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CHAPTER XXXVI
HUGH JOHN'S WAY-GOING
THE secret which had oppressed society after the return of Mr. Picton Smith from London, being revealed, was that Hugh John and Sammy Carter were both to go to school. For a while it appeared as if the foundations of the world had been undercut – the famous fellowship of noble knights disbanded, Prissy and Cissy, ministering angel and wild tomboy, alike abandoned to the tender mercies of mere governesses.
Strangest of all to Prissy was the indubitable fact that Hugh John wanted to go. At the very first mention of school he promptly forgot all about his noblest military ambitions, and began oiling his cricket bat and kicking his football all over the green. Mr. Burnham was anxious about his pupil's Latin and more than doubtful about his Vulgar Fractions; but the General himself was chiefly bent on improving his round arm bowling, and getting that break from the left down to a fine point.
Every member of the household was more or less disturbed by the coming exodus – except Sir Toady Lion. On the last fateful morning that self-contained youth maundered about as usual among his pets, carrying to and fro saucers of milk, dandelion leaves cut small, and other dainties – though Hugh John's boxes were standing corded and labelled in the hall, though Prissy was crying herself sick on her bed, and though there was even a dry hard lump high up in the great hero's own manly throat.
His father was giving his parting instructions to his eldest son.
"Work hard, my boy," he said. "Tell the truth, never tell tales, nor yet listen to them. Mind your own business. Don't fight, if you can help it; but if you have to, be sure you get home with your left before the other fellow. Practise your bowling, the batting will practise itself. And when you play golf, keep your eye on the ball."
"I'll try to play up, father," said Hugh John, "and anyway I won't be 'dasht-mean'!"
His father was satisfied.
Then it was Prissy who came to say good-bye. She had made all sorts of good resolutions, but in less than half a minute she was bawling undisguisedly on the hero's neck. And as for the hero – well, we will not say what he was doing, something most particularly unheroic at any rate.
Janet Sheepshanks hovered in the background, saying all the time, "For shame, Miss Priscilla, think shame o' yoursel' – garring the laddie greet like that when he's gaun awa'!"
But even Janet herself was observed to blow her own nose very often, and to offer Hugh John the small garden hoe instead of the neatly wrapped new silk umbrella she had bought for him out of her own money.
And all the while Sir Toady Lion kept on carrying milk and fresh lettuce leaves to his stupid lop-eared rabbits. Yet it was by no means insensibility which kept him thus busied. He was only playing his usual lone hand.
Yet even Toady Lion was not without his own proper sense of the importance of the occasion.
"There's a funny fing 'at you wants to see at the stile behind the stable," he remarked casually to Hugh John, as he went past the front door with an armful of hay for bedding, "but I promised not to tell w'at it is."
Immediately Hugh John slunk out, ran off in an entirely different direction, circled about the "office houses," reached the stile behind the stable – and there, with her eyes very big, and her underlip quivering strangely, he discovered Cissy Carter.
He stopped short and looked at her. The pressure of having to say farewell, or of making a stated speech of any kind, weighed heavily upon him. The two looked at each other like young wild animals – or as if they were children who had never been introduced, which is the same thing.
"Hugh John Picton, you don't care!" sobbed Cissy at last. "And I don't care either!" she added haughtily, commanding herself after a pathetic little pause.
"I do, I do," answered Hugh John vehemently, "only every fellow has to. Sammy is going too, you know!"
"Oh, I don't care a button for Sammy!" was Cissy's most unsisterly speech.
Hugh John tried to think of something to say. Cissy was now sobbing quietly and persistently, and that did not seem to help him.
"Say, don't now, Ciss! Stop it, or you'll make me cry too!"
"You don't care! You don't love me a bit! You know you don't!"
"I do – I do," protested the hero, in despair, "there – there —now you can't say I don't care."
"But you'll be so different when you come back, and you'll have lost your half of the crooked sixpence."
"I won't, for true, Cissy – and I shan't ever look at another girl nor play horses with them even if they ask me ever so."
"You will, I know you will!"
A rumble of wheels, a shout from the front door – "Hugh John – wherever can that boy have got to?"
"Good-bye, Ciss, I must go. Oh hang it, don't go making a fellow cry. Well, I will say it then, 'I love you, Ciss!' There – will that satisfy you?"
