Part 3 (2/2)

As she sat there on the edge of one of Mrs. Carruthers' chairs--the drawing-room furniture was of the spa.r.s.est; a chair or small table dotted here and there on the wilderness of polished floor--she could see herself in a pier-gla.s.s at the other end of the room. It was a quite unfamiliar presentment she saw. This Mary was dressed in soft dove-grey.

She had a little white muslin folded fichu about her shoulders. She had a wide black hat, with one long white ostrich feather. Her good hand was gloved in delicate grey kid. There was something quaint about her aspect; for that artist, Simmons, had discovered that Mary, for all her fifteen years, looked her best with her soft fine brown hair piled on top of her head. When she presented Mary so to Lady Anne the old lady was fain to acknowledge that Simmons was right. There was a quaint and delightful stateliness about Mary which made Lady Anne say to herself once more that the child had gentle blood in her.

”Dear me,” Mildred Carruthers thought, as her eyes wandered again and again to the elegant little figure, ”Kit said nothing of this. I expected to find a rather interesting child of the humbler cla.s.ses. I remember particularly that he said she looked as though she had had a hard time.”

Mary's changed aspect had one unforeseen result. When she presented herself at Wistaria Terrace the baby did not know her. Her stepmother shed a few tears, which were half-gratification. The elder children were already a bit shy of her, the baby's immediate predecessor even murmuring of her as ”the yady,” and surveying her from afar, finger in mouth. But the baby could in no way be brought to recognise her, and only shouted l.u.s.tily when she tried to force herself upon his recognition.

”I shall come to-morrow in my old frock,” Mary said, bitterly hurt by this lack of perception on the baby's part. ”I hate these hideous things; so I do. To-morrow he will come to his Mary, so he will.”

But when the morrow came, and she sought for her old work-a-day garments in that pretty white and blue wardrobe where she had hung them when she had discarded them for the grey frock and hat, they were not to be found. There were numbers of things such as Mary had never dreamed of.

Lady Anne had provided her with an outfit, simple according to her thoughts, but splendid in Mary's eyes. A white cashmere dressing-gown, trimmed with lace, hung on the peg where the grey linsey had been.

Mary flew to Simmons to know where her old frock had gone to. The good woman, who by this time had taken Mary under her wing to uphold her against the rest of the household if it were inclined to resent the new inmate, looked at her reprovingly.

”You never wanted that old frock, and you her ladys.h.i.+p's companion? No, Miss Mary--for so I shall call you, as by her ladys.h.i.+p's orders, let some people say what they like--that frock you never will see, for gone it has to a poor child that'll maybe find it a comfort when winter comes. I wonder at you for thinking on it, so I do, seeing as how I've taken so much trouble with your clothes.”

Mary turned away with a desolate feeling. The grey linsey might have been like the feathers of the enchanted bird that became a woman for the love of a mortal, the feathers which, if she wore them again, had the power of transporting her back to her kindred and her old estate. The old life was indeed closed to Mary with the disappearance of the grey linsey; and it was long before she lost the feeling that if she could only have kept her old garments she need not have been so separated from the old life.

CHAPTER IV

BOY AND GIRL

It was during those early days that Mary made the acquaintance of Robin Drummond. She had a comfortless feeling afterwards about the meeting; but it was not because of Sir Robin or anything he did: he was always a kind boy in her memory of him. It was because of his mother, Lady Drummond. Mary knew from Lady Anne, who always thought aloud, that Lady Drummond made a good many people feel uncomfortable.

They had driven out all the way from the city to the Court, the big house on its wide plain below the mountains. It was a long drive--quite twenty miles there and back--and Jennings, who liked to have a good deal of his time to himself, had been rather cross about it. Not that he dared show any temper to Lady Anne, who was easy and kindly with her servants, as a rule, but could reduce an insubordinate one to humble submission as well as any old lady ever could. But Mary, who knew the household pretty well by this time, knew that Jennings was out of temper by the set of his shoulders, as she surveyed them from her seat in the barouche. It was a road, too, he never liked to take, because of a certain steam tram which ran along it and made the horses uncomfortable when they met it face to face. And there his mistress was unsympathetic towards him. She had been a brilliant and daring horsewoman in her youth and middle age.

”I never thought I should live to amble along like this,” she confided to Mary as they drove between golden harvest fields. ”Rheumatic gout is a great humbler of the spirit. Ah! here comes one of those black monsters to make the pair curvet a little. They are too fat, Mary. They have too easy a life. It is only on such an occasion as this that they remember their hot youth.”

They reached the Court without mishap, although once or twice the horses behaved as though they meditated a mild runaway.

”You shall take the other road home, Jennings,” Lady Anne said graciously, as she alighted in front of the great square, imposing house, amid its flower-beds of all shapes, its ornamental fountains flinging high jets of golden water in the sun.

”It's time we gave up the horses, my lady,” Jennings said, with bitterness, ”with the likes o' them black beasts on the road.”

Later, as she and Mary waited in the great drawing-room for Lady Drummond, she returned to the subject of Jennings and his grievance.

”He is always bad-tempered when we come to the Court,” she said. ”For all its grandeur it is not a hospitable house. Jennings will have to go without his tea this afternoon.”

Mary looked with wonder down the great length of the magnificent room.

Her feet sank in the Turkey carpet. The walls, which were papered in deep red, were lined with full-length portraits, some of them equestrian. The place had an air of rich comfort. Was it possible that the mistress of so much magnificence could grudge a visitor's coachman his tea?

”Her ladys.h.i.+p looks after the bawbees,” Lady Anne went on, thinking aloud as usual, rather than talking to Mary. ”And those who are in her employment must think of them too, or they go. Ah! you are looking at Gerald Drummond's portrait. What do you think of it, child?”

It was one of the equestrian portraits. The subject, a man in the thirties, dressed in a lancer uniform, stood by his horse's head. His helmet was off, lying on the ground at his feet; and it was easy to see why the artist had chosen to paint the sitter with his head uncovered.

The upper part of the face--the forehead and eyes--was strikingly handsome. The sweep of golden hair, despite its close military cut, was beautiful also. For the rest, the nose was too large and not particularly well-shaped, the chin was rugged, the mouth stern.

Lantern-jawed was the epithet one thought of when looking at the portrait of the man whose deeds were written in his country's history.

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