Captain O’Brien, having finished his glass of Claret, and turned up the
points of his carroty moustaches, thus resumed his story:--
“At first it was as much as I was able to do to track the fellow by the
sound of his horse’s hoofs upon the soft turf, but I trusted a good deal
to the mare’s instinct to follow the horse before her; fortunately we
had not very far to go before we got upon the hard village road, and
then there was nothing to do but ride him down, for the grey light that
precedes the dawn enabled me to see his figure distinctly. But that same
riding him down was easier to talk about than to do, for the scoundrel
had obtained a long start of us, and though I was well mounted, I soon
perceived that he was equally so. Away we rattled at a slashing
pace, and for about a mile the two troopers managed to keep up pretty
tolerably; but by the time we had ridden rather more than twice that
distance, I found my friend was gradually drawing ahead, and that if I
waited for my men, I should soon have seen my last of him; so giving
the mare her head, and a trifling reminder with the spur besides, I left
them, and they gradually tailed off in the distance, until a turn of
the road hid them altogether. In my time, I’ve ridden steeple-chases,
hurdle-races, and every species of race that the divil ever invented,
but a faster thing than that morning’s ride I never saw nor heard of.
The horses were well matched as to speed, mine was rather the freshest,
but then the Carlist was the lighter weight; the thing could not have
been fairer. However, after a couple of miles or so more, I was glad to
perceive that I was gradually creeping up to him; and I suppose he began
to suspect it too, for, as the light increased, I saw him every now and
then look round suspiciously, and urge his horse still faster at each
successive glance. About a mile from the village, I had gained upon him
so decidedly that it was evident I must overtake him before he could
reach its friendly shelter. Apparently he was of the same opinion, for,
before I was aware of his intention, he unslung a carbine he carried,
pulled up suddenly, and turning in his saddle, levelled it, and took a
deliberate aim at me. Everybody that knows Terence O’Brien, knows he’s
no coward, but ’pon my conscience, at that moment, I wouldn’t have
been sorry to have turned my horse’s head, and cried quits with him;
however, a bullet is a style of article that doesn’t allow a man much
time for deliberation, so seeing it was a case of hit or miss, I only
rammed in the spurs harder, bent down my head, couched my lance, and
galloped on. Bang went the carbine; and almost before the report reached
me, a bullet whistled through the air; I heard a sort of ‘thud,’ as
when an arrow strikes a straw target, and felt my throat-strap suddenly
tightened,--the messenger of death had passed through my cap, severing
a lock of hair and just raising the skin, without doing me the slightest
injury; but it was a close shave in every sense of the word. Well, as
soon as the scoundrel perceived that his shot had failed, he felt that
his only chance was to exert every nerve to reach the village before I
overtook him; so, flinging away his discharged carbine, he dashed on,
urging his failing steed with voice and spurs, and even, as I gained
upon him, with the point of his dagger. Another minute brought us in
sight of the village, where a sleepy sentinel was pacing up and down the
road in front of a sort of toll-house. Astonished at the sight of two
men riding like lunatics, he first attempted to close the bar fixed
there to defend the entrance to the village, then, recognising my
companion, he paused, and before he had come to any decision, we had
dashed past him--my friend obligingly desiring him to ‘shoot the dog of
a Christino,’ as we flew by; an order which, fortunately for me, he was
too much confused to execute, discharging his firelock harmlessly into
the air. As we passed the toll-house, I was not above two horse-lengths
from my antagonist, and gaining upon him at every stride. Any
feelings of compunction I might have had at the thought of slaying a
fellow-creature, had been effectually put to flight by the shot he had
so deliberately fired at me; thus when I found myself at length coming
up with him, I grasped my lance more firmly, set my teeth, drove
the spurs into the mare, and dashed at him. In another moment I had
overtaken him, the point of my lance entered his back between the
shoulder-blades, and by the mere impetus of my onward career I drove
it through him. As the weapon transfixed him, the poor wretch uttered a
yell of agony, and fell forward on his horse’s neck a corpse. If you’ll
believe me, gentlemen, it wasn’t till I’d thus squared accounts with the
rascal for our sentries that he’d murdered in cold blood, that the idea
ever struck me how I was to get back again, with the Carlist village
between me and our camp. The first thing I tried, was to pull my lance
out of the dead assassin, as he lay on his face in the middle of the
road; but the more I pulled, the more it wouldn’t come--I’d driven it
in with such force; and, at last, with a wrench I gave it, I snapped the
staff in two. Seeing there was no time to lose, I was about to turn my
mare’s head in a homeward direction, when it occurred to me that they’d
never believe in the regiment that I’d killed the fellow;”--(“Not an
improbable thing,” soliloquised Beaupeep)--“so I jumped down, secured
the scoundrel’s sash and dagger, remounted, and rode off. As I expected,
the sentinel’s shot had roused the village, and just as I got back, a
company of soldiers were turning out, half-awake and in great confusion,
and the lieutenant contrived to draw a file across the road to stop me.
