With Moore at Corunna by G. A. Henty (red queen ebook TXT) π
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"That is a grave matter, and not to be answered hastily, Doctor. Let me see, there are thirty-two officers with the regiment. Now, what would you say would be a fair allowance per day for each man?"
"I should say half a bottle, Colonel. There are some of them won't take as much, but O'Grady will square matters up."
"I protest against the insinuation," O'Grady said, rising; "and, moreover, I would observe, that it is mighty little would be left for me after each man had taken his whack."
"That is sixteen bottles a day. For a continuance I should consider that too much; but seeing that we have been out of dacent liquor for a month, and may have but a fortnight after it arrives to make up for lost time, we will say sixteen bottles."
"Make it three gallons," O'Grady said, persuasively; "we shall be having lots of men drop in when it gets known that we have got a supply."
"There is something in that, O'Grady. Well, we will say three gallons-- that is, forty-two gallons for a fortnight. We will commission Captain Hall to bring back that quantity."
"If you say forty-five, Colonel, it will give us a drop in our flasks to start with, and we are as likely to be fifteen days as fourteen, anyway."
"Let it be forty-five then," the colonel assented. "Will you undertake that, Captain Hall?"
"Willingly, Colonel. I will get the whisky emptied into wine casks, and as I know one of the chief commissaries at Lisbon, I can get it brought up with the wine for the troops."
After sitting for a couple of hours, the colonel proposed that they should all go for a walk, while those who preferred it should take a nap in the shade.
"I move, O'Connor," he said, "that this meeting be adjourned until sunset."
"I think that will be a very good plan, Colonel."
The proposal was carried out. O'Grady and a few others declared that they should prefer a nap. The rest started on foot, and sauntered about in the shade of the wood for a couple of hours, then all gathered at the table again. At eight o'clock grilled joints of fowls and ducks were put upon the table, and at nine all mounted and rode back to Abrantes.
"How many of those quart jugs have been filled, Sancho?"
"Eight, sir."
"That is not so bad," Terence said to Macwitty. "That is twelve bottles; and as there were sixteen and our three selves, that is only about two bottles between three men."
"I call that vera moderate under the circumstances, Colonel," Macwitty said, gravely. "I have drank more myself many a time."
"They were a good many hours over it too," Terence added; "you may say it was two sittings. You will see that we shall have a great many callers from the camp for the next few days."
A fortnight later Terence received a letter from Don Jose, saying that he had heard from his friend at Oporto, and that they informed him that the SeοΏ½ora Johanna O'Connor had been killed at the sack of Oporto. She had left her own house and taken refuge at the bishop's. That place had been defended to the last, and when the infuriated French broke in, all within its walls had been killed.
Terence was not altogether sorry to hear the news. The woman had been a party to the cruel imprisonment of Mary. No doubt his cousin would feel her death, but her grief could not be very deep; and it was, he thought, just as well for her that her connection with Portugal should be altogether severed. Her mother might have endeavoured to tempt her to return there; and although he felt sure that she would not succeed in this, she might at least have caused some trouble, and it was better that there should be an end of it. As to the woman herself, she had been in agreement with the bishop, had been mixed up in his intrigues, and her death was caused by her misplaced confidence in him. Of course she had not known that he had left the town, and thought that under his protection she would be safe in the palace.
"She must have been a bad lot," he said to himself.
"Evidently she did not make her husband happy, and persecuted her daughter, and I regret her death no more than any other of the ten thousand people who fell in Oporto."
A few days later he received letters both from his father and Mary. Being under eighteen he opened the former first.
I have heard all about you and your doings from Mary, and I am proud of you. It is grand satisfaction that you should have won your lieutenancy, and that you should be on the general's staff; as to your being a colonel, although only a Portuguese one, it is simply astounding. I don't care so much about the rank, for the Portuguese officers are poor creatures, not one in fifty of them knows anything of his duty; but what I do value is your independent command. That will give you opportunities for distinguishing yourself that can never fall in the way of a subaltern of the line, and I fancy, now that you have got Wellesley at the head, there will be plenty of such opportunities.
