Part 16

"The deuce!" drawled Berkeley, holding his cigar at arm's length, and wheeling the sofa half round, to have a better view of our adjutant. "Is there any other little thing you would like?"

"I think not, sir."

"My good friend, Studhome, you are, I have not a doubt, a very excellent adjutant, well up in lance, sword, and pistol exercise--knowing how to 'set a squadron in the field,' like the amiable Othello; but you--aw--aw--must really permit me to be the best judge of my own affairs."

Studhome bowed haughtily, and then stood, cap and whip in hand, erect; so Berkeley resumed--

"You are aware of the whispers concerning Norcliff and that girl, Agnes Auriol--isn't that her name?"

"Yes, sir; I am aware there have been malicious whispers, and I have my eyes now on the circulator of them."

"Very good," said Berkeley, colouring slightly; "they are very current among the 16th Lancers and 8th Hussars. I have known a little of the girl; but have--aw--tired of her now. We all tire, my dear fellow, of such affairs in time. Take a cigar--aw--you won't--what a bore! well, so my advice to your irritated Scotch friend would be that, as she is at perfect liberty to leave my protection, she may enter quietly upon his; so there is an end to the doocid affair."

"So you may affect to think," said Studhome, eyeing the lounger with angry scorn.

"What could be more equivocal, as Lady Loftus admitted, than the circumstances under which we found them? He was supporting--actually caressing her; and then there was his proffered fifty-pound note. My dear fellow, people are not such devilish fools as--aw--to give fifty pounds to such girls for--aw--nothing!"

"Whatever you may pretend to think, or affect to say, of that affair, of my friend's ultimate intentions, as a man of spirit, you cannot be unaware."

"Aw--I don't choose to speculate upon them."

"This trifling, sir, is insufferable! He may lash you in the face with his whip before the whole regiment, when Beverley wheels it into line to-morrow, and so make you a scandal to us, to Maidstone, and the entire British Army, from the Life Guards to the Cape Rifles."

"Lash me?"

"Yes; and soundly too!"

"I don't think he will."

"Why?"

"For then the whole story would come out, there would be an arrest--aw--and court of inquiry, and my Lady Louisa Loftus would have her august name paragraphed in every paper, from the _Morning Post_ downwards."

"And under this belief in his forbearance, which pays my friend a high compliment, you actually shelter yourself?" said worthy Jack Studhome, with intense scorn.

"I shall take my chance."

"Then, sir, cunning as you are, and though believing that my friend must submit to lie under a vile imputation, and, if it so happen, be ruined with Lady Louisa Loftus and his friends, you cannot expect to get off scot free. The devil! we live in strange times. Are we sunk so low that officers and gentlemen, that honourable and gallant members, that noble lords, that counsellors learned in the law, and even jolly students, are to settle their disputes in pothouse fashion, by womanly vituperation or vulgar fisticuffs, without ever dreaming of a recourse to the pistol? Men of all ranks, from the premier peer down to the anonymous scribblers of the daily press--

Those grovelling, trodden, whipt, stript, turncoat things, Made up of volumes, venom, stains, and stings,--

may now brand each other as liars, cowards, and ruffians, with perfect impunity. Do you understand me, sir?"

"Not quite."

"How so? I speak plain enough!"

"Such fellows are--aw--out of my way."

"Then you will understand this, sir," said Studhome, grasping him fiercely by the shoulder, and with an expression in his eye which made even the insouciance of Berkeley to evaporate, "a few weeks must see us in the Levant, on the shores of Turkey, and before the enemy. A duel shall come off there, and to evade alike the laws of Britain and the rules of the service, the seconds shall bind themselves by a solemn promise to declare that he who may be wounded, or he who may be killed, was struck by a chance shot from the enemy. You comprehend this arrangement, sir?"

"Perfectly."

"And your friend--who is he to be?"

"Captain Scriven, of ours."

"Good--I shall see him instantly."

"So that was your arrangement, Studhome?" asked Beverley.

"Yes; there was no other way. Scriven promises and agrees, and has passed his word for secrecy. Do you approve, colonel?"

"Why, I suppose that I must; and you, Norcliff?" he inquired.

