He was a tall, slim fellow, standing six feet one in his stockings, so dark in the complexion that he might have passed for a native of Southern Europe. Although rather an Apollo amongst men, his graceful bearing and manly carriage were not the characteristics that gave him a passport at first hand to every one he met. It was the full, deep, earnest, clear, and honest eye, by which you could look into his soul. At a glance you took this in; there was no mistaking that, in the handsome young fellow who confronted you, there dwelt a spirit as brave, strong, and well braced as the frame that held it.
He had long since lost his mother--so long ago that he could but just recall her image as that of a tall, fair, delicate, blue-eyed woman, who had left her heart on his lips on the day she died.
His father was a retired Indian officer, who had seen much service, and had greatly distinguished himself in the Indian Mutiny. He had been severely wounded, and returned to England. Having recruited his health after several years' stay in Cheltenham, he went back to the scenes of his former victories to occupy himself with investigations concerning the ancient literature of the Hindoos. He soon became so completely engrossed in this work, in which he hoped to cover himself with no less glory than in his campaigns, that he determined not to trouble himself with his native country or its affairs till he was able to announce to the learned societies of Europe the full fruition of his labours. He was a good man, and had been a kind and generous father, but became so enwrapped in his musty literature as to be practically dead to his duties to his only son, who, with all his kinsmen and friends of his fatherland, had become of very much less importance to him than the Sanskrit poem he had just discovered hidden in an image of a cross-legged Buddha serenely contemplating his epigastrium. So it having been finally settled that Harrowby was to be made a doctor, Major Elsworth arranged with his agents in England to pay the necessary fees, and settled on his son a sum of £300 a year for life, so that he might be free to pursue his own calling untroubled by the smaller anxieties of life till his profession should afford him a more ample subsistence. All these matters having been finally concluded, at the expense of much distraction from the Mahâbhârata research, the old gentleman felt disburdened of a long-standing load which had often impeded the even tenor of his work, and once more settled down to the classic heroes of Indian song and the legends of his mythic age. He felt that Harrowby was off his hands, and gave him very plainly to understand that, pending the completion of his great work on the Origin of the Mahâbhârata Poems, he must have no disturbing communications requiring any reply from him. Acting upon these hints, Harrowby very rarely troubled his father with any letters, and still more rarely had any replies to them. He made up his mind that when he had done all the work at the hospital he wanted to do, he would go out to his father, and spend a year or two with him before finally settling down to practice.