"Oh, Leolyn, be obstinately just;
Indulge no passion and deceive no trust.
Let never man be bold enough to say,
Thus, and no farther, shall my passion stray;
The first crime past compels us into more,
And guilt grows fate, which was but choice before."
AARON HILL.
The third day and the fourth passed away at Portalegre; on the fifth and sixth, Major Middleton and others, who felt a friendly interest in Quentin Kennedy, began to surmise, when they met on the morning or evening parade, or in each other's billets, or so forth, that it was time now he had reported his return, and the good or bad success of his journey, to the colonel and general commanding the division.
Other days passed; it was whispered about from staff-office officials that ere long the division would leave Portalegre, as the whole army was about to advance against the enemy; and then Captain Askerne, Monkton, Buckle, the adjutant, and others, became doubly anxious about the lad, and were interested as much as men could be under their circumstances, when human life is deemed of so little value as it is when on active service and before an enemy.
As for Warriston of the 94th, not being under the immediate command of Colonel Crawford, he openly and bitterly inveighed against "the iniquity of having sacrificed a mere youth in such a manner," and threatened "to bring the matter prominently before Sir John Moore," who commanded the forces in Portugal.
"He has, perhaps, gone over to the enemy—a despatch is sometimes well paid for," said Cosmo, in his sneering manner, when some of these remarks reached him on parade, one morning.
"Impossible, my dear sir—impossible!" said Middleton, testily, while spurring and reining in his horse; "I know the lad as if he were my own son, and feel assured that he is the soul of honour; that he was all ardour for the service, and that he would die rather than disgrace himself."
"Indeed—ah-aw—you think so?" drawled Cosmo, with his glass in his sinister eye, as he surveyed the major with a glance of somewhat mingled cast.
"I do, colonel," was the emphatic rejoinder.
"He has disappeared at all events—a dubious phrase. If the fellow has not levanted to the Duke of Dalmatia with General Hope's despatch, may his heart not have failed him? may he not have shown the white feather? Better men than he, among the Belem Rangers, have done so ere now."
The imaginary corps referred to contained one of the most offensive imputations to the ears of Peninsula men; thus Captain Askerne exclaimed—
"Cowardice, Colonel Crawford—would you infer cowardice?"
"I infer nothing, gentlemen, but that better men than he have shown the white feather."
"Not in the Line, that I am aware of," was the somewhat pointed remark of Middleton; and Cosmo, who had lately come from the Guards, crimsoned with suppressed passion.
"A volunteer is a soldier of fortune, and none such can ever be a coward," said Askerne, stoutly.
"Of course not—the idea is absurd," added Middleton, looking round the group of officers, who glanced their approval.
"You are warm, Major Middleton," said Cosmo, sternly, while his eyes gleamed with their most dangerous expression; "somewhat unnecessarily warm on this trivial subject, I think."
"I am at least honest, colonel, as he must be who defends the absent or the dead."
"We have had enough of this—to your companies—fall in, gentlemen!" said the colonel, sternly and impatiently, as he spurred his horse, unsheathed his sword, and the formula of the parade began, after which he revenged himself by drilling the corps, under a drizzling rain, for nearly two hours, forcing Askerne's grenadiers to skirmish in a swamp, and making old Major Middleton put the battalion twice through the eighteen manoeuvres.
About this time a patrol of Portuguese cavalry found near the high road that led through a desert towards the Spanish frontier, the remains of a man, almost reduced to a skeleton, picked, gnawed, and torn asunder, to all appearance recently, by those devouring wolves and wild dogs which infest the mountains of the district.
Terrible surmises of Quentin's fate were now whispered among the Borderers; the officer in command of the patrol was closely questioned by Middleton, Warriston, and others; but he constantly stated that the victim had probably been stripped by robbers before being devoured, as nothing had been found near the remains that might lead to their identification, or in any way connect them with the missing Quentin Kennedy. Thus, in default of other proof, as time wore on, the members of the regiment made up their minds to consider the poor bones as his, and concluded that he had perished miserably in the wilderness.
To do Cosmo Crawford justice, there were times when he was not without secret emotions of shame, and even of compunction, for the part he had acted to Quentin. His own conscience, the small still voice that would speak, could not acquit him; but those gleams of the better spirit came only briefly and at intervals, and such unwelcome thoughts were always eventually stifled by the constitutional malignity of his nature, and he would mutter to himself—
"Pshaw! he is well away; what the devil was he to me, or I to him?"
It was while the troops were lingering at Portalegre and elsewhere along the Spanish frontier, that Lord Castlereagh's despatch, containing the first organized plan of the future campaign, arrived in Lisbon.
In the northern provinces of Spain, thirty-five thousand horse and foot were to be employed; ten thousand of these were to be embarked from British ports, and the rest to be drafted from our army of occupation in Portugal; and these were supposed to be equal to cope with the vast hosts pouring through the many passes of the Pyrenees from France and Germany, and those which already blackened all the plains of Castile and Arragon.
We have elsewhere mentioned the vast strength of the French army, whose head-quarters were at Vittoria.
The brave but ill-fated Sir John Moore was ordered to take the field without delay with the troops that were under his own command. Some fortress or city (unnamed) in Galicia, or on the borders of the kingdom of Leon, was to be the place for concentrating the whole allied armies of Britain, Spain, and Portugal; and his specific plan of operations was afterwards to be concerted with the stupid, jealous, and uncompromising local juntas, and the obstinate and impracticable Spanish generals.
These orders were perilous, loose, and vague; they promised nothing, but only that war at any hazard was to be waged in Old Castile and on the banks of the Ebro.
And now for a time let us change the scene to a not less tuneful or classic locality—the rocky hills and heather braes of Carrick's western shore.