LITMIR.BIZ

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It does not appear to me to be well at all,” said the Colonel; “how often have I told you, when on recruiting duty, to tell the truth? You pour a parcel of lies into a poor blockhead’s head, and blow up his pride with thoughts of what’s going to happen to him; and you expect, when he has found out that it’s all lies, as he must do, that he will believe the rest of what you say to him! That’s bad enough; but to go into it con amore—I mean for pure love of romancing—when there was neither necessity nor business in it—I admit to you that’s something that beats me.”

      “Ay, Cornel, it’s easy for the like of you,” said Kennedy, “that have your pensions and commands; but what’s a man to say to the poor devils? Hard service and poor wages, barracks and boiled beef, and sixpence a-day! Truth’s a grand thing for the army, Cornel, but it does not bring in no recruits; and where’s the harm done? If Johnny Raw is deceived wance in a way, it’s soon tooken out on him. At the worst, did I ever tell a man he could rise to be Cornel but by a steedy life and doing his duty? Sure, and if he minds himself, he can come to be sergeant, and that’s next best; but the biggest lot of them, Cornel, as you know as well as me, never try, and get no honour at all, at all, as may well be proved; for them that strive not, win not on, as I’ve told them till I was hoarse myself, many’s the day.”

      “You never wanted an excuse,” said the Colonel, shaking his head; “however, we’ll leave the general question; did you ever know a man in the 100th rise from the ranks?—did you ever hear of a sergeant sent on a political mission?—and how could you venture to begin the day, you old sinner, with such a pack of lies?”

      “Well, well, Cornel—aisy, sir,” said the sergeant; “sure he was a gentleman, and know’d what was what as well as me!”

      Colonel Sutherland laughed in spite of himself at this original excuse, on seeing which Kennedy recovered his courage, and took a higher tone.

      “And if ye’ll believe me, the best thing for him yonder is just to ’list, Cornel. If he wance ’lists, friends’ll come in and buy his commission; for sure they are well off and in plenty, Yorkshire ways—and the disgrace, sir, the disgrace, that’s what will make them draw their purse-strings. I would not desire a prettier man, either for parade or battle-field. He’s a soldier born!”

      “They! who are they?” said Colonel Sutherland; “he has no friends.”

      “Maybe, Cornel, maybe—I say little of friends—friendship’s neither here nor there,” said the sergeant, waving his hand; “but the faother and moother I can speak to. Them that heeds not love, heeds shame.”

      “You are oracular, Sergeant Kennedy,” said the Colonel, with a very little peevishness; “but I tell you the lad told me he had no friends.”

      “Faother and moother, Cornel, as I say,” answered the persistent sergeant, with a little nod of his dogmatical head.

      Colonel Sutherland got up and fell to pacing the room with great annoyance and agitation. After a little while, being somewhat obstinate himself, he seized Kennedy by the shoulder and shook him.

      “You’re deaf!” said the Colonel, with a whimsical, half-angry transference of his own defect to the other; “you’re hard of hearing! I tell you the lad says he has no friends.”

      “And I tell you, Cornel, he has faother and moother, if it was my last word!” said the sergeant once again.

      “Your last word!—ay, you will always have the last word,” cried Colonel Sutherland, this time indeed hearing imperfectly; “there must be some mistake, I suppose. Never mind, we’ll inquire into it later. You must see me again, sergeant—I am going now to my young people. Good morning to you, my friend—ask for me here to-morrow.”

      “Are the young gentlemen in these parts, Cornel?” said Kennedy, rising with a little reluctance; “I said to mysel’ the Cornel behooved to have his own occasions here.”

      “Not my boys—my niece and nephew, people you never heard of,” said the Colonel, quickly. “Now, my man, good morning—I am pushed for time—you’ll come again to-morrow.”

      Thus urged, Kennedy had no resource but to obey, which he did, however, very slowly, running over in his mind immediately all the “gentlemens’ families” of the district, with which he had any acquaintance, in a vain endeavour to ascertain who could be the niece and nephew of his “old Cornel.” Kennedy, as it happened, had not been at his usual post in the public room of the little inn on the previous night, and had consequently no intimation of any dawn of new fortune on Mr. Horry, whom he knew perfectly well, and at whose hands he had suffered contradiction enough to give him some interest in the young man’s fate. This information, however, he would have been pretty sure to receive, but that Colonel Sutherland had already sent for the landlady to give her his orders for the day.

      The Colonel was extremely frugal, almost parsimonious so far as his own manner of living was concerned, but having set himself to devise some pleasure for poor Susan, shut up all her life in Marchmain, the extremest liberality which the circumstances would allow, was not too much for his inclinations. The only vehicle possessed by the little inn at Tillington was a double gig, a very homely conveyance, which the Colonel had already ordered, and in which he proposed to take Susan “somewhere,” bringing her back to lunch with him. The kind old man entered into the most minute directions about this lunch. He put elaborate leading questions, in order to ascertain what the cuisine was capable of, and consulted over puddings and tarts with the zeal of a connoisseur. A sentimental French chef who would have entered into the sentiment of the occasion, would have delighted the Colonel. He wanted a dainty meal of pretty little dishes, sweet and savoury, as much in honour of Susan, as to please her youthful palate, and endeavoured so earnestly to impress his wishes upon the homely innkeeper, that the idea of some secret grandeur belonging to Mr. Horry and his sister impressed itself more and more deeply upon that good woman’s mind. She promised to do her very best; with the greatest awe and impressment she left the innocent and too trustful Colonel to study her cookery-book with devotion, and to conceive impossible triumphs of culinary art. But art, even in the kitchen, avenges itself upon those who neglect it. Poor Mrs. Gilsland lost three or four hours of valuable time, and her temper—which was still more valuable—over trifle which sunk dead into the bottom of her dish, and cream which would not “whip;” and dratted the Colonel at the conclusion of it with hearty good will and much vexation. While the innocent Colonel, secure of having done all that man could do to procure a satisfactory collation for Susan, drove the innkeeper’s steady old horse across the moorland road, and combated manfully the vexation which rose stronger and stronger in his mind, as he recollected the discrepancy between young Musgrave’s account of himself and that given by Kennedy.

      The Colonel had a little pride in his own discernment, and could not bear to be taken in; but besides that, was grieved in his kind old heart at the thought of finding his new protegé unworthy; and yet his manner was so sincere, his face so honest and candid! Would that Horace had as clear a countenance! Colonel Sutherland touched the horse with his whip, and went forward with a little start, as if he would rather escape from that last thought, and so dismissed young Musgrave from his mind as best he could, and began to think with simple pleasure of Susan and the unusual holiday which he was bringing to her. He had ascertained that it was possible this fine morning to drive her to the little country town, where it was market-day, and where the little stir and bustle of life would be new to her. The idea of the pleasure she would have exhilarated himself, as he approached nearer to the house. He meant to buy her some books, and anything else that might amuse her in her solitude, and smiled to himself, with a tender and simple satisfaction, as he tried to anticipate her likings and wishes. Thus thinking, and thus smiling, he came in sight of the solitary house upon which at the moment the sun shone.

      There it stood in its dark reserve, with the windows buried deep in the wall, sending no responsive glimmer to the light which shone full upon the blank gable, and slanted along the front of the house. There was no projecting point to make a break of shadow in the featureless brightness, nothing but the dull wall and the cold slate-roof; and all around the black moor, without a tree, intersected

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