In the last chapter we have somewhat anticipated the progress of time, for in the first few weeks after the disappearance of Cecil Falconer, certain disagreeables in the love of Fotheringhame and Annabelle Erroll, fortunately for Mary, served to attract her attention and draw her from her own great sorrow.
Fotheringhame was always a welcome guest at the house of the general. To Mary he seemed a link with the lost one, and through him alone could she hope to hear tidings that might come to any member of the mess. To the general, whom he viewed, so far as his friend Cecil Falconer was concerned, as a stupid, obstinate, proud, and avaricious old man, he was specially welcome, as the patient listener to his prosy reminiscences of India, of battles and marches, of pig-sticking, shooting expeditions, and potting man-eaters, all of which Fotheringhame heard with respect and feigned interest, that he might the more freely enjoy the society of Annabelle, and of Mary, whom he really loved for the affection she bore his lost friend.
His engagement with Annabelle was no secret now; but if it was a source of joy to him, to her it was not without painful doubts and fears, for he seemed to have some secret which she, as yet, failed to probe.
That he and the lady she had twice seen, had some hidden and intimate knowledge of each other, the words overheard by Annabelle on the night of the ball seemed fully to prove. Then there was his undisguised emotion on seeing her pass into the fortress on the night of the visit to Falconer, an emotion that inflamed anew the suspicion, jealousy, and natural indignation of a proud and sensitive girl like Annabelle.
What was this stranger doing there, she thought, passing the sentinels unchallenged, as if it was her use and wont? whither was she going, if not to visit Fotheringhame in his quarters? Who, and what was she, and in what manner related to him? Whence this vulgar mystery which had suddenly come into the lives of her and her intended, after their reconciliation and complete reunion had given her so much of the purest joy?
It filled her with a nameless dread, and as women, in joy as in sorrow, generally seek the sympathy of each other, now in her jealousy, pain, and mortification, it was natural of Annabelle Erroll to confide in her friend and gossip Mary, while, in gusts of pride and anger, she sometimes failed to appear when Fotheringhame came to visit her, or received him with a coldness that certainly seemed to excite in him pain, surprise, and pique.
Hew, who had some intuitive perception of all this, and who dearly loved mischief for its own sake, brought home exaggerated, and even false, statements of how and where he had met Fotheringhame with ladies generally, and especially with one lady in particular.
'Who she is no one knows, but she is always attired in the richest and most becoming of outdoor costumes.
'And seems a lady?'
'Undoubtedly, so far as air and bearing go.'
'Most strange, Hew!'
'Not strange at all, Mary, as the world goes,' said he, with a laugh.
'If you are sure of all this, Hew,' said Mary, 'it is a wrong, a great wrong, to Annabelle.'
'Stuff!' said he. 'Why, Ulysses loved Penelope very well, but that did not prevent him from being very jolly with Calypso. But people are generally known by the company they frequent, and we all know who was his particular friend. What the devil can that fellow have done with himself? He is too poor for the wine trade, and must have turned digger at Ballarat, or a donkey-merchant in Texas.'
Mary gave him a glance of ineffable disdain, and turned away. She felt keenly for the anguish and wounded self-esteem of her friend! and she felt deeply mortified that the chosen friend of Cecil should be playing the present double part of Fotheringhame, for the general had seen him with this lady, and he could not be mistaken.
'And Cecil, where was he?' she would whisper to herself for the thousandth time, as she drew forth a locket with some of his hair.
'It is so little to have of him, and yet so much that it reminds me of him all!' she would say, kissing it tenderly, and retying the tiny ribbon that bound it; 'my darling Cecil—my own darling!'
Anon she would drop it softly into her bosom, and let it nestle there.
But soon some brief and important events brought about a kind of crisis in the affair of Annabelle and Fotheringhame.
After leaving the general's house one afternoon, it was found that he had dropped a note on the carpet, a note which he had apparently drawn forth with his handkerchief, and Annabelle picked it up. The envelope was addressed to him in a pretty and free feminine hand, and the top of the page began, 'My dear Leslie.' Neither of the girls read more, but instantly replaced it in the cover. Annabelle, as she grew ghastly pale, gazed with sparkling yet doubting eyes upon the note.
What did it all mean? What was to be done?
It bore a monogram in blue and gold, 'F.F.,' and there was a sweet yet subtle perfume about the note that, like the florid monogram, spoke surely of a female in the matter, and of a feminine taste too.
'Whatshallwe do?' asked Mary, in great perplexity.
'Enclose it, dear, in an envelope of yours, and post it to him,' said Annabelle. 'I do not wish to seem as if I knew aught of it.'
Bursting with natural curiosity, poor Annabelle no doubt was; yet she was too honourable and ladylike to pry into the matter, though, sooth to say, it so very nearly concerned herself.
'Perhaps it is only a note of invitation,' suggested Mary.
'Scarcely,' replied Annabelle, with difficulty restraining her tears; 'but I shall end this, Mary, by bringing my most protracted visit to a close, and go home to mamma, who has been urging me to do so.'
So the note was enclosed and despatched, and another came from Leslie Fotheringhame, thanking Mary for returning the former, adding that 'it was scarcely worth while doing so;' and when next they all met, the subject was ignored; but there was a cloud over Annabelle's face, for the memory of the note, in connection with other matters, haunted and tormented her. But he, in manner, was calm, affectionate, and unchanged—the same as usual.
'It cannot be from Blanche Gordon,' she thought, though she certainly was at the ball. This woman—F.F.—can it be possible that she is some former flame of Leslie's, with whom he has renewed his intimacy?'
Her jealous fancies ran riot, and not unnaturally.
Next day, Mary, when attended by a groom, riding in a sequestered lane, between trees and hedgerows, came suddenly upon Fotheringhame and the unknown, walking slowly together hand in hand, in a calm, apparently accustomed, and affectionate manner, that filled her with so much grief and astonishment, that, wheeling her horse in another direction, and escaping them, as she hoped, unseen, she dashed home at a gallop, and at once sought her friend.
Without removing her habit or hat, she threw her arms round the neck of Annabelle, who, though used to her impulsiveness, was certainly startled.
'Dearie—my dearie,' she exclaimed, 'can you bear evil tidings?'
'That may depend upon what they are,' replied Annabelle, growing very pale in anticipation.
'Well,' said Mary, in a broken voice, while drawing her friend close in an embrace, 'you must teach yourself to—to forget Leslie Fotheringhame.'
'Not a difficult task, perhaps, as matters have been going,' was the bitter response; 'but why?'
'I have had ocular proof that he is trifling with you and your love, and that he has, I fear, a wife already—this "F.F." no doubt.'
'Married!' said Annabelle, in a breathless whisper, while the four walls of the room seemed to fly round her and the eyes of Mary, who was impetuously grasping at a conclusion, wore a strange expression in which high indignation was blended with the tenderest pity as she related what she had just seen, and added:
'Oh, my darling, be calm! I am so sorry to tell you this—but, but—what can we think?'
'Ah! why does he deceive me so cruelly—why labour thus to break the heart of one who loves him as I do?'
'You must learn to think and speak in the past tense now,' continued Mary, whose tears fell fast, and she clasped her friend to her own bosom caressingly.
'Married,' thought Annabelle, 'that cannot be; but he is perhaps about to cast me off—play me false for another again!'
Anger and scorn struggled with love and sorrow in her heart; but her blue eyes were dry and tearless.
'Had papa been alive, Leslie dared not have treated me thus!' she exclaimed; 'but he knows I have no protector now, save a widowed mother. I wish that I had not met him again, Mary, or that I were dead—dead!' she exclaimed through her clenched teeth.
Mary, alarmed to see the storm she had raised, now attempted to soothe Annabelle.
'We may judge too rashly, after all, dearie,' she urged; 'it may be only one of those meaningless flirtations to which most young men—officers especially—are, it seems, addicted.'
'What right has he to engage in such, even if it be so?'
'Cecil's friend could never be so base!' urged Mary again. 'Oh, let us cling to the hope that it is something that may yet be explained away.'
'It—what?' asked Annabelle impetuously.
'This apparent mystery.'
But less gentle than Mary, who was apt to take refuge in tears, Annabelle said with outward calmness, though she felt only despair and exasperation:
'I fear that he is totally without principle—false as the fell serpent that beguiled Eve!'
And when night came she was thankful to lay her weary head on the pillow, though she did so, not to sleep, but to long that she was again at home beside her mother, and to agonise herself with doubts and fears as to the issue of this affair, to which she was resolved there should be a climax, either verbally or by letter, on the morrow, when Fotheringhame was expected to luncheon.
But on the morrow matters took a new and more startling turn, ere time for luncheon came.
Mary, who had been idling over the morning papers, suddenly drew Annabelle aside, and said:
'Look at this advertisement. Can it be that the creature takes the initial of his second name—if not his name altogether?'
Annabelle read what the speaker's slender fingers indicated, and it ran thus:
'Will L.F. meet F.F. to-day in the N.G. at twelve o'clock?'
'This is evidently an appointment between these two—and in the National Gallery!' said Annabelle. 'Oh, it is intolerable!'
'I must confess that so far as the initials go, it looks as if such an event was on thetapis,' said Mary.
'But this mode of correspondence is surely beneath Fotheringhame?'
'Though not beneath her—it is her request.'
'If married, she would not resort to this. I shall go to the Gallery, humiliating though the act may be.'
'And I too,' exclaimed Mary; 'let the carriage be countermanded—we were to have driven this morning, but we shall set out quietly on foot.'
Attired in dresses and hats of different style and colour from those they usually wore, and Shetland veils tied over their faces—than which there can be no more perfect masque—they set forth on this expedition, which was one of great pain to both, but more particularly to Annabelle.
It was a bright April forenoon, raindrops still rested on the fresh green leaves, and sparkled in the sunshine, early flowers bloomed abundantly in the gardens, perfuming the air, and the young birds were twittering in the trees. Pure and bright, it was a morning calculated to make anyone feel happy without knowing why; but the hearts of both girls were sad, and Mary sighed as she looked at the great masses of the fortress, steeped in the radiant sunshine, and thought of him who was away, she knew not where.
The National Gallery, with its Ionic porticoes, was soon reached by the way of Princes Street, and they entered the western range of saloons, which contain a very valuable collection of paintings by old masters and modern artists. At that early hour they were nearly empty.
Dreamily Annabelle looked at the various objects of art around her—the gigantic Ettys, the sweet proud bride of the victor of Barrosa—the long-hidden Gainsborough—the girl-wife of Grahame of Lynedoch; and then her eye saw the figure of one she recognised again—the woman who had so evidently come between her and Fotheringhame—seated in a corner, apart from all, with her veil half-down, and her eyes fixed eagerly and expectantly on the entrance-door.
The two friends could see that she was perfectly ladylike in style and bearing, in pose and action, and that her costume, though plain and quiet in colour, was rich in material. Wrath and pride flamed up together in the heart of Annabelle, and while shrinking behind a group of sculpture, that she might observe without being seen, she said:
'It seems to me most unladylike, this mode of espionage, and truth to tell it is humiliating in the extreme; but I have neither father nor brother to protect me, Mary, and so I must protect myself.'
'Take courage, Annabelle—perhaps we may deceive ourselves, and—and—oh, good heavens! here he comes!' said Mary, with a kind of gasp in her voice, as Fotheringhame, in 'mufti'—a very accurate morning costume—came with his swinging military step through the long gallery, and raised his hat with a somewhat sad and certainly fond smile on his face, as the unknown threw up her veil and advanced to meet him. But leading her back to her seat, he bent over her, and a low and earnest conversation ensued between them, yet not so low but that some of it reached the overstrained ears of Annabelle.
'It was rash of you to put in that advertisement,' said he; 'and I saw it by the merest chance, as I never examine the business columns of any paper.'
'Rash? but, dearest Leslie, it is rasher still, circumstanced as I am, to visit the castle,' she replied in a sweetly modulated voice.
Her face was a very fine one; her eyes were golden hazel—a perilous kind of eye—'light hazel, the fickle colour,' says a writer, 'the most fickle eye that shines—the eye ever changing, ever seeking something new, ever wearying of what it hath, ever greedy of enjoyment in the present, ever ungrateful for the past and unmindful of the future.'
Such were the eyes of the handsome woman on whom the face of Fotheringhame was bent with tenderness, and what a beautifully moulded face his was, with its heavy, dark moustache, straight nose and well-defined eyebrows.
'If my husband,' she began.
'Don't talk of him, Fanny!' he interrupted, angrily.
'Oh, the wretch is married!' whispered Annabelle.
'And her name is Fanny,' added Mary.
'And so the lawyers have got your case in their hands, my poor Fanny?' said he.
'Yes—and when may I get it out of them again?'
'The devil alone knows—he is the great master in all matters legal.'
(Now what could this case be, thought the listeners; here was a fresh mystery—perhaps degradation.)
'To serve you, I sold my troop in the Lancers, and with the money——'
'I know, Leslie—I know all, dearest. I have suffered much since then.'
'Despite all that, how handsome you are still!' said he, tenderly and admiringly.
'I was handsome a few years ago, as you know well,' she replied with a sad, but coquettish smile; 'but why seek to flatter me now, dearest Leslie, you of all men?'
'There is a flatterer beyond us all, Fanny—your own mirror.'
She laughed at this, but there was undoubted sadness in her laugh.
'Intolerable!' muttered Annabelle, and unwilling to hear more of this mysterious conversation she withdrew in grief and dismay, followed by Mary, who knew not what to make or to think of the whole situation.
They had barely reached home when Fotheringhame came punctually to luncheon, wearing the same dress he had worn at the peculiar assignation, easy and frank in manner, with his usual smile of tenderness for Annabelle, who strove to hide the coldness of her manner and the ire of her spirit, but utterly failed to check the nervous quiver of her sensitive lip.
Mary, who had to act as hostess, and who had no personal interest in this matter, scarcely knew what to do, or how to comport herself, full as she was of disappointment and just indignation. The abstraction of her manner was apparent to Leslie Fotheringhame, who scored it down to Falconer's affair; and as Sir Piers, Mrs. Garth, and Hew were all absent, she was thankful for the attendance of Tunley on the trio; but the luncheon proceeded with indescribable slowness and oppressive silence—a silence broken only by strained and disjointed remarks.
