II
I think he saw young Alex Breagh, a junior Lieutenant of the Grenadier company of the Royal Ennis Regiment of Infantry, winning his spurs of manhood under Gough and Hardinge and Gilbert on the plain beside the Sutlej, where stands Ferozshahr.
"For I don't pretend to be a hero or anything of that sort, but I've never shirked my share of fighting," said the silent voice within him, and the Captain exhaled a spirt of smoke and mumbled: "I believe you!" And the other Breagh went on:
"Fair play and no favor won us our honors, mind you! though the chance didn't come until later on. True, we helped Sir Harry Smith to pound the Sikhs at Ferozshahr and at Aliwal, when the cavalry of his Right had driven the Khâlsas back across the Red Ford. Waiting for the elephants with the heavy siege-guns and the ammunition and stores to come up from Delhi, took a hell of a time. Seven long weeks of broiling by day and freezing o' nights, while Tij Sinh and his thirty-five thousand Khâlsas entrenched themselves, mounted their heavy artillery—made their bridge of boats, and encamped their cavalry up the river. But the day came—our day!—and I don't forget that foggy tenth of February while I'm breathing."
Captain Breagh sucked at his pipe and reflectively pulled a whisker. And the silent voice went on:
"We were with the Left Division under General Dick, and led the assault, while Gilbert and Smith feigned to attack on the enemy's left and center. And in that charge,—when the General got his death-wound from a swivel-ball,—I was the second red-coat to cross the ditch, and scramble over the big mud rampart, and saber a Sikh gunner with his linstock in his hand!..."
Mrs. Breagh, chagrined at remaining so long the object of her husband's inattention, picked up his fallen newspaper and almost timidly laid it on his knee. And the child under the table kept as quiet as a mouse, almost...
"Thank ye, my dear!" said the Captain, while the other Breagh went on:
"And when the Treaty was signed and the rumpus all over—for the time!—because Dalhousie's bungling brought the hornets about our ears again!—we marched from Lahore to Calcutta with Britain's victorious army—barring the force we'd left with Lawrence at Mian Mir."
The silence continuing, Mrs. Breagh drew her work-table toward her, and began to look over a basket of little toeless and heel-less stockings. As she did this she sighed. The Captain smoked thoughtfully. And the inward voice went on:
"The Governor-General and his staff rode with Sir Harry Smith and the Advance—and between the Cavalry Brigade that came after 'em—for Sir Harry swore he'd be damned but since we'd seen the hottest of the fighting, we should have the post of honor!—between the Cavalry and Ours came the spoils of war, drawn by the Government elephants—two hundred and fifty Sikh guns we'd taken at Sobraon. Hah!"
The Captain's eyes were fixed on the fire. He smoked in quick, short puffs.
"Standards waving, bands blowing their heads off, and a bit o' loot in most men's knapsacks. Glory for the dead, and praise and promotion for the living—begad! it was worth while—just then!—to be a British soldier! And I'd been wounded just enough to look interesting, and got a Special Mention in Despatches—and the women were pulling caps for me,—devil a lie in that! And I danced with Milly at the Welcome Back Ball at Government House, in March, 1846. And whether it was Fate—or that way she had of looking up under her eyelashes, and showing a laughing mouth full of tiny pearly-white teeth over the top of her fan, I've never been quite clear. But even before the steward introduced Lieutenant Breagh to the Hon. Millicent Fermeroy, I'd fallen head over ears in love with Milly, and she was as mad for me!"
Still silence reigned in the room, only broken by the cinders falling on the hearth, and the breathing of three people. Mrs. Breagh still bent over her basket of little worn socks, of which those in most crying need of darning belonged to Carolan. Her lips were tightly closed, but as the man within her husband talked to the man, the woman within the woman talked to his wife.
"I wonder whether he knows I know he's thinking of her again? I wonder whether she'd have liked to sit and toil and moil for a child of mine, and know that the other woman held the first place in his heart? Ah, dear me!"
She glanced at her husband. He did not see her. He was living in the Past.
"Nobody noticed how often we danced together.... It had gone pretty far with us before Her Ladyship scented what was in the wind, and sent an aide-de-camp to remind Miss Fermeroy that the doctor had set down his foot against her overheating herself with waltzing,—and I found myself staring after her with her bouquet in my hand.... And I took it home to quarters—and I've got it now, stowed away with her letters and a lot of other things in a tin uniform-case.... Fanny hasn't an idea of that!"
The smoke-puffs came more slowly, and the darning-needle now worked busily. The voice of a sergeant who was drilling a squad of recruits came in gruff barks from the Parade.
