"_O clementissime Jesu, amator animarum, lava in sanguine Tuo peccatores
totius mundi, nunc positos in agonia et hodie morituros._"[*]
[*] "O most merciful Jesus, lover of souls, wash in Thy blood the
sinners of the whole world who are now in their agony and are to die
this day!"
Then, whispering something of her "mother who was in heaven, kneeling
for her before the Mother of God," the pure spirit of this French girl
passed out into the black night of eternity. We stood for a time
silent, and nothing roused us but our rear-guard defiling to the front
from the right of troops, and then the orders of the colonel recurred to
me. Were I to live a thousand years I shall never forget the calm and
soothing, yet sorrowful, impression made upon me by this poor girl's
death. I closed her eyes, and their long, dark lashes fell over the
pale cheek, from which they never more would rise, and she lay under the
poor horse-rug, looking so calm, with a peaceful and beautiful
expression on her sweet dead face. Her hands were now folded on her
breast; her black ebony crucifix had fallen from them; but Lanty O'Regan
replaced it gently, and kindly closed the stiffening fingers round it,
and there was a big sob in Lanty's throat as he did so. Death brought
back all the strange loveliness of other days to Sister Archange; and I
could not behold her lying there, looking so peaceful, so white and
still, without feeling my heart very full indeed. For when I saw so
much self-devotion, poverty, and charity united with peace and goodwill
to all mankind--to Christian and Osmanli, to friend and foe alike--it
seemed to me truly that of such as she was the kingdom of God. I kissed
the dead girl's forehead as we drew the horse-rug over her, and prepared
for her interment, as we had not a moment to lose.
The soil was soft, and we had only our sword-blades and hands to dig
with; but we contrived to scoop a hole about three feet deep.
Reverently, as if she had been their sister, my comrades laid her in it,
and then we heaped the mould above her. She lies in that little thicket
of olives, about a mile from Bulganak, and sleeps in what is called
unconsecrated earth; though the ashes of that sister of charity might
bring a blessing on the city of the Sultan. We now mounted, put our
horses to full speed, and soon passing our rear-guard, came up with our
brigade, and rejoined the regiment. By this time the whole army was on
the march to force the position of the Alma, and already our right flank
was almost united to the left of the French column under General
Bosquet, as the allies advanced together.
*CHAPTER XXXVII.*
News of battle!--news of battle!
Hark, 'tis ringing down the street!
And the archways and the pavement
Bear the clang of hurrying feet.
News of battle!--who hath brought it?
News of triumph! Who should bring
Tidings from our noble army?
Greetings from our gallant king?
LAYS OF THE SCOTTISH CAVALIERS.
While these events were occurring by the shore of the Euxine, brown
autumn was spreading her sober tints upon the Scottish woods; and one
seldom sees the country more attractive than when its beauty is
decaying, and a soothing sadness mingles with our delight.
The long grass is dank in the shady places, for there the dew falls
early at eve, and lingers long after sunrise; and now in Calderwood Glen
the dark leaves of the chestnuts were varied by the golden yellow of the
lime tree, whose frail leaves are among the earliest to whirl before the
gusty autumn wind.
Already the first leaves--the early spoil of the season--were lying in
the long, shady avenue, or were gathered in heaps, even as the breeze
had swept them, about the well of James V., the yew hedgerows, and the
grass walks of the antique Scottish garden, where tradition avers that
Anne of Denmark flirted with the bonnie Earl of Gowrie. There the
asters and dahlias still contended for a place with the old-fashioned
hollyhock. Summer had gone; but the corn-marigold and the gorgeous
crimson poppy yet lingered among the yellow stubble, or on the green
burn braes; scarlet hips and haws made gay the hedgerows, and the
ladybirds were pecking at the sweet apples in the orchard. The shadows
of the flying clouds passed over the green mountain slopes, over Largo's
lofty cone, the round swelling Lomonds--the Mamelles of Fife, as a
French officer not inaptly termed them--the breeze of the German Sea
came up the long, fertile Howe, and brought softly to the ear the lowing
of cattle from Falkland Woods and many a cosy homestead. The autumn was
lovely in Calderwood Glen; but the old manor house seemed empty and
silent, and the heart of Cora was sad, for--
Great events were on the gale,
And each hour brought a varying tale,
and she knew that the same autumnal sun which was browning the woods of
Scotland was lighting her kilted regiments on their path of death and
peril by the Alma. There were times when Cora thought that, bitter
though it was, this hopeless sorrow for the absence of one she loved,
how sweet it might have been--how sadly sweet--had Newton loved her in
return. Ah! it had not been hopeless then; but Newton loved another,
who loved him too. Yet, did that other love him so well as she, poor
quiet Cora, did? And would she love him always? Then, when she heard
the thistlefinch, with its golden wings, singing among the linden trees,
the words of the old, old song seemed to come home truly to her heart as
she hummed them over.
There sat upon the linden tree
A bird, and sang its strain;
So sweet it sang, that, as I heard,
My heart went back again;
It went to one remembered spot,
It saw the rose-trees grow,
And thought again the thoughts of love
There cherished long ago.
A thousand years to me it seems
Since by my love I sate,
Yet thus to have been a stranger long,
Was not my choice, but fate;
Since then I have not seen the flowers,
Nor heard the bird's sweet song,
My joys have all too briefly passed,
My griefs have been too long!
Ladies were setting forth to join the army of the East as nurses! An
idea occurred to her, and then she shrank from it, for Cora was not one
of our strong-minded British females but a good and kind-hearted,
earnest and high-souled Scottish girl; and it is a peculiarity of the
women of Scotland ever to shrink from publicity; and, somehow, public
life seems neither their _forte_ nor their _role_.
"Ah, oh!" thought Cora; "what if this is not merely a separation, but a
loss for ever!"
No battle had yet been fought; but already many men had perished at
Varna, at Scutari, and elsewhere, of fever and cholera. And so, often
as she wandered alone in the garden walks, by the old Battle Stone in
the woods, by the Adder's Craig, or King James's Well, she wept, as she
thought of the lively young lancer whom she had last seen marching for
the East, and still more for her early playmate and cousin, who in
boyhood so petted her at home.
And when Cora would say, or old Willie Pitblado would read, that the
lancers had embarked, that they had touched at Gibraltar, at Malta--that
they were at Varna or elsewhere--he would pause, and look up wistfully,
saying--"Nae word yet o' my Willie?"
"But the papers don't mention Captain Norcliff either."
"Ay, ay, true, Miss Cora," the old man would mutter, and shake his head
at omissions so strange.
Anxiety, love, and fear injured the poor girl's health. She was
alternately resigned and gentle, or short-tempered and irritable.
Though frequently self-absorbed and pre-occupied, she strove, by
affected gaiety, to prove to those about her that she was neither. By
turns she was grateful for sympathy or irritated by it, while her
craving for news about the army of the East became a source of
speculation--shall we call it friendly?--among such sharp-witted
visitors as the Mesdames Spittal and Rammerscales, the wife of the
parish minister, or the slavishly suave Mrs. Wheedleton, the rib of the
village lawyer.
To add to her annoyances, she had a new admirer in young Mr. Brassy
Wheedleton--a newly-fledged legal prig--who had in his hands a dispute
concerning a bond over a portion of the Calderwood property, and whom,
as Sir Nigel patronized him, being the son of a neighbour, a dependent,
and beginner at the bar, she saw rather oftener than she cared for as a
visitor at the Glen. Cora was always most irritable when a letter came
from her English friends in Kent. However, her correspondence with
Chillingham Park had lessened every day since the regiment left England,
why neither could exactly say. Louisa's missives were generally full of
gaiety and the world of fashion, with all its tinsel glitter and
heartless frivolity. As for the war, and our poor soldiers in the East,
she heeded them no more than the clock of St. Paul's, or the last year's
snow. Her last letter had been all concerning the elevation of my Lord
Slubber to a marquisate (skipping the intervening titles of viscount and
earl,) and enclosing a slip from a fashionable morning paper, which
announced that the garter king had given to the noble peer "a coat of
augmentation, in addition to the three guffins' heads mange, of the
grand Anglo-Norman line of De Gullion, with the cage in chief granted to
the fourth baron of that illustrious name, by the greatest of the
Plantagenets, when that chivalrous monarch hung the Scottish Countess of
Buchan outside the walls of Berwick for four years in an iron cage, and
when 'ye potente and valyant Lord Slobbyr de Gulyone was captain yairof
with CCC archeris.'"
This afforded her father the first hearty laugh in which he had indulged
for some time past, for he, too, had become somewhat dull and peevish.
