COSMO THE MASTER.
"Why make I friendships with the great,
When I no favour seek?
Or follow girls seven hours in eight--
I need but once a week?
Luxurious lobster night's farewell,
For sober studious days!
And Burlington's delicious meal,
For salads, tarts, and peas."--POPE.
The first rider was indeed the Master of Rohallion, who had arrived
with a punctuality that was more military than personal, as the
Honourable Cosmo Crawford was somewhat erratic, and, as the Guards
Club said significantly, "nocturnal," in his habits; and here it may
be well to inform the English reader, that his haughty title of
MASTER he obtained in right of his father being a Scottish baron, the
custom being older than the reign of James IV.
In ancient times, the heirs apparent of Scottish nobles were not
discriminated according to their father's rank by the titles of
marquis, viscount, earl, or lord, but were simply styled as the
Masters of Marischal, Glencairn, Glammis, Lindesay, Rohallion, and so
forth, a custom existing in Scotland to the present day, in most
houses, under ducal rank.
Cosmo Crawford was tall and strongly built, but handsome and
graceful, with a cold and stately manner, that sometimes degenerated
into banter, but seldom perfect suavity, and he had a somewhat cruel
and sinister grey eye. The pupils of the latter feature had a
peculiarity worth noticing. They possessed the power of shrinking
and dilating like those of a cat. His hair was curly and worn in the
Prince Regent's profusion, but without powder, that being already
considered almost Gothic, or decidedly behind the age, the curls on
one side being so arranged as to conceal a very palpable sword-cut.
Like that of his valet, to whom he flung his riding-whip, hat, and
coat, his garments were all of the latest Bond Street cut, and he
lounged towards the yellow-damask drawing-room as coolly and
leisurely as if he had only left it two hours instead of two years
ago, according but a cold stare to the warm smile and respectful
salute of poor old Jack Andrews, who, throwing open the door,
announced,
"The Master, my Lord!"
"Welcome home, boy--God bless you!" shouted the hearty old lord,
springing towards him; but Lady Rohallion anticipated him, and
received Cosmo in her arms first.
"Dear mother, glad to see you," said he, kissing her forehead;
"father, how well, how jolly and hale you look!"
"Hale," repeated the white-haired peer; "don't like to be called
hale, it smacks, Cosmo, of breaking up; looking well, only for one's
years, and so forth."
"And my Lady Rohallion," said Cosmo, kissing his mother's hand, "what
shall I say of you?
"'With curious arts dim charms revive,
And triumph in the bloom of fifty-five.'"
"Arts, you rogue," said his father; "it's no art, but the pure breeze
from our Carrick hills and from the Firth of Clyde, with perhaps
earlier hours at night and in the morning than you keep in London."
"Well, I am sorry my compliments displease you both," said he,
laughing; "I am unfortunate, but pray be merciful; I have bade adieu
to the Guards, to London, and all its glories to rusticate among you
for a time. So, so, here comes Miss Warrender of Ardgour, I presume,
and Quentin Kennedy; I saw you both in the avenue, I think," added
Cosmo, the pupils of his pale eyes shrinking as he concentrated his
gaze and knit his dark brows, which nearly ipet in one, over a
straight and handsome nose. "Flora, you are charming! May I----"
The kiss he bluntly gave her seemed to burn a hole in Quentin's
heart, for it may readily be supposed that he saluted the lovely
young girl with much more _empressement_ than he did the worthy lady
his mother. Flora blushed scarlet, and glanced at Quentin
imploringly, as much as to say, "don't be angry, dearest--you see
that I cannot help this;" but he felt only rage to see the little
cherry-lip, which his own had so lately touched in tremulous love and
reverence, roughly and eagerly saluted by this _brusque_ and _blasé_
guardsman. Rapid though Flora's glance was, the latter detected it.
"And this is Quentin?" said he, surveying him through his eyeglass,
with a deepening knit in his dark brows, and a smile on his haughty
lips; "what a great hulking fellow he has become! Begad, he is tall
enough for a rear-rank grenadier; and why is he not set to do
something, instead of idling about here, and no doubt playing the
devil with the preserves?"
There was some sense in the question, but coming from such a quarter,
and the tone in which, it was spoken, cut Quentin to the quick.
"He is barely done with his studies," urged Lord Rohallion, coming to
his favourite's rescue.
"Before I was his age, I had mounted my first guard at St. James's
Palace."
"And I mine on the banks of the Weser," said his father.
Quentin looked steadily at the cold, keen face of the Master, who was
not yet six-and-thirty--but his Guards' life made him look much
older; thus, to a lad of Quentin's years, those of the Master seemed
quite patriarchal; a time came, however, when he thought otherwise,
and removed the patriarchal period of life a few years further off.
"Well, Cosmo, talking of age," said Lord Rohallion, slapping his tall
son on the back, "to be lieutenant-colonel of a line regiment at
six-and-thirty, with the Cross of the Bath, for doubtless you will
get it----"
"Of course, father, of course--one thing follows the other--well?"
"Is being decidedly lucky," said Lady Winifred, closing his
lordship's sentence, and glancing at Flora, to see what she thought
of it.
