JEALOUSY, CRUEL AS THE GRAVE
It was the latter end of April when Sir Robin Drummond presented himself
again in the big bare room where Mary Gray transacted the business of
her Bureau. The windows were wide open now, and the dull roar of the
distant street traffic came in. It had been a showery day, and he had
noticed as he came up the stairs the many marks of muddy feet which
showed that business at the Bureau was brisk. The women were coming at
last to be organised, to learn a spirit of _camaraderie_, to see that
their good was the common good, to have hope for a future which would
not be always starvation and deprivation, sufferings in cold and heats,
intolerable miseries crowding upon each other.
He came up the stairs, looking sadder and sterner than was his wont. He
remembered how all last winter he had run up those stairs like a
school-boy, being so glad at last to get to the hour he had desired all
day. As he passed up the staircase now he looked at the walls,
distempered a dirty pink. Outside Mary's door they were adorned by the
effusions of amateur artists, the children of the working women,
messenger boys, casual urchins, with the desire of their kind for
scribbling. It was all quite unlovely, yet it had made him happy to come
there. It was a happiness that he had had no right to and now it must be
relinquished. This was the last time he should come after this intimate
fashion.
He turned the handle of the door and went in, rather dreading to find
Mary engaged with other visitors; but she was alone. She turned round
from her desk as he came in, and, jumping up at sight of him, she came
to meet him with an outstretched hand.
"Congratulate me," she said. "The book is finished and accepted.
Strangmans have taken it. They took only a week to decide. I am wild
with pride and joy. Maurice Ilbert is one of their readers. He got it to
read and recommended it enthusiastically. They are to publish it in
June. Wasn't it generous of him, because there is so little of it he can
agree with?"
"Oh, Ilbert's conscience is pretty elastic, I should say, and he can
agree with many things," Sir Robin answered. He felt vaguely annoyed
that Ilbert should have had anything to do with Mary or her book. Ilbert
was one of the younger school of Tories, a free-lance he called himself,
handsome, conceited, immensely clever, a golden youth with an air of
Oxford and the Schools added to him. He was one of the youngest members
of Parliament, and was gifted with a dazzling and impertinent wit. Sir
Robin had occasionally smarted under Ilbert's sallies. He was a target
for them, with his serious and simple views, his lean air of Don
Quixote.
Mary looked at him reproachfully, as though the speech grieved her.
"He is very generous," she repeated. "He has come to see me. I found him
most sympathetic. It is not a question of parties. He thinks awfully
well of the book. He says it will stir the public conscience. To be
sure, it is written out of experience, just the plain story of things as
they are. I have learned so much since I began this work."
He had got over his first ill-temper, and now he spoke gently.
"I am sure it is a good book," he said. "I have always felt that you
would make a good book of it because you know. Ilbert is a very capable
critic."
He did Ilbert justice with some difficulty. He had a sharp thought of
Ilbert coming in and out as he had been used to, when he should come no
more. For the first time in his life, which had had no room for
self-consciousness, he compared himself with another man, handsome,
debonair, and remembered the lean visage over which mornings he passed
the razor, dark, lantern-jawed, almost grotesque. It was the only aspect
of himself he knew, the one which was presented to him when he shaved.
"Now you are like yourself," Mary said sweetly. "It was not like you to
throw cold water on my pleasure."
He turned away his head from her reconciled eyes. She was making what he
had come to say doubly hard for him.
"I want to tell you something," he said. "I should like you to hear it
from me first, because you have been so good a friend to me. I have
spoken to you of my cousin, Nelly. I wanted you to be her friend.
Well--I am to marry my cousin in July."
There was silence for a moment after he had said it, a silence broken
only by the ticking of the noisy clock on the mantelpiece, by the sounds
of the street outside.
"There has been an implicit engagement between my cousin and myself," he
went on as though he set his teeth to it. "I couldn't tell you when it
began. It was made for us. I was always ready to be bound by it. She is
as sweet a thing as ever lived; but sometimes I have thought that
perhaps, perhaps, the cousinly closeness would make the other tie a
difficult thing for Nelly to accept. I was wrong. She has no desire to
break through that implicit bond."
He was making an explanation, and Mary Gray was not the girl to
misunderstand him.
