Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon Volume Ii Part 43

"Halloo, Orderly!" cried I, from the window, as I hurriedly sealed my few words of acknowledgment, "take this note back to General Picton, and here's a guinea for yourself." So saying, I pitched into his ready hand one of the very few which remained to me in the world. "This is, indeed, good news!"

said I, to myself. "This is, indeed, a moment of unmixed happiness!"

As I closed the window, I could hear Mike p.r.o.nouncing a glowing eulogium upon my liberality, from which he could not, however, help in some degree detracting, as he added:

"But the devil thank him, after all! Sure, it's himself has the illigant fortune and the fine place of it!"

Scarcely were the last sounds of the retiring horseman dying away in the distance, when Mike's meditations took another form, and he muttered between his teeth, "Oh, holy Agatha! a guinea, a raal gold guinea to a thief of a dragoon that come with the letter, and here am I wearing a picture of the holy family for a back to my waistcoat, all out of economy; and sure, G.o.d knows, but may be they'll take their dealing trick out of me in purgatory for this hereafter; and faith, it's a beautiful pair of breeches I'd have had, if I wasn't ashamed to put the twelve apostles on my legs."

While Mike ran on at this rate, my eyes fell upon a few lines of postscript in Picton's letter, which I had not previously noticed.

"The official despatches of the storming are, of course, intrusted to senior officers, but I need scarcely remind you that it will be a polite and proper attention to his Royal Highness to present your letters with as little delay as possible. Not a moment is to be lost on your landing in England."

"Mike!" cried I, "how look the cattle for a journey?"

"The chestnut is a little low in flesh, but in great wind, your honor; and the black horse is jumping like a filly."

"And Badger?" said I.

"Howld him, if you can, that's all; but it's murthering work this, carrying despatches day after day."

"This time, however, Mike, we must not grumble."

"May be it isn't far?"

"Why, as to that, I shall not promise much. I'm bound for England, Mickey."

"For England!"

"Yes, Mike, and for Ireland."

"For Ireland! whoop!" shouted he, as he shied his cap into one corner of the room, the jacket he was brushing into the other, and began dancing round the table with no bad imitation of an Indian war dance.

"How I'll dance like a fairy, To see ould Dunleary, And think twice ere I leave it to be a dragoon."

"Oh, blessed hour! Isn't it beautiful to think of the illuminations and dinners and speeches and shaking of hands, huzzaing, and hip-hipping. May be there won't be pictures of us in all the shops,--Mister Charles and his man Mister Free. May be they won't make plays out of us; myself dressed in the gray coat with the red cuffs, the cords, the tops, and the Caroline hat a little c.o.c.ked, with a phiz in the side of it." Here he made a sign with his expanded fingers to represent a c.o.c.kade, which he designated by this word. "I think I see myself dining with the corporation, and the Lord Major of Dublin getting up to propose the health of the hero of El Bodon, Mr.

Free; and three times three, hurra! hurra! hurra! Musha, but it's dry I am gettin' with the thoughts of the punch and the poteen negus."

"If you go on at this rate, we're not likely to be soon at our journey's end. So be alive now; pack up my kit; I shall start by twelve o'clock."

With one spring Mike cleared the stairs, and overthrowing everything and everybody in his way, hurried towards the stable, chanting at the top of his voice the very poetical strain he had indulged me with a few minutes before.

My preparations were rapidly made; a few hurried lines of leave-taking to the good fellows I had lived so much with and felt so strongly attached to, with a firm a.s.surance that I should join them again ere long, was all that my time permitted. To Power I wrote more at length, detailing the circ.u.mstances which my own letters informed me of, and also those which invited me to return home. This done, I lost not another moment, but set out upon my journey.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.

THE LEAVE.

