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."

"G.o.d bless my soul, to be sure, he is in a hurry. He must be in a hurry.

When you get back to your looking-gla.s.s, little Nell, ask yourself whether it is likely that he should not be in a hurry!"

He was talking as much to rea.s.sure 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 embarra.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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. G.o.d knows, Nell, I will do my best to make you happy, and may G.o.d 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 pa.s.sionately 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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sion.

"When you will, Robin."

"You will never repent it, G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed, 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.

CHAPTER XX

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 pa.s.sed 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.