CHAPTER XVII.
FORTH INTO THE WORLD.
"This nicht is my departing nicht,
For here nae langer I maun stay;
There's neither friend or foe o' mine,
But wishes me away.
What I hae dune through lack o' wit,
I never, never can reca';
I hope you're a' my friends as yet—
Gude nicht, and joy be wi' ye a'."
Johnnie Armstrong's Good Night.
The knock-down blow given to Quentin by the butt-end of the clubbed fowling-piece, beside inflicting a severe wound which bled profusely, stunned him completely for a time, and in this condition he was found by the quartermaster, who was returning from having a jug of punch and a quiet rubber with our quaint friend the dominie at his little thatched cottage in the village.
Great were the alarm and concern of the kind-hearted veteran when he found his young friend and favourite in a condition so pitiable. He raised him, tied a handkerchief over his wound to stanch the bleeding; then gradually as consciousness returned, Quentin remembered all that had occurred, and told Girvan of his meeting with the Master—the unmerited and unexpected insolence of the latter, his sudden assault, and that was all he knew.
The disquiet of the ex-quartermaster was greatly increased on hearing of a fracas so unseemly and so dangerous, and he knew in a moment that it contained more elements of discord than Quentin admitted or perhaps knew; though he was ignorant of the Master's abrupt proposal, the garden-scene, and of the subsequent expostulation, which was in progress at that moment, and which we have detailed in the preceding chapter.
"I can't blame you, my boy," said the old soldier, half communing with himself, and shaking his head till his pigtail swung like a pendulum; "I can't blame ye," he repeated, as he gave Quentin his arm, and together they walked slowly towards the castle; "ye are young—the temptation is great, though I hae long since forgotten all of such matters, save that love-making tendeth to mischief."
"Quartermaster," stammered Quentin, "I don't understand, what——"
"But I do! The devilment first began in Father Adam's garden, and it will go on so long as the world wags."
Quentin coloured deeply, and his heart leaped with mingled rage and exultation—rage at the Master for the injury he had done him, and exultation for its cause—jealousy, by which he was assured that Flora loved him, despite all the attention and the greater attractions of the blasé guardsman.
But what was to be done now?
To remain longer under the same roof with the Master of Rohallion was impossible; but whither was he to go? The quartermaster, without adverting further to what he too well knew to be the secret spring or moving cause of a quarrel so sudden and unbecoming in its details, hurried Quentin to his secluded little quarters, "the snuggery," already described as existing in a tower of the castle. There he gave him a glass of sherry and water as a reviver; sponged and cleansed, with ready and kindly hands, his face and hair from the clotted blood which disfigured them, applied with soldierlike promptitude a piece of court-plaster to the cut, and brushed a lock or so gently over to conceal it.
That Lady Rohallion must be informed of the encounter and have it explained away, if possible; that the Master should be urged to apologise to Quentin (a very improbable hope); and that they should be made to shake hands and commit the affair to oblivion, was the mode in which the worthy ground-bailie proposed to solder up this untoward affair. Quentin was long inexorable, and with the fury of youth vowed to have some mysterious and terrible revenge; but gradually the inexpediency, the impropriety, and impossibility of obtaining reparation by the strong hand dawned upon him, and he consented to leave the matter in the hands of Girvan—to have it explained gently to Lady Rohallion, and leave her to be the mediator between them.
On being informed by Jack Andrews that she was in the yellow drawing-room, and as there was still an hour to spare before the supper bell rang, they proceeded thither to have an interview with her.
While passing through the outer drawing-room, which was quaintly furnished with marqueterie cabinets, tables, and bookcases, with chairs and fauteuils of Queen Anne's time, they heard voices in the inner apartment, and one of them was Lady Rohallion's, pitched in a louder key than was her wont, so they paused, unfortunately, only to hear the LAST words of her conversation with Flora—words which fell like molten lead on the ears and in the heart of the listener, whom they most concerned.
