Part 40

On that day, the last he was to spend on earth, there was an unwonted bustle in and around the great military hospital of Fort Pitt, and, natheless the sick and wounded, the weary in body and subdued in spirit, the dying men in the wards, and those whose battles and troubles were over, and who lay stark and stiff under a white sheet in the deadhouse, awaiting the muffled drums and the--now daily--funeral party, there had been a scouring of tins and polishing of wooden tables, a renovation of sanded floors and white-washed walls; an extra folding and arranging of knapsacks and bedding. Staff officers in full uniform, with aiguillette and plume, galloped to and fro, in and out, up and down the steep hill from whence the grim old fort looks down upon the quiet and sleepy Medway, with all its old battered hulks; and then whispers were passed along the wards that the Queen--Queen Victoria herself--was coming to visit the poor fellows who had carried her colours in triumph up the slopes of Alma, through the valley of Inkermann, and in the charges at Balaclava.

Then pale cheeks flushed and sunken eyes grew bright, and all were in high expectation, save one who lay in a corner on his iron bed and straw pallet under a poor rug, with eyes already glazed at times, for the hand of death was heavy on him; and this was my poor comrade Pitblado, with no friend near him save the hospital orderlies, who by this time were pretty well used to suffering and dissolution, and could behold both with stoical indifference.

It was on a day that many yet remember--Monday, the 18th of June--the fortieth anniversary of Waterloo, that all Strood, Rochester, and Chatham were startled from their usual rural tranquillity by the appearance of the Queen and her retinue, as she swept through their narrow and tortuous streets, at her usual speed, to visit the wounded soldiers in Fort Pitt.

The cold-blooded days of the "Four Georges" have passed into the waste of eternity, and it is our happy fortune to have upon our throne a queen whose true woman's heart no glory of station, or fortuitous grandeur of position, can alter.

On his poor pallet, in the sick ward, Willie heard the cheers in the streets of Chatham far below; he heard the clash of arms and the rolling of the drum, as the guard presented arms at the gate, and in his death-drowsy ear he seemed to hear again the din of battle far away, Beverley's voice, and the rush of the charging squadrons; but the sounds brought him back to the world for a time.

He was too feeble, too far gone, to join the melancholy parade before the hospital; but the orderlies opened the window of the ward, and propped him up with pillows and knapsacks, that, like one or two other wasted creatures, he might see the Queen pass along.

"I wish that God had spared me ance mair to see my puir auld father's face," said Willie, whose Scottish dialect came faster back as life ebbed in his gallant heart; "but His will be done. It canna be--it canna be! I maun e'en bear it, and he that tholes, overcomes."

From the windows on the ground floor he saw the glorious noonday sun, on which his eyes were soon to close for ever, for the staff-doctor had rather curtly told him so. He saw the fertile plains of lovely Kent stretching far away towards Rainham, and the windmills tossing their arms on the green upland slopes. He saw the tower of Rochester Cathedral half hidden in the sunny haze, and the great square stone block of the grand old Norman castle towering against the clear blue sky, and casting a sombre shadow on the winding Medway, and poor Willie thought the world that God had made looked peaceful and lovely.

Before the hospital he saw paraded some three hundred men. The front rank lay mostly on the gravel, for they were unable to stand, either by debility or amputation; the rear rank was propped against the wall, on crutches or staves. All wore the light blue hospital gown, trousers, and cap; but many an empty sleeve and useless trouser-leg were there.

Every man of them has been face to face and foot to foot with death, and yet withal their hearts are strongly stirred within them by their Queen's approach. Their hair is long, and in elf-locks; their faces are hollow and pale, and their eyes shine out weirdly, and like bits of glass, as those of the sick usually do.

"Attention!" cries the sleek and well-fed commandant (who, perhaps, had not been at Sebastopol), as he comes along in full uniform, with his cocked hat under his arm, by the side of the Queen, who leans on the arm of Prince Albert; and as they pass slowly along that remarkable line, their eyes and faces fill with pity and commiseration.

