FORTH INTO THE WORLD.
"This nicht is my departing nicht,
For here nae langer I maun stay;
There's neither friend or foe o' mine,
But wishes me away.
What I hae dune through lack o' wit,
I never, never can reca';
I hope you're a' my friends as yet--
Gude nicht, and joy be wi' ye a'."
_Johnnie Armstrong's Good Night._
The knock-down blow given to Quentin by the butt-end of the clubbed
fowling-piece, beside inflicting a severe wound which bled profusely,
stunned him completely for a time, and in this condition he was found
by the quartermaster, who was returning from having a jug of punch
and a quiet rubber with our quaint friend the dominie at his little
thatched cottage in the village.
Great were the alarm and concern of the kind-hearted veteran when he
found his young friend and favourite in a condition so pitiable. He
raised him, tied a handkerchief over his wound to stanch the
bleeding; then gradually as consciousness returned, Quentin
remembered all that had occurred, and told Girvan of his meeting with
the Master--the unmerited and unexpected insolence of the latter, his
sudden assault, and that was all he knew.
The disquiet of the ex-quartermaster was greatly increased on hearing
of a _fracas_ so unseemly and so dangerous, and he knew in a moment
that it contained _more_ elements of discord than Quentin admitted or
perhaps knew; though he was ignorant of the Master's abrupt proposal,
the garden-scene, and of the subsequent expostulation, which was in
progress at that moment, and which we have detailed in the preceding
chapter.
"I can't blame you, my boy," said the old soldier, half communing
with himself, and shaking his head till his pigtail swung like a
pendulum; "I can't blame ye," he repeated, as he gave Quentin his
arm, and together they walked slowly towards the castle; "ye are
young--the temptation is great, though I hae long since forgotten all
of such matters, save that love-making tendeth to mischief."
"Quartermaster," stammered Quentin, "I don't understand, what----"
"But I do! The devilment first began in Father Adam's garden, and it
will go on so long as the world wags."
Quentin coloured deeply, and his heart leaped with mingled rage and
exultation--rage at the Master for the injury he had done him, and
exultation for its cause--jealousy, by which he was assured that
Flora loved him, despite all the attention and the greater
attractions of the _blasé_ guardsman.
But what was to be done now?
To remain longer under the same roof with the Master of Rohallion was
impossible; but whither was he to go? The quartermaster, without
adverting further to what he too well knew to be the secret spring or
moving cause of a quarrel so sudden and unbecoming in its details,
hurried Quentin to his secluded little quarters, "the snuggery,"
already described as existing in a tower of the castle. There he
gave him a glass of sherry and water as a reviver; sponged and
cleansed, with ready and kindly hands, his face and hair from the
clotted blood which disfigured them, applied with soldierlike
promptitude a piece of court-plaster to the cut, and brushed a lock
or so gently over to conceal it.
That Lady Rohallion must be informed of the encounter and have it
explained away, if possible; that the Master should be urged to
apologise to Quentin (a very improbable hope); and that they should
be made to shake hands and commit the affair to oblivion, was the
mode in which the worthy ground-bailie proposed to solder up this
untoward affair. Quentin was long inexorable, and with the fury of
youth vowed to have some mysterious and terrible revenge; but
gradually the inexpediency, the impropriety, and impossibility of
obtaining reparation by the strong hand dawned upon him, and he
consented to leave the matter in the hands of Girvan--to have it
explained gently to Lady Rohallion, and leave her to be the mediator
between them.
On being informed by Jack Andrews that she was in the yellow
drawing-room, and as there was still an hour to spare before the
supper bell rang, they proceeded thither to have an interview with
her.
While passing through the outer drawing-room, which was quaintly
furnished with _marqueterie_ cabinets, tables, and bookcases, with
chairs and _fauteuils_ of Queen Anne's time, they heard voices in the
inner apartment, and one of them was Lady Rohallion's, pitched in a
louder key than was her wont, so they paused, unfortunately, only to
hear the LAST words of her conversation with Flora--words which fell
like molten lead on the ears and in the heart of the listener, whom
they most concerned.
