Edward, on returning to his hotel, found Gusty there before him, in great delight at having seen a “splendid” horse, as he said, which had been brought for Edward's inspection, he having written a note on his arrival in town to a dealer stating his want of a first-rate hunter.

“He's in the stable now,” said Gusty; “for I desired the man to wait, knowing you would be here soon.”

“I cannot see him now, Gusty,” said Edward: “will you have the kindness to tell the groom I can look at the horse in his own stables when I wish to purchase?”

Gusty departed to do the message, somewhat in wonder, for Edward loved a fine horse. But the truth was, Edward's disposable money, which he had intended for the purchase of a hunter, had a serious inroad made upon it by the debts he had discharged for other men, and he was forced to forego the pleasure he had proposed to himself in the next hunting season; and he did not like to consume any one's time, or raise false expectations, by affecting to look at disposable property with the eye of a purchaser, when he knew it was beyond his reach; and the flimsy common-places of “I'll think of it,” or “If I don't see something better,” or any other of the twenty hackneyed excuses which idle people make, after consuming busy men's time, Edward held to be unworthy. He could ride a hack and deny himself hunting for a whole season, but he would not unnecessarily consume the useful time of any man for ten minutes.

This may be sneered at by the idle and thoughtless; nevertheless, it is a part of the minor morality which is ever present in the conduct of a true gentleman.

Edward had promised to join Dick's dinner-party on an impromptu invitation, and the clock striking the appointed hour warned Edward it was time to be off; so, jumping up on a jaunting car, he rattled off to Dick's lodgings, where a jolly party was assembled ripe for fun.

Amongst the guests was a rather remarkable man, a Colonel Crammer, who had seen a monstrous deal of service—one of Tom Durfy's friends whom he had asked leave to bring with him to dinner. Of course, Dick's card and a note of invitation for the gallant colonel were immediately despatched; and he had but just arrived before Edward, who found a bustling sensation in the room as the colonel was presented to those already assembled, and Tom Durfy giving whispers, aside, to each person touching his friend; such as—“Very remarkable man”—“Seen great service”—“A little odd or so”—“A fund of most extraordinary anecdote,” &c., &c.

Now this Colonel Crammer was no other than Tom Loftus, whose acquaintance Dick wished to make, and who had been invited to the dinner after a preliminary visit; but Tom sent an excuse in his own name, and preferred being present under a fictitious one—this being one of the odd ways in which his humour broke out, desirous of giving people a “touch of his quality” before they knew him. He was in the habit of assuming various characters; a methodist missionary—the patentee of some unheard-of invention—the director of some new joint-stock company—in short, anything which would give him an opportunity of telling tremendous bouncers was equally good for Tom. His reason for assuming a military guise on this occasion was to bother Moriarty, whom he knew he should meet, and held a special reason for tormenting; and he knew he could achieve this, by throwing all the stories Moriarty was fond of telling about his own service into the shade, by extravagant inventions of “hair-breadth 'scapes” and feats by “flood and field.” Indeed, the dinner would not be worth mentioning but for the extraordinary capers Tom cut on the occasion, and the unheard-of lies he squandered.

Dinner was announced by Andy, and with good appetite soup and fish were soon despatched; sherry followed as a matter of necessity. The second course appeared, and was not long under discussion when Dick called for the “champagne.”

Andy began to drag the tub towards the table, and Dick, impatient of delay, again called “champagne.”

“I'm bringin' it to you, sir,” said Andy, tugging at the tub.

“Hand it round the table,” said Dick.

Andy tried to lift the tub, “to hand it round the table;” but, finding he could not manage it, he whispered to Dick, “I can't get it up, sir.”

Dick, fancying Andy meant he had got a flask not in a sufficient state of effervescence to expel its own cork, whispered in return, “Draw it, then.”

“I was dhrawin' it to you, sir, when you stopped me.”

“Well, make haste with it,” said Dick.

