London Pride, Mary Elizabeth Braddon [book recommendations website txt] 📗

dishonest company," said the lady, tossing her cards upon the table, and rising in a cloud of powder and perfume, and a flutter of lace and brocade. "If I were ill-humoured I would say you marked the cards! but as I'm the soul of good nature, I'll only swear you are the luckiest dog in London."

"You are the soul of good nature, and I am the luckiest dog in the universe when you smile upon me," answered De Malfort, without looking up from his cards, as the lady posed herself gracefully at the back of his chair, leaning over his shoulder to watch his play. "I would not limit the area to any city, however big."

Fareham seated himself in the chair the lady had vacated, and gathered up the cards she had abandoned. He took a handful of gold from his pocket, and put it on the table at his elbow, all with a somewhat churlish silence, that escaped notice where everybody was loquacious. De Malfort went on fooling with Lady Lucretia, whose lovely hand and arm, her strongest point, descended upon a card now and then, to indicate the play she deemed wisest.

Once he caught the hand and kissed it in transit.

"Wert thou as wise as this hand is fair it should direct my play; but it is only a woman's hand, and points the way to perdition."

Fareham had been losing steadily from the moment he took up Lady Lucretia's cards; and his pile of jacobuses had been gradually passed over to De Malfort's side of the table. He had emptied his pockets, and had scrawled two or three I.O.U.'s upon scraps of paper torn from a note-book. Yet he went on playing, with the same immovable countenance. The room had emptied itself, the rest of the visitors leaving earlier than their usual hour in that hospitable house. Perhaps because the hostess was missing; perhaps because the royal sun was shining elsewhere.

Lackeys handed their salvers of Burgundy and Bordeaux, and the players refreshed themselves occasionally with a brimmer of clary; but no wine brightened Fareham's scowling brow, or changed the glooiay intensity of his outlook.

"My cards have brought your lordship bad luck," said Lady Lucretia, who watched De Malfort's winnings with an air of personal interest.

"I knew my risk before I took them, madam. When an Englishman plays against a Frenchman he is a fool if he is not prepared to be rooked."

"Fareham, are you mad?" cried De Malfort, starting to his feet. "To insult your friend's country, and, by basest implication, your friend."

"I see no friend here. I say that you Frenchmen cheat at cards--on principle--and are proud of being cheats! I have heard De Gramont brag of having lured a man to his tent, and fed him, and wined him, and fleeced him while he was drunk." He took a goblet of claret from the lackey who brought his salver, emptied it, and went on, hoarse with passion. "To the marrow of your bones you are false, all of you! You do not cog your dice, perhaps, but you bubble your friends with finesses, and are as much sharpers at heart as the lowest tat-mongers in Alsatia. You empty our purses, and cozen our women with twanging guitars and jingling rhymes, and laugh at us because we are honest and trust you. Seducers, tricksters, poltroons!"

The footman was at De Malfort's elbow now. He snatched a tankard from the salver, and flung the contents across the table, straight at Fareham's face.

"This bully forces me to spoil his Point de Venise," he said coolly, as he set down the tankard. "There should be a law for chaining up rabid curs that have run mad without provocation."

Fareham sprang to his feet, black and terrible, but with a savage exultation in his countenance. The wine poured in a red stream from his point-lace cravat, but had not touched his face.

"There shall be something redder than Burgundy spilt before we have done!" he said.

"Sacre nom, nous sommes tombes dans un antre de betes sauvages!" exclaimed Masaroon, starting up, and anxiously examining the skirts of his brocade coat, lest that sudden deluge had caught him.

"None of your ---- French to show your fine breeding!" growled the old cavalier. "Fareham, you deserved the insult; but one red will wash out another. I'm with your lordship."

"And I'm with De Malfort," said Masaroon. "He had more than enough provocation."

"Gentlemen, gentlemen, no bloodshed!" cried Lady Lucretia; "or, if you are going to be uncivil to each other, for God's sake get me to my chair. I have a husband who would never forgive me if it were said you fought for my sake."

"We will see you safely disposed of, madam, before we begin our business," said Colonel Dangerfield, bluntly. "Fareham, you can take the lady to her chair, while Masaroon and I discuss particulars."

"There is no need of a discussion," interrupted Fareham, hotly. "We have nothing to arrange--nothing to wait for. Time, the present; place, the garden, under these windows; weapons, the swords we wear. We shall have no witnesses but the moon and stars. It is the dead middle of the night, and we have the world all to ourselves."

"Give me your rapier, then, that I may compare it with the Count's. You are satisfied, monsieur? 'Tis you that are the offender, and Lord Fareham has the choice of weapons."

