Part 3

Before I had been three days at Brighton, my purse was in a rapid consumption, and the air of that fashionable watering-place was in no way calculated to recover it from the effects of the shock it had received in London. I beheld it dwindling to a shadow; and what was worse, there was no soothing restorative in the hands of its physicians, Doctors Greenwood and Cox, of Craig's Court, London. In consequence of this decay of my purse, I passed Sunday in rather a sombre mood, and, with the exception of marching to church with my regiment, I had nothing to lighten the forenoon. In this disposition I sat down to write to all my friends, and in the descriptions, wherein I detailed to them my proceedings, lived my time in the service over again. I described my setting out from London “_to join_”—my arrival at the _barracks_—_reporting_ myself to the _commanding officer_—my servant—my preparations for the mess—mess drums and fifes—the dinner—thirty _honours of wine_—the band (not a word about the “singers” and their books)—our serenade—my first parade—my attendance of officers' drills—mode of saluting with the sword at the “_present_”—account of orders for _marching_ to embark for Spain (this we only _expected_ at the regiment)—a sentimental adieu, and injunctions in case I should _fall_—heroism and glory—England and his Majesty! In short, I wrote from one till six that day, and not less than half a dozen letters. In the last, which was to my father, I did not forget the main point—I spoke of _finance_ in such a way, that I received in return three sides of a sheet of paper closely written and crossed, containing, however, a handsome remittance, which happily arrived just as I concluded my FIRST WEEK IN THE SERVICE.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The practical joke of changing signs from one house to another, well nigh cost some officers of infantry their lives, some years ago, in the good city of Bath.

[2] For a long time, the Author of this sketch has sought an opportunity of expressing his gratitude to the gallant General above alluded to; but has never had that opportunity, from having been always employed on a service different from that in which he commenced. The Author now avails himself of the present occasion, publicly to acknowledge his sense of the paternal kindness he received in the affair alluded to; and trusts, that should these pages meet the General's eye, he will consider this note as a token of the Author's gratitude.

[3] This alludes to a case in which the magistrate censured a midshipman for appearing in uniform in the streets. His worship said, that if the officer had business at the Admiralty, he might have gone there in uniform; but it was proper on no other occasion.

THE SOLDIER'S ORPHAN.

“Heu! miserande puer!”—VIRGIL.

Amongst soldiers—men whose habits of life are almost in direct opposition to social and domestic enjoyment—who are strangers every where, and whose profession is to destroy their fellow-men, it is astonishing what tenderness and amiability of disposition are frequently to be met with. If a comrade dies and leaves a widow; or if an object of distress presents itself to a regiment—such as a poor traveller, unable to proceed from illness or want, a subscription is immediately set on foot, and although a few pence from each be the extent of the alms, yet, with men whose pay is so limited, it bears the credit of a considerable gift: but it is not the amount of the subscription I have looked to most; it is the generous promptitude with which the measure is adopted. Nor are such the greatest marks of tenderness in the soldier: oftentimes has it occurred, that an orphan has been left in a regiment, and the child has either been supported and domiciled with the company to which its father belonged, or a single soldier has undertaken the care of it. I believe one remarkable instance occurred immediately after the battle of Waterloo—the infant was discovered under the carriage of a field-piece. Another is, I believe, at this moment to be found either in the 76th or 79th Regiment. That which fell under my own observation I will relate; and I think it affords undoubted proof of the kindest and most amiable heart.

At the battle of Talavera, a soldier, who had his wife, and a child about two years and a half old, at the regiment with him, was killed. His death weighed heavily at the heart of the woman, and together with a severe cold caught in marching, produced a fever which terminated in her death. Her infant, thus left fatherless and motherless, became an interesting object of pity. The officers of the regiment took measures for its protection, and placed the boy in the care of a woman belonging to their own regiment. This woman, however, was a drunkard, and the comrade of the deceased father, perceived that she neglected the child. He reported this to the officers, and they determined to remove it; but on examination it was found that there was no other woman in the regiment who had claims to be trusted more than the person with whom the child already was. Indeed, there are but few women permitted to take the field with the soldiers; and these, in general, are not only intemperate, but blunted in their feelings by their own privations.