"--We know nothing of him--he may be base-born for aught that we can
tell, and Lord Rohallion shall learn that Quentin Kennedy--a brat, a
very beggar's brat--shall never come between our own son and his
success--and so, young lady, your humble servant!"
These bitter, bitter words--words such as he had never heard from
_her_ lips before, made Quentin reel as if stunned, so that with the
effect they produced upon him, added to that of the recent blow, he
would have fallen had not the quartermaster caught him in his arms,
and held him up, surveying him the while with a kind and father-like
expression of solicitude and bewilderment in his old and weather-worn
visage.
Rousing himself, with his teeth set and his eyes flashing, he made
three efforts to turn the door handle and enter the room.
It was _his_ hand that Flora had heard upon the lock when she started
from the sofa and fled to her own apartment in a passion of tears, so
that when he entered the inner drawing-room it was empty, and thus
Quentin knew not--though his heart foreboded--to whom the injurious
words of Lady Rohallion had been addressed; but their tenor decided
him at once in a preconceived intention of leaving, and for ever, the
only home he had now in the world, and almost the only one of which
he had any distinct memory.
"This is no longer a place for me, John Girvan, and so sure as God
sees and hears me, I shall leave it this very night!" he exclaimed,
as with his eyes flashing and full of tears, and his heart now filled
only by new, and hitherto unknown emotions of sorrow, bitterness, and
mortification (unknown to him at least) he walked to and fro upon the
gun-battery, where the 24-pounders of _La Bonne Citoyenne_ faced the
waves of the Firth, on which the last rays of a waning moon were
shining coldly and palely, especially on the ridge of foam that
boiled for ever over the Partan Craig.
"And whither would ye go, Quentin?" asked Girvan, who felt in his
honest heart an intense commiseration for the lonely lad, knowing
that were he to remain after the insult he had received, and the
words he had heard, it would argue a poverty of spirit he would be
loth to find in Quentin; "whither would ye go?"
"Away to France, to seek my mother."
"Impossible--it's hostile ground, and once on it you would be made a
prisoner by the authorities, and shut up in Bitche, Verdun, or
Brisgau, if they did not hang you as a spy, or send you to serve as a
private soldier in the _Corps Etranger_. You must think of another
scheme, less rash and romantic."
"I know of none."
"In all the wide world, Quentin," said Girvan, with his nether lip
quivering, "ye have no home but this."
"_This!_" repeated Quentin, grinding his teeth.
"Yes."
"Well--I care not; I will go anywhere from it--the farther away the
better!" (And Flora? suggested his heart.)
In vain the quartermaster urged him to do nothing rashly, and to
await the return of Lord Rohallion, who had ridden over to Eglinton
castle, to visit his old friend and American comrade, Earl Hugh, who
had just returned from London; but pride and passion, with a
conviction that the mother's unwonted bitterness was only a
supplement to the son's insulting conduct, seemed to dissolve all the
ties that had bound Quentin to Rohallion and its family.
These emotions of anger had full swing in his heart. What Lady
Rohallion had said, the old Lord must, he argued, have heard
repeatedly, and may often have thought; and so, forth--forth to seek
his bread elsewhere, he would go before the clocks struck midnight.
Mentally he vowed and resolved, that the first hour of another
morning should see him far in search of a new home.
Deluding good John Girvan by some excuse, he slipped to his own room
and packed a few necessaries in a small portmanteau, feeling, while
he did so, a sense of mortification that they were the gifts of those
whom, in justice to himself, he was compelled to leave. His watch, a
ring, a breast-pin, and other trinkets given to him by Lady
Rohallion, he laid upon his dressing-table, leaving them in token
that he took with him nothing but what was absolutely necessary.
The time was an hour and a-half from midnight. Unheeding he had
heard the supper-bell clanged long ago, and cared not what any
one--Flora excepted--thought of his absence now. Opening a window,
he looked forth upon the night. The moon had waned, and the
atmosphere was thick and gusty--yea, nearly as stormy and as wild as
on that night when he had been washed ashore on the sand of the bay
below Rohallion.
