The handsome Brandons

CHAPTER XXII.

BOOKS AND SOLDIERS.

The day after I saw Freda I went with General MacNeill to call on his friend, Mr. Linklater. I can tell you my heart beat as we went in through the narrow nest of streets that make the publishing quarter, and I saw names on the street corners that told me we were in the heart of my Mecca. Paternoster Row, Ave Maria Lane, Amen Corner,—I whispered the names to myself as softly as though I were a votary.

We went through a narrow passage into a kind of shop on the first-floor of a tall house, but no one was buying or selling. Only a clerk sat at a desk, with a pen behind his ear, amid walls of books in bundles of brown paper, or standing in piles in their outer wrappings.

"Mr. Linklater, sir?" he said in answer to the General; "I will see if he is in. Will you and the lady step in here?"

We followed him into a stuffy room, ventilated only by a window opening on the outer office. The walls of the room were of muffled glass, and when the clerk had switched on the electric light and left us I was free to walk about and look at the books published by the firm which stood about on tables and shelves. Would mine ever be there, I wondered, as we waited!

The General had taken off his hat and was mopping his brows with his handkerchief while he grumbled at the stuffiness of the place. It was stuffy—but I didn't mind it a bit. I thought I should love to be one of the people whose shadows I could see passing along the glass corridors—to breathe and smell books all day, to see famous authors, and handle proofs.

Presently the clerk returned to us and asked us to follow him. We went up in a comfortable padded lift, which in itself was a delightful experience to me. Then the clerk opened the door, and we stepped out into a long corridor. He knocked at a door which stood a little open, and in answer to a "Come in" he ushered us across the threshold, and left us with a low bow.

A tall, dusty, untidy man came to meet us, and greeted the General very warmly. I stood in the background and looked at him. His reddish-brown hair was sprinkled thickly with gray. He wore a very old coat, the lapels of which bore some traces of tobacco ash. He had a rough grayish-brown beard and bright shrewd hazel eyes. He seemed as if he were always running his hands through his hair in desperation, and as if he had slept in his clothes.

So much I noticed while the old friends were greeting each other. Then the two turned to me.

"And so this is the author of Love in the Valley!" said the great publisher in a singularly musical voice. "Upon my word, I could not have believed it was such young work, General."

"Ah! Miss Brandon is very old for her age," replied the General, highly delighted at the implied compliment to the book. "You've been reading it, Linklater?"

We had sent in the manuscript before leaving home.

"Yes, yes," said Mr. Linklater, still looking at me very kindly; "I've dipped into the early chapters. I think well of it, very well, for a first book. It isn't a Jane Eyre, you know, nor a Wuthering Heights. Still, 'tis pleasant reading, and very hopeful."

"That's all we wanted you to say," said the General, a bit testily. "We're not fools about our first book, are we, Hilda?"

"Indeed," said I truthfully, "Mr. Linklater's verdict is far kinder than I had dared to hope for."

The publisher looked away from me as if the subject were done with.

"And how are pheasants in your part of the world, MacNeill?"

"Not much, Linklater. Poaching has been rampant for years. There's no such system of fat and comfortable preserving as you have here; and then the heavy rains kill off the young birds, all but the strongest."

"Ah! that's bad, that's bad. Any blackcock?"

"The mountains simply swarm with every kind of game, from deer to snipe. But nothing's been taken care of. My place has been derelict for years. I'll put in a couple of keepers, and next year you must come and judge for yourself, if God spares us all."

"Why shouldn't He?" said the publisher hastily.

"Ah! Linklater, you're a young man still, while I've turned sixty. And life is uncertain to the youngest of us."

"So it is, so it is!" said the publisher, as if the question had no interest for him. "I hear you've good trout rivers over there."

"The best in Europe," said the General heartily. "My cook will send you up a salmon-trout if you'll come over next May or June—off your own rod, too—that you'll never forget as long as you live."

"You were always a lucky dog!" said the publisher enviously. "I suppose there's no man alive hates the smell of printer's ink more than I do, and yet here I am, condemned to it all my life, while you've been living the life of a man, fighting half the time, and now sitting down to enjoy your elder years in a half-wild country flowing with milk and honey."

"You are shocking this child, Linklater," said the General, and indeed I had heard him in amazement. "Miss Brandon thinks Paternoster Row the centre of the universe."

The publisher looked at me kindly.

"So did I when I was her age, or I shouldn't be where I am now."

"Hear him!" said the General. "Who would think the man was one of the finest scholars alive?"

"Grubbing among the bones of dead men."

"My lad told me that when he was at Oxford you were still remembered as the Bodleian Bookworm."

"I had less complimentary names than that. I was an idle dog in those days, or at least learnt nothing that could bring me honours. I read at my own sweet will, and came out badly in the Schools, though better than I deserved. I was really the idlest man of my time, except Fennings of New, who lay all day in a hammock with a pack of cards, and played the right hand against the left when he could no longer get anyone to play with him. He afterwards became a great colonial administrator,—"

"And you a scholar, whose scholarship altogether overshadows you as a publisher."

"Well, well, I ought to have been a farmer, and tramped the furrows all day in muddy boots. Books are not living."

"You're an ungrateful fellow!" said the General. "If you were one of the failures, now?"

"Ah!" said the publisher; "everyone knows in his own heart how much he has failed or succeeded. But here is Miss Brandon, a beginner still at the cross-roads, and with the will yet hers to choose which she will take. You're not afraid of hard work, Miss Brandon?"

"Not a bit," I answered fervently.

"You can bear having your things rejected by stupid editors and publishers, while they publish work you feel to be infinitely less good? You can bear to see popularity pass you by, on its way to writers whose work you think beneath your contempt? You can bear to see your books published and forgotten, as utterly as a stone is forgotten that is dropped in the water; and to endure the stupidity and neglect of the critics, as well as of the public?"

