Chapter IV · "THE GIRL I LEFT BEHIND ME."

"There was a time when hope and enthusiasm were the mainsprings of life and action with me. Alas! their places are supplied alone by memory now. No battle in the field has ever been fought without some blunder; then how much more likely is the battle of life to be full of error and mischance!

"In the year after the storming of Ghuznee, in Afghanistan (when both of you who now listen to me must have been boys at school), I found myself at home in Cheshire on sick-leave. I had been wounded by an Afghan lance, and was in comparatively feeble health; so as our way to and from India then was always round the Cape, my leave was for two years from the date of leaving head-quarters, and I was bent on enjoying it all the more that I had come home on promotion; for my corps, the **th, had been sorely cut up during Keane's operations amid the snowy mountains and deep and perilous defiles of Afghanistan. We lost by war and disease nearly all our captains, so we, the subalterns, benefited thereby.

"My aunt, Lady Singleton (dowager to Sir Guy Singleton, a general of the old fighting days of Wellington), received me with open arms, for I was almost the only relation she possessed, and at her old place, Stoketon Moat, near Warrington, but on the Cheshire side of the Mersey, I had always found a warm welcome when I came there for school holidays in the years of my orphanage (my parents having died young), then how much more welcome was I from far away India, and the perils of the Afghan war!

"Stoketon Moat—so called, for once in Saxon times a timber house had stood there surrounded by a moat, of which not a trace can now be found, though it was said to be deep enough when Hugh d'Avranches, after Hastings, slew the whole Saxon inmates of the place, sparing not even the dogs by the hearth—was a beautiful old mansion of the later Tudor days, with heavily mullioned windows that were half-shrouded in ivy, jasmine, and clematis, through the leafy masses of which the sun at times could scarcely penetrate the little leaded hexagonal panes, the upper rows whereof were emblazoned with the armorial bearings of the Singletons for many a generation, back even to Geoffrey Singleton, one of the two knights who represented Cheshire in Parliament in the reign of Henry VIII., who curtailed so greatly the absurd privileges of the county-palatine of Chester.

"The old house stood on an eminence overlooking the sweep made by the Mersey towards Runcorn: it was surrounded by fine old oaks, massive cedars, and dark yews, and the vista through these, as seen from its front, was terminated by the green hill that is crowned by the old ruined castle of Halton.

"Aunt Singleton was of a cheerful disposition, thus Stoketon Moat was seldom without visitors; and on this occasion she had residing with her three handsome and lovely girls, the youngest seventeen, the oldest barely twenty, whose presence spread a new and bright charm to me about the quaint old house.

"Isabel, Lyla, and Katie Vane, were unusually attractive girls; their beauty was great and of the most refined and delicate cast; but the eldest proved the most charming to me. She was twenty now, and I had not seen her for four years before, when an incipient boyish and girlish flirtation had sprung up between us—a flirtation that with our somewhat maturer years was to take a more solid and lasting form amid the seclusion of Stoketon Moat, and the opportunities afforded by its woods and fields, green lanes, and leafy privacy.

"I was an object of interest now, to be flattered, coddled, and petted—pale, and with my recent wound yet green, and yet with all the glories of Keane's campaign to talk about!

"Thus my rival, her admirer Riversdale, had no chance when compared with me, though he was a very pleasant and good-looking young fellow. A doctor of the Royal Staff corps, Robert Riversdale was home on leave of absence like myself, but from America. It seemed to me that Isabel's blue eyes were always seeking mine, and that every glance we exchanged was half-complimentary and wholly caressing. They were glances of mute and secret intelligence, that we alone felt and understood.

"Riversdale's family lived in the neighbourhood of Stoketon Moat; they were wealthy, thus he was everyway an eligible suitor, and had been a kind of privileged dangler after the Vanes for a short time prior to my arrival. He had driven and ridden with them to see all the sights in the county; but his attentions were in no way decided, nor was his preference marked, until my decided admiration for Isabel, seemed as a spur alike to his jealousy and love.

"However, her residence in my aunt's house, our daily, almost hourly intercourse—the vast charm of propinquity, and the chances afforded by it—gave me every advantage over Riversdale; and after the snuff-coloured Bengalee girls, and the dreamy, tawny, and affected Eurasians or Indo-Britons, with whom we were compelled at times to associate when up country, the pure and soft English beauty of Isabel Vane, together with her sweetness of disposition, and a certain piquant playfulness of manner, were so pleasing, that, within a week after my return to the Moat, I was fondly in love with her—madly, I may say, as I never did things by halves in those days.

"I was scarcely aware of the strength or depth of the passion that was growing up in my heart, until one day, when my aunt said—

"'Why is it, Conyers, that your talk to me is for ever of Bella Vane? You are never weary of extolling her accomplishments——'

"'But she has so many, aunt!'

"'Her graceful style of conversation, her elegance of figure, her beauty, and so forth; do you love her, Conyers?'

"'Yes, dear Aunt Singleton,' said I, blushing like the boy I had been, rather than the man I was.

"'Then tell her so, Convers, and God bless you; for Bella, I know, will make a kind and loving wife to the man who is happy enough to win her.'

"My heart leaped within me, and my blood seem to course with renewed force through every vein, as Lady Singleton spoke thus, for already ideas of marrying, of being the actual proprietor, possessor, and protector of a girl so charming, came with her words.

"Well, encouraged thus, my declaration—fully expected, no doubt, by foregone conclusions—and her acceptance came about successfully in the usual fashion, or what I suppose to be such, for I never loved before, and have never loved since.

"In a leafy lane, where the purple plum, the golden apple, and the damson trees entwined their branches overhead, excluding the sun from the thick rank grass below, and where the wild honeysuckle and flowers by the wayside, filled the air with fragrance, as we rode slowly together, side by side, on a summer afternoon, it all came to pass somehow.

"We were long of turning our horses' heads homeward, and the house-bell had summoned us thrice to dinner, ere I lifted her from her saddle with a caressing tenderness and an emotion of delight such as had never before thrilled through me, for we were engaged now; she was my own Isabel, and to be the wife of my heart, before we sailed together for India.

"We were rallied by the laughing Lyla and the golden-haired Katie, about our delay and return at so late an hour; and we must have had self-conscious or tell-tale faces, for the girls were not long in discovering our great secret; and even Riversdale, who unluckily dined with us that day, detected quickly enough on Isabel's engaged finger, a ring which he knew well to be mine, for it was conspicuous enough to him, as he stood by her side to turn the music leaves, as she seated herself at the piano in the drawing-room, where usually music became the order of the evening.

"I, too, was near, and could detect the flush that mounted to his temples when his eyes fell on the ring, and how the words of compliment or flattery he was about to whisper in her half-averted ear, died away unuttered on his lips.

"He was too well-bred to question her, or make the least remark upon the subject; but pleading an after-dinner engagement, took his leave soon after; and I was weak enough to feel some triumph at being master of the position, and that the girl he admired so much and loved in secret, was mine—and mine for ever.

"For ever? Alas, could I then have foreseen the future!

"Three months afterwards the bells rang a merry wedding chime in the old church of Warrington, when Isabel and I knelt at the altar, and were declared 'man and wife' by the white haired rector; and seldom, perhaps, has the sun shone through the quaint stained glass of those ancient windows on a lovelier bride than mine, or on two sweeter girls than Lyla and Katie, in their clouds of snowy tulle, as they knelt, sobbing, of course, behind her.

"A brother officer was to have been groomsman, but an accident detained him, and by an odd chance or fatality, his post was occupied by Robert Riversdale, who acquitted himself to the satisfaction of all—the six bridesmaids in particular, for very striking the fellow looked in his rich staff uniform; though I fancied that his voice faltered when he congratulated me, and he turned deadly pale, as he kissed the cheek of Isabel; but I could forgive him these little weaknesses then; and as if to show that he had no secret repining at my success, he presented her with a magnificent suite of jewels, diamonds and opals set in gold and blue enamel—a suite an empress might have worn; and that evening saw us off to seclude ourselves in Wales, until the honeymoon waned.

"As our carriage drove away from the Moat, and I drew down the blinds and embraced her, caressing her head on my shoulder, 'Oh Isabel!' I exclaimed; 'my own Isabel—at last we are married and one!'

"'Married for life!' she murmured with her face nestling in my neck.

"'Married for love,' I added.

"'Yes, but for life, dearest Conyers—for life, too—and the life beyond, if such can be!' she added with an energy that haunted me even as her words did, when our dark and sorrowful future came.

"I shall never forget the delight of those remembered days—for they are but a memory now—the blissful days I spent with Isabel, amid the green vales, the frowning cliffs and soaring peaks of the old principality; in lonely places where the wild goat, his long beard waving in the wind, leaped from crag to crag, rousing the golden eagle in his giddy eyrie; or by secluded pools and mountain tarns, where the brown otter would rise suddenly to the surface, and, with a spotted trout between his teeth, vanish as quickly to his hole among the rank green sedges. 'The world forgetting, by the world forgot,' at least for a period, we spent it in a calm of joy and tenderness, till Lady Singleton began to weary for us, and urged our return to Stoketon, as I could spend but six months more in England, and would have to report myself at the Depôt Battalion in Chatham, whither Isabel was of course to accompany me.

"How well I can yet recall our long Welsh ramble, the flat vale of the Teifi and the old church of St. David's; the gloomy pass of Llanberris; Craig Ceffyl, where the Welsh made their last brave stand against the 'Ruthless King;' the lovely vale of Llangollen with all its luxuriant greenness and fertility—for we were never weary of wandering, and were full of love and enthusiasm for each other and for everything.

"I had no alloy to my happiness, not even when I found, as by chance I sometimes did, among Isabel's favourite books, a withered flower between the leaves, that had not been given by me, or 'To Isabel, from her friend R.R.,' pencilled on the fly-leaf, for Riversdale's hopes were gone for ever now. But if I progress thus, I fear you may find my story as weary as an old novel written in letters, than which, perhaps, I know of nothing more flat and prosy.

"After we had been some months at Stoketon, a child came to add to our happiness.

"When you see me seated here, a plain and rough old soldier, in his bare or half-furnished barrack-room—if not happy, at least content, like poor La Vallière in her convent—content to do without the luxuries and the tendernesses of life, you may think there is little of the poetry of it in me; but there was much of it then, ere sorrow, care, and unmerited misfortune came upon me.

"A new joy seemed to spread a holy light over all our little circle when the baby came. I shall never forget the tender emotions that made my heart swell tremulously and filled my eyes with a moisture akin to tears. I felt grateful to God and happy with everybody, with the old village doctor, the wrinkled and tyrannical nurse, who assumed command of the entire household; with my benignant Aunt Singleton; the radiant girls Lyla and Katie (exalted now to the sudden dignity of full-blown aunts), and more than all with my poor, pale darling Isabel, for to my enthusiastic mind, something of sanctity seemed to mingle with the love I bore her.

"I felt what the childless can never feel; now more than ever joined, as a certain writer has it, to the great community of man. Here was a little unit, that in the time to come should be a man, to live long after us, I hoped and prayed in my heart of hearts, honourably and well, beyond the years, when the sod had grown green above Isabel and me.

"So the baby grew the wonder of all our little community at Stoketon Moat; Aunt Singleton bestowed upon it a sponsorial silver mug, the handsomest that could be procured, and the white haired and red faced Rector gave it a name and made a little Christian of it, under the double cognomen of Guy Conyers; the latter for me, and the former for the old General who had led his brigade so gallantly at Vittoria and Toulouse; and so, happily passed the days till the time came when I found that I must appear in Chatham garrison, and our home was to be, thenceforward, a broken one!

"If our baby was a hale and sturdy little fellow who throve amazingly, it was otherwise with his mamma, for Isabel made a slow recovery, and was so weak and ailing, when the terrible time for my departure came, that by a consultation of physicians, it was impressed upon me, that she must imperatively remain at home, nor attempt to follow me to India, for perhaps six—certainly for four—months yet to come.

"This was a sad dictum to me, who knew that the transport which was to take me to the shores of Hindostan—the Rangoon Indiaman—was already lying opposite Tilbury Fort, taking in water and stores.

"I shall pass over our parting. It was sad, indeed; and long and frequently did I press both the pale mother and the golden-haired child to my breast, ere I tore myself away, with a whirling brain and a bursting heart.

"'To your care I confide them, dear Aunt Singleton,' said I, as she embraced me at the door. 'I am going now, and perhaps may not be here again before my hair is grey and wrinkles have taken the place of dimples.'

"The overland route had not then been developed, and going to India was, to many, the affair of a lifetime. I had tried to speak in jest, but, alas! I knew not how prophetically.

"I travelled night and day until I reported myself to the Commandant, old Sir William W., and assumed the command of the men of my own regiment, that were to embark next day.

"In the hurry of our departure, I had no time left me for a moment's reflection, luckily: and grey daybreak on the following morning saw us leave Chatham for Gravesend, five hundred strong, all drafts for various corps in India. And as we marched in the still and dewy dawn, to the air of 'The Girl I Left Behind Me,' every tap of the drums and every note of the sweet, low fifes, went keenly to my heart: for I thought of her I had left behind in Cheshire, my girl-wife, my Isabel, with our baby at her breast!

"The cheers of the heedless and unthinking boys—for the detachments were composed of little else—who were off to see the world, each with sixty rounds of ammunition at his back, and ready to face anything—Old Scratch himself if he came against them—failed to rouse either my natural spirit or my military enthusiasm; though I could remember the time, when the loud crash of the regimental band, the bright gleam of the bayonets, and the waving of the colours above nine hundred bearskin caps, with the measured tread of many feet, had kindled both when last I had marched to India, through the deep resounding arch of the old Picquet House, and under the guns of the great Spur Battery.

"Seven miles of dusty road brought us to Gravesend, where the Rangoon lay, a stately ship of eighteen hundred tons, hove short on her cable, with blue-peter flying at the foremast-head. All was confusion on board, for she was a great East Indiaman of the old school, built alike for war and traffic, carrying twenty eighteen-pounders, and eight thirty-twos on her main and lower decks. Everybody was bustling about, and the ship was a veritable Babel. Cuddy stores, with fresh and salt provisions, were being hoisted in from lighters on one side; rusty shot and shell, as ballast, from a Woolwich tender, on the other. Casks and cases encumbered all the decks; paint, tar, beer, tobacco, gin, and bilge-water, loaded the atmosphere above and below; a drizzling rain was falling, and a thick white mist enveloped all the low flat shore; the brick bastions, the curtain and fosse of Tilbury, which is a fort as Dutch in aspect as in character, since its chief strength lies, not in defending itself by fire, but in being able to lay the surrounding district under water.

"More than a hundred women, sailors' wives and sweethearts, were sent noisily ashore. Our men were 'told off' to their berths speedily, and amid the noise and bustle, the voice of Isabel, her face and the baby's, came ever and anon as in a dream before me; and, with something of a sickened heart, I entered the great cabin.

"'Bravo, Singleton! How goes it, old fellow,' cried a familiar voice, and from amid a crowd of oificers who were lounging and lunching about the table, some sitting, some standing, and all laughing and chatting gaily, Doctor Riversdale in his blue undress uniform, with sword and black belt on, came forward to greet me. 'So you are going out in the Rangoon, eh!'

"'Yes, with two hundred men from the depôt. Are you?'

"'Bound for Bombay I am, to be stationed there on the staff. But—but I don't see Mrs. Singleton with you.'

"I then explained, and my voice faltered as I spoke of her, that her health did not, as yet, permit her to accompany me to India. I know not now the words of Riversdale's reply; but the spirit of it impressed me with the idea that her absence proved rather a relief to him. To avoid talking of Isabel, even to my late rival, was impossible. He seemed to like the theme, and perhaps felt a grim satisfaction in the idea that she and I were to be separated for a time.

"The voyage passed over pleasantly enough. At St. Helena, at the Cape, and with several homeward-bound ships, we left letters for those we had left behind us—those we loved, and hoped, if spared by war and disease, to meet again. And the month of December saw us with our various regiments in the army of Sir Hugh Gough, advancing from Agra against the Mahrattas engaged in that war, which was incident to the quarrel about the occupation of Cutch, all of which, however, has nothing to do with my story, save that I was a unit in the army destined to annex the principality of Scinde to the British Crown.

"On the 29th of December we crossed the Chumbal (a river which flows through Central India, from the Vendhya mountains to the Jumna) without loss or much trouble, and had just halted and piled arms to have a little tiffin, when the mails from Europe overtook us, and I got a letter from Isabel, the first I had received since leaving her and home, an event that seemed now to have happened ages ago.

