Chapter 5

It happened that just two days before the day fixed for the marriage of Miss Priest and Captain Hambleton, there was a fancy-dress ball in the Assembly Rooms at Mussoorie. I think that as a rule fancy-dress balls are greater successes in India than at home. People in India give their minds more to the selection and to the elaboration of costumes; and there is less of that _mauvaise honte_ when masquerading in fancy costume, which makes a ball of this description at home so wooden and wanting in go. At a fancy ball in India "the devil" acts accordingly, and manages his tail with adroitness and grace. It is a fact that at a recent fancy-dress ball in Lahore a game was played on the lap of a lady who appeared as "chess," with the chess-men which had formed her head-dress. This Mussoorie ball, being the last of the season, was to excel all its predecessors in inventive variety. A _padre's_ wife conceived the bright idea of appearing as Eve; and only abandoned the notion on finding that, no matter what species of thread she used, it tore the fig-leaves--a result which, besides causing her a disappointment, imperilled her immortal soul by engendering doubts as to the truth of the Scriptural narrative of the creation. Miss Priest determined to go to this ball, although doing so under the circumstances was scarcely in accordance with the _convenances_; but she was a girl very much addicted to having her own way. Captain Hambleton did not wish her to go, and there was a temporary coolness between the two on the subject; but he yielded and they made it up. The principle as to her going once established, Miss Priest's next task was to set about the invention of a costume. It was to be her last effort as a "spin"; and she determined it should be worthy of her reputation for brilliant inventiveness. She had shone as a _Vivandière_, as the Daughter of the Regiment, as a Greek Slave, Grace Darling, and so forth, times out of number; but those characters were stale. Miss Priest had a form of supple rounded grace, nor had Diana shapelier limbs. A great inspiration came to her as she sauntered pondering on the Mall. Let her go as Ariel, all gauze, flesh-tints, and natural curves. She hailed the happy thought and invested in countless yards of gauze. She had the tights already by her.

Now Miss Priest, knowing the idiosyncrasy of Captain Hambleton, had little doubt that he would put his foot down upon Ariel. But she knew he loved her, and with characteristic recklessness determined to trust to that and to luck. She too loved him, even better, perhaps, than Ariel; but she hoped to keep both the captain and the character. She did not, however, tell him of her design, waiting perhaps for a favourable opportunity. But even in Arcadian Mussoorie there are the "d----d good-natured friends" of whom Byron wrote; and one of those--of course it was a woman--told Captain Hambleton of the character in which Miss Priest intended to appear at the fancy ball. The captain was a headstrong sort of man--what in India is called _zubburdustee_. Instead of calling on the girl and talking to her as a wise man would have done, he sat down and wrote her a terse letter forbidding her to appear as Ariel, and adding that if she should persist in doing so their engagement must be considered at an end. Miss Priest naturally fired up. Strangely enough, being a woman, she did not reply to the captain's letter; but when the evening of the ball came, she duly appeared as Ariel with rather less gauze about her shapely limbs than had been her original intention. She created an immense sensation. Some of the ladies frowned, others turned up their noses, yet others tucked in their skirts when she approached; and all vowed that they would decline to touch Miss Priest's hand in the quadrille. Miss Priest did not care a jot for these demonstrations, and she never danced square dances. Among the gentlemen she created a perfect furore.

Captain Hambleton was present at the ball. For the greater part of the evening he stood near the door with his eye fixed on Miss Priest, apparently rather in sorrow than in anger. His gaze seemed but to stimulate her to more vivacious flirtation; and she "carried on above a bit," as a cynical subaltern remarked, with the gallant major to whom she had been penultimately engaged. Toward the close of the evening Captain Hambleton relinquished his post of observation, seemed to accept the situation, and was observed at supper-time paying marked attention to a married lady with whom his name had been to some extent coupled not long before his engagement to Miss Priest.

Next morning Miss Priest took time by the forelock. She waited for no further communication from Captain Hambleton; he had already sent his ultimatum and she had dared her fate. The morrow was the day fixed for the marriage. Many people had been bidden. Mussoorie, including Landour, is a large station, and the postal delivery of letters is not particularly punctual. So she adopted a plan for warning off the wedding-guests identical with that employed in Indian stations for circulating notifications as to lawn-tennis gatherings and unimportant intimations generally. At the head of the paper is written the notification, underneath are the names of the persons concerned. The document is intrusted to a messenger known as a _chuprassee_, who goes away on his circuit; and each person writes "Seen" opposite his or her name in testimony of being posted in the intelligence conveyed in the notification. Miss Priest divided the invited guests into four rounds and despatched four _chuprassees_, each bearing a document curtly announcing that "Miss Priest's marriage will not come off as arranged, and the invitations therefore are to be regarded as cancelled."