"With the prospect of a long war before him, too."
"Yes, father, and I hope that the luck in store will belie the
prophecy of my old foster-mother, Elsie Irvine, at the Coves, who
used to allege, that when I _first_ left your room, mother, a puling
and new-born brat, I was carried _down_ a stair instead of up, a
certain token that I should never rise in the world. I have often
made the Prince Regent, Paget, and other fellows laugh at that story;
yet I have always had a fair run of success in everything I
undertake."
"Which should make you in future avoid all affairs at Chalk Farm, and
so forth; you have had three men out there in three years, Cosmo."
"And winged them all. My dear lord, don't talk. Some small sword
affairs of yours, when Leicester fields was the fashionable place,
are still remembered in London."
"Yes--I ran two friends of Mr. Wilkes fairly through the body there
one morning, for permitting themselves to indulge in national
reflections, and would do so again if the same cause were given me:
but, zounds! what else could we do in those days of the 'North
Briton?' By-the-bye, is this new movement about the stuff called gas
spreading in London?"
"Yes; I wish you had been there on the 28th of January, 1807, and
seen Pall-Mall actually lighted with it--by a man named Winsor, the
Cockney call him a mad man for thinking of such a scheme!"
"Did you pass through Edinburgh?"
"I was obliged to do so, my lord, unfortunately."
"Did you make any stay there?"
"Stay! I should think not--only long enough to dine with some jolly
fellows of the Cinque Ports Dragoons, at the new barrack, built some
fifteen years ago at Piershill--"
"Once Colonel Piers' place--Piers, of the old Scotch 17th--Aberdour's
Light Dragoons."
"Exactly, and then to get a relay of post-horses at Ramsay's stables.
But as for staying in Edinburgh, egad! it would be intolerable to me,
with its would-be dandies and its freckled women, whose faces have
that sweet expression imparted by the soothing influences of
Presbyterianism and the east wind; and then its one street, or only
half a street to promenade in, who the devil would stay there that
could stay out of it? Why, not even the rhyming ganger who hailed it
as 'Edina, Scotia's darling seat.'"
As his son concluded with a loud laugh, Lord Rohallion shook his
powdered head, for he could not endorse this unpatriotic depreciation
of the Scottish metropolis, and poor Lady Winifred sighed as she
glanced at a black silhouette by Miers, presented to her by the bard
of Coila, with a copy of his verses in her honour; and then
remembering the fancied glories of the Old Assembly Close, as she and
her friend, Lady Eglinton, had seen them in their girlhood, she said:
"In my time, Cosmo, Edinburgh was wont to be gay enough."
"A sad gaiety. Thank God, mother, the Guards can never be quartered
in so dull a provincial town."
"Its dulness is the effect of the Union, which removed court,
council, parliament, revenue, and everything," said Lord Rohallion.
"I thought most people had ceased to consider that a grievance," said
his son, laughing again; "but I think that if Edinburgh has been dull
since 1707, it must have been truly diabolical before it."
"Cosmo," said his mother, reproachfully, "I know not what some of
your ancestors who fought at Flodden and Pinkey would have thought of
you."
"The more fools they to fight at such places."
"Not so," said the old lord rising, with some asperity in his tone;
"God rest all who ever fought or died for Scotland and her kings; and
I must tell you, Cosmo, that you will never be the better or the
truer Briton for being a bad or false Scotsman!"
The Master gave another of his sinister laughs; and, finding that the
conversation had suddenly taken an uncomfortable turn, his father
said with a smile--
"I was about to express a hope, Cosmo, that with the rank of
lieutenant-colonel, you mean to settle at last, and become quiet."
"What, my lord--have I been drawing too heavily upon you and old John
Girvan of late?"
"I mean, that pranks which passed well enough in a subaltern, won't
do in one who looks to the command of a regiment."
"Pelting the rabble with rotten eggs at Epsom, and so forth, you
mean? No; in my days a sub, after pulling off half the knockers in
Piccadilly, breaking all the oil lamps in Pall Mall, getting up a cry
of fire in the Hay market, and bringing out the engines to pump on
the rascally mob; having, at least, one set-to with the rough and
muscular democrats of the watch, would finish off by a champagne
supper somewhere, and thus bring to a close a reputable London day,
which, in our corps, usually begins after evening parade. Ah, my
lord, you slow fellows of the King's Own Borderers knew nothing of
such pranks, with your long pigtails, your funny regimentals, and
Kevenhüller hats."
"The reason, perhaps, we cocked those same hats so bravely on many a
field," retorted his father. "In my days the army was the school of
good-breeding, sir--but here's Jack Andrews announcing tea and
devilled grouse in the inner drawing-room."
"Cosmo, give your arm to Flora, if Quentin can spare her," said Lady
Rohallion, smiling. "They are great friends and companions."
"Oh--ah--indeed," said the Master, sarcastically, as he gave Flora
Warrender his arm. "I think I saw them exchanging strong marks of
their mutual goodwill as I rode up the avenue."
Quentin grew scarlet, and Flora painfully pale at this remark, which
stung her deeply, and roused her indignation.