Ричард Марш
Under One Flag

REWARDED

I

"Am I altered?"

She was, and yet was not. In one sense, not so much as he had expected. In another sense, more. Or was the alteration in himself? Mr Ferguson was conscious of a curious qualm as he recognised that at least the thing was possible.

He had told himself, over and over again, not only that he was not a romantic man, but that there was no romance about the story. He had loved Helen Sinclair when he was scarcely more than a boy, and when she was, certainly, nothing but a girl. Sir Matthew Griswold had come her way, and-well-she had married him. How much her mother had had to do with the match, and how much she herself had had to do with it, was a matter Mr Ferguson never could determine. Griswold was scarcely more than half an Englishman. His mother had left him large estates in South America. To those estates he had departed with his wife. On those estates for eighteen-or was it nineteen? – years Lady Griswold had practically resided.

If Mr Ferguson was broken-hearted when his love forsook him, he concealed the fact with admirable ability. Indeed, it is an open question whether, very soon, he did not tell himself that it was just as well. A poor wife, possibly any sort of wife, might have proved a drag on his career. For he had a career. And, in a certain way, he had succeeded in that career to quite a remarkable extent. He was M.P. for the Culmshire Boroughs. He had made a name in literature. Literature, that is, of a kind. Not light and fanciful, but matter-of-fact and solid. He was, in fact, that wholly indescribable personage, a promising politician. He was beginning to feel, and possibly others were beginning to feel as well, that there was only one thing needed to enable him to turn the promise into fulfilment. That thing was money. He was not, in a positive sense, a poor man. In a relative sense, he was. He was very far from being as rich as he felt that he ought to be if he was ever to occupy that position in politics which he would like to occupy.

Helen Sinclair had sent him a little note when her marriage with Sir Matthew was finally arranged. Mr Ferguson had not replied to it. She had particularly desired that he would not reply. After that there had been no communication between them for years. Mr Ferguson, of course, was aware that Lady Griswold was still alive. The Griswolds were sufficiently important personages in English society to be heard of now and then, even from that remote portion of the world, from an English social point of view, in which they chose to dwell.

One day a certain young friend of Mr Ferguson's made up his mind to travel in South America. He came and asked Mr Ferguson if he could make him known to any persons "over there." The request was, geographically, rather vaguely worded, but Mr Ferguson, smiling to himself as he wrote, gave him a note of introduction to Lady Griswold, in case he should get, say, within a hundred miles of her. That young man got within a hundred miles of her. He made a long sojourn with the Griswolds. They made much of him. Lady Griswold even went so far as to write and thank Mr Ferguson for having thought of her. Mr Ferguson replied to her letter. The lady replied again. And so, between them, there grew up a curious correspondence, a correspondence which, if they had only known it, was in its way pathetic. Perhaps, after a fashion of their own, they did recognise the pathos of the thing. Then Sir Matthew died. He was thirty years older than his wife. The widow, in her distress, wrote to Ronald-Mr Ferguson was once more "Ronald" to her-in her grief. And, in soothing her sorrow, Mr Ferguson had dropped a hint. When he wrote again he dropped another hint. And then another, and another, and another. By degrees the widow began to take the hints. The end of it was, that, after many years of exile, Lady Griswold had come home.

Mr Ferguson understood quite well that it was because of those hints which he had dropped that Lady Griswold had come home. He had not written one plain word. Nothing which she would be able to fasten on and say, "Did you not write this, or that, and so deceive me?" His political training had tended to develop the bump of caution which he had originally possessed. "Non-committal" was the watchword for him. He was unwilling to commit himself to any person, in any way, on any subject whatsoever. Experience had taught him, or had seemed to teach him, that that was the safest policy. But he certainly had dropped those hints. And, as it appeared to him, with cause.

It is true enough that, since he was left forlorn, he had never thought of marriage. Never once, until Sir Matthew died. He had discovered, with an old sensation of surprise, that he had still a tenderness for his boyhood's love. Though until he saw Lady Griswold's handwriting-she wrote the same hand which she had written as a girl-he had been unaware of the fact during all these years. That young man had sent Mr Ferguson a glowing account of his sojourn with the Griswolds. According to him, Lady Griswold was the most charming woman in the world. And so young. The traveller protested that she scarcely looked as if she were more than twenty. Even allowing for the natural exaggeration of grateful youth, this sounded well. In her letters Lady Griswold had herself declared that she felt young. She only had one child, a girl. That young man scarcely spoke of the girl. Lady Griswold alluded to her rarely. When Mr Ferguson heard that Sir Matthew had divided his vast possessions equally between his wife and his daughter, and that the widow was free to do with her portion exactly what she pleased, his heart actually throbbed a little faster in his breast. Here was the wealth he needed to make his standing sure. It was then he dropped a more decisive hint than any other of the hints which he had dropped, the hint which had induced Lady Griswold to come home.

