"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.
"a.s.suredly."
"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."
CHAPTER X.
"LA JEUNE FRANCE."
If this were not a veracious history, in the customary order of events as they occur in the construction of fiction, the reader should have gone straight from the quick and gracious acceptance of O"Hoolohan"s proposal of marriage to the old-fashioned formula of ringing the wedding-bells, and leaving the united pair to the enjoyment of the honeymoon, with the tag: "If they don"t live happy, may we!" That would be the artistic conclusion. But we are copying from nature, and have no pretensions to art. And O"Hoolohan"s nature was one of surprises. That phenomenally-const.i.tuted being had been very busy secretly prosecuting researches into the manner in which the girl he had recognised in the Morgue had come by her death, and the mode in which her body had been disposed of.
A great city like Paris, with its never-ending rush of activities, is like to a whirlpool. It is always in surging motion; the figures that rise to the surface for awhile and attract a pa.s.sing notice as they circle giddily round are thought no more of, when they sink from view, than the flotsam and jetsam sucked into the oblivion of the Maelstrom.
Marguerite (for it was she) had run her course, and nine days after she had disappeared from the haunts that knew her she was forgotten. How she had died was never ascertained; but there was narrow scope for conjecture. It was only too evident that she had committed suicide. In the mult.i.tude of her facile acquaintances she had met one for whom she had conceived a real attachment. He pretended to reciprocate it, and he did, seemingly, until his student"s career was finished, and he had received his doctor"s degree, and was summoned to his home in the provinces to begin his dull professional life. The consecrated preliminary to that in France is to marry a neighbour"s daughter with a snug dowry, who has been provided of long date by the prudence of family councils, tenacious of tradition. The youthful doctor duly led his destined help-meet to the altar, and by the same act consigned her erring sister in Paris, whose very existence she had never suspected, to the cold Seine and the nameless burial-pit.
That is no novelty in the Latin Quarter, nor will ever be while woman, degraded soever though she be, is not utterly heartless.
The deserted Marguerite _had_ committed suicide. She had sallied out in the blackness of midnight, when the quays were silent and lonely, and, watching her opportunity till the policemen and roysterers and rag-pickers were distant, she had stealthily clambered the parapet of a bridge and dropped into the river. That must have been the end. So it had been settled over pipes and cards and Strasburg beer in the _bra.s.series_ of the Boulevard St. Michel; and so, truly, it might--nay, must have been.
O"Hoolohan had learned this from a knot of premature cynics in the cafe of _la Jeune France_, where he had been in the habit of calling in among other gay resorts of the district to pick up what information he could on a matter that affected him much, for under his stone-like, soldierly exterior there were hidden springs of tenderness.
The cafe which is called after young France is much affected by those promising pillars of the future, the students of law and medicine, especially the latter, who reside in the Latin Quarter of Paris. A light, varied of blue and red, blazes like a pharos over its portals to entice the customers. It lies to the right a few hundred yards up the Boulevard St. Michel, as it is entered from the side of the quays. Here may be seen congregated, after dinner-hour in the evening--under the warm chandeliers in the winter, out in the fresh air of the thoroughfare in the finer season--the future Berryers and Lamballes of the most civilized nation in the world. Only they do not look like it always, carelessly chatting behind their modest gla.s.ses of beer, often from amid the clouds of incense floating from cheap cigars, or the equally economic _caporal_ tobacco. A gay and s.p.a.cious cafe it is; well lit, well furnished with softly-padded cushions, and lined with rows of mirrors reflecting the intellectual group around busily engaged wasting the hours in everything but the study of comparative anatomy or the subtleties of the Code Napoleon. Dominoes and picquet are more in vogue than jurisprudence, and the only books which are read by the novices of the learned professions who frequent the place are woman"s looks, and folly--the loss of time and money--invariably all they teach them.
The night before that on which O"Hoolohan paid his last visit to O"Hara"s chambers, the soldier of fortune had sauntered into the cafe early, but it was almost deserted. It was the _mi-careme_, that oasis in mid-Lent for the Paris student, when he avenges himself for the enforced abstinence from his usual enjoyments by the indulgence in riot in the interval of saturnalia allowed by custom. The habitues of the Young France were not there. They were dancing merrily in one disguise or other at the ball-room higher up in the same boulevard, the Closerie des Lilas.
Why, it may be asked, did not O"Hoolohan go to the ball-room where he had first seen her whose fate he was inquiring into? and why, knowing that she was dead, did he seek to know more?
The one answer may serve for both questions. He looked upon himself already as a member of Captain Chauvin"s household. He would not dishonour her he loved by showing himself in any of the notorious haunts of loose womankind now that he was her accepted suitor. But having come to the inevitable conclusion that Marguerite was the lost sister of Berthe"s friend, Caroline, he was anxious to obtain some memorial of her, and, if possible, to rescue her remains from the _fosse commune_, and put over them a simple tomb. He was emotional, was this battered campaigner, who had buffeted about the world so much, and had an infinite pity for human weakness--and chiefly for the weaknesses of maidenhood beset by temptation. He hung about the cafe until groups returning from the Closerie in every variety of carnivalesque costume had filled it with a noisy company. Close to the table at which he sat, three students, disciples of aesculapius, from their conversation, took up their position and ordered a frugal supper before retiring to roost in their attics hard by. They were talkative, and talked as if they were not very particular who listened. Our friend could not help overhearing them, and out of their conversation had sprung the proposed "affair of honour."
"Ah, _ma Marguerite_," said one pale-faced, blear-eyed stripling, as he rolled a cigarette, "little I thought as I whirled you in a waltz a twelvemonth ago that I"d be having a hand in your dissection to-day. She makes a splendid subject."
"The proud minx, she never would take my arm," said a sentimental gentleman with blue spectacles. "D"you know, Eugene, I cut enough of her hair off when I got the chance, two hours after they brought her in, to plait me a watch-guard. Garcon, a bock! Don"t you think it a famous idea?"
"_Ma foi!_" said Eugene, a black-bearded fellow with a Gascon accent, robust of frame, and several years older than his companion, "the idea is tolerable, but mine is better. I bought a member of Marguerite and took it home. _Tiens_, see this paper-knife," producing one from his pocket. "I thought I"d like a souvenir of _la modiste_ in memory of old times. This is made out of her tibia; I had the fibula removed. Please to observe the beautiful polish the internal malleolus takes!"