With all diffidence I mention a fact. Whether it had any bearing on a later happening I do not know. Mr. Kennet, as we know, indulged occasionally in strong waters. The result, as a rule, was only an increased surliness of demeanour of which no one took much notice.
On one such occasion, however, shortly after Jim's return, Kennet, trespassing on Mrs. Lee's domain on some message of his master's, got to words with the old lady, and, rankling perhaps under some sharper reproof than usual from above, snarled at her like a toothless old dog:
"Old witch! foisting your ill-gotten brat on us by kidnapping t'other!" At which Mrs. Lee snatched at her broom, and Mr. Kennet beat a retreat more hasty than dignified.
Mr. Eager did his utmost during these last months of the year to prepare the boys for their approaching translation.
"It's my old school, boys. See you do me credit there," he would urge on them. "In the games you'll do all right. Just pick up their ways, and never lose your tempers. You'll find the lessons tough at first, but I shall trust to you to do your best. You'll miss the flats and the sand-hills, of course, but you'll soon find compensations in the playing-fields."
They came to look forward with something like eagerness to the new prospect. It would be a tremendous change in their lives, and the call of the unknown works in the blood of the young like the spring.
But they could only stand a certain amount of book-grinding; and the flats and sand-hills, once the autumn gales were past, were full of enticement, and they ranged them, in the company of Eager and Gracie, with all the relish of approaching separation.
When George Herapath and Ralph Harben came home for the holidays, hare-and-hounds became the order of the day, and many a tough chase they had, and went far afield.
And so it came to pass that one fatal day, Jack, being the hare, led them away through the sedgy lands round Wyn Mere, and played the game so well that he disappeared completely.
The course of events that followed was so similar to those in Jim's case that repetition would be wearisome.
Sir Denzil and Sir George Herapath were equally furious and disturbed, but showed it in different ways. Eager, as before, was sadly upset and strained himself to breaking-point in his efforts to discover the missing one.
Once more the sand-hills were scoured, and this time, since the boy had gone in that direction, the Mere was dragged as far as it was possible to do so, but its vast extent precluded any certainty as to results.
And the days passed, and Jack was gone as completely as if he had been carried up into heaven.
"Well, Mr. Eager, what do you make of it this time!" asked Sir Denzil, one night when Eager called at Carne with the usual report.
"I don't know what to make of it," said Eager dejectedly. "I have thought about it till my head spins."
"Your ideas would interest me."
"When Jim was kidnapped you felt sure that that pointed to him as what you call the 'right one.' Is it possible that has become known to those interested, and this has been done to point you back to Jack?"
"You mean that old witch downstairs. . . . She is capable of anything, of course, and you don't need to look at her twice to see the gipsy blood in her. . . . On the other hand, she may have been cunning enough to anticipate the view you have just expressed. She may have had this boy Jack carried off for the sole purpose of prejudicing the other in our eyes. Do you follow me?"
"You mean as I put it just now--that one would expect them to kidnap our man to leave theirs in possession."
"Go a step farther, Mr. Eager. Suppose they have in some way learned that, in consequence of Jim's carrying-off, I am inclined to think him the rightful heir. They may, as you say, have carried off the other simply to point me away from Jim and so confuse the issue. But it is just possible they are not so simple as all that, and have reasoned thus--'When Jim disappeared Sir Denzil considered that as proof that he was the rightful heir. If we now carry off Jack, that is just what Sir Denzil would expect us to do, and he will probably stick the tighter to Jim in consequence.' If that is their reasoning, then Jack is our man and not Jim. You follow me?"
"It's a terrible tangle," said Eager wearily, with his head in his hands. "It seems to me you can argue any way from anything that happens, and only make matters worse."
"Exactly!" said Sir Denzil, over a pinch of snuff.
"And so we come back to my point. You must treat both exactly alike and leave the issue to Providence."
