One of the Six Hundred: A Novel
been favoured by that remarkable illumination known in those waters as
St. Elmo's light, which had shone on their main-topgallant mast for a
space of three feet below the truck in the night, when they were off the
volcanic isle of Pantalaria.
My old friend Fred Wilford received us with warmth and welcome. Thus
far our voyages had been equally unmarked by danger or adventure.
In the cabin we found Berkeley, reading one of the London morning
papers, which was only a week or so old. It had come by the steam
packet from Marseilles. He addressed a few remarks, in his usual
languid way, to the colonel and to Scarlett, made a pencil-mark on his
paper, as if half casually, and tossing it on the cabin table, retired,
with his strange smile and lounging gait, on deck.
Under other circumstances I should most probably have been awaiting him
at the hotel of M. Dessin, at Calais, for the purpose of giving him a
morning airing on the beach, with the chance of myself being carried
back on a shutter, perhaps, to that famous room, in which, as all the
travelling world know, Lawrence Sterne and Walter Scott have slept. But
fate or duty had arranged it otherwise; so here we were, quietly smoking
cheroots in the harbour of Valetta. But his voice and presence recalled
all the baseness of his conduct at the Reculvers, and the bitterness of
the time when he involved me in disgrace with Louisa Loftus--a double
piece of treachery for which I had yet to demand satisfaction.
Curious to see the paragraph which had such interest for him, I took up
his paper, and my eye fell at once upon the following paragraph:--
"THE NEW PEERAGE.--Our readers will be glad to perceive that, by last
night's _London Gazette_, a right honourable lord, long known in the
world of fashion, and latterly in political circles, has been raised to
a marquisate, by the title of Marquis of Slubber de Gullion and Viscount
Gabey of Slubberleigh. Rumour adds that, lest the newly-won honours
perish, the noble marquis is about to lead to the altar the only
daughter and heiress of one of the greatest of our English families--the
fair maid of Kent."
I knew well that the closing words could only refer to Louisa Loftus. I
had seen her but a few days before this piece of impertinent twaddle had
been penned, and the memory of our parting hour, and the expression of
her eyes, came vividly before me; but we were far separated now, and it
is difficult to describe how deeply the tenor of that paragraph stung
me.
The drums were beating in barrack and citadel, and the trumpets were
sounding tattoo in the transports, as we were rowed back to our vessel.
Studhome and the colonel were chatting gaily, and Scarlett was humming a
waltz, as he pulled the stroke-oar and thought of past days at Oxford.
I alone was silent and sad.
From violet and purple, the tints of the later evening--the gloaming, as
we call it in Scotland--passed into blue and amber, and the lights of
Valetta rose over each other, glittering in tiers along the slope on
which the city is built, with all its "streets of stairs," which Byron
anathematized.
The band of an infantry regiment was playing in Citta Nuova, and softly
the strains of the music came across the rippling water, over which the
blue and amber tints were swiftly spreading, while in its depths the
stars were shining, and all the shipping were reflected downwards.
Lights glittered gaily all round the harbour; the ramparts of St. Elmo
and of Ricazoli, with the mass of the cathedral, where the knights of
the Seven Nations sleep in their marble tombs, and where hung of old the
silver keys of Acre, Rhodes, and Jerusalem, stood in bold outline
against the ruddy, but deepening, twilight sky.
The scene was lovely and stirring withal; but my heart and thoughts were
far away from Malta, as we were rowed back between crowded transports,
and huge, silent frigates and line-of battle ships, to the _Pride of the
Ocean_.
My good friend, Jack Studhome, who knew the cause of my too apparent
depression, made light of the matter, and endeavoured, in his own
fashion, to soothe and console me while we took a whiff together on
deck, before turning in for the night.
"Consider, Norcliff," said he; "Lady Louisa Loftus, sole heiress of
Chillingham Park!"
"Ay, there's the rub, Jack--sole heiress. I would rather that she had
not a shilling in the world."
"Indeed! Why?"
"Our chances were more equal then."
"Hear me out. Sole heiress of Lord Chillingham--all save his titles!
What should, what could, tempt her--already too, in the face of her
engagement with you--to throw herself away on old Slubber, who might be
her grandfather? Where would be her gain?"
"The title of marchioness, with vast estates," said I bitterly. "In my
case, my dear fellow, she would only be Lady Louisa Loftus, wife of a
very poor captain of lancers."
"But those newspaper rumours are frequently such impertinent falsehoods.
Remember that, if their authors get their columns filled, they care
little with what it may be, for a newspaper must contain daily the same
amount of words, whether it give news or not. So with messieurs the
editors, it is anything for the nonce. Their best productions are in
the press to-day, and too often, perhaps, we don't know where to-morrow;
so put not your trust in this, Norcliff. And now to bed. We have stable
duty at seven, A.M., to-morrow," concluded Studhome.
Next morning, Captain Binnacle, who had been on shore at Valetta,
brought off with him the mail, which came from London _via_ Marseilles,
and by it I received a welcome letter from Sir Nigel.
It was long and hurried; but was filled chiefly with hunting
intelligence. Had Cora written--and why did she not?--I might have had
more interesting tidings.
