He told her so, very roughly, when her allusions became more and more significant. He warned her too that ‘she had better be careful what she said or did. It was a fact well known to the whole country-side that she was quite unable to take care of herself, that she was not responsible for her actions, that her proper place was an asylum, and she might come to that yet if—’
One day, when he had been taunting thus longer and more bitterly than usual, she was goaded into making an incautious reply.
‘The cup is nearly full to the brim, Rupert. Your time is fast drawing to a close.’
‘What new craze is this, Lady Farrington?’ he said, laughing scornfully, but with a black look on his face.
Sir Rupert’s was a hard dark face, with full eyes rather prominent, and a long, drooping, black moustache. When he looked black it was not a pleasant face to see.
‘It is nothing new, Rupert. I have waited patiently, hopefully. I thought the end would never come. It is near at hand now, although the consummation has been long delayed.’
‘Your ladyship’s language is, as usual, clear and perspicuous, yet you will forgive me if I ask you to explain.’
‘Listen,’ she said, as she laid her hand upon his arm, and hissed out her words slowly one by one. ‘Within a few short months, nay weeks, whenever I choose, I can produce the rightful heir of the Farringtons; and he shall come to his own.’
‘This is mere rhapsody, mere raving. You cannot touch me, you know that.’
‘I can, ay, and I will, miserable fool! You have not the shadow of a claim to the title and estates. My grandson, Herbert’s son, lives, and you must make way for him.’
‘Psha! Herbert’s son? How do you know that? What proof have you?’
‘The youth himself. He has been under my charge these five years past, and more. I found him—I myself found him. I knew I could not err. He had Herbert’s eyes, he is Herbert’s image; he—’
‘He must have more proof than this if he is to make good his case in a court of law,’ said Sir Rupert coolly.
‘I know it, and the proof shall be forthcoming. Every link in the chain.’
‘All right. If it is to be war to the knife, so let it be. But I tell you plainly that no one will believe a word you say.’
‘They will believe my beautiful boy, my own Herbert’s boy, when they hear his story from his own sweet lips. He shall come forward himself when the occasion is ripe for him to speak.’
‘Where is he now?’ asked Sir Rupert, carelessly, but with deeply cunning intent.
She laughed in his face.
‘No, no, Sir Rupert, I am not to be so easily beguiled. He is safe, quite safe, to be produced at exactly the right time.’
Sir Rupert gave her another fierce look, which boded her no good, but he said nothing more. He was not exactly disconcerted by her positive assertions, which he only half believed, yet his peace of mind had been rudely assailed. That he must discover the whereabouts of this mysterious claimant, and test the accuracy of Lady Farrington’s far-fetched statements, was clear. It was equally clear that he must, if possible, put a gag upon the old woman, and remove her where she could work no further harm.
CHAPTER III.
’TWIXT CUP AND LIP.
Hercules Albert—or Herbert, as he was henceforth to be called—was not a little taken aback by the sudden change in his circumstances, which followed Lady Farrington’s supposed recognition of him. To be measured for a suit of black cloth, which befitted best the Larkins’ notion of gentility; to have a brand new box, painted green, with sundry new shirts, new boots, and a broad-brimmed wide-awake hat, all his own; these were so many delicious surprises, the full effect of which was fully borne in upon him by the openly-expressed envy of the rest of the family. But it was a wrench to him when the time came to leave his home—the only one he had ever known—to lose the companionship of his playmates, and the warm, though roughly-expressed, affection of the sergeant and his wife.
‘Be a man, Herkles,’ the sergeant had said, as the boy stood snivelling at the door of the casemated room, which represented the whole of the Larkins’ establishment. ‘Eat your cake.’ They had provided him with a huge slice of bun-loaf, upon which little Sennacherib Larkins, a freebooter like his Assyrian sponsor, had made many inroads while Herbert’s attention was distracted by the new cares of property and the pangs of making his adieux.
‘Eat your cake, and keep up your heart; me and the missus’ll be over to see you before the month’s out, and we’ll bring Rechab and Senn and Jemimer Ann.’
‘It’s all for your own good, Herbert,’ said Mrs. Larkins. ‘They’re going to make a gentleman of you. You’ll get learning, and Latin, and French mathematics; and by and by you’ll be an officer, perhaps, and live like a lord.’
The prospect was brilliant, but remote. Herbert, as a child of the barracks, had been brought up to believe that officers were almost superior beings. He saw his father, the sergeant, and all soldiers salute them always, and pay them extraordinary deference. When in uniform they were resplendent in crimson and gold; when out of it they drove dog-carts and played cricket and owned dogs, all of which Herbert would have liked to have done too. Yet the off-chance of some day becoming an officer himself did not reconcile him to separation from the best friends he had in the world; and as he left Triggertown casemates, he wept bitterly, and refused to be comforted.
If life looked black and forbidding then, it was a thousand times worse when he got to school. A cross-grained old man—it was Mr. Bellhouse, Lady Farrington’s solicitor—escorted him thither, and snubbed him all the way. The old lawyer was a little sick of her ladyship’s caprices, and considered this last the most serious of all. But it was none of Herbert’s fault, and the poor woe-begone home-sick lad did not deserve to be made to answer for Lady Farrington’s sins. At school he was left stranded, like a waif of the sea upon an unknown shore. Presently the natives, troops of little savage school-boys, swooped down upon him to scalp and torture him. He was pestered with questions, and his hair pulled, his strange wide-awake was jeered at, and given to the winds.
But the instincts of self-defence are strong, and Herbert, if new to school life, was not new to the use of his fists. His tormentors were numerous, but with one or two exceptions were not much older or bigger than himself, and when it came to a question of blows and hard knocks he was physically well able to take care of himself. Presently a ‘straight un’ from the shoulder relieved him of the most troublesome of his assailants, and a second, planted upon the nose of a tall bully, proved that Herbert thought nothing of disparity in height when disposing of his foes. Boys are sensibly affected by the display of pluck, especially against superior odds, and Herbert soon gained for himself the respect due to his prowess, and immunity from further annoyance.
He was vexed and irritated no more, but he went to his bed, a far more cleanly and luxurious couch than that which he had been accustomed to in the crowded casemate at Triggertown, with a sad and sorrowful heart. There are no woes so acute as those of early youth. Happily they are as transient as they are intense. Herbert at night was in the depths of woe; next morning he was already in a fair way to recover his spirits, and before the day was out, in the excitement of the new life opening before him, he had forgotten his sorrows and was as happy as a bird. He was just the boy to get on at school. Brisk and buoyant in disposition, with a well-knit vigorous frame, a predilection