Private Tinker, and other stories

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Contents

PAGB

PRIVATE TINKER 7

MAJOR VANDELEUR'S TRUST, . 8 A CROWN OF ASPHODEL, ... 35 FRED'S ANNIE, .... 59

Chapter I

Under the brilliant stars of ^n Afghan sky two men were smoking — the one, George Vandeleur, Major of the White Lancers, the other a mere boy, by name Geoffrey Mainwaring, a lately-joined subaltern of the Cuirassiers.

Major Vandeleur was a man of little more than forty — a handsome man, but with a cloud of care over the eyes which ought to have been full of life and energy. Young Mainwaring was scarcely more than a boy, long and lithe and strong, with a mere shading of dark down on his upper lip, and still the gay laughter that he had brought with him a few months before. He looked aside at his companion as a sigh — an unmistakable sigh — fell upon his ear.

" Major," he said, " you're down in the mouth to-night, sir. I hope you had no bad news by the mail to-day ? "

The older man shook himself together. " No, not that, Mainwaring — quite the contrary, in fact, for my home news was most cheering.

Aajot Vandeleiit*0 Sniet* 19

But I feel somehow — well, I've got a sort of presentiment hanging about me, and I can't shake it off, try as I will."

'* I don't think, Major," said the lad respectfully, '* that sitting out here is likely to help you to get rid of it — I don't really."

'' No, perhaps not. Let us go in," the Major answered.

Before either of them rose from their chairs, however, the Major asked the subaltern a question : ** Have you any sisters, Mainwaring ? "

" No, sir ; nor brothers," he replied.

" Ah ! And your father is living ? "

"No, Major. My father died fifteen years ago, when I was quite a little chap. My mother died when I was born."

" Then you are quite alone in the world ? "

" That's pretty much about it, sir," in the tone of one who did not find the position a particularly trying one.

** Ah ! Yes, yes ; but it's not so bad for a boy to be left as a girl."

'' I should say not," said young Mainwaring ; " but, for my part, sir, it's so long since I had any relations that I've got pretty well used to it."

" And your guardian ? "

" Oh ! my guardian's an awful old duffer," the young man answered promptly. " It is no fault of his that I didn't go to the Jews and make ducks and drakes of my property years ago. As it was, however, I got along on a very beg-

garly allowance, and put the time in till I became my own master."

** Oh ! then you are of age ? " said the senior in surprise.

** Yes. I am nearly two-and-twenty, sir. Late in joining ? Well, that's so, but you see, Major, I had to do the Militia grind, for my old fool of a guardian had what he called scruples about my going to Sandhurst. Yes, it was a nuisance, but it's pretty much about the same now."

He had pulled himself into an attitude expressive of readiness to follow the older man's lead, either in rising or sitting still. Major Vandeleur apparently had forgotten that they had just suggested going within doors.

'' I don't know why I should tell you. Mainwaring," he said, filling his pipe again with slow but steady fingers ; but I have an idea that I shall never get out of this alive."

" Indigestion, sir," said the young man promptly. He did not suffer in that way himself.

" Never had it in my life," answered the Major with equal promptitude. " No, it's something quite different — and the thought of my little girl at home clings to me like a ghost. "

" Your little girl. Major ? " exclaimed the young man. •* Why, I didn't even know you were married."

" No more I am—at least, my wife died five years ago," Major Vandeleur answered, " and

I'm like yoa> Mainwaring, I haven't got a relation in the world, not one except my little girl. Ah ! poor little woman ; it goes to my heart to think what may become of her if anything happens to me."

'* Oh ! but nothing will happen to you, sir ; at least, it's very unlikely," cried the young man, trying to speak with a good deal more cheerfulness than he felt. '*And, you know, thinking about it is the very worst thing possible, and the most likely of anything to bring it about. You oughtn't to do it, Major, really."

" No, I know," smiling faintly ; " so I'll go indoors and see what the rest of them are after."

He got up then, and went along the half-ruined veranda towards the large room which was the temporary messroom of his regiment, and young Mainwaring followed him in, going straightway in search of what he called ** an iced peg," feeling more than sorry for the handsome fellow who seemed to have taken such a fancy to him since they had been thrown together in this dreary land, wherein all Europeans became as brothers in their feeling towards each other, and yet, though sorry, he was glad to get away from his immediate vicinity.

