Part 37 (2/2)

My salaams to the General and Mrs Grantly, and to you--my remembrances.

Do you, by the way, remember ”our last ride together” in January? When shall we have another? Would the General let us ride in the park one day if I could get off?--Yours,

REGGIE.

P.S.--Why the kind and blameless member for Marlehouse? Has the Squire changed his politics? It's all very well for you to say the young man looked at you as if you were a picture. We've another name for that sort of sheep's eyes where I come from. He'd better not let me catch him at it.

Eloquent came to the conclusion that it is very difficult to pay court to a girl who belongs to what his father was wont to call ”the cla.s.ses.” He wondered how they managed it. Such girls, it seemed to him, were never left alone for a minute. One's only chance was to see them at parties in a crowd, and if you did dine at their houses, there was always bridge directly after dinner, when conversation was restricted to ”I double hearts,” or ”with you,” or ”No.” He studied the rules of bridge industriously, for he found on inquiry that even Cabinet Ministers did not disdain it as a recreation. Therefore Dalton shared with blue-books the little table by his bed.

It's a far cry from Westminster to Woolwich, and in spite of indefatigable spade-work on his part, it was well on in the third week in May before he so much as caught a glimpse of Mary Ffolliot.

Then one morning he saw her in Bond Street with her grandmother. She was on the opposite side of the street rather ahead of him, but he knew that easy strolling walk, the flat back, and proud carriage of the head: that head with its burnished hair coiled smoothly under a bewitching hat. They stopped to look in at Asprey's window, and he dashed across the road in the full stream of traffic. Two indignant taxi-drivers swore, and he reached the curb breathless, but uninjured, just as they went into the shop.

He stood staring at the window, keeping at the same time a sharp look-out on the door.

What an age they were!

He had just decided that the only thing to do was to go in and buy something, when they came out.

Mary saw him at once, and his round face looked so wistful that she greeted him with quite unnecessary warmth. She recalled him to Mrs Grantly, who, remembering vaguely that he was a young man who had ”risen from the ranks,” was also more cordial than the occasion demanded.

He walked up Bond Street with them, piloted them across Piccadilly, and turned with them down Haymarket, so plainly delighted to see them, so nervous, so pathetically anxious to please, that Mrs Grantly's hospitable instincts, fatally easy to rouse where pity played a part, overcame her discretion. Her husband and her daughter used to declare that she had a perfect genius for enc.u.mbering herself with impossible people--and repenting afterwards. With dismay she realised that Eloquent had, apparently, attached himself to them. Short of cruelly wounding his feelings, she saw herself walking about London all day, accompanied by this painfully polite young man. It seemed impossible to call a taxi, and leave him desolate there on the pavement unless . . . Mrs Grantly's heart was hopelessly soft where animals were concerned, and just then Eloquent reminded her of nothing so much as an affectionate dog, allowed to frisk gaily to the front door, and cruelly shut in on the wrong side, as she said--

”We've got to meet my husband at the Stores, Mr Gallup, perhaps you'll kindly get us a taxi, as I'm rather tired.”

His woebegone face was too much for her, and she added, ”We're always at home on Sunday afternoons.”

Mary rather wondered at her grannie.

The taxi drove away and Eloquent walked down Haymarket as though he were treading on air. To-day was Friday. Sunday, oh blessed day! was the day after to-morrow.

There were clovers nodding in her hat, a wide-brimmed fine straw hat that threw soft shadows over her blue eyes and turned them dark as the clear water underneath Redmarley Bridge. And he would see her again on Sunday.

That lady, that handsome portly lady, he had been afraid of her at first, she looked so large and imposing, but how kind she was! How wonderfully kind and hearty she had been. It was she who had invited him. ”We are always at home on Sundays,” she said. Surely that meant he might go more than once?

That night he made his maiden speech in the House.

Reggie went down to Redmarley at the beginning of June from Sat.u.r.day afternoon till Sunday evening. The Squire had a bad cold and was confined to the house. His nerves vibrated, so did the tempers of other people, but Reggie did not care. He joined Willets at the river and fished till dinner-time. Directly after dinner he went out again and they had splendid sport till nearly ten. Willets walked with him back to the house, and Reggie had a curious feeling that Willets wanted to tell him something and couldn't come to the point. So strong was this feeling that as they parted he said, ”I shan't go to bed yet, Willets. It's such a perfect night--may stroll down to the bridge, and if you're still up we might have a cigar together.”

He went into the house, chatted a while to Mrs Ffolliot and the Squire, and when they went to bed let himself out very quietly and strolled down the drive and out of the great gates to the bridge. The perfect peace of the warm June night, the yellow moonlight on the quiet water, the wide-spanned bridge, the long straggling street of irregular gabled houses so kindly and so sheltering with their overhanging eaves, the dear familiar charm of it all seemed to grip Reggie by the throat and caused an unwonted smarting in his eyes.

The village was absolutely deserted save for one motionless figure sitting on the wall at the far end of the bridge.

”Hullo, Willets,” Reggie called, ”not in bed yet?”

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