the quiet of the dawn, and the measured tramp of armed men sounded
audibly; my heart stood still, my lips felt parched,--I knew the errand
of that column marching so slowly across the parched turf. A little
while longer yet, and I heard the sharp ring of the ramrods being
withdrawn, and the dull echo of the charge being rammed down: with a
single leap, as though the bullets were through me, I sprang, weak as I
was, from my wretched pallet, and staggered to the open doorway, leaning
there against the entrance powerless and spell-bound. I saw the file of
soldiers loading; I saw the empty coffin-shells; I saw three men
standing bound, their forms distinct against the clear, bright haze of
morning, and the fresh foliage of the woods. Two of them were
Virginians, but the third was not Stuart Lane With a great cry I sprang
forward, but the guards seized my arms and held me, helpless as a woman,
in their gripe. He whom we had called Deadly Dash heard, and looked up
and smiled. His face was tranquil and full of light, as though the pure
peace of the day shone there.
The gripe of the sentinels held me as if in fetters of iron; the world
seemed to rock and reel under me, a sea of blood seemed eddying before
my eyes; the young day was dawning, and murder was done in its early
hours, and I was held there to look on,--its witness, yet powerless to
arrest it! I heard the formula--so hideous then!--"Make
ready!"--"Present!"--"Fire!" I saw the long line of steel tubes belch
out their smoke and flame. I heard the sullen echo of the report roll
down from the mountains above. When the mist cleared away, the three
figures stood no longer clear against the sunlight; they had fallen.
With the mad violence of desperation I wrenched myself from my guards,
and staggered to him where he lay; he was not quite dead yet; the balls
had passed through his lungs, but he breathed still; his eyes were
unclosed, and the gleam of a last farewell came in them. He smiled
slightly, faintly once more.
"She will know how I loved her now. Tell her I died for her," he said
softly, while his gaze looked upwards to the golden sun-rays rising in
the east.
And with these words life passed away, the smile still lingering gently
on his lips;--and I knew no more, for I fell like a man stunned down by
him where he was stretched beside the grave that they had hewn for him
ere he was yet dead.
* * * * *
I knew when I saw him there, as well as I knew by detail long after,
that he had offered his life for Stuart Lane's, and that it had been
accepted; the Virginian, ignorant of the sacrifice made for him, had
been sent to the Southern lines during the night, told by the
Northerners that he was pardoned on his parole to return in his stead a
distinguished Federal officer lately captured by him. He knew nothing,
dreamt nothing, of the exchange by which his life was given back to the
woman who loved him, when his English Leader died in his place as the
sun rose over the fresh summer world, never again to rise for those
whose death-shot rang sullen and shrill through its silence.
So Deadly Dash died, and his grave is nameless and unknown there under
the shadow of the great Virginian forests. He was outlawed, condemned,
exiled, and the world would see no good in him; sins were on him
heavily, and vices lay darkly at his door; but when I think of that
grave in the South where the grass grows so rankly now, and only the
wild deer pauses, I doubt if there was not that in him which may well
shame the best amongst us. We never knew him justly till he perished
there.
* * * * *
And my friend who told me this said no more, but took up his
_brule-gueule_ regretfully. The story is given as he gave it, and the
States could whisper from the depths of their silent woods many tales of
sacrifice as generous, of fortitude as great. That when he had related
it he was something ashamed of having felt it so much, is true; and you
must refer the unusual weakness, as he did, to the fact that he told it
on the off-day of the Derby, after having put a cracker on Wild Charley.
A sufficient apology for any number of frailties!
THE GENERAL'S MATCH-MAKING.
OR,
COACHES AND COUSINSHIP.
