Mary Gray Part 18

The General looked without seeing. He was thinking of Sayers' young wife--to be sure, she was not so young now: she must be well over thirty--an innocent-faced creature, sitting at the piano in a white gown, singing, while he and poor Sayers paced the garden-walk in the twilight. Poor woman! how was she to bear it? Those knives, too! The General ground his teeth in fury.

Then suddenly another aspect of the matter flashed upon him, so suddenly that he almost leaped in his seat. Why, the --th Madras Light Infantry--he remembered now--it was Langrishe's regiment. How extraordinary that he should not have remembered before! It was the regiment sent in pursuit. Langrishe would fall in for some fighting--he would find it ready-made to his hand. Those little frontier wars were endless things once they started. And what toll they took of precious human lives! In the last one more young fellows of the General's acquaintance had been killed than he liked to remember. Such deaths, too! Even the bravest soldier might well shrink from the fiendish things the Wazees were capable of.

Suddenly the train pulled up abruptly, so abruptly that for a few seconds it quivered as a horse will after being hard-driven. The General went to the window and looked out. The houses had been left behind and around them was a country of grey mud-flats with the river dragging its sluggish length through it like a great serpent. There was a windmill on the horizon, breaking the uniform grey of land and river and sky. The sky was heavy with coming snow.

The guard of the train was standing on the line, beating his two arms against his breast to warm them, and answering stolidly the impatient questions of the pa.s.sengers.

"Obstruction on the line in front, sir," he said, addressing n.o.body in particular. "Waggon broke away from the siding and got on to our track.

There's a breakdown gang doing its level best to get us clear. How long?

Can't say, I'm sure, sir. Matter of half an hour, maybe."

The matter of half an hour became a matter of three-quarters, of an hour, of an hour and a quarter. The train grumbled from end to end. Here and there a particularly indignant pa.s.senger got out with the expressed intention of walking to his destination. The officials bore it all patiently. It was no fault of theirs. The breakdown gang, was doing its best. It was a very lucky thing the runaway had been discovered just before the train came round the corner. The train for the _Sutlej_ must have had a narrow shave of meeting it.

The General sat in his compartment, which he had to himself, with his watch in his hand. He was thinking of Sayers and Sayers' young wife.

Mordaunt was not married, but he had an old mother at home in England.

It was bad enough for the men, the brave fellows. But that women should have to suffer such things through their love was intolerable.

The cold intensified. Philosophical pa.s.sengers either wrapped themselves in their rugs or got out and walked up and down, stamping their feet, their hands in their coat-pockets. The General sat, quiet as a Fate, staring at his watch. His thoughts were tending towards a certain conclusion.

At first he had been merely impatient for the train to get on. As time pa.s.sed he became more impatient as it was borne in on him that he might possibly be too late for the _Sutlej_. He might lose the chance of looking in Langrishe's eyes and getting the lead he desired so that he might say the words which would bring happiness to his Nelly. Still the time went on. His moustache became little icicles. If anyone had been looking at him they might have thought that he suggested being frozen himself, so stiff and grey was he. They were within a few miles of Tilbury. It was now half-past eleven. The _Sutlej_ was to sail at twelve. Was there any chance of his being there in time? The guard had said half an hour! If he had not, the General might have walked with those other impatient pa.s.sengers.

But if the General was a religious man--nay, rather because he was a religious man--he looked for signs and portents from G.o.d for the direction of his everyday life. He believed that G.o.d, amid all His whirling world of stars and all His ages, had leisure to attend to every unit of a life upon earth. He believed in special Providences.

Everything that was dear to him or near to his heart he commended to G.o.d in his prayers. He had prayed for direction and guidance in this matter of his girl and young Langrishe. He had thought to do his best. Well, was not the breakdown of the train a sign that his best was not G.o.d's best?

At ten minutes to twelve the track was free, and the train resumed its journey. It was now one chance in a thousand that the General would not be too late. If that chance came, if he saw Langrishe he would take it as a sign that G.o.d approved his first intention. If the _Sutlej_ had sailed--well, that, too, was the leading and the light.

As they ran into Tilbury Station a train was standing at the departure platform. The General beckoned to a porter.

"Do you know if the _Sutlej_ has sailed?"

"Yes, sir--sailed at ten minutes to twelve. Might catch her at Southampton, sir, perhaps. There's a good many people as well as you disappointed in this 'ere train. There's another train back in three minutes."

"When is the next train?"

"Three hours' time."

The General went to the door of the carriage and looked out; then retired hastily. He had caught sight of Grogan and Mrs. Grogan and a number of boys and girls of all ages. Not for worlds would he have let Grogan see him. The amazement at seeing him, the questions about his presence there, Grogan's laugh, Grogan's slap on the back, would be more than the General could bear at this moment.

"I shall wait for the next train," he said to the astonished porter. The porter had not thought of Tilbury as a place where the casual visitor desired to wait for three hours.

The General remained in the train till the other had steamed out of the station. When all danger was over he alighted and walked to the hotel of many partings. He ordered his lunch, a chop and a vegetable, biscuits and cheese. While his chop was cooking he would stretch his legs, cramped by that long time in the train.

He walked along the docks, dodging lorries and waggons, getting out at the side of a basin, with a clear walk along its edge. It was empty--the _Sutlej_ had left it only three-quarters of an hour ago. He paced up and down by the grey water, lost in thought.

The _Sutlej_ had sailed, ten minutes before the time antic.i.p.ated. G.o.d had given him the sign. He had turned him from his presumptuous attempt to be Providence to his Nelly. The General never had been, never could be, pa.s.sive. He was made for the activities of life. Yet his religious ideal was pa.s.sivity--to be in the hands of G.o.d expecting, accepting, His Will for all things. It was an ideal he had never attained to, and it was, perhaps, therefore the dearer.

