CHAPTER IX.
THE QUARTERMASTER'S SNUGGERY.
"Ambition is dead within me: but there is some satisfaction in a queen's commission, with half-pay at the end of it."—Once a Week.
Quentin Kennedy loved the venerable dominie, but was undoubtedly bored by his pedantry, and to escape it, once actually disappeared for three entire days, to the utter dismay of the whole household at Rohallion, when it was naturally supposed that he had been kidnapped by gipsies, or carried off by the smugglers, who frequented the coves in the rocks when the nights were dark and gusty; that he had been carried off by the pressgang from Ayr, or had fallen over the cliffs when bird-nesting, until Elsie Irvine arrived at the castle, in tears and tribulation, to announce that he had cunningly secreted himself in the "saut-backet" of her husband's clinker-built boat, and gone with the little fleet from the adjacent bay to the herring fishery.
When Lady Winifred's old friend and school companion, Eleonora Hamilton (then Countess of Eglinton) visited the castle with her two unmarried daughters, the Ladies Lilias and Mary—which she did once yearly—it was always a happy time for Quentin; for then he had two little companions with whom to romp and swing in the old terraced gardens; for whom to gather birds' eggs and butterflies in the old woods of Rohallion, and before whom he could exhibit his boyish skill in shooting at the butts, or hooking a brown trout in the Girvan or the Doon; but of the two, his chief friend and playmate was the fair-haired, blue-eyed, and softly-voiced little Lady Mary, with whom he generally opened the dance at the annual kirn, or harvest-home, which Lord Rohallion always gave to the field-labourers in the great barn of the home-farm, and on these occasions, the brightest ribbons that Maybole could produce, together with the dominie's violin and Pate's pipes, were in full requisition.
On a November night, about four years after the boy's arrival at Rohallion, his two friends, the dominie and ex-quartermaster, were seated in the latter's apartment discussing, which they did very frequently, the boy's pranks and progress, with a pipe of tobacco and a jug of hot toddy at the same time.
John Girvan's "snuggery," as he termed it, was in a square tower at an angle of the barbican wall of the old castle. The loopholes for defence by arrows or arquebusses yet remained under the window-sills, to enfilade all approach to the gate-way. They had been made with special reference to the English and the Kennedies of Kilhenzie; but there was a chance now that "the French might come by the same road."
The chamber was small, but very cosy, papered with a queer old pattern over the wainscoting; the walls were of vast strength, the windows arched, the fire-place deep, and lined with shining Delft squares of the Puritan times, representing bulbous-shaped Dutch skaters, and the instructive old Scriptural story of Susannah and the Elders.
The dark oak floor was minus a carpet, for the quartermaster had been long enough under canvas and in barracks to despise such a luxury.
Over the mantelpiece was a gaudily-coloured print of the Marquis of Cornwallis in full uniform, with a huge wig and cocked hat, New York and a hecatomb of slaughtered Yankees in the distance. Under this work of art hung the quartermaster's old regimental sword, with its spring shell, his crimson sash and gilt gorget, graven with a thistle, and the (to him) magic number "25"—his household lares, as the dominie called them.
Bound with iron, an old baggage-trunk, that had been over half the habitable globe, bore the same number and regiment.
Pipes, whips, and spurs and boot-tops, dog-eared Army Lists and empty bottles, littered all the mantelshelf and window-bunkers, and with some very wheezy-looking old chairs made up the appurtenances of the room, through which the fire shed a blaze so cheerful, that the dominie had no desire, when he heard the wind moaning through the battlements above, to face the blast which howled down the lonely glen that lay beyond the haunted gate.
A broiled poor man o' mutton and fried trout from the Girvan smoked on the table beside the toddy jugs, and all within looked cheery, as these two oddly-assorted friends, who had scarcely an idea in common, sat down to supper.
"Aye, dominie, it is a dreich night!" said the quartermaster, filling his pipe; "but your jug is empty, brew again; and now wi' a' your book-learning, can you tell me the name o' the man who invented this same whisky?"
"Many a night in Mossgiel, wi' Burns, we've drank to his memory, whoever he was," replied the dominie; "but odds my heart! John Girvan, I have scarcely got the better o' the fright that brat o' a laddie gave us, when he disappeared and ran off to the herring fishery."
