One Of Them. Lever Charles James
he never uttered a syllable.
“‘If I had you down here for five minutes, I ‘d teach you as how you ‘d set yourself on the box-seat again!’ cried coachee, whose passion seemed only aggravated by the other’s submission. Scarcely were the words spoken, when the dripping traveller began to descend from the coach. He was soon on the ground, and almost as he touched it the coachman rushed upon him. It was a hand-to-hand conflict, which, however, could not have lasted four minutes. The stranger not only ‘stopped’ every blow of the other, but followed each ‘stop’ by a well-sent-in one of his own, dealt with a force that, judging from his size, seemed miraculous. With closed eyes, a smashed jaw, and a disabled wrist, the coachman was carried away; while the other, as he drank off a glass of cold water, simply said, ‘If that man wishes to know where to find me again, tell him to ask for Tom Spring, Crane Alley, Borough Road!’”
Karstairs followed the anecdote with interest, but, somehow – for he was not a very brilliant man, though “an excellent officer” – missed the application. “Capital – excellent – by Jove!” cried he. “I ‘d have given a crown to have seen it.”
Layton turned away in half ill-humor.
“And so it was Tom Spring himself?” said the Colonel. “Who ‘d have guessed it?”
Layton made no reply, but began to set the chessmen upon the board at random.
“Is this another amongst your manifold accomplishments, sir?” asked Ogden, as he came up to the table.
“I play most games,” said Layton, carelessly; “but it’s only at billiards that I pretend to any skill.”
“I’m a very unworthy antagonist,” said Ogden; “but perhaps you will condescend to a game with me, – at chess, I mean?”
“With pleasure,” said Layton, setting the pieces at once. He won the first move, and just as he was about to begin he stopped, and said, “I wish I knew your strength.”
“The players give me a knight, and generally beat me,” said Ogden.
“Oh! I understand. Will you allow me to fetch a cheroot? I move king’s knight’s pawn one square.” He arose as he spoke, and walked into the adjoining room.
Ogden moved his queen’s pawn.
Layton, from the adjoining room, asked the move, and then said, “King’s bishop to knight’s first square;” meanwhile continuing to search for a cigar to his liking.
“Do you purpose to continue the game without seeing the board?” asked Ogden, as he bit his lip with impatience.
“Not if you prefer otherwise,” said Layton, who now came back to his place, with his cigar fully lighted.
“You see what an inexorable enemy I have, Millar,” said Ogden, with an affected laugh; “he will not be satisfied unless my defeat be ignominious.”
“Is it so certain to be a defeat, George?” said the rector. “Chess was always your great game. I remember how the Windsor Club entertained you on the occasion of your victory over that Swiss player, Eshwald.”
“And so you have beaten Eshwald,” broke in Layton, hastily. “We must give no quarter here.” And with this he threw away his cigar, and bent down over the board.
“We shall only disturb them, Karstairs; come along into the drawing-room, and let us talk parish business,” said the rector. “Our little dinner has scarcely gone off so well as I had expected,” said Millar, when they were alone. “I meant to do our doctor a service, by asking him to meet Odgen, who has patronage and influence in every quarter; but I suspect that this evening will be remembered grievously against him.”
“I confess I was highly amused at it all, and not sorry to see your friend Ogden so sorely baited. You know well what a life he has led us here for the last week.”
“A hard hitter sometimes, to be sure,” said the rector, smiling; “but a well-meaning man, and always ready for a kind action. I wish Layton had used more moderation, – more deference towards him.”
“Your Madeira did it all, Millar. Why did you give the fellow such insinuating tipple as that old ‘31 wine?”
“I can’t say that I was not forewarned,” continued Millar. “I was told, on his coming down to our neighborhood, to be careful of him. It was even intimated to me that his ungovernable and overbearing temper had wrecked his whole fortune in life; for, of course, one can easily see such a man ought not to be sentenced to the charge of a village dispensary.”
“No matter how clever you are, there must be discipline; that’s what I’ve always told the youngsters in my regiment.”
The rector sighed; it was one of those hopeless little sighs a man involuntarily heaves when he finds that his companion in a tête-à-tête is always “half an hour behind the coach.”
“I intended, besides,” resumed Millar, “that Ogden should have recommended to the Government the establishment of a small hospital down here; an additional fifty or sixty pounds a year would have been a great help to Layton.”
“And of course he ‘ll do it, when you ask him,” said the hearty Colonel. “Now that he has seen the man, and had the measure of his capacity, he ‘ll be all the readier to serve him.”
“The cleverest of all my school and college companions sacrificed his whole career in life by shooting the pheasant a great minister had just ‘marked.’ He was about to be invited to spend a week at Drayton; but the invitation never came.”
“I protest, Millar, I don’t understand that sort of thing.”
“Have you never felt, when walking very fast, and eagerly intent upon some object, that if an urchin crossed your path, or came rudely against you, it was hard to resist the temptation of giving him a box on the ear? I don’t mean to say that the cases are parallel, but great people do, somehow, acquire a habit of thinking that the road ought always to be cleared for them, and they will not endure whatever interferes with their wishes.”
“But don’t you think if you gave Layton a hint – ”
“Is n’t that like it? Hear that – ”
A loud burst of laughter from the adjoining room cut short the colloquy, and Layton’s voice was heard in a tone of triumph, saying, “I saw your plan – I even let you follow it up to the last, for I knew you were checkmated.”
“I ‘m off my play; I have not touched a chessman these three years,” said Ogden, pettishly.
“Nor I for three times three years; nor was it ever my favorite game.”
“I’m coming to crave a cup of tea from you, Millar,” said Ogden, entering the drawing-room, flushed in the cheek, and with a flurried manner.
“Who won the game?” asked the Colonel, eagerly.
“Dr. Layton was the conqueror; but I don’t regard myself as an ignoble foe, notwithstanding,” said Ogden, with a sort of look of appeal towards the doctor.
“I ‘ll give you a bishop and play you for – ” He stopped in some confusion, and then, with an effort at a laugh, added, “I was going to say fifty pounds, quite forgetting that it was possible you might beat me.”
“And yet, sir, I have the presumption to think that there are things which I could do fully as well as Dr. Layton.”
Layton turned hastily round from the table, where, having half filled a large glass with brandy, he was about to fill up with soda-water; he set down the unopened soda-water bottle, and, drinking off the raw spirit at a draught, said, —
“What are they? Let’s hear them, for I take the challenge; these gentlemen be my witnesses that I accepted the gage before I knew your weapon.” Here he replenished his glass, and this time still higher than before, and drank it off. “You have, doubtless, your speciality, your pet subject, art or science, what is it? Or have you more than one? You’re not like the fellow that Scott tells us could only talk of tanned leather, – eh,