General Bounce Part 17

His hand was on the pistol--the lock clicked sharp and true up to the c.o.c.k--one touch of the trigger, and where would Gaston D'Orville have been?--when his eye chanced to light upon the seal of Mary's letter.

It was a casual seal, accidentally selected from a number of others, but the device was somewhat uncommon, and now struck D'Orville with a strange, painful distinctness that surprised him. It was but an eye, surrounded by an obliterated motto; yet it served for an instant to divert his attention; and--on such trifles turns the destiny of man--he laid down the pistol, and took up the letter to examine it more closely. The eye seemed to fascinate him. Turn which way he would, that eye seemed to watch him; steadily, unremittingly, an eye that never closes or slumbers seemed to be above him, around him, all about him; he rose from his chair, and still the eye followed him; he walked to the window, and the eye watched him steadily from out the blue summer sky. A trumpet-note pealed from the rear of the building; it was one of those merry stable-calls so dear to every cavalry soldier's heart. The familiar strain brought D'Orville to himself; the tension of his brain relaxed. As the excitement subsided, the visionary disappeared, and the real resumed its sway over strong nerves and a powerful intellect. Mechanically he put the pistols away, and carefully locked them in their case. Still the eye seemed to be watching him; and a vague feeling of shame began to take possession of him, as the suspicion rose in his mind that there was _cowardice_ at the bottom of the resolution which he had made, as he thought so boldly, a few minutes ago.

D'Orville was a naturally brave man, and the force of habit and education had taught him to scorn anything in the shape of fear as the vilest of all degradation. To betray a woman in his code might be venial enough; but to shrink from aught in earth, or heaven, or h.e.l.l, was a stain upon his honour _not_ to be thought of. In his career of active service he had seen the advantage of courage too often, had discovered too frequently how much more rare a quality it is than is generally supposed, not to appreciate its value and worship it as an idol, although conscious of possessing it himself. It now dawned upon him that suicide was after all but a desperate method of running away--that the sentry had no right to desert his post until regularly relieved. By the by, in Mary's letter was there not something about warfare as compared to religion?--some parallel drawn between the Christian and the soldier? Again he perused that letter carefully, attentively, word for word: but the bitterness was past; the writer was no longer the poor governess, spurning a suitor whom she ought to have been proud to accept, but the high-minded, pure-hearted woman, feeling for his sorrows, appreciating his good qualities, and pointing out to him those consolations which for her could take the sting from earth's most envenomed shafts. One or two expressions reminded him of his mother--the mother he had loved and lost as a boy. Again he seemed to see that gentle lady bending her graceful head over him, as she spoke of other worlds, and other duties, and other pleasures totally unconnected with this lower earth. He remembered the very gown she wore; he seemed to hear her low, sweet, serious tones, as she called him "my darling boy," and insisted on those miraculous stories which she was herself fully persuaded were truths, and which the boy drank in, childlike, nothing doubting. Ah! what if they should be true after all? What if the whole history should be something more than a legend of priestcraft, an old woman's fable? D'Orville had thought but little on such matters; he had heard them discussed by clever men of opposite opinions, and it never struck him that either side could demonstrate very satisfactorily the futility of the adversary's arguments; but he was wise enough to know that the boasted human intellect has but a narrow horizon, that "the two-foot dwarf" sees little beyond the garden-wall, and that "there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy." Here were the only two beings he had ever _respected_ in the world, shaping their whole conduct, as they formed all their opinions, upon circ.u.mstances which they seemed to believe facts, as firmly as they believed in their own ident.i.ty. Well, what of that? These might be facts or they might not. But stay: was there not something wanting in the whole scheme and const.i.tution of life, as he had tried it? Could any man have had better chances of being happy here than he had had? Was he happy? Was he satisfied? Was there not always a shadow somewhere athwart the sunlight? Was there not always a craving for something more? As a boy, he longed to be an officer; no sooner was that distinction gained than he longed for fame, first in the boyish arena of mere field-sports, then in the daring exploits of real war. Had he not for a time drunk his fill of both? and was his thirst quenched? Could he sit down, "_uti conviva satur_," and say "Enough"? No, no, he knew it too well. Then came the daily craving for excitement--that longing for something unattainable, which, more than all besides, argues the inferiority of our present state--the necessity for a _to-morrow_, even when the sun of to-day has for us set its last. Well, had he not wooed excitement in all her haunts? Had he not gambled and raced and speculated, and shone in the world of fashion, and sunned himself in the smiles of Beauty? And had not the G.o.ddess ever fleeted away when just within his grasp? Was not his heart still empty, his desire unslaked? Even had he not endured this disappointment--had the only woman he really loved consented to be his--did he not feel in his innermost soul, was he not forced to confess to himself, that still there would have been a want?--still would to-morrow have been the goal, still to-day but the journey. Yes, disguise it how he might, deaden his sensations with what opiates he would, he could not but own that hitherto his world had been "stale, flat, and unprofitable." Had he not been so weary of life, that he had voluntarily, even now, been within the wag of a finger of laying it down, to go he cared not whither, so as it was anywhere but here?

