Mary Gray

by Katharine Tynan

As soon as they got back the Dowager engaged her in a whirl of shops and dressmakers, and for that the General was grateful. He resorted to man[oe]uvres in those days to keep the newspapers out of Nelly's way that revealed to himself hitherto unsuspected depths of cunning. He opened the papers with a tremor. The orange and green and pink bills of the evening newspapers stuck up where Nelly could see them, laid on the pavement almost under her feet, brought his heart into his mouth. If they could only tide over the dangerous time, and Nelly be married and gone off on her leisurely honeymoon! Langrishe might almost fade out of her mind, become at least a gentle memory, before anything could happen to him: or the deadly little dragging war might be over and Langrishe have carried out a whole skin.

It was the height of the season and Nelly had her social engagements as well as the preparations for her wedding. As often as was possible Robin Drummond put in an appearance, but the House was sitting and much of his time was taken up. He looked rather more hatchet-faced than of old. Once, sitting in the Strangers' Gallery of the House, the General heard someone say as Robin was about to speak: "Who is that careworn-looking young man?" Careworn, indeed! The General fumed and fretted over it, the more because it fell in with a certain secret thought he had had once or twice. Robin had always been somewhat too much of an old head on young shoulders to please his uncle. To be sure, he had fed on Blue Books and slept on statistics, yet his engagement to a lovely girl like Nelly ought to have made him look happier. It was indecent in the circumstances, that's what it was, that anybody, with the remotest justification for the epithet, could call him careworn.

Once Robin on an afternoon when the House was not sitting called for his cousin and carried her off in a hansom without saying where he was taking her to. That was something of which the General heartily approved. If Robin had done it oftener his opinion of him would have gone up immensely. He rubbed his hands while he asked the Dowager what Mrs. Grundy would say to such doings. "Supposing they made a runaway match of it, ma'am, where should we be?" he asked cheerfully. To which the Dowager replied that Robin would never think of anything so silly. Why should he, when the wedding was fixed for the twenty-third and everything ordered, even the bridesmaids' dresses and the wedding-cake? "Perhaps for that reason," replied the General. But this was a dark saying to the Dowager.

The visit that afternoon was to Mary Gray. Even Nelly had heard of the book which Sir Michael Auberon had praised so highly, which the newspapers had declared to be more interesting than any novel. She had roused herself to be interested in the visit, to talk, to ask questions, to look about her, as they drove into the east, instead of gazing inwards with that introspective glance which had given her eyes of late the beauty of mystery, making them larger and darker than they had been in the old days.

She was exquisitely dressed, in a long cloak of cream lace over an Indian muslin frock, and an airy hat of chiffon and feathers. She had put on her best for her outing with Robin, her visit to Robin's friend. It was one of the sweet things she was always doing, with an intention in her own mind to make up for some lack or other which certainly her lover had not felt. When she alighted in the busy street people stared as though they had seen a white bird of Paradise; and coming into Mary Gray's room with a basket of roses in her hand she looked like a bride.

Now, at least, she wore the pilgrim air. She looked curiously about the unlikely place which housed the wonderful woman as she set down her roses, then back at Mary herself. Mary had come to meet her with outstretched hands. Her bright look at Robin Drummond was full of sympathetic admiration, of felicitation. She kissed Nelly warmly. She was not an effusive person, and nothing had been further from her thoughts than kissing, but her heart went out at once to this charming girl.

"How good of you to come to see me!" she said, pressing Nelly's hands in hers. "Into the east, too! And you must be so busy just now."

"I have been longing to see you," Nelly responded. "Robin has talked so much about you." At that moment Nelly had no doubt that he had talked. "And I wanted to see you here, in your ordinary life. Robin says you will not be here much longer—that there will be an official position found for you. And it was here that 'Creatures of Burden' was written!"

"Nearly all here," Mary said, smiling down at the young enthusiast.

Robin Drummond stood aside, in one of his characteristically awkward attitudes, his hat in his hand, watching them. He was not thinking sufficiently of himself to feel awkward, although he looked it. He was thinking of those two dear women, as he called them to himself, objurgating himself for his unworthiness to be the kinsman and lover of one, the friend of the other.