The Castle Inn: Chapter 5

Chapter 5

THE MEETING

Sir George awoke next morning, and, after a few lazy moments of
semi-consciousness, remembered what was before him, it is not to be
denied that he felt a chill. He lay awhile, thinking of the past and the
future--or the no future--in a way he seldom thought, and with a
seriousness for which the life he had hitherto led had left him little
time and less inclination.

But he was young; he had a digestion as yet unimpaired, and nerves still
strong; and when he emerged an hour later and, more soberly dressed than
was his wont, proceeded down the High Street towards the Cherwell
Bridge, his spirits were at their normal level. The spring sunshine
which gilded the pinnacles of Magdalen tower, and shone cool and
pleasant on a score of hoary fronts, wrought gaily on him also. The
milksellers and such early folk were abroad, and filled the street with
their cries; he sniffed the fresh air, and smiled at the good humour and
morning faces that everywhere greeted him; and d----d White's anew, and
vowed to live cleanly henceforth, and forswear Pam. In a word, the man
was of such a courage that in his good resolutions he forgot his errand,
and whence they arose; and it was with a start that, as he approached
the gate leading to the college meadows, he marked a chair in waiting,
and beside it Mr. Peter Fishwick, from whom he had parted at the Mitre
ten minutes before.

Soane did not know whether the attorney had preceded him or followed
him: the intrusion was the same, and flushed with annoyance, he strode
to him to mark his sense of it. But Peter, being addressed, wore his
sharpest business air, and was entirely unconscious of offence. 'I have
merely purveyed a surgeon,' he said, indicating a young man who stood
beside him. 'I could not learn that you had provided one, sir.'

'Oh!' Sir George answered, somewhat taken aback, 'this is the
gentleman.'

'Yes, sir.'

Soane was in the act of saluting the stranger, when a party of two or
three persons came up behind, and had much ado not to jostle them in the
gateway. It consisted of Mr. Dunborough, Lord Almeric, and two other
gentlemen; one of these, an elderly man, who wore black and hair-powder,
and carried a gold-topped cane, had a smug and well-pleased expression,
that indicated his stake in the meeting to be purely altruistic. The two
companies exchanged salutes.

On this followed a little struggle to give precedence at the gate, but
eventually all went through. 'If we turn to the right,' some one
observed, 'there is a convenient place. No, this way, my lord.'

'Oh Lord, I have such a head this morning!' his lordship answered; and
he looked by no means happy. 'I am all of a twitter! It is so confounded
early, too. See here: cannot this be--?'

The gentleman who had spoken before drowned his voice. 'Will this do,
sir?' he said, raising his hat, and addressing Sir George. The party had
reached a smooth glade or lawn encompassed by thick shrubs, and to all
appearance a hundred miles from a street. A fairy-ring of verdure,
glittering with sunlight and dewdrops, and tuneful with the songs of
birds, it seemed a morsel of paradise dropped from the cool blue of
heaven. Sir George felt a momentary tightening of the throat as he
surveyed its pure brilliance, and then a sudden growing anger against
the fool who had brought him thither.

'You have no second?' said the stranger.

'No,' he answered curtly; 'I think we have witnesses enough.'

'Still--if the matter can be accommodated?'

'It can,' Soane answered, standing stiffly before them. 'But only by an
unreserved apology on Mr. Dunborough's part. He struck me. I have no
more to say.'

'I do not offer the apology,' Mr. Dunborough rejoined, with a
horse-laugh. 'So we may as well go on, Jerry. I did not come here
to talk.'

'I have brought pistols,' his second said, disregarding the sneer. 'But
my principal, though the challenged party, is willing to waive the
choice of weapons.'

'Pistols will do for me,' Sir George answered.

'One shot, at a word. If ineffective, you will take to your swords,' the
second continued; and he pushed back his wig and wiped his forehead, as
if his employment were not altogether to his taste. A duel was a fine
thing--at a distance. He wished, however, that he had some one with whom
to share the responsibility, now it was come to the point; and he cast a
peevish look at Lord Almeric. But his lordship was, as he had candidly
said, 'all of a twitter,' and offered no help.

