CHAPTER II. THE COLONEL MEETS THE SQUIRE
CHAPTER III. THE TALE OF SIR JAMES DE LA MOLLE
CHAPTER IV. THE END OF THE TALE
CHAPTER V. THE SQUIRE EXPLAINS THE POSITION
CHAPTER VI. LAWYER QUEST
CHAPTER VII. EDWARD COSSEY, ESQUIRE
CHAPTER VIII. MR. QUEST’S WIFE
CHAPTER IX. THE SHADOW OF RUIN
CHAPTER X. THE TENNIS PARTY
CHAPTER XI. IDA’S BARGAIN
CHAPTER XII. GEORGE PROPHESIES
CHAPTER XIII. ABOUT ART
CHAPTER XIV. THE TIGER SHOWS HER CLAWS
CHAPTER XV. THE HAPPY DAYS
CHAPTER XVI. THE HOUSE WITH THE RED PILLARS
CHAPTER XVII. THE TIGRESS IN HER DEN
CHAPTER XVIII. “WHAT SOME HAVE FOUND SO SWEET”
CHAPTER XIX. IN PAWN
CHAPTER XX. “GOOD-BYE TO YOU, EDWARD”
CHAPTER XXI. THE COLONEL GOES OUT SHOOTING
CHAPTER XXII. THE END OF THE MATCH
CHAPTER XXIII. THE BLOW FALLS
CHAPTER XXIV. “GOOD-BYE, MY DEAR, GOOD-BYE!”
CHAPTER XXV. THE SQUIRE GIVES HIS CONSENT
CHAPTER XXVI. BELLE PAYS A VISIT
CHAPTER XXVII. MR. QUEST HAS HIS INNINGS
CHAPTER XXVIII. HOW GEORGE TREATED JOHNNIE
CHAPTER XXIX. EDWARD COSSEY MEETS WITH AN ACCIDENT
CHAPTER XXX. HAROLD TAKES THE NEWS
CHAPTER XXXI. IDA RECANTS
CHAPTER XXXII. GEORGE PROPHESIES AGAIN
CHAPTER XXXIII. THE SQUIRE SPEAKS HIS MIND
CHAPTER XXXIV. GEORGE’S DIPLOMATIC ERRAND
CHAPTER XXXV. THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES
CHAPTER XXXVI. HOW THE GAME ENDED
CHAPTER XXXVII. SISTER AGNES
CHAPTER XXXVIII. COLONEL QUARITCH EXPRESSES HIS VIEWS
CHAPTER XXXIX. THE COLONEL GOES TO SLEEP
CHAPTER XL. BUT NOT TO BED
CHAPTER XLI. HOW THE NIGHT WENT
CHAPTER XLII. IDA GOES TO MEET HER FATE
CHAPTER XLIII. GEORGE IS SEEN TO LAUGH
CHAPTER XLIV. CHRISTMAS CHIMES
CONCLUSION
I DEDICATE
THIS TALE OF COUNTRY LIFE
TO
MY FRIEND AND FELLOW-SPORTSMAN,
CHARLES J. LONGMAN
PREPARER’S NOTE
This text was prepared from an 1889 edition published by Longmans,
Green and Co., printed by Kelly and Co., Gate Street, Lincoln’s Inn
Fields, W.C.; and Middle Mill, Kingston-on-Thames.
COLONEL QUARITCH, V.C.
A TALE OF COUNTRY LIFE
CHAPTER I.
HAROLD QUARITCH MEDITATES
There are things and there are faces which, when felt or seen for the
first time, stamp themselves upon the mind like a sun image on a
sensitized plate and there remain unalterably fixed. To take the
instance of a face—we may never see it again, or it may become the
companion of our life, but there the picture is just as we _first_ knew
it, the same smile or frown, the same look, unvarying and unvariable,
reminding us in the midst of change of the indestructible nature of
every experience, act, and aspect of our days. For that which has been,
is, since the past knows no corruption, but lives eternally in its
frozen and completed self.
