The King's Own Borderers: A Military Romance, Volume 1 (of 3)

CHAPTER XV.

THE BLOW.

"Take comfort: he no more shall see my face;
Lysander and myself will fly this place.
Before the time I did Lysander see,
Seemed Athens as a paradise to me:
Oh, then, what graces in my love do dwell,
That he hath turned a heaven unto a hell!"
                                                Midsummer Night's Dream.

A very dark idea crossed the Master's mind, and then another, darker still!

A few guineas judiciously bestowed among the smugglers, who, when the nights were dark and gusty, frequented the coves near the castle (and when some person or persons unknown hung a lantern over the rocks to guide their steerage through a narrow cleft in the Partan Craig), might for ever rid him of Quentin Kennedy. They could land him on the sands of Dunkirk or Boulogne, or, or—what?

Oh, no! he thrust away the next idea as too horrid, though such things had been done of old in Carrick by the lawless lairds of Auchindrane, and to denounce them, in one terrible instance, had not the sea given up its dead?

He thought of despatching a line to the lieutenant commanding the pressgang at Ayr, by whose agency poor Quentin might be shipped off for seven years' sea service in the East or West Indies, but dread of exposure, and the outcry consequent thereto, made him relinquish such kidnapping ideas of revenge, though they were practical enough in the days when George III. was king.

Revolving these thoughts, with brows knit and his stealthy eyes fixed on the ground, Cosmo quitted the garden and entered the avenue, where the evening shadows under the sycamore trees were gloomy and dark; and there as he strode forward, with a quick and impatient step, he stumbled roughly against some one, who, like himself, seemed lost in reverie.

"Quentin Kennedy!" he exclaimed in a hoarse voice, as this collision brought all his readily excited fury to the culminating point; "confound it, fellow, is this you?"

"I beg pardon, sir—I did not see you—I was lost in thought," replied Quentin.

"Lost in thought, were you?" repeated Cosmo, in his most insulting tone; "you were loitering near the labyrinth in the garden?" he added with almost fierce suspicion.

"I was down in the oakwood shaw, two miles off."

"Hah—indeed! and what have you been doing with that gun??

"Sir!" stammered Quentin, his natural indignation rising as he perceived the other's resolute intention of insulting him.

"I say, what the deuce have you, or such as you, to do with that gun, and on these grounds?"

Quentin drew back, haughtily, in growing anger and surprise, and fearing that the Master was mad or intoxicated, and that he was about to make an assault, he very naturally brought the fowling-piece to the position of charging.

"What, you scoundrel! would you charge me breast high?" cried the Master, choking with rage; "would you shoot me as the poacher Campbell shot Lord Eglinton on his own lands, here in Ayrshire too? I'll teach you to know your proper place, you scurvy young dog!"

With these injurious words, and before even Quentin, who was completely astounded by the wantonness of the whole affair, could be aware of his purpose, Cosmo rushed upon him, wrenched the gun away, and clubbing it, dealt the poor lad a terrible blow on the head with the heavy iron butt, stretching him senseless on the grass. Then uttering a heavy malediction, the fierce Master, still boiling with unappeased rage, passed through the ivied-gateway and entered the mansion. Having the fowling-piece in his hand, force of habit led him towards the gun-room, where he proceeded to draw the charge, for it was still loaded, and to leave it for the under-game-keeper to clean.

Perceiving that there was blood on the lock and also on his straw-coloured kid gloves, he carefully wiped the former, and threw the latter into a stove. Regret he had none for the atrocity just committed; but he disliked the appearance of blood, it looked ugly, he thought—dangerous, and deuced ugly.

"Egad, I hope I haven't killed the young rascal!" he muttered; "how the deuce am I to explain the affair to the old people?—they will be certain to blame me."

Stepping from the gun-room into the library, which adjoined it, he was suddenly met by Lady Rohallion, who gave him an affectionate glance, which suddenly turned to one of anxiety, as she surveyed him by the last light of the sunset, that streamed through a deeply-embayed window. With an assumed smile and some commonplace remark, he was about to pass on, shame and mortification compelling the concealment of what he had done, when she laid her hands on his arm, and said tenderly,

"Dearest Cosmo, what has happened—you look extremely pale?"

"Do I, mother—pale, eh?"

"Yes, and quite ruffled too," she added.

"Well, perhaps so—your friend Flora is the cause."

"Flora Warrender?"

"Yes."

"Explain, Cosmo, explain?" she asked with evident uneasiness.

"I had a long conversation with her in the garden, and it was decidedly more animated than amatory in the end."

"You quarrelled?"

"Not at all—I proposed," he replied, with a strange smile.

"And were accepted?"

"The reverse."

"Rejected—you—my son, rejected?"

"Finally so—or for the present shall we say?" replied Cosmo, lighting a pipe by the old and elaborate process, to conceal his agitation. "A wilful little jade she is as ever I knew. Evidently has no fancy for me, or for increasing the number of his Majesty's lieges under canvas, or for seeing the world in a baggage-waggon, as a lady attached to a regiment of the line."

The courtly old lady gazed at her son almost mournfully; for this mocking brusquerie, acquired in the Pavilion of the Prince Regent, but ill accorded with her old-fashioned ideas of gentle bearing.

"You have been wrong, Cosmo," said she gravely; "you have been too hasty—too abrupt."

"Now, faith, do you think so, really?"

"It was absurd to propose for any girl, especially a young lady of family and fortune, after a two days' acquaintance."

"Egad, my most respected mamma, in London, I've known a score of women of the first fashion, who would have eloped with me for better or worse, and taken post horses for Gretna, on a two hours' acquaintance."

"Oh, Cosmo!"

"So I am wrong, you think, my lady mother?"

"Decidedly; but I trust that time will put all right. I do not despair."

"Neither do I, be assured," said he, with one of his strange smiles.

"The silly girl, of course, felt flattered by your offer?"

"Not at all—one might think such matters were of daily occurrence with her."

"Did she make no consideration of our family and its antiquity?" she asked, bridling up.

