THE CHILD OF THE SEA.
"'Tis gone--the storm has past,
'Twas but a bitter hail shower, and the sun
Laughs out again within the tranquil blue.
Henceforth, Firmilian, thou art safe with me."
AYTOUN.
To the eyes of those who surveyed the beach beneath the castle walls
next morning, a lamentable spectacle was displayed. The wreck upon
the Partan Craig had been completely torn to pieces by the fury of
the waves, and now shattered masts and yards, blocks and rigging,
casks, bales, planks and other pieces of worn and frayed timber were
left high and dry among the shells and shingle by the receding tide,
or were dashed into smaller fragments by the surf that beat against
the castle rock.
Several dead bodies were also cast ashore, sodden with the brine, and
partly covered with sand; and, though all had been but a short time
in the water, some were sadly mutilated by having been dashed
repeatedly against the sharp and abutting rocks of Rohallion, by the
furious sea last night.
All looked placid and calm, and by the position of their limbs,
nearly all seemed to have been drowned in the act of swimming. By a
portion of the sternboard that came on shore, the vessel's name
appeared to have been the _Louise_; but of what port, or from where,
remained unknown, for, save the little child, there remained no
tongue or record to tell the story of that doomed ship, or the
dreadful secrets of that eventful night.
The mutterings of the fishermen and the lamentations of the women of
the little hamlet, were loud and impressive, as they rambled along
the beach, drawing the dead aside to remain in a boat-shed till that
great local authority, the parish minister, arrived. Everything that
came drifting ashore from the wreck was drawn far up the sand, lest
the returning tide should wash it off again.
There were no Lloyds' agents or other officials in the neighbourhood
of Rohallion, so each man made a lawful prize of whatever he could
lay hands upon and convey to his cottage. The people at work close
by relinquished plough and harrow, and harnessed their horses to the
masts and booms for conveyance through the fields. Others brought
carts to carry off the plunder; and thus, long before midday, not a
trace remained of the shattered ship, save the pale dead men, who lay
side by side under an old sail in the boat-shed; but for many a night
after this, Elsie Irvine and others averred that they could see the
pale blue corpse-lichts dancing on the sea about the Partan Craig, to
indicate where other men lay drowned, uncoffined, and unprayed for.
Among other bodies discovered on the beach next morning was that of a
man in whom, by his costume--a light green frock, laced with
gold--all recognised the father, or supposed father, of the little
boy he had striven so bravely to save, and whom all had seen perish
by the light of their torches.
The poor man was lying among the seaweed, stark and stiff, and half
covered with sand, within a few yards of the cottage where his little
boy, all unconscious of his loss, of the past and of the future, lay
peacefully asleep in Elsie Irvine's bed.
And now the quartermaster and Dominie Skaill, who had given his
schoolboys a holiday, in honour of the excitement and the event,
arrived at the scene of operations, with Lady Rohallion's orders that
the child should be brought to her.
Old John Girvan looked at the corpse attentively.
"This poor fellow has been a soldier," said he; "I can perceive that,
by a glance. Lift him gently into the shed, lads, though it's all
one to him how he's handled now!"
The corpse seemed to be that of a tall, well-formed, and fine-looking
dark-complexioned man, in the prime of life; his dark brown hair,
from which the white powder had all been washed away, was already
becoming grizzled, and was neatly tied in a queue by a blue silk
ribbon. In the breast-pocket of his coat, there were found a purse
containing a few French coins of the Republic, but of small value,
and a plated metal case, in which were some papers uninjured by the
water. On the third finger of his left hand was a signet ring on
which the name "Josephine" was engraved; so with these relics (while
the body was placed with the rest in the boat-shed) John Girvan and
the dominie, accompanied by Elsie, bearing the child, repaired to the
presence of Lady Rohallion, who received them all in her little
breakfast-parlour, the deeply embayed and arched windows of which
showed that it had been the bower-chamber of her predecessors, in the
feudal days of the old castle.