Where the devil shall I go this Long? Paris is too hot; the inside of my
adorable Chateau des Fleurs would give one a lively idea of the feelings
of eels in a frying-pan. Rome's only fit to melt down puffy cardinals,
as jocks set themselves before the kitchen fire preparatory to the
Spring Meetings. In Switzerland there's nothing fit to eat. Spain might
be the ticket--the Andalusians are a good-looking lot, but they haven't
a notion of beer. Scotland I daren't enter, because I know I should get
married under their rascally laws. I'd go to the Bads, but the V. P.'s
fillies say they mean to do 'em this summer, and I won't risk meeting
them if I know it; the baits they set to catch the unsuspecting are
quite frightful. Where the devil _shall_ I go?
So spoke Sydenham Morton, whilom Captain of Eton, now, in due course,
having passed up to Kings, discussing ham-pie and audit, devils and
coffee, while the June sun streamed through the large oriel windows.
"_To_ the devil, I fear, if you only find your proper fraternity," said
a man, coming in. Oak was never sported by Sydie, except when he was
rattling certain little squares of ivory in boxes lined with green felt.
"Ah, Mr. Keane, is that you? Come in."
The permission was needless, insomuch as Keane was already in and down
on a rocking-chair.
"One o'clock, and only just begun your breakfast! I have finished more
than half my day's work."
"I dare say," answered Sydie; "but one shining light like you,
monseigneur, is enough for a college. Why should I exert myself? I swore
I hadn't four marks a year, and I've my fellowship for telling the
furbelow. We all go in for the dolce here except you, and you're such a
patent machine for turning out Q. E. D.s by the dozen, that you can no
more help working than the bed-maker can help taking my tea and saying
the cat did it, and 'May she never be forgiven if she ever so much as
looked at that there blessed lock.' I say, find a Q. E. D. for me, to
the most vexatious problem, where I'm to go this Long?"
"Go a quiet reading tour; mark out a regular plan, and travel somewhere
rugged and lonely, with not a crinoline, or a trout-stream, or a pack of
hounds within a hundred miles; the middle of Stonehenge, for example, or
with the lighthouse men out at the Smalls or Eddystone. You'd do wonders
when you came back, Sydie."
Sydie shook his head and puffed gravely at his pipe.
"Thank you, sir. Cramming's not my line. As for history, I don't see
anything particularly interesting in the blackguardisms of men all dust
and ashes and gelatine now; if I were the Prince of Wales, I might think
it my duty to inquire into the characters of my grandfathers; but not
being that individual, I find the Derby list much more suited to my
genius. As for the classics, they won't help me to ask for my dinner at
Tortoni's, nor to ingratiate myself with the women at the Maison Doree;
and I prefer following Ovid's counsels, and enjoying the Falernian of
life represented in these days by milk-punch, to plodding through the De
Officiis. As for mathematics, it _may_ be something very grand to draw
triangles and circles till A meets B because C is as long as D; but I
know, when I did the same operation in chalk when I was a small actor
on the nursery floor, my nurse (who might have gone along with the
barbarian who stuck Archimedes) called me an idle brat. Well, I say,
about the Long? Where are _you_ going, most grave and reverent
seignior?"
"Where there are no impertinent boys, if there be such a paradise on
earth," rejoined Keane, lighting his pipe. "I go to my moor, of course,
for the 12th, but until then I haven't made up my mind. I think I shall
scamper over South America; I want freshening up, and I've a great fancy
to see those buried cities, not to mention a chance of buffalo hunting."
"Travelling's such a bore," interrupted Sydie, stretching himself out
like an india-rubber tube. "Talk of the cherub that's always sitting up
aloft to watch over poor Jack, there are always ten thousand demons
watching over the life of any luckless AEothen; there are the
custom-house men, whose natural prey he becomes, and the hotel-keepers,
who fasten on him to suck his life-blood, and there are the mosquitoes,
and other things less minute but not less agonizing; and there are
guides and muleteers, and waiters and ciceroni--oh, hang it!
travelling's a dreadful bore, if it were only for the inevitable widow
with four daughters whom you've danced with once at a charity ball, who
rushes up to you on the Boulevards or a Rhine steamer, and tacks herself
on to you, and whom it's well for you if you can shake off when you
scatter the dust of the city from the sole of your foot."
"You can't chatter, can you?"
"Yes; my fraenum was happily cut when I was a baby. Fancy what a loss the
world would have endured if it hadn't been!" said Sydie, lazily shutting
his half-closed blue eyes. "I say, the governor has been bothering my
life out to go down to St. Crucis; he's an old brick, you know, and has
the primest dry in the kingdom. I wish you'd come, will you? There's
capital fishing and cricketing, and you'd keep me company. Do. You shall
have the best mount in the kingdom, and the General will do you no end
of good on Hippocrate's rule--contrarieties cure contrarieties."
"I'll think about it; but you know I prefer solitude generally;
misanthropical, I admit, but decidedly lucky for me, as my companions
through life will always be my ink-stand, my terrier, and my papers. I
have never wished for any other yet, and I hope I never shall. Are you
going to smoke and drink audit on that sofa all day?"
"No," answered Sydie, "I'm going to take a turn at beer and Brown's for
a change. Well, I shall take you down with me on Tuesday, sir, so that's
settled."
Keane laughed, and after some few words on the business that had brought
him thither, went across the quad to his own rooms to plunge into the
intricacies of Fourrier and Laplace, or give the vigor of his brain to
stuffing some young goose's empty head, or cramming some idle young dog
with ballast enough to carry him through the shoals and quicksands of
his Greats.
Gerald Keane was a mathematical Coach, and had taken high honors--a rare
thing for a Kingsman to do, for are they not, by their own confession,
the laziest disciples of the dolce in the whole of Granta, invariably
bumped and caught out, and from sheer idleness letting other men beat
Lord's and shame the Oxford Eleven, and graduate with Double Firsts,
while they lie perdus in the shades of Holy Henry? Keane, however, was
the one exception to the rule. He was dreadfully wild, as ladies say,
for his first term or two, though equally eloquent at the Union; then
his family exulting in the accuracies of their prophecies regarding his
worthlessness, and somebody else daring him to go in for honors, his
pluck was put up, and he set himself to work to show them all what he
could do if he chose. Once roused to put out his powers, he liked using
them; the bother of the training over, it is no trouble to keep place as
stroke-oar; and now men pointed him out in the Senate House, and at the
Senior Fellows' table, and he bid fair to rank with the writer on Jasher
and the author of the Inductive Sciences.
People called him very cold. It was popularly averred that he had no
more feeling than Roubilliac's or Thorwaldsen's statues; but as he was a
great favorite with the under-grads, and always good-natured to them,
there were a few men who doubted the theory, though _he_ never tried to
refute or dispute it.
Of all the young fellows, the one Keane liked the best, and to whom he
was kindest, was Sydenham Morton--Sydie to everybody in Granta, from the
little fleuriste opposite in King's Parade, to the V. P.'s wife, who
petted him because his uncle was a millionnaire--the dearest fellow in
the world, according to all the Cambridge young ladies--the darling of
all the milliner and confectioner girls in Trumpington Street and Petty
Cury--the best chap going among the kindred spirits, who got gated, and
lectured, and rusticated for skying over to Newmarket, or pommelling
bargees, or taking a lark over at Cherryhinton--the best-dressed,
fastest, and most charming of Cantabs, as he himself would gravely
assure you.
They were totally dissimilar, and far asunder in position; but an affair
on the slope of the Matterhorn, when the boy had saved the elder man's
life, had riveted attachment between them, and bridged over the
difference of their academical rank.
The Commencement came and went, with its speeches, and its H.R.H.
Chancellor, and its pretty women gliding among the elms of Neville's
Court (poor Leslie Ellis's daily haunt), filling the grim benches of the
Senate House, and flitting past the carved benches of King's Chapel.
