The handsome Brandons

CHAPTER XVIII.

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."

CHAPTER XIX.

I VISIT THE GREAT WORLD.

It must not be imagined that during those happy weeks I had been quite forgetting my novel. On the contrary, it grew steadily during the morning hours in which I worked at it, and it was not the worse, I am sure, for the new pleasantness that had come into my life.

As time went on, and the friendship between myself and the General throve, I even allowed myself to be persuaded to read him some chapters of it; and finding him so full of interest and so excellent a critic, I went on with the reading of it as it grew. He had all the love of a story which belonged to the youthfulness of his heart, and I found that the more romantic I grew—and I had been rather shy of the romantic passages at first—the keener grew his interest.

Indeed, he took my characters as seriously as if they had been living men and women, and would argue with me vehemently about the exact course of conduct that might have been expected from one or another,—a delightfully flattering thing to an author. In nine cases out of ten he was right, and I was not too proud to accept his suggestions, so that the book, as it grew, came really to have a part of the General in it, and I used to say we had better publish in collaboration.

I was going to look for a publisher for Love in the Valley, though I did not at all expect to be like those silly people in novels who make tremendous successes with a very first book. I expected to have a very stiff, uphill fight before I should even see my name on the title-page of a book.

"And when I do see it," I said to the General, "it will not be my first book. Why, my first book was burnt early in my teens!"

The interest the General took in my hero, Maurice Westwater, was something really touching.

"However you've managed it, young woman," he said, "you've made a success of that lad. Somehow he reminds me of my own boy."

As all the General's suggestions about the development of Maurice's character tended, I felt sure, to make him more and more a portrait of Lance, I was not surprised if, by and by, the likeness came to be more than a shadowy one.

One fine September afternoon brought Aline home, and overjoyed I was to see her. The sea-breezes had given her dear fair cheeks a touch of brown which delighted me, while her step was brisk, and her eyes tranquil as I had hardly dared to hope.

The very first thing she did when she came into the house, before she removed her wraps, was to go upstairs to Pierce's room, which Oona had kept all those months with drawn blinds. She remained there only a few seconds, but in the time she had drawn up the blinds, and flung all the windows open to the sweet air.

"I am going to put the twins next door to you, Hilda," she said when she returned, "and keep for myself that room which has known so much of heaven."

While she drank her tea we all gathered about her, and poured out our stories about the new tenant of Rose Hill, and the joys of his domicile.

Aline listened with her maternal smile.

"What a kind old man he must be!" she said in a pause of the crowding voices.

"Not so old as all that amounts to," said one of the boys rather resentfully. "You don't call sixty old, Aline?"

"Well, I don't call it exactly young," said Aline, smiling. "Still, I thought your friend was older, more Lady O'Brien's contemporary."

"Oh! he knew her when he was quite a young fellow and she was a married woman, long after she took Peter," said Hugh.

"Dear boy!" said Aline. "Peter!"

"Well, doesn't she always call him so herself?" pleaded Hugh, unabashed.

"Why, he has a son no older than you, Aline," said Cusha, the younger of the twins.

"Oh, a son!" said Aline; "and where is he?"

"They don't know. He went with a party to Kabul, and the whole of them disappeared. 'Awkins thinks it as likely as not that he was tortured and killed."

"Cusha!" cried I, "have you been talking to Hawkins? Not 'Awkins, remember."

"'Awkins he calls himself, and I did talk to him a little, wee bit."

"The twins," said Hugh, with a grin, "think no end of Hawkins. Why, they're always talking to him, and the General knows, and says Hawkins will teach them nothing but good. Why, he's drilling them now, and he's teaching them to ride! He says they're the gamiest little ladies he ever heard tell on."

"I hope they haven't been running wild," said Aline, with an apprehensive glance at me.

However, I was sure the General was right, and that his soldier-servant was fit to be trusted with our little sisters.

A day or two later the General and Lady O'Brien met at Brandon, and such a delightful interchange there was of reminiscence and compliment that we younger ones hardly got in a word. Esther, I thought, after her absence, looked listless and preoccupied. I was very anxious to know how affairs were going with her, and got her to myself after a while. But she had really nothing to tell. Her lover had wished to write to her during their absence from each other, but she had forbidden it, and then, woman-like, she was half-sorry.

"He hates the secrecy as much as I do," she said, wringing her hands, "and is always anxious to speak. Now I think I shall let him. I do not feel that we are so helpless now that I have gran."—by this name she had come to call Lady O'Brien,—"and I am sure the General would help us if we needed help. I used to feel that we were only a parcel of friendless girls and children caught in the net of that wicked old spider who ruined us."

She shuddered violently.

