Nero fiddled while Rome blazed! We possess the record of the main fact, but all details connected with that memorable performance have perished in the lapse of ages. We can imagine, however, that the novelty and horrid grandeur of the situation by no means interfered with the skill and execution of the imperial amateur; but rather added a force and brilliancy to his playing, for which it may not have been usually remarkable. If he had at all a turn for improvisation, an opportunity then offered for his making a great hit; the roaring of the flames, the crash of falling buildings, the coarse laughter of a brutal soldiery, mingling with the shrieks of women and children, and with the shouts changing to the half-curse, half-prayer, of the death agony of brave, true-hearted men, striving to rescue the helpless ones, and perishing in the exercise of their noble daring, all must have afforded a suggestive theme for the crescendo and diminuendo of the tyrant’s catgut, which may have been handed down to posterity, until the tradition may have furnished the thesis of that classic and artistic composition, the “Battle of Prague.”
Everybody considers Nero a hateful tyrant, and everybody may be in the main right; although good Dr. Goldsmith, in his interesting Roman history (which has been perpetually “abridged for the use of schools” ever since it was written, and is not half short enough yet), has probably applied too deep a coating of lamp-black even to Nero. But, though as manners and customs change, the outward seeming of things varies with them, human nature, too bad ever to be all good, and too good to be all bad, remains much the same, despite the preaching of Paul, and the watering-pot of Apollos.
Thus, while in the heart of mighty London vice filled model prisons with the recklessly depraved, or, far worse, the recklessly hypocritical—while hospital-wards teemed with those comparatively fortunate victims of disease and improvidence whom some good Samaritan had thus far rescued, when a frightful majority were dying untended in reeking alleys and other hotbeds of pestilence—while covetousness and hatred were scarcely restrained from breaking forth into rapine and murder by the strong arm of the law—my Lord Alfred Courtland, and the leeches who sought to prey upon his youth and inexperience, drove down to Blackwall to nibble a small fry of ridiculous little fishes, enveloped in batter, called whitebait, and esteemed, for some undiscoverable reason, a delicacy.
Exactly as the clock struck five, a dark, well-appointed drag, with three bays and a chestnut—all thorough-bred, or thereabouts—drew up at the entrance to the Pandemonium. Captain O’Brien, handing the reins to a dark-whiskered, good-looking young fellow, who was his companion on the box, descended, and entering the club, was introduced by D’Almayne to Lord Alfred Courtland and Jack Beaupeep; the first mentioned individual acknowledging his salutation by the slightest possible removal of the hat, together with an all but invisible motion of the head, the latter by a profound salaam, together with the diffident remark—
“Sir, you do me proud.”
“Not at all, sir, not at all; on the contrary, it’s proud I am to make your acquaintance, and you a mimber of the government, too. Did ye know Smith O’Brien, now?” Not waiting a reply, he continued—“Oh, he’s a great legislathur entirely; and sure them that don’t die first will live to see him prime-minister of this country, one of these fine mornings; and a prime minister he’ll make, sure! ‘Justice to Ireland’ will be found engraved in copper-plate on his heart, by any gentleman who may have the pleasure of attending the post-mortem examination of his remains, and long life to ’em!”
“Are we waiting for any one?” inquired Horace, fearful lest his Hibernian associate should disgust Lord Alfred by his offensive familiarity at first starting. “Guillemard has, I see, already taken his seat. Have you any objection to pull up at the Guards’ Club, O’Brien? There are three or four army men who have promised to come, and your drag will carry them easily.”
The Captain agreeing to this—as indeed he appeared willing to agree to any and everything suggested by D’Almayne—they took their places; O’Brien insisting on Lord Alfred succeeding to the box-seat, vacated for that purpose by the dark-whiskered, hawkeyed youth, who was none other than Phil Tirrett, the horse-breeder’s son, whom Horace D’Almayne had designated as a very promising young scoundrel—a style of character which he was so well able to recognise, and so thoroughly competent to form an opinion upon, that we feel convinced he only did the young gentleman’s merits justice.
By no means captivated by O’Brien’s manners or address, Lord Alfred was at first haughty and monosyllabic; but perceiving that D’Almayne was us scrupulously polite to this son of Erin as to the most polished member of the fashionable world, it occurred to him that in his character of man-about-town the correct thing was to assume a general languid citizen-of-the-worldship; and, as a duty to his presumed imperturbability, to appear, not all things to all men, but the same thing to every man. Thus, rousing himself, he paid a die-away and meaningless compliment to the workmanlike manner in which Captain O’Brien—“Ar—put his team along, and—ar—the correct style of the whole affair.”
