MY REGIMENT.
'To be Ensigns in the 2nd battalion of the -- Highlanders, Allan Mac
Innon, Gent., and John Belton, Gent., vice Dowb, promoted to the
Turkish Contingent.'
Such was the announcement which I read in a Gazette sent to my
lodgings one morning, about a fortnight after my first interview with
Colonel Crawford. I now ceased to be 'gent.' in any sense of the
word, and found myself in one day a full-blown ensign, with a fortune
of 5_s._ 3_d._ per diem, and a passport to go where glory invited me,
in the shape of whistling-dicks and Minie-rifles.
Thus, thanks to the faith and love borne me by twenty-five peasant
lads of Glen Ora, now all duly attested and accepted soldiers, I had
surmounted the barriers of interest at the Horse Guards; the
necessity of pounding 500_1._ with Cox and Co., the puzzling,
cramming, and quizzing at Sandhurst, with a hundred minor annoyances.
Let the reader suppose my subscription to band-fund, mess-plate, and
commission fees all paid--three trifles amounting to twenty-one
guineas, by which one's first three months' pay is legally borrowed
under the Royal authority; let the reader imagine my outfit
procured--my uniform, camp-equipage, canteen, iron-bedstead, et
cetera, provided--and all to be paid for by Providence, or the
plunder of Sebastopol, if the aforesaid 5_s._ 3_d._ failed to do
so--and behold me, then, an ensign in a 'crack regiment,' and like
Don Juan--
'Made up by youth, by love, and by an army tailor.'
In less than a month I was reported fit for duty, and joined my
company, into which the colonel had kindly enrolled my twenty-five
Mac Innons. I had applied myself with such assiduity to the
mysteries of the goose-step, the right half-face, the left half-face,
and the right-about three-quarters-face, &c., that I gained the
respect of that dread man the adjutant, and the profound esteem of
the various sergeants to whom I was handed over in succession to
acquire the manual and platoon exercises, the use of the club and
broadsword, and to each of whom, at parting, the 'tip' of two days'
pay was necessary. I soon won, too, the entire confidence of our
brave old colonel, who, in kindness and advice, acted to me more as a
father than a friend.
Great was the change this month had achieved in my fortunes! In that
brief time I had seen our dwellings levelled to the earth! the glen,
which had been peopled for ages, laid desolate and bare; the muirs
consumed by fire, and all the land reduced to a voiceless solitude.
My mother was lying far away in her quiet grave--her old familiar
face was gone for ever: I was separated from Laura, and was now a
soldier, like my forefathers, with the wide world all before me.
Of John Belton, who was gazetted at the same time with myself, and
who became one of my chief friends, I shall speak frequently anon.
He was a handsome, lively, and light-hearted fellow, and we were a
pair of inseparables; but with all the charms of the new life that
had so suddenly opened before me, I was far from happy still.
After long thought, anxiety, and careful consideration, with a heart
inspired by love and hope, I ventured to write a timid letter to
Laura, expressing my admiration, my esteem, and undying regard for
her, all of which were strengthened by the knowledge that an early
and greater separation was at hand, as the regiment to which I had
been appointed was warring in the East, and I added, that in leaving
her, more than probably for ever, all my hopes and prayers were for
her happiness.
Cæsar, on the night before the great battle of Pharsalia, was not
more full of thought than I, while penning this letter to little
Laura Everingham.
I dared not ask her to write to me, yet I hoped she might do so;
indeed, for some days, I was certain she would reply. I knew that
she would write politely, kindly, timidly, and perhaps with some
formality; but I longed to gaze upon the lines her pretty hand had
traced. It would be a relic of her--a souvenir of buried hopes and
futile aspirations, when other days would come.
But day after day passed--a week elapsed--then, a fortnight, and yet
no letter came; and daily, while every pulse quickened with anxiety,
I watched the pipe-major (who acted as our regimental postman)
distributing his letters on parade; but, alas! none ever came for me.
My courage fell--day succeeded day, and still no letter. Then hope
began to die; my nights were dreamy or sleepless, and my days full of
gnawing suspense. Could Laura be ill?--then Fanny would write. Had
she dismissed me from her mind? or had Sir Horace intercepted the
letter? Thus I wearied myself with conjectures. Should I write to
her again? Pride said 'no;' yet that very pride which sprang from
wounded self-esteem was rendered the more bitter by its struggle with
much of honest tenderness, pure regard, and sincere regret that one I
loved so well should treat me with such cutting coldness and neglect.