She had told him that he was not to meet her on her arrival in her native land. She would let him know when he was to call on her in town. She had let him know. He had waited on her command. He had been conscious of a slight internal fluttering as he came up the stairs. Now he held her by the hand.

"Am I altered?"

It was when she asked that question that Mr Ferguson had been made aware of that curious qualm. She had not altered anything like so much as might reasonably have been expected. She showed not the slightest sign of having lived in such a very trying climate. She was, perhaps, a little filled out. Perhaps a little more stately. There was about her the certain something which so distinctly divides the woman from the girl. But there was not a wrinkle on her face. Not a line of sorrow or of care. She looked at him, too, with the eyes of a girl; she certainly looked very much more like twenty-six than thirty-six. And yet! -

And yet, what? It is rather difficult to put the matter into words. The truth is, that as he stood in front of her, holding her hand in his, looking into her eyes, he felt an absolute conviction that this was not the sort of woman that he cared for. That this was not the sort of woman that he ever could care for now. But he could not tell her so. Just as little could he leave her inquiry unanswered.

"No, I do not think that you have altered."

Her womanly perception was not to be deceived.

"You are saying that to please me. I see you do think that I have altered."

"I think that you have grown younger."

"Ronald!"

She dropped her eyes, as a young girl might drop her eyes on receiving her first compliment. The blood showed through her cheeks. He felt that she expected him to say something else. But he could not say it.

"And me-what do you think of the changes which have taken place in me?"

She looked up at him shyly, with a shyness which he found curiously embarrassing.

"You are just what I expected you would be. See here."

Taking him by the hand she led him to a table. On the table lay a photographic album. The album was of considerable size. It seemed to be full of photographs. She opened it.

"See," she said, "I have them all. At least, I think I have them all."

The album contained nothing but photographs of Mr Ferguson. He filled it from cover to cover. When he perceived this was so, he was tongue-tied. He felt, almost, as if he were some guilty thing. She went on, -

"I made arrangements with someone over here-he is in a news agency, or something. I told him to find out whenever you were photographed and to send me copies. So you see that I have been able to follow the changes which have taken place in you from year to year."

He said nothing. He could say nothing. He could only turn over the leaves of that photographic album.

"But I not only have your photographs, I have every speech you ever made. I have read them over and over again. I believe I know some of them by heart. I have everything you ever wrote. I have records of you which will surprise you, one day, when you see them, Ronald." She paused. Then added, half beneath her breath: "And you? Did you take any interest in me?"

"Were not my letters proofs of that?"

"Yes, indeed! Ah, Ronald, if it had not been for you I should never have come home."

He was startled.

"But what was there to keep you out of England now?"

"Nothing, only you. I always told myself that I never would come back unless you wrote and said you wished me to."

He was silent for a second, oddly silent. It was with an effort that he seemed to speak.

"You take my breath away."

"Do I?" she laughed. "Ronald, instead of being eighteen years, it does not seem to me as if it were eighteen days since we were parted." Not eighteen days! It seemed to him as if it had been eighteen hundred years and more. "I want to tell you all about it. I always said to myself that I would tell you all about it the very first time I saw you, if I had to tell you on my bended knees."

"What is there to tell?"

"What is there not to tell! Now sit down and listen."

He had to sit beside her on a couch, and he had to listen. He did not know how to help it. He would have given something to have known. He felt that between himself and this woman there was a great gulf fixed. While she-she seemed to be so happy in his presence as to be unconscious that anything was wrong. She seemed to be unconscious that there was a single jarring note which marred the perfect harmony.

"Ronald, do you remember Major Pettifer?"

Pettifer! The mere mention of the name brought back to him the long passage of the years. Why, Pettifer had been dead these dozen years and more. He told her so.

"Has he? Well, it was owing to Major Pettifer that I married Sir Matthew Griswold."

"Owing to Pettifer? How do you mean?"

"He came down with you one day to mother's. At that time mother was worrying me to marry Sir Matthew, and Sir Matthew himself was worrying me even worse than mother. Between them I was nearly driven out of my mind. I chanced to be passing an open window when I overheard a remark which Major Pettifer addressed to you. 'To you,' he said, 'marrying a poor girl means ruin.' 'Well,' you answered, 'it shall mean ruin.' Your words struck me as with a sudden light of revelation. I made up my mind upon the instant. I told myself that if marrying a poor girl did mean ruin, then a poor girl you should not marry. Sir Matthew seemed even older than he was. My mother had told me, with her own lips, that it was quite possible that he would not live a year. I knew all through that you never would marry anyone but me. I knew you, Ronald! Even supposing Sir Matthew lived two years-then I should not be poor. You would not be ruined by mating yourself with poverty."