At last the cold fowl, patés, etc., were discussed, and a move was made to the drawing-room, where Mary did not follow the pair of lovers, over whom she saw a stormy cloud was impending, and thought the sooner it burst the better for them both—for Annabelle most certainly—and Mary's tender heart seemed to bleed for the proud girl's humiliation.
'My dearest Belle,' said Fotheringhame, attempting to take her hands caressingly in his the moment they were alone, 'what is the matter to-day—why this gloom and coldness of manner to me? In what have I erred or offended you?'
He gazed at her appealingly and passionately; but she snatched her hands away, and drew herself haughtily up to her full height, while her proud white face only expressed much scorn and much grief too.
'You treated me once shamefully, Leslie,' she began.
'Let the dead past bury its dead,' said he, beseechingly; 'and now, dearest Annabelle——'
'How dare you speak to me thus again?' she asked, with half-averted face, and her blue eyes flashing with a kind of steel-like glitter.
'Thus—how?' he asked, in a bewildered and rather indignant tone, as it seemed to her.
'In terms of love or regard!'
'Whatdoyou mean, Annabelle?' he asked, after a pause. 'Surely you have not permitted me to speak of love to you again—since that happy day in yonder gardens—or rather lured me into it, but to repel and cast me off, in revenge, for our quarrel in the foolish past time; beguiling me by your sweetness, but to fool me in the end?'
'I do not care what you think.'
'Good heaven! can it be that you do not love me, Annabelle—do not love me after all?'
'After all—all what, sir?'
'I hope, Annabelle,' said he, in the first faint tone of irritation she had ever heard from him, 'that after all this smoke, you have some fire to follow?'
'I do not understand you, Fotheringhame,' she replied, restraining her tears by a strong effort; 'but I fear that you are involved in something very dark and very dreadful. Who is Fanny—Fanny with the hazel eyes?' she demanded, passionately; 'Fanny, who is in the hands of the lawyers—who is so afraid of her husband, and for whom you sold your troop?'
Bewilderment first, and then anger, appeared in the proud face of Fotheringhame, who certainly seemed not to know what to think, and grew very pale. Then he smiled, sadly and bitterly, with something of anger making his lip quiver.
'Surely, Annabelle,' said he, slowly, as if to gain time to think, 'you, with your superior grace and beauty, assured position, and the indefinable charm you possess for all, and more than all for me, need fear no woman?'
'Jealousy is stronger than fear, and I am humiliated enough to be jealous. You have secret meetings with a woman to me unknown!' she exclaimed in a low, bitter and concentrated voice.
He grew still paler.
'You cannot deny it?' she added, imperiously.
'I do not—deny it,' he replied, sadly.
'On your honour, and ere all is over between us for ever, tell me who she is, though certainly it should matter little to me now.'
He paused, and, with a deep frown, began:
'If you are acting on information given by Mr. Hew Montgomerie——'
'I am not—I act on information gained by myself, and even thrust upon me; and here ends all between us,' she added, tearing off her engagement-ring, and thrusting it into his hand.
'Annabelle, I implore you to be patient, and reconsider this.'
'How dare you ask me to be patient, under such insult and wrong? Go, sir—I hate you—I never loved you—I leave you to this Fanny, whom we saw in her fitting place, among the domestics, on the night of the assembly—this matron of the period, whom I saw entering the castle, doubtless, to visit you—the Fanny with whom you have secret meetings and a secret correspondence—begone to her, and cross my path no more!'
And sweeping from the room like a tragedy queen, she left him.
'Did she but know who that woman is, would she speak of her thus?' said Leslie Fotheringhame, almost aloud, as he quitted the house with an emotion of deep distress, not unmixed with shame and anger.
He made two or three attempts to alter the decision that Annabelle Erroll had come to, of casting him off for ever. He called twice at the house of Sir Piers, but on both occasions was told that she was from home, and Mr. Tunley added, was preparing to leave town. He wrote her a tender and most passionate letter which might—nay, surely would—have explained all; but it was returned to him unopened; and heaven only knew the bitter ache it cost the heart of Annabelle to act thus firmly and decidedly, for, sooth to say, the love of Leslie Fotheringhame had become, as it were, a part of her own existence, interwoven with her daily life.
She knew that their engagement had become known to many, and the inevitableexposéand gossip that must follow its sudden ending, exasperated her justly; and thus pride struggled with grief for mastery in her heart, as she brought her visit to the Montgomeries to a close, and departed for her own home.
From casual remarks, Mary could learn that none among the Cameronians had ever heard aught of Cecil since the night of his disappearance. The poor fellow had passed out of their ken completely. Mary's grief was all the deeper because it was secret, and as time passed, the grass seemed to be growing over the grave of all her hopes.
When Fotheringhame left the regiment on leave, she ceased to have expectation of ever hearing of Cecil in any way, even through Freeport or others; and it gave her much of a shock to learn that the mysterious lady—she of the golden hazel eyes—had left Edinburgh too—at least, so Hew gleefully informed her.
And now Mary—though she omitted all mention of this circumstance in her many letters to Annabelle—knew not what to think of Leslie Fotheringhame, save, perhaps, the worst!
She was sick of Edinburgh and its new associations—the ruin of Falconer and the too apparent perfidy of his friend; but she regarded with equal dread and disgust a return to the general seclusion of Eaglescraig, and the persecution of Sir Piers and of Hew Montgomerie, and bitterly in her heart did she inveigh against the absurdity of her father's will.
Eaglescraig—wood and wold, field, garden and lawn—was in all the glory of summer now, when June brought with it, as usual, the fragrance of the red and white hawthorn blossoms, the song of the nightingale and the coo of the cushat-dove; May that gave fresh greenness to the young corn on the upland slopes, and studded the grass on the dairy farms of Cunninghame with white daisies and golden buttercups; June that saw the old general clad in grey, whipping the cool dark pools of the Garnock or the Irvine with rod and line, and the skylark soaring high amid the silver clouds—the full-uddered cows standing knee-deep in the heavy pastures, and the bees warring among the velvet buds; but where was he with whom Mary would fain have looked upon Nature and her native scenery in their glory!
Eaglescraig in summer was rather unlike the Eaglescraig to which Cecil Falconer had come in stern winter to shoot over the covers; but Mary's heart could gather no brightness from the locality, which, though changed and more beautiful than in those days, was so full of his presence and associated with him: the lanes through which he had driven her pony-carriage when visiting the poor on missions of charity; the roads by which they had ridden to Kilwinning and elsewhere; the garden wherein they had so often lingered; the ancient dovecot on the lawn, and the grotto where—but why did she torture herself, in the superstition of the heart, by recalling all that was, but never could be again?
As that heart foreboded, she was not very long at Eaglescraig before the old subject of her marriage with Hew Montgomerie was resumed by Sir Piers, who nearly found an ally in Mrs. Garth, who came to the conclusion that everyone loved their first love, as a general rule, and married their second or third; though she was not without her fears that such a marriage would not be conducive to Mary's welfare, and knew well that too generally, in the end, 'as the husband is, the wife is.'
With all the regard that Hew affected to profess for Mary, it did not prevent him from growling heavily over exchanging Eaglescraig for Edinburgh, where yet, so far as its gaieties were concerned, everything was yet, as the Americans say, 'in full blast.'
'Here, in the quiet of the country,' said Sir Piers, 'she will have time to think over the escape she made from that fellow Falconer; and time to think over what she ought to do, Mrs. Garth.'
