Old Comrades

BY

AGNES GIBERNE

AUTHOR OF "LIFE-TANGLES," "IDA'S SECRET," "WON AT LAST," "THE EARLS OF THE VILLAGE," ETC.

LONDON

JOHN F. SHAW AND CO.

48 PATERNOSTER ROW

CONTENTS

CHAP.

I. A CHRISTMAS CARD

II. THINGS NOT IN THE COLONEL'S LINE

III. USING OPPORTUNITIES

IV. MRS. EFFINGHAM

V. DOLLY'S JOURNAL

VI. A POSSIBLE ACQUAINTANCE

VII. INTRODUCTIONS

VIII. AFTERNOON TEA

IX. WAS SOMETHING WRONG?

X. A PARK ENCOUNTER

XI. ISABEL'S QUESTIONING

XII. A TENNIS PARTY

XIII. DOLLY'S TROUBLE

XIV. DOROTHEA'S LETTER

XV. THE SOMETHING THAT WAS WRONG

XVI. DOLLY'S JOURNAL AGAIN

XVII. A FRIEND IN NEED

XVIII. A MISTAKE

XIX. "STRICTLY IN CONFIDENCE"

XX. CUTTING THE KNOT

OLD COMRADES

CHAPTER I

A CHRISTMAS CARD

"DOROTHEA!"

The voice was deep-toned, verging on gruffness, and it lingered over the name, not affectionately, but as if the speaker's mind were absent.

No answer came in words from the girl seated beyond the round table. She lowered the book in her hands, and waited.

"Dorothea!"

"Yes," she said.

"Fetch me the first volume of the Encyclopædia."

"The Encyclopædia?"

"Britannica, of course."

"Downstairs?" Dorothea asked hesitatingly.

"Of course!"—again. "Lowest shelf of the bookcase."

"That long row of big volumes! I think I saw the first volume upstairs."

"Then, my dear, it ought not to be. Everything should always be in its right place."

Colonel Tracy spoke with the air of one enunciating a profound truth, disembosomed by himself for the first time in the history of the world. He was a grey-haired veteran, with large features, a complexion of deep-red rust, and solid though not tall figure. Fifteen years of "retired" life had not undone his Indian military training. When giving an order to daughter or domestic, he was apt still to give it as to a Sepoy. "Ready! Present! Fire!" was the Colonel's style. Domestics were disposed to rebel, where the daughter had to endure.

Dorothea laid down her book, and stood up slowly. There was a controlled stillness about her movements, unusual in girls of eighteen, and not too common in women of middle age. She did not remind her father that he, not she, had conveyed the volume to its present resting-place. One week at home—if this could fairly be called "home"—had shown Dorothea that whatever went wrong would be the fault of anybody rather than of the Colonel. So she left that question alone, and vanished.

The Colonel lifted his head, and looked after her. "Quiet!" he muttered in a gratified tone. "Good thing, too! I hate your bouncing women, slamming the doors, and shaking the house at every step." He had himself a heavy footfall, and he was given to loud shutting of doors, but these were exclusive privileges, not to be accorded to anybody else.

The room which Dorothea left was not attractive. Carpet and curtains were faded; wall-paper and furniture were ugly; ornaments were cheap and in bad taste. There were no dainty knick-knacks on brackets or side-tables. An old-fashioned round table stood in the centre, and was strewn with books—dull books in dull bindings.

London lodgings are not wont to be attractive, especially the second-rate sort. This was the "upstairs parlour" of a very second-rate sort, situated in a side-street of exceptional dreariness.

All the houses on either side of the street were exactly like all the rest. Each had a porch with steps; each had an area with more steps; each had one window of a small dining-room beside the porch, and two windows of a little drawing-room above; each had two bedroom windows yet higher, and most had two garret holes at the top. Each was discoloured with smoke, dingy and dismal. Each had white blinds to the bedroom windows, which seemed to keep up a futile struggle after cleanliness.

These particulars would have been patent in daylight; but daylight vanishes early on a December afternoon in town. Night had drawn its pall over the big city an hour before. A tall candle burnt upon the table, close to the Colonel. He was so used to read and write alone by the light of a single candle, that the need of a second for his daughter had not occurred to him.

She came in, carrying the big volume, laid it down, and stood for a moment beside him, as if to await further orders.

