WADHURST.
Jacqueline _not_ dead, but in Paris! It terrified and bewildered me.
Was Hautois drowned at last? might he too reappear as he had done
before, like a vampire, whom there was no destroying? Jacqueline not
dead, but in Paris with her cousin, the handsome Comte de Bourgneuf,
to whom she was soon to be married. This idea--this sequel to her
story, whether false or _true_, was ever before me, kindling my
jealousy, wounding my self-esteem, filling my heart with bitter
sorrow, and I longed for active service to wean me from myself; and
right glad was I when the "Route" arrived for Germany.
Wadhurst is five miles from Tunbridge Wells. That famous Spa was
then little more than a village, but many fashionables who were there
to drink the waters, to kill time, to catch an heir or an heiress,
came over to see the corps inspected by the general of the district
on the day before we marched for the coast.
The regiment paraded in complete marching order, with valises packed,
and pouches filled with ammunition. In addition to the usual
accoutrements for horse and man, every officer and trooper had
strapped to his saddle a nosebag, watering bridle and log, with mane
and curry-combs, sponge, horsepicker, scissors, and spare shoe, all
in a canvas cover, and a net for forage.
We received the general, John Lafausille (who four years after died
when on his way home from the Havannah), in review order, with our
trumpets sounding "Britons, strike home." And I can remember well
the stately appearance of the old soldier, with his hair powdered and
queued, as he rode to the front of the staff, and raised his
Kevenhüller hat in salute, while the veteran Preston, erect, grim,
and stiff, in his buff coat, a relic of a past age retained by his
eccentricity, lowered his heavy broadsword in return till the blade
touched the toe of his right jackboot. The muscular strength and
stature of our men, nearly all of whom were natives of Ayrshire, with
the beauty and high condition of our horses, excited great admiration.
A brilliant staff now passed along the line, and it was so numerous,
that to admit its passage, our rear rank went about by threes,
retired to double distance, then fronted and dressed by the pivots.
Many ladies on horseback accompanied the staff.
Among them was one in a pale blue riding-habit, with a broad hat and
white plume, who was mounted on a dashing grey pad, and rode beside
an aide-de-camp, of whom she was asking many questions; and she
seemed to be eagerly scrutinizing the corps, the officers thereof
especially.
Her companion I knew by sight to be a Major Shirley--rather a gay and
dissipated man, and a brother of that Cornet Frederick Shirley who
had wrought my friend Charters such evil when in the Dragoon Guards.
"Have you found him?" asked the major, laughing.
"No," I heard the lady reply.
"Look among the cornets."
"But how shall I know them?"
"By their cake and pudding appearance. Besides, each carries the
standard of his troop."
They were now close to me, and I carried the standard of the Light
Troop, with the staff resting on the toe of my right boot, so the
young lady, a handsome girl with fair, almost golden hair, a delicate
complexion, and dark blue eyes, turned and looked fully at me.
She was my cousin Aurora!
Though it was for me she had been looking, she coloured deeply, bowed
and smiled, and then grew pale--so pale that her friend the staff
major observed it, and said, drily:
"So, Miss Gauntlet, you have found him, then?"
"Yes--oh yes, and knew him immediately."
"Then I hope you are pleased," said the major, biting his nether-lip
and adroitly catching the bridle of her horse, which reared at a
sudden crash of the trumpets that drowned her reply as the cavalcade
passed on.
The ranks were now closed.
"Dress the line by the standards, Major Maitland," cried Colonel
Preston. "Who is that fool yonder throwing the whole line out?" he
added, as a sergeant's horse became restive and reared on its hind
legs.
"A fool, but for whom, Colonel, you would have been years ago in your
grave at Stapledyke," replied the sergeant, quietly.
"Egad you are right, Duff, for you saved my life there--forgive my
anger, comrade," said the kind old officer.
"I would forgive you any thing, Colonel," replied the old sergeant in
the same under tone, while his eyes filled; "for you and I are the
last left of the Greys who rode in the charge on the bloody day in
South Beveland."
The review was soon over; we passed the general in open column of
troops, charged in squadrons and in line, amid whirlwinds of
dust--went through sword and carbine exercise, were complimented by
the general and harangued by the colonel; then the men were dismissed
to their quarters, while the officers joined the staff and the ladies
at luncheon, in a large marquee which had been erected on a pleasant
lawn for the purpose.