Time to think! Poor Mary had plenty of that: time to ponder in long and oppressive hours, as she lingered by the dovecot with the pigeons fluttering round her; by the burn that flowed at the garden-foot, with Mudie's last new novel half-cut and wholly unread in her lap; and, lost in a day-dream, saw the bees seek the flowers and the butterflies darting to and fro, while wondering with all the intensity of love and pity wherehewas, and what doing, now!
Sir Piers did not precisely see his way to acting like the stern parent or fiery guardian of the melodrama; but he thought that the time was approaching when hemustdo something to bend Mary to his purpose, and compel or cajole her into the acceptance of Hew, his heir of entail and successor.
'You knew that—that young man but a very short time, Mary,' said he one day in reference to Falconer, and playfully pinching her chin.
'True,' she replied, with a sweet sad smile; 'but it does not take years to learn to—love. Was it so with you, grand-uncle?'
'No, by Jove! we were in cantonments at Simmerabad, and expecting the route every day, the route for Jubbulpore, when Lady Montgomerie and I were married, egad! at the drum-head, I may say.'
But as far as Hew's interests were concerned, a visit from Mr. John Balderstone one day gave Sir Piers much occasion to think over them—and pause.
A close correspondence with Annabelle Erroll was Mary's chief solace and support about this time; they had so much in common to commune about. Yet the name of Fotheringhame never once escaped the former, though he was mourning that a girl with such an amount of strength of character and so much loveliness had gone out of his life—for Annabelle was a wonderfully beautiful girl—beautiful with the charms of glittering golden hair, of slightness of form and white purity; tall, slender and full of grace; and though her heart was wrung by the memory of all she had passed through since the night of the Cameronian ball—that night on which she had been so happy—she thanked Heaven for the strength it gave her to cut the Gordian knot and quit the atmosphere of doubt, perplexity, degrading deception, and chaos in which she had latterly found herself in Edinburgh. 'No girl could be expected to undergo that sort of thing over and over again,' as she once wrote to Mary; so well it was, she added, that she had with decision laid the future lines of her life and that of Fotheringhame, so far apart from each other.
Hew was smoking on the terrace one forenoon, deep in the study of his betting-book—a study that did seem a very pleasant one, if one might judge from the expression of his face—when he saw Mr. John Balderstone, the faithful and jolly old factor and friend of the family, coming ambling up the long avenue, top-booted, on his favourite old roadster, an easy-going bay, high in the forehead, round in the barrel, and deep in the chest, as John averred, 'all that a roadster should be;' and he dismounted at the entrance door with the air of a man who felt himself at home and sure of a welcome.
'Now, what can this old buffer want?' thought Hew, sulkily, as the rider threw his reins to Pate Pastern, who took the bay round to the stables; 'but he is always coming here, whether wanted or not.'
'Good-morning, Mr. Balderstone,' he added, but without offering his cold, damp hand, which the visitor had never taken since the insulting trick had been played him with the pair of jack-spurs.
Between these two there was no open war, but a species of armed truce: a veiled dislike or species of civil suspicion. Mr. Balderstone knew pretty well the secret character of Hew, and cordially detested him. Hew knew the great influence the old factor possessed with Sir Piers, and had mentally resolved that when he 'came to his kingdom,'i.e.succeeded to the title and estate of Eaglescraig, Mr. John Balderstone should receive hiscongé, and pretty quickly, too; and that old Tunley, and even Sandy Swanshott, the aged game-keeper, together with Mrs. Garth, would have marching-orders, also. But the general 'was so confoundedly hale—seemed as if he would never die!'
'Did I not see Miss Montgomerie on the terrace?' said Mr. Balderstone, with a twinkle in his bright yet dark-grey eyes; 'she need not avoid me—bless her!—eh, billing and cooing as usual, I suppose, Mr. Hew?'
Hew muttered an ugly word under his red moustache, and said, coarsely:
'I'll make my innings now, I suppose, as I have the field to myself.'
'And no red-coated rivals—eh?'
'Look here, Balderstone, I don't like chaff; but I can tell you that Sir Piers did me a deuced lot of mischief by bringing that fellow here from Dumbarton, and petting him, egad! as if he had been his own son. He is a regular old fool, Sir Piers!'
'I can hear nothing said against him, Mr. Hew.'
'At all events, I may indulge in a few bitter thoughts of this base-born interloper, who has caused so much turmoil.'
'Base-born—how know you that he is so?'
'Bah! I heard all about him in Edinburgh.'
'Not all, surely?'
'Yes, as sure as I am the heir to Eaglescraig! What are you laughing at?' demanded Hew, who had been in Tunley's pantry, sharply.
'I do laugh, and heartily too; but pardon me,' said old John Balderstone, whose paunch, enfolded in a deep corduroy waistcoat, was actually shaking, while Hew, by some intuition of coming mischief, he knew not why, eyed him dubiously, even savagely.
'By the way, have you ever heard aught of that unfortunate young gentleman?' asked the factor.
'What young gentleman?' said Hew, sulkily.
'Captain Falconer.'
'Oh! the singing woman's son—dancer, or whatever she was—no; how should I hear of him?'
'A pity—he must be found.'
'Found—for what?' asked Hew, growing pale, as he recalled the event of the ball. 'You'll have to seek him where he has gone.'
'And where is that?'
'The husks and the swine-trough—or the devil.'
'How can you speak so pitilessly?'
'I don't owe him much, I think,' muttered Hew; with an imprecation.
'God knows all you owe him.'
'How—why—in what way?' thundered Hew.
'As reparation.'
'D—n the fellow, I never wronged him!' exclaimed Hew, growing paler than ever, while his shifty eyes wandered restlessly about, and fear seized him that John Balderstone had discovered, he knew not what.
But on this day the latter took all Hew's insolence of manner with wonderful equanimity, while his rubicund face seemed to beam and ripple all over with good-nature, and his eyes were twinkling as if he had somethingin pettothat greatly delighted him.
'Reparation,' growled Hew, scornfully; 'reparation for what?'
'Here comes the general; he will tell you all about it,' said the factor, as Sir Piers, in an old tweed suit, arrived from a morning's fishing, with rod in hand, a full basket, and a venerable wideawake hat, garnished all round with flies and catgut.
'Welcome, John; welcome, Balderstone! you have business with me? Step indoors. A glass of sherry and a biscuit before luncheon—tiffin, as we say in India—and then we'll hear all about it.'
'Business to which Mr. Hew may as well listen, as it interests him very nearly,' said Mr. Balderstone, with a sudden gravity of demeanour that impressed the former unpleasantly, and filled his heart with the alarm of the guilty, and he was the first to assist himself to a glass of the sherry which Tunley placed on the dining-room table; 'and as what I have to relate is not without interest to our dear Miss Mary,' added Mr. Balderstone, 'I would wish her to be present too.'
'Now what the devil can all this be about?' thought Hew, in a cold perspiration, as he took another glass of sherry, and thought of the ball and the court-martial that came of it, while Mary seated herself near Sir Piers, with her heart beating quickly and unequally, and her white hands trembling at her Berlin-wool work.
'In this matter I must begin at the beginning, as we used to read in the old story-books,' said Mr. Balderstone, polishing his bald head with his handkerchief, and looking up at the ceiling as if he would draw inspiration therefrom.