Something lit on the end of Cissy's nose, which was very red and wet with the tears that had run down it. There was a clatter of feet, and the Lord of Creation had departed. Cissy sank down behind the stone wall, a slim bundle of limp woe, done up in blue serge trimmed with scarlet.
The servants were gathered in the hall. Several of the maids were already wet-eyed, for Hugh John had "the way with him" that made all women want to "mother" him. Besides, he had no mother of his own.
"Good-bye, Master Hugh!" they said, and sniffed as they said it.
"Good-bye, everybody," cried the hero, "soon be back again, you know." He said this very loudly to show that he did not care. He was going down the steps with Prissy's fingers clutched in his, and every one was smiling. All went merry as a marriage bell – never had been seen so jovial a way-going.
"Ugh – ugh – ugh!" somebody in the hall suddenly sobbed out from among the white caps of the maids.
"Go upstairs instantly, Jane. Don't disgrace yourself!" cried Janet Sheepshanks sharply, stamping her foot. For the sound of Jane's sudden and shameful collapse sent the other maids' aprons furtively up to their eyes.
And Janet Sheepshanks had no apron. Not that she needed one – of course not.
"Come on, Hugh John – the time is up!" said his father from the side of the dog-cart, where (somewhat ostentatiously) he had been refastening straps which Mike had already done to a nicety.
At this moment Toady Lion passed with half a dozen lettuce leaves. He was no more excited "than nothing at all," as Prissy indignantly said afterwards.
"Good-bye, Toady Lion," said Hugh John, "you can have my other bat and the white rat with the pink eyes."
Toady Lion stood with the lettuce leaves in his arms, looking on in a bored sort of way. Prissy could have slapped him if her hands had not been otherwise employed.
He did not say a word till his brother was perched up aloft on the dog-cart with his cricket bat nursed between his knees and a new hard-hat pulled painfully over his eyes. Then at last Toady Lion spoke. "Did 'oo find the funny fing behind the stable, Hugh John?"
Before Hugh John had time to reply, the dog-cart drove away amid sharp explosions of grief from the white-capped throng. Jane Housemaid dripped sympathy from a first-floor window till the gravel was wet as from a smart shower. Toady Lion alone stood on the steps with his usual expression of bored calmness. Then he turned to Prissy.
"Why is 'oo so moppy?"
"Oh, you go away – you've got no heart!" said Prissy, and resumed her luxury of woe.
If Toady Lion had been a Gallic boy, we should have said that he shrugged his shoulders. At all events, he smiled covertly to the lettuces as he moved off in the direction of the rabbit-hutches.
"It was a very funny fing w'at was behind the stable," he said. For Sir Toady Lion was a humorist. And you can't be a humorist without being a little hard-hearted. Only the heart of a professional writer of pathos can be one degree harder.
CHAPTER XXXVII
THE GOOD CONDUCT PRIZE
IT was three years after. Sometimes three years makes a considerable change in grown-ups. More often it leaves them pretty much where they were. But with boys and girls the world begins all over again every two years at most. So the terms went and came, and at each vacation, instead of returning home, Hugh John went to London. For it so happened that the year he had left for school the house of Windy Standard was burned down almost to the ground, and Mr. Picton Smith took advantage of the fact to build an entirely new mansion on a somewhat higher site.
The first house might have been saved had the Bounding Brothers been in the neighbourhood, or indeed any active and efficient helpers. But the nearest engine was under the care of the Edam fire brigade, who upon hearing of the conflagration, with great enthusiasm ran their engine a quarter of a mile out of the town by hand. Then their ardour suddenly giving out, they sat down and had an amicable smoke on the roadside till the horse was brought to drag the apparatus the rest of the distance.
But alas! the animal was too fat to be got between the shafts, so it had to be sent back and a leaner horse forwarded. Meantime the house of Windy Standard was blazing merrily, and when the Edam fire company finally arrived, the ashes were still quite hot.
So in this way it came about that it was three long years before Hugh John again saw the hoary battlements of the ancient strength on the castle island which he and his army had attacked so boldly. There were great changes in the town itself. The railway had come to Edam, and now steamed and snorted under the very walls of the Abbey. Chimneys had multiplied, and the smoke columns were taller and denser. The rubicund Provost had gone the way of all the earth, even of all provosts! And the leading bailie, one Donnan, a butcher and army contractor, sat with something less of dignity but equal efficiency in his magisterial chair.
