The Guests of Hercules | Page 9

would not let her half-sister
even mention, in that connection, the name of the other Mary--or
Marie--Grant, who also had gone away sensationally. The eldest of the
"three Maries," the three prettiest, most remarkable girls in the convent
school, had left mysteriously, in a black cloud of disgrace. She had run
off to join a lover who had turned out to be a married man, unable to
make her his wife, even if he wished; and sad, vague tidings of the girl
had drifted back to the convent since, as spray from the sea is blown a
long way on the wind.
Reverend Mother would not hear Lady MacMillan say, "Strange that
the two Mary Grants should be the only young women to leave you,
except in the ordinary way," the ordinary way being the end of school
days for a girl, or the end of life for a nun.

"I want dear Mary to be happy in the manner that's best for her,"
answered the good woman, whose outlook was very wide, though her
orbit was limited, "If it had been best for Mary to stay with us, she
would have stayed; or else some day, when she has learned enough to
know that the world can be disappointing, she will return. If that day
ever comes, she'll have a warm welcome, and it will be a great joy to us
all; but the next best thing will be hearing that she is happy in her new
life; and she promises to write often." Then the clever lady proceeded
to ask advice about Mary's wardrobe. Should the girl do such shopping
as she must do in Aberdeen, or should she wait and trust to the taste of
Mrs. Home-Davis, the widowed aunt in London, who had agreed to
take charge of her?
The question had fired Lady MacMillan to excitement, as Reverend
Mother knew it would. Lady MacMillan believed that she had taste in
dress. She was entirely mistaken in this idea; but that was not the point.
Nothing so entranced her as to give advice, and the picture of an
unknown aunt choosing clothes for Mary was unbearable. She made up
her mind at once that she would escort her young friend to London, and
stay long enough at some quiet hotel in Cromwell Road to see Mary
"settled." Mrs. Home-Davis lived in Cromwell Road; and it was an
extra incentive to Lady MacMillan that she would not be too far from
the Oratory.
It was evening when the two arrived at King's Cross Station, after the
longest journey Mary had ever made. There was a black fog, cold and
heavy as a dripping fur coat. Out of its folds loomed motor-omnibuses,
monstrous mechanical demons such as Mary had never seen nor
pictured. The noise and rush of traffic stunned her into silence, as she
drove with her old friend in a four-wheeled cab toward Cromwell Road.
There, she imagined, would be peace and quiet; but not so. They
stopped before a house, past which a wild storm of motor-omnibuses
and vans and taxicabs and private cars swept ceaselessly in two
directions. It seemed impossible to Mary that people could live in such
a place. She was supposed to stay for a month or two in London, and
then, if she still wished to see Italy, her aunt and cousin would make it
convenient to go with her. But, before the dark green door behind

Corinthian pillars had opened, the girl was resolving to hurry out of
London somehow, anyhow, with or without her relatives. She decided
this with the singular, silent intensity of purpose that she did not even
know to be characteristic of herself, though it had carried her through a
severe ordeal at the convent; for Mary had never yet studied her own
emotions or her own nature. The instant that the Home-Davises, mother
and daughter, greeted her in their chilly drawing-room, she lost all
doubt as to whether she should leave London with or without them. It
would be without them that she must go. How she was to contrive this,
the girl did not know in the least, but she knew that the thing would
have to be done. She could not see Italy in the company of these
women.
Suddenly Mary remembered them both quite well, though they had not
met since a visit the mother and daughter had made to Scotland when
she was seven years old, before convent days. She recalled her aunt's
way of holding out a hand, like an offering of cold fish. And she
remembered how the daughter was patterned after the mother: large,
light eyes, long features of the horse type, prominent teeth, thin,
consciously virtuous-looking figure, and all the rest.
They had the sort of drawing-room that