The King's Own Borderers: A Military Romance - Volume 3 by James Grant - HTML preview

CHAPTER XXV.
 THE REVELATIONS OF A NIGHT.

"Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
 Old Time is still a-flying;
 And this same flower that smiles to-day,
 To-morrow will be dying.
 Then be not coy, but use your time,
 And while you may, go marry;
 For having lost but once your prime,
 You may for ever tarry."—HERRICK.

"It has come strangely about, Madame Rohallion, how my son Eugene, and your—your friend, Mr. Kennedy, have met during the contingencies of service in Spain," said Madame de Ribeaupierre; "and it is all the more strange that my name was once Kennedy."

We are sorry to say that the good lady pronounced it Kinnidee.

"Yours, madame?"

"My first husband was so named."

"Madame has then been twice married?"

"Yes; and Eugene is the only son of the general's first wife, for he has been twice married, too," said Madame Ribeaupierre, with one of her merry little laughs.

"But I have always loved you, madame, as my mother," said the young officer.

"Indeed, child, you never knew any other," replied madame, as Eugene kissed her forehead very affectionately.

"Then was your first husband a Scotsman?" asked Lord Rohallion.

"He was, monsieur le general, a captain in the King's service during the monarchy."

"Was he killed in action, madame?"

"No, poor man—he was drowned at sea."

"In what year was this?"

"Alas! it was in 1798."

A keen, bright glance was exchanged by Lord and Lady Rohallion on hearing this; a light seemed to break upon their minds simultaneously.

"Madame, pardon me," said the lady, very hurriedly, "but may I enquire what is your Christian name?"

"Josephine."

"Josephine!"

"Yes, madame. I was named at the font, Josephine St. Marie Duré de Lusart."

"Good heavens, my lord, if it should be so!" exclaimed Lady Rohallion, hurrying to her escritoire and bringing forth an old faded and yellow packet, from which she took a ring—the same that had been found on Quentin's father. It bore, as we have stated elsewhere, the name of Josephine graven on the gold, and a crest, a demi-griffin cut on an amethyst.

"This ring, madame—this ring—where did it come from? It was my mother's gift to my first husband, Captain Kennedy, of the Scottish regiment de Berwick, in the service of France; and this letter," continued Madame de Ribeaupierre, with increasing agitation, "this letter was mine—mine, written to him after he had left me with our child to return to his own country, whither I was to follow him——"

"And this commission, madame?"

"Was his—was his," she exclaimed, becoming deeply excited, as she pressed to her lips the signature of Louis XVI. "How came it here? And this letter, too, of Monsieur le Comte d'Artois, written to him after the campaigns on the Meuse and Rhine?"

"They were found in the pocket-book of Quentin's father, when he was cast drowned on the beach, with him, then a little child, senseless and benumbed by cold," said Lady Rohallion, with one arm placed caressingly round the Frenchwoman's neck, and with her eyes full of tears, as the wild and stormy night on which our story opened came back to memory.

Madame Ribeaupierre became quite hysterical.

"My son—you? oh, mon Dieu! mon Dieu! and this was your secret at the Villa de Orsan," she exclaimed, in a very touching voice, as she pressed to her breast the somewhat bewildered Quentin, who, having been deeply engaged with Flora, had heard not a word of the foregoing conversation.

After a time, however, she related that her husband, who had left Scotland in consequence of some quarrel, she believed, with his own family, had taken his mother's name of Kennedy, and entered the regiment de Berwick, in which he faithfully served the French monarchy, even after it was completely shattered by the Revolution.

That, on a rumour rising that Monsieur, then residing at Holyrood, was about to reconstitute the Hundred Scottish Guards, with consent of the British Government, he departed hurriedly from France, leaving her at Arques, with her mother, Madame Duré de Lusart, who was then on her death-bed. Accompanied by the Abbé Lebrun, an old friend, he set out for Scotland, taking with him their little son. She added, that the vessel in which they sailed was a Scottish brig, under cartel, and bound for the Clyde; but it was, nevertheless, attacked by a French privateer, off the coast of Britain somewhere—where she knew not—but far to the north. The vessel was driven on a rock, and all perished save the Abbé Lebrun, who saw both her husband and child sink into the waves and die together.