Hugh John from the station platform saw something of this with a sick heart, but he was sure that out in the pure air and infinite quiet of Windy Standard he would find all things the same. But a new and finer house shone white upon the hill. Gardens flourished on unexpected places with that appearance of having been recently planted, frequently pulled up by the roots, looked at and put back, which distinguishes all new gardens. Here and there white-painted vineries and conservatories winked ostentatiously in the sun.
What a time Hugh John had been planning they would have! For months he had thought of nothing but this. Toady Lion and he would do all over again those famous deeds of daring he had done at the castle. Again they would attack the island. Other secret passages would be discovered. All would be as it had been – only nicer. And Cissy Carter – more than everything else he had looked forward to meeting Cissy. Prissy had seen her often, and even during the last week she had written to Hugh John (Prissy always did like to write letters) that Cissy Carter was just splendid – so much older and so improved. Cissy was now nearly seventeen, being (as before) a year and three months older than Hugh John.
Now the distinguished military hero had not been much troubled with sentiment during his school terms. Soldiers at the front never are. He was fully occupied in doing his lessons fairly. He got on well with "the fellows." He was anxious to keep up his end in the games. But, for all that, during these years he had sacredly kept the half of the crooked sixpence in his box, hidden in the end of a tie which he never wore. Now, however, he had looked it out, and by dint of hammering his imagination, he had managed to squeeze out an amount of feeling which quite astonished himself.
He would be noble, generous, forbearing. He remembered how faithfully Cissy had loved him, and how unresponsive he had been in the past. He resolved that all would be very different now.
It was.
Then again he had brought back a record of some distinction from St. Salvator's. He had won the school golf championship. He possessed also a fine bat with an inscription on silver, telling how in the match with St. Aiden's, a rival college of much pretension, he had made 100 not out, and taken eight wickets for sixty-nine.
Besides this presentation cricket bat Hugh John had brought home only one other prize. This was a fitted dressing-bag of beautiful design, with a whole armoury of wonderful silver-plated things inside. It was known as the Good Conduct Prize, and was awarded every year, not by the masters, but by the free votes of all the boys. Prissy was enormously proud of this tribute paid to her brother by his companions. The donor was an old gentleman whose favourite hobby was the promotion of the finer manners of the ancient days, and the terms of the remit on which the award must be made were, that it should be given to the boy who, in the opinion of his fellow-students, was most distinguished for consistent good manners and polite breeding, shown both by his conduct to his superiors in school, and in association with his equals in the playing fields.
At first Hugh John had taken no interest whatever in this award, perhaps from a feeling that his own claims were somewhat slender – or thinking that the prize would merely be some "old book or other." But it happened that, in order to stimulate the school during the last lax and sluggish days of the summer term, the head-master took out the fittings of the dressing-bag, and set the stand containing them on his desk in view of all.
There was a set of razors among them.
Instantly Hugh John's heart yearned with a mighty desire to obtain that prize. How splendid it would be if he could appear at home before Toady Lion and Cissy Carter with a moustache!
That night he considered the matter from all points of view – and felt his muscles. In the morning he was down bright and early. He prowled about the purlieus of the playground. At the back of the gymnasium he met Ashwell Major.
"I say, Ashwell Major," he said, "about that Good Conduct Prize – who are you going to vote for?"
"Well," replied Ashwell Major, "I haven't thought much – I suppose Sammy Carter."
"Oh, humbug!" cried our hero; "see here, Sammy will get tons of prizes anyway. What does he want with that one too?"
"Well," said the other, "let's give it to little Brown. Butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. He's such a cake."
Hugh John felt that the time for moral suasion had come.
"Smell that!" he said, suddenly extending the clenched fist with which a week before he had made "bran mash" of the bully of the school.
Reluctantly Ashwell Major's nostrils inhaled the bouquet of Hugh John's knuckles. Ashwell Major seemed to have a dainty and discriminating taste in perfumes, for he did not appear to relish this one.
Then Ashwell Major said that now he was going to vote solidly for Hugh John Smith. He had come to the conclusion that his manners were quite exceptional.
And so as the day went on, did the candidate for the fitted dressing-bag argue with the other boarders, waylaying them one by one as they came out into the playground. The day-boys followed, and each enjoyed the privilege of a smell at the fist of power.
"I rejoice to announce that the Good Conduct Prize has been awarded by the unanimous vote of all the scholars of Saint Salvator's to Hugh John Picton Smith of the fifth form. I am the more pleased with this result, that I have never before known such complete and remarkable unanimity of choice in the long and distinguished history of this institution."
