Playing with Fire: A Story of the Soudan War

by James Grant

'Not that I know of,' replied Roland, who was already weary of the Indian reminiscences that Sir Harry contrived to drag into conversation whenever he could.

'Well, it was a strange affair—very much out of the common, and happened in this way. Duncan Skene was Captain of our Grenadiers—ah, we had Grenadiers then, before the muddlers of later years came!—and a handsomer fellow than Duncan never wore a pair of epaulettes. A year before we stormed Jhansi from the Pandies, we were in quarters there, and all was as quiet at Allahabad as it is here in the valley of the Esk. We did not occupy the city or the Star Fort, but we had lines outside the former then, and one night Duncan, when pretty well primed, it was thought, after leaving the mess bungalow, betook him towards his own, which stood in rather a remote part of the cantonment. All seemed dark and quiet, and the ghurries at the posts had announced the hour of two in the morning, when Duncan came unexpectedly upon a large and well-lighted tent, within which he saw six or seven fellows of ours—old faces that he knew, but had not seen for some time—all carousing and drinking round the table; he entered, and was at once made welcome by them all.

'Now, Duncan must have been pretty well primed indeed not to have been sobered and chilled by what he saw; he could scarcely believe his eyes or his own identity, and thought that for the past year he must have been in a dream; for there he was met with outstretched hands and hearty greetings by many of ours who he thought were gone to their last homes. There was Jack Atherly, second to none in the hunting-field, whom he had seen knocked over by a matchlock ball in a rascally hill fight; and there, too, was Charley Thorold, once our pattern sub and pattern dancing man, who he thought had fallen the same day at the head of the Light Company; there, too, were Maxwell and Seton, our best strokes at billiards, whom he had seen—or thought he had seen—die of jungle fever in Nepaul; and Hawthorn and Bob Stuart, for whom he had backed many a bill, and who had been assassinated by Dacoits; but now seeming all well and jolly, hale and hearty, though a trifle pale, after all they had undergone. It was a marvellous—a bewildering meeting; but he felt no emotion either of fear or surprise—as it is said that in dreams we seldom feel the latter, though some of his hosts in figure did at times look a little vaporous and indistinct.

'He was forced to sit down and drink with them, which he did, while old regimental jokes were uttered and stories told till the tent seemed to whirl round on its pole, the pegs all in pursuit of each other; and then Duncan thought he must be off, as he was detailed for guard at dawn. But ere he quitted them, they all made him promise that he was to rejoin them at the same place that day twelvemonth, a long invitation, at which he laughed heartily, but to which he acceded, promising faithfully to do so; then he reeled away, and remembered no more till he was found fast asleep under the hedge of his compound by the patrol about morning gun-fire.

'Duncan's dream, or late entertainment, recurred vividly to him in all its details; he could point to the exact spot where the tent had stood, but not a trace of it was to be found in any way, and no more was thought about the matter by the few in whom he confided till that time twelvemonth, when we found ourselves before Jhansi, with the army sent under Lord Strathnairn to avenge the awful slaughter and butchery there of the officers of the 12th Native Infantry by the mutineers, from whom we took the place by storm; and in the conflict, at the very hour of the morning in which Duncan Skene had had that weird meeting and given that terrible promise, and on the very spot where the supposed tent stood, he was killed by a cannon shot; and just about the same time I received the infernal bullet which is lodged in me still.

'That is a story beyond the common, Roland, for Skene of ours was a fellow above all superstition, and wild though his dream—if a dream it was—he was wont to relate it in a jocular way to more than one—myself among the number.'

Was it the case that the mention of young Skene as a new admirer—perhaps more than an admirer—of Hester had acted as a species of fillip to Roland? It almost seemed so, for after that there was more tenderness if possible in his manner to her, and he did not fail to remark that he saw music and books lying about, presented to Hester by the gentleman in question; and her father muttered to himself with growing satisfaction, for he loved Roland well:

'Now they are all day together, just as they used to be; and see, he is actually carrying her watering pan for the rosebuds. Well, Roland, that is better fun, I suppose, than carrying the lines of Tel-el-Kebir!' And the old gentleman laughed at his own conceit till he felt his Jhansi bullet cause an aching where it lodged. This companionship filled the heart of the girl with supreme happiness, and more than once she recalled the words of a writer who says of such times: 'I think there are days when one's whole past life seems stirred within one, and there come to the surface unlooked-for visions and pictures, with gleams from the depths below. Are they of memory or of hope? Or is it possible that those two words mean one thing only, and are one at last when our lives are rounded and complete?'

One evening, after being absent in the city, Roland suddenly, when he and Hester were alone, opened a handsome morocco case wherein reposed, in their dark-blue satin bed, a necklace of brilliant cairngorms set in gold with a beautiful pendant composed of a single Oriental amethyst encircled by the purest of pearls.

'A little gift for you, Hester,' said he; 'I am soon going to Earlshaugh, and I hope to see you wear these there,' added he, clasping the necklace round her slender throat.