# To the Tune of Little Red Heels

Extracted from Windsor magazine, vol. 19, 1903, pp. 161–175. Accompanying illustrations omitted.
TO THE TUNE OF LITTLE RED HEELS
By AGNES and EGERTON CASTLE
MR. DENIS O'HARA was distracted between ecstasy and despair. It had so fallen on that the lady of his heart, the object of years of hopeless devotion, Mistress Kitty Bellairs, to wit—daintiest little widow that ever stepped through an obsequious world on high little red heels!—was not to contract, after all, a certain magnificent alliance which would have been the death-blow to his own aspirations.
Furthermore, the circumstances of this breach between the wealthy widow and my lord Earl Mandeville had been such as to place the lady in the odious and unparalleled position of aggrieved party. Not to mince words, the lovely Kitty had been jilted—she, the most notorious little jilt herself! In circumstances such as these, the Irishman (an experienced lover) had said to himself: "There's no knowing." Hence ecstasy!
But alas! what Mr. O'Hara, Lord Kilcroney's heir, knew but too well—what, indeed, demanded no effort of intellect for its realisation—was the vacuous state of his purse and the consequent impossibility of maintaining himself with any sort of credit within the brilliant circle that surrounded the rich widow. Hence despair!
Matters had come to a crisis. He had lost the last of his guineas at the bouillotte of my Lady Buckinghamshire's mansion, in a gallant effort to retrieve his fortunes. Mistress Kitty Bellairs's doors were as yet closed to all the world, and her friends were still asked to believe that the little lady was a prey to the grippe. But this mood could not last long. Denis became desperate. He withdrew from company, spent the night over figures. He was not at the best of times particularly good at calculations, and the result of his strenuous vigil (a wet towel tied over his red curls to ensure coolness of brain-action, a jug of delicately brewed rack-punch to stimulate activity of thought) was a couple of innocent-looking figures, followed by such a distracting row of noughts as to make him empty the brew at a draught and fan himself with his wet towel.
"The curse of the crows is on it!" said the poor young man, a sorry, haggard spectacle in the grim winter dawn. "There's no making the two ends of the candle meet at all, at all, over here. There's nothing for it but I must all the way to Ireland and see if the old gentleman has left me a few sticks of trees to cut down, and what I can squeeze or coax out of the lawyer boys."
Yes, go he must, and that forthwith. My Lord Verney would gladly lend him a handful of guineas—to go away withal; his landlady would trust him till his return. (Where was there a woman yet that would not trust O'Hara, the handsome ne'er-do-weel? Many a one, in truth, would have been glad to trust him further than he, with his single heart, was like to ask of her.)
On the noon after this tremendous resolution, Denis was ready to start. Verney's gold jingled in his pocket. He had kissed his landlady, left a despairing love-letter at the inexorably barred door of Kitty in dudgeon, and, under the pale blue sky misting into dun city vapours, he mounted a mettlesome chestnut mare—"Red Beauty" yclept—lent from the stables of Mr. Stafford, a wealthy friend, and selected by him as "a good match for his hair!" (Mr. Stafford, like the rest of Mistress Bellairs's little court, perhaps saw no disadvantage in the absence for a while from the town of the winning Mr. O'Hara.) Posting was expensive; coaching in wintry weather and wintry roads was slow—aye, and too dull. Mr. Stafford's friendly loan was opportune.
With light valise strapped on the crupper, with holsters well filled, with a handy hanger on his thigh, instead of the natty smallsword at which he was such an expert, Mr. O'Hara pricked his way down Knightsbridge towards the old Bath Road—bent for Bristol—a solitary horseman, yet with none too heavy a heart, in spite of the uncertainty of his venture.
To have young blood in your veins and a singing soul, to feel a piece of good horse-flesh between your knees, to be independent and yet to be in love, to be setting forth on a hazard of risky fortunes and yet to have settled hopes—does a man need more to be happy?
A tolerably well-metalled turnpike road ringing to quick hoofs, a fair country opening out ever new and ever fairer, a glorious frosty sky above, and tart, tingling airs whipping the cheeks, the prospect of a strange inn-room and of unknown company for the night's halt; the arrival in the dark through the spice of lurking danger, the savour of unfamiliar country fare, and the smack of the nutty home-brewed against the palate; the traveller's tale in the ingle-nook by the fire, the drowsy comfort and the deep sleep; the awakening of a morning in a strange bed, and the looking out upon an unknown landscape under a fairy veil of frost: and next day, the start again, a fresh man into a fresh world, with the rested steed spurning the frozen ground with drum of iron!… It is a question, after all, whether the little frequent joys of life do not total a better sum of satisfaction than the rare ecstasies which make so great a demand upon our human limitations and leave such void behind.
True, this traveller would heave a heavy ever and anon at the thought of the space and time he was putting, ever lengthening, between himself and his beloved. But the next moment her name would be on his lips with a smile. And, after all, true lover as he was, he bore her with him: a most delicate and roguish dream-Kitty, and a far tenderer (if truth be told) than the same lady in the dainty flesh! For did she not, in his fancy, trot about his room on little red heels, and kiss him "Good night" with a lace kerchief tied over her dark curls? (as once he had seen her at her toilet. Oh, lovely Kitty!).
And did she not ride behind him, through the sparkle and tingle of the morning: an invisible Kitty on an invisible pillion, but with her sweet arms round his neck to keep his heart warm? Aye, and now and then whispered in his ear, to send the song of his soul carolling loud to those silent hedges, so thickly furred with little icicles that not even a robin could pipe there.
The first halt at Hounslow; the next day "at the sign of the Angel," Woolhampton, where, after a mighty fine supper, Mr. O'Hara spent the night appropriately in roaming fields heavenly, with his own particular conception of an angelic being—in little red-heeled slippers, diamond buckled! And he started next day in the highest feather under quite a warm midday sun, for just as far as his own humour and the mettle of friend Stafford's admirable chestnut mare would lead him.
They were now drawing near the high, flat wastes of Cold Ash gorse-fields, not many miles short of Newbury, when a bleak wind began to rise, whistling shrewishly in the rider's ears, and bringing such dull, chill mists up against the sky that all its ruddy sunset promise was lost in threats of snow. The soul of the impressionable Irishman became instantly affected.
