One of the Six Hundred 1One of the Six Hundred (part 1)
18
Literature · Romance
One of the Six Hundred 1
One of the Six Hundred (part 1)
GrantEnglish
*ONE OF
THE SIX HUNDRED*
*A Novel*
BY JAMES GRANT
AUTHOR OF "THE ROMANCE OF WAR."
"Half a league, half a league,
Half a league, onward,
Into the Valley of Death,
Rode the Six Hundred!"
TENNYSON.
LONDON:
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS
THE BROADWAY, LUDGATE
NEW YORK: 416 BROOME STREET
1875
*ONE OF THE SIX HUNDRED.*
*CHAPTER I.*
To be handsome, young, and twenty-two,
With nothing else on earth to do;
But all day long to bill and coo,
It were a pleasant calling.--THACKERAY.
I was just in the act of humming the above verse, when the following announcement was put into my hand--
"Regimental Orders.--Head-quarters, Maidstone, December 31st.
"As the regiment is to be held in readiness for foreign service in spring, captains of troops will report to Lieutenant and Adjutant Studhome, for the information of the commanding officer, on the state of the saddlery, the holsters and lance-buckets; and the horses must be all re-shod under the immediate inspection of the veterinary surgeon and Farrier-Sergeant Snaffles.
"Leave of absence to the 31st proximo is granted to Lieutenant Newton Calderwood Norcliff, in consequence of his urgent private affairs."
"Hah! this is what most concerns me," I exclaimed, as I read the foregoing, and then handed the order-book, a squat vellum-bound quarto, to the orderly-serjeant who was in waiting.
"Any idea of where we are likely to go, sir?" he asked.
"The East, of course."
"So say the men in the barracks; for the present, good-bye, sir," said he, as he wheeled about on his spurred heel, and saluted; "I wish you a pleasant journey."
"Thanks, Stapylton," said I; "and now to be off by the night train for London and the north. Ugh! the last night of December; I shall have a cold journey of it."
Despatching my man, Willie Pitblado--of whom more hereafter--to the mess-house to report that I should not dine there that evening, I proposed at once to start for home, resolved to make the most of the favour granted me--leave between returns, as it is technically termed.
I propose to give the story of my own adventures, my experiences of life, or autobiography (what you will); and this I shall do, in the face of a certain writer, who asserts, with some truth, doubtless, that she does not "believe that there was, or could be in the world, a wholly true, candid, and unreserved biography, revealing all the dispositions, or even, without exception, all the facts of any existence. Indeed," she adds, "the thing is next to impossible; since, in that case, the subject of the biography must be a man or woman without reserve, without delicacy, and without those secrets which are inevitable even to the most stainless spirit."
With all due deference to this fair writer, I beg to hope that such a candid spirit may exist; and that, without violating the delicacy of this somewhat (externally) fastidious age on the one hand, and without prudish or hypocritical reserve on the other, I, Mr. Newton Norcliff, will relate the plain, unvarnished story of a cavalry subaltern's life during the stirring events of the last ten years.
My regiment was a lancer one. I need not designate it further; though, by the way, it has always struck me as somewhat peculiar in our cavalry of the line, that while we have our Scottish corps, the famous old Greys, and no less than three Irish, we have not one English regiment, provincially designated as such.
I despatched a note of thanks to the colonel, handed over my cattle to the care of my friend Jack Studhome, the adjutant, and had a hasty interview with Saunders M'Goldrick, our Scots paymaster--not that I wish the reader to infer that he was my chief factor and reliance (heaven help those in a dragoon regiment who find him so!).
Glad to escape, even for the brief period of a month, from the monotony of routine parades, the stable duty, the barrack life, and useless hurly-burly of Maidstone--to be free from all bother, mess, band, and ball committees, courts-martial, and courts of inquiry; from having to remember when this parade took place, and when that particular drill, and all that sort of thing--glad, I say, to escape from being saluted by soldiers and sentinels at every turn and corner, and to be once again lord of my own proper person, I relinquished my gay lancer trappings, and resumed the less pretending mufti of the civilian--a suit of warm and strong heather-mixture tweed--and about nine o'clock P.M. found myself, with some light travelling baggage, my gun-case, railway rugs, &c. (in care of Willie Pitblado, who was attired in very orthodox livery--boots, belt, and cockade), awaiting the up train for London, at the Maidstone station, and enjoying a last friendly chat and a cigar with Studhome, as we promenaded to and fro on the platform, and talked of the different work that would soon be cut out for us, too probably, about the time my short leave expired.
The British fleet was already in the Bosphorus; the field of Oltenitza had seen the terrible defeat of the Russians by the troops of Omar Pasha, generalissimo of the Porte, avenge the recent naval massacre at Sinope. Ere long, the Turks were to be again victorious at Citate. General Luders was about to force his way into the Dobrudcha; Britain, France, Russia, Turkey, and Sardinia were gathering their hosts for the strife; and amid these serious events, that absurdity might not be wanting, the sly broad-brims and popularity-hunters of the Peace Society sent a deputation to the Emperor Nicholas, to expostulate with him on the wickedness of his ways.
"Egad! if the weather proves cold here, what will you find it at home, in Scotland?" said Studhome, as we trod to and fro; for there is no knocking the idea out of an Englishman's head that the distance of some four hundred miles or so must make a more than Muscovite difference in soil and temperature; but it was cold--intensely so.
The air was clear, and amid the blue ether the stars sparkled brightly. Snow, white and glistening, covered all the roofs of the houses and the line of the railway, and the Medway shone coldly, like polished silver, under the seven arches of its bridge, in the light of the rising moon; and now, with a shrill, vicious whistle, and many a rapidly iterated grunt and clank, came the iron horse that was to bear me on my way, as it tore into the station, with its mane of smoke, and its red bull's-eyes that shed two steady flakes of light along the snow-covered line of rails.
The passengers were all muffled to their noses, and their breath coated and obscured the glasses of the carefully-closed windows.
Pitblado brought me Punch, the Times, and "Bradshaw," and then rushed to secure his second-class seat; Studhome bade me farewell, and retired to join Wilford, Scriven, and some others of the corps, who usually met at a billiard-room, near the barracks, leaving me to arrange my several wrappers, and enjoy the society of one whom he laughingly termed my railway belle--a stout female with a squalling imp, whom, notwithstanding my secret and confidential tip of half-a-crown, the deceitful guard had thrust upon me; and then, with another shriek and a steady and monotonous clanking, the train swept out of the station. The town vanished with its county court house, barracks, river, and the fine tower of All Saints' Church; and in a twinkling I could survey the snow-covered country stretching for miles on each side of me, as we scoured along the branch line to the Paddock Wood, or Maidstone Road Junction, of the London and Dover Railway, where I got the up train from Canterbury.
