Jack Hinton: The Guardsman

CHAPTER XXIII. MAJOR MAHON AND HIS QUARTERS

The Major’s quarters were fixed in one of the best houses in the town, in the comfortable back-parlour of which was now displayed a little table laid for three persons. A devilled lobster, the grouse-pie already mentioned, some fried ham, and crisped potatoes were the viands; but each was admirable in its kind, and with the assistance of an excellent bowl of hot punch and the friendly welcome of the host, left nothing to be desired.

Major Bob Mahon was a short, thickset little man, with round blue eyes, a turned-up nose, and a full under lip, which he had a habit of protruding with an air of no mean pretension; a short crop of curly black hair covered a head as round as a billiard-ball. These traits, with a certain peculiar smack of his mouth, by which he occasionally testified the approval of his own eloquence, were the most remarkable things about him. His great ambition was to be thought a military man; but somehow his pretensions in this respect smacked much more of the militia than the line. Indeed, he possessed a kind of adroit way of asserting the superiority of the former to the latter, averring that they who fought pro arts et focis– the Major was fond of Latin – stood on far higher ground than the travelled mercenaries who only warred for pay. This peculiarity, and an absurd attachment to practical jokes, the result of which had frequently through life involved him in lawsuits, damages, compensations, and even duels, formed the great staple of his character – of all which the good priest informed me most fully on our way to the house.

‘Captain Hinton, I believe,’ said the Major, as he held out his hand in welcome.

‘Mr. Hinton,’ said I, bowing.

‘Ay, yes; Father Tom, there, doesn’t know much about these matters. What regiment, pray?’

‘The Grenadier Guards.’

‘Oh, a very good corps – mighty respectable corps; not that, between ourselves, I think overmuch of the regulars; between you and me, I never knew foreign travel do good to man or beast. What do they bring back with them, I’d like to know? – French cookery and Italian licentiousness. No, no; give me the native troops! You were a boy at the time, but maybe you have heard how they behaved in the west, when Hoche landed. Egad! if it wasn’t for the militia the country was sacked. I commanded a company of the Roscommon at the time. I remember well we laid siege to a windmill, held by a desperate fellow, the miller – a resolute character, Mr. Hinton; he had two guns in the place with him.’

‘I wish to the Lord he had shot you with one of them, and we ‘d have been spared this long story!’ said the priest.

‘I opened a parallel – ’

‘Maybe you ‘d open the pie?’ said the priest, as he drew his chair, and sat down to the table. ‘Perhaps you forget, Bob, we have had a sharp ride of it this evening?’

‘Upon my conscience, so I did,’ replied the Major good-humouredly. ‘So let us have a bit of supper now, Mr. Hinton, and I’ll finish my story by-and-by.’

‘The Heavens forbid!’ piously ejaculated the priest, as he helped himself to a very considerable portion of the lobster.

‘Is this a fast, Father Loftus?’ said I slyly.

‘No, my son, but we’ll make it one. That reminds me of what happened to me going up in the boat. It was a Friday, and the dinner, as you may suppose, was not over-good; but there was a beautiful cut of fried salmon just before me – about a pound and a half, maybe two pounds; this I slipped quietly on my plate, observing to the company, in this way, “Ladies and gentlemen, this is a fast day with me” – when a big fellow, with red whiskers, stooped across the table, cut my bit of fish in two halves, calling out as he carried off one, “Bad scran to ye! d’ye think nobody has a soul to be saved but yourself?”’

‘Ah, they’re a pious people, are the Irish!’ said the Major solemnly, ‘and you’ll remark that when you see more of them. And now, Captain, how do you like us here?’

‘Exceedingly,’ said I, with warmth. ‘I have had every reason to be greatly pleased with Ireland.’

‘That’s right! and I’m glad of it! though, to be sure, you have not seen us in our holiday garb. Ah, if you were here before the Union; if you saw Dublin as I remember it – and Tom there remembers it – “that was a pleasant place.” It was not trusting to balls and parties, to dinners and routs, but to all kinds of fun and devilment besides. All the members of Parliament used to be skylarking about the city, playing tricks on one another, and humbugging the Castle people. And, to be sure, the Castle was not the grave, stupid place it is now – they were convivial, jovial fellows – ’

‘Come, come, Major,’ interrupted I; ‘you are really unjust – the present court is not the heavy – ’

‘Sure, I know what it is well enough. Hasn’t the duke all the privy council and the bishops as often to dinner as the garrison and the bar? Isn’t he obliged to go to his own apartment when they want to make a night of it, and sing a good chorus? Don’t tell me! Sure, even as late as Lord Westmorland’s time it was another thing – pleasant and happy times they were, and the country will never be the same till we have them back again!’

Being somewhat curious to ascertain in what particular our degeneracy consisted – for in my ignorance of better, I had hitherto supposed the present regime about as gay a thing as need be – I gradually led the Major on to talk of those happier days when Ireland kept all its fun for home consumption, and never exported even its surplus produce.