Then if there was nothing in the present that could satisfy his soul, might he not presume that there was a future for which it was specially created and intended? Yes, there might be something to live for after all--there might be a career in which to win more than fame and more than honour--which at any rate should satisfy those longings and aspirations here, and might be the portal to such a glorious hereafter as he could not even picture to his world-wearied imagination--and if so, what scheme so probable, what religion so well supported by historical proof and logical deduction, as that which he had learnt at his mother's knee? One by one, thoughts came back to him that had lain dormant for more than thirty years; one by one he recalled the miraculous facts, the touching sufferings that had awed his boyish imagination and moved his boyish heart. For the first time for more than thirty years, he thought as a reality of the Great Example who never quailed nor flinched, nor shrank one jot from His superhuman task. Did he admire courage? There was One who had faced the legions of h.e.l.l, unaided and alone, with but human limbs and a human heart to support Him through the dread encounter. Did he admire constancy? There was One who voluntarily endured the obloquy of the world, the agonies of the most painful death, and moved not an eyelash in complaint or reproach. Did he admire self-denial--that most heroic of all heroism? What had that One given up to walk afoot through this miserable world, with such a prospect as the close of His earthly career!--and for whom?--even for him amongst the rest--for him who till this very moment had never thanked Him, never acknowledged Him, never so much as thought of Him. The strong man's heart was touched, the well was unsealed in the desert, and, as the tears gushed from his unaccustomed eyes, Gaston D'Orville bent the knees that had not bent for half a lifetime; and can we doubt that he was forgiven?

In four-and-twenty hours D'Orville was laid upon his small camp-bedstead in a brain fever. The excitement of his late life; the reaction consequent on his abandonment of his awful resolution; the strong revulsion of feeling, into which we have no right to pry, had been too much for a const.i.tution already shaken by years of dissipation and hard service beneath an Indian sun; and for days together life and death trembled in the balance so evenly that it seemed a single grain might turn the scale. And of all his comrades, who was it that watched at his bedside with the attention, almost the tenderness, of a woman--sitting up by him at night, giving him his medicine, smoothing his pillow, and tending him with a brother's love?--who but Lacquers! the unmeaning, empty dandy--the fellow with but two ideas, his dress and his horses--the ignorant, grown-up schoolboy that could scarcely write his own name; but, for all that, the staunch, unflinching comrade, the true-hearted, generous friend.

When the lamp, after flickering and fading, and well-nigh dying out altogether, began once more to flame up pretty steadily, and the Major, gaunt and grim, with nearly white moustaches, and a black skull-cap, and haggard hollow cheeks, began to experience the superhuman appet.i.te of convalescence, and the wonderful longing for open air and country scenery, and such simple natural pleasures, which invariably comes over those who have been near the confines of Life and Death, as though they brought back with them from that mysterious borderland the earlier instincts of childhood; when, in short, the Major was getting better, and could sit at his window and see the white charger go to exercise, or the regiment get under arms below, many and long were the conversations between him and Lacquers on the thoughts and feelings which almost insensibly had sprung up in each of them. Lacquers did not conceal his disappointment as regarded Blanche.

Poor fellow, he had made her an honest, disinterested offer, and it had not entered into his calculations that he might be repulsed.

"I know I'm not good enough for her, D'Orville," the humbled dandy would sigh, as he poured his griefs into his friend's ear. "I'm not very 'blue,' and that sort of thing, though I suppose I've got natural talents just like other fellows; but I stood by her when all the rest gave way, and I was the only one amongst 'em that really liked her for herself and not for her money. Why, you yourself, D'Orville" (the Major winced), "you yourself never made up to her after you heard of the smash, nor Mount Helicon, nor Uppy, nor any of 'em; to be sure she had refused Uppy; do you remember how glum he looked that night at 'The Peace'? but I don't believe he'd have proposed to her ten days later. She might have liked me much better when she came to know me--mightn't she? and I would have read history and grammar, and Latin and Greek, and that, and made myself a scholar for her sake. I can't help feeling it, Major, and that's the truth. She's the only woman I ever really cared for; and what have I to live for now?"

