Chapter XXIV: An Unexpected Guest

One afternoon, in one of their winter holidays, Gracie and the two boys had been down along the shore to visit Mrs. Rimmer and Kattie, especially Kattie.

They were tramping home along the crackling causeway of dried seaweed and the jetsam in which of old they had sought for treasure, and chattering merrily as they went.

"Kattie's getting as pretty as a--as a----" stumbled Jim after a comparison equal to the subject.

"Wild-rose," suggested Gracie.

"Sweet-pea," said Jack.

"I was thinking of something with wings," said Jim, "but I don't quite know----"

"Peacock," said Jack.

"No, nor a seagull. Their eyes are cold, and Kattie's aren't."

"You think she'll fly away?" laughed Gracie. "You think she looks flighty? That was the red ribbons in her hair. She must have expected you, Jim."

"They were very pretty, but I liked her best with it all flying loose as it used to be."

"She's getting too big for that, but she certainly has a taste for colours."

"Well, why shouldn't she, if they make her look pretty?"

"Oh, she can have all the ribbons she wants, as far as I am concerned. I only hope----"

And then they were aware suddenly of the rapid beat of horses' feet on the firm brown sand below, and turned, supposing it might be Sir George or Margaret Herapath.

But it was a stranger, a tall and imposing figure of a man on a great brown horse, and behind him rode another, evidently a servant, for he carried a valise strapped on to the crupper of his saddle. Both wore long military cloaks and foreign-looking caps. In the half-light of the waning afternoon, and the rarity of strangers in that part of the world, there was something of the sinister about the new-comer, something which evoked a feeling of discomfort in the chatterers and reduced them to silent staring, as the riders went by at a hand-gallop.

"Who can they be?" said Gracie, as they stood gazing after them.

"Foreigners," said Jack decisively. "French, I should say, from the cut of their jibs. A French officer and his servant."

"What are they wanting here, I'd like to know," said Jim, still staring absorbedly. "He's a fine-looking man anyway, and he knows how to ride."

"His eyes were like gimlets," said Gracie. "They went right through me. I thought he was going to speak to us."

"Wish he had," said Jim. "That's just the kind of man I'd like to have a talk with."

They were to drink tea with Gracie, and she had made a great provision of special cakes for them with her own hands. So they turned off into the sand-hills and made their way to Wyvveloe.

Eager came out of a cottage as they passed down the street, and they all went on together.

"Oh, Charles," burst out the Little Lady, as she filled the cups, "we saw two such curious men on the shore as we were coming home----"

"Ah!"--for he always enjoyed her exuberance in the telling of her news. "Two heads each?--or was it smugglers now, or real bold buccaneers?"

"Jack thinks, by the cut of their jibs, they were Frenchmen, one an officer and the other his servant."

"Oh?"--with a sudden startled interest. "Frenchmen, eh? And what made you think they were Frenchmen, Jack, my boy?"

"They looked like it to me. They had long soldiers' cloaks on, and their caps were not English----"

"And they had rattling good horses, both of them," struck in the future cavalryman.

"And where were they going?"

"We didn't ask. We only stared, and they stared back. They were galloping along the shore towards Carne," said Jack.

"I We don't often see Frenchmen up this way nowadays." And thereafter he was not quite so briskly merry as usual, as though the Frenchmen were weighing on him.

And truly an odd and discomforting idea had flashed unreasonably across his mind as they spoke, and it stuck there and worried him.

They were gathered round the fire, and Jim was gleefully picturing to the shuddering Gracie, in fullest red detail, the great fight with Chissleton. And Gracie had just gasped, "But didn't it hurt dreadfully, Jim?" And Jim had just replied, with the carelessness of the hardened warrior, "Sho! I din know. It was the very best fight I ever had";--when a knock came on the cottage door, and Eager jumped up, almost as though he had been expecting it, and went out. It was Mr. Kennet stood there, and when the light of the lamp in the passage fell on his face it seemed longer and more portentous even than usual. It was Kennet whom Eager's foreboding thought had feared to see. And his words occasioned him no surprise.

"Sir Denzil wants the boys, Mr. Eager, and he says will you please to come too."

"Very well, Kennet." And if Mr. Kennet had expected to be questioned on the matter he was disappointed. "Will you wait for us?"

"I've a message into the village, sir. I'll come on as soon as I've done it." And in the darkness beyond, a horse jerked its head and rattled its gear.

