Red Coats

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Chapter I

It caused a good deal of wonder among the officers of Jack Amyatt's regiment when he suddenly bloomed out in a new character, that of a literary man. The Red Horse was a very popular regiment in the Service, and Jack Amyatt was, as indeed he had been ever since he had joined, one of its most popular officers. Through the various grades of cornet, lieutenant, and captain, he had made no enemies, while he had gathered many friends. He was essentially a good all-round man, popular with his men, who would have followed him into the jaws of death and back again, and good at sport of any and every kind. " What a fuss you make about Major Amyatt," cried a fair beauty one day to one of the youngsters, who had been extolling his accomplish ments. " Oh ! the Major's such an out-and-out good sort," returned the lad, blushing a fine scarlet all over his handsome face at thus being caught at hero-worship.

" Is he ? " responded the lady, who had tried every fascinating art in her power on Amyatt, but with out avail. " What does he do to win him so much adulation ? " "I don't know about adulation," said the lad rather curtly. " But I know he's the best soldier I ever knew, and the most popular. Why, the regiment would follow him to the dev to the end of the world, that is," correcting himself hastily. " He's good — that is, among the best — at any RED COATS. sport you like to mention, and he's the best army writer there is, in spite of the shoals of women who have tried their hand at putting us on paper, and only succeeded in making their soldiers look like bagmen out for a holiday in a blazer and a pair of tennis-shoes." The beauty drew herself up with a little more dignity than she usually displayed.

" Dear me, Mr. Arlington, you are severe — almost as severe as Major Amyatt looks when he goes to a ball and stands re garding us frivolous and faulty women as stiff and straight as if he had swallowed his ramrod, as well as bringing the other parts of his uniform with him." It was on the tip of young Arlington's tongue to remind the beauty that a ramrod is not part of a cavalry officer's equipment — but, as he had done a minute or so before, he remembered his manners in time and let the remark pass without further notice. " Well, I don't think the Major cares much about ladies," he admitted. "I'm sure they don't care much about him," returned the beauty sharply. He wondered at the tartness of her tone, if that was indeed the case, but as she was a beauty and s' mewhat of a power in the neighbourhood of the station at which they were quartered, he did not want to offend her more than was necessary in taking up the cudgels in the Major's defence.

" I never heard him say a word against a woman in my life," he said eagerly, " never. Only he don't seem to be very keen on dancing, and afternoon teas, and so on. By-the-bye, Miss Vane, will you come and have a cup of tea or anything ? " The beauty thought she would have an ice, and took the lad's arm with alacrity, glad, perhaps, to get away from the subject of a man who had remained blind and deaf to the attractions and fascinations — liberally set forth for his benefit from time to time — of the beauty of the county. "HE WONDEKED AT THE TARTNESS OF HEB TONE." 2* AMYATT'S CHILD FRIEND. 17 The name of the Major was not mentioned again, but, all the same, the conversation had set youDg Arlington thinking about it. " I say," he said that evening to Moore, the senior subaltern, " is Amyatt what you'd call a woman hater ?

" " Not a bit of it," returned Moore promptly, " I don't think he thinks enough about 'em to hate 'em." " But that's sailing pretty near the wind, eh ? " enquired Arlington, laughing. " No, I don't think so. Amyatt doesn't dance nor go out to tea much, but then he has plenty else to do. True, he never seems to think of getting married, but then, he's only six-and-thirty, and what fellow in his senses would think of getting married before that ? " " A good many do," Arlington ventured to say. He felt guiltily that this thrust had gone home, for he at twenty-one had thought fondly of the mar riage state — more than once for the matter of that — indeed, he had thought of it many a time and oft. " Yes, a good many do," responded Moore, who had never known what it was to feel a qualm at his heart such as threatened to ruin all his peace of mind.

