第55章

"Colonel and Mrs. Jowler," said I solemnly, "we are alone; and you, Miss Jowler, you are alone too; that is--I mean--I take this opportunity to--(another glass of ale, if you please)--to express, once for all, before departing on a dangerous campaign"--(Julia turned pale)--"before entering, I say, upon a war which may stretch in the dust my high-raised hopes and me, to express my hopes while life still remains to me, and to declare in the face of heaven, earth, and Colonel Jowler, that I love you, Julia!" The Colonel, astonished, let fall a steel fork, which stuck quivering for some minutes in the calf of my leg; but I heeded not the paltry interruption. "Yes, by yon bright heaven," continued I, "I love you, Julia! I respect my commander, I esteem your excellent and beauteous mother; tell me, before I leave you, if I may hope for a return of my affection. Say that you love me, and I will do such deeds in this coming war as shall make you proud of the name of your Gahagan."The old woman, as I delivered these touching words, stared, snapped, and ground her teeth, like an enraged monkey. Julia was now red, now white; the Colonel stretched forward, took the fork out of the calf of my leg, wiped it, and then seized a bundle of letters which I had remarked by his side.

"A cornet!" said he, in a voice choking with emotion; "a pitiful, beggarly Irish cornet aspire to the hand of Julia Jowler! Gag, Gahagan, are you mad, or laughing at us? Look at these letters, young man--at these letters, I say--one hundred and twenty-four epistles from every part of India (not including one from the Governor-General, and six from his brother, Colonel Wellesley,)--one hundred and twenty-four proposals for the hand of Miss Jowler!

Cornet Gahagan," he continued, "I wish to think well of you: you are the bravest, the most modest, and, perhaps, the handsomest man in our corps; but you have not got a single rupee. You ask me for Julia, and you do not possess even an anna!"--(Here the old rogue grinned, as if he had made a capital pun).--"No, no," said he, waxing good-natured; "Gagy, my boy, it is nonsense! Julia, love, retire with your mamma; this silly young gentleman will remain and smoke a pipe with me."I took one; it was the bitterest chillum I ever smoked in my life.

. . . . . .

I am not going to give here an account of my military services;they will appear in my great national autobiography, in forty volumes, which I am now preparing for the press. I was with my regiment in all Wellesley's brilliant campaigns; then taking dawk, I travelled across the country north-eastward, and had the honor of fighting by the side of Lord Lake at Laswaree, Deeg, Furruckabad, Futtyghur, and Bhurtpore: but I will not boast of my actions--the military man knows them, MY SOVEREIGN appreciates them. If asked who was the bravest man of the Indian army, there is not an officer belonging to it who would not cry at once, GAHAGAN. The fact is, Iwas desperate: I cared not for life, deprived of Julia Jowler.

With Julia's stony looks ever before my eyes, her father's stern refusal in my ears, I did not care, at the close of the campaign, again to seek her company or to press my suit. We were eighteen months on service, marching and countermarching, and fighting almost every other day: to the world I did not seem altered; but the world only saw the face, and not the seared and blighted heart within me. My valor, always desperate, now reached to a pitch of cruelty; I tortured my grooms and grass-cutters for the most trifling offence or error,--I never in action spared a man,--Isheared off three hundred and nine heads in the course of that single campaign.

Some influence, equally melancholy, seemed to have fallen upon poor old Jowler. About six months after we had left Dum Dum, he received a parcel of letters from Benares (whither his wife had retired with her daughter), and so deeply did they seem to weigh upon his spirits, that he ordered eleven men of his regiment to be flogged within two days; but it was against the blacks that he chiefly turned his wrath. Our fellows, in the heat and hurry of the campaign, were in the habit of dealing rather roughly with their prisoners, to extract treasure from them: they used to pull their nails out by the root, to boil them in kedgeree pots, to flog them and dress their wounds with cayenne pepper, and so on.

Jowler, when he heard of these proceedings, which before had always justly exasperated him (he was a humane and kind little man), used now to smile fiercely and say, "D--- the black scoundrels! Serve them right, serve them right!"One day, about a couple of miles in advance of the column, I had been on a foraging-party with a few dragoons, and was returning peaceably to camp, when of a sudden a troop of Mahrattas burst on us from a neighboring mango-tope, in which they had been hidden: in an instant three of my men's saddles were empty, and I was left with but seven more to make head against at least thirty of these vagabond black horsemen. I never saw in my life a nobler figure than the leader of the troop--mounted on a splendid black Arab: he was as tall, very nearly, as myself; he wore a steel cap and a shirt of mail, and carried a beautiful French carbine, which had already done execution upon two of my men. I saw that our only chance of safety lay in the destruction of this man. I shouted to him in a voice of thunder (in the Hindustanee tongue of course), "Stop, dog, if you dare, and encounter a man!"In reply his lance came whirling in the air over my head, and mortally transfixed poor Foggarty of ours, who was behind me.

Grinding my teeth and swearing horribly, I drew that scimitar which never yet failed its blow,* and rushed at the Indian. He came down at full gallop, his own sword making ten thousand gleaming circles in the air, shrieking his cry of battle.

* In my affair with Macgillicuddy, I was fool enough to go out with small-swords--miserable weapons only fit for tailors.--G. O'G. G.