CHAPTER XIII.
COSMO THE MASTER.
"Why make I friendships with the great,
When I no favour seek?
Or follow girls seven hours in eight—
I need but once a week?
Luxurious lobster night's farewell,
For sober studious days!
And Burlington's delicious meal,
For salads, tarts, and peas."—POPE.
The first rider was indeed the Master of Rohallion, who had arrived with a punctuality that was more military than personal, as the Honourable Cosmo Crawford was somewhat erratic, and, as the Guards Club said significantly, "nocturnal," in his habits; and here it may be well to inform the English reader, that his haughty title of MASTER he obtained in right of his father being a Scottish baron, the custom being older than the reign of James IV.
In ancient times, the heirs apparent of Scottish nobles were not discriminated according to their father's rank by the titles of marquis, viscount, earl, or lord, but were simply styled as the Masters of Marischal, Glencairn, Glammis, Lindesay, Rohallion, and so forth, a custom existing in Scotland to the present day, in most houses, under ducal rank.
Cosmo Crawford was tall and strongly built, but handsome and graceful, with a cold and stately manner, that sometimes degenerated into banter, but seldom perfect suavity, and he had a somewhat cruel and sinister grey eye. The pupils of the latter feature had a peculiarity worth noticing. They possessed the power of shrinking and dilating like those of a cat. His hair was curly and worn in the Prince Regent's profusion, but without powder, that being already considered almost Gothic, or decidedly behind the age, the curls on one side being so arranged as to conceal a very palpable sword-cut. Like that of his valet, to whom he flung his riding-whip, hat, and coat, his garments were all of the latest Bond Street cut, and he lounged towards the yellow-damask drawing-room as coolly and leisurely as if he had only left it two hours instead of two years ago, according but a cold stare to the warm smile and respectful salute of poor old Jack Andrews, who, throwing open the door, announced,
"The Master, my Lord!"
"Welcome home, boy—God bless you!" shouted the hearty old lord, springing towards him; but Lady Rohallion anticipated him, and received Cosmo in her arms first.
"Dear mother, glad to see you," said he, kissing her forehead; "father, how well, how jolly and hale you look!"
"Hale," repeated the white-haired peer; "don't like to be called hale, it smacks, Cosmo, of breaking up; looking well, only for one's years, and so forth."
"And my Lady Rohallion," said Cosmo, kissing his mother's hand, "what shall I say of you?
"'With curious arts dim charms revive,
And triumph in the bloom of fifty-five.'"
"Arts, you rogue," said his father; "it's no art, but the pure breeze from our Carrick hills and from the Firth of Clyde, with perhaps earlier hours at night and in the morning than you keep in London."
"Well, I am sorry my compliments displease you both," said he, laughing; "I am unfortunate, but pray be merciful; I have bade adieu to the Guards, to London, and all its glories to rusticate among you for a time. So, so, here comes Miss Warrender of Ardgour, I presume, and Quentin Kennedy; I saw you both in the avenue, I think," added Cosmo, the pupils of his pale eyes shrinking as he concentrated his gaze and knit his dark brows, which nearly ipet in one, over a straight and handsome nose. "Flora, you are charming! May I——"
The kiss he bluntly gave her seemed to burn a hole in Quentin's heart, for it may readily be supposed that he saluted the lovely young girl with much more empressement than he did the worthy lady his mother. Flora blushed scarlet, and glanced at Quentin imploringly, as much as to say, "don't be angry, dearest—you see that I cannot help this;" but he felt only rage to see the little cherry-lip, which his own had so lately touched in tremulous love and reverence, roughly and eagerly saluted by this brusque and blasé guardsman. Rapid though Flora's glance was, the latter detected it.
"And this is Quentin?" said he, surveying him through his eyeglass, with a deepening knit in his dark brows, and a smile on his haughty lips; "what a great hulking fellow he has become! Begad, he is tall enough for a rear-rank grenadier; and why is he not set to do something, instead of idling about here, and no doubt playing the devil with the preserves?"
There was some sense in the question, but coming from such a quarter, and the tone in which, it was spoken, cut Quentin to the quick.
"He is barely done with his studies," urged Lord Rohallion, coming to his favourite's rescue.
"Before I was his age, I had mounted my first guard at St. James's Palace."
"And I mine on the banks of the Weser," said his father.
Quentin looked steadily at the cold, keen face of the Master, who was not yet six-and-thirty—but his Guards' life made him look much older; thus, to a lad of Quentin's years, those of the Master seemed quite patriarchal; a time came, however, when he thought otherwise, and removed the patriarchal period of life a few years further off.
"Well, Cosmo, talking of age," said Lord Rohallion, slapping his tall son on the back, "to be lieutenant-colonel of a line regiment at six-and-thirty, with the Cross of the Bath, for doubtless you will get it——"
"Of course, father, of course—one thing follows the other—well?"
"Is being decidedly lucky," said Lady Winifred, closing his lordship's sentence, and glancing at Flora, to see what she thought of it.
