CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE MANGROVE CREEK.
I reached the garrison in time for guard-mounting, and the storm sufficiently explained the cause of my absence from quarters. I had ample time for thought during the monotony of that day's duty, when with a guard of twenty rank and file, including my comrade Tom Telfer (now a corporal), I had charge of various stores, powder, shot and live shells, which a gang of woolly-headed negroes were hoisting into the launch of H.M.'s frigate Adder, which was still anchored ahead of the leeward line, about a mile off in the bay, where all the fleet were preparing for the forthcoming attack upon the isle of Martinique.
During this important duty, which we superintended under a sunshine so hot that the barrels and bayonets of our firelocks actually grew warm in our hands, my mind never for a moment ceased reverting to the pretty villa of Boscobelle, and the beautiful young Frenchwoman who dwelt in seclusion there.
Wearily I counted the hours till I could return.
Strict orders had been issued against permitting liquor to be given to soldiers on duty, but so much was I abstracted from all sublunary matters by the fair image of Eulalie de Rouvigny, and the whole tenor of my late adventure, that I was quite oblivious of the fact that some of my comrades were industriously "sucking the monkey," through the kind ministrations of two or three pretty mulatto girls. This monkey, was a cocoanut-shell filled with coarse rum, to be sucked at the end through the orifice, which represents the mouth of an ape. A discovery of this neglect might have caused me, in those days, to lose the three stripes from my arm, and to gain three hundred elsewhere, as intoxication when on duty, and more especially on foreign service, is a most serious military crime, and severely was it visited in those old times of the cat and halberds.
I could not conceal from myself, that ruin, misfortune, and the Revolution had combined to make Madame de Rouvigny somewhat of a philosopher. Then, circumstanced as we were,—she married to a man whom she hated, and might never see,—an exile from a country to which she could never return; I, a Scots Fusilier, bound on a desperate service, in a torrid clime of fever and death. What secret impulse made me yield to the folly of being attracted or lured into an amour with her? What end could it serve?
I could not determine this. I was only eighteen; and at that age one does not scrutinize too closely. It may be, that I was solely actuated by the resolution to enjoy life while it lasted; as the volunteer of a forlorn hope, sells his kit and blanket, or spends his last sixpence in roistering at the sutler's tent, lest it should become the prey of the plunderer who overhauls his corpse, or the pioneer who buries it.
There was no enthusiasm in my heart for Eulalie, because I could not deem her that which every lover deems his divinity to be,—perfection. I pitied her friendless condition; her beauty charmed and her manner won me. That was all. I could scarcely love, in the purest sense of the term, a woman who had yielded, even under terror of death, to a wretch, such as she had portrayed Thibaud de Rouvigny to be. Any regard I felt for her could not be lasting; and yet, so inconsistent is our nature, that I departed next day to visit her, quoting, as I left the barracks, the words of Rochefoucault, who says tritely, somewhere, "There are few people who are not ashamed of having loved one another when that love ceases;" and with this cold aphorism in my heart, I hastened along the road to Boscobelle.
I found madame in her pretty little drawing-room: at the sight of her all scruples vanished, and I was vanquished by the charm of her presence and her beauty.