To the right, under the arch leading to the casemate barracks at Triggertown, dwelt Jonadab Larkins, a deserving public servant who had enjoyed the proud position of barrack sergeant for some years. He was like the old lady who lived in the shoe. He had more children than he could do with comfortably, so he gave it up as a bad job, and let them do for themselves. Mrs. Larkins, what with cooking, cleaning, and the family washing, had no spare time on her hands; and except to yell out shrill cautions which no one heeded, or threats of corporal punishment which were forgotten as soon as uttered, allowed her brood to risk their lives as freely as they pleased. They had many outlets of this kind; one favourite amusement was to hang themselves to the chains of the drawbridge leading to the barracks; another to walk along the brick edge of the counterscarp; but that which all enjoyed most was to watch the approach of vehicles in the main thoroughfare, and to rush madly across the road right under the horses’ feet. It was often a very near thing; and the nearer they went to self immolation the better they were pleased. But the pitcher goes once too often to the well. One fine day there was a tremendous disturbance in the street; a crowd gathered quickly, and presently a message reached Mrs. Larkins that one of her bairns had been driven over and was killed.
‘Which on ’em is it?’ shrieked the red-armed but pleasant-visaged dame. ‘Not Rechab, nor yet Sennacherib, nor yet Jemimer Ann?’
No; it was Hercules Albert, the eldest of the family, who was just then carried in and laid upon the bed.
A lady—a middle-aged lady, with silver white hair and a worn emaciated face—followed, and looking round with a strange wild look in her eyes, asked almost hysterically:
‘Is he much injured? Will he live? Where are the people who call themselves his parents?’
The lad was only stunned, and a little water quickly brought him to.
‘I should have been so grieved had he come to harm,’ went on the lady. ‘It was my coachman’s fault. It has been a terrible shock to me; quite terrible. But tell me—’
She looked hastily round, then whispered to Larkins—
‘How did you come by this child?’
The Sergeant stared at her in amazement—
‘Honestly! Why, it’s our own—leastways it’s the mother’s.’
‘Do you mean that you are its mother?’ she asked of Mrs. Larkins.
‘Certainly I do! Do you dispute it?’
‘Mother? Yes. It may be so. But you, you man, you are not his father? You cannot be. It is impossible, simply impossible. Why, the child has his eyes; his own dear eyes, I could swear to them among a thousand. You cannot, you shall not deceive me. How came you by this child?’
‘He’s not my own son, that I won’t deny,’ said the Sergeant. ‘But he is my missus’s; she was a widow when I married her, and—’
‘I must have the boy. You cannot refuse him to me. I will buy him of you; will pay you any price you please. But he must leave this place. It is no place for him.’
And she gazed scornfully at the humble surroundings. The little dark vaulted room with its one deep recessed window, its inner space curtained off to form a second bedroom, the litter and mess about the floor.
‘This is no place for—’
She paused suddenly, and a wild scared look came over her face. A footman, one of her own people, a tall, black-whiskered and pompous Jeames, was standing in the doorway, and the sudden apparition seemed to put a seal upon her tongue.
‘The horses, m’lady,’ said the man respectfully enough, although there was an accent of authority in his voice. ‘The horses have been standing nearly half an hour, m’lady, and the coachman says—’
‘Yes, yes, I’ll come at once—at once, Robert. Good people, you will understand my anxiety for the boy. The blame rested so entirely upon us. It is an immense relief to know that he is not injured.’
Then watching her opportunity, she hissed out with frenzied eagerness—
‘Not a word to a soul; not a syllable, as you value his future and my peace. I will come again to-morrow, or sooner, unattended. H—sh, for heaven’s sake, h—sh,’ and she hurriedly left the room.
‘Well, I’m blowed,’ said the Sergeant, drawing a long breath. ‘If that ain’t the rummest game. What does it mean, missus? Can you tell?’
Mrs. Larkins met his inquiring eyes quite steadily, and if she was conscious of any mystery no suspicion of it could be traced in her voice and manner.
‘She must be off her head—that’s my notion—clean, stark, staring mad.’
‘And mine too. Yon flunkey was her keeper, I expect. Bound to look after her and keep her out of mischief. It’ll make a fine talk in the barracks, this will.’
‘I don’t see why it should. I wouldn’t let on if I was you; don’t gossip about it at the canteen, Sergeant, or at the sergeants’ mess. What’s the good?’
A docile and obedient husband was Sergeant Larkins, who, through all the years of his married life, had accepted his wife’s will as law. Mrs. Larkins was a buxom, bright-eyed dame, who made a man’s home comfortable for him, so long as he allowed her to rule.
‘You’re right. It’s a folly always to talk, leastways when you’ve nothing to talk about, and the freaks of a mad woman don’t amount to much. We shan’t hear no more about her.’
Nor did they for days, nay, weeks, but months, and the episode was fading from their memories, at least from that of the Sergeant, when the lady suddenly re-appeared unattended and alone.
She looked suspiciously about her as she entered the room.
‘I could not come before. I have been watched. Even now I fear they are on my track. Quick! Where is the boy?’
Hercules Albert was where he and his brothers generally were—in mischief.
‘I must see him; my heart yearns for him. And to think that I should find him thus! How inscrutable are the ways of Providence! My sweet, my pet, it is balm to my wounded heart!’ And she kissed and fondled the boy, regardless of the mud with which his dirty face was encrusted, and of his own evident perturbation and objection to these endearments.
‘But I must not waste time. I may be disturbed before I have said my say. Listen: you will let me have the child? You shall name your own price. I will ask no questions. Keep your own counsel. You shall not divulge your secrets.’
‘There ain’t no secrets to divulge,’ said the Sergeant stoutly. ‘And you shan’t buy a brat of mine, as though he were a full-blooded Congo on the West coast.’
‘Wait, Larkins—let’s see what the lady means,’ the practical wife interposed. Mrs. Larkins was quite quiet and self-possessed, as she looked her strange visitor full in the face. ‘Perhaps she will explain. Do you wish to adopt the child?’
‘I do—and more. I wish to educate him to be worthy of his birth, and of that position which he must some day come to, in spite of all. He shall have all my love while I live, all my possessions after death. They are his by right, indefeasible. Has he not Herbert’s eyes? Is he not my—?’
‘Say no more, Madam,’ Mrs. Larkins interrupted her. ‘If you are in sober, serious earnest, if you mean what you say—’
‘Surely you would not part with the child, not like this?’
‘We have seven, Jonadab, and it is a fine chance for one. If you are in earnest, Madam—’
‘Will this prove to you that I am in earnest?’ said the lady, taking from her purse a roll of bank notes. ‘Here are fifty pounds. Spend it in outfit; get him proper clothes, books, boxes, all that a boy wants when he is going to a school. Within a fortnight you shall hear from me through a lawyer. I will send full instructions, and a confidential messenger, who shall take Herbert—Herbert he must be called, not Hercules—Herbert Farrington.’
‘Is that your own name?’ asked Mrs. Larkins, rather hurriedly.
‘Certainly, I am Lady Farrington. You have then heard the name before? You know me? Say you know me, that you knew Herbert. Confess that Herbert was—’
‘My lady, you are mistaken; I never knew any Herbert Farrington—never in all my life!’
Lady Farrington shook her head sadly.
‘If you know, and will not speak, you may do the child irreparable harm. No matter. It is sufficient for the present that he is mine; that he passes into my keeping; that I am free to lavish upon him the whole of my pent-up yearning affection. The rest will come—all in good time. Heaven bless you, Herbert, and prosper you, and bring you some day to your own.’
She kissed the bewildered boy repeatedly, shook hands with his father and mother, and then left the place.
‘I don’t like it, I don’t; blowed if I do,’ said the Sergeant. ‘It ain’t fair on the youngster, it ain’t—to give him over to that crack-brained old idiot! Why, you may tell she is mad by her talk and her ways. Maybe she’ll fatten him up and eat him; or perhaps she’ll turn him into a Papist or a Frenchman. He shan’t go.’
‘You’re a fool, Larkins! But it’s more my business than it is yours after all. And where’s the harm? Doesn’t she promise fair enough, and ain’t these notes a pretty certain proof that she is all above board? We won’t lose sight of the boy—not altogether. We’ll stipulate that we are to see him sometimes, and then he can’t go far wrong. But you hold your tongue, that’s what you’ve got to do. None of your blabbing or gossipping about. If they ask you what’s become of Herkles, why say he’s got into the Duke of York’s school, and won’t be back for ever so long.’
‘I wish he had. I could see my way then. But I can’t now, and it beats me how you can take it all so coolly.’