This led to an equestrian and sporting rhapsody on the part of the Hon. Terence, interspersed with anecdotes—strange, if true—of the dams and the sires, and the own brothers and sisters, of the individual members of the team, and especially of the chestnut, which had been—“The sweetest thing, sir, across a stiff country that ever man rode; no day was too long and no burst too fast for him, bedad! and the bitterest moment ever I, Terence O’Brien, knew (barring the loss of me maternal grandmother, by spontaneous combustion, from fortuitously sitting down upon a lighted cinder, which had providentially popped out of the fire for that purpose), was when I staked him above the near hock at Melton, last season; and he’s never been fit to gallop since, or it isn’t in harness ye’d see him now—and him costing me a cool £400, and worth all the money now, if he was but sound,” &c. &c.
The witty author of Tristram Shandy, in introducing to the reader that most lovable of humorists, my Uncle Toby, has discoursed eloquently on the various hobby-horses which take possession of, and enslave, the mind of man. Fortification, which was my Uncle Toby’s mania, engrossed his thoughts, and influenced his conversation, until nothing but his simplicity and kindness of heart saved him from degenerating into a complete bore; but when a man’s hobby-horse is the equine animal itself, you can no more unhorse him than if he were—as assuredly he ought to have been, if mind and body had borne a proper affinity to each other—a centaur. O’Brien was a centaur, and having once mounted his hobby, he rode him all the way to Blackwall, to Lord Alfred’s extinction, or thereabouts; but considering that a certain amount of “turf” adheres to the character of a man-about-town, he bore the infliction like a—well, suppose, though we have foresworn slang as low, we for this once say—a brick.
Three guardsmen, and a young heavy dragoon, who lived to consume beer and cigars, and produce moustachios and stupidity were duly added to the party; and by the time they reached Blackwall everybody grew hungry, and prepared to do ample justice to the whitebait. Of course, everybody has at some period of their earthly career eaten a Blackwall dinner, and such feeds are all exactly alike. First appears a course of fish, enough to constitute a dinner in itself: sea-fish, river-fish, pond-fish—fishes boiled, fried, stewed, and bedeviled in various ways, which it would require the knowledge of the supposed inventor of cooks himself to detail; then come the wonderful whitebait themselves, their stupid little bodies enveloped in skeleton dresses of batter; and then fishes are ignored, and develop, according to the “Vestiges of Creation” theory, into the higher forms of animal, into which the highest form of all—man—pitches cannibal-like, until the culinary cosmos is resolved into its pristine chaotic elements. And around this hecatomb of slaughtered zoology and feasting humanity skip nimble waiters, furnished with bottles of every shape and hue; for, since Noah first discovered the seductive beverage, wine-bibbing has been a levelling principle, by means of which the lords of the creation have been accustomed to assimilate themselves to their subjects the brutes, despite the hydraulic pressure of Father Matthew, and all others who have pledged themselves to cold-water such degrading customs. And, indeed, we fear that of the two parties whose respective mottoes might be “in vino veritas” and “truth lies at the bottom of a well,” the latter will continue to constitute the minority until the end of the chapter; or, as Jack Beaupeep expressed the same sentiment, when D’Almayne propounded to him a somewhat similar theory, be “safe to kick the bucket, if they don’t put their foot in it in any other way:” but that misguided young man not only made, but rejoiced in shocking bad puns.
The dinner had been done ample justice to—the wines (and their name was legion) had not been at all neglected—Lord Alfred had become quite intimate with the guardsmen, who, as the wine unlocked their tongues, began, in a quiet, gentlemanly way, to quiz everything and everybody, especially the heavy dragoon, who rejoiced in the patronymic of Gambier—a name on which the other military gentlemen were pleased to exercise their wit whenever they addressed him. As, for example, 1st guardsman, loquitur:——
“I say, Beaupeep, have you heard Fred’s (2nd guardsman’s) last?”
“I haven’t even heard his first,” was the rejoinder.
“No; I should think not,” continued No. 1; “he made that when he was quite a baby in arms.”
“Ye may as well say before he could speak, while ye are about it,” suggested O’Brien.
“Bravo, Captain! you won’t better that,” said the narrator.
“However, Fred’s last and worst was this—‘Why is the gallant cornet opposite, an addition to any mess-table?’ Do you give it up? ‘Because he’s half game and half beer!’”
“I dare say it’s very funny,” muttered the heavy subject of the jest, “but I don’t see the point myself.”
