Chapter XIV: Part 14

Dine--dine with him--the general of the Muscovites? Did they hear aright, or did their ears deceive them? Then he set the goodman Michel and his goodwife Gretchen at table among the splendidly attired and brilliantly accoutred officers of his staff--those counts and colonels of Uhlans, hussars and cuirassiers, who gnawed their moustaches, and raised their fierce eyebrows superciliously, with wonder and inquiry, at proceedings so novel; while some of the younger laughed covertly at the terror and bewilderment of the worthy couple, who, however, ate heartily of dainties to which they were all unused, after their first alarm subsided. The Muscovite general, who sat between them, at the head of the table, with a kind smile on his handsome face--for handsome it was, though his hair was now thin and grey--asked Michel many questions about his family and household affairs--how the mill prospered and flour sold in the market.

Then Michel, who scarcely ventured to raise his eyes from the order, with the cross batons and crown of St. Andrew of Russia, which sparkled on the general's breast, told him that he was the eldest son of his father, who had been a miller at the same mill years and years ago, even when Frederick V. of Denmark, married to the Princess Louisa of Great Britain, was a boy.

"The eldest son, say you, Michel?"

"Yes, herr general," replied the miller, smoothing down his white hair nervously.

"Then you had, at least, a brother?"

"Yes, herr general; poor Karl. He disappeared."

"How?"

"Some said he became a soldier, others that he was spirited away by the fairies," said Gretchen.

"Many a prayer my good wife and I have said for Karl, though it is so long since he was lost; and in his memory we have named our only son Karl, too."

On hearing this, the Russian general became greatly moved, and, seeing that the astonishment of his officers at the interest he took in these humble rustics could no longer be repressed, he rose, and taking Michel and his wife by the hand--"Gentlemen," said he, "you know me but as a soldier of fortune, and have often been curious to learn who I am, whose breast the Emperor has covered with stars and orders, and whence I came. This village is my native place. In yonder crumbling mill by the wooden bridge I was born. This is my brother Michel, and Gretchen, his wife! I am Karl Baur, son of old Karl, the miller of Husum. Here was I _bairn_ ere I relinquished my miller's dusty coat to become a soldier. Oh, brother Michel, who then could have _spaed_[*] the present?" he added, in their old native dialect, as he embraced the wondering pair.

[*] Foretold.

"I was supposed to have been stolen on St. John's night by the golden-haired Stillevolk of the marshes, or the cranky old red-capped Trolds, who dwelt among the green holms; but it was not so. I became a hussar under Duke Karl Peter of Gottorp, and have risen to be what thou seest--general of cavalry under our father the Emperor! So drink a deep becker of our Danish beer, brother Michel; drink to the old times of our boyhood, and fear not. I know our patrimony is but one of the poor _Bauerhafen_, which are divided according to the number of ploughs; but to-morrow thy _hufe_ shall be a _Freihufen_, Michel, free of all burdens, even to the duke's bailiff or the King of Denmark."

Next day the general dined at the old mill, where he sat upon the same hard stool he had used in boyhood, supping his Schleswig _groute_ with a horn spoon from a wooden platter. In memory of the olden time, he placed a marble cross above his parent's grave. Three days after the trumpets were heard, and the army marched from Schleswig to return no more; but the general--the same General Bauer who served under Suwarrow in the famous campaigns of Italy--made a plentiful provision for his poor relatives, and sent the miller's only son, his namesake, Karl, to Court for his education, Karl rose to a high place in the household of the Czar, and it was his son, Karlovitch Bauer, who prepared so specious a trap for our advanced guard on the Bulganak--a trap happily rendered useless by the skill and foresight of our leader, the good and brave Lord Raglan.

*CHAPTER XXXVI.*

Let me go! The day is breaking,
Morning bursts upon mine eye,
Death this mortal frame is shaking;
But the soul can never die!

Let me go! The day-star beaming,
Gilds the radiant realms above;
Full its glory on me streaming
Lights me to the land of love!
LAYS OF THE PIOUS MINSTRELS.

Wrapped in my cloak and blanket, I had fallen into an uneasy slumber, close by a fragment of ruined wall, the boundary, perhaps, of a deserted Tartar garden, when I was roused by Sergeant Stapylton of my troop.

"I beg pardon, sir, for disturbing you," said he, in an apologetic way; "but as I was returning from the river side with water for some of the wounded horses, I passed a Frenchwoman, as I take her to be, dying to all appearance, and thought, as she can't be left where she is, that if you would come and speak to her----"

"Of course," said I, springing up; "where is she?"

"Near a grove of olive trees--just a pistol-shot or so beyond our advanced sentries. You can pass me to the front, sir, as your guide."

Leaving the sleeping group of my brother officers, I accompanied Stapylton, with stiffened joints and chattering teeth. The morning was yet dark, but a red streak of light above the hilly ground that rose between our left flank and the Perekop road, showed where the dawn was about to break. All was still around me. Save the occasional neigh of a horse, scarcely a sound broke the silence of that place, where so many thousands of our soldiers were sleeping, or dozing as men may do, after reflecting that the night which was passing away might be their last in the land of the living, and that the coming day must find them face to face with danger, and--death! On the chill breeze of the September morning, I could hear the rush of the Bulganak over its stony bed, between which and our bivouac could be traced the line of our cavalry vedettes, seated, cloaked, in their saddles, with carbine on thigh, and the advanced sentinels, muffled in their great coats, standing motionless, with "ordered arms," and their faces turned to the southward, where all knew the enemy lay. Passing through the Light Brigade, where each man slept beside his horse, I stumbled over a sleeper, in whom I recognized a medical officer, and asked him to accompany us, which he did readily; and, guided by Stapylton, we proceeded towards the grove of olive trees.

