Benton of the Royal Mounted Part 34

Hopgood eyed the other tentatively for a second or two. "_This_ one's Irish, too, I understand?" he remarked. "Irish-American, anyway.... He seems mighty partial to the Irish. Her name's O'Malley. They'll be able to keep a pig and 'live pretty,' what?"

And, overcome by the thought, he made a comical grimace of despair and sank back into the depths of his luxurious chair, while the roar of the busy street below floated up to their ears.

Musgrave cleared his throat. "Mother was an Irishwoman," he said presently. "Probably that accounts for it. She was a Miss Fitzgerald, of Dublin-sister of that brave, splendid chap, Captain Fitzgerald, who was killed along with poor Fred Burnaby and many others of Stewart's column, when the square was broken in the fight near the wells at Abou Klea, in the Soudan War of 'eighty-four and five."

He smoked on silently for a s.p.a.ce. "Oh, h-l!" he burst out, with a sudden incredulous bitterness that startled even the cynical Hopgood.

"Why, that beggar's _always_ come to me before with his troubles. Guess I'm the only one he ever _does_ confide in. Many's the time I've acted as Father-confessor and mentor to him. Surely he'd never have pa.s.sed me up in such a momentous business as this? What saith the poet:

"You may carve it on his tombstone, You may cut it on his card That a young man married is a young man marred."

The Provost emitted a noisy, snorting laugh.

"Yes," he remarked, with the jeering familiarity of old acquaintance, "and I must say you're a nice blooming old Gamaliel to act as mentor to anybody, Charley, especially if you expect him to embrace _your_ self-const.i.tuted creed of morality and philosophy. Oh, you're some Father-confessor, all right, what? Besides, he _ain't_ young. That is, unless you call thirty-nine unsophisticated youth. 'Bout time he _was_ making the break. There's no fun in getting married when you're old, all same Pope's 'January and May.' He happened to mention it was his birthday to a bunch of us down town when he came in last month. I remember him saying it was his thirty-ninth, because I and Berkley, Mac, and Port stuck him for the drinks on the strength of it. We rushed him into the Alberta bar right away and-"

"How about the way he used to hand it out about non-coms and bucks getting married in your Force, too?" interrupted Musgrave, grinning.

"'Look at Beckstall,' he would say. 'Look at Corbett,' and lots of others. 'Big families-always broke-dragging out their miserable lives in rotten little line detachments-can never afford to send their poor wives away for a change anywhere-they don't _live_-they just _exist_, from one year's end to another. That's all there's to it! D'you think I'd let myself in for a purgatory like _that_?' and so on. You've heard him, Hop, too-lots of times, what?"

Hopgood held up his hands appealingly.

"Don't shoot, Colonel!" he said. "I'll come down! _I'm_ not holding any particular brief for him. Guess he's pretty well able to conduct his own defense. _Ish ga bibble!_-it ain't _our_ funeral."

It was worse than useless to argue with Musgrave. All his opponent's best hits were turned aside by the target of his cynicism and unbelief, while his repartee and sarcasms often came home.

"Funny chap!" he resumed musingly. "I think he is just about _the_ most interesting and complex character I've ever come across. He's very much of a man, but at the same time-he's as simple as a kid in some things.

Beggar reads a lot, and he's as rum in his tastes in that as he is in everything else. Fond of all this old-fashioned stuff. The heighth of his imagination in humor he finds in Balzac's and Rabelais' yarns, or Boccaccio's 'Decameron,' and his ideals of pathos in George Eliot's or d.i.c.kens's tales. Whatever can you do with a man like that?"

"Oh, what's the use of talking?" broke out Hopgood testily:

"A fool there was, and he made his prayer-"

he quoted, with a low, bitter laugh. "And by gum! it's me that knows it."

The doctor silently eyed him in cynical abstraction awhile after this outburst, then his grim mouth relaxed into a faint sympathetic grin, and he held out his hand.

"Aye!... 'Even as you and I,'" he finished softly. "Shake!... Is _that_ why you chucked up your commission in India?... I and Ben always thought so," he continued, as the Provost nodded wearily to his query. "None of our business to get making inquisitions, though.... Well! this sad news has been quite a shock to our nervous systems. Kind of breaks up us 'Three Musketeers,' eh?... Looks very much as if we're going to lose our D'Artagnan. The old chum of your bachelor days is, somehow, never the same again to you after he gets married. S'pose an all-wise Providence has ordained things so for some unfathomable reason. Think we need a little drink to console us."