There was nothing "school-girlish" about Dorothea, in the ordinary sense of the word, though she had left school but one week earlier. Of good height, she had a pretty figure, the effect of which was somewhat spoilt by the forward carriage of her head, almost amounting to a poke, and due to short sight. Her face was rounded and pale, and in repose was serious. The wistful eyes looked through a pair of "pincer" glasses, balanced on a neat little nose.

Colonel Tracy was making voluminous notes from a decrepit brown volume, which had lost half its binding. He wrote an atrocious hand, which fact had mattered little hitherto, since nobody needed to read it except himself. Now that he was beginning to wake up to the possession of a daughter who might be useful, a new element came into the question.

"Is that all?" asked Dorothea.

"Humph!" was doubtless meant for thanks, and the girl went towards her seat. But before she could reach it, a supplementary order was issued: "Ha! No! It's not here! Second volume."

"Shall I get the second volume?"

Colonel Tracy glanced up, and really did say "Thanks!" with even a suspicion of apology in the tone.

Dorothea ran down the narrow staircase this time, instead of up. She had to light a candle, and take it into the dining-room. Having found the required volume, some impulse led her to the window, where she peeped through the lowered venetians.

A hansom was dashing past; and two ladies on the pavement seemed to be carrying home an armful of packages. Dorothea could detect a merry ring in their voices as they went. Then came a boy, bearing a big bunch of holly. For this was Christmas Eve.

The Colonel had bought no holly. "Nonsense," he had said that morning, when Dorothea petitioned for some. "You are not a child now, my dear; and I have no money to throw away on rubbish."

Was it rubbish? Dorothea considered the question, as she leant against the window, forgetting for the moment the volume which had to be taken to her father.

"He does not, seem to care much about Christmas," she thought. "I used to feel it dull to stay at school; but this seems more dull. Did Mrs. Kirkpatrick guess how it would be, when she told me I should have worries? She said I must try to draw out my father's sympathies, because he has been so long alone. But how? What can I do? He does not care to talk. I can see that it only bothers him. And he seems to have no friends. Nobody calls to see him, not even any letters come. Will it always be so?"

As if in response, the postman's rap sounded.

"Mrs. Kirkpatrick, I dare say! She will not forget me," the girl said joyously, hastening out.

But the one letter handed to her was addressed "Colonel Tracy."

"I shall hear to-morrow. I did not really expect it sooner," she thought, and she ran lightly upstairs.

"Something for you, father. A Christmas card!" she suggested.

Colonel Tracy looked up. "Christmas card!" he repeated. "Where is the volume?"

"The Encyclopædia! O how stupid of me! The postman came, and I forgot. I'll get it at once."

"Make haste!" hurried her steps. She would have liked to wait and see the envelope opened. Expeditious as she was, that process was over by the time she returned. The Colonel sat bolt upright, gazing at something in his hand, with a singular expression on his sunburnt face. It was a Christmas card, as Dorothea had guessed, and she came fearlessly near, to gaze also. There was a background of dull pale blue, and across the background flew a white dove, bearing in its beak a bunch of leaves—presumably an olive-branch. "Peace and Good-Will" in golden letters occupied one corner.

"Why, father, it is quite an old card," Dorothea exclaimed merrily, anxious to throw herself into his interests. "Look at the soiled edges; and a crease all down the middle. It might be years old."

The Colonel was not communicative. He glanced at her with the same odd expression, and said, "Yes."

"Who can it be from? Some old friend of yours?"

"We were friends—once!"

"And not now?"

"No!" decisively.

"But you exchange Christmas cards?"

"We send—this," after a pause. Colonel Tracy seemed unwilling to explain.

Dorothea knelt on a stool close to the table, resting her hands upon it, much interested.

"Do tell me more," she said. "It is Christmas Eve, and I have nobody else to talk to."

"There is nothing to tell. We had a—a trifling disagreement," said the Colonel. "What makes you wear spectacles?"

"Short sight. Why, father, you know that!"

"I had forgotten. Well, I shall put this away," said the Colonel.

"And send another to your friend?"

"No. Certainly not. Next Christmas, I shall return this."

A light dawned on Dorothea. "Is that it? I see. How strange!"

"Not strange at all. We have done so for some years—eight or nine, I think—alternately."

"Always the same card?"

"Yes."

"And you have never met! And never written!"

"No. Why should we?"

Dorothea was silent for a moment. Then she said, "If you met, you would be friends again."

The Colonel made a dubious sound.

"Was it you who sent the card first, or was it he?"

"Not I."

"And when you first got it, did you wait a whole year to send it back?"

"Certainly."

