O'Hare drew himself up. He had grown all at once exceedingly still.
Mr. Stafford, gradually recovering from his paroxysms, had begun to
bestow some intelligent interest upon the scene. There was a mist of
doubt in his eyes as he gazed from the victimised, but very lively,
lady to her crestfallen "violent abductor," and thence to the gloomy
countenance of the new-comer on the threshold. There seemed to be, it
struck him, a prodigious deliberation in Mistress Kitty's cry and start
of surprise.
"What is my pretty Bellairs up to now? Well, poor Irish Denis, with
all his wits, is no match for her anyhow, and, faith, she knows it,"
thought he. Aloud he said, with great placidity: "Fie, fie, this is
shocking to hear!" and sat, the good-humoured Chorus to the Comedy, on
the edge of the table, waiting for the development of the next scene.
Sir Jasper, wiping a beaded brow and still staring, as if by the sheer
fixing of his bloodshot eye he could turn these disappointing puppets
into the proper objects of his vengeance, was quite unable to follow
any current but the muddy whirl of his own thoughts.
Lord Verney alone it was, therefore, who rose at all to Mistress
Kitty's situation.
"Are _you_ the scoundrel, then," said he, marching upon O'Hara, "who
dared to lay hands upon an unprotected lady in the very streets of
Bath?"
"Monstrous!" remarked Captain Spicer behind him. Then jogging his
patron's elbow, "'Twas well spoke, Verney, man. At him again, there's
blood in this."
Mr. O'Hara looked steadily at Lord Verney, glancing contemptuously at
Captain Spicer, and then gazed with long, full searching at the
beguiling widow.
She thought to scent danger to herself in the air; and, womanlike, she
seized unscrupulously upon the sharpest weapon in her armoury.
"Perhaps," she said, with an angry, scornful laugh, "Mr. O'Hara will
now deny that he and his servants attacked my chairmen in the dark,
threw me, screaming with terror, into his carriage, and that his
intention was avowedly to wed me by force in London to-morrow."
All eyes were fixed on the Irishman, and silence waited upon his reply.
He had grown so pale that his red head seemed to flame by contrast. He
made a low bow.
"No, Kitty," said he, in a very gentle voice, "I deny nothing." Then
sweeping the company with a haughty glance. "This lady," said he, "has
spoken truth; as for me, I am ready to meet the consequences of my
conduct."
His eye finally rested once more on Lord Verney. The latter grew white
and then scarlet; while Spicer whispered and again jogged.
"Of course," blustered the youth, and wished that he had the curious
digestion of his contemporaries, that his stomach did not so
squeamishly rebel at the prospect of a dose of steel, "of course, sir,
you must be aware----"
"It shall be swords," interrupted the irrepressible Spicer; "and gad,
sir, what my noble friend will have left of your body I will myself
make mince of this night! Aye, sir," said the Captain, beginning to
squint as was his wont under excitement, and slapping his bony chest;
"I will fight you myself, sir."
"Fight _you_!" exclaimed O'Hara, suddenly stung into magnificent
contempt. "Fight you, sir?" he ran a withering eye over the
grasshopper anatomy of the toady as he spoke, "you, sir, you, the
writer of that dirty note this morning, bidding me
apologise--apologise!" cried Denis, with his most luscious brogue, "to
the man, Sir Jasper there, for having insulted you on the subject of
your miserable mealy head--fight you, sir? Sure, rather than fight
you," said Mr. O'Hara, searching for the most emphatic asseveration
conceivable, "I'd never fight again for the rest of my life! But I'll
tell you what I'll do for you: next time you thrust that ugly face of
yours within the reach of me arm Oi'll pull your nose till it's as long
as your tongue, and as slender as your courage, damme!"
"Oh, gad! what a low scoundrel," murmured Captain Spicer, withdrawing
quickly several paces, and with an intensified cast in his eye; "'tis
positive unfit for a gentleman to speak to him!"