"I am very glad," she said cheerfully, "very glad. I hope you will be
very happy. I am sure that you will be."
He looked at her with relief, which was not altogether agreeable. He had
not done her any wrong after all. She was not angry with him. But, to be
sure, why should she be? It was unlikely that she would have taken more
than a friendly interest in him. He mocked at himself, and thought of
his harsh uncomeliness. If he had been Ilbert now his conduct of all
this winter past would have been unpardonable. But Ilbert and he were
made in a different mould. Oddly, the thought did not comfort him--was a
bitter one, rather.
"Won't you sit down and tell me about it?" Mary said, her eyes looking
at him frankly and kindly. "I am not at all busy. The business of the
Bureau is pretty well over for the day, and I can finish my proofs at
home. Do, Sir Robin."
She pushed a chair towards him, and he sat down in it. He felt that he
ought to go. It was a concession to his own weakness that he stayed. And
he had no inclination at all to talk about his engagement. He tried to
say something, tried to imagine what a man happily engaged to be married
would find to say to a sympathetic woman-friend about it. He could think
of nothing, only that so far as he could see there was no consciousness
in the serious bright eyes that watched him. To be sure he ought to be
glad. He would be the most miserable hound on earth if he wished her to
be unhappy because he was marrying his cousin. Yet he was not glad of
that ready sympathy.
"Well," she said at last, "you have nothing to tell me."
"What can I say"--he laughed awkwardly--"that I have not already said?
We have been brought up like brother and sister, but our elders always
expected us to marry when we should be old enough. We have been taking
it easy, Nell and I; thought there was plenty of time, you know."
"And at last you have decided that the plenty of time is up?" she said,
filling the gap in his speech. Her eyes were wondering now. It was a
strange thing to her that lovers should take it easy.
"Yes, that was it."
"Of course, I understand now why you felt you had to go that Thursday in
Holy Week. It was very good of you to give us so much of your time."
"You didn't tell me how you got on, what you did," he said eagerly. He
was glad to escape from the discussion of his too intimate affairs.
"What did you do on Good Friday, after all?"
"Mrs. Morres spent the day with me. It was a lovely day. We went to the
service at St. Hugh's. The music was wonderful. Afterwards we sat by the
open window and talked. My window-box was full of daffodils. They are
just over now. Mrs. Morres said it was like the country. Afterwards I
locked up the flat, put the key in my pocket, discovered a hansom--it
wasn't easy, but 'Tilda, who comes in to tidy up for me every day,
managed it. Her young man is a hansom-driver. I stayed the night at the
Square, and we went down to Hazels next morning."
"Was it good?"
"Exquisite. I finished the book there. We had miraculous weather. I was
able to work out of doors in the very same green garden where her
Ladyship and I worked at the novel last year. The dogs used to sit all
around me: and I believe the birds remembered me. I am sure I recognised
one robin. I came back like a lion refreshed, with the full copy of the
book done up in my portmanteau. Since then I have been enjoying the
sweets of a mind at ease."
"You look it."
She did, indeed, look like a flower refreshed. She was wearing a soft
grey gown with a little good, yellowed lace about the shoulders. The
lace had been a gift from Lady Anne. It gave the final touch of
distinction to Mary's air. She had the warm, pale complexion that goes
well, with grey, and her hair seemed to have more than usual of gold in
it. Standing against the light it was blown out like a little aureole
full of stars. He had thought that he could like her in nothing so well
as her dark blue frock, but now he thought that grey should be her only
wear.
"What time do you leave?" he asked, glancing at the clock.
"Not for a long time yet. It is only half-past five. People come in and
out here up to quite late. I foresee that my hours will be later and
later."
"You mustn't let them take too much of your time. You must have time for
exercise, for meals, for rest, for your friends----"
"I am so profoundly interested in the work that I don't grumble. As for
my friends, they can see me here. For exercise I walk most of the way
between Kensington and this, either coming or going. Society is not
likely to claim me--at least, not in her Ladyship's absence. My few
friends can find me here."
It was on his lips to ask her to let him walk part of the way home with
her. He might have this last pleasure since he was coming here no more,
at least not in the old way. But, as though her words had been a
challenge, there was a clatter of wheels and horses in the narrow street
below.