'Begin at the beginning!—don't say that,' said Sir Piers.
'Why, general?'
'Because it reminds me how a poor fellow of Ours used those very words when about to relate some secret to me, as he lay dying by the roadside, on the march to Malwah, and though he began at the beginning I never heard the end of his story; so we buried him beneath a palm-tree, in his cotton quilt, the only coffin we could afford him—poor old Sandy Freeport—the father of Dick who is in the Cameronians now; and I remember that John Garth read the funeral service over him by torch-light. Now fire away, Balderstone.'
The latter gazed fondly and admiringly on Mary in all her delicate beauty, clad in a loosely made brown holland morning-dress, relieved only by the spotless white cuffs at the snowy wrists, and a simple collar of the same at her slender throat, and said:
'I have some strange tidings for you, Sir Piers—tidings which may seriously shock your nerves.'
'Never! d—n it, John Balderstone, speak out, sir!' said the baronet with irritation. 'Who the devil ever heard of an old Cameronian with nerves! And these tidings——'
'Concern your son—your only son Piers.'
'What of him—now?' asked the other in a changed and rather broken voice.
'His fate—his story.'
'Piers is dead,' said the baronet hoarsely, as he recalled the shadowy form—the dim, yet distinct outline—he had seen on the night of terror, so long ago.
'I know it,' said Mr. Balderstone, sadly; 'poor Piers—poor boy! for he was but a boy when compared with your years and mine now.'
'Well.'
'How Piers married the penniless daughter of a struggling artist, and was therefore expelled from this house—yea, from this very room, you know,' said John Balderstone, speaking very slowly and deliberately, while the general's wrinkled hands grasped the knobs of his armchair, and he fixed his hollow yet bright eyes firmly on the speaker's face; 'how his commission was sold, and the money went, you know too; but there was much more that you and I never knew, and never shall know, till the long, long day when all things will be known. Piers became an artist, and died in sore penury some years after quitting his father's house.'
'Where?'
'In an obscure street of Rome; but he left behind him a son—the son of the girl he had married.'
'My grandson!'
'And heir.'
Hew fastened his glass in his eye—the green one—and glared at John Balderstone, who said:
'I know nothing precisely, though I can guess of months of penury and struggling to keep the wolf from the door, Sir Piers; but that such was the case I have little doubt from what I have gleaned: of wanderings from town to town—the husband trying to sell his pictures, and the wife to get engagements as a concert-singer—for she was highly accomplished—to support her husband in his last illness, and maintain her little boy. Piers was found dead one night at his easel. Pride prevented the widow from applying to you; and though she felt how sweet and dear it was to have her child as a precious link between her and Piers, she bestowed upon it her own name, which was Cecilia Falconer, and as Falconer the boy grew to manhood. Now you know who I mean!'
Sir Piers was struck dumb, and continued to grasp the arms of his chair with nervous energy, while Hew felt himself grow pale, and hot, and cold; and to the memory of the startled Mary came back the episode of Annabelle's 'Birthday Book,' and the curious admission of Falconer that he had been named Cecil after his mother.
In fact they were all paralysed and absorbed by the strangeness of this revelation.
'The proofs of what I say were sent to me, and thereby hangs another curious story,' continued John Balderstone. 'A woman of indomitable spirit and pride, this Cecilia Falconer (or Montgomerie) resolved that never in your lifetime, Sir Piers, would she seek your friendship or alliance, nor until your death make known the rank and claims of her son; but she died suddenly and unexpectedly, and the secret of who her husband was died with her, so far as Cecil was concerned, for indeed he knows it not even unto this hour.'
'Then how the devil do you——' began Hew, impetuously; but Balderstone silenced him by a wave of his hand.
'Her great musical talents won her powerful and titled patrons, and through one of them she got her son a cadetship, and by a singular chance he was gazetted to the Cameronians, the regiment of his father and grandfather.'
'I believe the whole affair a d——d tarra-diddle, from beginning to end!' exclaimed Hew, while a kind of gasp escaped the general.
'You have not yet heard the end,' said John Balderstone with a quiet laugh, as he drew from his breast-pocket a large envelope or packet, soiled by the dust of many years, and covered with old and foreign postal marks and stamps. 'In this envelope, addressed to me, as her husband's friend, the widow, when her last fatal illness came upon her, sent for safety three papers: the marriage certificate of herself and Piers, performed at Rome; the certified register of the child's birth, endorsed by herself and Piers, and the register of the latter's death at Rome. But the packet on which such interests depended had fallen behind a bookcase in my office; there it has lain for fifteen years, and I never knew of its existence till yesterday. And here is your son's writing, Sir Piers, which I never expected to see again in this world, and it comes to me like a message from the dead,' added Balderstone, with a tremulous voice.
'From the dead, indeed!' added the general, more tremulously still, as he took the documents and strove to read them through glasses that became moist and dim.
On the back of the marriage-register was written in a feminine hand:
'Nov.5.—He died to-night, speaking of his stern father and not of me who loved him so! Oh Piers! my husband, my husband! how shall I live without you—live on alone in the long years to come, unless it is for our boy! In losing you I lose my all. For me you gave up home, friends, fortune, rank and position—all the world for me—yet, oh my husband, all the wealth of my love was yours!'
Thedatecorresponded with the general's dream or vision! Could Piers' spirit have flashed home at the instant of his departure? Can such things be, and may men see them and live! thought he.
'My poor Piers! my poor Piers!' he groaned. 'John Balderstone, none but God and myself can tell how I have suffered in my soul for my severity to him in the past time.'
And so the long years had gone, and others had come; and behold this was all that had resulted from the old man's pride, petulance, and injustice. His only son had died in penury and obscurity; that son's wife had despised even his vaunted name and had taken her own; and now, their only son, the legal and lawful heir of Eaglescraig, a crushed and ruined creature like his father before him, had been driven forth into the world, in darkness and despair, too surely also to ruin and death!
Sir Piers sighed bitterly, and seemed utterly to forget the existence of Hew, to whom this new state of things came like a prolonged roll of thunder. To the former it seemed as if the irrevocable past was throwing its shadow over his present and his future—a shadow deep as the grave; nay, that past made the future, and its shadow was over him still!
This accounted for the expression of eye that Mrs. Garth had traced in Cecil; and Sir Piers had now a perfect key to that which had so often perplexed him—a something that the voice, face, and manner of Cecil brought to memory out of the mists of the past, causing him much vague and mental exercise—the resemblance to his dead son; clearly accounted for now, when too late—all too late, perhaps.
'Scratched—out of the race!' muttered Hew with an oath, as he slunk away, and betook him to brandy and seltzer in Tunley's pantry, while Mary, her lithe and slender form full of energy, her dark and eloquent eyes filled with joyous light, seemed all unlike the languid Mary of the past month or so, as Balderstone's narrative came to an end.
Could it all really be in earnest, and no dream? Cecil was her cousin—her own cousin, and that lawful heir of Eaglescraig whom Sir Piers, by the powers of his father's will, desired she should marry, while Hew was scarcely even a cousin by Scottish reckoning—little more than a namesake to her; but Cecil—Cecil, where was he?
