Kitabı oku: «Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2», sayfa 27
CHAPTER XLVI
NEW VIEWS
When I found myself the next morning at home, I could not help ruminating over the strange adventures of the preceding day, and felt a kind of self-reproach at the frigid manner in which I had hitherto treated all the Blake advances, contrasting so ill for me with the unaffected warmth and kind good-nature of their reception. Never alluding, even by accident, to my late estrangement; never, by a chance speech, indicating that they felt any soreness for the past, – they talked away about the gossip of the country: its feuds, its dinners, its assizes, its balls, its garrisons, – all the varied subjects of country life were gayly and laughingly discussed; and when, as I entered my own silent and deserted home, and contrasted its look of melancholy and gloom with the gay and merry scene I so lately parted from, when my echoing steps reverberated along the flagged hall, – I thought of the happy family picture I left behind me, and could not help avowing to myself that the goods of fortune I possessed were but ill dispensed, when, in the midst of every means and appliance for comfort and happiness, I lived a solitary man, companionless and alone.
I arose from breakfast a hundred times, – now walking impatiently towards the window, now strolling into the drawing-room. Around, on every side, lay scattered the prints and drawings, as Baby had thrown them carelessly upon the floor; her handkerchief was also there. I took it up; I know not why, – some lurking leaven of old romance perhaps suggested it, – but I hoped it might prove of delicate texture, and bespeaking that lady-like coquetry which so pleasantly associates with the sex in our minds. Alas, no! Nothing could be more palpably the opposite: torn, and with a knot – some hint to memory – upon one corner, it was no aid to my careering fancy. And yet – and yet, what a handsome girl she is; how finely, how delicately formed that Greek outline of forehead and brow; how transparently soft that downy pink upon her cheek! With what varied expression those eyes can beam! – ay, that they can: but, confound it, there’s this fault, their very archness, their sly malice, will be interpreted by the ill-judging world to any but the real motive. “How like a flirt!” will one say. “How impertinent! How ill-bred!” The conventional stare of cold, patched, and painted beauty, upon whose unblushing cheek no stray tinge of modesty has wandered, will be tolerated, even admired; while the artless beamings of the soul upon the face of rural loveliness will be condemned without appeal.
Such a girl may a man marry who destines his days to the wild west; but woe unto him! – woe unto him, should he migrate among the more civilized and less charitable coteries of our neighbors!
“Ah, here are the papers, and I was forgetting. Let me see – ‘Bayonne’ – ay, ‘march of the troops – Sixth Corps.’ What can that be without? I say, Mike, who is cantering along the avenue?”
“It’s me, sir. I’m training the brown filly for Miss Mary, as your honor bid me last night.”
“Ah, very true. Does she go quietly?”
“Like a lamb, sir; barrin’ she does give a kick now and then at the sheet, when it bangs against her legs.”
“Am I to go over with the books now, sir?” said a wild-looking shockhead appearing within the door.
“Yes, take them over, with my compliments; and say I hope Miss Mary Blake has caught no cold.”
“You were speaking about a habit and hat, sir?” said Mrs. Magra, curtsying as she entered.
“Yes, Mrs. Magra; I want your advice. Oh, tell Barnes I really cannot be bored about those eternal turnips every day of my life. And, Mike, I wish you’d make them look over the four-horse harness. I want to try those grays; they tell me they’ll run well together. Well, Freney, more complaints, I hope? Nothing but trespasses! I don’t care, so you’d not worry me, if they eat up every blade of clover in the grounds; I’m sick of being bored this way. Did you say that we’d eight couple of good dogs? – quite enough to begin with. Tell Jones to ride into Banagher and look after that box; Buckmaster sent it from London two months ago, and it has been lying there ever since. And, Mrs. Magra, pray let the windows be opened, and the house well aired; that drawing-room would be all the better for new papering.”
These few and broken directions may serve to show my readers – what certainly they failed to convince myself of – that a new chapter of my life had opened before me; and that, in proportion to the length of time my feelings had found neither vent nor outlet, they now rushed madly, tempestuously into their new channels, suffering no impediment to arrest, no obstacle to oppose their current.
