Under One Flag Part 24

"You do not know him."

"I fancied that I did. I a.s.sure you I hear enough of him from Mr Glover. Mr Glover seems to think that some fine day Mr Ferguson is going to save the country."

"I have no doubt that he will, when there is need of him. I mean that you do not know him as--I know him. He will adequately reward me for--oh, for more than I have done."

"Indeed." There was an odd smile about the visitor's lips. "He seems to be very much struck with that girl of yours."

"With Inez? He is good to her for my sake. I know what he suffers, because, you see, she is so different from me in all respects. But it is like him, to suffer for me."

"Frankly, Helen, is there a definite engagement between you?"

"Well, Marian, you are trying to dig deeper into my secrets than I quite bargained for. But I don't mind telling you that it was he who asked me to come home."

"He asked you to come home, did he? Did he ask you to come home to be his wife?"

Lady Griswold's cheeks went flaming red.

"Marian, I will tell you nothing else than this, that I am the happiest woman in the world."

There was an odd smile about the visitor's lips.

"You are at least the funniest woman in the world, my dear. It appears to me that you have devoted one portion of your life to the pursuit of one chimera. I only hope that you are not going to devote the remaining portion to the pursuit of another."

"A chimera! Do you call Ronald a chimera?" Lady Griswold laughed. "I will tell Ronald that you called him a chimera."

Mrs Glover rose to go.

"You may tell him that I called him what you please. I don't think he is likely to care for what I may call him. He has been called too many things in his time to be super-sensitive. Mr Ferguson was born hard.

The life he has lived has made him one of the hardest men I know. I am not saying it at all as a reproach, my dear; it seems to me that coming statesmen have to be hard, but it is so."

"My dear Marian, you don't know Ronald. He may seem hard outwardly.

Inwardly, it only requires a touch to turn him into a naming fiery furnace."

Lady Griswold stated the truth more exactly than, for an instant, she imagined. Mrs Glover would not allow that it was the truth.

"You really are the funniest woman, my dear Helen. If Mr Ferguson's temperature ever gets to summer heat he will be in danger of--well, cracking. But never mind that. All's well that ends well. I only hope that it will all end well with you, my dear."

"All end well!" Lady Griswold told herself, when her visitor had gone.

"She only hopes that it will all end well with me. As though it could end any other way but well! Foolish Marian! These women of the world have not, in their keeping, all the wisdom. Their besetting weakness is that they are so apt to measure other people's corn with their own bushels."

There was a photograph frame, fastened with a clasp, on the table at which she was standing. She unclasped it. It contained the usual photograph of Mr Ferguson, the very latest.

"Ronald, she does not know you, she says that you are hard. My Ronald!"

She pressed her lips against the pictured lips in the pictured face.

"How often I have kissed your effigy! When--" she was actually trembling--"when shall I kiss your living lips instead?" Laying the photograph down upon the table, she covered her face with her hands.

"When, when? How often have I cried for you in the dead of the night, and--and yearned to hold you in my arms!"

She seemed to be positively crying. She was crying, there was not a doubt of it. Removing her hands from before her flaming face, with her handkerchief she dried the tears which stood in her smarting eyes.

"I think, as Marian says, that I have earned you. I have waited for you eighteen years. You must not make me wait much longer. I will not let you, Ronald. When one has loved, for eighteen years, as I have loved, one's love--one's love becomes--too much for one." She looked down as if, although she was alone, she was ashamed. "I wonder if it was the climate, or whether it is I. I think--I think that it is I. Love with me is not, I think, an affair of climate." She stretched out her arms in front of her with a strange gesture of strange pa.s.sion. "I think that I am made for love! Ronald, I am made for love! That day of which, almost in my madness, I have dreamed, that day for which I have waited eighteen years, that day when you shall take me in your arms, I shall go mad--with joy--that joy which follows after waiting. Ronald!

Ronald!"

Again she put her hands before her face. She trembled as with fever.

She began to pace, feverishly, about the room.

"I wonder what he is waiting for? I wonder if he thinks it is too soon?

Too soon! Too soon! If he thinks it is too soon, I, even I, I myself, will show him if it is too soon. Ronald! Ronald!"

Even while the name was still upon her lips a servant was standing with the handle of the open door in his hand, announcing,--

"Mr Ferguson!"

And Mr Ferguson came in.

As Lady Griswold turned to greet him, one could not but feel that she was beautiful. Beautiful with the beauty which is the crowning beauty of all beauty in the eyes of many men. The beauty of the beautiful woman who is in the full, rich, ripe glory of her summer's prime. She advanced to him with both her hands held out.

"Ronald!"

There was a look of welcome on her face, and in her eyes and about her lips, and, as it seemed, in every curve and outline of her body, for which some men, to have had it appear for them, would nave given a good slice of their possessions. But Mr Ferguson seemed, positively, as if he would rather that it had not been there.

He seemed reluctant, even, to yield her one of his hands in exchange for both of hers.

"Lady Griswold--"

"Lady Griswold! Why do you call me Lady Griswold? Call me Helen! Am I not Helen?"

He was silent. To himself he said,--

"It is going to be more difficult even than I fancied. After all, I almost wish that I had written. Bah! I am a coward! Better to face it once and for all." Then, to her, "Lady Griswold, who _once_ was Helen."

Before she could interpose, he added, "There is something I wish particularly to say to you."

"To me?" She caught her breath. "Ronald! What is it?"

He saw she caught her breath. It made him awkward. He began to blunder,--

"I trust that what I am about to say to you will not--cause you to feel annoyed."

"Annoyed! As though anything which you could say to me could cause me to feel annoyed! Ronald, how little you know me after all."

He wished to Heaven that she knew him better.

"I can only hope that, when you have heard me out, you will not think that I have, in any way, misled you."

"Misled me! As though you had misled me, as though you could mislead me--Ronald."

Mr Ferguson was a cool and a courageous man. But his courage almost failed him then. He felt that he was face to face with the most difficult and the most delicate task that he had ever had to face in all his life. The look which was in this woman's eyes, which was on her face, which was, so to speak, all over her, was, to him, nothing less than terrible. He would rather have encountered a look of the deadliest hatred than the love-light which was in her eyes. As a rule, in his way he was a diplomatist. Now, his diplomacy wholly failed him. He struggled from blunder on to blunder.

"I feel that--that, in this matter, I may not, myself, have been wholly free from blame--"