More fortunate, M. l'Abbé floated out to sea upon a spar, and was picked up next morning, in a most exhausted condition, by the same privateer which had done all the mischief.

Notwithstanding all the skill of the great Doctor Thiebault, who came from Paris, her mother died, and now she found herself childless and alone in France—the terrible France of the Republic—and where she was hourly in peril of the guillotine as an aristocrat.

The Bastile had been razed to the ground; that was good; but the change that had come over France was not for the better; "the gilded coach, the red-heeled slipper, and the supper of the Regency; the powdered marquise, for a smile of whose dimpled mouth the deadly rapier flashed in the moonlight—the perfumed beauty, for one of whose glances a poet would have ransacked his brain to render it smoothly in verse;" the high-bred old courtier, the gilded salon—had all given place to regiments of sans-culottes, to assassins, and the sovereign people—to the République démocratique et sociale; to planting trees of liberty, and grape-shotting the mob; to sham Roman citizens and tribunes; to women debating the existence of a God, and dancing nude in the fêtes of Venus; to a France of heroes and madmen—a Paris of "monkeys and tigers!"

Her country had become intolerable to her; she was long in despair, she said, and but for the kindness and love of her friend, Marie de Ribeaupierre, a chauoinesse of the Chapter of Salles, in Beaujolais, she must have sunk under the loss of all her friends; but after a time Marie's brother came; he was then a captain in the regiment of La Fere, a handsome man, and in the prime of life, and, happily for himself, stood high in the favour of Citizen Bonaparte. In the end, she added, with a little smile and a very faint blush, she learned to love him. They were married, and then she strove to console herself for the loss of her own child by making a pet of his, the little Eugene.

"Ah, mon Dieu! mon Dieu!" she exclaimed, "what subtle instinct was this? what mysterious voice was that which whispered in my heart to love you, Quentin? I have only learned your name to-night; but how often did I ask of myself, at the Villa de Orsan, what is this stranger—this young Scottish officer—to me, that I should feel so deeply interested in him? Oh, Ribeaupierre, my dear husband, what a strange story I shall have to tell you! That he, for whom I prayed nightly, and thanked God for saving the life of your son Eugene, proves to be mine—the child of my own bosom—my long-lost little Quentin! Truly the hand of a kind and blessed Providence has been in all this!"

After she became a little more composed, she desired her maid to bring from her dressing-table a casket, which she unlocked, saying that she would show Quentin a miniature of his father—a relic on which she had not looked for many a day; and he gazed on it with eager, earnest, and mournful tenderness.

It was the face of a dark-complexioned and thoughtful-looking young man, with his hair simply tied by a blue ribbon; there was a singular combination of mildness, sadness, and softness in the features and their expression; but when it was handed to Lady Rohallion, a sharp little cry, as if of pain, escaped her.

"Reynold—my lord—look here—you know this face!" she exclaimed.

"My brother Ranulph, for a thousand guineas! Why, madame, this is a miniature of my brother Ranulph Crawford, who was killed, we were told, in the defence of the Tuileries."

"No—no—impossible! impossible! Captain Crawford who fell there was our dear friend—he commanded the grenadiers of the regiment de Berwick. My husband took, I know not why, his mother's name in France; and that miniature he hung round my neck on the day we were married in Arques by the good Abbé Lebrun."

"I can swear that it was painted for me, about three years after Minden, by honest David Allan of Alloa, whose name should be within it."

"True, monsieur, behold!" she added, opening the locket by a spring; "there is the name of Monsieur Allan, and this is Quentin's hair, when it was the colour of gold, woven up with—with his poor father's."

