“Have you seen the morning paper?” began Mary, in her low, measured tones, though her voice shook more than usual. “Have you seen those disastrous tidings from the Cape? Oh, Mr. Hardingstone, we are all in despair! Charles Kettering has, in all probability, been”—she could not bring herself to say it—“at least he is missing—missing, gracious Heaven! in that fearful country!—and we have only heard of it this morning. The General is incapable of acting; he is completely paralysed by the blow; and I have come—forgive me, Mr. Hardingstone—I have come to you as our only friend, to ask your advice and assistance; to entreat you to—to——” Poor Mary broke down, and went into a passionate fit of weeping, all the more violent from having been so long restrained.
Frank was horrified at the intelligence; he made a grasp at the paper, and there, sure enough, his worst fears were confirmed. But this was no time for the indulgence of helpless regret; and when Mary was sufficiently composed, he asked her with a strange, meaning anxiety, “How Blanche bore the fatal tidings?” Heart of man! what depths of selfishness are there in thy chambers! At the back of all his sorrow for his more than brother, at the back of all his anxiety and horror, he hated himself to know that there was a vague feeling of relief as if a load had been taken off, an obstacle removed. He would have laid down his life for Charlie; had he been with him in the bush, he would have shed the last drop of his blood to defend him; yet now that his fate was ascertained, he shuddered to find that his grief was not totally unqualified; he loathed himself when he felt that through the dark there was a gleam somewhere that had a reflection of joy.
“Blanche’s feelings you may imagine,” replied Mary, now strangely, almost sternly composed; “she has lost a more than brother” (Frank winced); “but of feelings it is not the time to talk. You may think me mad to say so, but something tells me there may still be a hope. He is not reported killed, or even wounded; he is ‘missing’; there is a chance yet that he may be saved. These savages do not always kill their prisoners” (she shuddered as she spoke); “there is yet a possibility that he may have been taken and carried off to the mountains. An energetic man on the spot might even now be the means of preserving him from a hideous fate. These people must surely be amenable to bribes, like the rest of mankind. Oh, it is possible—in God’s mercy it is possible—and we may get him back amongst us, like one from the dead.”
Frank grasped at her meaning in an instant; and even while he did so, he could not help remarking how beautiful she was—her commanding sorrow borne with such dignity and yet such resignation. He drew down his brows, set his teeth firm, and the old expression came over his face which poor Charlie used to admire so much—an expression of grim, unblenching resolve.
“You’re right, Mrs. Delaval, it might be done,” he said, slowly and deliberately. “How long has the mail taken to come to England—twenty-eight days?—the same going out. It is a desperate chance!—yet would it be a satisfaction to know the worst. Poor boy!—poor Charlie!—game to the last, I see, in the general order. What think ye, Mrs. Delaval; would it be any use?”
“If I was a man,” replied Mary, “I should be in the train for Southampton at this moment.”
Frank rang the bell; the waiter appeared with an alacrity that looked as if he had been listening at the keyhole. “Bring my bill,” said Frank to that astonished functionary, “and have a cab at the door in twenty minutes.”
“You are going, Mr. Hardingstone?” said Mary, clasping her hands; “God bless you for it!”
“I am going,” replied Frank, putting the short pipe carefully away, and pulling out the small black portmanteau.
“You will start to-day?” asked Mary, with an expression of admiration on her sorrowing countenance for a decision of character so in accordance with her own nature.
“In twenty minutes,” replied Frank, still packing for hard life; and he was as good as his word. His things were ready; his bill paid; his servant furnished with the necessary directions during his master’s absence; and himself in the cab, on his way to his bankers, and from thence to the railway station, in exactly twenty minutes from the moment of his making up his mind to go.
“Tell Blanche I’ll bring him back safe and sound,” said he, as he shook hands with Mary on the hotel steps; “and—and—tell her,” he added, with a deeper tint on his bronzed, manly cheek, “tell her that I—I had no time to wish her good-bye.”
We question whether this was exactly the message Frank intended to give; but this bold fellow, who could resolve at a moment’s notice to undertake a long, tedious voyage, to penetrate to the seat of war in a savage country, and, if need were, to risk his life at every step for the sake of his friend, had not courage to send a single word of commonplace gallantry to a timid, tender girl. So it is—Hercules is but a cripple in sight of Omphale—Samson turns faint-hearted in the lap of Delilah—nor are these heroes of antiquity the only champions who have wittingly placed their brawny necks beneath a small white foot, and been surprised to find it could spurn so fiercely, and tread so heavily. Mary should have loved such a man as Frank, and vice versâ—here was the beau idéal that each had formed of the opposite sex. Frank was never tired of crying up a woman of energy and courage, one who could dare and suffer, and still preserve the queenly dignity which he chose to esteem woman’s chiefest attraction; and so he neglected the gem, and set his great, strong heart upon the flower. Well, we have often seen it so; we admire the diamond, but we love the rose. As for Mary, she was, if possible, more inconsistent still. As she walked back to Grosvenor Square she thought over the heroic qualities of Mr. Hardingstone, and wondered how it was possible he should yet remain unmarried. “Such a man as that,” thought Mary, revolving in her own mind his manifold good qualities, “so strong, so handsome, so clever, so high-minded, he has all the necessary ingredients that make up a great man; how simple in his habits, and how frank and unaffected in his manner; a woman might acknowledge him as a superior indeed! Mind to reflect; head to plan; and energy to execute! She would be proud to love him, to cling to him, and look up to him, and worship him. And Blanche has known him from a child, and never seen all this!” and a pang smote Mary’s heart, as she recollected why, in all probability, Blanche had been so blind to Frank Hardingstone’s attractions; and how she, of all people, could not blame her for her preference of another: and then the fair young face and the golden curls rose before her mind’s eye like a phantom, and she turned sick as she thought it might even now be mouldering in the earth. Then Mary pulled a letter from her pocket, and looked at it almost with loathing, as the past came back to her like the shade of a magic-lantern. She saw the gardens at Bishops’-Baffler; the officers in undress uniform, and the grey charger; the evening walks; the quiet summer twilight; the steeple-chase at Guyville; and her eyes filled with tears, and she softened to another’s miseries as she reflected on her own. “Selfish, unprincipled as he is,” thought Mary, “he must love me, or he never would make such an offer as this. And what am I, that I should spurn the devotion of any human being? Have not I, too, been selfish and unprincipled, in allowing my mind to dwell alone on him who in reality belonged to another? Have I not cherished and encouraged the poison?—have I not yielded to the temptation?—do I wish even now that it was otherwise?—and am I not rightly punished?—have I not suffered less than I deserve?—and yet how miserable I am—how lonely and how despairing!—there is not another being on earth as miserable as I am!”
“By your leave, ma’am,” said a rough, coarse voice; and Mary stepped aside to make way on the pavement for a little mournful procession that was winding gloomily along, in strange, chilling contrast to the bustle and liveliness of the street. It was a little child’s funeral. The short black coffin, carried so easily on one man’s shoulder, seemed almost like a plaything for Death. It was touching to think what a tiny body was covered by that scanty pall—how the little thing, once so full of life and laughter, all play and merriment and motion, could be lying stiff and stark in death! It seemed such a contradiction to the whole course of nature—a streamlet turning back towards its source—a rosebud nipped by the frost. Had the grim Reaper no other harvest whitening for his sickle? Was there not age, with its aches and pains and burdens, almost asking for release? Was there not manhood, full of years and honours, its appointed task done on earth, its guerdon fairly earned, itself waiting for the reward? Was there not crime, tainting the atmosphere around it, that to take away would be a mercy to its fellow-men, and a deserved punishment to its own hardened obstinacy, having neglected and set aside every opportunity of repentance and amendment? Was there not virtue willing to go, and misery imploring to be set free? And must he leave all these, and cut off the little creeping tendril that had wound and twisted itself round its mother’s heart? There was the mother first in the slow procession—who had so good a right to be chief mourner as that poor, broken woman? Who can estimate the aching void that shall never be quite filled up in that sobbing, weary breast? She is not thinking of the funeral, nor the passers-by, nor the crape, nor the mourning; she does not hear rough condolences from neighbours, and well-meant injunctions “to keep up,” and “not to give way so,” from those who “are mothers themselves, and know what a mother’s feelings is.” She is thinking of her child—her child shut down in that deal box—yet still hers—she has got it still—not till it is consigned to the earth, and the dull clods rattle heavily on the lid, will she feel that she has lost it altogether, when there will come a fearful reaction, and paroxysms of grief that deaden themselves by their own violence; and then the wound will cicatrise, and she will clean her house, and get her husband’s dinner, and sit down to her stitching, and neighbours will think that she has “got over her trouble,” and she will seem contented, and even happy. But the little one will not be forgotten. When the flowers are blooming in the spring—when the voices of children are ringing in the street—when the strain of music comes plaintively up the noisy alley—when the sun is bright in heaven—when the fire is crackling on the hearth—then will her lost cherub stretch its little arms in Paradise, and call its mother home.
As Mary made way for the poor afflicted woman, who for an instant withdrew from her mouth the coarse handkerchief that could not stifle her sobs, she recognised Blanche’s former maid, poor Gingham. Yes, it was Mrs. Blacke, following her only child, her only treasure, her only consolation, to the grave. Poor thing! her sin had been too heavy for her to bear; with her husband’s example daily before her eyes, what wonder that she strove to stifle her conscience in intoxication? Then came “from bad to worse, from worse to worst of all”; the child was neglected, and a rickety, sickly infant at all times, soon pined away, and sickened and died. The mother was well-nigh maddened with the thought that it might have been saved. Never will she forgive herself for that one night when she left it alone for two hours, and coming back, found the fever had taken it. Never will she drive from her mind the little convulsed limbs, and the rolling eyes that looked upward, ever upward, and never recognised her again. And now her home is desolate, her husband is raving in the hospital, and her child is in that pauper-coffin which she is following to the grave. Mary Delaval, do you still think you are the most miserable being on the face of the earth?
MILITARY CRITICISMS—GARE LES FEMMES!—THE MAJOR AT HOME—A BITTER PILL—“I’M A-WEARY”—VERY NEAR THE BORDER—DAY DAWNS IN THE EAST—THE BETTER ANGEL—A BRAIN FEVER—A SICK-NURSE IN SPURS
“’Gad, I thought the Major was very crusty this morning,” remarked Cornet Capon, as he removed a large cigar from his lips, and watched its fragrant volume curling away into the summer air. “How he gave it you, Clank, about leading the column so fast, and about riding that old trooper instead of your own charger! I can’t help thinking D’Orville’s altered somehow; used to be such a cheery fellow.”
“You needn’t talk, my boy,” retorted Captain Clank to his subaltern; “I heard him tell you that if you would attend a little more to your covering, and less to your overalls, you would be quite as ornamental, and a good deal more useful to the regiment; but I agree with you—he is altered. He’s like all the rest of ’em—a capital fellow till you get him in command, and then he’s crotchety and cantankerous and devilish disagreeable. Give us another weed.”
These young officers were not very busy; they were occupied in, perhaps, the most wearisome of all the duties that devolve on the dragoon, and their task consisted of lounging about a troop-stable, attired in undress uniform, to watch the men cleaning and “doing up” their respective horses. They could but smoke, and talk over the morning’s field-day to while away the time. Neither of them was encumbered with an undue proportion of brains—neither of them could have engaged in a much deeper discussion than that which they now carried on; yet they did their duty scrupulously, they loved the regiment as a home, and looked upon the B Troop as their family; and although their thoughts ran a little too much on dress, fox-hunting, driving, and other less harmless vanities, they were, after all, good comrades and tolerably harmless members of society. Cornet Capon’s ideas oozed out slowly, and only under great pressure, so he smoked half a cigar in solemn silence ere he resumed, with a wise look—
“There’s something at the bottom of all this about the Major, Clank. Did you notice where he halted us after the charge—all amongst that broken ground at the back of the Heath? We shall have half the horses in the troop lame to-morrow.”
“Old ‘Trumpeter’ was lame to-day,” returned Clank, with a grim smile, “and that’s why D’Orville was so savage with me for riding him. You’re right, Capon. The Major’s amiss—there’s a screw loose somewhere, I’m sure of it, and I’m sorry for it.”
“He lost ‘a cracker’ at Newmarket last week, I know,” said Capon, thoughtfully; “I shouldn’t wonder if he was obliged to go—let me see—Lipstrap’ll get the majority, and I shall get my lieutenancy. Well, I shall be sorry to lose him, though he does blow me up.”
“Pooh! man, it’s not that,” rejoined Clank, who was a man of sentimental turn of mind, and kept Tommy Moore in his barrack-room. “You young ones are always thinking about racing. I’ve known D’Orville hit a deal harder than that, and never wince. Why, I recollect he played a civilian, at Calcutta, for his commission and appointments against the other’s race-horses and a bungalow he had up in the hills. ’Gad, sir, he won the stud and the crib too—and not only that, but I landed a hundred gold mohurs by backing his new lot for the Governor-General’s Cup, and went and stayed a fortnight with him at his country-house besides—best billet I ever had—furniture and fittings and fixings all just as t’other fellow left them. No—D’Orville’s as game as a pebble about money—it isn’t that.”
Cornet Capon opened his eyes, smoked sedulously for about five minutes, and then asked Clank, “What the devil there was to bother a fellow, if it wasn’t money?”
“Women!” replied the Captain, looking steadily at his companion; “women, my boy. I’ve watched the thing working now ever since I was a cornet, and I never knew a good fellow thoroughly broke down that there wasn’t a woman at the bottom of it. Now, look at Lacquers; when Lacquers came to us, there wasn’t such another cheery fellow in the Hussar Brigade—it did me good to see Lacquers drink that ’34 we finished in Dublin—and as for riding, there wasn’t another heavy-weight in that country could see the way he went—and now look what he’s arrived at. Never dines at mess—horses gone to Tattersall’s—sits and mopes in his barrack-room, or else off to London at a moment’s notice—and closeted all day with agents and men-of-business—and what is it that’s brought him to this pass? Why, that girl he wants to marry, who won’t have anything to say to him—and why she won’t is more than I can tell, unless she’s got a richer chap in tow somewhere else. Capon, my boy, you’re younger than me, and you’ve got most of your troubles to come. Take my advice, and stick to the regiment, and horses and hunting and that; but keep clear of women; they’re all alike—only the top-sawyers are the most mischievous—you keep clear of ’em all, for if you don’t you’ll be sorry for it—mark my words if you’re not.”
