Hemming, the adventurer

The colonel sat in Captain Hemming's room. He looked about at the snug furnishings, and the photographs above the chimney. Even the row of polished spurs on their rack against the wall, and the line of well-shone boots and shoes at the head of the bed, could not do away with the homelike air of the room.

"Even in Dublin, a man with something over his pay can make himself comfortable, in seven months," mused the colonel. Being a bachelor himself, he liked the way things were arranged. For instance, the small book-shelf above the bed, with its freight of well-thumbed volumes, tobacco-jar, and match-box, appealed to him. He selected a cigarette from an open box at his elbow, and, lighting it, sighed contentedly. In reaching back to deposit the burnt match on an ash-tray, his hand upset a stack of folded papers and spilled them on the floor.

"The devil!" he exclaimed, and, doubling up, scooped for the nearest.

What's this, he wondered, as a yard or two of narrow, printed matter unrolled from his hand. He was a stranger to galley-proofs. He looked at the top of the upper strip, and saw, in heavy, black type, "The Colonel and the Lady." Then he settled back in the chair, crossed his thin, tight-clad legs, and smoothed the proof. Ten minutes later Hemming's orderly entered and mended the fire; but the colonel did not look up. The orderly retired. The clock on the chimneypiece ticked away the seconds all unheeded. The shadows lengthened at the windows, and at last the colonel straightened himself, and replaced the papers. He smiled.

"Sly old Hemming," he remarked, and laughed outright. "He shouldn't show us up like that," he said, "but it's a good yarn. Wonder if he will lend it to me to finish to-night?"

Just then Captain Hemming entered.

By this time the room was dusk with the twilight of early spring. He did not sight the colonel immediately, and, going over to a wardrobe, hung up his cap and greatcoat. He was in "undress" uniform--his blue serge tunic somewhat shabby, but his riding-breeches and high, spurred boots smart and new. The colonel coughed.

Though the captain's greeting was prompt and polite, it did not hide his surprise.

"I dropped in to speak about Tomilson--he seems in a bad way," the other explained. Tomilson was a full private--in both rank and condition.

Hemming advised leniency in this case. He had a soft heart for the men, in spite of his abrupt diction, and the uncompromising glare of his single eye-glass. When the commanding officer was about to take his departure, the captain asked him to wait a minute. His manner was as cool as ever.

"I intend resigning my commission, sir. I decided on the course some days ago, and meant to speak to you after parade to-morrow," he said.

"Bless me," exclaimed the colonel, "what the devil have you been up to?"

The other smiled,--a somewhat thin smile,--and replied that he had not disgraced the regiment, or done anything low. "But I'm down to my pay again," he exclaimed, "and I can't live on that."

"Why not? Have you ever tried?" inquired the colonel.

Hemming did not answer the question, but waited, with his hands behind his back, and his face toward the fast darkening windows.

"I'm sorry for it," said the older man, at last. "You are a good officer,--forgive my saying so,--and--and the mess swears by you. I hope you have suffered no serious misfortune."

The captain laughed wanly.

"It seems rather serious to me," he replied. "I've come to the end of my little pile."

"The second, I believe," remarked the colonel.

Hemming nodded.

"It beats me," exclaimed his superior, and looked as if an explanation would be welcome.

"You would understand, sir, if you were as big a fool as I have been. Good nature, without common business sense to guide it, gets away with more money than viciousness."

He stared gravely at the reclining colonel. "At last I have learned my lesson," he concluded, "and it is this--put not your trust in cads."

The colonel laughed uneasily, and quitted the room without asking for the loan of the proof-sheets. Hemming sat down in the vacated chair. His face now wore a pleasanter expression.

"Thank God, I'm not afraid of work," he said, "but may the devil fly away with that cad Penthouse. How can a blood-relation of Molly's be such a sneaking, mealy-mouthed little cur? Now, while I am lying here winged, thanks to my childish generosity and his beastliness, he is skipping around in London, on two months' leave. Herbert Hemming is done with the ways of lambs and idiots." Jumping to his feet, he went to the door and shouted for his man. A few minutes later, with the candles glowing softly on sword and photograph, spur and book-back, he dressed for dinner.

That night the mess found him more talkative than usual. But he left early, for his own quarters. The groups in the anteroom thinned gradually, as the men went about their various concerns, some to their rooms, and some to the town, and one across the square to the colonel's quarters, where the colonel's youngest sister awaited him. This sister was a thorn in the colonel's flesh. She would not let him smoke his pipe in the drawing-room (though he was sure she smoked cigarettes there), and he heartily hoped his junior major would marry her. The junior major hoped so too, and, with this hope in his breast, took his departure, leaving Spalding, a subaltern, and Major O'Grady alone by the piano.

O'Grady balanced his smouldering cigarette on the edge of the music-stand, and strummed a few erratic bars.

"The other chaps must have suspected something," said Spalding. "I wondered why they all cleared out."

"What are ye doing here, ye impudent young divil? Should think ye'd skeedaddle down-town, now that Penthouse is in London, and ye've got a chance with the lady," cried the stout Irish major. The subaltern's boyish face took on an ugly expression.

"Penthouse--that bounder," he sneered.

"I must admit that his manners are a trifle airy," returned O'Grady, "but the same can be truly said of most subs of this glorious age."

"I'm not objecting to his manners, major, and I'm not defending my own," said Spalding. "I'm simply naming him a bounder."

O'Grady took up his cigarette, and turned his back on the keyboard.

"What are ye kicking about?" he inquired.

"Well," replied Spalding, anxiously examining the ceiling, "I happen to know things about him."

"Ye're a gossip, me boy, that's what ye are," cried the major, "and of all contemptible things, the worst is a male gossip. What do ye happen to know about him, me boy?"

A faint smile played across the lieutenant's upturned face; but the impatient major did not notice it.

"To begin with, he's some sort of cousin to a Miss Travers, an English girl whom Hemming is in love with," said Spalding.

"Then you object to him on purely social grounds," interrupted the Irishman.

"Oh, shut up, and let me tell my tale. Social grounds be shot--Miss Travers is daughter of a lord bish-hop. Penthouse is son of a baronet. What I'm getting at is that good old Hemming, just because this chap is related to his girl, has looked after him like a dry-nurse for more than a year. That is right enough. But--and this is not known by any one but me--Hemming backed a lot of his paper, and for the last two months he has been paying the piper. Once upon a time, in the memory of man, Hemming had some money, but I'll eat my helmet if he has any now."