Mechanically, at the word of command, all the men make a nervous start. Those who are legless prop themselves on their hands and arms; and some stand painfully erect on their crutches, and their wasted fingers are raised in salute, to where the helmet or the Highland bonnet would have been; but, alas! a hospital nightcap is only there now!

Men of all regiments are there--horse, foot, and artillery, guardsmen, hussars, and lancers; but all wear one sad uniform now.

That morning was long remembered in Fort Pitt; and it was one which, no doubt, our good Queen long remembered too.

With a last effort, Willie rallied, and propped himself at the window, just as a hospital orderly pinned on his blue woollen gown a card like those worn by all the others, stating the age, name, and corps of the wearer. It bore--

"William Pitblado--aged twenty-four--lancer--leg amputated--Battle of Balaclava."

The card, as it was pinned on, caught the eyes of the royal group, and the terrible expression that none can mistake--even those who luckily see it for the first time--was read in Willie's face.

"Do not speak to him, please, your Majesty," whispered the commandant; "his aspect must distress you--the man is dying."

"Dying!" exclaimed the Queen; "poor, poor fellow!"

"Pulse sinking--hope all over--will be dead before evening parade," muttered a sententious staff surgeon.

The Queen had in her hand a magnificent bouquet, presented to her by the ladies of those in the high places of Chatham garrison--heads of departments, and so forth. She detached a white rose, and gave it to the poor dying lad, whose faculties were making a rally for the last time.

He looked at the high-born donor without shrinking or quailing, and, with a sad, sad smile on his face, so thin and wan--for the eye of One who is greater than all the kings of the earth was on him now--the sufferer spoke, but in long and feeble utterances.

"My auld father aye said I need never--never look for--my reward in this world; but--but this day I hae gotten it."

And he pressed the rose to his thin blue lips.

"Are you easy, my poor fellow?" asked the commandant.

"Ye-yes, sir--thank you--very easy,"

"Is there anything you would wish?"

"I would wish to be laid--in the old kirk-yard at hame, where my--my mither lies under a saugh tree--but--but it canna be. God has been gude to me--I might hae found a grave for ever far awa' in the Crimea--and--and no within the sound o' a Christian bell."

His head fell back and turned on one side, as the eyes glazed and the jaw relaxed. The Queen--good little woman--drew back, with her handkerchief at her eyes, and the spirit of my faithful comrade--this poor victim of the war--passed away.

The Queen's white rose is buried with Poor Willie Pitblado. His grave is in the military cemetery, under the shadow of the great Spur Battery.

I know the place well, and a stone placed by Sir Nigel Calderwood marks it.

*CHAPTER LIV.*

Banished every thought of sadness In our home of quiet gladness; Absence, separation o'er, Together, and to part no more. United, lovingly we glide, Ever going with the tide.

Storm nor tempest fear we now, Love sits watching at the prow; Happy, trusting, silently, Onward to the shoreless sea, Together let us drift or glide, Ever going with the tide. ST. JAMES'S MAGAZINE.

"And you love me, dear Newton--and--and no one else?"

Soft autumn was in all her beauty; the forest leaves of Fife were already tinged with yellow; the harvest fields were bare, and the brown partridges were whirring up in tempting coveys from the hard stubble and the hedgerows, while the deep, fragrant clover grew green and rich on the upland slopes.

It was a glorious evening in September, when the days and nights are of equal length. The sun was setting beyond the western Lomond, and casting his dewy shadow far across the woodlands of Calderwood Glen, when Cora and I lingered, hand in hand, in the old avenue, and she asked this rather pleasing--I had almost said, perplexing--question, while her soft and beautiful eyes were turned tenderly upwards to mine.

And dearly I kissed her, for we had been but three days married--so Cora was my _kismet_, my destiny, after all!

I was lost for a moment in thought--even lance-prods and rifle bullets had not cured me of my habit of day-dreaming and memory flashed back to that strange episode in the quarters of the hakim Abd-el-Rasig at Varna, when poor Jack Studhome, Jules Jolicoeur, and Captain Baudeuf were with me, and the words of the conjuring Egyptian quack doctor seemed to come to my ears again--"_Allah kerim_--it is _kismet_--your destiny."

