The inactivity of our present life weighed also heavily upon me. The stirring events of a campaign—the march, the bivouac, the picket—call forth a certain physical exertion that never fails to react upon the torpid mind.
Forgetting all around me, I thought of home; I thought of those whose hearts I felt were now turning towards me, and considered within myself how I could have exchanged the home, the days of peaceful happiness there, for the life of misery and disappointment I now endured.
A brooding melancholy gained daily more and more upon me. A wish, to return to Ireland, a vague and indistinct feeling that my career was not destined for aught of great and good crept upon me, and I longed to sink into oblivion, forgotten and forgot.
I record this painful feeling here, while it is still a painful memory, as one of the dark shadows that cross the bright sky of our happiest days.
Happy, indeed, are they, as we look back to them and remember the times we have pronounced ourselves “the most miserable of mankind.” This, somehow, is a confession we never make later on in life, when real troubles and true afflictions assail us. Whether we call in more philosophy to our aid, or that our senses become less acute and discerning, I’m sure I know not.
As for me, I confess by far the greater portion of my sorrows seemed to come in that budding period of existence when life is ever fairest and most captivating. Not, perhaps, that the fact was really so, but the spoiled and humored child, whose caprices were a law, felt heavily the threatening difficulties of his first voyage; while as he continued to sail over the ocean of life, he braved the storm and the squall, and felt only gratitude for the favoring breeze that wafted him upon his course.
What an admirable remedy for misanthropy is the being placed in a subordinate condition in life! Had I, at the period that I write, been Sir Arthur Wellesley; had I even been Marshal Beresford,—to all certainty I’d have played the very devil with his Majesty’s forces; I’d have brought my rascals to where they’d have been well-peppered, that’s certain.
But as, luckily for the sake of humanity in general and the well-being of the service in particular, I was merely Lieutenant O’Malley, 14th Light Dragoons, the case was very different. With what heavy censure did I condemn the commander of the forces in my own mind for his want of daring and enterprise! Whole nights did I pass in endeavoring to account for his inactivity and lethargy. Why he did not seriatim fall upon Soult, Ney, and Victor, annihilate the French forces, and sack Madrid, I looked upon as little less than a riddle; and yet there he waited, drilling, exercising, and foraging, as if he were at Hounslow. Now most fortunately here again I was not Sir Arthur.
Something in this frame of mind, I was taking one evening a solitary ride some miles from the camp. Without noticing the circumstance, I had entered a little mountain tract, when, the ground being broken and uneven, I dismounted and proceeded a-foot, with the bridle within my arm. I had not gone far when the clatter of a horse’s hoofs came rapidly towards me, and though there was something startling in the pace over such a piece of road, I never lifted my eyes as the horseman came up, but continued my slow progress onwards, my head sunk upon my bosom.
“Hallo, sir!” cried a sharp voice, whose tones seemed, somehow, not heard for the first time. I looked up, saw a slight figure closely buttoned up in a blue horseman’s cloak, the collar of which almost entirely hid his features; he wore a plain, cocked hat without a feather, and was mounted upon a sharp, wiry-looking hack.