Swiftly went the first-class express. The fifty-six miles were soon done, and in an hour I was amid the vast world, the human wilderness of London, even while worthy Jack Studhome's merry smile and hearty good-bye seemed to linger before me. How glorious it is to travel thus, with all the speed and luxury that money in these our days can command!
A hundred years hence how will they travel--our grandchildren? Heaven alone knows.
I was now four-and-twenty. I had been six years with the lancers, and already the novelty of the service--though loving it not the less--was gone; and I was glad, as I have said, to escape for a month from a life of enforced routine, and the nightly succession of balls, card and supper parties among the garrison hacks or passe belles, whose names and flirtations are standing jokes at the messes of our ungrateful lancers, hussars, and dragoon guards, wherever they are stationed, from Calcutta to Colchester, and from Poonah to Piershill.
A day soon passed amid the whirl of London, and night saw me once more seated in the coupe of a well-cushioned carriage for the north.
This time I was alone, and had the ample seat all to myself, thereon to lounge with all the ease of a sybarite; and with the aid of a brandy-flask, cigars, and warm wrappers and plaids, prepared for the dreary journey of a winter night.
On, on went the train!
Lights, crimson and green, flashed at times out of the darkness. Here and there the tall poplars of the midland counties stood up, like spectres in the moonlight, above the snow-clad meadows. Hollowly we rumbled through the subterranean blackness of a tunnel; out in the snow and moonlight again, amid other scenes and places. Anon, a hasty shout from some pointsman would make me start when just on the eve of dropping asleep; or it might be a sudden stoppage amid the lurid glare of furnaces, forges, and coalpits, where, night and day, by spells and gangs the ceaseless work went on. Then it was the shrill whistling and clanking of the train, the bustle, running to and fro of men with lanterns, the banging of doors, tramping, and voices, with the clink of hammers upon the iron wheels, as their soundness was tested, which announced that we were at Peterborough, at York, or Darlington.
But every station, whether we tarried or rushed past it, seemed wonderfully alike. There were always repetitions of the same glazed advertisements in gilt frames; the same huge purple mangold-wurzel, with its tuft of green leaves; the same man in the hat and surtout, with the alpaca umbrella, under the ceaseless shower of rain; Lea and Perrin's sauce-bottles; somebody else's patent shirt; the florid posters of Punch, the Illustrated News, and the London Journal; and the same parti-coloured volumes of railway literature.
Rapidly we rushed through England. Yorkshire and its Ridings were left behind, and now the Borders, the old land of a thousand battles and a thousand songs, drew near--the brave green Borders, with all their solemn hills, upheaved in the light of the faded stars.
Grey dawn of the coming day saw us traversing the fertile Merse, with glimpses of the gloomy German sea, tumbling its whitened waves upon bleak promontories of rock, such as Dunbar, Fastcastle, and the bare, black headland of St. Abb. Then, as I neared home, and saw the sun brightening on the snow-covered summits of Dirlton and Traprainlaw, many an old and long-forgotten idea, and many a sad and affectionate thought of the past years, came back to memory, in the dreary hour of the early winter morning.
I have said I was but four-and-twenty then. When I had last traversed that line of rail, it was in the sweet season of summer, when the heather was purple on the Lammermuirs; and a sea of golden grain clothed all the lovely valley of the Tyne. I was proceeding to join my regiment, a raw, heedless, and impulsive boy, with bright hope and vague ambition in his heart, and with a poor mother's tears yet wet upon his cheek.
I had been six years with the lancers, and four of these were spent in India. While there, my dear mother died; and the memory of the last time when I saw her kind and affectionate face, and heard her broken voice, as she prayed God to bless my departing steps, came vividly, powerfully, and painfully before me.
It was on the morning when I was to leave home and her to join the corps. Overnight, with all a boy's vanity and glowing satisfaction, I had contemplated my gay lancer trappings, had buckled on my sword, placed the gold cartouche-belt and glittering epaulettes on my shoulders.
At that moment I would not have exchanged my cornetcy for the kingdom of Scotland. These alluring trappings were the last things I thought of and looked on ere my eyes were closed by slumber, and the grey dawn of the next eventful day saw them still lying unpacked on the floor, when my poor mother, pale, anxious, unslept, and with her sad eyes full of tears, and her heart wrung with sorrow, stole softly into my room, to look for the last time upon her sleeping boy, and her mournful and earnest face was the first sight that met my waking eyes, when roused by a tear that dropped upon my cheek.
I started up, and all the consciousness of the great separation that was to ensue--the terrible wrench of heart from heart that was to come--burst upon me. Then sword and epaulettes, cap and plume, and the lancers, were forgotten; and throwing my arms around her neck, as I had done in the days of childish grief, I wept like the boy I was, rather than the man I had imagined myself to be.
I was going home now; but I should see that beloved face no more, and her voice was hushed for ever.
In that home were others, who were kind and gentle, and who loved me well, awaiting my arrival, and to welcome me. And there was my cousin Cora Calderwood--she was unmarried still.
Cora I was about to see again. It seemed long, long since we had last met, though we had frequently corresponded, for my uncle had a horror of letter-writing; and certain it was that she had inspired the first emotion of love in my schoolboy heart, and during my sojourn in India, and amid the whirl and gaiety of barrack-life at Bath, at Maidstone, at Canterbury and elsewhere, her image had lingered in my mind, more as a pleasing memory connected with ideas of Scotland and my home, rather than with those of a passionate or enduring attachment.
Indeed, I had just been on the point of forming that elsewhere; but now, having no immediate attraction beside me, I began to wonder whether Cora had grown up a beauty; how tall she was, whether she was engaged, and so forth; whether she still remembered with pleasure the young playmate who had left her sorely dissolved in tears, half lover and wholly friend.
As we progressed northward, and crossed the Firth of Forth, the snow almost entirely disappeared, save on the lofty summits of the Ochil mountains, whose slopes looked green and pleasant in the meridian sun; and my friend Studhome, had he been with me, might have been much surprised in finding the atmosphere warmer north of Stirling Bridge than we found it at Maidstone--so variable is our climate.
