When Conyers had learned from Colonel Hunter all that he knew of
his father's involvement, it went no further than this, that the
Lieutenant-General had either resigned or been deprived of his civil
appointments, and Hunter was called upon to replace him. With all his
habit of hasty and impetuous action, there was no injustice in
Fred's nature, and he frankly recognized that, however painful to him
personally, Hunter could not refuse to accede to what the Prince had
distinctly pressed him to accept.
Young Conyers had heard over and over again the astonishment expressed
by old Indian officials how his father's treatment of the Company's
orders had been so long endured. Some prescriptive immunity seemed to
attach to him, or some great patronage to protect him, for he appeared
to do exactly as he pleased, and the despotic sway of his rule was known
far and near. With the changes in the constitution of the Board, some
members might have succeeded less disposed to recognize the General's
former services, or endure so tolerantly his present encroachments, and
Fred well could estimate the resistance his father would oppose to the
very mildest remonstrance, and how indignantly he would reject whatever
came in the shape of a command. Great as was the blow to the young man,
it was not heavier in anything than the doubt and uncertainty about it,
and he waited with a restless impatience for his father's letter,
which should explain it all. Nor was his position less painful from
the estrangement in which he lived, and the little intercourse he
maintained with his brother-officers. When Hunter left, he knew that he
had not one he could call friend amongst them, and Hunter was to go in a
very few days, and even of these he could scarcely spare him more than a
few chance moments!
It was in one of these flitting visits that Hunter bethought him of
young Dill, of whom, it is only truth to confess, young Conyers had
forgotten everything. “I took time by the forelock, Fred, about that
affair,” said he, “and I trust I have freed you from all embarrassment
about it.”
“As how, sir?” asked Conyers, half in pique.
“When I missed you at the 'Fisherman's Home,' I set off to pay the
doctor a visit, and a very charming visit it turned out; a better
pigeon-pie I never ate, nor a prettier girl than the maker of it would
I ask to meet with. We became great friends, talked of everything,
from love at first sight to bone spavins, and found that we agreed to
a miracle. I don't think I ever saw a girl before who suited me so
perfectly in all her notions. She gave me a hint about what they call
'mouth lameness' our Vet would give his eye for. Well, to come back
to her brother,--a dull dog, I take it, though I have not seen him,--I
said, 'Don't let him go to India, they 've lots of clever fellows out
there; pack him off to Australia; send him to New Zealand.' And when she
interrupted me, 'But young Mr. Conyers insisted,--he would have it so;
his father is to make Tom's fortune, and to send him back as rich as a
Begum,' I said, 'He has fallen in love with you, Miss Polly, that's the
fact, and lost his head altogether; and I don't wonder at it, for here
am I, close upon forty-eight,--I might have said forty-nine, but no
matter,--close upon forty-eight, and I 'm in the same book!' Yes, if
it was the sister, _vice_ the brother, who wanted to make a fortune in
India, I almost think I could say, 'Come and share mine!'”
“But I don't exactly understand. Am I to believe that they wish Tom to
be off--to refuse my offer--and that the rejection comes from them?”
“No, not exactly. I said it was a bad spec, that you had taken a far too
sanguine view of the whole thing, and that as I was an old soldier, and
knew more of the world,--that is to say, had met a great many more
hard rubs and disappointments,--my advice was, not to risk it. 'Young
Conyers,' said I, 'will do all that he has promised to the letter.
You may rely upon every word that he has ever uttered. But bear in mind
that he's only a mortal man; he's not one of those heathen gods who used
to make fellows invincible in a battle, or smuggle them off in a cloud,
out of the way of demons, or duns, or whatever difficulties beset them.
He might die, his father might die, any of us might die.' Yes, by Jove!
there's nothing so uncertain as life, except the Horse Guards.' And
putting one thing with another, Miss Polly,' said I, 'tell him to
stay where he is,'--open a shop at home, or go to one of the
colonies,--Heligoland, for instance, a charming spot for the
bathing-season.”
“And she, what did she say?”
“May I be cashiered if I remember! I never do remember very clearly what
any one says. Where I am much interested on my own side, I have no time
for the other fellow's arguments. But I know if she was n't convinced
she ought to have been. I put the thing beyond a question, and I made
her cry.”
“Made her cry!”
“Not cry,--that is, she did not blubber; but she looked glassy about
the lids, and turned away her head. But to be sure we were parting,--a
rather soft bit of parting, too,--and I said something about my coming
back with a wooden leg, and she said, 'No! have it of cork, they make
them so cleverly now.' And I was going to say something more, when a
confounded old half-pay Major came up and interrupted us, and--and, in
fact, there it rests.”
“I 'm not at all easy in mind as to this affair. I mean, I don't like
how I stand in it.”
“But you stand out of it,--out of it altogether! Can't you imagine that
your father may have quite enough cares of his own to occupy him without
needing the embarrassment of looking after this bumpkin, who, for aught
you know, might repay very badly all the interest taken in him? If
it had been the girl,--if it had been Polly--” “I own frankly,” said
Conyers, tartly, “it did not occur to me to make such an offer to
_her!_”
“Faith! then, Master Fred, I was deuced near doing it,--so near, that
when I came away I scarcely knew whether I had or had not done so.”
“Well, sir, there is only an hour's drive on a good road required to
repair the omission.”
“That's true, Fred,--that's true; but have you never, by an accident,
chanced to come up with a stunning fence,--a regular rasper that you
took in a fly a few days before with the dogs, and as you looked at
the place, have you not said, 'What on earth persuaded me to ride at
_that?_'”
“Which means, sir, that your cold-blooded reflections are against the
project?”