"My dear mother, it seems to be of very little importance to Flora Warrender whether the said family flourished at the court of old King Cole, from whose grave Kyle takes its name, or at that of his Majesty of the Cannibal Islands; at all events, she won't have me. Confound it!" he exclaimed, as if talking to himself; "to think that I, almost the pattern man of the Household Brigade—chosen by many a proud peeress to squire her through the crush of the opera; by the fighting men of the corps as their second in every affair of honour; by the Prince Regent to arrange his déjeuners, afternoon receptions, and crack suppers; I, the star of Fops' Alley—deemed the best stroke at billiards in London—the best hand on a tiller at Cowes, or to pull the bow-oar to Richmond; chosen to ride the most vicious brutes at Epsom and Melton, and who can hit a guinea at twenty yards with a saw-handle and a hair-trigger—that I, I say, should be outflanked by a country booby passes my comprehension, unless, as in old King James's days, there be witchcraft again in the Bailiwick of Carrick! To be jockeyed by a country lout and a lass of eighteen—deucedly disgusting! Thank heaven! this can never be known in town, or how would the lady-killing Cosmo be roasted! I think I hear Paget of the Hussars, and the rest of our set laughing over it; and, by Jove, they would laugh too, until I had one or two of them out at Chalk Farm for a morning appetiser."

"How this little rebuff nettles you! Take courage, Cosmo," said his mother, almost laughing at his angry and odd enumeration of his many good qualities.

"Well, I have changed my mind many times; so do women, and so may Flora. This is a boy's love; she will tire of his idea, and then is my time to cut in and win in a canter. You, my dear mother, yourself once loved, before my father proposed——"

"Stay," said Lady Rohallion, interrupting, with sudden agitation, and hastening angrily to change the unwelcome topic; "a sudden light breaks upon me! Cosmo, on the night you arrived, it seemed to me you spoke very oddly of Flora Warrender and Quentin Kennedy."

"How—about something in the avenue, was it?"

"Yes; that you had seen them exchanging marks of their mutual good will, or words to that effect."

"Exactly so, my Lady Rohallion," said Cosmo, slowly emitting the smoke of his pipe.

"What did you mean, Cosmo?" she demanded, with increasing asperity.

"Much more than I said, mother."

"That you saw Quentin kissing Flora?"

"Or Flora kissing Quentin, my dear lady mother, I don't think it makes much difference," said he, with an angry laugh, while she almost trembled with indignation; "but what do you think of your amiable ward and your protégé—a lively young fellow, isn't he?"

"I ought to have been prepared for this," said Lady Rohallion; "indeed, Eleonora Eglinton forewarned me that something of this kind might happen. A separation by school, college, or something else, should have been made whenever Flora came here. I must consult Rohallion, and have such arrangements made for Quentin as shall prevent his interference with the views we have so long cherished for our only son. The foolish girl—the presumptuous boy—to be actually kissing her!"

"Shameful, isn't it?" said Cosmo, who had been despatched somewhat precipitately into the Guards for making love to his mother's maids.

"Such vagaries must be controlled and punished."

"He should have been gazetted a year ago to a West India Regiment, or one of the eight Hottentot Battalions at the Cape; they are quite good enough for such as he; or send him still-hunting with a line regiment into Ireland, where slugs from behind a hedge may send him to the devil before his time."

"Oh fie, Cosmo, you are cruel and unjust;" but she added bitterly as pride of birth, her only failing or weakness, got the mastery for the moment; "no unknown waif, no nameless person like this youth Kennedy shall come between my son, the Master of Rohallion, and our long cherished purpose—no, assuredly! Andrews," she added, raising her voice, as the thin, spare military valet passed through the library, "desire Miss Warrender to speak with me in the yellow drawing-room, before the bell rings for supper."

Then leaving her son, Lady Rohallion swept out of the library to have a solemn interview with her ward.

The last flush of sunset had died away, and one by one the stars were shining out.

The night wore on, and nothing was seen or heard of Quentin. Indeed, save the Master, as yet no one missed him: but as he did not appear when the supper-bell clanged in the belfry of the old keep, Cosmo, with several unpleasant misgivings in his mind, hastened unseen into the avenue, down the long vista of which the waning moon shed a broad and pallid flood of radiance, ere, in clouds that betokened a rough night, it sunk beyond the wooded heights of Ardgour.

Cosmo went to the place where so savagely he had struck the poor lad down; but Quentin was gone; the grass where he had lain was bruised, and on the gravel was a pool of blood about a foot in diameter—blood that must have flowed from the wound in his head; but other trace of him there was none!

CHAPTER XVI.

EXPOSTULATION.

"Pledged till thou reach the verge of womanhood,
And shalt become thy own sufficient stay!
Too late I feel, sweet orphan! was the day
For steadfast hope the contrast to fulfil;
Yet still my blessing hover o'er thee still."
                                                                                    WORDSWORTH.

Lady Rohallion had so frequently spoken to Flora Warrender on the subject of the proposed or expected marriage with Cosmo, that she had little diffidence generally in approaching the subject; but now there was a new and unexpected feature in the matter—a lover, a rival—thus she felt aware that the adoption of some tact became requisite.

What the good lady could hope to achieve, where her enterprising son had failed in person, it is difficult to imagine; nevertheless, she resolved to remonstrate with Flora.

"She is too young to judge for herself, and must therefore let others judge for her," said she, half aloud.

"You wished to see me, madam," said Flora, entering with an air of annoyance, only half concealed by a smile, as she correctly feared this formal summons had reference to the recent scene in the garden.

Seating Flora beside her on a sofa, she took her by the hand, and while considering what to say, played caressingly with her dark wavy hair, and said something in praise of her beauty, so the girl's heart foreboded what was coming next.

"You are rich, dear Flora," said Lady Rohallion, insinuatingly, "but most, perhaps, in beauty."

"I am often told so, especially by you," replied Flora, laughing.

"An heiress, too."

"But what of it, madam?" she asked, gravely.

