They had reached dessert, and he was handing Mary a dish of sweets; she took four. "Do take some," she whispered, "take lots, and what you don't want give to me; you can put them in my bridge-bag under the table, I want them for the children. I promised Ger."

Bewildered, but only too happy to do anything she asked him, Eloquent helped himself largely.

"Now," Mary whispered, holding a little white satin bag open under the table, "and if they come round again, take some more."

"It was my grandfather began it," she explained; "he used always to save sweets for us when we stayed with him, and now it's a rule—if we dine downstairs—if there are any—there aren't always, you know—and Fusby's so stingy, if there are any left he takes them and locks them up in a box till next time. You watch Grantly, he's got some too, but he hasn't got anywhere to put them, like me. I must go round behind him when mother collects eyes, then I'll nip up to Ger, for he'll never go to sleep till I've been . . ."

"You see," she went on confidentially, "they will take them to Willets to-morrow. He loves good sweets and he never gets any unless they take them to him. They'll make a party of it, and Mrs Willets will give them each a weeny glass of ginger-wine. They'll have a lovely time—do you know Willets?"

"By sight, I think . . . he's your keeper, isn't he? From all I can hear to-night he seems a very remarkable person, everyone is talking about him."

"Oh, you ought to know him, he's the greatest dear in Redmarley. Everyone who knows us knows Willets, and dukes and people have tried to get him away, he's such a good sportsman, but he won't leave us. We love him so much we couldn't bear it. He couldn't either. He's been keeper here nearly twenty-three years. Before mother came he was here, and now there's all of us he'll never leave."

"Have you got enough? Won't they want some for themselves as well as Willets?"

"Thanks to you, I've got a splendid lot. One can't always ask people, you know, but I thought you wouldn't mind."

"Shall I demand some more in a loud voice? there are some at the end of the table," Eloquent murmured; "I'm very shy, but I can be bold in a good cause."

Mary looked at him in some surprise. "Would you really? Ah, it's too late, there's mother——"

Eloquent watched her with breathless interest as she "went round the longest way" and received new spoils from Grantly as she passed. How curious they were about their servants these people, where Fusby seemed to control the supplies and the children of the house secretly saved sweets for the keeper.

The men did not sit long over their wine, and it was to the hall they went and not to the white-panelled room that Eloquent unconsciously resented as an anachronism; and in the hall bridge-tables were set out.

This was a complication Eloquent had not foreseen. Among his father's friends cards were regarded as the Devil's Books, and he did not know the ace of spades from the knave of hearts.

Would they force him to play, he wondered. Would he cover himself with shame and ignominy? and what if he said it was against his principles to play for money?

He braced himself to be faithful to the traditions in which he had been trained, only to find that on his saying he never had played bridge no one expressed the smallest desire that he should do so.

In fact it seemed to him that three tables were arranged with almost indecent haste, cryptic remarks about "cutting in" were bandied about, and in less than five minutes he was sitting on the oak settle by the fire with Mrs Ffolliot, who talked to him so delightfully that the dream came back.

Here on the high-backed settle he found courage to tell her how clearly he remembered that first time he had seen her in his father's shop; and plainly she was touched and interested, and drew him on to speak of his queer lonely childhood and the ultimate goal that had been kept ever before his eyes.

He was very happy, and it seemed but a short time till somebody at one of the tables exclaimed "game and rub," and Mary came over to the settle saying, "Now, mother, you must take my place. I've been awfully lucky, I've won half a crown."

She sat down beside him on the settle asking, "Would you care to watch, or shall we just sit here and talk—which would you rather?"

What Eloquent wanted to do was to stare: to gaze and gaze at the gracious young figure sitting there in gleaming white flecked with splashes of rosy light from the dancing flames, but he could hardly say this.

"I'm afraid it would be of no use for me to watch; I have never played cards, and don't understand them in the least."

"You mean you don't know the suits?"

"What are suits?"

"This must be seen to," said Mary; "you don't smoke, you drink nothing festive, you don't know one card from another; you can't go through life like this. It's not fair. We won't waste another minute, I'll teach you the suits now."

She made him fetch a little table, she produced a pack of cards. She spread them out and she expounded. He was a quick study. By the time Mr Ffolliot came to take Mary's place he knew all the suits. By the time Mr Ffolliot had thoroughly confused him by a learned disquisition on the principles of bridge, Lady Campion's motor was announced, and he departed in her train.

"Surely Mr Gallup is a very absent-minded person," Miss Bax remarked to her aunt when they had deposited Eloquent at his door.

"I expect he's shy," said Lady Campion, who was sleepy and not particularly interested; "but wasn't Mary nice to him?—I do like that girl—she's so natural and unaffected."

"She always strikes me as being a mere child," said Miss Bax, "so very unformed; is she out yet, or is she still in the schoolroom?"

Sir George chuckled. "She's on her way out," he said, "and, I fancy, on her way to an uncommonly good time as well. That girl is a sight to make an old man young."

"She certainly is handsome," said Miss Bax.

Sir George chuckled again. "Unformed," he repeated, "there's some of us likes 'em like that."

Eloquent sat long in his orderly little dining-room where the glass of milk and tray of sandwiches awaited him on the sideboard. His head was in a whirl. She drank champagne. She gambled. She seemed to think it was perfectly natural and right to do these things. It probably was if she thought so. She . . .

Heavens! what an adorable wife she would be for a young Cabinet Minister.



CHAPTER XXIII

WILLETS

Had Eloquent ever taken the smallest interest in country pursuits he must have come across Willets, for in that part of the Cotswolds Willets was as well known as the Marle itself.

A small thick-set man with a hooky nose, and with bright, long-sighted brown eyes and strong, sensitive hands, wrists tempered and supple as a rapier, and a tongue that talked unceasingly and well.

