CHAPTER IX.

A SOLDIER OF FORTUNE.

On the day following the events detailed in our last chapter, O'Hara was seated in his chamber, hard at work at his desk, when a visitor announced himself at the door. It was the O'Hoolohan Roe--in the old suit.

'Take a seat--scribbling away for the bare life, as you see. Just finished.'

'I've come to ask you a favour. I presume you'll grant it.'

'Certainly, always presuming that it is such as a gentleman can grant.'

'Still harping on the old string.'

'Sir,' said O'Hara, getting annoyed, 'I have the misfortune to a certain extent to be your debtor; but I am not your valet. Here, take back the hundred francs you lent me, and we shall speak on more equal terms,' holding out his purse.

'Did I ever ask you for it?'

'I insist on your taking it.'

'If I do, I'm blest if I don't give it to the first beggar I meet on the highway.'

'That as you like, sir. I'm not a beggar--nor yet a barbarian.'

'Ha, ha, ha! That's really good. Now, tell me, who should lose his temper? Here, I take the money and beg your pardon. I didn't think you were so thin-skinned.'

'Thin-skinned! Thank you for that expression.'

'What better could you expect from a barbarian?'

O'Hara could not resist a smile.

'Well, now,' continued his visitor, 'that you're getting into better humour I'll try and put on my good manners. The favour I'm going to ask of you is not much; but it's hardly fair to ask it of you without telling you who and what I am. Would you like to hear my history?'

'Candidly, I would.'

'Then, attend,' said his visitor, assuming a more serious air, and after a short pause, in which he seemed to be running over the hoards of memory, he thus commenced:

'My life is briefly told. It has been a hard life, a life of struggling, written in plain black and white, and as such I'll tell it to you. I haven't the genius of a romancer to make it picturesque. I was born in Cork----'

'The city?'

'Yes, the beautiful city.'

'Some of our most eminent literary worthies came from Cork.'

'Well, I'm not one of them--my father was, though, in a way. He kept a classical and mathematical school which was well supported, and called himself a philomath, whatever that meant. My mother was a big-hearted, kind woman who never sent a beggar empty-handed from her door, and believed her husband the most learned man the world ever saw. But if she worshipped her husband, she adored her son.'

'She was a woman,' sententiously remarked O'Hara.

'That's it, I suppose,' resumed O'Hoolohan with a sigh. 'Of course she must have been,' he added, after thinking a little, as if a new revelation had dawned upon him. 'Anyhow, he wasn't as good a boy as he ought to have been, and 'tis sorry he is to-day to have to own it. Well, it's no use crying over spilt milk. To get on with my tale. I raked and I rambled--I may as well make a clean breast of it--and in the end I took a liking to a cavalry uniform I saw in Ballincollig, and I 'listed. My father paid the smart-money, my mother cried, and I was lugged home. Then they bound me to a saddler. After a month I 'listed again: he bought me off again, and the old game of tears from the mother and promises of repentance from the hopeful youth, and stern majesty from the father, was repeated. Six months after, the quicksilver got up in my constitution again. I determined not to be balked this time, so I went to the old fellow, said I was going to 'list, and wouldn't be bought out.

'"Mother'll buy you out," says he.

'"I'll 'list again," says I; "see who'll get tired of that trick first."

'"She prevailed on you to leave off your soldiering notions twice before," said he again.

'"The third time has the charm," was my answer.

'He reflected awhile: "Well, if you will be a soldier, I suppose it's wrong to bar such a fine fellow the chance of getting a bullet in his head."

'"Oh!" said I gaily, "the man that is born to be hanged will never be shot."

'"Go your way, then," said he.

'"You'd better let me have that one-and-twenty shillings smart you used to pay, to drink your long life, and a healthy thirst for learning to the rising generation of Corkonians."

'If I hadn't ducked my head at the moment, I mightn't be here to tell you. He had levelled "lamb and salad," as he used to call his slapper--the superannuated bolt of an outhouse--at the place where my brains ought to have been. The good man had a temper of his own.'