We changed carriages at Stirling, where I was to imbibe some hot coffee, while Pitblado looked after my baggage, and swore in no measured terms at the slowness of an old, cynical, and hard-visaged porter, on whose brass badge was engraved a wolf--the badge of Stirling.
"Now then, look alive, you old duffer!" I heard Willie shouting.
"Ou, aye!" replied the other slowly, with a grin on his weather-beaten and saturnine face; "ye think yoursel' a braw chiel in your mustaches and laced jacket--there was a time when I thocht mysel' one too."
"What do you mean?" asked Pitblado, whose dragoon air even his livery failed to conceal.
"Mean!" retorted the other; "why, I mean that at the point o' the bayonet I helped to carry Badajoz and Ciudad Rodrigo to boot; and now, for sax baubees, I'm thankfu' to carry your bag. Sae muckle for sodgerin'!"
"It is not very encouraging, certainly," said my man, with a smile.
"Ten years' service, two wounds, and a deferred pension of threepence per diem," growled the other, as he threw my traps, with an oath, on the roof of the carriage.
"What regiment, my friend?" I inquired.
"The old Scots brigade, second battalion, sir," he replied, with a salute, as I slipped a trifle into his hand.
"The weather seems open and fine here."
"Aye," said he, with another saturnine grin; "but a green yule maketh a fat kirkyard."
In five minutes more we were en route, sweeping along the little lonely branch line, that through grassy glens, where the half-frozen runnels oozed or gurgled among withered reeds and bracken bushes, led us into the heart of Fife--"the kingdom," as the Scots call it; not that it ever was so in any time of antiquity, but because the peninsular county contains within its compact and industrious self every means and requisite for the support of its inhabitants, independent of the produce of the whole external world--at least, such is their boast.
I was drawing nearer and nearer home; and now my heart beat high and happily. Every local feature and casual sound, the little thatched cottages, with rusty, antique risps on their doors, and the clatter of the wooden looms within, were familiar to me. We swept past the quaint town, and the tall, gaunt castle of Clackmannan, where its aged chatelaine--the last of the old Bruce line--knighted Robert Burns, with the sword of the victor of Bannockburn, saying, dryly, that she "had a better right to do it than some people," and ere long I saw the spires that overshadow the graves of Robert I. and many a Scottish monarch, as we glided past Dunfermline, old and grey, with its glorious ruined palace, where Malcolm drank the blood-red wine, and where Charles I. was born, and its steep, quaint streets covering the brow of a sloping ridge that ends abruptly in the wooded glen of Pittencrief.
The old Scottish tirling-pin--to be found now nowhere save in Fife--in lieu of bells and knockers.
My delight was fully shared in by Willie Pitblado, my servant, the son of old Simon, my uncle's keeper. He was a lancer in my troop, for whom I had procured a month's furlough; thus the hedgerows where he had bird-nested, the fields where he had sung and whistled at the plough, the farm-gates on which he had swung for hours--a truant boy from school--the woods of Pitrearie and Pittencrief, the abbey's old grey walls, and the square tower that covers Bruce's grave, were all hailed by Willie as old friends; and strange to say, his Doric Scotch came back to his tongue with the air he breathed, though it had been nearly well-nigh quizzed out of him by our lancers, nearly all of whom were English.
He was a smart, handsome, and soldier-like fellow, who bade fair to be "the rage" among the servant-girls at the old house, the home-farm, and the adjacent village, and a source of vexation to their hobnailed country admirers.
A few miles beyond the old city I quitted the train, and leaving him to follow with my baggage in a dog-cart, I struck across the fields by a near path that I remembered well, and which I knew would bring me straight to Calderwood Glen, the residence of my uncle, Sir Nigel--save Cora, almost the last relation I had now on earth.
*CHAPTER II.*
Pure as the silver wreath of snow
That lies on yonder wintry hill,
Are all the thoughts that peaceful flow,
And with pure joy my bosom fill.
Soft as the sweet spring's morning breath,
Or summer's zephyr, forth they roam;
Until my bosom grows more kind,
And dreams of thee and all at home.
The winter day was cold and clear, but without frost, save on the mountain tops, where the snow was lying. Though vegetation should have been dormant, the swelling uplands, the pastoral hills and braes of Fife, looked green and fertile; and there was a premature budding of young shoots, which the bitter frost of to-morrow might totally destroy.
Fires glowed redly through the little square windows of the wayside cottages, and from their massive stone chimneys the smoke ascended into the thin air in heavy volumes, that told of warmth, of comfort, and industry within. Ere long I could see the woods, all bare and leafless, that covered the slopes of Calderwood Glen, and the vanes of the old house shining in the light of the setting sun, which streamed along the green slope of the western Lomond.
I passed unnoticed through the secluded village which stood, I knew, upon the verge of my good uncle's property, and where the old signboards of the smithy, the bakery, and alehouse were familiar to me. The clock of the old Gothic kirk struck the hour of three, slowly and deliberately, as only such clocks do in the country.
Many years ago, in boyhood, I remembered the familiar voice of that village monitor. What changes had taken place since then, in myself and others, and even in the scene around me! How many, whose daily routine, and whose labours--the heritage of toil--were timed by its bell and dial, were now in other lands, or sleeping in their humble graves beneath the shadow of the spire, and yet the old moss-grown clock ticked on!
Since then I had grown to manhood, had seen many of the dearest of my kindred die. Since then I had become a soldier, and had served in India, and on the staff in the late Burmese war. At the bombardment of Rangoon, I received a wound in the night attack made by the enemy on our camp at the heights of Prome.
Thousands of stirring scenes and strange faces had flitted before me. I had traversed twice the great Atlantic and Indian oceans, and had twice passed the Cape, on the first occasion looking with anxious eyes and envious heart at every homeward-bound sail; and now all these events seemed as a long dream, and as if it were but yesterday when last I heard the voice of the old village clock.
In that timeworn fane, Row, the Covenanter, had preached, and the great archbishop, too--Sharpe, the recreant, or the martyr (which you will), who died on Magus Muir; and, that the marvellous may not be wanting, there is a legend which tells us that, in the year before the Covenanters invaded England, and stormed Newcastle, thereby seriously injuring the London coal market, there used to issue from the empty loft where, in old Catholic times, the organ stood, the sound of such an instrument in full play, together with the voices of the choristers singing a grand old Gregorian chant. These sounds were only heard in the night, or at other times when Calderwood kirk was empty, for the moment any one entered they ceased, and all became still--still as the dead Calderwoods of the Glen and of Piteadie, stretched in effigy, each upon his pedestal of stone, in St. Margaret's aisle; but this marvel was universally believed to portend the ultimate return of prelacy.
So rapidly and totally does the speed of the railway annihilate alike the extent of time and space, that it seemed difficult to embody the fact that, but four-and-twenty hours ago, I had been in my quarters at Maidstone barracks, or amid the splendour of a fashionable hotel in London; and yet it was so.
Treading deep among the last year's crisp and withered leaves, I proceeded down the sombre and winding avenue, with a heart that beat quicker as I drew near a man, whose figure I remembered instantly, for he was my early friend, my second father, my maternal uncle, good old Sir Nigel Calderwood. Occupied with a weeder, which he always carried, and with which the ends of all his walking-sticks were furnished, he was intent on up-rooting some obnoxious weed; thus I could approach him unobserved. He seemed as stout and hale as when I saw him last. The grey hair, that was wont to escape under his well-worn wide-awake, was thinner and more silvery, perhaps; but the old hat had its usual row of flies and fishhooks, and his face was as ruddy as ever, and spoke of high health and spirits. He stooped a little more, certainly; but his figure was still sturdy, and clad, as usual, in a rough suit of grey tweed, with his stout legs encased in long brown leather leggings, that had seen much service in their time among the turnips and heather in the shooting season, and in the trouting streams that traverse the fertile Howe of Fife.
An old, half-blind, and wheezing otter terrier crept close to his heels as I came up. With a polite bow the worthy baronet surveyed, but failed to recognise me, and waited, with a glance of inquiry, until I should speak; for, sooth to say, in the tall, rather well-knit figure, bronzed face, and heavy moustaches I exhibited, he could scarcely be expected to recognise the slender and beardless lad, whose heart was so heavy when he was conveyed away from his mother's arms, to push his way in the world as a cornet of cavalry some six years before.
"Uncle--Sir Nigel!" said I, in a voice that became tremulous.
"Newton--my dear boy, Newton--am I blind that I did not recognise you?" he exclaimed, while he grasped my hand and threw an arm round me; "welcome back to Calderwood--welcome home--and on the second day of the New Year, too! may many many joyous returns of the season be yours, Newton! What a manly fellow you have become since I saw you last in London--quite a dragoon!"
"And how is Cora--she is with you, of course?"
"Cora is well; and though not a dashing girl, she has grown up an amiable and gentle little pet, who is worth her weight in gold; but you shall see--you shall see, and judge for yourself. The house is full of visitors just now--I have some nice people to present you to."
"Thanks, uncle; but you and Cora were all I cared to see."
"But how came you to be here alone, and on foot too?"
"I left the train at Calderwood station, and wished to come quietly back to the old house, without any fuss."
"To steal a march upon us, in fact?"
"Yes, uncle, you understand me," said I, looking into his clear dark eyes, which were regarding me with an expression of great affection, which recalled the memory of my mother, his youngest and favourite sister. "Pitblado will drive over with my traps before dinner."
"Ah, Willie, the old keeper's son?"
"Yes."
"And how is he?"
"Quite well, and become so smart a lancer, that I fear there will be a great pulling of caps among the housemaids. I am loth to keep him out of the ranks, but the worthy fellow won't leave me."
"Many a good bag of grouse from yonder fields and the Lomonds, and many a good basket of trout from the Eden, has poor Willie carried for me. But, come this way; we shall take the near cut by the keeper's lodge to the house; you have not forgotten the way?"
"I should think not, uncle; by the Adder's Craig and the old Battle Stone."
"Exactly. I am so glad you have come at this time; I have such news for you, Newton--such news, boy."
"Indeed, uncle?"
"Yes," he continued, laughing heartily.
"How?"
"Calderwood Glen is a mere man-trap at present."
"In what manner?"
"We have here old General Rammerscales, of the Bengal army, who has come home with the liver complaint, and a face as yellow as a buttercup, and his pale niece--a girl worth heaven knows how many sacks or lacs of rupees (though, for the life of me, I never knew what or how much a lac is.) We have also Spittal of Lickspittal and that Ilk, M.P. for the Liberal interest (and more particularly for his own), with his two daughters, rather pretty girls; and we have that beautiful blonde, Miss Wilford, who has a cousin in your regiment--a Yorkshire heiress, whom all the men agree would make such a wife! We have also the Countess of Chillingham, and her daughter, Lady Louisa Loftus, really a very charming girl; so, as I told you, Newton, the old house is baited like a regular man-trap for you."
Had my uncle's perception been clearer, or had he been less vigorously using his weeder, as he ran on thus, he could not have failed to observe how powerfully the last name he uttered affected me.
After a pause--"In none of your letters," said I, "did you mention that Lady Loftus was here."
"Did I not? But Cora is your chief correspondent, and no no doubt she did."
"On the contrary, my cousin never once referred to her."
"Strange! Lord Chillingham left us a week ago in haste to attend a meeting of the Cabinet; but his women folks have been rusticating here for nearly three months. Charming person the countess--charming, indeed; but the daughter is quite a Diana. You have met her before--she told us so, and I have made up my mind--ah, you know for what, you rogue--eh?"
What my uncle had made up his mind for was not very apparent; but he concluded his sentence by poking the weeder under my short ribs.
"To have me marry in haste and repent at leisure, eh, uncle--is it for this that your mind is made up?"
"I am a man of the old school, Newton; yet I hate proverbs, and everything old, except wine and good breeding."
"You are aware, uncle," said I, to change the subject, "that the lancers are under orders for Turkey?"
"Where women are kept under lock and key, bought, and secluded from society; just as in Britain they are thrust into it for sale."
"And so, my dear uncle, supposing that a lively young lancer will make a most excellent husband for your noble and beautiful protegee, you are resolved to make a victim of me, is it not so?"
"Precisely; but according to the old use and wont in drama and romance, you must not be a willing one; you must be prepared to hate her cordially at first sight, and to prefer some one else--of course, some amiable village damsel, of humble but respectable parentage," replied Sir Nigel, laughing.