“Mister Dawson, I'll trouble you for a small slice of the turkey,” said the colonel.

“With pleasure, colonel; but first do me the honour to take champagne. Andy—champagne!”

“Here it is, sir!” said Andy, who had drawn the tub close to Dick's chair.

“Where's the wine, sir?” said Dick, looking first at the tub and then at Andy. “There, sir,” said Andy, pointing down to the ice. “I put the wine into it, as you towld me.”

Dick looked again at the tub, and said, “There is not a single bottle there—what do you mean, you stupid rascal?”

“To be sure, there's no bottle there, sir. The bottles is all on the sideboord, but every dhrop o' the wine is in the ice, as you towld me, sir; if you put your hand down into it, you'll feel it, sir.”

The conversation between master and man growing louder as it proceeded attracted the attention of the whole company, and those near the head of the table became acquainted as soon as Dick with the mistake Andy had made, and could not resist laughter; and as the cause of their merriment was told from man to man, and passed round the board, a roar of laughter uprose, not a little increased by Dick's look of vexation, which at length was forced to yield to the infectious merriment around him, and he laughed with the rest, and making a joke of the disappointment, which is the very best way of passing one off, he said that he had the honour of originating at his table a magnificent scale of hospitality; for though he had heard of company being entertained with a whole hogshead of claret, he was not aware of champagne being ever served in a tub before. The company were too determined to be merry to have their pleasantry put out of tune by so trifling a mishap, and it was generally voted that the joke was worth twice as much as the wine. Nevertheless, Dick could not help casting a reproachful look now and then at Andy, who had to run the gauntlet of many a joke cut at his expense, while he waited upon the wags at dinner, and caught a lowly muttered anathema whenever he passed near Dick's chair. In short, master and man were both glad when the cloth was drawn, and the party could be left to themselves.

Then, as a matter of course, Dick called on the gentlemen to charge their glasses and fill high to a toast he had to propose—they would anticipate to whom he referred—a gentleman who was going to change his state of freedom for one of a happier bondage, &c., &c. Dick dashed off his speech with several mirth-moving allusions to the change that was coming over his friend Tom, and, having festooned his composition with the proper quantity of “rosy wreaths,” &c., &c., &c., naturally belonging to such speeches, he wound up with some hearty words—free from badinage, and meaning all they conveyed, and finished with the rhyming benediction of a “long life and a good wife” to him.

Tom having returned thanks in the same laughing style that Dick proposed his health, and bade farewell to the lighter follies of bachelorship for the more serious ones of wedlock, the road was now open for any one who was vocally inclined. Dick asked one or two, who said they were not within a bottle of their singing-point yet, but Tom Durfy was sure his friend the colonel would favour them.

“With pleasure,” said the colonel; “and I'll sing something appropriate to the blissful situation of philandering in which you have been indulging of late, my friend. I wish I could give you any idea of the song as I heard it warbled by the voice of an Indian princess, who was attached to me once, and for whom I ran enormous risks—but no matter—that's past and gone, but the soft tones of Zulima's voice will ever haunt my heart! The song is a favourite where I heard it—on the borders of Cashmere, and is supposed to be sung by a fond woman in the valley of the nightingales—'tis so in the original, but as we have no nightingales in Ireland, I have substituted the dove in the little translation I have made, which, if you will allow me, I'll attempt.”

Loud cries of “Hear, hear!” and tapping of applauding hands on the table followed, while the colonel gave a few preliminary hems; and after some little pilot tones from his throat, to show the way, his voice ascended in all the glory of song.

THE DOVE-SONG

I

II

The colonel's song, given with Tom Loftus' good voice, was received with great applause, and the fellows all voted it catching, and began “cooing” round the table like a parcel of pigeons.

“A translation from an eastern poet, you say?”

“Yes,” said Tom.

“'T is not very eastern in its character,” said Moriarty. “I mean a free translation, of course,” added the mock colonel.

