"The worst those brown devils could have done!" was the energetic reply. "We've beaten them, and we will beat them again, the villains! but that will not bring him back—captain—captain—the colonel's down!"
The captain started from his chair, but before he could frame another word, Ellen had caught hold of the old man's arm, and wildly exclaimed, "Do you mean—do you mean, pray tell me, Sergeant Allen!—Have the natives met papa's troop, and have they fought?—and—is he hurt—is he killed?" The man could not answer her—for her look and tone, he afterward declared to his comrades, went through his heart, just for all the world like a saber cut; and for the moment neither Captain nor Mrs. Cameron could address her. The shock seemed to have banished voice from all, save from the poor child principally concerned.
"Stay with me, my dear Ellen!" Mrs. Cameron at length said, advancing to her, as she stood still clinging to the sergeant's arm: "the captain will go and meet your father, and if he be wounded, we will nurse him together, dearest! Stay with me."
"No, no, no!" was the agonized reply; "let me go to him, he may die before they bring him here, and I shall never feel his kiss or hear him bless me again. He told me he should fall in battle—oh! Mrs. Cameron, pray let me go to him?"
And they who knew all which that father was to his poor Ellen, could not resist that appeal. The sergeant said the colonel was not dead, but so mortally wounded they feared to move him. It was a fearful scene. Death in its most horrid form was all around her; her little feet were literally deluged in blood, and she frequently stumbled over the dusky forms and mangled and severed limbs that lay on the grass, but neither sob nor cry escaped her till she beheld her father. His men had removed him from the immediate scene of slaughter, and tried to form a rough pallet of military cloaks, but the ghastly countenance, which the moon's light rendered still more fixed and pallid, the rigidity of his limbs, all seemed to denote they had indeed arrived too late, and that terrible stillness was broken by the convulsed and passionate sobs of the poor child, who, flinging herself beside him, besought him only to open his eyes, to look upon her once more, to call her his darling, and kiss her once, only once again: and it seemed as if her voice had indeed power to recall the fluttering soul. The heavy eyes did unclose, the clenched hand relaxed to try and clasp his child, and he murmured feebly—
"How came you here, my poor darling Ellen? are friends here?—is that Cameron's voice?" The captain knelt down by him and convulsively pressed his hand, but he could not speak.
"God bless you, Cameron! Take my poor child to her mother—implore her—to—and it is to-night, this very night—she and my boy are happy—and I—and my poor Ellen—" A fearful convulsion choked his voice, but after a little while he tried to speak again—
"My poor child, I have prepared you for this; but I know you must grieve for me. Take my blessing to your brother, tell him to protect—love your mother, darling! she must love you at last—a ring—my left hand—take it to her—oh! how I have loved her—God have mercy on her—on my poor children!" He tried to press his lips again on Ellen's cheek and brow, but the effort was vain—and at the very moment Mrs. Fortescue had stood transfixed by some unknown terror, her husband ceased to breathe.
It was long before Ellen rallied from that terrible scene. Even when the fever which followed subsided, and she had been taken, apparently perfectly restored to health, once more to her mother and brother, its recollection so haunted her, that her many lonely hours became fraught with intense suffering. Her imagination, already only too morbid, dwelt again and again upon the minutest particular of that field of horror; not only her father, but the objects which, when her whole heart was wrapped in him, she seemed not even to have seen. The ghastly heaps of dead, the severed limbs, the mangled trunks, the gleaming faces all fixed in the distorted expressions with which they died—the very hollow groans and louder cry of pain which, as she passed through the field, had fallen on her ear unheeded, returned to the poor child's too early awakened fancy so vividly, that often and often it was only a powerful though almost unconscious effort that prevented the scream of fear. Her father's last words were never forgotten; she would not only continue to love her mother because he had desired her to do so, but because he had so loved her, and on her first return home this seemed easier than ever to accomplish. Mrs. Fortescue, tortured by remorse and grief, had somewhat softened toward the child who had received the last breath of her husband; and could Ellen have overcome the reserve and fear which so many years of estrangement had engendered, and given vent to the warmth of her nature, Mrs. Fortescue might have learned to know, and knowing, to love her—but it was then too late.
So torturing were Mrs. Fortescue's feelings when she recalled the last request of her husband, and her cruel and haughty refusal; when that which had seemed so important, a juvenile ball—because not to go would disappoint Edward—became associated with his fearful death, and sunk into worse than nothing—she had parted with him in anger, and it proved forever;—that even as England had become odious to her, twelve years before, so did India now; and she suddenly resolved to quit it, and return to the relatives she had neglected so long, but toward whom she now yearned more than ever. She thought and believed such a complete change would and must bring peace. Alas! what change will remove the torture of remorse?