“It’s a pint of half-and-half,” observed Jack Beaupeep, explanatorily.
“Or ‘heavy’ wet, if he were out in the rain,” added guardsman No. 2.
“Talking of heavy wet, puts me in mind of coming down with the dust. When are you going to perform that operation in regard to the Windsor Steeple-chase?” inquired the cornet, surlily; who, not having anything witty to reply to his assailant, substituted instead the most unpleasant topic he could select.
“That is soon answered,” was the rejoinder; “whenever you’ll make a fresh match between the horses, and give Rattletrap a chance of showing Teacaddy the way home, when he’s not been pricked in shoeing by a confounded blacksmith.”
“Oh! if that’s all, you may hand over the cash to-morrow morning,” returned the dragoon; “the mare’s in first-rate order, and I’m game to back her for a match, hurdle-race, steeple-chase, or what you will,” was the confident reply.
“Ah! is it a steeple-chase now, ye’re talking of?” interrupted O’Brien, filling himself a tumbler of Claret; “sure an’ I’ve got a horse I’d be proud to enter, if it wasn’t jist putting me hand in your pockets and taking the money out of ’em; for if he’s in the race, I’d name the winner before they start.”
“He must be a wonderful animal, Captain,” observed the first guardsman; “high-pressure, express train style of quadruped, eh?”
“Furnished with a screw-propeller, more likely,” added his companion, ironically.
“Faith, an’ ye’re wrong there entirely: it’s little of the screw ye’ll find about Broth-of-a-boy. Talk about railroads, indeed, I never knew what flying was till the day I first galloped him in the Phoenix Park. I only wish I’d had him in Spain, when I served with the legion of Sir De Lacy Evans; it isn’t overtaken and kilt entirely by their blackguard dragoons I’d have been then—though it’s little but hard blows and hard swearing they got out of me, as it was, the Lord be praised!”
“Hear, hear! a story, a story!”
“Military reminiscences of Captain O’Brien! order, order!”
“Silence for the noble anecdote!”
“Out with it, Captain!” &c. &c., were some of the exclamations with which the Hibernian’s last speech was hailed by various members of the party, upon whom the whitebait (?) was beginning to tell.
Thus urged, that worthy, clearing his throat by a sip at the Claret, which half emptied the tumbler, began:—
“Well, boys” (here he caught a look from Horace D’Almayne, which caused him, nothing abashed, to add parenthetically), “if in the congeniality of good fellowship you will permit me to call ye so, the story’s nothing so very wonderful, after all—it was just a bit of a spree, do ye see, nothing more; but such as it is ye’re welcome to it”—(polite aside from Jack Beaupeep for Lord Alfred’s benefit—“You’re too liberal, really!”) “I was with Sir De Lacy Evans in Spain, captain in a regiment of lancers; a rare set of rattling dogs they were, too—up to everything, from robbing a henroost to burning towns and sacking monasteries”—(Beaupeep aside—“A decidedly sac-religious act that last!”)
“On one occasion, we were stationed at a place distant about four miles from a village occupied by a strong body of Carlists; well, sir, for several nights running, our sentinels on the side towards the village were assassinated—stabbed through the heart they were! We had ’em doubled, two men to each post; bedad, the only improvement that effected was, we got two men murdered instead of one; and yet the scamp that did it always contrived to get away clear and clean—we never so much as clapped eyes on him! Well, I bothered and puzzled the matter over, and thought of this thing and that thing, and at last I got hold of a notion I fancied might work well; so I cut off to our Colonel, and ‘Colonel,’ says I, ‘with your kind permission, I think I can stop these assassinations.’ ‘What is it, O’Brien?’ says he, ‘you’re a clever, rising young officer, and a man that bids fair to be an ornament to his profession;’ but I won’t trouble ye with the illegant eulogy he was so polite as to pronounce upon me that day”—(“Hear, hear!” from Beaupeep and the guardsmen). “So I jist obtained his permission to select two well-mounted troopers out of my own company, and leave to do what I pleased with them and myself during the night, and that was all I wanted. I happened at that time to have a particularly fast mare—a sweet thing she was, bay, with black points, nearly thorough-bred, a head like an antelope, and as to pace, ’gad there wasn’t a horse in the regiment could come near her. Before nightfall I picked out my two troopers—sharp, plucky young fellows, that I knew I could depend upon if it came to hard fighting, each of them well mounted; and I took care to see that their horses and the mare were properly fed and watered, so as to be fit for a stiff burst; then I amused myself with sharpening the point of my lance till it was as keen as a razor. About a stone’s throw from the post where the sentry they used to assassinate was stationed”—(“Of course, the same man every night till further notice,” murmured Jack Beaupeep, continuing his running commentary)—“there was a thicket of olive bushes and other shrubs; behind this, as soon as it grew dusk, I posted my men with the horses, while I availed myself of a rise in the ground to advance nearer, and lie down, hidden from sight by a stunted bush or two. Well, I waited and waited, and watched and watched, so that a mouse could not have stirred without my noticing it; but nothing did I see, except the shadowy figure of the sentinel pacing up and down in the moonlight, as though he were the discontented ghost of one of his murdered comrades”—(“Very pretty—quite poetical, I declare!” from Beaupeep).
