Oh sovereign beauty, you whose charms
All other charms surpass;
Whose lustre nought can imitate,
Except your looking-glass.
Southey, _from the Spanish_.
The arrival of Lady Mabel Stewart was a god-send to the young officers
of the brigade. Already the sources of interest afforded by the
country around, began to fail them. Few men can long make a business
of mere eating and drinking; red-legged partridges were getting scarce
in that neighborhood, and boar hunting in the mountain forests was
distant, laborious, and too often, fruitless of game. The scenery of
the country, the costume and habits of the people, now familiar to
their eyes, palled upon their tastes. They wanted something new to
interest them, and were particularly delighted when this novelty came
from home. But, above all, the black-haired, dark-eyed daughters of
this sunny region grew many shades browner in their eyes. We look not
at the daffodils when the lily rears its head. A new and higher order
of beauty, rare even at home, now demanded homage, and it was freely
paid.
Lord Strathern, a social and jovial man, had always been a favorite
with his subalterns, but now his popularity attained its acme. His
open house became headquarters, even more in a social than a military
sense. It was a little court, and Lady Mabel played the queen regnant
there.
Justly proud of her, her father encouraged this, taking all the
attention she attracted as compliments to himself; and the gentlemen
displayed great ingenuity in devising various excuses for being in
frequent attendance at headquarters, in the service of her ladyship.
Lieutenant Goring, the best horseman in the ---- light dragoons, a
squadron of which had been sent hither with the brigade, to fatten
their emaciated steeds on the barley and maize of Alemtejo,
established himself, uninvited, in the post of equerry, and sedulously
devoted himself to training the beautiful Andalusian provided for Lady
Mabel's own saddle. Of course, he had to be in attendance when she
took the air on horseback. Major Warren, from a free, heedless
sportsman, who followed his game for his own pleasure, became
gamekeeper, or rather, grand huntsman, bound to lay the feathered,
furred, and scaly tribes under contribution to supply her table and
tempt her delicate appetite. A proud and happy man was he when skill
or fortune enabled him to lay the antlered stag or tusked boar at her
feet, and expatiate on the incidents of his sylvan campaign. He, of
course, must be often invited to partake of the social meal. Captain
Cranfield, of the engineers, had just returned from Badajoz, where he
had been repairing shattered bastions, and patching up curtains sadly
torn by shot and shell. He found Lady Mabel busy renovating,
modernising and adorning the rude and comfortless apartments of her
monastic quarters. Immediately his pencil, his professional ingenuity
and skill are devoted to her service. He appoints himself architect,
upholsterer and improver-general to the household. He designed elegant
curtains, with graceful festoons for the misshapen windows, tasteful
hangings to conceal bare walls of rough-hewn stone, picturesque
screens to hide unsightly corners; and arranged and put them up with
as much skill as if, with a native genius for it, he had been bred to
the business. The commonest materials became rich chintz and costly
arras in his hands, mahogany, or rose-wood, at his bidding. One
morning so spent put him on an easier footing with Lady Mabel than a
dozen casual meetings; and he quite got the weather gage of both
equerry and huntsman, securing frequent and easy intercourse, while
advising and assisting her in his inter-menial capacity, whereas these
gentlemen's spheres of official duty lay properly out of doors. But he
soon found a dangerous rival to take the wind out of his sails, in the
person of Major Lumley, who, possessing great taste and skill in
music, accidentally heard Lady Mabel singing in one room, while he was
conversing with her father in the next. "She has," thought and said
the major, "the sweetest voice in the world; and it only needs a
little more cultivation to make it heavenly!" Lord Strathern thought
so too. The major's instructive talents were put into requisition,
and, from private practice, her father led her on, somewhat reluctant,
to more public display, and soon the major and herself discoursed
exquisite music to the ears of a score of officers, at a musical
soirée. If, with the powers, she did not acquire the confidence of a
_prima donna_, it was not his lordship's fault. Had propriety
permitted, he would have brought up the brigade in close column of
divisions, to hear Lady Mabel sing; and he could not help saying to
the gentlemen beside him: "I have heard you young fellows talk about
the nightingale, and have even known some of you spend hours in the
moonlit grove, listening to their music, but my bird from foggy
Scotland can out-warble a wood full of them." And no one felt disposed
to contradict him.
