The Certain Hour Part 16

The two men gazed for a long while. Amid that coterie of exquisites, wherein allusion to whatever might be ugly in the world was tacitly allowed to be unmentionable, Lady Honoria glitteringly went about the moment's mirthful business with lovely ardor. You saw now unmistakably that "Light Queen of Elfdom, dead t.i.tania's heir" of whom Ufford writes in the fourth Satire. Honoria's prettiness, rouged, frail, and modishly enhanced, allured the eye from all less elfin brilliancies; and as she laughed among so many other relishers of life her charms became the more instant, just as a painting quickens in every tint when set in an appropriate frame.

"There is no other way," her husband said. He drank and toasted what was dearest in the world, smiling to think how death came to him in that wine's familiar taste. "I drink to the most lovely of created ladies! and to her happiness!"

He snapped the stem of the gla.s.s and tossed it joyously aside.

"a.s.suredly, there is no other way," said Ufford. "And armored by that knowledge, even I may drink as honorable people do. Pro honoria!" Then this man also broke his emptied gla.s.s.

"How long have I to live?" said Calverley, and took snuff.

"Why, thirty years, I think, unless you duel too immoderately," replied Lord Ufford,--"since while you looked at Honoria I changed our gla.s.ses.

No! no! a thing done has an end. Besides, it is not unworthy of me.

So go boldly to the Earl of Bute and tell him all. You are my cousin and my successor. Yes, very soon you, too, will be a peer of England and as safe from molestation as is Lord Pevensey. I am the first to tender my congratulations. Now I make certain that they are not premature."

The poet laughed at this moment as a man may laugh in h.e.l.l. He reeled.

His lean face momentarily contorted, and afterward the poet died.

"I am Lord Ufford," said Calverley aloud. "The person of a peer is inviolable----" He presently looked downward from rapt gazing at his wife.

Fresh from this horrible half-hour, he faced a future so alluring as by its beauty to intimidate him. Youth, love, long years of happiness, and (by this capricious turn) now even opulence, were the ingredients of a captivating vista. And yet he needs must pause a while to think of the dear comrade he had lost--of that loved boy, his pattern in the time of their common youthfulness which gleamed in memory as bright and misty as a legend, and of the perfect chevalier who had been like a touchstone to Robert Calverley a bare half-hour ago. He knelt, touched lightly the fallen jaw, and lightly kissed the cheek of this poor wreckage; and was aware that the caress was given with more tenderness than Robert Calverley had shown in the same act a bare half-hour ago.

Meanwhile the music of a country dance urged the new Earl of Ufford to come and frolic where every one was laughing; and to partake with gusto of the benefits which chance had provided; and to be forthwith as merry as was decorous in a peer of England.

THE IRRESISTIBLE OGLE

"_But after SHERIDAN had risen to a commanding position in the gay life of London, he rather disliked to be known as a playwright or a poet, and preferred to be regarded as a statesman and a man of fas.h.i.+on who 'set the pace' in all pastimes of the opulent and idle. Yet, whatever he really thought of his own writings, and whether or not he did them, as Stevenson used to say, 'just for fun,' the fact remains that he was easily the most distinguished and brilliant dramatist of an age which produced in SHERIDAN'S solemn vagaries one of its most characteristic products._"

Look on this form,--where humor, quaint and sly, Dimples the cheek, and points the beaming eye; Where gay invention seems to boast its wiles In amorous hint, and half-triumphant smiles.

Look on her well--does she seem form'd to teach?

Should you expect to hear this lady preach?

Is gray experience suited to her youth?

Do solemn sentiments become that mouth?

Bid her be grave, those lips should rebel prove To every theme that slanders mirth or love.

RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN.--_Second Prologue to The Rivals_.

THE IRRESISTIBLE OGLE

The devotion of Mr. Sheridan to the Dean of Winchester's daughter, Miss Esther Jane Ogle--or "the irresistible Ogle," as she was toasted at the Kit-cat--was now a circ.u.mstance to be a.s.sumed in the polite world of London. As a result, when the parliamentarian followed her into Scotland, in the spring of 1795, people only shrugged.

"Because it proves that misery loves company," was Mr. Fox's observation at Wattier's, hard upon two in the morning. "Poor Sherry, as an inconsolable widower, must naturally have some one to share his grief. He perfectly comprehends that no one will lament the death of his wife more fervently than her successor."

In London Mr. Fox thus worded his interpretation of the matter; and spoke, oddly enough, at the very moment that in Edinburgh Mr. Sheridan returned to his lodgings in Abercromby Place, deep in the reminiscences of a fortunate evening at cards. In consequence, Mr. Sheridan entered the room so quietly that the young man who was employed in turning over the contents of the top bureau-drawer was taken unprepared.

But in the marauder's nature, as far as resolution went, was little lacking. "Silence!" he ordered, and with the mandate a pistol was leveled upon the representative for the borough of Stafford. "One cry for help, and you perish like a dog. I warn you that I am a desperate man."

"Now, even at a hazard of discourtesy, I must make bold to question your statement," said Mr. Sheridan, "although, indeed, it is not so much the recklessness as the masculinity which I dare call into dispute."

He continued, in his best parliamentary manner, a happy blending of reproach, omniscience and pardon. "Only two months ago," said Mr.

