In less than a month I was reported fit for duty, and joined my company, into which the colonel had kindly enrolled my twenty-five Mac Innons. I had applied myself with such assiduity to the mysteries of the goose-step, the right half-face, the left half-face, and the right-about three-quarters-face, &c., that I gained the respect of that dread man the adjutant, and the profound esteem of the various sergeants to whom I was handed over in succession to acquire the manual and platoon exercises, the use of the club and broadsword, and to each of whom, at parting, the 'tip' of two days' pay was necessary. I soon won, too, the entire confidence of our brave old colonel, who, in kindness and advice, acted to me more as a father than a friend.
Great was the change this month had achieved in my fortunes! In that brief time I had seen our dwellings levelled to the earth! the glen, which had been peopled for ages, laid desolate and bare; the muirs consumed by fire, and all the land reduced to a voiceless solitude. My mother was lying far away in her quiet grave—her old familiar face was gone for ever: I was separated from Laura, and was now a soldier, like my forefathers, with the wide world all before me.
Of John Belton, who was gazetted at the same time with myself, and who became one of my chief friends, I shall speak frequently anon. He was a handsome, lively, and light-hearted fellow, and we were a pair of inseparables; but with all the charms of the new life that had so suddenly opened before me, I was far from happy still.
After long thought, anxiety, and careful consideration, with a heart inspired by love and hope, I ventured to write a timid letter to Laura, expressing my admiration, my esteem, and undying regard for her, all of which were strengthened by the knowledge that an early and greater separation was at hand, as the regiment to which I had been appointed was warring in the East, and I added, that in leaving her, more than probably for ever, all my hopes and prayers were for her happiness.
Cæsar, on the night before the great battle of Pharsalia, was not more full of thought than I, while penning this letter to little Laura Everingham.
I dared not ask her to write to me, yet I hoped she might do so; indeed, for some days, I was certain she would reply. I knew that she would write politely, kindly, timidly, and perhaps with some formality; but I longed to gaze upon the lines her pretty hand had traced. It would be a relic of her—a souvenir of buried hopes and futile aspirations, when other days would come.
But day after day passed—a week elapsed—then, a fortnight, and yet no letter came; and daily, while every pulse quickened with anxiety, I watched the pipe-major (who acted as our regimental postman) distributing his letters on parade; but, alas! none ever came for me.
My courage fell—day succeeded day, and still no letter. Then hope began to die; my nights were dreamy or sleepless, and my days full of gnawing suspense. Could Laura be ill?—then Fanny would write. Had she dismissed me from her mind? or had Sir Horace intercepted the letter? Thus I wearied myself with conjectures. Should I write to her again? Pride said 'no;' yet that very pride which sprang from wounded self-esteem was rendered the more bitter by its struggle with much of honest tenderness, pure regard, and sincere regret that one I loved so well should treat me with such cutting coldness and neglect.
I endured six weeks of much chagrin and suspense after writing that unlucky letter from Dumbarton; but at last a crisis was put to my artificial affliction.
One day Captain Clavering made his appearance at mess, in mufti; he was the guest of Colonel Crawford, and expressed so much real pleasure and satisfaction at meeting me again, that he quite won me by his frankness. He even went the length of offering me the use of his purse, saying that I might repay him at any time—whenever it suited me to do so.