Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon Volume Ii Part 54

Nothing could be easier to follow than this advice; and in fact so little merit had I in obeying it, that I never spoke a word. Down the avenue we went, at the speed of lightning, the stones and the water from the late rain flying and splas.h.i.+ng about us. In one series of plunges, agreeably diversified by a strong bang upon the splash-board, we reached the gate.

Before I had time to utter a prayer for our safety, we were through and fairly upon the high road.

"Musha, but the master's mad!" cried the old dame of the gate-lodge; "he wasn't out of this gate for a year and a half, and look now--"

The rest was lost in the clear ringing laugh of Baby, who clapped her hands in ecstasy and delight.

"What a spanking pair they are! I suppose you wouldn't let me get my hand on them?" said she, making a gesture as if to take the reins.

"Heaven forbid, my dear!" said I; "they've nearly pulled my wrists off already."

Our road, like many in the west of Ireland, lay through a level tract of bog; deep ditches, half filled with water, on either side of us, but, fortunately, neither hill nor valley for several miles.

"There's the mail," said Baby, pointing to a dark speck at a long distance off.

Ere many minutes elapsed, our stretching gallop, for such had our pace sobered into, brought us up with it, and as we flew by, at top speed, Baby jumped to her feet, and turning a waggish look at our beaten rivals, burst out into a fit of triumphant laughter.

Mike was correct as to time; in some few seconds less than forty minutes we turned into the avenue of Gurt-na-Morra. Tearing along like the very moment of their starting, the hot and fiery animals galloped up the approach, and at length came to a stop in a deep ploughed field, into which, fortunately for us, Mr. Blake, animated less by the picturesque than the profitable, had converted his green lawn. This check, however, was less owing to my agency than to that of my servants; for dismounting in haste, they flew to the horses' heads, and with ready tact, and before I had helped my cousin to the ground, succeeded in unharnessing them from the carriage, and led them, blown and panting, covered with foam, and splashed with mud, into the s.p.a.ce before the door.

By this time we were joined by the whole Blake family, who poured forth in astonishment at our strange and sudden appearance. Explanation on my part was unnecessary, for Baby, with a volubility quite her own, gave the whole recital in less than three minutes. From the moment of her advent to her departure, they had it all; and while she mingled her ridicule at my surprise, her praise of my luncheon, her jests at my prudence, the whole family joined heartily in her mirth, while they welcomed, with most unequivocal warmth, my first visit to Gurt-na-Morra.

I confess it was with no slight gratification I remarked that Baby's visit was as much a matter of surprise to them as to me. Believing her to have gone to visit at Portumna Castle, they felt no uneasiness at her absence; so that, in her descent upon me, she was really only guided by her own wilful fancy, and that total absence of all consciousness of wrong which makes a truly innocent girl the hardiest of all G.o.d's creatures. I was rea.s.sured by this feeling, and satisfied that, whatever the intentions of the elder members of the Blake family, Baby was, at least, no partic.i.p.ator in their plots or sharer in their intrigues.

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 a.s.sizes, its b.a.l.l.s, 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 a.s.sociates with the s.e.x 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 unblus.h.i.+ng 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 trespa.s.ses! 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 partic.i.p.ate 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 fis.h.i.+ng 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 Iris.h.!.+" 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 flas.h.i.+ng 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, subst.i.tuting 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 ill.u.s.tration: 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 pa.s.sed 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 l.u.s.tre 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 a.s.sociation 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 dispa.s.sionately 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 pa.s.sing 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 pa.s.sing--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 pa.s.sionless 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 a.s.sociations of his happiest hours, and preserving, even in distance, the outline that he loved.

Distance in time, as in s.p.a.ce, 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 ma.s.s, 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

"The smiles, the tears, Of boyhood's years,"

it is because, like April showers, they but checker the spring of our existence.