The comrade, finding much difficulty in providing a nurse for the child, declared that he would sooner undertake the care of him himself until an opportunity of better disposing of him should occur, as he felt convinced that the poor infant would be lost, if suffered to remain with the woman under whose care he then was.

There was no objection made to this, so the soldier immediately took charge of the child. And well he acquitted himself in his responsibility: he regularly washed, dressed, and fed the little fellow, every morning; he would clamber over the hills and procure goats' milk for him, when even the officers could not obtain that luxury; and although not much of a cook, would boil his ration-meat into a nutritive jelly, as scientifically as the best of them, for the child. In less than two months, the little campaigner was very different in appearance from that which he exhibited when first taken in charge of the soldier; and he became a rosy-faced, chubby, hardy little hero, as ever bivouacked on the hills of Portugal.

Month after month passed away, during which the regiment often moved about. Upon the march the soldier always found means of procuring a seat for the child upon one of the baggage mules; and he now became so interesting to all who knew him, that little difficulty in obtaining transport for him was to be met with. One time a muleteer would take the boy before him on his _macho_, or place him between two sacks or casks, upon the animal's back, and gibber Spanish to him as he jogged along; at other times he would find a seat on some officers' baggage, or “get a lift” in the arms of the men; nobody would refuse _little Johnny_ accommodation whenever he needed it. So far I heard from a soldier of the division in which the child was protected. What follows I witnessed myself.

After the battle of Busaco, which was fought in the year following that of Talavera, the army retreated over at least one hundred and fifty miles of a country the most difficult to pass; steep after steep was climbed by division after division, until the whole arrived within the lines of Torres Vedras. The whole of this march, from the mountains of Busaco to the lines, was a scene of destruction and misery, not to the army, but to the unhappy population. Every pound of corn was destroyed, the wine-casks were staved, and the forage was burnt; the people in a flock trudging on before the army, to shelter themselves from the French, into whose hands, had they remained in their houses, they must have fallen. Infants barely able to walk; bedridden old people; the sick, and the dying—all endeavouring to make their way into Lisbon; for which purpose all the asses and mules that they could find were taken with them, and the poor animals became as lame as their riders by a very few days' marches. It was a severe measure of Lord Wellington's thus to devastate the country which he left behind him, but, like the burning of Moscow, it was masterly; for Massena being thus deprived of the means of supplying his army, was soon obliged to retrace his steps to Spain, pursued in his turn by the British, and leaving the roads covered with his starving people and slaughtered horses.

Amidst this desolation I first saw the little hero of whom I write. I had been with the rear-guard of the division, and was approaching Alhandra, when I observed four or five men standing on a ridge, in the valley through which we were passing. One of them ran towards me, and said that there was a man lying under a tree a little way off the road, beside a stream, and that he was dying. A staff-surgeon was close by; I told him the circumstance, and we immediately proceeded to the spot. There we beheld a soldier lying upon his back, his head resting against a bank, his cap beside him and filled with water as if he had been drinking out of it. Beside the man sat a fine boy, of about three years' old, his little arms stretched across him. The child looked wistfully at us. We asked him what he was doing there? but, from fright and perhaps confusion at seeing us all intent upon questioning him he only burst into tears. The surgeon examined the man, and found he was lifeless, but still warm. I asked the child, if the man was his father? he said he was; but to any further questions he could only lisp an unintelligible answer. The surgeon thought the man had died of fatigue, probably from marching while under great debility or sickness. I asked the boy, if he had walked with his father that day? and he replied, that he did not, but had been carried by him.

