Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  “And our men like bull-dogs,” was William’s brief reply.

  “Have your eyes about you!” exclaimed Langly, hurriedly. “Unless I am mistaken, they are bearing down upon us, sword in hand. Poor Hill!” he continued as a soldier fell at his side: “that was a fatal bullet for you! There fall two officers! Heavens! how they are swept down! Can you see who they are, Allair?”

  William turned his eyes; but before he could answer, something fell in his path. It was Langly, shot down to death.

  There was no stopping, and William was hurried on. He was an eye-witness to the dreadful slaughter in the Queen’s 24th regiment. On they came, at full speed, this ill-fated corps: but, what could that handful do against the numbers that overwhelmed them? The Sikhs were like ferocious beasts of prey, howling, swearing, dealing death with their deadly weapons. The unhappy 24th were exposed to it all; to the full sweep of their batteries, the full play of their musketry. Man after man fell, officer after officer; half the regiment was cut down in a few minutes, and the rest were falling. Two hundred lay dead, three hundred wounded — only in this one ill-fated regiment.

  But, who is this who advances, sword in hand, gallantly leading on his men to avenge the death of so many of his comrades? It is Brigadier Pennycuick; as brave and honourable a soldier as ever drew breath. William Allair knew him well, and recognised him; for, let me tell you, that in a scene such as this it is not so easy to recognise individuals as it is on the quiet field of peace. He had fought in many a campaign, but this was to be his last. Almost as William looked, he was struck down, sent to follow his companions, who were already standing before God. The Sikhs, with their mutilating weapons, and the Brigadier’s own men, began to contend for the body.

  But now another flies up, and plants himself astride on the dead Brigadier. His hand grasps his drawn sword, and he waves it nobly; but his heart is rent, for the dead whom he would guard is his father. It was indeed the brave old officer’s son; a noble boy, younger by three years than William. But recently had he quitted England, full of hope, and in the highest spirits. And it was to run this brief career that he had come to India! Brave lad! His spirit was good to defend his father against them all; but the Sikhs would not let the boy escape with life. He fell under their weapons; and the two, father and son, were left lying on the battlefield together.

  The dead and the dying lay in heaps upon the ground. Numbers, who might have been saved by surgical care and assistance, were left alone to die. And for this there was no help. Night stopped the carnage. And then William, with others, helped to do what he could for the wounded. It was a fearful task; one to make a strong man’s heart shrink. They lay, writhing in their agony; not a surgeon to be had, not a taste of water! There was no linen to bandage up their wounds; there were no pillows to place their beating heads upon, save the dead men and horses that strewed the earth around them. How do you think you would like to make one on a battle-field?

  After a while William Allair, thoroughly exhausted, lay down on the field. But not to sleep. A more dreadful night he never passed; he almost wished for a return of his delirium and the miserable forecastle of the “Prosperous.” He had been slightly wounded in his left hand; it pained him much, though it was nothing to look at; and he felt ready to perish with the intense thirst. Tremblingly alive was he to the horrible details around him; not only to the multitude of dead. The wails of the dying were ringing in his ears; the incessant cry for water; the anguished prayer from the wounded, not to be left there, amidst the dead, to die.

  Another feature of discomfort was soon added to the scene. A thick, drizzling rain came on, wetting to the skin, and putting William in mind of the perpetual soaking he had experienced in rounding Cape Horn. He rose from the ground at length, and wandered about, not openly complaining — he never did that, — but bitterly deploring the wild infatuation which had led him to quit his home for scenes such as these. Never was his folly more present to him than on this dreadful night.

  Without knowing it, he came upon the field hospital And he never forgot the sight presented to his view. Poor, poor men! poor, sick, disabled soldiers Î They were lying on the ground with little help; medical attendance was lamentably scarce, and the hospital apparatus was not there! Awful suffering witnessed he that night. One incessant cry went up around—” Water! water! water!” And there was none.

