"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.

CHAPTER XXVI

GOLDEN DAYS

The time went peacefully with Nelly and the mother in the little house among the Suss.e.x woods. And presently, since Nelly showed no indication of wishing to join them, and could not be spared indeed, and since Robin was plainly ill at ease yachting up and down the coast, the General declared his intention of going off to a grouse-moor in Scotland, rented by an old friend, over which he had shot year after year for many years back.

On hearing of this sudden change of plans Robin expressed a polite regretfulness, but the General looked at him with twinkling eyes--he and Robin had come to be on the best of terms of late--and bade him be off to Dublin without any confounded hypocrisy about it.

"You've been wishing me anywhere, my lad, this last week or two except aboard the _Seagull_," he said. "Not but what you've borne with me--oh, yes, you've borne with me; a lad of my own couldn't have done more: and now you've earned your reward."

So the General went off northward for what was left of the grouse season. Later, he was to go into Suss.e.x for the partridge and pheasant shooting, not so far from where Nelly was living in a state of blissful peace, with excellent reports of Langrishe's recovery coming by every mail.

And be sure, the _Seagull_ spread her white wings and flew, as fast as wind and wave could carry her, across the Irish Sea.

Sir Robin presented himself unannounced at the little house in Wistaria Terrace, where the youngest but two of the Miss Grays opened the door half-way to him, and was visibly alarmed at the sound of his t.i.tle.

The little house smelt of cookery, perhaps of washing, although doors and windows were open. But little Robin Drummond cared for that. Beyond the demure child who had admitted him he caught sight of Mary sitting on the shabby little gra.s.s-plot, in a wicker-chair, with a j.a.panese umbrella over her head. And roses could not have been sweeter than the atmosphere.

The simplicity which belonged to his character came out in his dealings with Mary's family. Walter Gray came home to find his daughter's grand lover stretching his long figure on the gra.s.s at her feet, while the smaller Grays, their shyness quite departed, rolled and tumbled over him as confident as puppies. To be sure Walter Gray, with his disbelief in distinctions of rank as otherwise than accidental, was not unduly elated by the fine company in which he found himself. He looked hard and long at Robin Drummond as hand met hand. Then a bright look of rea.s.surance came over his face. He could trust even Mary to the owner of those eyes.

They discovered a deal in common later on as they walked, with Mary for a third, in the long twilight and early moonlight. Walter Gray imparted his secret thoughts as to a spiritual brother. His dreams, his aspirations, his Utopia of a world as he would have made it, he laid bare to Robin Drummond in his slow, easy talk, with a hand through his arm.

"He was born to be a great man," Robin Drummond said to Mary later, in a generous enthusiasm, "and he shall not miss his vocation. He must have leisure and ease. When we are married he shall have a corner of the Court to himself, and he shall put his dreams into black and white. I know the room; it looks into an elm-tree, and the owner of the room has the key to the birds' secrets. There is an oriel window, and in the room is a little old organ, yet wonderfully sweet. You shall play to him when he lacks inspiration."

"He could do better with the young ones about him and the mother grumbling placidly in his ear," said Mary.

"Then they shall have the Cottage. It is within the walls and looks to the mountains. It is a roomy old place and has a big overgrown garden of its own."

"I wonder if he will take it from you?"

"He will have to," said the lover.

Then they went back to supper: and he was introduced to Gerald, the young bank-clerk, whose mind was not yet cured of the fever for the sea, who had a roving eye in his smooth young face; and Marcella, the eldest one of the young Grays, who was a typist in the same employment as her father. And though at first the young people were shy of Mary's lover they were quickly at home with him. The fine breeding of Walter Gray had pa.s.sed on, to some extent, to every one of his children.

"It will be my privilege to look after them," Robin Drummond said to Mary. "As for the lad, he will never be a financier. He is too old for the Navy, but why should he not learn the seaman's trade on the yacht?

He has a pining look which I don't altogether like."

"It will be said that you are marrying all my people," Mary said uneasily.

"We shall not hear it said," her lover answered placidly. "We shall be out of hearing of that sort of thing."

When their friendship had the ratification of weeks upon it he broached the matter of the cottage to Walter Gray. They were walking together as they usually did of evenings; and Walter Gray walked with a stick, leaning on him, with the other hand thrust through his arm. He had a groping way of walking, which Drummond had noticed and ascribed to his abstraction from the things about him. After Drummond had unfolded his plans there was a silence, during which he watched Walter Gray curiously. Was he going to refuse, as Mary had suggested?

They were near a lamp on the suburban road which stood up in the boughs of a lime, making a green flame of the tree. Walter Gray pulled up suddenly and lifted his eyes to the light.

"Do you notice anything?" he asked.

Drummond peered down into the eyes. Yes, there was a slight film upon the pupil of one.

"Cataract," said Walter Gray cheerfully. "I shall never be fit for my work any more, even if an operation should be successful. Marcella knows. Good girl, she has kept her own counsel. I have not been working for some time at the watches. Mr. Gordon, kind soul, continues my salary. I have been learning type-writing against the days that are to come. I confess I have a desire to write a book. I have saved nothing, Sir Robin Drummond. How is it possible, with fifty shillings a week and eight children? I have no pride about accepting your offer. If my scrip is empty and yours is full I don't object to receiving from a fellow-pilgrim what I should give if our cases were reversed."