"The Fermeroys were great folks.... Colonel Lord Augustus Fermeroy—Milly's uncle, was a tremendous Light Cavalry swell on the Commander-in-Chief's Staff. Of course, I knew that he would never hear of an engagement between his brother's orphan daughter—(to do the old man justice, he loved her as his own!)—and a Lieutenant of a marching regiment of infantry who'd nothing but his pay. So—as Milly and me had made up our minds we couldn't live without each other,—we were married secretly—first at a Protestant Mission Church, and then by a French Franciscan padre—and he made bones about splicing us—because I wasn't a Catholic,—and if I hadn't told a white lie or two about my intention of turning Papist, I don't believe he'd have tied the knot. But all's fair in love!—and we were in love with a vengeance. I suppose I was a selfish beggar to coax Milly into deceiving her people, but——"
A long ray of chilly January sunshine, full of dancing dust-motes, came in at the window. Mrs. Breagh sneezed as it fell across her face.
"A time came when I knew I had been as selfish as she never would have called me. People had to be told!—so we enlightened 'em by shooting the moon. The condition of my war-chest wasn't over and above flourishing, but I got a month's leave for the Mofussil and secured a twenty-rupee furnished bungalow at Titteghur—and next morning—before the hue and cry had well begun, Lady Augustus got a chit from Milly by harkára—I remember every word of it. 'Dearest Aunt,—I hope you have not been alarmed, supposing me to have been murdered or carried off by wicked persons. I am safe and happy with my own dear husband, from whom, I shall never be parted now.'"
The pipe was nearly smoked out, but the Captain did not appear aware of that.
"'Never be parted,' and before three months were over our heads..."
Clash! Mrs. Breagh had let her scissors fall. Her husband made a long arm, picked them up, and gave them back to her.
"Thank you, Alex, love!" said Mrs. Breagh effusively. But he went on sucking at the now empty pipe, and staring at the waning fire. And the silent voice went on:
"The Fermeroys were furious. But there was no use in making a fuss and a scandal, and I must say they took the blow awfully well. Good haters both—declared that under no conceivable circumstances would they ever admit within their doors an officer who had acted so dishonorably, but they'd receive Milly whenever she liked to come. Nor would they—though her uncle was her guardian and trustee—deprive her of her fortune—seven thousand pounds in East India Stock, Home Rails, and Government Three Per Cents. But they tied it up tight for the benefit of the child that was coming, and others that might come—in what they called a Post-Matrimonial Settlement, and I was agreeable; though, mind you!—I had the law on my side if I'd chosen to make a fuss. And I was too much in love to bother over money—or to care a cowrie about being cut by the Fermeroys' friends."
Nothing but gray ashes remained in the pipe-bowl.
"I don't know whether it wasn't to get me out of the way that the regiment was ordered to Sikandarabad. There'd been a Sepoy rising at Haidarabad, six miles north of the Subsidiary Force's cantonments—and as the big Mussulman city was swarming with all the blackguards and budmashes in the Dekkan—and bazar-gup had it that another Rohilla riot was threatening—Ours got the route to go. And Milly—God bless her! wouldn't hear of being left behind. And we steamed down coast to Masulipatam, and marched the two hundred miles; and though it was early in January, the roads were confoundedly squashy and the heat was like a vapor-bath—there being no winter to speak of in the South."
"He's in a regular brown study," said her unseen gossip and confidante to the Captain's second wife. "Perhaps his tailor has been dunning him, or he's been losing at cards. When men are out of spirits, money's generally at the bottom of it! Better get him to tell what's the matter by-and-by—not now!"
"And the long road ran like a brown snake between mangrove-swamps and paddy-fields, where it wasn't coffee-plantations and cotton-ground. And there were black-buck and partridge for the shooting when you could get away from the columns; and duck and snipe when we were hung up at the river-fords waiting for the elephants that were to take over the baggage and guns."
The shouts of the drill-sergeant came more faintly from the Parade-ground. The Captain seemed to doze as he sucked at the empty pipe, but Memory's voice went on:
"The women and children of the rank and file were carried on the baggage-wagons, and the officers' wives traveled by bullock-tonga or palki-dak, under an escort of good-conduct men of the Subsidiary Force the Brigadier had sent down from cantonments. Milly laughed at their oilskin-covered wickerwork chimney-pot hats and little old red coatees, and black unmentionables and bare sandaled feet. But they couldn't keep the beggars of bearers from turning out of the road and taking short-cuts through jungle-paths. Then they'd dump the palkis down in the shade, and light a fire of sticks, and squat round and smoke their hubble-bubbles or chew betel.... And Milly's blackguards had gone out of sight behind some trees, and she was scared at finding herself alone and unprotected. And she tried to be calm and plucky, thinking of—what she and me were looking for.... But something trotted out of a cane-brake and snuffed at the palki curtains—and she went off in a dead faint and small blame to her! For there were the prints of a full-grown tiger's pugs in the soft ground round the palanquin—and the place where his hind-claws had torn up the grass when he bounded off...."
