Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1

“There you are all right; quite correct, my boy. But there are many points I should have wished otherwise in the conduct of the affair hitherto.”

Conceiving that he was displeased at my petulance and boldness, I was about to commence a kind of defence, when he added, —

“Because, you see,” said he, assuming an oracular tone of voice, “throwing a wine-glass, with or without wine, in a man’s face is merely, as you may observe, a mark of denial and displeasure at some observation he may have made, – not in any wise intended to injure him, further than in the wound to his honor at being so insulted, for which, of course, he must subsequently call you out. Whereas, Charley, in the present case, the view I take is different; the expression of Mr. Bodkin, as regards your uncle, was insulting to a degree, – gratuitously offensive, – and warranting a blow. Therefore, my boy, you should, under such circumstances, have preferred aiming at him with a decanter: a cut-glass decanter, well aimed and low, I have seen do effective service. However, as you remark it was your first thing of the kind, I am pleased with you – very much pleased with you. Now, then, for the next step.” So saying, he arose from his bed, and striking a light with a tinder-box, proceeded to dress himself as leisurely as if for a dinner party, talking all the while.

“I will just take Godfrey’s tax-cart and the roan mare on to Meelish, put them up at the little inn, – it is not above a mile from Bodkin’s; and I’ll go over and settle the thing for you. You must stay quiet till I come back, and not leave the house on any account. I’ve got a case of old broad barrels there that will answer you beautifully; if you were anything of a shot, I’d give you my own cross handles, but they’d only spoil your shooting.”

“I can hit a wine-glass in the stem at fifteen paces,” said I, rather nettled at the disparaging tone in which he spoke of my performance.

“I don’t care sixpence for that; the wine-glass had no pistol in his hand. Take the old German, then; see now, hold your pistol thus, – no finger on the guard there, these two on the trigger. They are not hair-triggers; drop the muzzle a bit; bend your elbow a trifle more; sight your man outside your arm, – outside, mind, – and take him in the hip, and if anywhere higher, no matter.”

By this time the count had completed his toilet, and taking the small mahogany box which contained his peace-makers under his arm, led the way towards the stables. When we reached the yard, the only person stirring there was a kind of half-witted boy, who, being about the house, was employed to run of messages from the servants, walk a stranger’s horse, or to do any of the many petty services that regular domestics contrive always to devolve upon some adopted subordinate. He was seated upon a stone step formerly used for mounting, and though the day was scarcely breaking, and the weather severe and piercing, the poor fellow was singing an Irish song, in a low monotonous tone, as he chafed a curb chain between his hands with some sand. As we came near he started up, and as he pulled off his cap to salute us, gave a sharp and piercing glance at the count, then at me, then once more upon my companion, from whom his eyes were turned to the brass-bound box beneath his arm, – when, as if seized with a sudden impulse, he started on his feet, and set off towards the house with the speed of a greyhound, not, however, before Considine’s practised eye had anticipated his plan; for throwing down the pistol-case, he dashed after him, and in an instant had seized him by the collar.

“It won’t do, Patsey,” said the count; “you can’t double on me.”

“Oh, Count, darlin’, Mister Considine avick, don’t do it, don’t now,” said the poor fellow, falling on his knees, and blubbering like an infant.

“Hold your tongue, you villain, or I’ll cut it out of your head,” said Considine.

“And so I will; but don’t do it, don’t for the love of – ”

“Don’t do what, you whimpering scoundrel? What does he think I’ll do?”

“Don’t I know very well what you’re after, what you’re always after too? Oh, wirra, wirra!” Here he wrung his hands, and swayed himself backwards and forwards, a true picture of Irish grief.

“I’ll stop his blubbering,” said Considine, opening the box and taking out a pistol, which he cocked leisurely, and pointed at the poor fellow’s head; “another syllable now, and I’ll scatter your brains upon that pavement.”

“And do, and divil thank you; sure, it’s your trade.”

The coolness of the reply threw us both off our guard so completely that we burst out into a hearty fit of laughing.

“Come, come,” said the count, at last, “this will never do; if he goes on this way, we’ll have the whole house about us. Come, then, harness the roan mare; and here’s half a crown for you.”

“I wouldn’t touch the best piece in your purse,” said the poor boy; “sure it’s blood-money, no less.”

The words were scarcely spoken, when Considine seized him by the collar with one hand, and by the wrist with the other, and carried him over the yard to the stable, where, kicking open the door, he threw him on a heap of stones, adding, “If you stir now, I’ll break every bone in your body;” a threat that seemed certainly considerably increased in its terrors, from the rough gripe he had already experienced, for the lad rolled himself up like a ball, and sobbed as if his heart were breaking.

