THE
PHANTOM REGIMENT
OR
STORIES OF "OURS"
BY
JAMES GRANT
AUTHOR OF
"THE ROMANCE OF WAR"
LONDON
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS
BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL
NEW YORK: 9 LAFAYETTE PLACE
JAMES GRANT'S NOVELS,
Two Shillings each, Fancy Boards.
THE ROMANCE OF WAR
THE AIDE-DE-CAMP
THE SCOTTISH CAVALIER
BOTHWELL
JANE SETON; OR, THE QUEEN'S ADVOCATE
PHILIP ROLLO
THE BLACK WATCH
MARY OF LORRAINE
OLIVER ELLIS; OR, THE FUSILIERS
LUCY ARDEN; OR, HOLLYWOOD HALL
FRANK HILTON; OR, THE QUEEN'S OWN
THE YELLOW FRIGATE
HARRY OGILVIE; OR, THE BLACK DRAGOONS
ARTHUR BLANE
LAURA EVERINGHAM; OR, THE HIGHLANDERS OF GLENORA
THE CAPTAIN OF THE GUARD
LETTY HYDE'S LOVERS
CAVALIERS OF FORTUNE
SECOND TO NONE
THE CONSTABLE OF FRANCE
VIOLET JERMYN
THE PHANTOM REGIMENT
THE KING'S OWN BORDERERS
THE WHITE COCKADE
FIRST LOVE AND LAST LOVE
DICK RODNEY
THE GIRL HE MARRIED
LADY WEDDERBURN'S WISH
JACK MANLY
ONLY AN ENSIGN
THE ADVENTURES OF ROB ROY
UNDER THE RED DRAGON
THE QUEEN'S CADET
SHALL I WIN HER?
FAIRER THAN A FAIRY
ONE OF THE SIX HUNDRED
MORLEY ASTON
DID SHE LOVE HIM?
THE ROSS-SHIRE BUFFS
SIX YEARS AGO
VERE OF OURS
THE LORD HERMITAGE
THE ROYAL REGIMENT
THE DUKE OF ALBANY'S HIGHLANDERS
THE CAMERONIANS
THE SCOTS BRIGADE
CONTENTS
I. The Romance of a Month
II. The Guarda Costa
III. Jack Slingsby
IV. The Venta
V. The Regiment of San Antonio
VI. La Posada del Cavallo
VII. The Halt in a Cork Wood
VIII. The Alcalde
IX. The Tertulia
X. Don Fabrique
XI. The Raterillo
XII. La Rio de Muerte
XIII. Pedro the Contrabandista
XIV. The Spanish Steamer
XV. The Circassian Captain
XVI. Osman Rioni
XVII. The Hussars of Tenginski
XVIII. Zupi
XIX. We Reach Head-Quarters
XX. St. Floridan; or, the Adventures of a Night
XXI. The Widow; or, the Adventures of a Night
XXII. Perez, the Potter; or, the Adventures of a Night
XXIII. The Major's Story
XXIV. "Estella"
XXV. A Legend of Fife
XXVI. The Phantom Regiment--The Quartermaster's Story
XXVII. The Phantom Regiment--The Unco' Quest
XXVIII. The Phantom Regiment--The Midnight March
XXIX. The Last of Don Fabrique
THE PHANTOM REGIMENT;
OR,
STORIES OF "OURS."
CHAPTER I.
THE ROMANCE OF A MONTH.
"Adios, Señora Paulina--adios, mi Señora Dominga."
"Adios, Señor Don Ricardo," replied a sweet voice from the depths of
the old Spanish coach.
"Vaya usted con Dios, y que no haya novedad Señoras," said I, making
a vigorous effort with my best Castilian; and with these words, and
one bright parting glance from two black Andalusian eyes, so ended my
little romance of a month, as the old-fashioned coach, which was
doubtless the production of some cunning workman of Seville or Jaen,
rolled slowly, pompously, and heavily away towards the Spanish lines,
from the north gate of Gibraltar.
And this farewell took place exactly this day twelve months ago.