Granta was henceforth a desert to all Cambridge belles; they could walk
down Trumpington Street without meeting a score of little straw hats,
and Trumpington Street became as odious as Sahara; the "darling Backs"
were free to them, and, of course, they who, by all relations, from
those of Genesis to those of Vanity Fair, have never cared, save for
_fruit defendu_, saw nothing to admire in the trees, and grass, and
river, minus outriggers and collegians. There was a general exodus:
Masters' red hoods, Fellows Commoners' gold-lace, Fellows' gown and
mortar boards, morning chapel surplices, and under-grads' straw-hats and
cutaway coats, all vanished from court and library, street and cloister.
Cambridge was empty; the married Dons and their families went off to
country-houses or Rhine steamers; Fellows went touring with views to
mediaeval architecture, Roman remains, Greek inscriptions, Paris laisser
aller, or Norwegian fishing, according to their tastes and habits;
under-grads scattered themselves over the face of the globe, and were to
be found in knots of two or three calling for stout in Vefour's, kicking
up a row with Austrian gendarmerie, chalking up effigies of Bomba on
Italian walls, striding up every mountain from Skiddaw to the Pic du
Midi, burrowing like rabbits in a warren for reading purposes on
Dartmoor, kissing sunny-haired Gretchens in German hostelries, swinging
through the Vaterland with knapsacks and sticks, doing a walking
tour--in fact, swarming everywhere with their impossible French and
hearty voices, and lithe English muscle, Granta marked on them as
distinctly as an M.B. waistcoat marks an Anglican, or utter ignorance of
modern politics a "great classic."
Cambridge had emptied itself of the scores of naughty boys that lie in
the arms of Mater, and on Tuesday Keane and Sydie were shaking and
rattling over those dreadful nervous Eastern Counties tenders, through
that picturesque and beautiful country that does permutations with such
laudable perseverance on pollards, fens, and flats--flats, fens, and
pollards--at the snail's pace that, according to the E.G.R., we must
believe to be "express."
"I wrote and told the governor you were coming down with me, sir," said
Sydie, hanging up his hat. "I didn't tell him what a trouble I had to
make you throw over South America for a fortnight, and come and taste
his curry at the Beeches. You'll like the old boy; he's as hot and
choleric, and as genial and good-hearted, as any old brick that ever
walked. He was born as sweet-tempered and soft-mouthed as mamma when an
eldest son waltzes twice with Adeliza, and the pepper's been put into
him by the curry-powder, the gentlemanlike transportation, and the
unlimited command over black devils, enjoyed by gentlemen of the
H.E.I.C.S."
"A nabob uncle," thought Keane. "Oh, I see, yellow, dyspeptic, always
boring one with 'How to govern India,' and recollections of 'When I
served with Napier.' What a fool I was to let Sydie persuade me to go. A
month in Lima and the Pampas would be much pleasanter."
"He came over last year," continued Sydie, in blissful ignorance, "and
bought the Beeches, a very jolly place, only he's crammed it with
everything anybody suggested, and tried anything that any farmer
recommended, so that the house and the estate present a peculiar
compendium of all theories of architecture, and a general exhibition of
all sorts of tastes. He's his hobbies; pouncing on and apprehending
small boys is one of 'em, for which practice he is endeared to the youth
of St. Crucis as the 'old cove,' the 'Injian devil,' and like
affectionate cognomens. But the General's weak point is me--me and
little Fay."
"His mare, I suppose?"
"His mare!--bless my heart, no!--his mare!" And Sydie lay back, and
laughed silently. "His mare! By George! what would she say? She's a good
deal too lively a young lady to run in harness for anybody, though
she's soft-mouthed enough when she's led. Mare! No, Fay's his niece--my
cousin. Her father and my father went to glory when we were both smalls,
and left us in legacy to the General, and a pretty pot of money the
legacy has cost him."
