Works of Ellen Wood, page 624
“Don’t take it to heart in this way, Allair. Fathers and mothers must die, and it’s only in the course of nature that they should go before we do. I lost mine when I was a lad. Don’t take it so much to heart!” William wrung his hand; and, without a word — for he could not utter it — made his way from the field hospital.
And when the shades of night fell and shielded him from observation, he threw himself on the ground, and sobbed aloud, in his excess of grief. The rain was falling in torrents, the earth was soaked with it, for it had scarcely ceased since the night of the battle. But he was unmindful of rain. His cup of sorrow was indeed full; and he would have been thankful to die on the spot, as he lay there. Never had the consequence of his folly, in all its sad reality, come home to him until now. His best friend on earth was gone; had broken her heart for him; had called upon him in dying: and he was far away, and knew it not.
Was it for this that he had passed through his dangers and his sorrows? Through the hard work on the coast; through the harder life at sea; through the fever and delirium; through the fatigue of the forced marches; through the horrors of the battle-field! Against all had his spirit fought; for there was ever a still small hope alive in his heart, whispering him to bear up, that he might once more behold the mother whose love he had so wantonly cast aside. And now he knew that that mother had died; and died for him!
Bury your face in the wet earth, William Allair, and call in vain upon her who is no longer on earth to respond. The sin of a child’s ingratitude is a grievous one; and grievous must be its retribution.
CHAPTER XIX.
DYING IN THE FIELD HOSPITAL.
BOTH the Sikhs and the British forces remained some three weeks at Chillianwallah, in the position each had taken up after the battle. Then the Sikhs moved away in the night towards Goojerat, a town situated seventeen miles distant, midway between the Jhelum and the Chenab. They took possession of the place, and entrenched themselves round about it.
Lord Gough followed them, marching up his troops. I wonder if you have a tolerably correct idea of what marching in India is? It is essentially different from marching in England. Weary work it is there — killing work sometimes. They have often to push through plains of thick jungle breast high; or they plod over the hot sand, the small dust from which flies into their eyes, blinding them for the time, and causing intolerable pain. For a change, the land will be a marshy swamp, and they must wade through that. In those forced marches the burning sun seems to be a very fire, oppressing the brain, blistering the face, scorching them through their hot, heavy clothing. And there’s not a drop of water to be obtained, did you give your life for it.
William Allair’s hand did not heal. It gave him great pain, and became suddenly much worse; greatly inflamed and swollen. This was after the march of the troops to Goojerat, where they encamped in front of the Sikhs. The medical staff ordered William to lie by: they did not like the look of his hand at all; and a whisper went round amongst them, that locked-jaw might supervene. Wound or no wound, he was certainly very ill. During the last month his spirits had alarmingly sunk, and he was worn to a skeleton.
On the morning of the 21st of February, at sunrise, the troops got under arms, and formed up in order of battle. Lord Gough cantered down the lines, each regiment cheering him as he passed. The men and officers generally were in high spirits, chatty and cordial: an acquaintance, who at another time would be passed with a bare nod, is met with a warm grasp of the hand, when there is a chance that that day’s salutation may be the last.
A little before eight, the bugles sounded the advance. A shout, that made the plain ring, broke from the entire army, as it moved on in answer. The morning was clear and beautiful, the landscape most fair, the land rich with cultivation. Between columns of infantry, their scarlet uniforms dazzling the eye, stalked the elephants, drawing the heavy guns. Dividing the divisions of infantry, went a light field battery; and between each brigade rode a troop of horse artillery, in their handsome dresses of dark blue. To the flanks rode the cavalry, some in quiet French grey, some in the sparkling costumes peculiar to the dragoons and lancers; while the irregular cavalry favoured all colours: flaming yellow, bright green, sky blue, scarlet and gold. And this beautiful scene was soon to be marred by war.
The action commenced immediately, and for three hours raged incessantly — the guns booming, the balls from either side ploughing up the earth, shattering those who stood on it. Doolie after doolie, long lines of them, passed in procession, bearing the wounded to the field hospital. Towards mid-day the battle ceased — not the slaying. The Sikhs had lost; they were flying helter skelter from the field, and the British bore down upon them, striking and slaying without quarter or mercy. They were hewn down by thousands; and those who took shelter in the village were shot or bayoneted. For ten miles did the pursuit last; and as the British rode back to camp, it was over the numberless bodies of the slain. Charming work, that battle doing!
Strange confusion was in the camp of the Sikhs. Tumbrils and waggons were standing upside down; the ground was strewed with the dead and dying; wounded horses were dashing madly about in their pain; camels and oxen danced in the rear, oversetting whatever came in their way, and turning summersets for themselves. The work of slaughter from the victorious British troops — mad then, as well as merciless — went on as hard as it could go. In this engagement we recaptured all our guns and standards lost at Chillian-wallah, as well as many belonging to the enemy.
And William Allair? Was he in all this disastrous turmoil and melee, as he had been in that of Chillian? No. Then where was he? In the field hospital, dying of locked-jaw. As the doctors surmised, the fatal termination had supervened.