"It looks like it," said Sir Denzil, and forbore to argue the matter theologically. "If the other comes back we shall have two strings to our bow, which is one too many for practical purposes. If he doesn't, we'll stick to the one we have, right man or wrong, and be hanged to them!"
Seth Rimmer, and young Seth, who had only lately returned home after an unusually long absence, were tireless in their search for the missing boy in their own neighbourhood, in or about the Mere.
After a day's hard work dragging the great hooks to and fro across the bottom of the Mere, old Seth would shake his head gravely as he looked back over the silent black water.
"Naught less than draining it dry will ever tell us all it holds," he would say. "From the look of it there's a moight of wickedness hid down there."
Katie too was indefatigable, and she and Jim and George Herapath and Harben hunted high and low round the Mere, but found no smallest trace of Jack.
They had all been planning an unusually festive Christmas, but it passed in anxiety and gloom, and the time came round for Jim to go away to school. But going along with Jack was one thing, and going all alone a very different thing indeed, and he jibbed at it strongly.
Sir Denzil, however, having made up his mind, was not the man to stand any nonsense. He prevailed on Eager, as being more conversant with such matters, to see to the boy's outfit, and finally to take him up to Harrow himself.
And so, in due course, Jim, still very downcast at his parting with Gracie and Mrs. Lee and Carne and the flats and sand-hills, found himself sitting with wide, startled eyes and firmly shut mouth, opposite Mr. Eager, in one of the new railway carriages, whirling across incredible ranges of country at a Providence-tempting speed which seemed to him like to end in catastrophe at any moment.
They went from Liverpool to Birmingham, both of which towns paralysed the little ranger of flats and sand-hills; from Birmingham to London, the enormity of which crushed him completely: spent two days showing him the greater sights, which his overburdened brain could in no wise appreciate; and finally landed him, fairly stodged with wonders, in his master's house at Harrow, which seemed to him, after his recent experiences, a haven of peace and restfulness.
Eager was an old school and college chum of the housemaster, and spent a day of reminiscent enjoyment with him. He imparted to his friend enough of the boy's curious history to secure his lasting interest in him, and next day said good-bye to Jim and carried the memory of his melancholy dazed black eyes all the way back to Wyvveloe with him.
And Gracie's first words as she rushed at him and flung her arms round his neck were, "Jack's back!" And the Rev. Charles sat down with a gasp.
"Really and truly, Gracie?"
"Really and truly! Yesterday--all rags and bruises and as dirty as a pig."
"And wherever has he been all this time?"
"Dear knows! He doesn't, except that it was with some men--gipsies--who carried him away and beat him most of the time. He's all black and blue, except his face, and that was dirty brown, and one of his eyes was blackened; one of the men nearly knocked it out."
"Well, well, well! It's an uncommonly strange world, child!
"Yes. How's old Jim?"
"He was all right when I left him, but anything may happen to those boys, apparently, without the slightest warning. Now, if you'll give me something to eat I'll go along and hear what Jack has got to say for himself."
Jack, however, had very little information to give that could be turned to any account. It was at the far side of the Mere that he had come upon a couple of men crouching under a sand-hill, as though they were on the look out for somebody. They had collared him, tied a stick in his mouth, and carried him away--where, he had no idea--a very long way, till they came up with a party on the road. There he was placed in one of the travelling caravans, fed from time to time, and not allowed out for many days. He had tried to escape more than once and been soundly thrashed for it. His back--well, there it was, and it made Eager almost ill to think of what those terrible weals must have meant to the boy. Then, after a long lime, another chance came, when all the men were lying drunk one night and some of the women too. He had crept out, and ran and ran straight on till his legs wouldn't carry him another step. A farmer's wife had taken pity on him at sight of his back and helped him on his road. And through her, others. He knew where he wanted to get to, and so, bit by bit, mostly on his own feet, but with an occasional lift in a friendly cart, he had reached home.
"And what do you say to all that, Mr. Eager?" asked Sir Denzil.