Putting his purse in his pocket--it contained but a half-guinea, he
gave a last glance at his bed-room--to leave it with all its familiar
features cost him a pang; there were some of Lady Rohallion's
needlework, and sketches by Flora, books lent him by the dominie,
gloves and foils that had borne the dint of many a bout between him
and John Girvan; quaint shells given to him by Elsie Irvine, and many
little trophies of his shooting expeditions with the gamekeeper, and
so forth. He quitted the room with a sigh, and slipping downstairs
reached the hall-door unseen by any of the household.
"And now a long farewell to Rohallion!" he exclaimed, as he reached
the ivied arch of the haunted gate.
"Not so fast, Quentin," said a voice, and the rough hand of the
worthy quartermaster grasped his.
"John Girvan," said Quentin, with emotion.
"I thought it would come to this. So you are really about to take
French leave of us--to levant in the night, and without beat of drum?"
"Yes,"
"To go out into the wide world?"
"Yes."
"I knew it would be thus, for I knew your spirit, Quentin, and so
have been keeping guard here at the gate."
"Guard--for what purpose? To stop me?"
"No."
"What then?"
"To aid and help ye, Quentin, laddie," said Girvan, placing a heavy
purse in his hand. "I have saved something here, forty guineas or
so, off my half-pay, take them and use them cautiously, wi' an auld
man's blessing--an auld soldier's, if you like it better."
"Girvan--John Girvan," said Quentin, with a very troubled voice; "I
cannot--I cannot----"
"What?"
"Deprive you of what I may never be able to repay."
"Ye must and ye shall take the money, or I'll fling it into the
Lollard's Linn!" said the other, impetuously. "It was I who laid
your father's head in the grave, laddie, in the auld kirkyard yonder
in the glen, and ill would it become auld John Girvan, of the 25th,
to let his son go forth to seek his fortune in this cold hard world,
portionless and penniless, while there was a shot in the locker--a
lad I love, too!"
"But the repayment, John Girvan, the repayment."
"Heed not that--it will come time enough; and if it never comes I'll
never miss it; but ye'll write to me from the next burgh-town, won't
ye, Quentin, laddie?"
"I shall, John--I shall," replied Quentin, now so softened that he
sobbed with his face on the old man's shoulder.
"God bless ye, my bairn--God bless ye!"
"And you, John."
"You'll think o' me sometimes."
"Oh, could I ever forget?"
"Sorely will _she_ repent this at my lord's homecoming," said Girvan,
bitterly.
"My father was an ill-starred wanderer, and perished miserably, poor
man! What right have I to hope for, or to look for, a better fate
than he? My mother, too..... Do they see me now, and know of all
this? .... And Flora--dear Flora, whom I shall see no more!"
"Take a dram ere you go, laddie, for the night is dark and eerie,"
said Girvan, producing a flask from his pocket; "'a spur in the head
is weel worth twa on the heels,' says an auld Scots proverb."
"You will bid the dominie good-bye for me."
"That shall I, laddie--that shall I."
"And tell--tell _her_, that I have gone forth to seek my fortune,
and--and----"
His voice failed him, so he slung his little portmanteau on his
shoulder, and wrung the hand of his kind friend for the last time.
Hurrying away, he disappeared in the darkness, and, as he did so, a
sound that followed on the wind made him pause, but for an instant.
It was the old quartermaster sobbing like a child.
* * * *
So, thus went Quentin Kennedy forth into the world.
"Few words," says a charming writer, "are more easily spoken than _He
went forth to seek his fortune_; and what a whole world lies within
the narrow compass! a world of high-hearted hopes and doubting fear;
of noble ambition to be won and glorious paths to be trod, mingled
with tender thoughts of home and those who made it such. What
sustaining courage must be his who dares this course, and braves that
terrible conflict--the toughest that ever man fought--between his own
bright colouring of life, and the stern reality of the world. How
many hopes has he to abandon--how many illusions to give up. How
often is his faith to be falsified and his trustfulness betrayed;
and, worst of all, what a fatal change do these trials impress upon
himself--how different is he from what he had been."
Bitterness tinged the spirit of Quentin Kennedy with an impression of
fatalism, and he marched mournfully, doggedly on.