Part 1 (2/2)
”I know no talisman but this, my Lord; in luck and out of luck to bear a smiling front, content with the goods the G.o.ds may send.”
It was a fair hit, for Balmerino was well known as an open malcontent and suspected of being a Jacobite.
”Ah! The goods sent by the G.o.ds! A pigeon for the plucking--the lad you have called friend!” retorted the other.
”Take care, my Lord,” warningly.
”But there are birds it is not safe to pluck,” continued Balmerino, heedless of his growing anger.
”Indeed!”
”As even Sir Robert Volney may find out. An eaglet is not wisely chosen for such purpose.”
It irritated me that they should thrust and parry over my shoulder, as if I had been but a boy instead of full three months past my legal majority.
Besides, I had no mind to have them letting each other's blood on my account.
”Rat it, 'tis your play, Volney. You keep us waiting,” I cried.
”You're in a devilish hurry to be quit of your shekels,” laughed the Irishman O'Sullivan, who sat across the table from me. ”Isn't there a proverb, Mr. Montagu, about a--a careless gentleman and his money going different ways, begad? Don't keep him waiting any longer than need be, Volney.”
There is this to be said for the Macaronis, that they plucked their pigeon with the most graceful negligence in the world. They might live by their wits, but they knew how to wear always the jauntiest indifference of manner. Out came the feathers with a sure hand, the while they exchanged choice _bon mots_ and racy scandal. Hazard was the game we played and I, Kenneth Montagu, was cast for the role of the pigeon. Against these old gamesters I had no chance even if the play had been fair, and my head on it more than one of them rooked me from start to finish. I was with a vast deal of good company, half of whom were rogues and blacklegs.
”Heard George Selwyn's latest?”[1] inquired Lord Chesterfield languidly.
”Not I. Threes, devil take it!” cried O'Sullivan in a pet.
”Tell it, Horry. It's your story,” drawled the fourth Earl of Chesterfield.
”Faith, and that's soon done,” answered Walpole. ”George and I were taking the air down the Mall arm in arm yesterday just after the fellow Fox was hanged for cutting purses, and up comes our Fox to quiz George. Says he, knowing Selwyn's penchant for horrors, 'George, were you at the execution of my namesake?' Selwyn looks him over in his droll way from head to foot and says, 'Lard, no! I never attend rehearsals, Fox.'”
”'Tis the first he has missed for years then. Selwyn is as regular as Jack Ketch himself. Your throw, Montagu,” put in O'Sullivan.
”Seven's the main, and by the glove of Helen I crab. Saw ever man such cursed luck?” I cried.
”'Tis vile. Luck's mauling you fearfully to-night,” agreed Volney languidly. Then, apropos of the hanging, ”Ketch turned off that fellow Dr.
Dodd too. There was a shower, and the prison chaplain held an umbrella over Dodd's head. Gilly Williams said it wasn't necessary, as the Doctor was going to a place where he might be easily dried.”
”Egad, 'tis his greatest interest in life,” chuckled Walpole, harking back to Selwyn. ”When George has a tooth pulled he drops his kerchief as a signal for the dentist to begin the execution.”
Old Lord Pam's toothless gums grinned appreciation of the jest as he tottered from the room to take a chair for a rout at which he was due.
”Faith, and it's a wonder how that old Methuselah hangs on year after year,” said O'Sullivan bluntly, before the door had even closed on the octogenarian. ”He must be a thousand if he's a day.”
”The fact is,” explained Chesterfield confidentially, ”that old Pam has been dead for several years, but he doesn't choose to have it known.
Pardon me, am I delaying the game?”
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