As we quitted the bivouac, the medical officer said--"You perceive that vapour which is rising so steadily from the ground?"

"Yes," said I, with an irrepressible shudder; "I saw enough of it at Varna."

"You are right," he continued, in a low and impressive voice; "that pale, blue, fetid vapour is the cholera mist--always a bad sign. We shall have many cases on our lists ere sunset to-morrow, and Heaven knows they are full enough already. Nearly all the women and children of my regiment were buried on the roadside yesterday. A sick Frenchwoman, I think you said, sergeant?" he observed, recurring to the business in hand.

"Yes, sir," replied Stapylton, saluting.

"Strange! What should bring her here? The French are at present far away on our right, and in the rear. I presume you have heard of what took place this evening, Captain Norcliff?"

"Where?"

"At head-quarters."

"The little post-house on the Bulganak, where Lord Raglan passes the night?"

"Exactly. Marshal St. Arnaud, attended by Colonel Trochier, of the imperial army, rode up there to concert the plan of an attack to-morrow. So, whatever it is, our part in the play of to-morrow is already assigned us; and now, sergeant, your Frenchwoman."

"Is here, sir, to speak for herself, if she can, poor thing."

Close by the grove of olive trees, with a coarse blanket spread over her, lay the woman of whom Stapylton had spoken.

"Cholera!" said the surgeon, as he turned down the blanket, and knelt beside her; "cholera, and in the last stages, too. No pulse can be felt, the extremities cold and rigid, the face ghastly, the strength exhausted. I can be of no use here," he added to me, in a low voice. "A little time and all will be over."

From my hunting flask he poured a little brandy between the lips of the sufferer, who proved to be a _soeur de charite_, by her white coif and black serge dress; and, on drawing nearer, imagine what were my sensations on recognising, through the twilight of the coming day, the pale and convulsed features of Sister Archange--of Mademoiselle de Chaverondier! An exclamation of sorrow and astonishment burst from me. All the memory of her kindness when I lay sick in the house of the Armenian merchant at Varna; all her singleness of heart; all her purity and self-devotion; all the memory of her story, and of her own happy home amid the mountains of Beaujolais, and how and why she had devoted herself to Heaven and acts of charity; all her simple belief in magic and miracles, with her child-like love and piety; her regard for her brother Claude, the gallant officer of Canrobert's regiment, his wife, Cecile Montalle, and the cruel Lucrece, whose revenge wrought all their sorrow--all the memory of these things, I say, rushed upon me like a flood, as I stood, bewildered, by the side of the dying girl--dying like an outcast in that wild and savage place--and they deeply moved me. To leave her to die thus, untended and uncared for, was impossible. Yet what was to be done? How was I to succour her? Already the trumpets of the cavalry, and the ringing bugles of the infantry, were sounding the "rouse" and the "assembly," and the army was getting rapidly under arms--all the more rapidly that there were no tents to strike and no baggage to pack. Each man fell into the ranks on the ground where he had slept; the cavalry were mounting, the artillery were tracing their horses and limbering up, and long ere the Bay of Kalamita glittered in the rising sun, the whole British army was on the move towards the Alma.

My friend the surgeon, finding that he could do no more--that he had, perhaps, patients enough elsewhere--suggested, ere he departed, that she might be put into one of the _kabitkas_ of the ambulance corps; but, as he assured me that she could not live above an hour, I despatched Stapylton to explain the matter to Colonel Beverley; and in a few minutes he returned with Pitblado, Lanty O'Regan, my groom, and four other lancers and our horses, and with permission for me "to look after my sick friend; but, at all risks, not to be ten minutes' march behind the rear guard, as General Bosquet's division was already advancing rapidly on our right flank, and the French sister might be more properly handed over to her own people."

We lifted her into the olive thicket, out of the way of the passing troops; for already our advanced guard, under Lord Cardigan--"Prince Albert's Own," with their blue jackets and scarlet pelisses covered with glittering lace, and the 13th Light Dragoons--were once more splashing through the Bulganak, laughing and joking merrily, as if it were a fox that was to break cover in the Lincolnshire fens, and not the hordes of the southern and western Russias that were before them. By means of three barrel-hoops and a horse-sheet, we improvised something like that which the French term a day-tent, to hide her and her sufferings. Then the idea occurred to me as to what I could do if she survived beyond the time allotted to us by the colonel. Could I leave her in that wild place to die alone, and to lie unburied, save by the wolves and birds of prey? Alas! a very brief time now resolved all my doubts and fears. A little way apart from us, a silent and sympathetic group, my seven lancers stood, each by his horse's head, leaning on his lance, and awaiting me. If they conversed, it was in half whispers, for they sincerely pitied the girl, those French sisters of charity being the admiration of the whole army. I was bathing her lips with some diluted brandy, when she fully, and for the first time, recognised me. Then a little smile of joy passed over her ghastly face, and she began to speak, painfully, huskily, and at long intervals.

"It is my turn now; but I am dying, you see, _mon frere_," said she, "dying. Many of my sisters have died in the camp--but--but few thus."

"Few, indeed," said I, in a low, sad voice.

