THE OLD BRIGADIER.
"I cannot deem why men so toil for fame,
A porter is a porter, though his load
Be the oceaned world, and although his road
Be down the ages. What is in a name?
Ah! 'tis our spirit's curse to strive and seek.
Although its heart is rich in pearls and ores,
The sea, complains upon a thousand shores;
Sea-like we moan for ever."--ALEXANDER SMITH.
By this time the snows of a bleak and early winter lay deep in the
grassy glens and on the heathery hills of Carrick; the mountain burns
and rivulets that whilome flowed to the Doon and the Girvan were
frozen hard and fast, and, suspended in mid-air, the cascade of the
Lollards' Linn hung under its gothic arch like the beard of Father
Christmas. Long icicles hung from the eaves of the houses and from
the quaint stone gurgoyles of the old square keep.
The sound of the woodman's axe echoed in the leafless oakwood shaw
and the brown thickets of Ardgour, and everywhere the hedges and
trees were being lopped and trimmed by the shears or bill-hook of the
gardener and husbandman.
In the clear frosty air, from many a mountain loch rang up the cheers
of the jovial curlers, with the roar of the granite curling-stones as
they swept along the glassy _rinks_, and many a hearty fellow
anticipated, his appetite sharpened by the frosty air, the banquet of
salt beef and greens, with steaming whisky toddy, that closed his
day's sport, at the Rohallion Arms in Maybole.
The cattle were in their heather-roofed shielings on the sheltered
sides of the hills, the sheep and swine were among the pea-ricks, the
dusky smoke of the ruddy winter fire ascended into the clear blue air
from many a happy hearth and thatched homestead; but, as the roads
that wound over hill and lea were buried deep in snow, news of the
distant war in Spain come slowly and uncertainly to such remote
dwellings as the castle of Rohallion--how much more uncertainly and
slowly to those glens in Sutherland and Ross, where a few heaps of
stones amid the desert waste now mark the birthplaces of those who
manned the ranks of our noblest Scottish regiments in that old and
glorious war.
As yet no further tidings had been heard either of Quentin Kennedy or
of his court-martial. All that had been heard at home, through the
columns of the London _Courier_, was that the slender army of Sir
John Moore was falling back before the overwhelming masses of the
enemy, and that ere long all might be confusion in its ranks--perhaps
dismay!
After the receipt of the Adjutant-General Sir Harry Calvert's letter,
the public papers were searched in vain for further tidings of
Quentin Kennedy, but none were found. "Our own correspondent," with
his camp-gossip, had no place in the newspaper columns of those days.
The mails were then often late and always uncertain; many that came
by sea were lost between storms and privateers, and the vague anxiety
of Quentin's friends gradually became painful suspense, and amid it
Lord Rohallion once more _wrote with energy_ recommending his young
protégé to the duke.
Dinner was over, and the wax-candles in the candelabra and girandoles
of crystal had been lighted in the antique yellow drawing-room; Lady
Rohallion, seated as usual in her own corner, was engaged, according
to her wont, upon some piece of knitting or other work for the poor
or old folks on the estate; her grey hair, somewhat needlessly
powdered, was dressed back as of old. Lord Rohallion had brought his
decanter of claret with him into the drawing-room and placed it on a
guéridon table by his side; and there he sat, in a cushioned
easy-chair, lingering over the wine, and gazing dreamily into the
large fire that blazed in the old-fashioned brass-basket between the
delf-lined jambs of the fireplace.
The wind was sighing through the old sycamores of the avenue, and the
roar of the sea was heard on the Partan Craig.
Flora was idling over the piano, practising the "Battle of Prague,"
the Duke of York's grand march, or some such piece of music then in
vogue with young ladies, and near her hovered her present admirer,
Jack Ferny of Fernwoodlee, a good-looking but brainless young fellow
with sandy hair and a pea-green hunting-coat of the fast kind worn
when the Pavilion was in its glory at Brighton. Ferny's estate was a
small one, and he was evidently, as gossips said, "doing his best to
make ducks and drakes of it."
He was strongly addicted to betting, and was a keen fox-hunter and
sportsman. Beyond the kennel or the stable he had very few ideas;
and so little capability had he of adapting his conversation to time,
place, or person, that he was now prosing away to the preoccupied
Flora about sporting matters.