"I can bear it all," said I cheerfully.

"Well, then, if you can," said he, with a change of tone, "you will find the roses in your path thicker than the thorns. The work is exquisite for its own sake, and if it is good, and it will be good, you will have a little audience that will love you and it. You will never write a word to fall on deaf ears. You will find even a few critics to believe in you, and say so. And you will gain the most unselfish friendship. I have heard of envy and malice in literature, but I have never yet discovered them."

"Ah! there speaks the cynic," said the General; "and yet you would tramp the furrows and depend on the weather?"

"I would plant cabbages against the rainy time, so that if my oats were rotting my vegetables would be waxing fat. The weather is a good or a bad fellow according as you take him."

"Well, Linklater, we're taking up too much of your valuable time."

"I'm the idlest man in London this minute."

"Well, if you are, come and lunch with us at the Cecil."

"Ah! but others are not so idle as I. I have a good many people to see before lunch time. By the way, we must meet again. Suppose you dine with me one evening? I want to hear a good many things about yourself."

As we went out Mr. Linklater drew the General aside, and said something to him in a low voice. I guessed at its purport, for the General shook his head very sadly in answer.

"Ah, well!" said the publisher; "I wouldn't give up hope, man. Lance was always a fellow of so much resource, and again and again men have returned after being given up for lost, as he has been."

"And many have not returned," said the General. "But thank you, Linklater, for your sympathy all the same."

"We are both lonely men," said the publisher. "But you have yet hope."

"And you have certainty," said the General, looking up and lifting his hat. "I have often wished I could have as much."

"Ah! that is where you religious men score."

"Yes," said the General simply; "I do not know where my boy is, but there is One that knows."

The two men shook hands in silence. Then the publisher turned to me with his kind smile.

"We shall make you formal publishing proposals in a day or two, Miss Brandon. It would never do to arrange such matters during a morning call."

After we had gone out in the street the General told me that Mr. Linklater had lost his wife and daughter by scarlet fever a few years previously.

"Poor fellow! poor fellow!" he said; "he looks as if he wanted a woman's hand about him. You would hardly believe, Hilda, that I remember him as one of the golden youth?"

"I don't think the carelessness of his attire misbecomes him," I said.

"Ah! it has a sad look to me, remembering him so far otherwise."

"I always supposed that all scholars were rather dusty. Books are such dusty things."

"Linklater was the exception. His wife was a lovely, soft creature, and devoted to him. And the little red-haired girl was a thing of such light and colour that she seemed more like a bird or a flower than a human creature. It is hard to imagine Death stilling all that wild and gracious life."

"Or fixing it for ever."

"True, my child. He carries the elixir of life if we would only see it. But now, how are you pleased about your own affairs?"

"Oh, dear General, how could I be anything but pleased? And I owe it all to you. What a blessed, blessed day it was that brought you to Rose Hill!"

"It was blessed for me. I have often since thought it so strange that we should have been brought together, you having known my boy."

I said nothing in answer to this, but as we were in a hansom I just pressed my old friend's hand to assure him of my sympathy. Then to distract his mind I told him about Freda, and how I had got to the root of her mystery. He was greatly interested.

"She must be a brave creature," he said, "though I think her foolish to have kept you all in the dark. But young people are romantic, and will take views, especially in the matter of self-sacrifice, that we sadder and older ones cannot share. And there was no wilful deception; the thing seems to have grown up of itself. But don't you feel happier, now that your golden castles for her are all in ruins?"

"I feel as if my sister had been given back to me," I said, "and if I'm not mistaken, Aline will feel just the same way."

"Ah, that's right! Better to have her heart in the right place than to have her a rich woman, eh?"

"Much better."

"I fancy I knew Mrs. Vincent at one time," he said musingly. "At least I remember meeting the wife of an excellent soldier and good comrade, Ned Vincent, of the Frontier Rifles. I heard he died of fever up-country. I wonder if it could be the same!"

"I am sure it is," said I, "for Mrs. Vincent always speaks of 'Ned'."

"I had no idea he left his widow poor. Something ought to be done for her if she is Ned Vincent's widow. I wonder if I have enough influence at the War Office to try!"

"You had better make sure about her first. Supposing we go to-morrow? I'll send a card to Freda to-night."

The thing was agreed upon, and the General and I drove down to Magnolia Cottage next day. The General had gone out in the morning on a mysterious business, and several brown-paper parcels of odd shapes had been left afterwards by quickly-arriving errand-boys. I didn't ask what the things were, but I guessed pretty accurately without the assistance of Miss MacNeill's indiscretion.

She had accompanied us to the hall-door, and noticed the General, with a pretence of there being no secrecy about the matter, carrying his parcels to the hansom.

"Now whatever have you got there?" she blurted. "Not a toy drum, surely. You're not going back to your second childhood, Hugh?"

"Madam," said the General in his angriest voice, "folly and meddlesomeness are not confined to any age, as you've the best right in all the world to know."

And he stalked away from the gibe I saw trembling on Miss Lucy's lips.

When we were seated and packed round about with very angular parcels, he explained to me apologetically that he had taken the liberty of bringing some toys for the little soldier.

"Your sister won't mind, my dear," he said. "She will forgive an old man who once had a little soldier of his own."

"She will think it very kind," I assured him, and indeed those toys were a passport for the General to the hearts of the two women who loved Jacky more than all the world.

Mrs. Vincent proved to be the widow of the General's old friend, and as they seemed to have a thousand things to talk of, Freda and I left them together while we made Jacky's toilet. It had been made earlier in the day, but he had undone it all by falling into the bath while giving his puppy, Captain, a bath in honour of the brave soldier man they were both going to be introduced to.

Jacky certainly looked very smart when we had got him into a fresh white sailor suit, and with his hair more curly than ever after his cold-water dip, presented him to the General. Jacky immediately stood "at attention", with his finger to his curls as a military salute.

