On an evening about the end of January, we were off Southampton, and ran into the tidal dock, which has such peculiar advantages for first-class steamers. There out of the general traffic, and in the basin of quiet water, the Blazer could easily land her melancholy freight of wounded men. Many poor fellows whom she had embarked had died on the way home, and found a grave under the waves of the Mediterranean.
We were landed by gaslight. I must have been very weak at that time. I remember the cheers of welcome and the genuine commiseration of the kindly English folks assembled on the crowded quays as we were borne tenderly ashore in the arms of our good sailor comrades; and my wasted appearance was not the least exciting, for I was so worn now that my face was not unlike the Death's head on the appointments of the 17th Lancers—but with a goodly Crimean beard appended to it.
The lieutenant of marines conducted me to a fashionable hotel.
At Southampton I was separated from poor Willie. With all the other wounded soldiers, he was transmitted, per third-class train, to Fort Pitt, at Chatham. Save once, I never saw the poor affectionate fellow again. He became a confirmed invalid, and months passed away, during which he was neither discharged nor cured, though he longed to get home—home, that he might die where he first saw the light, in his father's cottage, and be laid beside his mother's grave in the glen.
But there is no cure for the home-sickness in the pharmacopoeia of Her Majesty's medical department, at No. 6, Whitehall Yard.
For many days I remained at the hotel, careless how the time passed. I had become perfectly listless, and lay on the sofa for hours, less to nurse my wounds than from pure inertia, and heedless of what might happen.
Thus, one evening, when the snow lay deep in the streets without, muffling the footsteps of the passengers and the wheels of the cabs and omnibuses—when the fire was burning cheerily in the bright bars of the polished grate—the crimson curtains drawn across the windows—the crystals of the gaselier glittering with a thousand prisms, and thus when, after Crimean experiences, it was impossible not to feel intensely comfortable in the well-carpeted room of a fashionable English hotel, I was dozing off to sleep, and to dream, perhaps, of other scenes, when a sound roused me.
An arm—a soft and warm one—was round my neck, and two bright, sad, earnest, and tearful eyes were beaming affectionately into mine; a smooth cheek, rendered cold as a winter apple by the frosty air without, just brushed mine, and a kiss was on my forehead, as a beautiful and blushing girl threw back her veil, and I found my hands were clasped by those of Cora Calderwood.
"Dear, dear Cora!" I exclaimed, and pressed her to my breast.
I had longed for sympathy, companionship, friendship—for some one with whom to share the secret burden that crushed my heart; but I rapidly found the impossibility of doing this with my beautiful cousin, for now, as I embraced her, all her long-treasured and long-hidden love gushed up in her heart.