The Dash for Khartoum: A Tale of the Nile Expedition, G. A. Henty [ebook offline reader txt] 📗

were fields of grass and broad patches of cultivated land. Here they were to wait until the rest of the mounted troops came up, and a portion, at any rate, of the infantry arrived in the boats.

[Pg 165]

CHAPTER X. AN UNEXPECTED MEETING.

"It is a nice place for a camp, isn't it, youngster?"

"Very nice, sergeant; but it will soon be spoiled with all these troops arriving. It is very pretty now with that grove of palm-trees, and the low green bushes that hide the sand, and the river with all the boats with white sails. I have just been counting them, there are thirty-two in sight. But when we get three or four regiments here they will soon cut down the scrub and spoil its appearance altogether."

"That is so, lad; troops make a pretty clear sweep of everything where they settle down."

Edgar had taken a good deal to Sergeant Bowen, who had shown him many little kindnesses on the way up. He was an older man than most of those engaged in the expedition, and Edgar judged him to be thirty-two or thirty-three years old. He was a fine, tall, soldierly-looking fellow, and had served in various parts of the world.

"Let us sit down," the sergeant said; "this bush will give us a little shade. How long have you been in the army, lad?"

"Better than two years. Directly the campaign is over I shall give up my trumpet, and hope I shall get my stripes soon."

"How old are you—nineteen?"

"Not for some months yet, sergeant."

"Hope to get your commission some day?" the sergeant said. "I suppose that is what you entered the army for."

"Yes, partly, sergeant; partly because I saw no other way of keeping myself."

"But what are your friends doing?"

"I have not any friends; at least none that I care to apply to," Edgar answered shortly.

"No friends, lad? That is bad. But I do not want to know[Pg 166] your story if you do not choose to tell it. It is easy to see that you have had a good education. Keep steady, lad, and you will get on. I might have been a quarter-master years ago if it hadn't been for that. Drink and other things have kept me down; but when I was twenty I was a smart young fellow. Ah! that is a long time back."

"Why, one would think that you were an old man, sergeant," Edgar said, and smiled.

"Older than you would think by a good bit. How old do you take me to be?"

"Something past thirty."

"A good deal past that. I am just forty, though they don't know it, or I should not be here."

"Why, then, if you enlisted when you were my age, sergeant, you must have done over twenty years' service."

"It's twenty-two since I first enlisted. I served eight years in the infantry. I don't know why I am telling you this, but somehow I have taken a fancy to you. I was uncomfortable in the regiment. It does not matter why. I got my stripes twice, and had to give them up or I should have been put back for drinking. Then I left the regiment without asking leave. I was three or four years knocking about at home; but I had no trade and found it hard to get work, so at last I enlisted again. I was thirty then, but looked years younger than I was. Of course I had shaved off my moustache and put on a smock-frock when I went to enlist, and I gave my age as twenty-two. No one questioned it. I chose the cavalry this time, because I knew that if I entered an infantry regiment again they would spot me as an old soldier at once; but as it was all new in the cavalry I managed to pass it off, and now I have had ten years' service, the last six of them as sergeant. And as I gave up drink years ago I have a good character in the regiment, and when a steady non-commissioned officer was wanted for this business I had the luck to be chosen. Officers coming, lad!"[Pg 167]

They rose to their feet and saluted as three officers passed. They were talking eagerly together, and returned the salute mechanically without glancing at the two soldiers.

"It is a rum chance, Clinton, our meeting here. I ran against Skinner at Assouan quite accidentally. I had seen his name in the list of the officers of the Marines going up; but we met quite by chance, and only forgathered here yesterday, and now here you are turning up as one of Stewart's A.D.C.'s. Who would have thought that we three should meet here, when we have never seen each other since we left Cheltenham?"

The sergeant stood looking after them with an air of interest till their voices died away. Then he turned to his companion.

"Hullo, lad, what is the matter? Are you ill?"

"No, I am all right," Edgar said huskily.

"Nonsense! Your colour has all gone, and you are shaking like a leaf. What! did you know any of those officers?"

"I knew them all once," Edgar said. "We were at school together. I did not know that any of them were out here. I would not have them recognize me for anything."

"Oh, that is it! I thought you must have run away from school; got into some scrape, I suppose. Well, my lad, as you have made your bed you must lie in it. But it is not likely that any of them would know you even if they ran up against you. Two years' service under this sun changes a lad of your age wonderfully. By the way, one of them called the other Clinton; do you happen to know whether he is the son of a Captain Clinton—Captain Percy Clinton?"

"Yes, he is."

