Sir Brook Fossbrooke Volume I Part 59

How they inveighed against the national n.i.g.g.ardliness that insisted on making a small army do the work of a large one! How they scouted the popular idea that regiments were treated alike and without favoritism!

_They_ knew better. They knew that if they had been the Nine Hundred and Ninth, or Three Thousand and First, there would have been no thought of sending them back to cholera and jungle fever. Some, with a little sly flattery, ascribed the order to their efficiency, and declared that they had done their work so well at Gonurshabad, the Government selected them at once when fresh troubles were threatening; and a few old grumblers, tired of service, sick of the Horse Guards,--not over-enamored of even life,--agreed that it was rank folly to join a regiment where the Lieutenant-Colonel was not a man of high connections; as they said, "If old Cave there had been a Lord George or even an Honorable, we 'd have had ten years more of home service."

With the exception of two or three raw subalterns who had never been out of England, and who wanted the glory of pig-sticking and the brevet to tell tiger stories, there were gloom and depression everywhere. The financially gifted complained that as they had all or nearly all bought their commissions, there was no comparison between the treatment administered to them and to officers in any foreign army; and such as knew geography asked triumphantly whether a Frenchman, who could be only sent to Africa, or an Austrian, whose most remote banishment was the "Banat," was in the same position as an unfortunate Briton, who could be despatched to patrol the North Pole to-day, and to-morrow relieve guard at New Zealand? By a unanimous vote it was carried that the English army was the worst paid, hardest worked, and most ill-treated service in Europe; but the roast-beef played just at the moment, and they went in to dinner.

As the last bars of that prandial melody were dying away, two men crossed the barrack-yard towards the mess-house. They were in close confabulation, and although evidently on their way to dinner, showed by their loitering pace how much more engrossed they were by the subject that engaged them than by any desire for the pleasures of the table.

They were Colonel Cave and Sewell.

"I can scarcely picture to my mind as great a fool as that," said Sewell, angrily. "Can you?"

"I don't know," said Cave, slowly and doubtingly. "First of all, I never was heir to a large estate; and, secondly, I was never, that I remember, in love."

"In love! in fiddlestick. Why, he has not seen the girl this year and half; he scarcely knows her. I doubt greatly if she cares a straw for him; and for a caprice--a mere caprice--to surrender his right to a fine fortune and a good position is absolute idiocy; but I tell you more, Cave, though worse--far worse." Here his voice grew harsh and grating, as he continued: "When I and other men like me played with Trafford, we betted with the man who was to inherit Holt. When I asked the fellow to my house, and suffered a certain intimacy--for I never liked him--it was because he represented twelve thousand a year in broad acres. I 'd stand a good deal from a man like that, that I 'd soon pull another up for,--eh?"

The interrogative here puzzled Cave, who certainly was not a concurring party to the sentiment, and yet did not want to make it matter of discussion.

"We shall be late,--we've lost our soup already," said he, moving more briskly forward.

"I 'd no more have let that fellow take on him, as he did under my roof, than I 'd sufifer him to kennel his dogs in my dressing-room. You don't know--you can't know--how he behaved." These words were spoken in pa.s.sionate warmth, and still there was that in the speaker's manner that showed a want of real earnestness; so it certainly seemed to Cave, who secretly determined to give no encouragement to further disclosures.

"There are things," resumed Sewell, "that a man can't speak on,--at least, he can only speak of them when they become the talk of the town."

"Come along, I want my dinner. I'm not sure I have not a guest, besides, who does not know any of our fellows. I only remembered him this instant. Is n't this Sat.u.r.day?"

"One thing I 'll swear,--he shall pay me every s.h.i.+lling he owes me, or he does not sail with the regiment. I 'll stand no nonsense of renewals; if he has to sell out for it, he shall book up. You have told him, I hope, he has nothing to expect from my forbearance?"

"We can talk this all over another time. Come along now,--we 're very late."

"Go on, then, and eat your dinner; leave me to my cigar--I 've no appet.i.te. I 'll drop in when you have dined."

"No, no; you shall come too,--your absence will only make fellows talk; they are talking already."

"Are they? and in what way?" asked he, sternly.

