EXPLOIT THE FIRST.
HE PATRONISES PAMELA.
I.
THE HAT OF MR. PARKINS.
A very wilderness is Bernard O’Hagan, which no man could hope thoroughly
to explore; a most picturesque figure in the satin-lined cloak which he
loves to wear in defiance of fashion and indeed of civilised custom,
singularly resembling the Merry Monarch whom a lady of his race once
entertained right regally at the ancestral home of the O’Hagans. The
unexpectedness of the man is one of the most marked features of his
character—the one that makes his society at once delightful and
alarming.
“My boy,” he will burst out, as we sit in a crowded café, “that
gentleman yonder is unduly interested in my appearance.” And, stepping
over to the offensive one: “Sir, you are staring at me. I suspect you of
being a bum-bailiff!”
“What!” says the other, in all probability—whilst, my friend and I the
observed of many observers, I tremble for the outcome of the
affair—“how dare you! Damn it! how dare you!”
“Because,” replies O’Hagan, with a sort of calm ferocity, “I desire to
pull your nose, and only await a fitting opportunity! You are a puppy,
sir! There is my card!”
The man leaps in anger to his feet. Others arise, too, and waiters
approach.
“You will regret this outrage!” says the man, pale or inflamed. “You
will hear from my solicitor!”
Then O’Hagan throws back his picturesque head and laughs.
“The solicitor again!” he cries, snapping his fingers. “Always the
solicitor—or the police! Is there no man alive to-day who can fight his
own battles?”
He quietly returns to his table. The other speaks to the manager, and,
if he be a good customer, the manager comes across to O’Hagan. O’Hagan
rises slowly, fixing his eyes upon him. And, somehow, O’Hagan is never
ejected. A devil of a fellow.
To the charge that he is a polished kind of bully he will reply calmly,
arguing that he is merely of a sensitive and aristocratic temperament
and suffers affront where one more callous would be conscious of none.
He will submit to rudeness from no man, be he premier or potman; yet he
is never vulgarly embroiled.
O’Hagan rarely wears a hat during the day. There is a simple
explanation. At one time in his chequered career, the only presentable
hat he possessed was a crush-hat. It was then that he cultivated the
hatless fashion. This habit of going hatless directly led to his meeting
with Pamela.
Captain O’Hagan was walking along a crowded, shop-lined thoroughfare,
with that swinging stride which he will tell you runs in the family, and
which enabled his ancestor Patrick to secure enrolment in the ranks of
the Musketeers of Louis XIII. Before the door of a newsagent’s
establishment—quite an unpretentious little shop—two men stood. One of
them, elderly, waved a tweed cap—to a girl more than ordinarily pretty
who was making her way up the steps to the roof of a moving motor bus.
The girl carried a neat brown leather case, and, having gained a seat,
turned and waved her handkerchief. The younger man smiled sourly, but
did not join the elder in his waving.
O’Hagan, delighted with the girl’s animation and beauty, halted by the
two, smiling at the retreating figure. Quite mechanically he raised the
hard felt hat from the head of the younger and less enthusiastic man,
and waved it with a vigour even more marked than that of the elder
waver.
He was recalled to the scene from which the girl now had disappeared
amid the motley traffic, by a violent punch in the ribs.
“Blighter!” said a coarse voice. “My ’at!”
Another than Captain O’Hagan had turned quickly, with arm raised to ward
off another possible blow. But with O’Hagan the cult of the unusual is a
creed to which he sacrifices daily. Some difficulty he experienced in
suppressing a gasp, but he turned unhastily, calmly, and looked into the
bright little eyes of the hat’s owner. These were set upon him wickedly,
and a truculent, blue-shaded jaw was thrust forward in menace.
“You’ve properly asked for it,” continued the man, tensely, “and you’re
goin’ to get it!”
“Jem!” protested the older man, fearfully. “Not here——”
Straight from the shoulder a piston stroke was launched at O’Hagan. It
was a blow with brawn to drive it, with science to direct it. It was
aimed—and well—in accordance with ring traditions of the “knock-out.”