"He was captain of my company when I was a young sergeant. Well, well, time flies fast, to be sure. Do you know whether this young fellow has a brother, and, if so, what he is doing?"

"No, he has no brother," Edgar said shortly.

"There were two of them," the sergeant said positively. "Perhaps one has died. I wonder which it was," he muttered to himself.[Pg 168]

"Do you know the story?" Edgar asked suddenly.

"Do I know the story!" the sergeant repeated slowly. "What story do you mean?"

"The story of Captain Clinton's baby being confused with another."

"Oh, you know about that, do you?" Sergeant Bowen asked in turn. "So they made no secret of it. Ay, lad, I know it; every man in the regiment knew it. And good cause I had to know it, it was that that ruined me."

"Are you Sergeant Humphreys?" Edgar asked, putting his hand on the man's shoulder.

The sergeant started in surprise.

"Why, lad, how come you to know all the ins and outs of that story? Ay, I was Sergeant Humphreys, and for aught I know that young fellow who has just passed, whom they call Clinton, is my son."

"No, he is not, sergeant; I am your son!"

The sergeant looked at the young trumpeter in bewilderment, then his expression changed.

"You have got a touch of fever, lad. Come along with me to the hospital; I will report you sick. The sooner you are out of the sun the better."

"I am as sensible as I ever was in my life," Edgar said quietly. "I was brought up by Captain Clinton as his son. I was at Cheltenham with Rupert Clinton, who has just passed us. We believed that we were twins until the day came when a woman came down there and told me the story, and told me that I was her son and yours; then I ran away, and here I am."

"My wife!" the sergeant exclaimed passionately. "I have not seen or heard of her for fifteen years. So she came down and told you that. She is a bad lot, if ever there was one. And so she told you you were my son? You may be, lad, for aught I know; and I should be well content to know that it was so. But what did she come and tell you that for? What game is she up to now? I always knew she was up to some[Pg 169] mischief. What was her motive in coming down to tell you that? Just let me know what she said."

"She said she had deliberately changed me as an infant for my good, and she proposed to me to continue the fraud, and offered, if I liked, to swear to Rupert's being her child, so that I might get all the property."

"And that she might share in it!" the sergeant laughed bitterly. "A bold stroke that of Jane Humphreys. And how did she pretend to recognize you as her child more than the other?"

"She told me that Captain Clinton's child had a tiny mole on his shoulder, and as Rupert has such a mark, that settled the question."

"Jane Humphreys told you more than she knew herself. Whether she intended to make the change of babies or not I don't know, but I believe she did; but whether it was done by chance, or whether she purposely mixed them up together, one thing I am certain of, and that is, that she confused herself as well as every one else, and that she did not know which was which. When I came into the room first she was like a woman dazed, and, clever as she was, I am sure she was not putting it on. She had thought, I fancy, that she could easily distinguish one from the other, and had never fancied that she could have been confused as well as other people. She undressed them, and looked them over and over, and it was then she noticed the little mole on the shoulder, and she turned to me and said, 'If I had but noticed this before I should always have told them apart.'

"We had a pretty bad time of it afterwards, for it made me the laugh of the whole regiment, and caused no end of talk and worry, and we had frightful rows together. She taunted me with being a fool for not seeing that there was money to be made out of it. She acknowledged to me over and over again that she had intended to change the children, and had dressed them both alike; and when I asked her what good had come[Pg 170] out of her scheming, she said that in the first place we had got rid of the bother of bringing up the boy, and that if I were not a fool we might make a good thing out of it yet. But she was vexed and angry with herself for not having seen this little mark, and for having herself lost all clue as to which was her child. I told her that as she had intended to change them she could have cared nothing for her own boy, and that her only object could have been to make money.

"She did not deny it, but simply jeered at me for being content to remain all my life a non-commissioned officer when there might be a fortune made out of this. I do not say that if she had been able to tell one child from the other she would have told me, for if she had I should certainly have gone to Captain Clinton and told him; but she did not know. A woman can act well, but she cannot make herself as white as a sheet and put such a wild look into her eyes as she had when I found her turning those children over and over, and trying to make out which was which. I could take the Bible in my hand and swear in court that Jane Humphreys knew no more than I did which was her child, that she had never noticed the mark until after the change was made, and that to this day she does not know.

"One of the points we quarrelled on was that I made her start for the captain's quarters in such a hurry. She afterwards said that when it first came across her that she did not know which child was which, her blood seemed to go up into her head, and she lost her power of judgment altogether. She said over and over again that if I hadn't hurried her so, and had let matters be for a day or two, so that she could have slept on it and had looked at them quiet, she would have known which was her child. So that is