"I say, first, that I am most devoutly thankful that he has come back to us. What may be behind it all is altogether beyond me. If he is their boy would they treat him so cruelly?"
"To gain their ends they would stick at nothing. I see no daylight in the matter."
"You had no chance of seeing how the old woman received him, I suppose, sir?"
"All we know is that when Kennet went downstairs he found the boy sitting in the kitchen, eating as though he had not seen food for a week. Not a word beyond that and what he tells us. The problem is precisely where it was when those damned women came in that first morning each with a child on her arm."
Smaller matters must give way to greater. You have seen how that great problem of Carne came about, and how it perpetuated itself in the persons of Jack and Jim Carron, without any apparent likelihood of satisfactory solution, unless by the final intervention of the Great Solver of all doubts and difficulties.
To arrive at the end of our story within anything like reasonable limits, we must again take flying leaps across the years, and touch with no more than the tip of a toe such outstanding points as call for special notice.
Harrow was the most tremendous change their lives had so far experienced. Mr. Eager had indeed prepared them for it to the best of his power. But the change, when they plunged into it--first Jim and then Jack--went far beyond their widest imaginings.
With their fellows they shook down, in time, into satisfactory fellowship. But the rules of the school, written and unwritten, from above and from below, were for a long time terribly irksome and almost past bearing. They were something like tiger-cubs transferred suddenly from their native freedom to the strict rounds of the circus-ring. They were expected to understand and conform to matters which were so taken for granted that explanations were deemed superfluous. And they suffered many things that first term in stubborn silence, mask and cloak for the shy pride which would sooner bite its tongue through than ask the question which would make its ignorance manifest.
The milling-ground between the school and the racquet-courts knew them well, and drank of their blood, and proved the rough nursery of many a lasting friendship.
Jim used laughingly to say at home that he had seen the colour of the blood of every fellow he cared a twopenny snap for, on that trampled plot of grass by the old courts. If the colour was good, and the manner of its display in accordance with his ideas, good feeling invariably followed, and he soon had heaps of friends. That was doubtless because he had nothing whatever of the swot in him. He delivered himself over, heart and soul, to the active enjoyments of life, and found no lack of like temper and much to his mind.
Jack developed along somewhat wider and deeper lines. He had no great craving for knowledge simply as knowledge. But concerning things that interested him he was insatiable, and slogged away at them with as great a gusto as Jim did at his games.
Jack's ideas of a correct school curriculum, being based entirely on his own leanings, necessarily clashed at times with those of the higher powers, and both he and Jim passed under the birch of the genial Vaughan with the utmost regularity and decorum.
Neither, of course, ever uttered a word under these inflictions. Jack went tingling back to his own private preoccupation of the moment; and Jim went raging off to the playing-fields.
"It's not what he does," he would fume to his chums, "but the way he does it. If he'd get mad I wouldn't mind, but he's always as nice and smooth as a hairdresser, and talks as if it was a favour he was doing you."
"Oily old beast!" would be the return comment, and then to the game with extra vim to make up for time lost in the swishing.
Jim's greatest fight was an epic in the school for many a year after he had left. "Ah!" said the privileged ones--whether they had actually been present in the body on that historic occasion or not--"but you should have seen the slog between Carron and Chissleton! Thatwasa fight!"
It was the usual episode of the big bully, whom most public-schoolboys run up against sooner or later, and Chissleton was three years older and a good head taller than Jim. But Jim had the long years of the flats, and all the benefit of Mr. Eager's scientific fisticuffs, behind him. They fought ten rounds, each of which left Jim on the grass, his face a jelly daubed with blood, and his eyes so nearly closed up that it was only when the bulky Chissleton was clear against the sky that he could see him at all. But bulk tells both ways, and loses its wind chasing a small boy about even a circumscribed ring, and knocking him flat ten times only to find him dancing about next round, as gamely as ever, though somewhat dilapidated and unpleasant to look upon. So Jim wore the big one down by degrees, and in the eleventh round his time came. He hurled himself on the dim bulk between him and the sky with such headlong fury that both went down with a crash. But Jim was up in a moment daubing more blood over his face with the backs of his fists, and the big one lay still till long after the pæans of the small boys had died away into an interested silence.
