THE BLOW.
"Take comfort: he no more shall see my face;
Lysander and myself will fly this place.
Before the time I did Lysander see,
Seemed Athens as a paradise to me:
Oh, then, what graces in my love do dwell,
That he hath turned a heaven unto a hell!"
_Midsummer Night's Dream._
A very dark idea crossed the Master's mind, and then another, darker
still!
A few guineas judiciously bestowed among the smugglers, who, when the
nights were dark and gusty, frequented the coves near the castle (and
when some person or persons unknown hung a lantern over the rocks to
guide their steerage through a narrow cleft in the Partan Craig),
might for ever rid him of Quentin Kennedy. They could land him on
the sands of Dunkirk or Boulogne, or, or--what?
Oh, no! he thrust away the next idea as too horrid, though _such_
things had been done of old in Carrick by the lawless lairds of
Auchindrane, and to denounce them, in one terrible instance, had not
the sea given up its dead?
He thought of despatching a line to the lieutenant commanding the
pressgang at Ayr, by whose agency poor Quentin might be shipped off
for seven years' sea service in the East or West Indies, but dread of
exposure, and the outcry consequent thereto, made him relinquish such
kidnapping ideas of revenge, though they were practical enough in the
days when George III. was king.
Revolving these thoughts, with brows knit and his stealthy eyes fixed
on the ground, Cosmo quitted the garden and entered the avenue, where
the evening shadows under the sycamore trees were gloomy and dark;
and there as he strode forward, with a quick and impatient step, he
stumbled roughly against some one, who, like himself, seemed lost in
reverie.
"Quentin Kennedy!" he exclaimed in a hoarse voice, as this collision
brought all his readily excited fury to the culminating point;
"confound it, fellow, is this you?"
"I beg pardon, sir--I did not see you--I was lost in thought,"
replied Quentin.
"Lost in thought, were you?" repeated Cosmo, in his most insulting
tone; "you were loitering near the labyrinth in the garden?" he added
with almost fierce suspicion.
"I was down in the oakwood shaw, two miles off."
"Hah--indeed! and what have you been doing with that gun??
"Sir!" stammered Quentin, his natural indignation rising as he
perceived the other's resolute intention of insulting him.
"I say, what the deuce have you, or such as you, to do with that gun,
and on these grounds?"
Quentin drew back, haughtily, in growing anger and surprise, and
fearing that the Master was mad or intoxicated, and that he was about
to make an assault, he very naturally brought the fowling-piece to
the position of charging.
"What, you scoundrel! would you charge me breast high?" cried the
Master, choking with rage; "would you shoot me as the poacher
Campbell shot Lord Eglinton on his own lands, here in Ayrshire too?
I'll teach you to know your proper place, you scurvy young dog!"
With these injurious words, and before even Quentin, who was
completely astounded by the wantonness of the whole affair, could be
aware of his purpose, Cosmo rushed upon him, wrenched the gun away,
and clubbing it, dealt the poor lad a terrible blow on the head with
the heavy iron butt, stretching him senseless on the grass. Then
uttering a heavy malediction, the fierce Master, still boiling with
unappeased rage, passed through the ivied-gateway and entered the
mansion. Having the fowling-piece in his hand, force of habit led
him towards the gun-room, where he proceeded to draw the charge, for
it was still loaded, and to leave it for the under-game-keeper to
clean.
Perceiving that there was blood on the lock and also on his
straw-coloured kid gloves, he carefully wiped the former, and threw
the latter into a stove. Regret he had none for the atrocity just
committed; but he disliked the appearance of blood, it looked ugly,
he thought--dangerous, and deuced ugly.
"Egad, I hope I haven't killed the young rascal!" he muttered; "how
the deuce am I to explain the affair to the old people?--they will be
certain to blame me."
Stepping from the gun-room into the library, which adjoined it, he
was suddenly met by Lady Rohallion, who gave him an affectionate
glance, which suddenly turned to one of anxiety, as she surveyed him
by the last light of the sunset, that streamed through a
deeply-embayed window. With an assumed smile and some commonplace
remark, he was about to pass on, shame and mortification compelling
the concealment of what he had done, when she laid her hands on his
arm, and said tenderly,
"Dearest Cosmo, what has happened--you look extremely pale?"
"Do I, mother--pale, eh?"
"Yes, and quite ruffled too," she added.
"Well, perhaps so--your friend Flora is the cause."
"Flora Warrender?"
"Yes."
"Explain, Cosmo, explain?" she asked with evident uneasiness.
"I had a long conversation with her in the garden, and it was
decidedly more animated than amatory in the end."
"You quarrelled?"
"Not at all--I proposed," he replied, with a strange smile.
"And were accepted?"
"The reverse."
"Rejected--you--_my_ son, rejected?"
"Finally so--or for the present shall we say?" replied Cosmo,
lighting a pipe by the old and elaborate process, to conceal his
agitation. "A wilful little jade she is as ever I knew. Evidently
has no fancy for me, or for increasing the number of his Majesty's
lieges under canvas, or for seeing the world in a baggage-waggon, as
a lady attached to a regiment of the line."
The courtly old lady gazed at her son almost mournfully; for this
mocking brusquerie, acquired in the Pavilion of the Prince Regent,
but ill accorded with her old-fashioned ideas of gentle bearing.
"You have been wrong, Cosmo," said she gravely; "you have been too
hasty--too abrupt."
"Now, faith, do you think so, really?"