" And a good many fellows wish to the very devil they'd left it alone." " Well, I'm not altogether so sure about that," returned Arlington, who, in spite of his modest air, was as well able to stick to his own opinions as any man in the regiment. Now this conversation no more enlightened him as to the state of the Major's affections or natural inclinations than the one with the beauty had done, so Arlington put his question to someone else, choosing this time the senior captain, one George Trevor ; and when Trevor heard it, he stared hard at him. " Amyatt a woman-hater ! What ever put such an idea as that into your head ? " RED COATS. "Well, I can hardly say; but is he, do you think ? " " A woman-hater — no, of course he isn't." " But, Trevor, he never has anything to do with women at all— never goes to teas or bazaars, or garden parties, or even balls if he can get off it, and when he does go he never dances."

" No more he does ! He never did dance, even as a cornet." " Was he the same then ? " " I fancy he was — certainly he never hung about the women much," Trevor admitted. " Did he have a let-down any time, do you think ? " Arlington persisted. " A let-down ? No ! The women were too jolly eager to have him at any price. Lord, I've seen hundreds of women try for Amyatt — hundreds of j j) em. "That's just it," put in Arlington eagerly. "They all try — but they just have to try. It's queer, for Amyatt's a handsome chap, and as rich as a Jew." "Can't say, I'm sure. Just now he's so taken up with his novel-writing, and every spare minute seems to go to that." " But why did he take up novel-writing ? " cried the lad. " Faith, and I can't say," Trevor laughed. " But his love-making's mighty pretty for a woman-hater, don't you think ?

" Meanwhile, the object of all this thought was in the sitting-room of his comfortable quarters, over looking the green which occupied part of the barrack square. It was a pretty room, with walls of dark olive-green, relieved only by four or five pictures in plain gilt frames, all of them originals of the illustrations of the story which had made his name famous. No, not his name, but that by which he chose to be known to the world. ' HE WAS SMILING THEM OVER A LETTER. AMYATT'S. child friend. 19 For Major Amyatt did not write under his own name, preferring to be known as " John Dawes " for many reasons, the chiefest of which was that, as a beginner, he had scarcely dared to contemplate the possibility of other than failure, and he had no wish to appear before the regiment in the light of non success.

So, although for some time his intimates had known him as the popular author, who stood second to none as a faithful delineator of army men and manners, to the world at large he was still John Dawes, and but few knew that the name was not his own. A handsome man this Major Amyatt, and looking at him as he sat at the table one could not wonder at young Arlington's curiosity concerning his past life. It wotrld be hard to say positively that any trace of a disappointment — what Arlington called a " let-down " — marked his pleasant fresh face, or lurked in the steady grey eyes that were as cool and clear and undisturbed as the eyes of a lad of sixteen. He had a frank and tender smile, too, and he was smiling then over a letter which lay open upon the table before him, a letter which had been forwarded by his publishers, through whom it had been sent, a letter written in a clear but unformed child's hand, on paper which had been ruled with pencil lines.

" My dear Mr. John Dawes," it said, " I have read all your books and like them very much. But please I do want to know if Laura is going to marry Gerard King. I do hope you won't go and marry her to anyone else, because I am very, very fond of him. So I am of nearly all the others, but I like Gerard best. " Laura is my name too. I hope you won't mind my writing to you, though I am still rather little. I am nine, or at^ least nearly nine, and have no brothers, or sisters, '.so jthat I read a good deal. But RED COATS. 20 I have a dog called Gyp, and my mother is not very old, so that she plays with me a good lot. — With best love, "I am your loving little friend, " Lauka Holt. " P.S. — It was quite my own idea to write." Like most writers who have won a hold upon the hearts of the people, Amyatt was accustomed to re ceiving many letters from all sorts and conditions of men and women who were utter strangers to him, expressing all manner of sentiments about his work.