First it was of a famous match against time by the noted pedestrian,
Captain Barclay of Urie; and next, how, when coursing among the
Carrick hills, his two favourite stag-hounds so pressed a hare they
had put up yesterday, that she leaped down a precipice more than
fifty feet in height, and then the hounds followed without the
slightest hesitation.
"Good heavens! they were killed, of course!" said Flora, looking up
with wonder.
"Killed, Miss Warrender?--egad, no! To the astonishment of us all,
we saw puss and the hounds scouring along the road towards Maybole;
but the Ayr stage, coming up with four spanking greys, caused her to
make for a field of grass, and though turned five several times by
the hounds, she made her escape down a burn at last, for of course
they lost the scent."
Finding that Flora had relapsed into listlessness, and that he failed
to interest her by his scraps of information on the Newmarket Craven
meeting, such as his horse Rolla, eight stone, running against Lord
Sackville's Tag, also eight stone, across the flat for a thousand
guineas, and that three to one was being taken on Rolla; that the
betting was even at Epsom on the brown colt, by Eclipse, out of Mrs.
Fitzherbert, and other gossip of similar character, he was compelled
to resume his place near the old Lord, who was just in the act of
pressing him politely to join in another glass of claret, when Jack
Andrews limped in with a letter, which the running-footman had at
that moment brought from Maybole. The mail from Ayr had broken down
near the bank of the Boon in the snow, and the guard had brought on
the bags to Dalrymple, on one of the horses, at the risk of his life.
Oblong and official, the cover of the letter showed that it was "On
His Majesty's service."
"News of Quentin Kennedy, doubtless," said Lord Rohallion, peering
about for his eye-glass.
"I pray God it be not unfortunate news about Cosmo!" thought Lady
Winifred, for the tidings that came to many a poor mother in those
days of war were sad enough sometimes.
Fernwoodlee, who had seen Quentin Kennedy, and knew the rumours
concerning him and Flora, observed with annoyance that she was pale
and colourless with ill-concealed interest, as she drew near Lord
Rohallion, who on opening the missive found, to his no small
surprise, that it referred neither to Quentin nor Cosmo, but to
_himself_, and was from Sir Harry Calvert, who wrote, that "by the
direction of his Royal Highness the Field-Marshal
Commanding-in-Chief, he had the pleasure to acquaint him that his
lordship's repeated applications and wishes for command of a brigade
could now be gratified, and that his name would appear in the next
_Gazette_; and that as troops were being assembled in great force at
Shorncliffe camp, his Royal Highness hoped that his lordship would,
within a week, be ready to set out for that place, where his services
were greatly required, and where his proper staff would be selected."
This announcement fell with a startling effect upon Lord and Lady
Rohallion.
"Appointed to a brigade--a brigade for foreign service! My dear
Reynold, you cannot for a moment think of accepting this command?"
said Lady Winifred, anxiously taking his right hand between her own.
"I applied for it, as you are aware, dearest, repeatedly."
"About the time of the first unhappy expedition to Egypt; but you
have long since relinquished all idea of serving again, and now--now,
Reynold----"
"I am bound to accept it, Winny," said he, with more of sadness than
of his old enthusiasm in his tone. "I am well up the list of
major-generals," he added, with a faint smile, "and must do something
for promotion. I may be a field-marshal yet, Winny, and a K.G. to
boot."
Perhaps in his secret heart he would rather have wished that this
command had not been offered him; he felt that he was rather old now,
rather staid and formed in habit, and that he had too long settled
down into the easy tenor of a quiet country life to care for the
hurly-burly and anxiety of leading a brigade--it might ultimately be
a division--in the field; but he knew that honour and duty compelled
him to accept it.
Thus he wrote to the adjutant-general that very night accepting the
command, and again urging that something should be done for his young
protégé, Quentin Kennedy.
The letter left by the mail next morning, and Lord Rohallion prepared
to bid farewell once more to the old mansion of his forefathers, and
to buckle on the same sword that he had drawn on the plains of
Minden, when a stripling ensign, forty-nine years before.
