"THE GIRL I LEFT BEHIND ME."
"There was a time when hope and enthusiasm were the mainsprings of
life and action with me. Alas! their places are supplied alone by
memory now. No battle in the field has ever been fought without some
blunder; then how much more likely is the battle of life to be full
of error and mischance!
"In the year after the storming of Ghuznee, in Afghanistan (when both
of you who now listen to me must have been boys at school), I found
myself at home in Cheshire on sick-leave. I had been wounded by an
Afghan lance, and was in comparatively feeble health; so as our way
to and from India then was always round the Cape, my leave was for
two years from the date of leaving head-quarters, and I was bent on
enjoying it all the more that I had come home on promotion; for my
corps, the **th, had been sorely cut up during Keane's operations
amid the snowy mountains and deep and perilous defiles of
Afghanistan. We lost by war and disease nearly all our captains, so
we, the subalterns, benefited thereby.
"My aunt, Lady Singleton (dowager to Sir Guy Singleton, a general of
the old fighting days of Wellington), received me with open arms, for
I was almost the only relation she possessed, and at her old place,
Stoketon Moat, near Warrington, but on the Cheshire side of the
Mersey, I had always found a warm welcome when I came there for
school holidays in the years of my orphanage (my parents having died
young), then how much more welcome was I from far away India, and the
perils of the Afghan war!
"Stoketon Moat--so called, for once in Saxon times a timber house had
stood there surrounded by a moat, of which not a trace can now be
found, though it was said to be deep enough when Hugh d'Avranches,
after Hastings, slew the whole Saxon inmates of the place, sparing
not even the dogs by the hearth--was a beautiful old mansion of the
later Tudor days, with heavily mullioned windows that were
half-shrouded in ivy, jasmine, and clematis, through the leafy masses
of which the sun at times could scarcely penetrate the little leaded
hexagonal panes, the upper rows whereof were emblazoned with the
armorial bearings of the Singletons for many a generation, back even
to Geoffrey Singleton, one of the two knights who represented
Cheshire in Parliament in the reign of Henry VIII., who curtailed so
greatly the absurd privileges of the county-palatine of Chester.
"The old house stood on an eminence overlooking the sweep made by the
Mersey towards Runcorn: it was surrounded by fine old oaks, massive
cedars, and dark yews, and the vista through these, as seen from its
front, was terminated by the green hill that is crowned by the old
ruined castle of Halton.
"Aunt Singleton was of a cheerful disposition, thus Stoketon Moat was
seldom without visitors; and on this occasion she had residing with
her three handsome and lovely girls, the youngest seventeen, the
oldest barely twenty, whose presence spread a new and bright charm to
me about the quaint old house.
"Isabel, Lyla, and Katie Vane, were unusually attractive girls; their
beauty was great and of the most refined and delicate cast; but the
eldest proved the most charming to me. She was twenty now, and I had
not seen her for four years before, when an incipient boyish and
girlish flirtation had sprung up between us--a flirtation that with
our somewhat maturer years was to take a more solid and lasting form
amid the seclusion of Stoketon Moat, and the opportunities afforded
by its woods and fields, green lanes, and leafy privacy.
"I was an object of interest now, to be flattered, coddled, and
petted--pale, and with my recent wound yet green, and yet with all
the glories of Keane's campaign to talk about!
"Thus my rival, her admirer Riversdale, had no chance when compared
with me, though he was a very pleasant and good-looking young fellow.
A doctor of the Royal Staff corps, Robert Riversdale was home on
leave of absence like myself, but from America. It seemed to me that
Isabel's blue eyes were always seeking mine, and that every glance we
exchanged was half-complimentary and wholly caressing. They were
glances of mute and secret intelligence, that we alone felt and
understood.
"Riversdale's family lived in the neighbourhood of Stoketon Moat;
they were wealthy, thus he was everyway an eligible suitor, and had
been a kind of privileged dangler after the Vanes for a short time
prior to my arrival. He had driven and ridden with them to see all
the sights in the county; but his attentions were in no way decided,
nor was his preference marked, until my decided admiration for
Isabel, seemed as a spur alike to his jealousy and love.
"However, her residence in my aunt's house, our daily, almost hourly
intercourse--the vast charm of propinquity, and the chances afforded
by it--gave me every advantage over Riversdale; and after the
snuff-coloured Bengalee girls, and the dreamy, tawny, and affected
Eurasians or Indo-Britons, with whom we were compelled at times to
associate when up country, the pure and soft English beauty of Isabel
Vane, together with her sweetness of disposition, and a certain
piquant playfulness of manner, were so pleasing, that, within a week
after my return to the Moat, I was fondly in love with her--madly, I
may say, as I never did things by halves in those days.
