"MY DEAR NORCLIFF,--As the barracks here are becoming uncomfortably crowded, by the Indian depots and so forth, your troop is detached to Canterbury for a week or two, to share the quarters of the hussars. You will remain there, probably, till the route comes. You need not return to head-quarters, unless you choose; but may report yourself to the lieutenant-colonel commanding the consolidated cavalry depot at Canterbury. This is a stranger-day at mess. We are to have an unusual number of guests, and the band. Wish you were with us.
Believe me, &c., &c., LIONEL BEVERLEY, Lieut.-Col.
"P.S.--You will drill the troop once daily to the sword and lance exercise on horseback."
"How lucky!" thought I. "I shall have Canterbury for the basis of my operations, and the Reculvers for an advanced post; quartered here, and Chillingham close by!--When does the troop march in, Willie."
"To-morrow forenoon, sir, under Mr. Jocelyn."
"Good. You will take my card to the barrack-master, and my horses to the stables, and receive over my quarters. I shall remain at the hotel until the troop comes in."
I did not ride to the Reculvers on that afternoon, though I scoured every road in the vicinity of the city, by Sturry, Bramling, and Horton.
Next morning I went for a mile or two in the direction of Ospringe, and soon saw the troop advancing leisurely, with their horses at a walk, along the dusty Kentish highway, their keen lance-heads glittering with all their bright appointments in the sunshine, their scarlet and white banneroles, and the long plumes in the men's square-topped caps dancing in the wind, as I trotted up and joined them, though in mufti.
My lieutenant, Frank Jocelyn, and the cornet, Sir Harry Scarlett, were both pleasant and gentlemanly young men, and would have been a most welcome addition to my residence in Canterbury, but for the hopes, the fears, and plans which occupied me. They asked me how I liked the cathedral city, and there was a smile on their faces, which, when taken in conjunction with my secret thoughts, galled and fretted me. Yet I could not notice it.
Accompanied by a multitude of the great "unwashed," we proceeded straight to those spacious barracks which are erected for cavalry, artillery, and infantry, on the road that leads to the Isle of Thanet, and there the lancers were rapidly "told off" to their quarters, the horses stabled, corned, and watered.
We dined that evening with a hussar corps, of whose mess we were made honorary members while we remained in Canterbury, and from Jocelyn I learned incidentally that for the last three days Berkeley had scarcely been in barracks. The hope that I had harrassed myself in vain passed away now, and fear alone remained.
While the first set of decanters were traversing the table, I slipped away unnoticed, and without changing my uniform, took the road at a rasping pace direct for the Reculvers. The moon was just rising from the sea, and the last notes of the curfew were dying away, as I drew up at the door of Miss Auriol's cottage.
She was alone, and sitting at tea, to which she bade me welcome, in a manner that showed she half doubted the honesty of my visit, and betrayed such emotions of shame, confusion, and awkwardness, I felt myself quite an intruder. But I simply asked if she had heard more of Berkeley.
She admitted that she had, and stated mournfully that for the last three days he had been constantly at the park, thus confirming what Frank Jocelyn had told me.
In the course of another visit or two, I gradually learned piecemeal all the poor girl's unhappy history, and how she became the victim, first of evil fortune, and afterwards of a cold-blooded man of the world like De Warr Berkeley.
*CHAPTER XVIII.*
Where are the illusions bright and vain That fancy boded forth? Sunk to their silent caves again, Aurorae of the north!
Oh! who would live those visions o'er, All brilliant though they seem, Since earth is but a desert shore, And life a weary dream! MOIR.
She was the orphan daughter of the poor curate of a secluded village on the borders of Wales. Her mother, also the daughter of a curate, had died when Agnes was very young. She was thus left to be the sole prop and comfort of the old man's declining years, and he loved her dearly--all the more dearly that, with a little brother, a beautiful, golden-haired boy (the same whose miniature I remarked), she alone survived of all their children, ten in number.