A stranger amid that gay throng, and caring little on the eve of
embarkation whether or not I made new acquaintances, I was attending
to one or two stout and elderly mammas, who being neither handsome
nor blooming, had been somewhat neglected; and while doing the
honours with our cold fowl, pink cream and champagne, a voice close
by me said:
"And so, Basil, you are going to the seat of war?"
I looked around, and found Aurora Gauntlet's blue eyes bent on me
with something of sad earnestness.
"You will shake hands with me, Basil--won't you?"
I coloured and trembled with pride, perplexity, and even annoyance;
but pressed her hand in mine, though the wrongs I had suffered at the
behest of our grandfather swelled up bitterly in my heart.
"So, Basil," she resumed, smiling, "I have brought your military
escapade to a creditable--to a pleasant termination; have I not?"
"I felt quite certain, Miss Gauntlet, that it was to you I owed my
epaulettes, and I pray you to accept of my gratitude for your
friendship and memory. My military escapade! Is it thus you term
the resource of stern necessity? Would it have been an escapade had
I turned highwayman, or joined some desperate privateer? Few
resources are left to a penniless gentleman, so I chose the most
honourable."
"I deplore your bitterness of spirit, cousin Basil," said she, "and I
pity you; but what could--what _can_ I do?"
"I ask no pity, Miss Gauntlet," I replied, somewhat ruffled; "but
permit me to lead you from this--here we cannot converse with
freedom." And taking her hand, we went forth into the sunny lawn,
Aurora holding her riding-habit gathered in her left hand, her
ostrich feather drooping over her right shoulder, and very lovely and
graceful she looked in the bloom of her youth and beauty.
"Forgive me," said she, almost with tears in her eyes, and a quiver
on her pouting lip, for she knew in what a hostile aspect I viewed
her; "but I think your conduct to me, as a kinswoman who seeks to
befriend you, most unkind and ungracious! Think of what is before
you, and that we may never see or meet each other again."
I laughed and replied,
"We have not seen much of each other hitherto, Miss Gauntlet."
"Call me Aurora!" said she, grasping her switch with an impulse that
was not all playfulness.
"But then, when I am such a scape-grace--outcast if you will--what
the devil does it matter what is before me, or how soon I am shot?
Thanks to you, however, my dear cousin, I shall die in the position
of a gentleman."
"I would have sent you a few hundred guineas on your promotion,
Basil; but mamma reminded me of your dangerous pride, your haughty
and resentful spirit, so I tore up the cheque after signing it."
"You judged rightly, my dear cousin; but I thank you, though I would
not have accepted the money. The commission you have thrust upon
me----"
"Thrust--oh fie, Basil! It was simply managed," said she, smiling,
"by a note from mamma to Mr. Pitt, the great commoner, who was once
himself a cornet of cavalry; in the Blues, I think, was he not?"
"That commission I hoped to have won otherwise. However----" I
paused, as there was a tearful and angry expression in Aurora's eyes,
and very beautiful eyes they were, with lashes thick, dark, and long,
which imparted to them a charming softness. Then cousinship is such
a strange affinity--something like a sister and more like a
sweetheart, that I committed some very ungracious speech to silence,
for I now began to perceive that from her mother Aurora inherited a
true English girl's face, in expression the sweetest, in features the
softest, perhaps, in the world.
"And you march----" she began, to change the subject.
"To-morrow, at eight in the morning."
"So early! Yet I shall ride over from Tunbridge Wells to see you
off."
"Thank you, Aurora; but at such an hour----"
"Oh, I shall not want for an escort, believe me. Major Shirley and a
dozen others will only be too happy. And now that we are to be
friends from henceforward, confess that you have been wrong, cousin
Basil, and that I have been right!"
"Perhaps--it is the privilege of all handsome girls to be right,
whatever view they take."
"Did you learn this in France?" she asked, with a steady glance.
"Ah!" said I, and with the thought of Jacqueline, my heart seemed to
die within me; "in France I preserved your handkerchief (you remember
our race on Banstead Heath), and it saved my life from a bullet at
St. Malo."
