CHAPTER VII.
'I HAVE COME FOR YOUR SWORD.'
The mind of Cecil, next forenoon, when he partially awoke, and seemed to grope his way back to life and to the world, was a species of chaos. He was ill, sick, abed in the doctor's hands—too ill to think—too weak to rise. He found himself in his quarters in the castle, and the events of the past night confused themselves grotesquely and hideously with the prosaic features of the apartment in which he lay: the joy and rapture of his being with Mary, mingled with the remembered horror that seemed to envelop him, as darkness descended on his eyes and the ball-room whirled round him, and amid the circles of the dancers, the crash of the music and the murmur of many voices, he fell heavily on the floor, as all sense passed away, and he seemed to sink into a sea!
When he did begin to come round and rouse himself, he was sensible of a hum of voices, and considerable odour of vinegar and of cigars, in his huge room—for a large one it was; and there were Acharn, Leslie Fotheringhame, and Dick Freeport and the doctor, refreshing themselves with brandy-and-water, talking about the ball and surmising about himself, sympathisingly, and in low tones.
'I cannot comprehend it,' he heard the doctor say; 'a curious case, and not like imbibing too much. He must have eaten or drunk something poisonous at the supper-table. There was no sudden transition from heat to cold—he had undergone no great fatigue or excessive weakness to cause such a fit as overtook him; but I have known strong and healthy persons, abounding in blood, seized with sudden faintings after violent exercise——'
'But, man alive, doctor, Falconer is one of the best round dancers in the regiment,' said Freeport.
'It must have been the closeness of the room,' said Acharn.
'It looks a deuced deal more like half-poisoning,' exclaimed the doctor, with a finger on Cecil's pulse. Then turning to Falconer's servant, Tommy Atkins, and a hospital orderly who were in attendance, he ordered his hands to be rubbed, and his head to be bathed with brandy, salts to be held to his nostrils, and a little wine, as soon as he could swallow it, to be given him—for he was unwilling to accept the idea that was forcing itself upon him, that Cecil had, perhaps, taken too much champagne over-night; and then he withdrew.
In defiance of the doctor's injunction, which was that he was to lie with a low pillow, Cecil struggled up into a sitting posture and looked rather wildly around him as he greeted his friends.
He felt that he was in a dreadful emergency—a coil—yet in his pale face there was that faint indication of a smile that is sadder by far than none; for he felt that however well-meaning and attached to him his brother officers were, they were certain to have but one fatal suspicion in the matter.
'What on earth has come to you, Falconer, old fellow?' said Fotheringhame. 'I never knew of your getting into a scrape like this, even when a greenhorn, who was fined a dozen of Moselle for first drawing his sword, or a ditto for the sergeants' mess on first carrying the colours!'
'By Jove! it knocks me into a cocked hat,' added Freeport; 'I can't reason over it—the whole thing seems so unnatural—so horribly unreal! This is a worse scrape than mine with the three daughters of the depôt commandant.'
'There was safety in the trio,' said Acharn.
'Yes—he couldn't marry them all, certainly,' said Fotheringhame, 'though I am not prepared to say that if the law of Scotland permitted it he might have tried to do so.'
'How can you fellows jest thus?' said Falconer, faintly.
'True—I beg your pardon,' replied Fotheringhame; 'but chaff and fun are such habits with us.'
'I fear that this affair will be no "fun" for me. Have I talked much nonsense, Dick?'
'Well—being screwed—Cecil, you certainly did talk a lot of stuff; but people do that at all times, and even when quite sober.'
Falconer felt his heart sink at the view his best friends were taking of this catastrophe. He felt that he was the victim of some hidden and mysterious circumstance over which he had no control; but how was that to be proved? and he knew that in the chief city of Mrs. Grundy the public always took the worst possible view of everything.
'You do not think—you dare not think,' he exclaimed half-entreatingly and half-defiantly, 'that I forgot my position and the honour of the corps, and took too much wine last night—in uniform and at a public ball too, in presence of the general commanding and all the staff?'
'I fear, my dear Falconer,' said Fotheringhame, 'that it only looks too much like that very mistake.'
'By heavens! I was never near the supper-tables but once—and had but one glass of Moselle!' cried Falconer impetuously.
'But people will be sceptical in such matters,' said Acharn, pulling his long black moustache angrily; 'and from much of what I heard on parade this morning there is a devil of a row impending.'
'Over me?'
'Yes.'
At that moment there came a single knock smartly on the door, and the adjutant entered with an expression of grave concern on his face. After a few words of kind inquiry, and half apology, he said:
'I am so sorry for you, my poor fellow, but the chief is furious, and, by his order, I have come—for your sword.'
