'To be Ensigns in the 2nd battalion of the — Highlanders, Allan Mac Innon, Gent., and John Belton, Gent., vice Dowb, promoted to the Turkish Contingent.'
Such was the announcement which I read in a Gazette sent to my lodgings one morning, about a fortnight after my first interview with Colonel Crawford. I now ceased to be 'gent.' in any sense of the word, and found myself in one day a full-blown ensign, with a fortune of 5s. 3d. per diem, and a passport to go where glory invited me, in the shape of whistling-dicks and Minie-rifles.
Thus, thanks to the faith and love borne me by twenty-five peasant lads of Glen Ora, now all duly attested and accepted soldiers, I had surmounted the barriers of interest at the Horse Guards; the necessity of pounding 5001. with Cox and Co., the puzzling, cramming, and quizzing at Sandhurst, with a hundred minor annoyances.
Let the reader suppose my subscription to band-fund, mess-plate, and commission fees all paid—three trifles amounting to twenty-one guineas, by which one's first three months' pay is legally borrowed under the Royal authority; let the reader imagine my outfit procured—my uniform, camp-equipage, canteen, iron-bedstead, et cetera, provided—and all to be paid for by Providence, or the plunder of Sebastopol, if the aforesaid 5s. 3d. failed to do so—and behold me, then, an ensign in a 'crack regiment,' and like Don Juan—
'Made up by youth, by love, and by an army tailor.'
In less than a month I was reported fit for duty, and joined my company, into which the colonel had kindly enrolled my twenty-five Mac Innons. I had applied myself with such assiduity to the mysteries of the goose-step, the right half-face, the left half-face, and the right-about three-quarters-face, &c., that I gained the respect of that dread man the adjutant, and the profound esteem of the various sergeants to whom I was handed over in succession to acquire the manual and platoon exercises, the use of the club and broadsword, and to each of whom, at parting, the 'tip' of two days' pay was necessary. I soon won, too, the entire confidence of our brave old colonel, who, in kindness and advice, acted to me more as a father than a friend.
Great was the change this month had achieved in my fortunes! In that brief time I had seen our dwellings levelled to the earth! the glen, which had been peopled for ages, laid desolate and bare; the muirs consumed by fire, and all the land reduced to a voiceless solitude. My mother was lying far away in her quiet grave—her old familiar face was gone for ever: I was separated from Laura, and was now a soldier, like my forefathers, with the wide world all before me.
Of John Belton, who was gazetted at the same time with myself, and who became one of my chief friends, I shall speak frequently anon. He was a handsome, lively, and light-hearted fellow, and we were a pair of inseparables; but with all the charms of the new life that had so suddenly opened before me, I was far from happy still.
After long thought, anxiety, and careful consideration, with a heart inspired by love and hope, I ventured to write a timid letter to Laura, expressing my admiration, my esteem, and undying regard for her, all of which were strengthened by the knowledge that an early and greater separation was at hand, as the regiment to which I had been appointed was warring in the East, and I added, that in leaving her, more than probably for ever, all my hopes and prayers were for her happiness.
Cæsar, on the night before the great battle of Pharsalia, was not more full of thought than I, while penning this letter to little Laura Everingham.
I dared not ask her to write to me, yet I hoped she might do so; indeed, for some days, I was certain she would reply. I knew that she would write politely, kindly, timidly, and perhaps with some formality; but I longed to gaze upon the lines her pretty hand had traced. It would be a relic of her—a souvenir of buried hopes and futile aspirations, when other days would come.
But day after day passed—a week elapsed—then, a fortnight, and yet no letter came; and daily, while every pulse quickened with anxiety, I watched the pipe-major (who acted as our regimental postman) distributing his letters on parade; but, alas! none ever came for me.
My courage fell—day succeeded day, and still no letter. Then hope began to die; my nights were dreamy or sleepless, and my days full of gnawing suspense. Could Laura be ill?—then Fanny would write. Had she dismissed me from her mind? or had Sir Horace intercepted the letter? Thus I wearied myself with conjectures. Should I write to her again? Pride said 'no;' yet that very pride which sprang from wounded self-esteem was rendered the more bitter by its struggle with much of honest tenderness, pure regard, and sincere regret that one I loved so well should treat me with such cutting coldness and neglect.