Then it was that D'Orville showed himself an altered man--then it was that the thoughts which had first flashed across him when he contemplated self-destruction, and had since been progressively developing themselves on a bed of sickness, bore their fruit, as such thoughts will sooner or later where a man has a heart to feel or a brain to reason. He explained to Lacquers the views he now entertained of life, its duties, and its charms--how different from those on which he had hitherto acted! He pointed out to him the utter insufficiency of everything on earth to const.i.tute happiness, when unconnected with a grand object and a future state of being. He talked well, for he was in earnest; and he reasoned closely, for his was a penetrating intellect, ever ready to strip at a moment's notice the illusive from the real. He had all his life been an acute man--saw through a fallacy in an instant, and, to do him justice, never hesitated to expose it:

"Called knavery, knavery--and a lie, a lie."

Such a mind, when convinced of truth, is doubly strong; and Lacquers listened, much admiring, though, it must be confessed, not always quite understanding the deductions of his mentor. Yet was he too, ere long, stirred with a n.o.ble ambition, a desire to fulfil his destiny in life with some credit to himself and benefit to his fellow-creatures--a longing to be useful in his generation--to feel that he was part of the great scheme, and, however humble might be his task, yet that its fulfilment was a fair condition of his very existence, and was conducive to the well-being of the whole.

"But what can I do, however willing I am?" he would say. "An officer of hussars cannot be a Methodist preacher, or even a moral philosopher, without doing more harm than good. If I thought I had talents for it, and eloquence and learning, I'd sell out to-morrow, and go to South Africa as a missionary, or anywhere else--Gold Coast, Sierra Leone--anything rather than be a useless drone c.u.mbering the earth in a life without an aim."

"Not the least occasion for that," replied D'Orville.

"Fortune--accident--call it rather Providence--has placed you in a certain station, and it is fit for you to fulfil the duties of that station without repining or restlessness, because, forsooth, it does not happen to square exactly with some vague notions of your own. You may do a deal of good, though you _are_ an officer of hussars. Why should a soldier be necessarily an irreligious or an immoral man? It is not his profession that should bear the blame, however convenient it may be to make the red coat a scapegoat. We must have troops. We cannot be secure from war. Do you suppose a man leading a squadron gallantly against an enemy, doing the best he can for all--cool, confident, and daring--is not fulfilling his duty every whit as well as he who is on his knees in the rear praying for his success the while? Our calling bids us look death in the face oftener than other men, and that very fact should give us trust in Him on whom alone we can depend at the last gasp. We are always nearer His presence than those who are not so exposed: and, for my part, I think it a proud and honourable privilege. Then, in barracks, may you not improve the _morale_ of all about you in a thousand ways? You may look to the bodily well-being of your troop. Why?--first, because it's your duty; and secondly, because it's a pleasure to you, and a credit to have them smart and clean and well-disciplined! Why should you totally neglect their minds? They, too, have a future as well as a present.

The one is not less a reality than the other. Ay, it's startling enough, because people slur it over, and don't talk of it, or allow themselves to think of it; but it's none the less true for all that.

You may shut your own eyes as close as you please, but you won't prevent the sun from shining just the same. I grant you that the task is a difficult one. So much the more credit in fulfilling it, by an effort that does require some sacrifice and some self-denial. I have lived forty years in this world for _myself_--the careless, thoughtless life that a tolerably sagacious dog might have led--and I have never been really happy. Come what may, I hope to do so no more.

I have found out the true secret that turns everything to gold, and I don't grudge a share of my good fortune to my friends."

"You're right, D'Orville," said Lacquers, shaking the Major by the hand; "you're right, though I never looked at it in that light before.

I see that I have an object in life--that I have a task to perform; and I see--no, I don't see my way quite through it; but I trust I shall have courage and patience to do the best I can. D'Orville, I feel happier than I did. I'm not much of a book-worm, and I can't quite express what I feel; but, old fellow, you talked of exchanging, and going to India; well, I'll go too--we'll get appointed into the same corps--I'm good enough to be broiled in that country, at any rate--and I'll never leave you, old boy, for you're the best friend I ever had!" Little Blanche Kettering might have done worse than take poor, ignorant, good-looking, blundering, warm-hearted Lacquers.