This was a long speech for the Captain, and he was quite out of breath at its conclusion; but the Cornet did not entirely agree with him. He had got a tendresse down in the West—a saucy blue-eyed cousin, whose image often came before the lad’s eyes in his barrack-room and his revelry and his boyish dissipation; so he contented himself with remarking profoundly that “Women were so different, it was impossible to lay down any general rule about them any more than horses;” and expressing his conviction that, whatever might be the secret grief preying upon the Major’s spirits, it could have nothing to do with the fair sex, “for you know, Clank, D’Orville’s a devilish old fellow—why, he must be forty if he’s a day.”
So the pair jingled into the mess-room to have some luncheon, and ordered their buggy, to drive up to London afterwards, and spend the rest of the day in the delights of the metropolis—since this it is which makes Hounslow such a favourite quarter with these light-hearted sons of the sword.
The Major was altered certainly, not only in temper, but even in appearance. He had got to look quite aged in the last few weeks. How strange it is that time, so gradual in its effects on the rest of creation, should make its ravages on man by fits and starts, by sudden assaults, so to speak, and coups-de-main, instead of the orderly and graduated process of blockade! We see a “wonderfully young-looking man”—we watch him year by year, still as fresh in colour, still as upright in figure and as buoyant in spirits as we recollect him when we were boys—we admire his vigour—we envy him his constitution, and we make minute inquiries as to his daily habits and mode of life—“he never drank anything but sherry,” perhaps, and forthwith we resolve that sherry is the true elixir vitæ. All at once something happens—he loses one that he loves—or he has a dangerous illness—or, perhaps, only meets with severe pecuniary losses and disappointments. When we see him again, lo! a few weeks have done the work of years. The ruddy cheek has turned yellow and wrinkled—the merry eye is dim—the strong frame bent and wasted—the man is old in despite of the sherry; and Youth, when once she spreads her wings, comes back no more to light upon the withered branch.
Hair has turned grey in a single night. We ourselves can recall an instance of a young girl whose mother died suddenly, and under circumstances of touching pathos. Her daughter, who was devotedly attached to her, was completely stupefied by the blow. All night long she sat with her head resting on her hand, and her long black tresses falling neglected over the arm that supported her throbbing temples. When the day dawned she moved and withdrew her hand. One lock of hair that had remained pressed between her unconscious fingers had turned as white as snow. That single lock never recovered its natural hue. Like the Eastern virgins, it mourned in white for a mother.
Well, the Major looked old and worn as he sat in his lonely barrack-room, surrounded by many a trophy of war-like triumph or sporting success. Here was the sabre he had taken from the body of that Sikh chief whom he cut down at the critical moment when, six horses’ length ahead of the squadron he was leading, he had been forced to hew his way single-handed through his swarming foes. There, spread out on a rocking-chair, was the royal tiger-skin perforated by a single bullet, that vouched for the cool hand and steady eye which had stretched the grim brute on the earth as he crouched for his fatal bound. On the chimney-piece those enormous tusks recalled many a stirring burst over the arid plains of the Deccan, when the boldest riders in India thought it no shame to yield the “first spear” to the “Flying Captain,” as they nicknamed our daring hussar. Nor were these exploits confined to the East alone. On the verdant plains of merry England had not Sanspareil, ridden by his owner, distanced the cream of Leicestershire in a steeple-chase, never to be forgotten whilst the Whissendine runs down from its source; and did not that spirited likeness of the gallant animal hang worthily above the cup that commemorated his fame? Yes, the Major had earned his share of the every-day laurels men covet so earnestly, and truly it was only opportunity that was wanting to twine an undying leaf or two amongst the wreath. Yet did he look haggard, and old, and unhappy. His hair and moustaches had become almost grey now, and as he sat leaning his head upon his hand, with an open letter on his knee, the strong fingers would clench themselves, and the firm jaw gnash ever and anon, as though the thoughts within were goading him more than he could bear. Like some gallant horse that feels the armed heel stirring his mettle the while he champs and frets against the light pressure of the restraining bit, a touch too yielding for him to face, too maddening for him to overcome, so the Major chafed and struggled, and while he scorned himself for his weakness, submitted to the power that was stronger than he; and though he strove and sneered, and bore it with a grim, sardonic smile, was forced to own the pang that ate into his very heart.
“And this is what you have come to at last,” he said, almost aloud, as he rose and paced the narrow room, and halted opposite the looking-glass that seemed to reflect the image of his bitterest enemy; “this is what you have come to at last. Fool—and worse than fool! After chances such as no man ever so threw away—after twenty years of soldiering, not without a certain share of distinction—with talents better than nine-tenths of the comrades who have far outstripped you in the race—with a brilliant start in life, and wind and tide for years in your favour—with luck, opportunities, courage, and above all, experience, what have you done? and what have you arrived at? Three words in a dispatch which is forgotten—a flash or two of the spurious, ephemeral fame that gilds a daring action or a sporting feat—the reputation of being a moderately good drill in the field—and a chance word of approbation from fools, whom you know that you despise. Truly a fair exchange—a most equal barter. This proud position you have purchased with a lifetime of energy spent in vain, and that thorough self-contempt which is now your bitterest punishment. Money, too; what sums you have wasted, lavished upon worse than trifles!—but let that pass. Had you the same fortune and the same temptations you would spend it all again. The dross is not to be regretted; but oh! the time—the time—the buoyancy of youth, the vigour of manhood that shall never come again. Fool! fool!” and the Major groaned aloud. “And what have I lived for?” he added, as he sat himself down and leaned his head once more upon his hand, looking into his past life as the exile looks down from a hill upon the lights and shades of the cherished landscape he shall see no more. “I have lived for self, and I have my reward. Have I ever done one single action for a fellow-creature, save to indulge my own feelings? have I not schemed and flattered, and worked and dared all for self? and this is the upshot. The first time I try to do a disinterested action—the first time I strive to break from the fetters of a lifetime, to be free, to be a man, I am foiled, and scouted, and spurned. Refused!—refused! by a poor governess—ha! ha!—it is, indeed, too good a joke. Gaston D’Orville on his knees, at forty, a grey old fool—on his knees to a wretched, dependent governess, and she refuses him. By all the demons in hell—if there is a hell—it serves him right. Laugh! who can help laughing? And yet what a woman to lose—a woman who could write such a letter as this—a woman who knows me better, far better, than I know myself; she would have shared with me every dream of ambition—she would have appreciated and encouraged the few efforts I have ever made to be good—she would have understood me, and with her I could have been happy even in a cottage—but no! forsooth. Her mightiness, doubtless, thinks the poor major of hussars, pretty nearly ruined by this time, no such great catch. And is she not right? What am I, after all, that I should expect any human being to give up everything for me? Broken-down, old, worn-out, if not in body, at least utterly out-wearied and used-up in mind, why should I cumber the earth? Gaston, my boy, you have played out your part—you have got to the end of your tether—’tis time for the curtain to drop—’tis time to lie down and go to sleep—there is not much to regret here—you have seen everything this dull world has to show. Now for ‘fresh fields and pastures new’—at all events the waking will be glorious excitement—to find out the grand secret at last—where will it be, and how? I might know in ten minutes—many an old friend is there now—not badly off for company at any rate—there was poor Harry, the night before we were engaged at Chillianwallah he thought he was there. How well I remember him, as he told me his dream just before we went into action! He thought he was disembodied—floating, floating away through the blue night sky—hovering over the sea—bathing in the moonlight—flitting amongst the stars, and ever he got lighter and lighter, and ever he rose higher and higher, till he reached a cool, quiet garden, without a breeze or a sound, and there he saw his mother walking, as he remembered her before she died, when he was yet a child. And she placed her hand upon his brow, and the thin transparent hand clove through him—for he, too, was a spirit—till it struck chill like ice around his heart, and he awoke. Poor Harry, I saw him go down with a musket-shot through his temples; and he knows all about it, too, now. Pain! the pain is nothing. A dislocated ankle is far more acute agony than it would take to kill an elephant—’tis but a touch to a trigger, and the thing’s done.”