And he got up with a dreary sighing yawn and, unlocking a small mahogany liquor cellaret, produced a splendid silver and cut-gla.s.s "Tantalus."

"What's yours, Hop?" he inquired. "Brandy, or 'Scotch'?"

Leaving these two well-meaning, if cynical, worthies to console each other with the bitter philosophy which retrospection of past irremedial misfortunes has caused many better, and worse, men than them to revert to, let us return to the detachment at Cherry Creek, where at this particular moment the object of their commiseration is leaning back in his favorite chair, with his head resting in its customary position against the leopard-skin kaross. Tired out by a long and uneventful four days' patrol, Ellis lit a pipe and gazed wearily out through the open door into the gathering dusk. Gradually, his mind, still obsessed with the vague memories of brands of missing cattle and horses and the usual round of more or less petty complaints, strayed back to the Trainors'

establishment.

He found himself wondering how Mary was, and what had caused her to be so strangely silent and abstracted during that last homeward ride together from Lone b.u.t.te. At supper time, too, he mused, she had been in the same mood ... had hardly spoken to him at all? Could it be that-?

And, not unmixed with an unfamiliar, slightly self-conscious, feeling of shame, came the sudden thought that she _might_ have grown to regard his attentions in a more serious light than mere frank camaraderie. And, if that was so-well-she sure _must_ be thinking him a proper "laggard in love." Not much of the "Young Lochinvar" about him, he reflected bitterly. Anyway, it certainly didn't seem very gentlemanly behavior on his part, or the right thing, exactly, to run around after a girl-like he undoubtedly had, to a certain extent-with Mary, and then keep her "hanging on the fence" indefinitely, as it were, like that. Surely the Trainors must be wondering not a little, too. How the deuce was it that he had never thought of his conduct in that light before? What a simple fool he had been not to have "tumbled" to all this earlier? Should he chance it? She could but "turn him down" like she had the rest-some of whose very palpable discomfiture he had been a casual and not altogether disinterested witness on more than one occasion.

And then, on the other hand, was he _justified_ in asking _any_ woman to share the lot that he had so often bitterly inveighed against as being utterly insufficient, unsuitable, and contrary to all his ideals of conjugal happiness?

His somewhat gloomy reflections were suddenly disturbed by the sounds of an approaching rider, who presently drew up outside the open door.

"Oh, Sargint!" came the gruff bark of Gallagher; "yu're back, eh? Bin down for me mail, so I brung yores along."

"Good man! much obliged. Come on in, Barney!" Ellis called out.

And the rancher, swinging down from the saddle, dropped his lines and slouched in with a packet of letters in his hand.

"Nothin' doin', an' n.o.body around for yu' while yu' was away," he remarked, dropping into a chair and lighting his pipe. "Gosh, but it's a warm night for this time o' year!"

The Sergeant reached out for, and began leisurely to open up his mail.

Most of it bore the regimental stamp of L Division. Returned crime reports, with caustic, blue-pencilled marginal comments in the O.C.'s caligraphy, requesting certain omitted particulars therein. Circulars respecting stolen stock, descriptions of persons "wanted" for various crimes, drastic orders emanating, primarily, from Headquarters at Regina, regarding new innovations to be observed in certain phases of detachment duty, etc., the monthly "General Orders," and so on. But presently a somewhat large envelope, addressed in a clerk's hand and bearing an English stamp and the London postmark, attracted his attention. Whoever could be writing _him_ from the Old Country? he wondered. The only letters he ever received from _there_ were mostly from Major Carlton, and this wasn't _his_ handwriting.

With a vague feeling of uneasiness, he turned it over in his hand irresolutely for a moment, then opened it. It contained a closed envelope and a letter which bore the heading of a London legal firm.

Mechanically he smoothed this latter communication out and began to read the epoch-making doc.u.ment that was destined later to create for him a new world and to transform his desert into a paradise.

_Dear Sir_,-We are charged with the melancholy duty of breaking to you the news of the death of your old friend, Major Gilbert Carlton, on the 20th ult. Our late respected client, although possessing all the outward appearances of being a hale, robust old soldier, had for many years suffered from what physicians term an "aortic aneurism," the origin of which was probably the result of the privations and exposure endured by him in the various campaigns that he had gone through. The final bursting of this "aneurism" was the cause of his sudden death.

