Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn | Page 9

was soon to be undeceived. When the
news first came, James had galloped off to Portsmouth, and late in the
evening they saw him come riding slowly and sadly up the avenue. She
was down at the gate before he could dismount, and to her eager
inquiries if the news were true, he replied,

"All too true, my love; and I must leave you this day week."
"My God!" said she; "leave me again, and not six months married?
Surely the king has had you long enough; may not your wife have you
for a few short months?"
"Listen to me, dear wife," he replied. "All the Peninsular men are
volunteering, and I must not be among the last, for every man is wanted
now. Buonaparte is joined by the whole army, and the craven king has
fled. If England and Prussia can combine to strike a blow before he gets
head, thousands and hundreds of thousands of lives will be spared. But
let him once get firmly seated, and then, hey! for ten years' more war.
Beside the thing is done; my name went in this morning."
She said, "God's will be done;" and he left his young bride and his old
father once again. The nightingale grew melodious in the midnight
woods, the swallows nestled again in the chimneys, and day by day the
shadows under the old avenue grew darker and darker till merry June
was half gone; and then one Saturday came the rumour of a great
defeat.
All the long weary summer Sabbath that followed, Agnes and
Marmaduke silently paced the terrace, till the curate--having got
through his own services somehow, and broken down in the "prayer
during war and tumults,"--came hurrying back to them to give what
comfort he could.
Alas! that was but little. He could only speculate whether or not the
duke would give up Brussels, and retire for reinforcements. If the two
armies could effect a union, they would be near about the strength of
the French, but then the Prussians were cut to pieces; so the curate
broke down, and became the worst of the three.
Cheer up, good souls! for he you love shall not die yet for many long
years. While you are standing there before the porch, dreading the long
anxious night, Waterloo has been won, and he--having stood the
appointed time in the serried square, watching the angry waves of
French cavalry dash in vain against the glittering wall of bayonets-- is
now leaning against a gun in the French position, alive and well,
though fearfully tired, listening to the thunder of the Prussian artillery
to the north, and watching the red sun go down across the wild
confusion of the battle-field.
But home at Clere none slept that night, but met again next morning

weary and harassed. All the long three days none of them spoke much,
but wandered about the house uneasily. About ten o'clock on the
Wednesday night they went to bed, and the old man sleeps from sheer
weariness.
It was twelve o'clock when there came a clang at the gate, and a sound
of horses' feet on the gravel. Agnes was at the window in a moment.
"Who goes there?" she cried.
"An orderly from Colonel Mountford at Portsmouth," said a voice
below. "A letter for Mr. Buckley."
She sent a servant to undo the door; and going to the window again, she
inquired, trembling,--
"Do you know what the news is, orderly?"
"A great victory, my dear," said the man, mistaking her for one of the
servants. "Your master is all right. There's a letter from him inside this
one."
"And I daresay," Mrs. Buckley used to add, when she would tell this
old Waterloo story, as we called it, "that the orderly thought me a most
heartless domestic, for when I heard what he said, I burst out laughing
so loud, that old Mr. Buckley woke up to see what was the matter, and
when heard, he laughed as loud as I did."
So he came back to them again with fresh laurels, but Agnes never felt
safe, till she heard that the powers had determined to chain up her
BETE NOIR, Buonaparté, on a lonely rock in the Atlantic, that he
might disturb the world no more. Then at last she began to believe that
peace might be a reality, and a few months after Waterloo, to their
delight and exultation, she bore a noble boy.
And as we shall see more of this boy, probably, than of any one else in
these following pages, we will if you please appoint him hero, with all
the honours and emoluments thereunto pertaining. Perhaps when I have
finished, you will think him not so much of a hero after all. But at