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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of VC -- A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of
+the Crimea, by David Christie Murray
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: VC -- A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea
+
+Author: David Christie Murray
+
+Release Date: August 8, 2007 [EBook #22275]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VC, A CHRONICLE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+VC -- A CHRONICLE OF CASTLE BARFIELD AND OF THE CRIMEA
+
+By David Christie Murray
+
+
+CHATTO & WINDUS
+
+1904
+
+LONDON
+
+
+
+
+V. C.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+The people of Castle Barfield boast that the middle of their High
+Street is on a level with the cross of St. Paul's Cathedral. The whole
+country-side is open, and affords a welcome to storm from whatever
+corner of the compass it may blow. You have to get right away into
+the Peak district before you can find anything like an eminence of
+distinction, though the mild slopes of Quarry-moor and Cline, a few
+miles to the westward, save the prospect from complete monotony. East,
+and a trifle to the north, rises Beacon Hargate, on the top whereof one
+of the innumerable bonfires which warned England of the coming of the
+Armada hung out its flaming banner in the sight of three counties.
+Topping that high tableland, Beacon Hargate is familiar with wild
+weather at the proper seasons, and by dint of use takes very little
+notice of it. But on the evening on which this story has its proper
+beginning such a storm raged round and over the old Beacon as no man or
+woman of that region could even remember. It began in the grey of the
+dawn in wild and fitful gusts, driving thick squalls of rain before
+them, but long before midday it lost its first waywardness and settled
+down to business with a steady purpose. It grew in force from hour to
+hour, and almost from minute to minute, until all living things sought
+shelter. The disconsolate cattle huddled under the sparse hedgerows,
+looking down their broad, dripping noses in a meek abandonment to fate.
+The sheep packed themselves in any hollowed corner they could find,
+and hugged their soaked fleeces close to each other in uncomplaining
+patience. The trees fought the blast with impotent arms, and shrieked
+and groaned their protest against it Flying boughs, like great grotesque
+birds, went hurtling through the air.
+
+As the brief March day fell towards its close, the storm seemed suddenly
+to double in fury. Oak and elm went down before it bodily, torn from the
+stout anchorage of many years, and before the wind had raged itself
+to rest many scores of patriarchal landmarks were laid low. Roar of
+tormented woods, howl of wind, crash on crash of breaking boughs or
+falling trees, blended to one tune, and a plunging rain came down in
+ropes rather than in lines, driven at a fierce angle.
+
+Night fell, and the pitiless tempest raged on, but with the coming of
+the darkness one sign of cheer displayed itself. From the windows of
+the plain old grey-stone mansion on the eastern side of the Beacon Hill
+lights began to glow, first in this chamber and then in that, until the
+whole squat edifice seemed charged with warmth and comfort. The tempest
+poured its full strength against the grey-stone house. It shook the
+windows with its frantic hand, it shrieked and howled and roared amongst
+the chimney tops and gables, it strained the hasps of the staunch oaken
+doors, and the old house faced it with a broadening smile, and shone the
+brighter by contrast as the night grew blacker.
+
+In the whole roaring region there was but one man to be found abroad,
+and he was making for the grey-stone house. He was a portly person with
+a prosperous-looking development about the neighbourhood of the
+lower waistcoat, and he was sorely tried, though he was as yet on
+the sheltered side of the hill. His heavy black broadcloth was soaked
+through and through, and weighed him down. The icy wet had chilled him,
+and he breathed hard at every laboured step. One stiff slope of some
+fifty yards had still to be surmounted before he reached the hill-top.
+Twenty yards further lay the house, with all windows beaming. It was
+as yet invisible to him, but in his mind's eye he could see it, and the
+thought of it gave him courage. He turned his back to the plunging rain,
+and paused to gather breath before he assaulted the last slope of the
+hill. He had lost his hat, and the water trickled out of his hair in
+rivulets.
+
+'I've seen worse weather than any they can brew in the neighbourhood
+of Beacon Hargate,' he panted to himself, 'but it's one thing to have a
+good tight craft under your feet, and it's another to be bogged in the
+dark, over half a mile of rotten plough-land. All right, my lads, you
+haven't got Jack Jervase under yet. Here goes.'
+
+With this he faced the hill and the rain again, and made his difficult
+and slippery way upward, impeded by his clinging clothes, and snorting
+like a grampus. Right at the crown of the hill, most fortunately for
+the wayfarer, there was a thick coppice of stunted trees, which afforded
+refuge from the gale and shelter from the rain. He was quite blown by
+the time he reached it, and he clutched at the nearest sapling as a
+drowning man clutches at a spar. He stood there perforce for a full
+minute, panting hard. Then he shook his head doggedly, and muttered a
+second time:
+
+'All right, my lads. You haven't got Jack Jervase yet.'
+
+And then, helping himself along from hand to hand, he skirted the
+coppice, until he came to the unsheltered brow of the hill. It was well
+for him then that he had something to hold on by. Even as it was, he was
+clean lifted from his feet, and it was only by a prodigious effort that
+he saved himself from being blown away like a leaf. But having once
+struggled past the actual summit, he had escaped that danger, and a
+minute later, through howling-wind and scourging rain, the fire-lit
+windows of the house were beaming 'home!' upon him. Another instant and
+his feet were on the firm gravel, and he went scudding before the wind
+until he had gained the corner of the house. Here, feeling his troubles
+over, he paused once more for breath, and took a dripping way towards
+the rear of the building.
+
+He stayed for an instant to glance in at an old-fashioned broad
+mullioned window. He looked into a room where a jolly coal fire was
+burning in the grate, and blazing up the chimney. About it half-a-dozen
+people sat comfortably grouped, and there was a big brown steaming jug
+upon the wooden table in the centre of the room, which was paved with
+the large square tiles locally called 'quarries.' One of the group about
+the fire turned to this jug and poured out from it a generous-looking
+stream of dark brown liquid into a number of mugs of the old
+Staffordshire ware, which at that time of day was common in rustic
+households, though it seems now to have vanished from all places but
+the shelves of the collector. The onlooker shivered and spoke under his
+breath.
+
+'You're making pretty free with old Jack's old October inside there,
+ain't you? Pretty fine old crowd to come home to!--guzzling at my
+expense. I'll sort ye.'
+
+A moment later he was in the room, but short as the interval was between
+the close of his speech and his appearance before the group about the
+fire, his temper had apparently changed, for he broke out in a cheery
+voice:
+
+'Hilloa, my lads! I reckon one or two of you are weatherbound. Well,
+you've found a snug harbour here, and you're welcome to it. Mary,' he
+went on, addressing a thick-set woman of middle age, who had risen at
+his entrance, and stood before him with an embarrassed aspect, 'don't
+tell the missus that I'm at home, but go upstairs and lay out dry things
+for me. I'm wet through to the marrow. I'll have a drop of that myself,'
+he said, laying a hand on one of the mugs and nodding round the little
+circle, with a beaming face.
+
+One of the men noisily shifted his chair to make room for him, and the
+master of the house approached the fire, and, turning his back to it,
+began to steam like a whole washing day.
+
+He sipped comfortably at the creaming contents of the mug, and fairly
+beamed upon his guests.
+
+'You chaps,' he said, 'will have to wake up by and by. I hope there
+isn't one of you that hasn't got the spirit to go out and fight for his
+Queen and country?'
+
+'There ain't a-going to be no fightin', Mr. Jervase,' said one of the
+men sheepishly.
+
+'Don't you make any mistake about that, my lad,' said Mr. Jervase. 'I've
+got a bit of news for you as will set old England in a blaze within
+another four-and-twenty hours. And I suppose I'm the only man within
+five miles that knows it. You mark my words, now, all of you. You'll
+remember this night to the last day o' your lives. This is the 27th
+March, this is. The twenty-seventh of March in the year of Our Lord
+eighteen hundred and fifty-four. That's a date as will stick in your
+gizzards, my hearties. It's a date as will stick in old England's
+gizzard, and in the Czar of Rooshia's gizzard, and in the gizzard of
+Napoleon Three. And you can lay your oath to that, because Jack Jervase
+told you.'
+
+'Why, what's happened, Mr. Jervase?' asked the man who had spoken
+earlier.
+
+'Happened?' cried Mr. Jervase. 'Why, Her Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria
+has sent a message to her Royal 'Ouses of Parliament to say as she's
+declared war agen the Czar of all the Rooshias. And before a month is
+over your heads, my lads, there'll be war amongst the Great Powers of
+Europe, for the first time in eight-and-thirty years.'
+
+The five men rose to their feet unconsciously in their excitement.
+They were mere country-side clods, and knew as little of the rights and
+wrongs of that great Eastern question which had overshadowed the world
+so long, as the horses they drove about the heavy country lanes or the
+flocks they herded. But they broke into a cheer.
+
+The bringer of the news lifted a hand, and waved them into silence.
+
+'You'll have the missus in to know what all that hullaballoo's about,'
+he said, reprovingly: 'and I don't want to be bothered until I've made a
+change. Now I'll tell you what it is, my lads. The Queen wants men, and
+there isn't one of you that isn't fit to go a-soldiering. I just tell
+you this--if any one of you, or the whole lot of you, see fit to take
+the Queen's shilling I'll put a pound to it for bounty money. Now, you
+needn't cheer again,' he added hastily.
+
+As a matter of fact, none of his listeners showed any inclination to
+cheer. War in the abstract was a thing to cheer about, but war in
+the concrete--war with its possibilities--thus brought home to each
+individual mind excited no enthusiasm.
+
+'You think about that, my lads,' said the host, distributing a series of
+smiling nods about him. 'Old Jack Jervase's day is over, or he'd be at
+it again, and so I tell you. It's many and many a year now since I heard
+a shot fired in anger, or since I stood on a ship's deck. But I've got
+the heart for the work still, if I haven't got the figger. Heigh-ho,' he
+went on, with a regretful moan, 'there's no room for a pottle-bellied,
+bald-headed old coot like me atween the decks of a man o' war. But if I
+was five-and-twenty years younger, why, God bless my soul, I shouldn't
+hesitate a minute!'
+
+The woman he had despatched immediately upon his entrance returned at
+this instant and coughed behind her hand to indicate her presence.
+
+'All ready, Mary?' said Mr. Jervase in a ringing and cheery voice.
+'That's well. Don't forget what I've told you, lads: fine young chaps
+like you ought not to desert their Queen and country in the hour of
+need. I'll keep my promise. Any one of you as takes the sergeant's
+shilling can claim a pound for bounty money from old Jack Jervase.'
+
+So saying, he rolled, with a nautical gait, towards the door by which
+the domestic had re-entered the room, and having reached the stairfoot,
+and finding himself alone, he added, with a sudden snarl, 'I'd like to
+give three of ye a chance of earning a wooden leg anyhow--coming into my
+house and guzzling my best beer the very minute my back's turned on ye.'
+
+He found a cheerful fire blazing in his own room, and dry clothing laid
+out before it. He began to undress, casting his coat into one corner
+of the room, with a gesture of exasperation, and his waistcoat into
+another. He tugged at his bootlaces angrily, muttering to himself
+meanwhile mere scraps of speech in which the words 'beer,' and 'waste,'
+and 'guzzling beasts,' were audible. When he had stripped completely,
+he gave himself a lusty towelling from head to foot, and then struggled
+into the warm, dry raiment prepared for him. As at the completion of
+his toilet he stood with a pair of stiff military brushes working at
+his hair and whiskers, before a big cheval glass, he looked eminently
+British for his day. The style is a little changing now, but the
+thick-set sturdy figure, the full paunch, the blunt scowling features,
+the cold grey eyes, the double chin, the firm yet sensual mouth, were
+all expressive of his type. The suit of pilot cloth into which he had
+changed gave him something of a seafaring look; but the high white
+collar, the shining black satin stock, the heavy gold chain which
+trailed across his waistcoat, and the clean-trimmed hirsute mutton-chop
+on either side the heavy jowl combined to make him intensely respectable
+to look at. He thrust his feet into a pair of wool-lined slippers, which
+he had left toasting till the last moment before the fire, and took his
+way downstairs, and along the passage which traversed the whole side of
+the house. His face was drawn into a heavy frown as he thrust open the
+door he came to, and he entered the room with a cough of magisterial
+importance. A tall, gaunt man, with stooping shoulders, rose to meet
+him, and the expression of Mr. Jervase's face changed as if by magic.
+Something of such a change had taken place between his looking in on
+the rustics assembled round his kitchen fire and his appearance amongst
+them. But now it was even swifter, and more pronounced.
+
+'Why, General Boswell!' he cried. 'This is indeed an unexpected honour.
+I'm proud to see you, sir, beneath my 'umble roof. Jack Jervase wasn't
+a very distinguished servant of Her Majesty. He never held the Queen's
+commission, sir; but he fowt beneath his country's flag, and he'll
+always feel it an honour to welcome a superior officer of the sister
+arm.'
+
+He said this with a laugh, and a roll of the head, as if to carry off
+by his own geniality any sense of presumption which might appear to lurk
+within his speech, and he bent low over the hand which was proffered to
+him.
+
+The visitor's type was as pronouncedly English as John Jervase's own,
+and yet it could hardly have differed further from it if the two men
+had been inhabitants of planets strange to one another. John Jervase
+was British _bourgeois_ from head to foot, and the General from crown to
+sole was an aristocrat. His very figure told the observer that, and the
+manly aquiline features and the mild, yet searching blue eye had never
+left an instant's doubt about it in the mind of any man. He was some six
+feet four in stature, and the slight stoop which sat upon his shoulders
+looked somehow as if it had been brought about by the innate courtesy of
+a man who could not refrain from bending to people of inferior stature.
+It scarcely detracted from the military character of his carriage, and,
+indeed, the General could stand up straight enough when he chose, as
+divers of the old incorrigibles who had been under his command in many
+climates knew full well. It was always a bad sign to one of these when
+he saw the General square his shoulders: and if, in addition to this,
+both hands were sent at the same time to twist the ends of the great
+drooping grey moustache, the old offender knew that his plight was
+serious indeed. Yet, for a grizzled old campaigner, who was now growing
+nigh to three score years, the General was marvellously mild and sweet
+in manner. His features, to be sure, were high, and in some of their
+signs a little harsh; but his mouth was very gentle in expression,
+and the large yet deepset eyes beamed with a kind simplicity. It was
+a common saying in his fighting days that Boswell's men would have
+followed him into hell. But children trusted and loved him at sight; and
+it was a pretty picture sometimes in his social hours to see him as the
+centre of a bevy of young girls--over whom he always seemed to exercise
+a perfectly unconscious fascination.
+
+'You've been to town, Jervase, I understand,' said the General, 'What's
+the news there?'
+
+'The news, sir,' said Mr. Jervase. 'The news, sir, has come at last,
+and by this time I suppose Her Majesty's forces have got their marching
+orders.'
+
+'Do you mean it's war, Jervase?' cried the General.
+
+'I mean it's war, sir,' Jervase answered. 'The latest news, before I
+came away, was that the Queen had sent a message to Parliament that
+negotiations with the Czar are broken off. The message goes on to say
+that Her Majesty relies upon her faithful subjects to protect the Sultan
+against the encroachments of Russia.'
+
+His manners and his accent were alike more dignified than they had been
+when he addressed the rustic crowd. It could be seen that he had one
+manner for the kitchen and another for the parlour.
+
+'At last!' said the General, half under his breath. 'At last! Well,
+everybody has seen it coming, and there----' he went on, turning upon
+his heel and speaking in a raised voice, 'there is your chance, Polson.
+You're a lucky dog, not even to have your commission from your
+agent's hands, and yet to be on the edge of the biggest campaign since
+Waterloo.'
+
+A lad of three-and-twenty had risen from a seat in the corner of the
+room at the moment of John Jervase's entry. He had risen so hastily that
+he had overturned half a set of chessmen from the board on which he had
+been playing, into the lap of a pretty girl, his partner in the game;
+but he had listened so intently, from the General's first question, that
+he was unconscious of that slight mishap. He walked into the broader
+light which shone beneath the central lamp, and asked eagerly:
+
+'There's no mistake about that, Dad? There's no mistake about it?'
+
+The speaker was Jervase's son, as a stranger seeing them under the same
+roof would have been ready to swear at sight. He was taller than his
+father by a good four inches; and the family resemblance, striking as it
+was, did not pierce so deep as the expression of the face. The father's
+blunt features were softened in the boy's, and though the look of
+energy was there, it was altogether lifted and spiritualised--possibly,
+perhaps, by the intense feeling of the moment.
+
+'And there'll be no mistake about my commission?' the young man asked.
+'There's no fear of any delay, or any official nonsense?'
+
+'I sent my cheque to the agent before I left the town,' his father
+answered, 'and I expect you'll get your call to boot and saddle within a
+day or two at the outside.'
+
+The pretty girl who had been playing chess with the young man in the
+corner laid down the pieces which had fallen in her lap. She placed them
+on the board, with a meaningless precision, and looked straight before
+her with wide eyes, and a face which had slowly grown paler and more
+pale.
+
+'Polson, my boy,' said the General, 'I congratulate you. You are a lucky
+fellow.' He held out his right hand, and as the young man grasped it,
+he laid his left upon his shoulder. 'They won't keep you long at the
+Depot,' he said, 'for a man who can shoot straight, and ride to hounds,
+is half a soldier already. God bless you, my lad. You'll do your duty
+well, I know.'
+
+There was silence in the room, and the noise of the storm outside, which
+nobody had hitherto thought about, fell upon the ears of all four, as if
+it had not been a familiar tone for hours, but as if it had but awakened
+at that instant. They all stood listening, for by this time the girl
+also had risen from her seat, and had made an indeterminate movement
+forward towards the centre of the room. And out of the boom and thunder
+of the storm there suddenly came a wild clatter of horses' feet, and a
+heavy gate was heard to fall back upon its fastening. An instant later
+there was a mad tugging at the front door bell, and an insaner clatter
+at the knocker. Jervase himself rushed to answer this sudden and
+unexpected summons, and opening the door unguardedly, was blown back
+into the hall, from the walls of which every hanging picture and every
+garment were swept by the incoming blast, like leaves. It sounded as if
+the house were coming down.
+
+A drenched, bareheaded figure staggered into the hall, wind-driven, and
+would have fallen had not Jervase clutched at it. The newcomer and the
+master of the house held on to each other, and Jervase panted hoarsely:
+
+'You? What's the matter?' 'The matter?' said the new arrival. 'The
+matter's ruin!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+The clatter of the tumbling objects in the hall brought out the General
+and Jack Jervase's son. The girl peered with a whiter face than ever
+from the parlour doorway, and a fourth auditor came upon the scene in
+the person of an elderly woman in black satin and old lace, who rushed
+into the hall with frightened eyes and upraised hands, in time to hear
+the question and the answer.
+
+To make clear what the question and the answer meant to the four people
+who heard them, I must go back a step.
+
+Jack Jervase ran away from home when the nineteenth century was in its
+teens. He had left behind him a harum-scarum reputation, and, save for
+his father and mother, but a solitary relative of his own name. When
+he came back, with coin in pouch, and the story of a life of strange
+adventure behind him, the old folks had been dead a dozen years, and the
+solitary cousin, whom he had always derided as a pious sneak, had so
+far prospered in the world's affairs that he had left the old-fashioned
+conventicle in which he had had his spiritual upbringing, and had become
+a pillar of the Established Church. The cousin had been christened Jacob
+and Noakes; but he had embroidered himself into James Knock Jervoyce;
+the Knocks being a family of some distinction in his neighbourhood, and
+the name Jervoyce having, to his fancy, a Norman-French sort of aspect
+which seemed to lift its bearer to a superior social height. James
+had many irons in the fire, and seemed to be prosperously busy at the
+commercial anvil all day long. Amongst the business enterprises he had
+in hand, there was but one which at any time had appeared to yield him
+no return for his labours. He had lent money on the strength of the
+security afforded by a brine pit in the neighbourhood of Droitwich;
+and his creditor having failed in the stipulated payments, James had
+foreclosed upon this property and had undertaken to work it for himself.
+He found this enterprise a failure, but since he could induce nobody to
+take it off his hands, he worked the property for what it was worth from
+time to time. There were seasons in which the pit was almost dry, and
+when it was impossible to work it at a profit. There were other seasons
+when the underground sources treated him more favourably. A more decided
+man than Mr. Knock Jervoyce would probably have decided to abandon the
+property altogether, and to let one loss stand for everything. There was
+a considerable cost incurred in the upkeep of machinery which was much
+oftener idle than engaged; and the occasional employment of the plant
+was, of course, on the average much more expensive than its constant
+use would have been. James was on the point, after two or three years
+of indecision, of relinquishing the working altogether, when Cousin John
+came home. There was a conference between the two, and following on that
+conference a very strange thing happened. The worthless mine became a
+property, and one of the best of its kind in England. Five men knew how
+this result was brought about, and three of them had been for a good
+many years in the enjoyment of a pension--one in Australia, one in
+Canada, and one in the United States. These pensions were paid by
+Cousins John and James, and paid by no means willingly. Not to boggle
+at this matter, the two cousins, at John's instigation, had contrived
+a simple villainy. Very near to the unproductive salt pit was a noble
+property of the same kind, and John's device had been to tap the wealthy
+neighbour's store by running a little adit from the worthless shaft
+into the rich one. It was not an unheard-of thing for the value of such
+properties to fluctuate. A rich mine would pay out, and a poor one at
+a distance would become suddenly enriched; and these changes were,
+no doubt rightly, in the common instance attributed to the capricious
+operations of Nature. If the owner of the tapped sources of the cousins'
+wealth suspected anything to begin with nobody ever knew. The only fact
+with which we need concern ourselves is that the fraud went on without
+exposure for many years, and that James and John alike grew fat on it.
+
+A certain hulking ruffian, with an Australian digger's beard, had turned
+up of late to disturb the tranquillity of the partners. He had been
+asking what they regarded as an exorbitant price for his silence in
+respect to the construction of that adit which has just been mentioned,
+and had been fobbed off from time to time with five or ten pounds, as
+the case might be, and with promises of more. Young Polson Jervase had
+caught this person slinking about the house on the Beacon Hill in what
+looked to him like a suspicious fashion, and an interview between the
+two had resulted in a stand-up fight in which the blackmailer had got
+very much the worst of it. But as he rose from the last round, and
+spat out the fragments of one or two broken teeth, he said things which
+filled the honourable and manly spirit of young Jervase with a terror to
+which he hardly dared to give a name. The terror would have named
+itself loudly enough if he had dared but to let it; but next to being an
+honourable man himself, the young fellow wanted to believe that he came
+of honest people, and the rascal's threats and innuendoes had left him
+with a dreadful doubt upon his mind.
+
+The combat had taken place at the very gate of the grey-stone house, and
+the old lady in the black satin and the costly yellow lace had flown out
+at the finish of it in time to hear the threats and innuendoes which
+had brought such trouble to her boy. It was a hundred to one that young
+Polson Jervase would have been less disturbed if his mother, hearing
+these things, had not fallen to trembling and weeping and wringing
+her hands; for he argued, naturally, that she would not have been so
+dreadfully upset if she had not feared at least that there was some
+ground for the words which had been spoken in her hearing.
+
+General Boswell had his concern in the matter, also. He was an admirable
+soldier, but a wretched man of business; and his monetary affairs had
+never prospered until he had entrusted them to the hands of the cousins
+Jervase & Jervoyce. Little by little he had been drawn on until the
+greater part of his investments lay at their control.
+
+And now for the pretty girl who is staring with so alarmed and white a
+visage on the tumult of the hall. This is General Boswell's daughter,
+sole child of a late marriage, and the apple of his eye. She has been
+wandering quite consciously towards an engagement with young Polson;
+and expects him, with excellent reason, to declare himself at almost
+any hour. She knows of her father's association with Jervase & Jervoyce,
+and, indeed, it has been a familiar thing to her ever since she came to
+be of an age to understand.
+
+Thus the brief and terrible colloquy between the cousins translates
+itself variously for every listener.
+
+To John Jervase it cries out of guilt detected.
+
+To Polson Jervase it speaks of half-a-dozen things at once; it awakes
+with a crushing sense of certainty that late suspicion; it tells him of
+the ruin of the one man whom he most loves and honours in this narrow
+world--not his father, but the grey old father of his sweetheart; it
+tells him in an instant of a life of narrow means for the girl he loves;
+it hurls his own hopes in the mire, and makes the very thought of them
+a dishonour; it snatches from him the bright prospect of the career
+on which he has set his heart, the gate to which stood wide open but
+a moment earlier. And all this in the tick of a watch, in the space of
+time filled by one agonised beat of the heart.
+
+For the girl, whatever it may mean hereafter, it means for the moment
+nothing more than a confused leaping of two thoughts in one. Her mind is
+conscious only of a mingled cry of 'Polson!' and of 'Father!'
+
+So Guilt stares at Guilt, and Terror and Suspicion stare at both of
+them; and the roaring wind and lashing rain make exclamation dumb.
+
+Jervase was the first to recover himself. He thrust his cousin on one
+side, and butted towards the open door; but he strove in vain to close
+it, until his son and the General lent their aid. The hall was sown
+with broken glass and fragments of picture frames, and here and there
+an engraving lay wet and crumpled, but not even the housewife regarded
+these things for the time being.
+
+John Jervase turned from the final struggle with the door, and looked
+about him. His face had lost its ruddy tint. His eyes stared, his
+mouth twitched, and his lips were of the colour of lead. The swaggering
+jocundity of his manner had all gone. The very stature of the man seemed
+changed, and the square width of his shoulders was shrunk and rounded.
+He moistened his leaden lips three times with his tongue, and each time
+tried to speak in vain.
+
+'Come in,' he said at last, in a harsh and rasping voice. And they all
+moved automatically into the parlour, he leading them.
+
+They grouped there at the end of the centre table, and the instinct
+of the trembling housewife so far awoke within her that she closed the
+door, lest the servants and hangers-on about the house should hear what
+she knew was coming.
+
+James Jervoyce, a mean-statured man, of meaner feature, with his hair
+plastered about his forehead by the rain, and the water dripping from
+his cape, stood as the centre of all eyes. His face was of the hue of
+grey paper, and he gasped for breath, and trembled.
+
+'Pol,' said John Jervase, waving his right hand blindly, 'give me--give
+me the decanter and a tumbler.'
+
+Both lay near at hand, and Jervase, having primed himself with a great
+gulp of neat brandy, spoke again.
+
+'Now, James,' he asked, 'what's the matter? What do you mean by coming
+here to scare a peaceful house in this wild fashion?'
+
+The accent was the accent of his youth, the broadest speech of the
+Castle Barfield region. James seemed incapable of answer, and his
+cousin, laying a hand anew upon the decanter, filled the glass almost to
+the brim, and held it out to him.
+
+'Get a heart into you,' he said gruffly, 'and speak out!'
+
+The timider of the guilty pair drank unwarily, not knowing what was
+offered to him, and fell into a fit of coughing. The rest awaited him in
+a tense expectation. At last he controlled himself, and spoke, sipping
+from time to time to moisten his dry lips.