Sporting people wondered why Willets, with his multifarious knowledge of wood and river craft, should stay at Redmarley: a comparatively small estate, whose owner was known to preserve only because it was a tradition to do so, and not because he cared in the least about the sport provided. Willets was wasted, they said, and it is possible that at one time Willets, himself, agreed with them.

He came originally of Redmarley folk, and his wife from a neighbouring village. He "got on" and became one of the favourite keepers on a ducal estate in the North, much liked both by the noble owner and his sporting friends; a steady, intelligent man with a real genius for the gentle craft. He could charm trout from water where, apparently, no trout existed; he could throw a fly with a skill and precision beautiful to behold, and he was well read in the literature of his pursuits. Much converse with gentlemen had softened the asperities of his Cotswold speech, he expressed himself well, wrote both a good hand and a good letter, and was very popular with those he served. Life looked exceedingly rosy for Willets—for he was happy in his marriage and a devoted father to his three little girls—when the hand of fate fell heavily upon him. There came a terribly severe winter in that part of Scotland, and one after another the little girls got bronchitis and died; the three in five months.

He and his wife could bear the place no longer, and came South. The Duke was really sorry to lose him, and took considerable trouble to find him something to do in the Cotswold country whence he came.

It happened that just then old Mr Ffolliot was looking for a keeper who would see after things in general at the Manor, and the fishing in particular; so Willets accepted the situation merely as a make-shift for a short time, till something worthier of his powers should turn up.

It was pleasant to be in the old county once more. There was help and healing in the kind grey houses and the smiling pastoral country. His wife was pleased to be near her people, and his work was of the lightest. But Willets was not yet forty, he had ambitions, and the wages were much smaller than what he had been getting. It would do, perhaps, for a year or two, and he knew that whenever he liked, his late master would be glad to have him back and would give him a post in the Yorkshire dales.

Old Mr Ffolliot died, and his nephew, Hilary, reigned in his stead. Willets announced to his wife that their time in Redmarley would be short.

The young Squire married and in the bride's train came General Grantly with all the patience and enthusiasm and friendly anecdotal powers of your true angler; and in his train came like-minded brother officers to whom, it must be conceded, Hilary Ffolliot was always ready to offer hospitality.

Things livened up a bit at Redmarley, and Willets decided to stay a little longer.

Margery Ffolliot liked the Willets and was passionately sorry for them about the little girls; but it was the Ffolliot children who wove about Willets an unbreakable charm, binding him to his native village.

One by one, with toddling steps and high, clear voices, they stormed the little house by the bridge and took its owners captive.

Saving only their mother, Willets had a good deal more to do with the upbringing of the young Ffolliots in their earliest years than anybody else. Singly and collectively, they adored him, tyrannised over him, copied him, learnt from him, and wasted his time with a prodigality a more sporting master than the Squire might have resented seriously.

Thus it fell out that offers came to Willets, good offers from places far more important than Redmarley, where there were possibilities both in the way of sport and of tips—there was a sad scarcity of tips at Redmarley—and yet he passed them by.

Sometimes his wife would be a little reproachful, pointing out that they were saving nothing and he was throwing away good money.

Willets had always some excellent reason for not leaving just then.

Redmarley had possibilities; it would be a nice place by the time Master Grantly was grown up and brought his friends. No one else would take quite the same interest in it that he did; he was proud of the children, and money wasn't everything, and so Willets stayed on.

With the arrival of the Kitten his subjugation was completed, and a seal was set upon the permanence of his relations with the Manor House. From the days when the Kitten in a white bonnet and woolly gaiters would struggle out of her nurse's arms to be taken by Willets, sitting on his knee and gazing at him with wine-coloured bright eyes not unlike his own, occasionally putting up a small hand encased in an absurd fingerless glove to turn his face that she might see it better, Willets was her infatuated and abject slave. When on these occasions he attempted to restore her to her nurse she would clutch him fiercely and scream, so that it ended in his carrying her up to the house and up the backstairs to the nursery, whence he only escaped by strategy.

No day passed without a visit from the Kitten and although he was not wholly blind to the defects in her character, he was sure she was the "peartest, sauciest, cleverest little baggage in the British Isles."

Of course the fact that Eloquent had been asked to dine at the Manor House was much canvassed in the village. Miss Gallup trumpeted the matter abroad, and naturally it was discussed exhaustively by what Mr Ffolliot would have called his "retainers."

Willets was not sure that he approved. "I've no doubt," he said leniently to Mrs Willets as they were sitting at tea, "that he's a smart young chap and he's got on wonderfully, but I don't altogether trust that pushing kind myself, and he's that sort. Why, I saw him, with my own eyes, walk past this house with our Miss Mary as bold as brass. I'll warrant if Squire had seen him he'd have been put out."

"He was her partner at dinner last night," Fusby was saying, "and what's more," here Mrs Willets lowered her voice mysteriously, "he says as he looked at her that loving, he's sure he's after her."

"After your grandmother!" Willets said rudely, his hawk's eyes bright with anger. "As if Miss Mary would so much as look at him! Let him seek a mate in his own class."

"That's just what he won't do; Miss Gallup—she's that set-up and silly about him—says he must marry a lady, one who'll be able to help him now he's got so high up. I'm surprised, I own it, at Squire—but probably it was the Mistress, she's all for friendliness always. But I'll warrant they'd both be in a pretty takin' if they thought he was after Miss Mary."

"I tell you he's nothing of the kind," Willets shouted, thumping the table so violently that he hurt his hand. "It's scandalous to say such things, and so I'll tell Fusby the first time I see him—gossiping old silly."

"Now, William, it's no good going on against Fusby. He was as upset as you could be yourself, an' he only told me when he looked in this afternoon because he felt worried like. He wouldn't care a bit if it wasn't that she seems taken with 'im. He says he saw them whisperin' at dinner, and young Gallup he give something to Miss Mary under the table. Fusby saw them."

