Маргарет Олифант
Old Mr. Tredgold
CHAPTER XII
“Bravo, Charlie!” said Lady Jane. “I never knew anything better or quicker done. My congratulations! You have proved yourself a man of sense and business. Now you’ve got to tackle the old man.”
“Nothin’ of th’ sort,” said Sir Charles, with a dull blush covering all that was not hair of his countenance. “Sweet on little girl. Like her awf’lly; none of your business for me.”
“So much the better, and I respect you all the more; but now comes the point at which you have really to show yourself a hero and a man of mettle—the old father–”
Sir Charles walked the whole length of the great drawing-room and back again. He pulled at his moustache till it seemed likely that it might come off. He thrust one hand deep into his pocket, putting up the corresponding shoulder. “Ah!” he said with a long-drawn breath, “there’s the rub.” He was not aware that he was quoting anyone, but yet would have felt more or less comforted by the thought that a fellow in his circumstances might have said the same thing before him.
“Yes, there’s the rub indeed,” said his sympathetic but amused friend and backer-up. “Stella is the apple of his eye.”
“Shows sense in that.”
“Well, perhaps,” said Lady Jane doubtfully. She thought the little prim one might have had a little consideration too, being partially enlightened as to a certain attractiveness in Katherine through the admiration of Algy Scott. “Anyhow, it will make it all the harder. But that’s doubtful too. He will probably like his pet child to be Lady Somers, which sounds very well. Anyhow, you must settle it with him at once. I can’t let it be said that I let girls be proposed to in my house, and that afterwards the men don’t come up to the scratch.”
“Not my way,” said Sir Charles. “Never refuse even it were a harder jump than that.”
“Oh, you don’t know how hard a jump it is till you try,” said Lady Jane. But she did not really expect that it would be hard. That old Tredgold should not be pleased with such a marriage for his daughter did not occur to either of them. Of course Charlie Somers was poor; if he had been rich it was not at all likely that he would have wanted to marry Stella; but Lady Somers was a pretty title, and no doubt the old man would desire to have his favourite child so distinguished. Lady Jane was an extremely sensible woman, and as likely to estimate the people round her at their just value as anybody I know; but she could not get it out of her head that to be hoisted into society was a real advantage, however it was accomplished, whether by marriage or in some other way. Was she right? was she wrong? Society is made up of very silly people, but also there the best are to be met, and there is something in the Freemasonry within these imaginary boundaries which is attractive to the wistful imagination without. But was Mr. Tredgold aware of these advantages, or did he know even what it was, or that his daughters were not in it? This was what Lady Jane did not know. Somers, it need not be said, did not think on the subject. What he thought of was that old Tredgold’s money would enable him to marry, to fit out his old house as it ought to be, and restore it to its importance in his county, and, in the first place of all, would prevent the necessity of going to India with his regiment. This, indeed, was the first thing in his mind, after the pleasure of securing Stella, which, especially since all the men in the house had so flattered and ran after her, had been very gratifying to him. He loved her as well as he understood love or she either. They were on very equal terms.
Katherine did not give him any very warm reception when the exciting news was communicated to her; but then Katherine was the little prim one, and not effusive to any one. “She is always like that,” Stella had said—“a stick! but she’ll stand up for me, whatever happens, all the same.”
“I say,” cried Sir Charles alarmed—“think it’ll be a hard job, eh? with the old man, don’t you know?”
“You will please,” said Stella with determination, “speak more respectfully of papa. I don’t know if it’ll be a hard job or not—but you’re big enough for that, or anything, I hope.”
“Oh, I’m big enough,” he said; but there was a certain faltering in his tone.
He did not drive with the two girls on their return to the Cliff the morning after the ball, but walked in to Sliplin the five miles to pull himself together. He had no reason that he knew of to feel anxious. The girl—it was by this irreverent title that he thought of her, though he was so fond of her—liked him, and her father, it was reported, saw everything with Stella’s eyes. She was the one that he favoured in everything. No doubt it was she who would have the bulk of his fortune. Sir Charles magnanimously resolved that he would not see the other wronged—that she should always have her share, whatever happened. He remembered long afterwards the aspect of the somewhat muddy road, and the hawthorn hedges with the russet leaves hanging to them still, and here and there a bramble with the intense red of a leaf lighting up the less brilliant colour. Yes, she should always have her share! He had a half-conscious feeling that to form so admirable a resolution would do him good in the crisis that was about to come.