"Wish to Heaven that I saw Malta, or even Gibraltar, sinking into the sea upon our lee quarter!" said I, with fierce fervour, as I shook Studhome's hand, and for that night, at least, was obliged to content me, and return to my troop at Canterbury.

"If one in our ranks shows the white feather before the Russians, I believe Berkeley will be the man," said Beverley, as he and Studhome smoked a last cigar with me on the platform before the down-train started.

*CHAPTER XXIII.*

Since there's no help, come let us kisse and part. Nay, I have done; you get no more of me; And I am glad--yea, glad with all my heart-- That thus so clearly I myself can free; Shake hands for ever. DRAYTON, 1612.

Unslept and unrefreshed, after returning to Canterbury, I found myself next day at morning parade, and undergoing all the routine of regimental drill, by troop and squadron, with the hussar corps to which we were attached, while my thoughts and wishes were apparently a thousand miles away from the present time and circumstances.

The prospect of "satisfaction," as it is termed, even in the unusual mode in which it was to be obtained, and though deferred, soothed me; but how was I circumstanced with Louisa? She believed me untrue to her! I was still under the false colours in which the artful Berkeley had contrived to show me.

My ring was returned, and though I still wore hers, our engagement seemed to be silently, tacitly broken; her miniature I would look upon no more--its features filled me with rage and torture.

Over the day which followed my last unlucky visit to the cottage near the Reculvers I shall gladly hurry. Ordering my horse--the black cover-hack with the white star on its counter--I was about to start for a ride, before mess, towards Ashford, when Pitblado placed in my hand two notes, which had just come by post. On one I recognised the handwriting of Cora; on the other the coronet and monogram of the Countess of Chillingham! My heart leaped to my head, and I tore open the latter first.

It was simply a card of invitation in the usual form--the Earl and Countess of Chillingham requested the honour of Captain Norcliff's company at a friendly dinner, at eight o'clock on the evening of the 20th inst.--only three days hence, so the time was brief; but then we were under orders of readiness, and everywhere troops--horse, foot, and artillery--were pouring towards Southampton and other places for embarkation. The note concluded by mentioning that Sir Nigel Calderwood was expected from Scotland.

The invitation was perplexing; but I reflected that the earl and Countess were alike ignorant of the relations that had existed between their daughter and me, and the sharp wrench by which those tender relations had been so suddenly broken.

I could not refuse; and if I accepted, how was I to meet Louisa? And now, what said Cora?

Her dear little note was brief and rapid, but explained all, and more than I could have hoped for. Miss Agnes Auriol, on seeing the false position in which Berkeley had contrived to place me, had generously transmitted, last night, by her old nurse, all the letters she possessed of Mr. Berkeley, and these had served completely to explain her relations with him, and to exonerate me, affording a complete clue to what had already excited their suspicion and surprise--Berkeley's intimate knowledge of the cottage, and the strange fact of his possessing a latch-key for it.

"Louisa knows everything, and now believes that she has been too precipitate;" so ran the note. "Restore her ring when you meet, and I shall tell you a great deal when we see you here. It is Louisa's request that you meet her as if nothing had taken place. Will you believe it, that yesterday morning, before that horrid scene occurred, Berkeley had actually proposed to her in form, and been rejected--rejected, dear Newton, and for you? (This part of the note was singularly blurred, blotted, and ill-expressed for Cora.) I need not tell you to make yourself pleasant, for papa is expected, and Lord Slubber is to be here."

A postscript added that the packet of letters had been returned to the cottage that morning by a servant--but he found the place locked up, and the inmates gone, none could tell him whither; so, in this dilemma, they had been posted to Berkeley himself, at Maidstone barracks.[*]

[*] When serving in the East, a paragraph in a Welsh newspaper recorded the death of Agnes Auriol in the parish where her father had been incumbent. She was found dead at the stile which led to the village burying-ground; and the verdict of the jury was "Death by the visitation of God."

I answered the notes, gave them to Pitblado to post, and turned along the Ashford Road like one in a dream, letting the reins drop on my horse's neck, and having ample food for serious reflection and mature consideration; for all these meetings, communications, and passages so momentous to me had been crammed into the short space of barely two days.

