For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War

Lewis Hough

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• Publié par: erzey
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 26
• Langue: English

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The Project Gutenberg EBook of For Fortune and Glory, by Lewis Hough
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Title: For Fortune and Glory
A Story of the Soudan War
Author: Lewis Hough
Illustrator: Walter Paget
Release Date: April 18, 2007 [EBook #21136]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOR FORTUNE AND GLORY ***
Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England
Lewis Hough
"For Fortune and Glory"
A Story of the Soudan War.
Chapter One.
A Mysterious Relative.
It is nice to go home, even from Harton, though we may be leaving all our sports
behind us. It used to be specially nice in winter; but you young fellows are made
so comfortable at school nowadays that you miss one great luxury of return to
the domestic hearth. Why, they tell me that the school-rooms at Harton are
warmed! And I know that the Senate House at Cambridge is when men are in for
their winter examinations, so it is probable that the younger race is equally
pampered; and if the present Hartonians’ teeth chatter at six o’clock lesson,
consciousness of unprepared lessons is the cause, not cold.
But you have harder head-work and fewer holidays than we had, so you are
welcome to your warm school-rooms. I am not sure that you have the best of it:
at any rate, we will cry quits.
But the superior material comforts of home are but a small matter in thepleasure of going there after all. It is the affections centred in it which cause it to
fill the first place in our hearts, “be it never so humble.”
Harry Forsyth was fond of Harton; fond of football, which was in full swing; fond
of his two chums, Strachan and Kavanagh. He rather liked his studies than
otherwise, and, indeed, took a real pleasure in some classical authors—Homer
and Horace, for example—as any lad who has turned sixteen who has brains,
and is not absolutely idle, is likely to do. He was strong, active, popular; he had
passed from the purgatorial state of fag to the elysium of fagger. But still his
blood seemed turned to champagne, and his muscles to watch-springs, when the
cab, which carried him and his portmanteau, passed through the gate into the
drive which curved up to the door of Holly Lodge. For Holly Lodge contained his
mother and Trix, and the thought of meeting either of them after an absence of
a school-term set his heart bounding, and his pulse throbbing, in a way he would
not have owned to his best friends for the choice of bats in the best maker’s
shop. He loved his father also, but he did not know so much of him. He was a
merchant, and his business had necessitated his living very much abroad, while
Cairo did not suit his wife’s health. His visits to England were for some years but
occasional, and did not always coincide with Harry’s holidays. Two years
previously, indeed, he had wound up his affairs, and settled permanently at
home; but he was still a busy man—a director of the Great Transit Bank, and
interested in other things, which took him up to London every day. He was also
fond of club-life and public dinners; and, though he was affectionate with his wife
and children, too much of their society rather bored him.
When she heard the cab-wheels crunching the gravel, Beatrice Forsyth ran out
without a hat, and Harry seeing her, opened the door and “quitted the vehicle
while yet in motion,” as the railway notices have it, whereby he nearly came a
cropper, but recovered his balance, and was immediately fitted with a live
necklace. Beatrice was a slight, fair, blue-eyed, curly-haired girl of fifteen; so
light and springy that her brother carried her, without an effort, to the hall steps,
where, being set down, she sprang into the cab and began collecting the smaller
packages, rug, umbrella, and other articles, inside it, while Harry hugged his
mother in the hall.
“Your father will be home by four,” said Mrs Forsyth, when the first greetings and
inquiries as to health were over.
“And Haroun Alraschid has taken possession of his study,” added Trix, with a sort
of awe.
“Haroun, how much?” asked Harry.
“Don’t be absurd, Trix!” said Mrs Forsyth. “It is only your uncle, Ralph Burke.”
“Burke, that was your name, mother; this uncle was your brother then?”
“Of course, Harry. Have you never heard me speak of your uncle Ralph?”
“Now you mention it, yes, mother. But I had a sort of idea that he was dead.”
“So we thought him for some time,” said Mrs Forsyth, “for he left the Indian Civil
Service, in which he had a good appointment, and disappeared for years. He met
with disappointments, and had a sunstroke, and went to live with wild men in the
desert, and, I believe, has taken up with some strange religious notions. In fact, I
fear that he is not quite right in his head. But he talks sensibly about things too,
and seems to wish to be kind. We were very fond of one another when we were
children, and he seems to remember it in spite of all he has gone through.”
“I am frightened to death at him,” said Trix. “I know he has a large cupboard athome with the heads of all the wives he has decapitated hanging up in a row by
the back hair!”
“I wonder at your talking so foolishly, Beatrice. You must not be prejudiced by
what she says, Harry. Except your uncle in Ireland, he has no other relatives, and
he may be very well off; and he is quite harmless.”
“You know that you were afraid of him yourself, mamma, when he first came.”
“A little, perhaps, because I did not recognise him, and thought him dead. And
then, you know, I fear he is not quite orthodox. But go and see him, Harry, and
never mind what any one says.”
“All right, mother; you have made me a bit curious, I confess,” said Harry,
leaving the room.
The garden in front of Holly Lodge was formal—just a carriage-drive, and a bit of
shrubbery, and a grass-plat with prim beds on it, which had various flower
eruptions at different periods of the year. First snowdrops, aconites, and
crocuses, then tulips, then geraniums. The real garden was at the back, and the
study looked out upon it. Not upon the lawn, where bowls, or lawn-tennis, or
other disturbing proceedings might be going on; no, from the oriel window, which
alone lighted the room, one saw a fountain, a statue, rose-bushes, and a catalpa
tree, enclosed in a fringe of foliage, syringa, lilac, laurel, chestnut, high and thick
enough to make it as private and quiet as any man with a speech to prepare, or
sums to do, might require. Harry went along a passage, turned to the left up five
steps, passed through a green-baize swing door, and knocked at that of the
study.
A deep musical voice, which seemed, however, to come from a strange distance,
told him to “come in,” and on opening the door, he found that he had to push
aside a curtain hanging over it, and which had dulled the sound of the voice.
Smoke wreaths floated about the apartment, bearing an aromatic odour quite
different from ordinary tobacco, and a curious gurgling sound, like that of water
on the boil, only intermittent, came from the direction of the broad low sofa,
which had been brought from the drawing-room, and was placed between the
fire and the window. Close to this was a small table with writing materials, a note-
book, and a pile of letters ready for the post, upon it.
On the sofa reclined a man dressed in a black frock-coat, buttoned, and dark
trousers, the only Oriental thing about him being the red cap with a silk tassel
which he wore on his head. But smokers often have a fancy for wearing the fez,
so there was nothing peculiar in that. And yet there was something different
from other people about him. Most men lounging on a sofa are ungainly and
awkward-looking, while the attitude of this one was easy and graceful, and the
motion of his hand, with which he indicated the chair on which he wished his
nephew to be seated, was courteous and yet commanding.
His complexion was sallow, and appeared the darker from the contrast afforded
by the silvery whiteness of his long beard, moustache, and thick bushy eyebrows,
from the deep cavities beneath which his dark eyes seemed literally to flash. His
nose was aquiline, his cheek-bones prominent. His hands were small, but strong
and nervous, with little flesh upon them, and the fingers were long and shapely.
When Harry was seated he resettled himself on the sofa, and, keeping his eyes
fixed on the lad, placed the amber mouth-piece of a long spiral tube connected
with a narghile which was smouldering on the floor to his lips, and the gurgling
sound was once more produced. But to Harry’s astonishment, no cloud issued
from his uncle’s mouth; like a law-abiding factory chimney, he appeared toconsume his own smoke. Then, deliberately removing the amber tube which he
held in his hand, he said&#