One of Clive's Heroes Part 2

The elder, with an imprecation, thrust Desmond into the open, hauled him some distance down the path, and then beat him heavily about the shoulders. He stood a foot higher, his arm was strong, his grip firm as a vice; resistance would have been vain; but Desmond knew better than to resist. He bent to the cruel blows without a wince or a murmur. Only, his face was very pale when, the bully's arm being tired and his breath spent, he was flung away and permitted to stagger to the house. He crawled painfully up the wainscoted staircase and into the dark corridor leading to his bedroom. Halfway down this he paused, felt with his hand along the wall, and discovering by this means that a door was ajar, stood listening.

"Is that you, Desmond?" said a low voice within.

"Yes, mother," he replied, commanding his voice, and quietly entering.

"I hoped you were asleep."

"I could not sleep until you came in, dear. I heard d.i.c.k's voice. What is the matter? Your hand is trembling, Desmond."

"Nothing, mother, as usual."

A mother's ears are quick; and Mrs. Burke detected the quiver that Desmond tried to still. She tightened her clasp on his hot hand.

"Did he strike you, dear?"

"It was nothing, mother. I am used to that."

"My poor boy! But what angered him? Why do you offend your brother?"

"Offend him!" exclaimed the boy pa.s.sionately, but still in a low tone.

"Everything I do offends him. I went to see General Clive; I wished to; that is enough for d.i.c.k. Mother, I am sick of it all."

"Never mind, dear. A little patience. d.i.c.k doesn't understand you.

You should humour him, Desmond."

"Haven't I tried, mother? Haven't I? But what is the use? He treats me worse than any carter on the farm. I drudge for him, and he bullies me, miscalls me before the men, thrashes me--oh, mother! I can't endure it any longer. Let me go away, anywhere; anything would be better than this!"

Desmond was quivering with pain and indignation; only with difficulty did he keep back the tears.

"Hush, Desmond!" said his mother. "d.i.c.k will hear you. You are tired out, dear boy; go to bed; things will look brighter in the morning.

Only have patience. Good-night, my son."

Desmond kissed his mother and went to his room. But it was long before he slept. His bruised body found no comfort; his head throbbed; his soul was filled with resentment and the pa.s.sionate longing for release.

His life had not been very happy. He barely remembered his father--a big, keen-eyed, loud-voiced old man--who died when his younger son was four years old. Richard Burke had run away from his Irish home to sea.

He served on Admiral Rooke's flagship at the battle of La Hogue, and, rising in the navy to the rank of warrant-officer, bought a ship with the savings of twenty years and fitted it out for unauthorized trade with the East Indies. His daring, skill, and success attracted the attention of the officers of the Company. He was invited to enter the Company's service. As captain of an Indiaman he sailed backwards and forwards for ten years; then at the age of fifty retired with a considerable fortune and married the daughter of a Shropshire farmer.

The death of his wife's relatives led him to settle on the farm their family had tenanted for generations, and it was at Wilcote Grange that his three children were born.

Fifteen years separated the elder son from the younger; between them came a daughter, who married early and left the neighbourhood. Four years after Desmond's birth the old man died, leaving the boy to the guardianship of his brother.

There lay the seed of trouble. No brothers could have been more unlike than the two sons of Captain Burke. Richard was made on a large and powerful scale; he was hard-working, methodical, grasping, wholly unimaginative, and in temper violent and domineering. Slighter and less robust, though not less healthy, Desmond was a boy of vivid imagination, high-strung, high-spirited, his feelings easily moved, his pride easily wounded. His brother was too dull and stolid to understand him, taking for deliberate malice what was but boyish mischief, and regarding him as sullen when he was only dreamily thoughtful.

As a young boy Desmond kept as much as possible out of his brother's way. But as he grew older he came more directly under Richard's control, with the result that they were now in a constant state of feud.

Their mother, a woman of sweet temper but weak will, favoured her younger son in secret; she learnt by experience that open intervention on his behalf did more harm than good.

Desmond had two habits which especially moved his brother to anger. He was fond of roaming the country alone for hours together; he was fond of reading. To Richard each was a waste of time. He never opened a book, save a manual of husbandry, or a ready reckoner; he could conceive of no reason for walking, unless it were the business of the farm. Nothing irritated him more than to see Desmond stretched at length with his nose in Mr. Defoe's _Robinson Crusoe_, or a volume of Hakluyt's _Voyages_, or perhaps Mr. Oldys's _Life of Sir Walter Raleigh_. And as he himself never dreamed by day or by night, there was no chance of his divining the fact that Desmond, on those long solitary walks of his, was engaged chiefly in dreaming, not idly, for in his dreams he was always the centre of activity, greedy for doing.

These day-dreams const.i.tuted almost the sole joy of Desmond's life.

