Mrs. Rolleston had a friend at the Horse Guards, and instantly despatched the servant there, with a letter requesting further particulars as early as possible. Ill news does not lag. A letter from General--soon arrived, with its warning black seal. Captain Du Meresq was among the casualties. He had been shot through the heart during the charge.
Into a ward of the white-washed walls, Where the dead and the dying lay, Wounded by bayonets, shells, and balls, Somebody's darling was borne one day. --Song.
Mrs. Rolleston completely sank under this dreadful blow. Bertie had been her darling and pride from his infancy, and her own misery was redoubled, in anticipation of the even greater anguish of Cecil.
Strange to say, though, _she_ experienced no new shock. That Du Meresq was dead, she had never doubted, or that his spirit, in the moment of departure, had hovered for an instant near the one who loved him best. It seemed to connect her with that other world whither he had gone. It did not appear so far away, now Bertie was there, and her thoughts were ever in communion with her spirit love.
The hour in which he had, as she believed, appeared to her, she regularly passed alone in the same room, and even prayed for another sign of his presence.
But if such prayers were answered, what mourners would remain unvisited by their dead?
This room became her "temple and her shrine," in which Bertie, all his sins forgotten, was canonized. How incessantly she regretted having parted with those letters, so impulsively affectionate and so entirely confidential! To be sure, they were chiefly about himself; but what subject could be so interesting to Cecil? His normal condition of picturesque insolvency was only a proof of generosity of disposition and absence of meanness. Now she had nothing but a letter not her own, and that one last message, "Give my dearest love to Cecil."
Whether or no the vision was really but a dream, we leave to the decision of our readers. It was not unnatural that the dominant idea should impress that unreasoning moment between sleeping and waking; but Cecil's fervent faith knew no doubts, and thus it was that Du Meresq dead influenced her as much as when living.
They soon heard from Colonel Rolleston. Part of his regiment had been sent to seek and bring in the wounded; his brother-in-law's body had been found and brought back by Vavasour, and he sent his wife Bertie's watch. The newspapers were full of the disastrous but glorious charge of the cavalry, and of their immense loss.