Mated from the Morgue Part 16

O'Hara then sat down and set himself a-thinking anew. This was the sum of his thoughts; being literary, they wandered into quotation:

'"Frailty, thy name is woman!"' (Shakespeare; this is good to begin with!) 'Bidelia never had an ounce of sentiment in her. D----n sentiment! I don't regret her. Pshaw! not I; in fact, I'm pleased--pleased, no, rejoiced, that she's well married. What's this Noll says? "She who makes her husband happy leaves nowhere in the running the novel-reading hussy, whose sole aim is to murder mankind with shafts from her quiver."' (This is better: substantially, it is Goldsmith, but it has been very, very queerly committed to memory. Poor fellow! his nerves must have been unstrung.) 'To Connaught with Bidelia I'll marry the Frenchwoman through spite. I'll throw myself at her feet next week, or next year--I'll swear I love, I do love her--that is to say, I do not dislike her--and I'll send Missus Beatrice Clarke--oh, the short-sightedness of some girls!--an invitation to the ceremony and the wedding-breakfast to follow, with a promise of a bit of bride-cake to cheer her if she is debarred by previous engagements from the pleasure of accepting my very kind invitation. Good! "Remove far from me vanity and lies: give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me."' (Holy Writ; this is getting serious, friend O'Hara.) 'Caroline was evidently designed for me by nature. My mind is made up.'

O'Hara rose, and nearly tripped over Pat, his faithful dog, the last henchman of the clan. He stroked him fondly on the back; and Pat, jumping up, licked his master's hand with his moist red tongue, and then went through a favourite gymnastic exercise--that of pursuing his own tail. When he was tired of this canine form of search for a chimera, he stood still, panting, and yelped and agitated his tail like a fan.

'Biscuits as usual,' said O'Hara to the quadruped. 'By my troth, it would be a great saving to me if _you_ were in love, but you're not.

You've the appet.i.te of an ogre.

O'Hara and the O'Hoolohan might have been discovered outside the Cafe de Suede one evening a month afterwards. They were deep in conversation.

'I do not believe in the constancy of woman--you know my reasons; but I do in the necessity of marriage. You know Caroline intimately now. Do you admire her?'

It was O'Hara who spoke.

'Much,' answered O'Hoolohan; 'but some people are prejudiced in favour of brunettes.'

'Ah! you mistake me. I referred to disposition, to mind--which, after all, counts more in a union than complexion, or figure, or hair. Can I confide in you?'

'You are not obliged to give your confidence if you mistrust.'

'Then I shall give it. I have spoken to her of marriage. She frankly told me that she felt she could not love, and I as frankly told her that neither could I.'

'Then the affair is finished?'

'Yes, but not as you think. We have agreed to marry, and trust to love to come afterwards.'

'Mother of Moses! I hope it may,' and O'Hoolohan leant back surprised.

'Ah! friend, have you forgotten what Moore sang?'

'That poodle of literature,' said O'Hara, 'he sang any amount of nonsense, like the rest of them. Which of his verses are you thinking of now?'

'Have it, if you must:

'"In France, when the heart of a woman sets sail On the ocean of wedlock its fortune to try, Love seldom goes far in a vessel so frail, But just pilots her off, and then bids her good-bye!"'

'Is that _your_ experience?' queried O'Hara.

'Respect your seniors, _blanc-bec_,'[12] growled O'Hoolohan.

'At your excellency's orders,' returned O'Hara, with mock obsequiousness. 'But I can cap your quotation with another from Master Tommy Little, which will give us an excuse for fresh bocks at all events:

'"----fill the cup--where'er, boy, Our choice may fall, our choice may fall; We're sure to find Love there, boy, So drink them all, so drink them all!"'

'I don't mind pledging that,' a.s.sented O'Hoolohan, 'but I wish all the same the la.s.s and you had got spooney on each other. This sort of nuptial knot has a kink in it. As for Berthe and myself, we're happy as Midsummer Day, but conscientiously I can offer _you_ no congratulations.'

'Your good wishes are all I want. There are marriages of affection, of interest, of spite, and of necessity; but this is the first time, I venture to say, you have heard of a marriage of esteem,' and O'Hara folded his arms and looked philosophic.

