Quietly and before day dawned the trench-guards were relieved, and we marched wearily back towards the camp. I had dismissed my company, and was betaking me to my tent, threading my way along the streets formed by those of each regiment, when an ambulance wagon, four-wheeled and covered by a canvas hood, drew near. It was drawn by four half-starved-looking horses; the drivers were in the saddles; and an escort rode behind, muffled in their blue cloaks. It was laden, no doubt, with boots warranted not to fit, and bags of green or unripe coffee for the troops, who had no means of grinding it or of cooking it, firewood being our scarcest commodity. An officer of the Land Transport Corps, in cloak and forage-cap, was riding leisurely in rear of the whole, and as he passed I heard him singing, for his own edification, apparently: the refrain of his ditty was,
"Ach nein! ach nein! ich darf es nich.
Leb'wohl! Leb'wohl!"
"Heavens!" thought I, pausing in my progress, "can this be my quondam acquaintance, the attaché at the Court of Catzenelnbogen here--here, in the Crimea!"
"Can you direct me to the commissariat quarter of the Second Division?" asked the singer, a little pompously.
"By all the devils it is Guilfoyle!" I exclaimed.
"Oho--You are Hardinge of the 23rd--well met, Horatio!" said he, reining-in his horse, and with an air of perfect coolness.
"How came you to be here, sir?" I asked, sternly.
"I question your right to ask, if I do not your tone," he replied; "however, if you feel interested in my movements, I may mention that I was going to the dogs or the devil, and thought I might as well take Sebastopol on the way."
"It is not taken yet--but you, I hope, may be."
"Thanks for your good wishes," was the unabashed reply; "however, I am wide enough awake, sir; be assured that I cut my eye-teeth some years ago."
To find that such a creature as he had crept into her Majesty's service, even into such an unaristocratic force as the Land Transport Corps, and actually wore a sword and epaulettes, bewildered me, excited my indignation and disgust; and I felt degraded that by a reflected light he was sharing our dangers, our horrors, and the honours of the war. I had never seen his name in the Gazette, as being appointed a cornet of the Transport Corps, and the surprise I felt was mingled with profound contempt, and something of amusement, too, at his insouciance and cool effrontery. This made me partially forget the rage and hatred he had excited in me by the mischievous game he had played at Walcot Park, his plot to ruin me with Estelle Cressingham--a plot from which I had been so victoriously disentangled. Hence circumstance, change of position and place, induced me to talk to the fellow in a way that I should not have done at home or elsewhere.
"How came you to deprive England of the advantages of your society?" I asked, in a sneering tone, of which he was too well-bred not to be conscious; so he replied in the same manner,
"A verse of an old song may best explain it:
"'A plague on ill luck, now the ready's all gone,
To the wars poor Pilgarlick must trudge;
But had I the cash to rake on as I've done,
The devil a foot I would budge!'
"And so Pilgarlick is serving his ungrateful country," he added, with the mocking laugh that I remembered of old.
"You can actually laugh at your own--"
"Don't say anything unpleasant," said he, shortening his reins; "I do so, but only as Reynard, who has lost his brush, laughs at the more clever fox who has kept his from the hounds," he added, with a glance of malevolence. "So you were not at the Alma? Doubtless it was pleasanter to break a bone quietly at home than risk all your limbs here in action."
Disdaining to notice either his sneer or the inference to be drawn from his remark, I asked, "What has become of that unhappy creature--your wife?"
"As you call her."
"Georgette Franklin--well?"
"It matters little now, and is no business of yours."
"That I know well--I only pitied her; but why do I waste words or time with such as you?"
"So you would like to know what has become of her, eh?"
"Very much."
"Well," said he, grinding his teeth with anger or hate, perhaps both, "there is a den in the Walworth-road, above a rag, bone, and old-bottle shop, the master of which was not unknown to the police, as apt to be roaming about intent to commit, as no doubt he often did, felony; for a few articles of bijouterie, such as a bunch of skeleton-keys, a crowbar, a brace of knuckle-dusters, and a 'barker,' with a piece of wax-candle, were found upon his person, after an investigation thereof, suggestive that his habits were nocturnal, and that the propensities of his digits were knavish; and the landlord of this den gave her lodgings--and there she died, this Georgette Franklin, in whom you are so interested--died not without suspicion of suicide. Now are you satisfied?" he added, holding a cigar between the first and second fingers of his right hand, and gazing lazily at the smoke wreaths as they curled upward in the chill morning air.
There was something sublimely infernal--if I may be permitted the paradox--in the gusto with which the fellow told all this, and in the sneering expression of his face; and I could see his green eyes and his white teeth glisten in the light of a great rocket--some secret signal--that soared up from Fort Alexander, and broke with a thousand sparkles, curving downward through the murky morning sky.
"Pass on, sir," said I, sternly; "and the best I can wish you is that some Russian bullet may avenge her and rid the earth of you."
And with his old mocking laugh, he galloped after his wagon, as he turned back in his saddle, "Compliments to old Taffy Lloyd, when you write--may leave him my brilliant in my will if he behaves himself."