He had bought a couple of hunters from Lord Chillingham but feared they
wouldn't do in such a stone-wall county as Fife; and he had secured a
new huntsman--such a tip-top fellow! He had hunted all the counties on
the Welsh border--could tell the pedigree of a hound at a glance--was
perfect in his work, and rode under ten stone. Sir Hubert himself was
but a sham when compared to him, and he was sure to figure some day in
the columns of _Bell's Life_.
I had full permission to draw for whatever I required; but I scanned the
letter in vain for the name of Louisa. Slubber's was spoken of only
twice. Indeed, my hearty old uncle viewed that noble peer of the realm
with no small contempt.
"I am still at Chillingham Park, with our kind friends; but I must be
home in Scotland for the Lanarkshire steeple-chase on Beltane day.
There will be some queer jockeyship in the mounts, I fear. Four miles
distance will be the run, including thirteen stone walls, four rough
burns, two water leaps, and six-and-twenty most infernal fences. I know
the course well--by Gryffwraes and Waterlee. (All this stuff, thought
I, and not one word of Louisa!) Old Slubber is to be made a marquis, it
seems, so the countess talks nothing but 'peerage'--Douglas and Debrett,
Lodge, and Sir Bernard Burke. It is all noble 'shop,' and we poor
commoners have not the shadow of a chance!
"Slubber is an old humbug; I am as old as he is, perhaps; but I don't
wear my hat in the nape of my neck, or use goloshes and an
umbrella--never had one in all my life. I don't mount my horse with the
aid of a groom, and ride him as if I was afraid he'd take it into his
head to run up a tree. I don't take dinner pills and Seltzer water on
the sly from the butler; and my stomach, thank God, is not like his--a
more delicate piece of machinery than Cora's French watch; for I can
take a jolly curler's dinner of salt beef and greens, and can rush my
horse at a six-foot wall neck and neck with the lightest lad in your
troop.
"So why he's made a marquis, the devil, and that Scoto-Russian, Lord
Aberdeen, on whose policy he always gobbles like a turkey-cock, only
know."
Sir Nigel's ridicule of Slubber consoled me a little for his omitting
the dear name of Louisa. I knew that it was my regard for her that
inspired his chief dislike for the lord. But why was the good-hearted
baronet so vituperative? Was the senile peer really likely to become a
successful lover? Save by the side of his mistress, a lover is never
content.
*CHAPTER XXIX.*
We pass the scattered isles of Cyclades,
That, scarce distinguished seemed to stud the seas.
The shouts of sailors double near the shores,
They stretch their canvas, and they ply their oars.
Full on the promised land at length we bore,
With joy descending on the Cretan shore.
DRYDEN.--_Translation of AEn._ iii.
We were favoured by AEolus. One might have supposed that Captain Robert
Binnacle had succeeded to the bag of wind which that airy monarch gave
to the wise and gentle king of Ithaca. Thus a few days more saw our
transport amid the Isles of Greece as she bore through the Archipelago.
One day it was Milo, with Elijah's lofty peak, its smoky spring, and
hollow, sea-soaked rocks, that rose upon our lee; the next it was
Siphanto's marble shore, where ireful Apollo flooded the golden mines;
rugged Chios--in pagan times the land of purity, in later days the land
of slaughter; then Mytilene, the most fertile of all the AEgean Isles,
where "burning Sappho loved and sung," and where Terpander strung the
lyre anew. Now it was Lemnos, where Vulcan fell from heaven, and where
his forges blazed; and the next tack brought us to Tenedos, whose name
has never changed since Priam reigned in Troy--all names that recalled
alike our schoolboy labours, and the departed glories of the Grecian
name.
Off Tenedos the _Himalaya_ steamed past us, with two thousand two
hundred souls in her capacious womb. Soon after we entered the
Hellespont, between the famous castles of the Dardanelles, where Sestos
and Abydos stood of old, and the cannon of Kelidbahar (the lock of the
sea) on the European side saluted us, while the Turkish sentinels yelled
and brandished their muskets; and amid the haze of a summer evening we
saw the harbour lights of Gallipoli rise twinkling from the waters of
the strait; and when the anchor was let go, the courses were hauled up,
and the transport swung at her moorings, we knew that we were hard by
the shores of Thrace.
"And where the blazes is this same Seblastherpoll?" asked Lanty O'Regan,
my Irish groom, who was taking a survey of the waters where Leander took
his nightly bath.
"That place we sha'n't see, Lanty, for many a long and weary day," said
his Scotch companion, Pitblado, with more foresight than some of us then
possessed.
Few of us slept that night, and all were busy with preparations for
landing; for, with all its varieties, we were weary of the voyage, the
confinement of the transport, impatient for shore and for action. So
vague were the ideas our soldiers had of distance and locality, that
most of them expected to find themselves face to face with the Russians
at once.
Beverley and Studhome prepared their "disembarkation returns" for the
information of the adjutant-general; and these were so elaborate that
one might have supposed the worthy man's peace of mind depended entirely
on their literary productions. The whole troop had their traps packed,
and were ready to start with the first boat, when the order came to
land; and almost with dawn next morning an aide-de-camp, sent by
Lieutenant-General the Earl of Lucan, commanding the cavalry division,
arrived with orders for our immediate disembarkation, as we were to be
posted in the Light Brigade, which already consisted of the 8th and 11th
Hussars, and the 4th and 13th Light Dragoons.
The news spread through the ship like wildfire, and the cheer which rose