Pistols for Two (17 page)

‘Ought to have called for the porter,’ agreed Sir Francis. He then perceived that this amiable response had failed to please his fiery young friend, and begged pardon. A powerful thought assailed him. He turned his eyes towards Mr Wadworth, and said suddenly: ‘You know what, Bernie? He shouldn’t have accepted Charlie’s challenge. Must know he ain’t been on the town above six months!’

‘The point is he
did
accept it,’ said Mr Wadworth. ‘But it ain’t too late. Charlie dashed well ought to apologize.’

‘I
will
not!’ said Lord Saltwood tensely.

‘You were in the wrong,’ insisted Mr Wadworth.

‘I know it, and I mean to fire in the air. That will show that I acknowledge my fault, but was not afraid to meet Rotherfield!’

This noble utterance caused Sir Francis to drop with a clatter the cane whose amber knob he had been meditatively sucking, and Mr Wadworth to stare at his principal as though he feared for his reason. ‘Delope?’ he gasped. ‘Against Rotherfield? You must be queer in your attic! Why, man, you’d be cold meat! Now, you listen to me, Charlie! If you won’t beg the fellow’s pardon, you’ll come up the instant you see the handkerchief drop, and shoot to kill, or I’m dashed if I’ll have anything more to do with it!’

‘Awkward business, if he killed him,’ objected Sir Francis. ‘Might have to leave the country.’

‘He won’t kill him,’ said Mr Wadworth shortly.

He said no more, but it was plain to Saltwood that his seconds thought poorly of his chances of being able to hit his opponent at a range of twenty-five yards. He was by no means a contemptible shot, but he suspected that it might be easier to hit a small wafer at Manton’s Galleries than a large man at Paddington Green.

Mr Wadworth called for him in a tilbury very early in the morning. He did not find it necessary to throw stones up at his lordship’s window, for his lordship had not slept well, and was already dressed. He stole downstairs, and let himself out of the house, bidding Mr Wadworth good morning with very creditable composure. Mr Wadworth nodded, and cast a knowledgeable eye over him. ‘No bright buttons on your coat?’ he asked.

The question did nothing to allay the slightly sick feeling at the pit of Saltwood’s stomach. Mr Wadworth followed it up with a reminder to him to turn up his collar, and to be careful to present the narrowest possible target to his adversary. Lord Saltwood, climbing into the tilbury, answered with spurious cheerfulness: ‘I must suppose it can make little difference to such a shot as they say Rotherfield is.’

‘Oh, well – ! No sense in taking needless risks,’ said Mr Wadworth awkwardly.

After that, conversation became desultory. They were the first to arrive on the ground, but they were soon joined by Sir Francis, and a man in a sober-hued coat, who chatted about the weather. Saltwood realized that this insensate person must be the doctor, gritted his teeth, and hoped that Rotherfield would not be late. It seemed to him that he had strayed into nightmare. He felt cold, sick, and ashamed; and it said much for the underlying steel in his spoilt and wayward nature that it did not enter his head that he might even now escape from a terrifying encounter by apologizing to Rotherfield for conduct which he knew to have been disgraceful.

Rotherfield arrived even as the church clocks were striking the hour. He was driving himself in his sporting curricle, one of his friends seated beside him, the other following him in a high-perch phaeton. He appeared to be quite nonchalant, and it was obvious that he had dressed with all his usual care. The points of his shirt stood up stiffly above an intricate neckcloth; his dark locks were arranged with casual nicety; there was not a speck upon the gleaming black leather of his Hessian boots. He sprang down from the curricle and cast his drab driving-coat into it. The seconds met, and conferred, and presently led their principals to their positions, and gave into their hands the long-barrelled duelling-pistols, primed and cocked.

Across what seemed to be an immeasureable stretch of turf, Saltwood stared at Rotherfield. That cold, handsome face might have been carved in stone; it looked merciless, faintly mocking.

The doctor turned his back; Saltwood drew in his breath, and grasped his pistol firmly. One of Rotherfield’s seconds was holding the handkerchief high in the air. It fell, and Saltwood jerked up his arm and fired.

He had been so sure that Rotherfield would hit him that it seemed to him that he must have been hit. He recalled having been told that the bullet had a numbing effect, and cast an instinctive glance down his person. But there did not seem to be any blood, and he was certainly still standing on his feet. Then he heard someone ejaculate: ‘Good God!
Rotherfield!
’ and, looking in bewilderment across the grass, he saw that Mr Mayfield was beside Rotherfield, an arm flung round him, and that the doctor was hurrying towards them. Then Mr Wadworth removed his own pistol from his hand, and said in a stupefied voice: ‘He
missed
!’

