COLVILLE OF THE GUARDS
BY
JAMES GRANT
AUTHOR OF
"THE ROMANCE OF WAR," "THE CAMERONIANS,"
"THE SCOTTISH CAVALIER,"
ETC., ETC.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
LONDON:
HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,
13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
1885.
_All rights reserved._
CONTENTS
I. The Queen's Shilling
II. In London
III. No. 60, Park Lane
IV. 'So Near and Yet So Far!'
V. 'Some Day.'
VI. Jack Shows His Teeth
VII. The Daughter of Nox
VIII. Mrs. Deroubigne
IX. Was It Not a Dream?
X. Going to the Front
XI. At Jellalabad
XII. The Hadji
XIII. A Fight with the Mohmunds
XIV. In the Lughman Valley
XV. The Fancy Ball
XVI. The 10th Hussars
XVII. Lost
XVIII. The Sequel
XIX. The Hakim Abou Ayoub
XX. At Cabul
COLVILLE OF THE GUARDS.
CHAPTER I.
THE QUEEN'S SHILLING.
Robert Wodrow, we have stated, had disappeared from his home.
Ellinor had apparently passed out of his life, and he felt as if he
had nothing more to hope for in it; but the influence of her memory
hung over him still.
Even the love he bore his poor old mother failed to restrain his wild
impulse, his craving, to begone, he cared not where; thus her
influence also failed in getting him to resume those medical studies
which he once pursued with enthusiasm, but now relinquished with
indifference or disgust; and, under the disappointment and mental
worry produced by Ellinor's falsehood to himself, he failed to
graduate at the expected time.
'My poor boy!' his mother said again and again, while stroking his
dark brown hair caressingly with her now shrivelled hand; 'that
cold-blooded girl has come between you and your wits.'
'Don't call her so, mother. Perhaps I did not deserve her,' said he,
humbly.
'I used to sit and watch you both when children many a time and oft,
and think what a winsome couple you would be in the days to come. Ah
me, Robert, your one ewe lamb, and that stranger took it from you, to
be but a plaything for his idle hours too probably!'
'Mother, you torture me by all this kind of thing!' exclaimed Robert.
'It is perhaps but a sudden girlish fancy hers for that man Sleath.
It may pass away and all yet be well.'
'Never for me, mother. And you think so meanly of me as to take that
view of the matter? I would not and could not with my knowledge of
the present seek to have the past over again, and never more can I
look upon Ellinor Wellwood or think of her save as I would of the
dead. The charm is broken, the flower has lost its fragrance, and
the peach its bloom.'
'Why should the weakness or falsehood of one person--one person
only--wreck the whole life of another?' asked his father, with some
asperity. 'It should not be so.'
'The old and the young view these matters differently, father,' said
Robert, gently.
'True. I have read that "in youth grief is a tempest which makes you
ill; in old age it is only like a cold wind which adds a wrinkle to
your face and one more white lock to the others. Yet there are
people who can feed themselves on their grief till they grow fat on
it."'
But arguments proved unavailing. The vicinity of Birkwoodbrae had
become intolerable to Robert now, and he resolved that he would go
far away from them and the pleasant birks of Invermay; and he openly
announced his intention of becoming a soldier, adding that nothing
would make him swerve from his purpose, as by that means he would be
taken to other scenes and be under other influences.
'Most evil ones, I fear!' exclaimed the doctor, striking his hands
together.
'Oh, my poor infatuated boy!' added his mother, while her tears fell
hotly and fast, and his father started from the table on which the
untasted dinner was spread, tore open his waistcoat as if he was
suffocating, and paced about the room with impatient strides, his
whole form agitated with a kind of convulsive agony that cut Robert
to the soul, but did not make him swerve from his bitter purpose.
'Consider the society and profligacy you have to encounter--yea, such
as even our ancestor, in the third volume of his _Analecta_, details
when describing the schools of profanity in 1726.'
Then, after a time, finding that all his opposition was vain, he
said, in a very broken voice,
'God bless and protect you, Robert, and may He forgive you for all
the sorrow you are causing us, as by such a course you will be lost
to us and to yourself, after all our care and affection, after all
your painful anxieties at college, and after all your good training
and religious education.'
'In three years I shall be an officer,' exclaimed Robert,
confidently, 'and won't you and the dear old mother be proud of me
then?'
But the minister shook his silver head.
'Your future----' he began, and paused. 'Who can see the future?'
'One above, Robert. And may He give you the grace to think overall
this terrible purpose again.'
Robert did think again, as he had thought before, deeply and
decidedly, and, to avoid more painful scenes and partings, he quitted
his bed next morning while the sky was dark, and no ray of light
gilded as yet the Ochil peaks. He dressed himself in haste, took a
few necessaries in a handbag, and after kneeling softly and saying a
prayer at the door of the room in which his parents were asleep, he
tore himself as it were out of the house and set forth on his new
path in life, the path by which there might be no returning.