"But didn't it hurt dreadfully, Jim?" asked Gracie, long afterwards, with pitifully twisted face.
"Sho! I d'n know. It was the very best fight I ever had."
The Little Lady found the days without the boys long and slow, in spite of her close friendship with Margaret Herapath.
Meg was everything a girl could possibly be. She was sweet, she was lovely, she was clever, she was a darling dear, she was splendid. She was an angel, she was a duck. She was Lady Margaret, she was dear old Meggums. And never a day passed but she was at the cottage or Gracie was over at Knoyle.
They rode and walked and bathed and read together. They slept together at times, and talked half through the night because the days were not long enough for the innumerable confidences that had to pass between them.
And Eager rejoiced in their close communion, for he had never met any girl whose friendship he would have so desired for Gracie. And he went about his duties, storming and persuading, fighting and tending, with new fires in his heart which shone out of his eyes, and his people all acknowledged that he was "a rare good un," even when he was scarifying them about manure-heaps and stinks, which they suffered as tolerantly as they did his vehemence, and as though such a thing as typhus had never been known in the land.
And what times they all had when the holidays came round!
A little shyness, of course, at first, while the various parties took stock of the changes in one another. For Gracie was growing so tall--"quite the young lady," as Mrs. Jex said; and such a change from the fellows at school, as Jack and Jim acknowledged to themselves.
Girls--as girls--were somewhat looked down upon at school, you know. But this was Gracie, and quite a different thing altogether.
When the first shyness of these meetings wore off she was apt to be somewhat overwhelmed by their effusive worship. They were her slaves, hers most absolutely, and their only difficulty was to find adequate means for the expression of their devotion.
For their first home-coming, each of them, unknown to the other, had saved from the wiles of the tuck-shop such meagre portion of pocket-money as strength of will insisted on, and brought her a present; Jack, a small volume of Plutarch's Lives, the reading of which gave himself great satisfaction; and Jim, a pocket-handkerchief with red and blue spots, which seemed to him the very height of fashion, and almost too good for ordinary use by any one but a princess--or Gracie.
"Youdearboys!" said the Little Lady, and opened Plutarch and sparkled--although for Plutarch, simply as Plutarch, she had no overpowering admiration; and put the red and blue spots to her little brown nose in the most delicate and ladylike manner imaginable. "But you really shouldn't, you know!" And they both vowed internally that they would do it again next time and every time, and each time still better.
And, so far, the fact that they were two, and that there was only one Gracie, occasioned them no trouble whatever.
Each time they came home Sir Denzil and Eager looked cautiously for any new developments pointing to the solution of the puzzle, and found none. Developments there were in plenty, but not one from which they could deduce any inference of weight. Was Jim more dashing and heedless and headstrong than ever?--all these came to him from his father. Was Jack developing a taste for study, of a kind, and along certain very definite lines of his own choosing?--could that be cast up at him as an un-Carronlike weakness due to the Sandys strain, or should it not rather be credited to the strengthening admixture of red Lee blood?
Those were the broader lines of divergence between the two, and the most striking to the outward observer, but it must not be supposed therefrom that Jack had foresworn his birthright of the active life. He revelled in the freedom of the flats as fully as ever, rode and bathed and ran, and held his own in cricket and hockey; but, at the same time, the habit of thought had visibly grown upon him, and it made him seem the older of the two.
Time wrought its personal changes in them all, but brought no great variation from these earlier characteristics. Gracie grew more beautiful in every way each time the boys came home; Jack more deliberative; Jim remained light-hearted and joyously careless as ever, enjoying each day to its fullest, and troubling not at all about the morrow. His devotion to the playing-fields gave him by degrees somewhat of an advantage over Jack in the matter of physique and general good looks. His healthy, browned face, sparkling black eyes, and the fine supple grace of his strong and well-knit body were at all times good to look upon.