"Why, come here, my brave lad, and see whether the young soldier can learn anything from the old soldier!" cried the General, beaming; and a few seconds later Jacky was perched on his knee, showing him his good-conduct stripes, and explaining that at the end of the year, if his conduct was all that could be desired, he was to receive a medal.

"Where are your medals, old soldier?" Jacky cried. "And why don't you wear them on your tunic as I shall?"

The general explained to him that custom required the grown-up soldier to dress like an ordinary citizen at times, and then he described, with the utmost painstaking, so that a little child might understand, the various medals he had, and the battles for which they were given.

Freda and Mrs. Vincent were as much absorbed as Jacky. I enjoyed it from an outsider's point of view, thinking how pretty it was—the old man with the child's heart bringing down his years to the level of the child's, and the two women with their pleasure and pride in it all.

Presently, when they were quite old friends, for the friendship advanced by strides, the General's gifts were offered, and received with such shrieks of delight on Jacky's part that I was fain to clap my hands to my ears.

When we left, Jacky played us out, marching backwards and forwards as he had seen the Highland pipers do in the streets, girt with sword and drum, and with a shrill fife at his lips, so that all Grove Avenue turned out to see.

"A brave little chap!" the General pronounced him; and as we drove away he leaned from the hansom to look back at him. I thought he looked sad. He was thinking of his own soldier boy, I made sure.

We had very gay times after that, and on several occasions the General took Jacky with us on our expeditions, bearing with the child so patiently and sweetly that I thought no mother could have done more. Not that Jacky didn't behave admirably. He had an immense admiration for "Old Soldier" as he called him; but then a lively boy of six is apt to prove a handful to a veteran with a gun-shot wound in the leg, and to a slightly-limping girl.

We saw the Tower, and Hampton Court, and Windsor Castle, and the exhibition at Earl's Court, and the waxworks at Madame Tussaud's, and the Crystal Palace, all with Jacky to bear us company.

Then the General and I saw one or two theatres, and one evening we dined with Mr. Linklater, and it was all very pleasant. But by the time our little holiday was up I was beginning to feel rather fagged, and to wish for Brandon and the library at Rose Hill.

The very last morning we were in London came the publishing proposal from Messrs. Linklater, Lee, and Warner, with a stamped agreement for me to sign, which I did, feeling it the proudest moment of my life. The book was to come out before Christmas, and the proposal seemed to me a very handsome one, for I should have been overjoyed to get the book published without any suggestion of being paid for it.

However, as the General said, that wouldn't be business, or at least business as an honourable firm like Linklater, Lee, and Warner understood it.

I couldn't send back the agreement till I had taken it home for Aline and Esther and the boys to see, not even if it delayed the book, but the General said he thought there would be no fear of that.

And now that I had to look forward to such happy things—the book, and the reviews, and all that—I longed for the time to pass till the published book should be an accomplished fact, and Hilda Brandon the name of a real author.

CHAPTER XXIII.

ESTHER.

I was welcomed at Brandon as rapturously as if I had come out of a long exile, and delightful it was to see the dear faces after even a short absence. It seemed to me as if I had been ages away, and I was rather surprised that the ducklings which had come out just before I left appeared much the same black-eyed balls of yellow fluff, and that the year had advanced so little during my memorable eight days of absence.

I had so much to tell them that though I had travelled all night I did not feel inclined to go to bed. I spent the morning over my unpacking and distributing the little gifts I had brought for each one. I kept till the afternoon,—when the young ones should have dispersed and left me with Aline,—the wonderful discovery I had made about Freda.

Well, Aline didn't know whether to cry or be vexed or glad over the knowledge that our Freda—about whom we had built so many golden dreams—was after all in the ranks of the workers. Yet I think, on the whole, the relief of knowing that she was the same dear, generous girl, only empty-handed now, outweighed all the rest.

Then my stories about Magnolia Cottage and Mrs. Vincent and Jacky were so pleasant that Aline, after a bit, grew reconciled to Freda's change of fortune. I gave her an imploring little note which Freda had intrusted me with, asking her to forgive the deception, which was never seriously meant, and had somehow grown up of itself. The humility of it brought the tears into Aline's eyes.

"I will write to her at once, dear girl," she said, going to her writing-table.

As she looked for a pen a sound caught our ears.

"Ah," she said, "it is Esther! We have not seen her all the week. Entertain them, dear Hilda, while I scribble a few words."

But when I went downstairs I found the pony and phaeton with Dobson, and a note from Lady O'Brien, saying that Esther had a sick headache and was being kept in bed, but longed to see me; and would I drive over and stay for dinner, or the night if I would?

"Yes, go," said Aline, "but you had better stay the night, dear. It would be too much to drive back here after your journey last night."

So I put one or two necessary things into a hand-bag, and drove off to Annagower.

When I went into the drawing-room I found Lady O'Brien alone, but no Esther.

"Your sister is asleep, Hilda," she said; "and I won't waken her, for I want a good long chat with you. Just take off your hat and cloak and come to the fire, and we'll have tea in, and be comfortable. Have you a pair of slippers in your bag? Well, just put them on,—don't mind going upstairs. You look rather fagged already."

I found the low chair and the footstool before the fire very comfortable indeed, for I was tired, but by no means sleepy. I felt that Lady O'Brien wanted to say something, and feeling sure that it was about Esther's trouble, I was too interested to be sleepy.

When we had each our cup of tea in our hands, and the fat page-boy had gone out, closing the door behind him, Lady O'Brien opened the matter which I had seen all the time trembling on her lips.

"Your sister has told me everything, child."

"Ah!" said I. "I wished she would. Has anything new happened?"

"Nothing; but Esther is in trouble. We have heard nothing of young De Lacy, though I have written twice to ask him to come."

"That is curious."

