years no rumor even had reached him of the man he had disowned and
disinherited; he had believed him dead--shot, as he had predicted, after
some fray in a gaming-room abroad; and now he heard of him thus in the
war-news of the American camp! His denial of him was not less stern,
nor his refusal to acknowledge even his name less peremptory, because,
with all his wrath, his bitterness, his inexorable passion, and his
fierce repudiation of him as his son, a thrill of pleasure stirred in
him that the man still lived--a proud triumph swept over him, through
all his darker thoughts, at the magnificent dash and daring of a deed
wholly akin to him.
Bertie, a listless man about town, a dilettante in pictures, wines, and
women, spending every moment that he could in Paris, gentle as any young
beauty, always bored, and never roused out of that habitual languid
indolent indifferentism which the old man, fiery and impassioned himself
as the Napiers, held the most damnable effeminacy with which the present
generation emasculates itself, had been incomprehensible, antagonistic,
abhorrent to him. Bertie, the Leader of the Eight Hundred, the reckless
trooper of the Virginian Horse, the head of a hundred wild night raids,
the hero of a score of brilliant charges, the chief in the most daring
secret expeditions and the most intrepid cavalry skirmishes of the
South, was far nearer to the old Lion, who had in him all the hot fire
of Crawford's school, with the severe simplicity of Wellington's stern
creeds. "He is true to his blood at last," he muttered, as he tossed
back his silky white hair, while his blue flashing eyes ranged over the
far distance where the Southern lines lay, with something of eager
restlessness; "he is true to his blood at last!"
There was fighting some days later in the Shenandoah Valley.
Longstreet's corps, with two regiments of cavalry, had attacked
Sheridan's divisions, and the struggle was hot and fierce. The day was
warm, and a brilliant sun poured down into the green cornland and
woodland wealth of the valley as the Southern divisions came up to the
attack in beautiful precision, and hurled themselves with tremendous
_elan_ on the right front of the Federals, who, covered by their
hastily thrown-up breastworks, opened a deadly fire that raked the whole
Confederate line as they advanced. Men fell by the score under the
murderous mitraille, but the ranks closed up shoulder to shoulder,
without pause or wavering, only maddened by the furious storm of shot,
as the engagement became general and the white rolling clouds of smoke
poured down the valley, and hid conflict and combatants from sight, the
thunder of the musketry pealing from height to height; while in many
places men were fighting literally face to face and hand to hand in a
death-struggle--rare in these days, when the duello of artillery and the
rivalry of breech-loaders begins, decides, and ends most battles.
On Longstreet's left, two squadrons of Virginian Cavalry were drawn up,
waiting the order to advance, and passionately impatient of delay as
regiment after regiment were sent up to the attack and were lost in the
whirling cloud of dust and smoke, and they were kept motionless, in
reserve. At their head was Bertie Winton, unconscious that, on a hill to
the right, with a group of Federal commanders, his father was looking
down on that struggle in the Shenandoah. Bertie was little altered, save
that on his face there was a sterner look, and in his eyes a keener and
less listless glance; but the old languid grace, the old lazy
gentleness, were there still. They were part of his nature, and nothing
could kill them in him. In the five years that had gone by, none whom he
had known in Europe had ever heard a word of him or from him; he had cut
away all the moorings that bound him to his old life, and had sought to
build up his ruined fortunes, like the penniless soldier that he was, by
his sword alone. So far he had succeeded: he had made his name famous
throughout the States as a bold and unerring cavalry leader, and had won
the personal friendship and esteem of the Chiefs of the Southern
Confederacy. The five years had been filled with incessant adventures,
with ever present peril, with the din of falling citadels, with the
rush of headlong charges, with daring raids in starless autumn nights,
with bivouacs in trackless Western forests, with desert-thirst in
parching summer heats, with winters of such frozen roofless misery as he
had never even dreamed--five years of ceaseless danger, of frequent
suffering, of habitual renunciation; but five years of _life_--real,
vivid, unselfish--and Bertie was a better man for them. What he had done
at the head of Eight Hundred was but a sample of whatever he did
whenever duty called, or opportunity offered, in the service of the
South; and no man was better known or better trusted in all Lee's
divisions than Bertie Winton, who sat now at the head of his regiment,
waiting Longstreet's orders. An aide galloped up before long.
"The General desires you to charge and break the enemy's square to the
left, Colonel."