"Come away, Elsie, and show me your darling prize!" she exclaimed, as
she hurried forward and held out her hand to the fisherman's wife,
for there was a singular combination of friendly and old-fashioned
grace in all she did.
"There is no a bonnier bairn, my leddy, nor a better, in a' the three
Bailiwicks o' Kyle, Carrick, and Cunninghame," said Elsie, curtsying
deeply, as she presented the child.
"Yes, madam," added the dominie; "the bairn is as perfect an Absalom
as even the Book of Samuel describeth."
"But I dinna understand a word he says," resumed Elsie; "hear ye
that, madam?"
"Ma mère, ma mère!" sobbed the child, a very beautiful dark-eyed, but
golden-haired and red-cheeked little boy of some seven or eight years
of age, as he looked from face to face in wonder and alarm.
"Faith! 'tis a little Frenchman," said the dominie.
"A Frenchman!" exclaimed Elsie, placing the child somewhat
precipitately on Lady Rohallion's knee, and retiring a pace or two.
"I thocht sae, by his queer jargon of broken English, wi' a
smattering o' Scots words too; but French folk speak nae Christian
tongue. Maybe the bairn's a spy--a son, wha kens, o' Robespierre or
Bonaparte himsel!"
"Elsie, how can you run on thus?"
"Ah, mon père--mon père!" said the child, sobbing.
"Hear till him again, my leddy," exclaimed Elsie; "the bairn can
speak French--that cowes a'!"
"He cries for his father--poor child--poor child!" said Lady
Rohallion, whose eyes filled with tears.
"Father--yes, madame; my father--where is he?" said the boy, opening
his fine large eyes wider with an expression of anxiety and fear, and
speaking in a lisping but strongly foreign accent; "take me to
him--take me to him, madame, if you please."
"The bairn speaks English well enough," said the dominie; "he'll hae
had a French tutor, or some sic haverel, to teach him to play the
fiddle, I warrant, and to quote Voltaire, Rousseau, and Helvetius,
when he grows older."
"What is your name, my dear little boy?" asked Lady Rohallion,
caressingly; but she had to repeat the question thrice, and in
different modes, before the child, who eyed her with evident
distrust, replied, timidly:
"Quentin Kennedy, madame."
"Kennedy!" exclaimed all.
"A gude auld Ayrshire name, ever since the days of Malcolm the
Maiden!" said the quartermaster, striking his staff on the floor.
"Rohallion's mother was a Kennedy," said the lady, a tender smile
spreading over her face as she surveyed the orphan, "so the bairn
could not have fallen into better hands than ours."
"Indubitably not, my lady," chimed in the dominie; "nor could he find
a sibber friend."
"And your father, my dear child--your father?" urged Lady Rohallion.
"My father--oh, my father is drowned! He went down into the sea with
the big ship. Oh, ma mère! ma mère!" cried the little boy, in a
sudden passion of grief, and seeking to escape from them, as the
terrors of the past night, with a conviction of his present isolation
and loneliness, seemed to come fully upon him.
"And your mamma, my little love?" asked the lady, endearingly.
"She is far away in France."
"Where--in what town?"
"Hélas, madame, I do not know."
He sobbed bitterly, and Lady Rohallion wept as she kissed and
fondled, and strove to reassure him by those caresses which none but
one who has been a mother can bestow; but sometimes he repelled her
with his plump little hands, while his dark eyes would sparkle and
dilate with surprise and alarm. Then he would ask for his father
again and again, for the child knew neither what death or drowning
meant; and it was in vain they told him that his father had perished
in the sea. He could not understand them, and to have shown the
child the poor pale, sodden corpse that lay in the boat-shed on the
shore would have been a useless cruelty that must have added to his
grief and terror.
Lady Rohallion, pointing upward as he sat on her knee, told him that
his father was in heaven, and that in time he would meet him there;
for, of such as he was, poor orphan, was the kingdom of heaven made;
but in heaven or in the sea was all one for a time to little Quentin
Kennedy, who wept bitterly, and noisily too, till he grew weary, or
became consoled, by the winning ways of his gentle protectress, for
of course the poor child knew not the nature of his awful loss and
bereavement.
While the boy, already temporarily forgetful of his griefs, was
stretched on the soft, warm hearth-rug before the fire that blazed in
the parlour grate, and occupied himself with the gambols of a wiry
Skye-terrier, John Girvan handed to Lady Rohallion the relics he had
found on the drowned man.
"A ring!" said she; "this is painfully interesting; and it has an
inscription."
"Yes, madame, it is like the _annuli_ worn by the legionary tribunes
in the Punic war," added Dominie Skaill, who never lost an
opportunity of "airing" his classics.
"It bears a crest; that speaks of gentle birth," said Lady Rohallion,
who had a great veneration for that fortuitous circumstance. "And
there is a name, _Josephine_."
"Mamma--ma mère!" exclaimed the child, starting and looking up at
the, no doubt, familiar sound.
"His mother's name, I am sure; poor little fellow, he has heard his
father call her so," said Lady Rohallion, as she opened the plated
case and drew forth the documents it contained. One was on
parchment, the other two were letters.
"A military commission--Girvanmains, look here!"
It was the commission of Quentin Kennedy, _gentilhomme Ecossais_, to
be captain in the Royal Regiment of Scots, in the service of His Most
Christian Majesty, and was signed by the unfortunate Louis XVI., as
the date showed, in the year before his execution.
"So this poor drowned man has eaten his bread by tuck of drum!"
exclaimed the old quartermaster, with a kindling eye, as he stooped
to caress the orphan's golden curls. "Puir fellow--puir fellow! He
has been a commissioned officer like myself, so I'll e'en turn out
the Rohallion Volunteers, and he shall be borne to his grave as
becomes a soldier, with muffled drums and arms reversed--eh, dominie?"
"Yes, and the spoils of war shall be cast on the pile, as we read in
the eleventh book of the Æneid; and they shall march like the
Thebans, striking their weapons one on another, to the sound of the
trumpet--eh, quartermaster?"
"I'd batoon the first lout I caught doing aught so unsteady or so
unsoldierlike," was the indignant response.
"But how came this Scotsman to be serving the French King," asked the
dominie; "as such was he not a renegade soldier, such as the Romans
were wont to stab and leave unburied, as we find in Tacitus?"
"He had been in the foreign brigades, the Scottish and Irish,"
replied the lady. "One of these letters is from Monsieur the Comte
d'Artois, and it praises the courage of the Scottish Captain Kennedy,
of the Regiment de Berwick, in the campaigns upon the Meuse and
Rhine. The other letter is from his poor wife, and is subscribed
Josephine. Ah me, how sad! the name that is on the ring."
They spoke in low tones, as if loth to disturb the child, who was
still playing with the terrier.
"What says it, my lady?" asked the dominie, "for though well versed
in the dead languages, praised be Providence and the auld pedagogy of
Glasgow, I know little of the living--French especially, the language
of Voltaire, Diderot, and Helvetius--of democrats, levellers,
revolutionists, and the slaves of the Corsican tyrant."
"The letter has no date, dominie," replied the lady, smiling at this
outburst; "the cover also is wanting, but it runs thus."
Standing one on each side of her chair, each with a hand at his ear
to listen, the two old men heard her translate with ease the
following letter:
"MY OWN DEAR, DEAR QUENTIN,--
"This is the last letter you will receive in France from your own
Fifine. The next I shall address to you, as you may direct, to
Scotland. Ah, mon Dieu! how sad--how terrible to think that we are
to be separated, and at such a time! But madame my mother's illness
pleads for me with all, and more than all with you, Quentin. You, as
a Scotsman and royalist officer, and our poor child, for the very
blood it inherits from his mother, would be welcome victims to the
shambles of the great Republic; for the first Consul B. and Citizen
M. his secretary of state, would not spare even a child at this
crisis, lest it should grow into an aristocrat and an enemy.* Every
hour the hatred of Britain grows stronger here, and the mode in which
we treat the prisoners taken in Flanders and elsewhere, makes my
blood alternately glow and freeze, Frenchwoman though I am! But I
have not forgotten the Place de la Grève, or the horrors of that day,
when my father's blood moistened the sawdust of a scaffold, just
wetted by the blood of Marie Antoinette.
* The initials no doubt refer to Bonaparte and the secretary Hugues
Bernard Maret, who assisted so vigorously in the 18th Brumaire.
"Enough of this, however, dear Quentin; 'tis safer to speak than to
write of such things, though this letter goes by a safe and sure
hand, our dear friend, the Abbé Lebrun, for in this land of spies the
post is perilous. Destroy it, however, the moment you receive it,
for we know not what mischief it might do us all, though the ship by
which you sail, goes, you say, under cartel, and by the rules of war
can neither be attacked nor taken.
"Rumour says that Monsieur Charles Philippe, the Comte d'Artois, is
now with his suite at Holyrood, the old home of those Scottish kings
with whom his fathers were allied; and that the ancient Garde du
Corps Ecossais is to be re-established for him there. I pray God it
may be so, as in that case, dearest, Monsieur will not forget you and
your services on the Rhine and elsewhere, and your steady adherence
to his family in those days of anarchy, impiety, and sin.
"Kiss our little cherub for me. I am in despair when I think of him,
though he is safer with you than with me, in our dreadful France--no
longer the land of beauty and gaiety, but of the bayonet and
guillotine. He must be our hostage and peace-offering to your
family, and I doubt not that his innocent smiles and golden curls may
soften their hearts towards us both. La Mère de Dieu take you both
into her blessed keeping and hasten our reunion. Till then, and for
ever after, I am your own affectionate little wife,
"FIFINE."
This letter, we have said, was undated, but the postscript led Lady
Rohallion to suppose it came from a remote part of France. It ran
thus:
"Your own petted Fifine sends you a hundred kisses for every mile
this has to travel; as many more to little Quentin, as they wont add
a franc to the weight in the pocket of M. l'Abbé."
So ended this letter, so sad in its love and its tenor, under the
circumstances. With that of the Comte d'Artois, the commission,
purse, and ring, Lady Rohallion carefully put it past in her antique
buhl escritoire, for her husband's inspection on his return; and, on
leaving the castle, the old quartermaster kept his word.
True to his inbred military instincts and impulses, he had the
Rohallion company of Volunteers duly paraded, in their cocked hats,
short swallow-tailed red coats, white leggings, and long black
gaiters; and, with arms reversed, they bore the dead soldier of
fortune, shoulder-high, from the old castle-gate, where the scarlet
family standard, with its fess _ermine_, hung half-hoisted on the
battery.
Mournfully from the leafless copse that clothed the steep sides of
the narrow glen in which the old kirk stood, did the muffled drums
re-echo, while the sweet low wail of the fifes sent up the sad notes
of the dead march--"The Land o' the Leal."
At one of the drawing-room windows, Lady Rohallion sat, with the
child upon her knee--little Quentin Kennedy, our hero, for such he
is; and her motherly heart was full, and her kindly tears fell fast
on his golden hair, when three sharp volleys that rung in the clear
cold air above a yawning grave, and the pale blue distant smoke that
she could see wreathing in the November sunshine, announced the last
scene of this little tragedy--that the poor drowned wanderer, the
Scottish soldier of fortune, who adhered to King Louis in his
downfall, had found a last home in his native earth; and that,
_perhaps_, all his secrets, his sorrows, and the story of his life
were buried with him.
Then with a burst of sympathy and womanly tenderness, she pressed her
lips to the soft cheek of the child, whose eyes dilated with inquiry
and wonder, as he heard those farewell volleys that rung in the
distant air, but little knew that they were fired above his father's
closing grave!