  Who gained the victory? We claimed it, and the Sikhs claimed it. One thing was certain — that we lost standards and guns, and did not hold the field of battle. The following morning Lord Gough rode round, in the midst of the rain, and gave orders to mark out an encampment. At four o’clock the funeral of the officers took place. William attended it. Thirteen of the ill-fated 24th were buried in one grave; Brigadier Penny-cuick and his son were buried in another.

  A day or two later, William was in the hospital, waiting to have his hand dressed. He felt languid and feverish; and clinging to him was a presentiment that he should never leave the plains of India alive. It was singular that this idea should have come to him. He had escaped unhurt — or all but unhurt — from that desperate battle. Why then should a fear of death follow him now? It cannot be said why. These things are unaccountable. But the presentiment did haunt him.

  Whilst he was waiting, the chaplain, the Reverend Mr Whiting, entered, and prepared to administer the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper to the dying, and to others who might wish for its consolation. For the first time in his life William Allair partook of it. Few but did. The scenes gone through lately had brought men to their senses; the worst and most callous of them had become alive to the awful consideration that he possessed an immortal soul, to be welcomed or rejected by Heaven.

  William knelt there with the rest, humbly repentant. His eyes were blinded with tears, his heart was riven with sorrow; and when he rose up, he dared to hope his sinful disobedience had been forgiven, and that, should it be his fate to die on those battle plains, he might sink to rest in calm trust and peace.

  CHAPTER XVIII.

  AN UNEXPECTED MEETING.

  WILLIAM ALLAIR lingered in the hospital, willing to bestow his services, where so many were in need. He was standing close by the side of one who had received a wound in the leg, less dangerous than painful. He was a remarkably well-grown young man, six feet two inches high, and not above a year or two, as William judged, older than himself.

  William fell into a train of thought. A comrade had called this young man “Jenniker,” and the name had brought up vivid memories of home. Was it possible that the wounded soldier, stretched there before him, could be the once intimate companion of his boyhood? He had entered the army, and had gone out to India. William scanned him attentively, and decided in the negative; for, in the darkened, bronzed face lying there, across which a contraction of pain often passed, he could not trace the fair features of the careless schoolboy. But William might have remembered that since they met, the years which change the boy into the man had passed.

  “Lend a hand to put this precious leg of mine straight, will you, comrade?” he exclaimed, suddenly addressing William.

  “You are from England,” William remarked, as he assisted him.

  “Merry England, as they call it,” was the answer. “Not that I found it so merry, or I should not have taken wing from it. Though, with all its faults, it was a decided improvement upon this.”

  It was certainly Jenniker. The words were characteristic of him.

  “You are from Whittermead! You are Richard Jenniker!” cried William eagerly, as he laid hold of his hand.

  “And who the wonder are you?” demanded Jenniker, partially raising himself on his elbows, and regarding William from top to toe.

  “Do you not remember me?”

  “I never saw you.”

  “Indeed you have, hundreds of times. We passed years at Dr Robertson’s together.”

  “Then I have forgotten you out and out. Were you to tell me your name I should not recognise it.”

  “Yes,
yes, you would. You have not forgotten William Allair, any more than I have forgotten Richard Jenniker.”

  They remained silent for some minutes, their hands locked together, each one examining the face of the other.

  “I trace your features now,” cried Jenniker. “But you are much altered. How broad you have got in the shoulders!”

  “My service at sea has done that for me.”

  “And how you stoop!”

  “So would you, if you had had nothing but a high chest to sit upon for three years. Going to sea spoils the figure, if it spoils nothing else, Jenniker.”

  Jenniker laughed. “I heard you were gone off on a pleasure trip to the Mexican coast; or enjoying the genial climate of the Polar regions. Who would have dreamt of seeing you here?”

  William explained in a few words. That he had been shipwrecked, was rescued, and carried to Calcutta, where he had joined the British troops.