"And faith!" said he, turning up the great collar of his roquelaure to his ears, and feeling the wind pinch the tip of his boots—"faith and 'tis the devil of a lonely journey to-day! Not the nose of a nag in sight; not the tail of a coach; not even the rim of a highwayman's barker!" As this last thought hopped into his mind to the tune of his trot, a smile twisted his lips. "By my soul, and that's an idea!" said he. "I wonder, now, I haven't taken to the business myself, instead of starting this weary old way to Ireland!"
Once, in a fit of desperation, he had indeed promised Lydia (Mistress Bellairs's own woman, and a person of prodigious importance to all lovers of her mistress) to "go on the road," if necessary, and get her a diamond necklace in recognition of court service! He juggled with the thought for a minute or two, cheating himself out of his sudden sense of depression and loneliness by a vivid series of fancy pictures.
"There does not seem to be a gentleman now left in the profession, if all one hears of the road be true. … I flatter myself," thought he, "that I could show them the way to do the thing!"
Tickled by the humorous thought, he gave his hat a truculent cock, loosened one of his pistols in its holster, and looked round upon the leaden waste with the air of the most gallant desperado. The road ran along a high stretch of open grassland and then suddenly dipped, so that the view in front of the traveller was of flat spaces enclosed as in a cup of dull sky. Suddenly—in the very midst of his mental antics—his eye was attracted by the silhouette of a man's hat, minute but distinct as if cut out of court plaster, rising upon this near horizon line. Under hat-silhouette followed promptly silhouette of flying cloak, then silhouette of straining horse.
"Company, be jabers!" cried Denis jovially; and, as he and the new-comer drew nearer to each other, he gathered up his reins to make the chestnut strike out with elegance.
"He's come apace," thought the Irishman, "whoever he be. That beast of his is dead beat; the legs are trembling under him. And by me soul! what sort of company is it at all? Bad, I'm thinking."
The stranger indeed bore no very prepossessing appearance; and the occupation in which he was even then engaged as, with reins loose upon its neck, his exhausted and sweat-matted steed toiled up the incline, was not the most reassuring one in the world. With feverishly hurried hands he was, in fact, reloading a long horse-pistol. About his garments there was a flaunting air of shabby smartness; upon his countenance (which was marked for observation by a dismal length of copper-red nose) a scowling anxiety that tried in vain to assume the easy airs of dash and impudence. He lowered up from his pistol to Denis as the latter, with an engaging smile, drew rein within a few yards; then he flung a swift backward look over his shoulder. In both glances there was a background spark of craven fear.
"Oho and oho!" said Denis to himself with a leap of the blood. Then his smiling lip curled. "And did I not say that there was not a gentleman in it? Oh, shade of my gay Duval! Alas, gallant Maclean! what sorry scion of your race is this?
"You ride lonely, sir," began he aloud, addressing the stranger.
"For the matter of that, sir," answered the latter, after a slight pause, balancing the now reloaded pistol in his right hand and gathering the reins in his left as he spoke—"for the matter of that, sir, so do you."
"And you have ridden fast, I mark, sir," pursued O'Hara genially.
"Pray, sir," snarled the other, "may not a man ride fast if he choose?"
As he spoke, his furtive eye shifted from O'Hara's smiling countenance to the points of the dancing mare, and thereupon became filled with a sinister, greedy glow. On his side, with bridle hand warily alert, and purposely keeping Red Beauty on the move to frustrate sudden attack, the Irishman pursued with unperturbed amiability—
"Agreed! A gentleman may have his reasons, eh, friend?"
"Reasons? Reasons? Rat me, sir! I have no more reasons than another man. I'll have you know, sir, that I'm none of your fellows with reasons. I will drive any man's teeth down his throat who dares to say I have reasons?"
"Upon my life, a lad of richest humour!" cried O'Hara, addressing the wind. "Indeed, sir," added he then in a more personal manner, "it is evident I did you infinite wrong. Spare my teeth, for I have a pretty smile (or, so the ladies say), and I will make the handsome admission that you have no reason on this road, or off it either."
So very uneasy became the degenerate Duval under Mr. O'Hara's playful banter that it was quite obvious that he hesitated between instant flight or instant attack. Choler, however, had the better of him. An openly threatening gleam appeared in his eye; his long pistol inclined towards an attitude to match. Denis instantly pushed the mare sidling a pace nearer. In proportion to her advance the stranger drew his exhausted horse stumbling obliquely away.
"All! that is, no doubt, a remarkable weapon of yours, sir," quoth Lord Kilcroney's heir, in that tone of delicate, taunting irony that was so wasted here. "Must have been used at Blenheim. Old-fashioned, but useful, no doubt. Fie on it, though, for its useless length of nose! A long nose, sir, is a mistake, if you can avoid it—in a pistol, I mean. What would you think now, I wonder, of the build of this pretty one?" And Mr. O'Hara (who had been holding his adversary with a fierce, dilating eye, almost as round as a pistol-rim in its wide-opened lids) here, with a swift and elegant motion of his long right hand, extracted the easy-sitting pistol, and, in his turn, balanced it with as much significance as the bully, but a vast more of elegance.
"Rigby's latest pattern, sir. The creature has a pretty voice. Hark to it clear its throat!" As he spoke, he set the cock, and the click rang sharp and musical. "I can recommend Rigby, of Dublin Town. With a Rigby, sir, a gentleman can have reason on the road."
"Can he? can he? sir? can he?" exclaimed the rider, with a sudden blustering outburst, as uncertain in its aim as the wavering weapon in his hand—"can he? And gentleman, forsooth! I'll have you know by—by—and by——! that, gentleman or no gentleman, no one has right or reason on this road when I ride. When I ride, d'ye hear? And that by ancient rules of the High Toby!"
"Rules of the High Toby!" echoed O'Hara, vastly entertained by the sound of the unknown cant. "High Toby, sir? Any connection with little Toby Philpott?" cried he. "Yet, if I take your meaning, a somewhat more dangerous person. An acquaintance like enough to lead on to the Jug! Eh? Rules of High Toby, say you? Will they not bring a man so high that he may end by dancing on air?"