"In ardent prayers for the repose of my soul you find no solace. I say not this upbraidingly, yet the mortuary chants of the 'Dies Irae' and the 'De Profundis' will never be said for me, because I die--die thus!" she said, in a low and piercing voice, as she closed her eyes.

Perplexity was now added to my sorrow, for I knew not what the poor girl wished or meant; but I implored her to tell me how she came to be left thus alone and in illness. In the night when, asleep and weary, she had fallen unseen from a French ambulance cart, some scouting Cossacks had found and carried her off in mocking triumph; but, on finding that the deadly pestilence had seized her, they barbarously flung her into the Bulganak. She had crept ashore, and was making her way to our bivouac, when the progress of her illness became so rapid and destroying that she was reduced to the condition in which Stapylton found her. Such was the short story she told me, in long and painful intervals, her voice being at times so low that I had to place my ear close to her lips.

"And now," she added, with a divine smile, which brought back much of the wonderful beauty of her face, "I am so glad--so happy that I shall die!"

"Why, _ma soeur_?"

"Lest I should live longer; because, in doing so, I could scarcely fail in some way to offend heaven," replied the poor girl. "I confessed me two days ago--I die in peace, and forgive those Cossaques--_mon ami_--_mon frere_, I should say--you will close my eyes--you will see me buried--promise me that you will!"

I could only answer her by my tears; and strange it seemed that all around the thicket where this solemn scene was acting, and when the spirit of this good being was hovering between eternity and time, the thousands of our army, horse, foot, and artillery, with ammunition and stores, were pouring past in the bright morning sunshine, towards the passage of the Bulganak.

All around was instinct with the glitter and bustle of martial life; but within that olive grove was death, sublime humility, and suffering.

"Are you in pain now?" I asked, as this thought occurred to me.

"Oh, no--pain is long since passed away. If I could but live till three in the afternoon, I could then die more than ever happily."

"Why at three?"

"For at that time our Blessed Lord yielded up his soul on Calvary!" said she, with a voice of enthusiasm, while a strange brightness seemed to pass over all her face.

As she turned restlessly her eyes fell upon Sergeant Stapylton and the lancers, and beckoning them forward, she bestowed her blessing on each; and they listened with bowed heads, and took off their caps. I was deeply moved, and drew a pace or two aside.

"Heaven has always been so good to me," she muttered, in broken English, as the sergeant placed his cloak as a pillow under her head; "because, as you must know, _messieurs les soldats_, my mother dedicated me to heaven, and I am a child of the Holy Virgin."

Poor Stapylton, a worthy but stolid John Bull, looked rather bewildered by this information; but my Irish groom understood her.

"Thrue for you, miss," said Lanty, wiping his eyes with the worsted tassels of his yellow sash. "Oh, it's fast she's goin' to glory, the poor cratur. Oh, never a ha'porth she thinks of herself; but it is us she's prayin' for, boys."

"Other souls than mine shall pass away to-day, for ere nightfall a great battle is to be fought--I know that."

At that moment, through an opening in the olive trees, we saw a regiment of infantry marching past in close column of subdivisions, with the band in front, colours flying, and bayonets gleaming in the sun. It was our 88th, of gallant memory, with Colonel Shirley riding at the head of the column, and the drums and fifes made the blue welkin ring to the air of "The Young May Moon." She looked wistfully at the defiling ranks; there was so much of life there, so much of death here! Then, clasping her white hands, which were so thin and tremulous, and, closing her eyes, she began to repeat a little prayer in Latin, for those who were to fall on both sides--the Russians as well as the English.

Of that prayer I can only remember a single sentence--

"_O clementissime Jesu, amator animarum, lava in sanguine Tuo peccatores totius mundi, nunc positos in agonia et hodie morituros._"[*]

[*] "O most merciful Jesus, lover of souls, wash in Thy blood the sinners of the whole world who are now in their agony and are to die this day!"

Then, whispering something of her "mother who was in heaven, kneeling for her before the Mother of God," the pure spirit of this French girl passed out into the black night of eternity. We stood for a time silent, and nothing roused us but our rear-guard defiling to the front from the right of troops, and then the orders of the colonel recurred to me. Were I to live a thousand years I shall never forget the calm and soothing, yet sorrowful, impression made upon me by this poor girl's death. I closed her eyes, and their long, dark lashes fell over the pale cheek, from which they never more would rise, and she lay under the poor horse-rug, looking so calm, with a peaceful and beautiful expression on her sweet dead face. Her hands were now folded on her breast; her black ebony crucifix had fallen from them; but Lanty O'Regan replaced it gently, and kindly closed the stiffening fingers round it, and there was a big sob in Lanty's throat as he did so. Death brought back all the strange loveliness of other days to Sister Archange; and I could not behold her lying there, looking so peaceful, so white and still, without feeling my heart very full indeed. For when I saw so much self-devotion, poverty, and charity united with peace and goodwill to all mankind--to Christian and Osmanli, to friend and foe alike--it seemed to me truly that of such as she was the kingdom of God. I kissed the dead girl's forehead as we drew the horse-rug over her, and prepared for her interment, as we had not a moment to lose.

The soil was soft, and we had only our sword-blades and hands to dig with; but we contrived to scoop a hole about three feet deep. Reverently, as if she had been their sister, my comrades laid her in it, and then we heaped the mould above her. She lies in that little thicket of olives, about a mile from Bulganak, and sleeps in what is called unconsecrated earth; though the ashes of that sister of charity might bring a blessing on the city of the Sultan. We now mounted, put our horses to full speed, and soon passing our rear-guard, came up with our brigade, and rejoined the regiment. By this time the whole army was on the march to force the position of the Alma, and already our right flank was almost united to the left of the French column under General Bosquet, as the allies advanced together.