These were the memorable words of the headmaster on the great day of the prize-giving. Whereupon our hero, going up to receive his well-earned distinction, blushed modestly and becomingly; and was gazed upon with wrapt wonder by the matrons and maids assembled, as beyond controversy the model boy of the school. And such a burst of cheering followed him to his seat as had never been heard within the walls of St. Salvator's. For quite casually Hugh John had mentioned that he would be on the look-out for any fellow that was a sneak and didn't cheer like blazes.
Moral. —There is no moral to this chapter.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
HUGH JOHN'S BLIGHTED HEART
ON the first evening at home Hugh John put on his new straw hat with its becoming school ribbon of brown, white and blue, for he did not forget that Prissy had described Cissy Carter as "such a pretty girl." Now pretty girls are quite nice when they are jolly. What a romp he would have, and even the stile would not be half bad.
He ran down to the landing-stage, having given his old bat and third best fishing-rod to his brother to occupy his attention. Toady Lion was in an unusually adoring frame of mind, chiefly owing to the new bat with the silver inscription which Hugh John had brought home with him. If that were Toady Lion's attitude, how would it be with the enthusiastic Cissy Carter? She must be more than sixteen now. He liked grown-up girls, he thought, so long as they were pretty. And Cissy was pretty, Prissy had distinctly said so.
The white punt bumped against the landing-stage, but the brown was gone. However, he could see it at the other side, swaying against the new pier which Mr. Davenant Carter had built opposite to that of Windy Standard. This was another improvement; you used to have to tie the boat to a bush of bog-myrtle and jump into wet squashy ground. The returned exile sculled over and tied up the punt to an iron ring.
Then with a high and joyous heart he started over the moor, taking the well-beaten path towards Oaklands.
Suddenly, through the wood as it grew thinner and more birchy, he saw the gleam of a white dress. Two girls were walking – no, not two girls, Prissy and a young lady.
"Oh hang!" said Hugh John to himself, "somebody that's stopping with the Carters. She'll go taking up all Cissy's time, and I wanted to see such a lot of her."
The white dresses and summer hats walked composedly on.
"I tell you what," said Hugh John to himself, "I'll scoot through the woods and give them a surprise."
And in five minutes he leaped from a bank into the road immediately before the girls. Prissy gave a little scream, threw up her hands, and then ran eagerly to him.
"Why, Hugh John," she cried, "have you really come? How could you frighten us like that, you bad boy!"
And she kissed him – well, just as Prissy always did.
Meanwhile the young lady had turned partly away, and was pulling carelessly at a leaf – as if such proceedings, if not exactly offensive, were nevertheless highly uninteresting.
"Cissy," called Priscilla at last, "won't you come and shake hands with Hugh John."
The girl turned slowly. She was robed in white linen belted with slim scarlet. The dress came quite down to the tops of her dainty boots. She held out her hand.
"How do you do – ah, Mr. Smith?" she said, with her fingers very much extended indeed.
Hugh John gasped, and for a long moment found no word to say.
"Why, Cissy, how you've grown!" he cried at length. But observing no gleam of fellow-feeling in his quondam comrade's eyes, he added somewhat lamely, "I mean how do you do, Miss – Miss Carter?"
There was silence after this, as the three walked on together, Prissy talking valiantly in order to cover the long and distressful silences. Hugh John's usual bubbling river of speech was frozen upon his lips. He had a thousand things to tell, a thousand thousand to ask. But now it did not seem worth while to speak of one. Why should a young lady like this, with tan gloves half-way to her elbows and the shiniest shoes, with stockings of black silk striped with red, care to hear about his wonderful bat for the three-figure score at cricket, or the fact that he had won the golf medal by doing the round in ninety-five? He had even thought of taking some credit (girls will suck in anything you tell them, you know) for his place in his class, which was seventh. But he had intended to suppress the fact that the fifth form was not a very large one at St. Salvator's.
But now he suddenly became conscious that these trivialities could not possibly interest a young lady who talked about the Hunt Ball in some such fashion as this: "He is such a nice partner, don't you know! He dances – oh, like an angel, and the floor was – well, just perfection!"
Hugh John did not catch the name of this paragon; but he hated the beast anyhow. He did not know that Cissy was only bragging about her bat, and cracking up her score at golf.