D’Orville got up coolly, and calmly walked across the room, took a certain oblong mahogany box from under his writing-table, and quietly unlocking it, drew his hand along the smooth, shining barrel of a pistol. He examined it well, pricked the touch-hole, shook the powder well up into the nipple, and then, having wiped the weapon almost caressingly, laid it down on the table at his elbow, and pursued his reflections, more at ease now that he had prepared everything for his escape.
“Well, it can be done in a moment, so there need be no hurry about it. In the meantime, let me see—I should like to leave some remembrances to the fellows in the regiment. There’s that sabre—how game the old white-bearded chief died!—I almost wish I hadn’t cut him down. ‘Faith, I shall see him too. I expect he won’t give me so warm a welcome as Harry—it’s a pity I can’t take him his sword back again. Well, Lacquers always admired it, and I’ll leave it him. Poor Lacquers, he’s a good fellow, though a fool. I’ll leave a note, too, asking him to take care of the white horse, and shoot him when he’s done with him: let him follow his master, poor old fellow! Yes; there’s very little to arrange—one advantage in having got through a good property. I don’t think there’ll be much quarrelling over my will. And now, to consider the journey. I must have been very near it often before; and yet, somehow, I never looked at it in that light. ’Tis a different thing in action, with the excitement of duty, and watching the enemy, and keeping the men in hand, and that confounded smoke preventing one from seeing what is going on. No, I’ve never been quite so near as now; but I must some day, even if I should put it off—I must go at last—and why not now? What matter whether at forty or seventy? Time is not to be reckoned by years. I am old, and fit for nothing else. When the fruit is ripe, it had better be plucked; why should people let it hang and rot, till it drops off the tree, all spoilt and decayed? How do I know I may not want some of my manly energy where I am going? Going—how strange it sounds! Well, now to ticket the sabre, and write a line to poor Lacquers”—(D’Orville indited a few words in his firm, bold hand; if anything, firmer and bolder than usual)—“and now for ‘a leap in the dark’—face the Styx, if there be such a place, just like any other yawner; and so, steady, steady!”
His hand was on the pistol—the lock clicked sharp and true up to the cock—one touch of the trigger, and where would Gaston D’Orville have been?—when his eye chanced to light upon the seal of Mary’s letter. It was a casual seal, accidentally selected from a number of others, but the device was somewhat uncommon, and now struck D’Orville with a strange, painful distinctness that surprised him. It was but an eye, surrounded by an obliterated motto; yet it served for an instant to divert his attention; and—on such trifles turns the destiny of man—he laid down the pistol, and took up the letter to examine it more closely. The eye seemed to fascinate him. Turn which way he would, that eye seemed to watch him; steadily, unremittingly, an eye that never closes or slumbers seemed to be above him, around him, all about him; he rose from his chair, and still the eye followed him; he walked to the window, and the eye watched him steadily from out the blue summer sky. A trumpet-note pealed from the rear of the building; it was one of those merry stable-calls so dear to every cavalry soldier’s heart. The familiar strain brought D’Orville to himself; the tension of his brain relaxed. As the excitement subsided, the visionary disappeared, and the real resumed its sway over strong nerves and a powerful intellect. Mechanically he put the pistols away, and carefully locked them in their case. Still the eye seemed to be watching him; and a vague feeling of shame began to take possession of him, as the suspicion rose in his mind that there was cowardice at the bottom of the resolution which he had made, as he thought so boldly, a few minutes ago.
D’Orville was a naturally brave man, and the force of habit and education had taught him to scorn anything in the shape of fear as the vilest of all degradation. To betray a woman in his code might be venial enough; but to shrink from aught in earth, or heaven, or hell, was a stain upon his honour not to be thought of. In his career of active service he had seen the advantage of courage too often, had discovered too frequently how much more rare a quality it is than is generally supposed, not to appreciate its value and worship it as an idol, although conscious of possessing it himself. It now dawned upon him that suicide was after all but a desperate method of running away—that the sentry had no right to desert his post until regularly relieved. By the by, in Mary’s letter was there not something about warfare as compared to religion?—some parallel drawn between the Christian and the soldier? Again he perused that letter carefully, attentively, word for word: but the bitterness was past; the writer was no longer the poor governess, spurning a suitor whom she ought to have been proud to accept, but the high-minded, pure-hearted woman, feeling for his sorrows, appreciating his good qualities, and pointing out to him those consolations which for her could take the sting from earth’s most envenomed shafts. One or two expressions reminded him of his mother—the mother he had loved and lost as a boy. Again he seemed to see that gentle lady bending her graceful head over him, as she spoke of other worlds, and other duties, and other pleasures totally unconnected with this lower earth. He remembered the very gown she wore; he seemed to hear her low, sweet, serious tones, as she called him “my darling boy,” and insisted on those miraculous stories which she was herself fully persuaded were truths, and which the boy drank in, childlike, nothing doubting. Ah! what if they should be true after all? What if the whole history should be something more than a legend of priestcraft, an old woman’s fable? D’Orville had thought but little on such matters; he had heard them discussed by clever men of opposite opinions, and it never struck him that either side could demonstrate very satisfactorily the futility of the adversary’s arguments; but he was wise enough to know that the boasted human intellect has but a narrow horizon, that “the two-foot dwarf” sees little beyond the garden-wall, and that “there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.” Here were the only two beings he had ever respected in the world, shaping their whole conduct, as they formed all their opinions, upon circumstances which they seemed to believe facts, as firmly as they believed in their own identity. Well, what of that? These might be facts or they might not. But stay: was there not something wanting in the whole scheme and constitution of life, as he had tried it? Could any man have had better chances of being happy here than he had had? Was he happy? Was he satisfied? Was there not always a shadow somewhere athwart the sunlight? Was there not always a craving for something more? As a boy, he longed to be an officer; no sooner was that distinction gained than he longed for fame, first in the boyish arena of mere field-sports, then in the daring exploits of real war. Had he not for a time drunk his fill of both? and was his thirst quenched? Could he sit down, “uti conviva satur,” and say “Enough”? No, no, he knew it too well. Then came the daily craving for excitement—that longing for something unattainable, which, more than all besides, argues the inferiority of our present state—the necessity for a to-morrow, even when the sun of to-day has for us set its last. Well, had he not wooed excitement in all her haunts? Had he not gambled and raced and speculated, and shone in the world of fashion, and sunned himself in the smiles of Beauty? And had not the goddess ever fleeted away when just within his grasp? Was not his heart still empty, his desire unslaked? Even had he not endured this disappointment—had the only woman he really loved consented to be his—did he not feel in his innermost soul, was he not forced to confess to himself, that still there would have been a want?—still would to-morrow have been the goal, still to-day but the journey. Yes, disguise it how he might, deaden his sensations with what opiates he would, he could not but own that hitherto his world had been “stale, flat, and unprofitable.” Had he not been so weary of life, that he had voluntarily, even now, been within the wag of a finger of laying it down, to go he cared not whither, so as it was anywhere but here?
