CHAPTER V.
THE PAST.
"Still shall unthinking man substantial deem
The forms that flit through life's deceitful dream,
Till at some stroke of Fate, the vision flies,
And sad realities in prospect rise;
And from Elysian slumbers rudely torn,
The startled soul awakes, to think and mourn."
BEATTIE'S Elegy, 1758.
Such is the buoyant thoughtlessness of childhood, that a few days sufficed to console, to soothe, and to reconcile the poor boy to his new friends and his new habitation. The kindness, tenderness, and attention of Lady Rohallion did much, if not all, to achieve this; and doubtless she would have succeeded very well in the same way with an older personage than little Quentin Kennedy, for she fully possessed, together with great amiability and sweetness of disposition, those requisites which Sir William Temple affirmed to be the three great ingredients of pleasant conversation, viz., good sense, good humour, and wit.
Secluded and retiring in her habits, simple and old-fashioned in her tastes, she preferred residing quietly among her husband's tenantry at Rohallion, to figuring, as had been her wont, in the great world of fashion, such as it was to be found in the London of old King George's days, or in the smaller circle of the Scottish metropolis; and even when parliamentary business compelled Lord Rohallion to proceed southward, he could scarcely prevail upon her to accompany him, for travelling was not then the swift and easy process we find it now, in these days of steam and railways.
Thus the advent of her little protégé was quite a boon to her, and while rapidly learning to love the child, who had a thousand winning and endearing ways, she relinquished all idea of attempting to discover his mother till the return of her husband, though the notion was scarcely conceived, when it was abandoned as simply impossible, from the want of a distinct clue as to her residence, and the existence of the bitter and revengeful war that had been waged between France and Britain for five years now, ever since the siege of Toulon. Consequently there seemed nothing for it, as Quartermaster Girvan said, but to make a good Scotsman of the little Frenchman, (if French, indeed, he was)—and the dominie failed not to quote Cicero, "anent the adoptio of the Romans."
So Lady Rohallion learned to love the child, and the child to love her with a regard that was quite filial; and his pretty prattle in broken English was her chief solace and amusement after the hours of attendance and surveillance she daily bestowed, like a good housewife and chatelaine of old, upon her household and her husband's tenantry; for there was not "a fishwife's bairn" in the hamlet below could be pilled or powdered for the measles or hooping-cough, without a due consultation being first held with my lady in the castle.
Sensation novels were then unknown, and Walter Scott was still in futurity, save as a translator of German ballads. Our respectable old friends, "Tom Jones," "Roderick Random," and "Peregrine Pickle," were still in the flush of their fame; but Lady Rohallion preferred the works of Mr. Richardson, and deemed the sorrows of Clarissa Harlowe, and of Fielding's "Amelia," to be sorrows indeed.
Being Winifred Maxwell of the gallant but attainted House of Nithsdale, her Jacobite sympathies were keen and intense; thus, ten years before the date of our story she suffered a real grief, and had worn a suit of the deepest black, on tidings coming from Maybole that Prince Charles Edward, with whom her mother had flirted in Holyrood, and for whom her uncles had shed their blood on the fatal field of Culloden—that the Bonnie Prince Charlie of so many stirring memories, so many Scottish songs, and so many faithful hearts, an old, soured, and disappointed man, had been gathered to his fathers, and was lying cold and dead in his tomb, beneath the dome of St. Peter.
Though she had somewhat strong ideas on the subject of keeping up "the old spirit of the Crawfords of Rohallion," a good deal of which, we are sorry to say, meant looking down on their neighbours: and though she had an intense estimation for people of "that ilk," and for coats, quarterings, and family claims, and that kind of blood which the Scots designated as gude, and the Spaniards as blue, she was weak enough, as Lady Eglinton phrased it, to treasure immensely a copy of very flattering verses, addressed to her in her beauty and girlhood, by a certain democratic Ayrshire ploughman, named Mr. Robert Burns, for whose memory she had a very great regard.
She was full of the proud and fiery ideas of a past and manly age, for she was old enough to remember when the beaus and bloods of Edinburgh in their periwigs and square-skirted coats of silk or velvet, squired her and Eleanora Eglinton up the old Assembly Close, with links flaring and swords flashing round their sedans, swearing, with such large oaths as were then fashionable, to whip through the lungs any scurvy fellow who loitered an instant in their way.
But the first years of the present century saw a new world closing round her, and innovations coming fast, though the old language in which our laws are written yet lingered in the pulpit and at the bar.
To her aristocratic ideas, and to those of her friends, it seemed as if the malign influence of the French revolution tainted the very air, especially in Scotland, where, by the tendency of their education and religion, the people are naturally democratic in spirit; and it was pretty apparent, that the decapitation of Robert Watt at Edinburgh, and the persecution of "citizen Muir" and his compatriots by the Government, in no way cooled the real ardour of the Friends of the People.
To Lady Winifred, it appeared also, that while, on one hand, the humbler classes were less genuinely affectionate and less deferential to the upper, on the other, they were less kindly and less courteous to each other. Everything seemed to be done in a hurry too, though the mail-coaches carrying four inside, usually took a week or more in rumbling between Edinburgh and London, with the varieties of an occasional break-down when fording a river, or receiving the contents of a robber's blunderbuss in a lonely part of the way.
Holidays were kept in a hearty old fashion, and there was no sour Sabbatarianism to excite the wrath of the liberal-minded Scots, and the wonder and derision of their English neighbours. There were democrats and demagogues in every village, it is true; but patriotism, and a genuine British spirit rendered their revilings innocuous and all but useless.
Where now the dun deer rove in the desert glens, the Highland Clans existed in all their hardihood and numerical strength, to fill by thousands the ranks of our kilted regiments. The flags of "Duncan, Nelson, Keppel, Howe, and Jervis" were sweeping the sea. Beacons studded all the hills, and every village cross was the muster-place of volunteer corps; and there are yet those alive who remember the great night of the false alarm when it was supposed the French had landed, when the bale-fire on Hume castle sent its blaze upon the midnight sky; when the alarm-drum, the long roll which a soldier never forgets, was beat in town and hamlet, and all Scotland stood to arms: and when the brave Liddesdale yeomanry swam the Liddle, then in full and roaring flood, every trooper riding with his sword in his teeth, as if to show that the old spirit yet lived upon the Borders, unchanged as in those days when the Lords Marchers blew their trumpets before the gates of Berwick or Carlisle.
And as it came to pass, it was in those stirring times of war and tumult—times not now very remote, good reader—that our little hero found a home in the old manor of Rohallion.
His mother sorrowed for him in sunny France beyond the sea, where she may never see him more, or know that he survived the wreck in which her husband perished; and now daily another received his morning kiss, and watched his footsteps and gambols; and nightly hushed him to sleep, smoothed the coverlet, caressed his ruddy cheeks and golden hair; yet that poor bereaved mother was never absent from the thoughts of good Lady Rohallion, who had now taken her place.
Of his many kisses and caresses, she felt that she was robbing that poor unknown, the affectionate "Fifine" of the dead man's letter; but how to find her, how to restore him, stultified and rendered every way impossible as all such attempts must be, by the war now waged by every sea and shore between the two countries?
Though little Quentin, we grieve to say, was gradually forgetting his own mother and learning to love his adopted one, there were times when, natheless all Lady Rohallion's sweetness and tenderness, he felt that there was something lacking—something he missed; he knew not what, unless it were that he longed
"For the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still."
