CHAPTER XXVIII. TIDINGS OF THE WOUNDED.
The interests of our story do not require us to dwell minutely on themiserable system of intrigue by which the French authorities sought tocompromise the life and honor of a British officer. The Knight of Gwynnewas committed to the charge of a veteran officer of the Republic, who,though dignified with the title of the Governor of Akrish, was, inreality, invested with no higher functions than that of jailer over thefew unhappy prisoners whom evil destiny had thrown into French hands.
By an alternate system of cruelty and concession, efforts were dailymade to entrap Darcy either into some expression of violence orimpatience at this outrage on all the custom of war, or induce himto join a plot for escape, submitted to him by those who, apparentlyprisoners like himself, were in reality the spies of the Republic.Sustained by a high sense of his own dignity, and not ignorant of thecharacter under which revolutionized France accomplished her triumphs,the Knight resisted every temptation, and in all the gloom of thisremote fortress, ominously secluded from the world, denied access toany knowledge of passing events, cut off from all communication with hiscountry and his comrades, he never even for a moment forgot himself, norbecame entangled in the perfidious schemes spread for his ruin. It wasno common aggravation of the miseries of imprisonment to know that eachday and hour had its own separate machinery of perfidy at work. At onemoment he would be offered liberty on the condition of revealing theplans of the expedition; at another he would be suddenly summoned toappear before a tribunal of military law, when it was hinted he would bearraigned for having commanded a force of liberated felons,--for in thisway were the Volunteers once designated,--in the hope that the insultwould evoke some burst of passionate indignation. If the torment ofthese unceasing annoyances preyed upon his health and spirits, alreadyharassed by sad thoughts of home, the length of time, to which theintrigues were protracted showed Darcy that the wiles of his enemies hadnot met success in their own eyes; and this gleam of hope, faint andslender as it was, sustained him through many a gloomy hour ofcaptivity.
While the Knight continued thus to live in the long sleep of aprisoner's existence, events were hastening to their accomplishmentby which his future liberty was to be secured. The victorious army ofAbercrombie had already advanced and driven the French back beneath thelines of Alexandria. The action which ensued was terribly contested, butended in the complete triumph of the British, whose glory was, however,dearly bought by the death of their gallant leader.
The Turkish forces now joined the English under General Hutchinson,and a series of combined movements commenced, by which the French sawthemselves so closely hemmed in, that no course was open save a retreatupon Cairo.
Whether from the changed fortune of their arms,--for the French hadnow sustained one unbroken series of reverses,--or that the efforts toentrap the Knight had shown so little prospect of success, the mannerof the governor had, for some time back, been altered much in his favor,and several petty concessions were permitted, which in the earlier daysof his captivity were strictly denied. Occasionally, too, little hintsof the campaign would be dropped, and acknowledgments made "that fortunehad not been as uniformly favorable to the 'Great Nation' as was herwont." These significant confessions received a striking confirmation,when, at daybreak one morning, an order arrived for the garrison toabandon the fort of Akrish, and for the prisoners, under a strongescort, to fall back upon Damanhour.
The movements indicated haste and precipitancy; so much so, indeed,that ere the small garrison had got clear of the town, the head of aretreating column was seen entering it by the road from Alexandria; andnow no longer doubt remained that the British had compelled them to fallback.
As the French retired, their forces continued to come up each day, andin the long convoy of wounded, as well as in the shattered conditionof gun-carriages and wagons, it was easy to read the signs of a recentdefeat. Nor was the matter long doubtful to Darcy; for, by some strangeanomaly of human nature, the very men who would exaggerate the smallestaccident of advantage into a victory and triumph, were now just as loudiu proclaiming that they had been dreadfully beaten. Perhaps the avowalwas compensated for by the license it suggested to inveigh against thegenerals, and, in the true spirit of a republican army, to threaten themopenly with the speedy judgments of the Home Government.
Among those who occasionally halted to exchange a few-words of greetingwith the officer in conduct of the prisoners, the Knight recognized withsatisfaction the same officer who, in the retreat from Aboukir, hadso kindly suggested caution to him. At first he seemed half fearfulof addressing him, to speak his gratitude, lest even so much mightcompromise the young captain in the eyes of his countrymen. Thehesitation was speedily overcome, however, as the young Frenchman gaylysaluted him, and said,--
"Ah, mon General, you had scarcely been here to-day if you hadbut listened to my counsels. I told you that the Republic, one andindivisible, did not admit criticism of its troops."
