LIGHT ON THE WAY
It wanted three weeks to her wedding when one day Nelly suddenly came upon Mrs. Rooke in one of the narrow, fashionable streets south of Oxford Street. Mrs. Rooke was coming out of a florist's shop, and she was carrying a sheaf of lilies in her hand. For one second she looked as though she would have turned aside and avoided Nelly. Then she came straight on with a little unfriendly uplifting of her white chin.
She might have passed with a bow if Nelly had not stopped straight in her path.
"How d'ye do?" she said coldly. "What a delightful day! I had no idea you were back. But to be sure ... I must congratulate you. It is next month, is it not?"
"Yes; it is next month," Nelly said with stiff lips. "The twenty-third of July, to be accurate. I have wondered about you. I hope Mr. Rooke is well and Cuckoo and Bunny."
Bunny was the youngest hope of the Rooke household, a wise, fat, golden-haired child, who had taken a huge fancy to Nelly. At the mention of his name his mother faltered. She had been used to swear by Bunny's sagacity. Bunny had been fond of Nelly Drummond; and there had been a time when Bunny's mother had referred to that fact as though it were Nelly's patent of nobility.
"Cuckoo is at school. Bunny hasn't been very well. Those east winds in May caught him. I had a horrible fright about him. Imagine Bunny—Bunny—choking with croup! I thought I should have gone mad!"
For the moment she had forgotten Nelly's offences, and only remembered that she had been Bunny's friend. Nelly looked back at her as aghast as herself.
"Croup! I never thought of such a thing," she responded. "He has never had it before, has he?"
"Never. That was why I was so terrified. I didn't know what to do. There, don't look so frightened about it! It is over—weeks ago. Indeed, the next day he was about, as well as ever. I should never be so frightened again. It was the horrible novelty of it."
That frightened look in Nelly's eyes had softened the little woman's not very hard heart.
"I wish I had known," said Nelly. "I have wanted to come to see Bunny. I brought him a toy from Paris—a lamb that walks about by itself."
"Ah! you were thinking of him!"
There was complete reconciliation now in the mother's voice and eyes. How could she hate the girl who loved Bunny and had remembered to bring him from Paris a lamb that walked about by itself? She put an impulsive hand on Nelly's arm.
"Come home with me and see him. You are not very busy? You can spare the time?"
Nelly was on her way to keep a dress-making appointment, but she felt that not for worlds would she have said so. She flushed up quite happily. That moment of hostility on Mrs. Rooke's part had chilled her sensitive soul.
"Might I call at Sherwood Square for the lamb, do you think?" she asked diffidently.
"To be sure you may. And I'll tell you what—stay to lunch with me. There'll be nobody but ourselves, of course. It comes to me now that I haven't seen you for centuries."
"Yes; I should like to stay for lunch, thank you."
Mrs. Rooke rather wondered at the pale determination which came over Nelly's soft face, succeeding the flush of a minute before. It did not occur to her that Nelly had been pushing away from her with both hands during the weeks since her return the temptation which at this moment was offered to her. Nelly was only too conscious of the strength of her desire to hear something of Godfrey Langrishe.
It was a feeling she did not dare look in the face. If she had had any idea at the time she agreed to marry Robin that she was going to be haunted by the thought of another man she would never have agreed. Even of late there had been moments when her common-sense had whispered in her ears, protesting against the folly of marrying one man when another had so taken possession of her thoughts. But day by day the net had been drawn closer about her feet. The wedding-clothes, the wedding-breakfast, the bridesmaids, the wedding-cake, the hundred and one arrangements for the wedding, had all been strands of the net that held her ever tighter and tighter. How could she, at this stage, contemplate the breaking of her engagement? How could she? The courage of her race had not risen to that.
Mrs. Rooke suggested a 'bus, and Nelly agreed. Now that she had done the thing against which her conscience protested she did not want to think over-much. She even wanted to postpone the hearing of the name which she had been hungry to hear for so long. The news she had desired too. How was she going to listen to his name, to talk of him calmly? She wanted time to gain courage. A 'bus did not give one opportunities for talking, hardly for thinking.
She knew perfectly well that she should find a clear coast at Sherwood Square. The General had come part of the journey into town with her on his way to the club. Poor Sir Denis! If he could only have seen his Nelly now he would not have been so easy in his mind. Lady Drummond was engaged during the morning hours; she had to lunch with an old friend. Nelly had been contemplating lunch in a quiet Regent Street restaurant rather than the going back to the lonely meal at home. She had known that a telegram to Robin would have brought him to her side, but she had not meditated sending that telegram. She had been glad, in her innermost guilty, repentant heart of her morning of freedom from mother and son.