"You know, dear Flora, that money is the key to a thousand pleasures—it is alike the object of the avaricious, and the ambition of the poor."

"True, Lady Rohallion," replied Flora, smiling again; "but, as we say in Scotland, a tocherless lass, though she may have a long pedigree, may have a pleasure that no heiress can ever enjoy."

"Indeed?"

"Yes; the most flattering and glorious conviction!"

"Pray tell me?"

"She can prove to her heart's content that she is loved for herself, and herself alone. Poverty makes all equal——"

"True; but so does wealth," interrupted Lady Rohallion, annoyed by her own mismanagement in the beginning. "You are rich, but my son is also rich, and he loves you, Flora, well, truly, and devotedly."

"And have two days sufficed to summon all this truth and devotion?"

"Flora, Flora, you are well aware that it has been an old purpose and hope, between your parents and his, to unite or cement their old hereditary friendship by a stronger tie, and that this intended marriage has been an object of solicitude to all——"

"Save to those most interested in it—myself especially."

"Do not say so, my dear child—the match is most suitable."

A gesture of annoyance escaped Flora, but Lady Rohallion resumed:

"Our families have known each other so long; it has been a friendship of three generations—Cosmo and you suit each other so admirably; and then the Ardgour lands run the whole length of the Bailiwick with our own."

"The most convincing argument of all," replied Flora, in a tone which made Lady Rohallion colour deeply, and the secret annoyance of both was gradually rising to a height, though each strove to conceal it.

"Consider our family, Flora!" exclaimed Lady Winifred, haughtily; "look at that gilded vane on yonder turret. It bears a date—1400; in that year, Sir Ranulph, first baron of Rohallion, was made Hereditary Admiral of the Firth of Clyde, from Glasgow Bridge to Ailsa Craig, by the Regent Duke of Albany. We are not people of yesterday!"

Flora failed to perceive what this aqueous office had to do with her or her affairs.

"In three years," she began. "I shall cease to be your ward——"

"Three, by your father's will, Flora."

"So do not let us embitter those three remaining years, my dear madam, by this project, a constant recurrence to which serves but to excite and pique by the attempt to control me."

"I trust, my dear but wilful Flora, that we have not been unjust stewards in the execution of the trust your worthy parents bequeathed to us, and if the hope of a nearer and dearer connexion——"

"Your son, the Master, is a brave and noble gentleman, I grant you," interrupted Flora, with quiet energy; "but save in name, we have been almost strangers to each other, and he is so many years my senior, that when we last met he treated me quite as a little girl—a child! Our tastes, habits, manners, and temper are all dissimilar; ah, madam, pardon me, but I never could love him!"

"Never love Cosmo—my Cosmo?" said Lady Rohallion, with indignant surprise.

"Never as a husband, though dearly as a friend."

"Fancy, all! You would love him with all a true wife's devotion ere long. In girls of your age, love always comes after marriage, it is unnecessary before it. You little know how dear and loveable he is, and how gallant too! What wrote Sir Ralph Abercrombie to the Duke of York concerning him, after that affair at the Helder? 'The bravery of the Honourable Captain Crawford, of the 3rd Guards, in the action of the 27th instant, forms one of the most brilliant episodes of the war in Holland!'"

Flora gave an almost imperceptible shrug of her white shoulders, for praises of Cosmo's valour at the Helder had been a daily story of the old lady for some time past. Slight though the shrug and the smile that accompanied it, Lady Rohallion detected them, and her eyes sparkled brightly with anger. She arose with ineffable hauteur, and shook out her flounces, as a swan ruffles its pinions, to their fullest extent.

"Miss Warrender," said she, with her hands folded before her, and her powdered head borne very erect indeed, "is it possible that this strange opposition alike to the earnest wishes of the living and of the dead, arises from a cause which I have hitherto disdained to approach or allude to—as a species of midsummer madness—a love for the luckless lad to whom for so many years we have extended the hand of protection, Quentin Kennedy?"

At the name which concluded this formal exordium, a deep blush suffused the delicate neck of Flora; but, as her back was to the lighted candles, the questioner did not perceive it, though scrutinising her keenly.

"And why, madam, may I not love poor Quentin, if I choose?" asked the wilful Flora, bluntly.

"Because he is, as you justly named him, poor," replied the other, with calm asperity.

"But I am rich," urged Flora, laughing through all her annoyance, with an irresistible desire to pique Lady Rohallion.

"He is nameless."

"How know we that, madam? Kennedy is as good a name as Warrender."

"True, when borne by an Earl of Cassilis, by a Laird of Colzean, of Kilhenzie, or Dunure; but not by every landless waif who bears the name of the clan or family. God knoweth how in my heart I dearly love that boy; yet this fancy of yours passes all bounds of reason, and all my expectations, in its absurdity. I have destined you for my son, Cosmo, and none other shall have you!" she added, almost imperiously.

"Destined," said Flora, with mingled laughter and chagrin, "because the march-dyke of Rohallion is also the march-dyke of Ardgour."

"Nay, nay, think not so unworthily of us; we need to covet nothing and to court none; but destined you are, because it was your dear mother's dying wish."

"To make me miserable?"

"To make you happy, foolish girl; dare you speak of misery with my son?"

"So you would actually have me to marry a man I don't like, and scarcely ever saw? It is a common sacrifice in the great world, I am aware; but my sphere has been rather small——"

"You would not marry a boy, surely?"

"I may at least love him," replied Flora, simply; "and I have no wish to marry at all—just now, at least."

"This is the very stuff of which your novels are made!" exclaimed Lady Rohallion, crimsoning with passion, and raising her voice in a manner quite unusual to her. "Mercy on me! I wonder why I have never detected Quentin at your feet, on his knees before you, for that I believe is the true and most approved mode; but we know nothing of him, he may be base-born for aught that we can tell, and Lord Rohallion shall learn that Quentin Kennedy—a brat, a very beggar's brat—shall never come between our own son and his success; and so, young lady, your humble servant!"

