Gil the Gunner - George Manville Fenn (people reading books .TXT) 📗

There,” he continued, “tell me which is the key, and I will get out clean linen and another suit. Then I’ll tell my servant to see that a bath is prepared; and, by the way, you have no servant yet, I suppose?”

I shook my head, as I lay wondering whether I liked this stern, cold, dark man, or whether I did not.

“Ah, well, we will soon pick out a man from the draft. This looks like the key.”

It was the right one, and in a quiet matter-of-fact way, and with very little help from me, he selected the necessary articles; and an hour later I went on deck, saving a slight headache, very little the worse.

I was eager to see how far we had dropped down the river; but at the end of ten minutes I was back in the cabin, flushed, hot, and excited, to find the door unfastened this time, and Captain Brace unpacking and arranging such articles as he wanted on the voyage.

“Hullo!” he cried; “not so well?”

“Oh, it’s horrid!” I cried excitedly. “How can people be so stupid!”

“Why, what is the matter?”

“I felt quite ashamed of myself,” I cried. “I had no sooner got on deck than the men began to cheer. I did not know then that it was meant for me, but directly after the captain came up and shook hands with me.”

“Very civil of him,” said my brother-officer, drily.

“Oh yes, if he had only meant it civilly; but then the chief officer came up, and a lot of passengers, and they all shook hands, and there was quite a crowd, and before I knew what was going to happen, I found a pack of ladies had come up, and one, a very stout little woman, called me her dear boy, and kissed me, and two others took out their handkerchiefs and began to cry.”

Captain Brace laughed unpleasantly, and I grew hotter.

“Why, you are quite the hero of the day, Vincent,” he said grimly.

“It’s horrid!” I cried pettishly. “I declare I wouldn’t have done it if I had known what they meant to do. Such nonsense!”

“Ah, you are talking nonsense, boy. Bah! take no notice. They’ll forget it all in a few hours. People soon get over these hysterical displays.”

I sat down sulkily on one of my cases, while he went on coolly arranging his shaving tackle, night things, and the boots and shoes.

“I like him less and less,” I said to myself, as I sat and watched him, while, as I fancied, he treated me in the most cavalier of ways, only speaking now and then; but when he did speak it was to ask me some question about myself, and each time he made me think how young and inexperienced I was, for he appeared to be getting to know everything, while he was still quite a stranger to me.

“Yes,” he said at last, “I have heard of Colonel Vincent—a brother-officer of mine once met him at dinner somewhere up the country. I was in quite a different part.”

“Then you have been out in India before?” I cried eagerly.

“I?” he said, with a faint smile. “Oh yes. I was out there seven years—quite an apprenticeship. I was just such a griffin as you when I went out first, but a couple of years older.”

“Griffin!” I thought; and I felt I disliked him more and more; just, too, as I was warming up to him a little, and thinking he was improving.

We were silent for a time, and I waited for him to speak, which he did at last, but in a forced, half-bantering way.

“You’ll find it pretty hot, squire,” he said; “and sometimes you’ll wish your uniform back at the tailor’s. It is terribly hot at times.”

“Yes, I’ve heard so,” I said, with my curiosity getting the better of my annoyance. “Tell me something about the country.”

“Eh? About the country? Ah! Of course you, in your young enthusiasm, are full of romantic fancies.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I replied haughtily.

“Yes, you are,” he said laughing. “All boys going out are. I was. But don’t expect too much, my lad,” he continued coldly. “There are grand and lovely bits of scenery, and times when the place looks too beautiful for earth; but, to balance this, deserts and storms, terrible rains, and dust borne on winds that seem as if they had come from the mouth of a furnace. There are times, too, when the state of the atmosphere affects your nerves, and life seems to be unendurable.”

“It doesn’t sound very cheerful,” I said bitterly.

“No; and I am acting like a wet blanket to you,” he said, with a sad smile. “But you will do your duty, and make friends, and it is not such a bad life after all.”

There was another silence, and I waited in vain for him to speak.

“What regiment are you in, sir?” I said at last, as he stood with his back to me, as if wrapped in thought.

“I?” he said, starting, and looking round. “Oh, I am in the artillery—the horse artillery. I thought you would know.”

I shook my head.

“We may run against each other sometimes out yonder; but it is a great country, and you may be stationed hundreds of miles away.”

“I hope so,” I thought.

“Rather a rough time to come for you, my lad,” he said, with what I took to be a cynical smile; “but you will soon get used to the noise of the guns.”

“Of course,” I said coldly. “Tell me more about the country. There are plenty of tigers, I suppose?”

“Oh yes, but far more mosquitoes.”

“Well, I know that,” I said.

“You have never seen one, I suppose?”

“No.”

“Then don’t make the same mistake as the Irish private’s wife at Madras.”

“What was that?” I said.

“It is an old story that you may not have heard. She was on shipboard, and eagerly listening to an old sergeant’s wife who had been there before; and this woman told her that one of the great troubles of the country was the mosquito. ‘An’ what’s a moskayto?’ said the Irishwoman. ‘Oh, a horrid creature with a long trunk, and it plunges it into you, and sucks your blood.’ At last they reached the coast, and the young Irishwoman was eagerly watching the shore with its troops of turbaned natives, palanquins, and mounted men, till suddenly a train of elephants came in sight, steadily nodding their heads and waving their trunks. The young Irishwoman drew a long deep breath, and looked as if she would never see home again, and the old sergeant’s wife asked her what was the matter. ‘Oh,’ she said, in a hoarse whisper, ‘is thim moskaytoes?’”

Captain Brace appeared so different as he told me this little old anecdote, that I felt as if I should like him after all; but the light died out of his face again, and he looked at me in a troubled way, as if vexed with himself for having been so frivolous.

“How long have you been back home?” I said, so as to keep up the conversation, for it was miserable to sit there in the silence.

“Six months,” he said gravely.

“That’s a good long holiday,” I said merrily.

“Holiday, boy?” he cried, in so wild and passionate a tone that I was startled, and looked at him wonderingly as he turned away.

“I—I beg your pardon,” I said apologetically. “I’m afraid I have blurted out something which I ought not to have said.”

“Never mind—never mind,” he said, with his head averted; “of course you could not know.”

He sank down on the edge of his berth with so sad and dejected a look that I rose and went to him.

“Pray forgive me,” I said. “I did not know.”

He looked up at me with his face drawn and old.

“Thank you,” he said, taking my hand. “There is nothing to forgive, my lad. You may as well know, though. Brother-officers ought to be brotherly, even if they are a little strange. It was a case of illness. I took some one home—to save her life, and—”

He was silent for some moments, and I could feel his hand tremble as he pressed mine very hard, and seemed to be making a desperate effort to be calm, and master the emotion which evidently thrilled him.

“God knows best,” I heard him whisper, hardly above his breath. And then aloud, “I am going back to my duties, you see—alone.”

The painful silence which followed was broken by the sound of a bell, and he started up quite a changed man.

“There!” he said, in a strange tone, “soldiers have no time for sorrow. It is the dead march, Vincent. Then a volley over the grave, and a march back to quarters to a lively quick-step. Come, brother-officer, we are abreast of Gravesend: as far as we shall go to-night, and there’s the dinner-bell. Right shoulder forward. March!”

“No,” I said to myself. “I am sorry for him, but he is too strange. I shall never like Captain Brace.”