Part 37

With equal astonishment and pleasure I heard of this unexpected honour, though no way inclined to indulge in self-glory, when a Turkish officer of rank, a fat old fellow, wearing a blue surtout, a scarlet fez, and gold-hilted Damascus sabre--an aide-de-camp of the Seraskier Pasha--brought me the Order of the Medjidie--a silver star, inscribed, in Turkish characters, "Zeal and ardent sentiments of Honour and Fidelity," around the Sultan's cypher, which closely resembled the cabalistic figures on the side of a tea-chest--when he hung it on my breast, I say, the natural emotions of pride which rose in my heart were blended with joy at the pure satisfaction it would afford my dear friends at home.

A jolly cooper of old port would be started at Calderwood, and I already saw in fancy my uncle (to whom I instantly wrote of my safety and success) receiving the congratulations of his neighbours and old servants. And what of Louisa? Surely this would be soothing to her inordinate pride!

It was accompanied by a little diploma in Turkish, to the effect that "Captain Newton Calderwood Norcliff, of her Britannic Majesty's service, having distinguished himself prior to the battle of the Alma, as a gift in appreciation of his worthily-performed duty, his Imperial Majesty the Sultan grants him the fifth degree of the Medjidie medal, together with this warrant. Dated in the year of the Hejira, 1271."

Medals, save those of the old Waterloo veterans, were scarcely known in our service, as yet--thus a decorated man was a man of mark. Yet, amid the excitement of campaigning, this gift was but the gratification of an hour, and the dull craving at my heart to punish Berkeley and to hear from Louisa still remained unsatisfied.

Reduced by service, sufferings, starvation, and cholera, our regiment was very weak now, so all servants and grooms were turned into the ranks. Our chief duty was to watch the Russian forces that were gathered for the relief of Sebastopol. Their outposts were only four miles distant from the little secluded harbour of Balaclava, where under the shadow of an old round Genoese tower, several line-of-battle ships (including the gallant _Agamemnon_), and some dozen of transports, were daily disembarking troops and stores, as they lay within ten yards of the red and white marble rocks that rise into mountains and overlook the inlet, as the steep hills enclose a Highland loch at home.

To harass us, the Cossacks frequently galloped forward, causing a general turn-out of the whole line of British cavalry. Then the trumpets blew "Boot and saddle," lance and sabre were assumed, and arms were loaded; but our ranks would barely be formed, when they would ride quietly back again. We swept all the valleys of everything we could find either to eat or burn, and our patrol duties were incessant. We always slept in our dress-jackets, with boots and spurs on, our cloaks over us, and arms and accoutrements at hand, ready to turn out at the first note of the alarm trumpet: and though the days were sometimes hot, the nights were cold now, and the dews were chilly and dangerous.

Once I had a narrow escape.

On the hilly grounds above the Monastery of St. George, seeing a Turkish officer busy with an old rusty bombshell, the fuse of which had long since burned out, and the contents of which he was investigating by sedulously poking them with the point of his sabre, as he sat cross-legged with the missile in his lap, I drew near. At that moment it exploded, blowing him nearly to pieces, while a splinter tore away my left epaulette!

"Allah be praised! so ends thy black and most unholy magic!" exclaimed a Turkish _onbashi_, who stood near; and then, in the mutilated dead man, I recognised the _hakim_ Abd-el-Rasig, the magician and chief doctor of the 10th regiment of the Egyptian Contingent; and in the speaker, who coolly proceeded to search his remains for coins or valuables, the corporal whose mother's image he had failed to produce in the necromantic shell at Varna!

Squalid, dirty, and miserable, the sentinels of the once splendid 93rd Highlanders, with frayed tartans, patched jackets, and tattered plumes, while guarding Balaclava, presented a very different aspect now from that which they showed when their grand advance along the slopes of the Kourgane Hill struck terror to the souls of the Muscovites.

The Black Watch and the gay Cameron Highlanders were in the same condition. I saw the latter erecting a cairn above the grave of one of their officers--young Francis Grant, of Kilgraston, who had died at Balaclava, and it made me think of the words of Ossian: "We raised the stone, and bade it speak to other times."

