Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2. Lever Charles James
“the restoration of my health,” when he suddenly interrupted me, eying me fixedly as he spoke.
“Indeed! indeed! Is that so?”
“Yes,” said I, half puzzled at the tone and manner of the speech; “I can join now when I please; meanwhile, Fred, I have been thinking of you. Yes, don’t be surprised, at the very moment we met you were in my thoughts.”
I took his arm as I said this, and led him down the alley.
“We are too old and, I trust, too true friends, Fred, to have secrets from each other, and yet we have been playing this silly game for some weeks past. Now, my dear fellow, I have yours, and it is only fair justice you should have mine, and, faith, I feel you’d have discovered it long since, had your thoughts been as free as I have known them to be. Fred, you are in love; there, don’t wince, man, I know it; but hear me out. You believe me to be so also; nay, more, you think that my chances of success are better, stronger than your own; learn, then, that I have none, – absolutely none. Don’t interrupt me now, for this avowal cuts me deeply; my own heart alone knows what I suffer as I record my wrecked fortunes; but I repeat it, my hopes are at end forever; but, Fred, my boy, I cannot lose my friend too. If I have been the obstacle to your path, I am so no more. Ask me not why; it is enough that I speak in all truth and sincerity. Ere three days I shall leave this, and with it all the hopes that once beamed upon my fortunes, and all the happiness, – nay, not all, my boy, for I feel some thrill at my heart yet, as I think that I have been true to you.”
I know not what more I spoke nor how he replied to me. I felt the warm grasp of his hand, I saw his delighted smile; the words of grateful acknowledgment his lips uttered conveyed but an imperfect meaning to my ear, and I remembered no more.
The courage which sustained me for the moment sank gradually as I meditated over my avowal, and I could scarce help accusing Power of a breach of friendship for exacting a confession which, in reality, I had volunteered to give him. How Lucy herself would think of my conduct was ever occurring to my thoughts, and I felt, as I ruminated upon the conjectures it might give rise to, how much more likely a favorable opinion might now be formed of me, than when such an estimation could have crowned me with delight.
“Yes,” thought I, “she will at last learn to know him who loved her with truth and with devoted affection; and when the blight of all his hopes is accomplished, the fair fame of his fidelity will be proved. The march, the bivouac, the battle-field, are now all to me; and the campaign alone presents a prospect which may fill up the aching void that disappointed and ruined hopes have left behind them.”
How I longed for the loud call of the trumpet, the clash of the steel, the tramp of the war-horse; though the proud distinction of a soldier’s life were less to me in the distance than the mad and whirlwind passion of a charge, and the loud din of the rolling artillery.
It was only some hours after, as I sat alone in my chamber, that all the circumstances of our meeting came back clearly to my memory, and I could not help muttering to myself, —
“It is indeed a hard lot, that to cheer the heart of my friend, I must bear witness to the despair that shed darkness on my own.”
CHAPTER XVI
Although I felt my heart relieved of a heavy load by the confession I had made to Power, yet still I shrank from meeting him for some days after; a kind of fear lest he should in any way recur to our conversation continually beset me, and I felt that the courage which bore me up for my first effort would desert me on the next occasion.
My determination to join my regiment was now made up, and I sent forward a resignation of my appointment to Sir George Dashwood’s staff, which I had never been in health to fulfil, and commenced with energy all my preparations for a speedy departure.
The reply to my rather formal letter was a most kind note written by himself. He regretted the unhappy cause which had so long separated us, and though wishing, as he expressed it, to have me near him, perfectly approved of my resolution.
“Active service alone, my dear boy, can ever place you in the position you ought to occupy; and I rejoice the more at your decision in this matter, as I feared the truth of certain reports here, which attributed to you other plans than those which a campaign suggests. My mind is now easy on this score, and I pray you forgive me if my congratulations are mal à propos.”
After some hints for my future management, and a promise of some letters to his friends at headquarters, he concluded: —
“As this climate does not seem to suit my daughter, I have applied for a change, and am in daily hope of obtaining it. Before going, however, I must beg your acceptance of the charger which my groom will deliver to your servant with this. I was so struck with his figure and action that I purchased him before leaving England without well knowing why or wherefore. Pray let him see some service under your auspices, which he is most unlikely to do under mine. He has plenty of bone to be a weight carrier, and they tell me also that he has speed enough for anything.”
Mike’s voice in the lawn beneath interrupted my reading farther, and on looking out, I perceived him and Sir George Dashwood’s servant standing beside a large and striking-looking horse, which they were both examining with all the critical accuracy of adepts.
“Arrah, isn’t he a darling, a real beauty, every inch of him?”
“That ‘ere splint don’t signify nothing; he aren’t the worse of it,” said the English groom.
“Of coorse it doesn’t,” replied Mike. “What a fore-hand, and the legs, clean as a whip!”
“There’s the best of him, though,” interrupted the other, patting the strong hind-quarters with his hand. “There’s the stuff to push him along through heavy ground and carry him over timber.”
“Or a stone wall,” said Mike, thinking of Galway.
My own impatience to survey my present had now brought me into the conclave, and before many minutes were over I had him saddled, and was cantering around the lawn with a spirit and energy I had not felt for months long. Some small fences lay before me, and over these he carried me with all the ease and freedom of a trained hunter. My courage mounted with the excitement, and I looked eagerly around for some more bold and dashing leap.
“You may take him over the avenue gate,” said the English groom, divining with a jockey’s readiness what I looked for; “he’ll do it, never fear him.”
Strange as my equipment was, with an undress jacket flying loosely open, and a bare head, away I went. The gate which the groom spoke of was a strongly-barred one of oak timber, nearly five feet high, – its difficulty as a leap only consisted in the winding approach, and the fact that it opened upon a hard road beyond it.
In a second or two a kind of half fear came across me. My long illness had unnerved me, and my limbs felt weak and yielding; but as I pressed into the canter, that secret sympathy between the horse and his rider shot suddenly through me, I pressed my spurs to his flanks, and dashed him at it.
Unaccustomed to such treatment, the noble animal bounded madly forward. With two tremendous plunges he sprang wildly in the air, and shaking his long mane with passion, stretched out at the gallop.
My own blood boiled now as tempestuously as his; and with a shout of reckless triumph, I rose him at the gate. Just at the instant two figures appeared before it, – the copse had concealed their approach hitherto, – but they stood now as if transfixed. The wild attitude of the horse, the not less wild cry of his rider, had deprived them for a time of all energy; and overcome by the sudden danger, they seemed rooted to the ground. What I said, spoke, begged, or imprecated, Heaven knows – not I. But they stirred not! One moment more and they must lie trampled beneath my horse’s hoofs, – he was already on his haunches for the bound, – when, wheeling half aside, I faced him at the wall. It was at least a foot higher and of solid stone masonry, and as I did so I felt that I was perilling my life to save theirs. One vigorous dash of the spur I gave him, as I lifted him to the leap. He bounded beneath it quick as lightning; still, with a spring like a rocket, he rose into the air, cleared the wall, and