AN ABRUPT PROPOSAL.
"Wherefore dwell so sad and lonely,
By the desolate sea-shore;
With the melancholy surges
Beating at your cottage door?
You shall dwell beside the castle,
Shadowed by our ancient trees!
And your life shall pass on gently,
Cared for and in rest and ease."
For two days after his arrival the Master strove to engross as much
of Flora's time as she would yield, or as he could spare from the
study of his betting-book, the pages of the "Sporting Magazine,"
playing billiards right hand against the left, quizzing the dominie,
who paid him a ceremonious visit, and in relating to the
quartermaster certain military "crammers" about the alterations and
improvements in the service since his time, some of which were
astounding enough to make the old fellow's pigtail stand on end, with
wonder and dismay, lest the said service was going to the deuce, or
further.
Quentin he seldom favoured with more notice than a cool and insolent
survey through his eyeglass.
There were times when the Honourable Cosmo was moody, ennuyéed, and
irritable, and none knew why or wherefore; but he had frequent
recourse to Mr. Spillsby, the butler, for brandy and rare dry old
sherry; and he smoked a great many cigars, which were a source of
marvel to all who saw them, tobacco, in that form, being almost
unknown in England, till the close of the Peninsular War.
It was not ambition, or a desire to see active service that made the
haughty and somewhat _blasé_ Master propose to leave the household
troops and begin the sliding scale from the Guards to the line; nor
was it any desire to settle in life that made him enter at once and
so readily into his mother's old and favourite scheme of a marriage
between him and their ward, the heiress of Ardgour.
While he could not be insensible to the fresh budding beauty of Flora
Warrender, the conviction that he had impaired his finances,
anticipated his heritage, and had calculated to a nicety the value of
all the oak, pine, and larch woods upon the estate--that each and all
were numbered and known to certain hook-nosed, long-bearded, and
dirty children of Judah in London--all, even to the venerable lines
of sycamores in the long avenue, the pride of his father's
heart--trees that for centuries had cast their shadows on his
ancestors in youth, in prime, and age. While this conviction, we
say, filled him with as much shame, sorrow, and repentance as he
could feel, with it came the knowledge that Flora's fortune, which
had accumulated during her minority, and, indeed, ever since her
father's fall in Egypt, would afford him a most seasonable escape
from shipwreck on several rocks which he saw ahead.
"Hah!" said Cosmo, as he tossed away the end of his cigar, "some one
says truly--don't know who the devil he is--that if we could look
into each other's breasts, there would be no such thing as envy in
the world. Egad! I'll enter for the country heiress."
He roused himself and resolved to make the effort, all the more
willingly, that to a half, or wholly _blasé_ guardsman like himself,
long used to the glittering banquets, the late orgies, and startling
scenes of Carlton House and the Pavilion at Brighton, the bloom,
beauty, and country freshness of Flora Warrender, were indeed
charming.
Flora, instinctively, and in a feminine spirit of pride and
opposition to Lady Rohallion's plots and plans, kept somewhat
studiously out of the Master's way--a somewhat difficult task, even
in a mansion so spacious and rambling as the old castle; but on the
evening of the second day after his arrival, from the stone
balustraded terrace of the antique Scoto-French garden where he was
smoking, Cosmo saw her light muslin dress fluttering among the narrow
green alleys of the old and carefully clipped yew labyrinth, and then
he hastened to join her, to the infinite mortification and chagrin of
Quentin Kennedy, who had not seen her for the entire day; and who,
just as he was approaching the garden, found himself anticipated, so
he at once retired, leaving the field in possession of the enemy.
An older or more experienced lover would have joined them, and thus,
perhaps, might have marred the plans of the Master, who, to do
justice to his coolness and courage, lost no time in opening the
trenches.
Midsummer was past now; the foliage of the tall sycamores, of the
oakwood shaw, and other copses of Rohallion, though leafy and green,
were crisped and dry; in the haughs or low-lying meadows, the mower
had already relinquished his scythe; the green corn rigs were
yellowing on the upland slopes "that beaked foment the sun;" next
month they would be golden, brown and ready for the sickle; on bush
and spray the blackbird sang cheerily, and the plover's note came
shrilly out of the green and waving fern.