Mr. Tredgold stood at the door to meet his daughters when they came home, very glad to see them, and to know that everybody was acquainted with the length of Stella’s stay at Steephill, and the favour shown her by Lady Jane, and delighted to have them back also, and to feel that these two pretty creatures—and especially the prettiest of the two—were his own private property, though there were no girls like them, far or near. “Well,” he said, “so here you are back again—glad to be back again I’ll be bound, though you’ve been among all the grandees! Nothing like home, is there, Stella, after all?” (He said ’ome, alas! and Stella felt it as she had never done before.) “Well, you are very welcome to your old pa. Made a great sensation, did you, little ’un, diamonds and all? How did the diamonds go down, eh, Stella? You must give them to me to put in my safe, for they’re not safe, valuable things like that, with you.”
“Dear papa, do you think all that of the diamonds?” said Stella. “They are only little things—nothing to speak of. You should have seen the diamonds at Steephill. If you think they are worth putting in the safe, pray do so; but I should not think of giving you the trouble. Well, we didn’t come back to think of the safe and my little rivière, did we, Kate? As for that, the pendant you have given her is handsomer of its kind, papa.”
“Couldn’t leave Katie out, could I? when I was giving you such a thing as that?” said Mr. Tredgold a little confused.
“Oh, I hope you don’t think I’m jealous,” cried Stella. “Kate doesn’t have things half nice enough. She ought to have them nicer than mine, for she is the eldest. We amused ourselves very well, thank you, papa. Kate couldn’t move without Algy Scott after her wherever she turned. You’ll have him coming over here to make love to you, papa.”
“I think you might say a word of something a great deal more important, Stella.”
“Oh, let me alone with your seriousness. Papa will hear of that fast enough, when you know Charlie is– I’m going upstairs to take off my things. I’ll bring the diamonds if I can remember,” she added, pausing for a moment at the door and waving her hand to her father, who followed her with delighted eyes.
“What a saucy little thing she is!” he said. “You and I have a deal to put up with from that little hussy, Katie, haven’t we? But there aren’t many like her all the same, are there? We shouldn’t like it if we were to lose her. She keeps everything going with her impudent little ways.”
“You are in great danger of losing her, papa. There is a man on the road–”
“What’s that—what’s that, Katie? A man that is after my Stella? A man to rob me of my little girl? Well, I like ’em to come after her, I like to see her with a lot at her feet. And who’s this one? The man with a handle to his name?”
“Yes; I suppose you would call it a handle. It was one of the men that were out in the boat with her—Sir Charles–”
“Oh!” said Mr. Tredgold, with his countenance falling. “And why didn’t the t’other one—his lordship—come forward? I don’t care for none of your Sir Charleses—reminds me of a puppy, that name.”
“The puppies are King Charles’s, papa. I don’t know why the Earl did not come forward; because he didn’t want to, I suppose. And, indeed, he was not Stella’s sort at all.”
“Stella’s sort! Stella’s sort!” cried the old man. “What right has Stella to have a sort when she might have got a crown to put on her pretty head. Coronet? Yes, I know; it’s all the same. And where is this fellow? Do you mean that you brought him in my carriage, hiding him somewhere between your petticoats? I will soon settle your Sir Charles, unless he can settle shilling to shilling down.”
“Sir Charles is walking,” said Katherine; “and, papa, please to remember that Stella is fond of him, she is really fond of him; she is—in love with him. At least I think so, otherwise– You would not do anything to make Stella unhappy, papa?”
“You leave that to me,” said the old man; but he chuckled more than ever.
Katherine did not quite understand her father, but she concluded that he was not angry—that he could not be going to receive the suitor unfavourably, that there was nothing to indicate a serious shock of any kind. She followed Stella upstairs, and went into her room to comfort her with this assurance; for which I cannot say that Stella was at all grateful.
“Not angry? Why should he be angry?” the girl cried. “Serious? I never expected him to be serious. What could he find to object to in Charlie? I am not anxious about it at all.”
Katherine withdrew into her own premises, feeling herself much humbled and set down. But somehow she could not make herself happy about that chuckle of Mr. Tredgold’s. It was not a pleasant sound to hear.
