From One Generation to Another | Page 7

dared to hint that all the Agars had seen the
light at Stagholme since time immemorial; but feelings of this
description found no answering note in her practical and essentially
commonplace mind. So Mr. And Mrs. Agar emigrated to Clapham,
leaving Jem behind them.
It happened that a few days after their arrival at the stately house
overlooking the Common, a young officer called to see Mr. Hethbridge,
who was at that time one of the Directors of the East India Company.
Now it furthermore happened that this young soldier was he whom we
last saw smoking a cheroot in the doorway of Seymour Michael's
bungalow in India. As chance would have it, he called in the evening,
and the estimable Mr. Hethbridge, warmed into an unusual hospitality
by the fumes of his own port wine, pressed him to pass into the
drawing-room and take a dish of tea with the ladies. The subaltern
accepted, chiefly because it was the Director's self that pressed, and
presently followed that short-winded gentleman into the
drawing-room--thereby shaping lives yet uncreated--thereby
unconsciously helping to work out a chain of events leading ultimately
to an end which no man could foresee.
"Yes," he said, in reply to Mrs. Agar's question, "I am just back from
India."
It happened that these two were left almost beyond earshot at the far
end of the room. The old people, among whom was Mrs. Agar's

husband, were settling down to a game of whist. Mrs. Agar was leaning
forward with considerable interest. This was not a mere passing
curiosity to hear further of a country and of an event which have not
lost their glamour yet.
The very word "India" had stirred something up within her heart of the
presence of which she had been unsuspicious. She was as one who,
having a closed room in her life, and thinking the door thereof securely
barred, suddenly finds herself within that room.
"Whereabouts in India were you?" she asked, with a sudden dryness of
the lips.
"Oh--I was north of Delhi."
"North of Delhi--oh, yes."
She moistened her lips, with a strange, sidelong glance round the room,
as if she were preparing to jump from a height.
"And--and I suppose you saw a great deal of the Mutiny?"
Even then--after many months, in a drawing-room in peaceful
Clapham--the young man's eyes hardened.
"Yes, I saw a good deal," he answered.
Mrs. Agar leant back in her chair, drawing her handkerchief through
her fingers with jerky, unnatural movements.
"And did you lose many friends?" she asked.
"Yes," answered the young fellow, "in one way and another."
"How? What do you mean?" She had a way of leaning forward and
listening when spoken to, which passed very well for sympathy.
"Well, a time like the Mutiny brings out all that is in a man, you know.
And some men had less in them than one might have thought, while

others--quiet-going fellows--seemed to wake up."
"Yes," she said; "I see."
"One or two," he continued, "betrayed themselves. They showed that
there was that in them which no one had suspected. I lost one friend
that way."
"How?"
It was marvellous how the merest details of India interested this woman,
who, like most of us, did not know herself. Moreover, she never learnt
to do so thoroughly, thereby being spared the horrid pain of knowing
oneself too late.
"I made a mistake," he explained. "I thought he was a gentleman and a
brave man. I found that he was a coward and a cad."
Something urged her to go on with her pointless questions--the same
inevitable Fate which, according to the Italians, "stands at the end of
everything," and which had prompted Mr. Hethbridge to bring this
stranger into the drawing-room.
"But how did you find it out?"
"Oh, I did not do it all at once. I first began by a mere trifle. It
happened that this man was reported dead in the Gazette--I showed it to
him myself."
The young officer, who was not accustomed to ladies' society, and felt
rather nervous at his own loquaciousness, kept his eyes fixed on his
boots, and did not notice the deathly pallor of Mrs. Agar's face, nor the
convulsive clutch of her fingers on the velvet arm of the chair.
She turned right round, with a peculiar movement of the throat as if
swallowing something, and made sure that the whist-players were
interested in their game. In that position she heard the next words.
"He did not even take the trouble to write home to his friends. I thought

it rather strange at the time, and told him so. Later on I heard the truth
of it. I heard him tell some one else that he was engaged to a girl in
England, and he thought it