VC - A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea Part 5

'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 s.h.i.+lling, 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 a.s.sumed 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 s.h.i.+fted within the last hour or two. Then, stalwart as he was, it caught and whirled him and sent him running w.i.l.l.y-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 s.p.a.ces in the sky out of which the stars began to s.h.i.+ne 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 pa.s.sed 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 d.i.c.kens, as all men who are privileged to speak the English language ought to do, will remember a striking little pa.s.sage 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 n.o.body took heed of him until some two hours had gone by, when the Sergeant awoke him from his reverie.