"Nothing seriously, of course," mumbled Cave, for he saw how he had fallen into an indiscretion; "but you must come, and you must be yourself too. It's the only way to meet flying rumors."

"Come along, then," said Sewell, pa.s.sing his arm within the other's; and they hurried forward without another word being spoken by either.

It was evident that Sewell's appearance caused some surprise. There was a certain awkward significance in the way men looked at him and at each other that implied astonishment at his presence.

"I didn't know you were down here," said the old Major, making an involuntary explanation of his look of wonderment.

"Nothing very remarkable, I take it, that a man is stopping at his own house," said Se well, testily. "No--no fish. Get me some mutton," added he to the mess-waiter.

"You have heard that we 've got our orders," said a captain opposite him.

"Yes; Cave told me."

"I rather like it,--that is, if it means India," said a very young-looking ensign.

Sewell put up his eye-gla.s.s and looked at the speaker, and then, letting it drop, went on with his dinner without a word.

"There 's no man can tell you more about Bengal than Colonel Sewell there," said Cave, to some one near him. "He served on the staff there, and knows every corner of it."

"I wish I did n't, with all my heart. It's a sort of knowledge that costs a man pretty dearly."

"I 've always been told India was a capital place," said a gay, frank-looking young lieutenant, "and that if a man did n't drink, or take to high play, he could get on admirably."

"Nor entangle himself with a pretty woman," added another.

"Nor raise a smas.h.i.+ng loan from the Agra Bank," cried a third.

"You are the very wisest young gentlemen it has ever been my privilege to sit down with," said Sewell, with a grin. "Whence could you have gleaned all these prudent maxims?"

"I got mine," said the Lieutenant, "from a cousin. Such a good fellow as he was! He always tipped me when I was at Sandhurst, but he's past tipping any one now."

"Dead?"

"No; I believe it would be better he were; but he was ruined in India,--'let in' on a race, and lost everything, even to his commission."

"Was his name Stanley?"

"No, Stapyleton,--Frank Stapyleton,--he was in the Grays."

"Sewell, what are you drinking?" cried Cave, with a loudness that overbore the talk around him. "I can't see you down there. You 've got amongst the youngsters."

"I am in the midst of all that is agreeable and entertaining," said Sewell, with a smile of most malicious meaning. "Talk of youngsters, indeed! I'd like to hear where you could match them for knowledge of life and mankind."

There was certainly nothing in his look or manner as he spoke these words that suggested distrust or suspicion to those around him, for they seemed overjoyed at his praise, and delighted to hear themselves called men of the world. The grim old Major at the opposite side of the table shook his head thoughtfully, and muttered some words to himself.

"They 're a shady lot, I take it," said a young captain to his neighbor, "those fellows who remain in India, and never come home; either they have done something they can't meet in England, or they want to do things in India they couldn't do here."

"There's great truth in that remark," said Sewell. "Captain Neeves, let us have a gla.s.s of wine together. I have myself seen a great deal to bear out your observation."

Neeves colored with pleasure at this approval, and went on: "I heard of one fellow--I forget his name--I never remember names; but he had a very pretty wife, and all the fellows used to make up to her, and pay her immense attention, and the husband rooked them all at ecarte, every man of them."

"What a scoundrel!" said Sewell, with energy. "You ought to have preserved the name, if only for a warning."

"I think I can get it, Colonel. I 'll try and obtain it for you."

"Was it Moorcroft?" cried one.

"Or Ma.s.singbred?" asked another.

"I'll wager a sovereign it was Dudgeon; wasn't it Dudgeon?"

But no; it was none of the three. Still, the suggestions opened a whole chapter of biographical details, in which each of these worthies vied with the other. No man ever listened to the various anecdotes narrated with a more eager interest than Sewell. Now and then, indeed, a slight incredulity--a sort of puzzled astonishment that the world could be so very wicked, that there really were such fellows--would seem to distract him; but he listened on, and even occasionally asked an explanation of this or of that, to show the extreme attention he vouchsafed to the theme.

To be sure, their attempts to describe the way some trick was played with the cards or the dice, how the horse was "n.o.bbled" or the match "squared," were neither very remarkable for accuracy nor clearness. They had not been well "briefed," as lawyers say, or they had not mastered their instructions. Sewell, however, was no captious critic; he took what he got, and was thankful.