"Three guffins' heads; Cora, this is excellent!" said the old baronet,
laughing still; "it is very droll how the English snob of high family
boasts of his descent from the rabble of William the Norman, just as our
Scotch snob likes to deduce his pedigree from those Saxon _hildings_ who
fled from Hastings, or the savage Danes we licked at Luncarty and
elsewhere. There were Calderwoods in the Glen before either of those
times! What says the old rhyme?
Calderwood was fair to see,
When it gaid to Cameltrie;
But Calderwood was fairer still,
When it grew owre Crosswood Hill."
Sir Nigel's old chum, General Rammerscales, was laid up with the gout
and jungle fever, and their political friend, Lickspittal, was absent in
Parliament--where, like a true Scottish M.P., he served to fill the
house, to vote with the lord advocate or the majority, to work on all
committees (which paid); but, of course, remaining as oblivious of
Scottish interests as of those of the Sioux Indians.
Now that he was residing almost permanently at the old manor house--the
Place of Calderwood, as it was named _par excellence_--Sir Nigel became
somewhat infected by his daughter's melancholy. Thoughts of his two
dead sons--Nigel, who fell at Goojerat, of his pet boy Archie, and also
of his nephew, his favourite sister's only son, exposed to all the
perils of disease and war in Turkey--recurred to him again and again, as
he wandered through the rooms and under the old linden trees that had
often echoed to their voices in infancy; and he thought of how the old
estates, and the title first granted by King Charles to Sir Norman
Calderwood, _Primus Baronettorum Scotiae_, would go after his death, an
event which he knew must happen some day; for, though hale and hearty
yet, he felt that he rode a stone or two heavier now, was apt to "funk"
at a sunk fence, and was finding that noble brute Splinterbar a trifle
hard in the mouth for his bridle-hand now.
Even Cora's old song of "The Thistle and Rose" only served to make him
sad--to make him think of those who had sung it long, long ago; and then
he would order another bottle of that rare, creamy old claret, that Mr.
Binns kept among the cobwebs, in a particular corner of the cellar, for
_themselves_.
Faithful old Davie Binns! He had grown grey, white, and bald in the
service of the Calderwoods, like his fathers before him, and like many
other servants in that kind old Scottish household--one, indeed, "of the
olden time." If he had been dismissed for a dereliction of duty, he
would have thought the world was coming to an end, and doubtless would
have flatly refused to go; for Davie was one of a class of servitors
that are passing away, even in Scotland and Ireland; and from the
sister-kingdom I fear they have long since vanished.
Accompanied by old Willie, Sir Nigel and a friend or two had
occasionally a shot at the partridges in the stubble or the
turnip-fields; but when the first meet of the hounds took place their
master was absent.
In vain the horns were blown by Largo's slopes and Balcarris Wood; in
vain the dogs gave mouth, and yelped, and wagged their upright tails.
The cover was drawn, and every spur struck deep, as the huntsmen sped
over dyke and ditch, by loch, and moor, and mountain; but Sir Nigel was
sorrowing at his house in the Glen, and his favourite hunters, Saline
and Splinterbar, were forgotten in their stalls.
Why was this?
On a Sunday towards the end of September--a Sunday which many must
recall with sorrow--mysteriously, as if borne in the air, there passed a
whisper over all the land of a great event that had happened far, far
away; and that whisper found an echo in many a heart and home in
England--in many an Irish mud cabin and Scottish glen--in many a high
and many a humble dwelling.
In the quaint old village kirk of Calderwood, during the morning
service, it passed along the pews from ear to ear among the people, even
to the old haunted aisle of St. Margaret, where Cora sat (her sweet,
earnest eyes intent on the preacher, though her thoughts were far away)
beside her father in his carved oak seat, with all its armorial bearings
overhead; for he was lord of all the glen and manor--a little king, but
a very kind one, among the peasantry there.
So, on this calm, sunny summer morning, when no sound disturbed the
preacher's voice but the rustle of the oak woods without, or the
twittering of the martins in their nests among the Gothic carvings,
there came vaguely to the pastoral glen--vaguely, wildly, no one knew
how--news that a great battle had been fought far, far away in the East,
and that we had lost four, five, some said even six thousand men; but
that we were, thank God, _victorious_.
Pausing in his sermon, while his eyes kindled and his cheek flushed as
they had never done when detailing the bloody wars of the Jews and
Egyptians, the aged minister announced the tidings from the pulpit,
adding (the first false rumour) "that the Duke of Cambridge had fallen
at the head of the Guards and our own Highland lads, as he led them,
sword in hand, up the braes of the Alma."
Every eye turned to St. Margaret's aisle, where, through the painted
windows, the yellow sunshine streamed on Sir Nigel's silver hair and
Cora's smooth dark braids, for all knew that they had a dear kinsman in
that distant field, and when the minister asked the people to join with
him in prayer for those who might fall, and for the widows and orphans
of the slain, it was with earnest, humble, and contrite hearts that the
startled and anxious rustics added their voices to his.
Cora covered her face with her handkerchief; and old Pitblado looked
round him, grim and sternly as any Covenanter who ever wore a blue
bonnet; but the poor man's heart was full of tears, as he prayed to
heaven that his Willie might be safe. Besides, as a native of Fife, he
had much of the old and inbred horror of soldiering peculiar to that
peninsula, since those dark days when the Fifeshire infantry found their
graves on the field of Kilsythe.
Ere the red autumn sun went down beyond the green hills of Clackmannan,
the electric wire had announced the passage of the Alma over all the
length and breadth of the land--flashing over all Europe, from the
shores of the Bosphorus to those of the Shannon.
But in reply to a message sent by Sir Nigel to the War Office--a
telegram despatched to soothe the agony of love--came the brief but
terrible answer--
"_The name of your nephew is among the killed!_"
"Papa--papa--among the killed--among the killed!" Cora exclaimed, after
the first stunning paroxysm of her grief was past.
"Yet I do not despair, Cora," said the old man, in his bewilderment,
caressing her, and not knowing what to say, while remembering the keen
bitterness that the gazette of Goojerat brought to his heart, when there
he read the name of his eldest son and hope--his dark and handsome
Nigel.
"Oh, do not speak of hope to me, papa. Poor Newton, I did so love him!
I cannot dare to hope!"
"Dearest Cora, we have no details. He may be missing. I have heard of
many returned so in the old Peninsular times. My old friend, Jack
Oswald, of Dunnik, among others; but he was always found under a heap of
dead men, or so forth."
"But the telegram says distinctly, among the killed--his body, his poor,
mangled body, must have been seen----"
"Colonel Beverley will write to me. In a few days we shall know all the
particulars."
"Even were he only wounded, I should be miserable; but to know that he
is dead--dead--Newton dead--buried far, far away by strangers, and among
strangers, and that I shall never, never see him more! Oh, papa--my
dear papa!" she exclaimed, as she flung herself upon his breast, "I
loved Newton dearly--far more dearly than life!"
And so the great secret escaped her in her grief.
*CHAPTER XXXVIII.*
The fight's begun;--in momentary blaze
Bright o'er the hills the volleying lightning plays,
Bursts the loud shell, the death shots hiss around,
And the hoarse cannon adds its heavier sound,
Till wide the gathering clouds that rise between
Clothe in a thicker gloom the maddening scene;
And as the billow's wild and angry crest,
That swells in foam on Ocean's lurid breast,
Through each long line the curling volumes spread,
And hang their white wreaths o'er the column's head.
After the troops crossed the Bulganak, strict silence was enjoined, and
no drum was beaten or bugle blown. Scattered parties of Russian cavalry
scoured all the ground before us; and as they galloped to and fro, the
gleam of Cossack lances, the flash of a carbine, or the steady glitter
of sword-blades and cuirasses, shone at times from among the groves of
the turpentine trees, and between the rocky undulations of the
landscape. Thus we, the British, could not make ourselves quite aware
of the nature of the ground we were approaching, while the French
marched straight and confidently towards certain great cliffs, which had
been carefully reconnoitred from the sea on the extreme right, and which
they were to storm, with the village of Almatamack, at the point of the
bayonet. At nine o'clock, the French on our right--Bosquet's
column--halted, and quietly cooked their coffee, while our troops were
still moving laboriously over rough ground, to bring our flank closer to
theirs; and now, far beyond the extended columns of the allies--those
long, bright lines of bayonets, sloped barrels, and waving colours that
shone in the sun of a lovely morning--we saw the dark smoke of the
war-steamers towering into the clear air, as they crept in-shore,
seeking opportunities to open fire upon the Russian's lofty position;
and at twenty minutes past ten we heard the first cannon booming, as
they threw their shot among the imperial troops in rear of the telegraph
station, which was distant nearly five thousand metres from the shore.
