Emmy received a letter from Louis, and, in the hushed silence of her
own apartment, the humbled coquette wept over every word of it--and
read it again and again--for it seemed to come like the beloved voice
of the writer from a vast distance and from that land of danger.
Then when she looked at the date and saw that it was a month--a whole
month--ago, and when she thought of the new terrors each day brought
forth, she trembled and her heart grew sick; then a paroxysm of tears
was her only relief, for she was a creature of a nervous and highly
excitable temperament.
It described the long and dreary voyage to America in the crowded and
comfortless transport--one thought ever in his soul--the thought of
her; one scene ever around him--sea and sky. It detailed the hurried
disembarkation and forced march of General Forbes's little army of
6200 soldiers from Philadelphia in the beginning of July, through a
vast tract of country, little known to civilized men; all but
impenetrable or impassable, as the roads were mere war paths, that
lay through dense untrodden forests or deep morasses and over lofty
mountains, where wild, active, and ferocious Indians, by musket,
tomahawk, scalping-knife, and poisoned arrow, co-operated with the
French in harassing our troops at every rood of the way. He told how
many of the strongest and healthiest of Montgomery's Highlanders
perished amid the toils and horrors they encountered; but how still
he bore up, animated by the memory of her, by that love which was a
second life to him, and by the darling hope that, with God's help, he
would survive the campaign and all its miseries, and would find
himself again, as of old, seated by the side of his beloved Emmy,
with her cheek on his shoulder and her dear little hand clasped in
his. He sent her some Indian beads, a few forget-me-nots that grew
amid the grass within his tent; he sent her another lock of his hair,
and prayed kind God to bless for the sake of the poor absent heart
that loved her so well.
And here ended this sorrowful letter, which was dated from the camp
of the Scottish Brigadier, who halted at Raystown, ninety miles on
the march from Fort du Quesne. Thus, by the time Emmy received it,
the fort must have been attacked and lost or won.
"Attacked!"--How breathlessly and with what protracted agony did she
long for intelligence--for another letter or for the War-office
lists! But days, weeks, months rolled on; the snow descended on the
Highland mountains; the woods of Kinnoull were again leafless; again
the broad Inches of Perth wore the white mantle of winter; the Tay
was frozen hard as flint between its banks and between the piers of
the old wooden bridge; there now came no mails from America; no
letter reached her; and poor Emmy, though surrounded by admirers as
of old, felt all the misery of that deferred hope which "maketh the
heart sick."
Meanwhile Louis, at the head of his company of Montgomery's
Highlanders, accompanied the force of Brigadier Forbes, who, in
September, despatched from Raystown Colonel Bouquet to a place called
Loyal Henning, to reconnoitre the approach to Fort du Quesne. The
colonel's force consisted of 2000 men; of these he despatched in
advance 500 Provincials and 400 of Montgomery's regiment, under Major
James Grant of Ballindalloch, whose second in command was Captain
Charters. Despite the advice of the latter, Grant, a brave but
reckless and imprudent officer, advanced boldly towards Fort du
Quesne with all his pipes playing and drums beating, as if he was
approaching a friendly town. Now the French officer who commanded in
the fort was a determined fellow. He it was who had behaved with
such heroism at the recent siege of Savannah, where he had been
sergeant-major of Dillon's Regiment of the Irish Brigade in the
service of King Louis. When the Comte d'Estaing madly proposed to
take the fortress by a _coup-de-main_, M. le Comte Dillon, anxious to
signalize his Irishmen, proposed a reward of a hundred guineas to the
first grenadier who should plant a fascine in the fosse, which was
swept by the whole fire of the garrison; but his purse was proffered
in vain, for not an Irishman would advance. Confounded by this,
Dillon was upbraiding them with cowardice, when the sergeant-major
said--
"Monsieur le Comte, had you not held out a sum of money as an
incentive, your grenadiers would one and all have rushed to the
assault!"
The count put his purse in his pocket.
"Forward!" cried he--forward went the Irish grenadiers, and out of
194 who composed the company, 104 left their bodies in the breach.
But to resume: the moment the soldiers of Grant were within range,
the French cannon opened upon them, and under cover of this fire, the
infantry made a furious sortie.
