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The Irresistible Ogle
by
He saw–and he admired–the flush which mounted to his visitor’s brow. And then, “I must concede that appearances are against me, Mr. Sheridan,” the beautiful intruder said. “And I hasten to protest that my presence in your apartments at this hour is prompted by no unworthy motive. I merely came to steal the famous diamond which you brought from London–the Honor of Eiran.”
“Incomparable Esther Jane,” ran Mr. Sheridan’s answer, “that stone is now part of a brooch which was this afternoon returned to my cousin’s, the Earl of Eiran’s, hunting-lodge near Melrose. He intends the gem which you are vainly seeking among my haberdashery to be the adornment of his promised bride in the ensuing June. I confess to no overwhelming admiration as concerns this raucous if meritorious young person; and will even concede that the thought of her becoming my kinswoman rouses in me an inevitable distaste, no less attributable to the discord of her features than to the source of her eligibility to disfigure the peerage–that being her father’s lucrative transactions in Pork, which I find indigestible in any form.”
“A truce to paltering!” Miss Ogle cried. “That jewel was stolen from the temple at Moorshedabad, by the Earl of Eiran’s grandfather, during the confusion necessarily attendant on the glorious battle of Plassy.” She laid down the pistol, and resumed in milder tones: “From an age-long existence as the left eye of Ganesh it was thus converted into the loot of an invader. To restore this diamond to its lawful, although no doubt polygamous and inefficiently-attired proprietors is at this date impossible. But, oh! what claim have you to its possession?”
“Why, none whatever,” said the parliamentarian; “and to contend as much would be the apex of unreason. For this diamond belongs, of course, to my cousin the Earl of Eiran—-“
“As a thief’s legacy!” She spoke with signs of irritation.
“Eh, eh, you go too fast! Eiran, to do him justice, is not a graduate in peculation. At worst, he is only the sort of fool one’s cousins ordinarily are.”
The trousered lady walked to and fro for a while, with the impatience of a caged lioness. “I perceive I must go more deeply into matters,” Miss Ogle remarked, and, with that habitual gesture which he fondly recognized, brushed back a straying lock of hair. “In any event,” she continued, “you cannot with reason deny that the world’s wealth is inequitably distributed?”
“Madam,” Mr. Sheridan returned, “as a member of Parliament, I have necessarily made it a rule never to understand political economy. It is as apt as not to prove you are selling your vote to the wrong side of the House, and that hurts one’s conscience.”
“Ah, that is because you are a man. Men are not practical. None of you has ever dared to insist on his opinion about anything until he had secured the cowardly corroboration of a fact or so to endorse him. It is a pity. Yet, since through no fault of yours your sex is invariably misled by its hallucinations as to the importance of being rational, I will refrain from logic and statistics. In a word, I simply inform you that I am a member of the League of Philanthropic Larcenists.”
“I had not previously heard of this organization,” said Mr. Sheridan, and not without suspecting his response to be a masterpiece in the inadequate.
“Our object is the benefit of society at large,” Miss Ogle explained; “and our obstacles so far have been, in chief, the fetish of proprietary rights and the ubiquity of the police.”
And with that she seated herself and told him of the league’s inception by a handful of reflective persons, admirers of Rousseau and converts to his tenets, who were resolved to better the circumstances of the indigent. With amiable ardor Miss Ogle explained how from the petit larcenies of charity-balls and personally solicited subscriptions the league had mounted to an ampler field of depredation; and through what means it now took toll from every form of wealth unrighteously acquired. Divertingly she described her personal experiences in the separation of usurers, thieves, financiers, hereditary noblemen, popular authors, and other social parasites, from the ill-got profits of their disreputable vocations. And her account of how, on the preceding Tuesday, she, single-handed, had robbed Sir Alexander McRae–who then enjoyed a fortune and an enviable reputation for philanthropy, thanks to the combination of glucose, vitriol and other chemicals which he prepared under the humorous pretext of manufacturing beer–wrung high encomiums from Mr. Sheridan.