WILD THYME AND VIOLETS
While Sir Robin and Mary Gray sat on that English hillside, Nelly and
her father walked on a hilly road above Lugano. The April afternoon was
Paradise. Below, the lake lay blue as a sapphire mirroring a sapphire
sky. The space between them and the lake's edge was tinged with a bloom
of bluish-rose, for all the almond groves were out in blossom. Below
them were drifts of sweet-scented narcissi. All around them lay the
mountains, Monte Rosa silver against the sapphire sky. Below the
fantastic houses clustered to the lake's edge in their little groves and
coppices of green.
They were talking of Robin's coming. The hour of his arrival was
somewhat uncertain. They might find him at the hotel when they returned,
going home in the evening quietness, when Monte Rosa would be flushed to
rose-pink and the blue sky would die off in splendours of rose and
orange.
Nelly was certainly looking better. Not a hint had come to her of the
frontier war in which, by this time, her lover must be engaged. The
General starved for his newspapers in these days, if he did not get the
chance of a surreptitious peep at one at the English library, or when
some friendly fellow-guest in the hotel would hand him a belated print
two days old. Nelly had a wild rose bloom in her cheek and a light in
her eye at this moment. Who could look upon such a scene and not praise
the Designer? Not Nelly, certainly. As they paused for the hundredth
time to look she breathed sighs of content and pressed her father's arm
close to hers in a caress. Even though one's lover had been cruel and
had gone away without speaking, it was good to be alive.
The appealing influence of the season was about them, too. They had just
peeped into a little wayside chapel, where there was a small altar
ablaze with lights set amid masses of flowers. The place was heavy with
sweetness. Here and there knelt worshippers with bent heads. The General
had bowed with a reverent knee, and Nelly had knelt with him before they
had gone out into the blaze of the day again.
"There are only two armies, after all, Nell," the General had said,
explaining himself. "The army of the Lord and the army of the Prince of
Darkness. Let us rejoice that we have so many fellow-soldiers in the
Lord's army, though we fight in different regiments."
"To-morrow," said Nelly dreamily, "the lights will be all out and the
little chapel draped in black. There will be the service of the Three
Hours' Agony. Do you think we might come?"
"I'm afraid the Dowager would be shocked," her father replied hastily.
"She would look upon it as deserting the flag. Many excellent women are
very narrow-minded."
They went along in silence. At intervals they sat down to enjoy at
leisure the beautiful world about them. They did not say much. There was
little need for talk between two who understood each other so
thoroughly. While they dawdled, half-way round the lake from their
hotel, the sun dropped behind the hills and left them in shadow. It was
time for them to go home.
As they went along leisurely, Nelly's face, uplifted towards the sky,
seemed to have caught an illumination from it. It was the eve of the
Great Sacrifice. Already the shadow and the light of it lay over the
world. Nelly was thrilled and touched. That visit to the wayside chapel
had set chords vibrating in her heart. Sacrifice for love's sake
appealed to her as it does to all generous, impressionable young souls.
Though her own personal happiness had vanished, gone down under the
world with the _Sutlej_, there was yet the happiness possible of making
those she loved happy. She had understood her father's wistful looks and
tentative speeches. She knew that he desired her happiness to be in her
cousin's keeping. The old days were over, the sweet days before that
other had come, when she and her father had sufficed for each other.
They could never come again, and he wanted her to marry Robin. Robin's
mother, who was good to her, had suggested that she was trying Robin's
patience too far. Why, if she could make them all happy--she was not in
a state of mind to appreciate what marriage with one man while she loved
another was going to cost her--if she could make them all happy, ought
she not to do so?
"Father!" she whispered. "Father!"
"What is it, Nell?"
She rubbed her cheek slowly against his arm, not speaking for a second
or two.
"Father, I am ready to marry Robin whenever you will."
The General's heart bounded up with an immense relief.
"Whenever I will?" he said, with an air of rallying her. "Is it not
rather whenever you will? Poor Robin has been waiting long enough."
"You are quite sure he wants me: I mean soon?"
"He'd be a dull fellow if he didn't."
The General had suddenly a memory of the time when he had called Robin a
dull fellow in his secret heart because he had been content to wait,
endlessly to all appearances. He put the memory away hastily as an
uncomfortable one.
"To be sure, he wants you soon, Nelly, my dear," he said. "As soon as
your old father can give you up to him. You have always been Robin's
little sweetheart from the time you were a child. He has never thought
of any girl but you."
He made the speech with a gulp, as though it were distasteful to him.
