Harry held the lid of the devonport open for a moment with one
hand, and looked at the rows of counted gold within. The fingers of the
other hand rose slowly and remorsefully up to the edge of the desk, and
there hovered in an undecided fashion. Sir Thomas watched still, with
his heart breaking. Then for a second Harry paused. He held back his
hand and appeared to deliberate. Something within seemed to have
affected him deeply. Sir Thomas, though a plain old soldier, could read
his face well enough to know what it was; he was thinking of the kind
words his uncle had said to him that very evening as they sat together
down there at dinner. For half a minute the suspense was terrible. Then, with a sudden
impulse, Harry shut the lid of the devonport down hastily; flung the
wire with a gesture of horror and remorse into the fireplace; took up
his candle wildly in his hand; and rushed from the room and up the
stairs, leaving the door open behind him. Then Sir Thomas rose slowly from his seat in the window corner; lighted
the gas in the centre burner; unlocked the devonport, with tears still
trickling slowly down his face; counted all the money over carefully to
make quite certain; found it absolutely untouched; and flung himself
down upon his knees wildly, between shame, and fear, and relief, and
misery. What he said or what he thought in that terrible moment of
conflicting passions is best not here described or written; but when he
rose again his eyes were glistening, more with forgiveness than with
horror (anger there never had been); and being an old-fashioned old
gentleman, he took down his big Bible from the shelf, just to reassure
himself about a text which he thought he remembered somewhere in Luke:
"Joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over
ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance." "Ah, yes," he
said to himself; "he repented; he repented. He didn't take it. He felt
he couldn't after what I said to him." And then, with the tears still
rolling silently down his bronzed checks, he went up stairs to bed, but
not to sleep; for he lay restless on his pillow all night through with
that one terrible discovery weighing like lead upon his tender old
bosom. III. Next morning, after breakfast, Sir Thomas said in a quiet tone of
command to Harry, "My boy, I want to speak to you for a few minutes in
the library." Harry's cheek grew deadly pale and he caught his breath with difficulty,
but he followed his uncle into the library without a word, and took his
seat at the table opposite him. "Harry," the old soldier began, as quietly as he was able, after an
awkward pause, "I want to tell you a little--a little about your father
and mother." Harry's face suddenly changed from white to crimson, for he felt sure
now that what Sir Thomas was going to talk about was not the loss of the
money from the devonport a week earlier; and on the other hand, though
he knew absolutely nothing about his own birth and parentage, he knew at
least that there must have been some sort of mystery in the matter, or
else his uncle would surely long since have spoken to him quite freely
of his father and mother. "My dear boy," the Colonel went on again, in a tremulous voice, "I think
the time has now come when I ought to tell you that you and I are no
relations by blood; you are--you are my nephew by adoption only." Harry gave a sudden start of surprise, but said nothing. "The way it all came about," Sir Thomas went on, playing nervously with
his watch-chain, "was just this. I was in India during the Mutiny, as
you know, and while I was stationed at Boolundshahr, in the North-West
Provinces, just before those confounded niggers--I mean to say, before
the sepoys revolted, your father was adjutant of my regiment at the
same station. He and your mother--well, Harry, your mother lived in a
small bungalow near the cantonments, and there you were born; why,
exactly eight months before the affair at Meerut, you know--the
beginning of the Mutiny. Your father, I'm sorry to say, was a man very
much given to high play--in short, if you'll excuse my putting it so, my
boy, a regular gambler. He owed money to almost every man in the
regiment, and amongst others, if I must tell you the whole truth, to me. In those days I sometimes played rather high myself, Harry; not so high
as your poor father, my boy, for I was always prudent, but a great deal
higher than a young man in a marching regiment has any right to do--a
great deal higher. I left off playing immediately after what I'm just
going to tell you; and from that day to this, Harry, I've never touched
a card, except for whist or cribbage, and never will do, my boy, if I
live to be as old as Methuselah." The old man paused and wiped his brow for a second with his capacious
handkerchief, while Harry's eyes, cast down upon the ground, began to
fill rapidly with something or other that he couldn't for the life of
him manage to keep out of them. "On the night before the news from Meerut arrived," the old soldier went
on once more, with his eye turned half away from the trembling lad, "we
played together in the major's rooms, your father and I, with a few
others; and before the end of the evening your father had lost a large
sum to one of his brother-officers. When we'd finished playing, he came
to me to my quarters, and he said 'Woolrych, this is a bad job. I
haven't got anything to pay McGregor with.' "'All right, Walpole,' I answered him--your father's name was Captain
Walpole, Harry--'I'll lend you whatever's necessary.' "'No, no, my dear fellow,' he said, 'I won't borrow and only get myself
into worse trouble. I'll take a shorter and easier way out of it all,
you may depend upon it.' "At the moment I hadn't the slightest idea what he meant, and so I said
no more to him just then about it. But three minutes after he left my
quarters I heard a loud cry, and saw your father in the moonlight out in
the compound. He had a pistol in his hand. Next moment, the report of a
shot sounded loudly down below in the compound, and I rushed out at once
to see what on earth could be matter. "Your father was lying in a pool of blood, just underneath a big
mango-tree beside the door, with his left jaw shattered to pieces, and
his brain pierced through and through from one side to the other by a
bullet from the pistol. "He was dead--stone dead. There was no good doctoring him. We took him
up and carried him into the surgeon's room, and none of us had the
courage all that night to tell your mother. "Next day, news came of the rising at Meerut. "That same night, while we were all keeping watch and mounting guard,
expecting our men would follow the example of their companions at
head-quarters, there was a sudden din and tumult in the lines, about
nine in the evening, when the word was given to turn in, and McGregor,
coming past me, shouted at the top of his voice, 'It's all up, Woolrych.