Part 2

"A time came when I knew I had been as selfish as she never would have called me. People had to be told!--so we enlightened 'em by shooting the moon. The condition of my war-chest wasn't over and above flourishing, but I got a month's leave for the Mofussil and secured a twenty-rupee furnished bungalow at Titteghur--and next morning--before the hue and cry had well begun, Lady Augustus got a _chit_ from Milly by _harkára_--I remember every word of it. '_Dearest Aunt,--I hope you have not been alarmed, supposing me to have been murdered or carried off by wicked persons. I am safe and happy with my own dear husband, from whom, I shall never be parted now._'"

The pipe was nearly smoked out, but the Captain did not appear aware of that.

"'_Never be parted_,' and before three months were over our heads..."

Clash! Mrs. Breagh had let her scissors fall. Her husband made a long arm, picked them up, and gave them back to her.

"Thank you, Alex, love!" said Mrs. Breagh effusively. But he went on sucking at the now empty pipe, and staring at the waning fire. And the silent voice went on:

"The Fermeroys were furious. But there was no use in making a fuss and a scandal, and I must say they took the blow awfully well. Good haters both--declared that under no conceivable circumstances would they ever admit within their doors an officer who had acted so dishonorably, but they'd receive Milly whenever she liked to come. Nor would they--though her uncle was her guardian and trustee--deprive her of her fortune--seven thousand pounds in East India Stock, Home Rails, and Government Three Per Cents. But they tied it up tight for the benefit of the child that was coming, and others that might come--in what they called a Post-Matrimonial Settlement, and I was agreeable; though, mind you!--I had the law on my side if I'd chosen to make a fuss. And I was too much in love to bother over money--or to care a cowrie about being cut by the Fermeroys' friends."

Nothing but gray ashes remained in the pipe-bowl.

"I don't know whether it wasn't to get me out of the way that the regiment was ordered to Sikandarabad. There'd been a Sepoy rising at Haidarabad, six miles north of the Subsidiary Force's cantonments--and as the big Mussulman city was swarming with all the blackguards and _budmashes_ in the Dekkan--and bazar-_gup_ had it that another Rohilla riot was threatening--Ours got the route to go. And Milly--God bless her! wouldn't hear of being left behind. And we steamed down coast to Masulipatam, and marched the two hundred miles; and though it was early in January, the roads were confoundedly squashy and the heat was like a vapor-bath--there being no winter to speak of in the South."

"He's in a regular brown study," said her unseen gossip and confidante to the Captain's second wife. "Perhaps his tailor has been dunning him, or he's been losing at cards. When men are out of spirits, money's generally at the bottom of it! Better get him to tell what's the matter by-and-by--not now!"

"And the long road ran like a brown snake between mangrove-swamps and paddy-fields, where it wasn't coffee-plantations and cotton-ground. And there were black-buck and partridge for the shooting when you could get away from the columns; and duck and snipe when we were hung up at the river-fords waiting for the elephants that were to take over the baggage and guns."

The shouts of the drill-sergeant came more faintly from the Parade-ground. The Captain seemed to doze as he sucked at the empty pipe, but Memory's voice went on:

"The women and children of the rank and file were carried on the baggage-wagons, and the officers' wives traveled by bullock-_tonga_ or _palki-dak_, under an escort of good-conduct men of the Subsidiary Force the Brigadier had sent down from cantonments. Milly laughed at their oilskin-covered wickerwork chimney-pot hats and little old red coatees, and black unmentionables and bare sandaled feet. But they couldn't keep the beggars of bearers from turning out of the road and taking short-cuts through jungle-paths. Then they'd dump the _palkis_ down in the shade, and light a fire of sticks, and squat round and smoke their hubble-bubbles or chew betel.... And Milly's blackguards had gone out of sight behind some trees, and she was scared at finding herself alone and unprotected. And she tried to be calm and plucky, thinking of--what she and me were looking for.... But something trotted out of a cane-brake and snuffed at the _palki_ curtains--and she went off in a dead faint and small blame to her! For there were the prints of a full-grown tiger's pugs in the soft ground round the palanquin--and the place where his hind-claws had torn up the grass when he bounded off...."

