“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.
CHAPTER XLI
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, Hibernicè speaking, 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!