"I never thought there was any girl," Nelly said simply. "Robin is not
at all a young man for girls. Only he cares so much for politics. He has
not seemed in any hurry."
"God bless my soul, to be sure, he is in a hurry. He must be in a hurry.
When you get back to your looking-glass, little Nell, ask yourself
whether it is likely that he should not be in a hurry!"
He was talking as much to reassure himself as Nelly. To be sure, Robin
must be as eager a lover as it was in his capacity to be. There was
nothing volcanic about Robin. He was steady, sensible, reliable! Yes,
better let the affair be settled at once. June would be a good month for
the wedding. He could go afterwards and take the cure at Vichy for his
gout. Pat could go with him. Perhaps Nelly would take over Bridget and
some of the other servants. Why shouldn't Robin and Nelly have the house
just as it stood? He would make them a deed of gift of it. He could have
a bachelor's flat somewhere near the Parks and the Clubs, with Pat to
look after him. It would be easier for him if the old house sanctified
by many memories were not to be broken up.
Nelly's exaltation carried her on to Saturday afternoon. Sir Robin had
arrived on the morning of that day while the General and Nelly were out
climbing the lower range of a hill. The Dowager was no climber. More
than that, she had acquired tact and good feeling it seemed in her
latter days, for she left father and daughter very much together. The
General's heart had begun to soften towards her. He had begun to ask
himself how it was that he could have so persistently misjudged her all
those years. If Gerald had liked her well enough to marry her, surely he
could have done her more justice than so to dislike her.
The Dowager had her son to herself for some hours of the Saturday
forenoon. He had suggested following Nelly and her father up the
mountain track, but she had detained him with a demonstrativeness
unusual in her, which struck him like a jarring note. What had come over
his mother? She had always been a woman of a cold and even harsh manner,
at least to him. To be sure, he had noticed with amazement that she had
been different to Nelly. She ought to have had a daughter instead of a
son. He had no idea that if he had been a dashing soldier he might have
been a far less dutiful son, a far less satisfactory member of society
than he was and yet have awakened a feeling in his mother's breast which
she had never given to him. Now he was embarrassed somewhat by her
playful insistence on her mother's right to her boy for a time.
Playfulness sat as ill on her as could well be imagined, and he was
captious over her raillery on his hurry to be at his cousin's side,
calling it atrocious taste in his irritable mind, he who had never been
irritable, to whom it would have seemed the worst of taste to question
good taste in his mother.
More than one person was irritable with the Dowager that day. The
General was furiously irritable over the transparent man[oe]uvre by
which she packed off the young people together.
"Enough to spoil the whole thing," he thought, pursing his lips and
pushing out his eyebrows as he did when he was annoyed. "Indelicate!
Stupid! I'd rather have her when she was disagreeable. My poor Nell! She
did not look very happy as she went. I had a great mind to go with her
and spoil things, after all."
The cousins found their way to Nelly's favourite haunt, the little
coppice of low almond trees with the troops of narcissi and violets and
primroses colouring all the brown earth. They went into the little
chapel together. It smelt of incense after the ceremonies of the
morning. The mournful black had been removed. There were flowers on a
side-table, and the sacristan was setting the candlesticks on the fair
white cloth which he had just laid along the altar. The scents in the
woods at home had been thin and faint by these. Standing with his hat in
his hand at the threshold of the little chapel, Robin Drummond had a
memory of the scent of wild thyme.
He was not one to hesitate when he had made up his mind. His mother had
told him that Nelly was waiting, ready for the word which might have
been hers any time those two or three years back. Her father thought the
time had come to arrange a date for their marriage. His mother, too, was
anxious to see him settled. Neither she nor the General was young any
longer. They had a right to look upon their children's happiness for the
years that were left to them of life.
The young people were high on a mountain path, where few were to be met
with except an occasional Englishman climbing like themselves, or the
goatherds with their little flocks. He had helped her up a steep bit of
climbing. The exertion had brought an unwonted colour to her face. Her
hand lay in his, soft and warm. His closed on it and held it. It was the
hand of one who had never done anything toilsome in her life, the hand
of a petted darling. He remembered another hand, thin, brown, capable.
None of Mary's later years of ease had given her the hand of a woman of
leisure. It was the hand of a comrade, a helpmate. Nelly's hand
fluttered in his and was suddenly cold.
"Well, Nell," he said, "do you know what I came here in the mind to ask
you?"
"Yes." He saw the quick rise and fall of her bosom; he noticed the
almost terrified look of her eyes. Was that how women showed their happy
agitation when their lovers claimed them? Poor little Nell! How easily
frightened she was! She had turned quite pale. He would have to be very
good to her in the days to come.