I endured six weeks of much chagrin and suspense after writing that
unlucky letter from Dumbarton; but at last a crisis was put to my
artificial affliction.
One day Captain Clavering made his appearance at mess, in mufti; he
was the guest of Colonel Crawford, and expressed so much real
pleasure and satisfaction at meeting me again, that he quite won me
by his frankness. He even went the length of offering me the use of
his purse, saying that I might repay him at any time--whenever it
suited me to do so.
'I know deuced well, my dear fellow, what it is to be under orders
for foreign service, having once had the misfortune to be in the
Line,' said he, 'and to have only five shillings and threepence per
diem, to find myself in messing, clothing, servant and servant's
livery, camp-equipage, and everything. Snobleigh of ours--languid as
ever--has lost a devil of a bet on the Oaks, and has rejoined the
Guards at Windsor. Fanny, my sister, is as Lola Montes--looking as
ever. Sir Horace--you asked for Sir Horace--he is quite well and
hearty; busy about his new shooting-box in Glen Ora; and Laura--oh
Laura is more charming than ever, and full of anticipated happiness.'
As he said this, he stroked his black moustache, and gave me one of
the most knowing little winks; and it scorned to convey so much,
though I knew not what, that pique fettered my tongue, and a vague
sentiment of jealousy filled my heart.
'He is a fine fellow Clavering,' said the colonel, in a low voice, to
me;--'glad to see you know him.'
'Ah--yes--he is quite an old friend,' I replied, while fixing my gaze
on a diamond-and-pearl ring he wore on the engaged finger, and which
I recognized to have been worn by Laura.
'I knew his brother well--poor Bob Clavering, of the 5th--the
Northumberland Fusileers,' said Brevet-Major Duncan Catanagh, the
captain of our Grenadiers, a dark-visaged, rough, and black-bearded
soldier; 'and I had the narrowest escape in the world on the day he
was killed.'
'How?' asked several.
'We were both wounded in the action of Maheidpoor, in the Mahratta
war, and, with six others, were being conveyed from the field next
day in a waggon: the sun was blazing hot--ay, hot as fire! Our
wounds were undressed; we were half dead of thirst, and the jolting
of the vehicle increased our sufferings to such a degree that I left
it, resolving to die quietly by the road side rather than endure such
misery longer. The waggon was then being drawn along a road which
wound close to the abrupt brow of a tremendous precipice, and in one
minute after I stepped out, the horses became restive, plunged and
reared--the waggon went backward, and toppled over the rocks into the
valley, three hundred feet below, where the horses, wheels, and
framework, with my five miserable companions, were dashed to pieces!
I thought little of my escape then--but it has often come painfully
before me since. Tom Clavering came into a handsome fortune by that
little _malheur_, and at once exchanged from the 5th to the Grenadier
Guards.'
'And the Mahrattas?' said Belton.
'Oh, they would soon have finished me,' said Catanagh, 'but for the
exertions of a cunning old Brahmin, who saved my life, and smuggled
me to Murray Mac Gregor's head-quarters, when he held Poonah with
only the Scots Royals against all the thousands of Ras Holkar.'
'Poonah,' said the old colonel, laughing, 'that was where you had
such a long flirtation with a pretty widow, whose husband, a
lieutenant of the 5th, had been blown from the mouth of a mortar by
the Mahrattas--eh?'
'Not at all--but pass the wine,' replied Catanagh, laughing and
reddening a little; 'besides, we speak of flirtation with an
unmarried female--one's cousin, for instance--but with a widow, it
assumes a--a--'
'A deeper character,' suggested the colonel.
'Yes--we then call it a _liaison_,' said Clavering, who had retired
to an open window and lighted a cigar.
'Clavering is in high spirits--'gad, the fellow's like champagne!'
said Catanagh.
'For the best of reasons,' whispered the colonel, whose voice went
through me like a galvanic shock; 'he is about to be _married_.'
'Indeed,' I rejoined, a desperate air of coolness struggling with the
painful interest this communication excited within me; 'to whom may I
ask?'
