Don’ Juan.
A quarter of an hour elapsed before the confusion my sudden entrance into the drawing-room of Bromley Park occasioned the inmates, had entirely subsided. I ran briefly over the narrative of my capture and escape—accounted for the non-appearance of the fosterer—was assured, notwithstanding wounds and “durance vile,” that I looked particularly healthy—and in due course returned, as in duty bound, a shower of compliment. The Colonel was particularly anxious to know why a lodgment was attempted on the breach, without battering down the defences; and in support of his opinion, made some extensive quotations from Vauban and Carnot. He also wished to inquire, why the false alarm upon the land-side, when the globe of compression was fired with such success, had not been turned, like the feint of the third division at Badajoz, into a real attack? Mr. Clifford asked the exact date to which my last advices from England had reached me, that he should take up his details therefrom. My mother was solicitous in ascertaining how often Mark Antony had attended mass; and was rather anxious to find out whether the fosterer had fasted upon Fridays, and figured frequently at confession. Poor Isadora’s were whispered queries, and more readily and willingly replied to:—“Had I really thought of her?” and “Were the ladies of the Peninsula so handsome as they had been represented?” The answer to the first was an ardent affirmation, and to the second I gave a faithful assent—for the finest features of Isadora’s beauty were decidedly Spanish.
The entrance of two former acquaintances, Dominique and my loving countryman, the ratcatcher, induced the ladies to withdraw, and retire to their respective apartments. From the faithful negro I received an ardent welcome; and the Captain was graciously pleased to express his satisfaction at my return. Indeed, the outer man of the latter was so changed for the better, that I might have passed him on the road and not recognised my former ally. The eccentric habiliments in which he had migrated from “the far-west,” had given place to the smart costume of an English game-keeper; and as the Captain was a stout, careless-looking fellow, no wonder he had found fwour in the widow’s sight, and had been pronounced by that experienced lady, “a nice man.”
After Dominique’s congratulations, and Shemas Rhua’s “ceade fealtagh” had been duly delivered, the latter, in sentences equally compounded of English and Irish, the ratcatcher announced himself to my uncle, as the bearer of important intelligence. He had been taking a turn round the park, he said, after night-fall, with the gun under his arm, on the look-out for poachers, and in the course of his rambles had dropped into “the George:” What occurred there he briefly detailed, with the omission of all love-passages between himself and the fair widow, and then he thus proceeded with his narrative:—
“I followed the sound of the horse’s feet. When the rider reached the second gate in the lane, he dismounted, joined the other villains, and all three walked forward towards the broken palings, while I slipped quietly through the wicket, and, knowing my path well, was at the opening in the fence before they reached it. Only two of them came in, for the little fellow remained outside with the horse. They went along, trampling on broken boughs as they groped their road, while I kept the grass under my foot, and dodged them without being overheard. They made directly for the house—and when they turned by the clump of ever-greens, I ran round by the other side and hid behind a holly. I saw them steal to the window of this room, and look in for at least five minutes. They then fell back close to the bush that sheltered me.
“‘You’re certain you know the man?’ says the dacent dressed fellow to the other thief.
“‘To be sure I do,’ was the answer—‘he has a pair of arms, and the other cove but one.’
“‘You see how easily it can be done. You can shoot him from the outside, and be safe on the high road before any body could give an alarm.’
“‘The job’s plain enough,’ said the other.
“‘And the moment it’s done, mind that you be off at once to London—and for your lives don’t stop to drink on the way. Attend to this—avoid public houses—and all trace of you is lost.’