I am not about to chronicle how time now rolled over the characters of
our story. As for the life of those at the villa, nothing could be less
eventful All existences that have any claim to be called happy are of
this type, and if there be nothing brilliant or triumphant in their
joys, neither is there much poignancy in their sorrows.
Loyd wrote almost by every mail, and with a tameness that shadowed forth
the uniform tenor of his own life. It was pretty nigh the same story,
garnished by the same reflections. He had been named a district judge
“up country,” and passed his days deciding the disputed claims of indigo
planters against the ryots, and the ryots against the planters. Craft,
subtlety, and a dash of perjury, ran through all these suits, and
rendered them rather puzzles for a quick intelligence to resolve,
than questions of right or legality. He told, too, how dreary and
uncompanionable his life was; how unsolaced by friendship, or even
companionship; that the climate was enervating, the scenery monotonous,
and the thermometer at a hundred and twenty or a hundred and thirty
degrees.
Yet Loyd could speak with some encouragement about his prospects. He was
receiving eight hundred rupees a month, and hoped to be promoted to some
place, ending in Ghar or Bad, with an advance of two hundred more. He
darkly hinted that the mutinous spirit of certain regiments was said to
be extending, but he wrote this with all the reserve of an official,
and the fear that Aunt Grainger might misquote him. Of course there were
other features in these letters--those hopes and fears, and prayers and
wishes, which lovers like to write, almost as well as read, poetising to
themselves their own existence, and throwing a rose-tint of romance
over lives as lead-coloured as may be. Of these I am not going to say
anything. It is a theme both too delicate and too dull to touch on. I
respect and I dread it. I have less reserve with the correspondence of
another character of our tale, though certainly, when written, it was
not meant for publicity. The letter of which I am about to make an
extract, and it can be but an extract, was written about ten months
after the departure of Calvert for India, and, like his former ones,
addressed to his friend Drayton:
“At the hazard of repeating myself, if by chance my former
letters have reached you, I state that I am in the service
of the Meer Morad, of Ghurtpore, of whose doings the _Times_
correspondent will have told you something. I have eight
squadrons of cavalry and a half battery of field-pieces--
brass ten pounders--with an English crown on their breech.
We are well armed, admirably mounted, and perfect devils to
fight. You saw what we did with the detachment of the --th,
and their sick convoy, coming out of Allenbad. The only
fellow that escaped was the doctor, and I saved his life to
attach him to my own staff. He is an Irish fellow, named
Tobin, and comes from Tralee--if there be such a place--and
begs his friends there not to say masses for him, for he is
alive, and drunk every evening. Do this, if not a bore.
“By good luck the Meer, my chief quarrelled with the king’s
party in Delhi, and we came away in time to save being
caught by Wilson, who would have recognised me at once.
By-the-way, Baxter of the 30th was stupid enough to say,
‘Eh, Calvert’ what the devil are you doing amongst
these niggers?’ He was a prisoner, at the time, and, of
course, I had to order him to be shot for his imprudence.
How he knew me I cannot guess; my beard is down to my
breast, and I am turbaned and shawled in the most approved
fashion. We are now simply marauding, cutting off
supplies, falling on weak detachments, and doing a small
retail business in murder wherever we chance upon a station
of civil servants. I narrowly escaped being caught by a
troop of the 9th Lancers, every man of whom knows me. I
went over with six trusty fellows, to Astraghan, where I
learned that a certain Loyd was stationed as Government
receiver. We got there by night, burned his bungalow, shot
him, and then discovered he was not our man, but another
Loyd. Bradshaw came up with his troop. He gave us an
eight mile chase across country, and, knowing how the Ninth
ride, I took them over some sharp nullahs, and the croppers
they got you’ll scarcely see mentioned in the government
despatches. I fired three barrels of my Yankee six-
shooter at Brad, and I heard the old beggar offer a thousand
rupees for my head. When he found he could not overtake
us, and sounded a halt, I screamed out, ‘Threes about,
Bradshaw, I’d give fifty pounds to hear him tell the
story at mess: ‘Yes, Sir, begad, Sir, in as good English,
Sir, as yours or mine, Sir; a fellow who had served the
Queen, I’ll swear.’
“For the moment, it is a mere mutiny, but it will soon be a
rebellion, and I don’t conceal from myself the danger of
what I am doing, as you, in all likelihood, will suspect.
Not dangers from the Queen’s fellows--for they shall never
take me alive--but the dangers I run from my present
associates, and who, of course, only half trust me.... Do
you remember old Commissary-General Yates--J.C.V.R. Yates,
the old ass used to write himself? Well, amongst the other
events of the time, was the sack and ‘loo’ of his house at
Cawnpore, and the capture of ais pretty wife, whom they
brought in here a prisoner. I expected to find the poor
young creature terrified almost out of her reason. Not a bit
of it! She was very angry with the fellows who robbed her,
and rated, them roundly in choice Hindostanee, telling one
of the chiefs that his grandfather was a scorched pig. Like
a woman, and a clever woman, too, though she recognised me--
I can almost swear that she did--she never showed it, and we
talked away all the evening,-and smoked our hookahs together
in Oriental guise. I gave her a pass next morning to
Calcutta, and saw her safe to the great trunk road, giving
her bearers as far as Behdarah. She expressed herself as
very grateful for my attentions, and hoped at some future
time--this with a malicious twinkle of her gray eyes--to
show the ‘Bahadoor’ that she had not forgotten them. So you
see there are lights as well as shadows in the life of a
rebel.”
I omit a portion here, and come to the conclusion, which was evidently
added in haste.
