Then it all came back, and he was bathing and dressing long before he needed to leave his couch, but the desire for sleep was gone. He had to nerve himself to master as manfully as he could the horribly depressing feeling of strangeness; for the officers he had for companions in the journey were with their own company, quite away from his quarters, and his new companions were men who would look down upon him for being such a boy; and at last he found himself wishing that he had been able to keep as he was, for the honour and glory of belonging to the dashing troop of horse artillery seemed to be nothing better than an empty dream.
The next three days were days of desolation to the lad, for he was left, as he expressed it, horribly alone. There was a good deal of business going on in the settling of the new-comers in the barracks, and his new brother-officers were away with the troop. He knew nobody; nobody seemed to know him, or to want to know him. There was the native town to see, but it did not attract him; and there were moments when he longed to go to the general, his father’s friend, and beg that he might be sent back to his old company. But then there were moments when he came to his senses again and felt that this was folly; but he could not get rid of a strange longing to be back home once more.
Then he grew better all at once; the troop of horse artillery filed into the barrack-yard, and he hurried out to look at the men, horses, and guns, whose aspect chilled him, for they were in undress and covered with perspiration and dust. There was nothing attractive or glorious about them, and he went back to his quarters with his heart sinking once more.
Then it rose again with a jump, for his native servant met him at the door, showing his white teeth in a broad smile, to inform the sahib that the cases had come; and there they were, with each bearing his name branded thereon: “Lieutenant Richard Darrell, Bengal Horse Artillery.”
“Hah!”
It was a loud expiration of the breath, and the lad felt better already. Those cases had come from the regimental tailor’s, a long journey across the plains, and looked very ordinary, and cumbered the room; but then there were the contents—medicine to the disconsolate lad at a time like that—a tonic which completely carried the depression away.
Chapter II.
Fine Feathers make Fine Birds.
Richard Darrell was not a vain or conceited lad, but the time had arrived when he could not help feeling like a young peacock. He had gone on for a long time in his ordinary dowdy plumage, till one fine spring day the dull feathers began to drop out, and there was a flash here and a gleam there—a bit of blue, a bit of gold, a bit of purple and violet, and golden green and ruddy bronze—and he was strutting along in the sunshine in the full panoply of his gorgeous feathers, from the tuft on his head to the grand argus-eyed train which slants from the back, and is carried so gingerly that the tips may not be sullied by the dirt; all which makes him feel that he is a bird right glorious to behold.
And the day had come when, in the secrecy of his own room, Dick was about to moult from the simple uniform of the foot and preparatory days into the splendid full dress of the Bengal Horse Artillery, a commission in which was a distinction, a feather in any young soldier’s cap.