OUR CANTONMENT.
The next day's sun rose bright and radiant; the birds sang in the
green poplars; the storks screamed on the red gable-tops; the great
frogs were croaking hoarsely among the bronze-like slime which was
generated on the bosom of the stagnant canals, and the business of
life commenced in Glückstadt.
"I'll find her out;" I muttered, as we sat down to breakfast on the
remains of our supper, together with a can of Dantzig beer, a ham and
basket of eggs, which our invaluable Phadrig had procured from some
confiding sutler in the Platz; "I will find her out, if she is
between the rooftree and the ground-stone!"
"Who?" asked Ian, overhearing my Gaëlic.
"A fair young lady, whom I discovered yesterday."
"Dioul! we have been but one night in this land of Holstein, and
this inflammatory student hath fallen in love!" replied Ian, laughing
aloud, for he thought I was jesting. "How these petticoats influence
the fate and the fancies of men!"
"And where does this fair dame dwell?" said Angus.
"Below us; did you not hear me speaking about her to the _husbonde_,
Hausmeister, or whatever yonder august man in boots considers
himself."
"How could we? you spoke in Dutch."
"Or Spanish, or some such gibberish, known only to yourselves," said
Ian, slicing down the ham with his dirk.
"Below us, too," continued Angus Roy; "that is good! Why, Phadrig
Mhor and I investigated the whole place when we came in yesterday,
and saw no woman but that delectable old housekeeper, with her linen
coif and wrinkled visage. Depend upon it, there is no lady here!"
"You are as bad as that sullen dog, the Herr; for I assure you there
is a woman--a lady--a very pretty one, too! Pass the beer-can,
Angus, please."
"'Tis a fairy," said the sergeant, Mhor, breaking his sixth egg.
"She is fair as the daughter of the snow--that love of Fingal, of
whom I have heard you sing a hundred times, Phadrig," said I.
"Here, in this desolate house?"
"Below us, Ian, as I have said, in a magnificent chamber, too."
"Come, now," replied Ian, "he is jesting with us all; this is some
quip he has picked up at college. Look at us again, cousin Philip,
have our ears grown, since we marched in yesterday?"
"Cousin Ian, I never was more serious in my life."
"Why, you might as well tell us there was snow last night, as that
this beautiful lady and stately apartment are in this mansion, when
we searched every nook and corner of it for food, fuel, and
furniture, and the sergeant thrust his Lochaber axe into every hole
we could not enter ourselves. And pretty, you say?"
"Actually beautiful! a dazzling skin--dark hair--an adorable
figure--the air of a countess."
"What a diamond?" exclaimed Angus Roy, shaking back the thick red
hair which gained him that sobriquet; "what a love of a little woman
she must be! By the grey stone of M'Gregor, I would give my best
brooch to see her! however," he continued, pouring some skeidam into
his silver-hooped hunting quaigh, "I drink to her health."
"A fairy's health?" said Ian.
"Nay, to the countess thou knowest about, Philip," and then the whole
three laughed loudly, like frank hearty mountaineers, as they were.
"Beware of snares, Philip," said Ian, as he adjusted his graceful
plaid with the brooch of Moina Rose; "as for me, I would not give my
brown-eyed Highland maid for all the dames of Almaynie--by St. Colm
of the Isles, I would not!" and, as he buckled on his sword, the
light-hearted young chief began to sing an old Gaëlic song.
"_Gu ma slàn a chì mi,
Mo chaillin dileas donn;
Air 'n d' fhas an cualan reidh,
'S air an deise dh'eireadh fonn._
"How happy could I be with thee,
My bonnie brown-eyed maid!
In thy loveliness and beauty,
With innocence array'd.
"_Se cainnt do bheoil bu bhinne leam,
'Nuair bhiodh mintinn trom;
'Stu thogadh suas mo chridhe
'Nuair bhiodh tu bruidhiun reum._"
"Thy voice to me was music
When my poor heart was sad;
With thee, how fled the fleet hours,
Conversing in the shade!
Breakfast being over, we took our swords and bonnets, and sallied
forth to the sunny Platz, where the regiment was parading under the
colours to commence the course of drill, and training to march and
countermarch by files, sections, and companies. As to the handling
of arms, our clansmen had known that since their childhood; for they
were all men of that glorious old race, whose first food in infancy
was received from the point of their father's sword; and who were
reared like the Spartans of old by their Highland mothers, whose
prayers were ever, that their warlike sons might have the grace to
die--not on their beds like sloths or hounds--but on the field of
battle, with their shields below and their plaids above them. Thus
were the Scottish clansmen reared in arms, and trained to war and
daring; and hence we cannot wonder, at finding the Highland brigades
of Christian IV., and of Gustavus Adolphus, the terror of the Poles,
the Muscovites, and the Imperialists.
"Now, cousin Philip," said Ian, as we descended the great staircase
of the mansion; "show us the bower of your invisible countess."
Undeterred by their jesting, I examined all the doors of the empty
flats below our billet; but found no trace of the one I looked for.
Every chamber appeared to have been long deserted; the walls were
damp; the dust lay on the floors; there was rust on the andirons and
grates, and spiders had spun their webs across the small thick panes
of the windows. Though completely silenced by the disappearance of
the chamber, and by the consequent jests, laughter, and disbelief of
my friends, I was not the less convinced that there lurked some
strange mystery in the lady's concealment, and the Hausmeister's
connivance thereat.
This mystery I secretly resolved to probe and unravel. It was
doubtless a very impertinent determination; but there was less beard
then on my chin than now, besides I was very heedless and rash.
I applied my powers of persuasion to the old housekeeper; but she was
deaf as a cannon, shook her paralytic head, determined not to
understand me, and pouched with true German avidity a gold Scottish
noble, or a twelve shilling piece, which I gave her in mistake for a
dog-dollar.
The old pile of building became invested with an interest which
otherwise it would never have possessed. My friends, who frequently
discovered me searching for the lost chamber, laughed at me for a
time without mercy; and none entered more into their spirit of
raillery than Otto Roskilde, who swore that it was a spirit I had
seen, a Danish Trold from Juteland--a spirit of the Elbe--a white
woman from the forests of Bremen--or a Trold, and nothing but a Trold!
Rather provoked by all this, I frequently ascended and descended the
staircase alone; examined all the doors, and tapped on the walls of
the desolate rooms; listened for a sound, but heard none save the
guttural voices of the people in the Platz the croaking of the frogs
in the canal, or the hoarser croak of Roskilde's old timber-toned
housekeeper, dame Krumpel, singing a monotonous ditty of Holstein to
the birr of her spinning-wheel. My beauty was certainly not in the
apartments of her master; he had but two, and I had taken the liberty
of examining them both, twenty times. Having been educated at the
college of James IV., and moreover been a residenter in "the brave
city" of Aberdeen for so many years, I considered myself more than
usually acute; but I was now forced to confess, that with all the
knowledge of the world I had gathered at the London of the North, in
this affair of "my countess" (as Ian and Angus named her), I was
completely baffled.
At Glückstadt on the Elbe we lay in quarters for some time, during
which we improved in all points of discipline, according to the rules
of war then practised by all noble cavaliers of the Scottish nation,
who had first carried them into the armies of northern Europe.
By speaking our pure old Lowland language, I found little or no
difficulty in making myself understood by the Danish officers, and by
the brave and honest Holsteiners, whose peculiar dialect of the
German I soon acquired.
Our pay was poor. A captain had about £130 per annum, and mine, as
ensign of musketeers, was only a slet-dollar per day, out of which I
had to furnish myself with wine and beer; but we had come to fight
for honour and glory, not for the base lucre or copper
_skillings_--for Elizabeth Stuart, and her uncle, the brave king
Christian--for the liberties of Germany and the freedom of the
Protestant religion--for, _Vivat!_ we were all true Scottish
cavaliers. Yet there were many among us who, when the season became
moist and the marsh fevers thinned our ranks, grumbled sorely, and
openly averred we would have been better at home, fighting our own
neighbours, the English, than gasping among the frowsy fogs of
Holstein.