"I don't believe it," Willets said stoutly. "It's all some foolishness Fusby's gone and made up. I don't hold with such cackle, and I'm surprised at you, my dear, allowing him to say such things."

"How could I stop him? He was worried, I tell you. You talk to him about it yourself and see what he says."

"I'm not going to talk about Miss Mary to anyone, let alone Fusby. There's nothing but mischief happens when people begins talking about a young lady. I've seen it over and over again. If, which I can't believe, young Gallup's got the cheek to be after our Miss Mary, he'll be choked off, and pretty quick too."

"Who's going to do the chokin'? He's in parlyment, he's got plenty money, there's nothing against him as I know of, and they've asked him to their house. Who's going to do the chokin?"

Mrs Willets paused, breathless and triumphant. She seemed to take a malicious delight in considering the possibility of such a courtship.

Willets looked at her steadily. "We shan't have far to seek," he said, "and that old fool Fusby's got a maggot in his head. Why, the fellow's gone to London; Parliament meets to-morrow, I saw it in the paper."

Mrs Willets nodded, as who should say "I could an' I would"—aloud she remarked, "And Miss Mary's going to London to her granpa for a long visit, beautiful new clothes she's gettin', and going to see the King and Queen and all, so they're certain to meet. It's quite like a story book."

Willets frowned. He had once spent two days in London. He realised what a big place it was, but he also remembered that during those two days he had met seven people he knew in other parts of the country.



CHAPTER XXIV

CROSS CURRENTS

Reggie kept his word as to not interfering with Mary till such time as she should have seen a little more of the world. How much of the world in general, and the male portion of it in particular, he was willing she should see, he could not make up his mind. Sometimes he thought a very little would sufficiently salve his conscience and make a definite course of action possible. Reggie was not one of those who feared his fate. He was always eager to put it to the touch. Inaction was abhorrent to him. To desire a thing and to do nothing to obtain it seemed to him sheer foolishness. Whether any amount of effort would get for him what he desired just now was on the knees of the gods. But it was the waiting that tried him far more than the uncertainty. He was not conceited. He was confident, ready to take risks and to accept responsibility, but that is quite another thing.

Just before her birthday he sent her a little necklet under cover to Mrs Ffolliot, asking that it might be put with Mary's other presents on her plate that morning. And she had written to thank him for it, but he did not answer the letter. He had always been by way of writing to her from time to time; letters, generally embellished with comic sketches and full of chaff and nonsense, which were shared by the family. Lately he had not felt in the mood to write such letters. He wanted to see her with an unceasing ache of longing intense and persistent; and if he wrote he wanted to write, not a love letter—Reggie did not fancy he'd be much of a hand at love letters—but something intimate and revealing that would certainly be unsuitable for "family reading."

Then he got two letters from Redmarley that seemed to him to need an answer.

These were the letters:—

REDMARLEY, Tuesday.

DEAR REGGIE,—We were all very excited to see it in the Gazette this morning, though of course we knew it was coming. The children took the Times down to Willets at tea-time, and Fusby was at special pains to ask mother after lunch if there was any chance of Captain Peel coming down soon. Is there? You won't find me here unless it's very soon, for I'm actually to be allowed to stay with grannie for quite a long time. After swearing that I should only go up for the drawing-room, and that it was nonsense to talk of my going out at all till mother could take me, the pater has suddenly veered round, and I am to go up to Woolwich on May-Day, and what's more, he is taking me up himself. At first I thought I was to go with Grantly when he went back to the Shop, but that wouldn't do seemingly, Grantly wasn't enough chaperon, so father's coming just for one night.

Last night we had a dinner-party and the Liberal member took me in. He is such an odd little man. Very, very good, I should think; very kind—not hard-hearted and ruthless like some people who write cruel stories about war—he is a nonconformist of sorts and doesn't do any of the usual things, so it's a little difficult to talk to him, but mother managed it—to make him talk, I mean. I heard him murmuring away like anything while we were playing bridge. She likes him too. He has an odd way of looking at you as if you were a picture and not a person. Don't you think it's fun to be going to town on May-Day and to have proper dinner every night whether there are people or not. I hope there will be lots of people. Do come to Woolwich while I'm there, and mind you treat me with great respect.

When is the new story coming out? I wish they'd hurry up. It will be so exciting to hear people talk about it and to think I know who wrote it and they don't. Clara Bax came with the Campions last night—do you remember her? She is very pretty and so clever, understands all about politics and things like that. Fancy, she sells newspapers in the street for the Cause. She asked me if I'd help her, and I thought it would be great fun, but father—you know how he pounces—heard from the other end of the table, and though just a minute before he'd been ever so sympathetic with Miss Bax, at once interfered, and said I was much too ignorant to take any active part as yet, and Grantly frowned at me across the table. Would you buy a newspaper from me, I wonder?

When father pounces I always feel that I could almost marry an impossible person just to annoy him; but the worst of it is that I should have the impossible person always, and I might get rather tired of it. Why should Miss Bax steal a horse and father beam and pay her compliments, and yet if I so much as look over the fence he shoos me away with a pitch-fork.

I wonder if you will get out to India, as you wish? In a way I hope you won't, because you'd go out in the autumn, wouldn't you? and if you are stationed anywhere at home you could come sometimes for a few days' hunting; but of course if you want it very much I want you to have it.

This is a very long letter. Good-bye, Reggie, and heaps of grats. You a captain and me grown up: we are coming on.—Yours: affectionately,

MARY B. FFOLLIOT.

P.S.—Some fiend in human shape sent Ger a little red book, trumpet, and bugle notes for the army, and he makes Miss Glover play them and then practises. There's one thing, it's a little change from the eternal "cook-house door," but it's very dreadful all the same.

BRIDGE HOUSE, REDMARLEY, 27th. April.

