Beau Nash

“ When he found a man fixed upon ruining himself, he did his best to keep him from that suicidal act. This was the case with a young Oxonian, to whom he had lost money, and whom he invited to supper, in order to give him his parental advice. The fool would not take the Beau's counsel and 'came to grief.' Even noblemen sought his protection. The Duke of Beaufort entered on a compact with him to save his purse, if not his soul. He agreed to pay Nash ten thousand guineas, whenever he lost the same amount at a sitting. It was a comfortable treaty for our Beau, who accordingly watched his grace. ”

“ She admitted after a moment that they were quite right and the dressing-rooms of actresses nasty places; but she was sorry, for that was the sort of thing she had always figured in a corner—a distinguished man, slightly bald, in evening dress, with orders, admiring the smallness of a satin shoe and saying witty things. Nash was convulsed with hilarity at this—such a vision of the British political hero. Coming back from the glass and making that critic give her his place on the sofa, she [508] seated herself near Nick and continued to express her regret at his perversity. ”

“ Another coughing spell overtook Nash and left him frowning down at the glowing end of his butt.
"She ain't like the rest."
"I wonder?" mused the Easterner.
He had an infinite advantage in this duel of words, for he could watch from under the shadow of his long, dark lashes the effect of his speeches on the cowboy, yet never seem to be looking. For he was wondering whether the enmity of Nash, which he felt as one feels an unknown eye upon him in the dark, came from their rivalry about the girl, or from some deeper cause. ”

“ Nash squirmed uneasily under her unswerving gaze. “Oh!” repeated Mrs. Nash, and her intonation conveyed much or little according to her husband’s perception. “And Betty, where is she?”
The rapid change of topic confused Nash, his slower wits failing to keep up with his wife’s trend of thought. “She is downstairs,” he stated. “That is, I left her there talking to Alan and Roberts.”
“She ought to be in bed,” declared Mrs. Nash, with ill-concealed irritability. “Traipsing around the countryside by herself at night. ”

“ Nick introduced Gabriel Nash to his mother and to the other two as "a delightful old friend" whom he had just come across, and Sherringham acknowledged the act by saying to Mr. Nash, but as if rather less for his sake than for that of the presenter: "I've seen you very often before."
"Ah repetition—recurrence: we haven't yet, in the study of how to live, abolished that clumsiness, have we?" Mr. Nash genially inquired. "It's a poverty in the supernumeraries of our stage that we don't pass once for all, but come round and cross again like a procession or an army at the theatre. ”

“ Nick continued, "Nash has melted back into the elements—he's part of the great air of the world." And then as even with this lucidity he saw the girl still mystified: "I've a notion he has gone to India and at the present moment is reclining on a bank of flowers in the vale of Cashmere."
Biddy had a pause, after which she dropped: "Julia will be glad—she dislikes him so."
"If she dislikes him why should she be glad he's so enviably placed?" ”

“ But Nash was frowning.
"Now and then I talk to the cards a bit, Mr. Drew, and you'll hear fellers say some pretty rough things about me, but I've never asked for no odds against any man. I'm not going to start now."
"You're a hard man, Steve, but so am I; and hard men are the kind I take to. I know that you're the best foreman who ever rode this range and I know that when you start things you generally finish them. All that I ask is that you bring Bard to me in this house. The way you do it is your own problem. Drunk or drugged, I don't care how, but get him here unharmed. ”

“ Nash replied benignly. "But I'm very sincere. And I have tried to straighten out things a bit for myself."
"Then why do you give people such a handle?"
"Such a handle?"
"For thinking you're an—for thinking you're a mere farceur."
"I daresay it's my manner: they're so unused to any sort of candour."
"Well then why don't you try another?" Nick asked.
"One has the manner that one can, and mine moreover's a part of my little system."
"Ah if you make so much of your little system you're no better than any one else," Nick returned as they went on. ”

“ She explored the place discreetly and on tiptoe, talking twaddle as she went and bending her head and her eyeglass over various objects with an air of imperfect comprehension that didn't prevent Nick's private recall of the story of her underhand, commercial habits told by Gabriel Nash at the exhibition in Paris the first time her name had fallen on his ear. A queer old woman from whom, if you approached her in the right way, you could buy old pots—it was in this character that she had originally been introduced to him. ”

