“Bloody news! Fall of Ciudad Rodrigo! Five thousand prisonersand two hundred pieces of cannon taken!”
This veracious and satisfactory statement, aided by Mike’s personal exertions, and an unwearied performance on the trumpet he had taken from the French dragoon, had roused the population of every hamlet, and made our journey from London to Bristol one scene of uproar, noise, and confusion. All my attempts to suppress Mike’s oratory or music were perfectly unavailing. In fact, he had pledged my health so many times during the day; he had drunk so many toasts to the success of the British arms, so many to the English nation, so many in honor of Ireland, and so many in honor of Mickey Free himself,—that all respect for my authority was lost in his enthusiasm for my greatness, and his shouts became wilder, and the blasts from the trumpet more fearful and incoherent; and finally, on the last stage of our journey, having exhausted as it were every tribute of his lungs, he seemed (if I were to judge by the evidence of my ears) to be performing something very like a hornpipe on the roof of the chaise.
Happily for me there is a limit to all human efforts, and evenhispowers at length succumbed; so that, when we arrived at Bristol, I persuaded him to go to bed, and I once more was left to the enjoyment of some quiet. To fill up the few hours which intervened before bedtime, I strolled into the coffee room. The English look of every one, and everything around, had still its charm for me; and I contemplated, with no small admiration, that air of neatness and propriety so observant from the bright-faced clock that ticked unwearily upon the mantelpiece, to the trim waiter himself, with noiseless step and a mixed look of vigilance and vacancy. The perfect stillness struck me, save when a deep voice called for “another brandy-and-water,” and some more modestly-toned request would utter a desire for “more cream.” The attention of each man, absorbed in the folds of his voluminous newspaper, scarcely deigning a glance at the new-comer who entered, was in keeping with the general surroundings,—giving, in their solemnity and gravity, a character of almost religious seriousness, to what, in any other land, would be a scene of riotous and discordant tumult. I was watching all this with a more than common interest, when the door opened, and the waiter entered with a large placard. He was followed by another with a ladder, by whose assistance he succeeded in attaching the large square of paper to the wall above the fireplace. Every one about rose up, curious to ascertain what was going forward; and I myself joined in the crowd around the fire. The first glance of the announcement showed me what it meant; and it was with a strange mixture of shame and confusion I read:—
“Fall of Ciudad Rodrigo: with a full and detailed account of thestorming of the great breach, capture of the enemy’s cannon, etc., byMichael Free, 14th Light Dragoons.”
Leaving the many around me busied in conjecturing who the aforesaid Mr. Free might be, and what peculiar opportunities he might have enjoyed for his report, I hurried from the room and called the waiter.
“What’s the meaning of the announcement you’ve just put up in the coffee-room? Where did it come from?”
“Most important news, sir; exclusively in the columns of the ‘Bristol Telegraph,’—the gentleman has just arrived—”
“Who, pray? What gentleman?”
“Mr. Free, sir, No. 13—large bed-room—blue damask—supper for two—oysters—a devil—brandy-and-water-mulled port.”
“What the devil do you mean? Is the fellow at supper?”
Somewhat shocked by the tone I ventured to assume towards the illustrious narrator, the waiter merely bowed his reply.
“Show me to his room,” said I; “I should like to see him.”
“Follow me, if you please, sir,—this way. What name shall I say, sir?”
“You need not mind announcing me,—I’m an old acquaintance,—just show me the room.”
“I beg pardon, sir, but Mr. Meekins, the editor of the ‘Telegraph,’ is engaged with him at present; and positive orders are given not to suffer any interruption.”
“No matter; do as I bid you. Is that it? Oh, I hear his voice. There, that will do. You may go down-stairs, I’ll introduce myself.”
Captain Mickey Free Relating his Heroic Deeds.
So saying, and slipping a crown into the waiter’s hand, I proceeded cautiously towards the door, and opened it stealthily. My caution was, however, needless; for a large screen was drawn across this part of the room, completely concealing the door, closing which behind me, I took my place beneath the shelter of this ambuscade, determined on no account to be perceived by the parties.
Seated in a large arm-chair, a smoking tumbler of mulled port before him, sat my friend Mike, dressed in my full regimentals, even to the helmet, which, unfortunately however for the effect, he had put on back foremost; a short “dudeen” graced his lip, and the trumpet so frequently alluded to lay near him.
Opposite him sat a short, puny, round-faced little gentleman with rolling eyes and a turned up nose. Numerous sheets of paper, pens, etc., lay scattered about; and he evinced, by his air and gesture, the most marked and eager attention to Mr. Free’s narrative, whose frequent interruptions, caused by the drink and the oysters, were viewed with no small impatience by the anxious editor.
“You must remember, Captain, time’s passing; the placards are all out. Must be at press before one o’clock to-night,—the morning edition is everything with us. You were at the first parallel, I think.”
“Devil a one o’ me knows. Just ring that bell near you. Them’s elegant oysters; and you’re not taking your drop of liquor. Here’s a toast for you: ‘May—’ Whoop! raal Carlingford’s, upon my conscience! See now, if I won’t hit the little black chap up there the first shot.”