"'Sdeath!" cried the Knight of the Road, and grew grey all but his copper nose. Upon which, to nerve himself, he called upon fury again. But all the time his frightened hare of an eye fluttered from O'Hara's pistol back to the road that dipped into the valley. "The devil is in your flummery!" he yelled. "No gentleman, I say, shall ride on my road, as I'll very soon show you."
He wrenched at his horse's reins, but the wretched creature, in the vain effort to answer his master's call, faltered, floundered, and nearly fell. In the midst of his flying oaths O'Hara noted once again the covetous gaze enveloping his own splendid mount.
"Aha!" cried the alert gentleman to himself. "So 'tis the mare he's after!" And instantly, with a twist of the reins and a spur of the heel, Mr. O'Hara whisked round upon his adversary, flanking out of the line of the pistol just as this latter was, at last, brought to a decided point.
"So that's the game?" he cried, with the exultation that any prospect of conflict never failed to bring him. "A match, brother Turpin, a match! Barker for barker, my Rigby against your Long-nose: I refer, sir, to that interesting heirloom of good Queen Anne's days, your pistol."
But the aggrieved highwayman, apparently, was not used to take professional work in so light-hearted a manner; the intruder's airy agility of wit disconcerted him even more than his steadiness of hand and the nimbleness of his equitation. Again he hesitated, again flung a darkling look upon the coveted steed. Then, to O'Hara's mingled disappointment and amusement, muttering between his teeth a handsomely larded phrase to the effect of his having no time to waste on fools—fairly turned tail and set off along the grey road at the best of his sorry nag's speed. And ever and anon the backward look!
It was this backward look that kept Denis from pricking in pursuit.
"Why, the creature's no more liver on him than a white rabbit!" cried he dolefully as he watched him out of sight.
Nevertheless, for all its disappointing issue, this little encounter had pleasantly enlivened Mr. O'Hara. He started down the hill at a brisk trot.
"I smell snow," said he, and thought of the "Pelican" a few miles ahead—a hostelry he was well acquainted with—of a ruddy fire and a steaming brew.
Upon the lower level he passed once more into the land of hedges and fields; rode under the shade of Dunstan Park woods, naked, yet sheltering. There, upon ground where the frost had not lain, and where the stepping was softer, between ditches full of sodden, pungent leaves, the mare broke into a joyous canter to the tune of a fresh dance of little red heels in the rider's heart.
And thus cantering, they came at the turn of the road upon a high, yellow chaise, that travelled in the direction of Newbury at a melancholy and uncertain rate. O'Hara would have sped past without bestowing more than a glance upon it but for the sounds of wrangling, which rose loud into the wintry silence—wrangling in the midst of which something familiar, in a pipy voice and an affected, mincing speech, seemed to strike his ear. He wheeled Red Beauty suddenly round. A surly-looking postboy, with eyes well-nigh as furtive as those of his recent road acquaintance, pulled the horses to a standstill.
"By my noble father's thirst, whom have we here?" cried O'Hara.
The clamour in the chaise was succeeded by a hush. Then, "Gracious!" rose a voice, quavering in terror, "is this another of them?" Upon which, the shrill accents which O'Hara seemed to have recognised cut in, acid: "Get out your pistals, paltroon. A carse on my good nature—that I should have ever have cansarted with a City dag! Rat you, you must do the fighting this time!"
"Spicer! as I live! 'Tis Spicer!" exclaimed Lord Kilcroney's heir, with a great burst of laughter. Through the window a long, lean, deathlike face was now gingerly protruded. At sight of the rider it broke into a sickly smile.
"Tare and 'ouns, man!" Mr. O'Hara called out, "what's up with you? You look like a fresh-made corpse! 'Tisn't considerate to suggest a wake when there's not a bottle within miles."
"I've been wounded, Mr. O'Hara," responded the gentleman with dignity. "Stapped in broad daylight, too, set upon, rabbed, wounded——" He raised his right arm, bound with a blood-stained napkin, nursing it upon his left hand for O'Hara's inspection. But if he expected sympathy, he was disappointed. O'Hara gave a long whistle. This explained the reloading performance of Copper-nose! A calf-like bleat of terror from within the chaise brought him back to the present circumstances.
"Come, Spicer," quoth he, "let us see what you've got in there. Something young and tender and green, as usual, I'll warrant! A gosling with some lard on him, I'll stake my life, or you would not be his bear-leader! Come, young sir!" knocking jovially with the butt of his whip on the taut leather of the hood. "Show yourself! Your money is safe from me."
"Money!" responded the bleat pitifully, while its owner displayed at the same time a pale, silly, flabby visage of remarkable immaturity.
"Money, sir!" echoed Spicer, again thrusting himself into prominence. "Did I nat tell you, man, that I have been rabbed? Rabbed of near everything, sir. We have been fallowed, 'tis my belief, all the way from Hounslow. This fool would prate of our gold from inn to inn——"
"Now," thought O'Hara, "the story unfolds. Now is made plain the reason of friend Copper-nose's foundered nag! A stern chase is a long chase, as your privateersman has it."
Meanwhile—"Our money! 'Twas my money!" the poor calf was whimpering. "Three hundred guineas—Aunt Matilda's legacy—all gone, all gone!"
Now, the devil would have it that Mr. O'Hara must always see the joke of the situation. No sooner had this moving tale fallen upon his ear than he set up such a laugh that the very crows at the top of Dunstan trees took wing with scandalised cawing.
That Captain Spicer, the ingenious gentleman whose main business in life was to teach the rich greenhorn the ways (and byways) of the fashionable world—a business requiring much delicacy of handling, but, in a general way, very lucrative indeed—that Captain Spicer should thus have the fruit of probably many days' diplomacy whisked away from under his nose, without (as the Irishman phrased it to himself) as much as a bite! The story was rich!
"'Pon my soul, Spicer," quoth he, "I'm sorry for you!"
He glanced at the surly postboy. Then again thought of the long-nosed man and his frightened eye—and laughed again, this time scornfully.