When he was quite a little fellow he would sprawl on the bank near Tyrley Castle and weave romances about the Norman barons whose home it had been--romances in which he bore a strenuous part. He knew every interesting spot in the neighbourhood: Salisbury Hill, where the Yorkist leader pitched his camp before the battle of Blore Heath; Audley Brow, where Audley the Lancastrian lay watching his foe; above all Styche Hall, whence a former Clive had ridden forth to battle against the king, and where his namesake, the present Robert Clive, had been born. He imagined himself each of those bold warriors in turn, and saw himself, now a knight in mail, now a gay cavalier of Rupert's, now a bewigged Georgian gentleman in frock and pantaloons, but always with sword in hand.

No name sang a merrier tune in Desmond's imagination than the name of Robert Clive. Three years before, when he was imbibing Latin, Greek, and Hebrew under Mr. Burslem at the grammar school on the hill, the amazing news came one day that Bob Clive, the wild boy who had terrorized the tradespeople, plagued his master, led the school in tremendous fights with the town boys, and suffered more birchings than any scholar of his time--Bob Clive, the scapegrace who had been packed off to India as a last resource, had turned out, as his father said, "not such a b.o.o.by after all,"--had indeed proved himself to be a military genius. How Desmond thrilled when the old schoolmaster read out the glorious news of Clive's defence of Arcot with a handful of men against an overwhelming host! How he glowed when the schoolroom rang with the cheers of the boys, and when, a half-holiday being granted, he rushed forth with the rest to do battle in the churchyard with the town boys, and helped to lick them thoroughly in honour of Clive!

From that moment there was for Desmond but one man in the world, and that man was Robert Clive. In the twinkling of an eye he became the devoutest of hero-worshippers. He coaxed Mr. Burslem to let him occupy Clive's old desk, and with his fists maintained the privilege against all comers. The initials "R.C." roughly cut in the oak never lost their fascination for him. He walked out day after day to Styche Hall, two miles away, and pleased himself with the thought that his feet trod the very spots once trodden by Bob Clive. Not an inch of the route from Hall to school--the meadow-path into Longslow, the lane from Longslow to Shropshire Street, Little Street, Church Street, the churchyard--was unknown to him: Bob Clive had known them all. He feasted on the oft-told stories of Clive's boyish escapades: how he had bundled a watchman into the bulks and made him prisoner there by closing down and fastening the shutters; how he had thrown himself across the current of a torrential gutter to divert the stream into the cellar shop of a tradesman who had offended him; above all, that feat of his when, ascending the spiral turret-stair of the church, he had lowered himself down from the parapet, and, astride upon a gargoyle, had worked his way along it until he could secure a stone that lay in its mouth, the perilous and dizzy adventure watched by a breathless throng in the churchyard below. The Bob Clive who had done these things was now doing greater deeds in India; and Desmond Burke sat day after day at his desk, gazing at the entrancing "R.C." and doing over again in his own person the exploits of which all Market Drayton was proud, and he the proudest.

But at the age of fourteen his brother took him from school, though Mr.

Burslem had pleaded that he might remain longer and afterwards proceed to the university. He was set to do odd jobs about the farm. To farming itself he had no objection; he was fond of animals and would willingly have spent his life with them. But he did object to drudging for a hard and inconsiderate taskmaster such as his brother was, and the work he was compelled to do became loathsome to him, and bred a spirit of discontent and rebellion. The further news of Clive's exploits in India, coming at long intervals, set wild notions beating in Desmond's head, and made him long pa.s.sionately for a change. At times he thought of running away: his father had run away and carved out a successful career, why should not he do the same? But he had never quite made up his mind to cut the knot.

Meanwhile it became known in Market Drayton that Clive had returned to England. Rumour credited him with fabulous wealth. It was said that he drove through London in a gold coach, and outshone the King himself in the splendour of his attire. No report was too highly coloured to find easy credence among the simple country folk. Clive was indeed rich: he had a taste for ornate dress, and though neither so wealthy nor so gaily apparelled as rumour said, he was for a season the lion of London society. The directors of the East India Company toasted him as "General" Clive, and presented him with a jewelled sword as a token of their sense of his services on the Coromandel coast. No one suspected at the time that his work was of more than local importance and would have more far-reaching consequences than the success of a trading company. Clive had, in fact, without knowing it, laid the foundations of a vast empire.

At intervals during two years sc.r.a.ps of news about Clive filtered through to his birthplace. His father had left the neighbourhood, and Styche Hall was now in the hands of a stranger, so that Desmond hardly dared to hope that he would have an opportunity of seeing his idol.

