Under One Flag Part 23

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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sing 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 flas.h.i.+ng 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 gla.s.ses, 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.