It is recorded, O’Hagan will tell you, that his ancestor Patrick, sometime of the Musketeers of Louis XIII., on one occasion waited for eight hours in the snow outside the hotel of the Duchesse de C——, in order to reprimand an unknown nobleman who had trodden on his corn. But within eight minutes from the time of the gentleman’s coming out, Patrick O’Hagan had aroused the concierge of the Hotel de C—— to take him in again, summoned a surgeon, summoned a priest, summoned an undertaker, and reported for duty at the Louvre. A bloody ancestor for any man.
My friend’s code, then, is peculiar, but iron-bound. He scrupulously avoided the topic of Mr. Repton with his host; but when, later, Mrs. Lestrange, the Major’s sister, came in to dinner on the arm of Captain O’Hagan, the countenance of Repton would have served as model for a Notre Dame gargoyle.
The Major, too, had been whispering to one man: “The O’Hagan! You recall the incident at so-and-so?” And to another: “O’Hagan, V.C.! One of the O’Hagan’s of Dunnamore!” To a girl: “You must have read how the Boers ambushed a company of the So-and-So’s at So-and-So? Kipling has written about it! Well, this is Captain O’Hagan, who,” etc., etc.
So that, altogether, my friend has assured me that he recalls no more enjoyable evening. His conversation is always brilliant, but on this occasion, I gather, he surpassed himself. All eyes were fixed upon the handsome, debonair visitant from an older world of romance; for O’Hagan is at heart a Musketeer. Moira Cumberley in particular found him wholly entrancing; and each glance of her bright eyes which rested upon the cavalierly figure, likewise poured gall and wormwood into two souls. One of these souls was the sombre soul of Repton; the other was the joyous but hungry soul of a certain Mr. Bruce McIvor.
(“I could see how the wind blew,” O’Hagan will explain. “McIvor was the favoured swain, and naturally enough; for he was a fine lad and descended from Robert Bruce. When, later in the evening, I was presented to Mrs. Cumberley—Moira’s mother—I discovered the fly in the ointment. Repton had money—but no blood, my boy; no family—and poor McIvor, though he could trace back to Bruce, was a mere free-lance journalist. Mrs. Cumberley also lacked breed, but worshipped Pluto. She had banned the McIvor and encouraged Repton. I saw my course plainly.”)
When my friend Bernard O’Hagan sees his course plainly, there are squalls a-brewing for any unhappy wight who queries the Captain’s navigation.
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III.
NATURAL SELECTION.
Moira sat out a dance with O’Hagan in the conservatory. Needless to say, the Captain does not dance. McIvor’s sighful acknowledgment of the girl’s disappearance rose above the music. Repton’s Mephistophelian glare pierced palm and fern. But Moira blushed, and settled down tête-à-tête.
“My dear little girl,” said O’Hagan blandly, “you are so very pretty and charming, that I am going to talk to you seriously about your lovers.”