Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2. Lever Charles James
himself in the glass. Of this fact I had soon the most complete proof; for as I looked, he slowly raised his broad-leafed Spanish hat with an air of most imposing pretension, and bowed reverently to himself.
“Come sta vostra senoria?” said he.
The whole gesture and style of this proceeding struck me as so ridiculous, that in spite of all my efforts I could scarcely repress a laugh. He turned quickly round and approached the bed. The deep shadow of the sombrero darkened the upper part of his features, but I could distinguish a pair of fierce-looking mustaches beneath, which curled upwards towards his eyes, while a stiff point beard stuck straight from his chin. Fearing lest my rude interruption had been overheard, I was framing some polite speech in Portuguese, when he opened the dialogue by asking in that language how I did.
I replied, and was about to ask some questions relative to where, and under whose protection I then was, when my grave-looking friend, giving a pirouette upon one leg, sent his hat flying into the air, and cried out in a voice that not even my memory could fail to recognize, —
“By the rock of Cashel he’s cured! – he’s cured! – the fever’s over! Oh, Master Charles, dear! oh, Master, darling, and you ain’t mad, after all?”
“Mad! no, faith! but I shrewdly suspect you must be.”
“Oh, devil a taste! But spake to me, honey; spake to me, acushla!”
“Where am I? Whose house is this? What do you mean by that disguise, that beard – ”
“Whisht, I’ll tell you all, av you have patience? But are you cured? Tell me that first. Sure they was going to cut the arm off you, till you got out of bed, and with your pistols, sent them flying, one out of the window and the other down-stairs; and I bate the little chap with the saw myself till he couldn’t know himself in the glass.”
While Mike ran on at this rate, I never took my eyes from him, and it was all my poor faculties were equal to, to convince myself that the whole scene was not some vision of a wandering intellect. Gradually, however, the well-known features recalled me to myself, and as my doubts gave way at length, I laughed long and heartily at the masquerade absurdity of his appearance.
Mike, meanwhile, whose face expressed no small mistrust at the sincerity of my mirth, having uncloaked himself, proceeded to lay aside his beard and mustaches, saying, as he did so, —
“There now, darling; there now, Master, dear, – don’t be grinning that way, – I’ll not be a Portigee any more, av you’ll be quiet and listen to reason.”
“But, Mike, where am I? Answer me that one question.”
“You’re at home, dear; where else would you be?”
“At home?” said I, with a start, as my eye ranged over the various articles of luxury and elegance around, so unlike the more simple and unpretending features of my uncle’s house, – “at home?”
“Ay, just so; sure, isn’t it the same thing. It’s ould Don Emanuel that owns it; and won’t it be your own when you’re married to that lovely crayture herself?”
I started up, and placing my hand upon my throbbing temples, asked myself if I were really awake, or if some flight of fancy had not carried me away beyond the bounds of reason and sense. “Go on, go on!” said I, at length, in a hollow voice, anxious to gather from his words something like a clew to this mystery. “How did this happen?”
“Av ye mean how you came here, faith, it was just this way. After you got the fever, and beat the doctors, devil a one would go near you but myself and the major.”
“The major, – Major Monsoon?”
“No, Major Power himself. Well, he told your friends up here how it was going very hard with you, and that you were like to die; and the same evening they sent down a beautiful litter, as like a hearse as two peas, for you, and brought you up here in state, – devil a thing was wanting but a few people to raise the cry to make it as fine a funeral as ever I seen. And sure, I set up a whillilew myself in the Black Horse Square, and the devils only laughed at me.
“Well, you see they put you into a beautiful, elegant bed, and the young lady herself sat down beside you, betune times fanning you with a big fan, and then drying her eyes, for she was weeping like a waterfall. ‘Don Miguel,’ says she to me, – for ye see, I put your cloak on by mistake when I was leaving the quarters, – ‘Don Miguel, questa hidalgo é vostro amigo?’
“‘My most particular friend,’ says I; ‘God spare him many years to be so.’
“‘Then take up your quarters here,’ says she, ‘and don’t leave him; we’ll do everything in our power to make you comfortable.’
“‘I’m not particular,’ says I; ‘the run of the house – ’
“Then this is the Villa Nuova?” said I, with a faint sigh.
“The same,” replied Mike; “and a sweet place it is for eating and drinking, – for wine in buckets full, av ye axed for it, for dancing and singing every evening, with as pretty craytures as ever I set eyes upon. Upon my conscience, it’s as good as Galway; and good manners it is they have. What’s more, none of your liberties or familiarities with strangers; but it’s Don Miguel, devil a less. ‘Don Miguel, av it’s plazing to you to take a drop of Xeres before your meat?’ or, ‘Would you have a shaugh of a pipe or cigar when you’re done?’ That’s the way of it.”
“And Sir George Dashwood,” said I, “has he been here? Has he inquired for me?”
“Every day either himself or one of the staff comes galloping up at luncheon time to ask after you; and then they have a bit of tender discourse with the senhora herself. Oh, devil a bit need ye fear them, she’s true blue; and it isn’t the major’s fault, – upon my conscience it isn’t, – for he does be coming the blarney over her in beautiful style.”
“Does Miss Dashwood ever visit here?” said I, with a voice faltering and uncertain enough to have awakened suspicion in a more practised observer.
“Never once; and that’s what I call unnatural behavior, after you saving her life; and if she wasn’t – ”
“Be silent, I say.”
“Well, well, there, I won’t say any more; and sure it’s time for me to be putting on my beard again. I’m going to the Casino with Catrina, and sure it’s with real ladies I might be going av it wasn’t for Major Power, that told them I wasn’t a officer; but it’s all right again. I gave them a great history of the Frees from the time of Cuilla na Toole, that was one of the family and a cousin of Moses, I believe; and they behave well to one that comes from an ould stock.”
“Don Miguel! Don Miguel!” said a voice from the garden.
“I’m coming, my angel! I’m coming, my turtle-dove!” said Mike, arranging his mustaches and beard with amazing dexterity. “Ah, but it would do your heart good av you could take a peep at us about twelve o’clock, dancing ‘Dirty James’ for a bolero, and just see Miss Catrina, the lady’s maid, doing ‘cover the buckle’ as neat as Nature. There now, there’s the lemonade near your hand, and I’ll leave you the lamp, and you may go asleep as soon as you please, for Miss Inez won’t come in to-night to play the guitar, for the doctor said it might do you harm now.”
So saying, and before I could summon presence of mind to ask another question, Don Miguel wrapped himself in the broad folds of his Spanish cloak, and strode from the room with the air of an hidalgo.
I slept but little that night; the full tide of memory, rushing in upon me, brought back the hour of my return to Lisbon and the wreck of all my hopes, which from the narrative of my servant I now perceived to be complete. I dare not venture upon recording how many plans suggested themselves to my troubled spirit, and were in turn rejected. To meet Lucy Dashwood; to make a full and candid declaration; to acknowledge that flirtation alone with Donna Inez (a mere passing, boyish flirtation) had given the coloring to my innocent passion, and that in heart and soul I was hers, and hers only, – this was my first resolve; but alas! if I had not