Mary Gray

by Katharine Tynan

"You mustn't let them take too much of your time. You must have time for exercise, for meals, for rest, for your friends——"

"I am so profoundly interested in the work that I don't grumble. As for my friends, they can see me here. For exercise I walk most of the way between Kensington and this, either coming or going. Society is not likely to claim me—at least, not in her Ladyship's absence. My few friends can find me here."

It was on his lips to ask her to let him walk part of the way home with her. He might have this last pleasure since he was coming here no more, at least not in the old way. But, as though her words had been a challenge, there was a clatter of wheels and horses in the narrow street below.

"A carriage," Mary said. "It will be one of the fine ladies who are interested in philanthropy and politics."

There was a rustle of silks and murmur of voices coming up the stairs. Sir Robin sat holding his hat in one hand, vaguely annoyed. Why should one of those meddlesome fine ladies choose for the hour of her empty, unimportant visit his last hour with Mary Gray?

He sat irritated, shy, awkward, his feelings faithfully reflected in his face. The door opened. A lady came in whom he had occasionally met in drawing-rooms, a slight, tall woman, with a brilliant brunette face. A delicate perfume came with her entrance. She was finely dressed, as fine as a humming-bird, and it became her. She looked incredibly young to be the mother of the slim youth who followed her. The youth was Maurice Ilbert. His mother, Mrs. Ilbert, was well known as one of the most brilliant and exclusive hostesses in fine London circles. Now she was holding Mary's two hands in her own grey-gloved ones.

"I insisted that my son should bring me to see you, Miss Gray," she was saying with empressement. "I hope you will excuse my descending on you like this. But I positively had to. This wonderful book of yours—my boy has been talking of it every hour we have been alone. It is such a pleasure to meet you. Ah—Sir Robin Drummond, how do you do? Are you also privileged to know about the wonderful book?"

To Robin Drummond's mind Ilbert's smile and nod had something amused, mocking in them. He had acknowledged the greeting with the curtest of nods.

Now he got up, shook hands awkwardly with Mrs. Ilbert, and made his farewells to Mary Gray. It was sheer ill-temper drove him out as soon as they had come. He had wanted to ask Mary if he might bring Nelly when she returned to town. He had wanted ... a good many other things. But now he stalked away from her presence with fury in his heart. If the Ilberts were going to take her up!—to exploit the book! The Ilberts belonged to the young Tory party which his soul detested, or he said so in his wrath; as a matter of fact, he had not many detestations, and in the matter of politics he had no personal rancours. Yet at the moment he thought he had, and fancied that a part of his indignation was because Mary Gray, who had learnt in the Radical school, was going to be made much of by advanced Tories. As he sat in his hansom, "stepping westward" into the heart of the sunset, he bit the ends of his moustache, and it was like chewing the cud of bitterness. Mary Gray had expanded to answer the genial warmth of Mrs. Ilbert's manner as a flower opens to the sun. It was not in her to be ungracious, and Mrs. Ilbert was a charming woman.

And now he asked himself what was he going to do for the next month or six weeks till his mother and Nelly came home? All the winter he had been in the habit of seeing Mary Gray two or three times a week. He had been home a week from Lugano, and he had kept away; and all the time something stronger than himself had seemed to be tugging at him to take the old familiar road. He had found it a hard struggle to keep away for those ten days. And how was he going to do it for all those weeks to come? He had always had so much to say to her—or, at least, there had always been things he wanted to say, for in his most intimate moments he was naturally rather silent.