The wonder in Dorothea's tone was lost upon the gallant Colonel.

"And you will wait a whole year now! Not write a letter, or—"

"I shall wait till next Christmas," said the Colonel.

Thereupon, he pushed the little messenger of peace into a square envelope, wrote upon it, "Christmas Card—Erskine—" and hid it away in his desk.

"Is Erskine his name?"

"Colonel Erskine. We were in the same regiment. He was my senior, slightly; and I believe, he retired first."

"And now he lives at—"

"Craye. My dear, we have talked long enough. I have no more time to spare," said the Colonel, turning with assiduity to vol. ii. of the Encyclopædia.

Dorothea subsided into her chair and into silence. She was not timid, but she did not wish to worry him. Besides, she had something fresh to think about, in the slow progress of reconciliation between the two veterans. "But to have gone on all these years!" she said to herself. "And I wish my father had been the first to send the card."

CHAPTER II

THINGS NOT IN THE COLONEL'S LINE

LONDON is commonly counted a lively place, with plenty to do, and abundance to see; even though it has its little drawbacks in the shape of noise, soot, and fog. But the compensating liveliness seemed unlikely to enter into Dorothea Tracy's town existence.

If a man wishes for freedom from society, he is as likely to get what he wants in London as in the tiniest village—perhaps more so. Colonel Tracy had never been a man of society. He detested the generality of human beings, hated company, abhorred teas, dinners, and conversation.

In earlier life, he had had one friend—the quondam comrade of the olive-leaf card!—and had lost that friend. He had also had a wife, and had lost that wife.

Thenceforward, habits of seclusion had grown upon him apace. As years went on, he troubled himself to see less and less of his child; though always looking forward, curiously, to the time when he would have her to live with him. Now that time was come, and it found him a confirmed hermit. He had no friends. He associated with no one, called upon no one. As a natural corollary, no one called upon, or associated with him. He did not even belong to a club, for a club means acquaintances, and the Colonel wanted no acquaintances. He lived in a huge overgrown parish, the work of which could never be overtaken by the toiling clergy. A call from one of the curates, some months earlier, had met with no gracious reception, and had not yet been repeated.

The manner of life which might suit the tastes of a retired veteran was not precisely fitted for a young girl. This as yet did not cause the Colonel concern; if indeed it occurred to him. He expected to go on as he had done hitherto, with merely the little addition of a silent and useful daughter. He expected Dorothea to conform unquestionably to his will.

She had come "home," as she called it—or rather, as she had called it beforehand—full of young hopes and dreams. At eighteen, one is apt to see future life through rosy spectacles. In one short week, the glasses had gained a leaden hue, borrowed from the leaden atmosphere around. The hopes were dying; the dreams were fading. Dorothea had had, and would have, some rebellious struggles before settling down to the dead level of existence which seemed inevitable. Thus far, the effect of her surroundings was rather to stupefy than to excite. Everything was so different from the previous expectations of the school-girl, that she did not know what to make of her own position.

A girl naturally wishes for companions. Beyond her father, Dorothea had none; and Colonel Tracy was far too self-absorbed a man to render satisfying companionship. Below the rugged surface, he was in the main kind-hearted; but he lacked the mighty gift of sympathy. He neither understood his daughter, nor troubled himself to be understood by her. Each was more or less of an enigma to the other.

He had his own notions of propriety, and after his own fashion, he was careful. "You are too young to walk out alone at present in London," he had said to Dorothea, the day following her arrival. "I always take my constitutional after breakfast, and you may accompany me. I hope you are a good walker. If it should be necessary for you to leave the house at any time when I am otherwise engaged, you must have Mrs. Stirring for a companion. She has promised me to attend to your wants."

Mrs. Stirring was the lodging-house keeper: a highly respectable little woman, "genteel" to a degree in her own estimation, but apt to be plaintive in tone and behindhand in work. So she was not always an available "companion," and when available she was not too cheerful.

The morning "constitutional" became a daily event, regular as breakfast itself when weather permitted. Happily, Dorothea was a very good walker. The Colonel went fast and far; and he never thought of asking whether pace or distance suited his daughter's capabilities. Dorothea enjoyed the rapid motion and the comparative freshness of the morning air. She would have enjoyed some conversation likewise; but the Colonel was seldom in a talkative mood. If she spoke, he grunted; if she asked a question, he answered it, and that was all.

