“What! is he then leaving England?”
“He is ordered to the Peninsula, and sails on Thursday evening.”
“Heaven send him better luck than his father! God knows whether you and I shall ever meet again!” she said, addressing me. “May the best fortunes of a soldier be yours! Farewell! I saw your first and your twentieth, and may your next be a happier anniversary than either!”
She wrung my hand. I left the room, but Mr. Hartley remained, and a quarter of an hour passed before he joined me in the street. We walked to the hotel, and there the fosterer and his companion were in waiting.
“Mark, I am ordered off. What can I do for you before I leave England?” I said, addressing the former.
Mr. O’Toole merely answered with a sigh “hot as a furnace.”
“Where shall I find you on my return? and how will you dispose of yourself in the mean time?”
“Dispose of myself?” returned the fosterer, like an echo. “Why, am I not also, ready for the Peninsula: Arrah! what would they say at Killucan, if you went to the wars, Master Hector, and I remained at home? Mona-sin-dioul, if I went back, the very dogs would not acknowledge me. But, love apart, where can I put in a happier twelvemonth? Have I not listened, till my heart beat again, to the old colonel’s talking to the priest about the time when he stormed that village in the Low Countries where he lost his arm. Often have I fancied that I saw him bursting through the streets at the head of his noble grenadiers, scattering the French column like a flock of sheep, while the shout of ‘Liberty’ was answered by a thundering ‘Faugh a ballagh!’ It would be cruel, Hector, to leave me behind you—I will be no burden to you.”
He placed a little packet in my hand; and turning to the window, the poor fosterer sentimentalized in secret, while I perused a letter he had received after we had separated at the inquest. With the course of Mark Antony’s love adventures, that gentle affair with Miss Biddy O’Dwyer excepted, I was altogether ignorant—and I felt interest in the fosterer’s epistle. I read it accordingly; and, could woman rise in the estimation of one who loved as I did, that artless letter would have raised her.
“You have followed me to England. In that you have violated our agreement; but my heart offers a ready apology for the offence. I told you that twelve months must pass before we met again; and in that resolution I am confirmed. My brother has wildly ventured to the coast of Spain, on secret service connected with some of the guerilla chiefs in Arragon; and, in the mean time, I am resident in the family of the village clergyman. Mark, I am happy, because I am once more respectable. Let me remain until the year elapses under this good man’s dwelling—and then that wanderer whom you protected in her hour of destitution, will prove to you that she has not forgotten her deliverer.