The 'bus rumbled along as that vehicle of the middle ages does, making a prodigious screaming in the ears, filling one with horrible electric thrills as the brake was jammed down. Neither conversation nor thinking was possible. Nelly closed her eyes a little wearily in her corner. The other people in the 'bus had stared as she got in at the fresh daintiness of her attire, conspicuous in the dingy vehicle. Now, as she leant back with closed eyes, the tired lines came out in her face. Mrs. Rooke, from the other side of the 'bus, glanced at her with pitying wonder.
"Dear me!" she thought to herself. "It isn't the Nelly Drummond I knew. What has she been doing to herself? She must have been racketting a deal. She doesn't look in the least like a happy bride should. Poor child! I wonder if she is marrying against her will?"
Arrived at Sherwood Square the lamb was brought down and displayed to Bunny's delighted mother. Pat whistled for a hansom, and when the two ladies were in he carried out the animal and placed it in front of them, where it created some excitement in its passage through the street.
Behold Nelly, then, presently seated on the nursery floor, winding up the lamb for Bunny and forgetting all about her beautiful lavender muslin frock. The mother and nurse stood by as eager as Nelly herself. Bunny, indeed, was the least interested of the party. To be sure in the wonder-world of Bunny's mind baa-lambs that went of themselves and bleated were no great wonder, even though it was a pleasing novelty to find one in his nursery. He was more excited over the reappearance of Nelly herself and stood by her with one fat affectionate arm about her neck in a contented silence. In vain his mother asked him if he wasn't pleased.
"He is always like that," she said at last. "We took him to the Hippodrome and he only yawned, even when Seeth's lions came on. He didn't take the smallest interest."
"Begging your pardon, ma'am, that he did," the nurse interposed. "He were flinging 'imself on his precious 'ead twenty times a day for a week after. 'Twas a wonder he had any 'ead left, the precious lamb. Them there dratted clowns, I don't 'old with them nohow!"
The reconciliation between Bunny's mother and Bunny's friend and admirer was complete by the time they went down to lunch. Nelly had begged for Bunny's presence at the meal, and so the young monarch of all he surveyed was seated opposite to her in his high chair, with a napkin tucked under his chin, playing a fandango with a spoon and fork on the little table in front of him. Bunny filled the lunch-hour, Bunny's sayings and doings—there were not many of the former, but his mother managed to extract gems of wit and wisdom from his taciturnity—Bunny's likes and dislikes, Bunny's amazing development.
Only once was Langrishe's name mentioned. He had sent home a beautiful mug of beaten silver for Bunny. At the sound of his name Nelly's eyes were suddenly startled: she caught her breath; the colour swept over her face and ebbed away, leaving her paler than before.
Presently the luncheon-hour was over and Bunny had been carried off for his afternoon's outing. The half-hour or so in the drawing-room was over. Nelly was drawing on her gloves, standing by the window which over-looked the narrow slip of square, invisible now for the flowers on the balcony. The fateful visit was nearly at an end and Godfrey Langrishe's name had been mentioned only once.
She had a wild thought that her one opportunity was slipping out of her grasp. She had come here to have news of him. She must not come again. She must try and forget that he existed till such time at least as she could think of him calmly. Now she must know, she must hear, what was happening to him away there at the end of the world.
She glanced furtively around the pretty room, to which she would not come again. It was as though she said farewell to its comfort and pleasantness. She was not going to see Bunny and his mother again, not for a long time at least. Her gaze came back to the window, pausing ever so slightly on its way to glance at a portrait of Langrishe which hung on the wall, a portrait painted in the days when he had been his uncle's heir, by a great painter. She had been conscious all the time she had been in the room of the presence of the portrait although she had not looked its way. The picture had caught the quiet passion and intensity of Godfrey Langrishe's gaze, as though he looked on deeds of glory and fought his way towards them. The face was less stern than she remembered it; it had yet some of the bloom and bonniness of his boyhood; renunciation had not written its deeper meaning in lines about the lips and eyes.
She opened her mouth to speak of him, but at first no words would come. The fastening of her glove took all her attention it seemed. She had turned to the light for it, away from Mrs. Rooke's sympathetic glances.
She had almost controlled her voice to speak without trembling when the thing was taken out of her hands.
"I must not let you go," Mrs. Rooke said, "without giving you a message from Godfrey. A message and gift. It came a week ago. See—here it is. I was going to post it to you." She took up a packet from the side-table.
"How is he?"