"Scarce the crow of a mouse between the two of them … and a confederate to drive the pair and send notice! Ha, Copper-nose had a long race for his three hundred guineas! No wonder he longed for my Red Beauty. Three hundred guineas, and but a dead lame nag to scuttle away with them—not five miles in the poor beast left, poor Copper-nose!"
"Little thought I," cried the led captain, with fresh acrimony, "when I cansented to give the creature—this Haggins, old Haggins, the silversmith's nephew, pah!—the benefit of my campany and countenance at Bath, that I had to deal with a coward—yes, Mr. Haggins, a coward, that is what I said."
"Zounds!" cried the goaded Huggins. "You screeched out that you were murdered, Captain Spicer, sir! And, if you please, the scoundrel's pistol was at my head, sir!"
"Whereupan, sir," said Spicer, sneering hideously, "you handed him your sealskin bag, as palitely, sir, as if you were handing a snarf-bax, sir, aver your father's counter, sir. Rut it serves me right, for candescending to the City——"
"And why, Spicer, why? What would you expect of a City gentleman but counter courage?" cried O'Hara in the highest humour. "Mr. Huggins. 'tis evident, has been brought up to regard life from the safe side."
He had perforce to supply himself the applause to his own quip, for neither of the combatants would see the point.
"And for the matter of that, Captain Spicer," retorted the calf, between tears and fury, "if you'd shot a little straighter yourself, sir, I should not be now——"
"'Tis all the gratitude I get, you see, O'Hara. Wounded, grievously wounded, and talked to, zounds! talked to by this fallow! A serious wound, O'Hara—nay, two wounds; for, hang me if the rascal's ball did not go in at one side of my arm, and out at the ather!"
"Went out, did it, now? And prodigious obliging of it!" cried the cheerful rider. "'Twill save the surgeon's fee."
"Three hundred guineas!" ejaculated Mr. Huggins again, with a sudden yelp, as if the memory of bis wrongs had been driven into him with a bradawl.
"Three hundred guineas!" A second or two Mr. O'Hara sat stock still in his saddle, staring across the chaise towards the fields beyond. A few feathery white flakes came undulating downwards from the leaden sky: here in this valley road there was shelter from the wind, and the flakes fell fantastic slow. His brow was drawn with deep thought. Presently a slow smile overspread his countenance.
Within the chaise the pair were once more at their bickers. Upon his patient horse the postboy with the uneasy eye sat motionless, the image of sullen waiting.
"Zounds, man!" the Captain was saying, "will you never have dan? And by the way," exclaimed he with sudden snarl, "rat me if I know what we are loitering here for. Carse that postboy! Drive on, rascal, will you!"
Denis awoke from his abstraction with a start. "Farewell, then, my lively lads," quoth he, "for here our ways diverge."
And then it was instructive to hear the gallant captain bestow as many curses on the postboy for starting as the instant before for standing still. "Split him! Rat him! Did he not see that he was speaking to the gentleman?
"Oh, Denis!" next quoth he in piteousness, "you are not going to leave us?"
"Why, tare and ages!" cried the Irishman in contempt, "(and Denis me no Denises, if you please, Captain Spicer!) do you think you will be stopped for your beauty next? Why, there is your postboy will answer to any gentleman of the road that you're not worth the stopping—eh, friend?" He reached the lad a smart tap on the shoulder with his riding-whip, whereat that individual let fly between his horse's ears a growling asseveration as to his utter ignorance of what the gentleman could mean, but refrained from allowing the candour of his visage to be scanned.
"Four lonely miles," groaned Spicer, "and I a wounded man!"
"Why, what is that but two apiece—not to speak of the boy and the horses?" cried O'Hara, with his pitiless laugh. "Sorry, my noble captain, but I have business in this neighbourhood."
He took off his hat with a splendid flourish, wheeled the chestnut abruptly round up a by-lane, and was off at so brisk a pace that before the dismal travellers in the chaise could utter another protest he was out of their sight.
"Unless I am much mistaken," reflected the ingenious gentleman, "this path must lead round the park to the turnpike again."
And, truly, out on the turnpike again he came, before the fast falling shades of the winter night had gathered to much more perceptible density.
"And now, Red Beauty, my dainty one," cried he to his mare, as he shook the reins, and the mettled beast responded instantly by breaking into her long, easy canter, "'tis a race for love, when all's said and done. And as good a joke, aha! as ever was heard, into the bargain! Bravo, my lady! Never a touch of the spur shall your side get from me. Why, begorrah! 'tis the born hunter you are. Give me the red-haired ones! No wonder Copper-nose wanted you."
Having breasted the long ascent from the valley in easy sprints—for, keen as he was upon his quarry, O'Hara was too true a sportsman to press a willing steed—they reached again those bleak wastes appropriately dubbed Cold Ash, and then, with the wind at their back, let fly through the driving dusk at topmost speed. Here blew a whistling wind that scarce permitted a snowflake to fall, while the laden clouds hung ever closer and more lowering above the darkening land.
It was that dim and deceitful hour—"'twixt dog and wolf," as the French have it—when shadows and objects are intermingled and outlines lost. Still the road stretched straight, a paler grey amid the deeper. And if, once or twice, the chestnut shied, it was but when some distorted, wind-nipped, ragged tree seemed to leap black at her out of the world of shadows. Denis found the situation to his taste: the contrast between his whipped-up blood and the dead-cold approach of night, between the desolation of the scene and his own luminous fancies. The rapid motion, of itself an exhilaration. And over all was a sense of personal danger, which was always the finest spice of life to him.
"But another mile or so," he reckoned, "my beauty, and you and I will have a few more words to say to this High Toby gentleman and his sorry nag."
The chuckle was yet on his lips when the swinging pace beneath him was violently cheeked; and the next instant the chestnut, snorting in fury and fear, was rearing from the indignity of a brutal grasp on her bridle. Denis had scarce time to realise that the way was blocked by some just distinguishable bulky mass—a dead horse: it seemed to be just across the road—and that a man had sprung at his mare's head, before a husky shout commanded him to dismount.