There was nothing for it but impudence; so, drawing my sabre, I waved it
in the air, then looking round, as if I’d got a regiment at my back, I
sang out, ‘Come on, boys!--trot, gallop, charge!’ and dashed at ’em,
cut down the lieutenant, and what between their fright and their
confusion, broke their line, rode slap through ’em, escaped by good
luck half-a-dozen bullets that were sent after me, and should have got
clear away but for a patrol of dragoons that came up on hearing the
firing, and who, learning how the matter stood, gave chase. As their
horses were fresh, while the race she’d won had pumped every puff of
wind out of my mare, they soon overtook me; and after two or three
minutes’ hard fighting, a cut in the sword-arm disabled me, and I was
forced to give in. Well, they carried me back to the village, settled
that I was a spy, besides having killed Don Pedrillo Velasquez de
Hatadoro, or some such jargon; for which double crime I was to be hung
at noon. Owing to the fortunate arrival of my lancers and a regiment
of rifles, however, that event was indefinitely postponed, but I’ll
mercifully spare you the recital of the scrimmage, which ended in our
taking the village; and, as talking is dry work, I’ll just thank you for
the Claret, D’Almayne, me boy!”
Much cheering and acclamation followed the conclusion of the Captain’s
story, under cover whereof Jack Beaupeep insinuated to Lord Alfred his
opinion that the history in question was better suited to the capacity
of the marines than to that of able-bodied seamen, to which his
Lordship, quoting Horace, replied, that “Judaeus Apella” might believe
it, but that he did not; which, as he said it in the original language
of the Roman poet, elicited from his companion the remark that it
sounded very pretty, and he wished that _he_ understood Dutch.
“But about this said race; what is it to be, and when is it to come
off?” inquired the heavy cornet, who possessed every requisite except
brains to become a first-rate blackleg.
“Do you really mean that you’ve a horse you’d like to enter for, say a
hurdle-race, Captain O’Brien?” observed the first guardsman, thinking
the gallant Hibernian had been rhapsodising, and desirous of exposing
the fact.
“Indeed then an’ I have, if you’re plucky enough to enter any horse
against him,” was the confident reply. “Broth-of-a-boy will show ’em
the way home in style; but there may be a very pretty race for second,
nevertheless.”
A laugh followed this slightly gasconading assertion, and the “Heavy”
continued: “Suppose we try and make a good race of it, and each of us
here enter a horse, and do the thing well.”
“_Mais que diable_--vot shall he mean?” inquired Monsieur Guillemard,
completely out of his depth; “to entaire, to valk into!--how shall ve
valk into a horse?”
“Oh, it’s a mere _façon de parler_,” returned Beaupeep, delighted at an
opportunity of mystifying a foreigner; “it’s merely a term used in
this kind of game; it is a sort of lottery, in which each person
thinks of--invents, in fact--some horse’s name, _Jaques-bon-Homme, or
Mart-de-ma-Vie_, or any other name that occurs to him; then, some day
that may be agreed on, these names are written on slips of paper, and
drawn out of a hat or cap, and those that don’t lose, win; but there’s
very little chance of losing--almost everybody wins; it’s a pretty game,
and very simple when you’re used to it. Do you quite understand, or
shall I say it again?”
“_Mais oui_, you are polite, not at all. I shall apprehend him one day,
when I shall have played at him: _vive la bagatelle!_ long live zie
rubbish!” was the cheerful rejoinder.
While this little conversation had been proceeding, the dark, handsome
young man, yclept Phil Tirrett, receiving a hint from O’Brien, conveyed
in a contraction of the eyelid, so slight that no one but himself
perceived it, wrote a few words on a scrap of paper, and tossed it to
Horace D’Almayne. Having read it, D’Almayne crushed it in his hand;
then, turning to Lord Alfred, he said--
“Do you know who my left hand neighbour is?”
“What, the good-looking, gipsy-like party?--no; you will surprise me if
you tell me he’s a gentleman,” was the sarcastic reply.
