"Take comfort: he no more shall see my face;
Lysander and myself will fly this place.
Before the time I did Lysander see,
Seemed Athens as a paradise to me:
Oh, then, what graces in my love do dwell,
That he hath turned a heaven unto a hell!"
Midsummer Night's Dream.
A very dark idea crossed the Master's mind, and then another, darker still!
A few guineas judiciously bestowed among the smugglers, who, when the nights were dark and gusty, frequented the coves near the castle (and when some person or persons unknown hung a lantern over the rocks to guide their steerage through a narrow cleft in the Partan Craig), might for ever rid him of Quentin Kennedy. They could land him on the sands of Dunkirk or Boulogne, or, or—what?
Oh, no! he thrust away the next idea as too horrid, though such things had been done of old in Carrick by the lawless lairds of Auchindrane, and to denounce them, in one terrible instance, had not the sea given up its dead?
He thought of despatching a line to the lieutenant commanding the pressgang at Ayr, by whose agency poor Quentin might be shipped off for seven years' sea service in the East or West Indies, but dread of exposure, and the outcry consequent thereto, made him relinquish such kidnapping ideas of revenge, though they were practical enough in the days when George III. was king.
Revolving these thoughts, with brows knit and his stealthy eyes fixed on the ground, Cosmo quitted the garden and entered the avenue, where the evening shadows under the sycamore trees were gloomy and dark; and there as he strode forward, with a quick and impatient step, he stumbled roughly against some one, who, like himself, seemed lost in reverie.
"Quentin Kennedy!" he exclaimed in a hoarse voice, as this collision brought all his readily excited fury to the culminating point; "confound it, fellow, is this you?"
"I beg pardon, sir—I did not see you—I was lost in thought," replied Quentin.
"Lost in thought, were you?" repeated Cosmo, in his most insulting tone; "you were loitering near the labyrinth in the garden?" he added with almost fierce suspicion.
"I was down in the oakwood shaw, two miles off."
"Hah—indeed! and what have you been doing with that gun??
"Sir!" stammered Quentin, his natural indignation rising as he perceived the other's resolute intention of insulting him.
"I say, what the deuce have you, or such as you, to do with that gun, and on these grounds?"
Quentin drew back, haughtily, in growing anger and surprise, and fearing that the Master was mad or intoxicated, and that he was about to make an assault, he very naturally brought the fowling-piece to the position of charging.
"What, you scoundrel! would you charge me breast high?" cried the Master, choking with rage; "would you shoot me as the poacher Campbell shot Lord Eglinton on his own lands, here in Ayrshire too? I'll teach you to know your proper place, you scurvy young dog!"
With these injurious words, and before even Quentin, who was completely astounded by the wantonness of the whole affair, could be aware of his purpose, Cosmo rushed upon him, wrenched the gun away, and clubbing it, dealt the poor lad a terrible blow on the head with the heavy iron butt, stretching him senseless on the grass. Then uttering a heavy malediction, the fierce Master, still boiling with unappeased rage, passed through the ivied-gateway and entered the mansion. Having the fowling-piece in his hand, force of habit led him towards the gun-room, where he proceeded to draw the charge, for it was still loaded, and to leave it for the under-game-keeper to clean.
Perceiving that there was blood on the lock and also on his straw-coloured kid gloves, he carefully wiped the former, and threw the latter into a stove. Regret he had none for the atrocity just committed; but he disliked the appearance of blood, it looked ugly, he thought—dangerous, and deuced ugly.
"Egad, I hope I haven't killed the young rascal!" he muttered; "how the deuce am I to explain the affair to the old people?—they will be certain to blame me."
Stepping from the gun-room into the library, which adjoined it, he was suddenly met by Lady Rohallion, who gave him an affectionate glance, which suddenly turned to one of anxiety, as she surveyed him by the last light of the sunset, that streamed through a deeply-embayed window. With an assumed smile and some commonplace remark, he was about to pass on, shame and mortification compelling the concealment of what he had done, when she laid her hands on his arm, and said tenderly,
"Dearest Cosmo, what has happened—you look extremely pale?"
"Do I, mother—pale, eh?"
"Yes, and quite ruffled too," she added.
"Well, perhaps so—your friend Flora is the cause."
"Flora Warrender?"
"Yes."
"Explain, Cosmo, explain?" she asked with evident uneasiness.
"I had a long conversation with her in the garden, and it was decidedly more animated than amatory in the end."
"You quarrelled?"
"Not at all—I proposed," he replied, with a strange smile.
"And were accepted?"
"The reverse."
"Rejected—you—my son, rejected?"
"Finally so—or for the present shall we say?" replied Cosmo, lighting a pipe by the old and elaborate process, to conceal his agitation. "A wilful little jade she is as ever I knew. Evidently has no fancy for me, or for increasing the number of his Majesty's lieges under canvas, or for seeing the world in a baggage-waggon, as a lady attached to a regiment of the line."
The courtly old lady gazed at her son almost mournfully; for this mocking brusquerie, acquired in the Pavilion of the Prince Regent, but ill accorded with her old-fashioned ideas of gentle bearing.
"You have been wrong, Cosmo," said she gravely; "you have been too hasty—too abrupt."
"Now, faith, do you think so, really?"
