Volume Three—Chapter Fourteen.
“See the Conquering Hero comes.”
The Abyssinian war was ended! that gallant exploit of British arms, however marvellous in its inception, and second only to the march of Cyrus to the Sea that we read of in Xenophon, was actually un fait accompli! The captives were rescued, and the host returned, leaving Abyssinia pretty much as it was before it set out, with the exception of King Theodore being no longer in the land of the living. Peace to the bones of his sable majesty, who deserves some credit for his pluck, even if his ideas on the subject of diplomacy were at fault.
Although we have been saddled with a debt of some ten millions more or less—probably more, on account of the expedition—still it was a glorious feat for our country.
That “Britons never will be slaves,” or allow their fellow-countrymen to remain in captivity, is a remarkably comfortable axiom to hug to one’s heart cannot be denied; and beyond the credit we have gained from the successful termination of the “war,” and the kudos for the manner in which it was carried through from first to last, in spite of apparently insurmountable difficulties, the Abyssinian mission has done much to restore our old Continental reputation.
Sadly tarnished has the latter been of late years by the “old womanish” policy of certain foreign secretaries of ours, in re Denmark, and one or two other like matters, not to speak of the moral cowardice and practical stupidity we displayed in the non-recognition of the ill-fated Confederate party in America; but we have not heard the last of that question yet! Vide Mr Sumner and the Alabama claims.
It would be useless to the point of our story, as well as out of place here, to chronicle the different steps of the Abyssinian army, so ably detailed by the graphic author of “The March to Magdala.”
Suffice it to say that the expedition started and succeeded in its purpose; and our hero, Master Tom, as one of its component parts, may be said to have gone, and seen, and conquered like one of the rest, and was, after a time, on his way home again.
Tom Hartshorne was ignorant of most that had occurred since he left home. He had read and grieved over the intelligence of his sister Susan’s death, which he had come across in a stray copy of the Times at Zoulla; but his grief was of very short duration, for the very next day after he read the announcement he received a letter from Mr Trump, telling him that it was all a mistake, and Susan was not dead at all, although his mother, the dowager, was seriously ill. Beyond this—and puzzled he was, too, with the conflicting accounts—Tom knew nothing of the chops and changes brought about at The Poplars and in its neighbourhood during his absence; he had no one to correspond with him, and although he had written frequently to his mother in the meanwhile, the lawyer’s letter was the only communication he had received about home matters since he left England, and home, and Lizzie, the year before, for the far East.
His means of information being thus so scant, you may be sure that Tom’s imagination was additionally busy; and Tom had plenty to occupy his mind in thinking of a past most important episode in his life, which you may guess was connected with somebody—“you know who”—and allowing his thoughts to dwell on the future, his future, so pregnant for him of joy or sorrow. Which was it to be?
Time alone could tell; and Time, that ill-featured old gentleman, who will persist in playing with edged tools, decided favourably, in spite of his usual malevolence.
Tom came home at last, to find his way smooth, and his lot cast in pleasant places; but it was some time before he did so.
You see he was connected with the staff, and had to return to Bombay with the major portion of the expeditionary army; and there he was detained, arranging this thing and that, until it was waxing late in the summer, when he gazed on the Sunderbunds behind him; late in the summer when he beheld again the donkey boys of Cairo; still latter when he steamed down the Mediterranean and past “The Rock,” and up the Bay of Biscay, and landed at Southampton; but he came at last, although the month of August had again come round ere Tom set foot on British soil, and revisited his native place.
The dowager had been “picking up,” as Doctor Jolly said, all this time; and although she could not walk about—one of her sides was paralysed still—yet she was very cheerful, and could speak fluently enough.
Lizzie was in the room—the parlour where his mother had told him “Fiddle-de-dee!” when he told his love—with her when he came home—and you may guess the meeting between the three. How the mother sobbed over her darling boy; how she grieved over the change in him; how Lizzie’s face wore little tell-tale blushes when he spoke to her; and how he, too, blushed, when his mother called out to him, when he was going to shake hands with her politely—
“Why don’t you kiss her, Tom? You know you would, you scamp, if I were not here.”
But the old lady would not let him out of her sight; and although Tom was dying to have more explanation with Lizzie, he had to wait for a chance.
When Lizzie rose to go it was late in the afternoon, a bright August afternoon. Tom told her he wanted to speak to her, as she was going to the door, and asked her if he might come down to the parsonage. “He wanted to see Pringle:” he was actually dying to see the young incumbent.
And Lizzie, with a still more tell-tale blush, and a sudden casting down of the pretty violet eyes, and a resting of the long black lashes on her cheek, had murmured to him—
“Come!”
Later on, when the mother and son had had still quieter conversation, and Tom got away, he bent his steps towards the parsonage, his mother wishing him “God speed” on his errand. What on earth could that errand be?
Fortunately, not only was the old campaigner away for the day—she had taken to visiting and bullying the young incumbent’s sick parishioners for him now, and priming them with tracts when a cheerful word would have better suited their ailments; but Pringle was also out with his wife, and Tom found Lizzie alone at home—alone in a very little conservatory, which had witnessed his love-tale before, and where he had parted from her, telling her that she was a heartless jilt.
Lizzie was in the self-same little conservatory, pretending to be very busy putting pots up, and poking about with her trowel, as if horticulture was the ultimate aim and end of existence. She was trying to be very unconscious—oh! what a very feeble pretence it was—and endeavoured to receive Master Tom as if he were an ordinary afternoon caller. Such a very faint endeavour it was.
Tom went forward eagerly. He was not going to be baulked this time, and his military experience had taught him that a determined assault was the best way of securing an enemy’s capitulation.
He went forward, and with one hand he seized the little taper fingers of the young lady; his other arm, the unblushing dog placed round her waist, forcing Miss Lizzie to drop her trowel, and thus reducing her means of defence.
He looked down into the deep violet eyes which were looking up into his own with—what shall you call it?—wonder or indignation?
“Well, Lizzie!” Tom said.
Lizzie said nothing; but it appeared to be “well.” And then what a long tale had to be told. What a number of explanations and conjectures, and enquiries, and assertions!
Tom wanted her to tell him here, in this very spot, where she had treated him so cruelly, that she was sorry for what she had done. Of course she was, and it “should not occur again,” with such a supplicating little gesture.
Then Lizzie must be informed over and over again in the strongest terms of assertion that the English language was capable of, whether Tom “really” loved her and cared for her so much.
Imagine the protestations that ensued: the multiplicity of lover’s honied words and oaths: then Tom’s enquiries to the same effect, which had also to be confirmed, and so da capo.
It took a good many “wells” before the interview was satisfactorily terminated, and Tom returned exultant to The Poplars to tell his mother of his happiness.