Chapter I · IN BARRACKS AGAIN.

"As I informed you by telegraph, Wedderburn, we embark on the 5th—so you have a fortnight to get your outfit for the East, to see all your old flames in Rochester and Brompton, to practise the use of the revolver at the Spur Battery, and every other little art of war or peace that may be turned to useful account in the land for which we are bound."

It was Sir Edward Elton, the Lieutenant-Colonel of the Fusileers, who spoke laughingly to Cyril, when the latter in uniform, with sword and sash on, reported himself in due form at Chatham Barracks, as having joined from leave, three days after his departure from Willowdean.

In the prime of life and manhood, Sir Edward looked every inch a soldier. Fully six feet in height, his strong and lithe figure had endured, without being impaired, the snows of Canada and the fierce hot sun of India: but his coal-black hair was becoming grizzled now. His dark hazel eyes were keen, but calm and resolute in expression, as those of one born to command; and his voice was full, deep, and rolling, though apt to become husky after he had "handled" the regiment throughout a long field-day on the Lines or elsewhere. He was the beau ideal of what a British officer and a thorough English gentleman ought to be: and had seen some sharp service in the East Indies, when with Pollock's Brigade in Afghanistan. He was thrice wounded on the banks of the Sutledge, and was nearly finished off by a thrust from a Sikh lance at the battle of Aliwal.

"You'll find all our fellows pretty much the same as you left them," he resumed; "Probyn as keen at billiards as ever; Bingham always in a scrape with some enterprising maid, wife, or widow; Pat Beamish always late for parade, breakfasting on seltzer and curaçoa, with a wet towel round his head, and the major giving, as usual, his song of 'The girl I left behind me,' to the last few who linger at the mess-table."

"He may sing that song with full effect, ere long," replied Cyril, laughing at the Colonel's enumeration of a few regimental peculiarities.

"We shall have work enough and to spare in getting all ready by the 5th of the month; the baggage must be reduced to the smallest possible compass, and all we don't require, must be left, like the poor women and children, with the depôt. I am glad to say that the regiment is in the highest order and discipline, and able, thank God! to face more than its own strength of any troops in the world."

Elton's eye kindled as he spoke, for he was intensely proud of his regiment, the noblest qualities of which he had carefully fostered and developed; and perhaps no finer body than these Royal Fusileers existed in the service of the Queen, being all picked men, and in their ranks the three countries of the Empire were pretty equally represented; if there was any preponderance it was in favour of England, and among them were more "Good-conduct-ring men," than almost any other corps could produce.

"I shall see you this evening at mess, I presume. This is our last night there; to-morrow it is to be broken up. There is no parade this afternoon, save for the juniors and recruits; so I would advise you to fill up a spare hour in going over the company's accounts and so forth."

And, as the Colonel concluded, he once more turned to the "Register of Services," one of the thirteen great books which are kept in every regiment of Infantry.

Cyril shook his hand, quitted the orderly room, and once more found himself in the sunlighted barrack square, where squads of recruits are for ever marching to and fro, with or without rifles, practising the balance-step, or swinging the clubs or the dumb-bells, and mechanically he took his way to his old rooms, on the tree-shaded and somewhat gloomy old brick terrace which overlooks the parade-ground.

Though his quarters as a captain—one small apartment and a still smaller bed closet, their walls covered with mean and dingy paper of the cheapest material—were quite familiar to him, their poverty of aspect, the small and coarsely-glazed window that faced the blank brick wall enclosing St. Mary's Hospital, the lowness of the ceiling, the ugly wooden beam which crossed it and was covered with ten thousand indentations made with a poker (the usual mode then of summoning one's servant from his den above) together with the meagre and rickety furniture obtained on hire from some exorbitant Jew, all impressed him unfavourably, fresh as he was from the luxury and splendour of his own home at Willowdean.

He tossed his sword and crimson sash on the table with a sigh, and opened his blue surtout with its gold shoulderscales—the most handsome undress ever worn by the Line—as if he was choking from want of air.

Was it not a dream that since he had last stood there, matters were so changed between him and Mary Lennox; that he had indeed lost her, and should never hear again the voice that found so soft an echo in his heart?

He had received no explanation from her of that obnoxious episode, the visit to Chesterhaugh; he had asked none, nor, perhaps, would he have listened to any in the mood of mind he was then. Yet he was not without a lingering hope that she might write to him in some fashion; and so the craving to hear from her, or of her, combated fiercely with the sterner resolve to pluck from his heart the memory of her image, and all that she had been. It was so difficult—so bitter a conviction to entertain, that all was indeed over between him and Mary Lennox! But he had never told her where his regiment lay, a singular omission, and in her sequestered home among the Lammermuirs, she knew none who could inform her, even if her little pride of heart would have permitted her to write. She, like him, longed and looked for letters; but did so in vain. None were exchanged, so disappointment and mistrust grew fast between these two, who had hitherto loved so tenderly.

While in this mood of mind, Cyril Wedderburn had no desire for the tame monotony of overhauling his pay-sergeant's books, and seeing that Private Jones had been duly credited or debited the sum of ninepence; that Private Brown's stoppage repaid the expense of the shako and ball-tuft he had lost in a row on St. Patrick's day; that Private Smith's clearances had been paid to his wife when her last baby was born, and not to the clamorous canteen-keeper; and that all the messing, clothing, and accoutrements of ninety odd non-commissioned officers and men, were right and regular.

But as idleness was impossible, he took his new-bought revolver-pistols, and went forth to the Spur Battery to practise in the dry ditch, at sundry imaginary Russians. Even of that he wearied, for in the ditch were already some thirty or forty noisy, happy, and heedless subalterns—boys fresh from Sandhurst or Eton, and chiefly ensigns of the Provisional Battalion, all cracking away to each other's peril with their revolvers, and emulous in their pistol practice; and so, while numbers of his brother officers, with whom he was an especial favourite, were searching for him at his quarters, the mess-room, and all about the barracks, he was leaning over the lofty summit of the glacis, gazing dreamily at the old familiar scene, which spread far down below him like a map.

He saw the fertile plains of Kent, steeped in the light of the noon-day sun, stretching far away till lost in hazy distance; the village of Rainham, and all the windmills that studded the green slopes; the sleepy Medway with all its man-o'-war hulks and freight of lesser craft, winding between its banks; bustling Chatham, its streets full of red-coats; the great square stone block of Rochester Castle, and the tower of the Cathedral, both rising from amid a sea of sunny vapour, half in light and half in sombre shadow; and immediately beneath the lofty bastion was the gloomier feature of the scene—the Military Cemetery, where lie the bones of a vast army—of the thousands who have escaped the battle and the pest, in every clime where our drums have beaten, and who have come home invalided at last, worn out by wounds and with constitutions broken, only to die in Fort Pitt, and fated neither to see home or kind, or to enjoy the hard-won pittance named in mockery a pension, but to find an obscure grave under the brow of the great Spur Battery.

Cyril looked long and thoughtfully over this scene so familiar to his eyes, while those sounds so incessant in the adjacent streets of barrack, the drum, the bugle, and often the shrill Scottish pipe, were perpetually ringing in air, announcing orders, parades, or dinners, and so forth; and he marvelled in his heart how he and all those in whom he had an interest, and for whom he had a love, might be situated, ere that day twelvemonths came round; for now war had been declared, and the sword was drawn; already the combined fleets of France and Britain lay before the Russian harbour of Odessa, and none knew what an hour might bring forth.