“Well, at last, just about a quarter of an hour before daybreak, which is the darkest period of the night in those latitudes, whether I had dozed off for a minute I don’t know, but I was startled by a noise differing from the monotonous tread of the sentinel, and which sounded to my ear like the cracking of a dry twig; in another moment I perceived a dark, round object moving upon the ground, which I soon made out to be the head of a man drawing himself along, snake-fashion, upon his stomach—while so close had he got to the unconscious soldier that I perceived, if I would save the poor lad’s life, not an instant was to be lost. I therefore gave the signal to my troopers to come up, and drawing my sword, rushed forward to secure the assassin. As I did so, a light active figure sprang up from the ground, and brandishing a long keen dagger, made a furious stab at the sentry; but, fortunately, my approach confused the scoundrel, so that he missed his stroke, and, instead of killing the man, merely inflicted a slight flesh wound of no consequence. Notwithstanding his surprise,—for, as the soldier afterwards declared to me, his antagonist seemed to have risen out of the earth,—the sentry attempted to seize him; but he contrived to slip out of his hands like an eel, and before I could reach the spot, had disappeared in the darkness. In another moment the dull sound of a horse’s feet galloping over the turf proved to me that he was away; but my own horse being brought up, I sprang into the saddle, snatched my lance from the trooper who held it, and ordering the men to follow me, started in pursuit. ’Pon me conscience, gentlemen, I niver reflect on me feelings at that critical moment but it makes me—Ah, well! I’ll trouble your Lordship for the Claret.”
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 punningest 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.
No one could justly accuse Mr. Philip Tirrett, son and agent to the well-known Yorkshire horse-breeder, of that prolific vice, idleness—mother of evil—on the night and morning after D’Almayne’s whitebait dinner. So far, indeed, was he from evincing any reprehensible slothfulness in attending to his father’s (and his own) interest, that hastening, the moment he quitted his companions, to his lodgings, he exchanged his evening costume for his every-day habiliments; then lying down, ready dressed as he was, he snatched a couple of hours’ sleep; and, as soon as the first ray of daylight became visible, rose and took his way to a neighbouring livery stable. Arriving there, he roused a sleepy helper, and desired him to saddle the bay mare; which, when his order had been complied with, he mounted; and telling the man to have the tilbury and the chestnut thorough-bred ready by a quarter before eight, rode off. As at that early hour the entrances to Hyde Park were still closed, he followed the windings of Park Lane, until he reached Cumberland Gate, when, giving his mare the rein, he rode at a smart trot down the Bayswater Road, until he reached the turnpike, after passing which he increased the trot to a fast canter. This pace he kept up for about four miles along the Harrow Road; then turning off to the right, he proceeded about a mile farther, until he came to a gate leading across a field, on the opposite side of which were situated a cottage and some farm buildings. Riding into the yard, Tirrett gave a shrill whistle, and immediately a round, bullet-shaped, close-cropped head, was protruded from a stable-door.
“Come and take my mare, Dick; put her in and give her a handful of corn to nibble at. How is the Don?”
“He be a getting on stunnin’, Mr. Philip; I’ve kept him bandaged, as you told me, sir, and it aint hardly noticeable.”
“Let me have a look at him,” was the reply; and after leading the mare into the stable from which he had originally himself appeared, Dick produced a key, and, unlocking therewith the door of another stable, Tirrett entered. In a loose-box, enveloped in cloths, stood a remarkably fine horse, which, as the door opened, turned its small, well-formed head to gaze at the intruders, laying back its ears and showing its teeth when Tirrett approached it. Master Phil, however, appeared perfectly aware of its various little peculiarities, both of temper and bodily estate.