"I dream of Sir Rupert at nights, of him and that wicked man of his—terrible dreams of injury and death to my Harry. I can't make him see his grandfather as I see him, nor believe the necessity of watching him as one would watch a wild beast. I have the fear for two, the loneliness and the helplessness."

"Poor Essie!" I said; "you are all nerves. Why, how you tremble! This must be put a stop to, Essie, or I'll speak myself. After all, what can Sir Rupert do except turn his grandson adrift? We are in a law-abiding country, more or less, within reach of police and magistrates, and the strong arm of the law generally. You are making yourself nightmares, darling."

"That is what Harry says; but I cannot shake off the fear. Do you remember that when I was a child I used to dream of him, of Sir Rupert and his dogs, and scream out at nights. It is so lonely up there at Angry that anything might be done, and no one a whit the wiser."

"Now, Essie," said I, "if this goes on you'll make yourself ill, and then who is to see after Harry? He is wiser than you are. Let him tell Lady O'Brien that you love each other, and let him tell Aline also. Promise me that you will. I am sure you will not find Aline hard, and your godmother will be, I am sure, all on your side."

Esther promised me, and looked happier when she had given the promise.

A day or two later something very surprising and delightful happened. The General came over to see Aline in the afternoon, and mentioned in the course of conversation that he had to go to London on business, which would probably occupy him a week.

"I shall stay with my sister in Bloomsbury," he said, "and I was thinking that you might perhaps be so kind as to trust Miss Hilda to my care. There is a little bit of business we might be about arranging while we're there."

"It would be very nice for her, General, and she has had no holiday, poor dear!" said Aline. "It is very kind of you, indeed. But the business?"

"Ah! Miss Brandon, that is Miss Hilda's secret, unless she likes to share it with you."

"Are you sure she knows it herself, General?" said I, with a wild hope springing up in my heart.

"Well, this is the way of it, Miss Brandon," said the General. "This very industrious young lady has, it seems, not only arranged my library for me, like a born librarian, and even begun to catalogue it, but she has written a novel, or the big end of one, during your summer holiday."

"A novel, Hilda!" cried Aline with hands upraised.

"And a very excellent one, if I'm any judge at all," said the General; "but we want an expert opinion, and I'm going to ask my old friend Linklater, of Linklater, Lee, & Warner, Paternoster Square, to pronounce upon it. I believe he'll read it himself for my sake, and let us know the result within a week."

"Oh dear General!" cried I, "what an angel you are!"

"My dear child, you've been very good to me, and it's nothing at all, nothing," said the General hastily. "So I may write to Lucy, Miss Brandon, to say I'm bringing a young lady?"

"Thank you very much, General. It won't be troublesome to Miss MacNeill?"

"Lucy'll be delighted. She'll be for taking the child to half the societies in London that affect her particular views. Lucy is a good soul, though we don't agree on many points. There, Miss Hilda, don't look alarmed. You and I are going to have a real good holiday-time and see the sights. Lucy shall only have you when there's something really pleasant to see or do."

I made joyful arrangements for my little expedition, and the question of frocks was set at ease by Lady O'Brien's having just presented me with an autumn outfit exactly like Esther's, only differing in colour. A long blue-gray cloak with a fur collar, and a smart little felt hat with an eagle's feather, made me all right for travelling, and I was not likely to have social engagements that would require fine indoor raiment.

The journey was a delight to me, though I certainly got a little tired on the way up to Dublin. However, a Turkish bath, which the General prescribed for me, and a good dinner did wonders; and afterwards we went down to Kingstown, where I had a snug little cabin to myself on the mail-boat, and slept all night like a top. Indeed I awoke to the swaying of the boat and the swish of water under the port-holes, and to hear the stewardess saying that we would have just time for breakfast before getting into Holyhead.

I felt it delightful to be taken such care of as I was on that journey. A man's kindness is, I think, always more touching and even more complete than a woman's; and the dear old General seemed to think of me at every turn. Then he had such a way of making railway porters, and people like that, fly to obey him that we seemed to get everything done for us sooner than other passengers. I could see that he "tipped" generously, but it wasn't that, for how could they know beforehand? Perhaps his way of looking in a towering passion imposed on them, though with my knowledge of him it made me laugh to think of anyone being afraid of the General.

When we reached Euston our luggage—there was not very much of it—was piled on top of a hansom, which I thought such a strange and delightful vehicle, and the General gave an address which I did not catch, but which certainly sounded different from Bloomsbury. When he had got inside he explained to me.

"We are going to dine before we go to my sister's, my dear. My sister has some very odd ideas about food, as you'll discover presently, and I take all my meals out when I'm with her. But when we get to her you must follow my example, and pretend to eat. Don't say you have not had your dinner—there is no such thing as a white lie, child—but seem to eat when she sets the things before you."

