One of the Six Hundred: A Novel
forget the new world that is opened to you--a respect for your brother
officers and soldiers, and a kindly feeling for the _old number_ of the
corps; it lasts with life.
But that ghastly trench in the green valley, and the pale, moustached,
and upturned faces! God bless all who lie there, and green be the
graves of our people in the Crimea!
It was on the second day of the new year that we--Pitblado and I--sailed
in H.M.S. _Blazer_ for Southampton, with many other invalids, and, as we
steamed round the Seraglio Point, and stood away into the Sea of
Marmora, I thought of that day twelvemonth, when I was at Calderwood
Glen, sharing the contents of my good old uncle's ancestral
wassail-bowl. How much had passed since then!
Trebitski's Cossacks had taken the miniature, the ring; even Louisa's
lock of hair was gone too, and luckily now I had nothing to remind me of
the beautiful traitress by whom I had been galled, befooled, hoodwinked,
and so cruelly abandoned!
And Lady Chillingham could witness this horrible sacrifice, this English
_suttee_, or act of immolation, quietly and approvingly. She had
married without love herself--so had her mother before her--and both had
been happy enough in their own heartless and stupid way. Such
alliances, made on mere worldly grounds, were part of the system of that
society in which they moved; so Lady Chillingham viewed the whole affair
as a matter of course.
As for Louisa Loftus, why should she be different from other women of
the world, and of her aristocratic class? I must have been deluded--mad
indeed, to think otherwise for a moment! And yet she could crash my
hope for the future recklessly, as a child breaks the glittering
soap-bubble he has so carefully developed, or casts aside the plaything
he once treasured. She could cruelly trample on the best love of a true
and honest heart, to make a marriage that was advantageous only in point
of rank and wealth, both of which she already inherited in the fullest
degree.
Yet something of pity mingled with my fierce and bitter scorn of
Louisa--pity for the dreary years she would have to spend, while tending
a senile dotard, whom she could neither respect nor love. She would
suffer in secret, or perhaps console herself by some scandalous
flirtation, that Sir Bernard Burke would never record in his usually
flattering pages, though he might have to chronicle the unexpected
appearance of an heir to the noble old Anglo-Norman line of Slubber de
Gullion.
While Louisa, plunged in all the gaiety of London life, forgot all but
it and herself, Cora--I learned this after--had thought it a crime to be
even happy, while I was suffering or absent. Such was the difference in
the nature of those two girls.
At Stamboul I had procured an inlaid Turkish rifle, a high-peaked
saddle, a cherry-pipe stick, and some yataghans, as trifles for Sir
Nigel; slippers, all sewn with pearls, a shawl, a veil, a little trunk
of essences, and other pretty things, for Cora.
Our homeward voyage was rapid and pleasant, so we steamed steadily on,
passing many a transport hurrying to the seat of war, with her human
freight, ardent and eager to replace the fallen; on by Malta and old
Gib. I was too ill to land at either; but I was well cared for on
board, for the officers treated me as if I had been their brother, and
were never weary of extolling the terrible charge of the Light Brigade
on the fatal 25th of October.
On an evening about the end of January, we were off Southampton, and ran
into the tidal dock, which has such peculiar advantages for first-class
steamers. There out of the general traffic, and in the basin of quiet
water, the _Blazer_ could easily land her melancholy freight of wounded
men. Many poor fellows whom she had embarked had died on the way home,
and found a grave under the waves of the Mediterranean.
We were landed by gaslight. I must have been very weak at that time. I
remember the cheers of welcome and the genuine commiseration of the
kindly English folks assembled on the crowded quays as we were borne
tenderly ashore in the arms of our good sailor comrades; and my wasted
appearance was not the least exciting, for I was so worn now that my
face was not unlike the Death's head on the appointments of the 17th
Lancers--but with a goodly Crimean beard appended to it.
The lieutenant of marines conducted me to a fashionable hotel.
At Southampton I was separated from poor Willie. With all the other
wounded soldiers, he was transmitted, per third-class train, to Fort
Pitt, at Chatham. Save once, I never saw the poor affectionate fellow
again. He became a confirmed invalid, and months passed away, during
which he was neither discharged nor cured, though he longed to get
home--home, that he might die where he first saw the light, in his
father's cottage, and be laid beside his mother's grave in the glen.
But there is no cure for the home-sickness in the pharmacopoeia of Her
Majesty's medical department, at No. 6, Whitehall Yard.
For many days I remained at the hotel, careless how the time passed. I
had become perfectly listless, and lay on the sofa for hours, less to
nurse my wounds than from pure inertia, and heedless of what might
happen.
Thus, one evening, when the snow lay deep in the streets without,
muffling the footsteps of the passengers and the wheels of the cabs and
omnibuses--when the fire was burning cheerily in the bright bars of the
polished grate--the crimson curtains drawn across the windows--the
crystals of the gaselier glittering with a thousand prisms, and thus
when, after Crimean experiences, it was impossible not to feel intensely
comfortable in the well-carpeted room of a fashionable English hotel, I
was dozing off to sleep, and to dream, perhaps, of other scenes, when a
sound roused me.