"Sling your muskets! Dirk and claymore!" cried the major as the foe
came on. A terrible conflict ensued, the Highlanders fighting with
their swords and daggers, and the Provincials with their fixed
bayonets; the French gave way, but, unable to reach the fort, they
dispersed and sought shelter in the vast forest which spread in every
direction round it. Here they were joined by a strong body of
Indians, and returning, from amid the leafy jungles and dense foliage
they opened a murderous fire upon Major Grant's detachment, which had
halted to refresh, when suddenly summoned to arms.
A yell pierced the sky! It was the Indian warwhoop, startling the
green leaves of that lone American forest, and waking the echoes of
the distant hills that overlook the plain of the Alleghany; thousands
of Red Indian warriors, horrible in their native ugliness, their
streaky war paint, jangling moccassins and tufted feathers, naked and
muscular, savage as tigers and supple as eels, with their barbed
spears, scalping-knives, tomahawks, and French muskets, burst like a
living flood upon the soldiers of Ballindalloch. The Provincials
immediately endeavoured to form square, but were broken, brained,
scalped, and trod under foot, as if-a brigade of horse had swept over
them. While, in the old fashion of their native land, the undaunted
77th men endeavoured to meet the foe, foot to foot and hand to hand,
with the broadsword, but in vain. Grant ordered them to throw aside
their knapsacks, plaids, and coats, and betake themselves to the
claymore, and the claymore only. For three hours a desultory and
disastrous combat was maintained--every stump and tree, every bush,
rock, and stone being battled for with deadly energy, and all the
horrors of Indian warfare--yells, whoops, the tomahawk and the
knife--were added to those of Europe, and before the remnant of our
Highlanders effected an escape, Captains MacDonald and Munro,
Lieutenants Alaster, William and Robert Mackenzie, and Colin
Campbell, were killed and scalped, with many of their men. Ensign
Alaster Grant lost a hand by a poisoned arrow; but of all who fell,
Charters most deeply regretted Alaster Mackenzie, his friend and
confidant, to save whom, after a shot had pierced his breast, he made
a desperate effort and slew three Indians by three consecutive blows;
but this succour came too late, and Mackenzie's scalp was torn off
before he breathed his last.
"Stand by your colours, comrades, till death!" were his last words.
"Farewell, dear Charters--may God protect you for your Emmy's
sake--we'll meet again!"
"Again!"
"Yes--again--in heaven!" he answered, and expired with his sword in
his hand, like a brave and pious soldier.
The Red men were like incarnate fiends, and, amid groans, yells,
prayers, and entreaties, were seen on their knees in frenzy, drinking
blood from the spouting veins and bleeding scalps of their victims.
The combat was a mere massacre, and seemed as if all hell had burst
its gates and held jubilee in that wild forest of the savage West.
The Provincials were destroyed. Grant, with nineteen officers, fell
into the hands of the French; and of his Highlanders only 150
succeeded in effecting a retreat to Loyal Henning, under the command
of Louis Charters, to whose skill, bravery, and energy, they
unanimously attributed their escape. Many of their comrades who were
captured died under agonies such as Indians, Turks, or devils alone
could have devised; and the story of one--Private Allan
MacPherson--who escaped a cruel death by pretending that his _neck_
was sword-proof, as related by the Abbé Reynal, and General Stewart
of Garth, is well known.
James Grant of Ballindalloch died a general in the army in 1806; but
he never forgot the horrors of his rashness at Fort du Quesne, which
was abandoned to Brigadier Forbes on the 24th November; by this he
was deprived of a revenge, and to win it Charters had volunteered to
lead the forlorn hope. Poor General Forbes died on the retreat.
Charters's regiment served next in General Ambent's army at
Ticonderoga, at Crown Point, and on the Lake Expedition, where he
saved the life of Ensign Grant--now known as Alaster the
One-handed--by bearing him off the field when wounded; but during all
those desultory and sanguinary operations, he never heard from Emmy,
nor did she hear from him. He suffered much; he nearly perished in
the snow on one occasion with a whole detachment; he was wounded in
the left shoulder on that night of horrors at Ticonderoga, and had a
narrow escape from a cannon-ball in the fight with a French ship,
when proceeding on the expedition to Dominique under Lord Rollo and
Sir James Douglas; but though the ball spared his head, the wind of
it raised a large inflamed spot, which gave him great trouble and
pain. He was with his corps at the conquest of the Havannah; he was
at the capture of Newfoundland with the 46th and the Highlanders of
Fraser, and he served with honour in a hundred minor achievements of
the brave Highlanders of Montgomery.
