"As far as taking charge of you goes, I am perfectly ready to do so—indeed more than ready; for it will give me great pleasure to have poor Hugo's son with me and to treat him as my own, for I am childless. But the sort of career I have chosen is pretty nearly closed. The Company have most of India under their thumb, and allow no English except their own officials to take service with the protected princes. At present the Punjaub is independent, but I don't think it can remain so much longer. Since the death of the Old Lion, as Runjeet Singh was called, things have gone from bad to worse. One ruler after another has been set up, and either dethroned or assassinated. The army is practically master of the country; and one of its first steps was to demand the dismissal of all foreign officers, and the greater part of us were accordingly discharged.
"Some of them left the country; others, like myself, are living on the estates granted us by Runjeet Singh, and on the pickings, which were considerable, that had come to us during our term of service, and we are waiting to see what may be the next turn of the wheel. Life here is something like that of a baron of old in England. My house is, in fact, a fortress perched on a rock. I have a garrison of several hundred picked men, and as I am a much easier master than most of these Sikhs, who wring the last farthing from the cultivators, I could raise a thousand more at a couple of days' notice. Still the place is not impregnable; and in the present disturbed state of the land, where there is practically no law save that of might, I might be besieged by some powerful Rajah, and in the event of the place being taken there is no doubt what my fate would be.
"However, at present the great men are too intent upon quarrelling with each other to trouble about me, especially as they know that the place is not to be taken without hard knocks. Moreover, although we who take service with foreign princes have no claim whatever for protection from our own countrymen, the fact of my being an Englishman is to some extent a safeguard. However, I want to put the case fairly before you; and if you come out here I will do my best for you—I will try to fill, as far as I can, your father's place. At the same time I warn you that the position here is a perilous one, and that there is no predicting how matters may turn out. My own opinion is, however, that our people can never permit the state of things that prevails here to go on, and will be forced to interfere before long. The Sikhs think that they are fully a match for us. I know better. They are brave, but so impatient of discipline, that although they look well enough on parade they would become a mere mob when fighting began.
"I need not say that the annexation of the Punjaub by the English would suit me admirably, but there will be a time of great trouble and danger before that can be accomplished. I daresay you wonder that I do not come home, having made, as you may suppose, a fortune amply sufficient to live upon there. But I do not think I shall ever do that; I have lived too long in India to settle down to English ways. Now that your poor father has gone I have not a single friend in England, and the humdrum life would kill me in no time, after having for four-and-twenty years lived in an atmosphere of intrigue, excitement, and danger.
"Now you know all about it, Percy, and can judge for yourself. By the time you get this letter you will be almost fifteen, and, as your father tells me that he has talked the matter over with you, capable of forming some sort of an opinion. As far as money goes, do not let that influence you one way or the other. The Old Lion was one of the most liberal of paymasters; and although one spends money freely out here, I took care to transmit a considerable portion of the presents I received and the money I earned to a firm who act as my agents in Calcutta, so as to be in safety if at any time I had to make a bolt of it. That money will some day be yours whether you come out to me or not, for I have no one else to leave it to; and I am, by the same messenger who carries this letter to the British agent at Loodiana, sending instructions to my agents that in case of anything happening to me, the money is to be transferred to your name, and they are to communicate with the firm who are, as your father tells me, his lawyers in London.
"I don't know whether I am acting altogether wisely in agreeing to your coming out; and I certainly should not have done so if it had not been that your father, who must have been perfectly aware of the disturbed state of this country, evidently wished that it should be so. Well, if the life has its dangers, it has its advantages. In our army at home an officer is but one bit of a great machine; his life is a routine, and in peace time as dull as ditch-water. Here a man has, every day and every hour, need of his brains, his courage, quickness, and spirit. In war-time we fight the enemies of the Maharajah; in peace we have to combat the intrigues of our enemies and rivals, to guard against the dangers of assassination, to countermine the approaches of the enemy, to be ready for instant flight, or sudden favour and promotion.
"It is a man's life, Percy, and to a man of spirit worth a hundred existences at home. If I knew you personally I could form a better idea as to whether I ought to say to you, stay where you are, or, come here. Your father says that he thinks you have a fair share of pluck and determination, and that he considers you to be as sharp and shrewd as most boys of your age. As he was the last man in the world to speak one word beyond what he considered due, I take it that his estimate of your character is in no way too flattering.
"Think it over yourself, Percy. Can you thrash most fellows your own age? Can you run as far and as fast as most of them? Can you take a caning without whimpering over it? Do you feel, in fact, that you are able to go through fully as much as any of your companions? Are you good at planning a piece of mischief, and ready to take the lead in carrying it out? For though such gifts as these do not recommend a boy to the favour of his schoolmaster, they are worth more out here than a knowledge of all the dead languages. It is pluck and endurance, and a downright love of adventure and danger, that have made us the masters of the greater part of India, and will ere long make us rulers of the whole of it; and it is of no use anyone coming out here, especially to take service with one of the native princes, unless he is disposed to love danger for its own sake, and to feel that he is willing and ready to meet it from whatever quarter it may come. However, there is no occasion for you to make up your mind at present upon more than the point whether you will come out to me for three or four years; when it will be time enough to make your final decision. In any case you may always consider me your affectionate uncle, ROLAND."
Percy read the letter through very carefully. It was something like what he had expected, for his father had in his last days spoken much to him of his brother.
"He was cut out for the life he has led, Percy," he had said to him. "He was the leader in all mischief at school; he had any amount of energy and life. He would not have made a good officer in the king's service; for he was impatient of authority, and would have been at loggerheads with the adjutant, and perhaps with the colonel, in no time. Once he set his mind to do a thing he would do it, whatever it was; and his straight-forwardness and loyal nature would certainly win for him the confidence of any of these Indian princes, accustomed as they are to being surrounded with intriguers ready at all times to take sides with the most powerful, and to sell themselves to the highest bidder. He will tell you frankly whether he thinks you had better come out to him or stay at home. But mind, if you do go out he will expect a good deal of you, and if you don't do credit to him as well as to yourself, he will have no hesitation in packing you off home again at an hour's notice."