" By Jove ! " his thoughts ran, as he put the glass down after draining its contents, *' but I should feel deuced uncomfortable if I had that a2 Aajov l^andeleut'0 ZvM.

sort of foreboding. And he has a child at home, poor old chap ! "

Well, the following day there was a sortie from Caubool, and some of our men were killed, and several officers dangerously wounded, among them Major Vandeleur. And an hour or two later, when the fighting was over and young Mainwaring got back into camp, somebody came up to him and said : " By-the-bye, are you Mr. Mainwaring, of the Cuirassiers ? "

Yes," he replied.

Major Vandeleur, of my regiment, has been brought in badly wounded — I believe mortally so — and he is asking for you. Will you go and see him ? "

" To be sure. By Jove ! poor chap, he was expecting this," Mainwaring exclaimed. " 'Pon my word, I am sorry. Go to him ? By Jove ! yes, that I will. Where is he ? "

" In his own quarters. I'll show you," said the other, and in less than three minutes Geoffrey Mainwaring, all dirty, dusty and battle • stained as he was, was shown into the room where George Vandeleur lay dying. Young Mainwaring went up to the bed as softly as he could, but the Major heard his footsteps and opened his eyes, unmistakably the eyes of a dying man.

"Major, I'm so awfully sorry " the

younger man began.

Aajot Vandelettt'0 VniM* 33

" Yes," said the other faintly. " All up with me now. I knew they'd get me. Wanted to see you," and there he stopped and closed his eyes, and Mainwaring looked round anxiously for the doctor, thinking that the poor fellow was on the very point, as he put it afterwards, of slipping his cable.

The Major, however, opened his eyes again. " No, don't call anyone. I shall hold out a bit longer. I want to ask you something."

'' Yes, sir, I am listening," young Mainwaring answered. ** What is it, sir ? "

** My little girl,'' said the Major, with a look of appealing anguish, ** she's all alone in the world, and I — I've never made my will or anything."

" Then make it at once, sir," said young Mainwaring promptly.

" Yes, I know. I've told Vickers." Vickers was the chaplain. *' But a guardian— she must have a guardian— -and, Mainwaring, I want you to be her guardian. Will you ? " . *' Of course I will, sir,'* said the young man instantly. At that terrible moment he would have promised anything which would have given or seemed to give the dying man a moment's peace of mind.

" You're young, my boy," said the other with an effort, '' but you've got a clear head, and you've kept yourself straight."

24 Aaloc VanDeleiit'0 Sniet

" ru do my best for her, sir," said the other manfully.

" There will be a few liundreds a year—; enough to bring her up properly," the Major said, more feebly. " Then, will — ^you — tell — Vickers ? "

So Mainwaring went and fetched the chaplain, and the Major told him that he was to put down the name of Geoffrey Mainwaring, of the Cuirassiers, as guardian and sole trustee of his child Mary, then in charge of Mrs Templeton, of No. 17 South Kensington Square. "She's at school there," he said faintly to Mainwaring.

It was soon done, for Mr. Vickers had got the will ready, leaving only the name of the child's guardian to be inserted. Then the Major, who was rapidly sinking, scrawled his name in the place where the doctor indicated ; the chaplain and the doctor both added their names as witnesses, and the dying man closed his eyes feeling that after all it had not been too late.

They had not a very long vigil, for before the dark fell George Vandeleur had entered into rest and the light which knows no night, and Geoffrey Mainwaring went out of the quiet room with a new burden of responsibility upon his shoulders.

" By Jove ! but it's an odd situation for me," he muttered, as he sat on the edge of his cot thinking it all over. ** Here am I guardian to a child. I don't know how old she is. nor what

she is like, nor what to do with her. I don't know anything ! By Jove ! but the whole thing's extraordinary. Well, anyway, I must do my best, for the sake of the dear old chap that's gone."

Chapter II

A YEAR had gone by, and Geoffrey Mainwaring found himself in London again for the first time since he had become the guardian of Major Vandeleur's daughter.

He had, of course, written to the lady in whose care the child was, had explained that by the late Major Vandeleur's will he had become her guardian, that he hoped she was weU and was not fretting much after her father, that at present he had no prospect of coming home from India, and therefore if the child was well and happy there was no need to disturb existing arrangements, and that he would instruct his lawyers to continue the same payments as had been made by the late Major Vandeleur.

After this he received several letters from Mrs. Templeton. In the first one she expressed her sorrow at the Major's death, told him that Mary, not having seen her father for more than three years, was not, naturally, in as deep grief as the death of a parent would under more

26 Aaiot VanDelcttc'0 JlvgOt.

ordinary circumstances have occasioned; th she was well and, she trusted, happy — and i the letter went on undl Geoffrey Mainwario; got to the end of it and laid it down with \ pitying " Poor little soul, it must be poor sor^ of comfort living with an old cat like that."

