CHAPTER XVIII.
UNAVAILING REGRET.
"Ay waken oh!
Waken and wearie;
Sleep I canna get
For thinking o' my dearie.
When I sleep I dream,
And when I wake I'm eerie;
Rest I canna get,
For thinking o' my dearie."
Old Scots Song.
When, three days after these events, Lord Rohallion returned home from his visit to Eglinton and to his brave old comrade—the "Sodger Hugh" of Burns' poem—he found the members of his household in a considerable state of consternation and excitement. This was consequent to the sudden and mysterious disappearance of his favourite, Quentin Kennedy; but gradually the whole story came out in all its details, even to the crushing observation, so unfortunately and unintentionally overheard by the lad and the quartermaster in the outer drawing-room.
Lord Rohallion was very indignant with his son for making an attack so unprovoked as the affair in the avenue, which, to do him justice, the Master described truly enough. He was seriously angry with Lady Winifred for speaking so ungenerously of his young favourite, and with the quartermaster too, for permitting, even aiding him in the means of flight.
Now, three days had elapsed and no tidings had been heard of him; but there were no railroads or steamers in those days, or other means of locomotion than the occasional stage-coaches and carriers' waggons, so the family supposed that he could not be very far off.
The Master was sullen, resenting all this interest as an insult to himself, so he spent the whole day abroad in search of grouse and ptarmigan, and had even ordered his valet to pack up and prepare for returning to London, an order which that powdered gentleman of the aiguillette heard with extreme satisfaction, "the hair of Hayrshire by no means agreeing with his constitution," while the "red hands and big beetle-crushers of the women were by no means to his taste."
It was evident to Cosmo that Flora entertained a horror of him; and now that her anger had fully subsided and emotions of alarm replaced it, Lady Rohallion mourned for the poor lad, repenting of the past, and trembling for the unknown future.
"A plague on your planning and match-making, Winny," said her husband, as they sat together on the old stone seat in the garden, late on the third evening after Quentin had disappeared; "I never knew any good come of that sort of thing."
"You know, Reynold, how long this proposed marriage has been a favourite scheme of ourselves and the Warrenders," she urged, gently.
"But you were—pardon me, Winny, dear—too officious or energetic; and Cosmo has been most reprehensibly rash!"
"Ah, don't say so!"
"I must! Had you left the girl to herself, this romantic fancy for her early playmate had soon been forgotten, or merged in a woman's love for Cosmo, and his proposal had been accepted, as I hope it yet shall be. Women change, don't they, sometimes?" he added, with a sly twinkle in his eyes.
"Yes; but there must be reasons," said she, hesitatingly.
"Of course—of course."
"From the hints that Cosmo gave of what he had seen or overheard, I deemed it right to interfere."
"An error, I think; couldn't you let the young folks alone? Heaven knows, many a girl I kissed, in my first red coat and epaulettes," said Rohallion, while knocking the gravel about with his silver-headed cane.
"But Cosmo does so love that girl."
"Love her?" said Rohallion, laughing.
"Yes."
"Then it must be after some odd fashion of his own."
"How, my lord?"
"Why, zounds! Cosmo has passed unscathed through the perils of too many London seasons to be bird-limed by a country belle like Flora, beautiful though she be. She is not the style of girl that passes muster with the Household Brigade, I fear."
"Flora Warrender?"
"I mean that she is too genuine—too unsophisticated—in fact, I don't know what I mean,—somewhat of a character, if you will; and then, Quentin—poor Quentin——"
"Poor dear boy! pray don't upbraid me more, Reynold," she urged with tears.
"I do not mean to do so, Winny."
"I remember him only as the sweet little prattling child, saved from the wreck on that wild and stormy night; and I love him dearly, as if he were our own; he was full of affection and gentleness!" she continued, covering her face with her handkerchief.
"And yet you trampled on him, Winny," said Lord Rohallion, taking a pinch of Prince's mixture with great energy, and making his hair-powder fly about like a floury halo, "trampled upon him as if he had been a beggar's cur—he a soldier's son!"
"Oh, Reynold, upbraidings again!"
"It wasn't like you, Winny, dear—it wasn't like you."
"My deep interest in Cosmo's welfare, provocation at Quentin, and the extreme wilfulness of Flora, all served to bewilder me. I own that I was wrong and not quite myself; but the dear bairn is gone, Reynold, gone from our roof-tree, and sorrow avails not."
"He was so good, so gentle, of so sweet a disposition," said Lord Rohallion, musingly; "always doing kind offices for everybody. Egad! I've seen him carrying horse-buckets for the old groom in the stable-court, because the man was feeble and ailing; but here come the dominie and John Girvan—perhaps they have news. Good evening, dominie. Any tidings of the deserter, Girvan?"
The kind-hearted dominie, who since Quentin's disappearance had been as restless as if his galligaskins had been lined with Lieutenant James's horse-blister, shook his head mournfully, while lifting his old-fashioned three-cornered hat, and bowing thrice to the lady, who presented him with her lace-mittened hand.
"I have just been telling Lady Rohallion that I thought she was unnecessarily severe, and I regret very much, Girvan, that Quentin overheard those casual words in the drawing-room—words lightly spoken, and not meant for him to hear."
"Poor lad! as for his falling in love with Miss Warrender, it was quite natural," said the quartermaster; "how could you expect aught else, my lady?"
"True—true," replied Lady Winifred, with an air of extreme annoyance at having private family matters openly canvassed by dependents; but the affair had gone beyond their own control now; "propinquity is frequently fatal."
"Prop—what? I dinna quite comprehend, my lady; but this I know, that if a winsome young pair are left for ever together——"
"That is exactly what I mean, Girvanmains," interrupted the lady, with cold dignity.
"Well—it is pretty much like leaving a lighted match near gunpowder; there will be a blow-up sometime when least expected."
"May you not be all wrong in your views of this matter?" said Lord Rohallion, who somewhat shared his wife's feeling of annoyance; "I must question Miss Warrender herself; I feel assured that she will conceal nothing from me."
"Not even that she allowed this sprightly young fellow to kiss her in the avenue, eh?" said the sneering voice of the Master, who appeared suddenly at the back of the stone chair, which he had approached unseen, and whereon he lounged with a twig in his mouth, and a Newmarket hat knowingly depressed very much over his right eye. "It was very pretty and becoming, wasn't it, dominie? ha! ha!"
"Cosmo!" exclaimed his mother, with positive anger.
"Osculatio—a kissing-match—eh, dominie?"
"There may be no harm in a kiss, my good sir," said the pedant, gravely, for though mightily shocked, as became the precentor of Rohallion kirk, on hearing of such undue familiarity, he felt himself bound to defend his young pupil and friend.
"No harm, you think?"
"Indubitably not."
"A rare old put it is! But what do such little favours lead to?"
"They may lead to reconciliation, as when the king kissed Absalom; or be the token of welcome, as when Moses kissed his father-in-law; or they may indicate homage, as we find in the book of Esther."
"And what about the kiss of Judas, dominie, when on such matters?" continued the sneering Cosmo.
"That I leave you, sir, to discover; but that there may be nothing wrong in the act itself, I can refer you to Genesis, Hosea, and all the sacred writings, which abound in solemn salutes by the lip, so that the kiss of Quentin may have been a pure and sinless one."
The dominie gave the fore-cock of his hat a twist with his hand, as if he had settled the matter, while Lord Rohallion, notwithstanding his annoyance, could not but join his son in a hearty laugh at the serious earnestness of the defence.
"You will have a vigorous search made for Quentin Kennedy," said he; "despatch messengers in every direction, John Girvan; spare neither trouble nor money, but bring the young rogue back to us."
"That shall I do blithely, my lord," replied the quartermaster, as he and the dominie made their bows and retired, while Cosmo curled his thin lips; and after a pause, uttered one of his harsh and unpleasant mocking laughs.
"The Master has the eyebrows of a wicked man, or I am no physiognomist—grieved am I to say so, dominie," whispered Girvan, as they walked away together.
"Ye are right, John, the intercilium is covered with hair, whilk I like not, though Petronius and Ovid call such eyebrows the chief charm of the other sex;
"'Ye fill by art your eyebrows' vacant space,'
saith the latter. It is an auld—auld notion that beetle-brows indicate an evil temper—a crafty and fierce spirit; and of a verity, the Master Cosmo hath both."
"Who the deuce could have anticipated such a blow-up as this?"
"About a woman! Pah! women," said the dominie, cynically, "according to a German philosopher, are only like works carved of fine ivory: nothing is whiter or smoother, and nothing sooner turns yellow."
"Are ye sure he was not a Roman philosopher?" asked the quartermaster, drily.
"I am: yet Petronius and Ovid both say——"
"Bother them both, dominie! leave Greek roots and Latin verbs alone, now that the poor boy is gone—God bless and watch over him! I know he'll ever have a warm corner in his heart for us both, and that, go wherever he may, he'll neither forget you nor the poor old quartermaster; but now to have a glass of grog, and then to set about this search that my lord has ordered—a search which I know right well will prove a bootless one."