So the time passed quickly in our cavalry quarters at Balaclava, while the siege was being pressed, amid misery, blood, and disaster, by the infantry of the Allies. Our duties were the reverse of monotonous, and were frequently varied by most desperate rows among the Montenegrins, Albanians, Arnauts, Greeks, and Koords, who all hated each other cordially, and were always ripe and ready for mischief, as they swaggered about, each with a barrowful of pistols and yataghans in the shawl that formed his girdle; or it might be the alarm of fire, broken out none knew how. Then the trumpets were blown loudly; the gathering pipes of the Highland Brigade would send up their yells; and the fire-drum would be beaten on board the war-ships in the harbour. Then their boats would come off, full of marines and seamen, chorusing "Cheer boys, cheer," while rumours were rife of incendiary Greeks hovering about our stores and powder with lucifer matches and fusees; shots might be fired, a few men cut down, and then we would all dismiss quietly to quarters again.

Dreaming of cutting foreign throats, my groom and servant (until they got a dog tent) slept under a tree close by my tent, each with his martial cloak around him, as Lanty said, "Like two babbies in the wood, only the divil a cock robin ever came to cover them up with leaves."

Lying by night in my tent, around which a wall of turf had been raised for warmth, to sleep after a day of harassing excitement was often impossible. Through the open triangular door, I could see the same bright stars and the same moon that were looking down on the quiet harvest fields at home, where the brown stubble had replaced the golden grain; the line of camp fires smoking and reddening in the breeze as it passed along the hostile hills. I could hear our horses munching as they stood unstalled close by in the open air, and the baying of the wild Kurdistan dogs in the distance far away.

From these, and the nearer objects within the tent, its queer furniture and baggage-trunks, the varnished tins of preserved fish, flesh, and fowl, the warming-pan in which Pitblado stewed my beef and boiled my potatoes (when I had either), hanging with my sword, sash, pistols, and lancer-cap on the tent-pole; a cheese and a frying-pan, side by side with a tea-kettle and writing-case; boots and buckets in one corner, a heap of straw in another; empty Cliquot bottles and a gallant leather bag for holding six quarts of cognac--from all these my thoughts would wander away in the hours of the night to home, and all its peace and comfort.

I thought--I know not why--of the village burying-ground in Calderwood Glen, where my mother and all my kindred lay, and I shuddered at the idea of being flung into one of those Crimean hecatombs that studded all the ground about Sebastopol. On the grassy graves in Calderwood, how often had I seen the summer sun shine joyously, and the summer grass waving in the warm breezes that swept the Lomond hills. The bluebell and the white marguerite, the wild gowan and the golden buttercup, were there growing above the dead; the old kirk walls and its haunted aisle, covered with ivy and the lettered tombs where laird and lady lay, with all the humble dwellers of the hamlet near them, came before me in memory, and I felt intensely sad on reflecting I might be buried here, so far from where my kindred slept, though

The stately tomb which shrouds the great Leaves to the grassy sod The dearer blessing that its dead Are nearer to their God.

Often had dear Cora quoted that verse to me at the old kirk stile, when the rays of a golden sunset were falling on the Falkland woods.

A letter which the Colonel had received from Sir Nigel, had, no doubt, induced this train of thought. It was all, however, about the Fifeshire pack and the Lanark race-meeting, "anent the bond," and Mr. Brassy Wheedleton and Messrs. Grab and Screwdriver, W.S., Edinburgh; that the bond had been got rid of, and Mr. Brassy, too, without having recourse to Splinterbar or old Pitblado's sparrow-hail--matters beyond the Colonel's comprehension, but of which he was to inform me, if he could, through the Russian lines, and discover whether I was well, as my friends were sorely afflicted to hear that I had been taken prisoner by Lord Aberdeen's friends.

Mail after mail came up per steamer from the Bosphorus; but there never was a letter for me from Lady Loftus, and my heart grew sick and sore with its old doubts and apprehensions. Nor were these natural emotions untinged by jealous fear that her cold, aristocratic father, or chilly, imperious mother, had prevailed--or that a more successful suitor had urged his suit. The latter seemed not unlikely, as I heard of her having been seen at the Derby with the marquis, and his party at Brighton. That when in London she was still the cynosure of every eye; that at her opera-box every lorgnette was levelled when she entered; that she was ever smiling, gay, happy, and beautiful!