Charles Eager, who had a searchingly appreciative eye for the beauties of God's handiwork in all its expressions, when he sped across the sands behind the corded muscles playing so exquisitely beneath the firm white flesh, or lay in the warm sand and watched the rise and fall of the wide, deep chest on which the salt drops from the tumbled mop of black hair rolled like diamonds, while up above the clean-cut nostrils went in and out like those of a hunted stag, said to himself that here was the making of en unusually fine man.
He doubted if Jim's brain would carry him as far as Jack's, but all the same he could not but rejoice in him exceedingly.
"Here," he mused, "is heart and body. And there is heart and brain,"--for at heart these two were very much alike still, open-handed, generous, and, by nature and Eager's own good training, clean and wholesome,--"which will go farthest?"
And, following his train of thought to the point of speech, one day when he and Jim were alone, he said:
"God has blessed you with a wonderfully fine body, lad. Where is it going to take you?"
"Into the thick of the fighting, I hope, if ever there is any more fighting," said Jim, with a hopeful laugh.
"One fights with brains as well as with brawn"--with an intentional touch of the spur to see what would come of it.
"Oh, Jack's got the brains--and the brawn too," he added quickly, lest he should seem to imply any pre-eminence on his own part in that respect. "He'll die a general. I'll maybe kick out captain--if I'm not a sergeant-major,"--with another merry laugh. "I'd sooner fight in the front line any day than order them from the rear."
"God save us from the horrors of another war," said Eager fervently. "I can just remember Waterloo. Every friend we had was in mourning, and sorrow was over the land."
"And there is another Napoleon in the saddle," said Jim.
"Ay; a menace to the world at large! An ambitious man, and somewhat unscrupulous, I fear. To keep himself in the saddle he may set the war-horse prancing."
"I'm for the cavalry myself," said Jim, and Eager smiled at the characteristic irrelevancy. "I shall try for Sandhurst. Jack's for Woolwich."
"Even Sandhurst will need some grinding up."
"Oh, I'll grind when the time comes "--somewhat dolefully. "You can get crammers who know the game and are up to all the twists and turns. If I can only crawl through and get the chance of some fighting, I'll show them!"
One afternoon, in one of their winter holidays, Gracie and the two boys had been down along the shore to visit Mrs. Rimmer and Kattie, especially Kattie.
They were tramping home along the crackling causeway of dried seaweed and the jetsam in which of old they had sought for treasure, and chattering merrily as they went.
"Kattie's getting as pretty as a--as a----" stumbled Jim after a comparison equal to the subject.
"Wild-rose," suggested Gracie.
"Sweet-pea," said Jack.
"I was thinking of something with wings," said Jim, "but I don't quite know----"
"Peacock," said Jack.
"No, nor a seagull. Their eyes are cold, and Kattie's aren't."
"You think she'll fly away?" laughed Gracie. "You think she looks flighty? That was the red ribbons in her hair. She must have expected you, Jim."
"They were very pretty, but I liked her best with it all flying loose as it used to be."
"She's getting too big for that, but she certainly has a taste for colours."
"Well, why shouldn't she, if they make her look pretty?"
"Oh, she can have all the ribbons she wants, as far as I am concerned. I only hope----"
And then they were aware suddenly of the rapid beat of horses' feet on the firm brown sand below, and turned, supposing it might be Sir George or Margaret Herapath.
But it was a stranger, a tall and imposing figure of a man on a great brown horse, and behind him rode another, evidently a servant, for he carried a valise strapped on to the crupper of his saddle. Both wore long military cloaks and foreign-looking caps. In the half-light of the waning afternoon, and the rarity of strangers in that part of the world, there was something of the sinister about the new-comer, something which evoked a feeling of discomfort in the chatterers and reduced them to silent staring, as the riders went by at a hand-gallop.