Scarcely were the words spoken, when a little painted bust of Shakespeare fell in fragments on the floor, as an oyster-shell laid him low.
A faint effort at a laugh at the eccentricities of his friend was all the poor editor could accomplish, while Mike’s triumph knew no bounds.
“Didn’t I tell you? But come now, are you ready? Give the pen a drink, if you won’t take one yourself.”
“I am ready, quite ready,” responded the editor.
“Faith, and it’s more nor I am. See now, here it is: The night was murthering dark; you could not see a stim.”
“Not see a—a what?”
“A stim, bad luck to you; don’t you know English? Hand me the hot water. Have you that down yet?”
“Yes. Pray proceed.”
“The Fifth Division was orthered up, bekase they were fighting chaps; the Eighty-eighth was among them; the Rangers—Oh, upon my soul, we must drink the Rangers! Here, devil a one o’ me will go on till we give them all the honors—Hip!—begin.”
“Hip!” sighed the luckless editor, as he rose from his chair, obedient to the command.
“Hurra! hurra! hurra! Well done! There’s stuff in you yet, ould foolscap! The little bottle’s empty; ring again, if ye plaze.
‘Oh, Father MaganWas a beautiful man,But a bit of a rogue, a bit of a rogue!He was just six feet high,Had a cast in his eye,And an illigint brogue, an illigint brogue!‘He was born in Killarney,And reared up in blarney—’
“Arrah, don’t be looking miserable and dissolute that way. Sure, I’m only screwing myself up for you; besides, you can print the song av you like. It’s a sweet tune, ‘Teddy, you Gander,’”
“Really, Mr. Free, I see no prospect of our ever getting done.”
“The saints in Heaven forbid!” interrupted Mike, piously; “the evening’s young, and drink plenty. Here now, make ready!”
The editor once more made a gesture of preparation.
“Well, as I was saying,” resumed Mike, “it was pitch dark when the columns moved up, and a cold, raw night, with a little thin rain falling. Have you that down?”
“Yes. Pray go on.”
“Well, just as it might be here, at the corner of the trench, I met Dr. Quill. ‘They’re waiting for you, Mr. Free,’ says he, ‘down there. Picton’s asking for you.’ ‘Faith, and he must wait,’ says I, ‘for I’m terrible dry.’ With that, he pulled out his canteen and mixed me a little brandy-and-water. ‘Are you taking it without a toast?’ says Doctor Maurice. ‘Never fear,’ says I; ‘here’s Mary Brady—‘”
“But, my dear sir,” interposed Mr. Meekins, “praydoremember this is somewhat irrelevant. In fifteen minutes it will be twelve o’clock.”
“I know it, ould boy, I know it. I see what you’re at. You were going to observe how much better we’d be for a broiled bone.”
“Nothing of the kind, I assure you. For Heaven’s sake, no more eating and drinking!”
“No more eating nor drinking! Why not? You’ve a nice notion of a convivial evening. Faith, we’ll have the broiled bone sure enough, and, what’s more, a half gallon of the strongest punch they can make us; an’ I hope that, grave as you are, you’ll favor the company with a song.”
“Really, Mr. Free—”
“Arrah, none of your blarney! Don’t be misthering me! Call me Mickey, or Mickey Free, if you like better.”
“I protest,” said the editor, with dismay, “that here we are two hours at work, and we haven’t got to the foot of the great breach.”
“And wasn’t the army three months and a half in just getting that far, with a battering train and mortars and the finest troops ever were seen? And there you sit, a little fat creature, with your pen in your hand, grumbling that you can’t do more than the whole British army. Take care you don’t provoke me to beat you; for I am quiet till I’m roused. But, by the Rock o’ Cashel—”
Here he grasped the brass trumpet with an energy that made the editor spring from his chair.
“For mercy’s sake, Mr. Free—”
“Well, I won’t; but sit down there, and don’t be bothering me about sieges and battles and things you know nothing about.”
“I protest,” rejoined Mr. Meekins, “that, had you not sent to my office intimating your wish to communicate an account of the siege, I never should have thought of intruding myself upon you. And now, since you appear indisposed to afford the information in question, if you will permit me, I’ll wish you a very good-night.”
“Faith, and so you shall, and help me to pass one too; for not a step out o’ that chair shall you take till morning. Do ye think I am going to be left here by myself all alone?”
“I must observe—” said Mr. Meekins.
“To be sure, to be sure,” said Mickey; “I see what you mean. You’re not the best of company, it’s true; but at a pinch like this—There now, take, your liquor.”
“Once for all, sir,” said the editor, “I would beg you to recollect that, on the faith of your message to me, I have announced an account of the storming of Ciudad Rodrigo for our morning edition. Are you prepared, may I ask, for the consequences of my disappointing ten thousand readers?”
“It’s little I care for one of them. I never knew much of reading myself.”
“If you think to make a jest of me—” interposed Mr. Meekins, reddening with passion.
“A jest of you! Troth, it’s little fun I can get out of you; you’re as tiresome a creature as ever I spent an evening with. See now, I told you before not to provoke me; we’ll have a little more drink; ring the bell. Who knows but you’ll turn out better by-and-by?”