"It was absurd to propose for any girl, especially a young lady of family and fortune, after a two days' acquaintance."
"Egad, my most respected mamma, in London, I've known a score of women of the first fashion, who would have eloped with me for better or worse, and taken post horses for Gretna, on a two hours' acquaintance."
"Oh, Cosmo!"
"So I am wrong, you think, my lady mother?"
"Decidedly; but I trust that time will put all right. I do not despair."
"Neither do I, be assured," said he, with one of his strange smiles.
"The silly girl, of course, felt flattered by your offer?"
"Not at all—one might think such matters were of daily occurrence with her."
"Did she make no consideration of our family and its antiquity?" she asked, bridling up.
"My dear mother, it seems to be of very little importance to Flora Warrender whether the said family flourished at the court of old King Cole, from whose grave Kyle takes its name, or at that of his Majesty of the Cannibal Islands; at all events, she won't have me. Confound it!" he exclaimed, as if talking to himself; "to think that I, almost the pattern man of the Household Brigade—chosen by many a proud peeress to squire her through the crush of the opera; by the fighting men of the corps as their second in every affair of honour; by the Prince Regent to arrange his déjeuners, afternoon receptions, and crack suppers; I, the star of Fops' Alley—deemed the best stroke at billiards in London—the best hand on a tiller at Cowes, or to pull the bow-oar to Richmond; chosen to ride the most vicious brutes at Epsom and Melton, and who can hit a guinea at twenty yards with a saw-handle and a hair-trigger—that I, I say, should be outflanked by a country booby passes my comprehension, unless, as in old King James's days, there be witchcraft again in the Bailiwick of Carrick! To be jockeyed by a country lout and a lass of eighteen—deucedly disgusting! Thank heaven! this can never be known in town, or how would the lady-killing Cosmo be roasted! I think I hear Paget of the Hussars, and the rest of our set laughing over it; and, by Jove, they would laugh too, until I had one or two of them out at Chalk Farm for a morning appetiser."
"How this little rebuff nettles you! Take courage, Cosmo," said his mother, almost laughing at his angry and odd enumeration of his many good qualities.
"Well, I have changed my mind many times; so do women, and so may Flora. This is a boy's love; she will tire of his idea, and then is my time to cut in and win in a canter. You, my dear mother, yourself once loved, before my father proposed——"
"Stay," said Lady Rohallion, interrupting, with sudden agitation, and hastening angrily to change the unwelcome topic; "a sudden light breaks upon me! Cosmo, on the night you arrived, it seemed to me you spoke very oddly of Flora Warrender and Quentin Kennedy."
"How—about something in the avenue, was it?"
"Yes; that you had seen them exchanging marks of their mutual good will, or words to that effect."
"Exactly so, my Lady Rohallion," said Cosmo, slowly emitting the smoke of his pipe.
"What did you mean, Cosmo?" she demanded, with increasing asperity.
"Much more than I said, mother."
"That you saw Quentin kissing Flora?"
"Or Flora kissing Quentin, my dear lady mother, I don't think it makes much difference," said he, with an angry laugh, while she almost trembled with indignation; "but what do you think of your amiable ward and your protégé—a lively young fellow, isn't he?"
"I ought to have been prepared for this," said Lady Rohallion; "indeed, Eleonora Eglinton forewarned me that something of this kind might happen. A separation by school, college, or something else, should have been made whenever Flora came here. I must consult Rohallion, and have such arrangements made for Quentin as shall prevent his interference with the views we have so long cherished for our only son. The foolish girl—the presumptuous boy—to be actually kissing her!"
"Shameful, isn't it?" said Cosmo, who had been despatched somewhat precipitately into the Guards for making love to his mother's maids.
"Such vagaries must be controlled and punished."
"He should have been gazetted a year ago to a West India Regiment, or one of the eight Hottentot Battalions at the Cape; they are quite good enough for such as he; or send him still-hunting with a line regiment into Ireland, where slugs from behind a hedge may send him to the devil before his time."
"Oh fie, Cosmo, you are cruel and unjust;" but she added bitterly as pride of birth, her only failing or weakness, got the mastery for the moment; "no unknown waif, no nameless person like this youth Kennedy shall come between my son, the Master of Rohallion, and our long cherished purpose—no, assuredly! Andrews," she added, raising her voice, as the thin, spare military valet passed through the library, "desire Miss Warrender to speak with me in the yellow drawing-room, before the bell rings for supper."
Then leaving her son, Lady Rohallion swept out of the library to have a solemn interview with her ward.
The last flush of sunset had died away, and one by one the stars were shining out.
The night wore on, and nothing was seen or heard of Quentin. Indeed, save the Master, as yet no one missed him: but as he did not appear when the supper-bell clanged in the belfry of the old keep, Cosmo, with several unpleasant misgivings in his mind, hastened unseen into the avenue, down the long vista of which the waning moon shed a broad and pallid flood of radiance, ere, in clouds that betokened a rough night, it sunk beyond the wooded heights of Ardgour.
Cosmo went to the place where so savagely he had struck the poor lad down; but Quentin was gone; the grass where he had lain was bruised, and on the gravel was a pool of blood about a foot in diameter—blood that must have flowed from the wound in his head; but other trace of him there was none!