My Brother Basil [A novel.] ... With illustrations, etc

Front matter

I y Frontispiece MY BROTHER BASIL. — Page 164, BY E. NEAL WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY ROBERT BARNES. EDINBURGH AND LONDON OLIPHANT ANDERSON & FERRIER 1 89 Extra Crown Svo, Cloth Extra, Illustrated, price y. 6d. NORMAN REID, M.A. By JESSIE PATRICK FINDLAY. AN OLD CHRONICLE OF LEIGHTON. By SARAH SELINA HAMER. MY BROTHER BASIL. Bv E. NEAL. MRS ROMAINE'S HOUSEHOLD. By EVELYN EVERETT-GREEN. PRINTED BY TURNBULL AND SPEARS, EDINBURGH. CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. Mistaken ..... 7 II. Uncle Dick . . . . 15 III. Hazelford ..... 26 IV. Two Portraits ..... 38 V. Heredity ..... 50 VI. A Lucky Ghost . . . -63 VII. At the Home Farm . . . .71 VIII. The Ghost again . . . -79 IX. Footprints in the Snow . . .94 X. Faces and Fancies . . . .104 XI. "Cinderella" . . . . . 115 XII. Waiting for the Verdict . . .121 XIII. Bound in Shallows . . .132 XIV.

Primrosing . . . . .146 XV. Kindred Spirits . . . .156 XVI. An Unexpected Arrival . . .165 VI CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE XVII. A Little Dinner . . . 174 XVIII. From Esther's Window . . .187 XIX. The Ghost explained . . 193 XX. Two Encounters . . . .207 XXI. "On the Word of an Officer" . . 223 XXII. A Moonlight Meeting . . . 233 XXIII. Friends in Council .... 244 XXIV. A Quiet Week . . . .254 XXV. A Curious Introduction . . .263 XXVI. Trumpeter Ford . . . .275 XXVII. Not all a Dream .... 283 XXVIII. Father and Son .... 292 XXIX. Mrs Fielding's Letter . . . 303 XXX. Conclusion . . . . -314 MY BROTHER BASIL

Chapter I. Mistaken

"No age was spared, nor sex, nay, no degree ; Nor infants in the porch of life were free."— Johnson. MAY as well say at once that I am not my own I heroine. I have no qualifications for the part. P My hair is neither red nor frizzy; my eyes are not green ; I am not cataleptic ; nor have I any but the most vague and general ideas on the subject of occult influence or odic force. On the other hand, I am not exceptionally beautiful, or talented, or any thing that a heroine of the other school ought to be. Since that one tragic night, without which this story would never have been written, my life has been free from great events. It has been my lot to watch the dramas of other lives rather than to tread the stage myself. My metier has been spec tator, not actor ; and on the whole, I am content that it should have been so.

If my life has not been S MY BROTHER BASIL. exciting, it has been happy, as nations and lives are said to be who have no history. It is the history of other lives that I have to tell — lives fuller and more eventful than mine, more exciting, but less serene and calm. Even on that strange and tragic night of which I spoke just now, I was scarcely an actor, or only in the most passive and involuntary sense, but the scenes of which I was the unnoticed observer burnt themselves into my memory in ineffaceable lines. My father was a young man then, a captain in the Honourable East India Company's service, and stationed with his regiment at Sooltapoor. There were three children, of whom I was the eldest, my sister Nelly, who could not speak plain, and a baby boy of two or three months. I ought to have gone home before this, but Sooltapoor was so far from the coast that travelling was difficult, and while my parents were trying to make arrangements for me, the mutiny broke out, and the opportunity slipped by.

So I stayed, growing daily whiter and thinner, as English children do who remain too long in India, and feeling the intense heat of the Indian summer more than either my parents or the little ones : feeling it, no doubt, all the more for a certain restraint that had crept into our lives. We were in the very centre of the disturbed districts, and though my father fondly hoped that his own troops were too loyal to be infected, there was enough in the condition of the countiy to inspire the gravest uneasi ness, and to make him take every possible precaution to ensure our safety. He would fain have sent us all MISTAKEN. 9 home, or up to the hills, had either course been possible, but the state of the country put it out of the question ; and besides this my mother utterly refused to leave him ; and when my mother utterly refused to do a thing, my father must have learnt by that time how vain it would be to attempt to alter her decision.