The sun was setting, and the screech of the white owl would ere long
be heard, as he blinked and looked forth for the moon from the ivied
windows of Kilhenzie. The white smokes of the hamlet on the shore of
the little bay, passing up among the trees, curled into the clear air
and melted over the ocean. The flowers that whilome had endured the
scorch of the noonday sun, were drooping now, as if pining for the
coming dew; and the stately peacocks sat listlessly, with their broad
tails, argus-eyed, upon the balustrades of the garden terrace.
Inspired by the beauty of the evening, lulled by the summer hum of
insect life among the flowers, and all unaware that her lover, with
his gun on his shoulder and wrath in his young heart, was plunging
pitilessly through some one's corn, Flora was musing or dreaming, as
only a young girl dreams or muses, on what fate had in store for her
now, with this new inmate of her present home. Mr. Walter Scott's
new poem "Marmion" had fallen from her hand, which was ungloved, and
so, pure in whiteness and delicacy, was half hidden among her dark
and wavy hair, as she reclined with her elbow upon the arm of a
moss-grown seat, which yet bears the date, 1590, with the Rohallion
arms and coronet, upon a hanging shield. The fingers of her left
hand were playing unconsciously with the strings of her gipsy hat,
which lay upon the gravel at her feet; and as the Master approached
her, the young lady seemed the perfection of bloom and beauty, as she
sat enshrined in the glory of the sunset that streamed along the
alley of the labyrinth.
His costume was very accurate, for the gentleman and the tradesman
did not then, as now, dress exactly alike, and wear exactly the same
stuffs; and certainly Cosmo was looking his best, as he seated
himself by her side and very deliberately took possession of her left
hand, saying in a voice which he meant to be, and which had often
enough proved elsewhere to be, very seductive.--
"I fear, my dear Miss Warrender, that this gloomy old barrack is not
a place for you to vegetate in."
"How so, sir?" she asked, while regarding him with a quiet smile.
"It too evidently influences your naturally joyous temperament; and
pardon me, you look _triste_."
"Oh, no--your mother is quite one to me, and I love Rohallion very
much."
"Then as for Ardgour, I think it gloomier still."
"Some parts of Ardgour--the vaults, I believe--are said to be coeval
with the Bruce's castle of Turnberry; at least so the dominie told
me. Mamma so loved it; and for her sake, I love it too."
"Very proper, and very pretty; but the world of fashion--a brilliant
world, of which you know nothing--should be your sphere, my dear Miss
Warrender. London, Brighton, the Prince's balls at Carlton House,
the parks, the theatre, the opera! You must come forth from your
shell, my dear Flora, like--like--like (he thought of Venus rising
from the sea, but the simile was not apt)--for you know it is absurd,
positively absurd, that you should be buried alive in this horrid
old-fashioned Scotch place, among rocks and rooks, ivy and ghost
stories. Egad! were the house mine, I'd blow it up, and build one
more suitable to the present time and its requirements."
"What! would you really uproot this fine old place of so many
historic memories?"
"To the last stone! What the devil--pardon me--do old memories
matter now, my dear girl? _En avant!_ we should look forward--never
back."
"I am sorry that your sentiments are so prosaic," said Flora, coldly.
"I trust that my mother has not filled your dear little head with her
usual nonsense about Scotch patriotism, the defunct Pretender, the
unlucky Union, and so forth--eh? I always said that the verses
addressed to her by her rhyming friend Burns, the democratic gauger,
turned her head; and this new man, Scott, with his Marmions and
Minstrels, bids fair to make the disease chronic. You have no idea,
Miss Warrender, how we laugh at all such stuff in London. Patriotism
indeed! It doesn't pay, so Scotchmen don't adopt it, and they are
wise. All patriotism _not_ English is purely provincialism, and any
man holding other opinions in Parliament would be as much out of
place as a crusader or a cavalier. But to return to what I was
saying. I should like to show you the great world that lies beyond
the Craigs of Kyle and the rocky hills of Carrick--to take you back
again to London."