"Begorrah!" cried he, "and is it on the top of you I am, then, before I'd time to overtake you?"
No sooner had the mocking Irish voice fallen upon the air than, with a cursing "Oh! it's you, is it?" the man gave another furious tug at the bridle and at the same moment fired. A hot streak of flame passed, singing, close above O'Hara's ear. Instantly, with the joyous alacrity of the born fighter, his every instinct leaped to the emergency. By the broad yellow flash he had seen, painted as it were upon the black canvas of the night, a vision of an evil, haggard countenance, of a long, red nose.
"Now we know where we are! Steady!" quoth he, and bent over on the side of his assailant. "Aha, friend!" he cried with loud exultation, and darted out a quick long arm. Before the pistol had time to fall from the pointing, he had seized it by its smoking barrel and wrenched it away. "Did I not tell thee that long noses were a mistake?" he cried, as he struck.
The heavy butt caught the highwayman between the eyes. There was heard the thud of his fall upon the road, and the kind of snuffling sob that accompanied it.
Red Beauty, now released, made a very pretty display of outraged feeling, which O'Hara, understanding equine nature, had, however, little trouble in calming. He was soon able to dismount.
"Troth!" said he, fondling her neck, "'tis the way of your sex to carry a man gaily into danger, and 'tis the way of ours to love you the more. It's yourself that the rogue coveted, my Red Beauty," said he; "but you were never foaled to carry such scum as that."
The intelligent creature thrust her head towards him in the dark and lipped his cheek with velvet touch.
"Yes, yes," answered he, "that was a lucky shy of yours!" He ran his hand across his ear; and, where he was wont to meet the crisp bunch of curls à la brigadiàre met a deplorable flatness. "A close shave, by thunder! What will Kitty think of this? Well, better a curl than a life. You saved us both, I'm thinking," he went on, again flattering the mare's neck. "Indeed, colleen, it's borne in upon me that we were made for each other. And if that sealskin bag but has half what Spicer reckoned on, why, then, you and I shall not part."
He slung the reins over his arms. Red Beauty was now all tranquil condescension. If truth were told, perhaps, she had the curiosity of her sex, and was quite aware that something interesting was afoot.
Mr. O'Hara advanced cautiously towards the smaller of the indistinct black heaps, that still showed vaguely upon the pale roadway in spite of the ever-deepening night. He knelt down and passed his hand over the prostrate figure.
Not dead! Well, that was a relief. Denis was of those who think little enough of life or death, for himself or for others; but there was not in him the stuff of the executioner.
"He'll live to be hanged yet," said he to himself. Certainly not dead. And, indeed, if sundry jerks and heaving breaths beneath his touch, sundry grunts that met his ears, be taken as indications, Copper-nose was rapidly Hearing consciousness again. "But ''twere well 'twere done quickly,' as little Davy Garrick says in the play," muttered Denis. And running the reins up to his shoulder, he now brought both hands to his task. "What's this, now? The fellow of the barker that snapped at me, in the belt! There now, friend, that will give you more room to breathe. And I'm thinking, anyhow, it's as well in safe keeping," he murmured, slipping the man's remaining pistol into his own belt. "'Pon my soul! little did I ever think I'd come to take a purse, and off a highwayman, too. Aha! What have we here? The sealskin bag, as I live! Easy, now, brother; don't be groaning that way. It's not a ha'porth of harm I'm doing you but relieving your conscience. Faith, I've as good a right to it as you, this night, and a deal better than Spicer any night of the year!"
His fingers were, indeed, in contact with a smooth, furry surface, under which rose a succession of hard little cylinders. This set his hand trembling.
"The little gold boys—or may I never fight again!"
The bag was strapped to the man's waist, and to get at it required some manipulation. Master Copper-nose, moreover, presently began to struggle; and O'Hara, who up to this moment had been perhaps a little half-hearted about the rifling business, now become exhilarated to interest, and set to work con amore. Hampered as he was by Red Beauty's reins, it was after a pretty severe wrestling match that he succeeded in drawing his hanger, cutting the recalcitrant straps, and possessing himself triumphantly of the weighty sealskin bag. The highway-man gave a despairing howl as he suddenly realised that the fruit of his long day's work was finally reft from him. He made a wild clutch at his rival when the latter rose to his feet; but his fingers, in the dark, struck against cold steel.
"Give it up, man!" came those laughing tones that from the very first had filled him with hatred and yet superstitious fear. "Give it up, brother of the High Toby, unless you've got another pair of heirlooms to match your nose."
The man had staggered up. Nothing but shadows were they now to each other in the universal blackness; but each could hear the other's breathing: O'Hara's caught with exultant laughter, the highwayman's stertorous with, impotent fury. To emphasise his remarks, then, Denis playfully drew the captured pistol from his belt and clicked the lock meaningly, and upon this there was a crash as of some wild animal plunging into cover, a stumbling rush of feet, sounds of flight, quickly carried away in the wings of the wind.
As O'Hara stood listening, the blast fled by him over the hill and left a deep interlude of silence in which he could catch no sound but Red Beauty's soft, inquisitive breathing at his elbow. He sent a loud laugh after the retreating knight, then he weighed the bag in his hands.
"Three hundred guineas, they said! I'd have been lucky if I'd got the half of it in the Old Country! That's back to Kitty! She will have had time to miss me, not time to replace me!" cried Denis O'Hara.
But now, being a man of money, a man of worth, Mr. O'Hara became mighty cautious. The first thing to be done was to distribute the rouleaux among all his pockets and cast the now limp recipient into the adjacent ditch. The next was to decide upon his own movements. Restraining, though not without a sigh, his natural inclination, which was Londonwards, he turned Red Beauty's head towards Speenhamland, near Newbury, the nearest halt, and was for mounting once more, when he paused.
"There's the poor comrade yonder," quoth he, "whom we must not leave in extremity, if he's not past help. We owe him that, colleen." And leading the mare, he retraced his steps once more. Red Beauty craned her neck and drew deeper breaths of sympathy over the body of her fallen brother.
