Jack Hinton Part 56

'Yes, sir, in the drawing-room.'

'Whose horse is that with the groom?' 'Lord Dudley de Vere's, sir; he's upstairs.' Already had I turned to go to the drawing-room, when I heard these words. Suddenly, a faint, half-sick feeling came over me, and I hastened upstairs to my own room, actually dreading to meet any one as I went. The blank future before me never seemed so cheerless as at that moment--separated, without a chance of ever meeting, from the only one I ever really loved; tortured by my doubts of her feeling for me (for even now what would I not have given to know she loved me!) my worldly prospects ruined; without a home; my cousin Julia, the only one who retained either an interest in me or seemed to care for me, about to give her hand to the man I hated and despised. 'How soon, and I shall be alone in the world!' thought I; and already the cold selfishness of isolation presented itself to my mind.

A gentle tap came to the door. I opened it; it was a message from Lady Charlotte, requesting to see me in her room. As I pa.s.sed the door of the drawing-room I heard Lady Julia and Lord de Vere talking and laughing together. He was, as usual, 'so amusing,' as my mother's letter called him--doubtless, relating my hasty and intemperate conduct at the Horse Guards. For an instant I stopped irresolute as to whether I should not break suddenly in, and disconcert his lordship's practical coolness by a disclosure: my better reason prevented me, and I pa.s.sed on. Lady Charlotte was seated in a deep arm-chair, inspecting the packing of various articles of toilette and jewelry which were going on around her, her cheek somewhat flushed from even this small excitement.

'Ah, dearest John, how d'ye do? Find a chair somewhere, and sit down by me; you see what confusion we 're in. Dr. Y---- found there was not an hour to spare; the heart he suspects to be sympathetically engaged--don't put that Chantilly veil there, I shall never get at it--and he advises Hastings for the present. He's coming with us, however--I'll wear that ring, Clemence--and I must insist at his looking at you. You are very pale to-day, and dark under the eyes; have you any pain in the side?'

'None whatever, my dear mother; I'm quite well.'

'Pain is, however, a late symptom; my attack began with an--a sense of--it was rather---- Has Bundal not sent back that bracelet? How very provoking! Could you call there, dear John?--that tiresome man never minds the servants--it's just on your way to the club, or the Horse Guards, or somewhere.'

I could scarce help a smile, as I promised not to forget the commission.

'And now, my dear, how did his grace receive you? You saw him this morning?'

'My interview was quite satisfactory on the main point. I am appointed to the Twenty-seventh.'

'Why not on the staff, dear John? You surely don't mean to leave England! Having been abroad already--in Ireland I mean--it's very hard to expect you to go so soon again. Lady Jane Colthurst's son has never been farther from her than Knightsbridge; and I'm sure I don't see why we are to be treated worse than she is.'

'But my own wish----'

'Your own wish, my dear, could never be to give me uneasiness, which I a.s.sure you you did very considerably while in Ireland. The horrid people you made acquaintance with--my health, I'm certain, could never sustain a repet.i.tion of the shock I experienced then.'

My mother leaned back and closed her eyes, as if some very dreadful circ.u.mstance was pa.s.sing across her memory; and I, half ashamed of the position to which she would condemn me, was silent.

'There, that aigrette will do very well there, I'm sure. I don't know why you are putting in all these things; I shall never want them again, in all likelihood.'

The depressed tone in which these words were spoken did not affect me much; for I knew well, from long habit, how my mother loved to dwell on the possibility of that event, the bare suggestion of which, from another, she couldn't have endured.

Just at this moment Julia entered in her travelling dress, a shawl thrown negligently across her shoulders.

'I hope I have not delayed you. John, are we to have your company too?'

'No, my dear,' said my mother languidly, 'he's going to leave us. Some foolish notion of active service----'

'Indeed!' said Julia, not waiting for the conclusion of the speech--'indeed!' She drew near me, and as she did so her colour became heightened, and her dark eyes grew darker and more meaning. 'You never told me this!'

'I only knew it about an hour ago myself,' replied I coolly; 'and when I was about to communicate my news to you I found you were engaged with a visitor--Lord de Vere, I think.'

'Ah, yes, very true; he was here,' she said quickly; and then perceiving that my eyes were fixed upon her, she turned her head hastily, and in evident confusion.

'Dear me, is it so late?' said my mother with a sigh. 'I have some calls to make yet. Don't you think, John, you could take them off my hands?

