COLONEL SUTHERLAND was out of doors early next morning, as was his wont. The weather had improved, the sun was shining, the fells rose dewy and fresh through the air and distance, the whole face of the country was changed. The Colonel strayed along the country road, with his unusual burden on his mind, yet making such minute, half-conscious observations of external nature as were usual to him; pausing to examine the hedges, to pinch a bud upon a branch, and make involuntary comparison between the progress of the spring at home and here; noting the primrose-tufts which began to appear in the hedgeside herbage, soft green leaves still curled up in their downy roll; and making unconscious memorandums in his mind of the early notes of birds already to be heard among the branches. Everything was early this year, he thought to himself, as with a calm and placid pleasure he enjoyed the air, the light, and the cold yet dewy and sparkling freshness of the morning. In the calm of his age this old man had recovered the sweet sensations and susceptibilities of childhood; life with its passions and struggles was over for him, or seemed so; all was well with his boys; and the many and sharp sorrows of his manhood had left upon him that feeling of happiness in the mere freedom from acute and immediate pain, which only those who have suffered deeply can feel. The sunshine warmed and cheered him to the heart. It was true that trouble, anxiety, and doubt were in that innocent and tender soul; a strong desire to help and deliver his young relatives, with still no perception of the means for doing so; but this was no urgent distress, enough to break in upon that sacramental morning hour. There might be difficulty, but everything was hopeful; and the Colonel wandered along the lonely rural road, where the wet grass sparkled in the sunshine, and the buds on the hawthorn-hedge basked with a secret growth and invisible expansion in the tender warmth and light; and in his age, and the quiet of his soul, was glad as they.
As he approached the corner of an intersecting road, voices came to the ear of the Colonel, or rather one voice, which seemed familiar to him. The speaker was addressing some one who made little reply; and Colonel Sutherland heard, to his great astonishment, a glowing description of the advantages and pleasures of a soldier’s life in India, splendidly set forth by the odd, familiar accents of this voice, as he approached. Half amused, half amazed, he listened—the words being, evidently, not of any private importance, and delivered in a tone too loud for confidential communications. He thought to himself that it must be some old soldier beguiling the innocence of some rustic lad, whom want of employment or youthful disappointment had prompted to try the expedient of “soldiering,” and went forward with a wrinkle on his forehead, but a smile on his lip—divided between sympathy for the supposed victim, and a professional reluctance to balk the voluntary recruiter, if the recruit should chance to be a promising one. But, to his surprise, when he had gained the corner of the road, instead of a young ploughman or country bumpkin, his eye fell upon a young man of extremely prepossessing appearance, with all the look of a gentleman, who listened with dilated nostrils and eyes fixed upon the distant hills—listened as a man listens whose thoughts are already too many for him, and who has but little attention to spare for what is said—but who, nevertheless, has a serious intention of hearing what is addressed to him. The Colonel was so much startled by this, that he scarcely observed the other person present, till an astonished exclamation of his own name, and the sudden motion of a military obeisance, aroused him. Then the smile returned, though with a difference, to his lip. The speaker was a sergeant of his own regiment, a veteran nearly as old as himself, who now stood before him, between joy and reluctance, eager to make himself known, yet not perfectly satisfied to be found in this exercise of his vocation; with confusion in his face, and his mouth full of excuses.
“What, Kennedy!” cried the Colonel; “my good fellow, what brings you here?”
“It’s far enough out of the way, to be sure, Cornel,” said the sergeant, rather sheepishly; “and neyther my oun place, nor like it. Sure it’s a bit of a flirt of a girl’s brought me, that’s come to be married here.”
“Married! What, you? You old blockhead!” cried the Colonel, inclining his deaf ear towards the voice, “what do you want with such nonsense at your age?”
“Na, Cornel, ne’er a bit of me—the Lord forbid!” said the old soldier; “but a daughter it is, brought up within five mile of ould Derry, but seed a lad o’ the fells as took her heart; and sure she’s all in wan, as ye may say, the whole stock o’ me familly; and according, Cornel, I’m here.”
“And at your old trade, I perceive,” said Colonel Sutherland—“hey, Kennedy?—you will never forget your cockade and bunch of ribbons; but I rather think you’re out a little here.”
“Ay, sir, ay—I said as much mysel’ wan moment afore. The young master, Cornel, he’s aboove my hand,” said the sergeant, promptly; “but youth, sir, youth will not hearken to a good advice. So I bid to tell him as he desired; he’s all for the cap and the feather, Cornel, and it’s not for an ould sodger to balk a gentleman, in especial as it was information Mr. Roger sought; and I well rec’klet, Cornel, that ye aye liked a lad of spirit yoursel’.”
“This is a mistake, however,” said the young man, hurriedly; “I’m not a gentleman seeking information. Go on, Kennedy; I want pay and bread—don’t be afraid, sir, there’s nobody belonging to me to break their hearts if I enlist. Let him say out what he has to say.”
The Colonel cast kindly eyes upon the young man, and saw his nervous haste of manner, and the impatient way in which he roused himself out of his half abstraction to deny the inferences of the sergeant—which, indeed, were entirely foreign to the address which Kennedy had just been delivering; and his benevolent heart was interested. “I also am an old soldier,” he said, with his kind stoop forward, and his smile; “perhaps I am a safer adviser for a young man of your appearance than Kennedy. Eh? Do you prefer the sergeant? Very well! But you must understand that the good fellow romances, and that rising from the ranks, even in India, is not so easy as he would have you suppose. Very true, I have nothing to do with it; but don’t be persuaded to enlist with such an idea. I wish you good morning, young gentleman. You can come to me, sergeant, at the inn in an hour or so. I am here only for a few days.”