+
+'You know,' he said, glancing at the floor and at the faces round him
+alternately, 'you know that when old General Airey died, that young cub
+De Blacquaire came into the Droitwich property.'
+
+'Well,' said John Jervase, 'we know that. Go on. What about it?'
+
+'You know,' said James, 'that his property and ours neighboured each
+other. The young skunk has trumped up a charge against us of having
+tapped his brine, and having lived on the property of his estate for
+twenty years past.'
+
+'Well,' said--John Jervase, 'that's a pretty cool piece of impudence, to
+be sure! But what is there to make a howl about?'
+
+'He has got some suborned evidence from somewhere,' James answered,
+'some scoundrels who pretend that they were employed by you and me to do
+the work.'
+
+'Well,' said John once more, 'what is there in that to make a howl
+about? Is there no law in England--is there no way of making a fool and
+a knave smart for it, if they see fit to assail the reputation of two
+honest men like you and me, James? 'His voice began to take something of
+its old ring. 'I wonder at you--tearin' up like a madman at this time o'
+night, and in this weather, with a yam like that. Why, man, what's come
+to you? Missus,' he turned towards his wife, 'tell one of the wenches to
+get James a change, and when he's done that well sit down in quiet, and
+talk this matter over.'
+
+'De Blacquaire!' he went on, as his wife left the room to obey his
+order. 'De Blacquaire, indeed! Who's De Blacquaire?
+
+It'll go pretty hard with you and me, James, if we can't put down a
+pound between us where he can put down twenty shillings. And libel's
+libel in this country, James, and them as chooses to talk it can be made
+to pay for it And any man as assaults the honest fame of Jack Jervase
+has got Jack Jervase to tackle, my lad. I've fowt the Queen's enemies,
+and I've fowt my own, and I'll stand fightin' till I die.'
+
+'My dear Jervase,' said the General. 'My dear Mr. James! I need not tell
+you, I am sure, how entirely certain I am that a very grievous error
+has been made in this matter. But I can't understand--I really
+cannot understand--why an absurd charge of that sort should be at
+all disturbing to you.' He turned upon Mr. James with an air of mild
+remonstrance, and laid a friendly hand upon his shoulder. 'Really,
+really, really,' he said, 'I thought you had more courage.'
+
+Mr. James was for the moment entirely deprived of that most useful
+quality. What with the chill which was coming upon him after a hasty and
+dangerous ride in that pelting rain and bitter wind through which he
+had travelled, and what with the perturbation of his spirit, he trembled
+like a shaken jelly, and his eyes were full of terror. John Jervase,
+obviously with the intent to make a diversion, turned upon him with a
+question.
+
+'Didn't you come on horseback? 'he asked. His cousin stared at him with
+an idiotic want of apprehension of the question's meaning. 'Didn't you
+come on horseback?' Jervase asked more loudly than before.
+
+'I--I suppose so,' stammered James.
+
+'Suppose so! 'his cousin snarled at him, laying an unfriendly hand upon
+him and jolting him roughly to and fro. 'You came on a horse, didn't
+you? And if you didn't, how the devil did you get here?'
+
+'Yes, yes, John,' the trembling rascal answered. 'I came on horseback,
+to be sure--of course I came on horseback. How else,' he asked feebly,
+'could I have got here on a night like this?'
+
+'Then where's the horse? 'Jervase demanded.
+
+'I don't know,' said James. 'He has been here before, he knows his way
+to the stables. I--I heard him clattering off in that direction, I
+am almost sure.' He made a pitiable attempt to collect himself, and
+prattled on. 'Oh, yes, I am quite sure now--he clattered off towards the
+stables--I remember--he has been here before, and he would know his way.
+He's in the grounds in any case, for I know that the gate closed behind
+him.'
+
+'Why didn't you stop for half a minute, anyhow? 'asked Jervase, who was
+glad of a chance to recover a seeming of composure for himself under the
+shelter of a pretended anger. 'Why didn't you give somebody the word
+in place of leaving a valuable beast like that wandering about in a
+tempest?
+
+'I don't know,' James answered, as feebly as ever. 'I was in a hurry to
+get in.'
+
+At this his cousin's temper broke altogether, or he was willing to
+relieve the tension of his own mind by allowing it to seem as if it did
+so.
+
+'Of all the funking, skunking, silly cowardly devils----'
+
+The General took him by the arm with a commanding grip.
+
+'You forget, my good Jervase, you forget--my daughter is present,
+and she is not accustomed to have her ears assailed by that sort of
+language.'
+
+'I beg your pardon,' said Jervase, suddenly cooling down. 'I beg ten
+thousand pardons--I beg Miss Irene's pardon most of all. I forgot
+myself, and I apologise.'
+
+He bowed to the girl and fell to pacing up and down the room, casting
+glances of wrath at the messenger of ill news.
+
+The General, fearing a new outburst, turned to the old lady with his
+courtliest air.
+
+'We are all a little agitated for the moment by the strange tidings Mr.
+Jervoyce has brought us, and they involve some matters of business about
+which it will be better for us to hold a consultation between ourselves.
+Will you be so very kind as to take Irene elsewhere for a little while?
+'His voice and manner were perfectly composed, and his face lit up with
+one of his rare sweet smiles as he added: 'I do not believe, my dear
+Mrs. Jervase, that I have ever, in the whole course of my three-score
+years, so far transgressed as to drive a lady from her own parlour,
+until now.'
+
+'We will go,' said Mrs. Jervase, and the General stepping to the door
+threw it open, and stood for his hostess and his daughter to go by.
+Irene looked first at young Polson Jervase with a glance of fear and
+inquiry, and the young fellow responded to it only by a curt nod of the
+head, as much as to say 'Go! 'She looked into her father's face as
+she passed through the doorway, and the old man smiled down on her
+reassuringly.
+
+'This will all be over in a few minutes, dear,' he said, 'and then I
+will send for you.' He closed the door gently, and tinned to face the
+trio in the room.
+
+'I have apologised to the ladies,' said Jervase, 'already; but I owe an
+apology to you, General. I'm very sorry that my temper carried me back
+to my old seafaring manners; but,' with a savage look at his cousin, 'a
+coward's my loathing. I hate the sight of a coward worse than I hate the
+smell of a rotten egg.'
+
+'Let us try to understand things,' said the General. 'Mr. James has
+brought his tidings in such a manner that they are evidently very
+serious to his mind. Had he brought them coolly I should have smiled at
+them. As it is, I think we must come to an explanation.'
+
+'Certainly, General,' Jervase answered. 'Let us come to an explanation.
+Get on, James. Who's this suborned rascal you have been telling us
+about?'
+
+James began to pull off his dripping overcoat, which by this time had
+left a little pond of water on the carpet round about him, and to
+fumble in the inner breast pocket of it. 'There are three of them,' he
+answered, and for a while he said no more. The General looked from him
+to John Jervase, and back again, and if his face were at all an index
+to his mind, he saw something which did not please him. His stooping
+shoulders straightened, and one hand went up to stroke the grey
+moustache. His brows straightened, his mild grey-blue eye grew stern,
+and his mouth was ruled into a straight line. The fact was that the
+General had had an almost lifelong experience in the great art of
+reading men, and though he had preserved a child-like simplicity in his
+dealings with the world, the fact was due a thousand times more to the
+charity of his heart than to any want of penetration. He was one of
+those who suspect nothing until suspicion is actually shaken awake, and
+who then see with a piercing clearness signs which would escape many who
+pride themselves upon their shrewdness. And when James Jervoyce faltered
+out the words, 'There are three of them! 'John Jervase gave a start and
+a look which indicated an instant understanding.
+
+'He knows those three,' said General Boswell to himself.
+
+'De Blacquaire's lawyer gave me their names to-day,' said Jervoyce, who
+had by this time found what he had been fumbling for in the pocket of
+his overcoat. 'Here they are.'
+
+He reached out a crumpled piece of paper to his cousin, who took it from
+him, and, after a single glance at it, started again, and, pale as he
+was already, grew still paler.
+
+'He knows those three,' said the General, voicelessly, and without a
+spoken word reached forward and took the crumpled page from Jervase's
+unresisting hand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+There was what seemed like a long silence, though in reality it
+endured only for a few seconds, whilst General Boswell searched for his
+gold-rimmed reading glasses, and balanced them on the bridge of that
+high Quixote nose. By and by, he began to read with great slowness and
+deliberation, pausing at every other instant to direct a look of calm
+inspection from John to James, and back again. 'William Ford,' he read,
+Ninth Avenue, Freemans Town, Ontario.' He paused after the name of the
+man--he paused after the name of the street--he paused after the name of
+the town, and he paused again when he had completed the reading of the
+address. The last pause was longer than the others had been, and he
+resumed his reading like a man of ice. 'William Buckle, Lafayetteville,
+Pennsylvania, U.S.A. George Lightfoot, late of Melbourne, now in
+England.'
+
+He laid the paper down upon the table with a firm hand, and with a
+slight shake of the head threw the glasses from their place. 'Do you
+know these men?' he asked, directing his inquiry to Jervoyce.
+
+'No,' he said, 'I never heard of any one of 'em.' His shifty eye tried
+in vain to meet his questioner's, and he began to fumble nervously with
+other papers which he had drawn from his pocket in his search for the
+first.
+
+'It needs no penetration to discover that this man is lying,' said the
+General to himself. He addressed his question to John Jervase, who made
+shift somehow to meet his look. 'Do you know these men?' he asked.
+
+'No,' John answered, 'I never heard of one of them. It's a conspiracy,'
+he cried, suddenly, 'that's what it is! It's a conspiracy! Quit shaking,
+you wretched coward! Stand up and fight this infernal libel like a man.
+Ain't there two of us? If this wicked charge is brought against James
+Knock Jervoyce, ain't it brought as well against Jack Jervase, his
+cousin and his partner? Look at me! You don't see me shivering and
+shaking like a frightened rabbit with a weasel after him.'
+
+'Ah! 'cried James, in a weak exasperation, 'it all very well for you.
+It might mean loss of money to you at the worst; but I'm the man they're
+going for.'
+
+'Oh,' said John, 'you are, are you? And why's that?'
+
+'Stubbs told me this afternoon,' said James, c that he could smash me
+dead, but so far he has no particle of evidence against you.'
+
+A light sprang into the burly scoundrel's eyes. He veiled it in an
+instant, but not before two of the quartette there present had read it.
+The boy turned away, groaning, and the General looked after him with a
+face from which all sternness disappeared for a moment.
+
+'Poor lad! 'he said, within doors. 'Poor lad!'
+
+'Now, look here,' said John Jervase, 'they haven't got any evidence agen
+you any more than they have agen me. The whole thing's a put-up job. If
+it was De Blacquaire's doing, he'd have gone for me rather than for
+you, because he always hated me, and I've put him down more than once
+or twice at Petty Sessions, and taught him to know his place. But De
+Blacquaire's an officer and a gentleman'--he made a burly bow towards
+the General--' and I don't suppose for a minute that he'd be guilty even
+of dreaming of such a piece of rascality as this. It's much more likely
+to be some pettifogging lawyer's game--some sneaking rogue that's got
+these fellow-rascals round him, with an idea of doing a little bit of
+blackmail. Stubbs is a decent fellow--for a lawyer. I don't think Stubbs
+would have a finger in that sort of pie, any more than his master. But
+Stubbs has been got at; that's how it'll turn out, you bet. Keep your
+pecker up, James,' he added, in a tone which the patron and the bully
+spoke at once. 'Well take care of you. Just you trust to old Jack
+Jervase--that's your game, my lad. He'll fight the battle for the pair
+of us.'
+
+Between his pretence of having thought the matter out impartially, and
+his other pretence of encouraging his timid relative, he had talked
+himself back into something like his common aspect, and his common
+manner; and there was a little of the nautical swagger in the few
+steps he took towards the table, where he applied himself again to the
+decanter.
+
+Just then a knock sounded at the door, and the voice of the domestic
+from the kitchen was heard saying that Mr. James's change of clothes was
+ready for him in the master's bedroom.
+
+'You know your way, James,' said Jervase. 'You'd better get into dry
+toggery at once. The missus will have a bedroom ready for you in half an
+hour. Meanwhile, you go and change; and when you come back we'll forget
+this nonsense over a bowl of punch. We've both had a drenching this
+wild night, and we shall neither of us be the worse for a good Captain's
+nip.'
+
+James stole furtively away, making himself as small as possible, and the
+General's eye followed him to the door.
+
+'Jervase,' said the General, with a suspicion of satire in his voice,
+'your cousin seems to take this ridiculous matter rather seriously.'
+
+'I don't know why he should, sir,' Jervase answered. 'He's had an honest
+reputation all his life. Now what is there in this,' he went on, taking
+up the scrap of writing the General had laid upon the table, 'what is
+there in this to frighten anybody? Who's William Ford, of Ontario,
+for instance? William Buckle, U.S.A.--who's he? And what's this other
+fellow's name--George Lightfoot, late of Melbourne, now in England----'
+
+'Why!' cried Polson, suddenly, 'that's the very blackguard I----'
+
+He paused suddenly, and turned with a gesture of dismay. He had given
+himself no time to calculate the significance of the words he had used,
+and they were no sooner spoken than he knew intuitively that he had at
+least in part betrayed his father. A lad of a more honest impulse and
+conduct could not have been found in all England; but even if his father
+were a rogue--and the belief that he was nothing short of that had
+already shocked him to the heart--it was not a son's business to betray
+him. It was the son's concern to suffer his own share of shame, if shame
+should come, and to preserve a front of unshaken confidence. Polson was
+frozen at his own indiscretion.
+
+'That is the blackguard,' said the General, with a certain silky quiet
+which had in his time grown to be very terrible to people who had come
+to understand its meaning, 'that is the blackguard, Polson? Be good
+enough to enlighten us a little further. You have some acquaintance with
+Lightfoot, late of Melbourne, now in England, though your father has no
+knowledge of him.'
+
+'What do you know about any fellow of that name?' Jervase asked
+wrathfully. 'What bee have you got in your bonnet?'
+
+'Let us see the bee, Polson, let us see the bee.'
+
+'Why, sir,' said Polson, turning with outspread hands of appeal, 'it
+comes to nothing. It happened a week or two ago that I found a hulking
+fellow with a digger's beard and a red shirt--one of those chaps we've
+seen lately back from Ballarat and Geelong--skulking about outside
+the gate. I asked him what he wanted, and he was drunk and abusive,
+and--well, I had to give him a hiding.'
+
+'Yes,' said the General, 'you had to give him a hiding. Why?'
+
+'I've told you, sir,' Polson stammered. 'The fellow was drunk, and--when
+I ordered him away, he got so beastly cheeky that I had to go for him.'
+
+'Before this happened,' said the General, somewhat drawling on the
+words, 'you exchanged cards and confidences?' Polson stretched out
+his hands again in appeal, and the General, looking at him with a
+countenance impassive as the Sphinx, felt a pang of pity in his heart,
+for the lad was a good lad, and the old warrior knew it, and he had
+been near to loving him, this past half-dozen years. And the boy was not
+merely pale with the suffering of his mind, but his very eyes had lost
+their colour, as a man's eyes do when he has received a shot in battle.
+The General knew that look, and had seen it in the eyes of dying
+comrades. It touched him nearly, but he gave no sign. 'Why did the man
+tell you his name, and that he came from Melbourne?'
+
+'He said,' Polson returned, desperately, 'that he wanted to see Mr.
+Jervase, and that he meant to see him. He said my father would wish
+anybody in hell who tried to hide him. That's all, sir.'
+
+'And you, Jervase,' said the General, 'never heard of this man?'
+
+'Never in my life,' Jervase answered bluntly. 'The world's gone mad, I
+fancy. Everybody's making a fuss about a thing that'll be forgotten in a
+week's time. Why didn't you,' he continued, turning sternly upon Polson,
+'why didn't you tell me about this?'
+
+'A man can't make a shindy about it every time he has a turn-up with a
+tramp,' Polson answered. 'I didn't think it worth while to talk about
+it.'
+
+'Polson,' said the General, 'I've known you since you were no higher
+than my knee, and I've never had a shadow of a reason to doubt your
+word. I don't want you to turn informer and I shan't ask you another
+question. You had better leave your father and myself to talk this out
+together.'
+
+'No, sir,' said Polson, 'there's trouble in the house, and I'm going to
+stay here, unless I get my father's orders to go away.'
+
+Now John Jervase was undoubtedly a good deal of a rogue, but no man is
+all of a piece, and he had one or two good characteristics. Amongst them
+was a true and deep affection for his only son, and if at the beginning
+of his career he had had any such hope of honour and credit as his son
+had bidden fair to bring him as he neared the close of it, he would
+have made a better man. Polson's quietly expressed resolve pinched him a
+little inwardly, and he gave the boy a glance of gratitude.
+
+'I don't say go, lad--I say stay. I've honoured and respected General
+Boswell since we first came to be neighbours, twenty years ago; and now
+I should have a very poor eye indeed if I couldn't see that he's on the
+way to lose his respect for me, if events don't change his mind. But if
+there's anything to be browt against Jack Jervase, let Jack Jervase's
+lad stand by and hear it, and see how his father takes the ackisation.'
+
+'Very well, Jervase,' said the General. 'We will have it so. I have an
+interest in this affair, and I must tell you plainly that your manner
+is so very strange that I feel scarcely comfortable under it. You are a
+business man, and you must not object to my using business terms. Very
+nearly the whole of my fortune is invested in your hands. If your credit
+is seriously shaken, and, above all, if it is shaken by such a charge
+as is now being brought against the firm, my daughter and I are on the
+verge of ruin. It wouldn't greatly matter about an old campaigner
+like myself, for I am not yet so far broken that I can't still run in
+harness. But I have my little girl to think of, and for her sake I am
+going to do my duty, as a business man, however unpleasant it may be to
+me to do it.'
+
+'The scandal can't touch you, sir.' The General smiled sternly.
+
+'It can't touch me in one way, but it may break my fortune. Now answer
+me this one question. What is the worth of the brine which has been
+pumped up from our workings since the firm of Jervase & Jervoyce began
+to prosper in that enterprise?'
+
+'I can tell you that, sir, roughly, in the turn of a hand. First and
+last, two hundred thousand pounds. That may be a thousand wrong on one
+side or the other--it may even be five thousand wrong on the one side or
+the other--but I'll guarantee that it's not more than that.'
+
+'So that if this claim, whether by fair means or by foul, could be
+established, the firm could be made responsible in a Civil Court for
+that sum.'
+
+'Exactly, sir. The case being established, the firm would be responsible
+for every penny.'
+
+'And for how large a share,' the General asked, 'am I personally
+responsible?'
+
+'Each member of the firm,' Jervase answered, 'is responsible in his own
+person for the whole amount. There's no limitation of liability.'
+
+The conversation was marked by less excitement than it had been on the
+one side, and by a more business-like manner on the other.
+
+'You needn't fear, sir,' said Jervase. 'James and I are good to meet the
+whole of the obligations, and, apart from that, these fellows who are
+being brought up against us are the very scum of the earth. I don't
+suppose that any Court of Law would listen to them.'
+
+'No?' asked the General, with sudden keenness. 'And why are they the
+very scum of the earth? You don't know the men?'
+
+Jervase was visibly disconcerted. He stammered as he answered:
+
+'Why, what else but the scum of the earth can they be, to have trumped
+up a lying case like this?'
+
+''Mph!' said the General. 'Be that as it may, as a partner in this
+concern, I may conceivably be made liable for two hundred thousand
+pounds?'
+
+'That's the law, sir.'
+
+'That being so, I must take this business into my own hands. Until I
+am legally advised to a contrary action I shall take no step without
+informing you of it. But the thing is too serious to be neglected, and
+I have little liking for your way of meeting it, Jervase, though I like
+your cousin's less.'
+
+After this declaration, there was silence for the space of a full
+minute, and then James came back, his slight figure absurdly costumed in
+his cousin's clothes, which were too long for him in the arm, too short
+in the leg, and too full everywhere.
+
+'Your cousin and I, Mr. Jervoyce,' said the General, 'have arrived at a
+partial understanding, and I must make the position clear as between you
+and myself. When did you first hear of this accusation?'
+
+'To-day,' said James. 'Never a word until to-day.'
+
+'When did you hear of this man Light-foot, late of Melbourne, and now in
+England?' James cast a piteously beseeching eye towards Jervase, and
+the General held out a hand towards the latter as if to interdict the
+speaking of a word. He repeated his question. 'When did you first hear
+of the man Lightfoot, late of Melbourne? Now, come, sir,' the General
+cried, in a voice of command, 'you are here to answer that question on
+your own responsibility. You don't choose to answer? Now, the story is
+that these men have been blackmailing you. Assuming that story to be
+true, they have been paid, and it is evident that there must be some
+means of discovering the channel through which payments have been made.
+Are you prepared to submit to an examination of your books?'
+
+'I am,' said John Jervase, 'willingly, at any moment.'
+
+'You!' cried James.
+
+'And not you?' said the General. 'Well, that simplifies matters.'
+
+The wretched James had all but surrendered himself to fate a quarter of
+an hour before, and now, seeing that he had betrayed himself, he cast
+the case up altogether, and, throwing both arms upon the table, fell
+on his knees beside it, dropped his face upon his hands, and began to
+whimper.
+
+'Wait a bit, sir,' cried John Jervase. 'Now just wait one minute and
+I'll put the case before you. Here are the facts. I should be obliged
+if you would take a seat, sir, and allow me to do the same.' He moved
+a chair towards the table with great deliberation, sat down leisurely,
+reached out for the decanter, filled his glass, emptied it and set it
+down--all with a certain look of weighty purpose. 'I'm going to make a
+clean breast of it, sir. I should leave James to do it if he was capable
+of doing anything but whimper like a kicked charity boy. It's a bit to
+my discredit to speak the plain truth, because I've got to admit that I
+have certainly made an effort to deceive you. That isn't creditable, and
+it goes again the grain to admit it. I said I didn't know this fellow
+Lightfoot. That was a lie. I know him well. I told the lie to shelter
+James.'
+
+James lifted a beslobbered face, stared at the speaker for a single
+instant, and then allowed his head to fall upon his hands again.
+
+'I did it to shelter James,' Jervase repeated, and as he spoke he dealt
+his cousin a sharp kick beneath the table, as if to bespeak that worthy
+gentleman's particular attention. 'James, to tell the truth about him,
+since it must be told, has always had two sides to him. He was a solid
+chapel-goer till he was thirty, and he was a deacon or an elder, or
+something of that sort; but he always had some little game on on the
+sly, and he always succeeded in keeping his Piccadillies pretty quiet.
+When he began to make money, he went over to the Church and took the
+plate round at collecting time, and got to be a sidesman, and a trustee,
+and I don't know what all. He never married, but he's never been
+without a quiet little home of his own, with a lady at the head of the
+table--have ye, James?'
+
+James groaned, but made no verbal answer.
+
+'Now this loafer of a Lightfoot had a sister, and in respect of her,
+there's no doubt about it that something discreditable might have been
+laid to James. For once in his life, he acted like a fool, and he wrote
+the girl a pile of letters. This fellow Lightfoot got hold of 'em, and
+he's made James pay through the nose ever since. Now the girl's dead,
+and the thing's so old, James has refused to keep this lazy beggar in
+his idleness and his dissipations any longer. The fellow's tried to
+frighten him with the letters, and, failing in that, he's worked up
+this lie against the firm, has got two more blackguards to swear to
+it, seemingly, and there's the whole truth about the matter. I suppose
+they've got up some sort of a case, or Stubbs wouldn't be looking at it.
+But we shall blow it all to smithereens when we get them in the
+witness box. Now, that's the whole of the matter. Speak for yourself,
+James--make a clean breast of it. Isn't that the truth? I haven't
+exaggerated your iniquities, and you may just as well own up to 'em.'
+
+He kicked his cousin a second time again by way of warning, and James
+looked up for a second time, and being fortified by the expression of
+his cousin's face, he spoke.
+
+'It's horribly humiliating to have those things said,' he gasped. 'But
+that is the truth about the whole transaction, General. God forgive
+me--it's many years ago. But that's the miserable truth.'
+
+'I think,' said the General, rising from the seat he had taken at his
+host's invitation, 'that it is time for me to go home.'
+
+'You can't do that, sir,' cried Polson. 'It's impossible. The weather is
+worse than ever. Think of Irene going out in such a storm as this! You
+were weatherbound here hours ago, and listen to it now. No carriage
+could live on the hillside to-night.'
+
+'That is probably true,' said the General with great dryness. 'And since
+I am forced to intrude myself upon your hospitalities, I will ask you,
+Polson, to be good enough to show me to my room.'
+
+He walked from the apartment without further speech, Polson following
+him; and when the sound of footsteps in the passage had died, John
+Jervase rose and closed the door.
+
+'Well, James,' he said with a grating laugh, 'that cock didn't fight
+anyhow.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+The oil-lamp which hung in the hall was flickering uncertainly as Polson
+and the General walked towards the foot of the staircase, leaving the
+passage in darkness for a second or two at a time, and then flaring up
+with an unwonted brilliance. The young man took a bedroom candle from a
+table at the stairfoot, lit it, and motioned the General to precede
+him. He, altogether military in gait, with his shoulders squared to the
+utmost, marched upstairs as if he were heading an assault by escalade.
+Polson followed, drooping.
+
+'This is your room, sir,' the young man said when they came to the end
+of the corridor on which they had entered. He threw open the door, and
+revealed a cheerful scene. Tall wax candles flamed here and there, a
+great fire burned with a steady glow on the hearth, and the rich dark
+maroon curtains and hangings of the room gave it a secluded, sheltered,
+and homely look which under other circumstances would have been wholly
+comfortable by contrast with the elemental war outside. The General
+walked into the apartment bolt upright, and Polson stood with the door
+handle in his grasp, waiting to catch his eye for a single instant that
+he might say good-night. The elder man wheeled suddenly.
+
+'Come in!' he said. 'Come in and close the door.' Polson obeyed,
+wondering what was about to happen. 'I suspect,' Boswell began, 'that I
+shall have cause to be sorry for myself and for somebody much dearer to
+me than myself before this business is over. But I am sorry for you,
+in the meantime, my lad, and I want to tell you that you will have to
+revise your ideas a little.'
+
+'As to what, sir?' asked Polson.
+
+'Unless I am very much mistaken,' the elder went on, 'the business which
+has been sprung upon us to-night will take some time to settle, and will
+make more noise in the world than either you or I will care to hear. You
+can't go into the army with this hanging over you.'
+
+'I had made up my mind about that already,' said the youngster.