A fortnight had passed away since the letter of Lord Rohallion had been brought by John Girvan from Maybole, and still there were no further tidings of his return; so the lady became sad and anxious, for she trembled at the idea of his returning by sea.
On one of the first nights of December, when the wind was moaning about the old walls of the castle, and the angry hiss of the sea was heard on the rocks below, she sat alone, by Quentin's little bed. He had just dropped asleep.
He occupied the same cot in which her own son Cosmo, Master of Rohallion, had been wont to sleep when a child about the same age. It was prettily gilt and surmounted by a coronet; the curtains were drawn apart, and by the subdued light of a night-lamp, she could see the pure profile and rosy cheeks of the boy, as he reposed on a soft white pillow, in the calm sleep of childhood.
She could almost imagine that her son Cosmo, the tall captain of the Guards, was again a child and sleeping there, or that she was a young wife again and not an old woman, and so, as thoughts that came unbidden poured fast upon her, she began to recal the years that had rolled away.
Then out of the thronging memories of the past, there arose a vision of a fair-haired and handsome young man—one who loved her well before Rohallion came—his younger brother; and with this image came the memory of many a happy ramble long, long ago, in the green summer woods of pleasant Nithsdale, when the sunshine was declining on the heights of Queensberry, or casting shadows on the plains of Closeburn or the grassy pastoral uplands through which the blue stream winds to meet the Solway—and where the voices of the mavis, the merle, and the cushat-dove were heard in every coppice.
She thought of those sunset meetings, and of one who was wont to sit beside her then for hours, lost in love and happiness. Lady Rohallion loved her husband well and dearly; but there were times when conscience upbraided her, and she pitied the memory of that younger brother whom she had deceived and deluded, and whom, like a thoughtless young coquette, she had permitted—it might be, lured—to love her.
In fancy she traced out what her path—a less splendid one, assuredly—might have been, had Rohallion not won her heart, and most unwittingly broken his brother's, for so the people said. And thus, while "speculating on a future which was already a past," the handsome, the gallant, and earnest young Ranulph Crawford, the lover of her girlhood, rose before her in fancy, and her eyes grew moist as she thought of his fatal end, for he died, a self-made exile, an obscure soldier of fortune, in defence of the Tuileries, and the public papers had recorded the story of his fall—not in the flowery language of the present, but in the cold brevity of that time—"as one Captain Crawford, a Scot, whose zeal outran his discretion, who in charging the populace, was wounded, taken, and beheaded by them."
"Clarissa Harlowe" had fallen from her hand, and the mimic sorrows of the novel were forgotten in the real griefs of Lady Winifred's waking dream. From these, however, she was roused by the clatter of a horse's hoofs at the haunted gate beside the gun-battery, and almost immediately after a servant announced the glad tidings,
"My Lady Rohallion, his lordship has arrived!"
CHAPTER VI.
LORD ROHALLION.
"She gazed—she reddened like a rose—
Syne pale as ony lily;
She sank within my arms and cried,
'Art thou my ain dear Willie?'
'By Him who made yon sun and sky,
By whom true love's regarded,
I am the man!' and thus may still
True lovers be rewarded."—BURNS.
Hastening to the drawing-room, she immediately found herself in the arms of her husband, who was throwing off his drab-coloured riding-coat, with its heavy cape, his small triangular Nivernois hat, boot-tops, and whip, to his favourite valet and constant attendant, old Jack Andrews.
Rohallion kissed his wife's hand and then her forehead, for he had not outlived either affection or respect, though verging on his fifty-fifth year; and he had all that gentleness of bearing and true politeness which the Scottish gentlemen of the old school, prior to, and long after the Union, acquired from our ancient allies, the French.
"And you returned from London——"
"By sea, Winny—by sea," said Rohallion, "After all my entreaties!"
"Zounds! Winny, I can't abide the mail, and am too old to post it now, as my old friend Monboddo used to do yearly, to kiss the king's hand; and so preferred the 'Lord Nelson' smack, from London to Leith, armed with twelve carronades, and sailing without convoy."
"And the voyage was pleasant?"
"A head-wind, a fourteen days' run, and an exchange of shots with a French privateer off Flamborough Head. At Edinburgh I took the stage to Ayr, and from thence Andrews and I jogged quietly home on horseback."
Still a handsome man, though portly in person, as became his years, Reynold Crawford, Lord Rohallion, had features that were alike noble in character and striking in expression. The broad, square forehead indicated intelligence and candour, his mouth, good humour; and the form of his closely shaved chin, spoke of decision and perseverance. His nose was perhaps too large, but his eyes were dark grey, gentle and soft, usually, in expression. He wore his own hair, which was still thick and wavy, powdered white as a cauliflower, and tied with a broad ribbon, having a double bow at the back.
He still adhered to the frilled shirt, and had a large pearl brooch in the breast thereof; his long waistcoat was of scarlet cloth, edged with silver; his coat of bright blue broadcloth, with large, flat steel buttons, had a high rolling collar, small cape, and enormous lapels. Hessian boots, with tassels of gold and spurs of steel, and tight buff pantaloons for riding, showed to advantage his stout, well turned limbs, and completed his costume. He had a ruddy complexion, a hearty laughing manner, and a jolly brusquerie about him that smacked more of the soldier or the agriculturist than the peer of the realm.
"And now, Rohallion, tell me about our Cosmo—how is he looking?"
"Twice as well as ever I did at the same age, and that is saying something—eh, Winny? Why he is the pattern man of the Household Brigade, but a strange boy withal. Duty about the Court has increased that cold hauteur which always marked his character. I don't know where the deuce he picked it up—not from you or me, Winny. But the butler says that an early supper is served——"
"Yes, dearest—in my little parlour."
"Egad! the snuggest billet in the house, and I can assure you that I am as well appetised as ever I used to be when a hungry ensign in Germany. Permit me, madam," said he, drawing her hand caressingly upon his arm; "and now tell me, how do you like the mode in which my hair is queued?"
"Why, Reynold?"
"'Tis a new fashion taught to Jack Andrews by old Hugh Hewson, of St. Martin-in-the-Fields—the Scotch hairdresser—you have heard of him, of course?"
"The original of Dr. Smollett's Hugh Strap—who has not?" said she, laughing; "well, his dressing is very smart! I see now, Andrews, his lordship looks quite a beau!"
"I was—or had the reputation of being so, when first I wore that gorget at Minden, a boy of fifteen or thereabouts; and before I saw you, Winny, dear."
"I have a surprise for you——"
"Supper first, Winny, egad! I don't like surprises; we had enough of them in Holland, and they were not at all to our taste. Eh, Jack Andrews—do you remember our night march for Valenciennes?" he asked, turning to his old valet, who grinned an assent as he deposited a pair of silver-mounted holster pistols in a mahogany case. To Rohallion this veteran, Jack Andrews, was all that Corporal Trim was to Uncle Toby (both of whom, according to Sterne, had served in the 25th Foot, then known as Leven's Regiment), a servant, and at times friend and companion, and perpetual resort or reference on military matters. Long and hard service together, community of sentiment on most matters, combined the sympathy of camaraderie with the steady faith of a Scottish servitor of the old school in Andrews, who was a sour-featured, thin, and erect old fellow, in a powdered wig (though, by the Act of 1795, hair powder cost a guinea per head), with a pigtail, and the family livery, grey faced with scarlet; and somehow on old Jack it always looked like a uniform.
