When consciousness returned, I found the dull red evening sun shining down the long valley of Inkermann, and that, save moans and cries for aid and water, all seemed terribly still now.
A sense of weakness and oppression, of incapacity for action and motion, were my first sensations. I feared that other shot must have struck me after I had fallen, and that both my legs were broken. The cause of this, after a time, became plain enough: a dead artillery horse was lying completely over my thighs, and above it and them lay the wheel of a shattered gun carriage; and weak as I was then, to attempt extrication from either unaided was hopeless. Thus I was compelled to lie helplessly amid a sickening puddle of blood, enduring a thirst that is unspeakable, but which was caused by physical causes and excitement, with the anxiety consequent on the battle. The aspect of the dead horse, which first attracted me, was horrible. A twelve-pound shot had struck him below the eyes, making a hole clean through his head; the brain had dropped out, and lay with his tongue and teeth upon the grass. The dead and wounded lay thickly around me, as indeed they did over all the field. Some of the former, though with eyes unclosed and jaws relaxed, had a placid expression in their white waxen faces. These had died of gun-shot wounds. The expressions of pain or anguish lingered longest in those who had perished by the bayonet. Over all the valley lay bodies in heaps, singly or by two and threes, with swarms of flies settling over them; shakoes, glazed helmets, bearskin-caps, bent bayonets, broken muskets, swords, hairy knapsacks, bread-bags, shreds of clothing, torn from the dead and the living by showers of grape and canister, cooking-kettles, round shot and fragments of shells, with pools of noisome blood, lay on every hand.
Truly the Angel of Horror, and of Death, too, had been there. I saw several poor fellows, British as well as Russian, expire within the first few minutes I was able to look around me. One whose breast bore several medals and orders, an officer of the Kazan Light Infantry, prayed very devoutly and crossed himself in his own blood ere he expired. Near me a corporal of my own regiment named Prouse, who had been shot through the brain, played fatuously for a time with a handful of grass, and then, lying gently back, passed away without a moan. A Zouave, a brown, brawny, and soldier-like fellow, who seemed out of his senses also, was very talkative and noisy.
"Ouf!" I heard him say; "it is as wearisome as a sermon or a funeral this! Were I a general, the capture of Sebastopol should be as easy as a game of dominoes.--Yes, Isabeau, ma belle coquette, kiss me and hold up my head. Vive la gloire! Vive l'eau de vie! A bas la mélancolie! A bas la Russe!" he added through his clenched teeth hoarsely, as he fell back. The jaw relaxed, his head turned on one side, and all was over.
Of Volhonski I could see nothing except his gray horse, which lay dead, in all its trappings, a few yards off; but I afterwards learned that he had been retaken by the Russians on their advance after the fall of poor Sir George Cathcart.
There was an acute pain in the arm that had been injured--fractured--when saving Estelle; and as a kind of stupor, filled by sad and dreamy thoughts, stole over me, they were all of her. The roar of the battle had passed away, but there was a kind of drowsy hum in my ears, and, for a time, strangely enough, I fancied myself with her in the Park or Rotten-row. I seemed to see the brilliant scene in all the glory of the season: the carriages; the horses, bay or black, with their shining skins and glittering harness; the powdered coachmen on their stately hammer-cloths; the gaily-liveried footmen; the ladies cantering past in thousands, so exquisitely dressed, so perfectly mounted, so wonderful in their loveliness--women the most beautiful in the world; and there, too, were the young girls, whose season was to come, and the ample dowagers, whose seasons were long since past, lying back among the cushions, amid ermine and fur; and with all this Estelle was laughing and cantering by my side. Then we were at the opera--another fantastic dream--the voices of Grisi and Mario were blending there, and as its music seemed to die away, once more we were at Craigaderyn, under its shady woods, with the green Welsh hills, snow-capped Snowdon and Carneydd Llewellyn, in the distance, and voices and music and laughter--some memory of Dora's fête--seemed to be about us. So while lying there, on that ghastly field of Inkermann, between sleeping and waking, I dreamed of her who was so far away--of the sweet companionship that might never come again; of the secret tie that bound us; of the soft dark eyes that whilom had looked lovingly into mine; of the sweetly-modulated voice that was now falling merrily, perhaps, on other ears, and might fall on mine no more. And a vague sense of happiness, mingled with the pain caused by the half-spent shot and the wild confusion and suffering of the time, stole over me. Waking, these memories became
"Sad as remembered kisses after death,And sweet as those by hopelessfancyfeignedOn lips that are for others--deep as love,Deep as first love, and wild with all regret,O death in life--the days that are no more!"
"Sad as remembered kisses after death,And sweet as those by hopelessfancyfeignedOn lips that are for others--deep as love,Deep as first love, and wild with all regret,O death in life--the days that are no more!"
From all this I was thoroughly roused by a voice crying, "Up, up, wounded--all you who are able! Cavalry are coming this way--you will be trod to death. Arrah, get out ofthat, every man-jack of yees!"