+
+'Well,' the General returned, 'it's a bitter pill for you to swallow,
+and, as I have said, I am sorry for you. It will not be easy for you to
+be on terms of intimate friendship with a man who is compelled to fight
+your father tooth and nail, and there is nothing else for it at this
+moment but for you and me to say good-bye. Things may right themselves,
+but I see no use in mincing matters, and I tell you the honest truth
+when I say that I don't believe it, and that for the moment I don't even
+hope for it. There are some men,' he added, 'who can't afford to treat
+themselves to violent emotions, and Mr. James Knock Jervoyce is one of
+them. I hope your father may be able to clear himself of all complicity;
+but _that_ man's a rascal whatever happens.'
+
+'Good-bye, sir,' said Polson.
+
+'Good-bye,' the General answered. He held out his hand, but Polson did
+not see that friendly gesture, and he walked from the room quite broken,
+his chin fallen upon his breast, and his broad shoulders rounded with
+despondency. He went straight to his own room, and there also, after the
+generous fashion of the countryside, a cheerful fire was burning. It
+had fallen to a settled ruby glow, and though it filled the room with
+warmth, it afforded but little light. Polson sat down in the shadow, and
+stared at the heart of the fire. Outside, the wind howled and wailed, as
+if in alternate wild triumph and wild mourning; and the rain beat
+upon the window panes in driving sheets. But he heard no sound and was
+unconscious of his immediate surroundings. Only two hours ago he had
+been sitting in sweet nearness to the girl he loved; and he had been
+transcendently and tumultuously happy. How happy he had not known until
+the blow came which had dashed the structure of his life to pieces. He
+had always longed for a career in the army, and the rumours of war which
+had flown so thickly for the past year and a half had served naturally
+to set a keener edge to his desire. A commission had not seemed a
+very likely thing to hope for at one time, for in the years before the
+Crimean War the sons of the British bourgeoisie were not very welcome
+in the British army. But as his father had climbed hand-over-hand to
+wealth, and as one local honour after another had fallen upon him, the
+prospect grew clearer. Now, John Jervase for three years had held the
+Commission of the Peace, and had taken a part in politics which had made
+him something of a figure in the district. He was above all the poor
+man's friend, and had become a great authority on working-man economics.
+He had been foremost in the local movement for the establishment of the
+Penny Bank, and had printed a pamphlet which somebody else had written
+to his order, which had brought him into a favourable prominence. The
+commission for which Polson yearned grew nearer and nearer in
+prospect, and at last he had almost placed his hand upon it. Now it was
+gone--gone, in all probability, beyond retrieval, and that alone would
+have been enough for an average grief. Yet it was barely a tithe of the
+sudden burden he had to bear. He had lost Irene, and any man who has
+ever been seriously in love knows what that may mean to the heart
+of three-and-twenty. And even this was not all, for he had lost his
+father--lost irrevocably the bluff, outspoken, honourable man of whom,
+in spite of the occasionally disturbing vulgarities of his manner, he
+had all his life been proud. Confusedly and slowly the sense of all
+these losses surged upon him. Now one was uppermost in his mind, and now
+another; but they were always linked together in one leaden feeling of
+heavy misery. He sat motionless for a full half-hour, staring at the
+fire. At last a single dry sob, which shook him from head to foot,
+escaped him. He rose with a bulldog shake of the head, threw back his
+shoulders, and walked resolutely but slowly down the staircase. He would
+have it out then and there, he declared to himself, and would come to an
+understanding with his father. He would actually know the truth without
+disguise, and, having learned it, would decide upon the conduct of his
+future life. There was no thought of desertion in his mind, but there
+was a great longing to be at action, to be striving with something for
+a settled purpose; and no settled purpose was possible for him until
+he and his father could stand heart to heart and face to face, with all
+pretence between them broken down.
+
+The hall lamp had flickered out, as it had threatened to do, and he
+groped his way in darkness, though at another moment he would have
+walked with the sure foot of custom blindfold about the house. Somehow,
+the whole tide of his purpose seemed suddenly to ebb. He became
+conscious of the night, and stood in the dark to listen to its wild
+voices. There were other voices in the air, for he could hear his father
+speaking in a deep, loud hum, and Jervoyce answering from time to time
+in a treble like that of an hysteric woman. He felt his way to a hall
+chair which had its place close to the parlour door, and sat down there
+to wait until he should find his father alone. He could hear no words
+from where he sat, but through all the plangent noises of the storm he
+could discern anger and command in his father's voice, and a querulous
+appeal which had a note of rage in it in the voice of his father's
+companion. He paid but little heed, for his heart was growing numbed,
+and no distinct thought any longer found a place in his mind. Sitting
+there in the dark and the cold, he grew barely conscious of his own
+pain. This is Nature's mercy. When the wound is beyond bearing she draws
+away the sufferer's consciousness, and an extremity of agony brings its
+own relief, if only for a little while. A dull ache of respite follows
+the keener agonies alike of bodily and of mental pain. So he sat there,
+dulled and numb and empty, and for the moment he cared for nothing.
+
+A gleam of light and the sound of a coming footstep awoke him to a
+knowledge of his surroundings. He did not wish to be found there
+sitting miserably in the dark, and he arose, and stood uncertain in what
+direction to move. The light grew clearer and nearer, and as it turned
+the corner he saw that it was carried by Irene. He forgot his impulse
+towards flight, and stood rooted, staring as if he beheld a vision. The
+little figure came forward with uncertain footsteps, one hand holding
+the candlestick overhead and the other groping for the wall. The feet
+trod with a. harsh sound on one or two fragments of broken glass which
+had escaped the housemaid's broom. A yearning ache filled him as the
+girl came nearer, for he saw that her eyes were blind with tears. There
+was no distortion of the features, save that the small mouth quivered;
+and the shining drops brimmed over heavily and silently. Not a sigh
+escaped her, and she came on like a figure in a dream. He moved forward
+involuntarily, and her name sprang to his lips.
+
+'Irene!'
+
+She paused and pressed her disengaged hand upon her eyes to clear them
+of that bitter rain. Then she looked up at him in silence, and the big
+tears began to well over, shining like diamonds as they fell to the
+bosom of her dress. It was to be his last sight of her in his own home.
+He knew it, and his own heart was like cold iron in his breast. She
+made a picture never to be forgotten; a picture to be recalled on stormy
+nights at sea; in many a lonely hour of contemplation on alien shores;
+in many hours of sickness and delirium, in summer heats among the
+vineyards on the banks of Alma, in winter frosts in the trenches of
+Sevastopol; in convalescent wanderings amid the dumb reminders of
+English dead at Scutari; and later, too, in happy hours when the storms
+of youth were over, and manhood's heart had found safe anchorage, and
+the dear head was touched with silver.
+
+She stood there weeping, and he had no power to comfort her--no right to
+comfort her.
+
+'Good-bye, Irene.' He had the right at least to say that to the
+sweetheart of his boyhood, and the chosen idol of his young manhood's
+heart. 'I have seen your father, dear, and whatever there might have
+been, it's all over. Good-bye, and--God bless you, always. Always.
+Always.'
+
+'I have seen him, too,' she answered, and though the tears rained down
+as fast as ever, there was no break in the sweet quiet voice. 'Good-bye.
+God bless you.'
+
+This was all their farewell, save that when she turned away with that
+uncertain groping of the hand he took it in his own and guided it to the
+rail of the staircase. He watched her as she slowly mounted the stairs,
+with the light of the candle falling on her hair, and turning its brown
+masses to dark gold. All her figure was in shadow, and the dim gold head
+seemed to float upward until it vanished at the turning of a corner, and
+the feint light on the wall grew fainter. Then he heard the soft opening
+of a door, and before it closed again, one sob reached his ears, and
+stabbed the heart that had laid within him like cold iron; and he knew
+that all her self-control had broken down. The door closed swiftly,
+shutting out the last ray of light reflected from the wall, and he found
+his way back to his chair, and sat there doggedly fighting with himself,
+and praying for Heaven's mercy on her, until his eyes tingled as if they
+had been pricked by a needle. Whether he would have it so or no, the
+tears came, and as he hid his face in his hands, they dripped between
+his fingers to the floor. He was but three-and-twenty, and the first
+passion of the pain of life was upon him.
+
+The door at his side was opened stealthily, and his father spoke almost
+at his ear, in a harsh whisper.
+
+'Hillo! The hall's dark. They've all gone to bed, I suppose. Now don't
+let's have any more chatter. Spain's the land for you, my lad. You'll
+start first thing tomorrow. You lie low, and leave me to work things
+for the pair of us if I can. If I see that the game's going against us I
+shall follow. Good God, what's that?'
+
+'I am here, father,' said Polson, rising. 'I have been waiting to speak
+to you.' Jervase started violently at his unexpected voice, and half
+recoiled into the room behind him.
+
+'You're here?' he said, advancing with clenched hands. 'What are you
+doing here? Eavesdropping?'
+
+'No, sir,' said Polson more sternly than he had ever spoken in his life
+till then. 'That isn't my line of country, and you know it. I want to
+speak to you.'
+
+'Go to your room,' said his father, hissing from between clenched teeth.
+'Go to your room, sir, and be damned to you.'
+
+'I have meant to speak to you,' Polson answered, 'since I had time to
+think this night's work over, and after what I heard just now, I mean it
+more than ever.'
+
+He entered the room and his father gave way before him. He had forgotten
+the evident traces of his recent tears, and stood with his eyelashes
+still glistening and his cheeks wet and scalded. But his brows were
+drawn level and his jaw was thrust out beneath the tightened lips in a
+way which brought out the family likeness with amazing force.
+
+'Well,' said his father. 'Say your say, and go.'
+
+'I shall say my say,' the younger man responded. 'Spain is not the
+place. Castle Barfield is the place. The Beacon Hill is the place. This
+house is the place.'
+
+'So you have been eavesdropping?'
+
+'You know I haven't,' Polson answered in cold disdain. 'But I'm
+not going to follow that red herring. I say Spain's not the
+place--unless----'
+
+He choked and stammered and could go no further.
+
+'Unless what?'
+
+'Unless--oh, my God! how can I say it? Unless my father and his cousin
+are a brace of rascals.'
+
+'That's pretty language from an only son.'
+
+'Yes. It's pretty language. Give me a chance to take it back, and change
+it.'
+
+'Sit down,' said Jervase, pointing to a chair. His son obeyed him, and
+he took a seat at the opposite side of the table, leaning both his arms
+forward ponderously. 'Now, you and me have got to have this out, I see.'
+
+'Yes,' the young man answered, repressing a sick shudder. 'We must have
+it out, father.'
+
+'Very well; I suppose you believe the yarn these chaps have pitched to
+Stubbs?'
+
+'What am I to believe?'
+
+'Suppose it's true, what do you think is going to happen?'
+
+'Shame and ruin to us all,' said Polson.
+
+'As for shame--maybe yes--most likely no. As for ruin--that's as I
+please.'
+
+'Oh?'
+
+'That's as I please, I tell you. If this here idiot hadn't come bursting
+in and yelping out his story as he did, we could have managed some sort
+of a compromise quite easy. As it is, we've got our own partner again
+us. You can guess what sort of a chance that'd give us in a court of
+justice. Now you remember, Polson. This ain't a civil perceeding.
+The minute they get them chaps over from Canada and the States it's a
+criminal prosecution. D'ye want to see your own father in the dock? I
+don't, and so I tell you. He isn't _going_ to stand there--you may
+bet your life to that, and say I told you. If I can get this braying
+jackass, this leaking sieve, this trembling, yowking lady's lapdog out
+o' the way I can face things.'
+
+'You can say what you like about me, John,' said Mr. Jervoyce.
+
+'Thank you for nothing,' John answered. 'That's my privilege without
+your leave or with it.'
+
+'It's all true, is it?' asked Polson, drearily.
+
+'Yes. It's all true. But look here, Polson, when this fool's out o' the
+way we can make a fight for credit. It's him as deserves to suffer, and
+it's him as has got to suffer to begin with.'
+
+'Me!' cried James. 'Me that deserves to suffer? Who was it put the
+thing into my mind? Who was it that came time and time and time again
+to whisper into my ear, and tell me where I could find the
+men--and--and--and everything? Why curse you----!'
+
+'Look here,' said John Jervase. 'You're a sidesman and a trustee, and
+the Lord alone knows what all. Be decent in your language.'
+
+'You made me your catspaw. You've left nothing to be traced to you if
+you could help it. You've thrust me into the mire so that you could walk
+over dry-shod.'
+
+'You've had your share of the spoil, haven't you, you lean hypocrite?'
+asked Jervase. 'If you'll only do as I bid you now I'll pull you
+through.'
+
+He had turned to address his cousin, and now he showed him a disdainful
+back, and came face to face with his son again.
+
+'What on earth are you doing there?' he asked, after a minute's
+watching.
+
+For Polson was divesting himself of his heavy gold watch and chain, and
+rolling out gold and silver from his pockets, and pulling one or two
+handsome rings from his fingers, and laying them all upon the tablecloth
+before him with an extraordinary stolidity of manner.
+
+'What are you doing?' his father asked again.
+
+'I've said good-bye to one or two things to-night,' said Polson. 'I've
+got no right to a farthing's worth of all that. I've got no right to
+anything. It seems I've lived on stolen money all my life and gone
+flaunting about in stolen feathers. Well, I didn't know it. Perhaps I
+ought to feel kinder towards you than I do, but I can't help it.'
+
+'Why--why----' Jervase almost babbled. 'What's it mean?'
+
+'It's one more good-bye. That's all.'
+
+'You're not--you're _not_ a-going to leave me, Polly? You're not a-going
+to throw your father over?'
+
+'I thought my father was an honest man. I thought I had a right to go
+into the world amongst gentlemen and hold up my head amongst them,
+and make a career amongst them. That was a mistake, you see. I've
+been mistaken all along, and now I've found it out. Good-bye, father.
+Goodbye, James.'
+
+'No, no, Polly. You mustn't go. I can't let you go.'
+
+'Father,' the young man answered, sternly and sorrowfully, 'I am going.
+If I tried to swallow another mouthful in this house it would choke me.
+If I tried to sleep here another night I might as well lie down on fire.
+If I can't eat meat I have a right to, I'll go without. If I can't lie
+down under an honest roof, I can find the lee-side of a hedge.'
+
+'I've been a kind father to you, Polly, my lad; I've let you want for
+nothing.'
+
+'You've let me want for an honest name. That's all. Good-bye.'
+
+'But, Polly--Polly--my own lad, my only lad--you're all I've got to live
+for. What are you going to do?'
+
+'I shall take the Queen's shilling, and try my luck in the Crimea.'
+
+And before his father could answer him he was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+Polson was gone, so far, only to his own room, but so swiftly that it
+was impossible to intercept him, and the snick of the bolt in the lock
+arrested his father before he had set a single foot upon the stair.
+
+Grim and pale, Polson lit his candles and began to range about the
+apartment, drawing out from one recess a pair of heavy walking boots,
+and from another a well-worn suit of velveteens which had seen him
+through a year or two of sport in the spinny and at the river side. He
+cast off the clothes he wore, hastily assumed these stouter garments,
+and having encased his legs in a pair of strong leather leggings, he
+opened his bedroom door, blew out his candle, and went swiftly down the
+stairs into the hall. There the wreckage-of an hour or two ago was all
+piled together in one corner, but groping amongst it in the darkness
+with both hands, he found a long waterproof overcoat, and after more
+search a sealskin shooting cap; appropriating both of these he strode to
+the rear of the house, opened the door by which his father had entered
+on that night of evil omen, and walked out into the roaring darkness.
+
+He was on the sheltered side of the building and did not as yet feel
+the force of the wind. For half a minute he stood with his heart in his
+throat, and his hand upon the hasp of the door, straining his ears to
+listen. He heard nothing but the insane noises of the night. Suddenly,
+he drew the door towards him violently, and it closed with a slam and a
+snap. He was outside, and the thing he had purposed was accomplished.
+He had said good-bye to the house in which he had learned to walk and
+talk--the house which had been his home for the whole of his life,
+except for a year or two of earliest infancy, and the sound of the
+closing door seemed as if it cut his life in two.
+
+He walked rapidly until he reached the ridge before he encountered the
+full violence of the storm, for the wind had shifted within the last
+hour or two. Then, stalwart as he was, it caught and whirled him and
+sent him running willy-nilly for a hundred yards or more. But there was
+not a nail in his boots which was not familiar with every acre of that
+country-side for a mile or two, and he found the path with ease and
+certainty, and ploughed along it as surely as if it had been broad
+daylight, though the night was black as a wolf's mouth. The bitter wind
+and driving rain were welcome to his hot eyes and scalded face, and he
+walked with a swift resolution until he had reached the spot from which
+in daylight the last view of the house would have been possible. There
+he turned, the waterproof coat whipping about his ankles like a torn
+sail, and the rain pattering its own music on his broad shoulders.
+Dimly, very dimly, he could see--or perhaps he only thought he saw--the
+chimneys of the old home rising against a little clearing in the distant
+lift of the sky.
+
+So very brief a while ago he had been happy there. Only an hour or two
+since he was meditating, between the moves of the game, on the very
+words he meant to use in telling Irene that he loved her. Only an hour
+or two since every thought was full of hope and ambition, since the path
+of honour stood wide open with a vague bright figure beckoning in its
+far distance.
+
+A frost in harvest time will ripen grain, and a great grief will give a
+sudden maturity to character. It was a boy who dreamed the happy
+dreams of that evening; it was a man who turned his back upon the old
+homestead, and set out upon his journey through the world.
+
+He had a seven miles' walk before him, and a black unsheltered night at
+the end of it; but he walked as swiftly and as resolutely as if a goal
+of comfort had awaited him. When once the hillside was cleared and he
+had reached level ground, progress was less difficult, and after the
+tremendous tempest of the day the wind gave signs of having blown itself
+out. There were pausings and relentings in it, and there were clear
+spaces in the sky out of which the stars began to shine keen and clear.
+The storm was over by the time when, after two hours of brisk walking,
+he had reached his journey's end, and found himself before the long
+bleak wall of the cavalry barracks of the great Midland town. He had a
+long spell of waiting before him, and seating himself on a hewn stone
+at the side of the barrack gate he filled and lit his pipe, and prepared
+himself for a game of patience. Once or twice in the course of the long
+night a policeman passed him, turned his bull's-eye lantern upon his
+face, and went by without questioning, and these events made the only
+break in the long monotony of the hours. He had at last fallen either
+into a stupor or a doze, when suddenly the notes of a bugle sounding the
+_reveille_ startled him to his feet, with its urgent call of
+
+        Wake! Wake! Wake!
+     And wake in a hurry--a hurry--a hurry--a hurry,
+        And Wake! Wake! Wake!
+
+There began to be a faint stir about the place, like the humming in a
+hive the inmates of which have been disturbed, and a little while later
+the bugle rang out again, in notes that were destined to become familiar
+to his ears.
+
+        All you that are able
+        Come down to the stable,
+     And water your horses and give 'em some corn.
+        And if you don't do it
+        The Colonel shall know it,
+     And you shall be punished the very next morn.
+
+Soon afterwards the gates were opened, and a man in uniform appeared
+with a carbine tucked beneath his arm and began to pace up and down,
+just within the great bare barrack square. Polson marched up to him.
+
+'Are you recruiting here?' he asked.
+
+'We are so,' the man answered. 'Do you want to join?'
+
+Polson nodded.
+
+'Better see the Sergeant in the guardroom,' the sentry told him. 'Go
+through that door and you will find him there.'
+
+People who read their Dickens, as all men who are privileged to speak
+the English language ought to do, will remember a striking little
+passage in 'Oliver Twist,' in which the author moralises upon the first
+dressing of a new-born pauper baby. Until the faded yellow garments
+which have done service for many predecessors are wrapped about it,
+the baby might be anybody's child--a Duke's, or a ploughman's. But the
+livery of its unfortunate estate marks and stamps it at once and gives
+it the social caste and _cachet_ it is doomed to wear. But it is not so
+when time has developed character, and a change of garb does not work an
+actual transformation in the grown man. Polson had purposely chosen the
+shabbiest outfit he could find in his whole kit; but he was recognisably
+a gentleman at a glance, and as he strode into the guard-room the
+Sergeant in charge, who was sitting on the edge of a sloping wooden
+bedstead, stood up and saluted him, a fact for which the recruit had to
+pay later on.
+
+'You want recruits here?' said Polson, and the Sergeant, finding that
+he had been betrayed into a sign of respect for one who was willing to
+become his own inferior, answered him with a scowling ill-temper.
+
+'Yes!' he snapped. 'Wait there till the orderly room is opened.'
+
+The young man was too full of his own concerns to take offence at a
+tone. He sat down quietly and waited. Uniformed men came and went,
+and nobody took heed of him until some two hours had gone by, when the
+Sergeant awoke him from his reverie.
+
+'Come this way.'
+
+He followed the Sergeant across the square, and through an open doorway
+on the far side of it. The Sergeant turned on him. 'Take your cap off,
+and walk into that room.' Polson obeyed again, and found himself in the
+presence of a young officer who was bending over a sheaf of papers on a
+rough table, pen in hand.
+
+'Man wishes to join, sir,' said the Sergeant.
+
+The officer looked up and rose to his feet with an exclamation.
+
+'Good God, Jervase! What are you doing here?'
+
+'I've come to take the Queen's shilling, Volnay,' Polson answered.
+
+'Why, what's become of the commission?' the other asked. 'Go outside,
+Sergeant. I want to have some talk in private with this gentleman.'
+
+Now, chance had played a queer trick here, for it had led the intending
+recruit straight to his oldest and closest chum, his old schoolfellow,
+and old Oxford comrade. It had not occurred to him to think what
+regiment was quartered in Birmingham at that time, and he had walked
+straight towards his purpose without a thought of the possibility of
+such an encounter as this.
+
+'You ain't serious, old fellow, are you?' asked Captain Volnay.
+
+'Yes,' said Polson, 'I'm quite serious.'
+
+'Sit down,' said Volnay. 'Of course you'll tell me just as much and
+just as little as you want to. But before you take a step that you can't
+retreat from, you'd better think things over.'
+
+'No,' said Polson, 'I've done all the thinking I have need for, and I've
+made up my mind. You'll take me, of course?'
+
+'Look here,' said Volnay, 'you won't like it, and I take the liberty
+to tell you so. It's an infernally disagreeable life--it's a beast of a
+life for a gentleman to live. It's all very well, of course, if you're
+amongst your own set; but a gentleman ranker is certain to have a hell
+of a time. He has all the non-coms on to him out of jealousy; and he's
+bullied and browbeaten beyond endurance. As for the mere rough side of
+the living, nobody minds that. But if you do what you intend, you'll
+find before the week's over that you've stepped into a whole tubful of
+scalding hot water, and you'll wish yourself well out of it again.'
+
+'That's all right, old chap,' said Polson. 'I shan't be the first to try
+it, and I dare say I shall pull through as well as another.'
+
+'Now, here's a sample,' said Volnay with a laugh to take the edge from
+his words. 'Here's a sample of the sort of thing you're walking into.
+It'll be a piece of rank impertinence on your part to call me "old chap"
+in half an hour's time, and you mustn't do it. When you catch sight of
+me, it'll be your business to stand up as stiff as a ramrod and salute
+me; and you'll have to say "sir" when you talk to me. And you won't like
+that. And I shan't like it. And look here, old chap, you think twice
+about it.'
+
+'I've told you already,' Polson answered, 'I've done all my thinking.'
+
+'Well,' said Volnay, 'wilful must if wilful will. You haven't been
+getting into any sort of mischief, have you?'
+
+'No,' said Polson. 'I've done nothing that I have a right to be ashamed
+of.'
+
+'Had a row with the old man?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'Go home and make it up again, Jervase. A private soldier's life is a
+dog's life for a man of your breeding, and you'll find it so.'
+
+'That's as may be,' Polson answered. 'But I've quite made up my mind,
+and all the talking in the world will make no difference.'
+
+Within reach of his hand there lay upon the table a loose bunch of
+ribbons, red, white, and blue, such as recruiting sergeants were wont to
+pin in the hats of their recruits. And Polson, toying with this, found
+that the bunch was held together at one end by a pin. He affixed it to
+his own cap.
+
+'Now,' he said, putting on the cap and rising to his feet, 'the trick's
+done.'
+
+'Oh, dear no!' said Volnay. 'The trick isn't done yet, old fellow.
+You've got to be formally enlisted, and to answer a rigmarole of
+questions, and be examined by the regimental doctor, and to take the
+oath. The trick isn't done yet, by a long chalk.'
+
+'Well,' said Polson, 'I shall take it as a favour if you'll put me
+through with as little waste of time as possible, for, to tell you the
+truth, I want that shilling, and the sooner I get it the nearer I shall
+be to bread and cheese.'
+
+'Oh!' said Volnay, 'I ain't curious, old chap. I'm not a bit curious;
+but if you can do it, I should like you to take me into your
+confidence, because I might be of some use. I'm stinking rich, you
+know--disgracefully rich. And if that fact's any good to you, why you've
+only to say so, and I'm your man.'
+
+'Oh, no, it isn't money, Volnay. If it had been, I shouldn't have made
+any scruple about saying so. I can't talk about it. It's likely enough
+that you may hear everything in time.'
+
+'There's no changing you?' Volnay asked. 'There's no getting you to wait
+for a week?'
+
+'There's no changing me,' Polson answered, 'and no getting me to wait.'
+
+'Oh, very well,' said Volnay. 'Just take that and cut across to the
+canteen and get some breakfast. Come back here in a quarter of an hour's
+time, and I'll put you through. You needn't scruple about taking it: you
+can pay me back, for there's a five-pound bounty, ready money, declared
+yesterday, and you'll have it handed over to you on enlisting.'
+
+Polson took up the proffered sovereign, with something of a lump in his
+throat, and turned to go. He had scarce made a step towards the door
+when it opened suddenly. This was destined to be a day of strange
+encounters, for who should walk almost into his arms but that Major de
+Blacquaire who was the present owner of the Droitwich salt mine from
+which his father and his uncle had drawn an illicit fortune. There
+are men who are born to hate each other at sight; and this Major de
+Blacquaire and Polson, though they had but a slight knowledge of each
+other, had found time to develop a savage dislike on either side. De
+Blacquaire was a man with an exasperatingly cold and supercilious
+fashion of speech. He was a band-box dandy, and went scented like a
+lady. Polson had once threatened him with a horse-whip, and the Major
+had withdrawn from the conflict not because he had any want of physical
+courage, but solely because he was too much of a fine gentleman to
+brawl. He had never forgotten or forgiven the insult, and Polson had
+learned to hate him all the more because he mistook him for a coward.
+The two recoiled from each other just in time to avoid collision, for De
+Blacquaire had entered hastily. They regarded each other for an instant,
+and De Blacquaire's cynical and contemptuous gaze took in the other from
+head to foot, obviously taking note of the mean attire and the signs
+of the night march Polson had made. His glance fastened on the bunch of
+ribbons floating from the cap, and at that he smiled.
+
+'Oh!' he said, with a finicking drawl. 'You've made a bolt of it, have
+you?'
+
+'Say that again,' said Polson, 'and I'll ram it down your throat, and
+send a tooth or two along with it.'