The honest Sergeant was chiefly concerned as to the little chap’s future prospects. But although he was not a man of keen intelligence or of suspicious nature, he was also a little exercised as to the strangeness of the whole affair. He might explain the lady’s conduct by calling it eccentricity or madness, but he could not quite understand the part his wife had played.
He would have been still more perplexed had he returned unexpectedly from the canteen that evening after all the children were in bed. He would have found his wife engrossed with the treasures of a little box which she had emptied on her lap. A few gilt buttons, a lock of fair hair, a bow of ribbon—that was all.
Yet she wept bitterly as she kissed them again and again, and restored them one by one to the sacred box reverentially, as though each was a relic in her eyes.
Farrington Court was the dower-house of the Farrington family, where dowagers and heirs apparent resided, according as it might happen to suit. The Lady Farrington mentioned in the last chapter had occupied it for years—ever since the death of her husband and her sons, when the bulk of the property, with the title, had passed to Rupert Farrington, the late baronet’s nephew. Sir Rupert lived now at Farrington Hall, with his wife and one son of his own.
Old Lady Farrington, in her losses and her loneliness, was a woman much to be pitied. She had seen her children die, all of them but one. He also was dead, but miserably, and at a distance probably from home. Her husband she had mourned last of all, at a time when she had most needed strength and support. The new baronet did not treat her well. She was no doubt fortified by ample settlements. Farrington Court was hers also, by right inalienable, during her lifetime. Yet Sir Rupert had had it in his power to put her to infinite pain, and wittingly or unwittingly had not spared her in the least. The ejectment from the Hall—her once happy home, the scene of her married life, where all her children had been born, and where all were buried, save one—had been carried out with an almost brutal abruptness, which cut the poor afflicted soul to the quick. Sir Rupert had driven hard bargains with her also in taking over the house and the estate; had insisted upon the uttermost farthing, had denied her many possessions, small and great, which she valued as reminding her of the past, but which were his, according to the strict letter of the law. His unkindness pursued her even to the house which she might still call her own. But hers was only a life-interest, after all; and, as Farrington Court must in due course lapse back to the family, Sir Rupert felt bound, he said, for his own and his son’s sake, to see that the place came to no harm. His interference and inquisitiveness were, in consequence, constant and vexatious. He insisted upon inspecting the house regularly; he must satisfy himself that the repairs were duly executed, that the gardens and glass houses were properly kept up, and that no timber was cut down. He did not scruple to tell Lady Farrington that he looked upon her as a tenant, and by no means a good one, to whom he would gladly give notice to quit if he could.
These first causes for irritation and dislike deepened in time to positive hatred. Lady Farrington came by degrees to fear Sir Rupert with a terror that was almost abject; and when we fear others to this extent we undoubtedly hate them very cordially too. Her terror was not difficult to explain. It had its grounds in the conviction that she was more or less in his power. There was a secret which she had as she thought kept hitherto entirely to herself, but which he, as time passed and brought him opportunities for close observation, had eventually discovered. She herself knew, and by degrees she felt that he also knew that her mind was a little unsound.
Lady Farrington had been an eccentric woman even in her husband’s lifetime. Her ways had been odd; her manners strange. She was given to curious likes and dislikes, which showed themselves in extraordinary ways. Thus she hated the wife of a neighbouring squire—an upstart woman, certainly, but nothing worse than gauche or ill-bred. Whenever this lady called at the hall the chair on which she had sat was sent to the upholsterers to be re-covered. On one occasion, when she came at the time of afternoon tea, Lady Farrington threw the cup and saucer her visitor had used into the fire, declaring it should never be drunk out of again. A more unnatural antipathy was that which she long entertained for her second son—a dislike which had caused him much misery, and her much subsequent anguish of mind. As against all this, she had been extravagantly fond of her husband and her first-born. When the former left her even for a few hours, she kept his hat and walking-stick in the room with her, as though to cheat herself into the belief that he was really in the house; the latter she coddled and cossetted to such an extent that he grew up weakly and died young.
But after all her bitter trials and heavy blows, her eccentricity had developed so rapidly that it might fairly be called by a stronger name. At first she shut herself up in a private chamber, surrounded by the relics of happier days, and brooded sorrowfully over riding-whips, cricket-bats, and all manner of childish toys. Then she went to the other extreme; threw off her widow’s weeds and decked out in gay colours, and with a long white veil, drove about the country lanes in a carriage with grey horses, as though she were a newly-married bride. When Sir Rupert’s persecution had grown into a serious annoyance, she concentrated upon him all the aversion she had once levelled at more innocent objects of dislike. She never would have admitted him to the house, but as he would take no denial she consoled herself by throwing open all the windows and doors, whatever the weather, directly he had left the house, insisting that the place was unfit for habitation until it had been thoroughly aired. Then, saying his threats and menaces put her in bodily fear, she got into the habit of packing all her most treasured belongings in one or two trunks which she kept locked in her bedroom, under her own eye, in readiness as it were for immediate flight.
For a long time Sir Rupert seemed to take but little notice of her vagaries. When the county folk commiserated him, and inquired after poor Lady Farrington, he merely shrugged his shoulders and touched his forehead in a melancholy pitying way. She had had so much trouble in her time, poor soul. It was very dreadful of course. But what could be done? She had every care and attention he could secure for her. He went to see her frequently in spite of her strange dislike, so did his wife. He did his duty by her as well as he possibly could. She was harmless, and as he thought perfectly safe. She had good servants about her; he himself saw to that, and there was no necessity to put her under restraint—unless indeed, she became very much worse. If her malady increased to the extent of endangering the safety of those about her or of the house—by no means a secondary consideration with him—why then, as a last alternative, she must be shut up.
He did not conceal from her, however, that this would ultimately be her fate. More than once he warned her that he knew her condition, and would some day be compelled to take steps to make her secure. But he said this with no object but to prove his power, and Lady Farrington would probably have been left to pursue the curious tenour of her ways, had not her mania taken a direction which threatened to be distinctly inconvenient to Sir Rupert.
Of all the woes which Lady Farrington suffered, the keenest perhaps was remorse for her treatment of her second son. As has been said, she had looked upon him always with disfavour; Herbert never could please. Where another more tenderly cared for would have been gently corrected, he was called wilful, obstinate, perverse, and sharply chicled and admonished. He it was who was always in the wrong; he it was who led the other boys into mischief. It was his fault, or said to be his, when the boat upset, or the ice broke, or the gun went off, or any mishap occurred. As he grew to man’s estate his mother’s indifference did not soften into warmer feelings. Poor Herbert failed at school and college, the obvious consequence of early neglect. He could not pass the army examination, although he longed to wear a red coat. All he could do was to roam the woods with dog and gun at Farrington, consorting with grooms and keepers, enjoying an open air life the more because he thereby escaped from the house and his mother’s sneers. But these last, although thus rarely encountered, became at length unbearable, and one fine morning Herbert was not to be found. He had gone off, leaving a note to say that pursuit or inquiry would be fruitless, as he meant to leave England for good and all; nothing should induce him to return to Farrington Hall.
The blow fell heaviest upon Lady Farrington, who felt that she had been principally to blame. Prompt search was accordingly instituted, but all to no purpose.
Some said that he had emigrated, some that he had enlisted, others that he had gone to sea. No one ever saw him in the flesh again. Only Lady Farrington, in whom the catastrophe had worked a strong revulsion of feeling, was positive that she had seen him in the spirit more than once. He had appeared to her, last of all, just after the death of Algernon, the eldest son. Nor had he appeared alone. Hand-in-hand with him was a comely fair-haired girl, with a baby in her arms. Herbert had pointed significantly to the child, and Lady Farrington interpreted the gesture to mean that he and his son were now the rightful heirs of the Farrington title and estates. This vision she tremulously described to her husband and to others, but it was treated even by Sir Algernon as a mere dream, or the hallucination of an over-wrought brain.
Nothing more would have been thought of the circumstances of Herbert’s disappearance and shadowy return, except as a great and irreparable sorrow, but for the arrival of a mysterious packet, a year or two later, which contained a lock of light curly hair—Herbert’s?—and a scrap of paper, on which was written, in Herbert’s handwriting, ‘Be kinder to my boy.’
After this, a frantic desire to discover and do justice to her injured son possessed Lady Farrington, to the exclusion of all other objects in life. The family lawyers were called in; detectives, public and private, were employed; advertisements were inserted in the agony columns of the journals with the largest circulation in the world. As substantial rewards were offered, numbers of sons were promptly forthcoming. But not one of them was the right one; nor was any information which could be relied upon obtained, neither as to whether Herbert Farrington himself was alive or dead, or whether, in the latter case, he had left any heirs. Lady Farrington endured another and a more bitter disappointment than any she had hitherto experienced in life.
