Chapter XIII: Events Progress

The whole expedition was now returning from the Gold Coast, save those who had found their graves in the wilderness on the advance to Coomassie, and in the fighting incident thereto. Among those returning were the two hundred and sixty-eight wounded officers and men. The number of deaths in proportion was small as compared with those in recent European conflicts--a fact explainable by the arms and ammunition used by the Ashantees; first, their old-fashioned firelocks and use--not of bullets, but slugs, projectiles which soon lost their velocity after discharge, and were easily stopped after penetrating the body, the stronger bones of which they were incapable of breaking; and lastly, by the total absence of artillery.

The telegraphic wire made people at home aware that many of the Rifle Brigade had died on the voyage homeward between the Gold Coast and Madeira; that the Welsh Fusiliers had only twenty men on their sick-list; and the hardy Highlanders very few, though they had to regret the death by wounds of their major, William Baird, who had served with them for twenty years, and been at the siege and fall of Sebastopol.

It was known in England that many of the sick and wounded were to remain in the hospital ships, _Victor Emmanuel_ and _Simoom_, or were landed at Ascension and the Cape de Verde Isles for medical treatment; but, as no officer of the Rifles was recorded as among these, Laura with her daughter, escorted by Goring, had betaken herself to the port which is the great headquarters of the British navy, to behold the arrival of the victorious troops from Ashantee, and for whom a great ovation was prepared.

People from London and elsewhere crowded in thousands to witness their landing. In the hotel where Laura and Bevil Goring were, there were more than one old Scottish veteran officer of the Crimea, and even of the Peninsular war, who had come from the land beyond the Tweed to see, as they said, 'their dear old Black Watch again;' and more than one lady in widow's weeds, some young, some elderly, with their little brood, come to look again upon the ranks of the Welsh Fusiliers and the Rifles, though there a beloved face would be seen no more.

How gladly would poor Bella Chevenix have gone too; but she had no valid excuse--no friend or chaperon going save Laura, of whose movements she was ignorant; so she had but to wait, in the secluded village, the tidings given by the newspapers, but with more impatience and certainly less equanimity than Lady Julia at splendid Wilmothurst.

Greater was her love for Jerry than the latter could actually realise; for, with all her past coquetry, Bella was one of those ardent and impulsive girls that a man only comes across once in a lifetime, or, it maybe, thinks so. She knew that Jerry was comparatively safe when the fleet sailed, but she had heard with dismay of deaths among the Rifles ere it reached Madeira; so it may be imagined how eagerly and anxiously she watched the public prints, and learned that on the 19th of March the English people had the joy of welcoming home, first the 23rd Welsh Fusiliers, as they landed from the _Tamar_ at Portsmouth, where, among many other graceful gifts, a regimental goat was presented to them in lieu of their famous Indian one, which had died on the coast of Africa; and anon of the more brilliant ovation which was reserved for the heroic Black Watch when the soldiers of the latter came in the _Sarmatian_, and, prior to landing, had gleefully discarded their grey tunics and white helmets to resume their national uniform, the kilt and bonnet, so known to martial glory. And then came the Rifle Brigade and the Royal Engineers on board the mighty _Himalaya_.

How Laura's heart beat while she clung to Goring's arm and clasped little Netty's tiny hand, when the signals announced that the ship was about to enter that great harbour which is the most spacious and secure in the British Isles, though less than a quarter of a mile in breadth at the narrowest part of the entrance.

'There she is,' exclaimed Goring, 'just rounding South Sea Castle!'

Laura's bright hazel eyes grew dim as she watched the approaching ship. It seemed to her as if it was but yesterday, in one sense, since she had seen the transport depart with the Rifles after her reconciliation and reunion with Dalton; and yet, so strong are the impressions of the human mind, that it also seemed as if it were ages ago; and now--now he was coming home, though but perhaps the wreck of himself, to her and their little Netty--the husband and the father from whom they had been so long and unnaturally separated!