These are somewhat large thoughts to be born of a small matter, but
they rose up spontaneously in the mind of a soldierly-looking man who,
on the particular evening when this history opens, was leaning over a
gate in an Eastern county lane, staring vacantly at a field of ripe
corn.
He was a peculiar and rather battered looking individual, apparently
over forty years of age, and yet bearing upon him that unmistakable
stamp of dignity and self-respect which, if it does not exclusively
belong to, is still one of the distinguishing attributes of the English
gentleman. In face he was ugly, no other word can express it. Here were
not the long mustachios, the almond eyes, the aristocratic air of the
Colonel of fiction—for our dreamer was a Colonel. These were—alas! that
the truth should be so plain—represented by somewhat scrubby
sandy-coloured whiskers, small but kindly blue eyes, a low broad
forehead, with a deep line running across it from side to side,
something like that to be seen upon the busts of Julius Caesar, and a
long thin nose. One good feature, however, he did possess, a mouth of
such sweetness and beauty that set, as it was, above a very square and
manly-looking chin, it had the air of being ludicrously out of place.
“Umph,” said his old aunt, Mrs. Massey (who had just died and left him
what she possessed), on the occasion of her first introduction to him
five-and-thirty years before, “Umph! Nature meant to make a pretty girl
of you, and changed her mind after she had finished the mouth. Well,
never mind, better be a plain man than a pretty woman. There, go along,
boy! I like your ugly face.”
Nor was the old lady peculiar in this respect, for plain as the
countenance of Colonel Harold Quaritch undoubtedly was, people found
something very taking about it, when once they became accustomed to its
rugged air and stern regulated expression. What that something was it
would be hard to define, but perhaps the nearest approach to the truth
would be to describe it as a light of purity which, notwithstanding the
popular idea to the contrary, is quite as often to be found upon the
faces of men as upon those of women. Any person of discernment looking
on Colonel Quaritch must have felt that he was in the presence of a
good man—not a prig or a milksop, but a man who had attained by virtue
of thought and struggle that had left their marks upon him, a man whom
it would not be well to tamper with, one to be respected by all, and
feared of evildoers. Men felt this, and he was popular among those who
knew him in his service, though not in any hail-fellow-well-met kind of
way. But among women he was not popular. As a rule they both feared and
disliked him. His presence jarred upon the frivolity of the lighter
members of their sex, who dimly realised that his nature was
antagonistic, and the more solid ones could not understand him. Perhaps
this was the reason why Colonel Quaritch had never married, had never
even had a love affair since he was five-and-twenty.
And yet it was of a woman that he was thinking as he leant over the
gate, and looked at the field of yellowing corn, undulating like a
golden sea beneath the pressure of the wind.
Colonel Quaritch had twice before been at Honham, once ten, and once
four years ago. Now he was come to abide there for good. His old aunt,
Mrs. Massey, had owned a place in the village—a very small place—called
Honham Cottage, or Molehill, and on those two occasions he visited her.
Mrs. Massey was dead and buried. She had left him the property, and
with some reluctance, he had given up his profession, in which he saw
no further prospects, and come to live upon it. This was his first
evening in the place, for he had arrived by the last train on the
previous night. All day he had been busy trying to get the house a
little straight, and now, thoroughly tired, he was refreshing himself
by leaning over a gate. It is, though a great many people will not
believe it, one of the most delightful and certainly one of the
cheapest refreshments in the world.
And then it was, as he leant over the gate, that the image of a woman’s
face rose before his mind as it had continually risen during the last
five years. Five years had gone since he saw it, and those five years
he spent in India and Egypt, that is with the exception of six months
which he passed in hospital—the upshot of an Arab spear thrust in the
thigh.