"—We know nothing of him—he may be base-born for aught that we can tell, and Lord Rohallion shall learn that Quentin Kennedy—a brat, a very beggar's brat—shall never come between our own son and his success—and so, young lady, your humble servant!"
These bitter, bitter words—words such as he had never heard from her lips before, made Quentin reel as if stunned, so that with the effect they produced upon him, added to that of the recent blow, he would have fallen had not the quartermaster caught him in his arms, and held him up, surveying him the while with a kind and father-like expression of solicitude and bewilderment in his old and weather-worn visage.
Rousing himself, with his teeth set and his eyes flashing, he made three efforts to turn the door handle and enter the room.
It was his hand that Flora had heard upon the lock when she started from the sofa and fled to her own apartment in a passion of tears, so that when he entered the inner drawing-room it was empty, and thus Quentin knew not—though his heart foreboded—to whom the injurious words of Lady Rohallion had been addressed; but their tenor decided him at once in a preconceived intention of leaving, and for ever, the only home he had now in the world, and almost the only one of which he had any distinct memory.
"This is no longer a place for me, John Girvan, and so sure as God sees and hears me, I shall leave it this very night!" he exclaimed, as with his eyes flashing and full of tears, and his heart now filled only by new, and hitherto unknown emotions of sorrow, bitterness, and mortification (unknown to him at least) he walked to and fro upon the gun-battery, where the 24-pounders of La Bonne Citoyenne faced the waves of the Firth, on which the last rays of a waning moon were shining coldly and palely, especially on the ridge of foam that boiled for ever over the Partan Craig.
"And whither would ye go, Quentin?" asked Girvan, who felt in his honest heart an intense commiseration for the lonely lad, knowing that were he to remain after the insult he had received, and the words he had heard, it would argue a poverty of spirit he would be loth to find in Quentin; "whither would ye go?"
"Away to France, to seek my mother."
"Impossible—it's hostile ground, and once on it you would be made a prisoner by the authorities, and shut up in Bitche, Verdun, or Brisgau, if they did not hang you as a spy, or send you to serve as a private soldier in the Corps Etranger. You must think of another scheme, less rash and romantic."
"I know of none."
"In all the wide world, Quentin," said Girvan, with his nether lip quivering, "ye have no home but this."
"This!" repeated Quentin, grinding his teeth.
"Yes."
"Well—I care not; I will go anywhere from it—the farther away the better!" (And Flora? suggested his heart.)
In vain the quartermaster urged him to do nothing rashly, and to await the return of Lord Rohallion, who had ridden over to Eglinton castle, to visit his old friend and American comrade, Earl Hugh, who had just returned from London; but pride and passion, with a conviction that the mother's unwonted bitterness was only a supplement to the son's insulting conduct, seemed to dissolve all the ties that had bound Quentin to Rohallion and its family.
These emotions of anger had full swing in his heart. What Lady Rohallion had said, the old Lord must, he argued, have heard repeatedly, and may often have thought; and so, forth—forth to seek his bread elsewhere, he would go before the clocks struck midnight.
Mentally he vowed and resolved, that the first hour of another morning should see him far in search of a new home.
Deluding good John Girvan by some excuse, he slipped to his own room and packed a few necessaries in a small portmanteau, feeling, while he did so, a sense of mortification that they were the gifts of those whom, in justice to himself, he was compelled to leave. His watch, a ring, a breast-pin, and other trinkets given to him by Lady Rohallion, he laid upon his dressing-table, leaving them in token that he took with him nothing but what was absolutely necessary.
The time was an hour and a-half from midnight. Unheeding he had heard the supper-bell clanged long ago, and cared not what any one—Flora excepted—thought of his absence now. Opening a window, he looked forth upon the night. The moon had waned, and the atmosphere was thick and gusty—yea, nearly as stormy and as wild as on that night when he had been washed ashore on the sand of the bay below Rohallion.
