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Title: Lady Wedderburn's wish, Vol. 2 (of 3)
A tale of the Crimean War
Author: James Grant
Release date: September 16, 2026 [eBook #79591]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Tinsley Brothers, 1870
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79591
Credits: Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LADY WEDDERBURN'S WISH, VOL. 2 (OF 3) ***
LADY WEDDERBURN'S WISH.
A Tale of the Crimean War.
BY JAMES GRANT,
AUTHOR OF "THE ROMANCE OF WAR," "FIRST LOVE AND LAST LOVE,"
"THE GIRL HE MARRIED," ETC.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
LONDON:
TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18, CATHERINE STREET, STRAND.
1870.
[_All rights of Translation and Reproduction are reserved._]
CONTENTS
OF
THE SECOND VOLUME.
CHAP.
I. IN BARRACKS AGAIN
II. THE LAST NIGHT AT MESS
III. CONFIDENCES
IV. "THE GIRL I LEFT BEHIND ME"
V. THE MAJOR'S STORY CONCLUDED
VI. THE ROUTE FOR VARNA
VII. THE OLD, OLD STORY
VIII. DARK DAYS
IX. THE SHADOWY HAND AT LONEWOODLEE
X. A SURPRISE
XI. MARY BEGINS HER PILGRIMAGE
XII. IN LONDON
XIII. LOST
XIV. PICCADILLY
XV. THE LONELY STREET
XVI. ALDERMAN FIGSLEY
XVII. MEPHISTOPHELES AGAIN
XVIII. THE TROOPSHIP
XIX. THE VOYAGE
XX. "UN BON COUP D'ÉPÉE"
XXI. UNDER ARREST
XXII. THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS
XXIII. THE VALE OF ALADYN
XXIV. VARNA
LADY WEDDERBURN'S WISH.
CHAPTER I.
IN BARRACKS AGAIN.
"As I informed you by telegraph, Wedderburn, we embark on the 5th--so
you have a fortnight to get your outfit for the East, to see all your
old flames in Rochester and Brompton, to practise the use of the
revolver at the Spur Battery, and every other little art of war or
peace that may be turned to useful account in the land for which we
are bound."
It was Sir Edward Elton, the Lieutenant-Colonel of the Fusileers, who
spoke laughingly to Cyril, when the latter in uniform, with sword and
sash on, reported himself in due form at Chatham Barracks, as having
joined from leave, three days after his departure from Willowdean.
In the prime of life and manhood, Sir Edward looked every inch a
soldier. Fully six feet in height, his strong and lithe figure had
endured, without being impaired, the snows of Canada and the fierce
hot sun of India: but his coal-black hair was becoming grizzled now.
His dark hazel eyes were keen, but calm and resolute in expression,
as those of one born to command; and his voice was full, deep, and
rolling, though apt to become husky after he had "handled" the
regiment throughout a long field-day on the Lines or elsewhere. He
was the beau ideal of what a British officer and a thorough English
gentleman ought to be: and had seen some sharp service in the East
Indies, when with Pollock's Brigade in Afghanistan. He was thrice
wounded on the banks of the Sutledge, and was nearly finished off by
a thrust from a Sikh lance at the battle of Aliwal.
"You'll find all our fellows pretty much the same as you left them,"
he resumed; "Probyn as keen at billiards as ever; Bingham always in a
scrape with some enterprising maid, wife, or widow; Pat Beamish
always late for parade, breakfasting on seltzer and curaçoa, with a
wet towel round his head, and the major giving, as usual, his song of
'The girl I left behind me,' to the last few who linger at the
mess-table."
"He may sing that song with full effect, ere long," replied Cyril,
laughing at the Colonel's enumeration of a few regimental
peculiarities.
"We shall have work enough and to spare in getting all ready by the
5th of the month; the baggage must be reduced to the smallest
possible compass, and all we don't require, must be left, like the
poor women and children, with the depôt. I am glad to say that the
regiment is in the highest order and discipline, and able, thank God!
to face more than its own strength of any troops in the world."
Elton's eye kindled as he spoke, for he was intensely proud of his
regiment, the noblest qualities of which he had carefully fostered
and developed; and perhaps no finer body than these Royal Fusileers
existed in the service of the Queen, being all picked men, and in
their ranks the three countries of the Empire were pretty equally
represented; if there was any preponderance it was in favour of
England, and among them were more "Good-conduct-ring men," than
almost any other corps could produce.
"I shall see you this evening at mess, I presume. This is our last
night there; to-morrow it is to be broken up. There is no parade
this afternoon, save for the juniors and recruits; so I would advise
you to fill up a spare hour in going over the company's accounts and
so forth."
And, as the Colonel concluded, he once more turned to the "Register
of Services," one of the thirteen great books which are kept in every
regiment of Infantry.
Cyril shook his hand, quitted the orderly room, and once more found
himself in the sunlighted barrack square, where squads of recruits
are for ever marching to and fro, with or without rifles, practising
the balance-step, or swinging the clubs or the dumb-bells, and
mechanically he took his way to his old rooms, on the tree-shaded and
somewhat gloomy old brick terrace which overlooks the parade-ground.
Though his quarters as a captain--one small apartment and a still
smaller bed closet, their walls covered with mean and dingy paper of
the cheapest material--were quite familiar to him, their poverty of
aspect, the small and coarsely-glazed window that faced the blank
brick wall enclosing St. Mary's Hospital, the lowness of the ceiling,
the ugly wooden beam which crossed it and was covered with ten
thousand indentations made with a poker (the usual mode then of
summoning one's servant from his den above) together with the meagre
and rickety furniture obtained on hire from some exorbitant Jew, all
impressed him unfavourably, fresh as he was from the luxury and
splendour of his own home at Willowdean.
He tossed his sword and crimson sash on the table with a sigh, and
opened his blue surtout with its gold shoulderscales--the most
handsome undress ever worn by the Line--as if he was choking from
want of air.
Was it not a dream that since he had last stood there, matters were
so changed between him and Mary Lennox; that he had indeed lost her,
and should never hear again the voice that found so soft an echo in
his heart?
He had received no explanation from her of that obnoxious episode,
the visit to Chesterhaugh; he had asked none, nor, perhaps, would he
have listened to any in the mood of mind he was then. Yet he was not
without a lingering hope that she might write to him in some fashion;
and so the craving to hear from her, or of her, combated fiercely
with the sterner resolve to pluck from his heart the memory of her
image, and all that she had been. It was so difficult--so bitter a
conviction to entertain, that all was indeed over between him and
Mary Lennox! But he had never told her where his regiment lay, a
singular omission, and in her sequestered home among the Lammermuirs,
she knew none who could inform her, even if her little pride of heart
would have permitted her to write. She, like him, longed and looked
for letters; but did so in vain. None were exchanged, so
disappointment and mistrust grew fast between these two, who had
hitherto loved so tenderly.
While in this mood of mind, Cyril Wedderburn had no desire for the
tame monotony of overhauling his pay-sergeant's books, and seeing
that Private Jones had been duly credited or debited the sum of
ninepence; that Private Brown's stoppage repaid the expense of the
shako and ball-tuft he had lost in a row on St. Patrick's day; that
Private Smith's clearances had been paid to his wife when her last
baby was born, and not to the clamorous canteen-keeper; and that all
the messing, clothing, and accoutrements of ninety odd
non-commissioned officers and men, were right and regular.
But as idleness was impossible, he took his new-bought
revolver-pistols, and went forth to the Spur Battery to practise in
the dry ditch, at sundry imaginary Russians. Even of that he
wearied, for in the ditch were already some thirty or forty noisy,
happy, and heedless subalterns--boys fresh from Sandhurst or Eton,
and chiefly ensigns of the Provisional Battalion, all cracking away
to each other's peril with their revolvers, and emulous in their
pistol practice; and so, while numbers of his brother officers, with
whom he was an especial favourite, were searching for him at his
quarters, the mess-room, and all about the barracks, he was leaning
over the lofty summit of the glacis, gazing dreamily at the old
familiar scene, which spread far down below him like a map.
He saw the fertile plains of Kent, steeped in the light of the
noon-day sun, stretching far away till lost in hazy distance; the
village of Rainham, and all the windmills that studded the green
slopes; the sleepy Medway with all its man-o'-war hulks and freight
of lesser craft, winding between its banks; bustling Chatham, its
streets full of red-coats; the great square stone block of Rochester
Castle, and the tower of the Cathedral, both rising from amid a sea
of sunny vapour, half in light and half in sombre shadow; and
immediately beneath the lofty bastion was the gloomier feature of the
scene--the Military Cemetery, where lie the bones of a vast army--of
the thousands who have escaped the battle and the pest, in every
clime where our drums have beaten, and who have come home invalided
at last, worn out by wounds and with constitutions broken, only to
die in Fort Pitt, and fated neither to see home or kind, or to enjoy
the hard-won pittance named in mockery a pension, but to find an
obscure grave under the brow of the great Spur Battery.
Cyril looked long and thoughtfully over this scene so familiar to his
eyes, while those sounds so incessant in the adjacent streets of
barrack, the drum, the bugle, and often the shrill Scottish pipe,
were perpetually ringing in air, announcing orders, parades, or
dinners, and so forth; and he marvelled in his heart how he and all
those in whom he had an interest, and for whom he had a love, might
be situated, ere that day twelvemonths came round; for now war had
been declared, and the sword was drawn; already the combined fleets
of France and Britain lay before the Russian harbour of Odessa, and
none knew what an hour might bring forth.
CHAPTER II.
THE LAST NIGHT AT MESS.
"Welcome back, Wedderburn! Eastward Ho! is now the _cri de guerre_!"
exclaimed the cheerful voice of Probyn--always known as Jack
Probyn--when Cyril entered the mess-room of the Fusiliers, just as
the last notes of the fife and drum, playing the "Roast Beef of Old
England," died away on the Terrace without, and most of his brother
officers accorded him a hearty reception as he passed along to his
place. It was flattering to find that he was so much a favourite,
and on his mind there flashed the thought, could Mary but have seen
it!
It was the last day of the Regimental Mess--for the morrow was to see
it broken up, and those who had met together at the same board so
long and so happily, dining as best they might in their own quarters
or at hotels. Thus it was not without something of melancholy
interest, for the casualties of war had to be encountered before once
again those silver trophies glittered on the table; and of all the
happy, heedless, and handsome young fellows who sat there now, who
might be present at the next festal meeting? How many might be under
a foreign sod, or mutilated and pining forgotten, upon half pay.
God alone could tell. Soldiers are not much given to reflection
luckily, and probably few thought on the subject.
The mess-room was far from being an elegant one, for in Chatham
Barracks even moderate comfort cannot be found; then how much less,
elegance! It was long, narrow, and somewhat low in the ceiling.
Dingy red curtains draped the windows, and a few oil portraits
decorated the walls. These were the property of the regiment, being
likenesses of some of its colonels who had either been favourites
with the Fusileers of past times, or were eminent in military
history, such as George Lord Dartmouth, who demolished Tangiers, and
whose breast-plate and black wig belonged to the days of the
Revolution; the Great Earl of Orkney, who commanded the corps at
Steinkirk and the Siege of Athlone, and whose squinting Countess was
the mistress of him of "the pious, glorious, and immortal memory."
And there was fiery little Lord Tyrawley, in whose days, when the
regiment was hunting Rob Roy in the Highlands, it was named the South
British Fusileers to distinguish it from the 21st, who still retain
their remarkably ugly cognomen of North British Fusileers.
The furniture was very plain; at one end stood a table covered by a
red cloth, whereon lay the current literature of the mess, to wit:
Army Lists, Racing Calendars, Peerages, the "Queen's Regulations,"
"Field Exercise for the Infantry," and various newspapers, the
corners of which had been appropriated for lighting cigars when
matches ran short; but what the room itself lacked in elegance, was
amply made up for by the splendour of the long table, on each side of
which sat some thirty officers all in full uniform, richly laced,
with crimson sashes and glittering epaulettes, for in those days the
free and easy mode of dining in shell-jackets and open vests, had not
as yet crept into the service.
They were all men of a good style and more than creditable
appearance; there was not a sub in the regiment, and very few of the
captains, but could ride, row, shoot or fence, handle a cricket-bat,
a billiard-cue, or single-stick with any man; and, as the old
commandant said, at the farewell inspection, "They were a splendid
set of officers, and such as England only could produce."
The mess-plate, the long accumulation of years, was indeed
magnificent; and on the tall centre-piece, the chased epergnes, the
massive goblets and salvers, large as shields, were graven the
trophies and mottoes of the Fusileers--the Rose of England, the
Garter and the Crown, with all their battles from the capture of
Martinique to the field of Toulouse. Nor were softer luxuries
omitted; on this, the last day, the mess-man had done his best, and
thus roses, carnations, and geraniums from neighbouring
conservatories were not wanting to enhance the decorations of the
table; and the ice to cool the champagne was cut in square blocks of
crystalline brightness, hollowed out to receive the bottles, when
placed in the costlier coolers of gold and silver, carved and
embossed.
The Colonel, Sir Edward Elton, was in the chair; Pomfret, the junior
Lieutenant present--the corps had then no Ensigns--was
Vice-President. The former wore his Cross of the Bath, and save a
few who had Indian medals, he was the only man decorated there; for
the veterans of Walcheren and Egypt, the Peninsula and Waterloo, had
long since become as traditions in the ranks.
Ten liveried servants, whose close shorn hair and stiffness of
bearing showed them to be soldiers, were in attendance, and amid the
buzz of conversation, half-drowned by the crash of the band, playing
certain airs from _Lucrezia_ and _Fidelio_ on the Terrace outside,
Cyril heard dreamily the voices with which he had been so long
familiar; of his kindest friend, Major Singleton, an old soldier who
had suffered many disappointments in his time (as what old soldier
has not?) and who, having little save his pay, would have retired but
that war had broken out; of Jack Probyn, arguing with the Doctor
about a billiard match; Pat Beamish, with his rich Irish brogue,
quizzing Bingham, captain of the first company, about some girl with
whom he had been flirting furiously about three o'clock that morning;
and all the frivolous chatter and banter inseparable from the
conversation of thoughtless young men who meet thrice daily at
least--once at dinner and twice on parade.
But now after Cyril had related the story of his adventure with the
horse, very briefly, for a rumour of it had reached the regiment, the
usual light topics became diversified by others of a graver nature;
the crowded state of the garrison; the preparations for war by land
and sea; the chances of promotion and staff appointments; which
regiments had sailed already, and what other corps were going; was
Odessa to be the base of operations, or some port in the Black Sea?
Bets were taken in favour of Odessa, and lost in the end. The merits
of the general officers, the probable formation of the brigades and
divisions, and the supposed plans of the campaign, were all discussed
pell-mell with the beauty of certain dancers and opera singers, the
points of dogs and horses, quarrels and grievances, and the girls at
the Rochester Balls, where the same set of pretty faces appeared
weekly, and as Beamish said, "regularly tore one's epaulettes to rags
by the vigour with which they held on while waltzing."
"I'll trouble you for a slice of that turkey, Wedderburn," said
Probyn.
"With pleasure, old fellow," replied Cyril, starting from his waking
dream; "a little of the stuffing?"
"Thanks--did you see this morning's Gazette?"
"No--anything important?"
"Only the names of a few fellows who are appointed to serve on the
staff of the proposed Turkish Contingent."
"Any one we know?" asked Major Singleton.
"Bedad," struck in Beamish, with a flash in his dark blue Irish eyes,
"there's a fellow going out with the rank of major that is as big a
blackguard as ever was drummed out of the Belem Rangers."
"Rather strong language, Beamish!" said Sir Edward Elton, with a
smile, but a tone of reproof.
"Not a bit too strong for the occasion, Colonel," urged Beamish.
"Is it Ralph Rooke Chesters you mean?" asked Probyn.
"The same," resumed Beamish, while Cyril felt his heart throb
painfully; "he was once in a Lancer corps, but proved a mighty deal
too sharp for the mess at cards, and so had to sell out to avoid a
court-martial; and now here is the fellow going to the East with the
rank of major, bad luck to him!"
"That comes of having swell friends at headquarters," said Probyn.
"But it is only local rank," added some one disparagingly.
"True for you," grumbled Pat, dragging at his big black whiskers;
"but it is rank there anyhow, and it is small pleasure I'd have in
taking orders from Rooke Chesters on an outlying picquet, or in front
of the enemy---- Champagne, waiter! By-the-bye, Wedderburn, you'll
have to call out Pomfret."
"Why, what has poor Pomfret been doing?" asked Cyril, looking at the
smiling and rosy cheeked subaltern, who was fresh from Sandhurst.
"Doing? By Jove, he's been going ahead at an awful pace at the
bandstand and the Rochester Balls with an old flame of yours,
Miss----"
"Exactly--I know," said Cyril, nervously interrupting the name.
"The Canterbury girl who worked you an elegant cigar case."
"Pomfret is welcome," said Cyril, wearily, for the name of Chesters
had put a finishing stroke upon his secret annoyance. In spite of
the light-heartedness of those about him and the all-inspiring
subject of the coming war, Cyril felt low in spirits, dissatisfied
and unhappy, and the more champagne he imbibed, the more dull he
seemed to become.
His old friend Singleton observed this; but instead of rallying him
as he might have done, he said in a low voice--
"You seemed livelier before you left us on leave, Wedderburn--pardon
me, but what is wrong with you?"
"Can't say, Major--but I do feel out of sorts."
"Out of spirits, rather--no little bit of white muslin in the matter,
is there? Hah! I am right--that glitter and half closing of the
eye--and the sudden pink in the cheek, tell me all about it.
Well--if you have no engagement to-night, come to my quarters after
the mess breaks up, and we shall have a little friendly chat over a
quiet glass of grog and a devilled bone. Are you game for that?"
"Thanks--I am at your service, Singleton."
"Never think of annoyances, or run after them," said Beamish.
"Cyril, like creditors, duns, and the devil, by the Powers, they'll
find you out soon enough!"
"Going to the ball to-night, Beamish?" lisped Meredyth Pomfret, the
junior lieutenant, save Ramornie.
"Where is the ball, my little man?"
"At the Dockyard Superintendent's. The whole of the staff, a swell
set, will be there--some pretty girls too, Beamish."
"And could I venture among that lot in white muslin and tulle--I, an
unprotected man?" replied Beamish, who was a black whiskered and
square shouldered Irishman, with a deep Kerry brogue; "and on the eve
of marching for foreign service too, would it be fair to break any
more of the darlings' hearts? No--no; that cruelty I leave to such
fellows as you, Pomfret and Wedderburn."
"Foreign service--and so it has come to that again!" said a married
officer who was the Colonel's guest, and there was a tinge of
thoughtful regret in his tone.
"Well, Joyce, bedad it's a power sight better than being camped at
the Curragh of Kildare, or protecting Peelers and process-servers in
Tipperary, or hunting for whisky stills (God bless them!) in the Bog
of Allen, when the mist lies thick on the Slievebloom Mountains."
On this day Cyril had some food afforded him for speculating or
reflecting, if not on human affairs in general, on the mutability of
human love in particular. When returning from the Spur Battery in
the afternoon, he had passed a handsome carriage bowling on the way
past St. Mary's guard-house, towards the green Lines and the
beautiful village of Gillingham. A pretty brunette in a white crape
bonnet peeped forth for an instant. Cyril would remember--oh, how
well!--the time when the sight of that equipage, its horses, harness,
and livery, had made his heart leap, and now he barely accorded to
its occupant a salute with his forage-cap. Yet he could recall vows
that seemed now to have been traced in water or written on sand, and
the flood of joy her smile once poured through his heart had subsided
for ever! How the thought of her had been the first in the morning
and the last in the night! How many an hour had he rambled and
ridden, danced and lingered with her; and how often had he met her
amid the woods of Cobham, the green leafy lanes of Gillingham and
Rainham! How he had showered gloves, bouquets, music, and gifts more
precious still upon her; loving her and clinging to her, though he
knew that before this Hamilton of the Scots Royals, Musgrave of the
Marines, and Sutton of the Artillery, had flirted with her, and
carried on the same agreeable but perilous game! Yet he hoped that
she loved really at last, and loved him better than any one; but the
quizzing of the mess had saved him. She was beautiful, yet she had
been talked of then in his hearing as "a knowing hand--an old
stager--up to trap," and so on; and the warning drum, when it beat
for the march after the route came, dissolved the spell, so others
had succeeded him, and now it was on "Pomfret of ours." His idol had
taken to bird-liming the unfledged ensigns and second-lieutenants;
and she, so loved and petted by him once, was less even than a friend
now--a mere bowing acquaintance. How strange to think it was so,
after all that had been!
How often is much of this great game of life played out unseen, amid
a crowded drawing-room, at the jovial dinner-table, at the social
fireside, by hearts that seem to break, "yet breakingly live on,"
while sentiment wars and struggles in vain, for in the end time
soothes all things!
How much, how dear, how close to his soul was that woman once? Alas,
how little now--less, we have said, than a bowing acquaintance!
Would his love for Mary Lennox share a similar fate? Perhaps
so--time alone could show.
As this was the last night of the mess, until long after the drums
had beaten tattoo in the great echoing square; long after the
subalterns of the day had collected the final reports of the present,
the absent, and the tipsy; the last bugle had warned "lights and
fires out," and silence and darkness gathered over the roofs where so
many thousand soldiers were sleeping, that so long were to be in the
tented field, the officers of the Fusileers and a few of their guests
lingered at table as if loth to separate; but ultimately, leaving a
few who were bent on "making a night of it," or a morning rather,
Cyril and Beamish adjourned to the quarters of Major Singleton, to
have a little quiet supper, the "devilled bone," &c., which had
already preceded them from the mess-house.
CHAPTER III.
CONFIDENCES.
"Bother this garrison order about 'lights and fires out' by tattoo!
here's my fellow actually extinguished the stair-lamp," said the
Major, as they stumbled up the old wooden staircase which led to his
quarters. "Where are you, Beamish?"
"Behind you, in the dark, Major--in the dark, bedad, like a
Protestant Bishop, as we say in Kerry."
Singleton soon found the keys of his rooms at the back of the
staircase window-shutter, the place where such are frequently
deposited in Chatham and other barracks, and they soon found
themselves in his quarters, where, by the application of the poker to
the dormant beam above, he summoned his servant down.
"Now then, Bob, look alive, and let us have supper double quick!"
Bob Dacres had relinquished his white livery coat and aiguillette on
leaving the mess; but he still retained his yellow plush
inexpressibles, white stockings, and buckled shoes. They consorted
oddly with an old regimental coat, having white worsted wings--a
garment which he had donned for kitchen-work.
The fire was stirred up in the small, meagre grate furnished by her
Majesty's Ordnance Department; four candles were lighted, two on the
table where the supper was laid, and two more stuck in quart bottles
on the mantelpiece, gave the Major's sitting-room a cheerful aspect,
though it was minus carpet or curtains, and its furniture was of the
plainest description, being the mere barrack allowance; to wit, a
couple of Windsor chairs of hard wood, a table of the same material,
a set of fire-irons, a cast-metal coal-box, with three field-pieces
engraven thereon between the letters V.R. and B.O.; a pair of
bellows, and a black iron candlestick. These elegant pieces of
furniture, together with a few iron-bound baggage trunks that had
been all round the world, completed the comforts and appurtenances of
the Major's room, unless we add a couple of regulation swords and
undress and dress belts, with a double-barrelled gun and brace of
horse-pistols that hung in a corner, and a wooden box of cigars that
stood on the mantel-shelf, "pro bono publico," as he said, for
Conyers Singleton was a plain soldier of the old school, contenting
himself with little, and always resolved to make the most and best of
everything. He rarely or never wore "mufti," and when he did it was
quite out of the mode.
He had a grave, almost sad face at times, with a remarkably soft
expression of eye; and it was currently supposed in the regiment that
a shadow or a sorrow must have rested on some portion of his earlier
life; at least, all knew that prior to his joining the Fusileers he
had been long a prisoner of war in India, and had thereby lost his
chances of promotion. "There is no example of human beauty more
perfectly picturesque than a very handsome man of middle age--not
even the same man when in his youth," according to one of our fair
novelists: and these words fully applied to the Major, who, though
past the prime of life, was still a man of fine and commanding
appearance. His features were noble, and slightly aquiline, and his
thick, wavy hair, once a rich dark brown, was fast becoming grey and
grizzled now; but his hazel eyes were as clear and bright as when a
boy ensign he carried the colours of his regiment fearlessly up the
corpse-strewn glacis of Ghuznee, though seven reliefs had been shot
under them in succession.
He had seen much service in other corps, but was an especial
favourite with the Fusileers.
The supper, which consisted of something better than the promised
"devilled bone," was soon discussed; the Major's servant was
dismissed to his roost upstairs, and amid a cloud of soothing
Cavendish, the trio proceeded to make themselves completely
comfortable.
"This is jolly!" exclaimed Beamish, as he tossed aside his sash, and
threw open his full-dress uniform.
"I have wine, if you fellows prefer it," said Singleton; "but here
are brandy and some real Irish whisky; and neither will taste the
worse for being in black bottles."
"The whisky, by all means, with water _pur et simple_," said Beamish,
"and no adulteration of lemon or sugar--orthodox grog, that is the
mark, Major, for there's never a headache in a hogshead of it. Ah,"
continued Pat, while mixing his tumbler and eyeing the contents
affectionately, "there is nothing on earth so true as a good glass of
grog--nothing so fickle as a pretty woman!"
"Heresy!" said the Major, while Beamish heaved a mock sigh, and Cyril
remained silent.
"I saw Miss--Miss What's-her-name?--you know it well enough,
Wedderburn--passing in her carriage by St. Mary's Guard to the Lines
to-day," resumed Beamish.
"And young Pomfret, no doubt, with her?" added Singleton. "A little
fool that boy is!"
"She still looks young and beautiful, that brunette, though I have
known her when younger and more beautiful; but that was before we
went to Burmah; and, by Jove, 'tisn't yesterday I saw the big pagoda
of Moulmein."
"It seems ages ago, and she's on the cards still!"
Cyril's heart beat quicker, and he coloured while they spoke, yet he
scarcely knew with what emotion, as he had long ceased to care for
the fair one in question.
"Don't affect to be soured with the sex, Pat," said Singleton. "Fill
your glass again--it's down to zero."
"Soured! not I; for I am naturally kind and attentive to everything
with a petticoat on."
"Even a Scotch Highlander, eh?"
"But we had one omission to-night at mess, Singleton."
"What was it?"
"Your invariable song, 'The girl I left behind me.' It generally
comes off about one in the morning."
"But we left at twelve sharp, and I am keeping it for the
marching-out day," replied the Major; and with a twinkle in his eyes,
which were fixed on Cyril, Beamish began to sing in a mock
sentimental manner--
"My love is fair as Shannon's side,
And purer than its water;
But she refused to be my bride,
Though many a year I sought her.
Yet since to France I marched away,
Her letters oft remind me,
That I promised never to betray
The girl I left behind me."
"Well, Beamish," said Singleton, catching something of the other's
spirit of raillery, "I hadn't the heart to sing when I saw Wedderburn
looking so melancholy."
"What is amiss, Cyril? Have you made a bad book on the Epsom, or the
Whittlebury Stakes for three-year-olds? Or is it some red-headed
Scotch lass that you have left behind you?"
Cyril's eyes dilated and flashed; and he coloured with vexation, but
attempted to laugh while raising the glass to his lips.
"You seem awfully cut up about something, and it must be a girl,
Wedderburn," said the Major. "I can see that with half an eye."
Cyril's colour deepened; he was in no humour either for scrutiny or
banter. But Beamish said, laughingly--
"Don't grieve so about it, or her, or whatever it is. Little more
than a week must find us on the sea, and if a girl has jilted you,
forget all about it, or score it down to the bad drop that is in her,
as we say in Ireland."
He winced decidedly under this unwitting home-thrust, but drained a
huge rummer of brandy-and-water at a gulp, and then with a sudden
burst of that communicativeness which seizes most men at times, and
of which they generally repent when calm reflection comes in the
morning, he exclaimed--
"I have been deceived, Singleton--deceived where I trusted; I own it,
and am sick and sore at heart just now!"
"Hear that, now. Bedad! I would have sworn it!" said Beamish, in
whose eyes there shone a light that was all merriment, without an
atom of the commiseration for which Cyril was inclined to look.
"I have been deluded, I say, Singleton, by a girl I loved well and
dearly," he resumed, with growing bitterness; "and in my heart I am
constantly vowing--yes, swearing that I shall forget her; but with
every futile vow her gentle face, her soft voice, and all her
image--the remembered charm of her presence--come back to me clearer
and more vividly than ever! Oh, what magic, what idiosyncrasy of the
human heart is this!"
"By Jove! it's like a bit of Moore's melodies!" said Beamish, while
Cyril coloured deeper, with a sudden sense of his rashness in making
such an admission.
"You are just what I was at your age, when a subaltern, though,
luckier than I, you are now a captain," said Singleton. "I was
hot-headed, generous, impulsive, and warm-hearted. Ah, what a devil
of a treadmill is this work-a-day world, that it grinds both heart
and soul out of us till nearly all trust in man, and too often in
woman too, passes away with every scrape of our razor! How many
fellows have I seen come into the service since I was first
gazetted--cultivate their whiskers, and the d--d Jews!--get into debt
or matrimony, sell out or go to the devil, while I have still held
on, and am only a major yet, when so many of my brother-subalterns
are in command of regiments, or the enjoyment of snug staff
appointments!"
"But you had a singular run of ill-luck," urged Cyril--"your
captivity."
"True; few, however, but myself, know exactly all that captivity cost
me; and now, if you have patience to listen to an old soldier's
story, I don't care if I should spend a few minutes in telling you
the incidents that cast a a shadow on my life for many a year--a
shadow that may never pass away or melt into sunshine."
The Major paused, and after a time said--
"It is a strange, but pretty true axiom, that 'a man is only as old
as he feels; a woman as old as she looks;' thus I am not so old as to
be past loving, or at least remembering what it was to love and be
loved in return. So listen to my story."
And filling his glass and his meerschaum almost at the same time,
Conyers Singleton related the following little narrative of his early
life.
CHAPTER IV.
"THE GIRL I LEFT BEHIND ME."
"There was a time when hope and enthusiasm were the mainsprings of
life and action with me. Alas! their places are supplied alone by
memory now. No battle in the field has ever been fought without some
blunder; then how much more likely is the battle of life to be full
of error and mischance!
"In the year after the storming of Ghuznee, in Afghanistan (when both
of you who now listen to me must have been boys at school), I found
myself at home in Cheshire on sick-leave. I had been wounded by an
Afghan lance, and was in comparatively feeble health; so as our way
to and from India then was always round the Cape, my leave was for
two years from the date of leaving head-quarters, and I was bent on
enjoying it all the more that I had come home on promotion; for my
corps, the **th, had been sorely cut up during Keane's operations
amid the snowy mountains and deep and perilous defiles of
Afghanistan. We lost by war and disease nearly all our captains, so
we, the subalterns, benefited thereby.
"My aunt, Lady Singleton (dowager to Sir Guy Singleton, a general of
the old fighting days of Wellington), received me with open arms, for
I was almost the only relation she possessed, and at her old place,
Stoketon Moat, near Warrington, but on the Cheshire side of the
Mersey, I had always found a warm welcome when I came there for
school holidays in the years of my orphanage (my parents having died
young), then how much more welcome was I from far away India, and the
perils of the Afghan war!
"Stoketon Moat--so called, for once in Saxon times a timber house had
stood there surrounded by a moat, of which not a trace can now be
found, though it was said to be deep enough when Hugh d'Avranches,
after Hastings, slew the whole Saxon inmates of the place, sparing
not even the dogs by the hearth--was a beautiful old mansion of the
later Tudor days, with heavily mullioned windows that were
half-shrouded in ivy, jasmine, and clematis, through the leafy masses
of which the sun at times could scarcely penetrate the little leaded
hexagonal panes, the upper rows whereof were emblazoned with the
armorial bearings of the Singletons for many a generation, back even
to Geoffrey Singleton, one of the two knights who represented
Cheshire in Parliament in the reign of Henry VIII., who curtailed so
greatly the absurd privileges of the county-palatine of Chester.
"The old house stood on an eminence overlooking the sweep made by the
Mersey towards Runcorn: it was surrounded by fine old oaks, massive
cedars, and dark yews, and the vista through these, as seen from its
front, was terminated by the green hill that is crowned by the old
ruined castle of Halton.
"Aunt Singleton was of a cheerful disposition, thus Stoketon Moat was
seldom without visitors; and on this occasion she had residing with
her three handsome and lovely girls, the youngest seventeen, the
oldest barely twenty, whose presence spread a new and bright charm to
me about the quaint old house.
"Isabel, Lyla, and Katie Vane, were unusually attractive girls; their
beauty was great and of the most refined and delicate cast; but the
eldest proved the most charming to me. She was twenty now, and I had
not seen her for four years before, when an incipient boyish and
girlish flirtation had sprung up between us--a flirtation that with
our somewhat maturer years was to take a more solid and lasting form
amid the seclusion of Stoketon Moat, and the opportunities afforded
by its woods and fields, green lanes, and leafy privacy.
"I was an object of interest now, to be flattered, coddled, and
petted--pale, and with my recent wound yet green, and yet with all
the glories of Keane's campaign to talk about!
"Thus my rival, her admirer Riversdale, had no chance when compared
with me, though he was a very pleasant and good-looking young fellow.
A doctor of the Royal Staff corps, Robert Riversdale was home on
leave of absence like myself, but from America. It seemed to me that
Isabel's blue eyes were always seeking mine, and that every glance we
exchanged was half-complimentary and wholly caressing. They were
glances of mute and secret intelligence, that we alone felt and
understood.
"Riversdale's family lived in the neighbourhood of Stoketon Moat;
they were wealthy, thus he was everyway an eligible suitor, and had
been a kind of privileged dangler after the Vanes for a short time
prior to my arrival. He had driven and ridden with them to see all
the sights in the county; but his attentions were in no way decided,
nor was his preference marked, until my decided admiration for
Isabel, seemed as a spur alike to his jealousy and love.
"However, her residence in my aunt's house, our daily, almost hourly
intercourse--the vast charm of propinquity, and the chances afforded
by it--gave me every advantage over Riversdale; and after the
snuff-coloured Bengalee girls, and the dreamy, tawny, and affected
Eurasians or Indo-Britons, with whom we were compelled at times to
associate when up country, the pure and soft English beauty of Isabel
Vane, together with her sweetness of disposition, and a certain
piquant playfulness of manner, were so pleasing, that, within a week
after my return to the Moat, I was fondly in love with her--madly, I
may say, as I never did things by halves in those days.
"I was scarcely aware of the strength or depth of the passion that
was growing up in my heart, until one day, when my aunt said--
"'Why is it, Conyers, that your talk to me is for ever of Bella Vane?
You are never weary of extolling her accomplishments----'
"'But she has so many, aunt!'
"'Her graceful style of conversation, her elegance of figure, her
beauty, and so forth; do you love her, Conyers?'
"'Yes, dear Aunt Singleton,' said I, blushing like the boy I had
been, rather than the man I was.
"'Then tell her so, Convers, and God bless you; for Bella, I know,
will make a kind and loving wife to the man who is happy enough to
win her.'
"My heart leaped within me, and my blood seem to course with renewed
force through every vein, as Lady Singleton spoke thus, for already
ideas of marrying, of being the actual proprietor, possessor, and
protector of a girl so charming, came with her words.
"Well, encouraged thus, my declaration--fully expected, no doubt, by
foregone conclusions--and her acceptance came about successfully in
the usual fashion, or what I suppose to be such, for I never loved
before, and have never loved since.
"In a leafy lane, where the purple plum, the golden apple, and the
damson trees entwined their branches overhead, excluding the sun from
the thick rank grass below, and where the wild honeysuckle and
flowers by the wayside, filled the air with fragrance, as we rode
slowly together, side by side, on a summer afternoon, it all came to
pass somehow.
"We were long of turning our horses' heads homeward, and the
house-bell had summoned us thrice to dinner, ere I lifted her from
her saddle with a caressing tenderness and an emotion of delight such
as had never before thrilled through me, for we were engaged now; she
was my own Isabel, and to be the wife of my heart, before we sailed
together for India.
