THE ONE WOMAN
Mary Gray's loving, capable care and sympathy carried Nelly through the
worst days of her trouble. There were times when Mary had to hold the
girl's hands, to fight with all her might against the acute suffering
which menaced for a time her sanity and her health. The horrors into
which Nelly fell when she thought upon the things which happened in such
wars as this with cruel and cunning savages, were the worst things to
fight. There were hours in which all the fears of the world seemed to be
let loose on the unhappy child, when it seemed impossible to vanquish
those powers of darkness with one poor woman's love and prayers. During
these days Mary Gray hardly left Nelly's side. Fortunately she had
ceased to direct the Bureau, and another capable, much more
common-place, young woman had taken up her task. The official
appointment was on its way, but had not yet arrived. So she was free to
devote herself to her friend.
The doctor whom Sir Denis called in could do little for the patient
except prescribe sleeping draughts to be taken at need. He understood
that the girl had had a shock. He suggested a change, but Nelly would
not hear of that. She must stay on in London where the first news would
come. So stay on they did, through the torrid heats of July, when the
dust was in arid drifts on the Square green gardens and blew in through
the open windows, powdering everything with its faint grey.
"This young lady is better than my prescriptions," the doctor said
handsomely of Mary Gray. And added, "Indeed, what can we do for sorrow
except give the body a sedative?"
"If she could face her trouble clear-eyed," Mary said, "I should feel
glad in spite of everything. It is these mists and shadows in her mind
that it is so hard to fight against."
After a little while they were left pretty well to themselves in
Sherwood Square. The Dowager was angry with Nelly as her son had
anticipated; and, after a scene with Robin which prevented a scene with
Sir Denis, she had gone off over the sea to the Court. Everybody went
out of town: even Sherwood Square emptied itself away to the sea and the
foreign spas. Only Robin Drummond stayed in town and came constantly.
During the early days when Nelly kept the house and refused obstinately
to go out of doors, he would leave Sir Denis in charge and carry Mary
off for a walk in the Square.
The first sign of interest that Nelly showed in other things than her
sorrow was when she indicated to her father the distant figures of Mary
and Robin moving briskly along at the farther side of the Square.
"Do you notice anything there, papa?" she asked.
"What do you mean, my pet?"
Sir Denis was quite flurried at Nelly's suddenly coming out of her
brooding silence.
"I mean Mary and Robin," she answered. "It has been borne in on me that
that is why Robin was not in love with me. Poor Robin! He would have
gone through it heroically. Never say again, papa, that he is not a true
Drummond. And I should never have known if he could have helped it that
I wasn't the only woman for him."
"You don't mean to say, Nell, that Robin is in love with Miss Gray?"
"That is it, papa."
The General turned very red. For a second his impulse was towards wrath;
then he checked himself.
"To be sure, as you didn't want him, Nell, it would be the height of
unreasonableness to expect poor Robin to be miserable for your sake. And
Miss Gray is a fine creature--a fine, handsome, clever creature. Still,
there is a great difference in their positions. It will be a blow to the
Dowager."
"Mrs. Ilbert would not have minded."
"God bless my soul! You don't mean to say that Miss Gray could have had
Ilbert?"
"She has refused him, but I don't think he has given up hope."
"God bless my soul! Why, the Ilberts are connected with half the
peerage. We Drummonds are only country squires beside them. Such a
handsome fellow too, and with such a reputation! Why should she refuse
Ilbert? Is the girl mad?"
"Robin was first in the field. But I happen to know that Mary refused
Mr. Ilbert while yet Robin and I were engaged. What do you think of
that?"
"Madder and madder. I don't understand women, Nell. Such a fellow as
Ilbert! Why, he might marry anybody. We must make it easy for them with
the Dowager, Nell--as easy as we can. We owe a good deal to Miss Gray."
"Oh, she'll come round--she'll have to come round."
"Do you suppose they understand each other, Nell?"
"I don't think Robin has spoken. He seems to be waiting for something. I
have only noticed the last day or two. Before that I was absorbed in my
troubles--such a selfish daughter, papa."
"My darling, we have all felt with you. It is so good to see you more
yourself, Nell."
"Ah!" She turned away her head. "I have a feeling--there is no reason
for it at all--that good news is coming. I felt it when I awoke this
morning."
Meanwhile Robin Drummond and Mary had the Square almost to themselves,
except for a gardener or two. All around the Square were shuttered and
silent houses. It was the most torrid of early August days, and
presently the heat drove them to a sheltered seat beneath a tree. In the
mist of heat around them the bedding-plants, the scarlet geraniums, the
lobelia and beet, made a vivid glare. Only in the forest trees, too
dense for the dust to penetrate, were there shadow and relief.
They were talking of Nelly.
"She will be all right now," Mary said. "She has come out of the
darkness. Even if she has his death to bear I think she will bear it.