It had risen before him in all sorts of places and at all sorts of
times; in his sleep, in his waking moments, at mess, out shooting, and
even once in the hot rush of battle. He remembered it well—it was at El
Teb. It happened that stern necessity forced him to shoot a man with
his pistol. The bullet cut through his enemy, and with a few
convulsions he died. He watched him die, he could not help doing so,
there was some fascination in following the act of his own hand to its
dreadful conclusion, and indeed conclusion and commencement were very
near together. The terror of the sight, the terror of what in defence
of his own life he was forced to do, revolted him even in the heat of
the fight, and even then, over that ghastly and distorted face, another
face spread itself like a mask, blotting it out from view—that woman’s
face. And now again it re-arose, inspiring him with the rather
recondite reflections as to the immutability of things and impressions
with which this domestic record opens.
Five years is a good stretch in a man’s journey through the world. Many
things happen to us in that time. If a thoughtful person were to set to
work to record all the impressions which impinge upon his mind during
that period, he would fill a library with volumes, the mere tale of its
events would furnish a shelf. And yet how small they are to look back
upon. It seemed but the other day that he was leaning over this very
gate, and had turned to see a young girl dressed in black, who, with a
spray of honeysuckle thrust in her girdle, and carrying a stick in her
hand, was walking leisurely down the lane.
There was something about the girl’s air that had struck him while she
was yet a long way off—a dignity, a grace, and a set of the shoulders.
Then as she came nearer he saw the soft dark eyes and the waving brown
hair that contrasted so strangely and effectively with the pale and
striking features. It was not a beautiful face, for the mouth was too
large, and the nose was not as straight as it might have been, but
there was a power about the broad brow, and a force and solid nobility
stamped upon the features which had impressed him strangely. Just as
she came opposite to where he was standing, a gust of wind, for there
was a stiff breeze, blew the lady’s hat off, taking it over the hedge,
and he, as in duty bound, scrambled into the field and fetched it for
her, and she had thanked him with a quick smile and a lighting up of
the brown eyes, and then passed on with a bow.
Yes, with a little bow she had passed on, and he watched her walking
down the long level drift, till her image melted into the stormy sunset
light, and was gone. When he returned to the cottage he had described
her to his old aunt, and asked who she might be, to learn that she was
Ida de la Molle (which sounded like a name out of a novel), the only
daughter of the old squire who lived at Honham Castle. Next day he had
left for India, and saw Miss de la Molle no more.
And now he wondered what had become of her. Probably she was married;
so striking a person would be almost sure to attract the notice of men.
And after all what could it matter to him? He was not a marrying man,
and women as a class had little attraction for him; indeed he disliked
them. It has been said that he had never married, and never even had a
love affair since he was five-and-twenty. But though he was not
married, he once—before he was five-and-twenty—very nearly took that
step. It was twenty years ago now, and nobody quite knew the history,
for in twenty years many things are fortunately forgotten. But there
was a history, and a scandal, and the marriage was broken off almost on
the day it should have taken place. And after that it leaked out in the
neighbourhood that the young lady, who by the way was a considerable
heiress, had gone off her head, presumably with grief, and been
confined in an asylum, where she was believed still to remain.
Perhaps it was the thought of this one woman’s face, the woman he had
once seen walking down the drift, her figure limned out against the
stormy sky, that led him to think of the other face, the face hidden in
the madhouse. At any rate, with a sigh, or rather a groan, he swung
himself round from the gate and began to walk homeward at a brisk pace.
The drift that he was following is known as the mile drift, and had in
ancient times formed the approach to the gates of Honham Castle, the
seat of the ancient and honourable family of de la Molle (sometimes
written “Delamol” in history and old writings). Honham Castle was now
nothing but a ruin, with a manor house built out of the wreck on one
side of its square, and the broad way that led to it from the high road
which ran from Boisingham,[*] the local country town, was a drift or
grass lane.
[*] Said to have been so named after the Boissey family, whose heiress
a de la Molle married in the fourteenth century. As, however, the town
of Boisingham is mentioned by one of the old chroniclers, this does not
seem very probable. No doubt the family took their name from the town
or hamlet, not the town from the family.
