When Hilary’s sin had been purged, and himself (at certainly a somewhat heavy figure) allowed to draw his sword again, he soon regained all his former strength, and health, and perhaps a little more than his former share of wisdom. But he did not march into Paris as Colonel Clumps had once predicted; or at least not in that memorable year 1814. But in July of the following year, he certainly put in an appearance there, under the immortal Wellington, who had been truly pleased to have him under his command, but never on his Staff, again. And Hilary Lorraine, at Waterloo, had shown most clearly (through the thick of the smoke) that if the Duke had erred about his discretion, he had made no mistake about his valour.
And it was, of course, tenfold more valorous of him to carry on as he did there, when he called to mind that he had at home a lovely wife, of the name of Mabel, and a baby of the name of Roger. Because he had taken advantage of the piping time of peace,—when all the “crowned heads” were in England,—to put on his own head that “crown of glory” (richer than mural or civic) whereof the wise man speaks the more warmly, because he had so many of them. In June 1814, Hilary and Mabel were made one, under junction of the good Rector; and nature, objecting to this depopulating fusion of her integrals, had sternly recouped her arithmetic, by appeal to the multiplication table.
At Waterloo, Hilary worked his right arm much harder than he worked it through the rest of his life; because there he lost it. When the French Cuirassiers made their third grand charge upon the British artillery, to change the fortune, or meet their fate, Lorraine, with his troop of the Dasher-Hussars, now commanded by Colonel Aylmer, was in front of the rest of the regiment. The spirit of these men was up; they had been a long while held back, that day, and they could not see any reason why they should not have their turn at it. Man and horse were of one accord, needing no spur, neither heeding bridle. As straight as hounds in full view, they flew; and Hilary flew in front of them. In the crush and crash, he got rolled over, dismounted, and left slashing wildly in a storm of horses. An enormous cuirassier made at him, with a sword of monstrous length. Their eyes met, and they knew each other—the robber and the robbed; the crafty plotter and the simple one; the victor and the victim.
Alcides cried in Spanish—“Thou art at thy latest gasp; I have no orders now from my precious wife—receive this, and no more of thee!” With rowels deep in the flank of his horse, he made a horrible swoop at Hilary, spent of strength and able only to present a feeble guard. Hilary’s blade spun round and round, and his right arm flew off at the elbow; and the crash was descending upon his poor head, when a stern reply met Alcides. Through the joints of his harness Joyce Aylmer’s sword went in, and drank his life-blood. His horse dashed on the plain, like the felled trunk of a poison-tree,—that plain where lay so many nobler, and so few meaner than himself. Having run through the whole of the stolen money, he had donned the French cuirass, and left his wife and infant child to starve.
When the times of slaughter passed, and Nature began to be aware again that she has other manure than bloodshed; when even the cows could low without fear of telling where their calves were, and mares could lick their foals unwept on; and hills and valleys began again to listen to the voice of quiet waters (drowned no more in the din of the drum); and everything in our dear country was most wonderfully dear,—something happened at this period not to be passed over. Parenthetically it may be said—and deserves no more than parenthesis—that neither of the Chapmans had been killed (as mendacious fame reported), only knocked on the head, and legs, and stomach, and other convenient places. Steenie wedded their housemaid Sally; and it was the best thing he could have done, to clean up the steps of the family.
But now there is just time to say that it must have been broad August, when the fields were growing white for harvest, after the swath of Waterloo, ere Colonel Aylmer durst bring forth what he nursed in his heart for Alice. His words were short and simple, though he did not mean to make them so. But he found her in old Chancton Ring, where first he had beholden her; and so much came across him, that he never took his hat off, but just whispered underneath it. The whisper went under a prettier hat, where it long had been expected; and if a feather waved at all, it only was a white one.
“Are you not afraid of me?” asked Alice Lorraine, with a tremulous glance, enough to terrify any one.
“That I am, to the last degree. I never shall get over it.”
“That augurs well,” she replied with a smile—such a smile as none else could give; “but I mean more than that; I mean your fear of what the world will say of me.”
“Of that I am infinitely more afraid. It will vex me so to hear for ever—‘What has he done to deserve such a wife?’”