THE KING'S OWN BORDERERS.
A Military Romance.
BY
JAMES GRANT,
AUTHOR OF
"SECOND TO NONE," "THE ROMANCE OF WAR," "THE YELLOW FRIGATE,"
ETC. ETC.
"Memories fast are thronging o'er me,
Of the grand old fields of Spain;
How he faced the charge of Junot,
And the fight where Moore was slain.
Oh the years of weary waiting
For the glorious chance he sought,
For the slowly ripened harvest
That life's latest autumn brought."
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
LONDON:
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS,
BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL.
1865.
LONDON:
SAVILL AND EDWARDS, PRINTERS, CHANDOS STREET,
COVENT GARDEN.
CONTENTS
OF
THE SECOND VOLUME.
CHAP.
I. A LAST REJECTION
II. THE MESS
III. THE PUNISHMENT PARADE
IV. THE OLD REGIMENT OF EDINBURGH
V. THE ADVANCED PICQUET
VI. COSMO JOINS
VII. THE DEPARTURE
VIII. ON THE SEA
IX. PORTALEGRE
X. COSMO'S CRAFT
XI. QUENTIN DEPARTS
XII. ANXIOUS FRIENDS
XIII. THE PARAGRAPH
XIV. THE WAYSIDE CROSS AND WELL
XV. THE MULETEERS
XVI. GIL LLANO
XVII. DANGER IN THE PATH
XVIII. THE CHASSEUR À CHEVAL
XIX. EUGÈNE DE RIBEAUPIERRE
XX. THE GALIOTE OF ST. CLOUD
XXI. THE GUERILLA HEAD-QUARTERS
XXII. A REPRISAL
XXIII. DON BALTASAR DE SALDOS
XXIV. DONNA ISIDORA
XXV. THE JOURNEY
XXVI. A SURPRISE
XXVII. THE VILLA DE MACIERA
XXVIII. OUR LADY DEL PILAR
THE KING'S OWN BORDERERS.
CHAPTER I.
A LAST REJECTION.
"Ae fond kiss and then we sever!
Ae farewell, alas for ever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee;
Who shall say that Fortune grieves him
While the star of hope she leaves him?"
BURNS.
Ignoring the source or cause of the excitement among the household,
Cosmo lounged into the breakfast-parlour, where the silver urns were
hissing amid a very chaste equipage, and where the September sun was
shining in through clusters of sweet briar and monthly roses, and as
he seated himself he handed to his father a long official-like
document, at the sight of which his mother changed colour, and even
Flora, who looked charming in her smiling radiance, lace frills, and
morning dress of spotted white muslin, lifted her dark eyelashes with
interest.
"What's the matter, Cosmo?--your leave cancelled?" asked Rohallion.
"Oh no, my lord--nothing so bad as that."
"A summons from headquarters, I see."
"Something very like it," drawled Cosmo; "read it to the ladies.
Spillsby, some coffee--no cream."
The letter ran briefly thus:--
"Horse Guards, &c., &c.
"SIR,--I have the honour to acquaint you, by direction of His Royal
Highness the Field-Marshal Commanding-in-Chief, that it is now in his
power to appoint you to one of the second battalions lately raised
for the line and for immediate foreign service, provided that within
a fortnight you are prepared to assume the command, in which case
your name shall appear in the next Gazette.
"I have the honour to be, &c., &c.
"Major the Hon. C. Crawford,
&c., &c."
"A fortnight!--are we to have you only for a fortnight, my dear, dear
Cosmo?" exclaimed Lady Rohallion, all her maternal tenderness welling
up at once.
"You will not, I fear, have me so long, my dear mother," said he;
"and you, Flora," he added in a low voice, as he purposely held his
plate across her for a wing of grouse; "and you----"
"Give you full leave to go, with my dearest wishes, and your heart
unbroken. Come, Cosmo," she added in the same low voice, and with a
soft smile; "let us part friends, at least."
Cosmo's eyes seemed to shrink and dilate, while a cold and haughty
smile spread over his otherwise handsome features, as he turned
quietly to discuss his grouse, and said to the butler,--
"Spillsby, tell the groom to have a horse saddled for my man--take
Minden, the bay mare--as I must despatch a letter to Maybole within
an hour."
