Jack Hinton: The Guardsman

CHAPTER XLIX. THE HORSE GUARDS

I will not say that my reverse of fortune did not depress me; indeed, the first blow fell heavily; but that once past, a number of opposing motives rallied my courage and nerved my heart. My father, I knew, relied on me in this crisis to support his own strength. I had learned to care less for extravagant habits and expensive tastes, by living among those who accorded them little sympathy and less respect. Besides, if my changed career excluded me from the race of fashion, it opened the brilliant path of a soldier’s life before me; and now every hour seemed an age, until I should find myself among the gallant fellows who were winning their laurels in the battlefields of the Peninsula.

According to the duke’s appointment of the preceding evening I found myself, at ten o’clock punctually, awaiting my turn to be introduced, in the ante-chamber of the Horse Guards. The room was crowded with officers in full dress. Some old white-haired generals of division had been coming daily for years past to solicit commands, their fitness for which lay only in their own doting imaginations; some, broken by sickness and crippled with wounds, were seeking colonial appointments they never could live to reach; hale and stout men in the prime of life were there also, entreating exchanges which should accommodate their wives and daughters, who preferred Bath or Cheltenham to the banks of the Tagus or the snows of Canada. Among these, however, were many fine soldierlike fellows, whose only request was to be sent where hard knocks were going, careless of the climate and regardless of the cause. Another class were thinly sprinkled around – young officers of the staff, many of them delicate, effeminate-looking figures, herding scrupulously together, and never condescending, by word or look, to acknowledge their brethren about them. In this knot De Vere was conspicuous by the loud tone of his voice and the continued titter of his unmeaning laugh. I have already mentioned the consummate ease with which he could apparently forget all unpleasant recollections, and accost the man whom he should have blushed to meet. Now he exhibited this power in perfection; saluting me across the room with a familiar motion of his hand, he called out —

‘Ah, Hinton, you here, too? Sick of Ireland; I knew it would come to that. Looking for something near town?’

A cold negative, and a colder bow, was my only answer.

Nothing abashed by this – indeed, to all seeming, quite indifferent to it» he continued —

‘Bad style of thing, Dublin; couldn’t stand those con-founded talkers, with their old jokes from circuit. You were horribly bored, too; I saw it.’

‘I beg, my lord,’ said I, in a tone of seriousness, the best exchange I could assume for the deep annoyance I felt – ‘I beg that you will not include me in your opinions respecting Ireland; I opine we differ materially in our impressions on that country, and perhaps not without reason too. These latter words I spoke with marked emphasis, and fixing my eyes steadily on him.

‘Very possibly,’ lisped he, as coolly as before. ‘I left it without regret; you apparently ought to be there still! Ha, ha, ha! he has it there, I think.’

The blood mounted to my face and temples as I heard these words, and stepping close up beside him, I said slowly and distinctly —

‘I thought, sir, that one lesson might have taught you with whom these liberties were practicable.’

As I said thus much the door opened, and his grace the Duke of York appeared. Abashed at having so far forgotten where I was, I stood motionless and crimson for shame. Lord Dudley, on the contrary, bowed reverently to his Royal Highness, without the slightest evidence of discomposure or irritation, his easy smile curling his lip.

The duke turned from one to the other of us without speaking, his dark eyes piercing, as it were, into our very hearts. ‘Lord Dudley de Vere,’ said he at length, ‘I have signed your appointment. Mr. Hinton, I am sorry to find that the voice I have heard more than once within the last five minutes, in an angry tone, was yours. Take care, sir, that this forgetfulness does not grow upon you. The colonel of the Twenty-seventh is not the person to overlook it, I promise you.’

‘If your Royal Highness – ’

‘I must entreat you to spare me any explanations. You are gazetted to the Twenty-seventh. I hope you will hold yourself in readiness for immediate embarkation. Where’s the detachment, Sir Howard?’

‘At Chatham, your Royal Highness,’ replied an old officer behind the duke’s shoulder. At the same moment his grace passed through the room, conversing as he went with different persons about him.

As I turned away, I met Lord Dudley’s eyes. They were riveted on me with an expression of triumphant malice I had never seen in them before, and I hurried homeward with a heart crushed and wounded.

