Читать книгу The Child Wife - Reid Mayne - Страница 16

From the time of the hack’s departure, till the moment when the valet was so hastily sent out of the room, Mr Swinton had been acting as a man in full possession of his senses. The drink taken during the day had but restored his intellect to its usual strength; and with a clear brain he had written the note inviting Mr Louis Lucas to an interview. He had solicited this interview in his own apartment – accompanying the request with an apology for not going to that of Mr Lucas. The excuse was that he was “laid up.”

All this he could have done in a steady hand, and with choice diction; for Richard Swinton was neither dunce nor ignoramus.

Instead, the note was written in scribble, and with a chaotic confusion of phraseology – apparently the production of one suffering from the “trembles.”

In this there was a design; as also, in the behaviour of Mr Swinton, when he heard the footfall of his expected visitor coming along the corridor in the direction of his room. His action was of the most eccentric kind – as much so as any of his movements during the day.

It might have been expected that the ci-devant habitué of the Horse Guards, in conformity with past habits, would have made some attempt to arrange his toilet for the reception of a stranger. Instead, he took the opposite course; and while the footsteps of Mr Lucas were resounding through the gallery, the hands of Mr Swinton were busy in making himself as unpresentable as possible.

Whipping off the dress-coat he had worn at the ball, and which in his distraction he had all day carried on his shoulders; flinging the waistcoat after, and then slipping his arms out of the braces; in shirt-sleeves and with hair dishevelled, he stood to await the incoming of his visitor. His look was that of one just awakened from the slumber of intoxication.

And this character – which had been no counterfeit in the morning – he sustained during the whole time that the stranger remained in his room.

Mr Lucas had no suspicion that the Englishman was acting. He was himself in just that condition to believe in its reality; feeling, and as he confessed, “seedy as the devil.” This was his speech, in return to the salutations of Swinton.

“Yas, ba Jawve! I suppose yaw do. I feel just the same way. Aw – aw – I must have been asleep for a week?”

“Well, you’ve missed three meals at least, and I two of them. I was only able to show myself at the supper-table.”

“Suppaw! Yaw don’t mean to say it’s so late as that?”

“I do indeed. Supper we call it in this country; though I believe in England it’s the hour at which you dine. It’s after eight o’clock.”

“Ba heavins! This is bad. I wemembaw something that occurred last night. Yaw were with me, were you not?”

“Certainly I was. I gave you my card.”

“Yas – yas. I have it. A fellaw insulted me – a Mr Maynard. If I wemembaw awight, he stwuck me in the face.”

“That’s true; he did.”

“Am I wight too in my wecollection that yaw, sir, were so vewy obliging as to say yaw would act for me as – as – a fwend?”

“Quite right,” replied the willing Lucas, delighted with the prospect of obtaining satisfaction for his own little private wrong, and without danger to himself. “Quite right. I’m ready to do as I said, sir.”

“Thanks, Mr Lucas! a world of thanks! And now there’s no time left faw fawther talking. By Jawve! I’ve slept so long as to be in danger of having committed myself! Shall I wite out the challenge, or would yaw pwefer to do it yawself? Yaw know all that passed, and may word it as yaw wish.”

“There need be no difficulty about the wording of it,” said the chosen second, who, from having acted in like capacity before, was fairly acquainted with the “code.”

“In your case, the thing’s exceedingly simple. This Mr or Captain Maynard, as he’s called, insulted you very grossly. I hear it’s the talk of the hotel. You must call upon him to go out, or apologise.”

“Aw, sawtingly. I shall do that. Wite faw me, and I shall sign.”

“Hadn’t you better write yourself? The challenge should be in your own hand. I am only the bearer of it.”

“Twue – twue! Confound this dwink. It makes one obwivious of everything. Of cawse I should wite it.”

Sitting down before the table, with a hand that showed no trembling, Mr Swinton wrote:

“Sir – Referring to our interview of last night, I demand from you the satisfaction due to a gentleman, whose honour you have outraged. That satisfaction must be either a meeting, or an ample apology. I leave you to take your choice. My friend, Mr Louis Lucas, will await your answer.

“Richard Swinton.”

“Will that do, think you?” asked the ex-guardsman, handing the sheet to his second.