"But won't she know we're very late?" said I.

"Not she. Lucy's meals occur according to the hours she comes in from her committee meetings. She never knows what hour it is apart from those."

We had a most enchanting meal at a very gorgeous French restaurant, all lit with electric light and very gay with coloured shades and flowers and mirrors—and such odd, odd people.

"I thought you'd like it," said the General, highly pleased at my little cries of rapture. "Personally I prefer the Blue Posts, but there is a man here who can cook a sirloin, and you can enjoy the kickshaws."

I did enjoy the long menu very much indeed, and rather pitied the General and his plain fare. When we had finished, he rose up and uttered a sigh.

"And now for Lucy," he said.

I began to feel rather alarmed about Miss MacNeill. However, there was always the General to befriend me, so I plucked up heart of grace.

When we reached Bloomsbury Square, the houses of which seemed to me very high and gloomy, the door was opened to us by a pretty little maid, who beamed all over at seeing the General.

"Well, Phyllis," said he, "how are you, and how's your mistress?"

"Quite well, thank you, sir. The mistress has only just come in. She will be with you in a minute, sir."

"Just take this young lady upstairs to get her hat off, and make her very comfortable, Phyllis. Mind, very comfortable, like a good girl."

"That I shall, sir," said Phyllis with a pretty smile.

I found my bedroom very dainty, and what amazed me in London, it looked into a great chestnut tree, of which the leaves were all a warm lovely gold.

"Why, how comfortable I shall be, Phyllis!" said I. "It all looks so nice."

"Yes, don't it, Miss?" said Phyllis. "'Tis a very comfortable 'ouse, only for the eating, which it is awful."

I noticed that Phyllis pronounced her "h's" very curiously, but I shall not attempt to reproduce her pronunciation.

"The mistress she's vegetarian, Miss, and expecs everyone to fill 'emselves with what I calls garbage. An' as for beer, you wouldn't get a drop, not if it was ever so. But cook, she's recommended by the Vegetarian League, an' supposed to be strict. She 'as a joint sent in reg'lar by the greengrocer, an' put down for artichokes an' such like. So we gets our bit. There, poor girls has to take care of theirselves"—and, with a defiant little flounce of her head, as if she rebutted my imaginary objections, pretty Phyllis marched out of the room.

I found Miss MacNeill a very brisk old lady, with bright eyes and rosy cheeks and white teeth, quite like what the General would have been if he had lived at home in peace and a temperate climate.

She had been to a meeting of the Anti-Animal Food Society, and was very full of the subject. She told some very dreadful stories, and had a way of flinging them at the General's head as if he were a monster of cruelty, though, I am sure, poor dear, he loves the animals as much as anyone could, and the greeting between him and his sister's asthmatic pug and waddling poodle had been very pleasant to witness.

He bore his sister's stories wonderfully for a while, I suppose because he was conscious of his own deceit about the dinner. At last he got testy.

"Drop it, Lucy!" he cried; "can't you see you're making this child quite pale? It isn't a subject for dinner anyhow."

"Yet, Hugh," said Miss Lucy with a little spark of battle coming into her eye, "I've seen you sitting down to a meal of bleeding flesh which didn't seem to repel you the least bit in the world."

The General recovered his temper suddenly.

"That was in the old days, my dear," he said.

"Ah, if I could really believe you were changed!" she sighed.

"Anyhow," he said hastily, "here's this child sending away her food untasted."

I thought this low of the General.

"You mustn't take things to heart, my dear," said Miss Lucy kindly. "What you're eating has caused suffering to nothing that lives. There, I must go slow with you, I see. But after you've been a week in this house, my dear, you'll never see meat eaten again without a shudder. I've just brought out a new pamphlet, Hugh—'The Feeder on Flesh, or the Human Vampire'. The League tells me it is most successful."

"I dare say," grunted the General. "But what is this I am eating now, Lucy? Some sort of truffle? It isn't half-bad."

"We call it vegetarian beefsteak. It is a sort of toadstool which grows on rotting bark," said Miss Lucy, looking pleased.

"Great Heaven! Lucy, do you want to poison us? Don't touch a bit of it, Hilda. I don't mind being dosed, Lucy, but when it comes to being poisoned it's another matter. I wish you'd tell us beforehand the constituents of your ... feeds."

It is impossible to reproduce the contempt and loathing which the General managed to impress into the last word. Miss Lucy smiled placidly. I noticed after a time that when the General grew angry she became calm.

"Ah, Hugh, Hugh," she said with an air of affectionate reproof, "if you'd only give up your horrible bloodthirsty diet how your temper would be the gainer, to be sure!"

CHAPTER XX.

FREDA'S MYSTERY.