The excited speaker was an Irish hussar, picking his way across the field at a quick trot.
It was a false alarm; but the rumble of wheels certainly came next day, and an ambulance-wagon passed slowly, picking up the wounded, who groaned or screamed as their fractured limbs were handled, and their wounds burst out afresh through the clotted blood. I waved an arm, and the scarlet sleeve attracted attention.
"There is a wounded officer--one of the 23rd Fusileers," cried a driver from his saddle.
"Where?" asked a mounted officer in the blue cloak and cap of the Land Transport Corps.
"Under that dead horse, sir."
"One of the 23rd; let us see--Hardinge, by all the devils!" said the officer, who proved to be no other than Hawkesby Guilfoyle. "So-ho--steady, steady!" he added, while secretly touching his horse with the spurs to make it rear and plunge in three several attempts to tread me under its hoofs; but the terrible aspect of the dead animal smashed by the cannon-shot so scared the one he rode, that he bore on the curb in vain.
"Coward! coward!" I exclaimed, "if God spares me you shall hear of this."
"The fellow is mad or tipsy," said he; "drive on."
"But, sir--sir!" urged the driver in perplexity.
"Villain! you are my evil fate," said I faintly.
"I tell you the fellow is mad--drive on, I command you, or by----, I'll make a prisoner of you!" thundered Guilfoyle, drawing a pistol from his holster, while his shifty green eyes grew white with suppressed passion and malice; so the ambulance-cart was driven on, and I was left to my fate.
Giddy and infuriated by pain and just indignation, I lay under my cold and ghastly load, perishing of thirst, and looking vainly about for assistance.
Scarcely were they gone, when out of the dense thick brushwood, that grew in clumps and tufts over all the valley, there stole forth two Russian soldiers, with their bayonets fixed, and their faces distorted and pale with engendered fanaticism and fury at their defeat. There was a cruel gleam in their eyes as they crept stealthily about. Either they feared to fire or their ammunition was expended, for I saw them deliberately pass their bayonets through the bodies of four or five wounded men, and pin the writhing creatures to the earth. I lay very still, expecting that my turn would soon come. The dead horse served to conceal me for a little; but I panted rather than breathed, and my breath came in gasps as they drew near me; for on discovering that I was an officer, my gold wings and lace would be sure to kindle their spirit of acquisition. I had my revolver in my right hand, and remembered with grim joy that of its six chambers, three were yet undischarged. Just as the first Russian came straight towards me, I shot him through the head, and he fell backward like a log; the second uttered a howl, and came rushing on with his butt in the air and his bayonet pointed down. I fired both barrels. One ball took him right in the shoulder, the other in the throat, and he fell wallowing in blood, but not until he had hurled his musket at me. The barrel struck me crosswise on the head, and I again became insensible. Moonlight was stealing over the valley when consciousness returned again, and I felt more stiff and more helpless than ever. Something was stirring near me; I looked up, and uttered an exclamation on seeing our regimental goat, Carneydd Llewellyn, quietly cropping some herbage among the débris of dead bodies and weapons that lay around me. Like Caradoc, I had made somewhat a pet of it. The poor animal knew my voice, and on coming towards me, permitted me to stroke and pat it; and a strong emotion of wonder and regard filled my heart as I did so, for it was a curious coincidence that this animal, once the pet of Winifred Lloyd, should discover me there upon the field of Inkermann.
After a little I heard a voice, in English, cry, "Here is our goat at last, by the living Jingo!" and Dicky Roll, its custodian--from whose tent it had escaped, when a shot from the batteries broke the pole--came joyfully towards it.
"Roll, Dicky Roll," cried I, "for God's sake bring some of our fellows, and have me taken from here!"
"Captain Hardinge! are you wounded, sir?" asked the little drummer, stooping in commiseration over me.
"Badly, I fear, but cannot tell with certainty."
Dicky shouted in his shrill boyish voice, and in a few minutes some of our pioneers and bandsmen came that way with stretchers. I was speedily freed from my superincumbent load, and very gently and carefully borne rearward to my tent, when it was found that a couple of contusions on the head were all I had suffered, and that a little rest and quiet would soon make me fit for duty again.
"You must be more than ever careful of our goat, Dicky," said I, as the small warrior, who was not much taller than his own bearskin cap, was about to leave me (by the bye, my poor fellow Evans had been cut in two by a round shot). "But for Carneydd Llewellyn, I might have lain all night on the field."
"There is a date scratched on one of his horns, sir," said Roll; "I saw it to-day for the first time."
"A date!--what date?"
"Sunday, 21st August."
"Sunday, 21st August," I repeated; "what can that refer to?"
"I don't know, sir--do you?"