Sheridan, "I was so fortunate as to encounter a lady who, alike through the attractions of her person and the sprightliness of her conversation, convinced me I was on the road to fall in love after the high fas.h.i.+on of a popular romance. I accordingly make her a declaration. I am rejected. I besiege her with the customary artillery of sonnets, bouquets, serenades, bonbons, theater-tickets and threats of suicide. In fine, I contract the habit of proposing to Miss Ogle on every Wednesday; and so strong is my infatuation that I follow her as far into the north as Edinburgh in order to secure my eleventh rejection at half-past ten last evening."

"I fail to understand," remarked the burglar, "how all this prolix account of your amours can possibly concern me."

"You are at least somewhat involved in the deplorable climax," Mr.

Sheridan returned. "For behold! at two in the morning I discover the object of my adoration and the daughter of an estimable prelate, most calumniously clad and busily employed in rumpling my supply of cravats.

If ever any lover was thrust into a more ambiguous position, madam, historians have touched on his dilemma with marked reticence."

He saw--and he admired--the flush which mounted to his visitor's brow.

And then, "I must concede that appearances are against me, Mr.

Sheridan," the beautiful intruder said. "And I hasten to protest that my presence in your apartments at this hour is prompted by no unworthy motive. I merely came to steal the famous diamond which you brought from London--the Honor of Eiran."

"Incomparable Esther Jane," ran Mr. Sheridan's answer, "that stone is now part of a brooch which was this afternoon returned to my cousin's, the Earl of Eiran's, hunting-lodge near Melrose. He intends the gem which you are vainly seeking among my haberdashery to be the adornment of his promised bride in the ensuing June. I confess to no overwhelming admiration as concerns this raucous if meritorious young person; and will even concede that the thought of her becoming my kinswoman rouses in me an inevitable distaste, no less attributable to the discord of her features than to the source of her eligibility to disfigure the peerage--that being her father's lucrative transactions in Pork, which I find indigestible in any form."

"A truce to paltering!" Miss Ogle cried. "That jewel was stolen from the temple at Moorshedabad, by the Earl of Eiran's grandfather, during the confusion necessarily attendant on the glorious battle of Pla.s.sy."

She laid down the pistol, and resumed in milder tones: "From an age-long existence as the left eye of Ganesh it was thus converted into the loot of an invader. To restore this diamond to its lawful, although no doubt polygamous and inefficiently-attired proprietors is at this date impossible. But, oh! what claim have you to its possession?"

"Why, none whatever," said the parliamentarian; "and to contend as much would be the apex of unreason. For this diamond belongs, of course, to my cousin the Earl of Eiran----"

"As a thief's legacy!" She spoke with signs of irritation.

"Eh, eh, you go too fast! Eiran, to do him justice, is not a graduate in peculation. At worst, he is only the sort of fool one's cousins ordinarily are."

The trousered lady walked to and fro for a while, with the impatience of a caged lioness. "I perceive I must go more deeply into matters,"

Miss Ogle remarked, and, with that habitual gesture which he fondly recognized, brushed back a straying lock of hair. "In any event," she continued, "you cannot with reason deny that the world's wealth is inequitably distributed?"

"Madam," Mr. Sheridan returned, "as a member of Parliament, I have necessarily made it a rule never to understand political economy. It is as apt as not to prove you are selling your vote to the wrong side of the House, and that hurts one's conscience."

"Ah, that is because you are a man. Men are not practical. None of you has ever dared to insist on his opinion about anything until he had secured the cowardly corroboration of a fact or so to endorse him. It is a pity. Yet, since through no fault of yours your s.e.x is invariably misled by its hallucinations as to the importance of being rational, I will refrain from logic and statistics. In a word, I simply inform you that I am a member of the League of Philanthropic Larcenists."

"I had not previously heard of this organization," said Mr. Sheridan, and not without suspecting his response to be a masterpiece in the inadequate.

"Our object is the benefit of society at large," Miss Ogle explained; "and our obstacles so far have been, in chief, the fetish of proprietary rights and the ubiquity of the police."

And with that she seated herself and told him of the league's inception by a handful of reflective persons, admirers of Rousseau and converts to his tenets, who were resolved to better the circ.u.mstances of the indigent. With amiable ardor Miss Ogle explained how from the pet.i.t larcenies of charity-b.a.l.l.s and personally solicited subscriptions the league had mounted to an ampler field of depredation; and through what means it now took toll from every form of wealth unrighteously acquired. Divertingly she described her personal experiences in the separation of usurers, thieves, financiers, hereditary n.o.blemen, popular authors, and other social parasites, from the ill-got profits of their disreputable vocations. And her account of how, on the preceding Tuesday, she, single-handed, had robbed Sir Alexander McRae--who then enjoyed a fortune and an enviable reputation for philanthropy, thanks to the combination of glucose, vitriol and other chemicals which he prepared under the humorous pretext of manufacturing beer--wrung high encomiums from Mr. Sheridan.

"The proceeds of these endeavors," Miss Ogle added, "are conscientiously devoted to ameliorating the condition of meritorious paupers. I would be happy to submit to you our annual report. Then you may judge for yourself how many families we have s.n.a.t.c.hed from the depths of poverty and habitual intoxication to the comparative comfort of a vine-embowered cottage."

Mr. Sheridan replied: "I have not ever known of any case where adoration needed an affidavit for foundation. Oh, no, incomparable Esther Jane! I am not in a position to be solaced by the reports of a corresponding secretary. I gave my heart long since; to-night I fling my confidence into the bargain; and am resolved to serve wholeheartedly the cause to which you are devoted. In consequence, I venture to propose my name for members.h.i.+p in the enterprise you advocate and indescribably adorn."