Transcriber's note: Unusual and inconsistent spelling is as printed.
[Illustration: Captain Gump was silent for several seconds;
Mrs. Evendale, who was almost trembling with nervousness,
expected an outburst of passion, perhaps an insulting retort.]
THE
HARTLEY BROTHERS
OR
THE KNIGHTS OF SAINT JOHN
BY
A. L. O. E.
AUTHORESS OF "THE WHITE BEAR'S DEN," "NED FRANKS,"
"THE CLAREMONT TALES,"
ETC.
London.
GALL AND INGLIS, 25 PATERNOSTER SQUARE;
AND EDINBURGH
PRINTED
AND BOUND BY
GALL AND INGLIS
LUTTON PLACE
EDINBURGH
Contents.
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER.
I. STARTING FOR INDIA
II. CONTRASTS
III. BALKING THE BEAR
IV. A BATTLE AND ITS RESULT
V. TO THE RESCUE!
VI. AN ATTEMPT TO SERVE
VII. MALTA AND ITS KNIGHTS
VIII. PRINCESS AND SUITE
IX. CAUGHT
X. THE DESERT RIDE
XI. A JOURNEY ENDED
XII. THE BIVOUAC
XIII. WEARY AND THIRSTY
XIV. A NIGHT ATTACK
XV. AN OFFER
XVI. A DARK DEED
XVII. ON AGAIN
XVIII. DISCLOSURES
XIX. A BITTER CUP
XX. DESERT DANGERS
XXI. ONLY ONE LAMB
XXII. SLAVERY
XXIII. A PROMISE
XXIV. MEETINGS AND GREETINGS
XXV. CONCLUSION
[Illustration]
PREFACE.
To those who have happened to read my two former volumes, "Pictures of
St. Paul," and "Pictures of St. Peter in an English Home," the Hartley
Brothers will already be familiar, for this little work is a sequel to
their story. There would have been more symmetry in my arrangement,
could I have given the third book the title of "Pictures of St. John,"
but this could not be accomplished. We know too little of the career
of "The Apostle of Love" to treat his history in the same way as the
histories of "The Apostle of Faith" and "The Apostle of Hope;" while
St. Peter and St. John are so often mentioned together in the Gospels,
that much going over ground already trodden would have been rendered
inevitable. All that the writer has been able to do is to try to
represent the spirit of the disciple whom Jesus loved, as exhibited in
those who in modern days tread in his steps. As the Bible itself may
be said never to grow old, so the characters of those of whom we read
in the Bible are reproduced, generation after generation, in such as
are followers of the early Christians. We look on such plants in our
gardens now as Adam himself may have tended; in like manner the fruits
of the Spirit never die out, they reappear in every age; love, joy,
peace are perennial wherever true Christianity exists.
A.L.O.E. may once more remind her readers that she is a Missionary,
only employing her pen as supplementary work to humble labours amongst
the natives of India, to help on that work by supplying her purse. If
writing interferes with evangelisation, the pen ought at once to be
laid aside; but practically it does not interfere: it is a handmaid,
and not a rival.
And so A.L.O.E. sends forth this book, this child of her old age, to do
such humble work as the Lord may permit it to do, looking to Him for
the blessing without which all labour is vain.
[Illustration]
A NEW YEAR'S GIFT
FROM A. L. O. E.
OFTEN, at the festive season, young people want some new amusement
to give pleasant occupation in wet days, and during dark evenings.
A.L.O.E. has written this little poem to supply such a want; if well
learned by heart, and clearly recited, it may make children's parties
go off more pleasantly, and, it is hoped, more profitably also.
A.L.O.E.'s dear young readers—and perhaps families of old readers
also—may welcome this small New Year's Gift, sent across the wide sea
from a Missionary's home in India.
[Illustration]
(The Old Year comes to bid good-bye to certain, young people.)
OLD YEAR.
