THE STORY OF A SORROW.
After that I continued my work of arranging General MacNeill's
library with a mind very much at rest, and in a spirit of thorough
enjoyment. I saw now no necessary end to my use of this delightful
place, for soon after we had made friends the General presented me
with a key to the garden entrance of the library.
"It's a symbol," he said, "of your right to come and go without
consulting me or anyone else, and I thought you'd like to have it,
though of course there'd be always someone to open the door to you,
and no one at all to say you nay."
He was quite right. That symbolical key did add to my happiness in
the library, for I no longer felt an outsider, but as one who had an
inalienable right there.
The General never interfered with my work, except to approve of it,
and occasionally to insist that I should sit down and read and rest
myself when I was very anxious to get on with my librarian's work.
"Very good, very good!" I would hear him say behind my back while I
worked; and I would just toss him a greeting from off my ladder and
go on, while he went briskly back to his own work. We never talked
except during the more or less long half-hour we gave to our tea.
The General was tremendously energetic, and he was working hard those
days getting things into order. No one, he determined, should place
his bric-a-brac or statuary or pictures but himself; he had an
extreme sense of tidiness, and was fidgety about his things. He
would have no help from the women servants. He and Hawkins did all
the unpacking and hanging and setting up. I could understand better
now his angry indignation when he found me handling his books, and
took me for a maid-servant, and I was quite proud of the immense
compliment he paid me when he left me so much to my own guidance
among them.
He was not exactly a reading man, though he could enjoy an hour with
a book and a pipe as much as any man living. A great part of his
library had come down to him from his grandfather, the Bishop of
Westchester, and he had added to it with knowledge and pleasure, yet
without any very overweening delight in the books as books. He told
me once that he liked books about fighting, whether the fight was in
the natural or the spiritual world. The _Iliad_ or the _Holy War_
equally appealed to him, and in _The Soldiers Pocket-Book_, or the
last treatise on gunnery, he was pretty equally at home.
When we met at tea-time, we each gave a report of what we had been
doing. The General himself always fed Paudeen with a few Naples
biscuits and a little saucer full of milk-and-water, after which he
was dismissed. "Now, right about face--march!" the General would
say, adding, "Discipline is necessary for little dogs as well as for
human beings if they are not to infringe the rights of others." And
Paudeen soon understood that at "March!" he was to retire to the mat
and ask for no more food.
Sometimes after tea I went, at the General's request, to see what he
had been doing. Rose Hill was going to be a very beautiful house, I
thought, not being used to the rich colours and deep dyes of the
carpets and draperies, of which the General had a great profusion.
These made a fine background for the statues and the pottery and
bronzes and silver. I used to think it all too beautiful for an old
soldier, whose own tastes I gathered to be quite simple. Once I said
something of the kind to him. We were great friends by this time,
and I could risk being impertinent. He had called me to see a Clytie
in front of a piece of Indian embroidery, purple, bronze, and scarlet.
"She's lovely," said I heartily. "What a beautiful house you will
have presently, and all for yourself, General!"
"Ah!" said he, "you're thinking it's thrown away on the old soldier."
"Oh, no," I said hastily, "I didn't mean that!"
"You did, child, and you were thinking as well, though you'd be too
gentle to own it even to yourself, that I am an old fool for
gathering such things when a few years must see them sent to the
hammer. And you're right, so far as you know. But when I was
gathering them I had no thought of surrounding my own worn-out old
life with beauty and luxury."
He sighed and turned away, and I remembered how he had spoken before
of someone who had taken his angry words seriously and had left him.
I felt very sorry for the General, and very indignant against that
unknown person, whom I only wished I had there to give a bit of my
mind to.
"Why don't you have your sister to live with you, General?" I asked,
for he had told me he had a sister living in London.
"What, Lucy!" he cried. "Oh, we'd be flint and steel! The same
house wouldn't hold the two of us for long, though we're really
attached to each other. Wait till you've seen Lucy, and you'll
understand what a preposterous suggestion you've made, young lady."
I had told Aline in my letters about General MacNeill, and how I was
enjoying myself arranging his books, and by return had came a perfect
tornado of messages from Lady O'Brien to her old friend, and a letter
from Aline saying how glad she was I had found such a solace in my
loneliness as my visits to Rose Hill. I really was not sorry now
that I had missed Kilkee. I felt sure I should not have enjoyed it
half so much as I was enjoying my life at home.