Two more protracted halts took place, while final consultations were
made between Lord Raglan and Marshal St. Arnaud; but still we were
drawing nearer the scene of the coming conflict.
Before us rolled the Alma--a picturesque river--which takes its rise
among the western slopes of the Chatyrdagh, in Crim Tartary, and falls
into the Euxine, about twelve miles from Sebastopol. High rises its
southern bank into picturesque rocks, that in some places are
precipitous, and terminate in a lofty cliff which overhangs the sea; and
this formidable position was to be defended against us by more than
thirty-nine thousand Russians and one hundred and six pieces of cannon,
led by Prince Alexander Menschikoff, one of the Emperor's most
distinguished generals, who had entered the world as the son of a poor
pastrycook, but who now held the supreme civil and military command in
the Crimea. A round shot from a Turkish cannon had mutilated him
severely at the siege of Varna, and hence the hatred he bore the race
and faith of the Osmanlis was deep and fierce. His skill was not equal
to his presumption, for he fully thought--as a letter found in his
carriage by Captain Travers of ours, after the battle, asserted--that if
the three invading armies were not routed at the Alma, he would be fully
able to defend its hills for three weeks, until the Emperor sent him
reinforcements from the steppes of Bessarabia.
Two miles from the mouth of the Alma stood the picturesque little
village of Burliuk. It was now in flames, and the smoke of the
conflagration was rolling among the vineyards, which covered the slope
that extended between the stream and the base of those cliffs along
which glittered the hostile lines of the Russian army. Two miles in
length those lines extended along the hills, which were intersected by
deep ravines. On every ridge strong batteries of cannon swept the
approaches to these; deep trenches were dug along the mountain slopes,
and therein were posted the infantry. Constructed on the side of the
Kourgane Hill, which rises to the height of six hundred feet above the
Alma, was an enormous battery, forming two sides of a triangle, and
mounting fourteen heavy guns, thirty-two pounders, and twenty-four pound
howitzers. The ascent to this was commanded by three other batteries,
mounting twenty-five guns. To assail the Kourgane Hill--the right wing
of the Russian army--with all its cannon, howitzers, and trenches, was
the task assigned to the Light Division under Sir George Brown,
supported by the Duke of Cambridge, with the Guards and Highlanders; and
so intent was Menschikoff on its defence, that he had there concentrated
sixteen battalions of regular infantry, two battalions of sailors, and
two brigades of field-pieces. Near them were many ladies in carriages
from Sebastopol, and elsewhere, waiting to see the "English curs"
beaten.
During one of the protracted halts referred to, I could not help
thinking how lovely was the morning for the unholy work we had in hand!
The sun was without a cloud, and the soft breeze of the September morn
played along the grassy slopes, rustling the leaves of the olive and
turpentine groves, and the broader foliage of the vineyards, till at
last even its breath died away upon the summit of the hostile hills.
"It was then that in the allied armies there occurred," says Kinglake,
"a singular pause of sound--a pause so general as to have been observed
and remembered by many in remote parts of the ground, and so marked that
its interruption by the mere neighing of an angry horse seized the
attention of thousands; and although this strange silence was the mere
result of weariness and chance, it seemed to carry a meaning; for it was
now that, after nearly forty years of peace, the great nations of Europe
were once more meeting for battle!"
The French steamers were now shelling the heights, the Russians making
but a poor response; and just as a bomb, splendidly thrown by the
former, among the smoke wreaths that curled round the brow of the
cliffs, unmasked an ambush which had been prepared for the advancing
Zouaves, after the smoke cleared away, showed by the prostrate forms of
the riflemen it slew, how well it had done its fatal work--just as I was
watching this episode, through my glass, I heard Studhome say,
"Norcliff, we are to go to the front."
"Ours, alone?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Can't say; but you see the danger of having a reputation, Newton," said
Jack, laughing, for he was in unusual high spirits. "We lancers served
against the Pindarees in Central India, at Neerbudda, and elsewhere--the
men and horses, poor nags, change; but the name and the number remain.
Thus, you see what the honour of having a good name and gallant number
costs us. The lancers must advance."
"Only your squadron, Captain Norcliff," said Colonel Beverley, cantering
up to where we were halted in brigade; "you will advance and extend to
double the usual skirmishing distance, simply to feel the enemy."
I saluted and gave the command, "Threes right--left-wheel--forward," and
away we went at a swinging trot, with plumes and pennons glittering in
the air.
"If they hit you, Bill?" cried one of our men to Sergeant Dashwood, of
Wilford's troop, which formed the left of my squadron.
"Bah! I escaped often enough in India," said the sergeant, laughing;
"and, please Heaven, were it only for my poor wife's sake, I shall do so
again."
It did not please Heaven, however, for within one hour after this worthy
Sergeant Dashwood was lying on his back, pale and stiff, with a bullet
in his heart.
As we halted, formed line to the front, and extended from the right at
full speed, I heard Jocelyn of ours, a wild and extravagant fellow, say
to Sir Henry Scarlett, "I wonder how many infernal _post obits_ will be
cancelled to-day!"
We now advanced slowly over the open ground, halting at times, and every
moment gave us a clearer and nearer view of the enemy's position.
I looked to the rear. How steadily they were coming on, those splendid
lines of British infantry--the Royal and the Welsh Fusiliers, the 19th,
and 33rd, and Connaught Rangers--stretching far away from flank to
flank, in scarlet--that glorious and historic colour, which fills at
once the eye and the mind--their bayonets flashing in the sun, and their
colours threateningly advanced, but hanging listless, for the wind had
died away. Thousands of those who were now marching there, in youth,
and pride, and health--whose place at home was still vacant in many a
parent's heart--were doomed to fatten the earth with their bones, and
make the grass of future summers grow greener on the slopes of the Alma.
Strong memories of my early youth, of my dead mother's face and voice,
were with me now, and tears came too--I scarcely knew why; but I felt
somewhat as if in a dream. I had a strong yearning also to see the
proud Louisa, the tender Cora Calderwood, and my kind old uncle--those I
might never see again.
I strove to imagine how Louisa Loftus would bear the shock of hearing
that I had fallen--if fall I should. When and by whom would the news be
broken to her? I thought, too, of the quiet old woods of Calderwood
Glen, under the shadow of the greater Lomond. There, at least, all was
peace, thank Heaven; and in my heart I prayed that long, long might it
be so. And strange it was, too, that in this exciting time, when so
many thousands of various races were about to close in the shock of
battle--when a few minutes more might see me face to face with
death--death by the cannon, the rifle, or the sabre--even while the
explosion of the French shells rung every instant in the air--there
flickered in my memory snatches of frivolous musical strains, and one or
two trivial mess-room incidents; so that the vast array along the Alma
seemed almost a phantasmagoria. But here a hand was laid upon my bridle
arm. It was the hand of my faithful follower, Willie Pitblado, who
slung his lance, and, sinking the soldier in the friend and countryman,
said, while his bright grey eyes sparkled under his lancer cap--
"Hear you that, sir? It is the pipes of the Highland brigade!"
We were so far to the right of our squadron as to be close to the
division of the Duke of Cambridge, which was composed of the Grenadier,
Coldstream, and Scots Fusilier Guards, with three of the Highland
regiments (the 42nd, 79th, and 93rd), whose pipers were now playing each
the pibroch of their corps during the second halt; and then over all the
field the old wild "memory of a thousand years" was kindled in every
Scotchman's heart. I felt his enthusiasm; I saw that Willie felt it
too, and in the kindly smile we exchanged there was conveyed a world of
hidden sentiment. Wild, barbarous, and uncouth as it may be deemed--an
instrument, perhaps, beyond improvement--the voice of the war-pipe
seldom falls without a strange and stirring effect upon the Scottish
ear; and let neither Englishman nor Irishman ever trust that Scot who
hears it unmoved by the love of country and of home. There is something
rotten at his heart's core! In whatever part of the distant world a
Scotchman hears its strange notes, and the hoarse hum of its deep bass
drones, it sets him dreaming of home; of the old thatched cottage in the
mountain-glen, where the trouting burn gurgles under the long yellow
broom, or "the auld brigstane" where he fished in boyhood; and with its
voice come back the faces of "the loved, the lost, the distant, and the
dead," and the glories and the battles of the years that are gone. He
sees, too, the old kirk, where he prayed by his mother's knee; the
graveyard, with all its mossy stones, and the forms of those who are
lying there rise again in memory's eye. So the storm-beaten Isleman may
seem to hear once more the waves that lash on Jura's rocks, or the
scream of the wild birds over Scarba's shore, when ploughing far away in
the wastes of the Indian Sea. It is difficult to define what this
influence is; but that Scot is little to be envied who hears the warpipe
unmoved, when far away from home, or as we heard it on that day beside
the Alma; and though proud of his lancer regiment, I could see that my
comrade Willie's heart was with the Highlanders, whose dark plumes were
tossing on our right. It was at this time that Sir Colin Campbell, in
his quiet, grave way, said to one of his officers, as the historian
before quoted records, "This will be a good time for the men to get
loose half their cartridges."