Renewed or recruited thrice from the Highland clans, the old 77th
covered themselves with glory, and of all the Scottish corps in the
King's service, there was none from which the soldiers more nobly and
rigidly transmitted to their aged parents in Scotland the savings of
their poor pay or the prize money gained by their blood in the
Havannah. In one of his (unanswered) letters to Emmy Stuart, Louis
says, "I have known some of our poor fellows, my dear girl, who
almost starved themselves for this purpose."
One of the majors being killed at the storming of the Moro, his
widow, in consideration of his great services, was permitted to sell
his commission. Louis was now senior captain, and the regiment knew
well that he, having only his pay, was unable to purchase it: but so
greatly was he beloved by the soldiers, many of whom, in America, had
thrown themselves before the sharp tomahawks and poisoned arrows of
the Indians to save him, that they subscribed each Highlander so many
days' pay to purchase his majority; and the plunder of the rich
Havannah having put these brave souls in good funds, the money was
all fairly laid on the drum-head in one hour, when the corps was on
evening parade in the citadel of El Fuerte.
Such a noble instance of _camaraderie_ and true soldierly sentiment
never occurred in the British service but once before; and then it
was also in an old Scottish regiment which had served, I believe, in
the wars of Queen Anne, before the amalgamation of the forces of the
two kingdoms.*
* See "Advice to Officers." Perth, 1795.
This was the most noble tribute his soldiers could pay to Charters,
who was duly gazetted when the regiment was stationed at New York in
the summer of 1763, to enjoy a little repose after the toils of the
past war.
The services and adventures so briefly glanced at here, had thus
spread over a period of five years--to Louis, long and weary
years--during which he had never heard of Emmy but once; and now he
had no relic of her to remind him of those delightful days of peace
and love that had fled apparently for ever. The ring she had given
him, warm from her pretty hand, had been torn from his finger by
plunderers as he lay wounded and helpless on the ramparts of Fort
Loudon, on the confines of far Virginia; her fan was lost when his
baggage was taken on the retreat from Fort du Quesne; the locket with
her hair had been rent from him, when he was taken prisoner and
stripped by the French, in the attack on Martinique. He was changed
in appearance too; his hair once black as night was already seamed by
many a silvery thread, yet he was only two-and-thirty. His face was
gaunt and wan, and bronzed by the Indian sun and keen American frost.
His eyes, like the eyes of all inured to facing death and danger,
pestilence and the bullet, were fierce at times, and keen and
haggard; and when tidings came, or it was mooted at mess, that the
war-worn regiment of Montgomery was once again to see the Scottish
shore, poor Louis looked wistfully into his glass, and doubted
whether Emmy would know him; for between the French and the Cherokees
he had acquired somewhat the aspect of a brigand.
Peace was proclaimed at last, and the Government made an offer to the
regiment, that such officers and men as might choose to settle in
America should have grants of land proportioned to their rank and
services. The rest might return to Scotland or volunteer into other
corps. A few remained among the colonists, and on the revolt of
America in 1775, were the _first men_ to join the standard of George
III., who ordered them to be embodied as the 84th or Royal Regiment
of Highland Emigrants. The rest--most of whom volunteered to join
the Black Watch,--with the band, pipes, and colours, under Louis
Charters, embarked at New York, and, full of hope and joy, with three
hearty cheers, as their ship cleft the waters of the Hudson and bore
through the Narrows, saw the future capital of the western world sink
in the distance and disappear astern.
Five years! .....
"Emmy must now be nearly nine-and-twenty!" thought Louis; "in a month
from this time I shall see her--shall hear her voice--shall be beside
her again, assuring her that I am the same Louis Charters of other
days."
But month after month passed away, and six elapsed after the sailing
of the transport from New York had been duly notified by the London
and the Edinburgh Gazettes, and yet no tidings reached Britain of the
missing regiment of Montgomery.
During all these five long years--those sixty months--those one
thousand eight hundred and twenty-five days, every one of which had
been counted by poor Louis--how fared it with the beautiful Emmy
Stuart, who was still the belle of the fair city?