Then if there was nothing in the present that could satisfy his soul, might he not presume that there was a future for which it was specially created and intended? Yes, there might be something to live for after all—there might be a career in which to win more than fame and more than honour—which at any rate should satisfy those longings and aspirations here, and might be the portal to such a glorious hereafter as he could not even picture to his world-wearied imagination—and if so, what scheme so probable, what religion so well supported by historical proof and logical deduction, as that which he had learnt at his mother’s knee? One by one, thoughts came back to him that had lain dormant for more than thirty years; one by one he recalled the miraculous facts, the touching sufferings that had awed his boyish imagination and moved his boyish heart. For the first time for more than thirty years, he thought as a reality of the Great Example who never quailed nor flinched, nor shrank one jot from His superhuman task. Did he admire courage? There was One who had faced the legions of hell, unaided and alone, with but human limbs and a human heart to support Him through the dread encounter. Did he admire constancy? There was One who voluntarily endured the obloquy of the world, the agonies of the most painful death, and moved not an eyelash in complaint or reproach. Did he admire self-denial—that most heroic of all heroism? What had that One given up to walk afoot through this miserable world, with such a prospect as the close of His earthly career!—and for whom?—even for him amongst the rest—for him who till this very moment had never thanked Him, never acknowledged Him, never so much as thought of Him. The strong man’s heart was touched, the well was unsealed in the desert, and, as the tears gushed from his unaccustomed eyes, Gaston D’Orville bent the knees that had not bent for half a lifetime; and can we doubt that he was forgiven?
In four-and-twenty hours D’Orville was laid upon his small camp-bedstead in a brain fever. The excitement of his late life; the reaction consequent on his abandonment of his awful resolution; the strong revulsion of feeling, into which we have no right to pry, had been too much for a constitution already shaken by years of dissipation and hard service beneath an Indian sun; and for days together life and death trembled in the balance so evenly that it seemed a single grain might turn the scale. And of all his comrades, who was it that watched at his bedside with the attention, almost the tenderness, of a woman—sitting up by him at night, giving him his medicine, smoothing his pillow, and tending him with a brother’s love?—who but Lacquers! the unmeaning, empty dandy—the fellow with but two ideas, his dress and his horses—the ignorant, grown-up schoolboy that could scarcely write his own name; but, for all that, the staunch, unflinching comrade, the true-hearted, generous friend. When the lamp, after flickering and fading, and well-nigh dying out altogether, began once more to flame up pretty steadily, and the Major, gaunt and grim, with nearly white moustaches, and a black skull-cap, and haggard hollow cheeks, began to experience the superhuman appetite of convalescence, and the wonderful longing for open air and country scenery, and such simple natural pleasures, which invariably comes over those who have been near the confines of Life and Death, as though they brought back with them from that mysterious borderland the earlier instincts of childhood; when, in short, the Major was getting better, and could sit at his window and see the white charger go to exercise, or the regiment get under arms below, many and long were the conversations between him and Lacquers on the thoughts and feelings which almost insensibly had sprung up in each of them. Lacquers did not conceal his disappointment as regarded Blanche. Poor fellow, he had made her an honest, disinterested offer, and it had not entered into his calculations that he might be repulsed.
“I know I’m not good enough for her, D’Orville,” the humbled dandy would sigh, as he poured his griefs into his friend’s ear. “I’m not very ‘blue,’ and that sort of thing, though I suppose I’ve got natural talents just like other fellows; but I stood by her when all the rest gave way, and I was the only one amongst ’em that really liked her for herself and not for her money. Why, you yourself, D’Orville” (the Major winced), “you yourself never made up to her after you heard of the smash, nor Mount Helicon, nor Uppy, nor any of ’em; to be sure she had refused Uppy; do you remember how glum he looked that night at ‘The Peace’? but I don’t believe he’d have proposed to her ten days later. She might have liked me much better when she came to know me—mightn’t she? and I would have read history and grammar, and Latin and Greek, and that, and made myself a scholar for her sake. I can’t help feeling it, Major, and that’s the truth. She’s the only woman I ever really cared for; and what have I to live for now?”
Then it was that D’Orville showed himself an altered man—then it was that the thoughts which had first flashed across him when he contemplated self-destruction, and had since been progressively developing themselves on a bed of sickness, bore their fruit, as such thoughts will sooner or later where a man has a heart to feel or a brain to reason. He explained to Lacquers the views he now entertained of life, its duties, and its charms—how different from those on which he had hitherto acted! He pointed out to him the utter insufficiency of everything on earth to constitute happiness, when unconnected with a grand object and a future state of being. He talked well, for he was in earnest; and he reasoned closely, for his was a penetrating intellect, ever ready to strip at a moment’s notice the illusive from the real. He had all his life been an acute man—saw through a fallacy in an instant, and, to do him justice, never hesitated to expose it:
Such a mind, when convinced of truth, is doubly strong; and Lacquers listened, much admiring, though, it must be confessed, not always quite understanding the deductions of his mentor. Yet was he too, ere long, stirred with a noble ambition, a desire to fulfil his destiny in life with some credit to himself and benefit to his fellow-creatures—a longing to be useful in his generation—to feel that he was part of the great scheme, and, however humble might be his task, yet that its fulfilment was a fair condition of his very existence, and was conducive to the well-being of the whole.
“But what can I do, however willing I am?” he would say. “An officer of hussars cannot be a Methodist preacher, or even a moral philosopher, without doing more harm than good. If I thought I had talents for it, and eloquence and learning, I’d sell out to-morrow, and go to South Africa as a missionary, or anywhere else—Gold Coast, Sierra Leone—anything rather than be a useless drone cumbering the earth in a life without an aim.”