The forgotten pipe was upside down in the smoker's mouth now. A pinch of ashes had fallen upon the breast of the unhooked scarlet coat.

"When I came up I made those coolie-brutes eat plenty stick. But Milly--poor girl! had got her death-blow. And the boy was born that night under canvas by the roadside. An old Murderer--Surgeon-Major Murdoch of Ours--did all man could do to save her. But--just at dawn--with the eastern sky all lemon-yellow and pink and madder behind a mango-tope, with a Hindu temple near it, and a clump of mud huts--and some old saint's shrine under a sacred peepul-tree--the boy was born and the mother went out like a blown waxlight. Oh, my darling! ... And the Catholic chaplain--who'd been fetched to give Milly the Last Sacraments--baptized the boy, for Milly had made me swear all the children should be of her faith. And the boy would have died, too, but that my company Sergeant's wife--she that is nurse to my youngest child to-day--happened to be able and willing to suckle him. And we struck camp and set out on the last march, carrying a corpse and a new-born baby. And that night we buried my girl by torchlight in the cemetery belonging to the European infantry-barracks. And it's six years ago to-day--and here I am married to another woman! Are you happy with her, Alex Breagh? She's as unlike the other as chalk's different from cheese--and poor Milly 'ud have called her a vulgar person! I know she would! And yet--Milly never gave me a decent meal, and the servants did as they liked! and Fanny's a rare housekeeper. I've been more comfortable since I married her than I ever was in my life before. Yes, I'm a happy man!..."

He told himself this continually. And yet the knowledge of material comfort could not long silence the crying of his heart.

He took the smoked-out pipe from his mouth, and turned to look at the plump, high-colored, personable woman who was sitting darning his children's stockings with his wedding-ring shining on her finger, and the present had its value for him, and he ceased to company with the dead. His regard, at first chill and gloomy, warmed: his good-humored smile curled his full red lips again....

"Why, how you look, love!" said Mrs. Breagh, and she rose and came to his side. Then she sat on his knee and smoothed his hair from his forehead. And the Captain returned her kiss, and told himself that true wisdom lay in making the best of one's luck generally, and being grateful for whatever good the gods chose to grant.

"No use crying over spilt milk! ... Beg pardon, my dear!--but what were you asking me?"

"I was asking--supposing Carolan had never been born--or had died--whether you would have come into his mother's money?"

"Would I have inherited Milly's seven thousand pounds? Not a halfpenny of it, my dear! In the event of her decease without issue it would have gone back to her family. And even during Milly's lifetime she only had the half-yearly interest. Couldn't sell out stock, or raise a lump sum for--ahem!--for the benefit of any person she'd a mind to help. And husband and wife are one flesh, so the Bible tells you!"

"The poor thing that's gone ought to have had more spirit than to let you be treated so!" said the second wife, who had possessed no fortune beyond a hundred pounds or so, bestowed as dowry on his younger daughter by the hard-worked apothecary of an English country town; and was conscious that in marrying her the Captain had not aspired to a union above his social rank.

"Begad! my dear! I don't mind owning that Lord Augustus hated me, from the top hair of my head to the last peg in my boot-sole. And--when he died--and he did go over to the majority not long after the Fermeroys had sailed for England with Lord Hardinge--when he died it didn't make a pin's difference, for under that settlement I've told you of, the co-trustee, a solicitor--Mr. Mustey, of Furnival's Inn, Holborn, London--took his son,--who'd been made partner in his business--as his partner in the trusteeship. And, of course, the money's the boy's!--though the two-hundred-and-twenty-odd annual interest is paid to me--the whole of it!--until Carry's old enough to go to school and college--and when he reaches twenty-three the whole lump of the principal will be his--seven thousand golden sovereigns--to play ducks and drakes with if he likes!"

