Jacqueline not dead, but in Paris! It terrified and bewildered me. Was Hautois drowned at last? might he too reappear as he had done before, like a vampire, whom there was no destroying? Jacqueline not dead, but in Paris with her cousin, the handsome Comte de Bourgneuf, to whom she was soon to be married. This idea—this sequel to her story, whether false or true, was ever before me, kindling my jealousy, wounding my self-esteem, filling my heart with bitter sorrow, and I longed for active service to wean me from myself; and right glad was I when the "Route" arrived for Germany.
Wadhurst is five miles from Tunbridge Wells. That famous Spa was then little more than a village, but many fashionables who were there to drink the waters, to kill time, to catch an heir or an heiress, came over to see the corps inspected by the general of the district on the day before we marched for the coast.
The regiment paraded in complete marching order, with valises packed, and pouches filled with ammunition. In addition to the usual accoutrements for horse and man, every officer and trooper had strapped to his saddle a nosebag, watering bridle and log, with mane and curry-combs, sponge, horsepicker, scissors, and spare shoe, all in a canvas cover, and a net for forage.
We received the general, John Lafausille (who four years after died when on his way home from the Havannah), in review order, with our trumpets sounding "Britons, strike home." And I can remember well the stately appearance of the old soldier, with his hair powdered and queued, as he rode to the front of the staff, and raised his Kevenhüller hat in salute, while the veteran Preston, erect, grim, and stiff, in his buff coat, a relic of a past age retained by his eccentricity, lowered his heavy broadsword in return till the blade touched the toe of his right jackboot. The muscular strength and stature of our men, nearly all of whom were natives of Ayrshire, with the beauty and high condition of our horses, excited great admiration.
A brilliant staff now passed along the line, and it was so numerous, that to admit its passage, our rear rank went about by threes, retired to double distance, then fronted and dressed by the pivots. Many ladies on horseback accompanied the staff.
Among them was one in a pale blue riding-habit, with a broad hat and white plume, who was mounted on a dashing grey pad, and rode beside an aide-de-camp, of whom she was asking many questions; and she seemed to be eagerly scrutinizing the corps, the officers thereof especially.
Her companion I knew by sight to be a Major Shirley—rather a gay and dissipated man, and a brother of that Cornet Frederick Shirley who had wrought my friend Charters such evil when in the Dragoon Guards.
"Have you found him?" asked the major, laughing.
"No," I heard the lady reply.
"Look among the cornets."
"But how shall I know them?"
"By their cake and pudding appearance. Besides, each carries the standard of his troop."
They were now close to me, and I carried the standard of the Light Troop, with the staff resting on the toe of my right boot, so the young lady, a handsome girl with fair, almost golden hair, a delicate complexion, and dark blue eyes, turned and looked fully at me.
She was my cousin Aurora!
Though it was for me she had been looking, she coloured deeply, bowed and smiled, and then grew pale—so pale that her friend the staff major observed it, and said, drily:
"So, Miss Gauntlet, you have found him, then?"
"Yes—oh yes, and knew him immediately."
"Then I hope you are pleased," said the major, biting his nether-lip and adroitly catching the bridle of her horse, which reared at a sudden crash of the trumpets that drowned her reply as the cavalcade passed on.
The ranks were now closed.
"Dress the line by the standards, Major Maitland," cried Colonel Preston. "Who is that fool yonder throwing the whole line out?" he added, as a sergeant's horse became restive and reared on its hind legs.
"A fool, but for whom, Colonel, you would have been years ago in your grave at Stapledyke," replied the sergeant, quietly.
"Egad you are right, Duff, for you saved my life there—forgive my anger, comrade," said the kind old officer.
"I would forgive you any thing, Colonel," replied the old sergeant in the same under tone, while his eyes filled; "for you and I are the last left of the Greys who rode in the charge on the bloody day in South Beveland."
The review was soon over; we passed the general in open column of troops, charged in squadrons and in line, amid whirlwinds of dust—went through sword and carbine exercise, were complimented by the general and harangued by the colonel; then the men were dismissed to their quarters, while the officers joined the staff and the ladies at luncheon, in a large marquee which had been erected on a pleasant lawn for the purpose.