+
+'Indeed,' said De Blacquaire. 'I think you'll find that it won't pay
+you to use such language in your present position, Private Jervase.'
+He turned away and, with the whip he carried in his hand, struck a
+resounding blow upon the open door. 'Sergeant!' he called, 'bring up a
+file of men, and take this man to the guardroom.'
+
+'On what authority, if you please?' asked Polson.
+
+'On the authority of those ribbons, my man,' De Blacquaire answered.
+
+'You mistake your authority, friend Popinjay,' said Polson. 'I am not in
+your service yet.'
+
+'Has this man enlisted, Volnay?' asked the Major.
+
+'No,' said Volnay, 'he hasn't. He means to. And now I see what terms
+you're on, I shall advise him very strongly, as an old friend of mine,
+to choose another regiment.'
+
+'Yes,' said Polson. 'I think I'll choose another regiment. I'm not
+hungry for the cat-o'-nine tails, and I should earn it if I were under
+this brute's command five minutes. You'd be a handsome chap in your own
+way, Major, if it were not for that silly sneer you're pleased to carry
+about with you. But I warn you that, under any circumstances whatsoever,
+if you should presume upon any difference in our rank to insult me by a
+word, a gesture, or a look I'll spoil your beauty for you.'
+
+'This man's a friend of yours, is he, Volnay?' said De Blacquaire,
+ignoring his antagonist.
+
+'Yes,' said Volnay. 'A very old friend of mine.'
+
+'Well, you can keep him with you. I've just got my appointment on the
+Staff. I'm off for Varna to-morrow, and I don't suppose that I shall
+meet the gentleman again. I want a private word with you. If Mr. Jervase
+will be so kind as to relieve us of his presence.'
+
+'I'll be back in a quarter of an hour,' said Polson.
+
+'All right, old chap,' Volnay answered, and made haste to add, before
+his old chum had left the room, 'I'm devilish glad you're going, De
+Blacquaire, and the whole regiment will share my sentiments. The mess
+will be a devilish sight happier without you.'
+
+At this, the Major's pale face flushed for an instant, and Polson
+grinned sardonically as he strode away. He found his way into the
+canteen, made a rough breakfast there, and then returning found Volnay
+ready to put him through all the necessary formalities. An old Sergeant
+put the regulation questions as to name, age, and employment. Was he
+married? No. Was he an apprentice? No. Had he ever at any time offered
+himself for Her Majesty's service, and been refused? No. Had he ever
+been tried for any criminal offence? No. Then here was the Queen's
+shilling, and he was enlisted to serve Her Majesty for the term of
+twenty years, and was now to report himself to the doctor, and after
+passing his examination, would be required to present himself at noon
+to be sworn in before the Colonel, and failing so to present himself, he
+would be liable to arrest and imprisonment as a rogue and vagabond.
+
+'So now the trick is done,' said Volnay, 'and you can't undo it. At
+another time you could have bought out for thirty pounds; but we shall
+be off to Varna in a week or two, and the Queen won't spare a man she
+has once laid hands on for love or money until we have got through the
+little brush that's coming with old Nick and his merry men.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+There was no sleep in the grey-stone house on the Beacon Hill, on that
+eventful night on which Polson Jervase left his home, for anybody except
+the domestics, who were ignorant of the blow which had fallen on the
+household. Jervase made no pretence of courting sleep at all: but having
+banked up the fire he went down into the cellar, brought up a couple of
+bottles of brandy, and prepared himself to make a night of it. It had
+not been his habit for years to drink to excess, but in his earlier days
+at any time of trouble he had gone to that false solace, and now
+the instinct came back to him. James kept him company awhile in his
+potations, but by and by crept off to bed, and Jervase sat alone
+drinking fiercely, at first without apparent effect.
+
+General Boswell rose before dawn without having closed an eye, and
+waited for the daylight. At its first dawning he walked softly to the
+room in which Irene lay and tapped quietly at the door.
+
+'Who's there?' his daughter's voice asked him, and he answered:
+
+'It is I, dear. I wish to speak to you for a moment.' The girl unlocked
+the door and left it partly open. He waited for a moment and then half
+entered the room. 'I am just starting for home,' he said. 'And in an
+hour the carriage will be here to bring you away. Pray be ready for it.'
+
+She answered 'Yes,' and her father walked downstairs and into the hall.
+He was searching for his hat and overcoat when Jervase lurched out
+of the parlour. His bloodshot eyes and staggering gait showed in what
+fashion he had passed the night.
+
+'You're off?' he said, thickly. 'Won't you have some breakfast?'
+
+'No,' said the General. 'Go back to your bottle.'
+
+'Look here,' said Jervase, 'I shall put this all right. I've had the
+night to think it over, and I shall effect a compromise. D'ye see? I
+shall effect a compromise. It won't cost you a penny, and it won't break
+me. I shall have a sleep by and by, and then I shall go and see Stubbs,
+and effect a compromise. I hope you don't bear malice, General? You'll
+shake hands before you go, won't you?'
+
+'No,' said the General. 'Go back to--your bottle.'
+
+'But I say,' Jervase proceeded, with a drunken tenacity, 'you ain't
+going to bear malice, are you, General?'
+
+'Stand out of my way, you drunken beast!' the General responded, 'or
+I'll do you a mischief.'
+
+'Oh, if that's the way you're going to take it, all right,' said
+Jervase. 'James and me are going to stand the racket--it won't hurt you
+either in credit or in pocket, and I don't see what you've got to
+be shirty about. It wasn't exactly what you might call a legirrimate
+transaction, but there are lots of things in business that are not
+legirrimate. See 'em done every day--see 'em done by respec'able
+people.'
+
+Boswell by this time had found his hat and overcoat, and was prepared
+to go. He turned his back upon his host and re-ascended the stairs and
+knocked a second time at Irene's door.
+
+'Is that you, Papa?'
+
+'Yes, it is I. Can you hear me?'
+
+'Oh, yes, distinctly.'
+
+'I shall return for you. Keep your door locked until I come. Jervase has
+been drinking and he may annoy you.' With that, he walked back to the
+hall, where Jervase, holding on by the handle of the door, was solemnly
+swaying to and fro. 'I shall regret,' said Boswell, 'to be forced to use
+violence: but if you do not instantly free me of your very disagreeable
+presence I shall be compelled to do you damage. Stand on one side, I
+tell you. Go!'
+
+There was that in the ring of his voice which pierced to Jervase's
+intelligence, bemused as he was, and he staggered back into the parlour.
+The General undid the fastenings of the door and walked out into the
+keen, bright morning air. When he returned an hour later, Jervase had
+drunk himself to sleep, and there was no further trouble with him. Irene
+was ready and came from her bedroom at the General's call. His heart
+ached as he looked at her, for the passage of that one night of
+sleepless grief had blighted all her fresh young beauty as a year of
+sickness might have done. He took her to his arms and held her there
+until she drew gently away from him.
+
+'I know, dear,' she said in a voice she bravely tried to control, but
+with no great success. 'I know, dear.'
+
+They exchanged no further words until they reached home, but her father
+placed an arm about her shoulders and drew her to his breast, where she
+nestled quietly. She had wept all her tears away, but a dry sob shook
+her frame from time to time, and with every repetition of the sound the
+father's face twitched as if a rough hand had been laid upon a wound. He
+parted from her tenderly when they reached home, and they met again at
+the breakfast table.
+
+'You understand everything that has happened, dear?' he asked. 'I think
+so.'
+
+'The owner of the salt mine which my partners have for years been
+robbing is a Major de Blacquaire, whose regiment is just now quartered
+at Birmingham. They will have the route in a day or two, and I must see
+him before he goes. I shall drive into the town at once; and then I must
+run up to London. I do not know as yet what my partners' rascality may
+have cost me, but I am not a wealthy man, and the business may spell
+ruin. I cannot afford to be idle, and I must get back into harness. Lord
+Raglan knows my record. I was with him when he lost his right arm at
+Waterloo. He has more than once,' the old soldier went on with a certain
+stateliness, 'expressed a certain regard for me. I have every reason to
+believe myself highly honoured by his esteem. At a time like this men
+of experience will be in demand, and I feel hopeful of finding an
+appointment. I am not yet too old to serve my Queen and country. Lord
+Raglan will see service again, of course, and he is six years my senior,
+so that he is scarcely likely to make my years a ground of objection.'
+
+'Take me with you, dear,' said Irene, 'I shall not be very happy if I am
+left alone.'
+
+'Do you care for the drive this morning?' her father asked.
+
+'I should like it,' she answered, 'of all things.'
+
+'Run away and dress then,' said the General, 'for I have ordered the
+carriage already, and it will be round in a quarter of an hour. That is
+short notice for a lady's toilet.' he went on, trying to smile, 'but you
+must learn military despatch.'
+
+And thus it came about that Polson and Irene met once more before the
+final parting, for at the moment at which the carriage swept into
+the barrack square the newly-enlisted recruit was walking towards the
+orderly room under the guidance of a corporal. The youngster still wore
+the fluttering ribbons in the shabby old sealskin cap, and that fact and
+his presence in the barracks told the whole story instantly.
+
+'By Heaven!' cried the General, 'I like that. The lad has grit in him!'
+He cried aloud in the ringing clarion voice which advancing years
+had left in all its rounded sweetness, 'Hi, you there--halt!' and the
+corporal at the voice straightened himself and stood to attention.
+Polson knew the voice, but he walked on until the command was repeated.
+The General stopped the carriage and alighted. 'Can you bear to speak to
+him?' he whispered.
+
+'Yes,' said Irene, 'I wish it.'
+
+The General walked briskly to the recruit, and stretched out his hand
+towards him. 'You have done well, my lad. You could have done nothing
+better. You have an old soldier's respect, Polson. You have joined us?'
+
+'Yes, sir,' said Polson, 'I have joined you. Volnay is here, sir--you
+remember Volnay?'
+
+'His father and I charged together at Waterloo,' said the General. 'He
+is a good lad. You and he are great friends, I hear?'
+
+'We have been,' Polson answered. 'Major de Blacquaire is here as well;
+but he has a Staff appointment, and I understand he leaves the corps
+to-morrow.'
+
+'He is the man I am here to see,' said Boswell. 'Irene is with me, and I
+believe she wishes to speak to you.'
+
+The young man glanced deprecatingly at his old array, and the General
+read the glance. 'She will understand all that,' he said, 'just as well
+as I do. You have seen De Blacquaire?'
+
+'I believe he is in barracks--I saw him a few hours ago.'
+
+'Corporal! 'called the General, 'find Major de Blacquaire, give him
+General Boswell's compliments, and ask him to receive me.'
+
+The corporal saluted and went his way, a bewildered man, for it had
+never before fallen to his lot to find a raw recruit in the enjoyment
+of a General's friendship. There was a mystery here, and it kept the
+regiment in talk for a little while until the interest in it died out;
+but it made Polson a man of mark from the first. The corporal was back
+in a minute with a salute to say that Major de Blacquaire was in his
+own apartment, and would be proud to see General Boswell at once, so
+the General sent off Polson to Irene and made his way to De Blacquaire's
+quarters, piloted by the corporal. De Blaequaire received General
+Boswell with a show of profound respect.
+
+'I am here,' began the General, plunging into business at once after his
+own soldierly fashion, 'I am here on an uncommonly unpleasant business.
+You are the proprietor of a salt mine. You may not be aware that I have
+invested the greater part of my fortune in the hands of your neighbours,
+Messrs. Jervase & Jervoyce.'
+
+'I was not aware of that, sir,' said De Blaequaire, 'and I am very sorry
+to hear it. The men, to my certain knowledge, are a brace of thieves.'
+
+'I heard a very startling piece of news last night,' the General
+continued. 'I heard that your solicitor, Mr. Stubbs I believe, has
+made a charge against my partners of having robbed you and the former
+proprietor of the mine, my lamented old friend General Airey, through a
+whole course of years.'
+
+'That is undoubtedly true,' De Blacquaire answered. 'I have evidence
+that a passage exists between their mine and my own, and all the
+evidence points to the belief that it was purposely made. Their
+property, I learn, was a miserable failure for many years, and it has
+now for years yielded them a large income.'
+
+'My share of that income,' said the General, 'has amounted to something
+like fifteen hundred pounds a year for seven years past, and I need not
+tell you that it will be my immediate business, so soon as I can realise
+the money, to repay you--on distinct proof, of course, of the felonious
+action of my partners.'
+
+'I really do not see, General Boswell,' said De Blacquaire, 'that there
+is any call upon you to sacrifice yourself for their benefit. The men
+are wealthy, and I have no doubt that I can force them to disgorge.'
+
+'It will be my own hope and aim to do that also,' the General answered.
+'But I have no wish for money which has been dishonourably acquired,
+and I am very much afraid that I have been living at your cost. It is
+my obvious duty to return to you whatever has come into my possession,
+provided always that the facts are assured. I have my remedy against my
+partners in the law courts, and if necessary I must seek it there.'
+
+'I shall not venture,' said De Blacquaire, 'to dispute a point of
+personal honour with General Boswell; but I venture to suggest that the
+better course would be for us, as the injured parties, to join forces
+against Messrs. Jervase & Jervoyce, and discuss the partition of the
+spoils when we have secured them. They are thoroughly solvent; I know
+that, for I have made inquiries; and they are well worth powder and
+shot. Until the case is heard, or until they themselves come to heel of
+their own free will, I cannot in honesty receive anything from you.
+
+Their confession or, failing that, their conviction must absolutely
+precede any such action as you contemplate. I am taking a business point
+of view, sir, and I think that on reflection you will find that there is
+no escape from it.'
+
+The General sat frowning and perplexed. He was in haste to be rid of
+the sense that he was handling tainted money, and he was eager even to
+beggar himself to secure freedom from the load which lay upon his mind.
+'I wish you to understand, Major de Blacquaire,' he said, 'that I am
+pressing this matter for reasons personal to myself. I am placed in a
+most abominable and unbearable position. I have unwittingly been made a
+partner in a very shameful transaction, and I may tell you that I have
+not the faintest doubt in my own mind as to the justice of your cause.
+I do not feel that as a man of honour I am justified in retaining for a
+day money which has been actually stolen from another. I think I may say
+that it is your duty to relieve me from this burden. I must fight for my
+own hand afterwards; but I cannot consent to hold these gains a moment
+longer than is necessary for me to repay them.'
+
+'Suppose, sir,' said De Blacquaire, 'that we submit this matter to an
+independent and high-minded arbiter. You know Colonel Stacey? He is
+in quarters at this moment, I believe, and I am sure he would give his
+judgment between us willingly, I feel so confident of his verdict that
+perhaps it's hardly fair on my part to suggest the appeal to him.'
+
+'I know Stacey well,' said the General, 'Colonel Stacey is a man of
+honour. I have a great respect for Stacey, and I will abide by his
+opinion. I feel assured that he will be on my side. Will you kindly take
+me to him?'
+
+'Certainly, sir.' The Major took up his forage cap, opened the door
+for his guest, and marshalled him into the open, where he saw the hated
+Polson standing at the side of the General's carriage in conversation
+with a lady. His gorge rose within him at the spectacle, and it came
+into his mind that General Boswell might be as little pleased as he
+himself was. He asked a question by way of calling his companion's
+attention. 'That is your carriage, sir?'
+
+'Ah, by the way,' the General answered, 'that reminds me. That is young
+Jervase standing there. His commission is probably in his agent's hands
+to-day. He has learned the facts about this salt mine business, and he
+has thrown up what I know to have been the dearest hope of his life. He
+has joined as a recruit. He is a very fine and worthy fellow, Major
+de Blacquaire. I don't know a better lad in the world, and I desire to
+bespeak your good will for him. A gentleman's position in the ranks is
+not very tolerable; but a friend at court may make things easier for
+him.'
+
+Now Major de Blacquaire had made a very excellent impression on the
+elder warrior, who thought that he had behaved honourably and with
+delicacy in respect to the unfortunate business which had brought them
+together; but he undid that impression most conclusively.
+
+'Should you call,' he asked in his most deliberate and supercilious
+drawl, 'should you call Mr. Polson a gentleman, sir?'
+
+'Most decidedly, sir!' the General answered, with sudden heat. 'He has
+the instincts of a gentleman, and the sense of honour of a gentleman. He
+has had the education of a gentleman, and has lived among gentlemen.
+If these are not the facts to warrant the use of the word, I have no
+judgment in the matter.'
+
+'I beg your pardon, sir,' said De Blac-quaire, 'I am possibly
+prejudiced; but I thought the fellow a sort of unlicked cub.'
+
+The General said no more, but his shoulders straightened, and both hands
+went up to the big grey moustache. It was in his mind to offer a retort,
+but he remembered his own dignity in time, and contented himself by
+saying, 'I shall recommend him most strongly to Colonel Stacey's best
+consideration. And you, Major de Blacquaire, I understand, are leaving
+the regiment?'
+
+'I have received a Staff appointment, sir, and I leave to-morrow. These
+are the Colonel's quarters.'
+
+Both men had grown extremely frigid, but Colonel Stacey's welcome to his
+old campaigning comrade smoothed the General's ruffled mind. He was a
+bluff, grizzled man of sixty, with a scarlet countenance and a white
+head so closely cropped that it looked like a bottle-brush. He had seen
+service in every quarter of the world, and his manly chest was
+covered with well-won medals. He listened to the General's story
+sympathetically, but he gave his judgment with a twinkle of the eye.
+
+'The same old Quixote, eh, George? De Blacquaire's right, of
+course--absolutely right. And as for you, my boy, you haven't got a
+leg to stand on. Of course you're going to join forces with your fellow
+sufferer, and it's quite monstrous to suggest that the money should come
+out of the pocket of an innocent man. If the case were anybody's but
+your own you'd look at it like a sensible man. And if you were advising
+me, you would tell me precisely what I'm telling you. Here, where's that
+rascal of mine?' He opened the door and shouted, and in came a bronzed
+dragoon in civilian costume. 'Get a bottle of champagne and bring
+glasses. I've been longing for an excuse for self-indulgence all the
+morning, and I'm much obliged to you for giving it.'
+
+'I mustn't join you,' said the General.
+
+'Oh, by gad,' said the Colonel, 'but you must and you shall. I'm
+expecting to get my marching orders any hour, and those chaps mean to
+fight, mind you, and it's an open problem as to whether old Bob Stacey
+will come back again. Come on, George! You're not going to shirk a last
+liquor with a comrade of forty years' standing!'
+
+The General yielded, the wine was served, De Blacquaire at the Colonel's
+command emptied his glass and withdrew, leaving the old friends
+together. The General seized the moment to speak a word for Polson. He
+told the lad's story, and the Colonel nodded his white head with curt
+approval.
+
+'Is he a smart fellow?' he asked.
+
+'Highly intelligent,' the General answered. 'Took his B.A. at Oxford,
+first-rate man across country, excellent shot. Would have had his
+commission this week if his father hadn't turned out a rascal. Throws
+up everything like a lad of honour as he is, and takes the Queen's
+shilling.'
+
+'That's all right,' said the Colonel. 'Leave him to me. I'll shepherd
+him.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+General Boswell's coachman was a Scot; a grim, taciturn,
+brickdust-coloured fellow, who had been in his present service for a
+quarter of a century. He had been bred amongst horses from his boyhood,
+for his father had been a horsebreaker, and when he had run away from
+home and enlisted, he had satisfied ambition by becoming a driver of
+artillery. Then he had been wounded, and had turned batman for awhile.
+He had gone to the General as valet, but his stable love had broken
+out again, and he had gravitated by force of nature to the place of
+coachman. Polson's mind did not go back to a time when he did not
+remember Duncan, and to Irene he was like a fixed part of the scheme of
+nature. He had one defect which at this instant made him invaluable. He
+resented any imputation of the fact angrily, but he had been deaf as an
+adder for years.
+
+There was no great privacy in a barrack square, to be sure, but it was
+as safe to talk within arm's length of Duncan as if he had been a stone
+Sphinx. Duncan was a man of rare discretion, and, though it must have
+been like an upheaval of the world to him to see the most constant
+of visitors at the General's modest little mansion, walking in shabby
+raiment in a barrack square with a recruit's ribbons fluttering from
+his cap, he saluted imperturbably as the young man came up, and then sat
+motionless.
+
+Polson came to the side of the carriage, cap in hand.
+
+'Your father told me I might speak to you,' he said wistfully. 'I hope I
+am not wrong in coming to you.'
+
+'You have enlisted?' she asked him. 'You are going to the war?' Her
+self-possession cost her an effort, but she maintained it She had a
+soldier's daughter's pride, and though she had met this first great
+trouble so brief a time ago she had already taught herself to face it.
+Her father was a man conspicuously brave among the brave, and he had
+told her of his very first experience of war--a period of prolonged
+inaction under fire. 'A trying thing at first,' he had said, 'but duty
+will reconcile one to anything.' This memory had been present with
+her all the morning, and though the unexpected sight of her lost lover
+almost broke her down, the thought had had power to nerve her.
+
+'Yes,' he answered simply. 'I have enlisted. I shall have to go through
+a certain amount of drill, but that will soon be over, and then, I
+suppose, I shall get my marching orders.'
+
+'Father approves of what you have done,' she said.
+
+'He has told me so,' he responded. 'I am very glad of it. God is good
+to me,' he went on, turning half away from her and gazing across the
+square. 'I had not hoped to see you again for years, if ever, and there
+is just one thing I wanted very much to say. It is of no use to have
+reserves and disguises at a time like this. I shan't distress you? Can
+you let me speak?'
+
+'Put your cap on, Polson,' she said composedly. 'You will catch cold.'
+
+The touch of womanly solicitude, small as it was, moved him. He obeyed
+her, and stood, still looking across the square, until he had mastered a
+suspicious clicking in the throat.
+
+'You need have no fear of me, Polson,' Irene said. 'Speak out all your
+mind.'
+
+'Well, dear, it's this. We've been comrades ever since I helped you
+to learn to ride your first pony. We've always been the very best of
+friends, and only last night I was going to ask for something more. You
+don't mind hearing me out, Irene?'
+
+'No. Let us speak plainly. Let us understand each other.'
+
+'Well, you see, everything went last night with a clean sweep by the
+board. I thought I was safe for a commission. I'd been brought up to
+expect a handsome fortune.' He spoke in a level tone, as if he had
+been reading uninteresting matter from a book. 'All that is changed and
+everything is changed with it. I'm a penniless private of dragoons, and
+our ways in the world are wide apart. For old time's sake I should
+be very sorry to believe that you'd ever forgot me altogether, but if
+you'll try to bring yourself to think of me as trying to be cheerful in
+a humble station, as remembering you always in my heart of hearts, and
+never forgetting the distance that divides us--if you'll try to think
+of me as always honouring myself because I was once your friend'--He was
+forced to pause, but he went on again, level-voiced and monotonous as
+before--'If you'll try to think of me as learning to be cheerful for
+your sake, not as a moaning, broken-hearted chap--which I don't mean to
+be at all--but just doing my work, you know, and thinking about you like
+an affectionate poor relation might--why, then, in--in time you'll get
+to feel the parting less.'
+
+'Have you finished, Polson?' 'Yes, dear. That's about all, I think.
+You see, I know you, Irene. You'll grizzle if you think I'm grizzling.
+That's your nature. You can't bear to think of a canary bird in pain.'
+
+'And that is all?'
+
+'Yes, dear. That's all.'
+
+'I shall never forget you, dear. I shall never forget you, and I shall
+never change. If you had asked me to be your wife before these things
+happened I should have said "Yes," and I should have been proud and
+happy. But, Polson, this is why I thank God for having brought us
+together just this once. I want you to remember that in this war names
+will be heard of that never were known before. Yours may be one of
+them.'
+
+'You mustn't waste your life thinking of me, Irene. I shall remember
+every word you have spoken. I shall treasure every word. I hope I shall
+do my duty.'
+
+'I am sure of that,' she answered. And then for a long time not a word
+was spoken, and when at length they broke silence, they spoke of things
+which were indifferent by comparison. They discussed the probable hour
+of the arrival of the route, the probable destination of the regiment,
+the time at which Polson might expect to escape his drill.
+
+At last the General appeared walking side by side with Colonel Stacey.
+Irene was facing that way, and was naturally the first to see him.
+
+'Here is good-bye, dear,' she said. 'Papa is coming.'
+
+'Good-bye,' he said softly. 'Good-bye. God bless you.'
+
+'God bless you, too,' said Irene. She held out her little gloved hand
+to him, and he took it in his own. She looked bravely into his eyes, and
+they spoke their last farewell without a sign of tremor.
+
+'This,' said the General, advancing as Polson turned away, 'is the young
+fellow of whom I have been speaking. Polson, this is your commanding
+officer, Colonel Stacey.' Polson raised his cap and bowed civilian
+fashion.
+
+'Ah!' said the jolly colonel, turning his red face and twinkling eyes on
+the recruit.
+
+'You are Polson Jervase? Joined this morning, eh? I hear an excellent
+account of you. Try to deserve it. I shall remember you. Good morning.'
+
+But as Polson saluted again, and turned to go, the General seized him by
+the hand and shook it warmly.
+
+'We must all face the fortune of war, my lad,' he said. 'The best of
+good luck go with you. If you hear of me out yonder, as you may, don't
+forget to report yourself. Good-bye.'
+
+There were a good many eyes at the barrack windows, and the minds of
+many dragoons were inspired with wonder. For a General and a Waterloo
+veteran was a personage, and the daughter of the same was a personage,
+and it was out of the common for a newly-joined recruity to engage in
+intimate talk with the like of them for half an hour together, and to be
+shaken hands with by the veteran, and saluted as if he were an officer
+by the veteran's coachman, and personally introduced to 'Old Stayce'
+into the bargain.
+
+And amazement sat on many foreheads when the carriage rolled away, and
+the General stood up to wave his hat to the recruity, and the lady stood
+up to wave her hand, and the recruity, unconscious of the interest he
+excited, waved the shabby old sealskin cap in answer until the equipage
+was ringingly saluted at the gate, and swung swiftly out of sight.
+
+And then, it was over. Oh, it was all over, and one manly heart was sore
+and cold. The new recruity stood there planted in the barrack square, as
+innocent of his surroundings as if he had been asleep, and mechanically
+filled and lit his pipe, and stood on with his chin sunk upon his
+breast, scarcely aware of his own thoughts, and as yet realising little
+but solitude and an ache in the doleful middle of it. But a warmth stole
+into the cold. When everything was said and done, there was one thing
+left. Irene loved him. Loved him! How sweet and sacred a wonder. Yet her
+own dear lips had told him that she would have been proud and happy to
+be his wife, and that nothing should change her. And she had given him
+an ambition. The lofty and inspiring words were not yet written, but
+their purport thrilled him, as it thrilled many who went out to fight
+and bleed for a cause which may not have been wholly worthy of their
+devotion, and yet in a sense was worthy because they believed in it with
+all their hearts and souls. For, after all, what is it but the purpose
+which ennobles action? If the greatest Englishman since Shakespeare had
+not yet given Polson Jervase the words in which to speak his thought, it
+lightened his breast all the same.