It was not till long after the death of her husband and her occupation of Farrington Court, that the old theory as to the existence of a grandson was revived by her. Why or wherefore no one could understand. Had she come upon any traces of the long-lost son? Or was it merely that her mind, in its increasing weakness, worked back into old grooves? Be the cause what it might, Lady Farrington seemed at times strangely positive that she should find the missing dear one, or his representative, after all. She often hinted, darkly and mysteriously, that there was a great surprise in store for Sir Rupert. Something he little expected would assuredly come to pass when matters were properly ripe. There was no hurry. It was better to make all sure before the mine was sprung. No link in the chain must be wanting. But all would be ready ere long. Then let Sir Rupert look to himself.
All this gave the baronet, who was really the man in possession, but little uneasiness. As the next heir, he had heard long ago of the eager inquiries for the missing Herbert; and although he had resented them then, he had accepted their impotent conclusion as an unanswerable proof that his presumptive rights were not to be impugned. On the death of Sir Algernon his title had not been disputed, and he had succeeded, as a matter of course. Lady Farrington had made no protest. There was no shadow of foundation for a protest. And if not then, would any person in his sober senses think of disputing his rights now, when he had a firm grip of the title, property, and place? Only an old mad woman would harbour such an idea. Even she would hardly dare to raise the question openly, after such a lapse of years. And who would believe her if she did?
He told her so, very roughly, when her allusions became more and more significant. He warned her too that ‘she had better be careful what she said or did. It was a fact well known to the whole country-side that she was quite unable to take care of herself, that she was not responsible for her actions, that her proper place was an asylum, and she might come to that yet if—’
One day, when he had been taunting thus longer and more bitterly than usual, she was goaded into making an incautious reply.
‘The cup is nearly full to the brim, Rupert. Your time is fast drawing to a close.’
‘What new craze is this, Lady Farrington?’ he said, laughing scornfully, but with a black look on his face.
Sir Rupert’s was a hard dark face, with full eyes rather prominent, and a long, drooping, black moustache. When he looked black it was not a pleasant face to see.
‘It is nothing new, Rupert. I have waited patiently, hopefully. I thought the end would never come. It is near at hand now, although the consummation has been long delayed.’
‘Your ladyship’s language is, as usual, clear and perspicuous, yet you will forgive me if I ask you to explain.’
‘Listen,’ she said, as she laid her hand upon his arm, and hissed out her words slowly one by one. ‘Within a few short months, nay weeks, whenever I choose, I can produce the rightful heir of the Farringtons; and he shall come to his own.’
‘This is mere rhapsody, mere raving. You cannot touch me, you know that.’
‘I can, ay, and I will, miserable fool! You have not the shadow of a claim to the title and estates. My grandson, Herbert’s son, lives, and you must make way for him.’
‘Psha! Herbert’s son? How do you know that? What proof have you?’
‘The youth himself. He has been under my charge these five years past, and more. I found him—I myself found him. I knew I could not err. He had Herbert’s eyes, he is Herbert’s image; he—’
‘He must have more proof than this if he is to make good his case in a court of law,’ said Sir Rupert coolly.
‘I know it, and the proof shall be forthcoming. Every link in the chain.’
‘All right. If it is to be war to the knife, so let it be. But I tell you plainly that no one will believe a word you say.’
‘They will believe my beautiful boy, my own Herbert’s boy, when they hear his story from his own sweet lips. He shall come forward himself when the occasion is ripe for him to speak.’
‘Where is he now?’ asked Sir Rupert, carelessly, but with deeply cunning intent.
She laughed in his face.
‘No, no, Sir Rupert, I am not to be so easily beguiled. He is safe, quite safe, to be produced at exactly the right time.’
Sir Rupert gave her another fierce look, which boded her no good, but he said nothing more. He was not exactly disconcerted by her positive assertions, which he only half believed, yet his peace of mind had been rudely assailed. That he must discover the whereabouts of this mysterious claimant, and test the accuracy of Lady Farrington’s far-fetched statements, was clear. It was equally clear that he must, if possible, put a gag upon the old woman, and remove her where she could work no further harm.
Hercules Albert—or Herbert, as he was henceforth to be called—was not a little taken aback by the sudden change in his circumstances, which followed Lady Farrington’s supposed recognition of him. To be measured for a suit of black cloth, which befitted best the Larkins’ notion of gentility; to have a brand new box, painted green, with sundry new shirts, new boots, and a broad-brimmed wide-awake hat, all his own; these were so many delicious surprises, the full effect of which was fully borne in upon him by the openly-expressed envy of the rest of the family. But it was a wrench to him when the time came to leave his home—the only one he had ever known—to lose the companionship of his playmates, and the warm, though roughly-expressed, affection of the sergeant and his wife.
‘Be a man, Herkles,’ the sergeant had said, as the boy stood snivelling at the door of the casemated room, which represented the whole of the Larkins’ establishment. ‘Eat your cake.’ They had provided him with a huge slice of bun-loaf, upon which little Sennacherib Larkins, a freebooter like his Assyrian sponsor, had made many inroads while Herbert’s attention was distracted by the new cares of property and the pangs of making his adieux.
‘Eat your cake, and keep up your heart; me and the missus’ll be over to see you before the month’s out, and we’ll bring Rechab and Senn and Jemimer Ann.’
‘It’s all for your own good, Herbert,’ said Mrs. Larkins. ‘They’re going to make a gentleman of you. You’ll get learning, and Latin, and French mathematics; and by and by you’ll be an officer, perhaps, and live like a lord.’
The prospect was brilliant, but remote. Herbert, as a child of the barracks, had been brought up to believe that officers were almost superior beings. He saw his father, the sergeant, and all soldiers salute them always, and pay them extraordinary deference. When in uniform they were resplendent in crimson and gold; when out of it they drove dog-carts and played cricket and owned dogs, all of which Herbert would have liked to have done too. Yet the off-chance of some day becoming an officer himself did not reconcile him to separation from the best friends he had in the world; and as he left Triggertown casemates, he wept bitterly, and refused to be comforted.
If life looked black and forbidding then, it was a thousand times worse when he got to school. A cross-grained old man—it was Mr. Bellhouse, Lady Farrington’s solicitor—escorted him thither, and snubbed him all the way. The old lawyer was a little sick of her ladyship’s caprices, and considered this last the most serious of all. But it was none of Herbert’s fault, and the poor woe-begone home-sick lad did not deserve to be made to answer for Lady Farrington’s sins. At school he was left stranded, like a waif of the sea upon an unknown shore. Presently the natives, troops of little savage school-boys, swooped down upon him to scalp and torture him. He was pestered with questions, and his hair pulled, his strange wide-awake was jeered at, and given to the winds.
But the instincts of self-defence are strong, and Herbert, if new to school life, was not new to the use of his fists. His tormentors were numerous, but with one or two exceptions were not much older or bigger than himself, and when it came to a question of blows and hard knocks he was physically well able to take care of himself. Presently a ‘straight un’ from the shoulder relieved him of the most troublesome of his assailants, and a second, planted upon the nose of a tall bully, proved that Herbert thought nothing of disparity in height when disposing of his foes. Boys are sensibly affected by the display of pluck, especially against superior odds, and Herbert soon gained for himself the respect due to his prowess, and immunity from further annoyance.
He was vexed and irritated no more, but he went to his bed, a far more cleanly and luxurious couch than that which he had been accustomed to in the crowded casemate at Triggertown, with a sad and sorrowful heart. There are no woes so acute as those of early youth. Happily they are as transient as they are intense. Herbert at night was in the depths of woe; next morning he was already in a fair way to recover his spirits, and before the day was out, in the excitement of the new life opening before him, he had forgotten his sorrows and was as happy as a bird. He was just the boy to get on at school. Brisk and buoyant in disposition, with a well-knit vigorous frame, a predilection for games of every kind in which, with a little experience, he soon excelled, he rapidly advanced in the estimation of his fellows. He was liberal and free-handed too, which did not make him the less appreciated, and he had plenty to give away. ‘His people,’ as boys call their friends, were evidently of the right sort. The old lady with the snow-white hair and large mournful eyes, who came to see him regularly every month, was right royal in her tips, and not to him alone, but to any whom he called particular friends. He got tuck baskets continually and presents of all kinds to which others administered as freely as himself. These are substantial grounds for school popularity, and Herbert enjoyed it in the highest degree.
