LIEUTENANT PUDDOCK RECEIVES AN INVITATION AND A RAP OVER THE KNUCKLES.
The old gentlemen, from their peepholes in the Magazine, watched the
progress of this remarkable affair of honour, as well as they could,
with the aid of their field-glasses, and through an interposing crowd.
'By Jupiter, Sir, he's through him!' said Colonel Bligh, when he saw
O'Flaherty go down.
'So he is, by George!' replied General Chattesworth; 'but, eh, which is
he?'
'The _long_ fellow,' said Bligh.
'O'Flaherty?--hey!--no, by George!--though so it is--there's work in
Frank Nutter yet, by Jove,' said the general, poking his glass and his
fat face an inch or two nearer.
'Quick work, general!' said Bligh.
'Devilish,' replied the general.
The two worthies never moved their glasses; as each, on his inquisitive
face, wore the grim, wickedish, half-smile, with which an old stager
recalls, in the prowess of his juniors, the pleasant devilment of his
own youth.
'The cool, old hand, Sir, too much for your new fireworker,' remarked
Bligh, cynically.
'Tut, Sir, this O'Flaherty has not been three weeks among us,'
spluttered out the general, who was woundily jealous of the honour of
his corps. 'There are lads among our fireworkers who would whip Nutter
through the liver while you'd count ten!'
'They're removing the--the--(a long pause) the _body_, eh?' said Bligh.
'Hey! no, see, by George, he's walking but he's _hurt_.'
'I'm mighty well pleased it's no worse, Sir,' said the general, honestly
glad.
'They're helping him into the coach--long legs the fellow's got,'
remarked Bligh.
'These--things--Sir--are--are--very--un--pleasant,' said the general,
adjusting the focus of the glass, and speaking slowly--though no Spanish
dandy ever relished a bull-fight more than he an affair of the kind. He
and old Bligh had witnessed no less than five--not counting this--in
which officers of the R.I.A. were principal performers, from the same
sung post of observation. The general, indeed, was conventionally
supposed to know nothing of them, and to reprobate the practice itself
with his whole soul. But somehow, when an affair of the sort came off on
the Fifteen Acres, he always happened to drop in, at the proper moment,
upon his old crony, the colonel, and they sauntered into the
demi-bastion together, and quietly saw what was to be seen. It was Miss
Becky Chattesworth who involved the poor general in this hypocrisy. It
was not exactly her money; it was her force of will and unflinching
audacity that established her control over an easy, harmless, plastic
old gentleman.
'They are unpleasant--devilish unpleasant--somewhere in the body, I
think, hey? they're stooping again, stooping again--eh?--_plaguy_
unpleasant, Sir (the general was thinking how Miss Becky's tongue would
wag, and what she might not even _do_, if O'Flaherty died). Ha! on they
go again, and a--Puddock--getting in--and that's Toole. He's not so much
hurt--eh? He helped himself a good deal, you saw; but (taking heart of
grace) when a quarrel does occur, Sir, I believe, after all, 'tis better
off the stomach at once--a few passes--you know--or the crack of a
pistol--who's that got in--the priest--hey? by George!'
'Awkward if he dies a Papist,' said cynical old Bligh--the R.I.A. were
Protestant by constitution.
'That never happens in our corps, Sir,' said the general, haughtily;
'but, as I say, when a quarrel--does--occur--Sir--there, they're off at
last; when it does occur--I say--heyday! what a thundering pace! a
gallop, by George! that don't look well (a pause)--and--and--a--about
what you were saying--you know he _couldn't_ die a Papist in our
corps--no one does--no one ever _did_--it would be, you know--it would
be a _trick_, Sir, and O'Flaherty's a gentleman; it _could_ not be--(he
was thinking of Miss Becky again--she was so fierce on the Gunpowder
Plot, the rising of 1642, and Jesuits in general, and he went on a
little flustered); but then, Sir, as I was saying, though the thing has
its uses----.'
'I'd like to know where society'd be without it,' interposed Bligh, with
a sneer.
'Though it may have its uses, Sir; it's not a thing one can sit down and
say is _right_--we _can't_!'
'I've heard your sister, Miss Becky, speak strongly on that point,
too,'said Bligh.