+
+          I wake to the higher aims
+     Of a land that has lost for a little her lust of gold,
+     And love of a peace  that was full  of wrongs and shames,
+     Horrible, hateful, monstrous, not to be told;
+     And hail once more to the banner of battle unroll'd,
+     Tho' many a light shall darken, and many shall weep
+     For those that are crush'd in the clash of jarring claims,
+     Yet God's just wrath shall be wreak'd on a giant liar;
+     And many a darkness into the light shall leap,
+     And shine in the sudden making of splendid names,
+     And noble thought be freer under the sun.
+     And the heart of a people beat with one desire;
+     For the peace, that I deem'd no peace, is over and done,
+     And now by the side of the Black and the Baltic deep,
+     And deathful-grinning mouths of the fortress, flames
+     The blood-red blossom of war with a heart of fire.
+
+So thought Polson Jervase, and so thought hundreds of valiant men who
+were ready to lay down their lives in a quarrel which the years have
+proved unprofitable.
+
+But a voice awoke the recruity from his reverie--a voice of authority
+which asked with a most unnecessary emphasis what the blank, blank he
+meant by skulking there, when he knew conventionally well that he had
+been conventionally well ordered to the quartermaster's stores to get
+his conventional kit. The recruit was not accustomed to hear himself
+addressed in this manner, and his earliest impulse was to hit the pug
+nose of the person who accosted him, but he remembered himself in time,
+and bethinking him of the wise man's saying, that a soft answer turneth
+away wrath, he asked meekly where he should go. Then the Sergeant, who
+was so straitly trousered and jacketted that he pranced in his going,
+ordered him to follow his nose, adding that if he conventionally well
+supposed that because a conventional General in a conventional carriage
+came to see him off, he was entitled to shirk his conventional duties,
+he was conventionally well in error.
+
+'I say, Sergeant,' said Polson, turning to face his conductor, 'that's a
+filthy bad habit. If you want to be respected, drop it.'
+
+The Sergeant went as scarlet as his stable-jacket, and said that any
+conventional recruit had conventionally well _got_ to respect _him_ any
+conventional how.
+
+'My dear sir, no,' said Polson. 'It's quite impossible to respect a man
+who talks like a foul-mouthed parrot.'
+
+The Sergeant walked like a man astounded and said no more, and Polson
+likewise held his peace. They were both quietly businesslike whilst
+Polson got his kit served out to him, and by the time this work was
+over, the dinner hour had arrived. He was told off to a mess in a long
+barrack-room, in which his brother recruits were quartered, under the
+charge of an old soldier. Some of these new comrades were fresh from the
+plough, and some were the rowdy refuse of the town; one wore a miner's
+flannels, and another was a weedy youth from a shop-counter, who had a
+higher opinion of himself than others were likely to form.
+
+The speech of every man jack of them was like the exhalation of a
+cesspool, and the newest of Her Majesty's hired servants sat in a
+grim wrath and loathing, seeing that he had chosen these for his life
+companions. The meal was plentiful, and not bad of its kind, but it was
+dirtily served, and asked for long custom or an appetite of more than
+average keenness. Our recruit had neither the one nor the other, but
+he remembered his promise to Irene. He had undertaken to meet his
+fate cheerfully, and the fare was part of his fate. He would have no
+re-pinings. The food was honest and wholesome, and he would probably
+learn to be eager for worse before the war was over. So he, as it were,
+squared his shoulders at his trencher, and was just ready to fall to,
+when one of the plough-tail gentry sitting just opposite let fall a
+speech which would have turned the stomach of a decent hog, if he had
+happened to understand it. Polson's heart maddened within him, and he
+smote his fist upon the unclothed table so that the plates of chipped
+enamel iron danced from end to end on it.
+
+'You filthy clodpole!' he said, rising from his place and thrusting a
+prognathous jaw and blazing eyes half-way across the table. 'Speak like
+that again in my hearing, and I'll give you such a hiding as you never
+had since you were born.'
+
+'And sarve him right, begorra,' said the man at the head of the table.
+'It's sick I am of all the dirty stuff I've to listen to--An' dese boys
+is 'listed for de war, and dere's not wan of 'em knows he mayn't be
+stiff on de field in tree or four monts' time. An' be way of makin'
+ready for a soldier's end an' a sudden meetin' wid his God, dey're
+chewin' blasphaymious conversation from _reveille_ to lights out, so dey
+are.'
+
+'Thank you,' said Polson, and so sat down and tried to go on with his
+dinner.
+
+The meal was finished in silence. The scene had its effect, and it had
+all the more surely for two or three things which happened later on.
+Example. The whole rough squad was turned into the riding school
+that afternoon dressed as they might happen to be. The accustomed old
+drill-horses, saddled and bridled, were ranged on the tan at the wall,
+with stirrups crossed over the shoulders, and when the word 'Mount' was
+given, Polson was the only one of the newly recruited crowd who did not
+make a painful climb in trying to obey the order. He was in the saddle
+in a flash, and sat there like a centaur.
+
+'We've got one man amongst us, seemin'ly,' said the old rough-riding
+Sergeant.
+
+'You've seen a horse before to-day, my lad.'
+
+'One or two,' said Polson.
+
+'Come out,' said the red-nosed drill.
+
+'Let's see what you're good for. Put her at that.'
+
+'That' was a furze-covered revolving pole mounted on swivelled trestles,
+and about three feet high. It was a leap for a child, and Polson went
+over it, turned and came nimbly back again. The instructor approached
+him and took him by the foot and ankle.
+
+'That's the shape for the cavalry leg,' he said. 'Keep that and don't
+lose it. Now put her at it again.'
+
+As the recruit turned to obey the order, the Sergeant mischievously
+slashed the mare across the quarters, and the venerable she-trooper
+skipped; but this was hardly a thing to scare the best cross-country
+man of his shire, and Polson nipped over the bar and back again. At that
+moment entered Captain Volnay, to whom the drill, saluting, said:
+
+'It's no use wasting this man's time here, sir. Colonel's orders are
+to get 'em through as fast as possible. He'd be better engaged at foot
+drill.'
+
+'Very good,' said Volnay. 'You can dismount, my man. Come with me.'
+
+On the far side of the square a squad was at work at the sword exercise,
+and the instructor's voice was bawling: 'Thrust, return, thrust--return.
+Carry--so! Slope--so! Shun! Stand at ease!'
+
+'Well,' said Volnay. 'How do you like it?'
+
+'I shall like it well enough, I dare say. I haven't shaken into the
+saddle yet.'
+
+'I'm going to hand you over to this lot,' said Volnay, indicating the
+squad with a motion of the hand. 'D'you know anything about it?'
+
+'A bit,' the recruit answered. 'You see, it's been the dream of my life
+to join, and I've been taking lessons.'
+
+'Good old enthusiast!' said Volnay. 'I saw you meeting old Stayce. He's
+a grand old sort. No finer soldier in the army. Regiment adores him. And
+he has an eye for a man who does his duty. A nod's as good as a wink to
+a blind horse, old Pol, eh?'
+
+'I'll try,' said Polson.
+
+'You'll try right enough. You're a good old pebble. I've got to
+be professional, you understand. No end of a devil of a lot of
+unpleasantness if these chaps suspected favouritism.'
+
+'Oh,' said Polson, 'I'm at work. No playing _en amateur_.'
+
+'That's the style. There are some of our fellows saying there'll be no
+fighting. That's rubbish. There's glory in front of some of us, Polly.'
+
+They went on in silence until they reached the guard.
+
+'Shun!' roared the Sergeant, and the men clicked their heels together
+and straightened their backs and tucked their chins in and assumed that
+ramrod posture which the authorised drill-book of the day described as
+'the free and unconstrained attitude of a soldier.'
+
+'Sergeant,' said Volnay, 'this man has just joined, but Sergeant Gill
+finds that he can ride and has dismissed him from the riding school. He
+tells me that he's been taking lessons in sabre practice. Just put him
+through his paces, will you?'
+
+So the Sergeant set his squad to stand at ease again, and Polson, being
+provided with a belt and sabre, was stuck up in front of it, feeling
+absurdly like a trick ape on show.
+
+'Draw--so! Slope--so! Prep--air! Prove distance!' and so on.
+
+'Pursuin' practice. One. Cut--thrust--parry. Two. Cut--thrust--parry.
+Shunt Now from the word of command, right through. Sword exercise.
+Prep--air! Prove distance--go! Shun! Pursuin' practice I Prep--_air!_
+Go! Shun! That's all right, sir. Ever been in the service before, young
+feller?'
+
+'No,' said Polson. 'I always meant to join, and I thought I'd get ready
+as far as I could.'
+
+'Now look here, my lad,' said the Sergeant. 'You've been through the
+mill before, you have. You're a deserter, you know, that's what you
+are.'
+
+Polson laughed. He had thought never to laugh again, but the accusation
+tickled him.
+
+'I beg your pardon, Captain Volnay,' he said, saluting in officer's
+fashion--the only way he had been taught; 'but perhaps you will speak up
+for me.'
+
+'Deserter?' said Volnay. 'Rubbish! Known the man for years. Always keen
+on the service, and got ready for it. Jervase.' 'Yes, sir.'
+
+'You're a pretty good shot, I gather?' 'Thank you, sir.'
+
+'Any instruction in musketry?' 'Pretty fair, sir.'
+
+'Put him through his facings, Sergeant, in the riding school at four
+o'clock this afternoon. I'll be there. You hear, Jervase?'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+At this juncture the Sergeant surprised a wink from Volnay, which that
+young gentleman supposed to have been unseen, and he fell a-thinking.
+The result of his cogitation was rapid and conclusive. The young man who
+knew the minutiae of his trade of soldier, and had an officer's trick
+of salute, and was on winking terms with the wealthiest man in the
+regiment, was a person to be made up to, and to be made up to in the
+least transparent way.
+
+'We're awfully short-handed, sir,' said the Sergeant, touching his
+forage cap to Volnay. 'We might utilise this man as a drill, sir, if
+you'll permit me to suggest such a thing. I could get on twice as fast,
+sir, if I'd half the squad to deal with.'
+
+'Very well,' said Volnay. 'I'll see the adjutant about that.'
+
+And the raw recruit was drilling his barrack-room comrades before he
+or they had fitted on a uniform, and his ringing 'Carry--so!' or
+'Ground--oh!' sounded through the square as imperiously as any in those
+first busy days.
+
+'You're a (conventional) wonder, you are,' said the drill instructor at
+the close of the second day. 'You've got the powers that be behind you,
+and you'll be one of _us_ in a month or two. Promotion's quick when the
+word comes for blood and rust and mud and oil.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+If Polson had not to be taught how to ride, how to handle a sabre or a
+gun, or how to balance himself in the goose-step--matters which he had
+taken the pains to master long ago--there were still certain things to
+learn, and the button stick, and the flat and chain burnish, and the
+pots of chrome yellow, and blacking, and pipeclay, were just as strange
+to him as they would have been to any other raw recruit; so that he
+was teaching his business at one end and learning it at the other for a
+matter of some four or five days.
+
+There was a poor exile of Erin in the shape of an impecunious Irish
+nobleman, who enlisted on the same day with Polson and whose uniform was
+tried on in the same hour.
+
+They were in the tailor's shop together with a hurried Sergeant standing
+over them.
+
+The aristocratic Paddy pulled on his trousers with a heavy sigh.
+
+'The livery,' said he, 'of me degradation.'
+
+'It is the Queen's uniform,' said Polson, 'and you have a right to be
+proud to wear it.'
+
+The child of Erin buttoned his stable jacket and went out to drill, and
+Polson gave him a purposed double dose of labour. He had given orders to
+an individual man here and there, but until he became a dragoon he had
+never commanded a crowd, and there is something in that which makes
+either a man or a sweep of the commander. Polson was all alert, eager to
+teach what he knew to the slow and loutish squad before him; but on that
+first morning of his wearing the Queen's cloth, keen as he was upon
+his own business, he could not help recognising a certain pair of
+flea-bitten greys which swept through the barrack gate whilst he was at
+work some fifty yards away. They came from the Bar-field Arms, and he
+had helped the man who now drove them in their breaking, four or five
+years ago.
+
+There was a cry of 'Guard, tarn out!' and a clash of salute as the
+carriage rolled through the gates without a challenge, and the man who
+sat at the back, disdaining the cushions, and with a lustrous silk
+hat cocked over one eyebrow, was his father. John Jervase came into
+barracks, as he had gone everywhere throughout his life, with a
+magnificent impudence, and he distributed salutes to all and sundry from
+a majestic forefinger; whilst his only son watched him with a sardonic
+eye as he bowled up to the officers' quarters.
+
+The card of Mr. John Jervase was carried to Colonel Stacey, and Colonel
+Stacey was ready to receive Mr. Jervase in a flash.
+
+'I am told, sir,' said Mr. Jervase, in that bluff, John-Bull way of his,
+which had brought a hundred people to his net, 'that the regiment has
+its marching orders, and I can quite believe that you've got something
+better to do than to listen to anything I have to say.'
+
+'I'm pressed for time, sir,' said the Colonel. 'The regiment marches in
+an hour.'
+
+'Here's a lad of mine, sir,' said Jervase, 'has enlisted. And here is a
+letter from Kirby & Sons, the well-known Army agents, telling me they've
+got my cheque for his commission. It's been the hope of my heart to see
+the lad in the army, and it's been his hope also. We've had a quarrel,
+sir, and I don't mind confessing that it is my fault. The lad's a good
+lad.' His voice began to tremble. 'But he's throwing his life away for
+a freak. I've bowt his commission, and here's the letter from the London
+agents to say that the whole thing is complete. I know he's here, for
+I heard him as I crossed the barrack square. I'd like you to help me to
+bring him back to reason.'
+
+The Colonel took a whip from the table and struck a blow upon the door,
+which was one of his substitutes for bell-ringing.
+
+'Private Jervase,' he said, 'is drilling a squad in front of the Cupola.
+Send him here.' He waved his visitor to a chair, and plunged into the
+examination of a heap of papers which lay before him. Jervase nursed his
+silk hat in both hands and waited, listening to the scattered noises of
+the barrack square and catching amongst them his son's voice with a sort
+of fatal sound of command in it.
+
+'Is he going to talk to me like that?' asked the father of himself;
+and the minutes went slowly by until Colonel Stacey's batman tapped
+respectfully at the door, and announced 'Private Jervase.'
+
+'I'll leave you,' said the Colonel, gathering his papers in his hand,
+and darting towards the doorway.
+
+'I beg you won't, sir,' cried Jervase the elder, 'I shall be more than
+obliged to you, sir, if you will help me to bring my boy to reason.
+There,' he cried, casting a letter upon the table, 'is a notice from
+the London agents that his commission is bought and paid for. There's
+my cheque for a thousand pounds, and if that isn't good enough for him,
+there's fifty twenty-pound notes of the Bank of England, and he can have
+both of 'em with as good a heart on my side as if he took the one and
+left the other.'
+
+The Colonel looked from the son to the father, and back from the father
+to the son.
+
+'Really, Mr. Jervase,' he said, 'I don't see that this is much of an
+affair of mine. I will leave you to fight it out between you.'
+
+The Colonel walked to the door, and father and son were left together.
+John Jervase, banker, capitalist, driver of men, was not in the least
+like himself that morning, and his hands trembled so that he was fain to
+clutch one with another, and to hold both tight between his knees as he
+sat.
+
+'Look here, Polly,' he began, but Polson gazed sternly straight before
+him, and gave no sign of sympathy or forgiveness. 'Look here, Polly,
+I've had about a week of it, and I can't stand it any longer. You and
+me's got to be friends, or else I've got to put an end to things in a
+way as you won't fancy.'
+
+He waited, but there was no response from the stolid figure in front of
+him. Pol-son stared out of the window and stood silent and immobile as a
+statue.
+
+'I left you to yourself,' said Jervase, 'until I'd got everything right
+and comfortable. Major de Blaequaire has gone off to Southampton, and I
+believe he's on his way to Varna, somewhere in the Black Sea. I've
+made a deposit with Stubbs, his lawyer, of no less than fifty thousand
+pounds, my lad. That's been a shake, I tell you. I've had a good deal o'
+trouble to raise that sum in a hurry, but I've done it, and there's to
+be no action and no scandal of any sort until De Blaequaire comes back
+again. That gives your Uncle James and me time to turn round.'
+
+He waited again, and still Polson stood like a statue and made no
+answer.
+
+'I've done more than that,' Jervase went on. 'I've banked twelve
+thousand pounds to General Boswell's credit, so that come what may he
+isn't likely to suffer. If De Blaequaire carries the case on when he
+comes back to England, James and me can pay him every penny of his
+rightful claim, and we'll do it.'
+
+He paused again, for his voice had once more half escaped from his
+control. The boy stood before him, cold and inflexible as doom. To the
+father's eye he had never looked so manly and handsome as he did at this
+moment, and what with fatherly pride and self pity and a sense of the
+magnanimity of his own purposes, the emotions of John Jervase were
+strangely mixed.
+
+'There'll be no trouble at all, Polly,' he said, after a pause. 'I've
+put everything straight for you. You've only got to run up to London to
+sign your papers, to have your commission, and go out like a gentleman.
+I've brought a portmanteau with me in the carriage, with everything
+you'll actually need in it for a week or two, and there's the money for
+you to order anything else you want. I packed the portmanteau with my
+own hands, Polly.'
+
+He paused again, for in his own way he was genuinely moved: but the boy
+still stood there, staring out of the window, and answered never a word.
+
+'You've got to listen,' said the elder, rising and shaking him by the
+shoulder. 'You think I have acted like a scoundrel, and you're ashamed
+of your old father. I dare say you're right, my lad, but it wasn't so
+much my fault as you might fancy. There was a leak between that mine of
+old General Airey's and your Uncle James's when I went into partnership
+with him, and, after all, we only helped Nature just a little bit, and
+there's many a man walking about this minute, holding his head high, who
+has done more wrong than I have.'
+
+'For God's sake, don't!' cried Polson, breaking silence for the first
+time. 'It's bad enough as it is. Don't make it worse by talking about
+it.'
+
+'I won't, Polly,' said Jervase. 'I'll do anything you like if you'll
+only shake hands and say as you forgive me. Now there's two thousand
+pound on this here table, and there's the letter from your agents; and
+you can be off to London within an hour, and have your heart's desire.
+What's the good of being stupid?'
+
+He took a great bandana handkerchief from the tail pocket of his
+respectable black coat, and blew his nose resoundingly, and wiped his
+eyes. He was very deeply moved indeed, and Polson was profoundly sorry
+for him; but there was a sick whirl in the lad's mind which robbed
+him of any clear power of thought and seemed indeed to deaden feeling
+itself. Only he knew that nothing could undo his shame. Nothing could
+ever make him respect himself again. Nothing could give back to him the
+old sense of honour, the knowledge that he came of honest folk.
+
+'Look here, Polly,' Jervase broke out again, 'I haven't bred you up
+to be a common soldier. When I was a young and struggling man, by
+comparison with what I am now, I said to myself, "I'll make my lad a
+gentleman." I sent you to Rugby, and I sent you to Oxford, and I never
+stinted neither love nor money. And if I _was_ a bit over-greedy and in
+a hurry to be rich, I did what I did a good deal more for your sake than
+my own.'
+
+'Leave bad alone, father,' said Polson, with an almost savage sternness.
+'Can't you see that you make things worse with every word you speak?
+Isn't it enough for me to know what I know already, but you must make me
+a partner in that shameful business?'
+
+'Polly,' said Jervase, almost fawning on him, 'I've been a hard man all
+my life, and I've lived a hard life for years. I've been a proudish sort
+of chap, in my own way, and I've never stooped to ask any man's pardon
+twice for the same offence. But it's different between you and me, and
+I can't let my own flesh and blood go away from me until I've had a word
+of some sort. It's only a word, Polly. You can't deny me! You're a-going
+out to the war, Polly, and you might never come back again. And think
+of me--think of your poor old father sittin' at home, and sayin' to
+himself, "I sent my son away with a broken heart and ashamed of his own
+father, and he wouldn't touch my hand before he went to his own death,
+and he wouldn't say one forgiving word to me, and I murdered him, and I
+broke his heart, and I made him ashamed of his own father." You think of
+me, Polly, sittin' at home and thinkin' like that. Maybe for years and
+years. We're a long-lived lot, we Jervases, and I should make old bones
+in the course of nature, but I couldn't bear it, Polly, I couldn't bear
+it. I should have to put an end to it, and if you go away without a
+word, it won't be long before I do it.'
+
+The bugles sang out the assembly in the barrack square. Polson both
+heard and understood, but his father did neither. Within half an
+hour the regiment would be on the march, and already the red-coated,
+brass-helmeted men, shining from head to foot and glittering in the
+fine array war wears before the exchange of the first blows, were moving
+about the open.
+
+'Now look here, Polly,' said Jervase, striving no longer to disguise the
+wet eyes and the breaking voice, 'it's take it or leave it. There's your
+father's hand. Are you a-going to touch it before he goes away?'
+
+'Don't you think,' asked Polson, 'that you're making it pretty hard for
+both of us?'
+
+'Very well,' said Jervase, 'there's no handshake. There's no good-bye
+betwixt we two as friends. Perhaps you may come back in a different
+humour, Polly. Here's your agent's letter. Are you a-going to take
+your commission, and fight in a gentleman's uniform for your Queen
+and country, or are you going out to advertise your father's shame by
+wearing a private's coat?'
+
+'I shall go as I am,' said Polson.
+
+'Very well,' said John Jervase again. 'There's the father's hand
+refused, and there's the commission chucked into the gutter. Now here's
+a cheque for a thousand pound as you can cash with Cox & Co. in London.
+Are you a-going to take that, or are you not?'
+
+'I'm not likely,' said Polson, 'to have any sort of use for money.'
+
+'You're hard,' said his father. 'You're bitter hard. There's the 'and
+refused. There's the commission chucked, and there's the check too dirty
+for you to look at. Very well. Now there's fifty notes for twenty pounds
+a-piece. Will you take them?'
+
+'No,' said the youngster, 'I shall have no want of money and no use for
+it.'
+
+'You're hard,' said Jervase. 'You're bitter hard. Will you take one of
+them? It might come in useful. Take it, Polly. Just take it, even if you
+never spend it.' He clutched one note from the heap which lay upon the
+table, and held it in a shaking hand towards his son. And Polson still
+stood like a statue, and stared out of the window. He would fain have
+been more relenting had he dared, but he feared the loss of his own
+manhood if he once began to pardon, and perhaps he was severer to
+himself than to the old man who begged for his forgiveness. 'There's the
+'and,' said Jervase, weeping openly. 'He won't touch that. There's
+the commission only waiting for him to sign, and he won't touch that.
+There's a cheque for a thousand pound as would send him to the war
+fitted out like a gentleman, and he won't touch that. There's the ready
+money to the same amount as would help him to hold his head up among his
+comrades anywhere, and he won't touch that. And here's a note for a mere
+twenty pounds, and his father asks him just to take it as a sort of a
+memorial, and to keep it like as if it was a funeral card, and he won't
+touch that.'
+
+Polson was white to the lips, but he looked straight before him still,
+and gave no sign. Jervase took up the agent's letter and deliberately
+tore it into pieces. He took up his own cheque and tore that into pieces
+also. He patted the pile of notes together and put them into his breast
+pocket, crying all the while with odd little child-like snatches of
+sound which were wounding to listen to.
+
+The bugles sang out again in the square, and the distant hoofs were
+clattering on the cobbled stones in front of the stables. Through the
+window Polson could see the glitter of the polished brass of the band,
+as it moved slowly across the square towards the barrack gate, and
+formed up in a solid cube. There was a crowd outside in the streets, and
+from it rose a noise of cheering. There was silence in the room except
+for those child-like, unrestrained sobs which shook John Jervase; and
+even these quieted down as if he too were listening to the growing
+tumult outside. There was a sudden roll of drums, and the band began to
+play 'The Girl I left behind me.' An imperious rap sounded at the door,
+and Colonel Stacey entered without waiting for a response.
+
+'Do you take your commission, Jervase, or are you to be left here?' he
+asked brusquely.
+
+'I am to be left here, sir,' Polson answered. 'But I hope that I may get
+my marching orders as soon as possible.'
+
+'We embark on Friday,' said the Colonel, 'and another ship follows that
+day week. I'll see you through by then.'
+
+'Thank you, sir,' said Polson, and the Colonel nodded and was gone.
+
+The band was playing, and the crowd in the street was cheering, and
+there was silence between father and son for two or three minutes. Then
+rose from the barrack square a deafening roar as 'old Stayce' rode out
+on the bright bay with the three white stockings, and cantered to
+the front. The hoarse, commanding voice pealed out the word, the
+band crashed into a new marching tune, and the regiment began to move
+forward, like a scarlet snake with glistering scales. Clank and clatter
+of scabbard, tramp of the ordered ranks, blare of the band, and roar on
+roar from the street, and then little by little a falling silence. At
+last dead quiet.
+
+'You needn't think there's no clean money in my hands,' said Jervase.
+'I don't owe everything to that blasted brine-pit. You can take your own
+rights. You can take what I offer you, and feel as you're an honest man
+all the same. And Polly, if you're going out as a private soldier you'll
+want money. It isn't as if an untravelled man was talkin' to you. I know
+the Black Sea Coast I spent one Febiwerry there, a man before the mast.
+I'll back it again the Pole for cold. You'll miss a lot o' comforts,
+Polly, as a pound or two would buy for you.'
+
+'I must go back to duty,' said Polson, 'or I shall get into hot water.'
+
+'Take a hundred pound, Polly. It's clean money. I'll swear it on my
+Bible oath. Look here, Polly. Look here!'
+
+Jervase rose and shook his son by both shoulders in a frenzy.
+
+'Look here, Polly, look here. Listen.'
+
+'I am listening, father.'
+
+'Then look as if you was listening for Heaven's sake! I'm worth half
+a million, if I'm worth a penny. I never owned to it before, but if
+it isn't true God strike me dead. Outside that salt mine, I've been an
+honest man. You won't believe it, but I have. I saw a chance of making
+money elsewhere, and I wanted a start, and I turned rogue for the
+sake of it. Polly, Polly. I'll pay every penny with a three per cent,
+interest--compound, mind you--compound--and I shall be a rich man still!
+
+'Pol, you're hard. I don't know where you get it from. But, mind you!
+One of these days you might find yourself led into a temptation, and
+then perhaps you'll think of your old father. How many business men have
+gone through life, and never done but one thing as they had a call to be
+ashamed of? I've done one; and I've been bowled out at it! There's men
+that does hundreds, Polly, and are never bowled out at all! I'll tell
+you what. It ain't me having been dishonourable as stands between us.