Sir Charles Somers felt it very absurd that he should own a tremor in his big bosom as he walked up the drive, all fringed with its rare plants in every shade of autumn colour. It was not a long drive, and the house by no means a “place,” but only a seaside villa, though (as Mr. Tredgold hoped) the costliest house in the neighbourhood. The carriage had left fresh marks upon the gravel, which were in a kind of a way the footsteps of his beloved, had the wooer been sentimental enough to think of that. What he did think of was whether the old fellow would see him at once and settle everything before lunch, comfortably, or whether he would walk into a family party with the girls hanging about, not thinking it worth while to take off their hats before that meal was over. There might be advantage in this. It would put a little strength into himself, who was unquestionably feeling shaky, ridiculous as that was, and would be the better, after his walk, of something to eat; and it might also put old Tredgold in a better humour to have his luncheon before this important interview. But, on the other hand, there was the worry of the suspense. Somers did not know whether he was glad or sorry when he was told that Mr. Tredgold was in his library, and led through the long passages to that warm room which was at the back of the house. A chair was placed for him just in front of the fire as he had foreseen, and the day, though damp, was warm, and he had heated himself with his long walk.
“Sit down, sit down, Sir Charles,” said the old gentleman, whose writing-table was placed at one side, where he had the benefit of the warmth without the glare of the fire. And he leant amicably and cheerfully across the corner of the table, and said, “What can I do for you this morning?” rubbing his hands. He looked so like a genial money-lender before the demands of the borrower are exposed to him, that Sir Charles, much more accustomed to that sort of thing than to a prospective father-in-law, found it very difficult not to propose, instead of for Stella, that Mr. Tredgold should do him a little bill. He got through his statement of the case in a most confused and complicated way. It was indeed possible, if it had not been for the hint received beforehand, that the old man would not have picked up his meaning; as it was, he listened patiently with a calm face of amusement, which was the most aggravating thing in the world.
“Am I to understand,” he said at last, “that you are making me a proposal for Stella, Sir Charles? Eh? It is for Stella, is it, and not for any other thing? Come, that’s a good thing to understand each other. Stella is a great pet of mine. She is a very great pet. There is nobody in the world that I think like her, or that I would do so much for.”
“M’ own feelings—to a nicety—but better expressed,” Sir Charles said.
“That girl has had a deal of money spent on her, Sir Charles, first and last; you wouldn’t believe the money that girl has cost me, and I don’t say she ain’t worth it. But she’s a very expensive article and has been all her life. It’s right you should look that in the face before we get any forwarder. She has always had everything she has fancied, and she’ll cost her husband a deal of money, when she gets one, as she has done me.”
This address made Somers feel very small, for what could he reply? To have been quite truthful, the only thing he could have said would have been, “I hope, sir, you will give her so much money that it will not matter how expensive she is;” but this he could not say. “I know very well,” he stammered, “a lady—wants a lot of things;—hope Stella—will never—suffer, don’t you know?—through giving her to me.”
Ah, how easy it was to say that! But not at all the sort of thing to secure Stella’s comfort, or her husband’s either, which, on the whole, was the most important of the two to Sir Charles.
“That’s just what we’ve got to make sure of,” said old Tredgold, chuckling more than ever. There was no such joke to the old man as this which he was now enjoying. And he did not look forbidding or malevolent at all. Though what he said was rather alarming, his face seemed to mean nothing but amiability and content. “Now, look here, Sir Charles, I don’t know what your circumstances are, and they would be no business of mine, but for this that you’ve been telling me; you young fellows are not very often flush o’ money, but you may have got it tied up, and that sort of thing. I don’t give my daughter to any man as can’t count down upon the table shillin’ for shillin’ with me.” This he said very deliberately, with an emphasis on every word; then he made a pause, and, putting his hand in his pocket, produced a large handful of coins, which he proceeded to tell out in lines upon the table before him. Sir Charles watched him in consternation for a moment, and then with a sort of fascination followed his example. By some happy chance he had a quantity of change in his pocket. He began with perfect gravity to count it out on his side, coin after coin, in distinct rows. The room was quite silent, the air only moved by the sound of a cinder falling now and then on the hearth and the clink of the money as the two actors in this strange little drama went on with the greatest seriousness counting out coin after coin.
When they had both finished they looked up and met each other’s eyes. Then Mr. Tredgold threw himself back in his chair, kicking up his cloth-shod feet. “See,” he cried, with a gurgle of laughter in his throat, “that’s the style for me.”
He was pleased to have his fine jest appreciated, and doubly amused by the intense and puzzled gravity of his companion’s face.
“Don’t seem to have as many as you,” Sir Charles said. “Five short, by Jove.”
