“Why, my God! ma’am, what do you mean? You are not gone mad, as well as my wife.”
“Really, Mr. Fitz.” said Mrs. F. “this is carrying the joke too far. Take your unfortunate victim—as I suppose she is such—home to her parents, and prepare to accompany me to the barrack; and if there be law and justice in—”
“Well! may the Lord in his mercy preserve my senses, or you will both drive me clean mad.”
“Oh, dear! oh, dear!” sobbed the young lady, while Mrs. Fitzgerald continued to upbraid at the top of her voice, heedless of the disclaimers and protestations of innocence poured out with the eloquence of despair, by the poor doctor. Matters were in this state, when a man dressed in a fustian jacket, like a groom, drove up to the side of the road, in a tax-cart; he immediately got down, and tearing open the door of the doctor’s chaise, lifted out the young lady, and deposited her safely in his own conveyance, merely adding—
“I say, master, you’re in luck this morning, that Mr. William took the lower road; for if he had come up with you instead of me, he’d blow the roof off your scull, that’s all.”
While these highly satisfactory words were being addressed to poor Fitz. Mrs. Fitzgerald had removed from her carriage to that of her husband, perhaps preferring four horses to two; or perhaps she had still some unexplained views of the transaction, which might as well be told on the road homeward.
Whatever might have been the nature of Mrs. F.’s dissertation, nothing is known. The chaise containing these turtle doves arrived late at night at Kilkenny, and Fitz. was installed safely in his quarters before any one knew of his having come back. The following morning he was reported ill; and for three weeks he was but once seen, and at that time only at his window, with a flannel night-cap on his head, looking particularly pale, and rather dark under one eye.
As for Curzon—the last thing known of him that luckless morning, was his hiring a post-chaise for the Royal Oak, from whence he posted to Dublin, and hastened on to England. In a few days we learned that the adjutant had exchanged into a regiment in Canada; and to this hour there are not three men in the —th who know the real secret of that morning’s misadventures.
CHAPTER XIX.
DETACHMENT DUTY—AN ASSIZE TOWN.
As there appeared to be but little prospect of poor Fitzgerald ever requiring any explanation from me as to the events of that morning, for he feared to venture from his room, lest he might be recognised and prosecuted for abduction, I thought it better to keep my own secret also; and it was therefore with a feeling of any thing but regret, that I received an order which, under other circumstances, would have rendered me miserable—to march on detachment duty. To any one at all conversant with the life we lead in the army, I need not say how unpleasant such a change usually is. To surrender your capital mess, with all its well-appointed equipments—your jovial brother officers—hourly flirtations with the whole female population—never a deficient one in a garrison town—not to speak of your matches at trotting, coursing, and pigeon-shooting, and a hundred other delectable modes of getting over the ground through life, till it please your ungrateful country and the Horse Guards to make you a major-general—to surrender all these, I say, for the noise, dust, and damp disagreeables of a country inn, with bacon to eat, whiskey to drink, and the priest, or the constabulary chief, to get drunk with—I speak of Ireland here—and your only affair, par amours, being the occasional ogling of the apothecary’s daughter opposite, as often as she visits the shop, in the soi disant occupation of measuring out garden seeds and senna. These are indeed, the exchanges with a difference, for which there is no compensation; and, for my own part, I never went upon such duty, that I did not exclaim with the honest Irishman, when the mail went over him, “Oh, Lord! what is this for?”—firmly believing that in the earthly purgatory of such duties, I was reaping the heavy retribution attendant on past offences.