TWO WOMEN

The travellers came home the first week of June. During the weeks that had come and gone since Easter they had wandered about as the fancy took them. Rome, Florence, Genoa, Venice. They followed a path of wonders; but, somewhat to her father's dismay, Nelly did not prove the pa.s.sionate pilgrim he had expected. She looked on listlessly at the wonder-world.

Now that her first exaltation had died away it did not seem so simple a matter to make others happy. There was no royal road, she discovered, to the happiness of others any more than to her own.

Her father said to himself that Nell would be all right as soon as the wedding was over. He had not come to the point of thinking yet that marriage with Robin Drummond was not the way the Finger of G.o.d had pointed out to him. It was impossible not to notice Nelly's listless step and heavy eyes. The Dowager put down these things to ordinary delicacy, something the girl would outgrow.

"She wants a husband's care," she said. "To be sure, my dear Denis, you have done your best for her. But what, after all, could you know about girls?"

"As much as Robin Drummond, ma'am," the General said, with a growl; and was not placated by the Dowager's tolerant smile.

He was at once glad and sorry when the weeks were over. He dreaded, for one thing, going back to London where Nelly might hear news of G.o.dfrey Langrishe. To be sure, he had acted entirely for her happiness, yet he had an idea that Nell might be angry with him for keeping things from her if she found out that Langrishe's regiment was engaged in the deadly frontier war. He had been so used to being perfectly frank with her that his reservation galled him.

He had studied with attentiveness the columns of such papers as had come his way, dreading to find Langrishe's name among the casualties.

Hitherto it had not occurred, and for that he was deeply grateful. If there had been news he must have betrayed it to Nelly by his eyes and his voice.

"I wish we could have stayed longer," she said to him on the eve of their departure from Italy.

"And I, Nell."

"Oh," she looked at him in wonder. "I thought you were keen to be gone."

"Is it likely?" he asked with playful tenderness, "that I should be anxious to shorten the time in which you are mine and not Robin Drummond's?"

They were alone, and she turned and put her head on his shoulder.

"I shall always be yours," she said. "And I think marriage and giving in marriage a weariness of the spirit."

"Not really, Nell?" The General looked at her golden head in alarm, but already she was reproaching herself.

"Never mind, dear papa," she said. "I didn't altogether mean it. Poor, kind Robin! What a very ungrateful girl I am to you all!"

As soon as they got back the Dowager engaged her in a whirl of shops and dressmakers, and for that the General was grateful. He resorted to man[oe]uvres in those days to keep the newspapers out of Nelly's way that revealed to himself hitherto unsuspected depths of cunning. He opened the papers with a tremor. The orange and green and pink bills of the evening newspapers stuck up where Nelly could see them, laid on the pavement almost under her feet, brought his heart into his mouth. If they could only tide over the dangerous time, and Nelly be married and gone off on her leisurely honeymoon! Langrishe might almost fade out of her mind, become at least a gentle memory, before anything could happen to him: or the deadly little dragging war might be over and Langrishe have carried out a whole skin.

It was the height of the season and Nelly had her social engagements as well as the preparations for her wedding. As often as was possible Robin Drummond put in an appearance, but the House was sitting and much of his time was taken up. He looked rather more hatchet-faced than of old.

Once, sitting in the Strangers' Gallery of the House, the General heard someone say as Robin was about to speak: "Who is that careworn-looking young man?" Careworn, indeed! The General fumed and fretted over it, the more because it fell in with a certain secret thought he had had once or twice. Robin had always been somewhat too much of an old head on young shoulders to please his uncle. To be sure, he had fed on Blue Books and slept on statistics, yet his engagement to a lovely girl like Nelly ought to have made him look happier. It was indecent in the circ.u.mstances, that's what it was, that anybody, with the remotest justification for the epithet, could call him careworn.

Once Robin on an afternoon when the House was not sitting called for his cousin and carried her off in a hansom without saying where he was taking her to. That was something of which the General heartily approved. If Robin had done it oftener his opinion of him would have gone up immensely. He rubbed his hands while he asked the Dowager what Mrs. Grundy would say to such doings. "Supposing they made a runaway match of it, ma'am, where should we be?" he asked cheerfully. To which the Dowager replied that Robin would never think of anything so silly.

Why should he, when the wedding was fixed for the twenty-third and everything ordered, even the bridesmaids' dresses and the wedding-cake?

"Perhaps for that reason," replied the General. But this was a dark saying to the Dowager.

The visit that afternoon was to Mary Gray. Even Nelly had heard of the book which Sir Michael Auberon had praised so highly, which the newspapers had declared to be more interesting than any novel. She had roused herself to be interested in the visit, to talk, to ask questions, to look about her, as they drove into the east, instead of gazing inwards with that introspective glance which had given her eyes of late the beauty of mystery, making them larger and darker than they had been in the old days.

She was exquisitely dressed, in a long cloak of cream lace over an Indian muslin frock, and an airy hat of chiffon and feathers. She had put on her best for her outing with Robin, her visit to Robin's friend.

It was one of the sweet things she was always doing, with an intention in her own mind to make up for some lack or other which certainly her lover had not felt. When she alighted in the busy street people stared as though they had seen a white bird of Paradise; and coming into Mary Gray's room with a basket of roses in her hand she looked like a bride.