Nothing can be conceived more opposite to my late, than my present habits now became. The house, the grounds, the gardens, all seemed to participate in the new influence which beamed upon myself; the stir and bustle of active life was everywhere perceptible; and amidst numerous preparations for the moors and the hunting-field, for pleasure parties upon the river, and fishing excursions up the mountains, my days were spent. The Blakes, without even for a moment pressing their attentions upon me, permitted me to go and come among them unquestioned and unasked. When, nearly every morning, I appeared in the breakfast-room, I felt exactly like a member of the family; the hundred little discrepancies of thought and habit which struck me forcibly at first, looked daily less apparent; the careless inattentions of my fair cousins as to dress, their free-and-easy boisterous manner, their very accents, which fell so harshly on my ear, gradually made less and less impression, until at last, when a raw English Ensign, just arrived in the neighborhood, remarked to me in confidence, “What devilish fine girls they were, if they were not so confoundedly Irish!” I could not help wondering what the fellow meant, and attributed the observation more to his ignorance than to its truth.
Papa and Mamma Blake, like prudent generals, so long as they saw the forces of the enemy daily wasting before them; so long as they could with impunity carry on the war at his expense, – resolved to risk nothing by a pitched battle. Unlike the Dalrymples, they could leave all to time.
Oh, tell me not of dark eyes swimming in their own ethereal essence; tell me not of pouting lips, of glossy ringlets, of taper fingers, and well-rounded insteps; speak not to me of soft voices, whose seductive sounds ring sweetly in our hearts; preach not of those thousand womanly graces so dear to every man, and doubly to him who lives apart from all their influences and their fascinations; neither dwell upon congenial temperament, similarity of taste, of disposition, and of thought; these are not the great risks a man runs in life. Of all the temptations, strong as these may be, there is one greater than them all, and that is, propinquity!
Show me the man who has ever stood this test; show me the man, deserving the name of such, who has become daily and hourly exposed to the breaching artillery of flashing eyes, of soft voices, of winning smiles, and kind speeches, and who hasn’t felt, and that too soon too, a breach within the rampart of his heart. He may, it is true, – nay, he will, in many cases, – make a bold and vigorous defence; sometimes will he re-intrench himself within the stockades of his prudence; but, alas! it is only to defer the moment when he must lay down his arms. He may, like a wise man who sees his fate inevitable, make a virtue of necessity, and surrender at discretion; or, like a crafty foe, seeing his doom before him, under the cover of the night he may make a sortie from the garrison, and run for his life. Ignominious as such a course must be, it is often the only one left.
But to come back. Love, like the small-pox, is most dangerous when you take it in the natural way. Those made matches, which Heaven is supposed to have a hand in, when placing an unmarried gentleman’s property in the neighborhood of an unmarried lady’s, which destine two people for each other in life, because their well-judging friends have agreed, “They’ll do very well; they were made for each other,” – these are the mild cases of the malady. This process of friendly vaccination takes out the poison of the disease, substituting a more harmless and less exciting affection; but the really dangerous instances are those from contact, that same propinquity, that confounded tendency every man yields to, to fall into a railroad of habit; that is the risk, that is the danger. What a bore it is to find that the absence of one person, with whom you’re in no wise in love, will spoil your morning’s canter, or your rowing party upon the river! How much put out are you, when she, to whom you always gave your arm in to dinner, does not make her appearance in the drawing-room; and your tea, too, some careless one, indifferent to your taste, puts a lump of sugar too little, or cream too much, while she – But no matter; habit has done for you what no direct influence of beauty could do, and a slave to your own selfish indulgences, and the cultivation of that ease you prize so highly, you fall over head and ears in love.
