I could not in the least understand what he meant by this, nor could any one else present. There were murmurs of astonishment and indignation. However, Maguire said: ‘This is none of our business, lads. There’s a she in the case, I’ll be bound. Let us leave these bucks to settle it between them in private.’
‘Comrades, I have nothing whatever on my conscience,’ I declared, ‘in regard to Private Harlowe. Indeed, since the time when we were recruits together, I have treated him with far greater delicacy, I think, than many persons of my acquaintance.’
There was a laugh at this, for only the night before I had dissuaded Smutchy Steel, whom enforced abstinence had made quarrelsome, from daubing the tap-room wall, as he threatened, with Harlowe’s entrails.
‘You must come outside,’ pronounced Harlowe, ‘if you wish to talk compound with me.’
We went out for a jaunt down the Newton Breda road.
‘How have I offended you, Harlowe?’ I inquired. ‘For I know that you would not refuse me to keg myself to you, unless you considered yourself in some way injured.’
He did not answer me outright, but paced along by my side in a silence which greatly annoyed me.
I stopped in my stride, faced about, pulled him backwards by the shoulders and told him: ‘Gentleman Harlowe, if you will have your pound of flesh, then by God, say so plainly like an honest Shylock. For then I’ll go on the pad, cut the purse and throat of some innocent traveller and the money will be yours by morning, though I swing high for it.’
‘No, Gerry,’ he replied softly, ‘it need not come to that. But I’ll remit the whole debt and present you with my painted snuff-box, which you have so long coveted, into the bargain, if you will but give me the help, not of your side-arm but of your pen.’
I thought for the moment that he had gone out of his wits. I inquired, ‘Am I to write out the whole of Pope’s Essay on Man in a flowing hand, like a schoolboy punished for orchard-robbing?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘two words would serve, almost.’
‘Don’t tantalize me further,’ I cried. ‘What joke are you driving?’
Thereupon he explained: ‘I am bent on contracting marriage with a girl of this town. Not only is our scheme unknown to her father, who would object to it, but there is a general order posted this morning which prevents such marriages from being solemnized without the written permission of an officer. You know that Lieutenant Sweetenham has a strong antipathy to me, at any rate, and that he would reject my request, did I dare make it, with contempt. You write a good hand and are used by the Lieutenant as his amanuensis. You are therefore familiar both with his composition and his signature. Now, my proposal to you is that you shall counterfeit the Lieutenant’s signature to the licence and accompany me with it to the minister’s house, to arrange for the solemnization of my marriage. If you will do all this, you are quit of your debt; and the snuff-box, too, is yours.’
I stared dumbly at him and many strange emotions stirred within my breast. How thankful I now am that I did not do what came uppermost to my mind, which was to take him by the throat and choke him in rage, scorn, and envy. For, like a flash, the explanation of the evening’s events came upon me. The woman with whom he contemplated marriage could be none other than Kate Weldone. Her careful amity with me had been a mere pretence to conceal her infatuation for my comrade Gentleman Harlowe – against whom her father had conceived a strong prejudice on our first arrival at the town and whom he had told bluntly, he was an unwelcome visitor at the cottage. The petition that Kate had been on the point of disclosing to me and that I had undertaken in advance to grant, for love of her, was the very same that Harlowe had now converted into an obligation, by a downright cheat. For I was suddenly convinced that the cards had been rigged by him with this very object. I was sensible enough to reflect, however, that this fraud must have been unknown to Miss Kate, for otherwise she would not have troubled to plead with me in so melting a way; and that I could therefore not justly be incensed with her.
I therefore contented myself by saying shortly to my companion: ‘I must think this over for a spell.’ I turned on my heel and left him standing there.
It was a starry but moonless night and I had the luck to recognize old Captain Weldone as he passed me on the road, he not recognizing me. I could now count upon gaining admittance at the cottage and speaking to Kate, without recourse to any stratagem. She had already retired to rest, as I knew by the candle-light at her window; but I threw up a pebble and she presently put her head out and called, ‘Is that you, my sweet Dick?’
