Spanish John
9781465638359
330 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
How Angus McDonald of Clanranald and I set out for the Scots College in Rome; how we fell in with Mr. O'Rourke and Manuel the Jew, and with the latter saw strange company in Leghorn; how we were presented to Captain Creach, "of the Regiment Irlandia," at the Inn of Aquapendente, and what befel thereafter. "Hoot!" snorted my Uncle Scottos, with much contempt, "make a lad like that into a priest! Look at the stuff there is in him for a soldier!" Without waiting for a reply, he roared: "Here, mogh Radhan dubh! (my little black darling), shew your father how you can say your Pater-noster with a single-stick!" At which he caught up a stout rod for himself, and, throwing me a lighter one, we saluted, and at it we went hammer and tongs. I suppose my Uncle was a bit discomposed with his argument, for he was one ill to bear contradiction, even in thought, and so forgot I was but a lad, for he pushed me hard, making me fairly wince under his shrewd cuts, and ruffling me with his half-angry shouts of "Mind your guard!" each time he got in at me, until before long the punishment was so severe I was out of breath, my wrist half broken, and I was forced to cry "Pax!" Indeed, I was so ruffled I made but a poor shewing, and my father laughed heartily at my discomfiture. "Well, well, Donald," he said, in reply to my Uncle's argument, "I'll at least promise you his schooling will not be any harder than that you would put him at." "Perhaps not," answered my Uncle, still in some little heat, "but mine is at least the schooling of a gentleman! However, thank God, they cannot take that out of him in Rome, whatever else they may stuff into him. Man! man!" he broke out again, after a moment's pause, "but you're wasting the making of a pretty soldier!" And he looked so gallant as he stood there before the big fireplace, full of scorn for the ignoble fate he dreaded might be in store for me, that my heart swelled with a great pity for myself, and for my father too, who should be so bent on sending me to Rome, so far away from my Uncle, who knew so many pretty turns with the sword I might learn from no other, and so many songs I might never sing now. For I worshipped my Uncle, Donald McDonell of Scottos, but always known as "Scottos," as is our custom; he was called The Younger, not to belittle him, but because my Grandfather, old Æneas of Scottos, was still alive. He had been in France and Spain and Italy, first as a cadet and afterwards as ensign in Colonel Walter Burke's regiment of foot, one of the regiments of the Irish Brigade serving under the Duke of Berwick, and many a night have I been kept awake with his stories of their engagements at Cremona, Alicant, Barcelona, and other places—how they beat, and sometimes how they were beaten—till I knew the different Dillons and Butlers and McDonells and O'Rourkes, and other gentlemen of the regiment, not only by name, but as though I had met with them face to face. He had no great love for the Church, for he hated the sight of a priest, and was continually railing against my being sent to Rome lest they should make a "Black Petticoat" of me. "That 'a McDonell must be either a soldier or a priest' may be a very good saying in its way," he went on to my father, for there was no interruption in their talk, "but mark you which comes first! If all our forebears had bred but little shavelings, and no soldiers, where would the McDonell family be now, think you? 'Tis not in reason you should give up your one son for the sake of an old saw, like enough made by some priest himself. If one of mine chooses to take to it, he will not be missed out of the flock; but depend upon it, brother, God never gave you this one to waste in this way. Let me train him until he is ready to go abroad into the service, and I'll answer for it to stand him in better stead than all the tingle-fangle whimseys they'll teach him in Rome!"