"Come along, boys. Your grandfather has sent for you. I'll go along with you." And they were threading their way--with eyes a little less capable than of old of seeing in the dark, by reason of disuse and study--through the sand-hills towards Carne.

The boys speculated briskly as to the reason for this unusual summons. A couple of years earlier they would have been racking their brains as to which of their numerous peccadilloes had come to light, and bracing their hearts and backs to the punishment. But they were getting too big now for anything of that kind--except of course at school, where flogging was a part of the curriculum.

Eager guessed what was toward, but offered them no light on the subject.

"Yo're to go up," said Mrs. Lee to the boys, as they entered the kitchen. "Will yo' please stop here, sir till he wants yo'." And It seemed to Eager that the grim old face was pinched tighter than ever in repression of some overpowering emotion.

The boys stumbled wonderingly upstairs, knocked on Sir Denzil's door, and were bidden to enter.

Their grandfather was sitting half turned away from the table, on which were the remains of a meal and several bottles of wine. Before the fire, with his back against the mantelpiece, stood a tall, dark man in a very becoming undress uniform, his hands in his trousers' pockets, a large cigar in his mouth. Sparks shot into his keen black eyes as they leaped eagerly at the boys, devouring them wholesale in one hungry gaze, then travelling rapidly back and forth in assimilation of details.

A foreigner without doubt, said the boys to themselves, as they stared back with interest at the dark, handsome face with its sweeping black moustache and pointed beard.

Sir Denzil tapped his snuff-box and snuffed aloofly.

"Gad, sir, but I think they do me credit!" said the stranger at last, In a voice that sounded somewhat harsh and nasal to ears accustomed to the soft, round tones of the north.

"That's as it may be," said Sir Denzil drily. "Credit where credit is due."

"_Sang-d'-Dieu!_ you will allow me a finger in the pie, at all events, sir!"

"That much, perhaps!"--with a shrug. "That proverbial finger as a rule points more to marring than to making."

"And you've no idea which is which?" And he eyed the boys so keenly that they grew uncomfortable.

"Not the slightest! Have you?"

"I like them both. I'm proud of them both. But it certainly complicates matters having two of them. Suppose you keep one and I take one? How would that do? I'll wager mine goes higher than yours."

"Suppose you put it to them!"

The boys had been following this curious discussion with certainly more intelligence than might have been displayed by two puppies whose future was in question, but with only a very dim idea of what some of it might mean.

They had at times, of late, come to discuss themselves and their immediate concerns--as to which was the elder, and as to what their father and mother had been like, when they had died, and so on. In the earlier days they had never troubled their heads about such matters. But the exigencies of school life had awakened a desire for more definite information towards the settlement of vexed questions.

And so their holidays had been punctuated with attempts at the solution of these weighty problems, and the piercing of the cloud of ignorance in which they had been perfectly happy. And the unsatisfactory results of their inquiries had only served to quicken their thirst for knowledge.

Old Mrs. Lee gave them nothing for their pains, and her manner was eminently discouraging. "Which was the elder? She'd have thought any fool could tell they were twins! Their mother?--dead, years ago. Their father?--dead too, she hoped, and best thing for him!"

Their only other possible source of information was Mr. Eager. Sir Denzil and Kennet were of course out of the question. And Mr. Eager had so far only told them that of his own actual knowledge he knew as little as they did, and advised them to wait and trouble themselves as little as possible about the matter. He could not even say definitely if their father was dead. He had lived abroad for many years, and had not been heard of for a very long time.

Eager, of course, foresaw that, sooner or later, the whole puzzling matter would have to be explained to them, unless the solution came otherwise, in which case it might never need to be explained at all. But in the meantime no good could come of unprofitable discussion, and there were parts of it best left alone.

And so, when this handsome stranger dawned suddenly upon them, in such familiar discussion of themselves with their grandfather, their first "Who is it?" speedily gave place to "Can it be?" and then to "Is it?"--on Jack's part, at all events, and he stared at the dark man in the foreign uniform with keenest interest and a glimmering of understanding. Jim stared quite as hard, but with smaller perception.

"Well?" said the stranger, his white teeth gleaming through the heavy black moustache. "What do you make of it? Who am I?"

"Can you be our father?" jerked Jack; and Jim jumped at the unaccustomed word.

"Clever boy that knows his own father--or thinks he does--especially when he's never set eyes on him! How would you like to come back to France with me, youngster?"

"To France?" gasped Jack.

"Into the army. I have influence. I can push you on."

"The French army?" And Jack shook his head doubtfully. "I don't think--I--quite understand. Are you an Englishman, sir?