Nor was this the first letter he had had from a child, but it was the first that had touched him so deeply as this one did. There was a quaintness about its phrases, a brave frankness about its senti ment, a freshness in its tone which won his heart. " I hope you won't go and marry her to anyone else, because I am very, very fond of him," — " Laura is my name too," — " I am nine, or at least nearly nine," — and " It was quite my own idea to write." Amyatt read the letter again with a feeling which, if he had been a woman, would have brought tears into his eyes, but which, as it was, gave him a suspicious Jump in his throat and that tender smile on his lips. " Dear little soul ! " he said softly. " I must write to her." And forthwith he drew some paper before him and wrote a long and charming letter to the new little friend who was nine — or, scrupulous little soul that she was, at least nearly nine. Then he, too, added a postscript, which was — " Write to me again."

Chapter II

Amyatt's little friend did write to him again, a letter full of glee caused by his. Then Amyatt answered that, for he | could not leave the poor "'I SAY, OLD FELLOW, YOU'RE VERY SMART TO-DAY. ": AMYATT'S CHILD FRIEND. 21 little woman's pretty words unanswered, don't you know ; and so before long quite a brisk correspond ence passed to and fro between them ! He still kept up his nom de plume, though for no particular reason other than that he wished to avoid the trouble of an explanation. And it was all the same to her, and long letters filled with accounts of her child's life, or with her opinions of his characters, came to him regularly, and were as regularly answered. Sometimes he would send her a book, and often she would send a little box of flowers — violets or snowdrops — some of which he in variably wore during the rest of the day, to the surprise and delight of his brother officers, who fancied they scented a love affair in the distance.

" 1 say, old fellow, you're very smart to-day," said Trevor, as he noted the unwonted signs. " Did a lady send 'em ? " " A charming little lady," answered Amyatt with a laughing glance, not unmixed with tenderness, at the more or less faded flowers which adorned his button-hole. " Rather a new departure for you, eh, old chap ? " Trevor hinted. " Better late than never," returned the Major cheerfully. " I always thought Amyatt would take it badly, if he did take it," confided the senior Captain to Arlington. " Ah ! but you didn't think he ever would take it," Arlington said by way of a reminder. " Well, that's true," Trevor admitted. Amyatt, however, knew nothing of the gossip in the regiment concerning him, other than what Trevor had actually said to him, for in spite of his great popularity there was a certain something about him which effectually prevented even that familiarity which usually exists among officers of the same regiment.

And the days passed on until they grew into weeks, as the days of busy men do, when on one he realised that it was more than six weeks since he had heard from his child-friend, Laura Holt. " How odd that the little soul has not written," he thought, " perhaps she, too, has forgotten." However, as he had just got the numbers of a magazine in which a short story of his was appearing that month, he put a wrapper round one and addressed it to "Miss Laura Holt," and by return of post there came for him a letter in a strange hand writing, bearing the postmark of the town in which she lived. Aye, but was it so strange ? Amyatt stared at it for full a minute before he opened it, his memory going back, back, back — oh, to the days of his boy hood, gone never to come again, never any more. And then, when he tore the cover and found that it contained a little note in his friend's round hand writing, that memory straightway vanished.

" Dear Mr. John Dawes," it said, " Thank you so much for sending the story; Mother is just going to read it to me, but I wanted to write to you first. You must have thought it odd I didn't write so long. I have been very ill and can only sit up for a few minutes and write with a pencil now. I think I am rather better. I have been five weeks in bed already. " Ever your loving friend, " Laura." Naturally, Amyatt knew but little about the ail ments of children, but it seemed to him that for a child of nine years old to be in bed five weeks at a stretch, with no immediate prospect of getting up again, was a very bad sign, and in his anxiety he appealed to the regimental surgeon. " What's the matter with the child ? " he asked. " I don't know." AMYATT'S CHILD FRIEND. 23 "Then you'd better make the illness shorter or give it scarlet fever," he said, thinking that Amyatt was merely stating a case for one of his stories.