"Aye," said O'Hara, after a second's examination, "stone dead. His heart's broke, my colleen, and well for it. And if I've left my mark on Copper-nose, 'tis no more than he deserves."
But it was high time that Denis O'Hara should place himself, his borrowed steed, and captured wealth under shelter. The snowstorm was gathering, the winds on these high, bleak lands came charged with stinging flakes.
"We'll take it steady, but easy and cautious, love," said he, once more swinging himself into the saddle.
At the door of
The famous inn in Speeuhainland
That stands below the hill,
And rightly called "The Pelican,"
From its enormous bill
(as a wit of the period sang of that excellent house of entertainment), came a red-haired traveller upon a red-coated mare, both somewhat the worse for a difficult journey in the dark through a settled snowstorm.
Perished though he was, O'Hara, whose soft heart had ached over the fate of the highwayman's steed, would be content to-night to let no one see to his mare except himself. Having, therefore, seen her rubbed down to his own satisfaction, seen her at last stand in the best stall up to her belly in golden straw; having coaxed her to her feed with a warm mash, and satisfied himself that the capricious lady had really a good appetite in spite of some coquetting, he passed into the hostelry.
Here he was not an unknown guest. The length of the "Pelican's" bill was no deterrent to him; when he had a guinea, he spent it with the delightful ease of the impecunious, where another would haggle over a shilling. Thus it was with the familiarity of the intimate that, cocking his hat so as to conceal the loss of the curl, upon which he desired no question, he marched straight from the stable into the kitchen, where he knew he would find a roaring sea-coal fire, for the comforting of the chilled and sodden outer man, and would furthermore be able to choose on the spot the particular refreshment that seemed best suited for the cheering of the inner.
Now, the first object that met his airy glance, as he advanced into the rosy circle flung out by the great hearth, was the dubious postboy of the yellow chaise, shovelling rabbit-pie into his own anatomy with as much gusto as the most honest of Britons. The next instant, he beheld, seated in an attitude of utmost dejection, supporting an elaborately curled wig upon a limp fist, no less interesting a person than the whilom owner of the guinea rolls. So unexpected was the encounter, Newbury having been the declared destination of the yellow chaise, that for the moment it had the remarkable effect of depriving Mr. O'Hara of speech.
Suddenly, however, interrupting mine host upon the eulogy of spiced veal, and wood-cock on toast to follow, he strode up to the table and tapped it with his riding-whip in front of Spicer's disconsolate, plucked, and now useless, pigeon.
"Have we not met before, sir?"
Mr. Huggins looked up with a dismal, unillumined eye, and evidently failed to recognise the speaker. The postboy became more absorbed than ever in his supper.
"Surely," went on Mr. O'Hara, "you are the traveller whom I encountered this afternoon. Some little misadventure, I understand, had just befallen you."
"Little misadventure! Aye, sir, I had just been robbed—all I had!" said the poor youth, with dull, unconscious irony.
The landlord had followed O'Hara's move with some curiosity.
"I've offered the young man to make him a present of supper and bed," he here observed in tones of important philanthropy, "but he declines to partake."
Mr. O'Hara wheeled round upon him with some sternness. A man is never more disposed to rebuke his neighbour as when his own conscience is slightly uncomfortable.
"And pray, Mr. Landlord, how comes it that you have stationed this your gentleman in the kitchen with his own postboy?"
The landlord entered into a prodigious state of surprise and discomfiture. He plumed himself—indeed, with some truth—on having an instinct for a gentleman; and knew that brocade and lace did not suffice to the making of one. He stammered a hasty apology, turning from the disconsolate youth in his rich city garb to the mud-spattered, plain-coated Irishman, whose genial, clean-cut face was just now as haughty as ever any English peer's could be. He had not known. It was a strange story. It was very clear the young gentleman (Mr. Huggins was promoted!) could not pay shot. And Captain Spicer (who had gone to bed in the best room upstairs, with every attention for his wound)—Captain Spicer, whom probably Mr. O'Hara knew, had warned the landlord that he disclaimed all pecuniary responsibility.
"Captain Spicer!" ejaculated O'Hara, with such a twist of contempt on his lips that mine host of the "Pelican" perceived that he was here on the wrong track, and quickly abandoned it. "If he had known that the Honourable Mr. O'Hara, son of that well-known and admirable nobleman my Lord Kilcroney, took an interest——"
Again O'Hara cut him short. With an impatient wave of his hand, "That'll do!" cried he. "Had you known Mr. Huggins's consequence, you'd have stripped your breast bare for him—would you not, you old Pelican,
Mr. Huggins, on his side, hearing of the consequence of his interpellator, was no whit less obsequiously moved than his grudging host.
"The Honourable Mr. O'Hara!" quoth he, rising to his feet and making a series of city legs. "I am honoured, sir, vastly honoured." Then, with a return of his first bleat: "Your friend, sir, Captain Spicer, has abandoned me."
Thereupon ensued a rambling statement in which the tedium of a silversmith's life, the relief of Aunt Matilda's legacy, were intermingled with lamentations upon the hard fate that had overtaken him; the prospect of an immediate return to desk and grind.
O'Hara stood gazing at him in his unwontedly cogitative mood. "Sure," he was thinking. "it would be doing an owl of that kidney no good turn to give him back the money. What would the green-goose do with it but make an ass of himself—and him that already?"
Aloud he bade the landlord serve up supper for two in the parlour; and then, informing Mr. Huggins that he would expect him in a quarter of an hour, turned away abruptly to avoid the gratitude that overcame the young cit.
A genial meal loosens the tongues of even uncongenial companions; and Mr. O'Hara was not of the kind to make any guest of his feel the inferiority of his social station. Nevertheless, had the postboy been but a more lively sort of rascal, the Irishman would have preferred even his society to that of the little vulgar, pasty-faced clerk.
After a bumper or two, a kind of sparkle had come to the latter's watery eye; and, freed from his first hampering assumption of fine manners, he began to let his tongue wag with all its native impudence and folly. Between the picking of the last woodcock bone and the cracking of the first walnut, Mr. O'Hara was made the recipient of his innermost confidences.
