Whether he thanked Pelham for what he brought him; how he bade the former and Stanley adieu, and in what terms he did so, Cecil never gave thought to, nor did he remember; he was only aware of one fact, that the letter placed in his hand, crumpled, sodden, spotted with blood of the Servian dragoon, and partly defaced by the water of the Morava, was from Mary—from Mary Montgomerie; and oblivious of all else the world contained, he rushed away, breathlessly, to the solitude of his own tent, to peruse it.
Amid all it had undergone in transmission, the tinted paper on which it was written retained a subtle, but faint perfume. It was dated from Eaglescraig, and nearly a month back, and was sorely defaced and in some parts quite illegible.
A letter from Mary! he had opened it, hastily yet tenderly, with tremulous fingers—for his hands, that never shook when holding sword or pistol, shook now like aspen twigs, and as he held the paper before him a mist crept over his sight; for he knew that her hand had touched the paper and had written the lines that were there.
'My own little Mary!' he murmured; 'on earth I have nothing whereby to be worthy of you—and I have won and retained your love!'
He read on quickly and nervously, only to return to the beginning, and read over and over again; but in some places whole lines had been obliterated.
'My darling, oh my darling!' he read in one place, 'we have traced you at last, and learned from the newspapers that you have escaped some awful peril, the details of which have not yet been made public. Write to us soon, and that you are coming home—write to the general, if you will. Oh, how happy he would be.'
He—what mystery—what change was here?
'And oh! my own Cecil, you ...... and how can I tell it to you, although I do so with joy, that now we know all—all about the giddiness that seized you at the ball, when talking with me, and how it was caused by Hew—-Hew—the infamous and cruel, who, as he has since confessed in writing, when it was supposed he was dying, that he drugged your wine—unseen by all!'
Cecil paused and started to his feet, and passed a hand across his throbbing forehead.
'Drugged—oh, villain!—villain—vile trickster!' he exclaimed, while tears, hot and salt, came unbidden to his eyes.
'Sir Piers,' continued the letter, 'the general, as he will always have himself called—the dear old thing!—went straight to the Horse Guards about it, and saw the commander-in-chief personally. You know his position, services, and influence; and so, dearest Cecil, you are again .....
'In the old corps,' said Cecil, as the letter here was again illegible, 'as the Gazette shows—Falconer—Montgomerie—why, and under which name is the remainder of my life to be passed?'
A whole paragraph followed, so sorely defaced that, with all his intense anxiety, Cecil could make nothing of it; and yet his future life might hinge on all that paragraph contained or detailed. But he failed to decipher it, save a word or two here and there—among them the names of 'father—mother—cousin—my own cousin,' and old John Balderstone was again and again referred to, in connection with some mysterious letters and documents he had found in some mysterious way to all appearance, and the whole bewildering passage concluded thus:
'Sir Piers deplores in his inmost heart his harsh treatment of you and your poor parents.' (My parents!) 'And craves earnestly that you will return to your home—to Eaglescraig, and to me, dearest Cecil. He is telling me a long story about India, and letters going by dawk (whatever that may be) as I write, thus I scarcely know what I am putting upon paper .... Oh, how we all miss you, Cecil—I more than all; but you will soon be coming back to us now, thank God! Long and drearily pass the days—the mornings and evenings now at Eaglescraig; and I can but think of you, so blighted apparently in life, so lost to your own world, so ruined and so far away from me, in a land of peril. I write this to you on the merest chance, and in the prayerful hope that it may reach you; as we only learned your present terrible whereabouts from a newspaper paragraph.
'In Servia! oh, my love! what took you to such an unheard-of place as Servia? .... I never open the piano now; I dare not trust myself to sing.'
The sight of her writing sent ever and anon a thrill to his heart, even as a touch of her gentle and delicate hand would have done.
'You will be delighted to learn that the quarrel or estrangement between your friend Leslie Fotheringhame and my dear Annabelle has all been explained away, and they are to be married in two months; but in the meantime Leslie has resolved .... and to please me .... in Servia. Ah, dearest Cecil, I thought such strange things only occurred in novels and melo-dramas as are occurring now to us! Only think of ....'
'Such strange things; to what does she refer? More obliteration!' sighed Cecil.
And now the letter ended, as such documents usually do, with many of the sweet, if childish, endearing terms so appreciated by lovers, and of which they never weary, as they are meant for their eyes alone.
