Mated from the Morgue Part 10

'I've come to ask you a favour. I presume you'll grant it.'

'Certainly, always presuming that it is such as a gentleman can grant.'

'Still harping on the old string.'

'Sir,' said O'Hara, getting annoyed, 'I have the misfortune to a certain extent to be your debtor; but I am not your valet. Here, take back the hundred francs you lent me, and we shall speak on more equal terms,'

holding out his purse.

'Did I ever ask you for it?'

'I insist on your taking it.'

'If I do, I'm blest if I don't give it to the first beggar I meet on the highway.'

'That as you like, sir. I'm not a beggar--nor yet a barbarian.'

'Ha, ha, ha! That's really good. Now, tell me, who should lose his temper? Here, I take the money and beg your pardon. I didn't think you were so thin-skinned.'

'Thin-skinned! Thank you for that expression.'

'What better could you expect from a barbarian?'

O'Hara could not resist a smile.

'Well, now,' continued his visitor, 'that you're getting into better humour I'll try and put on my good manners. The favour I'm going to ask of you is not much; but it's hardly fair to ask it of you without telling you who and what I am. Would you like to hear my history?'

'Candidly, I would.'

'Then, attend,' said his visitor, a.s.suming a more serious air, and after a short pause, in which he seemed to be running over the h.o.a.rds of memory, he thus commenced:

'My life is briefly told. It has been a hard life, a life of struggling, written in plain black and white, and as such I'll tell it to you. I haven't the genius of a romancer to make it picturesque. I was born in Cork----'

'The city?'

'Yes, the beautiful city.'

'Some of our most eminent literary worthies came from Cork.'

'Well, I'm not one of them--my father was, though, in a way. He kept a cla.s.sical and mathematical school which was well supported, and called himself a philomath, whatever that meant. My mother was a big-hearted, kind woman who never sent a beggar empty-handed from her door, and believed her husband the most learned man the world ever saw. But if she wors.h.i.+pped her husband, she adored her son.'

'She was a woman,' sententiously remarked O'Hara.

'That's it, I suppose,' resumed O'Hoolohan with a sigh. 'Of course she must have been,' he added, after thinking a little, as if a new revelation had dawned upon him. 'Anyhow, he wasn't as good a boy as he ought to have been, and 'tis sorry he is to-day to have to own it. Well, it's no use crying over spilt milk. To get on with my tale. I raked and I rambled--I may as well make a clean breast of it--and in the end I took a liking to a cavalry uniform I saw in Ballincollig, and I 'listed.

My father paid the smart-money, my mother cried, and I was lugged home.

Then they bound me to a saddler. After a month I 'listed again: he bought me off again, and the old game of tears from the mother and promises of repentance from the hopeful youth, and stern majesty from the father, was repeated. Six months after, the quicksilver got up in my const.i.tution again. I determined not to be balked this time, so I went to the old fellow, said I was going to 'list, and wouldn't be bought out.

'"Mother'll buy you out," says he.

'"I'll 'list again," says I; "see who'll get tired of that trick first."

'"She prevailed on you to leave off your soldiering notions twice before," said he again.

'"The third time has the charm," was my answer.

'He reflected awhile: "Well, if you will be a soldier, I suppose it's wrong to bar such a fine fellow the chance of getting a bullet in his head."

'"Oh!" said I gaily, "the man that is born to be hanged will never be shot."

'"Go your way, then," said he.

'"You'd better let me have that one-and-twenty s.h.i.+llings smart you used to pay, to drink your long life, and a healthy thirst for learning to the rising generation of Corkonians."

'If I hadn't ducked my head at the moment, I mightn't be here to tell you. He had levelled "lamb and salad," as he used to call his slapper--the superannuated bolt of an outhouse--at the place where my brains ought to have been. The good man had a temper of his own.'

'Is he no more?'

'These ten years. So is my mother, and if I ever go back to Ireland again, one of the businesses that will take me there is to put a stone over their graves. The regiment which I joined was one of the medium cavalry, and my knowledge of saddlery stood me in good stead. Because of it I got promoted, which was not an ordinary piece of luck, for the corps was an English one, and a Paddy had little chance of the stripes anywhere except on his back. It was in the Tangiers Horse I learned to be a rebel and a democrat. To see young spooneys, fresh from their mother's ap.r.o.n-strings, spooneys not able to grow a beard, hemming and hawing on a parade-ground, and strutting about in command of old soldiers that were black with powder before they were born! It sickened me, I tell you Pshaw! All men are equal.'