CHAPTER XXI

HOSPITAL

DOWN AMONGST THE DEAD MEN--CHARLIE'S PRESERVER--A SICK MAN'S VISIONS--MENTAL PROSTRATION--THE DYING MAN'S GUESTS--DISCHARGED WITHOUT A PENSION--LEADEN HOURS--HOW'S THE PATIENT?--"WELCOME, FRANK"--HOMEWARD BOUND

We left Cousin Charlie, some chapters back, in a sufficiently unpleasant predicament. His arm broken by a bullet, a Kaffir's a.s.sagai through his shoulder, stunned moreover by a crushing blow from the b.u.t.t-end of a musket (Birmingham-made, and sold in the gross at nineteen shillings apiece), not to mention a roll of some fifty feet down an almost perpendicular ravine, the boy lay senseless, and to all appearance dead. The tide of war rolled far away from the _kloof_ that had been defended so fiercely, and won with such loss of life; and ere the young lancer had recovered his senses, an outlying band of the enemy, driven from their fastnesses far on the right, wound stealthily through this very ravine in full retreat. Fortunately they had that day got such a taste of English discipline as made them loth to improve any further acquaintance with "Brown Bess"; and although they stripped the lad from head to foot, believing him to be stone-dead, they had no time to stay and practise those horrid mutilations with which these demons signalise their triumph over a fallen foe. Not a shred of clothing, however, did they leave on the body; even his boots, the most useless articles conceivable to a Kaffir, were carried off as the spoils of war. For aught we know, to this day Charlie's smart jacket forms the ceremonial dress of some burly chief. Very tight, and worn with long, black legs, _au naturel_, it is doubtless a most imposing costume. Be that how it may, the white man was left naked and weltering in his wounds, whilst the routed party, who had wasted but little time in stripping him, made the best of their way to a more respectful distance from the British posts. Charlie never stirred for hours. The moon rose, and bathed in her cold light the crisp, rugged scenery and the ghastly accessories of that fatal glen.

Here, a stunted jagged bush threw its smoke-blackened twigs athwart the clear night sky, and beneath it, bleached by the moonlight, lay some grinning corpse that had dragged itself there to die, whilst a clean musket-barrel shining in those pale beams showed it had been a British soldier when morning dawned. There, hurled in a fantastic heap, lay the swarthy bodies of some half-dozen Kaffirs, one balanced on the verge of a blank bare cliff, his arms and head dangling, limp and helpless, over the brink--his comrades piled above him, as they fell in their desperate efforts to escape. Yonder, where the moonbeams glimmered through the twinkling foliage, frosting the leaves with silver, and shedding peace and beauty over the unholy scene, a Fingoe auxiliary stirred and groaned in his last mortal agony, his dusky skin welling forth its very life-drops on the trampled sward. Shout and curse and clanging blow, all the riot and confusion of the strife, had long since died away. The writhing Fingoe groaned out his soul with a last gasping sigh, and save for the short yelp of a famished jackal in the adjoining thicket, silence slept upon the glen, and Night shared with Death her dominion over that blood-stained, devastated spot.

Charlie came to himself--not that he knew where he lay, or was conscious of aught save a numbed sense of pain, and a confused stupefied idea, first that he was in bed, then that he was on the deck of a ship, heaving and plunging over the rolling waters. As sensation gradually returned, an intolerable thirst, so fierce as to amount to positive agony, began to rage in his dry, choking throat; then, with that unaccountable instinct to rise which is the first impulse of a man who is knocked down, he made a sort of abortive, staggering effort to get to his feet, it is needless to say in vain. The blood welled freshly from his wounds, the branches overhead spun round him, and he was again insensible. But the effort saved his life: the slight movement was seen, and in another instant a dark Fingoe girl was kneeling over him, with her hand upon his heart. The poor young savage had been stealing distractedly through the glen, looking for the body of her lover. She had missed him from his hut at nightfall. She knew there had been a severe engagement, and, like a very woman, faithful even unto death, she had glided away in the darkness to seek him out, succour him if wounded, and mourn over him if succour should come too late. It was a woman that alone recognised the body of the last of the Saxon kings, on the fatal field of Hastings. When earl and thane and liegeman saw but a mangled, mutilated corpse, Edith the swan-necked knew her lover and her lord. Keen was the eye, unerring was the instinct of affection, and Edith's fame lives in history and song; but our poor Fingoe girl was but a nameless savage, a wretched, ignorant heathen, debased almost to the level of the brute; yet she, too, had a woman's heart, and cherished a woman's love--she, too, recognised her barbarian lover, gashed and defaced by a.s.sagai and war-club, and it was whilst she wept and moaned over his mangled remains that her eye caught the stir of Charlie's white body, and her heart, softened by grief, bid her, woman-like, again come to the a.s.sistance of the suffering and the helpless. She threw a _kaross_ over his naked body.