"With the prospect of a long war before him, too."
"Yes, father, and I hope that the luck in store will belie the prophecy of my old foster-mother, Elsie Irvine, at the Coves, who used to allege, that when I first left your room, mother, a puling and new-born brat, I was carried down a stair instead of up, a certain token that I should never rise in the world. I have often made the Prince Regent, Paget, and other fellows laugh at that story; yet I have always had a fair run of success in everything I undertake."
"Which should make you in future avoid all affairs at Chalk Farm, and so forth; you have had three men out there in three years, Cosmo."
"And winged them all. My dear lord, don't talk. Some small sword affairs of yours, when Leicester fields was the fashionable place, are still remembered in London."
"Yes—I ran two friends of Mr. Wilkes fairly through the body there one morning, for permitting themselves to indulge in national reflections, and would do so again if the same cause were given me: but, zounds! what else could we do in those days of the 'North Briton?' By-the-bye, is this new movement about the stuff called gas spreading in London?"
"Yes; I wish you had been there on the 28th of January, 1807, and seen Pall-Mall actually lighted with it—by a man named Winsor, the Cockney call him a mad man for thinking of such a scheme!"
"Did you pass through Edinburgh?"
"I was obliged to do so, my lord, unfortunately."
"Did you make any stay there?"
"Stay! I should think not—only long enough to dine with some jolly fellows of the Cinque Ports Dragoons, at the new barrack, built some fifteen years ago at Piershill—"
"Once Colonel Piers' place—Piers, of the old Scotch 17th—Aberdour's Light Dragoons."
"Exactly, and then to get a relay of post-horses at Ramsay's stables. But as for staying in Edinburgh, egad! it would be intolerable to me, with its would-be dandies and its freckled women, whose faces have that sweet expression imparted by the soothing influences of Presbyterianism and the east wind; and then its one street, or only half a street to promenade in, who the devil would stay there that could stay out of it? Why, not even the rhyming ganger who hailed it as 'Edina, Scotia's darling seat.'"
As his son concluded with a loud laugh, Lord Rohallion shook his powdered head, for he could not endorse this unpatriotic depreciation of the Scottish metropolis, and poor Lady Winifred sighed as she glanced at a black silhouette by Miers, presented to her by the bard of Coila, with a copy of his verses in her honour; and then remembering the fancied glories of the Old Assembly Close, as she and her friend, Lady Eglinton, had seen them in their girlhood, she said:
"In my time, Cosmo, Edinburgh was wont to be gay enough."
"A sad gaiety. Thank God, mother, the Guards can never be quartered in so dull a provincial town."
"Its dulness is the effect of the Union, which removed court, council, parliament, revenue, and everything," said Lord Rohallion.
"I thought most people had ceased to consider that a grievance," said his son, laughing again; "but I think that if Edinburgh has been dull since 1707, it must have been truly diabolical before it."
"Cosmo," said his mother, reproachfully, "I know not what some of your ancestors who fought at Flodden and Pinkey would have thought of you."
"The more fools they to fight at such places."
"Not so," said the old lord rising, with some asperity in his tone; "God rest all who ever fought or died for Scotland and her kings; and I must tell you, Cosmo, that you will never be the better or the truer Briton for being a bad or false Scotsman!"
The Master gave another of his sinister laughs; and, finding that the conversation had suddenly taken an uncomfortable turn, his father said with a smile—
"I was about to express a hope, Cosmo, that with the rank of lieutenant-colonel, you mean to settle at last, and become quiet."
"What, my lord—have I been drawing too heavily upon you and old John Girvan of late?"
"I mean, that pranks which passed well enough in a subaltern, won't do in one who looks to the command of a regiment."
"Pelting the rabble with rotten eggs at Epsom, and so forth, you mean? No; in my days a sub, after pulling off half the knockers in Piccadilly, breaking all the oil lamps in Pall Mall, getting up a cry of fire in the Hay market, and bringing out the engines to pump on the rascally mob; having, at least, one set-to with the rough and muscular democrats of the watch, would finish off by a champagne supper somewhere, and thus bring to a close a reputable London day, which, in our corps, usually begins after evening parade. Ah, my lord, you slow fellows of the King's Own Borderers knew nothing of such pranks, with your long pigtails, your funny regimentals, and Kevenhüller hats."
"The reason, perhaps, we cocked those same hats so bravely on many a field," retorted his father. "In my days the army was the school of good-breeding, sir—but here's Jack Andrews announcing tea and devilled grouse in the inner drawing-room."
"Cosmo, give your arm to Flora, if Quentin can spare her," said Lady Rohallion, smiling. "They are great friends and companions."
"Oh—ah—indeed," said the Master, sarcastically, as he gave Flora Warrender his arm. "I think I saw them exchanging strong marks of their mutual goodwill as I rode up the avenue."
Quentin grew scarlet, and Flora painfully pale at this remark, which stung her deeply, and roused her indignation.