And inflamed by genuine passion, Lady Rohallion, as she uttered this unpleasant speech, (which, to do her justice, was scarcely uttered ere repented for,) in a loud and imperious tone, swept away with a haughty bow, in all her amplitude of black satin, and with that hauteur of bearing which made the Scottish gentlewomen of her day so stately and imposing.

Her words, the fiery glance of anger she darted at Flora, and the tenor of the expostulation proved too much for the temper or the nerves of that young lady, who on being left to herself, burst into a passion of tears.

But a hand was laid on the lock of the door, as if some one was about to enter; and fearing it might be the Master, she started up and escaped by another door to her own apartment.

CHAPTER XVII.

FORTH INTO THE WORLD.

"This nicht is my departing nicht,
    For here nae langer I maun stay;
There's neither friend or foe o' mine,
    But wishes me away.
What I hae dune through lack o' wit,
    I never, never can reca';
I hope you're a' my friends as yet—
    Gude nicht, and joy be wi' ye a'."
                                Johnnie Armstrong's Good Night.

The knock-down blow given to Quentin by the butt-end of the clubbed fowling-piece, beside inflicting a severe wound which bled profusely, stunned him completely for a time, and in this condition he was found by the quartermaster, who was returning from having a jug of punch and a quiet rubber with our quaint friend the dominie at his little thatched cottage in the village.

Great were the alarm and concern of the kind-hearted veteran when he found his young friend and favourite in a condition so pitiable. He raised him, tied a handkerchief over his wound to stanch the bleeding; then gradually as consciousness returned, Quentin remembered all that had occurred, and told Girvan of his meeting with the Master—the unmerited and unexpected insolence of the latter, his sudden assault, and that was all he knew.

The disquiet of the ex-quartermaster was greatly increased on hearing of a fracas so unseemly and so dangerous, and he knew in a moment that it contained more elements of discord than Quentin admitted or perhaps knew; though he was ignorant of the Master's abrupt proposal, the garden-scene, and of the subsequent expostulation, which was in progress at that moment, and which we have detailed in the preceding chapter.

"I can't blame you, my boy," said the old soldier, half communing with himself, and shaking his head till his pigtail swung like a pendulum; "I can't blame ye," he repeated, as he gave Quentin his arm, and together they walked slowly towards the castle; "ye are young—the temptation is great, though I hae long since forgotten all of such matters, save that love-making tendeth to mischief."

"Quartermaster," stammered Quentin, "I don't understand, what——"

"But I do! The devilment first began in Father Adam's garden, and it will go on so long as the world wags."

Quentin coloured deeply, and his heart leaped with mingled rage and exultation—rage at the Master for the injury he had done him, and exultation for its cause—jealousy, by which he was assured that Flora loved him, despite all the attention and the greater attractions of the blasé guardsman.

But what was to be done now?

To remain longer under the same roof with the Master of Rohallion was impossible; but whither was he to go? The quartermaster, without adverting further to what he too well knew to be the secret spring or moving cause of a quarrel so sudden and unbecoming in its details, hurried Quentin to his secluded little quarters, "the snuggery," already described as existing in a tower of the castle. There he gave him a glass of sherry and water as a reviver; sponged and cleansed, with ready and kindly hands, his face and hair from the clotted blood which disfigured them, applied with soldierlike promptitude a piece of court-plaster to the cut, and brushed a lock or so gently over to conceal it.

That Lady Rohallion must be informed of the encounter and have it explained away, if possible; that the Master should be urged to apologise to Quentin (a very improbable hope); and that they should be made to shake hands and commit the affair to oblivion, was the mode in which the worthy ground-bailie proposed to solder up this untoward affair. Quentin was long inexorable, and with the fury of youth vowed to have some mysterious and terrible revenge; but gradually the inexpediency, the impropriety, and impossibility of obtaining reparation by the strong hand dawned upon him, and he consented to leave the matter in the hands of Girvan—to have it explained gently to Lady Rohallion, and leave her to be the mediator between them.

On being informed by Jack Andrews that she was in the yellow drawing-room, and as there was still an hour to spare before the supper bell rang, they proceeded thither to have an interview with her.

While passing through the outer drawing-room, which was quaintly furnished with marqueterie cabinets, tables, and bookcases, with chairs and fauteuils of Queen Anne's time, they heard voices in the inner apartment, and one of them was Lady Rohallion's, pitched in a louder key than was her wont, so they paused, unfortunately, only to hear the LAST words of her conversation with Flora—words which fell like molten lead on the ears and in the heart of the listener, whom they most concerned.

"—We know nothing of him—he may be base-born for aught that we can tell, and Lord Rohallion shall learn that Quentin Kennedy—a brat, a very beggar's brat—shall never come between our own son and his success—and so, young lady, your humble servant!"

These bitter, bitter words—words such as he had never heard from her lips before, made Quentin reel as if stunned, so that with the effect they produced upon him, added to that of the recent blow, he would have fallen had not the quartermaster caught him in his arms, and held him up, surveying him the while with a kind and father-like expression of solicitude and bewilderment in his old and weather-worn visage.

Rousing himself, with his teeth set and his eyes flashing, he made three efforts to turn the door handle and enter the room.

It was his hand that Flora had heard upon the lock when she started from the sofa and fled to her own apartment in a passion of tears, so that when he entered the inner drawing-room it was empty, and thus Quentin knew not—though his heart foreboded—to whom the injurious words of Lady Rohallion had been addressed; but their tenor decided him at once in a preconceived intention of leaving, and for ever, the only home he had now in the world, and almost the only one of which he had any distinct memory.

"This is no longer a place for me, John Girvan, and so sure as God sees and hears me, I shall leave it this very night!" he exclaimed, as with his eyes flashing and full of tears, and his heart now filled only by new, and hitherto unknown emotions of sorrow, bitterness, and mortification (unknown to him at least) he walked to and fro upon the gun-battery, where the 24-pounders of La Bonne Citoyenne faced the waves of the Firth, on which the last rays of a waning moon were shining coldly and palely, especially on the ridge of foam that boiled for ever over the Partan Craig.