'Is he no more?'

'These ten years. So is my mother, and if I ever go back to Ireland again, one of the businesses that will take me there is to put a stone over their graves. The regiment which I joined was one of the medium cavalry, and my knowledge of saddlery stood me in good stead. Because of it I got promoted, which was not an ordinary piece of luck, for the corps was an English one, and a Paddy had little chance of the stripes anywhere except on his back. It was in the Tangiers Horse I learned to be a rebel and a democrat. To see young spooneys, fresh from their mother's apron-strings, spooneys not able to grow a beard, hemming and hawing on a parade-ground, and strutting about in command of old soldiers that were black with powder before they were born! It sickened me, I tell you Pshaw! All men are equal.'

'As all the fingers of our hand are of the same length,' quietly observed O'Hara.

The democratic dragoon did not regard the interruption, but continued:

'It was during the Repeal Agitation I enlisted, and our regiment never left the shores of England. We moved about from Manchester to Sheffield, and from Sheffield to York, but never too far from Ireland. I watched the excitement as it grew, and waited the moment till it would come to blows. I was an Irishman before I was a soldier, thought I, and I'll never wear a sabre against my country. I went to the colonel and demanded my discharge. I had saved enough in the saddlery workshop to pay for it.

'"Can't give any men their discharge now, especially a useful man like you."

'My resolution was taken on the spot. "All right, sir," I said; "I suppose I must put up with the disappointment."

'That night I deserted and put a letter with the money I had saved to buy myself out in the Post Office, and started for this city. I was always anxious to see foreign parts. I soon ran through my rhino, and then, although I couldn't speak the language, the trade I had at my fingers' ends stood my friend. But the old passion grew on me, and I joined the Foreign Legion in the French Service. I campaigned four years among the Kabyles in Algeria, and then, the Crimean War breaking out, I was taken as volunteer into the battalion of ours that went out with the Army of the East. I served through the awful winters before Sebastopol, served from the Alma to the Tchernaya, and came back with an honourable discharge, and not a scratch on my body. I stopped in Paris again awhile--I make this city my harbour of refuge, the place where I put in to refit always--but the Lombardy campaign of '59 broke out. I didn't care to enter into another engagement under the tricolour--it was too long--so I applied for a commission in a guerrilla corps in the Italian Service, and they were glad to take me on. We finished Austria at the double-quick; I was into the thick of the whole bloody six weeks' work from Turbigo to Solferino, and came off with the medal for military distinction and a sabre-cut on my left elbow. I laid up for awhile, nursing my wound and spending my money in old Paris. In 1860 I was in harness again, but this time a free-lance. I was one of the thousand of Garibaldi, landed with him at Marsala, marched with him through Palermo, crossed over with him to the mainland, fought by his side at the Volturno, and entered Naples in his triumphal procession on the Via Toledo, after he had driven out Bombalino, the dirty Bourbon.'

'Why, you have been a regular soldier of fortune! What a lot of fighting you have seen!'

'There is more to come, on the other side of the ocean. After a short stay in Paris again, I left from Havre by the _Pereire_ for New York; didn't like it, and travelled down South to Carolina. I was there when the first shot was fired at Sumter, and I threw in my fortunes with the Palmetto flag.'

'I wonder at a democrat doing that,' remarked O'Hara.

'Oh! you are of those who imagine the North was fighting to put down slavery in that war,' said his visitor.

'Not entirely, but I'd expect an Irish democrat would range him under the Stars and Stripes.'

'And I might have expected that the natural place for an Irish rebel to have ranged himself was on the side of the "rebels," as they were called. But to cut that matter short, it was very much a question of locality with most Irishmen.'

'I am satisfied. Go on.'

'There is not far to go now. I'm nearly at the end of my tether. I got a captain's command in the cavalry, served under General Stuart, and left a colonel, but broken-down in health, spirits and purse, like most of the noble fellows who strove to lift on high the bonnie blue flag. Fortunately I had secured some money behind me here in Paris before I had left for America--I had always an eye to the main chance in my campaigning, and had been able to save enough to sign myself _rentier_--my annuity had been accumulating in my absence, and I found myself comparatively well off. I have been gathering health in the two years since, and now I sometimes itch for work again. I should embark for Mexico, to join the guerrillas, but that I scruple fighting against my old comrades of Africa, the Crimea, and Italy. Sentimental, isn't it?'

'No; on the contrary, a quite healthy feeling, and I respect you for it,' said O'Hara.

'Well, I have told you my history.'

'Without telling me your name.'

'You knew that already. I dropped it the other night casually in the heat of conversation.'

'And, pray, how did you discover mine?'

'Nothing simpler in the world. You remember the famous old coat of yours that the dog carried from the Morgue. Your last card fell out of it.'

'How did you know it was my card?'

'It was wrapped in tissue-paper. Men are not in the habit of keeping their neighbours' cards with so much care.'

O'Hara gave a long low whistle.

'And now that I have told you so much about _my_self, will you answer me a question about _your_self?' resumed O'Hoolohan.

'You know my conditions.'

'Well, then, why were you so poor when I first met you?'

'I will answer you truly. Because I haven't self-control and firmness of mind enough to keep money when I get it--in a word, because I'm an Irishman. I receive a monthly allowance, and, as I wrote to a friend the other day, the first week in the month I am the King of Yvetot, the second comes good resolution on the heel of terrible reaction, the third is my week of work and philosophy, and the fourth----'

'Aye, the fourth?'

'Why, in the fourth I generally think of throwing myself off the Pont Neuf.'

'Ha! and I came upon you at the close of your fourth week?'

'That's just it.'

'Alas!' said O'Hoolohan, rising, 'that is one of our national failings. We never think of to-morrow. I had it myself, but the discipline of the barrack-yard made me methodical and gave me habits of order that grew into my nature. If I hadn't some foresight when I had the means of earning money; I would be in debt to-day and the debtor is a slave. I tell you what, sir, one of the worst lessons we Irish want to learn is the lesson of thrift--to put by something when the sun shines against the rainy day.'

O'Hara felt himself colouring, but his visitor had delicacy enough to pretend not to see it.

'Now, may I crave the favour I came for?' asked O'Hoolohan as he rose to leave.

'Assuredly.'

'Will you be my best man at the church of Saint Etienne du Mont in a certain ceremony one of these mornings?'

'With a heart-and-a-half; but have you really proposed?'

'Aye, and been accepted. I never fight my battles by halves.'

'Then,' said O'Hara, grasping his hands in a cordial grip, 'I sincerely wish you joy. Count upon me to turn up at the wedding in full fig with my holiday face on.'

'Thanks,' said O'Hoolohan, 'thanks. I knew you were a brick. For the present, farewell. The splicing will take place as soon as it can be managed--but be sure I'll let you know in time;' and he moved towards the door. As he reached the threshold he suddenly stopped and exclaimed, 'By Mars the immortal! I was near forgetting. This is what comes of being in love. I have another service to ask of you.'

'Name it, by all means.'

'Oh! it's a mere formality. Will you be my second in a duel?'

'With the greatest pleasure in life,' said O'Hara; 'but, stay, which comes off first, the wedding or the duel?'

O'Hoolohan cogitated for awhile as if he had not given that a thought before.

'The duel first--of course, the duel first!' he exclaimed. 'The wedding can wait, but the other, you know, is an affair of honour.'

'Hadn't you better let me know something about the quarrel? We may be able to arrange it.'

'Not likely,' said O'Hoolohan drily. 'I must be fairly bothered,' he added. 'Now that I recollect, it was to tell you all about the quarrel I came here expressly, but one thing has driven the other clean out of my mind.'

'Sit down,' said O'Hara, 'and go ahead.'