So far as the defective newspapers of those days, when Edinburgh had
only _three_ (and those of London seldom came north), supplied
intelligence, she had traced the operations of Montgomery's
Highlanders in the Canadas, the States, on the Lakes, and in the West
Indies, in the despatches of Brigadier Forbes, of Colonel Bouquet,
Lord Rollo, and others; she had frequently seen the name of her lover
mentioned, as having distinguished himself, and twice as having been
left wounded on the field. I need not dwell on her days and nights
of sickening sorrow and suspense, which no friendship could alleviate.
Save once, no letter from Louis had ever reached her; yet poor Louis
had written many: from among frozen camps and bloody fields--from wet
bivouacs, and places such as Emmy's gentle mind could never
conceive--had he written to her the outpourings of his heart,
believing that in due time Emmy would be gazing fondly on the words
his hand had traced, and endeavouring to conjure up the tones in
which he would have said all that distance and separation compelled
him to commit to paper; but, by a strange fatality, these letters
never reached her; yet Emmy, the belle, the coquette, remained true,
for she knew the chances of war; and that, until the regiment
returned home and he proved false, she could not desert her lover.
But Willy Douglas of the Black Watch, who had been all this time
comfortably recruiting about Perth and Dunkeld (thanks to his uncle,
the Duke of Douglas), was wont to remind her that the 40th Regiment
had been more than _forty_ years abroad,* and the battalion of
Montgomery might be quite as long away.
* Fact in 1764.
After three years had passed without letters arriving, Emmy still
mourned and loved Louis more than ever; while well-meaning friends,
who never thought of consulting the army list, assured her that he
was killed; but it availed them nought.
Then five years elapsed, and in all that time there came no letter;
yet, when taunted that Louis had forgotten her, she replied as
Cleopatra did to Alexis when he advised her to deem her lover cruel,
inconstant, and ungrateful:--
"I cannot, if I could; these thoughts were vain;
Faithless, ungrateful, cruel if he be,
I still must love him!"
But time changes all things. A pleasing and sad recollection was now
beginning to replace her lively affection for Charters. Tired of
worshipping one who had become little more than a beautiful statue,
her admirers had disappeared gradually, till the assiduous Douglas
alone remained in the position of a tacit and privileged dangler.
Willy was an honest-hearted fellow, and with his real love for Emmy
there was mingled much of pity for what she suffered on account of
his "devilish neglectful rival," as he termed Charters. Emmy had
long been insensible to his addresses; but as Douglas, who was very
prepossessing, was the nephew of the last Duke of Douglas, and had a
handsome fortune, her father frequently, earnestly, and
affectionately urged her to accept his proposals; while her mother
reminded her that she was past eight-and-twenty now; and added, that
in a new and more fortunate attachment--in the love that is supposed
to follow marriage--she would forget the sorrows of the past. But
Emmy, though knowing that this was all mere sophistry, was about to
give a silent acquiescence to their schemes, when, turning over the
leaves of an old periodical, one day, in a dreamy and listless mood,
her eye fell on the following:--
"A union of fortunes, _not_ a union of hearts, is the thing generally
aimed at in marriage, and, by those who esteem themselves _prudent_
people, is thought the only rational view. There is no divine
ordinance more frequently disobeyed than that wherein God forbids
human sacrifices, for in no other light can most modern marriages be
viewed. Brazen images, indeed, are not the objects of their worship;
a purer metal is their deity. Every one who reads in ancient history
of human sacrifices, exclaims against the horrid practice and
trembles at the narrative, though there is scarcely one of the female
readers, if she is of a marriageable age, who is not ready to deck
her person, like an adorned victim, in the hope of tempting some
_golden idol_ to receive a free-will offering."
Emmy thought of Douglas's fortune, and the book fell from her hand.
"No, no," she said with a shudder; "I shall not be the adorned victim
offered up to this golden idol;" and from that hour she resolved to
decline his addresses.
On the day succeeding this brave resolution came tidings "that the
remnant of Montgomery's Highlanders, under the command of Major Louis
Charters, had sailed from New York six weeks ago, and were daily
expected at Greenock, from whence that gallant corps had sailed for
the wars of the Far West in 1758."