A stranger amid that gay throng, and caring little on the eve of embarkation whether or not I made new acquaintances, I was attending to one or two stout and elderly mammas, who being neither handsome nor blooming, had been somewhat neglected; and while doing the honours with our cold fowl, pink cream and champagne, a voice close by me said:
"And so, Basil, you are going to the seat of war?"
I looked around, and found Aurora Gauntlet's blue eyes bent on me with something of sad earnestness.
"You will shake hands with me, Basil—won't you?"
I coloured and trembled with pride, perplexity, and even annoyance; but pressed her hand in mine, though the wrongs I had suffered at the behest of our grandfather swelled up bitterly in my heart.
"So, Basil," she resumed, smiling, "I have brought your military escapade to a creditable—to a pleasant termination; have I not?"
"I felt quite certain, Miss Gauntlet, that it was to you I owed my epaulettes, and I pray you to accept of my gratitude for your friendship and memory. My military escapade! Is it thus you term the resource of stern necessity? Would it have been an escapade had I turned highwayman, or joined some desperate privateer? Few resources are left to a penniless gentleman, so I chose the most honourable."
"I deplore your bitterness of spirit, cousin Basil," said she, "and I pity you; but what could—what can I do?"
"I ask no pity, Miss Gauntlet," I replied, somewhat ruffled; "but permit me to lead you from this—here we cannot converse with freedom." And taking her hand, we went forth into the sunny lawn, Aurora holding her riding-habit gathered in her left hand, her ostrich feather drooping over her right shoulder, and very lovely and graceful she looked in the bloom of her youth and beauty.
"Forgive me," said she, almost with tears in her eyes, and a quiver on her pouting lip, for she knew in what a hostile aspect I viewed her; "but I think your conduct to me, as a kinswoman who seeks to befriend you, most unkind and ungracious! Think of what is before you, and that we may never see or meet each other again."
I laughed and replied,
"We have not seen much of each other hitherto, Miss Gauntlet."
"Call me Aurora!" said she, grasping her switch with an impulse that was not all playfulness.
"But then, when I am such a scape-grace—outcast if you will—what the devil does it matter what is before me, or how soon I am shot? Thanks to you, however, my dear cousin, I shall die in the position of a gentleman."
"I would have sent you a few hundred guineas on your promotion, Basil; but mamma reminded me of your dangerous pride, your haughty and resentful spirit, so I tore up the cheque after signing it."
"You judged rightly, my dear cousin; but I thank you, though I would not have accepted the money. The commission you have thrust upon me——"
"Thrust—oh fie, Basil! It was simply managed," said she, smiling, "by a note from mamma to Mr. Pitt, the great commoner, who was once himself a cornet of cavalry; in the Blues, I think, was he not?"
"That commission I hoped to have won otherwise. However——" I paused, as there was a tearful and angry expression in Aurora's eyes, and very beautiful eyes they were, with lashes thick, dark, and long, which imparted to them a charming softness. Then cousinship is such a strange affinity—something like a sister and more like a sweetheart, that I committed some very ungracious speech to silence, for I now began to perceive that from her mother Aurora inherited a true English girl's face, in expression the sweetest, in features the softest, perhaps, in the world.
"And you march——" she began, to change the subject.
"To-morrow, at eight in the morning."
"So early! Yet I shall ride over from Tunbridge Wells to see you off."
"Thank you, Aurora; but at such an hour——"
"Oh, I shall not want for an escort, believe me. Major Shirley and a dozen others will only be too happy. And now that we are to be friends from henceforward, confess that you have been wrong, cousin Basil, and that I have been right!"
"Perhaps—it is the privilege of all handsome girls to be right, whatever view they take."
"Did you learn this in France?" she asked, with a steady glance.
"Ah!" said I, and with the thought of Jacqueline, my heart seemed to die within me; "in France I preserved your handkerchief (you remember our race on Banstead Heath), and it saved my life from a bullet at St. Malo."