"It is, because the boy is a gentleman, and because he is head over ears in love with your sister. I have seen that all along, but I pick the locks of no confidences. I knew that presently my dear girl would tell me of her own accord."

"He may be ill."

"That is what she says. She keeps saying over and over that she can never undo the silence of the last few months, during which he may have been ill and dying. She has fretted herself into a fever."

"I am afraid he is not very strong."

"He is not strong enough for ill-usage. He would be all right in the life he was brought up to. I'm afraid Rivers was right when he was anxious about the boy leaving Brandon. Where there is internal injury it is so hard to know whether healing or hurt is going on."

"What are we to do, Lady O'Brien?"

"That's what I wanted to consult you about. You have a clear head and a still tongue. Of one thing I am certain. My girl is not going to have her tender heart broken if I can help it, the Lord helping me."

She got up and paced about the room, all her little frame tense with a nervous energy I had not suspected in her.

"You think it has gone deep with Esther, Lady O'Brien?"

"What do you think, you who have been her dearest companion from babyhood?"

"I think it is once and for ever."

"I am sure of it. She is very innocent and very romantic. She feels that she has been waiting for him all those years, and about him all the dreams and the poetry of her innocent and ardent heart have gathered."

"You know as much of her as I do, whose dearer self she has been all our lives."

The old lady nodded a queer, triumphant little nod.

"Ah, Hilda!" she said, "love is a wonderful teacher, and I love her like my own child. I would do everything within the law of God to make her happy."

"You don't think it hopeless?"

Lady O'Brien snapped her fingers.

"Hopeless! I see no obstacle that other people can raise. The only obstacle I would acknowledge would be the lad's coldness or unworthiness or—"

She broke off abruptly.

"Or death," I said for her.

"That is in the hands of God," she replied, "but I pray that He may will this girl, the joy of my old age, to be happy."

"What do you propose to do?"

"Propose, child? Well, first we have to find out what's the matter with the boy. I've written to Sir Rupert."

"What?" I cried.

"Written to his old villain of a grandfather, who, I expect, is at the bottom of the mischief. I sent a boy with it on one of your wild mountain ponies. He ought to be nearly back by this time."

"You didn't tell him—"

"I merely asked for an interview. I had thought of driving over there, but I was afraid the rapscallion would bar his gates against me."

"The country people would tell you it wasn't safe."

"Pooh! What a mass of superstition has grown up about the place! Just because it stands in a dark spot and is surrounded by unwholesome weeds. Why, if I could have hoped to get past the gates, I'd have gone like a shot. Dobson would come and fetch me out after a certain time. He's as brave as a lion, though you wouldn't believe it."

"There are those horrible dogs."

"Poor, lumbering, unhappy brutes! I should never be afraid of them."

"All the same, I'm glad you didn't go, you intrepid little fairy godmother."

"You'll see that I can be intrepid where it's a question of fighting for my girl's happiness."

"Sir Rupert will never consent to the marriage, Lady O'Brien."

"A fig for the man's consent! I only want to find out where the boy is. If he cuts up rusty I'll tell him to go and be hanged. I've a roof to cover them, and enough for a young couple to live on, even with the old woman in the chimney-corner."

"How good you are, Lady O'Brien! No wonder Esther loves you."

"It is she who is good to come here and brighten my old life with her youth and freshness."

"You are very young in heart," I could not help saying.

"Ah! my dear, perhaps I keep my heart a little green. I remember when I was young myself—long before ever I thought of my good Peter—and how I loved somebody, and thought I should die of losing him."

"But why did you lose him?" I whispered.

"He never thought of me, my dear, not in that way. He never even suspected that I thought of him."

I looked at her in wondering sympathy.

"It was your grandfather, Hilda," she said. "He's a saint in heaven to-day, dear fellow, but, upon my word, I half wish he'd been less saintly, and had called out De Lacy and put a bullet through him."

The transition was so sudden and characteristic that I burst out laughing. Just then the page-boy came to the door.

"Your ladyship's messenger has returned and brought a note."

Lady O'Brien snatched the note from the salver.

"There, that will do. Never mind the fire. We'll attend to it ourselves. Go out, and shut the door after you."

She tore open the note, glanced at it, and then handed it to me. It was written on a half-sheet of paper, evidently torn from a letter, and with ink so pale as to suggest an application of water to the ink-pot.

Sir Rupert De Lacy presents his compliments to Lady O'Brien, and will do himself the honour of calling on her to-morrow at five.

"Now, that's the letter of an ordinary human being," said Lady O'Brien, "barring an eccentricity in the ink and paper. Maybe the devil's not so black as he's painted."

"It's very polite," said I, "but I wouldn't trust him. I'd distrust him all the more when he was by way of being civil."

"Well, we'll see, we'll see. It won't be long till to-morrow at five."

"I'll wait and hear what he has to say," I said.

"I'll tell you what. I'd better see him alone. But if you'd care to be present at the interview you can just sit inside the alcove there and pull the reed curtains. He'll never see your black frock in the dark, and if he does, why, it's no business of his."

"Esther is not to know, I suppose."

"Better not. It would only agitate her. Wait till it is over. Perhaps she is awake now and longing to see you."

She rang the bell and asked if Miss Brandon was awake, and the reply was in the affirmative, so I went upstairs to Esther's pretty room.

The dusk was beginning to gather, but I could see that she looked ill, though she had a bright colour. Her eyes were heavy and her aspect listless.

"I'm afraid I'm in for a feverish cold, Hilda," she said, when we had greeted each other. "My throat is sore and my hands very hot. Feel them."

I took her hands in mine and felt them dry and burning.

"What is it, Essie?" I said tenderly; "worry?"

"Not altogether that. The day before yesterday, when my godmother had driven to Iniscrone on business, and I was supposed to be nursing a little cold I brought from Kilkee, I slipped out and ran all the way to Brandon Abbey, thinking there might be a word or a flower for me in the old place. But there was nothing, and it rained hard coming back, and I got very wet, and said nothing about it."

