WOUNDED AND MISSING.
The summer was past, and the mellow tints of its successor were
beginning to steal over the woods at Willowdean. September had come,
the month of in-gathering, and brown autumn, the evening of the year,
was creeping on.
There is visually then a great variety of tints in the Scottish
woods; all gradations of green, from the tender paleness of the
willow to the bronze-like branches of the sombre pine, mingling with
every shade of fading foliage, from bright yellow to russet, brown,
and red.
Autumn was beautiful as ever in the fertile Merse; the cattle lowed
as usual on the pastoral hills of the Lammermuirs, over which the sun
cast the flying shadows of the white clouds that came from the German
Sea.
In the household at Willowdean, as elsewhere over all the British
Isles, the public prints were eagerly scanned for their contents at
that time; and the slow progress of our army in the East was watched
with the keenest interest, for there were few in the land who had not
either a relative or a friend who faced the pestilence at Varna, and
the perils of war that followed it.
And every letter that came from the camp added to the craving for
another; but during this anxious and eventful autumn, Willowdean
House did not seem to wear its usual aspect. Lady Wedderburn had not
her general circle of guests, and no friends were invited to pass the
shooting season with Sir John. Robert was not much of a sportsman,
so the gun-room was unentered, the preserves remained undisturbed,
and the speckled grouse and the golden pheasants kept holiday
together, the latter venturing even to feed among the barnyard fowls
at the home farm.
Robert Wedderburn was far from being insensible to the beauty of
Gwenny, and still more to the pleasing fact that she was an heiress;
and, regardless alike of his brother and cousin, he had striven to
effect a footing in her good graces from the time Horace departed;
but strove in vain: for Gwenny's impulsive and susceptible heart was
far away with our army of the East. His futile attentions, however,
had been apparent enough to Lady Wedderburn, and had secretly pleased
her.
"If Gwenny should happen not to care for Cyril," thought she, "let
Robert have her by all means. Her fortune would quite enable him to
cut the Temple and the dry study of the law."
Alone, the girl thought ever of the absent Horace Ramornie; and all
the scenes they had been wont to visit, even the objects of nature,
seemed to the fanciful Gwenny full of his memory by association of
ideas. The gurgle of the clear trouting stream that came from the
hills and flowed under the old bridge in the Dean, or Den, which
being fringed by over-arching willows, gave a name to the place; the
voices of the birds, the thrush, the blackbird and woodlark, among
the shrubberies of the garden and the stately trees of the lawn,
where they always sang most joyously after a shower had gemmed every
leaf and flower; the sweet perfume of the clover fields, where many a
day they had ridden together and rushed their horses at the fences
and turf-dykes, all somehow reminded Gwenny of Horace, the first and
only love of her passionate girlhood, now far away facing peril and
hardship, it might be to return no more!
That a change had come over her, even when visitors were present, was
perceptible alike to Sir John and to Lady Wedderburn. The latter
flattered herself that she was at last thinking of Cyril--that she
had begun to see his merits, and to remember how attractive he was in
person and manner; but the former more shrewdly suspected the real
state of matters, for Gwenny could not control her change of colour
when the name of Horace was mentioned incidentally, though she
betrayed no emotion whatever when that of his cousin occurred.
She never opened the piano now. To sing when Horace was no longer
there to listen or to accompany her; to laugh and talk or seem to
enjoy the society of others when he was absent--oh, what might he not
be enduring!--proved a bitter ordeal to her; and to her kind uncle's
observant eye it was evident that the girl was love-sick, but time he
knew would cure all that.
We have shown by her treatment of the hapless Mary Lennox that Lady
Wedderburn was neither an unjust nor unkind woman. The presence of
her son in the field, and the obvious risks he ran there, led her,
unlike Lady Ernescleugh, who was immersed in the gaieties of London,
to turn her attention to works of charity and benevolence, even more
than was her wont; to schemes for the amelioration of the poor; to
schools, emigration, little allotments of land on the estate--for her
husband denied her nothing; to teaching, visiting the peasantry and
so forth, a system which soon caused her and Gwenny to be idolized at
Willowdean, for she felt when doing all this good as if she gave
hostages to Heaven for her son's safety.
Like every one else who had friends in the army of Lord Raglan, the
Wedderburns were kept on the rack of keen expectancy during all that
memorable week which ended the month of September. Even in mighty
London every kind of business gave place or became secondary to this
anxiety and anticipation. All knew that the allies had landed at
Eupatoria, and all calculated to a nicety the day on which a battle
must be fought--a battle in which the dearest and best-beloved of
many might fall.
But it was not until the morning of the tenth day, _after_ we won the
Alma, that faint rumours through mercantile sources were heard in
London, and with that evening came the telegram, which announced the
total defeat of the Russians, and that again, as in the glorious wars
of old, our arms had been victorious!
By the following day (Sunday) it was known in Scotland, and in remote
places where no electric wire could flash the intelligence; for a
whisper seemed to pass over all the land--a whisper which at first
was full of exaggerations and mistakes, but it found an echo in every
heart, from the apple bowers of Devonshire to the storm-beat isles of
Orkney--a whisper of the great battle that had been fought in the
strange land so far away.
More keen and agonizing now became the expectancy. Lady Wedderburn
thought of her son; Gwenny of her lover Horace,--wounded or dying;
yes, it might be dead and buried afar off in that hitherto almost
unknown land, so far as we were concerned, and the names of the
places in which sounded so strange to the ears of those at home.
That already all might be over for ever, was the haunting thought
that wrung the aching heart of each.
Three days more passed ere Lord Raglan's telegraphed account of the
battle in the _London Gazette_ reached the secluded little town in
the Merse; and with a hand trembling Sir John unfolded the morning
paper which Gervase Asloane had taken from the despatch box, while
Lady Wedderburn and Gwenny quitted their places at the breakfast
table, and drew near him with their faces pale and their eyes so full
of eagerness and fear that an expression of expostulation escaped the
calmer Robert; and even the white-haired butler, and the stolid and
bewhiskered footmen in plush, paused to listen for intelligence.
Skipping all the details, Sir John glanced nervously and hurriedly
through the paper, seeking first the casualty lists of the battle;
and after running his eye down the regimental numbers, he suddenly
exclaimed--
"Kate--Kate! oh, my God, our poor boy!" and crushing up the paper,
buried his face in his hands.
While both Lady Wedderburn and Gwenny burst into tears, fearing the
worst, and a cry of terror escaped little Miss M'Caw, Robert quietly
spread out the paper and saw the fatal line which had so moved his
father. It came after the list of killed:
"Royal Fusileers; Captain Cyril Wedderburn severely wounded. Since
MISSING!"