“ For a minute Nash stared at the writing, his thoughts galloping far away—far beyond the miles of mountain ranges, beyond the limitless stretch of prairie, where, for the moment, he lived over again that black hour in the bunk house. Mentally he recalled the shouts, the questioning voices, the sharp crack of a revolver fired in the closed room. Then the mêlée of fists—the still, deathlike face of the man on the floor——
Nash drew in a deep breath and passed a quick hand across his eyes. “What a small world it is, after all!” ”

“ As he dropped these remarks he lolled on a big divan with one of his long legs folded up, while his visitor stopped in front of him after moving about the room vaguely and softly, almost on tiptoe, so as not to interrupt him. "You speak," Nash said, "with [351] the special and dreadful eloquence that rises to a man's lips when he has practically, whatever his theory may be, renounced the right and dropped hideously into the wrong. Then his regret for the right, a certain exquisite appreciation of it, puts on an accent I know well how to recognise."
Nick looked up at him a moment. ”

“ Our young man coloured deeper and watched the footman spring down as the victoria drove up; he heard Nash say something about the honour of having met Mrs. Dallow in Paris. Nick wanted him to go into the house; he damned inwardly his lack of delicacy. He desired a word with Julia alone—as much alone as the two annoying servants would allow. But Nash was not too much discouraged to say: "You came for a glimpse of the great model? Doesn't she sit? ”

“ There was no answer.
"You said you wanted no odds against any one man."
"When a man and a woman stand together," answered Nash, "they're worse than a hundred. That devil, Sally Fortune, is down there with him."
A gun cracked from the house; the bullet chipped the rock with an evil clang, and the flake of stone whirled through the air and landed at the feet of Drew.
"There's your answer," said Nash. "But we've got the rat cornered."
"Wrong again. Calamity Ben is going to live—"
A cry of joy came from Shorty Kilrain.
"Duffy says that he gave his horse away to Bard. ”

“ Nash,” he began, swinging around in his chair, “I am a blunt man, and when I approach a subject I strike for the heart at the first blow. I have asked you here to talk over certain matters that have come to my notice. As one of the aqueduct board, these affairs interest me strongly. I have been elected to this board by the honest votes of the Los Angeles citizens, and I intend to do my duty toward them. You have found certain irregularities on foot in Camp Forty-seven. I want to compliment you, Mr. Nash. Men of your caliber are the men we desire on the great undertaking. ”

“ Ufert, gone sullen, obeyed. He was at that age between youth and manhood when the blood, despite the songs of the poets, runs slow, cold; before the heart has been called out in love, or even in friendship; before fear or hate or anything saving a deep egoism has possessed the brain.
He looked about to the others for his cue. What he saw disturbed him. Shorty Kilrain, like a boy caught playing truant, edged little by little back against the rock; Butch Conklin, his eyes staring, had grown waxy pale; Steve Nash himself was sullen and gloomy rather than defiant. ”

“ Nash considered her kindly. "I hoped you'd say you like the Academy better."
"She would if she didn't think you expected it," said Nicholas Dormer.
"Oh Nick!" Biddy protested.
"Miss Dormer's herself an English picture," their visitor pronounced in the tone of a man whose urbanity was a general solvent.
"That's a compliment if you don't like them!" Biddy exclaimed.
"Ah some of them, some of them; there's a certain sort of thing!" Mr. Nash continued. "We must feel [27] everything, everything that we can. We're here for that." ”

“ Nash returned—"what you may do above all if she'll help you."
"I scarcely see how she can help me," said Nick with an air of thinking.
"She's extremely handsome as I remember her. You could do great things with her."
"Ah, there's the rub," Nick went on. "I wanted her to sit for me this week, but she wouldn't hear of it."
"Elle a bien tort. You should attack some fine strong type. Is Mrs. Dallow in London?" Nash inquired. ”

