“Why do you mean to leave me now, when all our affairs are prospering, and you have nothing to do but to stay on and enrich yourself? I have had it in my mind to promote you; indeed, I think you know that I am your good friend.”
“I do, indeed, sir,” I answered, “and I am most grateful for all your kindness to me. But it is right that I should tell you I am here in consequence of wrong-doing, which has, as I can now see, pursued my steps and caused me to be harassed with troubles and misfortunes from the very beginning to this hour.”
“Why, what wrong have you been guilty of?” asked the Colonel, much interested. “I could have sworn you were the most honest young man in my company.”
“I have run away from my home, sir. I have deceived and disobeyed my father and, I fear, caused great sorrow to my loving mother. I allowed myself to be tempted to leave them secretly, under cover of a falsehood, and to join a crew of privateers, who turned out to be pirates, the comrades of those whom you destroyed at Gheriah. In their company I fell into evil courses, and finally plunged into a murderous contest with one of my own flesh and blood. These things have long sat heavy on my mind. I have perceived their evil consequences, I have been visited with a bitter punishment, and I am now determined to go back to my parents and to obtain their forgiveness before it is too late.”
Colonel Clive looked at me with some sympathy, mingled with wonder.
“I believe you have decided rightly,” he said at last, when I had finished. “God forbid that I should keep you from making your peace with those who love you.” His tone softened as he added: “My story is different to yours. I didn’t run away; I was driven, pitchforked out of doors, and stuck into a miserable billet at Madras, where I nearly ate my heart out with loneliness and repining. When I returned to England it was not to ask forgiveness, but to give it, if a son can take it upon himself to forgive his parent. No matter, all that is past now, and I believe my family have found out that I am worth the love they have to give me. Look here, my boy, I have no business to talk like this to you; but, after all, we can’t be always thinking of rupees and Moorish tricks. Since you are bent on going to England, you shall start in the ship which I am sending from Calcutta with the news of our late proceedings, and I will give you a letter, which you are to deliver privately into the hands of Mr. Pitt.”
At this name I looked up with flushing cheeks.
“The great Mr. Pitt?” I exclaimed.
“Yes, the great Mr. Pitt,” returned Colonel Clive, with a slight inflection of bitterness in his tone. “But you are right, Ford, he is a very great man, and though his battles have been won within the four walls of St. Stephen’s Chapel, while we lesser men have to fight in very different scenes, far be it from me to grudge all honour to the man who was the first to do honour to me. He is fortunate in having for his theatre the senate of a great kingdom of Europe, I unfortunate in having for mine a remote country of which half Europe has never heard. Still, I recognise his merits, and it is for that reason I am addressing myself to him on a subject which is near to my heart.”
The Colonel paused for a few moments.