“Not the least occasion for that,” replied D’Orville. “Fortune—accident—call it rather Providence—has placed you in a certain station, and it is fit for you to fulfil the duties of that station without repining or restlessness, because, forsooth, it does not happen to square exactly with some vague notions of your own. You may do a deal of good, though you are an officer of hussars. Why should a soldier be necessarily an irreligious or an immoral man? It is not his profession that should bear the blame, however convenient it may be to make the red coat a scapegoat. We must have troops. We cannot be secure from war. Do you suppose a man leading a squadron gallantly against an enemy, doing the best he can for all—cool, confident, and daring—is not fulfilling his duty every whit as well as he who is on his knees in the rear praying for his success the while? Our calling bids us look death in the face oftener than other men, and that very fact should give us trust in Him on whom alone we can depend at the last gasp. We are always nearer His presence than those who are not so exposed: and, for my part, I think it a proud and honourable privilege. Then, in barracks, may you not improve the morale of all about you in a thousand ways? You may look to the bodily well-being of your troop. Why?—first, because it’s your duty; and secondly, because it’s a pleasure to you, and a credit to have them smart and clean and well-disciplined! Why should you totally neglect their minds? They, too, have a future as well as a present. The one is not less a reality than the other. Ay, it’s startling enough, because people slur it over, and don’t talk of it, or allow themselves to think of it; but it’s none the less true for all that. You may shut your own eyes as close as you please, but you won’t prevent the sun from shining just the same. I grant you that the task is a difficult one. So much the more credit in fulfilling it, by an effort that does require some sacrifice and some self-denial. I have lived forty years in this world for myself—the careless, thoughtless life that a tolerably sagacious dog might have led—and I have never been really happy. Come what may, I hope to do so no more. I have found out the true secret that turns everything to gold, and I don’t grudge a share of my good fortune to my friends.”
“You’re right, D’Orville,” said Lacquers, shaking the Major by the hand; “you’re right, though I never looked at it in that light before. I see that I have an object in life—that I have a task to perform; and I see—no, I don’t see my way quite through it; but I trust I shall have courage and patience to do the best I can. D’Orville, I feel happier than I did. I’m not much of a book-worm, and I can’t quite express what I feel; but, old fellow, you talked of exchanging, and going to India; well, I’ll go too—we’ll get appointed into the same corps—I’m good enough to be broiled in that country, at any rate—and I’ll never leave you, old boy, for you’re the best friend I ever had!” Little Blanche Kettering might have done worse than take poor, ignorant, good-looking, blundering, warm-hearted Lacquers.
DOWN AMONGST THE DEAD MEN—CHARLIE’S PRESERVER—A SICK MAN’S VISIONS—MENTAL PROSTRATION—THE DYING MAN’S GUESTS—DISCHARGED WITHOUT A PENSION—LEADEN HOURS—HOW’S THE PATIENT?—“WELCOME, FRANK”—HOMEWARD BOUND
We left Cousin Charlie, some chapters back, in a sufficiently unpleasant predicament. His arm broken by a bullet, a Kaffir’s assagai through his shoulder, stunned moreover by a crushing blow from the butt-end of a musket (Birmingham-made, and sold in the gross at nineteen shillings apiece), not to mention a roll of some fifty feet down an almost perpendicular ravine, the boy lay senseless, and to all appearance dead. The tide of war rolled far away from the kloof that had been defended so fiercely, and won with such loss of life; and ere the young lancer had recovered his senses, an outlying band of the enemy, driven from their fastnesses far on the right, wound stealthily through this very ravine in full retreat. Fortunately they had that day got such a taste of English discipline as made them loth to improve any further acquaintance with “Brown Bess”; and although they stripped the lad from head to foot, believing him to be stone-dead, they had no time to stay and practise those horrid mutilations with which these demons signalise their triumph over a fallen foe. Not a shred of clothing, however, did they leave on the body; even his boots, the most useless articles conceivable to a Kaffir, were carried off as the spoils of war. For aught we know, to this day Charlie’s smart jacket forms the ceremonial dress of some burly chief. Very tight, and worn with long, black legs, au naturel, it is doubtless a most imposing costume. Be that how it may, the white man was left naked and weltering in his wounds, whilst the routed party, who had wasted but little time in stripping him, made the best of their way to a more respectful distance from the British posts. Charlie never stirred for hours. The moon rose, and bathed in her cold light the crisp, rugged scenery and the ghastly accessories of that fatal glen. Here, a stunted jagged bush threw its smoke-blackened twigs athwart the clear night sky, and beneath it, bleached by the moonlight, lay some grinning corpse that had dragged itself there to die, whilst a clean musket-barrel shining in those pale beams showed it had been a British soldier when morning dawned. There, hurled in a fantastic heap, lay the swarthy bodies of some half-dozen Kaffirs, one balanced on the verge of a blank bare cliff, his arms and head dangling, limp and helpless, over the brink—his comrades piled above him, as they fell in their desperate efforts to escape. Yonder, where the moonbeams glimmered through the twinkling foliage, frosting the leaves with silver, and shedding peace and beauty over the unholy scene, a Fingoe auxiliary stirred and groaned in his last mortal agony, his dusky skin welling forth its very life-drops on the trampled sward. Shout and curse and clanging blow, all the riot and confusion of the strife, had long since died away. The writhing Fingoe groaned out his soul with a last gasping sigh, and save for the short yelp of a famished jackal in the adjoining thicket, silence slept upon the glen, and Night shared with Death her dominion over that blood-stained, devastated spot. Charlie came to himself—not that he knew where he lay, or was conscious of aught save a numbed sense of pain, and a confused stupefied idea, first that he was in bed, then that he was on the deck of a ship, heaving and plunging over the rolling waters. As sensation gradually returned, an intolerable thirst, so fierce as to amount to positive agony, began to rage in his dry, choking throat; then, with that unaccountable instinct to rise which is the first impulse of a man who is knocked down, he made a sort of abortive, staggering effort to get to his feet, it is needless to say in vain. The blood welled freshly from his wounds, the branches overhead spun round him, and he was again insensible. But the effort saved his life: the slight movement was seen, and in another instant a dark Fingoe girl was kneeling over him, with her hand upon his heart. The poor young savage had been stealing distractedly through the glen, looking for the body of her lover. She had missed him from his hut at nightfall. She knew there had been a severe engagement, and, like a very woman, faithful even unto death, she had glided away in the darkness to seek him out, succour him if wounded, and mourn over him if succour should come too late. It was a woman that alone recognised the body of the last of the Saxon kings, on the fatal field of Hastings. When earl and thane and liegeman saw but a mangled, mutilated corpse, Edith the swan-necked knew her lover and her lord. Keen was the eye, unerring was the instinct of affection, and Edith’s fame lives in history and song; but our poor Fingoe girl was but a nameless savage, a wretched, ignorant heathen, debased almost to the level of the brute; yet she, too, had a woman’s heart, and cherished a woman’s love—she, too, recognised her barbarian lover, gashed and defaced by assagai and war-club, and it was whilst she wept and moaned over his mangled remains that her eye caught the stir of Charlie’s white body, and her heart, softened by grief, bid her, woman-like, again come to the assistance of the suffering and the helpless. She threw a kaross over his naked body. Light-footed as an antelope, she darted to a neighbouring spring, shuddering the while—for that, too, was polluted with blood—and returned with a skin of the clear, cold water. She bathed his brow and temples—she poured the grateful drops between his blackened lips—and as he groaned and stirred once more, she knew there was life in him yet. The huts of her countrymen (half-armed auxiliaries to the British force) were at no great distance, and, savage as she was, the maiden would not leave a fellow-creature, particularly such a good-looking one as Charlie, to die like a dog without assistance. Her shapely limbs bore her rapidly back to her people. Alas! there was scarce a family amongst them that had not lost a member, and she soon returned with four stalwart Fingoes, who carried Charlie’s senseless frame to their encampment, where they tended him with such knowledge of surgery as they possessed, far more efficient, despite of sundry charms and superstitions, than our College of Surgeons at home would easily believe. There were other wounded soldiers in the encampment, and Charlie, though not recognised, was judged to be an officer, and met with all the attention from these poor fellows that they could spare from their own sufferings. But it was to the Fingoe girl that, under Providence, he owed his life. Night and day she tended him like a child, and when at length a convoy arrived from head-quarters with a train of waggons to carry off all the sick to Fort Beaufort, it was with difficulty the poor savage maiden was dissuaded from accompanying him even into the distant settlements, and long and wistfully she gazed after the waggon that bore her white charge out of her sight. Charlie had not yet recovered his consciousness, and had scarcely spoken; and when he did, muttered but a few incoherent words; yet the girl had saved his life, and nursed him in his agony, and it was hard to give him up!
