This conversation may be taken as a specimen of a hundred that our lovers had on every convenient opportunity, when Louis was all truthful earnestness—devotion and anxiety pervading his voice and manner; while Emmy was all fun, drollery, and coquetry, yet loving him nevertheless.
But a crisis came, when Charters received, by the hand of his chief friend, Lieutenant Alaster Mackenzie, of the house of Seaforth, a command to rejoin his regiment, then under orders to embark at Greenock, to share in the expedition which Brigadier-General Forbes of Pittencrief was to lead against Fort du Quesne, one of the three great enterprises undertaken in 1758 against the French possessions in North America. How futile were the tears of Emmy now!
"Though divided by the sea, dear Louis, our hope will be one, like our love," she sobbed in his ear.
"Think—think of me often, very often, as I shall think of you."
"I do not doubt you, Louis. I now judge of your long, faithful, and noble affection by my own. Oh, Louis! I have been foolish and wilful; I have pained you often; but you will forgive your poor Emmy now; she judges of your love by her own."
It was now too late to think of marriage. Emmy, subdued by the prospect of a sudden and long separation from her winning and handsome lover, and by a knowledge of the dangers that lay before him by sea and land, the French bullet, the Indian arrow—all the risks of war and pestilence—was almost broken-hearted on his departure. The usual rings and locks of hair, the customary embraces, were exchanged; the usual adieus and promises—solemn and sobbing promises of mutual fidelity—were given, and so they parted; and with sad Emmy's kiss yet lingering on his lips, and her undried tears on his cheek, poor Charters found himself marching at the head of his party of fifty recruits, while the drum and fife woke the echoes in the romantic Wicks of Baiglie, as he bade a long adieu to beautiful Perth, the home of his Emmy, and joined the headquarters of Montgomery's Highlanders at Greenock.
But amid all the bustle of the embarkation in transports and ships of war—such rough sea-going ships as Smollet has portrayed in his "Roderick Random"—Charters saw ever before him the happy, bright, and beautiful Emmy of the past year of joy; or as he had last seen her, pale, crushed, and drooping in tears upon his breast—her coquetry, her drollery, her laughter, all evaporated, and the true loving and trusting woman alone remaining—her eyes full of affection, and her voice tremulous with emotion.
Louis sailed for America with one of the finest regiments ever sent forth by Scotland, which, in the war that preceded the declaration of American independence, gave to the British ranks more than sixty thousand soldiers*—few, indeed, of whom ever returned to lay their bones in the land of their fathers.
* See "Present Conduct of the Chieftains Considered." Edinburgh: 1773. "Thus it appears," says an anti-ministerial pamphlet, published in 1763, "that out of 756 officers commanding in the Army, garrisons, &c., 210 are Scots: and out of 1930 in the Navy, 536 are Scots." The table was thus:—
Army
Scots Generals . . . . . . 29
Scots Colonels . . . . . . 39
Scots Lieut.-Colonels . . 81
Scots Majors . . . . . . . 61