  “What utter fools we were!” burst forth Jenniker. “Self-willed, lamentable fools! To leave England, where we might have lived in ease and plenty, and blindly embark on the perils of an untried, unknown life! I’ll tell you what I have been tempted to compare it to, Allair; to the madness of those unhappy wretches, who rush, uncalled, from this world to the next. They know not the soundings they enter upon, neither did we.”

  William groaned in spirit. His “soundings” had, indeed, been false.

  “But, Allair, there was one excuse for me, which you had not — if an excuse can ever be found for decamping away in disobedience. You had a jolly home and loving friends: I had neither.”

  “Too true.”

  “I had an uncle, who did not care a straw for me; a step-aunt, who hated me. The only being who ever cast a thought to me was Mildred. With a father and mother, such as you possessed, I should have been another sort of chap. It would not have been Dick Jenniker the scapegrace, but Richard Jenniker the affectionate, dutiful son. Don’t look so incredulous, Allair: it would.”

  “I am not incredulous,” replied William. “At the time of your leaving, many persons spoke out plainly, and condemned Mr Jenniker for his harshness. Lord Sayingham told him of it to his face. He said you ought to have been bought off.”

  “Oughts don’t go for much in this world. He was harsh to me! I wrote to him soon after I got out here; it was just after — the writing, I mean — our engagements with those demons of Sikhs at Moodkee and Ferozeshah, in 1845. Precious hot work they were, those actions; and I had the luck of arriving just in time for both. I was wounded at Ferozeshah; and while I was lying ill, not knowing, and perhaps not caring, whether I should live or die, I wrote to my uncle a letter of contrition. Begging pardon — or something akin to it — for my ungrateful escapade, and expressing a hope that if I lived to return to Europe, we might be better friends and relatives than we had ever been. Not a word spoke I of my soldier’s life; that I did not find it altogether a bed of roses; and I don’t suppose it would have elicited any sympathy if I had. Well, would you believe it, Allair? — he never answered the letter Î He has never given me a condescending line since I left.”

  “Perhaps he did not receive your letter,” said William.

  “I know he did,” was the answer. “And that they flung it aside as they had flung me — a thing unworthy of notice. Mildred writes to me; but she has to do it on the sly. A sweet, gentle girl is she! and there was more friendship between us than the world knew of. She did not think me all bad, and I deemed her the most estimable of human beings!”

  “Then — if you correspond with Mildred — you must know all the news of Whittermead!” burst forth William.

  “She gives me the tops and tails of it. What of that?”

  “Oh, tell me! — let me hear Î — what do you know of home; my home?” he exclaimed, in painful excitement.

  Jenniker looked at him, and hesitated. “When did you hear last?” he questioned.

  “I have never heard since I left.”

  “Never heard!”

  “How could I hear, blocked up on that remote Californian coast? The vessel or two that did come out there, sported the stars and the stripes. At any rate, if letters came, I never got them.”

  “Then you are in ignorance of — of anything that may have transpired since you left?” returned Jenniker, who was looking rather subdued.

  “Very nearly so. I saw Harry Vane in Calcutta. I was in the hospital, and discovered by accident that he was on board a vessel lying in the Ganges. He could not tell me much. He had not been home since he left, neither had he recently heard. The ‘Hercules’ had been at New South Wales, and he supposed his letters had miscarried. It was fifteen months, full, since he had had news. How were they all at home, when Mildred last wrote?”

  Jenniker made no reply. He was a bad adept at deception, fond as he used to be of the romancing — as William had once called it — with which he used to cram the school. William saw that there was something to be told which Jenniker did not like to tell. To one of quick imagination, this sort of suspense is next to unbearable. A sensation as of death-sickness came over his heart, but he maintained an outward calmness. Those who feel the most deeply show it least.

  “I see you have some bad news to tell me, Jenniker. Let me know the worst at once.”

  Jenniker still hesitated. He did not much relish the task before him.