“Put a saddle and bridle on him,” he said; “I want to see him out.” The execution of this order invoked a scene analogous to the little ballet d’action usually performed between a refractory child requiring to have its face washed, and a firm, but tender and judicious nurse. Thus, on Dick approaching his charge gingerly, with the bridle held out in a tempting and seductive manner, that perverse quadruped immediately elevated its head to the altitude of that of a cameleopard, or thereabouts; which, as Dick was rather under than over the middle height, completely frustrated his purpose; whereupon the groom told Pasquale to “now then!” superadding a request to him to “come out o’ that, will yer!” without unnecessary delay. If the demonstrative pronoun referred to the Don’s attitude, he did “come out of it” instantly, by turning short round, and in a most senseless and uncivil fashion presenting his tail to be bridled instead of his head; but this little display of wilfulness and ill-breeding defeated his object, for by his sudden gyration he placed himself in a corner of his loose-box, where Dick cleverly contrived to pin him, and before (if he had possessed the faculty of speech) he could have invoked Jack Robinson, clapt the bridle on him, and “brought him round” in every sense of the term. “Take the bandage off the foreleg,” was Tirrett’s next order; as soon as the groom had executed it, his employer stooped down and carefully felt and examined the uncovered leg. “The heat and tenderness seem all gone,” he said; “there’s a little fulness still, but that will go down when you’ve had him out for half an hour. Does he show lame at all?”
“I aint took him out of a valk, you know, since it happened, Master Phil; but he don’t valk lame none,” was the reply.
“I must see him out, Dick; take him down to the meadow with a saddle on over his clothes. How is his temper?” was the next inquiry.
“Vell, he aint jist the sort o’ hanimal for a timid old gentleman, you know, Master Phil; it takes a man to ride him; but he’d be civil enough with you or me on his back, after the first five minutes,” rejoined Dick, buckling the girths so tightly as disagreeably to compress the person of the irascible Don Pasquale, who, fortunately for himself, by no means resembled in figure his namesake, as enacted by the inimitable Lablache; but who still resented this indignity by making sundry vigorous, but abortive efforts to bite and kick his attendant, by which he obtained an exhortation to “cup!” (which we take to be an abbreviation of “come up!”), together with the interrogative remonstrance, “what are you arter—can’t ye?” His toilet thus completed, the Don was led, snorting and curvetting, across the yard to a gate opening into a grass paddock of from ten to twelve acres; where, as soon as he was fairly inside the gate, he commenced a series of violent pantomimic protestations against the indignity of being mounted; nor was it until Dick, having exhausted his entire vocabulary of equine endearment, had been forced to betake himself to a course of hard Yorkshire swearing, that he could be induced to stand still for ten consecutive seconds. That desideratum being fortunately attained just before Dick became black in the face from the force of the language he was compelled to employ, the groom, gathering up the reins, grasped the front of the saddle firmly, and requested from Tirrett the favour of “a leg up;” a demand to which that young gentleman responded by seizing him by the right knee, and flinging him recklessly upward into space, whence by a special mercy he descended on the saddle, and therefore on the back of Don Pasquale. Then that noble quadruped tried to obtain forcible possession of his own head, with the felonious intention of careering madly round the meadow, and annihilating Dick in his rapid career; but the astute groom, foreseeing some such catastrophe, would by no means permit him to accomplish his design, but retained possession of his head by a strong hand, a stout rein, and a powerful bit. Frustrated in his amiable intention, the Don appeared determined to prove to society at large that, if he had lost his head, he at all events possessed the free use (not to say abuse) of his limbs; so he pranced, and sidled, and jumped with all four feet off the ground at once, varying the performance by alternately kicking and rearing, until he had in that rash and inconsiderate manner made the circuit of the paddock, when, finding his rider clung to the saddle with an adhesive pertinacity which rendered the probability of throwing him completely a forlorn hope, he apparently gave the matter up in despair, dropped quietly into the habits and customs of ordinary horses, and permitted himself to be ridden hither and thither at his master’s, and his master’s master’s, pleasure.
“Take him by at a slow trot, then at a fast, then at a canter,” was Tirrett’s first direction; when this had been complied with, he continued: “Now take him over the leaping-bar.” Dick, who seemed devoid of all individuality of will, and to exist only in order to do as he was bid, without the slightest reference to its compatibility with the safety of his own life and limbs, immediately turned to obey; but Don Pasquale, whatever degree of fondness he had evinced for gymnastic exercises on his own account, clearly had not the smallest inclination to perform such feats for the pleasure of others: thus, when brought up to the leaping-bar, he not only refused to go over it, but actually turned his “head where was his tail,” and dashed off in a diametrically opposite direction. But it was of no avail; Dick, once mounted, was immovable, inexorable; moreover, he wore a pair of singularly sharp spurs, with which he had a disagreeable habit of excoriating the sides of any cantankerous quadruped he might bestride. So, after fight number two, the Don was again conquered, and taken over the leaping-bar, which he cleared in gallant style. “That will do, bring him here,” continued Tirrett; “he scarcely shows lame at all; but he’s too fresh, his temper appears too plainly, he wants severe exercise. Will the fore-leg stand training for a race, do you think?”
