Through Russian Snows (2 page)

When Julian arrived at the age of nineteen it was tacitly understood
that the idea of his going into the army had been altogether dropped,
and that when a commission was asked for, it would be for Frank.
Although Julian was still her favourite, Mrs. Troutbeck was more
favourably disposed towards Frank than of old. She knew from her friends
that he was quite as popular among his schoolmates as his brother had
been, although in a different way. He was a hard and steady worker, but
he played as hard as he worked, and was a leader in every game. He,
however, could say "no" with a decision that was at once recognized as
being final, and was never to be persuaded into joining in any forbidden
amusement or to take share in any mischievous adventure. When his own
work was done he was always willing to give a quarter of an hour to
assist any younger lad who found his lessons too hard for him, and
though he was the last boy to whom any one would think of applying for a
loan of money, he would give to the extent of his power in any case
where a subscription was raised for a really meritorious purpose.

Thus when the school contributed a handsome sum towards a fund that was
being raised for the relief of the families of the fishermen who had
been lost, when four of their boats were wrecked in a storm, no one
except the boys who got up the collection knew that nearly half the
amount for which the school gained credit came from the pocket of Frank
Wyatt.

The brothers, though differing so widely in disposition, were very fond
of each other. In his younger years Frank had looked up to his big
brother as a sort of hero, and Julian's good-nature and easy-going
temper led him to be always kind to his young brother, and to give him
what he valued most—assistance at his lessons and a patient attention
to all his difficulties. As the years went on, Frank came to perceive
clearly enough the weak points in his brother's character, and with his
usual outspokenness sometimes remonstrated with him strongly.

"It is horrible to see a fellow like you wasting your life as you do,
Julian. If you don't care for the army, why don't you do something else?
I should not care what it was, so that it but gave you something to
occupy yourself, and if it took you out of here, all the better. You
know that you are not doing yourself any good."

"I am not doing myself any harm, you young beggar," Julian replied good
temperedly.

"I don't know, Julian," the boy said sturdily; "you are not looking half
as well as you used to do. I am sure late hours don't suit you, and
there is no good to be got out of billiards. I know the sort of fellows
you meet there are not the kind to do you any good, or that father would
have liked to see you associate with if he had been alive. Just ask
yourself honestly if you think he would. If you can say 'yes,' I will
shut up and say no more about it; but can you say 'yes'?"

Julian was silent. "I don't know that I can," he said after a pause.
"There is no harm in any of them that I know of, but I suppose that in
the way you put it, they are not the set father would have fancied, with
his strict notions. I have thought of giving it up a good many times,
but it is an awkward thing, when you are mixed up with a lot of
fellows, to drop them without any reason."

"You have only got to say that you find late hours don't agree with you,
and that you have made up your mind to cut it altogether."

"That is all very well for you, Frank, and I will do you justice to say
that if you determined to do a thing, you would do it without minding
what any one said."

"Without minding what any one I did not care for, said," Frank
interrupted. "Certainly; why should I heed a bit what people I do not
care for say, so long as I feel that I am doing what is right."

"I wish I were as strong-willed as you are, Frank," Julian said rather
ruefully, "then I should not have to put up with being bullied by a
young brother."

"You are too good tempered, Julian," Frank said, almost angrily. "Here
are you, six feet high and as strong as a horse, and with plenty of
brain for anything, just wasting your life. Look at the position father
held here, and ask yourself how many of his old friends do you know.
Why, rather than go on as you are doing, I would enlist and go out to
the Peninsula and fight the French. That would put an end to all this
sort of thing, and you could come back again and start afresh. You will
have money enough for anything you like. You come into half father's
£16,000 when you come of age, and I have no doubt that you will have
Aunt's money."

"Why should I?" Julian asked in a more aggrieved tone than he had
hitherto used.