But one who takes unwarrantable liberties with unknowns’ hats must be
prepared for reprisals.
O’Hagan is fond of showing his friends the tricks learned of Shashu
Myuku of Nagasaki; he is equally prompt to demonstrate them to others.
Without employing his right hand, which was engaged in holding the felt
hat, he struck down the impending blow (any but a pupil of Myuku must
have endeavoured to strike it _up_), thrust his left foot rapidly
against his opponent’s advanced right shin, and, by a simple process of
natural law the pugilist pitched forward on to the pavement, propelled
by all the force of his own attacking impetus.
Much shaken, and with a rivulet of blood trickling down his nose from a
damaged forehead, he got upon his feet again. Captain O’Hagan
deliberately hurled the bowler far out into the stream of traffic, and
fixed his large eyes upon its white-faced owner.
“One word,” he said, in that tone of suppressed ferocity wholly
inimitable, “and I will throw you after it! You ape!”
The dazed and much-insulted man glanced from a shapeless dark mass
which, prior to the passage of a brewer’s traction-engine, had been a
felt hat, to the face of O’Hagan; and began with his handkerchief to
wipe blood from his wounds. O’Hagan cast his eyes upward to the legend:
“J. Crichton, Newsagent,” and took the elder man by the arm.
“A word with you, Mr. Crichton!” he said, sweeping that astonished old
tradesman into the shop, and ignoring the knot of interested spectators
gathered at the door.
—————
II.
“THE ART OF GENTLE THOUGHT.”
A chair stood by the journal-strewn counter.
“Sit down,” said O’Hagan kindly, “and answer a few questions! Who is
that person whose hat I honoured?”
The newsagent, who momentarily was expecting to awaken from this bad
dream, shook his head ominously.
“It’s Jem Parkins, sir,” he replied, with that respect bordering upon
awe which O’Hagan inspires in the plebeian soul. “He’s got the _Blue
Dragon_ now, but he’s ex-middleweight champion. There’ll be the devil to
pay when he’s pulled hisself together, sir!”
“Reserve your speculations, Mr. Crichton,” said O’Hagan, “and confine
yourself to facts. The young lady on the bus—your daughter?”
“Yes, sir.”
“She takes after her mother.”
Mr. Crichton stared.
“Did you know Polly—Mrs. Crichton, sir?”
“No. I was referring to your daughter’s good looks. She dresses neatly.”
Mr. Crichton had something of the British tradesman’s independent
spirit, and even the awe inspired by O’Hagan’s tremendous presence could
not wholly smother his paternal resentment.
“I’d have you know that Pamela’s a lady, sir! And I’d have——”
“Pamela is quite an unusual name for a girl of the lower classes. In
what way is Parkins interested?”
The mild eye of Mr. J. Crichton smouldered into faint flame.
“The lower classes! The——”
“I asked you a question.”
Mr. Crichton hesitated, glanced around his shop—his _own_ shop—noted
that his pugilistic friend was entering the door with an air of
business-like truculence, and took his elusive courage in both hands.
“I decline to be cross-examined—by you—or—by——”
Mr. Parkins closed the shop-door, bolted it, and pulled down the blue
blind. He began deliberately to remove his coat.
“Half a mo, Mr. C.,” he interrupted in a quivering voice. “Sorry to put
you out, but it’s got to be done. I’ll smash ’im; then you can call for
the police and give ’im in charge!”
O’Hagan raised the monocle swung upon the broad black ribbon, and
holding it at some distance from his right eye, surveyed the speaker.
“I thought I forbade you to address me?” he remarked icily.
Parkins, removing a collar and shirt-front combined, began to whistle.
“I’ll show you comin’ buttin’ in and runnin’ after respectable girls!”
he announced hoarsely. “_Blighter!_”
O’Hagan dropped the monocle and laid his cane upon the counter. At the
moment that Parkins stood upright and squared his chest, the Captain
snatched up Mr. Crichton’s day-book—a heavy, leather-bound volume—and
hurled it full at the pugilist’s head. One of the precepts of the Higher
Jiu-jitsu, or “Art of Gentle Thought,” he will tell you, is to avail
yourself of any missile within reach. His aim, then, is deadly. The
day-book struck Parkins edgewise across the face, felling him like a
stricken bullock—felling him utterly, brutally.