+It's your own pride, Polly. It's a good pride. It's what you might
+call a righteous pride. But if I was just what I am, without being your
+father--if I was just what you might call an average old sinner, you
+wouldn't let me beg like this, Polly. No, you wouldn't! And look here,
+Polly. Money's money, and here's a thousand pound----'
+
+'Damn your thousand pounds,' cried Polson. He turned to face his father
+in an agony, and struck his own clenched fist upon his breast three
+several times. Then he turned to his original position and stared
+through the window across the empty square.
+
+'Yes,' said John Jervase slowly. 'Damn the thousand pounds. Damn it,
+and damn it, and damn it over again. You think I'm trying to bribe you,
+Polly? No! You wait till you're a father, with your only son a-going to
+the wars without a penny in his pocket, and hating you too much to take
+what you can give him. Then you'll feel what I feel. Damn the thousand
+pounds! Damn all the money as was ever coined. But, Polly, there's my
+hand again. I'd rather you took it full--but won't you take it empty?'
+
+The lad took the empty hand and wrung it hard, and held it long.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+The time, half-past four o'clock in the morning; the date the twentieth
+of September, eighteen hundred and fifty-four; the place the southern
+bank of the River Alma. Present, some thirty thousand stalwart British
+men, the vast majority of them snoring open-mouthed, and here and
+there in the grey of the morning a sentry pacing up and down. Facing
+northward, Polson Jer-vase's regiment lies far to the right, and to
+the right of it again, at a distance of some half a mile, the men of
+Bosquet's command are also sleeping. This is a day destined to be famous
+and terrible in history; but the dawn is cloudless and quiet. Away
+beyond the slope of the valley, across the grey flow of the river and
+half-way upon the northern slope, the pacing sentries, or such of them
+as are sharp-sighted, can perceive what looks like a wrinkle in the
+hill. It is some three or maybe four miles from the long line of
+sleepers, and it indicates the outlines of that great Redoubt around
+which the memories of Englishmen will cling for centuries to come.
+
+Near five o'clock, and a soft warm morning wind blowing under a
+stainless sky. Gallopers from headquarters pass here and there with a
+quiet word, 'Wake your men, and make no noise.' There is no sound of any
+bugle call at that _reveille_, and the men silently arise, sit up and
+shake themselves, and mostly make their toilet by a simple process of
+eye-rubbing and the assumption of their headgear. Then the camp fires
+are lit here and there where a clump of officers gathers together over
+their morning tea and coffee. For thus early in the campaign all the
+luxuries of home are not abandoned or forgotten. Troop and company
+orderlies stroll down to the river, bearing buckets, and the rank and
+file munch their ration of ship's biscuit. And before the simple meal
+is barely over, the stealthy word passes along the ranks, and a forward
+march begins, ghost-like in the dawn. Somewhat clumsily manoeuvred
+by their chiefs, the line, three or four miles in length, dips; down
+towards the river and crowds at a few chosen fording places. Then
+it spreads out again like an open fan, and marches up the further
+slope--the infantrymen dripping from the arm-pits downwards, and the
+handful of cavalry on the right of the British flank shining in the
+rising sun to the horses' shoulders.
+
+Then a pause, and a long pause. Vine yards along the hill and spaces of
+field and farm, and scattered houses here and there, and on the left the
+village of Vourliouk, set aflame by the foe for some as yet undiscovered
+reason. The smoke goes circling up into the pure air, and a faint scent
+of burning is discernible. Still a mile and a half away on either side
+the great Redoubt, and in front of it there are cubes and oblongs which
+look like masses of grey stone, and might pass for such except that now
+and again they may be seen to move. These are the infantry troops of
+Russia, with whom our own men are soon to be in deadly conflict. The
+fields of Europe have heard no sounds of any cannon fired in anger
+since the last loud Sabbath of Waterloo shook down the spoilers of
+the Continent; but, unseen at this distance, the guns which line that
+wrinkle of the hill above there are charged to the throat, and there are
+resolute men behind them.
+
+The sun rises higher and higher, and the men of the halted army throw
+themselves to the ground, awaiting a further word from somebody.
+Solitary gallopers go hither and thither, over the rolling hills. The
+staff, with waving plumes, goes cantering along the line, and the idea
+somehow passes through the ranks that Lord Raglan has gone to consult
+with Monsieur St. Arnaud as to the disposition of the day's battle.
+There are thousands of youngsters lying there among the vineyards who
+have never, until this moment, set eyes on their commander. Raglan
+goes by amidst a dropping fire of cheers, the sleeve of the right arm
+dangling loose beside him, his bronzed Roman face one cheerful and
+inspiring smile, and the cunning left hand, with which he has learned to
+write his despatches, held low down as he controls his charger. And on
+the far right of the English line, Polson Jervase is standing at his
+horse's head, cheering with the rest, when on a sudden he discerns a
+familiar figure: General Boswell is at the Chiefs side and the two are
+in familiar converse. The young soldier's first battle not yet begun,
+and Irene's father going by so near and yet so unmindful of him as a
+mere unit among the waiting thousands. And it is not yet, not even yet,
+so very certain that we are to give battle this morning, after all. For
+we have been bedevilled hither and thither with false marches and with
+false rumours of sailing and lines of route. Monsieur St. Arnaud has
+been for camping south of the Balkans, and giving battle to the power
+of Russia there, and Raglan has been all for the Crimea and the road
+to Sevastopol. And no man has known what to believe amongst the divided
+councils of the Allies. The men amongst the vineyards are plucking and
+sucking the grapes. The sun grows hotter and hotter, and there is so
+dreary a silence in these waiting hours that the angry neigh of a horse
+is heard for a mile along the line. Five o'clock when we began to move,
+and here is high noon, and impatience all on edge, and nothing done.
+The staff comes cantering back, and another hour goes by in silence; and
+then from the Highlanders half a mile away on the left of the handful of
+cavalry there rises a sound of jubilation. And round the camp fires at
+night, when the fight is over and the English are in possession of the
+field, the men learn the reason of the cry. Sir Colin Campbell has sent
+round the word that the men are to break their cartridge packets, and
+lay the cartridges loose in their pouches, and this is the first word of
+real business. Now at one o'clock, or near it, the note passes along
+the line from east to west, and the men are afoot again, and marching
+forward two deep against those solid masses of grey human masonry, and
+that gash upon the hill-side which is by and by to burst like a volcano
+into flame. There goes the first boom of cannon from the Russian side,
+and a round shot sends the earth spluttering amidst the staff as it
+canters by once more, plumes waving, and epaulets, and scabbards, and
+gold lace, and all the fine tinsel of war, as yet unsoiled, glittering
+in the sunshine.
+
+This is no day for a cavalryman to win honour. Here we sit on the
+hill-side with a downward slope before us, and an upward slope beyond,
+and the unmounted men are working their way onward and upward, whilst we
+are held inactive. And now the war begins in earnest. The tartan fellows
+are lounging along, half of them with the stem of a grape bunch between
+their teeth, loading and firing as they go, scarcely a man of them
+having stood fire before, and walking towards their baptism of death and
+blood with an astounding cheerfulness, and the long waving broken line
+converges as if by instinct, and, as the historians of the battle tell
+us, without definite order from any quarter, towards that grim gash
+on the hillside, until it grows to be something of a mob, so thickly
+clustered that the Russian batteries cleave lines through it. It wavers,
+it pauses, it rushes forward, it takes shelter beneath the forehead of
+the hill on which the great Redoubt stands, and then declines, a mere
+swarm of ants to look at from this distance, towards the belching roar
+and smoke and flame. And on a sudden the batteries are silent, and far
+and far there goes up a cheer. And then there is silence again, and a
+long waiting, and the grave massive oblongs and cubes of masonry come
+down on this side and on that, and the watchers in the valley wait in
+a tense and terrible strain. Where are the reinforcements? Where is the
+Duke of Cambridge, with the Guards? Hidden away there in a wrinkle of
+the hill they are waiting for some unknown reason, and the conquerors
+of the great Redoubt seem doomed. But after awful minutes and minutes,
+which stretch to hours, the line sweeps up. Raglan's immortal two guns
+come into play from the knoll on the distant right, and the tide of
+battle is turned again. And all the while we of the cavalry division are
+maddened with excitement, and consumed by ennui, by turns, wearied with
+thirst and heat, and waiting in vain for our chance to strike a blow at
+the enemy. Bored and tired and athirst, the men who have stood for hours
+at the bridle throw themselves on the sunburned grass. No chance for
+us to-day, says one to the other, and the tide of battle, now grown
+invisible, is rolling noisily here and there, now seeming as if it
+would vanish altogether into the air, and now as if a flying enemy had
+suddenly taken heart and were back in swift return. And here is a hill
+to the west of us, and the hot sun, yet shining clean and bright through
+whiffs and shreds of scattered smoke, goes down behind it, and the
+shadow lengthens, and creeps up the brown-green face of the hill to the
+left. And lo, on a sudden, a sweating galloper on the crest of the hill,
+with his horse one lather from haunch to bridle, is tearing down with
+orders. Here is old Stacey in the saddle again, and his hoarse voice is
+calling. The tired and thirsty souls are alert in an instant, and away
+go the Heavy Dragoons at a walk until the hill is breasted. Then at a
+trot, a canter, a gallop, a charge. For the masses of the enemy are all
+huddled in disorderly crowds away there in the pass, and it needs but
+one decisive blow to smite them into utter rout and scatter them like
+chaff. Then was an hour when the fate of a great campaign lay in the
+balance; and because that hour was not chosen England had to pour out
+her blood and her treasure in one mingled torrent for a year or two. For
+as the charging regiment was in amongst the lingerers of the retreat,
+the pursuit was called away. The keener spirits had naturally ridden
+furthest, and there was no man there that day who was keener than Polson
+Jervase. When the bugles rang out the 'Retire,' he would, had he been in
+command, have risked a plagiarism of Nelson, with a glass at the blind
+eye, and would have failed to recognise the recalling signal. But he
+was a unit, and a private unit at that. And he was already half emmeshed
+amidst the edges of the flying crowd, and actually at their mercy,
+if any of the fugitives had found so much as a sheep's heart to awake
+within him.
+
+So he turned and galloped back, and since he had been one of the first
+in the advance, he was naturally one of the last to retreat. There had
+been a rare burst of a downhill mile or two, and his horse, unfed and
+unwatered within the last twelve hours, was in need of mercy. He rode
+the poor beast tenderly, caressing him as he went, and looking up he
+was aware of an officer in staff uniform, who was rounding up the
+stragglers. There are few things that appeal more directly from man
+to man than the sympathy of the sound and rooted sportsman. Polson had
+followed the hounds almost from the time when he could first bestride a
+pony; and the sight of a clean workman across bad country was like wine
+to him at any time. This fellow in the cocked hat and waving plumes was
+splendidly mounted, to be sure, but the going was as treacherous and
+difficult as it well could be, and the horseman rode with an address and
+daring which were delightful to look at. He waved an urgent hand from
+three or four hundred yards away towards Polson, who responded by a
+gesture indicating the route he meant to take. The last straggler having
+been thus rounded up, the officer turned and reined in his charger for a
+final look at the retreating forces of the enemy; and somewhere from the
+black middle mass of them down in the shadow of the valley there came a
+flash and a volley of smoke, and almost directly afterwards an echoing
+boom of sound. The charger reared, drooped upon his haunches, and fell
+over; the rider dropped with admirable agility on one side and avoided
+the threatened mischief of the fall. There were scores of unmastered
+steeds racing about the valley and the upward slopes; Polson rode for
+the nearest, and, having secured it, cantered up to the place where the
+dead charger lay, A round shot had ploughed its way clean through the
+noble creature's chest, and the sight was pitiable and gruesome.
+
+'Here is a mount, sir,' said the young dragoon. 'Not as good as your
+own, but it will carry you back to camp, anyhow.'
+
+As he spoke, the epauletted cocked-hatted owner of the slaughtered
+charger was leaning downward, detaching something from a holster, and
+when he looked up he displayed the features of Major de Blacquaire.
+
+Until that instant neither could have recognised the other, but at the
+first glance there was a challenge in the eyes of either.
+
+'Thanks, my man,' said De Blacquaire, laying a hand upon the rein which
+Polson held out towards him.
+
+Nothing could have been more savagely incisive than the tone, nothing
+more purposed to wound.
+
+'You caught this horse rather cleverly,' said De Blacquaire, 'and I'm
+very much obliged to you. Of course, you understand that a man doesn't
+go into action with a lot of money about him; but if you'll ask for
+me at headquarters this evening, Major de Blacquaire, you'll find
+half-a-sovereign waiting for you. You can ask my man for it.'
+
+The Major stood drawling there, with purposed insult in word and tone
+and smile, and Polson, leaning downward, drew his dragoon's gauntlet
+from the left hand, and struck him across the face with it.
+
+'I suppose,' he said, 'that's flat mutiny, and whilst I am about it,
+here's another sample of the same.'
+
+The Major retreated behind his horse, and stood there, almost speechless
+with indignation.
+
+'I threatened you with a hiding once before,' said Polson. 'And you were
+cur enough to run away. I told you on the day I joined that if we ever
+met again and by word or look or gesture you insulted me, I would spoil
+that handsome face of yours. You can report against me, if you like, and
+I dare say that if you do it may go pretty hard with me. But I will let
+you off for the moment with what you have taken, and for the present I
+will say good evening to you.'
+
+He drew on his gauntlet as he spoke, and turned his horse's head.
+
+'Wait there,' said De Blacquaire. 'I have just one word to say to you.
+You know that I could have you triced to the triangle and flogged?'
+Polson nodded, but said nothing. His eyes spoke for him. 'You know I
+could have you court-martialled and shot?'
+
+'Like enough,' said Polson. Major de Blacquaire swung into the saddle.
+'I don't care to take revenge that way,' he said. 'I have known you
+always for an impudent and underbred young cub; but you go by way of
+pretending to be a gentleman, and I have my punishment in store for you.
+I learned something of you from your friend, Captain Volnay, and amongst
+other things I find you are playing Quixote. When the campaign is over
+you'll be going back to the old thief's thousands. I will give you
+a gaol-bird to go back to. I have at quarters what amounts to a
+confession. It's an offer of restitution from Mr. Jervase; and I am not
+disposed to accept it. The case must slumber until this little business
+is over; but when I get back I will make a criminal prosecution of it,
+and you may make up your mind for whatever it may be worth that the
+work of this last five minutes has made a felon of that blackguard of a
+father.'
+
+'And that,' said Polson, 'is an English officer's answer to a blow!'
+
+'Yes,' said De Blacquaire, 'that is the English officer's answer.' And
+so saying, he put in spurs and rode away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Here we are, fifteen months later, with Balaclava and Inkerman behind
+us, and the world ringing with the story of our valour; and something
+here and there being said about the staring incapacity of our commanders
+and the crass dishonesty and stupidity of our contractors. The army
+which left home in such bright array is transformed to a crowd of ragged
+vagabonds, and all the services are mixed together in the trenches and
+the camps before Sevastopol. Here are men of the Horse Artillery whose
+batteries have lost their horses; and here are cavalrymen dismounted,
+whether by reason of warlike misadventure or the sheer starvation
+of horseflesh. And since folks must do something for their bread
+in campaigning times, as at more peaceful seasons, the rules and
+regulations of special branches of the military service are cast aside,
+and men of every arm are working in the trenches together. A crowd of
+vagabonds we are to look at, to be sure; but a year of war, if you only
+think of it, makes a boy a veteran, and the bronzed, weatherbeaten, and
+ragged lads of whom the army is in the main composed, have lived in
+an atmosphere of powder for a year past; have gone marching and
+counter-marching under shot and shell; and charging, and repelling
+charges, until the imminent peril of their lives is a great deal more
+familiar to them than their daily bread. The peril is there always, and
+the bread turns up with extreme fitfulness.
+
+On the Christmas Eve of 'fifty-five there was a time of excitement in
+the second parallel before the Malakoff; and this was not because of
+any special danger of the siege or any threatened imminent assault, but
+simply and merely because of the late slaughter of a pig of tender age
+whose screams had come up from the Turkish camp about the witching hour
+of midnight.
+
+Amongst the war-worn, ragged, bronzed and bearded crowd is that
+identical Paddy who reckoned his uniform the livery of his degradation
+when he first assumed it. He is as ragged as any Connemara harvester
+by this time, and as tanned, as plucky, and as impudent in the face
+of death and hardship as he knows how to stick; and it is he who has
+brought the news which flutters the spirits of the score of men who are
+huddled in the trench together, right beneath the gaping embrasure of
+the Russian guns.
+
+It was near midnight, and an extreme languor of fatigue had fallen upon
+all men when the tattered slip of Hibernian nobility crawled up on hands
+and knees so as not to expose himself against the sky-line, and dropped
+into his own place in the trench. He dropped with his feet on the
+stomach of Sergeant Polson Jervase, who denounced his clumsiness in fair
+set terms, which came as pat to his lips as if he had rehearsed them for
+a year.
+
+'Is that you?' said Paddy. 'I beg yer pardon, and be damned to you. And
+now will ye just listen? D'ye hear the death cry?'
+
+Everybody heard the death cry, filling the air from barely a third of a
+mile away: the voice of pork at the last agony.
+
+'The Lord alone knows where it's come from, but that Mussulman crush
+down below has got hold of a pig. The devil a ration has been served to
+them for a month past, and they ought to know what hunger means be this
+time. But bhoys,' the speaker went on, with a whispered emphasis,
+'we're Christian men, I hope, and we can't dream of allowing those poor
+infidels to peril their immortal salvation by the eating of strange
+food. It's eternal loss to the soul of a Mussulman that puts a knife and
+fork into a griskin. And I'm proposin' a work of Christian charity. Have
+ye got the matayrials for a fire handy?'
+
+One of the men sleepily bade him be damned, and turned over in the mud
+in a scrap of ragged blanket; but all the rest at the bare suggestion
+of a meal were wide awake. 'Sergeant, darlin', just be giving me
+half-a-dozen men and we will make an exploitation, and be back in
+no time with a meal of meat that ought to be good enough for this
+particular mess from now till New Year's Day. Is there any chance of a
+fire now?'
+
+A member of the hungry, hard-bitten band owned a solitary lucifer; but
+was afraid that the damp had deprived it of all virtue.
+
+'Hurry up, boys,' said one. 'If once those blessed Bazouks get a fork
+into piggy, we shall have to fight for a share of him.'
+
+'We've got the makings of a fire here somewhere,' said the man with the
+solitary lucifer. 'But how are we to start it? This brushwood stuff is
+all wet, and it won't catch.'
+
+But one man was there with a providential scrap of newspaper. There was
+a moon in the frosty sky, with tatters of windy cloud about it, which
+gave light enough to show the men each others' faces dimly, and they all
+clustered in a rough ring, some kneeling, some standing, and the centre
+of the throng was the man with the match. Near him, second only in
+importance, was the man with the newspaper, and kneeling near was a
+third who stirred up the loose brushwood below the heaped fuel which had
+been gathered and hoarded for a month past for a Christmas fire.
+
+'Here's a dry pebble,' said one man, pressing solicitously forward, and
+proffering his midnight find to the man with the match. 'Strike her on
+that, and for God's sake hold your breath, boys.'
+
+The human centre of interest, the man with the match, took the pebble
+and polished it to complete dryness on the lining of his overcoat. Then
+he struck the match, which emitted a faint phosphorescent glow, and went
+dark again.
+
+In those days, when a Russian gunner felt aweary, and found a lack of
+interest in the crawling hours of darkness, he would let bang a gun
+from the Redoubt, simply _pour passer le temps_; and at this minute the
+skipping 'zip' of a shot, a splutter of earth, and then the sullen boom
+of the discharge came to give variation to the scene. The lucifer match,
+however, was the all-absorbing centre of interest just then, and the
+scratch on the pebble was a much more important sound than any bellow
+of cannon from the fort. The lucifer was barely equal to its duties, and
+half-a-dozen times it gave its feeble spark of phosphorescent light in
+vain; but at last it struck, and the blue and yellow sulphur bubbled and
+crackled into flame. The man with the newspaper was ready, and
+caught the fire. The wet twigs smoked pungently, and there was one
+heart-sinking moment when the last chance seemed to have vanished; but
+then the fire sparkled up merrily, and the blaze lit the earthen side
+of the trench and the silky-bearded, bronzed, unwashed faces, and the
+stalwart, tattered figures of the crowd, with a flickering changeful
+brightness.
+
+'That's all right, boys,' said the Honourable Patrick Erroll, Private
+of Dragoons. 'And now, Sergeant darlin', give me half-a-dozen rank and
+file, and, please God, well have a meal for Christmas morning.'
+
+'Now, I'm just as keen as any one of you,' said Sergeant Jervase, 'and
+just as hungry; but be very quiet about the business, Paddy, and don't
+have a row with the Bashis, for the Lord's sake.'
+
+'Trust me, Sergeant,' said the Honourable Mr. Erroll, 'and nurse the
+fire whilst we're away.'
+
+Out of the blank darkness of the night the flame and glow from the
+second parallel seemed to bite a hole; and as its brightness grew, it
+drew the attention of the gunners of the Malakoff, who banged at it
+sulkily from time to time. But the reckless contingent under Paddy's
+leadership had already clambered to the open and were making a muddy way
+in the darkness towards the Turkish camp.
+
+Down in the trench the fire grew to a rich and splendid glow, and one
+or two of the favoured of fortune, who owned pipes and tobacco, plucked
+bright embers from it, and, nestling under the shelter of the wall,
+sucked away at their comfort with simple animal noises of satisfaction.
+
+'I say, Bill,' says one, 'was you ever Hingry before you seen this
+Gawd-forsaken Crimea?'
+
+'Lor' love yer,' says the man questioned, 'I was born hungry, and I've
+been hungry ever since. But if the Honourable Paddy finds that 'og,
+and I get hold of a hind leg of him, I won't complain before to-morrow
+midnight.'
+
+The fire glowed with a richer and a richer light, and men of hospitable
+minds wiped their half-smoked clays on the inside crook of a coated
+elbow and passed on luxury and refreshment to less-favoured neighbours.
+It was a time for comradeship, if only for the fact that it was
+Christmas Eve, and coming fast towards Christmas morning. But the
+thought of the slain porker was in all men's minds, and made them
+expansive and generous and reserved by turns. Boom! said the gun from
+the Redoubt, and the earth spluttered between the collar of Sergeant
+Polson's jacket and his neck, and dribbled comfortlessly down his back,
+colder than any charity he had known of: lately-frozen earth, half
+thawed, with wet snow on the top of it, and a sulky boom behind to add a
+threat to its cold sting.
+
+After long waiting, a voice in ecstatic laughter, and surely the voice
+of the Honourable Paddy, Shuffling footsteps in the dark, and the
+hungriest of the whole crowd in the trench climbing to peer into the
+blackness; a youth who has not yet finished growing, and who finds the
+irregularity of meals a cruel thing.
+
+'I'd like to know,' says the Honourable Mr. Erroll cheerfully, 'who
+trusted those infernal Russians with a gun? They'll be hurting somebody
+by and by, if they're not careful. But here's the pig, boys, and there's
+nobody but poor little Ahmed Bey the worse for us. I knocked him on the
+head from behind, and we'll be none the worse friends to-morrow.'
+
+Bang, and bang, and bang! sounded the guns from the Russian battery,
+drawn by the light; but a delicious odour rose upon the air, and the
+teeth of the little contingent watered. There was a ramrod with
+Sergeant Polson at one end of it, and Paddy Erroll at the other, and the
+loveliest loin of young pork in the middle; and the two, with scorched
+hands and scorched faces, turned, and turned, and turned the improvised
+spit. And there were some less nice in appetite who had raked out heaps
+of glowing cinders from the fire, and had lain succulent slices thereon
+and buried them in more cinders, and who were now enjoying a
+compound feast of pork and charcoal, with such an insane relish as no
+home-staying epicure could conceive over the lordliest dish the combined
+cuisine of the whole wide world could show him.
+
+'What are you up to here, you fellows?' said a voice out of the
+darkness. 'That's a jolly appetising smell.'
+
+'Fresh roast pork, sir,' responded one man with his mouth full.
+
+'Fresh roast pork!' echoed the inquirer. 'Hillo--that you, Sergeant?
+You're in luck. I'll join your mess if you make no objection.'
+
+'Nobody more welcome than Captain Volnay, sir,' said Polson. 'Find that
+old bread-box, one of you, and give Captain Volnay a seat.'
+
+'Hurry up!' said Volnay. 'That smell is maddening. How did you men come
+in for such a treasure trove as this?'
+
+'I'm Columbus,' said the Honourable Paddy, tinning the ramrod spit.
+
+'Why, by Jingo!' cried Volnay, 'you've got a whole pig here. I say,
+Sergeant, I'm going to confiscate a leg for our Christmas mess. You
+don't think you fellows are going to be allowed to sit gourmandising
+here whilst we go hungry!'
+
+One man, sheltered by the shadow, answered sneeringly:
+
+'Precious little going hungry amongst your set, sir,' said he.
+
+'And precious little you know about it, my good fellow,' Volnay
+answered, with his sunny laugh. 'Life isn't all beer and skittles
+amongst your officers, let me tell you.'
+
+'I'd like to change, sir,' said the malcontent.
+
+'Would you?'asked the Captain. 'Well, I dare say you would. But we all
+have enough to grumble at, and to spare, if we happen to be built that
+way. Just expedite that joint, Sergeant.'
+
+'It will be all the better for another turn or two, sir,' said Polson.
+'It's a deadly pity, but there's no such thing as a hint of crackling.
+Piggy came along with his bristles on, and we have no shaving tackle.'
+
+'Who goes there?' cried a voice in the darkness, two score yards away.
+
+'Grand rounds,' said another voice. It was Major de Blacquaire's, and
+Polson had not heard it since the day of the Alma, a year and three
+months ago.
+
+'Halt, grand rounds, and give the countersign.'
+
+'Bonnie Dundee.'
+
+'Pass, grand rounds, and all's well.'
+
+Grand rounds came tramping down the trench and the men about the fire
+rose up and stood to attention.
+
+'What is this?' asked De Blacquaire. 'Who's in charge here?'
+
+'I am, sir,' Polson answered, saluting.
+
+'What's the meaning of this blaze here? Can't you see that you're
+drawing the enemy's fire? Report yourself to me at noon to-morrow.
+Scatter that stuff, and trample it out.'
+
+A foot was thrust into the embers, and they flared up suddenly. The
+Major recognised his enemy, and looked from his eyes to the stripes upon
+the left sleeve of his ragged overcoat.
+
+'Is that your own coat?' he asked. 'Yes, sir.'
+
+'Sergeant are you? I'll break you for this to-morrow.'
+
+'That you, old chap?' drawled Volnay from his seat on the bread-box.
+'Said you were dead. We've got no end of a find here. Whole pig. If
+you'll let me know where to find you, I've bagged a ham, and I'll invite
+myself to dine with you, and bring my own rations with me.'
+
+'Thaanks,' said De Blacquaire. 'Don't trouble. I shall find it my duty
+to report this scene of riot and disorder. Forward. March.'