"Who can they be?" said Gracie, as they stood gazing after them.
"Foreigners," said Jack decisively. "French, I should say, from the cut of their jibs. A French officer and his servant."
"What are they wanting here, I'd like to know," said Jim, still staring absorbedly. "He's a fine-looking man anyway, and he knows how to ride."
"His eyes were like gimlets," said Gracie. "They went right through me. I thought he was going to speak to us."
"Wish he had," said Jim. "That's just the kind of man I'd like to have a talk with."
They were to drink tea with Gracie, and she had made a great provision of special cakes for them with her own hands. So they turned off into the sand-hills and made their way to Wyvveloe.
Eager came out of a cottage as they passed down the street, and they all went on together.
"Oh, Charles," burst out the Little Lady, as she filled the cups, "we saw two such curious men on the shore as we were coming home----"
"Ah!"--for he always enjoyed her exuberance in the telling of her news. "Two heads each?--or was it smugglers now, or real bold buccaneers?"
"Jack thinks, by the cut of their jibs, they were Frenchmen, one an officer and the other his servant."
"Oh?"--with a sudden startled interest. "Frenchmen, eh? And what made you think they were Frenchmen, Jack, my boy?"
"They looked like it to me. They had long soldiers' cloaks on, and their caps were not English----"
"And they had rattling good horses, both of them," struck in the future cavalryman.
"And where were they going?"
"We didn't ask. We only stared, and they stared back. They were galloping along the shore towards Carne," said Jack.
"I We don't often see Frenchmen up this way nowadays." And thereafter he was not quite so briskly merry as usual, as though the Frenchmen were weighing on him.
And truly an odd and discomforting idea had flashed unreasonably across his mind as they spoke, and it stuck there and worried him.
They were gathered round the fire, and Jim was gleefully picturing to the shuddering Gracie, in fullest red detail, the great fight with Chissleton. And Gracie had just gasped, "But didn't it hurt dreadfully, Jim?" And Jim had just replied, with the carelessness of the hardened warrior, "Sho! I din know. It was the very best fight I ever had";--when a knock came on the cottage door, and Eager jumped up, almost as though he had been expecting it, and went out. It was Mr. Kennet stood there, and when the light of the lamp in the passage fell on his face it seemed longer and more portentous even than usual. It was Kennet whom Eager's foreboding thought had feared to see. And his words occasioned him no surprise.
"Sir Denzil wants the boys, Mr. Eager, and he says will you please to come too."
"Very well, Kennet." And if Mr. Kennet had expected to be questioned on the matter he was disappointed. "Will you wait for us?"
"I've a message into the village, sir. I'll come on as soon as I've done it." And in the darkness beyond, a horse jerked its head and rattled its gear.
"Come along, boys. Your grandfather has sent for you. I'll go along with you." And they were threading their way--with eyes a little less capable than of old of seeing in the dark, by reason of disuse and study--through the sand-hills towards Carne.
The boys speculated briskly as to the reason for this unusual summons. A couple of years earlier they would have been racking their brains as to which of their numerous peccadilloes had come to light, and bracing their hearts and backs to the punishment. But they were getting too big now for anything of that kind--except of course at school, where flogging was a part of the curriculum.
Eager guessed what was toward, but offered them no light on the subject.
"Yo're to go up," said Mrs. Lee to the boys, as they entered the kitchen. "Will yo' please stop here, sir till he wants yo'." And It seemed to Eager that the grim old face was pinched tighter than ever in repression of some overpowering emotion.
The boys stumbled wonderingly upstairs, knocked on Sir Denzil's door, and were bidden to enter.
Their grandfather was sitting half turned away from the table, on which were the remains of a meal and several bottles of wine. Before the fire, with his back against the mantelpiece, stood a tall, dark man in a very becoming undress uniform, his hands in his trousers' pockets, a large cigar in his mouth. Sparks shot into his keen black eyes as they leaped eagerly at the boys, devouring them wholesale in one hungry gaze, then travelling rapidly back and forth in assimilation of details.
