As I glance at my picturesque friend, head aloft, purple-lined cloak swung well back, and note the air of smiling defiance wherewith he faces the world, I perceive the Man, and with pleasurable anticipation await the Circumstance. I shall always remember one conversation of this kind, for the reason that it directly preceded our meeting with the Grand Duke.
We had just quitted the theatre. My proposal in reference to supper had discovered the interesting circumstance that our joint capital equalled three-and-nine.
“Had you come out without money,” said O’Hagan, “I should not have been surprised. Had I come out without money I should not have been surprised. But for us both, on the same evening, to do so, reveals the finger of Fate.”
O’Hagan, as he stood with one half of his face and figure lighted up by the glare of the theatre lamps, and the other blacked out in contrasting shadow, bore a resemblance rather more marked than usual to the Monarch of merry memory. Withal, he looked strikingly handsome. He is the only man of my acquaintance who can successfully wear a flowing, black dress tie.
Captain Bernard O’Hagan is a figure unforgettable.
“Well?” I said, impatiently watching the theatre-goers driving supperward. “Shall we have something at the club?”
“No, Raymond,” replied my friend, reflectively. “That would be capitulating. Is it possible that two honourable gentlemen, chancing to be without half a sovereign or so, are forced to sup on credit? I recall an episode in the career of my ancestor, Patrick.”
He is fond of recounting episodes in the career of this ancestor, Patrick—some time of the Musketeers of Louis XIII.—a gentleman who would seem to have been chiefly notable for suave ruffianism.
The nature of the episode I was not destined to learn, however, at the time; for as O’Hagan lighted a cigarette, a block in the traffic occurred at the corner of Wellington Street (do not misunderstand me to mean that the incidents were correlative); and a handsome limousine was held up immediately in front of us. The interior was brilliantly illuminated, and a gentleman who lounged upon the fawn-coloured cushions glanced curiously in our direction.
This gentleman, the sole occupant, was distinguished by fiery moustachios and a squarely trimmed beard. My association with what O’Hagan terms “the lower journalism” has familiarised me with the faces of notabilities.