LITMIR.BIZ

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fire is so very hot, and I really was quite unprepared for this piece of news.”

      “And you, Julia,” said I, leaning over the back of my cousin’s chair, “what do you say to all this?”

      “I’ve just been thinking what a pity it is I should have wasted all my skill and my worsted on this foolish rug, while I could have been embroidering a gay banner for our young knight bound for the wars. ‘Partant pour la Syrie,’” hummed she, half pensively, while I could see a struggling effort to suppress a laugh. I turned indignantly away, and walked towards the fire, where the Count was expending his consolations on my mother.

      “After all, Miladi, it is not so bad as you think in the provinces; I once spent three weeks in Brittany, very pleasantly indeed: oui, pardieu, it’s quite true. To be sure, we had Perlet, and Mademoiselle Mars, and got up the Précieuse Ridicules as well as in Paris.”

      The application of this very apposite fact to Ireland was clearly satisfactory to my mother, who smiled benignly at the speaker, while my father turned upon him a look of the most indescribable import.

      “Jack, my boy!” said he, taking me by the arm, “were I your age, and had no immediate prospect of active service, I should prefer Ireland to any country in the world. I have plenty of old friends on the staff there. The Duke himself was my schoolfellow – ”

      “I hope he will be properly attentive,” interrupted my mother. “Dear Jack, remind me to-morrow to write to Lady Mary.”

      “Don’t mistake the country you are going to,” continued my father; “you will find many things very different from what you are leaving; and, above all, be not over ready to resent, as an injury, what may merely be intended as a joke: your brother officers will always guide you on these points.”

      “And above all things,” said my mother, with great earnestness, “do not adopt that odious fashion of wearing their hair. I’ve seen members of both Houses, and particularly that little man they talk so much of, Mr. Grattan, I believe they call him – ”

      “Make your mind perfectly easy on that head, my lady,” said my father, dryly, “your son is not particularly likely to resemble Henry Grattan.”

      My cousin Julia alone seemed to relish the tone of sarcasm he spoke in, for she actually bestowed on him a look of almost grateful acknowledgment.

      “The carriage, my lady,” said the servant. And at the same moment my mother, possibly not sorry to cut short the discussion, rose from her chair.

      “Do you intend to look in at the Duchess’s, General?”

      “For half an hour,” replied my father; “after that I have my letters to write. Jack, you know, leaves us to-morrow.”

      “‘Tis really very provoking,” said my mother, turning at the same time a look towards the Count.

      “A vos ordres, Madame,” said he, bowing with an air of most deferential politeness, while he presented his arm for her acceptance.

      “Good night, then,” cried I, as the party left the room; “I have so much to do and to think of, I shan’t join you.” I turned to look for Lady Julia, but she was gone, when and how I knew not; so I sat down at the fire to ruminate alone over my present position, and my prospects for the future.

      These few and imperfect passages may put the reader in possession of some, at least, of the circumstances which accompanied my outset in life; and if they be not sufficiently explicit, I can only say, that he knows fully as much of me as at the period in question I did of myself.

      At Eton, I had been what is called rather a smart boy, but incorrigibly idle; at Sandhurst, I showed more ability, and more disinclination to learn. By the favour of a royal Duke (who had been my godfather), my commission in a marching regiment was exchanged for a lieutenancy in the Guards; and at the time I write of I had been some six months in the service, which I spent in all the whirl and excitement of London society. My father, who, besides being a distinguished officer, was one of the most popular men among the clubs, my mother, a London beauty of some twenty years’ standing, were claims sufficient to ensure me no common share of attention, while I added to the number what, in my own estimation at least were, certain very decided advantages of a purely personal nature.

      To obviate, as far as might be, the evil results of such a career, my father secretly asked for the appointment on the staff of the noble Duke then Viceroy of Ireland, in preference to what my mother contemplated – my being attached to the royal household. To remove me alike from the enervating influence of a mother’s vanity, and the extravagant profusion and voluptuous abandonment of London habits, this was his object. He calculated, too, that by new ties, new associations, and new objects of ambition, I should be better prepared, and more desirous of that career of real service to which in his heart he destined me. These were his notions, at least; the result must be gleaned from my story.

      CHAPTER II. THE IRISH PACKET

      A few nights after the conversation I have briefly alluded to, and pretty much about the same hour, I aroused myself from the depression of nearly thirty hours’ sea-sickness, on hearing that at length we were in the bay of Dublin. Hitherto I had never left the precincts of the narrow den denominated my berth; but now I made my way eagerly on deck, anxious to catch a glimpse, however faint, of that bold coast I had more than once heard compared with, or even preferred to, Naples. The night, however, was falling fast, and, worse still, a perfect down-pour of rain was falling with it; the sea ran high, and swept the little craft from stem to stern; the spars bent like whips, and our single topsail strained and stretched as though at every fresh plunge it would part company with us altogether. No trace or outline of the coast could I detect on any side; a deep red light appearing and disappearing at intervals, as we rode upon or sank beneath the trough of the sea, was all that my eye could perceive: this the dripping helmsman briefly informed me was the “Kish,” but, as he seemed little disposed for conversation, I was left to my unassisted ingenuity to make out whether it represented any point of the capital we were approaching or not.

      The storm of wind and rain increasing at each moment, drove me once more back to the cabin, where, short as had been the period of my absence, the scene had undergone a most important change. Up to this moment my sufferings and my seclusion gave me little leisure or opportunity to observe my fellow travellers. The stray and scattered fragments of conversation that reached me, rather puzzled than enlightened me. Of the topics which I innocently supposed occupied all human attention, not a word was dropped; Carlton House was not once mentioned; the St. Leger and the Oaks not even alluded to; whether the Prince’s breakfast was to come off at Knights-bridge or Progmore, no one seemed to know, or even care; nor was a hint dropped as to the fashion of the new bearskins the Guards were to sport at the review on Hounslow. The price of pigs, however, in Ballinasloe, they were perfect in. Of a late row in Kil – something, where one half of the population had massacred the other, they knew everything, even to the names of the defunct. A few of the better dressed chatted over country matters, from which I could glean that game and gentry were growing gradually scarcer; but a red-nosed, fat old gentleman, in rusty black and high boots, talked down the others by an eloquent account of the mawling that he, a certain Father Tom Loftus, had given the Reverend Paul Strong, at a late controversial meeting in the Rotunda.

      Through all this “bald, disjointed chat,” unceasing demands were made for bottled porter, “matarials,” or spirits and wather, of which, were I to judge from the frequency of the requests, the consumption must have been awful.

      There would seem something in the very attitude of lying down that induces reflection, and, thus stretched at full length in my berth, I could not help ruminating upon the land I was approaching, in a spirit which, I confess, accorded much more with my mother’s prejudices than my father’s convictions. From the few chance phrases dropped around me, it appeared that even the peaceful pursuits of a country market, or the cheerful sports of the field, were followed up in a spirit of recklessness and devilment; so that many a head that left home without a care, went back with a crack in it. But to return once more to the cabin. It must be borne in mind that some thirty odd years ago the passage between Liverpool and Dublin was not, as at present, the rapid flight

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