'I suppose that I am to load,' the unlucky second continued. 'That being
so, you, Sir George, must have the choice of pistols.'

Sir George bowed assent, and, going a little aside, removed his hat,
wig, and cravat; and was about to button his coat to his throat, when he
observed that Mr. Dunborough was stripping to his shirt. Too proud not
to follow the example, though prudence suggested that the white linen
made him a fair mark, he stripped also, and in a trice the two, kicking
off their shoes, moved to the positions assigned to them; and in their
breeches and laced lawn shirts, their throats bare, confronted
one another.

'Sir George, have you no one to represent you?' cried the second again,
grown querulous under the burden. His name, it seemed, was Morris. He
was a major in the Oxfordshire Militia.

Soane answered with impatience. 'I have no second,' he said, 'but my
surgeon will be a competent witness.'

'Ah! to be sure!' Major Morris answered, with a sigh of relief. 'That is
so. Then, gentlemen, I shall give the signal by saying One, two, three!
Be good enough to fire together at the word Three! Do you understand?'

'Yes,' said Mr. Dunborough. And 'Yes,' Sir George said more slowly.

'Then, now, be ready! Prepare to fire! One! two! th--'

'Stay!' flashed Mr. Dunborough, while the word still hung in the air.
'You have not given us our pistols,' he continued, with an oath.

'What?' cried the second, staring.

'Man, you have not given us our pistols.'

The major was covered with confusion. 'God bless my soul! I have not!'
he cried; while Lord Almeric giggled hysterically. 'Dear me! dear me! it
is very trying to be alone!' He threw his hat and wig on the grass, and
again wiped his brow, and took up the pistols. 'Sir George? Thank you.
Mr. Dunborough, here is yours.' Then: 'Now, are you ready? Thank you.'

He retreated to his place again. 'Are you ready, gentlemen? Are you
quite ready?' he repeated anxiously, amid a breathless silence. 'One!
two! _three_!'

Sir George's pistol exploded at the word; the hammer of the other
clicked futile in the pan. The spectators, staring, and expecting to see
one fall, saw Mr. Dunborough start and make a half turn. Before they had
time to draw any conclusion he flung his pistol a dozen paces away, and
cursed his second. 'D----n you, Morris!' he cried shrilly; 'you put no
powder in the pan, you hound! But come on, sir,' he continued,
addressing Sir George, 'I have this left.' And rapidly changing his
sword from his left hand, in which he had hitherto held it, to his
right, he rushed upon his opponent with the utmost fury, as if he would
bear him down by main force.

'Stay!' Sir George cried; and, instead of meeting him, avoided his first
rush by stepping aside two paces. 'Stay, sir,' he repeated; 'I owe you a
shot! Prime afresh. Reload, sir, and--'

But Dunborough, blind and deaf with passion, broke in on him unheeding,
and as if he carried no weapon; and crying furiously, 'Guard yourself!'
plunged his half-shortened sword at the lower part of Sir George's body.
The spectators held their breath and winced; the assault was so sudden,
so determined, that it seemed that nothing could save Sir George from a
thrust thus delivered. He did escape, however, by a bound, quick as a
cat's; but the point of Dunborough's weapon ripped up his breeches on
the hip, the hilt rapped against the bone, and the two men came together
bodily. For a moment they wrestled, and seemed to be going to fight
like beasts.

