“Adieu—dearest, dearest Lucy.”
We separated. A villanous whistle was perpetrated at a short distance. It was a herd-boy of my father’s—and as he passed me in the lane, I rewarded his melody with a thundering box, that changed “Nora Crina” into “a lament” that might have been heard a mile off.
That night, when I retired I found a letter on my table, and broke the seal. Lucy’s fair hand had indited the billet—and within was enclosed a lock of “nut-brown” hair, which Mr. Truefit of the Burlington Arcade (I forget the number) would have knelt to and worshipped incontinently.
“Lucy—my loved Lucy.” I I exclaimed; “little did I fancy, that from thee love’s influence was to be learned for the first time.—The first?—Easy—Lieutenant Fitzmaurice, Saints and angels! ’tis the festival of the blessed Agatha—the very evening you promised, a year ago, to return to——. Ah! Pat—Pat—What have you to say for yourself?”
What a special-pleader love makes man! In ten minutes, I had ascertained to my own perfect satisfaction, that in Agatha’s case I had jumbled up gratitude with friendship, merely made a mistake, and called the mixture by a wrong name. It was quite certain that ny feeling for Agatha was only brotherly after all—and that night the secret drawer of of’ writing-ease contained a second treasure; for the jet-black tress was safely deposited beside the brown one.
This my third liason was short, but very ardent, while it lasted. Mr. Delmer discovered that we met—instituted inquiries—and learned the secret of our love. Well aware that an alliance with one whose only dower was innocence and beauty, would be objectionable to a family aristocratic in every feeling like mine, he delicately hinted the state of affairs to Sir Edward Fitzmaurice, and removed his daughter to the house of a distant relative. I had written for renewed leave of absence, as the original term had expired—and to my surprise received a refusal, point blank, from Colonel Markham, accompanied with a peremptory order to rejoin. The truth was, my loving father had written privately to the commander, and told him that I meditated matrimony with the daughter of a curate; and to that holy estate, the Colonel being an inveterate enemy, he readily became a consenting party to disturb our course of love.
For a week after I rejoined at Gort, I rejected invitations to tea, left the mess sober, and refused to be comforted. By night, Lucy’s ringlet lay underneath my pillow—and by day, rested on a breast within which, as I religiously believed, the image of the loved one was enshrined to eternity. This extraordinary change on my part, excited a general inquiry—some opining that I had rats in the garret, and would require a gentle restraint and antiphlogistic regimen—while others asserted that I was about to turn Methodist, and were anxious to know whether I had attended field preachings, or been heard to swear since my return. Still my melancholy remained unabated, and I levanted before the third pint of wine—a proceeding in a corps of sharp drinkers, considered totally unregimental. Various were the surmises as to the ruinous results which this unhappy alteration in my habits must occasion. The assistant-surgeon suspected I might drop into a decline; and the red-nosed major added, that I would drop into Pandemonium afterwards.
At this period an event occurred that formed another epoch in my history. The captain of grenadiers, a pleasant gentleman, remarkable for taciturnity and an honesty of purpose that would warrant your drinking with him in the dark, in retiring from the mess-room to his lodgings in the town, with three bottles of Page’s port under his belt and in Christian charity with all men, forgetting that an open cellar lay directly in his route, popped in head foremost, and was found an hour afterwards by the relief, dead as Julius Cæsar. By this deplorable event I got the step and the company together.
The day after the accident, Captain O’Boyle came into my room to offer his congratulations. He lamented the loss the regiment had sustained. It would be many a day before the fellow of the departed could be found—a man who never bothered people with argument, confined himself to “yes and no,” and would as soon forge a bill, as pass the bottle without filling honestly. However, the Lord’s will be done! It would have been all the better if he had taken the senior major. He, Peter O’Boyle, would have got the step, and the removal of a toast-and-water man would have been a happy deliverance. “Now I think of it, Pat,” he continued, “I had a long chat with Miss Maginnis about you, at that tea party with the French name, which her mother gave the night before Bob Purcel broke his neck. D———d dangerous to lewe cellars open with a drinking regiment in town, and men obliged to stagger home after dinner to their cribs. Well, you must know that Flora Maginnis is “a regular clipper.” You wouldn’t match her in the province—takes a country side as the Lord has made it—never cranes a fence—thinks no more of four-feet, coped and dashed, than you would—sweet girl—no humbug about her—worst of it, no fortune—old Denis not worth a ghost—six hundred a-year—spends twelve. Well, as I was saying—‘O’Boyle,’ says she, ‘what the devil sort of a spoon is that chap Fitzmaurice?’”
“Heavens and earth!” I mentally soliloquized, “what would my gentle Lucy say, to hear her beloved Pat denominated ‘a devil of a spoon!’”