The Argosy — page 356: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Fack and Fill. 337 tess free. From General Marriott, she heard of him every other week, and he seemed to be well and popular and happy. Of a young curate, who came to the parish, and after doing his utmost to win Jill’s love, left the place in anger and despair, it is needless to write here: his pride was, after all, more wounded by the utter coldness of her manner than his heart smitten by it. At the end of two years, the old General, who had been a long while a widower, died ; and Jill learnt no more now of Jack’s welfare, for the Hall was entirely closed. At that time, too, the second Afghan war broke out, and his regiment was sent to the front. Those were anxious days for her, when she daily waited at the Rectory gate to meet the old postman who brought the morning paper, and with trembling hands would open it to see if any battle had been fought and what names were amongst the killed or wounded or sick. At last, one evening her brother came back from a neighbouring town with news of the defeat of Maiwand: he knew no particulars, and fill had to wait till the next day in sickening anxiety. She spent the night sleeplessly, but not tearfully ; for if her darling died a soldier’s death, why she, a soldier’s sweetheart, must be brave too— if only she could be sure she was his sweetheart still! Surely the war was a special occasion which would have warranted his writing to her. Yet never a line from him had come. The next morning, when the postman put the paper in her hand, she leaned against an old chestnut tree in the garden and opened it and read—first the names of those killed in battle. ‘Thank God, thank God, his was not amongst them! Then, the seriously wounded. Ah! there it was, one of the very first: Lieutenant John Marriott of the Royal Engineers! He was suffering agonies in some camp hospital: perhaps dying, or perhaps dead! Oh! why had she not gone out at the beginning of the war, with other ladies, as a nurse? Then she might have been with him now, to win him back to life again with her care and tenderness, or to comfort him until the end. Wish as vain as it was earnest! for she was in her far away English home, and must hurry into the schoolroom to superintend the lessons of her young sister ; and into the garden to see about having the Autumn fruits picked for jam-making; and to a dozen other small duties, which make up the sum total of a woman’s daily life. | Two days afterwards, there came great comfort for her in an Indian letter from Jack, written some weeks before the Maiwand disaster, and brimful of good spirits and hope; and these words were at the end of it: “If I get through this campaign all right and come home again safe and sound, will my time of probation be over — Tell me, my darling, for indeed, indeed, I am getting weary oat?” Aye, the time of probation was over, but would he ever know it? GOMIGIOO SS im