“Would you favour us with the song again, in the original?” added Moriarty.

Tom Loftus did not know one syllable of any other language than his own, and it would not have been convenient to talk gibberish to Moriarty, who had a smattering of some of the eastern tongues; so he declined giving his Cashmerian song in its native purity, because, as he said, he never could manage to speak their dialect, though he understood it reasonably well.

“But there's a gentleman, I am sure, will sing some other song—and a better one, I have no doubt,” said Tom, with a very humble prostration of his head on the table, and anxious by a fresh song to get out of the dilemma in which Moriarty's question was near placing him.

“Not a better, colonel,” said the gentleman who was addressed, “but I cannot refuse your call, and I will do my best; hand me the port wine, pray; I always take a glass of port before I sing—I think 't is good for the throat—what do you say, colonel?”

“When I want to sing particularly well,” said Tom, “I drink canary.”

The gentleman smiled at the whimsical answer, tossed off his glass of port, and began.

LADY MINE

II

III

The song was just in the style to catch gentlemen after dinner—the second verse particularly, and many a glass was emptied of a “bumper bright,” and pledged to the particular “thee,” which each individual had selected for his devotion. Edward, at that moment, certainly thought of Fanny Dawson.

Let teetotallers say what they please, there is a genial influence inspired by wine and song—not in excess, but in that wholesome degree which stirs the blood and warms the fancy; and as one raises the glass to the lip, over which some sweet name is just breathed from the depth of the heart, what libation so fit to pour to absent friends as wine? What is wine? It is the grape present in another form; its essence is there, though the fruit which produced it grew thousands of miles away, and perished years ago. So the object of many a tender thought may be spiritually present, in defiance of space—and fond recollections cherished in defiance of time.

As the party became more convivial, the mirth began to assume a broader form. Tom Durfy drew out Moriarty on the subject of his services, that the mock colonel might throw every new achievement into the shade; and this he did in the most barefaced manner, but mixing so much of probability with his audacious fiction, that those who were not up to the joke only supposed him to be a very great romancer; while those friends who were in Loftus' confidence exhibited a most capacious stomach for the marvellous, and backed up his lies with a ready credence. If Moriarty told some fearful incident of a tiger hunt, the colonel capped it with something more wonderful, of slaughtering lions in a wholesale way, like rabbits. When Moriarty expatiated on the intensity of tropical heat, the colonel would upset him with something more appalling.

“Now, sir,” said Loftus, “let me ask you what is the greatest amount of heat you have ever experienced—I say experienced, not heard of—for that goes for nothing. I always speak from experience.”

“Well, sir,” said Moriarty, “I have known it to be so hot in India, that I have had a hole dug in the ground under my tent, and sat in it, and put a table standing over the hole, to try and guard me from the intolerable fervour of the eastern sun, and even then I was hot. What do you say to that, colonel?” asked Moriarty, triumphantly.

“Have you ever been in the West Indies?” inquired Loftus.

“Never,” said Moriarty, who, once entrapped into this admission, was directly at the colonel's mercy,—and the colonel launched out fearlessly.

“Then, my good sir, you know nothing of heat. I have seen in the West Indies an umbrella burned over a man's head.”

“Wonderful!” cried Loftus' backers.

“'T is strange, sir,” said Moriarty, “that we have never seen that mentioned by any writer.”

“Easily accounted for, sir,” said Loftus. “'T is so common a circumstance, that it ceases to be worthy of observation. An author writing of this country might as well remark that the apple-women are to be seen sitting at the corners of the streets. That's nothing, sir; but there are two things of which I have personal knowledge, rather remarkable. One day of intense heat (even for that climate) I was on a visit at the plantation of a friend of mine, and it was so out-o'-the-way scorching, that our lips were like cinders, and we were obliged to have black slaves pouring sangaree down our throats by gallons—I don't hesitate to say gallons—and we thought we could not have survived through the day; but what could we think of our sufferings, when we heard that several negroes, who had gone to sleep under the shade of some cocoa-nut trees, had been scalded to death?”

