THE WINTER Of THE YEAR.
When a little more composed they began to consider this catastrophe
in its various lights. That he was wounded severely they could not
doubt, but that he should be _missing_ was a most perplexing and
harrowing thought.* He might be a prisoner in the hands of the
Russians; or he might too probably have crept away, as many did, to
bleed to death and die unseen--a terrible thought! and thus his fate
might never be known.
* From the time of the first landing in the Crimea till the capture
of Sebastopol, September 8, 1855, no less than 13 of our officers, 23
sergeants, and 468 rank and file were reported missing and never
traced.
His pale mother had but one distinct idea--Cyril was wounded and
missing too; wounded and suffering she knew not, and might never
know, in what fashion or degree; and her motherly hands were not
there to nurse and tend him. Her pet boy--the apple of her
eye--Cyril, always so tender and loving to her!
All her worst, her darkest, and most terrible anticipations seemed to
be fulfilled now--so suddenly too, in the first battle. Oh, that she
could fly to him! Oh, that she had acceded to the Ernescleugh scheme
of the yacht voyage! Horace had escaped; but why was Cyril missing?
Horace could, should, and _must_ know all about it. And, as she
wrung her hands she thought, amid all the luxury and splendour of her
home, how futile it was to reckon on earthly joys, they were at best
so fleeting!
Then as she looked over the lists and saw how many other mothers must
be suffering even as she then suffered, she prayed for strength and
calmness to bear her cross; and prayed too as only a mother can do,
who yearningly supplicates for her son's safety and cure.
A few more anxious days and the same despatch-box which has already
figured in our story contained tidings from the seat of war--the
letter from Horace to Gwendoleyne Wedderburn. It simply announced
that we had won a great victory; and then detailed the mode in which
Cyril had been wounded.
This added anger, even an emotion of rage, to the grief of his mother
on learning that he had fallen when performing an act of mercy and
compassion. How bitterly in her heart she thought of that
treacherous Russian! If her son should indeed die of the wounds his
hand inflicted, the malediction of a sorrowing mother would follow
his assassin to the grave! Never, never would she forget or forgive
"The deep damnation of his taking off."
For Gwenny's behoof Horace could not resist saying a little about
himself:
"I had a narrow escape from a shot, nearly the last fired by the
Russian artillery. I was in the act of closing up the ranks of my
slender company (Probyn by this time was killed), when a _round black
spot_ caught my eye. I knew what it was by instinct, Gwenny; for I
had heard it said by old soldiers, that you can never see a cannon
ball unless you are in its line. I threw myself flat on the turf
with a breathless exclamation, and at that instant it cut in two one
of my men, and his covering file also. I felt the wind of the shot
as it passed over me!
"We are eager to attack Sebastopol before the fortifications are
increased, as they are sure to be if any more delay ensues; and when
they echo to the drums of the British Grenadiers, the latter will
prove better arbiters than those absurd Quaker fellows who lately
tried the peace-at-any-price dodge with old Nick, the Emperor. We go
in for any amount of shot and shell, risk and danger here; we endure
much more than I can describe; but I care little how the time passes
as it is not spent with you at home. My very soul seems to go with
this to you--_all_," he felt himself compelled to add, "and my tears
are falling on the paper, Gwenny. I know not what I write, or what I
have written; I have no time to read it over, for already the bugles
are sounding for the advanced guard to fall in, as we move at once
when the last of the dead are buried."
And Gwenny's voice broke as she read that letter which poor Horace
had penned on a drum-head, amid the harrowing carnage of the
field--amid that terrible grey "acre of Russian wounded," groaning
for water, tobacco, and sour-krout, while his thoughts travelled
forward to the time when the white hands of her he loved would open
and read it, and when her dark eyes might look so earnestly and
sweetly over the lines his hand had written, perhaps drop a tear on
them in secret and unseen.
"It is always of himself, and not of my Cyril he writes," said Lady
Wedderburn, almost with anger; "but continue."
"Already Gwenny," she read, "our once gay uniforms are in rags, the
lace black, the epaulettes vanished. Our once splendid bands have
been turned into the ranks, or are decimated by cholera and the
bullet. We have no mess, and all the brilliance of military life in
time of peace has gone. We are wretched and filthy, tattered,
unkempt and unshaven as gipsies, or the homeless poor of London."