As Mike rose at these words to summon the waiter, Mr. Meekins seized the opportunity to make his escape. Scarcely had he reached the door, however, when he was perceived by Mickey, who hurled the trumpet at him with all his force, while he uttered a shout that nearly left the poor editor lifeless with terror. This time, happily, Mr. Free’s aim failed him, and before he could arrest the progress of his victim, he had gained the corridor, and with one bound, cleared the first flight of the staircase, his pace increasing every moment as Mike’s denunciations grew louder and louder, till at last, as he reached the street, Mr. Free’s delight overcame his indignation, and he threw himself upon a chair and laughed immoderately.
“Oh, may I never! if I didn’t frighten the editor. The little spalpeen couldn’t eat his oysters and take his punch like a man. But sure if he didn’t, there’s more left for his betters.” So saying, he filled himself a goblet and drank it off. “Mr. Free, we won’t say much for your inclinations, for maybe they are not the best; but here’s bad luck to the fellow that doesn’t think you good company; and here,” added he, again filling his glass,—“and here’s may the devil take editors and authors and compositors, that won’t let us alone, but must be taking our lives and our songs and our little devilments, that belongs to one’s own family, and tell them all over the world. A lazy set of thieves you are, every one of you; spending your time inventing lies, devil a more nor less; and here,” this time he filled again,—“and here’s a hot corner and Kilkenny coals, that’s half sulphur, to the villain—”
For what particular class of offenders Mike’s penal code was now devised, I was not destined to learn; for overcome by punch and indignation, he gave one loud whoop, and measured his length upon the floor. Having committed him to the care of the waiters, from whom I learned more fully the particulars of his acquaintance with Mr. Meekins, I enjoined them, strictly, not to mention that I knew anything of the matter; and betook myself to my bed sincerely rejoicing that in a few hours more Mike would be again in that laud where even his eccentricities and excesses would be viewed with a favorable and forgiving eye.
IRELAND.
“You’d better call your master up,” said the skipper to Mickey Free, on the second evening after our departure from Bristol; “he said he’d like to have a look at the coast.”
The words were overheard by me, as I lay between sleeping and waking in the cabin of the packet, and without waiting for a second invitation, I rushed upon deck. The sun was setting, and one vast surface of yellow golden light played upon the water, as it rippled beneath a gentle gale. The white foam curled at our prow, and the rushing sound told the speed we were going at. The little craft was staggering under every sheet of her canvas, and her spars creaked as her white sails bent before the breeze. Before us, but to my landsman’s eyes scarcely perceptible, were the ill-defined outlines of cloudy darkness they called land, and which I continued to gaze at with a strange sense of interest, while I heard the names of certain well-known headlands assigned to apparently mere masses of fog-bank and vapor.
He who has never been separated in early years, while yet the budding affections of his heart are tender shoots, from the land of his birth and of his home, knows nothing of the throng of sensations that crowd upon him as he nears the shore of his country. The names, familiar as household words, come with a train of long-buried thoughts; the feeling of attachment to all we call our own—that patriotism of the heart—stirs strongly within him, as the mingled thrills of hope and fear alternately move him to joy or sadness.
Hard as are the worldly struggles between the daily cares of him who carves out his own career and fortune, yet he has never experienced the darkest poverty of fate who has not felt what it is to be a wanderer, without a country to lay claim to. Of all the desolations that visit us, this is the gloomiest and the worst. The outcast from the land of his fathers, whose voice must never be heard within the walls where his infancy was nurtured, nor his step be free upon the mountains where he gambolled in his youth, this is indeed wretchedness. The instinct of country grows and strengthens with our years; the joys of early life are linked with it; the hopes of age point towards it; and he who knows not the thrill of ecstasy some well-remembered, long-lost-sight-of place can bring to his heart when returning after years of absence, is ignorant of one of the purest sources of happiness of our nature.
With what a yearning of the heart, then, did I look upon the dim and misty cliffs, that mighty framework of my island home, their stern sides lashed by the blue waters of the ocean, and their summits lost within the clouds! With what an easy and natural transition did my mind turn from the wild mountains and the green valleys to their hardy sons, who toiled beneath the burning sun of the Peninsula; and how, as some twinkling light of the distant shore would catch my eye, did I wonder within myself whether beside that hearth and board there might not sit some whose thoughts were wandering over the sea beside the bold steeps of El Bodon, or the death-strewn plain of Talavera,—their memories calling up some trait of him who was the idol of his home; whose closing lids some fond mother had watched over; above whose peaceful slumber her prayers had fallen; but whose narrow bed was now beneath the breach of Badajos, and his sleep the sleep that knows not waking!
