Chapter V · WOUNDED AND MISSING.

The summer was past, and the mellow tints of its successor were beginning to steal over the woods at Willowdean. September had come, the month of in-gathering, and brown autumn, the evening of the year, was creeping on.

There is visually then a great variety of tints in the Scottish woods; all gradations of green, from the tender paleness of the willow to the bronze-like branches of the sombre pine, mingling with every shade of fading foliage, from bright yellow to russet, brown, and red.

Autumn was beautiful as ever in the fertile Merse; the cattle lowed as usual on the pastoral hills of the Lammermuirs, over which the sun cast the flying shadows of the white clouds that came from the German Sea.

In the household at Willowdean, as elsewhere over all the British Isles, the public prints were eagerly scanned for their contents at that time; and the slow progress of our army in the East was watched with the keenest interest, for there were few in the land who had not either a relative or a friend who faced the pestilence at Varna, and the perils of war that followed it.

And every letter that came from the camp added to the craving for another; but during this anxious and eventful autumn, Willowdean House did not seem to wear its usual aspect. Lady Wedderburn had not her general circle of guests, and no friends were invited to pass the shooting season with Sir John. Robert was not much of a sportsman, so the gun-room was unentered, the preserves remained undisturbed, and the speckled grouse and the golden pheasants kept holiday together, the latter venturing even to feed among the barnyard fowls at the home farm.

Robert Wedderburn was far from being insensible to the beauty of Gwenny, and still more to the pleasing fact that she was an heiress; and, regardless alike of his brother and cousin, he had striven to effect a footing in her good graces from the time Horace departed; but strove in vain: for Gwenny's impulsive and susceptible heart was far away with our army of the East. His futile attentions, however, had been apparent enough to Lady Wedderburn, and had secretly pleased her.

"If Gwenny should happen not to care for Cyril," thought she, "let Robert have her by all means. Her fortune would quite enable him to cut the Temple and the dry study of the law."

Alone, the girl thought ever of the absent Horace Ramornie; and all the scenes they had been wont to visit, even the objects of nature, seemed to the fanciful Gwenny full of his memory by association of ideas. The gurgle of the clear trouting stream that came from the hills and flowed under the old bridge in the Dean, or Den, which being fringed by over-arching willows, gave a name to the place; the voices of the birds, the thrush, the blackbird and woodlark, among the shrubberies of the garden and the stately trees of the lawn, where they always sang most joyously after a shower had gemmed every leaf and flower; the sweet perfume of the clover fields, where many a day they had ridden together and rushed their horses at the fences and turf-dykes, all somehow reminded Gwenny of Horace, the first and only love of her passionate girlhood, now far away facing peril and hardship, it might be to return no more!

That a change had come over her, even when visitors were present, was perceptible alike to Sir John and to Lady Wedderburn. The latter flattered herself that she was at last thinking of Cyril—that she had begun to see his merits, and to remember how attractive he was in person and manner; but the former more shrewdly suspected the real state of matters, for Gwenny could not control her change of colour when the name of Horace was mentioned incidentally, though she betrayed no emotion whatever when that of his cousin occurred.

She never opened the piano now. To sing when Horace was no longer there to listen or to accompany her; to laugh and talk or seem to enjoy the society of others when he was absent—oh, what might he not be enduring!—proved a bitter ordeal to her; and to her kind uncle's observant eye it was evident that the girl was love-sick, but time he knew would cure all that.

We have shown by her treatment of the hapless Mary Lennox that Lady Wedderburn was neither an unjust nor unkind woman. The presence of her son in the field, and the obvious risks he ran there, led her, unlike Lady Ernescleugh, who was immersed in the gaieties of London, to turn her attention to works of charity and benevolence, even more than was her wont; to schemes for the amelioration of the poor; to schools, emigration, little allotments of land on the estate—for her husband denied her nothing; to teaching, visiting the peasantry and so forth, a system which soon caused her and Gwenny to be idolized at Willowdean, for she felt when doing all this good as if she gave hostages to Heaven for her son's safety.

Like every one else who had friends in the army of Lord Raglan, the Wedderburns were kept on the rack of keen expectancy during all that memorable week which ended the month of September. Even in mighty London every kind of business gave place or became secondary to this anxiety and anticipation. All knew that the allies had landed at Eupatoria, and all calculated to a nicety the day on which a battle must be fought—a battle in which the dearest and best-beloved of many might fall.

But it was not until the morning of the tenth day, after we won the Alma, that faint rumours through mercantile sources were heard in London, and with that evening came the telegram, which announced the total defeat of the Russians, and that again, as in the glorious wars of old, our arms had been victorious!

By the following day (Sunday) it was known in Scotland, and in remote places where no electric wire could flash the intelligence; for a whisper seemed to pass over all the land—a whisper which at first was full of exaggerations and mistakes, but it found an echo in every heart, from the apple bowers of Devonshire to the storm-beat isles of Orkney—a whisper of the great battle that had been fought in the strange land so far away.

More keen and agonizing now became the expectancy. Lady Wedderburn thought of her son; Gwenny of her lover Horace,—wounded or dying; yes, it might be dead and buried afar off in that hitherto almost unknown land, so far as we were concerned, and the names of the places in which sounded so strange to the ears of those at home. That already all might be over for ever, was the haunting thought that wrung the aching heart of each.

Three days more passed ere Lord Raglan's telegraphed account of the battle in the London Gazette reached the secluded little town in the Merse; and with a hand trembling Sir John unfolded the morning paper which Gervase Asloane had taken from the despatch box, while Lady Wedderburn and Gwenny quitted their places at the breakfast table, and drew near him with their faces pale and their eyes so full of eagerness and fear that an expression of expostulation escaped the calmer Robert; and even the white-haired butler, and the stolid and bewhiskered footmen in plush, paused to listen for intelligence.

Skipping all the details, Sir John glanced nervously and hurriedly through the paper, seeking first the casualty lists of the battle; and after running his eye down the regimental numbers, he suddenly exclaimed—

"Kate—Kate! oh, my God, our poor boy!" and crushing up the paper, buried his face in his hands.

While both Lady Wedderburn and Gwenny burst into tears, fearing the worst, and a cry of terror escaped little Miss M'Caw, Robert quietly spread out the paper and saw the fatal line which had so moved his father. It came after the list of killed:

"Royal Fusileers; Captain Cyril Wedderburn severely wounded. Since MISSING!"