One of the Six Hundred: A Novel

Willie give the two sovereigns I gave him to his father? The old fellow is well enough off in his cottage, and lives like the son of an Irish king. He shot a magnificent silver pheasant before the Chillingham party left (they are gone then!) and Lady Louisa got the wings for her pork-pie hat. "Cora seems pining to join the Chillinghams, who, as you, of course, know, have been for a month past at their place near Canterbury. She is in low spirits, poor girl, and goes south in a week, when I shall, perhaps, accompany her. Lady Louisa has written to her thrice since they left. She says that Mr. Berkeley has been frequently visiting them; but never mentions you. What is the meaning of that?" I paused on reading this, for it embodied a vast deal for reflection! That the Loftuses should be at Chillingham Park unknown to me was not strange; neither was it strange that, situated as we were, poor Louisa should not mention me in her letters to Cora; but that Berkeley should be their frequent visitor, and omit to mention, or conceal that circumstance from me, was certainly startling! Berkeley! So this accounted for what the mess had remarked--his frequent absences from that agreeable board, from parades, and the used-up condition of his private horses. Was there any sly game afoot? So far as he was concerned, could I doubt it? His reserve to me declared that there was; and this game had been played for a month, with or without success, how was I to learn? Ha! thought I, if they knew about Miss Auriol, his unfortunate mistress! But noble morality is frequently very opaque--and my pay and expectations were but moonshine, when opposed to his solid thousands per annum. I was sorry to hear that Cora was coming so far south as Canterbury; for much as I loved and esteemed my cousin, I felt that I should rather avoid her now. I resume the letter. "How does your affair with la belle Louisa progress--eh? Well, I hope; though I think, with Thackeray, that 'every man ought to be in love a few times in his life, and have a smart attack of the fever. You are the better after it is over.' "So we are to have hostilities at last! I was in Edinburgh yesterday, anent the programme of the spring meeting at Musselburgh, and heard war declared by Britain against Russia. It was proclaimed at the market cross by the Rothesay, Albany, and Islay heralds, attended by the Kintyre, Unicorn, and Ormond pursuivants, all in their tabards, and a strong guard of Highlanders, with bayonets fixed, and colours flying. It was a quaint and picturesque sight, that did your old uncle's heart good, and set him thinking; for the same trumpets had many a time in the same place proclaimed war against England in the days of old." So ended my uncle's rambling letter, which certainly had the effect of setting me to think too, and with a heart full of sudden trouble, anxiety, and irritation. *CHAPTER XV.* In aught that tries the heart, how few withstand the proof. * * * * * What is the worst of woes that wait on age? What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow? To view each loved one blotted from life's page, And be alone on earth as I am now? BYRON. If Lady Louisa had not mentioned me in her letter to Cora, there was doubtless a secret and very good reason for the omission; but I thought it cold, and certainly uncourteous, that the countess, fresh from a long visit at Calderwood, should omit to invite me to her house; and that the earl should not have left his card for me at the barracks. So Cora was going to Chillingham Park! Well, at all events, I would visit my cousin Cora, were it but to evince my regard for Sir Nigel. But to know that Louisa was now, and had been for a month past, within a few miles of me, and that I had neither seen nor heard from her, while Berkeley was a frequent visitor at her father's house, filled me with such mortification that I could barely control my emotion when in his presence. His silence on the subject, too, added to my suspicions, and inflamed my smothered wrath; yet it was a matter on which I had no right to question him. Wounded vanity and self-esteem also sealed my tongue; and I actually despised myself when discovering that I could not help remarking his absence or his presence in quarters, and his going from the barracks to and fro. In the old duelling days--ay, had we been so circumstanced only some ten years before, and ere so decided a change came over public opinion--I should have made short work of it with my esteemed brother officer, and unmasked his duplicity. He might be a suitor to whose suit no response was made, even though Lady Chillingham seconded his intentions; but then she had, I knew, views regarding Lord Slubber. Louisa, however, could not have changed; or, if so, why send me the pretty miniature? Vainly I strove to busy myself with the interior economy of my troop, its management and discipline. Vainly I sought to kill time by attending closely to the men's messes and equipment, their pay-books, accoutrements, and horses, counting the days as they passed; but no letters came. I frequently absented myself from the barracks between the parades, with that strange superstition and hope which many persons have, that if they go away for a little time they will find the longed-for answer when they return. But save tradesmen's bills--missives which became more urgent as the rumoured day of departure drew nearer--no enclosures ever came to me. At last, finding suspense intolerable, one evening--I remember that it was the last of March--Beverley gave me leave from parades for two days. I mounted, and took the way by Sittingbourne--a quaint old Kentish town, which consists of one wide street bordering the highway, and by the village of Ospringe, to Canterbury, where I put up at