"We were rallied by the laughing Lyla and the golden-haired Katie,
about our delay and return at so late an hour; and we must have had
self-conscious or tell-tale faces, for the girls were not long in
discovering our great secret; and even Riversdale, who unluckily
dined with us that day, detected quickly enough on Isabel's engaged
finger, a ring which he knew well to be mine, for it was conspicuous
enough to him, as he stood by her side to turn the music leaves, as
she seated herself at the piano in the drawing-room, where usually
music became the order of the evening.
"I, too, was near, and could detect the flush that mounted to his
temples when his eyes fell on the ring, and how the words of
compliment or flattery he was about to whisper in her half-averted
ear, died away unuttered on his lips.
"He was too well-bred to question her, or make the least remark upon
the subject; but pleading an after-dinner engagement, took his leave
soon after; and I was weak enough to feel some triumph at being
master of the position, and that the girl he admired so much and
loved in secret, was mine--and mine for ever.
"For ever? Alas, could I then have foreseen the future!
"Three months afterwards the bells rang a merry wedding chime in the
old church of Warrington, when Isabel and I knelt at the altar, and
were declared 'man and wife' by the white haired rector; and seldom,
perhaps, has the sun shone through the quaint stained glass of those
ancient windows on a lovelier bride than mine, or on two sweeter
girls than Lyla and Katie, in their clouds of snowy tulle, as they
knelt, sobbing, of course, behind her.
"A brother officer was to have been groomsman, but an accident
detained him, and by an odd chance or fatality, his post was occupied
by Robert Riversdale, who acquitted himself to the satisfaction of
all--the six bridesmaids in particular, for very striking the fellow
looked in his rich staff uniform; though I fancied that his voice
faltered when he congratulated me, and he turned deadly pale, as he
kissed the cheek of Isabel; but I could forgive him these little
weaknesses _then_; and as if to show that he had no secret repining
at my success, he presented her with a magnificent suite of jewels,
diamonds and opals set in gold and blue enamel--a suite an empress
might have worn; and that evening saw us off to seclude ourselves in
Wales, until the honeymoon waned.
"As our carriage drove away from the Moat, and I drew down the blinds
and embraced her, caressing her head on my shoulder, 'Oh Isabel!' I
exclaimed; 'my own Isabel--at last we are married and one!'
"'Married for life!' she murmured with her face nestling in my neck.
"'Married for love,' I added.
"'Yes, but for life, dearest Conyers--for life, too--and the life
beyond, if such can be!' she added with an energy that haunted me
even as her words did, when our dark and sorrowful future came.
"I shall never forget the delight of those remembered days--for they
are but a memory now--the blissful days I spent with Isabel, amid the
green vales, the frowning cliffs and soaring peaks of the old
principality; in lonely places where the wild goat, his long beard
waving in the wind, leaped from crag to crag, rousing the golden
eagle in his giddy eyrie; or by secluded pools and mountain tarns,
where the brown otter would rise suddenly to the surface, and, with a
spotted trout between his teeth, vanish as quickly to his hole among
the rank green sedges. 'The world forgetting, by the world forgot,'
at least for a period, we spent it in a calm of joy and tenderness,
till Lady Singleton began to weary for us, and urged our return to
Stoketon, as I could spend but six months more in England, and would
have to report myself at the Depôt Battalion in Chatham, whither
Isabel was of course to accompany me.
"How well I can yet recall our long Welsh ramble, the flat vale of
the Teifi and the old church of St. David's; the gloomy pass of
Llanberris; Craig Ceffyl, where the Welsh made their last brave stand
against the 'Ruthless King;' the lovely vale of Llangollen with all
its luxuriant greenness and fertility--for we were never weary of
wandering, and were full of love and enthusiasm for each other and
for everything.
"I had no alloy to my happiness, not even when I found, as by chance
I sometimes did, among Isabel's favourite books, a withered flower
between the leaves, that had _not_ been given by me, or 'To Isabel,
from her friend R.R.,' pencilled on the fly-leaf, for Riversdale's
hopes were gone for ever now. But if I progress thus, I fear you may
find my story as weary as an old novel written in letters, than
which, perhaps, I know of nothing more flat and prosy.
"After we had been some months at Stoketon, a child came to add to
our happiness.
"When you see me seated here, a plain and rough old soldier, in his
bare or half-furnished barrack-room--if not happy, at least content,
like poor La Vallière in her convent--content to do without the
luxuries and the tendernesses of life, you may think there is little
of the poetry of it in me; but there was much of it _then_, ere
sorrow, care, and unmerited misfortune came upon me.
"A new joy seemed to spread a holy light over all our little circle
when the baby came. I shall never forget the tender emotions that
made my heart swell tremulously and filled my eyes with a moisture
akin to tears. I felt grateful to God and happy with everybody, with
the old village doctor, the wrinkled and tyrannical nurse, who
assumed command of the entire household; with my benignant Aunt
Singleton; the radiant girls Lyla and Katie (exalted now to the
sudden dignity of full-blown aunts), and more than all with my poor,
pale darling Isabel, for to my enthusiastic mind, something of
sanctity seemed to mingle with the love I bore her.
"I felt what the childless can never feel; now more than ever joined,
as a certain writer has it, to the great community of man. Here was
a little unit, that in the time to come should be a man, to live long
after us, I hoped and prayed in my heart of hearts, honourably and
well, beyond the years, when the sod had grown green above Isabel and
me.
"So the baby grew the wonder of all our little community at Stoketon
Moat; Aunt Singleton bestowed upon it a sponsorial silver mug, the
handsomest that could be procured, and the white haired and red faced
Rector gave it a name and made a little Christian of it, under the
double cognomen of Guy Conyers; the latter for me, and the former for
the old General who had led his brigade so gallantly at Vittoria and
Toulouse; and so, happily passed the days till the time came when I
found that I must appear in Chatham garrison, and our home was to be,
thenceforward, a broken one!
"If our baby was a hale and sturdy little fellow who throve
amazingly, it was otherwise with his mamma, for Isabel made a slow
recovery, and was so weak and ailing, when the terrible time for my
departure came, that by a consultation of physicians, it was
impressed upon me, that she must imperatively remain at home, nor
attempt to follow me to India, for perhaps six--certainly for
four--months yet to come.
"This was a sad dictum to me, who knew that the transport which was
to take me to the shores of Hindostan--the _Rangoon_ Indiaman--was
already lying opposite Tilbury Fort, taking in water and stores.
"I shall pass over our parting. It was sad, indeed; and long and
frequently did I press both the pale mother and the golden-haired
child to my breast, ere I tore myself away, with a whirling brain and
a bursting heart.
"'To your care I confide them, dear Aunt Singleton,' said I, as she
embraced me at the door. 'I am going now, and perhaps may not be
here again before my hair is grey and wrinkles have taken the place
of dimples.'
"The overland route had not then been developed, and going to India
was, to many, the affair of a lifetime. I had tried to speak in
jest, but, alas! I knew not how prophetically.
"I travelled night and day until I reported myself to the Commandant,
old Sir William W., and assumed the command of the men of my own
regiment, that were to embark next day.
"In the hurry of our departure, I had no time left me for a moment's
reflection, luckily: and grey daybreak on the following morning saw
us leave Chatham for Gravesend, five hundred strong, all drafts for
various corps in India. And as we marched in the still and dewy
dawn, to the air of 'The Girl I Left Behind Me,' every tap of the
drums and every note of the sweet, low fifes, went keenly to my
heart: for I thought of her I had left behind in Cheshire, my
girl-wife, my Isabel, with our baby at her breast!
"The cheers of the heedless and unthinking boys--for the detachments
were composed of little else--who were off to see the world, each
with sixty rounds of ammunition at his back, and ready to face
anything--Old Scratch himself if he came against them--failed to
rouse either my natural spirit or my military enthusiasm; though I
could remember the time, when the loud crash of the regimental band,
the bright gleam of the bayonets, and the waving of the colours above
nine hundred bearskin caps, with the measured tread of many feet, had
kindled both when last I had marched to India, through the deep
resounding arch of the old Picquet House, and under the guns of the
great Spur Battery.
"Seven miles of dusty road brought us to Gravesend, where the
_Rangoon_ lay, a stately ship of eighteen hundred tons, hove short on
her cable, with blue-peter flying at the foremast-head. All was
confusion on board, for she was a great East Indiaman of the old
school, built alike for war and traffic, carrying twenty
eighteen-pounders, and eight thirty-twos on her main and lower decks.
Everybody was bustling about, and the ship was a veritable Babel.
Cuddy stores, with fresh and salt provisions, were being hoisted in
from lighters on one side; rusty shot and shell, as ballast, from a
Woolwich tender, on the other. Casks and cases encumbered all the
decks; paint, tar, beer, tobacco, gin, and bilge-water, loaded the
atmosphere above and below; a drizzling rain was falling, and a thick
white mist enveloped all the low flat shore; the brick bastions, the
curtain and fosse of Tilbury, which is a fort as Dutch in aspect as
in character, since its chief strength lies, not in defending itself
by fire, but in being able to lay the surrounding district under
water.
"More than a hundred women, sailors' wives and sweethearts, were sent
noisily ashore. Our men were 'told off' to their berths speedily,
and amid the noise and bustle, the voice of Isabel, her face and the
baby's, came ever and anon as in a dream before me; and, with
something of a sickened heart, I entered the great cabin.
"'Bravo, Singleton! How goes it, old fellow,' cried a familiar
voice, and from amid a crowd of oificers who were lounging and
lunching about the table, some sitting, some standing, and all
laughing and chatting gaily, Doctor Riversdale in his blue undress
uniform, with sword and black belt on, came forward to greet me. 'So
you are going out in the _Rangoon_, eh!'
"'Yes, with two hundred men from the depôt. Are you?'
"'Bound for Bombay I am, to be stationed there on the staff.
But--but I don't see Mrs. Singleton with you.'
"I then explained, and my voice faltered as I spoke of her, that her
health did not, as yet, permit her to accompany me to India. I know
not now the words of Riversdale's reply; but the spirit of it
impressed me with the idea that her absence proved rather a relief to
him. To avoid talking of Isabel, even to my late rival, was
impossible. He seemed to like the theme, and perhaps felt a grim
satisfaction in the idea that she and I were to be separated for a
time.
"The voyage passed over pleasantly enough. At St. Helena, at the
Cape, and with several homeward-bound ships, we left letters for
those we had left behind us--those we loved, and hoped, if spared by
war and disease, to meet again. And the month of December saw us
with our various regiments in the army of Sir Hugh Gough, advancing
from Agra against the Mahrattas engaged in that war, which was
incident to the quarrel about the occupation of Cutch, all of which,
however, has nothing to do with my story, save that I was a unit in
the army destined to annex the principality of Scinde to the British
Crown.
"On the 29th of December we crossed the Chumbal (a river which flows
through Central India, from the Vendhya mountains to the Jumna)
without loss or much trouble, and had just halted and piled arms to
have a little tiffin, when the mails from Europe overtook us, and I
got a letter from Isabel, the first I had received since leaving her
and home, an event that seemed now to have happened ages ago.
"She was getting slowly better, and hoped to rejoin me soon--at
least, to be in Bombay, awaiting the conclusion of the war in Scinde.
My eyes suffused painfully, and my heart beat wildly, as I read on;
for though petty and trivial to others, situated as I was then, all
that followed was dear indeed to me, for it was about our little Guy
Conyers. He was growing _such_ a baby, _such_ a love as never was
seen or heard of since babies were first invented! His nose was fast
resembling mine (I remembered it a most unpromising button), and he
had such a pretty pouting mouth, just like Katie's; his eyes were
already noticing, and often smiled from his berceaunette at things
other people couldn't see; but they were _such_ eyes! How he crowed
and laughed, and bit the nurse's finger with his toothless gums; and
would persist in kicking off the woollen bootikins Aunt Katie had
knitted for him, and his little pink feet seemed more comfortable
without them!
"How I devoured all this. I who once upon a time thought all babies
most stupidly alike, deuced bores and nuisances, to be avoided and
shunned in all trains and steamers. And so while I read on, the
picture of Isabel, with her downcast eyes and long lashes, turned to
this particular and most wonderful baby, crowing on her knee, or
nestling in her tender bosom, came vividly and fondly before my
mental eye, till I was roused from my dream of home by the bugles
sounding 'fall in,' and the voice of Sir Hugh's senior aide-de-camp
saying to the Colonel as he rode past,--
"'The enemy are in front. Please get the battalion formed. Her
Majesty's 39th will commence the attack--the 56th Native Infantry to
support: stand to your arms!'
"I placed the letter in my breast pocket, drew my sword, and, with a
sigh, joined my company.
"I need not detail at any length the battle of Maharajpore, though it
proved a fatal field to me.
"The British were fourteen thousand strong, with forty guns; but the
Mahrattas, a fierce and warlike race, trained to arms from their
earliest years, mustered twenty-one thousand, horse and foot, with
one hundred pieces of cannon.
"Under a terrible fire, which, in the end, killed and wounded seven
hundred and ninety of our officers and men, we rushed upon them; the
old 39th, or Dorsetshire--_Primus in Indus_, as their colours have
it--in the van, and the 56th Bengal Infantry supporting them well and
gallantly, soon drove the foe from their guns, bayoneting the
gholandazees on every hand.
"Rallying in the village, the Mahrattas again showed front, and
fought with blind fury. There the Gwalior troops, after discharging
their long matchlocks right into our faces, flung them down, and,
like the Scots Highlanders of old, charged us sword in hand, with
target up and head stooped behind it. With frantic desperation they
fell, like a herd of wild tigers, upon our regiment; and the whole of
my company got mingled with them in a confused _mêlée_, opposing
their bayonets or clubbed muskets to the keen trenchant blades of the
Indians, who were ultimately routed, with the loss of four thousand
men, and all their beautiful cannon save one, which they carried off
the field, and to which I was fastened by a rope, a mutilated and
manacled prisoner of war!
"The catastrophe happened thus:--
"Amid the terrible _mêlée_ in front of the village, and just when
Major Stopford and Captain Codrington, of the 40th Regiment, fell
before the very muzzles of the Mahratta cannon, the aspect of the
enemy was wild and imposing, and I shall never forget it. Their
shrill, mad yells mingled with the cheers of the British, and added
to the general roar of the conflict; while their flowing garments,
and turbans of every brilliant colour, scarlet, yellow, crimson,
blue, and white, studded with precious stones and embroidered with
gold, made their excited masses seem gorgeous as a vast field of
flowers. Large round shields covered with brass bosses protected
their breasts, and over these we saw their swarthy faces, their
shining eyes, and crooked sabres, that flashed and glittered in the
sunshine. Personally, they were all powerful men, and their strength
and activity were only equalled by their recklessness of life and
ferocity of purpose.
"'Save me! save me, Singleton, for the love of God!' cried a voice;
and dismounted, with his horse shot under him, his bare head (for he
had lost his cap), exposed to twenty uplifted sabres, I saw Doctor
Riversdale lying among their feet; and I did save him, by a
superhuman effort, at the head of twenty determined men. But as we
fell back, keeping our bayonets at the charge, a volley of grape and
canister shot, from their last and only gun, swept away the twenty
brave fellows who adhered to me. I fell among the enemy alone, was
cut down by a tulwar, and dragged to the rear of the village.
"I fainted from loss of blood, and on recovering, found myself many
miles away from the corpse-strewn village of Maharajpore, and in the
hands of a Mahratta chief and a few of his men, now outlaws and
fugitives among the mountains; for their army had broken and fled,
totally defeated and irretrievably scattered."
CHAPTER V.
THE MAJOR'S STORY CONCLUDED.
"My limbs were stiff and sore, for I was still bound to the cannon,
which was a nine-pounder fieldpiece.
"The chief, Ali Khan, whose whim it was to keep me prisoner instead
of cutting me to pieces, was an outlaw now; several regiments of
Gough's army, both infantry and cavalry were sent into the country of
the Mahrattas at the expense of the Gwalior Government, to enforce
peace and order; so he, with his followers, were compelled to lurk
among the mountains in the north-west of Scinde.
"There were times when I repined bitterly, and thought that but for
Riversdale's presence in front of the village, when he ought to have
been in the rear of the attacking column looking after the wounded, I
should not have made that desperate onslaught to rescue him, and so
been taken myself!
"Alas! you see that my story, unlike most others, begins with a happy
marriage instead of ending with it, as most novels do, and all
comedies at the fall of the curtain.
"Like most, if not nearly all the Mahratta troops, the followers of
Ali Khan were cavalry, hardy and ferocious fellows. Their only arms
were swords, spears, and matchlocks, like those used in the wars of
Cromwell; their only equipage, blankets and horse-cloths. With these
slight incumbrances they easily rode fifty miles a day, feeding their
horses on whatever they would eat; whether it was the ripe corn
growing in the fields or the dry thatched roofs of a village, was all
the same to the Mahrattas of Ali Khan, who was a stern and unyielding
warrior, vain of real or supposed descent from Sevajee, the founder
of the old Mahratta empire.
"_En route_ he carried off several children, and I now learned for
the first time that his people were fond of possessing slaves, and
hence their capture of me.
"Over miles upon miles of a flat country covered with wild bushes,
and many more of desert sand, they fled from Maharajpore, till we
entered upon a district studded by almost impervious thickets and
tamarisk shrubs which also entwine their branches; and beyond this
desolate region we reached the mountains that look down on Western
Scinde, where they halted, encamped, and lurked for several weeks to
rest and heal their wounds, subsisting the while by forays and the
plunder they carried off in their march. Sometimes All Khan made the
neighbourhood too hot to hold him; and then, by a swift movement, he
would favour other regions, perhaps in Beloochistan, with a short
residence; but he generally preferred to hover in the hills to the
north of Tattah, which are barren and totally uninhabited, so that we
were often compelled to plunder for food, almost to the gates of
Brahminabad, its ancient capital.
"Chained to that accursed gun, my sole sleeping-place being between
its wheels at night, exposed to the dews with only a horse-rug to
cover me (while the Mahrattas lived in tents), exposed to the risks
of being helplessly strangled by Thugs, devoured by tigers or
jackals, or being bitten by serpents such as the terrible Braminee
cobra, stung by insects all day, and having the disgusting green bugs
among my matted locks and beard by night--chained to the gun, I say,
like Ixion on his wheel in the Infernal Regions, I thought--oh, how
deeply and desperately--of her I loved, of my home, of free and
pleasant England, far, far away; of Stoketon Moat and Cheshire with
all its shady woods, its lakes and meres; its parks of emerald green,
its shady lanes and hedgerows; of the broad Mersey winding to the
sea; of budding spring and glorious summer, brown autumn, with its
golden harvest fields and crisp foliage, and jolly winter, with its
snow on hill and wold, its green bays and scarlet berries in
church-porch and in hall.
"Changes like these I had none!
"It was a period of horror, weariness, and despair--a despair that
was black and hopeless, and daily, with a sickened heart, I surveyed
the arid plains on one hand and the barren mountains of Tattah on the
other, hoping against hope for some rescue or relief, and in this
slavery more than a year passed away, without an event save an
occasional buffalo hunt, when hides were wanted for shields or
harness, (as the Mahrattas cared not for the beef), or an occasional
kutha, a popular amusement of the tribe, when recitations and songs
are given by professional musicians or story-tellers; and frequently
I heard them sing of the battle of Maharajpore, and how the great
Sahib-log, Ellenborough Bahadour, had been amid the thickest of the
conflict, mounted on a snow-white elephant, in the howdah of which I
had certainly seen his lordship freely exposing himself to the risks
of shot and shell.
"My sabre wound had been allowed to heal as Nature chose, and after
hemorrhage ceased it closed rapidly; but unluckily for myself, by the
skilful and tender manner in which I bound up a bayonet-stab received
by Ali Khan, the Mahrattas conceived that I was a doctor, and hence
kept me closely secured to the gun, to frustrate any attempt to
escape.
"Isabel's letter was found upon my person, and conceived to be some
great medical secret; the ink lines were carefully washed off the
paper, and the dilution swallowed on speculation by Ali Khan and his
favourite wife; but I had many cures to perform, many cuts and stabs
and bullet-holes to probe and patch and bind, with the terror of
death hanging over me if I failed, or a patient fevered or died; but
luckily for me the Mahrattas were all Hindus, extremely temperate in
what they ate or drank, so I was pretty successful in my practice,
and earned the goodwill of all, particularly that of the women of the
tribe, who were as hardy and as muscular as the men, and regularly
shared every labour with them save that of fighting; but it was long
before I succeeded in convincing them that I was not a doctor, and by
that time I was so weary of existence, as to care little whether they
shot me, to save further feeding or trouble.
"Released but at rare intervals, and even then always closely
watched, I had been five years chained to the gun, when it was
abandoned in a deep nullah as a useless incumbrance. I was then worn
to bone and brawn; but I had lost all heart and hope. Heaven knows
how I had been fed, for I had been treated often like a dog--a
creature of the lowest caste.
"Offers of ransom I had often made in vain; and chance of rescue I
had none. Neither had I any prospect of escape. I was without
horse, or arms, or money, or even a knowledge of where I was, so
devious had been our wanderings; and at times I could not say with
certainty whether we were on the confines of Beloochistan, or among
the mountains of Kelat.
"The Hindu religion admits of no proselytes, so I was never troubled
with any attempts to convert me; the institutes of Menou, compiled
1200 B.C., had quite settled all that, so that I was safer than if in
the hands of Mohammedans, who might have compelled me to choose
between the turban and the bowstring.
"And so a sixth year passed away!
"Was my Isabel living or dead? Had she perished of a broken heart?
I tried to remember of a widow that had done so, but failed. Was our
little child living now? If so he should be verging on seven years
old. Seven years old--oh my God! I would press my hands over my
eyes and strive to portray him, for I knew that the child must grow,
and change with his growth; but I could only picture him as I had
seen him last, nestling in his mother's bosom.
"Then I would think with a shudder, Alas! how long may he have been
in his little grave?
"Ever present were such thoughts as these; of Isabel and the baby in
'the woollen bootikins' which had been worked for it, as her last and
only letter told, by Katie--little Katie, whom I remembered with her
masses of golden hair; the rippling locks of which would neither keep
in knot or net, but hung like an aureole, a shining glory round her
smiling face.
"Kate would be four-and-twenty now, and most likely herself a mother.
"I knew that I must long, long since have been gazetted out of the
service; numbered with the lost, the missing, or the dead; that
another must have filled my rank and place in the regiment, where by
that time my very name must be forgotten!
"And so I grieved at the thought of these things, till my heart grew
sick with sorrow and grieving. Oh, how true it is, that 'the heart
knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger intermeddleth not with its
joys.'
"Times there were when I longed for death, for, as Dryden says in his
'Don Sebastian,' I felt keenly but bitterly that 'Death is to man in
misery, _a sleep_;' but in that sleep, I should have no dreams of
Isabel or home.
"One day--I shall never, never forget it--these, and such sad and
bitter thoughts as these, were maddening me while I was grooming the
horses of Ali Khan, beautiful animals of the Candahar and Thibet
breeds, and when my task was over I sat down beside a tamarisk tree,
and actually gave way to tears. We were then encamped, as I knew,
not far from the Indus, in a place where a grove of peepul trees grew
round a little lake beside a Hindu temple of white marble, the bronze
idols in which the Mahratta women were wont to fan for hours, after
smearing them with ointments, butter, and ghee.
"'The Sahib-log (white gentleman) is always sad?' said a voice close
by me; and on looking up I saw Ali Khan, with his shield of buffalo
hide slung on his back, and leaning on his long Kelat spear, while
his dark gleaming eyes observed me with something of wonder and much
of contempt.
"'I have thoughts, O Khan, that make me sad,' said I, rising and
crossing my hands upon my breast.
"'Are you not kindly used among us?' he asked.
"'I have certainly eaten your salt and bread; but both have been
watered by the tears of misery.'
"'Why?'
"'I have a wife and child----'
"'I have several wives and children too; yet were I a captive, would
they cost me a tear? No. I am a man! Go--our lives are in the
hands of Bramah--our doom in the hands of Kali--even yours, a
creature without caste or future.'
"And turning away with stolidity and scorn, he mounted the horse I
had just saddled for him, and with his long tasselled spear in his
hand, rode off on a scouting expedition--for the appearance of some
Bombay cavalry in our vicinity had rendered him somewhat uneasy.
"He had scarcely left me, when I heard some shrill cries from the
women of his followers who were dipping and bleaching their linen
dresses in the little lake beside the peepul grove. A child had
fallen into it from a rock where he had been gathering flowers; it
was the deepest part of the lake, and the little creature rose twice
and sank again before I stirred myself.
"'What is it to me?' thought I bitterly; 'would that every Mahratta
in the land were in the same perilous predicament.'
"A third time the boy rose and wildly threw up his little brown hands
and arms, while his half-shriek came over the water as he vanished
again. At that moment a thought of my own child flashed upon my
mind, and plunging in, I dived successfully, saved and brought the
little Mahratta cub to dry land; but barely in time, for some hours
elapsed before I succeeded in perfectly restoring him to life and
consciousness, and ere I became aware that it was Sevajee, the
favourite child of Ali Khan, I had rescued from a watery grave!
"With all his assumed stolidity and apparent sternness of heart, the
Mahratta chief was melted towards me now, and in a burst of gratitude
he gave me my liberty!
"'Go,' said he; 'here are a swift horse, good arms, my own, and a bag
of rupees. You are free to join your people. Thirty miles from
this, near a temple of Seva, on the left bank of the Indus, you will
find them. Go--and Brahma, Kali, and Vishnu be your guides, and may
their arms overshadow you, even as those of the blessed banian tree
overshadow the earth!'
"This was the best and holiest wish a Hindu could give me, as they
pay divine honours to this enormous tree.
"You may imagine that I was not long in availing myself of the
permission so suddenly given.
"Like one in a dream, one who had suddenly shaken off a long
nightmare that has been protracted to the verge of madness, I rode
all that afternoon at a breathless pace, not without fears that Ali
Khan might change his mind, or my horse, arms, and rupees should
excite the cupidity of some of his people who might follow me; and
ere nightfall I found myself in a little flying camp formed by a
battalion of the Queen's troops (the 'old Springers'), and a squadron
of the 1st Bombay Lancers, whose French grey uniforms, faced with
white, I hailed with a shout of joy as I rode towards their videttes.
"On that day I had been exactly six years and four months a prisoner!
"On hearing my story, the officers treated me with every kindness and
commiseration, and while the Lancers departed on a vain search for
Ali Khan and his people, no time was lost in having me transmitted to
Bombay.
"I had been returned among the killed at the battle of Maharajpore,
and so circumstantial were the details of my having been cut down and
dreadfully mangled by the Mahratta swordsmen, that I had some trouble
in proving my own identity.
"The years of my captivity had seen many changes, and thus I, who had
gone out by the _Rangoon_, Indiaman, round the Cape, and up the
Arabian Sea, came home by the overland route, which was just being
got into working order, but we crossed the desert with a caravan. So
eager was I, that the six weeks of the homeward journey, with its
ever-changing scenes, seemed interminable; and telegraph, or Indian
cable, there were none. I reached London well nigh destitute; but
burning with impatience for news of Isabel and home, having counted
more than ever the hours since I was a free man.
"I attended the Commander-in-Chief's levee at the Horse Guards, where
my weird and wild, or hunted aspect, excited considerable speculation
among the fashionably-dressed loungers in the ante-room. He promised
to look after me promptly; but 'the Liberals were in office,' as he
told me, with a peculiar and inexplicable smile: so my back pay was
refused on the plea that 'the country had lost my services for six
years and four months;' my progressive rank also was declined, so
that I, who had been well up among the subalterns of my own corps at
the battle of Maharajpore, was now, when gazetted anew, placed at the
foot of twenty-four lieutenants of the Royal Fusileers.
"My wife! They could tell me nothing about her. 'Why?' I asked
passionately.
"'Because my rank and services did not entitle her to a pension;' so
I turned on my heel with mutiny in my heart, and on my lips a bitter
malison on 'the Liberals' who were in office.
"On my aunt, Lady Singleton, depended all my hopes now; so I set out
for Stoketon by the first train from London.
"Already in the whirl of events my past period of love, and my
marriage with Isabel Vane, had begun to seem but a tiny patch in the
chequered web of my existence; but it was a spot so bright and fair,
so pure and happy, that I clung to the memory of it, as being well
worth ten times all my other years together.
"My heart and soul yearned for her, and as the train bounded along
the London and North-Western line my mind went back to the day when
we set out from Stoketon on our joyous wedding trip to Wales, and the
affectionate energy with which she insisted we were married 'for love
and for life!' Would that gush of affection fill our hearts again?
or was it one of those joys which have no renewal in this world of
change?
"As I approached Stoketon Moat, and saw the dear old house with its
clustered chimneys, its quaint oriels and deeply-mullioned windows
shining in the sun, and half-hidden by dark-green ivy, flowering
clematis, and fragrant jasmine, I lifted my hat, and inspired by the
memory of all the terrors and hardships I had undergone, exclaimed in
a low voice--
"'My God--I thank Thee for this day!'
"Is it blasphemy--oh, I hope not--to say that I had little perhaps to
be thankful for in having escaped the perils of Maharajpore, and
survived my sufferings among the mountains of Tattah and Beloochistan?
"The house was occupied by strangers, who viewed me with coldness and
mistrusted my appearance of agitation.
"'Lady Singleton had died three years ago--Mr. Vane's people they
knew nothing about--had never even heard of them,' I was informed by
a sleek and well fed butler, who was about to close the door in my
face--the door of the house that was once my home.
"'Are any of Dr. Riversdale's family in the neighbourhood?' I
inquired anxiously.
"'Yes; the doctor has resided at his father's house since the old
gentleman died about a year ago.'
"'Thanks,' said I, and turned wearily away, and conscious that I was
a source of vulgar speculation to the menials of the strange family
now occupying what, as I have said, was once my home, I passed down
the old and well-known avenue to issue out upon the highway that led
to Warrington.
"Riversdale, I learned from the lodge-keeper, had retired upon
half-pay, and had now an extensive practice in the neighbourhood.
From him, then, I should perhaps learn all, and a few minutes' brisk
walking brought me to his villa, a handsome new house, embosomed
among some fine old trees.
"'Doctor Riversdale is always visiting his patients at this hour,'
the servant informed me; 'but Mrs. Riversdale is at home,' she added,
ushering me into a drawing-room, the splendour of which seemed
wondrous to me after my sojourn among the sordid tents of Ali Khan.
"'I have no card,' said I, having omitted to provide myself with such
a luxury, or forgotten all about such things, 'and the lady cannot
know me: but say an old brother officer of the doctor is anxious to
see her.'
"'Why did I become a soldier?' thought I, while surveying the
comforts of Riversdale's home, and seeing his children. I had no
doubt they were his; two boys and a girl, fair-haired little things,
gambolling on the lawn in the sunshine; and all the inclination for
what Jean Paul Richter calls 'cottage smoke and
sitting-still-comfort' came over me. Thus might mine have been merry
among the Stoketon woods! Oh, the years I have lost--years of love
and joy with Isabel!
"Escaping from her brothers, the little girl toddled through the
drawing-room window, which opened in the French fashion down to the
floor; and then impelled, I know not by what secret impulse, I drew
her towards me and kissed her so tenderly on the forehead, that she
shrank back abashed and eyed me dubiously, for I was tanned to almost
negro blackness, had a bushy beard, together with what must have
seemed to her the eyes of an ogre--the eyes of one who for fully
seven years, had been daily face to face with Death!
"Just as the poor child shrunk from me, the drawing-room door opened,
and there entered a lady who bowed with a well bred smile of inquiry
and paused, surveying me earnestly.
"Though more matronly in form, and a trifle rounder perhaps, her face
was still that of Isabel, the girl I had left behind me. Womanly and
thoughtful, her eyes were as sparkling and inquiring as of old, but
animated by wonder now and inexpressible tenderness (for my aspect
seemed so war-worn), till suddenly tears and terror filled them as
they gazed into mine. The mouth, so exquisitely cut, was full and
fine, till it quivered and blanched, while the skin of her delicate
face was smooth as the lining of a white and pink shell.
"'Isabel,' I exclaimed, and opened my arms; but shrinking back, she
uttered a wild cry of anguish and despair, and sank on a sofa, half
fainting, and holding up her hands, deprecatingly, between herself
and me. 'Touch me not,' was what her mute gesture seemed to say.
"I then perceived that she had two plain hoops upon her wedding
finger.
"_Two?_
"I dared not approach, but stood bewildered as if rooted to the
carpet, for now I saw it all--I saw it _all_; and that a great and
terrible grief was about to come upon me!
"She was the wife of Robert Riversdale!
"We stood apart, she shrinking and I doubting. Oh! was this the
meeting--this the moment--for which I had longed and yearned, and
thirsted, amid the protracted misery of the years that were past?
Gasping, she gazed at me, while she did so, clutching wildly the
cushions of the sofa; and there was an expression of unutterable
bewilderment, of keen intensity, in her eyes.
"'Oh, merciful Heaven! Conyers Singleton, can this be you?' she
exclaimed, in a low voice, like a wail.
"There was no embrace between us--no gladness, but only intolerable
fear in both our hearts; we did not even shake hands, and she was my
wife!
"'Oh, Isabel, and is it so? while I, after all those years that I
have been a prisoner of war, a hunted fugitive, a wretched Christian
slave, chained by the leg to a field-piece, among people whose faces
and voices were to me but as those of wild animals--is it thus we
meet and thus you greet me?' I said, mournfully. 'Isabel, what
weariness of the world is in my heart--speak, or I shall fall at your
feet!'
"Indeed, the room seemed to whirl round me, and I clung to the marble
mantelpiece for support.
"'You seem to have come back as it were from the grave to reproach
me; yet, oh, Conyers! I have nothing to reproach myself with,' she
replied, speaking with great difficulty, while she placed a hand upon
her heart as if to stay its wild beating, and a ghastly whiteness
blanched all her beautiful face. 'The misery of this meeting is
known only to--to God and me.'
"'And you have in my absence given to another your heart, your
affection, which I deemed my own--_for life_, you once said?'
"'Reproach me not; all the world told me you were dead. I read the
Gazette myself, and but too keenly remember, even at this hour, the
agony of that in which I saw your name as among the killed. My hand,
in time, was given to another.'
"'To Riversdale?'
"'To Riversdale; but my heart never--never. Oh, I shall go mad!'
She began to speak wildly and incoherently, and then added, 'In those
dear past days I loved you and you only--oh, yes, I loved you then so
dearly, so truly, Conyers!'
"'And now, Isabel!'
"'I love you still, dearest Conyers, but that love will turn my
brain. My little child--our little child, Conyers,' she added, with
moving pathos in her voice and eyes, 'was dead; Lyla and Katie were
about to be married. I had no one to love, and no tie seemed to bind
me to you, but sad, sad memory. Oh, what shall I say? how explain
myself? A mother--a wife, and yet no wife! Riversdale loved me
before I saw you, Conyers.'
"'Nay, not before your girlhood.'
"'Before your return from Ghuznee; but that pleads nothing, I am
aware, for I loved you then and you only.'
"'And since, Isabel--since?'
"'Alas! do not question me--and yet you must.'
"'Surely some little explanation is due to me?' said I, with the
forced calmness of settled despair. 'Oh that I had never returned
from Ghuznee or learned to love you; or would to God that He had
permitted me to perish at Maharajpore?'
"'I was lonely and helpless, Conyers--oh, so lonely and helpless in
my supposed widowhood,' said she, making a great effort to speak, for
voice and sense seemed alike to be failing her. 'I respected the
long-tried affection of Riversdale, which had survived even my
marriage with you. He told me that he owed his life on that fatal
field to you. Oh, how I mourned for you and how I loved your memory
are known only to myself and _One_ with whom there can be no secrets,
and who knows all things! Could I help myself? and now--_now_--NOW,'
she exclaimed, while casting her eyes despairingly to Heaven, and
striking her hands together, 'am I to be torn from my children--his
children, _his and mine_--even from the little helpless baby in its
berceaunette!'
