“And what has again brought you into the service?” inquired Sir Sydney. “I thought you had passed the board at Chelsea?”
“So I did,” said Tom; “but they only allowed me sixpence a-day, Sir; so I told them to keep it for the young soldiers, as it wasn’t enough for the old, who had seen all the tough work out.”
“Ha! the old thing, Tom, I perceive,” observed Sir Sydney, shaking his head; then immediately remarked to the Colonel of the regiment, as he proceeded down the ranks—“One of my bravest soldiers.”
The same day the General dined at the officers’ mess, when Tom was sent for after dinner.
“Here, Plunket, I have sent for you to give us a toast,” observed Sir Sydney, as he handed him a glass of wine.
“Then, Sir, here’s to the immortal memory of the poor fellows who fell in the Peninsula, Sir,” said Tom.
The toast was drunk by all with much solemnity, when Tom was dismissed with a present from Sir Sydney. The following day Tom was made a corporal, and shortly afterwards, through the medium, I believe, of Sir Sydney, went up and passed the pension board at Kilmainham, which granted him a shilling a-day.
But I had forgotten to mention, in its place, an event common in man’s life—I mean his marriage. Shortly after the battle of Waterloo, Tom had wedded a lady remarkable for being deficient in one essential to beauty—she actually had no _face_, or, at all events, was so _defaced_, it amounted to the same thing. This slight flaw in the beauty of Tom’s wife, who
Had gallantly follow’d the camp through the war,
arose from the bursting of an ammunition-waggon at Quatre Bras, near to which the lady stood, and by which her countenance was rendered a blue, shapeless, noseless mass. This event was duly commemorated by the government, who allowed the heroine a shilling a-day pension, in allusion to which Tom used facetiously to say—“It was an ill blowing up of powder that blew nobody good.”
The story of Tom Plunket, already narrated at greater length than I had intended, draws fast to a close. Imbued with roving inclinations, partly owing to his nature, and more perhaps to his profession, for nothing more unsettles a man than the ever-changing chequered course of a soldier’s life, he at one time determined to become a settler in Canada, and, accordingly, accepted the offer held out by government to all pensioners, of allowing them so much land, and giving them four years’ pay for their pensions. Plunket, ever eager for the handling of cash, got two years’ pay down here, and started off with some two or three hundred others to try their fortune. This proved to be a very miserable one: Tom was not a man to rusticate on the other side of the Atlantic amid privations, and with the recollection of old England fresh in his mind.