"Oh, Esther, that was foolish!"

"I know; but you don't know how I am driven to do something. It seems as if I was lying here and letting all my life slip through my fingers."

"Can't you trust other people to do for you just for the present?"

"Ah! my godmother has been talking to you. You know I have told her everything."

"Yes, I am glad of it. She is a stout friend, although only a frail little old fairy godmother. Trust her, Esther. She will do all that love and courage can."

"I know. She is wonderful. But what are we against Sir Rupert? If we had only a man with us! If Pierce had lived and been strong!"

"God's in his heaven, Esther."

"Yes, I try to pray and have faith, but I am afraid of the Cross. What if it were His will to take my Harry?"

"He would give you courage, and would bear your Cross with you. But His will for you may be just as well your heart's desire."

"Yes. I went into a church one day at Kilkee. The door was open, and someone was singing at the organ:

'O rest in the Lord, wait patiently for Him,
And He will give thee thy heart's desire'.

I thought it was a message for me, and have said it so often to myself. Oh, my heart's desire, my heart's desire!" she cried, and then covered her face with her hands.

"Why are you so full of fears, Esther?" I asked.

"My Harry is delicate," she whispered, "and Sir Rupert is wicked and strong."

"God is stronger than Sir Rupert."

"Oh, Hilda, can you imagine the unnaturalness of the man that makes him hate his own flesh and blood? No one knows how much my Harry has been made to suffer in that house. He says it is his grandfather's way of trying to drive him out of it. I wonder if he is right in staying?"

"He has only his own light to go by, as each of us has, Essie. We must leave him to its guidance."

"He says his presence is in some sort a check on the orgies of those two wretched men. But if he dies under it? Has he no duty to me and to his own life?"

"You exaggerate, darling, I am sure. One need not die even of such an unholy place as Angry."

"Not if one were strong. But he has never yet recovered of his hurt, and he is not likely to at Castle Angry."

She broke off suddenly and began to cry.

"I am forgetting that for four months I have had no word of him, and that now the letters that ought to have brought him so eagerly to my side remain unanswered. Where is he, Hilda? Where? How do I know but that he is already dead, and so escaped his enemies? If he were living and well he would surely have come."

"Be quiet, darling. You are letting your fear run wild. People are not made away with like that in the nineteenth century. Perhaps the letters have not reached him. Perhaps they have been kept from him, or he is not there. He may have sickened of Angry and gone back to Warwickshire."

"No, he might have gone, but he would have returned. He would not stay long away from where I am."

She lifted her head for a moment in proud confidence. Then it drooped again as a flower droops heavy with rain.

"You would never think, Esther, that he could be silent because he had forgotten you?"

"Never that. Nothing could separate us but death."

"Well, Esther," said I, "be quiet and keep your heart calm. We shall know something to-morrow, for Sir Rupert is to come here at five o'clock."

"Sir Rupert!"

"Yes. We had not meant to tell you, but now I think it is better. Lady O'Brien wrote that she wanted to see him, and he has written saying he will come."

She looked at me with distended eyes.

"Under this roof!" she muttered to herself.

"At least we shall find out where his grandson is."

"Yes, we surely shall. He will have to answer a plain question, won't he, Hilda? To think of the godmother drawing him like that."

"If he had not come she would have invaded him in his den."

"Dear, brave little soul! I have not deserved such love, Hilda."

"For an undeserving person, you seem to receive quite a large share," I said drily.

"Yes, don't I?" she answered in her simple way. Then she went on:

"I am so glad you told me about Sir Rupert, Hilda. It is the doing something that helps me, and I should hardly have had enterprise for that. The penny post has awful possibilities of cruelty. Think of launching those letters into the dark, and then waiting for an answer—the horrible strain of it—and feeling in your cold heart all the time that no answer will come."

"Poor penny post!" I said, laughing; "but think of all the happiness it brings as well!"

"I can only think of the letters that never come, or the cruel and cold letters. But they are easier to bear than the silence."

"Well, darling," I said soothingly, "the cruel and cold letters will never come to you, and the silence is only a pause before good news."

"You think so, Hilda? I was always so afraid of Sir Rupert. I know it is silly, but the shadows out of one's childhood dominate one in a time of trouble."

"Now, fret no more, Essie," I said; "I shall be with you to-night, and to-morrow will bring news. Think of yourself as a rich girl with a lover, and pity all the poor unloved ones like Hilda."

"Ah! time was," she smiled, "in my romantic youth, when I thought the lover stage the one most desirable. Now I think it is cruel and full of fear. But I am going to be strong, Hilda, and hope for to-morrow. You will tell me everything?"

"Everything; and be sure all will be well."

When I went up to bed that night I found Esther sleeping placidly. The finger-tips were turned towards her palms, like a child's in sleep, and the long lashes made a shadow on her richly-coloured cheeks. I prayed hard that night that the morrow might not betray our confidence.

CHAPTER XXIV.

SIR RUPERT.

The next day was cold and blustery, with winds that shook down the last remaining glory of the trees, and cold rain that beat the orange and scarlet of the dead leaves into so much black mud. It was a day when everything seems dreary. The big sunflowers in the lawn at Annagower broke with their own weight, and hung ruefully on the shattered stalk. The chrysanthemums were bruised and muddy, and the air was full of the repining of the afflicted branches. Even the robin sang as if his heart were not in it.

I sat with Esther a great part of the morning, and would not let her talk too much on the subject that was in all our minds. I tried to distract her by telling her the things that had happened when I was in London; but though she was interested about Freda, and unselfishly rejoiced over my success with the publishers, yet I could see that her mind wandered, that her fingers beat the counterpane impatiently as though the time would never pass.