“By no means,” returned D’Almayne, helping himself to Claret, and
pushing the bottle to Lord Alfred; “but, although he would pass with
less discriminating critics than ourselves, what I like about him is,
that he never pretends to anything of the kind--he knows perfectly well
his position, and the terms on which he gets admitted to society such
as the present. His father is a great Yorkshire horse-breeder--a man who
supplies half the London market, and exports largely into the bargain;
there’s not a year in which old Tirrett does not turn over his ten or
fifteen thousand pounds, and bag four or five of ’em clear profit by
the end of it. This lad is his eldest son, and comes up to town every
season with a lot of young horses; some are bought by the dealers,
others, generally two or three of the best, he shows himself, and keeps
back till he finds an opportunity of placing them to advantage. This
is his third season in town; and from his manner and appearance, not
to mention the chance of picking up first-rate horse from him, he has
acquired a sort of standing among turf-men.”
“And this brief biography comes _à propos_ to what?” inquired Lord
Alfred, languidly, filling his glass.
“_A propos_ to his handing me this bit of paper,” rejoined D’Almayne.
Lord Alfred unrolled the mysterious _billet-doux_; it ran as follows:--
“If your friend Lord A. C. has a fancy to enter a horse, I can show him
one to-morrow no one in London has yet seen, or heard of; it can beat
any animal that will be named to-night, _I know_; and, for its stamp,
the figure is not a high one. If he likes the idea, let him name Don
Pasquale.”
Lord Alfred pondered: during his life in London his money had been
making itself wings, and using them also with alarming assiduity. For
a peer, his father was not a rich man, and his own allowance, although
enough for a gentleman to live upon carefully, was by no means
calculated to withstand such reckless inroads as had lately been
made upon it. As yet he was not in debt, and had a virtuous horror
of becoming so; but to purchase a racehorse, with such a name as Don
Pasquale--an animal with a reputation which would ensure its beating any
horse likely to be entered by cavalry cornets, real live guardsmen, or
captains of lancers, who had speared Carlist spies, was an idea equally
fearful and fascinating, which, even the mystical information that (for
such an unparalleled quadruped) the figure was not to be a high one,
was unable to divest of its equal powers of terror and temptation. He
glanced at the cornet and at the guardsmen; the cornet might be
about his own standing, but he felt a proud consciousness that if the
prejudices of his benighted country had allowed him to wear a moustache,
he could have grown a much more imposing style of article. One guardsman
was a noble adult, endowed by nature with unimpeachable black whiskers,
and impregnable in the _sang froid_ of three decimals; but the other,
the fastest and punning_est_ of the party, was a mere boy apparently his
lordship’s junior by a year or more: yet this precocious young warrior
talked of entering racehorses, and betting cool hundreds, as though such
pursuits were analogous to playing marbles for stakes payable in
the copper coinage sacred to the effigy of Britannia, of wave-ruling
celebrity. And should he, the knowing man-about-town, the friend and
favourite pupil of Horace D’Almayne, should he be deterred by prudential
considerations which even that boy had the spirit to ignore and
disregard?
D’Almayne’s eyes looked through him as if he had been made of
plate-glass, perceived his hesitation and its cause, and hastened to put
an end to it. “Have nothing to do with it, _mon cher_,” he said, _sotto
voce_; “you’ve been spending money pretty fast lately, and we shall have
your noble father cutting up rough, and refusing the supplies.”
“You seem to think I am a baby!” was Lord Alfred’s piqued reply, as he
filled a large Claret-glass to the brim, having already partaken of
that liquor and others freely; “you fancy I am to go through life in
leading-strings; but you will learn better some of these days;” then,
with a confidential nod to Phil Tirrett, which that accomplished young
scoundrel acknowledged with a significant smile, he continued aloud,
“Captain O’Brien, I am curious to test your assertion, and beg to
enter a horse of mine, Don Pasquale, in order to discover whether
Broth-of-a-boy can show _him_ the way home, as that is a feat which I
have yet to seek the animal able to perform.”
At this challenge, so boldly thrown down, everybody grew clamorous and
excited, with the exception of Jack Beaupeep, who, for the delectation
of himself and the younger guardsman, went through a pantomimic
representation of first hanging himself, then, with a dessert-knife,
severing his carotid artery,--regarding Lord Alfred the while with a
smile of mock commiseration, as though to signify his conviction that
the young nobleman was metaphorically performing a similar suicide
operation on his own account. Horace D’Almayne, with a face indicative
of deep concern, vainly endeavoured to dissuade Lord Alfred from having
anything to do with horse-racing, which he described as a snare and
a delusion, with such pathetic earnestness that his Lordship, bent on
vindicating his enfranchisement from parental or morel leading-strings,
even if he were necessitated to throw himself over a precipice in
order to do so, became more than ever determined to have his own way.