'By Jove, she has her ensign half hoisted!' exclaimed a voice among the thousands of whom she formed a unit.

Goring had remarked this through his double field-glass, yet said nothing of it to his fair companion, lest she might be unnecessarily alarmed.

'What does it mean?' she asked him more than once, ere he replied, unwillingly,

'It means that there has been a death on board.'

'A death!' she said faintly, as she recalled the loving tenor of Dalton's last farewell letter to her, written like Jerry's to Bella on the night before Coomassie was entered, and of the fatal telegram that told of his serious wounds. 'A death, Goring?' she repeated, with a wild expression in her beautiful eyes, while her cheek grew snowy white as she watched the slowly approaching ship, which was under half steam now.

'Yes, marm,' said an officious old sailor, who was regarding the stately vessel through an old, battered telescope tied round with spunyarn; 'some poor fellow has lost the number of his mess, for there is a coffin covered by a Union Jack in one of the quarter boats, as you may see for yourself, marm.'

He proffered his telescope civilly enough, but Laura shrank closer to the side of Goring, who remained silent, for he too had his own thoughts. She could not look; her eyes felt sightless, and her poor heart seemed to die within her with the most fearful forebodings.

The bands of several regiments stationed at Portsmouth were now filling the sunny air with music, and the cheers of the Riflemen, clustering like bees along the sides of the mighty ship, were responding to the united voices of thousands on the shore, giving those hearty and joyous shouts that come from British throats and British lungs alone; and Laura, under all the pressure of the occasion and her own terrible thoughts, was on the point of fainting, as the transport came slowly abreast of the sea-wall, when Goring threw an arm round her, and exclaimed,

'Thank God, there is Dalton--there is dear old Tony at last!'

'Where--oh, where?' asked Laura, in a breathless voice.

'At the back of the poop,' he replied, lifting Netty aloft on his shoulder, as they now saw an officer--Dalton, indeed--with a face white as his tropical helmet, with the pallor that comes of suffering and much loss of blood--waving his handkerchief to them in recognition, for the ship was very close inshore, and Laura was soon to learn that the melancholy freight in the quarter-boat was the body of a poor sergeant who died off the Lizard, and whose widow--believing herself yet a wife--was awaiting him on the pier with a babe at her breast--the babe his eyes would never look upon.

In a few minutes more the steam was blowing off, and Goring with those in his care joined the stream of the privileged few, who poured along the gangways on board.

'God is very merciful,' murmured Laura, as she laid her face on Dalton's breast, heedless of spectators. 'He has given you back to me----'

'From the very gates of death, dearest Laura.'

'Oh, what should I have done if you had perished, my darling?--oh, my darling,' she said, in a low voice of exquisite tenderness as he embraced Netty--Antoinette so named after himself, and grown up to girlhood without his knowledge of her existence.

'Bravo,' cried a hearty voice familiar to them all; 'as Albert Smith used to say, "_C'est l'amour, l'amour, l'amour, qui fait le monde go round, O._" Thank God I see you and Old England again, Laura,' and Jerry Wilmot kissed her with hearty goodwill.

Like Dalton, Jerry was very pale and wan; but not so feeble as the former--and from the effects of his wounds and fever could scarcely stand, even yet.

The ovation that followed the landing of the Rifles may be fresh in the recollection of many. Balls, banquets, and addresses were amply accorded to all the returned troops, and decorations and crosses for valour were fully bestowed; but of all the joyous entertainments Bevil Goring saw nothing, as a notice which he read by chance in a paper led him to leave Portsmouth on the evening of the very day the regiment landed.

It was simply a paragraph in a Southampton paper, on which his eye fell casually, that rooted him for a few minutes to the spot, and ran thus:

'We understand that the late Sir Ranald Cheyne, Bart., of Essilmont and that ilk, whose demise at Chilcote we recorded some days ago, has died without heirs male, and his baronetcy, one of the oldest in Scotland, has thus become extinct.'