The drummer saluted and left the tent. I lay on my camp-bed weak and feverish, so weak, that I could almost have wept; for now came powerfully back to memory that episode, till then forgotten--the Sunday ramble I had with Winifred Lloyd when we visited the goat, by the woods of Craigaderyn, by the cavern in the glen, by the Maen Hir or the Giant's Grave, and the rocking stone, and all that passed that day, and how she wept when I kissed her. Poor Winifred! her pretty white hand must have engraved the date which the little drummer referred to--a date which was evidently dwelling more in her artless mind than in mine.
After the living were mustered next morning, and burial parties detailed to inter the dead, Caradoc and one or two others dropped into my tent to share some tiffin and a cigar or two with me; for, as Digby Grand has it, "whatever people's feelings may be, they go to dine all the same."
Poor Phil looked as pale and weary, if not more so, than I did. He was on the sick-list also, and had his head tied up by a bloody bandage, necessitated by a pretty trenchant sword-cut, dealt, as we afterwards discovered on comparing notes, by Volhonski just before his recapture.
"I was first knocked over by Cathcart's riderless horse--"
"Poor old Cathcart--a Waterloo man!" said Gwynne, parenthetically. "Well, Phil?"
"It was wounded and mad with terror," continued Caradoc; "then the splinter of a shell struck me on the left leg. Still I limped to the front, keeping the men together and close to the colours, till that fellow you call Volhonski cut me across the head; even my bearskin failed to protect me from his sabre. Then, but not tillthen, when blood blinded me, I threw up the sponge and went to the rear."
"What news of our friends in the 19th?" I asked.
"O, the old story, many killed and wounded."
"Little Tom Clavell?"
"Untouched. Had the staff of the Queen's colours smashed in his hands by a grape shot. Tom is now a bigger man than ever," said Charley Gwynne. "By the way, he was talking of Miss Dora Lloyd last night in my bunk between the gabions, wondering what she and the girls in England think of all this sort of thing."
"Thank God, they know nothing about it!" said Caradoc, lighting a fresh cigar with a twisted cartridge paper; "the hearts of some of them would break, could they see but yonder valley."
"Poor Hugh Price!" observed Charley, with a sigh and a grimace, for he had a bayonet prod in the right arm; "he was fairly murdered in cold blood by one of those Kazan fellows--brained clean by the heel of a musket, ere our bandsmen could carry him off to the hospital tents; but I am thankful the assassin did not escape."
"How?"
"He too was finished the next moment by Evan Rhuddlan."
Other instances of assassination, especially by a Russian major, were mentioned, and execrations both loud and deep were muttered by us all at these atrocities, which ultimately caused Lord Raglan to send a firm remonstrance on the subject to Sebastopol.
"Is it true, Charley, that the Duke of Cambridge has gone on board ship, sick and exhausted?" asked I.
"I believe so."
"And that Marshal Canrobert was wounded yesterday?"
"Yes, and had his horse shot under him, too."
"The poor Coldstreamers were fearfully cut up in the redoubt!"
"I saw eight of their officers interred in one grave this morning, and three of the Grenadier Guards in another."
"Poor fellows!" sighed Caradoc; "so full of life but a few hours ago."
For a time the conversation, being of this nature, languished; it was the reverse of lively, so we smoked in silence. We were all in rather low spirits. This was simply caused by reaction after the fierce excitement of yesterday, and to regret for the friends who had fallen--the brave and true-hearted fellows we had lost for ever. Victorious though we were, we experienced but little exultation; and from my tent door, we saw the burial parties, British and French, hard at work in their shirt sleeves, interring the slain in great trenches, where they were flung over each other in rows, with all their gory clothing and accoutrements, just as they were found; and there they lay in ghastly ranks, their pallid faces turned to heaven, the hope of many a heart and household that were far away from that horrible valley; their joys, their sorrows, their histories, and their passing agonies all ended now, with no tears on their cheek save those with which the hand of God bedews the dead face of the poor soldier.
A ring or a watch, or it might be a lock of hair, taken, or perhaps hastily shorn by a friendly hand from the head of a dead officer as he was borne away to these pits--the head that some one loved so well, hanging earthward heavily and untended--shorn for a widowed wife or anxious mother, then at home in peaceful England, or some secluded Scottish glen; and there his obsequies were closed by the bearded and surpliced chaplain, who stood book in hand by the edge of the ghastly trench, burying the dead wholesale by the thousand; and amid the boom of the everlasting and unrelenting cannonade, now going on at the left attack, might be heard the solemn sentences attuned to brighter hopes elsewhere than on earth, where "Death seemed scoffed at and derided by the reckless bully Life."
"Here is an old swell, with no end of decorations," said a couple of our privates, as they trailed past the body of a Russian officer, one half of whose head had been shot away, and they threw him into a trench where the gray-coats lay in hundreds. The "old swell" proved to be the brave Pulkovnich Ochterlony of Guynde; he who had led his regiment so bravely at Bayazid on the mountain slopes of the Aghri Tagh in Armenia, when, in the preceding August, the Russians had defeated the Turks, and laid two thousand scarlet fezzes in the dust. The episode of meeting with Guilfoyle, his conduct after the action, and the character he had borne as a civilian, formed a topic of some interest for my friends, who were vehement in urging me to denounce this distinguished "cornet" of the wagon-corps to the commander-in-chief. And this I resolved to do so soon as I was sufficiently recovered to write, or to visit Lord Raglan in person.
