ANXIOUS FRIENDS.
"Oh, Leolyn, be obstinately just;
Indulge no passion and deceive no trust.
Let never man be bold enough to say,
Thus, and no farther, shall my passion stray;
The first crime past compels us into more,
And guilt grows _fate_, which was but _choice_ before."
AARON HILL.
The third day and the fourth passed away at Portalegre; on the fifth
and sixth, Major Middleton and others, who felt a friendly interest
in Quentin Kennedy, began to surmise, when they met on the morning or
evening parade, or in each other's billets, or so forth, that it was
time now he had reported his return, and the good or bad success of
his journey, to the colonel and general commanding the division.
Other days passed; it was whispered about from staff-office officials
that ere long the division would leave Portalegre, as the whole army
was about to advance against the enemy; and then Captain Askerne,
Monkton, Buckle, the adjutant, and others, became doubly anxious
about the lad, and were interested as much as men could be under
their circumstances, when human life is deemed of so little value as
it is when on active service and before an enemy.
As for Warriston of the 94th, not being under the immediate command
of Colonel Crawford, he openly and bitterly inveighed against "the
iniquity of having sacrificed a mere youth in such a manner," and
threatened "to bring the matter prominently before Sir John Moore,"
who commanded the forces in Portugal.
"He has, perhaps, gone over to the enemy--a despatch is sometimes
well paid for," said Cosmo, in his sneering manner, when some of
these remarks reached him on parade, one morning.
"Impossible, my dear sir--impossible!" said Middleton, testily, while
spurring and reining in his horse; "I know the lad as if he were my
own son, and feel assured that he is the soul of honour; that he was
all ardour for the service, and that he would die rather than
disgrace himself."
"Indeed--ah-aw--you think so?" drawled Cosmo, with his glass in his
sinister eye, as he surveyed the major with a glance of somewhat
mingled cast.
"I do, colonel," was the emphatic rejoinder.
"He has disappeared at all events--a dubious phrase. If the fellow
has not levanted to the Duke of Dalmatia with General Hope's
despatch, may his heart not have failed him? may he not have shown
the white feather? Better men than he, among the Belem Rangers, have
done so ere now."
The imaginary corps referred to contained one of the most offensive
imputations to the ears of Peninsula men; thus Captain Askerne
exclaimed--
"Cowardice, Colonel Crawford--would you infer cowardice?"
"I infer nothing, gentlemen, but that better men than he have shown
the white feather."
"Not in _the Line_, that I am aware of," was the somewhat pointed
remark of Middleton; and Cosmo, who had lately come from the Guards,
crimsoned with suppressed passion.
"A volunteer is a soldier of fortune, and none such can ever be a
coward," said Askerne, stoutly.
"Of course not--the idea is absurd," added Middleton, looking round
the group of officers, who glanced their approval.
"You are warm, Major Middleton," said Cosmo, sternly, while his eyes
gleamed with their most dangerous expression; "somewhat unnecessarily
warm on this trivial subject, I think."
"I am at least honest, colonel, as he must be who defends the absent
or the dead."
"We have had enough of this--to your companies--fall in, gentlemen!"
said the colonel, sternly and impatiently, as he spurred his horse,
unsheathed his sword, and the formula of the parade began, after
which he revenged himself by drilling the corps, under a drizzling
rain, for nearly two hours, forcing Askerne's grenadiers to skirmish
in a swamp, and making old Major Middleton put the battalion twice
through the eighteen manoeuvres.
About this time a patrol of Portuguese cavalry found near the high
road that led through a desert towards the Spanish frontier, the
remains of a man, almost reduced to a skeleton, picked, gnawed, and
torn asunder, to all appearance recently, by those devouring wolves
and wild dogs which infest the mountains of the district.
Terrible surmises of Quentin's fate were now whispered among the
Borderers; the officer in command of the patrol was closely
questioned by Middleton, Warriston, and others; but he constantly
stated that the victim had probably been stripped by robbers before
being devoured, as nothing had been found near the remains that might
lead to their identification, or in any way connect them with the
missing Quentin Kennedy. Thus, in default of other proof, as time
wore on, the members of the regiment made up their minds to consider
the poor bones as his, and concluded that he had perished miserably
in the wilderness.
To do Cosmo Crawford justice, there were times when he was not
without secret emotions of shame, and even of compunction, for the
part he had acted to Quentin. His own conscience, the small still
voice that would speak, could not acquit him; but those gleams of the
better spirit came only briefly and at intervals, and such unwelcome
thoughts were always eventually stifled by the constitutional
malignity of his nature, and he would mutter to himself--
"Pshaw! he is well away; what the devil was he to me, or I to him?"
It was while the troops were lingering at Portalegre and elsewhere
along the Spanish frontier, that Lord Castlereagh's despatch,
containing the first organized plan of the future campaign, arrived
in Lisbon.
In the northern provinces of Spain, thirty-five thousand horse and
foot were to be employed; ten thousand of these were to be embarked
from British ports, and the rest to be drafted from our army of
occupation in Portugal; and these were supposed to be equal to cope
with the vast hosts pouring through the many passes of the Pyrenees
from France and Germany, and those which already blackened all the
plains of Castile and Arragon.
We have elsewhere mentioned the vast strength of the French army,
whose head-quarters were at Vittoria.
The brave but ill-fated Sir John Moore was ordered to take the field
without delay with the troops that were under his own command. Some
fortress or city (unnamed) in Galicia, or on the borders of the
kingdom of Leon, was to be the place for concentrating the whole
allied armies of Britain, Spain, and Portugal; and his specific plan
of operations was _afterwards_ to be concerted with the stupid,
jealous, and uncompromising local juntas, and the obstinate and
impracticable Spanish generals.
These orders were perilous, loose, and vague; they promised nothing,
but only that war at any hazard was to be waged in Old Castile and on
the banks of the Ebro.
And now for a time let us change the scene to a not less tuneful or
classic locality--the rocky hills and heather braes of Carrick's
western shore.