CHAPTER IV.
About three months after our arrival, we were sitting by the barrack-room fire one night, talking of our campaigns, a subject which was deeply interesting to us all.
‘Here we are,’ said Dennis, ‘round a good fire in the heart of Paddy’s land; last year at this time we were lying on the Pyrenees, starving alive, with the tents blowing down about our ears. But we had then what would make us forget every thing else—we had Colonel Lloyd commanding us—God rest his soul! he was too good to live long. Do you think his friends will not bring home his remains? Upon my soul, if I had the means, if I would not travel every foot to the heights of Zara, and bring them to Ireland; I am sure he would rest easier in his own native place.’
‘Why are you so anxious about his body,’ said I, ‘when your creed forbids you to believe his soul safe—Colonel Lloyd was a heretic, you know.’
‘Och, bother!’ said Dennis, ‘all the priests in Christendom would not make me believe that. Troth, if he isn’t in heaven, deuce a one of themselves are there; and if I thought he would not get there because he was a Protestant, I would deny my religion for ever.’
My comrades continued to talk of his goodness, for it was a theme they never tired of, but I was abstracted. To-morrow, thought I, it is just a twelvemonth since he closed his gallant career. Never will I forget that day. We turned out about two o’clock in the morning to storm the French intrenchments; as was his usual custom, he was on the ground before the regiment formed, mounted on his gray horse, which had carried him in many engagements. On reaching the foot of the hill on which we were encamped, we halted and waited the signal gun to advance. Daylight had broke, and the eastern clouds were tinged with that glorious colour which no painter can copy or no tongue describe. The French were in our view, and, ‘like greyhounds on the slip,’ we were waiting the signal to begin the fight, with that fearful anxiety which is more intolerable to bear than the greatest danger, and to which action is relief. Colonel Lloyd was at our head, with his face turned towards us, lighted up with its usual benignity and confidence. He looked on us as if he had said, I see you are all devoted to me; and the high resolutions he was forming on this conviction could be seen working in his countenance; his eye was ‘wildly spiritually bright,’ and the reflection of the gorgeous sky beaming on his fine features, gave them an expression almost superhuman. I am sure there was not a man in the regiment who could not have died for him, or with him, at that moment. A few minutes after, and the battle raged from right to left of the British line. His bravery exceeded all encomium, but it was the ‘last of his fields;’ he met his death-shot in ascending to the attack of a redoubt in the last line of entrenchments. He lived only a few minutes, and the only words he uttered were,—‘I am dying, I am dying, I am dying!’—but his feelings might, withtruth, have been portrayed thus:—‘I perish in the noon of my fame; I have bought honour and distinction with my blood, but when they are within my grasp, death, with his cold hand, intercepts them, and cuts me off from the world for ever. “O Glory! thou art an unreal good.”’ Mingled with these reflections came, no doubt, thoughts of kindred and friends, whose face he was doomed never to behold; but the scene soon closed, and all that remained of the young and gifted Lloyd, was the inanimate mould which had enshrined a soul as generous and brave ‘as e’er burst its mortal control.’
My praise of Colonel Lloyd may appear, to some, hyperbolical; but I have no end to serve—he is himself gone, and his relations, if he have any living, I know nothing about. In giving vent to my feelings in portraying his character, I am sensible I only give a faithful transcript of those of my comrades who then composed the corps, and whose devotion to his memory proves how susceptible soldiers are of feelings of love and gratitude to those who treat them as they ought to be treated—with kindness.
Furloughs were now granting to a certain number of men to go home to see their friends. Dennis, on the faith of some former promise, got one, but I was not so fortunate. He was quite delighted at the idea of going to see his mother and relations, and the evening previous to his intended departure he was very busy packing up his things.
‘Now,’ said he, when he had finished, ‘I will start very early to-morrow morning, and I think I will be able to manage the journey in four days.’
‘Here’s some one asking for Dennis,’ said a comrade.
An old woman, habited in a gray cloak, with a handkerchief on her head tied under her chin, entered the room, and looked round inquiringly at each face, until she found the one which was too deeply imprinted on her memory ever to forget. Then, springing forward, she caught Dennis in her arms, and almost smothered him with kisses.
‘Och, my poor child!’ said she, ‘do I live to see you once more? Jewel and darling! but this is a blessed day for your poor mother.’
Dennis was perfectly bewildered—so much taken by surprise that he could not utter a word for some minutes; at length he said—
‘In the name of God, mother, what brought you here?’
‘Indeed, I just came to see yourself astore; and wasn’t that reason good enough? and I would have come for that same, if it had been twice as far, although I walked every foot of the road.’
‘Well, well,’ said Dennis, ‘that beats Banacher and Balinasloe! Haven’t I my knapsack packed to set off home to-morrow? and here you have made all this journey for nothing, dragging the old limbs of ye.’
‘What matter, child? can’t we go home together? we’ll be company on the road.’
They actually set off in a day or two after, taking the first stage by the coach. The poor old woman, although between sixty and seventy years of age, had travelled upwards of a hundred miles on foot to see her son.
Soon after this, several parties going to Scotland on the recruiting service, I had an offer, if I chose, to go on that duty; but I refused it, as did many others to whom the offer was made. Few soldiers like it, being associated in their minds with something mean and dishonest; and the fact that those men who possess laxity of principle, and are but otherwise indifferent soldiers, are generally the most successful on that duty, strengthens the idea; and it is well known that men so employed, whatever might have been their previous character, return to their regiment much worse soldiers than when they left it. It is too often the practice of those so employed, to consider all stratagem fair, and so that they enlist men for the service, they care little whether the means taken are legal or not. Many, I know, argue, that when men are wanted, we should not be too fastidious in the means used to procurethem; and they quote the impressment of seamen,—that stain in our constitution, which our strenuous efforts to emancipate the West Indian negroes renders deeper and deeper. But one bad action can never be vindicated by another; and I cannot see how any cause can be really benefited by duplicity and cunning; on the contrary, it must hurt it, for it raises suspicion where there is no real grounds for any. I am sure it would facilitate the recruiting of the army, to give up all undue means to entrap men by plying them with drink, or telling them lies. I am persuaded that there are thousands to whom a military life would be far preferable to what they are employed at—many of whom would enlist, were it not that a suspicion is excited in their minds, that all is not right, by the finessing and over-anxiety displayed by those employed on the recruiting service. The liberal feeling and good sense which pervades the majority of the officers in the army at present, have rendered the situation of a soldier now quite another thing to what it was when I first entered it. This has been brought about by the increasing intelligence of the nation, but also in a great degree by the disposition evinced by the commander-in-chief. ‘One tyrant makes many’—of the reverse of this we have a bright example in His Royal Highness the Duke of York. He is in truth theSOLDIER’S FRIEND, and the whole army look up to him with confidence. I can have no aim in flattering him: if he did not deserve this encomium, he would not get it from me.