Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1

“Mr. O’Malley, 14th,” said I, by way of introduction.

“My service to you, then,” said the voice. “Going to join your regiment?”

“Yes; and you, are you bound on a similar errand?”

“No, Heaven be praised! I’m attached to the commissariat, and only going to Lisbon. Have you had any dinner?”

“Not a morsel; have you?”

“No more than yourself; but I always lie by for three or four days this way, till I get used to the confounded rocking and pitching, and with a little grog and some sleep, get over the time gayly enough. Steward, another tumbler like the last; there – very good – that will do. Your good health, Mr. – what was it you said?”

“O’Malley.”

“O’Malley – your good health! Good-night.” And so ended our brief colloquy, and in a few minutes more, a very decisive snore pronounced my friend to be fulfilling his precept for killing the hours.

I now made the effort to emancipate myself from my crib, and at last succeeded in getting on the floor, where, after one chassez at a small looking-glass opposite, followed by a very impetuous rush at a little brass stove, in which I was interrupted by a trunk and laid prostrate, I finally got my clothes on, and made my way to the deck. Little attuned as was my mind at the moment to admire anything like scenery, it was impossible to be unmoved by the magnificent prospect before me. It was a beautiful evening in summer; the sun had set above an hour before, leaving behind him in the west one vast arch of rich and burnished gold, stretching along the whole horizon, and tipping all the summits of the heavy rolling sea, as it rolled on, unbroken by foam or ripple, in vast moving mountains, from the far coast of Labrador. We were already in blue water, though the bold cliffs that were to form our departing point were but a few miles to leeward. There lay the lofty bluff of Old Kinsale, whose crest, overhanging, peered from a summit of some hundred feet into the deep water that swept its rocky base, many a tangled lichen and straggling bough trailing in the flood beneath. Here and there upon the coast a twinkling gleam proclaimed the hut of the fisherman, whose swift hookers had more than once shot by us and disappeared in a moment. The wind, which began to fall at sunset, freshened as the moon rose; and the good ship, bending to the breeze, lay gently over, and rushed through the waters with a sound of gladness. I was alone upon the deck. Power and the captain, whom I expected to have found, had disappeared somehow, and I was, after all, not sorry to be left to my own reflections uninterrupted.

My thoughts turned once more to my home, – to my first, my best, earliest friend, whose hearth I had rendered lonely and desolate, and my heart sank within me as I remembered it. How deeply I reproached myself for the selfish impetuosity with which I had ever followed any rising fancy, any new and sudden desire, and never thought of him whose every hope was in, whose every wish was for me. Alas! alas, my poor uncle! how gladly would I resign every prospect my soldier’s life may hold out, with all its glittering promise, and all the flattery of success, to be once more beside you; to feel your warm and manly grasp; to see your smile; to hear your voice; to be again where all our best feelings are born and nurtured, our cares assuaged, our joys more joyed in, and our griefs more wept, – at home! These very words have more music to my ears than all the softest strains that ever siren sung. They bring us back to all we have loved, by ties that are never felt but through such simple associations. And in the earlier memories called up, our childish feelings come back once more to visit us like better spirits, as we walk amidst the dreary desolation that years of care and uneasiness have spread around us.

Wretched must he be who ne’er has felt such bliss; and thrice happy he who, feeling it, knows that still there lives for him that same early home, with all its loved inmates, its every dear and devoted object waiting his coming and longing for his approach.

Such were my thoughts as I stood gazing at the bold line of coast now gradually growing more and more dim while evening fell, and we continued to stand farther out to sea. So absorbed was I all this time in my reflections, that I never heard the voices which now suddenly burst upon my ears quite close beside me. I turned, and saw for the first time that at the end of the quarter-deck stood what is called a roundhouse, a small cabin, from which the sounds in question proceeded. I walked gently forward and peeped in, and certainly anything more in contrast with my late revery need not be conceived. There sat the skipper, a bluff, round-faced, jolly-looking little tar, mixing a bowl of punch at a table, at which sat my friend Power, the adjutant, and a tall, meagre-looking Scotchman, whom I once met in Cork, and heard that he was the doctor of some infantry regiment. Two or three black bottles, a paper of cigars, and a tallow candle were all the table equipage; but certainly the party seemed not to want for spirits and fun, to judge from the hearty bursts of laughing that every moment pealed forth, and shook the little building that held them. Power, as usual with him, seemed to be taking the lead, and was evidently amusing himself with the peculiarities of his companions.