Light-footed as an antelope, she darted to a neighbouring spring, shuddering the while--for that, too, was polluted with blood--and returned with a skin of the clear, cold water. She bathed his brow and temples--she poured the grateful drops between his blackened lips--and as he groaned and stirred once more, she knew there was life in him yet. The huts of her countrymen (half-armed auxiliaries to the British force) were at no great distance, and, savage as she was, the maiden would not leave a fellow-creature, particularly such a good-looking one as Charlie, to die like a dog without a.s.sistance. Her shapely limbs bore her rapidly back to her people. Alas! there was scarce a family amongst them that had not lost a member, and she soon returned with four stalwart Fingoes, who carried Charlie's senseless frame to their encampment, where they tended him with such knowledge of surgery as they possessed, far more efficient, despite of sundry charms and superst.i.tions, than our College of Surgeons at home would easily believe. There were other wounded soldiers in the encampment, and Charlie, though not recognised, was judged to be an officer, and met with all the attention from these poor fellows that they could spare from their own sufferings. But it was to the Fingoe girl that, under Providence, he owed his life. Night and day she tended him like a child, and when at length a convoy arrived from head-quarters with a train of waggons to carry off all the sick to Fort Beaufort, it was with difficulty the poor savage maiden was dissuaded from accompanying him even into the distant settlements, and long and wistfully she gazed after the waggon that bore her white charge out of her sight.

Charlie had not yet recovered his consciousness, and had scarcely spoken; and when he did, muttered but a few incoherent words; yet the girl had saved his life, and nursed him in his agony, and it was hard to give him up!

When our hapless lancer really came to himself he was lying on a comfortable bed, with all the necessary appliances and alleviations for sickness, nowhere so efficient as in an English military hospital.

His first sensation was one of pleasing languor, almost of luxury, in the new feeling of complete repose; for, in the Fingoe hut, and yet more in the jolting, slow-moving waggon, his powerless limbs had never been able to dispose themselves in _real_ rest, and the change was positive delight. He was too weak to take any note of time or place--he was conscious of but one feeling, that of bodily ease; and he could no more undergo the mental exertion of recalling past events, or judging from present circ.u.mstances, than he could play the physical one of getting out of bed. He knew he was bandaged--he knew he had not strength to stir a finger were it to save his life, nor did he wish to do so--he knew he was lying between clean sheets, in a bed, somewhere; it seemed strange, for he had not been in a bed for so long, and he was quite satisfied to take things as they were, and gaze drowsily upon the wall, and hear a stealthy footfall in the room, far too languid to turn his head, and so drop off to sleep again quite contentedly. And when the surgeon of the Light-Bobs--a gallant fellow, whose only fault was that he never would keep his confounded lint and bandages and tourniquet far enough in the rear--saw his patient in this second slumber, and listened to his soft breathing, and placed his finger on the fluttering, scarce-perceptible pulse, he stroked his chin with a self-satisfied air, and smiled, and muttered to himself, "He'll do now, _I think_--not above twenty--young const.i.tution--never drank, I'll be bound. It's been touch-and-go; but I believe now he'll pull through."

So Charlie got over the crisis, and slept, and struggling hard with the ebbing tide, little by little gained ground and footing, and inch by inch, as it were, reached the sh.o.r.e.

As consciousness returned with returning strength, memory began to unravel its tangled skein of dim fantastic recollections, and by degrees the march, the engagement, the last brilliant charge, separated themselves from the ghastly moonlight glen, the dark phantom-shape that had saved him, the strange huts of the savages, and above all those excruciating sufferings in that jolting waggon. But with convalescence came the weary longing to be well, the restlessness of protracted confinement, the loathing of those tedious, monotonous days--their only event that unvarying meal--their only amus.e.m.e.nt to gaze upon the sunlight brightening that white-washed wall. How Charlie pined to feel the free, fresh breeze of out-of-doors; how horse and hound and field-day, the bounding charger, the jovial march, the cheerful mess, seemed to mock him with their phantom-like delights, as his body lay pinioned and helpless on that loathed couch, and his mind went soaring away in vision after vision of waving woods and rugged hills, and, above all, the glorious summer air, that he would fain have bathed in like a lark--have drunk into his very being as the true _elixir vitae_!