The only thing she would concede was, that if an escort to the coast could be found, Nelly and Charlie and I should be sent home under the care of Wuzeerun, our ayah, a native woman in whom my mother had the fullest confidence, and who, like so many of her class, proved to be entirely worthy of it when the hour of trial came. It came sooner than any one had expected. Before the projected journey could be undertaken, the troops, in whose loyalty my father had trusted, had turned upon their officers, and risen in open revolt. Some of the officers were shot on the parade-ground as they tried to summon the men to their duty, and the rest were forced to retreat to the citadel, where the women and children were already collected. The citadel of Sooltapoor was a tolerably strong fortress, but the overcrowding was something terrific, and the children had too little sense of danger to accept safety as a compensation for discomfort and privation.

There was no absolute lack of provisions, but the fare was of the simplest, consisting chiefly of dall and rice, and the crowded sleeping rooms made the nights like a hideous dream. The men were on one side, and the women and children on the other, except that my father and mother had a small room to themselves, and that little Charlie slept with them, instead of in the women's room with the other children. Nelly and I were with our ayah in the general apartment, a room already too small for the numbers who were obliged to share it, and still further over crowded on that dreadful night by the arrival of some fugitives from a neighbouring cantonment. They came in, weary and footsore, just as the brief Indian twilight was falling, and they were scarcely housed before the darkness of a tropical night was upon us to enhance the confusion.

I can see it all now — the bare barrack-room, dimly lit by chiraghs, native lamps, fed by villainous oil, and seeming to combine the maximum of smell with the minimum of light. What a picture it was they showed ! crying children, bewildered nurses, weary mothers for getting their own fatigue in ministering to the necessities of their little ones. The new arrivals belonged to a Queen's regiment, and there were English and Irish nurses squabbling over their re spective charges with the dark-skinned ayahs already in possession. There had been no time to bring any thing with them in their hurried flight, and, badly as those in the fort were supplied, they could not refuse to lend food and bedding, and even clothing, to the hapless fugitives. "Sure an' ye could make room for wan more, Missie ? " I heard a voice saying above me, as I lay on the charpoy I shared with Nelly, and watched the shadowy-looking groups the faint light distorted into grotesqueness.

Nelly was already asleep ; the dark eyes that were such a curious contrast to her " lint- MISTAKEN. white locks " were shut, and I did not like disturbing her, but I could not summon courage to refuse. And, indeed, the woman did not wait for an answer, but laid a sleeping figure beside us, and went away, with a cheerful "Good-night, Missie," to attend to another child. I did not know who she was, but my mother said afterwards she was probably one of the soldiers' wives who had come in that afternoon from Azuffghur. Several of them were Irish, and both speech and face showed that she was an Irish-woman. Beyond this I noticed nothing. I was too sleepy for observation. The room and all its occupants were gradually becoming indistinct, the confusion of tongues was softening to a soothing murmur, and I was soon as fast asleep as Nelly or the little un known child who lay so quietly beside us.

I slept, and knew nothing more till I was awoke, as I hope few English children will ever be waked again. Imagine what it was, ye who " live at home at ease ! " A noise as of a hundred cannon, a crash as if the citadel was falling about our ears, and that meant, we afterwards learnt, the exploding of a mine under the principal gate of the fort ; the clash and clink of steel, as the suddenly roused men sprang to arms, the sharp rattle of bullets, the sounds of mortal conflict, the shrieks of women and children, the groans of wounded and dying men. The gate was down, and hundreds of dark figures were pouring in at the breach, while the little handful of defenders could only be counted by tens. It was said afterwards that every white man fought as if he had the courage and the strength of ten ; and what wonder, when they were. all that stood between the helpless creatures within and death — or worse ?

But the contest was too unequal, and already there were lithe dusky forms in the women's room, and reddened swords and piercing cries. I sat up trembling and dazed with horror, but Nelly never stirred. Children of her age sleep so sound, and my little sister was such a bonnie, healthy child. It was too dark to distinguish much, but suddenly I saw my mother coming towards our corner, with a strange wild look and outstretched arms. She dragged, rather than helped me off the charpoy. " Run ! " she cried ; " your father is outside. Run to him, Esther, and I will bring Nelly." I sped along in the direction she pointed, guided by the glimmering of a light in the passage. It was so dark in the room I had just left, for already half the lamps were extinguished in the scuffle and confusion that prevailed, that had not my mother known exactly the position of our charpoy, I doubt if she could have made her way so swiftly to it.

Before I reached my father she was with us again, with a sleeping child closely folded in her arms, and that awful look of frenzied horror in her face. As she appeared, my father opened a small postern at the end of the passage, and we found ourselves outside the fort. Luckily there was no moon, and the star light was not sufficient to betray our flight, even if the mutineers had not been too busy with their fiendish work within the fort to have eyes or thoughts for the fugitives who were stealing along under cover of the night. There were, besides our- MISTAKEN. 13 selves, another officer, and his wife and child, and a young English girl who had clung to my father when her brother was cut down before her eyes. Both Captain Damar and my father were wounded, and it was only when they found resistance hopeless that my father determined to escape by the little postern, of which fortunately he had a key.