I know not if in my sad and sorrowing spirit I did not envy him who thus had met a soldier’s fate,—for what of promise had my own! My hopes of being in any way instrumental to my poor uncle’s happiness grew hourly less. His prejudices were deeply rooted and of long standing; to have asked him to surrender any of what he looked upon as the prerogatives of his house and name, would be to risk the loss of his esteem. What then remained for me? Was I to watch, day by day and hour by hour, the falling ruin of our fortunes? Was I to involve myself in the petty warfare of unavailing resistance to the law? And could I stand aloof from my best, my truest, my earliest friend, and see him, alone and unaided, oppose his weak and final struggle to the unrelenting career of persecution. Between these two alternatives the former could be my only choice; and what a choice!
Oh, how I thought over the wild heroism of the battle-field, the reckless fury of the charge, the crash, the death-cry, and the sad picture of the morrow, when all was past, and a soldier’s glory alone remained to shed its high halo over the faults and the follies of the dead.
As night fell, the twinkling of the distant lighthouses—some throwing a column of light from the very verge of the horizon, others shining brightly, like stars, from some lofty promontory—marked the different outlines of the coast, and conveyed to me the memory of that broken and wild mountain tract that forms the bulwark of the Green Isle against the waves of the Atlantic. Alone and silently I trod the deck, now turning to look towards the shore, where I thought I could detect the position of some well-known headland, now straining my eyes seaward to watch some bright and flitting star, as it rose from or merged beneath the foaming water, denoting the track of the swift pilot-boat, or the hardy lugger of the fisherman; while the shrill whistle of the floating sea-gull was the only sound save the rushing waves that broke in spray upon our quarter.
What is it that so inevitably inspires sad and depressing thoughts as we walk the deck of some little craft in the silence of the night’s dark hours? No sense of danger near, we hold on our course swiftly and steadily, cleaving the dark waves and bending gracefully beneath the freshening breeze. Yet still the motion, which, in the bright sunshine of the noonday tells of joy and gladness, brings now no touch of pleasure to our hearts. The dark and frowning sky, the boundless expanse of gloomy water, spread like some gigantic pall around us, and our thoughts either turn back upon the saddest features of the past or look forward to the future with a sickly hope that all may not be as we fear it.
Mine were, indeed, of the gloomiest; and the selfishness alone of the thought prevented me from wishing that, like many another, I had fallen by a soldier’s death on the plains of the Peninsula!
As the night wore on, I wrapped myself in my cloak and lay down beneath the bulwark. The whole of my past life came in review before me, and I thought over my first meeting with Lucy Dashwood; the thrill of boyish admiration gliding into love; the hopes, the fears, that stirred my heart; the firm resolve to merit her affection, which made me a soldier. Alas, how little thought she of him to whose whole life she had been a guide-star and a beacon! And as I thought over the hard-fought fields, the long, fatiguing marches, the nights around the watch-fires, and felt how, in the whirl and enthusiasm of a soldier’s life, the cares and sorrows of every day existence are forgotten, I shuddered to reflect upon the career that might now open before me. To abandon, perhaps forever, the glorious path I had been pursuing for a life of indolence and weariness, while my name, that had already, by the chance of some fortunate circumstances, begun to be mentioned with a testimony of approval, should be lost in oblivion or remembered but as that of one whose early promise was not borne out by the deeds of his manhood.
As day broke, overcome by watching, I slept, but was soon awoke by the stir and bustle around me. The breeze had freshened, and we were running under a reefed mainsail and foresail; and as the little craft bounded above the blue water, the white foam crested above her prow, and ran in boiling rivulets along towards the after-deck. The tramp of the seamen, the hoarse voice of the captain, the shrill cry of the sea-birds, betokened, however, nothing of dread or danger; and listlessly I leaned upon my elbow and asked what was going forward.
“Nothing, sir; only making ready to drop our anchor.”
“Are we so near shore, then?” said I.
“You’ve only to round that point to windward, and have a clear run into Cork harbor.”
I sprang at once to my legs. The land-fog prevented my seeing anything whatever, but I thought that in the breeze, fresh and balmy as it blew, I could feel the wind off shore. “At last,” said I,—“at last!” as I stepped into the little wherry which shot alongside of us, and we glided into the still basin of Cove. How I remember every white-walled cottage, and the beetling cliffs, and that bold headland beside which the valley opens, with its dark-green woods, and then Spike Island. And what a stir is yonder, early as it is; the men-of-war tenders seem alive with people, while still the little village is sunk in slumber, not a smoke-wreath rising from its silent hearths. Every plash of the oars in the calm water as I neared the land, every chance word of the bronzed and hardy fisherman, told upon my heart. I felt it was my home.
“Isn’t it beautiful, sir? Isn’t it illigant?” said a voice behind me, which there could be little doubt in my detecting, although I had not seen the individual since I left England.
“Is not what beautiful?” replied I, rather harshly, at the interruption of my own thoughts.
“Ireland, to be sure; and long life to her!” cried he, with a cheer that soon found its responsive echoes in the hearts of our sailors, who seconded the sentiment with all their energy.
“How am I to get up to Cork, lads?” said I. “I am pressed for time, and must get forward.”
“We’ll row your honor the whole way, av it’s plazing to you.”
“Why, thank you, I’d rather find some quicker mode of proceeding.”
“Maybe you’d have a chaise? There’s an elegant one at M’Cassidy’s.”
“Sure, the blind mare’s in foal,” said the bow oar. “The devil a step she can go out of a walk; so, your honor, take Tim Riley’s car, and you’ll get up cheap. Not that you care for money; but he’s going up at eight o’clock with two young ladies.”
“Oh, be-gorra!” said the other, “and so he is. And faix, ye might do worse; they’re nice craytures.”
“Well,” said I, “your advice seems good; but perhaps they might object to my company.”
“I’ve no fear; they’re always with the officers. Sure, the Miss Dalrymples—”
“The Miss Dalrymples! Push ahead, boys; it must be later than I thought. We must get the chaise; I can’t wait.”
Ten minutes more brought us to land.
My arrangements were soon made, and as my impatience to press forward became greater the nearer I drew to my destination, I lost not a moment.
The yellow chaise—sole glory of Cove—was brought forth at my request; and by good fortune, four posters which had been down the preceding evening from Cork to some gentleman’s seat near were about to return. These were also pressed into my service; and just as the first early riser of the little village was drawing his curtain to take a half-closed eye-glance upon the breaking morning, I rattled forth upon my journey at a pace which, could I only have secured its continuance, must soon have terminated my weary way.
Beautiful as the whole line of country is, I was totally unconscious of it; and even Mike’s conversational powers, divided as they were between myself and the two postilions, were fruitless in arousing me from the deep pre-occupation of my mind by thoughts of home.
It was, then, with some astonishment I heard the boy upon the wheeler ask whither he should drive me to.
“Tell his honor to wake up; we’re in Cork now.”
“In Cork! Impossible, already!”
“Faith, may be so; but it’s Cork, sure enough.”
“Drive to the ‘George.’ It’s not far from the commander-in-chief’s quarters.”
“‘Tis five minutes’ walk, sir. You’ll be there before they’re put to again.”
“Horses for Fermoy!” shouted out the postilions, as we tore up to the door in a gallop. I sprang out, and by the assistance of the waiter, discovered Sir Henry Howard’s quarters, to whom my despatches were addressed. Having delivered them into the hands of an aide-de-camp, who sat bolt upright in his bed, rubbing his eyes to appear awake, I again hurried down-stairs, and throwing myself into the chaise, continued my journey.
“Them’s beautiful streets, any how!” said Mike, “av they wasn’t kept so dirty, and the houses so dark, and the pavement bad. That’s Mr. Beamish’s, that fine house there with the brass rapper and the green lamp beside it; and there’s the hospital. Faix, and there’s the place we beat the police when I was here before; and the house with the sign of the Highlander is thrown down; and what’s the big building with the stone posts at the door?”
“The bank, sir,” said the postilion, with a most deferential air as Mike addressed him. “What bank, acushla?”
“Not a one of me knows, sir; but they call it the bank, though it’s only an empty house.”
“Cary and Moore’s bank, perhaps?” said I, having heard that in days long past some such names had failed in Cork for a large amount.
“So it is; your honor’s right,” cried the postilion; while Mike, standing up on the box, and menacing the house with his clinched fist, shouted out at the very top of his voice:
“Oh, bad luck to your cobwebbed windows and iron railings! Sure, it’s my father’s son ought to hate the sight of you.”
“I hope, Mike, your father never trusted his property in such hands?”
“I don’t suspect he did, your honor. He never put much belief in the banks; but the house cost him dear enough without that.”
As I could not help feeling some curiosity in this matter, I pressed Mickey for an explanation.
“But maybe it’s not Cary and Moore’s, after all; and I may be cursing dacent people.”
Having reassured his mind by telling him that the reservation he made by the doubt would tell in their favor should he prove mistaken, he afforded me the following information:—
“When my father—the heavens be his bed!—was in the ‘Cork,’ they put him one night on guard at that same big house you just passed, av it was the same; but if it wasn’t that, it was another. And it was a beautiful fine night in August and the moon up, and plenty of people walking about, and all kinds of fun and devilment going on,—drinking and dancing and everything.
“Well, my father was stuck up there with his musket, to walk up and down, and not say, ‘God save you kindly,’ or the time of day or anything, but just march as if he was in the barrack-yard; and by reason of his being the man he was he didn’t like it half, but kept cursing and swearing to himself like mad when he saw pleasant fellows and pretty girls going by, laughing and joking.
“‘Good-evening, Mickey,’ says one. ‘Fine sport ye have all to yourself, with your long feather in your cap.’
“‘Arrah, look how proud he is,’ says another, ‘with his head up as if he didn’t see a body.’
“‘Shoulder, hoo!’ cried a drunken chap, with a shovel in his hand. Then they all began laughing away at my father.
“‘Let the dacent man alone,’ said an ould fellow in a wig. ‘Isn’t he guarding the bank, wid all the money in it?’
“‘Faix, he isn’t,’ says another; ‘for there’s none left.’
“‘What’s that you’re saying?’ says my father.
“‘Just that the bank’s broke; devil a more!’ says he.
“‘And there’s no goold in it?’ says my father.
‘“Divil a guinea.’
“‘Nor silver?’
