[15] In Ireland the buttermilk is brought into the towns in the churn, fastened on a common car.
[16] A cant term for buttermilk.
CHAPTER IV.
COLONEL LLOYD.
About three months after our arrival, we were sitting by the barrack-room fire one night, talking of our campaigns, a subject which was deeply interesting to us all.
‘Here we are,’ said Dennis, ‘round a good fire in the heart of Paddy’s land; last year at this time we were lying on the Pyrenees, starving alive, with the tents blowing down about our ears. But we had then what would make us forget every thing else—we had Colonel Lloyd commanding us—God rest his soul! he was too good to live long. Do you think his friends will not bring home his remains? Upon my soul, if I had the means, if I would not travel every foot to the heights of Zara, and bring them to Ireland; I am sure he would rest easier in his own native place.’
‘Why are you so anxious about his body,’ said I, ‘when your creed forbids you to believe his soul safe—Colonel Lloyd was a heretic, you know.’
‘Och, bother!’ said Dennis, ‘all the priests in Christendom would not make me believe that. Troth, if he isn’t in heaven, deuce a one of themselves are there; and if I thought he would not get there because he was a Protestant, I would deny my religion for ever.’
My comrades continued to talk of his goodness, for it was a theme they never tired of, but I was abstracted. To-morrow, thought I, it is just a twelvemonth since he closed his gallant career. Never will I forget that day. We turned out about two o’clock in the morning to storm the French intrenchments; as was his usual custom, he was on the ground before the regiment formed, mounted on his gray horse, which had carried him in many engagements. On reaching the foot of the hill on which we were encamped, we halted and waited the signal gun to advance. Daylight had broke, and the eastern clouds were tinged with that glorious colour which no painter can copy or no tongue describe. The French were in our view, and, ‘like greyhounds on the slip,’ we were waiting the signal to begin the fight, with that fearful anxiety which is more intolerable to bear than the greatest danger, and to which action is relief. Colonel Lloyd was at our head, with his face turned towards us, lighted up with its usual benignity and confidence. He looked on us as if he had said, I see you are all devoted to me; and the high resolutions he was forming on this conviction could be seen working in his countenance; his eye was ‘wildly spiritually bright,’ and the reflection of the gorgeous sky beaming on his fine features, gave them an expression almost superhuman. I am sure there was not a man in the regiment who could not have died for him, or with him, at that moment. A few minutes after, and the battle raged from right to left of the British line. His bravery exceeded all encomium, but it was the ‘last of his fields;’ he met his death-shot in ascending to the attack of a redoubt in the last line of entrenchments. He lived only a few minutes, and the only words he uttered were,—‘I am dying, I am dying, I am dying!’—but his feelings might, with truth, have been portrayed thus:—‘I perish in the noon of my fame; I have bought honour and distinction with my blood, but when they are within my grasp, death, with his cold hand, intercepts them, and cuts me off from the world for ever. “O Glory! thou art an unreal good.”’ Mingled with these reflections came, no doubt, thoughts of kindred and friends, whose face he was doomed never to behold; but the scene soon closed, and all that remained of the young and gifted Lloyd, was the inanimate mould which had enshrined a soul as generous and brave ‘as e’er burst its mortal control.’
My praise of Colonel Lloyd may appear, to some, hyperbolical; but I have no end to serve—he is himself gone, and his relations, if he have any living, I know nothing about. In giving vent to my feelings in portraying his character, I am sensible I only give a faithful transcript of those of my comrades who then composed the corps, and whose devotion to his memory proves how susceptible soldiers are of feelings of love and gratitude to those who treat them as they ought to be treated—with kindness.