"I scarcely believed you could shrink from such an order," said theKnight, smiling.
"Not in the 'Moniteur,' perhaps," rejoined the Frenchman, laughing."Yours, however, had an excess of candor, which, if only listened to atyour own head-quarters, might have induced grave errors.
"I comprehend," interrupted Darcy, gayly catching up the ironical humorof the other,--"I comprehend, and you would spare an enemy such aninjurious illusion."
"Just so; I wish your army had been equally generous, with all myheart," added he, as coolly as before; "here we are in full retreat onCairo."
"On Damanhour, you mean," said Darcy.
"Not a bit of it; on Cairo, General. There's no need of mincing thematter; we need fear no eavesdropper here. Ah, by the by, your Germanfriends were retaken, and by a detachment of their own regiment too. Wesaw the fellows shot the morning after the action."
"Now that you are kind enough to tell me what is going forward, perhapsyou could let me know something of my poor comrades whom you tookprisoners on the night of the 9th."
"Yes. They are with few exceptions dead of their wounds, two menexchanged about a week since; and then, what strange fellows yourcountrymen are! They sent us back a major of brigade in exchange for awounded soldier who, when he left our camp, did not seem to have lifeenough to bring him across the lines!"
"Did you see him?" asked Darcy, eagerly.
"Yes; I commanded the escort. He was a young fellow of scarcely morethan four-and-twenty, and must have been good-looking too."
"Of course you could not tell his name," said the Knight, despondingly.
"No; I heard it, however, but it has escaped me. There was a curiousstory brought back about him by our brigade-major, and one which,I assure you, furnished many a hearty laugh at your land of nobleprivileges and aristocratic forms'."
"Pray let me hear it."
"Oh, I cannot tell you one-half of it; the finale interested the majormost, because it concerned himself, and this he repeated to us at leasta dozen times. It would seem, then, that this youth--a rare thing, Ibelieve, in your service--was a man of birth, but, according to yourhappy institutions, was a man of nothing more, for he was a younger son.Is not that your law?"
Darcy nodded, and the other resumed.
"Well, in some fit of spleen at not being born a year or two earlier,or for some love affair with one of your blond insensibles, or fromweariness of your gloomy climate, or from any other true British causeof despair, our youth became a soldier. _Parbleu!_ your English chivalryhas its own queer notions, when it regards the service as a lastresource of the desperate! No matter, he enlisted, came out here, foughtbravely, and was taken prisoner in the very same attack with yourself;but while Fortune dealt heavily with one hand, she was caressing withthe other, for, the same week she condemned him to a French prison,she made him a peer of England, having taken off the elder brother, anambassador at some court, I believe, by a fever. So goes the world;good and ill luck battling against each, and one never getting uppermostwithout the other rec
ruiting strength for a victory in turn."
"These are strange tidings, indeed," said the Knight, musing, "and wouldinterest me deeply, if I knew the individual."
"That I am unfortunate enough to have forgotten," said the Frenchman,carelessly; "but I conclude he must be a person of some importance, forwe heard that the vessel which was to sail with despatches was delayedseveral hours in the bay, to take him back to England."
Although the whole recital contained many circumstances which the Knightattributed to French misrepresentation of English habitudes, he wasprofoundly struck by it, and dwelt fondly on the hope that if the youngpeer should have served under his command, he would not neglect, onarriving in England, to inform his friends of his safety.
These thoughts, mingling with others of his home and of his son Lionel,far away in a distant quarter of the globe, filled his mind as he went,and made him ponder deeply over the strange accidents of a lifethat, opening with every promise, seemed about to close in sorrow anduncertainty. Full of movement and interest as was the scene around, heseldom bestowed on it even a passing glance; it was an hour of gloomyreverie, and he neither marked the long train of wagons with theirwounded, the broken and shattered gun-carriages, or the miserable aspectof the cavalry, whose starved and galled animals could scarcely crawl.