"I was scarcely aware of the strength or depth of the passion that
was growing up in my heart, until one day, when my aunt said--
"'Why is it, Conyers, that your talk to me is for ever of Bella Vane?
You are never weary of extolling her accomplishments----'
"'But she has so many, aunt!'
"'Her graceful style of conversation, her elegance of figure, her
beauty, and so forth; do you love her, Conyers?'
"'Yes, dear Aunt Singleton,' said I, blushing like the boy I had
been, rather than the man I was.
"'Then tell her so, Convers, and God bless you; for Bella, I know,
will make a kind and loving wife to the man who is happy enough to
win her.'
"My heart leaped within me, and my blood seem to course with renewed
force through every vein, as Lady Singleton spoke thus, for already
ideas of marrying, of being the actual proprietor, possessor, and
protector of a girl so charming, came with her words.
"Well, encouraged thus, my declaration--fully expected, no doubt, by
foregone conclusions--and her acceptance came about successfully in
the usual fashion, or what I suppose to be such, for I never loved
before, and have never loved since.
"In a leafy lane, where the purple plum, the golden apple, and the
damson trees entwined their branches overhead, excluding the sun from
the thick rank grass below, and where the wild honeysuckle and
flowers by the wayside, filled the air with fragrance, as we rode
slowly together, side by side, on a summer afternoon, it all came to
pass somehow.
"We were long of turning our horses' heads homeward, and the
house-bell had summoned us thrice to dinner, ere I lifted her from
her saddle with a caressing tenderness and an emotion of delight such
as had never before thrilled through me, for we were engaged now; she
was my own Isabel, and to be the wife of my heart, before we sailed
together for India.
"We were rallied by the laughing Lyla and the golden-haired Katie,
about our delay and return at so late an hour; and we must have had
self-conscious or tell-tale faces, for the girls were not long in
discovering our great secret; and even Riversdale, who unluckily
dined with us that day, detected quickly enough on Isabel's engaged
finger, a ring which he knew well to be mine, for it was conspicuous
enough to him, as he stood by her side to turn the music leaves, as
she seated herself at the piano in the drawing-room, where usually
music became the order of the evening.
"I, too, was near, and could detect the flush that mounted to his
temples when his eyes fell on the ring, and how the words of
compliment or flattery he was about to whisper in her half-averted
ear, died away unuttered on his lips.
"He was too well-bred to question her, or make the least remark upon
the subject; but pleading an after-dinner engagement, took his leave
soon after; and I was weak enough to feel some triumph at being
master of the position, and that the girl he admired so much and
loved in secret, was mine--and mine for ever.
"For ever? Alas, could I then have foreseen the future!
"Three months afterwards the bells rang a merry wedding chime in the
old church of Warrington, when Isabel and I knelt at the altar, and
were declared 'man and wife' by the white haired rector; and seldom,
perhaps, has the sun shone through the quaint stained glass of those
ancient windows on a lovelier bride than mine, or on two sweeter
girls than Lyla and Katie, in their clouds of snowy tulle, as they
knelt, sobbing, of course, behind her.
"A brother officer was to have been groomsman, but an accident
detained him, and by an odd chance or fatality, his post was occupied
by Robert Riversdale, who acquitted himself to the satisfaction of
all--the six bridesmaids in particular, for very striking the fellow
looked in his rich staff uniform; though I fancied that his voice
faltered when he congratulated me, and he turned deadly pale, as he
kissed the cheek of Isabel; but I could forgive him these little
weaknesses _then_; and as if to show that he had no secret repining
at my success, he presented her with a magnificent suite of jewels,
diamonds and opals set in gold and blue enamel--a suite an empress
might have worn; and that evening saw us off to seclude ourselves in
Wales, until the honeymoon waned.
"As our carriage drove away from the Moat, and I drew down the blinds
and embraced her, caressing her head on my shoulder, 'Oh Isabel!' I
exclaimed; 'my own Isabel--at last we are married and one!'
"'Married for life!' she murmured with her face nestling in my neck.
"'Married for love,' I added.
"'Yes, but for life, dearest Conyers--for life, too--and the life
beyond, if such can be!' she added with an energy that haunted me
even as her words did, when our dark and sorrowful future came.