Putting his purse in his pocket—it contained but a half-guinea, he gave a last glance at his bed-room—to leave it with all its familiar features cost him a pang; there were some of Lady Rohallion's needlework, and sketches by Flora, books lent him by the dominie, gloves and foils that had borne the dint of many a bout between him and John Girvan; quaint shells given to him by Elsie Irvine, and many little trophies of his shooting expeditions with the gamekeeper, and so forth. He quitted the room with a sigh, and slipping downstairs reached the hall-door unseen by any of the household.
"And now a long farewell to Rohallion!" he exclaimed, as he reached the ivied arch of the haunted gate.
"Not so fast, Quentin," said a voice, and the rough hand of the worthy quartermaster grasped his.
"John Girvan," said Quentin, with emotion.
"I thought it would come to this. So you are really about to take French leave of us—to levant in the night, and without beat of drum?"
"Yes,"
"To go out into the wide world?"
"Yes."
"I knew it would be thus, for I knew your spirit, Quentin, and so have been keeping guard here at the gate."
"Guard—for what purpose? To stop me?"
"No."
"What then?"
"To aid and help ye, Quentin, laddie," said Girvan, placing a heavy purse in his hand. "I have saved something here, forty guineas or so, off my half-pay, take them and use them cautiously, wi' an auld man's blessing—an auld soldier's, if you like it better."
"Girvan—John Girvan," said Quentin, with a very troubled voice; "I cannot—I cannot——"
"What?"
"Deprive you of what I may never be able to repay."
"Ye must and ye shall take the money, or I'll fling it into the Lollard's Linn!" said the other, impetuously. "It was I who laid your father's head in the grave, laddie, in the auld kirkyard yonder in the glen, and ill would it become auld John Girvan, of the 25th, to let his son go forth to seek his fortune in this cold hard world, portionless and penniless, while there was a shot in the locker—a lad I love, too!"
"But the repayment, John Girvan, the repayment."
"Heed not that—it will come time enough; and if it never comes I'll never miss it; but ye'll write to me from the next burgh-town, won't ye, Quentin, laddie?"
"I shall, John—I shall," replied Quentin, now so softened that he sobbed with his face on the old man's shoulder.
"God bless ye, my bairn—God bless ye!"
"And you, John."
"You'll think o' me sometimes."
"Oh, could I ever forget?"
"Sorely will she repent this at my lord's homecoming," said Girvan, bitterly.
"My father was an ill-starred wanderer, and perished miserably, poor man! What right have I to hope for, or to look for, a better fate than he? My mother, too..... Do they see me now, and know of all this? .... And Flora—dear Flora, whom I shall see no more!"
"Take a dram ere you go, laddie, for the night is dark and eerie," said Girvan, producing a flask from his pocket; "'a spur in the head is weel worth twa on the heels,' says an auld Scots proverb."
"You will bid the dominie good-bye for me."
"That shall I, laddie—that shall I."
"And tell—tell her, that I have gone forth to seek my fortune, and—and——"
His voice failed him, so he slung his little portmanteau on his shoulder, and wrung the hand of his kind friend for the last time. Hurrying away, he disappeared in the darkness, and, as he did so, a sound that followed on the wind made him pause, but for an instant.
It was the old quartermaster sobbing like a child.
* * * *
So, thus went Quentin Kennedy forth into the world.
"Few words," says a charming writer, "are more easily spoken than He went forth to seek his fortune; and what a whole world lies within the narrow compass! a world of high-hearted hopes and doubting fear; of noble ambition to be won and glorious paths to be trod, mingled with tender thoughts of home and those who made it such. What sustaining courage must be his who dares this course, and braves that terrible conflict—the toughest that ever man fought—between his own bright colouring of life, and the stern reality of the world. How many hopes has he to abandon—how many illusions to give up. How often is his faith to be falsified and his trustfulness betrayed; and, worst of all, what a fatal change do these trials impress upon himself—how different is he from what he had been."
Bitterness tinged the spirit of Quentin Kennedy with an impression of fatalism, and he marched mournfully, doggedly on.