"Ah! that is right," said Robin Drummond. "As for cataract, in its early stages it is easily curable. Sir George Osborne----"

"I will do whatever you and Mary wish. But I antic.i.p.ate blindness. I shall not mind very much if I have the light within. There will be the book to solace my age; and after a time I shall not be so helpless."

The Dowager came round after all sooner than was expected. The reconciliation was hastened by a letter she received from Mrs. Ilbert congratulating her on her prospective daughter-in-law. "My poor Maurice," she wrote. "I don't mind telling you, dear Lady Drummond, that Maurice was head-over-ears in love with your charming and distinguished daughter-in-law that is to be. The boy takes it very well, says that the better man has won, which is exactly like Maurice. Since your son has chosen a political career I congratulate him on having such a woman as Miss Gray by his side. She will be a force in political life, so says Maurice. And she will be the n.o.blest inspiration. Though I am grieved that she is to be your son's Egeria and not mine yet I offer you and Sir Robin my heartiest congratulations. I may add that I also congratulate the party to which your son belongs."

Lady Drummond had rubbed her eyes over this letter. Congratulate _her_--was it possible?--on being the prospective mother-in-law of Mary Gray, the daughter of a man who worked for his living at repairing the insides of watches! She, the widow of a hero, a rich woman of social importance! Congratulate _her_ and Robin and Robin's party! And not one word of congratulating Mary Gray! Was Caroline Ilbert mad?

However, the thing impressed her. It worked by slow degrees into her mind. She had listened often to such foolish heresies as that which declared brains more important than rank or wealth. In a general way she had not dissented. Brains were very important. Gerald had thought a good deal of brains. If he had lived he had meditated a book on Napoleon's Wars. She had often met writing and painting and musical people in her friends' drawing-rooms. They had not appealed to her nor she to them.

But she had grown accustomed to their presence there and to meeting them on an equality to which in her heart she had never subscribed.

However, she had the wisdom to see that there was no use in holding out against her son and to console herself with the idea that Mary was going to be a personage, even apart from the incredible social promotion of marrying Sir Robin Drummond. So she actually reached the point of coming in person to Wistaria Terrace to make a formal recantation of her opposition to the marriage, and to take Mary to her imposing, black-bugled breast.

To be sure the little house had almost driven her back from its threshold. She filled the small shabby hall, she fell over the brushes left by the general servant who had been scrubbing the oilcloth, not expecting her ladyship; she sat uncomfortably on the green rep chairs of the drawing-room staring at a Berlin-wool banner-screen which represented a poodle with beads for his eyes, at the silver shavings in the grate, and the school drawings, finished by the nuns, of the younger Misses Gray. There were certain aspects of that drawing-room dear to Mrs. Gray which Mary had been too tenderhearted to try to alter.

There Mary had found her and had been moved in her innermost humorous sense; but she had been glad to be friends with Robin's mother, and so had done her best to advance the reconciliation.

Lady Drummond had a surprising proposal to make. It seemed that her friend, Lady Iniscrone, had placed at Miss Gray's disposal for the wedding the big house on the Mall formerly occupied by Lady Anne Hamilton. Lady Iniscrone wrote that they had heard of Miss Gray from a friend of Lady Agatha Chenevix, and had felt interested in her progress ever since. Of course, remembering the tie which had existed between Lord Iniscrone's aunt and Miss Gray, Lord and Lady Iniscrone could never be without interest in Miss Gray's progress.

Mary smiled a smile of fine humour over the reading of the letter. At first she was in the mood to refuse. But, being her father's daughter, and so endowed with that sense of the comedy as well as the tragedy of life which makes it easy to regard things and persons equably, she consented at last. She would have preferred to be married from Wistaria Terrace, but she had no difficulty in making a concession to Robin's mother.

So the wedding-breakfast was spread in the dining-room where she and Lady Anne used to have their meals together. Mrs. Gray held a terrified reception of the few fine folk whom Lady Drummond had declared it necessary to ask in the long drawing-room with the three windows where Lady Anne used to sit with little Fifine in her lap.

Mary had wished to be married from the poor little house where she had grown up, but on her wedding day she felt that she had done as Lady Anne would have wished. There was nothing changed in the house: the old-fashioned substantial furniture, the faded carpets and curtains, were just the same. There were one or two familiar faces among the servants. After all, Lord and Lady Iniscrone had used the house little, since Lord Iniscrone had developed a chest affection which kept him following the sun round the world for three-fourths of the year.

The marriage had taken place earlier at the big, dim old church behind which Wistaria Terrace hid itself away, and the few fine folk were not bidden to the wedding but to the reception. A great many glittering things were spread out on the tables in the long drawing-room. It was surprising how many well-wishers the new Lady Drummond seemed to have in the great world. Sir Denis Drummond had come over for the wedding, and Nelly was a bridesmaid, with Mary's type-writing sister, Marcella. She was a different Nelly from her of a couple of months earlier, her delicacy gone, her old pretty bloom come back, her eyes bright as of old.

"Mrs. Langrishe wants me to return to her!" she confided to Mary, "but we are going to Sherwood Square. You know, _he_ is on his way home. In a week or two he will be on the sea. He must come to me, not find me there waiting for him. Do you know, Mary, that though his mother and sister have taken me to their hearts, he has not written me a line? You don't suppose, Mary, that he could be going to keep silence _now_?"