"And when the command travelled along the ranks of the Highlanders, it
lit up the faces of the men one after another, assuring them that now,
at length, and after long expectance, they indeed would go into action.
They began obeying the order, and with beaming joy, for they came of a
warlike race; yet not without emotion of a grave kind. They were young
soldiers, and new to battle."
But now the trumpets recalled us to our brigade in rear of the infantry,
who had the chief work of that bloody day to do. And just as we wheeled
into our places, a roar of musketry on our right announced that the
impetuous French had commenced the attack! The enemy's shot and shell
were coming souse among us now, and many heard for the first time the
fierce rushing sound, and then the mighty shock, as a bullet ripped up
the earth, or swept a man away; while shells that burst in mid-air fell
in hissing showers, that tore our clothing with their jagged edges, when
they failed to wound. Dashing through the Alma, in front of the steep
cliffs, under a terrific shower of round shot, grape, and musketry,
which clothed the whole face of the slopes with spouting lines of white
smoke, streaked with flashes of fire, waking a thousand echoes in the
sky above and earth below, the French poured forward in yelling and
impetuous masses. Fresh from their campaigns and conquests in burning
Algeria, those fierce little Zouaves, in their blue jackets, red
breeches, and turbans, active as mountain goats, were seen swarming up
at the point of the bayonet, and forming in two lines, which charged
with headlong rush on the astonished Muscovites, whose general, being
thus completely outflanked on the cliffs being scaled, sought, but
sought in vain, to change his front, and drive the French from those
hills they had taken so rapidly and so gallantly, but at awful loss.
"Allah-Allah Hu!" was now the cry that rent the air, as the Turks
advanced.
Under their green standards--the holy colour--with the crescent and
star, massed in close column at quarter distance, the Turkish troops
came on; and through the sea of red fezzes the cannon balls made many a
deadly lane, until the battalions deployed into line, sending, as
Studhome said, "many a believer to Paradise in a state of mutilation
such as the houris wouldn't appreciate." But on they went against that
sheet of lead and iron, shoulder to shoulder with the French; and many a
shaven crown and many a scarlet fez, with its broad military button and
blue tassel, were lying on the turf, while, with visions of the
dark-eyed girls of Paradise waving their green scarves from their
couches of pearl, and crying, "Come, kiss me, for I love thee," many a
grim, Turkish soul passed forth into the night of death. On the other
flank were the French linesmen, crying on "_Dieu, et la Mere de Dieu_,"
to help them in their last agony, while the sisters of charity and the
_vivandieres_ rivalled each other in the rear in their attention to the
wounded and dying.
*CHAPTER XXXIX.*
Three hundred cannon threw up their emetic,
And thirty thousand muskets flung their pills
Like hail to make a bloody diuretic.
Mortality! thou hast thy monthly bills;
Thy plagues, thy passions, thy physicians, yet tick,
Like the death-watch, within our ears the ills
Past, present, and to come;--but all may yield
To the true portrait of one battle-field. BYRON.
At half-past one the British infantry advanced into action; like
lightning the order flew along the line, for it was borne by Nolan, the
impetuous and the gallant.
The village of Burliuk, the centre of our position, was still in flames
that rose to a vast height, especially from the well-filled stackyards.
To the right of the conflagration, two regiments of Adams's brigade, the
Welsh[*] and 49th, or Hertfordshire, crossed the river by a deep and
dangerous ford, under a galling fire from the Russian Minie Riflemen,
who were ensconced among the vineyards on the opposite bank. The
remainder crossed on the left of Burliuk, and, both uniting beyond it,
the whole division of De Lacy Evans found themselves engaged in
sanguinary strife, while we, the cavalry, could but sit in our saddles
and look on, but burning with impatience to advance.
[*] 41st--so called since 1831.
On the extreme left of the British advance, the Light Division, under
Sir George Brown, G.C.B. (a Peninsular veteran of the old fighting
43rd), crossed the stream in their immediate front. Rugged and
precipitous, the bank rose above them. So steep was it in some places
that one of our officers, when in the act of climbing, was mortally
wounded by having his entire spinal column traversed by a ball, which
had been fired perpendicularly down from the Russian ranks above. Dense
vineyards and abattis of felled trees partially obstructed the advance
of our gallant Light Division; but in vain, for the 7th, the 33rd, and
Welsh Fusiliers, the 77th, and Connaught Rangers pressed on under the
volleying fire; and such was their coolness, that the soldiers threw to
each other bunches of the delicious crimson grapes, to quench their
thirst, for they had been long in marching order under a burning morning
sun. The Minie balls were showering past like hail; caps, epaulettes,
ears, fingers, and teeth were torn away, and every moment the men fell
fast on every hand; but from right to left the cries of "Forward! on!
on! forward!" were incessant, and the human surge of the Light Division
swept on, bearing with it the whole 95th regiment. Rapidly they formed
in line beyond the broken ground--rapidly and magnificently--and threw
their steady fire into the strong redoubts with terrible effect; but
hundreds were falling on both sides, and now commenced that ever
memorable charge up hill by which we won the Alma. Faintly in the air
came a yell of defiance from the Russians; it was very different from
"the strong-lunged, massive-throated, deep-chested outbursts of
cheering" that ran along the ranks of the British infantry.
Conspicuous on a grey horse, amid the clouds of passing smoke, we could
see old Sir George Brown, riding as he had ridden with the Light
Division of other days, at Busaco and Talavera. A deadly sheet of fire
now tears through the 7th Fusiliers--led by Lacy Yea--they waver, but
re-form! By the same fire the 23rd are decimated, and Colonel Chester
falls at their head, shouting, "On, lads, on!" Relief after relief is
shot down under the colours of the 7th. One is lost for a time; but,
hurrah! it is safe among the soldiers of the Royal Welsh!
Under their colour, young Anstruther (the son of my uncle's neighbour,
Balcaskie) is shot dead, and the poor boy rolls down the hill, enveloped
in its silken folds; but again it waves in the wind, as Private Evans
snatches it up, and bears it on towards the Great Redoubt.
Thicker fall the dead on every hand, for it is all musketry, and the
deep, hoarse boom of the cannon, surging like a stormy sea, roll upon
roll. The wounded are crawling, limping, and streaming to the rear; the
dead lie close as autumn leaves in Vallombrosa. On stretchers and
crossed muskets, officers and men are borne to the riverside, and,
reeking with blood, the stretchers return for other victims. Hythe is
forgotten now, and all her science of musketry; for no man thinks of
sighting his Minie rifle, but all load, and cap, and blaze away at
random, though many an officer is shouting, "Steady, men, steady, and
aim below the crossbelts."
On, yet on, rolls the human surge, for what or who could withstand
them--our noble infantry, our 19th and 33rd, our 77th and 88th, as they
rush on, with colours flying and loud hurrahs!
But now there is a louder cry!
Their leader falls! In a cloud of dust both horse and man go down, and
for a moment the advance is paralyzed--but for a moment only.
Again the grand old soldier is at their head on foot, his sword
glittering above his white head, and, reckless of the tremendous fire
which sweeps through them, our troops dash at the redoubts--a mighty
torrent in scarlet--the flashing bayonets are lowered--man seeks man,
ready to grapple body to body with his foe, and the sparks of fire rise
in the midst as steel clashes on steel, for the Russian hearts are stout
and their hands are strong as ours; the dead and the dying are heaped
over each other, to be trampled on and smothered in their blood.
Nine hundred of our officers and men fell, killed and wounded, amid the
terrible _melee_ in the Great Redoubt, and all up the scorched slope
that leads to it. In the torn vineyards, and among the leafy abbatis,
the poor redcoats are lying thicker than ever I have seen the scarlet
poppies stud the harvest fields in Lothian or the Merse!
The red dragon of the Royal Welsh is flying on that fatal redoubt, but
not yet is the victory ours!
Descending from the higher hills, a mighty column of Russian infantry--a
double column, composed of the Ouglitz and Vladimir battalions, bearing
with them the image of St. Sergius, a solemn trust given to them by the
Bishop of Moscow--a supposed miraculous idol, borne in the wars of the
Emperor Alexis, of Peter the Great, and Alexander I.--came rushing to
the mortal shock, in full confidence of victory.