The other letters were of a business nature pure and simple, and they invariably ended, " Mary is well and happy, gets on very well with her lessons, and wishes to be remembered to her guardian." And somehow, whenever Geoffrey Mainwaring got to the end of one of Mrs. Templeton's stiff and precise epistles, he always said to himself, " Poor little soul ! " — which was Mary Vandeleur, of course.

Well, at the end of a year he got a very bad return of an attack of fever which he had had in Afghanistan, and so nearly slipped his cable, to use his own words, that he was bundled off home in a desperate hurry. So it happened that at the end of May he found himself in London once more, and really feeling quite his own man again, so much so as to have a certain shamed feeling about him of being a complete fraud to be home on sick leave.

And, naturally enough, his first thought, having no home ties of his own, was of the little orphan in South Kensington Square, whose life, though he had never seen her, had been so strangely bound up with his own. Therefore as soon as he had turned himself round, so to

Aajot Vandelettr'0 Sru0t* 27

speak, he got into a cab and went off to see her.

"I suppose I'd better ask for the old cat first/' he said to himself as he rang the belL

Yes, Mrs. Templeton was at home; so he sent in his card, and was shown into a stiff and ghastly drawing-room, hung round like a bazaar with trophies of needle-work — a dull and cheerless room which looked as if it had not had a fire lighted in the terribly well-polished grate for at least a month.

" Good Heavens, what a vault to live in ! " said he, as his eyes wandered around.

Then the door opened and a tall and stately lady came in, looked at him in some surprise, then back at the card still in her hand.

" Mr. Geoffrey Mainwaring ? " she said.

" Yes, that is my name," he answered.

" Mary Vandeleur's guardian ? " said Mrs. Templeton, in a voice of the utmost astonishment.

" Yes," smiling. " I seem to surprise you somehow or other."

"Well, I confess that I am surprised," said the schoolmistress candidly. "I — well, I thought Major Vandeleur would have chosen some one older, and "

" Chosen I " Mainwaring broke in. " Ah ! poor fellow, it wasn't exactly a case of choosing with him, you see, but of taking the best man he could get at the moment."

28 Aajot tt)an^eleut'0 Sni0t*

They talked together for a few minutes, and then Mrs. Templeton rose from her seat.

" Come into my room, Mr. Mainwaring," she said, " and then I will send Mary to you. It is more cosy than this room, which I never sit in. I must go now, for I have a class waiting."

" Certainly," he replied courteously.

She led him into a small and very comfortable room, such as gave him a different and a better opinion of her.

** I will send her to you," she said, and then she left him.

He waited for some five or ten minutes before the door opened, standing comfortably warming himself before the lire, for as yet he felt chilly in the English climate. He turned as he heard the door open, and to his intense astonishment saw a tall, slender girl dressed in plain mourning, which threw into greater prominence the mass of soft golden hair which was coiled at the top of her little shapely head.

"Good morning," he stammered, so thoroughly taken aback that he hardly knew what to say ; " but you— you are not — not my ward ? "

" I am Mary Vandeleur," she said, looking at him with a pair of frank, beautiful blue eyes, so like her father's care-clouded ones, as he well remembered them the night before that fatal sortie from Caubool.

" But— but you are grown up/' he cried. " I

Aajot VatiOelettt'0 lEruet* 29

— I thought you were a little girl. I have brought you a doll."

At this point I am bound to say that Mary Vandeleur burst out laughing.

" It is very funny," she cried ; " but tell me," growing grave again," did poor Father never tell you anything about me .^ "

*' Not a word until the evening before that last sortie when he was wounded. And then he only spoke of you as his little girl, and — and I thought you were six, or ten, or something like that."

" Nay, I am sixteen ; I shall be seventeen next month, Mr. Mainwaring," she cried — " and Mrs. Templeton says I am very old for my age."

" I was never so astonished in my life," he exclaimed ; " never ! I can't believe it. Why, it's absurd on the face of it that / should be }^our guardian."

A sunny smile crossed Mary Vandeleur's face.

" Well," she said, " it zs absurd. I suppose I shall have to look up to you and respect you, but really — don't think me rude — but you look almost as much in need of a guardian as I do.''

** And so I am aknost," he answered with a laugh. " Why, the old lady — Mrs. Templeton, that is — she looked at me in such astonishment that I almost laughed in her face ; but, knowing you, well she might."