How many others, irresistibly attracted, sought, each in his own way,
to make himself agreeable, we will not undertake to say. Perhaps
Ensign Wade, who, not yet eighteen, had just been rubbing off the
school-boy in the last campaign, was the most madly in love with her;
unless he was surpassed by little Captain Hatton, who, being but five
feet three, had, to the great injury of his marching powers,
magnanimously added an extra inch to his boot heels, that Lady Mabel
might not look too much down upon him, when so happy as to stand
beside her.
Hers was a curious position for a lady, and, yet, more for one so
young. She instinctively looked round for the countenance and support
which only female companions could give. But, of the very few ladies
with the brigade, Mrs. Colonel Colville was at Portalegre, where her
husband's regiment was quartered, the wife of Major Grey was shut up
with him in his sick room; Mrs. Captain Howe had come out from home
less to visit her husband than to cure her rheumatism in the balmy
climate of Elvas; and the wife of Captain Ford had just, very
injudiciously, presented him with two little Portuguese, who might
have made very good Englishmen, had they first seen the light in the
right place. If the brigade had suffered heavy loss in the last
campaign, the ladies of the brigade were absolutely _hors de combat_,
and could not furnish Lady Mabel even a sentinel in the shape of a
chaperon. She felt that this was awkward; but, said she to herself,
"If there were any impropriety in my situation here, Papa would not
open his house so freely to the officers of the brigade." For she
loved and admired him far too much to doubt his judgment on such a
point. Now, Lord Strathern had dined the better part of his life at a
regimental mess table; and when promotion at length removed him from
that genial sphere, he felt selfish and solitary, if he took his
dinner and wine without, at least, a corporal's guard of his brother
officers around him. So far from deeming his daughter's arrival a
reason for excluding them, she was a strong ally, and a delightful
addition to his means of entertaining his friends. So she found
herself suddenly the centre of a circle, composed of gentlemen only,
most of them unmarried, young and gay, and admiring her. In short,
Lady Mabel was finishing off her education in a very bad school,
worse, perhaps, than a Frenchified academy, devoted to the education
of the extremities, in the shape of music, dancing and gabbling
French, with a dash of mental and moral training in the development of
the sickly imagination of the head and the empty vanities of the
heart.
For a time the dilapidated condition of kitchen and refectory
restricted the scale of hospitality at headquarters. But Lady Mabel
soon completed her reforms of house and household, in which she found
old Moodie an able assistant. Captain Cranfield had to bring his
labors of love to an end, and Lord Strathern celebrated the event by
feasting a large party of his friends.
While the company was assembled, Lady Mabel led a party of the first
comers through the apartments, to admire the results of the labor and
taste bestowed upon them. Some of the more prying peeped into the
kitchen to see what was going on there.
"I am glad to see," said Captain Hatton, "that though this is a
monastic house, and this a fast day, we shall not have to dine
orthodoxly, on _bacalhao_ and _sardinhas_."
"Nor be bored with the long Latin grace," said Major Warren, "which
the very walls of the refectory are tired of hearing and not
understanding."
"Would rendering it into English reconcile you to its length?" asked
Lady Mabel.
"Not in the least. I think nothing so heterodox as a long grace, while
soup and fish grow cold."
"I am told," said Lady Mabel, ascending to the apartment above, "that
this was the abbot's own room."
"That is very likely," said Captain Hatton, "from its neighborhood to
the kitchen."
"It is not exactly the apartment," she continued, "which I would
design for a lady's withdrawing room. But, if it satisfied the holy
father before it was thus improved, it is too good for a heretic like
me. I sometimes feel myself a profane intruder here, and, when I call
to mind whom this building belongs to, and see so many red-coated
gentry stalking at ease through dormitory, refectory and cloisters, I
think of rooks who have fled the rookery, before a flock of flamingoes
who usurp their place."
"The pious crows," said Captain Hatton, "would forgive our intrusion,
did they see the bird of paradise that attracts us hither."
"Put a weight on your fancy, Captain Hatton," said Lady Mabel. "Such
another flight and it may soar away altogether. Pray observe the
admirable effect of those hangings, with which Captain Cranfield has
concealed the dark and narrow passage that leads to the oratory."
Major Warren was provoked at the general admiration of Cranfield's
taste and skill, and stung by the repeated thanks with which Lady
Mabel repaid his labors, so he endeavored to turn them into ridicule.