Young Lord Saltwood, realizing that he had hit the finest pistol-shot in town and was himself untouched, was for a moment in danger of collapsing in a swoon. Recovering, he pushed Mr Wadworth away, and strode impetuously up to the group gathered round Rotherfield. He reached it in time to hear that detested voice say: ‘The cub shoots better than I bargained for! Oh, go to the devil, Ned! It’s nothing – a graze!’

‘My lord!’ uttered Saltwood. ‘I wish to offer you my apology for –’

‘Not now, not now!’ interrupted the doctor testily.

Saltwood found himself waved aside. He tried once more to present Rotherfield with an apology, and was then led firmly away by his seconds.

‘Most extraordinary thing I ever saw!’ Mr Wadworth told Dorothea, when dragged by her into the small saloon, and bidden disclose the whole to her. ‘Mind, now! Not a word to Charlie! Rotherfield missed!’

Her eyes widened. ‘Fired in the air?’

‘No, no! Couldn’t expect him to do that! Dash it, Dolly, when a man does that he’s owning he was at fault! Don’t mind telling you I felt as sick as a horse. He was looking devilish grim. Queer smile on his face, too. I didn’t like it above half. I’ll swear he took careful aim. Fired a good second before Charlie did. Couldn’t have missed him by more than a hair’s breadth! Charlie got him in the shoulder: don’t think it’s serious. Thing is, shouldn’t be surprised if it’s done Charlie good. Tried to beg Rotherfield’s pardon on the ground, and he’s called once in Mount Street since then. Not admitted: butler said his lordship was not receiving visitors. Given Charlie a fright: he’ll be more the thing now. But don’t you breathe a word, Dolly!’

She assured him she would not mention the matter. An attempt to discover from him who, besides Lord Rotherfield, resided in Mount Street could not have been said to have advanced the object she had in mind. Mr Wadworth was able to recite the names of several persons living in that street; but when asked to identify a gentleman who apparently resembled a demigod rather than an ordinary mortal, he said without hesitation that he had never beheld anyone remotely corresponding to Miss Saltwood’s description. He began then to show signs of suspicion, so Dorothea was obliged to abandon her enquiries and to cast round in her mind for some other means of discovering the name of her brother’s unknown preserver. None presented itself; nor, when she walked down Mount Street with her maid, was she able to recognize the house in which she had taken refuge. A wistful fancy that the unknown gentleman might perhaps write to tell her that he had kept his word was never very strong, and by the end of the week had vanished entirely. She could only hope that she would one day meet him, and be able to thank him for his kind offices. In the meantime, she found herself to be sadly out of spirits, and behaved with such listless propriety that even Augusta, who had frequently expressed the wish that something should occur to tame her sister’s wildness, asked her if she were feeling well. Lady Saltwood feared that she was going into a decline, and herself succumbed immediately to a severe nervous spasm.

Before any such extreme measures for the restoration to health of the younger Miss Saltwood as bringing her out that very season had been more than fleetingly contemplated by her mama and angrily vetoed by her sister, her disorder was happily arrested. Eight days after Saltwood’s duel, on an afternoon in June, the butler sought out Dorothea, who was reading aloud to her afflicted parent, and contrived to get her out of the drawing-room without arousing any suspicion in Lady Saltwood’s mind that she was wanted by anyone more dangerous than the dressmaker. But once outside the drawing-room Porlock placed a sealed billet in Dorothea’s hand, saying with the air of a conspirator that the gentleman was in the Red Saloon.

The billet was quite short, and it was written in the third person. ‘
One
who
had
the
pleasure
of
rendering
a
trifling
service
to
Miss
Dorothea
Saltwood
begs
the
honour
of
a
few
words
with
her.
’

‘Oh!’ gasped Dorothea, all her listlessness vanished. ‘Porlock, pray do not tell Mama or my sister!
Pray
do not!’

‘Certainly not, miss!’ he responded, with a readiness not wholly due to the very handsome sum already bestowed upon him downstairs. He watched his young mistress speed down the stairs, and thought with pleasure that when Miss Augusta discovered what kind of an out-and-outer was courting her sister she would very likely go off in an apoplexy. The gentleman in the Red Saloon, to his experienced eye, was a bang-up Corinthian, a Nonpareil, a very Tulip of Fashion.

Dorothea, coming impetuously into the saloon, exclaimed on the threshold: ‘Oh, I am so very glad to see you, sir! I have wished so much to thank you, and I have not known how to do so, for I never asked you your name! I don’t know how I came to be such a goose!’

He came towards her, and took her outstretched hand in his left one, bowing over it. She perceived that he was quite as handsome as she had remembered, and that his right arm lay in a sling. She said in quick concern: ‘How comes this about? Have you broke your arm, sir?’