"Have you seen 'The White Lady of Avenel' at the Sobriety Theatre, Mr. Smith?" she said, suddenly turning to him.
"No," grunted Hugh John, "but I've seen the Drury Lane pantomime. It was prime!"
The next moment he was sorry he had said it. But the truth slipped out before he knew. For so little was Hugh John used to the society of grown-up big girls, that he did not know any better than to tell them the truth.
"Ah, yes!" commented Cissy Carter condescendingly, "I used quite to like going to pantomimes when I was a child!"
A slight and elegant young man, with a curling moustache turned up at the ends, came towards them down the bank. He had grey-and-white striped trousers on, a dark cutaway coat, and a smart straw hat set on the back of his head. He wore gloves and walked with a pretty cane. Hugh John loathed him on sight.
"Good-evening, Courtenay," said Cissy familiarly, "this is my friend, Prissy Smith, of whom you have heard me speak; and this is her brother just home from school!"
("What a beast! I hate him! Calls that a moustache, I daresay. Ha, ha! he should just see Ashwell Major's. And I can lick Ashwell Major with one hand!")
"Aw," said the young man with the cane, superciliously stroking his maligned upper lip, "the preparatory school, I daresay – Lord, was at one once myself – beastly hole!"
("I don't doubt it, you look it," was Hugh John's mental note.) Aloud he said, "Saint Salvator's is a ripping place. We beat Glen Fetto by an innings and ninety-one!"
Mr. Courtenay Carling took no notice. He was talking earnestly and confidentially to his cousin. Hugh John had had enough of this.
"Come on, Priss," he said roughly, "let's go home."
Prissy was nothing loath. She was just aching to get him by himself, so that she might begin to burn incense at his manly shrine. She had had stacks of it ready, and the match laid for weeks and weeks.
"Good-night," said Cissy frigidly. Hugh John took hold of her dainty gloved fingers as gingerly as if each had been a stinging nettle, and dropped them as quickly. Mr. Courtenay Carling paused in his conversation just long enough to say over his shoulder, "Ah – ta-ta – got lots of pets to run round and see, I s'pose – rabbits and guinea-pigs; used to keep 'em myself, you know, beastly things, ta-ta!"
And with Cissy by his side he moved off, alternately twirling his moustache and glancing approvingly down at her. Cissy on her part never once looked round, but kept poking her parasol into the plants at the side of the road, as determinedly as if it had been the old pike manufactured by the exiled king O'Donowitch. Such treatment could not have been at all good for such a miracle of silk and lace and cane; but somehow its owner did not seem to mind.
"What an awful brute!" burst out Hugh John, as soon as Prissy and he were clear.
"Oh, how can you say so!" said Prissy, much surprised; "why, every one thinks him so nice. He has such lots of money, and is going to stand for Parliament – that is, if his uncle would only die, or have something happen to him!"
Her brother snorted, as if to convey his contempt for "everybody's" opinion on such a matter; but Prissy was too happy to care for aught save the fact that once more her dear Hugh John was safe at home.
"Do you know," she said lovingly, "I could not sleep last night for thinking of your coming! It is so splendid. There's the loveliest lot of roses being planted in the new potting house, and I've got a pearl necklace to show you – such a beauty – and – "
Thus she rattled on, joyously ticking off all the things she had to show him. She ran a little ahead to look at him, then ran as quickly back to hug him. "Oh, you dear!" she exclaimed. And all the while the heart of the former valiant soldier sank deep and ever deeper into the split-new cricketing shoes he had been so proud of when he sallied forth to meet Cissy Carter by the stile.
"Come on," she cried presently, picking up her skirts. "I'm so excited I don't know what to do. I can't keep quiet. I believe I can race you yet, for all you're so big and have won a silver cricket bat. How I shall love to see it! Come on, Hugh John, I'll race you to the gipsy camp for a pound of candy!"
But Hugh John did not want to race. He did not want not to race. He did not want ever to do anything any more – only to fade away and die. His heart was cold and dead within him. He felt that he would never know happiness again. But he could not bear to disappoint Prissy the first night. Besides, he could easily enough beat her – he was sure of that. So he smiled indulgently and nodded acquiescence. He had not told her that he had won the school mile handicap from scratch.
