EVENTS PROGRESS.
The whole expedition was now returning from the Gold Coast, save
those who had found their graves in the wilderness on the advance to
Coomassie, and in the fighting incident thereto. Among those
returning were the two hundred and sixty-eight wounded officers and
men. The number of deaths in proportion was small as compared with
those in recent European conflicts--a fact explainable by the arms
and ammunition used by the Ashantees; first, their old-fashioned
firelocks and use--not of bullets, but slugs, projectiles which soon
lost their velocity after discharge, and were easily stopped after
penetrating the body, the stronger bones of which they were incapable
of breaking; and lastly, by the total absence of artillery.
The telegraphic wire made people at home aware that many of the Rifle
Brigade had died on the voyage homeward between the Gold Coast and
Madeira; that the Welsh Fusiliers had only twenty men on their
sick-list; and the hardy Highlanders very few, though they had to
regret the death by wounds of their major, William Baird, who had
served with them for twenty years, and been at the siege and fall of
Sebastopol.
It was known in England that many of the sick and wounded were to
remain in the hospital ships, _Victor Emmanuel_ and _Simoom_, or were
landed at Ascension and the Cape de Verde Isles for medical
treatment; but, as no officer of the Rifles was recorded as among
these, Laura with her daughter, escorted by Goring, had betaken
herself to the port which is the great headquarters of the British
navy, to behold the arrival of the victorious troops from Ashantee,
and for whom a great ovation was prepared.
People from London and elsewhere crowded in thousands to witness
their landing. In the hotel where Laura and Bevil Goring were, there
were more than one old Scottish veteran officer of the Crimea, and
even of the Peninsular war, who had come from the land beyond the
Tweed to see, as they said, 'their dear old Black Watch again;' and
more than one lady in widow's weeds, some young, some elderly, with
their little brood, come to look again upon the ranks of the Welsh
Fusiliers and the Rifles, though there a beloved face would be seen
no more.
How gladly would poor Bella Chevenix have gone too; but she had no
valid excuse--no friend or chaperon going save Laura, of whose
movements she was ignorant; so she had but to wait, in the secluded
village, the tidings given by the newspapers, but with more
impatience and certainly less equanimity than Lady Julia at splendid
Wilmothurst.
Greater was her love for Jerry than the latter could actually
realise; for, with all her past coquetry, Bella was one of those
ardent and impulsive girls that a man only comes across once in a
lifetime, or, it maybe, thinks so. She knew that Jerry was
comparatively safe when the fleet sailed, but she had heard with
dismay of deaths among the Rifles ere it reached Madeira; so it may
be imagined how eagerly and anxiously she watched the public prints,
and learned that on the 19th of March the English people had the joy
of welcoming home, first the 23rd Welsh Fusiliers, as they landed
from the _Tamar_ at Portsmouth, where, among many other graceful
gifts, a regimental goat was presented to them in lieu of their
famous Indian one, which had died on the coast of Africa; and anon of
the more brilliant ovation which was reserved for the heroic Black
Watch when the soldiers of the latter came in the _Sarmatian_, and,
prior to landing, had gleefully discarded their grey tunics and white
helmets to resume their national uniform, the kilt and bonnet, so
known to martial glory. And then came the Rifle Brigade and the
Royal Engineers on board the mighty _Himalaya_.
How Laura's heart beat while she clung to Goring's arm and clasped
little Netty's tiny hand, when the signals announced that the ship
was about to enter that great harbour which is the most spacious and
secure in the British Isles, though less than a quarter of a mile in
breadth at the narrowest part of the entrance.
'There she is,' exclaimed Goring, 'just rounding South Sea Castle!'
Laura's bright hazel eyes grew dim as she watched the approaching
ship. It seemed to her as if it was but yesterday, in one sense,
since she had seen the transport depart with the Rifles after her
reconciliation and reunion with Dalton; and yet, so strong are the
impressions of the human mind, that it also seemed as if it were ages
ago; and now--now he was coming home, though but perhaps the wreck of
himself, to her and their little Netty--the husband and the father
from whom they had been so long and unnaturally separated!
