Unvisited and uninvited, I felt that to have left a card at Chillingham Park would have been an intrusion unwarranted by the rules of good society—rules which I warmly bequeathed to the infernal gods. I had come to Canterbury; but to what end?—unless I met Louisa on the road, or in the city, and such wished-for chances seldom fall to the lot of lovers.
There was the cathedral, where, doubtless, she and her family would be on a Sunday, in their luxuriously-cushioned pew, attended by a tall "Jeames" in plush, carrying a great Bible, a nosegay, and gold-headed cane; but to thrust myself upon her there was too humble a proceeding for my then mood of mind.
I longed with all my soul to see her, were it but for a moment; and yet I also longed for the route to the East, as a relief from my present torture; and come it soon would now. There was some consolation in that conviction.
War had already been declared against Russia by the Western Powers of Europe. On the 23rd of the last month the brigade of guards had departed from London, after taking farewell of the Queen at Buckingham Palace; the Baltic fleet had sailed from Spithead; many of our troops were already embarked; and the French fleet for the North Sea had sailed from Brest. All betokened earnest and rapid preparations for a protracted contest; so I felt assured that our days in Maidstone were numbered now.
How long, or how far I wandered on that evening, full of vague and most dispiriting thoughts, I know not—near to Margate certainly; and the sun was setting as I returned, keeping near the sea-shore, and in sight of the countless white sails and smoky funnels of the craft that were standing outward or inward about the mouths of the Thames and Medway.
The sun sunk beyond the horizon; but the twilight was strong and clear. The place was lonely and still; and, save the chafing of the sea on the rocks at the Reculvers, not a sound came on the calm atmosphere of the soft spring evening. I was there alone, with my own thoughts for company, and found it difficult to realise the idea that the roar of London, with all its mingled myriads of the human race, was but sixty miles distant from where my horse nibbled the grass that grew by the sequestered wayside.
The whole scenery was intensely English. Against the rosy flush of the sunset sky, that old landmark for mariners, the Sisters, as the two spires of the ancient church are named, stood up sharply and darkly defined about a mile distant; near me spread an English park, studded with fine old timber, a model of beauty and fertility, the sward of the most brilliant green, and closely mown, as if shaved with a huge razor. The smoke of the quaint old Saxon village curled upwards far into the still air, and all seemed peaceful and quiet as the shades of evening deepened—quiet as the dead of ages in the graves that lie about the basement of the old church that marks the spot where St. Augustine—sent by Pope Gregory on the errand of conversion—first put his foot upon the Saxon shore; and as if further to remind me that I was in England, and not in my native country, the curfew bell now rang out upon the stilly air, tolling "the knell of parting day," for, as the Norman power stopped on the banks of the Tweed, the curfew is, of course, unknown in Scotland.
I had been lost in reverie for some time—how long I know not, while my horse shook his bridle and ears ever and anon at the evening flies, and cropped the herbage that grew under a thick old hedge, which bordered the flinty and chalky way—when the sound of voices roused me; and close by a rustic wooden stile, that afforded a passage through the hedge in question, I suddenly beheld a man and woman in parley—conversation it could not be termed, as the former was evidently confronting, and rudely barring, the progress of the latter.
On the summit of the stile her figure was distinctly seen in dark outline against the twilight sky.
She seemed young and handsome, with a smart little black-velvet hat and feather. Her small hands were well-gloved; one firmly grasped her folded parasol and handkerchief, and the other held up her skirt prettily as she sought to descend the stile, showing more than no doubt was generally revealed of a well-rounded leg, a taper ankle, and tiny foot, encased in a fashionable kid boot.