When first, my young friends, I came to this place,
('Twas almost a twelvemonth ago),
With joy you beheld my merry young face,
Though my beard is now white as the snow.
I gave each a book, on its pages to trace
A journal, as days onward flow;
Now what's in it writ,
Let me look upon it,
For I very much want to know.
CHORUS OF YOUNG PEOPLE.
Oh! What's in it writ,
Let us look upon it,
We all very much want to know.
FIRST BOY.
In my book there's a great deal of pleasure and fun,
Ninety-nine games I played, yes, and three matches won!
A ball came and hit me right in the eye,
I was made for three days in darkness to lie,
But I jumped up again, for I "never say die!"
I lost one whole day in a troublesome thicket;
There's little put down but of racing and cricket!
OLD YEAR.
Oh! Look at your pages, look at them, do!
The idle fish-insect has nibbled them through.
Let play have its place—
The game and the race,
But duty comes first in a noble boy's case.
SECOND BOY.
My book tells a great deal of lessons and work,
For I go at my reading and sums—like a Turk,
Make nothing of Grammar, noun, pronoun, or verb;
My hand-writing, too, you will please to observe.
Oh! Was I not proud when I got the first prize,
Overcoming a chap I dislike and despise!
My greatest delight was to see his surprise,
For he counted himself so exceedingly wise.
He'll never beat me, if for ever he tries!
OLD YEAR.
Oh! Quick turn aside,
Such pages to hide,
They are blotted all o'er with ill-nature and pride!
SICK CHILD.
I've been so long ill, I've had little to write,
For months it was pain, both by day and by night;
I tried to be patient, indeed I did try
Not to give so much trouble, and never to cry,
But sometimes a tear came, and sometimes a sigh!
Oh! How much I owe to my dear Mother's care,
Her smiles and her soothing, her sweet words of prayer!
I'm sure, but for her, I'd have died in my pain,
But I'm getting so well and so happy again!
I think you will find,
On each page, underlined,
That God is so good, and my Mother so kind!
OLD YEAR.
And sickness, we find,
Left a blessing behind,
The rose-leaves of patience, a spirit resigned.
A GIRL.
My journal looked much like a milliner's bill,
With lace and with lappets, with flounce and with frill,
With choosing and trying,
And fitting and buying,
To fashions applying,
The looking-glass eyeing,
'Twas all rather frivolous, there's no denying.
A spark fell on my book,
Oh! Look at it, look!
'Tis almost as black as a raven or rook!
ALL.
Oh! Look at it, look!
'Tis a cinder-like book,
There's nothing to show for the time which it took!
A LAD.
I scarcely remember a word that I wrote;
There was nothing to praise, and little to note;
Three hundred and sixty-five days went so fast,
I scarce could believe when we came to the last.
But many a blunder and fault there has been.
OLD YEAR.
I cannot find one, they are blotted out clean.
I see against sin you have manfully striven,
Each fault was mourned over, confessed and forgiven,
Then effaced by the blood-purchased mercy of Heaven.
But other things stay, quite forgotten by you,
In bright golden letters they flash on the view;
I think that the hand of some kind angel wrote
The actions you thought were too trifling to note.
Let others now read them, as they will appear
In the glorious Day, when the whole world shall hear.
FIRST BOY READS—
Three hundred times written—"took care of young brother."
SECOND BOY READS—
And hundreds of times—"went on errands for Mother."
GIRL READS—
Dropped last shilling (unseen) in Miss'nary box.
(Alas! All mine went in trimming my frocks!)
SICK CHILD.
Oft, when I was ill, he watched by my side,
I ate all the fruit his wee garden supplied,—
FIRST BOY.
My time spent in play, in hard work he employed.
SECOND BOY.
Though he won no prize, my success he enjoyed.
GIRL.
All those gold dots stand for praises and prayer,—
My book is but ashes—and his is so fair!
SICK CHILD.
I think even angels with pleasure will look
On the bright shining lines in that beautiful book!
OLD YEAR.