But the hours turned round at last to five o'clock, and found me hidden like a conspirator in the little alcove off the drawing-room. This was unlighted; it was little more than an archway in fact, with a few feet of space behind, but with the dusk in it and the lit drawing-room beyond I had no fear that even Sir Rupert's unflinching old eyes, as I remembered them, would discover me.

I had placed Lady O'Brien with her back to me and the tea-table before her, and had drawn a chair near the lamplight for Sir Rupert, for I had a great desire to see our old enemy's face during the interview that was to be so momentous to poor Essie.

I had not long to wait, for he was punctual to his time. He came in, a curious figure for a lady's drawing-room, in a great rough old frieze coat such as the farmers wear at the fairs. As he sat down heavily in the chair I had placed for him I saw that he looked older, but scarcely weaker than I remembered him. If a tithe of the stories told about his way of life were true, then he had a constitution of iron.

I saw the gleam of his eyes fixed on my lady's face, and felt that I was going to watch a game of fence. In the heat of the room his coat began to steam, and Lady O'Brien implored him to take it off. He did so, flinging it across a velvet chair, and showed himself clad in a riding suit of very ancient cut, in which, however, he looked a figure of a certain distinction. Then he sat down again and leant towards his hostess, bringing his strong, colourless, old face, with its jaws of iron, within the rays of the lamp.

Lady O'Brien had dressed herself for the interview with a certain coquettishness. Dear old lady, it would indeed be the end of things with her when her pretty vanities were relinquished. She was wearing a gray, stiff silk, trimmed with the most exquisite old yellow lace, and her soft hair was piled high over her delicate face with its sparkling eyes.

I could not see her face, of course, from where I sat, but I could see the flash and glitter of her rings as her still-beautiful hands moved to and fro among the tea-cups.

"I may offer you some tea, Sir Rupert?" I heard her say.

"Well, madam, tea is not much in my line," he answered grimly. "It is a good many years since I have known the taste of it, in fact."

"Oh, Sir Rupert, you men!" said the little old lady, lifting a reproving finger; "it is well for you I know your ways."

She took from a lower tray of her tea-table a little bottle gold-coloured, and a liqueur glass.

"This is the finest old brandy, Sir Rupert," she said. "I won't insult you and it by asking if you will take soda-water with it."

"Brandy is quite good enough for me," he answered. "You were always a woman of a thousand."

"Ah! Sir Rupert, you flatter me," said the old lady, sipping her tea.

"If the truth is flattery," he said, "it is the truth that beauty and wit are seldom found in one garland."

"You have not forgotten your old ways," she said. "Rustication has made you no whit the better."

"Ah!" he said, "when beauty and grace shine on unaccustomed eyes, even the rustic tongue is loosed."

I listened with amazement. I had thought that the Sir Rupert who was a man about town and a pretty fellow ages ago, was quite lost in Sir Rupert the ogre of Angry Castle, the false and vindictive friend, the patient waiter upon vengeance, the sinner stained with so many crimes that it was easy to credit him with all. Yet, grim as he looked, his air now was not saturnine. He seemed to have forgotten for a moment his later years, and turned back to a page of his youth.

He had settled his huge shoulders comfortably in the low chair, and was swallowing glass after glass of the brandy, which apparently did not affect him in the least.

"You will be wondering," said my lady, "why I should have asked for this interview."

She had settled down for serious conversation, having replaced her cup in the tray. I could see the pretty fan with which she had provided herself waving to and fro against the firelight.

"No reason was needed, my lady, except that you had not forgotten me like the rest of the world."

"Was that enough to bring you half-a-dozen miles in drenching rain?"

"Since when have I been afraid of a shower?"

"Oh, Sir Rupert! you know you are a recluse by your own choice. The world would not have forgotten you if you had not willed to be forgotten. This being so, I did not lightly invade your solitude."

"The wish to meet again and recall old memories had been quite enough."

"Ah!" said her ladyship, "old memories are bitter-sweet; let them rest. But I thank you for coming all this way. I would have found my way to your solitude, but I was assured you barred your gates against all the world."

"Country folks' tales," he said. "But it would be to reverse the natural order of things if you had come. Besides, my house is hardly fit to receive a lady."

"That is why I longed to come."

"Because you had heard strange stories about me and it, eh?" he said shrewdly.

"Perhaps. You are somewhat of an ogre, De Lacy."

"Yes, I let the gobemouches say their say."

"Do you mean that really Castle Angry is like any other old house?"

"You do me too much honour to be interested in it. Castle Angry is perhaps as like any other old house as I am like any other old man."

"Well, you are not at all like any God-fearing kindly old man, carrying peace and honour upon his gray hairs."

Sir Rupert laughed grimly.

"You are right. I'm not the grandfatherly sort. If you've heard half the gossip of the country you're a brave woman to have me in your drawing-room. There are a good many milestones between this and our last merry meeting."

"I'm not a bit afraid of you, De Lacy," said my lady, still waving her large fan. "Though I know you're a bad lot, still I remember that some good people loved and trusted you once upon a time, so I hope the Lord may yet change your heart."

"Ah, thank you!" said Sir Rupert shortly. I guessed that my lady's reference was to my grandfather, and that it had angered Sir Rupert.

"Well, your reason, madam, for desiring an interview," he said with a slight barring of his strong yellow teeth, "since it is not for the pleasure of my company."

"You have a grandson, Sir Rupert."

"I have, madam."

"A charming youth," said my lady pensively. "I congratulate you upon him!"

"Did you send for me to say so, Lady O'Brien?"

"Of course not, De Lacy. But I have missed him of late."

"He is a fortunate fellow."

"I am fond of young society. He came often, and I was grateful to him. Now he comes no more, and though I have written to him I have had no answer."

"Young men, I have heard, are cavalier nowadays."

"They may be, but I don't think the lad is. Do you know anything of him, De Lacy?"

"Do you think I carry him in my pocket, madam?"