"I shall never forget the delight of those remembered days--for they
are but a memory now--the blissful days I spent with Isabel, amid the
green vales, the frowning cliffs and soaring peaks of the old
principality; in lonely places where the wild goat, his long beard
waving in the wind, leaped from crag to crag, rousing the golden
eagle in his giddy eyrie; or by secluded pools and mountain tarns,
where the brown otter would rise suddenly to the surface, and, with a
spotted trout between his teeth, vanish as quickly to his hole among
the rank green sedges. 'The world forgetting, by the world forgot,'
at least for a period, we spent it in a calm of joy and tenderness,
till Lady Singleton began to weary for us, and urged our return to
Stoketon, as I could spend but six months more in England, and would
have to report myself at the Depôt Battalion in Chatham, whither
Isabel was of course to accompany me.
"How well I can yet recall our long Welsh ramble, the flat vale of
the Teifi and the old church of St. David's; the gloomy pass of
Llanberris; Craig Ceffyl, where the Welsh made their last brave stand
against the 'Ruthless King;' the lovely vale of Llangollen with all
its luxuriant greenness and fertility--for we were never weary of
wandering, and were full of love and enthusiasm for each other and
for everything.
"I had no alloy to my happiness, not even when I found, as by chance
I sometimes did, among Isabel's favourite books, a withered flower
between the leaves, that had _not_ been given by me, or 'To Isabel,
from her friend R.R.,' pencilled on the fly-leaf, for Riversdale's
hopes were gone for ever now. But if I progress thus, I fear you may
find my story as weary as an old novel written in letters, than
which, perhaps, I know of nothing more flat and prosy.
"After we had been some months at Stoketon, a child came to add to
our happiness.
"When you see me seated here, a plain and rough old soldier, in his
bare or half-furnished barrack-room--if not happy, at least content,
like poor La Vallière in her convent--content to do without the
luxuries and the tendernesses of life, you may think there is little
of the poetry of it in me; but there was much of it _then_, ere
sorrow, care, and unmerited misfortune came upon me.
"A new joy seemed to spread a holy light over all our little circle
when the baby came. I shall never forget the tender emotions that
made my heart swell tremulously and filled my eyes with a moisture
akin to tears. I felt grateful to God and happy with everybody, with
the old village doctor, the wrinkled and tyrannical nurse, who
assumed command of the entire household; with my benignant Aunt
Singleton; the radiant girls Lyla and Katie (exalted now to the
sudden dignity of full-blown aunts), and more than all with my poor,
pale darling Isabel, for to my enthusiastic mind, something of
sanctity seemed to mingle with the love I bore her.
"I felt what the childless can never feel; now more than ever joined,
as a certain writer has it, to the great community of man. Here was
a little unit, that in the time to come should be a man, to live long
after us, I hoped and prayed in my heart of hearts, honourably and
well, beyond the years, when the sod had grown green above Isabel and
me.
"So the baby grew the wonder of all our little community at Stoketon
Moat; Aunt Singleton bestowed upon it a sponsorial silver mug, the
handsomest that could be procured, and the white haired and red faced
Rector gave it a name and made a little Christian of it, under the
double cognomen of Guy Conyers; the latter for me, and the former for
the old General who had led his brigade so gallantly at Vittoria and
Toulouse; and so, happily passed the days till the time came when I
found that I must appear in Chatham garrison, and our home was to be,
thenceforward, a broken one!
"If our baby was a hale and sturdy little fellow who throve
amazingly, it was otherwise with his mamma, for Isabel made a slow
recovery, and was so weak and ailing, when the terrible time for my
departure came, that by a consultation of physicians, it was
impressed upon me, that she must imperatively remain at home, nor
attempt to follow me to India, for perhaps six--certainly for
four--months yet to come.
"This was a sad dictum to me, who knew that the transport which was
to take me to the shores of Hindostan--the _Rangoon_ Indiaman--was
already lying opposite Tilbury Fort, taking in water and stores.
"I shall pass over our parting. It was sad, indeed; and long and
frequently did I press both the pale mother and the golden-haired
child to my breast, ere I tore myself away, with a whirling brain and
a bursting heart.
"'To your care I confide them, dear Aunt Singleton,' said I, as she
embraced me at the door. 'I am going now, and perhaps may not be
here again before my hair is grey and wrinkles have taken the place
of dimples.'
"The overland route had not then been developed, and going to India
was, to many, the affair of a lifetime. I had tried to speak in
jest, but, alas! I knew not how prophetically.