“Come, Adjutant, fill up; here’s to the campaign before us. We, at least, have nothing but pleasure in the anticipation; no lovely wife behind; no charming babes to fret and be fretted for, eh?”

“Vara true,” said the doctor, who was mated with a tartar, “ye maun have less regrets at leaving hame; but a married man is no’ entirely denied his ain consolations.”

“Good sense in that,” said the skipper; “a wide berth and plenty of sea room are not bad things now and then.”

“Is that your experience also?” said Power, with a knowing look. “Come, come, Adjutant, we’re not so ill off, you see; but, by Jove, I can’t imagine how it is a man ever comes to thirty without having at least one wife, – without counting his colonial possessions of course.”

“Yes,” said the adjutant, with a sigh, as he drained his glass to the bottom. “It is devilish strange, – woman, lovely woman!” Here he filled and drank again, as though he had been proposing a toast for his own peculiar drinking.

“I say, now,” resumed Power, catching at once that there was something working in his mind, – “I say, now, how happened it that you, a right good-looking, soldier-like fellow, that always made his way among the fair ones, with that confounded roguish eye and slippery tongue, – how the deuce did it come to pass that you never married?”

“I’ve been more than once on the verge of it,” said the adjutant, smiling blandly at the flattery.

“And nae bad notion yours just to stay there,” said the doctor, with a very peculiar contortion of countenance.

“No pleasing you, no contenting a fellow like you,” said Power, returning to the charge; “that’s the thing; you get a certain ascendancy; you have a kind of success that renders you, as the French say, téte montée, and you think no woman rich enough or good-looking enough or big enough.”

“No; by Jove you’re wrong,” said the adjutant, swallowing the bait, hook and all, – “quite wrong there; for some how, all my life, I was decidedly susceptible. Not that I cared much for your blushing sixteen, or budding beauties in white muslin, fresh from a back-board and a governess; no, my taste inclined rather to the more sober charms of two or three-and-thirty, the embonpoint, a good foot and ankle, a sensible breadth about the shoulders – ”

“Somewhat Dutch-like, I take it,” said the skipper, puffing out a volume of smoke; “a little bluff in the bows, and great stowage, eh?”

“You leaned then towards the widows?” said Power.

“Exactly; I confess, a widow always was my weakness. There was something I ever liked in the notion of a woman who had got over all the awkward girlishness of early years, and had that self-possession which habit and knowledge of the world confer, and knew enough of herself to understand what she really wished, and where she would really go.”

“Like the trade winds,” puffed the skipper.

“Then, as regards fortune, they have a decided superiority over the spinster class. I defy any man breathing, – let him be half police-magistrate, half chancellor, – to find out the figure of a young lady’s dower. On your first introduction to the house, some kind friend whispers, ‘Go it, old boy; forty thousand, not a penny less.’ A few weeks later, as the siege progresses, a maiden aunt, disposed to puffing, comes down to twenty; this diminishes again one half, but then ‘the money is in bank stock, hard Three-and-a-Half.’ You go a little farther, and as you sit one day over your wine with papa, he certainly promulgates the fact that his daughter has five thousand pounds, two of which turn out to be in Mexican bonds, and three in an Irish mortgage.”

“Happy for you,” interrupted Power, “that it be not in Galway, where a proposal to foreclose, would be a signal for your being called out and shot without benefit of clergy.”

“Bad luck to it, for Galway,” said the adjutant. “I was nearly taken in there once to marry a girl that her brother-in-law swore had eight hundred a year; and it came out afterwards that so she had, but it was for one year only; and he challenged me for doubting his word too.”

“There’s an old formula for finding out an Irish fortune,” says Power, “worth, all the algebra they ever taught in Trinity. Take the half of the assumed sum, and divide it by three; the quotient will be a flattering representative of the figure sought for.”