"Miss Lucy," said I next morning at breakfast, "do you know the way to Parson's Green?"

"Parson's Green—let me see. It's somewhere beyond Chelsea, I think."

"What do you want to know for, child?" asked the General.

"I have a sister living there whom I wish very much to see."

"Ah! you'd better go to-day then, for I've to spend a tiresome morning over business. We can meet again in the afternoon, and I'll take you to a theatre in the evening. Perhaps Lucy would come too."

"Not I," said Miss Lucy, good-temperedly. "My theatre-going days are over. I wonder that you, with your convictions, Hugh, would be seen in such places."

"I saw a play once," said the General simply, "called 'The Flag of England'. The hero was a very brave man and a good soldier. I thought that anyone must be the better for seeing it. Of course, I don't know much about theatres, Lucy, but I thought I'd like to show this young lady some gaieties. Perhaps you could advise me where to take her?"

"I was going to offer to take her to the annual meeting of the Society for the Abolition of the British Army."

"No societies please, Lucy," said the General a little gruffly.

"I forgot you were a man of blood," said Miss Lucy, "and didn't mean to be personal, Hugh. But about your theatres, if you'll stick to Shakespeare and Adelphi drama, I think you'll be quite safe. You'd better book seats for Irving in Henry V."

"Thank you, Lucy, I will," said the General meekly. And then turning to me: "If you've quite finished breakfast, my dear, you'd better come along. I'll put you on the way for Parson's Green."

I said I had quite finished. I had eaten a little porridge, but found nothing else that I could eat. Eggs were forbidden according to Miss Lucy's creed, and though she had made a concession to my weakness so far as to allow me milk, she ate her own porridge with treacle and drank her coffee black, because, as she said, "she'd feel that she was robbing the innocent offspring of the cow if she were to do as we were doing."

I felt rather hungry as I stood up, but I really couldn't face Miss Lucy's macaroni and haricot beans at a meal which I always like best of all the meals of the day.

When I came downstairs with my outdoor things on, Miss MacNeill looked at me critically.

"What kind of a feather is that you are wearing, my dear?" she asked a little sharply.

"An eagle's feather," I answered.

"I hope they don't tear it from the living bird," she said severely.

"It would be worse for them if they did," said I. "It is a feather the boys found on the side of Brandon which the golden eagle had dropped from his wing."

"Oh, I suppose if he dropped it there can be no wrong to him in your picking it up?"

"I should think not," said the General. "Be easy about Hilda, Lucy. She's as incapable of cruelty as you would be yourself. You won't find her wearing ospreys."

"Oh no, indeed!" I asserted fervently, "I wouldn't if I were to go hatless all my days."

"My sister's a good woman," said the General, as we went down the steps together, "and is right about many things though she does get hold of the wrong end of the stick often. Still, I daresay if I had her convictions I'd act up to them as she does. Aren't you hungry, my dear?"

"I am rather, General."

"So am I. I've been saving myself for breakfast. There is a quiet little hotel near here where we can get fresh eggs and kidneys done to a turn. Mind, my dear, you are never to make yourself ill eating Lucy's messes. Fortunately she's not very observant, dear woman, and you've only to pretend to eat. I'll see that you have all your proper meals, my dear."

We had a very snug little breakfast together, which I enjoyed the more that I had been making up my mind to endure hunger till I got to Freda's. What was to happen if Freda was out after my long journey I would not allow myself to think.

When we sallied into the street again the General accosted a very burly policeman and asked him the best way to get to Parson's Green.

"There's the thrain an' there's the bus," said the policeman, to my surprise, in a brogue that might have walked out of Brandon village yesterday.

"Can we get to it by way of Threadneedle Street?" asked the General, whose business lay that way.

"Ye cud," said the giant with a genial smile that robbed the speech of any suggestion of impertinence, "just the same way as ye'd get to the spot I'm stannin' on be way av Chaney an' Americay. That is, ye'd be turnin' your back on it all the time till ye pulled up straight forenint it. Now, look here, sir," with a change of tone to one of the liveliest concern, "if I was you I wouldn't be putting her in them dirty thrains this fine day. 'Tis an elegant ride a-top o' the bus from Piccadilly Circus."

"Is it too far for a cab ride?" said the General abruptly.

"Not if yez have the money to pay for it. 'Tis half-a-crown be justice, three an' six be fairity."

"We'll have the hansom, then," said the General.

"Ye'll be makin' no mistake, sir," said the policeman, "an' here's the best horse on the rank just trottin' up in the nick of time."

The General put me in carefully, and then pressed something into my hand. I looked down at the gold in my palm.

"I ought to go with you by right, and would if I could, my dear," he said with a face that admitted of no denial. "Remember this little holiday is entirely my affair. Have you silver?"

I said I had.