"I travelled night and day until I reported myself to the Commandant,
old Sir William W., and assumed the command of the men of my own
regiment, that were to embark next day.
"In the hurry of our departure, I had no time left me for a moment's
reflection, luckily: and grey daybreak on the following morning saw
us leave Chatham for Gravesend, five hundred strong, all drafts for
various corps in India. And as we marched in the still and dewy
dawn, to the air of 'The Girl I Left Behind Me,' every tap of the
drums and every note of the sweet, low fifes, went keenly to my
heart: for I thought of her I had left behind in Cheshire, my
girl-wife, my Isabel, with our baby at her breast!
"The cheers of the heedless and unthinking boys--for the detachments
were composed of little else--who were off to see the world, each
with sixty rounds of ammunition at his back, and ready to face
anything--Old Scratch himself if he came against them--failed to
rouse either my natural spirit or my military enthusiasm; though I
could remember the time, when the loud crash of the regimental band,
the bright gleam of the bayonets, and the waving of the colours above
nine hundred bearskin caps, with the measured tread of many feet, had
kindled both when last I had marched to India, through the deep
resounding arch of the old Picquet House, and under the guns of the
great Spur Battery.
"Seven miles of dusty road brought us to Gravesend, where the
_Rangoon_ lay, a stately ship of eighteen hundred tons, hove short on
her cable, with blue-peter flying at the foremast-head. All was
confusion on board, for she was a great East Indiaman of the old
school, built alike for war and traffic, carrying twenty
eighteen-pounders, and eight thirty-twos on her main and lower decks.
Everybody was bustling about, and the ship was a veritable Babel.
Cuddy stores, with fresh and salt provisions, were being hoisted in
from lighters on one side; rusty shot and shell, as ballast, from a
Woolwich tender, on the other. Casks and cases encumbered all the
decks; paint, tar, beer, tobacco, gin, and bilge-water, loaded the
atmosphere above and below; a drizzling rain was falling, and a thick
white mist enveloped all the low flat shore; the brick bastions, the
curtain and fosse of Tilbury, which is a fort as Dutch in aspect as
in character, since its chief strength lies, not in defending itself
by fire, but in being able to lay the surrounding district under
water.
"More than a hundred women, sailors' wives and sweethearts, were sent
noisily ashore. Our men were 'told off' to their berths speedily,
and amid the noise and bustle, the voice of Isabel, her face and the
baby's, came ever and anon as in a dream before me; and, with
something of a sickened heart, I entered the great cabin.
"'Bravo, Singleton! How goes it, old fellow,' cried a familiar
voice, and from amid a crowd of oificers who were lounging and
lunching about the table, some sitting, some standing, and all
laughing and chatting gaily, Doctor Riversdale in his blue undress
uniform, with sword and black belt on, came forward to greet me. 'So
you are going out in the _Rangoon_, eh!'
"'Yes, with two hundred men from the depôt. Are you?'
"'Bound for Bombay I am, to be stationed there on the staff.
But--but I don't see Mrs. Singleton with you.'
"I then explained, and my voice faltered as I spoke of her, that her
health did not, as yet, permit her to accompany me to India. I know
not now the words of Riversdale's reply; but the spirit of it
impressed me with the idea that her absence proved rather a relief to
him. To avoid talking of Isabel, even to my late rival, was
impossible. He seemed to like the theme, and perhaps felt a grim
satisfaction in the idea that she and I were to be separated for a
time.
"The voyage passed over pleasantly enough. At St. Helena, at the
Cape, and with several homeward-bound ships, we left letters for
those we had left behind us--those we loved, and hoped, if spared by
war and disease, to meet again. And the month of December saw us
with our various regiments in the army of Sir Hugh Gough, advancing
from Agra against the Mahrattas engaged in that war, which was
incident to the quarrel about the occupation of Cutch, all of which,
however, has nothing to do with my story, save that I was a unit in
the army destined to annex the principality of Scinde to the British
Crown.
"On the 29th of December we crossed the Chumbal (a river which flows
through Central India, from the Vendhya mountains to the Jumna)
without loss or much trouble, and had just halted and piled arms to
have a little tiffin, when the mails from Europe overtook us, and I
got a letter from Isabel, the first I had received since leaving her
and home, an event that seemed now to have happened ages ago.
"She was getting slowly better, and hoped to rejoin me soon--at
least, to be in Bombay, awaiting the conclusion of the war in Scinde.
