A MOMENTOUS QUESTION.
The Dowager Lady Farrington, after long years of grief and sorrow,
had chanced at last upon happier days. Her cup of bliss seemed
filled now to overflowing. To be free once more, released from
the hateful asylum, with its painful associations and unbroken
restraint, was in itself a great joy; that Herbert was restored
to her was a yet greater delight, but greatest of all was the
knowledge that her heart had not misled her, and that she had
rightly recognised him as the offspring of her own ill-used and
long-lost boy. Herbert had told her the story as he had had it from
Mrs. Larkins, and the statement--although it lacked formal legal
proof--was more than sufficient to satisfy her ladyship’s mind.
She was, indeed, only too eager to believe it. But had any doubt
remained, it would have been more than removed, so she declared, by
the living Herbert’s extraordinary resemblance to the one that was
dead and gone.
‘As I look at you now, a full-grown man, I seem to see my own poor
son once more,’ cried the old lady, with tears of joy in her eyes.
‘You have his face, his features, all his ways. Even the colour of
your hair and of your eyes is the same. You are a Farrington, every
inch; I know it, I feel it, and everybody else shall own it also,
and at once.’
Nothing would please her but that he should assume, without loss of
time, the Farrington name and arms.
‘No, not yet,’ he pleaded; ‘I am not entitled to them.’
‘Are you not my grandson? Who shall gainsay that?’
‘I know it, and I glory in it; but still the case is not
satisfactorily proved. Besides, if I am to take the name of
Farrington at all, it can only be as the head of the house.’
‘You _are_ Sir Herbert Farrington, at this very moment.’
‘I ought to be, perhaps. But you will admit that to say so
positively at present would be quite premature. It would not be in
very good taste either, and I had much rather let things stay as
they are.’
To this Lady Farrington eventually assented, but not with the best
grace in the world.
‘At any rate, everyone shall know that I recognise and adopt you,’
she said, with all a woman’s pertinacity. ‘You may be called Mr.
Larkins, but you are the son of this house. All I have is yours,
now if you wish it, and absolutely so after I am gone.’
And to prove her words she sought, in spite of his protestations,
to load him with rich gifts. Her ladyship happily had ample funds
at her disposal. Whatever sinister motives may have actuated Sir
Rupert in locking her up, he had behaved with scrupulous honesty
towards her effects. As the appointed administrator, he had full
power over every penny of hers, but he never misappropriated one.
No sooner was Lady Farrington at large, than he rendered an exact
account of his stewardship to Mr. Bellhouse, and the balance
he handed over was very satisfactory indeed. Out of this Lady
Farrington wished to make large settlements at once upon Herbert,
contenting herself with her jointure, which would amply suffice
for all her needs as before. But she attached a condition that he
should retire forthwith from the profession in which he had first
begun to climb, and reside with her, devoting himself also to the
great emprise of fully establishing his claims.
It was a severe struggle for the young man: On the one side,
gratitude to the kind benefactress who had done so much for him
impelled him to accept the offer she so generously made; on the
other, his affection for the service in which he had already
begun to rise urged him as strongly to reject the conditions she
wished to impose. At any rate, he begged for time. There was no
need to decide in a hurry. He had still six months’ leave to run;
something might turn up to support his case--some answers to
the advertisement, some news of the missing marriage lines. Lady
Farrington consented gladly enough. All she asked was that he
should remain always at her side. This time was spent in London,
whither the pair had come immediately after Lady Farrington’s
discharge. Farrington Court was hateful to her, she declared,
and for obvious reasons; it was too near the Hall, too near the
monster who had cast a cloud over the last half-dozen years of her
life; too full of memories she desired now to shut out for ever.
London, with its varied interests and amusements, its busy life,
and stirring ways, was more calculated to suit Lady Farrington’s
temper than a semi-conventual seclusion in a lonely and nearly
empty country place. Mr. Bellhouse had therefore secured a snug
house in a Mayfair street, a thoroughfare noisy with carriages,
gay and lively always with people passing continually to and fro.
Here Miss Ponting had also been installed as lady’s-maid, a very
wise precaution, which served to keep Lady Farrington always quiet.
