Jill stepped forward, tossing her head, as though to imply that there had never been any doubt about her welcome, and followed closely behind, while the servant led the way down two long passages running at right angles to each other, and threw open a door at the end, announcing the visitors’ names in tones.
A strong whiff of cigar smoke filled the air, and there sat the General on a arm-chair, which was hardly redder than his own . His eyes looked as glassy as ever, and his grey locks were at the top until he bore a ludicrous to a paroquet. He held the card in his hand, and greeted his visitors with a of amusement.
“Well, sir. Well, ma’am—‘kind enquiries,’ eh? Come to see how the poor old man is faring after his fall?”
“Yes! We wanted to know. We thought it would be polite, as we were the un—er—unwitting causers of your accident.”
Jill brought out the right word with fine effect, whereupon the General made great play with his outstanding tufts of , pretending to frown, and look .
“Un—witting, indeed! If that is your idea of unwitting, I should like to know how you would define deliberate intent! I’ll forgive you this time, but let me catch you at any of your tricks again, and the fat will be in the fire! Sit down—sit down. It’s not often an old bachelor like myself has the honour of entertaining a young lady visitor. No man has had better friends, or more of them, than Terence Digby, but there are precious few remaining nowadays. I’ve left them behind me in many a lonely grave, without a stick or stone to show the resting-place of some of the bravest fellows the world has ever known. It’s lonely work to outlive one’s best friends.”
“Have you been in many wars, sir?” asked Jack, quick to a story of adventure. He dropped his hat on the floor and back in his chair, the locks of hair which his sisters christened “Cetewayo,” after the Zulu chief, sticking up at the back of his head. “Have you been in any real, proper wars?”
“I should think I have, sir. Many wars, and tough and serious wars at that, though a whipper-snapper like you would not know their names, and the English newspapers sandwich the news of them in a corner—with a small headline of ‘Border War.’ It’s the Border Wars which keep the Empire together, let me tell you, sir—the Border Wars which the most self-sacrificing and thankless work. There’s no honour and glory about them. The people you are fighting for don’t even take the trouble to find out where you are, or what the trouble is about. Not that there ought to be any hardship about that to the true soldier. He fights for his King! That is enough for him!”
A curious of expression came over the fierce old face as he the last sentence. The young people both noticed it, and dimly suspected a deeper meaning to the words, but they were in no mood for moralising.
“I should prefer the honour and glory,” Jill declared boldly. “I’d hate to be sent to fight in pokey out-of-the-way places where nobody was watching and saying, ‘England expects!’ I could be most terrifically brave, if I knew it would be in the papers in the morning, and I should be a hero when I got home; but I’d be scared to death up among great lonely mountains with the feeling that nobody cared. Were you ever frightened, General Digby?”
“Soldiers are never frightened. You are only a girl,” interrupted Jack indignantly, but his host did not agree with his conclusions.
“She may be a girl, but she knows what she is talking about. She understands, because she is a girl, perhaps. Women have that born in them. Banners and flags, and bands playing airs, and the feeling that the world is watching, have an inspiring effect on the most timid of men. Who told you that a soldier was never afraid, young sir? Whoever it was did not know what he was talking about. Yes, I have been afraid, deadly afraid, many times over, and no man dared to call Terence Digby a coward. To camp with a handful of men among the great lonely mountains, as your sister so aptly puts it, never knowing when or how the attack may fall—an attack of devils rather than men; to know that if you are taken torture will be your portion, not death,—there is nothing to in dying for one’s country,—that shakes the nerves of the strongest man! I hear people talking about modern , and saying it is the hardest trial of bravery to fight an unseen three or four miles away. Well, well! I wonder if they have ever seen a rush of one of those warlike hill-tribes, and stood waiting to receive it as I have had to do times and again!”
“Did you kill lots of men—yourself? How many have you killed?” Jack inquired eagerly, but the General refused to be specific.
“I prefer not to think. It’s not a pleasant recollection. When the world is a little older, let us hope we shall find some better way of settling a quarrel than seeing who can kill off the most men. What are you going to be when you are a man, Mr Jack? Going in for a profession?”
Jack’s face fell. For personal questions, especially questions referring to his studies, he had a strong distaste. He wriggled on his chair, and between his lips—
“Trying for a scholarship. Half fees for the next three years. If I get it father will send me on to Cambridge. He wants me to be a doctor, and help him in the practice when he gets old.”
“And you?”
Jack his shoulders.
“I’d like to be a surgeon. It would be fine patching people up, setting their bones, and trying things no one had dared to do before; but I couldn’t stand driving round every day to look after their wretched colds, and the babies. I’d like to be an army doctor best of all.”
“Humph! Would you! Much you know about it. I fancy you’d soon be thankful to take on the babies in exchange. Well, I’ve only one piece of advice to give you, my boy: never be persuaded to take up a career into which you cannot throw your whole heart and soul. You are responsible for your life’s work, and will have to account for it some day. Don’t make things harder by drifting into uncongenial surroundings. You look to me like a young fellow who might drift. Too easy-going by half!”
Jack flushed uncomfortably. He hated being criticised, especially when the criticism was true, as conscience proclaimed the present to be. There came to him every now and then moments of illumination, when, as if a flashlight was suddenly played over the future, he realised that he would soon be a man, with a man’s duties and responsibilities to himself and to others, and that these years of preparation were his training-ground for the fight, concerning the spending of which he would either rejoice or sorrow all his life long. At such moments the blood in his , and he felt strong to do all things, and deny himself all things, if only the goal could be reached; but the vision soon faded, and he relapsed once more into careless, happy-go-lucky ways, caring more for a “lark” than for any solid gain, present or to come.
The old man stared at the boy for a moment,—seemed as if about to add something to his denunciation, but changed his mind, and addressed Jill instead.
“And you, missy? Girls have professions nowadays as well as their brothers. Have you any special in view?”
Jill shook her pretty shaggy head.
“Oh no, I’m just going to be a plain lady!” whereat the General threw himself back in his chair with a stentorian laugh.
“No, that you never will! That is, fortunately, out of your own hands. You will have to make another choice, my dear.”
Jill showed her white teeth in a smile, wholly unembarrassed by the compliment.
“I mean, I shall get married as soon as I leave school. I should hate to have to make money for myself. I’ll marry a rich man with lots of dogs and horses, and then I can enjoy myself without any bother.”
The General drew his together and stared scrutinisingly at the girlish figure seated on the high-backed oak chair. Flowing locks, short petticoats, heavy boots, woollen gloves—just a bit of a schoolgirl in the hobbledehoy stage in which feminine instincts seem dormant—and the ambitions are more those of a boy than a girl. But Jill was going to be a woman some day, and a fascinating woman into the bargain, with all the power for good or evil over............