I was delighted, as you may guess, when I got Mary's letter from London. I had just settled at the old house, and mighty lonely I felt with no one to speak to, and the wind whistling in at the broken windows, and the whole place in confusion. So putting aside Mary, I was glad enough to have some excuse for running away. I took the next coach for Dublin; found, by good luck, a packet just sailing for London; and got there a week later. She is a nice girl and a pretty one; but I suppose I need not tell you that. I told her it was a poor place I was going to take her to, but she would be as welcome as the flowers in May; but she only laughed and said, that after being shut up for a year in a single room, and having nothing but bread and water, it would not matter a pin to her what it was like.
She was in a grand house, and Mrs. Nelson insisted on my putting up there. We stopped three days and then we took ship to Cork. We had to prove that the money lying there belonged to me; that is to say, that I was the person in whose name it had been put. I had all sort of botheration about it, but luckily I knew the colonel of the regiment there, and he went to the bank with me and testified. Then we came down here, and Mary hadn't been here a day before she began to spend money. I said I would not allow it; and she said I could not help it, the money was her own, and she could spend it as she liked, which was true enough; and at present the place is more topsy-turvy than ever.
I won't have anything to do with giving orders, but she has got a score of masons and carpenters over from Athlone, and she is turning the old place upside down. I sha'n't know it myself when she has done with it. There is not a place fit to sit down in, and we are living for the time at the inn at Kilnally, three miles away, and drive backwards and forwards to the house. Except that we quarrel over that, we get on first-rate together. She is never tired of talking about you, and when I hinted one day that it was ridiculous your being made a colonel, she spurred up like a young bantam, and more than hinted that if you had been appointed commander-in-chief instead of Sir Arthur it would not have been beyond your deserts.
My wound hurts me a bit sometimes, but I am able to get about all right, and the surgeon says in a few months I shall be able to walk as straight as anyone. And so, good-bye. I don't think I ever wrote such a long letter before, and as Mary will be telling you everything, I don't suppose I shall ever write such a long one again.
Terence laughed as he put the letter down and opened one from his cousin.
Here I am with your father as happy as a bird, and as free. I sing about the place all day, my heart is so light, and should be perfectly happy were it not that I am afraid that you will be fighting again soon, and then I shall be very anxious about you. Your father is just what I thought he would be from what I know of you. He is as kind as if he was my own father, and reminds me of him. You told me it was a tumbledown old place, and it is. When we came it was only fit for owls to live in, so, of course, I set to work at once. Your father was very foolish about it, but, of course, I had my way. What is the use of having money and living in an owl's nest? So I have set a lot of men to work.
Your father won't interfere with it one way or the other. I had a builder down, he shook his head over it and said that it would be cheaper to pull it down and build a new one; but as it was an old family house I could not do that. However, between ourselves, I don't think there will be much of the old one left by the time we have finished. It looks awful at present. I am building a new wall against the old one, so that it will look just the same, only it will be new. The windows are going to be made bigger, and there will be a new roof put on. Inside it will all have to come down, all the woodwork was so rotten that it was dangerous to walk upstairs. It is great fun looking after the workmen. And though your father does keep on grumbling and saying that I am destroying the old place, I don't think he really minds.
As I tell him, one could live in a house without windows nine months in the year in Portugal, but it is not so in Ireland. One wants comfort, Terence; and, as I have plenty of money, I don't see why we should not have it. You can sleep on the ground, and go from morning till night in wet clothes, when you are on a campaign, but that is no reason why you should do it at other times. The weather is fine here now, at least your father says it is fine, and I want to get everything pushed on and finished before it changes to what even he will admit is wet. The people here seem all very nice and pleasant. They are delighted at having your father back again. I drive about with him a great deal, and we call upon the neighbours, who all seem very pleased that the house is going to be occupied again.
The poor people seem very poor. I don't know that they are poorer than they are in Portugal, but I think they look poorer; but they don't seem to mind much. I have made great friends with most of the children already, and always go about with a large bag of sweetmeats in what your father calls "the trap." I think of you very often, Terence, and your father and I generally talk about you all the evening. By what he says you must have been a very naughty boy, indeed, before you became a soldier. Do take care of yourself. We shall be very, very anxious about you as soon as we hear that fighting has begun again. I hope you think very often of your very loving cousin, MARY O'CONNOR.
"She will do a world of good to my father," Terence said to himself as he put down the letters. "After being so long in the regiment he would have felt being alone in that old place horribly, especially as it has, of course, been a terrible trial to him to be laid aside just as a big campaign is beginning. She will keep him alive, and he won't have any time to mope. Even if for no other reason, it is a lucky thing indeed
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