Letters to Fred Wilford and others of ours told of these things, and some hinted that a marriage was on the tapis with several persons as ineligible as myself; but, save Scriven, none ever hinted at my peculiar bugbear, the marquis.

When I lay on out-piquet, drenched with rain, and chilled by the early frosts, half dead with cold and misery of body, the fears her silence roused within me, added to other discomforts, made me reckless of my wretched life.

What would I not have given for liberty to return to Britain--the liberty which so many sought for and obtained, under a military regime so very different from that of the Iron Duke and the glorious days of Vittoria and Waterloo, until "urgent private affairs" became a byword and a scoff in the pages of _Punch_, as before the walls of Sebastopol; but the liberty for which I panted--liberty to return, and convince myself that I was not forgotten, and still loved by Louisa--a just sense of honour restrained me from seeking; so I remained like Prometheus on his rock, chained to my troop, with its daily round of peril and suffering.

A letter from Cora might have served to soothe me; but Cora never wrote to me. With all the love I bore Louisa, for Cora I had ever an affection that went, perhaps, beyond cousinship; for our regard had begun as companions in childhood, and no cloud had ever marred or shadowed it.

Had I loved her as I loved Lady Loftus, how much of sorrow had been spared me!

So time passed rapidly away until the evening of the 16th of October, when Studhome came to my tent, with a sparkle in his eye and a flush on his cheek.

"Jocelyn has been down to the harbour," said he, "and he has seen Berkeley's yacht. She is now at anchor close to the old ruined castle, and Scriven has boarded her."

"See him at once, Jack, like a good fellow," I exclaimed. "Delay is fatal with one so slippery."

"All right! I'm off!" replied Studhome, seizing his forage-cap, and in a few minutes after I saw him galloping past the redoubts of Kadokoi; for we, the cavalry, with the Highland brigade, were not exactly quartered in Balaclava, but among some vineyards two miles distant from the harbour-head in the direction of Sebastopol.

Lucky for us, too, that we were so, as the harbour of Balaclava was full of dead troop-horses, whose swollen bodies were used as stepping-stones in the shallow places, while all the ground about the little town was full of half-buried soldiers, whose feet, fingers, and fleshless skulls stuck through their shallow graves.

*CHAPTER XLIX.*

To-morrow? O, that's sudden! Spare him: He's not prepared for death! Even for our kitchens We kill the fowl of season. Shall we serve Heaven With less respect than we do minister To our gross selves? Good, good, my lord, bethink you: Who is it that hath died for this offence? There's many have committed it. SHAKSPEARE.

"I have been on board the yacht, Newton. I have seen Berkeley and Scriven there, and the matter is all but arranged," said Studhome, as he tossed aside his whip and forage-cap, seated himself on the edge of my camp bed, and proceeded to light a cigar.

Much though I longed for it, the information gave me a species of nervous start.

"Thanks, Jack. He will come to the scratch, then?"

"Like the muff, or rather the knave he is, in a fashion of his own. I found him surrounded by every luxury on board his yacht, and she is a beauty--the _Seapink_ of Cowes. He was lounging indolently on a rich sofa, in a velvet smoking-cap and gorgeous brocade dressing-gown, tied with yellow silk tassels. By Jove, the fellow was as grandly got up as a Highland piper, or Solomon in all his glory; and he and Scriven were having tiffin--not as we do here, on green coffee and pounded biscuit, but on preserved grouse pie, with iced hock and seltzer water. They asked me to join them, and offered me the chair, which had just been vacated by a--a--pretty Greek girl whom he has on board. His countenance fell rather when he heard my spurs rattling on the steps of the companion-way, and lower still when he discovered my errand. Before our Sybarite of a brother officer, with his bandolined moustaches and exquisite toilette, I was weak enough to feel almost ashamed of my tattered blue surtout, with its frayed frog lace."