'As all the fingers of our hand are of the same length,' quietly observed O'Hara.

The democratic dragoon did not regard the interruption, but continued:

'It was during the Repeal Agitation I enlisted, and our regiment never left the sh.o.r.es of England. We moved about from Manchester to Sheffield, and from Sheffield to York, but never too far from Ireland. I watched the excitement as it grew, and waited the moment till it would come to blows. I was an Irishman before I was a soldier, thought I, and I'll never wear a sabre against my country. I went to the colonel and demanded my discharge. I had saved enough in the saddlery workshop to pay for it.

'"Can't give any men their discharge now, especially a useful man like you."

'My resolution was taken on the spot. "All right, sir," I said; "I suppose I must put up with the disappointment."

'That night I deserted and put a letter with the money I had saved to buy myself out in the Post Office, and started for this city. I was always anxious to see foreign parts. I soon ran through my rhino, and then, although I couldn't speak the language, the trade I had at my fingers' ends stood my friend. But the old pa.s.sion grew on me, and I joined the Foreign Legion in the French Service. I campaigned four years among the Kabyles in Algeria, and then, the Crimean War breaking out, I was taken as volunteer into the battalion of ours that went out with the Army of the East. I served through the awful winters before Sebastopol, served from the Alma to the Tchernaya, and came back with an honourable discharge, and not a scratch on my body. I stopped in Paris again awhile--I make this city my harbour of refuge, the place where I put in to refit always--but the Lombardy campaign of '59 broke out. I didn't care to enter into another engagement under the tricolour--it was too long--so I applied for a commission in a guerrilla corps in the Italian Service, and they were glad to take me on. We finished Austria at the double-quick; I was into the thick of the whole b.l.o.o.d.y six weeks' work from Turbigo to Solferino, and came off with the medal for military distinction and a sabre-cut on my left elbow. I laid up for awhile, nursing my wound and spending my money in old Paris. In 1860 I was in harness again, but this time a free-lance. I was one of the thousand of Garibaldi, landed with him at Marsala, marched with him through Palermo, crossed over with him to the mainland, fought by his side at the Volturno, and entered Naples in his triumphal procession on the Via Toledo, after he had driven out Bombalino, the dirty Bourbon.'

'Why, you have been a regular soldier of fortune! What a lot of fighting you have seen!'

'There is more to come, on the other side of the ocean. After a short stay in Paris again, I left from Havre by the _Pereire_ for New York; didn't like it, and travelled down South to Carolina. I was there when the first shot was fired at Sumter, and I threw in my fortunes with the Palmetto flag.'

'I wonder at a democrat doing that,' remarked O'Hara.

'Oh! you are of those who imagine the North was fighting to put down slavery in that war,' said his visitor.

'Not entirely, but I'd expect an Irish democrat would range him under the Stars and Stripes.'

'And I might have expected that the natural place for an Irish rebel to have ranged himself was on the side of the "rebels," as they were called. But to cut that matter short, it was very much a question of locality with most Irishmen.'

'I am satisfied. Go on.'

'There is not far to go now. I'm nearly at the end of my tether. I got a captain's command in the cavalry, served under General Stuart, and left a colonel, but broken-down in health, spirits and purse, like most of the n.o.ble fellows who strove to lift on high the bonnie blue flag.

Fortunately I had secured some money behind me here in Paris before I had left for America--I had always an eye to the main chance in my campaigning, and had been able to save enough to sign myself _rentier_--my annuity had been acc.u.mulating in my absence, and I found myself comparatively well off. I have been gathering health in the two years since, and now I sometimes itch for work again. I should embark for Mexico, to join the guerrillas, but that I scruple fighting against my old comrades of Africa, the Crimea, and Italy. Sentimental, isn't it?'

'No; on the contrary, a quite healthy feeling, and I respect you for it,' said O'Hara.