“Shillin’s don’t matter,” said the old man; “but suppose every shillin’ was five thousand pounds, and where would you be then? eh? perhaps you would go on longer than I could. What do I know of your private affairs? But that’s what the man that gets Stella will have to do—table down his money, cent for cent, five thousand for five thousand, as I do. I know what my little girl costs a year. I won’t have her want for anything, if it’s ever so unreasonable; so, my fine young man, though you’ve got a handle to your name, unless you can show the colour of your money, my daughter is not for you.”
Sir Charles Somers’s eyes had acquired a heavy stare of astonishment and consternation. What he said in his disappointment and horror he did not himself know—only one part of it fully reached the outer air, and that was the unfortunate words, “money of her own.”
“Money of her own!” cried old Tredgold. “Oh, yes, she’s got money of her own—plenty of money of her own—but not to keep a husband upon. No, nor to keep herself either. Her husband’s got to keep her, when she gets one. If I count out to the last penny of my fortune he’s got to count with me. I’ll give her the equal. I’ll not stint a penny upon her; but give my money or her money, it’s all the same thing, to keep up another family, her husband and her children, and the whole race of them—no, Sir Charles Somers,” cried Mr. Tredgold, hastily shuffling his silver into his pocket, “that’s not good enough for me.”
Saying which he jumped up in his cloth shoes and began to walk about the room, humming to himself loudly something which he supposed to be a tune. Sir Charles, for his part, sat for a long time gazing at his money on the table. He did not take it up as Tredgold had done. He only stared at it vacantly, going over it without knowing, line by line. Then he, too, rose slowly.
“Can’t count with you,” he said. “Know I can’t. Chance this—put down what I put down—no more. Got to go to India in that case. Never mind, Stella and I–”
“Don’t you speak any more of Stella. I won’t have it. Go to India, indeed—my little girl! I will see you—further first. I will see you at the bottom of the sea first! No. If you can count with me, something like, you can send your lawyer to me. If you can’t, do you think I’m a man to put pounds again’ your shillin’s? Not I! And I advise you just to give it up, Sir Charles Somers, and speak no more about Stella to me.”
It was with the most intense astonishment that Charlie Somers found himself out of doors, going humbly back along that drive by which he had approached so short a time before, as he thought, his bride, his happiness, and his luncheon. He went dismally away without any of them, stupefied, not half conscious what had happened; his tail more completely between his legs, to use his own simile, than whipped dog ever had. He had left all his shillings on the table laid out in two shining rows. But he did not think of his shillings. He could not think. His consternation made him speechless both in body and in soul.
It was not till late in the afternoon, when he had regained his self-command a little, that he began to ask himself the question, What would Stella do? Ah, what would Stella do? That was another side of the question altogether.
CHAPTER XIII
There was great consternation at Steephill when Somers came back, not indeed so cowed as when he left the Cliff, but still with the aspect more or less of a man who had been beaten and who was extremely surprised to find himself so. He came back, to make it more remarkable, while the diminished party were still at luncheon, and sat down humbly in the lowest place by the side of the governess to partake of the mutton and rice pudding which Lady Jane thought most appropriate when the family was alone. Algy was the only stranger left of all the large party which had dispersed that morning, the few remaining men having gone out to shoot; and to Algy, as an invalid, the roast mutton was of course quite appropriate.
“What luck! without even your lunch!” they cried out—Algy with a roar (the fellow was getting as strong as an elephant) of ridicule and delight.
“As you see,” said Sir Charles with a solemnity which he could not shake off. The very governess divined his meaning, and that sharp little Janey—the horrid little thing, a mite of fourteen. “Oh, didn’t Stella ask you to stay to lunch? Didn’t they give you anything to eat after your walk?” that precocious critic cried. And Sir Charles felt with a sensation of hatred, wishing to kill them all, that his own aspect was enough to justify all their jokes. He was as serious as a mustard-pot; he could not conjure up a laugh on his face; he could not look careless and indifferent or say a light word. His tail was between his legs; he felt it, and he felt sure that everybody must see it, down to the little boys, who, with spoonfuls of rice suspended, stared at him with round blue eyes; and he dared not say, “Confound the little beggars!” before Lady Jane.
“What is the matter?” she asked him, hurrying him after luncheon to her own room away from the mocking looks of the governess—she too mixing herself up with it!—and the gibes of Algy. “For goodness’ sake,” she cried, “don’t look as if you had been having a whipping, Charlie Somers! What has been done to you? Have you quarrelled with Stella on the way?”