'By Jove, she has her ensign half hoisted!' exclaimed a voice among
the thousands of whom she formed a unit.
Goring had remarked this through his double field-glass, yet said
nothing of it to his fair companion, lest she might be unnecessarily
alarmed.
'What does it mean?' she asked him more than once, ere he replied,
unwillingly,
'It means that there has been a death on board.'
'A death!' she said faintly, as she recalled the loving tenor of
Dalton's last farewell letter to her, written like Jerry's to Bella
on the night before Coomassie was entered, and of the fatal telegram
that told of his serious wounds. 'A death, Goring?' she repeated,
with a wild expression in her beautiful eyes, while her cheek grew
snowy white as she watched the slowly approaching ship, which was
under half steam now.
'Yes, marm,' said an officious old sailor, who was regarding the
stately vessel through an old, battered telescope tied round with
spunyarn; 'some poor fellow has lost the number of his mess, for
there is a coffin covered by a Union Jack in one of the quarter
boats, as you may see for yourself, marm.'
He proffered his telescope civilly enough, but Laura shrank closer to
the side of Goring, who remained silent, for he too had his own
thoughts. She could not look; her eyes felt sightless, and her poor
heart seemed to die within her with the most fearful forebodings.
The bands of several regiments stationed at Portsmouth were now
filling the sunny air with music, and the cheers of the Riflemen,
clustering like bees along the sides of the mighty ship, were
responding to the united voices of thousands on the shore, giving
those hearty and joyous shouts that come from British throats and
British lungs alone; and Laura, under all the pressure of the
occasion and her own terrible thoughts, was on the point of fainting,
as the transport came slowly abreast of the sea-wall, when Goring
threw an arm round her, and exclaimed,
'Thank God, there is Dalton--there is dear old Tony at last!'
'Where--oh, where?' asked Laura, in a breathless voice.
'At the back of the poop,' he replied, lifting Netty aloft on his
shoulder, as they now saw an officer--Dalton, indeed--with a face
white as his tropical helmet, with the pallor that comes of suffering
and much loss of blood--waving his handkerchief to them in
recognition, for the ship was very close inshore, and Laura was soon
to learn that the melancholy freight in the quarter-boat was the body
of a poor sergeant who died off the Lizard, and whose
widow--believing herself yet a wife--was awaiting him on the pier
with a babe at her breast--the babe his eyes would never look upon.
In a few minutes more the steam was blowing off, and Goring with
those in his care joined the stream of the privileged few, who poured
along the gangways on board.
'God is very merciful,' murmured Laura, as she laid her face on
Dalton's breast, heedless of spectators. 'He has given you back to
me----'
'From the very gates of death, dearest Laura.'
'Oh, what should I have done if you had perished, my darling?--oh, my
darling,' she said, in a low voice of exquisite tenderness as he
embraced Netty--Antoinette so named after himself, and grown up to
girlhood without his knowledge of her existence.
'Bravo,' cried a hearty voice familiar to them all; 'as Albert Smith
used to say, "_C'est l'amour, l'amour, l'amour, qui fait le monde go
round, O._" Thank God I see you and Old England again, Laura,' and
Jerry Wilmot kissed her with hearty goodwill.
Like Dalton, Jerry was very pale and wan; but not so feeble as the
former--and from the effects of his wounds and fever could scarcely
stand, even yet.
The ovation that followed the landing of the Rifles may be fresh in
the recollection of many. Balls, banquets, and addresses were amply
accorded to all the returned troops, and decorations and crosses for
valour were fully bestowed; but of all the joyous entertainments
Bevil Goring saw nothing, as a notice which he read by chance in a
paper led him to leave Portsmouth on the evening of the very day the
regiment landed.
It was simply a paragraph in a Southampton paper, on which his eye
fell casually, that rooted him for a few minutes to the spot, and ran
thus:
'We understand that the late Sir Ranald Cheyne, Bart., of Essilmont
and that ilk, whose demise at Chilcote we recorded some days ago, has
died without heirs male, and his baronetcy, one of the oldest in
Scotland, has thus become extinct.'