Then Sir George, his left forearm under the other's chin, flung him
three paces away; and shifting his sword into his right hand--hitherto
he had been unable to change it--he stopped Dunborough's savage rush
with the point, and beat him off and kept him off--parrying his lunges,
and doing his utmost the while to avoid dealing him a fatal wound. Soane
was so much the better swordsman--as was immediately apparent to all
the onlookers--that he no longer feared for himself; all his fears were
for his opponent, the fire and fury of whose attacks he could not
explain to himself, until he found them flagging; and flagging so fast
that he sought a reason. Then Dunborough's point beginning to waver, and
his feet to slip, Sir George's eyes were opened; he discerned a crimson
patch spread and spread on the other's side--where unnoticed Dunborough
had kept his hand--and with a cry for help he sprang forward in time to
catch the falling man in his arms.

As the others ran in, the surgeons quickly and silently, Lord Almeric
more slowly, and with exclamations, Sir George lowered his burden gently
to the ground. The instant it was done, Morris touched his arm and
signed to him to stand back. 'You can do no good, Sir George,' he urged.
'He is in skilful hands. He would have it; it was his own fault. I can
bear witness that you did your best not to touch him.'

'I did not touch him,' Soane muttered.

The second looked his astonishment. 'How?' he said. 'You don't mean to
say that he is not wounded? See there!' And he pointed to the blood
which dyed the shirt. They were cutting the linen away.

'It was the pistol,' Sir George answered.

Major Morris's face fell, and he groaned. 'Good G--d!' he said, staring
before him. 'What a position I am in! I suppose--I suppose, sir, his
pistol was not primed?'

'I am afraid not,' Soane answered.

He was still in his shirt, and bareheaded; but as he spoke one of
several onlookers, whom the clatter of steel had drawn to the spot,
brought his coat and waistcoat, and held them while he put them on.
Another handed his hat and wig, a third brought his shoes and knelt and
buckled them; a fourth his kerchief. All these services he accepted
freely, and was unconscious of them--as unconscious as he was of the
eager deference, the morbid interest, with which they waited on him,
eyed him, and stared at him. His own thoughts, eyes, attention, were
fixed on the group about the fallen man; and when the elder surgeon
glanced over his shoulder, as wanting help, he strode to them.

'If we had a chair here, and could move him at once,' the smug gentleman
whispered, 'I think we might do.'

'I have a chair. It is at the gate,' his colleague answered.

'Have you? A good thought of yours!'

'The credit should lie--with my employer,' the younger man answered in a
low voice. 'It was his thought; here it comes. Sir George, will you be
good enough--' But then, seeing the baronet's look of mute anxiety, he
broke off. 'It is dangerous, but there is hope--fair hope,' he answered.
'Do you, my dear sir, go to your inn, and I will send thither when he is
safely housed. You can do no good here, and your presence may excite him
when he recovers from the swoon.'

Sir George, seeing the wisdom of the advice, nodded assent; and
remarking for the first time the sensation of which he was the centre,
was glad to make the best of his way towards the gates. He had barely
reached them--without shaking off a knot of the more curious, who still
hung on his footsteps--when Lord Almeric, breathless and agitated, came
up with him.

'You are for France, I suppose?' his lordship panted. And then, without
waiting for an answer: 'What would you advise me to do?' he babbled.
'Eh? What do you think? It will be the devil and all for me, you know.'

Sir George looked askance at him, contempt in his eye. 'I cannot advise
you,' he said. 'For my part, my lord, I remain here.'

His lordship was quite taken aback. 'No, you don't?' he said. 'Remain
here!--You don't mean it,'

'I usually mean--what I say,' Soane answered in a tone that he thought
must close the conversation.

But Lord Almeric kept up with him. 'Ay, but will you?' he babbled in
vacuous admiration. 'Will you really stay here? Now that is uncommon
bold of you! I should not have thought of that--of staying here, I mean.
I should go to France till the thing blew over. I don't know that I
shall not do so now. Don't you think I should be wise, Sir George? My
position, you know. It is uncommon low, is a trial, and--'

Sir George halted so abruptly that will-he, nill-he, the other went on a
few paces. 'My lord, you should know your own affairs best,' he said in
a freezing tone. 'And, as I desire to be alone, I wish your lordship a
very good day.'

