The Ffolliots of Redmarley Part 24

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."

Reggie was very modern. He built no altar to Mary in his heart nor did he set her image in a sacred shrine apart. He had no use for anyone in a shrine. He wanted a comrade, and he craved this particular comrade with all the intensity of a well-disciplined, entirely practical nature. He was not in the least conceited, but he knew that if he lived he would "get there," and the fact that he never had had, or ever would have, sixpence beyond the pay he earned did not deter him in his quest a single whit. Mary wouldn't have sixpence either. He knew the Redmarley rent-roll to a halfpenny. Mrs Ffolliot frankly talked over her affairs with him ever since he left Woolwich, and more than once his shrewd judgment unravelled some tangle which Mr Ffolliot's singularly unbusiness-like habits had created. He knew very well that were it not for General Grantly the boys could never have got the chance each was to get. That General Grantly was spending the money he would have left his daughter at his death in helping her children now when they needed it most. Mary and he were young and strong. They could rough it at first. Afterwards--he had no fears about that afterwards if Mary cared.

But would Mary care?

Reggie felt none of the qualms of a more sensitive man in making love to a very young girl who might certainly, both as regarded looks and social position, be expected to make an infinitely better marriage. He was a.s.sailed by no misgivings as to what might be thought of the man who made use of his position as almost a son of the house to make love to this girl hardly out of the schoolroom.

It was Mr Ffolliot's business to guard against such possibilities.

If, however, he might be called unscrupulous on that score, his sense of fairness was stronger than his delicacy; for where the latter proved no obstacle, the former decided him that it would not be playing the game to make open love to Mary till she had "been out a bit," and he laid down the poker with a smothered oath.

He had gone further than he intended that afternoon and he was sorry--but not very sorry. "There's no harm in letting her know I'm in the running," he reflected. "I hope it will sink in. Otherwise she might stick me down in the same row with Grantly and the twins, which is the last thing in the world I want."

He was glad he had told her about that story, even if it revealed him in an unfavourable light. "If she ever cares for me, and G.o.d help me if she doesn't--she must care for me as I really am, an ugly devil with some brains and a queer temper. I'll risk no disillusionment afterwards. She must see plenty of other chaps first--confound them; but if any one out of the lot shows signs of making a dart I'll cut in first, I won't wait another minute, I'm d.a.m.ned if I will."

And suddenly conscious that he had spoken aloud, Reggie undressed and went to bed, knowing full well that even though the hearth-stone should be eternally cold, and the high hopes flattened beyond all possible recognition, there yet remained to him something pa.s.sing the love of women.

For Reggie was not without an altar and a secret shrine, though not even the figure of the woman he loved best would ever fill it. The sacred fire of his devotion burned with a steady flame that illumined his whole life, though not even to himself did he confess the vows he paid.

"One must choose one's own mystery: the great thing is to have one."

And if prayer be the daily expression to the soul of the desire to do the right thing, then Reggie prayed without ceasing that he might do his WORK, and do it well. His profession was his G.o.d, and he served faithfully and with a single heart.

Mary had no fire to sit over, but all the same she dawdled throughout her undressing and, unlike Reggie, wasted the precious electric light.

She had a great deal to think about, for Grantly and Reggie were not the only people to confide in Mary that holiday. The day before he left, General Grantly had taken her for a walk, sworn her to secrecy, and then had sprung upon her a most astounding project. No other than that he and Mrs Grantly should take her mother with them when they went to the South of France for March--their mother without any of them.

"She has never had a real holiday by herself since she was married,"

the General said, "and my idea is that she should come with us directly your father gets back. The boys will be at school--Grantly at the Shop. There will only be the two little ones and your father to consider, and you could look after them. I'd like to take you too, my dear, but I don't fancy your mother could be persuaded to leave your father unless there was someone to see to things for him."

"She'd never leave father alone," Mary said decidedly; "but she might, oh, she might go now I'm really grown up. I should love her to go.

Don't you think"--Mary's voice was very wistful--"that she's been looking a little tired lately . . . not quite so beautiful . . . as usual?"

"Ah, you've noticed it too--that settles it--not a word, mind; if it's sprung upon her at a few days' notice it may come off. If she has time to think she'll discover insurmountable difficulties. Strategy, my dear, strategy must be our watchword."

"But father," Mary suggested dubiously, "who's going to manage him?"

"I think," the General said grimly, "I think we may safely leave your father in Grannie's hands. She has undertaken to square him, and, what she undertakes--I have never known her fail to put through."

"It will be most extraordinary to have mother go off for quite a long time by herself," Mary said thoughtfully.

"She won't be by herself, she'll be with _her_ father and mother; has it never occurred to you as possible that sometimes we might like our daughter to ourselves?"

Mary turned an astonished face towards her grandfather, exclaiming emphatically,

"No, Ganpy, it certainly never has . . . before."