Miss Priest had no fortune, and her mother was by no means wealthy. It may seem strange to English readers--not nearly so much so, however, as to Anglo-Indian ones--that Captain Hambleton had thought it a graceful and kindly attention to provide the wedding-cake. It had reached him across the hills from Peliti's the night of the ball, and now here it was on his hands--a great white elephant. Whether in the hope that it might be regarded as an olive-branch, whether that he burned to be rid of it somehow, or whether, knowing that Miss Priest was bound to get married some day and thinking that it would be a convenience if she had a bridecake by her handy for the occasion, there is no evidence. Anyhow, he sent it to Mrs. Priest with his compliments. That very sensible woman did not send it back with a cutting message, as some people would have done. Having considerable Indian experience, she had learned practical wisdom and the short-sighted folly of cutting messages. She kept the bridecake, and enclosed to the gallant captain Gosslett's bill for the dozen of simkin that excellent firm had sent in to wash it down wherewithal.

Bridecakes are bores to carry about from place to place, and Miss Priest and her mother were rather birds of passage. Peliti declined to take this particular bridecake back, for all Simla had seen it in his window and he saw no possibility of "working it in." So the Priests, mother and daughter, determined to realise on it in a somewhat original and indeed cynical fashion. The cake was put up to be raffled for.

All the station took tickets for the fun of the thing. Captain Hambleton was anxious to show that there was no ill-feeling, and did not find himself so unhappy as he had expected--perhaps from the _redintegratio amoris_ in another quarter; so he took his ticket in the raffle like other people. It is needless to say that he won; and the cake duly came back to him.

Had Captain Hambleton been a superstitious man, he might have regarded this strange occurrence as indicating that the Fates willed it that he should compass somehow a union with Miss Priest. But the captain had no superstition in his nature; and, indeed, had begun to think that he was well out of it; besides which it was currently reported that Miss Priest had already re-engaged herself to another man. But the bridecake was upon him as the Philistines upon Samson; and the question was, what the devil to do with it? He could not raffle it over again; nobody would take tickets. He had half a mind to trundle it over the _khud_ (_Anglice_, precipice) and be done with it; but then, again, he reflected that this would be sheer waste and might seem to indicate soreness on his part. It cost him a good many pegs before he thought the matter out in all its bearings, for, as has been said, he was a gunner, but as he sauntered away from the club in the small hours a happy thought came to him.

He would give a picnic at which the bogey bridecake should figure conspicuously, and then be laid finally by the process of demolition. His leave was nearly up; he had experienced much hospitality and a picnic would be a graceful and genial acknowledgment thereof. And he would ask the Priests just like other people, and no doubt they would enter into the spirit of the thing and not send a "decline." Bella, he knew, liked picnics nearly as well as balls, and it must be a powerful reason indeed that would keep her away from either.

Captain Hambleton's picnic was the last of the season, and everybody called it the brightest. "The Glen" resounded to the laughter at tiffin, and the shades of night were falling ere stray couples turned up from its more sequestered recesses. Amid loud cheers Miss Priest, although still Miss Priest, cut up her own bridecake with a serene equanimity that proved the charming sweetness of her disposition. There was no marriage-bell yet all went merry as a marriage-bell, which is occasionally rather a sombre tintinnabulation; and the _débris_ of the bridecake finally fell to the sweeper.

I would fain that it were possible, having a regard to truth, to round off this little story prettily by telling how in a glade of "The Glen" after the demolition of the bridecake, Miss Priest and the captain "squared matters," were duly married and lived happily ever after, as the story-books say. But this consummation was not attained. Miss Priest indeed was in the glade, but it was not with the captain, or at least this particular captain; and as for him, he spent the afternoon placidly smoking cigarettes as he lay at the feet of his married consoler. To the best of my knowledge Miss Priest is Miss Priest still.