It's only to drop a card at Lady Blair's; and you could ask if Caroline 's better--though, poor thing, she can't be, of course; Dr. Y---- says her malady is exactly my own. And then if you are pa.s.sing Long's, tell Sir Charles that our whist-party is put off--perhaps Grammont has told him already. You may mention to Saunders that I shall not want the horses till I return; and say I detest greys, they are so like city people's equipages; and wait an instant'--here her ladyship took a small ivory memorandum tablet from the table, and began reading from it a list of commissions, some of them most ludicrously absurd. In the midst of the catalogue my father entered hastily with his watch in his hand.

'You'll be dreadfully late on the road, Charlotte; and you forget Y---- must be back here early to-morrow.'

'So I had forgotten it,' said she with some animation; 'but we're quite ready now. Clemence has done everything, I think. Come, John, give me your arm, my dear: Julia always takes this side. Are you certain it won't rain, Sir George?'

'I really cannot be positive,' said my father, smiling.

'I'm sure there's thunder in the air,' rejoined my mother; 'my nerves would never bear a storm.'

Some dreadful catastrophe in the West Indies, where an earthquake had swallowed up a whole population, occurred to her memory at the instant, and the possibility of something similar occurring between Seven Oaks and Tunbridge seemed to engross her entire attention. By this time we reached the hall, where the servants, drawn up in double file, stood in respectful silence. My mother's eyes were, however, directed upon a figure which occupied the place next the door, and whose costume certainly was strangely at variance with the accurate liveries about him. An old white greatcoat with some twenty capes reaching nearly to the ground (for the garment had been originally destined for a much larger person), a glazed hat fastened down with a handkerchief pa.s.sed over it and tied under the chin, and a black-thorn stick with a little bundle at the end of it were his most remarkable equipments.

'What is it? What can it be doing there?' said my mother, in a Siddons tone of voice.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 3-081]

'What is it? Corny Delany, no less,' croaked out the little man in the crankiest tone of his harsh voice. 'It's what remains of me, at laste!'

'Oh, yes,' said Julia, bursting into a laugh, 'Corny's coming as my bodyguard. He'll sit in the rumble with Thomas.'

'What a shocking figure it is!' said my mother, surveying him through her gla.s.s.

'Time doesn't improve either of us,' said Corny, with the grin of a demon. Happily the observation was only heard by myself. 'Is it in silk stockings I'd be trapesing about the roads all night, with the rheumatiz in the small of my back! Ugh! the Haythina!'

My mother was at length seated in the carriage, with Julia beside her--the hundred and one petty annoyances to make travelling uncomfortable, by way of rendering it supportable, around her; Corny had mounted to his place beside Thomas, who regarded him with a look of as profound contempt as a sleek, well-fed pointer would confer upon some mangy mongrel of the roadside; a hurried good-bye from my mother, a quick, short glance from Julia, a whisper lost in the crash of the wheels--and they were gone.

CHAPTER L. THE RETREAT FROM BURGOS

Few men have gone through life without pa.s.sing through certain periods which, although not marked by positive misfortune, were yet so impressed by gloom and despondence that their very retrospect is saddening. Happy it is for us that in after days our memory is but little retentive of these. We remember the shadows that darkened over the landscape, but we forget in great part their cause and their duration, and perhaps even sometimes are disposed to smile at the sources of grief to which long habit of the world and its ways would have made us callous.

I was almost alone in the world--bereft of fortune, separated irrevocably from the woman I loved, and by whom I had reason to think my affection was returned. In that home to which I should have looked for fondness I found only gloom and misfortune--my mother grown insensible to everything save some frivolous narrative of her own health; my father, once high-spirited and freehearted, care-worn, depressed, and broken; my cousin, my early playfellow, half sweetheart and half sister, bestowing her heart and affections on one so unworthy of her. All lost to me--and at a time, too, when the heart is too weak and tender to stand alone, but must cling to something, or it sinks upon the earth, crushed and trodden upon.

I looked back upon my past life, and thought over the happy hours I had spent in the wild west, roaming through its deep valleys and over its heath-clad mountains. I thought of her my companion through many a long summer day by the rocky sh.o.r.e, against which the white waves were ever beating, watching the sea-birds careering full many a fathom deep below us, their shrill cries mixing with the wilder plash of the ever-restless sea--and how we dreamed away those hours, now half in sadness, now in bright hope of long years to come, and found ourselves thus wandering hand in hand, loved and loving; and then I looked out upon the bleak world before me, without an object to win, without a goal to strive at.

'Come, Jack,' said my father, laying his hand on my shoulder, and startling me out of my reverie, 'one piece of good fortune we have had.