After an hour's sharp riding we reached the Aguada, where the river was yet fordable; crossing this, we mounted the Sierra by a narrow and winding pa.s.s which leads through the mountains towards Almeida. Here I turned once more to cast a last and farewell look at the scene of our late encounter. It was but a few hours that I had stood almost on the same spot, and yet how altered was all around. The wide plain, then bustling with all the life and animation of a large army, was now nearly deserted,--some dismounted guns, some broken-up, dismantled batteries, around which a few sentinels seemed to loiter rather than to keep guard; a strong detachment of infantry could be seen wending their way towards the fortress, and a confused ma.s.s of camp-followers, sutlers, and peasants following their steps for protection against the pillagers and the still ruder a.s.saults of their own Guerillas.

The fortress, too, was changed indeed. Those mighty walls before whose steep sides the bravest fell back baffled and beaten, were now a ma.s.s of ruin and decay; the muleteer could be seen driving his mule along through the rugged ascent of that breach to win whose top the best blood of Albion's chivalry was shed; and the peasant child looked timidly from those dark enclosures in the deep fosse below, where perished hundreds of our best and bravest. The air was calm, clear, and unclouded; no smoke obscured the transparent atmosphere; the cannon had ceased; and the voices that rang so late in accents of triumphant victory were stilled in death. Everything, indeed, had undergone a mighty change; but nothing brought the altered fortunes of the scene so vividly to my mind as when I remembered that when last I had seen those walls, the dark shako of the French grenadiers peered above their battlements, and now the gay tartan of the Highlanders fluttered above them, and the red flag of England waved boldly in the breeze.

Up to that moment my sensations were those of unmixed pleasure. The thought of my home, my friends, my country, the feeling that I was returning with the bronze of the battle upon my cheek, and the voice of praise still ringing in my heart,--these were proud thoughts, and my bosom heaved short and quickly as I revolved them; but as I turned my gaze for the last time towards the gallant army I was leaving, a pang of sorrow, of self-reproach, shot through me, and I could not help feeling how far less worthily was I acting in yielding to the impulse of my wishes, than had I remained to share the fortunes of the campaign.

So powerfully did these sensations possess me, that I sat motionless for some time, uncertain whether to proceed; forgetting that I was the bearer of important information, I only remembered that by my own desire I was there; my reason but half convinced me that the part I had adopted was right and honorable, and more than once my resolution to proceed hung in the balance. It was just at this critical moment of my doubts that Mike, who had been hitherto behind, came up.

"Is it the upper road, sir?" said he, pointing to a steep and rugged path which led by a zigzag ascent towards the crest of the mountain.

I nodded in reply, when he added:--

"Doesn't this remind your honor of Sleibh More, above the Shannon, where we used to be grouse shooting? And there's the keeper's house in the valley; and that might be your uncle, the master himself, waving his hat to you."

Had he known the state of my conflicting feelings at the moment, he could not more readily have decided this doubt. I turned abruptly away, put spurs to my horse, and dashed up the steep pa.s.s at a pace which evidently surprised, and as evidently displeased, my follower.

How natural it is ever to experience a reaction of depression and lowness after the first burst of unexpected joy! The moment of happiness is scarce experienced ere come the doubts of its reality, the fears for its continuance; the higher the state of pleasurable excitement, the more painful and the more pressing the anxieties that await on it; the tension of delighted feelings cannot last, and our overwrought faculties seek repose in regrets. Happy he who can so temper his enjoyments as to view them in their shadows as in their sunshine; he may not, it is true, behold the landscape in the blaze of its noonday brightness, but he need not fear the thunder-cloud nor the hurricane. The calm autumn of _his_ bliss, if it dazzle not in its brilliancy, will not any more be shrouded in darkness and in gloom.