But, information having reached the court of directors that all was not going well in India, their eyes turned at once to Clive as the man to set things right. They requested him to return to India as Governor of Fort St. David, and, since a good deal of the trouble was caused by quarrels as to precedence between the King's and the Company's officers, they strengthened his hands by obtaining for him a lieutenant-colonel's commission from King George. Clive was nothing loth to take up his work again. He had been somewhat extravagant since his arrival in England; great holes had been made in the fortune he had brought back; and he was still a young man, full of energy and ambition. What was Desmond's ecstasy, then, to learn that his hero, on the eve of his departure, had accepted an invitation to the town of his birth, there to be entertained by the court leet. From the bailiff and the steward of the manor down to the javelin men and the ale-taster, official Market Drayton was all agog to do him honour. Desmond looked forward eagerly to this red-letter day. His brother, as a yeoman of standing, was invited to the banquet, and it seemed to Desmond that Richard took a delight in taunting him, throwing cold water on his young enthusiasm, ironically commenting on the mistake some one had made in not including him among the guests.

His crowning stroke of cruelty was to forbid the boy to leave the house on the great evening, so that he might not even obtain a glimpse of Clive. But this was too much: Desmond for the first time deliberately defied his guardian, and though he suffered the inevitable penalty, he had seen and heard his hero, and was content.

CHAPTER THE THIRD

*In which Mr. Marmaduke Diggle talks of the Golden East; and our hero interrupts an interview, and dreams dreams.*

Sore from his flogging, Desmond, when he slept at last, slept heavily.

Richard Burke was a stickler for early rising, and admitted no excuses.

When his brother did not appear at the usual hour Richard went to his room, and, smiting with his rough hand the boy's bruised shoulders, startled him to wakefulness and pain.

"Now, slug-a-bed," he said, "you have ten minutes for your breakfast, then you will foot it to the Hall and see whether Sir Willoughby has returned or is expected."

Turning on his heel he went out to harry his labourers.

Desmond, when he came downstairs, felt too sick to eat. He gulped a pitcher of milk, then set off for his two-mile walk to the Hall. He was glad of the errand. Sir Willoughby Stokes, the lord of the manor, was an old gentleman of near seventy years, a good landlord, a persistent Jacobite, and a confirmed bachelor. By nature genial, he was subject to periodical attacks of the gout, which made him terrible. At these times he betook himself to Buxton, or Bath, or some other spa, and so timed his return that he was always good-tempered on rent-day, much to the relief of his tenants. He disliked Richard Burke as a man as much as he admired him as a tenant; but he had taken a fancy to Desmond, lent him books from his library, took him out shooting when the weather and Richard permitted, and played chess with him sometimes of a rainy afternoon. His housekeeper said that Master Desmond was the only human being whose presence the squire could endure when the gout was on him.

In short, Sir Willoughby and Desmond were very good friends.

Desmond had almost reached the gate of the Hall when, at a sudden turn of the road, he came upon a man seated upon a low hillock by the roadside, idly swishing at the long ripe gra.s.s with a cane. At the first glance Desmond noticed the strangely-clad right hand of his overnight acquaintance, the shabby clothes, the red feather, the flaming neckcloth. The man looked up at his approach; the winning smile settled upon his swarthy face, which daylight now revealed as seamed and scarred; and, without stirring from his seat or desisting from his occupation, he looked in the boy's face and said softly:

"You are early afoot, like the son of Anchises, my young friend. If I mistake not, when Aeneas met the son of Evander they joined their right hands. We have met--let us also join hands and bid each other a very good morning."

Desmond shook hands; he did not know what to make of this remarkable fellow who must always be quoting from his school-books; but there was no harm in shaking hands. He could not in politeness ask the question that rose to his lips--why the stranger wore a mitten on one hand; and if the man observed his curiosity he let it pa.s.s.

"You are on business bent, I wot," continued the stranger. "Not for the world would I delay you. But since the hand-clasp is but a part of the ceremony of introduction, might we not complete it by exchanging names?"

"My name is Desmond Burke," said the boy.

"A good name, a pleasant name, a name that I know." Desmond was conscious that the man was looking keenly at him. "There is a gentleman of the same name--I chanced to meet him in London--cultivating literature in the Temple; his praenomen, I bethink me, is Edmund. And I bethink me, too, that in the course of my peregrinations on this planet I have more than once heard the name of one Captain Richard Burke, a notable seaman, in the service of our great Company. I repeat, my young friend, your name is a good one; may you live to add l.u.s.tre to it!"

"Captain Burke was my father."

"My prophetic soul!" exclaimed the stranger. "But surely you are somewhat late in following the craft paternal; you do not learn seamanship in this sylvan sphere?"

"True," responded Desmond with a smile. "My father turned farmer; he died when I was a little fellow, and I live with my mother. But you will excuse me, sir; I have an errand to the Hall beyond us there."