CHAPTER VIII.
THE COURT-MARTIAL.
St. Giles's clock, the castle clock, and on the dials of every other clock, the hands went inexorably round, and the day and the morning of the eventful crisis came inevitably at last, and Cecil put on his beloved full uniform, as his heart told him, perhaps for the last time—but minus his sword and sash!
He looked round his humbly furnished barrack-room, with the eye of one who was taking a long farewell of something, and a heavy sigh escaped his overcharged breast. Leslie Fotheringhame, who was to act as his legal friend in court, pressed his hand, and said in his off-hand way:
'Take courage, my dear friend. Keep up your pecker, old fellow; Marshal Ney's scrape was a worse one than yours.'
Through a crowd of idlers, witnesses and others, who thronged the antechambers and bare stone passages, they proceeded towards the mess-room, in which the court, composed of officers of the rank of captain and above it, was being constituted and sworn by the president, and all fully dressed in review order, with their swords and sashes, around a table littered with writing materials and a few volumes of military regulations.
The first incident that jarred on Cecil's nerves was the voice of the president, a cranky old Colonel, whose whole life had been passed in sinecure staff appointments, saying:
'Bring in the prisoner!'
And he found himself, after being introduced by Fotheringhame, with whom he sat apart at a writing-table, duly charged with 'conduct unbecoming the character of an officer, in having, on the —— day of ——, 18—,' etc., etc.; to all of which he listened as one in a dream; and still more did it all seem so as the day wore on. How bright the sunshine seemed outside, and how close and dark the ruin within that ill-omened room, which had been so often the scene of hospitality and convivial jollity.
Through the open windows came, as from a distance, the jangle of St. Giles's musical bells, with 'mingling din,' as Scott has it; and their monotony and iteration galled his spirit, and from mere association of ideas he felt certain that he must loath them for ever after.