"Hate her--prefer another!" I exclaimed; "on the contrary, I--I----"
I know not what I was about to say, or how far I might have betrayed myself. The blood rushed to my temples, and I felt giddy and confused, for the kind old baronet knew little of the hopeless passion with which the fair one of whom he spoke had inspired me already.
"You have met the Lady Lousia before, you say?"
"Nay, 'twas she who said she had met me," said I, glad to recall by this trifling remark that I was not forgotten by her.
"Ah, indeed--indeed; where?"
"Oh, at Canterbury, at Tunbridge Wells, Bath; all those places where people are to be met. In London, too, I saw her presented at Court."
"The deuce! You and she seem to have gone in a leash," said Sir Nigel, laughing, while the colour deepened on my cheek again; "but you must look sharp, for one of your fellows who is here is for ever dangling after her."
"One of ours?" I exclaimed, with astonishment.
"Yes; a solemn, dreary, dandified fellow, whom I met at Chillingham's shootings in the north, and invited to spend the last weeks of his leave of absence here, as we were to have you with us; and he spared no pains to impress upon me that he was a particular chum of yours."
"Is he Captain Travers--Vaughan Travers? He is on leave."
"No; he is Lieutenant De Warr Berkeley."
"Berkeley!" I repeated, with some disgust, and with an emotion of such inconceivable annoyance that I could scarcely conceal it; for decidedly he was the last man of ours whom I should have liked to find domesticated at Calderwood Glen.
Berkeley was well enough to meet with in men's society, at mess, on parade, on the turf, or in the hunting-field; but though handsome and perfectly well-bred, for his manners were generally unexceptionable, he was not a man for the drawing-room. He was master of a splendid fortune, which was left him by his father, a plain old Scotchman, who had begun life as a drayman, and whose patronymic was simply John Dewar Barclay. He became a wealthy brewer, and somehow his son like all such parvenus, despising his name, was gazetted to the lancers as De Warr Berkeley, and as such his name figured in the "Army List."
The carefully-acquired fortune of the plodding old brewer he spent freely, and without being lavish, though as an Eton boy, and afterwards as a gentleman commoner of Christchurch, he had plunged into dissipation that made his name proverbial. He was one of those systematic roues whom prudent mothers would carefully exclude from the society of their daughters, nathless his commission, his cavalry uniform, his fortune, his decidedly handsome person and bearing, which had all the "tone of society"--whatever that may mean.
Hence I was rather provoked to find that the kind and well-meaning but blundering old baronet had, as a favour to me, installed him at Calderwood, as a friend for my pretty cousin Cora, and an admirer of Lady Louisa. As I thought over all this, her name must have escaped me, for my uncle roused me from a reverie by saying--
"Yes; she is a charming, a splendid girl, really! A little too stately, perhaps; but I would rather have my little rosebud, Cora, with her peculiar winning ways. Lady Louisa may be all head--as I believe she is; but our Cora is all heart, Newton--all heart!"
"And Lady Louisa is all head, you think, uncle?"
"I could see that at a glance--yes, with half an eye; and yet there are times when I wish Cora had been a boy----"
My uncle leaned on his stick, and sighed.
His eldest son had been killed in the 12th Lancers, at the battle of Goojerat; the other had died prematurely at College--a double loss, which had a most fatal effect on their delicate mother, then in the last stage of a mortal disease. Now the affection of the lonely Sir Nigel was centred in Cora, his only daughter, the child of his declining years; and thus he had a great regard for me as the son of his youngest sister; but he sorrowed in secret that his baronetcy--one of the oldest in Scotland, having been created in 1625 by Charles I.--should pass out of his family.
Sir Norman Calderwood of the Glen, who had attended the Scottish princess, Elizabeth Stuart, to Bohemia, was the first patented among the baronets of Nova Scotia; and was therefore styled Primus Baronettorum Scotiae, a prefix of which my uncle, as his ancestors had been, was not a little vain.
"The estates are entailed," said he, pursuing this line of thought; "they were among the first that were so, when the Scottish parliament passed the Entail Act in 1685; and though they go, as you know, to a remote collateral branch, the baronetcy ends with myself. Cora shall be well and handsomely left; for she shall have the Pitgavel property, which, with its coal and iron mines, yields two thousand per annum clear. And you, my boy, Newton, shall find that, tide what may, you are not forgotten."
"Uncle, you have already done so much for me----"
"Much, Newton?"
"Yes, my dear sir."
"Stuff! fitted you out for the lancers--that is all."
"You have done more than that, uncle----"
"I have lodged the purchase money for your troop with Messrs. Cox and Co.; but most of this money must, under other circumstances, have been spent on your cousins, had they lived. So, thank fate and the fortune of war, not me, boy, not me. But there are times, especially when I am alone, that it grieves me to think that instead of leaving an heir to the old title, one boy lies in his grave in the old kirk yonder; and the other, far, far away on the battle-field of Goojerat."
He shook his white head, and his voice became tremulous, his chin sank on his breast, and he added--
"My poor Nigel!--my bonnie Archie!"
The baronet was a handsome man, above six feet in height, and, though he stooped a little now, had been erect as a pike. He possessed fine aquiline features, a ruddy and healthy complexion; clear, and bright dark grey eyes; a well-shaped, though not very small, mouth; and a Scottish chin, of a curve that evinced perseverance and decision. His hair was nearly white, but there was plenty of it; his hands, though browned by exposure and seldom gloved--for the gun, the rod, the riding-whip, and the curling stone were ever in them by turns--were well shaped, and showed by their form and nails that he was a gentleman of good blood and breeding. His plain costume I have described, and he was without ornament, save a silver dog-whistle at his button-hole, and a large gold signet-ring, which belonged to his grandfather, Sir Alexander Calderwood, who commanded a frigate under Admiral Hawke, in the fleet which, in 1748, fought and vanquished the Spanish galleons between Tortuga and the Havannah.
A sturdy old Fifeshire laird, proud of a long line of warlike Scottish ancestors, uncrossed by any taint of foreign blood, he was fond of boasting that neither Dane nor Norman--the Englishman's strange vaunt and pride--could be found among them; but that he came of a race, which--as our Highlanders forcibly phrase it--had sprung from the soil, and were indigenous to it.
But, indeed, the alleged foreign descent of nearly the whole Scottish aristocracy is a silly sham, existing in their own imagination, having arisen from the ignorance of the monkish Latin writers, who in rolls and histories prefixed the Norman de or le, in many instances, to the most common Celtic patronymics and surnames.
