The Luck of Barry Lyndon William Makepeace Thackeray (portable ebook reader .TXT) 📖

the odious little flirt of a Nora would put me with her eternal coquetries with the officers, and refused for a long time to be one of the party to the ball. But she had a way of conquering me, against which all resistance of mine was in vain. She vowed that riding in a coach always made her ill. “And how can I go to the ball,” said she, “unless you take me on Daisy behind you on the pillion?” Daisy was a good blood-mare of my uncle’s, and to such a proposition I could not for my soul say no; so we rode in safety to Kilwangan, and I felt myself as proud as any prince when she promised to dance a country-dance with me.

When the dance was ended, the little ungrateful flirt informed me that she had quite forgotten her engagement; she had actually danced the set with an Englishman! I have endured torments in my life, but none like that. She tried to make up for her neglect, but I would not. Some of the prettiest girls there offered to console me, for I was the best dancer in the room. I made one attempt, but was too wretched to continue, and so remained alone all night in a state of agony. I would have played, but I had no money; only the gold piece that my mother bade me always keep in my purse as a gentleman should. I did not care for drink, or know the dreadful comfort of it in those days; but I thought of killing myself and Nora, and most certainly of making away with Captain Quin!

At last, and at morning, the ball was over. The rest of our ladies went off in the lumbering creaking old coach; Daisy was brought out, and Miss Nora took her place behind me, which I let her do without a word. But we were not half-a-mile out of town when she began to try with her coaxing and blandishments to dissipate my ill-humour.

“Sure it’s a bitter night, Redmond dear, and you’ll catch cold without a handkerchief to your neck.” To this sympathetic remark from the pillion, the saddle made no reply.

“Did you and Miss Clancy have a pleasant evening, Redmond? You were together, I saw, all night.” To this the saddle only replied by grinding his teeth, and giving a lash to Daisy.

“O mercy! you’ll make Daisy rear and throw me, you careless creature you: and you know, Redmond, I’m so timid.” The pillion had by this got her arm round the saddle’s waist, and perhaps gave it the gentlest squeeze in the world.

“I hate Miss Clancy, you know I do!” answers the saddle; “and I only danced with her because⁠—because⁠—the person with whom I intended to dance chose to be engaged the whole night.”

“Sure there were my sisters,” said the pillion, now laughing outright in the pride of her conscious superiority; “and for me, my dear, I had not been in the room five minutes before I was engaged for every single set.”

“Were you obliged to dance five times with Captain Quin?” said I; and oh! strange delicious charm of coquetry, I do believe Miss Nora Brady at twenty-three years of age felt a pang of delight in thinking that she had so much power over a guileless lad of fifteen. Of course she replied that she did not care a fig for Captain Quin: that he danced prettily, to be sure, and was a pleasant rattle of a man; that he looked well in his regimentals too; and if he chose to ask her to dance, how could she refuse him?

“But you refused me, Nora.”

“Oh! I can dance with you any day,” answered Miss Nora, with a toss of her head; “and to dance with your cousin at a ball, looks as if you could find no other partner. Besides,” said Nora⁠—and this was a cruel, unkind cut, which showed what a power she had over me, and how mercilessly she used it⁠—“besides, Redmond, Captain Quin’s a man and you are only a boy!”

“If ever I meet him again,” I roared out with an oath, “you shall see which is the best man of the two. I’ll fight him with sword or with pistol, captain as he is. A man indeed! I’ll fight any man⁠—every man! Didn’t I stand up to Mick Brady when I was eleven years old?⁠—Didn’t I beat Tom Sullivan, the great hulking brute, who is nineteen?⁠—Didn’t I do for the Scotch usher? O Nora, it’s cruel of you to sneer at me so!”

But Nora was in the sneering mood that night, and pursued her sarcasms; she pointed out that Captain Quin was already known as a valiant soldier, famous as a man of fashion in London, and that it was mighty well of Redmond to talk and boast of beating ushers and farmers’ boys, but to fight an Englishman was a very different matter.

Then she fell to talk of the invasion, and of military matters in general; of King Frederick (who was called, in those days, the Protestant hero), of Monsieur Thurot and his fleet, of Monsieur Conflans and his squadron, of Minorca, how it was attacked, and where it was; we both agreed it must be in America, and hoped the French might be soundly beaten there.

I sighed after a while (for I was beginning to melt), and said how much I longed to be a soldier; on which Nora recurred to her infallible “Ah! now, would you leave me, then? But, sure, you’re not big enough for anything more than a little drummer.” To which I replied, by swearing that a soldier I would be, and a general too.

As we were chattering in this silly way, we came to a place that has ever since gone by the name of Redmond’s Leap Bridge. It was an old high bridge, over a stream sufficiently deep and rocky, and as the mare Daisy with her double load was