Deploying into line, the great grey mass, with their flat caps and
spiked helmets--for the corps were various--came boldly on, and followed
up a deadly volley by a powerful bayonet charge. Then the ranks in
scarlet, exhausted by their toilsome ascent, began to waver and fall
back, followed down hill by the yelling Russian hordes, who had a
perfect belief in their own invincibility, and barbarously bayoneted all
our wounded as they came on.
Terribly fatal was this temporary repulse to the gallant Welsh Fusiliers
in particular; but now the 7th and 33rd, with the Guards and
Highlanders, advanced, and again the struggle was resumed.
Of the 33rd, nineteen sergeants fell, chiefly in defence of the colours;
and fourteen bullet holes in one standard and eleven in the other
attested to the fury of the conflict.
Throwing open his ranks to allow the retreating regiments to re-form and
recover breath, the Duke of Cambridge now brought up his division,
though there was a momentary fear of its success, for an officer high in
rank exclaimed--
"The brigade of Guards will be destroyed. Ought it not to fall back?"
"Better that every man of her Majesty's Guards should lie dead upon the
field than turn their backs upon the enemy!" was the stern and proud
response of grim old Colin Campbell, a veteran of the old and glorious
wars of Wellington, as he galloped off to put himself at the head of his
Highlanders, whom he had had skilfully brought on in _echelon_ of
regiments. They reserved their fire, and advanced in solemn silence.
Terribly was our splendid brigade of Guards handled, when the
Highlanders came up, and then, as Kinglake tells us, a man in one of the
regiments re-forming on the slope cried, in the deep, honest bitterness
of his heart, "Let the Scotsmen go on--they'll do the work!" and, with
three battalions in the kilt, Sir Colin (whose horse was killed under
him) advanced to meet _twelve_ of the flushed and furious enemy.
"Now, men," said he, "you are going into action, and remember this, that
whoever is wounded--I don't care what his rank is--must lie where he
falls. No soldier must carry off wounded men. If any one does such a
thing, his name shall be stuck up in his parish kirk. Be steady--keep
silence--fire low! Now, men--the army are watching us--make me proud of
my Highland brigade!"
The brilliant author of "Eoethen," an eye-witness of this part of the
field, describes their movements so beautifully that I cannot resist
quoting him again.
"The ground they had to ascend was a good deal more steep and broken
than the slope close beneath the redoubt. In the land where those Scots
were bred, there are shadows of sailing clouds skimming up the mountain
side; and their paths are rugged and steep; yet their course is smooth,
easy, and swift. Smoothly, easily, swiftly, the Black Watch seemed to
glide up the hill. A few instants before, and their tartans ranged dark
in the valley; now their plumes were on the crest."
Another line in _echelon_, and another--the Cameron and the Sutherland
Highlanders; and now, to the eyes of the superstitious Muscovites, the
strange uniform of those troops seemed something terrible; their waving
sporrans were taken for horses' heads; they cried to each other that the
Angel of Light had departed, and the Demon of Death had come!
Close and murderous was the fire that opened on them; then a wail of
despair floated over the grey masses of the long-coated Russian
infantry, as they broke and fled, casting away knapsacks, and everything
that might encumber their flight, and, for the first time, rose the
Highland cheer. "Then," says the great historian of the war, "along the
Kourgane slopes, and thence west almost home to the Causeway, the
hill-sides were made to resound with that joyous and assuring cry, which
is the natural utterance of a northern people, so long as it is warlike
and free."[*]
[*] Kinglake, vol. ii.
The Heights of the Alma were won!
*CHAPTER XL.*
Had ye no graves at home,
Across the briny water,
That hither ye must come,
Like bullocks to the slaughter?
If we the work must do,
Why the sooner 'tis begun,
If flint and trigger hold but true,
The quicker 'twill be done,
By the rifle! the good rifle!
In our hands it is no trifle!
The battle was fought and won; the thunder had died away along the
heights of the Alma; it was all over now--that "hell of blood and
ferocity" was past; and little more remained but to number the dead, and
lay them in their last ghastly homes. The agonies even of the
wounded--that terrible grey acre of Russian wounded--were half forgotten
by the untouched; but many a bright-eyed girl in England far away, and
in that northern land which was to me the dearest half of "sea-walled
Albion," who was wearing her gay muslins and flowers, would be coming
forth, ere long, in the crape and sable livery of grief; for many a
father and mother's hope and pride were among the redcoats that lay so
motionless and still along those fatal slopes.
The sun was verging westward, the smoke of the villanous saltpetre hung
like a lurid canopy over the summit of the Kourgane Hill, and that final
scene of slaughter in the Great Redoubt; and now men, who had been
separated in the confusion and hurry of the conflict, were meeting
again, and congratulating each other that they were spared.
We, the small force of cavalry, a thousand sabres and lancers, who had
hitherto been impatient onlookers, now dashed through the river, without
Lord Raglan's authority; and, though the upsetting of a field-gun, and
the slippery nature of the ford, were the cause of much delay, we
reached the summit of the Kourgane Hill soon after the Highlanders had
swept the foe from it. We had six guns with us, and their fire told
fearfully upon the retreating masses of the Russians, who left mangled
piles of dead in their rear. The battery was divided; one half our
force, led by Lord Cardigan, escorting those on the right, while Lord
Lucan, with the rest, conducted those that were on the left. Our orders
were, also, to glean up cannon, prisoners, and other trophies.
The earl rode in advance with my squadron of lancers. We picked up a
good many prisoners, who sullenly threw down their arms and submitted.
These men were all light infantry, wearing flat forage-caps, and long
grey coats that reached to their ankles.
On this duty we had to traverse a great portion of the field, and its
aspect was harrowing; a day of slaughter was to be followed by a night
of agony.
Here and there were pools of blood, in which the flies were battening,
and from whence the honey-bee and the snow-white butterfly strove in
vain to free their tiny pinions; and on the glacis of the Great Redoubt,
where men of all regiments--but chiefly Welsh Fusiliers--lay blended
together, were bodies to be seen without heads, or legs, or arms, bowels
torn out, brains crushed, blood oozing from eyes, or ears, or
mouths--blood, blood everywhere: for it was there that grape, canister,
and round-shot had bowled through the advancing columns.
Among those ghastly piles lay an ensign of one of our line regiments--a
poor boy, fresh from Eton or Harrow, struck down in his first red coat.
He had a miniature in his hand--a young and beautiful girl, thought I.
But Pitblado handed it to me, and then I saw that it represented a
grey-haired woman, of comely and matronly aspect.
She was his mother, no doubt. Could she have seen him there!
A ball had pierced his chest. He was not quite dead; for when Pitblado
poured some water between his lips, his eyes opened, and he began to
mutter as if speaking to his mother--that his head lay on her breast,
and he heard, in fancy, her replies.
True, in the end, to the first instinct, or first tender impulse of
nature, as, when a little child, he had, under pain or wrong, hid his
weeping face in his mother's lap, the old spirit came over him; and as
his dying ear seemed to hear that mother's voice, a holy light shone
over his livid face, and the poor lad died happily.
He must have been shot under his colours, for the standard belt was yet
over his left shoulder.
The roar of battle was gone now, and the bushes where the dead ensign
lay were literally alive with larks, thrushes, and linnets in full song.
Many of the Russian slain had half-bitten cartridges in their open
mouths. Many who were shot in the head lay with their faces on the sod,
and their muskets under them; and when struck in the heart, death was so
instantaneous that all retained the position in which they had been
shot. By their attitudes, we might know the time they had been in
dying.
In one place seven of the Russian 26th--for that number was on their
glazed leather helmets--lay all in a line, with their bayonets at the
charge. All these men had been slain by a shower of grape, and were
shot in the head or breast.
As we rode on we secured many prisoners and several battery guns; all
the cannon were on stocks of wood, painted green, with white crosses on
the breeches and muzzles.
And now we were traversing the Kourgane Hill, where the fine fellows of
our household brigade, in their bright scarlet and black bearskins, were
lying in great numbers, and close by were many of the Black Watch, but
all dead. I reined in my horse, and looked at them earnestly.
The countenances of some seemed as if still in life, so far as
expression went. Some were calm and resigned; some as if in prayer.
Others were fierce and stern; but all were pale and white as the cold
Carrara marble. The evening breeze passed over them; it lifted their
hair and the black plumes in their bonnets. Then the dead seemed as if
about to stir. There they lay, with the blood stiffening on their
tartans. My heart was very full.
