Andy Gordon

“ Mike Hogan and George White are still boarding in a State institution, where they are likely to remain till the end of their term, though they would willingly relieve the State of the burden of their maintenance.
Rev. Dr. Euclid, honored and respected as of old, still remains principal of Hamilton Academy. He follows with strong interest the career of Andy Gordon, the greatest favorite among the hundreds of pupils whom he has had under his instruction, and he confidently predicts for him a brilliant future. ”

“ Gordon. You look at matters in the right light. I was always very much attached to Andy, as I may some time show. Not many boys would have defended my house and money as bravely as Andy did.”
“He was always a good boy. I have never had reason to feel ashamed of him,” said the mother, proudly.
Just then there was a knock at the door. Mrs. Gordon rose and opened it. To her surprise she saw before her the tall, dignified figure of Rev. Dr. Euclid, who the reader will remember was the preceptor of the Hamilton Academy.
Mrs. Gordon had a high respect for Dr. Euclid, and welcomed him cordially. ”

“ ANDY’S RESOLVE.
“Poor uncle Simon!” said Mrs. Gordon, after the letter had been read. “He seems to be in a difficult position.”
“Why doesn’t he send that man Brackett packing?” asked Andy, indignantly. “He can’t have much spirit.”
“You forget, Andy, how old he is. An old man is not so well able to contend for his rights as a man of middle age. Besides, it appears that his son-in-law has possession of the farm.” ”

“ No doubt, Andy will be glad to rest?”{106}
“I don’t let myself out for any such purpose,” said Herbert, hastily. “He is a poor boy, and needs the money. You wouldn’t expect a gentleman’s son to engage in any such business?”
“Andy is a gentleman’s son. If ever there was a gentleman, Mr. Gordon was one.” ”

“ Gordon smiled, but she was too much impressed by the serious position in which they were placed to feel as much amusement as Andy.
“I am afraid, Andy,” she said, “that Mr. Starr will deprive us of our furniture, unless something unexpected turns up in our favor.” ”

“ Mrs. Gordon supposed that her visitor had{68} some work which she wished Andy to do, and as the latter was always glad of a job, she answered:
“I am sure, Miss Sally, that Andy will be glad to do anything that you require.”
“I don’t want him to do anything,” answered Miss Peabody. “I want him to sleep at our house to-night.” ”

“ FOILING A HIGHWAYMAN.
Of course Andy was startled when he saw the pistol in close proximity to his head. I feel no hesitation in admitting that he felt far from comfortable. Some heroes are represented as startled by nothing, and afraid of nothing; but though Andy was unusually self-possessed for his years, he was not above the ordinary emotions of humanity. ”

“ They so plied him with hot biscuits, cake, preserves and pie that our hero felt uncomfortable when he rose from the table. Even then his hospitable entertainers did not seem to think he had eaten enough.
“Why, you haven’t made a supper, Andy,” said Miss Sally.
“I don’t think I ever ate so much in my life before at a single meal,” answered Andy. “If you don’t mind, I’ll go out and walk a little.”
“Certainly, Andy, if you wish.”
Andy went out and walked about the place.
“How lucky the Peabodys are!” he said to himself. “They have plenty to live upon, and don’t have to earn a cent. ”

“ His hatred, tantalised by the possibility, took a renewed life and sent the blood spinning through his veins like fire. He forgot the cold in his limbs, and the ice on the rocks, and clambered up in a reckless fury.
Meanwhile the mist was thickening continually, and by the time Gordon had completed his ascent and reached the point from which he had to diverge along the cliff's face, the night had fallen pitch-dark. He stood still for a moment, with his head bent forward, listening eagerly for a sound. Was he too late? ”

“ He was much excited, and talked and gesticulated violently.
"He says—" said Stedman; "he says—"
"What? yes; go on."
"He says—goodness me!—what do you think he says?"
"Well, what does he say?" cried Gordon, in great excitement. "Don't keep it all to yourself."
"He says," said Stedman, "that we are deceived. That he is no longer King of the Island of Opeki, that he is in great fear of us, and that he has got himself into no end of trouble. He says he sees that we are indeed mighty men, that to us he is as helpless as the wild boar before the javelin of the hunter." ”

