The same day the General dined at the officers’ mess, when Tom was sent for after dinner.
“Here, Plunket, I have sent for you to give us a toast,” observed Sir Sydney, as he handed him a glass of wine.
“Then, Sir, here’s to the immortal memory of the poor fellows who fell in the Peninsula, Sir,” said Tom.
The toast was drunk by all with much solemnity, when Tom was dismissed with a present from Sir Sydney. The following day Tom was made a corporal, and shortly afterwards, through the medium, I believe, of Sir Sydney, went up and passed the pension board at Kilmainham, which granted him a shilling a-day.
But I had forgotten to mention, in its place, an event common in man’s life—I mean his marriage. Shortly after the battle of Waterloo, Tom had wedded a lady remarkable for being deficient in one essential to beauty—she actually had no face, or, at all events, was so defaced, it amounted to the same thing. This slight flaw in the beauty of Tom’s wife, who
Had gallantly follow’d the camp through the war,
arose from the bursting of an ammunition-waggon at Quatre Bras, near to which the lady stood, and by which her countenance was rendered a blue, shapeless, noseless mass. This event was duly commemorated by the government, who allowed the heroine a shilling a-day pension, in allusion to which Tom used facetiously to say—“It was an ill blowing up of powder that blew nobody good.”
The story of Tom Plunket, already narrated at greater length than I had intended, draws fast to a close. Imbued with roving inclinations, partly owing to his nature, and more perhaps to his profession, for nothing more unsettles a man than the ever-changing chequered course of a soldier’s life, he at one time determined to become a settler in Canada, and, accordingly, accepted the offer held out by government to all pensioners, of allowing them so much land, and giving them four years’ pay for their pensions. Plunket, ever eager for the handling of cash, got two years’ pay down here, and started off with some two or three hundred others to try their fortune. This proved to be a very miserable one: Tom was not a man to rusticate on the other side of the Atlantic amid privations, and with the recollection of old England fresh in his mind.
Before a year had elapsed, he returned to England with his wife, and, by way of apology to his friends, stated his grant of land was so wild and swampy that it made him quite melancholy, looking at it in a morning out of the chinks of a wretched log hut he had managed to erect upon his estate. He returned home swearing loudly against forest-land, a swampy soil, and a bad climate, having, of course, duly forfeited his own pension for ever.
The last time I saw Tom Plunket was in Burton Crescent, most picturesquely habited, and selling matches. I did not disdain to speak to an old comrade who had been less fortunate in “life’s march” than myself. I asked him how he got on, when with one of his usual cheerful smiles he informed me, that the match-selling business kept him on his legs.