A VERSION OF BALACLAVA

Referring to a particular phase of this memorable combat, Mr. Kinglake wrote: "The question is not ripe for conclusive decision; some of those who, as is supposed, might throw much light upon it, have hitherto maintained silence." It was in 1868 that the fourth volume--the Balaclava volume--of Mr. Kinglake's History was published. Since he wrote, singularly few of those who could throw light on obscure points of the battle have broken silence. Lord George Paget's Journal furnished little fresh information, since Mr. Kinglake had previously used it extensively. There is but a spark or two of new light in Sir Edward Hamley's more recent compendium. As the years roll on the number of survivors diminishes in an increasing ratio, nor does one hear of anything valuable left behind by those who fall out of the thinning ranks. The reader of the period, in default of any other authority, betakes himself to Kinglake. There are those who term Kinglake's volumes romance rather than history--or, more mildly, the romance of history. But this is unjust and untrue. It would be impertinent to speak of his style; that gift apart, his quest for accurate information was singularly painstaking, searching, and scrupulous. Yet it cannot be said that he was always well served. He had perforce to lean on the statements of men who were partisans, writing as he did so near his period that nearly all men charged with information were partisans. British officers are not given to thrusting on a chronicler tales of their own prowess. But _esprit de corps_ in our service is so strong--and, spite of its incidental failings that are almost merits what lover of his country could wish to see it weakened?--that men of otherwise implicit veracity will strain truth, and that is a weak phrase, to exalt the conduct of their comrades and their corps. No doubt Mr. Kinglake occasionally suffered because of this propensity; and, with every respect, his literary _coup d'oeil_, except as regards the Alma where he saw for himself, and Inkerman where no _coup d'oeil_ was possible, was somewhat impaired by his having to make his picture of battle a mosaic, each fragment contributed by a distinct actor concentrated on his own particular bit of fighting. If ever military history becomes a fine art we may find the intending historian, alive to the proverb that "onlookers see most of the game," detailing capable persons with something of the duty of the subordinate umpire of a sham fight, to be answerable each for a given section of the field, the historian himself acting as the correlative of the umpire-in-chief.

It is true that the battle of Balaclava was fought to "a gallery" consisting of the gazers who looked down into the plain from the upland of the Chersonese. But of close and virtually independent spectators of the battle's most thrilling episodes, so near the climax of the Heavy Cavalry charge that they heard the clash of the sabres, so close to the lip of the Valley of Death that they discerned the wounds of our stricken troopers who strewed its sward and could greet and be greeted by the broken groups that rode back out of the "mouth of hell," there was but one small body of people. This body consisted of the officers and men of "C" Troop, Royal Horse Artillery. "C" Troop had been encamped from 1st October until the morning of the battle close to the Light division, in that section of the British position known as the Right Attack. When the fighting began in the Balaclava plain on the morning of the 25th, it promptly started for the scene of action. Pursuing the nearest way to the plain by the Woronzoff road, at the point known as the "Cutting" it received an order from Lord Raglan to take a more circuitous route, as by the more direct one it was following it might become exposed to fire from Russian cannon on the Fedoukine heights. Pursuing the circuitous route it came out into the plain through the "Col" then known as the "Barrier," crossed the "South" or "Inner" valley, and reached the left rear of Scarlett's squadrons formed up for the Heavy Cavalry charge. Here it received an order from Brigadier-General Strangways, who commanded the Artillery, with which it could not comply; and thenceforward "C" Troop throughout the day acted independently, at the discretion of its enterprising and self-reliant commander. What it saw and what it did are recorded in a couple of chapters of a book entitled _From Coruña to Sevastopol_. [Footnote: _From Coruña to Sevastopol_: The History of "C" Battery, "A" Brigade (late "C" Troop), Royal Horse Artillery. W.H. Allen and Co.] This volume was published some years ago, but the interesting and vivid details given in its pages of the Balaclava combats and the light it throws on many obscure incidents of the day have been strangely overlooked. The author of the chapters was an officer in the Troop whose experiences he shared and describes, and is a man well known in the service to be possessed of acute observation, strong memory, and implicit veracity. The present writer has been favoured by this officer with much information supplementary to that given in his published chapters, which is embodied in the following account throughout which the officer will be designated as "the 'C' Troop chronicler."

The "Plain of Balaclava" is divided into two distinct valleys by a low ridge known as the "Causeway Heights," which bisects it in the direction of its length and is everywhere easily practicable for all arms. The valley nearest to the sea and the town of Balaclava has been variously termed the "South" and the "Inner" valley; it was on the slope descending to it from the ridge that our Heavy Cavalry won their success; the valley beyond the ridge is the "North" or "Outer" valley, down which, their faces set eastward, sped to glorious disaster the "noble six hundred" of the Light Brigade. On the north the plain is bounded by the Fedoukine heights; on the west by the steep face of the Chersonese upland whereon was the allied main position before Sevastopol during the siege; on the south by the broken ground between the plain and the sea; on the east by the River Tchernaya and the Kamara hills. Our weakness in the plain invited attack. At Kadiköi, on its southern verge, Sir Colin Campbell covered Balaclava with a Scottish regiment, a Field battery, and some Turks. Near the western end of the South valley were the camps of the cavalry division. Straggled along the Causeway heights was a series of weak earthworks whose total armament consisted of nine iron guns, and among which were distributed some six or seven battalions of Turkish infantry. At daybreak of 25th October the Russian General Liprandi with a force of 22,000 infantry, 3300 cavalry, and 78 guns, took the offensive by driving the Turkish garrisons out of these earthworks in succession, beginning with the most easterly--No. 1, known as "Canrobert's Hill." The Turks holding it fought well and stood a storm and heavy loss before they were expelled. The other earthworks fell with less and less resistance, and the first three, with seven out of their nine guns, remained in the Russian possession.