"Because you are her favourite, Julian, and quite right that you should
be. You have always been awfully good to her, and that is one reason why
I hate you to be out of an evening; for although she never says a word
against you, and certainly would not hear any one else do so, I tell you
it gives me the blues to see her face as she sits there listening for
your footsteps."

"It is a beastly shame, and I will give it up, Frank; honour bright, I
will."

"That is right, old fellow; I knew you would if you could only once peep
in through the window of an evening and see her face."

"As for her money," Julian went on, "if she does not divide it equally
between us, I shall, you may be sure."

"I sha'n't want it," Frank said decidedly. "You know I mean to go into
the army, and with the interest of my own money I shall have as much as
I shall possibly want, and if I had more it would only bother me, and do
me harm in my profession. With you it is just the other way. You are the
head of the family, and as Father's son ought to take a good place. You
could buy an estate and settle down on it, and what with its management,
and with horses and hunting and shooting, you would be just in your
element."

"Well, we will see about it when the time comes. I am sure I hope the
old lady will be with us for a long time yet. She is as kind-hearted a
soul as ever lived, though it would have been better for me, no doubt,
if she held the reins a little tighter. Well, anyhow, Frank, I will cut
the billiards altogether."

They exchanged a silent grip of the hand on the promise, and Julian,
looking more serious than usual, put on his hat and went out. There was
a curious reversal of the usual relations between the brothers. Julian,
although he always laughed at his young brother's assumption of the part
of mentor, really leant upon his stronger will, and as often as not,
even if unconsciously, yielded to his influence, while Frank's
admiration for his brother was heightened by the unfailing good temper
with which the latter received his remonstrances and advice. "He is an
awfully good fellow," he said to himself when Julian left the room.
"Anyone else would have got into a rage at my interference; but he has
only one fault; he can't say no, and that is at the root of everything.
I can't understand myself why a fellow finds it more difficult to say no
than to say yes. If it is right to do a thing one does it, if it is not
right one leaves it alone, and the worst one has to stand, if you don't
do what other fellows want, is a certain amount of chaff, and that hurts
no one."

Frank, indeed, was just as good tempered as Julian, although in an
entirely different way. He had never been known to be in a passion, but
put remonstrance and chaff aside quietly, and went his own way without
being in the slightest degree affected by them.

Julian kept his promise, and was seen no more in the billiard saloon.
Fortunately for him the young fellows with whom he was in the habit of
playing were all townsmen, clerks, the sons of the richer tradesmen, or
of men who owned fishing-boats or trading vessels, and others of that
class—not, indeed, as Frank had said, the sort of men whom Colonel
Wyatt would have cared for his son to have associated with—but harmless
young fellows who frequented the billiard-rooms as a source of amusement
and not of profit, and who therefore had no motive for urging Julian to
play. To Mrs. Troutbeck's delight he now spent four or five evenings at
home, only going out for an hour to smoke a pipe and to have a chat with
the fishermen. Once or twice a week he would be absent all night, going
out, as he told his aunt, for a night's fishing, and generally returning
in the morning with half a dozen mackerel or other fish as his share of
the night's work.

Sometimes he would ask Frank to accompany him, and the latter, when he
had no particular work on hand, would do so, and thoroughly enjoyed the
sport.

Smuggling was at the time carried on extensively, and nowhere more
actively than between Weymouth and Exmouth on the one hand, and Swanage
on the other. Consequently, in spite of the vigilance of the revenue
men, cargoes were frequently run. The long projection of Chesil Beach
and Portland afforded a great advantage to the smugglers; and Lieutenant
Downes, who commanded the revenue cutter
Boxer
, had been heard to
declare that he would gladly subscribe a year's pay if a channel could
be cut through the beach. Even when he obtained information that a cargo
was likely to be run to the west, unless the winds and tides were alike
propitious, it took so long a time to get round Portland Bill that he
was certain to arrive too late to interfere with the landing, while, at
times, an adverse wind and the terrors of the "race" with its tremendous
current and angry waves would keep the
Boxer
lying for days to the
west of the Island, returning to Weymouth only to hear that during her
absence a lugger had landed her cargo somewhere to the east.

