The Argosy | Page 6

choose. I have found some work to do.
Lend me your ears, both of you. About an hour after you, sir, had
started for Deepley Walls, I received a note from the editor of the
Eastbury Courier, in which he requested me to give him an early call.
My curiosity prompted me to look in upon him as soon as breakfast
was over. I found that he was brother to the editor of one of the London
magazines--a gentleman whom I met one evening at a party in town.
The London editor remembered me, and had written to the Eastbury
editor to make arrangements with me for writing a series of magazine
articles on India and my experiences there during the late mutiny. I
need not bore you with details; it is sufficient to say that my objections
were talked down one by one; and I left the office committed to a
sixteen-page article by the sixth of next month."
"You an author!" exclaimed the Major. "I should as soon have thought

of your enlisting in the Marines."
"It will only be for a few months, uncle--only till my limited stock of
experiences shall be exhausted. After that I shall be relegated to my
natural obscurity, doubtless never to emerge again."
"Hem," said the Major, nervously. "Geordie, my boy, I have by me one
or two little poems which I wrote when I was about nineteen--trifles
flung off on the inspiration of the moment. Perhaps, when you come to
know your friend the editor better than you do now, you might induce
him to bring them out--to find an odd corner for them in his magazine.
I shouldn't want payment for them, you know. You might just mention
that fact; and I assure you that I have seen many worse things than they
are in print."
"What, uncle, you an author! Oh, fie! I should as soon have thought of
your wishing to dance on the tight-rope as to appear in print. But we
must look over these little effusions--eh, Miss Hope. We must unearth
this genius, and be the first to give his lucubrations to the world."
"If you were younger, sir, or I not quite so old, I would box your ears,"
said the Major, who seemed hardly to know whether to laugh or be
angry. Finally he laughed, George and Janet chimed in, and all three
went back indoors.
After an early dinner the Major took rod and line and set off to capture
a few trout for supper. Aunt Félicité took her post-prandial nap
discreetly, in an easy-chair, and Captain George and Miss Hope were
left to their own devices. In Love's sweet Castle of Indolence the hours
that make up a summer afternoon pass like so many minutes. These
two had blown the magic horn and had gone in. The gates of brass had
closed behind them, shutting them up from the common outer world.
Over all things was a glamour as of witchcraft. Soft music filled the air;
soft breezes came to them as from fields of amaranth and asphodel.
They walked ever in a magic circle, that widened before them as they
went. Eros in passing had touched them with his golden dart. Each of
them hid the sweet sting from the other, yet neither of them would have
been whole again for anything the world could have offered. What need

to tell the old story over again--the story of the dawn of love in two
young hearts that had never loved before?
Janet went home that night in a flutter of happiness--a happiness so
sweet and strange and yet so vague that she could not have analysed it
even had she been casuist enough to try to do so. But she was content
to accept the fact as a fact; beyond that she cared nothing. No syllable
of love had been spoken between her and George: they had passed what
to an outsider would have seemed a very common-place afternoon.
They had talked together--not sentiment, but every-day topics of the
world around them; they had read together--poetry, but nothing more
passionate than "Aurora Leigh;" they had walked together--rather a
silent and stupid walk, our friendly outsider would have urged; but if
they were content, no one else had any right to complain. And so the
day had worn itself away--a red-letter day for ever in the calendar of
their young lives.
CHAPTER XX.
THE NARRATIVE OF SERGEANT NICHOLAS.
One morning when Janet had been about three weeks at Deepley Walls,
she was summoned to the door by one of the servants, and found there
a tall, thin, middle-aged man, dressed in plain clothes, and having all
the appearance of a discharged soldier.
"I have come a long way, miss," he said to Janet, carrying