the Royal Hotel; and, after having my horse corned, trotted him along the Margate Road, till I came to the well-known gate of Chillingham Park. The lodge--a mimic castle in the Tudor style--was pretty, and already covered with green climbers; through the bars of the iron gate, which was surmounted by a gilded earl's coronet, I could see the carefully-gravelled avenue winding away with great sweeps between the stately old trees, and bordered by the smooth, velvet-like lawn of emerald green, towards the house, a small glimpse of the Grecian peristyle and the white walls of which were just visible. There she dwelt; and I gazed wistfully at the white patch that shone in the sunshine between the gnarled stems of her old ancestral trees. On hearing a horse reined up without, the lodge-keeper came forth, key in hand, and politely touched his hat, as if waiting my pleasure; but I waved my hand, and with a flushing cheek and an anxious heart, let the reins of my nag drop on his neck, and rode slowly and heedlessly on. Unvisited and uninvited, I felt that to have left a card at Chillingham Park would have been an intrusion unwarranted by the rules of good society--rules which I warmly bequeathed to the infernal gods. I had come to Canterbury; but to what end?--unless I met Louisa on the road, or in the city, and such wished-for chances seldom fall to the lot of lovers. There was the cathedral, where, doubtless, she and her family would be on a Sunday, in their luxuriously-cushioned pew, attended by a tall "Jeames" in plush, carrying a great Bible, a nosegay, and gold-headed cane; but to thrust myself upon her there was too humble a proceeding for my then mood of mind. I longed with all my soul to see her, were it but for a moment; and yet I also longed for the route to the East, as a relief from my present torture; and come it soon would now. There was some consolation in that conviction. War had already been declared against Russia by the Western Powers of Europe. On the 23rd of the last month the brigade of guards had departed from London, after taking farewell of the Queen at Buckingham Palace; the Baltic fleet had sailed from Spithead; many of our troops were already embarked; and the French fleet for the North Sea had sailed from Brest. All betokened earnest and rapid preparations for a protracted contest; so I felt assured that our days in Maidstone were numbered now. How long, or how far I wandered on that evening, full of vague and most dispiriting thoughts, I know not--near to Margate certainly; and the sun was setting as I returned, keeping near the sea-shore, and in sight of the countless white sails and smoky funnels of the craft that were standing outward or inward about the mouths of the Thames and Medway. The sun sunk beyond the horizon; but the twilight was strong and clear. The place was lonely and still; and, save the chafing of the sea on the rocks at the Reculvers, not a sound came on the calm atmosphere of the soft spring evening. I was there alone, with my own thoughts for company, and found it difficult to realise the idea that the roar of London, with all its mingled myriads of the human race, was but sixty miles distant from where my horse nibbled the grass that grew by the sequestered wayside. The whole scenery was intensely English. Against the rosy flush of the sunset sky, that old landmark for mariners, the Sisters, as the two spires of the ancient church are named, stood up sharply and darkly defined about a mile distant; near me spread an English park, studded with fine old timber, a model of beauty and fertility, the sward of the most brilliant green, and closely mown, as if shaved with a huge razor. The smoke of the quaint old Saxon village curled upwards far into the still air, and all seemed peaceful and quiet as the shades of evening deepened--quiet as the dead of ages in the graves that lie about the basement of the old church that marks the spot where St. Augustine--sent by Pope Gregory on the errand of conversion--first put his foot upon the Saxon shore; and as if further to remind me that I was in England, and not in my native country, the curfew bell now rang out upon the stilly air, tolling "the knell of parting day," for, as the Norman power stopped on the banks of the Tweed, the curfew is, of course, unknown in Scotland. I had been lost in reverie for some time--how long I know not, while my horse shook his bridle and ears ever and anon at the evening flies, and cropped the herbage that grew under a thick old hedge, which bordered the flinty and chalky way--when the sound of voices roused me; and close by a rustic wooden stile, that afforded a passage through the hedge in question, I suddenly beheld a man and woman in parley--conversation it could not be termed, as the former was evidently confronting, and rudely barring, the progress of the latter. On the summit of the stile her figure was distinctly seen in dark outline against the twilight sky. She seemed young and handsome, with a smart little black-velvet hat and feather. Her small hands were well-gloved; one firmly grasped her folded parasol and handkerchief, and the other held up her skirt prettily as she sought to descend the stile, showing more than no doubt was generally revealed of a well-rounded leg, a taper ankle, and tiny foot, encased in a fashionable kid boot. Young and perfectly ladylike, her whole toilette was in keeping with her lithe and graceful figure; but her face was turned from me. He who confronted her was a burly, surly, beetle-browed, and rough-visaged fellow, like a costermonger, with a slouched, broken hat, which he touched, half ironically, from time to time; a black beard of a week's growth bristled on his chin; a patch covered one of his discoloured eyes; he had a great cudgel under his arm, and an ugly