Attended by this valet, both well mounted, and having holster pistols at their saddles, he had ridden from Ayr, through Maybole, and was now ready for supper, braced by the keen December blast, and feeling happy and jovial to find himself once more at home from London, which, so far as travelling and the ideas of the time are concerned, was then nearly as distant from the Scottish capital as Moscow is to-day; and a perfect picture they formed, that gentle, high-bred, and loving old couple in powdered hair, seated at supper, with their antique equipage, conversing in the plain old Scottish accent, which was still used, with a Doric word here and there, by the Scottish aristocracy.
"Andrews and I would have been here an hour earlier," said his lordship, slicing down a daintily-roasted capon, "but the old piper of Maybole, in the burgh livery, would play before us all the way through the town and two miles beyond it, according to use and wont—a glass of wine, Andrews—but Pate is growing old, Winny, now; he fairly broke down in playing 'Lord Lennox March,' so I think we must add something to his piper's-croft and cow's-mailing. They scarcely keep the poor fellow, when meal, malt, and everything are at such prices. I had, moreover, to inspect the Maybole volunteers. I say, Andrews, did you see how they shouldered arms?"
"Ay, my lord; knocking all their fore-and-aft cocked hats off, as they canted their firelocks from right to left," replied the valet, with a grim smile.
"Then we had to see an effigy of Tom Paine burned in front of the Tolbooth, with a copy of the 'Rights of Man,' while we drank Confusion to the French, the Friends of the People, the National Convention, and Charles Fox. So you see, Winny, my time was fully occupied."
The wax lights in the silver candelabra and crystal girandoles, and the fire that blazed in the polished brass grate, diffused a warm and ruddy glow through the cosy old-fashioned parlour, with its pink damask chairs and curtains; and speedily the old general dismissed his supper and glass of dry sherry.
Then, Andrews, as if according to use and wont, without requiring to be told, removed the decanters, and placed before his master the "three elements," whisky, hot water, and sugar, and Rohallion, with ladle and jug, proceeded to make a jorum of hot steaming toddy.
"Now, Andrews, my man," said he, "make a browst like this for yourself in the butler's pantry, and then turn in; neither you nor I are so young as we have been, and you've had a long journey to-day. Good night. I require nothing more."
Andrews gave a military salute, wheeled round, as if on a pivot, so that his pigtail described a horizontal circle, and withdrew.
"Now, what is the surprise you have for me, Winny?" asked Rohallion, as he filled her ladyship's glass, a long one, with a white worm in its stem.
"Tell me first the news from London."
"Well, gudewife Winny, nobody speaks of anything but this expedition to Egypt, and the expected surrender of Malta. Then if all goes right, ere long General Abercrombie will have about 15,000 men with him in the Bay of Marmorice."
"I am so glad our Cosmo did not think of going on foreign service."
"Why?"
"Can you ask me, Reynold—our only son?"
"I had been ten times under fire before I was half his age. He was most anxious to go, and I wished him too; but, as the staff appointments were all filled up, and his battalion of the Guards will soon be detailed for service, I thought it a pity that the boy should lose his regimental rank."
"Cosmo will be twenty-five on his next birth-day," said Lady Rohallion, thoughtfully, a remark probably suggested by the term "boy;" "our only son, Rohallion; we must indeed be careful of him."
"Careful of a strapping Guardsman like Cosmo!"
"There are times—when—when——"
"What, Winny?"
"I regret his having gone into the army at all."
"Odds my heart! then he would be the first Crawford of Rohallion that ever was out of it. His battalion may soon go to Ireland; the people there are more than ever discontented with the proposed union, and hope that the First Consul, the upstart Bonaparte, may enable them to cut a better figure than they and their allies under Humbert did at Ballnamuck last summer. I don't think the Horse Guards used me well in refusing me a brigade for service; so I don't return to London for some time, having paired off with our friend Eglinton, who is to put himself at the head of his Fencibles."
"Oh, I am so happy to hear this!" exclaimed Lady Winifred, clasping her plump white hands, the rings on which sparkled through her black lace mittens.
"Despite all I could urge, my old comrade, Jack Warrender of Ardgour, goes to Egypt in command of the Corsican Rangers."
"So Lady Eglinton wrote to me."
"And if he is knocked on the head,—which God forbid!—his daughter, Flora, will be long under trust, so her estate will be a fair one; and now, Winny, when I add that Mr. Fox and the Opposition are having their hair dressed à la Brutus, in imitation of the Parisian rabble, you have all my news."
"And now for mine," said she, with a delightful smile.
"Your surprise?"
"Yes—but you must come with me."
"Where?"
"To the nursery."
"That which was once the nursery, you mean."
"And which has become so again," she replied, laughing at his bewilderment.
Passing her arm through his, she led him to the sleeping-room, which adjoined their own, and desired him to look into Cosmo's little cot. Rohallion did so, and great indeed was his surprise to find a beautiful little boy, whose hair, all golden and curly, and whose form of face, rich bloom, and long dark eyelashes, powerfully reminded him of what Cosmo had been at the same age, when sleeping in the same chamber and in the same cot.
"Zounds, Winifred, what in the world does this mean?" said he, with a droll expression twinkling in his dark grey eyes; "whose little fellow is this? Not ours, certainly; you can't have been stealing a march on me now-a-days."
"'Tis a long story and a sad one; but return with me to the parlour, and I shall tell you all about it," she replied, while selecting the key of her escritoire from the huge, housewife-like bunch that glittered at her chatelaine.
"Egad, then I'll brew another jug of punch the while; and now, Winny, I am all attention."
She related all that the reader knows: the storm on that gloomy November night; the attack made by the armed Frenchman, and the consequent flight of the British ship; her wreck on the Partan Craig and the loss of the crew, with the recovery of the child from a state of insensibility, and the burial of his father, by the ground bailie, John Girvan.
"My worthy old quartermaster did right—'twas like my good comrade!" said Lord Rohallion, while his eyes glistened; "I can imagine I see him marching up the glen at the head of the funeral party, erect as ever he marched under fire—a trifle more, maybe. The old Borderer did just what I should have done myself!"
Lady Winifred now laid before her husband the ring, the purse with its few franc pieces, and the papers of the drowned stranger, and all of these he examined with interest and commiseration, for he was a kind, generous, and warm-hearted man.
"This is sad—very sad, indeed!" he muttered.
"By the handwriting, Rohallion, and by the crest on the ring——"
"A lily, stalked and leaved, rising from a coronet."
"Yes."
"Well, Winny?"
"I should say they must have been people of figure and fashion—of good quality, at least."
"An old fashioned phrase that, and going out now, like our fathers' swords and our mothers' hoops; call them aristocrats—eh, Winny?"
"Undoubtedly, and under suspicion, too, by the tenor of the poor lady's letter."
"'Josephine,'" said he, reading the inscription upon the ring; "why, that is the name of the widow Beauharnais, who three or four years ago married the First Consul to escape the guillotine! You must preserve these relics with care, Winny; and as for the poor bairn, Rohallion must be his home till we find his mother, a task very unlikely to be accomplished, if ever at all, in these times, when France is at war with all the world, and her scaffolds are drenched daily with the blood of women, children, and priests, as well as of brave and loyal gentlemen. But into no better hands than ours, Winny, could this poor waif of misfortune have fallen. He is the child of a faithful royalist soldier, too—we must always remember that."