Very few minutes sufficed us now to harness the mare in the tax-cart, and when all was ready, Considine seized the whip, and locking the stable-door upon Patsey, was about to get up, when a sudden thought struck him. “Charley,” said he, “that fellow will find some means to give the alarm; we must take him with us.” So saying, he opened the door, and taking the poor fellow by the collar, flung him at my feet in the tax-cart.

We had already lost some time, and the roan mare was put to her fastest speed to make up for it. Our pace became, accordingly, a sharp one; and as the road was bad, and the tax-cart no “patent inaudible,” neither of us spoke. To me this was a great relief. The events of the last few days had given them the semblance of years, and all the reflection I could muster was little enough to make anything out of the chaotic mass, – love, mischief, and misfortune, – in which I had been involved since my leaving O’Malley Castle.

“Here we are, Charley,” said Considine, drawing up short at the door of a little country ale-house, or, in Irish parlance, shebeen, which stood at the meeting of four bleak roads, in a wild and barren mountain tract beside the Shannon. “Here we are, my boy! Jump out and let us be stirring.”

“Here, Patsey, my man,” said the count, unravelling the prostrate and doubly knotted figure at our feet; “lend a hand, Patsey.” Much to my astonishment, he obeyed the summons with alacrity, and proceeded to unharness the mare with the greatest despatch. My attention was, however, soon turned from him to my own more immediate concerns, and I followed my companion into the house.

“Joe,” said the count to the host, “is Mr. Bodkin up at the house this morning?”

“He’s just passed this way, sir, with Mr. Malowney of Tillnamuck, in the gig, on their way from Mr. Blake’s. They stopped here to order horses to go over to O’Malley Castle, and the gossoon is gone to look for a pair.”

“All right,” said Considine, and added, in a whisper, “we’ve done it well, Charley, to be beforehand, or the governor would have found it all out and taken the affair into his own hands. Now all you have to do is to stay quietly here till I come back, which will not be above an hour at farthest. Joe, send me the pony; keep an eye on Patsey, that he doesn’t play us a trick. The short way to Mr. Bodkin’s is through Scariff. Ay, I know it well; good-by, Charley. By the Lord, we’ll pepper him!”

These were the last words of the worthy count as he closed the door behind him, and left me to my own not very agreeable reflections. Independently of my youth and perfect ignorance of the world, which left me unable to form any correct judgment on my conduct, I knew that I had taken a great deal of wine, and was highly excited when my unhappy collision with Mr. Bodkin occurred. Whether, then, I had been betrayed into anything which could fairly have provoked his insulting retort or not, I could not remember; and now my most afflicting thought was, what opinion might be entertained of me by those at Blake’s table; and above all, what Miss Dashwood herself would think, and what narrative of the occurrence would reach her. The great effort of my last few days had been to stand well in her estimation, to appear something better in feeling, something higher in principle, than the rude and unpolished squirearchy about me; and now here was the end of it! What would she, what could she, think, but that I was the same punch-drinking, rowing, quarrelling bumpkin as those whom I had so lately been carefully endeavoring to separate myself from? How I hated myself for the excess to which passion had betrayed me, and how I detested my opponent as the cause of all my present misery. “How very differently,” thought I, “her friend the captain would have conducted himself. His quiet and gentlemanly manner would have done fully as much to wipe out any insult on his honor as I could do, and after all, would neither have disturbed the harmony of a dinner-table, nor made himself, as I shuddered to think I had, a subject of rebuke, if not of ridicule.” These harassing, torturing reflections continued to press on me, and I paced the room with my hands clasped and the perspiration upon my brow. “One thing is certain, – I can never see her again,” thought I; “this disgraceful business must, in some shape or other, become known to her, and all I have been saying these last three days rise up in judgment against this one act, and stamp me an impostor! I that decried – nay, derided – our false notion of honor. Would that Considine were come! What can keep him now?” I walked to the door; a boy belonging to the house was walking the roan before the door. “What had, then, become of Pat?” I inquired; but no one could tell. He had disappeared shortly after our arrival, and had not been seen afterwards. My own thoughts were, however, too engrossing to permit me to think more of this circumstance, and I turned again to enter the house, when I saw Considine advancing up the road at the full speed of his pony.

“Out with the mare, Charley! Be alive, my boy! – all’s settled.” So saying, he sprang from the pony and proceeded to harness the roan with the greatest haste, informing me in broken sentences, as he went on with all the arrangements.

“We are to cross the bridge of Portumna. They won the ground, and it seems Bodkin likes the spot; he shot Peyton there three years ago. Worse luck now, Charley, you know; by all the rule of chance, he can’t expect the same thing twice, – never four by honors in two deals. Didn’t say that, though. A sweet meadow, I know it well; small hillocks, like molehills; all over it. Caught him at breakfast; I don’t think he expected the message to come from us, but said it was a very polite attention, – and so it was, you know.”

So he continued to ramble on as we once more took our seats in the tax-cart and set out for the ground.