*CHAPTER XXXVII.*

News of battle!--news of battle!
Hark, 'tis ringing down the street!
And the archways and the pavement
Bear the clang of hurrying feet.
News of battle!--who hath brought it?
News of triumph! Who should bring
Tidings from our noble army?
Greetings from our gallant king?
LAYS OF THE SCOTTISH CAVALIERS.

While these events were occurring by the shore of the Euxine, brown autumn was spreading her sober tints upon the Scottish woods; and one seldom sees the country more attractive than when its beauty is decaying, and a soothing sadness mingles with our delight.

The long grass is dank in the shady places, for there the dew falls early at eve, and lingers long after sunrise; and now in Calderwood Glen the dark leaves of the chestnuts were varied by the golden yellow of the lime tree, whose frail leaves are among the earliest to whirl before the gusty autumn wind.

Already the first leaves--the early spoil of the season--were lying in the long, shady avenue, or were gathered in heaps, even as the breeze had swept them, about the well of James V., the yew hedgerows, and the grass walks of the antique Scottish garden, where tradition avers that Anne of Denmark flirted with the bonnie Earl of Gowrie. There the asters and dahlias still contended for a place with the old-fashioned hollyhock. Summer had gone; but the corn-marigold and the gorgeous crimson poppy yet lingered among the yellow stubble, or on the green burn braes; scarlet hips and haws made gay the hedgerows, and the ladybirds were pecking at the sweet apples in the orchard. The shadows of the flying clouds passed over the green mountain slopes, over Largo's lofty cone, the round swelling Lomonds--the Mamelles of Fife, as a French officer not inaptly termed them--the breeze of the German Sea came up the long, fertile Howe, and brought softly to the ear the lowing of cattle from Falkland Woods and many a cosy homestead. The autumn was lovely in Calderwood Glen; but the old manor house seemed empty and silent, and the heart of Cora was sad, for--

Great events were on the gale,
And each hour brought a varying tale,

and she knew that the same autumnal sun which was browning the woods of Scotland was lighting her kilted regiments on their path of death and peril by the Alma. There were times when Cora thought that, bitter though it was, this hopeless sorrow for the absence of one she loved, how sweet it might have been--how sadly sweet--had Newton loved her in return. Ah! it had not been hopeless then; but Newton loved another, who loved him too. Yet, did that other love him so well as she, poor quiet Cora, did? And would she love him always? Then, when she heard the thistlefinch, with its golden wings, singing among the linden trees, the words of the old, old song seemed to come home truly to her heart as she hummed them over.

There sat upon the linden tree
A bird, and sang its strain;
So sweet it sang, that, as I heard,
My heart went back again;
It went to one remembered spot,
It saw the rose-trees grow,
And thought again the thoughts of love
There cherished long ago.

A thousand years to me it seems
Since by my love I sate,
Yet thus to have been a stranger long,
Was not my choice, but fate;
Since then I have not seen the flowers,
Nor heard the bird's sweet song,
My joys have all too briefly passed,
My griefs have been too long!

Ladies were setting forth to join the army of the East as nurses! An idea occurred to her, and then she shrank from it, for Cora was not one of our strong-minded British females but a good and kind-hearted, earnest and high-souled Scottish girl; and it is a peculiarity of the women of Scotland ever to shrink from publicity; and, somehow, public life seems neither their _forte_ nor their _role_.

"Ah, oh!" thought Cora; "what if this is not merely a separation, but a loss for ever!"

No battle had yet been fought; but already many men had perished at Varna, at Scutari, and elsewhere, of fever and cholera. And so, often as she wandered alone in the garden walks, by the old Battle Stone in the woods, by the Adder's Craig, or King James's Well, she wept, as she thought of the lively young lancer whom she had last seen marching for the East, and still more for her early playmate and cousin, who in boyhood so petted her at home.

And when Cora would say, or old Willie Pitblado would read, that the lancers had embarked, that they had touched at Gibraltar, at Malta--that they were at Varna or elsewhere--he would pause, and look up wistfully, saying--"Nae word yet o' my Willie?"

"But the papers don't mention Captain Norcliff either."

"Ay, ay, true, Miss Cora," the old man would mutter, and shake his head at omissions so strange.

Anxiety, love, and fear injured the poor girl's health. She was alternately resigned and gentle, or short-tempered and irritable. Though frequently self-absorbed and pre-occupied, she strove, by affected gaiety, to prove to those about her that she was neither. By turns she was grateful for sympathy or irritated by it, while her craving for news about the army of the East became a source of speculation--shall we call it friendly?--among such sharp-witted visitors as the Mesdames Spittal and Rammerscales, the wife of the parish minister, or the slavishly suave Mrs. Wheedleton, the rib of the village lawyer.