It was with sad forebodings that Lady Rohallion prepared to break up
her quiet and happy household, and bid farewell to friends and
neighbours, for she proposed, in the first instance, to accompany her
dear old husband to Shorncliffe, and Flora, their ward, who could not
be left behind, to the unmistakable dismay of young Fernwoodlee, was
to go with them.
She was the only one who felt any pleasure in the anticipated change
and long journey by post-horses, as it promised at least all that
novelty so charming to a young girl.
Poor Lady Rohallion! She knew that by her husband's frequently
expressed desire for military employment (parliamentary and
diplomatic matters he detested) he was bound in honour--especially at
a time when all Britain was in arms--to accept the first command
offered him by the Duke of York, his old friend and comrade. She had
long feared the crisis, but, as time passed on and no appointment
came, she ceased to think of it; but now it had come at last, and
when least expected, and she was about to be subjected to a double
separation, from her husband and her son.
Cut off as Britain was then from the continent, the majority of its
people had few views or sympathies beyond their own fireside or
immediate circle. The scene of the probable campaign in which
Rohallion would serve, was wild and remote, the people desperate and
lawless; our force in the field small, most pitifully so, when
compared with the masses of the dreaded and then abhorred French.
She could perceive that her courtly old lord vacillated between
sincere sorrow for leaving her and a love for his profession, with a
hope of distinguishing himself and trying his strength and skill
against some of the famous marshals of the new empire--the heroes of
the Italian, German, and Egyptian campaigns--those corporals of le
petit caporal, who had picked up their epaulettes on the barricades
of Paris, or at the foot of the guillotine on which King Louis and
the noblest in France died; for thus were the marshal dukes of the
great emperor viewed by the high-flying aristocracy of the Pitt
administration, in the old fighting days "when George the Third was
king."
Lord Cockburn, in his "Memorials," describes, with happy fidelity, "a
singular race of old Scottish ladies," that have completely passed
away. "They were," says he, "a delightful set; strong-headed,
warm-hearted, and high-spirited; the fire of their tempers not always
latent; merry even in solitude; very resolute; indifferent about the
modes and habits of the modern world, and adhering to their own ways,
so as to stand out like primitive rocks above ordinary society.
Their prominent qualities of sense, humour, affection, and spirit,
were embodied in curious outsides, for all dressed, and spoke, and
did exactly as they chose; their language, like their habits,
entirely Scottish, but without any other vulgarity than what perfect
naturalness is sometimes taken for."
One of that genuine race was the handsome and stately old Lady
Winifred of Rohallion.
A Scottish lady of the kindly old school, one who in infancy had been
nursed and fondled by warm-hearted and periwigged old gentlemen and
hoopskirted gentlewomen, who boasted that they were the last of the
true old Scots, born when a Stuart was on the throne, and before
their country was sold by the Whigs, and when her Parliament
assembled on the ringing of St. Gileses bell; she who in girlhood had
seen and known many of the gallant and loyal who had dined and drunk
with Kilmarnock and Balmerino, and who had drawn their swords for
James VIII. at Falkirk and Culloden; who treasured in secret the
white rose, and yearly drank to "the king ower the water"--she felt
now that she would be sadly at a loss and strange among English
modern society. Her local ideas and usefulness, her strong Jacobite
sympathies and loyalty to a dead race of kings, her nervous terror of
democracy and foreigners, might pass for eccentricity; but how could
those among whom she would now be thrown know or understand her
little weakness for the heraldry, genealogy, connexions, and past
glories of the Maxwells of Nithsdale and the Crawfords of Rohallion;
for she knew them to be people who spoke of the late cardinal-duke as
"the dead Pretender;" who voted all that was not English absurd or
vulgar, and who basked in the rays of the star of Brunswick as it
beamed on the breast of "the first gentleman in Europe," the future
George IV.: with her powder and patches, her broad Scottish accent,
and her high-heeled shoes, she felt that she would be, in such an
atmosphere, an anachronism--a fish out of water!
These minor considerations of self, however, were completely merged
or lost eventually in distress at the prospect of being separated
from her husband, and in dread of the perils and hardships he might
have to encounter at the seat of war--at his advanced years, too!
To add to her anxiety, the death-watch had ticked for several nights
in the four-poster of the great old state bedroom, and this devilish
little pediculus wrought the good lady as much alarm as Sir Harry
Calvert's missive from the Horse Guards had done.
