MY FRIEND PASQUALE

AND OTHER STORIES

BY
JAMES SELWIN TAIT
AUTHOR OF
“WHO IS THE MAN?” “THE NEAPOLITAN BANKER,” ETC., ETC.


NEW YORK
TAIT, SONS & COMPANY
Union Square


Copyright, 1892, by
J. SELWIN TAIT
——
[All rights reserved]

TO THE DEAR MEMORY OF HER,
WHO FIRST INSPIRED MY PEN,
I DEDICATE THESE PAGES.

MY FRIEND PASQUALE.

CHAPTER I.

THE events narrated in the following story happened a score and more of years ago. They have never before been made public, and I make them known now with pain and misgiving, but impelled by a sense of duty which I can no longer disregard.

During their occurrence they changed the current of my life, once from grave to gay, and then and finally, from gaiety to unspeakable gloom. Although time has to some extent dulled the edge of my grief at the loss of my friend Pasquale, his memory will remain with me while life lasts as a cherished and sacred thing.

When the reader ends this simple narration this eulogy of the dead may surprise and shock him, and, in reply and explanation, I have only to say in advance that I pity him if the faithful, unvarnished record leaves that impression on his mind—he did not know Pasquale.

I was wending my way homeward from Hampstead Heath one Saturday afternoon in the early summer time, when I found myself, on recovering from a lengthened reverie, midway on the Old North Road at a point now occupied by the Midland Railway Terminus at Saint Pancras.

My day’s work at the bank was finished and with it all the duties of the week, and I felt that sense of relief and buoyancy which, perhaps, comes to all, young and old alike, at the completion of tedious work honestly performed.

I was still—at the period of which I write—a good deal of a day-dreamer, living in a world of my own for many hours of the twenty-four, and when the heavy bank doors clanged behind me, with all business cares and anxieties doubly barred within the impregnable vault, my mind would soar away from business thoughts as an imprisoned lark leaps to freedom from its narrow cage.

The road I was traveling was not one which I would have taken intentionally, but in my fit of absent-mindedness I had unconsciously followed the trend of the highway with the result that I was committed to one of the most uninviting thoroughfares in the city of London.

As a highway this road was but little used; it had already been secured by the railway company, and with the exception of one public-house of low character there were no dwellings fronting it, but only the wreck of the torn down structures demolished to make way for the company’s projected improvements; and this wreckage was walled, or penned in, by a high and closely boarded fence running the full length of the road.

The Old North Road was nearly a mile in length between these wooden walls, and it was a street to be shunned not only by females but by solitary travelers of even the stronger sex, for it afforded no means of escape from an unpleasant encounter.

When I had traveled about one third of its length my attention was attracted to an excited group of men some three hundred yards distant.

These men I found, on nearing them, to be coal-heavers employed by the railway company, and already a good deal exhilarated by their wages-day libations.

They were broad-shouldered, powerful men—a collection of sooty giants—and the sport which they were enjoying was an impromptu dog-fight, an amusement entirely after their own heart.

As I approached the group on the one side, a young man of about my own age neared it from the other, and we both stopped to ascertain the cause of the excitement.

The sight of one dog apparently killing the other was to me a revolting spectacle, and I was turning away in disgust when I saw the other arrival elbow his way fiercely through the men and attempt to drag off the dog which seemed to be gaining the victory; in doing which he certainly risked his life.

“O, you great, black cowards!” he shouted, his voice ringing in the air like a trumpet, “to allow two poor creatures to worry each other in such a way!”

His movements were so sudden that he had actually grasped one of the dogs before his intention could be frustrated, but as soon as he touched the animal a burly coal-heaver seized him round the waist, and lifting him high in air, carried him out of the crush into the middle of the road, where he planted him on the ground and released his hold. Not ill-naturedly altogether, but yet with a warning look in his grimy face he placed his bulky body in front of the disturber of the fight, saying as he did so, “Master, we are not molesting you, leave us alone, or——” the threat in his eyes supplied the rest.

The stranger whose face was pale as death, and whose eyes literally flamed with rage, said not a word, but, quick as lightning, his right hand shot out and struck his opponent straight between the eyes. The amazing fury of the blow, the skill with which it was given, and the smallness of the hand which struck it, had, to some extent, the same effect on the dense skull of the coal-heaver as the pole axe has on the head of the ox. He fell, not backward, but forward, on his knees, as a bullock falls when struck.

The group around the two dogs had given no more thought to the intruder after their companion had removed him, but now one looked around and seeing his friend on the ground and probably concluding that the foreign-looking stranger had stabbed him, he rushed to secure the intruder.

The latter, however, seemed possessed with an ungovernable fury and flew at his new assailant as if he would rend him to pieces. Even a blow from the ponderous fist, though it landed him three yards away flat on his back in the dusty road, in nowise discouraged him. In a moment he was on his feet flying like a tiger-cat at his antagonist’s throat, his dark eyes gleaming anew with electric fire. In the midst of the mêlée a hansom cab drove up, and the driver stopped to witness the double event.

Others of the group now gathered around, and I feared, not for the safety of the stranger’s limbs, but for his life. It was an “ugly” group for any single man to attack. These men, although easygoing enough up to a certain point, were incarnate fiends when roused, and they were already disposed to be quarrelsome.

At length the coal-heaver tore the other from his throat, and getting him at arm’s length promptly felled him to the ground.

No movement this time—was he dead? That sledge-hammer blow might well have fractured the skull of a delicate man!

Such men don’t always stop at knock-down blows, and when one, the worse for liquor, shouted “Kill the fellow,” I called to the cabman, “For Heaven’s sake get the injured man out of this.” “You get him inside here,” promptly replied the driver. “Stand back!” I yelled to the men with a horrified air, which was only half-assumed; “you have killed him,” and stooping down I raised the slender figure in my arms. As I did so the cabman turned his horse as if to drive off, but in reality in order to put his vehicle between the men and myself. This he did with much adroitness and without obstruction, as the others thought he was simply preparing to leave.

His movement enabled me to place the slowly recovering figure in the hansom cab without interference.

“Drive on!” I shouted, but, alas! a smoke-colored Hercules had