O children! My moments are passing away,
But hear the last words which the Old Year can say.
You will soon a new book, on a new year, begin,
Pray God to preserve it from records of sin!
Oh! Ask that His grace may your spirits pervade,
Whether working or playing, in sunshine or shade,
That the Lord and His angels with pleasure may look
On the bright shining lines in each beautiful book!
THE
HARTLEY BROTHERS;
OR,
THE KNIGHTS OF SAINT JOHN.
CHAPTER I.
STARTING FOR INDIA.
"FAREWELL Clarence! Ida—good-bye! God's blessing rest on those whom we
leave behind us!"
There is the last grasp of the hand—the last wistful gaze on familiar
faces—and the bridge is raised, the connecting link with the shore
broken. The little crowd assembled on the platform give a faint cheer,
and handkerchiefs are waved, as the vessel, starting on her long voyage
to India, slowly moves forward through the mass of craft of various
kinds that half block up the River Thames. The brown water curdles into
cream-like foam under the paddle-wheels, and the smoke from the funnel
streams backwards.
Each one on board is taking a last look of old London with her dingy
Tower, and the friends lining the shore, who may never be seen again.
Now faces can be distinguished no more; the "Alligator" increases her
speed as her course is more clear; some of the passengers dive down
below into their respective cabins, for a drizzling rain is falling,
and soon Loudon herself can no more be viewed behind the forest of
masts, swathed in her dun mantle of smoky mist.
Two young men keep their place on the deck, leaning against the
bulwarks, unconscious of dripping rain. The taller and finer looking
of the two, wrapt in a cloak, might at first sight be recognised as
a clergyman, though Harold Hartley took orders but a few months ago.
The younger is little more than a lad, numbering, perhaps, sixteen
or seventeen summers, with broad shoulders, a form made more for
activity than grace, a sunburnt face, and a rough head of hair under
his wide-awake; his locks are brown in colour with a little dash of
auburn red, which also tints the thick eyebrows which overhang bright
intelligent eyes.
"So, Robin, we are fairly started for India!" said Harold, laying his
hand on his brother's arm. "We have the meeting with our father to look
forward to now; all the partings are over."
"The one bitter parting was over six months ago," observed Robin
with feeling, "when we stood by her deathbed, and received her last
blessing. Our strongest tie to old England is the grave of our more
than mother; though," added the youth, "I never think of her as in the
grave." Robin raised his eyes for a moment towards a bit of clear blue
in the cloudy sky, which looked to him like a smile from above.
"You and I must not give way to sad thoughts," observed Harold Hartley.
"They are not sad thoughts now," said Robin, "I consider such memories
to be like a treasure in a golden casket, to be carried about with us
wherever we go; or rather—they are pictures in an album, and when we
are far-away in the East, how often shall we open the clasp, and turn
over the leaves! There is dear old William Lodge, where we spent such
jolly days; the little arbour in the shrubbery—the cote where I kept my
pigeons, the parlour where we met for our evening readings, the chair
where she—" Robin paused abruptly, and pressed his lips together to
keep in a sigh.
"It is a great satisfaction to me," observed Harold, "that she who
adopted us, and loved us as her own sons, so fully approved of our
giving ourselves to mission work in India."
"The thought of it made Mother so happy!" said Robin, with animation.
"Perhaps our going makes her all the happier now, for Mother may be
watching us still. I do not like to think how much trouble I gave her,
little unmanageable cub that I was!"
"You never gave her a tithe of the trouble that I did," remarked Harold
regretfully; "but Mother had the patience of a saint. If I ever do
anything for my Master in the mission field, I owe it—under grace—to
her."
The rain after a while ceased, and passengers emerged from below to
have a sight of Greenwich, as Elizabeth's stately old palace was
passed. Suddenly the brothers were surprised by a shrill, familiar
voice behind them exclaiming, "Dear me! Can it be! Yes, Harold and
Robin Hartley! Though almost grown out of knowledge!"
