Gil the Gunner Part 15

"Contemptible!"

Barton took a step forward angrily.

"Keep your bullying looks and words, sir, for the poor Hindoos, whom you have so disgracefully trampled down. They are wasted upon me, for I know your nature now only too well. I am not going to quarrel, though I have easy excuse."

"Then what will you do?" said Barton. "Fight?"

"Yes, when my duty renders it necessary, sir. As matters stand, I feel bound to report what has taken place to Major Lacey, and to leave it in his hands to reprimand you, and call upon you to apologise."

Barton sank back into a chair, uttering a forced laugh that made Brace turn pale.

"'And out crept a mouse!'" cried the lieutenant. "Is that all, my brave, fire-eating captain? Report all to Major Lacey! By Jingo, sir, I'll spare you the trouble. I'll go and tell him what a miserable, contemptible, beggarly coward he has in his troop, and that he is allowing you to drag down your wretched pupil to your own level. There, stand out of my way."

He thrust Captain Brace aside, as he strode toward the door--a thrust that was almost a blow, and then aloud, "Here you: open that door-- quickly. Do you hear?"

I looked across sharply, and saw that a couple of the native servants had entered the room, and felt that they must have heard every word.

They opened the door, Barton pa.s.sed out, and the two white-robed men turned to look at us wonderingly before hurrying out, and the door fell to.

"They must have heard," I said to myself; "and they'll go and tell the others. It will be all round the station directly that Captain Brace is a coward." For a few moments I felt as if I dared not raise my eyes, but it was as if something was dragging me to look up, and as I did, I saw that Brace was looking at me fixedly, and there was something very singular in his gaze; but for some time he did not speak, and there was so strange a tumult in my breast that no words would come.

"Well," he said at last. "What are you thinking?"

"Of all this," I said huskily.

"And that as an officer and a gentleman I ought to have knocked Barton down?"

"Something of the kind," I replied.

"Of course; and then, according to the code of honour among gentlemen, I ought to fight him at daybreak to-morrow morning."

I was silent.

"Yes," he said pa.s.sionately; "that is what you are thinking."

"I can't help it," I cried angrily. "He almost struck you, and the khansamah saw it, and that other man too. It will be all over the place. You must fight him now."

He looked at me very strangely, and I saw his brows contract as he said gravely--

"Duelling is a thing of the past, Vincent; a cowardly, savage practice in which the life of a man is at the mercy of his skilful adversary.

Life is too valuable to throw away in a quarrel. I do not feel as if I had done all my work yet."

"But what can you do?" I said excitedly, for my brain was in a turmoil.

I loved him, but his conduct frightened me; it was so unlike anything I could have expected from a gallant soldier; and there was a singularly cold sensation of dread creeping over me. I felt afraid that I was going to dislike him as one unworthy to be known, as I cried angrily, "But what can you do?"

He looked at me as if he could read me through and through, and his face grew very sad as he replied--

"There is the proper course open to me, Vincent, and that I am about to do."

"Fight him?" I cried eagerly, and the miserable sensation of dread began to pa.s.s off.

"No, boy; I am going to explain everything to Major Lacey, who will report to head-quarters if he considers it right."

He pa.s.sed slowly out of the room, and I heard his step echoing beneath the broad verandah, as he went in the direction of Major Lacey's, while, unable to restrain myself in my bitterness and contempt, I too got up and hurried out.

"He is a coward!" I muttered; "a coward!"--for I could not see the bravery of the man's self-control; "and I have been gradually growing to like him, and think of him always as being patient and manly and n.o.ble.

Why, I would have tried to knock Barton down, if he had killed me for it."

"Gone to report," I thought again, after a pause; "gone to tell, like a little schoolboy who has been pushed down. Him a soldier; and a coward like that!"

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

Joined to the love of a military life, I had all a boy's ideal notions of bravery and chivalry. By which I mean the frank, natural, outside ideas, full of the show and glitter, and I could not see beneath the surface. I did not know then that it might take more courage to refuse to fight and face the looks and scorn of some people than to go and meet an adversary in the field, after the braggart fas.h.i.+on of some of our French neighbours, whose grand idea of honour is to go out early some morning to meet an enemy about some petty, contemptible quarrel, fence for a few moments till one or the other is p.r.i.c.ked or scratched, and then cry, "_Ah, mon ami! mon ami_!" embrace, and go home to breakfast together.

Very beautiful, no doubt, to a certain cla.s.s of Frenchman, but to a nineteenth-century Englishman--fluff.

I'm afraid that I was very Gallic in my ideas in more ways, so that when next morning I knew that both Brace and Barton had had long interviews separately with Major Lacey, and then met him together in the presence of the doctor, and found that a peace had been patched up, my feelings toward Brace were very much cooled, and I was ready to become fast friends with Barton--at least, I could have been if he had been a different kind of man. As it was, I was thrown a great deal on the society of the doctor and the other officers, while Brace, who rightly interpreted my coolness, held himself aloof at mess.

I found myself near the major that evening, and after a time he began chatting to me in a low tone.

"Let's see; you were in the squabble yesterday," he said. "Great pity.

We don't want any references to head-quarters, Vincent, nor court-martial; and as for their fighting, that sort of thing's as dead as Queen Anne. We've got to keep our fighting for the Queen's enemies, eh?"

"I suppose so, sir."

"Of course you suppose so," he said sharply. "Why, you did not want them to fight, did you?"

"That, it seems to me, would have been the most honourable course, sir,"

I said stiffly.

He turned his head and stared in my face.

"You're a young goose--gander, I mean. No: gosling," he said. "There, I've made them shake hands, after Barton had apologised. I'm not going to have any of that nonsense. And look here, you've got to be friends with Barton too. Why, hang it, boy, a handful of Englishmen here, as we are, in the midst of enemies, can't afford to quarrel among ourselves; we must hold together like--like--well, like Britons. Here, I've something else for you to think about. I've had a messenger over from the nawab. A couple of man-eaters have been doing a lot of mischief a few miles from his place, and he wants some of us to go over very early to-morrow to rid the country of the brutes. Perhaps I shall go too."

The thoughts of such an exciting expedition soon drove away those of the trouble, and upon the major making the announcement, it was at once discussed, while in imagination I pictured the whole scene, ending with the slaughter of the monsters, and their being brought home in triumph upon a pad elephant.

"I thought so," the major whispered to me with a chuckle; "that has put them both in a good temper. I did think of going, but I shall send them."

I went across the square to my bed that night, full of thoughts of the expedition, and not far from my quarters came upon three figures in white, talking eagerly together, but ready to start apart when they caught sight of me, and salaam profoundly. "Ah, Ny Deen," I said.

"Fine night."

"Yes, sahib," he said in his soft low voice. "Does the sahib go to the hunt to-morrow?"

"How did you know there was to be a hunt to-morrow?" I said sharply.

"There are orders to have the buggies ready, sahib, before day."