MERVYN O'CONNOR 
 
 AND 
 
 OTHER TALES 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 MERVYN O'CONNOR 
 
 AND 
 
 OTHER TALES 
 
 BT 
 
 THE EARL OF DESART 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 " THE HONOURABLE ELLA," 
 " KELVERDALE," 
 
 &c., &c. 
 
 IN TH^EE VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON: 
 HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS, 
 
 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 
 
 1880. 
 
 All rights reserved.
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED BY DUNCAN MACDONALD, 
 
 BLENHEIM HOUSE.
 
 8^3 
 
 V.l. 
 
 MERYYN O'CONNOR. 
 
 rl 
 
 4- 
 
 VOL. I. B 
 
 S^"
 
 MERVYN O'CONNOR. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 I INTRODUCE MYSELF TO THE READER. 
 
 HOME for the holidays! What a de- 
 lightful fact that was ! How one 
 revelled in the sight of the familiar scenes, 
 of the loved faces, in the old amusements 
 that seemed to lose half their flavour when 
 transplanted to school ! Everybody knows 
 how far more delightful was that impromptu 
 game of cricket, with a rolled-up piece of 
 newspaper for a ball and a book for bat — 
 which, perhaps, was the outcome of the 
 emancipated schoolboy's wish to show his 
 
 B 2
 
 4 MERVYN CONNOR. 
 
 joy at being again at home — than the most 
 elaborately prepared and solemnly played 
 game of school cricket, with all its fame 
 and after-description in local papers and 
 grand luncheon and white flannels. After 
 going through this ceremony in a passage — 
 the first parental greetings being over — it 
 was the custom of Arthur and myself to 
 proceed hurriedly, but very systematically, 
 to various points of vantage — the old school- 
 room, the first landing of the grand stair- 
 case, the servants' hall, the stable-yard, the 
 orchard, and the steps in front of the hall 
 door, and then, waving our caps, to give 
 three hearty cheers at each place. That 
 ceremony over, I think the housekeeper's 
 room was visited, and our dinner duly 
 spoiled by ''lumps of delight" and such 
 delicacies, which caused us to blush over 
 our past infatuation for those unlovely 
 buUs'-eyes which formed the only sweet 
 stock in the village shop hard by our 
 school.
 
 MEKVYN O CONNOR. 5 
 
 Home for the holidays ! How seldom 
 one can manage to get home for the holi- 
 days in after-years ! A bit of the drudgery 
 of every-day life — of our grown-up school 
 work — clings to us, go where we will ; 
 trouble obtrudes itself triumphantly in those 
 moments which we have carefully arranged 
 should be all pleasure, and we are apt to 
 remember, in the very midst of our most 
 careless gaiety, that awkward crack in our 
 heart, received so long ago, but never to 
 heal again. » 
 
 And yet I am inclined to doubt whether 
 child-life is quite so happy as it is the fash- 
 ion to esteem it. If our child joys are very 
 pure and sweet, so are our child woes 
 exceedingly piteous. 
 
 An afternoon's dull despair over an un- 
 doable sum, with the sound of our luckier 
 companion's play in our ears, and with the 
 certain prospect of a flogging in the not 
 remote future, is forgotten — the flogging 
 over — in the next day's freedom and jol-
 
 6 MERVYN O CONNOR. 
 
 lity ; but, nevertheless, during the sad time 
 the little heart has ached very sorely, and 
 the tears shed over those accursed figures 
 have been bitter enough. 
 
 We, Arthur and Mervyn O'Connor, were 
 as liappy as children could well hope to be. 
 Arthur was the elder, and had, at the age 
 of two, inherited the baronetcy, while the 
 rents rolled up into a goodly sum for his 
 coming of age, not much lessened by the 
 jointure drawn from them by our mother, 
 with whom we lived at the old place in 
 Ireland. 
 
 She, my mother, was then, and is still, 
 my ideal of feminine beauty. She had 
 married v/hen very young, and lost her 
 husband in two years' time. I was often 
 told that she never quite recovered her 
 looks after this grief; but as I first remem- 
 bered her, tall and slender, with a far-away 
 look in her great dark eyes, and a grace of 
 movement beyond describing, she was beau- 
 tiful enough in all conscience.
 
 MERVYN CONNOR. 7 
 
 She was a curious mixture of worldly 
 wisdom and worldly ignorance. Had she 
 acted up to her own precepts she would 
 have been wise beyond the wisdom of wo- 
 men, but unfortunately she always forgot 
 to apply in her own case the knowledge she 
 possessed. Having as a girl astonished and 
 rather disgusted her parents by her very 
 practical, not to say sordid, ideas about 
 settling herself well in life, she proceeded 
 to fall desperately in love with the third 
 son of an Irish baronet of no very great 
 fortune, and threatened to die incontinently 
 unless permitted to marry him. Her parents 
 — honest Somersetshire folk, who read the 
 novels of the last century, and believed, 
 perhaps, in death of a broken heart — gave 
 their consent with some misgiving, buoyed 
 up a little by the energetic manner in which 
 the young bride made plans for economical 
 living in the wedding state, and therefore 
 proportionately cast down when — not very 
 many months had elapsed — the sad story
 
 8 MERVYN CONNOR. 
 
 of debt and difficulty began to be unfolded. 
 But just as things were looking blackest, 
 when the second boy had been born, and 
 it was considered probable that his father 
 would become a permanent inmate of a 
 debtors' prison, the baronet and his eldest 
 son managed to be carried off by fever, and 
 my mother became Lady O'Connor, with 
 an income and a carriage. 
 
 Hardly, however, was the ink dry of the 
 letter in which she vindicated to her parents 
 her foreseeing prudence, when she was left 
 a widow. Sir Arthur, my father, who was 
 in an infantry regiment, had sent in his 
 papers, and intended to set up as a country 
 gentleman. His brother officers gave him 
 a farewell dinner, at which, as was the 
 custom in those days, a vast amount of 
 wine was drunk. The evening was wound 
 up with some pistol practice in his room, at 
 a mark he was accustomed to shoot at. In 
 the morning the gay party staggered to 
 their quarters to bed, leaving my father. A
 
 MERVYN O CONNOR. ^ 
 
 few hours after, when the servant went to 
 wake him up for his journey to his wife 
 and family, who had preceded him to Ire- 
 land, he was lying — still dressed in uniform 
 — stone dead, with a bullet-mark in the 
 temple. The sad accident made a good 
 deal of stir ; sensible people shook their 
 heads at the folly of pistol-shooting after a 
 heavy dinner ; and poor Lady O'Connor 
 was a widow. 
 
 Everyone — that is, everyone interested 
 in the iiatter — aerreed that, after her first 
 outburst of grief and horror, she behaved 
 very well. When my father's great friend, 
 Bayley North, who was junior to him in 
 the regiment, and who was generally es- 
 teemed the best-looking, cleverest boy in 
 the Array, came over to Ireland with those 
 few little things of my father's which no 
 doubt he thought she would like to receive 
 from a friend's hand, and also probably for 
 the purpose of telling her all he could of 
 her husband's last days on earth, she cer-
 
 10 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 tainly shut herself up and refused to see 
 him ; but after all, in her great grief, this 
 was allowed to be only natural, and Mr. 
 North returned without exchanging a word 
 with his friend's widow. 
 
 Her determination not to re-marry, much 
 as it might vex the souls of many admirers 
 of her beauty and her jointure, also gave 
 pleasure to the family ; and the way in 
 which she devoted herself, body and soul, 
 to the welfare of her two little sons took 
 the admiration of all. We learned from 
 her only, until, clad in the shortest of jackets 
 and armed with an undue share of pocket- 
 mone}^, we went to school to forget all we 
 had so learnt, and to be taught instead how 
 to play at cricket and football, how to evade 
 the best efforts of our masters to teach us, 
 and how to tell a lie. 
 
 That Arthur — who was utterly unlike 
 me — was her favourite, I always knew; but 
 even to my boyish comprehension it was 
 plain that she struggled incessantly against
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 11 
 
 her predilection in this respect, and was 
 determined that, whatever her heart might 
 prompt, she would allow no material diifer- 
 ence to exist between her treatment of him 
 and of me. But that he had her heart on 
 his side I knew ; and the first bitter feelings 
 I remember sprang from this source. 
 
 One day my pony ran away with me in the 
 park, and the animal perhaps naturally sup- 
 posing that, if he could pass under a bough of 
 a tree, there was no duty incumbent on him 
 of calculatini]^ whether I on his back could 
 do the same, I was swept off with some 
 violence, and picked up by the old steward, 
 who happened to be passing by, and by my 
 frightened elder brother, and conveyed, 
 with a face covered with blood, homewards. 
 
 The steward went into my mother's room 
 first to prepare her for the unlovely sight, 
 and rather bungled his opening remarks. 
 
 " Arthur 1" I heard her cry out, as I stood 
 at the door more frightened than hurt, and 
 conscious withal of some proper pride in my
 
 12 MERVYN O'CONNOR. 
 
 wounded face — ''Arthur hurt! Where is 
 he? Oh, my boy!" 
 
 '' It is not Sir Arthur," said the old man ; 
 " it is Master Mervyn." 
 
 "Mervyn, is it?" And the alteration 
 in her tone hurts me even now to recalL 
 " Where is he ?" And then, when ray face 
 had been washed, and the damage discov- 
 ered not to be excessive, it was Arthur, not 
 me, that she folded in a passionate embrace; 
 it was for him, I felt, not for me, that her 
 lips moved in prayer. 
 
 I had all the external sympathy he would 
 have had, and the same excusing of lessons, 
 the same amount of plaister, the same little 
 indulgences of an invalid, the same glory of 
 a big arm-chair, and of breakfast in bed ; 
 but there was a something he would have 
 had which it was out of her power to give 
 me. Child as I was, I felt rather than 
 knew this truth, and that night I cried my- 
 self to sleep, and took no pleasure in being 
 the hero of my first accident.
 
 MERVYN o'CONNOR. 13 
 
 I will pass over the rest of my boyhood 
 as briefly as possible. Arthur and I were 
 seldom apart long. We left our private 
 school together, and were placed — thanks 
 to my being a little quicker than he at my 
 books — in the same division at Harreton 
 College, where we learned a little, and 
 rowed a good deal, and smoked our first 
 pipes, and got flogged, and enjoyed our- 
 selves as Harreton boys always do. One 
 incident of the time I may recount, not that 
 it made any great impression upon me then, 
 but because it has a bearing on some of the 
 after-events to be unfolded in this history. 
 
 One day my tutor came into the pupil- 
 room, where I was vainly struggling with a 
 most perverse copy of verses, into which 
 false quantities would come as persistently 
 as Charles I. into Mr. Dick's memorial, and 
 told me to go to his room, where a gentle- 
 man wished to see me. 
 
 I rose and waited for Arthur to accom- 
 pany me, the idea of anyone wishing to see
 
 14 MERVYN o'CONNOR. 
 
 me, and not liim, being preposterous. I 
 wondered meanwhile which of my few 
 *' gentlemen" acquaintances it might be, and 
 what the " tip " read}^ in his pocket ; for the 
 '' half" was far gone and the " tick " score 
 at the "sock "shop had assumed alarming 
 dimensions. 
 
 ''No, only you — O'Connor minor," said 
 •my tutor, observing my glance. And I 
 went alone, wondering. 
 
 *'So you're Mervyn O'Connor," said a 
 wonderfully smartly-clad man of middle age 
 (as I then deemed it — probably he was 
 about thirty-one). "Come, let me have a 
 look at 3^ou. Yes, devilish like her — devil- 
 ish like her." And, as he drew me towards 
 him, I was quite struck by the tender expres- 
 sion in his eyes, and for the moment forbore 
 my speculations as to the forthcoming '^tip." 
 
 He asked me several questions, but not 
 one about Arthur, and cross-examined me 
 closely as to my home-life, and then dis-
 
 MERVYN O'CONNOK. 15 
 
 missed me with two things that surprised 
 me vastly. One was a kiss — a kiss from 
 a middle-aged stranger, and to me a Har-- 
 reton boy! — the other was a five-pound 
 note. 
 
 The delight in swaggering into old 
 Brown s '* sock " shop and demanding change 
 in a proud voice, wherewith to settle my 
 tick — the tick which had caused me many 
 sleepless nights and many dreams of im- 
 pecunious horror — quite expunged all recol- 
 lection of the insulting kiss ; and the admir- 
 ing envy of my schoolfellows, not one of 
 whom had ever received so splendid a 
 *' tip " from a stranger, made a very proud 
 boy of me that day. 
 
 But the story had its sequel. Not many 
 v\reeks afterwards came a letter from my 
 mother, written in a tone that was new to 
 me, in her. 
 
 She had been, she said, very much 
 annoyed to hear that I had been permitted
 
 16 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 to see a gentleman with whom she never 
 wished me to become acquainted, and she 
 warned me most impressively against an un- 
 due readiness to make undesirable friends. 
 
 " I do not say that in this case it was 
 entirely your fault, my dear Mervyn ; but I 
 think it right to warn you that I shall be 
 very angry if I ever hear of your seeing Mr. 
 North again." 
 
 My tutor, who, it now seems to me, was 
 not overburdened by a strict sense of 
 justice, subsequently said to me, with much 
 asperity, 
 
 ''What did you mean by saying you 
 knew that gentleman, who called for you 
 the other day, at home ?" 
 
 "Please, sir, I never said so," I stam- 
 mered. 
 
 *' Do not add to your fault by prevarica- 
 tion, sir. That will do ;" and I was re- 
 leased, a little perplexed, but gathering 
 from this incident that he also had received 
 from my mother a " wigging," as I called it.
 
 MERVYN o'CONNOR. 17 
 
 My conscience pricked me a little about the 
 five-pound note ; but, as it was spent, I saw- 
 no use in saying anything on the subject. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 18 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 I ENTER HER MAJESTy's SERVICE. 
 
 T3ALLYCONOR, our home, to which, on 
 -"-^ the occasion of which I write, we had 
 come for our last holidays, Harreton being 
 outgrown, was very like many hundreds of 
 other Squires' houses in the South of Ire- 
 land. 
 
 Of course it was called a castle, on the 
 lucus a non lucendo principle, for anything 
 less like a castle than the ugly, square, 
 barrack-looking house can scarcely be imag- 
 inedj though, perhaps, some ominous-look- 
 ing slits in the iron shutters on the first 
 floor may have given a certain martial
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 19 
 
 appearance to it in observant eyes. These 
 had been made as the iron shutters had 
 been put up in the old troublous times, 
 when an attack on a landlord's residence 
 was a very usual way of finishing a pleasant 
 evening, and when agent-shooting in the 
 high-road was a most flourishing and excit- 
 ing sport of " the boys," and had the merit 
 of a safety which is denied to the battye 
 shooters of the present day, with whom 
 blind eyes are so common. 
 
 At Ballyconor, besides ray mother, re- 
 sided an old friend of the family, a Colonel 
 Gilbeau — Archie Gilbeau, as everyone called 
 him — whom we all loved. He called him- 
 self a blase, disappointed, soured man, and 
 we humoured him as much as possible in 
 this idea, and ignored whenever we could 
 the fact that in his intense enjoyment of life, 
 of the very fact of living, and in his boyish 
 glee at the smallest pleasure, he far sur- 
 passed either Arthur or myself. 
 
 Then there was Jim Leary, the agent, 
 
 c 2
 
 20 MERVYN O'CONNOR. 
 
 who helped us to hunt our little pack of 
 harriers, had taught us how to train our 
 ponies over a country, and who was also 
 supposed — Heaven save the mark ! — to 
 teach us the ins and outs of estate manage- 
 ment. A dear good creature was Jim 
 Leary, but with somewhat mixed ideas. 
 
 ^' You see," he would say, putting on his 
 business face, and poring over an enormous 
 rental, ''you see, now, the Ballyglass estate 
 brings in two thousand, and the Ballyhunter 
 one thousand three hundred ; well, then — 
 bad cess to it, I forgot to tell them before 
 leaving home to take that colt in — did ye 
 see his leg, Arthur? Well, to resume; will 
 you attend to me, av ye plase, Mr. Mervyn^ 
 and not look out of window ; ye can see 
 the horses exercising any other morning. 
 Oh, blazes ! the chestnut's lame — lame be- 
 hind ; don't you percave it, Mervyn ? Never 
 mind ; that must keep. As I was saying, 
 the Ballyglass estate bringing in — now I've 
 lost the place — was it two thousand or three
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 21 
 
 thousand I said ? By the wa}-, Arthur, did 
 they give the bay pony that ball, and is he 
 coughing still ? Ah, here's her ladyship !" 
 and, much reheved, the worthy man would 
 rise to his full height of six feet one and 
 greet my mother, who came sailing in to 
 see how our studies were progressing. I 
 scarcely think she much believed in their 
 reality, but at any rate they kept us sitting 
 on our chairs for a couple of hours per diem, 
 and diminished by that amount of time our 
 chances of breaking our necks. • 
 
 And wonderful was the way in which we 
 screwed our w^ell-bred ponies — always by 
 thorough-bred sires — over those ugly stone- 
 faced banks, and through, rather than over, 
 those enormous ditches. Jim Leary, on a 
 flea-bitten grey mare that could creep like 
 a cat, would have followed her master even 
 though he had, like Mr. Charles Reade's 
 villain, taken to dancing the rogue's march 
 on a razor's edge, and was even supposed to 
 be able to talk to him during his long visits
 
 22 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 to her ill the stable, never looked back to 
 see whether we had followed him, let the 
 fence be ever so big ; and as to his fallings 
 it was unknown. The grey had five legs, 
 and would have used her nose and her tail 
 rather than fall upon her master, we honest- 
 ly believed. 
 
 Those hunting days were very happy. I 
 can feel asrain now, as I sit lonelv and lons^- 
 ing for the end of all, the glow of satisfac- 
 tion that came over us three as we rode 
 home one evening with a fox's brush hidden 
 away in Jim's capacious shooting-jacket 
 pocket, after a steady hunting run of about 
 twelve miles, in which we had triumphed 
 over our quarry by dint of sheer persever- 
 ance and nose. Horse and ponies could 
 scarcely drag themselves along ; the poor 
 hounds, their sterns depressed and the 
 tongues protruding, were quite unable to run 
 even the ordinary homeward jog ; and we 
 were pretty certain that an ill-natured 
 keeper knew of our accidental drawing of a
 
 MERVYN O'CONNOR. 23 
 
 certain outlying fox-covert, into which, of 
 course, we were prepared, to aver a hare 
 had run, and that a furious letter would 
 very shortly reach Lady O'Connor from the 
 outraged M.F.H. 
 
 But guilty as we were, perhaps because 
 of our guilt, we were all three supremely 
 happy ; and as I say even now, after all the 
 eventful years, I still feel a reflected pleasure 
 at the recollection. And here, perhaps, I 
 may stop to make a remark which, if not 
 new, is to some extent true — that is, how 
 guilt adds to every pleasure. From the day^ 
 of the apple-eating in Paradise to that of 
 "shirking" in the streets of Eton, the 
 sense of naughtiness has given zest to the 
 commonest and tamest amusement. The 
 latter excitement has, I am told, been 
 abolished ; and I am quite sure that that 
 walk on a Sunday to the Castle Terrace— ? 
 where you might be, though you must never 
 he going there — has lost most of its charm. 
 
 Going " out of bounds " is the one uni-
 
 24 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 versal pleasure of humanity. You may put 
 all your lovely flowers into the straight, 
 easy, pleasant road, but the tourist will per- 
 versely climb the fence and stray into the 
 fields, even though he find but stinging- 
 nettles there. But I must not linger longer 
 than necessary on the threshold of my 
 story, though I confess the temptation so to 
 do is almost irresistible. 
 
 Well, my brother and I lingered happi- 
 ly through the golden hours of youth, and 
 never knew that each day gone took with 
 it so much happiness we never should see 
 again. We grew quickly up into tall youths 
 of seventeen and eighteen, and then (after 
 we had been at home for a whole year) a 
 great event happened. We both fell in 
 love. We had been so accustomed to do 
 everything in unison that at first I don't 
 think either of us was surprised or discon- 
 certed at " the object " in each case being 
 the same, but the inconvenience of this 
 arrangement soon made itself felt.
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 25 
 
 Caroline Leary came home from lier 
 school near Dublin to take up her abode at 
 her father's little house in the Park ; and 
 Arthur and I were knocked over all at 
 once. 
 
 Jim took it very philosophically. " Ye'll 
 git over it, my dear boys," he said one day, 
 having observed that we had been during 
 our hours of study casting looks of defiance 
 at each other. " Ye'll get over it. Don't 
 ye quarrel about a woman. There's none 
 of them worth it. Carry's a good girl — a 
 dacent good girl enough — but she's not 
 worth a quarrel, any more than her 
 
 moth " Here he checked himself, but 
 
 we filled in the sentence easily enough ; 
 knowing the commonl3^-reported history of 
 the late Mrs. Leary, who loved whisky with 
 more than Celtic ardour, and died for it 
 like a true patriot. 
 
 But we did quarrel about Carry Leary, 
 nevertheless ; for one whole week not a 
 syllable did we exchange, except when
 
 26 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 obliged to do so by the exigencies of the 
 chase, or in our mother's presence. I re- 
 member even on one occasion during this 
 silent week, when I was as usual doing 
 huntsman and Arthur was first whip (for I 
 was rather quicker at the thing than 
 he), my riding up to him and remarking 
 in my very best and most courteously cutting 
 manner — ''Have the goodness, Sir Arthur, 
 to put Pillager and Pleiad to me ; they are 
 running heel ;" but then on that day I had 
 actually seen her pin a bunch of violets in his 
 button-hole, while my coat was flowerless ! 
 
 At last I spoke. " Carry," I said, holding 
 her hand, and trying to remember how 
 Lord Floribel in that sweet novel, "The 
 Marquis's Mistake ; or, The Broken Heart," 
 addressed his ladylove ('' Adorable- Leary !" 
 would have been the formula had I remem- 
 bered it), " I love you. So does Arthur. 
 But I love you best ! Tell me I do not love 
 in vain !"
 
 MERYYN o'CONNOR. 27 
 
 " Dear nie, Mr. Mervyn !" giggled the 
 girl, with not even a blush on her cheek ; 
 *' oi'm engaged to Captain O'Slathery, of 
 the Koyal Buffs. Didn't ye know it, now ? 
 I thought all Doblin knew it, after the Castle 
 ball, when he popped. Don't ye know the 
 Captain ? They say he can ride to the 
 hounds with any man in Galwav ; and his 
 uncle, by the mother's side, is owner of 
 Kilmacurragh Castle, and has a whole stable 
 full of blood harses." 
 
 So was my bright dream shattered ! Thus 
 ruthlessly was first love in my case sent to 
 the four winds of heaven. 
 
 That night — over our pipes — Arthur and 
 I vowed an eternal friendship : an alliance, 
 defensive, perhaps, we savagely hinted, also 
 offensive, to resist and overcome the wiles 
 of faithless women ; but it was long before 
 either could drop in as before at JimLeary's 
 cottage, and longer still before we could 
 laugh and joke as before with his bright-
 
 28 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 eyed, cheery-cheeked, strongly-brogued 
 daughter. 
 
 Jim went into fits of laughter when I 
 confided to him my desillusionnement. '' The 
 little flirt," he said, "to catch ye both, too. 
 But she's a good girl, and I could trust her. 
 When Captain O'Slathery comes into his 
 estate, which at present consists of splendid 
 black whiskers, she'll make him a good 
 wife. JSTever mind, my boy. Maybe it's 
 taken the rough edge off your appetite, and 
 ye'll be able to sit down quietly some day 
 to the fashionable feast your lady mother's 
 preparing for you in London." 
 
 "In London?" 
 
 " Yes — ve'll hear it all soon enouiifh. But 
 I may as well tell you that ye've to be a 
 Guardsman." 
 
 " Why, when was that decided ? And 
 Arthur ?" 
 
 " Oh, he'll be a country gentleman." 
 
 " A Guardsman — when did you hear 
 it?"
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 29 
 
 " I heard her Ladyship and the Colonel 
 talking of it yesterday." 
 
 I flew to the Colonel, who was reading a 
 newspaper in his own especial chair in the 
 library. 
 
 ** What's all this about me?" 
 
 "About you, Mervyn — I am reading an 
 article on the blessings — blessings ! — of a 
 thing called Free Trade. I fail to see how 
 it can be about you." 
 
 *'No. I mean about my going into the 
 Guards." 
 
 '* Do you like the idea ?" 
 
 ''Like it! I should think so. But I 
 thought my mother " 
 
 " Wished to keep you away from London 
 life. Yes, but don't you see, my dear boy, 
 it is impossible. Everyone gravitates there 
 now-a-days ; though Heaven only knows 
 what they find ; and if you go it would be 
 better you should go in a proper position. 
 I was in the Fourth Guards, you know, and 
 wretched enough I was ; but still, if you are
 
 :30 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 to be wretched, you may as well be 
 wretched in the Fourth Guards as any other 
 -way." 
 
 " I believe 3'ou had great fun in those 
 old days, Colonel Gilbeau," I said, a little 
 maliciously, for it was a safe draw. 
 
 " Fun !" and he sat up with some ferocity, 
 and threw away his newspaper. " I was a 
 headstrong, stupid, heartless young scoundrel, 
 •sir. I ran about London doinsj as much 
 harm to myself and everyone else as I could. 
 Fun ! The recollection of all the stupid 
 things I did in those days makes me quite — 
 egad !" and here he burst out laughing — 
 "they were funny some of them, too. Did 
 I ever tell you how we shaved off one of 
 old McCorquodale's whiskers, and painted 
 his noise bright red, and took him to 
 Almack's, and how the Duchess of Devon- 
 dale made the Duke call him out, and they 
 fired seventeen shots at each other with 
 bread bullets ?" 
 
 ''No, Colonel," said 1, who knew the
 
 MERVYN o'CONNOR. 31 
 
 story, and those which were sure to follow, 
 but rather enjoyed them nevertheless. 
 
 Then, when he had run down, having 
 given me a host of reminiscences, and 
 having relapsed into his deprecation of such 
 doings, I betook me to my mother. 
 
 " Yes, Mervyn," she said, looking at me 
 with those melancholy eyes ; '*' yes, I will 
 not be selfish enough to do as I would wish 
 and keep you in leading-strings here. 
 Arthur, as owner of the place, with duties to 
 do, will very fitly stay here and learn those 
 duties, after he has seen something of lifo" 
 abroad. But for you, with a very limited 
 income, a profession is necessary, and that 
 of — of vour father is the fittest." Slie 
 mentioned the name of my father with an 
 evident effort. Indeed, it was but seldom 
 she could recall him without an outburst of 
 grief terrible to witness. 
 
 *' Yes, mother, I shall delight in it." 
 ** Of course, I shall be blamed — I have 
 already been blamed — for placing you in so
 
 82 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 expensive a regiment as this; but Archie'' 
 — she waved her hand towards the library — 
 Archie declares that with little care a young 
 man can live cheaper in London than else- 
 where, as he has no mess expenses ; and I 
 can recollect how dreadful those mess 
 expenses were. Besides, Archie is actually 
 going to live in London on purpose to offer 
 you a home. He has bought a little house 
 in Park Lane." 
 
 " Colonel Gilbeau live in London again ?'' 
 
 " Yes,*' said ray mother, with a slight flush 
 upon her face ; yes, he thinks — and I am 
 not sure that I quite disagree with him — 
 that he has made this his home long enough. 
 You see, Mervyn " — and here the blush 
 became deeper — "although I am, of course, 
 quite an old woman " 
 
 "No, mother 1" 
 
 "Yes, I am thirty-five next birthday. 
 Even at that age one is not safe from ill- 
 natured talk ; and, althougb dear Archie is 
 more my elder brother than anything else,
 
 MEKVYN O'CONNOR. 33 
 
 still for your sakes, my dear boys, I would 
 rather that no one should have even the 
 remotest right to say anything. So — well, 
 so Archie is going to make a home for you 
 in London; and I hope you'll always be 
 good to him, and try to make him happy." 
 
 Her eyes filled with tears as she spoke, 
 and I vowed, with a little surprise, con- 
 sidering my mother was a little apt to 
 grumble at the Colonel's melancholy senti- 
 ments and noisy ebullition of amusement, 
 that I would make him as happy as he would 
 let me. 
 
 It was rather curious that for some time 
 it never struck one of us that there was yet 
 the little preliminary of an examination to 
 be passed. I had done well enough at 
 Harreton to be considered a very clever 
 boy, and no one dreamed of doubting that 
 I could manage this with ease. But at 
 length the conclusion was come to that I 
 had better make sure by going for a short 
 time to what was vulgarly called a '* cram- 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 34 MERVYN O'CONNOR. 
 
 mer's " near London ; and thither, after our 
 grand final day with the Ballyconor Har- 
 riers, at which even Colonel Gilbeau assisted, 
 and rode with such vehemence that on two 
 occasions he arrived over a fence in advance 
 of his horse — a steady old Tory of a horse, 
 that always looked many times before leap- 
 ing — I went, saddened at least the first five 
 miles of my journey by seeing the fond look 
 which my mother, after waving an adieu to 
 me, turned upon Arthur. 
 
 It is my hope that the reader of the fol- 
 lowing pages, will, before I have gone far, 
 understand pretty accurately the character 
 of the writer. Suffice it now to say that I 
 was, at the time of which I write, a credu- 
 lous, high-spirited, well-meaning youth ; 
 with a certain amount of quickness of 
 apprehension, with a lively sense of humour, 
 and a blind faith in my fellow-creatures, 
 and in goodness generally ; and endowed 
 with a passionate longing for affection and
 
 MERVYN o'CONNOR. 35 
 
 for popularity which bade fair to give me 
 many a pang. 
 
 There are many boys, such as I then was, 
 every day being launched upon the troubled 
 sea of life ; every day learning, with infinite 
 sadness, the hard lessons of experience ; 
 every day gulping down those sentiments 
 (sweet and good enough in themselves) that 
 are too soft, too delicate for every-day use ; 
 every day discovering that the battle here is 
 each for himself; that Vce victis is the cry 
 that sounds loudest over the field of strife ; 
 and to each one of them I would say — ray. 
 excuse being my experience — Do not harden 
 because others are hard ; do not disbelieve 
 because you are betrayed ; do not be ag- 
 gressive because others, even your friends, 
 war against you. Keep, oh ! keep — for it 
 is your dearest possession — every bit of 
 credulity and softness that you can ; cherish 
 those feelings that provoke such shame at 
 first in you, and such sneering in others. 
 
 d2
 
 36 MERVYN O'COXNOR. 
 
 There may coine a time when all the glory, 
 all the cynicism, all the proud independence 
 of worldliness will pass away from you, and 
 leave you, if you have no fund of honest 
 feeling to fall back upon, poor indeed. 
 
 Because you have tasted so much Dead 
 Sea fruit, do not believe there is no sweet- 
 ness in the garden ; because the evading, 
 though apparent, nearness of the mountain 
 top mocks your climbing ambition, do not 
 desist in the attempt, do not sit down and 
 mock the intrepid mountaineer. 
 
 Good there is a top, though you may have 
 hitherto failed to find it ; good there is thai 
 you can and slialljindy if you only search on. 
 Call this life what you will, after your cyni- 
 cal friends' gibes, after your bitterest disap- 
 pointments, there is a heaven in it ; but part 
 of that heaven, or of the power of knowing 
 of it, is in your own heart. 
 
 When, reader, you have seen what man- 
 ner of man it is, and how situated, who 
 writes these lines, you may turn back to
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 37 
 
 them and say to yourself that, if I can write 
 so, it is difficult to doubt the truth of it. 
 
 After this digression I will simply add 
 that I got through my examination, and in 
 May, 1865, was gazetted to a commission in 
 Her Majesty's Fourth Foot Guards. A 
 letter I received a few days afterwards from 
 my uncle, James O'Connor, I reserve for 
 another chapter.
 
 38 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 UNCLE JAMES. 
 
 T T was with some surprise that I received 
 -*- this letter from ray uncle James. His 
 name was scarcely ever mentioned amongst 
 us, and we all had a vague idea that he had 
 committed some atrocious crime. My 
 mother never alluded to him, save when 
 obliged to do so with Jim Leary, for busi- 
 ness reasons ; and when she did so it was 
 with such an accent of scorn that Arthur and 
 I felt that it was incumbent on us to hate 
 him and despise him. He lived, as we 
 gathered, in a wild, mad, bad manner in a 
 suburb of London, and did intense harm
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 39 
 
 under a pretence of doing intense good. 
 What the harm he did was, or what good 
 he simulated the doing of, we knew not. 
 Enough for us that our mother disliked 
 him. He must be a villain. And yet even 
 then his letter did not seem altogether vil- 
 lainous to me. It certainly w^as not an 
 enlivening one — it certainly did not present 
 life to me in a very inviting aspect ; but 
 there seemed, even to me, something in its 
 tone which rather upset my mental pictures 
 of the scoundrel uncle. 
 
 *' Was he not fond of my father ?" I once 
 asked my mother. 
 