"Is he at Angry?"

"If he were, would he not have flown at your call?"

"I feared he might be ill. He is not yet recovered of his hurts when he fell in the spring. I feared he might be at Angry needing a woman's care."

"Your heart is too tender. If he had needed nursing he could have found it where it was supplied to him so generously before. He would naturally turn to my neighbours at Brandon."

"They were very good to him, De Lacy. It was true Christianity of them to take him in. It ought to wipe off old scores in your mind."

His face went livid.

"A new way to pay old debts," he sneered; "but your sex is ever romantic, my lady."

"I am glad the boy is so little like you."

"Little enough as far as that goes, as little as his father was before him. But to what am I indebted for this interest in my flesh and blood?"

"To himself, De Lacy, be sure, and not to you. Partly, too, because he is dear to someone who is dear to me."

"Ah! an affair of the heart. I did not credit him with being a gallant. But I daresay he had a score of pretty affairs I knew nothing of. The county is famed for its rustic beauties, and young men will be young men."

The fan trembled violently in my lady's hand.

"You insult your grandson, sir, and you insult my adopted daughter, to whom he is betrothed."

"Your ladyship's adopted daughter?"

"Miss Esther Brandon."

I leant forward with my heart in my mouth. Sir Rupert had half sprung from his chair, and for a second his attitude was so menacing that I was in the act to rush to the bell-rope. Then he resumed his seat and looked at my lady with narrowed eyes. Something in the look told me that he was answering a defiance in hers. Still her feather fan waved airily up and down.

"The plot thickens," he said at last, and his voice had grown hoarse. "Am I to understand that you contemplate a marriage between this modern Romeo and Juliet? I suppose so, since the affair has flourished under your roof."

"You certainly may understand it, De Lacy. I don't see why your wicked old feuds and hatreds should overshadow two young lives. Let alone that the feud was entirely of your making."

"Do you expect me to abet you?"

"Oh, indeed, I expect little of you, De Lacy, unless the grace of God should soften your heart!"

"Will it alter matters that the youth inherits nothing but the barren acres of Angry? You and—Miss Brandon—are probably thinking of him as the inheritor of my wealth. But my money is my own, and I'd rather leave it to Gaskin to found a family, or endow a home for mangy cats with it."

The fan moved more airily than ever.

"As you will, Sir Rupert. I am a poor woman, but what little I have goes to my dear child."

"She may not be satisfied with that," he said, sneering viciously. "You probably underestimate her common-sense. And he—he may know on which side his bread is buttered."

"You wrong them both, De Lacy. Love is enough for them."

"A very pretty sentiment in the mouth of an old woman."

The fan fluttered as if the hand that held it were agitated, and I guessed that the rude shaft had gone home.

"It was hardly worth my while to ask you if you were friend or foe," she said after a moment's silence. "I might have known. Do your worst, De Lacy, you cannot hurt them."

"Oh, hurting of the kind you mean is out of fashion! They have my worst wishes. Otherwise, all I desire is to hear no more of the cub who calls himself by my name, and the pauper he has chosen."

"For shame, Sir Rupert! You are unnatural, or you would love the boy and think of nothing but his happiness."

The old man rose from his seat and made an exaggerated bow.

"You are welcome to him," he said, "the poor, pretty, puling fool! I hope the girl has enough manhood for two."

"If he were not a man, De Lacy, he would never have spent an hour in Angry Castle. What are you, to judge of gentleness and chivalry?"

She had stood up now, and, leaning on her stick, shook an angry head at him.

"What have you done with him, De Lacy?" she cried. "I believe you know where he is, and will not say."

"What, then, is Master Milksop to be spirited away like a yearling child?"

"He is not with you, then?" she said, too eager to be baffled by his insults.

"He is not. He left three months ago."

"Three months ago! Why hasn't he written then?"

"How can I say? He has tired of his fancy, I expect."

"That is not true, De Lacy, and you know it is not."

"If he has not, let him come back to her."

Lady O'Brien rang the bell, and in answer the page-boy appeared.

"Show this gentleman out," she said, and stood erect till the door had closed behind the enemy.

The instant he was gone I ran to the window to see him mount his dog-cart and disappear in the wet night. Then I came back to Lady O'Brien's side. She had sunk into her chair, and the sparkle and fire were gone out of her face.

"Ah," she said, drawing a long breath, "if I only had the flogging of that man! And to think how helpless we are, an old woman and two girls, my dear. And time was when twenty fine fellows would have been ready to flog him for me!"

"I suppose he really knows nothing of his grandson?"

"I suppose not. After all, as he says, the boy is not an infant. He must have grown sick of the place and gone away. I know his life there was insupportable, though Sir Rupert never actually showed him the door."

"What are we to say to Esther?"

"That is what is troubling me."

"We hardly know Harry De Lacy. Is it possible he could care less than she does, and knowing his own poverty, and that Sir Rupert would never consent, has given her up and gone away?"

She shook her head.

"Esther would say it was not possible. I only know him through her love. For myself, I saw a handsome and gentle boy, a gentleman, and with the tastes and habits of one. I could say as much for fifty lads of my acquaintance."

"You don't think the gentleness could imply weakness?"

"Ah! that I cannot answer for. Esther will never believe that he could go away and forget her. Ah, my poor child! I dread to tell her that we have heard nothing. If no word of him comes I don't know what she will do."

"There is nothing left for us to do but wait," I said sadly.

"I suppose not," she said, "especially as there was no formal engagement between them. Poor child! if she had trusted me earlier, all this might have been averted. We cannot go out into the world, you and I, Hilda, and track him down."

"No," I assented, "but we will hope. You have done what you could, brave little fairy godmother! We must leave the rest to God."

But when we told Esther, she only turned her head away, and said nothing. In her heart of hearts I am sure she said over and over that he was dead, or was kept from coming to her. No matter what happened, she would never believe anything else.

