_Wherein Sir Percy and Sir Robin come face
to face, to the unfeigned amazement of
each: and where My Lady takes
to her heels and a wherry._
When Lady Diana and Percy quitted the box, he, after conducting her to
the care of Lady Brookwood, strode off into the Dark Alleys, taking with
him, not Kennaston, for the hopeless youth, flouted still by Diana, had
gone a-mooning by the river’s bank, but a company of valiant and merry
gentlemen all raised a bit by the partaking of the famous Vauxhall
punch; and to them he confided sufficient of his reasons and intentions,
as made plain their course to them as his friends, to do aught and all
in their several powers toward the promoting of a quarrel betwixt him
and Sir Robin McTart; whom, he would presently point out to them, as
they should stroll, seeming careless, the length of the walk.
Thus, arm in arm, Sir Percy, Sir Wyatt Lovell, His Grace of Escombe, and
Mr. Jack Chalmers, across the path, swaggering with sticks and tassels
hanging, hats at a cock, perfumed with Venus oil, and most jocund of
demeanor; with Beau Brummell behind ’em spying, waving his little muff,
and chatting with Lord Wootton and one or two more gay sparks, all
disporting themselves carelessly, but hilts eased for the drawing.
Just as they were nearing the wooden lion of Sir Robin’s tryst, Lady
Biddy’s shriek assailed their ears, and Sir Percy, thanking Providence
for so opportune an occurrence, which, not to say that it was in any way
premeditated, yet continued to ring out louder and louder, even after
Sir Robin had ceased to pull at her mask-string and stood, held fast in
Her Ladyship’s stout grasp, the very center of a blaze of light from
footmen’s flambeaux,—they and the masses pushing every way, screaming
and cursing.
Into the thick of this mêlée dashed Sir Percy de Bohun, with his friends
on either side of him.
But a moment sufficed for him to wrest the Lady from her assailant and
to deliver her over to the care of Diana and the Duchess, who carried
her swooning (whether with laughter or emotion ’twould be difficult to
set down), to the Room.
In another second, taking his silver-fringed gloves from his pocket he
threw them into the masked face of Sir Robin McTart.
The little Baronet, who had both temper and vanity, which brace now got
the upperhand of his cowardice, and, believing that Lady Peggy’s eyes
were upon him, that Sir Percy was at the bottom of the Thames, and with
full foreknowledge that he could run away before the meeting could be
arranged, caught the gloves as they struck and flung them back into
their owner’s covered countenance.
“Take that! ’sdeath!” squeaked Sir Robin, now much the more valiant as
he beheld the Vicar screwing his way toward him through the excited
crowds.
[Illustration: I am Sir Robin McTart!...]
“Unmask, and show yourself for who you are!” cried Percy, every one of
his companions echoing:
“Unmask! Unmask! Unmask, or we’ll run ye!”
“Willingly,” responded the trembling gentleman from Kent, tugging at the
slip-knot in his mask-string.
“I am Sir Robin McTart! Who, the devil, are you?”
“I am Sir Percy de Bohun!” replied his opponent, as both masks came off
at the same instant, and the two confronted one another, staring with
four eyes that fairly popped in their sockets.
’Twould be hard to say which of these two was the more astounded,
although Sir Percy’s amazement had quite a different flavor from the
Baronet’s abject terror.
“You! Sir Percy de Bohun!” he quavered, turning ashy pale. “I’ll not
believe it. ’Tis a lie!”
“You! Sir Robin McTart!” replied Percy, hotly. “Gentlemen,” turning to
his friends, “I pray you bear me out in this, not to the exclusion of my
challenge of this impostor, which holds good until one or t’other of us
sheds blood, but for the preservation of the honor of a valiant
gentleman, who is not far off of us now. That this weazen wretch may
meet his dues, for not only does he masquerade his face, but seeks to
usurp the character and name of one whom we all know to be both
handsome, brave and courageous.”
Percy’s blood runs high as he speaks these generous words, while every
soul about him stands breathless, staring, struck dumb with the
singularity of the episode.
“But I am Sir Robin McTart,” cries the Baronet, brandishing his weapon
with a will, since there is none to oppose him, and the Vicar, now,
although well-nigh choked, not above ten yards distant from him.
“Tut, tut, Sir, whoever you are,” interposed Lord Escombe. “Your game’s
up, and you’d better give your lies a rest.”
“Hold!” cries Sir Percy to Robin, “whoever you are, I challenge you to
fight me ten minutes hence, yonder in the open, towards the river, and
those ten minutes my friends and I’ll spend in calling the actual Sir
Robin McTart into your presence, and confronting your impudence with his
reality. Lend me your lungs, My Lords and Gentlemen; Sir Robin’s in call
somewhere in the Gardens as we all know.”
And with one accord the shout went up, ringing up and down the river and
far across to the highway, where it caused the horse-patrol to think
that every highwayman in the kingdom had broken loose upon Vauxhall, and
presently brought them rearing, plunging, swearing, firing, thumping
cutlasses right and left, into the midst of the surging thousands, by
this all shouting:
“Sir Robin McTart! Sir Robin McTart! Sir Robin! Sir Robin! Sir Robin
McTart!” at the top of their voices.