"Well, then, hansom back; remember I shall have you on my mind till I see you again. But your sister will put you in a cab."

The cab journey seemed to me interminably long, and yet there was no sign of green fields. At first our way lay through very fine streets, with beautiful shops, and crowded with such traffic as I had never dreamt of. I found the hansom more exhilarating than any form of progression I have ever known since I used to ride Pat Maloney's colt barebacked in the old days; and I felt very much excited about going to see Freda and her dear little boy. Despite an occasional qualm of doubt about Freda, my affection for her was as strong as ever, and from sheer excitement I felt myself turning hot and cold.

Still, I thought it must be a long long way to Parson's Green yet, for we were now going through miles of mean little streets full of tiny pea-soup-coloured houses all exactly alike and indescribably monotonous. I was amusing myself by trying to discover what it was those wonderful costers were shouting, when suddenly the hansom pulled up before one of a hundred little houses, and the man shouted down on the top of my head:

"Now, Miss, Magnoliar Cottage. 'Ere you are!"

"Oh!" cried I, "are you quite sure? Is this Grove Avenue? It isn't at all the kind of place I meant. Are you quite sure this is Parson's Green?"

"All right, Miss!" he replied stolidly, "Magnoliar Cottage, Grove Avenue, Parson's Green. See it wrote up there on the corner of the road."

I looked and saw a plate with "Grove Avenue" inscribed on it, and above the door of the house, in ridiculous stucco work, I read "Magnolia Cottage". I descended, bewildered and doubtful, and let the cab go half unwillingly. There must be another Parson's Green, and when I had discovered my mistake how should I ever find another cab in this wilderness of shabby little houses?

However, the man drove off, and I knocked at the door. It was opened by a little maid of about fifteen, quite neat, with her white cap and apron, and quite unconscious of the large smut on her little perked-up nose.

"Oh, please," said I, in a voice which was, I am sure, full of distress, "does Mrs. Hazeldine live here?"

"She do, miss," said the little maid, in a most sympathetic voice. "Please to walk in. I'm expectin' of her shortly, an' Mrs. Vincent too, that 'as gone to take Master Jacky a walk on the Common. You've 'ad 'ard work, I expec', to find the 'ouse. Most people 'as."

She ushered me into a little room, quite pretty and refined, though there wasn't an article of substantial furniture in it except a piano. However, with frilled muslin curtains, and a few water-colours on the wall, low chintz-covered chairs, and a hanging-shelf of books, to say nothing of a canary singing in the window and a bow-pot of autumn leaves, it was surprising what cheerful results were obtainable. There was the tiniest spark of fire in the grate, but it was burning briskly, for the morning had a touch of frost. Still, the place was very, very poor, though anyone could see that it belonged to ladies. I began to guess dimly that our dear, loving, foolish Freda had been deceiving us all those years since Jim's death.

Presently there was the click of a latch-key outside, and in came Freda herself, looking so tired and worn, and rather shabbily dressed. She cried out when she saw me, and we flew into each other's arms. When she released me at last, she looked at me with a mixture of shamefacedness and fun in her expression, which recalled the old happy Freda of long ago.

"Well, darling," she said, "and what do you think of Magnolia Cottage?"

"Oh, Freda, you bad girl!" I answered, "why did you deceive us all like this?"

"It was rather silly, I acknowledge, for I was sure to be found out some time. Still, I certainly did not inaugurate the deception. Aline chose to believe me a rich woman, and since the belief seemed a comfort to her, I let it stand; I thought it would be a blow to her if I were to undeceive her, and she would fret about us, and want Jacky and me at Brandon, where already, as I well know, there is little enough to spare."

"No," I said; "now I think of it, you never did contribute a brick to our air-built castle. The only thing was that you seemed to stay in fine houses, and meet fine people, and all that."

"In some houses even the governess is allowed to meet the guests,—not in all, though."

"Still, I think Aline will be hurt, Freda. You should have trusted her."

"Ah! well, if I did wrong I was punished. I have felt often and often that you must all think me such a mean wretch, rolling in riches, and never doing anything for any of you. I often felt inclined to throw it up and confess. Perhaps I distrusted myself, for there have been times when I grew tired of the struggle, and if Aline had known and had said 'Come', I would have been spiritless enough to come, and to stay. Still, the times have not been many," she said more brightly. "The world has not been bad to me, as a whole, and I had always my dear old friend to come to, and she kept my boy for me, more tenderly than I could myself."

"This room is really pretty, Freda."

"The rooms are all pretty, I think, because a woman like Mary Vincent dwells in them, and imparts something of the fragrance of herself to them. In Magnolia Cottage it is possible to forget Grove Avenue."

"And just think, Freda; we took your house, from the extreme rurality of its title, to be situated in a delicious country place."

