The Cheerful Blackguard
9781465678560
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
I, José de la Mancha y O'Brien, was born on the ninth day of November, 1865, in Spain, of an Irish mother and a Spanish sire. Ten years later my parents entered the service of God, my father from a battle-field, my mother living in a convent. With my brother, Don Pedro, the Brat, then eight years old, I was sent away from Spain to Tita, a fat Irish aunt, whose highly poisonous husband, Uncle Tito, was English, and lived in London. From their house, when he was old enough, I took the Brat to my school where I attended to his morals with a small strap. I had been busy for several terms explaining to the other chaps at school that they were heretics and doomed to hell, and as my skin was not large enough to hold the lickings they supplied me, they paid the balance to my little brother. He spoke as yet but very broken English and could not understand why he should share with me the glories of an early martyrdom. He shunned me. Yet, when in 1883 I went to college, the Brat was not content to be left alone. Indeed he ran from school, and when I next heard from him, was in America, where he had gone to work for a man called Lane. When the summer vacation left me free, Aunt Tita supplied me with money and sent me off to collect my Brat. I was to bring him home and place him at a private school in Oxford where I could always keep him out of mischief. Thus I set out, determined to tear the Brat's hide off over his ears when I caught him. Perhaps he expected as much and was ungrateful, for when in due course I arrived in Winnipeg—from whence his letter appeared to have been posted—I could find no trace of my brother or of any man called Lane in Manitoba. There the search ended in bitter disappointment. When I had lost my brother, with nothing left in all the world to love, a dog adopted me. Rich Mixed was named after a biscuit box containing twenty-seven distinct species of biscuits. You will realize that a dog must be of the noblest pedigree who had twenty-seven quarterings on his coat of arms and showed unmistakable descent from every possible kind of thoroughbred from daschund to great Dane. I loved him dearly and was consoled for my brother's loss. Since I could not take Brat home, and would not return without him, I had no use for the remaining funds. Most of the cash was disposed of at a race-meeting where the wrong horses won. The rest of it merely dispersed. At that time, a laundress pursued me with a bundle of my washing and a bill I could not pay. To dispose of this poor widow, I despatched her with a note to the Presbyterian minister. My letter accused him of deserting one whom he had sworn always to love and cherish. Mrs. Minister appears to have been morbid, for she put the police after me for attempting to levy blackmail. I could not safely remain in Winnipeg. And yet I had not then the means for flight until I thought of Tito's dressing-case, a gift from His late Catholic Majesty to my fat uncle. It proved good enough to pay for a farewell dinner, at which I consulted my friends on the idea of flight from the city. Then just as they began to give me good advice, the police became obnoxious. I fled with my advisers in a cab beyond the city limits, and there we found a bad house where wine was plentiful. At the door we left cabby crowned with a chaplet of ham frill and crooning lullaby songs to his aged horse. Indoors we drank more wine than we could carry. Later in the evening Rich Mixed and I set forth to find my brother. We had no place to go to, and no money, so we did not get very far before I fell asleep out on the starlit prairie. Once Rich Mixed woke me up to hear a terrible wailing close beside us, a wolf-howl, but for its human throb a thing beyond all anguish of the beasts, heartrending desolation keening star-high, while its faint echoes throbbed on the horizon. The huskies at the mission gave tongue in answer, the tame dogs bayed in distant Winnipeg.