An arm--a soft and warm one--was round my neck, and two bright, sad,
earnest, and tearful eyes were beaming affectionately into mine; a
smooth cheek, rendered cold as a winter apple by the frosty air without,
just brushed mine, and a kiss was on my forehead, as a beautiful and
blushing girl threw back her veil, and I found my hands were clasped by
those of Cora Calderwood.
"Dear, dear Cora!" I exclaimed, and pressed her to my breast.
I had longed for sympathy, companionship, friendship--for some one with
whom to share the secret burden that crushed my heart; but I rapidly
found the impossibility of doing this with my beautiful cousin, for now,
as I embraced her, all her long-treasured and long-hidden love gushed up
in her heart.
She smoothed back her thick dark hair with her pretty and tremulous
hands, and then, placing them on my temples, surveyed me again and
again, with eyes full of pity and delight, while half-kneeling beside me
on the low _fauteuil_ on which I lay.
"Cora!"
"Newton!"
She was too full of pure joy to speak; she could only throw her arms
round my neck and whisper, with her rosy lip close to my ear--
"Newton--Newton--my poor Newton! my own love at last--and--and--here
comes papa."
As if to relieve me from a situation that was as embarrassing as it was
pleasing, the affectionate old gentleman hurried forward to meet me. He
had been less agile than his daughter in springing upstairs, and
threading the mysterious corridors of an English hotel. He took me in
his sturdy arms. His eyes were sparkling with pleasure; his ruddy cheeks
were now rendered redder than ever by the frosty wind; his white locks
glittered in the light; and his handsome old face was beaming with
pleasure, as it always did when he saw me. Warmly he shook my hands
again and again. He surveyed my hollow cheeks with commiseration, as
Cora now did with tears; and then, with prodigious bustle, he proceeded
to divest himself of numerous overcoats and wrappers, until he appeared
at last in his black cut-away, with white corded breeches and top-boots,
as of old the _beau ideal_ of the master of the Fifeshire hounds.
"So we have found you at last, my dear boy--fairly run you to earth, eh?
You must come home with us now----"
"To-night, papa?"
"Not exactly to-night, Cora; but as soon as he is fit for travelling.
And a rare cooper of old port Davie Binns shall set abroach when again
Newton is beneath the roof of the house in which his mother was born,
and where she died, too, poor girl!"
My mother was more than forty when she died; but the old baronet only
remembered his favourite sister as "the girl," of whose beauty he was
always so proud.
Cora had now removed her bonnet and cloak. She was beautiful as ever,
but paler, I thought, for the flush that dyed her soft face at first had
now passed away, and she lowered her dark lashes at times when I looked
at her. But her secret was out now. I knew all, but could scarcely
foresee how matters were to end.
Cora wore at her breast the silver crescent and lion I had sent her from
India. She had more. She had on her finger my Rangoon diamond, which
the Marchioness had sent to her, and which I desired her to retain for
my sake, till I replaced it by one more valuable still.
We were very happy that night in Southampton; and, with more alacrity
than I thought remained in me, I prepared at once to return to Scotland.
My health was not now what it had been; but my native air in Calderwood
Glen would restore it. To repine now would have been ungrateful to
heaven and my kind kinsfolk.
I had passed through that dreadful ordeal, the Valley of Death, and had
returned with life and youth before me, when so many better and braver
than I had perished by my side. So I resolved to return thankfully and
joyfully home, to water my laurels among the heath-clad hills and grassy
glens of my native place.
*CHAPTER LIII.*
Away with my firelock!
Here, take my red coat!
On danger and glory
No longer I'll dote.
A train of soft passions
Now rise in my breast;
The soldier subsides,
And ambition's at rest.
And no more shall the sound
Of the trumpet or drum
Forewarn the poor shepherd
Of evils to come.
SOLDIER'S SONG.
Poor Willie Pitblado sank fast after the extraction of the ball, and the
subsequent amputation of his leg.
In the pleasant month of June, when he knew that the golden laburnums
and the hawthorns, pink and white, would be wearing their loveliest hues
among the green hills and burnsides where he had played in boyhood, and
when the summer breeze would be rustling the thick foliage that shaded
his father's humble cottage in Calderwood Glen, Willie felt that his
hour was coming nigh, and he grew very sad and restless.
On that day, the last he was to spend on earth, there was an unwonted
bustle in and around the great military hospital of Fort Pitt, and,
natheless the sick and wounded, the weary in body and subdued in spirit,
the dying men in the wards, and those whose battles and troubles were
over, and who lay stark and stiff under a white sheet in the deadhouse,
awaiting the muffled drums and the--now daily--funeral party, there had
been a scouring of tins and polishing of wooden tables, a renovation of
sanded floors and white-washed walls; an extra folding and arranging of
knapsacks and bedding. Staff officers in full uniform, with aiguillette
and plume, galloped to and fro, in and out, up and down the steep hill
from whence the grim old fort looks down upon the quiet and sleepy
Medway, with all its old battered hulks; and then whispers were passed
along the wards that the Queen--Queen Victoria herself--was coming to
visit the poor fellows who had carried her colours in triumph up the
slopes of Alma, through the valley of Inkermann, and in the charges at
Balaclava.