"'Not by _me_, Isabel,' said I, while on my aching heart those
piercing words fell like drops of molten lead; 'not by me. I shall
go forth again to seek death more surely now, and cross your path no
more. One kiss--only one kiss--even _he_ could not refuse me that,
and then never again shall we meet on this side of the grave.'
"We both sobbed bitterly as I took one brief but passionate embrace.
I laid her gently on the sofa and rang the bell, because she had
fainted. Then I quitted the house of Riversdale never to enter it
again!
"To me it seemed that I must be in a dream from which I should surely
waken. The sun was shining in all the glory of a summer noontide on
the green woodlands and greener meadows, but I felt no warmth in its
rays, and my teeth chattered as I walked on, I knew not, cared not
whither. So ended this terrible meeting--this interview of agony.
"I felt as one who was enveloped in the horror of a great and sudden
darkness--one who had gone from the world itself, into the cold
shadow of death.
"I have but little more to tell you now. Believing that I was dead,
my aunt, Lady Singleton, on the death of my infant boy, bequeathed
all she possessed to charitable institutions; and I cared not to
dispute her will, for a few months after saw me again in India, and
face to face with the hard fighting Sikhs at Chillianwallah. I
strove hard to throw my life away; but it seemed to be charmed now.
I never received a scratch, nor has bullet or blade been near me
since the day of Maharajpore.
"A few weeks after our victory over the Sikhs, I read the death of
Isabel in the _Times_, and then I knew that my interview with her,
and the intolerable mental agony consequent to the falsehood of her
position, had destroyed her! My poor Isabel!
"We were then on the march for Goojerat, and none of my comrades knew
why in that battle, and for many a day long after it, the hilt of my
sword was covered with crape--the only mourning in which I dared
indulge, for the miserable fate of the girl I had left behind me."
CHAPTER VI.
THE ROUTE FOR VARNA.
Unquestionably Cyril was unhappy in his mind about the new state of
relations between himself and Mary Lennox. There were times when he
thought that perhaps he had acted rashly in yielding so suddenly to
the dictates of jealousy and the angry pride it engenders. He
thought, too, over Singleton's remarkable story, and remembered how
he had conceived the idea of a private marriage, and had even urged
it upon Mary--a measure by which he must have left a young and almost
unfriended bride behind him. Singleton's wife had wealth, position,
and relations to rally round her, yet her fate had been a hapless
one; and Cyril, as he reflected on the contingencies of war, felt
somewhat consoled, that he and Mary were still free.
"Let me think of her no more--no more!" he said, mentally. "Ah, how
true it is that 'violets plucked, the sweetest showers will not make
grow again.' And now my flower of love has been crushed in its
bloom!"
Fortunately for him, in the short time that intervened now before the
departure of the regiment, his days were too fully occupied to leave
him great room for reflection; and the tours of duty entailed upon an
officer in such a place as Chatham, even in time of peace, are
incessant; thus, if they engaged, they at the same time bored him by
their continuous hard work and monotonous routine.
When not on guard or picquet, and when captain of the day, he had to
make incessant inspections of the barrack-rooms, to see that the iron
beds were turned up in the morning, and the ventilators open; also
before and after, and at every meal, to ascertain that the messes
were in order, wholesome, and sufficient. Then came visits to the
patients in hospital, the prisoners in the cells and guard-room, the
children in school, for the number of each and all were to be
inserted in his daily report. Then there were courts-martial and of
inquiry; committees of all kinds, mess and band; the expenses of the
last ball; and baby-linen for soldiers' wives; the foreign outfit for
his company to be provided; the settlement of women who were to sail,
and those who were to be left behind (to starve, perhaps)--a mournful
fate determined by ballot; then came squabbles about barrack damages,
broken glass, nail holes, and candle blisters, over which
barrack-sergeants groaned and quartermasters became furious, as they
were generally found in the "married corners" of the rooms, for in
Cyril's corps the angles of each apartment were still appropriated in
the old fashion, to the wedded couples, because experience had taught
Sir Edward Elton that the motherly and domestic care of the women,
when thrifty and respectable, added to the comfort of his men.
Add to all these, the arrangement of little scrapes into which
Pomfret, Jack Probyn, and some of his younger comrades had fallen by
"flying kites to raise the wind," as they phrased it, among the Jew
usurers and money-lenders, the Shylocks of Hammond Place--fifty per
cent. wretches--whose eyes, unlike those of poor Banquo, were full
enough of "speculation."
He had to leave his card on several garrison belles, who had bloomed,
and blushed, and faded; but by the triumph of art over nature, had
bloomed and blushed again through many fruitless seasons, amid a vast
number of military changes, which saw the beardless ensigns they
danced with at one period, come back at another as bronzed captains
or majors. Invitations were showered upon him; there were even
attempts made to revive one or two dead flirtations--sickly attempts
indeed, for his love-wound was still green, and his heart was with
the solitary girl at Lonewoodlee.
Besides all these little occupations, there were revolver practice in
the dry ditch, pontooning at Rochester Bridge, where, under the
shadow of the old Norman Castle of the Bishop of Bayeux, the Medway
runs so fast, that it sometimes swept away a life or two; and
escalading with storming ladders about daybreak at the walls of the
Spur Battery, a dangerous style of practice, too, when the bayonets
of one's mimic forlorn hope are unpleasantly close behind. As a
finale, he had to get his own Crimean outfit, for which Sir John
enclosed him an ample cheque: to wit, gutta-percha jack boots,
waterproof cloak and cape, camp bed, ground sheets, and blankets; a
canteen for two persons; lantern, basin, and bucket; bullock trunks
and slings, and much more lumber, all of which he got for the small
sum of eighty guineas, "dog sheep," from a Jew contractor; so one way
or another, it must be acknowledged that Captain Wedderburn's hands
were pretty full, and that his sword could be seldom from his side.
Thus the days were got rapidly through; but in the morning when he
awoke, like a flood of gloom, his hopeless quarrel with Mary--his
Mary, once so loved and petted--rushed upon him, and despite the
bustle around, for many an hour his eyes and heart were far away at
Willowdean and Lonewoodlee; and a fair face he had last seen
there--Mary, tearful, trembling, and pale in her muslin dress, with
her delicate neck and adorable arms--haunted him.
Torn by conflicting emotions and unstable in purpose, he had come to
the merciful resolution of writing to her, when a letter was placed
in his hand by the drum-major, who acted as regimental postman.
It was from his mother, Lady Wedderburn; and after a great deal of
verbosity about Gwenny--to the effect of how much and how often she
spoke of _him_; how _sad_ she had looked since his departure; a wish
that Horace was safe with the Depôt (_why_, she did not add), which
she hoped would be stationed in England and _not_ in Scotland--she
mentioned Mary Lennox, and as he read on, Cyril felt the blood
rushing to his temples.
"As for that unfortunate girl at Lonewoodlee, the popular verdict, I
regret to say, is still against her. Your father alone talks in an
extenuating manner, but then we all know that he is so exceedingly
simple! I am so glad that you are beyond her dangerous influence
now, dearest Cyril. Only think of what would have been your
fate--your future, if you had been lured into an engagement with one
whom society could not have received after what has occurred."
He crushed the cruel letter up, but after a time smoothed it out and
read on.
"I hope my darling boy is now happy in his mind, and quite cured of
his absurd _local_ fancy; for Mrs. M'Guffog, the minister's wife,
told me that she has heard on all hands the rumour confirmed, that
the visit to Chesterhaugh, of which we know, and which caused you
such suffering and annoyance, was too probably not the only one."
Cyril placed his mother's letter in his desk, which he locked, and
buckling on his sword with a vicious jerk, set forth to attend to his
duties, so there was no letter written to poor Mary Lennox.
The mess, the great solace of barrack-life, was now broken up
completely; the splendid epergnes, trophies, and plate, either packed
or "handed over" to the Depôt; and Cyril hailed with satisfaction the
dawn of the day that was to see the Royal Fusileers off to share in
the coming perils and glories of the Eastern War; and every heart in
their ranks beat high, save those, perhaps, who were leaving hearts
that were swollen with sorrow behind.
The notes of the _réveille_, now low, now high and swelling, with the
drowsy, softened roll of the drums, rang through the square and
echoing streets of the great barrack just as the grey dawn stole in.
It is an air sweet and mournful in its cadence, and is known in the
service traditionally as the Scottish Reveille, with which the
English was originally played alternately; and ere the last soft
notes of it had died away, Cyril heard the pealing bugles of his own
regiment sounding loudly and high the "turn out."
The brief, restless, and half-sleepless night passed away, and ere
long, belted and accoutred, he yawned and shivered in the cool
atmosphere of that spacious and roughly-gravelled barrack square,
where, since the middle of the last century, so many hundred thousand
men have been drilled and sent forth to all parts of the world; for
Chatham is our great military school--"a mighty military hell,"
Beamish was wont to term it.
The pale morning star was melting into the amber sunrise, but the
purple shadows yet lay deep along the wooded terrace and the lower
barracks. The voices of the birds were heard as they carolled
merrily in the old bushes and tiny gardens before the quarters of the
commandant, the staff, and other officers, when the adjutant, about
half an hour after daybreak, began to form the regiment, which was in
heavy marching order, in open column of companies.
The colours, borne by Pomfret and another subaltern, were in their
oilskin cases; the officers and men wore white canvas haversacks; but
Bingham and a few of the former affected smart courier bags. The
Fusileers were in complete order for service in the field; their
blankets rolled on the top of their knapsacks; their great coats
folded; their canteens and camp-kettles strapped on; thus their
aspect was such as no soldiers had been in Chatham Barracks since
Bonaparte landed from Elba.
A few of the Fusileers had been late of coming into barracks
over-night: others had undoubtedly got groggy at the rural tavern
known as the Hook and Hatchet, or other places; but not a man was
absent on this auspicious morning, though some were noisy and jocular.
"Answer to your name, sir!" cried Beamish to one of his men as the
roll was called.
"Faith, but it's blisterin' dry my tongue is this morning, Captain
dear."
"Dry, after all you drank last night, Barney?"
"Faith, if I had drank more, may be I wouldn't have been so thirsty
this blessed morning."
"Silence!"
This was the sole rebuke for Barney's chatter, which on any other
occasion would have secured him a sojourn in the guard-house.
Mounted on his fine black horse Vidette, Sir Edward Elton was in
front of the line, conning over the route, an official document,
which stated that it was "Her Majesty's will and pleasure," that he
was to proceed to Chatham, with thirty-five officers, forty-seven
sergeants and drummers, and eight hundred and twenty-eight rank and
file of the Royal Fusileers, to Southampton, "there to embark for the
coast of Bulgaria, on board of such tonnage as may be provided," for
so the formula ran.
The officers were around him in a group, and all were chatting gaily.
"So we are bound for Bulgaria; but wherever that may be, the devil a
bit of me knows," said Beamish, whose whiskers were so black that
they seemed a mere continuation of his bearskin cap; "and there is
small honour in being a traveller now, when all the world is rushing
about by steam and rail, and fellows go to pot tigers in Bengal and
lions in Africa, when their fathers were content to look after snipe
in an Irish bog, or grouse in the Highlands."
"Good morning, Wedderburn," said Sir Edward, as Cyril saluted him and
presented his hand; "whatever it may be at Southampton, here the wind
is fair for running down the Channel. We don't go by steamer I
find," he added, pointing to the great vane on the barrack-roof--an
iron rifleman, the size of life, who has levelled his weapon in the
wind's eye ever since the days of Waterloo.
"Well, Bingham," said one, "have you had a tender leave-taking before
breakfast?"
"Breakfast!" repeated the other, twirling the tassels of his sash;
"who could make one at this inhuman hour? I have had a dose of
brandy-and-seltzer."
"A bad beginning," said Beamish. "I have breakfasted at the
mess-house by candle-light (which made me think it supper), on
devilled kidneys, fried mackerel, and a jolly glass of Sauterne, to
make a man of me for the day."
"And what is that huge flask slung over your sword-belt, Pat?"
"What would it be, Wedderburn, my boy, but 'condensed sunshine'--the
best condensation I know of."
"Sunshine?"
"Well--poteen. Would you like a dock an dorroch, out of it? We can
understand that, though Bingham and these English fellows don't, or
pretend they don't."
The light-hearted banter of the majority contrasted strongly with the
gravity, even unconcealed sadness, of one or two of the married
officers, particularly Joyce, who but a short time before, hand in
hand with his wife, had lingered beside the bed where their two
children lay fast asleep and nestling in each other's arms. As he
kissed them softly, the poor man's tears had dropped upon their
golden hair, and then he came forth to take his place at the head of
his company; but their little cherub faces, though they haunted him
for many a day and night, amid the sufferings of our army at Varna,
and the perils of the Crimea, poor Joyce was fated never again to see.
And now, gnawing the brass chain of his cap, he stood on parade,
tearless, but with his eyes bent wistfully on the window of the room
where his children slept, and from whence their mother was watching
him. He kissed his hand to her and tried even to smile, so true it
is, that in the wealth of our emotions, at times we can give nothing.
Many of the married soldiers were in the same predicament, and the
sobbing of the women became at times painfully audible, as they stole
forward into the ranks, and held up their children to be kissed by
the father who was too probably leaving them for ever; for before
Sebastopol, whole companies perished, and were renewed but to perish
again. "Soldiers have hearts like other men, and they share the lot
of other men," says Florence Marryat. They love and leave and lose
occasionally, and occasionally also they have a soft spot left
wherein to keep the memory of such things; for the military
profession and a careless roving life, do not necessarily render men
dead to human feeling.
How often do we hear the contemptuous or careless remark, "he is only
a private soldier;" but thank God! our private soldiers are generally
made of better stuff than those who seek to sneer at them, and no
nobler or finer army ever left the British Isles, than that which
landed under Lord Raglan on the shore of Bulgaria; and the letters
that came from its humblest members, the mere voices from the ranks,
with which the newspapers of the day soon teemed, formed a splendid
example of epistolary literature, displaying inherent manliness,
strong affection and fearlessness, resignation and hope; high moral
and religious principles, together with a singularly graphic power
for describing all they saw and felt.
"Gentlemen and soldiers of the Royal Fusileers," cried Sir Edward
Elton, when the officers had fallen in, and he wheeled the battalion
into line; "prior to this we have all been soldiers but in name. Now
the day is coming--nay, it has come--when we shall be soldiers in
stern earnest, with battles to fight and glory to gain. Though nine
hundred strong, we are one in heart, my lads--one in heart, officers
and men--and ready to face anything. We are of various ages--your
captains and field-officers, being senior in years to most of you.
Half a century hence, how many of us shall be alive? A whole
century, and as surely as the sun now shines the grass will be
growing over us all; but the deeds we shall achieve must be borne on
the pages of history and live for centuries after us. So comrades,
while shoulder to shoulder, let us be all as brothers, and never
forget that we must be ready to die with honour to the Queen we
serve, and the country which gave us birth!"
To this short, but remarkable address, the regiment responded by loud
cheering, and began its march at the word of command.
"Flam off!" cried the tall Drum-major, flourishing his splendid staff
(which was surmounted by the Horse of Hanover in massive silver), and
using the old fashioned command now almost forgotten in the service;
then crash went the music of the brass band to the air of "The Girl I
left behind me," while the deep, hoarse, but hearty hurrah that
Englishmen can give so well, burst from the throats of the thousands
of their comrades of other corps that were soon to follow, and who
had assembled to watch the departure of the Fusileers. Cheering and
waving their caps, they followed into the streets of Chatham.
Other troops, Infantry, Artillery, and Marines, were on the march
that morning, and other bands were heard to break the stillness of
the ambient air, as their music floated over the level fields of
Kent, scaring the lark and the blackbird in the budding woodlands.
Soldiers always muster and march merrily, so even the usually grave
faces of Singleton and Joyce, looked bright on this eventful morning.
Patrick Beamish, who was a "devil-may-care" sort of officer, and had
contrived to get several Irishmen into his own company, struck up the
popular marching song, and nearly eight hundred men, while waving
their bearskin caps or brandishing their muskets, made the clear blue
welkin ring to the merry chorus;
"Though I bask beneath another's smile,
Her charms shall fail to bind me;
For my heart flies back to Erin's isle,
And the girl I left behind me."
How many brave young hearts were bounding there with wild and vague
ambition, with the hope of that which they could scarcely have
explained! There was, of course, the stirring novelty of departure
for foreign service, to engage in a great European War after forty
years of peace, and a glow swelled up in every breast as the cheers,
the songs, and the music loaded the morning air, reverberating with a
thousand echoes in the streets of the town through which they
marched. Even Conyers Singleton, we have said, seemed to feel this
proud emotion keenly--he who had marched many a time to battle, and
had heard given the orders of the per-precussion times--"Gentlemen,
uncase the colours--examine your flints and priming;" and leaning
with his hand on his horse's flank, he looked back with bright and
glistening eyes on the marching column, the flushed faces, the black
Fusileer caps, the sloped arms and the fixed bayonets that flashed so
keenly in the sunshine.
Among the women who saw them march there was no enthusiasm, but there
were commiseration and tears for all; for none, perhaps, more than
the smooth-cheeked boy ensigns, like Pomfret, in their first
red-coats; or the little drummers who beat so lustily in front of the
column, and the half of whose whole height, seemed a tall bearskin
cap.
By rail they were soon swept away to Southampton, and that evening
saw them all stowed on board the _Victoria_ transport ship, and "told
off" to their berths; the muskets racked; the belts and knapsacks
hung on their cleats; the messes formed, the quarter-guard on duty,
and silence and order prevailing through all the crowded vessel, the
result of discipline, strict obedience, and military etiquette.
By sunset, the _Victoria_ had been towed by a steamer below
Portsmouth, where through the evening haze, loomed the great modern
tower of the church which forms a landmark from the sea, the forest
of masts, and the long line of ultra-mural fortification extending
along the beach to Southsea Castle. Now, her canvas was let fall and
sheeted home; the tow-line was cast off, the last connecting link
with dear Old England; a farewell cheer was exchanged; the steamer
dipped her ensign thrice, and the great transport with its human
freight stood upon her own pathway, with the high lands of the Isle
of Wight upon her weather-bow gleaming white and pale in the cold
lustre of the clear star-light; but the chalky Culver Cliffs, the
Cove of Ventnor with all its pretty villas, and the Blackgang Chine,
soon melted into the midnight sea as the transport bore down the
channel before a spanking breeze.
CHAPTER VII.
THE OLD, OLD STORY.
Lady Wedderburn's fond desire that Gwenny should be married to Cyril
was still uppermost in her mind, and ever present in her thoughts and
day-dreams, though Cyril was far away and thinking now of other
things--had, perhaps, almost forgotten his cousin's existence. Thus
she viewed with extreme impatience the intimacy that was ripening
fast between her wealthy niece and the penniless Horace Ramornie; an
intimacy which led her to fear that ere Cyril could return to
Willowdean the love of the beautiful heiress, if he cared to win it,
might be lost to him for ever.
In a farewell letter from Cyril, dated at Southampton, Lady
Wedderburn had heard of the embarkation, and she already trembled at
the idea of the many perils to come. The _Victoria_ transport, with
the Royal Fusileers, had sailed; and the same newspaper which
announced that circumstance contained an account of the destruction
of the _Europe_ troop-ship by fire, off Cape Finisterre, with a body
of the 6th Dragoons on board, when the Colonel, so many of the men,
and all the horses perished.
It has been already mentioned how love for Gwenny was dawning in the
heart of Horace Ramornie; how twice he had been upon the point of a
declaration, but was restrained by an intuitive perception of his
aunt's views. And though a secret passion was swelling up in his
heart, fear of the family aims and wishes made him actually long for
the expiry of his leave of absence, as a suitable excuse for quitting
his uncle's house, where he had ever been welcome and always a
favourite.
Gwenny was a sensitive creature; one of those who shrink from the
world's rougher touch. By nature she was all gentleness, sympathy,
and enthusiasm. The blue waves rolling in light, and breaking in
shining ripples on the sandy beach, or thundering in white foam on
the bluff coast of the Merse, where the rocks are literally alive
with wild seafowl; the songs of the birds, so new a sound to her, as
the birds of India are mostly voiceless; the perfume of flowers, a
novelty too, as the most gorgeous plants of the land she had left are
scentless; the balmy coolness of the spring days, the dark purple
tint of the heather on the hills of Lammermuir; the songs of the
sturdy peasantry, so different in cadence from the monstrous polyglot
rubbish of the dusky Hindoostanees--all served to fill her with joy
and vague yearnings, in which Horace, her usual attendant or
companion, was associated. For Robert Wedderburn, anticipating,
perhaps the day when he should have the field to himself, was
usually, to all appearance, immersed in his studies.
Horace was master of all the legendary lore of the Merse. Thus, when
with Gwenny, he enlivened many a solitary ride by the tales he told
her--weird ones some of them--about the witches of Auchincraw, who
became cats or crows, as suited their purpose; the terrible goblin
known as the Bogle of Billymire, who devoured children like shrimps;
of St. Mary of Coldingham, and the Skeleton Nun who was found built
in the convent wall, and the last words in whose ears had been the
awful three, _Vade in pacem_. And often they rode to the deep rocky
ravine and the two abrupt hills, which form the famous foreland named
St. Abb's Head, from whence they could see the coast of England,
stretching in the distance far away.
There an undulation in the velvet turf, and a few gray stones lying
one upon another, indicate where the convent church stood in an age
that is now remote indeed; a low fence of sods, a few tufts of
hemlock and wild nettles tossing in the keen sea-breeze show the old
burial-ground, where the dust of the Pict, the Scot, and the Briton,
mingle on the bleak verge of the giddy cliff, three hundred feet
below which the ocean roars and boils, hurling the huge waves that
have come unbroken from the Naze of Norway and the mouth of the
Skager Rack.
There he would tell her how the church that had passed away, had been
founded in gratitude to God, by the Saxon Princess Ebba (daughter of
a Northumbrian prince), when escaping shipwreck there. And how, when
the Danish rovers came, in the days of the Flame-bearer, the pious
nuns, to save themselves from capture, cut off their own lips and
noses; which made her think of some of the barbarous tales she had
heard in India.
And often Horace paused in stories such as these, bewildered by the
love that filled his heart and loaded his tongue, while he gazed into
the soft, inquiring, or wondering eyes of Gwenny, or admired the
graceful mode in which she sat her horse.
Horace knew well that it is not every woman who looks well on
horseback; but a slender girl like Gwenny, whose spirits were light
as ether, whose dark eyes were always sparkling, and whose
complexion, if not brilliant, was clear, pale, and pure, looked a
very Aurora in a plumed hat and riding-habit.
Those who love truly and tenderly, seem to have had no past, for love
seems always a part of the present; thus Horace felt as if he had
known Gwenny all his life, or rather to have begun a new existence by
knowing her.
One day as they rode home together slowly, after having lingered at
Wolf's Crag, and talked of Lucy Ashton and Edgar of Ravenswood, as if
they had been real characters, rather than the shadows of a romance--
"Thank God!" exclaimed Horace, suddenly, after a pause, "that this is
my last week at Willowdean!"
"Why that exclamation?" she asked, with surprise.
"Because, Gwenny, I shall soon see the last day here of a love that
is without--hope."
She made no further inquiry, but cast down her long lashes, for right
well did Gwenny know that her young companion loved her. By one
electric glance which once had passed between them, like a flash of
light, she had learned it instinctively.
"Oh, Horace," said she, tremulously, though she seemed to have more
courage in the matter than he. "How lonely will all these places
seem to me when you are gone!"
"And how will it be with me, Gwenny, when a memory shall be all I
have of you?"
The girl cast her dark eyes down again, and blushed and smiled.
"There is a poet, who says," continued Horace--
"How many meet who never yet have met,
To part too soon, but never to forget!"
So it is with you and me, Gwenny--with me, at least. Times there are
when I almost wish we had never met; for never, never can I forget
you, or the hours of delight we have spent together. Oh, Gwenny
Wedderburn," he added, while checking her horse's bridle, and taking
her hand in his own, "I love you--love you dearly; but--but, you are
rich, and I so poor--and then our aunt----" He paused, and then
resumed, while the girl trembled in her saddle, and was covered with
confusion. "Gwenny, dare I hope that the distinction I trust to
attain on service--such, at least, as may fall to the lot of a mere
subaltern--may be a pledge to me--of--of--that if I live to return, I
may claim your love as my reward--my recompense?"
"You have my love already, dear Horace--all that my heart can
bestow," was the almost breathless response of Gwenny.
Their horses were side by side; so passing an arm round her, he drew
her close to his breast, and kissed her brow and cheek. There was
something wonderfully soft and loving, tender and respectful--mutely
eloquent, in fact--in the manner in which Horace gathered the girl in
his embrace, when words failed him, and Gwenny seemed to feel it as
such. "No two declarations of love are alike, any more than two
leaves on the same tree," says a writer who has had some experience
in such pleasant matters. But it was thus that the great secret,
which had trembled so long on the lips and in the heart of Horace
Ramornie, was shared now by her whom it most concerned.
Long did they linger on their homeward ride, these two young lovers,
reiterating the old, old story that has been said or sung by others
so often, and will be so, till the end of time--how much they loved,
and how unutterably dear they were to each other now!
"But what will Aunt Wedderburn say when she hears of our engagement?"
said Gwenny, after a long pause, as they entered the shady avenue
which led to the house of Willowdean.
"She will learn to hate me, I fear. And yet I am her sister's only
son," said Horace, sadly.
"Hate you--why?"
"As yet we shall say nothing about it, Gwenny, love," replied Horace.
"Ah, it is a pity you are so rich," he added. "People could not then
talk as many do; our Aunt Wedderburn would not then deem me a
fortune-hunter, and I could marry you at once, and take you away with
me."
"To live on your lieutenant's pay, with a share of a barrack-room, a
bungalow, or a tent! Oh, cousin Horace--Horace, darling, it is very
romantic, but not to be thought of," said Gwenny, laughing.
"I have thought of it often in my day-dreams."
"Yes; but even the proverbial love in a cottage were better," she
continued, looking down with a beautiful smile, and toying with her
horse's mane.
"Aunt Wedderburn wishes you to marry Cyril."
"But Cyril never asked me, nor seemed to care for me, but as one to
talk to and laugh with," said Gwenny, looking surprised.
"I feel that such is her wish, however; even Robert has hinted as
much."
"But let us speak of ourselves," she exclaimed, as her eyes suddenly
filled with tears; "oh, how long may this horrible war last?"
"It is scarcely begun, so far as we are concerned, but when once
shots are exchanged, Heaven alone can tell the issue. However, I may
not be away from you for more than a year--perhaps," he added, with a
quivering lip, for he strove to speak hopefully, though his heart
misgave him.
"A year? Good Heavens! a whole year!" exclaimed Gwenny, ponderingly.
"Yes, Gwenny: what is a year, at most?"
"It will be an eternity for us to look forward to, though it is so
little to look back upon."
"True, my own Gwenny; and when I think of looking forward to a whole
year,--twelve months, fifty-two weeks, three hundred and sixty-five
days, with all their weary hours of separation----"
"And a year of such peril to you, it may be--of anxiety and terror
and sorrow to me!"
"Oh, my darling--my beautiful darling, it is horrible to be separated
so soon when we have just learned to love each other, and to find
existence so dear and that is love is so sweet!" said Horace, with a
burst of tenderness, as he assisted her to alight, and would
certainly have kissed her, but for the appearance of that solemn
personage Asloane, the butler, between the pillars of the peristyle.
The future life of Horace Ramornie--the life of ambition and of
military glory he had hoped to live--seemed to have passed from his
mind and desires. He could imagine no scene and form no scheme for
the long years to come, in which Gwenny was not concerned, and in
which she did not bear a part. His ambition had evaporated, and with
it, for the time, his military ardour, vanity of uniform, and the
"pomp and circumstance of war" seemed to have faded sorely. The joys
of the mess; the glitter of the military ballroom; the splendour of
the parade; the perils of the field and the chance of being even a
unit in the great game about to be played by Europe in the East, were
all as nothing now, when contrasted with the charm of Gwenny's
presence, her voice and her society.
Ideas of the life of splendour and display he might spend with a
beautiful girl possessed of such wealth as Gwendoleyne Wedderburn,
never occurred even once to single-hearted Horace. He was too young,
too impassioned, too genuine in heart and impulse to be mercenary, or
to love the orphan-heiress for anything save herself alone.
He felt that he could almost without a pang relinquish his old world
of hope, for she had become a new world to him.
But his sword was his sole inheritance, and now duty and honour alike
combined to separate them; yet as the few remaining days of his leave
of absence flew past, the happy consciousness of mutual love grew
stronger between him and Gwenny; though the hour of his imperative
departure was viewed with an apprehension that was mixed with
sadness--an intense sadness, that was all the more keen that they
were compelled to conceal it from the searching eyes of Lady
Wedderburn.
"If poor Horace has nothing but his pay as a lieutenant, and I love
him so, why should we not be married?" thought Gwenny; "surely I have
wealth enough for two--even for a dozen. Horace is a dependant, I
have heard Aunt say; but what of that? Who that love as we do, care
for riches!"
And as she thought thus, a grand scorn for wealth curled the
beautiful lip of the little proprietrix of three hundred thousand
pounds in gold mohurs and rupees.
"It would be hard indeed to marry only to please Aunt Wedderburn,
when I should much rather do so to please myself and dear Horace."
But that was not the time for marrying or giving in marriage. They
had to content themselves by a solemn ratification of their
engagement--an exchange of rings, of locks of hair and photographs--a
long, long stolen embrace amid the flowers of the conservatory, and
then the hour came when they were to part, to all appearance as
merely affectionate friends; when they had that task to perform which
is so difficult to those who are unused to the world, and are young
and love tenderly--to veil their secret emotions, to smile when they
would weep; when each had to conceal their great grief at parting
with the other, while their passion was so new and keen in their
sensitive and impulsive hearts.
But the fatal hour came, and as the carriage rolled away through the
avenue with Horace just as it had done with Cyril, Gwenny felt with a
sobbing emotion in her throat, and a suffocating sensation at her
heart, as if the sun of her existence had set at Willowdean, and she
never knew till then how much she loved him.
To her, his departure seemed the breaking of a spell--the mockery of
a dreamy fancy, till ultimately his vacant place at table and in the
house generally, served to bring the truth home to her, that he was
gone, gone perhaps for ever--Horace so loving in manner, so gentle in
voice and eye--and then the tide of sorrow welled up in the girl's
heart, all the more that she had none with whom to share her secret.
The memories and visions of love remained with her; but they were
visions and memories only.
Meanwhile, Horace felt sensibly that, save with Gwenny, there had
been far less fuss and _empressement_ about his departure, than that
of Cyril Wedderburn; and poor little Miss Flora M'Caw was the only
one who gave free vent to her tears, which were always ready for
service on a suitable occasion.
CHAPTER VIII.
DARK DAYS.
"Well, thank Heaven, they are separated at last!" was Lady
Wedderburn's mental congratulation, as she saw, but not without
emotions of pity and suspicion mingled, the pale girl--her soul wrung
with uncontrollable anguish--retire to her own room after the
departure of Horace; but she knew not how inexpressibly dear they had
become to each other, by that very separation.
In oppressive dulness the weeks succeeded each other now, for as the
family were in mourning still for Uncle Wedderburn, the visitors were
fewer than usual at Willowdean; and it was not until the fourth or
fifth day, and when a letter arrived, dated at Chatham Barracks from
Horace and addressed to his aunt, that Gwenny realized to the full
the fact of his absence.
"Horace gone," thought she; "Horace (like Scott's 'Quentin Blane') so
gentle-voiced and gentle-eyed, who looked like one whom all the world
had frowned on, oh! what a dreary void, what a blank her life would
be now! There were no more drives, or walks, or rides together; no
more reading together, and no more sweet companionship."
But Horace, she knew, would be sad, even as she was herself; and who
could comfort him? and who fill her place?
And the confidence and innocent truth of her own heart told
her--_none_!
How happily the past three months had fled! Oh! how she missed him,
and wept and sorrowed in secret for his absence from a house where no
one seemed particularly to care for him; for Robert Wedderburn was
cold and selfish, hence perhaps his legal predilections; Sir John was
incessantly occupied by all the cares that take up the time of a
sporting country gentleman; by politics, county meetings, and the
internal affairs of the little burgh of Willowdean, where he was
viewed as a species of potentate, even by the ministers of the three
Presbyterian denominations who had churches there and Christian
hearers who hated each other most cordially. As for Lady Wedderburn,
she had special views and wishes, that made her approve of Horace
being away, though he was soon to be face to face with death and
suffering.
The piano Gwenny would touch no more, for the music so powerfully
reminded her of his presence and voice, as to give her absolute pain.
Her worsted work, her embroidery, her flowers and the birds she had
brought from India, had all become distasteful to her; and so were
her books, though these were full of passages he had marked, poor
boy--for he was not much more than a boy after all; and fast fell her
tears as she re-read them.
"Alone--alone! oh, I am now so much alone!" she would say.
Her engagement-ring, which, curiously enough, escaped Lady
Wedderburn's attention among the others that glittered on Gwenny's
white fingers, and which had cost poor Horace a couple of months'
pay, she was never weary of looking at, during the first few weeks of
their separation; even as another sad girl was looking at her
plainer--but equally, or perhaps more beloved hoop, which from its
form was emblematic of something more than a mere betrothal ring.
In her separation, Gwenny had no wound to her self-love, such as that
which tortured the heart of Mary Lennox; the consciousness that one
of whose whole soul and thoughts she had been empress, to whom her
least word was law, her smiles and glances happiness, had cast off
his allegiance, was neglecting and ignoring her, and seeking to
forget her as one who would disgrace him.
The joy and excitement of Gwendoleyne when letters came from Horace,
and her normal condition of sadness, were alike ignored by Lady
Wedderburn, though the latter was viewed with some concern by
good-natured, but unthinking Sir John.
"Well, Gwenny, my summer blossom, why so sad? Thinking of your
Indian home and poor papa--eh?" he would ask at times, and suppose
that such were her thoughts as he received no direct reply; and then
his handsome sun-burned hand would caress her dark hair, which was
always dressed to perfection by the skilful fingers of her ayah
Zillah, the Madrassee; but she wore fewer ornaments now, for there
was no one at Willowdean whose eye she cared to please.
And so the summer months stole on.
Horace was as yet at crowded and bustling Chatham, where the drills
and duties were hard and incessant; and unremitting too were the
departures of troops for the East, amid the cheers of the people, the
crash of music, and the clangour of bells; and he knew that the time
for him to go must arrive soon, for the grim fever king was thinning
fast the ranks of his regiment at Varna. But never before had Horace
seemed in such an affectionate mood to his aunt, and never had he
written to her so many letters, so that at times she had, most
unwillingly, to depute "the task" of answering them to Gwenny, the
first sight of whose handwriting made Horace start as if electrified
when he received a letter in Chatham barrackyard.
"Dear Aunt Wedderburn has desired me to write in her place; she has
one of her nervous headaches to-day, and neither Dr. Squills, nor
Miss M'Caw with Rimmel, can make anything of her."
He could read no further, for now the bugle sounded; but Gwenny's
presence seemed beside him--Gwenny in her innocent love and artless
girlhood--and he became so bewildered, that as the exasperated
adjutant said, "he made a mull of the whole day's drill by his
blunders, by twice marching a camp colour through the centre of his
company, and repeatedly throwing the whole line out!"
Attended by an old groom, Gwenny often rode to the places she and
Horace had visited, and his stories of the quaint old world that was
past, came back to her memory with many a sweet and pleasant
association; but how dull, how lonely and valueless seemed all those
places now, for he whose presence had shed a charm over them, was no
longer by her side.
The evening sun setting in gold and amber clouds beyond the purple
ridges of the Lammermuirs; the beautiful flowers in the garden, even
those he and she had planted (the seedlings "from dear papa's house
in the Choultry"), expanding under the summer warmth; the rippling
grass, the growing corn on the upland slopes, the green waves
breaking in surf on the rocky shore, were all alike gloomy and
discordant, for Horace was not there, and never more might be, the
most terrible reflection of all! Had she but known the solitary Mary
Lennox, what delightful companions they would have been, with their
community of thought and wishes; for though their positions in
fortune were widely different, their hopes were one.