"Now, my lord?" said O'Hara, resuming his easy dignity.
But that her comedy should drift into tragedy was none of Mistress
Kitty's intentions. Briskly stepping between the laboriously
pugnacious Verney and the poor Irishman, whose eye (for all his present
composure) shone with the lust of the fray, she thus addressed them
collectively and in turn:
"Shame, shame, gentlemen, I protest! Is it not enough that a poor
woman's heart should be set a-fluttering by over-much love, must it now
go pit-a-pat again for over-much hate? My Lord Verney, think of your
mother. Think of her, of whose declining years you are the sole prop
and joy; recall to mind those principles of high morality, of noble
Christian duty, which that paragon of women so sedulously inculcated in
you!" Her voice quivered on the faintest note of mockery. "Oh, what
would that worthy lady's feelings be, were you to be brought home to
her--a corse! What, ah what indeed! would _your_ feelings be if, by
some accident," here she shot involuntarily what was almost the
suspicion of a wink in the direction of O'Hara, "you had to answer for
the life of a fellow-creature before to-morrow's dawn? Why, you could
never open your Bible again without feeling in your bosom the throbbing
heart of a Cain!" She stopped to draw breath.
Mr. Stafford, one delighted grin, slid the whole length of the table on
which he sat with dangling legs, to get a fuller view of the saucy
face: "Incomparable Bellairs," he murmured to himself with keen
appreciation, And: "So, ho, my noble friend," thought he, as he shot a
glance at the solemn Verney, "now do I know what has closed to you for
ever the gates of Paradise."
"And you, Mr. O'Hara," resumed the lady, turning her eye, full of
indefinable and entrancing subtleties upon the honest gentleman, "would
you have me forgive you this night's work? Do not, then, do not force
this impetuous young man to an unnecessary quarrel. Allow him to
withdraw his challenge. Do that in _atonement_, sir," said she, with
much severity of accent; but her eye said sweetly enough, "Do that for
me" and gave further promise of unutterable reward.
"Madam," said O'Hara, glancing away as if the sight of her beauty were
now more pain than pleasure to him, "'tis for my Lord Verney to speak;
I am entirely at his orders. I understand," and here, for all his
chivalrousness, he could not refrain him from a point of satire, "I
understand, ma'am, that you have given him the right to espouse your
quarrels."
"Most certainly," said the crimson Verney, who had been monstrously
uneasy during his lady's sermon, not only because every word of it hit
some tender point of his abnormally developed conscience, but also
because of an indefinable sensation that he was being held up to
ridicule, "most certainly, sir, it is as Mistress Bellairs's future
husband that I find it incumbent--that I find myself forced,
reluctantly--no, I mean----" here he floundered and looked round for
Spicer, who, however, was ostentatiously turning his back upon the
proceedings and gazing at the moon. "In fact," resumed the poor youth,
falling back on his own unguided wits, "I have no alternative but to
demand satisfaction for an attempt on the honour of the future Lady
Verney."
"Mercy on us!" cried Mistress Kitty, with a shrill indignant little
scream. "Oh fie, my lord, who would have deemed you so bloodthirsty?
Before heaven," she cried piously, glancing at the raftered ceiling,
"before heaven, it would be the death of me, were there to be
quarrelling, strife, contention for me--for _me_! Who am I," she said
with the most angelic humility, "that two such gallant gentlemen should
stake their lives for me? Rather," said she, "will I give you back
your word, my lord. Indeed," this with a noble air of sacrifice, "I
feel Providence has but too clearly shown me my duty. Hush, hush,
Verney, bethink yourself! How could I ever face your mother (were you
indeed to survive the encounter) with the knowledge that I had exposed
you to danger; that for me you had loaded your soul with
blood-guiltiness!"
She shuddered and looked delicious.
"Child," said she meltingly, as Lord Verney faintly protested, "it must
be so. I have felt it more than once; you are too young." There was a
conviction in her voice that gave no hope of reprieve, and Lord Verney,
who had already found out that Mistress Bellairs was too dangerous a
delight to pursue with comfort, accepted his sentence with a Christian
resignation that did justice to his mother's training.