There were yet three days to pass before I should again see Louisa, hear her voice, and be gladdened by her smile.

Three days were a short invitation to a fashionable household, even to an officer in country quarters, but they seemed three centuries to me.

I felt, too, that I never enjoyed Louisa's society less than amid her own family circle. True, my name was not recorded in Douglas, Debrett, or any other _libre d'or_ of Scottish or English nobility, but I was not the less a gentleman, and my whole soul fired up--almost with red republicanism--at the cool bearing usually assumed towards me by my Lady Chillingham.

A few hours since, the idea of being made a mark for a Muscovite bullet, or a Cossack lance, had not been a matter of much moment; now that the cloud had dispersed, that I knew Louisa loved me still--now that I felt once more all the witchery with which the love of such a girl can enhance existence--now that the sweet dream was no longer, as it had been at Calderwood, a mere dream, but a delicious reality--I came to the conclusion that war was an impertinent bore, glory a delusion and a snare, Mars and Bellona a couple of humbugs--the former a rowdy, and the latter no better than she should be.

I can really assure the reader that I would have borne the intelligence of a sudden peace with great Christian fortitude and perfect equanimity of mind; and had it pleased the Emperor Nicholas and the Western Powers to shake hands, and leave unmolested the Crimea and the "sick man" at Stamboul, certainly none would have blessed their quiet intentions more than I, Newton Norcliff.

But fate had ordained it otherwise; and, like the Roman senator, their "voice was still for war!"

The eventful evening of the "20th instant" saw me ushered into the drawing-room at Chillingham Park, and on this occasion I went in full uniform, knowing well that it enhances the interest with which one is viewed, in times when the atmosphere is so redolent of gunpowder, as it certainly was at this period of my story; and when one is made up--

By youth, by love, and by an army tailor,

the impression is generally favourable.

Circumstances fluttered me, and it was not without an unwonted emotion of confusion I made my way among ottomans, buhl tables, and glass-shades, and seeming to see in the reflecting mirrors at least one hundred figures in lancer uniform traversing the vast perspectives.

Even the usual cold and haughty countess received me with cordiality (she was soon to be rid of me for ever, perhaps). Lord Chillingham, a dignified old peer, whom it is difficult to describe, as there was an absence of characteristics, and nothing remarkable about him, save the extreme length of his white waistcoat, met me with the polite and pleasing warmth he accorded to all whom he cared nothing about.

Cora hurried forward to meet me, looking, I thought, very pale, and not very becomingly dressed--in deep dark blue silk, with black lace flounces--and beyond her I saw Lady Louisa. When I approached the latter, my temples throbbed painfully, and I played nervously with the tassels of my gold sash, like a raw boy who had just reported his having joined.

She was calm, collected, and grave--fashionably, painfully so--but then your well-bred Britons do so hate a scene that they have learned the art of keeping every emotion under the most complete control, relaxing the curb only when it suits themselves.

Save Cora, who witnessed our smiling and pleasant meeting, our suave exchange of bows, and a slight pressure of the hand, none could have read the thoughts that filled our eyes and hearts, and still less could they have imagined the stormy adieux of the other evening. The diamond drops that glittered in Louisa's eyes as she met me did not run over; but were absorbed by her thick dark lashes, as she closed them for an instant, and then looked down. She was simply dressed in white silk, with diamond ornaments, and strings of pearls among the braids of her magnificent black hair.

"I invited your friend, Mr. De Warr Berkeley, for the evening," said the countess, "but the invitation, I fear, was too short, and unfortunately, he pleaded a pre-engagement."

At that moment a bright and intelligent smile flashed in Louisa's eye. In fact, the whole of the late affair was known only to the actors therein--unless I included Beverley and Studhome.

"Captain Calderwood Norcliff--my Lord Slubber," said the earl, as he led me forward to an old gentleman, who was stooping over the chair of the countess, with whom he was smiling and conversing in a polite monotone.

"Ah--indeed--have much pleasure," said this personage, bowing, with a broad conventional smile, and giving two of his withered fingers; "any relation of Sir Nigel Calderwood?"

"His nephew."

"De-lighted to see you, my dear sir. Sir Nigel is here--arrived this morning."