He lay there, restless and full of pain; yet snatching at intervals a few moments of sleep. In one of these blessed intervals there came to him the sweetest dream! All the more so, from the contrast it presented to his waking realities.
He dreamt that he was at home at Whittermead; that it was one of those brilliant, sunny days of spring, which, in spite of our railings against this unlucky climate, do condescend to visit us now and then. Just such a day as that happy 29th of May, when you met William Allair for the first time. He thought he was in the Grange meadow, lounging (it seemed too warm to run) through its growing grass, all sparkling with cowslips and bluebells, and those lilac-coloured flowers, not unlike a bluebell in shape, that they called cookoos. He vaulted over the stile — it was less trouble than to open the five-barred gate at its side — and continued his way towards Grange brook. Very soon the murmuring of the rivulet, as it ran on its course between the banks, where grew so many violets and primroses, reached his ear; and, with a pace imperceptibly quicker, he gained its side. The overhanging trees, of many sorts and sizes, cast over the stream their grateful shade — oak, ash, lime, horse-chestnut, willow, fir, larch; underneath which William had lain hundreds of times in his boyhood, gazing up through their leaves at the dark blue sky. It had puzzled the Cockney, Mr Fisher, to tell their names: it would have puzzled him still. Here, in imagination, William threw himself now, and watched the water. Nature seemed at rest. The birds were singing in the calm, quiet air, hopping from tree to tree; the butterflies and bees sported on the fragrant banks; and the ringing bells of Whittermead came flowing to his ear with the sweetest melody, sweeter than ever he had heard it in life. Strange that this dream should visit him amidst bodily sufferings so great! But so it was. It was almost as though they were for the brief moment suspended. He seemed to lie yet on that pleasant grass. The branches of the trees fanned the gentle breeze in his face, and wafted onwards the faint perfume of the lime blossoms; never had he seemed so completely to realize the rest of earthly peace. And now, as he looked, there knelt Edmund, in that little dell by the miniature brick bridge; and his sisters, Alice and Rose, were sitting on the worn old oak stump. By their side was another form, whom he soon distinguished to be that of Caroline Vane, with her handsome eyes and stately presence. They were threading a daisy chain for Edmund — as they had many a time done in reality. A double chain, it seemed, they were going to make him; for while Caroline Vane plucked the blossoms from the stalks, Alice and Rose were both passing their needles through the daisies. Suddenly he saw his mother at his side, looking down upon him with her gentle smile; but at the same moment a terrible thirst came on, like that he had been forced to endure several times of late. “Oh, mamma! I am so thirsty!” he said; and she smiled again, and dipped a glass, which he now saw she held in her hand, into the crystal stream of the rivulet, through whose clearness might be seen the white pebbles underneath. She raised it, brimming full, and handed it to William. Whilst he was drinking, he saw his father and Harry Vane opposite to him. The latter laughed and spoke; but William was too agreeably occupied to listen.
He laid down the glass. It was the sweetest draught he had ever tasted: but, even while his lips were wet with its moisture, a dreadful change took place. The most frightful pain was racking him, such as he had once never imagined could be borne; the thirst he had just slaked had returned tenfold; the soft music of the bells had changed to jarring sounds; while all around him seemed to lie wounded men, soldiers, crying out with agony. For one blissful moment, William was unconscious that he had awoke to REALITY.
Oh, boys, boys Î Never, never desert, as he did, your father’s home. Should the temptation ever assail you, pause on the very threshold of the ill-omened thought, and remember William Allair.
One of the surgeons, Dr MacRae, came up and looked at him, for he had given vent to a sharp wail of anguish. The doctor little thought that it proceeded from the sick mind, rather than from the body. How should he think it? He passed on: nothing more could be done in this world for William Allair.
He turned his painful eyes, over which the shades of death were gathering, upon the doolies, as they were brought in with the wounded. In one of those doolies lay the fine form of Richard Jenniker. Cured of the hurt received at Chillianwallah, he had gone forth that morning, a hale, healthy man; and now he was brought back, wounded unto death.
“Lay me down here,” he panted to the soldiers who bore him, indicating by a nervous motion of the hand the spot close to William. “I suppose this is our last day on earth, Allair, so we may as well die in company.”
“Can nothing be done for you?” murmured William, whose indistinct utterance and closed mouth prevented Jenniker’s catching at more than the sound of the words, and he had to guess at the sense.
“Nothing, they say. I have got a big hole in the side, and the blood’s welling out of me like a waterspout.”
“I was in hopes you would have been spared. And would have borne back tidings of my death to Whittermead.”
“It is decreed otherwise, it seems. By this time tomorrow, we shall both have passed into another world.” William cast his reproachful eyes towards him.
“I know what that means,” cried Jenniker. “You would say that my tone of speech ill becomes such as we are. But it comes natural to me. I meant nothing wrong: nobody could at an hour like this. God is all-powerful to save. He forgives what we’d not forgive to one another. We have seen our share of ill in this life, Allair, knocked about as we have been: let us trust that, by God’s mercy, which we greatly need, the next will prove a brighter and a better world for us.”