'Ah! I dare say,' said the general, quite innocently, an coughing a
little. This was a sore point with the hen-pecked warrior, and the grim
scarcecrow by his side knew it, and grinned through his telescope; 'and
you see--I say--eh! I think they're breaking up, a--and--I say--I--it
seems all over--eh--and so, dear colonel, I must take my leave, and----.'
And after a lingering look, he shut up his glass, and walking
thoughtfully back with his friend, said suddenly--
'And, now I think of it--it could not be _that_--Puddock, you know,
would not suffer the priest to sit in the same coach with such a
design--Puddock's a good officer, eh! and knows his duty.'
A few hours afterwards, General Chattesworth, having just dismounted
outside the Artillery barracks, to his surprise, met Puddock and
O'Flaherty walking leisurely in the street of Chapelizod. O'Flaherty
looked pale and shaky, and rather wild; and the general returned his
salute, looking deuced hard at him, and wondering all the time in what
part of his body (in his phrase) 'he had got it;' and how the plague the
doctors had put him so soon on his legs again.
'Ha, Lieutenant Puddock,' with a smile, which Puddock thought
significant--'give you good-evening, Sir. Dr. Toole anywhere about, or
have you seen Sturk?'
'No, he had not.'
The general wanted to hear by accident, or in confidence, all about it;
and having engaged Puddock in talk, that officer followed by his side.
'I should be glad of the honour of your company, Lieutenant Puddock, to
dinner this evening--Sturk comes, and Captain Cluffe, and this wonderful
Mr. Dangerfield too, of whom we all heard so much at mess, at five
o'clock, if the invitation's not too late.'
The lieutenant acknowledged and accepted, with a blush and a very low
bow, his commanding officer's hospitality; in fact, there was a _tendre_
in the direction of Belmont, and little Puddock had inscribed in his
private book many charming stanzas of various lengths and structures, in
which the name of 'Gertrude' was of frequent recurrence.
'And--a--I say, Puddock--Lieutenant O'Flaherty, I thought--I--I thought,
d'ye see, just now, eh? (he looked inquisitively, but there was no
answer); I thought, I say, he looked devilish out of sorts, is
he--a--_ill_?'
'He _was very_ ill, indeed, this afternoon, general; a sudden attack----'
The general looked quickly at Puddock's plump, consequential face; but
there was no further light in it. 'He _was_ hurt then, I knew it'--he
thought--'who's attending him--and why is he out--and was it a
flesh-wound--or where was it?' all these questions silently, but
vehemently, solicited an answer--and he repeated the last aloud, in a
careless sort of way.
'And--a--Lieutenant Puddock, you were saying--a--tell me--now--_where_
was it?'
'In the park, general,' said Puddock, in perfect good faith.
'Eh? ah! in the park, was it? but I want to know, you know, what part of
the body--d'ye see--the shoulder--or?----'
'The duodenum, Dr. Toole called it--just here, general,' and he pressed
his fingers to what is vulgarly known as the 'pit' of his stomach.
'What, Sir, do you mean to say the pit of his stomach?' said the
general, with more horror and indignation than he often showed.
'Yes, just about that point, general, and the pain was very violent
indeed,' answered Puddock, looking with a puzzled stare at the general's
stern and horrified countenance--an officer might have a pain in his
stomach, he thought, without exciting all that emotion. Had he heard of
the poison, and did he know more of the working of such things than,
perhaps, the doctors did?
'And what in the name of Bedlam, Sir, does he mean by walking about the
town with a hole through his--his what's his name? I'm hanged but I'll
place him under arrest this moment,' the general thundered, and his
little eyes swept the perspective this way and that, as if they would
leap from their sockets, in search of the reckless O'Flaherty. 'Where's
the adjutant, Sir?' he bellowed with a crimson scowl and a stamp, to the
unoffending sentry.
'That's the way to make him lie quiet, and keep his bed till he heals,
Sir.'
Puddock explained, and the storm subsided, rumbling off in half a dozen
testy assertions on the general's part that he, Puddock, had distinctly
used the word '_wounded_,' and now and then renewing faintly, in a
muttered explosion, on the troubles and worries of his command, and a
great many 'pshaws!' and several fits of coughing, for the general
continued out of breath for some time. He had showed his cards, however,
and so, in a dignified disconcerted sort of way, he told Puddock that he
had heard something about O'Flaherty's having got most improperly into a
foolish quarrel, and having met Nutter that afternoon, and for a moment
feared he might have been hurt; and then came enquiries about Nutter,
and there appeared to have been no one hurt, and yet the parties on the
ground--and no fighting--and yet no reconciliation--and, in fact, the
general was so puzzled with this conundrum, and so curious, that he was
very near calling after Puddock, when they parted at the bridge, and
making him entertain him, at some cost of consistency, with the whole
story.
