One Of Them

“Won’t you give me a seat in the carriage with you? Surely, you ‘d not see me ride back in such a downpour as that.”

“I should think I would. I ‘d leave you to go it on foot rather than commit such an indiscretion. Drive back to Rome with Mr. O’Shea alone! What would the world say? What would Sir William Heathcote say, who expects to make me Lady Heathcote some early day next month?”

“By the way, I heard that story. An old fellow, called Nick Holmes, told me – ”

“What old Nick told you could scarcely be true. There, will you order the carriage to the door, and give these good people some money? Ain’t you charmed that I give you one of a husband’s privileges so early? Don’t dare to answer me; an Irishman never has the discretion to reply to a liberty as he ought. Is that poor beast yours?” asked she, as they gained the door, and saw a horse standing, all shivering and wretched, under a frail shed.

“He was this morning, but I had the good luck to sell him before I took this ride.”

“I must really compliment you,” said she, laughing heartily. “A gentleman who makes love so economically ought to be a model of order when a husband.” And with this she stepped in, and drove away.

CHAPTER II. A DINNER OF TWO

The O’Shea returned to Rome at a “slapping pace.” He did his eight miles of heavy ground within forty minutes. But neither the speed nor the storm could turn his thoughts from the scene he had just passed through. It was with truth he said that he could not give credit to the fact of such good fortune as to believe she would accept him; and yet the more he reflected on the subject, the more was he puzzled and disconcerted. When he had last seen her, she refused him, – refused him absolutely and flatly; she even hinted at a reason that seemed unanswerable, and suggested that, though they might aid each other as friends, there could be no copartnership of interests. “What has led her to this change of mind, Heaven knows. It is no lucky turn of fortune on my side can have induced it; my prospects were never bleaker. And then,” thought he, “of what nature is this same secret, or rather these secrets, of hers, for they seem to grow in clusters? What can she have done? or what has Penthony Morris done? Is he alive? Is he at Norfolk Island? Was he a forger, or worse? How much does Paten know about her? What power has he over her besides the possession of these letters? Is Paten Penthony Morris?” It was thus that his mind went to and fro, like a surging sea, restless and not advancing. Never was there a man more tortured by his conjectures. He knew that she might marry Sir William Heathcote if she liked; why, then, prefer himself to a man of station and fortune? Was it that he was more likely to enact the vengeance she thirsted for than the old Baronet? Ay, that was a reasonable calculation. She was right there, and he ‘d bring Master Paten “to book,” as sure as his name was O’Shea. That was the sort of thing he understood as well as any man in Europe. He had been out scores of times, and knew how to pick a quarrel, and to aggravate it, and make it perfectly beyond all possibility of arrangement, as well as any fire-eater of a French line regiment. That was, perhaps, the reason of the widow’s choice of him. If she married Heathcote, it would be a case for lawyers: a great trial at Westminster, and a great scandal in the papers. “But with me it will be all quiet and peaceable. I ‘ll get back her letters, or I ‘ll know why.”

He next bethought him of her fortune. He wished she had told him more about it, – how it came to her, – was it by settlement, – was it from the Morrises? He wished, too, it had not been in America; he was not quite sure that property there meant anything at all; and, lastly, he brought to mind that though he had proposed for dozens of women, this was the only occasion he was not asked what he could secure by settlement, and how much he would give as pin-money. No, on that score she was delicacy itself, and he was one to appreciate all the refinement of her reserve. Indeed, if it came to the old business of searches, and showing titles, and all the other exposures of the O’Shea family, he felt that he would rather die a bachelor than encounter them. “She knew how to catch me! ‘A row to fight through, and no questions asked about money, O’Shea,’ says she. ‘Can you resist temptation like that?’”

As he alighted at the hotel, he saw Agincourt standing at a window, and evidently laughing at the dripping, mud-stained appearance he presented.

“I hope and trust that was n’t the nag I bought this morning,” said he to O’Shea, as he entered the room.

“The very same; and I never saw him in finer heart. If you only witnessed the way he carried me through those ploughed fields out there! He’s strong in the loins as a cart-horse.”

“I must say that you appear to have ridden him as a friend’s horse. He seemed dead beat, as he was led away.”

“He’s fresh as a four-year old.”

“Well, never mind, go and dress for dinner, for you’re half an hour behind time already.”

O’Shea was not sorry to have the excuse, and hurried off to make his toilet.

Freytag was aware that his guest was a “Milor’,” and the dinner was very good, and the wine reasonably so; and the two, as they placed a little spider-table between them before the fire, seemed fully conscious of all the enjoyment of the situation.

Agincourt said, “Is not this jolly?” And so it was. And what is there jollier than to be about sixteen or seventeen years of age, with good health, good station, and ample means? To be launched into manhood, too, as a soldier, without one detracting sense of man’s troubles and cares, – to feel that your elders condescend to be your equals, and will even accept your invitation to dinner! – ay, and more, practise towards you all those little flatteries and attentions which, however vapid ten years later, are positive ecstasies now!