A foreigner without doubt, said the boys to themselves, as they stared back with interest at the dark, handsome face with its sweeping black moustache and pointed beard.
Sir Denzil tapped his snuff-box and snuffed aloofly.
"Gad, sir, but I think they do me credit!" said the stranger at last, In a voice that sounded somewhat harsh and nasal to ears accustomed to the soft, round tones of the north.
"That's as it may be," said Sir Denzil drily. "Credit where credit is due."
"Sang-d'-Dieu!you will allow me a finger in the pie, at all events, sir!"
"That much, perhaps!"--with a shrug. "That proverbial finger as a rule points more to marring than to making."
"And you've no idea which is which?" And he eyed the boys so keenly that they grew uncomfortable.
"Not the slightest! Have you?"
"I like them both. I'm proud of them both. But it certainly complicates matters having two of them. Suppose you keep one and I take one? How would that do? I'll wager mine goes higher than yours."
"Suppose you put it to them!"
The boys had been following this curious discussion with certainly more intelligence than might have been displayed by two puppies whose future was in question, but with only a very dim idea of what some of it might mean.
They had at times, of late, come to discuss themselves and their immediate concerns--as to which was the elder, and as to what their father and mother had been like, when they had died, and so on. In the earlier days they had never troubled their heads about such matters. But the exigencies of school life had awakened a desire for more definite information towards the settlement of vexed questions.
And so their holidays had been punctuated with attempts at the solution of these weighty problems, and the piercing of the cloud of ignorance in which they had been perfectly happy. And the unsatisfactory results of their inquiries had only served to quicken their thirst for knowledge.
Old Mrs. Lee gave them nothing for their pains, and her manner was eminently discouraging. "Which was the elder? She'd have thought any fool could tell they were twins! Their mother?--dead, years ago. Their father?--dead too, she hoped, and best thing for him!"
Their only other possible source of information was Mr. Eager. Sir Denzil and Kennet were of course out of the question. And Mr. Eager had so far only told them that of his own actual knowledge he knew as little as they did, and advised them to wait and trouble themselves as little as possible about the matter. He could not even say definitely if their father was dead. He had lived abroad for many years, and had not been heard of for a very long time.
Eager, of course, foresaw that, sooner or later, the whole puzzling matter would have to be explained to them, unless the solution came otherwise, in which case it might never need to be explained at all. But in the meantime no good could come of unprofitable discussion, and there were parts of it best left alone.
And so, when this handsome stranger dawned suddenly upon them, in such familiar discussion of themselves with their grandfather, their first "Who is it?" speedily gave place to "Can it be?" and then to "Is it?"--on Jack's part, at all events, and he stared at the dark man in the foreign uniform with keenest interest and a glimmering of understanding. Jim stared quite as hard, but with smaller perception.
"Well?" said the stranger, his white teeth gleaming through the heavy black moustache. "What do you make of it? Who am I?"
"Can you be our father?" jerked Jack; and Jim jumped at the unaccustomed word.
"Clever boy that knows his own father--or thinks he does--especially when he's never set eyes on him! How would you like to come back to France with me, youngster?"
"To France?" gasped Jack.
"Into the army. I have influence. I can push you on."
"The French army?" And Jack shook his head doubtfully. "I don't think--I--quite understand. Are you an Englishman, sir?
"A Carron of Carne."
"And in the French army?"
"As it happens. You don't approve of that?"
Jack shook his head. Jim, with his wide, excited eyes and parted lips, was a study in emotions--amazement, excitement, puzzlement, admiration mixed with disapproval--all these and more worked ingenuously in his open boyish face and made it look younger than Jack's, which was knitted thoughtfully.