Dick was Harlowe’s name, so I knew that I had read the story aright. But nevertheless I carried on with my game.
‘No,’ said I, ‘it’s no sweet Dick, nor no common Tom or Harry, but it’s myself, Private Roger Lamb. I have come to hear the service that I am to do for you, since it weighs so heavy on your mind.’
She descended after a while, with her hair loose upon her shoulders, and, upon my urging her, disclosed to me the very same plan of forgery that I had just heard from Gentleman Harlowe’s lips, though she was more frank than he in naming him as her intended spouse. I simulated grief, surprise, and a great unwillingness, but she urged that I had given my word. I agreed at last, making one condition only, which she swore on her honour to keep: that she was not on any account to reveal to Harlowe her request of me, and that the very next words she spoke to him would be begging him to propose the plan to me himself as an act of friendship. ‘If he does so, I will agree readily,’ I assured her, ‘and thus persuade him, against truth but in the interests of your own honour, that the object of my visits to this house has always been rather your father than yourself.’
She considered this more than handsome on my part, and with expressions of unmistakable affection, which I need not rehearse, promised never to forget the heavy debt that she was incurring. Presently I said good night and we parted.
On my way home to our quarters, I smiled sourly to myself at the comedy which would ensue: Harlowe would agree, at Miss Kate’s instance, to urge me for friendship’s sake to forge the document; and yet be greatly troubled in his mind lest I reveal to her, at my next visit to the cottage, in what manner that crime had already been forced upon me.
My spirits were totally restored by an incident upon the road. I passed by a poor thatched cabin from which issued the agreeable sound of a fiddle very masterly played; and the melody so plucked at me that I turned aside, pushed upon the door and entered. It was a scene of the most distressful poverty. That the inhabitants were Papists was shown by the wooden crucifix hanging on the rough earthen wall. I found them to consist of a sick man groaning on a straw pallet; an ailing young woman crouched before a low fire, over which potatoes were boiling unskinned in an old iron pot on legs; three half-naked dirty children tumbling in a corner; four starved fowls roosting on a beam; and an old grandfather with ragged white hair seated on a stool at the opposite side of the fire from the woman. It was he who was playing upon the fiddle, and his face was away from me as I entered.
He put down his instrument and spoke something to me in the Gaelic tongue without turning round. The woman translated for him. ‘He says you are welcome, your Honour, and to be seated on this stool. He has not the English and he is blind; but he has the Sight. He told us this morning that a tall young soldier visits us this evening.’
I asked: ‘What was that tune he was playing? It seemed to invite me to enter.’
She replied that the Gaelic words concerned a woman for whose sake a wise man would not trouble himself. She repeated them to me, and they may be Englished thus:
O woman shapely as the swan
Should I turn wan
For love of thee?
O turn those blue and rolling eyes
On men unwise –
They wound not me.
The old man spoke again. The woman informed me: ‘My man’s father says that he played the tune for your comfort ‘
‘Thank him kindly,’ I said, ‘and pray give hi
m this shilling if he will consent to take a fee. But how in the world could he have known my need of it?’
‘I tell you, he has the Sight,’ she returned.
The old man pocketed the shilling with satisfaction and seizing up his fiddle again, resumed his playing to such an effect that my breast swelled with the strangest alternations of enraged despair and amused equanimity; and, having thus amused himself with me for a while, let the music drop into a lullaby so compelling that I felt myself falling off into a deep sleep where I sat on the stool.
I awoke with a startle, to find that the music had stopped and that the old man was laughing at me.
‘He has all the ancient gifts of music,’ said the woman.
‘It was a shilling well spent,’ I rejoined, rubbing my eyes, and thereupon went over to shake my host by the hand. He retained my fingers in a surprisingly powerful grasp, and I had the conviction that he was able to read my inmost thoughts while so engaged.
He spoke at last and (as the woman gave me to understand) ran through many exact particulars of my past life, including the story of my early escape from drowning and my attempted desertion, promised me happy issue to my present troubles, but a long and hazardous life to follow. He also assured me of a future event so fantastical that I laughed outright to hear of it: that when next I attempted desertion I should succeed in the attempt and that I should be thanked for my pains by a general with a shining star on his breast.