"Young Calico's a rip, begorrah! of the first water—first gutter water! The cock of the tavern, the buck of Cheapside wenches!" Upon this summary of his guest, Mr. O'Hara—a silk handkerchief tied over his mutilated curl;—leant back in his chair and surveyed him through half-closed lids with something of pity mixed with his contempt.
"And by goles!" Mr. Huggins was saying, as he reached unceremoniously for the bottle, "I can give you as good a song, though I say it, as any lad of ours among the 'Harmonious Owls.'"
"Harmonious Owls?" inquired O'Hara, tickled as was his wont by any picturesque combination of words.
"Aye, my boy!—honourable sir, I mean—'tis our club in Little Britain. A set of fellows—oh! they could show you a bit of life! We meet o' Saturday nights. Aye, and there's the 'Bleeding Cross-Bones,' down Knightrider Lane. That is a club! There's play at 'the Bones,' sir, I tell you," said Mr. Huggins, leaning forward and speaking in a husky whisper. "I won nine guineas there one night. At single sitting, sir."
"Thunder and turf! say you so?"
"I could give you a bit of a new song that took them mightily among the Howls—the Owls, I should say."
Mr. O'Hara sat quickly up in his chair and flung out a forbidding hand, as Mr. Huggins uplifted a dismal voice and carolled—
""Oh, where is the harm of a little kiss— One, one, only one?
And what can the heart——"
"Peace!" cried the Irishman with loud authority, slapping the table with his open hand. And as the other stared, open-mouthed, round-eyed: "'Tis my infirmity, sir," proceeded Denis more civilly. "Music, somehow, turns my wine sour on me. It comes, Mr. Huggins, doubtless from an error in my upbringing; my head was not made early enough. I'm obliged to concentrate, sir, to give my attention to the bottle."
While gravely dealing out this farrago, which had the desired effect of completely nonplussing the young man, Mr. O'Hara's wits were busy upon a little scheme suggested by a chance boast of his companion. One might, after all, get an hour or two of entertainment out of the back-street buck, if 'twere true he was such a ruffler at the dice and the cards. "And if this jot-down-nought-and-carry-one has, as he says, swept the mighty sum of nine guineas from his fellow 'prentices, he's as good a chance of winning his three hundred from me!"
There was a quaintness about the idea that pleased Mr. O'Hara hugely. And, indeed, he would not have been O'Hara had not the temptation of putting all his fortunes to the hazard again been irresistible.
"Upon my soul!" he exclaimed suddenly, "but you're a young gentleman of prodigious accomplishment! And what, Mr. Huggins, may I inquire, is your favourite game?"
"Why," cried the clerk, "I am reckoned, sir, dangerous at piquet. And there are many, sir, who had rather be my partner at whist. But when the humour is on me to play high," said Master Huggins, tossing down the end of his glass with a knowing turn of wrist, "then nothing, to my mind, comes up to faro; though basset, indeed, and ombre, and lanterloo, and quinze are reckoned fair games, and also lansquenet, quadrille, and——"
"Nay," said O'Hara, breaking the chain, "I am with you. Faro is a pretty game—between gentlemen. Faro's the game! What say you to a deal or two?"
"By goles!" cried the clerk, and a greedy joy spread over his countenance, "but you're a gentleman after my own heart!" Then he suddenly clapped his hands against his pockets, and his jaw dropped. "Ud's bones! I was forgetting! Cleaned out! Unless you will throw with me for my buttons—silver, on my honour, and a pretty fancy——"
"Oh, pooh, Mr. Huggins!" cried O'Hara, "between gentlemen! Sir, your misadventure might have occurred to anyone—to anyone of your constitutional modesty. You've learned that 'tis a mistake to be at all backward in coming forward when the call is pistols, that's all! I shall be charmed to oblige you, sir, by the loan of a few guineas. The note of hand of so well known a person as yourself is as good as the Bank, I've no doubt. Shall it be, to begin with, a trifle of ten?"
"Oh, make it a guinea, sir," said the dashing cit in superior tones.
"Now, here's a lad of spirit!" cried O'Hara, breaking into loud laughter. "By my father's last bottle, sir! I like your humour!"
He swept a clear space on the table as he spoke, and spread thereupon, in shining array, ten of Verney's golden coins. "I'm a bad arithmetician," he went on; "I've not had your education, and it comes easier to me to reckon in pieces. Will you hold the bank, or shall I?"
Gog and Magog! How their bold 'prentice son kept up the credit of City valour and pledged his own that winter night, at the "Pelican," Speenham, on the Bath road! At first, indeed, he won; and, all that were left of my Lord Verney's thirty guineas found themselves heaped in a pile by the side of his glass. And Mr. O'Hara (enjoying himself colossally) began to see the moment when he would have surreptitiously to break one of those rouleaux that lay so snug in his pockets.
But it seemed fated that Aunt Matilda's legacy was not to benefit her gay young dog of a nephew; for, from the moment when it was likely to come once more into action, the luck turned. And first my Lord Verney's guineas found their way back to Mr. O'Hara's side of the table. Then a bundle of I.O.U.'s began to grow beneath that gentleman's elbow—the earlier ones neatly engrossed in Mr. Huggins's most clerkly hand, those succeeding growing wilder and wilder as that gentleman's spirits approached desperation. They called for more wine; they called for fresh candles. Rouleau by rouleau, the travelled gold passed de jure into the pockets where it already reposed de facto.
"Your luck's bitter bad, my young friend. Have you ever tried, at the 'Bleeding Bones,' what the turning of your coat will do for you? 'Tis a practice you may on occasion see at White's."
It took the muddled wits of the city-bred youth a full minute to grasp the purport of this advice. When, however, he had done so, he carried it out with such tipsy precipitation, and the figure he cut when the change was at last effected and he sat down once more, clad in the bright red lining, that Mr. O'Hara fell into inextinguishable laughter.
"If that does not propitiate the Fates——!" said he. "Why, 'tis a little Lord Mayor you're destined to be, and no mistake!"
"Paroly! I'll go paroly!" cried the future Lord Mayor in a thick voice, falling once more upon his cards with a froglike plunge.
