"Pleasures fled hence, wide now's the gulf between us;
Stern Mars has routed Bacchus and sweet Venus:
I can no more—the lamp's fast fading ray
Reminds me of parade ere break of day,
Where, shivering, I must strut, though bleak the morning,
Roused by the hateful drummer's early warning.
Come, then, my boat-cloak, let me wrap thee round,
And snore in concert stretched upon the ground."
An Elegy.
The noisy racket maintained by those who were in custody of the rear-guard, the voices of others who whipped or cheered on the long string of baggage animals (Evora horses, Castilian mules, and sturdy burros or donkeys), the various novel sights and sounds incident to the march of Hope's division, together with the appearance of the division itself winding down the deep valleys and up the steep mountains like a long and glittering snake, amid clouds of white dust, out of which the sheen of arms and the waving of colours came incessantly, won Quentin from his sadder thoughts, and he began to feel, after all he had undergone, an emotion, of joy on finding himself among his old comrades—a joy that can only be known by a soldier—by one forming a part of that great and permanent, but almost always happy family, a regiment of the line.
The morning was bright and breezy; the large floating clouds cast their flying shadows over the sunlit landscape at times, adding alike to its beauty and the striking effect of the marching columns.
Weary of the dark and sallow Spaniards, Quentin's eyes had run along the ranks of the 25th, and their familiar faces, which seemed so fair and ruddy when contrasted with those of the nations they had come to free, were pleasant to look upon.
Their colours, with the castle triple-towered and the city motto; the familiar bugle calls, and more than all, the old quick-step of General Leslie, which came floating rearward from time to time when the corps traversed an eminence, all spake to him of his new but moveable home, and the new associations he had learned to love.
Cosmo—the impracticable and inscrutable—Cosmo Crawford—alone was the feature there that marred his prospects and blighted his pleasure!
He felt a sincere regret for poor Isidora, and this was not unmingled with a little selfish dread of her brother, De Saldos, the scowling Trevino, and others, when those guerillas joined the division, which they would probably do in the course of a day or so; and what answer would he make to them when they—and chiefly her brother—asked for the missing donna? He felt himself, indeed, between the horns of a dilemma, and many unpleasant forebodings mingled with his dreams of a brilliant future.
Amid these ideas recurred the longing to write home (how long, long seemed the time that had elapsed since he left it!) that the good Lord Rohallion and the gentle Lady Winifred—that dear Flora, and the old quartermaster too, might learn something of what he had seen, and done, and undergone since last they parted.
Had Cosmo, in any of his letters, ever written to announce that he was serving with the Borderers?
This was a question Quentin had frequently asked of himself, and he felt certain that the colonel had not done so, as in the other instance, and unless he had been cruelly misrepresented, Lord Rohallion or worthy John Girvan, and his old mentor the quaint dominie, would assuredly have written to him long since. Thus it was evident that in his correspondence with those at home in Carrick, the haughty Master had totally ignored his name.
Quentin's passion for Flora Warrender was a boyish devotion that mingled with all his love and all his memories of home. She was still a guiding star to his heart and hopes, the impulse of every thought, the mainspring of every act and deed; and thus Quentin felt that while this dear girl at home loved him—as sister, friend, and sweetheart all combined, the spiteful hauteur of Cosmo was innocuous and pointless indeed.
As the paymaster of the regiment was riding with the rear-guard, Quentin lost no time in placing in his hands a sufficient number of those gold moidores that were found in the repositories of the late Corporal Raoul, of the 24th Chasseurs a Cheval (the spoil so liberally shared with him by Ribeaupierre), for the purpose of having them transmitted by bill or otherwise to the quartermaster at Rohallion, to repay the good man for the forty pounds he had placed at his disposal on the night he left the castle to return no more; and the fact of this debt being off his conscience made his spirit more buoyant than ever.
They were now marching through the province of Alentejo, the land of wine and oil, the granary of Portugal. Long-bearded goats and great bristly swine were to be seen in all the pastures, but few or no horned cattle. Proceeding on a line parallel with the Spanish frontier, they passed through the fortified town of Alegrete, which is moated round by the small river Caia, and there each regiment made its first brief halt for a few minutes before pushing on to Azumar, some fourteen miles from Portalegre, where the division was to pass the night.