 She shivered. 
 
 " Yes — no — how can I tell ? Your 
 uncle James was not easily understood. 
 Your father thoudit he was fond of him." 
 
 o 
 
 " But you know he wasn't ?" cried I, 
 boy-like, jumping to a conclusion. 
 
 My mother rose with that grace that 
 always fascinated me, and which, indeed, I 
 have never seen since equalled.
 
 40 MERVYN O'CONNOK. 
 
 " My dear Mervyn, there are some things 
 which it is better not to speak of — for me — 
 and for you." 
 
 Then she sighed and swept away. 
 In my recollection of her, more vivid even 
 than her grace, her sweet temper, and her 
 justice, if not fondness, for me, is the 
 memory of the air of mystery which hung 
 about her. That there was some secret 
 attached to her I had instinctively felt since 
 I had the power to feel anything ; and here 
 was my uncle James come in to intensify it. 
 I hated him worse than ever. 
 
 " Colonel Gilbeau," I said, bursting in 
 upon that gentleman, as he read a novel, 
 ^' tell me, is my uncle James a blackguard, 
 and what has he done to my mother ?" 
 
 The Colonel looked up lazily, with his 
 usual air of uncomplaining misery, a little 
 spoiled by the irrepressible twinkle in his 
 eye. 
 
 ''A blackguard! What a word! My 
 dear Mervyn, there is every kind of guard
 
 MEKVYN o'CONNOR. 41 
 
 in the world : a Horse Guard, a Foot Guard 
 like you, a railway guard, a guard for your 
 watch-chain, a camp guard, and many others, 
 only there is no such thing as a blackguard, 
 except as snufF — except as snuff," he re- 
 peated, reflectively, turning to his book. 
 
 Colonel Gilbeau, I should mention, was 
 an inveterate snufF-taker, and this was the 
 one and only point on which he and my 
 DJOther fell out. 
 
 " But you have left my second question 
 unanswered," I said, doggedly, sitting down 
 opposite him. 
 
 He laid down his book with a sigh., 
 
 " ^ How absolute the knave is !' as Hamlet 
 says of the grave-digger. Well, I will speak 
 by the card. James O'Connor has always 
 been serious. Probably he was born too 
 serious to squall. As a boy 1 don t doubt 
 he never played like other boys. He ana- 
 lysed their games, and found them full of 
 nothingness. If a boy could play with a 
 doll " — (and here the Colonel glanced at me
 
 42 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 to accentuate a very old joke against me) — 
 "and he bad been such an extraordinary 
 boy, he would have opened it, and wept 
 over the sawdust inside. He " 
 
 " Why, Colonel Gilbeau," I exclaimed, 
 starting up, " he is exactly like you !" 
 
 This was a palpable hit, and the Colonel 
 was obliged to have a pinch of snuff to 
 arrange his answer. 
 
 *' No, distinguish " — (as if a boy could 
 distinguish ; lines are all miles broad to 
 him!) — "I know life thoroughly. I have 
 done everything ; seen everything. I know 
 it's all humbug ; but I am ready to acknow- 
 ledge the value of humbug. Your uncle 
 knows nothing, has seen nothing, has made 
 up his mind that things generally are hum- 
 bug, and that humbug has no merits. It's 
 like a fellow abusing cookery w^hen he has 
 never dined at the Cafe Anglais." 
 
 ''But what does he do ?" I persisted. 
 
 " Do ? He is a philanthropist. A man 
 who supposes that, although unable to make
 
 MER\a"N o'cONNOR. 43^ 
 
 himself, that he knows a little, happy, he is 
 still able to make others so, knowing them 
 not at all." 
 
 '' And who does he philanthropate ?" in- 
 quired I, reckless of language. 
 
 " Dirty people who hate him for it. I 
 think the cruelty of taking a jovial young 
 thief away from his amusing profession and 
 animated friends and making a bad, respect- 
 able pauper of him — half knave, half coward 
 — is about as great as — as that hunt you 
 had last year after a three-legged fox." 
 
 " He wasn't three-legged !" I answered^ 
 hotly ; and then we forgot all about Uncle 
 James, and wandered off into an abstruse 
 argument as to the legitimacy of putting 
 down a bag fox before harriers — a crime 
 concerning which Colonel Gilbeau (who 
 cherished recollections of Melton in the days 
 when Lord Gardner rode the crop-eared 
 horse, and Lord Wilton jfiew over a country, 
 and " the " Lord Waterford jumped un- 
 necessary gates, and young Lord Grey de
 
 44 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 Wilton rode into unnecessary ponds — vide 
 the well-known picture) was wont to chaff 
 the members of the Ballyconor Hare Hunt 
 Club most unmercifully. 
 
 Here is the letter which gave rise to 
 my questionings concerning ray unknown 
 uncle : — 
 
 " Manor Lodge, Wandsworth. 
 
 '* My dear Nephew, 
 
 *' It was with much surprise, 
 and, I will add, with some disapprobation, 
 that I saw the announcement in the papers 
 of your appointment to a regiment of the 
 Guards. 
 
 " To besin with, as the vouns^er son of a 
 family not too well supplied with the world's 
 goods, you should, if you must enter the 
 Army, have gone into a less expensive corps. 
 Secondly, your mother should have known 
 that, of all places on earth, London was the 
 last where yoa should be placed. 
 
 " To you, on the threshold of life, it is no
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 45 
 
 doubt useless for me to speak of the insidi- 
 ous temptation, the terrible excitement, that 
 will await you in the capital of pleasure. I 
 do not suppose you would listen to me ; I 
 am sure you would not believe me. Your 
 first idea would be that this was what was 
 always said to young men, generally by 
 those who contemned the pleasures they 
 had outgrown. Your second would be that 
 I, who never mingled amongst people such 
 as you are about to live with, can give on 
 the subject no opinion worth taking. And 
 yet I believe that I do know much that it 
 will take you much time and cost you much 
 pain to learn. I believe that human nature 
 is much the same in all classes, and I there- 
 fore write asking you, as a favour to me, 
 not to tear up my letter, but to read it again 
 some day when perhaps you are wearied 
 with enjoyment or disgusted by disappoint- 
 ment. Now you can scarcely believe I 
 speak the truth. Then, perhaps, you will 
 be obliged to own it.
 
 •46 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 " For, Mervyn O'Connor, I am interested 
 in your fate, and I would, if I could, save 
 you some of the agony that has come to me. 
 
 " You laugh at the word ' agony ' now ; 
 you are young and strong and healthy. 
 The world in its fairest aspect is before you. 
 ^ He jests at scars that never felt a wound.' 
 
 ^' But, jest as you may, that is no reason 
 why you should unnecessarily incur the 
 danger of the wound. 
 
 *' Mervyn O'Connor, my brother Arthur 
 would have spoken to you as I am about to 
 speak, were he alive. His father — ay, and 
 his father again before him — would join me 
 in my warning could they re-visit the earth. 
 You are young, ardent, no doubt longing to 
 open that book which holds in its pages the 
 magic mystery called ' love.' Beware of 
 turning a leaf. There are death, misery, 
 ■destruction there for you. Disbelieve those 
 who tell you that ' love ' is one of the 
 heavenly attributes of our nature ; without 
 love, in that sense, the world would be pure.
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 47 
 
 It is the degraded sentiment which we vainly 
 try to exalt by calling it pretty names, and 
 invoking the blandishments and tricks of 
 poets, that keeps us near akin to the brute 
 beasts. Mervyn O'Connor, if you must 
 love, love some one in whom there is no- 
 thing that you can respect, whose memory 
 shall be as easily wiped out as the memory 
 of your yesterday's dinner. Throw aside 
 the silly trash called ' sentiment.' 
 
 " Do not let any woman's eyes, or words, 
 or lying vov/s come between you and the 
 business of life. As regards women, be 
 cynical — you cannot be too much so. I 
 write for you alone when I say that they 
 are fatal. Would I could tell you more ; 
 but there are grave and sufficient reasons 
 why I must stop short of that. But believe 
 me when I do tell you that the very day 
 you allow your senses to be carried captive 
 by a woman will be the first day of your 
 utter ruin — body and soul. 
 
 " Perhaps I might as well preach to the
 
 48 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 winds as write thus to you ; but I do it on 
 the chance. You may have sufficient sense 
 to take my warning. You may not be 
 prejudiced against me, and may believe in 
 my good wishes. I once was as you now 
 are, and stood, panting with pleasurable 
 excitement, at the opening of life. I stood 
 so but a short time. The Fates overtook 
 
 me almost before I had entered, and 
 
 Some day, perhaps, you will find your way 
 up to see me in this far-off region, and I 
 may then be able to tell you more. Believe 
 me, there is more in my words than the 
 ordinary warning of an elderl}^ man who 
 has survived his pleasures. You are — much 
 against my will — going into what is called 
 Society ; and going into it under the most 
 fatal auspices. I hear you are good-looking ; 
 would to God you were loathsome to look 
 upon ! It would be for your good. I hear 
 you are agreeable in women's society ; 
 would you were dumb ! I hear you are 
 ardent and enthusiastic ; you are doomed !
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 49 
 
 Yet, no ; it is barely possible that you may 
 listen to my words — it is barely possible 
 that it may be given to me to save you from 
 The Curse. Remember what I have asked 
 you. Keep this letter, and read it again 
 some day. I do not ask you to come and 
 see me when you reach London. It would 
 be better for us not to meet yet. In due 
 time we shall do so. Pray God we may 
 meet without having the knowledge of 
 another victim. Tell your mother that I 
 shall be glad to hear, through Gil beau or 
 through North, what are the plans concern- 
 ing Arthur. From reports I hear concern- 
 ing him, he is not in your danger. This 
 letter I beg you to consider private. 
 " Your Uncle, 
 
 '* James O'Connor." 
 
 " Mad," I said to myself, after perusing 
 this extraordinary epistle ; ** quite mad. As 
 far as I can make out, I am not to see any 
 women in London. Poor fellow! I sup- 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 50 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 pose he has been thrown over — and that's 
 the reason for his odd life." 
 
 Questioning Colonel Gilbeau in the smok- 
 ing-room that night, I scarcely cleared up the 
 mystery to my satisfaction. 
 
 "No, he's not mad," said the Colonel, 
 puffing at his pipe. " Strange, if you 
 please, but not mad. He was about 
 as good-looking a young fellow as ever 
 there was seen — better-looking than poor 
 Arthur your father, by a long way. He 
 went to Rome before going to the Bar — at 
 least I think that was to have been his pro- 
 fession — and there was some mysterious 
 business there — of course with a woman in 
 it. No one ever quite knew the rights of it, 
 only he came back to England a perfectly 
 changed man, or rather boy, aged by ten 
 years, they said, and then he quarrelled with 
 your father. What about no one knew. 
 All I do know is that the only communica- 
 tion that ever again took place between them 
 was just before your poor father's death.
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 51 
 
 A letter addressed to your uncle was found 
 on his table after that sad accident — along- 
 side one to your mother — and was for- 
 warded to hira. For Heaven knows how 
 many years James O'Connor has lived a sort 
 of recluse life, doing a great deal of good in 
 a stupid way — at least it seems stupid to me : 
 for surely there are enough unconvicted 
 persons to help without giving it all to 
 scoundrels — but never seeing a woman. For 
 that reason he has built a high wall round 
 his place at Wandsworth, and never stirs 
 outside it. There is a story that some 
 wag once threw a lady's photograph — an 
 actress's, I think — over the wall, and caused 
 your uncle to go to bed for a month." And 
 Colonel Gilbeau laughed grimly to himself 
 
 *' That would suit you. Colonel," said Ar- 
 thur, smiling at me. 
 
 " No, my dear boy. You, like Mervyn, 
 are afflicted with the boyish inability to dis- 
 tinguish subtle shades of difference. I de- 
 spise women — exceptinsj your mother and 
 
 -'^ e2
 
 52 MERVYN O'CONNOR. 
 
 mine, and, in fact, everybody's mother — but 
 I do not mind meeting them and confound- 
 ing their schemes. To run away is a con- 
 fession of weakness. I have never run away 
 from a woman, except — — " 
 
 " Except when ?" I cried, knowing that a 
 story lay behind his hesitation. 
 
 '^ Well — between ourselves, my boys — on 
 one occasion I did run away. You see I 
 made a mistake — took a widow for a lady 
 blessed with a live husband, and therefore 
 allowed myself a latitude of language, and 
 even of action, which would have been most 
 reprehensible had I known the true state of 
 the case. Well, the lady was quite ready — 
 it was at a Bath hotel — and all arrangements, 
 down to the post-chaise, were made, when 
 I discovered on the very day arranged for our 
 flight that she wished to escape, not a jealous 
 husband, but a brother-in-law who would 
 lose money by her re-marrying. It was very 
 terrible." 
 
 " And what did you do, Colonel Gilbeau ?"
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 53 
 
 I inquired, as he paused, overcome by the 
 reminiscence. 
 
 " Do ? I ostensibly put off the elopement 
 an hour. I really ordered the chaise an 
 hour earlier. I redoubled my first cautions 
 against the possibility of pursuit, and I 
 eloped at eleven p.m. alone, while the fair 
 widow waited for the signal in her chamber. 
 How long she waited I don't know. I flew 
 to the Continent, and then another little 
 affair, in which I was more fortunate, soon 
 put this terrible business out of my mind. 
 But, boys," he added, as we laughed, ^* don't 
 think I ever enjoyed any of such follies. It 
 is quite sad to look back upon so terrible a 
 waste of time — and of sentiment." And to 
 show how sad it was he opened his mouth 
 to laugh, and in so doing let fall his pipe 
 upon the floor. 
 
 " Emblematic," quoth he, picking it up, 
 and this time with real sadness in his ex- 
 pression ; " the only pipe I ever loved — 
 broken, spoiled, and useless."
 
 54 MERVYN O CONNOR. 
 
 " Oh, no, Colonel ; a little silver " 
 
 *' You young cynic! Well, perhaps you 
 are right. Silver and gold v^ill mend any- 
 thing. Let somebody give me a really good 
 cigar."
 
 55 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE ADJUTANT, 
 
 A LL the innumerable pleasures of hope 
 -^^ and imagination cling about a great 
 city in the eyes of a young man about to 
 be initiated, under favourable auspices, into 
 its mysteries — about to commence life, not 
 as one of a dull, droning congregation of 
 country folk, with their stale news, their 
 small tattle, and their narrow ideas, but as 
 a unit — perhaps a not undistinguished one 
 — of a busy crowd of the men and women 
 who make social history, whose lives form, as 
 it were, the living records of the age — with 
 its grandeur and its meanness, its glories
 
 56 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 and its failures. To an ardent boy such as I 
 was that sunny morning in May, when I 
 drove from Euston Square to the West-End 
 hotel I intended to honour by my presence 
 until formally installed in barracks, every- 
 thing spoke of brightness and of life — life, 
 not as we know it when the bloom has been 
 rubbed off, and things present themselves to 
 our vision not as they are, but as worse 
 than they are ; but breathing, burning, 
 palpitating, achieving, glorious life, such as 
 it ought to be, such as, alas ! it can never 
 be. And mingled with my restless happi- 
 ness was a spice of that pleasure which 
 comes, according to the amiable philosopher, 
 to him watching from the shore the struggles 
 of a friend in the sea. Look at those 
 wretched people hurrying to and fro in the 
 streets ! Poor devils ! How I pitied them ! 
 They were not officers in Her Majesty's 
 Fourth Regiment of Foot Guards ! 
 
 With what eagerness I scanned such
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 57 
 
 privates of the Household infantry as I 
 chanced to pass ! They scarcely noticed me 
 as I went past them now in my Hansom 
 cab ; but perhaps in a few days — ay, in a 
 few hours — I should be standing before 
 them in all my glory, their officer ! 
 
 Alas ! I did not know how very little 
 majesty there is in the goose-step and other 
 rudiments of martial education. I had 
 never withered under the haughty and 
 scarcely-disguised contempt of a smart drill- 
 sergeant ; I had never blushed to the roots 
 of my hair as I saw the covert smile go 
 along the ranks of my company, responsive 
 to some egregious blunder on my part in 
 telling off; I had never, then, come trem- 
 bling up with my tail — or my sword — be- 
 tween my legs, and been met with the stern 
 reprimand, "A minute late for parade 
 again, sir !" from the Colonel ; I had never 
 sat down with a mind perfectly devoid of 
 imagination, or even of reasoning power, to
 
 58 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 concoct a '' reason in writing " for the Adju- 
 tant, in consequence of some utterly reason- 
 less delinquency. 
 
 The one great thing in life, says some- 
 one, is Compromise ; but I think a still 
 larger part of it is taken up with disillusion- 
 ments. We begin almost at once. The 
 little girl who opened her doll and found 
 the sawdust had before that found out many 
 other things were not as they had seemed to 
 her dawning intelligence. In the black- 
 currant jelly lurked the insidious powder. 
 Under the delicious sweet wine lay dark- 
 ling the nauseous cods'-liver oil. The revel 
 over hot elder-wine at night was followed 
 by the dreadful application of candle-grease 
 to one's insulted nose ; the delicious draught 
 out of our sponge while bathing was inevit- 
 ably followed by the quick correction of 
 the nurse's hand. Then there is the new 
 pony, which we find we cannot hold, and 
 are generally afraid of; the first gun, which 
 we may not load for ourself, and which
 
 MERVYN o'CONNOR. 59* 
 
 hurts our arm when fired, while the scarcely- 
 alarmed rabbit proceeds leisurely to his 
 burrow, and the keeper smiles derisively. 
 All disillusions — all going to add to the dull 
 weight of experience ultimately to crush us 
 down. 
 
 Even coming home for the holidays — 
 that grand delight of boyhood — never quite 
 comes up to the expected mark. In the 
 restraints of school we find we have exag- 
 gerated the freedom of home life. Every- 
 thing does not give way to our enjoyment 
 as we fondly deemed it would ; and we dis- 
 cover, to our intense astonishment and dis- 
 gust, that the pleasure of doing nothing is 
 not immeasurable, after all. 
 
 But to return. 
 
 Here I was, Ensign and Lieutenant in the 
 Fourth Guards, in the capital of England, 
 with a sum of £200 at my bankers, with an 
 annual allowance of £400 a year, and with 
 a splendid new uniform in a tin case. The 
 summit of my ambition had been reached,,
 
 •60 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 and yet, that first night in London, I was 
 forced, in my solitude, to make friends with 
 the waiter who brought me my dinner in the 
 dingy coffee-room. 
 
 What I expected I scarcely knew. How 
 the glories of London life were to come 
 suddenly upon me I had never considered. 
 I only do know that the first night of my 
 splendour was a very wretched one, and I 
 went to bed out of spirits and half-inclined 
 to wish myself back again at Ballyconor. 
 
 Next morning, however, brought happier 
 thoughts. I had sent a note to the Adju- 
 tant over-night, and at breakfast 1 received 
 this reply : — 
 
 " Dear O'Connor, 
 
 '' You had better come to the 
 orderly-room at twelve o'clock to-day — in 
 uniform, if you have got it. 
 " Yours truly, 
 
 '* Henry Marx, 
 *' Captain and Adjutant Fourth Guards^
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 61 
 
 Fully half an hour before the necessary 
 time I stood fully equipped on a chair be- 
 fore the glass over my fireplace, prepared 
 to swiftly descend should I hear steps 
 approaching. And then came a grand 
 difficulty. How to hook up my sword, as 
 I had seen done by ofiicers in the street, I 
 knew not ; if I let it clatter at my side I fell 
 over it, like an officer in a farce ; and if I 
 held it in my hand it seemed to me that I 
 held it more like an umbrella than an im- 
 plement of warfare. However, I think I 
 managed to pass by the waiter in the 
 passage with sufficient dignity, and, after 
 paying my cabman about three times his 
 fare — for how could an officer haggle about 
 small change ? — I marched across the 
 parade-ground, returning the salutes of the 
 men I met, with my heart in my mouth, 
 longing with much intensity that I could 
 only have put on a moustache with my 
 uniform. 
 
 The orderly-room found, I had to wait
 
 ^2 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 outside for a time, while prisoners march- 
 ed in and out with their escorts — objects of 
 much interest to me, who wondered what 
 their fate might be. The sternness of 
 military life — I was glad I had at once seen 
 a little of this ; and I looked at a dissipated- 
 looking ruffian, scarcely recovered yet from 
 his previous night's debauch, as he walked 
 unsteadily back to the guard-room, with no 
 evidence in my features of my pity for him. 
 
 " Oh, 3^ou're O'Connor, I suppose ?" said 
 a tall, fair man, coming out of the orderly- 
 room. " I had forgotten all about you. 
 Come in." 
 
 I entered, and, taking off my cap, 
 advanced with a genial smile to greet the 
 elderly gentleman at the table. 
 
 He smiled. 
 
 " You're a cool hand. Nevermind. Put 
 on your cap. Now salute. Marx, show 
 him how to salute." 
 
 It was some time before I could suffici-
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 63 
 
 ently recover from my gaucherie to reply 
 coherently to the questions put to me. 
 Ultimately it was decided that I could have 
 a room in barracks at once, and should take 
 possession of it and commence drill on the 
 morrow. 
 
 Then Marx, the Adjutant, most kindly 
 took me about the barracks ; introduced me 
 to the Sergeant-Major, (who looked at me 
 with a superciliously critical eye, and 
 observed that I wanted some setting up, to 
 which I nearly retorted that it seemed to 
 me he wanted some setting down) ; and 
 finally, after teaching me the mystery of 
 hooking up a sword, and informing me that 
 the Colonel, or the '' C. 0.," as he called 
 him, was a capital fellow as long as you 
 never omitted any detail of military duty, 
 took me to his room, the comfort of which 
 astounded me after all I had heard of 
 barrack life, and proceeded to take out of 
 his desk a large quantity of foolscap paper.
 
 64 MERVYN o'CONNOR. 
 
 ** I think you said jou. were fond of 
 poetry ?" he observed, fixing me with a 
 somewhat glassy eye. 
 
 I had not said so ; but I would have 
 agreed with my Adjutant in anything, so T 
 nodded. 
 
 " It is so seldom one meets a man who 
 has a soul above — above ordinary things, 
 you know. I really am very glad you have 
 come into our battalion, O'Connor." 
 
 I thanked him with effusion, and he went 
 on — 
 
 ^' If you re not in a hurry " 
 
 I assured him that I was not. 
 
 *' I should like to ask you what you 
 think of a little thing I scribbled this morn- 
 ing. It is, I fancy you will say when you 
 have heard it, worthy to go into the collec- 
 tion of poems I shall publish." 
 
 As I heard of this collection for the 
 first time, I was scarcely competent to give 
 an opinion ; but I nodded, and Captain 
 Marx looked quite satisfied, and read —
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 65 
 
 '' Cynthia's eyes are sweetly blue, 
 Golden-tinted is her hair ; 
 Pearly- white her teeth are, too. 
 Yet she drives me to despair. 
 
 " Cynthia loves so tenderly. 
 Gives caresses soft and shy, 
 Just what kisses ought to be — 
 Yet she makes me long to die. 
 
 " Cynthia vows she'll e'er be true — 
 Vows she's never loved before ; 
 Yet I think, the while I woo. 
 That her voAving is a bore. 
 
 *' For — a detail 'tis, I know. 
 Yet somehow I never can 
 Quite ignore that detail's woe — 
 Cynthia loves Another Man !" 
 
 " Capital !" said I ; but he turned quick- 
 ly to another page of the MS., and read 
 out, looking at me between each line with 
 an admiration-extorting glance, 
 
 '' ' Haughty Belinda ' this little thing is 
 called : — 
 
 ' Could you love me, dear V I said. 
 ' Yes, I might,' she murmured ; 
 
 (There was no one byj, 
 ' If I tried with might and main — 
 But you see, oh, love-sick swain, 
 I don't mean to try.' " 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 66 MERVYN o'CONNOR. 
 
 *' Charming!" I exclaimed, with the natural 
 ecstasy of the junior Ensign when listening 
 to his superior officer's lucubrations. 
 
 '' Yes," said Captain Marx, thoughtfully 
 stroking his chin ; " yes, I think it is neat — 
 and happy — yes, decidedly happy. But it's 
 only a trifle, as you see. Somewhat after 
 the fashion of Suckling — or Herrick. Yes, 
 more like Herrick. The fact is, my dear 
 fellow," and here he lowered his voice im- 
 pressively and put his hand on my shoulder, 
 *'the fact is that if these fellows, Herrick 
 and such like, had lived in tliese days they 
 never would have made their names." 
 
 " Reallv !" I said. 
 
 "No. Now you've heard these lines — 
 you shall hear hundreds — thousands — of 
 mine just as good— well, I fancy they have 
 more chic, more delicate grace, than any of 
 the old writers ; yet, would you believe it, 
 I have been sending them to editors of 
 naagazines for years and never got one in-
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 67 
 
 serted. Not one ! Mind, I don't say that 
 what were inserted are better than mine — 
 no ; only the asses of editors don't know a 
 good thing when they see it ; or, perhaps, 
 are obliged to insert the poetry of the 
 fenaale members of their families. What I 
 do say is that Herrick might have written 
 himself sick before he would have got a 
 verse printed — except at his own expense." 
 
 Then Captain Marx unfolded, with some 
 pride and with a tender care that no mother 
 handling her first-born child could have 
 exceeded, the manuscript of his great work 
 in ten cantos to which I listened till sleep 
 overcame me — although I was not very apt 
 to fall asleep in those days. 
 
 '^ You are tired after your journey," said 
 he, putting away the papers with a sigh. 
 <« Very tired, poor boy, or you could not 
 have gone to sleep while I read ' The Crime 
 and the Curse.' Never mind. I'll read it 
 you another day." 
 
 F 2
 
 68 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 Mentally vowing that that day should be 
 as far off as T could make it, I escaped; 
 wondering whether it was part of a junior 
 officer's understood duty to listen to the 
 poetry of his seniors, and determined, 
 should such be the case, to at once relin- 
 quish ray position in the Fourth Guards. 
 
 " Old Marx been reading poetry to you ?" 
 observed a brother Ensign to whom, not 
 long afterwards, I confided my doubts and 
 fears. "Of course, newly -joined Ensigns 
 are the only people who will listen to him. 
 Why, even his servants always prefer to go 
 back to the ranks in a week rather than 
 have to do it." 
 
 " Does he read poetry to his servant ?" 
 
 *'I should think so. And he's very 
 lucky now, for he's got one that sits still by 
 the hour while he spouts. The only incon- 
 venience is that poor Marx has to write 
 down his orders." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Oh, because the mans as nearly stone
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 69 
 
 deaf as possible. However, he does as 
 audience ; and no one else will stay." 
 * * * * * * 
 
 The commencement of ray military life in 
 London I will pass over. It has been de- 
 scribed by able pens, and, monotonous, 
 perhaps, to those who know it, it is scarcely 
 interesting to those that do not. At first 
 the solitude was galling, but before long I 
 had met many old Harreton friends, and 
 had become more or less intimately ac- 
 quainted with most of my other brother- 
 officers. In London, during the season, this 
 latter operation is not quite so simple or so 
 quick as might be supposed ; for opportuni- 
 ties of converse on parade are not great, 
 and, off duty, everyone had a hundred 
 things to do which scarcely concerned a 
 newly-joined ensign they scarcely knew. 
 However, thanks to high spirits and a 
 general wish to oblige, I soon became popu- 
 lar enough amongst the " young uns," and 
 entered into London life under the auspices
 
 70 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 of the lightest-hearted and perhaps the least 
 scrupulous of them all. 
 
 Many things I saw that I had better not 
 have seen ; many things I did that I had 
 better not have done ; but I do not think 
 that any of it tended at all to deteriorate 
 me. I had such a fund of credulity and 
 spontaneous belief in goodness that I scarce- 
 ly saw all that I might have seen ; nay, in 
 some instances, I think I did see what 
 others, more knowing, did not see. I saw 
 good in things which others considered to 
 be all evil ; and, seeing it, perhaps I did 
 something to increasing that good. Let a 
 man or a woman be universally regarded as 
 lost, and they are, from this cause, more 
 than from their innate worthlessness, really 
 lost. The touch of human kindness that is 
 unsuspected, and to which we are long un- 
 accustomed, comes with a quadrupled kind- 
 ness from its very rarity ; perhaps from a 
 feeling it is undeserved.
 
 MEKVYN o'cONNOR. 71 
 
 In the life of every young man who has 
 "lived" without too much regard to the 
 moralities, only eager to be foremost in all 
 so-called fun that may be going on, there 
 must be sad — even sweet — remembrances 
 scattered here and there in the most un- 
 likely moments ; a pair of soft blue eyes for- 
 getting their venal smiles for a moment, and 
 waxing dim as some heedless word, some 
 snatch of music, reminds their owner of the 
 long-deserted home : a passionate outburst 
 of hatred of an unworthy life, which is per- 
 haps real enough at the moment, though 
 peradventure it may be soon cured by gin- 
 and-water or champagne. It would be 
 impossible for me to attempt to describe 
 what I have set myself to describe, were I 
 to take no heed of a current of life that 
 under-runs, as it were, the broad public 
 stream of the life of myself and those like 
 me in their first years. 
 
 There it was: there it may still be for
 
 72 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 aught I know. Bad enough, perhaps ; but 
 not so altogether bad as those who forget 
 that human nature always is human nature 
 would have us believe. I was as the other 
 youths around rae were ; no better and no 
 worse. There was more of high spirits and 
 the mischief of the out-of-bounds schoolboy 
 about it than of vice ; and there was, I 
 verily believe, less heartlessness in the un- 
 nameable places I am thinking of than 
 in many a drawing-room in Belgravia or 
 Mayfair. 
 
 Yes, I have heard of instances of noble 
 self-sacrifice, of devotion, in that substratum 
 of this London Society, which are worthy to 
 be placed beside the noblest deeds of 
 respectability. 
 
 It is not, however, to moralize over a 
 question which may perhaps some day stir 
 the w^orld — we have had the first battle- 
 notes from America — that I began this tale ; 
 and, apologising for having so taken up the
 
 MERVYN o'CONNOR. 73 
 
 kind reader's time, I will come at once to 
 ray entrance into " the world." 
 
 But such an event requires a new chapter.
 
 74 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 LADY MONYMUSK. 
 
 '' TOOK," said my especial crony, Tom 
 ^ Sackton, entering my room one morn- 
 ing, just as I was thinking of getting up ; 
 ^' are you going to the Tilliefruries' to- 
 night?" 
 
 I may as well here mention that I was 
 called Jock in the regiment, for no other 
 reason that I ever could discover except 
 that my name was Mervyn. 
 
 The careless question set me thinking. 
 The Tilliefruries were people to whom I. 
 had been especially recommended by my 
 mother, and also by Colonel Gilbeau, who
 
 MERVYN O'CONNOK. 75* 
 
 had been an early friend of her ladyship's. 
 Hitherto I had carefully refrained from any 
 society save that hinted at in the last chap- 
 ter. Would it not be as well to make the 
 plunge now, and to take this opportunity of 
 making their acquaintance ? 
 
 "Well;' I answered, ''I think I shall. 
 The only thing against it is that I am not 
 asked." 
 
 " Oh, that don't matter. It's not till 
 Thursday — come and leave a card. Theirs 
 are the best balls in London — no confounded 
 girls there." And the old-young man shook* 
 his head with all the sagacity of one who 
 had been hunted by mothers for a season. 
 For Tom Sackton was — or was to be — rich 
 in this world's ^oods, beinsf heir to an im- 
 mense estate in the Midlands. So we not 
 long after found ourselves outside the Tillie- 
 frurie portals, and I deposited two cards in 
 the hands of the butler, a portly personage 
 with a splendid expanse of white waistcoat, 
 who was airing himself at the door. Tom
 
 7G MERVYN o'CONNOR. 
 
 had stopped at the corner of the street, for, 
 having his invitation, he had no need to 
 leave a card, and when I rejoined him I at 
 first thought he was in a fit of apoplexy, so 
 red in the face was he. He dragged me 
 round the corner and out of sight of Tillie- 
 frurie House, and, just as I was about to 
 loosen his coUar, gave vent to an uproarious 
 shout of laughter. ^' Oh ! Jock, you are 
 too beautiful ! too splendid ! Do you know 
 who that was ?" 
 
 "Why, the butler, of course! What on 
 
 eai'th " 
 
 ^'The butler! That was Archibald 
 George Monymusk ; Fifteenth Marquis of 
 Tilliefrurie, and Hereditary Grand Cham- 
 berlain of Scotland ; Captain-General of the 
 Highland Irregular Cavalry ; Trustee of the 
 British Museum; etcetera, etcetera, etcetera." 
 And again Tom's laughter burst forth. 
 
 I Avas horror-struck, and then angry. 
 
 " Why the deuce does he stand at the 
 door and look like a butler, then ?"
 
 MERVYN O'CONNOK. 77 
 
 "Look like a butler! My dear Jock, 
 you should see his butler. His lordship 
 can't hold a candle to him in grandeur of 
 deportment." 
 
