Part 23 (1/2)
The General's heart bounded up with an immense relief.
”Whenever I will?” he said, with an air of rallying her. ”Is it not rather whenever you will? Poor Robin has been waiting long enough.”
”You are quite sure he wants me: I mean soon?”
”He'd be a dull fellow if he didn't.”
The General had suddenly a memory of the time when he had called Robin a dull fellow in his secret heart because he had been content to wait, endlessly to all appearances. He put the memory away hastily as an uncomfortable one.
”To be sure, he wants you soon, Nelly, my dear,” he said. ”As soon as your old father can give you up to him. You have always been Robin's little sweetheart from the time you were a child. He has never thought of any girl but you.”
He made the speech with a gulp, as though it were distasteful to him.
”I never thought there was any girl,” Nelly said simply. ”Robin is not at all a young man for girls. Only he cares so much for politics. He has not seemed in any hurry.”
”G.o.d bless my soul, to be sure, he is in a hurry. He must be in a hurry.
When you get back to your looking-gla.s.s, little Nell, ask yourself whether it is likely that he should not be in a hurry!”
He was talking as much to rea.s.sure himself as Nelly. To be sure, Robin must be as eager a lover as it was in his capacity to be. There was nothing volcanic about Robin. He was steady, sensible, reliable! Yes, better let the affair be settled at once. June would be a good month for the wedding. He could go afterwards and take the cure at Vichy for his gout. Pat could go with him. Perhaps Nelly would take over Bridget and some of the other servants. Why shouldn't Robin and Nelly have the house just as it stood? He would make them a deed of gift of it. He could have a bachelor's flat somewhere near the Parks and the Clubs, with Pat to look after him. It would be easier for him if the old house sanctified by many memories were not to be broken up.
Nelly's exaltation carried her on to Sat.u.r.day afternoon. Sir Robin had arrived on the morning of that day while the General and Nelly were out climbing the lower range of a hill. The Dowager was no climber. More than that, she had acquired tact and good feeling it seemed in her latter days, for she left father and daughter very much together. The General's heart had begun to soften towards her. He had begun to ask himself how it was that he could have so persistently misjudged her all those years. If Gerald had liked her well enough to marry her, surely he could have done her more justice than so to dislike her.
The Dowager had her son to herself for some hours of the Sat.u.r.day forenoon. He had suggested following Nelly and her father up the mountain track, but she had detained him with a demonstrativeness unusual in her, which struck him like a jarring note. What had come over his mother? She had always been a woman of a cold and even harsh manner, at least to him. To be sure, he had noticed with amazement that she had been different to Nelly. She ought to have had a daughter instead of a son. He had no idea that if he had been a das.h.i.+ng soldier he might have been a far less dutiful son, a far less satisfactory member of society than he was and yet have awakened a feeling in his mother's breast which she had never given to him. Now he was embarra.s.sed somewhat by her playful insistence on her mother's right to her boy for a time.
Playfulness sat as ill on her as could well be imagined, and he was captious over her raillery on his hurry to be at his cousin's side, calling it atrocious taste in his irritable mind, he who had never been irritable, to whom it would have seemed the worst of taste to question good taste in his mother.
More than one person was irritable with the Dowager that day. The General was furiously irritable over the transparent man[oe]uvre by which she packed off the young people together.
”Enough to spoil the whole thing,” he thought, pursing his lips and pus.h.i.+ng out his eyebrows as he did when he was annoyed. ”Indelicate!
Stupid! I'd rather have her when she was disagreeable. My poor Nell! She did not look very happy as she went. I had a great mind to go with her and spoil things, after all.”
The cousins found their way to Nelly's favourite haunt, the little coppice of low almond trees with the troops of narcissi and violets and primroses colouring all the brown earth. They went into the little chapel together. It smelt of incense after the ceremonies of the morning. The mournful black had been removed. There were flowers on a side-table, and the sacristan was setting the candlesticks on the fair white cloth which he had just laid along the altar. The scents in the woods at home had been thin and faint by these. Standing with his hat in his hand at the threshold of the little chapel, Robin Drummond had a memory of the scent of wild thyme.
He was not one to hesitate when he had made up his mind. His mother had told him that Nelly was waiting, ready for the word which might have been hers any time those two or three years back. Her father thought the time had come to arrange a date for their marriage. His mother, too, was anxious to see him settled. Neither she nor the General was young any longer. They had a right to look upon their children's happiness for the years that were left to them of life.
The young people were high on a mountain path, where few were to be met with except an occasional Englishman climbing like themselves, or the goatherds with their little flocks. He had helped her up a steep bit of climbing. The exertion had brought an unwonted colour to her face. Her hand lay in his, soft and warm. His closed on it and held it. It was the hand of one who had never done anything toilsome in her life, the hand of a petted darling. He remembered another hand, thin, brown, capable.
None of Mary's later years of ease had given her the hand of a woman of leisure. It was the hand of a comrade, a helpmate. Nelly's hand fluttered in his and was suddenly cold.
”Well, Nell,” he said, ”do you know what I came here in the mind to ask you?”
”Yes.” He saw the quick rise and fall of her bosom; he noticed the almost terrified look of her eyes. Was that how women showed their happy agitation when their lovers claimed them? Poor little Nell! How easily frightened she was! She had turned quite pale. He would have to be very good to her in the days to come.
”Haven't you kept me waiting long enough, little girl?” he went on with a tenderness which might easily have pa.s.sed for a lover's. ”I've been very patient, haven't I? But now my patience has come to an end. When are you going to fix a date for our marriage?”
”We have been very happy,” began Nelly with trembling lips.
”Not so happy as we are going to be. G.o.d knows, Nell, I will do my best to make you happy, and may G.o.d bless my best!”
As he said it the scent of some little plant, bruised beneath his feet, rose to his nostrils, sharply aromatic. It was the wild thyme, the fragrance of which had hung about him those few days back, no matter how he tried to banish it.