THE FRIEND
Robin Drummond had heard from his cousin's own lips his dismissal. Her
father would have spared her, but Nelly would not hear of that and he
let her have her way.
She told Robin everything in a dull, unmodulated voice, with a
dead-tiredness in it which revealed her unhappiness more eloquently than
words could have done. She stood by the mantel-shelf, holding one hand
over her eyes while she told him. When she had finished there was a
momentary silence.
"You are not angry with me?" she asked, turning about and looking at him
with eyes of suffering.
"My poor child! Could I have the heart to be angry with you?"
"Ah! that is right. You were always kind, Robin. I shouldn't have liked
you to be unkind now. You must win me your mother's forgiveness."
"She will come round in time."
He had an idea his mother would take it badly. But, of course, she would
have to come round. The whole bad business had been her fault in a way;
and if she was hard on Nelly, he felt like telling her so.
"I am glad to think I have done you no great harm, Robin. Indeed, the
harm would have been in marrying you. I have realised for some time that
I was not essential to your happiness."
He opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again. He was not a
diplomatist.
"I am very fond of you, Nelly," he said, after a pause.
"Yes, I know you are. So am I fond of you. It was not enough, of course;
I ought to have known better."
"And I. I can't forgive myself, Nell, for having been in a way the cause
of the mischief. Take courage, dear. All may yet be well. God knows what
happiness is in store for you."
"God knows," she echoed; but there was no assurance in her tone.
The General, lying in wait for him, drew him into his own den. He put
his hand on Robin's shoulder, leaning heavily on it, like an old man
with his son.
"I'm sorry for this, so far as it concerns you, my lad," he said. "But
my great trouble is for my girl. She is taking it too quietly. I don't
know what is happening--inside. One knows so little about women--how
they take those things. She ought to have a woman with her."
"His sister. She is a good little woman, and she adores him. She would
be good to Nelly."
"You can't go tearing off to people's houses at this hour of the
evening"--it was nine o'clock--"and asking them to come with you. To be
sure, the sister knows. I don't want Nell talked about."
"Nor I. Let him come home well and then they can talk of the nine-days'
happy wonder. I'm going to the sister. If she fails, there is Miss
Gray."
The General snatched at the idea.
"She came to see Nell the other day and I liked her. I began with a
prejudice--I've no liking for women who take up the trade of politics.
Writing books, too! I'm glad my Nell doesn't write books. I shouldn't
like to see her name stuck up in the papers. But this Miss Gray of
yours. She overcame my prejudice. She looks clean, my lad, clean outside
and within. Nell's fond of her. The dogs pawed her as if they had known
her all her life. I trust a dog's judgment. She didn't mind it either,
though she was fresh as a daisy. What do you propose to do? To ask her
to come round and see Nell to-morrow, if the sister fails? You can't
very well ask her to come to-night."
He looked wistfully at Robin.
"Miss Gray often works late," the other said, consulting his watch. "If
she is at home, why shouldn't she come back with me? She may be out, of
course; the world has begun to run after her. She is not much attracted
by the world, but she gives kindness for what she takes to be kindness.
She is not conventional. If she feels she is wanted she won't mind
coming in at ten o'clock."
"I believe Nell would talk to her," the father said eagerly. "If Nell
would talk to someone my mind would be at rest. Poor Nell! The purpose
of my life was to keep her from pain and sorrow."
He went back to his room shaking his old head, and Robin Drummond went
out into the night. He drove first to Mrs. Rooke's house, and found the
mistress absent. She had gone off to an old mother who had to be
consoled.
Fortunately it was not far to Mary Gray's little flat, not more than ten
minutes' hansom drive. He told the driver to wait while he ran up the
stone steps. To his relief, when he had rung the bell at the white door
he heard someone stirring within. Mary herself opened the door.
"Forgive my coming at this hour," he began apologetically. Even as he
spoke he remembered that he had had a chance of seeing those little
rooms that held Mary and had relinquished it on that bygone Good Friday.
He looked enviously beyond Mary herself to the glimpse of lamplit room.
He could see a white wall with pictures on its panels, a bit of a dwarf
bookcase, a chair drawn to a table heaped with books, a green-shaded
reading-lamp. Against the lighted background Mary's cloudy hair stood
out illumined.
"What is it?"
"It is my cousin. She is in great trouble. I will explain to you as we
go along. Can you come to her? Her father is anxious about her."
She was a woman in ten thousand. She asked no questions, although it
occurred to him that it must seem odd to her that she should be
summoned, that Nelly should be in great trouble, seeing that he and her
father were well.
"Shall I stay the night?" she asked. "Your cousin was so very anxious
that I should come and stay with her. She showed me the room I should
have--next to hers. Sir Denis seconded the invitation warmly. I said
that I would try to come."
"It will be the best thing in the world. How long will you take to get
ready? I have a hansom at the door."
"Five minutes."
She came down the stairs in four and a half minutes. Robin had been
expeditious; it yet wanted twenty minutes to ten by his watch.
He helped her into the hansom, got in himself and placed her little bag
at their feet. The hansom turned up the hill. She waited for him to
speak.
"Nelly has found out that she made a mistake," he said quietly. "Her
heart was not given to me, but to a Captain Langrishe of her father's
old regiment. News has come that he has been badly wounded, so badly
that in all probability he is dead by this time. He had exchanged into
an Indian regiment, and almost as soon as he got out he was sent into
the hills on the business of this wretched little war. Those conquests
of ours, what they cost us! Why should we have all those thousands of
miles of frontiers to defend? Why can't we stay at home and let the
territories be for their own people?"