Those halts on the line of march were so brief that the bugles of the leading corps always sounded the advance when those of the rear were sounding the halt—ten minutes being the utmost time allotted.
On reaching Azumar, the lieutenant-general with his staff, and the colonels of corps, found quarters in the castle of the counts of that name, while the rest of the troops remained without the walls of the town.
The night was fine for the season, and clear and starry; a pinkish flush, that lingered beyond the summits of the Sierra Alpedriera to the westward, showed where the November sun had set. Tents were pitched for the whole force; but, before turning in for the night, Captain Askerne, Monkton, and other Borderers, preferred to sup in a cosy nook, sheltered by a ruined vineyard wall and a group of gigantic chestnuts, under which their servants had lighted a rousing fire of dry branches and wood, hewn down by the pioneers' hatchets.
Each added the contents of his havresack to the common stock of the party, and in the same fraternal fashion they shared the contents of their canteens, flasks, and bottles; thus various kinds of liquor, wine—brandy, and aguardiente, were contributed. What the repast lacked in splendour or delicacy was amply made up for by good humour and jollity, and to those who had an eye for the picturesque, that element was not wanting.
In the foreground the red glaring fire cast its light on the soldierly fellows we have introduced to the reader, as they sat or lounged on the grass in their regimental greatcoats, or cloaks of blue lined with scarlet, and their swords and belts beside them. The great chestnut trees were well-nigh leafless now, and with the rough masonry of the old wall, coated with heavily-leaved vine and ivy, formed a background.
Further off, in another direction, were the glares of other watchfires, around which similar groups were gathered—fires that shed their light in fitful flashes on the long rows of white bell-tents, on the dark figures that flitted to and fro, and on the forms of the distant and solitary sentinels, who stood steadily on their posts, the point of each man's bayonet shining like a red star as the flame tipped it with fire.
"Here comes Colville," said Monkton, as that individual, who was somewhat of a dandy and man of fashion, lounged slowly up, and cast himself languidly on the grass. "You have just been with the colonel, I suppose?"
"Yes—a deuced bore—to report the baggage all up with the battalion, the guard dismissed to their tents, and luckily, no casualties, save a mule that we lost in a bog."
"And you found him bland, as usual?"
"I found him quartered, not in the castle, as I expected, but in a deserted house half ruined by the French," replied Colville, smiling; "the only habitable apartment was the kitchen, where our colours are lodged, and there he was eating a tough bullock steak, embers and all, just as his man had cooked it, on the ramrod of an old pistol. Egad, it was a picture!"
"A dainty kabob we should have called it in Egypt," said Major Middleton, laughing, with a huge magnum-bonum bottle of brandy-and-water placed between his fat legs. "Ah, the Honourable Cosmo should not have quitted his guardsman's comforts at the York Coffee-house, or Betty Neale's fruit-shop in St. Jameses Street,* to rough it with the line in the Peninsula!"
* Two favourite resorts of the Household Brigade in those days.
"Did he compliment you on bringing up your disorderly charge without other loss than the mule?" asked Askerne.
"The devil a bit," yawned Colville; "with his glass stuck in his eye, he gave me one of his cool stares, and said, briefly, 'That will do, sir—to your company.'"
"Ah," grumbled Middleton, shaking his old head, while his pigtail swayed to and fro, "the colonel may have in his veins good blood, as it is called, but he has in his heart about as much of the milk of human kindness as if it belonged to an old lawyer."
The last part of the sentence, we are bound to add, was partly mumbled into the mouth of the magnum, which at that moment the major applied to his own.
"Here comes Dick Warriston," said Monkton, as an officer muffled in a cloak approached. "Hallo, Dick—how goes it, man?"
"Good evening, gentlemen—thought I should find you out. I heard on the march that our friend the volunteer had turned up again. How are you, Kennedy? glad to see you safe and sound once more," said Quentin's old friend, as they shook hands, and he cast his ample blue muffling aside, displaying his well-built figure, with the scarlet coat, green lapels, and massive gold epaulettes of the Scots Brigade.
"Be seated, Dick."
"Thanks, Askerne."
"Do you prefer a chair, or a sofa?" asked Monkton.
"The sofa, by all means," replied Warriston, stretching himself on the grass.