CHAPTER XXV.

"WILL YE NO COME BACK AGAIN?"

That winter was like to be nearly as melancholy as the previous winter, when Pierce was dying slowly. The months passed, and no word came of Esther's lover, and as she had taken our ill news that first day so she took it always, with her face to the wall and in silence.

Her secret lay between her godmother and me. It seemed scarcely worth while to reveal it now, even to Aline. If Harry De Lacy did not return, we said, she would have to live it down, as many another girl before her has had to live down such a trouble. We could do no more to help her—her godmother and I—though either of us would have sacrificed anything in the world for her happiness. We could only wait with our love till she should be able to turn round and find comfort in it. Now, except for the constant silent testimonies of love, it was better to leave her alone, and we left her alone.

She came out of her feverish cold slowly and languidly, and looking very thin and pinched. Her godmother was anxious about her, and would have carried her off to a warmer climate, but Esther preferred to stay where she was, and by this we knew that all hope was not dead in her heart.

When she got about again at last, in the frosty days before Christmas, it was not to either of us that she first turned for companionship and comfort. Quite unknown to us, she had been friends for some time with Margaret Flaherty, the comfortable wife of a small farmer, who had fostered Harry De Lacy in his delicate babyhood. Now everyone knows that the ties of fosterage are hardly less dear and close than those of maternity itself, and when Harry De Lacy came back to his wretched home at Angry, there had been no heart in all the place to welcome him except the faithful heart of his foster-mother.

We were glad when we discovered that Esther had this comfort. Her unhappiness had weighed heavily on her godmother. During that winter our dear old lady's age seemed suddenly to have found her out. Her bright, brisk, merry ways deserted her, and she began to be racked with rheumatism, the result, I suppose, of our damp climate. Yet she would not go away so long as Esther desired to stay; and when we spoke of it, Esther always cried out for a reprieve, as though news were on its way, which would surely arrive the minute she was absent.

All the time she was so tender, so loving, so full of compunction over her dear godmother, that we could not be angry with her, or think her selfish. I felt that she was held to the place by bonds which she was powerless to break. Yet she had promised to go in March,—they had a project of spending Easter in Rome,—and with that we had to be content.

The trouble weighed so much on my spirits that I had scarcely the heart to be glad when Love in the Valley in its coat of delicate blue and silver, reached me a little before Christmas. Nor even when the first reviews were distinctly favourable. I began to grow pessimistic, I who had always been cheerful. Was there nothing but trouble in the sweet world? I asked myself as I looked about me. There was Esther breaking her heart, and we who loved her breaking ours with her in sympathy; there was Aline, looking for ever like a dove whose mate has flown; there was the dear old General, bearing like a saint and a soldier his own terrible trouble. Only the young ones were glad, and they were like lambs playing in the fields, whom every hour brought nearer to the butcher's knife.

"It is time," I said to myself one day, "for something happy to happen; for very long there have been nothing but unhappy things."

I spent my time now pretty well between Annagower and Rose Hill. The General at last had his house in order, and was sitting down, as he said, to enjoy life under his own fig-tree. But sometimes I thought it was a melancholy kind of enjoyment. He had been used to so active a life, and he was not of those who grow old easily. It would have suited him better to have dropped between the shafts.

I used to find it lonely and melancholy when I went in during the short winter afternoons, and found him sitting there with an odd, unhappy air of doing nothing. He used to brighten wonderfully when he saw me, but I knew that the sadness would come again when I went away. Presently, I felt, things would be better with him, for he had not yet shaken down into the new life.

"You must become a country gentleman," I said, "and a magistrate, and sit on boards, and farm a little. And in the intervals of your busy life you must write a book about your Indian experiences."

Then he would smile, and say I was right, and that presently he would find his work to his hand and do it.

But, brave and resigned as he was, I could see that the uncertainty about his son's fate was weakening the spring of life and energy in him.

We had finished cataloguing the library and getting it into order, and very proud I was of my work. The house was in the most spick-and-span condition, and there was nothing left for us to do. And now I began the feast of reading which I had promised myself.

Well, a day came when I bullied the General at last into getting into his cords and boots, and riding to a meet, which was at no great distance.

"Every country gentleman hunts," I said; "and you are shirking the duties of your state in life by not hunting."

"I was never a shirker, little girl," he replied, laughing; "and I suppose I must obey orders."

"I will wait and dine with you," said I, "if you're very good, and afterwards you can drive me home."

By this time General MacNeill was nearly as much our friend as Esther's godmother, and, like her, had brought untold pleasure into our humdrum lives.

He rode off, looking quite cheerful, and I felt that already he was better in the prospect of meeting his fellows, and having a good day after the fox. I was in a pleasanter mood with myself and the whole world, when I settled down to my long quiet day, alone in the library, or alone except for Paudeen, who is the most unobtrusive company, and is never so rowdy but what he can vent his high spirits on tearing the paper in the waste-paper basket into infinitesimal strips.

It was twelve o'clock I found, after the General had departed, for he had only a short distance to ride to the meet.

The hours passed with luxurious slowness. At half-past one a maid brought my lunch and set it on a table drawn close to the fire. After lunch I read again till it was nearly tea-time; I expected the General to be in for his tea, a repast which he fondly loved.

About four, Mary O'Connor herself brought in the tea-tray, and lit the spirit-lamp under the urn. Having done this, she made up a bright little fire, and fetched the lamp with its large green shade. I had put down my book, and sat lazily watching her from my favourite seat, the top rung of the library steps, on which I perched, dangling my feet.

"You've no idea, Mary," I said, "of how jolly the room looks from here."

"Glory be to goodness, child!" said Mary, for the thousandth time, "I wish you'd come off that ould flight o' steps, and sit in a chair like a Christian. 'Tis breakin' your neck you'll be one o' these days."