My eyes suffused painfully, and my heart beat wildly, as I read on;
for though petty and trivial to others, situated as I was then, all
that followed was dear indeed to me, for it was about our little Guy
Conyers. He was growing _such_ a baby, _such_ a love as never was
seen or heard of since babies were first invented! His nose was fast
resembling mine (I remembered it a most unpromising button), and he
had such a pretty pouting mouth, just like Katie's; his eyes were
already noticing, and often smiled from his berceaunette at things
other people couldn't see; but they were _such_ eyes! How he crowed
and laughed, and bit the nurse's finger with his toothless gums; and
would persist in kicking off the woollen bootikins Aunt Katie had
knitted for him, and his little pink feet seemed more comfortable
without them!
"How I devoured all this. I who once upon a time thought all babies
most stupidly alike, deuced bores and nuisances, to be avoided and
shunned in all trains and steamers. And so while I read on, the
picture of Isabel, with her downcast eyes and long lashes, turned to
this particular and most wonderful baby, crowing on her knee, or
nestling in her tender bosom, came vividly and fondly before my
mental eye, till I was roused from my dream of home by the bugles
sounding 'fall in,' and the voice of Sir Hugh's senior aide-de-camp
saying to the Colonel as he rode past,--
"'The enemy are in front. Please get the battalion formed. Her
Majesty's 39th will commence the attack--the 56th Native Infantry to
support: stand to your arms!'
"I placed the letter in my breast pocket, drew my sword, and, with a
sigh, joined my company.
"I need not detail at any length the battle of Maharajpore, though it
proved a fatal field to me.
"The British were fourteen thousand strong, with forty guns; but the
Mahrattas, a fierce and warlike race, trained to arms from their
earliest years, mustered twenty-one thousand, horse and foot, with
one hundred pieces of cannon.
"Under a terrible fire, which, in the end, killed and wounded seven
hundred and ninety of our officers and men, we rushed upon them; the
old 39th, or Dorsetshire--_Primus in Indus_, as their colours have
it--in the van, and the 56th Bengal Infantry supporting them well and
gallantly, soon drove the foe from their guns, bayoneting the
gholandazees on every hand.
"Rallying in the village, the Mahrattas again showed front, and
fought with blind fury. There the Gwalior troops, after discharging
their long matchlocks right into our faces, flung them down, and,
like the Scots Highlanders of old, charged us sword in hand, with
target up and head stooped behind it. With frantic desperation they
fell, like a herd of wild tigers, upon our regiment; and the whole of
my company got mingled with them in a confused _mêlée_, opposing
their bayonets or clubbed muskets to the keen trenchant blades of the
Indians, who were ultimately routed, with the loss of four thousand
men, and all their beautiful cannon save one, which they carried off
the field, and to which I was fastened by a rope, a mutilated and
manacled prisoner of war!
"The catastrophe happened thus:--
"Amid the terrible _mêlée_ in front of the village, and just when
Major Stopford and Captain Codrington, of the 40th Regiment, fell
before the very muzzles of the Mahratta cannon, the aspect of the
enemy was wild and imposing, and I shall never forget it. Their
shrill, mad yells mingled with the cheers of the British, and added
to the general roar of the conflict; while their flowing garments,
and turbans of every brilliant colour, scarlet, yellow, crimson,
blue, and white, studded with precious stones and embroidered with
gold, made their excited masses seem gorgeous as a vast field of
flowers. Large round shields covered with brass bosses protected
their breasts, and over these we saw their swarthy faces, their
shining eyes, and crooked sabres, that flashed and glittered in the
sunshine. Personally, they were all powerful men, and their strength
and activity were only equalled by their recklessness of life and
ferocity of purpose.
"'Save me! save me, Singleton, for the love of God!' cried a voice;
and dismounted, with his horse shot under him, his bare head (for he
had lost his cap), exposed to twenty uplifted sabres, I saw Doctor
Riversdale lying among their feet; and I did save him, by a
superhuman effort, at the head of twenty determined men. But as we
fell back, keeping our bayonets at the charge, a volley of grape and
canister shot, from their last and only gun, swept away the twenty
brave fellows who adhered to me. I fell among the enemy alone, was
cut down by a tulwar, and dragged to the rear of the village.
"I fainted from loss of blood, and on recovering, found myself many
miles away from the corpse-strewn village of Maharajpore, and in the
hands of a Mahratta chief and a few of his men, now outlaws and
fugitives among the mountains; for their army had broken and fled,
totally defeated and irretrievably scattered."