'Who died some days ago at Chilcote,' thought Goring, who felt a species of shock; 'and Alison is thus alone--alone in the world--poor girl! At Cadbury's mercy perhaps--while I--oh, what must she think of me? Why do I only hear of this calamity now?'

So next noon betimes saw him arrive at Chilcote with his horse at a rasping gallop, and his heart beating high with mingled hope, love, and great commiseration, as he knew how Alison idolised the querulous old man she had lost; and again, as before, his spirit sank on finding only silence and desolation--the house abandoned and all its windows shuttered.

'Desolation, as before,' he muttered, as he leaped from his horse; 'desolation, and perhaps mystery too. Where can she have gone, and with whom?'

He passed the gate, and mechanically handled the door-knocker, and the sound thereof echoed hollowly through the silent house. He drew close to the shuttered windows, and peeped in through a fissure in one. He saw the almost entirely darkened dining-room, from the walls of which the portraits of the two cavalier brothers were still looking grimly and stonily down; on the table was a vase, with a few flowers still in it; and near stood a chair and a work-basket, in which some coloured wools were lying.

Very recently must Alison have been there, as the flowers seemed still somewhat fresh; in fact, she had only set out on her pilgrimage the day before, when he had been at Portsmouth.

How full the place seemed of her presence! Yet he had to turn sadly away.

The buds in the giant beeches were bursting already into tender green leaves; the birds were twittering and singing in the hedgerows, and the kine lowed amid the deep spring grass of yonder meadows; 'the deep bell' swung in the distant tower of Chilcote Church; the dogs barked sharply in an adjacent farm-yard; and close and nigh was the hum of the bee, as it thrust its golden head into the cups of the spring flowers in the now neglected garden.

To his senses all seemed unchanged as when he last saw Alison there; and where was she now--his love--his promised wife?

Where again was she gone? Into the hard and chilly world--all the colder and more perilous now that her father was dead, and that she must stand alone in it?

Alone!

Bevil Goring felt his heart wrung by irrepressible anxiety, and he bethought him at once of appealing to the vicar of the parish, who could not fail to possess some information on the subject.

The latter received him with considerable suavity, for he was a kind-hearted old gentleman, but eyed him keenly under his bushy white eyebrows. He had heard--but how, he knew not, for gossip spreads fast in a secluded country parish; yet he had heard that there was a young officer from the camp, who was wont to hover near Chilcote Beeches, and who was eminently distasteful to the late Sir Ranald, for reasons best known to the latter; so the worthy vicar fashioned his answers accordingly.

Bevil, however, learned that Alison had been resident for many weeks at Chilcote after her return from the Continent, and prior to the demise of her father.

Many weeks! thought he, and yet she had never written, as she might have done, to his address at the camp, whence letters were forwarded to his address in London. Poor Alison had not written because she knew he was absent, and, moreover, she was sorely pre-occupied at home.

Was she under the influence of Cadbury? thought Bevil. Oh, that was impossible! Yet Goring began to feel, as Alison often felt, that their engagement--that its many trammels--was a very peculiar one, and would be so while her father lived. Now he was gone, and wealth had accrued to Goring, yet they were as much apart as ever!

'Sir Ranald was dead, yes,' he heard the vicar saying, 'and buried near the ancient yew in the churchyard, where Miss Cheyne meant in time to erect a marble cross.'

'That shall be my duty,' observed Goring.

'Yours?' said the vicar, inquiringly, and again the bushy brows were knitted. 'Poor man! he is sleeping where I know he did not want to lie, in my churchyard; yet he will sleep as soundly there in English earth, let us hope, as if he lay among his ancestors in Ellon Kirk, among mailed knights, mediæval bones, and the _Hic jacets_ of other days,' he added, smiling.

'Where has Miss Cheyne gone to?'

'London,' replied the vicar, curtly.

'Can you give me her address?' asked Goring, eagerly.

'May I ask who inquires?' said the vicar.