Sir Nigel had "paraded," to use a barrack phrase, more than one man in his youth, and enjoyed the reputation of being an unpleasantly good shot with his pistol. He could remember sharing in the rage of the high-flying Tory party among the Fife lairds, when Sir Alexander Boswell, of Auchinleck, was shot by James Stuart, of Dunearn, in a solemn duel, where personal and political rancour were combined, at Balmuto, for which the victor had to fly to England, and from thence to France.
"It seemed strange on reflection, Newton," I have frequently heard Sir Nigel, say, "that poor Boswell was the first to propose in Parliament the repeal of our old Scottish statutes anent duelling, and that, after all, he should fall by the pistol for a mere newspaper squib, in which Sir Walter Scott was, perhaps, as much to blame as he."
*CHAPTER III.*
Sing on, thou sweet mavis, thy song to the ev'ning,
Thou'rt dear to the echoes of Calderwood Glen;
Sae dear to this bosom, sae heartless and winning,
Is charming young Jessie, the flower o' Dunblane.
TANNAHILL.
"Here is the old house, and here we are at last, Newton," said my uncle, as an abrupt turn of the private path through the woodlands brought us suddenly in front of the ancient mansion, in which, after the early death of my father, I had spent my boyhood.
It stands in a well-wooded hollow, or glen, overlooked by the three Lomonds of Fife--a county which, though not renowned for its picturesque scenery, can show us many peaceful and beautiful landscapes.
Calderwood is simply an old manor-house, or fortalice, like some thousand others in Scotland, having a species of keep, with adjacent buildings, erected during quieter or more recent periods of Scottish history than the first dwelling, which had suffered severely during the wars between Mary of Guise and the Lords of the Congregation, when the soldiers of Desse d'Epainvilliers blew up a portion of it by gunpowder--an act terribly revenged by Sir John Calderwood of the Glen, who had been chamberlain of Fife and captain of the castle of St. Andrew's for Cardinal Beaton. Overtaking a party of the Bandes Francaises in Falkland Woods, he routed them with considerable slaughter, and hung at least a dozen of them on the oak trees in the park of the palace.
The latest additions had been made under the eye of Sir William Bruce of Kinross, the architect of Holyrood--the Scottish Inigo Jones--about a hundred and ninety years before the present period, and thus were somewhat florid and Palladian in their style, their fluted pilasters and Roman cornices and capitals contrasting singularly with the grim severity and strongly-grated windows of the old tower, which was founded on a mass of grey rock, round which a terraced garden lies.
Within this, the older portion, the rooms were strange and quaint in aspect, with arched roofs, wainscoted walls, and yawning fireplaces, damp, rusty, cold, and forlorn, where the atmosphere felt as if the dead Calderwoods of other times visited them, and lingered there apart from the fashionable friends of their descendants in the more modern mansion; and within the tower Sir Nigel treasured many old relics of the palace of Dunfermline, which, when its roof fell in, in 1708, was literally plundered by the people.
Thus, in one room, he had the cradle of James VI., and the bed in which his son, Charles I., had been born; in another, a cabinet of Anne of Denmark, a chair of Robert III., and a sword of the Regent Albany.
The demesne (Scotice, "policy") around this picturesque old house was amply studded with glorious old timber, under which browsed herds of deer, of a size, strength, and ferocity unknown in England. The stately entrance-gate, bearing the palm-tree of the Calderwoods, a crusading emblem, and the long avenue, of two Scottish miles, and the half-castellated mansion which terminated its leafy vista, well befitted the residence of one whose fathers had ridden forth to uphold Mary's banner at Langside, and that of James VIII. at the battle of Dunblane.
Here was the well where the huntsman and soldier, James V., had slaked his thirst in the forest; and there was the oak under which his father--who fell at Flodden--shot the monarch of the herd by a single bolt from his crossbow.
In short, Calderwood, with all its memories, was a complete epitome of the past.
The Eastern Lomond (so called, like its brothers, from Laomain, a Celtic hero), now reddened by the setting sun, seemed beautiful with the green verdure that at all seasons covers it to the summit, as we approached the house.
Ascending to the richly-carved entrance-door, where one, whilom of oak and iron, had given place to another of plate-glass, a footman, powdered, precise, liveried, and aiguilletted, with the usual amplitude of calf and acute facial angle of his remarkable fraternity, appeared; but ere he could touch the handle it was flung open, and a handsome young girl, with a blooming complexion, sparkling eyes, and a bright and joyous smile, rushed down the steps to meet us.
"Welcome to Calderwood, Newton," she exclaimed; "may our new year be a happy one."
"Many happy ones be yours, Cora," said I, kissing her cheek. "Though I am changed since we last met, your eyes have proved clearer than those of uncle, for, really, he did not know me."
"Oh, papa, was it so?" she asked, while her fine eyes swam with fun and pleasure.
"A fact, my dear girl."
"Ah! I could never be so dull, though you have those new dragoon appendages," said she, laughingly, as I drew her arm through mine, and we passed into a long and stately corridor, furnished with cabinets, busts, paintings, and suits of mail, towards the drawing-room; "and I am not married yet, Newton," she added, with another bright smile.
"But there must be some favoured man, eh, Cora?"
"No," she said, with a tinge of hauteur over her playfulness, "none."
"Time enough to think of marrying, Cora; why, you are only nineteen, and I hope to dance at your wedding when I return from Turkey."
"Turkey," she repeated, while a cloud came over her pure and happy face; "oh, don't talk of that, Newton; I had forgotten it!"
"Yes; does it seem a long, or a doubtful time to look forward to?"
"It seems both, Newton."
"Well, cousin, with those soft violet eyes of yours, and those black, shining braids (the tempting mistletoe is just over your head), and with loves of bonnets, well-fitting gloves and kid boots, dresses ever new and of every hue, you cannot fail to conquer, whenever you please."
She gave me a full, keen glance, that seemed expressive of annoyance, and said, with a little sigh--
"You don't understand me, Newton. We have been so long separated that I think you have forgotten all the peculiarities of my character now."
"What the deuce can she mean?" thought I.
My cousin Cora was in her fullest bloom. She was pretty, remarkably pretty, rather than beautiful; and by some women she was quite eclipsed, even when her cheek flushed and her eyes, a deep violet grey, were most lighted up.