Sir Charles walked to the window, pulling his moustache, and stood there looking out, turning his back on Lady Jane. A window is a great resource to a man in trouble. “Old man turned me off,” he said.
“What? What? The old man turned you off? Oh!” cried Lady Jane in a tone of relief; “so long as it was only the old man!”
Sir Charles stood by the window for some time longer, and then he turned back to the fire, near which Lady Jane had comfortably seated herself. She was much concerned about him, yet not so much concerned as to interfere with her own arrangements—her chair just at the right angle, her screen to preserve her from the glare. She kept opening and looking at the notes that lay on her table while she talked to him.
“Oh, old Tredgold,” she said. “He was bound to object at first. About money, I suppose? That of course is the only thing he knows anything about. Did he ask you what you would settle upon her? You should have said boldly, ‘Somerton,’ and left him to find out the rest. But I don’t suppose you had the sense to stop his mouth like that. You would go and enter into explanations.”
“Never got so far,” said Sir Charles. “He that stopped my mouth. Game to lay down pound for pound with him, or else no go.”
“Pound for pound with him!” cried Lady Jane in consternation. She was so much startled that she pushed back her chair from her writing-table, and so came within the range of the fire and disorganized all her arrangements. “Now I think of it,” she said, “(pull that screen this way, Charlie) I have heard him say something like that. Pound for pound with him! Why, the old–” (she made a pause without putting in the word as so many people do), “is a millionaire!”
Sir Charles, who was standing before the fire with his back to it, in the habitual attitude of Englishmen, pulled his moustache again and solemnly nodded his head.
“And who does he think,” cried Lady Jane, carried away by her feelings, “that could do that would ever go near him and his vulgar, common– Oh, I beg your pardon, Charlie, I am sure!” she said.
“No pardon needed. Know what you mean,” Somers said with a wave of his hand.
“Of course,” said Lady Jane with emphasis, “I don’t mean the girls, or else you may be sure I never should have taken them out or had them here.” She made a little pause after this disclaimer, in the heat of which there was perhaps just a little doubt of her own motives, checked by the reflection that Katherine Tredgold at least was not vulgar, and might have been anybody’s daughter. She went on again after a moment. “But he is an old– Oh! I would not pay the least attention to what he said; he was bound to say that sort of thing at first. Do you imagine for a moment that any man who could do that would please Stella? What kind of man could do that? Only perhaps an old horror like himself, whom a nice girl would never look at. Oh! I think I should be easy in my mind, Charlie, if I were you. It is impossible, you know! There’s no such man, no such young man. Can you fancy Stella accepting an old fellow made of money? I don’t believe in it for a moment,” said Lady Jane.
“Old fellows got sons—sometimes,” said Sir Charles, “City men, rolling in money, don’t you know?”
“One knows all those sort of people,” said Lady Jane; “you could count them on your fingers; and they go in for rank, &c., not for other millionaires. No, Charlie, I don’t see any call you have to be so discouraged. Why did you come in looking such a whipped dog? It will be all over the island in no time and through the regiment that you have been refused by Stella Tredgold. The father’s nothing. The father was quite sure to refuse. Rather picturesque that about laying down pound for pound, isn’t it? It makes one think of a great table groaning under heaps of gold.”
“Jove!” said Sir Charles. “Old beggar said shillin’ for shillin’. Had a heap of silver—got it like a fool—didn’t see what he was driving at—paid it out on the table.” He pulled his moustache to the very roots and uttered a short and cavernous laugh. “Left it there, by Jove!—all my change,” he cried; “not a blessed thruppenny to throw to little girl at gate.”
“Left it there?” said Lady Jane—“on the table?” Her gravity was overpowered by this detail. “Upon my word, Charlie Somers, for all your big moustache and your six feet and your experiences, I declare I don’t think there ever was such a simpleton born.”
Somers bore her laughter very steadily. He was not unused to it. The things in which he showed himself a simpleton were in relation to the things in which he was prematurely wise as three to a hundred; but yet there were such things. And he was free to acknowledge that leaving his seventeen shillings spread out on the millionaire’s table, or even taking the millionaire’s challenge au pied de la lettre, was the act of a simpleton. He stood tranquilly with his back to the fire till Lady Jane had got her laugh out. Then she resumed with a sort of apology:
“It was too much for me, Charlie. I could not help laughing. What will become of all that money, I wonder? Will he keep it and put it to interest? I should like to have seen him after you were gone. I should like to have seen him afterwards, when Stella had her knife at his throat, asking him what he meant by it. You may trust to Stella, my dear boy. She will soon bring her father to reason. He may be all sorts of queer things to you, but he can’t stand against her. She can twist him round her little finger. If it had been Katherine I should not have been so confident. But Stella—he never has refused anything to Stella since ever she was born.”