"Devil mend you!" muttered O'Hara to himself, "You'd go St. Paul's and the Bank of England on the value of a lock of your hair! Here has the green calf lost his Aunt Matilda's legacy twice, and he'll double or quits me with never a stiver to stake! But, by the living Jingo! I'll do it—and win my chances with Kitty for the third time! 'There's luck in odd numbers, says Rory O'Moore!'" And aloud: "Done with you, my gay punter! "
The cards were shuffled and again dealt upon the table. And then Mr. Huggins gazed, horror-struck.
Then, in the silence, Mr. O'Hara poured himself the last glass and tossed it down. For a "head that had not been made early," his had a wonderful capacity for remaining on the intelligent side of exhilaration through a very mighty potation. But then (as he would explain to the neophyte) "you can get through a deal of claret with the help of a bottle of port." And he was always careful to top up with the more generous fellow.
"God bless you, Kitty!" said he in his soul, with a deep sigh of satisfaction as the final mellow drop ran down his throat. "I shall have a sight of your pretty face the day after to-morrow."
"And now, sir," he asked, "how do we stand with regard to each other?"
Mr. Huggins started from his sodden trance of horror. The words had fallen upon him like buckets of cold water. The I.O.U.'s lay spread out in eloquent array. There was a rapid, merciless little calculation.
"I take it, sir," said O'Hara, dropping his pencil, "that you owe me some six hundred guineas. Or will you kindly verify!"
Verify! The clerk flung out his arms upon the table, dropped his head over them, and gave vent to a bellow of utter misery. Six hundred guineas! With the three hundred of which he had been robbed, nine hundred! What a sum for a City youth, worth at highest calculation some fifty shillings a week! He had the vaguest notions of the manner in which such a debt might be enforced in the high circles to which his opponent belonged—whether by prison, or, yet more awful contingency, by pistols!
Mr. O'Hara rose from his seat and walked over to the fireplace. From that point of vantage, warming his coat-tails, he gazed philosophically, though not unbenevolently, upon the prostrate and howling youth.
"Begorrah! the poor little cur! 'tis the voice of a bullock he's got!"
After a moment or two he approached the table once more and tapped the young gambler sharply on the shoulder. Then, without a word, gathering together the valuable autographs, held them up solemnly before the youth's staring eyes; and then, still in silence, but with a certain air of ceremony, crushed them into a tight ball, which he finally flung into the fire.
The clerk sprang to his feet, uncertain, trembling, scarcely daring to interpret the action to his own relief, so unspeakable did that relief appear. Upon this Mr. O'Hara spoke in the most mellifluous yet doctoral accents that it is possible to conceive.
"Let this be a lesson to you, young man. For the future be content with the humble lot which Providence has marked as your own. Devote yourself to the low virtues of your state in life, and refrain from endeavouring to improve yourself by imitating the high vices of your betters. Another than myself, Mr. Huggins, be assured of it, would not have——" He paused impressively and waved his hand towards the fire.
The little cit—no very attractive spectacle in his turned coat, with his pale, puffy, red-eyed face—here fairly broke down and burst into tears. But they were tears of the grateful and the shamed. O'Hara stalked over to the table with a magisterial gait which admirably concealed a slight tendency to waver, collected his loose gold into a pile, then, slipping the greater part into his pocket, slammed down in front of the ever more bewildered youth five ringing golden pieces.
"There, young man!" quoth he, "take these, and also take the coach to-morrow back to London. Eat humble-pie when you get there. And for the future, sir, beware of wine and the company of your superiors, of fashionable captains, and the Bath road. Reserve yourself for the Harmonious Bones and the ale tankards. Not a word, sir!"
Upon which he pointed to the door with so decided a gesture that, not unlike the cur to which he had been compared, the would-be Macaroni crawled away without either the wit or the courage to utter another word.
Had he been able to see through the solid wood, after he had drawn it between himself and his singular entertainer, Mr. Huggins probably would have been more puzzled than ever. For Denis O'Hara, propped against the table, was swinging from side to side, a prey to paroxysms of laughter. O'Hara, moralist! Delicious pleasantry!
It was, after all, not before the sunset of the second day that Mr. O'Hara, on Red Beauty, rode into the rumour, the stir and smoke of Town, from the still, lonely, clean-breathing country road.
With his temporary sense of wealth there had come over him a temporary sense of caution. The going was bad after the snow; it was not in him to push the dear, faithful mare; and he was determined, moreover, to risk no encounter that might jeopardise his renewed hopes. It was late, therefore, before (in a toilet of sufficient elegance and with his hair recoiffed à la Catogan to hide the loss of . his curl) he found himself once again between the two link-extinguishers of Kitty Bellairs's house in Charles Street.
A sedan was waiting outside; there were lights within. He was emboldened to knock, and, to his bliss, was admitted, though upon conditions. "Mistress Bellairs was this very moment about to leave for Lady Wharton's rout," said the footman; "he would inquire whether she would receive."
"Nay," said Denis, his heart beating thick, and slipped one of his hard-won guineas into the ready hand, "do not announce me, friend; I will see for myself."
He sprang up the stairs four at a time and then paused without the lavender parlour. And there he stood, the silly fellow, breathing short, trembling, before he could summon self-control enough to knock at the white-and-gold panel.
"Gracious sakes!" cried Kitty's treble within.
"'Tis I, darling Kitty, darling, 'tis I!" cried the most ridiculous, hoarse voice in all the world.
"Who?" came the query, crystal-clear and silver-sharp within. (Bellairs Incomparable was musical even in querulousness; delicious in all her butterfly moods.)
"I really believe, ma'am," came Lydia the tirewoman's vibrant tone, with a bold giggle, "that 'tis Mr. O'Hara back again, if you please!"
And, "O'Hara!" echoed the lady within. And surely, surely, there was a ring of joy in the cry!
And O'Hara, opening the door, heard the song of her silken skirt, the patter of her little red heels, as, surprised into unwary graciousness, she actually ran to meet her faithful adorer—those saucy little red heels that had been sweetly dancing through his thoughts these five long days!
"Mercy!" cried the lady, "what have you done with your hair?"
This work was published before January 1, 1930, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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