Her soft, peachlike cheek flushed with honest pleasure when I said
this, but ere she could reply, Major Shirley--a privileged man
evidently was this devil of a major, and a very handsome one to
boot--came forward, saying--
"Miss Gauntlet, I beg pardon, but I have been looking for you
everywhere."
"Why?" asked Aurora, raising her eyebrows.
"You are forgetting the hour, and that I promised your mamma to see
you safely back to Tunbridge Wells betimes."
"Adieu, Basil!"
"Till to-morrow," I added.
She kissed her gloved hand to me, and the smiling major led her away
with all haste.
I was happier after this interview than I had been for many a day.
The kindness that the warmhearted and impulsive Aurora seemed to
cherish for me gave her another and a nearer interest in my mind.
Animosity died within me, and I began to think it was charming to
have at least one relation who loved me for myself, and I thought of
our old Scottish proverb, which says that "Blood is thicker than
water." Moreover, how could she help the tenor of my crusty
grandfather's odious will, or that fatality by which my cousin Tony
broke his valuable neck and made her an heiress?
We paraded duly for the march next day. The several troops were
formed, their rolls called, and as the clock of the old market-place
struck eight, the whole regiment moved off amid the cheers of the
populace and the lamentations of those soldiers' wives who were left
behind with their poor little ones, their treasured marriage lines,
and a "begging pass" to their own parish wherever it might be--too
often the usual and cruel wind-up of military matrimony.
At that moment Aurora Gauntlet, mounted on her dashing grey--a pad
she rode in compliment to _us_--her cheeks flushed by a long ride in
the pure morning air, her skirt and plume and golden hair floating
behind her, cantered up to the column, accompanied by Major Shirley
in his staff uniform, and by John Trot, the valiant hero of
Wandsworth Common, in very gay livery, and like the staff officer,
well mounted.
"I'm just in time, I find," said she, as I drew aside from my troop
(which being the Light one was in the rear, as the corps was marched
with the right in front) and reined up beside her.
"I was looking for you anxiously, Aurora. Will you keep this
document for me, cousin? for if I am killed in Germany, I have no
desire that it should be used by some boor to light his pipe with or
wrap his butter in."
It was the diploma of the Netherwood baronetcy, running in the name
of "CAROLUS, DEI GRATIA, REX SCOTIÆ ET ANGLIÆ, &c. &c., _nostro
Johanni Gauntleti de Netherwood, ejusque hæredibus masculis de
corpore, &c., titulam gradum et dignitatem militis Baronetti in hac
antiqua parte Regni Nostri Scotiæ,_" and so forth.
"You shall be the custodier of this choice piece of archæology, for
with my sword, Aurora, it is all my inheritance now. In my haversack
or valise I have borne it ever since old Nathan Wylie, Sir Basil's
evil mentor, sent it to me as a taunt amid my misfortunes."
"You would still reproach me?" said she, in a low voice.
"Nay, Aurora, on my soul I do not."
"I thank you," she replied, with her eyes brimful of tears; for in
addition to the peculiar position in which we stood, nothing melts a
woman's heart so much as the aspect of a fine regiment departing for
foreign service in time of war. "My mother has become feeble and
ailing--I shall soon be alone in the world, so think kindly of me,
Basil, when you are far away, even as we shall think kindly of you,
for we are the last of our family--the last of the old Gauntlets of
Netherwood."
"I am, rather than you," said I, smiling.
"How?"
"Some one, of course, will marry you, so I must be the last."
She blushed painfully, and her glance wandered to Shirley, but his
_eyes_, at least, appeared to be intent upon the marching column.
"I am going to Germany now, perhaps never to return; for news I have
heard (here I referred to the strange tidings of Boisguiller) have
made me, even in youth, somewhat reckless of life."
"Oh, Basil, Basil! you must not speak thus."
"Sir, Colonel Preston is looking back for _you_," said Major Shirley,
with a slight tone of impatience and authority in his voice. "And
there sounds a trumpet."
"Then we do part friends at last?" said Aurora, with a sad smile.
"Yes, dear cousin, the best of friends."
She held up her cheek to be kissed by me; but somehow her rosy lip
came in its place.
I saw Shirley's face darken, but heeded it little, as I put spurs to
my grey and dashed after the regiment, which was now trotting along
the highway which led towards Brighton.