MARY'S LETTER.
Whether he thanked Pelham for what he brought him; how he bade the
former and Stanley adieu, and in what terms he did so, Cecil never
gave thought to, nor did he remember; he was only aware of one fact,
that the letter placed in his hand, crumpled, sodden, spotted with
blood of the Servian dragoon, and partly defaced by the water of the
Morava, was from Mary--from Mary Montgomerie; and oblivious of all
else the world contained, he rushed away, breathlessly, to the
solitude of his own tent, to peruse it.
Amid all it had undergone in transmission, the tinted paper on which
it was written retained a subtle, but faint perfume. It was dated
from Eaglescraig, and nearly a month back, and was sorely defaced and
in some parts quite illegible.
A letter from Mary! he had opened it, hastily yet tenderly, with
tremulous fingers--for his hands, that never shook when holding sword
or pistol, shook now like aspen twigs, and as he held the paper
before him a mist crept over his sight; for he knew that her hand had
touched the paper and had written the lines that were there.
'My own little Mary!' he murmured; 'on earth I have nothing whereby
to be worthy of you--and I have won and retained your love!'
He read on quickly and nervously, only to return to the beginning,
and read over and over again; but in some places whole lines had been
obliterated.
'My darling, oh my darling!' he read in one place, 'we have traced
you at last, and learned from the newspapers that you have escaped
some awful peril, the details of which have not yet been made public.
Write to us soon, and that you are coming home--write to the general,
if you will. Oh, how happy he would be.'
_He_--what mystery--what change was here?
'And oh! my own Cecil, you ...... and how can I tell it to you,
although I do so with joy, that now we know all--all about the
giddiness that seized you at the ball, when talking with me, and how
it was caused by Hew---Hew--the infamous and cruel, who, as he has
since confessed in writing, when it was supposed he was dying, that
he drugged your wine--unseen by all!'
Cecil paused and started to his feet, and passed a hand across his
throbbing forehead.
'Drugged--oh, villain!--villain--vile trickster!' he exclaimed, while
tears, hot and salt, came unbidden to his eyes.
'Sir Piers,' continued the letter, 'the general, as he will always
have himself called--the dear old thing!--went straight to the Horse
Guards about it, and saw the commander-in-chief personally. You know
his position, services, and influence; and so, dearest Cecil, you are
again .....
'In the old corps,' said Cecil, as the letter here was again
illegible, 'as the _Gazette_ shows--Falconer--Montgomerie--why, and
under which name is the remainder of my life to be passed?'
A whole paragraph followed, so sorely defaced that, with all his
intense anxiety, Cecil could make nothing of it; and yet his future
life might hinge on all that paragraph contained or detailed. But he
failed to decipher it, save a word or two here and there--among them
the names of 'father--mother--cousin--my own cousin,' and old John
Balderstone was again and again referred to, in connection with some
mysterious letters and documents he had found in some mysterious way
to all appearance, and the whole bewildering passage concluded thus:
'Sir Piers deplores in his inmost heart his harsh treatment of you
and your poor parents.' (My parents!) 'And craves earnestly that you
will return to your home--to Eaglescraig, and to _me_, dearest Cecil.
He is telling me a long story about India, and letters going by
_dawk_ (whatever that may be) as I write, thus I scarcely know what I
am putting upon paper .... Oh, how we all miss you, Cecil--I more
than all; but you will soon be coming back to us now, thank God!
Long and drearily pass the days--the mornings and evenings now at
Eaglescraig; and I can but think of you, so blighted apparently in
life, so lost to your own world, so ruined and so far away from me,
in a land of peril. I write this to you on the merest chance, and in
the prayerful hope that it may reach you; as we only learned your
present terrible whereabouts from a newspaper paragraph.
'In Servia! oh, my love! what took you to such an unheard-of place as
Servia? .... I never open the piano now; I dare not trust myself to
sing.'
The sight of her writing sent ever and anon a thrill to his heart,
even as a touch of her gentle and delicate hand would have done.
'You will be delighted to learn that the quarrel or estrangement
between your friend Leslie Fotheringhame and my dear Annabelle has
all been explained away, and they are to be married in two months;
but in the meantime Leslie has resolved .... and to please me .... in
Servia. Ah, dearest Cecil, I thought such strange things only
occurred in novels and melo-dramas as are occurring now to us! Only
think of ....'
'Such strange things; to what does she refer? More obliteration!'
sighed Cecil.
And now the letter ended, as such documents usually do, with many of
the sweet, if childish, endearing terms so appreciated by lovers, and
of which they never weary, as they are meant for their eyes alone.
