The note began, 'Dear Mr. Angus, Mrs. Meredith would be very pleased if you could – '
The blood came to Rob's face as he saw the handwriting, but it went as quickly.
'They ask me down next Saturday,' Rob said bluntly to Dick, 'but you know why I can't go.'
'You had better come,' miserable Dick said, defying himself.
'She is to marry Dowton, is she not?' Rob asked, but with no life in his voice.
Dick turned away his head, to leave the rest to fate.
'So, of course I must not go,' Rob continued bravely.
Dick did not dare to look him in the face, but Rob put his hand on the shoulder of Mary's brother.
'I was a madman,' he said, 'to think that she could ever have cared for me, but this will not interfere with our friendship, Abinger?'
'Surely not,' said Dick, taking Rob's hand.
It was one of those awful moments in men's lives when they allow, face to face, that they like each other.
Rob concluded that Mrs. Meredith, knowing nothing of his attachment for Mary, saw no reason why he should not return to the house-boat, and that circumstances had compelled Mary to write the invitation. His blundering honesty would not let him concoct a polite excuse for declining it, and Mrs. Meredith took his answer amiss, while Nell dared not say what she thought for fear of Dick. Mary read his note over once, and then went for a solitary walk round the island. Rob saw her from the tow-path where he had been prowling about for hours in hopes of catching a last glimpse of her. Her face was shaded beneath her big straw hat, and no baby-yacht, such as the Thames sports, ever glided down the river more prettily than she tripped along the island path. Once her white frock caught in a dilapidated seat, and she had to stoop to loosen it. Rob's heart stopped beating for a moment just then. The way Mary extricated herself was another revelation. He remembered having thought it delightful that she seldom knew what day of the month it was, and having looked on in an ecstasy while she searched for the pocket of her dress. The day before Mrs. Meredith had not been able to find her pocket, and Rob had thought it foolish of ladies not to wear their pockets where they could be more easily got at.
Rob did not know it, but Mary saw him. She had but to beckon, and in three minutes he would have been across the ferry. She gave no sign, however, but sat dreamily on the ramshackle seat that patient anglers have used until the Thames fishes must think seat and angler part of the same vegetable. Though Mary would not for worlds have let him know that she saw him, she did not mind his standing afar off and looking at her. Once after that Rob started involuntarily for Molesey, but realising what he was about by the time he reached Surbiton, he got out of the train there and returned to London.
An uneasy feeling possessed Dick that Mary knew of the misunderstanding which kept Rob away, and possibly even of her brother's share in fostering it. If so, she was too proud to end it. He found that if he mentioned Rob to her she did not answer a word. Nell's verbal experiments in the same direction met with a similar fate, and every one was glad when the colonel reappeared to take command.
Colonel Abinger was only in London for a few days, being on his way to Glen Quharity, the tenant of which was already telegraphing him glorious figures about the grouse. Mary was going too, and the Merediths were shortly to return to Silchester.
'There is a Thrums man on this stair,' Dick said to his father one afternoon in Frobisher's Inn, 'a particular friend of mine, though I have treated him villainously.'
'Ah,' said the colonel, who had just come up from the house-boat, 'then you might have him in, and make your difference up. Perhaps he could give me some information about the shooting.'
'Possibly,' Dick said; 'but we have no difference to make up, because he thinks me as honest as himself. You have met him, I believe.'
'What did you say his name was?'
'His name is Angus.'
'I can't recall any Angus.'
'Ah, you never knew him so well as Mary and I do.'
'Mary?' asked the colonel, looking up quickly.
'Yes,' said Dick. 'Do you remember a man from a Silchester paper who was at the castle last Christmas?'
'What!' cried the colonel, 'an underbred, poaching fellow who – '
'Not at all,' said Dick, 'an excellent gentleman, who is to make his mark here, and, as I have said, my very particular friend.'
'That fellow turned up again,' groaned the colonel.
'I have something more to tell you of him,' continued Dick remorselessly. 'I have reason to believe, as we say on the Press when hard up for copy, that he is in love with Mary.'
The colonel sprang from his seat. 'Be calm,' said Dick.
'I am calm,' cried the colonel, not saying another word, so fearful was he of what Dick might tell him next.
'That would not, perhaps, so much matter,' Dick said, coming to rest at the back of a chair, 'if it were not that Mary seems to have an equal regard for him.'
Colonel Abinger's hands clutched the edge of the table, and it was not a look of love he cast at Dick.
'If this be true,' he exclaimed, his voice breaking in agitation, 'I shall never forgive you, Richard, never. But I don't believe it.'
Dick felt sorry for his father.
'It is a fact that has to be faced,' he said, more gently.
'Why, why, why, the man is a pauper!'
'Not a bit of it,' said Dick. 'He may be on the regular staff of the Wire any day now.'
'You dare to look me in the face, and tell me you have encouraged this, this – ' cried the colonel, choking in a rush of words.
'Quite the contrary,' Dick said; 'I have done more than I had any right to do to put an end to it.'
'Then it is ended?'
'I can't say.'
'It shall be ended,' shouted the colonel, making the table groan under his fist.
'In a manner,' Dick said, 'you are responsible for the whole affair. Do you remember when you were at Glen Quharity two or three years ago asking a parson called Rorrison, father of Rorrison the war correspondent, to use his son's Press influence on behalf of a Thrums man? Well, Angus is that man. Is it not strange how this has come about?'
'It is enough to make me hate myself,' replied the irate colonel, though it had not quite such an effect as that.
When his father had subsided a little, Dick told him of what had been happening in England during the last month or two. There had been a change of Government, but the chief event was the audacity of a plebeian in casting his eyes on a patrician's daughter. What are politics when the pipes in the bath-room burst?
'So you see,' Dick said in conclusion, 'I have acted the part of the unrelenting parent fairly well, and I don't like it.'
'Had I been in your place,' replied the colonel, 'I would have acted it a good deal better.'
'You would have told Angus that you considered him, upon the whole, the meanest thing that crawls, and that if he came within a radius of five miles of your daughter you would have the law of him? Yes; but that sort of trespassing is not actionable nowadays; and besides, I don't know what Mary might have said.'
'Trespassing!' echoed the colonel; 'I could have had the law of him for trespassing nearly a year ago.'
'You mean that time you caught him fishing in the Dome? I only heard of that at second-hand, but I have at least no doubt that he fished to some effect.'
'He can fish,' admitted the colonel; 'I should like to know what flies he used.'
Dick laughed.
'Angus,' he said, 'is a man with a natural aptitude for things. He does not, I suspect, even make love like a beginner.'
'You are on his side, Richard.'
'It has not seemed like it so far, but, I confess, I have certainly had enough of shuffling.'
'There will be no more shuffling,' said the colonel fiercely. 'I shall see this man and tell him what I think of him. As for Mary – '
He paused.
'Yes,' said Dick, 'Mary is the difficulty. At present I cannot even tell you what she is thinking of it all. Mary is the one person I could never look in the face when I meditated an underhand action – I remember how that sense of honour of hers used to annoy me when I was a boy – and so I have not studied her countenance much of late.'