+
+Grand rounds went by, and the scattered fire faded.
+
+'If you _can_ manage to hack a slice of that pork off, Sergeant!' said
+Volnay, 'I'm beastly hungry.'
+
+'Done, I think, to a turn,' said Polson. 'Who's got anything that will
+cut?'
+
+'I'm tould, sir,' said a voice out of the darkness, with a rich oily
+brogue in it, 'that there's hours of difference between here and
+Limerick. Won't it be Christmas morning in old Ireland, sir? And will
+the bells be ringing?'
+
+'Ye're out in your reckonin',' said another voice amid the shadows.
+'It's exactly the other way. Your folks is going to bed in Limerick.
+The sun has a knack of risin' in the east, my lad, and we're far east
+of Ireland, or Aberdeen for that matter. I'm not mindin' the exact
+particulars, but it's a matter of some two hours, I'm thinking. It's
+deep midnight here, and an hour or so beyond it, and they'll be over
+their punchbowls, yonner. That's so, sir, I'm believin'?'
+
+'I don't know, upon my word,' said Volnay. 'You're out of my depth, my
+lad. But it's a bit of a sin to talk about punch-bowls, isn't it, on a
+night like this, when there isn't a hot drink within a hundred miles?
+Sergeant, this pork is like manna in the wilderness. Look me up before
+you report yourself to Major de Blacquaire, will you? I'm responsible
+for the fire, you understand. It was my duty to retire the whole crowd
+of you under arrest, I know, but there isn't a lot of fun going for you
+beggars here, is there? Goodnight, Sergeant, and don't forget the hour
+in the morning.'
+
+'Good-night, sir.' 'God go with you, sir.' 'A merry Christmas and a
+loight harrut to you, sir, for many a year.'
+
+'That's your man, nah, Sergeant,' said one man out of the shadow in a
+tone that was learned in Rotherham, or very near it. 'Ah like Captain
+Volnay as mooch as ah like anybody. He's got a kind of a way with him
+an' he sits dahn with the like of huz, and he talks to us as if we was
+men in place o' bein' cattle, which is the way with most on 'em. Here's
+good luck to Captain Volnay, an' if ah'd got a glass o' that steamin'
+poonch they'n got in Aberdeen, ode bird, ah'd scald _my_ throat with a
+relish.'
+
+They were all full of roast pork, or of pork more or less roasted, and
+the scent of the sacrifice was yet in the air, and their war-bitten
+souls were cheered and warmed, if ever so little.
+
+'Yis,' said one lad, 'if half the quality knowed!'
+
+'Hallo!' said Polson, turning in the fragrant dark. 'How far from
+Bilston were _you_ born?'
+
+'Wedgebury,' said the voice. 'No furder.'
+
+'Beacon Hargate, me,' said Polson. 'I'd ha' guessed it, Sergeant. I'd
+ha' guessed it. I niver heerd your voice afore to-night, but there's a
+kind of a turn of the tongue in it now and then.'
+
+The contingent fell to silence, and a wet clinging snow began, ruled in
+straight lines. The embers of the fire hissed under it, and the men drew
+themselves into such shelter as they could find, and waited in the grey,
+cold patience for the expected relief from duty. It was long in coming,
+and they learned afterwards that the regimental Sergeant-major, whose
+duty it ought to have been to relieve them on that Christmas morning,
+was dead from dysentery, poor fellow, and as a matter of fact it turned
+out that he was buried in the muddy earth and half frozen in there
+before anybody remembered to take up his duty.
+
+The long, long night went on, and the Russian gunner, finding his
+attention no longer drawn to the distant fire, had gone to sleep or
+anyhow fallen silent, when a witching noise rose upon the air, and all
+the worn, half-sleeping men sat up to listen. Surely there was the sound
+of church bells, and there was a rush towards the pleasant noise. It was
+only a man from the smithy who happened to have a musical ear and had
+rigged up a kind of gallows from which he had hung carbine and rifle
+barrels of varying lengths and calibre, on the which he was beating with
+an iron rod. The sulky dull beginning of the dawn on Christmas Day, and
+there in the trenches the Christmas bells ringing as they might have
+rung in any village church in old England, two thousand miles away. And
+the hearts of the listeners rose to their throats, and men were quiet
+whilst the music sounded. The notes reached far, and fell on many a
+drowsy ear, conjuring up visions in the half-slumbering minds of humble
+whitewashed village steeples, far and far away. Polson's contingent,
+drawn from a distance of some two hundred yards, stuffed that ingenious
+musician with half-cold roast pork, and left him well rewarded for his
+toils.
+
+By one of those surprising fatuities which distinguished this particular
+campaign almost above all others in which the English private soldier
+has been engaged, an attack which was ordered for black midnight was
+ready just in the grey of dawn, and Polson's ear caught a whispered word
+of command here and there, and a noise of careful footsteps. The trench
+of the second parallel was ten feet deep, but there was a ladder of
+foot-holes just behind him, and he turned and climbed, digging his
+fingers into the half-frozen turf on the Russian side. There was the
+grim Redoubt at which the English guns had hammered in vain this many
+and many a day, still solidly silhouetted against the clearing sky of
+morning, dark and lowering, quiet as death and yet from old experience
+holding a threat in the entrails of it. The men--three or four thousand
+of them, as one might guess--climbed into the trench of the first
+parallel and were lost to sight. They emerged crouching, and raced
+across the space which intervened between them and the second, where
+Polson's own post lay. They were down like a dumb wind on the one side
+and up again on the other, and raced, crouching, for the first, into
+which they again disappeared. The man who shouldered Polson from his
+place, and whose face as he went by might be distinctly seen, was Major
+de Blacquaire.
+
+'Leading a forlorn hope, you devil, are you?' said the Sergeant to
+himself; but the words were silent, and he felt a simple throb of
+admiration for the set mouth and resolute eyes of the man who had
+climbed past him, and wished himself in his place.
+
+The racing, crouching crowd had dived into the foremost trench and had
+reappeared again before it was discerned by the Russian sentries; but
+a hundred yards away from the foot of the glacis, the whole advance was
+caught and swept and twisted, as by a whirlwind, by a hail of gunshot,
+canister and rifle fire. The half-melted, new-fallen snow clung to the
+sloping glacis of the Redoubt, and made a greyish background of dim
+light against which a watcher could perceive not only the whole motion
+of the line, but the gesture of any single figure in it. Hate and
+interest and admiration alike prompted Polson's eyes to follow the
+slim, active figure with the waving sword which silently beckoned on his
+followers. The Redoubt opened, as it were, with an earthquake crash, and
+all the black front of it went fiery red and yellow, and at the first
+discharge of this inferno, the figure with the flourished sabre in his
+right hand fell prone. The double line of the invaders shook and wavered
+from right to left, and men dropped amongst them as if the scythe
+of Death were literally sweeping there. The lines advanced, wavered,
+paused, turned, turned again, advanced again with mad cheering, scarce
+heard amid the rattle of musketry and the roaring of the guns; and
+finally broke and ran, utterly routed. The onlooker had no part in this
+conflict except to bite and ram down a cartridge or two and to send a
+shot more or less at random into the black oblong of the opposing fort;
+but clinging with his feet on that precarious muddy ladder, and with his
+elbows to the frozen turf, he saw clearly the convulsive gesture with
+which De Blacquaire lifted his sabre in a last effort to wave on his
+men.
+
+Man is a very complex creature, and he will not be finally analysed
+and done with until this planet is very much older than it was in the
+nineteenth Christian century. Whether it was hate, or personal pride,
+or a sudden flash of admiration for a man whom he had hitherto despised,
+Polson Jervase could not have told you to his dying day.
+
+But though the motives which inspired him were very wildly mixed and
+very uncertain in their origin, there is no doubt whatever as to the
+deed to which amongst themselves they inspired him that Christmas
+morning. The Malakoff belched hell. The flying crowds hustled him and
+threw him twice or thrice. But he was on his feet again, racing towards
+that prone figure. He dropped into the front trench and trod upon
+a wounded man who screamed beneath his heel, and climbed out on the
+further side. The air was musical with hooting shell and singing shot
+and hissing bullet as if a whole diabolic orchestra were fiddling and
+bugling. Polson found the fallen body of his foe, and hugged it in
+his arms, and raced back as hard as he could tear. He tumbled into the
+trench of the first parallel almost anyhow; but he gripped the man he
+hated, and in his soul was a great rejoicing. He tore up the opposite
+side, and came out upon the open slope again, with the unconscious man
+still in his arms.
+
+'You'll ruin me, you devil!' said Polson, as he ran breathlessly with
+the wind of shot and shell in his ears. 'And I'm to report myself to you
+to-morrow, am I? We may report ourselves to Almighty God together, but
+_you_ are safe for the minute, I guess.'
+
+He was within a yard of his own post when these mad exaltations of an
+excited fancy crossed his mind, and at that instant a musket shot took
+him in the neck and he fell with his burden into the trench before him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+We swoop, as it were, to the skies, and we drop, as it were, to the very
+sea bed, and we are seasick to the souls of us, one and all; and of
+the five hundred men the staunch boat carries, there are a round four
+hundred and fifty wounded, and a round four hundred who will never see
+the skies with conscious eyes again. We are bound for Scutari, where
+an enlightened intelligence, awakened at last to some beginning of
+elementary necessity, has established a hospital; for Government,
+as usual in such matters, after five hundred years of more or less
+victorious prowling to and fro in the world and more of gathered
+experience than any other body of men ever had in the history of the
+world, has positively made up its mind to shelter broken bones and sick
+bodies from the mere inclemencies of the weather.
+
+It would not have done so much had it not been for the intervention of
+a lady whose name deserves to be immortal so long as the British Empire
+paints itself red upon the map; but Florence Nightingale had enlisted
+the sympathy of English hearts more quickly than the Queen's shilling
+had enlisted fighting men, and the Crimean hospitals were the centre
+of a thousand human interests. The authorities had somehow caught and
+impounded the good ship _Caesar_ at Odessa, and had despatched it to a
+desert bay with no landing place or chartered sounding, near Ouklacool
+Aides, and, having loaded it there with wounded, had ordered it across
+to the Black Sea and down the Dardanelles. The stout Ayrshire heart
+of the captain was sick and sore within him many a time on that grim
+voyage, for before it was half over he had spent his last round shot on
+board and his last bit of spare canvas in the sewing up and weighting of
+men who were fated to be buried in the deep.
+
+Amongst those who escaped this dreary fate were Polson Jervase and the
+enemy he had rescued at so grave a risk of his own life, and they
+two, with about one half the original human cargo of the ship, reached
+Scutari, and were landed there, and carried into hospital. A rough sea
+voyage in January weather in the Black Sea affords no pleasant nurture
+for a wounded man, and the poor fellows who were carried or helped
+ashore were a pitiable crew indeed. Neither Polson nor his enemy was
+conscious at the hour of landing, or had been truly conscious throughout
+the whole of the long and trying voyage. They were lowered in their
+stretchers from the ship's side to the caiques which were brought
+alongside, pulled to the shore and carried by hand to the hospital.
+They were luckier in this respect than the majority of the men, who were
+huddled into the straw of the lumbering octagonal-wheeled arabas. The
+rustic Turk had not yet mastered the art, even if he has mastered
+it to-day, of constructing a cartwheel in a circle. He makes it
+eight-sided, and builds his vehicles without springs, and the wounded
+went along the vile road with a compound jolt for every foot of ground
+they traversed. There are men yet living who remember that piercing
+scene, and the cries which were wrung from the hearts of the stoutest
+fighting men in the world along that _via dolorosa_. It happened that
+the rescued and the rescuer were laid side by side, each on a bed some
+twenty inches in width; and there they were tended many days before
+either of them awoke to a real knowledge of his surroundings. In their
+waking hours they babbled deliriously, the pair of them, letting out the
+secrets of their very souls, if anybody had been there to listen. Day by
+day, and night by night, Polson, as he remembered afterwards, heard the
+best loved voice in the world from time to time, and sometimes with it
+and sometimes alone the voice he hated most. The wind was blowing the
+rain against the windows of the grey-stone house on Beacon Hill, and
+Irene and his father were whispering secrets together in the parlour.
+Then De Blacquaire was chattering there and saying all manner of things
+which were not pertinent to the case in hand, and Irene was answering
+him. John Jervase was talking by turns to all three, and was sometimes
+absurdly sentimental, dropping tears on the listener's upturned face.
+All this was so strange and confused, so much a dream of delirium, that
+when at last the sufferer awoke to reason, he attached no meaning to it.
+
+It was the 1st of February, as he found out afterwards, and he had been
+crazy for five weeks. He stared feebly up at the ceiling and wondered
+as to his whereabouts. He tried to lift a hand, but he might have worn
+a gauntlet of lead, it felt so heavy; though, when at last he struggled
+into a changed posture, it looked as if it were made of egg-shell
+porcelain, it was so thin and worn.
+
+'I wonder,' he said within himself--and this was his first conscious
+thought, 'I wonder if I saved that sweep.' And then at his side he heard
+De Blacquaire's voice.
+
+'Thank you,' it was saying. 'You're awfully sweet and kind, and I'm very
+much obliged to you. That is much easier.'
+
+Polson was greatly interested, but in the very act of turning over to
+look at his enemy, and to find out whom he was addressing, he fell into
+a deep sleep. The next time he came back to consciousness it was dark,
+except for a sickly burning oil lamp on a sconce fixed against a wall
+at a little distance. He began to be aware of the fact that he was
+amazingly hungry, and the memory of what he imagined to have been his
+last meal came back to him. He laughed feebly, and he spoke.
+
+'I wonder what the beggars did with the rest of that pig.'
+
+There was the sound beside him as of an emotional snuffle, and John
+Jervase blew his nose resoundingly, so that Polson knew that his father
+was there before the old man bent his head above him. He was too weak
+to be surprised at anything, and had no earthly notion as to his own
+whereabouts.
+
+'Why, you've come round again, Polly,' said his father. 'You know me,
+don't you?'
+
+It was in Polson's mind to return a hearty nod in the affirmative, but
+all he managed to do was to close his eyes and open them again.
+
+'Why, that's hearty!' said Jervase, smoothing the bedclothes above him
+with a tremulous hand. 'That's hearty, old chap. They said you wouldn't
+pull through, but I knew better all along. Now, you was to take this,
+if you woke up, and you've got to keep very still and quiet. This is the
+very best beef tea as you can get for love or money in all Asia Minor.
+You let me tuck this napkin under your chin, Polly, and I'll feed you
+with a golden tablespoon. You'd 'ardly believe it, but I bought this
+in Vienna on my way out here, and it used to belong to the Empress
+Catherine of Rooshia, and I gave a twenty-pun' note for it, and it's got
+her monogram. You don't mind me chattering, old chap, but I don't want
+to excite you, and it's the doctor's orders that I mustn't; but it's
+pretty nigh on two years now since I set eyes on you, and when you get
+stronger and begin to walk about again, I shall have a heap of things to
+tell you.'
+
+The wounded man lay face upwards, and sipped at the tepid liquid
+presented to his lips with a huge physical enjoyment. In his whole life
+he had never conceived of so complete a pleasure. Only the convalescent
+knows the joys of the table.
+
+'That's the last spoonful, Polly,' said John Jervase, wiping the pale
+lips with the napkin he had tucked beneath the invalid's chin at the
+beginning of the meal. 'You'd like more, wouldn't you?'
+
+Folson tried to nod again, and again achieved nothing more than a
+lowering and raising of the eyelids.
+
+'You haven't got to have it, you know, old chap. You've got to be kept
+hungry. It's been touch and go for weeks, but you'll be all right now,
+if we take care of you. And I reckon we'll do that amongst us.'
+
+A weary voice rose from the neighbouring bed.
+
+'Stop that infernal cackle, whoever you are, and let me sleep. Don't you
+know better than to make a row like that in a hospital?'
+
+Once more Polson--this time wide awake--was conscious of the voice of
+his enemy.
+
+'It's all right,' his father whispered. 'I'll come back next time you've
+got to be fed, old chap, but he doesn't like me, and he's been down on
+me a hundred times already.'
+
+The sick man stared at the ceiling where the oil lamp in its sconce on
+the wall had made a smoky semi-circle, and where the yellow light now
+slept upon the whitewash within the limits of the smoked half-ring. He
+was too weak to think very deeply, and too weak to feel very strongly;
+but the sense of home within his mind, and the father was the father,
+and the voice and the hand had never been unkind since he could
+remember, and the scorn and passion of his heart had somehow worn away,
+and he was not angry or contemptuous or full of hatred as he had been.
+
+Jervase leaned over him in a momentary farewell, and Polson saw that the
+old man's eyes were full of tears. One dropped plump and warm on the tip
+of his own nose, and there was something comic and touching in the fact,
+and he giggled and snuffled over it to the verge of a weak hysteria.
+
+'I wasn't to disturb you, Polly,' said Jervase, 'and I'm misbehaving
+myself. I've got to go, and you've got to go to sleep; but I'll be back
+as soon as ever they'll let me, and in a day or two's time you'll be
+strong enough for you and me to have a talk together.'
+
+'I wish,' said the feeble, drawling voice from the neighbouring bed,
+'that you would hold your tongue or go. I want to sleep.'
+
+John Jervase stooped to kiss Polson on the forehead, and went his way
+down the silent ward, with his boots creaking with a fainter and
+fainter sound, until he reached the folding doors at the far end of the
+dormitory.
+
+The lad lay quiet. He had parted with his father in bitter disdain and
+anger, but somehow these emotions had all departed from him by this
+time, and had left him as if they had been an evil spirit, banished by
+some better influence. He did not know--he was too weak and tired to
+think about things--but at his side there was an angry stirring and a
+peevish voice spoke to him.
+
+'That's you, is it?'
+
+Polson, a little strengthened by the food he had taken, managed to roll
+round upon his shoulder, and looked his late enemy in the face.
+
+'It's I,' he said. 'Indubitably. And it's you, to a certainty. Where did
+you get hit?'
+
+There was so long a silence that each thought that the other had fallen
+asleep; but when it had endured for perhaps the space of twenty minutes,
+De Blacquaire began to turn and murmur, and at last his words found an
+articulate form.
+
+'I say,' he began, 'you there! You! Sergeant! Are you awake?'
+
+'Wide,' said Polson.
+
+The man beside him lay with pallid face and big bird-like eyes, staring
+at the smoked semi-circle on the ceiling, and after the inquiry he had
+offered and the answer given, there was silence again, whilst a man
+might have counted twenty.
+
+'They've told me all about it,' said Major de Blacquaire, 'and I don't
+understand it.
+
+And I want to understand. What in the name of hell did you fetch me out
+for?'
+
+'You go to sleep,' said Polson, 'and don't ask ridiculous questions.'
+
+'I want to know,' said De Blacquaire.
+
+'I'll tell you to-morrow,' the Sergeant answered. 'But it's no good
+thinking about things just now.'
+
+Again there was a silence, and it lasted for a full hour. The rank
+petroleum lamp in the sconce burnt out and left a sickening stench upon
+the air. The whole space in which the wounded men lay went dark, and
+the wild free wind and the cruel driving rain beat at the window. In the
+black darkness voices spoke here and there. There were notes of fever
+from wounded men, and once or twice there was a last message whispered
+to a nurse's ear, never to be delivered. Dark and storm, and the heroic
+long-suffering soul released from the heroic long-suffering body, and
+going home at midnight.
+
+Sick men who have been half-starved for a year or two, and who have run
+through every note of the gamut of emotion, may be quicker to appreciate
+these influences than common people are: but Polson Jervase, lying
+on his back and staring upwards in a futile endeavour to trace the
+semi-circular ring of smoke upon the ceiling, felt them all deeply.
+
+Whilst he lay there, staring upwards, there was a sudden patter of bare
+feet on the bare floor at his side, and a hand clutched him.
+
+'Look here,' said Major de Blacquaire, and even in his half dream he
+knew the voice instantly, as if he had been wide awake and the room had
+lain in broad daylight. 'Look here, what the devil did you do it for?'
+
+'Get back into bed,' said Polson, 'and I'll try to talk to you.'
+
+The beds were not more than twenty inches in width, and there was barely
+a foot between them, so that a man by the stretching of a hand could
+touch a comrade.
+
+Out of the dark, to the Sergeant's intense surprise, there came a
+groping hand, which sought his own, and found it and Clutched it.
+
+'What the devil did you do it for?' said De Blacquaire.
+
+'Well,' said the wounded Sergeant, 'it's pretty hard to say. I suppose
+it's a mixed-up kind of thing altogether. I saw you drop, and you
+promised to break me in the morning, and if I'd let your chance go by,
+d'ye see----'
+
+'See! 'said De Blacquaire, holding on to the hand in the darkness.
+'You're not half a bad fellow, Jervase.'
+
+'Ain't I?' said Jervase. 'You go on like this, Major, and I shall begin
+to think that you're a better sort than I fancied you were.'
+
+The two men went to sleep together, each holding the other's hand. It
+was an odd thing, and quite unlikely to have been prophesied by anybody;
+but it happened.
+
+An hour or two later, when the elder Jervase stole in on tiptoe, with
+a new cup of priceless beef-tea, he saw the two men lying there, with
+their faces turned to each other, as if they had been lovers, and hand
+holding hand. He took Polson by the wrist, and shook the grasp gently
+asunder.
+
+'You've got to take this, old chap,' he said, and setting down the
+candle he carried, and fixing it by its own grease to the rough hospital
+table at the bed head, he began to feed the boy once more.
+
+You are not to imagine the ward silent all this time. There are valiant
+souls of men passing with every hour, and groans of death and anguish,
+and all the living axe conscious.
+
+When Jervase had fed the Sergeant to the last teaspoonful, he retired
+again, leaving the candle burning on the table at the bed head.
+
+'These poor chaps,' he said, 'may find a little bit of comfort in a
+light, and any way, good English wax don't stink like Turkish lamp oil,
+does it, old chap?'
+
+The 'old chap' winked. He had no strength to express himself in any
+more emphatic manner; but he had got to love his father once again, for,
+after all, the ties of blood are strong, and a man may have been a wrong
+doer without giving his own son an eternal cause to hate him. And when
+a man has a bullet hole through the neck, and has been unconscious for
+many days, and delirious for many weeks, and finds a once familiar face
+bending over him, habit asserts itself; and any hatred or despite which
+may have come in between two people long ago is likely to be scattered.
+It was a foreign air which howled about the gables and chimneys. It was
+a foreign wind which wept and moaned about that abode of sorrow, and
+drove the rain against the window panes. But to the boy, the feel of
+whose father's hand was still warm in his own, it was home, home, home.
+The candle dwindled down, and he had been watchful enough to prevent the
+whole place being set on fire by waiting to blow out its final flame as
+it drove towards the bare wood on which it rested. Darkness came down
+and slumber with it; and then on the top of slumber a quiet whisper and
+a dawning light which waked many men in the long bare corridor. There
+was a candle carried by a hospital nurse in the sombre uniform of her
+craft, and behind it came a lady whom every waking man there present
+turned to thank, if it were only by a movement of the enfeebled hand,
+or a droop of the eyelid, or a motion of the deadened lips. Men who are
+dying after long sickness in hospital cannot cheer. Men who fall in
+the full tide of the strength of manhood on the battlefield can acclaim
+their leader. The wasted forces had naturally gone, but as the gleaming
+candle light led Florence Nightingale from couch to couch, the wakers
+turned and gave such signals as they could. The pitying, watchful,
+gracious face went by, and the candle light departed.
+
+A good many weeks and months went by before the name of the owner
+of that gracious face and that memorable smile was known even to the
+parting souls and suffering bodies which were cheered by it.
+
+Spring comes up earlier in the region of Scutari than it does in London,
+and there were many scores of ragged silken-bearded fellows rambling up
+and down the streets of the place on crutches before the first leaf
+had declared itself in any park in London, and almost before the first
+wayside flower had bloomed in any English country hedgerow.
+
+Away to the north-east of the hospital lies that cemetery which for
+many a year to come will be a place of pilgrimage for the British
+globe-trotter. There are the hunched, high-shouldered monuments of many
+buried men, with the turban with its wreathen carvings to indicate the
+resting place of the master sex. In those days, when the shallow graves
+were being very quickly filled, the convalescent inmates of the hospital
+made the cemetery their favourite promenading ground, and it was
+here, upon a shining March Monday, that Polson and Major de Blacquaire
+encountered each other on their wanderings amid the tombs, the one on
+crutches, and the other painfully supporting his footsteps by the aid of
+a walking stick.
+
+'Since they began to sort us about,' said De Blacquaire, 'I've lost
+sight of you. And you've never answered my question. Now, what the devil
+_did_ you do it for?'
+
+'Look here,' said Polson, using his favourite locution, 'you've
+threatened two or three times to make an end of me.'
+
+'Yes,' said the Major, nodding and drawling on the word. 'That's right
+enough, But what's that got to do with it?'
+
+'Well, you see,' said Polson, 'I'd got to give you the chance to do it.'
+
+'Had you?' said Major de Blacquaire.
+
+The one man was leaning on his crutches, and the other was stooping on
+his crutch walking-stick, and there was nobody near so far as either of
+them could see.
+
+'I don't know,' said De Blacquaire, in a drooping voice. 'I may be all
+wrong, and in a sort of way knocked to pieces, don't you know. But I
+think on the whole, Sergeant, that you have acted like an unusually
+damned good fellow. Do you mind?'--he pointed to a sunken tomb by a
+motion of one of his crutches, and he sat down upon it. 'What has a
+fellow got to do when another fellow has fetched him out of the fire at
+the risk of his own life, and one fellow hates the other fellow like the
+very devil? I'll tell you straight, Polson,' said De Blacquaire, in his
+old-mannered drawl, 'I'd have seen you damned and done for before I'd
+have reached out a finger to save you. And I think that you are the
+blamedest kind of an ass and a duffer to have pulled me out. And yet I
+don't know--I'm not so cursed certain that you'll suffer for it.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+In the pale spring sunlight where they sat, there came a wholly
+incongruous figure. It was clad in black broadcloth, and black kid
+gloves, and there was a black shining silk hat on the top of it; and in
+one of the black kid gloved hands was balanced a black silk umbrella.
+The figure was that of John Jervase, and he was walking amidst the tombs
+of Scutari with about as much visible emotion as he would have shown if
+he had been on his daily walk to the Stock Exchange in Stevenson Place,
+Birmingham.
+
+'They told me at the hospital as you'd got leave for a bit of a walk,
+Polly, and one of the chaps said it was likely I should find you here.
+You're better, ain't you? There's a little bit of colour in your face
+this morning.'
+
+He was altogether gay and friendly, and his voice and manner alike were
+cheerful, but he fell into a ludicrous consternation as he turned to
+find Major de Blacquaire seated between two turbaned tombs at his left
+hand.
+
+'I say, Sergeant,' said the Major, with his University drawl, 'I wish
+you'd go away for half a minute, and leave me to talk things over with
+your Governah?'