Like his worthy wife, Lord Rohallion inherited with his blood a strong dash of Jacobitism, thus his sympathies were all with the humbled royalty of France.
The worthy old Defender of the Faith, who muddled away his time at Windsor, and his son, the "first gentleman" in Europe, who spent his days and nights less reputably in his Pavilion at Brighton—Thackeray's man of waistcoats, wigs, and uniforms—had perhaps no truer servant than Major-General Reynold Lord Rohallion, K.C.B., &c. Yet among the "Stuart Papers," which, in 1807, found their way into the royal archives, there was discovered a correspondence between a certain peer whose initial was R. and "His Majesty Henry II. of Scotland and IX. of England," which rather excited the surprise of the ministry and privy council; but like the same secret correspondence of many other nobles of both kingdoms, it was deemed only wise and charitable to commit it to oblivion, for the grave had closed over the good old Cardinal Duke of York—the last of the Stuarts—and few knew why, for a year and a day, the hilt of Rohallion's sword was covered by a band of crape.
CHAPTER VII.
OUR STORY PROGRESSES.
"Here he dwelt in state and bounty,
Lord of Burleigh fair and free;
Not a lord in all the county,
Is so great a lord as he."—TENNYSON.
Kind old Rohallion was deeply interested in and attracted by the little boy, who had many winning and endearing ways about him; and he particularly excelled in a bright and captivating smile, that was joyous in its perfect innocence.
He seated him on his knee at the breakfast-table n the library, and strove, by all the art he was master of, to draw from him some clue, as to the part of France in which his mother resided, but save a knowledge of his own name, Quentin's recollections were few prior to the terror he had experienced on the wreck. All beyond that seemed vague, and his reminiscences were an odd jumble of a large town with a cathedral where his mamma took him to hear Abbé Lebrun preach or say mass—good M. l'Abbé Lebrun, who always gave him bon-bons, and wore such large spectacles. Then there was a river with boats, a bridge and a great mountain with a windmill, where he used to go with his nurse when she visited the miller.
Then, there was a Chanoinesse who gave him painted toys; there were some wicked soldiers, who burned a street and dragged away all the people to die, and of these same soldiers he had a peculiar dread and aversion. But whether they were ugly toys, or actors in some scene the child had witnessed, Rohallion could not tell; he supposed the affair referred to was some grim reality incident to the late revolution. He could gather nothing more that afforded a clue; and now as these memories were wakened in him, the faces of others came with them; tears filled the child's fine dark eyes, and he entreated piteously to have his mother brought to him and his nurse Nanette, or have his father brought to him out of the sea; and thus perceiving that nothing of certainty or value could be gleaned from him, his protectors tacitly agreed to let the subject drop.
Breakfast was just over when Andrews announced Quartermaster Girvan and Dominie Skaill, two individuals, who are perhaps bores in their way, but are nevertheless necessary to us in the course of this narrative.
They had heard of his lordship's arrival, and had "come to pay their dutiful reverence," for something of the old feudal sentiment lingered yet in Carrick, and a journey to Calcutta is a mere joke or pleasure trip now, when compared with how the Scots of 1798 viewed one to London, few prudent people attempting it without previously making a will, and settling all their earthly affairs.
"Welcome, Girvan, and welcome, dominie," said Rohallion, shaking each by the hand cordially; "I am glad to be at home again among you."
"Yea," replied the dominie, while rubbing one hand over the other, and smiling blandly, as perhaps his scholars seldom saw him smile; "your lordship has come back like Cincinnatus after the defeat of the Volci and the Æqui, to plough turnips and plant gude kail on haugh and rig—so welcome hame to Carrick, my lord."
The dominie had on his Sunday coat, with its huge flapped pockets; his best three-cornered hat, bound with black braid, was under his arm, and his square shoe-buckles shone like silver.
"And our little Frenchman has become quite a friend with your lordship, I see," said Girvan, patting the child on the head.
"Quite—a splendid little fellow he is!"
"But call him not a Frenchman," said the dominie, "when he bears the gude auld Carrick name of Kennedy."
"Aye, dominie; it used to find an echo hereabout, in the old trooping and tramping times," replied Girvan.
"And has so still," added Rohallion, laughing; "for I am half a Kennedy, and often have I heard my mother sing—
"'Twixt Wigton and the town of Ayr,
Portpatrick and the Cruives of Cree,
Nae man may hope in peace to bide,
Unless he court Saint Kennedie."
"Like the Maxwells in Nithsdale, the Kennedies had all their own way here in those days," said Lady Winifred, as she drew off her lace mittens, and prepared to adjust her ivory-mounted spinning-wheel.
"But to return to the present time, tell me, John Girvan, did that French ship actually come within range of our gun-battery?"
"Yes, my lord—or nearly so."
"And what were you about, John, to stand with your hands in your pockets at such a time? Egad, 'twas not like an old 25th man?"
The quartermaster reddened.
"There was a tremendous gale from the seaward," said Lady Rohallion, coming to his assistance; "a storm—a tempest——"
"And she came only within a mile of the Partan Craig, where the unfortunate merchantman was in sore peril—a foe on one side, a lee shore on the other—eh, dominie?"
"'Here Scylla bellows from her dire abodes,
Tremendous port—abhorred by men and gods,
And there Charybdis,'
as old Homer hath it," replied the dominie, promptly.
"Even had the battery been manned, my lord, I am doubtful—I am doubtful if these old twenty-four pounders would pitch shot so far; and she scarcely appeared, before she hauled her wind and disappeared into the mist," said Girvan, giving his old yellow wig an angry twist.
"Some of these small craft are growing very saucy," said Lord Rohallion, to change the subject, which he saw was distasteful to his old comrade. "It was only the other day that a lieutenant with fourteen men from one of our gun-brigs landed on the coast of France to distribute royalist manifestoes of the Comte d'Artois, dated from Holyrood, but he and his men were taken by a party of dragoons who surrounded an auberge in which they were imprudently drinking. They were instantly hanged as spies, by order of General Monnet, and the bodies are to be seen on fifteen gibbets, a mile apart, along the coast between Boulogne and Cape Grisnez."
"Poor men! How horrible!" exclaimed Lady Winifred.
"Such barbarities were not committed in our time, my lord, except among the Indians."
"Quartermaster—but we are getting old fellows now," said Rohallion, with something between a laugh and a sigh. "We have often stopped the march of the French with fixed bayonets, but we can't arrest the march of time."
"Aye, aye, my lord," said the old soldier, warming, and answering a friendly smile from old Jack Andrews, who was removing the breakfast equipage; "but, when at Minden, and while the French gun brigade was bowling through the six British regiments that stood there in division, we little thought that we would live to drink our grog in Rohallion, forty years after, hale carles, and hearty ones, too."
"If we ever thought at all, Girvan, which is not likely; reflection troubles a young soldier seldom, and, egad! we were beardless boys then."
"And those who were boys like ourselves then, and those who were grey-haired grenadiers of Fontenoy and Culloden—who had no need to powder their white hair—were alike mowed down together, and lay like herrings in a landing net," said Girvan, sadly.
"It was a day on which the ripe fruit and the blossom were gathered together," said Lady Rohallion, as her wheel revolved rapidly, and little Quentin sat at her feet to watch it.
"Your ladyship's speech savoureth of poetry," said the dominie, bowing; "it is even as my old friend Burns—puir Robbie Burns—would have expressed himself."
"It is ten years since the Scots Horse Guards were amalgamated with the new Life Guard Regiments," said Rohallion, commencing a familiar topic.