To add to her annoyances, she had a new admirer in young Mr. Brassy Wheedleton--a newly-fledged legal prig--who had in his hands a dispute concerning a bond over a portion of the Calderwood property, and whom, as Sir Nigel patronized him, being the son of a neighbour, a dependent, and beginner at the bar, she saw rather oftener than she cared for as a visitor at the Glen. Cora was always most irritable when a letter came from her English friends in Kent. However, her correspondence with Chillingham Park had lessened every day since the regiment left England, why neither could exactly say. Louisa's missives were generally full of gaiety and the world of fashion, with all its tinsel glitter and heartless frivolity. As for the war, and our poor soldiers in the East, she heeded them no more than the clock of St. Paul's, or the last year's snow. Her last letter had been all concerning the elevation of my Lord Slubber to a marquisate (skipping the intervening titles of viscount and earl,) and enclosing a slip from a fashionable morning paper, which announced that the garter king had given to the noble peer "a coat of augmentation, in addition to the three guffins' heads mange, of the grand Anglo-Norman line of De Gullion, with the cage in chief granted to the fourth baron of that illustrious name, by the greatest of the Plantagenets, when that chivalrous monarch hung the Scottish Countess of Buchan outside the walls of Berwick for four years in an iron cage, and when 'ye potente and valyant Lord Slobbyr de Gulyone was captain yairof with CCC archeris.'"

This afforded her father the first hearty laugh in which he had indulged for some time past, for he, too, had become somewhat dull and peevish.

"Three guffins' heads; Cora, this is excellent!" said the old baronet, laughing still; "it is very droll how the English snob of high family boasts of his descent from the rabble of William the Norman, just as our Scotch snob likes to deduce his pedigree from those Saxon _hildings_ who fled from Hastings, or the savage Danes we licked at Luncarty and elsewhere. There were Calderwoods in the Glen before either of those times! What says the old rhyme?

Calderwood was fair to see,
When it gaid to Cameltrie;
But Calderwood was fairer still,
When it grew owre Crosswood Hill."

Sir Nigel's old chum, General Rammerscales, was laid up with the gout and jungle fever, and their political friend, Lickspittal, was absent in Parliament--where, like a true Scottish M.P., he served to fill the house, to vote with the lord advocate or the majority, to work on all committees (which paid); but, of course, remaining as oblivious of Scottish interests as of those of the Sioux Indians.

Now that he was residing almost permanently at the old manor house--the Place of Calderwood, as it was named _par excellence_--Sir Nigel became somewhat infected by his daughter's melancholy. Thoughts of his two dead sons--Nigel, who fell at Goojerat, of his pet boy Archie, and also of his nephew, his favourite sister's only son, exposed to all the perils of disease and war in Turkey--recurred to him again and again, as he wandered through the rooms and under the old linden trees that had often echoed to their voices in infancy; and he thought of how the old estates, and the title first granted by King Charles to Sir Norman Calderwood, _Primus Baronettorum Scotiae_, would go after his death, an event which he knew must happen some day; for, though hale and hearty yet, he felt that he rode a stone or two heavier now, was apt to "funk" at a sunk fence, and was finding that noble brute Splinterbar a trifle hard in the mouth for his bridle-hand now.

Even Cora's old song of "The Thistle and Rose" only served to make him sad--to make him think of those who had sung it long, long ago; and then he would order another bottle of that rare, creamy old claret, that Mr. Binns kept among the cobwebs, in a particular corner of the cellar, for _themselves_.

Faithful old Davie Binns! He had grown grey, white, and bald in the service of the Calderwoods, like his fathers before him, and like many other servants in that kind old Scottish household--one, indeed, "of the olden time." If he had been dismissed for a dereliction of duty, he would have thought the world was coming to an end, and doubtless would have flatly refused to go; for Davie was one of a class of servitors that are passing away, even in Scotland and Ireland; and from the sister-kingdom I fear they have long since vanished.

Accompanied by old Willie, Sir Nigel and a friend or two had occasionally a shot at the partridges in the stubble or the turnip-fields; but when the first meet of the hounds took place their master was absent.

In vain the horns were blown by Largo's slopes and Balcarris Wood; in vain the dogs gave mouth, and yelped, and wagged their upright tails. The cover was drawn, and every spur struck deep, as the huntsmen sped over dyke and ditch, by loch, and moor, and mountain; but Sir Nigel was sorrowing at his house in the Glen, and his favourite hunters, Saline and Splinterbar, were forgotten in their stalls.

Why was this?

On a Sunday towards the end of September--a Sunday which many must recall with sorrow--mysteriously, as if borne in the air, there passed a whisper over all the land of a great event that had happened far, far away; and that whisper found an echo in many a heart and home in England--in many an Irish mud cabin and Scottish glen--in many a high and many a humble dwelling.

In the quaint old village kirk of Calderwood, during the morning service, it passed along the pews from ear to ear among the people, even to the old haunted aisle of St. Margaret, where Cora sat (her sweet, earnest eyes intent on the preacher, though her thoughts were far away) beside her father in his carved oak seat, with all its armorial bearings overhead; for he was lord of all the glen and manor--a little king, but a very kind one, among the peasantry there.

So, on this calm, sunny summer morning, when no sound disturbed the preacher's voice but the rustle of the oak woods without, or the twittering of the martins in their nests among the Gothic carvings, there came vaguely to the pastoral glen--vaguely, wildly, no one knew how--news that a great battle had been fought far, far away in the East, and that we had lost four, five, some said even six thousand men; but that we were, thank God, _victorious_.

Pausing in his sermon, while his eyes kindled and his cheek flushed as they had never done when detailing the bloody wars of the Jews and Egyptians, the aged minister announced the tidings from the pulpit, adding (the first false rumour) "that the Duke of Cambridge had fallen at the head of the Guards and our own Highland lads, as he led them, sword in hand, up the braes of the Alma."