" Mrs. Templeton is utterly shocked and

30 Aajot tt)an^eleat'6 Stuat.

scandalized/' Mary Vandelcur returned. " She came to me just now. * My dear/ she said, ' your ^ardtan has just come, and is waiting to see you ; and, my dear Mary, he is a boy,' she added/'

" Well," said he, " of course that is a matter I cannot help. I didn't ask your poor father to make me your guardian ; but, all the same, what the poor dear fellow could have been thinking of, /can't imagine."

" Poor Father ! " murmured the girl with a sigh ; " he never troubled himself about the conventional idea of things. If a man or woman had a face he liked and felt inclined to trust, he never troubled himself as to what the world would think of his trusting them. And I don't know that it is a bad plan— he very seldom was deceived in people."

The compliment to him was not a small one, the more because it was an absolutely unconscious one ; nor was Geoffrey Mainwaring slow to notice it. They were still standing before the fire, and at the mention of her father be had taken her hands in his and had kept them there ever since. And when she reached the last sentence he had hard work not to press the little soft fingers resting within his own with a wholly unguardianlike warmth. He did resist the temptation, however, and so the fingers remained where they were.

" I don't quite see what is to be done," he

Aajot Van^e[ettt'B Smet* 3>

said at last. ** You know you ought to have a snuffy old grump for a guardian, either a crabbed old bachelor, or a man with a horrid crabbed old wife who would snub you persistently. It's the proper thing to do. But as I am not old, nor crabbed, nor married, I can only do the best I can. Supposing I take you out for a drive ? "

" Mrs. Templeton won't let me go," she said promptly.

" You forget I am your guardian," he cried. ** She can't help herself. I have a right to take you out for a drive ; a/I guardians have. What's the use of being anyone's guardian else ? "

" She won't let me go," said Miss Vandeleur with conviction.

** Shall we send and ask ? ".

" Yes," she said frankly. " I should like to go immensely."

So Mr. Mainwaring sent a polite little note to Mrs. Templeton, asking if he might take his ward for a drive, and the request so mollified the lady that she came to speak to him again and to ask him to return and dine with Mary and herself, to see the doll which he had brought for the child he had believed his ward to be, and generally to be very gracious and forgiving to his very embarrassing youthfulness.

As Geoffrey Mainwaring had very truly said.

32 Aajot Van^eleut'6 Stu0t»

he could not help himself, either in the matter of his own juvenility — and he was juvenile when you consider him in the light of a guardian — or the grown-up condition of his ward. Yet certainly he might have helped going away from No. 17 and thinking about Mary Vandcleur through all the hours of that livelong night, and he might have helped going off to No. 17 again as soon as he decently could the next morning and asking permission to take her to the Academy. As Mrs. Templeton very naturally remarked to her sister, a guardian so abnormally young was a very serious piece of business.

And yet who was to say him nay ? He was her legal guardian, and if he had chosen to remove her from the delightful circle under Mrs. Templeton's care and take her off to India with him there and then, neither Mrs. Templeton, no, nor Mary Vandeleur herself, was in a position to say to him that he should not do it. He did not, however, wish to do anything outrageous or to shock the good lady's fine feelings of conventionalism; but he came and went to and from No. 17 duly and truly, and Mary Vandeleur was the envy and admiration of every girl in the school.

" I want to take you to the Dor6 Gallery," he said to her one day when he had carried her off from her lessons.

"The Dor6!" she repeated doubtfully. " Oh ! I've been there."

Aalot VanOelettc'0 tltust. 33

" Yes, I know. At least, I don't know, but that doesn't matter. It's a quiet place where one can talk," he answered.

So they went to the Dor6 Gallery, and were soon blinking dismally in an effort to accustom their eyes to the dim religious light which prevails at that particular esdiibition.

" Mary," he said presently, when they had found a comfortable seat, " I've been thinking about — about things. And you know it's perfectly absurd our going on doing this ward and guardian business. We really ought to stop it."

" Well, but how.^ " cried she in dismay ; she was well satisfied enough with her guardian, and had not the very smallest desire for a change. " Am I such a very dreadful bother to you ? Because if I am, you know, I don't think you need take me about so much. Guardians don't generally, you know. One of our girls has a guardian who never comes near her."

She looked up at him so piteously, this little lonely one, that Geoffrey Mainwaring's heart began to beat faster, and a great lump rose up for a minute or so in his throat.

"My dear little love," he said, taking her hand under cover of the gloom, " don't you understand ? I only want to give you up in a certain way. I want you to give yourself to me for always— don't you see ? "

" To be married ? " she whispered. .

34 Aaiot Van5eleut'0 Stust.

•• Yes," he answered joyously ; " to be married."