“Scalded?” said his friends; “burnt, you mean.”

“No, scalded; and how do you think? The intensity of the heat had cracked the cocoa-nuts, and the boiling milk inside dropped down and produced the fatal result. The same day a remarkable accident occurred at the battery; the French were hovering round the island at the time, and the governor, being a timid man, ordered the guns to be always kept loaded.”

“I never heard of such a thing in a battery in my life, sir,” said Moriarty.

“Nor I either,” said Loftus, “till then.”

“What was the governor's name, sir?” inquired Moriarty, pursuing his train of doubt.

“You must excuse me, captain, from naming him,” said Loftus, with readiness, “after incautiously saying he was timid.”

“Hear, hear!” said all the friends.

“But to pursue my story, sir:—the guns were loaded, and with the intensity of the heat went off, one after another, and quite riddled one of his Majesty's frigates that was lying in the harbour.”

“That's one of the most difficult riddles to comprehend I ever heard,” said Moriarty.

“The frigate answered the riddle with her guns, sir, I promise you.”

“What!” exclaimed Moriarty, “fire on the fort of her own king?”

“There is an honest principle exists among sailors, sir, to return fire under all circumstances, wherever it comes from, friend or foe. Fire, of which they know the value so well, they won't take from anybody.”

“And what was the consequence?” said Moriarty.

“Sir, it was the most harmless broadside ever delivered from the ports of a British frigate; not a single house or human being was injured—the day was so hot that every sentinel had sunk on the ground in utter exhaustion—the whole population were asleep; the only loss of life which occurred was that of a blue macaw, which belonged to the commandant's daughter.”

“Where was the macaw, may I beg to know?” said Moriarty, cross-questioning the colonel in the spirit of a counsel for the defence on a capital indictment.

“In the drawing-room window, sir.”

“Then surely the ball must have done some damage in the house?”

“Not the least, sir,” said Loftus, sipping his wine.

“Surely, colonel!” returned Moriarty, warming, “the ball could not have killed the macaw without injuring the house?”

“My dear sir,” said Tom, “I did not say the ball killed the macaw, I said the macaw was killed; but that was in consequence of a splinter from an epaulement of the south-east angle of the fort which the shot struck and glanced off harmlessly—except for the casualty of the macaw.”

Moriarty returned a kind of grunt, which implied that, though he could not further question, he did not believe. Under such circumstances, taking snuff is a great relief to a man; and, as it happened, Moriarty, in taking snuff, could gratify his nose and his vanity at the same time, for he sported a silver-gilt snuff-box which was presented to him in some extraordinary way, and bore a grand inscription.

On this “piece of plate” being produced, of course it went round the table, and Moriarty could scarcely conceal the satisfaction he felt as each person read the engraven testimonial of his worth. When it had gone the circuit of the board, Tom Loftus put his hand into his pocket and pulled out the butt-end of a rifle, which is always furnished with a small box, cut out of the solid part of the wood and covered with a plate of brass acting on a hinge. This box, intended to carry small implements for the use of the rifleman, to keep his piece in order, was filled with snuff, and Tom said, as he laid it down on the table, “This is my snuff-box, gentlemen; not as handsome as my gallant friend's at the opposite side of the table, but extremely interesting to me. It was previous to one of our dashing affairs in Spain that our riflemen were thrown out in front and on the flanks. The rifles were supported by the light companies of the regiments in advance, and it was in the latter duty I was engaged. We had to feel our way through a wood, and had cleared it of the enemy, when, as we debouched from the wood on the opposite side, we were charged by an overwhelming force of Polish lancers and cuirassiers. Retreat was impossible—resistance almost hopeless. 'My lads,' said I, 'we must do something novel here, or we are lost—startle them by fresh practice—the bayonet will no longer avail you—club your muskets, and hit the horses over the noses, and they'll smell danger.' They took my advice; of course we first delivered a withering volley, and then to it we went in flail-fashion, thrashing away with the butt-ends of our muskets; and sure enough the French were astonished and driven back in amazement. So tremendous, sir, was the hitting on our side, that in many instances the butt-ends of the muskets snapped off like tobacco-pipes, and the field was quite strewn with them after the affair: I picked one of them up as a little memento of the day, and have used it ever since as a snuff-box.”