Now came Emmy's hour of triumph, and already Louis seemed before her,
loving, trusting, and true; and hourly she expected to have, in his
own handwriting, assurance of all her heart desired; but, alas! time
rolled on--days became weeks--weeks became months, and no tidings
reached Britain of the Highlanders of Montgomery.
"The lost regiment" was spoken of from time to time, till even
friends, comrades, and relations grew tired of futile surmises, and
their unaccountable disappearance became like a tale that is told--or
a fragment of old and forgotten intelligence.
For a time a sickening and painful suspense bad been kept alive by
occasional reports of pieces of wreck, with red coats and tartan
fluttering about them, having been espied in the Atlantic; vessels
waterlogged and abandoned were passed by solitary ships, and averred
to be the missing transport; craft answering her description had been
seen to founder in tempests off the banks of Newfoundland; but after
eight months had elapsed nothing was heard of what was emphatically
called _the lost regiment_.
Emmy mourned now for Louis as for one who was dead--one who, after
all his toil and valour, suffering and constancy (she felt assured he
had been constant), was sleeping in the great ocean that had divided
them so long.
Tired of all this, her friends had arrayed her in mourning as for one
who was really dead; and to carry out a plan of realizing this
conviction, her father had erected in the church of St. John a
handsome marble tablet to the memory of Charters; and this cold white
slab _in memoriam_ met Emmy's heavy eyes every time she raised them
from her prayer-book on Sunday. So at last Louis was dead--she felt
convinced of it, and, with a reluctant and foreboding mind, she
consented to a marriage with Captain Douglas of the Black Watch--a
consent in which she had but one thought, that in making this
terrible sacrifice she was only seeking to soothe the anxiety and
gratify the solicitations of her mother, who was now well up in the
vale of years, and who loved her tenderly.
Emmy was placid and content; but though even cheerful in appearance,
she was not happy; for her cheek was ever pale and her soft hazel
eyes, with their half-drooping lids, failed to veil a restlessness
that seemed to search for something vague and undefined.
They were married. We will pass over the appearance of the bride,
her pale beauty, her rich lace, the splendour of all the accessories
by which the wealth of her father, of her husband, and the solicitude
of her kind friends surrounded her, and come to the crisis in our
story--a crisis in which a lamentable fatality seemed to rule the
destinies of the chief actors in our little drama.
The minister of St. John's Church had just pronounced the nuptial
blessing, and the pale bride was in her mother's arms, while the
officers of the Black Watch were crowding round Douglas with their
hearty congratulations; a buzz of voices had filled the large
withdrawing room, as a hum of gladness succeeded the solemn but
impressive monotony of the marriage service, when the sharp rattle of
drums and the shrill sound of the fifes ringing in the Southgate of
Perth struck upon their ears, and the measured march of feet,
mingling with the rising huzzahs of the people, woke the echoes of
every close and wynd.
A foreboding smote the heart of Captain Douglas. He sprang to a
window and saw the gleam of arms--the glitter of bayonets and
Lochaber axes, with the waving of plumed bonnets above the heads of a
crowd which poured along the sunny vista of the Southgate; and, as
the troops passed, led by a mounted officer whose left arm was in a
sling--a bronzed, war-worn, and weatherbeaten band--their tartans
were recognised as well as the tattered colours which streamed in
ribbons on the wind, and their name went from mouth to mouth:--
"The Lost Regiment--the Highlanders of Montgomery!"
A low cry bunt from Emmy; she threw up her clasped hands, and sank in
a dead faint at her mother's feet. All was consternation in the
house of Stuart of Tullynairn; and the marriage guests gazed at the
passing soldiers, as at some fascinating but unreal pageant--but on
they marched, cheering, to the barracks, with drums beating and pipes
playing; and now the mounted officer, who had been gazing wistfully
at the crowded windows, stoops from his saddle and whispers a few
words to another--Alaster the One-handed, now a captain--then he
turns his horse, and, dismounting at the door, is heard to ascend the
stair; and in another moment, Louis Charters, sallow, thin, and
hollow-eyed, by long toil and suffering, his left arm in a sling and
his right cheek scarred by a shot, stands amid all these
gaily-attired guests in his fighting jacket, the scarlet of which had
long since become threadbare and purple.