Now, you are not, my good reader, by any means to suppose that this was my case. No, no; I was too much what the world terms the “old soldier” for that. To continue my illustration: like the fortress that has been often besieged, the sentry upon the walls keeps more vigilant watch; his ear detects the far-off clank of the dread artillery; he marks each parallel; he notes down every breaching battery; and if he be captured, at least it is in fair fight.
Such were some of my reflections as I rode slowly home one evening from Gurt-na-Morra. Many a time, latterly, had I contrasted my own lonely and deserted hearth with the smiling looks, the happy faces, and the merry voices I had left behind me; and many a time did I ask myself, “Am I never to partake of a happiness like this?” How many a man is seduced into matrimony from this very feeling! How many a man whose hours have passed fleetingly at the pleasant tea-table, or by the warm hearth of some old country-house, going forth into the cold and cheerless night, reaches his far-off home only to find it dark and gloomy, joyless and companionless? How often has the hard-visaged look of his old butler, as, with sleepy eyes and yawning face, he hands a bed-room candle, suggested thoughts of married happiness? Of the perils of propinquity I have already spoken; the risks of contrast are also great. Have you never, in strolling through some fragrant and rich conservatory, fixed your eye upon a fair and lovely flower, whose blossoming beauty seems to give all the lustre and all the incense of the scene around? And how have you thought it would adorn and grace the precincts of your home, diffusing fragrance on every side. Alas, the experiment is not always successful. Much of the charm and many of the fascinations which delight you are the result of association of time and of place. The lovely voice, whose tones have spoken to your heart, may, like some instrument, be delightful in the harmony of the orchestra, but, after all, prove a very middling performer in a duet.
I say not this to deter men from matrimony, but to warn them from a miscalculation which may mar their happiness. Flirtation is a very fine thing, but it’s only a state of transition after all. The tadpole existence of the lover would be great fun, if one was never to become a frog under the hands of the parson. I say all this dispassionately and advisedly. Like the poet of my country, for many years of my life, —
“My only books were woman’s looks,”
and certainly I subscribe to a circulating library.
All this long digression may perhaps bring the reader to where it brought me, – the very palpable conviction, that, though not in love with my cousin Baby, I could not tell when I might eventually become so.
CHAPTER XLVII
A RECOGNITION
The most pleasing part about retrospect is the memory of our bygone hopes. The past, however happy, however blissful, few would wish to live over again; but who is there that does not long for, does not pine after the day-dream which gilded the future, which looked ever forward to the time to come as to a realization of all that was dear to us, lightening our present cares, soothing our passing sorrows by that one thought?
Life is marked out in periods in which, like stages in a journey, we rest and repose ourselves, casting a look, now back upon the road we have been travelling, now throwing a keener glance towards the path left us. It is at such spots as these remembrance comes full upon us, and that we feel how little our intentions have swayed our career or influenced our actions; the aspirations, the resolves of youth, are either looked upon as puerile follies, or a most distant day settled on for their realization. The principles we fondly looked to, like our guide-stars, are dimly visible, not seen; the friends we cherished are changed and gone; the scenes themselves seem no longer the sunshine and the shade we loved; and, in fact, we are living in a new world, where our own altered condition gives the type to all around us; the only link that binds us to the past being that same memory that like a sad curfew tolls the twilight of our fairest dreams and most cherished wishes.
That these glimpses of the bygone season of our youth should be but fitful and passing – tinging, not coloring the landscape of our life – we should be engaged in all the active bustle and turmoil of the world, surrounded by objects of hope, love, and ambition, stemming the strong tide in whose fountain is fortune.
He, however, who lives apart, a dreary and a passionless existence, will find that in the past, more than in the future, his thoughts have found their resting-place; memory usurps the place of hope, and he travels through life like one walking onward; his eyes still turning towards some loved forsaken spot, teeming with all the associations of his happiest hours, and preserving, even in distance, the outline that he loved.
Distance in time, as in space, smooths down all the inequalities of surface; and as the cragged and rugged mountain, darkened by cliff and precipice, shows to the far-off traveller but some blue and misty mass, so the long-lost-sight-of hours lose all the cares and griefs that tinged them, and to our mental eye, are but objects of uniform loveliness and beauty; and if we do not think of it is because, like April showers, they but checker the spring of our existence.