But to take action in the matter soon proved impossible, as he was taken prisoner the next day by some Cossacks who were scouting near the Baidar Valley, and who instantly carried him off. Some there were in the camp who gave this capture the very different name of wilful desertion, from two reasons; first, he had been gambling to a wonderful extent, and with all his usual success, so that he had completely rooked many of his brother officers, nearly all of whom were deserving men from the ranks; and second, that on the day after he was taken, the Russians opened a dreadful fire of shot and shell on one of our magazines, the exactlocaleof which could only have been indicated to them by some traitor safe within their own lines; and none knew better than I the savage treachery of which he was capable.
It was now asserted that we should not assault Sebastopol until the arrival of fresh reinforcements, which were expected by the way of Constantinople in a few weeks. There were said to be fifteen thousand French, and our own 97th, or Earl of Ulster's, and 99th Lanarkshire coming from Greece, with the 28th from Malta; but that we were likely towinterbefore the besieged city was now becoming pretty evident to the Allies, and none of us liked the prospect, the French perhaps least of all, with the freezing memories of their old Russian war and the retreat from flaming Moscow still spoken of in their ranks; and the cruel and taunting boast of the Emperor Nicholas concerning Russia's two most conquering generals--January and February.
So when the wood for the erection of huts began to arrive at Balaclava, and the winter siege became a prospect that was inevitable, I thought of having a wigwam built for myself and two other officers; and confess that as the season advanced, some such habitation would have been more acceptable than my bell-tent, which, like much more of our warlike gear, had probably lain in some of John Bull's shabby peace-at-any-price repositories since Waterloo, and was all decaying. Hence the door was always closed with difficulty, especially on cold nights, the straps being rotten and the buckles rusty. Add to this, that our camp-bedding and clothes were alike dropping to pieces--the result of constant wet and damp. Already no two soldiers in our ranks were clad alike; they looked like well-armed vagrants, and wore comically-patched clothing, with caps of all kinds, gleaned off the late field or near the burial trenches. Some of the Rifles, in lieu of dark green, were fain to wear smocks made by themselves from old blankets, and leggings made of the same material or old sacking, and many linesmen, who were less fortunate, had to content them with the rags of their uniforms. Happy indeed were the Highlanders, who had no trousers that wore out. Alas for those to whom a flower in the button-hole, kid gloves, glazed boots, and Rimmel's essences, were as the necessaries of life! But ere the wished-for materials formyhut arrived, circumstances I could little have foreseen found me quarters in a very different place. Every other day I was again on duty in the trenches, and without the aid of my field-glass could distinctly see the dark groups of the enemy's outposts, extending from the right up the valley of Inkermann, towards Balaclava.
The rain rendered our nights and days in the trenches simply horrible; as we had to shiver there for four-and-twenty hours, literally in mud that rose nearly to our knees, and was sometimes frozen--especially towards the darkest and earliest hours of the morning, when the cold would cause even strong and brave fellows almost to sob with weakness and debility, while we huddled together like sheep for animal warmth, listening the while, perhaps, for a sound that might indicate a Russian mine beneath us. Those who had tobacco smoked, of course, and shared it freely with less fortunate comrades, who had none; and under circumstances such as ours, great indeed was the solace of a pipe, though some found their tobacco too wet to smoke; then the Russians and the rain were cursed alike. The latter also often reduced the biscuits in our havresacks to a wet and dirty pulp; but hunger made us thankful to have it, even in that condition.
"By Jove," one would say, "how the rain comes down! Awful, isn't it?"
"Won't spoil our uniforms, Bill, anyhow."
"No, lads, they are past spoiling," said I, and often had to add, "keep your firelocks under your greatcoats, men, and look to your ammunition."
And such care was imperatively necessary, for on dark nights especially we never knew the moment when an attempt to scour the trenches might bring on another Inkermann. So we would sit cowering between the gabions, while ever and anon the fiery bombs, often shot at random, came in quick succession through the dark sky of night, making bright and glittering arcs as they sped on their message of destruction, sometimes falling short and bursting in mid-air, or on the earth and throwing up a column of dust and stones, and sometimes fairly into the trenches, scattering death and mutilation among us. Erelong, as the season drew on, we had the snow to add to our miseries, and for many an hour under the lee of a gabion I have sat, half awake and half torpid, watching the white flakes falling, like glittering particles, athwart the slanting moonlight on the pale and upturned faces and glistening eyes of the dead, on their black and gaping wounds, and tattered uniform; for many perished nightly in the trenches, on some occasions over a hundred; and at times and places their bodies were so frozen to the earth, that to remove or tear them up was impossible, so they had to be left where they lay, or be covered uppro tem, with a little loose soil, broken by a sapper's pickaxe. And with the endurance of all this bodily misery, I had the additional grief that no letters ever came from Estelle for me. My dream-castle was beginning to crumble down. I began to feel vaguely that something had been taken out of my life, that life itself was less worth having now, and that the beauty of the past was fading completely away. I had but one conviction or wish--that I had never met, had never known, or had never learned to love her.