Every one was amused by the outrageous romancing of the colonel but Moriarty, who looked rather disgusted, because he could not edge in a word of his own at all; he gave up the thing now in despair, for the colonel had it all his own way, like the bull in a china-shop; the more startling the bouncers he told, the more successful were his anecdotes, and he kept pouring them out with the most astounding rapidity; and though all voted him the greatest liar they ever met, none suspected he was not a military man.

Dick wanted Edward O'Connor, who sat beside him, to sing; but Edward whispered, “For Heaven's sake don't stop the flow of the lava from that mighty eruption of lies!—he's a perfect Vesuvius of mendacity. You'll never meet his like again, so make the most of him while you have him. Pray, sir,” said Edward to the colonel, “have you ever been in any of the cold climates? I am induced to ask you, from the very wonderful anecdotes you have told of the hot ones.”

“Bless you, sir, I know every corner about the north pole.”

“In which of the expeditions, may I ask, were you engaged?” inquired Moriarty.

“In none of them, sir. We knocked up a little amateur party, I and a few curious friends, and certainly we witnessed wonders. You talk here of a sharp wind; but the wind is so sharp there that it cut off our beard and whiskers. Boreas is a great barber, sir, with his north pole for a sign. Then as for frost!—I could tell you such incredible things of its intensity; our butter, for instance, was as hard as a rock; we were obliged to knock it off with a chisel and hammer, like a mason at a piece of granite, and it was necessary to be careful of your eyes at breakfast, the splinters used to fly about so; indeed, one of the party did lose the use of his eye from a butter-splinter. But the oddest thing of all was to watch two men talking to each other: you could observe the words, as they came out of their mouths, suddenly frozen and dropping down in little pellets of ice at their feet, so that, after a long conversation, you might see a man standing up to his knees in his own eloquence.”

They all roared with laughter at this last touch of the marvellous, but Loftus preserved his gravity.

“I don't wonder, gentlemen, at your not receiving that as truth—I told you it was incredible—in short, that is the reason I have resisted all temptations to publish. Murray, Longmans, Colburn, Bentley, ALL the publishers have offered me unlimited terms, but I have always refused—not that I am a rich man, which makes the temptation of the thousands I might realise the harder to withstand; 't is not that the gold is not precious to me, but there is something dearer to me than gold—it is my character for veracity! and therefore, as I am convinced the public would not believe the wonders I have witnessed, I confine the recital of my adventures to the social circle. But what profession affords such scope for varied incident as that of the soldier? Change of clime, danger, vicissitude, love, war, privation one day, profusion the next, darkling dangers, and sparkling joys! Zounds! there's nothing like the life of a soldier! and, by the powers! I'll give you a song in its praise.”

The proposition was received with cheers, and Tom rattled away these ringing rhymes—

THE BOWLD SOJER BOY

II

III

Andy entered the room while the song was in progress, and handed a letter to Dick, which, after the song was over, and he had asked pardon of his guests, he opened.

“By Jove! you sing right well, colonel,” said one of the party.

“I think the gallant colonel's songs nothing in comparison with his wonderful stories,” said Moriarty.

“Gentlemen,” said Dick, “wonderful as the colonel's recitals have been, this letter conveys a piece of information more surprising than anything we have heard this day. That stupid fellow who spoiled our champagne has come in for the inheritance of a large property.”

“What!—Handy Andy?” exclaimed those who knew his name.

“Handy Andy,” said Dick, “is now a man of fortune!”