DEAR SIR,—Excuse the liberty I take in writing to offer you my congratulations on the announcement in the paper yesterday. Master Ger and Miss Kitten came to tea with my wife, and the mistress, with her usual kindness, sent me the paper. When I first knew you, sir, you were very much the size Master Ger is now, and yet it seems but yesterday when I was teaching you to throw a fly just beyond the bridge here. I always look on you as one of our young gentlemen, for you've come amongst us so many years now and always been so free and pleasant, and I hope I may have the pleasure of going out with you often in the future, though Master Ger did say he'd heard that you were thinking of India. If that is so, I hope you'll make a point of coming down for a few days early in June, when the fly will be at its best. If this mild weather continues we ought to get some very sizeable fish.

It's funny to me to think how I've been here twenty-three years come Michaelmas, and when the present Squire came I never thought I should stop, he not being fond of sport. If I may say so, you, sir, had a good deal to do with me stopping on that first summer, me being very fond of children, and then when they came at the Manor House and the mistress always sent them down to be shown to us as soon as ever they went out, I began to feel I'd taken root here, and so I suppose I have.

Master Ger is becoming a first-rate performer on the bugle, he played for us yesterday, quite wonderful it was. My wife begs to join with me in respectful congratulations.—Your obedient servant,

WILLIAM WILLETS.

He wrote to Willets at once, promising to come down at the end of May for a week-end, even if he couldn't get more. He was frightfully busy, for he was one of the instructors at Chatham, and had many other irons in the fire as well. He waited till he knew Mary was in Woolwich and then he wrote to her:—

It was nice of you to send me such pretty grats, and I am truly appreciative. I also had the jolliest letter from old Willets. He promises good sport very shortly, and I shall make a point of turning up at Redmarley when the fly is on the water, if only for a couple of nights, for when Willets foretells "sizeable fish" you know you're in for a first-class thing. It will be queer to be at the Manor House and you away. Only once has that happened to me, the year you were at school, and now "all that's shuv be'ind you" and you're out and dancing about. I shall certainly have urgent private affairs in Woolwich during the next month. Talk of respect! When was I ever anything but grovelling? And once I have gazed upon your portrait in train and feathers I shall be reduced to such a state of timidity you won't know me.

The other day I met your friend Clara Bax selling Votes for Women at the Panton Street corner of Leicester Square, and she hadn't at all a Hurrah face on. I greeted her and bought one of the beastly little papers, and went on my way. But something caused me to look back, and I beheld Miss Bax seemingly in difficulties with two young feller-me-lads, who evidently had no intention of going on. There was no policeman handy—besides, there's a coolness at present between members of the force and the fair militants—so I went back and dealt faithfully with Miss Bax's admirers, and they departed, I regret to say, blaspheming.

Miss Bax seemed rather shaken, the type was evidently new to her, and I suggested that she should quit her pitch for the moment and come and have lunch with me; so we went together to the Petit Riche, where we consumed an excellent omelette; and the bundle of papers, which I, Mary, had nobly carried through the streets of London, sat on a chair between us and did chaperon.

Personally, I see no reason why women should not have votes if they want 'em, but I see every reason why no woman, and above all no young woman, should sell papers anywhere, more especially in Leicester Square. I'd like to give the Panks, and the Peths, and the Hicemen a bit of my mind on the subject. The mere thought of you ever indulging in such unseemly vagaries fills me with horror unspeakable. Talk of the Squire! Pouncing and pitchforks wouldn't be in it with me, I can tell you, and yet Miss Bax isn't an orphan.

That very day I met a lugubrious procession of females, encased in large sandwich-boards proclaiming a meeting somewhere. They were dismally dodging the traffic, and looked about as dejected as they could look—ladies every one of them. I begin to think old England's no place for women when they're reduced to that sort of thing—what do you say to India for a change?

The story will be out next month, but you won't like it—too technical.

I hope young Grantly's doing some work. This term counts a lot, and he mustn't pass out low for the honour of the family.

My salaams to the General and Mrs Grantly, and to you—my remembrances. Do you, by the way, remember "our last ride together" in January? When shall we have another? Would the General let us ride in the park one day if I could get off?—Yours,

REGGIE.

P.S.—Why the kind and blameless member for Marlehouse? Has the Squire changed his politics? It's all very well for you to say the young man looked at you as if you were a picture. We've another name for that sort of sheep's eyes where I come from. He'd better not let me catch him at it.

Eloquent came to the conclusion that it is very difficult to pay court to a girl who belongs to what his father was wont to call "the classes." He wondered how they managed it. Such girls, it seemed to him, were never left alone for a minute. One's only chance was to see them at parties in a crowd, and if you did dine at their houses, there was always bridge directly after dinner, when conversation was restricted to "I double hearts," or "with you," or "No." He studied the rules of bridge industriously, for he found on inquiry that even Cabinet Ministers did not disdain it as a recreation. Therefore Dalton shared with blue-books the little table by his bed.

It's a far cry from Westminster to Woolwich, and in spite of indefatigable spade-work on his part, it was well on in the third week in May before he so much as caught a glimpse of Mary Ffolliot.

Then one morning he saw her in Bond Street with her grandmother. She was on the opposite side of the street rather ahead of him, but he knew that easy strolling walk, the flat back, and proud carriage of the head: that head with its burnished hair coiled smoothly under a bewitching hat. They stopped to look in at Asprey's window, and he dashed across the road in the full stream of traffic. Two indignant taxi-drivers swore, and he reached the curb breathless, but uninjured, just as they went into the shop.

He stood staring at the window, keeping at the same time a sharp look-out on the door.

What an age they were!

He had just decided that the only thing to do was to go in and buy something, when they came out.

Mary saw him at once, and his round face looked so wistful that she greeted him with quite unnecessary warmth. She recalled him to Mrs Grantly, who, remembering vaguely that he was a young man who had "risen from the ranks," was also more cordial than the occasion demanded.

