With Kitchener in the Soudan: A Story of Atbara and Omdurman

by G. A. Henty

"I fancy your uncle was a somewhat extravagant man. I remember he kept a lot of race horses and so on, but he could not have dipped very seriously into the property. At any rate, there will be fourteen years' accumulations, which will put matters straight.

"I hope you have got papers that will prove you are your father's son, and that he was brother of the late Earl."

"I think there can be no difficulty about that," Gregory said. "I have letters from both my parents, a copy of their marriage certificate, and of the registers of my birth and baptism. There are some persons in Cairo who knew my father, and a good many who knew my mother."

"Then I should say that it would be quite safe sailing.

"I don't know, Lewis, whether you are not entitled to that five hundred pounds."

"I am afraid not," the other laughed. "Mr. Hartley; or rather, I should say, the Earl; would have discovered it, himself. I only recognized the name, which plenty of people would have done, as soon as they saw it in despatches."

"It will be a great disappointment to someone," Gregory said; "if they have been, for fourteen years, expecting to come in for this."

"You need not fret about that," another officer said. "The next heir is a distant cousin. He has been trying, over and over again, to get himself acknowledged; but the courts would not hear of it, and told him that it was no use applying, until they had proof of the death of your father. I know all about it, because there was a howling young ass in the regiment from which I exchanged. He was always giving himself airs, on the strength of the title he expected to get; and if he is still in the regiment, there will be general rejoicings at his downfall."

"Then I have met him," Gregory said. "On the way up, he made himself very unpleasant, and I heard from the other officers that he was extremely unpopular. The Major spoke very sharply to him, for the offensive tone in which he addressed me; and an officer sitting next to me said that he was terribly puffed, by his expectations of obtaining a title shortly, owing to the disappearance of those who stood before him in succession. Some of the officers chaffed him about it, then. I remember now that his name was Hartley; but as I had no idea, at that time, that that was also mine, I never thought anything more about it, until now. As he was the only officer who has been in any way offensive to me, since I left Cairo nearly three years ago, certainly I would rather that he should be the sufferer, if I succeed in proving my right to the title, than anyone else."

"I don't think he will suffer, except in pride," the officer said. "His father, who was a very distant cousin of the Earl's, had gone into trade and made a considerable fortune; so that the young fellow was a great deal better off than the vast majority of men in the army. It was the airs he gave himself, on the strength of being able to indulge in an expenditure such as no one else in the regiment could attempt--by keeping three or four race horses in training, and other follies--that had more to do with his unpopularity, than his constant talk about the peerage he was so confident of getting."