CHAPTER X.
THE TELEGRAM.
In her joy and impulsiveness, Mary actually embraced Leslie Fotheringhame, and kissed him when she heard from Annabelle of the reconciliation, and explanation of all that seemed so unpleasant and mysterious.
'Had she not loved you—yes, loved you dearly—do you think she would have felt all this so much—so keenly and so bitterly!' said Mary to Fotheringhame.
And hearty were the congratulations of the general, who was pleased that Eaglescraig should be the scene of such an event, though love and lovers' quarrels were somewhat beyond his sympathies now; but he liked Fotheringhame, as a friend of the absent Cecil, and he had a strong regard for Annabelle, the only daughter of an old and valued Indian comrade; so the episode immediately brought to memory one of his inevitable 'up-country' reminiscences.
'Talking of lovers' quarrels,' said he, as they idled over the dessert; 'egad! I remember one which was not without some strange features. When we were in Lucknow, under Inglis—just about the time of the first outbreak of the mutiny—a pair of lovers met, who had quarrelled in some jealous pique at a ball in Chowringhee. Olive Vane was a pretty brunette, daughter of an old Sudder judge, and her Romeo was Bob Acharn—cousin of Acharn of Ours, a lieutenant of the Bengal Native Infantry. There was not a better fellow at pig-sticking, or shooting, in all India than Bob; and I remember that, at Jodpore, he watched and waited for days and nights to pot a man-eater that had made a whole village desolate.
'As people don't lose time in love affairs in India, it was fully arranged that—the quarrel made sweetly up—the lovers should be married on the 31st of May, though many there were who said that the time was not one for marrying or giving in marriage, for the rising of the Pandies at Meerut, some time before, had sent a thrill of terror through every European breast in India, and at Lucknow, as elsewhere, it was uncertain when the secret hate of the natives might burst into a flame.
'The bridal party gathered, and at the very moment the clergyman was asking the bride if she was ready, a musket-shot entered the room, and she fell, mortally wounded. It had entered her chest, and then ensued a scene which I cannot describe.
'A company of Acharn's regiment—the 71st Bengal Native Infantry—had been brought in from the Muchee Bawn for disaffection some days before. They refused all obedience, and in vain were the black silk colours they had borne at Sobraon displayed to them. It was deemed imprudent to coerce them; and the result was that on that eventful evening—the 31st of May, the budmashes, or armed mob of Lucknow, rose, six thousand strong, crossed the Goomtee in wild tumult by a ford—a dark mass amid which there were thousands of glittering steel-points, rushing to join the mutineers. From one of the latter came the shot that struck down Olive Vane. We turned the great guns of the Residency upon them, and, after an hour's heavy firing, the insurrection was suppressed for a time; but a time only.
'During the attack and repulse, poor little Olive Vane lay motionless on a sofa, with young Acharn bending over her, weeping like a boy, and striving to staunch the blood that welled from the terrible wound in her bosom—a wound which the doctors declared she could not survive above an hour. When she recovered consciousness and learned the truth, her courage never quailed, but she said: