Chapter XXIII · PERA.

Robbed and stripped by plunderers, in short by the Cossacks of the escort, of their money, jewels, and even their outer garments, Lady Wedderburn and Lady Ernescleugh reached Balaclava, the neat white houses of which were now almost hidden by more recent erections of huts, stores. and so forth, even as its slender population of Arnaouts had become lost amid the overwhelming numbers of its new occupants, the Highland Brigade, Rifles, and other British soldiers of all arms and uniforms; and in the distance their anxious eyes could see the three-tiered batteries, the green domed churches, and the lofty houses of that Sebastopol, whose name was then in the mouths of half the world.

They reached the headquarters of Sir Colin Campbell in such a plight, and in such a state of excitement, that the testy but warm-hearted old Scottish General, after telling them that it was alike impossible for them to go to the front, or to remain in Balaclava, as deaths were occurring every hour by cholera, and that the Sardinians at Tchorgoun had lost a thousand men in three weeks by disease, transmitted them without much ceremony on board a steamer, then just starting for Scutari; and before the poor ladies quite knew where they were, they found her steaming out of the harbour of Balaclava, amid all the débris of wreck and driftwood, and the festering and floating carcases of cavalry horses which encumbered it.

There, at Scutari, they had been told by some one, they knew not who—a staff officer apparently, in tattered uniform, with a haversack under his arm, and wearing a prodigious beard—they "should get intelligence of their sons."

The boat left the vessel's side and he was gone.

"Has Cyril been wounded again?" thought Lady Wedderburn; but ere long, on board the steamer, she learned all!

Poor Cyril had fallen at the head of his company, on the 8th of the preceding June, in the memorable attack, when the great Mamelon, the Quarries, and the White Works were stormed and taken by the Allies. On that occasion, among a host of others, the Master of Ernescleugh had been wounded and sent to Scutari, so it was to him that Sir Colin Campbell's aid-de-camp had referred.

Who can open the Book of Destiny, or see the slender thread, the link or chain of events, that leads to fortune or to fame—to misery or calamity? Happy it is for us that we can never see the future!

Cyril had fallen by a ball through the chest, at the base of the Picquet House Hill, and there he lay, while the tide of his comrades swept on—lay dying and alone, under the sultry sun, while the dull mist of intense heat mingled with the smoke of the conflict, and settled down in the breathless valley, where there was no air to rend it aside; and as his blood and his life ebbed together, there seemed to come to his drowsy ear the voice of Mary Lennox, singing, and he thought himself again listening to her in the garden at Lonewoodlee.

It was the voice of a French sister of charity, at a little distance. She was chanting the De Profundis amid some dying Zouaves, and when her song ceased the soul of Cyril Wedderburn had passed away.

Upon the table in his hut the poor fellow had left a will, hurriedly written. Therein, after piously giving his soul to God, and his body to be buried by the finders, if he fell, he bequeathed certain sums to wounded soldiers of the Fusileers and to the widows and orphans of others who had fallen in the war. His love he left to his parents, brother, and all friends, adding that he would die at peace and with goodwill to all men.

And so he was found lying on his face stone dead when the burial parties came.

Nightfall saw the handsome and gallant soldier shovelled away, with hundreds of others, into the trench-grave—"the vast lumber-house of death"—and the secrets of Mary's love, and of all her sorrows, were buried with him.

Cyril dead! Oh, could it be, thought Lady Wedderburn, that all the objects and wishes of her life had changed within so short a space of time?

"Oh! my Cyril, my son, my pride! and has it ended here, and ended thus?" she wailed out on the breast of Lady Ernescleugh, when she read the last letter sealed for her, and left in his hut. "Oh, where now are all my fond aspirations! oh, my hope! my joy! they have ended now in death! Oh, Cyril! why did I ever bear or nurse you? Yet, I am enduring only what many a poor mother has endured since this fatal war began."

And she wept long the tears of unavailing sorrow, while her maternal heart went sadly home, and back to the sweet days of his tender and loving childhood, when he, who had fallen a handsome and stately soldier, had clung to her skirts, clambered at her knees, and nestled in her bosom, a beautiful, a happy and smiling child with dark eyes and golden hair; and so the loss of her son, combined with keen and sharp anxiety for Gwendoleyne, brought on a species of low and nervous fever, under which she lingered on for many weary weeks in Misseri's Frankish Hotel at Pera. She was not confined to bed, but lay propped on a sofa at the open window, from whence she could see the vast and glittering panorama of Stamboul and all the Golden Horn, with the three-deckers of Abdul Medjid lying at anchor, with the star and crescent flying; but nothing could rouse her. She thought ever of the dead Cyril, the lost Gwenny, and her now futile wish.

"Oh, wherefore should we heap up riches," she would say, "when, as the Scripture tells us, we know not who shall gather them! Oh, Juliana, dear!" she added to Lady Ernescleugh, whose son was now convalescent, and was able to lounge about Pera with glazed boots and carefully parted hair, "I did not think it possible that I could have heard of my Cyril's death, though daily I knew he risked life, and yet live on as I am living. But I don't think I shall survive it long. See, my poor hair has become quite grey, and is coming out fast."

"Use cantharides, dear," lisped Lady Ernescleugh, as she lounged on a satin divan and fanned herself with a bunch of feathers in a pearl handle; "it is an excellent specific," she added, as she saw that her friend's "division" was becoming wider than its wont.

So the quiet, unsentimental and unenthusiastic Robert Wedderburn, who had in his time "spoiled more foolscap than cartridge paper," plodding over his books in the Temple, became the heir of Willowdean and the old baronetcy, the stately mansion, and the Burgh of Barony, with all their political interests, while a grass-covered mound at the base of the Picquet House Hill, was all that remained to his elder brother.