THE dreamy conviction or thought with which the last chapter closes, proved, perhaps, but a foreshadowing of that which was looming in the future. On the day after that terrible storm of wind, rain, and hail in the Black Sea, when some five hundred seamen were drowned, and when so many vessels perished, causing an immense loss to the Allies; a terrific gale, such as our oldest naval officers had never seen; when the tents in camp were uprooted in thousands, and swept in rags before the blast; when the horses broke loose from their picketing-ropes, and forty were found dead from cold and exposure; when every imaginable article was blown hither and thither through the air; and when, without food, fire, or shelter, even the sick and wounded passed a night of privation and misery such as no human pen can describe, and many of the Light Division were thankful to take shelter in the old caverns and cells of Inkermann--on the 15th of November, the day subsequent to this terrible destruction by land and water, there occurred an episode in my own story which shall never be forgotten by me.
Singular to say, amid all the vile hurly-burly incident to the storm, a disturbance increased by the roar of the Russian batteries, and a sortie on the French, a mail from England reached our division, and it contained one letter for me.
Prior to my opening it, as I failed to recognise the writing, Phil Caradoc (wearing a blanket in the fashion of a poncho-wrapper, a garment to which his black bearskin cap formed an odd finish) entered my tent, which had just been re-erected with great difficulty, and I saw that he had a newspaper in his hand, and very cloudy expression in his usually clear brown eyes.
"What is up, Phil?" said; "a bad report of our work laid before the public, or what?"
"Worse than that," said he, seating himself on the empty flour-cask which served me for a table. "Can you steel yourself to hear bad news?"
"From home?" I asked.
"Well, yes," said he, hesitating, and a chill came over my heart as I said involuntarily,
"Estelle?"
"Yes, about Lady Cressingham."
"What--what--don't keep me in suspense!" I exclaimed, starting up.
"She is, I fear, lost to you for ever, Hardinge."
"Ill--dead--O, Phil, don't say dead!"
"No, no."
"Thank God! What, then, is the matter?"
"She is--married, that is all."
"Married!"
"Poor Harry! I am deuced sorry for you. Look at this paper. Perhaps I shouldn't have shown it to you; but some one less a friend--Mostyn or Clavell--might have thrown it in your way. Besides, youmusthave learned the affair in time. Take courage," he added, after a pause, during which a very stunned sensation pervaded me; "be a man; she is not worth regretting."
"To whom is she married?" I asked, in a low voice.
"Pottersleigh," said he, placing in my hand the paper, which was aMorning Post.
I crushed it up into a ball, and then, spreading it out on the head of the inverted cask, read, while my hands trembled, and my heart grew sick with many contending emotions, a long paragraph which Phil indicated, and which ran somewhat as follows, my friend the while standing quietly by my side, manipulating a cheroot prior to lighting it with a cinder from my little fire. The piece of fashionable gossip was headed, "Marriage of the Right Hon. the Earl of Aberconway and the Lady Estelle Cressingham;" and detailed, in the usual style of such announcements, that, on a certain--I forget which daynow--the lovely and secluded little village of Walcot, in Hampshire, presented quite a festive appearance in honour of the above-named event, the union of the young and beautiful daughter of the late Earl of Naseby to our veteran statesman; that along the route from the gates of Walcot Park to the porch of the village church were erected several arches of evergreen, tastefully surmounted by banners and appropriate mottoes. Among the former "we observed the arms of the now united noble houses of Potter and Cressingham, and the standards of the Allies now before Sebastopol. The beautiful old church of Walcot was adorned with flowers, and crowded to excess long before the hour appointed. The lovely bride was charmingly attired in white satin, elegantly trimmed with white lace, and wore a wreath of orange blossoms on her splendid dark hair, covered with a long veil,à la juive. The bridesmaids, six in number, were as follows:" but I omit their names as well as the list of gifts bestowed upon the noble bride, who was given away by her cousin, the young earl. "Lord Aberconway, with his ribbon of the Garter, wore the peculiar uniform of the Pottersleigh Yeomanry."
"Rather a necessary addition," said Phil, parenthetically; "his lordship could scarcely have figured in the ribbon alone."
"--Yeomanry, of which gallant regiment he is colonel, and looked hale and well for his years. After a choicedéjeûnerprovided for a distinguished circle, the newly-wedded pair left Walcot Park, amid the most joyous demonstrations, for Pottersleigh Hall, the ancestral seat of the noble Earl, to spend the honeymoon."
"A precious flourish of penny whistles!" said Phil, when I had read, deliberately folded the paper, and thrust it into the fire, to the end that I might not be troubled by the temptation to read it all over again; and then we looked at each other steadily for a minute in silence. Forsaken! I remembered my strange forebodings now, when I had ridden to Walcot Park. They were married--married, she and old Pottersleigh! My heart seemed full of tears, yet when seating myself wearily on the camp-bed, I laughed bitterly and scornfully, as I thought over the inflated newspaper paragraph, and that thesangre azulof the Earl of Aberconway must be thin and blue indeed, when compared with the red blood of my less noble self.
"Come, Harry, don't laugh--in that fashion at least," said Caradoc. "I've some brandy here," he added, unslinging his canteen, "I got from a confiding little vivandière of the 10th Regiment, Infanterie de Ligne. Don't mix it with the waters of Marah, the springs of bitterness, but take a good caulker neat, and keep up your heart.Varium et mutabile semper--you know the last word is feminine. That is it, my boy--nothing more. Even the wisest man in the world, though he dearly loved them, could never make women out; and I fear, Harry, that you and I are not even the wisest men in the Welsh Fusileers. And now as a consolation,
"'And that your sorrow may not be a dumb one,Write odes on the inconstancy of woman.'"
"'And that your sorrow may not be a dumb one,Write odes on the inconstancy of woman.'"
"I loved that girl very truly, very honestly, and very tenderly, Phil," said I, in a low voice, and heedless of how he had been running on; "and she kissed me when I left her, as I then thought and hoped a woman only kissesonceon earth. In my sleep I have had a foreshadowing of this. Can it be that the slumber of the body is but the waking of the soul, that such thoughts came to me of what was to be?"
"The question is too abstruse for me," said Caradoc, stroking his brown beard, which was now of considerable length and volume; "but don't worry yourself, Harry; you have but tasted, as I foresaw you would, of the hollow-heartedness, the puerile usages, the petty intrigues, and the high-born snobbery of those exclusives 'the upper ten thousand.' Don't think me republican for saying so; but 'there is one glory of the sun and another of the moon,' as some one writes; 'and there is one style of beauty among women which is angelic, and another which isnot,' referring, I presume, to beauty of the spirit. We were both fated to be unlucky in our loves," continued Caradoc, taking a vigorous pull at the little plug-hole of his canteen, a tiny wooden barrel slung over his shoulder by a strap; "but do take courage, old fellow, and remember there are other women in the world in plenty."
"But not for me," said I, bitterly.
"Tush! think of me, of my affair--I mean my mistake with Miss Lloyd."
"But she never loved you."
"Neither did this Lady Estelle, now Countess of Aberconway" (I ground my teeth), "love you."
"She said she did; and what has it all come to? promises broken, a plight violated, a heart trod under foot."
"Come, come; don't be melodramatic--it's d--d absurd, and no use. Besides, there sounds the bugle for orders, and we shall have to relieve the trenches in an hour. So take another cigar ere you go."
"She never loved me--never! never! you are right, Phil."
"And yet I believe she did."
"Did!" said I, angrily; "what do you mean now, Caradoc? I am in no mood to study paradoxes."
"I mean that she loved you to a certain extent; but not well enough to sacrifice herself and her--"
"Don't say position--hang it!"
"No--no."
"What then?" I asked, impatiently.
"Her little luxuries, and all that she must have lost by the tenor of her father's will and her mother's bad will, or that she should have omitted to gain, had she married you, a simple captain of the 23rd Foot, instead of this old Potter--this Earl of Aberconway."
"A simple captain, indeed!"
"Pshaw, Harry, be a man, and think no more about the affair. It is as a tale that is told, a song that is sung, a bottle of tolerable wine that has become a marine."
"L'infidelitéducorps, ou l'infidelité duc[oe]ur, I care not now which it was; but I am done with her now and for ever," I exclaimed, with a sudden gust of rage, while clasping on my sword.
"Done--so I should think, when she is married."
"But to such a contemptible dotard."
"Well, there is some revenge in that."
"And she could cast me aside like an old garment," said I, lapsing into tenderness again; "I, to whose neck she clung as she did on that evening we parted. There must have been some trickery--some treachery, of which we are the victims!"
"Don't go on in this way, like a moonstruck boy, or, by Jove, the whole regiment will find it out; so calm yourself, for we go to the front in an hour;" and wringing my hand this kind-hearted fellow, whose offhand consolation was but ill-calculated to soothe me, left for his own tent, as he had forgotten his revolver.
I was almost stupefied by the shock. Could the story be real? I looked to the little grate (poor Evans' contrivance) where the charred remains of theMorning Poststill flickered in the wind. Was I the same man of an hour ago? "The plains of life were free to traverse," as an elegant female writer says, "but the sunshine of old lay across them no longer. There were roses, but they were scentless--fruits, but they were tasteless--wine, but it had lost its flavour. Well, every created being must come to an hour like this, when he feels there is nothing pleasant to the palate, or grateful to the sense, agreeable to the ear, or refreshing to the heart; when man delights him not and woman still less, and when he is sick of the dream of existence."