I have but one reason for the mention of this trivial incident. It is to show how often the studied courtesy, the well-practised deception, that the fashion of the world teaches, will prevail over the heartfelt, honest indignation which deep feeling evinces; and what a vast superiority the very affectation of temper confers, in the judgment of others who stand by the game of life and care nothing for the players at either side. Let no one suspect me of lauding the mockery of virtue in what I say here. I would merely impress on the young man who can feel for the deep sorrow and abasement I suffered the importance of the attainment of that self-command, of that restraint over any outbreak of passion, when the very semblance of it insures respect and admiration.

It is very difficult to witness with indifference the preference of those we have once loved for some other person; still more so, when that other chances to be one we dislike. The breach of affection seems then tinctured with a kind of betrayal; we call to mind how once we swayed the temper and ruled the thoughts of her who now has thrown off her allegiance; we feel, perhaps for the first time too, how forgotten are all our lessons, how dead is all our wonted influence; we remember when the least word, the slightest action, bent beneath our will; when our smile was happiness and our very sadness a reproof; and now we see ourselves unminded and neglected, and no more liberty to advise, no more power to control, than the merest stranger of the passing hour. What a wound to our self-love!

That my cousin Julia loved De Vere, O’Grady’s suspicions had already warned me; the little I had seen of her since my return strengthened the impression, while his confident manner and assured tone confirmed my worst fears. In my heart I knew how utterly unworthy he was of such a girl; but then, if he had already won her affections, my knowledge came too late. Besides, the changed circumstances of my own fortune, which must soon become known, would render my interference suspicious, and consequently of no value; and, after all, if I determined on such a course, what allegation could I bring against him which he could not explain away as the mere levity of the young officer associating among those he looked down upon and despised?

Such were some of my reflections as I slowly returned homewards from the Horse Guards. As I arrived, a travelling-carriage stood at the door; boxes, imperials, and cap-cases littered the hall and steps; servants were hurrying back and forward, and Mademoiselle Clémence, my mother’s maid, with a poodle under one arm and a macaw’s cage in the other, was adding to the confusion by directions in a composite language that would have astonished Babel itself.

‘What means all this?’ said I. ‘Is Lady Charlotte leaving town?’

‘Miladi va partir – ’

‘Her ladyship’s going to Hastings, sir,’ said the butler, interrupting. ‘Dr. T – has been here this morning and recommends an immediate change of air for her ladyship.’

‘Is Sir George in the house?’

‘No, sir, he’s just gone out with the doctor.’

Ah, thought I, this then is a concerted measure to induce my mother to leave town. ‘Is Lady Julia at home?’

‘Yes, sir, in the drawing-room.’

‘Whose horse is that with the groom?’ ‘Lord Dudley de Vere’s, sir; he’s upstairs.’ Already had I turned to go to the drawing-room, when I heard these words. Suddenly, a faint, half-sick feeling came over me, and I hastened upstairs to my own room, actually dreading to meet any one as I went. The blank future before me never seemed so cheerless as at that moment – separated, without a chance of ever meeting, from the only one I ever really loved; tortured by my doubts of her feeling for me (for even now what would I not have given to know she loved me!) my worldly prospects ruined; without a home; my cousin Julia, the only one who retained either an interest in me or seemed to care for me, about to give her hand to the man I hated and despised. ‘How soon, and I shall be alone in the world!’ thought I; and already the cold selfishness of isolation presented itself to my mind.

A gentle tap came to the door. I opened it; it was a message from Lady Charlotte, requesting to see me in her room. As I passed the door of the drawing-room I heard Lady Julia and Lord de Vere talking and laughing together. He was, as usual, ‘so amusing,’ as my mother’s letter called him – doubtless, relating my hasty and intemperate conduct at the Horse Guards. For an instant I stopped irresolute as to whether I should not break suddenly in, and disconcert his lordship’s practical coolness by a disclosure: my better reason prevented me, and I passed on. Lady Charlotte was seated in a deep arm-chair, inspecting the packing of various articles of toilette and jewelry which were going on around her, her cheek somewhat flushed from even this small excitement.