‘It was better in every respect,’ responded the Major. ‘Hadn’t we all the patronage amongst us? There’s Jonah, there – Harrington, I mean; well, he and I could make anything, from a tide-waiter to a master in Chancery. It’s little trouble small debts gave us then; a pipe of sherry never cost me more than a storekeeper in the ordnance, and I kept my horses at livery for three years with a washwoman to Kilmainham Hospital And as for fun – look at the Castle now! Don’t I remember the times when we used to rob the coaches coming from the drawing-rooms; and pretty girls they were inside of them.’

‘For shame, for shame!’ cried Father Tom, with a sly look in the corner of his eye that by no means bespoke a suitable degree of horror at such unwarrantable proceedings.

‘Well, if it was a shame it was no sin,’ responded the Major; ‘for we never took anything more costly than kisses. Ah, dear me! them was the times! And, to be sure, every now and then we got a pull-up from the Lady lieutenant, and were obliged to behave ourselves for a week or two together. One thing she never could endure was a habit we had of leaving the Castle before they themselves left the ball-room. I’m not going to defend it – it was not very polite, I confess; but somehow or other there was always something going on we couldn’t afford to lose – maybe a supper at the barrack, or a snug party at Daly’s, or a bit of fun elsewhere. Her Excellency, however, got angry about it, and we got a quiet hint to reform our manners. This, I need not tell you, was a hopeless course; so we hit on an expedient that answered to the full as well. It was by our names being called out, as the carriages drove up, that our delinquency became known. So Matt Fortescue suggested that we should adopt some feigned nomenclature, which would totally defy every attempt at discovery; the idea was excellent, and we traded on it for many a day with complete success. One night, however, from some cause or other, the carriages were late in arriving, and we were all obliged to accompany the court into the supper-room. Angry enough we were; but still there was no help for it; and so, “smiling through tears,” as the poet says, in we went. Scarcely, however, had we taken our places when a servant called out something from the head of the stairs; another re-echoed it at the ante-chamber, and a third at the supper-room shouted out, “Oliver Cromwell’s carriage stops the way!” The roar of laughter the announcement caused shook the very room; but it had scarcely subsided when there was another call for “Brian Boru’s coach,” quickly followed by “Guy Fawkes” and “Paddy O’Rafferty’s jingle,” which latter personage was no other than the Dean of Cork. I need not tell you that we kept our secret, and joined in the universal opinion of the whole room, “that the household was shamefully disguised in drink”; and indeed there was no end to the mistakes that night, for every now and then some character in heathen or modern history would turn up among the announcements; and as the laughter burst forth, the servants would grow ashamed for a while, and refuse to call any carriage where the style and title was a little out of the common. Ah, Mr. Hinton, if you had lived in those days! Well, well, no matter – here’s a glass to their memory, anyway. It is the first time you ‘ve been in these parts, and I suppose you haven’t seen much of the country?’

‘Very little indeed,’ replied I; ‘and even that much only by moonlight.’

‘I’m afraid,’ said Father Tom, half pensively, ‘that many of your countrymen take little else than a “dark view” of us.’

‘See now,’ said the Major, slapping his hand on the table with energy, ‘the English know as much about Pat as Pat knows of purgatory – no offence to you, Mr. Hinton. I could tell you a story of a circumstance that once happened to myself.’

No, no, Bob,’ said the priest; ‘it is bad taste to tell a story en petit comité. I’ll leave it to the Captain.’

‘If I am to be the judge,’ said I laughingly, ‘I decide for the story.’

‘Let’s have it, then,’ said the priest. ‘Come, Bob, a fresh brew, and begin your tale.’

‘You are a sensual creature, Father Tom,’ said the Major, ‘and prefer drink to intellectual discussion; not but that you may have both here at the same time. But in honour of my friend beside me, I’ll not bear malice, but give you the story; and let me tell you, it is not every day in the week a man hears a tale with a moral to it, particularly down in this part of the country.’

CHAPTER XXIV. THE DEVIL’S GRIP

‘The way of it was this. There was a little estate of mine in the county of Waterford that I used now and then to visit in the shooting season. In fact, except for that, there was very little inducement to go there; it was a bleak, ugly part of the country, a bad market-town near it, and not a neighbour within twelve miles. Well, I went over there – it was, as well as I remember, December two years. Never was there such weather; it rained from morning till night, and blew and rained from night till morning; the slates were flying about on every side, and we used to keep fellows up all night, that in case the chimneys were blown away we ‘d know where to find them in the morning. This was the pleasant weather I selected for my visit to the “Devil’s Grip” – that was the name of the town-land where the house stood; and no bad name either, for, ‘faith, if he hadn’t his paw on it, it might have gone in law, – like the rest of the property. However, down I went there, and only remembered on the evening of my arrival that I had ordered my gamekeeper to poison the mountain, to get rid of the poachers; so that, instead of shooting, which, as I said before, was all you could do in the place, there I was, with three brace of dogs, two guns, and powder enough to blow up a church, walking a big dining-parlour, all alone by myself, as melancholy as may be.

