HOME IN THE SPIRIT.
"And now for my letter!" exclaimed Denzil, as he hurried eagerly from
the excited throng about the cantonment gate to his new quarters, a
bungalow of somewhat humble construction, as its low roof was
thatched, and its walls built of the unburnt brick peculiar to Cabul.
Save his bed and table, a chair, some bullock trunks, and
accoutrements, furniture or ornament it had none.
The letter lay on the table, and, as he entered, its black-edged
envelope gave him a shock. Audley had not mentioned this
circumstance, for he humanely knew that until the fatal conference
was over, and Denzil could get it perused, his anxiety would be
torture, as "the dim shadow of an unknown evil is worse than the
presence of a calamity whose worst is told."
It proved to be from Sybil, and, curiously enough, had been brought
from Bombay by Audley Trevelyan! In India, people when "up country"
are thankful to get their home letters, even though six months old,
and, in the joy of receiving one, the longing to learn all it
contained--tidings of those he loved, and who were so far
away--Denzil forgot the terrible double catastrophe he had so
recently witnessed--the cruel butchery of two gallant gentlemen; he
forgot even about Rose Trecarrel, and cast himself into his chair, to
enjoy the full luxury of perusing it; but for a time an envious film
spread over his eyes when he attempted to read--a film that was soon
to turn to tears.
"Ah! England and Sybil," he murmured, "how far, far, I am away from
you!"
The letter was dated some months back; and the first few words gave
the young military exile a dreadful shock, for they told him of his
mother's death:--
"Oh, Denzil, my brother, how my heart yearns for you now more than
ever! You know how much she loved us, Denzil, and how much our lives
were bound up in each other; thus I cannot convince myself that I am
quite alone, that she has gone from this world for ever, and that we
shall never see her more--never see that sweet smile which her
beautiful dark eyes always wore for us. Our darling mamma! I send
you a lock of her hair (you will see that grey had begun to mingle
with it); and I send you also a wild violet that grew near the grave
where I buried her."
Sybil's writing here became tremulous, almost illegible, and falling
tears had evidently blotted the ink. The poor young subaltern seemed
to forget his present surroundings; he felt himself a boy again, and,
covering his bowed-down face with his hands, wept bitterly.
"Time will soften what we suffer, Denzil; but shall I ever be the
same again? I never had any plan or future unconnected with poor
mamma, after you left us, and our papa was lost. I fear she wore her
life out with thinking of what would become of us--of me, perhaps,
more especially--when she was, as she now is, dead and gone. There
cannot be two beings more isolated than you and I are now, dear
Denzil, and your letters are my only comfort. I am so thankful to
find from them that you are a favourite with so many, that General
Trecarrel is so kind; and that honest fellow, Bob Waller, too, I feel
that I quite love him. How do you like the Misses Trecarrel? Rather
giddy, are they not? Has Mr. Audley Trevelyan joined yet?"
Then, as if with the mention of Audley's name other thoughts that
were unknown to Denzil occurred to her, Sybil added--
"My music and my sketching days are ended now, Denzil; as some one
has it, 'I may put away all the bright colours out of my paint-box,
for they have gone out of my life.' Vainly has our rubicund Rector,
fresh from his pretty parsonage, his happy family circle, as yet
unbroken and unclouded by sorrow, fresh, perhaps, from his sumptuous
luncheon and glass of full-bodied old port, besought me to take
comfort--that grieving for the dead was useless--and told me that
there is One above 'who turneth the shadow of death into mourning,'
for I can only weep as one who would not be comforted. The old man
is very kind to me, however--bless him! though we have suffered much
through that horrid Lamorna peerage story--much at the hands and
tongues even of those to whom mamma was ever open-hearted, and all
charity and benevolence; but you will remember what Lady Fanshawe
says of our common Cornish folks in her time, that 'they are of a
crafty and censorious nature, _as most are so far from London_.'
"My next letter will tell you more certainly of my future intentions,
and all that immediately concerns myself. Our faithful nurse, Winny
Braddon, whose brother perished with papa, has gone to spend--to end,
I should say--her days with old Mike Treherne and his wife, who, as
you know, is her sister; and the Rector, who takes care of me--for I
am all but penniless now--is to give me an introduction to a lady of
high rank, who is about to go abroad; to where I know not--to India
itself perhaps. Would to Heaven it were! for then we might meet
again."
"My sister a companion--compelled, for bread, to submit to whim,
caprice, neglect, and mortification! Oh, my father, has it come to
this!" groaned Denzil in agony of spirit.