How often Cecil read it, kissed it, and strove to fill up and draw deductions from the fragmentary passages, we shall not pretend to say; but great food was given to him for speculation and marvel.
What was this miraculous discovery of John Balderstone? What event had produced such a beneficial effect upon everyone, on the general and himself in particular? How had it turned the heart of the general to him, and to 'his parents,' the ill-treatment of whom he deplored?
That the general, a soldier and man of the highest honour, smarting under a sense of Hew Montgomerie's treachery to an innocent man, had done as he had, by putting himself instantly in communication with the military authorities, and procuring his restoration, as the victim of a conspirator, Cecil could readily understand and be profoundly grateful for; but beyond that, all Mary's letter was to him—chaos!
Mental questions occurred to him in tiresome iteration.
In the fever of his impatience and doubts of all he wished elucidated, he drank some wine, but it seemed destitute of strength and coolness; he tasted some grapes, and they failed to moisten his tongue; he lighted a choice cigar, but its soothing influence was gone.
Mary's letter, delicious though it was to receive, meant much more than he could extract from it. What was all this new mystery of which he had so suddenly become the centre? Would she write again—and when?
He must write to her; but where might she be at that precise time? At Eaglescraig, without doubt. Their love was one that had made them cleave unto each other in the teeth of all adverse circumstances, and hope naturally began to brighten anew in Cecil's heart, as he turned alternately from the puzzling notice in the Gazette to Mary's equally puzzling letter.
'Patience,' he would mutter; 'patience, and in a little time all will be made clear.'
But nevertheless he grew more impatient than ever.
How much of caressing tenderness, as well as information of importance, had been obliterated in Mary's letter by the envious water of the Morava! When would he obtain a key, a clue to it all?
The soft, bright dreams that are so frequent in our earlier years, and form a part of our existence then, and which as time goes on become greyer, duller, and farther apart, and less tinted with sunshine, were coming back to Cecil's heart again, as he sat in his tent alone, and striving to think it all out—the new mystery that enveloped him.
He lost no time in writing to her in reply, a long and passionate letter; all the longer and more passionate that he had heard nothing of her for such a length of time, and had all the pent-up emotion of his heart to pour forth. Though he knew not what was meant by the discoveries to which she referred, he tendered through her all his thanks to the general for his kindness, and, in the exuberance of his joy, felt that he could even forgive Hew for the malice he had displayed and the terrible wrong he had done him. Home! he would start for home the moment he could hear from her again, or get some details, some official letter of instructions, on the subject that perplexed him; and he deplored that as matters stood he could not just then, with honour, quit the army of the Morava. Why, he did not tell her—that the thunderclouds of a great battle were soon to darken the air around Deligrad!
The rumour spread rapidly, with many exaggerations, that the 'Herr Capitan' in Tchernaieff's own Dragoons was an officer in the British army, and it greatly enhanced the importance with which Cecil was viewed in the Servian camp.
If, ere he could leave that arena with honour, he was doomed to fall in battle now, it seemed to him hard to have to quit life so suddenly, when it became full of new value, and seemed more worth living!
Often had he reflected that he had not yet seen his thirtieth year, and that all the maturity of life spread out before him, and he felt that he had the spirit, energy, and courage to carve out name and fame for himself; but were either to be won in the heartless struggle between Servia and Turkey? He had always feared not; and now, with a bright, glorious, and triumphant revulsion of feeling, he felt it mattered not. He had now a name and career elsewhere!
'I like this young fellow Falconer immensely,' said Stanley to Pelham, as they talked over his affairs after he left them; 'but I wish him well out of this camp and country too, especially if he has new and brighter prospects at home.'
'Well,' replied Pelham, who, like Stanley, was a handsome fellow, with much of that easy but indescribable air and manner of a man who has seen all the world of life has to show, 'he has been down on his luck—got court-martialled, it seems, in some row, and is now reinstated in his regiment and rank—squared it with the F.M. at the Horse Guards and all that.'
'With a girl he loved also—an heiress I expect; and yet he is going in for the last of this campaign.'
'What of that—why shouldn't he see the end of the fun?'
'What of it? This much! won't it be strange—very strange—if Count Palenka's weird prediction comes true, and the poor fellow gets bowled out after all?'
'By Jove! I never thought of that. What a fellow you are! But I don't believe in predictions of gipsies, jugglers, and things, don't you know.'
But there was much in the memory and the time—the memory of the count's dark grave face, his manner and expression—that impressed even the thoughtless Stanley; so he dropped the subject, and smoked on in silence.