“The smiles, the tears,
Of boyhood’s years,”
For myself, baffled in hope at a period when most men but begin to feel it, I thought myself much older than I really was; the disappointments of the world, like the storms of the ocean, impart a false sense of experience to the young heart, as he sails forth upon his voyage; and it is an easy error to mistake trials for time.
The goods of fortune by which I was surrounded, took nothing from the bitterness of my retrospect; on the contrary, I could not help feeling that every luxury of my life was bought by my surrender of that career which had elated me in my own esteem, and which, setting a high and noble ambition before me, taught me to be a man.
To be happy, one must not only fulfil the duties and exactions of his station, but the station itself must answer to his views and aspirations in life. Now, mine did not sustain this condition: all that my life had of promise was connected with the memory of her who never could share my fortunes; of her for whom I had earned praise and honor; becoming ambitious as the road to her affection, only to learn after, that my hopes were but a dream, and my paradise a wilderness.
While thus the inglorious current of my life ran on, I was not indifferent to the mighty events the great continent of Europe was witnessing. The successes of the Peninsular campaign; the triumphant entry of the British into France; the downfall of Napoleon; the restoration of the Bourbons, – followed each other with the rapidity of the most common-place occurrences; and in the few short years in which I had sprung from boyhood to man’s estate, the whole condition of the world was altered. Kings deposed; great armies disbanded; rightful sovereigns restored to their dominions; banished and exiled men returned to their country, invested with rank and riches; and peace, in the fullest tide of its blessings, poured down upon the earth devastated and blood-stained.
Years passed on; and between the careless abandonment to the mere amusement of the hour, and the darker meditation upon the past, time slipped away. From my old friends and brother officers I heard but rarely. Power, who at first wrote frequently, grew gradually less and less communicative. Webber, who had gone to Paris at the peace, had written but one letter; while, from the rest, a few straggling lines were all I received. In truth be it told, my own negligence and inability to reply cost me this apparent neglect.
It was a fine evening in May, when, rigging up a sprit-sail, I jumped into my yawl, and dropped easily down the river. The light wind gently curled the crested water, the trees waved gently and shook their branches in the breeze, and my little barque, bending slightly beneath, rustled on her foamy track with that joyous bounding motion so inspiriting to one’s heart. The clouds were flying swiftly past, tinging with their shadows the mountains beneath; the Munster shore, glowing with a rich sunlight, showed every sheep-cot and every hedge-row clearly out, while the deep shadow of tall Scariff darkened the silent river where Holy Island, with its ruined churches and melancholy tower, was reflected in the still water.
It was a thoroughly Irish landscape: the changeful sky; the fast-flitting shadows; the brilliant sunlight; the plenteous fields; the broad and swelling stream; the dark mountain, from whose brown crest a wreath of thin blue smoke was rising, – were all there smiling yet sadly, like her own sons, across whose lowering brow some fitful flash of fancy ever playing dallies like sunbeams on a darkening stream, nor marks the depth that lies below.
I sat musing over the strange harmony of Nature with the temperament of man, every phase of his passionate existence seeming to have its type in things inanimate, when a loud cheer from the land aroused me, and the words, “Charley! Cousin Charley!” came wafted over the water to where I lay. For some time I could but distinguish the faint outline of some figures on the shore; but as I came nearer, I recognized my fair cousin Baby, who, with a younger brother of some eight or nine years old, was taking an evening walk.
“Do you know, Charley,” said she, “the boys have gone over to the castle to look for you; we want you particularly this evening.”
“Indeed, Cousin Baby! Well, I fear you must make my excuses.”
“Then, once for all, I will not. I know this is one of your sulky moods, and I tell you frankly I’ll not put up with them any more.”
“No, no, Baby, not so; out of spirits if you will, but not out of temper.”
“The distinction is much too fine for me, if there be any. But there now, do be a good fellow; come up with us – come up with me!”