Bertie bowed with the old Pall Mall grace, turned, and gave the word to
advance. Like greyhounds loosed from leash, the squadrons thundered down
the slope, and swept across the plain in magnificent order, charging
full gallop, riding straight down on the bristling steel and levelled
rifles of the enemy's kneeling square. They advanced in superb
condition, in matchless order, coming on with the force of a whirlwind
across the plain; midway they were met by a tremendous volley poured
direct upon them; half their saddles were emptied; the riderless
chargers tore, snorting, bleeding, terrified, out of the ranks; the line
was broken; the Virginians wavered, halted, all but recoiled; it was one
of those critical moments when hesitation is destruction. Bertie saw the
danger, and, with a shout to the men to come on, he spurred his horse
through the raking volley of shot, while a shot struck his sombrero,
leaving his head bare, and urging the animal straight at the Federal
front, lifted him in the air as he would have done before a fence, and
landed him in the midst of the square, down on the points of the
levelled bayonets. With their fierce war-cheer ringing out above the
sullen uproar of the firing, his troopers followed him to a man, charged
the enemy's line, broke through the packed mass opposed to them, cut
their way through into the centre, and hewed their enemies down as
mowers hew the grass. Longstreet's work was done for him; the Federal
square was broken, never again to rally.
But the victory was bought with a price; as his horse fell, pierced and
transfixed by the crossed steel of the bayonets, a dozen rifles covered
the Confederate leader; their shots rang out, and Bertie Winton reeled
from his saddle and sank down beneath the press as his own Southerners
charged above him in the rush of the onward attack. On an eminence to
the right, through his race-glass, his father watched the engagement,
his eyes seldom withdrawn from the Virginian cavalry, where, for aught
he knew, one of his own blood and name might be--memories of Salamanca
and Quatre Bras, of Moodkee and Ferozeshah, stirring in him, while the
fire of his dead youth thrilled through his veins with the tramp of the
opposing divisions, and he roused like a war-horse at the scent of the
battle as the white shroud of the smoke rolled up to his feet, and the
thunder of the musketry echoed through the valley. Through his glass, he
saw the order given to the troopers held in reserve; he saw the
magnificent advance of that charge in the morning light; he saw the
volley poured in upon them; and he saw them under that shock reel,
stagger, waver, and recoil. The old soldier knew well the critical
danger of that ominous moment of panic and of confusion; then, as the
Confederate Colonel rode out alone and put his horse at that leap on to
the line of steel, into the bristling square, a cry loud as the
Virginian battle-shout broke from him. For when the charger rose in the
air, and the sun shone full on the uncovered head of the Southern
leader, he knew the fair English features that no skies could bronze,
and the fair English hair that blew in the hot wind. He looked once more
upon the man he had denied and had disowned; and, as Bertie Winton
reeled and fell, his father, all unarmed and non-combatant as he was,
drove the spurs into his horse's flanks, and dashing down the steep
hill-side, rode over the heaps of slain, and through the pools of gore,
into the thick of the strife.
With his charger dead under him, beaten down upon one knee, his
sword-arm shivered by a bullet, while the blood poured from his side
where another shot had lodged, Bertie knew that his last hour had come,
as the impetus of the charge broke above him--as a great wave may sweep
over the head of a drowning man--and left him in the centre of the foe.
Kneeling there, while the air was red before his sight that was fast
growing blind from the loss of blood, and the earth seemed to reel and
rock under him, he still fought to desperation, his sabre in his left
hand; he knew he could not hold out more than a second longer, but while
he had strength he kept at bay.
His life was not worth a moment's purchase,--when, with a shout that
rang over the field, the old Lion rode down through the carnage to his
rescue, his white hair floating in the wind, his azure eyes flashing
with war-fire, his holster-pistol levelled; spurred his horse through
the struggle, trampled aside all that opposed him, dashed untouched
through the cross-fire of the bullets, shot through the brain the man
whose rifle covered his son who had reeled down insensible, and
stooping, raised the senseless body, lifted him up by sheer manual
strength to the level of his saddle-bow, laid him across his holsters,
holding him up with his right hand, and, while the Federals fell asunder
in sheer amazement at the sudden onslaught, and admiration of the old
man's daring, plunged the rowels into his horse, and, breaking through
the reeking slaughter of the battle-field, rode back, thus laden with
his prisoner, through the incessant fire of the cannonade up the heights
to the Federal lines.