The rest had perished early; for all possessed that terrible heritage, the seeds of which Agnes was now maturing in her own bosom--consumption.
One by one the old clergyman had seen them borne forth from his little thatched parsonage, under the ivy-clad lyke-gate of the village church, and laid by their mother's side, a row of little grassy graves, where the purple and golden crocuses grew in spring, and the white-eyed marguerites in summer, all as gaily as if the last hopes of a broken heart were not buried beneath them.
In the fulness of time the shadow of death again fell on the old parsonage, and the curate's white hairs were laid in the dust, close by the quiet little Saxon church in which he had ministered so long; and now the ten graves of the once loving household lay side by side, without a stone to mark them.
"In the days before this last calamity befel me, Captain Norcliff," said Miss Auriol, "when my poor father was wont to take my face caressingly between his tremulous old hands, and kissing my forehead, and smoothing my hair, would tell me that my name, Agnes, signified gentleness--a lamb, in fact--that it came from the Latin word _Agnus_; and when he would bless me with a heart as pure as ever offered up a prayer to God, how little could I foresee the creature I was to become! Oh, my father--oh, my mother! what a life mine has been; and after my father died, what a youth!
"I have often thought of the words of Mademoiselle de Enclos, when, in the flush of her beauty, she exclaimed to the Prince of Conde, 'Had any one proposed such a life to me at one time, I should have died of grief and fright!'
"So my father passed away; the new incumbent came to take our mansion, with its humble furniture at a valuation. After paying a few debts, with a small sum, I found myself with my little brother, who was sickly and ailing, in London, seeking subsistence by exerting the talents I possessed--music, chiefly, for I am pretty well accomplished as a musician."
She continued to tell me of all her heart-breaking struggles, her perils and bitter mortifications, and of the acute sufferings of that little fair-headed brother, on whom all her love and hope were centred; and how, daily, in the fetid atmosphere of a humble lodging, far away from the green fields, the bright sunshine and the rustling woods of that dear old parsonage on the slope of the Denbigh hills, the poor child grew worse and more feeble; and how her crushed heart was wrung as her little store of money melted away like snow in spring; her few ornaments went next, and no employment came.
How misery depressed, and horrible forebodings of the future haunted her; how she remembered all the harrowing tales she had read--and such as we may daily read--of the poor in London, and how they perish under the feet of the vast multitude who rush onward in the race for existence, or in the pursuit of pleasure; and how thoughts and doubts of God himself, and of His mercy and justice, at times came over her, even as they came at times now, when the man she loved and trusted most on earth had deceived her.
Employed at last as a hired musician, she was out frequently to play the piano at balls and evening parties, for half a guinea per night, in London, and thus made a slender subsistence for the suffering child and for herself.
After receiving her fee from the hand of some sleepy butler or supercilious upper-servant, as she nightly wrapped her scanty cloak about her, and, quitting the heated and crowded rooms, hurried through the dark, wet, and snowy streets, to an almost squalid lodging, which even her native neatness failed to brighten, and to the couch where the poor, thin, wakeful boy, with his great, sad, earnest eyes, awaited her; ere long she began to find a cold and cough settling upon her delicate chest; and then the terror seized her that if she became seriously ill, and failed to obey her patrons at the nearest music-shop, where would the boy get food? And if she died--in a hospital, perhaps--what would be his fate, his end, in other and less tender hands than hers?
Then, as she wept over him in the silence of the night, and remembered the prayers her old father had taught her, she would strive to become more composed, and to sleep like that child that lay hushed in her bosom; but her dreams, if not full of terrors for the present, were ever haunted by the sad memories of the past; for the kind faces and sweet smiles of the dead came vividly before her, and the familiar sound of their voices seemed to mingle in the drowsy hum of the London streets without, or with the murmur of her native Dee, and the pleasant rustle of the summer leaves in the woods of the old parsonage she would never see again, or the green hills of Denbigh that overshadowed it.