Amid all this, Flora's chief thought was, that at Shorncliffe she
would be nearer Quentin Kennedy, by the entire length nearly of
Britain, and as Lord Rohallion was to pass through London, he would
see the Duke of York personally about him and his prospects.
The last night they were to spend in the old castle was a wild, cold,
and bitter one. The waves of the Firth of Clyde boiled in mountains
of white foam over the Partan Craig, and as Elsie Irvine said, "the
yowls of the sealghs were heard on the wind, just as they were on the
nicht that Quentin was shipwrecked, and a' body kent they were never
heard for nocht."
The tempest roared round the snow-clad promontory on which the old
castle stood, and on this night one of the oldest sycamores in the
avenue was uprooted with a mighty crash by the wind, an omen
decidedly of coming woe. Black clouds sailed like ghostly ships
across the otherwise clear frosty sky, and in the distance the scud
and the ocean blended together in storm and darkness.
On that night, the _last_ they were to spend in their old home, sleep
scarcely visited the eyes of either Lady Rohallion or her husband.
She was full of melancholy forebodings, tears, and prayers, the
result of her education and temperament, and she was thinking of
Flora's parents, of John Warrender of Ardgour, who fell in Egypt, and
of his widow's broken heart; while in Lord Rohallion's mind, real
regret for the coming separation was mingling with anxieties and
little vanities about how he would handle his brigade in the field,
as he had so long grown "rusty."
As the morning dawned--the morning of a clear and bright December
day, Lady Winifred's spirits rose a little, especially after the sun
burst forth auspiciously from the parting clouds.
The poor quartermaster was heart-broken with the idea of being left
behind; but he had the household to look after, and all the live
stock, including Quentin's terrier and Flora's birds, all of which
she solemnly committed to his care.
On this morning, when they were to set out, trunks, mails, imperials,
and all the usual incumbrances of a long journey were borne forth to
the haunted gate where the carriage stood, with its four horses
pawing the hard frosty ground, and their breath ascending like steam,
in the clear cold air. Old Jack Andrews limped about, whistling the
point of war, with uncommon vigour, and with a new lightness in his
eye and step, at the prospect of seeing military life again.
All the tenantry of the estate and the fishermen of the hamlet
mustered at the old castle-gate, and the Rohallion volunteers, all in
full uniform, with cocked-hats and pigtails, were there in honour of
the brave old Brigadier and his gentle lady; and there too, were all
the household, from bluff Mr. Spillsby the butler, to John Legate,
the long, lean running-footman, and all looked sad and downhearted.
The dominie had overnight prepared a long Latin address to read on
the occasion, but happily for all concerned, he had left it behind
him; and now his great horn barnacles were obscured and dim, as he
lifted his old three-cornered castor and kissed her ladyship's hand
with profound reverence and affection, and then Miss Flora's, as they
were assisted by Fernwoodlee and the quartermaster into the carriage.
"Farewell, dominie," said the old Lord, as he shook the good man's
hand. "I'll expect you to write me sometimes, and tell us how all
the folk here and the school bairns are coming on."
"Woe is me, Rohallion! and you are again going to follow the drum!"
he replied, shaking his queue and queer old wig: "it was invented by
Bacchus, who, as Polysenus declares, used it first in the Indian war,
but from the sorrow created by its sound, I verily believe its
inventor to be the devil--the great author of the bagpipe."
"Hush, dominie," said his lordship, laughing, "for here comes Pate of
Maybole."
This was the piper of the barony town, in the burgh livery, who now
appeared; and as the coachman whipped up his horses, the sobs of the
servants were drowned in the skirl with which Pate blew out his bag
to the air of the good Lord Moira's Farewell to Scotland:
"London's bonnie woods and braes,
I maun leave them a', lassie,
For who can thole when Britain's faes,
Wad gie Britons law, lassie?"
And striding as only a Scottish piper strides and swaggers, he played
before the carriage down the avenue and out upon the high road; while
there was not an eye unmoistened at that time-worn castle gate, as
its old lord and his lady went forth upon their way "to the wars in
the far-awa land."
It was a silent house that night in Rohallion.