In some faces I could read a ghastly and defiant smile, and several were
stretched at length, as if the friends that would ere long be sorrowing
for them in their distant home were about to commit them to their
winding-sheet.
Where our cannon had mauled their retreating cavalry, the horses lay in
close ranks, with their long necks stretched out, and their riders
beneath them, all torn, brained, or disembowelled alike by the iron
storm of grape-shot that had swept through the squadron. In some places
we saw only a red, muddy pulp, composed of flesh and bones, where the
enemy's brigade of guns had traversed the ground.
"War!" says a French writer; "those by whose will war comes--those who
make men resemble the savage beasts--will have a fearful account to
render to the righteous Judge above!"
As we passed along with our prisoners, many of our wounded reviled and
execrated them, for on all hands we heard stories of Russian treachery.
Our soldiers, in some instances, when supplying their wounded enemies
with water from their canteens, were shot down by the very wretch whose
thirst they had just quenched. Captain Eddington, of the 95th, was
murdered in this fashion by a Russian rifleman, in sight of the whole
regiment, and of his brother, a lieutenant, who rushed in advance to
avenge him and fell riddled with bullets. Maddened by several such
incidents, our soldiers, with their musket butts, dashed out the brains
of several of the wounded, slaying them like reptiles, and undeserving
of mercy.
Such details are only calculated to weary and revolt; but the stern
scene was not without its brighter features.
Already the surgeons were busy among the wounded, and our gallant seamen
were all tenderness, sympathy, and activity, as they conveyed them on
board the ships, from the rigging of which the events of that exciting
day had been witnessed by thousands.
"Cheer up, sodjer," I sometimes heard them shout, as they bore a maimed
victim, pale and bloody, to the boats; "we shall all eat our Christmas
duff in Sebastopol."
Many whom they bore away were "booked" for Chelsea, "the poor soldier's
last home in the land of the living;" but many were fated to die of
their wounds ere the sun of the morrow lit up the waters of the Euxine.
We were now far in the rear of the original Russian position, and were
actually riding along the Sebastopol road, when Captain Bolton, of the
1st Dragoon Guards, whose sword hand was muffled in a bloody
handkerchief, came galloping after us, to explain that Lord Raglan
desired we should fall back at once.
"His lordship fears that you are going too far in advance," said he,
"and that the Russian flying artillery may halt and open on you. Give
up all pursuit of prisoners; set loose those you have, and simply escort
the guns."
On this we halted and liberated more than a hundred prisoners of all
ranks, several being officers. Some of the latter shrugged their
shoulders contemptuously at the commiseration we expressed for some of
the Russian wounded, who lay on the road expiring of weakness and
thirst.
"Bah!" said one, in French, to me; "they are only private
soldiers--peasants--and will soon die."
His sentiments were worthy of a Russian aristocrat; but he was a grim,
stern, and white-moustached officer, evidently of high rank, for his
breast was covered from epaulette to epaulette with stars, medals, and
crosses.
I had afterwards reason to know that this officer was General Baur, who
had commanded the reconnaisance at Bulganak.
As we were retiring, we came among some of the French, and I recognised
Mademoiselle Sophie, the _vivandiere_ whom I had seen at Gallipoli and
Varna, and who immediately offered me a _petit verre_ of cognac from her
little store, which I gladly accepted. She looked pale and excited, and
her eyes were bloodshot.
"Our regiment has suffered heavily to-day, monsieur," said she. "I was
thrice under fire with it; but so many of my comrades
fell--that--that--_mon Dieu!_ it proved too much for me."
"Your friend, M. Jolicoeur, of the 2nd Zouaves," said I; "he, I hope,
has escaped to-day?"
"_Helas! mon pauvre Jules!_ he is lying yonder with ever so many more of
ours," she replied, pointing with her trembling hand to the Telegraph
Battery.
"Wounded?"
"Dead, monsieur, dead! He fell when planting the standard of the 2nd
Zouaves on the summit, where you may still see it flying. Poor Captain
Victor Baudeuf, who used to flirt so terribly with Rigolboche, and pay
such frightful sums for a _fauteuil_ every night she danced, till
Mademoiselle Theresa took her place at the _cafes chantants_--well, he,
too, and two hundred of our rank and file, are lying there."
The _vivandiere_ wept and wrung her hands.
All great excitements are followed by a painful reaction; and I shall
not readily forget the dreary night that followed the day of the Alma.
My troop bivouacked near the old ruined walls that lie on the western
flank of the Kourgane Hill.
Vast numbers of dead were lying near; they disturbed us not. But the
wounded, the dying--ah, their moans and cries were frightful! I muffled
my head in my cloak, and strove to shut out the piteous-sounds, and
court sleep beside my jaded charger, close to whose side I crept for
warmth.
*CHAPTER XLI.*
Mine own one! years have passed away
Since I have seen your thoughtful face;
Yet could I every feature trace--
Your image haunts me night and day.
A song brings back the time we walked
Above the brown cliff's sloping lawn;
From music I have even drawn
The very words we used to talk.
The crumbling church, the upland lea,
The river wimpling round the bridge,
The brave grey wold--the far-off ridge,
The mournful singing of the sea.
A few days after the startling telegram reached Calderwood, the
newspapers teemed with despatches and details of the victory at the
Alma, the flight of the shattered Russian Army towards Baktchiserai, and
the advance of the Allies on Sebastopol.
Among those details were the official lists of the killed, wounded, and
missing, furnished by the adjutant-general. How many a home in the
British Isles did these fatal lists fill with grief? how many a heart
they wrung?
Cora Calderwood, pale, and still suffering from the recent shock, read
over the lists; but looked in vain for the name of her cousin Newton.
It was not among the killed; neither was it among the wounded or the
missing. There was no casualty among the officers of the lancers, save
the death of Lieutenant Rakeleigh, who was killed by a cannon shot in
the affair of Bulganak, on the evening preceding the great battle of the
Alma, "and whose body Captain Newton Calderwood Norcliff, with a few
lancers, made a gallant attempt to rescue and carry off."
Poor Rakeleigh! She remembered how well he waltzed, and what desperate
love he made to her at the lancers' ball, when flushed by a furious
galop and a bumper of the mess champagne. What mystery was this? Dared
she hope? Might papa prove right, after all? And might Newton "turn up"
as their old friend Dunnikeir had so often done, from under a pile of
dead men and horses, in the old Peninsular days? Sir Nigel instantly
wrote to the War Office requesting some information regarding Captain
Newton C. Norcliff, and was promptly informed that the telegram should
have been, "_The name of your nephew is_ NOT _among the killed._"
So the omission of those three letters--one little word--made a mighty
difference to poor Cora's anxious and affectionate heart; but the letter
from the War Office added, after an apology, "_We regret to state that,
a day or two after the passage of the Alma, Captain Norcliff was
severely wounded, mutilated, and taken prisoner in a skirmish with the
enemy's cavalry--an affair of which no detail has yet reached
headquarters._"
Mutilated and taken!--taken by those odious, savage, and terrible
Muscovites, of whose barbarities the newspapers were daily giving fresh
details! Here was a new horror--another source of anxiety and grief;
and Cora and Sir Nigel were never tired of surmising or conjecturing
what might be the fate of their kinsman, or of searching the public
journals, and the letters from the army with which their columns teemed,
for some scrap of information regarding the lost one; but they searched
in vain. Time passed on; the Russians sank their fleet across the mouth
of the harbour of Sebastopol; Balaclava was captured by the British; and
the second week of October saw the first bombardment of the beleagured
city. These were important facts; but one was more important still to
Cora Calderwood--there came no tidings of her lost cousin Newton. Had
he died in the hands of the Russians, or been sent to dig copper in the
mines of Siberia?--a place of which she had rather vague ideas, and of
which, with its capital, Tobolsk, she had read such thrilling accounts,
when at school, in Madame Cottin's celebrated "Elizabeth, or the
Exiles," &c. Her heart sank within her at this conjecture, and all that
such a fate suggested. She penned several letters on the subject to
Lady Louisa Loftus. Now, they could mingle their tears, she wrote; now
they could commune and sorrow in common; now----. But she could not
tell _her_ that she loved Newton, too, and could only profess a sisterly
affection for Louisa.
The responses of the latter were cold--singularly so. She was greatly
shocked, no doubt; it made her quite nervous, and all that sort of
thing, to think that Captain Norcliff should be mutilated. Had he lost
his nose (it was a very handsome one)?--or his ears?--or what had the
Russians cut off? If it was a leg, Lord Slubber jocularly suggested
that it would mar his fox-hunting and round-dancing for the future; and
to think of a husband with a wooden leg, or an iron hook for an arm,
like the poor old creatures one sees at Chelsea, would be so funny--so
very absurd!