When our hapless lancer really came to himself he was lying on a comfortable bed, with all the necessary appliances and alleviations for sickness, nowhere so efficient as in an English military hospital. His first sensation was one of pleasing languor, almost of luxury, in the new feeling of complete repose; for, in the Fingoe hut, and yet more in the jolting, slow-moving waggon, his powerless limbs had never been able to dispose themselves in real rest, and the change was positive delight. He was too weak to take any note of time or place—he was conscious of but one feeling, that of bodily ease; and he could no more undergo the mental exertion of recalling past events, or judging from present circumstances, than he could play the physical one of getting out of bed. He knew he was bandaged—he knew he had not strength to stir a finger were it to save his life, nor did he wish to do so—he knew he was lying between clean sheets, in a bed, somewhere; it seemed strange, for he had not been in a bed for so long, and he was quite satisfied to take things as they were, and gaze drowsily upon the wall, and hear a stealthy footfall in the room, far too languid to turn his head, and so drop off to sleep again quite contentedly. And when the surgeon of the Light-Bobs—a gallant fellow, whose only fault was that he never would keep his confounded lint and bandages and tourniquet far enough in the rear—saw his patient in this second slumber, and listened to his soft breathing, and placed his finger on the fluttering, scarce-perceptible pulse, he stroked his chin with a self-satisfied air, and smiled, and muttered to himself, “He’ll do now, I think—not above twenty—young constitution—never drank, I’ll be bound. It’s been touch-and-go; but I believe now he’ll pull through.”
So Charlie got over the crisis, and slept, and struggling hard with the ebbing tide, little by little gained ground and footing, and inch by inch, as it were, reached the shore.
As consciousness returned with returning strength, memory began to unravel its tangled skein of dim fantastic recollections, and by degrees the march, the engagement, the last brilliant charge, separated themselves from the ghastly moonlight glen, the dark phantom-shape that had saved him, the strange huts of the savages, and above all those excruciating sufferings in that jolting waggon. But with convalescence came the weary longing to be well, the restlessness of protracted confinement, the loathing of those tedious, monotonous days—their only event that unvarying meal—their only amusement to gaze upon the sunlight brightening that white-washed wall. How Charlie pined to feel the free, fresh breeze of out-of-doors; how horse and hound and field-day, the bounding charger, the jovial march, the cheerful mess, seemed to mock him with their phantom-like delights, as his body lay pinioned and helpless on that loathed couch, and his mind went soaring away in vision after vision of waving woods and rugged hills, and, above all, the glorious summer air, that he would fain have bathed in like a lark—have drunk into his very being as the true elixir vitæ!
Of serious thoughts as to his late proximity to another world, of gratitude for his narrow escape from death, we fear we must confess our patient was altogether innocent. The sick-bed is the last place in the world to promote such grave reflections: and those who trust to an illness as a means of making them better and wiser men, will generally find that they have leant upon a broken reed. The exhaustion of physical pain acts little more upon the body than the mind. The latter partakes of the languor which pervades its tenement, and has generally but strength to pine in helpless inactivity, and gaze idly on the balance of life and death, with scarce a wish even to turn the scale. If a man never reflects when well, still less can he expect to have power to do so when sick; and many a death-bed, we fear, has owned its tranquillity to the mere prostration, intellectual as well as physical, which quiets the departing sufferer. ’Tis an uncomfortable notion; but we hold it too true, nevertheless. Charlie had an instance in his very next neighbour, a gallant private of the Light-Bobs, who occupied the adjoining bed to our young lancer. He, too, had been shot down in the fatal ravine, had been nursed in the Fingoe huts, and forwarded to Fort Beaufort in the waggon-train. For a time his wounds went on favourably enough, and he seemed to have a far better chance of recovery than poor Charlie. But he had been a drunkard in early life; his constitution was sapped with strong liquor; something unintelligible “supervened,” as the medical officer said; and the man was doomed—doomed, as surely as if he had been sentenced to death by court-martial.
In the earliest stages of his own recovery, Charlie would lie and listen to the poor fellow’s ravings, till he shuddered at the wild imaginings of that delirious brain. Now the man would fancy himself back in England, amongst the low haunts of vice and debauchery which seemed most familiar to his mind. He would shout out ribald toasts and drinking-songs, and roar fierce oaths of mingled pain and exultation, till he roused every pale inmate of the ward. Then would a frightful reaction take place, and he would lie still as a corpse, hand and foot, but mutter and roll his eyes and gnash his teeth, like one possessed. He peopled the place, too, with frightful apparitions; amongst which a pale girl, with her throat cut from ear to ear, and the enemy of mankind, seemed, by his expressions, to be the most frequent visitors. With these he would hold long conversations, ludicrous even through their horrors, and would display much ingenuity in their imaginary questions, to which he poured forth voluble answers of abuse and blasphemy. Of his satanic disputant he generally seemed to get the better, by his own account; but the mutilated girl always brought on a fit of trembling that was frightful to behold. Once, after a visit from this spectre, which he detailed at considerable length, he tore all the bandages from his wounds, and was obliged to be pinioned in a strait-waistcoat. After this he got quieter, not so much from the restraint as the weakness and loss of blood consequent on his paroxysm. He would listen with marked attention to the chaplain, who visited him daily; and when the good man was gone, would mumble out incoherent words of repentance and amendment; but could never fix his mind upon their meaning for two seconds at a time. Then he would give it up in despair, and would shout and sing again more boisterously than ever. At length it became evident, even to Charlie’s enfeebled perceptions, that he was sinking fast; and as the sand of life ebbed more and more rapidly, the dying man became more and more composed and tranquil, till he promised to make as peaceful an ending as ever did glorified saint in Popish calendar. The eye lost its unnatural glitter, the pain ceased entirely, and the pulse became quiet and regular—but oh, so weak for that active, muscular frame! The youngest tyro would not have been deceived by the change; it was obvious that his very hours were numbered; yet now, for the first time, he seemed to recognise place and people—called Charlie by his name, and asked Mr. Kettering after “the reg’ment,” and whether the old major was shot dead when he forced the river so smartly, and the colour-sergeant (he never could abide that colour-sergeant) lost his life in the very middle of the stream; then he remembered how Charlie had led the assault, and from that time he seemed to confide in him, and whispered to him his plans, and his little spites against his comrades, and his longing for his old life; for he made no doubt of getting well. And so he slept for a few hours (the doctor came in and looked at him asleep, and shook his head), and woke about noon, and asked for something to drink; but his lips were quite black, and Charlie saw that he was somehow changed even before the man told him he was conscious of it himself.
