Quentin strove to take courage from the good major's words, and ultimately did so; but Middleton knew not the past of those he spoke of, and was ignorant of the secret rivalry and settled hatred that existed between them, especially in the heart of Cosmo; while Quentin, in his ignorance of military matters, knew not that the Master, if he chose to exert his powers arbitrarily, might dismiss him from the corps at once, unquestioned by any authority for doing so; and that by the stigma thus attached to his name, the chance of any other commanding officer accepting him as a volunteer would be utterly precluded; and that Cosmo did not do so was, perhaps, only by a lingering emotion of justice or of shame for what his family, and chiefly Flora Warrender and that huge bugbear "the world," would say if the story got abroad.
"Better trust to the chances of war," thought Cosmo, grimly, as he lay sullenly at length, smoking, on a luxurious fauteuil in his ample quarters, which were furnished with all the comforts and elegance with which a Jew broker could surround him; "a brat, a boy, a chick—a d—ned foundling! With all my conscious superiority of rank, birth, and, what are better, strength of mind and character, why do I dread this Quentin Kennedy? Why and how does he seem to be so inextricably woven up with me, my fate and fortune—it may be, with the house of Rohallion itself? Last of all, why the devil do I find him here?" (This question he almost shouted aloud as he kicked away the cushion of the fauteuil.) "Why do I dread him? Dread—I—shame! what delusion is this—what depression is it that his presence—the very idea of his existence—and contact bring upon me? In all this there is some strange fate—I know not what; but I shall trust to the chances of war for a riddance, and to the perilous work I shall cut out for him in particular."
And so he trusted; but with what success we shall see ere long.
CHAPTER VII.
THE DEPARTURE.
"Our native land—our native vale—
A long and last adieu;
Farewell to bonny Teviotdale,
And Cheviot mountains blue!
The battle-mound, the border-tower,
That Scotia's annals tell;
The martyr's grave—the lover's bower—
To each, to all—farewell."—PRINGLE.
Cosmo studiously and ungenerously omitted the slightest mention of Quentin's name or existence in the letters which he wrote home to Carrick, well knowing that if he did so, the kind old general, his father, would at once address the authorities at the Horse Guards on the subject of the young volunteer's advancement; and he knew, that if appointed to any other corps than the Borderers, Quentin would be beyond his influence, and free from the wiles and perils in which he had mentally proposed to involve his future career.
At last came the day so long looked forward to by all the regiment—the day of its departure for foreign service, as it proved in the Spanish Peninsula, the land to which, after several useless and bloody expeditions to Holland, Flanders, Sweden, and Italy, the thoughts and hopes and all the sympathies of Britain turned, with the desire of driving out the victorious French, and restoring the Bourbon dynasty—almost an old story now, so remote have the struggles before Sebastopol and the wars of India made the great battles of those days seem to be.
The regiment had been under orders, and in a state of readiness for weeks; but until, for it and for others, the route came in the sabretasche of an orderly dragoon who rode spurring in "hot haste" to Colchester Barracks, its members knew not for what country they were destined.
The drums beat the générale, the signal for marching, early in the morning of a soft September day, and the four pipers of the regiment played loud and high a piobroch, that rang wildly, in all its various parts, through the calm air, waking every echo of the old barrack square; for the piobroch, we may inform the uninitiated, is a regular piece of music, containing several portions; beginning with an alarm, after which follow the muster, the march, the fury of the charge, the shrill triumph of victory, and the low sad wail for the slain.