CHAPTER II.

THE COLONEL-COMMANDANT.

The General refilled his glass and his meerschaum, and remained sunk in thought after the departure of his nephew, and more than once he sighed heavily, knit his brows, and shook his head.

He was not drinking schiedam with water, but good Farintosh whisky, kegs of which were regularly sent to him by a Scottish merchant from the Scotsch Dyk at Rotterdam--Farintosh which was then free from all Excise duty, and remained so till five years after the period of our story.

We have said that General Kinloch was a handsome man and in the flower of manhood; and a fine picture he would have made as he sat there, in his graceful old-fashioned uniform, with heavily-laced lapels and skirts, his hair powdered and queued, with a Khevenhüller hat (not unlike that of Napoleon I.) close by, adorned with a stiff upright feather and Dutch cockade, and his silk sash worn crossways in the old Scottish fashion.

The old Scottish officer who took a turn of service in France was jaunty in air, tone, and bearing, as Scott describes his Baron of Bradwardin to have been; but his countryman who served the States of Holland became, under the influence of his flat, stale and stolid surroundings, rather another style of man--equally brave and gallant in war, but less gallant in the ball-room or the boudoir--often grave, grim, and starched amid the influence of Dutch society and Presbyterianism.

It was only thirty-four years before that Culloden had been fought; and though his political sympathies were not with the exiled King James VIII., his mind was full of the bitter memories of that atrocious field left in every right-thinking Scottish heart; and his orphan nephew, Lewie Baronald, was the son of his only sister, one of those enthusiastic Jacobite ladies who kept guard at Edinburgh Cross with a drawn sword when the King was proclaimed, who danced at the famous Holyrood ball, and who, like more than one old lady in Scottish history and tradition, had never allowed her husband to kiss her, after the Prince did so, and after making his bed, when an exile and fugitive, with her own hands, had laid aside the sheets thereof to be a shroud for herself, in the true spirit of loyalty 'and that sublime devotion which the Saxon never knew.'

Long as he had been in Holland, the eyes of our Scot--accustomed as he had been to the grand mountain scenery of his native land--had never become accustomed to the utter monotony, flatness, and insipidity of the Dutch landscape, or to the brusqueness of the natives, their stolidity and general dulness of demeanour; but the pay was good, the quarters were comfortable, and--when not fighting--the service was easy enough. His sword was almost his inheritance, as the estate he inherited, Thominean, was drowned in debt; and their High Mightinesses the States-General were sure and generous paymasters.

Yet, times there were when he thought with the author of 'Vathek,' that there must have been a period when Holland was all water, 'and the ancestors of the present inhabitants fish. A certain _oysterishness_ of eye and flabbiness of complexion are almost proof-sufficient of this aquatic descent; and pray tell me for what purpose are such galligaskins as the Dutch burthen themselves with contrived, but to tuck up a flouncing tail, and thus cloak the deformity of a dolphin-like termination.'

Reflecting angrily and sadly upon the recent conversation with his favourite, the General continued to smoke and gaze down the long vista of the quaint Dutch street, with its stiff rows of trees reflected downward in the canal that lay parallel with them, and its quaint gables on each of which, nearly, a stork was perched; the little mirrors projecting from the windows to enable the ladies within to see those who passed outside; the knockers tied up with pincushions and plaited lace to indicate that a 'goodwife was in the straw.'

There were women in the mobcaps, print-gowns, and gaudy satin aprons wore by all ranks alike; men in broad, round, conical hats, puckered jackets, and capacious breeches, now no longer to be seen but in very remote districts; an occasional dominie or clergyman in his court-like costume, ruff and cocked hat, passing homeward after having a pipe with some parishioner, or a dish of coffee with his vrouw.

There was the clatter of wooden shoes in the ill-paved street; the oil-lamps were beginning to glimmer like glow-worms, and were reflected in the slime of the canals; the drums and fifes of the Scots Brigade, in the adjacent caserne, were playing out the dying day, and sweetly stole upon the ambient evening the old air:

'Oh, the Lowlands o' Holland Hae parted my love and me;'

but the General was in shadow-land, thinking of other times and long-vanished faces, and wondering when the guilders of their High Mightinesses, and the prize-money won from the French and Spaniards, would free his inheritance from all its wadsets and incumbrances, and he would be able to hang his sword, where still his father's hung, in the old dining-hall of Thominean.