There was no time to find others to share their flight, no time except to rescue wife and child, and fly. My father had Charlie in one arm, and he caught me up with the other. Even now I seem to feel again the labouring of the heart I was pressed against, and the strange, panting breath. " We must run for it," he said, " but be brave, dear wife ! If they overtake us I have this." He held up something that glittered in the star light, and we sped along the dusty road, keeping in the shelter of the cactus hedge, and making for a dak bungalow, at a little distance from the fort, which Captain Damar believed to be deserted. The Damars got there first, being less encumbered, and when we reached it they had already lit a chiragh that had been left upon the table, and were looking eagerly out for us.

We gathered together in the welcome shelter, a panting, breathless group. My father set me down, and I remember still the desolate appearance of the deserted room and the unnatural expression of the familiar faces. My father had a sabre-cut across his forehead, and Miss Wharton took Charlie from him, and began hushing him off to sleep, while my mother was unrolling the shawl from the awakening child in her arms. She set the little bundle down, and disengaged the folds of the shawl, and then — Shall I ever forget my own bewilderment or my mother's awful shriek ? The child she had saved at the risk of her own life was not Nelly — was not her own child at all. It was the little fair-haired boy who had been laid on the charpoy beside us, and whose very existence I had till that moment for gotten.

Chapter II. Uncle Dick

" Throw thine eye on yon young boy." — Shakespeare. THE little boy, so strangely and unwittingly rescued, was a fair, pretty child, apparently about four or five years old, but small and slightly built. He stood staring in bewilderment at the circle of astonished #and scarcely friendly faces ; and as it dawned upon him that he was amongst strangers, the corners of the delicate mouth drooped and fell, the sensitive lips trembled, and tears rose in the large blue eyes. "Who is he?" Mrs Damar cried. "He doesn't belong to the regiment, I'm sure." " He must have been amongst those poor people from Azuffghur," said my father. " The only one left by now, I'm afraid." " Poor little man ! " said Mrs Damar, pitifully, as she set her own child down and took him on her knee. My mother did not speak. She sat rocking her self to and fro in speechless agony, while my father vainly endeavoured to soothe her grief.

Alas ! poor mother, not even he could do that. She was like one distraught, accusing herself of having killed her child, and covering her eyes as if she could not bear the sight of the child who had lain in Nelly's place, and whose long fair curls had made it possible to mistake him for her. She was only quieted when Mrs Damar carried him into another room, and then she fell into a sort of stupor from which only my father could rouse her. When we left the bungalow I believe she would have left the poor little boy behind, but for my father's stern refusal to permit it. " Do you think there is a chance in such things ? " he exclaimed. " Surely the child is given to us as much as our own. Think what you would wish if some other woman had found Nelly." It was the most effectual argument he could have used.

For the first time since her loss, my mother burst into tears, weeping with a passionate violence that frightened Charlie and me, and made little Basil tremble like an aspen-leaf, but that probably saved her reason or her life. And when the storm had spent itself, she went up to the astonished child and kissed his brow. "For Nelly's sake," she said, and let my father lead her quietly away. And so Basil became my brother then and for evermore. His name, he said, was Basil Ford — or so my father understood it, for the child said it all together, as if it were one word. He did not speak very plainly, running his words together in a hurried, nervous way, that my father said was probably caused by some mental shock. Who could tell what scenes of horror those blue eyes might have gazed on before he was brought into the citadel at Sooltapoor ?

They were the bluest eyes I ever saw, the sort of deep sea-blue that seldom outlasts child hood ; and that, indeed, in Basil's case, merged into a greyer hue as he grew to man's estate. But though the colour altered, his eyes never lost their look of wonderful clearness and depth, or the power of expression that made their glance sometimes so scathing and sometimes so sweet. Luminous, large pupilled, clear and true, I have seen many beautiful eyes, but none like my brother Basil's. Even as a child I felt their power, and could refuse nothing to their imperious pleading. And later — But we were both children that long day that was spent in the deserted bungalow — children with no prevision of the future before us, and a very real sense of the discomforts of the present. My father had decided that we must not attempt to pursue our flight till nightfall.