Here was an astounding discovery; an absorbing topic from the discussion of which, although their minds were full of it, and overpowered by it, they were compelled to cease during dinner and other meals, in that jerky, half-and-half way in which people are wont to adopt when servants are present, though the interest of their whole souls may be concentrated in it for the time.
But menials are close and watchful observers, and it was soon pretty well known to Mr. Tunley and all in the servants' hall, the topic which engrossed those in the dining-room—that Mr. Hew was not heir to the general's title and estate; but some one else was—whothey scarcely could define. So the matter was speculated upon, twisted and turned over, eliciting a score of different opinions; but to all it was apparent that Sir Piers was perplexed, was daily conferring with John Balderstone; that Miss Mary—'bless her,' said they all—was radiant with joy; and Mr. Hew, with whom none sympathised—as might be expected—wore a sullen, baffled, and exasperated look.
The tables had been turned with a vengeance; but Hew had one crumb of comfort: Cecil was gone, no one knew where, and might never be heard of again, in which case he—Hew—would resume his old place as heir of entail!
In his anxiety to discover the lost, and make some reparation to the dead, Sir Piers forgot all the dark colours in which Hew had painted Cecil, and felt with regard to his son that, as Dickens says, 'there is no remorse which is so deep as that which is unavailing; and if we would be spared its tortures, let us remember this in time!'
Mr. Balderstone suggested that they should advertise for the lost one; but poor Cecil was now where no advertisements would ever reach him.
Sunset, red and glowing, in a lovely land where a long spur of the Balkan mountains overlooks the current of the Morava, and where fair fields of rice and maize, hemp and tobacco, cover the upland slopes, for it is early in September, and the days are of great heat still. The golden shafts or rays of the setting sun shot upward from the flank of the mountain range, and shed their ruddy gleam upon the shining river. Slowly sank the glorious sun, as if reluctant to quit the strange and terrible scenes it was leaving: on one side the camp and bivouac of an army, with its fires for cooking and scaring wild animals, its piles of baggage and arms, groups of soldiers in thousands; on the other, the awfuldébrisof a newly-fought field, covered with killed and wounded men and horses, broken caissons and gun-carriages, drums and standards, pools of blood in which the flies were battening; and paler then grew the upturned faces of the dead, as the last segment of the sun disappeared, and the brightness it left behind began to deepen from gold and red to sombre violet in the plain, though light yet lingered on the mountain summits.
In the tents and around the fires, men spoke little of the artillery duel that had preluded the conflict, of whether the Servians had broken the armistice, or the Turks had done so by opening with their guns, and little even of the victory; for the soldiers fresh from it and flushed with triumph and carnage, Servians and Russians alike, spoke only of the gallant but nameless British volunteer who had saved the life of the general, the terrible old Tchernaieff, and that of his chief aide-de-camp, the gallant Count Michail Palenka, and who had been made a sub-lieutenant on the field, and decorated after it with the gold cross of the order called the Takovo of Servia, and welcomed back with shouts of,
'Dobro—dobro! Ghivo—ghivo! (Well done—long life); hourah!'
In one of the terrible charges of cavalry, led by himself, Tchernaieff had his horse killed under him by a cannon shot, but this volunteer had remounted him on his own, and also dragged Count Palenka out of the terriblemêlée.
The Turkish horse were led, not by a Pasha or other officer, but by a frantic dervish, wielding on high a long staff, furnished at the end with a shining brass knob, and shouting:
'Allah is here! Allah and the angels who fought at Bedr!'
The Servian Hussars and Lancers, with the Russian Dragoons, advanced to join issue in the charge for a third time, not sorry to exchange close quarters for a desultory carbine-fire. Both sides came thundering on, the Lancers with their spears in the rest, the Dragoons with swords pointed to the front, and all with their horses well in hand, till within a few yards, when they let them go at racing speed, and dashed with terrible force and fury among the Turkish squadron.
Anon the Lancers, finding their weapons useless at such close quarters, slung them, and smote heavily on every side with their keen bright swords. Long and hard was the fight, and for a time the mingling masses were too closely wedged in some places to use even their swords, and grappled with each other, while the entangled chargers, enraged and frightened, reared, plunged, struck out and brained or trampled into gore the dead and wounded.
Here it was the volunteer saved the general and his faithful aide-de-camp, covering them as they struggled back, faint and breathless, out of thedébris; thrusting with his lance till it snapped in two, and then hacking his way out with the sword; and it was only after it was all over, and he came afoot out of the field, dazed in aspect, with teeth set, eyes dilated and glaring with the fierce fever of battle, and clutching a sword, the blade and hilt of which were literally covered with blood, that he fairly knew what he had done, and the burst seams of his uniform showed all how well he had plied his weapon that day.
Thirstily and gratefully he took a draught from a tin canteen of Negotin wine, which a passing sutler gave him.
Cecil Falconer, for the volunteer was he, though in that blood-stained foreign uniform few would have recognised the once fashionable Cameronian officer, was sorely changed in aspect. He was browner visaged, bearded to the eyes, yet his face was worn and lined, and his eyes seemed sunk and keen, with the wolfish expression worn by those of men who are daily facing peril and death.
As a volunteer, he wore the uniform of a private—a brown tunic faced with scarlet, crimson pantaloons, now covered with blood and mud, and a grey cloth cap, not unlike the Scottish glengarry. Fighting in a cause for which—and in that of a prince for whom—he cared nothing; fighting in battle as a weaker spirit might have betaken itself to alcohol to drown the past and give oblivion to the present, poor Cecil had found his way to Servia, and had that day done wonders, setting little store on the lives of those he fought against—the barbarous and brutal Turks—and certainly none whatever on his own life.
Refused a commission in the service by the Servian minister of war—for, by the influence of long conquest, there is much of the Ottoman in the character of the Servian people, who are fatalists, and as distrustful of all strangers as a John Bull of the last century—he had joined 'Tchernaieff's Own' as a volunteer trooper, and on that day by the Morava had won his commission, and the cross of the Takovo; but what a mockery they were to him, and how little he cared about them!
Since joining in the humble and apparently hopeless capacity he had taken, he had undergone all the perils and miseries of the Servian campaign; had been compelled to consort, at times, with fierce and lawless comrades, who were most repugnant to his refined nature; he had been generous to all with his money, when he had any, which was not often now; he had nursed the wounded, buried the dead, and won golden opinions from all; he had groomed his own horse and the horses of others; had to hew wood, to cook coarse rations, when there were any to cook; slept on the bare earth in the rain and the storm, or sharing atente-d'abriwhen one could be got, and sharing it with a comrade—some unsavoury and unwashed Servian trooper, whose vicinity was, in itself, a horror.
As most people know, but a very short time ago the Christians in Bosnia and elsewhere took arms against their oppressors, the Turks, who were unable to suppress the insurrection, and soon after the disturbance was intensified by a declaration of war against the Porte by Prince Milano Obrenovitch of Servia, who, by his army, was proclaimed King of Bosnia, and whose father, the alleged slayer of the famous Cerni Georges, began life as a cattle-driver, and first distinguished himself in battle so far back as 1807. Born in 1854, Prince Milano succeeded Michail III. (who was assassinated); and as the new war spread into Bulgaria, as we all know, it took the form of atrocities unparalleled in modern Europe, unless we except the Cromwellians at Wexford and the Williamites at Glencoe. The villages of the Christians were plundered and given to the flames; their male inhabitants slain without mercy, under nameless tortures; women and girls carried off to slavery. The dead lay heaped in the churches to which they had fled for shelter, and dogs and hungry kites tore their flesh as they lay unburied by the wayside.