The coach which bore away the old lady who rejoiced in the euphonious
cognomen of Donna Dominga de Lucena y Colmenar de Orieja, and her
daughter the pretty Paulina, was a genuine old Castilian contrivance
of the true caravan species; and, though still in use, in this our
age of luxury and invention, had been constructed, perhaps, before
folding steps were conceived; for a three-legged stool, to facilitate
ingress and egress, hung near the door. The roof was shaped like the
crust of an apple-pie, and the lower carriage, like that portion of a
triumphal car. It was drawn by a pair of fat sleek mules, which
seemed to have grown old with the vehicle, and with Pedrillo, the
little postilion, who floundered away on a demi-pique saddle, with a
gigantic cocked hat surmounting his dark visage; and his lean spindle
legs lost in two gigantic jack-boots, which belonged to the
beforesaid saddle rather than to his own person.
Such was the antediluvian vehicle which bore away the pompous old
Donna and her daughter the charming Paulina, who, for the past month
(during which she had resided in Gibraltar), had turned all the heads
of "Ours;" and was boasted by the Spaniards as the fairest belle in
las Cuatros Reinos--yes in the three mighty little kingdoms of
Seville, Cordova, Jaen, and Granada, which are now conglomerated into
the beautiful province of Andalusia.
And so, without other escort than the redoubtable Pedrillo, who wore
a trabujo or blunderbuss slung across his back, and strong in their
belief in the virtues of the Santa Faz of Jaen, a picture of which
was hung in the back of their coach, these two Spanish ladies, on the
conclusion of their visit, departed on their return to Seville, their
native city; and from the British fortifications, which frown in
solid tiers towards the Spanish lines, I watched the venerable
carrozzo as it rolled across the low sandy Isthmus, which is known as
the neutral ground; and it disappeared just as the sun began to fade
upon the beautiful masses of the Serrania de Rondo, which rose in
piles against the golden clouds, and as the evening gun pealed like
thunder among the Moorish peaks of Jebel Tarik; and then I turned
away with a sigh as I thought of the winning smile I should never see
again.
"It's all over now, Ramble," said my friend Jack Slingsby, who was
the subaltern of my company, and who had been my chum at Sandhurst;
"it is all over, Dick," he continued, with a laugh and one of those
rough slaps on the shoulder, which no one ventures to give but an
Englishman; "and so, instead of airing your sorrows here, 'sighing to
the evening breeze' and all that sort of thing, you may as well come
with me and knock the balls about a little--or join Shafton, the
colonel, and some of "Ours" who have proposed a pool to-night--and
meanwhile solace yourself with another of my 'very superior' cabanas."
"Perhaps it is as well she is gone, Jack," said I, endeavouring to
imitate his light-hearted indifference; "had she remained among us
another week, I would certainly have booked for her, and so have
bedevilled myself, as you said yesterday."
"For Donna Paulina?"
"Of course--had you any doubts as to which?"
"Why--no. I certainly did not think that you were in love with the
mother."
"Well," said I, impatiently.
"Paulina is very beautiful, no doubt; she has those Andalusian eyes
and ancles which all the world talk about, but which all the world
must see to feel the full effect of either. She has a charming
manner--a glorious 'espiêglerie'--yes, that's the word! full of
pretty repartee, and all that sort of thing--you understand me, Dick,
or Don Ricardo, as she called you; but withal, I assure you, I should
not like to enter for a Spanish wife, of all women in the world; no,
no--what does the song say?" and as we reascended to the higher parts
of the fortress, this careless fellow sang aloud a scrap of a popular
mess-table song, somewhat to this purpose:--
"No fair fräulein or demoiselle, nor donna with her smile,
Shall ever teach me to forget the dear ones of our isle;
And when I seek a heart and hand among the fair and free,
Still constant in my faith, I'll say an English girl for me."
"That is the mark, Dick,--
"----an English girl for me!"