At this moment the last of the division was passing up the hill, and the French columns appeared about half a mile behind. There was nothing to be done but to remove the child, and leave the dead man as he was. I directed the soldiers to do so, and to bring him along with them. They accordingly went over to the boy, to take him away from the body; but he cried out, while tears rolled from his eyes, “_No, no! me stay wi' daddy!—me stay wi' daddy!_” and clung his little arms about the dead soldier with a determined grasp. The men looked at each other; we were all affected in the same way; I could see the tears in the hardy fellows' eyes. They caressed him; they promised that his father should go also; but no, the little affectionate creature could not be persuaded to quit his hold. Force was necessary; the men drew him away from the body; but the child's cries were heart-rending: “_Daddy! daddy! daddy! dear, dear, daddy!_” Thus he called and cried, while the men, endeavouring to sooth him, bore him up the hill just as the enemy were entering the valley. This was little Johnny, and the dead man was his father's kind, good-hearted comrade, who perhaps hastened his own death in carrying the beloved little orphan.

NIGHTS IN THE GUARD-HOUSE.

No. I.

“See yonder, round a many-colour'd flame, A merry club is huddled all together; Even with such little people as sit there One would not be alone.”

GOËTHE.

“Who goes there?”

“Rounds.”

“What rounds?”

“Grand rounds.”

“Stand, grand rounds—advance one and give the countersign.”

“Waterloo.”

“Pass, grand rounds: all's well.”

Splash went the steed, and patter went the rain, as the above dialogue rapidly passed between the officer of the rounds and the advanced sentry of Ballycraggen guard-house, one stormy night in the depth of December, and in the midst of the Wicklow mountains.

“Guard, turn out!” instantly bellowed with true Highland energy, from the lungs of Sergeant M'Fadgen, and echoed quickly by those of Corporal O'Callaghan, increased the panic to its climax, and broke up the circle of story-tellers who were enjoying themselves round a huge turf fire, and, for aught yet known, a bottle of pure potyeen. “Guard, turn out!” repeated the corporal, as he upset, in his haste to obey, the stool on which he sat, as well as the lance-corporal and a fat private who occupied one end of it; but notwithstanding these little embarrassments, both men and musquets were out of the guard-house in a twinkling—silent, and as steady in line as the pillars of the Giants' Causeway.

The officer's visit did not last many seconds, for the night was too wet, and nothing had occurred with the guard worth his particular notice: off he galloped, and the clatter of his horse's hoofs was almost drowned in the word of command given by Sergeant M'Fadgen, as he returned the guard; for the Sergeant always made it a point, when giving the word within the hearing of an officer, to display the power of his non-commissioned lungs in the most laudable manner.

The arms were speedily laid down, and each man ran to take up his former position at the fire, or perhaps to secure a better, if permitted to do so by the rightful owner: this, however, was, as regarded the stools, without any reference whatever to the sergeant's seat—an old oak chair, which he leisurely, gravely, and consequentially resumed.

“The Major was in a hurry to-night, Sargeant,” observed Corporal O'Callaghan, as he fixed himself at the front of the fire, elbowing his supporters right and left.

“The Major's nae fool, Corporal; it's a cauld an' a raw naight,” replied the Sergeant.

“Could, did ya say, Sergeant,” returned O'Callaghan; “By the powers o' Moll Kelly! he knocks fire enough out o' the wet stones to keep both him and the baste warm: I could ha' lit my pipe with it when he started off.”

“Aweel, he's done his duty as effectally as if he had stopped an hoor; so dinna fash, but gi' us that story you were jist commencing afore the turn-oot.”

“Yes, yes, the story, Corporal!”—“Give us the story;”—“That's the thing, my boy;”—“Let us have it.” These, and a dozen similar requests followed the Sergeant's, from the men of the guard; when, after the due quantity of hems, haws, and apologies, usual in all such cases, Corporal O'Callaghan commenced the following

STORY OF MARIA DE CARMO.

