PISTOLS FOR TWO.
I knew nothing of all this. I was not to learn what had passed at that
interview till many years later. Laura Grey, on my return, told me
nothing. I am sure she was right. There were some things she could not
have explained, and the stranger's apparently insane project of marrying
penniless me was a secret better in her own keeping than in that of a
simple and very self-willed girl.
When I returned there were signs of depression and anxiety in her looks,
and her silence and abstraction excited my curiosity. She easily put me
off, however. I knew that her spirits sometimes failed her, although she
never talked about her troubles; and therefore her dejection was, after
all, not very remarkable. We heard nothing more of our guest till next
day, when Rebecca Torkill told us that he was again suffering from one
of his headaches. The intelligence did not excite all the sympathy she
seemed to expect. Shortly after sunset we saw him pass the window of our
room, and walk by under the trees.
With an ingrained perversity, the more Laura Grey warned me against this
man, the more I became interested in him. She and I were both unusually
silent that evening. I think that her thoughts were busy with him; I
know that mine were.
"We won't mind opening the window to-night," said Laura.
"I was just thinking how pleasant it would be. Why should we not open
it?" I answered.
"Because we should have him here again; and he is not the sort of person
your mamma would like you to become acquainted with."
I was a little out of humour, but did not persist. I sat in a sullen
silence, my eyes looking dreamily through the window. The early twilight
had faded into night by the time the stranger re-appeared. I saw him
turn the line of his walk near the window; and seeing it shut, pause for
a moment. I dare say he was more vexed than I. He made up his mind,
however, against a scene. He looked on the ground and over his shoulder,
again at the window.
Mr. Marston walked round the corner to the steward's house. The vague
shadows and lights of night were abroad by this time. Candles were in
his room; he found Rebecca Torkill there, with a small tankard and a
tea-cup on a salver, awaiting his return.
"La! sir, to think of you doing such another wild thing, and you, only
this minute, at death's door with your head! And how is it now, please,
sir?"
"A thousand thanks. My head is as well as my hat. My headache goes as it
comes, in a moment. What is this?"
"Some gruel, please, sir, with sugar, white wine, and nutmeg. I thought
you might like it."
"Caudle, by Jove!" smiled the gentleman, "isn't it?"
"Well, it is; and it's none the worse o' that."
"All the better," exclaimed Mr. Marston, who chose to be on friendly
terms with the old lady. "How can I thank you?"
"It's just the best thing in the world to make you sleep after a
headache. You'll take some while it's hot."
"I can't thank you half enough," he said.
"I'll come back, sir, and see you by-and-by," and the good woman toddled
out, leaving him alone with his gruel.
"I must not offend her." He poured some out into his cup, tasted it, and
laughed quietly. "Sipping caudle! Well, this is rather a change for
Richard Marston, by Jove! A change every day. Let us make a carouse of
it," he said, and threw it out of the window.
Mr. Marston threw on his loose wrapper, and folded his muffler about his
throat, replaced his hat, and with his cane in his fingers, was about to
walk down to the town of Cardyllion. A word or two spoken, quite
unsuspiciously, by Doctor Mervyn that morning, had touched a sensitive
nerve, and awakened a very acute anxiety in Mr. Marston's mind. The
result was his intended visit, at the fall of night, to the High-street
of the quaint little town.
He was on the point of setting out, when Rebecca Torkill returned with a
sliced lemon on a plate.
"Some likes a squeeze of a lemon in it," she observed, "and I thought I
might as well leave it here."
"It is quite delicious, really," he replied, as Mrs. Torkill peeped into
the open flagon.
"Why," said she, in unfeigned admiration, "I'm blest if he's left a
drop! Ah! ah! Well, it was good; and I'll have some more for you before
you go to bed. But you shouldn't drink it off, all at a pull, like that.
You might make yourself ill that way."
"We men like good liquor so well--so well--we--we--what was I saying?
Oh! yes, we like our liquor so well, we never know when we have had
enough. It's a bad excuse; but let it pass. I'm going out for a little
walk, it always sets me up after one of those headaches. Good evening,
Mrs. Torkill."
He was thinking plainly of other matters than her, or her caudle; and,
before she had time to reply, he was out of the door.
It was a sweet, soft night; the moon was up. The walk from Malory to the
town is lonely and pretty. He took the narrow road that approaches
Cardyllion in an inland line, parallel to the road that runs by the
shore of the estuary. His own echoing footsteps among the moon-lit trees
was the only sign of life, except the distant barking of a watch-dog,
now and then, that was audible. A melancholy wind was piping high in the
air, from over the sea; you might fancy it the aerial lamentations of
the drowned.
He was passing the churchyard now, and stopped partly to light a cigar,
partly to look at the old church, the effect of which, in the moonlight,
was singular. Its gable and towers cast a sharp black shadow across the
grass and gravestones, like that of a gigantic hand whose finger pointed
towards him. He smiled cynically as the fancy struck him.
"Another grave there, I should not wonder if the news is true. What an
ass that fellow is! Another grave, I dare say; and in my present luck, I
suppose I shall fill it--fill it! That's ambiguous; yes, the more like
an oracle. That shadow does look curiously like a finger pointing at
me!"
He smoked for a time, leaning on the pier of the iron wicket that from
this side admits to the churchyard, and looking in with thoughts very
far from edifying.