How often Cecil read it, kissed it, and strove to fill up and draw
deductions from the fragmentary passages, we shall not pretend to
say; but great food was given to him for speculation and marvel.
What was this miraculous discovery of John Balderstone? What event
had produced such a beneficial effect upon everyone, on the general
and himself in particular? How had it turned the heart of the
general to him, and to 'his parents,' the ill-treatment of whom he
deplored?
That the general, a soldier and man of the highest honour, smarting
under a sense of Hew Montgomerie's treachery to an innocent man, had
done as he had, by putting himself instantly in communication with
the military authorities, and procuring his restoration, as the
victim of a conspirator, Cecil could readily understand and be
profoundly grateful for; but beyond that, all Mary's letter was to
him--chaos!
Mental questions occurred to him in tiresome iteration.
In the fever of his impatience and doubts of all he wished
elucidated, he drank some wine, but it seemed destitute of strength
and coolness; he tasted some grapes, and they failed to moisten his
tongue; he lighted a choice cigar, but its soothing influence was
gone.
Mary's letter, delicious though it was to receive, meant much more
than he could extract from it. What was all this new mystery of
which he had so suddenly become the centre? Would she write
again--and when?
He must write to her; but where might she be at that precise time?
At Eaglescraig, without doubt. Their love was one that had made them
cleave unto each other in the teeth of all adverse circumstances, and
hope naturally began to brighten anew in Cecil's heart, as he turned
alternately from the puzzling notice in the _Gazette_ to Mary's
equally puzzling letter.
'Patience,' he would mutter; 'patience, and in a little time all will
be made clear.'
But nevertheless he grew more impatient than ever.
How much of caressing tenderness, as well as information of
importance, had been obliterated in Mary's letter by the envious
water of the Morava! When would he obtain a key, a clue to it all?
The soft, bright dreams that are so frequent in our earlier years,
and form a part of our existence then, and which as time goes on
become greyer, duller, and farther apart, and less tinted with
sunshine, were coming back to Cecil's heart again, as he sat in his
tent alone, and striving to think it all out--the new mystery that
enveloped him.
He lost no time in writing to her in reply, a long and passionate
letter; all the longer and more passionate that he had heard nothing
of her for such a length of time, and had all the pent-up emotion of
his heart to pour forth. Though he knew not what was meant by the
discoveries to which she referred, he tendered through her all his
thanks to the general for his kindness, and, in the exuberance of his
joy, felt that he could even forgive Hew for the malice he had
displayed and the terrible wrong he had done him. Home! he would
start for home the moment he could hear from her again, or get some
details, some official letter of instructions, on the subject that
perplexed him; and he deplored that as matters stood he could not
just then, with honour, quit the army of the Morava. _Why_, he did
not tell her--that the thunderclouds of a great battle were soon to
darken the air around Deligrad!
The rumour spread rapidly, with many exaggerations, that the 'Herr
Capitan' in Tchernaieff's own Dragoons was an officer in the British
army, and it greatly enhanced the importance with which Cecil was
viewed in the Servian camp.
If, ere he could leave that arena with honour, he was doomed to fall
in battle now, it seemed to him hard to have to quit life so
suddenly, when it became full of new value, and seemed more worth
living!
Often had he reflected that he had not yet seen his thirtieth year,
and that all the maturity of life spread out before him, and he felt
that he had the spirit, energy, and courage to carve out name and
fame for himself; but were either to be won in the heartless struggle
between Servia and Turkey? He had always feared not; and now, with a
bright, glorious, and triumphant revulsion of feeling, he felt it
mattered not. He had now a name and career elsewhere!
'I like this young fellow Falconer immensely,' said Stanley to
Pelham, as they talked over his affairs after he left them; 'but I
wish him well out of this camp and country too, especially if he has
new and brighter prospects at home.'
'Well,' replied Pelham, who, like Stanley, was a handsome fellow,
with much of that easy but indescribable air and manner of a man who
has seen all the world of life has to show, 'he has been down on his
luck--got court-martialled, it seems, in some row, and is now
reinstated in his regiment and rank--squared it with the F.M. at the
Horse Guards and all that.'
'With a girl he loved also--an heiress I expect; and yet he is going
in for the last of this campaign.'
'What of that--why shouldn't he see the end of the fun?'
'What of it? This much! won't it be strange--very strange--if Count
Palenka's weird prediction comes true, and the poor fellow gets
bowled out after all?'
'By Jove! I never thought of that. What a fellow you are! But I
don't believe in predictions of gipsies, jugglers, and things, don't
you know.'
But there was much in the memory and the time--the memory of the
count's dark grave face, his manner and expression--that impressed
even the thoughtless Stanley; so he dropped the subject, and smoked
on in silence.