"This is wonder upon wonder!" exclaimed Flora Warrender, as she hung on the neck of Madame de Ribeaupierre, who kept the right hand of Quentin pressed upon her heart, while Eugene, who stood by, was stroking his moustache, and thinking if he had anything to do in the way of kissing, he would certainly prefer Flora.

Lady Rohallion was silent.

So the boy, by whose cradle in infancy she had watched with such motherly solicitude, was the nephew of her husband, the cousin-german of Cosmo; the son of that younger brother who had been the first love of her girlish days—the worshipper of her girlish beauty, in the pleasant times long past in sunny Nithsdale, the courtly gentleman and gallant soldier of fortune, over whose life she had cast a shadow. It was a strange mystery!

Some such idea was passing in the mind of her husband.

"Good heavens, Winny! so that poor father, whose fate is yet a legend among our tenantry—the poor man who struggled so bravely to save his child, when the ship was shattered on the Partan Craig—who died in sight of Rohallion, and whom honest John Girvan buried as became a soldier in the old kirkyard—our own ancestral burying-place—was my dear brother Ranulph!" exclaimed Lord Rohallion, with a sudden gush of affection and emotion; "and 'tis his boy we have so loved and protected, Winny! Poor Ranulph—poor Ranulph! I should like to have looked on your handsome and honest face once again ere it was laid in the grave; but it could not be, for I was absent. Madame, do you know that his drowned corpse was carried forth by his father's people from the gate of the house in which he was born, and every room of which has echoed to his voice in boyhood, and past the very haunts in which we played together, under the old sycamores of the avenue, by the Lollards' Linn and the Kelpie's Pool, on the Girvan Water. Thank God, poor Ranulph, you found a grave at last among your own people, and where your forefathers lie; but we have much to make amends for," added the old Lord, as he placed Flora's hand in that of Quentin; "may you both live long to enjoy all the happiness you deserve; and be assured that my last prayer will be for both of you!"

* * * *

What follows?

Orange wreaths and snow-white satin dresses, kid gloves and wedding favours, compliments and kisses, a marriage settlement and so forth, were all the subjects for mature consideration ere long at Minden Lodge; and within a month Quentin Crawford—he had to change his name, as well as Flora—departed with his bride to spend the honeymoon among the green summer woods and purple heather braes of Rohallion; and joyful indeed was the salute that pealed from the guns on the battery—whilome those of La Bonne Citoyenne under the direction of the old quartermaster, who concluded by a general salvo that scared the rooks from the keep, sent the seabirds screaming in flocks to the Partan Craig, and made the dominie jump a yard high in his square-toed shoes; and red and rousing were the bonfires that blazed on the old castle rock and on the heights of Ardgour in honour of the day.

Cosmo, we have said, was enjoying the seclusion and safety from duns afforded by the fortress of Verdun, where we have no wish to disturb him.

Monkton, long since retired upon full pay as colonel, is still one of the most popular members of the Caledonian U.S. Club; but poor old Middleton died a lieutenant-general some years ago, near his native place, the secluded village of the Stennis, in Lothian. The old watch, which was the providential means of saving his life in action, he never had repaired; but it always hung above his mantelpiece with the bullet in it, for he said that no clock in the land could ever remind him so well of time and eternity.

Donna Isidora accompanied the French troops to Paris, and made a tremendous sensation as a Spanish opera-dancer. In London she became the rage, and, as La Fille de l'Air, her benefits were ably puffed and conducted by her secretary, whose name always figured in the bills as El Senor Trevino.

Old John Girvan "sleeps the sleep that knows no waking" in the green kirkyard of Rohallion; but he lived to dandle a young Quentin on his knee, and to hear the dominie teach a little Flora to lisp her first letters under the old oak-trees of Ardgour.

Eugene de Ribeaupierre, now one of the generals of the second Empire, has lived to lead his division of cavalry at Inkerman and the Tchernaya, at Solferino and Magenta, as bravely as ever his father did at Corunna, at Austerlitz, or Smolensko, in the wars of Napoleon the First.

THE END.