As she said this she placed her arm within mine. I thought, too, – perhaps it was but a thought, – she pressed me gently. I know she blushed and turned away her head to hide it.
“I don’t pretend to be proof to your entreaty, Cousin Baby,” said I, with half-affected gallantry, putting her fingers to my lips.
“There, how can you be so foolish; look at William yonder; I am sure he must have seen you!” But William, God bless him! was bird’s-nesting or butterfly-hunting or daisy-picking or something of that kind.
O ye young brothers, who, sufficiently old to be deemed companions and chaperons, but yet young enough to be regarded as having neither eyes nor ears, what mischief have ye to answer for; what a long reckoning of tender speeches, of soft looks, of pressed hands, lies at your door! What an incentive to flirtation is the wily imp who turns ever and anon from his careless gambols to throw his laughter-loving eyes upon you, calling up the mantling blush to both your cheeks! He seems to chronicle the hours of your dalliance, making your secrets known unto each other. We have gone through our share of flirtation in this life: match-making mothers, prying aunts, choleric uncles, benevolent and open-hearted fathers, we understand to the life, and care no more for such man-traps than a Melton man, well mounted on his strong-boned thorough-bred, does for a four-barred ox-fence that lies before him. Like him, we take them flying; never relaxing the slapping stride of our loose gallop, we go straight ahead, never turning aside, except for a laugh at those who flounder in the swamps we sneer at. But we confess honestly, we fear the little, brother, the small urchin who, with nankeen trousers and three rows of buttons, performs the part of Cupid. He strikes real terror into our heart; he it is who, with a cunning wink or sly smile, seems to confirm the soft nonsense we are weaving; by some slight gesture he seems to check off the long reckoning of our attentions, bringing us every moment nearer to the time when the score must be settled and the debt paid. He it is who, by a memory delightfully oblivious of his task and his table-book, is tenacious to the life of what you said to Fanny; how you put your head under Lucy’s bonnet; he can imitate to perfection the way you kneeled upon the grass; and the wretch has learned to smack his lips like a gourmand, that he, may convey another stage of your proceeding.
Oh, for infant schools for everything under the age of ten! Oh, for factories for the children of the rich! The age of prying curiosity is from four-and-a-half to nine, and Fonché himself might get a lesson in police from an urchin in his alphabet.
I contrived soon, however, to forget the presence of even the little brother. The night was falling; Baby appeared getting fatigued with her walk, for she leaned somewhat more heavily upon my arm, and I – I cannot tell wherefore – fell into that train of thinking aloud, which somehow, upon a summer’s eve, with a fair girl beside one, is the very nearest thing to love-making.
“There, Charley, don’t now – ah, don’t! Do let go my hand; they are coming down the avenue.”
I had scarcely time to obey the injunction, when Mr. Blake called out: —
“Well, indeed! Charley, this is really fortunate; we have got a friend to take tea with us, and wanted you to meet him.”
Muttering an internal prayer for something not exactly the welfare of the aforesaid friend, whom I judged to be some Galway squire, I professed aloud the pleasure I felt in having come in so opportunely.
“He wishes particularly to make your acquaintance.”
“So much the worse,” thought I to myself; “it rarely happens that this feeling is mutual.”
Evidently provoked at the little curiosity I exhibited, Blake added, —
“He’s on his way to Fermoy with a detachment.”
“Indeed! what regiment, pray?”
“The 28th Foot.”
“Ah, I don’t know them.”
By this time we reached the steps of the hall-door, and just as we did so, the door opened suddenly, and a tall figure in uniform presented himself. With one spring he seized my hand and nearly wrung it off.
“Why what,” said I, “can this be? Is it really – ”
“Sparks,” said he, – “your old friend Sparks, my boy; I’ve changed into the infantry, and here I am. Heard by chance you were in the neighborhood; met Mr. Blake, your friend here, at the inn, and accepted his invitation to meet you.”
