Then weeks and months slipped away, but Adam White was heard of no more.
Every hope that inventive kindness could suggest, or the uncertainty of war, time, and distance could supply, were advanced to soothe the sufferer, who caught at them fondly and prayerfully for a time; but suspense became sickening, and day by day these hopes grew fainter, till they died away at last.
The colonel of the regiment, Lieutenant-General Lord John Murray (son of John Duke of Athole, who, after the revolution, had been Lord High Commissioner to the Scottish Parliament), an officer who took a vivid interest in everything connected with his regiment, spared no exertion or expense to discover the missing officer; but, after a long correspondence with the Marquis de Montcalm, who commanded the French in America, M. Bourlemarque, who commanded near Lake Champlain, and the Comte de Montmorin, commandant of Ticonderoga, no trace of poor White could be discovered, as all prisoners had long since been transmitted to France.
At Chelsea, Lord John Murray appeared in the dark kilt and scarlet uniform of the regiment to plead the cause of its noble veterans who had been disabled at Ticonderoga; and becoming exasperated by the parsimony, partiality, and gross injustice of the Government of George II., a monarch who abhorred the Scots and loved the English but little, he generously offered "the free use of a cottage and garden to all 42nd men who chose to settle on his estates." Many accepted this reward, and the memory of their gallant colonel—the brother of the loyal and noble Tullybardin, who unfurled the royal standard in Glenfinnan—was long treasured by the men of the Black Watch.
But this tale, being a true narrative, though enrolled among our regimental legends, will not permit of many digressions.
White's name disappeared from the lists at last; another filled his place in the ranks, and after a time even the regiment ceased to speak of him, in the excitement of the new campaign in the West Indies, where, in the following year, 1759, the most of his friends fell in the attack on Martinique or the storming of Guadaloupe; and Jack Oswald, who was a strange and excitable character, becoming disgusted with the slowness of promotion, after being "rowed" one morning for absence from parade, sold out, left the service in a pet, became an amatory poet, and then a dangerous political writer, under the well-known nom de plume of Sylvester Otway.
Long, sadly, and sorely did Lucy Fleming pine for the lost love of her youth. The mystery that involved his fate, and the snapping asunder of the hopes she had cherished for yearn, the shattering of the fairy altar on which she had garnered up these hopes, and all the secret aspirations of her girlish heart, affected her deeply. She had all the appearance of one who was dying of a broken-heart; and yet she did not so die. Many have perished of grief and of broken-hearts, but our fair friend with the black ringlets and the black eyes was not one of these.
In time she shook off her grief, as a rose shakes off the dew that has bent it down, and like the rose she raised her head again more beautiful and bright than ever; for her beauty was now chastened by a certain pensive sadness which made her very charming; and thus it was, that in the year 1761—three years after the fatal repulse of the British troops before Ticonderoga—she attracted especial attention at the Hague, whither her father, the amiable old minister, had gone for a season, leaving his well-beloved flock and sequestered manse upon the Scottish border, to benefit the health of his pale and drooping daughter. Being furnished with introductory letters from his friend Home, the author of "Douglas," who was then conservator of Scottish privileges at Campvere, the best society was open to them.
At the balls and routs of the Comte de Montmorin, the French resident, Lucy soon eclipsed all the blue-eyed belles of Leyden and the Hague. Enchanted by the charms of the beautiful brunette, their country-woman, a crowd of gay fellows belonging to the Scots brigade in the Dutch service followed her wherever she went; and those who saw her dancing the last cotillion by M. Brieul of Versailles, the fashionable composer of the day, or the stately and old-fashioned minuet de la cour, with the bucks of Stuart's regiments or MacGhie's musketeers, might have been pardoned for supposing that poor Adam White of Ours, and the dark days of Ticonderoga, were alike forgotten—as indeed they were; for Time, the consoler, was fast smoothing over the terrible memories of three years ago; and again Lucy could listen with a downcast eye and a half-smiling blush to the voice that spoke of love and admiration.
Thrice the Comte de Montmorin asked her hand in marriage, and thrice she refused him; but again monseigneur returned to the charge.