“‘No, nor silver; nor as much as sixpence, either.’
“‘Didn’t ye hear that all day yesterday when the people was coming in with their notes, the chaps there were heating the guineas in a frying-pan, pretending that they were making them as fast as they could; and sure, when they had a batch red-hot they spread them out to cool; and what betune the hating and the cooling, and the burning the fingers counting them, they kept the bank open to three o’clock, and then they ran away.’
“‘Is it truth yer telling?’ says my father.
“‘Sorra word o’ lie in it! Myself had two-and-fourpence of their notes.’
“‘And so they’re broke,’ says my father, ‘and nothing left?’
“‘Not a brass farden.’
“‘And what am I staying here for, I wonder, if there’s nothing to guard?’
“‘Faix, if it isn’t for the pride of the thing—’
“‘Oh, sorra taste!’
“‘Well, may be for divarsion.’
“‘Nor that either.’
“‘Faix, then you’re a droll man, to spend the evening that way,’ says he; and all the crowd—for there was a crowd—said the same. So with that my father unscrewed his bayonet, and put his piece on his shoulder, and walked off to his bed in the barrack as peaceable as need be. But well, when they came to relieve him, wasn’t there a raal commotion? And faith, you see, it went mighty hard with my father the next morning; for the bank was open just as usual, and my father was sintinced to fifty lashes, but got off with a week in prison, and three more rowling a big stone in the barrack-yard.”
Thus chatting away, the time passed over, until we arrived at Fermoy. Here there was some little delay in procuring horses; and during the negotiation, Mike, who usually made himself master of the circumstances of every place through which he passed, discovered that the grocer’s shop of the village was kept by a namesake, and possibly a relation of his own.
“I always had a notion, Mister Charles, that I came from a good stock; and sure enough, here’s ‘Mary Free’ over the door there, and a beautiful place inside; full of tay and sugar and gingerbread and glue and coffee and bran, pickled herrings, soap, and many other commodities.”
“Perhaps you’d like to claim kindred, Mike,” said I, interrupting; “I’m sure she’d feel flattered to discover a relative in a Peninsular hero.”
“It’s just what I’m thinking; av we were going to pass the evening here, I’d try if I couldn’t make her out a second cousin at least.”
Fortune, upon this occasion, seconded Mike’s wishes, for when the horses made their appearance, I learned, to my surprise, that the near side one would not bear a saddle, and the off-sider could only run on his own side. In this conjuncture, the postilion was obliged to drive from what,Hibernicèspeaking, is called the perch,—no ill-applied denomination to a piece of wood which, about the thickness of one’s arm, is hung between the two fore-springs, and serves as a resting-place in which the luckless wight, weary of the saddle, is not sorry to repose himself.
“What’s to be done?” cried I. “There’s no room within; my traps barely leave space for myself among them.”
“Sure, sir,” said the postilion, “the other gentleman can follow in the morning coach; and if any accident happens to yourself on the road, by reason of a break-down, he’ll be there as soon as yourself.”
This, at least, was an agreeable suggestion, and as I saw it chimed with Mike’s notions, I acceded at once; he came running up at the moment.
“I had a peep at her through the window, Mister Charles, and, faix, she has a great look of the family.”
“Well, Mickey, I’ll leave you twenty-four hours to cultivate the acquaintance; and to a man like you the time, I know, is ample. Follow me by the morning’s coach. Till then, good-by.”
Away we rattled once more, and soon left the town behind us. The wild mountain tract which stretched on either side of the road presented one bleak and brown surface, unrelieved by any trace of tillage or habitation; an apparently endless succession of fern-clad hills lay on every side; above, the gloomy sky of leaden, lowering aspect, frowned darkly; the sad and wailing cry of the pewet or the plover was the only sound that broke the stillness, and far as the eye could reach, a dreary waste extended. The air, too, was cold and chilly; it was one of those days which, in our springs, seemed to cast a retrospective glance towards the winter they have left behind them. The prospect was no cheering one; from heaven above or earth below there came no sight nor sound of gladness. The rich glow of the Peninsular landscape was still fresh in my memory,—the luxurious verdure; the olive, the citron, and the vine; the fair valleys teeming with abundance; the mountains terraced with their vineyards; the blue transparent sky spreading o’er all; while the very air was rife with the cheering song of birds that peopled every grove. What a contrast was here! We travelled on for miles, but no village nor one human face did we see. Far in the distance a thin wreath of smoke curled upward; but it came from no hearth; it arose from one of those field-fires by which spendthrift husbandry cultivates the ground. It was, indeed, sad; and yet, I know not how, it spoke more home to my heart than all the brilliant display and all the voluptuous splendor I had witnessed in London. By degrees some traces of wood made their appearance, and as we descended the mountain towards Cahir, the country assumed a more cultivated and cheerful look,—patches of corn or of meadow-land stretched on either side, and the voice of children and the lowing of oxen mingled with the cawing of the rooks, as in dense clouds they followed the ploughman’s track. The changed features of the prospect resembled the alternate phases of temperament of the dweller on the soil,—the gloomy determination; the smiling carelessness; the dark spirit of boding; the reckless jollity; the almost savage ferocity of purpose, followed by a child-like docility and a womanly softness; the grave, the gay, the resolute, the fickle; the firm, the yielding, the unsparing, and the tender-hearted,—blending their contrarieties into one nature, of whose capabilities one cannot predicate the bounds, but to whom, by some luckless fatality of fortune, the great rewards of life have been generally withheld until one begins to feel that the curse of Swift was less the sarcasm wrung from indignant failures than the cold and stern prophecy of the moralist.
