Volume Two—Chapter Eleven.
“The Girl I Left behind me.”
“Partant pour la Syrie” should have been the proper title for this chapter, only instead of la Syrie, read l’Abysinne; but as “The girl I left behind me” is more appropriate to the matter, if not to the motive of what follows, the latter heading has been adopted in preference. “The Girl I left behind me!” That would-be jovial and yet melancholy air, with its dreary rub-a-dub-dub which the band plays when the regiment is marching out so gaily oh! with the route for foreign service. The Light Brigade played it when they started off to the Crimea; the Royals when they sailed for India, to avenge the deaths of our murdered kinswomen at Cawnpore: how many that departed so gallantly marching to the strains of that sad hackneyed tune, saw their native land again, or met the welcome of the girls they left behind them!
The “fiddle-de-dee” conversation with the old dowager had levelled the charming little Spanish castle which Tom had erected down to the ground; so it was with a very sad heart that he called at the parsonage on the following day to acquaint Lizzie and her brother with the upshot of his interview with his mother.
He was obliged to speak out straight and tell the truth: and it resulted in his worst fears being realised. Herbert Pringle said he could not hear of an engagement between them, as Mrs Hartshorne would not give her consent; and Lizzie, with a very pale little face and a determined little air, as if she was a martyr and being led to the stake, said she would have to do as her brother told her.
Tom, on hearing this, burst into a passion, and said she had “never cared for him,” and that “nobody cared for him,” and he “wished he was dead,” and that he “would go away,” and “when some bullet put an end to his life” she “would think of him,” a false, “fickle, perjured girl as she was;” and he went off in a tantrum, unmindful of Lizzie’s pleading little face, and the longing violet eyes, and the pale, tearless cheek.
Tom went straight off to rejoin his regiment, the dépôt of which was quartered at Aldershot. He told the Colonel, who was an old bachelor, and regarded Tom as a son, that he wanted to exchange and go on foreign service.
“Pooh, pooh!” said the old Plunger, who had grown grey in the regiment, and seen much service at its head in India and the Crimea—“Pooh, pooh, Tom; why, you must be crossed in love, my boy!”
Tom was very sad over it, and very stern; he could not see anything to joke about. He told the colonel that he was very unhappy at home, and wished to go away for a time; and if he could assist him in furthering his object, he, Tom, would ever remain grateful, and so on.
The Colonel was a kind hearted old fellow, and seeing that Tom was sore wounded, he did not rally him any more on the subject, but entered into it con amore.
“I’ll do anything for you, Tom, my boy, that I can. You know that without my saying it; and if you really do want to go abroad, I can put you in the way of it this present moment.”
“Can you, Colonel?” said Tom, earnestly; “I wish you would.”
“That I will, my boy! You know the Abyssinian Expedition is just starting out.”
“By Jove!” said Tom, “that’s just what I should like.”
“Easy, my boy—easy! Don’t run away with the squad like that all at once! I’m just coming to it, my boy.”
“Pray excuse me, sir,” said Tom, who was dying for the rather easy-going Colonel to proceed.
“All right, my boy—all right. You see, I met my friend Sir Charles, who goes out with the advanced corps, the other day in London, and he told me that if I knew any smart young officer who would like to go out, he would be happy to let him come with him as one of his aides-de-camp, to oblige me.”
“Oh, sir!” ejaculated Tom, in anxiety.
“The question is, my boy, are you a smart young officer, and can I recommend you?” the Colonel asked, being a bit of a wag, as he saw the sudden joy which irradiated the suppliant’s face.
“I would thank you so much, sir,” ejaculated Tom; “I am sure I could be useful to him if you would only recommend me.”
“Much use you would be, to be sure! I suppose you would teach him the last waltz step, and tell him how to flirt, you dog!”
“Oh, sir—you’ll oblige me, Colonel, won’t you? and do me this favour?”
“Well, I don’t mind if I do, Tom. You are a young scamp I know, but I’ve a sort of liking for you, and I’ll give you a letter of introduction to Sir Charles. But you must go up to London at once, for he’ll be off in a day or two. I daresay you can catch him at that den of thieves, the Horse Guards, or else at his club.”
