Volume Ii Part 5 (1/2)
”Oh, bother it!--Lord Wentworth, may he be moved?”
”No, no, Johnny,” said the Earl, who could not help relis.h.i.+ng the dreadful jest--”he has been knocked about enough for one night. You may sleep in another room; but I put my veto on moving him again.”
”Well, who will come to Piers.h.i.+ll?” said Frank; ”I am not going to ride alone--Arranmore, come along!”
”Faith, not I--I never feared Musgrave, alive or dead! Besides, I am married; I have my wife to defend.”
”Ah, that's well enough; but we poor devils who have no wives must look out for company. Come, will no one accompany me?”
”I think I had better weigh anchor and be off,” said Captain Wilson; ”I have had far too much to do with it to moor myself here and be snapped up by the sharks!--only for G.o.d's sake don't put me aboard that vicious craft young Nimrod again.”
”Good night, then--and don't dream about ghosts, Florence,” said Frank, as he and Wilson descended. ”It is not I am really afraid you know, Wilson; but I want to tell the news at the barracks.”
The two young men were soon mounted, and riding along to the cavalry barracks, where the 10th Hussars were now quartered. When they reached the barracks, they found the yard full of men and officers, crowded round a soldier who had lately dismounted.
”Hallo! here's some one who can enlighten us better than this d--d Paddy!”
”How are you, De Vere?--so you've had a duel at the Towers?” said Captain Ross.
”How the devil did you learn the news? Well, that's a nice sell for me,--coming all this way to tell you stale news.”
The explanation was given that one of the troopers had been supping at the Towers that evening, and, with true Irish wisdom, having heard there had been a duel, and one of the duellists killed, without staying to inquire which had fallen
”much aghast, Rode back to _Piers.h.i.+ll_ fiery fast.”
He could only tell that the Captain and Sir Richard Musgrave had had a duel: one was shot dead, but he could not say which.
When Frank came with the full particulars, he slipped away and had a long argument with a stolid Scotchman, about who fired the first shot.
”Come, De Vere, who was the slain?” said Major Cathcart;--”I will bet five to one it was not John De Vere!”
”You're right;--Musgrave was done for--shot clean through his forehead.”
Frank then detailed the whole to a throng of officers and sergeants in the mess room, and did not omit the joke about his riding there for fear of the dead man.
”You should have brought him here,” said the Major; ”we are not afraid of dead bodies!”
A yell of laughter followed this savage jest; and they then all sat down to a wining party, and drank the dead man's health in silence ere they retired!
Captain Wilson departed next day for the Continent. Sir Richard Musgrave's remains were interred in the vaults at the Towers; and the Earl had some trouble to clear himself of the sc.r.a.pe. The marriage was deferred till the 18th of December, the Earl choosing the same day he had met Ellen a year before at the Duke's ball. A letter from the Captain arrived shortly before that day, saying he was at Hamburgh; had met a delightful young Polish officer, Count Czinsky, who was also there for a similar lawless deed, and they were to proceed to St. Petersburgh almost immediately.
CHAPTER IV.
”From that chamber, clothed in white, The bride came forth on her wedding-night; There, in that silent room below, The dead lay in _her_ shroud of snow.”--_Longfellow._
There is something peculiarly sad in the reflection that even the works of man are longer lived than himself. The gray castle, the ancestral residence of proud races, outlives its lords; the trees man plants shall wave green long after he has mouldered in the tomb; the very picture exists long after the original has ceased to be known in his place. But it is this very fact that lends so much romance to the old castle--the ancient tree, on whose trunk is carved many a long-forgotten name--the dusky portrait, which retains the likeness of old ancestors, and s.n.a.t.c.hes them from the oblivion of the dead! There is little interest in the new mansion; we could well afford to dispense with all modern luxuries, could we gain some old traditionary story of the house we dwell in.
The Towers was the most ancient castle in all the neighbourhood; it had been brought into the De Vere family through a Scotch heiress--her name had long been joined with De Vere, but the custom had grown into desuetude. The Towers had stood unchanged for many a century; its lords had mouldered away, not so its battlements; its chieftains had died the death, not so its b.u.t.tresses; not so its four lofty towers, on one of which floated the banner of the family, and in one of which slumbered the mortal remains of many of its stout possessors and fair mistresses.
It had seen every vicissitude of its owners, but owned little change itself. The bride and the bridegroom, the dead had been borne over, and the mourners had trodden its halls. If its walls could have spoken they could have divulged many a dark secret, related many a dark deed. It seemed as if in silent night it mourned the departed, as if in sunny day it rejoiced with the living. These thoughts have been suggested by the lines that head the chapter, and the sequence will show they are not wholly without their meaning.