PIQUE.
"These hands are brown with toil; that brow is scarred;
Still must you sweat and swelter in the sun,
And trudge with feet benumbed the winter snow,
Nor intermission have until the end.
Thou canst not draw down fame upon thy head,
And yet wouldst cling to life!"--ALEXANDER SMITH.
"A lieutenant in the 7th, or Royal Fusiliers!--am I actually so?" was
the question Quentin asked of himself repeatedly.
There could be no doubt about it; the general had said so, and the
Gazette confirmed it, that he, Quentin Kennedy, volunteer with the
25th Foot, had been appointed to that regiment, one of the oldest
corps of the line--a "crack one," too--commanded by General Sir
Alured Clark, G.C.B. Long known as the _South British Fusiliers_, to
distinguish them from the Scottish corps and the famous Welsh
Fusiliers, armed with the same weapon, the 7th were without officers
of the rank of ensign until a year or two ago; thus, at the time we
refer to, their two battalions had no less than sixty-four
lieutenants.
This sudden promotion, which put him so completely beyond the power
of his rival and enemy, the Master of Rohallion, and which gave him
independence and a position in society too, puzzled Quentin for a
time; but briefly so, as reflection showed him that he must owe it to
the great interest possessed by Lord Rohallion, who, he was aware,
had now traced him to the Borderers; and this, indeed, was the secret
of the whole affair.
And Flora Warrender--she must have seen his appointment in the
Gazette long before it had thus casually met the sharp eye of Sir
John Moore, and could he doubt that she rejoiced at the event?
To be raised at once from a position so subordinate and anomalous, so
unrecognised and so fraught with useless peril as that of a gentleman
volunteer, from the ranks as it were of that army whose dreadful
sufferings he shared and whose many dangers he risked--to be raised
to the rank of an officer in a regiment so distinguished as the Royal
Fusiliers, and to be at once, temporarily though it were, placed on
the general's staff, and beyond the reach of Cosmo's coldness, pique,
and hauteur, was indeed to be independent, and to taste of happiness
supreme!
His heart was full of joy, of enthusiasm, and gratified ambition; but
sincere gratitude and increased regard for the kind and fatherly old
Lord to whom he owed it were not wanting now; and Quentin resolved to
write a letter pouring out his thanks, and expressive of all he felt,
on the first opportunity. He was right to make the last reserve
mentally, for opportunities for committing one's lucubrations to
paper were sadly wanting now when within musket shot of the French
advanced guard.
He was full of genuine regard for the good and great Sir John Moore,
full of enthusiastic devotion, gratitude, and admiration, too! How
was it possible that he could feel otherwise? Apart from the news of
his promotion in life, which must soon have reached him, he blessed
the chance which made his informant the resolute and gallant leader
of the British army!
After obtaining the warm congratulations of those who were his
friends, and who hailed him now as a brother officer (as for old
Middleton he almost wept for joy, and swore to wet the new commission
deeply), most grateful indeed to his heart were the humble but
earnest felicitations of the soldiers, who crowded round him, poor
fellows, all haggard, ragged, and starving though they were, begging
leave to shake his hand, and to wish him all success and prosperity
to the end of his days. And Quentin felt that such genuine and
heartfelt wishes as theirs were well worth remembering as an
incentive for the future.
But little time was there for joy or loitering now, as the French
were coming on and were again close at hand.
Relieved from the out-picquet on the Nogales road just as the winter
dusk was deepening, he passed through the gloomy streets of Lugo,
where ammunition waggons, unclaimed or abandoned baggage, and dead
horses weltering in pools of dark blood, added greatly to the
confusion of those crowded, ancient, narrow, and decidedly dirty
thoroughfares; which were destitute alike of lamps, pavement, and
police, and were full of holes, puddles, mud, and mire. There were
sentinels, with bayonets fixed, at the doors of all the wine-shops
and bodegas; yet crowds of famished soldiers loitered about them,
while the dreaded provost-marshal guard, with cord and triangles, and
patrols of horse and foot passed slowly to and fro in every
direction, to enforce that order which the alcalde and his alguazils
considered hopeless.