'I sent in my card--Captain Goring, of the Rifle Brigade.'

'Just returned from Ashantee?'

'Nay,' replied Bevil, colouring with honest mortification, 'I was detailed for home service.'

'And now stationed at Aldershot?'

'Yes.'

'Ah! a bad place Aldershot--a very centre of dissipation, I fear. May I ask if you are a relation?'

'I am not.'

'A friend?' queried the vicar.

'Of course--one most deeply interested in Miss Cheyne.'

'I thought so,' rejoined the vicar, eyeing him keenly and with a curiously provoking smile while playing with his gold eyeglass; 'may I ask how and why?'

'Certainly--I am engaged to her.'

'Her _fiancé_? asked the vicar; 'is that what you mean?'

'Yes; and now _where_ is she?'

'I regret--regret to say--that--that I have not yet her present address. She only left this for London yesterday.'

'In other words, by your tone,' said Goring, haughtily, as he rose and took his hat, 'you know it, but decline to give it to me?'

'I do not say so,' replied the vicar, also rising, as if the interview was ended; 'but for the present you will excuse me saying more.'

'Sir!' exclaimed Bevil, with some heat.

'Goring--Goring,' muttered the vicar, eyeing Bevil's card; 'it is strange that the young lady never spoke to me of you, though in her grief she several times mentioned another friend.'

'Ah!--who?'

'Lord Cadbury.'

'Cadbury!' exclaimed Goring, with a contemptuous inflection of voice that did not escape the listener.

'Yes; who, by a very ample remittance--a thousand pounds, I believe--did much to ease and soothe her poor father's last days on earth.'

'Indeed!'

Whew! here was intelligence. His birthday gift had been attributed to, and evidently adopted by, that reptile Cadbury! And, finding that there was nothing to be made of the suspicious and over-wary vicar, he withdrew.

Scarcely had Goring, disappointed and dispirited, taken his departure, when Lord Cadbury, accompanied by Gaskins, having found Chilcote deserted, arrived at the vicarage to make the same inquiries, but with very different intentions. Impressed by the years and rank of his second visitor, the vicar admitted that he was cognisant of Miss Cheyne's movements, and, on consideration, promised to send her correct address to Cadbury Court when she wrote to him from London; for, knowing the helplessness of the young girl, even with Cadbury was the vicar wary.

Dalton remained at Chilcote Grange to be nursed by Laura; Jerry departed on sick leave to Wilmothurst, while Bevil Goring remained with the battalion at Aldershot to undergo the drudgery of the spring drills in the Long Valley, and await in a kind of silent desperation with hope to hear something of Alison.

How terrible to endure was this period of an inaction that was enforced by circumstances over which he had no control, and many a hearty malediction he bestowed upon the close old vicar of Chilcote.

Often he opened the clasp of her ring--Ellon's ring--and gazed upon her tiny lock of hair, now faded and withered by the heat it had undergone when 'up country' in the Land of the Sun, and on her pictured face he gazed till his eyes ached and burned with the intensity of his longing to see the features smile, the lips unclose, in fancy.

We are told that if a man, 'overborne by any grief or pain--not the more endurable because no outward sign can be discerned--should go forth into a crowd to seek for solace, the chances are that he will return in a more discontented frame of mind than that in which he set out, simply from realising the fact how infinitely little his own sufferings affect the most of the world at its work or play.'

Amid the bustle, gaiety, and business of the crowded camp at Aldershot, Bevil Goring realised all this to the fullest extent.

Day after day went by and brought no news of Alison, either to Goring or to Laura Dalton, whom he saw frequently, and hope deferred was making the heart of the young officer very 'sick' indeed; but, though he wrote a very important letter to his solicitors at Gray's Inn Square concerning certain properties at Chilcote, he went there no more.

In the words of L.E.L., he could no more

'To the loved haunt return,
Love's happy home; and touch the tender chord,
And softly whisper there the little word,
The name whereat fond memories shall burn,
That parting vows record.'