CHAPTER XXXII

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THE RESTORATION OF BRANDON.

After all, who do you think it was of all the Brandons that brought the fortune back to Brandon? You would never guess. Well, it was Aline, and now I will tell you how that came about.

During the months that elapsed between my marriage and the autumn when Mr. Desmond was expected to revisit the "old country", Hugh and Donald worked quietly but indefatigably to fit themselves for anything that might turn up in the life of a new continent. They were already expert riders, and could handle a gun, as they could an oar, with absolute dexterity. They had grown to be big, sunburnt, handsome lads in their free and wholesome life, and never knew an ache or a pain, so they were made of the fine raw stuff of pioneers. But in the last months, acting on my Lance's advice, they set themselves to learn the rough-and-ready rudiments of the simpler trades, to shoe a horse with Teddy Murphy at the forge, to cobble a shoe or mend a joint in a horse's harness with Farrell the brogue-maker and Byrne the harness-maker, and many such useful arts.

They were full of the joy of the new life that was coming to them, scenting the battle of the world far off like the horse in the Scriptures, and yet preparing for it with a gravity and responsibility which came of their deep-rooted conviction that they were going to redeem Brandon. They had time now to make their own and their family's fortunes, now that the gray old wolf was no longer at Castle Angry waiting upon our need.

"If Sir Rupert had lived," Hugh said to me once, "one or other of us must have stayed to watch him, but now we shall go with minds at rest."

Poor Aline watched their quiet preparations with unprotesting pain. In her heart I think she was proud that they had asserted their manhood, though that heart bled all the time with fear of how that dragon, the world, might overcome them. We were always trying to console her, pointing out to her how this and that mother's son went and conquered and returned in safety.

"Ah!" she would say, "is it easier for me because other women suffer? I shall be glad when they return, but let me have my grief now that they must go."

Then the time came when we heard that Mr. Desmond had come back, and was staying in the Brandon Arms, as he had done six years ago before he took away our Pierce. And when we heard he was there Lance suggested that we should go and call on him and ask him to take up his quarters at Rose Hill, seeing that he had been Pierce's friend. Lance was keen also to see the man of whom he had heard so much, whose qualities of all others were those that appealed to him.

But when we arrived at the rough little place they call the Brandon Arms we found that Mr. Desmond had gone out. As we turned away rather disappointed, the landlady, Mrs. Fahy, came hurrying after us.

"I think, ma'am," she said, "that Mr. Desmond may have gone to Brandon, for there was a boy here with a bit of a note from Miss Brandon herself in the morning, and when Mr. Desmond came in and read it he just ordered his chop and immediately after went out again. I shouldn't be surprised now if you were picking him up, if so be you took it into your head to walk towards Brandon."

"Oh, thank you, Mrs. Fahy," said I, "I think we shall."

And, sure enough, when we went into the drawing-room at Brandon there was the man himself sitting astride a spindle-legged chair, and talking earnestly with Aline.

They made a curious contrast, he with his big frame and rugged face, his great hands, with their look of grasp, resting on his knees, and his rough colonist's clothes, and she so fair and dainty and refined, with her almost old-world dignity. She was wearing a tea-gown which had been easily adapted from our great-grandmother's wardrobe, a brocade of the colour the French call ashes of roses, a queer, elegant, faded thing, with old lace at the neck and wrists. I saw at once that Aline had made a toilette for Mr. Desmond, and guessed at her tender reason. She did him so much honour in the hope that he would more surely be a friend to her boys.

As we came through the ante-room unannounced Mr. Desmond was speaking, and I signed to Lance not to disturb him till he had finished.

"I can only say, Miss Brandon, that I loved the lad like a son, and would have saved him from pain and trouble just as if he had been my son. But I have had a rough life, and did not know how to manage a lad like him when it came to a delicate matter. I can only say what a deep grief it has been to me."

[Illustration: "I CAN ONLY SAY, MISS BRANDON, THAT I LOVED THE LAD LIKE A SON."]

"Oh, no, no!" said Aline with her handkerchief at her eyes. "He said that no one could have been more patient, more wise, and tender with him than you were. I can never thank you enough."

"I wish to Heaven I could have saved him," the man answered in his deep and musical voice.

Then we went in, and Aline introduced us to Mr. Desmond. He and Lance fraternized at once, if one can talk of fraternizing in a case like this, where my husband sat and looked at the elder man with a boyish expression of hero-worship on his face, and listened with such deference.

There was a curious nobility and simplicity about the man. Whatever his successes had been in the world, it was easy to see that they had not been obtained by craft and guile or by trampling on weaker men. Seeing that we were interested in what he had to tell he talked with simple unconsciousness fully and freely.

"Yes," he said in answer to Lance, "it is lonely to come back. There are nettles growing round the hearthstone of the little cabin where I was born, and the last of my kin is laid to rest long ago in Brandon Abbey. Still, the mountains and the woods are the same; it is the same country. I sat to-day for a long time on the stile where I used to sit when I fetched the water from the well for my mother, and I remembered how, the day I was leaving her, she ran after me to the stile to kiss me again, for the last time it proved. Yes, it is lonely to come back, but the old memories are sweet too."