Arrangements had been made to join Lady Ernescleugh in London during
the season; but now Lady Wedderburn, on hearing from Cyril's letters
and the public prints, of the disease and horrors by which, through
the utter inertia of the Ministry, our splendid army was literally
withering away at Varna, shrunk from the idea of leaving Willowdean
for a house in town and entering into gaiety, so the family remained
at home.
Though it has been truly written that "three months of a London
season teach us more than six months in the country," Lady Wedderburn
had no desire that her niece's mind should become so much
enlightened; so even the mixed and melancholy gaieties of Edinburgh
were eschewed, and young gentlemen visitors by no means encouraged.
So the girl would sigh with utter weariness when visitors came who
talked only of crops and cattle, or the county pack; or when the
Reverend Mr. M'Guffog paid a solemn and fussy visit, for then the
conversation ran entirely on matters clerical. And thus Gwenny
learned for the first time that there was a Scottish Established
Church, a Dissenting Episcopal Church with bishops, a Free Kirk which
had none, and other roads to heaven without number; and she heard of
petty squabbles about religious forms, if the utter absence of any
could be so called. The pharisees seemed the most powerful sect of
all; and she would listen in vacant wonder to the discussion of
affairs that seemed as incomprehensible as the difference between
Parsees and Hindoos, Brahmins, Bheels and Khonds; but much less
picturesque.
Summer we have said had come; the scarlet poppies and blue
cornflowers studding the golden fields of the Home Farm, pleased the
eyes of Gwenny more than those of Sir John, who viewed them as weeds,
and a bore; and Lady Wedderburn sighed when she thought of all that
might happen, and all her eldest son must face before that corn was
reaped and ground, for it was evident that our army would soon take
the field, and be where hard knocks were going, as the Ministry, with
a stupidity, if not worse, that has few parallels in history, was
only waiting for _winter_ to commence the Russian campaign.
Once, peace and war had only been empty words to many a heart and
household; but they had a terrible significance now.
The Turks had compelled the Russians to raise the siege of Silistria,
and driven them across the Danube; our ships of war had destroyed the
batteries of Sulina, a Bessarabian village at the mouth of that
river; the battle of Bayazid was fought in Armenia; Bomarsund, in the
Baltic, had been bombarded by land and sea, and utterly destroyed by
old Sir Charles Napier; and now many new and barbarous names of
places almost never heard of before became at every table and
fireside at home in Great Britain familiar in the mouths of all "as
household words;" and even Lady Ernescleugh wrote Lady Wedderburn, to
announce that, with some friends, she was actually thinking of going
to Constantinople in Everard's yacht.
"My friend Lord Cardigan's yacht has already sailed; would you care
to join us?" she added; and then followed a catalogue of many events
of the London season: the debts and difficulties of some, the
flirtations, matches, and jiltings of others--threatened duels, for
that fashion of adjusting disputes had barely gone out.
"What if Cyril saw Gwenny now, or after the lapse of some months?"
thought Lady Wedderburn. "Yes, we shall go; and perhaps I may get
leave for him to come back with me on 'urgent private affairs,' as so
many contrive to do now. Yes--yes, I must bring my dear boy away
from that odious place before the fighting begins with us."
But Sir John was opposed to the scheme as eccentric, and so far as
regarded Cyril, incompatible with honour. The yacht required
complete refitting, and the plans of Lady Ernescleugh were delayed
for a time.
Though an active and obstinate opponent of Lord Aberdeen's
government; and one who mistrusted him personally and as a minister,
Sir John gave a large dinner party to a few neighbours and local
notabilities, on news coming of the surrender of Bomarsund to Napier
and General Baraguay d'Hilliers, when two thousand two hundred
Russians were taken prisoners; and to his guests he bitterly reviled
the Ministry for their delays and utter mismanagement of the war, and
the mode by which, through their previous reductions and
retrenchments, they had crippled our power by land and sea, so that
our very arsenals could scarcely furnish shot for the first siege
trains, while the entrenching tools issued to the troops had been
condemned as worthless by the Duke of Wellington in Spain forty-three
years before; and in conclusion, he quoted that fine sentence of Sir
William Napier, whose words are terrible in their significance and
truth. "In the beginning of each war, England has to seek in blood
the knowledge necessary to insure success, and, like the fiend's
progress towards Eden, her conquering course is through chaos,
followed by Death!"*
* "History of the Peninsular War."
"Sae that evil-minded neer-do-weel, Chesters o' Chesterhaugh, has
gone to help the Turks in person," said the Baron-Bailie of
Willowdean, who officiated as croupier; "think ye it is true news,
Sir John?"
"Yes; he has been gazetted to a majority in the Turkish contingent,"
replied Sir John, laughing.
"A major o' Bashi Bozooks, whatever they be!" said the Reverend Mr.
M'Guffog, lifting up his dreary eyes; "the Lord be good to us!"
"It's just what we micht hae expected o' siccan a loon, sirs,"
resumed the irate bailie, who, being a grocer and general dealer,
ranked heavily as a creditor against Chesters; "he's mair a Turk than
a Christian by nature, and will find himsel' quite at hame amang
their harem-scarems, I warrant."
The mention of Chesters' name, by a direct association of ideas
caused a reference to be made to the decayed Laird of Lonewoodlee,
and the _esclandre_ concerning his pretty daughter.
Sir John, his son, and several gentlemen who were present, were
disposed to express their disbelief of the matter, or their hopes at
least, that the Master of Ernescleugh had been mistaken on the night
in question; but the Baron-Bailie, who was a strict Sabbatarian, and
vehement expounder in public on religion and morality, and who
naturally took the worst views of human nature, maintained that "the
young leddy had doubtless gude reasons o' her ain for her mysterious
visits to such a man; and evil or no evil, there was aye some water
found where the stirkie droons," a Scottish proverb which is supposed
to infer a vast deal more than one may dare to say; and as she
listened, again in her heart did Lady Wedderburn congratulate herself
on the escape of her eldest son "from the snares of that designing
girl."
Singularly enough, the next day was to behold somewhat of a change in
her views regarding Mary Lennox.
Just as she and Gwenny were setting forth in the basket-phaeton which
was drawn by a pretty pair of Orkney ponies, for a drive as far as
the town of Greenlaw, a man whose face seemed not unfamiliar,
approached, and respectfully lifting his bonnet, craved a few words
"with her Ladyship."
"I think I know your face," said she, pausing, whip in hand, and
bowing pleasantly to encourage him.
"I am Tony Heron, my lady, a gate-keeper at Chesterhaugh."
"Well, Tony, what can I do for you?"
"Much, madam, if you are but willing, and a' in the Merse ken how
kind you are to the poor. I have a wife and five wee bairns that can
neither work nor want. They are a' thrown on my hands, which are
empty, for the Mansion House is you know shut up; Chesters has gone
to the wars; the servants are all dismissed, and I have got notice to
quit too, from Grub and Wylie, the writers."
"Poor man!" said Gwenny, beginning to open her purse; but Lady
Wedderburn checked her, for the man, who saw she had mistaken his
intended appeal, blushed scarlet and drew back.
"You want employment, I presume?"
"Just so, my lady; and if you or Sir John could find me something to
do about Willowdean, to put a little bread into the bairns' mouths,
I'd be beholden to you for life. I have been twenty years in
service, and have a good character."
"But from a bad master."
"I was servant to the good laird his father, before him."
"I fear you may find it a poor recommendation to Sir John having been
at Chesterhaugh."
"So I hear on all hands now," said the other, with a sigh of
bitterness; "but no man can say a word derogatory to the character of
Tony Heron."
"Well, I shall speak to Sir John and the ground bailie, and do what I
can for you, Tony, were it but for the children's sake."
The man's eyes kindled with gratitude; but he was not profuse in
thanks; for Scotchmen, reserved at all times, seldom are so.
Suddenly, checking her ponies again, Lady Wedderburn asked--
"Were you the gate-keeper who was cognisant of the visits Miss Lennox
paid your bachelor master?"
"Miss Lennox never visited my master," replied the man with a glance
of genuine surprise.
"But you must have heard it said that she did?" continued Lady
Wedderburn, looking astonished in turn.
"I have heard, my lady, what a' the countryside has been ringing wi';
but Miss Lennox was never, to my knowledge, at Chesterhaugh save
once, and then she came to visit me."
"You--about what--or for what reason?"
"She came in the evening, about the sunset time, to make some inquiry
anent the terrible night when Mr. Cyril--that is, Captain
Wedderburn--went amissing; to ask me the hour he left--if his horse
was restive, and so forth?"
"What interest could _she_ possibly have in the matter?" asked Lady
Wedderburn, rather haughtily, and with a heightened colour.
"Interest, my lady! Through a' the Lammermuirs, secret as they
thought it, it was well kent that they loved each other well and
truly, till some quarrel came between them. Just as she was asking
me all about the captain, poor thing, her heart seeming to be in her
mouth the while, the master lured her inside the gate, and then the
storm of hail and snow came suddenly on. She wished to take shelter
in my lodge; but the master would not hear of it, and half led, half
pulled her into the house, where he kept her till midnight, as his
hellicate groom, Billy Trayner, told us, by pretending that the
springs of his waggonette were broken; and that is the whole story,
my lady; and if I have told you a word that is untrue, may my puir
bairns lack the bread I'm seeking to win them!"
"Why did you not state this before?" asked Lady Wedderburn, angrily.
"To whom, my lady? Besides, it was not my place or interest to speak
against my master."
"True," she replied, and a keen emotion of remorse inspired her, as
she now saw that the poor girl in her love for Cyril--artful though
it might be--and her burning anxiety to learn tidings of him, after
that terrible night and time of suspense and dread, had permitted
herself to be lured into the false position we have so fully
described elsewhere, and which was so destructive to her peace of
mind and place in society.
"Call again to-morrow, Tony, and I shall see what can be done for
you. Meanwhile," she added, turning to Gwenny, "We must call openly
on Miss Lennox, and see if we cannot in some measure repair the
serious injury that has been done her."
"I don't think she will see you, my lady," said Tony Heron.
"Not see me--why?" she asked haughtily.
"Because as I passed the tower gate this morning, I heard the women
lamenting, for the Laird of Lonewoodlee had died in the night; and he
is the last of the auld Lennox line, my lady," added the man, with an
emotion of respect.
Lady Wedderburn, to do her justice, was inexpressibly shocked and
grieved when she heard of this, notwithstanding all the old quarrels
and coolnesses in the past time. She relinquished her idea of
driving, and sent Gervase Asloane with cards of condolence; and she
even in the first emotion of generosity wrote to Cyril on the
subject; but he never got her letter (as she was pleased to think, on
after-thoughts), for the mail steamer by which it went was cast away
in the Gulf of Salonica.
And, though she knew it not, times there were when Cyril's thoughts
flashed home, quicker than the electric wire could have brought them:
when he sat in his tent at Varna, gazing listlessly out upon the flat
shore, the vast blue semicircular bay, and the hideous, gloomy, and
dilapidated Bulgarian town, while his heart grew filled with
irritating doubts and vague regrets, and with the mournful image of
his lost Mary. Was she indeed false, as had been represented, and
with Rooke Chesters of all men? Had she forgotten him? Had
separation and time effaced his memory from her heart? Was he now as
one she had never known and never cared for?
"Well, well," he would think, "a few more weeks must see me at
Eupatoria, and a Russian bullet may solve all my doubts and
difficulties."
But we are somewhat anticipating the regular progress of our story.
CHAPTER IX.
THE SHADOWY HAND AT LONEWOODLEE.
During all this time that the summer had been verging towards autumn,
and the corn yellowing on lea and upland, Mary Lennox had been
unremitting as usual, in the lonely task of tending her father's
sick-bed.
She had only heard incidentally of Cyril's departure for the seat of
war--that he had gone without a word of kindness or farewell to her
who loved him as her own soul and more; and for a time, that soul had
seemed to die within her.
Her betrothal ring was a fond link--a species of sentimental
fetter--from which she had no wish to free herself, otherwise she
might have drawn it from her finger and cast it in the fire!
The first time that Cyril had called her Mary--her Christian
name--still dwelt in her memory with exquisite tenderness, from the
very novelty of the circumstance. The last time he had called her
Mary, dwelt in her memory too; but with anguish, for then it had been
uttered in a tone of wrath, of sorrow and upbraiding.
Music was the great solace of old Oliver Lennox's lonely days. He
loved to hear the rich and glorious voice of his daughter, and thus,
for many an hour she played and sung to him, while her heart was
full, nigh unto bursting, with thoughts that would not be repressed.
Like an angel of mercy had poor Mary hovered about that sick-bed,
where her only tie to earth was about to be severed; for at last
there came a day, she was never to forget, when the doctor assured
her that all his skill could "protract life no longer, and that ere
nightfall, too probably, all would be over;" and Mary heard him
without tears, for now they would not flow; but the old anxious and
clamorous sensation about her heart, became replaced by a gnawing
concentrated agony too keen for description; and as she listened to
the fatal words of Doctor Squills, felt the kind pressure of his hand
and heard his steps die away as he left the house, she gazed in a
kind of stupor across the landscape, where the setting sun shone so
warmly, and, it seemed, so mockingly, in his summer splendour, on the
green pasture lands, and on the trees where the birds were singing so
merrily, while through the open windows the hum of the mountain bee,
and sweet perfume of the honeysuckle came together.
"Must it be--must it be--at last--at last!" she murmured through her
clenched teeth; and creeping once more to his side, she kissed her
father's brow and caressed his silvery locks, that were now as thin
and fine as floss silk; and as she did so, there flashed on her
memory the old tradition that "a grey head was ne'er kamit" (i.e.,
combed) by a Lennox of Lonewoodlee, for in domestic brawls or foreign
wars, they all perished early; but the manners were changed for the
better now.
For a time he seemed unconscious of her presence, and spoke only of
her dead brother.
"Oh, my Harry," he murmured, "your mother was in her grave, and never
knew how gallantly you led your squadron on that terrible day against
the Sikhs."
"Mamma is in Heaven, and oh, papa, may know it all!" whispered Mary.
Then suddenly a light seemed to penetrate the darkness of his mind;
he recognised her, and drew her close to his breast in a tremulous
embrace.
"Mary, my own little Mary," said he in low and laboured accents, "the
bitterness of death is not in dying, but in leaving you without a
home--without a friend--for all passes away with me."
"God will guard and guide me, papa!"
"Our past, with all its traditions and history, has been an
honourable past; yet we Lennoxes have been going down in the
world--down so surely as I shall go to my grave--my poor child!"
After a long pause he spoke again; but more feebly.
"Play me something, Mary, while I can yet listen; for the music
soothes me into dreams and fills me with prayerful thoughts; play to
me once again, Mary," he added with a smile that made her heart
sicken, for it was the last flash up of the dying light, ere that
light went out for ever!
Mary seated herself at the piano in the adjoining room, and while
tears streamed over her face, and her tremulous hands could barely
touch the keys in accompaniment, she slowly sung two verses of a hymn:
"Gentle Jesus, look with pity
From Thy great white throne above;
All the night my heart is wakeful
In Thy sacrament of love.
Shades of evening fast are falling,
Day is fading into gloom;
So when shades of death fall round us,
Lead thine exiled children home."
For a time the old man had beat feebly with his fingers on the
coverlet; then all motion ceased, and when Mary stole in, a cry
escaped her, and she sank on her knees, burying her face in the
bedclothes.
The day had indeed faded into gloom; the old man had passed away to
the foot of the Great White Throne; and, a terrible reality, the
unseen, yet shadowy hand was resting on Lonewoodlee.
* * * * * *
There were now silence and utter desolation in that sequestered tower
among the moorlands. The blinds were drawn down; old and dingy
blinds they were, making the deeply set windows look more gloomy in
the walls which were of such strength and thickness.
Alison Home, after the first noisy explosion of her grief, when she
uttered spasmodic sobs and rocked herself to and fro before the
kitchen fire, moved about stealthily and softly in list shoes, as if
fearing still to disturb the old Laird, who died where so many of his
forefathers had lain, and where many of their brides had slept.
The stillness, the solemn hush of death were over all, and nowhere
more than in the desolate heart of Mary. Everything connected with
such an event in Scotland is so grim, so stern, so funereal, and
utterly without aught to alleviate the mind of the survivor, that it
becomes harrowing in the extreme. There are no prayers for the dead;
no pretty offices, such as the decoration of the body with flowers:
no service of any kind is performed beside it, so that the living may
linger near in a labour of love to the last. A white sheet is simply
spread over to hide it, and then the body is left to stiffen into
ghastly rigidity of outline.
And this death had not come unaccompanied by omens; the watch-dog had
moaned painfully all the preceding night; and Alison Home, and the
other domestic, had of course heard the dead-bells tinkling in their
ears, according to the peasant superstition in the old ballad:
"Yestreen I heard the death-bell sound,
When a' were fast asleep;
And aye it rung, and aye it sung,
Till a' my flesh did creep."
Though in days and months past, Mary had often, in anticipating the
present terrible contingency, thought of her own future, she forgot
all about it now. She had even ceased to think of Cyril Wedderburn
till his mother's card came, and a bitter smile crossed the girl's
pale face as she placed it on the table, where lay an open letter
from Messrs. Grub and Wylie, the solicitors, "threatening legal
proceedings anent the bill handed to us by our client Captain
Chesters of Chesterhaugh."
It might safely lie on the table unheeded now!
Mary Lennox was indeed alone! Sorrow-stricken as she was, there was
not on all the earth a being who could share her terrible emotion of
grief. She had no friend nigh to soothe her awful loneliness by a
single word that was not so conventional as to be repellant. She had
no home, no house, no shelter now from the too probable want that
must soon overtake her!
Dark and cheerless indeed was the prospect of the bereaved girl;
there were affliction and agony for the present, with vague terror of
the future. No hand was near to caress, and no voice to soothe her,
as she lay weeping on her bed, sleepless and without rest, though
prostrate from over-wrought emotion. There was something terrible in
the desolation of that young heart, thrust back upon itself, even in
its craving for sympathy. She had not even that relief afforded to
sorrow by having around her friends to whom she might speak of the
dead, and hear his real or imagined virtues extolled, remembered, and
descanted on.
The two old female servants sat cowering by the kitchen fire, talking
in low whispers of the Shadowy Hand on the wall, and wondering if it
was visible now; but then there was no moon. According to an old
custom, or superstition, they had covered up with white every piece
of furniture the chamber of death contained, and then the door
thereof was carefully closed, for in rural districts the people fear
the dead may speak if it is left ajar, though the whistle of the
locomotive is fast banishing all such foolish fancies.
The minister of Willowdean, a cold and somewhat pompous personage,
came on the morrow, and his extempore prayer--one stereotyped in his
mind, having been delivered on a thousand similar occasions--though
hard and unsympathetic, and most jarringly intoned, soothed her a
little, because his meaning was good, and he wished to be kind
apparently.
The Reverend Gideon M'Guffog was a burly, hard-featured, and
sandy-whiskered Galwegian, who seemed more like something between a
bluff grazier and a sleek attorney, than a clergyman. At the close
of his prayer, which he delivered with his eyes shut, he glanced with
surprise at the open piano, on which the music Mary had last used was
yet remaining neglected or forgotten.
"Music?" said he, in a tone of reprehensive inquiry, while glancing
at Mary, under, over, and finally through his spectacles.
"It is the hymn I sang to my darling papa last night; he loved it so,
next to _Adeste fideles_, indeed; and it was while I was singing it,
he passed away from me," said Mary in a choking voice.
The measure of the Reverend Gideon's reprehension became full when he
read over the hymn in question.
"It is ritualistic, even popish in spirit, Miss Lennox, and I deplore
that the last sounds heard on earth by the ears of your esteemed
father, were such as these. But oh, let not me bruise the bruised!
My poor young lady, this sort of thing comes of your being so sadly
left to yourself."
He retired, promising to call again. But nothing that he could say
had the effect of crushing Mary's spirit lower, though she felt that
in life or in death she had nothing to reproach herself with as a
daughter.
As he was in haste to address a meeting of the Sabbatarians and
self-righteous folks of Willowdean, who were getting up a petition to
the Home Office to prevent the working-men of Edinburgh from entering
the Botanical Gardens of that city "on the Lord's Day," and indulging
in the desecration of it by enjoying flowers and sunshine, he hurried
away; but permitted his wife, who had latterly ignored Mary's
existence (at least since the Chesterhaugh story), to remain with
her, till the funeral matters were arranged. This was but an act of
Christian charity; and when it became known in the neighbourhood,
that the impoverished Laird of Lonewoodlee was dead, many shook their
heads regretfully, when remembering, like honest Sir John Wedderburn,
his stately manners, his steady seat in the hunting field, his
convivial qualities, his dignified, old-fashioned courtesy, his queer
feudal notions; and all agreed that a link with the past was broken.
A few others speculated on what would become of his beautiful orphan
daughter.
The funeral day came at last, the great and final wrench to poor
Mary, who was secluded in her own room, as men alone are present when
"the Prayer" is given in Scotland; but she heard that Sir John
Wedderburn and his youngest son were present in deep mourning, and
she sobbed more heavily at the intelligence.
Cyril's father! Cyril's brother!
"Dead!--dead!" she would whisper in her heart. "How shall I struggle
through the world alone? Who will love me now that my dearest papa
is dead?"
So Oliver Lennox was buried in the Lennox aisle of Willowdean Kirk,
where are lying the tombs of his race for three hundred years, back
even to Oliver who built the Tower, as the legend above its door
records. And with a face of due solemnity, specially got up for the
occasion, his solicitor from Edinburgh acted as chief mourner; for
neither kith nor kin had Oliver left to stand by his grave on that
solemn day when the turf fell like a green curtain over the last
scene of his history.
"Better in his narrow home than in the Tolbooth of Willowdean or
Greenlaw; for it was coming to _that_, sir!" whispered his solicitor
in the ear of Sir John Wedderburn, to whom, as a Baronet and man of
property, he had stuck like a barnacle during the whole of the
melancholy ceremony.
CHAPTER X.
A SURPRISE.
When Oliver Lennox passed away, he left Mary little that she could
call her own, save her paraphernalia and a few jewels that had been
her mother's. Lonewoodlee had been sold piecemeal in times long
past, and the little that remained was mortgaged to the turret-vanes.
The spot of ground around it was mortgaged too, even to the last tree
that grew thereon. There was the old furniture of the days of the
Regency, now scarcely worth removal; there were some grim old
portraits, by Ramsay and Aikman, and even two by Sir Peter Lely,
which would sell readily to those who were "getting up" galleries of
ancestors elsewhere. There were some old arms, even bits of armour
that had seen service in the Border Wars; steel caps and jacks, and
Jedwood axes; old cabinets, and eggshell china in the chintz-covered
drawing-room; old books, old rods and guns, and whips; and many a
household god, to which Mary's heart clung yearningly now that she
knew she must leave them all behind her; for whichever way her eyes
turned they fell on some object through which, by the mere
association of ideas, she was tortured.
But she strove to cast such thoughts aside, as she reflected on the
littleness of life and the worthlessness of it--a bitter conclusion
when formed by the heart of one so young, and when that heart should
feel all the best impulses of hope in a joyous future, and in a long
life of lasting happiness.
Had her father been more provident in his hot fox-hunting youth; had
her brother, the lancer, contracted fewer debts of honour, her fate
might, she knew, have been different now. But her father was dead,
and Harry was dead--buried in his Indian grave, far, far away; so she
crushed the thoughts that would upbraid them. Yet when taken in
conjunction with her broken engagement, and the whole details of her
luckless love affair with Cyril Wedderburn, her heart
"Ached with thoughts of _all_ that might have been,"
had her fortune and circumstances in life been more prosperous and
suitable to her birth.
When the gloomy excitement of the funeral was past, and she came
steadily to see the necessity for facing the future, she felt at
times an irritation--an almost angry and defiant emotion at Destiny;
while sharing with Alison Home the hope that "when things are at the
worst, they are sure to mend--at least they couldna' weel be waur."
But she knew that with her they must mend elsewhere than in her old
ancestral home. And knowing that the Chesters' story had caused her
to be coldly and malevolently regarded in the neighbourhood, now she
felt only the most intense longing to quit it, and for ever.
In the years of the future, if God spared her, when her name had been
forgotten here, she might, if she chose, return again to see her
father's grave, and perhaps to erect a little monument over it. And
so, thinking over these possibilities, pondering alone--for the
minister's wife had that day gone back to the Manse--Mary, seated in
her modest black dress, gave herself up to thoughts that became most
difficult to unravel.
She leaned her head upon her right hand, and sat in the deep recess
of one of the dining-room windows. She heard only the beating of her
heart, save when the intense solitude that reigned around the old
house was broken by the cawing of the black rooks in the ancient
thicket--the lone wood--from which the Tower took its name, or the
bleating of a sheep on the hillside close by.
A day was coming, she knew, when her eyes must rest on other lands
and prospects than the old familiar view she saw from her window now;
and never did the fields, laden with golden grain, or the green
pasture meadows and the purple heather of the hills now bathed in the
amber hues of sunset, look more lovely than in this her time of
sorrow.
With all her anxiety to begone now, she dreaded the change. She was
so young, and so totally ignorant of the world and all its crooked
ways; the uprootal from old associations amid which she had lived
from infancy; the risk of venturing among the cold, hard, suspicious,
and perhaps unpitying strangers--more than all, of precipitating
herself into a human wilderness so vast, and to her unknown, as that
of London, appalled her--for to London she was bent on going!
She felt herself little able to work, but alike ashamed and unable to
beg! These, and such as these, were crushing thoughts to a tender
girl in the sensitive time of youth, when all around her should be
happiness and sunshine.
Her former friends and school companions now in London were, many of
them, girls of good and high position. But in her change of
circumstances she shrunk from intruding on any of them as a
supplicant; and resolved that among strangers only should she look
for work and bread.
So immersed was Mary in her own sad thoughts that she heard neither
the sound of horses' hoofs, the rolling of wheels, nor the barking of
the Dalmatian dogs; nor was she roused from her reverie till the
startled Alison Home placed before her an old and well-worn silver
salver, whereon lay two black-edged cards. Almost immediately after
there was a rustling of silk and crape, as Lady Wedderburn and
Gwendoleyne entered; and, being both in deep mourning, their
appearance was most consonant to the occasion. Lady Wedderburn at
once introduced herself, adding,--
"Miss Lennox--my niece, Miss Wedderburn."
A flush crossed Mary's pale face, and her quickened heart beat
painfully as she rose to receive visitors who were entirely
unexpected. But still, in the native pride of her heart, she strove
to restrain her tears.
"Lady Wedderburn," said she, "it is most--most kind of you to come to
me----"
"Surely not at a time like this, my dear child," replied Lady
Wedderburn, seating herself on the deep old horse-hair sofa, and
thinking how beautiful and how perfectly ladylike the pale girl
looked in her black dress--an orphan in mourning for her father.
"Yes, at a time like this--the darkest of a blighted, a stricken
life!" continued Mary, deeply moved by the soft and kind manner of
her visitors.
"My son Cyril asked me to--to--," poor Lady Wedderburn paused,
conscious that she was beginning to blunder already.
"Cyril--Captain Wedderburn--did he----"
"Yes. He asked me to be kind to you if aught happened. You
understand, Miss Lennox?"
Mary did understand, and she began to weep hysterically, while her
visitors, unused to grief of this kind, glanced at each other
uneasily.
The elder had ignored, slighted, even "cut" her. But could Mary
forget that she was the mother of Cyril, who once loved her, and
whose ring was yet on her engagement finger--Cyril, whom she still
loved so well! Her heart was crushed-by her own great grief: she
felt weak and tender, and had the desperate longing in her utter and
intense loneliness for some one to love her, for something to cling
to. And she had now all the passionate desire to throw herself into
the arms of Lady Wedderburn, as she might have done into those of a
parent, and then weep freely and fully, pouring out her sorrow; but a
remnant of family pride--the genuine old Scottish instinct, of not
"letting oneself down," sustained Mary's spirit, and withheld the
generous emotion which the other was too motherly and too
kind-hearted to have misunderstood.
She had admitted Cyril's interest in Mary's welfare, and she resolved
to ignore that she knew or suspected more; but somehow the
conversation always turned to Cyril.
"I have now learned,--I think it right to tell you, my dear Miss
Lennox--the true story of that visit you paid to the house--the gate,
I mean--of Captain Chesters. I learned it quite incidentally," she
added, perceiving that a momentary flash of anger lit up Mary's eyes;
"but I do think, as a friend, that it was most unfortunate for
yourself that you concealed it so."
"I concealed it, knowing the character of Captain Chesters, and in
dread of the very event that took place."
"And this event?" asked the other, looking a little perplexed.
"Was your son's just indignation at that which I had no control over;
indeed I had not," replied Mary, referring thus to her engagement in
the most straightforward manner, and not ill-pleased that the
attractive eyes of the beautiful cousin were occupied by an album in
the recess of a window.
"Control?" stammered Lady Wedderburn, not knowing well what to say.
"Before that, he loved me very truly, madam."
"For long?"
"Almost ever since he brought my dear papa my brother's sword and
rings from India."
"And you loved him?"
"Yes," replied Mary, in a low voice like a sigh.
"It was great duplicity on Cyril's part, when he knew our families
were on bad terms; and _latterly_," she added, with a glance at the
unconscious Gwenny, "an unfortunate folly on yours, under all the
circumstances."
"You refer, madam, I presume, to the engagement with his cousin of
which Captain Cheaters told me?"
Lady Wedderburn was silent; and thus, unwittingly, perhaps, permitted
Mary to adopt a painful error.
"Well, well," she sighed, looking sadly down the while; "I can have
no more bereavements now. My papa's death leaves me alone in the
world."
"Alone?"
"Yes; God and myself only know how fearfully alone!"
"This is most sad," replied Lady Wedderburn, kindly, as she took
Mary's hands in hers, and gazed tenderly into the sweet young face.
"Can I not assist you, Miss Lennox? In anything you may command me,"
she added, for secretly her heart went forth to the girl who had
loved her absent son, and had the courage to honestly avow that love;
so with charming inconsistency, forgetting all about her past
accusation of art, of cunning, and decoying on Mary's part, with much
of pity and sudden affection, she surveyed her; for Mary was so
wasted and worn by past watching, nursing, and sorrow, that she was
more like a spirit, having dark brown hair and large violet eyes,
with bluish unhealthy circles under them, than a living being.
"You do not seem strong, Miss Lennox," said she.
"Nor am I; my health may never recover the shocks I have sustained of
late, with dear papa's long illness, and the hard task--a labour of
love--watching him by night and day; so Doctor Squills tells me, that
unless I am very careful, my grave is not far distant, and at best,
assuredly not far off."
"Poor child! And what do you mean to do? Pardon me, but you cannot
live here alone."
"Here!" repeated Mary, and as she glanced at the old faded
dining-hall, the bitter smile stole over her lip again; "no, not
here--not here. I mean to get some teaching if I can."
"And if not?"
"Then I can but--die!"
"Do not speak thus, I implore you!"
"My voice is thought to be a good one, and has been well cultivated,
for papa was vain of it; but I fear I have lost a note or two
since--since----"
"Since when?"
"Last March."
("That was when Cyril left this," thought Lady Wedderburn.)
"And you mean to go London, I have heard; is that true?"
"Yes; in a few days."
"Have you friends there?"
"Not one."
"This is a terrible--a bleak prospect!"
"Bleak indeed; fatherless, motherless, and in time, it may be,
penniless! But not hopeless, while God spares and helps me.
Assuredly, Lady Wedderburn, this world is not the place where our
fondest hopes are realized, or where our brightest dreams are always
embodied. It is a place, rather, where we should bear and forbear
one with another, striving to be happy if we can; and if we cannot be
happy, to be at least resigned and content."
"My poor child, by living so much alone, you have learned to talk and
think painfully beyond your years," replied the other, who could not
help contrasting the probable fate, fortune, and future of Mary and
Gwenny, both alike so young and beautiful.
Somehow her visit proved a very protracted one. She found the charms
of Mary's mind and manner were such, that even her loveliness seemed
to be but a secondary excellence. She pressed her to visit
Willowdean--to come away with her now in the carriage; to spend even
a single day there; but Mary remembered her father's luckless and
expensive quarrels and disputes with Sir John; she thought, too, of
the bitter slights and mortifications that had been put upon herself;
and now that all was over between her and Cyril, and that another
possessed the love that had once been her own, she steadily declined,
so her visitors ceased to press; and all this seemed very strange to
the blushing and simpering Mrs. M'Guffog, who had just returned,
happy that she was in time to have an opportunity of even shaking
hands "wi' her leddyship."
She prevailed upon Mary, however, to accept of a letter of
introduction to a lady friend in London, who had two little
daughters, and who, she was assured, would befriend her; and for
this, Mary felt herself compelled to express gratitude; and there the
interview, which afforded sincere pleasure to Mary, ended, and the
splendid carriage, with its liveried servants and brace of spotted
dogs, rolled away from the door of the desolate and dilapidated house.
When Gwenny, after kissing Mary and weeping with her at parting, in
the mode adopted by most young ladies, who so readily share each
others' joys and griefs--expatiated on the romantic solitude of the
old tower, and the quaintness--so she was good-natured enough to term
it--of its furniture and so forth, Lady Wedderburn reminded her that
the Lennoxes were but as mushrooms when compared to the old Welsh
line of Ap-Rhys of Llanchillwydd; but so she might, with a safer
conscience, have added were the Wedderburns of Willowdean; for so,
even in this advanced age of the world, will some people talk, and
set a mighty store upon their real or fancied little bit of heraldry,
as if there had been more Adams than one in Eden.
CHAPTER XI.
MARY BEGINS HER PILGRIMAGE.
With that promptitude which women can so often exert when in grief or
adversity, Mary made all her preparations for leaving Lonewoodlee.
It was already in the hands of creditors or their agents, and every
day she remained she felt as if they were conferring an obligation
upon her, and that idea was intolerable! A few relics of her father
she secured for herself. The embroidered slippers he had last
worn--her own working; his spectacles, an old riding-whip, and other
mementos were put away as sacred treasures, over which she often
wrung her poor little hands, and as the emotions of the child welled
up in her heart, would weep--oh, so bitterly!
Mary had sometimes--especially latterly--repined at the dulness of
her impoverished home; but now, with an emotion of repentance, she
shed salt and silent tears, at the misery of leaving its shelter for
a future which she could not foresee, and some dark forebodings of
which had already begun to steal upon her.
The last day there was a dull and melancholy one indeed. A dense
mist had set in from the German Sea, and was rolling in masses along
all the glens and ravines of the Lammermuirs; the wind seemed to sigh
with a deep "sough" in the old pine wood, and the old house-dog, as
if sensible of some impending change or calamity, uttered ever and
anon a low and dismal howl.
Mary was taking away with her only a trunk, for everything that had
belonged to the family in past times, and all their most treasured
household _lares_, were to be left behind for the hammer of the
inexorable auctioneer.
Jealously tender of her dead father's honour, Mary had changed into
money everything in the shape of jewellery that the solicitors would
permit her so to turn (for even the stony hearts of Grub and Wylie
were moved); she had thus paid to the last penny all he owed in the
neighbourhood; and leaving herself but a very little stock in
gold--enough, perhaps, to maintain her for a few weeks, till she
discovered some one to appreciate her musical talents and those
little domestic accomplishments by which she hoped to feed herself in
the great metropolis of the world.
So the fatal or eventful evening came at last, and Mary, with her
little trunk, was driven over to the Railway station by Doctor
Squills, who, as he had always admired her greatly in secret, was
somewhat moved on this occasion. As he turned the gig down the
roadway from the hills, Mary begged of him to pause for a moment,
while she gave a last long, wistful glance at Lonewoodlee,
which--save that no smoke ascended from its chimneys now, and that
all the windows were closed--looked just as it must have done for
three centuries, a grey and stony mass, with its four turrets
standing sharply up against the evening sky.
The little garden, once so trim and neat, was a mere wilderness now,
where the jasmine grew in wild masses round the old lichen-spotted
dial-stone; and the ancient pines of the thicket which her usually
improvident father had spared for beauty's sake, and where she had
been wont to meet Cyril, were marked by the axe for cutting down and
"sale by public roup at the Market Cross of Willowdean," as a large
placard informed the passer.