One afternoon the General walked home with me, and made the
acquaintance of the twins--whom at first his aspect nearly put to
flight--and the two boys. He became great friends with them. The
boys were quick to recognize in him the boyishness that in a sense
placed them on a level, while there were all his achievements, which
they had learned--Heaven knows how--to give the friendship that
romantic tinge of hero-worship which just made it perfect. The
meeting resulted in a visit to Rose Hill, which was the first of
many. By this time the house was getting into order, and the General
was, as he would have said, off duty; and as for me, they never
disturbed me. I might slip away after tea, and leave the party on
the lawn, following those diagrams of the General's in which he
showed how a battle was fought.
I have laughed to look back and see the stiff old veteran and the
boys all down on their knees making a battlefield in the gravel of
the path, while the little girls peered between them, scarcely less
fascinated.
Nor was the General always the _raconteur_. He was ready to listen
with kindling eyes to the story of the big trout caught below the
Lacken Falls last May, or that wonderful adventure when the boys had
climbed to the eagle's eyrie, happily during the bird's absence, and
had discovered a perfect charnel-house. It was a feat never
repeated, for Aline had been so frightened about it, and so stern,
that they had taken her will for law.
"Fine boys, fine spirited lads!" the General said to me one day.
"They ought to be serving Her Majesty. They're cut out for soldiers."
"Not both of them, General," said I. "We want one boy at home to
take care of so many women."
"He'd take care of you all the better for a few years' soldiering.
However, duty's duty, and if the lad sees his post is here, and he
can find work to occupy him, let him stay. Why isn't the second lad
at Sandhurst?"
"Sandhurst means money, General."
"Pooh!" he said very fiercely, "what is money?"
"A commodity which we Brandons lack very much."
He looked at me sharply, and muttered to himself that something must
be done; the fine lads couldn't be allowed to loaf the best part of
their lives away; but as he didn't speak to me, I took no notice of
what he said, and the matter dropped.
A day or two later, when the General was having one of his field-days
with the boys and the twins, I heard them all come in from the lawn,
and tramp upstairs to the General's private domain. I did not hear
them come back, and presently the tea was brought in and set on a
table.
"Ring the bell, Jane," said I.
Jane rang the bell and departed, but no one came. The tea stood some
minutes, and then I rang again, but with no result.
"Ah!" said I to myself, "they are so absorbed in their discussion
that they have not heard." And so I went in search of them.
I found my way to them by the low hum of voices, and when I entered
the room where they were I came upon the whole party bending over a
table on which there was an open map. The General was tracing for
them the path of a retreat, and so absorbed were they that they did
not hear me come in.
I looked about me with interest. The room was bare even to
nakedness. A little iron bed stood in one corner. There was a high
wooden desk, a few penitential chairs, a bath with a can of cold
water standing in it, a shelf with a few shabby books obviously of a
devotional kind. On the wall, between some soberly-coloured texts,
were one or two prints of famous soldiers; and above the
mantel-piece, with its row of pipes, its pistol-cases, and a long
sword in its scabbard, there hung a portrait in pastel of a young
man, the one bit of colour in the room.
I gazed at it fascinated. It recalled to my memory the young man who
had been so kind that day long ago at Annagassan Races. Why, it was
he surely--the expression, the eyes, the mouth, at once grave and
humorous. I had not forgotten him all those years, and I had no
doubt about him now. How strange to find his picture here in General
MacNeill's room!
"Hullo!" said Hugh, suddenly espying me. "Here's Hilda. You'll have
to do it all over again for her, General."
"Perhaps you don't know," said I, "that the tea's been standing a
quarter of an hour, and the bell has rung twice. It's not what I
call discipline, General."
"No more it isn't," said the General gaily. "I've been training the
young recruits badly, but we were fighting, Miss Hilda, and in
war-time we take a snack when we can. Run away, youngsters, run
away, or the tea won't bear drinking."
The next day when we were alone I spoke to General MacNeill about the
portrait, with a curious shyness for which I was at a loss to account.