"You reminded him of the arrangement made between you and Scriven at Maidstone barracks?"

"Word for word."

"And what did he say?"

"He grew rather pale and nervous, and so forth, and muttered, 'Aw--aw--doocid odd sort of thing. A demmed noosance to fight a fellah when he had just that morning got his leave to return home on--aw, aw--urgent private affairs.' And then he eyed me superciliously and defiantly through his eyeglass, stroking his bandolined moustache the while, till I felt inclined to punch his well-oiled head."

"Confounded puppy!" I exclaimed.

"One might as well sing psalms to a dead horse as appeal to the honour of such as he--the most contemptible fellow one could meet with in the longest day's march."

"So he has actually got his leave for England, then?"

"Yes; so I was not a moment too late. The yacht's crew were taking in water, prior to getting under weigh again. He hummed and hawed, and puffed himself out like a pouter pigeon for a time; but 'a change came o'er the spirit of his dream,' when Scriven, his own peculiar chum, acknowledged that all our mess knew of, and tacitly acquiesced in, the scheme for a hostile meeting within the French lines, or rather within range of Sebastopol, to account for any mishap that might occur. You should have seen how he winced at the word 'mishap!' Scriven and I then retired together on deck for a few minutes, and there arranged that, after sunset to-morrow night, at seven o'clock, as there will no doubt be a brilliant moon, we are to meet on the hilly ground midway between the British left attack and the right of the French entrenchments, about a mile from the South Fort of Sebastopol. There, if necessary, two shots are to be exchanged at twelve paces each, after which we will allow no more firing. The first shot to be tossed for; the others to follow in succession."

"Enough, Jack," said I, trembling with fierce eagerness, as I shook his hand. "When I remember all his perfidy towards me, his cool insolence at Calderwood, the mode in which he sought to compromise me with that poor girl at the Reculvers, his subsequent slanders at Maidstone, his act of treachery at the Balbeck, and his crowning it by the cool assertion that I, and not he, shot my own horse, to fall into the enemy's hands--I shall shoot him if I can, like the dog he is."

I passed the night as I suppose most men do who have such a dreadful business as a duel on their hands. It was all very well for Studhome to urge me again and again to sleep soundly, to keep my hand steady and my head cool; but strange thoughts _would_ come unbidden--thoughts of those who were far away, and from whom I was now, perhaps, on the eve of parting for ever. Yet I could not bring myself to wish that Berkeley had sailed and escaped me.

Next morning ushered in the 17th of October, and with it the first formal bombardment of Sebastopol, on which the breaching batteries opened simultaneously from all quarters; and so terrible was the roar of sound, that in the rifle pits the discharge of the muskets could scarcely be heard. It seemed a mere snapping of caps.

I could not help smiling grimly when I heard the storm of war that was raging in the distance.

"What is one human life amid the numbers that are passing away there?--and such as Berkeley's, too!" said I.

"Too true," replied Jack. "But there go the trumpets for church parade. We are to have divine service in the cavalry camp, it seems."

"Why?"

"We missed sermon on two Sundays--the chaplains were so busy with burial services for the cholera dead--so we are to have our minds enlightened to-day."

As the regiment was for patrol duty, it paraded on horseback, and the whole formation of the parade--the lancers, with their fluttering banneroles; the appearance of the chaplain, with his white surplice and Crimean beard; the Bible on the kettledrums, which were improvised as a pulpit; and, in short, the entire affair seemed to me a species of phantasmagoria, for my thoughts and intentions were far away from that strange and stirring, yet somewhat solemn, scene. I was rather struck with the inconsistency of the text, however, on that a day of such importance to me and to the history of Europe.

"Love thine enemy, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you."

Such was the text of our chaplain on that morning. I heard him praying and expounding amid the thunder of the breaching batteries all round Sebastopol, from the Tchernaya on the right to the Quarantine Point on the left; but late events had turned my heart to stone, and with my mind intent upon a duel to the death, I heard him preach in vain.