She was silent. And he was silent. This was far worse than he could possibly have expected.

"Do you mean to say that you married Griswold because of some chance words which you heard Pettifer address to me, a mere fragment of a conversation to which you did not even possess the key?"

"I do. I simply made up my mind that you should not be ruined by marrying me, even though, for love of me, you courted ruin. I resolved that when I became your wife, in every possible sense of the word I would bring you fortune."

"But during eighteen years of married life have you had no sort of compensation?"

"I have had the compensation of looking forward, the compensation of expecting this."

What could he say to her? He vowed that never again would he commit himself even to the extent of dropping a hint. He ought to have better learnt the lesson which had been taught him on many and many a platform.

"You have had children."

"One child-a girl."

"Was she no compensation?"

"Really, I can hardly tell you. I seem to have seen so little of her; though, of course, she has been with me nearly all the time. But, somehow, to myself, I never seem yet to have become a mother."

"How old is she?"

"Let me see, she was born the year that I was married, so she must be nearly eighteen. Frankly, Inez is so different to me in all respects that she never seems to me to be my daughter. Here she is." If Lady Griswold did not welcome the opening door, which was possible, she allowed no sign of annoyance to escape her. "Inez, this is Mr Ferguson."

Mr Ferguson stood staring, as if spellbound, at the girl who had entered the room. He felt more than half inclined to rub his eyes. It was an extraordinary thing. This big-eyed girl, who was so unlike the fair and stately Lady Griswold that she might almost have belonged to a different race of human beings, he seemed to have seen many and many a time in his dreams. He who flattered himself that he was no dreamer. Her appearance was so familiar to him that he could have drawn her likeness even before she entered the room. It was odd. It was even preposterous. Yet it was so. She advanced with outstretched hand. Even her soft, musical voice, with its faint suggestion of a foreign accent, seemed familiar to him.

"Mr Ferguson, I have seen you before."

"You have seen me, Miss Griswold? Where?"

"In my dreams."

Her mother interposed.

"In your dreams? Inez, don't be so silly! What do you mean?"

"I mean what I say." She turned to Mr Ferguson. "In your dreams, have you not seen me?"

Mr Ferguson hardly knew what to make of her, or of himself.

"It is an extraordinary thing, but I do seem to have seen you in my dreams, many and many a time."

"It was not seeming. It was reality. We have seen each other in our dreams."

"Inez! Mr Ferguson, let me show you some photographs of our home in South America." She led Mr Ferguson towards a table on which there was a large portfolio. As they went, she whispered, "Ronald, I sometimes really think that Inez is a little mad."

Mr Ferguson answered her never a word. For in an instant of time, in the flashing of an eye, something seemed to have come into his life which had never come into it before. For one thing, there had come into his life the real presence of the ideal woman of his dreams.

II

"I think that I have earned him, Marian!"

Mrs Glover, putting up her glasses, surveyed Lady Griswold through them quizzically.

"Earned him? You have earned him, over and over again, a hundred thousand times, my dear."

Lady Griswold positively blushed with pleasure.

"Do you really think so? Do you really think that he will think so too? To look at me you would not think I was romantic, but I suppose I am."

"If there is a more romantic creature at present existing in the world I should like to meet her, or rather, I am almost tempted to say I shouldn't. Are you sure that after all your romance will end well?"

"Sure?" Lady Griswold seemed surprised. "How do you mean?"

"Are you sure that this Mr Ferguson of yours will adequately reward you for your eighteen years of-what shall I say? – servitude or waiting?"

Lady Griswold dropped her eyes in that girlish way she had. Her fingers trifled with a fold in the skirt of her dress.

"You do not know him."

"I fancied that I did. I assure 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 passion. "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-"

"Blame? You have not been free from blame? I will not have you say that you have been to blame in anything, I will not let you say it, Ronald."

"But-"

"But me no buts! If there has been blame, then it has been wholly mine. But, Ronald, you will not blame me-now?"

"If you will permit me to explain-"

"Oh, yes, I will permit you to explain. Will you do it standing up? I would rather, since you ask my permission, that you make your explanation sitting at my side. I would rather, Ronald, have it so?"

It was maddening. Did she mean to compel him to play the brute?

"Lady Griswold, I-I must really beg you to hear me, without interruption, to an end."

"Ronald! Is that your House of Commons manner when the Opposition won't be still?"

He was a man whom it was notoriously, exceedingly difficult to irritate. But he was beginning then to be conscious of an unwonted feeling of irritation.

"I am simply here, Lady Griswold, to inform you that I propose to marry."

"Propose to marry! Is that the way in which you speak of it? And you do really think that it is news to me-after all your letters? Ronald! Ronald!"