Cora repeated her winning question.

"And you love me, dear Newton--and no one else?"

"Could I fail to love you, Cora--you, who are all affection and perfection, too?"

"Now, in her memoirs, Mrs. Siddons asserts that 'no woman can ever reach perfection until the age of nine and twenty or thirty,' and I require a few years to reach that mature time," she replied.

Another kiss, and perhaps another--I don't think we counted them.

"Ah! how happy I am now!" she exclaimed, as she clasped her fair fingers on my arm, with her cheek reclining on my shoulder.

"And I, too, Cora."

"Shall I sing you a verse of an old song?"

"If you please. Is it the 'Thistle and Rose'?"

"No."

"What then?"

"It's gude to be merry and wise, It's gude to be honest and true; It's gude to be off wi' the old love Before ye are on wi' the new.

But it is too bad to tease you, Newton dear!"

"My dear little wag of a wife!" I exclaimed; for while Cora's sweet voice rippled over the verse, I could smile now, and tenderly too, at the advice it conveyed.

So much for "Time, the avenger!"

In the second chapter of this long history of myself and my adventures I have related that the Calderwood estates were entailed, and were thus destined to enrich a remote collateral branch, which had long since settled in England, "and lost all locality, and nationality too," as Sir Nigel had it, the baronetcy ending with himself, to whom long life!

Thanks to the legal acumen of Mr. Brassy Wheedleton, and of Messrs. Grab and Screwdriver, writers to the signet, Edinburgh, there were "no end" of flaws discovered in the original entail of 1685, registered when James VII. was king of the realm. They boast that they could have driven a coach-and-six through it; so it was speedily reduced, and the lands of Calderwood Glen, with the place, fortalice, and manor-house thereof, and those of Pitgavel, with the mains, woods, and farm touns thereof, which were Cora's own portion, were all secured to us, our heirs--yes, that was the word which made Cora blush--our executors, and assigns, for ever.

The old title of "_Primus Baronettorum Scotiae_," the pride of Sir Nigel's heart, neither I nor mine could inherit; but I have my star of Medjidie, a medal and two clasps for the Crimea, with the French Legion of Honour, and that decoration which I value more than all: the little black bronze Victoria Cross, inscribed "For valour," which I received for the rash attempt I made at Bulganak, with a gallant few, to bring off the mutilated body of poor Rakeleigh, as the reader will find duly recorded in page 336 of the "Army List" for the month in which it was given, if he or she choose to look; and those four prized baubles, won amid blood and danger, shall long be prized as heirlooms in Calderwood Glen.

With the poet, I may exclaim--

Yea! I have found a nobler heart That I may love with nobler love: True as the trembling stars thou art, Pure as the trembling stars above. And shall I live a nobler life, Come peace or passion, joy or grief? Remembrance brings a sweet relief, And points me to this nobler life.

* * * * *

The grass was growing green on the graves of the Alma, and where Albyn's warpipe sent up its yell of triumph on the Kourgane Hill; greener, perhaps, on the graves of the light brigade in the Valley of Death, through which our six hundred chivalry swept like a thunderbolt; and the sweet spring flowers were blooming in the abandoned trenches of Sebastopol, when I could hear the angel voices of glad little ones waking the peaceful echoes in our old woody glen; and there a dark-eyed Nigel, a golden-haired Newton, and a blooming little Cora, with beaming eyes and dark brown braids, gambolled round the gaitered legs of old Willie Pitblado, and the boot-tops of the sturdy old baronet, or were learning "a taste of the brogue," as they rode on the back of Lanty O'Regan, now our head groom.

And when winter comes to strip the old woods, and hurl their rustling foliage before the west wind, seaward, down the lovely Howe of Fife; and when the snows of Christmas whiten the scalps of Largo and the Lomond Hills, we never forgot, after Cora has spiced the wassail bowl, to fill our glasses, and drink in silence--

"To the memory of the brave fellows who died before Sebastopol!"

THE END.

BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD, SURREY.