"Ae fond kiss and then we sever!
Ae farewell, alas for ever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee;
Who shall say that Fortune grieves him
While the star of hope she leaves him?"
BURNS.
Ignoring the source or cause of the excitement among the household, Cosmo lounged into the breakfast-parlour, where the silver urns were hissing amid a very chaste equipage, and where the September sun was shining in through clusters of sweet briar and monthly roses, and as he seated himself he handed to his father a long official-like document, at the sight of which his mother changed colour, and even Flora, who looked charming in her smiling radiance, lace frills, and morning dress of spotted white muslin, lifted her dark eyelashes with interest.
"What's the matter, Cosmo?—your leave cancelled?" asked Rohallion.
"Oh no, my lord—nothing so bad as that."
"A summons from headquarters, I see."
"Something very like it," drawled Cosmo; "read it to the ladies. Spillsby, some coffee—no cream."
The letter ran briefly thus:—
"Horse Guards, &c., &c.
"SIR,—I have the honour to acquaint you, by direction of His Royal Highness the Field-Marshal Commanding-in-Chief, that it is now in his power to appoint you to one of the second battalions lately raised for the line and for immediate foreign service, provided that within a fortnight you are prepared to assume the command, in which case your name shall appear in the next Gazette.
"I have the honour to be, &c., &c.
"Major the Hon. C. Crawford,
&c., &c."
"A fortnight!—are we to have you only for a fortnight, my dear, dear Cosmo?" exclaimed Lady Rohallion, all her maternal tenderness welling up at once.
"You will not, I fear, have me so long, my dear mother," said he; "and you, Flora," he added in a low voice, as he purposely held his plate across her for a wing of grouse; "and you——"
"Give you full leave to go, with my dearest wishes, and your heart unbroken. Come, Cosmo," she added in the same low voice, and with a soft smile; "let us part friends, at least."
Cosmo's eyes seemed to shrink and dilate, while a cold and haughty smile spread over his otherwise handsome features, as he turned quietly to discuss his grouse, and said to the butler,—
"Spillsby, tell the groom to have a horse saddled for my man—take Minden, the bay mare—as I must despatch a letter to Maybole within an hour."
Breakfast was hurried over in silence and constraint, then Cosmo, kissing the brow of his mother, who was already in tears,—for the only real emotion that lingered in the Master's heart was a regard for his mother—played with the silk tassels of his luxurious dressing-gown, and lounged into the library to write his answer to the military secretary, and profess himself to be completely, as in duty bound, at the disposal of His Royal Highness, and proud to accept the command offered him.
He soon penned the letter, and sealed it with the coronet, the shield gules and fess ermine of Rohallion, muttering as he did so,—
"The line—the line after all; a horrid bore indeed, to come down to that!"
He threw open his dressing-gown, as if it stifled him, almost tearing the tasselled girdle as he did so, and planting his foot on the buhl writing-table, lounged back in an easy-chair, where he strove to read up Sir David Dundas's "Eighteen Manoeuvres," and fancied how he would handle his battalion without clubbing the companies or bringing the rear rank in front; by taking them into action with snappers instead of flints, as old Whitelock did at Buenos Ayres, or committing other little blunders, which might prove very awkward if a brigade of French twelve-pounders were throwing in grape and canister at half-musket range.
Soothed by pipe, and by the silence of the place, and by the subdued sunlight that stole through the deep windows of that old library, so quaint with its oak shelves of calf-bound and red-labelled folios and quartos, its buhl cabinets, and square-backed chairs of the Covenanting days, its half-curtained oriel window, through which were seen the ripe corn or stubble fields that stretched in distance far away to the brown hills of Carrick. Soothed, we say, by all this, Cosmo dawdled over the pages and the diagrams of the famous review at Potsdam for some time before he became conscious that Flora was seated near him, busy with a book of engravings.
Then begging pardon for his pipe and his free-and-easy position, a bachelor habit, as he said, he arose and joined her. Leaning over the back of his chair, as if to overlook the prints, while in reality his admiring eyes wandered alternately and admiringly over her fine glossy hair, the contour of her head, and little white ears (at each of which a rose diamond dangled), and her delicate neck, which rose so nobly from her back and beautifully curved shoulders, he said in a low voice, and with considerable softness of manner, for him at least,—
"'Pon my honour, friend Flora, I believe you really begin to love me, after all."
"How do you think so, or why?" she asked, looking half round, with her bewitching eyes full of wonder and amusement.
"Because we always quarrel when we meet, and that is called a Scots mode of wooing, isn't it?"
"So our nurses used to say, long ago."
"And were they right?"
"Now, dear Cosmo, let us talk of something else, if you please," she urged pleadingly.
"Why so?"
"A dangerous topic has a strange fascination for you."
"Dangerous?"
"Unpleasant, at least," said Flora, pettishly.
Cosmo flung the "Eighteen Manœuvres" of Lieutenant-General Dundas very angrily and ignominiously to the extreme end of the library, and folding his arms stood haughtily erect before Flora, whose bright eyes were fixed on his, with a smiling expression of fear and perplexity combined.
