James Grant

“ The Bedouins conveyed him some five and twenty miles or more into the mountains, till they reached a kind of oasis, where their tents, which were very numerous, stood. Day was on the point of breaking, and Allan was utterly worn out. However keen excitement may be, Nature will demand her due, so he slept on a dirty Bedouin barracan, and ere he did so, so great was the mental and bodily toil he had undergone, that he felt a kind of pleasure as drowsiness came upon him—a happiness to find oblivion—oblivion for a time even. ”

“ Amid the scenes of warfare the organ of wonder becomes blunted considerably, and thus after a time Allan, soothed by the fumes of a fragrant havannah, and weary, perhaps, with the events of a long day—the entraining and detraining of the regiment, its baggage and stores, and so forth—fell sound asleep in his chair, oblivious of the clatter of voices in the large room of the hotel, and the many sounds in the street below; while Cameron, re-entering the room, idled over an album of views of Grand Cairo and its vicinity. ”

“ No man was permitted to speak or smoke, and our brown helmets, red serges, and dark kilts seemed to blend with the gloom.
'If the silence of that weird, solemn, and impressive time were broken, it was by the occasional rumble of an artillery wheel or of a commissariat waggon, the clatter of a rammer or a steel scabbard against a stirrup-iron, as we advanced through the gloom, expecting every moment to hear the explosion of a musket or a shrill shout from the scattered Bedouin horsemen, who were alleged to be scouting in the vicinity—men belonging to the band of the Sheikh Zeid-el-Ourdeb. ”

“ Daily Eveline's hazel eyes seemed to become larger and brighter, while her face grew paler, and all the delicate rose-leaf colour and complexion faded out of it. The lines of her young features, if sorrowful, were very sweet, and her eyes, if somewhat sad, seemed calm in expression now. Yet the girl had ever before her the last haunting look that Evan gave her as he marched past, amid the wild hurly-burly of the dense crowd that surged around the departing Black Watch—the long, silent, and indescribable look of those who gaze their last upon the silent dead ”

“ I married a short time ago to please you, and, now that God in His goodness has spared and restored Evan to me, I shall marry next to please myself.'
'It is very strange how some girls get it into their head that there is a special virtue in a man because he is poor.'
'Evan isn't poor now,' replied Eveline, stoutly. 'Stratherroch is nearly free, and, if it were not, I have enough for two.'
'Your jointure dies with you,' said Lady Aberfeldie, sourly. ”

“ AT ISMAILIA.
The putrid water he had drunk on many occasions, the stone-fruit on which he had been compelled to feed, the damp sand on which he had lain under the night dews—the watching, fatigue, and depression of spirits he had undergone—had served to prostrate Allan now, and even his magnificent constitution failed to resist such a combination of evils.
At times he was in a burning fever; at others in cold, shivering fits, as if his limbs would go to pieces. These were succeeded by feeble listlessness and indifference to all around him, and then he seemed as if about to die. ”

“ As one in a dreadful dream Eveline listened to all this, and the awful shadow of something—something, as yet unthought of and unconceived, fell blackly and bleakly across the dark horizon of her life, as she saw the body borne past her—the body she shrank from touching—borne past her indoors; and a darker shadow would yet fall, when she learned the news from Egypt. ”

“ The setting sun shed its red light far along the desert that stretched to the land of Goshen, with its luxuriant plains—yea, to the far horizon—and Allan, a thoughtful and a well-read man, as he looked around him, reflected, as he often did, how strange was the land where just then his duty led him—how strange that the Egyptians were there, without a tradition of a parent stock or of another land ”

“ Eveline heard with total indifference that they were to have guests that evening, and with all his admiration of her Sir Paget thought,
'What a fool I was to marry her, knowing or suspecting what I did—that she loved that fellow—loved him first (me she never loved at all) and last, and loves him now, no doubt. They say no woman ever forgets her first love, simply because he was her first. ”

“ Accustomed though they were to suffering and slaughter, the Highlanders stood around him leaning on their muskets, full of commiseration, and looking attentively at the pale face of the dying officer and back to the desert where they had last seen the enemy hovering; and more than one wished that the Bedouins would only come on again.
'Has no man among us here any water?' asked Allan, for by this time the tin bottles of the detachment were empty. ”

“ The soldiers, with their hands, bayonets, and rifle-butts, hollowed a trench some three feet deep, and therein, rolled in a blanket, they reverently deposited the yet warm form of Cameron, and covered it up with sand.
Allan maintained a grim silence, and, though his heart was full of genuine grief, the remarks of his soldiers pleased him.
'Those who have lived with us and died as he has done will never be forgotten in the regiment, sir,' said Sergeant Farquharson. ”

“ It was a life for a life now, and both men fought desperately; both were expert swordsmen, and both were filled with blackest fury—the Bedouin by the agony of his wound, and Allan by the peril which menaced him.
After pausing to draw breath for a moment, Abdallah came rushing on with blind rage; Allan warded a cut, and, closing in, caught his sword-hand by the wrist and held it with an iron grasp ”