"Miss Petty!" cried both the brothers at once, turning round to greet
an old acquaintance whom they had not seen for seven long years, yet
whom they would have recognised by her peculiarities had the seven been
numbered thrice.
There stood the small, thin form, a little more shrivelled and bent,
there was the familiar face, a good deal more wrinkled, but otherwise
little altered. It was surmounted by a bonnet almost as gay as that
which, in Robin's childhood, had diverted his attention in church by
its gaudy wreath of artificial flowers. There was exactly the same
inquisitive expression in the narrow slits of eyes, but the lashes had
become white, for eye-lashes are not so easily dyed as hair on head or
brows.
"Miss Petty, are you really going to India?" asked Harold, with
unaffected surprise; he had almost added "at your age," but happily
checked himself ere the words passed his lips. Poor Miss Petty indulged
herself in a dream of perpetual youth, from which it would have been
discourteous to have awakened her.
"You wonder at my having the courage to cross the sea, but you see
I had a reason, a very particular reason," said Miss Petty in a
confidential tone, which she was fond of assuming. "My dear friend,
Lady O'More—you have of course heard of Sir Patrick O'More—very
distinguished man—in high command—had to leave her only child in
England last year, on account of measles or mumps, or something of the
catching kind of illness. Now Lady O'More wants to have her Shelah with
her—such a fond mother, you know; and she could not trust the darling
to anyone but me, so I consented, as guardian, you understand, to my
dear friend's child, to take her under my care as far as Bombay."
The Hartleys did not inquire whether the friendship, now first heard of
by them, was a mere formal correspondence concerning what was really a
simple matter of business, Miss Petty, for a consideration, undertaking
to play the nurse to a baronet's child. If they guessed this, their
guess was not far from the truth, for Miss Petty was so much accustomed
to exaggeration, to giving out fiction as fact, merely because she
wished it to be so, that her mind had gradually lost all power to
discriminate between false and the true. As some persons have no sense
of smell, so had she none of the delicate spiritual perception of—and
disgust at falsehood, possessed those of sensitive conscience. Miss
Petty had not the warning of danger which such perception bestows.
"But what are you going to India for?" inquired Miss Petty, looking up
curiously at the tall, graceful, intellectual man whom she had known in
his boyhood and early youth.
"I am going out as a missionary," was Harold's reply.
"Oh, dear! What a pity! You might have done much better in England!"
"I do not think so," said Harold.
"I am certain of it," cried Miss Petty. "I saw in the 'Times' that
you had taken honours, and come out a double First. You might in time
have been a Lord Chancellor, or a Lord Mayor, and have ridden in your
carriage and four. Missionaries are as poor as rats, no one thinks
anything of them, they ain't in society, you know! You would have done
ever so much better for yourself, had you remained at home."
Harold answered with a smile, "I am quite contented with my lot."
"Well, well, you'll repent of your choice one of these days. But what
on earth is taking you across the sea, Master Robin? You ought to be
learning Greek and Latin at home. You're not fledged; you can't fly
about the world as a missionary yet."
"No," laughed Robin, "I'm a callow downy nestling; but I can hop about
a little, and I hope to fly when my feathers are grown."
"What can you do?" persisted Miss Petty, who had seated herself on a
bench by the bulwarks, prepared for what she called a good long chat
with old friends.
"Not much, but I can do something," said Robin, good-humouredly. "I can
make a box, pack it, and carry it; groom a horse, shoe it, and ride
it; act as clerk or medicine compounder; cut down a tree and light a
fire; cook a dinner and eat it, and make myself useful to my father and
brother in a general sort of way—at least I'll try to do so."
"But all that won't bring in a penny," observed sage Miss Petty.
"You know that when a piece of machinery is packed up in a box to go
some distance, one sticks in little odd items to fill up the crannies
and corners, to keep the instrument from being shaken by the jolts on
the journey. My brother is the machine, and I—well, I'm one of the odd
items to keep him safe and steady," said Robin, gaily.
