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Deadly Dash! It was a fatal sounding sobriquet, and had a fatal fascination for many, for me as well as the rest, when I was in my salad days and joined the old ----th, amongst whose Light Dragoons, it was so signally and ominously famous. The nickname had a wide significance;
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was said with twofold truth, in twofold meaning of Dash; in a _barrière_ duel he would wheel lightly, aim carelessly, and send the ball straight as any arrow through heart or lung, just as he fancied, in the neatest style anybody could dream of; and in an intrigue he took just the same measures, and hit as invariably with the self-same skill and the self-same indifference.
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He always kills applied equally to either kind of affair, and got him his sobriquet, which he received with as laughing an equanimity as a riding man gets the Gilt Vase, or a
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the Ravensworth Stakes, or the Puppy Cup and Goblet. He was proud of it, and had only one regret, that he lived in the dead days of the duel, and could only go out when he was on French soil. In dare-devilry of every sort he out-Heroded Herod, and distanced any who were mad enough to try the pace with him in that steeple-chase commonly called
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It was a miracle how often he used to reach the stage of
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that the Prince de Soubise once sighed for as an unattainable paradise; and picked himself up again, without a hair turned, as one may say, and started off with as fresh a pace as though nothing had knocked him over. Other men got his speed sometimes; but nobody could ever equal his stay. For an
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there was nobody like Deadly Dash; and though only a Captain of Horse, with few
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he did what Dukes daren't have done, and lived at a faster rate than all the elder sons in the kingdom put together. Dash had the best bow and the brightest wits, the lightest morals and the heaviest debts of any _sabreur_ in the Service; very unscrupulous fellows were staggered at _his_ devil-me-care vices; and as for reputation,--
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they used to say at the Curragh, in the Guards' Club, at Thatched House anniversary dinners, in North Indian cantonments, in Brighton barrack-rooms, or in any of the many places where Deadly Dash was a household word;
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I was very young then. I had gone through a classic course of yellow covers from Jeffs' and Rolandi's, and I had a vague impression that a man who had had a dozen _barrière_ affairs abroad, and been
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to every lovely _lionne_ of his day, must of necessity be like the heroes of Delphine Demireps' novels, who had each of them always a
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Charivari,
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Of course! growled a man to me once in the Guards' smoking-room, an order of the Scots Fusilleers to Montreal having turned him misanthrope.
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Did Mephistopheles ever come out in full harness, with horns and tail complete, eh? Not such a fool. He looked like a gentleman, and talked like a wit. Would the most dunder-headed Cain in Christendom, I should be glad to know, be such an ass as to go about town with the brand on his forehead, when he could turn down Bond Street any day and get a dash of the ladies' pearl powder? Who ever _shows_ anything now, my good fellow? Not that Dash 'paints,' to give the deuce his due--except himself a little blacker even than he is; he don't cant; he couldn't cant; not to save his life, I believe. But as to his bewitching you, almost as bad as he does the women, I know all about that. I used to swear by him till----
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Till what?
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Till he cut a brother of mine out with Rachel, and shot him in the woods of Chantilly for flaring-up rough at the rivalry. Charlie was rather a good fellow, and Dash and I didn't speak after that, you see. Great bore; bosh too, perhaps. Dash brews the best Curaçoa punch in Europe, and if he name you the winning mount for the Granby, you may let the talent damn you as they like. Still you know as he killed Charlie,-- and the Guardsman stuck a great cheroot in his mouth, in doubt as to whether, after all, it wasn't humbug, and an uncalled-for sacrifice, rather scenic and sentimental, to drop an expert at Curaçoa brew, and a sure prophet for Croxton Park, just because in a legitimate fashion he had potted your brother and relieved your entail;--on the whole, a friendly act rather than otherwise?
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Keep clear of the Killer, though, young one, he added, as he sauntered out.
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He's like that cheetah cub of Berkeley's; soft as silk, you know, _patte de velours_, and what d'ye call 'em, and all the rest of it, but deucedly deadly to deal with.