As he grew in years and developed in strength and good looks, Lady Farrington’s affectionate admiration knew no bounds. She lavished caresses on him without ceasing, declaring that he was daily becoming more and more fitted for the station which would some day be his.
‘Yes, yes, the end cannot be far off now,’ she said one day as she sat in the headmaster’s drawing-room, holding Herbert’s hand in hers and patting it from time to time in the fulness of her contentment. ‘Who shall gainsay your claim when they see you thus, my Herbert’s living image? my son! My son, my lost unhappy son!’ and in a moment she was in a paroxysm of tears.
Herbert was quite accustomed to her now. At first he had been dismayed by her sudden outbursts. The rapid transition from joy to sorrow, from smiles to hysterical tears, were sufficient to frighten him, and when to these were added her wild talk, her bitter self-reproaches, her mysterious hints of his coming greatness, he scarcely knew what to do or say. But by degrees he became familiar with her eccentricities, and he felt that although she might be queer, she was certainly uncommonly kind.
‘I cannot control myself when I think of the miserable past. But, please God, in you I shall make some atonement for my sins, and soon, soon,—for the time draws nigh. You are equal, Herbert, I trust, to a great and arduous trial?’
He was now nearly seventeen, tall and well-built for his age; and as he shook his light curls and looked steadily at her with his clear, honest eyes, he seemed the incarnation of youth and hope.
‘I am game for anything, Lady Farrington, only try me. I’d face the whole world if you asked me.’
‘My own brave boy! The struggle may be sharp, but with such a spirit the victory is certain to be ours.’
‘When may I know what it is that I have to do?’
‘The time draws nigh. It depends only on you and your fitness to play your part. You have not neglected your opportunities I know. Dr. Jiggs gives you a high character. You have profited by his studies, you have learnt to ride and shoot, and when you come to your own you will comport yourself as an English gentleman should.’
‘I am a gentleman born, then?’
‘Of the best,’ she replied proudly. ‘You are—why conceal it longer? Here you have for reasons been still known as Herbert Larkins, my ward, but you are really my grandson, the only child of Herbert, my second boy. You are Sir Herbert Farrington, the rightful heir of the family honours of an old name and wide estates.’
‘Is this certain, quite certain?’
‘Absolutely—at least to me. I have never doubted from the first. My instinct assured me I was right when I recognised you in Triggertown. But as the world needs more material proof I have sought them out, and hold them now all but one. This also I should have possessed had not one person failed me.’
‘Who was that?’
‘Mrs. Larkins. She alone can tell us what we want to know, and she has most unaccountably hesitated or refused to speak. This is why I have broken with her—why I have forbidden them to come and see you again.’
These honest people had paid several visits to Herbert at school, visits he had received with delight. They had ceased suddenly, and he had wondered greatly thereat.
‘But if my mother—if Mrs. Larkins—’
‘Mrs. Larkins is not your mother, Herbert, of that you may rest assured.’
‘She was as good as one to me always, I know that. But if she is the only person who can help us in this matter, was it prudent to break with her altogether?’ Herbert asked very pertinently.
‘I was annoyed, angry, and they were proud—I will seek them out again. They are necessary to us. Mrs. Larkins shall speak, and we will proceed at once to establish your claim. My patience is exhausted and Rupert’s cup is full.’
This conversation occurred at a time mentioned in a previous chapter when her relations with Sir Rupert had become more and more constrained. War had long been imminent between them, but a rupture had been precipitated by the overbearing harshness of his ways. She had spoken, therefore, a little rashly and prematurely perhaps, and in doing so had shown her hand. She had practically thrown down the glove, daring him to do his worst. He accepted the challenge, and acted with a promptitude and determination for which the poor cracked-brained old lady was certainly no match.
His first step was to put a watch upon Lady Farrington’s movements. Mr. Oozenam, the well-known private detective, was employed, who set about his task with his usual skill and despatch. Within a week or two he came with his first report.
‘Lady Farrington goes once every month, often twice, to Deadham School, in Essex. She has done so these five years past and more.’
‘Of course. The cub, her protégé, is there. Well?’
‘A ward of her ladyship’s, Herbert Larkins, is at school there. He is now seventeen years of age, is tall and well grown, has fair curly hair and greyish blue eyes. Her ladyship is said to take an immense interest in him. Their interviews are long. She must be very liberal to him; the lad is always well provided with money which he spends freely. He is a fair scholar, has been taught especially to ride and shoot, has learnt foreign languages and all extras.’
‘That is enough, Mr. Oozenam. You have handsomely earned your fee.’
‘It has gone very far,’ Sir Rupert said to himself as soon as he was alone. ‘What an idiot I have been not to have observed her more closely! But let us hope it is not too late even now.’
And then, after a long cogitation, he called for his carriage, and driving first into the neighbouring country town, where he made one or two calls, he bade the coachman next proceed to Farrington Court.
He asked for Lady Farrington, and was in due course ushered into her private boudoir.
‘The time has come, Lady Farrington, as you were good enough to say some time back—the time for plain speaking. I mean to put an end to your tomfooleries once for all. So long as they merely made you appear ridiculous I could have borne with you, although you scandalized our name. But I cannot permit you to plot against me and mine without protest and something more.’
‘Plot?’ she asked, in a voice which anger and agitation combined to make nearly inarticulate.
‘I have discovered all. You have kept your secret well, but I have found it out. This base-born pretender—’
‘He is my own grandson. I have the proofs.’
‘They will not bear the test of legal scrutiny, you know that. On the contrary, I can show that the whole affair is a conspiracy from beginning to end. That this Larkins is an adventurer—’
‘You will not harm him, surely? It is I, only I, who am to blame.’
‘I shall hand him over to the police, prosecute him, and make him pay dearly for his attempt to defraud.’
‘You would not dare,’ she cried aghast. Surprise and indignation combined to confuse her mind, and she did not pause to consider that he had no grounds of procedure; that his threats were vain, and could never be put into execution.
‘I shall not spare him nor you.’
‘Then you shall take the consequences. I will proclaim you to be the villain that you are; will tear you from your present exalted station, and will send you back to your former poverty and rags. You shall be dispossessed. You shall disgorge the rents and all that you have improperly acquired. You—’
He merely laughed at her, mockingly and rudely, which exasperated her beyond all bounds.
‘Begone, sir! You shall not remain here another second to insult me. Begone! or—’
He only laughed more loudly and mockingly than before. Instantly her rage passed into fury which seemed uncontrollable.
‘Begone!’ she cried again, snatching up a sharp-pointed paper knife and rushing on him with so much intention that Sir Rupert precipitately retired. She followed him downstairs with a wild shriek, little recking how completely she was playing into his hands.
The butler had just admitted several other visitors, who heard and saw all that passed. Sir Rupert went up to them apparently for protection, but his first words showed that he was eager for more than this.
‘Gentlemen, you have arrived most opportunely. You can see for yourselves. It is clearly not safe to leave her any longer at large.’
The butler had quelled poor Lady Farrington almost instantly, but although he held her back she was still furious and foamed at the mouth.
‘Scarcely. We cannot refuse the certificate,’ said Mr. Burkinshaw, of Bootle, a local magistrate and magnate. ‘Sir Henry quite agrees with me, and the doctors have no manner of doubt. Poor woman, she ought clearly to be put under restraint.’
And she was, without unnecessary delay.
Thus Herbert Larkins lost his protectress just when his fortune seemed close at hand. The cup was dashed away just before he had lifted it to his lips, with consequences which were by no means pleasant to himself, as will be seen in the next chapter.
Herbert Larkins was in the class-room when he was summoned to see a gentleman who had called.
‘I come from Lady Farrington,’ said his visitor, rather abruptly.
He was a tall, dark-eyed man, with a sinister look upon his face.
‘She is well, I hope? Nothing has happened? I half expected her to-day or to-morrow.’
‘She is well, but she cannot come here, and wishes you to go to her at once. You are aware, no doubt—’
‘The time then has arrived?’ Herbert said, a little incautiously.
‘It has arrived. You are ready, I presume?’
‘I must speak to Dr. Jiggs. I cannot leave the school without his permission, of course.’
‘That is all arranged. When you have got your belongings together, we will start. You are not to return here. You know that, I presume?’
‘We are going to join Lady Farrington?’
The visitor bowed assent.
An hour or two later they were in the train and on the road to London.
There was little conversation between them. Herbert was shy, and his companion by no means talkative or sociable.
‘Where does Lady Farrington live?’ Herbert asked.
‘You really don’t know?’
‘She never told me,’ Herbert replied, looking rather shamefaced.