"Can it be possible," he began, "I ask you, can it be possible, Miss Warrender——"
"Oh, you are about to address me officially—well, sir?"
"Can it be possible, Flora, that you still love this unknown protégé of my foolish mother—this nameless rascal, who has run away, heaven knows where? By-the-bye, I wonder if Spillsby has overhauled the plate chest since he went!"
Flora was silent, but his brusquerie and categorical manner offended her, and filled her eyes with tears.
"This weeping is enough," continued the exasperated Cosmo, who, though he had no great regard for Flora, felt his self-esteem—which was not small—most fearfully wounded; "you do love him."
"And what if I do?" she asked, very quietly, but withal rather defiantly.
"Very fine, Miss Warrender—very fine, 'pon my soul! That old jade, Anne Radcliffe, with her 'Romance of the Forest,' her 'Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne,' and this new Edinburgh fellow, Scott, with his 'Marmion,' and so forth, have perfected your education. Your teaching has been most creditable!"
"This taunting manner is not so to you,' replied Flora, resuming her inspection of the book of prints.
"Oho! we are in a passion again it seems?"
"Far from it, sir—I never was more cool in my life," said she, looking up with a wicked but glorious smile.
"And where has this runaway gone? His friends in the servants' hall heard something of him last night or this morning, if I may judge from the pot-house row they made."
"He has gone into the army," replied Flora, with a perceptible modulation of voice.
"The army!" replied Cosmo, really surprised; "enlisted—for what?—a fifer or triangle boy?"
"No," replied Flora, curling her pretty nostril, while her eyes gleamed dangerously under their long thick lashes.
"For what, on earth, has he gone then?"
"A gentleman volunteer."
"A valuable acquisition to His Majesty's service!" said Cosmo, laughing, and, greatly to Flora's annoyance, seeming to be really amused; "do you know, friend Flora, what a volunteer is?"
"Not exactly, sir," said Flora, again looking down on her book of prints with a sigh of anger.
"Shall I tell you?"
"If you please."
"We never had any in the Household Brigade—such fellows are usually to be found only with the line corps."
"Ah—with corps that go abroad and really see service—I understand."
"Miss Warrender, the Guards——"
"Well, what is a volunteer?" asked Flora, beating the carpet with a very pretty foot.
"A volunteer is a poor devil who is too proud to enlist, and is too friendless to procure a commission; who has all a private's duty to do, and has to carry a musket, pack, and havresack, wherein are his ration-beef, biscuits, and often his blackball and shoebrushes; who mounts guard and salutes me when I pass him, and whom I may handcuff and send to the cells or guard-house when I please; who is not a regular member of the mess and may never be; who gets a shilling per diem with the chance of Chelsea, a wooden leg, or an arm with an iron hook if his limbs are smashed by a round shot; who is neither officer, non-commissioned officer, nor private—neither fish, flesh, nor good red-herring (to use a camp phrase). Oh, Flora, Flora Warrender, can you be such a romantic little goose as to feel an interest in such a fellow as I have described?"
Mingling emotions, indignation at the Master's insulting bitterness, pity for Quentin, and pure anger at the annoyance to which she was subjected, made Flora's white bosom heave as she quietly turned her eyes, with a flashing expression however, upon the cat-like regards of the sneering questioner, and said,—
"Who are you, sir, that would thus question or dictate to me?"
"Who am I?" he asked, while surveying her through his glass with amusement, perplexity, and something of sorrow in his tone.
"Yes, sir—who are you?"
"I am, I believe, Cosmo, Master of Rohallion, and Colonel to be, of a very fine regiment; so I can afford to smile at the pride and petulance of a moon-struck girl."
"Oh, how unseemly this is! Whatever happens, let us part friends," said she politely, perhaps a little imploringly.
"So be it," said he, kissing her hand as she retired.
"Now, the sooner I am off from this dreary paternal den the better. Away to London at once. Andrews!—Jack Andrews," he shouted, in a tone almost of ferocity: "show me the last newspapers." They were soon brought, and Cosmo's sharp eyes ran rapidly over the advertisements. "Let me see," he pondered, "travelling by mail is intolerable; one never knows who the devil one may be boxed up with for a week, a fever patient or a lunatic, perhaps! The smacks are crowded with all manner of rubbish, travelling bagmen, linesmen going home on leave, sick mothers and squalling babies. What is this? The good ship Edinburgh, pinck-built, near the new quay at Leith, sails for England without convoy—carries six 12-pounders—master to be spoke with daily at the Cross—to be spoke with. Faugh! what says the next advertisement? 'A widow lady, who is to set out for London next week in a post-chaise, would be glad to hear of a companion. Enquire at the Courant office, opposite the Old Fishmarket-close, Edinburgh.' Egad! the very thing—widow lady—hope she's young and good-looking. I'll answer this!"
Such advertisements in the London and Edinburgh papers were quite common in those days, when travelling expenses were enormous.
He replied to it, and departed from Rohallion in a great hurry soon after. Whether with a fair companion or not, we are unable to say.
We hope so, and that on the journey of about four hundred miles to London, the amenity of the fair widow consoled him for the final rebuff he met with from Flora Warrender.