'I know deuced well, my dear fellow, what it is to be under orders for foreign service, having once had the misfortune to be in the Line,' said he, 'and to have only five shillings and threepence per diem, to find myself in messing, clothing, servant and servant's livery, camp-equipage, and everything. Snobleigh of ours—languid as ever—has lost a devil of a bet on the Oaks, and has rejoined the Guards at Windsor. Fanny, my sister, is as Lola Montes—looking as ever. Sir Horace—you asked for Sir Horace—he is quite well and hearty; busy about his new shooting-box in Glen Ora; and Laura—oh Laura is more charming than ever, and full of anticipated happiness.'
As he said this, he stroked his black moustache, and gave me one of the most knowing little winks; and it scorned to convey so much, though I knew not what, that pique fettered my tongue, and a vague sentiment of jealousy filled my heart.
'He is a fine fellow Clavering,' said the colonel, in a low voice, to me;—'glad to see you know him.'
'Ah—yes—he is quite an old friend,' I replied, while fixing my gaze on a diamond-and-pearl ring he wore on the engaged finger, and which I recognized to have been worn by Laura.
'I knew his brother well—poor Bob Clavering, of the 5th—the Northumberland Fusileers,' said Brevet-Major Duncan Catanagh, the captain of our Grenadiers, a dark-visaged, rough, and black-bearded soldier; 'and I had the narrowest escape in the world on the day he was killed.'
'How?' asked several.
'We were both wounded in the action of Maheidpoor, in the Mahratta war, and, with six others, were being conveyed from the field next day in a waggon: the sun was blazing hot—ay, hot as fire! Our wounds were undressed; we were half dead of thirst, and the jolting of the vehicle increased our sufferings to such a degree that I left it, resolving to die quietly by the road side rather than endure such misery longer. The waggon was then being drawn along a road which wound close to the abrupt brow of a tremendous precipice, and in one minute after I stepped out, the horses became restive, plunged and reared—the waggon went backward, and toppled over the rocks into the valley, three hundred feet below, where the horses, wheels, and framework, with my five miserable companions, were dashed to pieces! I thought little of my escape then—but it has often come painfully before me since. Tom Clavering came into a handsome fortune by that little malheur, and at once exchanged from the 5th to the Grenadier Guards.'
'And the Mahrattas?' said Belton.
'Oh, they would soon have finished me,' said Catanagh, 'but for the exertions of a cunning old Brahmin, who saved my life, and smuggled me to Murray Mac Gregor's head-quarters, when he held Poonah with only the Scots Royals against all the thousands of Ras Holkar.'
'Poonah,' said the old colonel, laughing, 'that was where you had such a long flirtation with a pretty widow, whose husband, a lieutenant of the 5th, had been blown from the mouth of a mortar by the Mahrattas—eh?'