“A very considerable objection,” answered I; “first, because I never fight without knowing why; and secondly, because my brother is not in the habit of fighting by proxy.”
“Not know why?” roared the captain. “There! read that! Oh! I wish you were hale and whole, cornet, that I might have the pleasure of a crack with you!”
I lost no time in reading the letter; and at once perceived that my unlucky relative had, in the flurry of his love, misdirected each of the two epistles just now spoken of, and consequently informed “the divine Alicia” that he could hold no further intercourse with her, &c.
A fit of convulsive laughter involuntarily seized me, which nothing could restrain; and the captain meanwhile, nearly bursting with rage, reinvited me to be shot at. My brother stood all the time like a ghost, in more pain, and almost in as great a passion as our visitor. He was unable to articulate; and the pillows fixed under each arm rendered him one of the most grotesque figures that a painter could fancy.
When I recovered the power of speaking (which was not speedily), I desired Tennyson to follow me to another room: he took up his pistol-case, and expecting I was about to indulge him with a crack or two, seemed somewhat easier in mind and temper. I at once explained to him the curious mistake, and without the least hesitation the captain burst into a much stronger paroxysm of laughter than I had just escaped from. Never did any officer in the king’s service enjoy a victory more than Captain Edwards did this strange blunder. It was quite to his taste, and on our proposing to make the invalid as happy as exhaustion and fractures would admit of, a new scene, equally unexpected, but of more serious consequences, turned up.
A ruddy, active and handsome country girl came to the door, and sprang with rapidity from a pillion on which she had been riding behind a good-looking rustic lad. Our landlady greeted her new customer with her usual urbanity. “You’re welcome to these parts, miss,” said Mrs. Mahony: “you stop to-night—to be sure you do:—what do you choose, miss?—Clean out the settle-bed parlour:—the chickens and rashers, miss, are capital, so they are.—Gassoon, do run and howld the lady’s beast; go, avourneen, carry him in and wipe him well—do you hear? and throw a wisp of hay before the poor brute. You rode hard, miss, so you did!”
“Oh! where’s the cornet?” cried the impatient maiden, totally disregarding Mrs. Mahony: for it was Jenny —— herself, who had come speedily from Philipstown to forestall the happy moments which my bewildered brother had, in his letter to his Alicia, so delightfully anticipated. Nothing could restrain her impatience; she burst into the little parlour full on the astounded invalid, who was still standing bolt upright, like a statue, in the very position wherein we had left him. His loving Jenny, however, unconscious that his collarbones had been disunited, rushed into his arms with furious affection. “Oh! my dearest Jack!” cried she, “we never part no more! no, never—never!” and tight, indeed, was the embrace wherewith the happy Jenny now encircled the astonished cornet; but, alas! down came one of the pillows! the arm, of course, closed; and one half of the left collar-bone being as ignorant as its owner of the cause of so obstreperous an embrace, and, wishing as it were to see what matter was going forward in the world, instantly divorced itself from the other half, and thrusting its ivory end through the flesh, skin, and integuments (which had obstructed its egress), quickly appeared peeping through the lover’s shirt.
The unfortunate inamorato could stand these accumulated shocks no longer, and sank upon the feather-bed in a state of equal astonishment and exhaustion, groaning pitiously.
Here I must again apply to the imagination of my reader for a true picture of the succeeding scene. Fielding alone could render a detail palatable; the surgeons were once more sent for to reset the collar: an energetic kiss, which his Jenny had imprinted on the cornet’s nose, again somewhat disturbed its new position, and conferred a pain so acute, as to excite exclamations, by no means gentle in their nature, from the unresisting sufferer.
Suffice it to say, Jenny was with much difficulty at length forced away from her Jack, if not in a dead faint, at least in something extremely like one. An éclaircissement took place so soon as she came round; and the compromise, before hinted at, was ultimately effected.