Part 38 (1/2)
”What is it, your honour?”
”I want you to take off all the marks of a field officer from my clothes. I am going to be a captain again.”
Mike looked with surprise at his master.
”Well, your honour, it is ungrateful bastes they must be. Sure I thought that the least they could do was to make you a full major, though if they had made you a colonel, it would be no more than you deserve.”
”I was offered the majority, Mike, but I declined it. It would be absurd, at my age, to have such a rank, and I should be ashamed to look officers of our brigade, who have done nigh twenty years of good service and are still only captains, in the face. I would much rather remain as I am.”
”Well, it may be you are right, sir, but it is disappointed I am, entirely.”
”You will get over it, Mike,” Desmond laughed.
”That may be,” Mike said doubtfully, ”but I should have felt mighty proud of being a colonel's servant.”
”I don't suppose you will ever be that, Mike. You know that, after the last war was over, several of the Irish regiments were disbanded, and no doubt it will be the same when this war is finished, so you could not count upon seeing me a colonel, at any rate not for another twenty years.”
”Ah, your honour, I hope we shall be back in old Ireland years before that!”
”I hope so, too, Mike. I have only been out here for two years, and yet I am beginning to feel that I should like a quieter life.
No doubt the loss of my hand has something to do with that, but I would give up, willingly, all chance of ever becoming a colonel, if I could but settle down in the old country, though I fear there is very little chance of that.”
”But sure there may be fighting there, too, your honour,” Mike said; ”and if King James goes across the water, there is sure to be divarsion that way.”
”I hope not, Mike. It is not that I do not feel as loyal as ever to the cause of the Stuarts, but if they cannot come to their own without Ireland being again deluged with blood, I would rather they would stay away. Twice Ireland has suffered for the Stuarts: first, when Cromwell came over, carrying fire and sword through the land, and divided half the country among his followers; next, when Dutch William did the same. I am loyal to the Stuarts, as I said, but I am still more loyal to Ireland, and would rather that King James remained all his life at Saint Germain, than that those scenes should ever come again.”
”That's true for you, sir; and when I come to think of it, I should be just as easy and comfortable in a snug little cot in Killarney, which is my county, whether King James or Queen Anne was ruling it in England.”
”Quite so, Mike; and if I had, as you say, a snug little cot to go to, and an income to live comfortably in it, and no fear of being hauled off to prison and hanged for joining the brigade, I should not be sorry to settle down.
”We start back for Badajos tomorrow morning.”
”Faith, your honour, it has been so hard getting away from there, that I should not have thought you wished to put your foot inside the place again. You might not be so lucky in getting off, next time.”
”We are going in a different way, Mike. Colonel Crofton's regiment of Irish dragoons is going with us, and a French infantry regiment from Toledo.”
”Then I am well content to go back, your honour, and I hope we shall see that murthering governor hung.”
”I think you have a good chance of seeing that, Mike, if he has not taken himself off before we arrive there; which I think he is pretty sure to do, directly he hears we have got through safely; for he will know that, as soon as my report is handed in, he is a lost man.”
”Bad cess to him! At any rate, I hope I shall light upon him some day, sir, and pay him out for sending those fellows to kill you at night, and to hinder us in the hills. As to his cheating the Spaniards, that is their business, and they can reckon with him for it; but I should like to pay our debt myself.”
”I don't suppose there is much chance of your having an opportunity of doing that.”
”Then why are we going back, your honour?”
”To carry out my original orders, Mike--survey the roads, and pa.s.ses, and bridges. The duke cannot rely upon Spanish testimony in these matters, and it is most important that we should ascertain, accurately, how good are the roads by which he would advance with the army into Portugal, or where best to oppose the enemy if they cross the Guadiana.”
”I am glad to hear you say so, sir, for I was afraid that we were going to have a long stay here again, and I would rather be on horseback, riding all over the country, than walking up and down these streets till my feet fairly ache.”