One of the Six Hundred: A Novel
"Remember that he is a devoted admirer of yours," I heard Lady
Chillingham whisper, with a glance which repressed her daughter's desire
to laugh outright.
"Hush, mamma," she replied, shutting her fan sharply; "confidences are
unusual in you; and as for he you speak of, his appearance is quite
enough to make one grow old."
Whether the countess would have checked this unseemly remark, which I
could not help overhearing with joy, I know not, for at that moment the
roar of the dinner-gong was heard in the vestibule, and my uncle, Sir
Nigel, looking hale, hearty, and ruddy, with his silver hair all shining
and waving, entered, and shook hands with all, but with none so warmly
as me. He wore a dark grey riding-coat, top-boots, and white corded
breeches, a costume for which he apologized to the countess, and then
turned again to me.
"Egad, Newton, glad to see you, my dear boy--in uniform, too--how well
the fellow looks in his sash and epaulettes! Your pardon for being so
late, Lady Chillingham; but I rode over to the barracks, thinking to
accompany Newton here. How glad Willie, my old keeper's son, was to see
me! Returning, I lost my way among a network of green lanes and
hedgerows; but as your Kent here is as flat as a billiard-table, when
compared with Fife and Kinross, the slopes of the Lomonds, and the
Saline hills, I rode straight for Chillingham, rushing my horse at
hedges, sunk fences, and everything that came in its way, in defiance of
threats against trespassers, and so forth, and I am here!"
"Coming as became the master of the Fife hounds, eh, Sir Nigel?" said
the countess; "but now I shall take your arm."
The earl led Cora, Slubber gave his arm to Lady Louisa; and I thought of
honest Chaucer's "January and May," as I brought up the rear, solus,
playing with the tassels of my sash, and gnawing my moustache, as we
marched through a double line of liveried servants to the dining-room,
where I contrived to seat myself on her other side.
There was an air of propriety about old Slubber, which, though it made
Louisa laugh, was intensely provoking to me, who had to keep my
conventional distance. However, I could cross a country with her when
riding to hounds, and claim her lithe waist for a waltz when occasion
offered; thank heaven! our senile Anglo-Norman was beyond these, and a
few other things now; and she gave me many a bright and intelligent
glance from under her long black eyelashes, which were almost curled at
the tips--recognitions of which his self-satisfied lordship was in
blissful ignorance.
I had the engagement ring to restore; but in the meantime our
conversation was confined to dinner-table twaddle, and as the dinner was
served up _a la Russe_, and all the carving done aside, even its
courtesies were abolished: so we confabulated with much hollow
earnestness on the prevalent rumour that all the cavalry, light and
heavy, were to march through France to Marseilles, the last batch of
novels from Mudie's, the race meetings, the future Derby, and other
topics equally far from our hearts; and then we had to laugh at old Lord
Slubber, when he perpetrated the joke that every small wit did at that
time.
"Turkey, my lord?" said a servant.
"Thanks--a slice--just what Nicholas wants."
"And what you, Newton, and other fellows, must prevent him from getting,
eh?" said Sir Nigel.
To return our engagement ring was the chief object that agitated me
during dinner; and, on perceiving that Louisa had drawn the glove off
her lovely left hand, I almost thought the return was thereby invited;
and as we dawdled over the dessert, which was served up on the earl's
favourite Rose du Barri service of Sevres china, and while Slubber waxed
eloquent on his friend Lord Aberdeen's doubtful policy, which my uncle
tore all to fritters, I contrived, unseen, to place my Rangoon diamond
in her hand, which closed upon it and mine, with a rapid, but nervous
pressure, which sent a thrill to my heart, and a flush to my cheek.
It was done!
Recovering--if, indeed, she ever lost it--her complete composure, she
asked me, with a smile, as if casually, how I liked the family motto,
which was graven round the champagne goblets.
"_Prends moi tel que je suis_," she added, reading it.
"I understand it with delight," said I.
"Take me such as I am," she translated, with a glance which filled me
with joy.
Poor old Slubber knew nothing of the little enigma that was being acted
almost under his aristocratic nose, and amid such trivial remarks as
these--
"What bin is this port from, Mr. ----?" naming the butler.
"Good, remarkable port, my Lord--bin ten--vintage, 1820; it is the
finest old wine in the county of Kent."
"Don't taste so," said Lord Chillingham; in fact, it had been voted out
of the servants' hall as intolerable. "And the sherry--eh?"
"Pale, my lord," whispered the butler; "you paid three hundred a butt
for it--from the small bin."
"Good--uncork some of the Moselle."
In the calm, inscrutable face, and tutored bearing of Louisa Loftus, no
one could have read the deep secret we had just shared in--the
reconciliation of two ardent and anxious hearts--the bond of love and
trust renewed; but this strange power of veiling all agitation at times
is incident alike to birth and training, and to the local influences of
these in the present time, when in modern society the human face is too
often a mere mask which conceals every emotion, exhibiting a calm
exterior, however at variance with the mind or disposition of the
person; thus, though her pride and self-esteem had been recently stung
to madness, and her heart had been crushed within her, now, under the
revulsion incident to a great joy, and reunion with me, Louisa was able
to wreathe her sweet face with a quiet and well-bred smile, while she
listened to the senile gabble of my Lord Slubber.