"The sunlight is setting redly on the rough summits of the Row Tor
and Bron Welli. All is quiet--quiet as death around me; I can hear
but the beating of my own heart, the most earnest prayers and
blessings of which go with these lines across the seas to you, dear
Denzil."
So ended this letter, which he read many, many times, heedless of the
unwonted bustle which reigned in the cantonments, where the gunners
were getting additional cannon mounted, the miners forming barricades
and traverses, and other vigorous preparations being made for defence
in case of a too-probable attack.
Denzil had learned that within every shadow, however deep, there may
be a darker shade; and now that shade within the shadow that had
fallen on him was the death of his mother.
His mother dead! Another beloved face gone as his father's had
gone--a sweet and winning face he saw in fancy still, yet never
should look on again. How much there were of past care and years of
love and tenderness to remember now! Then there were his only
sister's utter loneliness and helplessness to appal him. How trivial
a calamity seemed the coquetry of Rose Trecarrel when compared to
sorrows such as these! And she had died the tenant of a humble
cottage on the moors--the property of Mike Treherne, the miner, whose
son was now a sergeant in his company!
And could it be that for months past, while he had been happy,
thoughtless, heedless, and full of merriment among his comrades, that
she who loved him beyond her own life, purely and unselfishly as only
a mother can love an only son, had been in her dark cold grave, and
he knew it not? No thought by day, no vision by night, no intuition
or thrill of magnetic affinity (such as that of which we read in the
Corsican twins and their mother), had told him of this; and yet it
was so.
Far away from where the embattled Bala Hissar looked down on the
flowing Cabul, on the Mosque of Baber and the Obelisk of Alexander
the Macedonian, from the English cantonments and all their
associations, even from thoughts of Rose Trecarrel's auburn hair and
tender brown eyes, Denzil's mind, swifter than the electric
telegraph, flashed home to the land from whence that letter came--to
Cornwall with its mines below the rolling sea; to its granite
quarries where the thunder-blast, loud as a salvo from the Bala
Hissar, told of the riven rock; to its stone avenues solemn and
hoary, and the great rock-pillars of the Fire Worshippers of old; to
the dark brown moors of Bodmin, where in summer the drowsy bee hummed
over the heath-bells and wild honeysuckle; to the towering bluffs on
which the empurpled waves were rolling in the light of the sun as he
set beyond Scilly, "the isles of the god of day;" to tarns where the
water-lily floated, and to pools where the speckled trout was darting
to and fro; to his rugged home, we say, went all his thoughts--to the
Land's End with all its masses of splintered rocks, worn and bleached
by the seas of ages, split and rent like columns of basalt amid the
brine--rocks where the fresh-smelling seaweed and the scarlet
sea-anemone clung, and on whose summit the weary miner sometimes sat
and rested after his toil to watch the passing ships, or to ponder
when next his pickaxe would discover "a lode of tin or a goodly bunch
of copper ore" in those burrows beneath the sea over which the keels
were gliding, their crews little wotting that human beings were in
those lighted mines fathoms deep below;--over all these familiar
scenes the mind of Denzil wandered, to settle again in fancy on his
dead mother's face; to think of his sister's loneliness--of the vast
distance by sea and land that separated them,--of his own now-narrow
means; and his heart seemed to wither up within him.
So the long night wore away, and the day began to break. Its advent
was heralded by the boom of a 24-pounder from the Bala Hissar, by the
merry drums and fifes giving the _reveillez_, and by strokes on the
flat metal ghurries that hung in front of the guard-houses; but
Denzil sat heedless, very pale, and absorbed in thought.
* * * * * *
"Come, my dear fellow, don't mope, and don't give way thus--it is no
earthly use doing so," said the cheerful voice of Bob Waller on the
evening of the second day that Denzil had been permitted to absent
himself from parade. "I know what I felt when my own mother
died--God rest her! We were on the march to Ferozepore, under
General Duncan, when the letter reached me--thought I should die
too--wanted sick leave to go home, and all that sort of thing. Come
to my bungalow and have a weed, with some brandy-pawnee; or shall I
stay with you? By the way, here is Trevelyan's card of condolence.
Good style of fellow, Trevelyan: he and the Trecarrels give you their
kindest wishes." (This conjunction made Denzil wince.) "Will you
come with me to Mabel--Miss Trecarrel, I mean?" added the
good-hearted, well-meaning Waller. "She is so sensible, sympathetic,
and kind."
"I should prefer being alone," replied Denzil moodily.
"But you can't be alone."
"Why?"
"The whole 37th have come in, and the Shah's 6th Foot from the Bala
Hissar. These Afghan beggars have some movement in contemplation to
cut us off, and the cantonments are quite crowded."
But for a time Denzil would seek no relief, save in military duty.