  “You are making me ill,” murmured William. “Why don’t you speak out? I have strength to bear it, whatever it may be. — Are — are my father and mother dead?”

  “One of them,” answered Jenniker, in a low voice.

  “My father thought his life would not be a long one,” returned William, battling with his suspense.

  “When I last heard Mr Allair was ill.”

  “And my mother?”

  “She is dead.”

  There was a silence. William’s face was white and rigid as marble.

  “What did she die of?” he presently asked.

  “It was said of a broken heart.”

  A broken heart! The perspiration broke out, in drops as large as peas, over his livid features.

  “I see it all!” he said. “My conduct killed her. In my dreams this has been sometimes shadowed forth.”

  “Now, don’t think worse of it than it was!” cried Jenniker, glad that the ice was broken. “She went off like a person in a decline. I don’t believe in broken hearts, for my part; they are all moonshine, and double moonshine. She loved you dearly, Allair, and called upon you to the last So, how could you have killed her?”

  “Called upon me to the last,” echoed William, with the air of one who repeats what he does not hear.

  “Mildred wrote me all about it; she was stopping there at the time, with your sisters,” continued Jenniker. “For three days previous to her death, she was scarcely in her right mind; it was that wandering, I conclude, that sometimes precedes it. Her whole talk, then, was of you; now praying that you might be preserved on the sea, now fancying she saw you in danger of shipwreck, and crying wildly to the sailors to save you. Next, she would witness you in all imaginary hardships, and lament, in the most heartrending terms, that you were exposed to such; again she would fancy you had returned, and that she was clasping you in her arms, wild with joy and thankfulness, sobbing hysterically.”

  “Go on; tell it all,” said William, for Jenniker had stopped.

  “But in all her illness, in this wandering, or previous to it, she never breathed against you a word of reproach; you were still her darling William; her eldest and dearest child. But they said she never held up her head, so to speak, from the night you left; and after the receipt of a letter you wrote from America, her health visibly declined. —

  William made no reply. He only wiped the moisture from his brow.

  “In this letter, as Mildred related it to me, you said you were working on an American trading ship, and were bound for California, round Cape Horn. Now, of all dreadful accounts that anybody could give or imagine, of what the life was on boa
rd these ships, Gruff Jones gave the worst to Mrs Allair. Like an idiot, as he was, for his pains!”

  “He told truth; — it is the worst,” interrupted William.

  “Well, he need not have said it. It couldn’t improve things for you, and it only made her worry and fret over them. Let him go open-mouthed with his tale to all the village, had he liked, but he might have had the sense to spare Mrs Allair. Gruff always was a booby. Why couldn’t he have persuaded her that the trading ships were little models of Paradise, where the chaps had nothing to do but sit cross-legged all day, and dine on beefsteak and onions?”

  Jenniker stopped again, but still William never spoke. “She had imagined the life dark enough before, but Gruff’s description was the climax. Always was she brooding over the hardships you must undergo, the perils you were exposed to. Not that she said much; but they could see how it was. And, from what escaped her in the death-delirium, it was evident that these sorrows had haunted her night and day. Added to which, was the constant fear, or presentiment if you like, that you would not live to return.”

  “When did she die?” questioned William, burying his face in his hands.

  “About twelve months ago, I think; but I am a bad one to remember dates. Stay — it was in January; for I know in the same letter, Mildred told me how they kept up Christmas at the Jennikers’. Yes, a twelvemonth ago, as near as possible.”

  “Two whole years and some months of sorrow, of yearning, for me!” he gasped. “And this is true!”

  “True!” echoed Jenniker, taking the words as a question. “I shouldn’t give it you if it were not true.”

  “How was my father?”

  “Ailing,” Mildred said; “not over strong.”

  “And the rest?” he continued, his face still hid in his hands.

  “Oh, the rest were all well,” carelessly replied Jenniker. “Edmund as silly as ever.”

  “I will come in another time, Richard,” said William, starting up. But Jenniker caught him by the hand.