“Think so, really?” said Somers through his moustache. He was beginning to revive a little again, but yet the impression of old Tredgold’s chuckling laugh and his contemptuous certainty was not to be got over lightly. The gloom of the rejected was still over him.
“Yes, I think so,” said Lady Jane. “Don’t, for Heaven’s sake, go on in that hang-dog way. There’s nothing happened but what was to be expected. Of course, the old curmudgeon would make an attempt to guard his money-bags. I wish I were as sure of a company for Jack as I am of Stella’s power to do anything she likes with her father. But if you go down in this way at the first touch–”
“No intention of going down,” said Sir Charles, piqued. “Marry her to-morrow—take her out to India—then see what old beggar says.”
“That, indeed,” cried Lady Jane—“that would be a fine revenge on him! Don’t propose it to Stella if you don’t want her to accept, for she would think it the finest fun in the world.”
“By George!” Somers said, and a smile began to lift up the corners of his moustache.
“That would bring him to his senses, indeed,” Lady Jane said reflectively; “but it would be rather cruel, Charlie. After all, he is an old man. Not a very venerable old man, perhaps; not what you would call a lovely old age, is it? but still– Oh, I think it would be cruel. You need not go so far as that. But we shall soon hear what Stella says.”
And it very soon was known what Stella said. Stella wrote in a whirlwind of passion, finding nothing too bad to say of papa. An old bull, an old pig, were the sweetest of the similes she used. She believed that he wanted to kill her, to drag her by the hair of her head, to shut her up in a dungeon or a back kitchen or something. She thought he must have been changed in his sleep, for he was not in the very least like her own old nice papa, and Kate thought so too. Kate could not understand it any more than she could. But one thing was certain—that, let papa say what he would or do what he would, she (Stella) never would give in. She would be true, whatever happened. And if she were locked up anywhere she would trust in her Charlie to get her out. All her trust was in her Charlie, she declared. She had got his money, his poor dear bright shillings, of which papa had robbed him, and put them in a silk bag, which she always meant to preserve and carry about with her. She called it Charlie’s fortune. Poor dear, dear Charlie; he had left it all for her. She knew it was for her, and she would never part with it, never! This whirlwind of a letter amused Charlie very much; he did not mind letting his friends read it. They all laughed over it, and declared that she was a little brick, and that he must certainly stick to her whatever happened. The old fellow was sure to come round, they all said; no old father could ever stand out against a girl like that. She had him on toast, everybody knew.
These were the encouraging suggestions addressed to Sir Charles by his most intimate friends, who encouraged him still more by their narratives of how Lottie Seton tossed her head and declared that Charlie Somers had been waiting all along for some rich girl to drop into his mouth. He had always had an arrière pensée, she cried (whatever that might be), and had never been at all amusin’ at the best of times. He was very amusin’ now, however, with Stella’s letter in his pocket and this absorbing question to discuss. The whole regiment addressed itself with all the brain it possessed to the consideration of the subject, which, of course, was so much the more urgent in consequence of the orders under which it lay. To go or not to go to India, that was the rub, as Charlie had said. Stella only complicated the question, which had been under discussion before. He did not want to go; but then, on the other hand, if he remained at home, his creditors would be rampant and he would be within their reach, which would not be the case if he went to India. And India meant double pay. And if it could be secured that Stella’s father should send an expedition after them to bring them back within a year, then going to India with Stella as a companion would be the best fun in the world. To go for a year was one thing, to go as long as the regiment remained, doing ordinary duty, was quite another. Everybody whom he consulted, even Lady Jane, though she began to be a little frightened by the responsibility, assured him that old Tredgold would never hold out for a year. Impossible! an old man in shaky health who adored his daughter. “Doubt if he’ll give you time to get on board before he’s after you,” Algy said. “You’ll find telegrams at Suez or at Aden or somewhere,” said another; and a third chaunted (being at once poetical and musical, which was not common in the regiment) a verse which many of them thought had been composed for the occasion:
