Chapter XVIII · THE TROOPSHIP.

"The detachment of the Royal Fusileers, under Lieutenant Horace Ramornie, proceeding to join the service companies at the seat of war, will embark on board the Blenheim transport at Gravesend, with others, under the command of Major R. R. Chesters of the Turkish Contingent."

Such was the garrison order, which Horace to his infinite chagrin, perused in a little vellum bound book, handed to him by a corporal, one evening, as he was proceeding to the mess of the provisional battalion. He had no desire whatever to find himself under the special command of such a man as Chesters; but there was nothing for it save obedience; and the various anecdotes elicited at table, or recalled to the memory of officers present, confirmed his dislike to the prospect before him, for the mere mention of Chesters' name seemed sufficient. He seemed to be as well known in the service as the goat of the Welsh Fusileers, though not so harmlessly. One remembered "how completely he had done Black of ours in that affair of the spavined mare;" another "how he had been jockeyed by him in a race at the Curragh;" "how he had so rooked Blake of the Rifles at Malta, that the poor fellow had to sell;" how he had abandoned one girl, run off with another and so forth; with many other things that would never figure on his tombstone, or opposite his name in Hart's Army List.

Three days after Horace read the order, and after the interview recorded in the preceding chapter, saw H.M. transport Blenheim, with fully three hundred officers and men for various corps in Turkey, under weigh and steaming down the river, greeted by many a cheer from the crews of passing ships.

Horace remembered all that had passed at home between his cousin Cyril Wedderburn and Chesters; and though he had secretly a peculiar detestation for the latter, it would have been alike unwise and unsafe to exhibit it, now that they were to sit at the same table, to meet daily on the same parade, to encounter each other incessantly on the deck or in the saloon during a voyage of so many thousand miles; and more than all now when Chesters bore the local rank of major, and was distinctly his superior officer.

All irritation would have to be repressed and all disagreeables avoided, for Horace could not but remember that his commission was his sole inheritance, and that Chesters would care little "to smash him" if he got an opportunity. So he resolved to shun him as much as possible by seeking the society of other officers, of whom there were some thirty captains and subalterns on board.

Though Chesters hated responsibility of any kind and would very willingly have been second in command to any one on whom the trouble of authority and risk of direction might have devolved, he was not the less disposed to be overbearing in manner, and to attempt to "talk down," all about him, especially at and after the mess, which took place at an earlier hour on board than is usual ashore.

He soon became heated with wine and rather quarrelsome, disputing with Ned Elton, a brother officer of Horace, about the odds on the last Epsom; how he should have apportioned the weights, and how shrewdly he had guessed at the winning horse, yet, as if the devil was in it, didn't make a successful book after all, having been "sold" though he knew it not, by his own particular confidant, Trayner, who generally knew the contents of Chesters' betting book as well as his own.

"I'm safe on the Oaks, however," he added with an oath—"backed the winner at long odds there."

"A bad style of fellow this," whispered Elton to Ramornie; "we'll have many a case of row and arrest before we see the coast of Bulgaria, unless we combine and put him 'in Coventry.'"

Chesters had on board his faithful rascal Mr. Bill Trayner; but that amiable individual was at present enjoying his own society in the seclusion of the cable-tier, where, though a civilian, he was in irons for behaving insolently to a young officer of the Rifles, whom he taunted as "a carpet-bag 'cruity," a slang barrack-room phrase for a recruit who joins with a quantity of useless luggage; and on appealing to his master, the latter only laughed at him, and said—

"The bilboes and bread and water will do you good, Trayner,—you have been getting too fleshy of late."

And Trayner swore secretly that he would be revenged on Chesters for this at a future time.

When idling over their wine and fruit, and while the transport was steaming slowly past the flat but fertile shore of Kent, and the salt marshes of Essex, Chesters with his habitual insolence of spirit and disposition to be obnoxious began to annoy the inoffensive and gentle Horace Ramornie.

"Heard of our friends at Willowdean lately, eh, Ramornie?" he asked; "we are neighbours you are aware."

"No," replied the other curtly (though he had just received a letter from his aunt before embarking), and he turned away.

"Wedderburn is at Varna, isn't he?"

"Yes."

"With yours?"

"Ours."

"You are fond of monosyllables, I think?" said Chesters, with a white gleam in his pale eyes.

Horace gave a haughty smile, and was turning to Elton, the Colonel's nephew, when Chesters resumed his scheme for "trotting him out," as he would have phrased it, and when he spoke the buzz and laughter around the table subsided, for all feared that a scene of some kind would ensue ere long, and felt exceedingly uncomfortable.

