'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 glass.
'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 passing 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 shore, 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 circumstances, 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.'