"She was getting slowly better, and hoped to rejoin me soon—at least, to be in Bombay, awaiting the conclusion of the war in Scinde. My eyes suffused painfully, and my heart beat wildly, as I read on; for though petty and trivial to others, situated as I was then, all that followed was dear indeed to me, for it was about our little Guy Conyers. He was growing such a baby, such a love as never was seen or heard of since babies were first invented! His nose was fast resembling mine (I remembered it a most unpromising button), and he had such a pretty pouting mouth, just like Katie's; his eyes were already noticing, and often smiled from his berceaunette at things other people couldn't see; but they were such eyes! How he crowed and laughed, and bit the nurse's finger with his toothless gums; and would persist in kicking off the woollen bootikins Aunt Katie had knitted for him, and his little pink feet seemed more comfortable without them!

"How I devoured all this. I who once upon a time thought all babies most stupidly alike, deuced bores and nuisances, to be avoided and shunned in all trains and steamers. And so while I read on, the picture of Isabel, with her downcast eyes and long lashes, turned to this particular and most wonderful baby, crowing on her knee, or nestling in her tender bosom, came vividly and fondly before my mental eye, till I was roused from my dream of home by the bugles sounding 'fall in,' and the voice of Sir Hugh's senior aide-de-camp saying to the Colonel as he rode past,—

"'The enemy are in front. Please get the battalion formed. Her Majesty's 39th will commence the attack—the 56th Native Infantry to support: stand to your arms!'

"I placed the letter in my breast pocket, drew my sword, and, with a sigh, joined my company.

"I need not detail at any length the battle of Maharajpore, though it proved a fatal field to me.

"The British were fourteen thousand strong, with forty guns; but the Mahrattas, a fierce and warlike race, trained to arms from their earliest years, mustered twenty-one thousand, horse and foot, with one hundred pieces of cannon.

"Under a terrible fire, which, in the end, killed and wounded seven hundred and ninety of our officers and men, we rushed upon them; the old 39th, or Dorsetshire—Primus in Indus, as their colours have it—in the van, and the 56th Bengal Infantry supporting them well and gallantly, soon drove the foe from their guns, bayoneting the gholandazees on every hand.

"Rallying in the village, the Mahrattas again showed front, and fought with blind fury. There the Gwalior troops, after discharging their long matchlocks right into our faces, flung them down, and, like the Scots Highlanders of old, charged us sword in hand, with target up and head stooped behind it. With frantic desperation they fell, like a herd of wild tigers, upon our regiment; and the whole of my company got mingled with them in a confused mêlée, opposing their bayonets or clubbed muskets to the keen trenchant blades of the Indians, who were ultimately routed, with the loss of four thousand men, and all their beautiful cannon save one, which they carried off the field, and to which I was fastened by a rope, a mutilated and manacled prisoner of war!

"The catastrophe happened thus:—

"Amid the terrible mêlée in front of the village, and just when Major Stopford and Captain Codrington, of the 40th Regiment, fell before the very muzzles of the Mahratta cannon, the aspect of the enemy was wild and imposing, and I shall never forget it. Their shrill, mad yells mingled with the cheers of the British, and added to the general roar of the conflict; while their flowing garments, and turbans of every brilliant colour, scarlet, yellow, crimson, blue, and white, studded with precious stones and embroidered with gold, made their excited masses seem gorgeous as a vast field of flowers. Large round shields covered with brass bosses protected their breasts, and over these we saw their swarthy faces, their shining eyes, and crooked sabres, that flashed and glittered in the sunshine. Personally, they were all powerful men, and their strength and activity were only equalled by their recklessness of life and ferocity of purpose.

"'Save me! save me, Singleton, for the love of God!' cried a voice; and dismounted, with his horse shot under him, his bare head (for he had lost his cap), exposed to twenty uplifted sabres, I saw Doctor Riversdale lying among their feet; and I did save him, by a superhuman effort, at the head of twenty determined men. But as we fell back, keeping our bayonets at the charge, a volley of grape and canister shot, from their last and only gun, swept away the twenty brave fellows who adhered to me. I fell among the enemy alone, was cut down by a tulwar, and dragged to the rear of the village.

"I fainted from loss of blood, and on recovering, found myself many miles away from the corpse-strewn village of Maharajpore, and in the hands of a Mahratta chief and a few of his men, now outlaws and fugitives among the mountains; for their army had broken and fled, totally defeated and irretrievably scattered."