"Just twelve years this summer, my lord," replied Girvan.
"And though moving slowly up the list of generals, Girvan, I have not had a regiment since."
"Among the Romans——" began the dominie.
"A regiment! it is a brigade you should have," interrupted the quartermaster, ruthlessly.
"Among the Romans," began the dominie again, when Lord Rohallion, who was full of his grievance (was there ever an old soldier without one?) spoke with something of irritation.
"I have actually been refused a brigade for service, though senior to more favoured officers; but a time may come when Government may be glad to avail themselves of my services, though I am afraid, John, that I'm getting owre auld in the horn, as the drovers say.. Besides, they think that we old fellows of Minden and Bunker's Hill are as much out of date as the snap-muskets and matchlocks of King William's time. And zounds, man! there are not wanting in the Lower House certain disloyal spirits, termed financial reformers, who grudge the old soldier the day's pittance which he has won by blood and sweat, and by wasting the flower of his days among the swamps of the Helder, the fevers of the West Indies, and elsewhere."
"The devil take all fevers and reformers together—amen," said the quartermaster; "but I believe this intended Egyptian business will be only a flash in the pan when compared with what we have seen."
"Among the Romans the soldiery at first received no stipendium," said the dominie, raising his voice and speaking very fast, lest he should be interrupted; "but every man served at his own proper charges."
"That would suit our modern whigs to a hair, dominie," said Lord Rohallion, laughing.
"Yea, even to the vinegar which he mixed with spring water as his daily drink, did he furnish all, in the early days of the Roman army."
"Vinegar grog!" exclaimed the quartermaster with disgust; "Heaven be thanked I was not born a Roman. Such beggarly tipple would never have suited the 25th. And now, my lord, when you are at leisure, I wish to shew you a new farmsteading I have erected at the Cairns of Blackhinney, and also how bravely the young trees are thriving in the oakwood shaw."
"Glad to hear the latter, Girvan, for I agree with my worthy friend, Admiral Collingwood, that every British proprietor should plant as many oak trees as he can, to keep up our navy. 'I wish everybody,' said he, in one of his letters, 'thought on this subject as I do, they would not walk through their farms without a pocketful of acorns to drop in the hedges, and let them take their chance,' and so keep up the future wooden walls of old England."
Neither Rohallion nor the gallant old Admiral could foresee the days, when those famous "wooden walls," would be represented by screw propellers, armour clads, cupola ships, and steam rams!
Rohallion assumed his walking cane and Nivernois hat, to which he still adhered, though it had been long out of fashion, and had the flaps fastened up to its shallow crown by hooks and eyes; and, bowing ceremoniously, left the dominie to confer with the lady concerning the course of study on which little Quentin Kennedy was soon to enter, while he issued forth with his old comrade the factor to look over the estate.
Close by the haunted gate lay a fine old beech, on which a cavalier Lord of Rohallion hanged as a traitor one of his vassals whom he discovered serving as a soldier in an English regiment. It now lay prostrate, for the storm had torn it up by the roots.
"Have this removed as soon as possible, Girvan," said the old lord; "for, ugh! I never see a fallen tree, but I think of that devilish abattis we fell into at Saratoga, when the Yankees would have made an end of me, had it not been for Jack Andrews and others of the 25th."
"Aye, my lord, and some of the 17th Light Dragoons too—under Corporal O' Lavery—you remember him?"
"Who could ever forget him that served there—who could ever forget him or his story?" exclaimed the old general flourishing his silver-headed cane; "not I, certainly. It was he who was entrusted by my Lord Rawdon as a military courier (estafette, the French term it), to bring me an important despatch concerning the movements of the regiment, and this despatch the Yankees were determined I should not receive, for spies had informed them of the bearer and his route, so the way was beset by riflemen. The soldier who accompanied him fell mortally wounded; O'Lavery was riddled by bullets too, yet he rode manfully on, until from loss of blood he fell from his saddle. Then Girvan, resolved that the important paper which he bore should never fall into the hands of the Yankees, he crumpled it up and thrust it into one of his wounds. I discovered it, when next morning we came upon him dying in the bush, and he had just life sufficient left to point to the fatal place where Rawdon's letter was concealed.* As one of our greatest orators said, when Martius Curtius to sacrifice himself for his country leaped into the gulf of the forum, he had all Rome for his spectators; but the poor Irish corporal was alone in the midst of a desert—I quote at random, quartermaster. And yet, after all the brave deeds and service of those days to refuse me this brigade for service—zounds! it was too bad—too bad!"
But Rohallion survived his disappointment, and the two following years glided peacefully away, at his old castle in Carrick.
* "The surgeon declared the wound itself not to be mortal; but rendered so by the insertion of the despatch. Corporal O'Lavery was a native of the county of Down, where a monument, the gratitude of his countryman and commander Lord Rawdon, records his fame."—Records of the 17th Lancers.
CHAPTER VIII.
QUENTIN'S CHILDHOOD.
"Ah, happy time! ah, happy time!
The days of mirth and dream;
When years ring out their merry chime,
And hope and gladness gleam.
Then how we drink the storied page,
In boyhood's happy home:
The marvels of the wondrous age
Of old Imperial Rome."—All the Year Round.
The New Year's day of 1801 passed over at Rohallion amid feasting and revelling, for in the good old fashion the worthy lord, as his fathers had done before him, entertained all his people in the great hall of the tower. There the trophies were hung with green holly and scarlet berries; there the Yule log still smouldered on the hearth, and there he shook the powder from his hair, while footing it merrily with the wives and daughters of the fishers and cottars, while old Girvan hobbled away in his brigadier wig, the dominie screwing up his fiddle to discourse sweet music with the piper of Maybole, while as an interlude came the drums and fifes of the Rohallion Volunteers, to make the old castle ring to the cheering sounds of "Lady Jean o' Rohallion's Rant;" and this hearty homeliness, together with a free distribution of gifts on "auld handsel Monday," made the lord and lady of the manor adored by their tenantry. On that day there was something for every one: to the dominie a snuff-mull, which he received with many bows, reminding the donor how "Tacitus affirmed that Tiberius prohibited the bestowal of new year gifts, which was a great saving of expense to the knights and senators," To the quartermaster a gilt-bound "Army List," to keep him in reading and reference for the ensuing year; to Elsie at the coves a lace-curchie, and to little Quentin a gallant rocking-horse. So all danced the new year in hand-in-hand, to the old song,—
"Now Yule has come and Yule has gane,
And we hae feasted weel!
Sae Jock maun to his flail again,
And Jenny to her wheel."
In the ensuing spring, when fresh flowers and budding leaves came "to deck the dead season's bier;" when the aroma of fertility, warmth, and verdure came from the sunny upland slopes, and the mountain burns, as they bore brown leaves along, seemed to brawl louder over their stony beds towards the Firth of Clyde; when greener tints spread over the pastoral hills and glens about Rohallion; when the sky, long chilled by the frost of the past winter, had a richer tone and colour; when the air was warm and pleasant as it fanned the new-turned sods—when this sweet season came, we say, the old Lord had ceased to lament having been refused a brigade in the expedition to Egypt.