In that time of supreme bitterness little could the poor fellow see
all that was before him.
The morning was still dark, but the sky was clear and starry; the
great hills and tall silver birches in the foreground stood blackly
up against it, and he could hear that sound so familiar to his
ears--the rush of the May over its rocky bed.
He gave a lingering farewell glance at the roof of the old house
which had been his home since first he saw the light there--the
abode, with all its old-fashioned but substantial furniture, to which
his mother had come a smiling and blushing bride in the past
time--the abode, till now, of so much peace, frugality, and
happiness--and with a bitter sigh he turned his eyes resolutely away.
Then, if aught was required to nerve him, it was the next feature in
the still and sombre landscape; the smokeless chimneys and darkened
windows of Birkwoodbrae--the now empty shrine where so long his idol
had been.
'Oh, all I have ever loved!' he exclaimed, and, wringing his hands,
set out with all speed upon his way, haunted, however, by the coming
grief of those he was leaving behind when his place was found empty;
when his mother's eyes would have a vacant chair to contemplate and
his father's reverend head was bent with sorrow, as it would be in
the separation that was to come; and what is separation to the loving
but a living death?
The next day found him among the wide and stately streets of the
Modern Athens, willing to enlist in the first regiment any member of
which came in his way, for he was drawing a chance in the lottery of
life now, and to him all regiments were alike; so, as Fortune had it,
he met a hussar, to whom he expressed his wishes, and from whom he
soon receiyed, with all due formality, that magic coin _the Queen's
Shilling_, and became what is termed 'a Headquarter Recruit,'
enlisting for 'short service'--i.e., six years with the colours.
Six years! In these days of steam the progress of events is so
rapid, what might not happen in that brief space?
He had answered all the usual questions by those entitled to make
them as to his age, name, parish, and calling, with others that were
less pleasant, as to whether he had ever served before, or been
marked D. or B.C.; this formality over, and oath of attestation taken
before a bailie of the city--the oath to 'be faithful and bear true
allegiance to Her Majesty, her heirs and successors; obey all orders
of Her Majesty, her heirs and successors; and of all the generals and
officers, &c.,' set over him--being concluded, a night intervening
between enlistment and attestation, nothing remained, as his new
friend, Sam Surcingle, said, 'but to have a drink over it.'
This opinion was concurred in by several smart but long-legged
fellows in braided trousers, and tight jackets, with caps like
scarlet muffins, jangling jack-spurs, and riding switches, who seemed
all opportunely at hand, and suffering from chronic thirst, all the
more so as the new recruit seemed to have some loose cash; and a
suitable tavern (the 'Scots Grey') being at hand, Robert Wodrow soon
found himself acting as host to a military circle which made up in
heedless jollity and noise what it might lack in rank and distinction.
Yet among the half-dozen or so of his new friends were, at least, two
of those ill-starred fellows so frequently to be found in our cavalry
regiments at all times, but more especially just now, those who by
extravagance and dissipation or failing to achieve the insane
'cramming' of the present day, had lost their chance of commissions,
and taken 'the shilling' from sheer love of the service, and the
desperate hope of rising in it.
One of these was a mere youth, who, as Sam Surcingle said, 'had a
long pedigree behind and a long minority before him;' the other, Toby
Chase, the heir to an ancient baronetcy, was older, and drank fast to
drown care, shouting, with a laugh,
'To-day--to-day is for me; to-morrow is the paradise of the fool!
Your health and promotion, Wodrow, old fellow!'
Glass succeeded glass; toasts and anecdotes--some of the latter not
very classical--followed each other fast, till the sharp trumpets
blew 'the last post' in the adjoining barrack square of Piershill,
and the hussars had to hurry to quarters, and we are sorry to admit
that for perhaps the first time in his life--even during his college
career--Robert Wodrow had contrived to get disreputably tipsy.
He had no care for the present and no anticipation of the headache
and shame of the morrow, with the disgusts of the rough riding and
'barrack fatigue,' such as carrying coals or refilling mattresses
with fresh straw; neither was he troubled with the natural reflection
of what would be the emotions of his highly-principled and
purely-minded old father and mother could they have seen him then,
when he had spent the last of his cash on his new comrades, and was
voted the king of good fellows, and with one of the before-mentioned
scarlet muffins on his head, but cocked very much over the right ear,
he flourished a riding-whip, while joining, but with a somewhat
'feathery' voice, in the song,
'How happy's the soldier that lives on his pay,
And spends half-a-crown out of sixpence a day!
Little cares he for the bailiff or bum,
When he pays all his debts with a roll on the drum.'
And so, for a time, Robert Wodrow passes out of our story; but a time
only.