To this state had I come, and yet I had neither seen nor heard the last of her.
"Estelle--Estelle!" I exclaimed in a low voice, and my arms went out into vacancy, to fall back on the camp-bed whereon I reclined. Abandoned for another; forgotten it might too probably--nay, must be. I stared up, and looked from the triangular door of the tent over the wilderness of zigzags, the sand-bags, and fascines of the trenches; over the gun-batteries to the white houses and green domes of Sebastopol, and all down the long valley of Inkermann, where the graves of the dead lay so thick and where the Russian pickets were quietly cooking their dinners; but I could see nothing distinctly. The whole features of the scenery seemed blurred, faint, and blended, for my head was swimming, my heart was sick, and all, all this was the doing of Estelle! Did no memory of sweet Winifred Lloyd come to me in my desolation of the heart? None! I could but think of the cold-blooded treachery of the one I had lost. My letter! I suddenly remembered it, and tore it open, thinking that the writer, whose hand, as I have said, I failed to recognise, might cast some light upon the matter; and to my increasing bewilderment, it proved to be from Winifred herself. A letter from her, and tome; what could it mean? But the first few words sufficed to explain.
Craigaderyn, . . . .
"My dear Captain Hardinge,--Papa has sprained his whip hand when hunting with Sir Watkins Vaughan, and so compels me to write for him." (Why should compulsion be necessary? thought I.) "You will, no doubt, have heard all about Lady Estelle's marriage by this time. She was engaged to Lord Pottersleighbeforeshe came here, it would seem, and matters were brought to an issue soon after your transport sailed. She wished Dora and me to be among her bridesmaids, but we declined; nor would papa have permitted us, had we desired to be present at the ceremony. She bade me say, if I wrote to you, that you must forgive her, as she is the victim of circumstances; that she shall ever esteem and love you as a brother, and so forth; but I agree with papa, who says that she is a cold-hearted jilt, undeserving of any man's love, and that he 'will never forgive her, even if he lived as long as Gwyllim ap Howel ap Jorwerth ap Tregaian,' the Old Parr of Wales.
"We are all well at Craigaderyn, and all here send you and Mr. Caradoc kindest love. We are quite alone just now, and I often idle over my music, playing 'The Men of Harlech,' and other Welsh airs to papa. More often I wander and ride about the Martens' dingle, by Carneydd Llewellyn's hut--you remember it?--by Glendower's oak, by the Elwey, Llyn Aled, and the rocking stone, and think--think very much of you and poor Mr. Caradoc, and all that might have been." (Pretty pointed this--with which--Phil or me? Could I be uncertain?) "Next to hearing from you, our greatest pleasure at Craigaderyn is to hear about you and our own Welsh Fusileers, of whose bravery at Alma we are so justly proud; so we devour the newspapers with avidity and too often with sorrow. How is my dear pet goat?"
And so, with a pretty little prayer that I might be spared, her letter ended; and hearing the voices of the adjutant and sergeant-major, I thrust it into my pocket, and set off to relieve the trenches, with less of enthusiasm and more recklessness of life than ever before possessed me, and without reflecting that I did not deserve to receive a letter so kind and prayerful as that of the dear little Welsh girl, who was so far away. It was cold that night in the trenches, nathless the Russianfire--yea, cold enough to freeze the marrow in one's bones; but my heart seemed colder still. In the morning, four of my company were found dead between the gabions, without a wound, and with their muskets in their hands. The poor fellows had gone to their last account--slipt away in sheer exhaustion, through lack of food, warmth, and clothing--and this was glory!
I have said that, ere the regular hutting of the army for the winter siege began, quarters were found for me by fate elsewhere; a circumstance which came about in the following manner. All may have heard of the famous solitary ride of Lieutenant Maxse of the Royal Navy, to open a communication between headquarters and Balaclava; and it was my chance to have a similar solitary ride to perform, but, unfortunately, to fail in achieving the end that was in view. One afternoon, on being informed by the adjutant of ours that I was wanted at headquarters, I assumed my sword and sash--indeed, these appurtenances were rarely off us--and putting my tattered uniform in such order as the somewhat limited means of my "toilet-table" admitted, repaired at once, and not without considerable surprise, and some vague misgivings, to the house inhabited by Lord Raglan. I had there to wait for some time, as he was busy with some of the headquarter staff, and had just been holding a conference with certain French officers of rank, who were accompanied by their aides and orderlies. Among them I saw the fat and full-faced but soldier-like Marshal Pelissier, the future Duc de Malakoff, with his cavalry escort and banner; and grouped about the place, or departing therefrom, I saw Chasseurs d'Afrique in sky-blue jackets and scarlet trousers; Imperial Cuirassiers in helmets and corslets of glittering steel; French horse artillery with caps of fur and pelisses covered with red braid. There, too, were many of our own staff officers, with their plumed hats; even the Turkish cavalry escort of some pasha, stolid-looking fellows in scarlet fezzes, were there, their unslung carbines resting on the right thigh; and I saw some of our Land Transport Corps, in red jackets braided with black, loitering about, as if some important movement was on the tapis; but whatever had been suggested, nothing was fated to come of it.