‘She is a strange person, of that you must be aware. It is impossible to account for all she says and does.’
‘She has always been most kind to me,’ Herbert said, stoutly.
‘No doubt,’ the other replied, drily. ‘But perhaps that was a form of eccentricity. People are sometimes too affectionate by half.’
Herbert would have liked some explanation of this speech, but he could not bring himself to ask for it. He only knew that he began to dislike this man excessively, and hoped they might never have much to say to each other.
Arrived in London, they drove from one terminus to another. Fresh tickets were taken, for which his companion made Herbert pay; and after a hasty meal at the refreshment-room, they were again seated in a railway carriage, travelling westward. This second was a wearisome journey, which continued far into the chill autumn night. Towards nine they alighted at a station, where their baggage was transferred to a fly, into which they entered, and were driven half-a-dozen miles or more. At length they reached a small country inn, had some supper, and were shown to their rooms.
‘Remember,’ said his companion, as he bade him good-night, ‘our affair is secret. Keep your own counsel; do not gossip with any one you may meet here. Lady Farrington does not wish her name bandied about; so mind you do not mention it to a soul.’
Herbert slept late next morning, and when he went downstairs he found himself alone. The other gentleman had gone out, they told him, and would not return till late. Breakfast—what would he like? He might like what he pleased, but all he could get was cold bacon and bread, with thin cider to drink. A school-boy has a fine appetite, and is nowise particular. Herbert enjoyed his breakfast, as he did also his lunch and his dinner. He felt jolly enough. He asked where he was, and they told him King’s Staignton in Devonshire. Was there anything to do in the place? Yes, he might fish the trout stream, which he did, very much to his own satisfaction, and spent a thoroughly pleasant day.
But when night fell, and his companion did not return, he began to feel the least bit uneasy. He ate his trout, however, and his bacon and bread, and slept the sleep of the young, undismayed by fears of to-morrow. To-morrow came, but no companion. A third and a fourth day, and Herbert was still alone. What could it mean? He felt absolved from the necessity of holding his tongue, and he asked the landlady if she knew any one of the name of Farrington in the country round about. He was resolved to go to her ladyship himself.
‘No, they had never heard the name before.’
He now became more than puzzled. He was filled with an inexplicable but increasing dread of coming trouble, and he was just beginning his preparations for returning at once to Deadham, when the absentee suddenly reappeared.
Herbert was young, inexperienced, and terribly shy. But his was no craven spirit, and he had enough of school-boy plain-speaking frankness about him to say,
‘Come, this is a fine lark. You would not have kept me waiting here much longer, I can tell you. I was just going to cut and run.’
‘You may cut and run as soon as you please,’ said the other gruffly. ‘The sooner the better.’
‘And what would Lady Farrington say?’
‘Lady Farrington is not in a position to say much.’
‘I should like to see her.’
‘You can’t. She’s gone off in a hurry.’
‘She never was here, or near here. I know that much, for I have enquired.’
‘You broke through my instructions, did you? Not that it matters much; and it is time you should know all. Lady Farrington has been put under restraint. You do not understand? Locked up in an asylum, I mean. She is mad, insane; and of all her ravings, the wildest were those which led you to suppose you were somebody, instead of a beggar’s brat picked up out of the mire.’
‘That I’m not, I’ll swear, and no one shall call me so,’ cried Herbert, hotly. He looked so fierce, with his clenched fists, broad shoulders, and light active figure, that the man for the moment was cowed.
‘I don’t know who you are, or where you came from. But you’re not what you think you are, nor what Lady Farrington has made you believe. That is enough for me.’
‘I have her word.’
‘That of a mad woman!’
‘And she has proofs.’
‘Which exist only in her own distraught brain.’
‘That remains to be seen. But who are you? Why are you so bitter against me? Why did you bring me here?’
‘I am Sir Rupert Farrington. It is I whom this mad old lady wishes to wrong. She has been seeking what she calls a rightful heir all these years—only that she may dispossess me. You are not the first pretender she has set up. But I think it is not unlikely you will be the last.’
Had he brought Herbert there to injure him? The thought suddenly flashed across the young man’s mind. But then there were other people at the inn; the landlady, ostlers, keepers, police not far off, none of these would knowingly suffer any foul play to be done.
‘I defy you and your threats,’ said Herbert. ‘If I am in a false position it was none of my seeking, but I prefer to believe Lady Farrington rather than you. There are others who know of my claims, and with their help I shall yet put them forward as you will see.’
Sir Rupert snapped his fingers at him. ‘How do you propose to live meanwhile? Remember you can get nothing from Lady Farrington now. You cannot go back to the school; I brought you all this way on purpose that you should not. Besides, I have written to Dr. Jiggs to put him on his guard.’
‘He would still help me if I asked him; but I do not need to do that.’
‘You cannot have money hoarded? That would be very unlike a school-boy. You must be nearly cleaned out by this time. I made you pay your own expenses on purpose; and there will be the bill here. You ought to be nearly penniless. You will have to remain here, and turn farm labourer or starve.’
‘I shall not do that, you may depend. I have been well educated, thanks to Lady Farrington. I am not afraid of work, and I am well able to take care of myself. At any rate I look to you for nothing, and all I wish now is to get away from you and this place.’
Herbert called for his bill, paid it with his last sovereign, asked the way to the nearest railway station—Newton Abbot—and started off on foot, determined to get back to London as soon as he could. Thence he would find his way to Triggertown. The Larkins were the only friends left in the world; and Mrs. Larkins, as Lady Farrington had said, was the person who possessed the only link wanting in the chain of proofs which was to establish his claims.
At Newton Abbot he sold his watch, and had money for his ticket to London and to spare. Parting with other articles of his apparel to supply his necessities upon the road, he found himself at Triggertown upon the third day. How familiar the place seemed! Six years since he left it—a child, and now returning as a man he found everything unchanged. He passed up the covered way, across the drawbridge under the arch, and stood at the door of the casemate, expecting next moment to see the sergeant and Mrs. Larkins, and the whole of the brood.
But it was a stranger who came to answer his knock; a small vixenish woman with a shrewish tongue. She gave him a very short answer.
‘Larkinses? They don’t stop here. Been gone these years. Where? How do I know? They got the route right enough; that’s all I can tell you.’
‘Was there no one in the barracks who could tell him?’ Herbert asked.
‘No,’ said the woman, abruptly, and shut the door in his face.
The sentry would not let him pass the inner gates. The gate sergeant, who came up, peremptory and consequential, was still more inhospitable. Whom did Herbert want? A barrack sergeant of the name of Larkins? There was no such name in the garrison.
‘Better write to the Secretary of State for War, my man,’ said the gate sergeant with gruff condescension, ‘or to the Archbishop of Canterbury. One’s as likely to tell you as another. But you must clear out of this. Can’t have no loiterers about here. Them’s my orders. May be the adjutant or the sergeant-major’ll come this way, and I don’t choose to be blamed for you.’
‘What regiment do you belong to?’ asked Herbert.
‘Can’t you see for yourself?’ Where could this young man have been raised not to recognise the uniform of the Duke’s Own Fusiliers?
‘Is it a good corps?’
The sergeant was aghast at the fellow’s impudence. Like every soldier of the old school, he had been brought up to believe that his regiment was not only a good one, but the very best in the service.
‘G’long; I want no more truck with you. Clear out, or you’ll be put out.’
‘What’s your colonel’s name? I want to see him.’
‘You can’t want to see him if you don’t know his name.’
‘I do, though, on business.’
‘Pretty business! A tramp like you can’t have no business here at all, much less with the colonel or any other officer of ours.’
‘Won’t you pass me in?’
‘I won’t, there, that’s flat.’
‘All right; I’ll wait till some one comes out.’
Herbert coolly seated himself a little way down upon the slope of the glacis. If the sergeant meant to dislodge him it could only be by force.
The fact was our hero was meditating a serious step. The disappointment of not finding his old friends where he had left them was great. He had perhaps overrated the assistance which Mrs. Larkins could give him in substantiating his claims, but he had looked for advice from them as to the disposal of his immediate future. How was he now, unknown and seemingly without a friend in the world, to find employment? That was the serious question he was called upon to solve, and that without unnecessary delay. His pockets were empty, his clothes—such as he had not pawned—had reached that stage of irretrievable seediness which clothes worn uninterruptedly for weeks will always assume. He might or might not be the heir of the Farringtons. What did it matter who he was or might be if he died of starvation before he could prove his case?