I endured six weeks of much chagrin and suspense after writing that unlucky letter from Dumbarton; but at last a crisis was put to my artificial affliction.
One day Captain Clavering made his appearance at mess, in mufti; he was the guest of Colonel Crawford, and expressed so much real pleasure and satisfaction at meeting me again, that he quite won me by his frankness. He even went the length of offering me the use of his purse, saying that I might repay him at any time—whenever it suited me to do so.
'I know deuced well, my dear fellow, what it is to be under orders for foreign service, having once had the misfortune to be in the Line,' said he, 'and to have only five shillings and threepence per diem, to find myself in messing, clothing, servant and servant's livery, camp-equipage, and everything. Snobleigh of ours—languid as ever—has lost a devil of a bet on the Oaks, and has rejoined the Guards at Windsor. Fanny, my sister, is as Lola Montes—looking as ever. Sir Horace—you asked for Sir Horace—he is quite well and hearty; busy about his new shooting-box in Glen Ora; and Laura—oh Laura is more charming than ever, and full of anticipated happiness.'
As he said this, he stroked his black moustache, and gave me one of the most knowing little winks; and it scorned to convey so much, though I knew not what, that pique fettered my tongue, and a vague sentiment of jealousy filled my heart.
'He is a fine fellow Clavering,' said the colonel, in a low voice, to me;—'glad to see you know him.'
'Ah—yes—he is quite an old friend,' I replied, while fixing my gaze on a diamond-and-pearl ring he wore on the engaged finger, and which I recognized to have been worn by Laura.
'I knew his brother well—poor Bob Clavering, of the 5th—the Northumberland Fusileers,' said Brevet-Major Duncan Catanagh, the captain of our Grenadiers, a dark-visaged, rough, and black-bearded soldier; 'and I had the narrowest escape in the world on the day he was killed.'
'How?' asked several.
'We were both wounded in the action of Maheidpoor, in the Mahratta war, and, with six others, were being conveyed from the field next day in a waggon: the sun was blazing hot—ay, hot as fire! Our wounds were undressed; we were half dead of thirst, and the jolting of the vehicle increased our sufferings to such a degree that I left it, resolving to die quietly by the road side rather than endure such misery longer. The waggon was then being drawn along a road which wound close to the abrupt brow of a tremendous precipice, and in one minute after I stepped out, the horses became restive, plunged and reared—the waggon went backward, and toppled over the rocks into the valley, three hundred feet below, where the horses, wheels, and framework, with my five miserable companions, were dashed to pieces! I thought little of my escape then—but it has often come painfully before me since. Tom Clavering came into a handsome fortune by that little malheur, and at once exchanged from the 5th to the Grenadier Guards.'
'And the Mahrattas?' said Belton.
'Oh, they would soon have finished me,' said Catanagh, 'but for the exertions of a cunning old Brahmin, who saved my life, and smuggled me to Murray Mac Gregor's head-quarters, when he held Poonah with only the Scots Royals against all the thousands of Ras Holkar.'
'Poonah,' said the old colonel, laughing, 'that was where you had such a long flirtation with a pretty widow, whose husband, a lieutenant of the 5th, had been blown from the mouth of a mortar by the Mahrattas—eh?'
'Not at all—but pass the wine,' replied Catanagh, laughing and reddening a little; 'besides, we speak of flirtation with an unmarried female—one's cousin, for instance—but with a widow, it assumes a—a—'
'A deeper character,' suggested the colonel.
'Yes—we then call it a liaison,' said Clavering, who had retired to an open window and lighted a cigar.
'Clavering is in high spirits—'gad, the fellow's like champagne!' said Catanagh.
'For the best of reasons,' whispered the colonel, whose voice went through me like a galvanic shock; 'he is about to be married.'
'Indeed,' I rejoined, a desperate air of coolness struggling with the painful interest this communication excited within me; 'to whom may I ask?'