Great emotions, like those excited by the affair of Agnes Auriol, seldom
can remain long, and must subside; Louisa was quite subdued, and sunk in
softness and love to-night. She was all that I could desire--my own
Louisa.
The gentlemen soon joined the ladies in the drawing-room, and I drew at
once near Louisa, who was again seated on the same ottoman with Cora.
Lady Chillingham was idling in an easy-chair, half asleep, near the
fire, with her feet placed on the velvet fender-stool, and a silky
lapdog on her knee; but she roused herself on the approach of Lord
Slubber to whisper one of his old-fashioned compliments, coined in the
age when gallantry was a study.
"And you think the cavalry will not go through France?" said Louisa,
taking up, after a time, the thread of some of her former remarks, while
Cora fixed her tender and beautiful eyes kindly on my face.
"It is extremely doubtful," said I.
"And why so, Newton?" asked Cora.
"Because, cousin, it is feared that the red coats will not be popular in
France; and then there are the Scots Greys, who are literally covered
with trophies of Waterloo;[*] they especially would prove a very
unpalatable spectacle to the men of the Second Empire."
[*] This circumstance delayed for a time the appearance of the Greys in
the ranks of the allied army. They departed from Nottingham in July,
1854, with their band playing "Scots wha hae," &c.
"Your route will be a long but very pleasant one, by classic seas and
classic shores," said Louisa. "Shall we trace it on the map of the
Mediterranean, in the library? Come, Cora."
There was a tremulous change in her voice, and a glance in her eye that
I could not mistake.
Quitting the drawing-room unnoticed by our seniors, we stepped into the
library, the oak shelves of which were loaded with books of all sizes in
glittering bindings, more seemingly for show than use, and approaching
the large stand of maps on horizontal rollers, we drew down that of the
Mediterranean, while Cora, whose good little heart forboded that we
needed not her geographical aid, eyed us wistfully for a second, and
passed out by a door beyond.
The library had green-shaded lamps, which were half lighted; thus we
were almost concealed in shadow, and the huge cloth-mounted map we
affected to examine hung before us like a friendly screen. We had but a
few stolen moments for conversation, and one impulse animated us.
I turned to Louisa; her face drew closer to mine, and our lips met in
one long, long passionate kiss--such a kiss as if our souls were there.
"You understand all, now, Louisa?" said I.
"All," she said, in the same breathless voice.
"And forgive all--about that poor girl, I mean. How appearances were
against me!"
"Oh yes, dear, dear Newton."
"And you love me?"
"Oh, Newton!"
"You love me still?"
"Can you ask me while petting me thus? You have felt our separation
since those few happy days at Calderwood?"
"As a living death, Louisa. Worse than anticipations of the greater
separation that is to come."
"With all its dangers!" she said, with her eyes now full of tears.
"Yes; for whatever happens I shall feel assured----"
"That your poor Louisa loves you still--loves you dearly, Newton; and
ere you go to-night you must give me a lock of your hair."
Her head on my shoulder; her pale brow against my cheek, her lips were
close to mine.
"Till we are both in our graves, dear Newton, you can never, never know
how much I love you, and the agony that Berkeley's cunning cost me."
These were blessed words to hear--blessed words to treasure in the
distant land to which I was going; and in a silence more eloquent than
words, I could but press her to my heart.
This was indeed a moment of reunion, never to be forgotten, but to be
treasured in the secret recesses of the soul, and recalled only at
times; and times there were when I recalled it, when far, far away, in
the lonely watches of those dark nights, when the chafing of the Black
Sea was heard afar off on the rocks of Fort Constantine, and the thunder
of Sebastopol was close and nigh; and then the vague, undefined memory
of the place, the time, her voice, her eyes, and her kiss, would come
gradually back, filling my heart with intense melancholy, and my eyes
with tears.
In my doubt of the future, in my fear of ensnarements, and the exercise
of parental authority (a power of which we stand in such awe in
Scotland), and lest, by an unforeseen chance or circumstance, I should
lose her, I actually besought her, in what terms it is impossible to
remember now, to consent to a private marriage; and strange ideas of
written promises and protestations, of blood mingled with wine, and many
other melodramatic absurdities, occurred to me.
"Ah, no, no," said she, rousing herself to the occasion. "There will be
time enough when you return."
"If I ever do return," said I, impetuously, thinking of the chances of
war, and my certain hostile meeting with Berkeley.
"You must return, dear Newton--you shall, and I feel it in my heart."
"And there will be time----"
"For me," she interrupted, "to be cried, as Lydia Languish says, 'three
times in a parish church', and have an enormously fat parish clerk ask
the consent of every butcher in the parish to join in lawful wedlock
Newton Calderwood Norcliff, bachelor, and Louisa Loftus, spinster;
unless we have a special licence, St. George's, Hanover Square, and the
Bishop of London in his lawn sleeves, and so forth."
This sudden change of manner at such a time startled and distressed me.
"It is her way--a mistaken lightness of manner," thought I.
But, alas! I was yet to learn some terrible lessons in the treachery of
the human heart!
Another brief and mute embrace, and we had just time to veil our mutual
agitation and turn our attention to the outspread map of the
Mediterranean, affecting to trace the distance from Cagliari to Malta,