A certain haughty, overbearing tone of manner, was then popular in the army, and particularly in those regiments which boasted of an unalloyed nobility among the officers. If they assumed an air of superiority to the rest of the service, so much the more did they look down upon the mere civilian, whom they considered as belonging to a very subordinate class and order of mankind. To mark the sense of this difference of condition in a hundred little ways, and by a hundred petty observances, was part of a military education, and became a more unerring test of the soldier in society, than even the cockade and the cross-belt. To suppose that such a line of conduct should not have inspired those against whom it was directed with a feeling of counter hatred, would be to disbelieve in human nature. The civilian, indeed, reciprocated with dislike the soldier's insolence, and, in their estrangement from each other, the breach grew gradually wider—the dominant tyranny of the one, and the base-born vulgarity of the other, being themes each loved to dilate upon without ceasing.
Now, this consciousness of superiority, so far from relieving Frederick Travers of any portion of the difficulty of his task, increased it tenfold. He knew and felt he was stooping to a most unwarrantable piece of condescension in seeking these people at all; and although he trusted firmly that his aristocratic friends were very unlikely to hear of proceedings in a quarter so remote and unvisited, yet how he should answer to his own heart for such a course, was another and a far more puzzling matter. He resolved, then, in the true spirit of his order, to give his conduct all the parade of a most condescending act, to let them see plainly, how immeasurably low he had voluntarily descended to meet them; and to this end he attired himself in his full field uniform, and with as scrupulous a care as though the occasion were a review before his Majesty. His costume of scarlet coat, with blue velvet facings, separating at the breast, so as to show a vest of white kerseymere, trimmed with a gold border—his breeches of the same colour and material, met at the knee by the high and polished boot, needed but the addition of his cocked hat, fringed with an edging of ostrich feathers, to set off a figure of singular elegance and symmetry. The young men of the day were just beginning to dispense with hair powder, and Fred wore his rich brown locks, long and floating, in the new mode—a fashion which well became him, and served to soften down the somewhat haughty carriage of his head. There was an air of freedom, an absence of restraint, in the military costume of the period, which certainly contributed to increase the advantages of a naturally good-looking man, in the same way as the present stiff, Prussian mode of dress, will, assuredly, conceal many defects in mould and form among less-favoured individuals. The loosely-falling flaps of the waistcoat—the deep hanging cuffs of the coat—the easy folds of the long skirt—gave a character of courtliness to uniform which, to our eye, it at present is very far from possessing. In fact, the graceful carriage and courteous demeanour of the drawing-room, suffered no impediment from the pillory of a modern stock, or the rigid inflexibility of a coat strained almost to bursting.
“Are you on duty, Fred?” said Sir Marmaduke, laughing, as his son entered the breakfast-room, thus carefully attired.
“Yes, sir; I am preparing for my mission; and it would ill become an ambassador to deliver his credentials in undress.”
“To what court are you then accredited?” said Sybella, laughing.
“His Majesty, The O'Donoghue,” interposed his father; “King of Glenflesk, Baron of Inchigeela, Lord Protector of—of half the blackguards in the county, I verily believe,” added he, in a more natural key.
“Are you really going to Carrig-na-curra, Fred?” asked Miss Travers, hurriedly; “are you going to visit our neighbours?”
“I'll not venture to say that such is the place, much less pretend to pronounce it after you, my dear sister, but I am about to wait on these worthy people, and, if they will permit me, have a peep at the interior of their stockade or wigwam, whichever it be.”
“It must have been a very grand thing in its day: that old castle has some fine features about it yet,” replied she calmly.
“Like Windsor, I suppose,” said Fred as he replied to her, and then complacently glanced at the well-fitting boot which ornamented his leg. “They'll not be over-ceremonious, I hope, about according me an audience.”