“ With a flare of unrecking impertinence, and a racing recollection of a first dinner at Melbourne House, when he had given Lady Caroline Lamb such a blossom from his coat, Gordon drew the carnation from his buttonhole and handed it to Jane Clermont.
The crowd had looked to see him enter with the others; now as the vehicle rolled away, leaving him standing alone, the clamor, sharpened by his nonchalant act and by the smile which they could not translate, rose more derisive, more boldly mixed with insult. They were overcoming that dull inborn fear of the clod for the noble. ”

“ Gordon uttered an astonished and bewildered exclamation:
“Caro! What mad masquerade is this?”
She drew back under the pale intensity, the controlled agitation of his face. “Forgive me! forgive me!” Tumult was looking from her eyes, and her shoulders were heaving. “I could not help it! I have tried to forget you during all this past year. I cannot bear to see you only at Melbourne House and at parties and on the street. How pale you always are!” she went on. “Like a statue of marble, and your dark hair such a contrast. I never see you without wanting to cry. ”

“ He did not even mention it to me,” he concluded, looking King enquiringly in the face.
“The man who came out from Chicago to see me,” the deputy explained, “laid great stress on the handbag. He seemed to think that Don would keep the bag as well as the money. And he wanted the bag just as much as he wanted the treasury notes.”
“How did he know that Don was out in this country?” asked Alex.
“Oh,” laughed King, “a lad like Don is easy to follow. He was in Phoenix and Yuma several days, but always got out just ahead of the man who engaged me to handle the case. ”

“ He knew where to send a telegram that would bring him instant assistance in case of need, and even now he knew the officer on the motor-cycle [116] had reported to his employer that he had boarded this train. There was really no immediate need for him to worry. It was big game he was after and one must take some risks in a case of that sort. Thus he entered the sleeper to make good the impression of his inner senses.
Gordon had never held anything so precious, so sweet and beautiful and frail-looking, in his arms. ”

“ When David Evans began riding the mail route for Don Gordon’s father, who had the contract, and exchanged his rags for warm and durable clothing, and purchased a fine horse for himself, there were a good many who thought that he was getting on in the world altogether too fast. ”

“ It was only as jockey and stockrider that he was a success—that is to say, an object of admiration to others and of happiness to himself. “He sometimes,” says Mr. Woods, “compared the lot of a bushman with that of other states of mankind, saying that it was in many ways preferable to any one,” and for himself he was right. Let us not lament his failure in what he was not meant to be a success. Gordon, happy in life and love, might well have become at best a dilettante, at worst a materialized blockhead, he has so little [20] patience, so little clear-sightedness! ”

“ Gordon winced painfully. He felt with a sharper agony the sensitive pang of the cripple, the shame of misshapenness that all his life had clung like an old-man-of-the-sea. It had not only stung his childhood; it had stolen from him the romance of his youth—the one gleam that six years ago had died.
Six years! For a moment time fell away like rotten shale from about a crystal. The room, the wine-cabinet, faded into a dim background, and on this, as if on a theater curtain, dissolving pictures painted themselves flame-like.
He was back in his Harrow days now, at home for his last vacation. ”

“ Gordon was just able to bridge the distance between the boulders with the full reach of his stride. That on which he now stood, however, was flat and broad, a platform that gave sure footing.
"You will have to spring," he cried. "I can catch you. I am solid enough here."
"I can't," she replied, "I daren't move."
She stood looking into the water bubbling at her feet, and its swift flow made her feel giddy and insecure.
"What am I to do?" she cried plaintively.
"You must jump," Gordon answered. "It is the only way. Jump boldly! Don't be afraid, I will catch you." ”

“ Two Royal Engineer officers, Lieutenants Chippendall and Charles Watson, joined him before the end of the year. He worked very hard himself, and he expected those under him to do the same. The astonished Egyptian officials looked on in amazement at one in high rank, who examined into every detail himself, and who took his turn of the hard work. One of Gordon's forms of recreation was to get out and help to pull his dahabeah. Tucking up his trousers, he would wade through the river fearlessly, having learnt from the natives that crocodiles never attack a person moving. ”