Of serious thoughts as to his late proximity to another world, of grat.i.tude for his narrow escape from death, we fear we must confess our patient was altogether innocent. The sick-bed is the last place in the world to promote such grave reflections: and those who trust to an illness as a means of making them better and wiser men, will generally find that they have leant upon a broken reed. The exhaustion of physical pain acts little more upon the body than the mind. The latter partakes of the languor which pervades its tenement, and has generally but strength to pine in helpless inactivity, and gaze idly on the balance of life and death, with scarce a wish even to turn the scale. If a man never reflects when well, still less can he expect to have power to do so when sick; and many a death-bed, we fear, has owned its tranquillity to the mere prostration, intellectual as well as physical, which quiets the departing sufferer. 'Tis an uncomfortable notion; but we hold it too true, nevertheless. Charlie had an instance in his very next neighbour, a gallant private of the Light-Bobs, who occupied the adjoining bed to our young lancer. He, too, had been shot down in the fatal ravine, had been nursed in the Fingoe huts, and forwarded to Fort Beaufort in the waggon-train. For a time his wounds went on favourably enough, and he seemed to have a far better chance of recovery than poor Charlie. But he had been a drunkard in early life; his const.i.tution was sapped with strong liquor; something unintelligible "supervened," as the medical officer said; and the man was doomed--doomed, as surely as if he had been sentenced to death by court-martial.

In the earliest stages of his own recovery, Charlie would lie and listen to the poor fellow's ravings, till he shuddered at the wild imaginings of that delirious brain. Now the man would fancy himself back in England, amongst the low haunts of vice and debauchery which seemed most familiar to his mind. He would shout out ribald toasts and drinking-songs, and roar fierce oaths of mingled pain and exultation, till he roused every pale inmate of the ward. Then would a frightful reaction take place, and he would lie still as a corpse, hand and foot, but mutter and roll his eyes and gnash his teeth, like one possessed. He peopled the place, too, with frightful apparitions; amongst which a pale girl, with her throat cut from ear to ear, and the enemy of mankind, seemed, by his expressions, to be the most frequent visitors. With these he would hold long conversations, ludicrous even through their horrors, and would display much ingenuity in their imaginary questions, to which he poured forth voluble answers of abuse and blasphemy. Of his satanic disputant he generally seemed to get the better, by his own account; but the mutilated girl always brought on a fit of trembling that was frightful to behold. Once, after a visit from this spectre, which he detailed at considerable length, he tore all the bandages from his wounds, and was obliged to be pinioned in a strait-waistcoat. After this he got quieter, not so much from the restraint as the weakness and loss of blood consequent on his paroxysm. He would listen with marked attention to the chaplain, who visited him daily; and when the good man was gone, would mumble out incoherent words of repentance and amendment; but could never fix his mind upon their meaning for two seconds at a time. Then he would give it up in despair, and would shout and sing again more boisterously than ever. At length it became evident, even to Charlie's enfeebled perceptions, that he was sinking fast; and as the sand of life ebbed more and more rapidly, the dying man became more and more composed and tranquil, till he promised to make as peaceful an ending as ever did glorified saint in Popish calendar. The eye lost its unnatural glitter, the pain ceased entirely, and the pulse became quiet and regular--but oh, so weak for that active, muscular frame!

The youngest tyro would not have been deceived by the change; it was obvious that his very hours were numbered; yet now, for the first time, he seemed to recognise place and people--called Charlie by his name, and asked Mr. Kettering after "the reg'ment," and whether the old major was shot dead when he forced the river so smartly, and the colour-sergeant (he never could abide that colour-sergeant) lost his life in the very middle of the stream; then he remembered how Charlie had led the a.s.sault, and from that time he seemed to confide in him, and whispered to him his plans, and his little spites against his comrades, and his longing for his old life; for he made no doubt of getting well. And so he slept for a few hours (the doctor came in and looked at him asleep, and shook his head), and woke about noon, and asked for something to drink; but his lips were quite black, and Charlie saw that he was somehow changed even before the man told him he was conscious of it himself.

"It's all up, Mr. Kettering," said he, in a husky whisper, "it's all up with me this turn. What's the time o' day now? Twelve o'clock? I shall be a dead man at sundown;" and then he told Charlie how he had received a warning, and he knew there was no hope "_here_ nor yet _yonder_," he said, with a ghastly smile; for he had dreamt that he was standing sentry on a rampart over against the ocean, and the sun was setting in a golden haze, and the waters gleamed like molten gold; and he laid his firelock down, and rested and gazed with delight upon the scene; but a girl rose from the waves, far off between him and the sunset, and wrung the water from her long black hair, and pressed it with both hands to her throat, and seemed to staunch a ghastly wound that gaped at him even at that distance, and ever the blood flowed and flowed, and the sea became crimson, and the sun went down in blood-red streaks, and the sky darkened to the colour of blood, and everywhere there was blood, blood, nothing but blood; and the girl screamed to him in agony, saying, "Pray! pray!" and he knew that if he could speak a prayer before the sun went down he might be saved; and he strove and gasped, but he was choked; and still the sun dipped and dipped, and a fiery rim only was left above the sea, and still he could not speak; and it went down too; and the girl tossed up her arms with a shriek, and all was dark; and then with a convulsive effort he cried aloud, and his mouth was full of blood--and so he awoke. "And I shall never stand sentry nor carry a firelock again," he said; and from that time he spoke no more, but folded his hands and lay quiet, as if asleep.