Every eye turned to St. Margaret's aisle, where, through the painted windows, the yellow sunshine streamed on Sir Nigel's silver hair and Cora's smooth dark braids, for all knew that they had a dear kinsman in that distant field, and when the minister asked the people to join with him in prayer for those who might fall, and for the widows and orphans of the slain, it was with earnest, humble, and contrite hearts that the startled and anxious rustics added their voices to his.

Cora covered her face with her handkerchief; and old Pitblado looked round him, grim and sternly as any Covenanter who ever wore a blue bonnet; but the poor man's heart was full of tears, as he prayed to heaven that his Willie might be safe. Besides, as a native of Fife, he had much of the old and inbred horror of soldiering peculiar to that peninsula, since those dark days when the Fifeshire infantry found their graves on the field of Kilsythe.

Ere the red autumn sun went down beyond the green hills of Clackmannan, the electric wire had announced the passage of the Alma over all the length and breadth of the land--flashing over all Europe, from the shores of the Bosphorus to those of the Shannon.

But in reply to a message sent by Sir Nigel to the War Office--a telegram despatched to soothe the agony of love--came the brief but terrible answer--

"_The name of your nephew is among the killed!_"

"Papa--papa--among the killed--among the killed!" Cora exclaimed, after the first stunning paroxysm of her grief was past.

"Yet I do not despair, Cora," said the old man, in his bewilderment, caressing her, and not knowing what to say, while remembering the keen bitterness that the gazette of Goojerat brought to his heart, when there he read the name of his eldest son and hope--his dark and handsome Nigel.

"Oh, do not speak of hope to me, papa. Poor Newton, I did so love him! I cannot dare to hope!"

"Dearest Cora, we have no details. He may be missing. I have heard of many returned so in the old Peninsular times. My old friend, Jack Oswald, of Dunnik, among others; but he was always found under a heap of dead men, or so forth."

"But the telegram says distinctly, among the killed--his body, his poor, mangled body, must have been seen----"

"Colonel Beverley will write to me. In a few days we shall know all the particulars."

"Even were he only wounded, I should be miserable; but to know that he is dead--dead--Newton dead--buried far, far away by strangers, and among strangers, and that I shall never, never see him more! Oh, papa--my dear papa!" she exclaimed, as she flung herself upon his breast, "I loved Newton dearly--far more dearly than life!"

And so the great secret escaped her in her grief.

*CHAPTER XXXVIII.*

The fight's begun;--in momentary blaze
Bright o'er the hills the volleying lightning plays,
Bursts the loud shell, the death shots hiss around,
And the hoarse cannon adds its heavier sound,
Till wide the gathering clouds that rise between
Clothe in a thicker gloom the maddening scene;
And as the billow's wild and angry crest,
That swells in foam on Ocean's lurid breast,
Through each long line the curling volumes spread,
And hang their white wreaths o'er the column's head.

After the troops crossed the Bulganak, strict silence was enjoined, and no drum was beaten or bugle blown. Scattered parties of Russian cavalry scoured all the ground before us; and as they galloped to and fro, the gleam of Cossack lances, the flash of a carbine, or the steady glitter of sword-blades and cuirasses, shone at times from among the groves of the turpentine trees, and between the rocky undulations of the landscape. Thus we, the British, could not make ourselves quite aware of the nature of the ground we were approaching, while the French marched straight and confidently towards certain great cliffs, which had been carefully reconnoitred from the sea on the extreme right, and which they were to storm, with the village of Almatamack, at the point of the bayonet. At nine o'clock, the French on our right--Bosquet's column--halted, and quietly cooked their coffee, while our troops were still moving laboriously over rough ground, to bring our flank closer to theirs; and now, far beyond the extended columns of the allies--those long, bright lines of bayonets, sloped barrels, and waving colours that shone in the sun of a lovely morning--we saw the dark smoke of the war-steamers towering into the clear air, as they crept in-shore, seeking opportunities to open fire upon the Russian's lofty position; and at twenty minutes past ten we heard the first cannon booming, as they threw their shot among the imperial troops in rear of the telegraph station, which was distant nearly five thousand metres from the shore. Two more protracted halts took place, while final consultations were made between Lord Raglan and Marshal St. Arnaud; but still we were drawing nearer the scene of the coming conflict.

Before us rolled the Alma--a picturesque river--which takes its rise among the western slopes of the Chatyrdagh, in Crim Tartary, and falls into the Euxine, about twelve miles from Sebastopol. High rises its southern bank into picturesque rocks, that in some places are precipitous, and terminate in a lofty cliff which overhangs the sea; and this formidable position was to be defended against us by more than thirty-nine thousand Russians and one hundred and six pieces of cannon, led by Prince Alexander Menschikoff, one of the Emperor's most distinguished generals, who had entered the world as the son of a poor pastrycook, but who now held the supreme civil and military command in the Crimea. A round shot from a Turkish cannon had mutilated him severely at the siege of Varna, and hence the hatred he bore the race and faith of the Osmanlis was deep and fierce. His skill was not equal to his presumption, for he fully thought--as a letter found in his carriage by Captain Travers of ours, after the battle, asserted--that if the three invading armies were not routed at the Alma, he would be fully able to defend its hills for three weeks, until the Emperor sent him reinforcements from the steppes of Bessarabia.

