“Noble fellows! God bless ’em!” they cried, and shed tears and waved their pocket-handkerchiefs. They slopped over with patriotic sentiments as the champagne slopped over their glasses; while they told each other how soon those steadily-marching legs would bring their owners back. The whole thing was extravagantly simple. The British Army had but to proceed to the East—quite an enviable trip now the spring-time was approaching—show itself—conquer by the mere show; and return to be thanked and praised.
They were to return so soon, and the climate of Eastern Europe was believed, even in March, to be so warm and genial, that nothing in the way of extra covering had been issued to England’s darling sons. Sire my Friend, had equipped the French Army with a complete outfit of serviceable winter clothing. Stout and easy-fitting boots protected its feet, great-coats of heavy waterproofed material were supplied it against the nip of cold or the exigencies of wet weather. Even the Infidel had purchased for his troops, fifty thousand ample capotes of leather lined with sheepskin; but Britannia relied exclusively upon the glow of martial ardor for the generation and preservation of caloric. Hence it came about that whole battalions of the legs that were presently to march away, marched in the trousers of white duck, in which they had returned from service in Bermuda, China, and the East Indies. And the rest in a shoddy summer cloth of dirty bluish gray.
It is odd how universal was that conviction that the Expedition to the East was to be nothing beyond a flying visit. When the cheering broke out at the Officers’ Mess House—the Rathkeale Ragamuffins being at that moment quartered at the Victoria Barracks, Dublin; my Aunt Julietta,—who dined with the children at one o’clock, and frugally supped upon cold mutton and the remains of the rice-pudding or custard in the petrified or gelid state, whilst her Golightly was enjoying his seven courses, cheese, and dessert in the society of his peers—my Aunt, learning that the dreaded summons had come, greeted the reappearance of her lord with an outburst of hysterical emotion. Upon which Captain Goliath, whom you may suppose well primed with Mess Port, and subsequent whisky-toddy; jested at her wifely tears, and made light of her tender terrors.
“I tell ye there’s no danger!—they’ll simply send us out and order us back again. We’ll never get a shass at them—more’s the pity!—much less a prod. They’re cowards, rank cowards! They’ll turn tail and run at the first British cheer we’re after giving them. We’re simply being sent out—do you hear me?—to be sent back again. Sure, now, when ye married me, Juley, me own darling!—you didn’t suppose ye were taking anything but a soldier, did ye now? Killed is it? Killed!... Nonsense, ma’am!—there’ll be no killin’ at all, at all! Compose yourself, Mrs. McCreedy—for your own sake and the baby’s! Don’t you hear me saying that they’ll simply send——Will You Be Quiet And Listen to What I’m Telling You!” bellowed Captain Goliath, at the full pitch of a remarkably powerful pair of lungs.
But my Aunt Julietta, unwilling to lose so favorable an opportunity, here went into hysterics after the latest recipe published in the pages of The Ladies’ Mentor, and screamed, cried, and laughed so vigorously, that—had not the alarmed and flustered Captain seized and applied the Cayenne pepper-castor in mistake for my Aunt’s silver vinaigrette of Red Lavender—unfavorable results to the expected olive-branch of the McCreedy stem might have supervened.
But my Aunt—in paroxysms of sneezing—recovered sufficiently to scold her clumsy hero; and the Captain departed; to return towards the small-hours in a condition which his military body-servant erroneously described as “fresh.”
Ah, poor gentlewoman! how my Aunt winced at the coarse pleasantries of the man, and the hiccupping genialities of the master! How many times since she pledged to the idol of her soul the fondest vows, etc., had not that idol proved himself a mere lump of sodden, heavy clay.
She dismissed Private Fahy, ungratified in the wish—audibly expressed—for a hair of the dog that had bit the Captain—and herself undressed her prone and wallowing warrior; got him to bed, and while he snored, knelt beside the pillow his hoggishness defiled, and prayed to Heaven—pure, simple, loving creature!—that War might spare him to his wife and children, for many a long year to come!...
For the rest she was as “callum as you please, and as brave as a liness” to quote the Captain; when he gave her his parting hug on Kingstown Harbor Quay.