“It’s all up, Mr. Kettering,” said he, in a husky whisper, “it’s all up with me this turn. What’s the time o’ day now? Twelve o’clock? I shall be a dead man at sundown;” and then he told Charlie how he had received a warning, and he knew there was no hope “here nor yet yonder,” he said, with a ghastly smile; for he had dreamt that he was standing sentry on a rampart over against the ocean, and the sun was setting in a golden haze, and the waters gleamed like molten gold; and he laid his firelock down, and rested and gazed with delight upon the scene; but a girl rose from the waves, far off between him and the sunset, and wrung the water from her long black hair, and pressed it with both hands to her throat, and seemed to staunch a ghastly wound that gaped at him even at that distance, and ever the blood flowed and flowed, and the sea became crimson, and the sun went down in blood-red streaks, and the sky darkened to the colour of blood, and everywhere there was blood, blood, nothing but blood; and the girl screamed to him in agony, saying, “Pray! pray!” and he knew that if he could speak a prayer before the sun went down he might be saved; and he strove and gasped, but he was choked; and still the sun dipped and dipped, and a fiery rim only was left above the sea, and still he could not speak; and it went down too; and the girl tossed up her arms with a shriek, and all was dark; and then with a convulsive effort he cried aloud, and his mouth was full of blood—and so he awoke. “And I shall never stand sentry nor carry a firelock again,” he said; and from that time he spoke no more, but folded his hands and lay quiet, as if asleep. The afternoon shadows lengthened on the hospital-wall—the evening drew near—at half-past six the dying man muttered a request for drink—at seven the sun went down, and he was dead!—peacefully, quietly he parted, like a child going to its rest. Charlie never knew it was all over till the doctor came; and they took him away and buried him, and there was a vacant place by Charlie’s bedside; and so Her Majesty lost a soldier, and a recruit was enlisted and sent to the dépôt at home, and his place in the ranks was filled, and he was forgotten, just as peers, poets, conquerors, sovereigns, and sages are forgotten, only a little sooner—for the grim Reaper makes no distinction, and the monarch oak of the forest perishes as surely as the weed by the wayside.
Week after week Charlie lay in that weary bed. One by one patients became convalescents, and convalescents went back to their duty, and still he was not allowed to move. A fresh action was fought, and more wounded were brought in, and yet Charlie was unfit for duty—in fact, was unable to rise. The doctor was hopeful and good-humoured, as doctors generally are, not being invalids themselves, and told him “he was going on most satisfactorily, and all that was wanted was a little time, and patience and quiet;” but at length even he hinted at sick-leave, and talked of a return to England, and the necessity of care and avoidance of exposure to weather, even after the wounds were healed; and Charlie’s dearest hopes of rejoining his regiment, and tasting once more the excitement of warfare, were dashed to the ground. The kind doctor had written to his patient’s friends in England, and assured them of his safety—on the rejoicings thereby created at Newton-Hollows we need not now enlarge—so that all anxiety on that score had passed away, and there was nothing to do now but to get well and embark for home. What a tedious process that same getting well was! Charlie began to pine, and grow dispirited and nervous. He had no friends, no one to speak to but the doctor; and the gallant boy, who would have faced a whole tribe of Kaffirs single-handed and never moved an eyelash, was now so completely weakened and broken down that he would lie and weep for hours, like a girl, he knew not why. At last he began to give way to despondency altogether. One day in particular, when the ward was again emptied of its recovered inmates, and the boy was left quite alone in that long, dull room, he lost heart entirely. “I shall never get well now,” he said aloud in his despair; “I shall never see the bright blue sky again, nor the regiment, nor Blanche, nor Mrs. Delaval, nor any of them—sinking, sinking, day by day, and scarcely twenty! ’Tis a hard lot to die like a dog, in such a hole as this. Ah! Frank always talked of death as the ever-present certainty, and the next world will be a happier one than this, I do believe, though this has been a happy one to me. I used to think I shouldn’t mind dying the least—no more I should, in the free, open air, leading a squadron, with the men hurraing behind me; or falling neck and crop into a grass-field with ‘Haphazard,’ alongside the leading hounds.” (Charlie was barely twenty, and to him the hunting-field was just such an arena of glory as was the tilt-yard to a knight of the olden time.) “No, I could die like a man at home, but to rot away here in a hospital, thousands of miles from merry England, without a friend near me, it’s hard to bear it pluckily, as it ought to be borne. Frank! Frank! I want some of your dogged resolution now. If I could see your dear old face once more, and shake you by the hand, I should be a different fellow. Ah! it’s too late now; I shall never see you again, and you will hardly know what became of me. But you won’t forget me, old boy, will you?” and poor Charlie gave way once more, and turned his wet cheek down upon his pillow, as he heard the doctor’s step along the passage; for he was ashamed of his weakness, though he knew it was but the effect of his wounds. Hark! there is some one with him; the doctor is bringing a visitor to see him. He knows that firm, heavy tread. Is it one of his brother-officers?—how kind of them! No, that is no dragoon’s step: it is familiar, too, and yet he cannot remember where he has heard it. Is he dreaming? Over the doctor’s shoulder peers a well-known face, embrowned with travel, but with the old kind, frank expression beaming through those manly features. In another instant Charlie is clasping Frank Hardingstone’s strong hand in his own two emaciated ones, and after an abortive “How are ye, old fellow?” and a vain effort to laugh off his emotion, is sobbing once more like a woman or a child.
