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."

##