"Oh," exclaimed Cora, "to write thus, how heartless! To write thus,
when now, of all men in the world, he most requires commiseration! How
horrible! How worldly and selfish she is! She never loved him--never,
never loved him--as--as--I do," she dared not add, even to herself.
Then the letter described the new lining of the carriage; the last thing
in bonnets, and--but here Cora crushed it up in her quick, impatient
little hand, and, with a gesture of impatience, flung it in the fire.
November kept on, and the woods in the old sequestered Glen became
leafless and bare.
The snow powdered white the bare scalps of the hills, and old Willie
Pitblado, the keeper, predicted that the coming winter would be a bitter
one, for numbers of strange aquatic birds had been floating on Lochleven
and in the Forth above Inchcolm; and one morning the woods round the
Adder's Craig, and all the slopes of the Western Lomond, were covered by
flocks of wild Norwegian pigeons--large white birds, whose appearance in
Scotland always indicates a severe winter in the Scandinavian
peninsula--a winter in which all the north of Europe is sure to share;
so Cora trembled, in her tenderness of heart, as she thought of our poor
soldiers before Sebastopol, and her secret love, Newton, who, if
surviving, was a suffering prisoner in the hands of the Russians.
Cora often visited the cottage of old Willie, in the copse near King
Jamie's Well (though the rows of half-decayed hawks, wild cats, and
weasels, with which its eaves were garlanded, made the atmosphere
thereabout redolent of anything but perfume), for Willie's heart, like
her own, was with the army of the East; and he "devoured" all the
newspapers she gave him for intelligence of the war. But he used to
shake his white head, and speak often of the old times of Wellington and
his boyhood--of the many fine lads who had gone forth to Spain and
Holland--"forth frae the Howe o' Fife, to return nae mair," and he
greatly feared such would be the fate of his Willie, now that the poor
young master was gone.
The veteran keeper's spirits had sunk considerably. He was rheumatic
and ailing now; but he still crept about the woods and preserves with
his old double-barrelled Joe Manton and his favourite dogs, and said
hopefully, at times, "Aye ailing, ye ken, never fills the kirk-yard,
Miss Cora."
But Cora's visits to the gamekeeper's lodge, to the Adder's Craig, the
ruined castle of Piteadie, and other old familiar haunts, became
circumscribed, when she had the annoyance of Mr. Brassy Wheedleton's
company. For there were times when that legal sprout came on the
circuit, or visited Sir Nigel on business "anent the bond," or begged
leave to have a few blundering shots at the pheasants; and he seldom
failed to combine these objects with a more ambitious one, by a pretty
close attention upon Cora, and a marked attention, that to her was only
productive of extreme annoyance.
Yule-tide had come and gone at Calderwood; again Cora's pretty hands had
spiced the great wassail bowl, and all the household had partaken of its
contents; but there were heavy hearts at the Glen, as in many a home
circle elsewhere. For every icicle that hung from the eaves; every
flake of snow that drifted past; every biting gust that swept through
the bare woods, made old Sir Nigel and his people think of the horrors
our poor fellows were enduring among the frozen trenches of Sebastopol.
The golden pheasants and the brown partridges were alike forgotten, and
old Pitblado wandered about, alone and forlorn, among them, "though sic
a season for breedin' he couldna ca' to mind!"
The meets of the county pack took place at Largo, at Falfield, and
elsewhere. The foxes, tan, grey, and brown, were thick as blackberries
in Calderwood Glen--ay, thick as the black rabbits on the Isles of the
Forth--but the "M.F.H." heeded them little. He had only ridden to the
hounds once that season, and preferred in the cold evenings his seat by
the ruddy dining-room fire, with his steaming tumbler of toddy on a
gueridon table close at hand; and there he dozed in his cosy easy-chair,
with his favourite dogs at his slippered feet; or he beat time dreamily
to Cora, as she ran her fingers over the keys of the cottage piano, and
sang some such old-fashioned song as the "Thistle and the Rose."
*CHAPTER XLII.*
Alas! what evils I discern in
Too great an aptitude for learning!
And fain would all the ills unravel
That aye ensue from foreign travel.
Far happier is the man who tarries
Quiet within his household _lares_.
Read and you'll find how virtue vanishes,
How foreign vice all goodness banishes,
And how abroad young heads grow dizzy,
Proved in the under-written Odyssey.
RELIQUES OF FATHER PROUT.
The letter from the Under Secretary of State for War, which announced my
capture by the Russians, unfortunately proved more correct in its tenor
than the telegram; but the mode in which I fell into their hands,
through the foul treachery of Mr. De Warr Berkeley, shall be detailed by
myself in the following chapter.
On the 23rd of September, early in the morning, we bade adieu to the
Alma, and to all those sad mounds that now lay along its southern bank,
marking where seven thousand seven hundred and eighty soldiers were
taking their last long slumber.
The dying Marshal St. Arnaud--for he took the field literally in a dying
state--wished us to advance on the day immediately after the battle, as
his intention was to be at Sebastopol by the 23rd, at latest.
"If," said he, in one of his letters, "I land in the Crimea, and it
pleases God to give me a smooth sea for a few hours, I shall be master
of Sebastopol and of the whole Crimea; I will push on this war with an
activity and energy that shall strike the Russians with terror!"
But the humane Lord Raglan declined to advance until the wounded of all
countries were attended to; and to that high-spirited hero and Christian
gentleman, Dr. Thompson, of the 44th--still remembered in his native
Scottish village as "the surgeon of the Alma"--was committed the care of
seven hundred and fifty Russian soldiers, who had lain in their blood on
the field for sixty hours. Accompanied by one attendant, with only a
flag of truce displayed upon a lance to protect him from the savage and
vindictive Cossacks who were hovering about, that self-devoted man
worked without ceasing in the care and cure of those miserable
creatures, who were all lying side by side, collected in one place--the
acre of wounded--a task which proved too great in the end for his
energies, as he died of fatigue and cholera soon after the battle.
The day after we marched, Death, who had hovered beside the great French
marshal, even while his baton directed the movements of his zouaves and
riflemen, seized more firmly on his victim, and on the 29th St. Arnaud
died of cholera--that fatal pest, which still hung upon our skirts.
Our wounded, after the Alma, were conveyed in great numbers in those
_kabitkas_, some of which I had personally secured; and these, after
delivering their suffering and dying loads to the boats' crews, had to
bring back supplies to the camp. Many of those open carts broke down,
and were abandoned on the road with their contents; and thus, after we
marched, it was no uncommon event for us to find seven or eight
soldiers, dead, or dying of wounds and cholera, above the bags of
biscuit intended for the use of the troops.
The morning of the 23rd beheld us set forth hopefully on our march to
Sebastopol, where we hoped to crown our efforts by its speedy capture
and destruction.
No enemy was visible to oppose our advance, and save here and there a
broken-down _kabitka_, a dead Russian, who had fallen in his flight, and
lay by the wayside in his leather helmet and long coat, with the
vultures hovering over him; save these, and a deserted cannon, and the
deep wheel-tracks in the rough old Tartar road, no trace remained of the
great host we had swept before us in disorder and dismay.
In the afternoon of that day, we reached the beautiful valley of the
Katcha (seventeen miles from Sebastopol), a river which has its source
among the mountains of Taurida, and flows into the Black Sea, a little
below Mamachai.
The valley is fertile, and we had all the enjoyment of abundant
provender and water. We occupied the pretty little village of Eskel,
which Baur and Kiriakoff's retreating Cossacks had plundered and
partially destroyed, and piles of broken furniture around the
tastefully-decorated villas of the more opulent residents evinced their
destructive spirit.
Studhome, Travers, Sir Harry Scarlett, and I possessed ourselves of a
pretty little villa, with painted lattices of coloured glass, and rooms
neatly--even handsomely--furnished. A piano, and some pieces of music
from Rossini's "Guillaume Tell," Strauss's waltzes, &c., were scattered
about, showing that the fair occupants had fled at our approach; but
nearly all the furniture and every utensil had been destroyed.
With his carbine, Pitblado had shot a brace of fine fat ducks, just in
time to anticipate those most active of foragers, the Zouaves, and they
were stewed in a warming-pan, which he had luckily discovered, and
utilized for culinary purposes, the fuel used being the front door of
the villa, the wood that came most readily to hand.
We had a comfortable supper, and Travers and Scarlett, who were wont to
be fastidious enough with the mess-waiters about the icing of their
sparkling hock or Moselle, were now content to wash down their stewed
duck with a draught of water from a stale wooden canteen. But then we
had gorgeous bunches of emerald green and dewy purple grapes, from the
vineyards close by, and melons and peaches, too; and these we ate in
defiance of prudence and the cholera.