Quentin soon found, however, where the colonel and colours of the
Borderers were lodged. It was an old mansion which had once belonged
to the Knights of Santiago, the highest order of chivalry in Spain;
and above its arched door, where two of the colonel's servants were
chatting and smoking--one leisurely polishing a pair of hessian
boots, and the other oiling the harness of his charger--he saw carved
on a large marble block the badge of the order: a sword _gules_, the
hilt powdered with fleurs-de-lis, and the stern motto, _Sanguine
Arabum_.
It happened, though seated over his wine, after such a dinner as the
exigencies of the time enabled him to procure, and though in company
with his old friend the gallant and fashionable Lord Paget, then in
his fortieth year, rehearsing together their gay but somewhat coarse
memories and experiences of Carlton House and the Pavilion, the
Honourable Cosmo was far from being in the best of humours.
A full conviction of the sudden and disastrous turn in the prospects
of the expedition--the army was now only fighting to escape
home--together with the knowledge that on landing in England a horde
of harpies--Jews, lawyers, and tipstaves, were all ready to pounce
upon him, with protested bills, accounts, I.O.U.'s, post-obits,
bonds, and Heaven only knows what more, the result of his Guards'
life and reckless expenditure in London--all this, we say, well nigh
drove him frantic; and Paget's memories of their brilliant past, and
their wild, disreputable orgies with the Prince of Wales and his set,
added stings to the terror with which he viewed the future.
Flora's fair acres might have stood in the gap between him and ruin,
but fate and Quentin Kennedy ordained it should be otherwise.
"Egad, Paget, you see how it is; I've drained the paternal pump
dry--there are bounds to patience, and his lordship will not advance
me another guinea beyond my allowance. Indeed, I could scarcely
expect it; and thus, I dare not land in England!"
"Let us be afloat before we talk of landing," replied Paget; "it will
be a deuced bad affair for us all if we don't find our transports in
Vigo Bay; and, _entre nous_, I think Moore has some doubts about
them."
"I don't care a straw if undistinguishable ruin should fall upon us
all!"
"Which is certain to be the case, if the said transports are not
there," replied the other, with a yawn. "But come, Crawford, fill
your glass again; is this champagne some of the stuff we found in
Colbert's baggage?"
"My fate will soon be decided," said the other, pursuing his own
thoughts; "to-morrow, perhaps, for I can see some indication of
taking up a position here, in front of Lugo."
"Yes; but the infernal miners failed at the bridges of the Minho, and
the Sil--the river of gold."
"Thus, I say," continued Cosmo, doggedly, "Paget, old fellow, my fate
will soon be decided!"
"And it is----"
"Death on a Spanish battle-field, or to rot in an English prison!"
"Don't talk so bitterly; once in London again, we shall see what can
be done. Another glass of this sparkling liquid!--wine, wine, I
say--drown the blue devils in a red sea of it!" exclaimed the gay
Paget.
"Something stronger than wine for me now," said Cosmo, as he filled a
large glass nearly full with undiluted brandy, and drained it; "life
is short, and not very merry here."
"Egad! I know no place, however, where it is so difficult to live
and so easy to die."
"Right--so easy to die!" added Cosmo, with a strange and sickly smile.
It was at this inauspicious moment that a servant in
uniform--liveries there were none then with the army--brought in
Quentin's name.
"What the devil can this fellow possibly want with me?" said Cosmo,
full of surprise at a circumstance so unusual as a visit from
Quentin; "is he below?"
"Yes, sir."
"What does he wish?"
"To see you, sir," replied the soldier, with a second salute.
"Who is it?" drawled Paget, watching his cigar-smoke curling upward,
and depositing the leg he was destined to leave at Waterloo on a
spare chair.
"That fellow who was tried by a court-martial at Alva de Tormes."
"Tried--ah, I remember, for everything but high treason and
housebreaking, eh?--ha! ha!"
"Yes; but who gave the charges the go-by at racing speed. Send him
up!"
Quentin entered with a flush on his cheek and a painful beating in
his heart. He bowed low to General Paget, whom he knew by sight, and
to Cosmo, who responded by a quiet stare, and who, before he was
addressed, said sharply--
"I generally have my eye on you, sir, and I thought that you were
with the outlying picquets in front of the town?"
"I was, Colonel Crawford; but----"
"_Was_--and how does it come to pass that you are relieved, or here
at this time?" asked Cosmo, loftily.
"Because, sir, I am now Lieutenant Kennedy, of the 7th Fusiliers,
serving on the personal staff of Sir John Moore."
On hearing this Paget raised his eyebrows and smiled; but Cosmo
hastily thrust his gold glass into his right eye, and glared at
Quentin through it as he wheeled his chair half round, and surveyed
him with cool insolence from head to foot.
"Are you mad, fellow?" he asked, quietly but earnestly.
"Less so than you, Colonel Crawford," replied Quentin, with
suppressed passion; "I have here to show you a note from the general."
"To show _me_?"
"Yes, sir; because it goes from you direct to the adjutant-general
for insertion in orders."
Cosmo coughed, and very leisurely opened the little note which
Quentin handed to him.
"So, sir," said he, "so far as this scrap of paper imports--and I
know Moore's writing well--he has appointed you an extra
aide-de-camp?"
"He has done me the honour, Colonel Crawford."
"Your health, sir," said Lord Paget, frankly; "I congratulate
you--won't you drink?"
"You might more usefully fill up the time necessary to qualify you
for a staff appointment by serving with some corps of the army."
"The 25th, perhaps?" said Quentin, whose temper Cosmo's cutting
coldness was rapidly bringing to a white heat.
"No, sir," he replied, with one of his insolent smiles, "I did not
mean our friends the Borderers."
"What corps, then?"
"The Belem Rangers; what do you think of them?"
"Crawford!" exclaimed Lord Paget, starting with astonishment, for
this imaginary corps was our general Peninsular term for all
skulkers, malingerers, and others who showed the white feather, by
loitering in the great hospital of Belem, near Lisbon.
Quentin felt all that the studied insult implied; the blood rushed
back upon his aching heart, and he grew very pale. The conviction
now that his position was _different_, that Cosmo wished by
deliberate insolence to provoke and destroy him, rushed upon his
mind, and gave him coolness and reflection, so he said, quietly--
"I shall not report your kind suggestion to Sir John Moore; but I
presume I may now withdraw?"
"Sir," resumed Cosmo, starting from his chair pale with passion, as
he seemed now to have a legitimate and helpless object on which to
wreak his bitterness of soul--a bitterness all the deeper that it was
now inflamed by wine--"sir, I refer to General Lord Paget if your
bearing has not something of a mutinous sneer in it?"
"My smile might, Colonel Crawford; but not bearing, be assured of
that."
"Sir, what the devil do you mean? Is it to bandy words with me? You
hear him, Paget?" said Cosmo, incoherently, and purple alike with
fury and a sense of shame at the exhibition he was making; "you hear
him?"
"I have no intention of insulting you," urged Quentin, anxious only
to begone.
"Insults are never suspected by me, but when I know they are
intended, as I feel they are now. Even your presence here is an
insult! Now, sir, do you understand me, and your resource--your
resource--do you understand _that_--eh?"
"For God's sake, Crawford! are you mad?" interposed Lord Paget; "what
the devil is up between you?"
"More than I can tell you, Paget."
"With this mere lad, and you a man of the world!"
"'Sblood! Yes, with him."
The Master's mad pride had involved him in many quarrels, and he had
paraded more than one man at the back of Montague House, in London,
in the Duke's Walk at Holyrood, and elsewhere--luckless fellows who
had resented his overbearing disposition--so a duel to him was
nothing, and in his baffled pique and ungovernable fury he was now
wicked enough to aim at one.
"Cosmo Crawford," exclaimed Quentin, his dark eyes flashing through
the moisture that filled them, "Master of Rohallion," he added in a
choking voice, "I have too often, as a child, slept on your good old
mother's breast to level a pistol at yours, else, sir--else----"
"Bah!" shouted Cosmo, turning on his heel; "I thought so. Belem for
ever!"
"To-morrow we may be engaged with the enemy," said Quentin, in the
same broken voice; "I shall be in the field, and mounted too; then
let us see whether you or I ride closest to the bayonets of the
French!"
"Agreed--agreed!" said Cosmo, with stern energy, as his pale eyes,
that shrunk and dilated, filled with more than usual of their old
baleful gleam, and he wrung with savage energy the proffered hand of
Quentin, who hastened away.
"By Jove," said Paget, laughing, as he filled his glass with
champagne, "this same beats cock-fighting! But what the devil is it
all about?"