At last it was said. Nelly's hand closed over the little packet. She would open it when she got home. To think that he remembered—that he had chosen a gift for her! Was there a word with it, perhaps? Her first letter—and her last letter—from him was lying perhaps in her hand.
But what was it Mrs. Rooke was saying? She bent her ears greedily to listen.
"He was well when he wrote, but the letter was written some time ago. Where he is, it is not easy to get letters carried in safety. One never knows what may be happening. It is, of course, a terrible anxiety."
The tears came into her eyes. There had been a little shadow over her brightness even while she had watched Bunny. Nelly had been aware of it dimly. What did she mean?
"Anxiety!" Nelly repeated falteringly. "Why should you be anxious? He is not ill, is he?"
Her heart had sunk, heavy as lead. Her soul cried out in fear.
"You know he is with the punitive expedition against the Wazees for the murder of Major Sayers and his companions? You never can tell what dreadful thing may be happening to him. It isn't possible you didn't know? And I had been thinking you hardhearted! Ah!"
Her arms went round Nelly.
"It isn't possible you didn't know? Don't look like that! Do you care so much as all that, Nelly? Why, then, why, in the name of Heaven, did you let him go? Why are you marrying your cousin? My poor Godfrey!"
She was conscious of a strident voice shouting the evening papers in the street outside. Indeed, even while she spoke to Nelly, half her brain was listening in a strained way to that voice as it came nearer. What was it the creature was shouting? Before she could hear distinctly the voice died away again in the distance.
"Why did I let him go?" Nelly repeated after her. "Because, because, he would not stay. He knew that I loved him, but he would not stay. He never seemed to think of staying. When he had broken my heart it seemed that I might as well make others happy. My father, Lady Drummond, my cousin; they have been so good to me always."
"But you were engaged to your cousin, weren't you, when Godfrey left?"
Little Mrs. Rooke's dark eyes looked black in her frightened face.
"You were engaged to your cousin, were you not, just as you are to-day?"
"I never accepted my cousin till—till Captain Langrishe had gone. It was understood that when we grew up we should marry to please our parents if we saw nothing against it. No one would have wanted to bind me if I did not wish to be bound."
Mrs. Rooke flung up her hands with a dramatic gesture.
"Heaven forgive me, my poor Nelly, for it was I who sent Godfrey from you! I told him you were engaged to your cousin. I had been told so explicitly by Lady Drummond herself. How could I doubt that it was true?"
Nelly turned a white face towards her. Oddly enough, in spite of its pallor the face had a certain illumination.
"So he went away because of that. Only that stood between us. Do you think I am going to let that—a lie, a mistake—stand between us? I am going to break off my engagement, even at the eleventh hour."
The daughter of the Drummonds had found the courage of her race. She stared uncomprehendingly at the alarm in Mrs. Rooke's expression.
"Don't do anything rash," the little woman said, in a frightened voice. "Supposing Godfrey did not come back. Supposing——"
Again there sounded in the distance the voices of the vendors of evening papers. The voices came nearer, one, two, half a dozen of them. They were all shouting together.
"There must be some news," Mrs. Rooke said under her breath.
"I shall come and see you to-morrow," Nelly said. "To-morrow I shall be free to come and go where I like. Do you know that I was bidding this room and you and Bunny a long good-bye five minutes ago? And if he never comes back—well, he will know I waited for him."
So preoccupied was she with her intention that she never noticed the newspaper boys and men fluttering their Stop Press editions like the wings of some birds of evil omen. As she sat in the hansom she drew the engagement ring off her finger and dropped it into her purse. Then she sighed, as though an immense burden had fallen from her.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE NEWS IN THE WESTMINSTER
As Nelly's hansom drew up at her own door another hansom was just turning away from it. She wondered with an impatient wonder who could have come. At the moment she could not have endured any hindrance between her and her project of telling her father that the engagement with Robin was to come to an end. She was not in the least afraid of what she had to do. The spirit of the Drummonds was thoroughly awake now.
Beyond her announcement to her father lay something vaguely painful which at the moment she did not consider. She would have to tell Lady Drummond and Robin, of course, and it would hurt them: they would be angry with her. She was going to make a scandal, a nine days' wonder. Her father would be grieved—angry, too, perhaps; but that could not be helped either.
And then—some resentment stirred in her heart against him for the first time during all the years in which they had been together. He had kept her in ignorance of her lover's peril. She was not a child that she should have been kept in ignorance. For the moment she had no tender excuses for him. If he had been candid with her, then all this trouble about Robin might have been spared, for she could never have promised herself as wife to another man while the one she loved was in daily and hourly danger.
