VC -- A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea | Page 5

lucky dog, not even to have your commission from your
agent's hands, and yet to be on the edge of the biggest campaign since
Waterloo.'
A lad of three-and-twenty had risen from a seat in the corner of the
room at the moment of John Jervase's entry. He had risen so hastily that
he had overturned half a set of chessmen from the board on which he
had been playing, into the lap of a pretty girl, his partner in the game;
but he had listened so intently, from the General's first question, that he
was unconscious of that slight mishap. He walked into the broader light
which shone beneath the central lamp, and asked eagerly:
'There's no mistake about that, Dad? There's no mistake about it?'
The speaker was Jervase's son, as a stranger seeing them under the
same roof would have been ready to swear at sight. He was taller than
his father by a good four inches; and the family resemblance, striking
as it was, did not pierce so deep as the expression of the face. The
father's blunt features were softened in the boy's, and though the look
of energy was there, it was altogether lifted and spiritualised--possibly,
perhaps, by the intense feeling of the moment.
'And there'll be no mistake about my commission?' the young man
asked. 'There's no fear of any delay, or any official nonsense?'
'I sent my cheque to the agent before I left the town,' his father
answered, 'and I expect you'll get your call to boot and saddle within a
day or two at the outside.'
The pretty girl who had been playing chess with the young man in the
corner laid down the pieces which had fallen in her lap. She placed

them on the board, with a meaningless precision, and looked straight
before her with wide eyes, and a face which had slowly grown paler
and more pale.
'Polson, my boy,' said the General, 'I congratulate you. You are a lucky
fellow.' He held out his right hand, and as the young man grasped it, he
laid his left upon his shoulder. 'They won't keep you long at the Depot,'
he said, 'for a man who can shoot straight, and ride to hounds, is half a
soldier already. God bless you, my lad. You'll do your duty well, I
know.'
There was silence in the room, and the noise of the storm outside,
which nobody had hitherto thought about, fell upon the ears of all four,
as if it had not been a familiar tone for hours, but as if it had but
awakened at that instant. They all stood listening, for by this time the
girl also had risen from her seat, and had made an indeterminate
movement forward towards the centre of the room. And out of the
boom and thunder of the storm there suddenly came a wild clatter of
horses' feet, and a heavy gate was heard to fall back upon its fastening.
An instant later there was a mad tugging at the front door bell, and an
insaner clatter at the knocker. Jervase himself rushed to answer this
sudden and unexpected summons, and opening the door unguardedly,
was blown back into the hall, from the walls of which every hanging
picture and every garment were swept by the incoming blast, like
leaves. It sounded as if the house were coming down.
A drenched, bareheaded figure staggered into the hall, wind-driven, and
would have fallen had not Jervase clutched at it. The newcomer and the
master of the house held on to each other, and Jervase panted hoarsely:
'You? What's the matter?' 'The matter?' said the new arrival. 'The
matter's ruin!'
CHAPTER II
The clatter of the tumbling objects in the hall brought out the General
and Jack Jervase's son. The girl peered with a whiter face than ever
from the parlour doorway, and a fourth auditor came upon the scene in

the person of an elderly woman in black satin and old lace, who rushed
into the hall with frightened eyes and upraised hands, in time to hear
the question and the answer.
To make clear what the question and the answer meant to the four
people who heard them, I must go back a step.
Jack Jervase ran away from home when the nineteenth century was in
its teens. He had left behind him a harum-scarum reputation, and, save
for his father and mother, but a solitary relative of his own name. When
he came back, with coin in pouch, and the story of a life of strange
adventure behind him, the old folks had been dead a dozen years, and
the solitary cousin, whom he had always derided as a pious sneak, had
so far prospered in the world's affairs that he had