He crashed into the corner by the door—and lay still. (“A dreadful blow
was struck at every gentleman when the sword was taken from him,”
O’Hagan will say. “One cannot soil one’s gloves with the blood of
churls.”)
“If you compel me to deal with you,” said the Captain, as Parkins
returned to groaning consciousness of his injuries, “I shall cut your
ears off!”
Do not judge my friend harshly. He was born three centuries too late,
that is all. The claim of Democracy to an equality with Aristocracy is
as unintelligible to him as it must have been to Denis O’Hagan, who
upheld the Stuart cause whilst he had breath, and died at last like a
gentleman at Worcester, having demonstrated his distaste for plebeian
company by personally dispatching seven Roundheads. Or perhaps the
autocratic soul of Patrick O’Hagan lives again within Bernard. This
member of the family, sometime of the _Mousquetaires du roi_, narrowly
escaped the Bastille for decapitating a Paris grocer who insulted a lady
and attaching the erring tradesman’s head to his own shop-sign.
Parkins dizzily strove to get upon his feet. Mr. Crichton, trembling,
was seeking to reach the telephone.
“Sit down, Mr. Crichton,” directed O’Hagan, turning the monocle upon
him.
“This is my shop—and that’s one o’ my friends——”
“Sit down, Mr. Crichton.”
Mr. Crichton sat down.
“You”—to the tottering pugilist—“put on your filthy rags, and get
out.”
Parkins steadied himself against the door.
“What d’you mean, get out? I’ve got more right ’ere than you! Just wait,
you cowardly skunk! I’ll ’ave you yet! I’ll quod you for this!”
“You have one minute to get out. If I hear from you again, I shall give
you in charge for assault and battery!”
O’Hagan, lolling against the counter, swung the monocle carelessly. The
amplitude of his nonchalance prevailed. Parkins, recalling that he had
struck the first blow, stuffed his “dicky” into his coat, resumed that
garment, and began to unbolt the door.
With never a backward glance, the discredited Mr. Parkins made his exit.
One of a curious group, without, entered on the pretence of buying a
halfpenny paper. He was served by the trembling newsagent, but save for
the presence of a hatless, distinguished gentleman, saw nothing to
satisfy his curiosity in Mr. Crichton’s shop.
“Now, Mr. Crichton,” said O’Hagan, the customer departed, “in reference
to Pamela: has the fellow, Parkins, pretensions?”
Mr. Crichton, _pro tempore_, was past protest.
“He’s an old pal o’ mine,” he explained, unsteadily, “and well
off—and——”
“Pamela does not approve him?”
“Well, she’s got such superior ideas. But Parkins——”
“It is out of the question, Crichton. Dismiss the idea. Mrs. Crichton
was a woman of higher social standing than yourself?”
The newsagent felt suffocation to be an imminent danger.
“She was the daughter of a lit’r’y gentleman——”
“Singular that she should have married you! Her father was badly in
debt, possibly?”
“Look here——!”
“I say, possibly the late Mrs. Crichton’s father was financially
indebted to you?”
Crichton, cowed:
“I pretty well kept him, for years!”
“Ah! poor girl! A tragedy of poverty! But you have not neglected
Pamela’s education?”
“She’s had the best that money could give her!”
O’Hagan seized the hand of the bewildered Mr. Crichton and wrung it
warmly.
“There are redeeming features in your character, Crichton!” he said.
“For your endeavours on the girl’s behalf I can forgive you much. Rely
upon my friendship! And Pamela has literary inclinations?”
“No, sir,” answered the newsagent, whose world was being turned
topsy-turvy, who alternately believed that he was in the company of a
madman or that he himself was mad. “She’s a musician; I’ve had her
properly taught; she composes!”
Above all the chaos reigning in his mind, paternal pride asserted its
sovereignty and his voice proclaimed it.
“Ah! composes? She has just gone to see a publisher? She had music in
the leather case?”
