Heaven knows what effect it may have upon
all of you, who read it quietly at home in your own easy-chairs in
England; but we of the search party, who took those almost illegible
sheets of shaky writing from the cold fingers of the one solitary corpse
within the frozen cabin on the Liakov Islands--we read them through with
such a mingled thrill of awe and horror and sympathy and pity as no one
can fully understand who has not been upon an Arctic expedition. And
when we gathered our sad burdens up to take them off for burial at home,
the corpse to which we gave the most reverent attention was certainly
that of the self-accused murderer. _HARRY'S INHERITANCE._


I. Colonel Sir Thomas Woolrych, K.C.B. (retired list), was a soldier of the
old school, much attached to pipe-clay and purchase, and with a low
opinion of competitive examinations, the first six books of Euclid, the
local military centres, the territorial titles of regiments, the latest
regulation pattern in half-dress buttons, and most other confounded
new-fangled radical fal-lal and trumpery in general. Sir Thomas believed
as firmly in the wisdom of our ancestors as he distrusted the wisdom of
our nearest descendants, now just attaining to years of maturity and
indiscretion. Especially had he a marked dislike for this nasty modern
shopkeeping habit of leaving all your loose money lying idly at your
banker's, and paying everybody with a dirty little bit of crumpled
paper, instead of pulling out a handful of gold, magnificently, from
your trousers pocket, and flinging the sovereigns boldly down before you
upon the counter like an officer and a gentleman. Why should you let one
of those bloated, overfed, lazy banker-fellows grow rich out of
borrowing your money from you for nothing, without so much as a
thank-you, and lending it out again to some other poor devil of a
tradesman (probably in difficulties) at seven per cent. on short
discount? No, no; that was not the way Sir Thomas Woolrych had been
accustomed to live when he was an ensign (sub-lieutenant they positively
call it nowadays) at Ahmednuggur, in the North-West Provinces. In those
days, my dear sir, a man drew his monthly screw by pay-warrant, took the
rupees in solid cash, locked them up carefully in the desk in his
bungalow, helped himself liberally to them while they lasted, and gave
IOU's for any little trifle of cards or horses he might happen to have
let himself in for meanwhile with his brother-officers. IOU's are of
course a gentlemanly and recognized form of monetary engagement, but for
bankers' cheques Sir Thomas positively felt little less than contempt
and loathing. Nevertheless, in his comfortable villa in the park at Cheltenham (called
Futteypoor Lodge, after that famous engagement during the Mutiny which
gave the Colonel his regiment and his K.C.B.-ship) he stood one evening
looking curiously at his big devonport, and muttered to himself with
more than one most military oath, "Hanged if I don't think I shall
positively be compelled to patronize these banker-fellows after all. Somebody must have been helping himself again to some of my sovereigns." Sir Thomas was not by nature a suspicious man--he was too frank and
open-hearted himself to think ill easily of others--but he couldn't
avoid feeling certain that somebody had been tampering unjustifiably
with the contents of his devonport. He counted the rows of sovereigns
over once more, very carefully; then he checked the number taken out by
the entry in his pocket-book; and then he leaned back in his chair with
a puzzled look, took a meditative puff or two at the stump of his cigar,
and blew out the smoke, in a long curl that left a sort of pout upon his
heavily moustached lip as soon as he had finished. Not a doubt in the
world about it--somebody must have helped himself again to a dozen
sovereigns. It was a hateful thing to put a watch upon your servants and dependents,
but Sir Thomas felt he must really do it. He reckoned up the long rows
a third time with military precision, entered the particulars once more
most accurately in his pocket-book, sighed a deep sigh of regret at the
distasteful occupation, and locked up the devonport at last with the air
of a man who resigns himself unwillingly to a most unpleasant duty. Then
he threw away the fag-end of the smoked-out cigar, and went up slowly to
dress for dinner. Sir Thomas's household consisted entirely of himself and his nephew
Harry, for he had never been married, and he regarded all womankind
alike from afar off, with a quaint, respectful, old-world chivalry; but
he made a point of dressing scrupulously every day for dinner, even when
alone, as a decorous formality due to himself, his servants, society,
the military profession, and the _convenances_ in general. If he and his
nephew dined together they dressed for one another; if they dined
separately they dressed all the same, for the sake of the institution. When a man once consents to eat his evening meal in a blue tie and a
morning cutaway, there's no drawing a line until you finally find him an
advanced republican and an accomplice of those dreadful War Office
people who are bent upon allowing the service to go to the devil. If
Colonel Sir Thomas Woolrych, K.C.B., had for a single night been guilty
of such abominable laxity, the whole fabric of society would have
tottered to its base, and gods and footmen would have felt instinctively
that it was all up with the British constitution. "Harry," Sir Thomas said, as soon they sat down to dinner together, "are
you going out anywhere this evening, my boy?" Harry looked up a little surlily, and answered after a moment's
hesitation, "Why, yes, uncle, I thought--I thought of going round and
having a game of billiards with Tom Whitmarsh." Sir Thomas cleared his throat, and hemmed dubiously. "In that case," he
said at last, after a short pause, "I think I'll go down to the club
myself and have a rubber. Wilkins, the carriage at half-past nine. I'm
sorry, Harry, you're going out this evening." "Why so, uncle? It's only just round to the Whitmarshes', you know." Sir Thomas shut one eye and glanced with the other at the light through
his glass of sherry, held up between finger and thumb critically and
suspiciously. "A man may disapprove _in toto_ of the present system of
competitive examinations for the army," he said slowly; "for my part, I
certainly do, and I make no secret of it; admitting a lot of butchers
and bakers and candlestick makers plump into the highest ranks of the
service: no tone, no character, no position, no gentlemanly feeling; a
great mistake--a great mistake; I told them so at the time. I said to
them, 'Gentlemen, you are simply ruining the service.' But they took no
notice of me; and what's the consequence? Competitive examination has
been the ruin of the service, exactly as I told them.