‘Ah, dearest John, how d’ye do? Find a chair somewhere, and sit down by me; you see what confusion we ‘re in. Dr. Y – found there was not an hour to spare; the heart he suspects to be sympathetically engaged – don’t put that Chantilly veil there, I shall never get at it – and he advises Hastings for the present. He’s coming with us, however – I’ll wear that ring, Clémence – and I must insist at his looking at you. You are very pale to-day, and dark under the eyes; have you any pain in the side?’

‘None whatever, my dear mother; I’m quite well.’

‘Pain is, however, a late symptom; my attack began with an – a sense of – it was rather – Has Bundal not sent back that bracelet? How very provoking! Could you call there, dear John? – that tiresome man never minds the servants – it’s just on your way to the club, or the Horse Guards, or somewhere.’

I could scarce help a smile, as I promised not to forget the commission.

‘And now, my dear, how did his grace receive you? You saw him this morning?’

‘My interview was quite satisfactory on the main point. I am appointed to the Twenty-seventh.’

‘Why not on the staff, dear John? You surely don’t mean to leave England! Having been abroad already – in Ireland I mean – it’s very hard to expect you to go so soon again. Lady Jane Colthurst’s son has never been farther from her than Knightsbridge; and I’m sure I don’t see why we are to be treated worse than she is.’

‘But my own wish – ’

‘Your own wish, my dear, could never be to give me uneasiness, which I assure you you did very considerably while in Ireland. The horrid people you made acquaintance with – my health, I’m certain, could never sustain a repetition of the shock I experienced then.’

My mother leaned back and closed her eyes, as if some very dreadful circumstance was passing across her memory; and I, half ashamed of the position to which she would condemn me, was silent.

‘There, that aigrette will do very well there, I’m sure. I don’t know why you are putting in all these things; I shall never want them again, in all likelihood.’

The depressed tone in which these words were spoken did not affect me much; for I knew well, from long habit, how my mother loved to dwell on the possibility of that event, the bare suggestion of which, from another, she couldn’t have endured.

Just at this moment Julia entered in her travelling dress, a shawl thrown negligently across her shoulders.

‘I hope I have not delayed you. John, are we to have your company too?’

‘No, my dear,’ said my mother languidly, ‘he’s going to leave us. Some foolish notion of active service – ’

‘Indeed!’ said Julia, not waiting for the conclusion of the speech – ‘indeed!’ She drew near me, and as she did so her colour became heightened, and her dark eyes grew darker and more meaning. ‘You never told me this!’

‘I only knew it about an hour ago myself,’ replied I coolly; ‘and when I was about to communicate my news to you I found you were engaged with a visitor – Lord de Vere, I think.’

‘Ah, yes, very true; he was here,’ she said quickly; and then perceiving that my eyes were fixed upon her, she turned her head hastily, and in evident confusion.

‘Dear me, is it so late?’ said my mother with a sigh. ‘I have some calls to make yet. Don’t you think, John, you could take them off my hands? It’s only to drop a card at Lady Blair’s; and you could ask if Caroline ‘s better – though, poor thing, she can’t be, of course; Dr. Y – says her malady is exactly my own. And then if you are passing Long’s, tell Sir Charles that our whist-party is put off – perhaps Grammont has told him already. You may mention to Saunders that I shall not want the horses till I return; and say I detest greys, they are so like city people’s equipages; and wait an instant’ – here her ladyship took a small ivory memorandum tablet from the table, and began reading from it a list of commissions, some of them most ludicrously absurd. In the midst of the catalogue my father entered hastily with his watch in his hand.

‘You’ll be dreadfully late on the road, Charlotte; and you forget Y – must be back here early to-morrow.’

‘So I had forgotten it,’ said she with some animation; ‘but we’re quite ready now. Clémence has done everything, I think. Come, John, give me your arm, my dear: Julia always takes this side. Are you certain it won’t rain, Sir George?’

‘I really cannot be positive,’ said my father, smiling.

‘I’m sure there’s thunder in the air,’ rejoined my mother; ‘my nerves would never bear a storm.’