"Job himself would have lost his temper if he had been a revenue officer
at Weymouth," Lieutenant Downes would exclaim angrily. "Why, sir, I
would rather lie for three months off the mouth of an African river
looking for slavers, than be stationed at Weymouth in search of
smuggling craft, for a month; it is enough to wear a man to a
thread-paper. Half the coast population seem to me to be in alliance
with these rascals, and I am so accustomed to false information now,
that as a rule when one of my men gets a hint that a cargo is going to
be run near Swanage I start at once for the west, knowing well enough
that wherever the affair is to come off it certainly will not be within
ten miles of the point named. Even in Weymouth itself the sympathy of
the population lies rather with the smugglers than the revenue men."

The long war with France had rendered brandy, French wines, lace, and
silks fabulously dear, and the heavy duties charged reduced to a
minimum the legitimate traffic that might otherwise have been carried
on; therefore, even well-to-do people favoured the men who brought these
luxuries to their doors, at a mere fraction of the price that they would
otherwise have had to pay for them. Then, too, there was an element of
romance in the career of a smuggler who risked his life every day, and
whose adventures, escapes, and fights with the revenue men were told
round every fireside. The revenue officer was not far wrong when he said
that the greater portion of the population round the coast, including
all classes, were friendly to, if not in actual alliance with, the
smugglers. Julian was well aware that many of the fishermen with whom he
went out often lent a hand to the smugglers in landing their goods and
taking them inland, or in hiding them in caves in the cliffs known only
to the smugglers and themselves. He had heard many stories from them of
adventures in which they had been engaged, and the manner in which, by
showing signal lights from the sea, they had induced the revenue men to
hurry to the spot at which they had seen a flash, and so to leave the
coast clear for the landing of the goods.

"It must be great fun," he said one day. "I must say I should like to
take part in running a cargo, for once."

"Well, Master Julian, there would not be much difficulty about that, if
so be you really mean it. We can put you up to it easy enough, but you
know, sir, it isn't all fun. Sometimes the revenue men come down upon us
in spite of all the pains we take to throw them off the scent. Captain
Downes is getting that artful that one is never sure whether he has been
got safely away or not. A fortnight ago he pretty nigh came down on a
lugger that was landing a cargo in Lulworth Cove. We thought that it had
all been managed well. Word had gone round that the cargo was to be run
there, and the morning before, a woman went on to the cliffs and got in
talk with one of the revenue men. She let out, as how her husband had
been beating her, and she had made up her mind to pay him out. There was
going, she said, to be a cargo run that night at a point half way
between Weymouth and Lyme Regis.

"I know she did the part well, as she acted it on three or four of us
afterwards, and the way she pretended to be in a passion and as spiteful
as a cat, would have taken any fellow in. In course the revenue chap
asked her what her name was and where she lived, and I expect they did
not find her when they looked for her afterwards in the place she told
him. He wanted her to go with him to the officer of the station, but she
said that she would never do that, for if it got to be known that she
had peached about it, it would be as much as her life was worth. Well, a
boy who was watching saw the revenue chap go off, as soon as she was out
of sight, straight to the coast-guard station, and ten minutes later the
officer in charge there set off for Weymouth.

"The boy followed and he saw him go on board the
Boxer
. Directly
afterwards Captain Downes came ashore with him and had a long talk with
the chief of the coast-guard there; then he went on board again, and we
all chuckled when we saw the
Boxer
get up her anchor, set all sail,
make out to Portland, and go round the end of the rock. Two hours later
a look-out on the hills saw her bearing out to sea to the southwest,
meaning, in course, to run into the bay after it was dark. On shore the
officer at Weymouth got a horse and rode along the cliffs to the
eastward. He stopped at each coast-guard station, right on past
Lulworth, and soon afterwards three parts of the men at each of them
turned out and marched away west.