And now it was within forty British miles of that Bulgaria, where so much wild work was being done, that on the evening of the 28th of September, after Tchernaieff had crossed to the left bank of the Morava below Boboviste, and fought one of the greatest battles in the Servian war—a battle in which Prince Milan lost 3000 men, killed and wounded, while the Russians lost in proportion, and had sixty dead officers on the field—a battle in which the explosion of seven Turkish powder-caissons added to the horror and slaughter—that Cecil Falconer found himself warmly complimented, and again and again shaken by the hand, by old Tchernaieff, as the saviour of himself and his favourite aide-de-camp, Palenka.
'We shall never forget your services and your bravery this day!' said the latter—a pleasing and handsome man—in French.
'And your promotion, monsieur,' added the general, in the same language, 'will be my future care, either with the young King of Servia, or with our Father the Emperor, if you choose to take service in Russia, as so many, of your countrymen, like Bruce, Wilson, Greig, and Ochterlony, have done, attaining fame and fortune.'
The offer was not an inviting one, but Cecil thanked the general for his gracious notice of his service, and for the rank and cross conferred upon him; and the former then rode off to his head-quarters, accompanied by Count Palenka.
He was a short, thick-set man, reserved and haughty in manner and bearing, and covered with Russian orders and medals, won in no petty wars. His eyes were small, the lids heavy; his nose was large; his complexion a ruddy bistre colour, and his hair and thick moustache were somewhat of a mouse-skin hue. Whether it was the occasion or not, we cannot say, but his face, figure, and voice dwelt long in Cecil's memory. And now, to obtain some of that food and other refreshment of which he stood so much in need after a day of such terrible work, he joined a group of officers of his own corps, who were lounging on the grass near a fire, at which their servants were preparing a meal for them, and all made Cecil—the hero of the hour—most welcome, proffering him their flasks and cigar-cases.
Singular indeed was the group, and striking too, on which fell the fitful flashes of the adjacent watch-fire, for night had fallen, and the firmament overhead was full of brilliant stars.
German, French, Italian, Serb, and English could be heard, amid the group, chattered in turn, and sometimes all at once. Rich and picturesque in contour and colour were some of the uniforms, and they were worn by men of several nations who had come to serve the newly-proclaimed King of Servia and Bosnia. In the uniform of his infantry there was a Nassauer, who had won his laurels and his iron cross at the gates of Paris, in the war of 1871; Guebhard, a captain of Lancers, a man closely shaven save his moustache, with a silent manner, and most unpleasant expression of face; a dark and handsome Bohemian baron, armed with a quaint family sword of fabulous antiquity, now captain of a Bulgarian band, wearing a sheepskin cap, a richly broidered blue jacket, and loose trousers that had once been white, with pistols and yataghan in his girdle. There were a couple of Russian Lancers in red, and a Hussar in a sky-blue jacket, laced with yellow, who wore Crimean medals and had been lads, no doubt, when our troops went up the heights of the Alma, and were too politic, or too well-bred, to show the real hatred they secretly bore to all Britons; and in the Servian uniform, as captains, with three silver stars on their scarlet-faced brown tunics, were two ex-officers of our own Foot Guards, whom we shall call Stanley and Pelham, who—in search of a new sensation—had come out to see life (and death too) in Servia; there was an English ambulance doctor in the truly awful chimney-pot hat of civilisation; and though last, not least, the ubiquitous correspondent of a London paper, in a kind of uniform—a frogged coat and forage-cap—with a revolver at his belt, and a case of writing materials slung over his shoulder, as jolly and as much at home with everyone as if he had first seen the world and been weaned in a Servian bivouac, and ready to join with hearty goodwill a few who struck up 'La Belle Serbe,' the national chant of the country, to an air of great antiquity.
A light or two in the distance indicated the locality of the rather meanly-built village of Boboviste; and ever and anon cries and shrieks on the night-wind indicated that of the battle-field, where the ambulance-parties, doctors and nurses, were at work among the wounded and dying—Christians and Moslems alike.
The ex-guardsmen were chatting gaily together, and it seemed like a leaf out of the book of his old life to Cecil as he listened to them.
'A regular wanderer's club this, by Jove!' said one, laughing; 'made up of all sorts. I little thought to find you here, Stanley.'
'As little did I expect to find you.'
'Well, I suppose, with us both, it has come of backing the wrong horse too often—the little villa and brougham at St. John's Wood—the brougham with its three-hundred-guinea horses, and all the rest of it.'
'Not with me,' said Stanley; 'I found myself riding sixteen stone, and wished to bring down the flesh somehow. Besides, I was never much of a home-bird.'
'No,' assented the other, expelling his cigar-smoke in long concentric circles; 'but there is a novelty in all this new work here, with a vengeance. Only think, Stanley, in London, a few hours hence, would find us at the opera, at a crush in Belgravia, or consecrating the time to billiards, to the joys of Bacchus, and the chaste salutes of Venus, by Jove!'
'A devil of a business that last Turkish charge was,' said Pelham; adding, in a low voice, 'I shouldn't have cared if that fellow Guebhard had been knocked on the head—well, unhorsed at least, to-day; he is a cantankerous brute—bad form, very.'
Cecil looked at the officer of Lancers indicated, but knew not then that a time was coming when he would heartily share Pelham's wish.
'This is not yourbaptême de feu, I believe, even in Servia?' said the latter to him, suddenly.
'No—I have received that baptism before,' replied Cecil.
'Where?'
'In India.'
'Indeed! What regiment?'
Cecil remembered the mode of his leaving the beloved corps; he felt his cheek flush hotly, and, affecting not to hear the question, turned to the war-correspondent of the London daily, who was making notes for ulterior press purposes, and took from Cecil's own lips his modest detail of the charge in which he saved the lives of General Tchernaieff and Count Palenka:—all of which episode would doubtless appear in the illustrated papers from sketches 'made on the spot, by our own artist,' whose immediate whereabouts was Fleet Street.
'How those Montenegrins fought to-day!' exclaimed Pelham, after a pause; 'armed with their sharp yataghans they came on like a living flood, after delivering their musketry-fire, and then flinging away their firearms, fell on with their blades in the smoke, precisely as the Scottish Highlanders used to do of old.'
'We'll have to write home about all these things.'
Cecil smoked in silence, and thought what home had he, or to whom could he write save to one who dared not receive his letter!
Amid this easy kind of talk, ever and anon the cries of pain—long-drawn moans, ending in a half-scream—came on the breeze from the adjacent battle-field.
'We shall hear the howling of the evilvilasto-night,' said Guebhard, with a grim smile, as he took the meerschaum from his moustached mouth.
'Who are they?' asked Cecil, whose knowledge of Italian and German stood him in good stead amid the polyglot kind of conversation that went on around him.
'Don't you know?' said Guebhard, a little superciliously; 'but it is a Servian idea—superstition if you will—that spirits so named come at midnight to exult over the slain; these are the hideous and fiendishvilas, for there are others that are handsome and good.'