Through the buzz and Babel of several languages, I was ushered at last, by an orderly sergeant, into the little dingy room where the Commander-in-chief of our Eastern army usually held his councils or consultations, received reports, and prepared his plans. The military secretary, the chief of the staff, the adjutant-general, and some other officers, whose uniforms were all threadbare, darned, and discoloured, and whose epaulettes were tattered, frayed, and reduced almost to black wire, were seated with him at a table, which was littered with letters, reports, despatches, telegrams, and plans of Sebastopol, with the zigzags, the harbour, the valley of the Tchernaya, and of the whole Crimea. And it was not without an emotion of interest and pleasure, that I found myself before our old and amiable leader, the one-armed Lord Raglan--he whose kindly nature, charity, urbanity, and queer signature asFitzroy Somerset, when military secretary, had been so long known in our army during the days of peace; and to whom the widow or the orphan of a soldier never appealed in vain.
"Glad to see you, Captain Hardinge," said he, bowing in answer to my salute; "I have a little piece of duty for you to perform, and the chief of the staff" (here he turned to the future hero of the attack on the Redan) "has kindly reminded me of how well you managed the affair of the flag of truce sent to the officer on the Russian left, concerning the major of the 93rd Highlanders."
I bowed again and waited.
"My personal aides," he continued, "are all knocked up or engaged elsewhere just now, and I have here a despatch for Marshal Canrobert, requiring an immediate answer, as there is said to be an insurrection among the Polish troops within Sebastopol, and if so, you will readily perceive the necessity for taking instant advantage of it. At this precise time, the Marshal is at a Tartar village on the road to Kokoz." (Here his lordship pointed to a map of the Crimea.) "It lies beyond the Pass of Baidar, which you will perceive indicated there, and consequently is about thirty English miles to our rear and right. You can neither miss him nor the village, I think, by any possibility, as it is occupied by his own old corps, the 3rd Zouaves, a French line regiment, and four field guns. You will deliver to him this letter, and bring me his answer without delay."
"Unless I fail, my lord."
"As Richelieu says in the play, 'there is no such word as fail!'" he replied, smiling. "But, however, in case of danger, for thereareCossacks about, you must take heed to destroy the despatch."
"Very good, my lord--I shall go with pleasure."
"You have a horse, I presume?"
"I had not thought of that, my lord--a horse, no; here I can scarcely feed myself, and find no use for a horse."
"Take mine--I have a spare one," said the chief of the staff, who was then a major-general and C.B. He rang the hand-bell for the orderly sergeant, to whom he gave a message. Then I had a glass or two of sherry from a simple black bottle; Lord Raglan gave me his missive sealed, and shook my hand with that energy peculiar to the one-armed, and a few minutes more saw me mounted on a fine black horse, belonging to the chief of the staff, and departing on my lonely mission. The animal I rode--round in the barrel, high in the forehead, and deep in the chest, sound on its feet and light in hand--was a thorough English roadster--a nag more difficult to find in perfection than even the hunter or racer; but his owner was fated to see him no more.
I rode over to the lines of the regiment, to let some of our fellows--who all envied me, yet wished me well--know of the duty assigned me. What was it to me whether or notshesaw my name in despatches, in orders, or in the death list? Whether I distinguished myself or died mattered little to me, and less now to her. It was a bitter conviction; so excitement and forgetfulness alike of the past and of the present were all I sought--all I cared for. Caradoc, however, wisely and kindly suggested some alteration or modification in my uniform, as the country through which I had to pass was certainly liable to sudden raids by scouting Cossacks. So, for my red coat and bearskin, I hastily substituted the blue undress surtout, forage cap, and gray greatcoat. I had my sword, revolver, and ammunition pouch at my waist-belt. Perceiving that I was gloomy and sullen, and somewhat low-spirited in eye and bearing, Caradoc and Charley Gwynne, who could not comprehend what had "been up" with me for some time past, and who openly assured me that they envied me this chance of "honourable mention," accompanied me a little way beyond the line of sentries on our right flank.
"Au revoir, old fellow! Keep up your heart and remember all I have said to you," were Phil's parting words, "and together we shall sing and be merry. I hope to keep the 1st of March in Sebastopol, and there to chorus our old mess room song;" and as he waved his hand to me, the light-hearted fellow sang a verse of a ditty we were wont to indulge in on St. David's-day, while Toby Purcell's spurs were laid on the table, and the band, preceded by the goat led by the drum-major with a salver of leeks, marched in procession round it: