THE QUARTERMASTER'S SNUGGERY.
"Ambition is dead within me: but there is some satisfaction in a
queen's commission, with half-pay at the end of it."--_Once a Week_.
Quentin Kennedy loved the venerable dominie, but was undoubtedly
bored by his pedantry, and to escape it, once actually disappeared
for three entire days, to the utter dismay of the whole household at
Rohallion, when it was naturally supposed that he had been kidnapped
by gipsies, or carried off by the smugglers, who frequented the coves
in the rocks when the nights were dark and gusty; that he had been
carried off by the pressgang from Ayr, or had fallen over the cliffs
when bird-nesting, until Elsie Irvine arrived at the castle, in tears
and tribulation, to announce that he had cunningly secreted himself
in the "saut-backet" of her husband's clinker-built boat, and gone
with the little fleet from the adjacent bay to the herring fishery.
When Lady Winifred's old friend and school companion, Eleonora
Hamilton (then Countess of Eglinton) visited the castle with her two
unmarried daughters, the Ladies Lilias and Mary--which she did once
yearly--it was always a happy time for Quentin; for then he had two
little companions with whom to romp and swing in the old terraced
gardens; for whom to gather birds' eggs and butterflies in the old
woods of Rohallion, and before whom he could exhibit his boyish skill
in shooting at the butts, or hooking a brown trout in the Girvan or
the Doon; but of the two, his chief friend and playmate was the
fair-haired, blue-eyed, and softly-voiced little Lady Mary, with whom
he generally opened the dance at the annual kirn, or harvest-home,
which Lord Rohallion always gave to the field-labourers in the great
barn of the home-farm, and on these occasions, the brightest ribbons
that Maybole could produce, together with the dominie's violin and
Pate's pipes, were in full requisition.
On a November night, about four years after the boy's arrival at
Rohallion, his two friends, the dominie and ex-quartermaster, were
seated in the latter's apartment discussing, which they did very
frequently, the boy's pranks and progress, with a pipe of tobacco and
a jug of hot toddy at the same time.
John Girvan's "snuggery," as he termed it, was in a square tower at
an angle of the barbican wall of the old castle. The loopholes for
defence by arrows or arquebusses yet remained under the window-sills,
to enfilade all approach to the gate-way. They had been made with
special reference to the English and the Kennedies of Kilhenzie; but
there was a chance now that "the French might come by the same road."
The chamber was small, but very cosy, papered with a queer old
pattern over the wainscoting; the walls were of vast strength, the
windows arched, the fire-place deep, and lined with shining Delft
squares of the Puritan times, representing bulbous-shaped Dutch
skaters, and the instructive old Scriptural story of Susannah and the
Elders.
The dark oak floor was minus a carpet, for the quartermaster had been
long enough under canvas and in barracks to despise such a luxury.
Over the mantelpiece was a gaudily-coloured print of the Marquis of
Cornwallis in full uniform, with a huge wig and cocked hat, New York
and a hecatomb of slaughtered Yankees in the distance. Under this
work of art hung the quartermaster's old regimental sword, with its
spring shell, his crimson sash and gilt gorget, graven with a
thistle, and the (to him) magic number "25"--his household _lares_,
as the dominie called them.
Bound with iron, an old baggage-trunk, that had been over half the
habitable globe, bore the same number and regiment.
Pipes, whips, and spurs and boot-tops, dog-eared Army Lists and empty
bottles, littered all the mantelshelf and window-bunkers, and with
some very wheezy-looking old chairs made up the appurtenances of the
room, through which the fire shed a blaze so cheerful, that the
dominie had no desire, when he heard the wind moaning through the
battlements above, to face the blast which howled down the lonely
glen that lay beyond the haunted gate.
A broiled poor man o' mutton and fried trout from the Girvan smoked
on the table beside the toddy jugs, and all within looked cheery, as
these two oddly-assorted friends, who had scarcely an idea in common,
sat down to supper.
"Aye, dominie, it is a dreich night!" said the quartermaster, filling
his pipe; "but your jug is empty, brew again; and now wi' a' your
book-learning, can you tell me the name o' the man who invented this
same whisky?"
"Many a night in Mossgiel, wi' Burns, we've drank to his memory,
whoever he was," replied the dominie; "but odds my heart! John
Girvan, I have scarcely got the better o' the fright that brat o' a
laddie gave us, when he disappeared and ran off to the herring
fishery."
The quartermaster laid down his pipe gravely, for he and the dominie
had a perpetual disagreement about how Quentin was to be educated.
The former laboured hard to teach him the use of fire-arms (Brown
Bess in particular), to box, and to handle the pistol and broadsword,
saying, that without such knowledge he would never be a man; while
the poor dominie laboured still harder to infuse in his nature a love
for literature and the arts of peace, and though compelled to console
himself for Quentin's rapid progress in those of war, by some musty
quotation concerning the Actian games which were instituted in honour
of the victory over Marc Antony, he could not resist asking,
"To what end do you teach the laddie all this military nonsense--this
use of sword and musket, John?"
"For drill and discipline, dominie--drill and discipline."
"Both excellent things in their way, quartermaster; the Romans, who
conquered all the world----"
"South of Forth and Clyde--haud ye there, dominie!"
"Well, they conquered by the force of their discipline, and as that
declined, so did their power; but to what profitable end, I say,
teach the bairn all these havers about wars, battles, and
bombshelling? Do you wish to make of him a tearing, swearing,
tramping dragoon, such as we read of in the days of that atrocious
Claverhouse?"
"Not at all, dominie."
"Then," asked Skaill, angrily, "what would ye make of him?"
"A man, where you would make him a Molly."
The dominie shook his head, and as he did so the bag of his wig shook
pendulously behind him.
"John Girvan, bairns should be taught early to delight, not in arts
which conduce to the destruction of human life, but in such as lead
to charity, mercy, benevolence, and humanity."
"Quite right, dominie, and for utterly ignoring all these, I know a
man of peace who had his lugs cropped off his head."
"Cropped?"
"Shaven clean off his head by a knife."
"Barbarous! barbarous!"
"But just, dominie--strictly just. Did you ever hear how our 28th,
or North Gloucestershire, came to be called _the Slashers_?"
"Sooth to say, John, I never heard o' them at all."
"Well, pass the bottle, and I care na if I tell you. A company of
ours was quartered with them in a town on the Canadian frontier. It
was during the winter of '79, when the atmosphere was so cold that
the hoar-frost on our sentries' greatcoats made them look for a' the
world like figures round a bridecake; stiff half-and-half grog froze
before you could drink it; the bugles froze with the buglers' breath;
flesh came off if you touched a swordblade or musket barrel, and the
air was full of glittering particles. We had to saw our ration beef
in slices, and half roast our loaves before we could cut them. Men
were found dead in the snow every day--stiff and frozen; in fact,
there was no way of keeping ourselves warm, do what we might. I
don't know how many degrees it was _below_ the freezing point, but
the cold was awful, and it seemed as if the mercury was frozen too!
"Amid the severity of that Canadian winter, the mayor of the town, a
democratic and discontented ruffian, refused billets to the soldiers'
wives, and the poor women and helpless children of the 28th nearly
all perished in the streets; in the mornings they were found frozen
like statues, or half-buried among the snow; but severely was the
mayor punished, for one day as he sat at dinner the table was
suddenly surrounded by a party of savages, in war-paint, with hunting
shirts, fur cloaks, moccassins, and wampum belts. They whooped,
yelled, brandished their tomahawks, and then dragging the mayor from
the table, sliced off both his ears. After this they at once
disappeared, and it was not known for some days that these pretended
savages were soldiers of the 28th whose wives had perished through
his inhumanity. It was for this that we first called them
'slashers,' a title which their bravery in the war fully confirmed."
"The wretch was rightly served," said the dominie; "and truly did our
old friend Rob write of 'man's inhumanity to man making countless
thousands mourn.'"
"Aye, dominie, that poem is as gude as any sermon that ever was
written!" exclaimed the quartermaster.
"But to return to Quentin, it is wi' such barbarous stories as that
you have told me you fill the bairn's head, John, at an age when his
mind should be impressed wi' ideas of charity and mercy. How noble
it was of the great Constantine, to employ his son, as soon as he
could write, in signing pardons and granting boons. Under favour,
John, the pen is a nobler instrument than the sword."
"Then how about Wight Wallace and the Bruce of Carrick, dominie, eh?
Had they never learned to handle aught but a goosequill, where would
our auld mother Scotland have been to-day; so shut pans, ye auld
gomeril, and brew your toddy."
The dominie chuckled and said,
"I have worn a red coat mysel', quartermaster, for when Thurot was
off the west coast, I was a year in the volunteers under the Earl o'
Glencairn."
"The best year of your life, dominie!"
"I had a sword, a musket and a bayonet. 'Thrice is he armed who hath
his quarrel just.'"
"And how did you feel when you saw the beacons blazing on the Carrick
hills, and heard the drums dinging before you, on the night o' the
_false alarm_?" asked the old soldier with a sly smile.
"I shouted like Julian when sent to war, 'Oh Plato! Plato! what a
task for a philosopher.'"
"The deevil you did!" exclaimed Girvan, puffing vigorously; "and what
then?"
"Glencairn fined me twenty merks Scots, for speaking in the ranks."
"Fined--I'd have flogged you at the drumhead wi' the
cat-o'-nine-tails."
"The Romans used a vine sapling, as we find in Juvenal, and----"
"Bother those Romans, whoever they were, if they really ever existed
at all! You are ever and aye stuffing Quentin wi' these Romans and
their sayings and doings."
"Indubitably, and I would that I could teach him all that was ever
known to the seven wise men o' Greece."
"And who were they?"
"Bias, Pittacus, Solon, Chilo, Periander, Cleobulus, and Thales,"
replied the dominie with singular volubility; "all men who flourished
before the Christian era."
"Powder and pipeclay! Egad, I'm glad they don't flourish now. Their
names sound just like those of a regiment of niggers we had at the
siege of Boston. Pardon, dominie,--but I must have my joke. I wish
I could teach Quentin something of fortification," he added
thoughtfully, as he watched the pale smoke from his pipe curling up
towards the ceiling.
"It is an art almost coeval wi' man," responded the other approvingly.
"True," rejoined the quartermaster; "for did not Cain build a city
with a wall round it on Mount Libuan, and call it after his son
Enoch?"
"Right, quartermaster, right!" said the pedant, rubbing his hands
with pleasure. "Yea, and the Babylonians, after the waters of the
flood, built them cities, and wi' strong ramparts encompassed them
about; but I hope, if I live, to hear Quentin Kennedy expound on all
that and more, in the pulpit of Rohallion kirk."
"What!" roared the quartermaster, in a tone that made the dominie
start back; "make a minister of him?"
"Yea, John Girvan; and wherefore not?"
"He has about as much vocation for the kirk as I have. Would you
have him drag out his life like a drone in a Scotch country manse,
when a' the warld is up and stirring? Quentin is a penniless lad wi'
a proud spirit, so he must e'en follow the drum, as his father
followed it before him."
"His father before him, say ye? Some puir fellow, the son o' an
outlawed Jacobite, doubtless. I dinna think, quartermaster, that
_he_ made much o' the trade o' war; a trade that is clean against
scripture in every respect."
"Dominie, did not Richard Cameron, who fell bravely, battling for the
right, at Airs Moss, only a hundred and twenty years ago, know every
cut of his good broadsword, as well as the texts of his Bible? A
man's hands should always be ready to keep his head; thus, whatever
may be before him, I have taught Quentin to fence and to shoot."
"No harm, perhaps, in either, for I remember me," replied the
inveterate quoter, "that Bishop Latimer says of himself 'my poor
father was as diligent to teach me to shoot, as to learn any other
thing.' But anent Quentin Kennedy, you and I will never be able to
agree, John, so----"
"We'll e'en leave the lad's future to himself, dominie. I think he
has some right to be consulted, and, odds heart! he is but a bairn
yet; a bairn, though, that can handle his pistol as well as my other
pupil, the Master Cosmo."
"Fie, fie, John Girvan! and a most sinfu' use has the Master made o'
his skill."
"He has paraded a good many bucks and bullies by daylight; but what
would you have an officer to do? If insulted, he must challenge; if
challenged, he must go out, or quit the service and society too."
The dominie shook his head solemnly in deprecation of such
sentiments, and said--
"I fear me muckle the Master will meet wi' his match some day, and a
black one it will be for the house o' Rohallion; but now for my
_deoch an doruis_. Pass the dram bottle. Ugh! the road down the
glen will be eerie to-night, and I can never forget that awfu'
morning, John, when I saw the wraith of Cosmo's uncle, standing at
the castle-gate, in his wig, cocked hat, and red coat, silent and
grim, even as the ghost of Cæsar, on the night before Philippi."
"Wi' a' the whisky you had under your belt, I wonder you didna see
_twa_ o' them."
"Jest not--jest not," said the dominie, with, we are sorry to say,
half-tipsy solemnity, as he drained his _deoch_ to the last drop,
tied a large yellow bandanna over his three-cornered hat and under
his chin, assumed his walking-staff, and prepared to depart. "I hope
the servant-lass will air the night-cap that she puts wi' the Bible
at my bedside every night."
The quartermaster laughed slily, as he knew that the cap referred to
was a stoup of strong ale, which, in the old Scottish fashion, the
dominie's servant always placed with the Bible on a stool near his
bed.
The poor dominie's potations mounted to his head as he began to move,
and, striking his cane emphatically as he stepped away, he sung, in
somewhat uncertain tones:--
"My kimmer and I lay down to sleep,
Wi' twa pint stoups at our bed's feet:
And aye when we wakened we drank them dry,
Sae what think ye o' my kimmer and I?
Toddling butt and toddling ben,
When round as a neep ye come toddling hame!"
And so he departed in the dark, in a mood that neither brownie nor
bogle could scare.