"We rather run to rural titles in our London slums. See, over there is the 'Daisies', and next door the 'Grass-plot', yonder the 'Hawthorns' and the 'Laburnums' face each other."

"Who lives in them?"

"Usually working-men and their very large families. We're considered guilty of sinful waste, so Polly, our handmaiden, tells us, because we don't let lodgings. But come upstairs and see the rest of the domicile. You'll take off your hat and cloak and stay for a good long day. Oh, by the way, you haven't told me yet how you come to be here!"

I told her, as I was taking off my hat and washing my hands,—which I was surprised to find seemed to require constant washing in London,—about the General, and his business and my business, and that I had not to meet him till six o'clock.

"How lucky I was at home!" she cried. "We are going to have such a long long gossip, for though Aline's so faithful a letter-writer there are a thousand-and-one things that never get into letters. Yet, if you had come last week you would have found only Mrs. Vincent and Jacky. I have just left a place, and am going on to another next week."

"You poor dear!" said I. "The last must have been a very nasty place, to make you look so tired as you did when you came in."

"It was rather nasty," she said, "but the next is going to be much nicer. It is in a lovely part of Devonshire too, and I shall like the lady to whom I am going."

When we had left the pretty little chintz-hung bedroom and were seated at the fire downstairs, I asked Freda how it was she came to be so poor.

"Jim had saved nothing," she said. "He always meant to, poor love, but he was so generous, and then he never could have feared that his wife and boy would want. You know his parents are extremely wealthy, and he was their favourite son."

"Yet they let you want."

"They didn't know. I must do them that much justice. They thought I was left comfortably. But they must have had a strange opinion of me, for they offered to adopt my Jacky and make him heir to all their money. I took the suggestion as an insult, and walked out of the house. I have never heard of them since, and I am sure Jacky and I have disappeared as effectually from their ken as if the sea had opened and swallowed us."

"What horrid people!" cried I impulsively.

"They are very good people in their own way," answered Freda quietly. "But they are bitterly prejudiced, Lady Hazeldine especially. It was a great blow to her when Jim married a wild Irish girl. Especially as she had wanted him to marry a great pet of hers, a city heiress named Cicely Lambton. She had wished for it almost from the babyhood of both, for she and Mrs. Lambton were school-friends. I believe she thought that if Jim had married an English girl he would not have died."

"Stupid woman!" said I, not knowing how to express my indignation against Jim's mother to Jim's widow. "Why, she ought to have loved you a thousand times better because you loved Jim and he loved you, and you both have lost him."

"That doesn't always follow, little Hilda. Perhaps I shall not love the woman who will, one day, step into the first place in Jacky's heart and evict me."

"Tell me, Freda," said I, "have you had horrible times? Is it so bad for her 'who fareth up and down another's stairs'?"

"I don't know," she said thoughtfully. "I have met hard and unkind, as well as gentle and kind people. Yet, on the whole, I am not sorry that I have had to work. It would have been worse if I had had to sit down with folded hands and look at the wreck of my life,—worse surely amid the Hazeldine luxury, worse even at dear Brandon. Ah, no, no! work has made it possible for me to live."

Her face had assumed a very tragic expression, the face now of a woman of many sorrows.

"It has been sweet too," she went on, her tense expression relaxing a little, "to help to keep up this little home. Always, if things grew too hard for me, there were peace and love waiting for me here. Ah, the poor women without such a spot on earth!—how I pity them! And then there was always saving up for me a delicious thing that I looked at in my moments of leisure, the thought of coming home to Jacky."

Her face softened, and went back into the little roundnesses and dimples I remembered. Then she laughed, and it was like the sun coming out.

"Why, here is Jacky!" she cried out; and I saw a sweet-faced elderly woman and a swaggering small sailor pass the little bow-window.

She ran out and opened the door, and with a word to her friend came back, proudly leading her son.

"Hullo!" said he, with the free manner of a born son of Neptune, "you're a pretty girl, but you aren't half as pretty as my Muddie!"

"Oh Jacky, Jacky, you rude boy! and you silly boy as well! This is your dear pretty Auntie Hilda come to see you. Go up and say 'How d'ye do?' nicely, and kiss her."

"How d'ye do?" he said, swaggering up to me with his hands in both pockets. "I'll tell you what I'd like very much. A guinea-pig, or else a white rat. You don't happen to have thought of bringin' one? Hey?"

Freda burst out laughing even while she tried to stiffen her features to an expression of rebuke. I looked from her to the curly golden head and blue eyes of the boy. Ah, well! Freda is a happier woman than most, though she is a widow indeed.

CHAPTER XXI.

FREDA BREAKS SILENCE.