She reproaches herself for the pain she has caused her father."
"Poor Uncle Denis! He lives in terror about Nelly. She is all he has had
since her mother died."
"I think he may rest easy now. Nelly is not going to die--not even of
grief. Now that she is better, Sir Robin, why don't you go away? I know
your yacht is waiting for you, and you have got the London look; you
want change."
"I shan't go till there is news one way or another."
"There ought to be news soon. It is hard on you waiting from day to
day."
"I don't feel it hard. Perhaps if the good news came I might induce them
to come away with me on the yacht. It would be the best thing in the
world for them. For the matter of that, why don't you go away? You also
have the London look."
"Oh, I shall go gladly when I may. I am really longing to be off. Do you
know what I shall hear when I go over there?--a sound I am longing for."
"What?"
"The rain. I close my eyes now and fancy I hear it pattering on the
leaves. Oh, the music of it! One is never long without it at home. We've
had six weeks without rain here. Can't you imagine the soft, delicious
downpour of it? The music of the rain--my ears hunger for it."
"Oh, now indeed I see that it is time you went. You will probably have
enough of the rain."
He spoke gloomily, and she laughed.
"It will probably rain all the time I am there. And I shall be able to
forgive it because of its first delicious moments."
"What are you going to do?" He asked the question almost roughly.
"I am going to be with my father, in a mean, little two-storied house of
six rooms. At least, it is mean outwardly; but no house could be mean
inside where he lived and spread his light. He will have to be at his
work every day till he gets his fortnight's holiday in September. If I
get away in, say, a fortnight's time, I shall help my stepmother about
the house while he is at business all day; I shall have a thousand
things to do. They have only one servant; and my stepmother and sisters
do the greater part of the work. They would treat me like a queen when I
go over there, if I would let them; but I never do let them. I love
dusting, and cooking, and mending, and helping the little ones with
their lessons. Then as soon as my father is free I am going to carry
them off to a hotel I know between the mountains and the sea. It is a
big, old-fashioned house, and there is a lovely garden, full of roses
and lilies, and phlox and stocks and hollyhocks and mignonette and sweet
peas. I stayed there once with dear Lady Anne. We shall all have a
lovely time. There is a trout-stream at the end of the garden and the
trout sail by in it. There are hundreds of little streams running down
from the mountains. They make golden pools in the road and they hang
like gold and silver fringes from the crags that edge the road."
There had been a deliberation in what she told him about the little
house. But she was mistaken if she thought to surprise him. He was
picturing her there at her domestic duties and thinking that no small or
mean surroundings could dwarf her soul's stature. Hadn't the hideous
official room that held her been heaven to him?--the singing of the
naked gas-jets the music of the spheres?
"It will be a great change from London," he said.
"I am going back to the old days. I have refused to see any of my fine
new friends. The Ilberts will be staying over there with the Lord
Lieutenant at the same time. I have forbidden Mr. Ilbert to call."
Again his mood changed to one of unreasonable irritation. What had she
to do with the Ilberts, or they with her?
"If I find myself over there I shall certainly call," he said, with an
air of doggedness.
"Oh, very well, then, you shall," she said merrily. "_You_ won't
embarrass us, not even if we have to ask you to dinner."
An hour or two later the good news came, brought by Mrs. Rooke in
person. Captain Langrishe could hardly yet be considered out of danger,
but he lived; he had been sent down in a litter to the nearest station,
where there were appliances and comforts and white people all about him,
outside the sights and sounds of war, beyond the danger of recapture by
the enemy.
Nelly bore the better news well: she had been prepared for it, she said.
Seeing her so quiet, Mrs. Rooke brought out a scrap of blue ribbon cut
through and blood-stained. It was in a little case which had been hacked
through by knives. It had been sent home to her at the first when there
was no hope, when, practically, Godfrey Langrishe was a dead man.
"It is not mine, my dear," she said to Nelly, "and I think it must be
yours. I did not dare show it to you before."
Nelly went pale and red. Yes, it was her ribbon, which had fallen from
her hair that morning more than a year ago when Captain Langrishe had
ridden by with the regiment and the wind had carried off her ribbon.
She received it with a trembling eagerness.
"Yes, it is mine," she said. "I knew he had it. He showed it to me
before he went away."
"How furious Godfrey will be when he misses it!" Mrs. Rooke said.
"Somebody will be having a bad quarter of an hour. And now, Nelly, when
are you going to be well enough to come to see my mother? She longs to
know you. She is the dearest old soul. She wanted me to bring you to her
while yet we were in suspense. But I waited for news, one way or
another."
"I should love to go," Nelly said.
"She has a room in a gable fitted up for you; the windows open on roses.
The place is full of sweet sounds and sights. All through this trouble
her thoughts have been with you. Will you come?"
"If papa can spare me."
