CHAPTER VII.

THE GENERAL'S SECRET.

Next day, when Lewie Baronald, apparelled in all his regimental bravery, was setting forth to visit Dolores, he was summoned by General Kinloch, who, after working himself up to a certain degree of sternness or firmness, real or assumed, for the occasion, said:

'Stay, young man, I pray you, as we must have some conversation together.'

Lewie took off his Khevenhüller hat, and fearing that some animadversions were coming, played a little irresolutely with its upright scarlet feather.

'Your name has gone in for foreign service, Lewie,' said the General.

'To whom, sir?'

'The Director-General of Infantry.'

'Sent by you, uncle?'

'Yes, sir, by me.'

'You might at least have consulted with me in this matter. How cruel of you, uncle, under all the circumstances!' exclaimed Lewie, with sudden bitterness and intense anger.

'You will come to think it kindness in time, boy; I seek but to save you from what I, in my time, underwent.'

'If I refuse to go?'

'Refuse, and compromise your honour and mine--yea, the honour of the Brigade itself! My dear Lewie, when you have lived in this world as long as I----'

'Why, uncle, you are only forty!'

'Not yet twice your age, certainly--well?'

'If detailed for the Colonies, anywhere, separation from Dolores will be the death of me!' exclaimed the young man passionately.

'No, it won't; nor of Dolores either. So you are very much in love with her?' asked the General with a scornful grin.

'God only knows how purely I love her!' exclaimed the nephew in a low concentrated voice.

'Nature is full of freaks, certainly!'

'How?'

'She has varied the annals of the old fighting line of the Baronalds of that Ilk, by having them varied by something else.'

'By what?'

'A moonstruck fool!'

'This is eccentricity combined with unwarrantable interference and military tyranny,' cried Lewie, as he stuck his hat on his head and drew himself haughtily up; then in a moment his mood changed, for he loved this kinsman to whom he owed so much, and he said with an air of dejection, 'How shall I ever tell Dolores of what you have done to us both? I cannot sail for the Cape or the Caribbean Isles, and leave her bound to me! I must release her from her promise, though I know that she would wait a lifetime for me.'

'Poor fool that you are, Lewie! Do you forget the adage, "Out of sight, out of mind"? You think that, like Penelope, she will wait your return in hope, in love, and all the rest of it? You may be like Ulysses, but never was there a Penelope among women.'

The General indulged in many more doubting and slighting remarks upon women, particularly on their faith and constancy; and while he was running on thus, grief struggled with rage and indignation for mastery in the heart of Lewie, which seemed to stand still at this sudden wrench, and the prospect of an abrupt and protracted separation from Dolores--a separation that might be for years--every moment of which would be an agonised heart-throb, it seemed to him then!

How hard, how cruel, that they should be thus separated, and forced to drink, as it were, of the bitter waters of Marah, because this stern soldier hated all women so grotesquely, as the Countess had said, viewing them all through the medium of one; while Lewie and Dolores were so young that all the world seemed too small to contain the measure of their joy, and now--now, thought was maddening!

He would resign, 'throw up his pair of colours,' as the phrase was then; but his uncle had compromised him, by sending in his name to the Director-General of Infantry!

Already in anticipation he imagined and rehearsed their parting; already he saw her tears, her blanched face, and heard himself entreating her not to forget him, while vowing himself to be true to her--each regarding the other mournfully and yearningly, hand clasped in hand, lip clinging to lip; then came the void of the departure; the seas to plough, and the years that were to come with all their doubts and longing.

It was too bad--too bad; he owed his uncle much--all in the world indeed; but this stroke--this harsh interference, ended all between them for ever!

Overwhelmed with dejection he cast himself into a chair; there the General regarded him wistfully, and placing a hand kindly on his shoulder, said:

'Lewie, shall I tell you of what once happened to me?'

But, full of his own terrible thoughts, Lewie made no reply.

'It may have been that evil followed me,' said the General, looking down, with a hand placed in the breast of his coat.

'Evil?' repeated Lewie.

'Yes. When a boy I shot in the wood of Thomineau the last crane that was ever seen in Scotland, and my old nurse predicted that a curse would follow me therefor; thus, I never see a crane on a house-top here that I don't remember her words. Now listen to what happened to me when I was on detachment in the Dutch West India Islands. I belonged then to the battalion of Charles Halkett Craigie, who six years ago died Lieutenant-Governor of Namur, and we garrisoned Fort Nassau, or New Amsterdam as it is called now. There,' continued the General, alternately and nervously toying with his sword-knot and shirt-frill, 'I was silly enough to fall in love with the daughter of a wealthy merchant, a Dutch girl, like your Dolores, with some of the old Castilian blood in her, though a lineal descendant of the great Dutch family of Van Peere, to whom, in 1678, Berbice was granted by the States-General as a perpetual and hereditary fief. She possessed great beauty, and what proved more attractive still, a hundred sweet and winning ways, with the art of saying pretty and even daring little things, that endeared her to all--to none more than me. I was a great ass, of course; but, heavens, what a coquette she was!'

'What was her name?' asked Lewie, with just the smallest amount of interest.

'Excuse me telling, as I have sworn never to utter it again; nor do I wish it to go down in the annals of our family. She wound herself round my heart; my soul, my existence, seemed to be hers. My love for her became a species of idolatry; but poverty tied my tongue, and I dared not speak of it, till one evening, which I shall never forget, the secret left me abruptly, drawn from me by _herself_. We were lingering in the garden of her father's villa near the Berbice river, and the stars were coming out, one by one, in the deep blue sky above us. The hour was beautiful--all that a lover could wish; and around us the atmosphere was fragrant with the perfume of flowers--among those wonders of the vegetable world--the gigantic water-lilies, each leaf of which is six feet in diameter. I was soon to leave for Holland on duty, and my heart was wrung at the prospect of a separation.