It was inconceivable that a woman could be such a fool. Yet it was so. There was a rapturous suggestion in her voice which, literally, frightened him. The devil fly away with those letters of his! If ever he even dropped so much as a shadow of a hint again! She actually began to woo him. She came to him, she took both his hands in hers, she looked into his eyes-how she looked into his eyes! And he-he almost wished that he had no eyes to look into.

"Ronald! Ronald!" With what an unspoken eloquence of meaning she pronounced his name. "News to me? Rather-I will say it, after all these years-tidings of great joy. News to me! I will make you my confession, sir, in full." Why did he not nip her confession in the bud? Why did he stand there as if spellbound? He was speechless. A bolt seemed to have come out of the blue, and to have struck him dumb. And she went on, -

"For eighteen years, my lord, I have dreamed of this-this one hour. I cannot tell whether I am a wicked woman, or whether I am not. I tell you just how it has been with me. I have done what seemed to me to be my duty, from day to day, from month to month, yes, from year to year, and I do not think that anyone has ever heard me once repine. But all the time it has seemed that I, my own self, have been far away, and I watched and waited till I could join my own self-where you were. I knew that this day would come. I knew it, with a sure and a certain knowledge, all along. You see, Ronald, I knew you. I think it is that knowledge which kept me young. For I am young. I still am young, Ronald, in every sense. Indeed, I have sometimes feared that I am too young to be a fitting mate for a leader among men. Ronald, love of my life, speak to me, my dear."

He was looking away-down at the floor. He was standing in front of her, wearing the hang-dog air of a convicted criminal. He spoke to her.

"It is Inez." That is what he said.

She did not catch his meaning. Perhaps she did not distinctly catch his words. "Inez? What is Inez? Inez has nothing to do with us, my dear."

"Whom I am going to marry."

She looked at him as if she were dimly trying to realise what, by any possibility, could be his meaning. She seemed almost to think that great joy had caused him to lose his mental equilibrium, as it most certainly had caused her to lose hers. She put out her hands, as if he were a child, and advanced them towards his face.

"Ronald-kiss me, – after all these years."

Then the man blazed up. He seized her wrists just as her fingers touched his cheeks. He broke into a fury. "Don't."

She looked at him askance.

"Ronald-won't you kiss me?"

Still he could not tell it to her, not face to face. He roughly dropped her hands. He turned away. She looked at him in wondering amazement.

"Ronald, what do you mean?"

Then he turned to her. On his face there was that expression of resolution with which, in certain of his moods, the House of Commons was beginning to be very well acquainted.

"Lady Griswold, the purpose of my visit was to inform you that, with your permission, I propose to do myself the honour of marrying your daughter Inez."

Still she did not understand him.

"Ronald, what-what do you mean?"

She compelled him to be brutal, or, at least, it seemed to him that she compelled him.

"Lady Griswold, you must forgive my saying that you have made what I had hoped would be the happiest hour of my life one of the bitterest. If you had permitted me to speak at first you would have spared us both much pain. It would be absurd for me to pretend that I do not understand your meaning. You seem to take it for granted that things are to be with us as they were before the war. You appear to be wholly oblivious of the fact that eighteen-or is it nineteen? – years ago you jilted me."

"Jilted you? I-Ronald-I-I jilted you?"

"It is always my desire to use the most courteous and the gentlest language which will adequately convey my meaning. I know not how you may gloze it to yourself. To me it seems simply that-you promised to marry me, and you married Sir Matthew Griswold."

"But-Ronald-I-I have explained-just-how it was."

"Madam, did I require your explanation?"

She shrunk away, cowering as if she were some wild, frightened thing.

"But-but you wrote and asked me to come home."

"Lady Griswold, if you will refer to the letters of mine to which you are alluding, you will perceive that I merely suggested that it was possible that you might find more congenial surroundings in England than in Mexico."

"You-you meant more than that. And, Ronald-Ronald, I haven't ceased to love you all the time!"

"Lady Griswold, you compel me to use what may seem to be the language of discourtesy. How was I to know that, married to one man, you loved another? When you married him you died to me. I thought that, for me, all love was dead. But when I saw your daughter Inez-I have a constitutional objection to use the language of violence, or of passion. It is a plain statement of the naked truth that, when I saw your daughter Inez, that instant I knew that for me all love was not yet dead. It may appear to you that I have known her but a short time. Too short a time for knowledge. But I will say to you what I would not say to all the world. I seem to have known her-yes, certainly for years. I must certainly have known her in my dreams. I could have drawn her portrait, which would have been her very duplicate, instinct with all but life before she came into this room."

"Indeed. Is-is that so, Ronald?"

"I must have loved her in the spirit before I met her in the flesh. I must have done. And the strangest part of it all is that she seems, also, to have loved me."