"When I was last at the Horse Guards, Ramornie, I heard some talk of a waggon train being formed; and as we have no Belem Rangers, your cousin will be looking for his spurs in that force. He is a pleasant fellow, but a muff, and was an awful griff when he first came out to India."

Horace grew crimson with anger at the triple insolence of this speech; for to any military man the inference to be drawn from the first part of it, was most offensive.

"Major Chesters," said Horace, rising, while a chill seemed to fall on all at the table; "dare you impugn the honour of my cousin Captain Wedderburn of the Royal Fusileers?"

"No—far from it," replied Chesters, coolly, "whatever I may think," he added insolently, but aside. "Come, come Ramornie, take your wine, though it is a little corked, and let us be jolly. You could little imagine where I recently saw his last flame—that girl Lennox."

"Indeed—where?"

"Sent to prison from a London police court, where I had gone to bail out Trayner, who got into a row somewhere; to prison in London, by Jove! though I don't know exactly for what, unless it was involvement in some robbery affair."

"Miss Lennox?" exclaimed Ramornie, with genuine surprise and concern.

"Yes—Miss Lennox as you call her; hope she enjoys the silent and separate system peculiar to the London model prison and so conducive to reflection and all that sort of thing."

Horace was inexpressibly shocked, but hoping that Chesters was telling what was untrue, he disdained to make farther inquiries, and once more turned to his friend Elton, seeking to divert the conversation from himself; but Chesters was not to be baffled and began again, while leisurely dropping the ice into his champagne glass.

"And now Ramornie, to change the subject, how is the fair heiress—well and jolly I hope? You fellows—I mean you and the Wedderburns—will surely not let her slip through your hands. She is worth entering stakes for—a handsome girl, so well weighted, with a pot of money and no end of fun in her. A noble bird to bag, before the fields are in stubble."

"Silence, if you please, Major Chesters," said Horace, whose face from crimson had now become pale with passion, while his voice grew concentrated and low. "I have to request that the name of the lady in question be not uttered here, by your lips at least."

"That is very quarrelsome wine, surely—try the pale sherry; I have mentioned no name as yet," said Chesters, laughing.

"Then take heed how you do," added Horace, with his dark eyes flashing fire. How he cursed in his heart—even he, the quiet and gentle Horace—the rules of discipline, the amenities of society and civilized life, which prevented him from flying at this man's throat and dashing him under his feet. As for "calling him out," the idea certainly did occur, only to be dismissed, for duelling had gone out of fashion, and he had not the greatest of Job's virtues—patience.

His soul was full of love and tenderness for Gwendoleyne—worshipping her as a pure and beautiful spirit, with all a young man's generous enthusiasm and joy; and thus it revolted him to hear her spoken of jestingly by any man, least of all by one such as Ralph Rooke Chesters!

"I am going on deck, Ramornie," said Elton, "try these cigars with me;" and taking the arm of Horace, he succeeded in drawing him from the cabin to the poop, whither the majority of the party followed, leaving Chesters with one or two more at their wine.

"Ramornie," said young Elton, drawing his friend apart, "I warn you to beware of that fellow of the Turkish Contingent. From the first moment he saw you on parade in the Barrack-yard, he evinced a determination to annoy and fix a quarrel on you. You remember how closely he inspected our fellows in particular, and found so many sham faults, actually bringing four of our best privates to the front, to have them put through their facings as if tipsy, and then made them ground arms as a final snare, that they might topple over. It was an insult to us all. So be wary. I can see that he is an utter scoundrel, and as Oldham says, 'he could outrogue a lawyer,'—aye, even a Scotch one, or a Jew; but at the same time he is your senior officer, and in all rows a junior invariably is sent to the wall. Besides, old fellow, I think we have had quite enough of that ship champagne."

"You are right, Elton," said Horace; "he is beneath my attention. But my head still aches with the memory of that champagne breakfast we had at Brompton with the Rifles, before we marched out."

"Clicquot and fun; eh, Horace?"

"They are all very well," added a blasé-looking officer with sleepy eyes and long fair moustaches; "but when to these you add hazard and écarté, as we had them, the breakfast becomes something to remember."

"And repent of; eh, Ponsonby?"

"Yes, decidedly—doocidly so, as I know to my cost."

"Was Chesters there?" asked Elton.

"Of course; d—n him!" was the rejoinder of Ponsonby, who was a 23rd man.

"Well," said Ramornie, thoughtfully, "the Essex shore looks flat and low now; we shall soon be in blue water, and see the last of Old England."

"Not the last, I hope," said Ponsonby, smiling.

"For some among us, certainly, if knocks are going."

"Anyway, thank God, we are off in earnest," said Elton; "I was so sick of Chatham, with its boredom of drills and sham duties: besides, it will be so jolly to knock about the world a little."

"Yes; and better still to knock about the Russians a great deal, eh? ha, ha!" lisped a languid Hussar officer, as he twirled his bandolined moustache and laughed at his own mild joke.

The transport was now clearing the Thames, and rounding the floating light on the sand-bank that runs eastward from the Isle of Grain.

The waters of the Medway opened wide upon her starboard beam, and as the setting sun shone through the golden haze, the buildings of the dockyard, the tall masts of the war-vessels in the great basin at Sheerness, and the outline of the guardship, came all darkly and minutely forward to the eye.

A red flash and white puff of smoke from the black hull of the guardship caused all the loungers on the poop of the Blenheim to turn towards her.

"The evening gun," suggested one.

"Impossible," said another; "the sun is still high above the Essex marshes."

"What's the row yonder?" asked the Hussar, languidly; "the guardship has hoisted a signal at her main?"

The evening was beautiful; the poop was crowded with officers in their shell jackets, or undress uniform, and the air was redolent of cigars of all kinds; their men grouped amidships were looking at the fast-receding shore; others at the cat-heads, were gazing wistfully seaward, and some at the passing craft, bearing up Thames from every quarter of the globe, and all were merry, heedless, and thoughtless of the future that was before them.

"What the deuce is up?" was now the general exclamation, as the steamer slackened her speed, and drew in shore nearer to the point of Sheerness.

"What is the signal?" asked Ponsonby.

"Red, blue, and yellow—nautical, perhaps: enigmatical, certainly," said the Hussar.

"Some fellow on board has got his swell friends in town to telegraph for him at the last moment, to come back with the pilot-boat, perhaps," suggested Ponsonby.

"Urgent private affairs—that his book on Coutts' is all square; that his uncle is dead, the will all right, and that he'd better return to mamma."

"Hush, gentlemen," said a grave old Captain of the Rifles, who perhaps was thinking of his wife and little ones. "We shall soon learn what is wrong."

"There is nothing wrong, sirs," said the Captain, testily, from the bridge; "but the guard-ship has signalled that we are to lie to for a boat from the shore; and here it comes, hand over hand," he added, as a man-o'-war gig, with its oars feathered in beautiful and steady regularity, came sheering out from the basin direct for the transport, which lay heaving and plunging slowly on the heavy ground swell.

Meanwhile that distinguished officer Chesters had been left in the cabin alone to "soak over his wine," as he phrased it, for he was constitutionally and systematically a deep drinker. Amid all the quiet insolence and tipsy banter in which he had indulged, no sentiment of regret or pity for the poor girl whose interests he might have served, but to whom he had wrought so much mischief, and whose terrible sorrow he had witnessed, occurred to the callous and hollow-hearted Chesters. But he had peculiar and regretful thoughts of her, nevertheless.

"Had I possessed but more tact or time, to have waited a little till confinement had broken her spirit and dulled her perceptions; had I pressed her more tenderly perhaps, during that last interview; or had I spoken favourably of her to that old pump of an Alderman, she might have been mine—mine, by this time! Now, descending fast from scale to scale in misery and degradation, her noble qualities, for she has them, wasted; her pure sentiments dulled, her affections blasted, her perils equalled only by her beauty, she may become the prey—the facile prey of others!"

And he gnawed his yellow moustache and bit his thin cruel lip at the galling idea. Had he only traduced and repudiated her, to the end that she might become the prize—the prey of some person unknown? Jealousy became a keen pang, but the waters were rolling between them now, and every revolution of the inexorable screw—and now it suddenly occurred to him that the motion thereof had ceased, and he was just about to come on deck and have another bout of banter with Ramornie, when Lieutenant Elton, who acted as adjutant of the various detachments, placed in his hand a long official letter, which he tore open in haste and surprise.

It was from the Quartermaster-General, informing Major Chesters, that Lieutenant-Colonel Louis De la Fosse of the 34th Regiment, Infantry of the French Line, having come to London on a special mission from Marshal St. Arnaud, would have a free passage onboard H.M.S. Blenheim to Varna; and it was trusted that as a stranger and officer of the allied army, all courtesy and attention should be shown to him during the voyage.

"The devil! De la Fosse!" muttered Chesters, changing colour. "Where is this fellow, Elton? this Frenchman?"

"He is here," replied Elton, as a very handsome man about forty years of age, with regular features, curly hair, a long dark moustache and closely-shaven chin; in the blue uniform and gold epaulettes of the French Line, with a few orders glittering at his scarlet lapelles, his little kepi in one hand and his sabre in the other, entered the cabin and bowed low to Chesters, who returned the courtesy, but with a coldness and restraint that were as marked as the surprise and hauteur that immediately spread over the face of the other, when his open and pleasant smile passed away, and he recognised the man he looked on.