‘You may judge how happy I was, looking out upon the bleak country-side, with nothing to amuse me except when now and then the roof of some cabin or other would turn upside down, like an umbrella, or watching an old windmill that had gone clean mad, and went round at such a pace that nobody dare go near it. All this was poor comfort. However, I got out of temper with the place; and so I sat down and wrote a long advertisement for the English papers, describing the Devil’s Grip as a little terrestrial paradise, in the midst of picturesque scenery, a delightful neighbourhood, and an Arcadian peasantry, the whole to be parted with – a dead bargain – as the owner was about to leave the country. I didn’t add that he had some thought of blowing his brains out with sheer disgust of his family residence. I wound up the whole with a paragraph to the effect that if not disposed of within the month, the proprietor would break it up into small farms. I said this because I intended to remain so long there; and, although I knew no purchaser would treat after he saw the premises, yet still some one might be fool enough to come over and look at them, and even that would help me to pass the Christmas. My calculation turned out correct; for before a week was over, a letter reached me, stating that a Mr. Green, of No. 196 High Holborn, would pay me a visit as soon as the weather moderated and permitted him to travel If he waits for that, thought I, he ‘ll not find me here; and if it blows as hard for the next week, he ‘ll not find the house either; so I mixed another tumbler of punch, and hummed myself to sleep with the “Battle of Ross.”

‘It was about four or five evenings after I received this letter that old Dan M’Cormick – a kind of butler I have, a handy fellow; he was a steward for ten years in the Holyhead packet – burst into the room about ten o’clock, when I was disputing with myself whether I took six tumblers or seven – I said one, the decanter said the other.

‘“It’s blowing terrible, Mr. Bob,” said Dan.

‘“Let it blow! What else has it to do?”

‘“The trees is tumbling about as if they was drunk; there won’t be one left before morn.”

‘“They’re right,” says I, “to leave that, for the soil was never kind for planting.”

‘“Two of the chimneys is down,” says he.

‘“Devil mend them!” said I, “they were always smoking.”

‘“And the hall door,” cried he, “is blown flat into the hall.”

‘“It’s little I care,” said I; “if it couldn’t keep out the sheriff it may let in the storm, if it pleases.”

‘“Murther! murther!” said he, wringing his hands, “I wish we were at say! It’s a cruel thing to have one’s life perilled this way.”

‘While we were talking, a gossoon burst into the room with the news that the Milford packet had just gone ashore somewhere below the Hook Tower, adding, as is always the case on such occasions, that they were all drowned.

‘I jumped up at this, put on my shooting-shoes, buttoned up my frieze coat, and followed by Dan, took a short cut over the hills towards Passage, where I now found the packet had been driven in. Before we had gone half a mile I heard the voices of some country-people coming up the road towards me; but it was so dark you couldn’t see your hand.

‘“Who’s there?” said I.

‘“Tim Molloy, your honour,” was the answer.

‘“What’s the matter, Tim?” said I. “Is there anything wrong?”

‘“Nothing, sir, glory be to God – it’s only the corpse of the gentleman that was drowned there below.”

‘“I ain’t dead, I tell you; I’m only faint,” called out a shrill voice.

‘“He says he’s better,” said Tim; “and maybe it’s only the salt water that’s in him; and, faix, when we found him, there was no more spark in him than in a wet sod.”

‘Well, the short of it was, we brought him up to the house, rubbed him with gunpowder before the fire, gave him about half a pint of burnt spirits, and put him to bed, he being just able to tell me, as he was dropping asleep, that he was my friend from No. 196 High Holborn.

‘The next morning I sent up Dan to ask how he was, and he came down with the news that he was fast asleep. “The best thing he could do,” said I; and I began to think over what a mighty load it would be upon my conscience if the decent man had been drowned. “For, maybe, after all,” thought I, “he is in earnest, maybe he wished to buy a beautiful place like that I have described in the papers”; and so I began to relent, and wonder with myself how I could make the country pleasant for him during his stay. “It’ll not be a day or two at farthest, particularly after he sees the place. Ay, there’s the rub – the poor devil will find out then that I have been hoaxing him.” This kept fretting me all day; and I was continually sending up word to know if he was awake, and the answer always was – still sleeping.

‘Well, about four o’clock, as it was growing dark, Oakley of the Fifth and two of his brother officers came bowling up to the door, on their way to Carrick. Here was a piece of luck! So we got dinner ready for the party, brought a good store of claret at one side of the fireplace, and a plentiful stock of bog-fir at the other, and resolved to make a night of it; and just as I was describing to my friends the arrival of my guest above-stairs, who should enter the room but himself. He was a round little fellow, about my size, with a short, quick, business-like way about him. Indeed, he was a kind of a drysalter, or something of that nature, in London, had made a large fortune, and wished to turn country gentleman. I had only time to learn these few particulars, and to inform him that he was at that moment in the mansion he had come to visit, when dinner was announced.