Half an hour later we were sitting at a pleasant meal, and I was only sorry not to be hungrier, for the Magnolia Cottage of my imagination could not have provided more inviting viands than the cold fowl, and rolls and butter, and honey and fragrant coffee, which made our lunch. Freda flushed with pleasure when I said so.

"Ah!" she said, looking towards her friend, "if anybody can make a shilling go as far as a pound, it is Mary Vincent."

"Hardly that, my dear, but I am not an old campaigner for nothing, and the advantage of living in a slum is, that food is sold at prices within reach of the poor. Then I spent a couple of years of my girlhood in a French convent, and learned from Sister St. Genevieve to make coffee," said Freda's friend.

I liked Mrs. Vincent uncommonly well. She was quite plain-looking, but had, I thought, one of the sweetest expressions imaginable. Her hair, too, was very pretty, white, and with a wave in it, a striking contrast to her olive-hued cheeks and quick, brown eyes. But looking at her one only got an impression of the goodness of the face; the irregular features and small eyes and colourless skin faded into insignificance as compared with that.

Master Jacky, too, had his chair at the table, beside Mrs. Vincent. I must say he behaved very well for so small a boy, and one evidently so much petted. Except for an occasional indiscretion, such as asking why wasn't there chicken and honey every day, his conduct was exemplary. Indeed, with regard to her training of him it was evident that Mrs. Vincent had not been a soldier's wife for nothing. She had a number of military words of command, which she uttered with an immovable face whenever the young gentleman seemed on the point of becoming obstreperous. It amused me very much to see the boy's prompt obedience to them; but that was, as she explained to me, because Jacky was to be a soldier when he grew up, and he had already begun his training.

I couldn't help thinking that she was probably better for the young pickle than his own dear little mother, whose eyes danced and twinkled with such merriment when Jacky forgot that he was a soldier acting under orders. Mrs. Vincent's face never lost its sweet seriousness for one moment, even when Freda and I were visibly merry.

After lunch Mrs. Vincent carried the boy off and left us to our chat There were so many things we had yet to say to each other. After I had told all the home news I came back to Freda herself.

"Now tell me," I asked, "what a 'nasty place' is like, such as your last 'place'?"

I made a wry face over the word, which seeing, Freda laughed.

"Well, I'll tell you, dear," she said. "In taking my last place, which was to be for a short time, I thought I'd depart from the beaten path of governessing, which is really a very sad and lonely life. So I answered an advertisement for a lady to act as hostess at a Bayswater boarding-house, to take the head of the table, receive people who came on business, and all that kind of thing. The salary was miserable, but the place sounded an easy one, and there was one great inducement. I could have Jacky to stay with me whenever I liked, and oh, my dear, if you could know the pangs of loneliness I have suffered for want of my boy at times! The thought of a 'place' where Mary could fetch him to me now and again for a few hours was like heaven."

"Poor Freda!"

"Oh, poor Freda indeed! You shall hear how it turned out. I found the woman a coarse, red-faced, cunning-eyed person, not at all more prepossessing because of her oily smile. I took a dislike to her at once, though she meant to be very amiable. She said that her business was so large that she could no longer carry out all the duties of hostess herself,—she required another 'lydy' to help her. The real truth was that she was conscious of her own deficiencies, and had come to see that she lost clients by receiving them herself. She really did want a lady to coax people to come in."

"She must have had common-sense anyhow," said I.

"Oh, my dear, she knew well! She wasn't sensitive, even with regard to herself. She told me that my duties would be, besides presiding at table, receiving visitors, &c., to do such small household tasks as a lady would naturally do in her own house. She hoped, she said, that I wouldn't mind doing a little mending."

"Well?"

"Well, I said I didn't mind anything in reason. Then she took me upstairs and showed me my bedroom. It was the merest attic, but I could see a tree or two from it, and at the foot of my bed there was a little old cot, which clinched the matter for me, for I imagined Jacky in it, and the joy of undressing and dressing him myself, and listening to his soft breathing all night. So I said I'd come, without further ado."

"Is it so seldom you have Jacky to yourself, Freda?"

"Well, you see, Hilda, Mary Vincent has been like his mother so long that when I come home I don't like to disturb the existing order of things. She, dear woman, would utterly efface herself if she had the least suspicion of my longing to do everything for Jacky once in a while. But when I come home she thinks I need rest, and am to be waited upon, and will have me lie in bed in the morning while she does everything for both of us."

She sighed a little wistful sigh, and then smiled.

"But I always say to myself that I am Jacky's mother, and that is enough happiness for me. I can yield the rest to her who loves him so much also, and has never had a child of her own. It is so long since I have had things to do for Jacky that I daresay I should be awkward and unaccustomed now."

"Poor Freda!" I said again.