“Her new piece, sir. She reckons it’s goin’ to make her!”
“What has she published?”
Mr. Crichton, crestfallen:
“Nothing, sir! You see, she’s unknown. They won’t give her a chance.”
“She will return to lunch?”
The newsagent stared.
“Pamela’ll be home to dinner!” he said.
“The midday meal? Exactly. I will lunch with you, Crichton. My name is
Captain O’Hagan.”
His mode of patronage was superb, incomparable.
—————
III.
PAMELA RETURNS.
Pamela arrived late, a dainty figure in her neat serge costume; but the
very curl that floated across her brow, the limp little hand that held
the music-case, spoke of dejection. Her charming face was not habitually
pale, O’Hagan felt assured, nor were such glorious eyes meant to be
dimmed with threatening tears.
“Hullo, Pam!” began her father heartily—and hesitated. “Why—won’t they
take it?”
A forlorn little shake of the head.
“That horrible Ritzmann offered to publish it—if I would let him have
it for nothing!”
“For nothing! Didn’t he offer to pay anything?”
“Not after I had declined to go to lunch with him!”
Pamela laughed; not mirthfully.
“Cheer up, Pam,” said Mr. Crichton, in a voice of abysmal gloom.
“A—er—a friend——”
“A friend, yes, Crichton,” interrupted O’Hagan. “Don’t be nervous.”
“A friend of mine—_Captain_ O’Hagan—has called to see us!”
Pamela blushed delightfully; O’Hagan bowed inimitably.
“Didn’t Mr.—Parkins—stay?”
Crichton coughed.
“He couldn’t stop, after all!” He replied.
Pamela removed her hat. “Good job, too,” she muttered under her breath.
And then began that singular repast, throughout which O’Hagan talked as
only O’Hagan can talk; talked himself into the hearts of the Crichtons.
The old man’s natural resentment—which hitherto had not become wholly
dispersed—melted before the geniality of his distinguished guest; Mr.
Parkins was forgotten. Pamela forgot her troubles and became all smiles.
Crichton burned with pride to note that Captain O’Hagan treated her as
an intellectual equal. Of the Captain’s honourable and friendly
intentions no man could doubt after thirty minutes in his company; and
so that was a happy hour spent at the newsagent’s humble table.
The meal despatched:
“Now for the music!” said O’Hagan, and crossing the little room, he
opened the piano.
Pamela stared.
“May I try over your new piece, Miss Crichton?”
“Oh!” cried the girl. “You play?”
“A little. I should like, as a pleasure, to hear your own rendering; as
a matter of business I should prefer to play the piece myself.”
“A matter of business——”
“You hope to place these compositions?”
“Oh!” said Pamela blankly; “yes,” and took the MS. from her music-case,
adjusting it upon the piano-rack.
Few people have heard O’Hagan play the piano. He never plays unless
requested and the many being ignorant of his accomplishment, he rarely
is requested. But from the moment that his long, white fingers caressed
the keys in the opening bar until that when they leapt back from the
final chord, his audience of two listened spellbound. The piece was a
delicate, feminine morsel; individual, charming; upon an elusive melody,
which haunted the ear, which spelt Popularity. For a moment there was
silence. O’Hagan swung around and faced Pamela.
“Miss Crichton,” he said, “you will make a large sum of money with your
music. One day you will be famous.”
Pamela blushed; her lips trembled. She had never heard her dainty
composition played before by hands other than her own. It was something
of a revelation to its composer—this rippling, fascinating cascade of
harmony which had flown out under the subtle touch of the visitor. Tears
were not far from her eyes again.
“Give me more of your pieces—all you can find,” directed O’Hagan.
Glad enough of an excuse to hide her emotion, the girl ran to a little
escretoire and took out six or seven neatly-written compositions.
O’Hagan placed them before him, and played through them all, without
hesitation, without error; with intense sympathy and understanding. Soon
she was beside him, turning over the familiar pages; her wayward curls
brushed his cheek. When the master-touch had sounded the finale of the
last piece, old Crichton pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose in
clarion fashion.
