Part 24 (1/2)

They were looking each other straight in the face, Mary a little breathless and wondering: ”And so you'll find,” Reggie repeated a little louder, and there was a look in his eyes that caused Mary to drop hers, and she rode on.

Reggie caught her up.

”Are you sorry, Mary?” he asked gently.

”About what?”

”Well . . . about everything. The story, and my ferocious mental att.i.tude, and all the rest of it.”

He laid his hand on her horse's neck, and leaned forward to look in her face. They were riding very close together, and Mary was too near the hedge to put more distance between them.

”I can't be sorry you write so well,” she said slowly, ”it is very exciting--is the news for publication or not?”

”I'd be grateful if you'd say nothing as yet--you see I've only done these two, and what's a couple of short stories? Besides, it's not really my job, only it's amusing, and one can rub it in that way, and reach a larger cla.s.s than by the strictly military article--no one knows anything about it except the editor of _The Point of View_--and you--I'd rather you didn't mention it, if you don't mind.”

”Of course I shan't mention it, but I shall look out for 'Ubique' with much greater interest.”

”And still think him a beast?”

”That depends on what he writes.”

”I'm not so much concerned about what you think of Ubique as that you should remember that I mean what I say.”

”You say a good many absurd things.”

”Yes, but this is not absurd--when I want a thing very much . . .”

”Oh, you needn't say all that again. Be a silent, strong man like the heroes in Seton Merriman, they're much the best kind.”

”I'm not particularly silent, but I flatter myself that . . .”

”It's a shame to crawl over this lovely gra.s.s--come on and have a canter,” said Mary.

That night Reggie Peel sat long by his bedroom fire. The bedroom fire was a concession to his acknowledged grown-upness. The young Ffolliots were allowed no bedroom fires. Only when suffering from bad colds or in the very severest weather was a fire granted to any child out of the nursery. But Reggie, almost a captain now, was popular with the servants, especially with the stern Sophia, head-housemaid, and she decreed that he had reached the status of a visitor, and must, therefore, have a fire in his bedroom at night. He sat before it now, swinging the poker which had just stirred it to a cheerful blaze. He had carefully switched off the light, for they were very economical of the electric light at Redmarley. It had cost such a lot to put in.

Five years ago he and General Grantly between them had supervised its installation, and the instruction of the head-gardener in the management of the dynamo-room; each going up and down, as often as they could get away, to share the discomfort with Mrs Ffolliot, and look after the men. Mrs Grantly was, for once, almost satisfied, for she had carried off all the available children. Mr Ffolliot had decreed that the work should be done while he was in the South of France, and expressed a strong desire that all should be in order before his return; and it was finished, for he stayed away seven weeks.

And Reggie sat remembering all this, five years ago; and how just before the children were sent to their grandmother Mary used to want to sit on his knee, and how he would thrust her off with insulting remarks as to her weight and her personal appearance generally.

She was a good deal heavier now, he reflected, and yet--

Reggie had come to the parting of the ways, and had decided which he would follow.

Like most ambitious young men he had, so far, taken as his motto a couplet, which, through over-usage, has become a plat.i.tude--

”High hopes faint on a warm hearth-stone, He travels the fastest who travels alone.”

Reggie had accepted this as an incontrovertible truth impossible to dispute; but then he had never until lately felt the smallest desire to travel through life accompanied by any one person. He had fallen in and out of love as often as was wholesome or possible for so hard-working a young man, and always looked upon the experience as an agreeable relaxation, as it undoubtedly is. But never for one moment did he allow such evanescent attachments to turn him a hair's breadth out of his course. Now something had happened to him, and he knew that for the future the plat.i.tude had become a lie, and that the only incentive either to high hopes or their fulfilment lay in the prospect of a hearth-stone shared by the girl who a few hours ago declared that she ”would not like to fall into that man's hands.”