He walked up Bond Street with them, piloted them across Piccadilly, and turned with them down Haymarket, so plainly delighted to see them, so nervous, so pathetically anxious to please, that Mrs Grantly's hospitable instincts, fatally easy to rouse where pity played a part, overcame her discretion. Her husband and her daughter used to declare that she had a perfect genius for encumbering herself with impossible people—and repenting afterwards. With dismay she realised that Eloquent had, apparently, attached himself to them. Short of cruelly wounding his feelings, she saw herself walking about London all day, accompanied by this painfully polite young man. It seemed impossible to call a taxi, and leave him desolate there on the pavement unless . . . Mrs Grantly's heart was hopelessly soft where animals were concerned, and just then Eloquent reminded her of nothing so much as an affectionate dog, allowed to frisk gaily to the front door, and cruelly shut in on the wrong side, as she said—

"We've got to meet my husband at the Stores, Mr Gallup, perhaps you'll kindly get us a taxi, as I'm rather tired."

His woebegone face was too much for her, and she added, "We're always at home on Sunday afternoons."

Mary rather wondered at her grannie.

The taxi drove away and Eloquent walked down Haymarket as though he were treading on air. To-day was Friday. Sunday, oh blessed day! was the day after to-morrow.

There were clovers nodding in her hat, a wide-brimmed fine straw hat that threw soft shadows over her blue eyes and turned them dark as the clear water underneath Redmarley Bridge. And he would see her again on Sunday.

That lady, that handsome portly lady, he had been afraid of her at first, she looked so large and imposing, but how kind she was! How wonderfully kind and hearty she had been. It was she who had invited him. "We are always at home on Sundays," she said. Surely that meant he might go more than once?

That night he made his maiden speech in the House.

* * * * * *

Reggie went down to Redmarley at the beginning of June from Saturday afternoon till Sunday evening. The Squire had a bad cold and was confined to the house. His nerves vibrated, so did the tempers of other people, but Reggie did not care. He joined Willets at the river and fished till dinner-time. Directly after dinner he went out again and they had splendid sport till nearly ten. Willets walked with him back to the house, and Reggie had a curious feeling that Willets wanted to tell him something and couldn't come to the point. So strong was this feeling that as they parted he said, "I shan't go to bed yet, Willets. It's such a perfect night—may stroll down to the bridge, and if you're still up we might have a cigar together."

He went into the house, chatted a while to Mrs Ffolliot and the Squire, and when they went to bed let himself out very quietly and strolled down the drive and out of the great gates to the bridge. The perfect peace of the warm June night, the yellow moonlight on the quiet water, the wide-spanned bridge, the long straggling street of irregular gabled houses so kindly and so sheltering with their overhanging eaves, the dear familiar charm of it all seemed to grip Reggie by the throat and caused an unwonted smarting in his eyes.

The village was absolutely deserted save for one motionless figure sitting on the wall at the far end of the bridge.

"Hullo, Willets," Reggie called, "not in bed yet?"

"I'm always a bit wakeful when the fly's up, sir; the river seems to draw me, and I can't leave it."

"Have a cigar," said Reggie, and sat down beside him.

They smoked in silence for a few minutes till Willets said—

"Seen anything of Miss Mary up there, sir?"

"No, Willets, I haven't been able to get away for a minute till now, but I may manage to run down to Woolwich next week just to buck to the General about my catch. You'll have him down then post haste—I bet——"

"I suppose, sir," said Willets, with studied carelessness, "you never happened to come across the young man that's member for these parts?"

"What, young Gallup? I believe I saw him once. He's making quite a name for himself I hear, his maiden speech was in all the papers. By the way though, I did hear of him the other day in a letter I had from Miss Mary. They'd all been to dine at the House of Commons with him, and had no end of a time."

"Well I am damned!" said Willets.

He said it seriously, almost devoutly, and Reggie turned right round to stare at him.

"I beg your pardon, sir, I'm sure, but I really was fairly flabbergasted."

He stood up sturdy and respectful in a patch of moonlight, and his keen brown eyes raked Reggie's as though they would read his very soul.

It wasn't an easy soul to read, and Reggie knew that Willets had something on his mind, so he waited.

"I beg your pardon, sir," Willets said again. He had never got over the feeling that Reggie was one of the young gentlemen, and that it behoved him to be careful of his language in front of him.

Reggie Peel laughed. "Look here, Willets," he said, "what's your objection? Why shouldn't they go to the House of Commons to dine with Gallup if it amuses them?"

"I don't know, sir, I'm sure, but I was took aback. An' in a small place like this it's certain to make talk. That old Miss Gallup, now, she'll be boasting everywhere that our Miss Mary went to dine with her nephew, just as she did when he went to a dinner party up at the house, and for us as belongs to the house—well, we don't relish it. I hope, sir," Willets went on in quite a different tone, "that you'll make it convenient to go up and see after Miss Mary?"

The hawk's eyes were fixed unwinkingly on Reggie's face, so lean and sallow and set; the moonlight accentuated the rather hollow cheeks. and cast black shadows round his eyes, which looked green and sinister.

Suddenly he smiled, and when Reggie smiled, his whole face altered.

"Out with it, Willets," he said, "what maggot have you got in your head now? You're worried about something; you may as well tell me. I'm safe as a church."

"I'd like to know, sir," Willets remarked in a detached impersonal tone, "what's your opinion of mixed marriages?"

"What sort of marriages?"

"Well marriages where one of the parties has had a different bringing up to the other. Now suppose, sir—do you know Miss Shipway—over to Marlehouse; her father's got that big shop top of the market-place full of bonnets and mantles and such—good-looking girl she is——"

"I'm afraid I don't know the lady, Willets; why?"

"Well, sir, it's this way. She'll have a tidy bit of money when old Shipway dies; her mother was cook at the Fleece, but they've got on. Well now, sir, suppose you was to go after Miss Shipway——-"

Reggie's eyes twinkled. "It might be a most sensible proceeding on my part—a poor devil like me—if as you say she's a nice girl and will have a lot of money. Will you give me an introduction?"