By that time he had heard of the fall of his old friend and brother officer, the gallant Sir Ralph Abercrombie, and how war and disease had thinned the ranks of his army. He sorrowed for this: but his old spirit blazed up anew when he heard of how the 28th or Gloucestershire Slashers, in the Temple of the Sun, faced their rear rank about when surrounded, and defended themselves like a double wall of fire; how the Gordon Highlanders, at the bayonet's point, carried the cannon of the foe at the Tower of Mandora; how the Black Watch destroyed the boasted Invincibles, and won their scarlet plumes; and how the shrill pipes of the Highland Brigade rang in fierce defiance along the embattled heights of Nicopolis!
One name in the list of casualties made him start.
It was that of his old friend and neighbour, Colonel John Warrender of Ardgour, who fell, sword in hand, when leading the Corsican Rangers to a victorious bayonet charge against the 61st Demi-brigade.
"Oh, what a heart-stroke this is for his poor wife, Winny!" he exclaimed.
"And Flora—poor little Flora, their daughter," added Lady Rohallion, with her eyes full of tears.
"She is too young to know fully the calamity that has befallen her. Order the carriage, Andrews; we'll drive up the glen to Ardgour in an hour after this."
"Poor Mrs. Warrender!—she did so love her husband, and had sore misgivings that they were parting for the last time."
"A sad morning this will be for her, indeed!" said Lord Rohallion, laying the gazette upon the breakfast-table and gazing into the clear, bright fire, full of thought, as the battle of Alexandria seemed to come in fancy before his practised eye.
"Now Rohallion, bethink you, if circumstances had been reversed," said she, laying a hand caressingly on his neck, "and if she had been reading your name in that paper, what my feelings would have been."
"The carriage would be ordered at Ardgour instead of Rohallion," said the old Lord, with an affectionate smile; "they may need me yet—but egad! I am now, perhaps, better pleased that the brigade was refused me. Warrender gone—poor Jack! and Abercrombie, too—I knew him when in command of the 69th."
"He died on board the flagship, my lord," said Andrews, who, in virtue of his years and peculiar position, ventured to gratify his irrepressible curiosity, by taking up the paper, to skim it at his master's back; "they landed and formed line in the water, bayonets fixed and colours flying," he continued, with a nervous voice and kindling eye; "28th and 42nd—Foot Guards and Royal Scots—I think I see them all—whoop! d—n it—why weren't we there?—I beg pardon, my lady," he added, in some confusion, as he proceeded in haste to remove the breakfast equipage, stumping vigorously on his left leg—in which he received a bullet at Saratoga—as he hurried away to order the carriage for the proposed visit of condolence, to which we need not invite the reader.
The treaty of Amiens which followed soon after the Egyptian campaign brought about a peace for fourteen months, and during that time, Lord Rohallion wrote repeatedly to our Ambassador at Paris concerning the little protégé who had now found a home in Carrick; but at a period when all the powers of Europe were only, as it were, taking breath and gathering strength for a greater and more deadly contest, such a trivial matter as the fate of a shipwrecked boy could gain but little attention. His lordship's letters remained unanswered, and by the 18th of May, 1803, Britain and France again drew the sword, which was never to be sheathed save on the plains of Waterloo.
Time had made little Quentin as thoroughly at home in the castle and with the family of Rohallion, as if he had been born there.
The absence of her son with the Guards (Carlton House and the Pavilion at Brighton were decidedly more amusing than that old castle by the sea), created a void in Lady Rohallion's heart; so the strange child came just in time to fill it, and she loved him tenderly and fondly. The old Lord was never weary of chatting and playing with Quentin; and he was the especial pet and occasionally tormentor of the quartermaster, grey-haired Jack Andrews, and of old Dominie Skaill, who had been long since inducted to the honourable post of tutor, and as such, after his scholastic duties were over, he daily visited the castle, in which a room was set apart for study.
The following years saw Quentin Kennedy growing up into a fine and manly boy, bold in spirit and frank in nature; yet he retained even after his tenth year much of the chubby bloom, the rosy cheeks, the plump white skin, and the golden curls of his infancy.
Lady Rohallion and her visitors thought him a perfect Cupid; but her husband and the quartermaster—particularly the latter—vowed he was a regular imp, who always broke his tobacco-pipes, tied explosives to the end of his pigtail, and played him a hundred other tricks, the result of Jack Andrews' secret education.
The dominie often shook his bag-wig solemnly, for the boy's ways were at times very erratic and required reprehension; but his constant friend and adherent was Lady Rohallion, who, when beholding his beauty, his gambols, and grace, or when listening to his prattle, and watching all his waggish little ways, could never think but with a sigh of the widowed and unknown mother whom all these would have gladdened, and who was, perhaps, still sorrowing for the child who had forgotten her and transferred his filial love and faith to a stranger—if, indeed, the royalist sympathies of that unfortunate mother had not been long since expiated under the guillotine.
Quentin's only annoyance existed when the Master of Rohallion, then a captain in the Guards, came home on leave, which, sooth to say, the Honourable Cosmo Crawford did as seldom as possible, the gaieties of London, club-life, the opera, and the atmosphere which surrounded the Prince of Wales, proving greater attractions than any to be found among the Highlands of Carrick. On these occasions, the boy felt sensibly how secondary a place he bore in the affections of the lady, and clung more to his friend the quartermaster.
In addition to a cold and chilling stateliness of manner, the Master—a handsome and gallant soldier, however—disliked children generally, and half-grown boys in particular; thus if he ever spoke to Quentin, it was merely to quiz him as a young Frenchman (a nationality which the boy angrily repudiated), to call him a frog-eater, or little Boney, a name which, through some childish memory of the past, always roused his anger.
The Master was not popular in Carrick; on his home visits, the piper of Maybole never ventured to play before him as before his father; no mendicant held forth his hand in hope of charity when he passed the kirk-stile on Sunday; the tenantry never gathered to welcome him back, and he had been heard to speak of a recently deceased prince as "the late Pretender," a horrible heresy in the house of Rohallion, and almost a solecism in Scottish society yet.
But our young friend was always relieved of his presence when the shooting season was over, when the summer drills of the Guards began, or when urgent letters from great but unknown friends required his return to London; and whither he departed with baggage enough for a regiment, and his English valet, whose finery, foppery, and town airs always excited the risible faculties of Lord Rohallion, and the grim contempt of the cynical veteran, Jack Andrews.
Though bright and intelligent, Quentin was too erratic to be an industrious or plodding scholar; thus his Euclid and Cornelius Nepos, &c., were frequently left to themselves, that he might act the "truant," and have a day's fly-fishing in the Girvan or the winding Doon: or a ramble with his friend the gamekeeper through the preserves, where the deer came out of the fir woods to steal the dominie's turnips, and where the dark plover and the golden pheasant lurked among the sombre whin or feathery bracken bushes.
Then the "Life of Valentine and Orson," with the achievements of gallant Jack, the foe of all giants, together with similar ancient lore, in which the ex-quartermaster indulged him (generally about the time when his poor half-pay became due) together with the pungent military yarns of Jack Andrews, always proved sad opponents to the ponderous classics of Dominie Skaill; and, as Quentin grew older, Cornelius Nepos, Tacitus, Æschylus, and others, were alike neglected, and frequently neither entreaties or threats would substitute them for the pages of Smollett and Fielding—the Dickens and Thackeray of the preceding age.
Then the dominie would grow wrathful; but all without avail, for the boy was droll and loveable in his ways, and as the old Lord said, "would wind them all round his little finger." Thus in the oddly-assorted society of that sequestered castle he picked up a strange smattering of knowledge on many subjects.