The quartermaster laid down his pipe gravely, for he and the dominie had a perpetual disagreement about how Quentin was to be educated. The former laboured hard to teach him the use of fire-arms (Brown Bess in particular), to box, and to handle the pistol and broadsword, saying, that without such knowledge he would never be a man; while the poor dominie laboured still harder to infuse in his nature a love for literature and the arts of peace, and though compelled to console himself for Quentin's rapid progress in those of war, by some musty quotation concerning the Actian games which were instituted in honour of the victory over Marc Antony, he could not resist asking,
"To what end do you teach the laddie all this military nonsense—this use of sword and musket, John?"
"For drill and discipline, dominie—drill and discipline."
"Both excellent things in their way, quartermaster; the Romans, who conquered all the world——"
"South of Forth and Clyde—haud ye there, dominie!"
"Well, they conquered by the force of their discipline, and as that declined, so did their power; but to what profitable end, I say, teach the bairn all these havers about wars, battles, and bombshelling? Do you wish to make of him a tearing, swearing, tramping dragoon, such as we read of in the days of that atrocious Claverhouse?"
"Not at all, dominie."
"Then," asked Skaill, angrily, "what would ye make of him?"
"A man, where you would make him a Molly."
The dominie shook his head, and as he did so the bag of his wig shook pendulously behind him.
"John Girvan, bairns should be taught early to delight, not in arts which conduce to the destruction of human life, but in such as lead to charity, mercy, benevolence, and humanity."
"Quite right, dominie, and for utterly ignoring all these, I know a man of peace who had his lugs cropped off his head."
"Cropped?"
"Shaven clean off his head by a knife."
"Barbarous! barbarous!"
"But just, dominie—strictly just. Did you ever hear how our 28th, or North Gloucestershire, came to be called the Slashers?"
"Sooth to say, John, I never heard o' them at all."
"Well, pass the bottle, and I care na if I tell you. A company of ours was quartered with them in a town on the Canadian frontier. It was during the winter of '79, when the atmosphere was so cold that the hoar-frost on our sentries' greatcoats made them look for a' the world like figures round a bridecake; stiff half-and-half grog froze before you could drink it; the bugles froze with the buglers' breath; flesh came off if you touched a swordblade or musket barrel, and the air was full of glittering particles. We had to saw our ration beef in slices, and half roast our loaves before we could cut them. Men were found dead in the snow every day—stiff and frozen; in fact, there was no way of keeping ourselves warm, do what we might. I don't know how many degrees it was below the freezing point, but the cold was awful, and it seemed as if the mercury was frozen too!
"Amid the severity of that Canadian winter, the mayor of the town, a democratic and discontented ruffian, refused billets to the soldiers' wives, and the poor women and helpless children of the 28th nearly all perished in the streets; in the mornings they were found frozen like statues, or half-buried among the snow; but severely was the mayor punished, for one day as he sat at dinner the table was suddenly surrounded by a party of savages, in war-paint, with hunting shirts, fur cloaks, moccassins, and wampum belts. They whooped, yelled, brandished their tomahawks, and then dragging the mayor from the table, sliced off both his ears. After this they at once disappeared, and it was not known for some days that these pretended savages were soldiers of the 28th whose wives had perished through his inhumanity. It was for this that we first called them 'slashers,' a title which their bravery in the war fully confirmed."
"The wretch was rightly served," said the dominie; "and truly did our old friend Rob write of 'man's inhumanity to man making countless thousands mourn.'"
"Aye, dominie, that poem is as gude as any sermon that ever was written!" exclaimed the quartermaster.
"But to return to Quentin, it is wi' such barbarous stories as that you have told me you fill the bairn's head, John, at an age when his mind should be impressed wi' ideas of charity and mercy. How noble it was of the great Constantine, to employ his son, as soon as he could write, in signing pardons and granting boons. Under favour, John, the pen is a nobler instrument than the sword."
"Then how about Wight Wallace and the Bruce of Carrick, dominie, eh? Had they never learned to handle aught but a goosequill, where would our auld mother Scotland have been to-day; so shut pans, ye auld gomeril, and brew your toddy."
The dominie chuckled and said,
"I have worn a red coat mysel', quartermaster, for when Thurot was off the west coast, I was a year in the volunteers under the Earl o' Glencairn.”
"The best year of your life, dominie!"
"I had a sword, a musket and a bayonet. 'Thrice is he armed who hath his quarrel just.'"
"And how did you feel when you saw the beacons blazing on the Carrick hills, and heard the drums dinging before you, on the night o' the false alarm?" asked the old soldier with a sly smile.
"I shouted like Julian when sent to war, 'Oh Plato! Plato! what a task for a philosopher.'"
"The deevil you did!" exclaimed Girvan, puffing vigorously; "and what then?"
"Glencairn fined me twenty merks Scots, for speaking in the ranks."