“Not in the north,” said the adjutant, firmly, – “not in the north, Power. They are all well off there. There’s a race of canny, thrifty, half-Scotch niggers, – your pardon, Doctor, they are all Irish, – linen-weaving, Presbyterian, yarn-factoring, long-nosed, hard-drinking fellows, that lay by rather a snug thing now and then. Do you know, I was very near it once in the north. I’ve half a mind to tell you the story; though, perhaps, you’ll laugh at me.”

The whole party at once protested that nothing could induce them to deviate so widely from the line of propriety; and the skipper having mixed a fresh bowl and filled all the glasses round, the cigars were lighted, and the adjutant began.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE ADJUTANT’S STORY. – LIFE IN DERBY

“It is now about eight, may be ten, years since we were ordered to march from Belfast and take up our quarters in Londonderry. We had not been more than a few weeks altogether in Ulster when the order came; and as we had been, for the preceding two years, doing duty in the south and west, we concluded that the island was tolerably the same in all parts. We opened our campaign in the maiden city exactly as we had been doing with ‘unparalleled success’ in Cashel, Fermoy, Tuam, etc., – that is to say, we announced garrison balls and private theatricals; offered a cup to be run for in steeple-chase; turned out a four-in-hand drag, with mottled grays; and brought over two Deal boats to challenge the north.”

“The 18th found the place stupid,” said his companions.

“To be sure, they did; slow fellows like them must find any place stupid. No dinners; but they gave none. No fun; but they had none in themselves. In fact, we knew better; we understood how the thing was to be done, and resolved that, as a mine of rich ore lay unworked, it was reserved for us to produce the shining metal that others, less discerning, had failed to discover. Little we knew of the matter; never was there a blunder like ours. Were you ever in Derry?”

“Never,” said the three listeners.

“Well, then, let me inform you that the place has its own peculiar features. In the first place, all the large towns in the south and west have, besides the country neighborhood that surrounds them, a certain sprinkling of gentlefolk, who, though with small fortunes and not much usage of the world, are still a great accession to society, and make up the blank which, even in the most thickly peopled country, would be sadly felt without them. Now, in Derry, there is none of this. After the great guns – and, per Baccho! what great guns they are! – you have nothing but the men engaged in commerce, – sharp, clever, shrewd, well-informed fellows; they are deep in flax-seed, cunning in molasses, and not to be excelled in all that pertains to coffee, sassafras, cinnamon, gum, oakum, and elephants’ teeth. The place is a rich one, and the spirit of commerce is felt throughout it. Nothing is cared for, nothing is talked of, nothing alluded to, that does not bear upon this; and, in fact, if you haven’t a venture in Smyrna figs, Memel timber, Dutch dolls, or some such commodity, you are absolutely nothing, and might as well be at a ball with a cork leg, or go deaf to the opera.”

“Now, when I’ve told thus much, I leave you to guess what impression our triumphal entry into the city produced. Instead of the admiring crowds that awaited us elsewhere, as we marched gayly into quarters, here we saw nothing but grave, sober-looking, and, I confess it, intelligent-looking faces, that scrutinized our appearance closely enough, but evidently with no great approval and less enthusiasm. The men passed on hurriedly to the counting-houses and wharves; the women, with almost as little interest, peeped at us from the windows, and walked away again. Oh, how we wished for Galway, glorious Galway, that paradise of the infantry that lies west of the Shannon! Little we knew, as we ordered the band, in lively anticipation of the gayeties before us, to strike up ‘Payne’s first set,’ that, to the ears of the fair listeners in Ship Quay Street, the rumble of a sugar hogshead or the crank of a weighing crane were more delightful music.”

“By Jove!” interrupted Power, “you are quite right. Women are strongly imitative in their tastes. The lovely Italian, whose very costume is a natural following of a Raphael, is no more like the pretty Liverpool damsel than Genoa is to Glasnevin; and yet what the deuce have they, dear souls, with their feet upon a soft carpet and their eyes upon the pages of Scott or Byron, to do with all the cotton or dimity that ever was printed? But let us not repine; that very plastic character is our greatest blessing.”

“I’m not so sure that it always exists,” said the doctor, dubiously, as though his own experience pointed otherwise.

“Well, go ahead!” said the skipper, who evidently disliked the digression thus interrupting the adjutant’s story.