Sometimes he was present when Lord Rohallion and John Girvan had long consultations concerning farming and stock management, arable and pastoral; planting belts of pine for sheltering corn and deer; draining bogs and swamps; embanking or reclaiming; thatching farm-towns anew, and so forth—consultations which always ended in a jorum of hot toddy, and a reference to the war and chances of invasion, which naturally led to a mental parade of his majesty's 25th Foot, and old personal reminiscences, varying from the days of Minden down to Saratoga, Bunker's Hill, and Brandywine, with Corporal O'Lavery of the 17th, and Lord Rawdon's famous despatch. Then agriculture and its patron, the Baronet of Ulbter, were voted a double bore, and everything gave place to "shop" and pipeclay.
At other times Quentin was present when curious arguments ensued over a pipe and glass of grog between his preceptor and the ruddy-visaged quartermaster, who was wont to treat the ancients and their modes of warfare with supreme contempt. Thus, if he extolled Brown Bess and her bayonet, which the French could never withstand, Dominie Skaill brought the Parthians into the field, and told him how at close quarters with the Roman Legion they were broken; but how the troops of Crassus broke those same legions in turn, by the dexterity with which they used their bows, never failing to wind up with a reference to the Caledonian warriors who routed the Romans in the days of old, and the schiltrons or massed spearmen of Wight Wallace in later times, for the dominie had all the history of Harry the Minstrel by heart, and like the quartermaster, his patriotism had been no way lessened by many a jovial night spent with their friend Burns in his old farm-house of Lochlea or Mossgiel.
Thus Quentin's mind became gradually imbued by quaint ideas, and filled with a curious mixture of military, legendary, and historic lore. The very air he breathed was full of patriotism, for he was in the land of Burns—in Carrick, the ancient lordship of the kingly Bruces; and many a story the dominie told him of the time when the Earls of Cassilis, the Lords of Rohallion, the Lairds of Blairquhan, and other noblesse of Carrick, had their town mansions in Maybole; when love was made through barred helmets, and when there were hunting, and hosting and foraying; when castles were stormed and granges burned; when the Black Vault of Dunure saw Danish blood stream from its gutters after Largs was won; and the Abbot of Corseregal roasting on an iron grille ten years after the Reformation. But the story that Quentin loved best was of the Gipsy King who lured away the fair Countess of Cassilis, and of the long years of captivity she spent in the grim old tower of Maybole, where, to this day, we may see the likenesses of herself and her rash lover, carved in stone upon the upper oriel.
Many a day they spent together, this patient dominie and his playful pupil, wandering among the ruins of the Castle of Kilhenzie, in feudal times a stronghold of the Kennedies, and there for hours they were wont to sit, under the aged and giant tree which still stands near its southern wall—a tree twenty-two feet in girth, and so vast that it covers nearly the eighth of an acre.
"On that tree many a bold reiver, gipsy loon, and landlouping Southron has been hung in his boots by the auld Kennedies o' Kilhenzie," the dominie would say; "they were a dour, stern, and warlike stock, boasting themselves to be kean-na-tigh, or, as the name bears, 'head of the race,' and who can say, Quentin, but you may be their lineal descendant, and if every head wears its ain bonnet, be Laird of Kilhenzie yet? yea, restored to your proper estate after all your wanderings, even as Telemachus was, who in childhood was also saved miraculously from the sea."
Then the boy would look up to the ivy-covered masses of the crumbling wall, with its gaping windows, through which the gleds and hoodie-crows were flying, and feel strange throbbings and emotions wakened in his heart by the dominie's words; and there he often came alone to loiter, and think and dream over what his friend had said, till his musings took a tangible form, and ultimately, in all his day-dreams, he came to identify the old castle with himself—he knew not why.
When Quentin was brought first to Rohallion, he was wont to pray to his "blessed Mother who was in heaven," and to lisp the name of "la Mère de Dieu" with great reverence, to the utter scandal and bewilderment of Dominie Skaill, who smelt the old leaven of Prelacy and Popery strong in this, for he believed only in the Kirk of Scotland as by law established, confirmed by the Revolution Settlement and Treaty of Union (though sadly outraged by the restoration of patronage in 1712); and such language, he averred, was rank hanging matter in an adult!
Quentin's dark eyes were wont to sparkle and flash on hearing these rebukes, or France abused, as she was pretty sure to be, daily, by every one in those days; but after a time all these emotions and ideas gave place to local influences, and he settled down into a quiet little Scottish schoolboy, though, as we have said, somewhat of a truant withal.
His mind sobered and changed even as his clustering golden curls grew into dark and shining chestnut though dreamlike memories would still steal upon his mind—memories that came he knew not whence.
Once when the dominie pointed to a Vandyke that hung in the great hall, representing Lady Jean of Rohallion, and told him that "she was an evil-minded woman, who persecuted the saints of God in her time; and that the cross at her girdle was the hammer of Beelzebub, and an emblem of her damnable apostasy from the pure and covenanted Kirk of Scotland," the boy's eyes would assume their gleam, and then a pure, soft smile, as he said that "his mother in France wore just such a cross as that, and that he would love the picture for her sake."
Then Dominie Skaill would groan in spirit over "the bad bluid" that boiled in a heart so young and tender, and stamping up and down the hall in his square-toed shoes, would openly express his fears that "the bairn was a veritable young Claverhouse!"
On other occasions, and they were many, when Quentin was alone, and gazing on the sea that frothed so white about the Partan Craig, out of the perplexing mists of memory came the dream-like incidents of the wreck on that gloomy November night; his loving father's pale and despairing face, when the ship went down and left them all struggling amid the cold waves of a dark and stormy sea; and with these memories came others beyond that time, softer and dearer, like the recollections of a prior existence.
There was the cathedral, with its lights and music at mass; the bridge, the river, and the windmill; how surely he should know them all again! And so pondering and dreaming thus, he would lie for hours on the sunny bank that sloped southward from the cliff of Rohallion, while the blue Firth of Clyde that chafed upon the rocks below, came faintly and dreamily to his ear.
Thus his vision was turned inward, though his eyes were perhaps fixed on the blue ether overhead, where the sea mews were revolving and the great eagle soaring aloft; or on the distant tower and Tolbooth of Maybole that stood clear and dark against the sunset-flush—the wavy undulations of the Carrick hills: the blue peaks of Arran that rose afar off, or the nearer coast of Cunninghame, chequered by golden light on violet coloured shadow.
CHAPTER IX.
THE QUARTERMASTER'S SNUGGERY.
"Ambition is dead within me: but there is some satisfaction in a queen's commission, with half-pay at the end of it."—Once a Week.
Quentin Kennedy loved the venerable dominie, but was undoubtedly bored by his pedantry, and to escape it, once actually disappeared for three entire days, to the utter dismay of the whole household at Rohallion, when it was naturally supposed that he had been kidnapped by gipsies, or carried off by the smugglers, who frequented the coves in the rocks when the nights were dark and gusty; that he had been carried off by the pressgang from Ayr, or had fallen over the cliffs when bird-nesting, until Elsie Irvine arrived at the castle, in tears and tribulation, to announce that he had cunningly secreted himself in the "saut-backet" of her husband's clinker-built boat, and gone with the little fleet from the adjacent bay to the herring fishery.