"And whither would ye go, Quentin?" asked Girvan, who felt in his honest heart an intense commiseration for the lonely lad, knowing that were he to remain after the insult he had received, and the words he had heard, it would argue a poverty of spirit he would be loth to find in Quentin; "whither would ye go?"

"Away to France, to seek my mother."

"Impossible—it's hostile ground, and once on it you would be made a prisoner by the authorities, and shut up in Bitche, Verdun, or Brisgau, if they did not hang you as a spy, or send you to serve as a private soldier in the Corps Etranger. You must think of another scheme, less rash and romantic."

"I know of none."

"In all the wide world, Quentin," said Girvan, with his nether lip quivering, "ye have no home but this."

"This!" repeated Quentin, grinding his teeth.

"Yes."

"Well—I care not; I will go anywhere from it—the farther away the better!" (And Flora? suggested his heart.)

In vain the quartermaster urged him to do nothing rashly, and to await the return of Lord Rohallion, who had ridden over to Eglinton castle, to visit his old friend and American comrade, Earl Hugh, who had just returned from London; but pride and passion, with a conviction that the mother's unwonted bitterness was only a supplement to the son's insulting conduct, seemed to dissolve all the ties that had bound Quentin to Rohallion and its family.

These emotions of anger had full swing in his heart. What Lady Rohallion had said, the old Lord must, he argued, have heard repeatedly, and may often have thought; and so, forth—forth to seek his bread elsewhere, he would go before the clocks struck midnight.

Mentally he vowed and resolved, that the first hour of another morning should see him far in search of a new home.

Deluding good John Girvan by some excuse, he slipped to his own room and packed a few necessaries in a small portmanteau, feeling, while he did so, a sense of mortification that they were the gifts of those whom, in justice to himself, he was compelled to leave. His watch, a ring, a breast-pin, and other trinkets given to him by Lady Rohallion, he laid upon his dressing-table, leaving them in token that he took with him nothing but what was absolutely necessary.

The time was an hour and a-half from midnight. Unheeding he had heard the supper-bell clanged long ago, and cared not what any one—Flora excepted—thought of his absence now. Opening a window, he looked forth upon the night. The moon had waned, and the atmosphere was thick and gusty—yea, nearly as stormy and as wild as on that night when he had been washed ashore on the sand of the bay below Rohallion.

Putting his purse in his pocket—it contained but a half-guinea, he gave a last glance at his bed-room—to leave it with all its familiar features cost him a pang; there were some of Lady Rohallion's needlework, and sketches by Flora, books lent him by the dominie, gloves and foils that had borne the dint of many a bout between him and John Girvan; quaint shells given to him by Elsie Irvine, and many little trophies of his shooting expeditions with the gamekeeper, and so forth. He quitted the room with a sigh, and slipping downstairs reached the hall-door unseen by any of the household.

"And now a long farewell to Rohallion!" he exclaimed, as he reached the ivied arch of the haunted gate.

"Not so fast, Quentin," said a voice, and the rough hand of the worthy quartermaster grasped his.

"John Girvan," said Quentin, with emotion.

"I thought it would come to this. So you are really about to take French leave of us—to levant in the night, and without beat of drum?"

"Yes,"

"To go out into the wide world?"

"Yes."

"I knew it would be thus, for I knew your spirit, Quentin, and so have been keeping guard here at the gate."

"Guard—for what purpose? To stop me?"

"No."

"What then?"

"To aid and help ye, Quentin, laddie," said Girvan, placing a heavy purse in his hand. "I have saved something here, forty guineas or so, off my half-pay, take them and use them cautiously, wi' an auld man's blessing—an auld soldier's, if you like it better."

"Girvan—John Girvan," said Quentin, with a very troubled voice; "I cannot—I cannot——"

"What?"

"Deprive you of what I may never be able to repay."

"Ye must and ye shall take the money, or I'll fling it into the Lollard's Linn!" said the other, impetuously. "It was I who laid your father's head in the grave, laddie, in the auld kirkyard yonder in the glen, and ill would it become auld John Girvan, of the 25th, to let his son go forth to seek his fortune in this cold hard world, portionless and penniless, while there was a shot in the locker—a lad I love, too!"

"But the repayment, John Girvan, the repayment."

"Heed not that—it will come time enough; and if it never comes I'll never miss it; but ye'll write to me from the next burgh-town, won't ye, Quentin, laddie?"

"I shall, John—I shall," replied Quentin, now so softened that he sobbed with his face on the old man's shoulder.

"God bless ye, my bairn—God bless ye!"

"And you, John."

"You'll think o' me sometimes."

"Oh, could I ever forget?"

"Sorely will she repent this at my lord's homecoming," said Girvan, bitterly.

"My father was an ill-starred wanderer, and perished miserably, poor man! What right have I to hope for, or to look for, a better fate than he? My mother, too..... Do they see me now, and know of all this? .... And Flora—dear Flora, whom I shall see no more!"

"Take a dram ere you go, laddie, for the night is dark and eerie," said Girvan, producing a flask from his pocket; "'a spur in the head is weel worth twa on the heels,' says an auld Scots proverb."

"You will bid the dominie good-bye for me."

"That shall I, laddie—that shall I."

"And tell—tell her, that I have gone forth to seek my fortune, and—and——"

His voice failed him, so he slung his little portmanteau on his shoulder, and wrung the hand of his kind friend for the last time. Hurrying away, he disappeared in the darkness, and, as he did so, a sound that followed on the wind made him pause, but for an instant.

It was the old quartermaster sobbing like a child.

* * * *

So, thus went Quentin Kennedy forth into the world.

"Few words," says a charming writer, "are more easily spoken than He went forth to seek his fortune; and what a whole world lies within the narrow compass! a world of high-hearted hopes and doubting fear; of noble ambition to be won and glorious paths to be trod, mingled with tender thoughts of home and those who made it such. What sustaining courage must be his who dares this course, and braves that terrible conflict—the toughest that ever man fought—between his own bright colouring of life, and the stern reality of the world. How many hopes has he to abandon—how many illusions to give up. How often is his faith to be falsified and his trustfulness betrayed; and, worst of all, what a fatal change do these trials impress upon himself—how different is he from what he had been."