Her soft, peachlike cheek flushed with honest pleasure when I said this, but ere she could reply, Major Shirley—a privileged man evidently was this devil of a major, and a very handsome one to boot—came forward, saying—
"Miss Gauntlet, I beg pardon, but I have been looking for you everywhere."
"Why?" asked Aurora, raising her eyebrows.
"You are forgetting the hour, and that I promised your mamma to see you safely back to Tunbridge Wells betimes."
"Adieu, Basil!"
"Till to-morrow," I added.
She kissed her gloved hand to me, and the smiling major led her away with all haste.
I was happier after this interview than I had been for many a day. The kindness that the warmhearted and impulsive Aurora seemed to cherish for me gave her another and a nearer interest in my mind. Animosity died within me, and I began to think it was charming to have at least one relation who loved me for myself, and I thought of our old Scottish proverb, which says that "Blood is thicker than water." Moreover, how could she help the tenor of my crusty grandfather's odious will, or that fatality by which my cousin Tony broke his valuable neck and made her an heiress?
We paraded duly for the march next day. The several troops were formed, their rolls called, and as the clock of the old market-place struck eight, the whole regiment moved off amid the cheers of the populace and the lamentations of those soldiers' wives who were left behind with their poor little ones, their treasured marriage lines, and a "begging pass" to their own parish wherever it might be—too often the usual and cruel wind-up of military matrimony.
At that moment Aurora Gauntlet, mounted on her dashing grey—a pad she rode in compliment to us—her cheeks flushed by a long ride in the pure morning air, her skirt and plume and golden hair floating behind her, cantered up to the column, accompanied by Major Shirley in his staff uniform, and by John Trot, the valiant hero of Wandsworth Common, in very gay livery, and like the staff officer, well mounted.
"I'm just in time, I find," said she, as I drew aside from my troop (which being the Light one was in the rear, as the corps was marched with the right in front) and reined up beside her.
"I was looking for you anxiously, Aurora. Will you keep this document for me, cousin? for if I am killed in Germany, I have no desire that it should be used by some boor to light his pipe with or wrap his butter in."
It was the diploma of the Netherwood baronetcy, running in the name of "CAROLUS, DEI GRATIA, REX SCOTIÆ ET ANGLIÆ, &c. &c., nostro Johanni Gauntleti de Netherwood, ejusque hæredibus masculis de corpore, &c., titulam gradum et dignitatem militis Baronetti in hac antiqua parte Regni Nostri Scotiæ," and so forth.
"You shall be the custodier of this choice piece of archæology, for with my sword, Aurora, it is all my inheritance now. In my haversack or valise I have borne it ever since old Nathan Wylie, Sir Basil's evil mentor, sent it to me as a taunt amid my misfortunes."
"You would still reproach me?" said she, in a low voice.
"Nay, Aurora, on my soul I do not."
"I thank you," she replied, with her eyes brimful of tears; for in addition to the peculiar position in which we stood, nothing melts a woman's heart so much as the aspect of a fine regiment departing for foreign service in time of war. "My mother has become feeble and ailing—I shall soon be alone in the world, so think kindly of me, Basil, when you are far away, even as we shall think kindly of you, for we are the last of our family—the last of the old Gauntlets of Netherwood."
"I am, rather than you," said I, smiling.
"How?"
"Some one, of course, will marry you, so I must be the last."
She blushed painfully, and her glance wandered to Shirley, but his eyes, at least, appeared to be intent upon the marching column.
"I am going to Germany now, perhaps never to return; for news I have heard (here I referred to the strange tidings of Boisguiller) have made me, even in youth, somewhat reckless of life."
"Oh, Basil, Basil! you must not speak thus."
"Sir, Colonel Preston is looking back for you," said Major Shirley, with a slight tone of impatience and authority in his voice. "And there sounds a trumpet."
"Then we do part friends at last?" said Aurora, with a sad smile.
"Yes, dear cousin, the best of friends."
She held up her cheek to be kissed by me; but somehow her rosy lip came in its place.
I saw Shirley's face darken, but heeded it little, as I put spurs to my grey and dashed after the regiment, which was now trotting along the highway which led towards Brighton.