PAGE 10
Young Robin Gray
by
“Have you seen Mr. Gray since his return from the Mediterranean?”
Ah! one of the brooches had slipped from her fingers to the bottom of the case. There was an interval or two of pathetic murmuring, with her fair head under the glass, before she could find it; then she lifted her eyes to the consul. They were still slightly suffused with her sympathetic concern. The stone, which was set in a thistle–the national emblem–did he not know it?–had dropped out. But she could put it in. It was pretty and not expensive. It was marked twelve shillings on the card, but he could have it for ten shillings. No, she had not seen Mr. Gray since they had lost their fortune. (It struck the consul as none the less pathetic that she seemed really to believe in their former opulence.) They could not be seeing him there in a small shop, and they could not see him elsewhere. It was far better as it was. Yet she paused a moment when she had wrapped up the brooch. “You’d be seeing him yourself some time?” she added gently.
“Perhaps.”
“Then you’ll not mind saying how my father and myself are sometimes thinking of his goodness and kindness,” she went on, in a voice whose tenderness seemed to increase with the formal precision of her speech.
“Certainly.”
“And you’ll say we’re not forgetting him.”
“I promise.”
As she handed him the parcel her lips softly parted in what might have been equally a smile or a sigh.
He was able to keep his promise sooner than he had imagined. It was only a few weeks later that, arriving in London, he found Gray’s hatbox and bag in the vestibule of his club, and that gentleman himself in the smoking-room. He looked tanned and older.
“I only came from Southampton an hour ago, where I left the yacht. And,” shaking the consul’s hand cordially, “how’s everything and everybody up at old St. Kentigern?”
The consul thought fit to include his news of the Callenders in reference to that query, and with his eyes fixed on Gray dwelt at some length on their change of fortune. Gray took his cigar from his mouth, but did not lift his eyes from the fire. Presently he said, “I suppose that’s why Callender declined to take the shares I offered him in the fishing scheme. You know I meant it, and would have done it.”
“Perhaps he had other reasons.”
“What do you mean?” said Gray, facing the consul suddenly.
“Look here, Gray,” said the consul, “did Miss Callender or her father ever tell you she was engaged?”
“Yes; but what’s that to do with it?”
“A good deal. Engagements, you know, are sometimes forced, unsuitable, or unequal, and are broken by circumstances. Callender is proud.”
Gray turned upon the consul the same look of gravity that he had worn on the yacht–the same look that the consul even fancied he had seen in Ailsa’s eyes. “That’s exactly where you’re mistaken in her,” he said slowly. “A girl like that gives her word and keeps it. She waits, hopes, accepts what may come–breaks her heart, if you will, but not her word. Come, let’s talk of something else. How did he–that man Gow–lose Callender’s money?”
The consul did not see the Callenders again on his return, and perhaps did not think it necessary to report the meeting. But one morning he was delighted to find an official document from New York upon his desk, asking him to communicate with David Callender of St. Kentigern, and, on proof of his identity, giving him authority to draw the sum of five thousand dollars damages awarded for the loss of certain property on the Skyscraper, at the request of James Gow. Yet it was with mixed sensations that the consul sought the little shop of the optician with this convincing proof of Gow’s faithfulness and the indissolubility of Ailsa’s engagement. That there was some sad understanding between the girl and Gray he did not doubt, and perhaps it was not strange that he felt a slight partisanship for his friend, whose nature had so strangely changed. Miss Ailsa was not there. Her father explained that her health had required a change, and she was visiting some friends on the river.