“The very thing! Short, if not sweet. I like it all the better without the ‘obedient servant.’ It reads more defiant, and will be more likely to extract the apology. Where am I to take it? You have his card, if I mistake not. Does it tell the number of his room?”

“Twue – twue! I have his cawd. We shall see.”

Taking up his coat from the floor, where he had flung it; Swinton fished out the card. There was no number, only the name.

“No matter,” said the second, clutching at the bit of pasteboard. “Trust me to discover him. I’ll be back with his answer before you’ve smoked out that cigar.”

With this promise, Mr Lucas left the room.

As Mr Swinton sat smoking the cigar, and reflecting upon it, there was an expression upon his face that no man save himself could have interpreted. It was a sardonic smile worthy of Machiavelli.

The cigar was about half burned out, when Mr Lucas was heard hurrying back along the corridor.

In an instant after he burst into the room, his face showing him to be the bearer of some strange intelligence.

“Well?” inquired Swinton, in a tone of affected coolness. “What says our fellaw?”

“What says he? Nothing.”

“He has pwomised to send the answer by a fwend, I pwesume?”

“He has promised me nothing: for the simple reason that I haven’t seen him!”

“Haven’t seen him?”

“No – nor ain’t likely neither. The coward has ‘swartouted.’”

“Swawtuated?”

“Yes; G.T.T. – gone to Texas!”

“Ba Jawve! Mr Lucas; I don’t compwehend yaw?”

“You will, when I tell you that your antagonist has left Newport. Gone off by the evening boat.”

“Honaw bwight, Mr Lucas?” cried the Englishman, in feigned astonishment. “Shawley you must be jawking.”

“Not in the least, I assure you. The clerk tells me he paid his hotel bill, and was taken off in one of their hacks. Besides, I’ve seen the driver who took him, and who’s just returned. He says that he set Mr Maynard down, and helped to carry his baggage aboard the boat. There was another man, some foreign-looking fellow, along with him. Be sure, sir, he’s gone.”

“And left no message, no addwess, as to where I may find him?”

“Not a word, that I can hear of.”

“Ba Gawd?”

The man who had called forth this impassioned speech was at that moment upon the deck of the steamer, fast cleaving her track towards the ocean. He was standing by the after-guards, looking back upon the lights of Newport, that struggled against the twilight.

His eyes had become fixed on one that glimmered high up on the summit of the hill, and which he knew to proceed from a window in the southern end of the Ocean House.

He had little thought of the free use that was just then being made of his name in that swarming hive of beauty and fashion – else he might have repented the unceremonious haste of his departure.

Nor was he thinking of that which was carrying him away. His regrets were of a more tender kind: for he had such. Regrets that even his ardour in the sacred cause of Liberty did not prevent him from feeling.

Roseveldt, standing by his side, and observing the shadow on his face, easily divined its character.

“Come, Maynard!” said he, in a tone of banter, “I hope you won’t blame me for bringing you with me. I see that you’ve left something behind you!”

“Left something behind me!” returned Maynard, in astonishment, though half-conscious of what was meant.

“Of course you have,” jocularly rejoined the Count. “Where did you ever stay six days without leaving a sweetheart behind you? It’s true, you scapegrace!”

“You wrong me, Count. I assure you I have none – ”

“Well, well,” interrupted the revolutionist, “even if you have, banish the remembrance, and be a man! Let your sword now be your sweetheart. Think of the splendid prospect before you. The moment your foot touches European soil, you are to take command of the whole student army. The Directory have so decided. Fine fellows, I assure you, these German students: true sons of Liberty —à la Schiller, if you like. You may do what you please with them, so long as you lead them against despotism. I only wish I had your opportunity.”

As he listened to these stirring words, Maynard’s eyes were gradually turned away from Newport – his thoughts from Julia Girdwood.

“It may be all for the best,” reflected he, as he gazed down upon the phosphoric track. “Even could I have won her, which is doubtful, she’s not the sort for a wife; and that’s what I’m now wanting. Certain, I shall never see her again. Perhaps the old adage will still prove true,” he continued, as if the situation had suggested it: “‘Good fish in the sea as ever were caught.’ Scintillations ahead, yet unseen, brilliant as those we are leaving behind us!”