"And my poor darlings will have nothing," Mrs. Breagh bleated, "unless,---because I've treated Carolan in all respects--and more!--as if he were my own child, and that I would declare with my head upon my dying pillow!--unless he has the gratitude and the decent feeling to do something for Alan,--if it's only giving him a few hundreds to start him properly in life...."

"Don't count your chickens before they're hatched," advised her lord. "My dear, if you'll get me the materials from the sideboard, I'll wet my whistle. Talking's dry work!"

With wifely compliance Mrs. Breagh placed the whisky-decanter and the Delhi clay-bottle of drinking-water near her Alexander's elbow. You are to imagine the Captain mixing a jorum on half-and-half principles, nodding to his Fanny, and taking a refreshing swig of the cooling draft. And at this juncture a head of scarlet curls was poked out from the covert of the Indian shawl tablecloth, and the clear treble of his eldest son piped out:

"Dada, how much money is seven fousand golding sovereigns? And how long will it be before I get them to make ducks and drakes?"

III

You are to suppose Captain Breagh, startled by the unexpected apparition of his eldest son, swallowing the whole jorum of whisky and water at a gulp, and his wife dropping her darning into her lap with the very exclamation Carolan had previously promised himself. Still as a mouse, he had lain in ambush beneath the Pembroke table, with the portrait of the Duke of Wellington on a gray charger in the foreground of the highly varnished oil-painting--representing the Royal Ennis Regiment in the performance of prodigies of gallantry in conflict with the French at Vimiera--staring with bolting blue eyes, and pointing at him with a Field-Marshal's _bâton_ whenever he had peeped out.

Now, conscious of having made an impression, and with a curious mixture of sensations, emotions, impulses, fermenting in a brain of six years, the boy stood upright before his elders, his well-knit shoulders thrown back, his sturdy legs, arrayed in their virile coverings of blue cloth adorned with cat-stitches of yellow basting-thread, planted wide apart upon the tiger-skin hearthrug, and his stomach thrust forward with the arrogance characteristic of the newly made capitalist.

"Why the devil were you hiding there? Eh, you young Turk, you?" blustered the Captain.

"Eavesdroppers," said Mrs. Breagh acidly, "never go to Heaven."

"Farver Haygarty----" Carolan began.

"We don't want to know what Father Haygarty says!" snapped Mrs. Breagh, whose Protestant gorge rose at the Papistical teachings of the regimental chaplain. And then she remembered that in a few years the worldly prospects of her three children might depend on the good-will of this chubby-faced, red-haired urchin who stood silently before her, contemplating her with a new expression in a very round pair of oddly amber-flecked gray eyes. And being a weak, ill-balanced, underbred woman, and a mother into the bargain, she truckled, as such women will, to the latent potentialities vested in the stubborn wearer of the unfinished suit of clothes.

"Not but what Father Haygarty is a good man and much respected--and I dare say you're sorry for having kicked poor Josey. So, since it's your birthday we won't say any more about it--and Nurse shall pull out those basting-threads and sew on the brace-buttons when you're in bed to-night----"

"There! you hear! Stop, you young rascal! Come back and kiss your mother, and thank her, and run away to Mrs. Povah!" bade the Captain, for Carolan, driving a pair of grubby fists deep into the pockets of the new breeches, had swung contemptuously upon his heel, and made for the door.

"She's not my muvver!" said the son, pausing in his struggle with the door-handle to turn a flushed and frowning face upon his sire. "She said so just now and so did you!"

"Then shut the door!" thundered the Captain, but it had slammed before the words were fairly out. And Carolan stamped across the landing whistling defiantly, and burst into the nursery, where Baba--for the moment its sole occupant--was asleep in her bassinette, Alan and Monica having gone out to walk with Miss Josey, and Nurse being busy in the adjoining room.

