THE HEART OF A FATHER
Oddly enough, seeing the General's feeling towards his sister-in-law,
seeing, too, that he and Nelly had hardly ever had a thought or taste
that was not in common, a certain affection grew up on Nelly's part for
Lady Drummond. An acute observer would have said that the affection had
something conscience-stricken about it. There were times when Nelly's
eyes asked pardon of the Dowager for some offence committed against her,
and this usually happened when the Dowager was making much of her, as of
a daughter-in-law who would be dearly welcome when the time came.
Something of the love Lady Drummond had borne for her husband had passed
on to his niece. She was immensely proud, in her secret heart, of the
deeds of the Drummonds. Despite her hectoring ways, she looked up to and
admired the General, although he had been too simple to discern the fact
and profit by it. Robin's divergence from his father's ways was,
secretly, an acute disappointment to her. When she caressed Nelly with a
warmth which none of her friends would have credited her with
possessing, there was compunction with the tenderness. The child ought
to have had the delight of marrying a soldier, a hero whom she could
adore, as she herself had adored her Gerald. When she pressed the golden
head to her angular bosom she was asking the girl's pardon for her son's
shortcomings.
"I shall have heroic grandchildren," she said to herself. "Although
Robin is a throwback to the Quaker, the grandsons of Gerald and Denis
Drummond must be fighting men."
She pondered long over those grandchildren, and derived a grim pleasure
from the thought of them. She even spoke of them to the General, when
Nelly was out of hearing.
"It was a disappointment to both of us that Robin is a man of peace,"
she said, acknowledging the fact for the first time. "Not but that he is
a good boy--a very good boy. The fighting strain will recur in the next
generation. We shall have soldiers among our grandchildren."
"Grandchildren!" growled the General, turning very crimson in the face.
"I call it indelicate to discuss such subjects. As for Nelly's marrying,
why, she's only a child. I should feel very little obliged to the man
who would want to take her from me at her age."
"Nelly is nineteen," the Dowager reminded him, "and the marriage can't
be delayed much longer. It ought to be a source of satisfaction to us
that the young people are so pleased with the arrangement. I know that
Robin has never thought of anyone but his cousin, and I am sure it is
just the same with the dear child."
The General grew red again--not this time with anger, but rather as
though the Dowager's words had stirred some sense of guilt in his
breast. He muttered something grumpily, and, discovering that his
favourite pipe must have been left in his own den, he escaped from Lady
Drummond for a while.
As a matter of fact, his mind had been plotting mischief. He did not
care so much that it was against the Dowager, if it had not been that
the memory of his dead brother came in to complicate things. And, after
all, his plotting seemed to have come to naught. He had gone so far as
to invite young Langrishe to dinner for a specific occasion, without
result. The young man had written to say that he had effected his
exchange into the --th Madras Light Infantry, and would be so very much
occupied up to the time of his departure that he feared dining out was
out of the question.
The General had known he was going away. He had known it before he
received that letter, before he had seen it in the Gazette. He had known
from the day the regiment had gone by without Captain Langrishe in his
wonted place. He had felt with his arm about his girl's shoulders the
sudden shock that had passed through her. So she had not known either.
He had not prepared her. There was not an understanding between them. He
saluted as light-heartedly as ever to all appearance, but he did not
look at Nelly. Nor did he make any remark on the change in the regiment.
After that day the passing of his "boys" ceased to be the old joy to
him. Something was gone out of the ceremonial. It took all his _esprit
de corps_ to pretend to himself as well as to others that he felt no
difference. He felt the limpness and dejection in Nelly. He saw that her
roses had faded, that she walked without the old joyous spring. He heard
her no longer talking to the dogs, trilling to the canary. It was
January now, and raw, cold weather. It seemed as though the sunshine had
vanished from the house for good. The General had been wont to say that
the cheerfulness of his house was within it, not without it. He had come
home from London fog and rain with a happy sense of its bright fires and
spaciousness, its carpets and furniture, not so new that a muddy foot or
a stray shower of tobacco-ash was a thing to be feared--old friends
every one of them. The love and loyalty within his doors were something
that came out to welcome the General's home-coming like a sudden
firelight streaming out into the black night.
Now his little girl was unhappy, and the shadow of her unhappiness was
over his nights and days. It was when he felt this that he had written
to Captain Langrishe, saying nothing to her about it, stealing out, in
fact, at night to post the letter secretly, he whose correspondence,
such as it was--he was no great penman--had always lain in the
letter-basket on the hall table for the servants to scrutinise the
addresses if they would before it was posted.
When the answer came he congratulated himself on his forethought.
Luckily, that morning he was first at the breakfast-table. Of late
Nelly, who had been wont to rise as cheerfully as a waking bird, was
tardy occasionally. The General suspected broken sleep, and had bidden
the servants tenderly not to call her, although the breakfast-table was
not the same thing with no bright face and golden head opposite to him.
When he had read the letter he thrust it into an inner pocket. The
servant, who was attending, went away at the moment, and the General got
up quickly, and with a stealthy glance at the door, buried the letter in
the heart of the fire, raked the coals over it, and was in his place
before the servant returned.
"Confound the fellow!" he said under his breath.
Plainly, there was nothing more to be done. The child had to go through
it. People had to endure such things. Yet he was miserable, watching
furtively her dimmed roses and the circles about her eyes. His little
Nell, who had lived in the sunshine all her days!