He was oblivious of the cold, of the creeping water, of the thickening flakes in the air which nearly blotted out the silent ship the other side of the basin. He saw nothing but the pointing Finger, the Finger that pointed away from the course he had marked out for himself. He felt uplifted, glad, as one who has escaped a great peril. Was his Nelly to suffer the torture of an engagement to a man who would presently be every hour in danger of a horrible death? Was she, poor child, to suffer like Mrs. Sayers? like poor old Mrs. Mordaunt? No. She must be saved from the possibility of that.

He would say nothing. He would have to endure the looks she would send him from under her white eyelids, the looks of wistful entreaty. After all, he had not _said_ he was going to do anything. He had implied it, to be sure, but he had not committed himself to anything very definite.

Perhaps Nelly would not discover, for a time at least, the dangerous service Langrishe had gone on. She was no more fond of the newspapers than any other young girl. For the moment he was grateful to the Dowager that she claimed so much of Nelly's time.

He began to look forward with a fearful antic.i.p.ation to Nelly's marriage to her cousin. Something must be settled at once, before she could begin to grieve over Langrishe. He would be alone, of course, but Nelly would be in harbour. He did so much justice to Robin that he believed her happiness would be safe with him. He felt as if he must go home and put matters in train at once. He was impatient till Nelly was safe. It did not occur to him that he was, perhaps, once more wresting the conduct of his daughter's happiness from the Hand in Whose guidance he humbly trusted.

He awoke with a start to the fact that he had been more than half an hour pacing along by the water's edge. He hurried back to the hotel.

Fortunately, his chop was not put on the grill till he returned, and it was served to him piping hot, with tomatoes and a bottle of Burton.

Rather to his amazement, he enjoyed it thoroughly, but when he had finished it he had still more than an hour to wait.

He drove across country to another station, and arrived home early in the afternoon. During the return journey his mind was quite calm and unperturbed. He had had the guidance he needed, and now he had only to let things be--as though it were in his character to let things be!

He dreaded meeting Nelly's eyes and welcomed the Dowager's presence with effusion. He suggested to the lady that she should dine, and afterwards they would visit a theatre--_A Soldier's Love_ at the Adelphi was well worth seeing, he believed. Lady Drummond accepted, flattered by this unwonted friendliness. He would hardly let her out of his sight all that afternoon. She was his safeguard against Nelly's wondering, reproachful eyes.

He had to endure those eyes all the next day. Then--the eyes retired in on themselves, became introspective. It was hardly easier for the General, that look of a suffering woman in his Nelly's eyes.

To be sure, poor Nelly had known of that journey to Tilbury just as well as if she had accompanied him. The only thing she did not know was that he had failed to see Captain Langrishe. And his silence--the looks of tender pity he sent her when he thought he was un.o.bserved, what could they mean but that his mediation had been in vain? For some strange, cruel reason, although he loved her and he must know he was breaking her heart, her lover would have none of her. Even the knowledge that he loved her ceased to be an anodyne in those days.

Everyone was so good to her. She seemed to have found a way to the Dowager's arid heart, as her own son had not. The Dowager seemed dimly aware that Nelly was suffering in some way, and was tender to her. She came to the General with a proposal. Why should they not all go abroad together and escape the east winds of spring? The General leaped at it.

Once get Nelly abroad and she would know nothing of what was happening on the Indian frontier. He, and Nelly and the Dowager. He had not imagined the Dowager in such a party--yet, he shrank from the prolonged _tete-a-tete_ with Nell which the trip would have been without the Dowager's presence. Robin would join them at Easter. They could all travel home together.

There was a time of bustle when Nelly and the Dowager were getting their travelling outfits. A spark of excitement, of antic.i.p.ation, lit up Nelly's sad eyes. The General could have hugged the Dowager.

"Your dear father," the Dowager said to Nelly one day, "how calm he grows as he turns round to old age! I see in him more and more the brother my dear Gerald looked up to and reverenced."

The peacefulness, the good understanding, had their effect, too, on Nelly. It was good that those she loved should dwell together in amity.

She was in that state that she could not have endured sharpness or rancour.

Only Pat shook his head disapprovingly.

"If he goes on like this," he said, "he'll be goin' to Heaven before his time. I'd a deal sooner hear him grumblin' about her Ladyship as he used to do. It 'ud be more natural-like, so it would. Why would we be callin'

him 'Old Blood and Thunder' if 'twas to be like an image he was? Och, the ould times were ever the best!"

"He'll come to himself yet," said Bridget more hopefully.

CHAPTER XVII

A NIGHT OF SPRING

The room was a long bare one, with three deep windows. They were all open so that the fog and the noises of the street came in freely. It had for furniture a long office table, an American desk, several cupboards--the door of one of these last stood open, revealing lettered pigeon-holes inside. Everywhere there were files, letter-baskets, all manner of receptacles for papers. There were a number of hard, painted chairs. An American clock ticked on the mantel-shelf, a fire burned in the grate behind a high wire screen. The unshaded gas-lights gave the room a dreary aspect it need not have had otherwise.

The only occupant of the room was Mary Gray, who sat at a small table working a typewriter. She had pulled a gas-jet down low over her head, and the light of it was on her hair, bringing out bronze lights in it, on her neck, showing its whiteness and roundness. The machine clicked away busily. Sheet after sheet was pulled from it and dropped into a basket. The basket was half-filled with the pile of papers that had fallen into it.

Suddenly there came a little tap at the door. Mary raised her head and looked towards it expectantly as she said, "Come in."

Someone came in, someone whom she had expected to see, although she had said to herself that she supposed the caretaker of the building had grown tired of waiting, and was coming to remind her that the church clock had just struck seven.