Only a clod
stronger in the perceptive than in the reflective organs; his eyes were
of a clear grey, darkened by the shadow of thick black lashes. He was a
handsome soldier; he would have made a handsome gladiator in the old
Roman days; a noble-looking brigand, in the days when brigands were
chivalrous; a dashing highwayman, in the age when Claude Duval rode
gaily to his death on Tyburn tree; a glorious sporting farmer down in
Leicestershire to-day; but no power upon this earth could have
transformed him into an elegant West-end lounger, an accomplished
dawdler in fashionable drawing-rooms, or a “gentleman” in the modern
acceptation of the word.
He went out into the garden now, to smoke his pipe of bird’s-eye and
talk to the convict gardeners, who brightened at his approach, and
deliberately planted themselves in a convenient position upon their
spades, in order to converse with him. I am sorry to say that he was as
much at home in their society as if they had been the most estimable of
mankind, and that he encouraged them to talk freely of their burglarious
experiences in the Old World. Was there not a smack of brigandage and
adventure in these experiences, and even a dash of chivalry, according
to the two men’s own showing? for they told stories of encounters in
which they shone out quite with heroic lustre from their rooted
objection to cut an elderly lady’s throat, and their gallant bearing
towards a high-minded young damsel who had led them from room to room in
her father’s mansion, and had pointed with her own fair hands to the
whereabouts of the family valuables. Francis Tredethlyn sat upon the
trunk of a fallen acacia, watching the lazy clouds in the still evening
sky, and smoking his pipe, long after the two convicts had struck work
and retired to their own quarters. He sat smoking and musing; thinking,
as I suppose a man so banished must think, of that other far-away world
which he had left behind him; and which it seemed to him sometimes, in
such still moments as these, that he should never see again.
“So far away, so very far away!” he mused. “I wonder how the little
village street upon the hill is looking now? It’s winter time now there,
or getting towards winter time anyhow. I can fancy it of an evening,
with the lights twinkling in the low shop windows, the big castle-gate
frowning down upon the poor little street; the churchyard, where Susy
and I have played, all dark and lonesome in the winter night; and Susy
herself--pretty little dark-eyed Susy--sitting by the hearth in the big
kitchen at Tredethlyn, stitch, stitch, stitch, while the old man nods
and snores over his newspaper. Poor little Susy, what a hard life it is
for her; and the old man as rich as that king of somewhere--Crœsus,
don’t they call him?--if his neighbours are to be believed. Poor little
Susy! is she fond of me, I wonder? and will she be pleased to marry me,
if ever I’m able to go back, and say, ‘Susy, the best I could do, after
running away and ’listing, was to save up money to buy my discharge, so
that I might come home again to claim the old promise--for better for
worse, for richer or poorer’? We couldn’t well be poorer than we should
be just at first; for, of course, the old chap would turn rusty, and cut
Susy off with a shilling; but who cares for that?” thought Francis
Tredethlyn, snapping his fingers in the independence of his spirit. “If
Susy loves me, and I love Susy, and we’re both young and strong and
industrious, what’s to prevent us getting on in the world, without
anybody’s money to help us?”
The soldier smoked another pipe in a dreamy reverie, in which his
thoughts still hovered about one familiar spot in his native country--a
long, low, stone-built farmhouse, standing alone upon a broad plateau of
bare moorland, very dreary of aspect in winter,--a dismal,
ghastly-looking homestead, in which the ornamental had been sacrificed
to the useful,--a gaunt, naked-looking dwelling-place, upon whose
decoration or improvement a ten-pound note had not been expended within
the memory of man,--a house which had gone down through three
generations of close-fisted, cross-grained owners, and which had grown
uglier and drearier under the rule of each generation.
This was the habitation which stood as clearly out against the vague
background of Francis Tredethlyn’s dreams as if it had been palpably
present upon the rising ground on the other side of the bay. This was
the house; and in the low narrow doorway, fronting the desolate expanse
of stunted brown grass, the soldier saw the slender figure of a girl--a
girl with dark, gentle eyes, and a quaker-like dress of coarse brown
stuff,--a girl who stood with her hand shading her eyes, looking at the
distant figure of an old man plodding homeward in the winter twilight.
He had so often seen her thus, that it was only natural the picture of
her should present itself to his mind to-night, as his thoughts wandered
homeward. He was so far away from this girl and the familiar place in
which she lived, that it seemed almost impossible to him that he could
ever see her again, or tread the well-known pathways along which he had
so often walked by her side. He thought of her almost as the dead may
think of the living--if they do think of us.
“Poor little Susy! I wonder whether she loved me--whether she loves me
still? I wasn’t like some of your lovers,--I wasn’t one of your
desperate fellows. I had no hot fits, or cold fits, or jealous fits, or
such like, and there are some folks that might say I was never in love
at all. But I was very fond of Susy--poor little tender-hearted Susy! I
used to think of her, somehow, as if she had been my little sister. I
think of her like that now.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER III.
TIDINGS OF HOME.
It was late when Mr. Lowther came home from his friend the magistrate’s.