These wholesome reflections led him to accept the only means of livelihood which offered just then. He would enlist. Why not? He had been brought up within sound of the drum; his earliest recollections and associations were connected with the barrack. The life might be rough compared to the luxury of Deadham, but at least he would be fed, clothed and housed, and he need not stand still. The theory of the marshal’s baton, which every knapsack is said to contain, is not exactly supported by fact in the British Army, but times were not what they had been, and he might now hope to rise rapidly enough. Yes, he would take the shilling and join the Duke’s Own Fusiliers.
These were the words he addressed to the first officer who issued from the gates.
It happened to be the adjutant himself. Mr. Wheeler was the beau ideal of a smart young soldier, quick and energetic in movement, with an eagle eye to take in the ‘points’ of a possible recruit.
‘Want to enlist, do you? Hey, what, what, what? Where do you come from? Won’t say, I suppose? Where do you belong to? Don’t know, of course. What’s your age? You won’t tell the truth. Height? we can see to that. Health? are you sound in wind and limb? hey, what, what, what?’
All this time he had been appraising Herbert’s value, had noted his broad shoulders, thin flanks, his seventy-two inches, and his erect bearing, as keenly as though he were a slave merchant about to turn a penny on a deal. The scrutiny was satisfactory. The medical examination confirmed it, the nearest magistrate sanctioned the enlistment, and before sundown, Herbert Larkins had joined the Duke’s Own and had sworn to serve Her Majesty and her heirs for a term of years.
By a strange coincidence, within a week or two, Ernest Farrington, Sir Rupert’s only son, was gazetted to the same regiment, and the two young men presently found themselves in the same squad at recruit’s drill.
The Duke’s Own Fusiliers had the credit of being one of the most distinguished regiments in the service of the Queen. Its colours were emblazoned with the victories in which it had shared; its mess plate was rich in gifts from the great captains and men of mark who had held commissions in its ranks. It considered itself in every respect a crack corps, and held its head high always on account of its thorough efficiency and undeniably ‘good form.’ Its claims to the latter could not be denied; but its rights to the former were sometimes questioned by keen-eyed critics and people behind the scenes. The regiment no doubt turned out smartly upon parade; it always looked well, and was fairly well-behaved. But there were flaws and short-comings in its system, hidden a little below the surface, which in the crucial test of emergency would probably be laid bare. The gulf between officers and men was a little too wide; inferiors had no great confidence in those above them, the latter were generally indifferent, taking but little interest in their business, as though soldiering was not their profession, but a chance employment to fill up their hours when not otherwise engaged.
A certain Colonel Prioleau commanded the regiment at the time when Herbert Larkins enlisted into it; a soldier of the old school, at times fussy, testy, and sharp-spoken, but really a good-natured easy-going man. He was without much strength of character however, and not over-burthened with brains. It was not strange, therefore, that he should suffer his authority to slip a little out of his own hands. He was far from supreme in the body of which he was the ostensible head. English regiments are very variously governed. This is ruled by the sergeant-major, that by the colonel’s wife; in another, the general of the brigade or district, with his staff-officers, works his own wicked will. Some are, so to speak, self-governed, and the Duke’s Own was one of these. In it, the will of the body corporate, of the officers banded together like a joint-stock company, and trading under the name of ‘the regiment’ was absolute law. By and for ‘the regiment,’ everything was settled and decided. The regimental idea was a species of impalpable but all-pervading essence, which no one could resist. To quote regimental custom; to invoke regimental prestige; to talk of the credit of the regiment; to insist upon the maintenance of esprit de corps, were so many irresistible appeals, so many precepts of a powerful unwritten code universally accepted, and admitted to be binding upon all. In its highest form, this thorough-going devotion might be productive, as indeed it has often proved to be, of extraordinary good; but it was possible to develop it in the wrong direction, and this was to some extent the case with the Duke’s Own Fusiliers. It was generally understood in the regiment that its credit depended less upon its military proficiency than upon the dash it cut in the world.
Military matters, in fact, were not held in the highest esteem in the Duke’s Own. Nobody cared much about them. They were left to be managed by anybody, anyhow. Now and again Colonel Prioleau raised a feeble protest, but nobody listened to him or cared. He was told that the regiment wished this, or thought that, and he immediately succumbed. Those next senior to him, his two majors, were of little assistance to him in driving the coach. One, Major Diggle, of whom more directly, did not pretend to be a soldier at all. According to his own ideas, he was always much better engaged. The other, Major Byfield, had, unfortunately, been raised in another regiment, and was so unpopular that he was worse than a cipher; the Duke’s Own knew too well what was due to itself to allow an outsider to dictate to it or interfere in its affairs. The only person who did anything in the regiment was the adjutant, and he had come by degrees to monopolise the whole of the power. The colonel gave in to him more and more, till presently he abdicated his functions to him altogether. After all, Mr. Wheeler was a smart young gentleman, not without military aptitudes. He had no dread of responsibility, and having a fair knowledge of the red-books and routine, disposed of his work daily in an airy off-hand fashion which was always refreshing, and which, in the face of any serious difficulty, would have been absolutely sublime. He pulled all the strings, decided all the moot points, gave all orders, drafted all letters, which his humble slave, the colonel, obediently signed; it was he, practically, who man?uvred the battalion, although his puppet, the colonel, nominally gave the word of command. It saved everybody else a great deal of trouble. The men perhaps were not quite as well cared for and commanded as they ought to have been, the sergeants looking to the adjutant rather than to their officers, sometimes exceeded their powers, and carried matters with rather a high hand. Complaints of tyranny and ill-usage, however, seldom cropped up, and no suspicion ever arose that the condition of the regiment was otherwise than perfectly sound.
It was not difficult to understand why the officers as a body rather neglected their duties. They were too fully occupied in maintaining the credit of the regiment according to their own interpretation of the phrase. This meant that it should be renowned—not for marching and man?uvres, for demeanour, discipline, and drill—but for its ostentation and display, for the grand balls and entertainments it gave, for its mess perfectly appointed, its artistic chefs, its exquisite wines. It was for the credit of the regiment that it should keep up a regimental drag, a cricket and lawn tennis club, and give weekly afternoon teas; that during the season six or seven at least of the Duke’s Own should turn out in scarlet to hunt with the nearest hounds, that some one amongst their number should take a shooting or a river, which the regimental sportsmen might honour in turn; that half the regiment at least should rush up to town from Friday to Monday every week, and enjoy themselves in loafing about the park and the Burlington Arcade, or idling away the hours at the club, and devoutly wishing they were back at their own regimental mess.
These high-flown ideas very rapidly developed into extravagant tastes, which had reached their highest point about the time when Herbert Larkins became one of the Duke’s Own. The regiment had only returned a year or two previously from a lengthened tour of foreign service, and after their long exile in outer darkness everyone with any spirit or capacity for enjoyment had been resolved to take his pleasure to the full. It was expected of the officers of the Duke’s Own to come well to the front, and this they pretended was a more potent inducement to them to spend money than any hankering after personal gratification. So, with but few exceptions, they launched forth freely enough. It was, with many, a case of the earthen pots swimming with the brass; but all, or nearly all, were determined to do their duty to the regiment and go the pace, or as Mr. Crouch, the sporting quartermaster styled it, ‘go to the devil hands down.’ What if any serious financial crisis supervened? Their people would have to stump up; their fathers—probably by drawing upon a wife’s provision or daughter’s portion, and always by impoverishing themselves—would pay their debts, but they would have had ‘a high old time,’ and the imperishable credit of the Duke’s Own Fusiliers would have been most brilliantly maintained.
The leading spirit and showman of the regiment at this particular epoch was the junior major Cavendish-Diggle. Diggle was, in his way, a man of parts, young, pushing, ambitious, passably rich. No one knew exactly where he came from, or who were his belongings or his people. One of his patronymics was decidedly patrician, the other as unmistakeably commonplace. He might be a cousin of the Duke of Devonshire; and again he might not. When anyone asked him the question—and it was one he liked to have put to him—he smiled pleasantly, and said that the Cavendishes were all related, as everybody knew. But he was not so well pleased when people, envious or cynical, or both, remarked casually that Diggle was the name of the great grocers in Cheapside. There was no connection on that side of course, but the allusion was far from agreeable to him, as a shrewd observer might have noticed from his face and his avowed hostility to anyone who dared to make the remark.