"A carriage," Mary said. "It will be one of the fine ladies who are
interested in philanthropy and politics."
There was a rustle of silks and murmur of voices coming up the stairs.
Sir Robin sat holding his hat in one hand, vaguely annoyed. Why should
one of those meddlesome fine ladies choose for the hour of her empty,
unimportant visit his last hour with Mary Gray?
He sat irritated, shy, awkward, his feelings faithfully reflected in his
face. The door opened. A lady came in whom he had occasionally met in
drawing-rooms, a slight, tall woman, with a brilliant brunette face. A
delicate perfume came with her entrance. She was finely dressed, as fine
as a humming-bird, and it became her. She looked incredibly young to be
the mother of the slim youth who followed her. The youth was Maurice
Ilbert. His mother, Mrs. Ilbert, was well known as one of the most
brilliant and exclusive hostesses in fine London circles. Now she was
holding Mary's two hands in her own grey-gloved ones.
"I insisted that my son should bring me to see you, Miss Gray," she was
saying with _empressement_. "I hope you will excuse my descending on you
like this. But I positively had to. This wonderful book of yours--my boy
has been talking of it every hour we have been alone. It is such a
pleasure to meet you. Ah--Sir Robin Drummond, how do you do? Are you
also privileged to know about the wonderful book?"
To Robin Drummond's mind Ilbert's smile and nod had something amused,
mocking in them. He had acknowledged the greeting with the curtest of
nods.
Now he got up, shook hands awkwardly with Mrs. Ilbert, and made his
farewells to Mary Gray. It was sheer ill-temper drove him out as soon as
they had come. He had wanted to ask Mary if he might bring Nelly when
she returned to town. He had wanted ... a good many other things. But
now he stalked away from her presence with fury in his heart. If the
Ilberts were going to take her up!--to exploit the book! The Ilberts
belonged to the young Tory party which his soul detested, or he said so
in his wrath; as a matter of fact, he had not many detestations, and in
the matter of politics he had no personal rancours. Yet at the moment he
thought he had, and fancied that a part of his indignation was because
Mary Gray, who had learnt in the Radical school, was going to be made
much of by advanced Tories. As he sat in his hansom, "stepping westward"
into the heart of the sunset, he bit the ends of his moustache, and it
was like chewing the cud of bitterness. Mary Gray had expanded to answer
the genial warmth of Mrs. Ilbert's manner as a flower opens to the sun.
It was not in her to be ungracious, and Mrs. Ilbert was a charming
woman.
And now he asked himself what was he going to do for the next month or
six weeks till his mother and Nelly came home? All the winter he had
been in the habit of seeing Mary Gray two or three times a week. He had
been home a week from Lugano, and he had kept away; and all the time
something stronger than himself had seemed to be tugging at him to take
the old familiar road. He had found it a hard struggle to keep away for
those ten days. And how was he going to do it for all those weeks to
come? He had always had so much to say to her--or, at least, there had
always been things he wanted to say, for in his most intimate moments he
was naturally rather silent.
For a second his thoughts escaped his control, and settled on the
pleasantness that bare ugly work-a-day room had meant to him all the
winter through. The sodden winter streets, swept by bitter winds,
horrible in fog and snow, through which he had hurried on his way had
had something heavenly about them. "Ah, le beau temps passé!"
He pulled himself together with a sharp shock of reproach. He was to
marry Nelly in less than three months' time, and he was an honourable
man. When Nelly was his wife he meant that every thought of his heart
should belong to her. He must see Mary Gray no more. Yet as he pushed
the thought of her away from him it came to him that another man might
find the ugly gas-lit room, the wet winter streets with their bawling
crowds and flaring lights, something of the same magical world that he
had found them. Supposing that man were Ilbert? Well, supposing it were
so, what business had he to resent it? But however he might ask himself
rhetorical questions, the jealousy of the natural man swept over him in
passion and fury. He said to himself that now he knew why he had always
hated Ilbert. It was a prevision of this hour.
And at the moment the General was offering up his heartfelt thanks that
Nelly's happiness was secure in the keeping of one so steady and
reliable, if rather dull and slow, as Robin Drummond.