A vigorous pursuit and inquiry along all the highways were now instituted. Girvan, the dominie, the gardener, gamekeepers, grooms, Jack Andrews, Irvin the fisherman, the running footman, the parish minister on his puffy Galloway cob, and even Spillsby, the portly and unwieldy butler, were all despatched in various directions to the neighbouring farms, mansion sand villages, without avail.
John Legat, usually known in the Bailiwick as Lang Leggie, the running footman (for one of those officials still lingered in the old-fashioned household of Rohallion), scoured all Kyle and Cunninghame, with hard boiled eggs and sherry in the silver bulb that topped his long cane, scarcely pausing to imbibe these, his sustenance when on duty; and though he returned thrice to the castle, he was despatched like a liveried Mercury, thrice again, but without hearing tidings of the missing one.
Since the last Duke of Queensberry ("old Q.") who died in 1810, Lord Rohallion was perhaps the last Scottish peer who retained such an old state appendage as a running footman.
Long did they all, save the sullen Master, hope, and even flatter themselves, that the wanderer would return; but days became weeks, and no trace could be discovered and no tidings were heard of him anywhere.
An armed lugger that did not display her colours, but was very foreign in her build and in the rake of her masts, had been seen standing off and on near Rohallion Head. About midnight she was close in shore, steering clear of the Partan Craig, and burning a blue light. By sunrise she was far off at sea: could he have gone with her?
There had been a numerous and somewhat lawless body of gipsies encamped near the oakwood shaw on the night of his disappearance, for the ashes of their night-fires had been found, together with well-picked bones and broken bottles, the usual débris of their suppers al fresco; but there were other traces more alarming: several large pools of blood, which showed that there had been a fight—perhaps murder—committed among them. These wanderers had departed by sunrise, and passed beyond the craigs of Kyle, where all traces of them were lost. The quartermaster thought of the money he had given Quentin, and trembled lest the gold had only ensured his destruction, till the dominie reassured him by remembering that there were more Kennedies than Faas among those gipsies, and the former would be sure to protect him for the sake of his name.
On that night, too, the pressgang from Ayr had been more than ten miles inland, in search of certain seamen who had sought refuge as farm labourers; so this knowledge was another source of fear, as there was a great demand for men, and the officers were not very particular.
There had been a recruiting party beating up for various regiments in the Bailiwick of Cunninghame, and it had been at Maybole on the night after Quentin fled. The party had marched, no one could say whether for Edinburgh or Glasgow. Could Quentin have enlisted?
The night was a dark and stormy one; could he have lost his way and perished in the Doon or the Girvan, both of which were swollen by recent rains? This was barely possible, as he knew the country so well.
There were no electric wires to telegraph by, no rural police to apply to, and no penny dailies to advertise in. People travelled still by an armed stage or the carrier's waggon, just as their great-grandfathers did in the days of Queen Anne. Twanging his horn as he went or came, the Riding Post was still, as in Cowper's Task,
"——the herald of a noisy world,
With spattered boots, strapped waist, and frozen locks,
News from all nations lumbering at his back."
Posts came and went from the capital of the Bailiwick, but there were no tidings of Quentin, so the Master of Rohallion laughed in secret at all the exertions, doubts, and fears of those around him.
Every alarming idea was naturally suggested. The quartermaster's early instincts made him think most frequently of the recruiting party; but he grieved at the idea of the friendless and homeless lad, so delicately nurtured and gently bred, enduring all he had himself endured—the hardships and privations of a private soldier's life; while the kind-hearted dominie actually shed tears behind his huge horn barnacles at the bare thought of such a thing, and mourned for all his wasted classic lore.
Aware that she had been in some measure the primary cause of Quentin's expulsion from Rohallion, Flora Warrender had rather a difficult part to play now. To conceal entirely that she mourned for him would be to act a part which she disdained; but when she spoke with sorrow or anxiety, she excited the sarcasms of Cosmo, and even a little pique in Lady Winifred, who more than once said to her, almost with asperity, "Flora, you should have known your own position, and made Quentin remember his; then all these unseemly events had never taken place."
"How, madam?"
"You should at once have put an end to his mooning and tomfoolery. Do you hear me?"
"Yes, madam," sighed Flora, who seemed to be intent on a book, though she held it upside down.
"How cool—how composed you are!"
"Less so, perhaps, than I seem," replied Flora, who felt that tears were suffusing her eyes.
