His Big Opportunity Part 23

Colonel Manning laughed as he met the boys' admiring gaze, and before long he was enchanting them by his reminiscences.

"Now will you tell us the very bravest thing that you ever saw any soldier do?" demanded Roy, with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes.

Colonel Manning looked at his little auditor rather thoughtfully.

"I've seen a good many brave deeds done," he said, slowly; "but one stands out in my memory above and beyond them all."

"Oh, do tell us."

"It was quite a young lad, a recruit that came to join our regiment when we were in Malta. He was a fair, curly-headed boy, and seemed quite frightened at the rough life and ways of his comrades. I happened to be orderly officer one evening, and was going my rounds, when I pa.s.sed one of the barrack-rooms just before lights were out. It was in a low building and the windows were open. The men were noisy, and the first thing I heard was a volley of oaths from one of the oldest soldiers there. The corporal in charge instead of reproving him, was joining in, and there was a great dispute between a lot of them about some small matter, when this young chap stood up with a flush on his cheeks.

'Comrades,' he cried; 'would any of you allow your mother to be called evil names in the barrack-room?' His voice rang put so clearly that there was a hush at once, and they turned to him in wonder. 'You know you wouldn't,' he went on; 'and you are ill-treating the name of One who is dearer and nearer to me than any mother--the best Friend I've got. I tell you, I won't allow you to do it while I am in the room!' I remember as I stood there and heard him, and saw the men utterly abashed before the boy, I felt he had a courage that none of us could equal."

"Is that all?" asked Dudley, with disappointment in his tone.

"Did the men stop swearing?" asked Roy.

"As far as I can remember, they did. The corporal rebuked them, and lights were put out, but that boy was braver than many a hero on the battlefield."

The boys' faces fell.

"But that was not what we call a brave deed," said Roy, at length. "Of course it was splendid of him, but it wouldn't get him the Victoria Cross."

"No, only a crown of everlasting life, and a word of commendation from the King of Kings," said the colonel, in a strangely quiet voice; but Roy's expressive little face kindled at once, and he said no more. They went into the dining-room to lunch soon, and the boys were too busy enjoying the good things before them to talk much to their elders. After it was over General Newton sent them out for a run in the garden. And then when they came in, he asked them if they would like to come upstairs to his old picture gallery.

"I am going to take my friend up, and you can come, too."

The boys were delighted; they had often heard of this gallery, but had never been in it as General Newton kept it locked up, and very rarely opened it.

"I have some gems amongst the portraits," he said to Colonel Manning as he unlocked a door in the pa.s.sage, and led them into a long dusky corridor; "I will pull up the blinds and then we shall see. They are mostly ancestors, but one or two are by master hands, and two or three royal personages are amongst them."

The boys listened eagerly whilst their host pointed out one and another, with now and then an anecdote connected with them.

"Look," said Roy, delightedly, "there's a fine soldier. He is quite young, and yet what a lot of medals! and oh, General Newton, isn't that the Victoria Cross on his coat?"

"Yes, my boy, he served his country well for such a youngster, he fought in eight battles, and came home without a scratch, though he had many hair-breadth escapes. In one battle he had two horses shot under him, and he saved the colors on foot, though he was leading a cavalry charge."

"He was a regular hero!" murmured the admiring boys.

"I don't think he was," said the general, drily. "He had plenty of dash and go, but no moral courage. He came home after the wars were over, and broke his mother's heart by becoming a drunkard and a gambler; and he died an early death from drink and dissipation."

Roy looked very puzzled.

"I thought a brave man must be a good one, and brave and good to the end of his life."

"A man can face the cannon's mouth better than a friend's ridicule,"

said General Newton; "the young soldier we were hearing about before dinner had a n.o.bler courage than this poor fellow here."

Roy said no more, but though he listened and looked, the rest of the time they were in the gallery, his thoughts were with the hero of the Victoria Cross. He ran back to have one more look at him before they went downstairs, and gazed up at the bold, frank bearing, and the laughing mouth of the soldier, with wistful pity in his brown eyes.

"You served your Queen and country, but I expect you left out G.o.d," he said, in a whisper; then he ran on to overtake the others.

After an early tea the boys were packed up in the trap to come home.

"Drive home as quickly as you can," said the general to the groom, "for rain is not far off, and it will not do to let Master Fitz Roy get a soaking; he looks as if a breath of wind will blow him away."

"I do hate people talking about me like that," Roy confided to Dudley as they set off at a brisk rate; "I might just as well be a girl. I often wonder I wasn't born one for all the good that I shall do in the world."

"That's all stuff," said Dudley, indignantly; "you'll be an awfully strong man I expect when you grow up, you see if you aren't!"

Roy shook his head, and was unusually silent for some time. They were driving through the outskirts of a village when down came the rain. The groom wrapped the boys up as well as he could, and was urging the horse on, when it suddenly shied and came to a standstill. Looking down, the groom saw a small child seated in the middle of the road, almost miraculously preserved from the horse's hoofs.

"Well, here's a go," he muttered; "where on earth does it come from, we don't want no delay in such a storm as this!"

The boys had sprung down at once from the trap, and were endeavoring to drag the child away when it burst into roars of fright and anger.

"I want mummy--oh, mummy!"

It was a little girl between three and four. She had been placidly nursing a doll in the middle of the road, and seemed perfectly oblivious of wind and rain.

"Where do you live?" asked Roy, but the child only continued to wail for its mother.

"Here, Master Roy, you'll be wet through. Come back, and let Master Dudley hoist her up to me. We can't stop all day trying to find out where she lives. We'll take her back with us for the time."

But this did not please Roy.

"No, we must find her mother; she must come from the village we have pa.s.sed. You wait there with the horse, Sanders, and we'll take her back."

"Let Master Dudley do it, then," said Sanders, crossly, "and you get into the trap again."

This also Roy refused to do.

"It's an opportunity, isn't it, Dudley? And look she has taken hold of my hand; you run on in front and ask about her at the first cottage you come to, and I'll bring her after you."

Sanders grumbled and growled, but the boys did not heed him. Happily the mother of the child soon appeared, thanked them profusely, and Roy and Dudley clambered up into the trap again, both wet through.

"You're a heedless, disobedient pair," said the wrathful Sanders, "and if I'm blamed for your taking to your beds and gettin' rheumaticky fever and inflammation of the lungs, it won't be my fault, and I shall tell the missus so!"

XV

AN UNWELCOME PROPOSAL

Roy was not well for some time after this episode. He had a bad bronchial attack, and was in the hands of his old nurse again.

"It do seem as if everything conspires to make you a delicate lad," she said one day; "it beats me how you come through it as well as you do!