There were not many who were bold enough to attack him however. He could hold his own always. Nature had endowed him with a good presence and abundance of self-confidence; he could talk well, had a good voice, and was an excellent raconteur. These gifts were naturally of great service to him; not alone for purposes of repartee and self-defence; they were also exceedingly useful in assisting him to obtain that social success which had ever been one of the principal aims of his life. In his boyhood, when he had made his début as a second lieutenant in the Duke’s Own Fusiliers, he had had an uphill game to play. The regiment was then, as it still aspired to be, eminently aristocratic, and no one was disposed to welcome a Diggle with rapturous effusion. There was nothing against the lad, however, except the possible obscurity of his origin; on the contrary, there was much in his favour. He was modest and unpretending, fully impressed with the ‘greatness’ of ‘the regiment’ he had joined, falling down readily to worship the principal personages who were its idols at the time. He sought to attach himself to one or two of the most distinguished cadets of noble houses, who were nobodies at home, but made a good deal of in the Duke’s Own. Diggle’s hero worship, accompanied as it was by a willingness to bet, play écarté, and do good turns to his superiors—he thought them so himself—met with its reward, and he soon found himself in the position to enjoy the daily companionship and friendship of one or two baronets and several lords’ sons. It was long, however, before he advanced himself beyond the rather undignified status of a ‘hanger-on.’ His friends and comrades were very affectionate—with the regiment—but they were not so fond of him in town; nor did they help him into society, or get him invitations to their homes. But as time passed, and he gained promotion and seniority, his persistent efforts gradually achieved a certain success. He now took a prominent part in regimental entertainments, was willing to accept all the drudgery of managing balls and parties, because he thus came more to the front. At one rather dull country station he struck out the happy idea of giving dances on his account in his own quarters, which happened to be large, and at his own expense, and this gained for him great popularity in the neighbourhood. It was about this time that he began to lay much stress upon the Cavendish prefix to his proper name; he always called himself Cavendish-Diggle, had it so put in the Army List and upon his cards. Then the regiment went on foreign service, and while stationed in an out-of-the-way colony, he had the good fortune to be selected to act upon the personal staff of the governor and commander-in-chief. He turned this appointment to excellent account. He was soon the life and soul of Government House, developing at once into a species of diplomatic major-domo, who was simply indispensable to his chief. In this way he made many new and valuable friends; a young royalty on his travels, who was charmed with Captain Cavendish-Diggle’s devotion to his person; several heirs apparent also, and itinerant legislators, who took Barataria in their journey round the world, and who could not be too grateful for all he did for them, or too profuse in their promises of civilities whenever he might be in England. All this bore fruit in the long run, when the regiment returned. He experienced many disappointments, no doubt; for your notable on his travels, so cordial and so gushing, is apt to give you the cut direct if you meet him in his own hunting-grounds, at home. Still there were some did not quite forget the hospitable and obliging A.D.C.; and Major Cavendish-Diggle, at the invitation of one, went into Norfolk to shoot; of another to Scotland to fish; in the London season he found several houses open to him; and he was finally raised to a pinnacle of satisfaction by Royal commands to attend a garden party and a court ball.
In the Duke’s Own he was now a very great personage indeed. As both the Colonel and Major Byfield were married he was the senior member of the mess; always its most prominent figure; the chief host in all impromptu parties at home; the great man at all entertainments abroad. He had now a following of his own; a band of personal adherents who imitated him in his dress and talk and ways, who deferred to him, flattered him, and admired him fully as much as he had the shining lights around which he had himself revolved when he was young. This homage did not do him any great good. It confirmed him in the high opinion he had formed of himself: it indorsed and justified his aspirations, which were now by no means unambitious, although very carefully concealed. Why should he not make a brilliant marriage? There were plenty of heiresses about; if he could but find one in whom the charms of blood and beauty were united, why should he not go in and win? He was still comparatively young; he had kept his figure; he was répandu in the best society and appreciated wherever he went. Who should have a better chance? And what might he not achieve in the way of future distinction with a rich and well-born wife to help him in climbing the tree?
These ideas had been uppermost in his mind for some time past. It was in obedience to them that he had been at some pains to inform himself whether any likely partis were running loose about Triggertown or in the country round. But he had so far met with little success. Hopshire is a county owning many families of antiquity and repute, but none were especially renowned for their wealth. Diggle would have gone further afield and commenced his chase in London, or at one of the great watering places, but he wished first to exhaust the resources of the neighbourhood. The gay major was not wrong in supposing that he showed off to the best advantage upon his own territory, doing the honours of his own mess, backed up and supported by so many brilliant comrades and disciples. Just when he began to despair of finding any young lady who from substantial reasons was entitled to receive his addresses, he came across the Farringtons. They lived at the other end of the county. There was a daughter in the house—a very charming girl, he thought, who, having one brother only and no sisters, would assuredly be well portioned. This led him to consolidate his acquaintance with Sir Rupert, to accept many invitations and pay frequent visits to Farrington Hall.
It was entirely through his advice and intervention that Sir Rupert sent young Ernest into the Duke’s Own. The regiment would probably remain at Triggertown for a year or two longer, and this would break Lady Farrington gradually to the separation from her beloved son. Besides, Major Cavendish-Diggle would have the young fellow especially under his wing—a precious advantage no doubt, as we shall presently see.
Within twenty-four hours of his arrival in barracks, Herbert Larkins was bathed, cropped, clothed, numbered, and, so to speak, put away. His ‘rags,’ in plain English, his civilian clothes—invariably so called whether undeniable garments or veritable rags—had been exchanged for uniform, such as it was. A recruit, and especially in the fall of the year, when the annual issue of new clothing is near at hand, gets only things ‘part worn.’ So Herbert’s shell jacket, his regimental trousers, and his ammunition boots, were all of them palpable misfits.
He said as much to the corporal of the pioneers, who helped the quartermaster-sergeant in rigging out recruits.
‘Too large?’ replied the corporal, contemptuously. ‘Wait till you’re at the extension motions, or at club drill, and you’ll wish they were more than twice as big.’
‘But my trousers are too long, and—’
‘It’ll be longer before you get another pair. Besides, you ain’t done growing yet. Two months on full rations, and you’ll be as tall as a hop-pole. How do you think your legs ’d look then? Showing half a yard of sock above the high-lows, and the captain ’d be safe to put you down for a new pair of bags.’
‘And these boots are far too loose. I can’t feel the sides even.’
‘You’ll feel something else afore long, I can tell you, and not half so soft as leather. Them boots! Why, flash Alick Nokes wore them till he went “out”—and it ’d take a dozen Johnny Raws like you to make half a soldier such as him.’
Yet Herbert had really some reason to be discontented with his personal appearance. Always a trim and dapper youth, his patroness, Lady Farrington, had loved to see him neatly dressed, and had cheerfully paid his tailor’s bills when at Deadham school. But now, speaking exactly, he was not dressed at all; his figure was only concealed with clothes. His jacket was baggy at the back; the arms were so long that the cuffs came as far as his knuckles; his trousers, if they had been tied in at the ankle, would have suited a Janissary Turk; his forage-cap—it was before the days of smart glengarries—not yet ‘blocked’ and set up, fell like a black pudding-bag, over one forehead and one ear. His boots were quite amorphous, quite without form, and they might have been void were it not probable they encased a pair of feet shaped like wedges of Cheshire cheese. So deteriorating was the effect of these incongruous habiliments, that Herbert Larkins seemed to lose his erect bearing and springy step; and as he reached the barrack-room, to which he was presently marched, carrying his kit-bag full of cleaning utensils under one arm, and his new knapsack under the other, he hung his head and looked utterly ashamed of himself.
‘Oh! it’s you is it?’ said the sergeant in charge of the room, who took him over from the corporal of the pioneers.
Herbert recognised the sergeant with whom he had had the colloquy at the barrack-gate.
‘So you got past the gate, did you? Mind you stop, now you’ve got in. Don’t try and run off again with your bounty and kit.’
The suspicious sergeant scented a probable deserter.
‘I shouldn’t have come in if I’d wanted to go out directly afterwards,’ Herbert plucked up courage to say; but the scene was so new, and he felt so forlorn in his loneliness and his strange new clothes, that he had not much spirit left in him.
‘Don’t answer me with cheek,’ cried the sergeant, very sharply. ‘I want none of your slack jaw or back jaw. Hold your tongue, that’s what you’ve got to do, and do as you’re bid.’
‘Now look here,’ he went on, after a pause; ‘there’s your bed, and that’s your shelf; mind you keep them clean and proper. Don’t you try to lie down on the one before the right time, nor put what ain’t authorised on the other. You’ll be for recruits’ drill at six sharp to-morrow; don’t let me have to tell you twice to turn out, and mind you don’t get straying away so that you can’t answer your name at tattoo roll-call to-night. Mind, too, what your comrade says; I’ll tell you off to Boy Hanlon because you’re much of an age; mind him and what he tells you, and he’ll keep you straight. Lads’—this to the room—‘have any of you seen “the Boy”?’