“‘Up and away!’ is the order. We are off to Bithoor. The
Nana there--a staunch friend, as it was thought, of British
rule--has declared for independence, and as there is plenty
of go in him, look out for something ‘sensational.’ You
wouldn’t believe how, amidst all these stirring scenes, I
long for news--from what people call home--of Rocksley and
Uncle G., and the dear Soph; but more from that villa
beside the Italian lake. I’d give a canvas bag that I carry
at my girdle with a goodly stock of pearls, sapphires, and
rubies, for one evening’s diary of that cottage!
“If all go on as well and prosperously as I hope for, I have
not the least objection, but rather a wish that you would
tell the world where I am, and what I am doing. Linked with
failure, I’d rather keep dark; but as a sharer in a great
success, I burn to make it known through the length and
breadth of the land that I am alive and well, and ready to
acquit a number of personal obligations, if not to the very
fellows who injured me, to their friends, relatives, and
cousins, to the third generation. Tell them, Algy, ‘A duel’s
amang ye, cutting throats,’ and add, if you like, that he
writes himself your attached friend,
“Harry Calvert?”
This letter, delivered in some mysterious manner to the bankers at
Calcutta, was duly forwarded, and in time reached the hands of Alfred
Drayton, who confided its contents to a few “friends” of Calvert’s--men
who felt neither astonished nor shocked at the intelligence--shifty
fellows, with costly tastes, who would live on society somehow,
reputably, if they could--dishonourably if they must; and who all agreed
that “Old Calvert,” as they called him--he was younger than most of
them--had struck out a very clever line, and a far more remunerative
one than “rooking young Griffins at billiards”--such being, in their
estimation, the one other alternative which fete had to offer him.
This was all the publicity, however, Drayton gave to his friend’s
achievements. Somehow or other, paragraphs did appear, not naming
Calvert, but intimating that an officer, who had formerly served her
Majesty, had been seen in the ranks of the insurgents of Upper Bengal.
Yet Calvert was not suspected, and he dropped out of people’s minds as
thoroughly as if he had dropped out of life.
To this oblivion, for a while, we must leave him; for even if we had in
our hands, which we have not, any records of his campaigning life, we
might scruple to occupy our readers with details which have no direct
bearing upon our story. That Loyd never heard of him is clear enough.
The name of Calvert never occurred in any letter from his hand. It was
one no more to be spoken of by Florence or himself. One letter from him,
however, mentioned an incident which, to a suspicious mind, might have
opened a strange vein of speculation, though it is right to add that
neither the writer nor the reader ever hit upon a clue to the mystery
indicated. It was during his second year of absence that he was sent to
Mulnath, from which he writes:
“The mutiny has not touched this spot; but we hear every
day the low rumbling of the distant storm, and we are told
that our servants, and the native battalion that are our
garrison, are only waiting for the signal to rise. I doubt
this greatly. I have nothing to excite my distrust of the
people, but much to recommend them to my favour. It is only
two days back that I received secret intelligence of an
intended attack upon my bungalow by a party of Bithoor
cavalry, whose doings have struck terror far and near. Two
companies of the--th, that I sent for, arrived this
morning, and I now feel very easy about the reception the
enemy will meet The strangest part of all is, however, to
come. Captain Rolt, who commands the detachment, said in a
laughing jocular way, ‘I declare, judge, if I were you, I
would change my name, at least till this row was over.’ I
asked him ‘Why?’ in some surprise; and he replied, ‘There’s
rather a run against judges of your name lately. They shot
one at Astraghan last November. Six weeks back, they came
down near Agra, where Craven Loyd had just arrived, district
judge and assessor; they burnt his bungalow, and massacred
himself and his household; and now, it seems, they are
after _you_. I take it that some one of your name has been
rather sharp on these fellows, and that this is the pursuit
of a long meditated vengeance. At all events I’d call myself
Smith or Brown till this prejudice blows over.’”
The letter soon turned to a pleasanter theme--his application for a
leave had been favourably entertained. By October--it was then July--he
might hope to take his passage for England. Not that he was, he said,
at all sick of India. He had now adapted himself to its ways and
habits, his health was good, and the solitude--the one sole cause of
complaint--he trusted would ere long give way to the happiest and most
blissful of all companionship. “Indeed, I must try to make you all
emigrate with me. Aunt Grainger can have her flowers and her vegetables
here in all seasons, one of my retainers is an excellent gardener,
and Milly’s passion for riding can be indulged upon the prettiest Arab
horses I ever saw.”
Though the dangers which this letter spoke of as impending were enough
to make Florence anxious and eager for the next mail from India, his
letter never again alluded to them. He wrote full of the delight
of having got his leave, and overjoyed at all the happiness that he
conjetured as before him.
So in the same strain and spirit was the next, and then came September,
and he wrote: “This day month, dearest--this day month, I am to sail.
Already when these lines are before you, the interval, which to me now
seems an age, will have gone over, and you can think of me as hastening
towards you.”
“Oh, aunt dearest, listen to this. Is not this happy news?” cried
Florence, as she pressed the loved letter to her lips. “Joseph says that
on the 18th--to-day is--what day is to-day? But you are not minding me,
aunt What can there be in that letter of yours so interesting as this?”
This remonstrance was not very unreasonable, seeing that Miss Grainger
was standing with her eyes fixed steadfastly at a letter, whose few
lines could not have taken a moment to read, and which must have had
some other claim thus to arrest her attention.
“This is wonderful!” cried she, at last. “What is wonderful, aunt? Do
pray gratify our curiosity!”
But the old lady hurried away without a word, and the door of her room,
as it sharply banged, showed that she desired to be alone.