A LIFE FOR A LIFE

By Dinah Maria Craik

The Author Of "John Halifax, Gentleman," "A Woman's Thoughts About Women," &c., &c.

In Three Volumes. Vol. II.

London: Hurst And Blackett, Publishers,

1859

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I. HIS STORY.

CHAPTER II. HIS STORY.

CHAPTER III. HER STORY.

CHAPTER IV. HER STORY.

CHAPTER V. HIS STORY.

CHAPTER VI. HER STORY.

CHAPTER VII. HIS STORY.

CHAPTER VIII HER STORY.

CHAPTER IX. HIS STORY.

CHAPTER X. HER STORY.

CHAPTER XI. HER STORY.

CHAPTER XII. HIS STORY.

CHAPTER I. HIS STORY.

I ended the last page with "I shall write no more here." It used to be my pride never to have broken a promise nor changed a resolution. Pride! What have I to do with pride?

And resolutions, forsooth! What,—are we omnipotent and omniscient, that against all changes of circumstances, feelings, or events, we should set up our paltry resolutions, urge them and hold to them, in spite of reason and conviction, with a tenacity that we suppose heroic, god-like, yet which may be merely the blind obstinacy of a brute?

I will never make a resolution again. I will never again say to myself, "You, Max Urquhart, in order to keep up that character for virtue, honour, and steadfastness, which heaven only knows whether or no you deserve, ought to do so and so; and, come what will, you must do it." Out upon me and my doings! Was I singled out to be the scapegoat of the world?

It is my intention here, regularly to set down, for certain reasons, which I may, or may not, afterwards allude to, certain events, which have happened without any act of mine, almost without my volition, if a man can be so led on by force of circumstances, that there seems only one course of conduct open to him to pursue. Whither these circumstances may lead, I am at this moment as utterly ignorant as on the day I was born, and almost as powerless. I make no determinations, attempt no previsions, follow no set line of conduct; doing only from day to day, what is expected of me, and leaving all the rest to—is it? it must be—to God.

The sole thing in which I may be said to exercise any absolute volition, is in writing down what I mean to write here, the only record that will exist of the veritable me—Max Urquhart,—as he might have been known, not to people in general, but to—any one who looked into his deepest heart, and was his friend, his beloved, his very own.

The form of Imaginary Correspondent I henceforward throw aside. I am perfectly aware to whom and for whom I write: yet who, in all human probability, will never read a single line.

Once, an officer in the Crimea, believing himself dying, gave me a packet of letters to burn. He had written them, year by year, under every change of fortune, to a friend he had, to whom he occasionally wrote other letters, not like these; which were never sent nor meant to be sent, during his life-time—though sometimes I fancy he dreamed of giving+ them, and of their being read, smiling, by two together. He was mistaken. Circumstances which happen not rarely to dreamers like him, made it unnecessary, nay, impossible, for them to be delivered at all. He bade me burn them—at once—in case he died. In so doing there started out of the embers, clear and plain, the name. But the fire and I told no tales; I took the poker and buried it. Poor fellow! He did not die, and I meet him still; but we have never referred to those burnt letters.

These letters of mine I also may one day burn. In the meantime, there shall be no name or superscription on them—no beginning or ending, nor, if I can avoid it, anything which could particularise the person to whom they are written. For all others, they will take the form of a mere statement—nothing more.

To begin. I was sitting about eleven at night, over the fire, in my hut. I had been busy all day, and had had little rest the night before.

It was not my intention to attend our camp concert; but I was in a manner compelled to do so. Ill news from home reached poor young Ansdell of ours—and his colonel sent me to break it to him. I then had to wait about, in order to see the good colonel as he came out from the concert-room. It was, therefore, purely by accident that I met those friends whom I afterwards did not leave for several minutes.

The reason of this delay in their company may be told. It was a sudden agony about the uncertainty of life—young life; fresh and hopeful as pretty Laura Ansdell's—whom I had chanced to see riding through the North Camp, not two weeks ago—and now she was dead. Accustomed as I am to almost every form of mortality, I had never faced the grim fear exactly in this shape before. It put me out of myself for a little time.

I did not go near Granton the following day, but received from him a message and my plaid. She—the lady to whom I had lent it—was "quite well." No more: how could I possibly expect any more?

I was, as I say, sitting over my hut-fire, with the strangest medley in my mind—rosy Laura Ansdell—now galloping across the moor—now lying still and colourless in her coffin; and another face, about the same age, though I suppose it would not be considered nearly as pretty, with the scarlet hood drawn over it; pallid with cold, yet with such a soft light in the eyes, such a trembling sweetness about the mouth! She must be a very happy-minded creature. I hardly ever saw her, or was with her any length of time, that she did not look the picture of content and repose. She always puts me in mind of Dallas's pet song, when we were boys—"Jessie, the Flower o' Dunblane."

"She's modest as ony, and blithe as she's bonnie,