" But it is a real child," the Major explained. "Very bad look-out then," returned the doctor decidedly. Then Amyatt wrote to the mother. " I shall be grateful if you will tell me how my little friend is," he said. " I assure you if I had known her for twenty years I could not feel more anxious than her letter made me feel this morning," yet even when this was gone, he still could not take his thoughts away from the dear little friend whom he had never seen, lying prostrate — for the hand writing told him she must be indeed very ill — on a bed of sickness and pain. In two days the reply came, written in the same hand as the cover of the child's last letter — hand writing which set every nerve in his body throbbing, every pulse beating like a steam engine. "My little girl is very ill," Mrs. Holt wrote — " much worse since she wrote to you, and the doctors told me last night that I must be ready to face the worst.

When I tell you that she and I are quite alone in the world, you will know what my agony is. I can't write about it. I can only thank you and bless you for all the pleasure you have given her, and beg you, utter stranger as you are, to pray that this blow may not fall upon me. " Yours gratefully, " Laura St. Mary Holt." " Utter stranger that you are ! " why, even in his concern and distress, Amyatt almost laughed out aloud — a stranger to her — a stranger ! Why, the letter, the handwriting, the name, had all brought back the self-same memory that the cover of the child's letter had called back only the other day — the memory of what ? Well, just this — of the only woman he had ever asked to be his wife, the only woman he had ever loved. She had told him frankly and simply that she was engaged to another man, and Amyatt had rushed away, never asking in his misery so much as his rival's name.

So it had been Holt ! And he was dead — yes, evidently he was dead, for she had said that she and the child — the child who was dying — were quite alone in the world. But he could help her there ! She should be alone in the world no longer, for he would go to her, he would stand between her and the world, he would offer her his strong arm and his true heart to guard her from all evil, to keep her so that trouble should not come nigh her. Aye, but could he keep her so that trouble should not come nigh her ? No ! no ! alas ! for when he reached her side her little child was — dead. "HER LITTLE CHILD WAS DEAD." Colonel be CrespiQnp's Sweetheart.

CHAPTER I.

It was in the good old palmy days, before non purchase and competitive examinations came into fashion, before there was a thought that the Service would go — as old soldiers tell you now-a days it has gone — straight to the devil, that Colonel Valentine de Crespigny commanded the 102nd Dragoons, known throughout the Army as the King's Roans. He was not a young man. It was more common to see a commanding officer with a white head than a brown one in those days, and Colonel de Crespigny's head was as white as the driven snow. He must have been close upon sixty, a handsome, clear-eyed, fresh-coloured old dandy, square iu the shoulders, and equally square in the jowl, upright as the side of a house, and standing firm as the trunk of an old oak tree that has scarce reached perfection. He was a man, too, of perfect manners and courtesy, when he chose to be so, which he certainly did not do as a matter of course ; a man who was A 1 at everything which used at that time to be thought essential in a soldier — a good shot, a good whip, a good dancer, a first-rate soldier, and a good disciplinarian — or, as a young subaltern who had fallen under the ban of his displeasure once put it — " the d — - — est passionate old bully to be found from one end of the British army to the other."

But in polite language, he was what is called a martinet, and in that character he was as well known as the handsome old hero of the Lilley episode, and even better known than the scion of a great Yorkshire house, who had to give up his command owing to a playful little way he had of keeping up the discipline of his regiment by having the iuvalids, no matter in what stage of illness, roused from sleep that they might salute him when he passed through the wards of the military hospital under his command. Never was a regiment in better order than the King's Roans when Valentine de Crespigny com manded it ! For years he had never been known to overlook a fault, or, in truth, to let it pass without the most severe punishment which lay iu his power to award; and well it was for the rank and file that, at the time of which 1 am writing, the lash was no longer in existence, for I verily believe that if it had been, Colonel de Crespigny would have worn out cats-o'-nine tails by the di zen !

Yet he was popular ! His officers were as proud of his ungovernable temper as they were of his many accomplishments, and his men would one and all have followed him on the most forlorn hope thai ever gallant hearts tried to win. But outside the fighting strength of the regiment Colonel de Crespigny was not liked. The wives of his officers detested him, partly because he kept their husbands a good deal more closely at work than altogether suited their plans, partly because he did not approve of married soldiers, and gave them, therefore, the benefit of none of his pretty manners ; nay, more than that, he took every means in his power to show them that he considered their presence in his barracks altogether superfluous and quite unnecessary. As for the regimental ladies of the lower grade — that is, the married women on the strength — they simply shivered and shook in their shoes whenever they happened to cross his path.

