One Of Them

“I sold the chestnut to a young cornet in the Carabineers. He saw me ride him through all the bonfires in Sackville Street the night the mob beat the police, and he said he never saw his equal to face fire; and he was n’t far wrong there, for the beast was stone blind.”

“And the gray?”

“The gray is here, in Rome, and in top condition; and if I don’t take him over five feet of timber, my name is n’t Gorman.” A quick wink and a sly look towards Agincoort conveyed to Heathcote the full meaning of this speech.

“And you want a high figure for him?” asked he.

“If I sell him, – if I sell him at all; for you see, if the world goes well with me, and I have a trump or two in my hand, I won’t part with that horse. It’s not every day in the week that you chance on a beast that can carry fifteen stone over a stiff country, – ay, and do it four days in the fortnight!”

“What’s his price?” asked Agincourt.

“Let him tell you,” said O’Shea, with a most expressive look at Heathcote. “He knows him as well or better than I do.”

“Yes,” said Heathcote, tantalizing him on purpose; “but when a man sets out by saying, ‘I don’t want to sell my horse,’ of course it means, ‘If you will have him, you must pay a fancy price.’”

If O’Shea’s expression could be rendered in words, it might be read thus: “And if that be the very game I’m playing, ain’t you a downright idiot to spoil it?”

“Well,” said Agincourt, after a pause, “I ‘m just in the sort of humor this morning to do an extravagant thing, or a silly one.”

“Lucky fellow!” broke in Heathcote, “for O’Shea’s the very man to assist you to your project.”

“I am!” said O’Shea, firmly and quickly; “for there’s not the man living has scattered his money more freely than myself. Before I came of age, when I was just a slip of a boy, about nineteen – ”

“Never mind the anecdote, old fellow,” said Heathcote, laughingly, as he laid his hand on the other’s shoulder. “Agincourt has just confessed himself in the frame of mind to be ‘done.’ Do him, therefore, by all means. Say a hundred and fifty for the nag, and he ‘ll give it, and keep your good story for another roguery.”

“Isn’t he polite? – isn’t he a young man of charming manners and elegant address?” said O’Shea, with a strange mixture of drollery and displeasure.

“He’s right, at all events,” said Agincourt, laughing at the other’s face; “he’s right as regards me. I ‘ll give you a hundred and fifty for the horse without seeing him.”

“Oh, mother of Moses! I wish your guardian was like you.”

“Why so? What do you mean?”

“I mean this, – that I wish he ‘d buy me, too, without seeing me!” And then, seeing that by their blank looks they had failed to catch his meaning, he added, “Is n’t he one of the Cabinet now?”

“Yes, he is Colonial Secretary.”

“That ‘s the very fellow I want. He ‘s giving away things every day, that any one of them would be the making of me.”

“What would you take?”

“Whatever I ‘d get. There’s my answer. Whatever I ‘d get I’d be a Bishop, or a Judge, or a boundary Commissioner, or a Treasurer, – I ‘d like to be that best, – or anything in reason they could offer a man of good family, and who had a seat in the House.”

“I think you might get him something; I’m sure you might,” said Heathcote.

“Well, I can try, at all events. I ‘ll write to-day.”

“Will you really?”

“I give you my word on it. I ‘ll say that, independently of all personal claims of your own, you ‘re an intimate and old friend, whose advancement I will accept as a favor done to myself.”

“That’s the ticket. But mind no examination, – no going before the Civil Service chaps. I tell you fairly, I would n’t take the Governor-Generalship of India if I had to go up for the multiplication-table. I think I see myself sitting trembling before them, one fellow asking me, ‘Who invented “pitch and toss”?’ and another inquiring ‘Who was the first man ever took pepper with oysters?’”

“Leave all that to Agincourt,” said Heathcote; “he’ll explain to his guardian that you were for several sessions a distinguished member of the House – ”

“‘T was I that brought ‘crowing’ in. I used to crow like a cock when old Sibthorp got up, and set them all off laughing.”

“I ‘ll mention your public services – ”

“And don’t say that I ‘m hard up. Don’t make it appear that it ‘s because I ‘m out at the elbows I ‘m going, but just a whim, – the way Gladstone went to Greece the other day; that’s the real dodge, for they keep the Scripture in mind up in Downing Street, and it’s always the ‘poor they send empty away.’”

“And you’ll dine with us here, at seven?” said Agincourt, rising from the table.

“That ‘s as much as to say, ‘Cut your lucky now, Gorman; we don’t want you till dinner-time.’”

“You forget that he has got the letter to write about you,” said Heathcote. “You don’t want him to lose a post?”

“And the gray horse?”

“He’s mine; I ‘ve bought him.”

“I suppose you ‘ve no objection to my taking a canter on him this morning?”

“Ride him, by all means,” said Agincourt, shaking his hand cordially while he said adieu.

“Why did you ask him to dinner to-day?” said Heathcote, peevishly. “I wanted you to have come over and dined with us. My father is eager to see you, and so is May.”

“Let us go to tea, then. And how are they? – how is he looking?”

“Broken, – greatly broken. I was shocked beyond measure to see him so much aged since we met, and his spirits gone, – utterly gone.”

“Whence is all this?”

“He says that I deserted him, – that he was forsaken.”

“And is he altogether wrong, Charley? Does not conscience prick you on that score?”

“He says, too, that I have treated May as cruelly and as unjustly; also, that I have broken up their once happy home. In fact, he lays all at my door.”

“And have you seen her?”

“Yes, we had a meeting last night, and a long talk this morning; and, indeed, it was about that I wanted to speak to you when I found O’Shea here. Confound the fellow! he has made the thing more difficult than ever, for I have quite forgotten how I had planned it all.”

“Planned it all! Surely there was no need of a plan, Charley, in anything that you meant to say to me?”

“Yes, but there was, though. You have very often piqued me by saying that I never knew my own mind from one day to another, that you were always prepared for some change of intention in me, and that nothing would surprise you less than that I should ‘throw you over’ the very day before we were to sail for India.”

“Was I very, very unjust, Charley?” said he, kindly.