"London is to me full of sad memories."
"Sad--the deuce--how?"
"For there my dear mother died," said Flora, lowering her voice and
withdrawing her hand, while her eyes and her heart filled with
emotion.
After a pause:
"I love you, dear Flora," said Cosmo, again taking possession of her
hand, and placing his lips close to her shrinking ear. "Our marriage
is the dearest wish of my mother's heart, as it was of yours--and,
may I add, that it is the dearest hope of mine?"
This was coming to the point with a vengeance!
Instead of being mightily flattered or overcome, as he not
unnaturally expected, Flora, without withdrawing her hand, as if its
retention mattered little, turned half round, and said, with a quiet,
cairn smile:
"Remember how little I have known you, sir, save through your
parents, my guardians."
"True; the duties of honour at Court, and--ah, ah!--my profession,
Flora, called me elsewhere; but you don't refuse me, eh? My dear
girl--the deuce!--you surely can't mean that?"
Flora grew pale and hesitated, for with all her love for Lady
Rohallion, she had a kind of awe of her, and Cosmo was eyeing her
coldly and steadily through his glass.
"Nay, speak, Flora," said he, with, perhaps, more irritation than
tenderness in his tone. "I have, perhaps, not much personally to
recommend me to a young girl's eye, and this wound, which I got at
the Helder, when assisting to compel those Dutch devils to hoist the
colours of the Prince of Orange--a sabre-cut across the face--has not
improved me; but speak out, Flora Warrender; notwithstanding the ties
between us, you refuse me?"
"This proposal possesses all the abruptness of a scene in a drama."
"Well, what is life but an absurd drama? 'All the world's a stage,
and the men and women merely players.'"
"Well, I am not inclined to play the part you wish."
"You refuse me?" he reiterated, his eyes the while assuming their
wicked and louring expression.
"I do, Cosmo Crawford," she replied, trembling very much, but
speaking, nevertheless, firmly; "I do once and for ever refuse you."
Young and inexperienced though the girl was, the abrupt and
systematic proposal of the Master rather insulted than flattered her.
"No _tie_," she added, "save a fancied one made by Lady Rohallion,
ever bound us; so there are no pledges to return, no bonds, nor--I
can't help laughing--hearts to break."
"And this desire to--to--" he stammered.
"It was your mother's idea alone."
"Say not so, Miss Warrender, it is mine also. Though I know that my
good mother, because she jilted some fellow in her youth--my father's
younger brother, I believe--thinks she makes atonement to the gods,
or whoever rule these little matters of love and marriage, by making
as many miserable matches, and marrying right off as many persons as
she can."
"Miserable matches! So she conceived one for us. You are very
encouraging and complimentary to say so just after your offer to me."
"Pardon me; but consider, my dear Flora," he resumed, while rallying
a little, though sorely provoked to find himself confused and baffled
by a country girl, of whose rejection he felt actually ashamed to
tell his own mother, "are you not labouring under some deuced
misconception in giving this very decided, and, I must say, very
extraordinary refusal?"
"How?"
"Is it not, that to the affection and rank I proffer, you prefer the
absurd love of a silly upstart, who shall go hence as he came hither,
no one knows or cares how--a waif cast on the shore like a piece of
dead seaweed, or the drowned renegade his father--a creature whose
past affords no hope of a brilliant future! Speak, girl," he
exclaimed, while almost savagely he grasped her wrist; "is it this
that prevails with you, in opposition to the wishes of your dead
mother and the whole family of Rohallion?"
"What if it is, sir?" asked Flora, haughtily, for his categorical
manner offended her deeply.
"What if it is!" he repeated with louring brow.
"Yes, sir."
"Then the cool admission ill becomes Flora Warrender of Ardgour,
whose forefathers bear so high a place in the annals of their
country!"
"Oh, but they were mere provincials, and their bravery or patriotism
are unworthy the regard of such a citizen of the world as the Master
of Rohallion," said Flora.
