Mary Gray

by Katharine Tynan

"Grandchildren!" growled the General, turning very crimson in the face. "I call it indelicate to discuss such subjects. As for Nelly's marrying, why, she's only a child. I should feel very little obliged to the man who would want to take her from me at her age."

"Nelly is nineteen," the Dowager reminded him, "and the marriage can't be delayed much longer. It ought to be a source of satisfaction to us that the young people are so pleased with the arrangement. I know that Robin has never thought of anyone but his cousin, and I am sure it is just the same with the dear child."

The General grew red again—not this time with anger, but rather as though the Dowager's words had stirred some sense of guilt in his breast. He muttered something grumpily, and, discovering that his favourite pipe must have been left in his own den, he escaped from Lady Drummond for a while.

As a matter of fact, his mind had been plotting mischief. He did not care so much that it was against the Dowager, if it had not been that the memory of his dead brother came in to complicate things. And, after all, his plotting seemed to have come to naught. He had gone so far as to invite young Langrishe to dinner for a specific occasion, without result. The young man had written to say that he had effected his exchange into the —th Madras Light Infantry, and would be so very much occupied up to the time of his departure that he feared dining out was out of the question.

The General had known he was going away. He had known it before he received that letter, before he had seen it in the Gazette. He had known from the day the regiment had gone by without Captain Langrishe in his wonted place. He had felt with his arm about his girl's shoulders the sudden shock that had passed through her. So she had not known either. He had not prepared her. There was not an understanding between them. He saluted as light-heartedly as ever to all appearance, but he did not look at Nelly. Nor did he make any remark on the change in the regiment.

After that day the passing of his "boys" ceased to be the old joy to him. Something was gone out of the ceremonial. It took all his esprit de corps to pretend to himself as well as to others that he felt no difference. He felt the limpness and dejection in Nelly. He saw that her roses had faded, that she walked without the old joyous spring. He heard her no longer talking to the dogs, trilling to the canary. It was January now, and raw, cold weather. It seemed as though the sunshine had vanished from the house for good. The General had been wont to say that the cheerfulness of his house was within it, not without it. He had come home from London fog and rain with a happy sense of its bright fires and spaciousness, its carpets and furniture, not so new that a muddy foot or a stray shower of tobacco-ash was a thing to be feared—old friends every one of them. The love and loyalty within his doors were something that came out to welcome the General's home-coming like a sudden firelight streaming out into the black night.

Now his little girl was unhappy, and the shadow of her unhappiness was over his nights and days. It was when he felt this that he had written to Captain Langrishe, saying nothing to her about it, stealing out, in fact, at night to post the letter secretly, he whose correspondence, such as it was—he was no great penman—had always lain in the letter-basket on the hall table for the servants to scrutinise the addresses if they would before it was posted.

When the answer came he congratulated himself on his forethought. Luckily, that morning he was first at the breakfast-table. Of late Nelly, who had been wont to rise as cheerfully as a waking bird, was tardy occasionally. The General suspected broken sleep, and had bidden the servants tenderly not to call her, although the breakfast-table was not the same thing with no bright face and golden head opposite to him.

When he had read the letter he thrust it into an inner pocket. The servant, who was attending, went away at the moment, and the General got up quickly, and with a stealthy glance at the door, buried the letter in the heart of the fire, raked the coals over it, and was in his place before the servant returned.

"Confound the fellow!" he said under his breath.