But of all its glorious privileges there is not one can compare with the boundless self-confidence of youth, that implicit faith not alone in its energy and activity, its fearless contempt for danger, and its indifference to hardships, but, more strange still, in its superior sharpness and knowledge of life! Oh dear! are we not shrewd fellows when we matriculate at Christ Church, or see ourselves gazetted Cornet in the Horse Guards Purple? Who ever equalled us in all the wiles and schemes of mankind? Must he not rise early who means to dupe us? Have we not a registered catalogue of all the knaveries that have ever been practised on the unsuspecting? Truly have we; and if suspicion were a safeguard, nothing can harm us.

Now, Agincourt was a fine, true-hearted, generous young fellow, – manly and straightforward, – but he had imbibed his share of this tendency. He fancied himself subtle, and imagined that a nice negotiation could not be intrusted to better hands. Besides this, he was eager to impress Heathcote with a high opinion of his skill, and show that even a regular man of the world like O’Shea was not near a match for him.

“I ‘m not going to drink that light claret such an evening as this,” said O’Shea, pushing away his just-tasted glass. “Let us have something a shade warmer.”

“Ring the bell, and order what you like.”

“Here, this will do, – ‘Clos Vougeot,’” said O’Shea, pointing out to the waiter the name on the wine carte.”

“And if that be a failure, I ‘ll fall back on brandy-and-water, the refuge of a man after bad wine, just as disappointed young ladies take to a convent. If you can drink that little tipple, Agincourt, you ‘re right to do it. You ‘ll come to Burgundy at forty, and to rough port ten years later; but you ‘ve a wide margin left before that. How old are you?”

“I shall be seventeen my next birthday,” said the other, flushing, and not wishing to add that there were eleven months and eight days to run before that event should come off.

“That’s a mighty pretty time of life. It gives you a clear four years for irresponsible follies before you come of age. Then you may fairly count upon three or four more for legitimate wastefulness, and with a little, very little, discretion, you never need know a Jew till you’re six-and-twenty.”

“I beg your pardon, my good fellow,” said the other, coloring, half angrily; “I’ve had plenty to do with those gents already. Ask Nathan whether he has n’t whole sheafs of my bills. My guardian only allows me twelve hundred a year, – a downright shame they call it in the regiment, and so I wrote him word. In fact, I told him what our Major said, that with such means as mine I ought to try and manage an exchange into the Cape Rifles.”

“Or a black regiment in the West Indies,” chimed in O’Shea, gravely.

“No, confound it, he did n’t say that!”

“The Irish Constabulary, too, is a cheap corps. You might stand that.”

“I don’t mean to try either,” said the youth, angrily.

“And what does Nathan charge you? – say for a ‘thing’ at three months?”

“That all depends upon the state of the money-market,” said Agincourt, with a look of profoundest meaning. “It is entirely a question of the foreign exchanges, and I study them like a stockbroker. Nathan said one day, ‘It’s a thousand pities he’s a Peer; there’s a fellow with a head to beat the whole Stock Exchange.’”

“Does he make you pay twenty per cent, or five-and twenty for short dates?”

“You don’t understand it at all. It’s no question of that kind. It’s always a calculation of what gold is worth at Amsterdam, or some other place, and it’s a difference of, maybe, one-eighth that determines the whole value of a bill.”

“I see,” said O’Shea, puffing his cigar very slowly. “I have no doubt that you bought your knowledge on these subjects dearly enough.”

“I should think I did! Until I came to understand the thing, I was always ‘outside the ropes,’ always borrowing with the ‘exchanges against me,’ – you know what I mean?”

“I believe I do,” said O’Shea, sighing heavily. “They have been against me all my life.”

“That’s just because you never took trouble to study the thing. You rushed madly into the market whenever you wanted money, and paid whatever they asked.”

“I did indeed! and, what’s more, was very grateful if I got it.”

“And I know what came of that, – how that ended.”

“How?”

“Why, you dipped your estate, gave mortgages, and the rest of it.”

O’Shea nodded a full assent.

“Oh, I know the whole story; I ‘ve seen so much of this sort of thing. Well, old fellow,” added he, after a pause, “if I ‘d been acquainted with you ten or fifteen years ago, I could have saved you from all this ruin.”

O’Shea repressed every tendency to a smile, and nodded again.

“I ‘d have said to you, ‘Don’t be in a hurry, watch the market, and I ‘ll tell you when to “go in.’’”

“Maybe it’s not too late yet, so give me a word of friendly advice,” said O’Shea, with a modest humility. “There are few men want it more.”

There was now a pause of several minutes; O’Shea waiting to see how his bait had taken, and Agincourt revolving in his mind whether this was not the precise moment for opening his negotiation. At last he said, —

“I wrote that letter I promised you. I said you were an out-and-outer as to ability, and that they could n’t do better than make you a Governor somewhere, though you ‘d not be disgusted with something smaller. I ‘ve been looking over the vacancies; there’s not much open. Could you be a Mahogany Commissioner at Honduras?”