"We but wait his appearance for dinner; our party is small, as you see, Captain Norcliff," said the countess, who was certainly still beautiful, being a larger, older, and more stately version of Louisa, and a powdered toupee would well have suited her face and stature.

Amid vapid discussions or desultory remarks about the probabilities of the war, the weather, and the crops, with my Lord Aberdeen's suspicious policy--ante-dinner remarks--while my eyes from time to time sought those of Louisa, I studied the aspect of my wealthy rival, who, little suspecting the secret of my heart, had immediately engaged me in conversation.

Lord Slubber was not so tall as he had been; his features, though finely cut, were somewhat flabby now, and had become a mass of undoubted wrinkles, yet he had been deemed "the handsomest man of his day," a period on which we shall not venture to speculate. The veteran roue considered himself "a lively dog" yet, and hoped to achieve conquests. Thus his teeth were a brilliant triumph of art over nature, and though his head was bare and smooth as a billiard-ball, his pendulous cheeks wore a delicate little pink hue there could be no doubt about.

His face, with its long, aristocratic nose, somewhat prominent chin, and receding forehead, and his perpetual simpering smile, reminded one of the portraits of Beau Nash, and made one fancy how well he would have suited the powder and ruffles, the bagwig and small-sword of the early days of George III., rather than the odious black swallow-tail and waiter-like costume of the present age.

And this garrulous old beau--this "lean and slippered pantaloon"--was the descendant and representative of the great Norman line of Slobar de Gullion, who had hamstrung the Saxon Kerne in the New Forest, extracted the grinders of the sons of Judah; who had made their mark (as an Irish navvy might do) at Magna Charta, and ridden in all their ironmongery in Edward's ranks at Bannockburn, and in Henry's at Agincourt.

My satisfaction in finding myself still the lover of Louisa, and again the guest of her father, was somewhat dashed by the presence of this, in some respects, formidable rival, who, as the countess informed me in a whisper, was about to be created a marquis for his zealous support of Lord Aberdeen's administration, and was to be decorated with the Garter, of which the Emperor Nicholas had just been deprived.

I muttered something by way of reply, and Lady Louisa, who was seated near us on an ottoman, said, laughingly, behind her fan--

"A marquis and K.G. Oh, mamma, such an old quiz it is! But, only imagine, he has been proposing to take us all, and Cora, too, in his yacht to Constantinople--or even to the Black Sea, if we wish it."

"How kind of him."

"She carries brass guns, and he believes he may assist Admiral Lyons, if necessary."

"Remember that he is a devoted admirer of yours," I heard Lady Chillingham whisper, with a glance which repressed her daughter's desire to laugh outright.

"Hush, mamma," she replied, shutting her fan sharply; "confidences are unusual in you; and as for he you speak of, his appearance is quite enough to make one grow old."

Whether the countess would have checked this unseemly remark, which I could not help overhearing with joy, I know not, for at that moment the roar of the dinner-gong was heard in the vestibule, and my uncle, Sir Nigel, looking hale, hearty, and ruddy, with his silver hair all shining and waving, entered, and shook hands with all, but with none so warmly as me. He wore a dark grey riding-coat, top-boots, and white corded breeches, a costume for which he apologized to the countess, and then turned again to me.

"Egad, Newton, glad to see you, my dear boy--in uniform, too--how well the fellow looks in his sash and epaulettes! Your pardon for being so late, Lady Chillingham; but I rode over to the barracks, thinking to accompany Newton here. How glad Willie, my old keeper's son, was to see me! Returning, I lost my way among a network of green lanes and hedgerows; but as your Kent here is as flat as a billiard-table, when compared with Fife and Kinross, the slopes of the Lomonds, and the Saline hills, I rode straight for Chillingham, rushing my horse at hedges, sunk fences, and everything that came in its way, in defiance of threats against trespassers, and so forth, and I am here!"

"Coming as became the master of the Fife hounds, eh, Sir Nigel?" said the countess; "but now I shall take your arm."

The earl led Cora, Slubber gave his arm to Lady Louisa; and I thought of honest Chaucer's "January and May," as I brought up the rear, solus, playing with the tassels of my sash, and gnawing my moustache, as we marched through a double line of liveried servants to the dining-room, where I contrived to seat myself on her other side.