The words seemed to sink into Falconer's soul. He knew all this implied, and that, too probably, it was the beginning of his destruction—the beginning of a bitter end!'
So his sword was taken away, and he found himself under arrest—but arrest at large, as the adjutant informed him that he was at liberty to take exercise within defined limits, within the barracks, but not to go beyond the barrier-gates of the fortress, and not to quit his room otherwise than in uniform, minus a sword and sash.
All this was not new to him, of course, yet he had listened to the adjutant as one in a dream, and saw him take away the sword. After the departure of this important official—the grand vizier of the colonel—the gravity of the situation became painfully apparent to all, and it may well be supposed there was no more jesting then, and Falconer felt all the horror of the new position.
His mysterious illness seemed to grow worse now; a dreadful ache racked his head; his heart grew heavy as lead, and his spirit seemed to die under this disgrace and all it implied and all it imperilled, and as yet he had not the most remote idea that he was the victim of a wretch's revenue: thus the well-meant efforts of his friends to rouse him and inspire him with the hope that he would yet get over it—that all would be explained—that all would be well in the end, and so forth, were made in vain.
Dick Freeport, Leslie Fotheringhame, and the entire corps were bewildered by the catastrophe, and poor Tommy Atkins, who doted on his master, was in despair—got very tipsy on the head of it, and had given him, therefore, three days in the black hole, to contemplate the unstability of human—and more especially of military—affairs.
Events followed each other fast now; and when again the adjutant most reluctantly visited him, it was to announce that he was in orders for a general court-martial, and to furnish him, by the colonel's instructions, with a copy of the charge preferred against him, 'for conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman at the ball,' together with a list of the witnesses for the prosecution.
All the bright, youthful, and enthusiastic hopes—the hopes cherished for years; all the visions of glory and honour conjured up on the day he first donned his uniform, were crushed and gone now, like the dear love of yesterday, for the love of Mary had—in one sense—come into his heart but yesterday; and yet, how strong and keen, how tender and true it was!
So bewildered was poor Falconer by his mysterious illness, the sudden giddiness and unconsciousness in the ball-room, and his symptoms since, that he actually began to believe at last, or adopt the idea, based perhaps on the remarks of his medical attendant, that he had been guilty of what was unwillingly imputed to him.
And yet, how could it be? Utterly unconscious as he was of Hew's vicinity to him on that occasion, the idea that he had been vulgarly, yea brutally, hocussed, never occurred to his simple mind, though the doctors hinted that he must have partaken of something deleterious.
Apart from his comrades of the mess, there was an intense interest in the regiment for Cecil; the soldiers, and even their wives, paid him surreptitious visits of condolence; and the children of his company, who had been the recipients of so many Christmas-boxes and bonbons, lingered with hushed voices under the windows of his room—the girls curtseying and the small boys coming to 'attention' and saluting him quite gravely as their fathers would have done; and Cecil felt all this keenly and gratefully.
In the barracks and guard-house, his affairs were under constant and serious consideration, through the medium of much birds'-eye, and among many stories of kindness and generosity, connected with Cecil's popularity among the Cameronians, was one which they recalled prominently now: how, on one occasion, after a long day's march of heat and thirst, far up country in India, when commanding an advanced picket before the position of a hill-tribe, he had found, on visiting his sentinels, one of them, Tommy Atkins, worn with toil, sound asleep—a crime which was death by the Articles of War, if reported.
But instead of making poor Tommy a prisoner with the quarter-guard, he had shouldered his musket and kept the post in person, watching over the sleeping soldier on the one hand and the hill-camp on the other, till the movement of armed tribesmen in front compelled him to fire and bring the picket under arms.
He saw less of his chief friend Leslie Fotheringhame than he might otherwise have done, for the time of the latter—despite anxiety for the affair of his friend—was much occupied by Annabelle Erroll, and in dangling after her.
At last there came a day which Cecil never forgot, from the emotions of mortification and humiliation it occasioned him, It was a Thursday—the usual 'march-out' day for the regiment. From his window he watched its departure, with bayonets fixed and colours flying, in heavy marching order, and in all the pride and bravery of the service, while he remained behind a prisoner, disgraced, deprived of his sword and sash, with a terrible ordeal before him, and too probably a doom—to him—worse than death!
And he heard the drums grow fainter and fainter, till their last notes died away in the distance, and he heard only the beating of his heart, that followed them with painful yearning it had never known before.