Besides, half of the young fellows in garrison here ran after
Paulina; and at every mess-table she was as well known as the big
drum, or the regimental snuff-box, or that great ram's head with its
devilish horns, with which those highland fellows of the 92nd
decorate their table, after the cloth is removed. At every jail,
field-day, and tertulia--at church, and on the promenade, a crowd of
admirers surrounded her, like flies round honey, and she seemed to be
equally delighted with all."
"That was one of the peculiar charms of her manner, Jack," said I.
"Peculiar, indeed!" said he, letting out a cloud of smoke from his
well-mustachioed lip.
"In public, she distinguished none in particular, but was alike gay
with all."
"And in private, who was said generally to be the happy Lothario?"
I made no reply, but knocked the ashes away from the 'very superior'
cabana, with which he had just favoured me.
"It was said to be a certain person known as Dick Ramble of 'Ours',"
continued Slingsby, in his bantering way; "but I am deuced glad it is
all over, like any other flirtation, and you are 'free to win and
free to wed another;' I don't like Spaniards--and never shall. In
fact, I have hated them ever since that unpleasant adventure I had at
Malaga last year, and about which I shall tell you some other time;
but here come Shafton, Morton, and some more of 'Ours,' and as soon
as we leave the mess, we shall adjourn to the billiard table."
What this 'unpleasant adventure,' to which Slingsby referred--and to
which I had often heard him refer before--might have been I cared not
then to inquire; but walked on, more chilled than consoled by his
rattling manner and by that mess-room raillery, which I have known to
laugh many a wiser man than your humble servant, out of an honest and
sincere passion; while it has also been the saving of many an
inflammable "Newcome," or unfledged, but amatory ensign, from the
lures of those passé garrison belles, whose feathers are beginning to
moult, and whose brilliance is beginning to fade, after a long career
of close flirtation, round-dancing, supper-crushes, cold fowl, ices,
pink champagne, affectionate farewells in the grey morning, when the
drowsy drum-boys beat reveillie, or when the route arrived, and each
lover--a lover alas! but for the time--departed with his regiment to
return no more.
Of Paulina de Lucena (such a pretty name it is!) I had seen much
during her short residence in Gibraltar, and had become--what shall I
term it, for 'Ours' were not marrying men--charmed by her sweetness
of temper and piquant manner, as well as by her acknowledged beauty.
Jack Slingsby stigmatised this under the denomination of "being
spooney;" but as I have a proper abhorrence of all that slang
phraseology which is peculiar to the university, the barrack, the
clubhouse, and the turf, I believe I shall quote honest Jack no more,
but proceed in my own fashion.
She was the only daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel Don Ignacio de
Lucena, a Knight of San Ferdinando, an officer of Lancers in the
service of the Queen of Spain, in one of whose battles he was taken
prisoner by Cabrera, and shot in cold blood with fifty of his
soldiers: for this ferocious Carlist behaved with such barbarity to
the Constitutional Army that one of its officers, who had been a
prisoner, assured me that at Valencia he and his comrades were
subjected to such cruelty by their captors, that after a thousand
sufferings, on being denied food, they were driven to the dreadful
necessity of devouring the body of a fellow captive.*
* A work published in Valencia positively asserts this.
The profession of her father, together with the circumstance of one
of her brothers being in the Spanish sea service, and another in the
army of Portugal, caused her to view with a favourable eye all who
have the honour to live by the sword; and my small smattering of
Spanish, which I picked up in those idle hours of a garrison life
that otherwise must have hung heavily over me, gave me every facility
for cultivating a friendship which had in it everything that might
serve to dazzle and charm a young man; for with the idea of Andalusia
and Spanish beauty we are apt to conjure up so much of love and of
romance that the imagination gets the better of the senses; besides,
those rogues of travellers and romancers have always given us such
exaggerated pictures of Spanish loveliness.