"Let him choose. I will fight him with cannon--or with soap-bubbles," answered De Malfort, lolling back in his chair, tilted at an angle of forty-five, and drumming a gay dance tune with his finger-tips on the table. "'Tis a foolish imbroglio from first to last: and only his lordship and I know how foolish. He came here to provoke a quarrel, and I must indulge him. Come, Lady Lucretia"--he turned to his fair friend, as he unbuckled his sword and flung it on the table--"it is my place to lead you to your chair. Colonel, you and your friend will find me below stairs in front of the Holbein Gate."

"You are forgetting your winnings," remonstrated the lady, pointing to the pile of gold.

"The lackeys will not forget them when they clear the room," answered De Malfort, putting her hand through his arm, and leaving the money on the table.

Ten minutes later Fareham and De Malfort were standing front to front in the glare of four torches, held by a brace of her ladyship's lackeys who had been impressed into the service, and the colder light of a moon that rode high in the blue-black of a wintry heaven. There was not a sound but the ripple of the unseen river, and the distant cry of a watchman in Petty France, till the clash of swords began.

It was decided after a brief parley that the principals only should fight. The quarrel was private. The seconds placed their men on a piece of level turf, five paces apart. They were bare-headed, and without coat or vest, the lace ruffles of their shirt-sleeves rolled back to the elbow, their naked arms ghastly white, their faces suggesting ghost or devil as the spectral moonlight or the flame of the flambeaux shone upon them.

"You mean business, so we may sink the parade of the fencing saloon," said Dangerfield. "Advance, gentlemen."

"A pity," murmured Masaroon, "there is nothing prettier than the salute _à la Française_."

Dangerfield handed the men their swords. They were nearly similar in fashion, both flat-grooved blades, with needle points, and no cutting edge, furnished with shell-guards and cross-bars in the Italian style, and were about of a length.

The word was given, and the business of engagement proceeded slowly and warily, for a few moments that seemed minutes; and then the blades were firmly joined in carte, and a series of rapid feints began, De Malfort having a slight advantage in the neatness of his circles, and the swiftness of his wrist play. But in these preliminary lounges and parries, he soon found he needed all his skill to dodge his opponent's point; for Fareham's blade followed his own, steadily and strongly, through every turn.

De Malfort had begun the fight with an insolent smile upon his lips, the smile of a man who believes himself invincible, while Fareham's countenance never changed from the black anger that had darkened it all that night. It was a face that meant death. A man who had never been a duellist, who had raised his voice sternly against the practice of duelling, stood there intent upon bloodshed. There could be no mistake as to his purpose. The quarrel was an artificial quarrel--the object was murder.

De Malfort, provoked at the unexpected strength of Fareham's fence, attempted a partial disarmament, after the deadly Continental method. Joining his opponent's blade near the point, from a wide circular parry, he made a rapid thrust in seconde, carrying his forte the entire length of Fareham's blade, almost wrenching the sword from his grasp; and then, in the next instant, reaching forward to his fullest stretch, he lunged at his enemy's breast, aiming at the vital region of the heart; a thrust that must have proved fatal had not Fareham sprung aside, and so received the blow where the sword only grazed his ribs, inflicting a flesh-wound that showed red upon the whiteness of his shirt. Dangerfield tore off his cravat, and wanted to bind it round his principal's waist; but Fareham repulsed him, and lashed into hot fury by the Frenchman's uncavalier-like ruse, met his adversary's thrusts with a deadly purpose, which drove De Malfort to reckless lunging and riposting, and the play grew fast and fierce, while the rattle of steel seemed never likely to end. Suddenly, timing his attack to the fraction of a second, Fareham dropped on his left knee, and planting his left hand upon the ground, sent a murderous thrust home under De Malfort's guard, whose blade passed harmlessly over his adversary's head as he crouched on the sward.

De Malfort fell heavily in the arms of the two seconds, who both sprang to his assistance.

"Is it fatal?" asked Fareham, standing motionless as stone, while the other men knelt on either side of De Malfort.

"I'll run for a surgeon," said Masaroon. "There's a fellow I know of this side the Abbey--mends bloody noses and paints black eyes," and he was off, running across the grass to the nearest gate.

"It looks plaguily like a coffin," Dangerfield answered, with his hand on the wounded man's breast. "There's throbbing here yet; but he may bleed to death, like poor Lindsey, before surgery can help him. You had better run, Fareham. Take horse to Dover, and get across to Calais or Ostend. You were devilish provoking. It might go hard with you if he was to die."

"I shall not budge, Dangerfield. Didn't you hear me say I wanted to kill him? You might guess I didn't care a cast of the dice for my life when I said as much. Let them find it murder, and hang me. I wanted him out of the world, and don't care how soon I follow."

"You are mad--stark, staring mad!"

The wounded man raised himself on his elbow, groaning aloud in the agony of movement, and beckoned Fareham, who knelt down beside him, all of a piece, like a stone figure.

"Fareham, you had better run; I have powerful friends. There'll be an ugly stir if I die of this bout. Kiss me, mon ami. I forgive you. I know what wound rankled; 'twas for your wife's sister you fought--not the cards."

He sank into Dangerfield's