 This was not exactly an auspicious way 
 of commencing my acquaintance with the 
 family of whose greatness my mother had 
 so often spoken ; but there was nothing to 
 be done, and I returned a sadder and a 
 wiser man to my club ; and in the excite- 
 ment of planning an Ascot man-party soon 
 forgot the little contretemps. 
 
 But nevertheless when, faultlessly arrayed, 
 I elbowed — or rather gently squeezed — my 
 way up the stairs at Tilliefrurie House a few 
 days afterwards, it recurred unpleasantly to 
 my mind, particularly when, at the head of 
 the staircase, I found myself face to face 
 with my supposed butler. 
 
 "Ha I Here's my young friend who left 
 his card on me the other day — I told you 
 the story, my dear. My lady, here is Mr, 
 O'Connor."
 
 78 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 Lady Tilliefrurie, a superbly preserved 
 woman, of whom it was an insult to say 
 she had been handsome, turned with a smile 
 and aave me her hand, ^ivinc: the said 
 hand at the same time a slight pull which 
 said plainly enough, " Go on, and allow 
 other more worthy ones to come up." So I 
 moved on, a little mortified ; for in my own 
 -county the few ladies who entertained were 
 not wont so unceremoniously to evade my 
 small talk. In a few minutes I ran against 
 an acquaintance — a Major Draper, who was 
 to be one of our Ascot party, and who most 
 obligingly took me in hand and introduced 
 me to many persons, and set me fairly going 
 in the dancing way. 
 
 The shyness that at first oppressed me 
 soon wore off, and I was full of the courage 
 with which a slight flirtation with an elderly 
 girl, Avhom I had taken to supper and 
 supplied liberally with champagne and 
 <^utlets, had given me, when my eyes fell
 
 MERVYN o'CONNOR. 79 
 
 upon an apparition that fairly took away my 
 breath. 
 
 Tom Sackton was passing, hurrying to 
 his partner as the music commenced ; but I 
 laid ruthless hands on him. 
 
 " Stop a moment !" I cried, my heart 
 beating wildly as I spoke. '^Tell me who 
 that lovely woman is !" 
 
 "That! Don't you know? That's Lady 
 Monymusk," and he disappeared. 
 
 Monymusk was the title of the eldest son 
 of the house, who had lately returned from 
 a journey in x\merica, in which his wife had, 
 I knew, accompanied him, and had done 
 something wonderful in the way of roughing 
 it in the Yellowstone Mountains. To be 
 presented to her was now my sole object 
 and ambition in life. I threw over two 
 partners in my search of some one to do 
 this office. I dashed aimlessly about, getting 
 in everyone's wa3^ until at last, seeing my 
 beauty approach Lady Tilliefrurie, I plucked
 
 80 MERVYN o'CONNOR. 
 
 up courage and boldly went up and asked 
 her to introduce me. 
 
 The elder lady opened her fine eyes very 
 wide (wide enough, I thought maliciously, 
 to multiply the crows'-feet that were visible 
 at close quarters) and hesitated for a 
 moment. As I stood there, however, 
 apparently calmly determined, but inward- 
 ly in a mighty fear, she assented — "Ger- 
 trude dear, Mr. O'Connor wishes to know 
 you." 
 
 I bowed, and in another moment, I 
 know not how, found myself descending the 
 staircase, on the way to the supper-room, 
 with Lady Monymusk's little hand lying on 
 mv arm. 
 
 '' Your first ball ?" she said, soon after, 
 when we had obtained a round table all to 
 ourselves. "That is charming. It makes 
 you quite interesting. Very soon you will 
 be just like all the other young men, 
 saying the same thing as they do, cut out 
 according to the regulation pattern, like
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 81 
 
 Army clothes or boots. They tell me there 
 are only two sizes of boots issued to the 
 soldiers, and one or the other size they 
 must fit into. It often seems to me that 
 young men are much the same ; only there is 
 but one size of them." 
 
 I haven't the remotest notion of what I 
 said. I only know that as I sat there and 
 looked at her bright hazel eyes and watched 
 the soft, shy smiles that played about her 
 lips, and could not keep my eyes from the 
 delicately-moulded form whose every 
 movement was a poem, I was in a dream of 
 heaven. How I hated the raoustached 
 ruffian who came and took her away from 
 me ! How murdersome were my feelings 
 with regard to that woman who talked to 
 her, when the dance was over, for ten 
 minutes by the clock ; how deftly I awaited 
 the proper moment, and then was antici- 
 pated by another ruffian in my endeavour 
 to take her to her carriage ; how wildly 
 happy I was when she smiled a good night 
 
 A^OL. I. a
 
 82 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 to me ere she entered it ; liow dazedly I 
 walked home, puffing vigorously at an unlit 
 cigar ; how transcendent were my waking 
 thoughts before I slept ; how inconsequently 
 swe6t were the dreams which my servant 
 dissipated at ''ten minutes to parade" 
 time ! 
 
 " Do you know Monymusk ?" I asked at 
 lunch that day. 
 
 '' Yes — of course — at least, I know him 
 as much as anyone else, which is scarcely at 
 all." 
 
 "WhyV" 
 
 " Why? Well^ he's a rum chap — a little 
 touched in the head, I think," said Tom 
 Sackton, sipping his sherry thoughtfully. 
 *'Some say it's bad health, bat I believe 
 it's bad temper. Went off at a moment's 
 notice to the wilds somewhere, and made 
 that pretty woman go with him and wear 
 skins and live on locusts and wild honey. 
 But, by Jove, she is a stunner, isn't 
 she ?"
 
 MERVYN o'CONNOR. 83 
 
 I preserved a dignified silence. The idea 
 of Gertrude — already in my thoughts I 
 called her Gertrude — being spoken of as " a 
 stunner " was to me as the idea of a certain 
 class of paintings being called art is to Mr. 
 Ruskin. 
 
 Trembling in every limb, a few days 
 afterwards I called in Hertford Street, 
 where the Monymusks lived ; but fruitlessly 
 — she was "not at home." 
 
 Then I went into the Park and despaired 
 for half-an-hour, till it struck me that it was 
 barely possible that, at an hour when most 
 ladies were out driving, she might be 
 doing tlie same ; and I was a little com- 
 forted. 
 
 Wildly I paid duty visits and asked for in- 
 vitations — efforts which were rewarded by a 
 rapidly-increasing quantity of cards to stick 
 into the glass over my mantelpiece ; but ball 
 after ball and party after party did I 
 attend vainly. She was nowhere. 
 
 Day after day did I find important 
 
 G 2
 
 84 MERVYN O'CONNOE. 
 
 business which necessitated my walking 
 down Hertford Street ; but also in vain. 
 Nothing did I see save the closed muslin 
 curtains of the first-floor windows. My 
 habits changed. I gave up everything that 
 I fancied could be offensive to the sanctity 
 of my divinity. I lived only for her — only 
 for a woman whom I had once met, and 
 with whom I had only exchanged a few 
 meaningless sentences in a ball-room ! 
 
 Love at first sight may or may not be 
 possible. I only know that I have never 
 felt the same again as I felt when under the 
 influence of the recollection of those hazel 
 eyes.
 
 85 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 BAY LEY NORTH, 
 
 HOWEVER much in love a young man 
 may be, certain pleasures will 
 
 • 
 nevertheless assert some ascendancy over 
 
 him ; he cannot be always sighing like a 
 furnace, nor is it possible for him to spend 
 all the twelve hours penning sonnets to his 
 mistress's eyebrow. And for a young man 
 whose business, as it were, forces him into 
 gaiety, or at any rate into the society of 
 those to whom gaiety is the business of their 
 lives, it is impossible to allow his love, be it 
 ever so strong, to entirely absorb him. 
 Although in the very middle of the sweet
 
 86 MERVYN CONNOR. 
 
 thing called " Love's young dream," I yet 
 had time to give to some of the diversions 
 of my position ; and of all the diversions 
 more essentially fitted to the position of 
 an Ensign and Lieutenant in the Guards, 
 give me Ascot races. I say Ascot particu- 
 larly, as the head of those meetings 
 which combine the sport of the thing 
 with the society of the thing in a 
 pre-eminent degree. Goodwood, of course, 
 is as good ; but then Goodwood, at the time 
 of which I write, was scarcely, in the proper 
 sense of the term, a " popular " race-meeting, 
 and some part of the charm of Ascot was 
 the fact that, once outside the sacred 
 *' enclosure," you could meet a good many 
 people — as amusing as those inside, per- 
 haps, but unnameable to them. Epsom 
 was too big and vulgar; Goodwood too 
 small and select ; Ascot combined the 
 charms of both with the disadvantages of 
 neither.
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 87 
 
 So to Windsor one bright Monday did I, 
 in company with some half-dozen youngsters 
 as thoughtless as, if less in love than, I, go 
 down, and almost forgot Lady Mony musk's 
 — Gertrude's — unfathomable eyes in the 
 blissful anticipation of my week as honorary 
 member of the mess of the regiment 
 quartered there. 
 
 Deeply did one of us study "Ruff" 
 en route ; whimsically did another chaff 
 the officials and make fun generally of every 
 human being he saw, with occasional 
 variations, when no human being could be' 
 seen, into the comic ditties of the day, 
 or rather the night, given wdth exquisite 
 imitation of the music-hall gentleman who 
 sang them. Pleasantly did Marx (who had 
 been persuaded to allow an ambitious 
 junior, anxious to show his zeal, to do 
 Adjutant for a week) discourse in my ear 
 of the witty verses which might be written 
 anent the Ascot Week and its follies.
 
 88 MERVYN O'CONNOR. 
 
 Beautifully did Charlie Greenaway, our 
 beauty, gaze at such ladies as from the 
 platform encountered his earnest eyes ; and 
 wisely did our Colonel, who happened to 
 be in the carriasre, converse as to the folly 
 of young fellows presuming to bet until they 
 at least knew "Ruff" by heart, had made 
 the intimate acquaintance of most of the 
 owners and all the trainers of racehorses, 
 and were able to compete with ''the 
 Admiral" in the proper adjustment of the 
 weights of a handicap. 
 
 I felt angry with myself once or twice 
 when, laughing at some remark of Tom 
 Sackton, or wondering at the mimic skill 
 of Johnny Blowes, I found that I had quite 
 forgotten my grancle passion — a passion of 
 which, by the way, I wasintensely proud ; and 
 which 1 had actually gone so far as, one even- 
 ing, after perhaps an extra glass of brandy- 
 and-soda, to confide to my ally, Tom Sack- 
 ton, whose sympathy was, if a little coarse, 
 thoroughly flattering.
 
 MERVYN O'OONNOR. 89 
 
 Tom believed in nie already, although I 
 was two years his junior, both in years and 
 regimental seniority. That ladies should fall 
 in love with me he looked upon as correct, 
 and only following out the fitness of things ; 
 and he, indeed, once went so far as to give 
 up dancing with Lady Alice Manworth}^, 
 only because I had reported to him a little 
 incident of my first week's ball-going. Which 
 incident was this — 
 
 Emboldened by the soft glances of my 
 previous partners, I had dared not only to be 
 introduced to the reigning beauty (in those 
 days there were " reigning beauties " 
 amongst the girls — the young married 
 women had not monopolised everything 
 then), but actually to ask her to come down 
 to supper with me. Now, as is well known, 
 to ask an acknowledged beauty (I speak of 
 those days, hien entendu) to dance at all on 
 first introduction was a piece of impudence, 
 even when the dance was to be '^ square." 
 To ask her to valse was almost unparalleled
 
 90 MERVYN o'CONNOR. 
 
 effrontery, but to ask her to come to supper! 
 No punishment in the way of snubbing could 
 be too great. 
 
 Lady Alice tried to look down upon me, 
 but as the sweet creature's head only reached 
 my shoulder, this was scarcely to be done. 
 Then she raised her blue eyes to mine with 
 a wealth (as the novelists have it) — a wealth 
 of meaning — and very unpleasant meaning — 
 in them ; yet still I quailed not, but stood 
 my ground manfully, holding out my 
 arm. 
 
 It is said that a great millionaire of 
 well-known habits of caution was once 
 astonished into backing an impecunious 
 speculator's bill by the very wonder of the 
 latter daring to make such a request. The 
 same effect was achieved in my case. Lady 
 Alice put her little hand on my proffered 
 arm and came to supper ! 
 
 But then her revenge began. To my 
 brilliant small talk, which became less 
 brilliant as it ran itself out, she only
 
 MERVYN O CONNOR. 91 
 
 responded by supercilious little raisings of 
 the eyebrows and shrugging of the shoulders. 
 Not a word came out of the haughtily- 
 curved little mouth ; not a glance from the 
 magnificent eyes. I might have been a 
 footman waiting upon her little ladyship 
 at supper — a footman who forgot himself 
 and had to be kept in his proper place. At 
 last she had finished her chicken wing and 
 rose, taking my arm again as she would 
 have taken up a stick, just to assist her up 
 the stairs. Then, just as we were nearing 
 the corner where dozed her mother, she 
 fired a shot — 
 
 ^' I thought the holidays had not begun 
 yet!" 
 
 ^'Holidays! Leave, you mean. Oh, I 
 am going to do duty with my regiment 
 another six months." 
 
 '' Really ; but surely that doesn't let you 
 free from school?" 
 
 " School, Lady Alice ! I am in the Fourth 
 Guards !"
 
 92 MEUVYN o'CONNOR. 
 
 " Indeed ! I thought you were in the Eton 
 Volunteers." 
 
 Then she turned with a smile to a monster 
 with an immense moustache — that object 
 of my young ambition ! — and seemed entirely 
 to forojet the existence of one so insic;nifi- 
 cant as I. 
 
 As I have said, Tom resenting this, Lady 
 Alice lost one of her partners ; but, as Tom's 
 dancing was rather bear-like, she probably 
 did not much feel her punishment. The 
 sequel of the tale was that, some twelve 
 months after, she told me the story as a 
 good one against herself. '' Fancy a strange 
 boy, just introduced, coming up and asking 
 to take me to supper ! I declare I lost my 
 head, it was so funny." 
 
 We were in a break driving to covert, 
 and Lady Alice had flirted with me 
 prodigiously the night before, and seemed 
 quite willing to continue the amusement 
 still. 
 
 " I suppose you never looked at him?"
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 93 
 
 '' Looked at him, Mr. O'Connor ! if I had 
 I should have burst out laughing, his 
 impertinence was so charming ; and where 
 would my dignity have been then ?" 
 
 ^'Oh, I only asked because, you see — the 
 impertinent youth happened to be me !" 
 
 « But I must return to my first Ascot Week. 
 The mess dinner on the opening night was 
 marked by an incident that occasioned some 
 amusement. The champagne was strong. 
 I was excited and obliging, and never 
 dreamed of saying '' No " to the numerous 
 applications to drink wine with me, nor' 
 suspected anything in the nature of a plot 
 against my sobriety. So it happened that 
 when the table had been cleared, and the 
 bottles placed thereon before the officer on 
 duty, I was ripe for anything, and particu- 
 larly suited for the amusement of others. 
 
 ''Now then, Jock, go on," said the 
 Ensign on one side of me. 
 
 " Go on ! " echoed he on the other 
 side.
 
 ^94 MERVYN O'CONNOR. 
 
 "Now, then, O'Connor," said a grave 
 Captain opposite ; " we are all waiting for 
 you." 
 
 "To do what? To say grace?" I 
 asked, wondering whether it was a sudden 
 cold that made my voice so husky and 
 strange, and whether that also was the 
 cause of the indistinctness of the said 
 Captain's outhne, and of the far-off sound of 
 his remark. 
 
 "Why, to propose the Colonel's 
 health." 
 
 I should mention that the Colonel, lately 
 exchanged from another regiment, was of 
 the order of men who think that the 
 frequent assertion of it improves and 
 magnifies their dignity, and who mistake 
 the assumption of greatness for the real 
 ^article. 
 
 "'PosetheColonel'shealth !" I observed, all 
 in one word. 
 
 "Yes, of course — don't you know it is 
 the right thing? In Ascot Week the junior
 
 MEKVYN o'cONNOR. 95 
 
 honorary member of the mess always does 
 so. You should have prepared a speech 
 beforehand. However, I daresay he won't 
 be particular. Go ahead !" 
 
 " Go ahead !" said the Ensign on my 
 right. 
 
 " Go ahead !" cried the Ensign on my 
 left. 
 
 " Quite sure I must ?" I demanded, with 
 the calmness of despair. 
 
 " Quite sure — of course — couldn't possibly 
 help it," were heard all round. 
 
 Then some one knocked with a spoon " 
 upon the table, somebody gave me a push, 
 and, as I arose, I became aware that my 
 chair was taken away from under me. 
 
 It was neck or nothing, and I began : 
 
 " Gentlenaen— " 
 
 Thunders of applause at my end of the 
 table, and at the other a vision of several 
 surprised faces and of one very angry-looking 
 red one. 
 
 ^' I rise propose Colonel's health. Long
 
 96 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 life to the Colonel. May he live long and 
 
 prosper — may 
 
 *'What does this mean?" thundered a 
 voice from the other end of the table. 
 '* Sit down, sir. What's his name ?" 
 
 ''O'Connor," I heard, just as I sat down 
 with a bump upon the floor. 
 
 " Take him away ! — a most disgraceful 
 exhibition ! — take him away ! Take him to 
 bed ! I shall v/rite to Colonel Hendry 
 to-morrow morning. I have no notion of 
 such impertinence ! Take him away !" 
 
 And taken away I was, struggling 
 manfully, by three stalwart Ensigns in 
 ecstasies of laughter at the success of the 
 joke. 
 
 *' It's a court-martial, Jock," said one of 
 these Job's comforters as we reached the 
 first landing. 
 
 '' Go to the devil !" I exclaimed, hurling 
 him away from me. "And I'm not going 
 to bed — I'm going to Rattino's to-night." 
 
 My captors had had enough of fighting
 
 MERVYN o'CONNOR. 97 
 
 with me — for I was strong and determined 
 — and consented to a compromise. It was 
 agreed that 1 should stay in my room, 
 enjoying a bottle or two of soda-water, 
 until ten o'clock, when it was the custom 
 of the C. 0. to return to his room, and that 
 then I might descend, in plain clothes, and 
 make one of the party which was to sally 
 forth and tempt fortune at the hazard-table 
 so kindly provided by a philanthropic 
 gentleman who went by the name of Rattino 
 — his real cognomen being Ratt. 
 
 I carried out my part of the compact, 
 and at eleven o'clock we drove off in two 
 flies to the back street where the Signor 
 entertained. 
 
 The scene that met my eyes within, when 
 I could see through the dense clouds of 
 tobacco-smoke, was striking enough ; but a 
 gambling-table has been described ad 
 nauseam, and a hazard-table in Windsor 
 differed but little, as far as the passion to 
 which it gave rise is concerned, from the 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 98 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 roulette or rouge-et-noir table of old 
 Homburg and Baden. 
 
 One figure struck me particularly. A 
 pale, aristocratic face, young, yet with many 
 of the lines of age about it — lines wrought 
 by dissipation, and perhaps by anxiety 
 which no one knew of, added to by re- 
 morse which none suspected ; an enormous 
 cigar stuck in one corner of the well shaped 
 mouth ; a hat tilted almost at right angles 
 on one side, and making you wonder at the 
 skill with which it kept on ; two large and 
 intelligent, if somewhat sunken eyes watch- 
 ing the dice as they fell ; and two white 
 hands, trembling, but not with excitement, 
 taking in and paying out the counters that 
 represented money — that represented more 
 than money to that man of high lineage 
 and great estate ; that represented the 
 ruin of an old family ; the laying low 
 of many a mighty oak; the enriching 
 of many an Israelitish speculator on human 
 folly.
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 99 
 
 Even to me, young as I was, half drunk 
 as I was, it was sad to see that pale 
 young aristocrat hopelessly drinking and 
 gambling away a life that but a few short 
 seasons ago had seemed so full of happi- 
 ness and promise. 
 
 One other face attracted me before I 
 bought counters — following the example of 
 those with whom I had come — and sat down 
 to play a game of which I was absolutely 
 ignorant. It was that of a man of middle 
 age, with strikingly handsome, regular 
 features, a black moustache, and dark eyes 
 of singular brilliancy. As I looked at him, 
 he happened to raise them, and I felt a 
 thrill run through me ; while at the same 
 time a dim recollection of having seen them 
 before came across my brain. Where ? I 
 could not think, and soon I was deep in my 
 first gamble, perplexedly wondering why I 
 lost and why I won, but taking good and 
 bad fortune with the stoical composure I 
 knew to be en regie, 
 
 h2
 
 100 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 At last the box came to me, and I 
 called and threw mains with all the cheerful- 
 ness of youth and ignorance, until I became 
 aware of the fact that I had lost a very large 
 sum of money, besides being in debt to Mr. 
 Rattino for about as much besides. Then a 
 hand was put' on my shoulder, and, turning, 
 I was confronted with the dark eyes of the 
 man I mentioned as having attracted me on 
 entering the room. 
 
 " That's good enough for one night, my 
 boy," said he, in a low tone. 
 
 "What the devil is that to you?" was my 
 retort ; for the interference of a stranger 
 seemed to me unwarrantable. 
 
 " A good deal. I take an interest in you. 
 Don't lose more than you can pay. It's not 
 honourable, and, besides, it's deuced un- 
 comfortable next morning. You've lost 
 about three times your year's income now. 
 Come away ; I'll walk home with you, and 
 we'll shake off the atmosphere of this hole 
 in the fresh air, and have some nerves left
 
 MERVYN o'CONNOR. 101 
 
 wherewith to spot a winner to-morrow. 
 Come along." 
 
 There was something so winning in his 
 manner, so pleasant in his expression, his 
 whole demeanour seemed so free from all 
 desire to unduly interfere with my rights as 
 a free and emancipated grown-up man like 
 himself, that I j^ielded incontinently, and in 
 a few minutes, after a tender " good night" 
 from Rattino, found myself walking down 
 the Castle Hill, puffing at one of my com- 
 panion's excellent cigars. 
 
 '*To chuck away money at a game you' 
 don't know is wasting wilfully one of the 
 <jhief blessings of life — excitement. When 
 you have learned hazard, the king of games 
 of chance, you will then be able to enjoy it ; 
 at presenc you are simply throwing good 
 money into Mr. Rattino's pocket, and gain- 
 ing no pleasure from the amusement. One 
 of the great faults of youth is to only half 
 understand what youth's pleasures are. 
 Even in their vice young men are fools ; for
 
 102 MERVYN o'CONNOR. 
 
 vice properly managed is delicious. Vice 
 mismanaged is not much better than virtue." 
 
 I laughed foolishly, though what at I 
 scarcely knew. Most of my intellect was 
 taken up in hiding from my companion 
 that I could only with great difficulty steer 
 a straight course. Already two or three 
 times I had lurched up against him, and, 
 as he appeared not to notice it, I nursed the 
 hope that he supposed the erratic steering 
 was on his side. 
 
 '' There are two great pleasures in this 
 life," he went on, after turning curiously to 
 scan the face of a woman who flitted by ; 
 " gambling and women. Though they are 
 not to be compared one with the other. 
 Gambling is the only passion^ properly so- 
 called. It absorbs all your faculties. In a 
 really good fit of it the end of the world 
 might come, but you would hold your cards 
 or throw your dice till the consuming fire 
 reached you ; you would play on while your 
 leg was being cut off; you would play on
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 103 
 
 though all your dearest friends were dying ; 
 you would almost rather starve yourself 
 than give up any precious time to meals ; 
 and you only eat for the purpose of coming 
 back fresh to the table. Do you, can you, 
 ever feel this for a woman ? Pshaw ! a cold 
 in the head cools your love ; the gout for 
 the time kills it altogether. Still women are 
 very nice things, properly made use of. 
 But what I was going to impress upon you 
 was this. Both these pleasures are spoiled 
 by what some idiots have put down as a 
 pleasure per se — wine. If you hadn't been 
 
 drunk to-night, for instance " I tried 
 
 to murmur an indignant denial, but he took 
 no notice, and continued, " If you hadn't been 
 drunk you'd have got plenty of amusement 
 out of this evening. As it is you get none. 
 You've lost a lot of money which you can't 
 spare, and you haven't even learned the 
 game of hazard !" 
 
 At this moment we reached the gate of 
 the barracks, and then, as we were about
 
 104 MERVYN o'CONNOR. 
 
 to part, I managed to put a question which 
 had been trembling on my tongue for some 
 time. 
 
 ^'You know my name," I said; '*but 
 somehow — although I seem to remember 
 you — I cannot quite remember " 
 
 ^'My name?" he said, with a peculiar 
 smile. " Yes, I knew your name ; and you 
 have seen me before. I am Bayley North."
 
 105 
 
 CHAPTER Vir. 
 
 ASCOT. 
 
 ^' nnWO to one bar one !" ^' Two ponies 
 J- I'll take!" "Here! I'll lay agin 
 anything!" '^I'll bet against some of these 
 outsiders!" "Two to one bar one!" 
 "What do you want to do, my Lord?" 
 
 '' What do you bar ?" I asked, complacent- 
 ly, trying my best to look as if I were an 
 old Turfite and had not only just learned 
 the meaning of that mysterious expression. 
 
 "Flavins," replied the ringman, as if he 
 were confiding to me an important secret. 
 Flavins, then, was to be the winner, said I 
 to myself; and out came my new betting-
 
 106 MERVYN O'CONNOE. 
 
 book, with my name and the name of my 
 club in clear characters on the back 
 thereof. 
 
 "Two ponies — Flavius. Make it cen» 
 turies, Colonel." At first I thought he 
 alluded to the time it would take me to pay 
 if I lost, but immediately remembered that 
 "centuries" was the turf word for hun- 
 dreds — a very fair specimen of racing 
 humour. 
 
 " All right — two hundred to one — 
 Flavius." 
 
 And the first bet was inscribed upon the 
 virgin pages of my betting-book. 
 
 It was the first race of the meeting. I 
 mounted to the top of the stand, armed 
 with a pair of glasses and a card. Two 
 hundred pounds, after my tragic hazard the 
 night before, meant a great deal, and my 
 hand shook as I strove to make out where 
 the favourite was as they came into the 
 straight. There were only five horses in it, 
 and he was fourth.
 
 MERVYN O'CONNOE. 107 
 
 But what a fool the jockey was ! I felt 
 as if I could have done better myself. The 
 two leading horses have a set-to. Crack go 
 the whips. The ring shout, but my whole 
 thoughts are with that chestnut horse calmly 
 pulling up in the rear. Pulling up, as I 
 live ! Flavins is last, and I have lost my 
 first bet in a horse-race. 
 
 Sadly descending for champagne, I ran 
 against Colonel North. 
 
 '* Ah ! O'Connor, how do you feel ? A 
 little chippy after last night, eh ? No ? 
 What a thing it is to be young ! But don't 
 do it too often. Every night you drink one 
 B.-and-S. too many, you discount so much 
 of your most valuable possession — that same 
 youth. Didn't I see you betting just now — 
 not on that rascally-run race, I hope ?" 
 
 " I backed Flavins," said I, sadly. 
 
 North looked at me pityingly. 
 
 "My dear bo}^ did you know anything 
 of Flavins ?" 
 
 '*No."
 
 108 MERVYN O'CONNOR. 
 
 " Had you ever seen him before ?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Or looked into RufF for his perform- 
 ances ?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Or asked his owner, or trainer, or any- 
 one connected with the stable ?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Then why the deuce did you back 
 him ?" 
 
 *' Well — you see — he was favourite — and 
 I thought " 
 
 The Colonel interrupted me with a calm 
 smile. 
 
 "Let me give you a bit of advice, ray 
 boy. Never back the favourite in a small 
 race — unless you know something. They 
 have a wonderful knack of not winning; 
 and, as to Flavins being the favourite here, 
 he was not. You could get eight to one 
 about him." 
 
 ''Eight to one ! Why, I only got two." 
 
 " Two for an eight-to-one chance, and the
 
 MERVYN o'CONNOR. 109' 
 
 horse not meant! Well, I suppose you will 
 learn, but certainly it seems to me that 
 you " 
 
 "That I am a fool?" I asked, bitterly; 
 but he had turned away to speak to a very 
 shabby-looking individual who appeared to 
 be burdened by some tremendous secret. 
 
 I sauntered away, feeling that existence 
 was rather wearisome, and wondering 
 dreamily Avh ether I should have much 
 difficulty in raising the money I required ; 
 and soon found myself among the coaches, 
 on which the greatest event of the day, to 
 the ladies at least — luncheon — was going 
 bravely forward. 
 
 '' Hullo, O'Connor !" said a voice from 
 above me. ''Come up and eat. You're 
 wanted here." 
 
 I looked up, and recognized Sir Arthur 
 Holderly, one of the senior members of the 
 Four-in-Hand Club, and generally reputed 
 to be the best judge of horses and women 
 in London. Attired in the regulation brown
 
 110 MERVYN o'CONNOR. 
 
 coat, with an enormous flower in his button- 
 hole, and the sprucest wig that could be 
 bought for money on his head, he was in 
 his glory ; and beside him on the box-seat 
 was — Lady Monymusk ! 
 
 '' Yes, come up and tell me all about the 
 race, Mr. O'Connor," she said, in that ring- 
 ing voice which made my heart beat fast. 
 "All these people are so greedy that they 
 will think of nothing but champagne and 
 lobster salad, and I want to know what is 
 going to win the Cup." 
 
 I certainly did not at that moment feel 
 very well qualified to assist her ; but, nothing 
 loth, I climbed up to the seat behind her, 
 and straightway entered a seventh heaven 
 and utterly forgot my miseries — races, Jews, 
 hazard, Rattino, and all. 
 
 There are some women who have in them 
 a faculty of constantly surprising you; of 
 awakening in you emotions you did not 
 know you possessed, and which can be 
 stirred by no one but themselves. Seen
 
 MERVYN O'CONNOR. Ill 
 
 a ball-room, you would say that Gertrude 
 Monymusk is so best seen, glittering in 
 diamonds and in all the witcheries of art- 
 istic dress. Seen in her plainest costume, 
 walking along a muddy country road, you 
 could declare to yourself that your impres- 
 sion had been wrong, and that it was so she 
 looked her very best ; while at night again 
 you would return to your former belief. 
 Seeing her sad, you could not help owning 
 that sadness became her sympathetic face 
 better than any other emotion could become 
 it ; hearing her silvery laugh, you would ' 
 swear that such music should never cease, 
 and that a sigh from her would be a sadness 
 to all. She could be caressing, and you 
 adored ; haughty, and you worshipped ; 
 wilful, and you would bend your neck to 
 place it under her fairy foot; soft, and you 
 melted into a tenderness you little dreamed 
 your nature was capable of. That men 
 should love her surprised rae little. That 
 they could go about their daily amusements
 
 112 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 and occupations without gaining her love did 
 surprise me. The world was all Gertrude 
 Monymusk to me. There were other things, 
 it is true; but they were all only adjuncts 
 to the one grand, sweet, all-absorbing fact 
 — she existed! 
 
 How long I sat there and what I said I 
 do not know, but I am certain that she read 
 my secret easily enough, and I scarcely think 
 it displeased her. My failure for so long to 
 see her was .easily accounted for. 
 
 "Monymusk has been ill for a longer 
 time than usual, and I have not time to see 
 even my most intimate friends when he is 
 ill." 
 
 " I wish I were an intimate friend," I 
 remarked, stupidly. 
 
 *' Do you think intimacy is reckoned by 
 time, by the number of years one has known 
 a person?" she asked — and Heaven only 
 knows what I should have replied had not 
 a voice at my elbow interrupted us. 
 
 " How do you do, Lady Monymusk ?
 
 MERVYN O'CONNOR. 113 
 
 O'Connor, I want to speak to you if you can 
 spare time." 
 
 Colonel North was the speaker, and I 
 hated him at that moment with an unholy 
 hatred, but complied. 
 
 '* Look here," he said, when we were on 
 the ground ; *' you have plenty of time for 
 spooning elsewhere. It's ruinous work on 
 a racecourse, particularly when you have to 
 get money back. How do you propose to 
 pay what you lost last night and this morn- 
 ing ?" 
 
 "" Oh, the Jews, I suppose," I answered, ' 
 vaguely, trying to see what Lady Mony musk 
 was doing. 
 
 " No, no, it's too soon to come to that 
 game. I have a better way. Ringwood is 
 going to win the next race." 
 
 "Is he?" I asked, a little incredulously, 
 for the Colonel announced this as if he were 
 affirming that it was a hot day, or that 
 Queen Anne was dead. 
 
 '' Yes. I have certain information. He 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 114 MEEVYN O'CONNOR. 
 
 is at five to one. If you like, I'll put you a 
 monkey on^ — I am going into the ring now." 
 
 I hesitated. A *' monkey" — £500 — more 
 lost would be disastrous. 
 
 "It's about the best thing I've come 
 across for a long time," said he, a little im- 
 patiently; ''you can trust to my know- 
 ledge." 
 
 So I assented — he departed — and I 
 climbed over again to Lady Monymusk's 
 side. 
 
 " How long have you known Colonel 
 North ?" she asked. 
 