Breakfast was hurried over in silence and constraint, then Cosmo,
kissing the brow of his mother, who was already in tears,--for the
only real emotion that lingered in the Master's heart was a regard
for his mother--played with the silk tassels of his luxurious
dressing-gown, and lounged into the library to write his answer to
the military secretary, and profess himself to be completely, as in
duty bound, at the disposal of His Royal Highness, and proud to
accept the command offered him.
He soon penned the letter, and sealed it with the coronet, the shield
_gules_ and fess _ermine_ of Rohallion, muttering as he did so,--
"The line--the line after all; a horrid bore indeed, to come down to
that!"
He threw open his dressing-gown, as if it stifled him, almost tearing
the tasselled girdle as he did so, and planting his foot on the buhl
writing-table, lounged back in an easy-chair, where he strove to read
up Sir David Dundas's "Eighteen Manoeuvres," and fancied how he would
handle his battalion without clubbing the companies or bringing the
rear rank in front; by taking them into action with snappers instead
of flints, as old Whitelock did at Buenos Ayres, or committing other
little blunders, which might prove very awkward if a brigade of
French twelve-pounders were throwing in grape and canister at
half-musket range.
Soothed by pipe, and by the silence of the place, and by the subdued
sunlight that stole through the deep windows of that old library, so
quaint with its oak shelves of calf-bound and red-labelled folios and
quartos, its buhl cabinets, and square-backed chairs of the
Covenanting days, its half-curtained oriel window, through which were
seen the ripe corn or stubble fields that stretched in distance far
away to the brown hills of Carrick. Soothed, we say, by all this,
Cosmo dawdled over the pages and the diagrams of the famous review at
Potsdam for some time before he became conscious that Flora was
seated near him, busy with a book of engravings.
Then begging pardon for his pipe and his free-and-easy position, a
bachelor habit, as he said, he arose and joined her. Leaning over
the back of his chair, as if to overlook the prints, while in reality
his admiring eyes wandered alternately and admiringly over her fine
glossy hair, the contour of her head, and little white ears (at each
of which a rose diamond dangled), and her delicate neck, which rose
so nobly from her back and beautifully curved shoulders, he said in a
low voice, and with considerable softness of manner, for him at
least,--
"'Pon my honour, friend Flora, I believe you really begin to love me,
after all."
"How do you think so, or why?" she asked, looking half round, with
her bewitching eyes full of wonder and amusement.
"Because we always quarrel when we meet, and that is called a Scots
mode of wooing, isn't it?"
"So our nurses used to say, long ago."
"And were they right?"
"Now, dear Cosmo, let us talk of something else, if you please," she
urged pleadingly.
"Why so?"
"A dangerous topic has a strange fascination for you."
"Dangerous?"
"Unpleasant, at least," said Flora, pettishly.
Cosmo flung the "Eighteen Manœuvres" of Lieutenant-General Dundas
very angrily and ignominiously to the extreme end of the library, and
folding his arms stood haughtily erect before Flora, whose bright
eyes were fixed on his, with a smiling expression of fear and
perplexity combined.
"Can it be possible," he began, "I ask you, can it be possible, Miss
Warrender----"
"Oh, you are about to address me officially--well, sir?"
"Can it be possible, Flora, that you still love this unknown protégé
of my foolish mother--this nameless rascal, who has run away, heaven
knows where? By-the-bye, I wonder if Spillsby has overhauled the
plate chest since he went!"
Flora was silent, but his _brusquerie_ and categorical manner
offended her, and filled her eyes with tears.
"This weeping is enough," continued the exasperated Cosmo, who,
though he had no great regard for Flora, felt his self-esteem--which
was not small--most fearfully wounded; "you do love him."
"And what if I do?" she asked, very quietly, but withal rather
defiantly.
"Very fine, Miss Warrender--very fine, 'pon my soul! That old jade,
Anne Radcliffe, with her 'Romance of the Forest,' her 'Castles of
Athlin and Dunbayne,' and this new Edinburgh fellow, Scott, with his
'Marmion,' and so forth, have perfected your education. Your
teaching has been most creditable!"
"This taunting manner is not so to you,' replied Flora, resuming her
inspection of the book of prints.
"Oho! we are in a passion again it seems?"