Poor Sparks, albeit the difference in his costume, was the same as ever. Having left the Fourteenth soon after I quitted them, he knew but little of their fortunes; and he himself had been on recruiting stations nearly the whole time since we had met before.
While we each continued to extol the good fortune of the other, – he mine as being no longer in the service, and I his for still being so, – we learned the various changes which had happened to each of us during our separation. Although his destination was ultimately Fermoy, Portumua was ordered to be his present quarter; and I felt delighted to have once more an old companion within reach, to chat over former days of campaigning and nights of merriment in the Peninsula.
Sparks soon became a constant visitor and guest at Gurt-na-Morra; his good temper, his easy habits, his simplicity of character, rapidly enabled him to fall into all their ways; and although evidently not what Baby would call “the man for Galway,” he endeavored with all his might to please every one, and certainly succeeded to a considerable extent.
Baby alone seemed to take pleasure in tormenting the poor sub. Long before she met with him having heard much from me of his exploits abroad, she was continually bringing up some anecdote of his unhappy loves or mis-placed passions; which he evidently smarted under the more, from the circumstance that he appeared rather inclined to like my fair cousin.
As she continued this for some time, I remarked that Sparks, who at first was all gayety and high spirits, grew gradually more depressed and dispirited. I became convinced that the poor fellow was in love; very little management on my part was necessary to obtain his confession; and accordingly, the same evening the thought first struck me, as we were riding slowly home towards O’Malley Castle, I touched at first generally upon the merits of the Blakes, their hospitality, etc., then diverged to the accomplishments and perfections of the girls, and lastly, Baby herself, in all form, came up for sentence.
“Ah, yes!” said Sparks, with a deep sigh, “it is quite as you say; she is a lovely girl; and that liveliness in her character, that elasticity in her temperament, chastened down as it might be, by the feeling of respect for the man she loved! I say, Charley, is it a very long attachment of yours?”
“A long attachment of mine! Why, my dear Sparks, you can’t suppose that there is anything between us! I pledge you my word most faithfully.”
“Oh, no, don’t tell me that; what good can there be in mystifying me?”
“I have no such intention, believe me. My cousin Baby, however I like and admire her, has no other place in my affection than a very charming girl who has lightened a great many dreary and tiresome hours, and made my banishment from the world less irksome than I should have found it without her.”
“And you are really not in love?”
“Not a bit of it!”
“Nor going to marry her either?”
“Not the least notion of it! – a fact. Baby and I are excellent friends, for the very reason that we were never lovers; we have had no petits jeux of fallings out and makings up; no hide-and-seek trials of affected indifference and real disappointments; no secrets, no griefs, nor grudges; neither quarrels nor keepsakes. In fact, we are capital cousins; quizzing every one for our own amusement; riding, walking, boating together; in fact, doing and thinking of everything save sighs and declarations; always happy to meet, and never broken-hearted when we parted. And I can only add, as a proof of my sincerity, that if you feel as I suspect you do from your questions, I’ll be your ambassador to the court of Gurt-na-Morra with sincere pleasure.”
“Will you really? Will you, indeed, Charley, do this for me? Will you strengthen my wishes by your aid, and give me all your influence with the family?”
I could scarcely help smiling at poor Sparks’s eagerness, or the unwarrantable value he put upon my alliance, in a case where his own unassisted efforts did not threaten much failure.
“I repeat it, Sparks, I’ll make a proposal for you in all form, aided and abetted by everything recommendatory and laudatory I can think of; I’ll talk of you as a Peninsular of no small note and promise; and observe rigid silence about your Welsh flirtation and your Spanish elopement.”
“You’ll not blab about the Dalrymples, I hope?”
“Trust me; I only hope you will be always equally discreet: but now – when shall it be? Should you like to consider the matter more?”
“Oh, no, nothing of the kind; let it be to-morrow, at once, if I am to fail; even that – anything’s better than suspense.”
“Well, then, to-morrow be it,” said I.
So I wished him a good-night, and a stout heart to hear his fortune withal.