"It is a thousand pities, Cranfield, that these happy designs should
perish with their temporary use. Let me beg you to send a sketch of
them to Colonel Sturgeon, the head of your department. They should be
preserved among the draughts and plans of the engineer corps."
Cranfield was about to make angry answer, but Lady Mabel anticipated
him by saying: "doubtless, whenever Colonel Sturgeon has occasion to
turn monkish cloisters into ladies' bowers, it will save him a world
of trouble to avail himself of these designs."
At this moment dinner was announced. Colonel Bradshawe, resolving that
his juniors should not have Lady Mabel all to themselves, availed
himself of his right of precedence, to hand her into the room, and
seated himself at her right hand.
Full thirty guests occupied the space between her father's portly, but
martial figure, and her seat at the head of the table; and though,
Minerva-like in air and form, she presided there with exquisite grace,
she shrunk from this long array, and sought a kind of privacy in
devoting her attention, somewhat exclusively, to the senior colonel of
the brigade. Knowing how important a matter dining was in his
estimation, she soon made a conquest of him, by her judicious care in
supplying his wants, tickling his palate, and coinciding in his
tastes. She even, for his benefit, called into requisition the
unwilling service of old Moodie, who had habitually taken his post
behind her, like a sentinel, not troubling himself about the wants of
the guests. The colonel might have choked with thirst before he
spontaneously handed him a decanter.
Colonel Bradshawe having made himself comfortable, next sought to make
himself agreeable. "What a delightful contrast between my situation
to-day, and this day year, Lady Mabel."
"Where were you then?"
"About this hour we were fording the Aguada, in a snow storm, to
invest Ciudad Rodrigo."
"That was somewhat different from our present occupation."
"We soon finished that little job, however, before we had suffered
many privations there. But it proved to be but the opening of a
campaign, which I began, after a time, to think would never come to an
end."
"And, unhappily," said Lady Mabel, "it did not end quite so well as it
promised to do."
"Fortune is a fickle mistress, and fond of showing her character in
war," said the colonel. "Sometimes she favors one party with a run of
luck, then shifts suddenly over to the other side. So with
individuals, only there she is most apt to work at cross purposes. One
pretty fellow deserves to live forever, and gets knocked on the head
in the first skirmish; another deserves to rise, and all his good
service is overlooked or forgotten; another gets praise and promotion
for what he never did, or ought never to have done. Some men have such
luck! There is L'Isle now, who, after being pushed on as fast as money
and family interest could shove him; what next happens to him? Why
just for blundering into a Spanish village, and being nearly taken
with his whole command, he is made a lieutenant-colonel on the spot."
"That is a curious result of such a blunder."
"Curious, but true. This is capital port," interjected the colonel,
emptying his glass. "We drank no such stuff as this during the last
campaign. I would not disgust you with a detail of our privations; but
you must know, Lady Mabel, that during the whole march from Madrid to
Burgos, and thence, in retreat, to Ciudad Rodrigo, I never tasted a
bottle of wine that deserved the name, except one of _Peralta_, of
which I feel bound to make honorable mention. I met with it by great
good luck at the posada at Buitrago; but when I called for another, it
was so excellent that the landlord had drank all himself. The stuff
we had to drink was made by pouring water on the skins of grapes
already pressed. After they had been well macerated in it, it was
allowed to ferment and grow sour, then sold to us at the price of good
liquor."
"That accounts," said Lady Mabel, "for the provident care you lately
showed, in laying in a stock of better liquor for your winter's
use. Is it true that you sent a special agent to Xeres de la Frontera,
to select the best sherry for the regimental mess?"
"Not exactly a special agent," said the colonel, disclaiming it with a
gentle wave of the hand; "but, finding a trusty person, and a capital
judge, going thither, we did charge him with a little commission that
way."
"I was sorry to hear of your disappointment," added she, in a
commiserating tone. "I am told that he found that the firm of Soult,
Victor & Co., had already taken up all the oldest and best wine on
credit, that is, without paying for it; and you had to put up with new
and inferior brands, or go without any."
"It is but too true," said the colonel, with a sigh. "Those rascally
Frenchmen had drained the country of everything worth drinking; our
agent, very wisely, under the circumstances, made no purchase there,
and I am glad of it; for I have since learned, that the Amontillado,
which had been recommended to us as the dryest of sherry wines, is
made from a variety of grapes plucked before they are ripe."
"How lucky," said Lady Mabel, in a congratulatory tone, "that you have
since found out that this wine is made of sour grapes."
A faint suspicion that she was laughing at him induced him to change
the topic. "You were never abroad before, I believe. This part of the
country has some drawbacks; but I think you will find it, during the
winter, a very pleasant part of the world."
"We will all endeavor to make it so to you, Lady Mabel," said Major
Warren, who, impatient of his superior's monopoly, here tried to edge
in a word. But the colonel cut him short with "That's a mere truism,
Warren, a self-evident proposition. Let us have nothing more of that
sort. One of the peculiarities of this climate, Lady Mabel, is that it
has a double spring: one in February and another in April. Then we
will see you take your appropriate place in the picture, representing
the heyday of youth in the midst of spring, and beauty, surrounded by
flowers."
She bowed low, in suppressing a laugh at this elaborate compliment,
and said, "Will spring be so soon upon us?"
"In a fortnight you may gather the same flowers which at home you must
wait for till May."
"Not the same flowers," said she, quickly. "Portugal has a Flora
peculiar to itself, embracing very few of our native British plants. I
am on my strong ground on this topic, being a pupil of Dr. Graham, who
relieves his graver studies by striving to rival King Solomon in the
knowledge of plants, 'from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that
grows on the wall.' I am pledged to carry home a vast _hortus siccus_
for him."
"Oh! a scientific young lady--perhaps a little of a blue-stocking,
too," said the colonel to himself. "I must hash up a dish to suit her
peculiar taste. Though no botanist," continued he aloud, "there is one
plant that has strongly attracted my attention, and I recommend it to
yours; though your _hortus siccus_ will hardly contain a fair specimen
of it."
"What is that?" said she, on the _qui vive_ to hear of some rare
plant.
"It is the cork-oak," said the colonel, solemnly. "Its rough exterior
has led tourists and artists, and even naturalists, to treat it with
neglect, while it is daily contributing to the comfort, delight, and
civilization of the world."
"It may, perhaps," said Lady Mabel, hesitating, "be said to do all
that you attribute to it."
"Does it not strike you as passing strange, Lady Mabel, (_apropos_ to
our subject, pray take a glass of wine with me,) that the Romans, who
were, doubtless, a great and a wise people, should have been masters
of Spain and Gaul, and of their forests of cork trees for
centuries--that these Romans," continued he, growing eloquent on the
subject, "who had the tree in their own country, though not, perhaps,
in the full perfection of its cortical development, and did apply its
bark to a number of useful purposes, including, occasionally, that of
stoppers for vessels, should yet never have attained to the systematic
use of it in corking their bottles!"
"Strange, indeed," said Lady Mabel. "It was shutting their eyes
against the light of nature; for, we may say, that the obvious final
end of the cork tree is to provide corks for bottles."
"A great truth well expressed," said the colonel. "Such an oversight
has hardly a parallel; unless it be in their invention of printing and
never using it. For we see, in the baker's name, stamped on the loaves
found in Pompeii, and words impressed on their pottery and other
articles, what amounts to stereotype printing; yet they never went on
to separate the individual letters, and so become compositors and
printers in the usual sense of the art. But they could certainly get
on better without printing than without corks."
"Undoubtedly. For the world may--indeed, has--become too full of
books; while there is little fear of its becoming too full of bottles;
they get emptied and broken so fast."
"I wonder whether Horace," continued Colonel Bradshawe, with a
thoughtful air, "when he opened a jar of Falernian, was obliged to
finish it at a sitting, to prevent its growing sour? Wine out of a
jar! Think of that. With a wooden or earthen stopper, made tight with
pitch. Think of having your wine vinho-flavored with pitch! like the
_vinho verde_ of these Portuguese peasants, out of a pitchy goat-skin
sack."
Lady Mabel looked nauseated at the idea, and the colonel swallowed a
glass of Madeira, to wash away the pitchy flavor. "Yes," said he,
shaking his head gravely, "they must have often felt sadly the want of
a cork. How would it be possible to confine champagne (I am sorry this
cursed war prevents our getting any,) until it is set free with all
its life and perfection of flavor, just at the moment of enjoyment!
They had glass, too, and used glass, these Romans, yet persevered in
keeping their wine in those abominable jars. It proves how little
progress they had made in the beautiful art of glass-blowing; and, of
course, (here the colonel took up a decanter of old Madeira and
replenished his glass, after eyeing approvingly the amber-colored
liquor,) they were ignorant that wines that attain perfection by
keeping, ripen most speedy in light-colored bottles."
"Indeed!" said Lady Mabel, "I did not know that. But I learn something
new from you every moment."
"And that," said he, nodding approvingly at her, "is something worth
knowing. I doubt, after all, whether these Romans, with the world at
their beck, really knew much of the elegant and refined pleasures of
life. Setting aside their gladiatorial shows, and the custom of
chaining the porter by the leg to the doorpost, that he might not be
out of the way when friend or client called on his master, and similar
rude habits, there is enough to convict them as a gross people. They
put honey in their wine, too! What a proof of childish, or rather,
savage taste! Lucullus' monstrous suppers, and Apicius' elaborate
feasts, are better to read about than to partake of. Give me, rather,
a quiet little dinner of a few well-chosen dishes and wines, and three
or four knowing friends, not given to long stories, but spicy in talk,
and I will enjoy myself better than 'the noblest Roman of them all.'"
"But, Colonel Bradshawe, how did you become so familiar with Roman
manners? Many of us know something of their public life, their wars,
conquests, seditions and laws; but you seem to have put aside the
curtain, and peered into the house, first floor, garret and cellar."
"You overrate my learning, Lady Mabel; my tastes naturally lead me to
inform myself on some points that may seem to lie out of the common
road. Some people take the liberty of calling me an epicure. I admit
it so far as this: I hold it to be our duty to enjoy ourselves wisely
and well. Much as I esteem a knowing _bon vivant_, I despise an
ignorant glutton, or undiscriminating sot. To know how to make the
most of the good things given us, is, at once, a duty and a
pleasure. This conviction has led me to heighten what are called our
epicurean enjoyments, by investigating the history of cookery, the
literature of the vineyard, and other cognate branches of learning."
"You have devised a happy union of intellectual and sensual pleasure,
well calculated to heighten both."
"Why were these good things given us," said the colonel, gracefully
waving his hand over the table, "but that we should ascertain their
uses, and apply them accordingly?"
"I begin to understand your philosophy, in letting none of the good
things of life run to waste, but rather receiving them all in the
spirit of thankfulness."
"In those few words you express the essence of my philosophy."
"There may be," continued Lady Mabel, "as much piety, and certainly
more wisdom, in frankly enjoying the good things given us, than in
despising the world which God made, and rejecting the blessings it
teems with, like these self-tormenting ascetics, the monks and friars
around us."
"Heaven help your simplicity, Lady Mabel! They only pretend to do so,
the hypocrites! Rest assured, every one of these fellows is on the
sly."
"What! No exceptions? Is it true of every one--
'His eyes are set on heaven, his heart on earth?'"
"It fits them to a man!" said the colonel. "Their vocation is securing
to themselves the god things of this world, by promising to others the
blessings of the next: and as for the friars, true to their motto,
_Nihil habentes et omnia possidentes_, they profess to hold no special
property, merely that the whole country might be bound to maintain
them. They know the value of the good things of this life, and how to
enjoy them in a corner."
"These odd-looking monks and friars attract me much," said Lady Mabel:
"perhaps they will not bear a close inspection; but, with all my
prejudice against them, I must own, that many seem truly devout, and
the friars, at least, very zealous in their labors among the people."
"Yet the people, except the women," said Bradshawe, "are losing faith
in their greasy reverences."
"Women are everywhere more devout than men," she answered; "and I do
indeed observe their greasy reverences, as you call them, conversing
oftener with our sex than yours."
"Observe more closely, Lady Mabel, and you will see that they are most
zealous for the conversion of the young women, the tender lambs of the
flock. They care little for a tough, smoke-dried, old woman's soul."
This was said with a knowing, wink, and caused some merriment among
his juniors within ear-shot.
A gradual but perceptible change was coming over the colonel's manner,
which Lady Mabel did not like. In fact, Lord Strathern had pushed the
bottle briskly, though sometimes slighting it himself, as did many of
his guests; but Bradshawe made it a point of conscience to take toll
every time it passed him. He had, moreover, violated one of his own
maxims, in talking incessantly while imbibing his liquor; so she took
advantage of the next pause in his conversation to leave the table.