 *' I only made his acquaintance last night ; 
 he seems a very good-natured fellow." 
 
 She smiled — an odd smile — and said — 
 
 ''I suppose they are all good-natured 
 fellows to you now ; but — don't think it 
 impertinent of me — don't trust anyone, not 
 even Colonel North — too far. Are you 
 rich?" 
 
 *' No — only a second son — and my bro- 
 ther's not what you would call rich."
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 115 
 
 '^ Oh !" She seemed puzzled, and the 
 subject dropped, as several talkative people, 
 little suspecting my homicidal feelings re- 
 garding them, insisted on taking up Lady 
 Monyrausk's attention. But it seemed 
 to me, although she laughed and talked 
 pleasantly enough with these people, that 
 there was a nuance in her manner to me — a 
 something of sympathy, of comprehension, 
 of together-drawing (if I may so express it) 
 — which was lacking in her manner to 
 others. Her conversation with them was 
 not free from the artificiality that all such 
 talk must have ; with me she seemed utterly 
 and entirely natural and real. 
 
 She was, perhaps, the first woman, not a 
 relative, with whom I had felt quite at my 
 ease. No wonder I loved her, for amid all 
 the joys and glories of youth there is not 
 one so strong as to make us quite forget 
 that awful bugbear, mauvaise lionte. 
 
 Shyness scarcely expresses it, and, indeed, 
 the French expression is inadequate to 
 
 i2
 
 116 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 shadow forth its agony. I believe there are 
 moments of his existence when the self- 
 conscious young man — just escaped, or 
 hardly escaped, from hobbledehoyhood — 
 would gladly welcome a leap down a yawn- 
 ing chasm to escape the horror of his false 
 position ; and I have been myself assured by 
 a young gentleman not given to early hours 
 or weak potations, that if he had often to 
 breakfast with the ladies at a country-house 
 he should commit suicide: and that he would 
 far rather face all his creditors at once than 
 the battery of amused eyes opposite him 
 when struggling to induce his erratic hand 
 to convey the clattering cup to his parched 
 lips. Tom Sackton — who was rather of 
 this class — was wont to classify the ladies he 
 met in country houses according to a peculiar 
 scale of his own. There were the " one- 
 B-and-S. women," the '' two-B.-and-S. 
 women," and I believe some sarcastic ladies 
 who reached the "three" class; meaning 
 that this amount of Dutch courage was
 
 MERVYN O'CONNOR. 117 
 
 required by hini before lie — jaded and 
 tobacco-worn — could face their fresh prattle 
 and inquisitorial glances at the morning 
 meal. 
 
 With Lady Monymusk you felt that, 
 although your hand were ever so unsteady, 
 and whatever tales your glassy eye might 
 tell, you were sure of a sympathy devoid of 
 sarcasm, or of that pity which is worse than 
 sarcasm. She was a woman all over, soft 
 and loveable, and men and women all alike 
 bore testimony to her seductive nature. 
 
 But, while I sat on the coach drinking in 
 draughts of love, the bell had rung, the 
 preliminary canters were over, and all were 
 eagerly awaiting the start for the last race 
 of the day. 
 
 Five monkeys — two thousand live hun- 
 dred pounds ! It was an enormous stake 
 for me — indeed, for anyone — to have on a 
 single race, and that not an important race ; 
 but the days I write of were the days of 
 plunging — days which ended in the dissipa-
 
 118 MERVYN O'CONNOE. 
 
 tion of many a large estate, the ruin of 
 many a high-spirited young aristocrat. 
 
 As the cry arose, " They're off!" I almost 
 forgot my companion, while I looked for 
 the colour of the horse on which what w^as 
 to me a fortune depended. There he was, 
 going well within himself, fourth. Ha ! The 
 leading horse has shot his bolt. Ringwood 
 is third. But they are getting near home ; 
 why does not my jockey bestir himself? 
 That big chestnut in front is going strong 
 and well, and is bestrode by the best rider of 
 the day. It is the favourite, and the cry 
 goes up, "The favourite wins — the favourite 
 wins !" It is a splendid race ; you could 
 cover the three with a table-cloth. The 
 great jockey raises his whip, so does the 
 boy on the bay, and as he does so I see at 
 once that his chance is hopeless, for his 
 animal swerves towards the rails and is "out 
 of it " in a second. 
 
 Ringwood's rider sits as still as a statue, 
 and his knee must be touching that of the
 
 MERVYN O'CONNOR. 119 
 
 Other jockey — they gallop as if the two 
 horses were glued together — both whips are 
 going now. The excitement is intense. 
 " Ringwood ! the favourite ! the favourite ! 
 Ringwood 1" echo in'the air as the partisans 
 of either animal yell themselves hoarse. 
 They pass the post amid a roar of voices. 
 " A dead heat," is on every tongue. I am 
 almost too excited to look at the telegraph- 
 board. 
 
 *' Can you see the number, Lady Mony- 
 musk ?" for, with steady hand, she has 
 raised her glasses. *' Ring wood's number is 
 seven." 
 
 '^ And seven is hoisted !" Was it chance, 
 an accident, that as she put down the opera- 
 glasses her hand rested for a moment on 
 mine, which was trembling with excite- 
 ment. 
 
 *' I congratulate you, Mr. O'Connor; but 
 don't get too fond of betting, and don't 
 take Colonel North's advice in everything. 
 Here he comes, beaming with success. I
 
 120 MERVYN O'CONNOE. 
 
 daresay he has won a great deal of 
 money." 
 
 '' Well,'^ said Colonel North, mounting on 
 the coach and pouring himself out a glass of 
 champagne ; '' well, we pulled it off, you 
 see ; but it was an uncommon near thing. 
 Murphy waited just a little too long; if he 
 had let Ringwood out at the bend we 
 should have been spared that bit of excite- 
 ment, and minutes like those shorten one's 
 life. I feel as if I had at least three more 
 grey hairs than I had before the race." 
 
 ** It is a pity to waste so much emotion 
 on such a thing as whether one horse can 
 gallop a little faster than another, is it not ?" 
 asked Lady Monymusk, and I noticed that 
 she was deadly pale, and that her lips 
 trembled. 
 
 " What is there in life more worthy of 
 emotion — woman, do you think?" He spoke 
 roughly, and without the polish that usually 
 marked him, for Bayley North's manners 
 were esteemed perfect.
 
 MERVYN O'CONNOR. 121 
 
 Seeing that several people were below 
 who belonged to the coach's party, I turn- 
 ed to descend ; and, as I did so, I was 
 aware that Lady Monymusk said some- 
 thing to him in a low voice, and I heard 
 his reply. 
 
 " You are wrong — quite wrong. I will 
 have no interference here, Gertrude — under- 
 stand that !" 
 
 He called her by her Christian name ! It 
 seemed strange, considering that they had 
 before seemed to be but acquaintances ; and 
 what could he mean by her interference 7 
 Had it any reference to me ? Revolving 
 these things, I hunted out the regimental 
 coach, and took my place among the merry 
 crew — many of whom had lost several years' 
 income that day, but all of whom were in 
 the wildest spirits — and whirled away back 
 to Windsor town, escaping a series of break- 
 neck accidents by a series of miracles. 
 
 Immersed in the intricacies of a pool, I 
 forgot to go to the hell that night, and went
 
 122 MERVYN O'CONNOE. 
 
 to bed to dream of Gertrude and of the 
 enormous sum of money soon to be placed 
 in the care of an astonished banker. 
 
 Alas ! the latter part of my dream was 
 not doomed to be verified. Although North 
 put me on another "good thing" that meet- 
 ing which duly came off, my Turf successes 
 only went to swell the exchequer of Signor 
 Rattino, and on the Saturday I returned to 
 town a sadder, perhaps a wiser man, to 
 seek amongst the haunts of Israel for a few 
 hundreds wherewith to appear at Tattersall's 
 on Monday to '' settle." 
 
 One thing my first week's " plunging " had 
 done for me. I suddenly, with a certain set 
 of men, leaped into popularity. There is no 
 profession in which there is so strong an 
 esprit de corps as that of the gambler. 
 
 As great mutual danger attracts people to 
 each other, so does great mutual excite- 
 ment. Smith and Jones both intently 
 watching the same dice-box as it rattles, or 
 the same card as it is turned, are forced,
 
 MERVYN O'CONNOR. 123' 
 
 by the identity of interest, to love one 
 another. 
 
 Watch the meeting of a couple of gam- 
 blers next day after a hard night ; you would 
 think that at the least one had just confided 
 to the other his deep love for his sister, or 
 had volunteered to back his acceptances for 
 life.
 
 124 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 A NEW CHURCH-GOER. 
 
 T HAVE had so much to say concerning 
 -^ Lady Monymusk and Colonel Bayley 
 North that I have quite forgotten my host 
 of Park Lane. For, having finished the 
 martyrdom yclept drill, I had now taken 
 up my quarters in dear old Gilbeau s little 
 house, of which he had given up the 
 ground-floor entirely to me. We certainly 
 met but seldom, for his ways and mine 
 were diametrically in opposite directions, 
 and my evenings began just when he was 
 stepping into bed with the French novel 
 which was seldom far from his side, and
 
 MERVYN O'CONNOR. 125 
 
 with which he was wont to read himself to 
 sleep. 
 
 " A comfortable position ; two candles and 
 a French novel, and you may defy Fate and 
 forget the sordid, practical world outside," 
 he said. "Why, my dear Mervyn, while 
 you are standing about in tight boots and 
 struggling to understand something of the 
 artificial lying human beings around you, 
 and vainly attempting to extract either 
 amusement or instruction from them, I am 
 reading their inmost souls in the page of the 
 one man who thoroughly understood human 
 nature, Balzac. One of his novels will tell 
 you more than all your own study at first 
 hand would tell in a long lifetime of going 
 out in Society. I thought I knew some- 
 thing, but I find I was a child in knowledge 
 of men and women till I found him out. 
 Fancy living thirty years without having 
 read Balzac !" 
 
 And the Colonel shuddered and pro- 
 ceeded upstairs, while I donned my coat.
 
 126 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 and, calling a cab, dashed off to some party. 
 Colonel Gilbeau— or '' Old Gil," as I now 
 called him even to his face, he having pro- 
 tested against the formal designation — was 
 blessed with a neat little fortune of some 
 four thousand a year, and, as he had spent 
 but little for many years, it had quite re- 
 covered from the ravages of his jeunesse 
 orageuse, if indeed there had been any such 
 thing with him. For myself, I was rather 
 inclined to doubt his terrible tales of wild 
 excess and mad passion, which tales were 
 generally brought up to point a moral when 
 any story of my doings came to his ears. 
 And he managed to hear what I was about, 
 having gathered round him a selected circle 
 of old friends, picked up at the solitary 
 Club on the books of which he had kept his 
 name. A bachelor friend with Club ideas 
 and Club morals, but who can give an ex- 
 cellent dinner in his own house, is a vara 
 avis in this empty world, and " Old Gil " 
 became marvellously popular with the smart
 
 MERVYN O'CONNOR. 127 
 
 old gentlemen I used sometimes to meet in 
 the hall of our little house. I looked in 
 upon one or two of their little parties, and 
 was duly impressed with the immense 
 superiority of everything that had been over 
 everything that then was — men, w^omen, 
 horses, clothes, hats, manners — everything, 
 as far as I could see, .except morals. From 
 the tales over which they all chuckled I 
 should be inclined to think that we had 
 somewhat improved in this little respect ; 
 with regard to all else the laudator temporis 
 acti principle came in with a vengeance. 
 
 ^' Look at the young men of the present 
 day," said old General BuUyard, with a 
 fierce snort. " Why, there is not one of 
 'em who knows how to make love to a 
 woman or to put down a man. Look at 
 
 that row at the Club the other day. 
 
 In my time there would have been a slight 
 disagreement over the colour of the wall- 
 paper, or the Christian name of the head- 
 waiter, or the number of miles between
 
 128 MERVYN o'CONNOR. 
 
 Hyde Park Corner and Newmarket, and the 
 two would have gone out like men and 
 settled it. Instead of that, here we have a 
 vulgar brawl, with a black eye, a meeting of 
 a Club committee, a scandal in the papers, 
 a woman's name introduced, lawyers con- 
 sulted, and a case in the Divorce Court. 
 Damme, sir ! if a man will break a Com- 
 mandment, let him do it like a gentleman, 
 and not like a bargee !" And he glared at 
 me as if I had be^n one of the heroes of the 
 little fracas alluded to. 
 
 To tell the truth, I believe that, when they 
 had not me there to preach at, the dear old 
 gentlemen, casting off their innocent hypo- 
 crisy, were more inclined to weep over their 
 lost capabilities of enjoying the present than 
 to magnify the somewhat apocryphal past. 
 The sight of me, young and ardent, in my 
 war-paint, dashing off to scenes which lent 
 the enchantment of distance to their recol- 
 lections, must have been a little mortifying, 
 no doubt ; and, while I longed to get on,
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 129 
 
 and prayed for that full military raoustache 
 which is so long in coming, I little knew 
 how they envied the youth I was so care- 
 lessly throwing behind me. 
 
 A good many philosophers have remarked 
 upon the celerity with which the pleasantest 
 portion of our existence slips away. In my 
 case I can easily account for the phenome- 
 non. Sign a bill at three months, renew it 
 when due once, twice, thrice, with the sad 
 certainty of having to meet it and its snow- 
 ball-like accruing interest at the end of the 
 last term, and you will be electrified to find 
 how quickly a year has passed away. 
 
 If there were bill stamps and usurers in 
 the lower regions, eternity could not be 
 considered long there. 
 
 "Mervyn," said Old Gil, coming into my 
 room about noon one morning, and find- 
 ing me discussing my breakfast, " what's all 
 this about North ?" 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 130 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 '* What about him ?" I asked, my mouth 
 full of sausage. 
 
 "They say you and he are friends." 
 
 " Yes — why not ? He's a capital chap — 
 knows everything and everybody. The 
 most popular man in London." 
 
 " And hasn't a friend. You mustn't keep 
 it up." 
 
 *' Why not ?" 
 
 He looked a little puzzled for a reply, 
 and then said — 
 
 " Your mother doesn't wish it." 
 
 " I can't help that. Really, at that dis- 
 tance, my mother can hardly expect to be 
 able to choose my friends. Tell me what 
 harm you know of him." 
 
 " I can't say I know very much harm — 
 except that he is utterly unprincipled." 
 
 *^ Do vou mean dishonest ?" 
 
 ** Well, not exactly in the sense you mean 
 — dishonest with regard to women." 
 
 I looked up, with a laugh in my eyes. 
 
 " And what was old Lord Stufferton when
 
 MERVYN O CONNOR. 131 
 
 he was the hero of that capital story you all 
 were so delighted with the other day ? Not 
 over-honest to little — what was her name — 
 eh?" 
 
 " But there are other reasons," said he, 
 rather peevishly. 
 
 " Tell me them." 
 
 " Do you mean to say, notwithstanding 
 your mother's wishes, you will adhere to 
 this harmful friendship ?" 
 
 " You haven't proved that it is harmful. 
 Let my mother write and tell me why I am 
 to give up the friendship of a man who has 
 shown me great kindness — extraordinary 
 kindness, in fact." 
 
 Old Gil retired discomfited, and soon 
 after I received a long letter from Bally- 
 conor, in which my mother only amplified 
 his reasonless warnings against North, add- 
 ing, however — 
 
 *' In the event of your refusing to give 
 him up at once and for ever, I shall consider 
 the necessity of removing you from the
 
 132 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 Guards, and, by taking you from London,, 
 also taking you out of the reach of his per- 
 nicious influence." 
 
 . I had only just put down this letter when 
 the subject of it entered. He had come to 
 fetch me for a ride in the Park, where I 
 caracolled daily on a lovely hack I had 
 bought from him for about half her value. 
 
 Instinctively I attempted to hide the 
 letter I had just laid down. 
 
 '* You have heard from — from your 
 mother?" he asked, looking straight into 
 my face, very serious. 
 
 ''Yes." 
 
 *' I know what she said to you. I want 
 to know what your answer is going to be." 
 
 *' I don't quite understand " I began^ 
 
 bewildered. 
 
 " No, I daresay not. But, nevertheless, 
 I do know all about it. She wishes you to 
 be no longer friends with me. Is it not so ?" 
 
 I was obliged to confess so much. 
 
 '' And you are hesitating ?"
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 133 
 
 ''No. I cannot at all understand the 
 dislike my mother seems to have for you. 
 When did you know her ?" 
 
 '' Years ago. My character, whatever it 
 might have been then, has had ample time 
 to alter. When I knew your mother we 
 were both very young." 
 
 '' And you quarrelled ?" 
 
 He looked at me strangely for a moment. 
 
 *' Yes — we quarrelled." 
 
 " What about ?" 
 
 " I scarcely know. The quarrel was not 
 of my making. But it is better not to talk 
 of this, my dear Jock. The question is, 
 what are you going to say to her now ?" 
 
 " I am going to say that I value your 
 friendship far too well to give it up, 
 unless " 
 
 '' Unless what ?" he asked, impatiently. 
 
 " Unless she gives me ample reason." 
 
 " Exactly. Write and ask her for that. 
 You will not surrender your good sense 
 entirely to her in this? It would be absurd.
 
 134 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 You are a child no longer ; and you are in 
 the world. She is far from it, and can 
 know nothing of me now." 
 
 He spoke rapidly, excitedly ; and I was 
 naturally flattered. 
 
 " Certainly I will not." 
 
 " Well, then, will you let me tell you 
 what to write in answer ? Say that you 
 have spoken to me about it, and that I will 
 willingly take measures for the ending of 
 our friendship, if she will agree that, first, 
 in justice to me, I should tell you the reason 
 for her wishing this cessation." 
 
 "That sounds fair enough," I said, still 
 feeling flattered at his evident anxiety. 
 
 " Yes, I think it is. And add this : Say 
 that if she at any time chooses to take 
 measures to remove you from me, such as 
 your exchanging from the Guards, I shall 
 then — again in self-justification — think my- 
 self at liberty to tell you the reason of her 
 hatred, and to show you the proofs. Mind 
 you add that — * to show you the proofs.*
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 135 
 
 Sit down and write before we ride. It is 
 only half-past twelve." 
 
 He had obtained a strange influence over 
 me, and 1 obeyed without scruple, even 
 showing hiin my letter before I placed it in 
 the envelope. At the end I had written : — 
 " Do clear up this mystery, my dear mother. 
 I am quite at my wits' end to make out 
 what you all mean. First I get vague 
 warnings from my uncle, then Colonel Gil- 
 beau gives me mysterious advice, and no 
 reason for it, and now you. If you have 
 anything against North, except that he is no " 
 better than other people, tell me what it is." 
 
 '' I don't think she will," said he, smihng, 
 as he laid down the letter. 
 
 " Because there isn't anything, I suppose. 
 My mother takes very strong likes and dis- 
 likes," said I ; and very soon we were 
 cantering up Rotten Row. 
 
 The answer from Ballyconor did not 
 come for some time, and then it was short 
 and cold : —
 
 136 mervyn o'connor. 
 
 "My dear Mervyn, 
 
 *' I am sorry my wishes are not 
 enough for you without explanation. How- 
 ever, as you are so determined, I withdraw 
 my opposition to your friendship for Colonel 
 North. Arthur wishes me to say that he 
 wants a saddle. 
 
 " Your affectionate 
 
 *' Mother." 
 
 I did not think much of the fact at the 
 time, having many things to think of; but it 
 struck me afterwards as odd that North 
 should never have evinced any curiosity as 
 to the effect of the letter he had inspired. 
 He came to Park Lane as a matter of 
 course, and I looked in at his chambers as 
 before ; and we went racing together and 
 rode together, and shared our amusements, 
 as if we were of the same age, instead of 
 there being some twenty-five years between 
 us. 
 
 It was a very good thing for a youngster,
 
 w 
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 137 
 
 as far as Society goes, being seen so much 
 with Bayley North; and before my first 
 season was over, what with that and Lady 
 Monymusk's marked preference, and my 
 own good spirits and general willingness to 
 oblige, I became as popular as any young 
 man could well wish to be. And to be 
 popular is to be happy. Although not ex- 
 actly an '' eligible," I had my fair share of 
 dining out, and a plethora of parties, balls, 
 picnics at Maidenhead, and all other possible 
 London amusements. With these, added to 
 a pretty constant attendance to my soldier 
 duties, it may be guessed that I did not find 
 time hang heavy on my hands ; and the 
 amount of actual physical labour I got 
 through between the time of parade at per- 
 haps eight a.m. and the end of a cotillon at 
 perhaps five o'clock a.m. the following day 
 would have astonished a Radical agitator 
 grumbling at the habits of " the idle classes.'' 
 But, amid all my flirtations in ball-rooms 
 and in quiet nooks of the Thames valley, I
 
 138 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 was as safe as an ironclad amid a fleet of 
 three-deckers would be. Lady Monymusk 
 absorbed my entire devotion, and, although 
 one or two young ladies tried to shake her 
 on her throne, they soon gave up the at- 
 tempt as impracticable. 
 
 '*01d Gil," who of course heard all about 
 it, scarcely knew what to say. 
 
 " Tm not ^ure that it isn't safer for you 
 than to go falling in love right and left with 
 girls without a penny. If an heiress should 
 turn up, I'm sure Lady Monymusk has good 
 sense enough to retire : and otherwise the 
 idea of your marrying for the next ten years 
 is absurd." 
 
 ''But you don't really suppose there is 
 anything between me and Lady Monymusk !" 
 I exclaimed, with dignified astonishment — 
 although the coupling of our names together 
 afforded me much secret joy. "We are 
 only friends. I am useful to find her car- 
 riage and hold her fan — that is all." 
 
 The old gentleman looked at me whim-
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 13^ 
 
 sically, as if to see how much I meant of this 
 speech. 
 
 ^'No, no, my boy ! The husband is the 
 cavaliere servente nowadays." 
 
 What he meant T could not guess ; and at 
 that moment my servant came to say that 
 Colonel North was in my room. *' Old Gil" 
 groaned, and I went downstairs. 
 
 '* Where are you going this afternoon?" 
 asked North, who was ensconced in my 
 most comfortable chair, turning over the 
 leaves of a photographic book crammed 
 with beauties. 
 
 " I'm going to church/' I replied, colour- 
 ing — I could not tell why. There seemed 
 something mawkish about going to church 
 when near Bayley North. 
 
 "To church!" He gave a low whistle. 
 '' Do you often do it ?" 
 
 A remembrance of some story I had read 
 in my youth of a boy kneeling down to say 
 his prayers the first night at school amid 
 jeers and a shower of slippers came across
 
 140 MERVYN o'CONNOR. 
 
 my mind : and this time I answered more 
 boldly— 
 
 " Every Sunday !" 
 
 ** Ah !" He said nothing for a few minutes, 
 and then looked up suddenly — " I'll go with 
 you." 
 
 If the statue at the top of the Wellington 
 Monument had suddenly come down and 
 volunteered to take my duty at the next 
 field-day in the Park I could not have been 
 much more astonished. However, it would 
 scarcely have seemed polite to say so, and 
 off we set to a church whose modified 
 " highness " and artistic decoration gratified 
 my uneducated sense of the beautiful and 
 fitting. 
 
 Looking at my companion at the conclu- 
 sion of that exquisite hymn, ''Nearer to 
 Thee," I was astonished to meet his eyes — 
 with a soft look in them I had never seen 
 before, save when he drew me towards him 
 in my tutor's room at Harreton — bent 
 •earnestly upon me ; and still more so when
 
 MERVYN o'CONNOR. 141 
 
 I discovered that they were full of tears. 
 
 As we came out he laid his hand on my 
 
 shoulder for a moment, and I thought I 
 
 heard the muttered words, *' God bless 
 
 you!" 
 
 ^ ^ # # -^ * 
 
 " Been to church with Bayley North ! T 
 say, you fellows, wonders will never cease. 
 Here's Jock declaring that Bayley North's 
 been to church !" 
 
 General astonishment and incredulity on 
 the part of the other Club members present, 
 until one, a philosopher of nineteen, removes 
 a portentous cigar from his lips and settles 
 the matter. 
 
 " Gone to look after some pious woman, 
 you may be sure. There's no better 
 moment to take 'em than when they're 
 touched up by religious hysterics."
 
 142 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 DINNER IN HERTFORD STREET. 
 
 ^' TllT^"'^^ are you going to do to-night ?" 
 ' * said Bayley North to me one day 
 as he was sitting in my room. 
 
 I blushed. Why I should have blushed 
 because of my engagement to dine with the 
 Monymusks I know not; but the fact 
 remains. North looked at me curiously. 
 
 " Don't tell me if you " 
 
 '' Oh, no !" I broke in, annoyed beyond 
 measure with myself; "it's no secret. I'm 
 going to dine in Hertford Street with the 
 Monymusks." 
 
 He smiled.
 
 MERVYN O'CONNOR. 143 
 
 ^' Have you met him yet ?" 
 
 '' No." 
 
 '' You have a treat in store for you. He 
 is like an ogre of a fairy tale ; or the Beast 
 that married Beauty, minus the future 
 transformation into a prince." 
 
 " She is very lovely, isn't she ?" I asked, 
 with the youthful desire to hear praise of 
 the queen of my heart. 
 
 ''Yes, Gertrude Monymusk is a pretty 
 little thing. But don't get too deep there. 
 You'll never get out if you don't take care. 
 Two or three fellows have gone under 
 altogether, and you're impressionable, 
 Mervyn." 
 
 " Oh, we're only friends, you know — 
 quite Platonic," I answered, delighted at the 
 implied flattery. 
 
 " Ye — es," he said, meditatively, drawing 
 at his cigar. ** Ye — es, I don't see any harm 
 in it up to a certain point. But remember 
 one thing— you are a good-looking, 
 agreeable boy, run after by women, and
 
 144 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 well worth catching ; but never dream that 
 you will minister to anything more than my 
 Lady's vanity. She's got as much heart as 
 this cigar, which, by the way, doesn't draw. 
 Give me another." 
 
 " How do you know ?" 
 
 He stared as he cut off the end of another 
 of my monsters. 
 
 "How do I know? How long do you 
 think I have been going about London ?" 
 
 " Yes, that's all very well ; but no 
 amount of that would tell whether a 
 woman had a heart or not." 
 
 " Well, she may have ; it hasn't been 
 stirred yet, at all events. Listen a moment 
 and I'll tell you her history. She is the 
 daughter of a parson in Somersetshire, 
 where the Tillifruries have a small place, you 
 know. Well, when she was seventeen, she 
 went to a ball at Bath, and there she met 
 Bob De Vere, a young gentleman in the 
 — th Hussars, with some thousands a year 
 for income. He proceeded to fall head
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 145 
 
 over ears in love with her, and a match was 
 arranged. It was pretty good for her, as 
 she had two or three sisters, and he had 
 hopes of some more money from an uncle. 
 The uncle was a queer chap, and to give 
 his consent to the marriage (which meant 
 leaving Bob his money) he required him to 
 sell out. Bob was desperately fond of the 
 service, and the idol of his regiment. He 
 hadn't made any friends outside it, and in 
 the interval between his selling out (for he 
 obeyed the stern uncle) and the time fixed 
 for his marriage he was like a fish out of 
 water. I met him one day on the steps of 
 the Rag, and a more forlorn spectacle I 
 never encountered. Well, about a week 
 before the wedding-day, young Monymusk 
 went down to Somersetshire and met 
 la helle Gertrude. I think it was at a 
 croquet party. Anyhow she made des- 
 perate love to him, and managed, on some 
 plea or other, to get the wedding-day 
 postponed. Before the second date came 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 146 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 she had hooked her fish, and wrote to Bob 
 to say she had made a mistake — that her 
 heart was another's, &c., and that where she 
 gave her hand she must give the other 
 article, that same heart. And so she 
 became Lady Monymusk, prospective Mar- 
 chioness of TilHfrurie." 
 
 "And De Vere ? " I asked, not quite 
 relishing the story, but already finding 
 hundreds of excuses for my goddess. 
 
 *' Oh, Bob went to the bad, lost his 
 money first at play, and then his wits at 
 drink. In a lunatic asylum now, poor 
 chap !" 
 
 "• It sounds hard," I began ; " but all the 
 
 same " 
 
 " All the same you find plenty of reason 
 for her Ladyship's conduct. Of course you 
 do. So did I at one time, for husbands 
 like Monymusk, when they have pretty 
 wives, are a positive boon to society. But I 
 fancy my Lord fathomed his wife's character 
 pretty soon, and that she hasn't had the
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 147 
 
 €asy time of it she expected. He is simply 
 mad with jealousy, and does the most 
 ridiculous things. There is insanity in his 
 family too, and I never should be surprised 
 to hear that he had cut his wife's or his own 
 throat some night after she has danced 
 twice with some young gentleman — yourself, 
 for instance." 
 
 *^ And is his jealousy the reason why she 
 retires altogether from the world every now 
 and then ?" 
 
 " Yes. They say he beats her, and then 
 has wild fits of contrite affection, which must 
 be almost more alarming. There was one 
 capital story of his bringing a detective to 
 watch her window from a balcony when he 
 — Monymusk — was supposed to be out of 
 town ; and his nearly kiUing the detective, 
 having forgotten his plot, and fancying him 
 a lover about to enter by the balcony. 
 It's a toss-up whether she gets him into 
 a lunatic asylum before he commits 
 manslaughter. If she does manage it, it will 
 
 l2
 
 148 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 be curious that one woman should have 
 driven two men into the hands of the mad 
 doctors." 
 
 ^'But she gives him no reason for 
 jealousy ?" 
 
 North looked at me curiously for a 
 moment, and then replied, with infinite 
 dryness — 
 
 " No. Of course not." 
 
 *' Do you know her well ?" 
 
 " As well as she can be known. And 
 that is the reason I ventured to warn you 
 against going too far. You are young and 
 credulous, and I don't want you to be made 
 cynical and bitter before it's necessary. 
 The ignorance of youth is the pleasantest 
 thing on earth ; and the longer we can keep 
 our teeth from the fruit of the tree of 
 knowledge the better for us. Believe in 
 her smiles, my dear boy ; believe her when 
 she tells you that she prefers you just now 
 to all other men ; believe her when she 
 recounts all she braves from her husband
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 149 
 
 for your sake ; but do not believe that all 
 this is anything more than the suitable 
 amusement of one or even of two seasons, 
 to be looked back to in after-life pleasantly 
 enough — if dropped at the proper time." 
 '* And when is the proper time ?" 
 "Ah, there you have the secret of 
 success in such affairs. I mean success in 
 keeping them altogether sweet, as love 
 affairs should surely be. A man and woman 
 engaged in a liaison are playing a very 
 pretty game of skill — the stakes being their 
 peace of mind and self-conceit. And the 
 winner is the one Avho first detects the signs 
 which tell of the approaching end of the 
 affair, and, instead of waiting for dismissal, 
 promptly bursts his or her bands asunder. 
 The end of these things is desperately bitter 
 — the dregs horribly nauseous. As you 
 should rise, they say, from a dinner-table 
 with appetite still left, so should you break 
 off a love affair with just enough love and 
 resjret left to make a firm, wholesome,
 
 150 MEEVYN O'CONNOR. 
 
 lasting friendship. That's where the- 
 doctrines of Plato come in. As well talk 
 of them at the beginning as lecture a 
 starving man on the ills of dyspepsia. Let 
 a love affair die its own natural death, and 
 what is the result ? The one lover is 
 wearied to death, to loathing, by the 
 necessity of simulating a feeling which is 
 gone, until the power of such simulation 
 goes too ; and the other is sickened by 
 seeing through the play-acting of the other, 
 and broken-hearted when the truth, long 
 suspected, comes out in its coarse and 
 unfeeling nakedness. There can be no 
 friendship after that, only repugnance 
 and hatred, and the recollection of what has 
 been so sweet remains in the memory as a 
 curse and an injury." 
 
 '* All this," T said, lying back in my chair, 
 and speaking with all the confident 
 philosophy of youth ; *^ all this may be true 
 enough in ordinary instances ; but it is 
 based on the vulgar notion that love can
 
 MEEYYN O'CONNOR. 151 
 
 never be permanent — that there is no such 
 thing." 
 
 " There may be ; there may exist ghosts 
 and sea-serpents; some one may discover 
 perpetual motion, or a cure for sea-sickness, 
 or an lionest horsedealer, or a pretty woman 
 who never looks in the glass. Oh, yes, 
 there may be." 
 
 " I feel that there is," 1 exclaimed, starting 
 from my chair, and walking up and down 
 the room with rapid strides. 
 
 '' Of course you do ; you are young. If 
 you could be permanently young, the' 
 feeling would be right. But we have 
 moralised enough. The horses have been 
 here a long time, and it's past one. Your 
 divinity goes home at half-past, so there is 
 not much time." 
 
 *'Did you lose much money at As- 
 cot?" asked Lady Monymusk, some ten 
 minutes after, as I rode by the side of her 
 exquisite chestnut hack and cast side-glances
 
 152 MEEVYN O'CONNOR. 
 
 at her wondrously graceful figure, seen to 
 superb advantage as she sat square on the 
 saddle. 
 