"It was absurd to propose for any girl, especially a young lady of
family and fortune, after a two days' acquaintance."
"Egad, my most respected mamma, in London, I've known a score of
women of the first fashion, who would have eloped with me for better
or worse, and taken post horses for Gretna, on a two hours'
acquaintance."
"Oh, Cosmo!"
"So I am wrong, you think, my lady mother?"
"Decidedly; but I trust that time will put all right. I do not
despair."
"Neither do I, be assured," said he, with one of his strange smiles.
"The silly girl, of course, felt flattered by your offer?"
"Not at all--one might think such matters were of daily occurrence
with her."
"Did she make no consideration of our family and its antiquity?" she
asked, bridling up.
"My dear mother, it seems to be of very little importance to Flora
Warrender whether the said family flourished at the court of old King
Cole, from whose grave Kyle takes its name, or at that of his Majesty
of the Cannibal Islands; at all events, she won't have me. Confound
it!" he exclaimed, as if talking to himself; "to think that I, almost
the pattern man of the Household Brigade--chosen by many a proud
peeress to squire her through the crush of the opera; by the fighting
men of the corps as their second in every affair of honour; by the
Prince Regent to arrange his déjeuners, afternoon receptions, and
crack suppers; I, the star of Fops' Alley--deemed the best stroke at
billiards in London--the best hand on a tiller at Cowes, or to pull
the bow-oar to Richmond; chosen to ride the most vicious brutes at
Epsom and Melton, and who can hit a guinea at twenty yards with a
saw-handle and a hair-trigger--that I, I say, should be outflanked by
a country booby passes my comprehension, unless, as in old King
James's days, there be witchcraft again in the Bailiwick of Carrick!
To be jockeyed by a country lout and a lass of eighteen--deucedly
disgusting! Thank heaven! this can never be known in town, or how
would the lady-killing Cosmo be roasted! I think I hear Paget of the
Hussars, and the rest of our set laughing over it; and, by Jove, they
would laugh too, until I had one or two of them out at Chalk Farm for
a morning appetiser."
"How this little rebuff nettles you! Take courage, Cosmo," said his
mother, almost laughing at his angry and odd enumeration of his many
good qualities.
"Well, I have changed my mind many times; so do women, and so may
Flora. This is a boy's love; she will tire of his idea, and then is
my time to cut in and win in a canter. You, my dear mother, yourself
once loved, before my father proposed----"
"Stay," said Lady Rohallion, interrupting, with sudden agitation, and
hastening angrily to change the unwelcome topic; "a sudden light
breaks upon me! Cosmo, on the night you arrived, it seemed to me you
spoke very oddly of Flora Warrender and Quentin Kennedy."
"How--about something in the avenue, was it?"
"Yes; that you had seen them exchanging marks of their mutual good
will, or words to that effect."
"Exactly so, my Lady Rohallion," said Cosmo, slowly emitting the
smoke of his pipe.
"What did you mean, Cosmo?" she demanded, with increasing asperity.
"Much more than I said, mother."
"That you saw Quentin kissing Flora?"
"Or Flora kissing Quentin, my dear lady mother, I don't think it
makes much difference," said he, with an angry laugh, while she
almost trembled with indignation; "but what do you think of your
amiable ward and your protégé--a lively young fellow, isn't he?"
"I ought to have been prepared for this," said Lady Rohallion;
"indeed, Eleonora Eglinton forewarned me that something of this kind
might happen. A separation by school, college, or something else,
should have been made whenever Flora came here. I must consult
Rohallion, and have such arrangements made for Quentin as shall
prevent his interference with the views we have so long cherished for
our only son. The foolish girl--the presumptuous boy--to be actually
kissing her!"
"Shameful, isn't it?" said Cosmo, who had been despatched somewhat
precipitately into the Guards for making love to his mother's maids.
"Such vagaries must be controlled and punished."
"He should have been gazetted a year ago to a West India Regiment, or
one of the eight Hottentot Battalions at the Cape; they are quite
good enough for such as he; or send him still-hunting with a line
regiment into Ireland, where slugs from behind a hedge may send him
to the devil before his time."
"Oh fie, Cosmo, you are cruel and unjust;" but she added bitterly as
pride of birth, her only failing or weakness, got the mastery for the
moment; "no unknown waif, no nameless person like this youth Kennedy
shall come between my son, the Master of Rohallion, and our long
cherished purpose--no, assuredly! Andrews," she added, raising her
voice, as the thin, spare military valet passed through the library,
"desire Miss Warrender to speak with me in the yellow drawing-room,
before the bell rings for supper."
Then leaving her son, Lady Rohallion swept out of the library to have
a solemn interview with her ward.
The last flush of sunset had died away, and one by one the stars were
shining out.
The night wore on, and nothing was seen or heard of Quentin. Indeed,
save the Master, as yet no one missed him: but as he did not appear
when the supper-bell clanged in the belfry of the old keep, Cosmo,
with several unpleasant misgivings in his mind, hastened unseen into
the avenue, down the long vista of which the waning moon shed a broad
and pallid flood of radiance, ere, in clouds that betokened a rough
night, it sunk beyond the wooded heights of Ardgour.
Cosmo went to the place where so savagely he had struck the poor lad
down; but Quentin was gone; the grass where he had lain was bruised,
and on the gravel was a pool of blood about a foot in diameter--blood
that must have flowed from the wound in his head; but other trace of
him there was none!