"I'm not jokin', sir, nor taking the liberty to propose anything of the sort; it's only——"

"A hypothetical case?"

"That's it, sir. I mean suppose a gentleman like yourself was to marry a girl like her, do you think you'd be happy?"

"Surely it would all depend on whether they liked each other—and liked the same things——"

"Ah, sir, that's it. Would you like the same things, do you suppose?"

"Well, Willets, I don't see that you've any cause to worry. Unfortunately I don't know the young lady, so I can't see how I'm to get any forrader."

"Suppose, sir, a young lady, like what the Mistress was, should marry a man in quite a different rank from herself, do you think they'd be happy?"

"It depends," said Reggie, "what sort of a chap he was. People rise, you know."

"Well, suppose he did, would they happy?"

"I couldn't say, Willets, I'm sure. Is it any particular young lady you're worried about?"

Willets sat down on the wall. "In my time," he said slowly, "I've seen a good bit; and all I have seen, seems to me to show that it's safest for ladies and gentlemen to stick to their own class. But I thought I'd like to have your opinion, sir."

For five minutes they sat in silence, then Willets remarked, "And you think you'll be going up to town next week, sir?"

"I think so. I shall try anyway."

"Would you be so good, sir, as to say to General Grantly that he'd better not put off much longer if he wants the best of the fishing."

"I'll be sure and tell him, Willets. I suppose we must go to bed. Many thanks for the splendid sport. I have to get back to Chatham to-morrow, worse luck, and with the Sunday trains it takes a deuce of a time."

"Good-night, sir, I'm glad you managed to come, even though it was for but one night."

Reggie let himself in very quietly and went up to his room.

He lit his pipe and went to the window to smoke it.

The moonlight was so brilliant that he drew a letter from his pocket and read it easily:

"Dear Reggie," it ran, "yours was a lovely long letter. I'm glad you rescued poor Clara, and you needn't be afraid of me selling papers or carrying sandwich boards. I'm much too busy having a lovely time. Oh never have I had such a time, but I grieve to tell you that both Ganpy and I are very shocked at the behaviour of Grannie. She is having an outrageous flirtation with young Mr Gallup, our member. It's all very well for her to say she is forming him. She is undermining all his most cherished principles, and if his nonconformist constituents hear of his goings on I don't believe they'll ever have him again.

"She has taught him auction: he played with her last Sunday afternoon because it was too wet to be out in the garden. She has sent him to lots of plays: he came with us one night to the Chocolate Soldier; she talks politics to him by the hour and demolishes his pet theories. She tells him that he has, up to now, thought so many things wrong that he can't possibly have any sense of proportion, or properly discriminate what really matters and what doesn't; and she is so brisk and masterful and delightfully amusing—you know Grannie's way—that the poor young man doesn't know whether he's on his head or his heels, and simply follows blindly wherever that reckless woman leads. He gave a dinner for us in the House the other night and got Ganpy a seat in the Stranger's Gallery. He couldn't get us into the Ladies' Gallery because of the silly rule about only wives and sisters or near relations made since the suffragette fusses, but he showed us all about and it was simply fascinating. Of course Grannie met lots of members she knew, and we enjoyed ourselves awfully. We are going to tea on the Terrace next week. The dance at the Shop was ripping, and you needn't think I only danced with cadets. I danced with majors and colonels, and a beautiful captain in the Argyle and Sutherland, but I've come to the conclusion that the jolliest thing is to be Ganpy's wife on these occasions. You never saw such court as gets paid to Grannie. She never has a dull minute.

"Grantly went home on Sat. just for the night, and he says it's all too beautiful for words. Sometimes I feel wicked to be missing it, and I get homesick for mother and the children; but I do enjoy it all. When are you coming up to play about too? You stern, industrious young man."

Reggie folded the letter and put it back in his pocket.

"So that's what old Willets was driving at," he thought. He leaned out again to shake the ash out of his pipe. In the far east there was a pearly streak. "Daylight," he muttered, "—and by Jove I see it."



CHAPTER XXV

"MEN'S MEAL, FIRST CALL"

Mrs Grantly was interested in Eloquent. He was quite unlike any of the innumerable young men she had had to do with before. His simplicity and directness appealed to her; she admired his high seriousness even while she seemed to deride it, and though violently opposed to his party, she shared that party's belief in his political future.

The General shook his head; not over what he and Mary called "Grannie's infatuation for Mr Gallup," but over the possible results of this friendliness and intimacy to Mr Gallup. For the General saw precisely the same possibilities that Mr Ffolliot had seen, and didn't like what he saw one whit better than did the Squire.

Eloquent never saw Mary alone. Generally he was wholly taken possession of by Mrs Grantly, or such friends of hers as would be bothered with him. Yet his golden dream was with him continually, and in the dear oasis of his fancy he walked in an enchanted garden with Mary. In his waking moments, his sane practical moments, he would realise that it was sheer absurdity to imagine that she ever could care for him. He did not expect her to care, but—and here he drifted across the desert of plain possibilities into the merciful mirage of things hoped for—if she would condescend to let him serve her, he might take heart of grace.

He watched her carefully.

It did not seem to him that there was anybody else. There were crowds: crowds of dreadful, well-dressed, good-looking, cheerful men, who chaffed and laughed and quaffed any drinks that happened to be going; but he did not fear the enemy in battalions, and so far it appeared that her besiegers always attacked in companies.

Sometimes he was sure that she knew how he felt, and was trying in gentle, delicately pitiful ways to show him that it was of no use. Then again he would dismiss this thought as absurd and conceited. How should Mary know? How could she try to show him she didn't care when he had never shown her that he did? How could he show her?