“It’s all up, Mr. Kettering,” said he, in a husky whisper, “it’s all up with me this turn. What’s the time o’ day now? Twelve o’clock? I shall be a dead man at sundown;” and then he told Charlie how he had received a warning, and he knew there was no hope “here nor yet yonder,” he said, with a ghastly smile; for he had dreamt that he was standing sentry on a rampart over against the ocean, and the sun was setting in a golden haze, and the waters gleamed like molten gold; and he laid his firelock down, and rested and gazed with delight upon the scene; but a girl rose from the waves, far off between him and the sunset, and wrung the water from her long black hair, and pressed it with both hands to her throat, and seemed to staunch a ghastly wound that gaped at him even at that distance, and ever the blood flowed and flowed, and the sea became crimson, and the sun went down in blood-red streaks, and the sky darkened to the colour of blood, and everywhere there was blood, blood, nothing but blood; and the girl screamed to him in agony, saying, “Pray! pray!” and he knew that if he could speak a prayer before the sun went down he might be saved; and he strove and gasped, but he was choked; and still the sun dipped and dipped, and a fiery rim only was left above the sea, and still he could not speak; and it went down too; and the girl tossed up her arms with a shriek, and all was dark; and then with a convulsive effort he cried aloud, and his mouth was full of blood—and so he awoke. “And I shall never stand sentry nor carry a firelock again,” he said; and from that time he spoke no more, but folded his hands and lay quiet, as if asleep. The afternoon shadows lengthened on the hospital-wall—the evening drew near—at half-past six the dying man muttered a request for drink—at seven the sun went down, and he was dead!—peacefully, quietly he parted, like a child going to its rest. Charlie never knew it was all over till the doctor came; and they took him away and buried him, and there was a vacant place by Charlie’s bedside; and so Her Majesty lost a soldier, and a recruit was enlisted and sent to the dépôt at home, and his place in the ranks was filled, and he was forgotten, just as peers, poets, conquerors, sovereigns, and sages are forgotten, only a little sooner—for the grim Reaper makes no distinction, and the monarch oak of the forest perishes as surely as the weed by the wayside.
Week after week Charlie lay in that weary bed. One by one patients became convalescents, and convalescents went back to their duty, and still he was not allowed to move. A fresh action was fought, and more wounded were brought in, and yet Charlie was unfit for duty—in fact, was unable to rise. The doctor was hopeful and good-humoured, as doctors generally are, not being invalids themselves, and told him “he was going on most satisfactorily, and all that was wanted was a little time, and patience and quiet;” but at length even he hinted at sick-leave, and talked of a return to England, and the necessity of care and avoidance of exposure to weather, even after the wounds were healed; and Charlie’s dearest hopes of rejoining his regiment, and tasting once more the excitement of warfare, were dashed to the ground. The kind doctor had written to his patient’s friends in England, and assured them of his safety—on the rejoicings thereby created at Newton-Hollows we need not now enlarge—so that all anxiety on that score had passed away, and there was nothing to do now but to get well and embark for home. What a tedious process that same getting well was! Charlie began to pine, and grow dispirited and nervous. He had no friends, no one to speak to but the doctor; and the gallant boy, who would have faced a whole tribe of Kaffirs single-handed and never moved an eyelash, was now so completely weakened and broken down that he would lie and weep for hours, like a girl, he knew not why. At last he began to give way to despondency altogether. One day in particular, when the ward was again emptied of its recovered inmates, and the boy was left quite alone in that long, dull room, he lost heart entirely. “I shall never get well now,” he said aloud in his despair; “I shall never see the bright blue sky again, nor the regiment, nor Blanche, nor Mrs. Delaval, nor any of them—sinking, sinking, day by day, and scarcely twenty! ’Tis a hard lot to die like a dog, in such a hole as this. Ah! Frank always talked of death as the ever-present certainty, and the next world will be a happier one than this, I do believe, though this has been a happy one to me. I used to think I shouldn’t mind dying the least—no more I should, in the free, open air, leading a squadron, with the men hurraing behind me; or falling neck and crop into a grass-field with ‘Haphazard,’ alongside the leading hounds.” (Charlie was barely twenty, and to him the hunting-field was just such an arena of glory as was the tilt-yard to a knight of the olden time.) “No, I could die like a man at home, but to rot away here in a hospital, thousands of miles from merry England, without a friend near me, it’s hard to bear it pluckily, as it ought to be borne. Frank! Frank! I want some of your dogged resolution now. If I could see your dear old face once more, and shake you by the hand, I should be a different fellow. Ah! it’s too late now; I shall never see you again, and you will hardly know what became of me. But you won’t forget me, old boy, will you?” and poor Charlie gave way once more, and turned his wet cheek down upon his pillow, as he heard the doctor’s step along the passage; for he was ashamed of his weakness, though he knew it was but the effect of his wounds. Hark! there is some one with him; the doctor is bringing a visitor to see him. He knows that firm, heavy tread. Is it one of his brother-officers?—how kind of them! No, that is no dragoon’s step: it is familiar, too, and yet he cannot remember where he has heard it. Is he dreaming? Over the doctor’s shoulder peers a well-known face, embrowned with travel, but with the old kind, frank expression beaming through those manly features. In another instant Charlie is clasping Frank Hardingstone’s strong hand in his own two emaciated ones, and after an abortive “How are ye, old fellow?” and a vain effort to laugh off his emotion, is sobbing once more like a woman or a child.
“So you came out all the way from England on purpose to look after me,” said he, when the first burst of feeling had subsided; “how like you, old Frank—how kind of you!—and what did they say about me at home? and wasn’t Blanche sorry for me when she thought I was killed? and did Uncle Baldwin and—and Mrs. Delaval read the dispatch? and where are they all now? You know I’m to have sick-leave, and we’ll go back together. When does the doctor think I shall be able to sail? Frank, he’s a shocking muff; I’ve been in this bed for thirteen weeks, but I shall get up to-day—of course he’ll let me get up to-day;” and so Charlie ran on, and Frank was soon forcibly withdrawn from the patient, whose over-excitement was likely to be as prejudicial as his late despondency; but the maligned doctor whispered to him as he went out, “Your arrival, sir, has done more for my patient than the whole pharmacopœia: he’ll be well now in a fortnight.”
The doctor was right. From that day Charlie began to mend. Many a long hour Frank sat by his bedside, and talked to him of home, and of his prospects, and of his cousin (honest Frank), and settled over and over again their plans of departure, to which Charlie was never tired of listening; and after every one of these visits the boy’s appetite was better and his sleep sounder, and in a few days he got out of bed, and then he was moved into the hospital-sergeant’s room, who readily vacated his apartment for the young officer; and then he got out on Frank’s arm into the summer air, for which he had so pined—pleasant it was, but yet not so pleasant as he thought it would be, when he lay in that dull ward; and then his voracity became something ridiculous, and at the end of about three weeks Frank helped him up the companion-way of the Phlegethon, 200 horse-power, homeward-bound; and although wasted to a skeleton, his large eyes looked bright and clear, and now that he was really on his way to England he was well.