Mary Gray Part 19

"Ah, Sir Robin," she said, turning about to shake hands with him. "Who would have thought of seeing you? I am just going home."

"As I came past this way I looked up and saw your light through the fog.

I thought you would be going home, and that you would let me escort you to your own door. There is a bit of a fog really."

"I am glad you did not come out of your way. Thank you. I shall be ready in a few minutes. You don't mind waiting?"

"Not at all. May I smoke?"

"Do. It will be pleasanter than the smell of the fog."

"Ah! I hadn't noticed the smell. I have a delusion, or do I really smell--violets?"

"There are some violets by your elbow. I was wearing them, but they drooped, so I put them into water to revive them."

She turned back again to her work, and the clicking of the machine began anew. He leant to inhale the smell of the violets. Then, with a glance at her bent head, he drew one from the bunch, and, taking a pocket-book out of his coat-pocket, he opened it, and laid the violet between two of its pages.

While he waited he looked about him. The ugliness of the room did not affect him. The flaring gas, the business-like furniture, the unhomely aspect of the place, did not depress him. On the contrary, in his eyes it was pleasant. He always came to it with a sensation of happiness, which was not lessened because he felt half-guilty about it. To him the room was the room which for certain hours of every day contained Mary Gray. What did it matter if the case was unlovely since it held her?

Presently the clicking of the machine ceased, and she looked up at him with a smile.

"You are very good to wait for me," she said.

"Am I?" he answered, smiling back at her. "There is not very much to do to-day. The House is not sitting, and my const.i.tuency has been less exacting than usual."

She put the cover on her machine, locked up her desk, and then retired into a corner, where she changed her shoes, putting her slippers away tidily in a cupboard. She put on her hat, setting it straight before a little gla.s.s that hung in one corner. She got into her little blue jacket, with its neat collar and cuffs of astrachan. Then she came to him, drawing on her gloves.

"I am quite ready now," she said.

They lowered the gas, and went down the stone steps side by side. At the foot of the stairs Mary stopped to call into the depths of the back premises that she was going home, and a woman's voice bade her good-night.

It was cold in the street, and there was a light brown fog through which the street lamps shone yellowly.

The omnibuses crept by quietly, in a long string, making a m.u.f.fled sound in the fog. As they went towards the nearest station a wind suddenly blew in their faces.

"It is the west wind," she said. "And it breathes of the spring."

"There will be no fog to-night," he answered. "See, it is lifting. The west wind will blow it away."

"It comes from fields and woods and mountains and the sea," she said dreamily.

The fog was indeed disappearing. The gas-jets shone more clearly; the 'buses broke into a decorous trot. The long line of lights came out suddenly, crossing each other like a string of many-coloured gems.

Outside the Tube station they paused as though the same thought had struck both of them.

"It is like the washing of the week before last," Mary said, as the indescribable odour floated out to them.

"Why not take a 'bus?" said he. "The air grows more delicious."

"Why not, indeed?" she answered. "Except that I shall be so late getting home. And it will keep you late for your dinner."

"So it will," he said. "To say nothing of your dinner. I know you had only sandwiches and tea for lunch. You have told me that when you go home you make yourself a chafing-dish supper. You must need a meal at this moment. Supposing--Miss Gray, will you do me the honour of dining with me?"

"Will you let me pay for my dinner? I am a working-woman, and expect to be treated like a man."

"If you insist. But I hope you will not insist."

She looked at him for a moment hesitatingly. There was no prudery about Mary Gray. She had become a woman of the world, and she had had no reason to distrust the _camaraderie_ of men or to think it less than honest.

"Very well, then," she said, "if you will let me pay for your lunch another time."

"Why, so you shall," he answered. For a usually grave young man he laughed with an uncommon joyousness. "You shall give me one day a French lunch with a bottle of wine thrown in at one-and-sixpence. Mind, I must have the wine."

"You shall have the wine. But it isn't good form to talk about the price of a lunch you are invited to."

Laughing light-heartedly, they plunged into a labyrinth of dark streets.

The west wind had brought a gentle rain with it now. It was benignant upon their faces, with a suggestion of gra.s.ses and spring flowers pushing their heads above the earth. They pa.s.sed by the Soho restaurants, crowded to the doors. They found one at last in a more pretentious street.

Over the dinner they laughed and talked. There was something intoxicating to Robin Drummond's somewhat phlegmatic nature in their being together after this friendly fashion.

"You have a crease in your forehead, just above your nose," he said, while they waited for their salmon, the waiter having removed the plates from which they had eaten their _bisque_. "Have the Working Women been more unsatisfactory than usual to-day?"

"I was not thinking of the Working Women," she answered. "It is family cares that are on my mind. Supposing you had seven young brothers and sisters whom you wanted to help to place out in the world----"

"Heaven forbid! It's no wonder you look worried. What do you want to do for them, Miss Gray?"

"There's Jim. He's seventeen years old. I think he'd make a very good bank-clerk, but at present he wants to go to sea. There isn't the remotest chance of his being able to go to sea. The question is whether he can get a nomination to a bank. It will be quite a step in the social scale if we can manage it for Jim."

She looked at Drummond with her frank, direct gaze, and he blushed awkwardly.

"I don't know anything at all about your people, or anything of that sort, Miss Gray, but if I could help----"

"I don't think you could help." Mary's big mysterious eyes under their dark lashes, under their beautiful brows, looked at him reflectively.

"You see, you don't know anything about us. I am the eldest of a large family. The others are my stepbrothers and sisters. I love them dearly, and I love my stepmother, too. But not like my father--oh, not at all like my father. I would never have left him only he sent me away. Lady Agatha was very good to me. She paid me a disproportionate salary. And besides--after I had been away from them for a time they could really do very well without me. Cis and Minnie grew up so fast. To be sure, none of them make up to father for me. But he was really anxious that I should go. He thought I would be cramped at home, after----" She paused, and then went on: "He would never think of himself when it was a question of me."

What she was saying did not greatly enlighten him. But, without a doubt, something would come out of the desultory talk by-and-by.

As he watched her in the light of the electric candle-lamps on the table, which, sending their shaded light upwards reflected from the white cloth, made her face luminous in the shadow of her cloudy hair, he was struck again by a baffling resemblance to someone he had known. Now and again during the months since they had known each other her face had seemed familiar; then the likeness had disappeared; he had forgotten to be curious about it. At this moment the suggestion was very strong.

They had the top of the 'bus to themselves as they went on westward. At this hour the traffic was eastward, and the mist of rain saved them from fellow-travellers. They were as much alone as though they were in a desert, up there in the darkness at the back of the bus, with the long line of blurred jewels that were the street lamps stretching away before them.

They pa.s.sed close to the trees overhanging a square, and the branches brushed them.

"The sap is stirring in the trees to-night," she said. "Can't you smell the sap and the earth?"

"I a.s.sociate you with the country and green things," he answered irrelevantly. "Can you tell me, Miss Gray, how it is that I who have always seen you in London yet always think of you in fields and woods?"

She laughed with a fresh sound of mirth.

"We met long ago, Sir Robin," she said. "I have always been wondering how long it would be before you found out."