We had just lit our cigars, and my cornet, Sir Harry, was trying his
hand on the piano, through which some inquiring Cossack had poked his
lance two or three times, when the trumpet-major arrived with letters
for us all; the mails from England had just come in and been
distributed. Many a letter was there for those whom we had left in
their graves behind us!
A letter from Sir Nigel! I recognised his bold, old-fashioned
handwriting. There was none from Cora (but she had scarcely ever
written to me), and there was none yet from Louisa Loftus!
Alas! I had ceased to hope for one from her. Yet I paused with good
Sir Nigel's letter unopened in my hand, while my friends were busy with
theirs.
How was it that, as doubt, jealousy, and irritation gathered in my mind
concerning Louisa, I thought more of Cora, and that her soft features,
her sweet, earnest expression, her nose, that bordered on the retrousse,
her thick dark hair, and brilliantly fair complexion, came before me?
I opened my uncle's letter. It contained little else than country
gossip, and his usual ideas on things in general; but some of these
seemed odd and startling to me then, as I read them in that Russian
villa, far away in Crim Tartary, with the hum of our camp mingling in my
ears with the rush of the mountain Katcha, as it poured through its
stony vale towards the sea.
The letter had been posted before news had reached Calderwood of our
departure from Varna.
"So the army is to remain inactive till half its number die of cholera;
and then the rest are to open a campaign against Russia at the beginning
of winter. History has no parallel for such--shall I call it madness?
But I tell you," continued the furious old Tory, "that the Whigs--a
party which never yet made war with honour--have sold you to the
Russians, and _Punch_ alone dares boldly to expose it." (Pleasant,
thought I, to read this within a short ride of Sebastopol!) "Every
Scottish statesman had, and still has, his price. In the olden time
they were always ready to sell Scotland to England, and why should one
of the same brood hesitate in selling both to the Russians now?
"My friend, Spittal of Lickspittal, the M.P., of course ridicules this
idea; but that is no proof of our suspicions being incorrect. He and
the Lord Advocate--that especial ministerial utensil for Scotland--have
put their small brains in steep to prepare some bill for the
assimilation of our laws; but strive though they may, they can never
assimilate them. And while Englishmen may bow with respect to the
decision of Mr. Justice Muggins, to our ears an interlocutor sounds
better when delivered by my Lord Calderwood, Pitcaple, or so forth.
"By the way, Cora has had a dangler, a new admirer, for some time past;
and who the deuce do you think he is? Young Mr. Brassy Wheedleton, son
of old Wheedleton, the village lawyer here--one of those fellows who
should be in front of Sebastopol just now, with sixty rounds of
ammunition at his back, instead of loafing about the Parliament House
with his hands in his pockets.
"He is a greater snob than your brother officer, Mr. De Warr Berkeley
(whose patronymic was Dewar Barclay, and who once asked, when I was
fishing six miles up the Eden, if I ''ad 'ooked many 'addocks').
Whenever little Brassy comes here anent that d----d bond, he lays close
siege to Cora, with flowers, books, music, and pretty nothings; but she
only laughs at this Edinburgh goose, who neither speaks English nor
Irish, Scotch nor the unknown tongue; who pronounces lord 'lud,' and
cat, what, or that as 'ket, whet, or thet,' and so forth. Believe me,
Newton, there is no more grotesque piece of human carrion than a genuine
Scotch snob, in a high state of Anglophobia.
"I am sorry to say it, but the honourable position of the Scottish bar
is simply traditional--a thing of the past. To the English barrister,
the House of Lords, the woolsack, and the highest offices of the state
are open; but to his poor Scotch brother, since the Union, after
blacking the boots of the Lord Advocate, and scribbling in defence of
his party, whatever it may be, a wretched sheriffship is all he may get,
unless, like Mansfield, Brougham, or Erskine, he casts his gown inside
the bar, and crosses the border for ever.
"Any way, I don't like Cora's dangler; but the fellow is plausible, and
will be deuced hard to get rid of, unless Pitblado could mistake him for
a partridge, or Splinterbar bolt across country with him, after we have
given her a feed of oats, dashed with brandy.
"I wish you could see Cora, as the good girl sits opposite me just now,
reading. Her dark hair smoothly braided over her tiny ears; a muslin
dress of pink and white, fastened by your old Rangoon brooch; and she
blushes scarlet with pleasure as she desires me to send her love to
you."
So ended this eccentric letter.
I felt irritated. But why should I? Cora might have a lover if she
chose. But then to throw herself away upon old Wheedleton's son--old
Wheedleton, whose father was the village tailor!
Something like an oath escaped me; but at that moment Sergeant-Major
Drillem made his appearance, to announce that my squadron, with that of
Captain Travers, was detailed for the advanced guard of cavalry on the
Belbeck road, and that the trumpets would sound "boot and saddle" an
hour before dawn to-morrow.
In the dusk we got under arms, mounted, and, with the troops riding in
sections of threes, I rode from Eskel at a slow pace, crossed the
Katcha--a position stronger, in some respects, than the Alma, and which
the Russians might have disputed by inches, had we not cowed them; and
then we took the road towards Belbeck, while the whole army was getting
under arms.
My orders were simply to be on the alert, to advance in line when the
ground was sufficiently open for such a formation, and to "feel the way"
towards Belbeck, which lay only four miles distant. Such were the
instructions given to me by Colonel Beverley, whose eyes sparkled at the
coming work, for he was one of that race of men "known by the kindling
grey eye and the light, stubborn, crisping hair--disclosing the rapture
of instant fight."
As we moved off we nearly trampled down a wounded cornet of the 11th
Hussars, who lay under a tree.
"That wretched little cornet of yours," said Berkeley to a captain of
the 11th; "he reminds me--haw--of one of the new Minie rifles."
"How?" asked the other, coldly.
"He is a small bore--haw--what do you think of the pun?"
"That it is poor, and the occasion is bad," replied the hussar, sternly.
"The poor boy will be dead before sunset."
"A doocid good thing for himself, and--haw--for us, too. He always beats
us at billiards," was the heartless response of Berkeley.
"Is it true," said I, "that Lieutenant Maxe, of the navy, has opened a
communication with our fleet at Balaclava?"
"Yes," said Travers. "Bolton and Nolan informed me that the allied
generals were most anxious to secure it by a flank movement, especially
as it is slightly defended; and to announce this intention to the
fleets, which follow our movements, became the task of Maxe, who rode by
night through a woody district, literally swarming with Cossacks,
skirting Sebastopol; and with no aid but his brave heart, his sword and
pistols, arranged the combined sea and land movements so essential to
our success."
"Gallant, indeed!" we exclaimed, as we rode off.
On our right lay the ocean, its waves, as they rose and fell, beginning
to be tipped with light, as the dawn brightened over the high ground
that rose on our left. The country became hilly in our front, and, as
it was open for a time, I formed the squadron, and advanced in line,
diverging a little to the east, in the direction of Duvankoi, a village
which is exactly five miles from Belbeck.
In fact, we advanced straight between these two places towards the
valley through which rolls the river that bears the latter name, and
which comes from the lofty table land of the Yaila, fed on its course by
all the mountain streams of the Ousenbakh.
The birds were singing merrily among the trees when the sun burst forth,
to light the glancing bayonets of the advancing columns in our rear; and
now before us opened the vale of the Belbeck, with all its groves of
vine and olive, as we crowned an eminence, from whence we could see the
woody ravines of Khutor-Mackenzie, and, ten miles to the westward, the
gilded dome of Sebastopol shining like a huge inverted bowl. From this
point the road lay through woods so thick, that we found it impossible
to preserve much military order, and the utmost vigilance was necessary
on the part of our exploring squadron, as scattered troops of the enemy
were supposed to be in our vicinity.
Lord Raglan, with his staff, usually rode in advance of our main body;
but on this morning my little party was in advance of the whole. As we
defiled between the trees, that covered all the slope, by sections, by
subdivisions, and frequently by single files, struggling along at a slow
pace, but with our horses well in hand, I had repeatedly to address
Berkeley in a tone of reprimand, for the loose and unnecessary manner in
which he was permitting the men to straggle, and his mode of response
was rather sullen, defiant, and, on one occasion, jeering.
"Aw--the dooce! very easy for you to speak. I didn't make the road to
Belbeck," he would mutter. And once he added, "A demmed fool I not to
send in my papers long ago--aw--aw--doocid deal too good-looking to be
shot in a ditch."