There was an air of propriety about old Slubber, which, though it made Louisa laugh, was intensely provoking to me, who had to keep my conventional distance. However, I could cross a country with her when riding to hounds, and claim her lithe waist for a waltz when occasion offered; thank heaven! our senile Anglo-Norman was beyond these, and a few other things now; and she gave me many a bright and intelligent glance from under her long black eyelashes, which were almost curled at the tips--recognitions of which his self-satisfied lordship was in blissful ignorance.

I had the engagement ring to restore; but in the meantime our conversation was confined to dinner-table twaddle, and as the dinner was served up _a la Russe_, and all the carving done aside, even its courtesies were abolished: so we confabulated with much hollow earnestness on the prevalent rumour that all the cavalry, light and heavy, were to march through France to Marseilles, the last batch of novels from Mudie's, the race meetings, the future Derby, and other topics equally far from our hearts; and then we had to laugh at old Lord Slubber, when he perpetrated the joke that every small wit did at that time.

"Turkey, my lord?" said a servant.

"Thanks--a slice--just what Nicholas wants."

"And what you, Newton, and other fellows, must prevent him from getting, eh?" said Sir Nigel.

To return our engagement ring was the chief object that agitated me during dinner; and, on perceiving that Louisa had drawn the glove off her lovely left hand, I almost thought the return was thereby invited; and as we dawdled over the dessert, which was served up on the earl's favourite Rose du Barri service of Sevres china, and while Slubber waxed eloquent on his friend Lord Aberdeen's doubtful policy, which my uncle tore all to fritters, I contrived, unseen, to place my Rangoon diamond in her hand, which closed upon it and mine, with a rapid, but nervous pressure, which sent a thrill to my heart, and a flush to my cheek.

It was done!

Recovering--if, indeed, she ever lost it--her complete composure, she asked me, with a smile, as if casually, how I liked the family motto, which was graven round the champagne goblets.

"_Prends moi tel que je suis_," she added, reading it.

"I understand it with delight," said I.

"Take me such as I am," she translated, with a glance which filled me with joy.

Poor old Slubber knew nothing of the little enigma that was being acted almost under his aristocratic nose, and amid such trivial remarks as these--

"What bin is this port from, Mr. ----?" naming the butler.

"Good, remarkable port, my Lord--bin ten--vintage, 1820; it is the finest old wine in the county of Kent."

"Don't taste so," said Lord Chillingham; in fact, it had been voted out of the servants' hall as intolerable. "And the sherry--eh?"

"Pale, my lord," whispered the butler; "you paid three hundred a butt for it--from the small bin."

"Good--uncork some of the Moselle."

In the calm, inscrutable face, and tutored bearing of Louisa Loftus, no one could have read the deep secret we had just shared in--the reconciliation of two ardent and anxious hearts--the bond of love and trust renewed; but this strange power of veiling all agitation at times is incident alike to birth and training, and to the local influences of these in the present time, when in modern society the human face is too often a mere mask which conceals every emotion, exhibiting a calm exterior, however at variance with the mind or disposition of the person; thus, though her pride and self-esteem had been recently stung to madness, and her heart had been crushed within her, now, under the revulsion incident to a great joy, and reunion with me, Louisa was able to wreathe her sweet face with a quiet and well-bred smile, while she listened to the senile gabble of my Lord Slubber.

Great emotions, like those excited by the affair of Agnes Auriol, seldom can remain long, and must subside; Louisa was quite subdued, and sunk in softness and love to-night. She was all that I could desire--my own Louisa.

The gentlemen soon joined the ladies in the drawing-room, and I drew at once near Louisa, who was again seated on the same ottoman with Cora. Lady Chillingham was idling in an easy-chair, half asleep, near the fire, with her feet placed on the velvet fender-stool, and a silky lapdog on her knee; but she roused herself on the approach of Lord Slubber to whisper one of his old-fashioned compliments, coined in the age when gallantry was a study.

"And you think the cavalry will not go through France?" said Louisa, taking up, after a time, the thread of some of her former remarks, while Cora fixed her tender and beautiful eyes kindly on my face.