Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon Volume Ii Part 24

"And we'll take O'Malley in," said Hampden; "he looks imploringly."

"And now to return to the charge," quoth Maurice. "In what particular dare ye contend the palm with Dublin? We'll not speak of beauty. I can't suffer any such profane turn in the conversation as to dispute the superiority of Irishwomen's lips, eyes, noses, and eyebrows, to anything under heaven.

We'll not talk of gay fellows; egad, we needn't. I'll give you the garrison,--a decent present,--and I'll back the Irish bar for more genuine drollery, more wit, more epigram, more ready sparkling fun, than the whole rest of the empire--ay, and all her colonies--can boast of."

"They are nae remarkable for pa.s.sing the bottle, if they resemble their very gifted advocate," observed the Scotchman.

"But they are for filling and emptying both, making its current, as it glides by, like a rich stream glittering in the sunbeams with the sparkling l.u.s.tre of their wit. Lord, how I'm blown! Fill my pannikin, Charley.

There's no subduing a Scot. Talk with him, drink with him, fight with him, and he'll always have the last of it; there's only one way of concluding the treaty--"

"And that is--"

"Blarney him. Lord bless you, he can't stand it! Tell him Holyrood's like Versailles, and the Trossach's finer than Mont Blanc; that Geordie Buchanan was Homer, and the Canongate, Herculaneum,--then ye have him on the hip.

Now, ye never can humbug an Irishman that way; he'll know you're quizzing him when you praise his country."

"Ye are right, Hampden," said the Scotch doctor, in reply to some observation. "We are vara primitive in the Hielands, and we keep to our ain national customs in dress and everything; and we are vara slow to learn, and even when we try we are nae ower successfu' in our imitations, which sometimes cost us dearly enough. Ye may have heard, may be, of the M'Nab o'

that ilk, and what happened him with the king's equerry?"

"I'm not quite certain," said Hampden, "if I ever heard the story."

"It's nae muckle of a story; but the way of it was this. When Montrose came back from London, he brought with him a few Englishers to show them the Highlands, and let them see something of deer-stalking,--among the rest, a certain Sir George Sowerby, an aide-de-camp or an equerry of the prince.

He was a vara fine gentleman, that never loaded his ain gun, and a'most thought it too much trouble to pull the trigger. He went out every morning to shoot with his hair curled like a woman, and dressed like a dancing-master. Now, there happened to be at the same time at the castle the Laird o' M'Nab; he was a kind of cousin of the Montrose, and a rough old tyke of the true Hieland breed, wha' thought that the head of a clan was fully equal to any king or prince. He sat opposite to Sir George at dinner the day of his arrival, and could not conceal his surprise at the many new-fangled ways of feeding himself the Englisher adopted. He ate his saumon wi' his fork in ae hand, and a bittock of bread in the other. He would na touch the whiskey; helped himself to a cutlet wi' his fingers. But what was maist extraordinary of all, he wore a pair o' braw white gloves during the whole time o' dinner and when they came to tak' away the cloth, he drew them off with a great air, and threw them into the middle of it, and then, leisurely taking anither pair off a silver salver which his ain man presented, he pat them on for dessert. The M'Nab, who, although an auld-fashioned carl, was aye fond of bringing something new hame to his friends, remarked the Englisher's proceeding with great care, and the next day he appeared at dinner wi' a huge pair of Hieland mittens, which he wore, to the astonishment of all and the amus.e.m.e.nt of most, through the whole three courses; and exactly as the Englishman changed his gloves, the M'Nab produced a fresh pair of goats' wool, four times as large as the first, which, drawing on with prodigious gravity, he threw the others into the middle of the cloth, remarking, as he did so,--

"'Ye see, Captain, we are never ower auld to learn.'

"All propriety was now at an end, and a hearty burst of laughter from one end of the table to the other convulsed the whole company,--the M'Nab and the Englishman being the only persons who did not join in it, but sat glowering at each other like twa tigers; and, indeed, it needed, a'

the Montrose's interference that they had na quarrelled upon it in the morning."

"The M'Nab was a man after my own heart," said Maurice; "there was something very Irish in the lesson he gave the Englishman."

"I'd rather ye'd told him that than me," said the doctor, dryly; "he would na hae thanked ye for mistaking him for ane of your countrymen."

"Come, Doctor," said Dennis, "could not ye give us a stave? Have ye nothing that smacks of the brown fern and the blue lakes in your memory?"

"I have na a sang in my mind just noo except 'Johnny Cope,' which may be might na be ower pleasant for the Englishers to listen to."

"I never heard a Scotch song worth sixpence," quoth Maurice, who seemed bent on provoking the doctor's ire. "They contain nothing save some puling sentimentality about la.s.ses with lint-white locks, or some absurd laudations of the Barley Bree."

"Hear till him, hear till him!" said the doctor, reddening with impatience.