" But," — and the little soft hand clung to his —" will they allow it ? "

" They— who ? " he asked, " You forget ; / am the only person who has power to prevent it."

For a long time they sat there, and their silence was their troth-plight; both were too happy to speak — each was supremely content. Mary ! Dearest ? " he said inquiringly. I was just thinking," she answered, turning to him with an ineffable smile, " that dear Father's last instinct proved the best that could ever have been — but I shall keep that doll as long as I live."

A CROWN OF ASPHODEL.

** My regrets follow you to the grave."

— Language of Flowers,

CHAPTER I.

** And what was he like ? " asked a subdued, patient voice, a voice that was not without a ring of suffering.

" Very good-looking," a girl's voice replied. ** Not exactly handsome, you know, Mother ; but very big and strong, and straight-looking."

" And he stopped the Chicken ? "

'' Yes ; she had got the bit fairly between her wicked little teeth, and, though I sat back and tugged at her mouth till I nearly tugged her head off, she got the better of me and tore away like the wind. . . . Well, you know how the Chicken can go when she is in the mood."

" It was a mercy you were not killed," cried the mother in a tone of distress. " I shall never feel really easy about her again."

" Oh, I think she was more frightened than vicious/' said the girl, quietly. " After all, you know. Mother, it can't be a joke for a pony to have a clucking hen suddenly rush across the

road right under its legs. And the Chicken has never been * took ' that way before."

"Well, perhaps not. And this young man was able to stop her ? "

"He just stopped my lady beautifully, and held her tight, soothing her and talking to her till she got simmered down a little. ' You must not be angry with your pony/ he said to me. Tm sure I don't know whether he thought I was going to flog the Chicken mercilessly all the way home or not, but I couldn't help laughing outright at his earnestness in begging her off. I wonder who he is/' she ended.

Mrs. Annesley put out her hand and rang the bell. "You think he was a gentleman, Nannie ? " she said, carelessly ; for so long as her child was safe she took no particular interest in the young man who had been good enough to rescue her from an exceedingly awkward situation.

" Oh, dear me, yes, Mother," returned Nannie, promptly.

" Let me have tea at once," Mrs. Annesley said to the servant who came in answer to her summons. "Well, then, in that case, I must tell your father to find him out and ask him to dinner, or something civil of that kind. What did you say his name was ? "

** French, so he said," Nannie replied. " But he did not give me the very faintest notion of his address, or whether he was staying in the

B Ctown of Hdpbo^eU 37

neighborhood or not. Still, I should think he was one of the officers at Fort Helen. He looked like a soldier, anyway."

Such a subject is soon over and done with in a busy household, and when Colonel Annesley had been told all about it and had declared his intention of looking in at Fort Helen, the Artillery quarters three miles away, to see if he could not discover the gentleman who had saved his daughter from what might have been a very serious accident, the family thought and said no more about the matter, excepting that Nannie herself found her day dreams taking the form of the stalwart young man who owned up to the not very romantic name of French.

A week or so later, however, Colonel Annesley drove over to Fort Helen, and called on the officer commanding the battery ; and in a careless and casual kind of way asked whether one of his officers was not called French ?

"Of course— George French," that gentleman replied. " Why you must remember his father, Cut-throat French, of the 14th? "

" Bless my soul, of course I do," the Colonel cried, in great surprise, ** of course I do ; and a headlong dare-devil he was in his time, I can tell you."

" I suppose he was ; but he was rather before my day," said the other. " At all events his son does not take after him, for a quieter and

38 B (Tcown of HdpbodeL

steadier chap does not exist than George French."

"Takes after his mother, perhaps," said Colonel Annesley» pleasantly. "By-the-bye, do you happen to know if he is to be found ? I want to call on him."

" ril find out in two minutes," said the Major, pulling the nearest bell. " Oh, just inquire if Mr. French is in his quarters. Colonel Annesley to see him."

"Yes, sir," was the reply.

A few moments later George French came in, and the three sat talking together for some little time, and drinking the glass of sherry which, in messrooms, does duty for the feminine cup of tea ; and then Major Inglis excused himself, on the score of orderly-room business, and went away, leaving the old soldier and the young one alone together.

" I believe that I am very much in your debt, Mr. French," began the Colonel, when the door had closed behind Major Inglis.

George French looked up in surprise. Really, and how is that ? " he asked. Well, it was my daughter's pony that you were good enough to stop the other day, and my wife and I are most grateful to you for your promptitude and goodness. We hope you will come out to the Warren that she may express her thank^in person. Mrs. Annesley is a great invalid," he added, by way of explanation.