CHAPTER XIX

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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!"

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