Carolan's head was hot, and his heart felt big and swollen. He was a person of consequence, and at the same time a thing of no account. Thus the pride that flamed in his gray eyes was presently quenched by scalding salt drops of resentful indignation. He was sorrowful, elated, angry, and complacent, all at once, as he stood by Baba's crib.

He had never until now suspected Mrs. Breagh was not his mother. He had called her "Mamma" ever since he could speak. No question had ever risen in his mind as to the existence of some secret reason for her dislike of him.

When she had seemed most hateful in his eyes, by reason of her lacking reticence and absent sense of honor--for she couldn't keep a secret if she promised you ever so, and was always telling tales of you to Dada!--Carolan had frequently relieved his feelings by going into corners and calling her "that woman" under his breath. The appalling sense of crime, involved with the relief this process brought--for to call your real mother names would be a sin of the first magnitude--bad invested it with a dreadful fascination. Now the glamour had vanished, together with the wickedness. Mrs. Breagh was nothing to Carolan. He was the son of another woman--and she was dead in India. Her name was Milly--a gentle, prettily sounding name.

Only the day before, Carolan had found out what the thing grown-up people called "death" and "dying" meant. He had given a shiny sixpence that had lain hidden for weeks at the bottom of the pocket in his old plaid frock to Bugler Finnerty for a thrush he had limed, a beautiful brown thrush with a splendidly dappled breast. Only the bird's eyes looked like beads of dull jet glass instead of round black blobs of diamond-bright bramble-dew. And it had squatted on the foul floor of the little wood and wire cage in which Finnerty had been keeping it, panting, with ruffled feathers and open beak.

Finnerty had said that the bird would thrive on snails and worms, and Carolan had promised it plenty of these luxuries. He had meant to range for them through all the soldiers' vegetable-allotments, and ransack the Parade-ground flower-beds. But all at once the thrush had fallen over on its side, fluttering and struggling--and Carolan had been so sorry for it that he had thrust his pudgy hand into the cage, and taken the poor sufferer out with the intention of nursing it in his pinafore for a little, and then letting it go free, since it was so unhappy in captivity.

But when he had bidden it fly away it had had no strength to do so. It had lain helpless in his hands, and the strange quivering thrills that had passed through its slender body had communicated themselves to the child. Something was taking place--some change was coming. Without previous knowledge he had been sure of that.

And the change had come, with the drawing of the thin gray membrane from the corners next the beak, over the round yellow-rimmed eyes. Then the upper and underlids had sealed themselves over the veiled eyeballs--the quick panting had changed to long gasps, the head had rolled to one side helplessly--and with a long shuddering convulsion the thing had taken place. The slender body had stiffened in Carolan's hand, the glossy wings had closed down tightly against its dappled sides, its scaly legs had stretched out rigidly and not been drawn back again. And a voice that seemed to speak inside Carolan had said to him: "This is death!"

Now broke in upon his immature brain a flash of blinding brilliancy. Milly, who had been his mother, was dead, like the thrush. He shut his eyes, and saw her lying, very pale and pretty and helpless, with ruffled brown hair the exact color of the bird's feathers, and beautiful brown eyes--why was he so certain that they had been brown?--all dim and filmy, and her slender body and long graceful limbs now quivering and convulsed, and now growing rigid and stiff. And a lump rose in his throat, and a tear splashed on the front of the brand-new blue jacket, and another that would have fallen was dried by a glow of inspiration. For he had dug a grave with a sherd of broken flower-pot in the angle of one of the official flower-beds that decorated the oblong patch of lawn before the Mess House, and buried the dead thrush in the shelter of a clump of daffodils, and said a "Hail Mary!" for it, because, though Miss Josey and Mrs. Breagh--whom he would never call "Mamma" again!--termed it a Popish practice,--Father Haygarty said that one ought to pray for the dead....