When Lady Winifred's old friend and school companion, Eleonora Hamilton (then Countess of Eglinton) visited the castle with her two unmarried daughters, the Ladies Lilias and Mary—which she did once yearly—it was always a happy time for Quentin; for then he had two little companions with whom to romp and swing in the old terraced gardens; for whom to gather birds' eggs and butterflies in the old woods of Rohallion, and before whom he could exhibit his boyish skill in shooting at the butts, or hooking a brown trout in the Girvan or the Doon; but of the two, his chief friend and playmate was the fair-haired, blue-eyed, and softly-voiced little Lady Mary, with whom he generally opened the dance at the annual kirn, or harvest-home, which Lord Rohallion always gave to the field-labourers in the great barn of the home-farm, and on these occasions, the brightest ribbons that Maybole could produce, together with the dominie's violin and Pate's pipes, were in full requisition.
On a November night, about four years after the boy's arrival at Rohallion, his two friends, the dominie and ex-quartermaster, were seated in the latter's apartment discussing, which they did very frequently, the boy's pranks and progress, with a pipe of tobacco and a jug of hot toddy at the same time.
John Girvan's "snuggery," as he termed it, was in a square tower at an angle of the barbican wall of the old castle. The loopholes for defence by arrows or arquebusses yet remained under the window-sills, to enfilade all approach to the gate-way. They had been made with special reference to the English and the Kennedies of Kilhenzie; but there was a chance now that "the French might come by the same road."
The chamber was small, but very cosy, papered with a queer old pattern over the wainscoting; the walls were of vast strength, the windows arched, the fire-place deep, and lined with shining Delft squares of the Puritan times, representing bulbous-shaped Dutch skaters, and the instructive old Scriptural story of Susannah and the Elders.
The dark oak floor was minus a carpet, for the quartermaster had been long enough under canvas and in barracks to despise such a luxury.
Over the mantelpiece was a gaudily-coloured print of the Marquis of Cornwallis in full uniform, with a huge wig and cocked hat, New York and a hecatomb of slaughtered Yankees in the distance. Under this work of art hung the quartermaster's old regimental sword, with its spring shell, his crimson sash and gilt gorget, graven with a thistle, and the (to him) magic number "25"—his household lares, as the dominie called them.
Bound with iron, an old baggage-trunk, that had been over half the habitable globe, bore the same number and regiment.
Pipes, whips, and spurs and boot-tops, dog-eared Army Lists and empty bottles, littered all the mantelshelf and window-bunkers, and with some very wheezy-looking old chairs made up the appurtenances of the room, through which the fire shed a blaze so cheerful, that the dominie had no desire, when he heard the wind moaning through the battlements above, to face the blast which howled down the lonely glen that lay beyond the haunted gate.
A broiled poor man o' mutton and fried trout from the Girvan smoked on the table beside the toddy jugs, and all within looked cheery, as these two oddly-assorted friends, who had scarcely an idea in common, sat down to supper.
"Aye, dominie, it is a dreich night!" said the quartermaster, filling his pipe; "but your jug is empty, brew again; and now wi' a' your book-learning, can you tell me the name o' the man who invented this same whisky?"
"Many a night in Mossgiel, wi' Burns, we've drank to his memory, whoever he was," replied the dominie; "but odds my heart! John Girvan, I have scarcely got the better o' the fright that brat o' a laddie gave us, when he disappeared and ran off to the herring fishery."
The quartermaster laid down his pipe gravely, for he and the dominie had a perpetual disagreement about how Quentin was to be educated. The former laboured hard to teach him the use of fire-arms (Brown Bess in particular), to box, and to handle the pistol and broadsword, saying, that without such knowledge he would never be a man; while the poor dominie laboured still harder to infuse in his nature a love for literature and the arts of peace, and though compelled to console himself for Quentin's rapid progress in those of war, by some musty quotation concerning the Actian games which were instituted in honour of the victory over Marc Antony, he could not resist asking,
"To what end do you teach the laddie all this military nonsense—this use of sword and musket, John?"
"For drill and discipline, dominie—drill and discipline."
"Both excellent things in their way, quartermaster; the Romans, who conquered all the world——"
"South of Forth and Clyde—haud ye there, dominie!"
"Well, they conquered by the force of their discipline, and as that declined, so did their power; but to what profitable end, I say, teach the bairn all these havers about wars, battles, and bombshelling? Do you wish to make of him a tearing, swearing, tramping dragoon, such as we read of in the days of that atrocious Claverhouse?"
"Not at all, dominie."
"Then," asked Skaill, angrily, "what would ye make of him?"
"A man, where you would make him a Molly."
The dominie shook his head, and as he did so the bag of his wig shook pendulously behind him.
"John Girvan, bairns should be taught early to delight, not in arts which conduce to the destruction of human life, but in such as lead to charity, mercy, benevolence, and humanity."
"Quite right, dominie, and for utterly ignoring all these, I know a man of peace who had his lugs cropped off his head."
"Cropped?"
"Shaven clean off his head by a knife."
"Barbarous! barbarous!"
"But just, dominie—strictly just. Did you ever hear how our 28th, or North Gloucestershire, came to be called the Slashers?"
"Sooth to say, John, I never heard o' them at all."
"Well, pass the bottle, and I care na if I tell you. A company of ours was quartered with them in a town on the Canadian frontier. It was during the winter of '79, when the atmosphere was so cold that the hoar-frost on our sentries' greatcoats made them look for a' the world like figures round a bridecake; stiff half-and-half grog froze before you could drink it; the bugles froze with the buglers' breath; flesh came off if you touched a swordblade or musket barrel, and the air was full of glittering particles. We had to saw our ration beef in slices, and half roast our loaves before we could cut them. Men were found dead in the snow every day—stiff and frozen; in fact, there was no way of keeping ourselves warm, do what we might. I don't know how many degrees it was below the freezing point, but the cold was awful, and it seemed as if the mercury was frozen too!
"Amid the severity of that Canadian winter, the mayor of the town, a democratic and discontented ruffian, refused billets to the soldiers' wives, and the poor women and helpless children of the 28th nearly all perished in the streets; in the mornings they were found frozen like statues, or half-buried among the snow; but severely was the mayor punished, for one day as he sat at dinner the table was suddenly surrounded by a party of savages, in war-paint, with hunting shirts, fur cloaks, moccassins, and wampum belts. They whooped, yelled, brandished their tomahawks, and then dragging the mayor from the table, sliced off both his ears. After this they at once disappeared, and it was not known for some days that these pretended savages were soldiers of the 28th whose wives had perished through his inhumanity. It was for this that we first called them 'slashers,' a title which their bravery in the war fully confirmed."
"The wretch was rightly served," said the dominie; "and truly did our old friend Rob write of 'man's inhumanity to man making countless thousands mourn.'"
"Aye, dominie, that poem is as gude as any sermon that ever was written!" exclaimed the quartermaster.
"But to return to Quentin, it is wi' such barbarous stories as that you have told me you fill the bairn's head, John, at an age when his mind should be impressed wi' ideas of charity and mercy. How noble it was of the great Constantine, to employ his son, as soon as he could write, in signing pardons and granting boons. Under favour, John, the pen is a nobler instrument than the sword."
"Then how about Wight Wallace and the Bruce of Carrick, dominie, eh? Had they never learned to handle aught but a goosequill, where would our auld mother Scotland have been to-day; so shut pans, ye auld gomeril, and brew your toddy."
The dominie chuckled and said,
"I have worn a red coat mysel', quartermaster, for when Thurot was off the west coast, I was a year in the volunteers under the Earl o' Glencairn."
"The best year of your life, dominie!"