There had been a time when she had pictured herself leaving
Lonewoodlee--if she ever left it--as the bride of Cyril Wedderburn,
happy, joyous, and filled with the natural anticipations of a long
and brilliant future.--Now! tears choked her under her veil, as she
felt keenly all the bitterness of the present, when contrasted with
the vanished hopes of the past. It was all over--all--all; and
certainly on this side of the grave they would never meet again.
"Drive on, Doctor, please; I fear we shall be late for the train--I
am sure I hear the whistle already!" said she, making a prodigious
effort to be calm.
In her motherly heart, Lady Wedderburn viewed with much of pity and
more of terror, the fact of a solitary and beautiful girl, one so
gently bred and nurtured and so totally ignorant of the world,
setting forth on a pilgrimage so hazardous; while Sir John, with his
usual open-handed liberality, thought of enclosing a cheque to her
for a handsome sum, pretending it was some debt he owed her father;
but his wife assured him that the spirit of Mary Lennox was such,
that she would too probably return it as an insult; so the good man
sighed as he relinquished the idea, adding--
"Ah, poor thing--she was so fond of our Cyril, you say;" and he
sighed again over his wine that evening, and said, "Kate, Kate, I
cannot now, without regret and emotion, regard this utter destruction
of an old Border family, with all its local and historical
associations. Poor obstinate, passionate Oliver Lennox! I would,
for the girl's sake, he had guided his patrimony as he might have
done."
Lady Wedderburn agreed with him; but Robert thought "the sooner such
geese as old Lennox were plucked and in the market, the better."
"There speaks the lawyer," retorted his father; "but poor Lennox knew
one art only--that of squandering."
Meanwhile, Mary was standing as one in a dream on the platform of the
little station at Willowdean, where the Reverend Gideon M'Guffog and
a few others waited, either to see her off, or more likely to see the
train come in, that event being then somewhat of a novelty in the
secluded locality. He omitted to warn her, an inexperienced girl, of
the perils that might so easily beset her path in a city so vast as
London; but he did not fail to warn her to "beware of prelacy,
popery, ritualism, and other errors and snares of the Evil One,
abounding in the land to which she was going."
Sobbing bitterly as she bade her adieu, old Alison Home, forced upon
her acceptance a pair of worsted boots of her own knitting, "to keep
her feetie warm in the train," as she said, though the season was the
end of summer; and a tall footman in plush brought her from
Willowdean a beautiful bouquet and a pretty basket of fruit, with
"the compliments and best wishes of Miss Wedderburn."
Her rival--her supplanter! yet she received the graceful gifts
quietly, and returned a polite message of thanks.
To keep up appearances, she had taken a first-class ticket to
Berwick, resolving to exchange there where she was unknown to a
third-class for London, consoling herself by the reflection, that as
an unprotected girl, she should doubtless be safer among the many,
though more humble, who might be in the latter, than with one or two
in the former class of carriage.
And as the train glided away, Mary gave a last and piercing glance at
the familiar scenery around her, at the village spire, whose shadow
at sunset fell upon the grave of her parents, and then she sank back
into a recess of the carriage, to weep and commune alone, with all
her thoughts turned inwards.
Every tie between her and her home was broken now; and she had but
one all-pervading idea, that on the day of her visit, Cyril's mother,
by her _silence_, had tacitly admitted the fact of his engagement to
his cousin Gwendoleyne.
"How soon, oh, how readily he forgot me!" she exclaimed, for she was
alone.
Mary felt truly grateful to Lady Wedderburn for her letter of
introduction, which was addressed to a Lady Wetherall in Piccadilly,
and on the latter all her hopes were based. She wondered whether
Piccadilly was a street or square--a park or suburb, and what manner
of person Lady Wetherall might be--whether old or young, grave or
gay. Would she be kind to her? oh, if so, how very soon she should
learn to love her and her two little daughters. If the girls were
her daughters, then she could not be very old--middle-aged, pleasant
and motherly, perhaps; for now when alone, and entirely among
strangers, Mary began to feel a little timid; she had heard and read
so much of the unmerited humiliations of governess life.
She had changed carriages at Berwick; the waters of the bordering
Tweed had vanished, and she strove, but in vain, to court sleep in
the comfortless third-class vehicle, while the swift night train sped
on in darkness along the bleak Northumbrian coast line, by Morpeth,
and by Newcastle, the lights of which she saw with astonishment from
the famous High-level Bridge; and as the train "slowed," then with
growing fear and wonder did she look down on the quaint old bridge of
the Tyne, on the pigmy figures in the gas-lit streets, and on the
masts and yards of the shipping, more than one hundred and twenty
feet below her!
So the monotonous night wore away, and weary, pale and nervous, with
her black mourning dress powdered white with dust, she saw the train
enter London, and run on for miles upon miles between dense streets,
which being all of brick, seemed strange and even foreign to her
eyes, till she began to imagine it would never stop at all,--till
about ten in the forenoon, when she found herself standing lost,
bewildered, and literally stunned, amid the bustle and roar of the
Great Northern Railway!
But last night--only last night, she had been amid the sequestered
solitude of the heathy Lammermuirs, where, save the bleating of a
sheep or the whistle of a curlew, no sound broke the oppressive
silence!
CHAPTER XII.
IN LONDON.
The space, the crowd and the bustle in and around the terminus of the
Great Northern Railway, scared poor Mary, and literally took her
breath away. Wearily, and with a haggard and almost despairing eye,
the girl threw up her black veil and looked about her. The train had
disgorged its hundreds on the spacious platform; all seemed to have
some decided object or path to pursue--some home or hotel to go to;
nearly all seemed to have friends to greet them, were able to select
their own luggage, and depart on their way in confidence and security.
"Now then, young lady--move on, please," said a policeman, and she
moved on accordingly, but mechanically and forgetting all about the
little trunk which contained all her worldly goods, till she suddenly
saw it on a barrow, with many others, when she claimed it, and was
instantly surrounded by clamorous porters, and even cabmen seeking
her as a fare, and using strange slang terms of which she was totally
ignorant.
"Where was she to be driven to?" some one asked her.
She could not say, but stood helpless and burst into tears. At that
moment the guard of the train by which she had travelled--a ruddy
complexioned, brown-whiskered, and jolly looking man--remembered that
she was the young lady to whom the showily-liveried footman had
brought the bouquet and fruit at Willowdean. He came forward and,
touching his cap, politely said--
"Can I do anything for you, ma'am--'seem a stranger in London--'been
here before?"
"Never."
"Where do your friends live?"
"I have none in London."
"Then where would you like a cab to take you?" he continued.
"That I cannot tell you--I am so utterly a stranger."
The guard began to look puzzled, and a policeman who was standing by,
and had hitherto been gazing stolidly over his glazed leather stock,
now seemed to take an interest in the conversation and to look
suspicious, while one or two men of shabby appearance whispered
together and drew near, till his eye fell on them, and then they
slunk away.
"Do you know Lady Wetherall's house in Piccadilly?" asked Mary,
timidly.
"I knows Piccadilly pretty well, ma'am--but can't say as I knows Lady
Wetherall. Are you going there?"
"To-morrow--meantime I must rest for to-day and to-night; I am quite
exhausted."
After a pause, the guard said,
"I daresay my missus wouldn't object to taking you in for a night
till you could look about you, and do it cheap too. She prefers
Scotch folks--queer, but every one to their taste. If you choose to
cab it, I'll go along with you myself."
"Is she your wife of whom you talk, my good man?" asked Mary, feeling
the necessity of rousing herself to action, for the eyes of many
loiterers were now upon her.
"Wife--no, my landlady--poor woman she has seen better days, has Mrs.
Long Primer."
"Of course--who ever knowed a landlady that hadn't?" said the
policeman, laughing.
"She's a respectable woman--a printer's widow, ma'am; and though her
name be Long, she's little enough."
"Well, Tom," resumed the policeman, "I think you'd better take the
young woman away with you; she may get into trouble else, being, I
see, quite a stranger--a jolly green one sure as my name is Finnis."
This style of dialogue was Mary's first taste of a new kind of
humiliation. The distribution of two or three three-penny pieces
procured the cab, on the box of which her trunk was hoisted; she
stepped in, and the guard, Tom Gubbs, in his railway livery, followed
her. As they drove through the streets the double lines of vehicles
of all kinds, laden carts, drays and waggons, the multitude of sounds
that mingled and united into a species of dull roar; the vast and
ceaseless human tide that surged along the pavements, at first
appalled Mary, and then seemed to lull her senses into a kind of
stupor, from which the voice of her new companion roused her at
times, as he kindly named the thoroughfares through which they were
passing, or drew her attention to some great church or other public
edifice.
At last, after traversing what seemed to be an enormous wilderness of
streets, the cab turned to the left from the crowded Strand, down a
quiet and narrow alley, where all was still and nearly noiseless, and
at the foot of which a glimpse could be had of the Thames, with its
shipping, and the crowded steamers gliding past. And now the vehicle
stopped at the green-painted door of a large house, where people were
lodged on the various floors, according to what they could afford to
pay. Then the guard, Mr. Tom Gubbs, after a chaffing wrangle with
the cabby, who insisted that his fare should be five, instead of two
shillings, informed her that this was "Norfolk Street, Strand."
To Mary's ear this conveyed no particular idea, but to her eye the
houses looked gloomy, dingy, and strange, and she could not determine
whether they had been built yesterday, or two hundred years ago;
though with their quaintly corniced doors, old fashioned brass
knockers, and general aspect, they looked like mansions at which
Johnson and Garrick might have visited, near which Savage might have
wandered in his hunger and misery, and where crown bowls of punch had
been drunk over the defeat of "The Rebels" at Culloden, and the fall
of Quebec,--for the quarter seemed decidedly London of the Hanoverian
times.
Mary's _introducteur_, whose apartment was at the top of the house,
vouched to the landlady for the respectability of her "new wisitor,"
whom he said "had come from Scotland by the night-train, and was
going to Lady Wetherall's in Piccadilly--to service of some kind, as
he thought--to-morrow; but that she wished a few hours' rest, being
well nigh wore out."
Indeed Mary looked as if about to sink, and when Mrs. Long Primer, a
plump and motherly looking little woman in a huge white cap, asked
her "on which floor she wished an apartment," she replied that it was
a matter of total indifference to her; so the landlady solved the
difficulty by conducting her at once to a little room, one window of
which faced the gloomy street; but the other afforded a narrow
glimpse of the shining river with all its bustle.
A little breakfast was prepared for her, and now Mary with a swelling
and thankful heart, shook hands with Gubbs the guard (who, on the
morrow, she knew, would be speeding past the Lammermuirs, with the
down train), and the worthy fellow blushed scarlet, for it had not
been often his lot to have in his a hand so white and beautiful as
that of Mary Lennox.
A reference to the London Directory assured Mrs. Primer that there
was a Lady Wetherall in Piccadilly. The weight and appearance of
Mary's trunk, as it stood in the passage, suggested respectability,
and it was filled with genuine wearing apparel. Her courier bag too,
with all its little appurtenances, seemed faultless. Mrs. Long
Primer studied all these things acutely, for she had been deluded,
"taken in," more than once during her career as a landlady; but in
the course of conversation with Mary, she soon learned her
circumstances, her object in coming to London, and all her wishes;
and the good woman felt her mother's heart stirred within her, as she
surveyed the sad, weary eyes, the pale little face and the black
dress of a creature so young and attractive cast on the world alone;
and more sadly perhaps would she have surveyed her, had she known how
very few pounds the poor girl had in her pocket.
Unslept though she had been all the previous night, Mary felt
unnaturally wakeful all day. The street was still and quiet, though
close to the roar of the mighty Strand. No sound came to her ears
there, save an occasional street cry, the paddling of a steamer
shooting past with its human freight, or the bell of St. Clement's
church, as the clock struck the slowly passing hours. She prayed in
her heart and felt hopeful, for she had made her first essay in life
and met with kindness.
She studied the advertisements in the _Times_, and the number of
situations vacant filled her with wonder. Could people ever be found
to supply them all! On the other hand, the number of applicants,
their talents, qualifications, and recommendations rather scared her,
and made her happy to rest all her hopes upon Lady Wetherall. Yet
she could not resist turning again and again, nervously, to the
monstrous lists in the _Times_.
There were, "Wanted, a young lady for a millinery department--salary
for the first year 50_l_." "Wanted, a young _person_ of strictly
Christian principles, as governess to five little girls; solid
English education, French, Italian, music, drawing, and the use of
the globes necessary, salary 10_l_. per annum; and the share of a
comfortable home." "Widow, wanted as housekeeper to a single
gentleman, not over forty" (which was to be "not over forty," the
advertisement did not say). "Wanted, a cook"--the cooks seemed
decidedly to have the best of it, so far as salaries went; but Mary's
heart sank as she read on, and then she cast the paper aside.
Quitting the rickety little calico-covered sofa, she frequently rose
to look from the window into the street without. The architecture,
material, and construction of the houses seemed novel to her eye,
while the window panes being almost flush with the external walls,
suggested alarming ideas of insecurity. The voices of the passers,
and the names on the signboards, like the sound of the church bells,
all spoke to her of being in a strange place, and of being utterly
among strangers.
Slowly passed the day, and after she had been some hours alone, she
began to feel forlorn and nervous.
Oh, the gloom of that London lodging-house--she should never, never
forget it! Her liberty, her being so unheeded and uncared for,
almost terrified her. There were none to greet her, and none whom
she could greet. She felt as if her existence was already being
ignored. To add to the gloom of her thoughts, she had read in that
day's _Times_ of two cases of death from starvation--death amid the
wealth and luxury of London. And in one instance the victim had been
a governess, a lady of many accomplishments, but out of employment.
Starvation! the idea filled her with horror; but, with God's help,
such could never be her fate, for was there not Lady Wetherall, whom
Lady Wedderburn felt assured would refuse _her_ nothing?
The very opening and shutting of the house door, and the rat-tat of
its knocker, suggested the idea of temporary lodgings, and not of
home. _Home!_ alas, she had none now, though even the dog's kennel
or the half-ruined stable at Lonewoodlee, would have seemed as such
to her then. Never more--never more, should she feel the sublime
sense of security afforded by home and a father's roof!
She felt somewhat relieved, however, when gossipy little Mrs. Primer
came to ask her to "join her at tea, with a chop, quite cheery in her
own back parlour." The kind woman had hot muffins, shrimps and
watercresses--even a little flask of Old Tom--provided as a relish;
and she was very anxious to hear all about Scotland (the late Mr.
Long Primer's mother having been a native of that country), her ideas
of which were decidedly cloudy, and somewhat pre-railway, being
chiefly deduced from a cheap edition of Miss Porter's "Scottish
Chiefs," and "Rob Roy," as she had seen it performed at the Lyceum or
Surrey Theatre.
"And if Miss Lennox would like to go to the play to-night, or any
night," she added, "they could get a pit order from the first floor
front, Miss Madalena de Montmorencie, who was leading lady at one
establishment, or her third floor back, Mr. Algernon Sidney Spangles,
who was the light comedy gent at another; or to see funny little Mr.
Robson in 'Jones the Awenger,' when one didn't know whether to laugh
or cry. and so did both at once; or to see Mr. Harley, as--begging
your pardon, Miss--was Bottom at the Princess's." But Mary nervously
declined all these kind offers of patronage, urging that she was in
deep mourning, and had been face to face with sorrow too recently.
Even amid her intended civility and benevolence, Mrs. Primer came out
at times with little remarks that jarred on Mary's, perhaps,
overwrought sensibility.
"I think, my dear," said she, as she slowly stirred her tea and
balanced the spoon from time to time on the edge of her cup, "you
said it was a situation as governess you were a-looking after?"
"Yes."
"Oh, I quite forgot to ask--have you got a character?"
"A what--Mrs. Primer?" asked Mary, with genuine surprise, while the
other began to fidget and cool her tea in the saucer.
"Testimonial of any kind from your last place?"
"No, I have never been in a situation, and consequently never thought
such things were necessary."
"No character--no testimonials--not even a line from the rector or
parish clergyman?"
"I have nothing of the kind."
"Oh lor, oh lor, you are simple as a new-born babby! Why, child,
you'll not get a place even as a lady's maid, without some such
papers."
"I have a letter of introduction, such as one lady may give to
another," replied Mary, coldly and proudly, yet feeling crushed in
heart and broken in spirit, for that such things should be said to
her, plainly showed already how poor and dependent her position in
life was becoming.
And Mary--she who, in her pride of heart, had shrunk from kissing
Lady Wedderburn, while under the roof of her dead father's house--now
in the utter loneliness of that heart, kissed with real affection the
cheek of the plain little Englishwoman, as she left her for the
night; for she felt gratefully conscious that Mrs. Long Primer had
been kind and good to her.
But the word "character" continued to rankle in her memory; and at
times, especially in the darkness and silence of her bedroom that
night, ere she slept, there crept into her soul an intense longing to
be laid at rest by her father's side, where she might never--too
probably should never--lie, in the Lennox aisle at Willowdean.
CHAPTER XIII.
LOST.
Refreshed by a deep and dreamless sleep, after her hands had been
folded in prayer for assistance and guidance, Mary rose, inspired by
a hope that ere the new day was past, she should have come to the end
of her chief doubt and difficulty; but she had to count several weary
hours until the time would be suitable for her to call on a person of
Lady Wetherall's position.
The smart and bustling little Mrs. Long Primer suggested that Mary
should take an omnibus so far as this or that point, changing here
and changing there, as a matter of economy. However, Mary became so
bewildered by the strange names and the infinite number of changes to
be made, that she preferred going by cab; but before setting out she
met with a terrible shock.
Mrs. Primer suggested some little change in her travelling costume,
which Mary had forgotten all about; but she had the required
alteration in her trunk.
"And that, I forgot to say, has gone before you to Lady Wetherall's,
my dear," said Mrs. Primer, rubbing her hands over each other and
smiling with pleasure.
"Before me--how?"
"Her ladyship's own man came for it this morning early, and left her
compliments, with the message that you were to follow as soon as you
chose."
"It is impossible--it is incredible!"
"Lor, Miss. How?"
"Lady Wetherall knows nothing about me, and nothing of my being in
London. She never even heard a word of me!" said Mary, becoming very
excited as she hurried to the passage and saw that her property was
indeed gone.
"What can it mean?" asked Mrs. Primer, growing pale.
"The man must have been a robber."
"A robbery in my 'ouse, Miss Lennox--take care what you say, ma'am!"
exclaimed Mrs. Primer, growing red, while all the quilling of her cap
quivered with her anger.
"By Jingo, it looks very like it, missus," said Tom Gubbs, the guard,
who had overheard these remarks, as he was about to depart for the
mid-day train; "it's a regular do, Mrs. Primer, and has been done by
one of the fellows as was a loafing and listening about the platform
at the Terminus yesterday--perhaps it's the cabby himself, for all we
know or may ever know, that's away with the young lady's box, and
she'll never see it again on this side o' time."
Mary was dreadfully harassed by this loss. The trunk--apart from a
few little family relics--contained all she possessed in the world,
and what she was totally without the means of replacing. She seemed
so crushed that Mrs. Primer, in pity, felt the necessity of saying
something.
"Her ladyship may have sent for it, after all. Might not your friend
in Scotland have written to say that you were about to visit her?"
"Yes. But how were either of them to know that I was here?"
"It is impossible to say. The telegraph tells things wonderful
now-a-days."
"And then she would have sent her carriage for me," said Mary,
wearily and dreamily.
"If she has one."
"She must; for I have heard that she is very wealthy."
Tom Gubbs was off by this time to give information to the police,
while Mary, unable longer to delay, procured a cab and set out for
Piccadilly; but not before her kind landlady--whose prevailing idea
was that people should eat under all circumstances, whether of joy or
grief--had forced her to partake of a little luncheon, and followed
her to the door with the warmest wishes for her success.
Mrs. Primer's little ones were all dead, and the good-hearted woman
having known much of sorrow in her time, felt a genuine interest in
Mary and sympathy for her. She seemed so gentle, so thankful for any
kindness, so unsuspecting and truthful; and yet withal, as a stranger
utterly ignorant of London and its ways, most helpless.
She awaited her return with considerable impatience, and calculating
that she might be away at the furthest about three hours, put off the
usual time of tea (her most important meal, if it could be called
such), that they might have it cosily together, with a pleasant chat
about Lady Wetherall's house and establishment; what manner of woman
her ladyship was; how she dressed; what her two little girls were
like, and so forth.
She wondered if Mary would ever come to see her after she was fairly
established in one of those great mansions in Piccadilly. Mrs.
Primer hoped she might, for the young lady didn't look in the least
proud; but the idea of herself returning the visit, and being
admitted by a huge footman, all calves and whiskers, never entered
the timid little woman's head.
The summer afternoon wore drowsily on, and the shadows began to
deepen and then to darken in the gloomy brick streets and alleys off
the Strand. The clock of St. Clement's struck six, and Mary had now
been absent four hours. Mrs. Primer could wait no longer. She took
her tea alone, but left the pot to simmer on the hob, beside some hot
muffins, for she was certain the poor young lady would return
harassed and weary.
Another hour passed without her appearing. Still Mrs. Primer did not
feel alarmed; she knew that great folks dined very late, almost in
the middle of the night, she had even heard; and what could be more
likely than Lady Wetherall keeping her visitor to dinner. So she
looked forward with real pleasure to a description of the marvels
thereof.
Eight, and then nine, were duly chimed in succession from the church
tower, and still Mary was absent; and when ten o'clock and darkness
came together, Mrs. Long Primer began to feel a real anxiety mingled
with alarm. She knew the snares and pitfalls that beset the steps of
the unwary in London, and more particularly would one so beautiful as
Mary Lennox be subjected to peril; for she was an orphan, and utterly
friendless and unknown. Mrs. Primer knew from an article she had
lately read in the _Times_, that many more than a thousand beings
disappeared in the streets yearly, being literally lost beyond all
human ken; and dreadful stories of abductions and robberies, of
concealed traps that opened over the river in the floors of nefarious
dens and mysterious houses, recurred to her memory, for the slow
rolling current of the mighty Thames hides many a terrible crime.
A sudden terror seized her: that the man who had stolen the trunk
that morning might have got some deeper plot in hand; that Mary might
not have been taken to Piccadilly at all; that some wicked woman
might personate Lady Wetherall, and lure her away to where she might
never be heard of again.
Midnight came, and still the girl was absent; and then the good
woman's anxiety of heart amounted almost to an agony, but she knew
not what to do, or where, or to whom to go. Despite her fears of
rheumatism and toothache, with a shawl over her head, she remained
long at an open window, watching and listening. Twice or thrice a
cab dashed along Howard Street, and then her heart leaped with hope;
but, as it turned into the Strand, the hope, like the sound of its
wheels, died away.
The noises without became less and less. The gaslights in the
adjacent houses had all been turned off; silence and deeper darkness
seemed to be settling all around her. Miss de Montmorencie and the
light comedy man, who were always late, had both returned long ago,
and it became evident that the lost lady would not return until the
morrow--if she ever returned at all!
Then another vague terror, that she might be held somehow
responsible, personally, for this disappearance, occurred to Mrs.
Long Primer, and added greatly to her perturbation of spirit.
At last she closed the window with a sigh, and was about to retire to
bed, when suddenly, about two in the morning, a hansom cab dashed up
to the door, and there was such a vehement use made of the brass
knocker that the whole house resounded like a drum.
Mrs. Primer sprang again to the window, and a cry of alarm escaped
her on beholding a night-policeman, flashing his bull's-eye on her
brass plate, while alighting from the vehicle. And then the
conviction came over her that some terrible catastrophe must have
occurred to Mary Lennox!
She must have been robbed, maltreated, or ridden over at least!
CHAPTER XIV.
PICCADILLY.
With her heart full of sore anxiety concerning her loss, out of the
quietude of gloomy and shabby Norfolk Street, Mary had been rapidly
taken by the cab into the roar, the rush, the racket, and the
breathless heat of London, in one of its hottest months, when every
breath of air seems to have passed away, and the sunshades of the
shop windows cast strong dark shadows on the heated pavement.
Guiding his lean horse with marvellous skill, the cabman tore along
between the endless tides of busses, crowded inside and out; drays
and hansoms, splendid equipages, and costermongers' carts, and Mary
felt again as if in a dream; for ages instead of hours seemed to have
elapsed since she had left her sequestered home--the gloomy tower,
the solemn thicket, the pastoral hills, and the months of close
attendance on a sick bed, in a half-darkened and silent room. All,
all seemed to have happened long, long ago; and all to be far, far
away. So far that it seemed incredible to realize the fact, that
little more than ten hours by rail, would set her among the lonely
Lammermuir hills again.
Along all the line that Mary was driven, none of the sordid squalor
peculiar to some of the humbler parts of London was visible. All
savoured of wealth, to be won or wasted, of splendour, and of luxury.
There were stately buildings of vast magnitude; beautiful equipages,
with shining liveries bearing past beauty and fashion: there were
enormous plate-glass windows, glittering with jewellery and gold and
silver vessels; rich dresses and fabrics, and good things of all
kinds, from every portion of the habitable globe, and from the very
waters that wash its furthest shores; everything that fancy can
create or appetite suggest was there, for London is the true
metropolis of the world.
As Mary looked on all this, hope began to spring up in her heart.
Once established as an inmate of Lady Wetherall's house, she would
earnestly and honestly do her duty to her pupils there; and perhaps
elsewhere, in time to come, might, as a teacher, make her voice, so
vaunted at home, the means of further acquisition. She would toil
for money--not that she cared for lucre in itself--but as a means to
an end. That she might relieve the wants of the indigent, and do
good unto others, to people who might be as poor and forlorn as she
herself was then forlorn and poor. She would seek the abodes of
poverty and affliction, and God would reward her for all this by the
blessings that would be poured upon her by grateful hearts. Among
other fond projects for the future, was the erection of a monument to
her parents at home; and as she thought of it, there stole over the
soft face of the pretty daydreamer, weaving her plans even as
Alnaschar wove his of fancied greatness, over the basket of
crystal--a divine smile as she sketched the design in her mind's eye,
and traced the inscription to their beloved memory.
The girl was young, yet it was strange that no thought of a lover or
of marriage ever entered her scheme of the days to come, till the
appearance of a splendid battalion of the Foot Guards marching past
the National Gallery with all their bayonets glittering in the
evening sun, and the crash of their brass band waking the echoes of
peristyle and dome, recalled Cyril to her memory with a keen pang;
and she reflected that it was better to have loved and lost than
never to have loved at all, for their passion had been a sweet one
while it lasted.
"God pity the desolate loving heart, the only star of whose hope is
gone out in utter darkness;" and so thought Mary, as she clasped her
hands in bitterness.
From the Strand, where she had close glimpses of the mighty river,
with its dark forests of masts and rigging, past the great façade of
Somerset House, up the Haymarket, and across Great Jermyn Street, she
had been driven into Piccadilly and along that splendid thoroughfare,
to Mary it seemed that they must have proceeded many miles, when the
cabman suddenly drew up at the number she had given him, and, having
successfully extracted from her double his legal fare, he whipped up
his horse the moment she alighted, and disappeared, leaving her on
the pavement, looking wistfully at the house; for among all the
stately, gay, and brilliantly decorated mansions in Piccadilly, Lady
Wetherall's alone seemed gloomy and deserted, and Mary's heart now
began to palpitate, for it was the first time she had ever found
herself about to face a total stranger in the attitude of a dependant
or a suppliant.
The blinds were all down; the steps and entrance, which stood between
four white pillars, seemed dusty, unswept, and neglected, and hence a
foreboding chill, with a hope that Lady Wedderburn had mistaken the
number, came over Mary's mind. She rang the bell, and had to do so
thrice ere the door was opened by a sharp-featured little woman, who
was dressed in rusty black with a widow's cap of portentous size, and
who eyed Mary somewhat suspiciously and superciliously.
"Is this Lady Wetherall's--or have I made a mistake?" asked the
visitor, timidly.
"Yes; it is Lady Wetherall's 'ouse; but what do you want, Miss?"
"I have a letter for her----"
"Then you must post it, for her ladyship ain't at 'ome," replied the
little woman, in a sharp falsetto voice.
"Not at home?"
"No; nor in England either."
"Where is she?"
"With the family in Paris."
"But when does she return?" asked Mary, clinging still to chances.
"Can't say, Miss; but when the London season will be over, she will
be sure to go down to the country. Can I do anything for you, Miss?"
asked the housekeeper, civilly enough, but gradually closing the door
nevertheless.
"Nothing, thanks," said Mary, in a gasping voice as she turned away,
and the woman watched her with some interest, for her steps seemed to
totter when she reached the pavement. She felt the absolute
necessity of getting out of the stunning and breathless bustle then,
to consider the future. Immediately opposite Lady Wetherall's house
a gate of the Park stood invitingly open, and the shadow of its trees
looked tempting. She soon found a seat, and there, for more than an
hour, Mary sat lost in thought and bewilderment--in fear and
dejection, totally oblivious of the number of men who passed and
repassed; of one or two who seated themselves near and sought to
attract her attention; of the equipages and equestrians pouring past,
and more than all of the policeman, who, perhaps luckily for herself,
"had his eye on her," for to him there seemed something mysterious
about her, and she evidently "didn't seem an every-day young woman;"
for it is one of the peculiarities of London that no person can be
too respectable in aspect, too attractive in face or manner, too
richly or plainly dressed, to be above suspicion; and she frequently
clasped her hands as she said in her heart--
"God help me! What am I to do now; in London, unknown, without
employment, and robbed of all but a few pounds?"
Lady Ernescleugh was in town; she knew that her address was at a
place called--she thought--Cavendish Square; but Mary Lennox felt
that she would rather die by the curbstone than appeal for aid or
patronage to her, at whose table the odious story of Chesterhaugh had
first been mentioned, to render her the victim of local impertinence,
malevolence, and envy.
The sun had set; the shadows in the Park were deepening, and the
appearance of a few lamps twinkling at intervals, brought to Mary's
mind the necessity for seeking the only roof of which she had any
knowledge, kind Mrs. Primer's in Norfolk Street, from whence she
resolved to write without delay to Lady Wedderburn for advice, and to
obtain, perhaps, a letter to some other wealthy friend in London.
Already humbled and crushed by loneliness, by grief and misfortune,
all foolish pride on the score of the Willowdean family had
completely left her heart.
Her cab fare had been so excessive or extortionate that she resolved
to make her way back on foot, trusting to the directions of
strangers. Giving a small coin to a little fellow who had been going
round and round her in wheel-fashion on his hands and feet with
wonderful rapidity, she inquired of him "the way to Norfolk Street in
the Strand."
Whether inspired by mischief, or in mere ignorance, Mary could never
afterwards determine, but this imp of the pavement--one of those
intensely sharp and funny little vagabonds who are so peculiarly of
London growth, a denizen of the streets and gutters, where like
wandering curs they hunt for chance morsels--sent her in exactly the
opposite direction by pointing towards Hyde Park Corner, and telling
her that when there she was to turn to the right and go straight on;
the consequence was, that when darkness set in, and in her serious
alarm she inquired of some one to "direct her to Mrs. Long Primer's,
Norfolk Street, Strand," she was greeted with a rough laugh, and the
inquiry if "she thought the Strand was to be found about Paddington,"
for near that quarter of London she found herself, or supposed she
found herself, misled, weary, and sinking with fatigue.
Never before had she been in the streets of a vast city by night, and
the new scenes and sounds, the brilliant gin palaces, the music from
occasional casinos and dancing-rooms, the strange words that were
said to her, the vivid light at times, the strong dark shadows at
others, all conduced to confuse and terrify her. Once or twice she
received proper directions and wandered on in the desperate hope of
recognising some landmark of her morning drive, such as St. Paul's
dome, the Nelson pillar, or the National Gallery, but sought in vain.
The loss of her handkerchief, which had been filched from
her--deliberately twitched out of her hand, indeed--suggested that
she should take care of her little purse, which she secured in her
bosom. She feared to offer money for a guide lest she should fall
into some perilous snare; more than one man had already addressed her
in bantering terms of endearment, which only terrified, but failed to
excite anger in her heart; and, to avoid one of these who had begun
persistently to follow her, in a pitiable state of irresolution she
unfortunately turned down a quiet street, where she suddenly became
involved in a miserable catastrophe.
CHAPTER XV.
THE LONELY STREET.
Afraid lest this strange follower should accost her rudely or even
molest her, Mary took advantage of the shadow in a portion of the
street, to spring into the recess of a doorway, where with
palpitating heart she laid a hand upon the bell, determined to seek
succour at all hazards if he came near. The man evidently missed
her, and while he was gazing about him irresolutely, three fellows of
suspicious aspect, who appeared as suddenly as if they had been shot
up through the pavement, flung themselves simultaneously upon him!
There was a brief--very brief--struggle; a choking sound as of
strangulation, a half-stifled cry in which a shriek from Mary
mingled, and then the ruffians, one of whom she perceived to be tall
and thin, sallow-visaged, with a hooked nose and long moustache,
vanished, leaving their victim on the pavement, partially garrotted
and _minus_ watch, purse, and hat.
It was a common case of cruel assault and robbery by street thieves.
Breathlessly Mary approached the stranger, who lay still and
motionless. She had no fear of death--the dead had lain in her arms
too recently--"a heavier weight than lead," and as she looked down on
the unfortunate man, she could perceive by the light of a gas-lamp
close by that his hair was white and glistening. She thought of her
father's silvery hair, and forgetting how this man had so recently
scared and annoyed her, while stooping down and calling for help, she
endeavoured to loosen his cravat that he might respire more freely.
While she was thus acting the part of a little Samaritan, several
passers by gathered around her, and four officers of police came up
with a man handcuffed and in their custody; the tall sallow man with
the hooked nose.
"I am so glad you have captured this wicked wretch!" said Mary,
tremulous with excitement. "Oh, I saw it all happen--a horrible act
of cruelty!"
"Ah! this is fortunate; then you fully recognise this person as one
of the culprits?" said one who seemed by the difference of his dress
to be an Inspector of police.
"Yes; perfectly."
The prisoner uttered a terrible oath mingled with a threat.
"That is well, ma'am. This fellow, Ben Ginger, _alias_ 'the
Captain,' is an old offender; but we'll have him finally locked up
for this. Your evidence will be necessary, however. What is your
name, Miss?" he added doubtfully, while peering into her face, as
ladies are not wont to be abroad in the streets of London at that
hour afoot, and especially alone.
Mary began to sob, and said--
"My name is Lennox. I shall be so glad if you will direct me; I have
lost myself since this afternoon in the streets, and cannot make my
way----"
"Where to--home?"
"Home!" she repeated in a strange voice, for she felt that she had no
home; and none but the homeless can tell how that little word thrills
through the heart. Even he who composed "Sweet Home," the sweetest
of our ballads, is said to have died without one, a mendicant in the
streets of that great metropolis whose magnitude so terrified our
little wanderer.
"You seem respectable; in mourning, too," resumed the Inspector,
surveying her with the aid of a bull's-eye held up by one of his men.
"Mourning is a common dodge among this ere lot," said one of the
latter, "and respectable gals don't ramble about the streets at this
hour, so we'll just take her along with us, and lock her up till
morning."
"Unless you can show us your house, and give a proper address, I fear
there's nothing else for it," said the Inspector.
"So look lively, little one, and keep up your pecker," said the
captured thief, with a fierce grimace; "you're one of ourselves, you
know, and as you've taken such a precious interest in me and my
doings, you're welcome to a share of my bunk in the lock-up. Any
objection. Inspector Tappleton!"
"Silence, fellow!" said the Inspector; "we are wasting time.
Disperse this gathering crowd; help this poor man to rise, take him
to the nearest surgeon's, and get his name and address. But you must
come with us to the station-house, girl, if you are as you say, and,
as I suspect, a mere wanderer in the streets."
Mary started back with great horror, and, clasping her hands,
exclaimed incoherently--
"Oh, sir, do not take me there--what have I done? Oh, my papa, you
are in your grave, and Harry, my brother, lies in his at
Chillianwallah, but where will mine be?"