She was fully of the middle height, and finely rounded, with exquisite shoulders, arms, and hands. Her features were small, and perhaps not quite regular. Her eyes were alternately timid, inquiring, and full of animation; but, in fact, their expression was ever varying. Her hair was black, thick, and wavy; and while I looked upon her, and thought of her present charms and of past times--and more than all of my uncle's fatherly regard for me--I felt that, though very fond of her, but for another I might have loved her more dearly and tenderly. And now, as if to interrupt, or rather to confirm the tenor of such thoughts as these, she said, as a lady suddenly approached the door of the drawing-room, which we were about to enter--
"Here is one, a friend, to whom I must introduce you."
"No introduction is necessary," said the other, presenting her hand. "I have had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Norcliff before."
"Lady Louisa!" I exclaimed, in a breathless voice, and a heart that trembled with sudden emotion, as I touched her hand.
"I am so glad you have come before we leave. I shall have so much to ask you about our mutual friends--who are engaged, and who have quarrelled; who have come home, and who gone abroad. We have been no less than four months in Scotland. Meantime," she added, glancing at her tiny watch, "we must dress for dinner. Come, Cora; we have barely half an hour, and old General Rammerscales is so impatient--he studies 'military time,' and with a 'military appetite.'"
And with a bow and smile of great brightness and sweetness she passed on, taking with her Cora, who playfully kissed her hand to me as they glided up the great staircase into which the long corridor opened.
Lady Louisa was taller and larger in person than Cora. Her features were singularly beautiful, and clearly cut; her forehead was low; and her nose had the gentlest approach to the aquiline. She was without colour, her complexion being pale, perhaps creamy; while in strange contrast to this aristocratic pallor of delicacy, her thick, wavy hair, her long double eyelashes, and her ever-sparkling eyes, were black as those of a Spanish gitano or a Welsh gipsy.
To this pale loveliness was added a bearing alternately haughty and playful, but at all times completely self-possessed; an exquisite taste in dress and jewellery; a very alluring voice; a power of investing even trifles with interest, and of conversing fluently and gracefully on any subject--whether she was mistress of it or not mattered little to Lady Louisa.
She was about my own age, perhaps a few months younger; but in experience of the fashionable world, and in knowledge of the manners and ideas of the upper ten thousand, she was a hundred years my senior.
Suffice it to say that I had lost my heart to her--that I thought she knew it well, but feared or disdained to acknowledge a triumph so small as the conquest of a lieutenant of lancers among the many others she had won. So thought I, in the angry humility and jealous bitterness of my heart.
For a minute I felt as one in a dream. I was sensible that my uncle had said something about changing his costume, and, suggesting some change in mine, had apologised, and left me to linger in the corridor, or in the drawing-room, as I chose; but now a personage, who had been lounging on a fauteuil in the latter, intent on a volume of Punch, and the soles of whose glazed boots had been towards me, suddenly rose and approached, in full evening costume.
He proved to be no other than Berkeley of ours, who had been in the room alone, or, at least, alone with Lady Louisa Loftus. He came slowly forward, with his sauntering air, as if the exertion of walking was a bore, and with his eyeglass retained in its place by a muscular contraction of the right eyebrow. His whole air had the "used-up" bearing of those miserable Dundrearys who affect to act as if youth, wealth, and luxury were the greatest calamities that flesh is heir to, and that life itself was a bore.
"Ah, Norcliff--haw--glad to see you here, old fellow. Haw--heard you were coming. How goes it with you, and how are all at Maidstone?"
"Preparing for foreign service," said I, curtly, as the tip of his gloved hand touched mine.
"Horrid bore! Too late to send in one's papers now, or, by Jove, I'd hook the service. Don't think I was ever meant for it."
"Ere long many more will be of your way of thinking," said I, coolly.
Berkeley had a cold and cunning eye, which never smiled, whatever his mouth might do. His face was, nevertheless, decidedly handsome, and a thick, dark moustache concealed a form of lip which, if seen, would have indicated a thorough sensualist. His head was well shaped; but the accurate division of his well-oiled head over the centre of the caput gave him an air of intense insipidity. Mr. De Warr Berkeley never was a favourite of mine, though we had both joined the lancers on the same day, and it was with very ill-concealed annoyance I found myself compelled, with some apparent cordiality, to greet him as a brother officer and an inmate of my uncle's mansion.
"And--haw--what news from the regiment?" he resumed.
"I really have no news, Berkeley," said I.
"Indeed. You have got a month's leave?"
"Between returns, yes."
"Is the route come?"
"A strange question, when you and I are here."
"Haw--yes, of course--how devilish good."
"It has not," said I, coldly; "but we are under orders for foreign service, and may look to have our leaves cancelled by a telegram any day or hour."
"The devil--really!"
"Fact, though, however unpleasant it may be. So my uncle, Sir Nigel, met you at--where was it?"
"Chillingham's shooting-box, in the Highlands."
"I was not aware that you knew the earl."
"Losing my gillies--I think you call them in Scotland--one evening in the dark, I lost my way, and luckily stumbled on his lordship's shooting quarters, in a wild and savage place, with one of your infernally unpronounceable Scotch names."
"Oh, you think changes more euphonious at times; but I suppose your father, honest man, could have pronounced it with ease," said I, quietly, for Berkeley's, or Barclay's affectation of being an Englishman was to me always a source of amusement. "You have to learn Russ yet, and it will prove, doubtless, more unpalatable than the tongue your father spoke. In the north, did you appear en montagnad?"
"Hey--haw, the devil! no; as the Irish Gil Blas says, 'Every one's legs can't afford publicity,' and mine are among the number. Leather breeches, when I don the pink, must be all the length. I don't care about going, though Lady Louisa pressed me hard to join the Mac Quaig, the Laird of Mac Gooligan, and other natives in tartan at a gathering. I had a letter from Wilford yesterday. He writes of a famous match between Jack Studhome and Craven, on which the whole mess had a heavy book, that great stakes were pending, and that Craven won, scoring forty-two running off the red ball; and considering that the pockets of the table were not bigger than an egg-cup, I think Craven a trump."
"I heard something of this match at morning parade on the day I left; but being a bad stroke, you know, I seldom play billiards."
"Why was Howard's bay mare scratched at the last regimental race?"
"Don't know," said I, so dryly that he bit his nether lip.