Not entirely without cause, for Colonel de Crespigny had no notion of making the weekly inspection of their quarters a mere matter of form. On the contrary, every Sunday morning after church he made his round, and woe betide the unlucky woman on the strength who had a speck on her floor or a spot of rust on her grate, woe betide the child who had other than a smding face, so to speak! Oh, the atmosphere of awe which surrounded the hai d some old commanding officer was truly marvellous. " Jest you get on to the strength, my girl," cried one of the ladies who had the doubtful fortune of occupying that delectable position, to a sickly, slatternly young private's wife whom babies had weighed down till she seemed to have stuck fast in a veri' able slough of despond, " and the Colonel '11 make you sit up, see if he don't. Had a bad night wi' the babby ?

Aye, I daresay, but according to the Colonel that ought to make you all the better able to do your work in the morning. Got a bacK ache — ah ! I daresay you 'ave, but there's nought for easing a backache like going down on your knees floor-scrubbing. Aye, you ought to be on the strength, my girl, that's where you ought to be." " I wouldn't," remarked another of these ladies one day, after the Colonel had just discovered, or thought he discovered a bad smell in her quarters and, not being able to find it, had vented his disgust by asking her when she had washed her face last — "I wouldn't be the Colonel's servant, no, pot to call the Queen my aunt. How that poor feller manages to keep his 'ead on his shoulders is more than / can tell. Ton my word, there's never no pleasing of him. Here am I, all as clean as a new pin, even he can't find no fault except to fancy a smell ; so he just finds fault with my complexion and asks me when I'd washed my face last."

" 'E never did," gasped one of her hearers. " Oh, but didn't he ! and me as clean as a new pin.' 3* " And what did you say, Mrs. Morrisy 'i " asked a bystander with breathless interest. " Well," returned Mrs. Morrisy. " I ain't that afraid of the Colonel as some of the married ladies are ; so I jist up and says, ' Some folks are born fresh-coloured, sir, and some folks ain't. / was born sallow.' And then I gives a look at his great red face, and he gives a grunt and out he goes. Oh ; I ain't so scared of the Colonel as some I know ; but, all the same, 1 wouldn't be his servant — no, not to call the Queen my aunt. I do pity that poor lad often enough."

CHAPTER II.

But, as it happened, Colonel de Crespigny's servant stood in but little need of the pity which the re dodbtable Mrs. Morrisy so freely lavished upon him. Liue many another great and powerful man, the Colonel was less of a hero to his valet than to any one else of his acquaintauce. The human mind, like the human body, is singu larly adaptable to surrounding circumstances, and, perhaps after the manner in which the good people of Naples live and die, eat, drink, marry, and are given in marriage, with never a thought of the monster above them, whose rage might burst forth at any moment, as it burst forth in the time of Pliny and buried the cities of Heroulaneum and Pompeii for fourteen hundred years, so Private Jesse Spring lived very comfortably in a daily contact with his commanding officer such as would have filled any other one of his equals in the regiment with con sternation and dismay, merely to think of.

True, the Colonel used to vent many and many an annoy ance and vexation upon Jesse Spring in a way which some men might not have found themselves able to stand. But Spring was a young man of patient temper, and of a good solid rhinoceros-like mental epidermis. As he was wont to say himself, " He never took no notice, but just let the Colonel go on till he felt better." And, as a matter of course, Jesse Spring got tbe best of it in the long run ! He was very patient, and honest as the day, he was always respectful in manner, and, after the very worst "jacketing " which the Colonel was capable of administering, was just as amiable, and took precisely the same cheerful interest in everything as he did when his master was in high good temper. A truly valuable servant, a human safety-valve, at whom he might d and rave till his handsome old face was purple !