"Young ladies took these matters very differently in my time: but since this revolution in France, manners are strangely altered. (Here we may mention that the epoch referred to was now superseding the Union in Lady Rohallion'a mind.) Tears!" she continued; "I am glad to see them, at least for your own sake."
"They are not for my own sake, Lady Rohallion, but for the sake of poor Quentin, who has fallen under the displeasure of you all, and who, through my unwitting means, has—has—become——"
"What?"
"Homeless, friendless, and alone! Oh, it must be so sad to be alone in the world—all alone!"
Lady Winifred lowered her eyes, and her irritation passed rapidly away.
She had somewhat changed since that stormy night on which we first introduced her to the reader, and had altered, as people do with increasing years, so as to be at times—shall we say it?—almost selfish in much that related to her own immediate hearth and household, and more especially in all that concerned the still more selfish Cosmo, on whom she doted, and in whom she could see no imperfection. Yet she could not but reproach herself bitterly when thinking of Quentin Kennedy, and the harsh, cutting words he had overheard.
Then as his smiling, loving, and handsome face came vividly in memory before her, she would ask of herself, "Is it thus, Winifred Rohallion, you have treated the strange orphan, the helpless child once, the mere lad now, who was cast by fate, misfortune, and the waves of that bleak November sea, years ago, at your door and at your mercy? Was it generous to cast forth upon the cold world the friendless, poor, and penniless youth, who loves you—ay, even as your own son never loved you? And what answer is to be given if, at some future day, his mother, who may be living yet, should come hither and demand him of you—you who stung and galled his proud spirit by taunts, upbraiding and unmerited reproach?" And so she would whisper and think what she dared not say aloud; though "perhaps the lowest of our whispers may reach eternity, for it is not very far from any of us, after all."
By the past memories of her early life—by those of one whose face came at times unbidden before her, and by the pleasant days of their youth in pastoral Nithsdale—by those evenings when the sunset glowed so redly on the green summits of Monswald and Criffel, while the Nith brawled joyously over its pebbled bed, and the white hawthorn cast its fragrance and its blossoms on the soft west wind—by all these, it might be asked, had she no compassion for the young love she was seeking to mar and crush?
She had alike compunction and compassion; but in this instance she deemed it the mere love of a boy for a girl, and not quite such as Rohallion's brother, Ranulph Crawford, had for her some seven-and-thirty years before.
Seven-and-thirty! a long vista they were to look back through now; but the events of her youth seemed clearer at times than those of her middle age, and as we grow older they always are so in dreams.
Quentin would soon forget the affair, she was assured, and self-interest and love for her own son blinded her to the rest—to all but a sorrow for the lost youth, and a craving to know his fate, where he was now, and with whom.
Thus many a night after his disappearance her heart upbraided her keenly; and many a lonely hour, unseen by others, she wept and prayed—prayed for the welfare and safety of the unknown lad she might never see or hear of more, for as a mother she had been to him, and he had been ever tender, loving, and kind as a son to her—much more than ever the Master had been in the days of his infancy and boyhood, for he was always cold, cruel, and headstrong; and now Quentin's place was vacant among them, as completely as if he was in the grave.
And Flora Warrender, though mentioned last, her sorrow was not the least. How lonely and how tiresome the old castle seemed to her now! All their favourite walks—the long, shady avenue by the foaming Lollard's Linn; the grand old garden with its aged yew hedges; the kelpies' haunted pool, where first she learned that he loved her, and felt his kiss upon her cheek; the ivied ruins of Kilhenzie, and every old trysting-place, seemed deserted now indeed.
She had no companion now in her rambles to touch up her sketches, to compare notes with in reading, to hover lovingly by her side at the piano, and so forth: thus Flora's "occupation" seemed, like the warlike Moor's, to be gone indeed!
The sunny August mornings came, but there came not with them Quentin, to meet her fresh and ruddy from a gallop along the shore, with a dewy bouquet from the garden, or with a basket of speckled trout from the river.
Slowly passed each lingering day, and evening followed; but there was no one to ramble with now by starlight in the terraced garden—to linger with by the sounding sea that surged upon the shore below and foamed upon the distant rock, or to share all her thoughts, and anticipate every wish.
She hoped he would return when his money was spent and when his passion cooled, or his love for her obtained the mastery. So did Lady Rohallion and the old lord—that honest, worthy country gentleman and gallant peer—never doubted it; but the quicker-seeing quartermaster did; so day followed day until they began to count the weeks, and still there came no news of the lost Quentin Kennedy.