I returned to the tap-room in a sort of dream, but the familiar close smell of the room restored me to my usual senses. I recollected the plan of conduct that I had drawn up for myself before the distraction of that fiddling lured me from the road.
As I pushed open the door, all eyes turned on me.
I said to Mad Johnny Maguire: ‘Maguire, my good friend, I’ll not require your loan, nor yours neither, Terry Reeves, though I thank you from the bottom of my heart.’
Terry Reeves asked: ‘Have you compounded then with The Gentleman?’
My staunch resolve was that in no possible respect would I be beholden to my successful rival. I replied shortly: ‘I am permitted to keg myself to him after all.’
Harlowe started, but said nothing, for I continued: ‘He has asked me also, in return for this permission, to perform a certain small service for him, and I have consented to that.’
Harlowe raised his eyebrows in an inquiring manner; I nodded good-humouredly in his direction.
He fumbled in his pouch and drew out the snuff-box, which was a pretty enough piece, with a painting on it of the Limerick coach with its four matched horses at full gallop.
‘I accept the token, Gentleman Harlowe,’ I said softly. But, after helping myself to a pinch of snuff, I threw it to the back of the grate where the fire was crackling hotly under a kettle hung from a chain.
This seemed so droll and unaccountable an action that nobody had the wit to snatch the box from the fire for his own use: the company watched it slowly scorch and char, scrutinizing our countenances between whiles as if to read the riddle. Both Harlowe and I sat impassive, and they remained nonplussed.
Harlowe was the first to speak: ‘Well, it was yours, Gerry Lamb. You have a right to burn or squander whatever is yours, I suppose.’
‘I have kegged myself to you, Gentleman Harlowe,’ I said, ‘and I shall have arranged the other matter to your satisfaction before the coming pay-night.’
I was as good as my word, and Fortune assisted me smilingly. The next day was the 28th of July, which was kept in The Ninth as an anniversary of the Relief of Londonderry in the year 1689; at this exploit The Ninth had assisted, when the Mountjoy, with some of our musketeers aboard her, broke the boom across the river, and King James consequently raised the siege. Lieutenant Sweetenham called me in, an hour or two before his celebratory atoner, to copy for him in a fair hand some official papers to which he would then attach his signature. I considered whether to smuggle the marriage licence in among these papers, bringing them to him just before he sat down to dine with an ensign and another lieutenant, invited by him from neighbouring commands. But I rejected this project as too daring, though he was a man who, for negligence, seldom read through even the most important paper before he signed it.
Throughout the next day he was incapacitated from duty by a surfeit of roasted goose and of Madeira wine, four cases of which had been ordered up for this celebration; and on that afternoon, at four o’clock, Private Richard Harlowe was clandestinely married to Kate Weldone by a curate of Saintfield whom I had imposed upon. In Northern Ireland in those days it was not difficult, I confess, to find a minister to solemnize a marriage in a hurry and without proper ceremony: if he were visited in his front parlour at any time after noon, when it was ten chances in twelve that he would be perfectly inebriated.
I afterwards brazened it out with the Lieutenant. Upon his recovery, I reported to him, in a casual manner, that the marriage had passed without incident and that Private Harlowe had drunk his officer’s health with grateful devotion.
‘What marriage in the Devil’s name is that?’ the Lieutenant asked petulantly. ‘I sanctioned none, so far as I am aware.’
‘Oh, doesn’t your Honour remember signing the permission after dinner last night, which I brought to you at your own urgent request?’
‘I remember nothing at all of last night’s events,’ he complained. ‘If you now told me that I stripped myself naked and waved my small-clothes in the air like a flag, shouting “Death to the Papist pigs”, I would believe you, Private Lamb; not being able to swear to the contrary and knowing you for an honest man.’
‘It is exactly what your Honour did,’ I said, very truly, ‘for we all witnessed it.’