“Well! if yiz _will_ have the story, I suppose I must tell it:—Maria de Carmo, you see, is a Portuguese name, as _you_ Redmond, and _you_ Tom Pattherson knows well: for it's often you saw the self-same young girl I'm going to tell about; and as purty a crature she was as ever stept in shoe leather,—a beautiful and as sweet a young blossom as the sun ever shone upon, with her black curls, and her white teeth, set just like little rows of harpsichord kays; and her eyes, and her lips, and her ancles! O! she bet all the girls I ever saw in either Spain or Portugal; that you may depend upon. Well, Harry Gainer was her sweetheart; poor fellow! he was my comrade for many a long day. _You_ knew him well, Sargeant.”

“I listed the lad mysel at Waterford, aboot this time ten years, as near as poossible; an' a gay callant he was,” said M'Fadgen; and then with an important sigh resumed his pipe.

“Well, Harry and I went out with the rigiment from Cork to Lisbon in 1810, and it was in March; for we spent our Patrick's Day aboord, and drowned our shamrock in a canteen of ration rum, just as we were laving sight o' Ireland: and we gave the counthry three cheers on the forecastle—the whole lot of us together, sailors an' all, as the green hills turned blue, an' began to sink away from our sight. We had a fine passage, an' landed at a place called the Black Horse Square, in Lisbon, afther only six days' sailing, as hot and as fine a day, although in March, as one of our July days here. Well—to make a long story short, we made no delay, but, according to ordthers, were embarked aboord the boats, and sailed up the Tagus to Villa Franca (as pretty a river as ever I sailed in), and then the rigiment marched on to Abrantes, where we halted: it was in this town that Harry first met with Maria de Carmo. Both he and I were quarthered at her father's house, a nice counthry sort of place, what the Portuguese call a _Quinta_, in the middle of a thick wood of olives, on the side o' the high hill of Abrantes. You could see from the door fifty miles and more, over beautiful blue mountains on one side; an' on the other side, across the Tagus, a fertile, cultivated counthry, with the fine wide river itself, like a looking-glass, wandering away—God knows where. O, it was as purty a spot as any in Ireland, I'm sure, barrin' the town itself; and that was a dirty, narrow hole of a place, on the very top o' the high hill,—yet it was fortified all round, as if it was worth living in. The streets are so narrow that you could shake hands out o' the windows with the opposite neighbours. There's a bit of a square, to be sure, or Praça, as they call it, but that's not worth mentioning. The fact is, I often thought that the town of Abrantes was like a big dunghill in the middle o' Paradise.

“We halted here about a month, during which time Gainer was always looking afther this young girl; and faith! he hadn't much throuble to find her any day, for she was just as fond of looking afther him. I often met them both sthrolling up along the side o' the river, like two turtle doves, billing and cooing, and I could ha' tould how the matther would have gone, in two days afther we arrived; for, 'pon my sowl I don't know how it is, but when a young couple meets, that's made for one another, there is such an atthraction, an' such a snaking toward this way an' that way, that they are always elbowing and jostling, 'till they fall into each other's arms.

“Poor Harry was a warm-hearted sowl as ever was born, and as honourable, too. He came to me the night before we marched from Abrantes for Elvas, and says he to me (we were just outside the town, taking a bit of a walk in an orange garden), says he, ‘Tom,’ an' the poor fellow sighed enough to brake his heart; ‘Tom,’ says he, ‘I don't know what to do with that girl; the rigiment marches to-morrow, and God knows will I ever see her again. She wants to come with me, unknown to her parents.’ ‘An' will you take her?’ says I.—‘Take her, Tom,’ says he; ‘is it an' she, the only child of the good-natured ould man that behaved so well to us? The Lord forbid! I'd sooner jump off this hill into the river than I'd lade a sweet and innocent young girl asthray, to brake the heart o' her father.’

“Och, I knew well, before I mintioned it, that Harry's heart was in the right place.—‘Well,’ says I, ‘you must only lave her, poor thing; it's betther nor take her with you. But what does her father say?’ ‘O,’ says Harry, ‘the poor man would be willing enough to let her marry me if I was settled; but although he likes me so much, he knows well that this is no time for marriages with soldiers.’ ‘Well, then, Harry,’ says I, ‘there's no manner o' use in talking; you must only give her a lock o' your hair and a parting kiss,—then God speed you both.’