Coffee and cigarettes discussed, and a bottle or two of vina drunk to wash down mutton-chops fried in a flat earthen pot with a wooden handle, stuck into the hottest part of the bivouac fire, Cecil repaired to the place where his troop had picketed their horses, and looked after his own, which Tchernaieff had sent back to the bivouac. It was unbitted and munching some chopped forage; he relaxed the girths, and, rolled in his great coarse trooper's cloak, lay down on the bare earth beside it, though rain was beginning to fall. He was sore in every limb, and weary with the events of the day. He was without a wound, but many a buffet, blow, and strain, got he knew not how, began to make his bones ache now, as he thought over the stirring events of the day, and gave himself up—as he too often did—to sad and harrowing reflections.
Mary and the Cameronians—the regiment and Mary! was it the past life or the present one that was a dream? So far away did the old life seem now, that though some of the events we have related happened but a few months since, years seemed to have elapsed since Mary's last love-kiss lingered on his lips on that twilight evening in Edinburgh, and when he listened for the last time to the sound of her voice—the voice that had been for a time, and was still, the music of his life.
Oblivious of the pouring rain and sodden bivouac, he lay there thinking not of the past battle, or the present glory now; he was remembering the regimental ball—the lights, the music, the swift tender expression of Mary's eyes as she swept through the dance with him—their first and last dance, the returned pressure of her soft hand, the touch of her hair on his cheek; all the exultation of the time, and more than all, her secret visit to him in the old grey fortress of the city!
Could she but see him now!
His hopes—if he had any—his plans and desires, the scenes around him, his companions and his circumstances, were all changed now, as thoroughly as if he had been born in a new, or other age. The world rushes past so fast now (for steam destroys time and distance), that his troubles were beginning to seem old; or as if the whole of his former life had passed away, and that if he was to cut out fortune, fame, and at least food, in the new one, the old life could not be forgotten too soon.
But Mary Montgomerie was the central figure in that former world still.
'How completely the romance has died out of my life!' he thought; 'and our love, it seems so like a dream to me now—but a sweet and beautiful one; a dream that can come no more, yet I am glad that I have had it. I would that I had a flower her hand has touched—a glove or a ribbon she has worn! Could I but know, that on my dead face such tears as hers might fall!' he added as he gave way to his dismal thoughts, and sooth to say his other circumstances were dreary enough.
The pouring rain had long since extinguished all the camp and bivouac fires, and was adding to the miseries of the wounded and the dying. He had covered his horse with a blanket, and made a pillow of his holsters, and, with the flaps of his Servian forage cap tied over his ears, lay there sleepless and heedless of whether he was kicked, or trampled upon, by his charger's hoofs, or the hoofs of others, while ever and anon the deep thunder grumbled over the spur of the Balkans, and the red lightning flashes lit up vividly, for a moment, the waters of the fast-flowing Morava, and a strange tower close by—a tower of human skulls, erected to commemorate a victory over the Servians by the Turks under Comourgi.
It was six in the morning of the following day. From the eastward came a blaze of glorious sunshine; the rain had ceased about midnight; the blue sky overhead was cloudless; shadows strange and darkly defined fell to the westward from rock and tree; the Morava was glowing in golden light; but by its margin lay the battle-field with all its horrors—a place that no sunshine could brighten.
Cecil was roused from sleep by Captain Mattei Guebhard, who announced that General Tchernaieff required his presence at head-quarters forthwith.
'For what purpose?' asked Cecil.
'How can I tell!' was the sulky rejoinder; 'you will learn when you get there.'
The truth is, that this Mattei Guebhard, who was—justly, as events proved—cold in the king's service, had been unhorsed in one of the charges on the previous day, and had come a little scurvily out of the action, having failed to rally or reform his troop; thus, though he dared not to sneer at Cecil, he was jealous of the honours he had won, but never could have conceived how little the ex-Cameronian valued them.
There is perhaps more hate at first sight in this world than there is love at first sight; and somehow Mattei Guebhard felt a curious hatred of Cecil, who was aware at the same time of having a most decided repugnance of him. Yet they exchanged cigars, and picked their way across the battle-field, where the dead were being buried in trenches; the peasantry were stealing arms and whatever they could lay hands on; where the scared vultures were hovering, angry and expectant, overhead; and where all the hedgerows, hollows, and ditches were, as usual in every battle-field, strewed with those mysterious scraps of papers, that are the sport of the passing breeze.
What they are, no one cares to inquire, not even plunderers and burial parties, who fling them contemptuously aside, after searching the pockets and other repositories of the slain. They may be only Orderly Room reports, and parade returns; but too frequently they are the last letters from mothers and sweethearts, or wives—letters full of love and prayerful tenderness, to those who can peruse them no more.
It was the first general action that Cecil had ever been in, and the field to him looked awful, in the sweet bright morning sunshine; and the idea occurred to him, that if it be true—and we cannot doubt it—that to the Creator the fall of a sparrow is not a matter of indifference, what must that of a human being be? Yet, there they lay in thousands, butchered, hacked, and in some instances torn out of the semblance of humanity, by cannon shot and shell.'
'Here we are!' said Guebhard, gruffly, cutting short his reflections.
In a tent, round which a lancer guard was posted, dismounted, and leaning on their horses, with some staff-officers about him, Tchernaieff was seated at a table, and was in the act of sealing a long and official-looking blue envelope. Close by lay the body of a favourite staff-officer, for separate interment. A sheet covered it, and the dull outline of the profile, and the up-turned feet, showed plainly and ghastly to the eye. A veteran soldier, of great experience, and much stateliness of manner, he received Cecil politely and cordially, shook his hand, proffered his handsome silver case of cigarettes, and then said,
'To business.'
A portion of the letter was to the effect, that he had appointed Cecil to serve on his staff, as an extra aide-de-camp,viceColonel MacIver, popularly known as 'Tchernaieff's Scotchman,' who had joined the Russian army at Kischineff; and his first duty in his new capacity was to be the bearer of despatches to Belgrade; and Cecil bowed, and muttered his thanks and gratitude.
'This packet contains my report of the battle,' said Tchernaieff, with military brevity, rising to end the interview ere it was well begun; 'the casualty lists, and, more than all, myplanfor our further operations, if approved of, by his Majesty the King.'
Guebhard's face was a study for a painter as he heard all this, in the background, with hawk-like eyes, and ears that quivered, so intently did he listen.
'You will take the road by Resna and Paragatin,' said the General, speaking pointedly and emphatically; 'speak to none on the way; save for what you want—food and fresh horses; let no one join you on any pretence, or attempt to turn you from your path. Here is the route chalked out for you, the seven towns through which you have to pass, ere you reach Belgrade. Remember and be wary, as I have found you brave and trustful.'
'Take this ring,' said Count Palenka, coming forward, and drawing a valuable Russian diamond from his finger: 'I cannot give you gold medals or crosses like the King or his excellency the General; but I may insist upon your wearing this, as a personal gift from myself—the gift of gratitude for a life gallantly saved at great peril.'
Flattered by the high trust so suddenly reposed in him by Tchernaieff, Cecil, for the first time since he had set foot on Servian soil, felt his heart fill with something of the fire of his wonted ambition; but he knew not that he was selected, as a stranger, for this perilous and important duty; and still less, perhaps, did he know that there was a rival and pretender to the throne of Servia, in the person of Prince Georgeovitch, who had scouts, adherents, and secret supporters everywhere.