“ After Cameron's catastrophe he felt himself more disposed to think of Olive, and to think kindly and tenderly, and of his mother's explanatory letter concerning the extraordinary conduct of Holcroft and Olive's love and grief; for we are told that 'among all the many kinds of first love, that which begins in childish companionship is the strongest and most enduring; when passion comes to unite its force to long affection, love is at its spring tide,' and in childish affection had the love of Allan Graham and Olive Raymond begun. ”

“ In the library one day she was looking at a terrestrial globe on a tall and handsome stand. She saw that, as the crow flies, the distance was two thousand five hundred miles at least to where the Black Watch were face to face with the swarthy followers of Arabi; and, stooping, she pressed her lips to Egypt in general.
'He is there—I here! On the globe, how short the distance seems!'
'What are you about, Lady Puddicombe?' said a voice, sharply, behind her—the voice of Sir Paget, who was jerking his bald head forward most alarmingly. ”

“ He had never ceased to love her—never ceased to wish she should be his. Sir Paget was dead—dead as Julius Cæsar—and he, Evan Cameron, had been in possession of a treasure without knowing it—the free and unfettered love of Eveline! ”

“ The light of the coming day shone along the latter, a sandy waste, overlooked by Jebel Mokattam, a chain of rocks abrupt and barren that extends from Cairo to the cataracts. They are generally flat, with beetling summits, while below, on the face which fronts the Nile, they are furrowed as if water-worn by the rain of ages.
On the other flank, towards Jebel Dimeshk, rises a ridge of sand-hills that follows in the same direction at an equal distance, all the windings and sinuosities of that which lines the eastern bank. ”

“ Is not one place that God has made as good as another? And who and what are your people? With all their skill and power, they are but wretched unbelievers, who go to battle with their legs bare, accompanied by bags of devils, that squall and groan, like those who strove to defame Solomon.'
'Do be just, sheikh!' urged Allan. ”

“ So simple are the habits of the Bedouins that one can subsist for a whole day on such a repast, and deem himself happy and luxurious if he can add a small quantity of corn-flour or a little ball of rice. Meat being usually reserved for the greatest festivals, they rarely kill a kid, save for a marriage or a funeral, though some tribes eat the flesh of the gazelle and the desert cow.
A couple of days on such food, with rough usage and toil—for they compelled him to groom their horses—a toil degrading to a man of spirit, rendered Allan somewhat faint. ”

“ Though innately wicked in heart and rejoicing that the poor girl had made—or been compelled by others to make—an ill-assorted marriage, something of pity for her began to mingle with his nefarious ideas and hopes, and that pity was as much akin to love as his blasé soul could feel.
'It is a regular case of Beauty and the Beast, this marriage of old Pudd's,' thought he.
Finding her promenading on the terrace alone one evening overlooking the pool where the swans swam among the snow-white water-lilies, he hastened to join her. ”

“ Day had scarcely dawned, and the striking of the tents begun, ere he was conscious that his absence was discovered, and more than a hundred swiftly-mounted horsemen, with cries and shouts, darted from the camp in every direction around it in search, and, if afoot, he must inevitably have been overtaken; but, concealed where he was, he lay in safety, though his heart throbbed so violently that he seemed to hear its pulsations, as he heard the Bedouins, at full speed, pass and repass the Santon's tomb, with guns and rifles unslung, intent on his recapture and destruction. ”

“ It was hard to think of so young and gallant a life being cut short thus by the inexorable scissors of Fate; but he was gone to the 'Land of the leal,' where there can be no sorrow nor thought of sordid things.
'We cannot leave him lying here thus; neither can we carry him off; while there is a chance of these Bedouin devils coming on again. Besides, there are always jackals about,' said Allan, as he took possession of Evan's claymore, dirk, and ring. ”

“ Yes, though unbelievers, you are swift in action as the pigeons of Aleppo; not like the Osmanli, who would catch hares in waggons,' he added, with reference to the proverbial slowness of the Turks.
'Sheikh,' said Allan, in his most persuasive manner, 'you know that I befriended you when in sore peril.'
'Yes, as my brother would have done,' said Zeid, his expressive face lighting up and his black eyes sparkling under the hood of his burnous, as he pointed with his left hand to his right shoulder, which had been slashed by the long sword of one of our Life-Guardsmen. ”

“ Alas! she was to learn too soon tidings of another dire calamity, and why Allan was unable to write to any one.
There was no trace of all this deep emotion in her soft face when she descended to the drawing-room, with a velvet dress of that blue which so suited her pale complexion, cut square at the neck, and having elbow sleeves with lace, and rich mosaics set in gold clasping her white neck, and exquisitely rounded arms that were so white and taper. ”

“ He could not forgive her the general pallor and sadness of her face. Death, it is said, hallows the dead anew to the living. So it would be with the memory of Evan Cameron in the mind of Eveline, thought Sir Paget bitterly, nor was he far wrong. ”

“ Olive knew enough of life and of human nature to feel certain that her cousin was too young to relinquish all the hopes and fears, the many vague and brilliant dreams of girlhood. Another would come, but who?
Time would show that.
'She'll get over all this nonsense by-and-by, poor little thing,' said Sir Harry to his chum, Pyke Poole, as they knocked the balls about in the billiard-room, trying canons and so forth for practice. 'She is, by Jove, the best groomed woman in the whole stud of our acquaintances—perfect in all her points. ”