‘The Boy’ was also one of the household. He had given himself his
discharge the day after the great scene at the asylum, having
done the business entrusted to him, and wishing to avoid any
altercation with the angry and suspicious chief. Hanlon’s position
in Vaughan-street was not at first quite clearly defined; but,
beginning as hall-porter, he lapsed first into general factotum,
and then into Herbert’s body-servant and own particular man. His
appointment was rather a sinecure; beyond cleaning his master’s
boots, to which he gave a lustre which was the envy of every
shoeblack whom Herbert passed in the streets, and pipeclaying his
kid gloves, for want of anything better on which to try his hand,
he had not the slightest idea of the duties of a valet; and Herbert
had as little knowledge of what he should ask Hanlon to do. But the
two talked constantly together of old times; they compared notes
of past experiences, discussed old comrades, cross-questioned each
other, and wound up by expressing their unbounded and unshaken
opinion that there never was and never would be such a corps in any
army in the civilised world as the Duke’s Own. When they came to
this point Herbert’s heart grew heavy, and he sought to change the
conversation. ‘The Boy,’ after a little, saw this.
‘Faith, sir’--he was most religiously respectful nowadays--‘you jib
and shirk whenever we come to talk of the old corps. You’re as bad
as the colonel when a Goojerat day came twice in the same week.
What’s up, sir? You’re not going to turn your back upon the old
corps?’
‘That’s just where it is, Joe. Lady Farrington wants me to retire
and live always with her.’
‘And you that’s only just got your commission, sir, and that’ll
be adjutant when you please, and a staff officer, and a field
officer, and a general officer, and all sorts of officers rolled
into one, before you be got a grey hair. G’long with you, sir!
It’s the wildest, maddest--well, no, that’s not a pleasant word to
use in this house. But you mustn’t do it, sir; you mustn’t do it.
Only this blessed day did I see the captain--Greathed--him that’s
colonel now, you know; and he axes after you; and sez he, is he
pretty stout? sez he; and sez I, he is that, sez I; and I’ll be
coming to see him, sez he; and I hope he will, this very day, sez
I, for it’s a folly to talk to him, sez I; which it is, sez he; I
mean, sez I--but I’m fairly bothered, like Johnny Raw at recruits’
drill.’
There was no doubt that Herbert, although he fought against it,
was chafing much at his present life. If it was to be all like
this he would willingly, in preference, return to ‘sentry-go.’
Lady Farrington’s kindness was great and unceasing of course. She
never tired of expressing her affection, and this in something more
substantial than mere words. He had _carte blanche_ at the best
tailor’s, a park hack, and as much money as he could spend. For
a time all this was pleasant enough. It was his first experience
of London; and no young man in funds is likely to find London
dull. But it is possible to exhaust its amusements after a time,
especially when one has no special pursuits and no hankering after
shady places and not too reputable ways. There was no vice in
Herbert, although he was by no means a milksop or a prig. But he
knew too well what was due to himself to lapse into the inanities
which prove so often irresistible to other young men. It did not
satisfy him to bet, and haunt the theatres, and loaf about the
Burlington Arcade. Other and more rational ways of employing his
time he certainly found in visiting exhibitions, seeing the sights,
and more especially in frequenting the United Service Institution,
where he devoted himself for several hours of every day to the
continued study of the profession he was doomed probably, and
unhappily for him, soon to leave. Often enough too he satisfied his
military cravings by attending the Guard mounting at St. James’s
Palace; he was weak enough sometimes to accompany a volunteer
regiment on its way to the park for drill, keeping step almost
intuitively, and enjoying the whole thing far more than anyone in
the crowd.
But all these did not half suffice to exhaust his native energy,
developed and increased as it had been by his recent active life.
He panted continually for more to do. He grew more and more
hipped and out of joint. He was so lonely too. Under the peculiar
circumstances of his early career it was little likely that he
would have many acquaintances of his own age. He might perhaps hunt
up a few of his old Deadham school friends, but school friends
in after life do not run up against each other much, unless they
have been at Eton, Harrow, or the like, and belong of right to the
great world. He had no club as yet; no military comrades even.