“Not exactly that, either,” said he, in a sort of confusion; “but when
a man speculates on doing something for which the first step must be an
explanation to this fellow, a half apology to that,--with a whimpering
kind of entreaty not to be judged hastily, not to be condemned unheard,
not to be set down as an old fool who couldn't stand the fire of a pair
of bright eyes,--I say when it comes to this, he ought to feel that his
best safeguard is his own misgiving!”
“If I do not agree with you, sir, it is because I incline to follow my
own lead, and care very little for what the world says of it.”
“Don't believe a word of that, Fred; it's all brag,--all nonsense! The
very effrontery with which you fancy you are braving public opinion is
only Dutch courage. What each of us in his heart thinks of himself
is only the reflex of the world's estimate of him; at least, what
he imagines it to be. Now, for my own part, I 'd rather ride up to a
battery in full fire than I'd sit down and write to my old aunt Dorothy
Hunter a formal letter announcing my approaching marriage, telling her
that the lady of my choice was twenty or thereabouts, not to add
that her family name was Dill. Believe me, Fred, that if you want the
concentrated essence of public opinion, you have only to do something
which shall irritate and astonish the half-dozen people with whom you
live in intimacy. Won't they remind you about the mortgages on your
lands and the gray in your whiskers, that last loan you raised from
Solomon Hymans, and that front tooth you got replaced by Cartwright,
though it was the week before they told you you were a miracle of order
and good management, and actually looking younger than you did five
years ago! You're not minding me, Fred,--not following me; you 're
thinking of your _protégé_, Tom Dill, and what he 'll think and say of
your desertion of him.”
“You have hit it, sir. It was exactly what I was asking myself.”
“Well, if nothing better offers, tell him to get himself in readiness,
and come out with me. I cannot make him a Rajah, nor even a Zemindar;
but I 'll stick him into a regimental surgeoncy, and leave him to
fashion out his own future. He must look sharp, however, and lose no
time. The 'Ganges' is getting ready in all haste, and will be round
at Portsmouth by the 8th, and we expect to sail on the 12th or 13th at
furthest.”
“I 'll write to him to-day. I 'll write this moment.”
“Add a word of remembrance on my part to the sister, and tell bumpkin to
supply himself with no end of letters, recommendatory and laudatory, to
muzzle our Medical Board at Calcutta, and lots of light clothing, and
all the torturing instruments he 'll need, and a large stock of good
humor, for he'll be chaffed unmercifully all the voyage.” And, with
these comprehensive directions, the Colonel concluded his counsels, and
bustled away to look after his own personal interests.
Fred Conyers was not over-pleased with the task assigned him. The
part he liked to fill in life, and, indeed, that which he had usually
performed, was the Benefactor and the Patron, and it was but an
ungracious office for him to have to cut the wings and disfigure
the plumage of his generosity. He made two, three, four attempts at
conveying his intentions, but with none was he satisfied; so he ended by
simply saying, “I have something of importance to tell you, and which,
not being altogether pleasant, it will be better to say than to write;
so I have to beg you will come up here at once, and see me.” Scarcely
was this letter sealed and addressed than he bethought him of the
awkwardness of presenting Tom to his brother-officers, or the still
greater indecorum of not presenting him. “How shall I ask him to the
mess, with the certainty of all the impertinences he will be exposed
to?--and what pretext have I for not offering him the ordinary attention
shown to every stranger?” He was, in fact, wincing under that public
opinion he had only a few moments before declared he could afford to
despise. “No,” said he, “I have no right to expose poor Tom to this. I
'll drive over myself to the village, and if any advice or counsel be
needed, he will be amongst those who can aid him.”
He ordered his servant to harness his handsome roan, a thoroughbred
of surpassing style and action, to the dog-cart,--not over-sorry to
astonish his friend Tom by the splendor of a turn-out that had won the
suffrages of Tattersall's,--and prepared for his mission to Inistioge.
Was it with the same intention of “astonishing” Tom Dill that Conyers
bestowed such unusual attention upon his dress? At his first visit to
the “Fisherman's Home” he had worn the homely shooting-jacket and felt
hat which, however comfortable and conventional, do not always redound
to the advantage of the wearer, or, if they do, it is by something,
perhaps, in the contrast presented to his ordinary appearance, and
the impression ingeniously insinuated that he is one so unmistakably a
gentleman, no travesty of costume can efface the stamp.
It was in this garb Polly had seen him, and if Polly Dill had been a
duchess it was in some such garb she would have been accustomed to see
her brother or her cousin some six out of every seven mornings of the
week; but Polly was not a duchess: she was the daughter of a village
doctor, and might, not impossibly, have acquired a very erroneous
estimate of his real pretensions from having beheld him thus attired.
It was, therefore, entirely by a consideration for her ignorance of the
world and its ways that he determined to enlighten her.
At the time of which I am writing, the dress of the British army was a
favorite study with that Prince whose taste, however questionable, never
exposed him to censure on grounds of over-simplicity and plainness. As
the Colonel of the regiment Conyers belonged to, he had bestowed upon
his own especial corps an unusual degree of splendor in equipment, and
amongst other extravagances had given them an almost boundless liberty
of combining different details of dress. Availing himself of this
privilege, our young Lieutenant invented a costume which, however
unmilitary and irregular, was not deficient in becomingness. Under
a plain blue jacket very sparingly braided he wore the rich scarlet
waistcoat, all slashed with gold, they had introduced at their mess. A
simple foraging-cap and overalls, seamed with a thin gold line, made up
a dress that might have passed for the easy costume of the barrack-yard,
while, in reality, it was eminently suited to set off the wearer.
Am I to confess that he looked at himself in the glass with very
considerable satisfaction, and muttered, as he turned away, “Yes, Miss
Polly, this is in better style than that Quakerish drab livery you saw
me last in, and I have little doubt that you 'll think so!”
“Is this our best harness, Holt?”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right!”