"And rich Freda," she laughed. "I will confess to you, Hilda, that I got over my first great pang when I let my friend bathe Jacky while he was yet a baby. That was—"

She broke off abruptly, and I knew she had been going to say "after Jim died", and then had choked over it.

"She had been so good to us—to me and Jim—that when I saw she was hungry for the child, I stood aside. She never guessed that it cost me anything, dear soul! I cannot understand now how mothers give up the personal care of their babies to anyone else if they can help it. In that way, at least, rich women are not so happy as poor women."

"But the boarding-house, Freda?" I said.

"Ah, yes! I was forgetting. The money was very small, but having Jacky whenever I wished, as the woman said I might, outweighed everything, so I went. Mary thought, too, that the duties, being light, would not wear me out, as I have been worn out where there were half-a-dozen energetic children. But I soon found that I was to be a kind of white slave. I was to be housemaid and housekeeper and hostess all rolled into one. Even at the hour when a servant's duties are over, mine were going on. If Mrs. Tatlow—that was her name—saw me sitting still for a moment she found new work for me. Why, after a hard day I have sat up till two in the morning mending house-linen. There were years of arrears of mending, all waiting for me."

"Why did you stay when you found what it was like?"

"I couldn't come home at once, because I had been having a long rest, and the money was all spent. And Lady A. had promised to secure me the place I am now going to in Devonshire, so I thought I would stay on, and endure it without complaint for a while. Then the summer came, and there was an unusual demand for rooms, and Mrs. Tatlow came to me one day with her oily smile, and said she had been obliged to take my room for a time, and if I would not mind the inconvenience of sleeping downstairs she thought she could make me very comfortable. I said I shouldn't mind, for I had not then seen the room, and my attic, since the hot weather set in, had been so hot that I thought I couldn't be much worse off. But, oh, Hilda, if you had seen the room! It had no window, but was lit by a grating in the door. It ran under the street. It was dark, noisome, unwholesome in the last degree, for it had only been intended to put brushes and such things in. My wretched little bed almost filled it completely. I protested when I saw the place, but quite in vain. My own room was already taken."

"And you slept in it, Freda?" I cried out, horrified.

"I could do nothing else. Mary had taken Jacky to Broadstairs—we have always managed to give him a month at the sea every summer. This little house is taken for that period by two maiden ladies, friends of Mary's, who like to come up once a year to see the pictures and shops. I had nowhere to turn to. I sat down in the horrible little hole and cried bitterly. Then I concluded that I could stand it till Mary came home, and so I set my teeth to it."

"The woman ought to have been put in prison," I said angrily.

Freda laughed.

"That is precisely what Susan, the kitchen-maid, said. 'She did ought to be in 'Olloway, that's wot she ought.' Indeed I got plenty of sympathy from the overworked, badly-fed, worse-housed, kitchen staff. I often wondered at the warmth of their partizanship, poor dears. They were worse off, as far as sleeping accommodation went, than myself, though, of course, a servant has always this advantage over an untrained lady, that she can leave. There are so many of us," said Freda, with a watery little smile.

"You had some friends, anyhow?" I said.

"Yes; though I wouldn't listen to their sympathy; not so much for my dignity's sake—that sort of thing levels human beings somehow—as that I couldn't bear it at the time."

"You poor darling!" I cried, embracing her.

Again the rainbow smile flitted over her face, and she went on.

"The sympathy that really touched me most came from the ostensible master of the house. Before this time I had only seen Mr. Tatlow flitting along a corridor, or diving into a doorway to get out of my way. He was the most absurd little man to look at—pale-faced, tearful-eyed, with long red weepers of whiskers, and a general miserableness of expression."

"So well he might have," said I acridly. "Well—"

"So well he might, my dear. Susan informed me that he had to clean all the boots, sometimes forty pairs a day, in the season. He was the most oppressed of all his wife's victims."

"Why didn't he assert himself, then?"

"Oh, Hilda, you should have seen him! Poor little soul! He was one of those men who make you feel it to be so tragic that they should be men and yet like that. Coventry Patmore makes his plain heroine talk of the sadness—

            "That God should e'er
Make women, and not make them fair".

But the tragedy of men like poor little Mr. Tatlow is sadder still."

"How did he show his sympathy?" I asked.

"Oh, poor little soul! by facing his wife for me with the spirit of a lion. He was miserably afraid of her, yet he did that. And he apologized to me with a delicacy and good feeling that showed he had the heart of a gentleman in his poor little frame."

"He could do nothing?"

"No, only get himself into hot water by his championship of me. I believe the woman was horribly violent when she was angry. She vented all her violence on him, for though she was savagely angry with me she said nothing. I only knew it by her glance of malevolence when she thought herself unnoticed."