“Of course not to him,” said she, resolutely, for she knew well to what purposes he would apply the knowledge.
“Remember that we want to have the resignation before Parliament meets,—bear that in mind. Time is all-important with us; the rest will follow in due course.” With this he said “Good-bye,” and was gone.
“The rest will follow in due course,” said she to herself, repeating his last words as he went. “With your good leave, Mr. Balfour, the 'rest' shall precede the beginning.”
Was n't it Bolingbroke that said constitutional government never could go on without lying,—audacious lying too? If the old Judge will only consent to go, her Ladyship's peerage will admit of a compromise. Such was Mr. Balfour's meditation as he stepped into his cab.
CHAPTER XLIV. AFTER-DINNER THOUGHTS
Her Majesty's—th had got their orders for Malta, and some surmised for India, though it was not yet known; but all agreed it was hard,—“confoundedly hard,” they called it. “Had n't they had their turn of Inidan service?—how many years had that grim old major passed in the Deccan,—what weary winters had the bronzed bald captain there spent at Rangoon!”
How they inveighed against the national niggardliness that insisted on making a small army do the work of a large one! How they scouted the popular idea that regiments were treated alike and without favoritism! They knew better. They knew that if they had been the Nine Hundred and Ninth, or Three Thousand and First, there would have been no thought of sending them back to cholera and jungle fever. Some, with a little sly flattery, ascribed the order to their efficiency, and declared that they had done their work so well at Gonurshabad, the Government selected them at once when fresh troubles were threatening; and a few old grumblers, tired of service, sick of the Horse Guards,—not over-enamored of even life,—agreed that it was rank folly to join a regiment where the Lieutenant-Colonel was not a man of high connections; as they said, “If old Cave there had been a Lord George or even an Honorable, we 'd have had ten years more of home service.”
With the exception of two or three raw subalterns who had never been out of England, and who wanted the glory of pig-sticking and the brevet to tell tiger stories, there were gloom and depression everywhere. The financially gifted complained that as they had all or nearly all bought their commissions, there was no comparison between the treatment administered to them and to officers in any foreign army; and such as knew geography asked triumphantly whether a Frenchman, who could be only sent to Africa, or an Austrian, whose most remote banishment was the “Banat,” was in the same position as an unfortunate Briton, who could be despatched to patrol the North Pole to-day, and to-morrow relieve guard at New Zealand? By a unanimous vote it was carried that the English army was the worst paid, hardest worked, and most ill-treated service in Europe; but the roast-beef played just at the moment, and they went in to dinner.
As the last bars of that prandial melody were dying away, two men crossed the barrack-yard towards the mess-house. They were in close confabulation, and although evidently on their way to dinner, showed by their loitering pace how much more engrossed they were by the subject that engaged them than by any desire for the pleasures of the table. They were Colonel Cave and Sewell.