"He calls you simply 'Gwenny,'" said Lady Wedderburn, looking over
her gold eyeglasses; "it is scarcely courteous, as I have often said
you are not cousins."
Gwenny blushed in silence, but the blush was seen and noted too by
Robert.
"He does not seem to have fallen in again with that odious fellow
Chesters," said Sir John.
"Horace is frightfully vague about Cyril after the battle," resumed
Lady Wedderburn, who could not but resent something in the tone of
the letter; "he says that he saw him borne towards the boats, but why
did he not see him carried on board of the ship personally? Oh, my
boy--my poor boy may have died, or been taken prisoner on the way!"
"Scarcely prisoner, in rear of our lines," said Robert, sententiously.
"And if dead, dear Kate," added Sir John, in a low and husky voice,
"he must have been found, and not returned as missing. I cannot
understand it."
And so for a time sorrow and perplexity reigned at Willowdean, while
all there waited each successive mail in hope and fear; and while
letters and cards of condolence poured in from all the county,
together with an address from the inhabitants of the little Burgh of
Barony, signed by the bailie thereof, and an exhortation from the
Reverend Gideon M'Guffog, stuffed with the usual stereotyped crumbs
of comfort.
Though she sorrowed for Cyril, and deplored the mystery that seemed
to envelope his fate, Gwenny nightly, and on her knees, thanked God
for the safety of Horace; but then natural anxiety suggested the fear
of what might not have happened since that 22nd of September, when he
wrote his hasty letter on the Russian drum, and the bugles were
sounding for the advance to the front!
On discovering the mistake in the Gazette, Horace lost no time in
telegraphing direct to Willowdean, stating that Cyril was not
missing, but was in the hospital at Scutari, and was believed to be
doing well. Then he further wrote to mention that the announcement
which gave such pain to the family, was caused by his inability to
report to the adjutant who made up the lists, that he had seen his
cousin carried out of the field by seamen, as he was busy for two
entire days with a working party interring the dead; and now the army
was before Sebastopol, in the harbour of which, to bar all entrance,
the Russians had sunk their splendid fleet, adding the crews, in
battalions, to the strength of the garrison.
Some endearing terms to Gwenny were perceptible enough in this
letter; but his aunt felt that she could forgive the writer out of
the great relief he gave her heart.
Cyril was safe, and, as she hoped, recovering!
The newspapers teemed with harrowing details of the war; the
bombardment of Sebastopol began; the terrible slaughter of our Light
Brigade at Balaclava made all Britain thrill with sorrow and
enthusiasm; the two battles in the valley of Inkerman followed; the
carnage of the last saw Horace a captain; but still he escaped
without a wound; and then began the protracted sufferings in the
trenches and rifle-pits--the horrors of the close siege during a
Crimean winter.
The letters of Horace were always cheerful; but he had now learned
the policy of writing them to Lady Wedderburn alone.
The winter of the year came on with great severity at home--with
greater still by the shores of the Black Sea. Flights of wild
Norwegian pigeons were seen on the hills of Fife and Lothian, and
such are always a sign of heavy and protracted snows in the north of
Europe.
It was Christmas-day at Willowdean, as it was all over God's fair
world. A few friends, the minister and his wife, the Baron-Bailie,
and so forth, were there; but when Lady Wedderburn saw the luxuries
around her, the blazing fire, the glittering crystal, the fine linen,
rich china service and massive plate, the chandelier decorated with
shining holly and scarlet berries, the various courses at the table,
the fish, and beef or mutton; the fowls, puffs, custards, and creams;
the rich wines placed before Sir John, after being solemnly and
carefully decanted from cobwebby old bottles in secret binns known to
Asloane only, she sighed and thought with sorrow of her poor Cyril,
lying in his hospital bed, a wretched pallet, fed on meagre broth or
_bouillon_; and she thought too of those who were shivering amid the
mud of the frozen trenches, or dying of cold and starvation within
sound of the bells of Sebastopol, or crawling back to their huts half
dead with exhaustion, bearded, tattered, and squalid; and where their
only luxury might be a little half-ground and half-green coffee,
boiled on a wretched fire, made of damp wood from the nearest
thicket, or the wrecks made by the great hurricane in the Euxine.