"If you were to lie dying at my feet!"--his father remembered those
words, that had been spoken five years before in the fury of a deadly
passion, as Bertie lay stretched before him in his tent, the blood
flowing from the deep shot-wound in his side, his eyes closed, his face
livid, and about his lips a faint and ghastly foam.
Had he saved him too late? had he too late repented?
His heart had yearned to him when, in the morning light, he had looked
once more upon the face of his son, as the Virginian Horse had swept on
to the shock of the charge; and all of wrath, of bitterness, of hatred,
of dark, implacable, unforgiving vengeance, were quenched and gone for
ever from his soul as he stooped over him where he lay at his feet,
stricken and senseless in all the glory of his manhood. He only knew
that he loved the man--he only knew that he would have died for him, or
died with him.
Bertie stirred faintly, with a heavy sigh, and his left hand moved
towards his breast. Old Sir Lion bent over him, while his voice shook
terribly, like a woman's.
"Bertie! My God! don't you know _me_?"
He opened his eyes and looked wearily and dreamily around; he did not
know what had passed, nor where he was; but a faint light of wonder, of
pleasure, of recognition, came into his eyes, and he smiled--a smile
that was very gentle and very wistful.
"I am glad of that--before I die! Let us part friends--_now_. They will
tell you I have--redeemed--the name."
The words died slowly and with difficulty on his lips, and as his
father's hand closed upon his in a strong grasp of tenderness and
reconciliation, his lids closed, his head fell back, and a deep-drawn,
labored sigh quivered through all his frame; and Lion Winton, bowing
down his grand white crest, wept with the passion of a woman. For he
knew not whether the son he loved was living or dead--he knew not
whether he was not at the last too late.
* * * * *
Three months further on, Lady Ida Deloraine sat in her warm bright nest
among the exotics, gazing out upon the sunny lawns and the green
woodlands of Northamptonshire. Highest names and proudest titles had
been pressed on her through the five years that had gone, but her
loveliness had been unwon, and was but something more thoughtful, more
brilliant, more exquisite still than of old. The beautiful warmth that
had never come there through all these years was in her cheeks now, and
the nameless lustre was in her eyes, which all those who had wooed her
had never wakened in their antelope brilliancy, as she sat looking
outward at the sunlight; for in her hands lay a camellia, withered,
colorless, and yellow, and eyes gazed down upon the marvellous beauty of
her face which had remembered it in the hush of Virginian forests, in
the rush of headlong charges, in the glare of bivouac fires, in the
silence of night-pickets, and in the din of falling cities.
And Bertie's voice, as he bent over her, was on her ear.
"That flower has been on my heart night and day; and since we parted I
have never done that which would have been insult to your memory. I have
tried to lead a better and a purer life; I have striven to redeem my
name and my honor; I have done all I could to wash out the vice and the
vileness of my past. Through all the years we have been severed I have
had no thought, no hope, except to die more worthy of you; but now--oh,
my God!--if you knew how I love you, if you knew how my love alone saved
me----"
His words broke down in the great passion that had been his redemption;
and as she lifted her eyes upward to his own, soft with tears that had
gathered but did not fall, and lustrous with the light that had never
come there save for him, he bowed his head over her, and, as his lips
met hers, he knew that the redeemed life he laid at her feet was dearer
to her than lives, more stainless, but less nobly won.
OUR WAGER.
OUR WAGER;
OR,
HOW THE MAJOR LOST AND WON.
I
INTRODUCES MAJOR TELFER OF THE 50TH DASHAWAY HUSSARS.
The softest of lounging-chairs, an unexceptionable hubble-bubble bought
at Benares, the last _Bell's Life_, the morning papers, chocolate milled
to a T, and a breakfast worthy of Francatelli,--what sensible man can
ask more to make him comfortable? All these was my chum, Hamilton
Telfer, Major (50th Dashaway Hussars), enjoying, and yet he was in a
frame of mind anything but mild and genial.
"The deuce take the whole sex!" said he, stroking his moustache
savagely. "They're at the bottom of all the mischief going. The idea of
my father at seventy-five, with hair as white as that poodle's, making
such a fool of himself, when here am I, at six-and-thirty, unmarried;
it's abominable, it's disgusting. A girl of twenty, taking in an old man
of his age, for the sake of his money----"
"But are you sure, Telfer," said I, "that the affair's really on the
tapis?"
