THE COLONEL-COMMANDANT.
The General refilled his glass and his meerschaum, and remained sunk
in thought after the departure of his nephew, and more than once he
sighed heavily, knit his brows, and shook his head.
He was not drinking schiedam with water, but good Farintosh whisky,
kegs of which were regularly sent to him by a Scottish merchant from
the Scotsch Dyk at Rotterdam--Farintosh which was then free from all
Excise duty, and remained so till five years after the period of our
story.
We have said that General Kinloch was a handsome man and in the
flower of manhood; and a fine picture he would have made as he sat
there, in his graceful old-fashioned uniform, with heavily-laced
lapels and skirts, his hair powdered and queued, with a Khevenhüller
hat (not unlike that of Napoleon I.) close by, adorned with a stiff
upright feather and Dutch cockade, and his silk sash worn crossways
in the old Scottish fashion.
The old Scottish officer who took a turn of service in France was
jaunty in air, tone, and bearing, as Scott describes his Baron of
Bradwardin to have been; but his countryman who served the States of
Holland became, under the influence of his flat, stale and stolid
surroundings, rather another style of man--equally brave and gallant
in war, but less gallant in the ball-room or the boudoir--often
grave, grim, and starched amid the influence of Dutch society and
Presbyterianism.
It was only thirty-four years before that Culloden had been fought;
and though his political sympathies were not with the exiled King
James VIII., his mind was full of the bitter memories of that
atrocious field left in every right-thinking Scottish heart; and his
orphan nephew, Lewie Baronald, was the son of his only sister, one of
those enthusiastic Jacobite ladies who kept guard at Edinburgh Cross
with a drawn sword when the King was proclaimed, who danced at the
famous Holyrood ball, and who, like more than one old lady in
Scottish history and tradition, had never allowed her husband to kiss
her, after the Prince did so, and after making his bed, when an exile
and fugitive, with her own hands, had laid aside the sheets thereof
to be a shroud for herself, in the true spirit of loyalty 'and that
sublime devotion which the Saxon never knew.'
Long as he had been in Holland, the eyes of our Scot--accustomed as
he had been to the grand mountain scenery of his native land--had
never become accustomed to the utter monotony, flatness, and
insipidity of the Dutch landscape, or to the brusqueness of the
natives, their stolidity and general dulness of demeanour; but the
pay was good, the quarters were comfortable, and--when not
fighting--the service was easy enough. His sword was almost his
inheritance, as the estate he inherited, Thominean, was drowned in
debt; and their High Mightinesses the States-General were sure and
generous paymasters.
Yet, times there were when he thought with the author of 'Vathek,'
that there must have been a period when Holland was all water, 'and
the ancestors of the present inhabitants fish. A certain
_oysterishness_ of eye and flabbiness of complexion are almost
proof-sufficient of this aquatic descent; and pray tell me for what
purpose are such galligaskins as the Dutch burthen themselves with
contrived, but to tuck up a flouncing tail, and thus cloak the
deformity of a dolphin-like termination.'
Reflecting angrily and sadly upon the recent conversation with his
favourite, the General continued to smoke and gaze down the long
vista of the quaint Dutch street, with its stiff rows of trees
reflected downward in the canal that lay parallel with them, and its
quaint gables on each of which, nearly, a stork was perched; the
little mirrors projecting from the windows to enable the ladies
within to see those who passed outside; the knockers tied up with
pincushions and plaited lace to indicate that a 'goodwife was in the
straw.'
There were women in the mobcaps, print-gowns, and gaudy satin aprons
wore by all ranks alike; men in broad, round, conical hats, puckered
jackets, and capacious breeches, now no longer to be seen but in very
remote districts; an occasional dominie or clergyman in his
court-like costume, ruff and cocked hat, passing homeward after
having a pipe with some parishioner, or a dish of coffee with his
vrouw.
There was the clatter of wooden shoes in the ill-paved street; the
oil-lamps were beginning to glimmer like glow-worms, and were
reflected in the slime of the canals; the drums and fifes of the
Scots Brigade, in the adjacent caserne, were playing out the dying
day, and sweetly stole upon the ambient evening the old air:
'Oh, the Lowlands o' Holland
Hae parted my love and me;'
but the General was in shadow-land, thinking of other times and
long-vanished faces, and wondering when the guilders of their High
Mightinesses, and the prize-money won from the French and Spaniards,
would free his inheritance from all its wadsets and incumbrances, and
he would be able to hang his sword, where still his father's hung, in
the old dining-hall of Thominean.
He saw it in fancy, that old house of Thominean ('the hill of
birds'), with its grey crow-stepped gables and conical pepper-box
turrets of the days of James VI., overlooked by the green range of
the lovely Ochills; and he laughed softly as he remembered how in
boyhood there he had trembled at the thought of the tiny elves, who,
on their festival nights, were alleged to make great noises under the
green turf, opening and shutting large chests of gold, and clattering
with goblets and copper kettles; and how still more did he tremble at
the story of a mysterious mirror, in which occasionally the figure of
a pale woman, clad in white, could be distinctly seen _behind_ the
reflection of the person who stood before the glass, and how it was
said to have appeared therein on the night his beloved sister, the
Lady Baronald, died, and left her only son penniless in the world.
Thus Lewie, in his boyhood, became a soldier. On an evening that he
never forgot, there came marching bravely down the quaint High Street
of Kinross a recruiting-party of the Scots Brigade, with ribbons
fluttering, drawn swords gleaming, the shrill pipes and hoarse drums,
making every lane and alley bordering on Loch Leven to re-echo 'The
Lowlands o' Holland;' and halting in front of the Bruce Arms Inn, a
portly sergeant, after a libation of Farintosh had been duly poured
forth, harangued the gathered rustics. He invited 'all lads of
spirit to join that battalion of the Scots Brigade, commanded by the
noble and valiant Henry Douglas, Earl of Drumlanrig, under their High
Mightinesses the States-General of Holland, to fight the frog-eating
French and popish Spaniards; all who so entered to have complete new
clothing, arms and accoutrements as became a gentleman and soldier,
two guineas bounty, and a crown to drink to the health of their High
Mightinesses, and to the confusion of their enemies!'
A loud hurrah and much brandishing of broadswords followed this
invitation, and ere 'The Point of War' was fully beaten, Lewie
Baronald had shaken hands with this Scottish Sergeant Kite, and had
the Dutch cockade pinned on his blue bonnet by a cunning corporal,
who showed him an old watch like a silver turnip, and worth
half-a-crown, which he boldly alleged had been presented to him 'by
his Royal Highness the Prince of Orange in person.'
His uncle's influence soon procured him 'a pair of colours,' as the
phrase was then, for a commission; and he soon proved himself worthy
of the distinction by the daring and courage he displayed, when the
battalion of Drumlanrig was employed with other Dutch troops in 1774,
at the Cape of Good Hope, in driving the natives from the Bokkeveld
and Roggeveld, back into the deserts on the south-west coast of
Africa; and since his return to Holland his name, the popularity of
his regiment, his handsome face and figure, were equally passports to
the best society in the Hague and at Amsterdam.
But now, it seemed to his uncle and patron, the Colonel-Commandant of
the Brigade, that his prospects were on the point of being marred by
this unlucky passion for the daughter of the Countess van Renslaer.
Kinloch's antipathy to women was well known in the Brigade, and it
was a standing joke among the battalions, that once, when the
coquettish wife of the Grand Pensionary of Amsterdam had lured him
into a game of battledore and shuttlecock, and contrived to let the
latter drop into her ample bosom, and pointing thereto, piteously
besought the General to take it out, that he--obtuse as Uncle Toby
with the Widow Wadman--deftly abstracted it with the tongs.
'The lad will succeed me in time, as Laird of Thominean,' he
muttered, after a time; 'the forfeited baronetcy may be restored: so
why shouldn't he marry because I--I--but better not! They are all
alike--all alike, these women: so he will be safer with the left wing
of Dundas's Battalion in the West Indies, than philandering here at
the Hague.'
But even while giving utterance to his thoughts, his features
relaxed: his irritation or annoyance seemed to abate as other
thoughts stole into his mind, and a shade of melancholy came over his
face; and resting his head upon his hands, he remained for a time in
deep and apparently painful thought.
Then he rose slowly, and selecting a key from a small bunch, opened
an elaborately-carved Dutch cabinet, and from a secret drawer
thereof, curiously and ingeniously hidden by a movable lion's head,
he drew forth the oval miniature of a young girl, and gazed upon it
long, sorrowfully, and tenderly.
There was something quaint and childlike in the beauty of the girl
depicted there, with a string of pearls round her white and slender
throat. Her complexion was clear and pure, her expression innocent,
with golden-brown hair, and golden-brown eyes that seemed to smile on
him again as he gazed on them.
A hot tear started in the eyes of Kinloch, yet he bit his lip, and,
as if angry with himself for the emotion that came over him, he
closed the miniature-case with a sharp snap, and restored it to its
place of concealment hurriedly, muttering:
'Fool that I was--fool that I am now! Heaven grant that this Dolores
of Lewie's may not make the dupe of him that girl made of me! I must
save him from himself. I shall write the Director-General of the
Forces--Berbice or Essequibo it must be. Poor Lewie! I am loth to
part with him; but, der Duyvel! he shall not be the victim of this
old jade and her daughter.'