He saw it in fancy, that old house of Thominean ('the hill of birds'), with its grey crow-stepped gables and conical pepper-box turrets of the days of James VI., overlooked by the green range of the lovely Ochills; and he laughed softly as he remembered how in boyhood there he had trembled at the thought of the tiny elves, who, on their festival nights, were alleged to make great noises under the green turf, opening and shutting large chests of gold, and clattering with goblets and copper kettles; and how still more did he tremble at the story of a mysterious mirror, in which occasionally the figure of a pale woman, clad in white, could be distinctly seen _behind_ the reflection of the person who stood before the glass, and how it was said to have appeared therein on the night his beloved sister, the Lady Baronald, died, and left her only son penniless in the world.

Thus Lewie, in his boyhood, became a soldier. On an evening that he never forgot, there came marching bravely down the quaint High Street of Kinross a recruiting-party of the Scots Brigade, with ribbons fluttering, drawn swords gleaming, the shrill pipes and hoarse drums, making every lane and alley bordering on Loch Leven to re-echo 'The Lowlands o' Holland;' and halting in front of the Bruce Arms Inn, a portly sergeant, after a libation of Farintosh had been duly poured forth, harangued the gathered rustics. He invited 'all lads of spirit to join that battalion of the Scots Brigade, commanded by the noble and valiant Henry Douglas, Earl of Drumlanrig, under their High Mightinesses the States-General of Holland, to fight the frog-eating French and popish Spaniards; all who so entered to have complete new clothing, arms and accoutrements as became a gentleman and soldier, two guineas bounty, and a crown to drink to the health of their High Mightinesses, and to the confusion of their enemies!'

A loud hurrah and much brandishing of broadswords followed this invitation, and ere 'The Point of War' was fully beaten, Lewie Baronald had shaken hands with this Scottish Sergeant Kite, and had the Dutch cockade pinned on his blue bonnet by a cunning corporal, who showed him an old watch like a silver turnip, and worth half-a-crown, which he boldly alleged had been presented to him 'by his Royal Highness the Prince of Orange in person.'

His uncle's influence soon procured him 'a pair of colours,' as the phrase was then, for a commission; and he soon proved himself worthy of the distinction by the daring and courage he displayed, when the battalion of Drumlanrig was employed with other Dutch troops in 1774, at the Cape of Good Hope, in driving the natives from the Bokkeveld and Roggeveld, back into the deserts on the south-west coast of Africa; and since his return to Holland his name, the popularity of his regiment, his handsome face and figure, were equally passports to the best society in the Hague and at Amsterdam.

But now, it seemed to his uncle and patron, the Colonel-Commandant of the Brigade, that his prospects were on the point of being marred by this unlucky passion for the daughter of the Countess van Renslaer.

Kinloch's antipathy to women was well known in the Brigade, and it was a standing joke among the battalions, that once, when the coquettish wife of the Grand Pensionary of Amsterdam had lured him into a game of battledore and shuttlecock, and contrived to let the latter drop into her ample bosom, and pointing thereto, piteously besought the General to take it out, that he--obtuse as Uncle Toby with the Widow Wadman--deftly abstracted it with the tongs.

'The lad will succeed me in time, as Laird of Thominean,' he muttered, after a time; 'the forfeited baronetcy may be restored: so why shouldn't he marry because I--I--but better not! They are all alike--all alike, these women: so he will be safer with the left wing of Dundas's Battalion in the West Indies, than philandering here at the Hague.'

But even while giving utterance to his thoughts, his features relaxed: his irritation or annoyance seemed to abate as other thoughts stole into his mind, and a shade of melancholy came over his face; and resting his head upon his hands, he remained for a time in deep and apparently painful thought.

Then he rose slowly, and selecting a key from a small bunch, opened an elaborately-carved Dutch cabinet, and from a secret drawer thereof, curiously and ingeniously hidden by a movable lion's head, he drew forth the oval miniature of a young girl, and gazed upon it long, sorrowfully, and tenderly.

There was something quaint and childlike in the beauty of the girl depicted there, with a string of pearls round her white and slender throat. Her complexion was clear and pure, her expression innocent, with golden-brown hair, and golden-brown eyes that seemed to smile on him again as he gazed on them.

A hot tear started in the eyes of Kinloch, yet he bit his lip, and, as if angry with himself for the emotion that came over him, he closed the miniature-case with a sharp snap, and restored it to its place of concealment hurriedly, muttering:

'Fool that I was--fool that I am now! Heaven grant that this Dolores of Lewie's may not make the dupe of him that girl made of me! I must save him from himself. I shall write the Director-General of the Forces--Berbice or Essequibo it must be. Poor Lewie! I am loth to part with him; but, der Duyvel! he shall not be the victim of this old jade and her daughter.'