Colonel Quaritch followed this drift till he came to the high road, and
then turned. A few minutes’ walk brought him to a drive opening out of
the main road on the left as he faced towards Boisingham. This drive,
which was some three hundred yards long, led up a rather sharp slope to
his own place, Honham Cottage, or Molehill, as the villagers called it,
a title calculated to give a keen impression of a neat spick and span
red brick villa with a slate roof. In fact, however, it was nothing of
the sort, being a building of the fifteenth century, as a glance at its
massive flint walls was sufficient to show. In ancient times there had
been a large Abbey at Boisingham, two miles away, which, the records
tell, suffered terribly from an outbreak of the plague in the fifteenth
century. After this the monks obtained ten acres of land, known as
Molehill, by grant from the de la Molle of the day, and so named either
on account of their resemblance to a molehill (of which more presently)
or after the family. On this elevated spot, which was supposed to be
peculiarly healthy, they built the little house now called Honham
Cottage, whereto to fly when next the plague should visit them.
And as they built it, so, with some slight additions, it had remained
to this day, for in those ages men did not skimp their flint, and oak,
and mortar. It was a beautiful little spot, situated upon the flat top
of a swelling hill, which comprised the ten acres of grazing ground
originally granted, and was, strange to say, still the most
magnificently-timbered piece of ground in the country side. For on the
ten acres of grass land there stood over fifty great oaks, some of them
pollards of the most enormous antiquity, and others which had, no
doubt, originally grown very close together, fine upstanding trees with
a wonderful length and girth of bole. This place, Colonel Quaritch’s
aunt, old Mrs. Massey, had bought nearly thirty years before when she
became a widow, and now, together with a modest income of two hundred a
year, it had passed to him under her will.
Shaking himself clear of his sad thoughts, Harold Quaritch turned round
at his own front door to contemplate the scene. The long,
single-storied house stood, it has been said, at the top of the rising
land, and to the south and west and east commanded as beautiful a view
as is to be seen in the county. There, a mile or so away to the south,
situated in the midst of grassy grazing grounds, and flanked on either
side by still perfect towers, frowned the massive gateway of the old
Norman castle. Then, to the west, almost at the foot of Molehill, the
ground broke away in a deep bank clothed with timber, which led the eye
down by slow descents into the beautiful valley of the Ell. Here the
silver river wound its gentle way through lush and poplar-bordered
marshes, where the cattle stand knee-deep in flowers; past quaint
wooden mill-houses, through Boisingham Old Common, windy looking even
now, and brightened here and there with a dash of golden gorse, till it
was lost beneath the picturesque cluster of red-tiled roofs that marked
the ancient town. Look which way he would, the view was lovely, and
equal to any to be found in the Eastern counties, where the scenery is
fine enough in its own way, whatever people may choose to say to the
contrary, whose imaginations are so weak that they require a mountain
and a torrent to excite them into activity.
Behind the house to the north there was no view, and for a good reason,
for here in the very middle of the back garden rose a mound of large
size and curious shape, which completely shut out the landscape. What
this mound, which may perhaps have covered half an acre of ground, was,
nobody had any idea. Some learned folk write it down a Saxon tumulus, a
presumption to which its ancient name, “Dead Man’s Mount,” seemed to
give colour. Other folk, however, yet more learned, declared it to be
an ancient British dwelling, and pointed triumphantly to a hollow at
the top, wherein the ancient Britishers were supposed to have moved,
lived, and had their being—which must, urged the opposing party, have
been a very damp one. Thereon the late Mrs. Massey, who was a British
dwellingite, proceeded to show with much triumph _how_ they had lived
in the hole by building a huge mushroom-shaped roof over it, and
thereby turning it into a summer-house, which, owing to unexpected
difficulties in the construction of the roof, cost a great deal of
money. But as the roof was slated, and as it was found necessary to
pave the hollow with tiles and cut surface drains in it, the result did
not clearly prove its use as a dwelling place before the Roman
conquest. Nor did it make a very good summer house. Indeed it now
served as a store place for the gardener’s tools and for rubbish
generally.