Some dreadful catastrophe in the West Indies, where an earthquake had swallowed up a whole population, occurred to her memory at the instant, and the possibility of something similar occurring between Seven Oaks and Tunbridge seemed to engross her entire attention. By this time we reached the hall, where the servants, drawn up in double file, stood in respectful silence. My mother’s eyes were, however, directed upon a figure which occupied the place next the door, and whose costume certainly was strangely at variance with the accurate liveries about him. An old white greatcoat with some twenty capes reaching nearly to the ground (for the garment had been originally destined for a much larger person), a glazed hat fastened down with a handkerchief passed over it and tied under the chin, and a black-thorn stick with a little bundle at the end of it were his most remarkable equipments.

‘What is it? What can it be doing there?’ said my mother, in a Siddons tone of voice.

‘What is it? Corny Delany, no less,’ croaked out the little man in the crankiest tone of his harsh voice. ‘It’s what remains of me, at laste!’

‘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.’

Laughingly spoken as these few words were, they somehow struck upon a chord that had long lain silent in my heart, and as suddenly awoke in me the burning desire for distinction, and the ambitious thirst of military glory.

The next evening at sunset the transport weighed anchor and stood out to sea. A slight breeze off shore and an ebb-tide carried us gently away from land; and as night was falling I stood alone, leaning on the bulwarks, and looking fixedly on the faint shadows of the tall chalk-cliffs, my father’s last words, ‘You must take an eagle, Jack!’ still ringing in my ears, and sinking deeply into my heart.

Had my accidents by flood and field been more numerous and remarkable than they were, the recently-told adventures of my friend Charles O’Malley would prevent my giving them to the public. The subaltern of a marching regiment – a crack corps, it is true – I saw merely the ordinary detail of a campaigning life; and although my desire to distinguish myself rose each day higher, the greatest extent of my renown went no further than the admiration of my comrades that one so delicately nurtured and brought up should bear so cheerfully and well the roughings of a soldier’s life; and my sobriquet of ‘Jack Hinton, the Guardsman,’ was earned among the stormy scenes and blood-stained fields of the Peninsula.

My first experiences of military life were indeed but little encouraging. I joined the army in the disastrous retreat from Burgos. What a shock to all my cherished notions of a campaign! How sadly different to my ideas of the pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war! I remember well we first came up with the retiring forces on the morning of the 4th of November. The day broke heavily; masses of dark and weighty clouds drifted across the sky. The ground was soaked with rain, and a cold, chilling wind swept across the bleak plain, and moaned dismally in the dark pine-woods. Our party, which consisted of drafts from the Fiftieth, Twenty-seventh, and Seventy-first regiments, were stationed in a few miserable hovels on the side of the highroad from Madrid to Labeyos. By a mistake of the way we had missed a body of troops on the preceding day, and were now halted here in expectation of joining some of the corps retiring on the Portuguese frontier. Soon after daybreak a low rumbling sound, at first supposed to be the noise of distant cannonading, attracted our attention; but some stragglers coming up soon after, informed us that it proceeded from tumbrels and ammunition-waggons of Sir Lowry Cole’s brigade, then on the march. The news was scarcely communicated, when the head of a column appeared topping the hill.

As they came nearer, we remarked that the men did not keep their ranks, but strayed across the road from side to side; some carried their muskets by the sling, others on the shoulder; some leaned on their companions, as though faint and sick; and many there were whose savage looks and bloated features denoted drunkenness. The uniforms were torn and ragged; several of the men had no shoes, and some even had lost their caps and shakos, and wore handkerchiefs bound round their heads. Among these the officers were almost undistinguishable; fatigue, hardship, and privation had levelled them with the men, and discipline scarcely remained in that disorganised mass. On they came, their eyes bent only on the long vista of road that lay before them. Some, silent and sad, trudged on side by side; others, maddened by drink or wild with the excitement of fever, uttered frightful and horrible ravings. Some flourished their bayonets, and threatened all within their reach; and denunciations of their officers and open avowals of desertion were heard on every side as they went. The bugle sounded a halt as the column reached the little hamlet where we were stationed; and in a few seconds the road and the fields at either side were covered with the figures of the men, who threw themselves down on the spot where they stood, in every posture that weariness and exhaustion could suggest.