Accordingly, he made an appointment to meet the guardsman and Captain
O’Brien on the following morning at the “Pandemonium,” and settle all
the preliminaries of the race. This interesting and important matter
being thus put properly in train, much “turf” conversation followed; and
too much wine was drunk by the party generally, and Captain O’Brien
in particular; until somebody suggesting that they had a longish drive
before them, the meeting broke up, and D’Almayne retired with the
head-waiter, to undergo that uncomfortable operation yclept “paying
the bill.” As he did so, Tirrett drew Lord Alfred into a corner, and
inquired in a low tone--
“How early may I call on your Lordship, and take you to see Don
Pasquale?”
“Eh? early did you say?--do you mean really and positively early,
or early for London? I seldom breakfast before eleven,” was the
“about-townish” reply.
“I did mean _really_ early,” rejoined Tirrett. “Don Pasquale is at a
stable a little way out of town, where I would advise your Lordship to
keep him quiet till after the race; and, as there is no good in letting
too many people into the secret of his whereabouts, I was going to
propose to meet you at Hyde Park Corner, at eight o’clock to-morrow
morning, and drive you down; in which case you might be in town again by
your usual breakfast hour, and no one any the wiser for our expedition.”
“Yes--you know best, of course; but really it’s an alarming sacrifice
of ‘nature’s sweet restorer;’ still I’m game for the exertion--a--eight
o’clock did you say? ’Gad, I’d better book it, for my memory is not my
strong point,” and as he spoke Lord Alfred produced a knowing little
betting-book, which he considered it the correct thing to carry, and, in
the portion thereof, dedicated to memoranda, entered “Mr. Tirrett, H. P.
C., 8 a.m.;” then, replacing it in his pocket, joined a group, in the
centre whereof Jack Beaupeep was spinning a dessert-plate on the point
of his forefinger, and performing various feats of legerdemain. The drag
being reported in readiness, this facetious young gentleman was obliged
summarily to discontinue his performance, or, as he expressed it, “shut
up shop, in consequence of the early closing movement;” and, after an
agreeable moonlight drive, they reached town without adventure about
eleven o’clock.
“D’Almayne, my boy, what are we to do with ourselves?” inquired the
punning guardsman; “I’m open to anything--except, of course, going
quietly to bed.”
“Sure and can’t we get into a row anywhere, now?--is there any
gentleman’s head handy that we could punch for a little harmless
divarsion?” asked O’Brien.
“What do you say to kidnapping a policeman, charter a cab, convey him to
a gin-palace in some obscure locality, fill him blind drunk, shave off
his whiskers, blacken his face, and then deposit him at the door of the
nearest station-house, to be punished for insobriety, riotous
conduct, and neglect of duty?” suggested Beaupeep, with the air of a
philanthropist proposing some plan for the benefit of his species.
“Sure, an’ its a great idea intirely, and a thing that should be done
forthwith,” observed O’Brien, meditatively and approvingly.
“You can, of course, please yourselves, gentlemen,” replied D’Almayne;
“but such valorous achievements are scarcely in my line, or in that of
my friend Lord Courtland; _n’est-ce pas_, Alfred, _mon cher?_”
“Yes, decidedly. I was going to propose that we should look in at
J-------- Street for an hour or so, and then go quietly to bed--I don’t
want to be late to-night.”
“I’m with you,” chimed in the first guardsman, “what say you, Fred?”
“All serene; though I was in a position to vocalise in the teeth of a
footpad--‘_vacuus canit_,’ &c., you know--regularly cleaned out, the
last time I quitted those realms of enchantment; but never mind, faint
heart never succeeded with lovely woman, eh? Go in and win, that’s about
the time of day!”
“Of night, rather,” suggested Beaupeep, critically; then, assuming a
severe tone and manner, he continued, “I’ll tell you what it is, you’re
a set of very dissipated young men, and gambling is a vice of which all
your anxious parents most strongly disapprove!”
“Faith, and if mine should happen to do that same it won’t cost me any
overpowering amount of remorse thin; for me father died some years
before I came into this wicked world, and my mother was so cut up by the
catastrophe that she did not survive him many days,” remarked O’Brien,
with drunken gravity.
And having by this time reached the door of the mysterious club in
J-------- Street, D’Almayne knocked a peculiar knock, and the whole
party entered, with the exception of Jack Beaupeep, who, observing that
he had to write a private despatch to the Pope, and a confidential note
to Abd-el-Kader, before he went to bed, excused himself on the score of
his official duties. As he turned to depart, he glanced at Lord Alfred
Courtland, who, with flashing eyes and heightened colour, was the
first to enter:--“If that poor boy has not fallen into the hands of the
Philistines, it’s a pity!” was his mental comment, and he shook his head
with the ominous profundity of a second Lord Burleigh.