IV

"The situation," Mr. Vanringham, began, "may reasonably be described as

desperate. Here we sit, four ruined beings. For Dr. Quarmby has betrayed

an unoffending couple into involuntary matrimony, an act of which his

Bishop can scarcely fail to take official notice; Captain Audaine and

the Marchioness are entrapped into a loveless marriage, than which there

mayn't be a greater misery in life; and my own future, I needn't add, is

irrevocably blighted by the loss of my respected Dorothy, without whom

continued animation must necessarily be a hideous and hollow mockery. Yet

there occurs to me a panacea for these disasters."

"Then, indeed, Mr. Vanringham," said I, "there is one of us who will be

uncommonly glad to know the name of it."

He faced me with a kind of compassion in his wide-set brown eyes, "You,

sir, have caused a sweet and innocent lady to marry you against her

will--Oho, beyond doubt, your intentions were immaculate; but the outcome

remains in its stark enormity, and the hand of an inquisitive child is not

ordinarily salved by its previous ignorance as to the corrosive properties

of fire. You have betrayed confiding womanhood, an act abhorrent to

all notions of gentility. There is but one conclusive proof of your

repentance.--Need I mention that I allude to self-destruction?"

"O Lord, sir," I observed, "suicide is a deadly sin, and I would not

willingly insult any gentlewoman by evincing so marked a desire for the

devil's company in preference to hers."

"Your argument is sophistry," he returned, "since 'tis your death alone

that can endear you to your bride. Death is the ultimate and skilled

assayer of alloyed humanity: and by his art our gross constituents--our

foibles, our pettinesses, nay, our very crimes--are precipitated into the

coffin, the while that his crucible sets free the volatile pure essence,

and shows as undefiled by all life's accidents that part of divinity which

harbors in the vilest bosom. This only is remembered: this only mounts,

like an ethereal spirit, to hallow the finished-with blunderer's renown,

and reverently to enshrine his body's resting-place. Ah, no, Captain

Audaine! death alone may canonize the husband. Once you're dead, your wife

will adore you; once you're dead, your wife and I have before us an open

road to connubial felicity, a road which, living, you sadly encumber; and

only when he has delivered your funeral oration may Dr. Quarmby be exempt

from apprehension lest his part in your marriage ceremony bring about his

defrockment. I urge the greatest good for the greatest number, Captain;

living, you plunge all four of us into suffering; whereas the nobility of

an immediate _felo-de-se_ will in common decency exalt your soul to Heaven

accompanied and endorsed by the fervent prayers of three grateful hearts."

"And by the Lord Harry," says the Parson, "while no clergyman extant has

a more cordial aversion to suicide, I cannot understand why a prolonged

existence should tempt you. You love Miss Dorothy Allonby, as all Tunbridge

knows; and to a person of sensibility, what can be more awkward than

to have thrust upon him grandfathership of the adored one? You must in

this position necessarily be exposed to the committal of a thousand

_gaucheries_; and if you insist upon your irreligious project of procuring

a divorce, what, I ask, can be your standing with the lady? Can she smile

upon the suit of an individual who has publicly cast aside the sworn love

and obedience of the being to whom she owes her very existence? or will

any clergyman in England participate in the union of a woman to her

ex-grandfather? Nay, believe me, sir, 'tis less the selfishness than the

folly of your clinging to this vale of tears which I deplore. And I protest

that this rope"--he fished up a coil from the corner--"appears to have

been deposited here by a benign and all-seeing Providence to Suggest

the manifold advantages of hanging yourself as compared with the untidy

operation of cutting one's throat."

"And conceive, sir," says my wife, "what must be the universal grief

for the bridegroom so untimelily taken off in the primal crescence of

his honeymoon! Your funeral will be unparalleled both for sympathy and

splendor; all Tunbridge will attend in tears; and 'twill afford me a

melancholy but sincere pleasure to extend to you the hospitality of the

Allonby mausoleum, which many connoisseurs have accounted the finest in the

three kingdoms."

"I must venture," said I, "to terminate this very singular conversation.

You have, one and all, set forth the advantages of my immediate demise;

your logic is unassailable and has proven suicide my plain duty; and my

rebuttal is confined to the statement that I will see every one of you

damned before I'll do it."

Mr. Francis Vanringham rose with a little bow. "You have insulted both

womanhood and the Established Church by the spitting out of that ribald

oath; and me you have with equal levity wronged by the theft of my

affianced bride. I am only a play-actor, but in inflicting an insult a

gentleman must either lift his inferior to his own station or else forfeit

his gentility. I wear a sword, Captain Audaine. Heyho, will you grant me

the usual satisfaction?"

"My fascinating comedian," said I, "if 'tis a fight you are desirous of,

I can assure you that in my present state I would cross swords with a

costermonger, or the devil, or the Archbishop of Canterbury, with equal

impartiality. But scarcely in the view of a lady, and, therefore, as you

boast the greater influence in that quarter, will you kindly advise the

withdrawal of yonder unexpected addition to my family?"

"There's an inner room," says he, pointing to the door behind me; and I

held it open as my wife swept through.

"You are the epitome of selfishness," she flung out, in passing; "for had

you possessed an ounce of gallantry, you would long ago have freed me from

this odious marriage."

"Sure, madam," I returned, with a _congée_; "and is it not rather a

compliment that I so willingly forfeit a superlunar bliss in order to

retain the pleasure of your society?"

