hands. Again he polished his face.
"I should like awfully to kiss you," he said, "but I'm so fearfully
dusty--do you mind?"
"I think," said Mary, with a queer choky laugh, "that I'd rather like
it."
And just at that moment Willets appeared at a gate leading from the
garden. He didn't see them, and opened the gate, which squeaked
abominably, came through and let it shut with a clang, but they,
apparently, heard nothing.
Willets stood transfixed, for he saw the motor-bike and the dusty young
man in overalls, and clasped close in the arms of the said dusty young
man was Miss Mary!
Willets gave one quick glance, smote his hands softly together, and
turned right round with his back to them. He leaned on the gate and
gazed steadfastly into the distant garden. It was a squeaky gate, that
gate. If he opened it, it might disturb them, and bless you, they were
but young, and one is only young once.
So kindly Willets stared, with eyes that were not quite so keen as
usual, at the bit of garden he could see; and there, delphiniums were
blooming. The sun came out just at that moment, and they looked
particularly blue and tall and splendid.
It seemed to Willets that he admired those delphiniums for hours and
hours, but it was really only a few minutes till he heard a rather
husky voice behind him saying, "It's all right, Willets, you may turn
round and congratulate us."
And there they were both standing "as bold as brass" he said
afterwards, and the delphiniums he had just been studying so closely
were not as blue as Mary's eyes.