How to fill the remaining hours of the day became, even in one week, something of a problem to Dorothea. She had work in hand, but it is dull, at the age of eighteen, to sit and work with no one to take any interest in the progress of the needle. She dearly loved reading, but the Colonel's books were such as to put that love to a pretty severe test. She could have spent hours happily any day in writing to Mrs. Kirkpatrick and her favourite schoolfellows; but her father's pet economy was in the matter of paper and stamps. So time threatened to hang upon Dorothea's hands.

Nine years had elapsed since the death of Dorothea's mother; and the greater part of those nine years had been spent by her in a small Yorkshire school, kept by Mrs. Kirkpatrick. That had grown to be Dorothea's real "home." She hardly realised the fact while there, loyally reserving the term for future life with her father, and sometimes counting it a little hard to spend so many of her holidays at school. But now that the long-expected life with her father had begun, she knew well enough which was the real home.

Through the nine years Colonel Tracy had lived more or less in London, often going abroad for a while. It had happened curiously often—almost regularly—that he had to go abroad just before Dorothea's holidays, so that he was "quite unable to receive her." Whether the more correct word would not have been "unwilling" may be doubted. He was a man who disliked trouble; and he had no notion of doing on principle that which he disliked, for the sake of others.

About once a year, he had commonly arranged to spend a fortnight at some northern watering-place with Dorothea: this being the least troublesome mode he could devise for amusing a school-girl. From the age of twelve to the age of eighteen, she had never been to London. "Too expensive a journey," the Colonel said, though he made nothing of going himself north or south, travelling first-class. He liked to have Dorothea always within easy reach of Mrs. Kirkpatrick, that he might get her off his hands without difficulty when he found the girlish spirits too much.

Dorothea's recollections of his manner of life in town, seen before her thirteenth birthday, had grown somewhat dim, and perhaps were embellished by distance. Moreover, he had often changed his headquarters since those days, so her recollections were the less important. Certainly she did not expect what she found. The first glimpse of the dingy apartments, which for more than a year, he had made his home, gave a shock. Had the Colonel been aware of her sensations, he would have counted them unreasonable. He had "done his duty by her" in the matter of education. He expected now that she should "do her duty by him" in the matter of submission and usefulness.

Dorothea was a girl of too much character not to be useful, of too much principle to indulge in discontent. Still, this week had been a week of "deadly dulness"; and what there was for her to do, she had, as yet, failed to discover.

The Colonel arranged everything, ordered dinner, interviewed the landlady, and undertook to procure fish and vegetables. He piqued himself upon his intimate acquaintance with household details. He needed neither advice nor help. Dorothea was a mere adjunct in his existence thus far, less important than the said fish, less necessary than the said vegetables. She felt like a stranded boat, cast upon a mudbank, out of reach of the tide of life which surged and roared around. This, in a London street, where cabs and hansoms dashed past, where the sound of the great human Babel never ceased.

* * * * * *

Christmas morning dawned.

"I shall hear from Mrs. Kirkpatrick to-day," thought Dorothea cheerily. "Will my father go to Church with me?"

He had excused himself the Sunday before on the plea of bad weather and "indigestion." "Bad weather" did not keep the Colonel in when he wanted to secure fresh fish for dinner; but Church was another matter. Dorothea had had to content herself with Mrs. Stirring's companionship. The Church was very near, so near that she meant soon to plead for leave to go alone.

"Good morning, father," she said, in her brightest tone, when he came into the dining-room. He was punctual to the moment, yet Dorothea was before him.

An indistinct grunt served for "good morning." The Colonel was exercised in mind, to think that Dorothea should have already made the tea. It was no small trial to give up his tea-making to her, which he had done as in duty bound, he being man and she woman; and he liked to stand close by, watching with critical eyes, as she measured out each spoonful. On the Colonel's plate lay a neat white package, tied round with blue ribbon. He was far too much absorbed in the tea-question to notice it.

"How many spoonfuls did you put in, my dear?"

"Three, father. One for you, one for me, and one for the teapot. Mrs. Kirkpatrick always said—"

"Full spoons, but not piled up?" demanded the Colonel, wrinkling anxiously the skin of his face.

"Yes; just as you showed me."

"And the teapot,—you made the teapot hot first?"

Dorothea nodded. She had to bite her lips to keep from laughing, as the Colonel lifted the lid and peered in.

"Too much water! A great deal too much water!" he said solemnly.

"No, I don't think so indeed. It will all come right," Dorothea assured him with audacious confidence. "O father, never mind the tea. See what Mrs. Kirkpatrick has sent me."