“What are you thinking of, Charley?” said the count, as I kept silent for some minutes.

“I’m thinking, sir, if I were to kill him, what I must do after.”

“Right, my boy; nothing like that, but I’ll settle all for you. Upon my conscience, if it wasn’t for the chance of his getting into another quarrel and spoiling the election, I’d go back for Godfrey; he’d like to see you break ground so prettily. And you say you’re no shot?”

“Never could do anything with the pistol to speak of, sir,” said I, remembering his rebuke of the morning.

“I don’t mind that. You’ve a good eye; never take it off him after you’re on the ground, – follow him everywhere. Poor Callaghan, that’s gone, shot his man always that way. He had a way of looking without winking that was very fatal at a short distance; a very good thing to learn, Charley, when you have a little spare time.”

Half-an-hour’s sharp driving brought us to the river side, where a boat had been provided by Considine to ferry us over. It was now about eight o’clock, and a heavy, gloomy morning. Much rain had fallen overnight, and the dark and lowering atmosphere seemed charged with more. The mountains looked twice their real size, and all the shadows were increased to an enormous extent. A very killing kind of light it was, as the count remarked.

CHAPTER VIII

THE DUEL

As the boatmen pulled in towards the shore we perceived, a few hundred yards off, a group of persons standing, whom we soon recognized as our opponents. “Charley,” said the count, grasping my arm tightly, as I stood up to spring on the land, – “Charley, although you are only a boy, as I may say, I have no fear for your courage; but still more than that is needful here. This Bodkin is a noted duellist, and will try to shake your nerve. Now, mind that you take everything that happens quite with an air of indifference; don’t let him think that he has any advantage over you, and you’ll see how the tables will be turned in your favor.”

“Trust to me, Count” said I; “I’ll not disgrace you.”

He pressed my hand tightly, and I thought that I discerned something like a slight twitch about the corners of his grim mouth, as if some sudden and painful thought had shot across his mind; but in a moment he was calm, and stern-looking as ever.

“Twenty minutes late, Mr. Considine,” said a short, red-faced little man, with a military frock and foraging cap, as he held out his watch in evidence.

“I can only say, Captain Malowney, that we lost no time since we parted. We had some difficulty in finding a boat; but in any case, we are here now, and that, I opine, is the important part of the matter.”

“Quite right, – very just indeed. Will you present me to your young friend. Very proud to make your acquaintance, sir; your uncle and I met more than once in this kind of way. I was out with him in ‘92, – was it? no, I think it was ‘93, – when he shot Harry Burgoyne, who, by-the-bye, was called the crack shot of our mess; but, begad, your uncle knocked his pistol hand to shivers, saying, in his dry way, ‘He must try the left hand this morning.’ Count, a little this side, if you please.”

While Considine and the captain walked a few paces apart from where I stood, I had leisure to observe my antagonist, who stood among a group of his friends, talking and laughing away in great spirits. As the tone they spoke in was not of the lowest, I could catch much of their conversation at the distance I was from them. They were discussing the last occasion that Bodkin had visited this spot, and talking of the fatal event which happened then.

“Poor devil,” said Bodkin, “it wasn’t his fault; but you see some of the – th had been showing white feathers before that, and he was obliged to go out. In fact, the colonel himself said, ‘Fight, or leave the corps.’ Well, out he came; it was a cold morning in February, with a frost the night before going off in a thin rain. Well, it seems he had the consumption or something of that sort, with a great cough and spitting of blood, and this weather made him worse; and he was very weak when he came to the ground. Now, the moment I got a glimpse of him, I said to myself, ‘He’s pluck enough, but as nervous as a lady;’ for his eye wandered all about, and his mouth was constantly twitching. ‘Take off your great-coat, Ned,’ said one of his people, when they were going to put him up; ‘take it off, man.’ He seemed to hesitate for an instant, when Michael Blake remarked, ‘Arrah, let him alone; it’s his mother makes him wear it, for the cold he has.’ They all began to laugh at this; but I kept my eye upon him, and I saw that his cheek grew quite livid and a kind of gray color, and his eyes filled up. ‘I have you now,’ said I to myself, and I shot him through the lung.”

“And this poor fellow,” thought I, “was the only son of a widowed mother.” I walked from the spot to avoid hearing further, and felt, as I did so, something like a spirit of vengeance rising within me, for the fate of one so untimely cut off.

“Here we are, all ready,” said Malowney, springing over a small fence into the adjoining field. “Take your ground, gentlemen.”

Considine took my arm and walked forward. “Charley,” said he, “I am to give the signal; I’ll drop my glove when you are to fire, but don’t look at me at all. I’ll manage to catch Bodkin’s eye; and do you watch him steadily, and fire when he does.”

“I think that the ground we are leaving behind us is rather better,” said some one.