"There is brandy in that jar beside you, and Lisbon wine in the bottle. Here, under these fine old chestnuts, we are quite a select little pic-nic party, out of range of shot, shell, and everything——"
"Except fireflies and mosquitoes, Willie—a poor substitute for the girls, God bless them."
"Whose trumpets are these? what's up now?" asked Monkton, as a sharp cavalry call rang upon the night.
"The 3rd Dragoons of the German Legion, Burgwesel's regiment, are watering their horses."
"Those Germans are regular trumps in their order and discipline," said Monkton; "but as for the Portuguese, damme, they are not worth their liquor. Even the Johnny Crapauds despise them. You have just come in time, Warriston, to hear Kennedy relate to us his interview with the guerilla chief; go on, lad, we are all listening," he added, as he and others proceeded to light their cigars or charge their pipes for a thorough bout of smoking.
Quentin told them briefly as much of his adventures as he deemed it necessary to relate or reveal, from the time of his parting from Askerne to the hour of his return to Portalegre. The slaughter of the French prisoners at Herreruela drew forth loud execrations and unanimous condemnation. His illness at the Villa de Maciera was alone a mystery which he could not explain, and the manner in which he consequently and naturally blundered in narrating this part of his story, drew forth the laughter and the empty jests of the younger portion of his audience.
"Damme," said Monkton, "you were a bold fellow, Kennedy, to become spooney on the sister of such a melo-dramatic individual—such a regular 'heavy villain' as this guerilla De Saldos! Egad, the sight of the fellow, with those black moustachios you have described, each like a snake twisted under his hooked nose, would be enough to frighten the French!"
"Very singular style of person, your Spanish friend, I should think," lisped Colville, with his glass in his eye.
"Remarkably so," added Ensign Pimple, raising his white eyebrows; "decidedly a dangerous fellow to have a shindy with!"
"A most interesting individual, no doubt," said Buckle the adjutant; "but begad, not at all suited to a quiet rubber or a little supper party; takes mustard to his lamb, perhaps, and pepper to his enchanted eggs, but knows nothing, I'll be bound, of a devilled kidney, a broiled bone, and a tumbler of decent whisky toddy. 'Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard;' he is all spasms, big boots, and blue fire—eh?"
While they jested thus, and Quentin, with something of annoyance and vexation, looked from one to another, Askerne and Warriston, who were men of graver mood, had been eyeing him attentively.
"My poor lad,"' said the former, laying a hand kindly on his shoulder, "all this that you have related was a sad trial for you—a great test of courage and discretion for one so young to be subjected to, especially in a foreign country, and among a people so fierce and lawless."
"Your pistols were always my friends," said Quentin, laughing; "I thought of them in every extremity, Captain Askerne; but fortunately never had to use them."
"Then keep them, Quentin, my boy, as a little present from me," said the grenadier.
"But to deprive you——"
"Matters nothing—I took a handsome pair of silver-mounted pops from the holsters of a French officer the other day."
"Askerne has but anticipated me," said Warriston; "I had resolved to give you mine, though they were a gift to me from my father's old friend the Conservator of Scottish Privileges at Campvere, when the Scots Brigade came home and turned their backs upon honest old Holland for ever."
"Well, Kennedy," said Monkton, with a droll twinkle in his eye, "we've heard all your adventures, at least so much as you wisely, prudently, and discreetly choose to tell us; but I cannot help thinking that we could make a few interesting notes on the time spent in that ruined Château en Espagne. Was the donna young, black-eyed, beautiful, and all that sort of thing, eh?"
"By Jove," added Colville, in the same tone, "you are a regular St. Francis, or St. Anthony! But unlike you, if the donnas on the other side of the frontier think me worth their while, I am ready to be subjected to any amount of seduction the dear creatures may choose to put in practice."
Affecting neither to hear Monkton's banter nor Colville's addition, Quentin turned to Askerne, admiring the order that glittered on his left breast.
"This is Portuguese?" said he.
"Yes, Quentin—the Tower and Sword—given to me by the Junta of Oporto for capturing an exploring party, consisting of an officer and ten French dragoons of Ribeaupierre's regiment, whom I cut off in a narrow valley near Portalegre (on the very day after you left us), where I had been sent with twenty of ours to bring in forage."
"Askerne, I do envy you this decoration!" said Quentin, whose eyes sparkled with genuine pleasure and admiration, for medals were almost unknown in the British army then, and the Bath, as now, was only given to field officers; "and they were, you say, dragoons of Ribeaupierre?"