He said nothing at all of what we knew, how his wise and generous benefactions had made many a one rejoice at his coming back.

After a time Lance told him how we had looked for him at the Brandon Arms with the hope that he would come and stay with us at Rose Hill, but he declined, although very cordially.

"I never know when the fit will take me," he said laughing, "to roam about, and I should hopelessly disorganize your hours and your servants' ways. Besides, my old school-fellow, Mary Fahy, would take it as a slight upon her place if I were to desert her. Let me instead come in of evenings to smoke a pipe when I like,--may I? May I, Mrs. MacNeill?"

"Indeed you may," said I.

Just then the boys came in, full of repressed excitement. They shook hands with Mr. Desmond, and then retired into a distant corner, where they sat and glowered at their great man, in whose hands, although he did not yet know it, their fate lay. But he seemed almost as much interested in them as they were in him. His keen eyes followed them into their obscurity.

"Those great fellows," he said to Aline, "they were little lads when I was here before. Yet they were ready to follow me into the wilderness."

For a minute the silence was electrical. Then one or other of the boys broke silence.

"We are ready to follow you now."

Mr. Desmond stood up slowly, revealing his great height.

"What, still of the same mind?" he said. "Come over here till I look at you."

The boys came out of their corner and stood before him side by side, their eyes bright with excitement. The thing had come about much sooner than we expected, and as I turned to look at Aline I saw that her head was drooping, and her fingers plucked nervously at the lace of her gown.

Mr. Desmond looked at the boys a minute or two, and they looked back at him.

"Yes," he said, "I remember. You wanted to come with me, and I said that I had room for men, and that when you were men, if you were still of the same mind, I would find room for you."

"And now we are men," said Hugh, "and we are still of the same mind."

"We have been learning smith-work, and mason-work, and carpentry, and other things that we thought might be useful to us when you had found room for us," said Donald, "and we are ready to go."

"What, both?" said Mr. Desmond, and then he turned to Aline. "You would trust them to me, Miss Brandon?"

"Yes," said Aline in a low voice, "I have told them they might go if you would have them."

"Thank you!" he said, and his voice was full of feeling. We knew he felt that she had trusted him with Pierce, and Pierce had come home only to die, and now she trusted him with those two.

"Thank you!" he said again. "God helping me, I will fulfil your trust."

After that we saw a great deal of Mr. Desmond, and he was often at Brandon. There were naturally many arrangements to be made about the boys, and Aline confessed to me that Mr. Desmond's affection for Pierce and grief for his death had brought the silent strong man of the people closer into her friendship than perhaps any man had ever penetrated before.

He was to leave in October, and the boys' simple outfits were ready, and we had begun to dread the coming parting, for Aline more than for ourselves. It was no unusual thing now to find Mr. Desmond at Brandon when we went over of an afternoon, so that when we went in one of those last evenings, and saw him standing by the mantel-piece looking down at Aline's bent head, and Aline visibly agitated, we felt no surprise. The air was surcharged with emotion just then.

We sat down, and made some ordinary remarks, and then I asked if it had been settled about the date of departure, a matter which had been still under discussion when last we had met.

"Mrs. MacNeill," Mr. Desmond answered me in a half-shy, half-humorous way, "it is possible that the sailing may be indefinitely postponed after all."

"What do you mean?" I cried, without a glimmer of the truth.

He bent and lifted Aline's hand and kissed it.

"Your sister has done me the immense honour," he said, "of consenting to be my wife."

Well, we were all delighted beyond measure--all but the boys, who were bitterly disappointed at being cheated out of their fortune-hunting, so disappointed, indeed, that Mr. Desmond at last persuaded Aline to consent to their going out to the charge of his lieutenant, Mr. Allen, whom he trusted entirely, for such time as they chose to stay.

"If they have the spirit of the thing, they will be happy nowhere else. If not, it will take the edge of the appetite off, and they can come back to any career they choose, that I can open for them."

So Aline was married--by poor, faithful Mr. Benson, who had the sympathy of us all--and the boys went. A year later Hugh returned, but Donald stayed where he was. He is in Cape Town now, managing that part of John Desmond's immense business, and next year he will be in London, so that you may say we will all be reunited again. Hugh entered Sandhurst, and is now a very handsome young soldier, much in love with his profession.

But as soon as Aline and he had settled down after their marriage Mr. Desmond set about restoring the ancient glories of Brandon. Bit by bit, and with the utmost reverence, the dear old house was restored, and made more beautiful than our wildest dreams could have imagined.

Aline is now quite a great lady, much sought after in Society, beside whom her younger sisters are quite humble folk. But more than that, she is a happy and proud woman, and as for the good she and John Desmond do unostentatiously, that is written in the hearts of the poor, and in the books of Heaven.

The twins, by the way, were of the _débutantes_ this year, and are counted among the beauties of the Season. But I don't think admiration or newspaper paragraphs will make them vain or worldly, for have they not been brought up by Aline, who, like a certain royal saint, goes splendidly to honour her husband's position, but directs the eyes of her most meek spirit ever towards the Kingdom of Heaven.

THE END.

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