"This will be the second disagreeable discovery, without reckoning
Carmel, I shall have made since my arrival in this queer corner of the
world. Who could have anticipated meeting Laura here?--or that whining
fool, Carmel? Who would have fancied that Jennings, of all men, would
have turned up in this out-of-the-way nook? By Jove! I'm like Saint
Paul, hardly out of the shipwreck when a viper fastens on my hand. Old
Sprague made us turn all that into elegiacs. I wonder whether I could
make elegiacs now."
He loitered slowly on, by the same old road, into Castle Street, the
high-street of the quaint little town of steep roofs and many gables.
The hall-door of the "Verney Arms" was open, and the light of the lamp
glowed softly on the pavement.
Mr. Marston hated suspense. He would rather make a bad bargain,
off-hand, than endure the torture of a long negotiation. He would stride
out to meet a catastrophe rather than await its slow, sidelong
approaches. This intolerance of uncertainty made him often sudden in
action. He had come down to the town simply to reconnoitre. He was
beginning, by this time, to meditate something more serious. Under the
shadow of the houses opposite, he walked slowly up and down the silent
flagway, eyeing the door of the "Verney Arms" askance, as he finished
his cigar.
It so happened, that exactly as he had thrown away the stump of it, a
smoker, who had just commenced his, came slowly down the steps of the
"Verney Arms," and stood upon the deserted flagway, and as he puffed
indolently, he looked up the street, and down the street, and up at the
sky.
The splendid moon shone full on his face, and Mr. Marston knew him. He
was tall and slight, and rather good-looking, with a face of great
intelligence, heightened with something of enthusiasm, and stood there
smoking, in happy unconsciousness that an unfriendly eye was watching
him across the street.
Mr. Marston stood exactly opposite. The smoker, who had emerged from the
"Verney Arms," stood before the centre of the steps, and Mr. Marston, on
a sudden, as if he was bent on walking straight through him into the
hotel, walked at a brisk pace across the street, and halted, within a
yard, in front of him.
"I understand," said Marston instantly, in a low, stern tone, "that you
said at Black's, when I was away yachting, that you had something to say
to me."
The smoker had lowered his cigar, and was evidently surprised, as well
he might be; he looked at him hard for some time, and at length replied
as grimly: "Yes, I said so; yes I do; I mean to speak to you."
"All right; no need to raise our voices here though; I think you had
better find some place where we can talk without exciting attention."
"Come this way," said the tall young man, turning suddenly and walking
up the street at a leisurely pace. Mr. Marston walked beside him, a yard
or two apart. They might be very good friends, for anything that
appeared to a passer-by. He turned down a short and narrow by-street,
with only room for a house or two, and they found themselves on the
little common that is known as the Green of Cardyllion. The sea, at its
further side, was breaking in long, tiny waves along the shingle, the
wind came over the old castle with a melancholy soughing; the green was
solitary; and only here and there, from the windows of the early little
town, a light gleamed. The moon shone bright on the green, turning the
grass to grey, and silvering the ripples on the dark estuary, and
whitening the misty outlines of the noble Welsh mountains across the
water. A more tranquillising scene could scarcely be imagined.
When they had got to the further end, they stopped, as if by common
consent.
"I'm ready to hear you," said Marston.
"Well, I have only to tell you, and I'm glad of this opportunity, that I
have ascertained the utter falsehood of your stories, and that you are a
coward and a villain."
"Thanks; that will do, Mr. Jennings," answered Marston, growing white
with fury, but speaking with cold and quiet precision. "You have
clenched this matter by an insult which I should have answered by
cutting you across the face with this,"--and he made his cane whistle in
the air,--"but that I reserve you for something more effectual, and
shall run no risk of turning the matter into a police-office affair. I
have neither pistols nor friend here. We must dispense with formalities;
we can do all that is necessary for ourselves, I suppose. I'll call
to-morrow, early, at the 'Verney Arms.' A word or two will settle
everything."
He raised his hat ever so little, implying that that conference, for the
present, was over; but before he could turn, Mr. Jennings, who did not
choose to learn more than was unavoidable to his honour, said:
"You will find a note at the bar."
"Address it Richard Wynyard, then."
"Your friend?"
"No; myself."
"Oh! a false name?" sneered Mr. Jennings.
"You may use the true one, of course. My tailor is looking for me a
little more zealously, I fancy, than you were; and if you publish it in
Cardyllion, it may lead to his arresting me, and saving you all further
trouble in this, possibly, agitating affair." The young man accompanied
these words with a cold laugh.
"Well, Richard Wynyard be it," said Mr. Jennings, with a slight flush.
And with these words the two young men turned their backs on each other.
Mr. Jennings walked along beside the shingle, with the sound of the
light waves in his ear, and thinking rather hurriedly, as men will, whom
so serious a situation has suddenly overtaken. Marston turned, as I
said, the other way, and without entering the town again, approached
Malory by the narrow road that passes close under the castle walls, and
follows the line of the high banks overlooking the estuary.
If there be courage and mental activity, and no conscience, we have a
very dangerous devil. A spoiled child, in which self is supreme, who has
no softness of heart, and some cleverness and energy, easily degenerates
into that sort of Satan. And yet, in a kind of way, Marston was popular.
He could spend money freely--it was not his own--and when he was in
spirits he was amusing.
When he stared in Jennings' face this evening, the bruise and burning of
an old jealousy were in his heart. The pain of that hellish hate is
often lightly inflicted; but what is more cruel than vanity? He had
abandoned the pursuit in which that jealousy was born, but the hatred
remained. And now he had his revenge in hand. It is a high stake, one's
life on a match of pistol-shooting. But his brute courage made nothing
of it. It was an effort to him to think himself in danger, and he did
not make that effort. He was thinking how to turn the situation to
account.