My lord had never been so much astonished in his life. 'Oh, good
morning,' he said, staring vacantly, 'good morning!' but by the time he
had framed the words, Sir George was a dozen paces away.

It was an age when great ladies wept out of wounded vanity or for a loss
at cards--yet made a show of their children lying in state; when men
entertained the wits and made their wills in company, before they bowed
a graceful exit from the room and life. Doubtless people felt, feared,
hoped, and perspired as they do now, and had their ambitions apart from
Pam and the loo table. Nay, Rousseau was printing. But the 'Nouvelle
H�lo�se,' though it was beginning to be read, had not yet set the mode
of sensibility, or sent those to rave of nature who all their lives had
known nothing but art. The suppression of feeling, or rather the
cultivation of no feeling, was still the mark of a gentleman; his
maxim; honoured alike at Medmenham and Marly, to enjoy--to enjoy, be the
cost to others what it might.

Bred in such a school, Sir George should have viewed what had happened
with polite indifference, and put himself out no further than was
courteous, or might serve to set him right with a jury, if the worst
came to the worst. But, whether because he was of a kindlier stuff than
the common sort of fashionables, or was too young to be quite spoiled,
he took the thing that had occurred with unexpected heaviness; and,
reaching his inn, hastened to his room to escape alike the curiosity
that dogged him and the sympathy that, for a fine gentleman, is never
far to seek. To do him justice, his anxiety was not for himself, or the
consequences to himself, which at the worst were not likely to exceed a
nominal verdict of manslaughter, and at the best would be an acquittal;
the former had been Lord Byron's lot, the latter Mr. Brown's, and each
had killed his man. Sir George had more _savoir faire_ than to trouble
himself about this; but about his opponent and his fate he felt a
haunting--and, as Lord Almeric would have said, a low--concern that
would let him neither rest nor sit. In particular, when he remembered
the trifle from which all had arisen, he felt remorse and sorrow; which
grew to the point of horror when he recalled the last look which
Dunborough, swooning and helpless, had cast in his face.

In one of these paroxysms he was walking the room when the elder
surgeon, who had attended his opponent to the field, was announced.
Soane still retained so much of his life habit as to show an unmoved
front; the man of the scalpel thought him hard and felt himself
repelled; and though he had come from the sick-room hot-foot and laden
with good news, descended to a profound apology for the intrusion.

'But I thought that you might like to hear, sir,' he continued, nursing
his hat, and speaking as if the matter were of little moment, 'that Mr.
Dunborough is as--as well as can be expected. A serious case--I might
call it a most serious case,' he continued, puffing out his cheeks. 'But
with care--with care I think we may restore him. I cannot say more
than that.'

'Has the ball been extracted?'

'It has, and so far well. And the chair being on the spot, Sir George,
so that he was moved without a moment's delay--for which I believe we
have to thank Mr.--Mr.--'

'Fishwick,' Soane suggested.

'To be sure--_that_ is so much gained. Which reminds me,' the smug
gentleman continued, 'that Mr. Attorney begged me to convey his duty and
inform you that he had made the needful arrangements and provided bail,
so that you are at liberty to leave, Sir George, at any hour.'

'Ah!' Soane said, marvelling somewhat. 'I shall stay here, nevertheless,
until I hear that Mr. Dunborough is out of danger.'

'An impulse that does you credit, sir,' the surgeon said impressively.
'These affairs, alas! are very greatly to be de--'

'They are d--d inconvenient,' Sir George drawled. 'He is not out of
danger yet, I suppose?'

The surgeon stared and puffed anew. 'Certainly not, sir,' he said.

'Ah! And where have you placed him?'

'The Honourable Mr.--, the sufferer?'

'To be sure! Who else, man?' Soane asked impatiently.

'In some rooms at Magdalen,' the doctor answered, breathing hard. And
then, 'Is it your wish that I should report to you to-morrow, sir?'

'You will oblige me. Thank you. Good-day.'

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