“Oh I thank you, sir,” said Tom, shaking the old veteran heartily by the hand. “Oh! thank you, Colonel; I’ll never forget your kindness.”
“There, there, my boy—take it easily. And now if you will kindly let me have my arm to myself, I will sit down and write you your letter at once, and also one to the commander-in-chief, which will facilitate your movements.”
The Colonel then sat down and wrote as he promised; and Tom was off in a jiffey to London. In the joy of going off, he had for a moment forgotten Lizzie, only to remember her with a ten times greater fondness a moment or two later.
Being diligent in his explorations, Tom speedily found his new chief, who received him very cordially, and said how very glad he was to be able to do anything for the old Plunger veteran, from whom he had just come. Tom, to his great joy, was appointed one of the aides-de-camp of the general who was going off with the expeditionary force to Abyssinia. He was only just in time, however, for the places had all been filled up. Tom indeed owed his luck to the sudden illness of one of the officers already appointed.
What a wonderful thing that Abyssinian Expedition was! The world sees some queer changes in its time. Twenty-eight hundred and fifty years ago the Queen of Sheba paid her celebrated visit to King Solomon at Jerusalem, and here, so many centuries after, we have the children of the Gentiles and the inhabitants of the Isles of the West sallying out and getting them ready to battle against the descendants of the self-same King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba across the waters of the Red Sea.
Tom had very few days in which to prepare for his departure. It was now October, and he had to go by the overland route to India first, and then to sail from Bombay with the advance guard of the invading army.
His mother was very much vexed at his going away. She did not think he would have acted up to what he had threatened; but Tom had the same stubborn temper at bottom, and what he had said he would stick to, so she could not alter it. As she saw this she did not press him, for she knew it would be no use; his preparations were therefore rather hurried.
Tom, however, was not going to part from Lizzie in that way. He had rushed off that time in a passion, but he was not going to leave her so abruptly, and he went down again to the parsonage to make his peace in his own way.
The little conservatory witnessed many little tender scenes before the day of his departure came, although the time was but short for them to be acted in. Pringle had interposed scruples at first, but his calm course of ecstasy with the languid Laura made him somewhat more lenient than the campaigner, his future mother-in-law—the time was drawing on now—would have approved.
Tender little scenes of love these were in that romantic conservatory, which had witnessed all Tom’s love-making and all his short happiness. Little repetitions and conjugations of the same verb amo over and over again, with its present, and its past, and its future subjunctive tenses. Who has not lived and loved and can fill in all these details? Ah! how well remembered they are—the looks, the smiles, the tears, the joys, the sorrows, the ecstasies of love’s young dream! Tom Moore was more eloquent on the subject than Goethe, who told—
Ich habe genossen das irdische Glück;
Ich habe gelebt und geliebt,
Is not half so expressive as the Irish Catullus.
Fond hearts are severed however, if sometimes only for a time. Tom came down one day to the parsonage to take his last farewell. He had bidden adieu to his mother before. Lizzie he wanted to see last of all! She was the girl he left behind him.
It was very sad for the young lovers to part like this, just when they were beginning to know each other.
But perhaps it was for the best. With true love “Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” with the article of dross the reverse proverb holds true. Perhaps as it is preferable to be able to know which is the real Simon Pure: a separation sometimes works well.
There is little good in dwelling on last words.
The parting was only for a time, as Tom fondly told Lizzie, trying to cheer her up.
One long embrace, one last kiss, and Tom was off. The young Dunois had sallied forth for the Orient, and Lizzie wept like Medora at the departure of Conrad the Corsair, thinking, if not exclaiming—
“And is he gone?” On sudden solitude
How oft that question will intrude!
“’Twas but an instant past, and here he stood!
And now” - without the portal’s porch she rush’d,
And then her tears at length in freedom gush’d;
Big, bright, and fast, unknown to her they fell,
And still her lips refused to send “Farewell!”