“Pardon these details, gentlemen,” said Bob Burke, sighing, “but one always thinks of the first loves. Tom Moore says that ‘there’s nothing half so sweet in life as young love’s dram;’ and talking of that, if there’s anything left in the brandy-bottle, hand it over to me. Here’s to the days gone by; they will never come again. Dear Dosy, you and I had some fun together. I see her now with her red hair escaping from under her hat, in a pea-green habit, a stiff-cutting whip in her hand, licking it into Tom the Devil, a black horse, that would have carried a sixteen stoner over a six-foot wall, following Will Wrixon’s hounds at the rate of fifteen miles an hour, and singing out, ‘Go it, my trumps.’ These are the recollections that bring tears in a man’s eyes.”
There were none visible in Bob’s, but as he here finished his dram, it is perhaps a convenient opportunity for concluding a chapter.
CHAPTER II.
HOW ENSIGN BRADY WENT TO DRINK TEA WITH MISS
THEODOSIA MACNAMARA.
“The day of that hunt was the very day that led to my duel with Brady. He was a long, straddling, waddle-mouthed chap, who had no more notion of riding a hunt than a rhinoceros. He was mounted on a showy-enough-looking mare, which had been nerved by Bodolphus Bootiman, the horse-doctor, and though ‘a good ’un to look at, was a rum ’un to go;’ and before she was nerved, all the work had been taken out of her by long Lanty Philpot, who sold her to Brady after dinner for fifty pounds, she being not worth twenty in her best day, and Brady giving his bill at three months for the fifty. My friend the ensign was no judge of a horse, and the event showed that my cousin Lanty was no judge of a bill—not a cross of the fifty having been paid from that day to this; and it is out of the question now, it being long past the statute of limitations, to say nothing of Brady having since twice taken the benefit of the Act. So both parties jockeyed one another, having that pleasure which must do them instead of profit.
“She was a bay chestnut, and nothing would do Brady but he must run her at a little gap which Miss Dosy was going to clear, in order to show his gallantry and agility; and certainly I must do him the credit to say that he did get his mare on the gap, which was no small feat, but there she broke down, and off went Brady, neck and crop, into as fine a pool of stagnant green mud as you would ever wish to see. He was ducked regularly in it, and he came out, if not in the jacket, yet in the colours, of the Rifle Brigade, looking rueful enough at his misfortune, as you may suppose. But he had not much time to think of the figure he cut, for before he could well get up, who should come right slap over him but Miss Dosy herself upon Tom the Devil, having cleared the gap and a yard beyond the pool in fine style. Brady ducked, and escaped the horse, a little fresh daubing being of less consequence than the knocking out of his brains, if he had any; but he did not escape a smart rap from a stone which one of Tom’s heels flung back with such unlucky accuracy as to hit Brady right in the mouth, knocking out one of his eye-teeth (which, I do not recollect). Brady clapped his hand to his mouth, and bawled, as any man might do in such a case, so loud, that Miss Dosy checked Tom for a minute to turn round, and there she saw him making the most horrid faces in the world, his mouth streaming blood, and himself painted green from head to foot with as pretty a coat of shining slime as was to be found in the province of Munster. ‘That’s the gentleman you just leapt over, Miss Dosy,’ said I, for I had joined her, ‘and he seems to be in some confusion.’ ‘I am sorry,’ said she, ‘Bob, that I should have in any way offended him or any other gentleman, by leaping over him, but I can’t wait now. Take him my compliments, and tell him I should be happy to see him at tea at six o’clock this evening, in a different suit.’ Off she went, and I rode back with her message (by which means I was thrown out); and would you believe it, he had the ill manners to say ‘the h——;’ but I shall not repeat what he said. It was impolite to the last degree, not to say profane, but perhaps he may be somewhat excused under his peculiar circumstances. There is no knowing what even Job himself might have said, immediately after having been thrown off his horse into a green pool, with his eye-tooth knocked out, his mouth full of mud and blood, on being asked to a tea-party.
“He—Brady, not Job—went, nevertheless—for, on our return to Miss Dosy’s lodgings, we found a triangular note, beautifully perfumed, expressing his gratitude for her kind invitation, and telling her not to think of the slight accident which had occurred. How it happened, he added, he could not conceive, his mare never having broken down with him before—which was true enough, as that was the first day he ever mounted her—and she having been bought by himself at a sale of the Earl of Darlington’s horses last year, for two hundred guineas. She was a great favourite, he went on to say, with the Earl, who often rode her, and ran at Doncaster by the name of Miss Russell. All this latter part of the note was not quite so true, but then, it must be admitted, that when we talk about horses we are not tied down to be exact to a letter. If we were, God help Tattersall’s!
“To tea, accordingly, the ensign came at six, wiped clean, and in a different set-out altogether from what he appeared in on emerging from the ditch. He was, to make use of a phrase introduced from the ancient Latin into the modern Greek, togged up in the most approved style of his Majesty’s 48th foot. Bright was the scarlet of his coat—deep the blue of his facings.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Antony Harrison, here interrupting the speaker; “the 48th are not royals, and you ought to know that no regiment but those which are royal sport blue facings. I remember, once upon a time, in a coffee-shop, detecting a very smart fellow, who wrote some clever things in a Magazine published in Edinburgh by one Blackwood, under the character of a military man, not to be anything of the kind, by his talking about ensigns in the fusiliers—all the world knowing that in the fusiliers there are no ensigns, but in their place second lieutenants. Let me set you right there, Bob; the facings your friend Brady exhibited to the wondering gaze of the Mallow tea-table must have been buff—pale buff.”
“Buff, black, blue, brown, yellow, Pompadour, brick-dust, no matter what they were,” continued Burke, in nowise pleased by the interruption, “they were as bright as they could be made, and so was all the lace, and other traps which I shall not specify more minutely, as I am in presence of so sharp a critic. He was, in fact, in full dress—as you know is done in country quarters—and being not a bad plan and elevation of a man, looked well enough. Miss Dosy, I perceived, had not been perfectly ignorant of the rank and condition of the gentleman over whom she had leaped, for she was dressed in her purple satin body and white skirt, which she always put on when she wished to be irresistible, and her hair was suffered to flow in long ringlets down her fair neck—and, by Jupiter, it was fair as a swan’s, and as majestic too—and no mistake. Yes! Dosy Macnamara looked divine that evening.