'I had her hand in mine: my secret was trembling on my lips; and gazing into her eyes which were of a golden-brown colour, like that of her hair, I said very softly:

'"If your eyes have at all times an expression so sweet, so beautiful and winning, what must they seem to the man who reads love in them--love for himself!"

'"Can you not read it now?" she asked in a low voice, as she cast her long lashes down.

'I uttered her name and drew her close to me, my heart beating wildly the while, in doubt whether this was one of the daring little speeches I spoke of.

'Taking her sweet little face between my hands, I kissed her eyes and forehead, on which she said, in her low cooing voice:

'"I wonder if you will ever think of me after you are gone?"

'"Darling, do you think there will ever be a day of my life when I will not think you! Oh, the thought of our parting is worse than death to me!"

('A fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind,' thought Lewie, becoming fully interested now.)

'"We are jesting," said she; "do not say this."

'"There is no need to tell you that I love you," said I, "for you know that I do--dearly, fondly: that this love will last with life, end with death;" and much more rubbish I said to the same purpose, adding, "And you, if quite free, could you love me?"

'"I love you now; have I not admitted as much?"

'So it all came about in that way,' said the General; 'umph--what an ass I was! May you never live to be deceived as that girl deceived me! I thought our passion was mutual; and then perhaps she thought so too--all perfidious though she was!

'But how happy--how radiantly happy I was for a time, till a Dutch squadron came to anchor off the bar of the Berbice river, and in one of the lieutenants thereof she discovered, or said she discovered, a kinsman; and from that moment a blight fell upon me, and I discovered that she was variable as the wind. Her attentions seemed divided for a time; at last they were no longer given to me. Her smiles were for the stranger; she sang to him, played to him, and talked to him only. At home or abroad, riding or driving, or boating on the river, he was ever by her side when not on board his ship.

'What rage and mortification were in my heart! The rules of the service alone prevented me calling him to a terrible account, though indeed he was not to blame.

'When I attempted to reason or remonstrate with her, she laughed; then after a time became indignant. We parted in anger, and I felt fury and death in my heart when she tossed my engagement-ring at my feet.

'Once again we met, alone, and by the merest chance. How my pulses throbbed as our eyes met, and she coyly presented her hand, which I was craven enough, and fool enough, to fondle!

'"Oh, what have I done," said I, "that you should treat me thus? that you should tread my heart under your feet, and leave me to long years of sorrow and repining?"

'Then she laughed, and snatched her hand away, while once again my soul seemed to die within me.

'"Do you love this kinsman?" I asked her fiercely; and never till my last hour shall I forget her reply, or the almost cruel expression of her face.

'"Yes; I love him--love him with my whole heart, and as I never loved you!"

'Turning away, she left me--left me rooted to the spot. Yet she had some shame, or compunction, left in her after all; for next day came a would-be piteous letter of explanation, that she had given this lieutenant a promise to please her father when he was dying--her father who was his guardian; how she had never had the courage to tell me so at first; that she did not dream I loved her so much; that I must learn to forget her, though she would never forget me; and so--a thousand devils!--there was an end of it.

'A few weeks after I saw her marriage in the papers, to the Lieutenant--d--n his name--to her and her fortune of ever so many thousand guilders.

'I tore her farewell letter into minute fragments, and set to work to adopt her advice.'

'What was that?' asked Lewie.

'To forget her; and to do so I threw myself into my profession. I never looked upon her face again, and I thanked God when I heard our drums beating as we marched out of Fort Nassau, and when the accursed shore of the Berbice river faded into the evening sea! Now, Lewie, have I not the best of reasons for mistrusting women, and seeking to save you from the fangs of this little ogress--this Dolores?'

'Ah, you know not her of whom you speak thus!' exclaimed Lewie.

'Nor am I likely to do so. Shun her, nephew! a girl, doubtless, with a fair face, and a heart as black as Gehenna! Be firm, Lewie Baronald!--firmness is a great thing, as you will find when you come to be a general officer and as old as I am.'

Lewie had done his duty like a man and a soldier--like one worthy of the glorious old Brigade--among the savages in the old Cape War; but it was cruel, absurd, and, to use the Countess van Renslaer's phrase, 'grotesque,' that he should now be treated like a child, and in the most momentous matter of his life and happiness too!

'I was weak enough--idiot enough, to wish I might die, then and there, when that girl deceived me,' resumed his uncle bitterly; 'but I knew that I must live on and on; I was very young, and thought I might live for forty years with that pain in my heart at night and in the morning. It is twenty years since then, and though the pain is dead, I suppose, I cannot laugh at it yet, or the memory of Mercedes.'

'Mercedes! was that her name--Mercedes?'

'The devil--it has escaped me!'

'So that is the name which is not to go down in the annals of the family?'

'Precisely so.'

'But surely, dear uncle, after all these years, you must have forgiven her? Besides, she may be dead.'

'Dead to me, certainly! Forgiven her--well, perhaps I may have forgiven her; but what can make a mere mortal forget a wrong, a cruelty, or an injury?'

'Then you will not yield, but insist that I shall go abroad?'

'I will not yield an inch, and march you shall!' replied the General, as he turned on his heel and left him.

'My darling Dolores--the first and only love of my life!' exclaimed the young man passionately; 'how can he--how _dare_ he--act thus towards us? But that I love him, I think, I may soon come to hate him!'

He rushed away in search of Dolores; but she and the Countess were from home. He was on duty at the Palace next day, and Dolores was to be at the ridotto; thus, ere they could meet, events were to transpire which were altogether beyond the conception of both.