But how have I fallen into this strain! Let me rather turn my eyes forward towards my home. How shall I find all there? Have his altered fortunes damped the warm ardor of my poor uncle’s heart? Is his smile sicklied over by sorrow; or shall I hear his merry laugh and his cheerful voice as in days of yore? How I longed to take my place beside that hearth, and in the same oak-chair where I have sat telling the bold adventures of a fox-chase or some long day upon the moors, speak of the scenes of my campaigning life, and make known to him those gallant fellows by whose side I have charged in battle, or sat in the bivouac! How will he glory in the soldier-like spirit and daring energy of Fred Power! How will he chuckle over the blundering earnestness and Irish warmth of O’Shaughnessy! How will he laugh at the quaint stories and quainter jests of Maurice Quill! And how often will he wish once more to be young in hand as in heart to mingle with such gay fellows, with no other care, no other sorrow, to depress him, save the passing fortune of a soldier’s life!
THE RETURN.
A rude shock awoke me as I lay asleep in the corner of the chaise; a shout followed, and the next moment the door was torn open, and I heard the postilion’s voice crying to me:—
“Spring out! Jump out quickly, sir!”
A whole battery of kicks upon the front panel drowned the rest of his speech; but before I could obey his injunction, he was pitched upon the road, the chaise rolled over and the pole snapped short in the middle, while the two horses belabored the carriage and each other with all their might. Managing, as well as I was able, to extricate myself, I leaped out upon the road, and by the aid of a knife, and at the cost of some bruises, succeeded in freeing the horses from their tackle. The postboy, who had escaped without any serious injury, labored manfully to aid me, blubbering the whole time upon the consequences his misfortune would bring down upon his head.
“Bad luck to ye!” cried he, apostrophizing the off-horse, a tall, raw-boned beast, with a Roman nose, a dipped back, and a tail ragged and jagged like a hand-saw,—“bad luck to ye! there never was a good one of your color!”
This, for the information of the “unjockeyed,” I may add, was a species of brindled gray.
“How did it happen, Patsey; how did it happen, my lad?”
“It was the heap o’ stones they left in the road since last autumn; and though I riz him at it fairly, he dragged the ould mare over it and broke the pole. Oh, wirra, wirra!” cried he, wringing his hands in an agony of grief, “sure there’s neither luck nor grace to be had with ye since the day ye drew the judge down to the last assizes!”
“Well, what’s to be done?”
“Sorra a bit o’ me knows; the shay’s ruined intirely, and the ould divil there knows he’s conquered us. Look at him there, listening to every word we’re saying! You eternal thief, may be its ploughing you’d like better!”
“Come, come,” said I, “this will never get us forward. What part of the country are we in?”
“We left Banagher about four miles behind us; that’s Killimur you see with the smoke there in the hollow.”
Now, although I did not see Killimur (for the gray mist of the morning prevented me recognizing any object a few hundred yards distant), yet from the direction in which he pointed, and from the course of the Shannon, which I could trace indistinctly, I obtained a pretty accurate notion of where we were.
“Then we are not very far from Portumna?”
“Just a pleasant walk before your breakfast.”
“And is there not a short cut to O’Malley Castle over that mountain?”
“Faix, and so there is; and ye can be no stranger to these parts if ye know that.”
“I have travelled it before now. Just tell me, is the wooden bridge standing over the little stream? It used to be carried away every winter in my time.”
“It’s just the same now. You’ll have to pass by the upper ford; but it comes to the same, for that will bring you to the back gate of the demesne, and one way is just as short as the other.”
“I know it, I know it; so now, do you follow me with my luggage to the castle, and I’ll set out on foot.”
So saying, I threw off my cloak, and prepared myself for a sharp walk of some eight miles over the mountain. As I reached the little knoll of land which, overlooking the Shannon, affords a view of several miles in every direction, I stopped to gaze upon the scene where every object around was familiar to me from infancy: the broad, majestic river, sweeping in bold curves between the wild mountains of Connaught and the wooded hills and cultivated slopes of the more fertile Munster, the tall chimneys of many a house rose above the dense woods where in my boyhood I had spent hours and days of happiness. One last look I turned towards the scene of my late catastrophe ere I began to descend the mountain. The postboy, with the happy fatalism of his country, and a firm trust in the future, had established himself in the interior of the chaise, from which a blue curl of smoke wreathed upward from his pipe; the horses grazed contentedly by the roadside; and were I to judge from the evidence before me, I should say that I was the only member of the party inconvenienced by the accident. A thin sleeting of rain began to fall; the wind blew sharply in my face, and the dark clouds, collecting in masses above, seemed to threaten a storm. Without stopping for even a passing look at the many well-known spots about, I pressed rapidly on. My old experience upon the moors had taught me that sling trot in which jumping from hillock to hillock over the boggy surface, you succeed in accomplishing your journey not only with considerable speed, but perfectly dryshod.