He had so recently passed across the great gulf which divides the
commissioned officer from the rank and file, that he had not been
accepted by the one, although he had left the other altogether
behind.
Nevertheless, he kept his own counsel, and would not for the world
betray to Lady Farrington that he was not perfectly contented
with his lot. It would have been but a poor requital for all her
kindness, he said, and he must put the best face upon the matter.
Even that greater and far keener trial, which was daily growing
closer and closer, when he would have to cut himself finally adrift
from his much-loved profession, he would have faced, as he had met
other really greater trials, like a man.
But he was spared this, mainly through Colonel Greathed, and
indirectly, also, through ‘the Boy.’ The first came without delay
to see Herbert, but it was the latter who had induced him to come.
Naturally, he was introduced to Lady Farrington, who welcomed him
very cordially as one of Herbert’s early patrons and friends.
‘It has been a rough experience for my grandson,’ said the old
lady, who always spoke of Herbert openly as a relation, ‘but it
will, no doubt, have been for his good. At any rate, it is over
now, and Herbert will live like a gentleman for the rest of his
life.’
‘An _officer_ and a gentleman, I trust,’ said Colonel Greathed,
laying some stress on the first word.
‘No, not exactly; he has promised me that he will leave the service
at once.’
‘He will be taken up and shot as a deserter the very next day,’
said the colonel with mock seriousness.
But the old lady took the statement _au pied de la lettre_.
‘You don’t really mean that?’ she asked, nervously.
‘Of course not,’ put in Herbert.
‘I mean that he is, and must always be, a soldier--at heart. It’s
in him, part of his nature, and he can’t put it off like a slipper
or a coat.’
Lady Farrington looked hard at the colonel, as if to grasp his
meaning more thoroughly, then turned her eyes interrogatively upon
Herbert.
‘You have never said a word of this, Herbert, my sweet boy. You
have expressed no regrets, have offered no objections--?’
Herbert hung his head rather, and hesitated to speak.
‘Can it be possible that I have prayed you to take a step which is
distasteful to you? Selfish old wretch that I am!’
‘No, no, grandmother, it is not so. I would do this and far more
to gratify your slightest wish. I will leave the service gladly; I
don’t care to remain in it, I don’t indeed.’
‘Herbert, I cannot quite trust to what you say. I shall ask Colonel
Greathed to tell me the exact truth. Will you leave us alone
together, and come back in half an hour?’
Her ladyship pressed the colonel very closely. She begged him to
speak openly and without reserve. In order to invite confidence,
she detailed the whole of the circumstances connected with
Herbert’s birth and parentage. She enlarged upon his possible
prospects, and the importance of his always being at home to
advance them. What she scarcely referred to, brave old soul! was
the pleasure she would derive from his constant companionship.
‘If you ask my advice, Lady Farrington,’ said Colonel Greathed,
‘I should say leave him to follow his profession. It will be no
hindrance to him in prosecuting his claims; and should these fail,
as I apprehend is just possible, he may nevertheless achieve an
excellent position for himself. His bent is so strongly marked; he
is so promising a young soldier; he has already done so well; he
is, I firmly believe, so keen and eager to continue in his career
that I think it would be unfair to himself, to his friends, to the
country he serves, to baulk him and turn him aside.’
Lady Farrington was much moved. Her eyes were full of tears, and
she could hardly speak.
‘It will pain you, I fear, to part with him. You will miss him
greatly, I have no doubt. Still such partings are only short-lived,
and when they are for a young man’s good--’
‘You are right, Colonel Greathed, and I am half ashamed of myself
for my selfish weakness, but I can hold out no longer.’
She wiped her eyes and sent for Herbert.
‘It is settled, and in the way to please you best, I feel sure. You
shall continue in the calling you have chosen, my brave boy. It
must and shall be so. I have not many years to live, but I pray God
will spare me until I see you righted I hope, but at any rate on
the high road to fame.’
She kissed him tenderly on the forehead, as if to sign the
agreement thus.
‘But you will not leave me just yet,’ she said, almost piteously.
‘He need not go back to the regiment directly, Colonel Greathed?’
‘Certainly not; not till October, when we embark for Gibraltar
again. I shall want him to take the adjutancy then.’