It was, perhaps, not to be wondered at that, in the perturbation of his
mind, the pendulum should have swung towards Robin. "Confound the
fellow!"--(meaning Captain Langrishe)--"What did he mean by making Nelly
unhappy?" A still, small voice whispered to the General that the young
man was acting on some foolish, overstrained, honourable scruple just as
he would have done himself in his youth--nay, to-day, for the matter of
that. But he would not listen to the voice. He fretted and fumed, puffed
himself up into a great rage as men of his temperament will. Confound
the fellow! He had gone half-way to meet him, for Nelly's sake, and the
fellow had refused to budge. Confound him and be hanged to him! The
General would have used much worse language if the simple piety which
hid behind his blusterousness had not come in to restrain him.
He blamed himself--to be sure, he blamed himself. What a selfish old
curmudgeon he had been, always thinking of himself and his own likes and
dislikes! Where could his Nelly find greater security for happiness than
in the keeping of Gerald's son? Everybody thought well of Robin. There
had never been anything against him. Why, not a week ago, one of the
finest soldiers in the army, a field-marshal, a household word in the
homes of England, had button-holed the General to congratulate him on a
speech of Robin's.
"That young man will be a credit to you, Drummond," he had said. "Mark
my words, that young man will be a credit to you."
And the General had been oddly impressed by the opinion, coming from his
old comrade in arms, and one of the finest soldiers that ever stepped.
And, to be sure, he had been trying to set Nelly against Robin all the
days of her life.
When he had come to this point in his meditations he groaned aloud. A
thought had come to him of how little Nelly would be really his, married
to Robin Drummond. He would have no need for the house then. He would
have to dismiss the servants, the old servants of whom he was fond, who
adored him, and go into lodgings. He might keep Pat, perhaps. Even the
dogs would go with Nelly. He would never have his girl any more. The
Dowager would be always there. The Dowager would know better than anyone
how to set up an invisible barrier between Nelly and her father. Why,
since she had been their neighbour things had not been the same. She had
carried Nelly hither and thither, to concerts and At Homes and
picture-galleries and what-not. She talked of presenting her at Court,
with an air of significance which the General loathed. The question in
her eye and smile--the General called it a smirk--the very transparent
question was as to whether it was not better to wait and present Nelly
on her marriage.
When the Dowager was sly she made the General furious. Was his little
girl to be married out of hand to Robin Drummond without being given the
chance to see the world and other men? He asked the question hotly,
pacing up and down the faded Persian rug in his den. Then a chill came
on his heat. He had not been able to keep Nelly from choosing, and she
had chosen unwisely. He had had a dream of himself and young Langrishe
and Nelly and the babies in the big happy house. They would belong to
him--no one would push him away from his girl. They would be together
till they closed his eyes. The thought of it now was like a green oasis
in the desert; but it was a mirage, only a mirage!
And Nelly must not suffer. Langrishe had rejected her--rejected that
sweet thing, confound him! And there was her cousin Robin, patient and
faithful, waiting to make her happy. He forgot that once upon a time he
had been furious with Robin for his patience. Robin was a kind fellow, a
good fellow. He seemed to be always at the beck and call of his mother
and Nelly, always ready to escort them. Why, only yesterday Nelly had
said that there was no one so comfortable as Robin to go about with, and
then, in a fit of compunction, had flown to her father and hugged him
hard.
"Never mind, Nell, never mind," the General had said. "I never took you
about much, did I? We were great home-keepers, you and I. Never seemed
to want to gad about, did we? I ought to have taken you about more. It
was a dull life for a young girl--a dull life. I ought to be obliged to
your aunt for showing me the error of my ways, for making life
pleasanter for you."
He gulped over the end of the speech.
"It was a lovely life," cried Nelly wildly, and then burst into tears.
The General was terribly distressed. He had had no experience of Nelly
in tears. She had never wept or fainted or done any of the interesting
things young ladies were supposed to do in his time. She had been always
the light of the house, always happy and healthy and gay.
While he looked at the bell uncertainly, being half of a mind to summon
assistance, Nelly relieved him from his doubt by running away out of the
room, and when they met again he did not remind her of the scene. That
discretion of his went to her heart. It was so strange and pitiful for
him to be discreet, so unlike him.
After that he began to praise Robin Drummond, not too suddenly nor too
effusively at first, but by degrees, so as not to awaken Nelly's
suspicions. He amazed Robin Drummond by his cordiality in those days,
and the young fellow commented on it whimsically to Nelly herself.
"He has been telling me all my life that I am a poor creature," he said,
"and here he is, to all intents and purposes, eating his own words. Just
fancy his wading through that speech of mine on the estimates and
pretending to be interested in it, even praising it, Nell. Seeing that
the speech was all against our maintaining our big standing army, on a
motion to cut down the expenditure, it is bewildering. Is it a mild
joke, Nell dear?"
"You may call it a joke if you like," she said, her eyes filling with
tears. "I call it heart-breaking, heart-breaking. If he would only abuse
you as he used to do!"
"Dear Nell, what's up?" asked Robin, in great penitence. "I had no idea
I was saying anything to hurt you. The dear old man! Why, I never
resented his abuse. I'd rather he'd abuse me, like a dog, as they
say--though I don't see why anyone should want to abuse a dog--if it
made you happier."
Certainly, all Nelly's world was very good to her in those days. As for
Robin Drummond, he thought of women with a chivalrous tenderness
somewhat strange considering that the Dowager was his mother. To him
they were something delicate, mysterious, inexplicable. If he had had a
sister he would have adored her. Not having one, he lavished on Nelly
the feeling he would have given a sister; and hitherto he had been
content with the ardour of his feelings. What could a man wish for
sweeter and prettier beside his hearth than little Nelly? He had fallen
in love with that plan of his mother's for him and Nell with lazy
contentment. He liked Nelly's society, and it did not occur to him that
he would be just as well pleased with her daily companionship if he
could have it without the tie between them becoming more than cousinly.