"If it came to that I should probably claim exemption from serving against England, though,mon Dieu!it's little enough I have to thank her for, and it would be to my hurt. Sometime you will understand it all. And you?" he asked Jim, so unexpectedly that he jumped again. "You feel the same? A couple of years at St. Cyr, and then say, a sub-lieutenancy in my own cuirassiers, and all my influence behind you. As a personal friend of the Emperor, Colonel Caron de Carne is not by any means powerless, I can assure you."
But Jim wagged his head decisively. He did not understand how this mysterious, but undoubtedly fine-looking father came to be apparently both a Frenchman and an Englishman, but he himself was an Englishman, and an Englishman he would remain.
"So! Then I go back the richer than I came only in the knowledge of you, but I would gladly have had one of you back with me."
"Go now, boys," said Sir Denzil, "and tell Mr. Eager I would be glad of a word with him." And wrenching their eyes from this phenomenal father, whose advances evoked no slightest response within them, they got out of the door somehow and ran down to the kitchen.
"Sir Denzil wants you to go up, Mr. Eager," began Jack.
"Our father's up there," broke in Jim.
But Mr. Eager had already heard the strange news from Mrs. Lee, and went up at once, full anxious on his own account to see what manner of man this unexpectedly-returned father might be, and rigorously endeavouring to preserve an open mind concerning him until he had something more to go upon than Mrs. Lee's curt but emphatic, "He's a divvle if ever there was one."
"Ah, Mr. Eager, this is my son Denzil, father of your boys," said the old man briefly, and helped himself to snuff and leaned back in his chair and watched them.
"I am glad to make your acquaintance, Mr. Eager,"--and a strong brown hand shot out to meet him. "Sir Denzil tells me that whatever good is in those boys is of your implanting. I thank you. You have done a good work there."
"They are fine lads," said Eager quietly. "It would have been an eternal pity if they had run to seed. We are making men of them."
"I have been trying to induce one of them to go back to France with me----"
"Which one?"
"Either. I don't know one from t'other yet. I could make much of either, and it would solve the difficulty you are in here."
"And they?"
"They won't hear of it."
"I should have been surprised if they had."
"I suppose so. And yet I could promise one or both a very much greater career than they are ever likely to realise here."
Eager shook his head. "They have been brought up as English lads; you could hardly expect them to change sides like that, even for possibilities which I don't suppose they understand or appreciate."
"It's a pity, all the same. There will be many opportunities over there----"
"The Empire is peace----" interjected Eager, with a smile.
"The Empire"--with a shrug--"is my very good friend Louis Napoleon, and peace just so long as it is to his interest to keep it. But"--with a knowing nod--"he has studied his people and he knows how to handle them. I'll wager you I'm a general inside five years--unless he or I come to an end before that."
"I would sooner they died English subalterns than lived to be French generals."
"It's throwing away a mighty chance for one of them."
"Their own country will offer them all the chances they need."
"How?" asked the Colonel quickly. "You think England will join us in case of necessity?"
"I know nothing about that. I mean simply that our boys will do their duty whatever call is made upon them; and no man can do more than that."
"Peace offers few opportunities of advancement,"--with a regretful shake of the head. "But your minds all seem made up. It is a great chance thrown away, but I judge it is no use urging the matter----"
"Not the very slightest. To put the matter plainly, Captain Carron----"
"Colonel, with your permission!"
"You have forfeited all right to dictate as to those boys' future. Legally, perhaps----"
"Merci!I shall not invoke the aid of the law, Mr. Eager."
"It would clear the way here if you took one of them off our hands," said Sir Denzil; "but I agree with Mr. Eager, one Frenchman in the family is quite enough. You will have to go back empty-handed, Denzil."
"I am glad to have seen those boys, anyway. We may meet again, some time, Mr. Eager. In the meantime, my grateful thanks for all you have done for them!"
And next morning he took leave of his sons, and galloped off along the sands the way he had come, and the boys stood looking after him with very mixed feelings, and when he was out of sight looked down at the guineas he had left in their hands and thought kindly of him.