So Puddock--his head full of delicious visions--marched homeward--to
powder and perfume, and otherwise equip for that banquet of the gods, of
which he was to partake at five o'clock, and just as he turned the
corner at 'The Phoenix,' who should he behold, sailing down the Dublin
road from the King's House, with a grand powdered footman, bearing his
cane of office, and a great bouquet behind her, and Gertrude
Chattesworth by her side, but the splendid and formidable Aunt Becky,
who had just been paying her compliments to old Mrs. Colonel Stafford,
from whom she had heard all about the duel. So as Puddock's fat cheeks
grew pink at sight of Miss Gertrude, all Aunt Becky's colour flushed
into her face, as her keen eye pierced the unconscious lieutenant from
afar off, and chin and nose high in air, her mouth just a little tucked
in, as it were, at one corner--a certain sign of coming storm--an angry
hectic in each cheek, a fierce flirt of her fan, and two or three short
sniffs that betokened mischief--she quickened her pace, leaving her
niece a good way in the rear, in her haste to engage the enemy. Before
she came up she commenced the action at a long range, and very
abruptly--for an effective rhetorician of Aunt Becky's sort, jumps at
once, like a good epic poet, _in medias res_; and as Nutter, who, like
all her friends in turn, experienced once or twice 'a taste of her
quality,' observed to his wife, 'by Jove, that woman says things for
which she ought to be put in the watch-house.' So now and here she
maintained her reputation--
'You ought to be flogged, Sir; yes,' she insisted, answering Puddock's
bewildered stare, 'tied up to the halberts and flogged.'
Aunt Rebecca was accompanied by at least half a dozen lap-dogs, and
those intelligent brutes, aware of his disgrace, beset poor Puddock's
legs with a furious vociferation.
'Madam,' said he, his ears tingling, and making a prodigious low bow;
'commissioned officers are never flogged.'
'So much the worse for the service, Sir; and the sooner they abolish
that anomalous distinction the better. I'd have them begin, Sir, with
you, and your accomplice in murder, Lieutenant O'Flaherty.'
'Madam! your most obedient humble servant,' said Puddock, with another
bow, still more ceremonious, flushing up intensely to the very roots of
his powdered hair, and feeling in his swelling heart that all the
generals of all the armies of Europe dare not have held such language to
him.
'Good-evening, Sir,' said Aunt Becky, with an energetic toss of her
head, having discharged her shot; and with an averted countenance, and
in high disdain, she swept grandly on, quite forgetting her niece, who
said a pleasant word or two to Puddock as she passed, and smiled so
kindly, and seemed so entirely unconscious of his mortification, that he
was quite consoled, and on the whole was made happy and elated by the
rencontre, and went home to his wash-balls and perfumes in a hopeful and
radiant, though somewhat excited state.
Indeed, the little lieutenant knew that kind-hearted termagant, Aunt
Becky, too well, to be long cast down or even flurried by her onset.
When the same little Puddock, about a year ago, had that ugly attack of
pleurisy, and was so low and so long about recovering, and so puny and
fastidious in appetite, she treated him as kindly as if he were her own
son, in the matter of jellies, strong soups, and curious light wines,
and had afterwards lent him some good books which the little lieutenant
had read through, like a man of honour as he was. And, indeed, what
specially piqued Aunt Becky's resentment just now was, that having had,
about that time, a good deal of talk with Puddock upon the particular
subject of duelling, he had, as she thought, taken very kindly to her
way of thinking; and she had a dozen times in the last month, cited
Puddock to the general; and so his public defection was highly
mortifying and intolerable.
So Puddock, in a not unpleasant fuss and excitement, sat down in his
dressing-gown before the glass; and while Moore the barber, with tongs,
powder, and pomade, repaired the dilapidations of the day, he
contemplated his own plump face, not altogether unapprovingly, and
thought with a charming anticipation of the adventures of the
approaching evening.