She smiled quietly to herself in the corner of the cab. The sudden
excursion into politics was so characteristic of him.
The wind of the summer night came cool and friendly in their faces. The
blue heaven was studded with stars. A little half-moon hung above the
quiet shadows of the square through which they were passing. For the
stillness they might have been miles away from London.
"What a Don Quixote you are!" she said. "I believe you would cede India
if you had your way."
"I believe I should. Don't you wonder at me, Miss Gray? My forbears
devoted their existence chiefly to extending the boundaries of the
British Empire. Am I not their degenerate descendant?"
"Oh, you're a fighting man in other ways. You don't mind facing a
hostile audience and saying unpalatable things to them. Mr. Ilbert says
you'll have to fight for your seat at the next election."
"I wouldn't be bothered with a seat I hadn't to fight for. All the same,
I'm obliged to Ilbert for his interest in my affairs. Do you know that
he referred to me as a Little Englander the other night, as though there
were only one way of loving one's country and that to rob other people
of theirs?"
His tone was an offended one. The name of Ilbert seemed to have power to
irritate him. He resented the idea that Ilbert had talked to Mary of
him, disparaged him; he supposed she saw Ilbert often. The idea was
exceedingly distasteful to him.
"He has the highest opinion of your honesty and capacity, your
patriotism too," Mary said.
He did not want Ilbert's commendation; he hated that Mary should quote
his opinions. He lay back in the hansom, staring before him, and his
expression was one of unmixed gloom. Even her neighbourhood had no power
to cheer him, although at first he had had a sensation of delight in her
nearness to him, the perfume as of flowers that hung about her, the soft
folds of her dress which he had touched in the darkness.
They were driving along Sherwood Square now. Across the square itself
Robin could see the lit windows of the General's house. Their time
together was short, he thought; and perhaps the same thought occurred to
Mary, for she touched his sleeve with a gesture of sympathy.
"Will you let me say," she said, "how sorry I am for the pain and
trouble this must be to you?"
"You mean, because Nelly has--has chucked me?"
"Yes; I mean that."
For a moment he looked down in silence. He wondered if he had any right
to tell the truth. Would it not be like a disparagement of Nelly if he
were to confess that he had never loved her? A memory floated into his
mind. It was of Lady Agatha Chenevix and something she had said to him
once at a dinner-party.
"When I must be indiscreet----" she had begun. "Yes?" he had answered
laughingly. "When was your ladyship ever anything but indiscreet? and
who has made indiscretion adorable like you?" Her ladyship had bidden
him hold his tongue with frank camaraderie, and had finished the speech.
"When I am indiscreet, I am indiscreet to Mary. She is like a little
well, into which one drops one's indiscretions and puts the lid on." "A
very clear, transparent, honest well," he had said.
After the momentary pause he lifted his head. The rest of the world
might think him heartbroken if it would; he wanted Mary to know the
truth.
"As a matter of fact, Miss Gray," he said, "Nelly has not broken my
heart. She had always been very dear to me, like a dear little sister.
There was a time when I felt that it would be quite easy to fall in with
my mother's plan and marry Nelly. But I had come to the conclusion that
my feeling for her was not enough for marriage, before that time in the
spring when my mother intimated to me that Nelly was ready to fulfil her
engagement. I never considered it an engagement. I was actually about to
make things clear when that intimation was given to me. Then, I was led
to believe that Nelly had taken it as binding. What could I do only go
on? If Nelly cared for me--I confess that I ought to have known it to be
an unlikely thing--then my great concern in life was that Nelly should
not suffer. It was all a pretty bad mistake, but I am glad it has gone
no further."
He heard something like a sigh, so faint that he could be hardly sure he
heard it. It was, in reality, Mary's thanksgiving and great relief; a
burden which had lain at her heart for months past taking wings to
itself and flying away. She had not acknowledged to herself that cold
doubt about Robin Drummond, who had seemed to come so near to her, while
all the time he belonged to another woman. She had pushed away the doubt
with loyal refusal to hear it; but it had been there all the time. Now
it was gone for ever. There was no more need of excuses or explanations
to her own heart.
"Thank you for telling me," she said.
They were at the house-door and the hansom had pulled up. They went up
the steps between the couchant lions and before they could knock Pat had
opened the door, as though he had been listening for them.
"Miss Nelly is in the drawing-room, sir," he said in his privileged
Irish way; "but the master has just gone into the study."
They went up to the drawing-room. Nelly was sitting in a chair by the
open window as Robin had left her, tearless, her unemployed hands lying
in her lap. The circle of dogs about her watching her with anxious eyes
would have been humorous in other circumstances. The lamps were lit
behind her, but there was no light on her face, except the dying light
in the pale western sky.
"I have brought you a visitor, Nelly," Robin said.
She looked up indifferently. Then something of interest stirred in her
face.
"You have heard what has happened?" she said in a half-whisper.
Mary knelt down beside her and put her arms round the little frozen
figure.
"Why, you are cold!" she said. "Come away from the window. I am going to
ask for a fire, and then you will talk to me about it."
Robin Drummond left them together, and went down to tell Pat to light
the fire in the drawing-room, because Miss Nelly was cold.