+
+'As you like,' said Polson, and hobbled away towards the south end of
+the cemetery, where the bay lay gleaming that mild morning, and French
+and English troopships were landing men who were as broken as he himself
+had been a month ago.
+
+'I suppose,' said De Blacquaire, scratching lines on the ground before
+him with one of his crutches, 'that you're one of the beastliest old
+bounders that one could find on the face of the earth, and I have the
+best sort of a good mind to get you into trouble. I suppose you know
+that?'
+
+'Very well,' said John Jervase. 'If you won't get me into any sort of
+trouble that won't leave my boy outside, you're welcome.'
+
+'Yes,' said the Major, 'that's where you come in. You go and rob your
+neighbour for a matter of about twenty years, and when I drop into his
+property you go on robbing me, and then because your son's a good chap a
+man is obliged to let you alone. I don't think that that is fair.'
+
+John Jervase had seated himself at the opposite side of the cemetery
+path, and was as busy in the making of hieroglyphics with the point
+of his neatly folded silk umbrella as Major de Blacquaire was with the
+point of his crutch.
+
+'Hit me,' he said, 'without hitting the boy and you are welcome.'
+
+Major de Blacquaire scored the wet gravel with the crutch, looking
+frowningly down upon the ground, and Jervase scored the earth on his
+side with the neat brass ferrule.
+
+'I don't quite see what I am to do with you,' said the Major. 'It isn't
+the boy's fault that he has a rotter for a father, is it?'
+
+'Now you look here,' said John Jervase, heavily and solidly, 'I've had
+pretty nearly two years to think this thing over in. I've done wrong,
+and I own up to it There's my boy, Polly, as is recommended for the
+Victoria Cross by Sir Colin Campbell, and fetched you out of the fire
+under the Malakoff, so I'm told, as if you'd been his very born brother.
+I've been sitting by his bed for more than a month past, and if I'm not
+a Dutchman he hates you like poison. He'd only got to leave you there
+and everything would have been at an end betwixt us; and what on earth
+he fetched you out for, I don't know. If you think, Major, that I'm
+appealing for myself, you're the most mistaken man in the whole wide
+world. If you can find a way of hitting old Jack Jervase without hitting
+the boy, find it and do it. But ever since I've heard about you, folks
+have told me that you pride yourself on being a gentleman; and if a
+gentleman is going to take it out of a chap who has nearly died for him,
+when he had every right to leave him alone, and when it was the biggest
+kind of blunder to rescue him, I'm no judge of what a gentleman ought to
+be.' Major de Blacquaire moved the point of the crutch to and fro on the
+moist gravel, and made his hieroglyphics in the soil without response
+for a minute or two. But at last he said, in his Cambridge drawl:
+
+'You're an illimitable old bounder, but you're rather a clever old
+bounder, when all is said and done, and I suppose I shall have to let
+you go.'
+
+'Major de Blacquaire,' said Jervase, 'if ever there was a man mistaken
+in this world, you're a mistaken man. I don't want your ticket, and I
+don't want your pardon. I've had two years to think this over in. I've
+been without my lad all the time, and I've come out here to find him
+broke and wandering in his mind. I've sat down between your bed and
+his, and I've heard him in his wanderings say how he hated you, and I've
+heard you say how you've hated him. And now I tell you, fair and square,
+find a way of hitting me that won't hit the lad, and I'll take anything
+that you can do to me.'
+
+'There isn't any way,' said De Blacquaire, 'worse luck! I'm told that
+there's a doctrine of heredity, and we've got to believe that men are
+like their fathers. Personally, I'm not going to believe it And I shall
+be obliged to you if you will go and send back a lad who's about as much
+like you as you're like the Apostle Paul. Now--vanish! and behave like
+an honest fellow for once in your life for the sake of an honest son.'
+
+John Jervase rose. 'It's all very well,' he said, 'for you to talk.
+You've never been poor and ambitious and hard run, and you don't know
+what temptation can amount to. You've got your money back again to the
+last penny. It's in Stubbs' hands, and I've stood the racket. And if the
+father did you a bad turn the son has done you a good one.'
+
+'Will you kindly go away, Mr. Jervase?' said the Major.
+
+'Yes,' said Jervase, 'I'll go away. But since I'm here, I'm going to ask
+you one question. Are you going to hit the boy through me?'
+
+'Will you oblige me,' said Major de Blacquaire, 'by going to the devil?'
+
+'Are you a-going,' said John Jervase, 'to make a scandal of this
+business when you get home again? I've paid your lawyer to the last
+farthing. My cousin's hooked it with pretty near a quarter of a million
+sterling, and gone out to Venezuela. And if I hadn't struck on a pretty
+fat thing in the way of a contract for forage and horseflesh for these
+French chaps here, I should have been pretty well a bankrupt. But I
+found the money, and you're as well off as you would have been if old
+General Airey had never heard my name.'
+
+'That is good news to a poor man,' said De Blacquaire. 'And now, my dear
+sir, _will_ you oblige me by going to the devil?'
+
+'Are you a-going to make a scandal about this business when we get home
+again?' Jervase asked.
+
+'No, you purblind clown,' said Major de Blacquaire, rising, and fitting
+his crutches to his armpits. 'I am not. You have about as much notion
+of what a man is bound to do under these conditions as an ox would have.
+Please do as I have asked you, and leave me, and send the boy along.
+I don't think that he will leave the same flavour on the palate as the
+father does.'
+
+'I suppose,' said Jervase, 'that from your point of view I've been a
+badish sort of a lot?'
+
+'I suppose you have,' said Major de Blacquaire.
+
+'But Polly never knew about it, and you've never had any sort of a right
+to look down on him. Old Sir Ferdinand was the first of your crowd as
+ever climbed to the top of the tree, and I can remember him when he was
+no better off than I am.'
+
+'I do not think,' said Major de Blacquaire, 'that I have ever
+encountered quite so pestiferous a stupidity. Will you go?'
+
+The tension of the curious interview was relieved, for Polson, who
+had slowly paced the circular path which ran round the cemetery, came
+limping back again, dinting the wet gravel with the crutch-headed stick
+and leaning on it like a man who had achieved a forced march of many
+miles.
+
+'That's the chap,' said John Jervase, 'as fetched you out from under
+fire.'
+
+'I have a right,' said Major de Blac-quaire, 'to be as well aware of
+that fact as you are, Mr. Jervase. Sergeant, I've been mistaken about
+you all along. Do you mind----' he paused, and there was a break in the
+aristocratic drawl he had so long affected that it had grown to be a
+trick of second nature with him, 'd'you mind shaking hands, Sergeant?'
+
+Polson Jervase reached out the hand which was not engaged with the
+stick, and it happened to be the left.
+
+'I don't want that, Sergeant,' said the Major.
+
+'My dear fellow,' said Polson, 'it's the nearest to the heart.'
+
+And De Blacquaire took it with a glint of moisture in his eyes.
+
+'You ain't done that to me, Polly,' said Jervase. 'It's pretty near two
+years since you've done that to me. Are you ever going to shake hands
+with me again?'
+
+Major de Blacquaire fitted his crutches to his shoulders, and stumped
+away, leaving father and son together.
+
+'There's nobody seems to understand me, Polly,' said the elder. 'I ran
+my risk of getting into quod along with your Uncle James, and for a man
+who's been brought up respectable, that ought to count for something.
+I've owned up to everything, and I've paid for everything, and I'm a
+solid man this minute. Ain't you going to shake hands with your old
+father, Polly? I followed you out to the Crimea, and I learned where you
+was a-lyin', wounded, and I've nursed you from the minute I found you up
+till now. Shake hands, Polly.'
+
+Father and son shook hands, with no very great good will, if the truth
+must be told, on the side of the younger; for Polson had yet to learn
+a lesson or two and had not caught the art of forgiveness for the
+repentant sinner who was still prosperous. It is a great deal easier
+for almost anybody to forgive the criminal who has fallen to hunger and
+tatters than it is to find an excuse for him when he goes in shining
+broadcloth and lustrous silk and patent leather.
+
+De Blacquaire went stumping along on his crutches in the weak spring
+sunshine, and Polson and his father, by mere chance, were looking after
+him when he paused at the corner of the one important monument in the
+grounds, and raised his forage cap to some person as yet unseen.
+
+There is a sort of legend often taught in verse and fiction to the
+effect that no one true lover can be near another without the presence
+being felt. But Polson had turned away when his father laid a hand upon
+his sleeve, and asked him, 'Don't you see who that is, Polly?' And
+the lad, turning, saw the goddess of his dreams. It was Irene, and he
+recognised her face almost without surprise, for it flashed upon him
+instantly that her voice had sounded through all his fevered dreams
+since he had first laid his head upon the clean, sweet-smelling hospital
+pillow. The girl was dressed in black, and her slight figure looked the
+slighter for its garb. She came forward with a smile in her eyes, and
+with a quickened step.
+
+'I've kept my promise,' said Jervase the elder, 'and I haven't spoke a
+word.' And with that he exhibited a tact he had not shown before, and
+walked smartly away, leaving the boy and girl together.
+
+'I have wanted to see you,' she said amply, 'but I have kept away until
+I could be sure of bringing you good news. You know that my father is
+here?'
+
+'I saw him on Lord Raglan's Staff at the Alma,' said Polson, 'and I have
+heard about him since from time to time.'
+
+De Blacquaire was hobbling away on his crutches towards the
+hospital, and by this time was barely visible. Jervase in his black
+broadcloth and shining silk hat brandished his umbrella in the rear, and
+there was not another soul in sight.
+
+'I knew you, dear,' said Polson. 'I have had your voice and hand about
+me for a month past.'
+
+'I came out with my father,' said Irene, 'more than a year ago. Lord
+Raglan gave him some sort of work to do at the Embassy at Constantinople
+to begin with, and when the fighting began he was attached to the Staff
+and I was left behind. So I turned to the hospital and I have been at
+work here for a year and more.'
+
+He forgot his wound, and stood upright with the crutch stick in one hand
+and held out both arms to her.
+
+'I haven't the least little bit of a right, my dear,' he said, but she
+laughed tenderly, and ran to the offered shelter. All around were the
+unlettered, turbaned memorials of the dead, and there was just this
+one bit of youth and love in the middle of that record of a thousand
+tragedies.
+
+'Have you heard the news?' she asked, looking up at the worn young face
+with its late sprung growth of silky beard.
+
+'What news?' he asked.
+
+'The news about yourself,' she answered.
+
+'News about myself?' said Polson. 'What news is there about me?'
+
+'You don't know?' cried Irene, recoiling from him a little with clasped
+hands and sparkling eyes. 'Is it going to be my good luck to tell you?
+You don't know any news about yourself?'
+
+'I don't know any news about myself,' he answered; 'since I was bowled
+over on Christmas morning at Sevastopol, I haven't had a chance of
+hearing any, I've had your voice and this dear little hand about me all
+the time--I've known that.'
+
+'And you don't know?' she asked him, 'you don't know what's waiting for
+you when you get back to England?'
+
+A cloud fell upon him at the question. 'I don't know, dear,' he
+answered. 'I don't know what's waiting for me when I get back to
+England. But I do know that I'm a bit of a fool and a bit of a scoundrel
+to forget the reason why we said good-bye. I was so glad to see you
+again that it came natural to forget. And you'll forgive me sooner than
+I shall forgive myself.'
+
+'Wait one minute, Polson,' said Irene. 'Here is a letter from papa. So
+soon as you can recover you are to be invalided home, and the gem of
+the letter is--do you guess? Do you guess? You are recommended by the
+Commander-in-Chief for the Victoria Cross. Here it is.' And she read,
+dancing on tiptoe. '"Our young friend, Polson, has magnificently
+distinguished himself, having rescued under heavy fire a wounded
+officer, whose name I have not yet been able to discover. But the
+gallant action was seen by the Chief, who was there in person, and who
+has told me that he has seen nothing more splendid in the whole course
+of his career."'
+
+With that, she hid her face upon his breast again, and he folded his
+arms about her in a sort of stupor.
+
+'I said good-bye, dear, long ago,' he stammered haltingly. 'I've no
+right to behave like this.'
+
+'Why?' she asked. 'What can make any difference between us?'
+
+He took her to his heart again at those fond words, and laid his lips
+upon her forehead. De Blacquaire's crutches had long since ceased
+to crunch along the road towards the hospital, and Jervase's broad
+shoulders had gone out of sight. There was no human creature near, but
+far and far away overhead a lark was soaring and singing. Many and many
+a pair of English lovers had heard the same song as the bird had hailed
+the rising or the setting sun, and both the young hearts beat to that
+native sounding music which rang so far away from home. Their lips came
+together, and there was music in their hearts.
+
+'Take me back to the hospital, Polson,' she said, disengaging herself
+from his arms. 'I am on duty within a quarter of an hour.'
+
+She took a little watch from her girdle, and looked at it with a cry.
+
+'I have barely five minutes, and I have never failed to relieve guard
+since I came. Is that the word, dear?' She took his arm sedately, and
+walked along with him, he prodding at the wet gravel with his stick, and
+she half supporting him.
+
+'Was that true?' she asked. 'Did you know that I was near you?'
+
+'Did I know!' said Polson in a voice that was worth a thousand
+protestations to her ears.
+
+'I always thought,' said Irene, 'that I disliked Major de Blacquaire
+until a week or two ago; but whilst you were lying there ill and
+delirious, he behaved so kindly that I shall never forget him. And he
+told me--you won't mind, Polson, dear, you won't let anything I say
+wound you? He told me that the past was buried. That awful, awful night
+will never be quite forgotten, but it has left nothing behind it. Your
+father has paid everything, and there is not a word to be spoken by
+anybody, ever any more.'
+
+The lark sang in the thin sunlight as if he would break his very heart
+for joy, and the lovers walked homewards slowly, arm in arm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+It was the First of May, and that same good three-master, the _Caesar_,
+which had carried Major de Blacquaire and Sergeant Jervase from the
+Crimea to Scutari, was bowling merrily along south of Naples, where
+Vesuvius had his smoking cap on. There were many invalided men on board,
+and amongst them three with whom this story has a particular concern.
+
+'You are right, Captain Tompson, it is abominably unlucky; I had
+reckoned on seeing the finish of the campaign, and it's hard to find
+oneself bowled over now, and sent home again like a useless old bale of
+damaged goods.'
+
+General Boswell was stumping the sloping deck with the aid of the
+Captain's arm, getting his first hour of exercise since he came aboard.
+All the snowy canvas was filled hard as iron with a noble level breeze,
+and the ship was making a speed which would hardly have disgraced an
+Atlantic liner of the modern day. She made a prettier sight than any
+steam-driven craft ever made, or ever will make; and she carried a
+better music with her in the taut wind-smitten cordage of the shrouds
+and the deep organ hum of the stretched canvas.
+
+'I am saying, Polson,' said the General, encountering the Sergeant
+halfway along the deck, 'that it's unluckier for an old fellow to get
+bowled over than it is for a young one. You may be as fit as a fiddle
+again in a month or two, and may have your fill of fighting for Queen
+and country; but I have done my last day's work, and that is a weary
+thing to think of.'
+
+'Last day's fighting, sir?' said Polson, 'but not the last day's work.
+There's a heap to be done for the old country yet, and I hope that
+Irene's dream may come true and that you may go into the House of
+Commons and give those beggars at the War Office their proper fodder.'
+
+'That is the business of a younger man than I am,' said the General,
+'and I doubt if there's any mending in that direction. I have been at
+the game now, off and on, for something like forty years, and I know
+we have the best fighting stuff in the world at our command, but the
+Department have always made it their business to cripple it and starve
+it, and leave it naked and hungry. I've seen it in Spain, and in the Low
+Countries, and I've dragged out three years of it in the old Mahratta
+country, and it has always been the same. I suppose it always will be
+until we learn that it is as necessary to have a soldier to look after
+things at home as it is to have a soldier leading in the field. When we
+get you home again, my lad, well run you for the Southern Division of
+the county and you shall talk to 'em across the floor of the House of
+Commons.'
+
+The three men reached the bows of the good boat and turned, and there
+was De Blacquaire before them with a weather-beaten servant holding him
+by the elbow and piloting him along the deck. He saluted in passing, and
+the General laid a hand upon his shoulder.
+
+'I should like half an hour with you this morning,' he said, 'if you can
+spare the time to come into my stateroom for a talk.'
+
+'I am at your service now, sir,' said De Blacquaire.
+
+'Shall we go down?' asked the General. 'One tires easily still, and this
+May wind gets into an old man's head like wine.'
+
+'And into a young man's, too,' said De Blacquaire. 'I am half tipsy with
+it, and shall be glad to get into shelter.'
+
+'We'll see you at breakfast, Polson,' said the General, 'and until then,
+good-bye.'
+
+The two men reached the General's cabin and sat down together.
+
+'When we touched at Corfu,' said the General, 'I found a letter from my
+London agents--I'd like you to see it, and I shall be glad if you can
+confirm its contents, or at least a part of them.'
+
+De Blacquaire took the proffered letter and read:
+
+'Sir,--: We are instructed to inform you that a sum of fifty thousand
+pounds has been deposited with us to your credit by Mr. John Jervase, of
+Beacon Hargate. Mr. Jervase requests us in communicating with you to
+say that a further sum of one hundred thousand pounds, making in all one
+hundred and fifty thousand, has been deposited by him in the interest of
+Major de Blacquaire with that gentleman's agents. We are desired to add
+further that Mr. Jervase has joined his brother in South America, that
+he proposes to establish business relations there, and does not intend
+to return to England. We are, sir, your obedient humble servants, E. A.
+Cox & Co.'
+
+'Except,' said De Blacquaire, 'that the sums mentioned here are reversed
+in order, I have a letter identical in terms. The old scoundrel has bled
+very freely.'
+
+'And there's no vendetta?' said the General, smiling.
+
+'Vendetta?' said De Blacquaire. 'You can hardly have a vendetta with a
+man who has saved your life, even though the beggar did it for no other
+reason than to show how much he despised you. I was wrong about the lad,
+General; he's a very fine fellow.'
+
+'I could have told you that much long ago,' said the General. He reached
+out a lean brown hand and rang a bell which stood upon the stateroom
+table. 'You'll take a glass of wine, Major? It's against my rule, but I
+feel like breaking rules today.'
+
+'And so do I, sir,' said De Blacquaire.
+
+So the wine was brought, and the glasses were filled, and the two men
+drank to each other. The General lit a cheroot, and sat in a deck chair;
+but the younger man fidgeted and was obviously ill at ease.
+
+'There is one thing on my mind, General Boswell,' he said at last, 'and
+I should like to get it over. I had two or three months at Scutari and I
+was nursed by an angel all the while.'
+
+'Don't go on, my lad,' said the General, reaching a hand towards him.
+'If I understand you, it's useless to talk of that.'
+
+'Very well, sir,' said De Blacquaire, sipping gloomily at his wine; and
+nothing more was said for a minute or two, but the younger man gradually
+brightened, and it could be plainly seen that he was squaring his mental
+shoulders for the reception of a burden which he meant to cany.
+
+'The Sergeant is a lucky dog, sir.'
+
+'My dear fellow,' said the General, 'he has deserved to be a lucky dog.
+It is one of the ordinances of this life that a fellow can't choose his
+own father. If the lad had had a choice and had exercised it, I should
+have had no great respect for him. And yet I had a sort of liking for
+old Jervase. He was a bounder always, but I thought he was an honest
+bounder.'
+
+'They tell me,' said De Blacquaire, 'that the Sergeant's to have his
+V.C. for that business in front of the first parallel.'
+
+'That's a settled thing, I fancy,' said the General 'Sir Colin's
+word ought to be good for anything at home, and my own should go for
+something.'
+
+'Mine won't be wanting, sir, if they think it worth listening to.'
+
+'What did you two fall out about?' the General asked.
+
+Major de Blacquaire dipped into the cigar box which had been pushed over
+towards him long before, and very thoughtfully fingered an evil-looking
+Trichinopoli.
+
+'Why, sir, I believe if the whole truth were told we fell out mainly
+because I was a bit of a puppy. You're an older man of the world than
+I am, sir, and I dare say you can't have failed to notice that some men
+who think they are insiders are outsiders, and that some of the fellows
+they despise are better than themselves.'
+
+'Do you know, De Blacquaire,' said the General, 'I like that?'
+
+'A year in camp, and two or three months in hospital, will do a lot
+towards changing a man's opinions.'
+
+'Won't they?' cried the General. 'Egad! Won't they?' The old Christian
+Quixote mounted his hobby, and rode. 'There are things in war that
+nobody wants to think about. It's an ugly trade. When I was a youngster,
+and in my first action I was very hard-pressed, and I caught a bayonet
+out of the hand of a fellow who was dropping at my side, and I had to
+use it. It's fifty years ago now, but the man squealed and I haven't
+forgotten it, and I'm never likely to forget it. But a man is born to
+die, sir, and he's born to do his duty. I dare say I'm a simple thinker,
+Major de Blacquaire, but there are things a hundred times worse than
+war, and if you didn't believe that God sent them, you would have to
+turn infidel. I've seen two or three choleras, here and there, and a
+Black Death and a bubonic plague. What does it all mean? Jarring forces,
+sir, which Heaven will reconcile in its own good time. And that's what
+war means to my mind. You go where you're sent, just as the germ of
+disease, or whatever you call it, goes, and you do what you are set
+to do. And I'll say this for war, sir, as an old Christian man who has
+spent his life at it. It's the fire of God, to my way of thinking, and
+it burns out all manner of meannesses, and hypocrisies, and we should
+have a devil of a lot more to be ashamed of than we have if we didn't
+get into a solid fight now and again.'
+
+'It is a school, sir,' said De Blacquaire.
+
+'By heaven, sir,' said the solemn General, 'it is a school.'
+
+'But there are more class-rooms than one in the great school house of
+human nature, and whilst the General was setting forth his theories of
+war, young Polson Jervase was setting out a theory of another and an
+opposite fashion as he walked the deck with Irene.
+
+He was deadly serious also, for all that part of life which seems best
+worth having lay before him. And the two had many talks as they paced
+the decks, morn and eve together. Irene was almost the only lady on
+board, and most of the dot-and-go-one boys who had exchanged a natural
+limb for a timber toe, and the loose-sleeved men who had left an arm
+behind them at Sevastopol, had been beneath her care. And those who did
+not know her ministrations in effect knew them by oral tradition, and
+the bronzed fellows stumping and tramping up and down saluted her
+with such a worship that her heart was like a fountain of glad tears a
+hundred times in a day.
+
+A girl has a natural and inborn right to be proud of her sweetheart in
+any earthly circumstances whatsoever, if he were the merest snub-nosed,
+freckled, and chinless Jones that ever skipped over a counter. But to
+have an approved and veritable here for a lover, and to live at the same
+time as the sole heroine of so narrow a little world as a shipful of
+soldiers the incense of whose hearts went up about her constantly, was
+to be more than merely proud and happy. Polson had got a permanent crick
+in his neck from that bit of Russian lead which had caught him just as
+he dropped into the trench with De Blacquaire. In the course of time he
+began to carry it naturally, so that it looked like the merest little
+mannerism, but it could never have been handsome by any conceivable
+chance except in the eyes of a wife or a sweetheart. Irene adored it,
+and would have made it a rule of fashion, as the Grecian bend and the
+Alexandra limp came to be in later years, and no man would have been
+allowed to carry his head in any other fashion than Polson did save
+under heavy pains and penalties.
+
+'When everybody can see how a story will end,' said one of the greatest
+masters of the narrative art, 'the story is ended,' and the written
+history of Polson Jervase is coming to a close.
+
+There were certain things about which he was naturally anxious and about
+which it was impossible to ask any questions. But the truth came out
+little by little, and it appeared in the end that the world knew nothing
+of the secrets which had escaped between the partners in the firm of
+Jervase & Jervoyce in the course of that wild night which had brought to
+England news of such portentous moment. There were rumours, of course.
+There was a gossip to the effect that the firm had been on the edge of
+ruin, and that Polson, rather than miss the fighting, had elected to go
+out as a private soldier, dropping his hope of a commission for the time
+being. This was a fancy which hurt nobody. John Jervase had left his
+affairs in excellent order when he had established his own line of
+retreat, and since he had been known to have made money hand over fist
+within the last year or two, the halo which surrounds the millionaire
+was about him, and it would have been hard to say whether he or the boy
+were more popular in the Castle Barfield region. The general idea was
+that they were a pair of valiant fellows; the one in the commercial and
+the other in the warlike way.
+
+Poor Raglan's heroisms and blunders were buried together before the day
+came when in the ordinary course of events he would have led his troops
+along the saluting line and have received the honours due to him from
+his Sovereign.
+
+The scent of hot grass was strong in the flaming noontide in Hyde Park
+when London poured out its scores and scores of thousands to witness
+the ceremonial which crowned a foolish and disastrous war with a triumph
+better earned by the valour of the men who fought there than by the
+statecraft of the other men who sent them into combat. Ragged and lean
+and bearded, with the soil of the Crimea still upon them, the men of
+Alma and Inkerman, of Balaclava and Sevastopol, marched through the
+roaring citizen crowd and formed up in the Park. There were many men
+of valour there--many who had earned as well as any other the mark
+of honour which was that day to be bestowed; but opposite the bright
+pavilion with the raised crimson dais on which the Queen was to take her
+seat there was but a mere handful of the halt and maimed, upon whom the
+eyes of the vast multitude, whether civil or military, were fixed. They
+were no more than specks in the great open space--just so many little
+coloured ants to the eye--and the gaze of the spectators gloated on
+them. For they were Britain's chosen. These were the men of whom all
+London had been reading with bated breath for well nigh three years
+past. These were the men of Alma's heights and Balaclava's charge and
+Inkerman's fog, and the frost of the trenches--the pick and pride of the
+whole contingent which had gone out to do battle for England's honour.
+That they had never been truly called upon to go made little if any
+difference at that hour, for London was in the mood for hero-worship
+rather than political criticism just then, and not the rudest judge of
+British policy would have cared to speak a word against the ceremony of
+the day.
+
+And when, after long waiting, the royal carriage came, with the pretty,
+smiling little matronly figure bowing and swaying amidst the ringing
+thunders of the world's greatest city, and the bands rolled out their
+'God Save the Queen' as she passed them one after another, one happy,
+happy onlooker looked up at one war-hardened old veteran through tears.
+
+'Upon my word,' said the General, with a grimace which was really much
+less humorous than he meant it to be, and in a voice which was hardly as
+steady as he would have liked to have it--'upon my word, Irene, I'd give
+twopence to be in your shoes at this moment.'
+
+For one of the scarlet ants in the far distance, on the green tablecloth
+of the turf, was just then advancing towards the little figure on the
+dais, and an instant or two later the Queen was stooping to pin the
+bronze badge of honour to the coat of Polson Jervase.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of VC -- A Chronicle of Castle Barfield
+and of the Crimea, by David Christie Murray
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