"Your cousin, indeed! The name's more like a mare's than a girl's,"
answered Keane, thinking to himself. "A cousin! I just wish I'd known
that. One of those Indian girls, I bet, tanned brown as a berry, flirts
a outrance, has run the gauntlet of all the Calcutta balls, been engaged
to men in all the Arms, talks horridly broad Anglo-Indian-English. I
know the style."
The engine screamed, and pulled up at the St. Crucis station, some
seventy miles farther on, lying in the midst of Creswickian landscapes,
with woodlands, and cottages, and sweet fresh stretches of meadow-land,
such as do one's heart good after hard days and late nights in dust and
gaslight.
"Deuced fine points," said Sydie, taking the ribbons of a high-stepping
bay that had brought one of the neatest possible traps to take him and
Keane to the Beeches, and springing, in all his glory, to the box, than
which no imperial throne could have offered to him one-half so
delightful a seat. "Governor never keeps screws. What a crying shame
we're not allowed to keep the sorriest hack at King's. That comes of
gentlemen slipping into shoes that were meant for beggars. Hallo, there
are the old beech-trees; I vow I can almost taste the curry and dry from
looking at them."
In dashed the bay through the park-gates, sending the shingle flying up
in small simoons, and the rooks cawing in supreme surprise from their
nests in the branches of the beech-trees.
"Hallo, my ancient, how are you?" began Sydie to the butler, while that
stately person expanded into a smile of welcome. "Down, dog, down! 'Pon
my life, the old place looks very jolly. What have you hung all that
armor up for;--to make believe our ancestors dwelt in these marble
halls? How devilish dusty I am. Where's the General? Didn't know we were
coming till next train. Fay! Fay! where are you? Ashton, where's Miss
Morton?"
"Here, Sydie dear," cried the young lady in question, rushing across the
hall with the most ecstatic delight, and throwing herself into the
Cantab's arms, who received her with no less cordiality, and kissed her
straightway, regardless of the presence of Keane, the butler, and
Harris.
"Oh, Sydie," began the young lady, breathlessly, "I'm so delighted
you're come. There's the archery fete, and a picnic at Shallowton, and
an election ball over at Coverdale, and I want you to dance with me, and
to try the new billiard-table, and to come and see my aviary, and to
teach me pistol-shooting (because Julia Dupuis can shoot splendidly, and
talks of joining the Rifles), and to show me how to do Euclid, and to
amuse me, and to play with me, and to tell me which is the prettiest of
Snowdrop's pups to be saved, and to----" She stopped suddenly, and
dropped from enthusiastic tirade to subdued surprise, as she caught
sight of Keane for the first time. "Oh, Sydie, why did you not introduce
me to your friend? How rude I have been!"
"Mr. Keane, my cousin, the torment of my existence, Miss Morton in
public, Little Fay in private life. There, you know one another now. I
can't say any more. Do tell me where the governor is."
"Mr. Keane, what can you think of me?" cried Fay. "Any friend of
Sydenham's is most welcome to the Beeches, and my uncle will scold me
frightfully for giving you such a reception. Please do forgive me, I was
so delighted to see my cousin."
"Which I can fully enter into, having a weakness for Sydie myself,"
smiled Keane. "I am sure he is very fortunate in being the cause of such
an excuse."
Keane said it _par complaisance_, but rather carelessly; young ladies,
as a class, being one of his aversions. He looked at Fay Morton,
however, and saw she was not an Indianized girl after all. She was not
yellow, but, au contraire, had waving fair hair, long dark eyes, and a
mischievous, sunny face--
A rosebud set with little wilful thorns,
And sweet as English air could make her.
"Where's the governor, Fay?" reiterated Sydie.
"Here, my dear boy. Thought of your old uncle the first thing, Sydie?
God bless my soul, how well you look! Confound you, why didn't you tell
me what train you were coming by? Devil take you, Ashton, why's there no
fire in the hall? Thought it was warm, did you? Hum! more fool you
then."
"Uncle dear," said Miss Fay, "here is Sydie's friend, Mr. Keane; you are
being as rude as I have been."