“What terms were you asking of—er—Ritzmann?” said the Captain
abruptly.
“The usual ten per cent.,” replied Pamela, “with—something on account.”
“How much on account?”
“Ritzmann, I have heard—I know—usually gives ten guineas.”
She spoke the words with awe. Ten guineas on account of a composition of
_hers_—of her very own! It was a dream!
“Ah! Ten guineas on account of a ten per cent, royalty? Let me see: we
have eight pieces here. Can you find two more?”
“There is a suite of three short numbers.”
“Bring that.”
Pamela found it, and brought it. O’Hagan played it, and was delighted.
“Four sharps,” he criticised, “are bad in a composition designed for
general popularity. Would it lose by transposition into a more simple
key?”
“I think not,” said Pamela.
“Well,” continued O’Hagan, “it is a matter for discussion later. May I
take these with me?”
“Of course!” said Pamela. “But——”
“Can you give me until Thursday to place them for you?”
“To place them! To place _all_ of them?”
“All of them! Can you give me until Thursday?”
Pamela’s pretty eyes were widely staring.
“You overwhelm me! Do you really mean it?”
“Will you wait until Thursday and see?”
“Of course!” said Pamela.
—————
IV.
A MUSICAL INTERLUDE.
O’Hagan entered my rooms with the impressive dignity of a Richelieu; in
the very distinction of the man there is something opulent. His refined
_insouciance_ surpasses anything of the kind one could imagine.
“Will you do me a trifling service, Raymond?”
“Consider it as done.”
He threw himself into the blue Chesterfield lounge with the native grace
no lesser man could hope to imitate. His pose suggested that a rapier
hung at his hip and must be taken into consideration. A plumed hat would
have struck no discordant note but merely have harmonised with the
purple-lined cloak. O’Hagan’s head one might surmise to be from a study
by Van Dyck.
“I am running around to Ritzmann’s, the music-publishers, in Berners
Street.”
Now, I noted that he carried a full portfolio.
“At last you have decided to enter the field? You do wisely.”
“I am acting on behalf of a friend—a lady.”
“Indeed. What part do I play?”
“Come along. I will explain.”
We walked up Oxford Street to the corner of Berners Street. O’Hagan
creates a sensation wherever he appears: I am hardened to this.
“You will reconnoitre, Raymond. You will send in a card—anybody’s card
but your own—to Mr. Paul Ritzmann.”
“What!”
“You are representing Messrs. Angelo Morris, of Monte Video! Probably
there is no such firm; I invented the name. You are prepared to handle
Ritzmann’s dance-catalogue throughout the southern continent. If he
declines to do business, no matter; if he is interested, make an
appointment at your hotel—the Savoy sounds substantial without being
gaudy.”
“What is the object of this mendacity?”
“To learn if there is a second door to Ritzmann’s office; another than
that opening on the shop. If there is, come out by it at all costs, and
note where it leads you to. I think, and hope, it will open on a
corridor communicating with the street. From what I know of Ritzmann I
feel confident that there will be such a private entrance. You will
note, also, where the _other_ end of this hypothetical passage leads to.
Probably it will be to a stair. Finally, you will report respecting the
occupant of the suite of offices above—the suite to which this stair
should conduct you.”
“I am not confident,” I said; “but I will do my best.”
Three minutes later I was ushered into the Semitic presence of Mr. Paul
Ritzmann. Mr. Ritzmann had a corpulent person, a bald head, and an oily
smile. He wore diamond rings on his left hand as well as on his right,
by which token I knew that he was really rich. A Hebrew of the Ritzmann
type buys a diamond ring as soon as he can afford it, and displays it
upon his right hand. That is an advertising investment; it signifies
that he is ambitious. But when his right hand is full and he begins to
adorn his left it implies that his ambition is realised.
He made no plunge at my South American offer. He was very cautious.
“I will give you a ring at the hotel, Mr. Eddington.” (I had sent in the
card of Harry Eddington, who at the time was with an expedition looking
for the South Pole.) “I dare say we may be able to fix something up.”
“Good morning.”