'Who died some days ago at Chilcote,' thought Goring, who felt a
species of shock; 'and Alison is thus alone--alone in the world--poor
girl! At Cadbury's mercy perhaps--while I--oh, what must she think
of me? Why do I only hear of this calamity now?'
So next noon betimes saw him arrive at Chilcote with his horse at a
rasping gallop, and his heart beating high with mingled hope, love,
and great commiseration, as he knew how Alison idolised the querulous
old man she had lost; and again, as before, his spirit sank on
finding only silence and desolation--the house abandoned and all its
windows shuttered.
'Desolation, as before,' he muttered, as he leaped from his horse;
'desolation, and perhaps mystery too. Where can she have gone, and
with whom?'
He passed the gate, and mechanically handled the door-knocker, and
the sound thereof echoed hollowly through the silent house. He drew
close to the shuttered windows, and peeped in through a fissure in
one. He saw the almost entirely darkened dining-room, from the walls
of which the portraits of the two cavalier brothers were still
looking grimly and stonily down; on the table was a vase, with a few
flowers still in it; and near stood a chair and a work-basket, in
which some coloured wools were lying.
Very recently must Alison have been there, as the flowers seemed
still somewhat fresh; in fact, she had only set out on her pilgrimage
the day before, when he had been at Portsmouth.
How full the place seemed of her presence! Yet he had to turn sadly
away.
The buds in the giant beeches were bursting already into tender green
leaves; the birds were twittering and singing in the hedgerows, and
the kine lowed amid the deep spring grass of yonder meadows; 'the
deep bell' swung in the distant tower of Chilcote Church; the dogs
barked sharply in an adjacent farm-yard; and close and nigh was the
hum of the bee, as it thrust its golden head into the cups of the
spring flowers in the now neglected garden.
To his senses all seemed unchanged as when he last saw Alison there;
and where was she now--his love--his promised wife?
Where again was she gone? Into the hard and chilly world--all the
colder and more perilous now that her father was dead, and that she
must stand alone in it?
Alone!
Bevil Goring felt his heart wrung by irrepressible anxiety, and he
bethought him at once of appealing to the vicar of the parish, who
could not fail to possess some information on the subject.
The latter received him with considerable suavity, for he was a
kind-hearted old gentleman, but eyed him keenly under his bushy white
eyebrows. He had heard--but how, he knew not, for gossip spreads
fast in a secluded country parish; yet he had heard that there was a
young officer from the camp, who was wont to hover near Chilcote
Beeches, and who was eminently distasteful to the late Sir Ranald,
for reasons best known to the latter; so the worthy vicar fashioned
his answers accordingly.
Bevil, however, learned that Alison had been resident for many weeks
at Chilcote after her return from the Continent, and prior to the
demise of her father.
Many weeks! thought he, and yet she had never written, as she might
have done, to his address at the camp, whence letters were forwarded
to his address in London. Poor Alison had not written because she
knew he was absent, and, moreover, she was sorely pre-occupied at
home.
Was she under the influence of Cadbury? thought Bevil. Oh, that was
impossible! Yet Goring began to feel, as Alison often felt, that
their engagement--that its many trammels--was a very peculiar one,
and would be so while her father lived. Now he was gone, and wealth
had accrued to Goring, yet they were as much apart as ever!
'Sir Ranald was dead, yes,' he heard the vicar saying, 'and buried
near the ancient yew in the churchyard, where Miss Cheyne meant in
time to erect a marble cross.'
'That shall be my duty,' observed Goring.
'Yours?' said the vicar, inquiringly, and again the bushy brows were
knitted. 'Poor man! he is sleeping where I know he did not want to
lie, in my churchyard; yet he will sleep as soundly there in English
earth, let us hope, as if he lay among his ancestors in Ellon Kirk,
among mailed knights, mediæval bones, and the _Hic jacets_ of other
days,' he added, smiling.
'Where has Miss Cheyne gone to?'
'London,' replied the vicar, curtly.
'Can you give me her address?' asked Goring, eagerly.
'May I ask who inquires?' said the vicar.