"Fined—I'd have flogged you at the drumhead wi' the cat-o'-nine-tails."
"The Romans used a vine sapling, as we find in Juvenal, and——"
"Bother those Romans, whoever they were, if they really ever existed at all! You are ever and aye stuffing Quentin wi' these Romans and their sayings and doings."
"Indubitably, and I would that I could teach him all that was ever known to the seven wise men o' Greece."
"And who were they?"
"Bias, Pittacus, Solon, Chilo, Periander, Cleobulus, and Thales," replied the dominie with singular volubility; "all men who flourished before the Christian era."
"Powder and pipeclay! Egad, I'm glad they don't flourish now. Their names sound just like those of a regiment of niggers we had at the siege of Boston. Pardon, dominie,—but I must have my joke. I wish I could teach Quentin something of fortification," he added thoughtfully, as he watched the pale smoke from his pipe curling up towards the ceiling.
"It is an art almost coeval wi' man," responded the other approvingly.
"True," rejoined the quartermaster; "for did not Cain build a city with a wall round it on Mount Libuan, and call it after his son Enoch?"
"Right, quartermaster, right!" said the pedant, rubbing his hands with pleasure. "Yea, and the Babylonians, after the waters of the flood, built them cities, and wi' strong ramparts encompassed them about; but I hope, if I live, to hear Quentin Kennedy expound on all that and more, in the pulpit of Rohallion kirk."
"What!" roared the quartermaster, in a tone that made the dominie start back; "make a minister of him?"
"Yea, John Girvan; and wherefore not?"
"He has about as much vocation for the kirk as I have. Would you have him drag out his life like a drone in a Scotch country manse, when a' the warld is up and stirring? Quentin is a penniless lad wi' a proud spirit, so he must e'en follow the drum, as his father followed it before him."
"His father before him, say ye? Some puir fellow, the son o' an outlawed Jacobite, doubtless. I dinna think, quartermaster, that he made much o' the trade o' war; a trade that is clean against scripture in every respect."
"Dominie, did not Richard Cameron, who fell bravely, battling for the right, at Airs Moss, only a hundred and twenty years ago, know every cut of his good broadsword, as well as the texts of his Bible? A man's hands should always be ready to keep his head; thus, whatever may be before him, I have taught Quentin to fence and to shoot."
"No harm, perhaps, in either, for I remember me," replied the inveterate quoter, "that Bishop Latimer says of himself 'my poor father was as diligent to teach me to shoot, as to learn any other thing.' But anent Quentin Kennedy, you and I will never be able to agree, John, so——"
"We'll e'en leave the lad's future to himself, dominie. I think he has some right to be consulted, and, odds heart! he is but a bairn yet; a bairn, though, that can handle his pistol as well as my other pupil, the Master Cosmo."
"Fie, fie, John Girvan! and a most sinfu' use has the Master made o' his skill."
"He has paraded a good many bucks and bullies by daylight; but what would you have an officer to do? If insulted, he must challenge; if challenged, he must go out, or quit the service and society too."
The dominie shook his head solemnly in deprecation of such sentiments, and said—
"I fear me muckle the Master will meet wi' his match some day, and a black one it will be for the house o' Rohallion; but now for my deoch an doruis. Pass the dram bottle. Ugh! the road down the glen will be eerie to-night, and I can never forget that awfu' morning, John, when I saw the wraith of Cosmo's uncle, standing at the castle-gate, in his wig, cocked hat, and red coat, silent and grim, even as the ghost of Cæsar, on the night before Philippi."
"Wi' a' the whisky you had under your belt, I wonder you didna see twa o' them."
"Jest not—jest not," said the dominie, with, we are sorry to say, half-tipsy solemnity, as he drained his deoch to the last drop, tied a large yellow bandanna over his three-cornered hat and under his chin, assumed his walking-staff, and prepared to depart. "I hope the servant-lass will air the night-cap that she puts wi' the Bible at my bedside every night."
The quartermaster laughed slily, as he knew that the cap referred to was a stoup of strong ale, which, in the old Scottish fashion, the dominie's servant always placed with the Bible on a stool near his bed.
The poor dominie's potations mounted to his head as he began to move, and, striking his cane emphatically as he stepped away, he sung, in somewhat uncertain tones:—
"My kimmer and I lay down to sleep,
Wi' twa pint stoups at our bed's feet:
And aye when we wakened we drank them dry,
Sae what think ye o' my kimmer and I?
Toddling butt and toddling ben,
When round as a neep ye come toddling hame!"
And so he departed in the dark, in a mood that neither brownie nor bogle could scare.