Part 24 (1/2)

He turned the handle of the door and went in, rather dreading to find Mary engaged with other visitors; but she was alone. She turned round from her desk as he came in, and, jumping up at sight of him, she came to meet him with an outstretched hand.

”Congratulate me,” she said. ”The book is finished and accepted.

Strangmans have taken it. They took only a week to decide. I am wild with pride and joy. Maurice Ilbert is one of their readers. He got it to read and recommended it enthusiastically. They are to publish it in June. Wasn't it generous of him, because there is so little of it he can agree with?”

”Oh, Ilbert's conscience is pretty elastic, I should say, and he can agree with many things,” Sir Robin answered. He felt vaguely annoyed that Ilbert should have had anything to do with Mary or her book. Ilbert was one of the younger school of Tories, a free-lance he called himself, handsome, conceited, immensely clever, a golden youth with an air of Oxford and the Schools added to him. He was one of the youngest members of Parliament, and was gifted with a dazzling and impertinent wit. Sir Robin had occasionally smarted under Ilbert's sallies. He was a target for them, with his serious and simple views, his lean air of Don Quixote.

Mary looked at him reproachfully, as though the speech grieved her.

”He is very generous,” she repeated. ”He has come to see me. I found him most sympathetic. It is not a question of parties. He thinks awfully well of the book. He says it will stir the public conscience. To be sure, it is written out of experience, just the plain story of things as they are. I have learned so much since I began this work.”

He had got over his first ill-temper, and now he spoke gently.

”I am sure it is a good book,” he said. ”I have always felt that you would make a good book of it because you know. Ilbert is a very capable critic.”

He did Ilbert justice with some difficulty. He had a sharp thought of Ilbert coming in and out as he had been used to, when he should come no more. For the first time in his life, which had had no room for self-consciousness, he compared himself with another man, handsome, debonair, and remembered the lean visage over which mornings he pa.s.sed the razor, dark, lantern-jawed, almost grotesque. It was the only aspect of himself he knew, the one which was presented to him when he shaved.

”Now you are like yourself,” Mary said sweetly. ”It was not like you to throw cold water on my pleasure.”

He turned away his head from her reconciled eyes. She was making what he had come to say doubly hard for him.

”I want to tell you something,” he said. ”I should like you to hear it from me first, because you have been so good a friend to me. I have spoken to you of my cousin, Nelly. I wanted you to be her friend.

Well--I am to marry my cousin in July.”

There was silence for a moment after he had said it, a silence broken only by the ticking of the noisy clock on the mantelpiece, by the sounds of the street outside.

”There has been an implicit engagement between my cousin and myself,” he went on as though he set his teeth to it. ”I couldn't tell you when it began. It was made for us. I was always ready to be bound by it. She is as sweet a thing as ever lived; but sometimes I have thought that perhaps, perhaps, the cousinly closeness would make the other tie a difficult thing for Nelly to accept. I was wrong. She has no desire to break through that implicit bond.”

He was making an explanation, and Mary Gray was not the girl to misunderstand him.

”I am very glad,” she said cheerfully, ”very glad. I hope you will be very happy. I am sure that you will be.”

He looked at her with relief, which was not altogether agreeable. He had not done her any wrong after all. She was not angry with him. But, to be sure, why should she be? It was unlikely that she would have taken more than a friendly interest in him. He mocked at himself, and thought of his harsh uncomeliness. If he had been Ilbert now his conduct of all this winter past would have been unpardonable. But Ilbert and he were made in a different mould. Oddly, the thought did not comfort him--was a bitter one, rather.

”Won't you sit down and tell me about it?” Mary said, her eyes looking at him frankly and kindly. ”I am not at all busy. The business of the Bureau is pretty well over for the day, and I can finish my proofs at home. Do, Sir Robin.”

She pushed a chair towards him, and he sat down in it. He felt that he ought to go. It was a concession to his own weakness that he stayed. And he had no inclination at all to talk about his engagement. He tried to say something, tried to imagine what a man happily engaged to be married would find to say to a sympathetic woman-friend about it. He could think of nothing, only that so far as he could see there was no consciousness in the serious bright eyes that watched him. To be sure he ought to be glad. He would be the most miserable hound on earth if he wished her to be unhappy because he was marrying his cousin. Yet he was not glad of that ready sympathy.

”Well,” she said at last, ”you have nothing to tell me.”

”What can I say”--he laughed awkwardly--”that I have not already said?

We have been brought up like brother and sister, but our elders always expected us to marry when we should be old enough. We have been taking it easy, Nell and I; thought there was plenty of time, you know.”

”And at last you have decided that the plenty of time is up?” she said, filling the gap in his speech. Her eyes were wondering now. It was a strange thing to her that lovers should take it easy.

”Yes, that was it.”

”Of course, I understand now why you felt you had to go that Thursday in Holy Week. It was very good of you to give us so much of your time.”

”You didn't tell me how you got on, what you did,” he said eagerly. He was glad to escape from the discussion of his too intimate affairs.