A Modern Mercenary. Prichard Kate

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СКАЧАТЬ present. Of him it was told that while still a lieutenant he had been offered, as a reward for services rendered to the Crown, the command of any Maäsaun regiment he might choose to select, and he had replied that he would rather be a lieutenant of the Guard than a field-marshal elsewhere. And so he remained to favour the mess with his somewhat blood-and-iron jokes. The mess-room was a spacious hall, and though only three men sat at table the place seemed full of life and colour from the black polished flooring to the carved and vaulted ceiling, from which hung in tattered folds the old banners of the regiment. Red hangings partially draped the dark walls, and over all the light from the stained dome fell in rich colour; while through the talk of the men ran the one weird sound that never ceased about those walls, the whimpering of the wind.

      Suddenly the door opened, and a young man, small and thin, with a faint down upon his upper lip, entered quickly.

      'Unziar has won!' he cried.

      'Won what?' asked Adiron, the senior man present, as he poured out another glass of wine.

      'Won his second match against Abenfeldt with seven to spare.'

      Adiron stretched his legs and leant back; his figure was well adapted for leaning back.

      'My good Adolph, explain yourself.'

      'Hadn't you heard of it? Why, they arranged it last night at Countess Sagan's.'

      'Abenfeldt fancies himself as a shot, but he forgot he had to do with Unziar,' laughed Captain Adiron.

      'Abenfeldt bet that he could shoot more swallows in half an hour before breakfast than any man in Révonde. That was in September, you know, and Unziar took him up – with service revolvers – and shot fifteen, winning easily. Abenfeldt can't get over it, and challenged him to a shooting-match again last night. I say,' Adolph broke off, and his face altered; he thrust out a little foot and surveyed the spurred boot that covered it critically, 'I've just ridden back from Brale. That new charger of mine bolted down the hill by the paling. I went to see Insermann; they had not been able to move him, you know.'

      'Well,' urged all three voices at once.

      'Insermann's dead. He died last night at dinner time.'

      The men's eyes shot for a second at Insermann's empty place, which he was never to occupy again.

      'Ah, I told him that scooping pass of his was a mistake,' commented Adiron. 'And the worst of it is that his death breaks the line of the Xanthal Insermanns. Poor old Insermann! he was the last of a good stock, and I, for one, don't like new blood. What have you to say about that pass now, Colendorp? If I am not mistaken, you defended it?'

      'Insermann was by three inches too tall,' replied the individual addressed. 'For a short man one would be hard put to it to discover a more useful – Hullo!'

      The folding doors had been flung open with a crash, and a man of fifty or thereabouts, dressed in the gorgeous green and gold of the Guard, strode in tempestuously. He was short and heavily built, with a weather-red face and a coarse, overhanging moustache, which gave him rather the expression of an angry walrus. So angry, indeed, was he that his words came volleying out inarticulately. In his hand he held a crumpled sheet of parchment.

      The men rose as he took his place at the head of the table.

      'Insermann's dead, and Selpdorf says – ' The Colonel's choked ejaculations broke, his voice failed him, and he sent the paper fluttering from his hand across the silver and glass till little Adolf picked it up. In another moment Colonel Wallenloup was more coherent.

      'I am afraid I must have walked up the hill rather too quickly,' he said apologetically, after draining a great goblet of beer. 'However, it is not to be denied that M. Selpdorf begins to take too much upon himself. The entire administration of the State is in his hands, and yet he is not satisfied with that position! No, he aims even higher; he desires to nominate the officers of his Highness's Guard!'

      Every man present had his own peculiarity. The Colonel's reputation would not have stood so high as it actually did but for his insensate temper. Perhaps the anecdote told of him that, when discussing the point of having been ruled out of action during certain army manœuvres he became so enraged that he pursued the umpire in question with a wooden tent hammer, had added more to his popularity than all his thirty odd years of service and his immense genius for fortification.

      Some of the Continental armies are always marking time, and they do not prize the most the man who marks time best, but the man who can bring some humour or touch of romance into the dullness of routine, and they prefer the humour to be led up to by the winding road of eccentricity. It was never dull with the Guard. They possessed officers who kept their world on the move.

      'Gentlemen,' said Wallenloup at length, when his last remark had been received with approval, 'I have the honour to inform you that M. Selpdorf has seen fit to appoint, vice Captain Insermann, deceased, Lieutenant John Rallywood, of the Frontier Cavalry.'

      A silence followed this announcement.

      'Upon whose recommendation has M. Selpdorf taken this step?' inquired Captain Colendorp gravely.

      'Reasons of State – mere reasons of State. He had the audacity to tell me so.'

      'I understood, sir, that you had other views?' said Adiron.

      'Well, yes, we had virtually agreed upon our choice, I may say, gentlemen.'

      'Certainly, sir. And you made that clear to the Chancellor?'

      'I did so – perfectly clear. I told him in the most reasonable manner that we wanted no condemned rabble in the Maäsaun Guard! I told him that we had practically decided on Abenfeldt in case of a vacancy occurring. I even went so far as to remind him that there had been Abenfeldts among us for four centuries.'

      'He couldn't meet that argument!' exclaimed Adiron.

      'No, he parried it, gracefully enough, I admit. He reminded me in turn that there had been Selpdorfs also in the Guard, and swore that had he a son of his own to nominate he must still at this moment have given the preference to this Englishman. I left him to reconsider the matter, however, and rode home, to find that already waiting for me in my quarters,' and he pointed to the parchment in Adolf's hand.

      Adolf looked up with a smile.

      'He will not join immediately, sir, this Rallywood?' he said with his gentle lisp.

      'Not for a week.'

      'Then it doesn't really matter, you know,' added the young man.

      Wallenloup's red-shot eyes gleamed upon him suddenly.

      'As your commanding officer, sir,' he said grimly, 'I don't understand your meaning, but – ' and an odd smile flickered about the savage lips.

      'As a private gentleman, Colonel – ' put in Colendorp.

      'As a private individual I understand your meaning very well. But if I were here as your colonel, Lieutenant Adolf, by Heaven, sir, not all the officers of the Guard, past or present' – he rose to his feet as he spoke, and grasping the hilt of his sword glared round upon them – 'should dare to hint at insult to a comrade!' and he drove the blade home with a clatter into its scabbard and strode out of the room as he had come, like a thunderstorm.

      The men waited in silence until the echo of his footsteps died away, and in the mind of each rose a vivid memory. It happened, from causes which might in the case of the Guard of Maäsau be called СКАЧАТЬ