 '' No ; thanks to North." 
 
 " Always North," she muttered under her 
 breath. " How do you come to be such 
 friends ?" 
 
 "1 don't know. He is such good com- 
 pany, you know." 
 
 *' Yes ; so men say — and women, too, for 
 the matter of that. But I never knew him 
 take so much trouble with a boy before. 
 You're not offended?" she asked, with a 
 malicious smile, as she saw a cloud upon my 
 face. 
 
 "Oh, no," I replied, with an attempt at 
 hauteur which made her laugh again. 
 
 " Don't be ashamed of being young, Mer- 
 vyn," she said, in a low tone, as she pulled 
 her horse up at the corner by Albert Gate. 
 *'Now good-bye. You dine, remember, to- 
 night. Don't be surprised if I suddenly say 
 good night to you, and go directly if I do."
 
 MERVYN O'CONNOR. 153 
 
 She had called me by ray Christian name. 
 All North's history was swept away from my 
 memory as if it had never been. And I 
 only remembered that she had called me 
 Mervyn, and that I loved her. 
 
 I thought that day would never pass ; but 
 at length it was eight o' clock and I could 
 throw myself into a hansom and drive to 
 Hertford Street. There were only a few 
 people in the drawing-room when I en- 
 tered, one of them, however, being my host, 
 Lord Monymusk. He was a tall, gaunt 
 man, with a profusion of black hair and' 
 an unkempt beard. Singularly ungain- 
 ly in figure and untidy in dress, there was, 
 nevertheless, something about him which 
 bespoke the gentleman; and his greeting 
 of me, though awkward and almost shy, 
 was cordial enough. I noticed that once 
 or twice, when I was talking to other 
 people, his eyes wandered to me, with a 
 curious expression — a mixture of curiosity 
 and defiance. The butler announced dinner.
 
 154 MEEVYN O'CONNOR. 
 
 '' We will go in," said the host. ^* Gertrude 
 is not well — a headache. She will join 
 us afterwards, if possible." And so we 
 went in to dinner, while I wondered and 
 felt strangely disappointed. Was it fancy, 
 or, as I sat down, did I catch Lord Mony- 
 musk's eyes fixed upon me with an undis- 
 guised look of malignant triumph ? I was 
 seated near him, and before long I ventured 
 to say — 
 
 *'I hope Lady Monymusk is not very un- 
 well ? I saw her in the Park this morning, 
 and then she seemed " 
 
 "Sudden headache — subject to them," he 
 said, abruptly ; and I felt it impossible to 
 pursue the subject. The dinner was as dull 
 as it well could be. There was a feeling of 
 restraint upon us all, and our host's presence 
 seemed to freeze up the conversation of even 
 Algy Paminto, the great dinner-talker, who 
 was there. 
 
 "• I don't believe a word of her headache," 
 he said to me, as we walked out of the
 
 MERVYN O'CONNOR. 155 
 
 house together. " It's one of his jealous fits. 
 He's seen her talking to some man for more 
 than a minute — I believe that is the limit 
 allowed. I think I heard you tell our 
 sprightly host that you were not going to 
 Mrs. Render's, or I could have given you a 
 lift." 
 
 " No. I should have liked to go, if only 
 to see the house ; but I'm not asked. I 
 don't know her." 
 
 '^I do — very well — and can ask anj^one 
 I like. Come with me." 
 
 "All right," and I followed Algy into his' 
 brougham. 
 
 Hender House was looking its best, and 
 the ball came up to the reputation of the 
 best house for such things in London. After 
 my fill of dancing, I was roaming through 
 the drawing-rooms — now nearly deserted, 
 as a dance was going on, and the supper- 
 room had just been opened — when, to my 
 intense astonishment, I came face to face 
 with the object of my thoughts — Lady
 
 156 MERVTN O'CONNOR. 
 
 Monymusk — leaning on the arm of Count 
 Arnetti, one of the foreign attaches. 
 
 "You turn up at the right moment, Mr. 
 O'Connor," she said, with a gay smile. 
 " Here's poor Count Arnetti longing to 
 dance, and, instead, being victimised with 
 me doing the round of the Hender pictures. 
 You are released now, Count ; I shall con- 
 tinue my lecture on Art to this gentleman. 
 He is younger, and therefore more patient 
 than you are." 
 
 "I am sure, to hear Lady Monymusk 
 talk on any subject is a delight — even on 
 one " 
 
 " She doesn't understand — eh ? Kever 
 mind. I forgive you. Run away to your 
 valse. It is curious," she went on as, with 
 a courtly bow, the Count disappeared, 
 " what a serious thing it is with some of 
 these foreigners to miss a dance. The poor 
 man has nearly died of my love for Art." 
 
 '' But I thought you were laid up — your 
 headache "
 
 MERVTN O'CONNOR. 157 
 
 " I had no headache. At least," she 
 added, noticing my look of surprise — " at 
 least, it was not very bad. I hope your 
 dinner wasn't dull." 
 
 ** But it was." 
 
 '' That's rude of you. I asked little Mrs. 
 Montacute on purpose to amuse you." 
 
 " She didn't." 
 
 I suppose my tone was very gruif, for she 
 burst out laughing, and laid her hand on 
 my arm. The touch made me shiver, and 
 the blood to tingle in my veins. 
 
 *' Poor boy — is he sulky ?" 
 
 And she laughed again ; but the raillery 
 in her eyes was not unkind and I took 
 courage. 
 
 "It was dull because you were not there. 
 Do you think I can look at or think of any 
 other woman ?" 
 
 This speech out, I held my breath. For 
 less I felt she would be warranted in giving 
 me instant dismissal. But after a little 
 pause, which seemed an age to me, and
 
 158 MERVTN O'CONKOR. 
 
 •during which she played with her fan, she 
 only laughed again. 
 
 '' What an impressionable youth it is ! 
 Does my presence or absence really make 
 any difference to you, Mervyn ?" 
 
 Again my name — uttered, oh ! so softly, 
 it seemed no one had ever known its true 
 pronunciation before. But with all my 
 ardour I was timid, inexperienced, and all I 
 answered was — 
 
 " Yes — you know it does — all the differ- 
 ence." 
 
 "Let me see — how long have we known 
 one another? What would people say if 
 they knew that, at such a short acquaint- 
 ance, I allowed you to make love to me? 
 You must think me — I hate the word, but 
 I know no other — a flirt." 
 
 " I — think you " I stammered^ quite 
 
 unable to find words in which to express 
 my scornful repudiation of such a term 
 applied to her.
 
 MEBVYN O'CONNOR. 159 
 
 '' Some people say I am, you know. 
 Now, your friend, Colonel North, what has 
 he said of me?'' 
 
 "Said of you?" 
 
 " Yes, tell me. I am one of the few 
 women who can keep a confidence. If you 
 like me, as you say — no, you mustn't hold 
 my hand, some one might come in — you 
 must tell me. What did Bayley North tell 
 you of me?" 
 
 No love-stricken youth on earth could 
 have withstood the command of her proud, 
 imperious eyes. I told her the whole story 
 as he had told it to me. 
 
 "And you believe all this?" she asked, 
 when I had finished. 
 
 There was a mournful inflection in her 
 tone which thrilled me to the heart. 
 
 " No, I didn't. I thought it was distorted, 
 exaggerated, untrue." 
 
 " It is true that poor Robert De Vere did 
 love me," she said, in a low tone, standing
 
 160 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 straight in front of me, and looking into my 
 eyes with an expression that defied disbelief. 
 "It is true that at one time I thought I 
 loved him. But before I ever knew Lord 
 Monymusk I had discovered my mistake, 
 and had told him our marriage was impossi- 
 ble. Then — when I felt very sad and lonely 
 and weary of life, regretting the honesty 
 which had made me throw away what was 
 to me then a good match, for he would 
 have been well off — I met my husband. 
 My father was poor ; he urged me for my 
 sisters' sake to accept him. If not exactly 
 ' in love ' — some people are never privileged 
 to have that happiness, you know — I liked 
 him as well as in my depressed state I 
 thought I could like anyone. He offered 
 to do very generous things for my father 
 and my sisters, and to help my brother 
 in life. I may have been wrong to give 
 way — I believe I was — but at least there 
 was nothing to reproach me with on the 
 score of Robert De Vere. But, of course.
 
 MERVYN o'CONNOR. 161 
 
 people who like to talk of women's heart- 
 lessness did invent a story about that. And 
 vou believed it?" 
 
 Her plaintive look touched me. In a 
 moment her little hand was in mine. I 
 drew her towards me; her soft breath 
 fanned my cheek, when suddenly she tore 
 herself away, and, looking round, I saw 
 North, with a partner on his arm, coming 
 slowly up the room. 
 
 As he passed us he paused for a moment 
 and said — 
 
 **I am so glad to see you here, Lady 
 Monymusk, as I heard you were ill. I 
 met his Lordship just now; came straight 
 from the House. They didn't divide, 
 after all." 
 
 ''Go," she whispered hoarsely to me, as 
 he passed on; ''go — I will return lo the 
 ball-room that way. You go straight to the 
 hall and out." 
 
 She was deadly pale, and I could see she 
 trembled. 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 162 MERVYN O'CONNOE. 
 
 " I will tell you why some day. Go now, 
 only go !" 
 
 I hurried downstairs, and at the foot 
 met Lord Monymusk talking to several men. 
 As he saw me I started at the sudden change 
 in his expression. His eyes seemed to 
 shrivel up into two little balls of fire, and his 
 complexion turned a ghastly green. Then 
 I got my coat and walked home, wondering 
 what all this mystery meant, and went to 
 bed and dreamed a dream in which the 
 lovely vision of Gertrude Monymusk was 
 perpetually changing to a demoniacal 
 monster with masses of raven hair, and two 
 jets of fire for eyes. 
 
 For a whole week I heard nothing of my 
 divinity, and at the end of that time I had 
 the satisfaction of reading in the fashionable 
 intelligence that " Lord and Lady Monymusk 
 have left Hertford Street for the Con- 
 tinent." 
 
 No one seemed to know whither they 
 had gone, and " the Continent " is a large
 
 MERYYN O'CONNOE. ] 63 
 
 place. Besides this, I was tied to London 
 by the routine of guard-mounting, field-days, 
 and picquet duty. 
 
 m2
 
 164 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 A VISIT TO WANDSWORTH. 
 
 "II /FY DEAR NEPHEW,— Come and 
 -^'-*- see me to-morrow. I particularly 
 wish it, as 1 have something of importance 
 to say. Yours affectionately, 
 
 "James O'Connor." 
 
 This note was put into my hand one 
 morning when I had just come off guard, 
 and, a little interested in my mysterious 
 relative, I abandoned all thoughts of riding 
 in the Park, and proceeded to embark for 
 Wandsworth, after looking into Colonel 
 Gilbeau's room to tell him of my errand.
 
 MERVYN O'CONNOR. 165 
 
 " Going to see James !" he exclaimed. 
 ^' By Jove ! Are you armed ?" 
 
 "Armed! Do you think it a service of 
 danger, then ?" 
 
 " Danger ! I believe no one ever emerges 
 alive. It's my belief the old gentleman is 
 a cannibal ; but you don't look appetising, 
 my boy — not flesh enough yet. He'll keep 
 you some time to fatten. Seriously, though, 
 I think you ought to make notes ; for any 
 publisher in the neighbourhood would jump 
 at an account of a visit to Castle Danger- 
 ous, as they call it about there, I am told." 
 
 " You must get up a dinner to me as an 
 explorer," said I, laughing ; and in a mo- 
 ment I was bowling along behind a little 
 mare, lately picked up, together with T-cart 
 and harness, from one of my brother officers 
 for a mere song. 
 
 Given a knowledge of the whereabouts 
 of Wandsworth Common, the finding of 
 Manor Lodge was easy enough. Everyone 
 knew it, and one or two shop-people of
 
 166 MERVYN O'OONNOR. 
 
 whom I inquired looked at me much as the 
 gentlemen who attended the "levee" Mar- 
 tin Chuzzlewit held ere going to Eden 
 looked at that sanguine gentleman. No- 
 thing of the house could be seen as I drove 
 up to the gate — made of rusty iron, and 
 boarded upon the inside — for it was com- 
 pletely hidden by a wall about fifteen feet 
 high, surmounted by an imposing array of 
 broken bottles, and offering a very substan- 
 tial resistance to an enemy unprovided with 
 artillery or scaling-ladders. The bell taxed 
 all the strength of my boy — neatest and 
 tiniest of tigers — to pull ; and w^hen, by 
 dint of putting his little boots up against 
 the wall, he succeeded in making it ring, it 
 seemed as if it never w^ould cease, so aston- 
 ished was it at this unwonted frolic. After 
 a time, we heard the undoing of chains and 
 drawing back of bolts, and then the door, 
 creaking horribly, swung back a short dis- 
 tance, and an old man's face appeared in 
 the aperture — a face that might have be-
 
 MERVIN O'OONNOR. 167 
 
 longed to the very incarnation of suspicion 
 and distrust. 
 
 "What do you want? — who are you?" 
 
 *^ You're a nice old chap," replied I, gaily, 
 " and your welcome is delightful. I am 
 the first of a party your master has asked 
 to dance here this afternoon. Nineteen 
 waggon-loads coming, besides the omnibus 
 with the ballet-girls." 
 
 The scowl on the old man's face as I 
 chaffed him was perfectly diabolical. With 
 a muttered oath, he was about to close the 
 gate, when I sprang down and managed to 
 get ray foot up against it. 
 
 *'Woa ! Not so fast! I've come to see 
 your master, and I'm not going back with- 
 out seeing him." 
 
 " See my master !" The old villain 
 laughed in a fiendish way that would have 
 curdled one's blood in a lonesome place at 
 midnight. " And you think you'll do that, 
 do you, my young gentleman ?" 
 
 " I'm sure of it, my old friend. Look
 
 168 MERVTN O'OONNOE. 
 
 here ! " and I produced my uncle's note. 
 
 He read it in silence, returned it to me, 
 undid the chain he had kept fastened, and 
 opened the door just sufficiently for me to 
 pass through. 
 
 I entered a stone-paved courtyard, on 
 two sides of which there ran an inner wall, 
 while on that opposite me stood the house 
 — a square red brick edifice with stone 
 facings, gloomy and uncompromising-look- 
 ing, with its blinds drawn down, and an 
 undefinable air of death about it that struck 
 a chill into my heart even in the midst of 
 my careless, reckless gaiety. 
 
 " He's been expecting you all day," said 
 my guide, fumbling in his pockets for an- 
 other key, with which he opened the front 
 door. 
 
 As I hesitated, the darkness inside being 
 intense, I heard a deep growl, and in an 
 instant an enormous St. Bernard dog leaped 
 out, only, however, to lie down obediently 
 at a word from the servant. The latter
 
 MEEYYN O'CONNOE. 169 
 
 struck a match and lit a solitary jet of gas ; 
 and I then, stepping into the hall, found 
 rayself surrounded by dogs — dogs of all 
 sizes and breeds, from the Newfoundland 
 to the fox-terrier, from a remarkably well- 
 bred-looking greyhound to a cur whose 
 position with regard to a knowledge of its 
 father must have been humiliating. What 
 struck me as odd in this assemblage was 
 their silence. Some growled, some w^agged 
 their tails, many scratched, but not one 
 barked. Silence was evidently the genius 
 of the place, and, unimpressionable as I 
 was, I felt a strange difficulty in speaking 
 in my usual rather loud cheery accents. 
 
 *' What a lot of dogs ! Where does my 
 uncle get them all ? Stolen, eh?" 
 
 " Upstairs," was all the answer I received, 
 as my guide pointed to the dark staircase. 
 
 I ascended, and on the first story he 
 opened a green baize door, which led into 
 outer darkness, and then another beyond, 
 throuojh which I emeri^ed into a long low
 
 170 MERVYN O'CONNOE. 
 
 room, the walls of which were covered with 
 bookshelves, save at one end, where there 
 was nothing but a curtain of some dark 
 material. 
 
 The servant ushered rae in, closed the 
 door behind me, and departed, and, just as 
 the last sound of his tread had died away, 
 I became aware of a figure advancing from 
 a corner of the apartment — advancing so 
 noiselessly that, in the half light, it had all 
 the effects of an apparition. 
 
 But I was young, of good digestion, and 
 rather devoid of imagination. So I said, 
 boldly enough — 
 
 " Is that you, uncle ?" 
 
 " I am your uncle, James O'Connor. It 
 is a cursed name. Sit down, Mervyn." 
 
 These words were said in a short, deli- 
 berate manner that seemed to me to hide 
 inward pain. I sat down, and, as my eyes 
 grew accustomed to the semi-darkness, I 
 was able to distinguish my uncle's features. 
 They were eminently handsome, and im-
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 171 
 
 pressed me with the truth of what I had 
 been told — that he was, in his young daySy 
 far better-looking than even my father. 
 The features were regular and clearly cut. 
 There wa^ the same masterful look in the 
 eyes that I had remarked in my father's 
 picture, only more strongly developed. The 
 sternly-set mouth was like that of the por- 
 trait, except that it again exaggerated the 
 expression of the latter ; and I could scarcely 
 imagine a smile relaxing its fixed look of 
 bitter scorn. 
 
 As I observed him, he was occupied in 
 doing the same thing for me ; and it was 
 scarcely complimentary to me that when he 
 had finished his survey he sighed deeply, as 
 if much disappointed. 
 
 "It w^as good of you to come," he said at 
 length, with a sort of measured and con- 
 temptuous courtesy that checked the light 
 remarks that rose to my lips. '*I suppose 
 that you have much of what you dignify by 
 the name of occupation in your life."
 
 172 MERVTN O'OONNOR. 
 
 " I am sure, my dear uncle," I replied, 
 my exuberant spirits breaking througli all 
 restraint, "if you don't call guarding Her 
 Most Sacred Majesty at St. James's Palace 
 occupation, I don't know what ypu would 
 call it. We are, as you know, on the brink 
 of a revolution ; at any moment the sans- 
 culotte cabmen of London " 
 
 "You wonder why I have sent for you," 
 he went on, taking no notice whatever of 
 my attempt at humour, " and I will hasten 
 to explain. You have heard me spoken 
 of?" 
 
 "Verv little. No one seems to know 
 anything of you. I heard you did good." 
 
 "Good!" and he started with an impa- 
 tient gesture. " Good ! As if any one man 
 could do good, unless " 
 
 He checked himself suddenly, and changed 
 his manner. 
 
 " But I have not brought you up here to 
 talk about social science and what we can
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR, 173 
 
 do with our criminals or with our laws or 
 manners. If I get on the subject of injus- 
 tice I am hard to stop. I brought you here 
 for personal reasons — personal to you as 
 well as to me." 
 
 His manner — so calm, so gentleman-like, 
 so dignified — impressed me in spite of my- 
 self, and I bowed my head in token that I 
 would listen in silence, which was not a 
 thing 1 often did. 
 
 '' Mervyn O'Connor, did anyone — did 
 your mother — ever tell you of the traditions 
 of our race ? You need not answer. I see' 
 she has not — that no one has. Indeed, I 
 was sure of it before I saw you, from things 
 I had heard of you. You may think it odd 
 that I, cooped up here with my dogs and 
 that old servant, should hear anything of 
 the outer world; but I made some good 
 friends in the old days — friends whom even 
 such eccentricities as mine cannot shake 
 wholly off. They sometimes write to me,
 
 174 MEEVYN O'CONNOR. 
 
 and one of them, only two days ago, wrote 
 that you were — were supposed to be—en- 
 tangled with a woman." 
 
 An indignant denial seemed out of place 
 here. Besides — to speak it low — my self- 
 conceit, with which article most young men 
 are plentifully supplied, was pleased by the 
 thought that I should even be thought of 
 with her. So I said nothing. 
 
 " I am partially a believer in predestina- 
 tion ; but when I heard this I thought that 
 injustice to you — in justice even to myself 
 — I was bound to give you a chance — the 
 chance of fore-knowledge — of escaping the 
 <jurse of our house." 
 
 *' What is this curse ?" I asked, lookins; 
 curiously at his weary eyes. 
 
 "I sent for you to tell you that. Hark ! 
 Do you hear nothing ?" 
 
 *' One of the dogs howling," I hazarded. 
 
 *'No; none of my dogs howl. There it 
 is again, distinct and clear !" He rose from 
 his seat with agitation in his face as a sound
 
 MERVYN O'CONNOR. 175 
 
 as of the wind whistling in the gable of an 
 old house came upon us. 
 
 " Wind," I said again. 
 
 " Wind ! Open the window. Is there a 
 breath stirring ?" 
 
 I did as he directed. It was perfectly 
 still and calm. There was no sound in the 
 air save the rumbling of a cab and the dis- 
 tant noise of a train thundering along the 
 line. 
 
 When I turned back to the room, ray- 
 uncle was re-seated. 
 
 *'That means a misfortune to the house," 
 he said, calmly. " Heaven knows we have 
 had enough !" 
 
 "Why, Uncle James," I cried, ''you 
 don't mean to say that you believe in the 
 old banshee business ?" 
 
 " Wait !" he said, impressively, motioning 
 me to sit down. " Wait ; and now listen. 
 The O'Connors were always a wild race, 
 from the time when they disputed suprem- 
 acy with the Macmurroughs and other chiefs.
 
 176 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 to the tamer days when one of them threw 
 in his lot as an adherent of Queen Elizabeth, 
 and betrayed his country and his cause, for 
 the sake of the bright eyes of a woman who 
 came over with Lord Essex to subdue Ire- 
 land. You are not well read enough in 
 Irish history to know of the massacre of 
 Killeagh. Massacres were common enough 
 then, but this was marked by features of 
 extraordinary treachery and cold-blooded 
 cruelty. Our ancestor, E-uadh O'Connor, 
 was the traitor, and, as he was going to his 
 terrible doom, one of his own race — a 
 chieftain's wife, and esteemed a prophetess 
 —turned on him and cursed him. It was 
 for a woman's smile that he had sinned ; by 
 a woman's smile he should perish, and by 
 women's smiles should perish all his race. 
 The woman for whom he had lost his soul 
 betrayed him — she had only been acting a 
 part — and he killed her and himself. You 
 know something of your family history since
 
 MERVYN O'CONNOK. 177 
 
 then — you have heard of the death of 
 Mervyn O'Connor of Ardhaig ?" 
 
 ^'He died swimming his horse across a 
 swollen ford." 
 
 " Yes, to visit his paramour. You have 
 heard that his son Arthur, the first baronet, 
 who so upheld the family honour and added 
 to the family wealth, died in his bed. I 
 think I could prove — I have, at least, proved 
 to myself — that he was poisoned by a woman 
 he had in early life betrayed. His heir 
 perished in Austria — how was never ascer- 
 tained. The next O'Connor of our house 
 was killed, as you know, in a duel — about a 
 woman, of course. The next, after a reign 
 at Ballyconor of fifteen years, died of soften- 
 ing of the brain, really mad for love of a 
 woman who scorned him. But I will not 
 weary you with the list. No O'Connor has 
 reached more, than middle age — all have 
 died for one reason. To come to later 
 times " 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 178 MEEVYN O'OONNOR. 
 
 "Yes," r said, drawing my chair nearer 
 to his ; " yes, to come to later times." 
 
 '^ Your grandfather, my father, was found 
 in the lake one morning — dead. He had 
 gone there as usual to feed his wild ducks, 
 and slipped in. Nothing more natural. 
 Few people knew that he met there that 
 morning a woman of the fierce Western 
 blood, to whom he had brought the shame 
 of a nameless child ; few people connected 
 with the baronet's death the finding, some 
 weeks after, of a dark-eyed woman's body 
 among the rushes, clasping in her arms a 
 dead child. She had wandered from the 
 high-road and slipped in. Of course. So 
 she was given a pauper's funeral, and he 
 sleeps where you know, with that pomp- 
 ous inscription on his monument. Your 
 father " 
 
 " Yes, my father " 
 
 " Your father died by his own hand." 
 
 '^ Uncle!"
 
 MEltVYN o'cONNOR. irO 
 
 " It is too true. But first let me tell you 
 something more.* Years ago I went to 
 Rome. I was 3^oung and impressionable as 
 you are. I was a firm believer in woman's 
 love, as you doubtless are. I laughed at 
 the old legends of my family, as you do. I 
 met a woman who seemed to me to embody 
 every earthly possibility of perfection. I 
 loved her madly, devotedly. She swore she 
 returned my passion. She was as false as 
 hell. I discovered one day that she was 
 prepared to betray me for a man w^hose^ 
 name I did not know. I determined to 
 surprise them, and I went, bent on revenge, 
 to the meeting-place I had discovered. But 
 my vengeance failed me — the man was my 
 own brother." 
 
 "My father!" 
 
 "Froui that hour I believed in the Curse. 
 I left them together ; I never saw either 
 again ; I never heard from your father again 
 until — until the day before he died. Then 
 
 n2
 
 ISO MEKVYN O'CONNOE. 
 
 I was revenged ; but I no longer wished for 
 vengeance. I only saw in* it all the work- 
 ing of the Curse." 
 
 " And the woman you both loved ?" I 
 asked. 
 
 He hesitated. 
 
 " No matter. She betrayed us both. 
 She left him — death ; and me a life which 
 is almost death. No other woman has 
 heard my voice since ; for the moment that 
 I knew I was betrayed, that I escaped so 
 hardly from shedding a brother's blood — 
 for it nearly came to that in my first frenzy 
 -■ — I shut myself from the world. Whether 
 Destiny is satisfied with my expiation, I 
 know not. I suffer here at times such tor- 
 tures as would befit a damned one. But I 
 hope to die soon." 
 
 He ceased. His head sank down into his 
 hands, and he seemed to pray. Then he 
 raised his head, and his face was again calm 
 and dignified in expression. 
 
 " I had a portrait of her, painted at Rome
 
 MERVYN O'CONNOR. 181 
 
 in the days when we were happy. Time 
 after time have I tried to destroy it, but 
 dare not. Thus the Curse is fulfilled with 
 me. Whenever I am tempted to draw aside 
 that curtain " — and he indicated the curtain 
 I had noticed at the end of the room — " I 
 remember ; I live through again the misery 
 of that supreme moment when all the light 
 of life went out from me, and left me to 
 live on in darkness and loneliness." 
 
 He paused again. At last I broke the 
 silence. 
 
 " May I see it ?" 
 
 "No, not now; perhaps never. Better 
 not. Do you believe what I have told 
 you?" 
 
 I scarcely knew what to say. That by 
 living alone and brooding over this fanciful 
 family legend his brain had given way, I did 
 believe. 
 
 "Are you sure about my father?" 
 
 "Sure! Mervyn, I never told a lie in 
 my life. Your poor father wrote to me the
 
 182 MERVYN CONNOR. 
 
 very night he put an end to his existence, 
 telling me of his intention, and telling me 
 its cause/' 
 
 He took a letter from a desk near him, 
 and, turning down a portion, held it towards 
 me to read, having previously lit a candle. 
 
 I read these words — 
 
 " The Curse is true, brother. She has 
 ruined both our lives. You have the 
 strength to live. I have only enough to 
 die. Forgive me for any harsh words I 
 used that day. 1 wish I could shake your 
 hand a^sdn. But — I must die to-nidit. 
 Good-bye. Your brother, 
 
 '* Arthur." 
 
 " But this woman !" I cried, bewildered. 
 '' Who w^as she ? My father was on the 
 point of leaving his regiment and coming 
 home. He " 
 
 '^ Do not ask more, Mervyn O'Connor. 
 But let me say that now of which all this 
 has only been, the preliminary. Are you
 
 MEEVYN O'CONNOE. 183 
 
 about to allow a woman to wreck your 
 life ? It may be that the Curse may die 
 out. It may be that it can be broken by 
 strength and determination. This woman 
 — cast her off — fly her ! Save yourself^ 
 Mervyn O'Connor ! Save yourself, my poor 
 bov, ere it is too late." 
 
 He rose as he spoke, and a light of affec- 
 tion came into his eyes. 
 
 '' And Arthur ?" I asked, avoiding the 
 subject. 
 
 " Arthur ? He is in less danger than 
 you. From what I hear, as well by 
 temperament as by position, he is safer. 
 Mervyn, it is of you I now speak. Save 
 yourself while there is time. Give up this 
 boyish infatuation. Be brave. Break down 
 the Curse at last that has been the ruin of 
 our house." 
 
 " I am in no danger," I said, thinking it 
 was time to escape from this madman, to 
 whom it would have been no use to talk of 
 Plato.
 
 184 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 " No danger ! Is it not true that you 
 
 think only of one woman — that you " 
 
 '^ My dear uncle," I said, rising and 
 taking up my hat, " you have been strange- 
 ly misinfornaed. A lad}^ — a married lady 
 — is kind enough to be my friend ; and for 
 me to think of her even in the manner you 
 indicate would be an insult to her. It is 
 still more so to discuss such a possibility 
 with anyone. I must decline to do so. I 
 do not, I own, believe in family legends, 
 banshees, family ghosts, or curses. What 
 you have told me about my father is very 
 
 sad and very terrible. I only wish " 
 
 He interrupted me. 
 
 '* Boy, your incredulity will be your ruin. 
 But I can say no more. No words of ruin, 
 I see, can avert the workinoj of Destinv. I 
 will detain you no longer." 
 
 I escaped, and, as I emerged into the 
 sunshine, felt as if I were coming out of 
 prison. 
 
 The story I had heard did not fail to
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 185 
 
 make an impression on me ; but my natural 
 buoyancy of spirits soon came to the rescue, 
 and as I sent my little mare along Park 
 Lane I had nearly forgotten all my uncle's 
 gloomy prophecies. 
 
 In the hall of our house Colonel Gilbeau 
 met me. There was misfortune in his face. 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 " Come in here, Mervyn — prepare for a 
 shock. Your poor brother Arthur has had 
 an accident ; he is very badly hurt — very 
 badly !" 
 
 '' Arthur ! Oh, God ! But there is hope 
 — say there is hope !" 
 
 " There is no hope, my poor boy — none." 
 
 " Not dead ? Not dead ?" 
 
 "Yes— dead."
 
 186 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 SIR MERVYN. 
 
 NEXT, perhaps, to our first love our first 
 loss is the principal epoch in our 
 lives. Just as the heart becomes more and 
 more callous to Cupid's prickings, and bears 
 calmly at the age of thirty a coldness from 
 Julia which at twenty-five would have 
 caused instant suicide, so does it after a 
 time learn to philosophise over Death ; per- 
 haps, who knows ? secretly trying to allay 
 fears which intrude themselves concerning 
 the day when itself shall cease to beat. 
 
 When old Tomkins passes away, and his 
 Club arm-chair knows him no more, the
 
 MERVYN O'CONNOK. 187 
 
 thought really uppermost in the mind of his 
 two cronies, old Bobkins and old Johnkins, 
 is that their " Poor fellow ! I always told 
 him that, if he didn't take care and have 
 medical advice, he would go suddenly," or 
 " What else could such over-doctoring and 
 coddling result in ?" &c., are all humbug ; that 
 what the dear prosy fellow died of is just 
 age; and that they, too, who are tempor- 
 arily left, are as sick of this as he. 
 
 When your pious elderly lady hears of 
 her friend's death, and, scarcely pausing in 
 her needlework, ejaculates, "All flesh is 
 grass; we are here to-day and gone to- 
 morrow !" what is she doing in that tough 
 old heart of hers but striving, by dint of a 
 wordy philosophy, to stifle the terror of 
 dying also which has arisen there ? 
 
 The fact is that dying is to many people 
 a kind of disagreeable fable — a fairy-tale 
 ^gre which may be salutary in story, but is 
 really of doubtful existence. We can imag- 
 ine the death of any friend and relative.
 
 183 MERVYN o'CONNOR. 
 
 Poor Jones! Did you notice his colour 
 ^and hear him cough ? He is not long for 
 this world ! And how Brown lives at all 
 is a mystery ! Two fits already ; a third 
 will do it ! All this time we never dream 
 that Jones and Brown, hob-nobbing in the 
 Club smoking-room after we have gone, are 
 exchanging confidences as to the certainty 
 with which the}^ prognosticate our own 
 demise before the year is out. 
 
 It is morbid, you say, kind and genial 
 reader, to dwell upon that one certainty of 
 Life — Death. Why? If we are, after a 
 lapse of no matter how long a time, going 
 to a. certain country — say to emigrate to 
 America — should we not often think of 
 what outfit must be bought, what friends 
 we should persuade to come with us, what 
 route we should take, what capital is 
 required, and the rest of it? And all this 
 should we do for a doubtful contingency;^ 
 for we might change our minds, or come 
 into a fortune, or be made Prime Minister,
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. ] 89 
 
 or go mad and become a successful poet, 
 or take to thieving and be sent to penal 
 servitude. 
 
 Now we most decidedly shall die ; and it 
 is morbid to think of this, or make arrange- 
 ments to meet it. Is it ? 
 