But for all their bawling, no one answered, no one came, and but one of
the vast throng went.
This was Lady Peggy, at a loss to know the meaning of the shouts, not
having been near enough to the scene of the encounter to learn its
purport, and only now realizing that ’twas herself was sought and meant
by the concerted cry that rent the air. Scenting a new if unknown
danger, she followed her woman’s instinct, and, in the waiting pause
that succeeded the tumultuous call, Peggy fled to the landing, pressed a
handful of shillings, almost her last, into the palm of the only boatman
there, jumped into the wherry and bade him get her as swiftly as he
could to Queenhithe Stairs; for determined was she, now more than ever,
to leave no traces in her wake, and to return, at all risks, to Mr.
Brummell’s house for her bundle of woman’s clothes.
For a long way down the Thames the renewed cry of the Vauxhall crush
rang in her distracted ears:
“Sir Robin McTart! Sir Robin McTart! Sir Robin! Sir Robin! Where are
you? Come forth! Show yourself!”
But none other came forth, and the Baronet, taking such courage as he
might through his astonishment at Sir Percy’s being alive,—and not
forgetting, even at this point, to reckon how much the lying assassins
had mulcted him of, now, in the second breathless halt of the calling
his own name, waved his weapon and answered it, saying again:
“I am Sir Robin McTart!”
“Prove it,” shouted Chalmers, with a derisive shrug.
“Faith! and so he can by me!” exclaimed the panting Vicar, as, borne
rather by the surging of the people than by his slender legs, the tenant
of the cloth was pitched somewhat unceremoniously head-first into his
pupil’s middle. Sputtering, but yet winning the attention which truth
and the clergy usually and righteously obtain, the Vicar raised his
right hand, and, laying his left on the Baronet’s shoulder, he spoke:
“This is Sir Robin McTart of Robinswold, Kent. I have known him from his
birth; his father before him; he has been my pupil. Who dares use his
name than himself is an impostor and a thief!”
“What!” and now comes forward Mr. Brummell with open hand. “And my old
friend,” says he, “’sdeath, Mr. What’s-your-name, you were a curate when
we met last, twenty years ago, but I remember you, Sir, at Robinswold.
So this,” surveying the Baronet, “is my old friend’s son and heir? Of a
truth he favors his sire more than the pretty young rapscallion that’s
been a-fooling us all for now these four weeks past; for gentlemen,”
adds the Beau, turning to Sir Percy, “’tis as well we confess ourselves
to have been duped. Gad, Sir,” this _sotto voce_ to Percy alone, “I
always wondered where Sir Hector found that handsome lad, for he was as
ugly a gentleman as ever was wedded to wife.”
After the storm there came that calm which is the inevitable successor,
save that, in this case, while the noise subsided, the wonder grew.
Every one of Mr. Brummell’s company and all of the rest of the world
beside, was rehearsing his and her own surmise as to the identity of the
young gentleman who had, for above a month, been the town toast, and who
had now disappeared as suddenly as he came. Some believed him to be Tom
Kidde himself; some, a Lord out of France; some, a Prince of the blood;
some, the Devil; some, an astrologer; there was no lack of inventions as
to Her Ladyship’s identity by the time the ten minutes of Sir Percy’s
setting had come to an end.
He cast an eye about the place looking for Sir Robin, and his veins were
fairly on fire to know the color of his rival’s blood and wring from
his, he hoped, dying lips, a confession of where Lady Peggy was.
Presently, not spying his opponent, he begged Escombe and Chalmers to
have the goodness to seek him out; settle the spot; ask him to choose
his seconds; call a surgeon (of whom there were always a score in
attendance at Vauxhall, ready for just such affairs), while he himself
swung down toward the river to look for Kennaston and give him one last
word for Peggy, should Sir Robin run him through.
Peg’s twin lay on the turf sleeping. Such are the effects of being at
once a poet and a lover, not yet twenty, and quite fagged with
wide-awake nights and days and a fair lady’s cruel caprices. Sir Percy
looked at him, smiled, and whispered as he knelt:
“Dear lad, thou that art My Lady’s twin, when next thou seest her, sure
I know she’ll lay her dear lips on thy brow, and there she’ll find,
this.” Percy kissed the boy as he spoke. “’Tis doubtless more than she’d
care to discover, but, if death comes, ’twill ease the blow and charm
the pain while I remember this message that I send her now.”
He turned away and left Peg’s brother lying there to waken at his
leisure.
When he reached the Walk again, another clamor greeted him identical
with its predecessor.
“Sir Robin McTart! Sir Robin McTart! Sir Robin! Sir Robin! Come forth of
your seclusion. The time is up. Sir Robin, I say-y-y-y!”
This Sir Robin McTart had vanished as mysteriously as the other one, and
though the entire company made the welkin ring with the same cry over
again:
“Sir Robin McTart! Sir Robin! Sir Robin! Sir Robin McTart!” no Sir Robin
appeared or could be found, and they were fain be content, reinforced by
the ladies now well out of their swoons and terrors, to finish up the
night with punch and loo in the boxes, all brains much of a muddle with
the strange adventures and miraculous disappearances incident upon Beau
Brummell’s never-to-be-forgotten masquerade party at Vauxhall.
[Illustration]
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[Illustration]