'A charming young girl—Miss Everingham—daughter and heiress of Sir Horace Everingham, the Conservative M.P., who bought an estate in the Highlands lately.'
The poor colonel smiled pleasantly and confidentially as he said this, all unconscious that he was planting a dagger in his listener's heart.
'By Jove, he will have something handsome with her,' said Ewan Mac Pherson, the captain of our Light Company; 'Elton Hall is a magnificent place, and then the Highland property—but when does the little affair come off?'
'When he returns from the Crimea,' said Belton.
'The deuce—from the Crimea!'
'Nay, pardon me,' said the colonel; 'he is to be married almost immediately, and is now en route to Edinburgh after some of the little necessary arrangements.'
'Of course—there will be the bride's trousseau to order at a fashionable magazin des modes—the usual case of jewels—the twelve morning and evening dresses—the four dozen of everything necessary for ladies fair. Thank heaven, my marching luggage never consisted of more than a portmanteau, an epaulette-box, and a boot-jack.'
'Perhaps so, Catanagh,' replied the bantering colonel; 'but little Laura Everingham, with her English acres and funded property, is a better prize than our Poonah widow, with all her rupees and indigo; and drinking iced champagne at Elton Hall will be better than eating chutney and pickled monkey, with the thermometer at 104° in the shade—the punkah out of order, and not a breath of air to be had for love or for money. Pass the claret: gentlemen, fill your glasses—we will drink to my friend Captain Clavering, of the Grenadier Guards—happiness to him!'
The wine almost choked me; but mastering my emotion, I left the mess-room, and sought my quarters. There I tore off my red coat, for it seemed to stifle me. I threw myself upon my bed in an agony of mind difficult to portray—an agony such as we feel but once in a life-time; and I strove to be calm—to think—to reflect, and to realize all that the colonel had said so heedlessly, but yet so innocently, to torture me.
One fact stood palpably and painfully before me: Laura Everingham was lost to me for ever! It was, perhaps, a just punishment for the vanity and presumption—or the folly—with which I had permitted a fervent and enthusiastic heart to give full scope to a love which it fostered in defiance of reason and of hope. The tenor of the conversation I had overheard in the arbour occurred to me again and again. I endeavoured to analyze it. To me, there now seemed too much lightness of heart and of expression in Laura, when on the eve of a hopeless separation from one whom she knew to love her so well—one then so humbled, so crushed and ruined as I—but perhaps she could not have acted otherwise without exciting still more the suspicion and the ridicule of Fanny Clavering. Were her words to be considered as really indicative of her secret thoughts? Moreover, what claim had I, so poor in all this world's gifts and gear, on one so rich in all the gifts of heaven and earth? None. Nor was she to blame for the secret love I had nourished and fostered in my heart since the first moment of our acquaintance. Yet her silence, her pallor, her deep unspoken emotion when I left her, would seem to say that I was not without an interest in her heart. May she not, thought I, have wept for me, and prayed for me, on the midnight pillow, even as I, all lonely and unseen, had sighed and prayed for her?
No—no; the light had vanished at last, and Laura was for ever lost to me—a just punishment to one of the wildest fancies that ever warmed a romantic heart. The pearl ring, with a thousand 'trifles light as air,' came in all their bitter, blighting strength, to confirm the news of Clavering's marriage, and, covering my face with my hands, I wept like a child. Until that burning hour I knew not the depth of my hopeless passion, or how much I had really loved Miss Everingham.
The night was a miserable one to me, but it passed away like others; and the sharp brass drum, and then the yelling war-pipe, as they rang in the early morning air, waking the deep echoes of 'Balclutha's walls of rock,' announced that 'to march' was now the order; and first Jack Belton, and then Callum Dhu, burst breathlessly into my room.
'What the deuce—why the champagne must have been strong last night,' exclaimed Jack, on seeing me lying on my bed, and not in it; 'come, my boy—bustle up—turn out—the route has come!'
'The route—for where?'
'The East,' cried he, flinging his cap up to the ceiling.