She sniffed, and I closed the door; and within the moment the two men fell

upon me, from the rear, and presently had me trussed like a fowl and bound

with that abominable Parson's coil of rope.

V

"Believe me," says Mr. Vanringham, now seated upon the table and indolently

dangling his heels,--the ecclesiastical monstrosity, having locked the

door upon Mrs. Audaine, had occupied a chair and was composedly smoking

a churchwarden,--"believe me, I lament the necessity of this uncouth

proceeding. But heyho! man is a selfish animal. You take me, sir, my

affection for yonder venerable lady does not keep me awake o' nights; yet

is a rich marriage the only method to amend my threadbare fortunes, so that

I cheerfully avail myself of her credulity. By God!" cried he, with a quick

raising of the voice, "to-morrow I had been a landed gentleman but for you,

you blundering omadhaun! And is a shabby merry-andrew from the devil knows

where to pop in and spoil the prettiest plot was ever hatched?"

'Twas like a flare of lightning, this sudden outburst of malignity; for

you saw in it, quintessentialized, the man's stark and venomous hatred of

a world which had ill-used him; and 'twas over with too as quickly as the

lightning, yielding to the pleasantest smile imaginable. Meanwhile you are

to picture me, and my emotions, as I lay beneath his oscillating toes,

entirely helpless. "'Twas not that I lacked the courage to fight you," he

continues, "nor the skill, either. But there is always the possibility

that by some awkward thrust or other you might deprive the stage of a

distinguished ornament; and as a sincere admirer of my genius, I must,

in decency, avoid such risks. 'Twas necessary to me, of course, that you

be got out of this world speedily, since a further continuance of your

blunderings would interfere with my plans for the future; having gone thus

far, I cannot reasonably be expected to cede my interest in the Marchioness

and her estate. Accordingly I decide upon the handiest method and tip the

wink to Quarmby here; the lady quits the apartment in order to afford us

opportunity to settle our pretensions, with cutlery as arbiter; and she

will return to find your perforated carcass artistically displayed in

yonder extremity of the room. Slain in an affair of honor, my dear Captain!

The disputed damsel will think none the worse of me, a man of demonstrated

valor and affection; Quarmby and I'll bury you in the cellar; and being

freed from her recent and unfortunate alliance, my esteemed Dorothy will

seek consolation in the embraces of a more acceptable spouse. Confess, sir,

is it not a scheme of Arcadian simplicity?"

'Twas the most extraordinary sensation to note the utterly urbane and

cheerful countenance with which Mr. Vanringham disclosed the meditated

atrocity. This unprincipled young man was about to run me through with no

more compunction than a naturalist in the act of pinning a new beetle among

his collection may momentarily be aware of.

Then my quickened faculties were stirred on a sudden, and for the first

time I opened my mouth. Whatever claim I had upon Vanringham, there was no

need to advance it now.

"You were about to say--?" he queried.

"I was about to relieve a certain surplusage of emotion," I retorted, "by

observing that I regret to find you, sir, a chattering, lean-witted fool--a

vain and improvident fool!"

"Harsh words, my Captain," says he, with lifted eyebrows.

"O Lord, sir, but not of an undeserved asperity!" I returned, "D'ye think

the Marchioness, her flighty head crammed with scraps of idiotic romance,

would elope without regard for the canons of romance? Not so; depend upon

it, a letter was left upon her pin-cushion announcing her removal with

you, and in the most approved heroic style arraigning the obduracy of her

unsympathetic grandchildren. D'ye think Gerald Allonby will not follow

her? Sure, and he will; and the proof is," I added, "that you may hear his

horses yonder on the heath, as I heard them some moments ago."

Vanringham leaped to the floor and stood thus, all tension. He raised

clenched, quivering hands toward the ceiling. "O King of Jesters!" he

cried, in horrid blasphemy; and then again, "O King of Jesters!"

And by this time men were shouting without, and at the door there was a

prodigious and augmenting hammering. And the Parson wrung his hands and

began to shake like a dish of jelly in a thunder-storm.

"Captain Audaine," Mr. Vanringham resumed, with more tranquillity, "you are

correct. Clidamira and Parthenissa would never have fled into the night

without leaving a note upon the pin-cushion. The folly I kindled in your

wife's addled pate has proven my ruin. Remains to make the best of Hobson's

choice." He unlocked the door. "Gentlemen, gentlemen!" says he, with

deprecating hand, "surely this disturbance is somewhat _outré_, a trifle

misplaced, upon the threshold of a bridal-chamber?"

Then Gerald Allonby thrust into the room, followed by Lord Humphrey Degge,

[Footnote: I must in this place entreat my reader's profound discredit of

any aspersions I may rashly seem to cast upon this honest gentleman, whose

friendship I to-day esteem as invaluable; but I wrote, as always, _currente

calamo_, and the above was penned in an amorous misery, _sub Venire_, be

it remembered; and in such cases a wrong bias is easily hung upon the

mind.--F.A.] my abhorred rival for Dorothy's affection, and two attendants.

"My grandmother!" shrieks Gerald. "Villain, what have you done with my

grandmother?"

"The query were more fitly put," Vanringham retorts, "to the lady's

husband." And he waves his hand toward me.

Thereupon the new-comers unbound me with various exclamations of wonder.

"And now," I observed, "I would suggest that you bestow upon Mr. Vanringham

and yonder blot upon the Church of England the bonds from which I have been

recently manumitted, or, at the very least, keep a vigilant watch upon

those more than suspicious characters, the while that I narrate the

surprising events of this evening."