During the morning, while the Russians were taking the earthworks along the ridge, our two cavalry brigades, in the words of General Hamley, had been manoeuvring so as to threaten the flanks of any force which might approach Balaclava, without committing themselves to an action in which they would have been without the support of infantry. Ultimately, until his infantry should become available, Lord Raglan drew in the cavalry division to a position on the left of redoubt No. 6, near the foot of the Chersonese upland.

While it was temporarily quiescent there Liprandi was engaging in an operation of enterprise rare in the record of Russian cavalry. General Ryjoff at the head of a great body of horse started on an advance up the North valley. Presently he detached four squadrons to his left, which moved toward where Sir Colin Campbell was in position at the head of the Kadiköi gorge, was repulsed without difficulty by that soldier's fire, and rode back whence it had come. The main body of Russian horse, computed by unimaginative authorities to be about 2000 strong, continued up the valley till it was about abreast of redoubt No. 4 [Footnote: See Map.], when it halted; checked apparently, writes Kinglake, by the fire of two guns from a battery on the edge of the upland. The "C" Troop chronicler states that in addition to "a few" shots fired by this battery (manned by Turks), the guns of "I" troop R.H.A., temporarily stationed in a little hollow in front of the Light Brigade [Footnote: See Map.], fired rapidly one round each, "haphazard," over the high ground in their front. General Hamley assigns no ground for the Russian halt, but mentions that just at the moment of collision between our Heavies and the Russian mass "three guns" on the edge of the upland were fired on the latter. From whatever cause, the Russian cavalry wheeled obliquely to the leftward, crossed the Causeway heights about redoubt No. 5, and began to descend the slope of the South valley. Kinglake heard of no ground for believing that the Russian horse thus wheeling southward, were cognisant of the presence of the Heavies in the valley they were entering. But the "C" Troop chronicler states that as the Troop was crossing the plain a few Russian horsemen were seen by it trotting fast along the top of the ridge [Footnote: See Map.], who, when almost immediately afterwards the head of the Russian column showed itself on the skyline, were set down as the General commanding it and his staff.

Kinglake observes that the Russians have declared their object in this operation to have been the destruction of a non-existent artillery park near Kadiköi, while some of our people imagined it to have been a real attempt on Balaclava. But up the centre of the North valley was neither the directest nor the safest way to Kadiköi, much less to Balaclava. Is it not more probable that the enterprise was of the nature merely of a sort of "snap-offensive"; while as yet the allied infantry visibly pouring down the slopes of the upland were innocuous because of distance and while the sole occupants of the plain were a couple of weak cavalry brigades and a single horse battery? Ryjoff on the ridge could see in his front at least portions of the Light Brigade; its fire told him the horse battery was thereabouts too, and there were those shots from the cannon on the upland. Is it not feasible that, looking down on his left to Scarlett's poor six squadrons--his two following regiments were then some distance off--and seeing those squadrons as yet without accompanying artillery, he should have judged them his easier quarry and ordered the wheel that should bring his avalanche down on them?

Kinglake recounts how, while our cavalry division yet stood intact near the foot of the upland, Lord Raglan had noticed the instability of the Turks under Campbell's command at Kadiköi and had sent Lord Lucan directions to move down eight squadrons of Heavies to support them; how Scarlett started with the Inniskillings, Greys, and Fifth Dragoon Guards, numbering six squadrons, to be followed by the two squadrons of the Royals; how the march toward Kadiköi was proceeding along the South valley, when all of a sudden Elliot, General Scarlett's aide-de-camp, glancing up leftward at the ridge "saw its top fretted with lances, and in another moment the skyline broken by evident squadrons of horse." Then, Kinglake proceeds, Scarlett's resolve was instantaneous; he gave the command "Left wheel into line!" and confronted the mass gathering into sight over against him. Soon after Scarlett had started Lord Lucan had learned of the advance up the North valley of the great mass of Russian cavalry, which he had presently descried himself, as also its change of direction southward across the Causeway ridge; and after giving Lord Cardigan "parting instructions" which that officer construed into compulsory inactivity on his part when a great opportunity presented itself, he had galloped off at speed to overtake Scarlett and give him directions for prompt conflict with the Russian cavalry. Thus far Kinglake.