Two miles from the mouth of the Alma stood the picturesque little village of Burliuk. It was now in flames, and the smoke of the conflagration was rolling among the vineyards, which covered the slope that extended between the stream and the base of those cliffs along which glittered the hostile lines of the Russian army. Two miles in length those lines extended along the hills, which were intersected by deep ravines. On every ridge strong batteries of cannon swept the approaches to these; deep trenches were dug along the mountain slopes, and therein were posted the infantry. Constructed on the side of the Kourgane Hill, which rises to the height of six hundred feet above the Alma, was an enormous battery, forming two sides of a triangle, and mounting fourteen heavy guns, thirty-two pounders, and twenty-four pound howitzers. The ascent to this was commanded by three other batteries, mounting twenty-five guns. To assail the Kourgane Hill--the right wing of the Russian army--with all its cannon, howitzers, and trenches, was the task assigned to the Light Division under Sir George Brown, supported by the Duke of Cambridge, with the Guards and Highlanders; and so intent was Menschikoff on its defence, that he had there concentrated sixteen battalions of regular infantry, two battalions of sailors, and two brigades of field-pieces. Near them were many ladies in carriages from Sebastopol, and elsewhere, waiting to see the "English curs" beaten.

During one of the protracted halts referred to, I could not help thinking how lovely was the morning for the unholy work we had in hand! The sun was without a cloud, and the soft breeze of the September morn played along the grassy slopes, rustling the leaves of the olive and turpentine groves, and the broader foliage of the vineyards, till at last even its breath died away upon the summit of the hostile hills. "It was then that in the allied armies there occurred," says Kinglake, "a singular pause of sound--a pause so general as to have been observed and remembered by many in remote parts of the ground, and so marked that its interruption by the mere neighing of an angry horse seized the attention of thousands; and although this strange silence was the mere result of weariness and chance, it seemed to carry a meaning; for it was now that, after nearly forty years of peace, the great nations of Europe were once more meeting for battle!"

The French steamers were now shelling the heights, the Russians making but a poor response; and just as a bomb, splendidly thrown by the former, among the smoke wreaths that curled round the brow of the cliffs, unmasked an ambush which had been prepared for the advancing Zouaves, after the smoke cleared away, showed by the prostrate forms of the riflemen it slew, how well it had done its fatal work--just as I was watching this episode, through my glass, I heard Studhome say, "Norcliff, we are to go to the front."

"Ours, alone?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Can't say; but you see the danger of having a reputation, Newton," said Jack, laughing, for he was in unusual high spirits. "We lancers served against the Pindarees in Central India, at Neerbudda, and elsewhere--the men and horses, poor nags, change; but the name and the number remain. Thus, you see what the honour of having a good name and gallant number costs us. The lancers must advance."

"Only your squadron, Captain Norcliff," said Colonel Beverley, cantering up to where we were halted in brigade; "you will advance and extend to double the usual skirmishing distance, simply to feel the enemy."

I saluted and gave the command, "Threes right--left-wheel--forward," and away we went at a swinging trot, with plumes and pennons glittering in the air.

"If they hit you, Bill?" cried one of our men to Sergeant Dashwood, of Wilford's troop, which formed the left of my squadron.

"Bah! I escaped often enough in India," said the sergeant, laughing; "and, please Heaven, were it only for my poor wife's sake, I shall do so again."

It did not please Heaven, however, for within one hour after this worthy Sergeant Dashwood was lying on his back, pale and stiff, with a bullet in his heart.

As we halted, formed line to the front, and extended from the right at full speed, I heard Jocelyn of ours, a wild and extravagant fellow, say to Sir Henry Scarlett, "I wonder how many infernal _post obits_ will be cancelled to-day!"

We now advanced slowly over the open ground, halting at times, and every moment gave us a clearer and nearer view of the enemy's position.

I looked to the rear. How steadily they were coming on, those splendid lines of British infantry--the Royal and the Welsh Fusiliers, the 19th, and 33rd, and Connaught Rangers--stretching far away from flank to flank, in scarlet--that glorious and historic colour, which fills at once the eye and the mind--their bayonets flashing in the sun, and their colours threateningly advanced, but hanging listless, for the wind had died away. Thousands of those who were now marching there, in youth, and pride, and health--whose place at home was still vacant in many a parent's heart--were doomed to fatten the earth with their bones, and make the grass of future summers grow greener on the slopes of the Alma. Strong memories of my early youth, of my dead mother's face and voice, were with me now, and tears came too--I scarcely knew why; but I felt somewhat as if in a dream. I had a strong yearning also to see the proud Louisa, the tender Cora Calderwood, and my kind old uncle--those I might never see again.

I strove to imagine how Louisa Loftus would bear the shock of hearing that I had fallen--if fall I should. When and by whom would the news be broken to her? I thought, too, of the quiet old woods of Calderwood Glen, under the shadow of the greater Lomond. There, at least, all was peace, thank Heaven; and in my heart I prayed that long, long might it be so. And strange it was, too, that in this exciting time, when so many thousands of various races were about to close in the shock of battle--when a few minutes more might see me face to face with death--death by the cannon, the rifle, or the sabre--even while the explosion of the French shells rung every instant in the air--there flickered in my memory snatches of frivolous musical strains, and one or two trivial mess-room incidents; so that the vast array along the Alma seemed almost a phantasmagoria. But here a hand was laid upon my bridle arm. It was the hand of my faithful follower, Willie Pitblado, who slung his lance, and, sinking the soldier in the friend and countryman, said, while his bright grey eyes sparkled under his lancer cap--

"Hear you that, sir? It is the pipes of the Highland brigade!"