 But the idea of a subaltern in the Army 
 preaching a sermon is preposterous, and I 
 apologise. My excuse must be that the loss 
 of my brother Arthur was very great, and 
 even yet, after this lapse of time, is sadly 
 fresh in my memory. 
 
 Every incident of our boyish life together 
 came before me as I travelled from London 
 towards my home ; and the newspaper I 
 held before me and vainly strove to concen- 
 trate my attention upon was wetted with 
 tears of which I need not have been 
 ashamed. '' I was a very happy man," has 
 said some writer, " as long as I could cry." 
 Oh, the tears of youth, how soon their 
 source becomes dried up ! 
 
 Every incident in that sad journey stands
 
 190 MEUVYN O'CONNOR. 
 
 out distinctly before rae now — the commer- 
 cial traveller who made such terrible jokes 
 over his whisky and water in the steamer's 
 saloon ; the yellow-faced lady who tied 
 up ]ier face as you tie up the face of 
 a corpse and proceeded to be sea-sick 
 before we had cast off from the pier; 
 the plucky amateur sailor who walked 
 on the upper-deck smoking a black cigar 
 ■defiantly, and gazing over the side to lee- 
 ward when no one was looking ; the 
 " National " newspaper I purchased on 
 landing. By-the-by, I preserved this last, 
 and it may divert the reader to see a copy 
 •of it. 
 
 The time, I should premise, was one of 
 disturbance in Ireland — a not very unfre- 
 quent occurrence, I have heard. Fenians 
 were marching up and down ; rents were 
 being refused; "the land for the people" 
 was being demanded, and in a few instances 
 the old remedy of " an ounce of cold lead " 
 had been exhibited in the case of landlords
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 191 
 
 suffering from too great love of their rents. 
 This was the article which, even in the 
 midst of my grief, compelled from me a 
 smile as I journeyed past the wearisome 
 line of '' Ladies' Bathing Places " and " Gen- 
 tlemen's Bathing Places," which constitute 
 the landscape on one side of the railway 
 from Kingstown to Dublin : — 
 
 Irish Sport. 
 {From our Special Sporting Correspondent.) 
 
 ''Although it must be confessed that 
 Jupiter Pluvius has of late honoured our 
 fair isle with a special amount of attention — 
 until the banks are wet and unpleasant to 
 hide behind, and the evenings almost too 
 moist for waiting out in the dusk — still 
 there has been some decidedly fair sport in 
 this part of the country, and experienced 
 sportsmen have brought some very fair 
 game to bag. 
 
 Landlords are certainly wild and strong 
 on their cars, and the curse of this noble
 
 192 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 sport — absenteeism — is again showing itself ; 
 while agents — which game is very plentiful 
 and quite free from the disease, being of an 
 entirely different species (as I shall point 
 out in my forthcoming great work, "Land- 
 lord Hunting in the Green Isle") — are 
 savage, and, in some few instances, when 
 brought to bay, have injured inexperienced 
 hunters. It may be as well, while on the 
 subject, to mention, for the benefit of your 
 young readers, a few of the rudimentary 
 rules of this noble sport. 
 
 Imprimis, meeting a landlord in the open 
 is simple foolhardiness. There are certain 
 rules, handed down from generation to 
 generation of sportsmen, and I cannot too 
 strongly insist that any infraction of them will 
 lead to unnecessary danger. First, ascertain- 
 ing the habits of your quarry — where he col- 
 lects rents, w^here he stops to lunch, and so 
 on — you must build up an obstruction in his 
 track, so as to bring him to a full stop and 
 give you the necessary time for careful aim-
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 193 
 
 ing. You yourself, hidden by the growth 
 on the top of a bank, should be entirely 
 unseen, and should, moreover, previously 
 select a nice rest for the muzzle of your 
 gun. Aim at the face — it is the landlord's 
 most vulnerable part, for every Irish school- 
 boy knows that he has no heart — and load 
 with a few old nails and such things among 
 the swan-shot. Landlords, when brought 
 to bay, being very savage, you should never 
 attack one with less than half a dozen 
 assistants to finish off the game, if only 
 wounded sufficiently to make a resistance. 
 Battering on the head with the butt of a 
 gun or a thick stick is the best way of doing 
 this. 
 
 There is no necessity for gralloching. 
 
 Now a few words as to a dispute that has 
 of late arisen between several of our lead- 
 ing sportsmen as to the permissibility of 
 *' firing into the brown," if you happen to 
 come upon several of the brutes together. 
 
 I have taken some pains to collect valua- 
 
 VOL. I. o
 
 194 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 ble opinion on this subject, and have come 
 to the conclusion that, in the judgment of 
 the majority of those who have a right to 
 speak, the practice is condemned as un- 
 sportsman-like and unworthy of an Irish 
 hunter. 
 
 On the other hand, laying rent in a field 
 and watching it at night is quite permissible, 
 •while the silly old prejudice that forbade 
 shootinsj a landlord sittincr and insistin^j on 
 your waiting till he ran, has quite died 
 away. 
 
 In conclusion, let me tell young Ireland 
 that it can in no better wa}^ pass its leisure 
 time than in this noble sport. Exaggerated 
 ideas of its danger having been spread by 
 timorous spirits, or b}^ those unpatriotic men 
 who think it sufficient for a thing to be 
 Irish to decry it, I will assert, without fear 
 of contradiction, that, if proper precautions 
 be only taken, it requires about as much 
 courage, and involves as much personal risk, 
 as pigeon-shooting or rat-hunting. In
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 195 
 
 answer to a correspondent, who asks what 
 he is to do about a tame — or popular — 
 landlord in his part of the country, I should 
 be inclined to say — shoot him at once. 
 They are treacherous animals when tamed, 
 and at the rutting — or renting — season have 
 been known to attack the kindest of 
 tenants. 
 
 One more hint, and 1 have done. Never 
 shoot an agent when a landlord is to be 
 had, even though the latter may only appear 
 at long intervals. You might as well stalk 
 a caribou when a moose is in the neigh- 
 bourhood." 
 
 I pass over the few weeks during which I 
 stayed at Bally conor. My mother was 
 terribly cut up, and refused to be comforted. 
 It appeared that Arthur had managed to 
 lose his heart to a girl in the neighbour- 
 hood, daughter of a squire of high degree 
 but low purse, and was continually canter- 
 ing over the seven miles that separated his 
 
 o2
 
 196 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 place from Ballyconor. It was coming home 
 from courting that he met with his accident. 
 Taking a short cut by the fields in the 
 dusk, he galloped into an open drain, his 
 horse turned head over heels, and my poor 
 brother was picked up by a shepherd some 
 hours after, cold and dead, with his neck 
 broken. 
 
 And to my mother the worst part of the 
 whole affair was that on that very day 
 she had had hard words with her son — 
 the first quarrel that had ever occurred 
 between them. The particulars came to me 
 from Jim Leary. Arthur declared his un- 
 alterable affection for Madge Macfinegan ; 
 Lady O'Connor — to his intense astonish- 
 ment, which he confided to the agent — lost 
 her temper, vowed that nothing should ever 
 persuade her to give her consent, reproached 
 him with ingratitude, with deceit in trying 
 to make her — his mother — believe that he 
 never cast a thought to women, and ended 
 by declaring that she would leave his home
 
 MERVYN O'CONNOK. 197 
 
 unless he, within twenty-four hours, gave 
 up his mad — his ''fatal" passion. 
 
 " And why your poor dear lady mother 
 should have called it fatal, bedad I don't 
 understand. But she'd made up her mind 
 that Arthur was a — what do you call it? — 
 an anchorite, and didn't care more for the 
 dance of a girl's eye than you, you young 
 scamp, cared for the larning I tried so hard 
 to drum into your curly head," said Jim 
 Leary, as we sat together one night in that 
 poky little chamber called the ''smoking- 
 room," and he took an extra glass of toddy 
 in honour of the sad occasion. 
 
 Then Arthur, for the first time in his 
 gentle, quiet life, in a passion, called for 
 Norah, his bay mare, and dashed over to 
 Castle Macfinegan, with a resolute look on 
 his sweet face — and never came home 
 alive. 
 
 What did it matter to me, or to anyone, 
 that Madge married in five months' time a 
 huckeen not fit to clean my brother's buck-
 
 198 MERVYK O'CONNOR. 
 
 skins? She had, perhaps, made Arthur 
 happy, as she seemed to him idealised by his 
 pure imagination ; and I was grateful even 
 for that, and could not share, or scarcely 
 understand, the vindictive hatred towards 
 the girl which Lady O'Connor displayed 
 afterwards. 
 
 But then it must be remembered that I 
 was young and imaginative, and that I also 
 had an ideal — a soft woman, with sentiment- 
 al eyes, whose image had crossed the 
 Channel with me, and came between me 
 and all the duties which I — as become head 
 of the house — had to undertake — came 
 even between me and my grief for Arthur. 
 
 I wrote to her, directing the letter to 
 Hertford Street "to be forwarded ;" and in 
 time I received her answer, dated from a 
 small water-drinking place in Germany. 
 
 " You are," she wrote, "just the — shall I 
 say man or boy? — well, man, if you like — 
 just the man to be devotedly attached to- 
 your elder brother ; for you have no envy
 
 MERVYN O'CONNOR. 199 
 
 in your disposition. But don't be too un- 
 happy. Of all our misfortunes, Death is 
 the least ; at any rate, it is the last, and has 
 the great merit of preventing any more. 
 Don't let them persuade you that because 
 you have inherited you must change your life. 
 Of course you will hear a great deal of your 
 duty as a magistrate and a landlord ; but 
 remember the best landlord and magistrate 
 is always the man who has seen most of the 
 world. Look upon your life in London 
 as a preparation for the other, and do not 
 believe those who will tell you you mu^t 
 choose between the two. 
 
 '* Success in life means keeping out of 
 grooves ; and a country groove is a very 
 narrow one. We are coming to town for 
 the winter, and I hope to see much more of 
 you than in the Season, when it is so hard 
 to see anything really of one's friends." 
 
 After the receipt of this letter, which 
 went on to tell me little bits of news which 
 would not amuse the reader of this history,
 
 200 MERVTN o'cONNOR. 
 
 and which indeed I only appreciated because 
 of the hand that penned thera, I became 
 restless, and soon broached the idea of 
 returning to my duty. Armed as I was with 
 a letter from Marx saying that, although my 
 brother officers were content to do my duty 
 as long as it was necessary for me to stay 
 away, still it would be as well if I could 
 make a limit to my absence, my mother 
 could scarcely oppose me very strongly. 
 
 " You are your own master, Mervyn, or, 
 at least, you very soon will be ; and you 
 have not cared for my wishes so much of 
 late that I can expect you to give up any- 
 thing for my sake." 
 
 '' My dear mother, T would gladly give 
 up everything in reason, did you ask me. 
 But I do not see why I should abandon my 
 career " 
 
 " Guarding St. James's Palace," put in 
 ray mother, with a touch of her old 
 scorn.
 
 MERVYN O'CONNOR. 201 
 
 *' Well, guarding St. James's Palace, if 
 you like, although I think the Guards have 
 done other work. I am too young to 
 settle down here. I have made friends in 
 London " 
 
 Again she interrupted me with flashing 
 eyes. 
 
 " Friends ! Yes, Bayley N'orth, a man 
 who " 
 
 Then she paused. 
 
 "Who what? Tell me a reason why I 
 should reject his friendship ; one reason !" 
 
 She rose coldly. 
 
 " I suppose it is Fate," she said, in a 
 dreary sort of voice, which gave me pain to 
 hear ; " and against Destiny I can fight no 
 better than another. But — oh, my God — I 
 thought to have saved him — my boy — my 
 darling boy — my Arthur !" 
 
 And she burst into a passion of tears. 
 
 " Oh, mother," I said, bending over her 
 and holding her graceful form in my arms ;
 
 202 MERVYN O'CONNOR. 
 
 '^mother, why will you not let me love 
 you ? — let me in some sort take his place 
 and " 
 
 ^' Take his place ! You !" 
 
 Scorn, I think, hurts almost as much un- 
 merited as merited. I said no more, and 
 when I went back to London, my natural 
 high spirits fighting with the sadness of late 
 events, I felt as if that mysterious chasm 
 betw^een my mother and myself had been 
 widened rather than bridged over by them. 
 
 But before I left Ballyconor a thing 
 occurred which I must mention here. 
 
 My mother came to my room one even- 
 ing with two letters addressed to her- 
 self, and with the seals unbroken, in her 
 hand. 
 
 '' Be good enough, Mervyn," she said, in 
 her coldest and most dignified manner, "to 
 give these two letters to your friend, and 
 tell him that any more from the same 
 quarter will be burned unread, as these are 
 unread."
 
 MERVTN O'CONNOR. 203" 
 
 And as I put them into my pocket I saw 
 that the handwriting on the envelope was 
 that of Bayley North.
 
 204 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 A DIGRESSION AND A LECTURE. 
 
 T HAD not been long in London before I 
 -*- discovered the difference between Mer- 
 vyn O'Connor, the poor second son with 
 doubtful prospects and a suspected tendency 
 towards flirting with girls destined for his 
 betters, and Sir Mervyn, owner of a castle 
 and possible millionaire. It is true the 
 Castle was only in Ireland, where castles grow 
 somewhat in the shape of those in Spain, but 
 still a castle in Ireland was in mothers' eyes 
 better than none at all, and there was one 
 advantage of even a poor heritage in the 
 Green Isle — namely, that few Londoners
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 205 
 
 saw it, and that thus a pleasant halo of ex- 
 aggeration could be safely thrown over its 
 size and grandeur. Of course, my mourn- 
 ing at first prevented my accepting the 
 invitations that came in quickly enough now, 
 but towards the end of the winter I thought 
 it permissible to emerge from my retire- 
 ment and enjoy some of the festivities of 
 the little season, which is far preferable to 
 the big one in summer. I had invested in 
 three horses, which I kept at Leighton 
 Buzzard, and about twice a week I did my 
 best to show the hard riders of that grassy 
 country that a training over banks and 
 stone walls did not disqualify me from 
 negotiating timber or water with the best of 
 them. 
 
 What splendid moments those were — the 
 recollection of them now makes my heart 
 beat, and my cheek glow — when some 
 four couple of hounds — enough for all 
 practical purpose for us jealous ones — have 
 got well out of covert, not three hundred
 
 206 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 yards behind that cunning old dog-fox, out 
 for a lark, and some six miles from his 
 home, to which he means to take us as hard 
 as his legs can carry him, up ivind. A tear- 
 ing scent, big sowed grass fields, about a 
 dozen determined men mounted on the best 
 horses money can procure, in tip-top condi- 
 tion, racing from fence to fence ; less ambi- 
 tious spirits riding honestly the line, and 
 never seeing a hound from find to finish; still 
 more cautious horsemen making points, and 
 with but little fencing seeing a good deal of 
 the fun, and some of them, grizzled Nim- 
 rods of many winters' experience, knowing 
 better what the hounds had done than 
 we who were riding by the side of the 
 pack. 
 
 How they race ! Hold up, horse ! Two 
 of those go to a fall, and I can't afford to 
 fall unless Bob Scamperton falls too. What 
 a nice mare that is of his ! I'll buy her 
 at any price. Easy over that plough ! 
 Down ! Never mind ; I kept hold of the
 
 MERVYN O'CONNOE. 207 
 
 reins, and am on again in an instant ; re- 
 warded two fields after by seeing my rival 
 and brother subaltern Bob measure his 
 length on the sward, while his mare trots off 
 in the silly lost fashion of a riderless horse. 
 What's that? A halloa, close by. Look 
 there ! Yes — it is the fox going up that 
 big field on the hill! Forard ! forard ! we 
 involuntarily yell out, quite ignoring the 
 fact that if the hounds went any faster we 
 should be left hopelessly behind. My good 
 horse begins to jump short, and quite ig- 
 nores the spurs, a touch of which in the 
 morning would have driven the somewhat 
 obstreperous animal mad. 
 
 Another man down ! The select com- 
 pany with the hounds is becoming " small 
 by degrees and beautifully less." Yet an- 
 other cropper ; and this time the horse — 
 the first whip's— refuses to rise, and poor 
 Tom is left ruefully sitting on the rail, the 
 top bar of which he has broken, gazing at 
 the fast-receding pack. Oh! that I may
 
 208 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 last to the end ! I pray, as I nurse my 
 horse carefully over a spongy, badly- drained 
 field, and, with a prudence I should have 
 scorned ten minutes ago, turn out of my 
 way towards a welcome gate. 
 
 " He's just afore you !" shouts the civil 
 farmer who opens it. But just before us, 
 too, is the covert where his home lies await- 
 ing him, the earth too probably gaping 
 wide. Forard ! Forard ! The hounds 
 stop short, then turn and race almost mute 
 down a hedge at right angles to the line. 
 He is running short — nothing but a miracle 
 can save him. 
 
 " Leave them alone, oh, huntsman ! In 
 the name of heaven, leave them alone !" 
 No need to say this. The huntsman says 
 never a word ; his horn reposes in its case ; 
 he knows when and where not to interfere 
 — that knowledge so difficult to attain. Up 
 another hedgerow, another momentary 
 check, then a burst in view half across a 
 big grass-field, on the other side of which
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 209 
 
 you can see the gorse covert, then — 
 " Worry ! worry ! Who-oop !" 
 
 "As good a gallop as I ever saw," says a 
 noble lord, jumping off his horse. " Straight 
 as an arrow and fast as an express train. 
 Squandered the field a bit, too. Only seven 
 of us altogether." And I was one of that 
 seven ! Yes, they were glorious moments, 
 scarcely to be equalled by any mere intel- 
 lectual after-enjoyments ; those wild gallops 
 across country ! 
 
 My reader must pardon me if my revived^ 
 enthusiasm has a little carried me away. 
 
 Now and then during that winter I heard 
 of the Mony musks. Dear old Marx met 
 them at Florence, when he was spending a 
 month of his leave, and wrote several poems 
 to her ladyship — one "On her dropping her 
 catalogue in the Pitti Gallery," and another 
 
 " On seeing Lady M in front of the 
 
 Venus de' Medici," being especially in- 
 genious. 
 
 '' She asked after you," he said. 
 
 VOL. I. P
 
 210 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 " When are they coming home?" I asked, 
 trying to look indifferent. 
 
 " Oh ! she didn't know. I fancy Lord 
 Monymusk was ill — at least he didn't ap- 
 pear while I was there. By the way, North 
 was there too. I met him two or three 
 times with her. Seemed very attentive. 
 But he's a great deal too old, of course." 
 
 Soon after this I received a letter from 
 Bayley North, dated Rome, which I may as 
 well transcribe here : — 
 
 " Here am T, ray dear Mervyn, in this 
 city of very old antiquities and very new 
 society; the paradise of American shoddy 
 kings and hangers-on to the fringe of 
 London society ; the elysium of young 
 Irish ladies whose ideas of dissipation had, 
 before coming here, been an annual ball in 
 Patrick's Hall, or a dance at the county 
 town barracks. The American beauties 
 amuse me ; they are so very proud, so very 
 .clever, so very beautiful, and so very un-
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 211 
 
 interesting, except as studies of incarnate 
 vulgarity — as specimens of what imitative 
 power combined with absolute effrontery 
 and well-cut features will do. 1 declare, 
 when going through a gallery with one of 
 them, I always expected her to turn on me 
 in that quick manner of theirs, and demand 
 scornfully how many dollars one of Titian's 
 beauties possessed in her lifetime, or whether 
 that old gentleman in scanty clothing, de- 
 picted by Domenichino, was in the dry 
 goods line. 
 
 " They are the women of the future, you 
 know, and as such we must accept them, as 
 I suppose we must accept Wagner's tuneless 
 music, and a certain painter's unintelligible 
 'harmonies.' But when they have pre- 
 vailed and spread over the earth, I trust 
 there will be preserved to us by a kind 
 Providence some savage land where deluded 
 old Tories may find a woman or two of 
 flesh and blood, of affections, sympathies, 
 weaknesses, shyness, with complexions and 
 
 p2
 
 212 MERVYN O'CONNOR. 
 
 sound teeth, and with complete ignorance 
 of everything except love, dancing, and 
 perhaps novels. The American women are 
 very splendid, so are the American sewing- 
 machines; the American women are very 
 beautiful, but their beauty is like that of a 
 marble ' block ' in New York city. Give 
 me a tumble-down old English farmhouse, 
 covered with ivy, full of architectural faults, 
 instead. 
 
 ''The next time I travel I shall previously 
 purchase a title — Count or Baron would do. 
 Success with the fair sex here is not to be had 
 without. I was tremendously snubbed yes- 
 terday by Mrs. O'Slathery (of Castle Slathery, 
 in Galvva}^) in favour of Count Something, 
 whom I remember distinctly as a waiter at 
 an hotel in Folkestone ; but I daresay the 
 tips there enabled him to buy a Countdom, 
 and he Avears his order — Legion of Honour, 
 I think — with infinite grace and distinction. 
 A real Italian Marquis, with a pedigree as 
 long as one of Canon L 's sermons, was
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 213 
 
 snubbed by Mrs. O'S. at the same time as 
 your humble servant, which was hard upon 
 the poor man, as he had just offered to the 
 wealthy Hibernian widow his palazzo, and 
 -all that it contained, at a very moderate 
 price, considering the antiquity of his family. 
 
 "'The oidear !' she said to me after- 
 wards. ^ Imagine the Marquis offering to 
 •sell his own palace ! Fancy an O'Slathery 
 sellino^ the sate of his ancestors !' I have 
 since ascertained that the O'Slathery pro- 
 perty is in the hands of creditors, the late^ 
 chieftain having spent his patrimony on 
 whisky and cards at the nearest public, and 
 that the Castle is a square, twelve- roomed 
 house, built about forty years ago, and 
 splendidly whitewashed. 
 
 " I am writing to you merely to fill up 
 the time between dinner, at the horrible 
 hour of six, and a Roman party to which I 
 am bidden, and where I shall stand among 
 a crowd of Roman nobles with Roman 
 noses, knock-knees, and sallow faces, and
 
 214 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 glare uncomfortably across the room at a 
 row of haughty Roman dames, seated in 
 straight lines, and about as inviting as a 
 range of extinct volcanoes. Never mind ! 
 After that comes a little party to see the 
 Coliseum by moonlight — the Darbeytons, 
 Scroobys, Lady Monymusk, and some others 
 — which, with its supper afterwards, will 
 make up for the patrician coldness of my 
 Roman party. 
 
 " Gertrude Monymusk is looking uncom- 
 monly well ; perhaps her having left his 
 Lordship at Florence may account for her 
 high spirits. She tells me that he has ac- 
 cepted a berth on board Addely's yacht, 
 now at Naples, and means to cruise until 
 the late spring. She herself intends to go 
 back to London soon, and I shouldn't be 
 surprised if I volunteered as escort, having 
 outlived the age when scandal is possible. 
 She tells me that you are quite the nicest of 
 the new boys in London. Gave a vous, 
 mon ami! But it is no use warning you, as
 
 MERVYN O CONNOR. 215 
 
 I remember. If you are passing my dig- 
 gings, just tell the old woman to have things 
 ready, fires going, &c., as I may turn up at 
 any moment. Now don't go and catch cold, 
 watching and w^aiting in Hertford Street ! 
 
 ** By-the-by, I have never written to you 
 since 3^ou became Sir Mervyn. Whether 
 you are to be congratulated or not I scarcely 
 know. Credit witli mothers and tradesmen 
 is a grand thing, for a time. But eldest 
 sons or proprietors have to pay some day 1 
 Whereas your poor devil who gets his 
 credit in Society and in shops by stealth, as 
 it were, can put off the evil day almost in- 
 definitely. Write and tell me the news — • 
 post-ofiice here, as I shall stay for certain 
 another fortnight. 
 
 " Ever yours, 
 
 " Bayley Nokth." 
 
 I didn't exactly " watch and wait " in 
 Hertford Street after the reception of this 
 letter; but I certainly passed that way
 
 216 MERVYN O'CONNOK. 
 
 oftener than was absolutely necessary, and 
 was rewarded, early in the month of April, 
 by seeing the blinds drawn up, the chimneys 
 smoking, and other unmistakable signs of 
 the speedy coming home of ^'the family." 
 
 A couple of days after appeared the (to 
 me) magic announcement in the Morning 
 Post :— 
 
 *' Lady Monymusk has arrived at her 
 residence in town. His Lordship remains 
 abroad, where he is yachting with the Earl 
 of Addely." 
 
 Not many hours had elapsed before I 
 was knocking with a trembling hand at her 
 door. 
 
 '' It is so nice of you to come so soon to 
 welcome me back," she said, wnth her pleas- 
 ant smile, after a few of the common-places 
 of greeting. 
 
 " I couldn't lielp coming directly I saw 
 you had arrived," I stammered, furious with 
 myself for blushing. 
 
 '' And why should you help it ? I am
 
 MERVYN O'OONNOR. 217 
 
 sure one doesn't find so many friends in this 
 world that one can afford to lose those one 
 has made." 
 
 " You will allow me to be your friend, 
 then ?" 
 
 " Yes. You're too young. Never mind 
 — you will grow out of that. You shall be 
 my friend, and you shall come and tell me 
 all your little grievances and cares, and con- 
 fide in me all about 3/our loves. Who is she 
 now ?"' 
 
 ^'She?'' 
 
 ** Yes. You don't expect mo to believe 
 you are in love with nobody at your age ?" 
 
 '^ You mean a girl ?" 
 
 '*What else could I mean, sir? I am 
 afraid you have grown very wicked. What 
 else could I mean ?" 
 
 "I hate girls. They are all so stupid, 
 and care about nothing but dancing and 
 jabbering nonsense about how many balls 
 they have been to or are going to, and how 
 awfully jolly their week in Yorkshire was,
 
 218 MERVYN O CONNOR. 
 
 or how awfully dull their week in Norfolk 
 Avas, or how awfully unkind mamma is, or 
 how awfully " 
 
 " Stop ! stop ! You mustn't be so cynical. 
 Do you really mean to ask me to believe 
 you are heart-whole, Sir Mervyn ?" 
 
 " No ; and I wish you wouldn't call me 
 Sir Mervyn." 
 
 *' Well, Mervyn. I scarcely like to en- 
 courage such things, but confession will do 
 no harm, at any rate. Who is the unhappy 
 husband whose domestic peace you are 
 troubling ?" 
 
 Her gaiety hurt me. 
 
 ''No husband's," I said, rather gruffly. 
 ''The woman I love knows nothing of it, 
 and — and I shall never dare to tell her." 
 
 " So much the better," she said, screening 
 the fire from her face with a fan she took 
 up; "it is a thing that should never be 
 told." 
 
 " And yet it is so strong that "
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 219 
 
 *'The stronger it is the more reason for 
 keeping it secret. Don't be carried away 
 by all the silly cynical talk you hear, my 
 dear boy. A woman's name — her honour 
 — is her dearest possession. If a man loves 
 a woman who cannot — may not — return his 
 love, there is every reason why he should 
 be silent. If he loves her truly, he cannot 
 wish to pain her, surely?" 
 
 "Oh, no!" 
 
 "Well, what can his speaking do but give 
 her pain? If she return the feeling — and, 
 despite herself, she may — what does hJs 
 speaking mean ? That she must either, for 
 his sake, become in her own eyes a degrad- 
 ed woman, that she must for him sacrifice 
 her self-respect, or that she must do violence 
 to her feelings, act a lie to the man she 
 secretly loves, and thrust him from her side, 
 and for the rest of her life be tormented 
 with the horrible feeling that she has been 
 cruel to him whom she would give almost
 
 220 MERVYN CONNOR. 
 
 anything — short of her honour — to shield 
 from a pang. No, Merv^n ; a man's love of 
 this kind may be ever so strong, let him 
 bear it like a man, and, for the sake of her 
 he loves, let him remain silent." 
 
 "And if he cannot?" 
 
 "Then let him go. That is one of a 
 man's privileges — he can go when he likes. 
 We women are often tied down, bound 
 hand and foot, to the stake of tempta- 
 tion." 
 
 "This is not the view taken by " 
 
 " By most men and women of the world 
 now. No. But, thank Heaven, the philos- 
 ophy of men like Bayley North, the code 
 
 of morals of women like Lady , is not 
 
 so powerful as cheap cynics and immoral 
 novelists suppose." 
 
 She alluded to a lady, beautiful exceed- 
 ingly and a marvel of artistic dress, whose 
 husband — long ago ruined by play — mys- 
 teriously supplied her with every possible 
 luxury, including stepping horses, a yacht,
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 221 
 
 and a perfect house in Mayfair, on an in- 
 come of a few hundreds a-year. 
 
 Lady Monymusk had risen when she 
 spoke the last words, and stood opposite 
 nie, with a bright light in her eyes and a 
 colour on her cheeks that made her look 
 more supremely beautiful than anything I 
 ever imagined. I rose, and, as I did so, she 
 put one of her hands in mine. 
 
 " You must go now, Mervyn, for I have 
 to dress for dinner. Come and see me 
 whenever you please, and always remember 
 that I am your true friend, who is privi*- 
 leged to give you advice. And you'll take 
 
 it.'' 
 
 " I will try to," I said, and I stooped 
 down and kissed the white hand that lay in 
 mine. 
 
 " Thank you," she said, simply, and with 
 something like tears in her eyes. '' What- 
 ever the pain now, it is nothing to what 
 giving way to your impulse would — must — 
 bring. Good-bye."
 
 222 MERVYN O CONNOR. 
 
 Her lips just touched my forehead, and I 
 went from her sweet presence in a dream 
 of love that was as pure as that of an inno- 
 cent girl.
 
 223 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE CURSE BEGINS TO WORK. 
 
 "TTES. As pure as that of an innocent 
 -*- girl. For the moment all the grosser 
 part of my affection for Gertrude Mony-* 
 musk was beaten down ; only that feeling 
 remained which may be instinct, or may 
 be the product of the sweetness and light 
 following in the steps of civilization, but 
 which, after all, is a noble feeling, and one 
 of the certain things that divide us human 
 beings from the lower creation. 
 
 I love ; therefore I am. I love purely, 
 uncarnally, unselfishly, therefore I am a 
 man. Not the imperfect thing in which the
 
 224 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 intended finish has been self — or Society — 
 neglected, and which unites in itself the 
 brutal instincts of the brute with the vicious 
 cunning of the human creature ; but a man 
 with a mind, a soul, a heart — an incarna- 
 tion of generous impulses guided by culti- 
 vated idea. 
 
 And the belief in Gertrude which was 
 then in me produced a belief in other good- 
 ness, a softness and reasonable credulity 
 that was salutary to my moral nature. She 
 was — to me — so pure that I let her person- 
 ate the whole world of women, and a coarse 
 remark or brutal story which at other times 
 would have made me laugh just then made 
 me shiver. 
 
 Cynicism is a fine thing in its way doubt- 
 less, but it shrivels up to nothing at the first 
 approach of feeling. 
 
 And there were things concerning my 
 goddess herself which I had to hear, and 
 which it required all my self-control to hear 
 without an outbreak. Society persisted this
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 225 
 
 season in connecting her name with that of 
 Bayley North. Of course, I well knew that 
 there was, that there could be, no reason 
 for the wagging of these slanderous tongues ; 
 but I could not conceal even from myself 
 that he was continually at her side in pub- 
 lic, and that I scarcely ever now dropped 
 in at Hertford Street without finding him 
 seated in the most comfortable chair in that 
 pretty room of hers, with a lazy air of at- 
 homeness which irritated me almost as 
 much as it seemed to confirm the prevalent 
 rumours. 
 
 Lord Monymusk's cruise had been pro- 
 longed far into the summer, a fact that 
 would otherwise have afforded me intense 
 satisfaction. Now I scarcely saw more of 
 her than I had the season before. I some- 
 times tried to sit North out, and, although 
 I always failed, I came away secretly com- 
 forted. Assuredly there was scarcely friend- 
 ship, not to speak of any warmer feeling, 
 between the two. In response to his 
 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 226 MEEYTN CONNOE. 
 
 amusing q^nicism and good stories of their 
 neighbours, he received but the coldest of 
 monosyllables, except now and then, when 
 her face flushed and she protested hotly 
 against some hard, cruel saying of his. 
 
 This appeared to amuse him, and he 
 goaded her sometimes to the pitch of fury, 
 sitting there watching her exquisite face 
 with a smile in his I almost hated him for. 
 
 Could she be in his power ? And how ? 
 Were there dark secrets in her past ? What 
 was the secret of this man's success with 
 -Women ? Even over my mother, who evi- 
 dently detested him, he had a strange in- 
 fluence, to which she had been obliged to 
 succumb. What could it be ? 
 
 Notwithstanding all this, I myself failed 
 to shake off the fascination he possessed for 
 me, which, when he chose it should, re- 
 asserted itself with all its earlier force. 
 
 The reason of this was partly that the 
 man was, I believe, real only with me. 
 With me he often put aside his cynical
 
 MEBVYN O'CONNOR. 227 
 
 worldliness, as on the occasion of our going 
 to church together, and showed me that 
 beneath it all there was a heart. 
 