The duke has given me the command at Chatham; some hint of my altered circ.u.mstances, it seems, had reached him, and without my applying, he most kindly sent for me and told me of my appointment. You must join the service companies of the Twenty-seventh by to-morrow; they are under sailing-orders, and no time is to be lost. I told his grace that for all your soft looks and smooth chin there was no lack of spirit in your heart; and you must take an eagle, Jack, if you would keep up my credit.'

Laughingly spoken as these few words were, they somehow struck upon a chord that had long lain silent in my heart, and as suddenly awoke in me the burning desire for distinction, and the ambitious thirst of military glory.

The next evening at sunset the transport weighed anchor and stood out to sea. A slight breeze off sh.o.r.e and an ebb-tide carried us gently away from land; and as night was falling I stood alone, leaning on the bulwarks, and looking fixedly on the faint shadows of the tall chalk-cliffs, my father's last words, 'You must take an eagle, Jack!'

still ringing in my ears, and sinking deeply into my heart.

Had my accidents by flood and field been more numerous and remarkable than they were, the recently-told adventures of my friend Charles O'Malley would prevent my giving them to the public. The subaltern of a marching regiment--a crack corps, it is true--I saw merely the ordinary detail of a campaigning life; and although my desire to distinguish myself rose each day higher, the greatest extent of my renown went no further than the admiration of my comrades that one so delicately nurtured and brought up should bear so cheerfully and well the roughings of a soldier's life; and my sobriquet of 'Jack Hinton, the Guardsman,'

was earned among the stormy scenes and blood-stained fields of the Peninsula.

My first experiences of military life were indeed but little encouraging. I joined the army in the disastrous retreat from Burgos.

What a shock to all my cherished notions of a campaign! How sadly different to my ideas of the pride, pomp, and circ.u.mstance of glorious war! I remember well we first came up with the retiring forces on the morning of the 4th of November. The day broke heavily; ma.s.ses of dark and weighty clouds drifted across the sky. The ground was soaked with rain, and a cold, chilling wind swept across the bleak plain, and moaned dismally in the dark pine-woods. Our party, which consisted of drafts from the Fiftieth, Twenty-seventh, and Seventy-first regiments, were stationed in a few miserable hovels on the side of the highroad from Madrid to Labeyos. By a mistake of the way we had missed a body of troops on the preceding day, and were now halted here in expectation of joining some of the corps retiring on the Portuguese frontier. Soon after daybreak a low rumbling sound, at first supposed to be the noise of distant cannonading, attracted our attention; but some stragglers coming up soon after, informed us that it proceeded from tumbrels and ammunition-waggons of Sir Lowry Cole's brigade, then on the march.

The news was scarcely communicated, when the head of a column appeared topping the hill.

As they came nearer, we remarked that the men did not keep their ranks, but strayed across the road from side to side; some carried their muskets by the sling, others on the shoulder; some leaned on their companions, as though faint and sick; and many there were whose savage looks and bloated features denoted drunkenness. The uniforms were torn and ragged; several of the men had no shoes, and some even had lost their caps and shakos, and wore handkerchiefs bound round their heads.

Among these the officers were almost undistinguishable; fatigue, hardship, and privation had levelled them with the men, and discipline scarcely remained in that disorganised ma.s.s. On they came, their eyes bent only on the long vista of road that lay before them. Some, silent and sad, trudged on side by side; others, maddened by drink or wild with the excitement of fever, uttered frightful and horrible ravings. Some flourished their bayonets, and threatened all within their reach; and denunciations of their officers and open avowals of desertion were heard on every side as they went. The bugle sounded a halt as the column reached the little hamlet where we were stationed; and in a few seconds the road and the fields at either side were covered with the figures of the men, who threw themselves down on the spot where they stood, in every posture that weariness and exhaustion could suggest.

All the information we could collect was that this force formed part of the rear-guard of the army; that the French under Marshal Soult were hotly in pursuit, having already driven in the cavalry outposts, and more than once throwing their skirmishers amongst our fellows. In a few minutes the bugle again sounded to resume the march; and however little disposed to yield to the dictates of discipline, yet old habit, stronger than even lawless insubordination, prevailed; the men rose, and falling in with some semblance of order, continued their way. Nothing struck me more in that motley ma.s.s of ragged uniform and patched clothing than the ferocious, almost savage, expression of the soldiers as they marched past our better equipped and better disciplined party. Their dark scowl betokened deadly hate; and I could see the young men of our detachment quail beneath the insulting ruffianism of their gaze. Every now and then some one or other would throw down his pack or knapsack to the ground, and with an oath a.s.severate his resolve to carry it no longer. Some even declared they would abandon their muskets; and more than one sat down by the wayside, preferring death or imprisonment from the enemy to the horrors and severities of that dreadful march.