‘No, sergeant, not these hours past. He’s in the usual place, I’ll go bail.’
‘The canteen?’
Some of the men laughed and nodded, and the sergeant went off in search.
No one took any notice of Herbert, as he sat upon the edge of his iron cot at the far end of the room. Everybody seemed busy with his own affairs.
But presently some one near the door shouted, ‘Why, here’s “the Boy”! Duke’s Own! “’Tchun,”’ giving the word of command as though an officer was approaching.
It was only a wizened little man, who might have been fifty or barely five. He hadn’t a hair on his fresh coloured cheeks, but they were much wrinkled as though he were prematurely aged.
Boy Hanlon was one of the oldest soldiers in the regiment. He had been in it all his life from the time they had picked him up like a waif or stray on the line of march between Exeter and Plymouth till now, when he had upwards of twenty years’ service, and was growing grey-haired. He had begun as a boy in the band, thence he went to the drums; by-and-bye he became a bugler, from which, although barely of the standard height, he had been passed into the ranks. Now, as a veteran who knew his rights and what was due to himself, he gave himself great airs. No one was half so well acquainted as he was with professional topics. He could tell you the names of all the officers past and present, in the Duke’s Own; he was a keen critic upon drill from his own point of view—somewhere in the rear rank of one of the central companies; he could pipeclay belts to perfection, and had not his equal with brass ball, heel ball, boot-blacking, button stick and brush. But the chief source of his pride were his confidential relations with Colonel Prioleau, the present commanding officer. The two had ‘soldiered’ together all these years, in every clime, and knew each other thoroughly. More, they had stood side by side at the battle of Goojerat, where the Duke’s Own had fought remarkably well, and they were the only two survivors of that glorious day. ‘Boy’ Hanlon—he got his soubriquet of course from his insignificant size—traded a good deal on that battle of Goojerat. He was perpetually celebrating the victory. For one single battle it had an extraordinary number of anniversaries. Whenever ‘the Boy’ was thirsty—and with him drought was perennial—he turned up at the orderly room and told the colonel it was a fine morning ‘for the day.’
‘What day?’ old Prioleau would ask with pretended ignorance, although he knew and really enjoyed the joke.
‘The great day, of course, colonel; the day of Goojerat.’
‘Why, it was that only three weeks ago; surely—’
‘Well, sir, we’re the only two Goojeraties left, you know, sir, and I’d like to drink your health.’
It always ended in the same way—the transfer of half-a-crown from the colonel to ‘the Boy;’ the speedy exchange of the whole sum into liquor, the most potent description preferred, a free fight, for ‘the Boy’ was quarrelsome in his cups, a temporary relegation to the guard-room, from which he was sure to be immediately released by the officer of the day. When Hanlon misconducted himself he always got off scot free. Colonel Prioleau would never punish ‘the Boy.’
‘Where’s my towney?’ Hanlon asked directly he entered the room.
They pointed to where Herbert sat disconsolate; and the dapper little soldier, who was still trim in figure, and straight as a dart, walked over to the lad and gave him a friendly pat on the back.
‘Now, young chap, you must brush up, brush up, and show yourself a man. We’ve to be comrades, you and I, and it won’t suit me to consort with a chap as is given to peek and pine. What do you call yourself?’
This was delicately put. Recruits do not always enlist under their own names; so Hanlon asked, not what Herbert was called, but what he called himself.
‘Herbert Larkins.’
‘Good; and not a bad looking chap either. Too tall—leastwise I’m afraid you’re going to grow—’
Hanlon, like many little men, hated those whose inches far exceeded his own. In the days when there had been grenadiers, it was his favourite pastime, when at all the worse for liquor, to beard the giants in their own barrack-room. He called them ‘hop-poles,’ ‘sand-bags,’ ‘wooden ramrods,’ and other opprobrious names, and his onslaughts generally ended in his being carried, bodily, to the guard-room, under some stalwart soldier’s arm. Now that the grenadier company was abolished, he disseminated his dislike, and abused every private who was more that five feet six in height.
‘Too tall, unless you stop as you are. Gin perhaps’d do it; or whiskey; or perhaps “four” ale—if you took enough of it. Fond of “four” ale, eh?’
Hanlon’s eyes glistened with a toper’s joy as he mentioned his favourite fluid.
‘Ah! there’s nothing like “four” ale. I’m under stoppages myself,’ he went on, meditatively, ‘or I’d stand treat. But you’ll have got your bounty, and the money for your “coloured” clothes. You ain’t got the price of a glass about you?’
Herbert admitted readily enough that he had the price of several. He had lost none of his schoolboy freehandedness, and he had moreover the wit to see that his new comrade might, if propitiated, prove an uncommonly useful friend.
Hanlon first made Herbert swallow some piping hot tea which was brought in just then, and gave him the whole of his ‘tea’ bread; Hanlon’s own appetite was indifferent; and then the two, amid the winks and jeers of the rest, strolled over to the canteen. The place was not over full. Nothing stronger than ale and porter could be sold in it, and the Duke’s Own generally preferred the Triggertown taverns. So would Hanlon, but he knew that a newly enlisted recruit would not be permitted to leave barracks.
They had a quart ‘of the best;’ Hanlon called for it—and drank it, all but a glass; a second quart followed, and a third; and as the little veteran became more and more steeped in liquor he grew more and more communicative. He told Herbert all about the regiment; who were the chief personages in it; he spoke with awe of the sergeant-major, but of the colonel as a familiar friend. He described the ways of the officers, the habits and customs of the regiment, the chances there were of promotion for a smart lad who’d had any schooling and knew how to keep himself straight. ‘Can you read? good—and write? better still. If you can only cipher and do accounts you won’t have long to wait for a lance stripe. I’ll get it for you, aye and more too. I’ll get you put in the orderly-room as a clerk, or perhaps the pay office. You shall be a colour-sergeant before you’re many years older; who knows, perhaps you’ll be sergeant-major afore you die. All through Joe Hanlon; poor old Joe Hanlon—Letshavesmoreale.’
From Hanlon drunk to Hanlon sober there was a great distance. The big promises he made so freely in his cups were all of them forgotten next day. Yet the little man was, in his way, a good friend to Herbert Larkins. In the days, arduous and often wearisome, of the recruit’s novitiate, the old soldier acted always as mentor and adviser. He taught Herbert all he knew. He helped him with his exercises, rehearsing the manual and platoon in the privacy of the citadel ditch, so that Herbert soon won especial favour with the drill instructor of his squad; he took a pride in Herbert’s personal appearance, arranged a ‘swop’ for the misfitting jacket and highlows, contracted with one of the regimental tailors to alter the baggy trousers in his spare hours.
‘I’ll make you the smartest soldier in the Duke’s Own,’ said ‘the Boy’ enthusiastically. ‘You’re the right stuff; you’ve got it in you; you’re a soldier born, every inch. I don’t ask no questions. I don’t want to know who you are, or where you comes from, but you’ve got soldier’s blood in you; you come of a soldier’s stock, I’ll wager a gallon of the best four ale. I like you, lad. You’re free handed and open spoken, and you’ve got an honest mug of your own. I like you, and I’ll stick to you through thick and thin.’
The advantages of Boy Hanlon’s counsel and protection were soon apparent. Herbert, thanks to Hanlon’s coaching, but aided not a little by his own native intelligence, and the excellent education he had received, proved an apt scholar in the military school. He soon learnt his drill, and was passed for duty much more quickly than was usually the case with recruits. Mr. Farrington, who had commenced drill at the same time, but who enjoyed the officer’s privilege of taking it easy, and who was somewhat slow of apprehension to boot, was still at company drill when Private Larkins, fully accoutred, and admirably ‘turned out,’ took his place in the ranks on guard, mounting parade.
It was with a beating heart that he found Mr. Wheeler, the adjutant, in making his minute and critical inspection, pause just in front of him.
‘Fall out,’ said the adjutant curtly; and Herbert scarcely knew whether to expect praise or blame.
‘Colonel’s orderly. Report yourself at his quarters after parade.’
Here was an honour indeed! To be selected on his first guard-mounting parade, as commanding officer’s orderly—a post which, apart from the privileges it brought of immunity from ‘sentry go’ and a sure night’s rest in bed, every private soldier in the regiment coveted and esteemed—was a compliment which Herbert, and Hanlon also, appreciated to the full.
What befell the young orderly at Colonel Prioleau’s quarters must be reserved for another chapter.