“Vell, if ve has the doing of it, Master Phil; so as we can humour him, and doctor him, and vork him only on the soft turf, and little and often, not to overtire the back sinews, do yer see; and keep him cold-bandaged at night, and so work the horacle that fashion, the thing may be done without making a mull on it.”
Tirrett removed his hat, passed his fingers through his hair, replaced it again, thought for a moment, once more felt the suspicious back sinews, shook his head, and then resumed: “Keep him out for the next two hours; give it him sufficiently stiff to take the devil completely out of him; then feed and clean him, and have him ready to show by half-past eight. Get yourself dressed, too, for if I sell the horse I shall let you go with him for a time—you understand; but you shall have full directions when I see my way clearly. Now I must be off; you need not come in, I can get the mare myself. Take him over that bar again once or twice; it won’t do for him to shirk it when I’m showing him—remember, half-past eight.” So saying, Tirrett returned to the stable, brought out his mare, remounted, and rode off at the same speed as that at which he had arrived.
When he reached the livery stable whence he had procured the mare, it still wanted a quarter of seven; calling a cab, he drove without delay to a small street in the neighbourhood of Leicester Square, and rang twice at one of the houses without producing any result, but a third and more strenuous application of the bell-pull unearthed a curl-papered and slip-shod maidservant, who replied to his inquiry, “Whether the captain was at home?” that he was in bed and asleep, for aught she knew to the contrary. “Show me his room,” was the reply. The girl scrutinised him with a doubtful air, which, Tirrett perceiving, continued, “It’s all right, my good girl, I’m not a dun;” at the same time he placed a shilling in her hand, and, her scruples vanishing at the magic touch of silver, she led the way up two flights of stairs, then, tapping at a bedroom door, she exclaimed—
“Here’s a gentleman to see you, Captain.” Tirrett, without farther announcement, opened the door and walked in; thereby relieving the gallant tenant of the apartment from an alarming suspicion which was continually haunting him.
“Ar, Phil me boy, and I’m glad to see you are your own self then, and not a sheriff’s officer. What has brought ye here at this onconscionably early hour of the night? have ye set the Thames on fire, or bolted with the Bank of England?”
“Neither,” was the reply; “both exploits are more in your way than mine; but I’ve not a minute to lose. I’ve just come back from the stables at Shark’s Farm, and I’m to drive that green goose, with a handle to his name, down to look at the horse at eight o’clock.”
“You’ve got his Lordship so far as that, have ye? ’Pon me conscience you’re a clever lad, and your father ought to be proud of ye,” was the complimentary remark this announcement drew forth.
Unheeding it, Tirrett continued: “And now, Captain, before we go any farther, let us come to a clear understanding; the matter, I think, at present stands thus: I sold you the horse for 200 guineas, and half everything he might win during the ensuing year; 100 you paid out of your Derby winnings, 100 you still owe me; you next made a foolish bet, when you were half screwed, that the horse could perform an impossible leap, and in attempting it threw him down and lamed him; from that lameness he has wonderfully recovered—sound I never expect him to get; though, with care and management, he may now be sold and trained; but how are we to arrange about terms?”
“Terms, indeed!” was the astonished reply. “Why, I’ll pay you your second hundred out of the price I get for him; and well content ye should be with your good luck,—for if the nag had gone to the bad, it’s more kicks than ha’pence ye’d have got from Terence O’Brien.”
“Won’t do, Captain,” was the cool rejoinder: “I must have the hundred down, and half whatever you get beyond. Why, there’s a bill of thirty pounds from the ‘Vet.’ for time and medicines, besides the half share of the winnings which I lose by your selling him.”
The angry discussion which ensued, and which ended in O’Brien’s obtaining terms slightly more favourable for himself we will not inflict on the reader; suffice it to say that, ere the associates parted, all their differences were reconciled, and their alliance likely to be cemented more firmly than ever, by their proposed inroad on the credulity and cash of Lord Alfred Courtland.