“Well, we marched along, looking right and left at the pretty faces – and there were plenty of them, too – that a momentary curiosity drew to the windows; but although we smiled and ogled and leered as only a newly arrived regiment can smile, ogle, or leer, by all that’s provoking we might as well have wasted our blandishments upon the Presbyterian meeting-house, that frowned upon us with its high-pitched roof and round windows.

“‘Droll people, these,’ said one; ‘Rayther rum ones,’ cried another; ‘The black north, by Jove!’ said a third: and so we went along to the barracks, somewhat displeased to think that, though the 18th were slow, they might have met their match.

“Disappointed, as we undoubtedly felt, at the little enthusiasm that marked our entrée, we still resolved to persist in our original plan, and accordingly, early the following morning, announced our intention of giving amateur theatricals. The mayor, who called upon our colonel, was the first to learn this, and received the information with pretty much the same kind of look the Archbishop of Canterbury might be supposed to assume if requested by a a friend to ride ‘a Derby.’ The incredulous expression of the poor man’s face, as he turned from one of us to the other, evidently canvassing in his mind whether we might not, by some special dispensation of Providence, be all insane, I shall never forget.

“His visit was a very short one; whether concluding that we were not quite safe company, or whether our notification was too much for his nerves, I know not.

“We were not to be balked, however. Our plans for gayety, long planned and conned over, were soon announced in all form; and though we made efforts almost super-human in the cause, our plays were performed to empty benches, our balls were unattended, our picnic invitations politely declined, and, in a word, all our advances treated with a cold and chilling politeness that plainly said, ‘We’ll none of you.’

“Each day brought some new discomfiture, and as we met at mess, instead of having, as heretofore, some prospect of pleasure and amusement to chat over, it was only to talk gloomily over our miserable failures, and lament the dreary quarters that our fates had doomed us to.

“Some months wore on in this fashion, and at length – what will not time do? – we began, by degrees, to forget our woes. Some of us took to late hours and brandy-and-water; others got sentimental, and wrote journals and novels and poetry; some made acquaintances among the townspeople, and out in to a quiet rubber to pass the evening; while another detachment, among which I was, got up a little love affair to while away the tedious hours, and cheat the lazy sun.

“I have already said something of my taste in beauty; now, Mrs. Boggs was exactly the style of woman I fancied. She was a widow; she had black eyes, – not your jet-black, sparkling, Dutch-doll eyes, that roll about and twinkle, but mean nothing; no, hers had a soft, subdued, downcast, pensive look about them, and were fully as melting a pair of orbs as any blue eyes you ever looked at.

“Then, she had a short upper lip, and sweet teeth; by Jove, they were pearls! and she showed them too, pretty often. Her figure was well-rounded, plump, and what the French call nette. To complete all, her instep and ankle were unexceptional; and lastly, her jointure was seven hundred pounds per annum, with a trifle of eight thousand more that the late lamented Boggs bequeathed, when, after four months of uninterrupted bliss, he left Derry for another world.

“When chance first threw me in the way of the fair widow, some casual coincidence of opinion happened to raise me in her estimation, and I soon afterwards received an invitation to a small evening party at her house, to which I alone of the regiment was asked.

“I shall not weary you with the details of my intimacy; it is enough that I tell you I fell desperately in love. I began by visiting twice or thrice a week, and in less than two months, spent every morning at her house, and rarely left it till the ‘Roast beef’ announced mess.

“I soon discovered the widow’s cue; she was serious. Now, I had conducted all manner of flirtatious in my previous life; timid young ladies, manly young ladies, musical, artistical, poetical, and hysterical, – bless you, I knew them all by heart; but never before had I to deal with a serious one, and a widow to boot. The case was a trying one. For some weeks it was all very up-hill work; all the red shot of warm affection I used to pour in on other occasions was of no use here. The language of love, in which I was no mean proficient, availed me not. Compliments and flattery, those rare skirmishers before the engagement, were denied me; and I verily think that a tender squeeze of the hand would have cost me my dismissal.

“‘How very slow, all this!’ thought I, as, at the end of two months siege, I still found myself seated in the trenches, and not a single breach in the fortress; ‘but, to be sure, it’s the way they have in the north, and one must be patient.’