“ Sleep! She had tossed and turned on her pillow for two mortal hours and never closed her eyes. Always before her was the scene with Alexander Nash and Guy Trenholm. Later, her mind reverted to Betty Carter’s denial of her presence at Abbott’s Lodge. Twice she had been branded a liar—was she to sit down tamely under it?
Miriam ran softly upstairs to her room, her mind made up. Putting on her coat and hat, she hurried down the hall again, and heard, as she passed Mrs. [Pg 120] Nash’s partly open bedroom door, the sound of a male voice addressing the sick woman. So Doctor Nash was with his wife! ”

“ That was one's penalty with persons whose main gift was for talk, however inspiring; talk engendered a sense of sameness much sooner than action. The things a man did were necessarily more different from each other than the things he said, even if he went in for surprising you. Nick felt Nash could never surprise him any more save by mere plain perpetration.
He talked of his host's future, talked of Miriam Rooth and of Peter Sherringham, whom he had seen at that young woman's and whom he described as in a predicament delightful to behold. ”

“ CAMP FORTY-SEVEN.
This abrupt announcement changed Nash’s view of the situation. He remembered the letter he carried in his pocket, and to whom it was addressed.
“You are Wilson Hooker?” he asked.
The foreman nodded. “That’s me.”
“I came from Los Angeles this morning especially to find you,” Nash explained. “I want a job.”
“What can you do?”
“I’m willing to do anything from digging trenches to——”
The foreman shrugged. “I don’t need any one at present. I’ve ten men to every place.” ”

“ Nash; having means of persuasion at his command which that person seemed most unwillingly to feel that he was not in a position to resist; the result being that, as we have heard, the pair did gain access to the flat in Bloomsbury Mansions; the porter, as Mr. Morgan had prophesied, looking on as they went in. When they had entered they found themselves in a fair-sized hall.
"I wonder," said Nash, as if struck by the silence of the place, "how he managed for servants."
"The flat people provided service, I expect; they cater, and do everything for tenants if they're wanted to." ”

“ Nash told them. “You don’t pull together. Teamwork is the thing that counts.”
Gradually he gained his ends, and as gradually the work on the aqueduct allotted to his camp showed improvement. Never before had Nash worked so earnestly and with so much confidence. ”

“ Richard Nash's long-bow, and the yarns he spun were listened to with impatience. He grew rude and testy in his old age; suspected Quin, the actor, who was living at Bath, of an intention to supplant him; made coarse, impertinent repartees to the visitors at that city, and in general raised up a dislike to himself. Yet, as other monarchs have had their eulogists in sober mind, Nash had his in one of the most depraved; and Anstey, the low-minded author of 'The New Bath Guide,' panegyrized him a short time after his death in the following verses: [145] —
'Yet here no confusion—no tumult is known ”

“ The man below them came on cautiously, unable to distinguish the two who waited on the trail.
Miss Breen had slipped from her saddle and had joined Nash. Both were crouching behind a jagged point of rock.
Nash’s eager, searching eyes had discovered something that fairly made his pulses race. The advancing man was carrying a long-handled hammer over his shoulder.
“What—what is it?” the girl stammered, awed by the silence.
“You’d better not stay here,” Nash told her again.
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to capture this man,” he declared. “He may be armed. ”

“ When the controversy subsided, Nash sought employment in more peaceful paths, and apparently tried his hand at poetry. The publisher Thomas Newman employed him in 1591 to edit an unauthorised edition of Sidney's ‘Astrophel and Stella.’ But it was quickly withdrawn, and in Newman's revised edition of the same year Nash's contributions were suppressed (cf. Arber, Garner, i. 467 seq.) . ”

“ Sometimes he went into the card-room and took a hand; then, if he was tempted to give his antagonist the lie direct, he gave it; or if he lost, he said rude things about honesty; and he was so strong, and carried so big a cudgel, that for a time nobody dared to check him. Because, you see, by Nash’s orders, the gentlemen wore no swords. Now, although it is possible to challenge a man and run him through, what are you to do with one who perhaps would refuse a challenge, yet would, on provocation, being horribly strong, cudgel his adversary on the spot? ”