And Colonel Sutherland had turned away, and was once more descending the road, wondering a little, perhaps, that the young fellow did not eagerly seek his offered advice on a subject which he knew so much better than the sergeant, when he heard himself called from behind, and, looking back, found the youth following. As he came up, the Colonel remarked him more closely. He was of brown complexion and athletic form, though only about twenty—already a powerful though so young a man. He was dressed entirely in black—a somewhat formal suit, which almost suggested the clerical profession, though, in fact, it meant only mourning, and had a mingled look in his face of grief and mortification, sincere sorrow, and a certain affronted, indignant, resentful aspect, which raised a little curiosity in the mind of the Colonel. He came up with a bold, firm, straightforward step, which Colonel Sutherland could not help contrasting unawares with that of Horace, and with the colour varying on his cheek.
“I ought at least to thank you, sir, for the offer of your advice,” he said hurriedly; then came to a pause; and then, as if vainly seeking for some explanation of the reason why he rejected it; “I am, however, only a recruit for the sergeant, not for the Colonel,” he added, with sudden confusion. “It is because of this that I appear churlish and ungrateful in declining your offer. My dress is a deception. I have no right to be treated as a gentleman.”
“These are strong words,” said the Colonel. “I presume, then, that you have done something by which you forfeit your natural rank?”
A violent colour rushed to the young man’s face—“No!—No!—twenty times No!”—he cried, with a sudden effusion of feeling, half made up of anger, and half of the grief which lay in wait for him to catch him unawares; “and will not, if I should starve or die!”
“It seems to me,” said Colonel Sutherland, looking round in vain for Kennedy, who had taken the favourable moment to escape, “that you are in a very excited condition of mind; if you will take my advice, you will not do anything in your present state of feeling, and, above all, don’t enlist. Kennedy’s story is the common recruiting fable, dressed up to suit your particular palate. The old fellow cannot forget his old successes in that way, I suppose. It is as foolish to ’list in haste as to marry in haste, my young friend. It is a thing much easier to do than to undo. Keep yourself out of temptation, and consult your friends.”
Having said so much, the Colonel gave a slight kindly bow to his companion, and was about to pass on, but, looking at him again, waited to see if he had anything to say.
“Is it better to take the plough-stilts than the shilling?” exclaimed the young man; “you know nothing about me—but you look at my distress with a kind face. You know the world and life as they really are, and not as they appear to us here, becalmed on the shores of the sea. I have no friends to consult, no one to be grieved for me whatever I do. I have not much wit, and less education; I have only what the brutes have—strength. What shall I do with it. Is it best to be a ploughman or a soldier?—I will abide by your decision—which shall it be?”
“Walk down with me to my inn,” said Colonel Sutherland, “and tell me who you are, and how this has happened to you.”
The young man turned with an implicit, instantaneous obedience. He made no preface, no explanation. He had reached to that extreme agitation of mind in which a listener, interested and friendly, is salvation to the self-consuming spirit, when that spirit is of the kind which can disclose itself; as in this case it happened to be.
“My name is Roger Musgrave,” he said; “I have been brought up as heir to my godfather, a man supposed rich. With him I have lived most of my life—we two. He was more than a father to me: but he is dead, and died poor. There is nothing left of the supposed inheritance—worse than that; but that is all that relates to me,” he cried, suddenly pausing with a gasp of restrained grief. “The people here exhaust their kind feelings to me in reproaches upon him who has left me unprovided for. False reproaches!—insults to me as much as to him! He is gone, and all control of me, all love for me, have died in his grave. I have myself to support, and his honour to reclaim. I ask you how I am to do it best—must it be as a labourer at home, or as a soldier abroad?”
“But you have given me no reason why your choice should be limited to these two trades,” said Colonel Sutherland; “there are many things besides which such a young man as yourself can do better than either. Come, you are very young—you are arbitrary and impatient. The profession of arms can only carry a man on and forward in time of war. You are thinking of Napoleon’s soldiers, those men who might possibly carry a marshal’s baton in their knapsacks; but you forget that the first thing required is not the soldiers, but the Napoleon—and things were never so in the English army, my young friend. Even in times of war, not one man in a thousand rises from the ranks—no, not even in India—not in the Company’s service. Don’t deceive yourself. Don’t you know that even the old women in the village break their hearts when their sons enlist, and declare that anything would be better? I don’t say that. I am a soldier myself; but they are nearer the truth than you.”
“Is it then only the alternative of despair?” cried the young man.
Colonel Sutherland curved his hand over his deaf ear, and begged his pardon, and had not heard him. The excellent Colonel was at home in his capacity of adviser: he could understand this lad who came with his heart on his lips ten times better than he could understand Horace, and took up his case with lively zeal and interest. He took him to the inn with himself, and made him sit by while he breakfasted, and grew into friendship with the young stranger almost against his will. On the whole, the encounter pleased the Colonel: he made Roger promise to come to him in the evening, when they could talk over his affairs at leisure, and warned him with fatherly kindness to do nothing rashly, and to entertain no further thought of enlistment. Perhaps it was very foolish of the Colonel to comfort the youth’s heart after this rash fashion; perhaps it was “raising expectations which could never be justified.” The old man never thought of that: he had kindness to give, and good counsel, and some knowledge of the world. He said to himself that this was all an old man was good for, and so shook hands with poor Roger Musgrave as if he had known him all his life, and occupied himself on the road to Marchmain with contrivances for serving him. It was his “way”; there are people who have a worse “way” to be met with in this world.