 But with Gertrude Monymusk he was 
 always the same — cold, and witty, and cruel 
 in his estimate of human nature, in his 
 laughter at the folly and wickedness around 
 him. 
 
 What the relation between them was 
 puzzled me. It would have puzzled a wiser 
 head. But " the world," which has not 
 time to draw delicate distinctions, settled at 
 once what it was ; and, ere the yacht sailed 
 up the Solent with her lord and master on 
 board, Lady Monymusk had gone a long 
 way towards being classed amongst those 
 members of "Society" who are only so 
 because, as yet, the person whose sole right 
 it is so to do has not protested against their 
 shocking goings-on. 
 
 The night before the day on which Lord 
 Monymusk returned to town, after having 
 telegraphed to his wife to announce his safe 
 
 q2
 
 228 MERVYN O'CONNOK. 
 
 arrival at Southaaipton, 1 happened to be 
 making a short cut down the Albany, 
 thereby transgressing the rule of that re- 
 tired and dignified Elysium of wealthy 
 bachelors. It was dark, and as I sauntered 
 along I was thinking rather bitterly of the 
 gay young man's party at Limmer's which I 
 had just left, and wondering why the spirits 
 that a year ago would have made me the 
 gayest among them had so strangely 
 deserted me ; why some shadow of impend- 
 ing evil seemed to hang continually over 
 ray life, and to cloud what should have been- 
 its brightest and most careless moments. 
 As I passed the entrance to North's rooms, 
 I glanced up and saw a light in the little 
 passage window, and hesitated for a moment 
 whether I would go in and have a cigar and 
 a chat with him or proceed to my Club and 
 take a hand at whist, or to Park Lane and 
 get rid of my tobacco-smelling coat ere going 
 into " Society." At that moment the door 
 opened, and a female form emerged, hastily
 
 MERVYN o'CONNOR. 229 
 
 brushing past me and going swiftly down 
 the Arcade towards the Piccadill}^ entrance. 
 My heart stood still. I could have sworn 
 to that lithe figure under almost any dis- 
 guise. I could not mistake that graceful 
 walk or the inimitable carriage of the little 
 head. It was Gertrude Monymusk ! I 
 looked round to make sure. Yes, it was 
 the door that led to North's chamber ; and, 
 as I looked, there came to that door a man 
 — Bayley North himself. 
 
 He started as he saw me, for I suppose I 
 was under a lamp, and that my face wa« 
 easily recognisable ; and then, in his usual 
 lazy manner, said — 
 
 *' Hallo, Mervyn ! Coming to have a 
 smoke, eh? Come in! I was so tired of 
 my own society that I was actually going 
 down to hear those idiots at the Eccentric 
 Club talk; but now you're here we'll be 
 comfortable chez moV^ 
 
 I was far too much agitated to dissimu- 
 late. I could only say, in a hoarse voice,
 
 230 MERVYN O'CONNOR. 
 
 " You were not alone ? She !" and 
 
 here I stopped, unable to articulate. 
 
 " She !" he echoed, with apparent sur- 
 prise. " Oh ! that lady who preceded me 
 downstairs just now. A pretty figure, I 
 noticed. Old Ladybank, up on the second 
 floor, has good taste. But it is shocking at 
 his age. Come in !" 
 
 '' No, thanks. I — it— I have to go out 
 to-night." And I escaped his outstretched 
 arras and fled down the passage. 
 
 Black's Club came in my way, and I 
 entered, proposing, I believe — but I scarcely 
 know what I proposed — to drink something 
 to steady my nerves. The first person I 
 met was old Lord Ladybank, an ancient 
 lady-killer and as great a bore as was to be 
 found in all London. 
 
 He stopped to tell me of some new young 
 lady who was to take the town by storm in 
 the Opera ballet that season, and to explain 
 how he had already made tlie acquaintance 
 of an aunt, and how thus he hoped soon to
 
 MERVYN O'CONNOR. 231 
 
 gain that of her mother, and so by stages to 
 arrive at the divinity herself (who was about 
 seventeen, while Ladybank was not an hour 
 under sixty-four), and at last I got a mo- 
 ment to ask him, as carelessly as possible, 
 
 '^ You live above North, in the Albany, I 
 believe? Who else lives there, by the 
 by ?" 
 
 "No one now. Are vou lookins: for 
 rooms? The other two sets have been 
 vacant this six months. Just the place for 
 you, my boy. Come and breakfast with me 
 and see them." 
 
 I declined as politely as might be, and 
 escaped him. This, then, was the end of 
 my faith and love ; this was the reason of 
 that advice she gave me, simply to keep me 
 away and prevent my coming between her 
 and this man. And to him — it made me 
 shiver with rage to think of it — I had, time 
 after time, recounted the history of my love 
 and its purity, and her goodness and inno- 
 cence, and the rest of it. All a lie ! She
 
 232 MERVYN O'CONNOR. 
 
 was not pure ; she was not innocent ! Then 
 who was? If those eyes could lie, where 
 on the earth could true eyes be found ? If 
 her faith were false, was there honesty above 
 ground? But I would not condemn her 
 yet. There might be some reason — some 
 excuse; and North might have thought it 
 necessary to lie in case of misconception, or 
 have done so to minister to his own vanity 
 and make me suspect. 
 
 I called in Hertford Street half-an-hour 
 before lunch-time next day. There were 
 some people there, but at last I managed to 
 get a word with Tier unheard by them. 
 
 " Do you ever go to the Albany ?" 
 
 ''The Albany?" 
 
 She did not act it well ; her colour went, 
 and I saw her start violently. 
 
 " Yes/' I said, in a hoarse whisper, with 
 despair in my eyes; ''at night. — to visit Bay- 
 ley North ?" 
 
 " Sir Mervyn !" 
 
 She rose haughtily, and moved across the
 
 MERYYN O'CONNOR. 233 
 
 room to where the others were seated, dis- 
 cussing the chances of a grand fancy-ball 
 given by my regiment that night. 
 
 But she did not act it well, I say. I saw 
 her clutch at the back of a chair as shCitold 
 Lady Scarribel what her dress was to be ; 
 and 1 caught a look — a look that I could 
 not guess at the meaning of — horror, re- 
 morse, shame, reproach, affection almost — 
 that she cast at me as she turned to follow 
 the others to luncheon downstairs. 
 
 I was close behind her. 
 
 '' Good-bye," I said in her ear. 
 
 '' Will you not come in to luncheon?" 
 
 '* Oh, no," said little Mrs. Dashley ; " he's 
 on the ball committee, and must go back to 
 his duties. If the floor isn't good, Sir Mer- 
 vyn, I'll never dance with you again." 
 
 "Oh! and do tell me," cried the irrepres- 
 sible Lady Scarribel, " what is the Duchess 
 of Saint Lazar going to wear ?" 
 
 " And is it true that your Colonel is going 
 to whiten his nose to disguise himself?''
 
 234 MERVYN O'CONNOE. 
 
 "And what time is the Prince coming?" 
 
 Amid a fire of such questions I escaped. 
 
 There was only one thing to do now. 
 And I did it. Anything was better than 
 the least doubt. With a good deal of 
 trouble I discovered Bayley North, reading 
 a French novel in the library of a Club to 
 which we both belonged. 
 
 Disregarding the large board hung up 
 opposite me, with "Silence" thereon in- 
 scribed, I plunged at once into my subject. 
 
 " I know that Lady Monymusk was at 
 your chambers last night. Can you deny 
 it?" 
 
 He carefully turned down a page of his 
 book, and put it down on the sofa. 
 
 " Are you acting for Lord Monymusk ?" 
 
 ''No." 
 
 "Then since when has Society appointed 
 you guardian of its morals — or social in- 
 quisitor ?" 
 
 " Colonel North," I replied, scarcely 
 knowing what to say, but determined to
 
 MERVrN O'OONNOR. 235 
 
 learn the truth before either of us left that 
 room, *' you have pretended — or felt — some 
 liking for me. You have been kind to me, 
 and I am grateful. Do one thing for me 
 now. Tell me the truth. I am tortured 
 beyond bearing by even the shadow of a 
 doubt. Tell me the truth. She was 
 there ?". 
 
 " Do you wish me to confide in you, and 
 do you promise to respect my confidence ?'^ 
 
 ^ado." 
 
 "Then, my dear unsophisticated Mervyn, 
 of course she was. It was unlucky, your 
 running up against her in that way. If you 
 only had showed proper feeling you would 
 have avoided looking at a lady in her posi- 
 tion. But don't take it to heart so. What 
 did you take her for ?" 
 
 " You know what I took her for. I have 
 told you a thousand times. I took her for 
 a pure woman. God help me !" 
 
 " God help you indeed, my poor Mervyn^ 
 if you are to break your heart over every
 
 536 MERVYN O CONNOR. 
 
 married woman here who prefers some one 
 else to yourself." 
 
 I shook his hand off my shoulder, and 
 started up, causing two old gentlemen 
 slumbering in their chairs at the other end 
 of the room to look up and glance reproach- 
 fully at the board on the wall. 
 
 " It is not that. It is that she — whom I 
 
 believed to be an angel — could " And 
 
 I leant my head upon the mantelpiece in 
 speechless agony. 
 
 " Get to your tub, Diogenes, and give up 
 the useless search with the lantern. Stick 
 to fox-hunting, and don't engage in a sport 
 which is only a succession of blank days — 
 that after an honest woman." 
 
 '' And you," I said, after a pause, looking 
 at his sarcastic, calm face ; '^ and you — do 
 you not call yourself his friend ?" 
 
 " Certainly. And I could show it in no 
 better way than keeping his wife in a good 
 humour, and leaving him time for his scien- 
 tific pursuits at home. To a man of science,
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 237 
 
 as poor Mony appears to be, nothing is so 
 fatal as having to be attentive to a wife. I 
 shall probably have done much towards the 
 eventual discovery of perpetual motion, or 
 assisted in the squaring of the circle. Don't 
 be a fool, Mervyn. You happen to have 
 discovered a thing that has saved you from 
 a good deal of pain, perhaps. Be warned 
 in time. Never believe in a woman, and — ■ 
 pardon me if I presume on my greater ex- 
 perience — remember that men of the world 
 do not, as a rule, ask or answer such ques- 
 tions as that you just put to me, nor inter- 
 fere with each other's petits jeux innocents. 
 You don't mean to put yourself in the 
 husband's place and quarrel with me, 
 surely ?" 
 
 His mocking disconcerted me, and I re- 
 mained silent. 
 
 " Instead of that, put yourself in my 
 place. Supposing that, instead of that 
 pretty little lecture she favoured you with 
 that day you tried to make love to her, as
 
 238 MEBVYN O'CONNOE. 
 
 you own you did — I say, supposing that she 
 had responded, and once offered to come 
 to that charming little house in Park Lane, 
 would you have said, ' No, Madam. I am 
 too fond of Lord Monymusk to permit of 
 it ?' Bah ! You know you would not. 
 There is a vast amount of truth in that 
 fable about the dog in the manger. ' If 
 she is pure as far as I am concerned, she 
 shall be pure as far as all other men are 
 concerned.' Eh ? Isn't that what you said 
 to yourself — what your belief in her meant? 
 You cannot be so vain as to suppose that a 
 woman must be unapproachable because 
 you cannot touch her heart ? Be a sensible 
 man, Mervyn, and remember that, although 
 youth is a grand thing, experience some- 
 times beats it." 
 
 I turned fiercely on him, and the neces- 
 sity of speaking low, in deference to the 
 Club rule, rather added, I think, to the 
 bitterness of my tone. 
 
 " Experience ! And you boast of such
 
 MERVYN O'CONNOE. 239 
 
 teaching as this ! You are proud of know- 
 ing, after your forty years of life, how to 
 do harm most successfully ; you congratu- 
 late yourself on being able to tell lies to a 
 woman — to be as false as hell to a friend ! 
 Look here, Colonel North, broken-hearted 
 as I stand before you, while you sit and 
 sneer at the woman whose name you have 
 dishonoured in the eyes of the one man, 
 perhaps, who revered her as she 7n?(st wish 
 to be revered — who believed in the beauty 
 of her womanhood — I would not change 
 places with you! I would not, even for 
 what you have gained, for your so-called 
 success, be like you — a blackguard !" 
 
 He started up with a muttered oath, then 
 quickly re-seated himself, and laughed. 
 
 " It is the privilege of youth to be angry, 
 but it is silly and womanish to call ugly 
 names. I am not going to fight a duel 
 about a — — " 
 
 " Stop !" I cried, this time forgetting all 
 about the rules, and receiving a glance from
 
 240 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 an old gentleman that spoke volumes of 
 complaint to be addressed to the Committee. 
 " If you say a word of that sort in connec- 
 tion with her, I'll kill you !" 
 
 I was young and strong, and could very 
 easily have carried out my threat. Thirty 
 years of hard living had not improved 
 North's strength, although they had not 
 impaired the grace of his slim figure. 
 
 He laughed again, but a little uneasily. 
 
 " Really we mustn't come to blows here, 
 or we shall be turned out of the Club. I 
 think perhaps we had better not meet till 
 you have got into a more sensible frame of 
 mind. When you are in love with some 
 new ' pure woman,' you can come and 
 apologise to me, and thank me, too, for 
 having given you your freedom, so that you 
 could enjoy a new adventure." 
 
 His last words I scarcely heard as I left 
 the room, sick at heart, and remembering 
 my uncle James's mysterious legends and 
 prophecy that from the love of women
 
 MERVYN O CONNOR. 241 
 
 should come every misfortune to our race. 
 Not much consolation did I receive from 
 old Gilbeau, to whom that night I confided 
 ray sorrows, under strict seal of secrecy. 
 He scarcely could conceal his joy at the 
 ending of what he persisted in calling '* my 
 liaison''' Thus in despair of sympathy I at 
 last sallied forth, and walked all night 
 through the gloomy London streets, envy- 
 ing all I met, even the poor draggled paint- 
 ed outcast to whom I gave a shilling, that 
 she might forget a little of her woe, and 
 purchase some forgetfulness of shame and 
 horror, in the friendly glass of gin. 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 242 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 A DERBY. 
 
 T WILL pass over the misery of the next 
 J- few days. My resolution to see Ger- 
 trude Monymusk no more was firmly taken ; 
 but the longing for a final interview, the 
 struggle to keep myself from Hertford 
 Street, and to abstain from going to parties 
 where she was likely to be, was very 
 severe. 
 
 The shock I had received in discovering 
 her falsehood — not to me, but to her hus- 
 band — in finding that my idol was only clay 
 after all, changed my nature. I became 
 moody and peevish. I drank more than
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 243 
 
 was good for me ; not, indeed, intoxicating 
 myself, but obtaining a kind of fictitious 
 eagerness which led me sometimes into 
 quarrels, and sometimes into dissipations 
 which I blush to think of now. I tried to 
 be cynical, and probably succeeded only in 
 being silly; but I believed that my immature 
 incredulity was very bitter, and I almost, at 
 times, sneered myself into the belief that I 
 was 'Splits Jin que tons les autres'' Admitted, 
 easily enough, behind the scenes at many 
 theatres, I soon discovered how rapidly 
 money can be got rid of by other means 
 than horse-racing and gamblinor, and, after 
 a baddish night or two at whist, and other 
 less skilful games, I was obliged to make 
 inquiries of my impecunious friends as to 
 the address of some friendly and convenient 
 Jew. 
 
 The name of the one to whom I was 
 directed does not matter much. He lived 
 in a street not far from Piccadilly, and to his 
 modest residence did I repair one April 
 
 R 2
 
 244 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 day, a little nervous at this my first ex- 
 perience of borrowing money. 
 
 I found him smug, red-wigged, and re- 
 spectable-looking, with a huge watch-chain, 
 and an affable, philanthropic manner that 
 would have worked wonders at a charity 
 meeting. And his words were as kind as 
 his appearance — words uttered in that thick, 
 unctuous tone peculiar to his race. I will 
 not attempt to re-produce his pronunciation 
 in the spelling. 
 
 " God bless my soul ! This is bad. You, 
 Sir Mervyn O'Connor ; so young a man — 
 only just — let me see" — and here he 
 referred to a Baronetage which lay on the 
 table beside him — " only just come into your 
 title and estate. Come to me, the Jew 
 money-lender, for money ! Oh ! it is sad 
 — very sad ! I am afraid you gamble." 
 
 '' A little." 
 
 " And bet on horses?" 
 
 " Yes, sometimes." 
 
 He groaned.
 
 MERVYN CONNOR. Z45 
 
 " Oh, it is sad ! I have seen so many 
 fine young men ruined. And your income 
 is " 
 
 I mentioned the modest sum. He gave 
 a start. 
 
 ''God bless me! and you cannot live 
 upon that without coming to me ! Don't 
 you know that to come to people like me is 
 ruin ?" 
 
 "Well, I have heard so," I replied, rather 
 impatient at all these preliminaries ; ''but I 
 suppose that is the affair of those who choose 
 to come. Can you lend me the money at 
 once ?" 
 
 " Couldn't you do without ? Just think. 
 Couldn't you wait while the family solicitor 
 gets it for you in a legitimate way ?" 
 
 "No, I can't," I rejoined, somewhat 
 crossly, " or else I shouldn't have come to 
 you." 
 
 " Ah ! my poor boy," and here he put his 
 fat, be-ringed hand upon my shoulder, 
 ^' you don't know how easy it is to go down
 
 246 MEEYYN CONNOR. 
 
 hill, and the first step down is when you 
 come to us. How much is your mother's 
 jointure?" 
 
 I informed him. 
 
 " And you must have this money ?" 
 
 '^Yes, I must." 
 
 " Well, I can't bear to see a fine young 
 man like you go to the dogs — and once you 
 ^0 there they eat you up — without trying to 
 stop you. What do you say to promising to 
 give up cards and betting ? I'll leave you 
 the other amusement, which is about as 
 expensive, so help me 1" 
 
 I stared at him. This was a man I had 
 always heard of as rapacious and utterly 
 insensible to feeling ! 
 
 " No, I can't make any promises." 
 
 '' Not if I found — mind you, we've na 
 money, we get it from clients — not if I 
 found you what you want at a cheap 
 rate ?" 
 
 " Not even then." 
 
 "Well, well," and he sighed deeply^
 
 MEEVYN o'cONNOR. 247 
 
 "Til see what I can do. You know 
 my brother ?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 " All the better for you. If he had been 
 here to-day you wouldn't have got off under 
 sixty per cent., so help me ! He's a very 
 good man, is my brother, but he is a little 
 sharp about business matters. It is very 
 lucky for you you found me instead. Well, 
 I like the look of you, and should like to 
 save you from ruin, and from us ; so come 
 back the day after to-morrow at twelve, and 
 I may be able to let you have the money, 
 (though, so help me, it's an enormous sum), 
 at about ten per cent., and then I shall 
 lose about three per cent, by the trans- 
 action." 
 
 '' Oh, I don't want you to lose, Mr. ," 
 
 I said, taking up my hat, and wondering at 
 the kindness of my Israelite. 
 
 " Go away, Sir Mervyn — go away — and 
 let me think it over. If you don't come 
 back, I shall be glad. Eemember what
 
 2-18 MERVYN O CONNOR. 
 
 I said — and go to your family solicitor." 
 
 But, for several good reasons, I did not 
 go to my family solicitor, and at the time 
 named I found myself again in the spider's 
 web. 
 
 His face was overcast, and he shook ray 
 hand despondently. 
 
 '' I am sorry you have come back, Sir 
 Mervyn — very sorry. So you still want the 
 money ?" 
 
 " Certainly. I hope you have it 
 for me." 
 
 " Yes ; but " here he took a pinch of 
 
 snuff and looked as if ready to weep ; ^' but 
 my brother, a very good man, but rather 
 sharp about business, Sir Mervyn, won't do 
 it under the usual terms ; and I can't 
 conscientiously let you borrow at such a 
 rate — so help me, I can't." 
 
 " What rate is that ?" 
 
 ''Sixty per cent., — not a penny less. 
 My brother says he won't part with such an 
 enormous sum for a penny less. Don't do
 
 MERVYN O'CONNOE. 249 
 
 it, Sir Mervyn, don't do it. It's a robbery 
 — I told my brotlier it was a robbery — but 
 he's a hard man on business, is my brother, 
 and he said, * If the young man don't like 
 it, he can leave it.' You'd much better 
 leave it, Sir Mervyn. Here it is ; let me 
 send it back to him." 
 
 And as he spoke he displayed from a 
 drawer a bundle of crisp new Bank of 
 England notes, and counted them slowly 
 and thoughtfully. 
 
 Already 1 had kept an ecarte rival 
 waiting for two days, and the sight of the 
 notes did away with any hesitation the 
 Jew's good advice might have created. 
 
 ^^All right," I said; ''hand 'em over." 
 
 " I have deducted the interest from them. 
 It's my brother's way. He will have it so. 
 So there's £60 under the sum named on each 
 hundred ; and here's the bill." 
 
 ''At six months ! Why then you should 
 only have deducted half— only £30. Your 
 rate is £120 per cent."
 
 250 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 " Just what I told my brother," said the 
 Jew, with a despairing wave of his hand ; 
 ''just what I told him, so help me. I said, 
 ' It's shameful ! You're charging the young 
 man 120 per cent.' But my brother only 
 said again, ' If the young man don't like it, 
 he '" 
 
 "Yes, yes," I interrupted, *' I suppose 
 you really won't let me have it for less ?" 
 
 " 'Now I like that," said he, putting the 
 notes and the bill away hurriedly into 
 the drawer, and locking it — " I like that. 
 I said to my brother, ' He's an intelli- 
 gent gentleman is Sir Mervyn, and he 
 won't submit to be robbed in this way.' 
 That's right. Don't have anything to do 
 with it. Go to your family solicitor, and 
 then live on your income. That's right. 
 I'm glad you've shown a proper prudence 
 at last." And he stood up, and held out 
 his hand to take leave of me. 
 
 " Oh ! I didn't mean that," I said, remain- 
 ing seated. " The fact is, I must have the
 
 MERVYN O'COXNOR. 25-1 
 
 money at once ; and if I can't have it 
 cheaper — well — hand it over." 
 
 He sighed, unlocked the drawer, and laid 
 tlie bill before me. I did not quite know 
 Avhat to do with it, but was ashamed to ask 
 — it implying such extreme youth never to 
 have accepted a bill — and while I was dally- 
 ing over it I looked up, and saw that, 
 although he had risen and stood with his- 
 back to me, he was observing me in the 
 lookin2[-sjlass with sjreat interest. 
 
 ''Write accepted, and then your name — 
 here — across it. So you've never done one 
 before? I'm very glad to hear that," he 
 said, and he did really seem glad. " And I 
 hope this will be the last. What did you 
 say your mother's age was ?" 
 
 I told him, took up the notes, and was 
 about to go when he stopped me, in a de- 
 precatory, shamefaced way. 
 
 " I am very sorry. Sir Mervyn ; but you 
 see I am junior partner, and my brother is a 
 hard man about business ; but I am obliged
 
 252 MERVYN o'CONNOR. 
 
 to give liim a message for you. If any of 
 your brother officers are in want of money, 
 you can mention that we shall be happy to 
 let them have it on their simple note of 
 hand." 
 
 ^'At 120 per cent.?" 
 
 '' Oh ! Sir Mervyn," and his eyes really 
 filled with tears, " there you hurt my feel- 
 ings. If you knew the hours I spent en- 
 treating my brother to let me do it for you 
 at ten ! But my brother, Sir Mervyn, 
 although a good man, is " 
 
 I did not wait for the end of the sentence, 
 but departed, happy for the moment in that 
 I could pay off a member of my Club, who 
 had already begun to hint that our ecarte 
 should be conducted on strict ready-money 
 principles. 
 
 It is sad to think that this stickler for 
 punctuality of payment afterwards seceded 
 from Tattersall's under very painful circum- 
 stances, and afterwards had a little difference 
 within the Ring in Paris, which compelled
 
 MERVYN O'CONNOK. 253 
 
 his turning his attentions to horseracing 
 in the distant land of Australia. But this 
 by the way. "When I lost money to him, 
 he wore his white hat, and opened his 
 enormous betting-book in the Ring with 
 the best of them. 
 
 The philanthropical Jew was not wrong 
 in part of his gloomy prophecies. I was 
 soon back again in his office, and I became 
 very shortly a proficient in the art of writing 
 my name across an oblong piece of stamped 
 paper. Everything went wrong with me. 
 To begin with I got "in" with a certain 
 stable, which had a "dark" prodigy of a 
 three-year-old for the Derby. 
 
 It was to be a coup such as never had 
 before been made, and we were all to realize 
 large fortunes, and retire in the plenitude of 
 wealth and wisdom from the varying life of 
 the Turf. 
 
 Things went well for a time. We 
 dribbled our money on the horse — Phoebus 
 by name — so artistically that he scarcely
 
 254 MERVYN CONNOR. 
 
 rose in the quotations. We told no one, 
 €xcept a chosen cohort of ^'friends of the 
 stable ;" and Phoebus did his work in such 
 a style that the best judges amongst our 
 number said that the race was over. 
 
 I had a share in the animal, and stood to 
 win a tremendous stake on him by the 
 time that the longed-for Derby week 
 arrived. 
 
 With what secret contempt did I hear 
 night after night the speculations of those 
 miserable ones not in our secret, as to the 
 winner; with what a glow of prospective 
 triumph did I not see one cold morning our 
 champion win his trial in the commonest of 
 canters ; with what enthusiasm — almost for- 
 getting Lady Monymusk and my woe — did 
 not I take my place on a coach full of 
 brother officers on the great day en route for 
 Epsom Downs ; with what disdain did I not 
 languidly view the races before the great 
 event ; with what a proud feeling of 
 proprietorship did I not jostle my way
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR, 255 
 
 through the crowds hunting the favourites 
 in the paddock, and at length, finding 
 Phoebus, listen, with the feeling of an artist 
 hearing his own picture praised at an exhibi- 
 tion, to the remarks of the circle of know- 
 ing ones his good looks and superb condition 
 attracted. 
 
 Five, seven, ten points in the betting he 
 went up ; the latter rising being when — 
 with such sweeping action as can only be 
 seen in a horse bred from winners and 
 shaped as he was — he came past the Stand 
 in his preliminary canter. Johnny Gunrf, 
 who was riding hitn, was calm and confident. 
 Now — before less than ten to one was the 
 price — was the time for my final plunge. I 
 approached the ring. 
 
 " Here, Captain — here, Sir Mervyn — 
 what'll you do ? I'll lay agin any of them 
 outsiders !" 
 
 '' Phoebus," I remarked, quietl}'^, standing 
 close by the rails, on the other side of 
 which an enormous man was shoutin.^ him-
 
 256 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 self hoarse, only stopping every now and 
 then to give instructions to his attendant 
 clerk, whose duty was to write down the 
 bets. 
 
 " Phoebus — nine to one — nine hundred 
 to one, I'll lay ! Write it down, Sir 
 Mervyn." 
 
 " No ; ten," I said, pretending to turn 
 away, and shutting my betting-book with, a 
 snap. 
 
 '^Ten; very well. I wouldn't do it 
 for anyone else. Ten — shall we say 
 monkeys ?" 
 
 '' Thous, if you like." 
 
 " Ten thou to one — Phoebus." And the 
 bet was booked. 
 
 Trying in vain to appear calm and 
 indifferent, I mounted to the box where 
 I had taken care to have a place, so as 
 to secure an uninterrupted view of the 
 race. 
 
 '^Hats off!" The bell rings— a knell to 
 so many a fortune — a bell that has always
 
 MERVYN o'CONNOR. 257 
 
 seemed to me to have something desperate- 
 ly melancholy in its sound — and all eyes are 
 strained towards the starting-place. At first 
 they run all in a heap, and no one has cause 
 to be enthusiastic; but soon the pace begins 
 to tell, and they spread out. What is that 
 lying third, but well up, and evidently pull- 
 ing double ? Phoebus ! Johnny Gunn sits 
 like a statue, and I fancy, even at this 
 distance, I can distinguish on his features 
 the smile of certain triumph. He has never 
 won a Derby, popular jockey though he be 
 — and at last the spell is to be broken. 
 
 Yes, they come on like the wind, the 
 favourite leading ; then the chestnut, and 
 then our horse. They reach Tattenham 
 Corner ! The leading horse swerves ; his 
 jockey raises his whip. ''The favourite's 
 beat ! The favourite's beat !" is roared from 
 a couple of hundred throats. The mass of 
 people sway about with enthusiasm ; con- 
 flicting cries fill the air. I see, confusedly, 
 three horses apparently locked together. I 
 
 VOL. I. S
 
 258 MERVYN CONNOR. 
 
 hear the sound of three whips plying. 1 
 am deafened by shouts of " The favourite ! 
 Vortex 1 Phoebus ! Phoebus wins !" " By 
 G — d, he does !" says a voice in my ear — 
 that of little Dalesman, our plunging subal- 
 tern — " and we're all made men 1" The 
 cries redouble, the favourite drops behind ; 
 only two horses struggle on, and there is not 
 a pin to chose betw^een them. " Phoebus ! 
 Vortex! Vortex! Phoebus!" "Vortex 
 wins, for a monkey !" shouts a book-maker, 
 under my box. " Done !" I yell out ; and 
 as the w^ords leave my lips the two horses, 
 amid the roar of the multitude, shoot to- 
 gether past the post. 
 
 "No. 13," says a lady in my box. "See, 
 they've put the number up. No. 13 — 
 Vortex. 1 forget, Sir Mervyn, whether you 
 are interested in him or in Phoebus. I 
 think Vortex is the prettiest ; he is such a 
 nice colour, and has such a pretty head."
 
 259 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE FRUITLESS PLUNGE. 
 
 "P)ROBABLY everyone has experienced 
 -■- the disagreeable sensation of waking, 
 up the morning after a reverse of fortune. 
 It may be that your mistress has proved un- 
 kind, that your washerwoman has broken 
 her plighted troth with regard to your 
 shirts, that a bill is due, that your best 
 horse shows symptoms of chronic cough, 
 that your splendid article has been returned 
 ''with thanks," that your new clothes, tried 
 on overnight and with which you intended 
 to astonish the Park that morning, do not 
 fit — you scarcely know on waking what it is 
 
 s2
 
 260 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 that infuses so much melancholy into the 
 usually pleasant time of lazy thought previous 
 to plunging into that tub ostentatiously and 
 noisily prepared for you by your servant. 
 You only know that you are bowed down 
 by some woe, and, as the mists of sleep are 
 dispelled, and your eyes gradually open to 
 their full extent, you gradually become 
 aware of tlie exact nature of the misfortune 
 that has befallen you. I wish Mr. St. 
 George Mivart, or some one of the same 
 philosophical tendency, would explain how 
 it is that after a long period of absolute for- 
 getfulness, and even while total ignorance of 
 the evil lingers, the effects of such unknown 
 evil are as powerful — nay, in some cases still 
 more powerful — than if they were not for- 
 gotten. For after throwing off this kind of 
 instinctive despair, and wide awake to 
 grapple with the facts as they are, you find 
 that there is nothing so very terrible in 
 them after all, and that the feeling which so 
 oppressed you on waking was totally unsuit-
 
 MERVYN O'CONNOR. 261 
 
 ed to the gravity of the misfortune which 
 was its cause. 
 
 I remember a friend once telling me that 
 he woke one morning in abject terror, with 
 a gallows before the eye of his mind, con- 
 vinced, in that half-sleepy way, that he had 
 committed murder overnight ; and it was 
 not till he had drunk his cup of tea that he 
 became aware that his crime had really con- 
 sisted in giving a black eye to an insolent 
 cabman. 
 
 To my melancholy that morning after the 
 Derby, however, came no such pleasant 
 re-action. Add it up in my betting-book 
 how I chose, there was the same terrible 
 sum, which I had to obtain by Monday, 
 staring me in the face. That it must be 
 obtained was evident — but how ? 
 
 I had already borrowed a sura that 
 appalled me, and, besides, I doubted 
 whether my philanthropic friend, with the 
 sixty per cent, brother, would do more 
 for me just yet. However, to him I re-
 
 262 MERVYN O CONNOR. 
 
 paired, and ray fears were nearly realised. 
 
 " It's too much, Sir Mervyn. You are 
 going the pace too fast," he said. "My 
 brother won't do it without another name 
 — a good name." 
 
 This seemed impossible to me — to make 
 a friend liable for a sum which I scarcely 
 knew how to pay when due ; and that even- 
 ing, when we happened to be left alone in 
 the Club smoking-room, I told young 
 Dalesman of my difficulty. 
 
 " Another name !" he cried. ''' Of course ; 
 why not ? It's as easy as possible." 
 
 /* It doesn't seem so to me." 
 
 ^' Mine'll do. I'm pretty solvent just 
 now; for I hedged a bit you know, old 
 chap." 
 
 '' But I tell you in three months I don't 
 expect to be more able to pay such a sum 
 than now." 
 
 " What does that matter ? He'll renew, 
 and if he won't " 
 
 " Well, if he won't ?"
 
 MERVYN O'CONNOK. 26S 
 
 "Why, we'll go to another Shylock — 
 that's all." 
 