“Amen!” said William, as he clasped his hands together. “Amen, Amen!”
They were both buried the next morning in the common grave, shared by the others who had died in the night. What should we all do with this world’s sin, and mistakes, and suffering, but for that other blessed world which has to come! — for God’s mercy, for our Saviour’s love!
And now, boys, what do you think of running away to sea?
THE END
MILDRED ARKELL
CONTENTS
VOLUME I.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XV.
CHAPTER XVI.
CHAPTER XVII.
CHAPTER XVIII.
VOLUME II.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XV.
CHAPTER XVI.
CHAPTER XVII.
VOLUME III.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XV.
CHAPTER XVI.
VOLUME I.
CHAPTER I.
WHICH IS NOTHING BUT AN INTRODUCTION.
I am going to tell you a story of real life — one of those histories that in point of fact are common enough; but, hidden within themselves as they generally are, are thought to be so rare, and, if proclaimed to the world in all their strange details, are looked upon as a romance, not reality. Some of the actors in this one are living now, but I have the right to tell it, if I please.
A fair city is Westerbury; perhaps the fairest of the chief towns in all the midland counties. Its beautiful cathedral rises in the midst, the red walls of its surrounding prebendal houses looking down upon the famed river that flows gently past; a cathedral that shrouds itself in its unapproachable exclusiveness, as if it did not belong to the busy town outside. For that town is a manufacturing one, and the aristocracy of the clergy, with that of the few well-born families time had gathered round them, and the democracy of trade, be it ever so irreproachable, do not, as you know, assimilate. In the days gone by — and it is to them we must first turn — this feeling of exclusiveness, this line of demarcation, if you will, was far more conspicuous than it is now: it was indeed carried to a pitch that would now scarcely be believed in. There were those of the proud old prebendaries, who would never have acknowledged to knowing a manufacturer by sight; who would not have spoken to one in the street, had it been to save their stalls. You don’t believe me? I said you would not. Nevertheless, I am telling you the simple truth. And yet, some of those manufacturers, in their intrinsic worth, in their attainments, ay, and in their ancestors, if you come to that, were not to be despised.
In those old days no town was more flourishing than Westerbury. Masters and workmen were alike enjoying the fruits of their skill and industry: the masters in amassing a rich competency; the workmen, or operatives, as it has become the fashion to call them of late years, in earning an ample living, and in bringing up their children without a struggle. But those times changed. The opening of our ports to foreign goods brought upon Westerbury, if not destruction, something very like it; and it was only the more wealthy of the manufacturers who could weather the storm. They lost, as others did, a very great deal; but they had (at least, some few of them) large resources to fall back upon, and their business was continued as before, when the shock was over; and none in the outer world knew how deep it had been, or how far it had shaken them.
Conspicuous amidst this latter class was Mr. George Arkell. He had made a great deal of money — not by the griping hand of extortion; by badly-paid, or over-tasked workmen; but by skill, care, industry, and honourable dealing. In all high honour he worked on his way; he could not have been guilty of a mean action; to take an unfair advantage of another, no matter how he might have benefited himself, would have been foreign to his nature. And this just dealing in trade, as in else, let me tell you, generally answers in the end. A better or more benevolent man than George Arkell did not exist, a more just or considerate master. His rate of wages was on the highest scale — and there were high and low scales in the town — and in the terrible desolation hinted at above, he had never turned from the poor starving men without a helping hand.
It could not be but that such a man should be beloved in private life, respected in public; and some of those grand old cathedral clergy, who, with their antiquated and obsolete notions, were fast dropping off to a place not altogether swayed by exclusiveness, might have made an exception in favour of Mr. Arkell, and condescended to admit their knowledge, if questioned, that a man of that name did live in Westerbury.
George Arkell had one son: an only child. No expense had been spared upon William Arkell’s education. Brought up in the school attached to the cathedral, the college school as it was familiarly called, he had also a private tutor at home, and private masters. In accordance with the good old system obtaining in the past days — and not so very long past either, as far as the custom is concerned — the college school confined its branches of instruction to two: Greek and Latin. To teach a boy to read English and to spell it, would have been too derogatory. History, geography, any common branch you please to think of; mathematics, science, modern languages, were not so much as recognised. Such things probably did exist, but certainly nothing was known of them in the college school. Mr. Arkell — perhaps a little in advance of his contemporaries — believed that such acquirements might be useful to his son, and a private tutor had been provided for him. Masters for every accomplishment of the day were also given him; and those accomplishments were less common then than now. It was perhaps excusable: William Arkell was a goodly son: and he grew to manhood not only a thoroughly well-read classical scholar and an accomplished man, but a gentleman. “I should like you to choose a profession, William,” Mr. Arkell had said to him, when his schooldays were nearly over. “You shall go to Oxford, and fix upon one while there; there’s no hurry.” William laughed; “I don’t care to go to Oxford,” he said; “I think I know quite enough as it is; and I intend to come into the manufactory to you.”