We were so far to the right of our squadron as to be close to the division of the Duke of Cambridge, which was composed of the Grenadier, Coldstream, and Scots Fusilier Guards, with three of the Highland regiments (the 42nd, 79th, and 93rd), whose pipers were now playing each the pibroch of their corps during the second halt; and then over all the field the old wild "memory of a thousand years" was kindled in every Scotchman's heart. I felt his enthusiasm; I saw that Willie felt it too, and in the kindly smile we exchanged there was conveyed a world of hidden sentiment. Wild, barbarous, and uncouth as it may be deemed--an instrument, perhaps, beyond improvement--the voice of the war-pipe seldom falls without a strange and stirring effect upon the Scottish ear; and let neither Englishman nor Irishman ever trust that Scot who hears it unmoved by the love of country and of home. There is something rotten at his heart's core! In whatever part of the distant world a Scotchman hears its strange notes, and the hoarse hum of its deep bass drones, it sets him dreaming of home; of the old thatched cottage in the mountain-glen, where the trouting burn gurgles under the long yellow broom, or "the auld brigstane" where he fished in boyhood; and with its voice come back the faces of "the loved, the lost, the distant, and the dead," and the glories and the battles of the years that are gone. He sees, too, the old kirk, where he prayed by his mother's knee; the graveyard, with all its mossy stones, and the forms of those who are lying there rise again in memory's eye. So the storm-beaten Isleman may seem to hear once more the waves that lash on Jura's rocks, or the scream of the wild birds over Scarba's shore, when ploughing far away in the wastes of the Indian Sea. It is difficult to define what this influence is; but that Scot is little to be envied who hears the warpipe unmoved, when far away from home, or as we heard it on that day beside the Alma; and though proud of his lancer regiment, I could see that my comrade Willie's heart was with the Highlanders, whose dark plumes were tossing on our right. It was at this time that Sir Colin Campbell, in his quiet, grave way, said to one of his officers, as the historian before quoted records, "This will be a good time for the men to get loose half their cartridges."

"And when the command travelled along the ranks of the Highlanders, it lit up the faces of the men one after another, assuring them that now, at length, and after long expectance, they indeed would go into action. They began obeying the order, and with beaming joy, for they came of a warlike race; yet not without emotion of a grave kind. They were young soldiers, and new to battle."

But now the trumpets recalled us to our brigade in rear of the infantry, who had the chief work of that bloody day to do. And just as we wheeled into our places, a roar of musketry on our right announced that the impetuous French had commenced the attack! The enemy's shot and shell were coming souse among us now, and many heard for the first time the fierce rushing sound, and then the mighty shock, as a bullet ripped up the earth, or swept a man away; while shells that burst in mid-air fell in hissing showers, that tore our clothing with their jagged edges, when they failed to wound. Dashing through the Alma, in front of the steep cliffs, under a terrific shower of round shot, grape, and musketry, which clothed the whole face of the slopes with spouting lines of white smoke, streaked with flashes of fire, waking a thousand echoes in the sky above and earth below, the French poured forward in yelling and impetuous masses. Fresh from their campaigns and conquests in burning Algeria, those fierce little Zouaves, in their blue jackets, red breeches, and turbans, active as mountain goats, were seen swarming up at the point of the bayonet, and forming in two lines, which charged with headlong rush on the astonished Muscovites, whose general, being thus completely outflanked on the cliffs being scaled, sought, but sought in vain, to change his front, and drive the French from those hills they had taken so rapidly and so gallantly, but at awful loss.

"Allah-Allah Hu!" was now the cry that rent the air, as the Turks advanced.

Under their green standards--the holy colour--with the crescent and star, massed in close column at quarter distance, the Turkish troops came on; and through the sea of red fezzes the cannon balls made many a deadly lane, until the battalions deployed into line, sending, as Studhome said, "many a believer to Paradise in a state of mutilation such as the houris wouldn't appreciate." But on they went against that sheet of lead and iron, shoulder to shoulder with the French; and many a shaven crown and many a scarlet fez, with its broad military button and blue tassel, were lying on the turf, while, with visions of the dark-eyed girls of Paradise waving their green scarves from their couches of pearl, and crying, "Come, kiss me, for I love thee," many a grim, Turkish soul passed forth into the night of death. On the other flank were the French linesmen, crying on "_Dieu, et la Mere de Dieu_," to help them in their last agony, while the sisters of charity and the _vivandieres_ rivalled each other in the rear in their attention to the wounded and dying.

*CHAPTER XXXIX.*

Three hundred cannon threw up their emetic,
And thirty thousand muskets flung their pills
Like hail to make a bloody diuretic.
Mortality! thou hast thy monthly bills;
Thy plagues, thy passions, thy physicians, yet tick,
Like the death-watch, within our ears the ills
Past, present, and to come;--but all may yield
To the true portrait of one battle-field. BYRON.

At half-past one the British infantry advanced into action; like lightning the order flew along the line, for it was borne by Nolan, the impetuous and the gallant.

The village of Burliuk, the centre of our position, was still in flames that rose to a vast height, especially from the well-filled stackyards.

To the right of the conflagration, two regiments of Adams's brigade, the Welsh[*] and 49th, or Hertfordshire, crossed the river by a deep and dangerous ford, under a galling fire from the Russian Minie Riflemen, who were ensconced among the vineyards on the opposite bank. The remainder crossed on the left of Burliuk, and, both uniting beyond it, the whole division of De Lacy Evans found themselves engaged in sanguinary strife, while we, the cavalry, could but sit in our saddles and look on, but burning with impatience to advance.

[*] 41st--so called since 1831.