"All, all must now be over between us," said Kitty pathetically, "save
a gentle friendship! Your hand, my Lord."
She reached for his clumsy paw with her determined little fingers.
"Mr. O'Hara," said she, turning round. "_I forgive you_. Your hand
also, sir."
If the clasp she extended to Verney was purely official, that with
which she now seized O Hara's cold right hand was eloquent enough with
quick and secret pressure. But, for the first time in his life,
perhaps, O'Hara was slow in returning a woman's token.
"Shake hands," ordered Mistress Bellairs decisively, and joined the
belligerents' palms.
Here Stafford sprang jovially to the assistance of the pretty
peacemaker.
"Right, right," cried he. "Shake hands on it like good fellows. Fie!
who could keep up a feud under those beaming eyes?--Never be downcast,
Verney, lad! What did I tell thee, only yesterday, in the Pump Room,
about thy halo?--Denis, my boy, I've always loved thee, but now I'll
love thee more than ever, if only thou wilt mix us a bowl of punch in
right good Irish fashion, so that in it we may drown all enmity and
drink good friendship--and above all toast the divine Kitty Bellairs!"
"Hurroosh," cried O'Hara, and with a valiant gulp determined to swallow
his own bitter disappointment and flood in a tide of warm gaiety the
cold ache in his heart. "By all means," cried he, wrung Verney's hand
with feverish cordiality, and gave one last sadly-longing look at Kitty
and his lovely delusive dream.
Then spinning round upon himself he demanded loudly of the willing
landlord, lemons and "the craythur--a couple of bottles, my friend--a
bowl of sugar and a trifle of wather--the smaller the kittle the better
it boils." And: "Wake up, man," cried he, slapping Sir Jasper on the
back so that the powder flew from that baronet's queue. "Sure we're
all happy, now."
"Where's my wife, sir?" said the gloomy husband, springing to his feet
fiercely. "I've been made a fool of between you, but all this does not
tell me where my wife is! Stafford, man, I see it now: this has been a
blind." He struck his forehead. "Ha, yes I have it now, it was a
false scent--the villain, the fox is off with her on another road, with
his tongue in his cheek, grinning to think of me sitting and waiting
for them at Devizes!--Tom, the chaise, the horses! There's not a
moment to be lost!"
"Devil a horse or chay for me, sir," cried his friend. And nodding at
Kitty: "I know when I'm in good company," he pursued, "if you
don't.--Sit down, man, there's punch brewing. Your vengeance will keep
hot enough, ha, ha, but the punch won't."
"Glory be to God," cried O'Hara, staring at Sir Jasper as if he were a
natural curiosity, "I've known many a madman, but I never knew one mad
enough yet to run away from a punch-bowl!"
With lace ruffles neatly turned back from his deft hands, O'Hara began
to peel the lemons.
"Do you," now said Captain Spicer with an ingratiating chirp. "Do you
really care for _quite_ so much peel in the bowl ... ahem?"
The speaker stopped suddenly and seemed to wither quite away under a
sudden look from the punch-brewer (who had made a movement as though to
put his knife and lemons down and employ his fingers differently) and
the next instant found him whispering in Stafford's ear:
"You're a man of the world, I know, friend Stafford," said he. "No
doubt you will laugh at my over-nice sense of delicacy, but just now,
in his ravings, poor O'Hara made a kind of threat, I believe, about
pulling my nose. What would _you_ advise me to do in the matter? Look
over it, eh?"
"Certainly," cried the spark, with a glance of the most airy contempt.
"Look over it, _as straight as you can_. Look over it, by all means,
but as you value the symmetry of that ornament to your countenance,
Captain Spicer--if I were you I should keep it well-buttered."
* * * * *
With an art of which he alone was master, Captain Spicer hereupon
vanished from the company, without being missed.