Though there might be danger in delay, there would certainly have been more danger still in moving abroad within view of the now hostile citadel. As to the fate of those within it, it was only too certain ; and, indeed, Captain Damar, who had been round the compound to reconnoitre our position, had heard groups of Sepoys discussing the events of the night as they passed along the road, and declaring that every white person had perished — " man, woman, and child." B It was only what they knew must have happened, but at least it made my mother more willing to leave the place where she had tried to persuade herself that her child might yet be alive. "She was so little, so innocent — who could harm a baby like that ? " she cried, clinging desperately to hope. But her own eyes had shown her the hope lessness of expecting pity for innocence or helpless ness from the dark-skinned fanatics who were masters now in Sooltapoor.

When the night fell she let my father place her on one of the horses we had found in the stables, and when the rest were mounted, we set forth — a strangely silent party, keeping to the bye-roads, and guiding our course by the stars. I remember little of the toilsome journey, and, in deed, I believe I slept most of the way, supported by my father's arm, and undisturbed by the alarms and anxieties that pressed upon the elders. That we gained the shelter of Cawnpore before morning, and eventually reached Calcutta in safety, is all that is necessary to relate. Captain Damar had been ordered to join the British troops before Lucknow, but my father's wound did not heal, and it ended in his being invalided home. Mrs Damar and her child were to accompany him, and of course my mother and myself, Charlie, and my brother Basil.

I had already begun to call him so ; but though he was very engaging and affectionate, he evidently pined for his own people, and only accepted us as unsatisfactory substitutes. He had got over his first shyness, and chattered volubly enough to my father and me, but though he told us he had a pony named "Jack," and a bearer named "See-See," he could tell my father nothing that served to identify him or give a clue to his parentage. The little nightdress he wore was of coarse material, and bore no mark, and though at first there seemed a possible clue in the fact that he wore a small silver amulet, such as Hindus are fond of binding on their arms, it turned out to be quite an ordinary one, and offered no salient points for recognition. It had been put on his arm by See-See, he said, but he could not tell us more than that.

As for his parents, Basil could not even tell us their names. They had been Dada and Mamma to him, and that was all he knew. "Was that fat woman who put you in our bed your mamma ? " I enquired. "No!" cried Basil, indignantly. "My mamma booful — more boofuller than yours." I remember disputing this on filial grounds, but Basil stood firm. " Dada says so," he said, conclusively. " Dada says Mamma more boofuller than any one, and Dada knows best." Poor little fellow ! there was something pathetic in his firm belief in the father whom it was only too probable he no longer possessed. " Is your dada a soldier, my boy ? " said my father, stroking the long fair curls with a tender, pitying touch. " Dada a tum-tum man," said Basil ; and as we stared in not unnatural bewilderment, he conde scended to explain by going through a pantomime of beating an imaginary drum, and blowing an equally imaginary trumpet.

My father looked puzzled, and asked other questions, but without eliciting satis factory replies. Basil was easily frightened, and though he was always more at ease with my father than my mother, the effort to answer seemed to bring back all his shyness and timidity. I knew afterwards that my father came to the conclusion that Basil's father had probably been in a regimental band. It did not seem quite consistent with a bearer and pony of his own, but longer acquaintance showed that Basil possessed a lively imagination, and he was at the age when children " romance " with little perception of the line that separates truth from fiction. Besides this, my father obtained in disputable evidence that a trumpeter named Ford had been in the regiment stationed at Azuffghur, and had perished in the massacre at Sooltapoor.

" But whatever his birth, he is my own dear son now," said my father decidedly, and I believe he felt quite relieved that no one ever appeared to put in a prior claim. Poor Trumpeter Ford lay in the ditch at Sooltapoor, and Basil was to all intents and pur poses my father's son. I have said that no one ever put forward a claim to Basil, but I ought not to omit to record that Basil himself laid claim to kinship with a stranger the very day before we sailed for England. The claim was disallowed, but the incident, with all the at tendant circumstances, stamped itself on my childish recollection even more firmly than I knew. Memory is as capricious as dreams, and has apparently as " 'is your dada a soldier, my boy?'" — Page 19. little sense of fitness and proportion. Why should some scenes fade so completely from our remembrance, while others stand out in a vivid presentment quite disproportionate to their actual importance ?

Is it all chance-medley, or is there some yet unrecog nised law ? I leave physiologists and psychologists to settle this ; but whatever the reason, certain it is that I can see, as if it had happened yesterday, the wide, bright Calcutta street, the tide of vehicles and pedestrians, the imposing front of Government House, and the brilliant groups just then descending the steps. The Governor-General himself was there, followed by several of his suite, and looking as distin guished and commanding as only "the Great Eltchi" could. The setting sun flashed brightly on sword hilt, and lace, and epaulet, as the staff-officers came down to the row of carriages and horses in waiting, and Basil suddenly slipped his little white hand from the dark long fingers of the ayah who was with us, and darted up to a gentleman in uniform, who ap peared to be amongst the Governor's suite.