The afternoon shadows lengthened on the hospital-wall--the evening drew near--at half-past six the dying man muttered a request for drink--at seven the sun went down, and he was dead!--peacefully, quietly he parted, like a child going to its rest. Charlie never knew it was all over till the doctor came; and they took him away and buried him, and there was a vacant place by Charlie's bedside; and so Her Majesty lost a soldier, and a recruit was enlisted and sent to the _depot_ at home, and his place in the ranks was filled, and he was forgotten, just as peers, poets, conquerors, sovereigns, and sages are forgotten, only a little sooner--for the grim Reaper makes no distinction, and the monarch oak of the forest perishes as surely as the weed by the wayside.

Week after week Charlie lay in that weary bed. One by one patients became convalescents, and convalescents went back to their duty, and still he was not allowed to move. A fresh action was fought, and more wounded were brought in, and yet Charlie was unfit for duty--in fact, was unable to rise. The doctor was hopeful and good-humoured, as doctors generally are, not being invalids themselves, and told him "he was going on most satisfactorily, and all that was wanted was a little time, and patience and quiet;" but at length even he hinted at sick-leave, and talked of a return to England, and the necessity of care and avoidance of exposure to weather, even after the wounds were healed; and Charlie's dearest hopes of rejoining his regiment, and tasting once more the excitement of warfare, were dashed to the ground. The kind doctor had written to his patient's friends in England, and a.s.sured them of his safety--on the rejoicings thereby created at Newton-Hollows we need not now enlarge--so that all anxiety on that score had pa.s.sed away, and there was nothing to do now but to get well and embark for home. What a tedious process that same getting well was! Charlie began to pine, and grow dispirited and nervous. He had no friends, no one to speak to but the doctor; and the gallant boy, who would have faced a whole tribe of Kaffirs single-handed and never moved an eyelash, was now so completely weakened and broken down that he would lie and weep for hours, like a girl, he knew not why. At last he began to give way to despondency altogether. One day in particular, when the ward was again emptied of its recovered inmates, and the boy was left quite alone in that long, dull room, he lost heart entirely. "I shall never get well now," he said aloud in his despair; "I shall never see the bright blue sky again, nor the regiment, nor Blanche, nor Mrs. Delaval, nor any of them--sinking, sinking, day by day, and scarcely twenty! 'Tis a hard lot to die like a dog, in such a hole as this. Ah! Frank always talked of death as the ever-present certainty, and the next world will be a happier one than this, I do believe, though this has been a happy one to me. I used to think I shouldn't mind dying the least--no more I should, in the free, open air, leading a squadron, with the men hurraing behind me; or falling neck and crop into a gra.s.s-field with 'Haphazard,' alongside the leading hounds." (Charlie was barely twenty, and to him the hunting-field was just such an arena of glory as was the tilt-yard to a knight of the olden time.) "No, I could die like a man at home, but to rot away here in a hospital, thousands of miles from merry England, without a friend near me, it's hard to bear it pluckily, as it ought to be borne. Frank! Frank! I want some of your dogged resolution now.

If I could see your dear old face once more, and shake you by the hand, I should be a different fellow. Ah! it's too late now; I shall never see you again, and you will hardly know what became of me. But you won't forget me, old boy, will you?" and poor Charlie gave way once more, and turned his wet cheek down upon his pillow, as he heard the doctor's step along the pa.s.sage; for he was ashamed of his weakness, though he knew it was but the effect of his wounds. Hark!

there is some one with him; the doctor is bringing a visitor to see him. He knows that firm, heavy tread. Is it one of his brother-officers?--how kind of them! No, that is no dragoon's step: it is familiar, too, and yet he cannot remember where he has heard it. Is he dreaming? Over the doctor's shoulder peers a well-known face, embrowned with travel, but with the old kind, frank expression beaming through those manly features. In another instant Charlie is clasping Frank Hardingstone's strong hand in his own two emaciated ones, and after an abortive "How are ye, old fellow?" and a vain effort to laugh off his emotion, is sobbing once more like a woman or a child.