"The dissecting-table first, I hope," said the garrotter, with a
bitter grin, while mutterings of commiseration, doubt, and ridicule,
were heard among the listeners.
"At Chillianwallah?" said a constable, coming forward, and Mary's
quick eye saw the Indian ribbon on his breast. "What was his
regiment?"
"The **th Lancers."
"And did you say your name was Lennox?" said the official with
increased interest.
"Yes."
"Lor, Miss, I know'd your brother well; I was in his troop, and, more
than that, Miss, I was his own servant through all the campaign in
Central India; and a kind master he was to me. A Captain Wedderburn
of the Fusileers, and I, rolled him in a horserug and buried him with
our own hands, the same day he was killed in the charge."
"My good man, I thank you," said Mary, almost choked in tears. "He
was my only brother. Are you the John Finnis of whom he used to
write?"
"Yes, Miss; the very same."
"I have no time to listen to all this," said the Inspector,
impatiently.
"Beg pardon, for one moment," urged the constable. "Did you come
from Scotland t'other day by the morning train?"
"Yes; to King's Cross."
"Then I'm sure you are the young lady I told Tom Gubbs, the guard, to
take care of."
"I am; and he took me to Mrs. Primer's, near the Strand."
"Oh, sir," said Finnis the constable, turning to the Inspector, "this
young lady's respectability is unquestionable. I shall find her in
the morning when wanted; but, in the meantime, how is she to get
home?"
"Call a cab, and take her with you," replied the Inspector, while
making by gaslight a brief memorandum of Mary's full name and present
address (not an aristocratic one) in his notebook; and saying that
she would certainly be required in the morning, or next day at
latest, he proceeded to take care of the garrotted man.
"Come along with me, Miss Lennox, please," said Finnis the ex-Lancer,
conducting her into the next street. "Cab!"
"Here you are; fust cab! But what lark is this? A gal and a
blue-bottle," exclaimed a strange and tattered-looking being, who
seemed to spring out of the gutter, and placed his hand on the door
of a hansom.
"Get in, Miss, please. Norfolk Street, Strand."
"Bah! only a couple o' bobs' worth," said the driver, surlily, as he
whipped up his lean Rosinante, and away they went.
Mary felt her heart full of gratitude, and so pleased at her escape,
that she would have driven in the hansom with Finnis through the
streets at noonday perhaps, without thinking of the incongruity of
the situation; but, after a time, it did occur to her.
"Oh, Heaven!" she thought, "has it come to this with me, that I am
grateful for the countenance and the protection of people so humble
as these? and when my money is gone, what shall then be my fate?"
Her new ally treated her with the utmost deference, and expatiated at
great length on the kindness, the bravery, and high spirit of his
late captain, her brother; and he was still full of this subject when
the hansom drew up at the door of Mrs. Long Primer's house, to the
infinite relief in one way, and terror in another, of that little
woman, who had a wholesome dread of "the Perlice," as she named them.
A few words rapidly explained all; but Mary had no sooner reached her
room than she fainted, and for a few minutes was quite insensible.
She was comparatively safe now; but that episode in the street by
night was only the beginning of Mary's most serious sorrows, and with
morning came the terror and repugnance of having to appear as a
witness against the captured culprit. In her dreams the live-long
night had the past and the future haunted her, and if for a few
minutes she dropped off to sleep, she awoke with a convulsive start.
She saw the struggle, the robbery, the hook-nosed ruffian, and cries
for aid rang in her ear, or left her lips mechanically.
Her trunk, with her little all, had never been heard of, so she was
compelled to abandon all hope so far as concerned it. The next day
passed, and she heard nothing of the affair of the robbery in which
she was the chief, or only witness, so she spent a little time in
writing to Lady Wedderburn; it was so pleasant now amid the black
desperation of her situation to write to the mother of Cyril, and to
cast herself upon her for protection, telling of her sad
disappointment concerning Lady Wetherall, and asking if she would
kindly give her another letter of introduction to any friend in
London; and with a sigh of longing, and a prayer of hope, she had the
letter posted in the nearest post-office, and her soul went with it
back to the Lammermuirs!
There came a kind and motherly answer in due course; but poor Mary
Lennox was not at Norfolk Street to receive it.
Dark horror had closed over her by that time!
CHAPTER XVI.
ALDERMAN FIGSLEY.
The clamorous fear and sense of extreme mortification at having to
figure in a petty local court in some obscure part of London, as a
witness in such a cause--her very name to go forth in print too, as
connected with it--haunted Mary keenly, till a climax was put to her
endurance on the morning of the second day, when Finnis arrived with
the announcement that her presence was required before Alderman
Figsley at the office in W---- Street, when the prisoner, familiarly
known as "Ben Ginger," would be brought up for a preliminary
examination and committal.
A close cab was summoned, and they set out together, Mrs. Primer
assuring her that she must keep up her courage, as this petty
annoyance would soon be over.
When they arrived, Mary was politely enough handed to a seat within
the bar, near a table covered with books and printed papers; and
there she sat with a palpitating heart while the Alderman, a fussy,
portly, and wealthy city man, with a bald head, a rubicund visage,
and several double chins, disposed rapidly of numerous cases and
accusations by fines, committals, or remittance to a higher court.
The heinous crimes of poverty and sleeping in the open air, were
always visited severely; and a little orphan urchin, whose nightly
couch was the iron roller of the neighbouring park, was locked up
without mercy.
The court in W---- Street was a dingy looking apartment, the windows
of which were placed high in the damp and discoloured walls. It was
a metropolitan court, and consequently presided over by an alderman;
all other magistrates are stipendiary--carefully selected
barristers--else Mary's case might have been managed differently had
she been before one of them.
A gentleman of fashionable appearance, calling himself Mr. Jones
Robinson, was brought up for extinguishing and smashing a street lamp
in the exuberance of his spirits; and Mary drew her black veil closer
on recognising Everard Home, the Master of Ernescleugh, who after
tapping playfully, and perhaps contemptuously, with his cane, on the
iron spikes of the dock before him, paid his fine, and departed with
the air of one who deemed the affair a joke.
"Call the next case--what is it?" said the magistrate, impatiently,
for as none of those before him possessed any particular interest he
was getting a little weary, and proceeded to polish his bald head
with a silk handkerchief in irritation till it shone.
"William Trayner--livery servant, your worship, accused of assault in
a Betting House," was the reply; "his master, an officer about to
embark for the seat of war, will be ready to pay any fine you may
impose."
And to her astonishment, Mary beheld the impudent looking groom of
Ralph Chesters--the same long-bodied, short-legged, and gimlet-eyed
individual who had aided and abetted him in the scheme against
herself--step into the dock with a remarkably airy and confident
aspect, while at the same moment Chesters entered the court, attired
in a fashionable morning costume, and certainly looking more bloated
and dissipated than ever.
Mary was too thoroughly Scottish by blood and education to be without
a tinge of superstition in her character; and to her it seemed
ominous of misfortune--a conjunction of three evil stars,--a strange
coincidence,--that those three men who had brought her so much
mischief at home, should be there, in that London Court, at this
unhappy juncture.
Chesters' quick eye immediately fell upon Mary seated near the
Alderman, a remarkable piece of courtesy which roused his curiosity;
but as yet, her veil totally prevented recognition.
The assault in the Betting House was fully proved against Mr. Bill
Trayner, who was wont to make up a book on coming events as well as
his master, who immediately paid the fine. Trayner touched his
fore-lock to the Magistrate, and vanished at once; but Chesters,
inspired by curiosity--and, perhaps, a deeper interest--lingered a
little in a corner, to the infinite chagrin of Mary, leisurely
sucking the white ivory handle of his riding whip the while.
"There is but one more case, your worship," said Inspector Tappleton;
"the assault upon and robbery of, Mr. Fenchurch, solicitor, by
garrotters, of whom we have, unfortunately, but one in custody as
yet."
As he spoke, a pale, cadaverous, and savage looking fellow in very
worn habiliments appeared in the dock between two officers, and
glanced at the magistrate and all about him with defiance and
malevolence. He had been brought from the House of Detention, and
was heavily ironed, as the authorities seemed to fear that he was
quite capable, unless under powerful restraint, of destroying himself
or some one else, as he frequently threatened to do.
He boldly and furiously denied all knowledge of the circumstance of
which he was accused, averring that he was in another place at the
time.
"We have a competent witness, your worship," said Inspector Tappleton
of the 1st Division.
"Stand forward, Mary Lennox, and draw off your glove," said a voice,
authoritatively.
Chesters gave an undisguised and almost convulsive start on hearing
the name; and still more was he astonished when Mary came forward.
"Lift your veil, please," said the Alderman, with a very curt nod.
Her face was pale as that of death, and her eyes were full of alarm,
shame, and a restlessness of expression; the very sweetness of her
mouth had departed, and a hard line replaced the curve of her once
beautiful upper lip.
"Are you married or single? speak quickly," said he, pausing, pen in
hand, after the usual preliminaries.
"Single, sir," she answered faintly.
"No objection to be the other, I suppose," said he, hazarding the
attempt at a jest.
"Yes, I guess as she's a rum un' your worship," said a constable,
encouraged by this; "for she vears a kind o' vedding ring on the
wrong finger."
"Silence!" said the Inspector, severely.
The portly Alderman now turned to Mary, and politely enough required
her to relate all she had seen, and to confirm her full recognition
of the prisoner. Her evidence was deemed quite conclusive to warrant
the committal of the culprit for trial before a higher court, and he
was accordingly removed, partly by force, muttering vengeance against
Mary if she ever crossed his path again, as being herself an
accomplice.
"Don't be afraid, Miss," whispered Finnis, on seeing how terrified
she was; "'taint likely as the streets of London will be troubled by
him again."
"Search her pockets!" bellowed Ben Ginger, as he was dragged away. A
constable approached her; Mary shrunk back, but instinctively put her
hands into the outer pockets of her jacket, and drew forth from one,
in utter confusion and bewilderment, a leather portemonnaie, which
was found empty of money, but contained the cards of Mr. Fenchurch,
to whom it undoubtedly belonged.
"This looks ill, young woman--deuced ill for you," said the Alderman,
frowning.
"It may all be a plant, your worship--they've perhaps put it in the
young lady's pocket," said Inspector Tappleton.
"Still, why did she not find it there before, and produce it?" was
the suspicious question of the magistrate.
Mary's tongue clove to the roof of her mouth; she vainly strove to
say that she had never, until then, thought of looking in her
pockets, or on going home that night; she was crushed, terrified,
bewildered, and unable to speak, till she faintly implored a glass of
water.
After some inquiries concerning Mary, as to where she lived, what
friends she possessed and so forth, the magistrate said, coldly--
"I find that your account of yourself is so unsatisfactory, that I
must require you to give your personal recognisance that you will
appear at the due time to give further evidence against this man."
Mary stared in utter bewilderment; she failed indeed to understand
what he meant, but feeling only that money was somehow required of
her, she put her hand to her purse, and then nervously withdrew it.
With some irritation of manner, for though obese, he was not blessed
with overmuch patience or temper, the Alderman repeated the
information that she must give the necessary security for her
appearance whenever required.
"Sir, I have not above six pounds in the world--it is impossible; if
that sum will do, take it, and keep it; but permit me to go, I
entreat of you. I am so sick of this place!" she said imploringly.
"Mr. Fenchurch is very ill, you say, Tappleton?"
"Dangerously, sir--we have here a doctor's certificate," replied the
Inspector.
"Then, if anything serious befell him, the prisoner will be liable
for manslaughter--or worse--a double reason for procuring security to
insure the ends of justice."
Turning to Mary, he said, "The discovery of this purse upon you is
awkward; can no one be found who will be bail for you?"
"None, sir--oh, whom could I ask?"
"That is your affair; not mine."
All this time she had studiously kept her back to Chesters; but the
sense of his odious presence, if it oppressed her in one way, gave
her a species of false courage in another.
"You positively cannot find bail?"
"Oh no, sir--no."
"Then I have but one alternative," said Mr. Alderman Figsley, dipping
his gold pen in the ink bottle; "sorry for it, but I must at least
commit you to prison till this fellow's trial comes off."
"To prison--to prison!" repeated Mary in a voice of anguish that is
indescribable, while she clasped her hands and gazed into the round
stolid face and shining gold spectacles of the city Solon with
intense fear and entreaty mingled, while on her quivering lips a
prayer seemed to hover.
"If I may venture to speak a word, your worship," began Finnis the
ex-Lancer, with irrepressible anxiety; "I served under this young
lady's brother in the war in Central India, and elsewhere under
Brigadier----"
"What the deuce has Central India to do with the case!" exclaimed the
Alderman, testily, as he looked at his massive repeater, and
remembered that he had an appointment in the city; "the girl had no
business to be prowling about the streets alone at the hour
mentioned; I don't like that affair of the purse, and I must insure
her presence; she will be safer a prisoner than at large. You are a
soft-hearted fellow, Finnis, and this is not the first time you have
been the dupe of a pretty face and an artful manner. You hear me,
sir!"
Whatever was the instance to which the Alderman referred, in which
Finnis had been guilty of softness of heart, the rebuke had the
effect of completely silencing him, and the good-natured fellow slunk
back abashed.
"You have positively no friends in London to whom you can apply?"
said Figsley, pausing as he looked doubtfully at the girl's
horror-struck face.
In her despair Mary thought of poor Mrs. Primer. But could she, a
total stranger, expect a widow struggling for subsistence by letting
a humble lodging-house, to be her surety for some amount--she knew
not what! Then she actually thought again of the haughty Lady
Ernescleugh; but, as before, shrunk from an appeal to her.
"No--no," muttered Mary: "better let the daughter of Oliver Lennox
die unknown in the very gutter, than appeal to any--to any, but God!"
"I have a letter," faltered Mary; "a letter from a lady of rank in
Scotland to a friend in London, but found, sir, that she had gone to
Paris, and--and----"
"Where is this letter? I cannot open it, of course; but the address
may be some clue or guarantee."
Mary searched her pockets in vain; her letter was gone! In fact, she
had pulled it forth with her handkerchief, and it was now safely
deposited under the left foot of Cheaters, who had cleverly twitched
it towards him with the lash of his riding whip unseen.
"Oh, fatality! The letter is lost--I have it not, sir!"
"This is all, I fear, some specious pretence; we are too much used to
such trickery in London. If you were at all so respectable as you
pretend, and as your appearance certainly warrants, you would find no
difficulty in getting some humane person to be security for you.
Every one has some friend----"
"Save the poor; and God knows how poor am I!" she added, with
touching pathos.
"I have no time for all this sentimentalism; you must go to prison!"
replied the magistrate, as he proceeded deliberately to fill up the
warrant for her committal.
"Oh, Chesters--Captain Chesters," exclaimed Mary, suddenly turning in
her dire extremity and fear, and stretching her hands towards him;
"will you not speak for me?"
"Whew--what is this?" asked the Alderman, frowning at her over his
spectacles, and thoroughly filled with suspicion now.
He had been actually beginning to conceive the idea of making some
other arrangement concerning her. But now he rapidly dismissed the
thought from his mind, and felt irritated that he had permitted her
to impose upon him for a single moment.
"I thought, girl, that you had no friends in London; yet you suddenly
recognise one here--here in this very court, and in the master of
that disreputable groom, whom I have just permitted to go under a
fine for a very unprovoked assault. There must be some collusion
here! Captain Chesters, your town address is the Army and Navy Club,
I believe?"
"Major Chesters, Mr. Figsley; I am Major Chesters, of the Turkish
Contingent."
"Do you know this young person?"
"I know her intimately."
"Can you speak for her in any satisfactory way?"
"On one condition, and I must name it to herself."
He drew near her, and in French whispered something rapidly to Mary,
who surveyed him with a sublime expression of scorn and loathing.
"What is all this?" said Alderman Figsley, becoming now seriously
angry. It is doubtful whether a knowledge of French was among the
number of his accomplishments, but he frowned portentously, and
muttered something about "contempt of court."
"Oh, sir," exclaimed Mary, "this gentleman--if I may venture to call
him so now--knew my father, knew my family, knew me almost as a
child, and he might have the common humanity to speak one gentle word
for me here."
"I only know, Miss Lennox, that in your own locality at home, you
were spoken of lightly enough latterly," he replied with a malevolent
glance.
"Oh, papa! my poor papa!--thank Heaven you know nothing of all this!
What have I ever done to you, sir, that you should treat me thus, in
a strange place, too, when you might, and ought, as a Christian to
befriend me?"
"Bah! your name and mine have been mixed up enough, and oddly enough
already, Mary; so it is no use attempting to play genteel comedy or
act injured innocence here."
The subtle villany of this speech, in such a time and place, made all
present exchange smiles of intelligence, and caused the magistrate to
be less inclined to pity Mary. He was far from being a hard-hearted
man in the main, and thought there might--nay must--be more in all
this scene than met the eye or ear. So he signed the fatal warrant,
and leisurely placed the blotting paper over it. Then he handed it
to an officer, saying--
"It is for Tothill-fields Prison; but, in case of mistake, let her
have a separate sleeping cell," retired at once to an inner room, as
if to cut short a matter that had already occupied too much of his
valuable time.
"Tothill-fields," repeated Chesters to himself; "good, I'll have you
yet, my proud little minx! Bravo! here's Ralph Rooke Chesters
against the field! Unless, in despite of the fate that is hurrying
her downward, she take some silly qualm of conscience, as it is
called, bar accident the race is mine! How lucky that Trayner fell
into that scrape and brought me here. I should have known nothing
otherwise of her being in London. Ta, ta," said he aloud, with all
the coolness of practised effrontery, "I am going to soldier again,
but in Turkey, my girl, for I am sorry to say that my creditors are
much more attached to me and my fortunes than you are, my pretty
Mary; so it is better to have a shy at the Russians abroad, than
become a billiard-marker, or a gentleman rider at home. Any messages
for our mutual friend the Fusileer? Shall be happy to take them, I'm
sure."
And kissing the tips of his kid gloves, with an ironical bow and a
leering smile, for both of which he deserved to have been blown from
the mouth of a gun, the heartless vaurien, gamester, and spendthrift
mounted his horse and rode off to the Lady's Mile, and "to do a bit
of park," followed by his groom in accurate livery, while Mary Lennox
of Lonewoodlee, in a state more dead than alive, and looking as if
transformed to marble, was taken away to the prison in which she was
to be detained, in a common dark and grated police van!
CHAPTER XVII.
MEPHISTOPHELES AGAIN.
A prisoner, and without a crime!
Mary Lennox felt that fate was indeed dealing hardly with her. When
the first wild paroxysms of grief and mortification were past, she
learned to understand that she should be released and free the moment
the robber's trial was over; but whither was she to turn then? Could
she seek for any employment, however humble, and say that her last
abode had been a public prison? Her purse would be restored to her
she had been told; but how long might its contents avail her,
especially when all the wardrobe she possessed was the fast fading
suit of black she now wore.
All these reflections, and others, coursed through her mind, causing
such pangs of pain in her heart, that each was like a probe of hot
steel?
There was a valuable diamond in Cyril's ring, but the idea of parting
with it never occurred to her, or that it possessed other value than
accrued to it in her own estimation, from being his gift to her in a
time of vanished happiness.
Three weeks after the scene we have narrated, saw Mary still in a
cell of the prison, gazing in listless abstraction, and with eyes
that were becoming dull and stony in aspect, from a grated window at
the high brick boundary-wall of the place, a barrier to liberty and
the external world, defended by two rows of crooked spikes.
The chaplain had been kind, and gave her a few dreary books and pious
publications; while the matron, whose occupation rendered her
naturally suspicious, and who could not be convinced that Mary was
not an evil girl in some way, otherwise she should certainly have
friends of some kind, supplied her with work, and urged her to "do a
little white seam," that she might have more money by her when set at
liberty.
But she had ever one thought which rankled bitterly in her heart,
that she was a prisoner, though guiltless of a crime!
Should she ever smile--ever sing again--she who had so often sung
with an aching heart? Deadened by the massive walls, the roar of
mighty London came to her ears like a drowsy hum, and dreamily she
listened to it.
Within every shadow there is a deeper shade. To Mary it seemed
strange that she should have been able to undergo so many shocks to
her nervous system, so many humiliations to her proper pride, so many
bitter mortifications, so many sorrows and affronts, and not have
died! Yet she was still living, with all the impulses of life strong
within her, save its best and brightest one--hope, for that was
fading now.
Her lover! He was a feature of the past; yet she could not look on
his betrothal ring without a strange thrill running through her
bosom, while fond memory flew back to many an hour of quiet joy
beside the lonely stile and by the old pine wood. Anon she dismissed
these regrets as unworthy of her; but she longed and yearned amid the
solitude of her cell, for one caress, one kind word from the poor old
man who had so loved and petted her!
"Never more--never more!" she would moan and mutter. Could she but
join him! The attempt would be a crime against her Maker--yea, even
the thought thereof, was a sin; but the dark idea would come to her
again and again.
Memories grew strong and keen out of the monotony of her existence.
And the most vivid, were of her father, so fond and doting, so
passionate and querulous, and yet, withal, ever so gentle and
affectionate to her. So, then, would come before her with morbid and
painful distinctness the scene of his death-bed, his passing away,
and the wistful look, which when once seen is never forgotten--the
glance we must all give one day, when the world is receding from us,
and its smallness appears more small than ever. His was a smile of
unutterable fondness and sadness, and there came the great change
that chilled her heart then, and chilled it now--the pallor of
death--the forerunner of eternity and peace.
On whose face would her last smile rest? And who would close her
eyes when the hour came?
Times there were when a terror filled her soul lest she might come
forth only to fall lower than poverty could make her; for she
remembered painfully one or two poor girls whom she had seen brought
up before Alderman Figsley. But--no, no, she could only die, and be
at rest for ever!
She knew that while she was gazing at the smoke-blackened brick wall
or into the paved yard, where not a blade of grass was visible, the
leaves would be thick and green in the rustling woods of the Merse;
the blossoms of the white and pink hawthorn and of the golden
laburnum, must have passed away; but the honey bees would be humming
drowsily in the sunshine among the flowers she had planted, and over
the beautiful heath-clad hills that looked down on what was once her
home. There still, in the breezy and sunny morning, the mavis and
merle were singing, and the voice of the cushat-dove would sound in
the old coppice, the _lone wood_; but never more for her!
A pile of odious work for the matron was lying untouched before her,
when she was roused from these dull thoughts by a warder announcing
that "a gentleman, with an order from Alderman Figsley, had come to
visit her."
She started from her seat with heightening colour; a foreboding of
the heart told her who this visitor would too probably be--and
Chesters, bowing and smiling, was ushered in. He presented his hand;
but Mary drew back, and covered her eyes with her hand and arm, as if
to shut out the sight of him.
"That man--that man again! You here, sir?"
"As you see, Miss Lennox; or will you permit me, as an old friend, to
call you Mary?"
"Friend!" she exclaimed, with loathing in her half averted face.
He was now attired in a blue undress uniform, elaborately frogged and
braided about the breast. He wore a gilded waistbelt, and a sabre
with a white ivory hilt, and carried in one hand a scarlet fez with a
long blue silk tassel; for he was in the undress of an officer of the
Turkish Contingent. His appearance was always that of a gentleman,
but there was in his eyes the jaded and dissipated expression
habitual to them: and there were certain hard lines about the mouth,
at least the angles thereof, that indicated him to be a _roué_ or
worse, and a gambler who played at high stakes with honour, fortune,
and destiny.
"So, you foolish little girl, it has come to this," said he,
surveying the bare walls of the whitewashed cell. "Why would you not
permit me to become your security--to speak for you, I mean?"
"Rather would I have died than have accepted from your hands the
smallest favour on any terms, and least of all on such as you dared
to offer me--the daughter of a gentleman, every way your superior!
And how basely done--in French, too, lest the magistrate should
overhear or understand you. Begone, sir! What seek you here?" she
demanded, while surveying him with intense disgust and drawing
herself up the while, with the air of a little tragedy queen, her
eyes sparkling with resentment, and her hands clenched with energy.
"Why intrude upon me, unasked, unwanted, and so abhorred as you are?"
"This is a cell in a prison," said he mockingly.
"True. But here my privacy is as sacred as if I occupied the saloon
of a palace! And I am here--here--a prisoner, without crime!" And
her voice died away as she spoke.
After a pause she asked,--
"Is it manly of you to come here and mock me in my misery?"
"I did not come to mock you, Mary."
"Leave me, sir. Whatever be my fate, I am stainless and guiltless."
"Notwithstanding all that, your character will be utterly gone, and a
taint shall be upon you that will cause all to shrink from
befriending you. If you seek for work, or aid of any kind, however
menial, however humble, can you refer people only to the chaplain or
the turnkey of a prison? I should think not! Oh, Mary Lennox, you
will starve, or do worse, in the streets of this vast modern Babylon!"
Mary trembled in her soul, for he was speaking her own terrible
thoughts; but he was minute in his wish to torture her, and pitiless
in his desire to bend her to his wishes.
"There are, of course, houses of refuge for casuals, and the
hospitals for those who are ailing; and when the unknown or the
unclaimed die there, where do their remains go? To the surgical
theatre, where your beauty, which is undeniable, and where the very
perfections of your person, may be made a source of speculation,
perhaps of banter, for a rabble of young sprigs of anatomy; and
thence to a grave, God knows where or how! Avoid the contingencies
of a fate so terrible; I entreat you, dearest Mary, to listen to me,
and--and----"
"Go with you?"
"Yes." And he drew nearer, as he spoke, earnestly.
"Never," said she, through her clenched teeth, while shrinking back.
"Better death--any death, however black and desperate! Oh, how have
I the patience to degrade myself by talking with you on such a
subject? But I am becoming familiar with humiliation now and misery
too!"
"I could prove a strong friend, Mary."
"Hitherto you have been a dangerous enemy--a veritable fiend."
"As you please, as you please. In this epoch of ours, much as we
boast of enlightenment and advancement, passion is as strong, hate as
bitter, and Destiny quite as inexorable and pitiless, as ever they
were in the dark and middle ages."
Mary cowered and shivered as he spoke; and in the depth of her
misery--a misery rendered all the more keen by the girl's extreme
sensibility, he surveyed her with exactly such a glance or smile, as
one might fancy in the face of Mephistopheles, while watching
Goethe's heroine, poor Margaret, when she lay prostrate on the straw
in prison, with a piece of brown bread and a pitcher of cold water
beside her.
Mary's unconcealed repugnance and aversion for him, kindled at last
the rage of this would-be lover; and, in revenge, he adopted an
undisguised insolence of tone.
"So you hate me?"
"Say rather that I--despise you!"
"So you won't come with me to the East on any terms? By Jove, I
could give you such a pretty gilded kiosk on the shore of the
Bosphorus, where you might see all the gardens of Pera on one side;
Scutari, with its mosques on the other, and all that sort of thing.
I daresay that, as senior officer, I could get you out with me in the
transport somehow; and we should do the Mediterranean and the Levant
at Her Majesty's expense, and without requiring even a 'John Murray.'
Say you'll come, and I shall get you out of this den in a twinkling.
I shall soon make it all square with yonder Alderman, who made such a
fuss about you. I am in funds, my girl, I can tell you: cleared two
thousand odd, by a few strokes at billiards last night, after getting
the IOU's of two noble lords--swell friends--by whose aid my leave at
home has been somewhat protracted, as I threatened monetary pressure.
Say you'll come. I have plenty of gold to pave the way, and won't we
be jolly while it lasts? 'See; the mountains kiss high heaven'--you
know the rest. Ah, you will find it better fun steaming past the
isles of the Levant, than moping here or mooning at Lonewoodlee!"
Even his brusque insolence failed to rouse anger in her heart.
"Lonewoodlee--oh, Lonewoodlee!" she repeated, pressing her slender
white fingers interlaced upon her sunken eyes and speaking in a soft
and agitated voice; "my father's home! It is gone, and I have but
the memory of it now, and of all I have lost, to remind me of the
words of David," and lifting up her hands and eyes with much of
sublime resignation in the expression of her pallid face, she said,
"Dominus dedit, Dominus abstulit, sed nomen Domini benedictum!"
After a pause,
"Are you mad that you begin jabbering Latin in a place like this?" he
asked with an air of astonishment that was really genuine.
"I am not mad, sir, though I might well be; and now I have but once
more to entreat--nay to command you, as you are a man, to leave me to
my fate and trouble me no more."
"I shall do so--and be assured it will be a sad and degrading one."
"As God pleases."
She turned her back upon him, and with a glance in which rage and
baffled desire triumphed over pity, he retired and left her in an
almost fainting condition.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE TROOPSHIP.
"The detachment of the Royal Fusileers, under Lieutenant Horace
Ramornie, proceeding to join the service companies at the seat of
war, will embark on board the _Blenheim_ transport at Gravesend, with
others, under the command of Major R. R. Chesters of the Turkish
Contingent."
Such was the garrison order, which Horace to his infinite chagrin,
perused in a little vellum bound book, handed to him by a corporal,
one evening, as he was proceeding to the mess of the provisional
battalion. He had no desire whatever to find himself under the
special command of such a man as Chesters; but there was nothing for
it save obedience; and the various anecdotes elicited at table, or
recalled to the memory of officers present, confirmed his dislike to
the prospect before him, for the mere mention of Chesters' name
seemed sufficient. He seemed to be as well known in the service as
the goat of the Welsh Fusileers, though not so harmlessly. One
remembered "how completely he had done Black of ours in that affair
of the spavined mare;" another "how he had been jockeyed by him in a
race at the Curragh;" "how he had so rooked Blake of the Rifles at
Malta, that the poor fellow had to sell;" how he had abandoned one
girl, run off with another and so forth; with many other things that
would never figure on his tombstone, or opposite his name in Hart's
Army List.
Three days after Horace read the order, and after the interview
recorded in the preceding chapter, saw H.M. transport _Blenheim_,
with fully three hundred officers and men for various corps in
Turkey, under weigh and steaming down the river, greeted by many a
cheer from the crews of passing ships.
Horace remembered all that had passed at home between his cousin
Cyril Wedderburn and Chesters; and though he had secretly a peculiar
detestation for the latter, it would have been alike unwise and
unsafe to exhibit it, now that they were to sit at the same table, to
meet daily on the same parade, to encounter each other incessantly on
the deck or in the saloon during a voyage of so many thousand miles;
and more than all now when Chesters bore the local rank of major, and
was distinctly his superior officer.
All irritation would have to be repressed and all disagreeables
avoided, for Horace could not but remember that his commission was
his sole inheritance, and that Chesters would care little "to smash
him" if he got an opportunity. So he resolved to shun him as much as
possible by seeking the society of other officers, of whom there were
some thirty captains and subalterns on board.
Though Chesters hated responsibility of any kind and would very
willingly have been second in command to any one on whom the trouble
of authority and risk of direction might have devolved, he was not
the less disposed to be overbearing in manner, and to attempt to
"talk down," all about him, especially at and after the mess, which
took place at an earlier hour on board than is usual ashore.
He soon became heated with wine and rather quarrelsome, disputing
with Ned Elton, a brother officer of Horace, about the odds on the
last Epsom; how he should have apportioned the weights, and how
shrewdly he had guessed at the winning horse, yet, as if the devil
was in it, didn't make a successful book after all, having been
"sold" though he knew it not, by his own particular confidant,
Trayner, who generally knew the contents of Chesters' betting book as
well as his own.
"I'm safe on the Oaks, however," he added with an oath--"backed the
winner at long odds there."
"A bad style of fellow this," whispered Elton to Ramornie; "we'll
have many a case of row and arrest before we see the coast of
Bulgaria, unless we combine and put him 'in Coventry.'"
Chesters had on board his faithful rascal Mr. Bill Trayner; but that
amiable individual was at present enjoying his own society in the
seclusion of the cable-tier, where, though a civilian, he was in
irons for behaving insolently to a young officer of the Rifles, whom
he taunted as "a carpet-bag 'cruity," a slang barrack-room phrase for
a recruit who joins with a quantity of useless luggage; and on
appealing to his master, the latter only laughed at him, and said--
"The bilboes and bread and water will do you good, Trayner,--you have
been getting too fleshy of late."
And Trayner swore secretly that he would be revenged on Chesters for
this at a future time.
When idling over their wine and fruit, and while the transport was
steaming slowly past the flat but fertile shore of Kent, and the salt
marshes of Essex, Chesters with his habitual insolence of spirit and
disposition to be obnoxious began to annoy the inoffensive and gentle
Horace Ramornie.
"Heard of our friends at Willowdean lately, eh, Ramornie?" he asked;
"we are neighbours you are aware."
"No," replied the other curtly (though he had just received a letter
from his aunt before embarking), and he turned away.
"Wedderburn is at Varna, isn't he?"
"Yes."
"With yours?"
"Ours."
"You are fond of monosyllables, I think?" said Chesters, with a white
gleam in his pale eyes.
Horace gave a haughty smile, and was turning to Elton, the Colonel's
nephew, when Chesters resumed his scheme for "trotting him out," as
he would have phrased it, and when he spoke the buzz and laughter
around the table subsided, for all feared that a scene of some kind
would ensue ere long, and felt exceedingly uncomfortable.
"When I was last at the Horse Guards, Ramornie, I heard some talk of
a waggon train being formed; and as we have no Belem Rangers, your
cousin will be looking for his spurs in that force. He is a pleasant
fellow, but a muff, and was an awful griff when he first came out to
India."
Horace grew crimson with anger at the triple insolence of this
speech; for to any military man the inference to be drawn from the
first part of it, was most offensive.
"Major Chesters," said Horace, rising, while a chill seemed to fall
on all at the table; "dare you impugn the honour of my cousin Captain
Wedderburn of the Royal Fusileers?"
"No--far from it," replied Chesters, coolly, "whatever I may think,"
he added insolently, but aside. "Come, come Ramornie, take your
wine, though it is a little corked, and let us be jolly. You could
little imagine where I recently saw his last flame--that girl Lennox."
"Indeed--where?"
"Sent to prison from a London police court, where I had gone to bail
out Trayner, who got into a row somewhere; to prison in London, by
Jove! though I don't know exactly for what, unless it was involvement
in some robbery affair."
"Miss Lennox?" exclaimed Ramornie, with genuine surprise and concern.
"Yes--Miss Lennox as you call her; hope she enjoys the silent and
separate system peculiar to the London model prison and so conducive
to reflection and all that sort of thing."
Horace was inexpressibly shocked, but hoping that Chesters was
telling what was untrue, he disdained to make farther inquiries, and
once more turned to his friend Elton, seeking to divert the
conversation from himself; but Chesters was not to be baffled and
began again, while leisurely dropping the ice into his champagne
glass.
"And now Ramornie, to change the subject, how is the fair
heiress--well and jolly I hope? You fellows--I mean you and the
Wedderburns--will surely not let her slip through your hands. She is
worth entering stakes for--a handsome girl, so well weighted, with a
pot of money and no end of fun in her. A noble bird to bag, before
the fields are in stubble."
"Silence, if you please, Major Chesters," said Horace, whose face
from crimson had now become pale with passion, while his voice grew
concentrated and low. "I have to request that the name of the lady
in question be not uttered here, by your lips at least."
"That is very quarrelsome wine, surely--try the pale sherry; I have
mentioned no name as yet," said Chesters, laughing.
"Then take heed how you do," added Horace, with his dark eyes
flashing fire. How he cursed in his heart--even he, the quiet and
gentle Horace--the rules of discipline, the amenities of society and
civilized life, which prevented him from flying at this man's throat
and dashing him under his feet. As for "calling him out," the idea
certainly did occur, only to be dismissed, for duelling had gone out
of fashion, and he had not the greatest of Job's virtues--patience.
His soul was full of love and tenderness for Gwendoleyne--worshipping
her as a pure and beautiful spirit, with all a young man's generous
enthusiasm and joy; and thus it revolted him to hear her spoken of
jestingly by any man, least of all by one such as Ralph Rooke
Chesters!
"I am going on deck, Ramornie," said Elton, "try these cigars with
me;" and taking the arm of Horace, he succeeded in drawing him from
the cabin to the poop, whither the majority of the party followed,
leaving Chesters with one or two more at their wine.
"Ramornie," said young Elton, drawing his friend apart, "I warn you
to beware of that fellow of the Turkish Contingent. From the first
moment he saw you on parade in the Barrack-yard, he evinced a
determination to annoy and fix a quarrel on you. You remember how
closely he inspected our fellows in particular, and found so many
sham faults, actually bringing four of our best privates to the
front, to have them put through their facings as if tipsy, and then
made them ground arms as a final snare, that they might topple over.
It was an insult to us all. So be wary. I can see that he is an
utter scoundrel, and as Oldham says, 'he could outrogue a
lawyer,'--aye, even a Scotch one, or a Jew; but at the same time he
is your senior officer, and in all rows a junior invariably is sent
to the wall. Besides, old fellow, I think we have had quite enough
of that ship champagne."
"You are right, Elton," said Horace; "he is beneath my attention.
But my head still aches with the memory of that champagne breakfast
we had at Brompton with the Rifles, before we marched out."
"Clicquot and fun; eh, Horace?"
"They are all very well," added a _blasé_-looking officer with sleepy
eyes and long fair moustaches; "but when to these you add hazard and
_écarté_, as we had them, the breakfast becomes something to
remember."
"And repent of; eh, Ponsonby?"
"Yes, decidedly--doocidly so, as I know to my cost."
"Was Chesters there?" asked Elton.
"Of course; d--n him!" was the rejoinder of Ponsonby, who was a 23rd
man.
"Well," said Ramornie, thoughtfully, "the Essex shore looks flat and
low now; we shall soon be in blue water, and see the last of Old
England."
"Not the last, I hope," said Ponsonby, smiling.
"For some among us, certainly, if knocks are going."
"Anyway, thank God, we are off in earnest," said Elton; "I was so
sick of Chatham, with its boredom of drills and sham duties: besides,
it will be so jolly to knock about the world a little."
"Yes; and better still to knock about the Russians a great deal, eh?
ha, ha!" lisped a languid Hussar officer, as he twirled his
bandolined moustache and laughed at his own mild joke.
The transport was now clearing the Thames, and rounding the floating
light on the sand-bank that runs eastward from the Isle of Grain.
The waters of the Medway opened wide upon her starboard beam, and as
the setting sun shone through the golden haze, the buildings of the
dockyard, the tall masts of the war-vessels in the great basin at
Sheerness, and the outline of the guardship, came all darkly and
minutely forward to the eye.
A red flash and white puff of smoke from the black hull of the
guardship caused all the loungers on the poop of the _Blenheim_ to
turn towards her.
"The evening gun," suggested one.
"Impossible," said another; "the sun is still high above the Essex
marshes."
"What's the row yonder?" asked the Hussar, languidly; "the guardship
has hoisted a signal at her main?"
The evening was beautiful; the poop was crowded with officers in
their shell jackets, or undress uniform, and the air was redolent of
cigars of all kinds; their men grouped amidships were looking at the
fast-receding shore; others at the cat-heads, were gazing wistfully
seaward, and some at the passing craft, bearing up Thames from every
quarter of the globe, and all were merry, heedless, and thoughtless
of the future that was before them.
"What the deuce is up?" was now the general exclamation, as the
steamer slackened her speed, and drew in shore nearer to the point of
Sheerness.
"What is the signal?" asked Ponsonby.
"Red, blue, and yellow--nautical, perhaps: enigmatical, certainly,"
said the Hussar.
"Some fellow on board has got his swell friends in town to telegraph
for him at the last moment, to come back with the pilot-boat,
perhaps," suggested Ponsonby.
"Urgent private affairs--that his book on Coutts' is all square; that
his uncle is dead, the will all right, and that he'd better return to
mamma."
"Hush, gentlemen," said a grave old Captain of the Rifles, who
perhaps was thinking of his wife and little ones. "We shall soon
learn what is wrong."
"There is nothing wrong, sirs," said the Captain, testily, from the
bridge; "but the guard-ship has signalled that we are to lie to for a
boat from the shore; and here it comes, hand over hand," he added, as
a man-o'-war gig, with its oars feathered in beautiful and steady
regularity, came sheering out from the basin direct for the
transport, which lay heaving and plunging slowly on the heavy ground
swell.
Meanwhile that distinguished officer Chesters had been left in the
cabin alone to "soak over his wine," as he phrased it, for he was
constitutionally and systematically a deep drinker. Amid all the
quiet insolence and tipsy banter in which he had indulged, no
sentiment of regret or pity for the poor girl whose interests he
might have served, but to whom he had wrought so much mischief, and
whose terrible sorrow he had witnessed, occurred to the callous and
hollow-hearted Chesters. But he had peculiar and regretful thoughts
of her, nevertheless.
"Had I possessed but more tact or time, to have waited a little till
confinement had broken her spirit and dulled her perceptions; had I
pressed her more tenderly perhaps, during that last interview; or had
I spoken favourably of her to that old pump of an Alderman, she might
have been mine--mine, by this time! Now, descending fast from scale
to scale in misery and degradation, her noble qualities, for she has
them, wasted; her pure sentiments dulled, her affections blasted, her
perils equalled only by her beauty, she may become the prey--the
facile prey of others!"
And he gnawed his yellow moustache and bit his thin cruel lip at the
galling idea. Had he only traduced and repudiated her, to the end
that she might become the prize--the prey of some person unknown?
Jealousy became a keen pang, but the waters were rolling between them
now, and every revolution of the inexorable screw--and now it
suddenly occurred to him that the motion thereof had ceased, and he
was just about to come on deck and have another bout of banter with
Ramornie, when Lieutenant Elton, who acted as adjutant of the various
detachments, placed in his hand a long official letter, which he tore
open in haste and surprise.
It was from the Quartermaster-General, informing Major Chesters, that
Lieutenant-Colonel Louis De la Fosse of the 34th Regiment, Infantry
of the French Line, having come to London on a special mission from
Marshal St. Arnaud, would have a free passage onboard H.M.S.
_Blenheim_ to Varna; and it was trusted that as a stranger and
officer of the allied army, all courtesy and attention should be
shown to him during the voyage.
"The devil! De la Fosse!" muttered Chesters, changing colour.
"Where is this fellow, Elton? this Frenchman?"
"He is here," replied Elton, as a very handsome man about forty years
of age, with regular features, curly hair, a long dark moustache and
closely-shaven chin; in the blue uniform and gold epaulettes of the
French Line, with a few orders glittering at his scarlet lapelles,
his little kepi in one hand and his sabre in the other, entered the
cabin and bowed low to Chesters, who returned the courtesy, but with
a coldness and restraint that were as marked as the surprise and
hauteur that immediately spread over the face of the other, when his
open and pleasant smile passed away, and he recognised the man he
looked on.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE VOYAGE.
"Colonel De la Fosse, I bid you welcome to her Majesty's ship
_Blenheim_," said Chesters, presenting his hand, which, however, the
Frenchman did not take, but contented himself with another bow and a
very perceptible elevation of his black eyebrows. "I have also to
congratulate you on promotion since----"
"Since when, monsieur?"
"We last met."
"Ah!" said the other a little contemptuously, "I thank you. I have
just been in time to reach your vessel; the telegram left London this
forenoon, about the same time I quitted it by rail; and here I am."
"So we are to have the pleasure of voyaging together so far as Varna."
"So far--yes," replied the Frenchman, shrugging his shoulders, and
causing the bullion of his epaulettes to glitter, whilst his face
said so plainly that he saw little pleasure in the companionship that
Elton laughed behind his forage cap.
"Will you eat anything; the messman will bring you partridge pie and
_pâtés de foie gras_."
"No thank you."
"The wine is here," said Chesters; "shall I assist you?"
"Thanks; I shall help myself. What is this? St. Julien!--très bon!"
and the Colonel took a bumper of wine, without according a smile or a
glance to Chesters, who felt far from comfortable, as several
officers had left the deck, all anxious to converse with the
stranger, and be attentive to him. But after seeing to his berth on
board, and having his baggage arranged by a Fusileer, who was to act
as his servant during the voyage, he lit a cigar and went on deck
without bestowing the faintest bow on Chesters, who bit his lip, and
muttered something under his breath.
The _Blenheim_ was under full steam now; the wind was fair for her
down channel; her top-sails and topgallant-sails were sheeted home;
the Isle of Sheppey was sinking fast upon her starboard quarter, and
the bugles having ere this sounded the tattoo, save by the watch
under a subaltern officer the main deck was deserted.
The French colonel was of course the centre of attraction, and a
group gathered round him. The stiffness and restraint, even hauteur
of manner he exhibited in the cabin, passed away completely now, and
he chatted gaily and freely on the chances of the war, and spoke with
a Frenchman's hereditary hate of Russia and the Russians, for the
Gaul has never forgiven Moscow. He expatiated on the sufferings
undergone by the armies at Varna, and denounced as criminal the
conduct of our Ministry in waiting only for winter to begin the
campaign.
He spoke lightly of his own past military experience, but would seem
to have seen some sharp service in Algeria in the regiment of General
Bazaine; he had been side by side with Canrobert in the breach at
Constantine, and had served as a volunteer with the 3rd Chasseurs à
Pied in the terrible conflict at the Pass of Djerma, where the Arabs
were totally routed and their principal sheiks captured.
"Monsieur le Major, who commands you," said he during a pause, "has
_he_ seen much of the world?"
"I should say a deuced deal too much--for my taste at least," replied
Ponsonby, caressing his whiskers.
"Ah--but in the way of military service, I mean?"
"A little in India," said Horace Ramornie. "I don't think you seem
to like him much."
"Sacre Dieu! no. I should think not," replied De la Fosse, tipping
the ashes off his cigar.
"To me it is like a dream that I have heard of you and him having met
in Scotland."
"In Scotland," repeated the Frenchman, who spoke English very fairly;
"you are but a youth--from whom did you hear of that?"
"From my uncle, Sir John Wedderburn, of Willowdean."
"What do I hear--you a relation of Sir Wedderburn, who was so very
kind to me?"
"I am his nephew."
"Mon Dieu!" The Frenchman shook the hand of Horace with great
cordiality, and drew him a little way aside.
"And Madame Wedderburn--how is she?"
"Well--I thank you."
"I was a captain then, at the time you refer to--home after the
expedition to Morocco--travelling in Scotland, of which the Walter
Scottish novels had made me enthusiastic. (Horace smiled at the
compound word.) I met this Monsieur Chesters, who pressed me to have
a little shooting in Berwickshire. I went there--no shooting at all;
it was all one humbugs! play, play, play: écarté, hazard, vingt-un,
and so on, till I was left without a centime, and but for your kind
uncle, to whom my case became known, I should never have reached
France again, never have seen my regiment, never have been now, as I
am, Colonel of the 34th Infanterie de Ligne; for even my watch and
rings I had staked at his table and lost, among them a valuable onyx,
that belonged to one of my ancestors, and which I see he has the bad
taste now to wear; consequently, I have no particular favour for M.
Chesters. And now that we have met again, I would call him out," he
added through his clenched teeth, while a fierce gleam came into his
black eyes; "yes! and force him to fight me on the first land we see;
but then, mal-peste! I know that Marshal St. Arnaud would resent on
me severely a quarrel with any British officer at the present
juncture; so I must dissemble, if I can, till I find him among that
rabble the Turkish Contingent, when I may shoot him, begar! with a
safe conscience, under pretended belief that he was a Turk!"
The first few days of the voyage passed pleasantly enough; the
weather was fine, and when the few duties incident to a troop-ship,
such as the parade of the men in their canvas frocks and of the
quarter-guard for bayonet duty, on the poop, forecastle, and
scuttle-butt, were over, idling, smoking, single-stick, revolver
practice at the passing birds, or at a bottle slung from a yard arm,
and too often gambling, became the mode of passing the time.
Gaming is strictly prohibited in transports as in camp or quarters;
but the evil example of Chesters speedily infected the younger
officers, who as they all belonged to different corps, and would be
separated on landing, had little interest in each other personally;
so if the tedious monotony of the voyage was partially dispelled by
the excitement of gaming, they cared nothing for the monetary risk
they ran, and kept up a cross-fire of IOU's, that would rather have
astonished their parents and guardians; and were all the more free
with these from the knowledge that ere long they must be before the
enemy, and a bullet might pay off the heaviest score. Thus every
evening, after the mess-table was cleared, cards and dice made their
appearance regularly, and large sums were staked and lost or won, to
the manifest deterioration of discipline and good-feeling; and all
this was caused solely by Chesters, whose special office and duty it
was to have repressed the practice at once, instead of becoming a
leader in it: but this cosmopolitan Scot was "a gambler for gain:
that foul amalgam of the miser and the knave."
This state of matters continued to increase until the evening after
the transport entered the Mediterranean, when a very unpleasant
fracas took place.
The weekly parade of all the troops on board in full dress and in
heavy marching order had just occurred, and the soldiers had been
dismissed to rack their arms and resume their free and easy canvas
frocks, when the Bay of Gibraltar, glittering under a clear and
brilliant sunshine opened on the port bow of the _Blenheim_, as she
steamed onward between lovely Andalusia on one side, and the black
mountains of arid Tetuan on the other, gliding past the shores of
Europe and Africa into one of the greatest water-highways of the
world.
In outline a couchant lion, starting there to the height of fifteen
hundred feet from the pale blue ocean, that seemed to ripple in gold
and silver against its base, the Rock of immortal memories,
terminated in the ruin known as O'Hara's Tower, on which the British
flag was flying in the distance diminished to a speck. The
_Blenheim_ did not run close in, but steamed steadily onward into the
Mediterranean, and as the vast citadel began to lessen on her quarter
it seemed to all as if they had seen but a glimpse, and a passing
vision it certainly was--of gardens of brilliant green; terraced
houses of dazzling whiteness, with sunshaded windows; batteries
bristling with uncounted guns, and dotted by redcoats whose bayonets
glittered like stars; cliffs honeycombed into galleries and
perforated by round holes, through which grim cannon peered, and,
below all, the bay full of shipping, where the variegated flags of
all the nations of the maritime world were fluttering in the breeze
of a pleasant August afternoon.
There were special orders that unless stores were required she was
not to touch at Gibraltar, so, to the disappointment of many, the
_Blenheim_ held on her course. Horace experienced this in
particular; but several officers on board had been quartered there
before, and cared less about it.
"Were you ever stationed in old Gib?" asked Elton of Ponsonby.
"No; never. And shouldn't care much to be cooped up between the bay
and the Spanish lines."
"Old Gib is not without its amusements, and I have twice had a run
with the Calpe hounds," said Chesters, who was well up in all kinds
of field sports. "The meet always takes place at San Roque, six
miles from the Rock on the Andalusian side."
"You could scarcely have it six miles from the Rock on the _other_
side," said Colonel De la Fosse, twirling his moustaches.
Chesters frowned, but resumed:
"People don't usually course in the sea, Colonel. The last time I
rode yonder, after we had a dose of milk-punch at the nearest posada,
the fox broke cover at the end of the Malaga Garden, and away we went
powdering along at a rasping pace. We had a devil of a run over the
most awful ground in the world--the Stony Road they name it there,
and by Jove, it _is_ stony with a vengeance, being a slope at the
angle of forty-five degrees, covered with thousands of cart loads of
rocks, boulders and loose _débris_ that have fallen from the mountain
above; but across it we went with a whoop and a cheer, some eighty
riders or more, all in red, for no true born Briton can either hunt
or fight comfortably in any other colour; and if any of the 12th
fellows were there, you might be sure to hear them shouting '_Montis
Insignia Calpe!_' because that motto is on their colours with the
castle and key. I can almost make out the coursing ground from here
with my glass, though the old Rock is sinking fast astern. I had I
remember a strange bet there, with Bob Riversdale, a staff
surgeon----"
"And you won it?" asked De la Fosse drily.
"Yes."
"Aha, begar, I thought so--I'm sorry for Monsieur Bob," said the
Frenchman, whose manner made the speaker colour with anger, while
Horace turned away wearily, for he was heartily tired of Chesters'
everlasting topics, horses and gambling, dice and cards; so he
followed the Frenchman, who proceeded to the taffrail; there a few
officers were leaning over it, smoking and keeping their eyes fixed
on the fast receding pillars of Hercules, which were defined in dark
outline against the sky, and melting into the evening sea, which was
all aflame with the amber and crimson tints of the setting sun.
A young officer in a shell jacket with bright yellow facings,
politely touched his cap, and made way for the French Colonel.
"Thanks, Monsieur,--do not allow me to disturb you," said the latter;
"ah--pardon," he added, as he took a button of the other's uniform
between his fingers; "you belong to the 34th of the Line--my own
Number!"
"Yes, Monsieur le Colonel," said the young Ensign, proudly; "ours is
the Cumberland Regiment, and was raised in 1702."
"'Albuhera,' 'Arroya del Molinos,'" continued the Colonel, reading
the motto on the button. "I could tell you a good story about your
Regiment and mine, when my father, the Marquis De la Fosse, commanded
the latter in that very battle of Arroya del Molinos in Spanish
Estremadura, in the brave old war of the Peninsula, that we are
forgetting all about now.
"In that little village, which is situated in a plain that was then
quite covered with wild laurels and mignonette, and at the base of a
ridge of rocks that start abruptly up in the form of a crescent, the
whole Regiments comprising the division of Marshal Gerard, when
getting under arms amid the rain and mist of a dark morning, were
suddenly surrounded and attacked by the troops of Sir Rowland Hill,
who had made a forced march for that purpose from Alcuesca. To be
brief, they were nearly all taken to a man by your people, and my
father fell from his horse severely wounded. The French had formed
two squares and begun to retreat, when suddenly there was a shout of--
"'Voilà les baionettes Ecossais!' and one square was entirely cut off
by a Regiment of Highlanders, who dashed at it out of the mist. The
other, which was chiefly composed of the 34th of the Line, under the
Chef de Bataillon, my father--now sorely wounded and afoot--was
surrounded by the British 34th," and he told me that in the grey
light of the breaking day each Regiment simultaneously recognised the
other's number on their shakos, and the French officers as they
tendered their swords to those of your corps, exclaimed--
"'Voilà, messieurs--nous sommes des frères, nous sommes du
trente-quatrième régiment tous deux! Les Anglais se battent toujours
avec loyauté, et traitent bien leurs prisonniers!"
"The sword of my father was returned to him by the commander of your
regiment, who politely said something about 'les malheurs de la
Guerre,' and the fighting ended."
"It is quite true, Monsieur le Colonel," replied Hunton, the young
officer, smiling; "for at the Head quarters of our regiment, we still
possess the brass drums, and the drum-major's staff of the French
34th, and if I ever have, as I hope, the pleasure of presenting you
to our mess, you shall see them under more pleasant auspices than the
Marquis your father last saw them.* But now that we are allies, are
not such memories better forgotten?"
* This military coincidence is a historical fact.
And now we have to record the less agreeable portion of our story,
already referred to.
CHAPTER XX.
UN BON COUP D'ÉPÉE.
As the troops on board were divided into three watches, there were
always about a hundred men on deck at a time exclusive of the seamen.
On this evening, Horace was subaltern of the watch, and as such, was
solitary on the poop, while his men, muffled in their grey great
coats, trod to and fro on the main deck, or lounged between the guns
on each side, for the transport was partially armed.
As the evening deepened into night, the stars came brilliantly out in
the blue sky of the Mediterranean; the atmosphere was calm and
serene; the wind light, but fair, and the great troopship, with its
living freight, glided silently and swiftly on the watery path, with
its three great lanterns, green to starboard, crimson to port, and
white at the foretop, emitting weird and strange gleams at times on
the bellying sails, the lofty spars, and the passing waves.
The time and place were very conducive to thought and reflection, and
undisturbed by the laughter, exclamations and other sounds that
issued occasionally from the great cabin, where wine or brandy and
water, dice and cards were the order of the evening, Horace Ramornie
gave himself up to the solitude of the sea, and with a fragrant
havannah in his mouth, leaned over the taffrail, watching the white
and phosphorescent sparkle of the vessel's wake, as the water boiled
and bubbled in two eddies under each counter, to meet in one around
the propelling screw.
Horace had certain unpleasant forebodings that Chesters would yet
work him some mischief, in the spirit of his feud with Cyril
Wedderburn, and the fear of this grew strong within him, together
with a loathing of the man; for his commission and his honour were
the young man's sole inheritance now, and he knew that despite the
sword and epaulettes which gave Chesters the rank of field-officer in
the Turkish Contingent, he was a reckless desperado; so this dread
conflicted with the solemn thoughts that occurred to him, as they do
to most thinking men, while at sea in the silent night, when the
clear stars are reflected in the passing waves, and strange
phosphorescent lights seem to glide mysteriously under the bosom of
the vast and shadowy deep.
And soft and tender memories came of his Gwendoleyne--memories
blended with "the perfect love that casteth out fear." She loved him
well, he knew, though their mutual aunt knew it not, for both were
aware of her wish; and Horace blushed to himself as he thought of a
sentence in a novel which Lady Wedderburn had once read to him rather
pointedly, and which was to the effect, "that disproportion of
fortune was an insurmountable barrier to married happiness; that the
sense of perfect equality in condition was the first requisite of
that self-esteem which must be the basis of an affection untrammelled
from all unworthy considerations."
If he fell in the coming strife how long would Gwenny sorrow for him?
Long, he was assured; but sorrow cannot endure for ever. Time
consoled all, and soothed all, even as it avenged all things; and
others would come who would teach her to forget him, and perhaps--to
love them. Aye, there was the rub, the gall and the bitterness; and
his whole soul revolted at the idea that when he was lying forgotten
in his foreign grave, amid the festering heap in some battle-trench,
another might gather in his arms that Gwenny whose beauty was so
sweet and tender, and whose heart as yet, was wholly his own!
Yet he would not have her to pine as one who had no hope on earth.
That would indeed be too selfish; so with a sigh, he strove to thrust
these thoughts away.
While thinking thus, eight-bells struck, and Hunton, of the 34th,
whose duty it was to relieve him and take the middle-watch, which
extends from midnight to eight in the morning, came promptly on deck
to his post, while the old watch went below, and a hundred fresh
soldiers in their greatcoats and forage caps came thronging up the
hatchway.
"You'll scarcely find the cabin so pleasant as the poop," said Hunton
significantly, "for Chesters and Co. are at it again."
"I mean only to have a glass of sherry and a devilled biscuit from
the messman, and then turn in," replied Ramornie, to whom the long
and handsome saloon presented a very exciting scene as he entered it.
By the rules of Her Majesty's Service all lights in the fore part of
a troop-ship are extinguished at eight o'clock P.M., save such as
there are sentinels posted over; even the lights of the officers aft
are put out by ten. The captain of this transport, an old master of
the Royal Navy, had retired to his own cabin, leaving particular
orders that "the lights were to be doused before the first hour of
the middle watch was past;" but by permission of Major Chesters, "the
officer commanding," they were kept burning as long as there was a
card to be turned, or a dice-box rattled.
Overcome by wine and excitement, some of the juniors had dozed off to
sleep on the sofas and cushioned lockers. Two were singing, and
others were arguing noisily as to the place where the troops would
probably make their landing against the Russians--if they ever landed
at all. Some were offering and booking ridiculous bets, for the evil
example of Chesters was painfully prominent now. The wine decanters
had passed freely and frequently round, and as a result, the clamour
of voices rose at times to a most unseemly and discordant din; but
fortunately, laughter and fun were predominant, for most of those
present were heedless subalterns, lads fresh from Eton, Sandhurst, or
Harrow.
Chesters was seated at a table playing vingt-un with young Elton,
whom he had lured or taunted into gambling with him, and whose face,
alternately flushed or pale as he won--which was seldom--or lost,
which was frequently, presented a strange contrast to that of his
bloated adversary, or to the placid aspect of Colonel De la Fosse,
who, while watching the turns of the game with an eye expressive of
disdain, leant quietly against the foot of the mizen mast, with a
half-lit cigar between his fingers, and muttered to Horace as he
passed something about "_le régiment de la Calotte_" (_i.e._, madmen).
Horace had been at sea in troop-ships ere now. In one he had gone
round the Cape to India; but never before had he beheld a scene like
this at such an hour in any vessel in her Majesty's Service; it was
so entirely subversive of discipline and good feeling.
"Here comes Ramornie from the deck, looking as usual, cool as a
cucumber, rather reprehensively perhaps, too," said Chesters,
mockingly; "will you join us, and have a little mild play, 'to
improve the shining hour?'"
"I would rather be excused, Major. I never gamble," replied Horace.
"Ah, you have no small vices. You, then, Ponsonby?"
"Play with _you_?" replied Ponsonby, who had imbibed sufficient wine
to make him exceedingly rash, "not if I know it!"
"Why so?" asked Chesters with knitted brows.
"Can't afford it; that is why," replied the Welsh Fusileer, coolly.
"You have grown cautious?"
"No. But you are always so deuced lucky with the honours, and when
the ship rolls, do exactly what you please with the kings and aces."
"A home-thrust, egad!" said Elton bitterly, for he had been losing
fast.
"I'll have a turn with you, Major," said a little tipsy ensign,
stepping up from a sofa.
"I don't bet with boys under age."
"But you play with them, and to some purpose," retorted the lad
angrily.
Chesters darted a furious glance at the speaker (who returned it by
an unabashed stare), and then he proceeded to sort and shuffle the
pack of cards anew, prior to determining the deal.
"Mon ami," whispered Louis De la Fosse to Elton at this juncture;
"beware of him you play with. I know him of old; he is one of the
luckiest fellows in the world."
"How?"
"He is ever a winner, always cool, always quiet and observant, and
seems to possess the eyes of Argus instead of two."
"What is all that whispering about?" asked Chesters, with suspicion.
"You, Monsieur," replied the Colonel, so quietly, that the blotches
on the Major's face deepened in colour.
"A knave! the deal is mine," said he. "My transactions with you,
Colonel De la Fosse, if it is these you refer to, were a trifle
compared to my single affair with Prince Galitzin, the Russian
Attaché at Paris."
"They were serious enough for me, any way, Monsieur."
"I won eight thousand pounds odd, at a sitting; we played vingt-un,
this very game. But then he owned more roubles and Russian peasants
than he could well reckon."
Elton was still losing fast, and the exasperation of his temper, the
pallor of his face, his straining eyes and general disorder of
aspect, became painfully apparent, while the bead drops of
perspiration glittered on his temples.
"You had better abandon vingt-un," said Horace. "The run of luck is
against you, my dear fellow; or won't you turn in, the hour is waxing
late."
"Early, rather," replied Elton to this advice, which was rashly
given, so far as the giver was concerned, for Chesters immediately
said in a threatening tone--
"What the devil do you mean, sir, by interfering with us? By what
right do you permit yourself to do so?"
"The right accorded by friendship and kindness."
"Attend to your own affairs, sir. You've not had much experience of
life, my young friend; but like mild, trashy Cape Madeira, you'll
improve by a sea voyage, I hope."
Horace kept his temper by an effort, or felt himself compelled to do
so, and turned away towards the rudder-case, recalling the fears he
had fancied, and the wise resolutions he had formed on deck to avoid
this dangerous man; but a loud laugh elicited, by some remark of the
latter, from the tipsy ensign--a remark in which he heard his own
name mentioned, drew him again to the table near the mizen mast.
"And you came home with her over land?" he heard Chesters say.
"Yes, by Jove I did," replied the boy.
"She is a girl with a thundering lot of money in Indian stock, bonds,
a palace in the Choultry, and the deuce knows all what more. I
suppose Ramornie can tell us all about it."
"Of whom are you talking, sir?" asked Horace.
"Wedderburn's cousin--the Madras girl."
"That subject again, Major Chesters?" said Horace, absolutely
trembling with passion, for there was a deliberate and languid
insolence in the other's tone that maddened him.
"You should not find it an unpleasant one," said Chesters, still
mockingly. "A girl worth her weight in gold; in fact, her weight in
mohurs and rupees."
"A la belle millionaire!" said De la Fosse, smiling, as if to
preserve good humour. "If beauty be the test, parbleu! every girl I
saw in England is worth her weight in guineas."
"They say she is to marry Wedderburn of the Royal Fusileers,"
continued Chesters, resolutely bent on insulting Ramornie. "Ha, ha!
but many a fellow will be run to earth ere we return again, and why
not Wedderburn among the rest? He may go to Old Scratch with the
down train, for a hotter place than Varna, and have no return ticket."
"Sir, I appeal to all those present, if this is not a most brutal
jest?" exclaimed Horace, now as white with passion as Elton was with
his losses.
"This to me, sir?" exclaimed Chesters, starting up. "I am a
gentleman----"
"By the courtesy of the turf."
"I am a Major of the Turkish Contingent!"
"Much that is to boast of," replied Horace, whose voice was tremulous
with rage and scorn.
"Look you, young fellow," said Chesters, in a bullying tone,
"hitherto, so far as you have been concerned, I have been holding my
stride----"
"Sir, _I_ am a gentleman; neither a jockey, nor a groom, consequently
your phraseology----"
"Is obscure, you would say?"
"Yes."
"Then, by Jove, I'll make it plain enough to you. I am your superior
officer, and as such I order you under arrest; aye, close arrest in
your cabin. Mr. Elton, as acting adjutant, receive Mr. Ramornie's
sword. At Malta or Varna he shall figure before a general court
martial."
Ramornie, little foreseeing the use to which it would soon be put,
handed his sword and belt without a word to Elton, and bestowing on
Chesters a glance of supreme disdain, retired to his cabin, but in
such a mood of mind as the reader may conceive.
This untoward affair caused a chill, a gloom to fall on all present,
and they formed little groups to whisper over the probable result of
it.
"And now to finish our game, Elton," said Chesters, coolly reseating
himself. "We have but a few minutes only, ere the lights must
positively be put out. Where were we?"
"I scarcely remember," sighed Elton, who had already lost stake after
stake, and given IOU's to a considerable amount, for to him, as a
younger son, the losses he had sustained were ruinous, and he
despaired of retrieving his fortune.
Colonel De la Fosse, who had beheld the scene between Chesters and
Ramornie with silent indignation, now proceeded closely to watch the
conclusion of the game between the former and Elton; and while
humming a French air, he had taken up Ramornie's sword, drawn it from
the scabbard, and with apparent curiosity was examining the edge, and
more particularly the point of it.
As dealer, Chesters turned up a vingt-un with wonderful celerity and
success on every occasion. And at last poor Elton, pale as death,
with bloodshot eyes, trembling hands, and clammy brow, placed his
last stake, a very heavy one, upon his last chance!
But Chesters might still have a fatal twenty-one, and thus rook him
completely!
The hand, on a finger of which the latter still wore the large onyx
ring he had the bad taste to win in former days from De la Fosse, was
spread out on the table somewhat ostentatiously; and on this hand, or
on the ring, the keen dark eyes of the Frenchman were fixed as if by
some strange fascination. On the stone was engraved a gauntlet on a
sword's point.
All who were sober stood hushed in silence round them, their eyes
fixed alternately on Elton's excited face and the fatal cards which
roused such evil passions, when suddenly an exclamation escaped the
watchful Frenchman.
"_Imposteur! Mon Dieu--un imposteur_--ah, pitiful carabinade!" and
he dashed the sharp point of Ramornie's sword between the second and
third fingers of Chester's outspread hand, which he instantly and
instinctively withdrew; and then was seen by all an ACE, which he had
concealed beneath it, for purposes of his own--the ace being always
reckoned as one or eleven according to the exigencies of the holder's
play--pinned to the table by the steel weapon!
* * * * * *
CHAPTER XXI.
UNDER ARREST.
Meanwhile Horace Ramornie was in his little cabin (nearly one half of
which was filled by a 24-pounder), ignorant of the strange event that
had transpired in the saloon; and anticipating only the evils, the
affront, and shame of a court-martial, before which he knew not in
what artful fashion the charge of Chesters might be framed against
him; and in which, perhaps, spitefully, and for the mere purpose of
annoyance, the name of Gwendoleyne Wedderburn might appear as the
cause of quarrel, and this itself might ruin him with her for ever.
Knowing but too well that for the maintenance of discipline, the
authorities at the Horse Guards generally supported--even to
injustice, seniors against juniors--he passed the hours that remained
of the morning in a most unhappy mood, fearing that ruin stared him
in the face, and resolving--for he was full of desperate and bitter
thoughts--that if he were cashiered, he would join some regiment as a
volunteer, if permitted, and still serve, to perish, if he won not
honour, in the war!
What would Sir Edward Elton and the regiment--those Royal Fusileers,
of whom he was so proud to be one, and among whom he was so well
thought of--say, when they heard of his being placed under arrest,
close arrest too, a double degradation, when on his way out to the
seat of war, for an unmeaning gambling row (such it might be called)
with his senior officer?
Gwenny and the Wedderburns too! His heart grew sick when he thought
of her and of them; the disappointment his good uncle must feel; the
indignation of Lady Wedderburn and Cyril; and the cold, legal, and
reprehensive comments of Robert. So his ideas became a mere tumult,
a chaos of rage; for the catastrophe his fears foreshadowed had come
to pass sooner than he expected.
Separated from Ramornie only by a bulkhead or two, Chesters was in
his more spacious cabin, in a frame of mind that was still more
unenviable; for he had yet the hollow and conventional feeling of
honour, or knew the necessity of affecting to have it, for outward
purposes. As to what people at home might say he cared little, for
there he was forgotten by all, save his creditors; but here, in the
Allied Army, he would have to face exposure, disgrace, and, too
probably, a court-martial, if not summary dismissal from the Turkish
Contingent; for even the singularly recruited ranks of the Bashi
Bozooks might decline to receive him.
Deep were the blasphemies against Fate, and bitter the curses against
Louis De la Fosse that fell from his lips! He drank brandy and
seltzer water as if he had a consuming fire within him; his features,
all save the grog-blotches, were pale and livid; his hands trembled
and moved by convulsive twitches--all the more so when a message came
from the Frenchman, through young Elton.
"Tell him, Monsieur le Lieutenant," said the former to the latter,
cuttingly, "that I can neither be bullied nor jockeyed like some of
his boy ensigns; and that I will fight with sword or pistol, or both,
on the first land we sight, even were it no larger than this table."
"Something must be done," replied the rather bewildered Elton; "but I
fear arrest also, if I become the bearer of a challenge. Duelling is
fairly put down in our service."
"But not in ours. People cant and talk of steam and telegraphy, of
progress and civilization, but the science of human destruction keeps
pace with them, for human nature never changes. We shall never be
without crime and passion. And tell this man--if he is not what I
should blush to call any man who wears an epaulette?--I shall fight
him, if he will come, a _duel à mort_, though I fear that my old
comrade, St. Arnaud, would resent such a _fracas_. And yet he does
not always keep his own temper under control. Mon Dieu! I was close
by his side on that terrible morning in the Tuileries, when General
Cormeneuse accused him of extracting a valuable document from the
portfolio of Napoleon; and before one of us could speak, the sword of
St. Arnaud was plunged to the hilt in his heart."
Chesters strove again and again to write an insulting acceptance of
the challenge from the Frenchman, but his fingers failed to guide the
pen. And when he remembered that, too probably, not an officer on
board the troopship would become his messenger or second, he dashed
his desk against the cannon in his cabin, with blind and impotent
wrath.
A jockey, a gambler, a _roué_, he had never before been so openly and
publicly stripped of the character of "gentleman;" and now he knew
and felt himself to be exposed, lost, disgraced, perhaps beyond
redemption, and all through the means of that quiet, stern, and
observant Frenchman, whom he resolved that he would yet shoot like a
dog, if he had the opportunity. How he loathed and literally cursed
him!
Well, if he escaped dismissal, which he could scarcely hope, he
should in future scrupulously avoid his own countrymen, and
fraternize with the Orientals--perhaps turn Turk altogether, like the
Croat, Omar Pasha; for this gambling scrape would not, he conceived,
injure him much in the estimation of Osmanli officers, whom he knew
to be but an indifferent set of fellows, often originally the
_azancoglans_, or men who do the meaner offices of the Seraglio, or
attendants of the pashas, such as _tiruaktzys_ (nail cutters),
carpet-spreaders, _chiboukgis_ or pipe-bearers, and so forth.
But being literally covered with merited shame, he became seriously
ill, and his uninterrupted libations of brandy increased his ailment,
so that a few hours saw him in a raging fever and placed on the
sick-list.
The next officer in command, a Captain of the Rifle Brigade, ignoring
alike his past authority and the whole affair, released Horace from
arrest, and restored to him his sword. The incident, however ugly,
had a salutary influence among the youngsters. Dread of a court of
inquiry still existed; so the gambling in the cabin ceased, and a
vast number of bets were cancelled, and IOU's that had been
interchanged were, by mutual consent, destroyed, torn to pieces, and
sent whirling over to leeward.
To do him justice, amid all the contempt he had for his character,
the soldierly Louis De la Fosse felt some pity on learning that
Chesters was so crushed in spirit.
"My own life has not been always _couleur de rose_," said he to
Ramornie, as they promenaded on deck one evening, while the little
green coloured isle of Pantellaria, with Il Bosco, its volcanic cone,
were faintly visible on their weather beam; "it has been cloudy
enough at times--such as that when this same Chesters reduced me to
the verge of starvation and despair; and when for months I was a
prisoner among the Arabs in the mountains of Auress, which look down
on the sandy waste of Sahara, and when every morning I had the
pleasant anticipation of dislocation of the neck, by having my head
twisted one way and my body another, like a pigeon in a poulterer's
shop. _Ma foi! un bon coup d'épée_ I have struck many a time, but
for you young fellows, the best I ever struck was that with your
sword blade through yonder trickster's hidden card!"
Save through the surgeon on board, nothing was known of Chesters, who
only began to recover his senses one evening when he could see
through the open port-hole near his bed the waves careering past
before the pleasant breeze that fanned his throbbing brow, and land
visible a few miles off; but he gazed at it dreamily, for what shore
it proved he knew little, and cared less.
The ocean was all of a very light blue; but the bases of the
mountains were of a dark indigo tint, while their peaks were tipped
with crimson and purple, as they started in outline against a sky of
gold and amber, that gradually turned to fiery red as the sun went
down behind the land. Then blending tints of opal and crimson began
to steal across the sea; while darkness deepened on the shore of
Sicily, for such it was, and the cape--some call it the isle--which
terminated near Passaro. The chargers were whinnying on board as
they gladly snuffed the land--the Pachynum Promontorium of the
classic ages; but it might have been the coast of Bulgaria or of
Baffin's Bay for all that Chesters cared, as he closed his blood-shot
eyes, and dozed wearily off in slumber.
When next morning he awoke a little calmer, and looked forth once
more, he knew instantly where he was. Around the open port-hole
swarmed a flotilla of little boats, full of tawny, black-haired and
keen-eyed men and lads, almost in a state of nudity, looking like
great monkeys as they clamoured for money to be thrown over, that
they might dive for it. He recognised the streets of stairs
ascending to the Strada Reale; the solid batteries rising tier above
tier, and bristling with a thousand cannon over the freestone rocks,
on which the glittering sea was dashing; the Cathedral of St. John,
where the keys of the Holy Cities hang; the Castle of St. Elmo; the
harbour full of shipping, chiefly war vessels and transports, crowded
with troops, the boats in hundreds shooting to and fro, full of
seamen and marines, food and warlike stores, coals, powder, shot, and
cannon. He heard the occasional drum and bugle-call in the garrison,
and the tolling of those solemn bells that whilom had rung for mass
and prayer in Rhodes; and as Chesters turned wearily in his bed, he
knew that the _Blenheim_ swung at her moorings in the harbour of
Valetta.
A great French line-of-battle ship, the _Ville de Paris_, crowded
with Zouaves, lay near her. They were swarming about her decks, and
even out upon her booms, laughing, singing, and chattering like
marmosets, in their short blue jackets, and baggy red breeches, and
ever and anon their long brass trumpets rang shrilly out upon the
ambient air.
For all these he had no eyes: he was feverish, and though, in a moral
sense, not naturally courageous, at that moment he actually longed
for death. He could remember his father, a gallant and
irreproachable veteran officer, whose ideas of honour were based on
the old military school, when men entered the service, not as a
lounge, but for the duration of their lives, and when the standard
maxims were, never to give, but never to take an insult, and to be
ever prompt with your pistol! He could recall this fine old officer,
scarred with many an honourable wound, his breast decorated with the
medals he had won in Egypt, at Corunna, and Waterloo, commanding his
regiment in yonder citadel of Valetta; and he felt that if the dead
are conscious, his father would be regarding him with sorrow, if not
with shame!
And shame and rage Chesters felt keenly, but no dread of the future
and no regret for a misspent past; no thought of reformation for the
time to come, and short enough that might be. He was devoid of all
religion, yet, strange to say, not entirely destitute of a species of
superstition; and in times of danger, was wont to recall with
confidence the prediction of a gipsy woman at Yetholm, who, when he
crossed her hand with silver, had predicted, "That he should neither
be drowned, nor die a violent death--yet that he should not die in a
bed, as his father had done."
So he began to gather a little hope. He might survive the present
disgrace, and be a Bimbashi or Colonel yet--ay, a Pasha with two
tails, or a Brigadier; and thus, while trembling in his heart lest
the late affair should recall fully to memory the half-forgotten
play-transaction, in which his name was once involved before,
compelling him to quit the Queen's service, he schemed, in fancy, out
the future.
The saloon of the great ship was empty, voiceless, and he knew that
every officer who was not on duty would be on shore, to see the
wonders of Malta, to smoke cigars at the Auberge de Provence, have
tiffin with sliced melons and Maltese oranges at Spark's in the
Strada San Paoli, and a donkey ride as far as Monte Benjemma, or the
wood of Boschetto, where the knights of St. John kept their game of
old, for he had done all that himself in happier and more innocent
days.
Suspense and hope, the heaven and the hell of the systematic gambler,
he had endured and triumphed over; but to be pointed at by the finger
of scorn, for what he had been discovered to be--he, who had
alternately bullied or chaffed and rooked the boy-subs of his
detachment--all proved too much, however, for the brain. The cognac
was again appealed to in absence of the assistant-surgeon, and again
a raging fever seized him.
He became oblivious of everything and everybody now, save his close
attendant, Bill Trayner, whom he never failed to recognise, and to
anathematize most freely--a circumstance which excited only a smile
from that well-trained jockey, who was already looking to the
reversion of his effects, and taking the opportunity of dividing the
contents of a well-filled purse, with great fairness, between himself
and his master with whom he was left in charge, for when the
_Blenheim_ got up her steam for the Archipelago, Chesters was in the
Military Hospital at Malta, where we shall gladly leave him to
recover at leisure from the results of his own folly and debauchery.
It was generally supposed that he would die, or resign and slip
quietly home; so, as if by common consent, the officers on board the
troop-ship resolved to commit his story to oblivion.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS.
One more brief glance at home, ere we find ourselves face to face
with the disgusts of Varna, and the hostile columns of Russia.
Many, many weeks had passed away; and during these, Mary Lennox knew
nothing of what was passing in the outer world. She knew that busy
world was there, beyond her prison--"the huge lock which shut her out
from it," for during the monotonous hours of the day, and the
drearier watches of the night between her intervals of sleep, she
heard the hum of the vast multitudes around her--a hum that, though
less at midnight than at noon, seemed never to become, even for an
instant, still.
She was weary--weary indeed of life; but felt too strong to hope that
death was near her. In the morning she longed for night; and when
night came she thanked God that another day of her dull pilgrimage
had passed into eternity; and then she prayed for the oblivion of
that sleep "which covereth a man all over like a mantle:" but sleep
was not always forgetfulness, for sad dreams of the past and vague
terrors for the future haunted her, till, one memorable evening, the
chaplain and an official of the prison appeared with the startling
tidings that she "was _free_!"
"Free, sir! How?" she asked, doubtfully.
"By the death in prison of the man against whom you were bound to
appear. It is fortunate for you," added the chaplain, "as he
confessed your perfect innocence."
"Poor wretch! I hope he made his peace with Heaven?"
"Can't say as he did, Miss. You see he died in a hurry," replied the
warder.
And so it proved to be the case, that the miserable desperado, Ben
Ginger, otherwise known to the public as "the Captain," was soon
after found dead in his cell; whether of atrophy of the heart or by
some secret agency of his own, the learned coroner and intelligent
jury, who viewed or sat over his remains, failed to elicit; but Mary
was free.
"You may leave this, Miss Lennox, as soon as you choose," said the
chaplain, with a smile of encouragement; "for you the gates of the
prison are open at last, and the days of your bondage are over, I am
happy to say."
Intolerable as the prison had been to her, she was not without fear
of issuing forth once more into the vast human wilderness around it;
yet she knew that the essay must be made, come what might of it, and
like one in a dream, she put on her hat and shawl. Her garments were
sorely worn now, and from black had turned to a kind of rusty-brown
tint. Her purse was restored to her, and walking mechanically, she
found herself at the strong iron-barred gates. The chaplain still
accompanied her; but with that mistaken acuteness peculiar to some
people, both he and the matron had their doubts of Mary; and the
diamond ring on her "engaged finger" completed the measure of these.
"Where are you going to-night?" he asked, drily.
"As God may direct me. Would that it were to my father's grave at
home," said she, as with trembling hands she tied her worn veil under
her chin.
Those little hands were gloveless now, so their extreme whiteness and
delicacy caught the observant chaplain's eye.
"Home; it is ever home you pine for," said he, kindly, but
reprovingly; "why are you for ever looking back?"
"Because, sir, I dare not look _forward_," replied Mary, with a
morose gloom of manner all unusual to her.
"Are you then as one who has no hope?" he asked, with folded hands.
"Yes, sir; one who has no hope here, at least," and her smooth white
eyelids and long dark lashes drooped as she spoke.
A trite text or two suited to the occasion--a word of conventional
advice were given, the wicket clanged behind her, and they had
parted; he to repair to his snug little room, with its comforts and
well-filled bookshelves, and Mary to wander through the streets,
aimlessly, and in a tumult of terrible thoughts.
It was the month of September now, and darkness soon set in amid the
dense and smoky thoroughfares of London.
The girl was in utter desperation and bewilderment, and walked on
through the ceaseless throng and past the brilliantly-lighted shops,
with the old stunned sensation that the whirl of omnibusses and other
vehicles will always impart to those who are, as she was, country
bred; it came over her, all the more, perhaps, because latterly she
had been secluded so long in utter solitude.
Within her heart there was a sense of desolation that was fast
becoming unendurable!
She had vague ideas of once more seeking the abode and advice of kind
little Mrs. Long Primer, as the only being she knew in London; and
with this view inquired her way towards the Strand; but was fast
becoming weary, footsore, and in her agitation, oppressed with an
intense thirst, which she knew not where to allay.
Alone, she feared to trust herself by night in a cab, and whither, or
in what direction, those strings of gay, swift, and crowded omnibuses
went she knew not. The Bank, Pimlico, Piccadilly or Paddington,
Cornhill or Islington, conveyed no meaning to her; and so she
wandered on, enduring a horrible sensation of combined loneliness,
emptiness, and gloom, finding herself at times in densely crowded
thoroughfares, and at others in stately streets and squares, where
the lights and music that came through the tall and draperied
windows, the glimpses of rich dresses, of liveries in marble and
pillared vestibules; and where the carriages that rolled up to the
doors with flashing lamps and glittering harness, bespoke wealth and
luxury, gaiety and splendour.
Lady Wetherall might be in town now; but dared she present herself at
that great mansion in Piccadilly in such faded attire, and without
her letter, too? The thing was not to be thought of!
And it had come to this at last!
"Homeless, near a thousand homes she stood."
Mary Lennox, so delicate and tender--so loving and true--so formed
and calculated for home and home affections! What a fate to be
houseless and shivering in the busy streets of London, where the vast
human tide went surging by, ceaselessly--ceaselessly, as it has done
for centuries past, and shall do for centuries yet to come; its very
magnitude appalling her; though she knew that under happier auspices,
and with some protection, she would get used to it in time; but at
present she felt only a desperate longing for rest, for the face of a
friend--a yearning for the safe solitude of that home she never more
should see; and she recalled now with vivid distinctness all the
terrible things said to her by Chesters, so cruelly and so artfully,
of what her fate in life, and even after death, might be, if she died
there friendless and unknown.
It was night in London now, but the pulses of the mighty city were
throbbing still. In some streets the roll of carriages and the echo
of hurrying feet had passed away; but in the main arteries of the
modern Babylon the full flood of life was flowing strongly as ever.
Night or day seemed to make little difference in them.
Thus as Mary wandered aimlessly on, the strange combinations of
extreme light and dense darkness, with the peculiar aspect that
buildings and certain objects assume by night, all served to bewilder
her more, and she remembered with growing terror the episodes of the
last and only night she had ever been thus adrift in the streets at
such an hour before.
To add to her extreme misery, rain began to fall, and came down with
a heavy, steady, and apparently ceaseless determination. She was
without cloak or umbrella, and was often compelled to take shelter in
doorways and chilly passages, from which she was driven by men
accosting her in terms of mock gallantry, or by policemen flashing
their lanterns suspiciously into her eyes; for she had a most rustic
fear of those to whom she ought to have appealed for advice and
protection.
But all the little courage she ever possessed was gone now, and the
poor girl, bred and reared as she had been, was as a child lost or
astray in the streets of London.
The rain was still falling fast, and gusts of wind began to sweep the
drenched thoroughfares and to ripple up the puddles and gorged
gutters that reflected the gaslights. The atmosphere became murky as
the smoke and soot of the countless chimneys were forced downwards by
its density. Mary's clothing was wet and sodden now; but in the
terror and disorder of her mind, she was scarcely sensible of
discomfort, for a man of suspicious aspect had been pertinaciously
following her, and to escape him she ran onward till suddenly she
found herself in an open space upon a great bridge, the double lamps
of which were reflected in the wide river below.
It was the Thames, with all its bordering streets of stores and
wharves, and its gathered fleets moored side by side, packed and
densely, and yet so orderly.
Thousands of lights were gleaming across the murky bosom of the
river, and through the open balustrade Mary looked at its current
wistfully, thinking, as so many have thought, while lingering on that
bridge of sighs, that there was peace--there an escape from all
misery and sorrow.
She looked round her with a haggard eye: in one place rose a square
dark mass from out of the general obscurity; in another a vast dark
shadowy dome, that seemed to shimmer amid the dusky haze. One was
the Tower, the other St. Paul's; and once more, sighing heavily, she
bent her gaze on the turbid water.
It flowed steadily, swiftly, and darkly onward, that mighty
river--onward to the distant sea--but far down below her. Strange
white things seemed to shine there in a lambent or phosphorescent
light amid its rippling current. These objects made her shudder for
a time and recoil. Then she looked at them steadily--it might be
sternly. They were, she knew, only pieces of rag or rope, old hats,
sailcloth, straw, or dead animals--and--"to be found drowned," amid
all these!
"Oh, no--oh, no! God forgive me and guide me!" cried the girl,
wildly. "Let me not think of that."
She cast her eyes upwards as she prayed; but no star caught her
imploring eyes, and the fast falling rain plashed heavily on her
pallid face and sodden tresses.
She remembered her father as he lay dead in the old wainscoted room
at Lonewoodlee, calm, peaceful, and triumphant over the world and all
its ills. But his was a death so different from what such as this
would be.
"Now then, young 'ooman, wot air you hup to?" said a voice, sharply,
in her ear, startling her like a galvanic shock; and a well-whiskered
guardian of the night, in his felt helmet and dripping oilskin cape,
confronted her.
"I am doing nothing, sir," she faltered, and shrunk from him.
"Nothink! Then you'd better come along with me. Prison, I think, is
the place for such as you."
"Prison!"
She uttered a wild despairing cry, and throwing herself over the
balustrade, sank beneath the still, black current of the stream below!
The startled constable looked over, and as he sprang his rattle, saw
something like a little hat and veil floating downward on the
surface, but nothing more.
All seemed over!
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE VALE OF ALADYN.
By the time that Horace Ramornie with his detachment of the Fusileers
reached Varna, and after a six hours' march, joined the headquarters
of his regiment, which was then encamped in the green and beautiful
Vale of Aladyn, the magnificent army which had left the shores of
Britain so full of hope, so high in ardour and spirit, by the gross
mismanagement, the vacillation, or something worse, on the part of
the Home Government, had lain inactive and been literally decimated
by disease, during the breathless months of a hot Bulgarian summer,
and deliberately kept waiting for the approach of the Russian winter
with its icy terrors, of which the French army at least might
certainly have had a traditional memory and wholesome fear.
Cholera had cut our men off by thousands, and their graves lay
thickly all over the slopes in the Vale of Aladyn, where the Russians
had buried more than seven thousand of its victims a short time
before; hence it was not inaptly termed by the Bulgarian peasantry
the Valley of the Plague. The 7th, the Welsh Fusileers, the
Connaught Rangers, and all the other Infantry had suffered severely,
the Highlanders perhaps excepted; the peculiarity of the Celtic
costume, by the warmth it affords round the loins, having proved an
admirable protection, which saved many a life in their ranks. Two of
our cavalry regiments were reduced to skeletons, and about two
hundred and fifty sabres formed the average muster of the other
corps. So severe was the pest that many men died and were buried
within five hours of their being attacked; and now stern doubt and
louring discontent became visible in the faces of the survivors.
"Though no act unbecoming British soldiers was committed--though no
breach of discipline could be charged, it was impossible to refrain
from discontent. Murmurs, not loud but deep, made themselves heard.
No man there but burned to meet the enemy. The entire army was
prepared cheerfully to face death in the service of the country to
which it had sworn allegiance; but to remain in inactivity, exposed
to pestilence, which struck down its victims as surely and nearly as
speedily as the rifle-bullet, beneath a burning sun, with no power of
resistance and no possibility of evasion, was a fate which might
quell the stoutest courage, and raise discontent in the most loyal
bosom."
The French army had come to Varna by marching over the great mountain
barrier of Turkey, the Balkan; our fleet the while had been seeking
in vain to lure that of Russia from under the gun batteries of
Sebastopol. The Turkish army had been carrying all before it on the
left bank of the Danube; and at Citate and Oltenitza had actually
routed and covered the Russian armies with disgrace: but the last
days of August still saw our army lingering hopelessly in Bulgaria,
while the Russian forces whom they were ultimately to oppose were
gathering fast in the land of the Tartars.
Horace shared the cool bell-tent of Cyril in the camp, and on the
forenoon of his arrival, while lying on the pleasant sward which
formed its floor, enjoying cigars and bitter beer, with belts off and
coats open, and when looking forth on the scenery, who could imagine
that death was hovering so near, and that more than ten thousand
graves lay around them in that smiling valley!
On one side of the camp lay a beautiful lake, and on the other the
ground rose high and was covered with varied foliage, over which the
storks were always flying in long lines. And there too were eagles,
vultures, and kites, soaring in mid-air, on the outlook for dead
horses, or, it might be, a camp follower who had perished in a lonely
place, and lay blackening in the desolate glare of the sun, covered
with flies, with dim glazed orbs and open jaws.
Near Cyril's tent were the ruins of a kiosk or country-house which
the Russians had destroyed; but its arabesque white marble fountain
still remained in the centre of a beautiful garden, where the great
Persian rose-trees yet loaded the air with fragrance; where the
foliage of the greengage, the apricot, the apple, and the purple
plum, waved pleasantly in the soft wind; and the beautiful orioles,
all yellow and green, the gaudy woodpecker, the blackbird, and the
thrush, darted after the flies at times in veritable coveys, and sung
sweetly in the shadow.
A group of soldiers in fatigue dress, filling their camp-kettles,
canteens, and horse-buckets, or washing their linen, might always be
seen about this fountain. These visitors had long since "looted" the
garden of its golden-coloured melons and great scarlet pumpkins; the
Egyptian palm, the Indian fig-tree, the gorgeous aloe, and the solemn
towering cypress, still grew side by side, though the billhook of the
forager had abstracted many a branch to feed the camp-fires; and had
the French been near, not a twig had been left.
Now the allied forces, some eighty thousand strong, were under canvas
over the whole vast plain which extends from Aladyn to Varna.
Horace found Cyril looking pale and changed, for he had undergone a
touch of the pest, and he was bearded to an extent that would have
astonished the folks at home, whom he had never informed of his
illness, as Dr. Riversdale of the staff had "pulled him through it."
"If we don't take the field soon," said he, "the Russians will find
but few to fight with. The army, though recruited fast, is rotting
away, Horace, literally, and just as our army rotted at Walcheren in
1809, when thirty-five thousand entries were made in the fever
hospitals; so you see that in forty-seven years Britain has learned
nothing in the art of war! But how fresh you fellows look just from
home, in your new uniforms and bright epaulettes, as if you had just
stepped from band-boxes. By Jove! you do form a contrast to those
who have been under canvas here so long."
Cyril had, of course, overwhelmed Horace with questions about all who
were at home; and the latter had related, in confidence, the affair
with Chesters in the transport. It, however, excited no surprise, as
Cyril knew the worthy's character well; but the mention he had made
of Mary Lennox's name stung, grieved, and bewildered him.
In prison! The story seemed mere malevolence, and altogether
incredible! How could it come to pass?
While they were speaking, the same Drum-Major who had been wont to
act as regimental postman at Chatham--ay, even in Candahar and many
other places--appeared at the tent-door, coolly as usual, with
letters for both, the mails having come on in the _Blenheim_ from
Malta. Each tore his missive open in haste, and became absorbed in
its contents; for a letter there was as a voice from home, and the
hearts of both were instantly far away from the tented vale of
Aladyn, among the green braes of the Merse and Lauderdale. Cyril's
was from his mother, to whom he was tenderly attached. That to
Horace was from Gwenny.
"For a reason, of which I may tell you at a future time," Lady
Wedderburn mentioned among other matters, "we have employed Chesters'
old gatekeeper, Tony Heron, in the stableyard, where, by-the-by, the
long-projected new wing and clock-tower are progressing. Robert is
busy with his studies, and will come out for the English Temple.
Your father thinks that as he is not brilliant he might shine amid
the aspiring mediocrity of the Scottish bar (where there is such
utter poverty of position and of talent); but in London, we fear,
that he will never _be heard of at all_! The Reverend Gideon
M'Guffog, not content with 'the flesh pots' he enjoys, is raising an
action, chiefly against us, for an augmentation of his stipend,
through Grubb and Wylie, the writers (or wretches rather), who, like
too many Scotch legal desperadoes, are ready to do anything for cash
or a case. As your regiment does not wear the kilt, Dr. Squills
urges that you should wear a belt as a safe precaution against that
cholera which seems so terrible at Varna; and Gervase Asloane says he
has in the cellar some fine old Glenlivat, which would be a better
protection still, had we but the means of sending it to you."
Other things followed, of as little importance as these, but there
came one remark which found an echo in Cyril's heart.
"That foolish old man at Lonewoodlee is no more, as Horace, perhaps,
by this time may have told you, and his proud, but penniless,
daughter has left this part of the country for ever."
Mary's face, her sad, earnest eyes, her last words, and her
helplessness, all came painfully before him. Dead--old Oliver Lennox
dead! Cyril in imagination saw all the grim details of the last
scene, with poor Mary alone--so terribly alone--in that old rambling
and gloomy Tower. Had his mother been--as he implored her to be kind
to that orphan girl whom he had loved even as his own soul? The
coldness of her letter gave him slender hope of that. Who, then, had
befriended, who aided her? Chesters?
He writhed at this thought, and though he had never ceased to love
her, but false as he deemed her, had sworn never to see her more, the
interest he felt in Mary's fate would never die.
The cousins tacitly, and with one accord, exchanged letters, and
Cyril, from the tenor of Gwenny's, guessed at once how matters stood
now, and said--
"Bravo, Master Horace! So you have not been idle in my absence? But
I congratulate you, old fellow, for Gwenny, wealth apart, is a girl
among ten thousand!"
Horace blushed with pleasure, and replied, with a laugh--
"For Heaven's sake, Cyril, don't tell Lady Wedderburn that we have
committed the enormity of falling in love. You know what her wish
is, so far as you are concerned?"
But Cyril did not answer, for another pang was inflicted on him by a
passage in Gwenny's letter to Horace, and it almost seemed to
corroborate the remark of Chesters in the troop-ship.
"There has been some talk among us from time to time of a trip
eastward in the Ernescleugh's yacht, so don't be surprised if we
should see the Russians before you do. I should like to get a
Turkish husband for Zillah, my ayah (the men here won't look at her),
and I don't think that Miss Flora M'Caw, at her mature years, would
have much objection to a Muscovite, even if his name were like three
sneezes with _off_ or _iski_ at the end of them. The orphan girl,
Miss Lennox--perhaps you may remember, dearest Horace, it was she of
whom such unpleasant things were said by the Ernescleughs--was
visited by Aunt Wedderburn and me after her father's death, and
before she went to London. Aunt gave her a most kind letter to the
Wetheralls in Piccadilly, and another was sent to her address
somewhere near the Strand; but it was returned by the post-office
people, with the information that she could not be found in
London--had disappeared, in fact."
Disappeared, and in London!
Cyril grew ghastly pale as he read those words, which seemed to burn
themselves into his heart, and in a gust of jealous bitterness, he
connected this disappearance still with Chesters. He started up,
shouted for his servant, and ordering horses, added, suddenly and
impatiently--
"You have reported yourself to Sir Edward, the Colonel?"
"Of course, Cyril."
"Well, come Horace, there is no parade this evening; all hands are
turned to pound green coffee. Let us ride into Varna and have some
tiffin, such as it is, at the Military Café. Anything to kill time
and thought, till we can kill the Russians! Ned Elton, Probyn, and
ever so many more of our fellows will be there by this time, for it
is the only place in this dreary hole where any fun is going."
Horace agreed, and a few minutes after saw them mounted and off.
CHAPTER XXIV.
VARNA.
"And so you and Gwenny are engaged? By Jove! Don't wonder at it!
She is a most attractive girl; and there are worse-looking fellows in
the service than you, Horace. But I've not been lucky myself lately
in this game of love-making. And you should hear old Conyers
Singleton of ours tell the story of the girl he left behind him. It
is quite a warning," said Cyril, as they trotted towards the line of
advanced sentinels posted round the British camp.
"Going to Varna?" asked Captain Joyce, of the Fusileers, whose guard
tent was in that quarter.
"Yes. What is the parole?"
"'Bomarsund.' Countersign, 'Baltic.'"
"Thanks. That Zouave heard you?"
"Perhaps; but it can't matter much. He is a captain, I presume?"
Had Horace not been full of Gwenny's letter, and had he not found
ample occupation in repeating to himself certain pleasant passages
thereof, he must have been aware that there was a forced or spasmodic
gaiety in the manner of Cyril Wedderburn that was not real, for he
tugged at his moustache nervously, and viciously switched at the
flies which buzzed about his horse's ears.
Troops of every kind; Lancers, with gay bannerets; Hussars, with
their glittering dolmans; Carbineers, with brass helmets and slung
carbines; Artillery, in dark blue; and Infantry, in red, covered all
the plain. Our Household Brigade of Guards, in their bright scarlet
coats, with large white epaulettes and bearskins; the Highlanders,
who were in the same division, in their varied tartans, with their
sturdy bare legs and tall-plumed bonnets, exciting the wonder of the
starved-looking little Arabs of the Egyptian Contingent. There, too,
were the Rifles, in their sombre green uniform, which looks almost
black at a distance.
All the bustle of preparing food went forward at hundreds of
impromptu fires, by soldiers in their shirt-sleeves; and the sound of
chopping wood was heard on very hand, while the sun of the afternoon
blazed hot in their fires from the unclouded Bulgarian sky. Fatigue
parties went to and fro, laden with bundles of sticks for the cooks,
or corn or swathes of grass for the horses; and songs and merriment
came at times from the tents where the soldiers lay smoking on the
sward. But the camp had its darker pictures.
Here and there a ghastly and attenuated sick man might be seen
carried on a stretcher to the hospital tents; and, ere long, the same
stretcher would be borne in another direction, with some victim of
the Fever King, to be cast into the graves which honeycombed the low
range of hills that overlook the Vale of Aladyn, or it might be to
yonder "City of the Dead," in the plain, where the solemn rows of
giant cypresses stand like guardians round the tombs of "the
Faithful."
Beyond the British lay the French camp, with all its gaily-clad,
untidy, but somewhat purpose-looking little soldiery. The Infantry
of the Line, in long blue tunics, with scarlet epaulettes, and brass
eagles on their tiny shakos; the splendid Cavalry and Artillery of
the Imperial Guard; the Chasseurs à Pied; the Tirailleurs Algériens,
dressed like Arabs, but in light blue; and the active Zouaves, in
their (to us) well-known uniform, which excited great surprise and
speculation among the stolid Turks and the Bulgarians who swarmed
about the camps in great numbers, clad in jackets of undyed wool,
wide white trousers, girt with sashes of silk, caps of brown
sheepskin, and sandals of hide; and who failed to comprehend how
Christians should be going to battle wearing the turban of Mohammed;
for the poor Bulgarians loathe the Turks, whose slaves they are; and
as such, dare not carry a knife, while all the former, down to the
lowest _hamal_ (or porter) go armed to the teeth, with pistols,
sabre, and yataghan.
Amid all its splendour and order of military array, this camp, like
our own, had also its dark features; the sick and dead were hourly
borne through it; and there too were the intoxicated, courting
disease and death, as they lay by the waysides, in ditches or
kennels, stupefied with raki or peach-brandy, their faces blistering
in the sunshine, and covered by clouds of odious flies. Others,
despite all warnings, might be seen gorging themselves with scarlet
pumpkins, cucumbers, gages and plums which the acquisitive Greeks
offered for sale; and the Turks of Omar Pasha were nearly as
reckless, for they were always eating of the perilous green fruit,
when not engaged in smoking, praying, or covertly reviling "the
Christian dogs," who had to fight their battles.
As Wedderburn and Horace were passing a mass of Araba carts, all
drawn up wheel to wheel, there darted from under them a long snake of
dark green colour mottled with white, and having bright protuberant
eyes that flashed like carbuncles. As the reptile came forward,
writhing, wriggling, and almost dancing on its tail, Cyril's horse
reared back upon its haunches; but a Turkish Yazboshi, or captain of
cavalry, who was riding by, drew a long brass pistol from his belt,
and with singular adroitness shot it dead; and with a pleasant smile
and a low salaam rode on. Once or twice the reptile quivered all its
length in the dust, and then lay still.
"Ma foi, mes camarades, but that was well done!" said a voice, and
they found themselves joined by the same Captain of Zouaves whom they
had seen near Joyce's guard-tent. He was now mounted on a stout
little Tartar horse and seemed to have made a _détour_ round the
French lines, instead of coming _through_ them. The cousins scarcely
noted the circumstance then, but subsequent events made them remember
it. "Going into Varna, Messieurs?" he asked, reining in beside them.
"Yes," replied Cyril.
"A horrid place--dull as a vast catacomb; even the French can
scarcely make it lively. Any word yet of when the troops are like to
take the field, or for what point?"
"I have heard nothing yet, Monsieur," said Cyril, with some reserve,
as the manner of the questioner seemed abrupt and authoritative.
"Your cavalry force is dwindling fast," resumed the Zouave. "Why,
diable! all your regiments put together would barely make one
efficient Russian corps of four squadrons," he added, with a mocking
laugh.
"I don't understand this Captain of Zouaves," said Cyril, in a low
voice: "he spends his whole time in our camp, and seems to have
fallen in love with perfidious Albion. What can his object be?"
"Are you sure that he _is_ a Captain of Zouaves?" asked Horace.
"I have no reason to doubt it--but hush; he may understand English."
It might have been some peculiarity of his dress which made Horace
think what he said, for the Zouave had features that were more finely
cut than usually appertain to Frenchmen. His eyes were black,
glittering, and closely set together; his nose was somewhat hooked
and a fierce moustache stuck sharply out on each side of it; but his
hair, which was dark as a raven's wing, was shorn close to the scalp.
"Sang dieu!" he exclaimed, as if he had penetrated their thoughts and
doubts, "but I am tired of this work. Ugh! when we pound the green
beans here, between two friable stones, which add dust in plenty to
the condiment, I think of the fragrant coffee I used to get at home,
and the little pats of sweet butter on a honey-cake, or on a cool
green ivy-leaf--the breakfast of my schoolboy days, at home in
pleasant Gascony. I have been a soldier for twenty years; but I have
never forgotten those days."
"He is a Gascon--ah, that accounts for his peculiar accent," said
Horace.
"I am not much of a gourmand," resumed the Captain of Zouaves. "In
Africa, I have often dined on a slice from an old trooper--a horse I
mean; but still I have a predilection for _fricassées_, and
_fricandeaux et galettes_, which mean _collops Ecossais_, or thin
cakes (though the Scotch stole all their cooking from us, in the days
of the old alliance), and I doat on broiled chicken and cream-tarts,
such as I used to get from my old mother in Gascony, before I betook
me to the rough-and-ready trade of soldiering."
"And now, Horace," said Cyril, whom the Frenchman's empty chatter
bored, "behold our thriving city of Varna!"
It was a dreary looking place, and rose from a bank of white sand
that stretched far along the flat Bulgarian shore.
Imagine a low and half-ruined wall, a mile in length, broken and
battered as the shot of the Scoto-Russian Alexis Greig had left it in
1828, but all loopholed and painted pure white. Before it lies a
ditch, over which a number of 68-pounder guns are pointed. Above it
rise the round leaden domes of four mosques, with their tall, white,
slender minarets, encircled by wooden galleries; the solitary
campanile of the Greek church, and round these a little sea of dingy
red-tiled roofs, and one may picture that Varna on which so many of
our soldiers looked their last, and before which Ladislaus of
Lithuania and Poland perished in a futile attempt to drive the stupid
and brutal Osmanlees out of Christendom.
Prior to the arrival of our troops, its filthy streets had been
deserted and silent as the grave. Save when a wild dog--the unclean
and forbidden animal of the Prophet--panting with out-lolled tongue
on a heap of decayed melons or festering offal, uttered a melancholy
howl; when a stork, with flapping wings, came swooping down on the
eaves of a dilapidated house, and loosened a tile or two, to fall
with a crash; or when a bare-legged saka (a water carrier), with his
brown feet, in low slippers, and his greasy buckets slung from a
shoulder-strap, shambled along the narrow and tortuous, yet sunbaked,
thoroughfares, no sound was ever heard there.
But now French and British soldiers filled every street and alley
with noise and bustle; the bazaars were crowded by Zouaves chattering
like magpies; by Rifles and Guardsmen; by grave and observant
Scottish Highlanders in search of food, _soochook_ sausages, and
kabobs, or little articles of finery for wives and sweethearts far
away at home; by quartermasters and sutlers, seeking corn and flour,
beef and mutton, Greek wine and peach-brandy; in short, everything
eatable and drinkable. Drums were beaten, bugles sounded
incessantly, and incessant too was the marching to and fro of guards,
escorts, pickets, and fatigue parties in their canvas frocks.
Tumbrils, limbers, cannon and tents, encumbered the five arched
gates; war-ships, transports, and pestilent looking little gunboats,
crowded all its once empty harbour. The black kites and mangy pariah
dogs were alike scared from its streets and market place. The lazy
and blasé Turkish householder secluded himself in his _divan hanee_,
or zenanah if he had one; and hourly held up his hands, or stuck his
fingers in his ears, at every fresh wonder, for to him it seemed that
the end of the world was nigh, for the sons of Anak, the children of
Perdition and the Devil himself, had all possessed the city together!
French names were actually painted up at the street corners, and to
crown all, an old deserted caravansera had been taken possession of,
_sans permission_, by a speculative Parisian _restaurateur_, who
papered, painted, and furbished it up gaily, and hung out an immense
sign-board, on which an artistic Corporal of Zouaves had painted the
French eagle, with the words, "_Le Restaurant de l'Armée d'Orient,
pour Messieurs les Officiers et Sous-Officiers_;" and under this
sign-board Wedderburn and Horace Ramornie dismounted, gave their
nags, with a few piastres, to two half-naked _hamals_ to lead about,
and then entered the café.
END OF VOL. II
LONDON:
SAVILL, EDWARDS AND CO., PRINTERS, CHANDOS STREET,
COVENT GARDEN.
[Transcriber's note: Inconsistent and archaic spelling is as printed.]
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