"Ah, the portrait!" he said after me. "You noticed it. And what did
you think of it, my dear?"
A film came over the fine blue eyes, and I was half-sorry I had
spoken of it, yet I was very curious to find out who the original was.
"I'm not interested in it as a work of art," I said, "but I can't
help fancying that I once saw the original."
"Did you, now?" said the General with eager excitement. "Like
enough, my dear. He was stationed close by here with his regiment
some years ago."
"It's the very same," said I. "I thought I remembered the eyes and
the mouth. I wonder the boys didn't notice it; but perhaps they've
forgotten him. They were only children then."
"How did you meet him? Tell me everything about it," cried the
General, and in his excitement the film of suffering rolled away from
his eyes, and left them bright once more.
I told him the story of my accident.
"Ah," he kept saying, "that was so like my Lance! Yes, yes; Lance
was always so kind and clever. He kept his wits about him when other
people got theirs scattered. Ah, good boy! good boy!" and so on.
When I had finished he sank into a reverie, so that he forgot to tell
me who Lance was. I had to recall it to his memory.
"I have often wished," said I, "to know the name of the gentleman who
befriended us in so timely a way, but in the confusion I never asked,
and afterwards we found that he had gone away. I don't even know to
this day."
"Why, bless me, haven't I told you? Lance is my boy, my own boy, my
son."
"Why, to be sure he is," said I. "Now I know how it is that when you
look kind and funny you have reminded me of somebody. Of course the
colour is all different, but the expression is the same."
"In looks Lance is the image of his dear sainted young mother. But I
daresay there is an expression, as you have seen."
"Why isn't he with you, then?" said I bluntly.
The General lifted his eyes upwards, and again the strange film of
suffering came over them.
"For five years now," he said, "I have not known if my son is dead or
living."
"Poor General!" said I stupidly, feeling for the moment as if I too
had had a blow.
"I deserved my punishment," he went on in a low voice. "I had not
then learned to bury my will in the Will. I was a hot-headed,
wilful, evil-tempered old man, though even then the Light was leading
me. I tried to force my will on the boy, and when he would not have
it, for he too had a will of his own and something of a temper, I
bade him begone, never thinking he would take me at my word. But he
did, and from that hour to this I was alone till you came."
"But why don't you ask him to come back?" said I.
"He volunteered for special service in Afghanistan, and there he
disappeared. Whether he was killed or taken prisoner, none knows,
except God. But I am sure that if he could have come to me, he would
have come long ago. His anger against me could not have endured all
these years."
"You poor, poor old man!" said I, beginning to cry: the story had
made me feel so lonely and forlorn.
The General came round and stroked my hair tenderly.
"Good little girl!" he said, "to be so sorry for an old man's
trouble." But indeed I felt as if the trouble were my own. "There,
my dear," he went on. "Don't spoil your pretty eyes. Kneel down
with me now, and let us resign ourselves to the Will. Wherever my
boy is, and it is hard not to know what is befalling him, he is never
out of reach of the Power and the Love."
We knelt down then, and the poor old General poured out a prayer
which I thought most heart-breaking in its pathos. I seemed to
realize, as he revealed his heart unconsciously, all the fears my old
friend had had to endure for his boy in the hands of a cruel enemy.
The prayer seemed to help and comfort both of us. When we stood up I
took the General's brown old hand in mine.
"I am sure he will come back," I said fervently.
"Thank you, my dear, thank you," he said hastily; and then he added,
"I am sure you are a blessing, a helper and comfort sent from God to
a lonely old man."
Then he told me how he had come to quarrel with his son. He had
tried to make a marriage for him with a certain Miss Milbank, and
when the young man had refused to accept his father's choice for him
the hasty quarrel had ensued.
"Now, my dear," said the old General sadly, "you understand how it is
that I come to have so many pretty things. I would have given up
everything to them, so long as they kept me in a corner of their
hearts, and a corner of their pretty house, where I could look on at
my boy's happiness, and see perhaps the little grandchildren growing
up about me. I wanted to settle him, to ensure his happiness, as if
I could be his Providence. Well, well, and I thought May Milbank
cared for him, but afterwards I found that I was all wrong."
"Dear General," said I again, "I am quite sure he will come back."