“ Don was surprised at first, and finally he became suspicious.
“That fellow knows more about this afternoon’s work than any of us,” said he to himself. “He doesn’t act that way without some good reason. I believe it will pay to ask him a few questions.”
The sequel proved that our hero had struck a 331warm trail the very first time trying. When Dan found himself shut up in the cabin, and Don Gordon standing between him and the door and cutting off his only way of escape, he became terribly alarmed, and confessed his guilt without waiting to be questioned. ”

“ GORDON SWIMS FOR A LIFE
From London to Ostend, and through Flanders, a swart shadow trailed George Gordon slowly but unerringly. It was the man whose dark, reckless face had once turned with jealous passion to Jane Clermont as they had watched a carriage approaching Drury Lane; he who, on a later night, had pursued the same vehicle, then a mark for jeers, to Piccadilly Terrace. The question he had uttered as he saw Gordon alight alone, had rang in his brain through his after-search: “Where has he left her?” ”

“ Gordon was conscious of the suggestion of “jollying” in these remarks, and his answer was not altogether tactful; but he had been touched in a sensitive spot, for he could tolerate no question as to Harry’s all-round proficiency.
“He can do anything he tries,” he said vehemently. “He’s been down Long Island Sound in a canoe; he lived in a lumber camp—he was lost in the Canadian woods once—he knows all about South Africa—he swam three hundred miles, I mean yards—and shot the rapids—and—and—he can make a rice pudding!” ”

“ In 1870, after a series of crushing disappointments, Gordon committed suicide. His dramatic end awakened sympathy and gave an additional interest to his writings. It was soon found that in the city and the bush many of his spirited racing ballads were well known. The virile, athletic tone of his verse, which taught
"How a man should uphold the sports of his land
And strike his best with a strong right hand
And take his strokes in return" —
and the practical philosophy, summed up in the well-known quatrain —
"Life is mostly froth and bubble,
Two things stand like stone ”

“ Like a drunken man Gordon blocked weakly, clenched mechanically with the fighter's instinct for an instant's respite, and then as Harrison, pitying but firm, walked between them, pushing them roughly apart and ordering them to take the center of the ring, in that blessed moment the mist cleared from Gordon's eyes, the red tide of life pulsed again through every vein, and brave heart and cunning brain waked again to life. ”

“ He would not permit anyone to say that his suppression of the Taeping rebellion was a marvellous feat, and he evaded and resented all the attempts made by those in power to bring him into prominence as a national hero. Modesty is becoming as an abstract principle of human conduct, but Gordon carried it to an excess that made it difficult not so much for his fellow-men to understand him, as for them to hold ordinary workaday relations with him. ”

“ Neither of his kinsmen was likely to prove a formidable foe. Rionga passed his hours in native excesses, in the joy of receiving the titular rank of Vakil to the Khedive. Anfina alienated Gordon's friendly feeling by suggesting the wholesale assassination of Kaba Rega's officers and followers when they came on a mission to his camp. Kaba Rega carried off the stool to the south, or rather the west, of Victoria Nyanza, and bided his time, while Mtesa wrote a half-defiant [Pg 159] and half-entreating letter to Gordon, asking him to spare Unyoro. ”

“ When at length they left the Agency they were going in the right direction, but Gordon was once more choosing the lighter and more crowded thoroughfares. Again the hawkers, the pedlars, the water-carriers, the shrouded black forms of women and the blue figures of men. Again the salutations, the pious ejaculations, the silent Eastern greetings. It was almost as if Gordon were tempting Providence, as if he were trying to leave time for the trackers to overtake him.
"Every moment we lose fills me with fear—can't we go faster now?" ”

“ Every face held the intensity of almost terrible eagerness, and on every one but that of the gentle hostess sat cunning—craft that would stop at nothing to serve its own ends. It was a moment of almost awful import.
The next instant Gordon’s glance went down to the paper in his hand, and his brain and heart were seized in the grip of fright. There was no other word to describe his feeling. The message before him was clearly written in the code of the home office, and the words stared at him plainly without the necessity of study. ”