Lieutenant Sweetenham did not push his inquiry into the marriage matter further, but buried his head remorsefully in his feather pillow; and that was the first and last that I heard of it from him. But I faithfully kept my kegging-contract with Harlowe, intending that every penny I paid him on a Saturday night would scorch his palm.
Old Captain Weldone took his daughter’s marriage ill, and would not permit his son-in-law to lodge in the cottage during all the time that we were stationed there. However, he did not suspect my hand in it and I continued with my visits to the cottage, in order both to gratify the old man, who enjoyed my society, and to displease Harlowe. To Mrs Harlowe I was very civil and said nothing to wound her feelings. She would entrust messages to me for her husband, which it tickled my crooked humour to deliver to him with every outward show of good comradeship.
It was in this year that the octagonal tower of Craigenamanagh Cathedral fell down; and when we heard the news, we shook our heads. That the Devil was loose again in Ireland was ill news. It was said that he had not been sighted for certain in our country since his apparition to Saint Moling, near a thousand years before.
Chapter V
IN THE beginning of the year 1775 The Ninth was ordered to Dublin and Major-General Viscount Ligonier, the Colonel of the Regiment, arrived from England to inspect and take the command of it. His Lordship, who had fought at the battle of Minden, was generous, affable, and greatly beloved by the men. A regiment commanded by a peer can in general congratulate itself on this score, because as his coronet has elevated him above the society of his officers he can afford to unbend towards the rank and file to a degree that commoners would not dare – for fear of abating something of their dignity. Moreover, a peer can often win for his regiment privileges and advantages from the civil government that would be refused to a person of less consequence. It was said that, but for His Lordship’s interest at the Castle, another regiment would have been given the Dublin duty, which was the most popular in Ireland.
Lord Ligonier’s eye soon fastened upon Private Harlowe and myself as persons of superior education, fit for promotion as corporals; and the Sergeant-Major of the Regiment, under whose immediate command the non-commissioned officers came, and who was a complete sergeant, a good scholar, and a sensible, agreeable man, s
poke up for us to his Lordship. There was increasing talk of our being sent across the Atlantic, and his Lordship held that a scattered sort of fighting would be likely to prevail in the woody and intricate districts in which America abounds. It was therefore to the common advantage that non-commissioned officers should be able to send intelligible messages in writing to their company officers. Harlowe and I were among the non-commissioned officers chosen to be instructed in the novel light infantry manoeuvres, lately introduced into the Army by General Sir William Howe and strongly approved by His Majesty the King. These manoeuvres were intended for use in broken country, the set hitherto employed having been designed rather for the open battlefields of Germany and the Low Countries. They were six in number and well designed to their purpose, and we of The Ninth were sent to the Thirty-third Regiment, then also quartered in Dublin, to learn them.
I am bound to record here that I felt a certain shamefastness, on visiting the barracks of The Thirty-third, who were commanded by the young Earl of Cornwallis, to compare their high state of appointment and the steadiness of their discipline with the slovenly and relaxed bearing of most of our own companies. One can always correctly judge a regiment’s capacities by the behaviour of its sentries. I have already described how Maguire performed his sentry duty at Waterford, and might well have remarked then that his behaviour was not exceptional. I have seen men go on duty in The Ninth dead drunk and scarcely able to stand. But with The Thirty-third the sentry was always alert and alive in attention; when on duty he was all eye, all ear. Even in the sentry-box, which he never entered unless in a downpour of rain, he was forbidden to keep the palm of his hand carelessly on the muzzle of his loaded firelock; for this was considered as dangerous an attitude as it was awkward. During the two hours that he remained on his post the sentry continued in constant motion, and could not walk less than seven miles in that time. The Thirty-third thus set a standard of soldier-like duty which made me secretly dissatisfied with The Ninth, and which I have never seen equalled since but by a single other regiment which was brigaded with The Thirty-third under the same Lord Cornwallis, in the later campaigns of the American War. I resolved at least to bring the men who were under my immediate command into a state of discipline for which I should have no cause to blush.
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