The faint flush that lighted up his face, and the unwonted lustre of his
eyes, bore testimony to the merits of Mr. Corbett’s tawny port. All
Sandemann’s choicest vintages would not have tempted Harcourt Lowther to
sit listening to a prosy old magistrate’s civil-service experiences, in
Europe; but on this side of the world a bottle of good wine and a
tolerably civilised companion were not entirely to be despised. The
ensign was in a very good temper when he came into the little parlour,
where a swinging lamp burned brightly, and where a tobacco-jar, a
meerschaum, a case-bottle of Schiedam, a tumbler, and a jug of water,
were set upon the table ready for the master of the domain. Mr. Lowther
was in excellent temper, and inclined to be especially civil to his
valet.
“No Schiedam to-night, Tredethlyn,” he said, throwing himself into the
wicker easy-chair, and stretching his feet upon a smaller chair that
stood opposite to him; “I’ve had a little too much of that old fellow’s
port. Devilish good stuff it is too, if it hadn’t a tendency to spoil a
man’s complexion, and concentrate itself in his nose. I’ll take a pipe,
though. Just give me a light, will you, Tredethlyn?”
He sat in a lazy attitude, with his head thrown back against the rail of
the chair, and daintily arranged the stray shreds of tobacco in the bowl
of his pipe with the delicate tip of his little finger; while the
private lighted a long strip of folded paper and handed it to his
master.
“Oh, by the bye,” muttered Mr. Lowther, speaking with his mouth shut
upon the amber mouthpiece of his pipe, “I’ve got some news for you,
Tredethlyn. Just put your hand in my coat-pocket, and take out the paper
you’ll find there. Goodness knows what it means,--a legacy of fifty
pounds or so, I suppose. Anyhow, you’re a lucky devil. I should be glad
enough to get even such a windfall as that; but I never hear of anything
to my advantage.”
Francis Tredethlyn had taken the paper from his master’s pocket by this
time; it was an old copy of the “Times;” and he presented it to the
ensign, but the other pushed it away impatiently.
“_I_ don’t want it,” he said; “I think I read every line of it while old
Corbett was snoring after dinner. Look at the third advertisement in the
second column of the Supplement.”
The soldier did as he was directed, and read the advertisement aloud
very slowly and in a tone of unmitigated wonder.
“Francis Tredethlyn, nephew of the late Oliver Tredethlyn, of Tredethlyn
Grange, near Landresdale, Cornwall. If the above-mentioned will apply to
Messrs. Krusdale and Scardon, solicitors, 29, Verulam Buildings, Gray’s
Inn, he will hear of something to his advantage.”
“The late Oliver Tredethlyn!” cried Francis, staring blankly at the
paper; “my uncle’s dead, then!”
“Was he alive when you left England?” asked the ensign.
“He was alive when I left Cornwall. Dead! my uncle Oliver?” the young
man said, in a dreamy voice; “and I pictured him to-night in my fancy,
plodding home from the outlying lands, as hale and stern and sturdy as
ever. Dead! and he may have been dead ever so long, for all this tells
me,” added Francis Tredethlyn, pointing to the advertisement.
“You were uncommonly fond of your uncle, I suppose, from the way you
talk of him,” Mr. Lowther remarked, carelessly. He was in good humour
to-night, and ready to talk about anything,--inclined to take almost an
interest in the affairs of another man, and that man his valet!
“Fond of him!” exclaimed Francis Tredethlyn, “fond of my uncle Oliver! I
don’t think the creature ever lived that was fond of him, or whose love
he’d have cared to have. He liked folks to obey him, and cut things as
close as he wanted ’em cut; but beyond that, he didn’t care what they
thought or what they did. I suppose he did love his daughter though,
after a fashion, but it was a very hard fashion. No, sir, I wasn’t
particularly fond of my uncle Oliver Tredethlyn, but I’m struck all of a
heap by the news of his death coming upon me so sudden; and I’m thinking
of the effect that it will have on my cousin Susy,--she’s all alone in
the world now,--poor little Susy!”
The ensign looked up quickly. “Susy!” he said, “who the deuce is your
cousin Susy?”
“She’s my uncle Oliver’s only daughter, sir; his only child, too, for
the matter of that. We were engaged to be married, sir; but things went
wrong with me at home, and I ran away and enlisted.”
“Ah! How long ago did all that happen?”
“Nearly five years, sir.”
“And you’ve kept up some sort of a correspondence with your cousin since
then, I suppose?”
“Not I, sir; her father wasn’t the man to let her write a letter that
would cost a lump of money for postage, or to write any letter to such a
scamp as me, either; and poor Susy was too close watched, and too
obedient into the bargain, to write without his leave. _I’ve_ written to
her now and then, but I’ve had no news from home since the day I left
it, except this that you’ve brought me to-night.”
“And I suppose your uncle has left you a legacy?”
“I suppose so, sir; it isn’t likely to be much anyhow, for I never was
any great favourite of his.”
“You’d better write to these lawyers, though. There’s a mail to-morrow;
bring out your desk, and write at once.”
“Here, sir?”
“Yes, here.”
Francis Tredethlyn hesitated for a moment, but seeing that his master
was resolute, he brought a clumsy old-fashioned mahogany desk from his
chamber at the back of the cottage, and seated himself at a corner of
the table with the desk before him. He had placed himself at a very
respectful distance from Mr. Harcourt Lowther; but that gentleman,
having finished his pipe, got up, and began to walk slowly up and down
the room, while his valet squared his elbows and commenced a laborious
inscription of his address at the top of the page.