"Haven't you kept me waiting long enough, little girl?" he went on with
a tenderness which might easily have passed for a lover's. "I've been
very patient, haven't I? But now my patience has come to an end. When
are you going to fix a date for our marriage?"
"We have been very happy," began Nelly with trembling lips.
"Not so happy as we are going to be. God knows, Nell, I will do my best
to make you happy, and may God bless my best!"
As he said it the scent of some little plant, bruised beneath his feet,
rose to his nostrils, sharply aromatic. It was the wild thyme, the
fragrance of which had hung about him those few days back, no matter how
he tried to banish it.
"I will be very good to you, Nelly, if you can trust me with yourself."
It was not the least bit in the world like the love-making of Nelly's
dreams. To be sure, he was good and kind, the dear, kind old Robin he
had always been. She was grateful that he was not more lover-like
according to her ideals. If he had taken her in his arms and kissed her
passionately like that other--she smelt lilies of the valley where Robin
Drummond smelt the wild thyme--she could not have endured it. As it was,
she answered him sweetly.
"I know you will be good to me, Robin. When were you ever anything but
good?"
Then he kissed her, a light kiss that brushed her lips. He felt his own
shortcomings as a lover when he saw the blood rush tumultuously to her
face, cover even her neck. Why, she must care for him with some passion
to blush like that for his kiss. He had no idea that it was the memory
of another kiss which had caused that wild flush of colour.
"Well, Nell, when is it to be?" he asked, trying to galvanise himself
out of his coldness, trying to make the pity and tenderness which she
awoke in him take the place of passion.
"When you will, Robin."
"You will never repent it, God helping me," he said again.
They came back, as they were expected to, with things settled between
them. Robin had consulted a calendar in his pocket-book and named a
date--Thursday, 23rd of July. He would be free then. The House would
have risen and he would be able to devote himself to his honeymooning
with a clear mind. He had not asked for an earlier date, but it did not
occur to Nelly to wonder at that. She was relieved to find it so far
off. Already she thought of the time between as a respite, the "Long
day, my Lord!" of those condemned to death.
The Dowager saw nothing wrong with the date. They could wander about the
Continent leisurely, coming home early in June to prepare Nelly's
wedding-clothes. The General, after his first irritation had passed, had
brought himself to tell her of his plan about the house. She approved
graciously as she thought. It was very generous of the General. To be
sure, Robin must have a town house now he was married. Sherwood Square
was a little out of the way and quite unfashionable. Still, it was a
fine house in an excellent situation to balance those drawbacks. And of
course it must be new-papered and painted and modern conveniences placed
in it. That could be done while the young couple were away honeymooning.
Robin must be on the telephone, of course. That was indispensable. And
the furniture must be fresh-covered, so much of it as they decided to
keep. A deal of it was old-fashioned and had better go to a sale-room.
New carpets too. Already the Dowager was making calculations of what it
was going to cost the General. She was capable of a certain grim
enjoyment in the spending of other people's money.
"Do you propose to live with them, ma'am?" the General asked at last, in
a constrained voice.
She looked at him in amazement.
"Why, to be sure. Poor child, she will need someone beside her. Those
servants of yours, Denis, they've had their own way too much. I've no
doubt there's a terrible leakage in the establishment."
"If you propose to live with them, ma'am," the General went on, bursting
with fury, "I don't give up my house at all. Robin can find his own
town-house. The servants have done very well for me and Nelly. So have
the chairs and tables and carpets. I'd nearly as soon send my own flesh
and blood to an auction-room."
The Dowager was alarmed. She tried to propitiate the General after her
usual manner towards him. It was as though she tried to distract a
froward child.
"Dear me," she said, "dear me! I didn't mean to offend you, Denis. The
house is shabby. Those dogs have always sat in the chairs and on the
carpets. I only thought that we might put our heads together for the
good of the young people."
"I'm a Dutchman if we will, ma'am!" shouted the General. "As for the
dogs, did you intend to exclude them, too, from the fine new house?
You'd never teach them not to sit in chairs at this time of their
lives."
This outbreak was followed by the usual fit of repentance, in which the
General reproached himself for his hastiness. To be sure, he had been
annoyed that the wedding should have been put off for so long. In his
haste he had said derogatory things about Robin in his heart, which was
unreasonable. The fellow was a Member of Parliament and had to stick to
his post, to stick to his post like a soldier. Yet, there would be all
those weeks of June and July when bad news might come any day about
Langrishe: and Nell would be in London and would hear of it.
So, although the thing had come about which he desired, the General was
not happy.