"So you came out all the way from England on purpose to look after me," said he, when the first burst of feeling had subsided; "how like you, old Frank--how kind of you!--and what did they say about me at home? and wasn't Blanche sorry for me when she thought I was killed?

and did Uncle Baldwin and--and Mrs. Delaval read the dispatch? and where are they all now? You know I'm to have sick-leave, and we'll go back together. When does the doctor think I shall be able to sail?

Frank, he's a shocking m.u.f.f; I've been in this bed for thirteen weeks, but I shall get up to-day--of course he'll let me get up to-day;" and so Charlie ran on, and Frank was soon forcibly withdrawn from the patient, whose over-excitement was likely to be as prejudicial as his late despondency; but the maligned doctor whispered to him as he went out, "Your arrival, sir, has done more for my patient than the whole pharmacopoeia: he'll be well now in a fortnight."

The doctor was right. From that day Charlie began to mend. Many a long hour Frank sat by his bedside, and talked to him of home, and of his prospects, and of his cousin (honest Frank), and settled over and over again their plans of departure, to which Charlie was never tired of listening; and after every one of these visits the boy's appet.i.te was better and his sleep sounder, and in a few days he got out of bed, and then he was moved into the hospital-sergeant's room, who readily vacated his apartment for the young officer; and then he got out on Frank's arm into the summer air, for which he had so pined--pleasant it was, but yet not _so_ pleasant as he thought it would be, when he lay in that dull ward; and then his voracity became something ridiculous, and at the end of about three weeks Frank helped him up the companion-way of the _Phlegethon_, 200 horse-power, homeward-bound; and although wasted to a skeleton, his large eyes looked bright and clear, and now that he was really on his way to England he was well.

CHAPTER XXII

THE WIDOW

FAMILY ARRANGEMENTS--MOTHER AND SON--SEPARATE INTERESTS--A WIDOW'S DAY-DREAMS--FEMALE CONFIDENCES--THE RULE OF CONTRARY

"My dear Mount, I think, after all, I shall spend the winter at Bubbleton," said Lady Mount Helicon to her hopeful son, as they sat one sunny afternoon in her well-furnished drawing-room. London was emptying fast; a few of the lingerers still contrived to keep up a semblance of gaiety, and those who stayed on, like Lady Mount Helicon, because they had no country-houses to go to, voted it _so_ much pleasanter now the crush and hurry of the season was over. But even these could not conceal from themselves that they were but "the last roses of summer," that "all the world" was rushing out of town, and they had no business here any longer. The water-carts were getting very slack, and the dust unbearable; the Ride and the ring were fitting haunts for a hermit, and the Serpentine was gloomy as the Styx. Dinadam was inhaling appet.i.te in his deer-forest--Long-Acre was tempting Providence in his yacht--Mrs. Blacklamb was breaking hearts at Cowes--ministers had celebrated their many defeats during the session by their annual fish-dinner at Greenwich--and grouse were advertised at five shillings a brace in Leadenhall Market. Yes, the season was over, and Mount would not have been here instead of in Perthshire had it not been for the absolute necessity of his writing his autograph in person for the ulterior disappointment of a Hebrew, and his own immediate benefit. He was an excellent son when he had nothing better to do, and now sat for hours with his mother and talked over his own plans and hers with the most perfect open-heartedness.

"Bubbleton," said he, "mother, and why Bubbleton?"

"Can't you see, Mount?" replied her ladyship; "Bubbleton is within visiting distance of Newton-Hollows."

"What then?" rejoined her son; "I thought you had made up your mind to drop them when you found they were of no use."

"So I should, my dear," confessed the diplomatic lady, "if things had turned out as I expected; but don't you see that the game is not yet half played out? That unfortunate boy who went off to the Cape has been severely wounded; you know they put on mourning for him, thinking he was dead; and it is quite on the cards that he may not recover; he never looked strong; then our little friend is as great an heiress as ever; and I am sure, with _your_ eloquence, you could easily persuade her that it was jealousy, or pique, or something equally flattering, that made you so remiss for a time, and it would be all _on_ again.

Besides, I have been making a good many inquiries lately in a roundabout way, and I find that, even if the 'beau cousin' should return safe and sound, there will be a large sum of ready money to which the girl will be ent.i.tled when she comes of age. You want money, Mount, I fancy?"

"Not a doubt of it, my dear mother," replied he; "this has been my worst year for a long time, and you know I never holloa before I'm hurt. Goodwood _ought_ to have pulled me through, if 'Sennacherib'

hadn't failed at the last stride. I am afraid to say, and I can believe you had rather not hear, what that odd six inches cost me. No, mother, I can't go on much longer; I don't see my way a bit. If a general election comes I shall have to bolt."