Bitterness tinged the spirit of Quentin Kennedy with an impression of fatalism, and he marched mournfully, doggedly on.

CHAPTER XVIII.

UNAVAILING REGRET.

"Ay waken oh!
    Waken and wearie;
Sleep I canna get
    For thinking o' my dearie.
When I sleep I dream,
    And when I wake I'm eerie;
Rest I canna get,
    For thinking o' my dearie."
                                            Old Scots Song.

When, three days after these events, Lord Rohallion returned home from his visit to Eglinton and to his brave old comrade—the "Sodger Hugh" of Burns' poem—he found the members of his household in a considerable state of consternation and excitement. This was consequent to the sudden and mysterious disappearance of his favourite, Quentin Kennedy; but gradually the whole story came out in all its details, even to the crushing observation, so unfortunately and unintentionally overheard by the lad and the quartermaster in the outer drawing-room.

Lord Rohallion was very indignant with his son for making an attack so unprovoked as the affair in the avenue, which, to do him justice, the Master described truly enough. He was seriously angry with Lady Winifred for speaking so ungenerously of his young favourite, and with the quartermaster too, for permitting, even aiding him in the means of flight.

Now, three days had elapsed and no tidings had been heard of him; but there were no railroads or steamers in those days, or other means of locomotion than the occasional stage-coaches and carriers' waggons, so the family supposed that he could not be very far off.

The Master was sullen, resenting all this interest as an insult to himself, so he spent the whole day abroad in search of grouse and ptarmigan, and had even ordered his valet to pack up and prepare for returning to London, an order which that powdered gentleman of the aiguillette heard with extreme satisfaction, "the hair of Hayrshire by no means agreeing with his constitution," while the "red hands and big beetle-crushers of the women were by no means to his taste."

It was evident to Cosmo that Flora entertained a horror of him; and now that her anger had fully subsided and emotions of alarm replaced it, Lady Rohallion mourned for the poor lad, repenting of the past, and trembling for the unknown future.

"A plague on your planning and match-making, Winny," said her husband, as they sat together on the old stone seat in the garden, late on the third evening after Quentin had disappeared; "I never knew any good come of that sort of thing."

"You know, Reynold, how long this proposed marriage has been a favourite scheme of ourselves and the Warrenders," she urged, gently.

"But you were—pardon me, Winny, dear—too officious or energetic; and Cosmo has been most reprehensibly rash!"

"Ah, don't say so!"

"I must! Had you left the girl to herself, this romantic fancy for her early playmate had soon been forgotten, or merged in a woman's love for Cosmo, and his proposal had been accepted, as I hope it yet shall be. Women change, don't they, sometimes?" he added, with a sly twinkle in his eyes.

"Yes; but there must be reasons," said she, hesitatingly.

"Of course—of course."

"From the hints that Cosmo gave of what he had seen or overheard, I deemed it right to interfere."

"An error, I think; couldn't you let the young folks alone? Heaven knows, many a girl I kissed, in my first red coat and epaulettes," said Rohallion, while knocking the gravel about with his silver-headed cane.

"But Cosmo does so love that girl."

"Love her?" said Rohallion, laughing.

"Yes."

"Then it must be after some odd fashion of his own."

"How, my lord?"

"Why, zounds! Cosmo has passed unscathed through the perils of too many London seasons to be bird-limed by a country belle like Flora, beautiful though she be. She is not the style of girl that passes muster with the Household Brigade, I fear."

"Flora Warrender?"

"I mean that she is too genuine—too unsophisticated—in fact, I don't know what I mean,—somewhat of a character, if you will; and then, Quentin—poor Quentin——"

"Poor dear boy! pray don't upbraid me more, Reynold," she urged with tears.

"I do not mean to do so, Winny."

"I remember him only as the sweet little prattling child, saved from the wreck on that wild and stormy night; and I love him dearly, as if he were our own; he was full of affection and gentleness!" she continued, covering her face with her handkerchief.

"And yet you trampled on him, Winny," said Lord Rohallion, taking a pinch of Prince's mixture with great energy, and making his hair-powder fly about like a floury halo, "trampled upon him as if he had been a beggar's cur—he a soldier's son!"

"Oh, Reynold, upbraidings again!"

"It wasn't like you, Winny, dear—it wasn't like you."

"My deep interest in Cosmo's welfare, provocation at Quentin, and the extreme wilfulness of Flora, all served to bewilder me. I own that I was wrong and not quite myself; but the dear bairn is gone, Reynold, gone from our roof-tree, and sorrow avails not."

"He was so good, so gentle, of so sweet a disposition," said Lord Rohallion, musingly; "always doing kind offices for everybody. Egad! I've seen him carrying horse-buckets for the old groom in the stable-court, because the man was feeble and ailing; but here come the dominie and John Girvan—perhaps they have news. Good evening, dominie. Any tidings of the deserter, Girvan?"

The kind-hearted dominie, who since Quentin's disappearance had been as restless as if his galligaskins had been lined with Lieutenant James's horse-blister, shook his head mournfully, while lifting his old-fashioned three-cornered hat, and bowing thrice to the lady, who presented him with her lace-mittened hand.

"I have just been telling Lady Rohallion that I thought she was unnecessarily severe, and I regret very much, Girvan, that Quentin overheard those casual words in the drawing-room—words lightly spoken, and not meant for him to hear."

"Poor lad! as for his falling in love with Miss Warrender, it was quite natural," said the quartermaster; "how could you expect aught else, my lady?"

"True—true," replied Lady Winifred, with an air of extreme annoyance at having private family matters openly canvassed by dependents; but the affair had gone beyond their own control now; "propinquity is frequently fatal."

"Prop—what? I dinna quite comprehend, my lady; but this I know, that if a winsome young pair are left for ever together——"

"That is exactly what I mean, Girvanmains," interrupted the lady, with cold dignity.