"A Carron of Carne."

"And in the French army?"

"As it happens. You don't approve of that?"

Jack shook his head. Jim, with his wide, excited eyes and parted lips, was a study in emotions--amazement, excitement, puzzlement, admiration mixed with disapproval--all these and more worked ingenuously in his open boyish face and made it look younger than Jack's, which was knitted thoughtfully.

"If it came to that I should probably claim exemption from serving against England, though, _mon Dieu!_ it's little enough I have to thank her for, and it would be to my hurt. Sometime you will understand it all. And you?" he asked Jim, so unexpectedly that he jumped again. "You feel the same? A couple of years at St. Cyr, and then say, a sub-lieutenancy in my own cuirassiers, and all my influence behind you. As a personal friend of the Emperor, Colonel Caron de Carne is not by any means powerless, I can assure you."

But Jim wagged his head decisively. He did not understand how this mysterious, but undoubtedly fine-looking father came to be apparently both a Frenchman and an Englishman, but he himself was an Englishman, and an Englishman he would remain.

"So! Then I go back the richer than I came only in the knowledge of you, but I would gladly have had one of you back with me."

"Go now, boys," said Sir Denzil, "and tell Mr. Eager I would be glad of a word with him." And wrenching their eyes from this phenomenal father, whose advances evoked no slightest response within them, they got out of the door somehow and ran down to the kitchen.

"Sir Denzil wants you to go up, Mr. Eager," began Jack.

"Our father's up there," broke in Jim.

But Mr. Eager had already heard the strange news from Mrs. Lee, and went up at once, full anxious on his own account to see what manner of man this unexpectedly-returned father might be, and rigorously endeavouring to preserve an open mind concerning him until he had something more to go upon than Mrs. Lee's curt but emphatic, "He's a divvle if ever there was one."

"Ah, Mr. Eager, this is my son Denzil, father of your boys," said the old man briefly, and helped himself to snuff and leaned back in his chair and watched them.

"I am glad to make your acquaintance, Mr. Eager,"--and a strong brown hand shot out to meet him. "Sir Denzil tells me that whatever good is in those boys is of your implanting. I thank you. You have done a good work there."

"They are fine lads," said Eager quietly. "It would have been an eternal pity if they had run to seed. We are making men of them."

"I have been trying to induce one of them to go back to France with me----"

"Which one?"

"Either. I don't know one from t'other yet. I could make much of either, and it would solve the difficulty you are in here."

"And they?"

"They won't hear of it."

"I should have been surprised if they had."

"I suppose so. And yet I could promise one or both a very much greater career than they are ever likely to realise here."

Eager shook his head. "They have been brought up as English lads; you could hardly expect them to change sides like that, even for possibilities which I don't suppose they understand or appreciate."

"It's a pity, all the same. There will be many opportunities over there----"

"The Empire is peace----" interjected Eager, with a smile.

"The Empire"--with a shrug--"is my very good friend Louis Napoleon, and peace just so long as it is to his interest to keep it. But"--with a knowing nod--"he has studied his people and he knows how to handle them. I'll wager you I'm a general inside five years--unless he or I come to an end before that."

"I would sooner they died English subalterns than lived to be French generals."

"It's throwing away a mighty chance for one of them."

"Their own country will offer them all the chances they need."

"How?" asked the Colonel quickly. "You think England will join us in case of necessity?"

"I know nothing about that. I mean simply that our boys will do their duty whatever call is made upon them; and no man can do more than that."

"Peace offers few opportunities of advancement,"--with a regretful shake of the head. "But your minds all seem made up. It is a great chance thrown away, but I judge it is no use urging the matter----"

"Not the very slightest. To put the matter plainly, Captain Carron----"

"Colonel, with your permission!"

"You have forfeited all right to dictate as to those boys' future. Legally, perhaps----"

"_Merci!_ I shall not invoke the aid of the law, Mr. Eager."

"It would clear the way here if you took one of them off our hands," said Sir Denzil; "but I agree with Mr. Eager, one Frenchman in the family is quite enough. You will have to go back empty-handed, Denzil."

"I am glad to have seen those boys, anyway. We may meet again, some time, Mr. Eager. In the meantime, my grateful thanks for all you have done for them!"

And next morning he took leave of his sons, and galloped off along the sands the way he had come, and the boys stood looking after him with very mixed feelings, and when he was out of sight looked down at the guineas he had left in their hands and thought kindly of him.