Anon, when the regiment returned, Freeport told him that when passing the house of Sir Piers Montgomerie, it had been halted in column, when the fine old soldier came out on the balcony and was received with a general salute, which he beheld with swelling heart and glistening eyes, and then he attempted to make a speech, but his voice failed him—yet he made a short one—so short as only to be equalled by that of the Duke of Wellington to the Household Brigade, when, after keeping silence for some time, he said, 'Guards! you know me, and I know you—stand at ease!'
'Was—was Miss Montgomerie on the balcony?' asked Cecil, after a pause.
'No; there was only old Mrs. Garth waving her handkerchief vigorously, and alternately mopping her eyes with it, poor old soul, as she thought, I have no doubt, of old John Garth of our Grenadiers. I thought it strange that the belle of our unlucky ball was not there.'
But Mary had been watching the regiment, sorrowfully, from her own room, and missing an absent face sorely indeed.
To her this was a time of great horror and dismay; each night that she laid her sweet face on the pillow, she thought:
'If I could only waken in the morning to find it all a dream—all a dream!'
But alas! it was a dream from which there was no awakening. Blended with great pity and sorrow, she knew and felt now, in all its intensity, the love she had thought about, read about in romance, but never knew till she had met Cecil Falconer; the love, that is, whether found or not, ever a young girl's day-dream.
To all, save Annabelle Erroll, she had to act the part of apparent unconsciousness of, or indifference to, all that was in progress. Abed, it seemed to her that she heard every hour struck by the adjacent clocks, and yet she must have slept a little, as the memory of more than one torturing or tantalising dream told her.
People, however, do get through everything somehow.
In the petty circle of Edinburgh society, the malheur of Falconer spread with many exaggerations, and with much rancour; he was a great bibber, a vaurien, and it was not the first time, by many, that he had been in such a scrape; and there was much lifting up of hands and eyes among the self-righteous who abound in the northern city of the Seven Hills.
Mary resolved to avoid hearing aught on the subject of the nine days' wonder; she paid no idle visits, and was at home but to few; yet, as many of the few were connected with the service, the whole affair, the court-martial, and what was certain to come of it, were freely discussed in spite of her.
And he had no one to console him 'up there,' she would think, as she surveyed resentfully the grand old fortress, with its towers, turrets, and black portholes, which seemed to her but as a great trap, or giant lock, barring in Cecil from her and the world. And all her good-natured friends assured her, that the military trial could only end in dismissal, ruin, and disgrace. Would that she could go to him, and see him once again, and assure him that whatever came to pass, she was his own still.
She was tearless and very quiet. She would not even retort upon Hew's bitter exultation over the affair—an exultation which his detestable nature rendered him incapable of concealing. Her sweet face looked blank and white, and nothing seemed to rouse her.
Kind old Mrs. Garth felt intense pity for her.
'Poor darling,' she would say, while caressing her; 'no tears yet—would that I could see you weep!'
'Why?'
'It would at least relieve your heart. You have yet to learn, dearest Mary, that with too many in this world the growth of love is unlike every other growth: it often expands and blooms strongest amid sorrow and gloom and the chill blasts of adversity.'
'I am afraid, Sir Piers,' said Mrs. Garth on one occasion, 'the girl is simply breaking her heart!'
'Simply breaking her fiddlestick!' growled the general, who was terribly worried by the whole situation; 'yet I should not be angry with poor little Mary,' he added in a gentler tone; 'God is very good! He took pity on me, a childless old man, and, seeing an empty corner in my heart, sent her to fill it.'
Mary could hear, incidentally, from time to time, the general in his pure dismay that a Cameronian should cause such esclandre, Mrs. Garth acting in his interests, even Annabelle in her sorrow, and not knowing very well what to think (as she had her doubts of mankind in general), all inferring by casual remarks that Falconer was quite unworthy of her—that she had made a lucky escape, and so forth; but they 'forgot that' the woman never yet lived who could cast a true love out of her heart, because the object of it was unworthy of her, and that all she can do is to struggle against it in secret; and poor Mary was no exception to the rest of her sex generally.
'Look a little beyond the present, dear Mary,' said Sir Piers, as he caressed her head, that nestled beside his knee, and passed his old shrivelled hand through her rich brown hair; 'I dare say you think Providence very short-sighted in sweeping out of our circle this interloper, who thought to come between Hew and yourself, a ne'er-do-well, an utter black sheep in birth and bearing!' he added, angrily; for in his rage at the probable slur cast on the regiment—his regiment—he was pitiless with regard to Cecil, who, for a time, had come between the wind and his nobility; and Mary knew not exactly how Hew, artfully, insidiously, and openly, by turns, had succeeded in influencing Sir Piers against the victim of his own treachery, but she replied simply and firmly, as Cecil's love for her seemed something too sacred and too precious to be referred to so bluntly as it too often was:
'Talk not to me of Hew; had Cecil Falconer never been born, I never could have loved Hew Montgomerie!'
