Captain O'Blunderbuss was a gentleman of Irish extraction, and, according to his own account, possessed of vast estates in the Emerald Island; but it was evident to all his friends that the rents were very irregularly paid, inasmuch as their gallant proprietor was frequently under the necessity of soliciting the loan of a guinea, and when he could not obtain that sum, his demand would suddenly drop to half-a-crown or even eighteen-pence.
But whenever the Captain talked of his estates, no one ventured to suggest a doubt relative to their existence; for the gallant officer was a notorious duellist, having been engaged as principal in thirty-seven of those pleasant little contests, and as second in ninety-two more.
He was about forty-five years of age, and of exceedingly fierce appearance. His crown was entirely bald; but huge bushes of red hair stuck out between his temples and his ears—enormous whiskers of the same meteoric hue and portent covered half his face—and a formidable pair of moustaches, red also, curled ominously over his upper lip, the ends being twisted and greased so as to look like two small tails.
In person he was tall, thin, but not ill-made. He held himself particularly upright; and as he wore a military undress coat, all frogged and braided in the Polish fashion, and grey trousers with red stripes down the legs, he really looked like what he called himself and was called by others—namely, a Captain.
But he was not wont to be more explicit relative to his military services than he was definite concerning the locality of his estates. No one knew, and assuredly no one ever ventured to ask him, to what regiment he had belonged. He stated himself to be unattached; and that was sufficient.
We should, as faithful chroniclers, observe that it had been whispered—but then, scandal is so rife in this wicked world!—that Captain O'Blunderbuss was never in the army at all, and that his formidable name was merely an assumed one; and the newsmongers who propagated these reports behind the gallant gentleman's back, not only ridiculed the idea of his estates, but actually carried their malignant spite so far as to insinuate that he was once the driver of a jaunting-car in Dublin, and at that period bore the name of Teddy O'Flaherty.
Be all this as it may, it is nevertheless very certain that Captain O'Blunderbuss was a great man about town—that he was nodded to by loungers in the Park—shaken hands with by dandies in Bond Street—and invariably chosen as a second in every duel that took place on Wormwood Scrubs, Wimbledon Common, or Battersea Fields.
Such was the terrible individual who was standing on the rug, in a most ferocious attitude, when Sir Christopher Blunt entered the drawing-room.
The Captain desisted from twirling his moustaches, and indulged in a good long stare at the knight, whose half-ludicrous, half-doleful appearance was certainly remarkable enough to attract an unusual degree of attention.
"You resayved my car-r-d, Sir Christopher Blunt?" said the Captain, speaking in a strong Irish accent, and rattling the r in a truly menacing manner.