Now, at least, she wore the pilgrim air. She looked curiously about the unlikely place which housed the wonderful woman as she set down her roses, then back at Mary herself. Mary had come to meet her with outstretched hands. Her bright look at Robin Drummond was full of sympathetic admiration, of felicitation. She kissed Nelly warmly. She was not an effusive person, and nothing had been further from her thoughts than kissing, but her heart went out at once to this charming girl.

"_How_ good of you to come to see me!" she said, pressing Nelly's hands in hers. "Into the east, too! And you must be so busy just now."

"I have been longing to see you," Nelly responded. "Robin has talked so much about you." At that moment Nelly had no doubt that he had talked.

"And I wanted to see you here, in your ordinary life. Robin says you will not be here much longer--that there will be an official position found for you. And it was here that 'Creatures of Burden' was written!"

"Nearly all here," Mary said, smiling down at the young enthusiast.

Robin Drummond stood aside, in one of his characteristically awkward att.i.tudes, his hat in his hand, watching them. He was not thinking sufficiently of himself to feel awkward, although he looked it. He was thinking of those two dear women, as he called them to himself, objurgating himself for his unworthiness to be the kinsman and lover of one, the friend of the other.

He had never seen Nelly look like that before. Her air of worship was charming. Now she let Mary Gray's hands fall while she went swiftly to the table on which she had deposited her beautiful red roses. "I brought them for you," she said, offering them to Mary Gray.

"How delicious! How sweet of you!"

The smell of the roses was in the room. It might have been the aura of the two exquisite women, he thought. Nelly had come in carrying a little whiff of scent that went with her, as much a part of her as the soft rustling of her garments. He closed his eyes and there came to his memory, sweet and sharp, the odour of wild thyme. Not a second of time had pa.s.sed when he opened them again. Mary was still praising her roses.

She was holding them to her face, leaning towards Nelly as she did so.

Her expression was more than kind: it was tender. She put down her basket of roses and took Nelly's hands between hers. For a moment she held them against her breast before she relinquished them. She spoke with a little tremor in her voice. Why was it that Robin Drummond thought suddenly of the nightingale who leans his breast upon a thorn?

In an instant the thrill in the atmosphere had pa.s.sed. She was bustling about to make them tea, if her soft, quiet movements could be called bustling. She brought a kettle from the unpainted deal cupboard which housed her utensils of every day. She disappeared for a few seconds and returned with the kettle full of water and set it on the gas-stove. She pushed the papers away from one end of the table and covered it with a dainty tea-cloth. She brought out cups and saucers of thin j.a.panese porcelain, some sugar, a loaf and b.u.t.ter, a box of biscuits. While she set her table she went on talking and smiling at them. The kettle began to sing on the fire.

"Ah!" she said, with a sudden thought. "The milkman will not call for an hour yet. What are we to do?"

"Let me go and forage," said Drummond eagerly.

"The nearest dairy is a good bit off."

"Trust me to find one."

When he had gone the two girls sat down and looked at each other. No wonder she was beloved, Mary thought to herself, gloating over Nelly's golden head, her blue eyes with the dark lashes, her lovely colouring, her innocent mouth. She had a poor opinion of her own beauty and rarely looked in a gla.s.s, but she was none the less generous to beauty in others.

"And you are very happy?" she asked.

She had an inclination to put her arms about Nelly Drummond as though she were a beautiful child. She was so glad Robin had remembered to bring her at last. It had been strange and lonely when he had ceased to come as he had been used to. It had been so pleasant to look up when his tap came at the door and to see his plain, pleasant face looking at her with a friendly smile. She had grown used to his visits all that winter through; and when they had ceased abruptly she had missed them more than she cared to acknowledge to herself. She had an impulse to take Nelly's hand to her breast and hold it there for comfort.

"And you are very happy?" she said again.

She was prepared for a happy girl's outpourings. What she was not prepared for was the sudden shadow that fell on Nelly's face, the weariness, as though she had been brought back to the thought of something disagreeable. A sudden wintriness went over her charming face.

The eyes drooped, the lips trembled and were steadied with an effort.

"I ought to be very happy," she said. "Everyone is good to me. I have the dearest old father in the world and Robin is so kind and good. I ought to be very happy and to make other people happy."

But she was not happy! Mary stared at the golden head with incredulity.

For the moment Nelly's mask--a transparent one enough at best--with which she faced the world was down. No happy girl had ever spoken so, looked so. And it wanted only a few weeks to her marriage!

Mary, no more logical than women less intellectual than she, felt as her first impulse a coldness, chilling her heart that had been so warm towards the girl Robin Drummond had chosen. The chill must have reached Nelly's delicate apprehension, for she looked up in a startled way.

"Robin promised me your friendship," she began.

"And, to be sure, it is yours," Mary Gray said, still wondering at the inexplicable thing that Robin Drummond's promised wife could have secret cause for unhappiness. She had no further inclination to caress the girl for whom she had been pa.s.sed by. "We are going to be great friends," she said with a cold sweetness.

Then the kettle boiled over and created a diversion. While Mary was still mopping up the pool it had made on the floor Sir Robin returned.