“With that we went back to our quarthers, an' took share of a canteen o' wine; but although Harry drank, I saw it was more for the dthrowning of his throubles, and the sake of conversation about Maria, than for any liking he had to licker. But faith! I'm sure, although I'm no great hand at it myself, I think a glass on such an occasion as that, when the heart o' the poor fellow was so full, an' my own not very empty, an' when we were going to march from the town we spent some pleasant hours in, was a thing that if a man could not enjoy, he ought to be thrown behind the fire, as a dthry chip.

“We were just finishing the last glass, when the ould man, our Patroa, Signior Jozé, came to say that we must ate a bit o' supper with him, as it was our last night in the place; and although I didn't undtherstand much o' the language, yet he explained himself well enough to make us know that he was in the right earnest o' good-nature. We had no more wine to offer him, at which he smiled, and pointed to the parlour below,—‘_La esta bastante_,’ says he; which manes _there's enough below stairs, my boys_. We went down to supper, which was a couple of _Galinias boas_, or in plain English, _roast fowls_,—an' soup: with oranges of the best quality, just plucked out of the ould man's garden. Maria was with us, an' I don't think I ever passed a pleasanter night. God knows whether it was so with Harry an' his sweetheart or not; I believe it was a sort o' mixture. They were both not much in the talking way, an' Maria looked as if she had a hearty male o' crying before she sat down to supper. However, I kept up the conversation with Jozé, though I was obliged to get Harry to interpret for me often enough, as he was a far betther hand at the Portuguese than I was, from always discoursing with Maria—faith! in larning any language there's nothing like a walking dictionary;—that is to say, a bit of a _sweetheart_.

“Signior Jozé gave us a terrible account o' the French when they came to Abrantes first; an' all he feared was, that ever they should be able to make their way there again. He hoped he would never see the day, on account of his dear Maria, for they nather spared age nor sex in the unfortunate counthry.

“‘They call themselves Christians,’ says he, ‘and the English infidels; but actions, afther all, are the best things to judge by: the sign o' the cross never kept a devil away yet; if so, there should not have been such a _Legion_ of them here along with the French, for we had _crosses_ enough.’

“Jozé was a liberal man in his opinions, an' although a Catholic, an' more attached to Harry an' me from professing the same religion, yet he was not like the bigots of ould, that I read of; but one that looked upon every faith in a liberal light. He was for allowing every man to go to the devil his own way.”

“I dinna ken but Jozé was raight,” drily remarked Sergeant M'Fadgen; to the truth of which observation a general admission was given by all the fire-side listeners.

“Well, we broke up about one o'clock purty merry, but not at all out o' the way; and as we had to march, a little after day-brake, I thought three or four hours' rest would do us no harm: so I wouldn't let the Patroa open another bottle. Harry looked a little out o' sorts at my preventing him; but I knew what he was at—he didn't want the dthrink; but just to keep sitting up with the girl: therefore I thought it betther to go; for he an' she would have been just as loth to part if they had been six weeks more together without stopping.

“Next morning we turned out at day-brake; an' faith! Harry might as well have staid up all night for the sleep he got—he looked the picture of misery and throuble. We had our rations sarved out the day before; but faith! _we_ did not want much o' that—Harry and I; for Jozé had stuffed our haversacks with every spacies of eatables.

“We mustherd in the square or market-place,—mules and all, by four o'clock, and at half-past four we marched off to the chune o' _Patrick's Day_, upon as fine a band as ever lilted; which, in the middle o' foreign parts, as I was, made me feel a little consated, I assure you. The rigiment was followed by a crowd of Portuguese, as far as the bridge over the Tagus where we crossed. Poor devils! the band didn't seem to make _them_ look pleasanter; they were like as if they suspected we were not certain of keeping the French out long.