By the lonely path which I travelled, it was unlikely I should meet any one. It was rarely traversed except by the foot of the sportsman, or some stray messenger from the castle to the town of Banagher. Its solitude, however, was in no wise distasteful to me; my heart was full to bursting. Each moment as I walked some new feature of my home presented itself before me. Now it was all happiness and comfort; the scene of its ancient hospitable board, its warm hearth, its happy faces, and its ready welcome were all before me, and I increased my speed to the utmost, when suddenly a sense of sad and sorrowing foreboding would draw around me, and the image of my uncle’s sick-bed, his worn features, his pallid look, his broken voice would strike upon my heart, and all the changes that poverty, desertion, and decay can bring to pass would fall upon my heart, and weak and trembling I would stand for some moments unable to proceed.
Oh, how many a reproachful thought came home to me at what I scrupled not to call to myself the desertion of my home! Oh, how many a prayer I uttered, in all the fervor of devotion, that my selfish waywardness and my yearning for ambition might not bring upon me, in after-life, years of unavailing regret! As I thought thus, I reached the brow of a little mountain ridge, beneath which, at a distance of scarcely more than a mile, the dark woods of O’Malley Castle stretched, before me. The house itself was not visible, for it was situated in a valley beside the river. But there lay the whole scene of my boyhood: there the little creek where my boat was kept, and where I landed on the morning after my duel with Bodkin; there stretched for many a mile the large, callow meadows, where I trained my horses, and schooled them for the coming season; and far in the distance, the brown and rugged peak of old Scariff was lost in the clouds. The rain by this time had ceased, the wind had fallen, and an almost unnatural stillness prevailed around; but yet the heavy masses of vapor frowned ominously, and the leaden hue of land and water wore a gloomy and depressing aspect. My impatience to get on increased every moment, and descending the mountain at the top of my speed, I at length reached the little oak paling that skirted the wood, opened the little wicket, and entered the path. It was the self-same one I had trod in revery and meditation the night before I left my home. I remember, too, sitting down beside the little well which, enclosed in a frame of rock, ran trickling across the path to be lost among the gnarled roots and fallen leaves around. Yes, this was the very spot.
Overcome for the instant by my exertion and by my emotion, I sat down upon the stone, and taking off my cap, bathed my heated and throbbing temples in the cold spring, Refreshed at once, I was about to rise and press onward, when suddenly my attention was caught by a sound which, faint from distance, scarce struck upon my ear. I listened again; but all was still and silent, the dull splash of the river as it broke upon the reedy shore was the only sound I heard. Thinking it probably some mere delusion of my heated imagination, I rose to push forward; but at the moment a slight breeze stirred in the leaves around me, the light branches rustled and bent beneath it, and a low moaning sound swelled upward, increasing each instant as it came; like the distant roar of some mighty torrent it grew louder as the wind bore it towards me, and now falling, now swelling, it burst forth into one loud, prolonged cry of agony and grief. O God! it was the death-wail! I fell upon my knees, my hands clasped in agony; the sweat of misery dropped off my brow, and with a heart bleeding and breaking I prayed—I know not what. Again the terrible cry smote upon my ear, and I could mark the horrible cadences of the death-song, as the voices of the mourners joined in chorus.
My suspense became too great to bear. I dashed madly forward, one sound still ringing in my ears, one horrid image before my eyes. I reached the garden wall; I cleared the little rivulet beside the flower-garden; I traversed its beds (neglected and decayed); I gained the avenue, taking no heed of the crowds before me,—some on foot, some on horseback, others mounted upon the low country car, many seated in groups upon the grass, their heads bowed upon their bosoms, silent and speechless. As I neared the house the whole approach was crowded with carriages and horsemen. At the foot of the large flight of steps stood the black and mournful hearse, its plumes nodding in the breeze. With the speed of madness and the recklessness of despair I tore my way through the thickly standing groups upon the steps; I could not speak, I could not utter. Once more the frightful cry swelled upward, and in its wild notes seemed to paralyze me; for with my hands upon my temples, I stood motionless and still. A heavy footfall as of persons marching in procession came nearer and nearer, and as the sounds without sank into sobs of bitterness and woe, the black pall of a coffin, borne on men’s shoulders, appeared at the door, and an old man whose gray hair floated in the breeze, and across whose stern features a struggle for self-mastery—a kind of spasmodic effort—was playing, held out his hand to enforce silence. His eye, lack-lustre and dimmed with age, roved over the assembled multitude, but there was no recognition in his look until at last he turned it on me. A slight hectic flush colored his pale cheek, his lip trembled, he essayed to speak, but could not. I sprang towards him, but choked by agony, I could not utter; my look, however, spoke what my tongue could not. He threw his arms around me, and muttering the words, “Poor Godfrey!” pointed to the coffin.