"Some nice people visiting here," said he, staring at me steadily, so that his eyeglass glared in the light of the lustre, which was now lit; "and some very odd ones too. Lady Loftus is here, you see, in all her glory, and with her usual come-kiss-me-if-you-dare kind of look."
"Berkeley, how can you speak thus of one in her position?"
"Well, you-don't-dare-to-do-so-again sort of expression."
"She is my uncle's guest; not a girl in a cigar-shop or a casino!" said I, with growing hauteur.
"Sir Nigel's guest--haw--so am I, and I mean to make the best use of my time as such. Nice girl, Miss Wilford, from York--cousin of Wilford of ours--a doocid good style of girl; but have no intentions in that quarter--can't afford to chuck myself away, as I once heard my groom observe."
"You must learn to quote another style of people to make yourself understood here. You don't mean to infer that you have any intentions concerning Lady Louisa!" said I, with an air which was really impertinent.
"Why not?" he asked, failing completely to see it. "I have often such attacks, or affections of the heart, as she has given me."
"How?"
"Just as I had the measles or the chicken-pox in childhood--a little increase of the pulse, a little restlessness at night, and then one gets over it."
"Take care how you address her in this bantering fashion," said I, turning sharply away; "excuse me, but now I must dress for dinner."
And preceded by old Mr. Binns, the white-headed old butler, who many a time in days of yore had carried me on his back, and who now welcomed me home with a hearty shake of the hand, in which there was nothing derogatory to me, though Berkeley's eyes opened very wide when he saw our greeting, I was conducted to my old room in the north wing, where a cheerful fire was blazing, with two lights on each side of the toilette-table (the manor-house was amply lit with gas from the village), and there was Willie Pitblado arranging all my traps and clothes. But dismissing him to visit his family (to his no small joy), I was left to my own reflections and proceeded to dress. A subtle and subdued tone of insolence and jealousy that pervaded the few remarks made by Berkeley irritated and chafed me; yet he had said nothing with which I could grapple, or with which I could openly find fault. I was conscious, too, that my own bearing had been the reverse of courteous and friendly, and that, if I showed my hand thus, I might as well give up the cards. Suspicion of his native character, and a foreknowledge of the man, had doubtless much to do with all this; and while making my toilet with more than my usual care--conscious that Lady Louisa was making hers in the next room--I resolved to keep a lynx-like eye upon Mr. De Warr Berkeley during our short sojourn at Calderwood Glen. My irritation was no way soothed, or my pique lessened, by the information that for some time past, and quite unknown to me, he had been residing here with Lady Louisa, enjoying all the facilities afforded by hourly propinquity and the seclusion of a country house.
Had he already declared himself? Had he already proposed? The deuce! I thrust aside the thought, and angrily gave my hair a finishing rasp with a pair of huge ivory-handled hair-brushes.
*CHAPTER IV.*
And, oh! the memories that cling
Around this old oak-panelled room!
The pine logs flashing through the gloom,
Sun sparkles from life's early spring.
After long years I rest again;
This ancient home it seems to me,
Wearied with travel o'er the sea.
Holds anodyne for carking pain.
As I surveyed my old apartment the memories of other years stole over me with somewhat of a soothing influence, for when I thought of the past, the littleness of the present, the evanescent nature of all things could not fail to impress me.
It was in that room I had the last vivid recollection of my dear mother's face, on that farewell morning, when with early dawn she stole in on tiptoe to look for the last time upon her boy as he slept, and before he went forth into the world beyond her maternal care for ever.
The thunder of a gong in the corridor cut short further reflections, recalling me to the present; and giving a finishing touch to my costume, which was not the blue lancer uniform, faced with white, and laced with gold, but the solemn funereal suit and white necktie of civil life--a horrid costume that has crept among us, heaven knows how--I descended to the outer drawing-room, where I found my uncle and cousin marshalling their guests, of whom there appeared to be a goodly number.
Berkeley had already monopolized Lady Louisa, with whom he was conversing in a low tone, while busy stroking his moustaches, which were darkened by the "Guards' dye," and the pointing and twirling of which afforded him endless employment.
There was no denying that the fellow looked well, and that the result of riding, drilling, dancing, and fencing had been to impart to him much of that unmistakable air which, I may say without vanity, belongs particularly to the officers of our branch of the service.
The odd minutes which precede dinner are seldom very lively, and rather depress than raise the spirits. To Cora I was a species of "lion;" and as such underwent, through her, a process of introduction to several people I cared not a jot about, and never would.
I discussed the weather with General Rammerscales, as if I kept a rain-gauge and barometer, and was own brother to Admiral Fitzroy; touched on politics with the M.P., and on clerical innovations with a divine; kissed Cora's hand in play, and drew near to Lady Louisa, nearer still to her awful mother, whom I felt the necessity of conciliating to the utmost. Every one talked in a monotone, except jovial Sir Nigel, who was always cheery, brisk and bustling about from guest to guest.
With the Countess of Chillingham (who accorded me a calm, but courteous bow), my uncle, whose costume was a suit of accurate black, led the way past Binns and a line of liveried and powered gentlemen drawn up in the corridor.
She was a stately woman, of ample proportions, with a diamond tiara glittering on her grey hair.
Her face was fine in feature, and very noble in expression, showing that in youth she must have been beautiful. Her costume was magnificent, being maroon-coloured velvet over white satin, trimmed with the richest lace. I rather dreaded her.
She had all the peerage--"the Englishman's second Bible"--committed to memory; and, through the pages of Burke and Debrett, knew all the available and suitable heirs presumptive by rote--their ages, rank, title, and order of precedence; for it was among the strawberry leaves she chiefly expected to find a husband for her daughter--a marquis at least; and as she swept out of the room, with a velvet train like a coronation robe, she cast a backward glance to see to whose care that fair lady was confided.
Seeing Berkeley paired off with Miss Wilford, I hastened towards Lady Louisa. With her I was sufficiently intimate to have offered my arm.
As I have stated, we had met frequently before, at Canterbury, Bath, and elsewhere. Her society had been to me a source of greater pleasure and excitement than that of any other woman in whose way chance had thrown me.
Her rank, as the daughter of an earl, and her rare beauty had dazzled me, while her coquetry had piqued my vanity; though I imagined that, without discovering the deep interest she excited in my heart, I had taught her to view me as an object of more interest than other men.