He sullenly threw her hand from him; but she did not retire, being
loth that his family, especially the old Lord, whom she dearly loved
and respected, should know of this scene; and loth, too, that it
should end in this unseemly fashion.
"Cursed be my mother's doting folly!" thought he, while his pale eyes
alternately shrunk and dilated; "so--so, nothing but an heiress will
suit our foundling, our 'Tom Jones,' for a charmer--it's vastly
amusing. Confound it, a little more of this presumption will make me
wring the brat's head off!"
While his cool insolence piqued Flora, her decided rejection roused
all his wrath and pride; he thought of his pecuniary interest, too,
so both sat silent for a time.
"Well, begad! this passes my comprehension!" he exclaimed at length,
as he buttoned his accurately fitting straw-coloured kid gloves.
"To what do you refer, friend Cosmo?" asked Flora, looking at him
almost spitefully.
"To this whole matter. Do you know, my fair friend, that you are
perhaps the first young lady of your age that, in all my experience,
ever took a fancy to a hobbledehoy lad in preference to a man; so
while you reconsider the offer, you will perhaps permit me?" He
bowed, and conceiving her consent given, proceeded to light a pipe,
by the then very elaborate process of a small flint, steel and
matches in a little silver tinder-box, on the lid of which his coat
of arms was engraved. "And so you studied together, I presume, under
that absurd Dominie Skaill, with the knee-breeches and huge
shoe-buckles (like a heavy father at Old Drury), keen grey eyes, and
Scotch cheekbones one might hang one's hat on, eh?"
"Yes," replied Flora, tying the ribbons of her gipsy hat under her
dimpled chin with an angry jerk.
"And you learned Latin, Coptic, and Sanscrit together, I suppose," he
continued in his cool sneering tone; "and to conjugate the verb _to
love_, in all."
"Exactly so, and in Greek, Chaldaic, and Chinese, and ever so many
more languages, so that we became very perfect in grammar," replied
she, smiling wickedly, while the grim Master's cat-like eyes filled
with a very baleful green light; yet he had not the sense to see that
his operations were conducted on a wrong plan before such a fortress
as the fair lady of Ardgour.
"Come, Miss Warrender, whatever we do, hang it, don't let us quarrel,
and so make fools of ourselves."
"I have not the least intention of quarrelling, and trust that you
have none."
"Then allow me to kiss you once, and we shall become better friends,
I promise you."
"Kiss _me_!" exclaimed Flora, starting.
"Yes--why not--what does a little kiss signify?"
"So little that you shall never have one from me, were it to save
your life," said Flora, with a burst of laughter.
"Perhaps your fair cheek has become sacred since that beggarly little
rival of mine saluted it? It is a capital joke, is it not?"
"Perhaps," said Flora, reddening, and rising to withdraw; "and what
then?"
"If so, I would say you were as great an idiot as my old grandmother
Grizel Kennedy, of Kilhenzie, was."
"Respectful to her and polite to me! And she----"
"After Prince Charles Edward kissed her at the Holyrood ball, she
never permitted the lips of mortal man--not even those of my worthy
grandfather Cosmo, Lord Rohallion, K.T., and so forth, to salute her,
lest the charm of the royal kiss should be broken; and their married
life extended over some forty years and more."
At this apocryphal story, which has been told of more old ladies in
Scotland than Grizel of Rohallion, Flora laughed heartily, as well
she might; and her merriment made the Master excessively provoked.
"We are, I hope, at least friends?" said he, presenting his hand with
great but grim suavity.
"Oh yes, Cosmo, the best of friends--do excuse my laughing so; but
nothing more, remember, nothing more," she replied, and withdrawing
her hand, which he attempted to kiss, she darted through the
labyrinth towards the house, leaving "Marmion" forgotten on the
gravel behind her.
"By Jove! to be baffled, laughed at, and by a chick like this!"
muttered Cosmo with an oath which we care not to record, as he gave
the volume a kick, and strode angrily away, full of bitter and dark
thoughts, and inspired with rage at a rivalry which, in truth, he was
ashamed to acknowledge, even to himself.