'I sent in my card--Captain Goring, of the Rifle Brigade.'
'Just returned from Ashantee?'
'Nay,' replied Bevil, colouring with honest mortification, 'I was
detailed for home service.'
'And now stationed at Aldershot?'
'Yes.'
'Ah! a bad place Aldershot--a very centre of dissipation, I fear.
May I ask if you are a relation?'
'I am not.'
'A friend?' queried the vicar.
'Of course--one most deeply interested in Miss Cheyne.'
'I thought so,' rejoined the vicar, eyeing him keenly and with a
curiously provoking smile while playing with his gold eyeglass; 'may
I ask how and why?'
'Certainly--I am engaged to her.'
'Her _fiancé_? asked the vicar; 'is that what you mean?'
'Yes; and now _where_ is she?'
'I regret--regret to say--that--that I have not yet her present
address. She only left this for London yesterday.'
'In other words, by your tone,' said Goring, haughtily, as he rose
and took his hat, 'you know it, but decline to give it to me?'
'I do not say so,' replied the vicar, also rising, as if the
interview was ended; 'but for the present you will excuse me saying
more.'
'Sir!' exclaimed Bevil, with some heat.
'Goring--Goring,' muttered the vicar, eyeing Bevil's card; 'it is
strange that the young lady never spoke to me of you, though in her
grief she several times mentioned another friend.'
'Ah!--who?'
'Lord Cadbury.'
'Cadbury!' exclaimed Goring, with a contemptuous inflection of voice
that did not escape the listener.
'Yes; who, by a very ample remittance--a thousand pounds, I
believe--did much to ease and soothe her poor father's last days on
earth.'
'Indeed!'
Whew! here was intelligence. His birthday gift had been attributed
to, and evidently adopted by, that reptile Cadbury! And, finding
that there was nothing to be made of the suspicious and over-wary
vicar, he withdrew.
Scarcely had Goring, disappointed and dispirited, taken his
departure, when Lord Cadbury, accompanied by Gaskins, having found
Chilcote deserted, arrived at the vicarage to make the same
inquiries, but with very different intentions. Impressed by the
years and rank of his second visitor, the vicar admitted that he was
cognisant of Miss Cheyne's movements, and, on consideration, promised
to send her correct address to Cadbury Court when she wrote to him
from London; for, knowing the helplessness of the young girl, even
with Cadbury was the vicar wary.
Dalton remained at Chilcote Grange to be nursed by Laura; Jerry
departed on sick leave to Wilmothurst, while Bevil Goring remained
with the battalion at Aldershot to undergo the drudgery of the spring
drills in the Long Valley, and await in a kind of silent desperation
with hope to hear something of Alison.
How terrible to endure was this period of an inaction that was
enforced by circumstances over which he had no control, and many a
hearty malediction he bestowed upon the close old vicar of Chilcote.
Often he opened the clasp of her ring--Ellon's ring--and gazed upon
her tiny lock of hair, now faded and withered by the heat it had
undergone when 'up country' in the Land of the Sun, and on her
pictured face he gazed till his eyes ached and burned with the
intensity of his longing to see the features smile, the lips unclose,
in fancy.
We are told that if a man, 'overborne by any grief or pain--not the
more endurable because no outward sign can be discerned--should go
forth into a crowd to seek for solace, the chances are that he will
return in a more discontented frame of mind than that in which he set
out, simply from realising the fact how infinitely little his own
sufferings affect the most of the world at its work or play.'
Amid the bustle, gaiety, and business of the crowded camp at
Aldershot, Bevil Goring realised all this to the fullest extent.
Day after day went by and brought no news of Alison, either to Goring
or to Laura Dalton, whom he saw frequently, and hope deferred was
making the heart of the young officer very 'sick' indeed; but, though
he wrote a very important letter to his solicitors at Gray's Inn
Square concerning certain properties at Chilcote, he went there no
more.
In the words of L.E.L., he could no more
'To the loved haunt return,
Love's happy home; and touch the tender chord,
And softly whisper there the little word,
The name whereat fond memories shall burn,
That parting vows record.'