It was this desire to show her, this hope of familiarising her with the idea that caused Eloquent to resort to every possible place where he might see her. He went down to Woolwich as often as decency would permit, which wasn't often. He inundated Mrs Grantly with invitations to the House, and he haunted the theatres, generally in vain, in the hope of seeing her at the play. He would often reflect bitterly how easy things were for the young shopman in these matters. He met his girl and took her for a walk, and no one thought any the worse of either of them. There was none of this nerve-racking, heartrending uncertainty, this difficulty of access, this sense of futility, in their relations.

Of the many mysterious attributes of the "classes," there was none to be so heartily deplored as their entire success in secluding their young women, while apparently they gave them every possible opportunity for amusement of all kinds.

* * * * * *

Reggie went down to Woolwich once while Mary was with her grandparents, but it was not, from her point of view, a very satisfactory visit. Reggie was grumpy, and looked very tired and overworked. Moreover, Mary, though she could not have confessed it for the world, was just a trifle hurt that he never reminded her of that last ride together.

Just as he was leaving on the Sunday night, and they were all in the garden, he walked with her a little way down a winding path that hid them from the others, saying abruptly—

"Shall I let you know directly if they are going to send me to the Shiny?"

"Of course I should like to know, but . . . India is a long way off, Reggie, why do you want to go so far?"

"Because, my dear, it means work and promotion, and one's chance, and lots of things; one being quite decent pay. Besides, I like India, I shall be glad to go back, if . . ."

They had followed the path, and it led them out to the lawn again, where the others were standing. He didn't finish his sentence—

"Say you want me to get out there, Mary."

"Of course I want you to go if you really wish it."

"I'll let you know then. I shall know myself early in July, I fancy . . . perhaps I'll run down to Redmarley; you'll be back then?"

They joined the others; Reggie made his farewells and left.

Mary went and took her grandfather's arm, and made him walk round the garden with her. She developed an intelligent interest in geography, and made searching inquiries as to the healthiness of India generally.

It was comforting to walk arm and arm with grandfather. She didn't know why, but she felt a little frightened, a little homesick. How clearly one can see some people's faces when they are not there. What unusual eyes Reggie had, so green in some lights. He was looking dreadfully thin, poor boy, downright ill he looked, and yet everyone said he was very strong. No one else shook hands quite like Reggie: he had nice hands, strong and gentle; thin, but not hard and nubbly. Why is a summer night often so sad? Night-scented stock has a sad smell, though it is so sweet. He shouldn't work so hard. He was overdoing it. Surely if he went to India they'd give him some leave . . . it might be years before he came back. Three years he was away once.

Mary clasped both her hands over her grandfather's arm. "I do love you so, Ganpy," she said; "there's nobody like you in the world, no one at all."

The General smiled in the twilight, and pressed the arm in his against his side. He said nothing at all, yet Mary felt vaguely comforted.

In the beginning of July she went back to Redmarley, and everyone was very glad to see her again. One Saturday morning when the Squire and Mrs Ffolliot had started in the victoria to lunch with neighbours on the other side of Marlehouse, Mary called Parker and went to walk in the woods. It was a grey morning, warm and sunless and still. She wandered about quite aimlessly. She was restless and unsettled, and had a good deal to think over.

Just before she left Woolwich, Eloquent Gallup had called one afternoon when both the General and Mrs Grantly were out; but he asked boldly for Mary. She was at home, and he was shown into the cool, shady garden, where she was lying in a hammock reading a novel.

This was Eloquent's chance and he took it. He did not stay long. He left before tea, but during the time he did stay he contrived to let Mary see . . . what it must be confessed she had already suspected. He said nothing definite. He was immensely distant in his reverence, but a much humbler girl than Mary could hardly have mistaken his meaning. He was so pathetically diffident it was impossible to snub him, and she had no desire to snub him. Always she was immensely sorry for him—why, she did not know.

He was plain. He was insignificant. He was not a gentleman by birth, but he was—and Mary's standard was fairly high—so far as she could see, a thorough gentleman in feeling and in action. Moreover, he had ability, and an immense capacity for hard work, both of them qualities that appealed to Mary.

So she allowed herself to dally vaguely with the idea. It was very pleasant to be set in a shrine; to be worshipped; to be served in a prayerful attitude of adoration. To be able by a kind word, a kind glance, to raise a fellow creature to a dizzy height of happiness. How could anyone be unkind to that excellent little man? Suppose . . . this was a daring supposition, and Mary grew hot all over as she entertained it—suppose, in the dim and distant future, when Reggie . . . Reggie had never written after he went back to Chatham, nothing had happened then about India; but suppose he did go for years and years, and forgot her . . . perhaps he had never wanted to remember her in that particular way, and she had magnified quite little things that meant nothing at all. . . . Suppose she ultimately, years hence, could bring herself to marry Mr Gallup. How angry her father would be! But that was a prospective contingency that only amused Mary. He would be angry whoever she married. He would be exceedingly angry if she got engaged to . . . that young man at Chatham who was so taciturn and neglectful . . . who didn't seem to want to get engaged to anyone. Clara Bax said it would be dreadfully dull to marry anyone you'd known all your life. Would it? Clara Bax said it would be tiresome in the extreme to marry anybody. But about that Mary was not sure.

Westminster is certainly the nicest part of London; there are bits of it that remind one of Redmarley. It would be pleasant to be rich and important, and feel that you are helping to pull the wires that control destinies; helping to make history. Ah, that was what Reggie called it. He would do it. She was sure of that; but Reggie's wife would have no hand in it.

With clear intuition she saw that of these two men, only one could be influenced by his wife in anything that concerned his work. Reggie's wife would be outside all that. Eloquent's wife, if she were the right woman, would share everything: and at that moment Parker began to bark, and Mary found that she had walked into a part of the wood called the Forty Firs, and that Eloquent Gallup was standing right on the very same spot, where seven months ago she had assisted him to rise from a puddle.