"Show me anything," said Maurice, "like the 'Cruiskeen Lawn' or the 'Jug of Punch;' but who can blame them, after all? You can't expect much from a people with an imagination as naked as their own knees."

"Maurice! Maurice!" cried O'Shaughnessy, reprovingly, who saw that he was pushing the other's endurance beyond all bounds.

"I mind weel," said the Scotchman, "what happened to ane o' your countrymen wha took upon him to jest as you are doing now. It was to Laurie Cameron he did it."

"And what said the redoubted Laurie in reply?"

"He did na say muckle, but he did something."

"And what might it be?" inquired Maurice.

"He threw him ower the brig of Ayr into the water, and he was drowned."

"And did Laurie come to no harm about the matter?"

"Ay, they tried him for it, and found him guilty; but when they asked him what he had to say in his defence, he merely replied, 'When the carl sneered about Scotland, I did na suspect that he did na ken how to swim;'

and so the end of it was, they did naething to Laurie."

"Cool that, certainly," said I.

"I prefer your friend with the mittens, I confess," said Maurice, "though I'm sure both were most agreeable companion. But come, Doctor, couldn't you give us,--

Sit ye down, my heartie, and gie us a crack, Let the wind tak' the care o' the world on his back.'"

"You maunna attempt English poethry, my freend Quell; for it must be confessed ye'e a d.a.m.nable accent of your ain."

"Milesian-Phoenician-Corkacian; nothing more, my boy, and a coaxing kind of recitative it is, after all. Don't tell me of your soft Etruscan, your plethoric. _Hoch_-Deutsch, your flattering French. To woo and win the girl of your heart, give me a rich brogue and the least taste in life of blarney! There's nothing like it, believe me,--every inflection of your voice suggesting some tender pressure of her soft hand or taper waist, every cadence falling on her gentle heart like a sea-breeze on a burning coast, or a soft sirocco over a rose-tree. And then, think, my boys,--and it is a fine thought after all,--what a glorious gift that is, out of the reach of kings to give or to take, what neither depends upon the act of Union nor the _Habeas Corpus_. No! they may starve us, laugh at us, tax us, transport us. They may take our mountains, our valleys, and our bogs; but, bad luck to them, they can't steal our 'blarney;' that's the privilege one and indivisible with our ident.i.ty. And while an Englishman raves of his liberty, a Scotchman of his oaten meal, blarney's _our_ birthright, and a prettier portion I'd never ask to leave behind me to my sons. If I'd as large a family as the ould gentleman called Priam we used to hear of at school, it's the only inheritance I'd give them, and one comfort there would be besides, the legacy duty would be only a trifle. Charley, my son, I see you're listening to me, and nothing satisfies me more than to instruct inspiring youth; so never forget the old song,--

'If at your ease, the girls you'd please, And win them, like Kate Kearney, There's but one way, I've heard them say, Go kiss the Stone of Blarney.'"

"What do you say, Shaugh, if we drink it with all the honors?"

"But gently: do I hear a trumpet there?"

"Ah, there go the bugles. Can it be daybreak already?"

"How short the nights are at this season!" said Quill.

"What an infernal rumpus they're making! It's not possible the troops are to march so early."

"It wouldn't surprise me in the least," quoth Maurice; "there is no knowing what the commander-in-chief's not capable of,--the reason's clear enough."

"And why, Maurice?"

"There's not a bit of blarney about him."

The _reveil_ sang out from every brigade, and the drums beat to fall in, while Mike came galloping up at full speed to say that the bridge of boats was completed, and that the Twelfth were already ordered to cross. Not a moment was therefore to be lost; one parting cup we drained to our next meeting, and amidst a hundred "good-bys" we mounted our horses. Poor Hampden's brains, sadly confused by the wine and the laughing, he knew little of what was going on around him, and pa.s.sed the entire time of our homeward ride in a vain endeavor to adapt "Mary Draper" to the air of "Rule Britannia."

CHAPTER XXII.

FUENTES D'ONORO.

From this period the French continued their retreat, closely followed by the allied armies, and on the 5th of April, Ma.s.sena once more crossed the frontier into Spain, leaving thirty thousand of his bravest troops behind him, fourteen thousand of whom had fallen or been taken prisoners.

Reinforcements, however, came rapidly pouring in. Two divisions of the Ninth corps had already arrived, and Drouet, with eleven thousand infantry and cavalry, was preparing to march to his a.s.sistance. Thus strengthened, the French army marched towards the Portuguese frontier, and Lord Wellington, who had determined not to hazard much by his blockade of Ciudad Rodrigo, fell back upon the large table-land beyond the Turones and the Dos Casas, with his left at Fort Conception, and his right resting upon Fuentes d'Onoro. His position extended to about five miles; and here, although vastly inferior in numbers, yet relying upon the bravery of the troops, and the moral ascendency acquired by their pursuit of the enemy, he finally resolved upon giving them battle.