The Knight's momentary indifference was interpreted in a very differentsense by the officer who commanded the escort, and who seemed to suspectthat this apathy concealed a shrewd insight into the real condition ofthe troops and the signs of distress and discomfiture so palpable onevery side. As, impressed with this conviction, he watched the old manwith prying curiosity, a smile, faint and fleeting enough, once crossedDarcy's features. The Frenchman's face flushed as he beheld it, and hequickly said,--
"They are the same troops that landed at the Arabs' Tower, and who carrysuch inscriptions on their standards as these." He snatched a flag fromthe sergeant beside him as he spoke, and pointed to the proud wordsembroidered there: "Le Passage de la Scrivia," "Le Passage de Tisonzo,""Le Pont de Lodi." Then, in a low, muttering voice, he added, "ButBuonaparte was with us then."
Had he spoken for hours, the confession of their discontent with theirgenerals could not have been more manifest; and a sudden gleam of hopeshot through Darcy's breast, to think his captivity might soon be over.
There was every reason to indulge in this pleasing belief;disorganization had extended to every branch of the service. An angrycorrespondence, in which even personal chastisement was broadly hintedat, passed between the two officers highest in command; and this notsecretly, but publicly known to the entire army. Peculation of the mostgross and open kind was practised by the commissaries; and as thetroops became distressed by want, they retaliated by daring breaches ofdiscipline, so that at every parade men stood out from the ranks, boldlydemanding their rations, and answering the orders of the officers byinsulting cries of "Bread! bread!"
All this while the British were advancing steadily, overcoming eachobstacle in turn, and with a force whose privations had made no inroadupon the strictest discipline; they felt confident of success. The fewprisoners who occasionally fell into the hands of the French woreall the assurance of men who felt that their misfortunes could not belasting, and in good-humored raillery bantered their captors on theBritish beef and pudding they would receive, instead of horseflesh, sosoon as the capitulation was signed.
The French soldiers were, indeed, heartily tired of the war; they weretired of the country, of the leaders, whose incompetency, whether realor not, they believed; tired, above all, of absence from France, fromwhich they felt exiled. Each step they retired from the coast seemedto them another day's journey from their native land, and they did nothesitate to avow to their prisoners that they had no wish or care saveto return to their country.
Such was the spirit of the French army as it drew near Cairo, than whichno greater contrast could exist than that presented by the advancingenemy. Let us now return to the more immediate interests of our story;and while we beg to corroborate the brief narrative of the Frenchofficer, we hope it is unnecessary to add that the individual whosesuddenly changed fortune had elevated him from the ranks of a simplevolunteer to that of a peer of England was our old acquaintance DickForester.
From the moment when the tidings reached him, to that in which he lay,still suffering from his wounds, in the richly furnished chamber of aLondon hotel, the whole train of events through which he had so latelypassed seemed like the incoherent fancies of a dream. The excited frameof mind in which he became a volunteer with the army had not time tosubside ere came the spirit-stirring hour of the landing at Aboukir. Thefight, in all its terrible but glorious vicissitudes; the struggle inwhich he perilled his own life to save his leader's; the moments thatseemed those of ebbing life in which he lay upon a litter before Darcy'seyes, and yet unable to speak his name; and then the sudden news of hisbrother's death, overwhelming him at once with sorrow for his loss, andall the thousand fleeting thoughts of his own future, should life bespared him,--these were enough, and more than enough, to disturb andoverbalance a mind already weakened by severe illness.
Had Forester known more of his only brother, it is certain that thepredominance of the feeling of grief would have subdued the others, andgiven at least the calm of affliction to his troubled senses. But theywere almost strangers to each other; the elder having passed his lifealmost exclusively abroad, and the younger, separated by distance and along interval of years, being a complete stranger to his qualities andtemper.
Dick Forester's grief, therefore, was no more than that which ties of soclose kindred will ever call up, but unmixed with the tender attachmentof a brother's love. His altered fortunes had not thus the strong alloyof heartfelt sorrow to make them distasteful; but still there was anunreality in everything,--a vague uncertainty in all his endeavors atclose reasoning, which harassed and depressed him. And when he awokefrom each short disturbed sleep, it took several minutes before he couldbring back his memory to the last thought of his waking hours. The verytitle "my Lord," so scrupulously repeated at each instant, startled himafresh at each moment he heard it; and as he read over the names of thehigh and titled personages whose anxieties for his recovery had madethem daily visitors at his hotel, his heart faltered between thepleasure of flattery and a deeper feeling of almost scorn for thesympathies of a world that could minister to the caprices of rank whatit withheld from the real sufferings of the same man in obscurity. Hismother he had not seen yet; for Lady Netherby, much attached to hereldest son, and vain of abilities by which she reckoned on his futuredistinction, was herself seriously indisposed. Lord Netherby, however,had been a frequent visitor, and had already seen Forester severaltimes, although always very briefly, and only upon the terms of distantpoliteness.