"You won't like India," observed Miss Petty, shaking her head; "no
more shall I, but I don't mean to stay in it long. I hear that snakes,
scorpions, cockroaches, and mosquitoes are as plentiful as the
blackberries on our hedges, and you feel like a leg of mutton being
turned round on a spit before a big kitchen fire!"
Robin laughed so merrily at this description of the miseries before him
that his mirth was infectious. "I can't enter into the feelings of a
leg of mutton in such a predicament," he cried.
"Ah! Master Robin, you were always fond of joke," said Theresa Petty;
"but you'll find life in India no joke, I warrant you. Besides, I can
never make out what missionaries want to do with those dirty blackies.
Not that I know much about them; I never saw one but that wretched
creature whom my cousin brought home as a bearer."
Every trace of mirth vanished from Robin's face in a moment. "You must
not—you shall not speak so of dear Prem Dás!" he exclaimed. "Do you not
know that he was converted, that my father baptised him, and that he
lived Christ's true servant?"
"And died Christ's faithful martyr," was added in Harold's deep rich
voice, but in a tone almost too low to catch Miss Petty's attention.
"Oh! You need not fire up, Master Robin; you were not always so very
fond. I've heard that one day when you found the idiot praying to a
plaster-of-Paris figure, you kicked him as you would have kicked a dog."
"I was a dog when I did so!" exclaimed Robin passionately. "And you
do ill to bring up against me an act of childish brutality, of which
I shall repent to my dying day!" The youth fiercely strode away to a
distant part of the deck, his heart boiling over with anger.
"I see that Robin has lost none of his pepper and mustard," observed
Miss Petty in a testy manner; "he never knew how to treat a lady."
"A more courteous, generous-hearted fellow never existed!" exclaimed
Harold, almost as indignant as his brother, though he had much more
command over his feelings.
"Ah, well! Ah, well! I can't sit gossiping here now, I must go and
look after my Lammikin!" cried Miss Petty, rising, and then shuffling
towards the companion ladder which led down to the saloon and cabins
below. Harold heard her muttering to herself, "None lose their tempers
as soon as your saints!"
The old lady had some difficulty in descending the steep steps, for the
"Alligator" was beginning to heave up and down, as the ship was nearing
the Nore.
Miss Petty made her way to No. 6, the number of her cabin, after
blunderingly looking into 4 and 5. She was never clever at finding her
way. On pushing back the sliding door of her cabin, she saw her young
charge seated on the floor, happily engaged in eating toffy.
Shelah O'More was a child of about five years of age, with fiery red
hair and a freckled face. Her nose had an inclination to turn upwards,
to counterbalance which the corners of her mouth had a tendency to
turn downwards when anything aroused the little girl's ire. Shelah's
mouth, however, looked good-tempered enough at the moment, for it
was full of the sweets which bedaubed her lips with brown, while her
treacle-covered fingers had left an unbecoming smudge of the same on
her saucy little nose.
"You dirty young pup! I'm ashamed of you! You're not fit to be seen!"
exclaimed the guardian of the baronet's child. "Have you gobbled up all
your toffy already?"
"No," replied Shelah, speaking indistinctly and with difficulty, on
account of the sticky lump which she was serenely sucking. "I've put
what's left in that thing," and the brown-smeared, thick-tipped finger
pointed to Miss Petty's new yellow satin workbag.
"Oh! You mischievous monkey; you—you—" And poor Miss Petty made a dash
at the bag, which Shelah did not surrender without a struggle. Miss
Petty then opened it, and found reels of cotton, bodkin, needle-case,
scissors, and thimble, all sticking together in most unlovely union,
her exploration only ending in her soiling her own fingers, and
utterly losing her temper. The guardian caught hold of Lammikin by the
shoulders and gave her a hearty shake, which vigorous action produced a
loud roar which resounded over the ship.
This was the first, but was not to be the last struggle between the
guardian and her Lammikin charge.