"Well—it is pretty much like leaving a lighted match near gunpowder; there will be a blow-up sometime when least expected."

"May you not be all wrong in your views of this matter?" said Lord Rohallion, who somewhat shared his wife's feeling of annoyance; "I must question Miss Warrender herself; I feel assured that she will conceal nothing from me."

"Not even that she allowed this sprightly young fellow to kiss her in the avenue, eh?" said the sneering voice of the Master, who appeared suddenly at the back of the stone chair, which he had approached unseen, and whereon he lounged with a twig in his mouth, and a Newmarket hat knowingly depressed very much over his right eye. "It was very pretty and becoming, wasn't it, dominie? ha! ha!"

"Cosmo!" exclaimed his mother, with positive anger.

"Osculatio—a kissing-match—eh, dominie?"

"There may be no harm in a kiss, my good sir," said the pedant, gravely, for though mightily shocked, as became the precentor of Rohallion kirk, on hearing of such undue familiarity, he felt himself bound to defend his young pupil and friend.

"No harm, you think?"

"Indubitably not."

"A rare old put it is! But what do such little favours lead to?"

"They may lead to reconciliation, as when the king kissed Absalom; or be the token of welcome, as when Moses kissed his father-in-law; or they may indicate homage, as we find in the book of Esther."

"And what about the kiss of Judas, dominie, when on such matters?" continued the sneering Cosmo.

"That I leave you, sir, to discover; but that there may be nothing wrong in the act itself, I can refer you to Genesis, Hosea, and all the sacred writings, which abound in solemn salutes by the lip, so that the kiss of Quentin may have been a pure and sinless one."

The dominie gave the fore-cock of his hat a twist with his hand, as if he had settled the matter, while Lord Rohallion, notwithstanding his annoyance, could not but join his son in a hearty laugh at the serious earnestness of the defence.

"You will have a vigorous search made for Quentin Kennedy," said he; "despatch messengers in every direction, John Girvan; spare neither trouble nor money, but bring the young rogue back to us."

"That shall I do blithely, my lord," replied the quartermaster, as he and the dominie made their bows and retired, while Cosmo curled his thin lips; and after a pause, uttered one of his harsh and unpleasant mocking laughs.

"The Master has the eyebrows of a wicked man, or I am no physiognomist—grieved am I to say so, dominie," whispered Girvan, as they walked away together.

"Ye are right, John, the intercilium is covered with hair, whilk I like not, though Petronius and Ovid call such eyebrows the chief charm of the other sex;

"'Ye fill by art your eyebrows' vacant space,'

saith the latter. It is an auld—auld notion that beetle-brows indicate an evil temper—a crafty and fierce spirit; and of a verity, the Master Cosmo hath both."

"Who the deuce could have anticipated such a blow-up as this?"

"About a woman! Pah! women," said the dominie, cynically, "according to a German philosopher, are only like works carved of fine ivory: nothing is whiter or smoother, and nothing sooner turns yellow."

"Are ye sure he was not a Roman philosopher?" asked the quartermaster, drily.

"I am: yet Petronius and Ovid both say——"

"Bother them both, dominie! leave Greek roots and Latin verbs alone, now that the poor boy is gone—God bless and watch over him! I know he'll ever have a warm corner in his heart for us both, and that, go wherever he may, he'll neither forget you nor the poor old quartermaster; but now to have a glass of grog, and then to set about this search that my lord has ordered—a search which I know right well will prove a bootless one."

A vigorous pursuit and inquiry along all the highways were now instituted. Girvan, the dominie, the gardener, gamekeepers, grooms, Jack Andrews, Irvin the fisherman, the running footman, the parish minister on his puffy Galloway cob, and even Spillsby, the portly and unwieldy butler, were all despatched in various directions to the neighbouring farms, mansion sand villages, without avail.

John Legat, usually known in the Bailiwick as Lang Leggie, the running footman (for one of those officials still lingered in the old-fashioned household of Rohallion), scoured all Kyle and Cunninghame, with hard boiled eggs and sherry in the silver bulb that topped his long cane, scarcely pausing to imbibe these, his sustenance when on duty; and though he returned thrice to the castle, he was despatched like a liveried Mercury, thrice again, but without hearing tidings of the missing one.

Since the last Duke of Queensberry ("old Q.") who died in 1810, Lord Rohallion was perhaps the last Scottish peer who retained such an old state appendage as a running footman.

Long did they all, save the sullen Master, hope, and even flatter themselves, that the wanderer would return; but days became weeks, and no trace could be discovered and no tidings were heard of him anywhere.

An armed lugger that did not display her colours, but was very foreign in her build and in the rake of her masts, had been seen standing off and on near Rohallion Head. About midnight she was close in shore, steering clear of the Partan Craig, and burning a blue light. By sunrise she was far off at sea: could he have gone with her?

There had been a numerous and somewhat lawless body of gipsies encamped near the oakwood shaw on the night of his disappearance, for the ashes of their night-fires had been found, together with well-picked bones and broken bottles, the usual débris of their suppers al fresco; but there were other traces more alarming: several large pools of blood, which showed that there had been a fight—perhaps murder—committed among them. These wanderers had departed by sunrise, and passed beyond the craigs of Kyle, where all traces of them were lost. The quartermaster thought of the money he had given Quentin, and trembled lest the gold had only ensured his destruction, till the dominie reassured him by remembering that there were more Kennedies than Faas among those gipsies, and the former would be sure to protect him for the sake of his name.

On that night, too, the pressgang from Ayr had been more than ten miles inland, in search of certain seamen who had sought refuge as farm labourers; so this knowledge was another source of fear, as there was a great demand for men, and the officers were not very particular.

There had been a recruiting party beating up for various regiments in the Bailiwick of Cunninghame, and it had been at Maybole on the night after Quentin fled. The party had marched, no one could say whether for Edinburgh or Glasgow. Could Quentin have enlisted?