“So you came out all the way from England on purpose to look after me,” said he, when the first burst of feeling had subsided; “how like you, old Frank—how kind of you!—and what did they say about me at home? and wasn’t Blanche sorry for me when she thought I was killed? and did Uncle Baldwin and—and Mrs. Delaval read the dispatch? and where are they all now? You know I’m to have sick-leave, and we’ll go back together. When does the doctor think I shall be able to sail? Frank, he’s a shocking muff; I’ve been in this bed for thirteen weeks, but I shall get up to-day—of course he’ll let me get up to-day;” and so Charlie ran on, and Frank was soon forcibly withdrawn from the patient, whose over-excitement was likely to be as prejudicial as his late despondency; but the maligned doctor whispered to him as he went out, “Your arrival, sir, has done more for my patient than the whole pharmacopœia: he’ll be well now in a fortnight.”
The doctor was right. From that day Charlie began to mend. Many a long hour Frank sat by his bedside, and talked to him of home, and of his prospects, and of his cousin (honest Frank), and settled over and over again their plans of departure, to which Charlie was never tired of listening; and after every one of these visits the boy’s appetite was better and his sleep sounder, and in a few days he got out of bed, and then he was moved into the hospital-sergeant’s room, who readily vacated his apartment for the young officer; and then he got out on Frank’s arm into the summer air, for which he had so pined—pleasant it was, but yet not so pleasant as he thought it would be, when he lay in that dull ward; and then his voracity became something ridiculous, and at the end of about three weeks Frank helped him up the companion-way of the Phlegethon, 200 horse-power, homeward-bound; and although wasted to a skeleton, his large eyes looked bright and clear, and now that he was really on his way to England he was well.
[CHAPTER XXII]
THE WIDOW
FAMILY ARRANGEMENTS—MOTHER AND SON—SEPARATE INTERESTS—A WIDOW’S DAY-DREAMS—FEMALE CONFIDENCES—THE RULE OF CONTRARY
“My dear Mount, I think, after all, I shall spend the winter at Bubbleton,” said Lady Mount Helicon to her hopeful son, as they sat one sunny afternoon in her well-furnished drawing-room. London was emptying fast; a few of the lingerers still contrived to keep up a semblance of gaiety, and those who stayed on, like Lady Mount Helicon, because they had no country-houses to go to, voted it so much pleasanter now the crush and hurry of the season was over. But even these could not conceal from themselves that they were but “the last roses of summer,” that “all the world” was rushing out of town, and they had no business here any longer. The water-carts were getting very slack, and the dust unbearable; the Ride and the ring were fitting haunts for a hermit, and the Serpentine was gloomy as the Styx. Dinadam was inhaling appetite in his deer-forest—Long-Acre was tempting Providence in his yacht—Mrs. Blacklamb was breaking hearts at Cowes—ministers had celebrated their many defeats during the session by their annual fish-dinner at Greenwich—and grouse were advertised at five shillings a brace in Leadenhall Market. Yes, the season was over, and Mount would not have been here instead of in Perthshire had it not been for the absolute necessity of his writing his autograph in person for the ulterior disappointment of a Hebrew, and his own immediate benefit. He was an excellent son when he had nothing better to do, and now sat for hours with his mother and talked over his own plans and hers with the most perfect open-heartedness.