She went into the house with a look of stern accusation on her young face. The dogs came shrieking down the stairs in vociferous welcome as usual, but she took no notice of them. Being old dogs and wise, they recognised a forbidding mood in her, and retired with deprecating wrigglings of their bodies.
She asked Pat if there were a visitor in the drawing-room.
"No, then, Miss, only the master. I can't make out what came over him at all to be comin' home in a hansom."
He was minded to tell her that the General was not looking himself, to give her an affectionate, intimate warning; but she passed him by. He stood watching her, holding the door open in his hand till she took the bend of the staircase that hid her from his sight.
"Bedad, the Dowager couldn't have done it better," he said, "shweepin' by me without a 'By your l'ave, Pat'; and the master, callin' me 'Murphy' to my face, what he's never done since he left the rig'ment. I wonder what's the matter with Pat. 'Twill be 'Corporal' next."
Nelly looked into the drawing-room. Her father was not there. She turned the handle of another door, the door of the General's own particular den, and going in she found him.
She never thought of asking herself how he came to be there at this hour of the day, he who lived by rule, the click of whose latch-key had sounded in the hall-door every evening at a quarter to seven as long as she could remember. The clock on the mantelpiece pointed to ten minutes to five.
The General was sitting in an armchair by the fireplace as though he had dropped into it on his entering the room. He was doing absolutely nothing, and that was an alarming thing enough, if but she had noticed it. A green evening paper was crumpled on his knee. If she had eyes to see it there was calamity in his attitude and his looks. But she had no eyes. She was too much absorbed in the thing she had to do.
"What, Nell!" he said, getting up as she entered. "We must have come home almost together. Where have you been, child?"
To his own ear his voice rang false, but she did not notice it. She did not meet his kiss. She did not see that he was looking at her with a fearful apprehension.
"What is the matter, Nell?" he stammered, noticing the alteration in her looks.
She came and stood beside him, seeming to tower above him.
"Father," she said, "I am not going to marry Robin. I want him to know at once."
"Not marry Robin!" This was something the General was unprepared for. "Not marry Robin! God bless my soul, Nell! It's very late for you to say such a thing—within three weeks of your wedding! And all the arrangements made! What will people say? What will the Dowager say? You can't play fast and loose with a man like that, Nell. Why, it will be the talk of the town."
He tried to work himself up to the old fretting and fuming, but there was no heartiness in it. Under the projecting eyebrows his old frostily-blue eyes had a scared look. But if he had been in such a passion as he had shown on a certain historic occasion when the regiment had nearly scattered before the approach of screaming Dervishes—a passion which had rallied the men and won Sir Denis his V.C.—it would have been all the same to Nelly.
"All that is perfectly immaterial," she said. "I am sorry for Robin and for Aunt Matilda. But all that will pass. I was mad to consent to the marriage. I am only glad that I came to my senses in time."
Was this Nelly?—this young, sure, inflexible creature! He stared at her in utter amazement.
"Supposing I were to say that you must go on now since you have gone so far, Nell?" he said, and felt at the same time the futility of the saying. "I never thought my girl would play so shabby a trick on Gerald's son. You know that people will laugh at Robin?"
"They won't. Robin is not the sort of person to be laughed at—at least, not for long. Besides, if it is any consolation to you, father, I may tell you that it will not hurt Robin much: Robin is not and never has been in love with me."
"What!" The General now was genuinely indignant. He had forgotten for the moment his other perturbation, whatever it might be. "What do you mean, Nell? Your cousin not in love with you! After all the years during which you have been meant for each other! Impossible, Nell! Robin must be in love with you."
"He is not; he never has been. That is my consolation, so far as he is concerned. Father, why did you keep from me the fact that Captain Langrishe was fighting the Wazees? Why did you?"
The General's colour deserted his cheeks once again.
"Poor Langrishe! What was the good of letting you know, Nell? You used to be—interested in the poor fellow."
"You shouldn't have kept it from me. I didn't read the newspapers, or I should have known. Do you know why I didn't read them? Because if I had I must have turned to the army news. I was fighting that as a temptation. I was trying to drive him from my mind. I kept away from his sister, although she had been kind to me; I went nowhere where I might hear his name. Then to-day I met her by accident. I went home with her. She told me—do you know what she told me?"
"What, Nell?"
"That her brother went away under the impression that I was engaged to Robin Drummond. Aunt Matilda had told her so and she had told him. So that is why he left me."