Hew was one of the many in this age of refined civilisation, who, though they have no fear of God, have a wholesome fear of the police! Thus, with all his malevolent hatred of Falconer, he shrank from using a dagger or pistol, even secretly; but he had resorted to a means of revenge more subtle and cruel than either.
The great military influence of Sir Piers might have arrested the tide of ruin that was setting in against Falconer, and might ultimately have been brought to bear upon the president and members of a court so honourable and impartial as a military one; but Sir Piers was enraged by the whole affair, and his mind was so full of it that for a time he ceased even to prose about Central India. Thus, for many reasons patent to the reader, his influence, if used at all, was thrown into the opposite scale; and so Falconer was left to his destiny, an inexorable one, by the code militaire.
'Surely it is sharp work, Sir Piers, resorting to a court-martial at once,' said Fotheringhame on one occasion; 'could not your influence with the general commanding——'
'Don't speak of it, sir,' said Sir Piers, testily, with a wave of his hand.
'Is there no other resort?'
'None,' replied the other, sternly.
'Yet I have heard our lieutenant-colonel tell that when you, Sir Piers, were in his place at the head of the Cameronians, you were less severe on a similar occasion, but of more importance than a ball.'
'What was it?'
'When Lieutenant Piers Montgomerie was placed under arrest.'
The old general blushed scarlet and then grew very pale. The occasion referred to was when the regiment was leaving Edinburgh for the East; he had urged the men to behave soberly and with propriety during their last days in the castle, that all might parade and march forth in perfect order; and nobly did they all respond to the appeal, all save one, his son, who came flushed from some late entertainment to the parade in the early morning, to the great dismay of Sir Piers. A court-martial would have ruined his prospects for life; yet he was put under arrest, and, some example being necessary, it appeared in orders thus:
'Lieutenant Montgomerie, of the Grenadiers, will in future do duty with one of the battalion companies.'
This was in the days before the Crimea, when to be attached to a flank company was equally advantageous and honourable.
'True, Mr. Fotheringhame; the offender was my own son Piers,' said the general with much emotion, yet more irritation at the reminiscence; 'but this affair of Captain Falconer took place in the face of the city, as one may say; so let the arrest and charge take their course!'
How the drum for mess jarred on Cecil's ear when he heard it now! Instead of dining at that jovial table, and sharing in the happiness of its social circle, he had his solitary repast brought to him in covered dishes on a salver, the repast he had neither the appetite nor zest to eat, and which he would rather not have seen nor faced, save for acting a part before his servant, Tom Atkins, a sympathetic fellow, however, who could not help thinking that had he been seen groggy in public, how much more easily he would have got over it than his luckless captain.
The sweetest and the saddest hours must pass away inexorably, and so the sad hours passed with Cecil Falconer.
Day follows day and night follows night—is not human life made up of these?—but nothing lasts for ever, thank God, was his thought, and the end, be it ever so bitter, comes at last. But bitter as those of Marah seemed now the waters of his life! He felt that Mary and he were parted for ever; that she could be his love no more, and that the day-dream of her could be dreamt over never again!
About this time he received a kind and earnest letter of condolence from old Mr. John Balderstone, who had conceived a great friendship for him at Eaglescraig; but the terms of it served to irritate Cecil, as they too plainly hinted, 'from what Mr. Hew had reported, that on the night in question he had been exhilarated a little too much, perhaps.'
He tore and tossed it away with a malediction; yet old John Balderstone meant well and kindly.
Hew's satisfaction at the progress of events was too great for concealment.
'Screwed as Bacchus at the regimental ball!' he thought to himself; 'and this is the cad who tried to take Mary and her money away from me. By-and-by we'll kiss and be friends, as the children say, now that he is scratched for the running. He'll be doing the "blighted being" style of thing now,' he added aloud to Sir Piers. 'How interesting!—it is quite an idyll, whatever the devil that may be. Or perhaps he'll be going on the boards—back to the old trade of his mother before him! I have known more than one broken-down army fellow who came out quite strong in genteel comedy.'
The general heard and eyed him sternly, but with silence. What would his emotions have been had he fully known all?
Hew, however, thinking it would be as well to be out of Edinburgh about this time, took his departure to the country, on pretence of a little fishing; and the eventful day of Falconer's life was close at hand.
On the night before it, to his own surprise, he slept the heavy, yet feverish sleep that follows great tribulation of mind and consequent exhaustion of power; yet not without a dream in which he heard the voice of the adjutant again saying gravely, and with commiseration:
'I have come for your sword.'