“While thus I was in no very sanguine frame of mind as to my prospects, in reality my progress was very considerable. Having become a member of Mr. M’Phun’s congregation, I was gradually rising in the estimation of the widow and her friends, whom my constant attendance at meeting, and my very serious demeanor had so far impressed that very grave deliberation was held whether I should not be made an elder at the next brevet.

“If the widow Boggs had not been a very lovely and wealthy widow; had she not possessed the eyes, lips, hips, ankles, and jointure aforesaid, – I honestly avow that neither the charms of that sweet man Mr. M’Phun’s eloquence, nor even the flattering distinction in store for me, would have induced me to prolong my suit. However, I was not going to despair when in sight of land. The widow was evidently softened. A little time longer, and the most scrupulous moralist, the most rigid advocate for employing time wisely, could not have objected to my daily system of courtship. I was none of your sighing, dying, ogling, hand-squeezing, waist-pressing, oath-swearing, everlasting-adoring affairs, with an interchange of rings and lockets; not a bit of it. It was confoundedly like a controversial meeting at the Rotundo, and I myself had a far greater resemblance to Father Tom Maguire than a gay Lothario.

“After all, when mess-time came, when the ‘Roast beef’ played, and we assembled at dinner, and the soup and fish had gone round, with two glasses of sherry in, my spirits rallied, and a very jolly evening consoled me for all my fatigues and exertions, and supplied me with energy for the morrow; for, let me observe here, that I only made love before dinner. The evenings I reserved for myself, assuring Mrs. Boggs that my regimental duties required all my time after mess hour, in which I was perfectly correct: for at six we dined; at seven I opened the claret No. 1; at eight I had uncorked my second bottle; by half-past eight I was returning to the sherry; and at ten, punctual to the moment, I was repairing to my quarters on the back of my servant, Tim Daly, who had carried me safely for eight years, without a single mistake, as the fox-hunters say. This was a way we had in the – th. Every man was carried away from mess, some sooner, some later. I was always an early riser, and went betimes.

“Now, although I had very abundant proof, from circumstantial evidence, that I was nightly removed from the mess-room to my bed in the mode I mention, it would have puzzled me sorely to prove the fact in any direct way; inasmuch as by half-past nine, as the clock chimed, and Tim entered to take me, I was very innocent of all that was going on, and except a certain vague sense of regret at leaving the decanter, felt nothing whatever.

“It so chanced – what mere trifles are we ruled by in our destiny! – that just as my suit with the widow had assumed its most favorable footing, old General Hinks, that commanded the district, announced his coming over to inspect our regiment. Over he came accordingly, and to be sure, we had a day of it. We were paraded for six mortal hours; then we were marching and countermarching, moving into line, back again into column, now forming open column, then into square; till at last, we began to think that the old general was like the Flying Dutchman, and was probably condemned to keep on drilling us to the day of judgment. To be sure, he enlivened the proceeding to me by pronouncing the regiment the worst-drilled and appointed corps in the service, and the adjutant (me!) the stupidest dunderhead – these were his words – he had ever met with.

“‘Never mind,’ thought I; ‘a few days more, and it’s little I’ll care for the eighteen manoeuvres. It’s small trouble your eyes right or your left, shoulders forward, will give me. I’ll sell out, and with the Widow Boggs and seven hundred a year, – but no matter.’

“This confounded inspection lasted till half-past five in the afternoon; so that our mess was delayed a full hour in consequence, and it was past seven as we sat down to dinner. Our faces were grim enough as we met together at first; but what will not a good dinner and good wine do for the surliest party? By eight o’clock we began to feel somewhat more convivially disposed; and before nine, the decanters were performing a quick-step round the table, in a fashion very exhilarating and very jovial to look at.

“‘No flinching to-night,’ said the senior major. ‘We’ve had a severe day; let us also have a merry evening.’

“‘By Jove! Ormond,’ cried another, ‘we must not leave this to-night. Confound the old humbugs and their musty whist party; throw them over.’

“‘I say, Adjutant,’ said Forbes; addressing me, ‘you’ve nothing particular to say to the fair widow this evening? You’ll not bolt, I hope?’

“‘That he sha’n’t,’ said one near me; ‘he must make up for his absence to-morrow, for to-night we all stand fast.’

“‘Besides,’ said another, ‘she’s at meeting by this. Old – what-d’ye-call-him? – is at fourteenthly before now.’