'A charming young girl--Miss Everingham--daughter and heiress of Sir
Horace Everingham, the Conservative M.P., who bought an estate in the
Highlands lately.'
The poor colonel smiled pleasantly and confidentially as he said
this, all unconscious that he was planting a dagger in his listener's
heart.
'By Jove, he will have something handsome with her,' said Ewan Mac
Pherson, the captain of our Light Company; 'Elton Hall is a
magnificent place, and then the Highland property--but when does the
little affair come off?'
'When he returns from the Crimea,' said Belton.
'The deuce--from the Crimea!'
'Nay, pardon me,' said the colonel; 'he is to be married almost
immediately, and is now _en route_ to Edinburgh after some of the
little necessary arrangements.'
'Of course--there will be the bride's _trousseau_ to order at a
fashionable _magazin des modes_--the usual case of jewels--the twelve
morning and evening dresses--the four dozen of everything necessary
for ladies fair. Thank heaven, my marching luggage never consisted
of more than a portmanteau, an epaulette-box, and a boot-jack.'
'Perhaps so, Catanagh,' replied the bantering colonel; 'but little
Laura Everingham, with her English acres and funded property, is a
better prize than our Poonah widow, with all her rupees and indigo;
and drinking iced champagne at Elton Hall will be better than eating
chutney and pickled monkey, with the thermometer at 104° in the
shade--the punkah out of order, and not a breath of air to be had for
love or for money. Pass the claret: gentlemen, fill your glasses--we
will drink to my friend Captain Clavering, of the Grenadier
Guards--happiness to him!'
The wine almost choked me; but mastering my emotion, I left the
mess-room, and sought my quarters. There I tore off my red coat, for
it seemed to stifle me. I threw myself upon my bed in an agony of
mind difficult to portray--an agony such as we feel but once in a
life-time; and I strove to be calm--to think--to reflect, and to
realize all that the colonel had said so heedlessly, but yet so
innocently, to torture me.
One fact stood palpably and painfully before me: Laura Everingham was
lost to me for ever! It was, perhaps, a just punishment for the
vanity and presumption--or the folly--with which I had permitted a
fervent and enthusiastic heart to give full scope to a love which it
fostered in defiance of reason and of hope. The tenor of the
conversation I had overheard in the arbour occurred to me again and
again. I endeavoured to analyze it. To me, there now seemed too
much lightness of heart and of expression in Laura, when on the eve
of a hopeless separation from one whom she knew to love her so
well--one then so humbled, so crushed and ruined as I--but perhaps
she could not have acted otherwise without exciting still more the
suspicion and the ridicule of Fanny Clavering. Were her words to be
considered as really indicative of her secret thoughts? Moreover,
what claim had I, so poor in all this world's gifts and gear, on one
so rich in all the gifts of heaven and earth? None. Nor was she to
blame for the secret love I had nourished and fostered in my heart
since the first moment of our acquaintance. Yet her silence, her
pallor, her deep unspoken emotion when I left her, would seem to say
that I was not without an interest in her heart. May she not,
thought I, have wept for me, and prayed for me, on the midnight
pillow, even as I, all lonely and unseen, had sighed and prayed for
her?
No--no; the light had vanished at last, and Laura was for ever lost
to me--a just punishment to one of the wildest fancies that ever
warmed a romantic heart. The pearl ring, with a thousand 'trifles
light as air,' came in all their bitter, blighting strength, to
confirm the news of Clavering's marriage, and, covering my face with
my hands, I wept like a child. Until that burning hour I knew not
the depth of my hopeless passion, or how much I had really loved Miss
Everingham.
The night was a miserable one to me, but it passed away like others;
and the sharp brass drum, and then the yelling war-pipe, as they rang
in the early morning air, waking the deep echoes of 'Balclutha's
walls of rock,' announced that 'to march' was now the order; and
first Jack Belton, and then Callum Dhu, burst breathlessly into my
room.
'What the deuce--why the champagne must have been strong last night,'
exclaimed Jack, on seeing me lying on my bed, and not in it; 'come,
my boy--bustle up--turn out--the route has come!'
'_The route_--for where?'
'The East,' cried he, flinging his cap up to the ceiling.