Gwenny's astonishment when she found one winter morning her window
panes all frosted over in the fashion of thistle leaves, was great
indeed, and she wondered if the cold was as great in the Crimea as at
Willowdean. And in common with all the ladies in the land, she and
Miss M'Caw knitted all manner of worsted things--a labour of love for
our poor soldiers.
Crisp lay the snow over all the level park, over all the hills, and
nowhere so crisp as in the broad gravelled walks of the garden. Long
icicles hung from every eave and cornice; the Leader and even
portions of the Tweed were frozen hard, and the linns where erst the
torrent roared between rock and scaur, were congealed and white as
the beard of Father Christmas.
It was a season when the flakes lingered long on the Lammermuirs.
The white snowdrops did not appear till April; and the purple lilacs
and gold laburnams, the pink and white hawthorns, did not bloom till
after midsummer in the woods of Willowdean; but ere that time came
great events had taken place there, as well as elsewhere.
After the first month of spring, mail succeeded mail as usual from
the East; but to the terror and grief of Gwenny, the letters of
Horace ceased altogether, and a great horror filled the heart of the
girl, lest something fatal had occurred!
On the other hand, to give joy to the soul of Lady Wedderburn, there
came to her a letter from Cyril himself! He stated that at Scutari
all had nearly been over with him; but he had found one of the
dearest and most loving little nurses in the world; and that through
God's grace and her care, he was now almost well--quite convalescent,
able to ride about the streets, to have a sail on the Bosphorus, and
bully the extortionate Caïquejees. Then suddenly in one letter he
seemed to write in an agitated and disturbed state of mind, saying
that a great grief had come upon him, and that he would not--yea,
might never--return home on leave as his mother wished and urged; but
he was to rejoin his regiment, and be "in at the death of Sebastopol."
The silence of Horace, and the mysterious grief to which Cyril so
abruptly alluded, occasioned endless surmise and much perplexity at
Willowdean; but now spring had come, and with it came a letter from
Lady Ernescleugh, then in England. After the usual details of the
gaieties of some friend's country-house where she had spent much of
the winter, she wrote thus:--
"The commander of my son's yacht writes to me stating that she is
quite ready for sea, and I mean to sail with her for the East next
month. Lord Cardigan's yacht and others are now in the harbour of
Balaclava. _Will you accompany me_? Many officers' wives are
content to endure the discomforts of a residence at Constantinople,
for the purpose of being nearer the scene of those terrible events
which are daily occurring; and there, or even at Malta, letters and
news will reach one much sooner than when in England. I am sick of
London, and Ernescleugh is odious to me without Everard. The doctors
have prescribed a change of scene, and I do so long to see my my dear
boy, or be near him. As yet, thank God! he has only been slightly
wounded at Inkerman; but matters will go hard with me if I do not
bring him home in the yacht, and his father also, from Corfu."
This letter, together with her desire to unravel the mystery of
Cyril's conduct, which she attributed to a love freak for some
Turkish damsel (an odious creature, who wore trousers, sat
cross-legged, smoked a chibouk, and ate pilau with her fingers),
together with the strange silence of Horace, decided Lady Wedderburn
on travelling with her friend.
So slowly had passed the days at Willowdean, that Gwenny hailed with
rapture the prospect of a change, and the anticipated voyage. To see
those places towards which the thoughts and hearts of all were
turned! Perhaps--oh! what joy--to see Horace himself! The girl
became wild with delight. Stamboul, Varna, the Crimea, and the Black
Sea should no longer be as mere names to her when she had seen and
could remember them distinctly, as she did "dear Madras and papa's
lovely house in the Choultry."
And so it was arranged that Miss M'Caw was to govern at Willowdean in
their absence, and that Robert Wedderburn should escort them to
London, whither Sir John--who was in Parliament representing some
snug little English borough in the Conservative interest--had
preceded them.
"My foolish Kate," he wrote to Lady Wedderburn, "in this proposed
Crimean escapade of yours, you will be compelled to behold many a
scene of horror you do not reckon upon!"