"Sure! Yes," said the Major, with immeasurable disgust. "I never saw her
till last night, but the governor wrote no end of rhapsodies about her,
and as I came upon them he was taking leave of her, holding her hand in
his, and saying, 'I may write to you, may I not?' and the young
hypocrite lifted her eyes so bewitchingly, 'Oh yes, I shall long so much
to hear from you!' She colored when she saw me--well she might! If she
thinks she'll make a fool of my father, and reign paramount at Torwood,
give me a mother-in-law sixteen years younger than myself, and fill the
house and cumber the estates with a lot of wretched little brats, she'll
find herself mistaken, for I'll prevent it, if I live."
"Don't be too sure of that," said I. "From what I know of Violet
Tressillian, she's not the sort of girl to lure her quarry in vain."
"Of course she'll try hard," answered Telfer. "She comes of a race that
always were poor and proud; she's an orphan, and hasn't a sou, and to
catch a man like my father worth 15,000_l._ a year, with the surety of a
good dower and jointure house whenever he die, is one of the best things
that could chance to her; but I'll be shot if she ever shall manage it."
"_Nous verrons._ I bet you my roan filly Calceolaria against your colt
Jockeyclub that before Christmas is out Violet Tressillian will be
Violet Telfer."
"Done!" cried the Major, stirring his chocolate fiercely. "You'll lose,
Vane; Calceolaria will come to my stables as sure as this mouthpiece is
made of amber. Whenever this scheming little actress changes her name,
it sha'n't be to the same cognomen as mine. I say, it's getting deuced
warm--one must begin to go somewhere. What do you say to going abroad
till the 12th? I've got three months' leave--that will give me one away,
and two on the moor. Will you go?"
"Yes, if you like; town's emptying gradually, and it is confoundedly
hot. Where shall it be?--Naples--Paris----"
"Paris in July! Heaven forbid! Why, it would be worse than London in
November. By Jove! I'll tell you where: let's go to Essellau."
"And where may that be? Somewhere in the Arctic regions, I hope, for
I've spent half my worldly possessions already in sherry and seltzer and
iced punch, and if I go where it's warmer still, I shall be utterly
beggared."
"Essellau is in Swabia, as you ought to know by this, you Goth. It's
Marc von Edenburgh's place, and a very jolly place, too, I can tell you;
the sport's first-rate there, and the pig-sticking really splendid. He's
just written to ask me to go, and take any fellows I like, as he's got
some English people--some friends of his mother's. (A drawback that--I
wonder who they are.) Will you come, Vane? I can promise you some fun,
if only at the trente-et-quarante tables in Pipesandbeersbad."
"Oh yes, I'll come," said I. "I hope the English won't be some horrid
snobs he's picked up at some of the balls, who'll be scraping
acquaintance with us when we come back."
"No fear," said Telfer; "Marc's as English as you or I, and knows the
good breed when he sees them. He'd keep as clear of the Smith, Brown,
and Robinson style as we should. It's settled, then, you'll come. All
right! I wish I could settle that confounded Violet, too, first. I hope
nothing will happen while I'm in Essellau. I don't think it can. The
Tressillian leaves town to-day with the Carterets, and the governor must
stick here till parliament closes, and it's sure to be late this year."
With which consolatory reflection the Major rose, stretched himself,
yawned, sighed, stroked his moustache, fitted on his lavender gloves,
and rang to order his tilbury round.
Telfer was an only son, and when he heard it reported that his father
intended to give him a _belle-mere_ in a young lady as attractive as she
was poor, who, if she caught him, would probably make a fool of the old
gentleman in the widest sense of the word, he naturally swore very
heartily, and anything but relished the idea. Hamilton Telfer, senior,
had certainly been a good deal with Violet that season, and Violet, a
girl poor as a rat and beautiful as Semele, talked to him, and sang to
him, and rode with him more than she did with any of us; so people
talked and talked, and said the old member would get caught, and the
Major, when he heard it, waxed fiercely wroth at the folly his parent
had fallen into while he'd been off the scene down at Dover with his
troop, but, like a wise man, said nothing, knowing, both by experience
and observation, that opposition in such affairs is like a patent Vesta
among hayricks. Telfer was a particular chum of mine: we'd lounged about
town, and shot on the moors, and campaigned in India together, and I
don't believe there was a better soldier, a cooler head, a quicker eye,
or a steadier hand in the service than he was. He was six-and-thirty
now, and had seen life pretty well, I can tell you, for there was not a
get-at-able corner of the globe that he hadn't looked at through his
eye-glass. Tall and muscular, with a stern, handsome face, with the
prospect of Torwood (where there's some of the best shooting in England,
I give you my word), and 15,000_l._ a year, Telfer was a great card in
the matrimonial line, but hadn't let himself be played as yet, for the
petty trickery the women used in trying to get him dealt to them
disgusted him, and small wonder. Men liked him cordially, women thought
him cold and sarcastic; and he was much more genial, I admit, at mess,
or at lansquenet, or in the smoking-room of the U. S., than he was in
boudoirs and ball-rooms, as the mere knowledge that mammas and their
darlings were trying to hook him made him get on his stilts at once.
