Under Wellington's Command Part 45

"'I can do better without you than with you, Tim,' says I. 'Ye are always getting me into trouble, with your drunken ways. Ye would have been flogged a dozen times, if I hadn't screened you. Take up your musket and join your regiment. You rascal, you are smelling of drink now, and divil a drop, except water, is there in me flask.'

"'I did it for your own good,' says he. 'Ye know that spirits always heats your blood, and water would be the best for you, when the fighting began; so I just sacrificed meself.

"'"For," says I to meself, "if ye get fighting a little wild, Tim, it don't matter a bit; but the captain will have to keep cool, so it is best that you should drink up the spirits, and fill the flask up with water to quench his thirst."'

"'Be off, ye black villain,' I said, 'or I will strike you.'

"'You will never be able to do without me, Captain,' says he, picking up his musket; and with that he trudged away and, for aught I know, he never came out of the battle alive."

The others laughed.

"They were always quarrelling, Mary," Terence said. "But I agree with Tim that his master will find it very hard to do without him, especially about one o'clock in the morning."

"I am ashamed of you, Terence," O'Grady said, earnestly; "taking away me character, when I have come down here as your guest."

"It is too bad, O'Grady," Major O'Connor said, "but you know Terence was always conspicuous for his want of respect towards his elders."

"He was that same, O'Connor. I did me best for the boy, but there are some on whom education and example are clean thrown away."

"You are looking pale, cousin Terence," Mary said.

"Am I? My leg is hurting me a bit. Ireland is a great country, but its by-roads are not the best in the world, and this jolting shakes me up a bit."

"How stupid I was not to think of it!" she said and, rising in her seat, told Ca.s.sidy to drive at a walk.

They were now only half a mile from the house.

"You will hardly know the old place again, Terence," his father said.

"And a very good thing too, father, for a more tumble-down old shanty I never was in."

"It was the abode of our race, Terence."

"Well, then, it says mighty little for our race, father."

"Ah! But it did not fall into the state you saw it in till my father died, a year after I got my commission."

"I won't blame them, then; but, at any rate, I am glad I am coming home to a house and not to a ruin.

"Ah, that is more like a home!" he said, as a turn of the road brought them in sight of the building. "You have done wonders, Mary. That is a house fit for any Irish gentleman to live in."

"It has been altered so that it can be added to, Terence; but, at any rate, it is comfortable. As it was before, it made one feel rheumatic to look at it."

On arriving at the house, Terence refused all a.s.sistance.

"I am going to be independent, as far as I can," he said and, slipping down from the seat into the bottom of the chaise, he was able to put his foot on to the ground and, by the aid of his crutches, to get out and enter the house unaided.

"That is the old parlour, I think," he said, glancing into one of the rooms.

"Yes. It is your father's snuggery, now. There is scarcely any alteration there, and he can mess about as he likes with his guns and fis.h.i.+ng tackle and swords.

"This is the dining room, now."

And she led the way along a wide pa.s.sage to the new part of the house, where a bright fire was blazing in a handsome and well-furnished room. An invalid's chair had been placed by the fire, and opposite it was a large, cosy armchair.

"That is for your use, Major O'Grady," she said. "Now, Terence, you are to lay yourself up in that chair. I will bring a small table to your side, and put your dinner there."

"I will lie down until the dinner is ready, Mary. But I am perfectly capable of sitting at the table. I did so the last week before leaving the s.h.i.+p."

"You shall do that tomorrow. You may say what you like, but I can see that you are very tired and, for today, you will take it easy. I am going to be your nurse, and I can a.s.sure you that you will have to obey orders. You have been in independent command quite long enough."

"It is of no use, Terence; you must do as you are told," his father said. "The only way to get on with this young woman is to let her have her own way. I have given up opposing her, long ago; and you will have to do the same."

Terence did not find it unpleasant to be nursed and looked after, and even to obey peremptory orders.

A month later, Mary came into the room quietly, one afternoon, when he was sitting and looking into the fire; as his father and O'Grady had driven over to Killnally. Absorbed in his own thoughts, he did not hear her enter.

Thinking that he was asleep, she paused at the door. A moment later she heard a deep sigh. She came forward at once.

"What are you sighing about, Terence? Your leg is not hurting you, is it?"

"No, dear, it has pretty well given up hurting me."

"What were you sighing about, then?"

He was silent for a minute, and then said:

"Well you see, one cannot help sighing a little at the thought that one is laid up, a useless man, when one is scarce twenty-one."

"You have done your work, Terence. You have made a name for yourself, when others are just leaving college and thinking of choosing a profession. You have done more, in five years, than most men achieve in all their lifetime.

"This is the first time I have heard you grumble. I know it is hard, but what has specially upset you, today?"

"I suppose I am a little out of sorts," he said. "I was thinking, perhaps, how different it might have been, if it hadn't been for that unlucky sh.e.l.l."

"You mean that you might have gone on to Burgos, and fallen in the a.s.sault there; or shared in that dreadful retreat to the frontier again."

"No. I was not thinking of Spain, nor even of the army. I was thinking of here."

"But you said, over and over again, Terence, that you will be able to ride, and drive, and get about like other people, in time."

"Yes, dear. In many respects it will be the same, but not in one respect."

Then he broke off.

"I am an ungrateful brute. I have everything to make me happy--a comfortable home, a good father, and a dear little sister to nurse me."

"What did I tell you, sir," she said, after a pause, "when I said goodbye to you at Coimbra? That I would rather be your cousin. You were quite hurt, and I said that you were a silly boy, and would understand better, some day."