The night was a dark and stormy one; could he have lost his way and perished in the Doon or the Girvan, both of which were swollen by recent rains? This was barely possible, as he knew the country so well.

There were no electric wires to telegraph by, no rural police to apply to, and no penny dailies to advertise in. People travelled still by an armed stage or the carrier's waggon, just as their great-grandfathers did in the days of Queen Anne. Twanging his horn as he went or came, the Riding Post was still, as in Cowper's Task,

                    "——the herald of a noisy world,
With spattered boots, strapped waist, and frozen locks,
News from all nations lumbering at his back."

Posts came and went from the capital of the Bailiwick, but there were no tidings of Quentin, so the Master of Rohallion laughed in secret at all the exertions, doubts, and fears of those around him.

Every alarming idea was naturally suggested. The quartermaster's early instincts made him think most frequently of the recruiting party; but he grieved at the idea of the friendless and homeless lad, so delicately nurtured and gently bred, enduring all he had himself endured—the hardships and privations of a private soldier's life; while the kind-hearted dominie actually shed tears behind his huge horn barnacles at the bare thought of such a thing, and mourned for all his wasted classic lore.

Aware that she had been in some measure the primary cause of Quentin's expulsion from Rohallion, Flora Warrender had rather a difficult part to play now. To conceal entirely that she mourned for him would be to act a part which she disdained; but when she spoke with sorrow or anxiety, she excited the sarcasms of Cosmo, and even a little pique in Lady Winifred, who more than once said to her, almost with asperity, "Flora, you should have known your own position, and made Quentin remember his; then all these unseemly events had never taken place."

"How, madam?"

"You should at once have put an end to his mooning and tomfoolery. Do you hear me?"

"Yes, madam," sighed Flora, who seemed to be intent on a book, though she held it upside down.

"How cool—how composed you are!"

"Less so, perhaps, than I seem," replied Flora, who felt that tears were suffusing her eyes.

"Young ladies took these matters very differently in my time: but since this revolution in France, manners are strangely altered. (Here we may mention that the epoch referred to was now superseding the Union in Lady Rohallion'a mind.) Tears!" she continued; "I am glad to see them, at least for your own sake."

"They are not for my own sake, Lady Rohallion, but for the sake of poor Quentin, who has fallen under the displeasure of you all, and who, through my unwitting means, has—has—become——"

"What?"

"Homeless, friendless, and alone! Oh, it must be so sad to be alone in the world—all alone!"

Lady Winifred lowered her eyes, and her irritation passed rapidly away.

She had somewhat changed since that stormy night on which we first introduced her to the reader, and had altered, as people do with increasing years, so as to be at times—shall we say it?—almost selfish in much that related to her own immediate hearth and household, and more especially in all that concerned the still more selfish Cosmo, on whom she doted, and in whom she could see no imperfection. Yet she could not but reproach herself bitterly when thinking of Quentin Kennedy, and the harsh, cutting words he had overheard.

Then as his smiling, loving, and handsome face came vividly in memory before her, she would ask of herself, "Is it thus, Winifred Rohallion, you have treated the strange orphan, the helpless child once, the mere lad now, who was cast by fate, misfortune, and the waves of that bleak November sea, years ago, at your door and at your mercy? Was it generous to cast forth upon the cold world the friendless, poor, and penniless youth, who loves you—ay, even as your own son never loved you? And what answer is to be given if, at some future day, his mother, who may be living yet, should come hither and demand him of you—you who stung and galled his proud spirit by taunts, upbraiding and unmerited reproach?" And so she would whisper and think what she dared not say aloud; though "perhaps the lowest of our whispers may reach eternity, for it is not very far from any of us, after all."

By the past memories of her early life—by those of one whose face came at times unbidden before her, and by the pleasant days of their youth in pastoral Nithsdale—by those evenings when the sunset glowed so redly on the green summits of Monswald and Criffel, while the Nith brawled joyously over its pebbled bed, and the white hawthorn cast its fragrance and its blossoms on the soft west wind—by all these, it might be asked, had she no compassion for the young love she was seeking to mar and crush?

She had alike compunction and compassion; but in this instance she deemed it the mere love of a boy for a girl, and not quite such as Rohallion's brother, Ranulph Crawford, had for her some seven-and-thirty years before.

Seven-and-thirty! a long vista they were to look back through now; but the events of her youth seemed clearer at times than those of her middle age, and as we grow older they always are so in dreams.

Quentin would soon forget the affair, she was assured, and self-interest and love for her own son blinded her to the rest—to all but a sorrow for the lost youth, and a craving to know his fate, where he was now, and with whom.

Thus many a night after his disappearance her heart upbraided her keenly; and many a lonely hour, unseen by others, she wept and prayed—prayed for the welfare and safety of the unknown lad she might never see or hear of more, for as a mother she had been to him, and he had been ever tender, loving, and kind as a son to her—much more than ever the Master had been in the days of his infancy and boyhood, for he was always cold, cruel, and headstrong; and now Quentin's place was vacant among them, as completely as if he was in the grave.

And Flora Warrender, though mentioned last, her sorrow was not the least. How lonely and how tiresome the old castle seemed to her now! All their favourite walks—the long, shady avenue by the foaming Lollard's Linn; the grand old garden with its aged yew hedges; the kelpies' haunted pool, where first she learned that he loved her, and felt his kiss upon her cheek; the ivied ruins of Kilhenzie, and every old trysting-place, seemed deserted now indeed.

She had no companion now in her rambles to touch up her sketches, to compare notes with in reading, to hover lovingly by her side at the piano, and so forth: thus Flora's "occupation" seemed, like the warlike Moor's, to be gone indeed!

The sunny August mornings came, but there came not with them Quentin, to meet her fresh and ruddy from a gallop along the shore, with a dewy bouquet from the garden, or with a basket of speckled trout from the river.

Slowly passed each lingering day, and evening followed; but there was no one to ramble with now by starlight in the terraced garden—to linger with by the sounding sea that surged upon the shore below and foamed upon the distant rock, or to share all her thoughts, and anticipate every wish.