"I don't feel easy in my mind about the governor," said he, as we drove
along to the South-Eastern Station a few days after on our way to
Essellau. "As I was bidding him good-bye this morning, Soames brought
him a letter in a woman's hand. Heaven knows he may have a score of fair
correspondents for anything I care, but if I thought it was the
Tressillian, devil take her----"
"And the devil won't have had a prettier prize since Proserpine was
stolen," said I.
"No, confound it, I saw she was handsome enough," swore the Major,
disgusted; "and a pretty face always did make a fool of my father,
according to his own telling. Well, thank God, I don't take that
weakness after him. I never went mad about any woman. You've just as
much control over love, if you like, as over a quiet shooting pony; and
if it don't suit you to gallop, you can rein up and give over the sport.
Any man who's anything of a philosopher needn't fall in love unless he
likes."
"Were you never in love, then, old boy?" I asked.
"Of course I have been. I've made love to no end of women in my time;
but when one love was died out I took another, as I take a cigar, and
never wept over the quenched ashes. You need never fall in love unless
it's convenient, and as to caring for a girl who don't care for you,
that's a contemptible weakness, and one I don't sympathize with at all.
Come along, or the train will be off."
He went up to the carriages, opened a door, shut it hastily, and turned
away, with the frigid bow with which Telfer, in common with every other
Briton, can say, "Go to the devil," as plainly as if he spoke.
"By Jove!" said I, "what's that eccentric move? Did you see the Medusa
in that carriage, or a baby?"
"Something quite as bad," said he, curtly. "I saw the Tressillian and
her aunt. For Heaven's sake, let's get away from them. I'd rather have a
special train, if it cost me a fortune, than travel with that girl,
boxed up for four hours in the same compartment with such a little
intrigante."
"Calm your mind, old fellow; if she's aiming at your governor she won't
hit you. She can't be your wife and your mother-in-law both," laughed
Fred Walsham, a good-natured little chap in the Carabiniers, a friend of
Von Edenburgh, who was coming with us.
"I'll see her shot before she's either," said Telfer, fiercely stroking
his moustache.
"Hush! the deuce! hold your tongue," said Walsham, giving him a push.
For past us, so close that the curling plumes in her hat touched the
Major's shoulder, floated the "little intrigante" in question, who'd
come out of her carriage to see where a pug of hers was put. She'd heard
all we said, confound it, for her head was up, her color bright, and she
looked at Telfer proudly and disdainfully, with her dark eyes flashing.
Telfer returned it to the full as haughtily, for he never shirked the
consequences of his own actions ('pon my life, they looked like a great
stag and a little greyhound challenging each other), and Violet swept
away across the platform.
"You've made an enemy for life, Telfer," said Walsham, as we whisked
along.
"So much the better, if I'm a rock ahead to warn her off a marriage with
the governor," rejoined the Major, smoking, as he always did, under the
officials' very noses. "I hope I sha'n't come across her again. If the
Tressillian and I meet, we shall be about as amicable as a rat and a
beagle. Take a weed, Fred. I do it on principle to resist unjust
regulations. Why shouldn't we take a pipe if we like? A man whose
olfactory nerves are so badly organized as to dislike Cavendish is too
great a muff to be considered."
As ill luck would have it, when we crossed to Dover, who should cross,
too, but the Tressillian and her party--aunt, cousins, maid, courier,
and pug. Telfer wouldn't see them, but got on the poop, as far away as
ever he could from the spot where Violet sat nursing her dog and
reading a novel, provokingly calm and comfortable to the envious eyes of
all the _malades_ around her.