 '^ But in the end?" 
 
 *' The end ! Good Heavens, you don't 
 mean to say you are beginning to think of 
 the end now?" 
 
 The upshot was that Jack Dalesman did 
 add his autograph to a new bill, and that I 
 vowed to get it all back, and plenty more, 
 on a very safe and sure investment for the 
 Goodwood Stakes. True, no great odds 
 were to be obtained, but the horse was no 
 dark one untried in public, like our Derby 
 candidate ; and even wise old gentlemen, 
 who were cautious in prophecy, and still 
 more so in investment, staked their opinion 
 and their money on him with re- assuring 
 confidence. 
 
 Like all young men who are betting high, 
 money, as far as that commodity is concerned 
 with the ordinary needs of life, was of no 
 moment to me now ; and 1 surprised my 
 brother officers and horrified dear old Gilbeau
 
 264 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 by the magnificence of my stud and the still 
 greater magnificence of my mode of life. A 
 share in an omnibus-box at both Opera- 
 Houses did not content me (I write of the 
 time when everyone '' who was anyone " 
 went to the Opera, and when it was a sure 
 draw for all your friends on a Saturday 
 night). I must needs take a box also for 
 
 the season at a theatre where But my 
 
 reason matters little now. I gave dinners, 
 both to the world before and to that behind 
 the footlights, at Richmond and Greenwich. 
 I tried vainly to shoot pigeons with cer- 
 tainty at Hornsey Wood, backing myself 
 with bold though misplaced confidence ; I 
 belonged to every racing club that was 
 formed, and I laid out money in two-year- 
 olds and yearlings, and sent them to a well- 
 known trainer, regardless of the portentous 
 bill therefrom which would but too surely 
 come ; I was put up for half the clubs in 
 London, and at any of them where play 
 could be had I vied with the heaviest players
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 265 
 
 in the stakes I was ready to hazard ; I ran 
 over to Paris continually from Saturday to 
 Monday; I took special trains to race- 
 ineetings when the ordinary ones did not 
 quite suit my fastidious tastes ; I left my 
 floor in old Gilbeau's Park Lane house, and 
 took a sweet little house of my own close to 
 the bottom of St. James's Street, where my 
 dinner-parties of six and suppers of ten 
 became much talked of; 1 ordered coats by 
 the dozen and trousers by the score ; I 
 thought nothing of idling away an afternoon 
 in Bond Street and ordering goods to tHe 
 amount of half my income in that time; I 
 joined two singularly impecunious youths in 
 renting a deer forest in Scotland for the 
 coming season ; and I ordered of Mr. Cats- 
 eye a hundred-ton schooner, which was to 
 carry my racing flag triumphantly past many 
 a flag-boat. In short, I exhausted as far as 
 I could every means which is put in the 
 power of a so-called " gilded youth " to get 
 rid of his gilding; and all because I had
 
 266 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 been shown the true side of a woman's 
 character ! 
 
 Gilding, put on by 60 per cent, gilders, 
 too soon wears off, and lets the gingerbread 
 show through ; and it is scarcely to be won- 
 dered at that when the time came — after an 
 Ascot which did me no good, if no harm — • 
 to journey down to Sussex and tempt for- 
 tune once more in the Duke of Richmond's 
 park, my gingerbread was very nearly ap- 
 parent to a close observer. 
 
 However, this time things actually did 
 look promising. The horse was as " fit as a 
 fiddle," the stable was confident to a man, 
 and the betting never wavered ; two to one, 
 and not a shade more could you get. Al- 
 though I formed one of a joyous party of 
 young scamps who had a house near Bog- 
 nor, I was unable to get down until the 
 very day of the race, as an inconvenient 
 guard-day intervened. At dinner that night 
 at St. James's I was silent and disirait^ 
 except when the conversation turned on
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 267 
 
 racing, and, do what I would to emulate 
 those calm gentlemen who lost ten years' 
 income without moving an eyebrow, I could 
 scarcely hide the agitation with which I 
 heard Charlie Maynard — a young man " in 
 the City " who always knew everything — 
 say that he had been told my horse Zophar 
 was reported to have pulled up lame after 
 his gallop on the previous day. I had 
 heard nothing of this, but beincj on ejuard I 
 was tied by the leg, and could only, after 
 meekly following ray drummer and his 
 erratic and strangely-confusing lantern oii 
 ray rounds that night, retire to bed and 
 dream of success on the morrow. 
 
 That morrow came. I rushed home to 
 dress, caught the last special to Goodwood 
 by half a minute, and unfolded the daily 
 paper which 1 had bought. Of course I 
 turned first to the sporting intelligence, and 
 just as Lady Glowerly — who had long 
 marked me for one of her stern-looking 
 dauorhters — was makinor some severe remark
 
 268 MERVYN O'CONNOR. 
 
 anent the bad management of the line, I 
 read as follows : — 
 
 *' We have just received intelligence that 
 Zophar was struck out of the Goodwood 
 Stakes at nine last night. He pulled up 
 lame after his gallop on Monday, and, his 
 lameness increasing, Sir John Holyland 
 decided on this step. In consequence of 
 his removal," &c. 
 
 But I could read no more; the words 
 swam before my eyes, and it was not until 
 the eldest Miss Glowerly had asked me 
 three times whether I had ever heard Mr. 
 Pilkington preach that I once more woke 
 to the consciousness of an outside world. 
 
 To get back to London was now my first 
 thought. I had not a shilling left ; indeed, 
 I doubted whether I could raise what I had 
 now lost; and, in justice to myself, I must 
 say that I never dreamed of attempting by 
 any plunging to get that back. It seemed 
 to me that to bet with no chance of not 
 paying when you lose was not honest. But
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 269 
 
 I was very young then. At the next sta- 
 tion, with some inane excuse to the Glowerly 
 family, I sprang out, and soon managed, by 
 dint of a bribe to the station-master, to stop 
 a returning train of empty carriages and 
 thus to return to town.
 
 270 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 A CHANGE IN LIFE. 
 
 ^' TT'OUR determination is a wise one, my 
 "*- l^oy," said old Gilbeau, as we sat 
 together a few weeks after; ''and I know 
 you won't mistake my meaning when I say 
 I am glad you did not accept my offer. 
 Heaven knows I don't grudge you the 
 money. I have more than I require for 
 myself; but it ivoiild, as you say, be better 
 for you to face the thing and be independ- 
 ent. Of course I'll take five per cent., if 
 you insist, for that money wanted to pay off 
 the scoundrelly Jew — the idea of 120 per 
 cent. ! — and in a few years of living quietl}'
 
 MERVYN O'CONNOK. 271 
 
 in your new regiment abroad you'll be able 
 to pay off most of this mortgage. By the 
 way, what is the regiment ?" 
 
 "The 110th." 
 
 " Quartered in Canada ?" 
 
 " Yes, at Quereal." 
 
 " And what does your mother say ?" 
 
 "She writes very kindly, but I cannot 
 help thinking she is scarcely sorry that I 
 should be obliged to leave London 
 
 an( 
 
 " And your friend Bayley North. How 
 is it he hasn't been to see you lately ?" 
 
 " He came j^esterday, but I didn't see 
 him." 
 
 " I suppose you have found out that he is 
 only a fair-weather friend, eh ?" 
 
 " No — he has offered me any money I 
 required. No ; but — but we are not friends 
 still." 
 
 "Not friends, and yet he offers you 
 money ! Wonders will never cease." 
 
 When confiding my woe concerning Lady
 
 272 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 Monymusk to old Gil, I did not tell him the 
 name of my favoured rival. Gil had always 
 so set himself against that intimacy that to 
 have done so would have been to give him 
 too great a triumph. 
 
 My affairs, although bad enough, had not 
 turned out, on thorough investigation, quite 
 so desperate as I supposed when I read the 
 news of Zophar's scratching. My old friend 
 in Park Lane lent me enough to pay off the 
 philanthropical Israelite, and I contrived to 
 raise a sufficient sum on mortgage of n^y 
 estate to pay off the remainder of my debts 
 of all kinds. So when, one evening in Sep- 
 tember, I sat down to a farewell dinner 
 given in my honour by some of my ex- 
 brother officers of the Fourth Guards, I was 
 in that light-hearted state popularly sup- 
 posed to be the attribute of a man who 
 "doesn't owe a shilling, by Jove, sir !" 
 
 Notwithstanding this, however, my heart 
 was very full, and the tears very near my 
 eyes, when dear old Marx rose, and, with a
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 273 
 
 certain rough pathos hardly hidden under 
 an elephantine attempt at humour, proposed 
 my health and asked them to drink to my 
 good luck in my new career ; and when, 
 after three ringing cheers had been given, 
 they all came round to shake my hand and 
 slap me encouragingly upon the back, I 
 fairly broke down, and had to turn away to 
 hide from them the traces of an emotion I 
 need not have been ashamed of. 
 
 ** God bless you, Jock," said old Marx, 
 his voice sounding rather husky. ^' You're 
 a good chap, only you never would come 
 in time for parade ; and a good officer, 
 though I don't believe you ever quite 
 understood how to tell off your company ; 
 and we're all very fond of you, old chap, 
 though you did laugh at my poetry and 
 write parodies of it. Parody is a very 
 mean gift, Jock ; don't go parodying the 
 fellows in the 110th. They mightn't stand it. 
 But after all there are parodies of Shake- 
 speare, and Byron, and — and Miss Ingelow." 
 
 VOL. I. T
 
 274 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 " It's an awful slow regiment, the 110th," 
 said one of our dashing subalterns, who 
 spent about £2,000 a year gaily on an 
 allowance of £300. " I hear there is only 
 one horse among them, and they take it in 
 turns to ride it, and generally tumble off." 
 
 "Yes," echoed another of the same 
 kidney, " and they go in for soldiering, 
 and science, and maps, and knowing how 
 much soap is used a day in the army, and 
 how many buttons are used up annually, 
 and all that sort of thing." 
 
 "There was a rich chap — cotton — or 
 something — -joined 'em once," went on the 
 first speaker, "and brought a private 
 servant ; but after a few weeks the C. 0. 
 sent for him, and said the officers would be 
 ruined unless this servant were sent away, 
 as they were all dressing after him. And 
 the cotton chap left because he wouldn't 
 part with his valet." 
 
 " And they put a newly-joined Ensign in 
 Coventry because he swaggered so infernally
 
 MEEVYN O'CONNOE. 275 
 
 — actually was caught putting pomatum on 
 his hair and parting it at the back on a 
 weehday /" 
 
 " Oh, yes ! He was the same chap who 
 had a cousin who was a Baronet, and 
 mentioned him at mess by accident one day, 
 and he had to exchange, for the others said 
 they wouldn't speak to such a tuft-hunting 
 snob." 
 
 "Do you remember our lying next them 
 at Aldershot some years ago, and when we 
 dined with them how the Major, after 
 recommending the Moselle in preference to 
 the champagne, asked Tom Plant how much 
 leave we got in London, and how Tom said 
 it was all leave really, only he mustn't 
 mention it, because the Duchesses and 
 Marchionesses had formed a secret society, 
 called the Guards' Protection Association 
 (Limited), to do all our duty for us, with 
 sham moustachios." 
 
 " Yes ; and then appeared that tremendous 
 letter in the Naval and Military Journal, 
 
 T 2
 
 276 MERVTN O'CONNOE. 
 
 signed ' A Hard-working Linesman/ about 
 the ^Privileges of the Guards,' hinting at 
 'even the vicious state of our aristocracy 
 adding its quota to their enervated frivolity 
 and scandalous and luxurious idleness.'" 
 
 Thus they chattered on, while I, with a 
 heavy feeling at my heart, tried to join in 
 their mirth and share their nonsense ; until 
 the time came for even such as they to ga 
 to bed, and we separated, I to pack up my 
 things preparatory to an early start for 
 Ireland in the morning. 
 
 My visit to Ballyconor was short, and I 
 could not wish it to be longer. There 
 seemed some invisible barrier between my 
 mother and myself which neither of us was 
 able to break down, which rose up suddenly 
 just as for a moment there was — or appear- 
 ed to be — a chance of our understanding 
 one another, and which made our inter- 
 course a dreary succession of platitudes, 
 tempered by spasmodic and abortive attempts 
 at that sweet familiarity which should exist
 
 MERVYN O'CONNOR. 277 
 
 between mother and son. Only once did 
 she mention JSTorth's name, and then there 
 came into her face a kind of dread and 
 aversion, which made me hastily change the 
 subject. 
 
 After a few days — daring which I did a 
 good deal of not over-satisfactory or pleasant 
 business with Jim Leary, who looked upon 
 my " emigration/' as he insisted on calling 
 it, with dismay — I took train for Queens- 
 town, and there joined the good ship that 
 was to bear me over sea. But before I did 
 60 I received and wrote two letters, which I 
 will lay before my readers : — 
 
 " Dear Sir Mervyn, 
 
 " I hear you have lost a great 
 deal of money, and have exchanged into a 
 line regiment in Canada. You were right 
 to do the last — to look your difficulties in 
 the face — as so few men of your age have 
 the courage to do. Good-bye. Do not hate 
 and despise me, Mervyn. We may never
 
 278 MERVYN o'coNNOR. 
 
 meet again. So I must write and tell you 
 how sincerely and truly I pray for your 
 welfare. And my prayer will be heard. 
 God is more merciful than man ; and 
 though you mistrust — nay, judge me — He 
 knows the truth. Some day perhaps you 
 will write to me to say ' good-bye.' 
 " Yours very sincerely, 
 
 " Gertrude Monymusk." 
 
 And this was my answer : — 
 
 "Dear Lady Monymusk, 
 
 " I thank you for your good 
 wishes. I have exchanged into the 110th, 
 and am on the point of sailing to join it at 
 Quereal. Probably I shall be away from 
 England for five years. 
 
 *' Yours truly, 
 
 "Mervyn O'Connor."
 
 279 
 
 M 
 
 CHAPTER XYII. 
 
 TO AMERICA. 
 
 OST people would probably suppose 
 that a steamer in mid-Atlantic during 
 the heights of an equinoctial gale was a very^ 
 unpleasant place ; and yet, putting aside any 
 possible danger, there are many things con- 
 nected with such a position which are divert- 
 ing in a high degree. In the first place, 
 given that you are not sea-sick, there is 
 something very comic in the attitudes 
 assumed by your friends when the ship gives 
 a sudden lurch, and the fun is considerably 
 heightened when 3^ou see a dignified man, 
 whom you have for years believed to be a
 
 280 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 hero even to his valet, rolling helplessly in 
 the lee scuppers. Then the excitement of 
 moving from that safe place under the lee 
 of the boat to windward to the head of the 
 companion is as good as a run with fox- 
 hounds. How anxiously you watch the 
 motion of the vessel, and take note of that 
 wave yonder lifting his foam-crested head 
 above his fellows ! You are over him. 
 What a roll ! JN'ow is the time to make the 
 perilous voyage. You loosen your hold of 
 a back-stay and set forth. Alas ! The 
 wave behind the monster for whose passing 
 you had waited is another monster, not 
 quite so high, but with equal unsteadying 
 power. The ship jumps — literally jumps in 
 the air. You seize the first thing that 
 comes to hand — it happens to be the neck 
 of the disagreeable-looking gentleman you 
 have been so haughty to, having taken a 
 dislike to him on embarking at Liverpool ; 
 but there is no time for apologies, and you 
 both slide gracefully down the slippery
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 281 
 
 deck, until brought up by the lee-rail, and, 
 with irrepressible merriment, become hence- 
 forth bosom friends. 
 
 Then the dinner — what a prolonged 
 practical joke that is ! How amiably and 
 without malice your soup, before you have 
 had time to taste it, comes into your lap ; 
 how pleasantly the steward behind you — 
 while clutching at a brother steward, and 
 causing him to break some five dozen 
 plates — upsets that dish of Irish stew on to 
 your head ! 
 
 How amusing it is to watch the interior 
 emotions of the gentleman opposite — who 
 has just been chafl&ng the Captain on the 
 bridge — as depicted by the changes of colour 
 upon his face and by his increasing want 
 of interest in his dinner. You mentally 
 make bets with yourself as to how long he 
 will last ; and when, after a pitiful attempt 
 at eating his boiled mutton, and wqth a 
 smile that reminds you of the smile of an 
 aged coryphee at a Paris theatre, he pleads
 
 282 MERVYN O'CONNOR. 
 
 toothache, or a wish to brush his hair, or a 
 desire to consult the chart, as a reason for 
 hurriedly leaving the table, you must be 
 hard to please indeed if you have not enjoy- 
 ed the spectacle. We have all strength 
 enough to bear the woes of others, as the 
 French philosopher said ; and it is astonish- 
 ing how equably, how pleasantly, indeed, 
 we can all, ourselves well, look on at 
 the horrors of sea-sickness among our 
 friends. 
 
 This is, of course, if we have passed the 
 point of self-doubt. In a Channel passage 
 observe that gentleman with the cigar, un- 
 lit, in his hand. His gaiety when, during 
 the first quarter of an hour, he observes the 
 contortions of the sufferers, is forced — he 
 seems, when laughing at your witty re- 
 marks, to make some mental reserve — to 
 have some pity for the victims of internal 
 disturbance. In another quarter of an hour 
 his countenance clears ; he lights his cigar, 
 he walks the deck with an assumption of
 
 MEEVYN O'CONNOR. 283" 
 
 ease and a swagger which are imposing, he 
 roars at the cadaverous face of yonder blue- 
 cheeked Frenchman, he would hitch up his 
 trousers a la T. P. Cooke if he only knew 
 the way to perform that nautical-dramatic 
 feat. This change is because he has tested 
 himself; and just as we are always extra 
 severe upon those faults we have only just 
 escaped, so he is pitiless in his scathing ridi- 
 cule of those unfortunates whose stomachs 
 are less strong than his. 
 
 '' The one quality I like above all others 
 in a passenger," said a sea-captain once, " is. 
 sea-sickness. Then he can't ask stupid 
 questions, and doesn't get in the way." 
 
 But to return to my Atlantic passage. 
 The ten days passed in the way these ten 
 days always do. At first slow and dreary^ 
 then monotonous but quick, until, when 
 Sandy Hook was in sight, I could scarcely 
 believe that three thousand miles intervened 
 between home and me. There was a young 
 lady on board, of course, with whom we all
 
 284 MERVTN O'CONNOR. 
 
 flirted by turns, and on whose account the 
 males got up a little mild fictitious hatred of 
 each other; there was, of course, an old 
 traveller, who indulged us with accounts of 
 many perils by sea and land ; there was, of 
 course, the religious person, who gave us 
 tracts when he was not sea-sick, and who 
 took us all aside by turn to inquire after the 
 state of our souls ; there were the two 
 Roman Catholic priests, as inseparable as 
 Siamese twins, apparently engaged in a 
 friendly contest as to which should present 
 the broadest expanse of unshorn and bristly 
 cheek and chin and the tiniest bit of dirty 
 linen under it ; there was the shrewd-look- 
 ing, dried-up Yankee judge, with his inde- 
 fatigable eagerness to ascertain facts from 
 everyone — from the age of your last child 
 to the colour of your wife's grandmother's 
 hair, and with his intimate and somewhat 
 mysterious knowledge of many English things 
 — such as what Lord Beaconsfield says to 
 his valet, and how much the Queen pays
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 285- 
 
 her maid-servants — with which you as an 
 Englishman can pretend to no acquaintance ; 
 there was the New Endand commercial 
 traveller, who made up the list for each 
 day's sweepstakes on the " run," and who 
 sold the numbers with such dry humour 
 and in such a hard voice, invariably buying 
 in the likely ones for himself; there was the 
 rubicund-visaged, pleasant doctor, whose 
 only weakness, if it be a weakness, was 
 for a game of whist and a few cocktails ; 
 there was the purser, who found time, 
 amidst his other avocations, to make love- 
 and be of immense use to every decent- 
 looking woman on board, whose cabin was 
 full of photographs of his many Atlantic 
 conquests, and who never by any chance 
 made mention of the wife and seven 
 children in that little house outside 
 Liverpool ; and, to come to the most 
 important person last, there was the Captain 
 — " old sea-dog,'* as the passengers reverent- 
 ly called him — whose jokes were as bad as
 
 286 MERVYN O'CONNOE. 
 
 his knowledge of seamanship was good, and 
 whose nose was rather redder than his 
 ship's port light. 
 
 Our gale of wind on the third day out, 
 in which we lost a boat and altogether got 
 a good deal knocked about, made us all 
 more intimate than we otherwise should 
 have been, and I think, when we walked 
 on shore at New York to go through the 
 terrors of the Custom House examination, 
 that many of us were really sorry to have 
 come to an end of the voyage and to have 
 set eyes on each other — at least, as far as 
 most of us w^ere concerned — for probably 
 the last time. 
 
 There is something rather sad about 
 friendships struck up in the course of a 
 voyage. Of course, addresses are carefully 
 written ; promises of correspondence, of 
 visits, are profusely made ; but nevertheless 
 by both parties they are known to be more 
 or less hollow — it is good-bye for ever, as a 
 rule; and that feeling throws an element
 
 MEEVYN o'cONNOR. 287 
 
 of sadness and sentiment into the last liour 
 on board which is not quite subdued by the 
 natural satisfaction at having gained our 
 port, or even by the bustle of getting 
 baggage together, paying one's bills, and 
 making judicious presents to stewards and 
 other functionaries of the ship. 
 
 In New York I did not linger long, for 
 I was anxious to get to ray regiment and 
 begin duty ; but of course I could not escape 
 without receiving a little experience of 
 American hospitality, which was then — as 
 far, at any rate, as Englishmen were 
 concerned — most lavish. During the week 
 of my stay I could have eaten five dinners 
 a night, and danced in as many ball-rooms ; 
 and, if I got a little tired of being asked 
 what I thought of the country, still I, at 
 any rate, was shown it through the rosiest of 
 spectacles. One incident, I remember, 
 amused me at the time. I was dining out, 
 and a general officer sitting near me kept 
 observing me with a puzzled and doubtful
 
 288 MERVYN O'COXNOR. 
 
 expression of face. At last, when dinner 
 was over, he took me aside. 
 
 *' Sir," said he, very gravely, " may I ask 
 you a question ?" 
 
 '' Certainly, General." 
 
 *'Well, sir, I have heard you called a 
 baronet. Is that so ?" 
 
 ^' Yes ; I am one." 
 
 '* And yet you are going to join a Britisli 
 regiment as a subaltern ? Look here — 
 youll excuse my curiosity — but are you a 
 baronet or a lieutenant?" 
 
 When I told him I was both he left me, 
 deeply disgusted; and henceforth I know 
 the worthy man looked upon me as an 
 impertinent impostor, whom only his good- 
 nature prevented him from exposing. 
 
 At the Cheroot House, which was my 
 hotel, 1 had for the first time an opportunity 
 of observing the effect of so-called freedom 
 on certain minds, and this episode may be 
 worth transcribing. 
 
 The mornin^j after mv arrival I had
 
 MERVYN O'CONNOR. 289 
 
 occasion to ring the bell. After having 
 continued to do so at intervals for some 
 half-hour I was startled by a blow on the 
 outside of my door, at the bottom — evident- 
 ly a kick. 
 
 '* Come in !" I roared, thinking it was a 
 strange way of knocking. 
 
 " What do you want ?" was shouted from 
 outside. 
 
 " Come in !" I again said. But as this 
 produced no effect I opened the door. 
 Leaning against the wall, deeply engaged in 
 paring his nails with a knife, was a 
 shock-headed youth, one of the hotel 
 " helps." He looked at me with some 
 interest — much as one looks at a new animal 
 at the Zoological Gardens — and then calmly 
 finished his right hand and commenced 
 operations with his left, saying lazily, and as 
 if the subject had very little interest for 
 him — 
 
 " What were you ringing about ? What 
 do you want ?" 
 
 VOL. I. * u
 
 290 MERVYN CONNOR. 
 
 By this time I was a little provoked. 
 
 "Why the deuce don't you come in 
 and see ?" 
 
 He looked at me again in that calm 
 manner, and then replied, applying the knife 
 carefully — 
 
 " I guess it'll do as well here." 
 
 " Go and get me some water." 
 
 He slowly shut up his knife, put his hands 
 in his pockets, and, sauntering past me into 
 my room, pressed the electric bell-button 
 with the sole of his shoe. Having done this 
 he was about to leave, when catching sight 
 of something that interested him in the 
 street, he stood gazing out of the window, 
 whistling to himself the while. 
 
 It was too amusing to cause anger, and I 
 watched him silently. 
 
 After a few minutes his interest in the 
 view of Fifth Avenue died away, and, see- 
 ing me looking fixedly at him, he nodded 
 his head, and said —
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 291 
 
 *' Maid's business — she'll bring water. 
 That's a nice stick. Guess you bought 
 that in England. What may it have cost? 
 Five dollars, now ?" 
 
 He had taken up my cane, which lay on 
 the table, and was twisting it about in his 
 very dirty fingers. 
 
 *'Put it down, you impudent scoundrel 1" 
 
 "I shan't hurt it," he said; but a 
 significant move on my part caused him 
 to obey. 
 
 ^'Now take my boots and clean them." 
 
 "Your boots?" 
 
 "Yes. My boots." 
 
 " Where are they ?" 
 
 " Lying there." 
 
 " Wal — give 'em to me." 
 
 " Pick them up at once ; do you 
 hear ?" 
 
 He looked at the boots ; then at me ; 
 then at the boots again ; and then put his 
 hands deep into his pockets. 
 
 u2
 
 292 MERVYN o'CONNOR. 
 
 " You should have left them outside. It's 
 not my business to pick them up." 
 
 " It's your business to do what you're 
 told." 
 
 " I'm not your servant." 
 
 " Yes, you are. At any rate " 
 
 **I reckon you'll find you're wrong. We 
 are all equal here, sir." 
 
 " And you get no wages ?" 
 
 *' I guess I get a salary." And he spat 
 thoughtfully into the fireplace. 
 
 I could scarcely help laughing at 
 his calm impudence, but I managed to sa}^, 
 gravely — 
 
 *' Well, we won't argue about salary. I 
 don't mind admitting that all men are 
 equal." 
 
 ''That's about so." 
 
 ** Just as if there were no ranks, 
 distinctions, and laws, and things — one man 
 against another. The might of the People 
 to rule everything." 
 
 "That's well said. Yes, the might
 
 MERVYN o'CONNOR. 293 
 
 of the many against the tyranny of the few." 
 Of course the youth was a politician 
 — all the lower classes in America are — 
 and probably had picked this phrase up 
 from a stump oration. 
 
 "Very well — might against right. Do 
 you see this cane, and do you see me ? I'm 
 Might. You want to tyrannise over me by 
 refusing to obey my orders — I am going to 
 rebel against the tyranny. You say all men 
 are equal, but you want to put yourself 
 above me by getting wages for what you 
 don't do, which is evidently unfair, as"/ 
 can t manage it. So I, the People, rise in 
 my majesty against you, the Tyrant. If 
 you don't pick up those boots in one 
 minute and take them downstairs to be 
 blacked, I'll give you as sound a thrashing 
 as you ever got in your life." 
 
 He looked at me to see if I was in 
 earnest ; he looked at the cane, ominously 
 quivering in my hand ; he looked at the 
 boots, and as I made a step towards him
 
 294 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 
 
 he picked them up and sullenly left the 
 room. 
 
 " Come back and shut the door — 
 gently. If you bang it I'll kick you down 
 the passage." 
 
 I was close behind him with the cane, and 
 he obeyed, taking a not very consolatory 
 revenge by whistling "Yankee Doodle" 
 when he was in comparative safety at the 
 head of the staircase. 
 
 My next experience of equality and the 
 rights of man was also funny, though in 
 this case 1 gained no victory. I entered 
 a barber's shop in Broadway. It was a 
 small establishment, and at the time of my 
 visit there were no customers, and the two 
 operators were both seated in the shaving- 
 chairs, with their feet up in the air, reading 
 newspapers. 
 
 " I want to be shaved," I said. 
 
 One of them looked up, and then pro- 
 ceeded to read on. 
 
 Again I expressed my desire.
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 295 
 
 *^ One minute. I'm just reading Senator 
 Candling's oration down at Louisville." 
 
 He finished his article, keeping me stand- 
 ing all the while — for he and his brother 
 barber occupied the only chairs — and then 
 rose slowly. I was about to place myself 
 in the chair, and had actually removed my 
 coat, when I noticed my friend pass his 
 hand doubtfully over his own chin. 
 
 ''Yes, I guess I'll be done first. Here, 
 Seth, just give me a touch of a razor. I've 
 got a party this afternoon, and my chin's 
 like a nutmeg grater." And he sat down* 
 again, while the other rose and prepared to 
 comply with his request. 
 
 '' You impudent rascal !" I exclaimed ; 
 " do you aiean to say you are going to keep 
 me waiting while you are shaved ?" 
 
 *' I guess I have a right to be shaved in 
 my own house. You can sit down there, if 
 you like." 
 
 "We must accept the bad with the good," 
 said a friend to whom I recounted this
 
 296 MERVYN O'CONNOR. 
 
 experience. ^' The national independence, 
 which is a good thing, carries with it, of 
 course, some abuses. But even they do not 
 detract from its immense value." 
 
 *' I don't see anything independent in the 
 absence of courtesy." 
 
 " No ; I daresay you don't. But an 
 American does. Courtesy so often means 
 what you call respect shown by an inferior 
 to a superior. Now an American, because 
 he cleans your boots or shaves your chin, 
 does not thereby acknowledge that he is not 
 socially your equal." 
 
 "That may be; but there is no reason 
 why, when you are paid to do a thing, you 
 should not do it with civility and willingly. 
 And -these fellows are civil to each other, 1 
 suppose." 
 
 " Yes. The middle-class American's 
 manner is perfect, as a rule." 
 
 " Then by rudeness, instead of showing 
 himself my equal, he shows that he knows 
 he isn't, and is protesting against my assump-
 
 MERVYN o'cONNOR. 297 
 
 tion of a superiority to which he is aware I 
 have a right." 
 
 *' Well," said my American friend, avoid- 
 ing my argument, " there was a Lord came 
 from your country last year, and he had his 
 name and title painted on his box, and 
 coming up from Boston by the cars he 
 called for some one to put this box in. Well, 
 sir, it struck the boys there to make a joke- 
 of him, and to see whether the Lord could 
 put in his box himself. So they told 
 him to." 
 
 "And he did?" 
 
 ^* And he did. But he swore dreadfully." 
 " What was the business of the ' boys ' ?" 
 '' Well — to look after luggage and that." 
 '' And they showed their American 
 independence by refusing to do their duty 
 because it would have helped a Lord ! 
 Very fine !" 
 
 "Yes, sir; the story got about New 
 York, and occasioned a good deal of 
 laughter."
 
 298 MERVYN CONNOR. 
 
 When I arrived at Quereal the tints of 
 the fall were beginning to make the country 
 around glorious with their varied hues ; but 
 the Society of that city had not returned 
 from the watering-places to which it was cle 
 rigueur to go every autumn, and the town 
 was most desperately dull. However, at 
 first I had enough to do in making acquaint- 
 ance with my brother officers and getting 
 rid of the strong prejudice against me as 
 an ex-Guardsman and probable swaggerer. 
 Every now and then, watch myself as care- 
 fully as I could, some chance allusion to 
 London life, some mention of a big name, 
 would bring a sneer on the faces round the 
 mess-table ; and it was months before I had 
 convinced them all that I was not in reality 
 filled with contempt for all that did not 
 savour of St. James's, nor was anxious to 
 dazzle them with the splendour of my 
 aristocratic acquaintance in London town. 
 
 Perhaps the thing that eventually won 
 their hearts was my very evident hard-upness,
 
 MERVYN O'CONNOR. 299 
 
 and my frank avowal of it; while my judi- 
 cious snubbing of a certain Captain Poamer, 
 a "beauty-man " of the hairdresser's model 
 type, whose father had been a fashionable 
 London tailor, and who prided himself upon 
 being out of place and thrown away in a 
 Line regiment, won me many friends among 
 the youngsters, who had long half-admired 
 and half feared the whiskered impostor. 
 
 Then the old stories gleaned at Clubs, 
 which were useless in London, came out 
 brand new in the 110th ante-room, while, 
 when rosy wine (Moselle at twenty-four 
 shillings a dozen) on a guest night had 
 opened their hearts, and for the moment 
 dispelled suspicion as to my intention of 
 self-glorification, the recountal of what the 
 
 Duke of A said to Lord B at 
 
 Ascot, or how the Marchioness of C had 
 
 snubbed poor Lady D at Buckingham 
 
 Palace, gave a tinge of aristocratic flavour 
 to the regiment, which was acceptable to all, 
 and especially so to dear old Binks, the
 
 300 MERVYN o'CONNOR. 
 
 Quartermaster, who had risen from the 
 ranks, and spent all his little leave when at 
 home with his old mother, who kept a snuff 
 shop in St. Mary Axe. 
 
 END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
 LONDON: PRINTED BY DUNCAN MACDONALD, BLENHEIM HOUSE.