Surely one ought to pray for the soul of Milly. She would understand, it was to be hoped! why one had never done it before. Somebody would tell her Carolan hadn't known! Poor, poor Milly! He wished he had been there with his new tin sword when that snuffing Thing came out of the jungle and frightened her so that she had died....

He looked about the nursery. There stood Monica's Indian-cane cot, and Alan's green-painted iron crib on either side of Nurse's wooden four-poster. At the bed-head above Nurse's pillow was nailed a little plaster Calvary, and a miniature holy-water stoup, and over Carolan's little folding camp-bedstead hung a noble crucifix of ebony and carved ivory, so large and so massive that two iron staples held it in its place.

The Face of the pendent, tortured Figure--there was death in that also. It seemed to the child that the breast beneath the drooped, thorn-encircled Head, heaved with long sighs, that the lips gasped for breath--that long shuddering spasms rippled through the tortured Body, bringing home, as nothing ever had before, the meaning of the lines that the boy had learned as a parrot might....

"_He was crucified also for us ... suffered ... and was buried...._"

And that was why we prayed to Him for the dead and buried people, because He had suffered death and gone down into the dark grave, and He knew how to help souls.... Carolan nailed his resolution to say a nightly "Our Father" for poor Milly to the masthead of determination, unaware that Father Haygarty had incurred the displeasure of Mrs. Breagh by urging the necessary discharge of this filial duty as a reason why the boy should be told about his mother who was dead.

We may guess that the influence of the second wife had inspired the Captain to insist that the hour of enlightenment should be deferred indefinitely. And if any one had suggested to Mrs.. Breagh that she had been prompted by a belated jealousy of her predecessor, she would have been genuinely horrified at the idea.

Nurse came in as Carolan decided on his course of future loyalty, and started at the sight of the sturdy little figure standing, with legs planted wide apart, on the shabby nursery drugget, its childish brows puckered with profound thought.

"Now may the Saints stand between you and the mischief I know you're plannin'!" said Nurse, who prided herself on reading thoughts in faces. "Is ut playin' acreybats on the windy-sill, or shavin' wid the Captain's razor? Spake ut out!"

Carolan spoke.

"Mamma is not my muvver, an' I shall call her Mrs. Breagh _always_!"

"God be good to me!" said Nurse, quite pale, and putting her hand to her side. "An' who tould ye that, an' set the two eyes of ye blazin' like coals of fire?"

"You saided it!--and she saided it--and Dada saided it--when I was playin' robber's cave under the sittin'-woom table," Carolan proclaimed. "And I'm goin' to pray for Milly--that's my weal muvver--because she's dead--even if they say I shan't!"

"There'll none durst," said Nurse rather awfully, "wid Bridget Povah to the fore! And what else?"

Slightly damped by the prospect of being permitted to carry out his shining new intention without interruption, Carolan reflected.

"Nuffing," he said at last, "'cept that I want to know how much is seven fousand golding sovereigns? For I am going to have them when I grow up."

"Sure!" said Nurse, slightly bewildered, "a sovereign is the same as a wan-pound note! Ye have seen thim things, have ye not?"

Carolan had seen the soiled rags of Bank paper changing hands on market-days, and the recollection wrinkled his nose.

"'Tis quare talk ye have," said Nurse, "about the sivin thousand wan-pound notes. 'Tis a little haystack av them ye would be gettin' from the gintleman at the Bank. Where arr ye goin' now, ye onaisy wandherer? Wid your hoop for a rowl in the Barrack-square? Take your cap--an' remember that wheniver ye're clane out av sight, Biddy Povah has her eye on you!"

But Carolan was already out of the room and half-way down the stairs.

Outside under the blue sky, with its flocks of fleecy white clouds all hurrying southward, it was easy to forget the things that had hurt. The crackle of the sandy gravel underfoot, the purr of the iron hoop in the metal driving-hook soothed and stimulated; the ringing clatter when one got upon the cobblestones, and the echo when one came under the archway of the Barrack-gate--were familiar, pleasant things.