In regularity of feature and fairness of complexion, Donna Paulina
was inferior to many a pretty girl I have seen at home. Her most
glorious attractions were her dark glossy tresses and her black
eloquent eyes--brilliant, sad, subduing, ever varying, but ever
black, and under their long, long fringes, ever melting. In beauty
of form and grace of movement she was unmatched out of her own
province, and I can assure the reader that the first time her very
striking figure appeared among the promenaders in the Alameda of
Gibraltar with her drapery of black lace falling from a high pearl
comb, her mantilla, her close-fitting dress, her pretty feet in their
Cordovan slippers, and her large fan, the unhappy bones of which were
ever in a state of flutter and excitement, and between which she shot
her most dangerous glances, it occasioned much marvel, curiosity, and
speculation at all the mess-tables of Her Majesty's forces stationed
on the rock.
To such a companion imagine the charm of acting cicerone about the
fortifications of old Gibraltar; imagine our evening rambles round
Rosia Bay and along the new mole, where the ships of the British and
Yankees, the French, Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians, Turks, Greeks,
Moors, Arabs, and Jews, with all their varieties of ensigns, costume
and rig, are riding at anchor, and where many a grim mortar and
cannon gun frown over the new bastion; imagine the transition from
the sunny Alameda to the deep cool galleries which are hewn in the
heart of the living rock, and which are now turned to such war-like
purposes as old Pomponius Mela, who first wrote of them, could never
have conceived, and where we wandered for many an hour, the pretty
donna forgetting the starched customs of her country so far as to
grasp my arm with both her hands at times, for the aspect of these
places filled her with timidity and awe.
To these subterranean batteries there is admitted but a dim and
dubious light that steals through their embrasures, glinting on the
damp slime of their walls and roof of rock; and on the heavy
ordnance--sixty-eight pounders some of them--which stand on frames of
metal, on piles of balls and bombs, and on doors studded with iron,
that lead to other and inner vaults full of missiles and unknown
terrors.
On, on would we wander, through grim batteries, gloomy magazines, and
far-stretching galleries, that seemed to be without end, obtaining at
times through the vaulted embrasures a glimpse of the town, then
basking in the glare of the noonday sun, or of the sea, shining under
a brilliance in which the vessels on its bosom became lost, while we
heard only the sound of our own voices, the twang of a bugle, or the
sharp rat-tat of a drum in the barracks, the faint boom of a breaker
on the cliffs, or the fainter sound of voices in the town, far, far
down below, where all the races of the world were mingling; for
there, in its streets, might be seen the smart Greek in his scarlet
fez and ample kilt; the hideous Afric Jew in his black and white
striped cowl; the slow and solemn Turk; the bare-kneed Scottish
soldier; the lively Italian sailor, and the puffing, perspiring, and
grumbling John Bull.
I saw Paulina daily, and garrison life became one long and enchanting
dream!
In the batteries of the rock we promenaded often when the heat became
too great in the sunny Alameda, and with such a companion, while
wandering through the subterranean and twilight shades of Saint
George's Hall, or the Windsor Gallery, how was it possible to escape
from loving her.--A coquettish Andalusian, who, whenever I ventured
to become a little more tender than usual, would tap me over the
fingers with her fan, or give me one brilliant, flashing and
fascinating glance, as she closed her screen of black lace, and
threatened to leave me, while she sang, with the most charming grace
in the world, "Pues por besarte Minguillo," the English of which is
somewhat to the following purpose:--
"Give me swiftly back, thou dear one,
Give the kiss I gave to you;
Give me back the kiss, for mother
Is impatient--prithee do!
Give me that, and take another,
For that one, thou shalt have two."
And where, the while, the reader may naturally enquire, was the
cautious, suspicious, and lynx-eyed Spanish mother therein referred
to?
Now old Donna Dominga had conceived a vehement friendship for me
since the first evening on which I had the pleasure of meeting her at
the residence of the Governor and Commander-in-Chief; and where I
supplied her with ices when she was warm, adjusted her mantilla when
she was cool, held her fan, snuff-box, and poodle, and brought her a
cigarillo and orange-water dashed with the smallest taste of brandy;
and, discovering her sympathies and antipathies, soon learned to
anathematise Cabrera and the Conde de Montmolin, to express a vague
belief in miracles in general, and the verity of the Holy Face of
Jaen in particular. I "turned" the old lady's flank, and established
myself safely under the wing of her prejudices.