They started, and Hugh John began to run scientifically, as he had been taught to do at school, keeping a little behind Prissy, ready to spurt at the last and win by a neck. Doubtless this would have answered splendidly, only that Prissy ran so fast. She did not know anything about scientific sprinting, but she could run like the wind. So by the time they reached the Partan Burn she had completely outclassed Hugh John. With her skirts held high in her hand over she flew like a bird; but her brother, jumping the least bit too soon, went splash into the shallows, sending the water ten feet into the air.
Like a shot Prissy was back, and reached a hand down to the vanquished scientific athlete.
"Oh, I'm so sorry, Hugh John," she said; "I ought to have told you it had been widened. Don't let's race any more. I think I must have started too soon, and you'd have beaten me anyway. Here's the gipsy camp."
The world-weary exile looked about him. He had thought that at least it might be some manly pleasure to see Billy Blythe once more, and try a round with the Bounding Brothers. After all, what did it matter about girls? He had a twelve-bladed knife in his pocket which he intended for Billy, and he knew a trick of boxing – a feint with the right, and then an upward blow with the left, which he knew would interest his friend.
But the tents were gone. The place where they had stood was green and unencumbered. Only an aged crone or two moved slowly about among the small thatched cottages. To one of these Hugh John addressed himself.
"Eh, master – Billy Blythe – why, he be 'listed for a sodger – a corp'ral they say he be, and may be sergeant by this time, shouldn't wonder. Eh, dearie, and the Boundin' Brothers – oh! ye mean the joompin' lads. They're off wi' a circus in Ireland. Nowt left but me and my owd mon! Thank ye, sir, you be a gentleman born, as anybody can see without the crossin' o' the hand."
Sadly Hugh John moved away, a still more blighted being. He left Prissy at the white lodge-gate in order that she might go home to meet Mr. Picton Smith on his return from the county town, where he had been judging the horses at an agricultural show. He would take a walk through the town, he said to himself, and perhaps he might meet some of his old enemies. He felt that above everything he would enjoy a sharp tussle. After all what save valour was worth living for? Wait till he was a soldier, and came back in uniform with a sword by his side and the scar of a wound on his forehead – would Cissy Carter despise him then? He would show her! In the meantime he had learned certain tricks of fence which he would rather like to prove on the countenances of his former foes.
So with renewed hope in his heart he took his way through the town of Edam. The lamps were just being lighted, and Hugh John lounged along through the early dusk with his hands in his pockets, looking out for a cause of offence. Presently he came upon a brilliantly lighted building, into which young men and women were entering singly and in pairs.
A hanging lamp shone down upon a noticeboard. He had nothing better to do. He stopped and read —
Edam Mutual Improvement Society
SEASON 18 —
Hon. President.– Rev. Mr. Burnham
Hon. Vice-President.– Mr. N. Donnan
Hon. Sec. and Treasurer.– Mr. Nathaniel Cuthbertson
DEBATE TO-NIGHT
Subject.– "Is the Pen mightier than the Sword?"
Affirmative.– Mr. N. Donnan
Negative.– Mr. Burnham
All are Cordially Invited
Bring your Hymn-books
Hugh John did not accept the invitation, perhaps because he had no hymn-book. He only waited outside to hear Mr. N. Donnan's opening sentence. It ran thus: "All ages of the world's history have borne testimony to the fact that peace is preferable to war, right to might, and the sweet still voice of Reason to the savage compulsions of brutal Force."
"Oh, hang!" ejaculated Hugh John, doubling his fist; "did you ever hear such rot? I wish I could jolly well fetch Nipper Donnan one on the nob!"
And he sauntered on till he came to the burying-ground of Edam's ancient abbey. He wandered aimlessly up the short avenue, stood at the gate a while, then kicked it open and went in. He clambered about among the graves, stumbling over the grassy mounds till he came to the tombs of his ancestors. At least they were not quite his ancestors, but the principle was the same. "There's nothing exclusive about me. I'll adopt them," said Hugh John to himself, as many another distinguished person had done before him. They were in fact the tombs of the Lorraines, the ancient possessors and original architects of the Castle of Windy Standard, which he had spilt his best blood to defend. Well, it was to attack. But no matter.
He sat down and looked at the defaced and battered tombs in silence. Mighty thoughts coursed through his brain. His heart was filled full to the brim with the sadness of mortality. Tears of hopeless resignation stood in his eyes. It was the end, the solemn end of all. Soon he, too, like them, would be lying low and quiet. He began to be conscious of a general fatal weakness of the system, a hollowness of the chest (or stomach), which showed that the end was near.