"The same corps with some of whom you fell in among the Spanish mountains. They are quartered in Valencia de Alcantara."
"Ribeaupierre!" said the bantering Monkton; "there is a name for an intelligent young man to go to bed with! It smacks of Anne Radcliffe's mysterious romances of 'Sicily' and 'The Forest.'"
"Yet it is the name of an officer as brave as any in France," said Quentin; "the general who bears it was a subaltern with Napoleon in the Regiment of La Fere, a town on an island of the Oise, where it was originally raised."
"Like that corps, the 24th Chasseurs à Cheval were originally under the monarchy," said Warriston.
"Their uniform is light green, faced and lapelled with white?"
"Exactly, Quentin—the same uniform worn by the Emperor on almost every occasion," replied Warriston; "the 24th were long known as the Disinterested Regiment of Chartres."
"An honourable title," said Askerne; "how came they to win it, thou man of anecdote?"
"About nineteen years ago, when the troubles of the Revolution were first beginning, the regiment was quartered at Le Mans, a town of France situated on the river Sarthe, if you have not forgotten your geography, Rowland. The corps then belonged—such was the French aristocratic term—to Louis Philip Joseph, Duke of Orleans,* the notorious 'Egalité' who was guillotined by the mob in 1793; but it was denominated 'of Chartres,' from the county of the name gifted to his ancestor by Louis XIV.
* Father of Louis Philippe I., late King of the French.
"The outrages of the Revolutionists were at their height around the whole of Mans. Day and night the dragoons of Chartres remained with their accoutrements on and their horses saddled ready to assist the magistrates and all peaceable citizens. Every day brought tidings of new horrors in the rural districts, and every night saw the sky reddened by the flames of burning chateaux, convents, and abbey-churches, whose occupants were given to pillage and death.
"So resolute and orderly were the dragoons of Chartres, so sturdily and bravely did they protect the weak against the strong, enforce the public peace, and conduct the transit of corn for the poor, that the magistrates deemed it necessary to make some acknowledgment of their services. A vote of thanks from the municipality preceded a gratuity of eight hundred livres (no great sum among us certainly, but a handsome one on the other side of the Channel) to be distributed among the three hundred Chasseurs of the corps.
"In a large bag the money, made, by the way, from the church bells of France, was sent to the colonel, who gave it to the men to dispose of as they pleased; upon which, instead of dividing it among themselves, they resolved unanimously to bestow it upon a portion of the very people who had been tormenting their lives for the last six months.
"One of the dragoons, a mere youth named Raoul, waited upon the Rector of St. Nicholas in the city of Le Mans and handing him the bag with its contents, said—
"'Monsieur le Recteur, we want not this money. The pay of His Majesty, whom God and St. Louis long preserve! secures us in all that a soldier requires; but the poor, though they are the children of God, are not so blessed. We, the dragoons of Chartres, beg, therefore, that you will accept of this for their use, and put it to the common stock for the aged and the indigent.'"
"And this soldier was named Raoul?" said Quentin, who felt something like a shock when he heard him mentioned.
"So the newspapers said," replied Warriston.
Quentin was silent, but the face of one of the dead dragoons whom he had seen at Herreruela—he who had been dragged by his stirrup—came vividly to memory; while, such is the effect of fancy, the moidores that remained in his pocket seemed to become heavy as lead.
The hour was late now, and he was completely overcome by fatigue. With a knapsack for a pillow he dropped asleep, while his more hardy comrades sat smoking and drinking, and discussing the fortune of the coming struggle in Spain.
As the light of the watch-fire waned and fell in flickering gleams on his features, they seemed pinched, pale, and wan.
"God help the poor fatherless boy," said Captain Warriston, with considerable emotion; "what hard fate brings him here? He seems quite a waif among us, and one that is hardly used by you fellows of the 25th in particular. I wish I had him with me in the Scots Brigade. This last devilish piece of duty has broken him completely down!"
"No, no, Warriston; there is good stuff in him yet," said Rowland Askerne, as he divested his broad shoulders of his own ample cloak, and kindly spread it over the sleeper. "At his age, I had neither father nor mother nor friend to do this for me, and I too was, like him, a poor volunteer!"