"Far from it, sir--I never was more cool in my life," said she,
looking up with a wicked but glorious smile.
"And where has this runaway gone? His friends in the servants' hall
heard something of him last night or this morning, if I may judge
from the pot-house row they made."
"He has gone into the army," replied Flora, with a perceptible
modulation of voice.
"The army!" replied Cosmo, really surprised; "enlisted--for what?--a
fifer or triangle boy?"
"No," replied Flora, curling her pretty nostril, while her eyes
gleamed dangerously under their long thick lashes.
"For what, on earth, has he gone then?"
"A gentleman volunteer."
"A valuable acquisition to His Majesty's service!" said Cosmo,
laughing, and, greatly to Flora's annoyance, seeming to be really
amused; "do you know, friend Flora, what a volunteer is?"
"Not exactly, sir," said Flora, again looking down on her book of
prints with a sigh of anger.
"Shall I tell you?"
"If you please."
"We never had any in the Household Brigade--such fellows are usually
to be found only with the line corps."
"Ah--with corps that go abroad and really see service--I understand."
"Miss Warrender, the Guards----"
"Well, _what_ is a volunteer?" asked Flora, beating the carpet with a
very pretty foot.
"A volunteer is a poor devil who is too proud to enlist, and is too
friendless to procure a commission; who has all a private's duty to
do, and has to carry a musket, pack, and havresack, wherein are his
ration-beef, biscuits, and often his blackball and shoebrushes; who
mounts guard and salutes me when I pass him, and whom I may handcuff
and send to the cells or guard-house when I please; who is not a
regular member of the mess and may never be; who gets a shilling per
diem with the chance of Chelsea, a wooden leg, or an arm with an iron
hook if his limbs are smashed by a round shot; who is neither
officer, non-commissioned officer, nor private--neither fish, flesh,
nor good red-herring (to use a camp phrase). Oh, Flora, Flora
Warrender, can you be such a romantic little goose as to feel an
interest in such a fellow as I have described?"
Mingling emotions, indignation at the Master's insulting bitterness,
pity for Quentin, and pure anger at the annoyance to which she was
subjected, made Flora's white bosom heave as she quietly turned her
eyes, with a flashing expression however, upon the cat-like regards
of the sneering questioner, and said,--
"Who are you, sir, that would thus question or dictate to me?"
"Who am I?" he asked, while surveying her through his glass with
amusement, perplexity, and something of sorrow in his tone.
"Yes, sir--who are you?"
"I am, I believe, Cosmo, Master of Rohallion, and Colonel to be, of a
very fine regiment; so I can afford to smile at the pride and
petulance of a moon-struck girl."
"Oh, how unseemly this is! Whatever happens, let us part friends,"
said she politely, perhaps a little imploringly.
"So be it," said he, kissing her hand as she retired.
"Now, the sooner I am off from this dreary paternal den the better.
Away to London at once. Andrews!--Jack Andrews," he shouted, in a
tone almost of ferocity: "show me the last newspapers." They were
soon brought, and Cosmo's sharp eyes ran rapidly over the
advertisements. "Let me see," he pondered, "travelling by mail is
intolerable; one never knows who the devil one may be boxed up with
for a week, a fever patient or a lunatic, perhaps! The smacks are
crowded with all manner of rubbish, travelling bagmen, linesmen going
home on leave, sick mothers and squalling babies. What is this? The
good ship _Edinburgh_, pinck-built, near the new quay at Leith, sails
for England without convoy--carries six 12-pounders--master to be
spoke with daily at the Cross--to be _spoke_ with. Faugh! what says
the next advertisement? 'A widow lady, who is to set out for London
next week in a post-chaise, would be glad to hear of a companion.
Enquire at the _Courant_ office, opposite the Old Fishmarket-close,
Edinburgh.' Egad! the very thing--widow lady--hope she's young and
good-looking. I'll answer _this_!"
Such advertisements in the London and Edinburgh papers were quite
common in those days, when travelling expenses were enormous.
He replied to it, and departed from Rohallion in a great hurry soon
after. Whether with a fair companion or not, we are unable to say.
We hope so, and that on the journey of about four hundred miles to
London, the amenity of the fair widow consoled him for the final
rebuff he met with from Flora Warrender.