Though still unflinching in purpose, he somewhat softened me in one way: and in the evening, after some reflection, and to be prepared for the worst, I wrote a farewell letter to Sir Nigel, with a full explanation of my conduct, and my dearest thanks for all his kindness. My sword, pistols, saddle, and the Medjidie medal I left him as souvenirs, and to Cora some little jewels which I named as remembrances of her old boy-lover, Newton.

Then I turned me to compose a brief, bitter letter to Louisa. It contained but two or three lines. As circumstances stood between us, I could not trust myself to say more than "that I was called upon by the rules of honour, and the duty I owed to myself, to have a hostile meeting with one who had wronged me deeply; that God only could know the sequel; and while at this moment I committed my soul into His hands, I entreated her to be assured that, if I fell, I should die loving her, and her only."

This letter I had just sealed, addressed, and placed beside the other in my tent, when Studhome arrived, cloaked, and ready to set out. Our horses, with pistols in the holsters, were brought to the door.

It was long past five now, and the sun had set. I gave Pitblado the letters, saying--

"I am going to the front this evening, Willie, and, as we know not what may happen, if I don't return, you will carefully see these letters posted for Britain."

My voice must have faltered, for Pitblado looked at me earnestly, and said--

"Of course, sir--of course, sir; but, please, don't talk that way."

"Good-bye!" said I, clapping him kindly on the shoulder; and, as we mounted and rode away in the dark, I could see my faithful adherent looking alternately and wistfully at the superscription of the letters and after us.

Like a mighty shield of gold, the moon had long since risen from the Euxine, far across which its brightness came on the ripples, like a shining path, from the horizon to the red marble cliffs of Balaclava and Cape Phiolente, and now her disc grew smaller as she ascended into the more rarefied atmosphere; but her brilliance gave promise of a clear and lovely night as we quitted the cavalry camp at an easy walk--trotting might shake my hand, Jack said--and took the road that leads direct from Balaclava northward to Sebastopol.

High and broken ground rises on each side of that path which so many trod never to return, and which was now thronged by mounted men pouring down to Balaclava. A mile distant on our left, we passed the hamlet of Karani, and on our right the long line of defence works and redoubts, which lay two miles in rear of Khutor Karagatch, the British head-quarters. Those of France were a mile farther on, to the left; and then, diverging in the opposite direction, in rear of the breaching batteries which crossed the roadway, we sought for a quiet path between them and the extreme left of our army, to reach the broken ground opposite to the bastions of the South Fort, the proposed scene of our little operations.

So grand, so wild, and stirring was the scene, that for a moment I reined in my horse, and, forgetful of the dreadful errand on which we had come, surveyed it with a curious eye.

As I have said, on this night "the moon, sweet regent of the sky," full-orbed and glorious, shone with wonderful brilliance, eclipsing even the fixed stars in the deep blue vault above, pouring ten thousand silver rays over everything, bringing out some features in strong light, or sinking others into deep, dark shadow.

The terrible panorama of Sebastopol lay before us. The noble harbour, with its tremendous batteries, its outer and inner booms, and myriad sunken ships, of all sorts and sizes, the mastheads of some, the mere stumps, bowsprits, and poops of others, visible, showing where the _Flora_ of forty-four guns, the _Oriel_ of eighty-four, the _Three Godheads_ of one hundred and twenty, and all the rest of that vast scuttled armament, mounting more than one thousand five hundred cannon, lay, all sunk to bar our entrance.

We could see the white flag of Russia flying on its citadel; the cupola of the great church; the glass windows of the houses--the entire city, with all the domes and towers glittering in the moonlight, and girdled by its vast and formidable bastions of earth and stone, from which, ever and anon, came a red flash, and the boom of a heavy shot, or the clear, bright fiery arc described by the whistling shell, as it curved in mid air, on its ghastly errand, towards the French or British lines.

All this stirring panorama we saw extending for more than four miles, from the lazaretto on the west to the light of Inkermann on the east, which was glittering in the distance on its tower, four hundred feet above the mouth of the Tchernaya.

Several dead bodies lying in the immediate foreground, and the turf all torn to pieces and studded with cannon-balls and fragments of exploded shell--a literal pavement of iron--did not "add enchantment to the view."