Parker didn't like Eloquent upright a bit better than he had liked Eloquent prone, and he made a great yapping and growling and bouncing and skirmishing around about the two of them, until he finally subsided into suspicious sniffing at Eloquent's ankles.

"Has Parliament risen then?" Mary asked, when she had soothed Parker to quiescence.

"No, Miss Ffolliot, I came down"—Eloquent's eyes were fixed hungrily on her face, and she noticed that his was nothing like so round as it used to be, and that he was very pale—"because I couldn't keep away."

Mary said nothing. There seemed nothing to say.

"Miss Ffolliot," Eloquent said again, "I think you must know why I have come down, what I feel about you, what I have felt about you since the first minute I saw you in this very place, when I was so ridiculous and you so beautiful and kind. I have travelled a good way since then, but I know that in caring for you as I do I am still ridiculous, and it is only because you are so beautiful and kind, although you are so far above me, that I dare to tell you what I feel . . . but I would like your leave to think about you. Somehow, without it, it seems an impertinence, and, God knows, no man ever felt more worship for a woman than I feel for you. Do you give me that leave?"

Mary was very much touched, very much shaken. Eloquent's power lay in his immense earnestness. She no longer saw him small and insignificant and common. She saw the soul of him, and recognised that it was a great soul. For one brief moment she wondered if she could . . .

Through the woods rang the notes of a bugle. Ger was playing "Come to the cook-house door." Mary's heart seemed to leap up and turn right over.

"Come to the cook-house door" is not by any means one of the most beautiful of the bugle sounds of the British Army. It is rather jerky at the best of times, and as performed by Ger it was wheezy as well. But for Mary just then it was a clear call to consciousness.

Pity and sympathy and admiration are not love: and Mary knew it, and in that moment she became a woman.

Eloquent had taken her hand, taken it with a respect and gentleness that affected her unspeakably. She gave a little sob. She did not try to draw it away. "Oh dear," she sighed, "I am so sorry, for it's all no use," and the tears ran down her cheeks.

Eloquent lifted her hand and kissed it.

"Don't cry, my dear," he said, "don't cry. I'm glad I've known you and loved you. . . ."

Again through the woods there rang that "first call" so dear to the heart of Ger.

"Good-bye, Mr Gallup, I mustn't stay . . . try to forgive me, and . . ."

"Forgive," Eloquent repeated scornfully, "what have I to forgive? That is for you."

Mary turned and walked swiftly away, and Eloquent watched her till she was out of sight.

Parker kept close at her side, but every now and then he jumped up and tried to lick her face. Parker knew all was not right with Mary and he was uneasy.

Mary knew full well that it was to no comfortable cook-house door that Ger had summoned her. That wheezy bugle called her to the outposts of the world; to a life of incessant acerbating change, where there was no certainty, no stability, no sweet home peace, or that proud fixity of tenure that is the heritage of those who own the land on which they live. She had no illusions. Not in vain had she lived with her grandmother at Woolwich and heard the lamentations of the officers' wives when plans were changed at the last moment, and the fair prospect of a few years at home was blotted out by the inexorable orders for foreign service. And the Sappers were worst of all, for except at a very few stations they hadn't even a mess, and there was not the friendly fellowship of "the Regiment" to count upon.

The yard was quite deserted, for the men had gone to dinner. She paused at the gate and looked long and lovingly at the clustering chimneys, and lichened, grey-green roofs she loved: and as she looked a new sound broke the stillness. Three loud reports and then the touf-touf, spatter-dash-spatter-dash of a motor bicycle.

Mary opened the gate, went through, shut it behind her and leant against it, for her knees were as water.

The noise came on, it passed the house, turned into the back drive, came round, and someone in overalls, covered with dust from head to foot, swept into the deserted yard; saw Mary, pulled up short, and pushed the bike against a wall.

This dusty person tore off his goggles. It was Captain Reginald Peel, R.E., and he came across the yard towards her.

"Hullo, Mary," he said, "I told you I'd let you know whenever I heard. The A.A.G.'s a brick, I'm going to India. Marching orders came last night."

Mary's lips trembled and her voice died in her throat. Reggie took out a large silk handkerchief and mopped his dusty face.

He came on towards her and took both her hands.

"Mary," he said, "can you leave all this? Can you face it? Will you come with me and help me to build bridges and make roads and dig drains. . . . Will you come so that we can have the rest of our lives . . . together?"

They looked straight into one another's eyes.

"I will," said Mary, and she said it as solemnly as if she were repeating a response in the Marriage Service.

Reggie loosed one of her hands. Again he polished his face.

"I should like awfully to kiss you," he said, "but I'm so fearfully dusty—do you mind?"

"I think," said Mary, with a queer choky laugh, "that I'd rather like it."

And just at that moment Willets appeared at a gate leading from the garden. He didn't see them, and opened the gate, which squeaked abominably, came through and let it shut with a clang, but they, apparently, heard nothing.

Willets stood transfixed, for he saw the motor-bike and the dusty young man in overalls, and clasped close in the arms of the said dusty young man was Miss Mary!

Willets gave one quick glance, smote his hands softly together, and turned right round with his back to them. He leaned on the gate and gazed steadfastly into the distant garden. It was a squeaky gate, that gate. If he opened it, it might disturb them, and bless you, they were but young, and one is only young once.

So kindly Willets stared, with eyes that were not quite so keen as usual, at the bit of garden he could see; and there, delphiniums were blooming. The sun came out just at that moment, and they looked particularly blue and tall and splendid.

It seemed to Willets that he admired those delphiniums for hours and hours, but it was really only a few minutes till he heard a rather husky voice behind him saying, "It's all right, Willets, you may turn round and congratulate us."

And there they were both standing "as bold as brass" he said afterwards, and the delphiniums he had just been studying so closely were not as blue as Mary's eyes.

THE END