She always accompanied Paulina and me in our rambles; but I generally
contrived, by a little successful manoeuvring, to leave her to the
care of Dr. MacLeechy, our senior surgeon, after Jack Slingsby had
very disobligingly revolted against this duty; and as the doctor and
the Donna were either somewhat pursy, or disposed to prose and
linger, we usually left them far in the rear and lost sight of them
altogether.
Now the doctor, who quoted Kelaart as if he had been his own father,
and expatiated to the old lady on geology (with mineralogy, botany,
and Scottish metaphysics), was so very particular in explaining the
leaves, fibres, and various properties of the _Iberus Giberaltarica_,
the only plant peculiar to the rock, that the stout Donna Dominga,
who deemed all this but the language of the flowers, and viewed
everything through the medium of gallantry, became troubled in
spirit, and would occasionally blush behind the sticks of her fan, or
ogle and look unutterable things at our poor unconscious medico. She
would sigh tenderly when he plucked the soft palmetto which grows in
the rocky crevices, or tremble over the white polyanthus, and was
ready to drop like a ripe pumpkin into his arms, when he grew
eloquent upon the various species of the cacti.
This was all very well while it lasted, for while the ponderous old
donna thought that our quiet, canny, and discreet Galen, who signed
himself M.D. of St. Andrews, and F.E.C.S. of Edinburgh, was a lover
of her own, she forgot to look too narrowly after us; and believed
that she had found a most agreeable mode of passing the month in
Gibraltar, which, for change of air, had been recommended by some
sangrado of Seville, as her health had become somewhat impaired by
ease and good living.
I was so dazzled and delighted with the charming Paulina, and her
pretty little ways, that I had really begun to prepare my mind for
repelling the banter of the mess, and for waiting with due solemnity
upon Donna Dominga to confer with her alone, upon settlements and so
forth, when a terrible denouement took place! Having rashly boasted
of her imaginary conquest over our doctor, to a lady whom she met at
the house of a rich Spanish merchant in the Alameda, there ensued
between them an immediate scene; for this unlucky communication
(given with all the coy triumph with which the plump old lady could
invest it) was made to no other than the doctor's wife, who had just
arrived from Dublin; and as it had never entered the head of Donna
Dominga to inquire whether our unsuspecting medico was a
Benedick--bond or free, as they say in Australia--a storm was the
consequence.
Now, Mrs. Leechy MacLeechy, our Scotch doctor's better half, was a
strong-minded Irish woman, who wore a species of turban, and was the
terror of the regiment; on each of her fat wrists she wore a bracelet
of blood-encrusted medals, torn, as she said, "off Rooshian breasts,"
and sent to her from Sebastopol by her brother, who was "the
matchor--the saynior matchor--devil a less, or the foighting
eighty-ayth;" and so this lady, in her deep Galway patois, poured on
the Spaniard a broadside that would have sunk the Santissima Trinidad.
Finding her love affair at an end, the cruel donna resolved to cut
short mine. Within an hour after this meeting, Pedrillo was
summoned; the old Spanish coach was brought forth; the baggage
packed, and her farewell cards--P.P.C.--dispatched to the governor
and his military secretary; to the aides-de-camp and staff colonel;
to the officers commanding regiments, and all the great folks of the
place. The old lady and the pretty Paulina got into the depths of
the ponderous 'carrozza;' the three-legged stool was strapped to the
door; Pedrillo clambered into his bucket-like boots, and muttered
many 'carajos!' as he applied his latigo to the sleek sides of the
dapple mules, and while their proprietrix was sulking and fuming at
Gibraltar and all the heretics who dwelt therein, the huge conveyance
crawled along the narrow causeway which forms the communication
between the town and the isthmus, and, for the present, thus ended,
as I have said, my pleasant little Spanish romance of a month.
A recollection was all that remained to me of Paulina, and of that
flirtation which was fast maturing into something of a better and
more lasting nature.