The forgotten pipe was upside down in the smoker's mouth now. A pinch of ashes had fallen upon the breast of the unhooked scarlet coat.
"When I came up I made those coolie-brutes eat plenty stick. But Milly—poor girl! had got her death-blow. And the boy was born that night under canvas by the roadside. An old Murderer—Surgeon-Major Murdoch of Ours—did all man could do to save her. But—just at dawn—with the eastern sky all lemon-yellow and pink and madder behind a mango-tope, with a Hindu temple near it, and a clump of mud huts—and some old saint's shrine under a sacred peepul-tree—the boy was born and the mother went out like a blown waxlight. Oh, my darling! ... And the Catholic chaplain—who'd been fetched to give Milly the Last Sacraments—baptized the boy, for Milly had made me swear all the children should be of her faith. And the boy would have died, too, but that my company Sergeant's wife—she that is nurse to my youngest child to-day—happened to be able and willing to suckle him. And we struck camp and set out on the last march, carrying a corpse and a new-born baby. And that night we buried my girl by torchlight in the cemetery belonging to the European infantry-barracks. And it's six years ago to-day—and here I am married to another woman! Are you happy with her, Alex Breagh? She's as unlike the other as chalk's different from cheese—and poor Milly 'ud have called her a vulgar person! I know she would! And yet—Milly never gave me a decent meal, and the servants did as they liked! and Fanny's a rare housekeeper. I've been more comfortable since I married her than I ever was in my life before. Yes, I'm a happy man!..."
He told himself this continually. And yet the knowledge of material comfort could not long silence the crying of his heart.
He took the smoked-out pipe from his mouth, and turned to look at the plump, high-colored, personable woman who was sitting darning his children's stockings with his wedding-ring shining on her finger, and the present had its value for him, and he ceased to company with the dead. His regard, at first chill and gloomy, warmed: his good-humored smile curled his full red lips again....
"Why, how you look, love!" said Mrs. Breagh, and she rose and came to his side. Then she sat on his knee and smoothed his hair from his forehead. And the Captain returned her kiss, and told himself that true wisdom lay in making the best of one's luck generally, and being grateful for whatever good the gods chose to grant.
"No use crying over spilt milk! ... Beg pardon, my dear!—but what were you asking me?"
"I was asking—supposing Carolan had never been born—or had died—whether you would have come into his mother's money?"
"Would I have inherited Milly's seven thousand pounds? Not a halfpenny of it, my dear! In the event of her decease without issue it would have gone back to her family. And even during Milly's lifetime she only had the half-yearly interest. Couldn't sell out stock, or raise a lump sum for—ahem!—for the benefit of any person she'd a mind to help. And husband and wife are one flesh, so the Bible tells you!"
"The poor thing that's gone ought to have had more spirit than to let you be treated so!" said the second wife, who had possessed no fortune beyond a hundred pounds or so, bestowed as dowry on his younger daughter by the hard-worked apothecary of an English country town; and was conscious that in marrying her the Captain had not aspired to a union above his social rank.
"Begad! my dear! I don't mind owning that Lord Augustus hated me, from the top hair of my head to the last peg in my boot-sole. And—when he died—and he did go over to the majority not long after the Fermeroys had sailed for England with Lord Hardinge—when he died it didn't make a pin's difference, for under that settlement I've told you of, the co-trustee, a solicitor—Mr. Mustey, of Furnival's Inn, Holborn, London—took his son,—who'd been made partner in his business—as his partner in the trusteeship. And, of course, the money's the boy's!—though the two-hundred-and-twenty-odd annual interest is paid to me—the whole of it!—until Carry's old enough to go to school and college—and when he reaches twenty-three the whole lump of the principal will be his—seven thousand golden sovereigns—to play ducks and drakes with if he likes!"
"And my poor darlings will have nothing," Mrs. Breagh bleated, "unless,—-because I've treated Carolan in all respects—and more!—as if he were my own child, and that I would declare with my head upon my dying pillow!—unless he has the gratitude and the decent feeling to do something for Alan,—if it's only giving him a few hundreds to start him properly in life...."
"Don't count your chickens before they're hatched," advised her lord. "My dear, if you'll get me the materials from the sideboard, I'll wet my whistle. Talking's dry work!"
With wifely compliance Mrs. Breagh placed the whisky-decanter and the Delhi clay-bottle of drinking-water near her Alexander's elbow. You are to imagine the Captain mixing a jorum on half-and-half principles, nodding to his Fanny, and taking a refreshing swig of the cooling draft. And at this juncture a head of scarlet curls was poked out from the covert of the Indian shawl tablecloth, and the clear treble of his eldest son piped out:
"Dada, how much money is seven fousand golding sovereigns? And how long will it be before I get them to make ducks and drakes?"