"I see," the General groaned. "A nice lot of trouble has come out of that scheme of your Aunt Matilda's for marrying you and Robin. I never would agree to it; I used to say: 'Let it be till the children are old enough to choose for themselves.' I wish I had taken a stronger stand. I only wished for your happiness, Nell. I always liked poor Langrishe, and felt I could trust him with even what I held dearest on earth. I did my best for you, Nell. If I kept his danger from you, it was only that I hoped to keep you from suffering like those other poor women."
She did not notice the haggardness of his face, nor the repetition of "Poor Langrishe." She was too much absorbed in getting to the root of things. She was determined to know everything.
"What happened when you went to Tilbury?"
Was this young inquisitor his Nell?
"I didn't see him. The boat had gone."
"And I thought you had offered me to him, and that he had rejected me! Oh, I know you would have done it in the most delicate way. There need not have been a word spoken. But it would have been the same thing in the end. I thought his love was not great enough to conquer his pride."
"My train broke down, Nell; I came ten minutes too late. I thought the hand of God was in it."
"It was a mere accident. God had nothing to do with it. I am only grateful that it has not ended worse. If I had married Robin and then discovered these things——"
"Don't say that you couldn't have forgiven me, Nell." The General took out a big white silk handkerchief and wiped his forehead with it. "Don't say that you couldn't have forgiven me! I meant it all for the best. My little Nell couldn't be hard with her old father."
She stooped suddenly and caught his hand to her lips. She noticed with a tender contraction of her heart that it was an old hand—knotted, with purple stains.
"I should be a brute if I could be angry with you," she said; and the tenseness of her face relaxed to its old softness.
"Ah, that's right, Nell—that's right. We couldn't do without each other. You've always your old father, you know—haven't you, dearie?—no matter what happens. I'll stand by you, Nell. I'll take you away. No one shall be angry with my Nell."
"You are too good to me," she said. "And I've been angry with you! What a wretch I was to be angry with you! On my way here I telegraphed to Robin to come this evening. I must get it over. You shall take me away if you will afterwards. I would stay and face it if it would do any good, but it wouldn't. After all, there is no great harm done. Robin's heart will not be broken."
"And afterwards, Nell?"
"Afterwards? Oh, you and I shall be together."
"Yes; we did very well when we were together. Listen, Nell." He put his arm about her. "I want you to be strong and brave. I came home to tell you, lest you should hear by accident. His poor sister did not know——"
The General's den looked out on the Square gardens. It was quite a long way across them to the road; yet through the quietness of the golden afternoon there came the shouting of the newsboys. It all flashed on Nelly with a blinding suddenness. To be sure, they had been calling the same thing while she stood with his sister and learned why he had left her, only she had not known.
"He is dead," she said, with an immense quietness. It was as though she had known it always.
"No; not dead, Nell—terribly wounded, but not dead. He is in English hands."
He stopped, shuddering. If he had been in those black devils' hands to be tortured to death! He had been only saved by a sudden rush of his men. Even his wounds would not have saved him from torture if God had not delivered him out of their hands.
"Show it to me."
All of a sudden she saw the newspaper which had been lying crumpled on his knee. That had contained the news all the time while they had been talking about things that mattered so much less.
He did not try to keep it from her. He turned over the paper and found the page of it which had the latest news. There it was, with its staring headlines. She seemed to have seen it just so, in another life.
She read it through to the end. It had been an ambush. The small detachment of troops had been led by the guide into the midst of a large body of the enemy—it had been surrounded. Captain Langrishe had fallen, as had a young lieutenant. The men had stood shoulder to shoulder, fighting desperately. By the most desperate courage they had rescued the bodies of their officers, which were being carried by the tribesmen into one of their towers among the hills. They had fought their way back with the bodies strapped to their horses. Lieutenant Foley proved to be dead. He had been hacked and hewed with knives. Captain Langrishe had been more fortunate; the life was still in him when the last intelligence had been sent down. There was very little hope of his recovery.
Nelly neither cried out nor fainted. When she had finished the reading she laid down the paper quietly. Her father watched her in mingled terror and relief. She was seeing it all—the rocky gorge with the inaccessible hills on either side, filled in with scrub and low trees; at the little neck of the gorge the dreadful tower; the small body of Britishers fighting their way step by step backward; the dazzling blue sky over all. Was Heaven empty that such things happened? She remembered in a kind of daze that she had been at a garden-party that very afternoon. She had worn for the first time her white silk frock with the roses on it and she had seen in many eyes how well it became her. That had happened in another world. A great gulf stretched between even the events of the afternoon and this time—this time, in which she knew that Godfrey Langrishe was dead or dying.
"I wish he might have known," she said quietly, "that after all I was not engaged to Robin."