The General, at this conjuration, swung sharp round, a stout, hale,
handsome old fellow, with gray moustaches and a high color, holding a
spade in his hand and clad in a linen coat.
"Bless my soul, sir," cried the General, shaking Keane's hand with the
greatest possible energy, "charmed to see you--delighted, 'pon my honor;
only hope you're come to stay till Christmas; there are plenty of
bachelors' dens. Devil take me! of what was I thinking? I was pleased
to see that boy, I suppose. More fool I, you'll say, a lazy,
good-for-nothing young dog like him. Don't let me keep you standing in
the hall. Cursed cold, isn't it? and there's Little Fay in muslin!
Ashton, send some hot water into the west room for Mr.--Mr.----Confound
you, Sydie, why didn't you tell--I mean introduce me?--Mr. Keane.
Luncheon will be on the table in ten minutes. Like curry, Mr. Keane?
There, get along, Sydie, you foolish boy; you can talk to Fay after
luncheon."
"Sydie," whispered Fay, an hour before dinner, when she had teased the
Cantab's life out of him till he had consented to pronounce judgment on
the puppies, "what a splendid head that man has you brought with you;
he'd do for Plato, with that grand calm brow and lofty unapproachable
look. Who is he?"
"The greatest philosopher of modern times," responded her cousin,
solemnly. "A condensation of Solon, Thales, Plutarch, Seneca, Cicero,
Lucullus, Bion, Theophrastes, and Co.; such a giant of mathematical
knowledge, and all other knowledge, too, that every day, when he passes
under Bacon's Gate, we are afraid the old legend will come to pass, and
it will tumble down as flat as a pancake; a homage to him, but a loss to
Cambridge."
"Nonsense," said Miss Fay, impatiently. "(I like that sweet little thing
with the black nose best, dear.) _Who_ is he? What is he? How old is he?
What's his name? Where does he live?"
"Gently, young woman," cried Sydie. "He is Tutor and Fellow of King's,
and a great gun besides; he's some twenty-five years older than you. His
name on the rolls is Gerald, I believe, and he dwells in the shadow of
Mater, beyond the reach of my cornet; for which fact, not being
musically inclined, he is barbarian enough to return thanks daily in
chapel."
"I am sorry he is come. It was stupid of you to bring him."
"Wherefore, _ma cousine_? Are you afraid of him? You needn't be. Young
ladies are too insignificant atoms of creation for him to criticise.
He'll no more expect sense from you than from Snowdrop and her pups."
"Afraid!" repeated Fay, with extreme indignation. "I should like to see
any man of whom I should feel afraid! If he doesn't like fun and
nonsense, I pity him; but if he despise me ever so much for it, I shall
enjoy myself before him, and in spite of him. I was sorry you brought
him, because he will take you away when I want you all to myself; and he
looks so haughty, that----"
"You _are_ afraid of him, Fay, and won't own it."
"I am _not_," reiterated Fay, impetuously; "and I will smoke a cigar
with him after dinner, to show you I am not one bit."
"I bet you six pair of gloves you do no such thing, young lady."
"Done. Do keep the one with a black nose, Sydie; and yet that little
liver-colored darling is too pretty to be killed. Suppose we save them
all? Snowdrop will be so pleased."
Whereon Fay kissed all the little snub noses with the deepest affection,
and was caught in the act by Keane and the General.
"There's that child with her arms full of dogs," said the General,
beaming with satisfaction at sight of his niece. "She's a little,
spoilt, wilful thing. She's an old bachelor's pet, and you must make
allowances. I call her the fairy of the Beeches, God bless her! She
nursed me last winter, when I was at death's door from these cursed cold
winds, sir, better than Miss Nightingale could have done. What a
devilish climate it _is_; never two days alike. I don't wonder
Englishwomen are such icicles, poor things; they're frostbitten from
their cradle upwards."