" Uncle Dick ! Uncle — Uncle Dick ! " he cried, clinging round the spurred and booted leg in a per fect ecstacy of emotion and delight. The gentleman thus suddenly assailed was a tall, handsome man, about thirty years of age, with close cropped hair, and the long fair whiskers that were known as " weepers " then. He started violently, and looked down with an expression of intense and almost horrified surprise. That was all I understood from his glance : neither recognition nor welcome, but a strange horror and incredulous surprise. MY BROTHER BASIL. 24 " What foolery is this ? " he exclaimed, in a harsh, grating voice, looking round at the men clustered near, as he disengaged Basil's clinging hands with no very gentle touch. " What does the child mean ? Does no one know who he is ? " The ayah and I had hurried to the spot, but the little scene had attracted general attention, and before she could explain, the Governor-General's curiosity was excited.

" What is it ? " he asked, pausing as he was about to get into his carriage, and looking at the officer to whose knees Basil had clung. " Some mistake, your Excellency," said the gentle man he addressed. "I have no nephew, as you know." "And don't you know the child ? " " I never saw him in my life before." My poor Basil ! Shall I ever forget the heart broken look in the small white face ? " Un— cle Dick ! " he faltered faintly, and then dropped down senseless at his feet. I had been too shy and bewildered to utter a word, but now I rushed to him impetuously, and threw my arms round his neck. " He is my brother, my dear brother Basil," I cried ; " and you are a nasty, horrid man to make him cry ! " I was crying too much myself to know very clearly what followed, but I heard the ayah explaining, and the explanation seemed to give general satisfaction.

It was not our dear old Ayah Wuzeerun — Wuzeerun lay cold and stiff at Sooltapoor — but a new one, whom my mother had engaged for the voyage home, and who did not know that Basil was not the brother I called him. We were Captain Graham's children, she said now, and the Governor-General seemed quite satisfied, as he had every right to be. He got into his carriage and was driven off, and the officers mounted and jingled after him ; the crowd quickly dispersed, and only the ayah and Basil and I were left on the steps of Government House. Basil had revived a little, but he was shaken and trembling, and the ayah lifted the light little figure in her arms, where he lay with closed eyes, and uttering from time to time a low sobbing sigh. We got home without further adventure, except that as we left the steps of Government House, a native servant, whom I had seen in attendance on the officer whom Basil had addressed as "Uncle Dick," glided from the shadow of one of the pillars, looked curiously at Basil, as he lay white and sobbing in the ayah's arms, and immediately retired with a perfectly expressionless face.

My father con sidered it an additional proof that Basil had been misled by some resemblance of face or uniform, for the servant would probably have recognised the child had he been his master's nephew. " But, indeed, if it had been anything but the child's fancy, the uncle would have known him himself," said my father, with unanswerable logic ; " and it isn't very likely that Trumpeter Ford would have a brother on the Governor-General's staff."

Chapter III Hazelford

" He is in love with an ideal, a creature of his own imagination, a child of air, and echo of his heart." — Longfellow. j L AZELFORD is a quiet country town in the -j 1 south of England, a sleepy little place, that * " would be almost unknown if it were not that the great castle that frowns down upon it is the seat of the Earls of Otterbourne, famous alike in story and in song. To the ordinary tourist Hazelford simply means Hazelford Castle, and I must admit it is much the same with its own inhabitants. Liter ally and metaphorically, the castle dominates the little town. It stands on the brow of a sharp escarp ment, one of the cleanly-cut chalk ridges that mark the ancient coast-lines, and is built in the form of a quadrangle, with turrets and bastions and towers, and a great Norman keep frowning over all.

The cliff itself rises sheer from the low alluvial plain that lies between Hazelford and the sea, and the red roofs of Hazelford seem to nestle at the feet of the huge square pile of solid grey masonry that crowns the beetling crag. It is an article of faith with us all that no other castle is so finely situated, and certainly HAZELFORD. 27 I have never seen any other that seemed such a visible embodiment of strength, and force, and power. It may be that its strength is a thing of the past, that the ivy that clings to its buttresses hides a slow but sure decay, and that modern cannon would make very little of its ten-feet walls ; but there is a moral force in the old stronghold still, and no one in Hazelford quite escapes its influence. The castle is the deter mining factor in their lives ; the Earl is the perma nent interest that outlasts wars and tumults, the rise and fall of nations, the change of ministries — everything, in short, except the merits of shorthorns and the price of corn.