My first burst of pleasure over, the thought of my uncle's changed fortunes pressed deeply on my heart, and a hundred plans suggested themselves in turn to my mind to relieve his present embarra.s.sments; but I knew how impracticable they would all prove when opposed by his prejudices. To sell the old home of his forefathers, to wander from the roof which had sheltered his name for generations, he would never consent to; the law might by force expel him, and drive him a wanderer and an exile, but of his own free will the thing was hopeless. Considine, too, would encourage rather than repress such feelings; his feudalism would lead him to any lengths; and in defence of what he would esteem a right, he would as soon shoot a sheriff as a snipe, and, old as he was, ask for no better amus.e.m.e.nt than to arm the whole tenantry and give battle to the king's troops on the wide plain of Scariff. Amidst such conflicting thought, I travelled on moodily and in silence, to the palpable astonishment of Mike, who could not help regarding me as one from whom fortune met the most ungrateful returns.

At every new turn of the road he would endeavor to attract my attention by the objects around,--no white-turreted chateau, no tapered spire in the distance, escaped him; he kept up a constant ripple of half-muttered praise and censure upon all he saw, and inst.i.tuted unceasing comparisons between the country and his own, in which, I am bound to say, Ireland rarely, if ever, had to complain of his patriotism.

When we arrived at Almeida, I learned that the "Medea" sloop-of-war was lying off Oporto, and expected to sail for England in a few days. The opportunity was not to be neglected. The official despatches, I was aware, would be sent through Lisbon, where the "Gorgon" frigate was in waiting to convey them; but should I be fortunate enough to reach Oporto in time, I had little doubt of arriving in England with the first intelligence of the fall of Ciudad Rodrigo. Reducing my luggage, therefore, to the smallest possible compa.s.s, and having provided myself with a juvenile guide for the pa.s.s of La Reyna, I threw myself, without undressing, upon the bed, and waited anxiously for the break of day to resume my journey.

As I ruminated over the prospect my return presented, I suddenly remembered Frank Webber's letter, which I had hastily thrust into a portfolio without reading, so occupied was I by Considine's epistle; with a little searching I discovered it, and tr.i.m.m.i.n.g my lamp, as I felt no inclination to sleep, I proceeded to the examination of what seemed a more than usually voluminous epistle. It contained four closely-written pages, accompanied by something like a plan in an engineering sketch. My curiosity becoming further stimulated by this, I sat down to peruse it. It began thus:--

Official Despatch of Lieutenant-General Francis Webber to Lord Castlereagh, detailing the a.s.sault and capture of the old pump, in Trinity College, Dublin, on the night of the second of December, eighteen hundred and eleven, with returns of killed, wounded, and missing, with other information from the seat of war.

HEADQUARTERS, No. 2, OLD SQUARE.

My Lord,--In compliance with the instructions contained in your lordship's despatch of the twenty-first ultimo, I concentrated the force under my command, and a.s.sembling the generals of division, made known my intentions in the following general order:--

A. G. O.

The following troops will this evening a.s.semble at headquarters, and having partaken of a sufficient dinner for the next two days, with punch for four, will hold themselves in readiness to march in the following order:--

Harry Nesbitt's Brigade of Incorrigibles will form a blockading force, in the line extending from the vice-provost's house to the library. The light division, under Mark Waller, will skirmish from the gate towards the middle of the square, obstructing the march of the Cuira.s.siers of the Guard, which, under the command of old Duncan the porter, are expected to move in that direction. Two columns of attack will be formed by the senior sophisters of the Old Guard, and a forlorn hope of the "cautioned" men at the last four examinations will form, under the orders of Timothy O'Rourke, beneath the shadow of the dining-hall.

At the signal of the dean's bell the stormers will move forward. A cheer from the united corps will then announce the moment of attack.

The word for the night will be, "May the Devil admire me!"

The commander-of-the-forces desires that the different corps should be as strong as possible, and expects that no man will rema any pretence whatever, in the rear with the lush. During the main a.s.sault, Cecil Cavendish will make a feint upon the provost's windows, to be converted into a real attack if the ladies scream.

GENERAL ORDER.

The commissary-general, Foley, will supply the following articles for the use of the troops: Two hams; eight pair of chickens, the same to be roasted; a devilled turkey; sixteen lobsters; eight hundred of oysters, with a proportionate quant.i.ty of cold sherry and hot punch.

The army will get drunk by ten o'clock to-night.