'By my hand,' remarked O'Hoolohan, 'you're an original. I can't make you out. I give you up.'

CHAPTER XV.

THE FIFTH OF MAY, 1870.

It was the forty-ninth anniversary of the death of the eagle chained to the rock--of the Prometheus who was not unbound--of Napoleon Bonaparte imprisoned at St. Helena. Captivity, despair, dropsy--these were the last scenes in the great world-drama of the modern Caesar, the little lieutenant of artillery, who sprang from the obscurity of his islet-home in the Mediterranean to the perilous eminence of the purple. This was the end of the spoiled child of victory.

On this day the veterans of his wars, 'the old of the old,' mustered at the foot of his monument in the Place Vendome, in the core of the busy city--the monument which typified him as the Conquering Hero, who was the ideal of French martial aspirations--the being after the nation's heart. Proudly uprises in the middle of the square the tall pillar--an immense trophy covered with plates of bronze from the monster crucible in which the captured cannon of the Austrians were melted down. The statue of the Imperial soldier is on the summit, laurel-crowned, garbed in regal mantle, the sceptre in one hand, the orb in the other. It would have been better if it were sword or _baton_, instead of sceptre or orb--the cha.s.seur's jacket of Marengo, instead of the regal mantle--the three-cornered hat, instead of the garland of Roman triumph.

On this day the statue holds levee. Stooped veterans draw their old uniforms from the bottom of musty drawers, put on the plumed shako pierced with bullets, and the belts blackened with the powder of twenty battles, and march with tottering step to lay their memorial wreaths of the yellow-budded immortelles on the railings at the base.

'Tap! tap!' brattle the drum-sticks, plied by wrinkled fingers, and slowly comes in sight the slender company from the Hotel des Invalides, for some of these warriors have to hobble to the rendezvous on crutches.

The sight is one to thrill and sadden, as these glorious relics of an era that is past file feebly by, in every variety of military dress that recalls the First Empire. There are about five-and-thirty of them--no more. They halt and form into line in front of the entrance to the monument. The stalwart Munic.i.p.al Guard on sentry presents arms; the withered commander of the band advances and hangs his huge votive circlet of flowers on a rail, the drummer makes his most vigorous attempt at a roulade, but there is the tremor of palsy in the sound; it is as the rattling of clay on a coffin-lid.

'_Vive l'Empereur!_' pipes the commander, and a faint cheer, a cheer as if from out the dimness of some distant vault, is the response from his companions.

'Live the Man!' exclaims a stooped officer in c.o.c.ked hat, brandishing his stick as if it were a battle-blade. The stooped officer was Captain Chauvin. Having acquitted themselves of the duty of loyal love, the veterans broke up and dispersed, and our friend joined four bystanders on the pavement of the Rue Castiglione. They were M. and Madame O'Hoolohan, and M. and Madame O'Hara. They helped the aged warrior into a close carriage--for he had grown sadly helpless of late--and drove quietly to his apartment near the Pantheon. He complained of a coldness in the limbs. They sate him in an easy-chair before the stove, and wrapped him round with a warm cloak. He fell into a child-like slumber.

This may have lasted an hour, and then, with a loud voice, a voice with the vibration of young manhood, the veteran exclaimed:

'Farewell, my friends; they are beating the _appel_ on high.'

Lifting himself to his feet, by a superhuman effort, he stood straight as a lance for one moment, then flung out his arms and fell back dead.

There was a smile on his wan thin lips, and a hectic glow on his cheeks.

He was happier than his comrades, who did not follow him till another year had driven France to grief and Paris to delirium, had wiped out the legend of the Empire as with a b.l.o.o.d.y sponge, and had torn down the monument to The Man.

THE END.

BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] In Paris the p.a.w.n-office is called 'my aunt,' as it is nick-named 'my uncle' in England.

[2] 'To have the sack,' Paris slang for 'to be in funds.'

[3] To be out of money.

[4] The debtors' prison.

[5] The typical name of the Irishman, but spelt 'patte' (paw), is a common word to dogs in France. This may explain why O'Hara fancied he had hit on the animal's name.

[6] The smaller island close by the Morgue.