Gil the Gunner, George Manville Fenn [fun books to read for adults txt] 📗

“His old wound, colonel. Broken out with the exertion, perhaps from a blow,” some one was saying when I opened my eyes, and saw the softly glittering stars over my head. Then all came back with a flash, and I tried to rise, but a hand was pressed on my chest.

“How’s Brace?” I said quickly.

“Bad; but I have hopes,” said Danby. “Lie still.”

“But, father,” I said excitedly; “you can hold the place now?”

“Oh yes; they’re in full retreat; the town will be empty by daybreak. Oh for light now, to let loose your troop, and the lancers after them.”

“Better let the poor lads rest,” grumbled Danby.

“Is Colonel Vincent there?” said a voice.

“Yes; what is it?” cried my father, striding in the direction of the voice.

“They found the rajah, sir, under quite a heap of slain.”

“Hah!” cried my father, and he hurried away.

It was true enough, as I soon heard. Ny Deen had fallen when trying to make his followers face my father’s charge, and somehow a feeling of bitterness and sorrow came over me, for, in my sight, he was a brave man, and I felt that he was justified in his struggle to cast off his allegiance to our race.

It was as my father had said: the next day the city was emptied of all but the peaceably disposed inhabitants, who made no secret of their delight at the scattering of Ny Deen’s forces. The best homes were taken possession of for our sick and wounded; food was plentiful, and those who had toiled like slaves in the enclosure had found servants enough willing to attend upon them.

For the remnants of the rajah’s forces had gone far away in utter disbandment now their chief was no more, seeking to fight under some other rebel leader, and the tide of war ebbed farther and farther from Nussoor, where the wounded and sick lay in peace and comfort, tended by loving hands.

My father insisted upon Brace being carried to the house we occupied, and my mother and Grace were unremitting in their attention during the next few weeks, in which I rapidly grew stronger, though Brace mended more slowly.

It was wonderful to me to see how rapidly Grace and my mother changed. The terribly anxious look died out of their faces, but in both there was a saddened aspect which grew stronger daily; and it was most marked when they talked of the perils of the past, and my mother offered up a prayer that those she loved might not be called upon again to face the perils of the fight.

Her prayer was heard, for the horrors of war swept farther and farther away. Others had the task of crushing it out, while we remained to garrison Nussoor; and the various civil officers toiled hard to restore order and remove the horrible traces of the war of desperate fights for life.

It was during these days, when I was busy with Haynes—Captain Haynes now—trying to work up the draft of new men—who had come to fill up the gaps made in our troop in action—to something like the form of our old, that we had a surprise in the coming of Major Lacey, still rather weak, but who had made a wonderful recovery. He was full of anecdotes of his narrow escapes during the time he was being nursed back to health by the two faithful dhoby women, and he gave us a terrible account of the surprise that day when Barton was slain—for he was killed—the major saw him fall. But the old officer never referred to the death of his wife, that was too sacred a subject, and we dared not ask.

It was about two months after that awful night, and the cool season had come. My mother had had a few friends to dinner, and I was out on the verandah with the doctor, as he smoked his cigar.

“Humph! so you want to get on active service again, eh?” he said, after a long chat. “Well, after what you went through, I think you might wait for a few years.”

“You misunderstand me,” I said. “I don’t want that kind of active service, but something more to do.”

“It’ll come,” he said; and then he laughed.

“What are you laughing at?” I said.

“At you.”

“Why?”

“At the idea of their promoting such a boy as you.”

“What? promoted?” I cried.

“Yes; but I oughtn’t to have let it out. It was told me as a secret.”

“Oh, I am glad,” I cried. “But I say, doctor, I can’t help being such a boy.”

“Don’t try, Gil,” he said; “you don’t grasp it, but to be a boy, sir, is the grandest thing in the world. Never be discontented because you have no moustache. It will come.”

“I am not discontented,” I said maliciously, “only because we have such a bad doctor in the troop.”

“Bad! Why, what do you mean?”

“My arm pained me horribly this morning, and poor old Dost nearly cried as he bathed it, I was in such agony.”

“Bah! stuff!”

“And, then, look at poor Brace,” I said. “You don’t cure him a bit.”

“Ha, ha! Ho, ho!” laughed the doctor. “I like that. Why, between you and me, Gil, old man,” he whispered, “Brace is a sham. He could be well enough, at least nearly, if he liked.”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“Go and tell him I say he’s to be promoted to major, and he’ll grow strong at once. No, he will not. Can’t you see what’s going on?” he added jocosely, as he took my arm, for of late the doctor and I had grown quite chums, and Brace had drifted away.

“No,” I said; “only that he keeps very low-spirited.”

“Not a bit of it, boy. You’re too young to understand these things. But poor Brace once lost his fair young wife.”

“Yes, I know that,” I said.

“Well, he is waiting till he is quite well again, and then he is going to ask a certain beautiful young lady, who is about as near an angel of mercy among wounded soldiers as a woman can be; and I ought to know.”

“Ask a certain beautiful young lady what?” I said.

“To shed light on his dark life, boy, and be his wife.”

“Why, you don’t mean to say that he loves our Grace?” I said.

“Look there, then.”

He pointed to the window through which, by the light of the shaded lamp, I could see that in both their eyes that made me exclaim—

“Oh, doctor, I am glad!”

And so was every one else, when it was fully known. Brace became, in fact, a true brother to me, and in later days, when I had long ceased to be the youngest subaltern in the horse artillery, we two saw some service, though none so full of danger and horrors as we passed through in the struggle wherein England nearly lost her proudest possessions in the East.