Suffering from such an ailment, it is therefore not surprising that he apparently realized of late that his end might come upon him unexpectedly at any moment of his advanced age. This presentiment he recently confided to us, during one of his last business visits. The enclosed letter he left in our care, charging us-in case of his decease-to forward it immediately to you.

For many years he frequently spoke of you to us with great regard and feeling; referring to you always, as "The boy, Ellis," or "_His_ boy," in tones which moved us not a little, evincing as he did, such a kindly love and esteem for you. He was seventy-five years of age, and, as you are of course aware, a bachelor all his life, possessing only distant relatives.

Although not by any means a recluse, and enjoying life to its full in his old-fashioned, cheery way at his estate-Biddlecombe Hall, in Devonshire, surrounded by many of his old soldier friends-he was not an extravagant man and the revenues of the said estate have been steadily acc.u.mulating for many years. This magnificent property, with all revenues thereof had been left to him under the will of his cousin, the late Lord Baring, his nearest relative.

We enclose a copy of the testament, by which you will see that (with the exception of the estate, which, re a stipulated clause in Lord Baring's will, has reverted at the death of the last inc.u.mbent to the Morley Inst.i.tute, to be used as a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients, and a few bequests to old servants) he has bequeathed to you the great bulk of his money. We hold at your disposal, a sum (discounting probate dues) approximately nearly ninety thousand pounds.

We beg to congratulate you on the acquisition of this considerable fortune. Thinking that you might desire to relinquish your present occupation at once, and not knowing how you are financially situated, we enclose a credit for five hundred pounds, for which please sign the accompanying receipt.

Kindly communicate with us at your earliest convenience.

We are, dear sir, yours truly, _Eaton and Smith_.

Dazedly Ellis glanced through the attached copy of the will and reread the letter through. Gallagher, who had been intently watching his face throughout, vaguely aware from the Sergeant's unconcealed agitation that some tidings of an unusual character had been received, inquired casually:

"Why, what's up, Sargint? Hope yu' ain't bin a-gettin' bad news?"

Ellis regarded his interlocutor absently a moment or two, and then his preoccupied gaze flickered away again through the open door into the darkness of the night.

"It's both good _and_ bad, Barney," he answered slowly. "I'll tell yu'-later."

Choking back many conflicting emotions, he now picked up the previously mentioned closed letter which, he perceived, was addressed to him in his old friend's handwriting. With a feeling almost of awed reverence, he broke the heavy wax seal, stamped with the Major's own signet ring and, drawing out the letter, began to read a communication that was to remain indelibly in his memory forever:

_My Dear Lad_,-I take up my pen to write this-the last letter you will ever receive from me-while I am still of clear mind, and in possession of all my faculties. Life is very uncertain at all times, and especially so in the case of an old fellow like me. I have got what the doctors call an "aneurism," Ellis, and have had it for many years now. A man cannot expect to come through the hardships of such campaigns as the Afghan and Soudan, unscathed. I was at Charasiah, Kabul, Maiwand, and Tel-el-Kebir, my boy, and I tell you I have worked, bled, starved and suffered above a bit in my time. My incubus has been troubling me greatly of late and I cannot mistake its meaning.

Dr. Forsyth has warned me that it may burst at any time now.

Many thanks for granting my wish in sending me that photograph of yourself in your Mounted Police uniform. I look at it often.

For though externally it depicts one whom I believe to be a soldier, and a man in word, deed, and appearance, in it I seem to see again the face of a boy that I once loved, because-he had his mother's dear, dear eyes.

Yes, Ellis, my lad!... Now that I know my end is not far off, I feel that I cannot die peaceably without telling you what has been to me a sacred secret since I was in my thirties.

It must have been in 'sixty-two, or thereabouts, when I first met your mother, in Dublin. The regiment that I and your father were in lay at Athlone, then. I grew to love her. Loved her with a pa.s.sion that I fancy comes to few men, and my supreme desire was to be able to call her my wife. I suppose the Almighty willed it otherwise, though, and it was not to be.... For John Benton, your father, came along, my boy, and he was a big man, and a strong man, and a handsome man, with a bold masterful, loving way with him that took her by storm, as it were, and I-I faded into insignificance beside such a splendid personality as his. He won her from me, but that fact could not kill my love; all outward exhibition of which, though, I have guarded well. My Dear Lad I have worn the willow decently, I hope, as an honest English gentleman should, and have borne my cross patiently through the long, weary years that have pa.s.sed since then.