Although in a state that precluded everything like active exertion, andwhich, indeed, made the slightest effort a matter of peril, Forester hadalready exchanged more than one communication with the Horse Guardson the subject of the Knight's safety, and received the most steadyassurances that his exchange was an object on which the authorities weremost anxious, and engaged at the very moment in negotiations for itsaccomplishment. There were two difficulties: one, that no officer ofDarcy's precise rank was then a prisoner with the British; and secondly,that any very pressing desire expressed for his liberation would serveto weaken the force of that conviction they were so eager to impress,that the campaign was nearly ended, and that nothing but capitulationremained for the French.
Forester was not more gratified than surprised at the tone of obligingand almost deferential politeness which pervaded each answer to hisapplications. He had yet to learn how a vote in the "Lords" can makesecretaries civil, and Under-Secretaries most courteous; and whilehis few uncertain lines were penned with diffidence and distrust, thereplies gradually inducted him into that sense of confidence which a fewmonths later he was to feel like a birthright.
How far these thoughts contributed to his recovery it would be diffi
cultto say, nor does it exactly lie in our province to inquire. Thelikelihood is, that the inducements to live are strong aids to overcomesickness; for, as a witty observer has remarked, "There is no such_manque dre savoir vivre_ as dying at four-and-twenty."
It is very probable Forester experienced all this, and that the dreamsof the future in which he indulged were not only his greatest but hispleasantest aid to recovery. A brilliant position, invested with rank,title, fortune, and a character for enterprise, are all flatteringadjuncts to youth; while in the hope of succeeding where his dearestwishes were concerned, lay a source of far higher happiness. How toapproach this subject again most fittingly, was now the constant objectof his thoughts. He sometimes resolved to address Lady Eleanor; but solong as he could convey no precise tidings of the Knight, this would bean ungracious task. Then he thought of Miss Daly, but he did not knowher address; all these doubts and hesitations invariably ending inthe resolve that as soon as his strength permitted he would go over toIreland, and finding out Bicknell, obtain accurate information as toLady Eleanor's present residence, and also learn if, without beingdiscovered, he could in any way be made serviceable to the interests ofthe family.
Perhaps we cannot better convey the gradually dawning conviction of hisaltered fortune on his mind than by mentioning that while he canvassedthese various chances, and speculated on their course, he never dwelt onthe possibility of Lady Netherby's power to influence his determination.In the brief note he received from her each morning, the tone ofaffectionate solicitude for his health was always accompanied by someallusive hint of the "duties" recovery would impose, and each inquiryafter his night's rest was linked with a not less anxious question asto how soon he might feel able to appear in public. Constitutionallysusceptible of all attempts to control him, and from his childhooddisposed to rebel against dictation, he limited his replies to briefaccounts of his progress or inquiries after her own health, resolvedin his heart that now that fortune was his own, to use the blessings itbestows according to the dictates of affection and a conscientious senseof right, and be neither the toy of a faction nor the tool of a party.In Darcy--could he but see him once more--he looked for a friend andadviser; and whatever the fortune of his suit, he felt that the Knight'scounsels should be his guidance as to the future, reposing not even moretrust on unswerving rectitude than the vast range of his knowledge oflife, and the common-sense views he could take of the most complex as ofthe very simplest questions.
It was now some seven weeks after his return, and Forester, for wewould still desire to call him by the name our reader has known him,was sitting upon a sofa, weak and nervous, as the first day of aconvalescent's appearance in the drawing-room usually is, when hisservant, having deposited on the table several visiting-cards ofdistinguished inquirers, mentioned that the Earl of Netherby wished topay his respects. Forester moved his head in token of assent, and hisLordship soon after entered.