‘No, no!’ he replied, retaining her hand. ‘A slight accident to my shoulder merely! It is of no consequence. I trust that all went well that evening, and that your absence had not been discovered?’

‘No, and I have not mentioned it to anyone!’ she assured him. ‘I am so very much obliged to you! I cannot imagine how you contrived to prevail upon that man not to hit Charlie! Bernard told me that Charlie hit
him
, and I must say I am sorry, because it was quite my fault, and although he is so odious I did not wish him to be hurt precisely!’

‘To own the truth, he had little expectation of being hurt,’ he said, with a smile. He released her hand, and seemed to hesitate. ‘Lord Rotherfield, Miss Saltwood, does not wish to appear odious in your eyes, believe me!’

‘Is he a friend of yours?’ she asked. ‘Pray forgive me! I am sure he cannot be so very bad if that is so!’

‘I fear he has been quite my worst friend,’ he said ruefully. ‘Forgive me, my child!
I
am Lord Rotherfield!’

She stood quite still, staring at him, at first pale, and then with a flush in her cheeks and tears sparkling in her eyes. ‘
You
are Lord Rotherfield?’ she repeated. ‘And I said
such
things about you, and you let me, and were so very kind, and allowed yourself to be wounded – Oh, I am sure you must be the best person in the world!’

‘I am certainly not that, though I hope I am not the worst. Will you forgive me for having deceived you?’

She put out her hand, and again he took it, and held it. ‘How can you talk so? I am quite ashamed! I wonder you did not turn me out of doors! How
good
you are! How truly noble!’

‘Ah, how can
you
talk so?’ he said quickly. ‘Do not! I do not think I had ever, before that evening, wished to please anyone but myself. You came to me – enchanting and abominable child that you are! – and I wanted more than anything in life to please you. I am neither good nor noble – though I am not as black as I was painted to you. I assure you, I had never the least intention of wounding your brother mortally.’

‘Oh
no
! Had I known it was you I should never have thought that!’

He raised her hand to his lips. The slight fingers seemed to tremble, and then to clasp his. He looked up, but before he could speak Lord Saltwood walked into the room.

Lord Saltwood stopped dead on the threshold, his eyes starting from their sockets. He stared in a dazed way, opened his mouth, shut it again, and swallowed convulsively.

‘How do you do?’ said Rotherfield, with cool civility. ‘You must forgive me for having been unable to receive you when you called at my house the other day.’

‘I came – I wished – I wrote you a letter!’ stammered Saltwood, acutely uncomfortable.

‘Certainly you did, and I have come to acknowledge it. I am much obliged to you, and beg you will think no more of the incident.’

‘C-came to see
me
?’ gasped Saltwood.

‘Yes, for I understand you to be the head of your family, and I have a request to make of you. I trust that our late unfortunate contretemps may not have made the granting of it wholly repugnant to you.’

‘No, no! I mean – anything in my power, of course! I shall be very happy – ! If you would care to step into the book-room, my lord – ?’

‘Thank you.’ Rotherfield turned, and smiled down into Dorothea’s anxious eyes. ‘I must take my leave of you now, but I trust Lady Saltwood will permit me to call on her tomorrow.’

‘Yes, indeed, I am persuaded – that is, I do hope she will!’ said Dorothea naïvely.

There was a laugh in his eye, but he bowed formally and went out with Saltwood, leaving her beset by a great many agitating emotions, foremost amongst which was a dread that Lady Saltwood would, in the failing state of her health, feel herself to be unequal to the strain of receiving his lordship. When, presently, Saltwood went up to the drawing-room, looking as though he had sustained a severe shock, Dorothea was seized by a conviction that her escapade had been disclosed to him, and she fled to the sanctuary of her bedchamber, and indulged in a hearty bout of tears. From this abyss of woe she was jerked by the unmistakable sounds of Augusta in strong hysterics. Hastily drying her cheeks, she ran down the stairs to render whatever assistance might be needed, and to support her parent through this ordeal. To her amazement, she found Lady Saltwood, whom she had left languishing on the sofa, not only upon her feet, but looking remarkably well. To her still greater amazement, the invalid folded her in the fondest of embraces, and said: ‘Dearest, dearest child! I declare I don’t know if I am on my head or my heels!
Rotherfield!
A countess! You sly little puss, never to have told me that you had met him! And not even out yet! You must be presented at once:
that
I am determined upon! He is coming to visit me tomorrow. Thank heaven you are just Augusta’s size! You must wear the pomona silk dress Celestine has just made for her: I knew how it would be, the instant I brought you out! I was never so happy in my life!’