"Then I shall ask him, and we can go down on Saturday. Won't he come for
the day? When you know my mother I am going to leave you there with her.
Poor Cyprian is off to Marienbad and I must go with him. He's dreadfully
afraid of losing his figure. A fat lawyer, he says, is the one
unpardonable thing. Will you look after my mother?"
The General was only too glad to give his consent to the plan which had
brought the colour to Nelly's cheek and the light to her eye. After
leaving Nelly in Sussex he and Robin would go down to Southampton, get
out the yacht and cruise about the coast till Nelly felt inclined for a
longer run.
So Mary Gray was free to go. She went out in the afternoon, leaving
Robin to look after his cousin. The General had gone off to the club
with a lighter heart than he had known for many a month. Robin had
suggested a drive, but Nelly would not hear of that. She was going to
save up her pleasure, she said, for Sussex and Saturday. She consented
to walk in the Square, where she had not been for quite a long time. He
noticed that she looked delicate and languid and his manner to her was
very tender. In fact, a new under-gardener in the Square, who was very
susceptible to romance, put quite an erroneous interpretation on Robin's
manner to his cousin, and hovered in their vicinity with eager curiosity
till he was pulled up sharply by one of his superior officers.
"So we are all going to scatter, Nell," Drummond said, half regretfully.
She glanced at him.
"Poor Robin! It was too bad, keeping you in town."
"I haven't minded it at all, I assure you, Nell. Indeed, I couldn't have
gone happily while you were in suspense."
"Robin," she said suddenly, "what are you waiting for?"
He started. "Waiting for?" he repeated. "What do you mean, Nell?"
"You're not going to let Mary go without speaking to her?" Under her
light shawl her hand felt for and held the locket which contained the
blood-stained blue ribbon. "Haven't you waited long enough? I believe
she would wait an eternity for you, but don't try her. Speak now."
"My dear Nell," he stammered, "it is only a fortnight or so from the day
that should have been our wedding day."
"I was thinking as much. What have you had in your mind? Some foolish
Quixotic notion. What were you waiting for?"
"To tell the truth, Nell, till you should be happy."
"Don't take the chances of letting her go away without telling her. Do
you think I haven't known that you were in love with her all the time?
Why, that first day I saw her I said to myself in amazement, 'Where were
his eyes that he could have chosen you before her?'"
"Nelly, how do I know that she will look at me?"
"She will never look at anyone else. Speak now, if only in fairness to
the men who might be in love with her, who are in love with her and may
have false hopes."
"She won't look at me, Nell."
"She has sent Mr. Ilbert about his business, but he will not let her be.
He says that so long as she is not anybody else's she may yet be his. I
didn't want to betray him, but I must make you understand."
Poor Ilbert! For a moment Drummond's mind was filled with a lordly
compassion towards him. Ilbert rejected! And for him! To be sure, he
knew Mary cared for him. She was not the girl to have admitted him to
the intimacy of last winter unless she cared. She had borne with him
exquisitely. She had even taken her successful rival to her breast. He
had made her suffer, the magnanimous woman.
Suddenly he took fire. He had been a slow, dull fellow, he said to
himself, and quaked at the thought that Ilbert might have robbed him of
his jewel. Now, he felt as though he must follow her, and make her his
without even the possible mischances of a few hours of absence.
"She comes back to dinner?" he asked.
"She comes back to tea," his cousin answered, "and you have made me
tired, Robin. I am going to rest till tea-time."
They went back to the house and Nelly left him in the drawing-room while
she went away to her own room. He knew that she was giving him his
opportunity and was grateful for it. How could he have been so mad as to
think of letting Mary go away with nothing settled between them?
He walked up and down restlessly, while the dogs watched him in
amazement from their cushions. It was a topsy-turvy world in which the
dogs found themselves of late. They had almost reached the point of
being surprised at nothing. It was lucky the carpet was so faded and
shabby, for of late the General had worn a path in it with his restless
movements; and now here was his nephew behaving as though he were an
untamed creature in a cage and not a sober, serious legislator.
At last he heard her knock, and her light foot ascending the stairs. She
looked surprised to find him alone and asked rather anxiously for Nelly.
"You didn't let her get over-tired?" she asked, apprehensively.
"No; we walked very little. She said she would rest till tea-time. Well,
have you packed?"
"I have put my things together. I am going to ask to be allowed off
to-morrow. I shall sleep at the flat to-morrow night, if they can spare
me, and be off the next morning."
"You are glad to be free?"
"Very glad. I was also glad to stay. And you?"
He rose up to his awkward length from the chair into which he had
dropped on hearing her knock and went close to her.
"I shall never be free again in this world," he said. And then, with a
change of tone: "Do you suppose I am going to let you go over there a
free woman?"
He drew her almost roughly to him.
"I have always loved you," he said.
"And I," she answered, "I have loved you since I was sixteen."
"My one woman!" he cried in a rapture.