Volume Ii Part 1 (2/2)
”Dear me--dear me, what a mistake! The fact is, that living in a house affects one's sight. Now, let me guess. If you are not Marmaduke Heath, you must be...--What a dark skin you have, and what kind eyes!” She looked suspiciously round the room, and laying her finger on her lip, observed beneath her breath: ”You are not Stanley Carew, are you? They told me he was hung, but I know better than that. I have seen him since a hundred times. To be hung for nothing must be a terrible thing; but how much worse to be hung for love!”
”I am not Stanley Carew,” said I; ”I am Peter Meredith, who lives with Mr. Long at the Rectory.”
”I never happen to have heard your name before, sir,” replied the old woman, mincingly; ”perhaps you have never heard mine. Permit me to introduce myself. Don't suppose that our people don't know good manners, I am Sinnamenta--Lady Heath.”
”Madam,” said I, deeply moved, ”I apprehended as much. If I can do you any service, be sure that the will shall not be wanting. Pray, tell me what shall I do?”
”Well,” returned the poor creature, quickly, ”Marmaduke Heath should be killed at once, that is all important. We have been thinking of nothing else, my husband and I. But perhaps you have done it already.” (How I shrank from that random shaft.) ”If so, I have no further desire except to get out. If I could only be once more in the greenwood, my hair would rea.s.sume its natural colour. That is why Mr. Gilmore is so careful to keep me thus locked up. If my husband only saw me with my black hair again--it reached to the ground, sir--matters would be very different. I think I have already observed that it is not customary to watch a lady while she is partaking of refreshment.”
With that, she once more seated herself at the table, with her back to me; and judging thereby that my presence was distasteful to her, and having no notion of how I could possibly give her any aid, I withdrew from the sad scene. I had not, however, gone many steps, when she called me back again through the iron bars.
”Mr. Meredith,” said she, ”you arrived somewhat unexpectedly. It is to that circ.u.mstance alone, I beg to repeat, that you must attribute the absence of bracelets. My very best regards to all your family.
Sinnamenta, you know--Lady Heath.”
CHAPTER II.
HARLEY STREET.
While I was thus pa.s.sing my time at Fairburn, at work with my tutor, in rides rendered doubly lonesome by contrast with those made so enjoyable by the company of my friend, or in rambles about the solitary Chase, the course of true love was running more smoothly in Harley Street than it is fabled to do. During each of my visits there, I had perceived its silent increase even more clearly than those between whom it was growing up into the perfect flower, leaf by leaf, and bud by bud; they had tended it together--Marmaduke and Lucy--until it was well nigh in blossom, and yet they had not said to one another, and perhaps not even to themselves, ”Why, this is surely Love.” Mr. Gerard had watched it, not displeased, for he had found the young man all that my heart had foretold that he would; Mr. Clint had seen it, and won by the strong sense, as much as by the beauty of the gentle girl, forgot the revolutionary stock of which she came. This, thought he, is the wife for Marmaduke Heath; tender, but yet determined; dutiful, but indisposed to submit to unauthorized dictation; as fearless as kind. In her, once wedded to this young man, so morbid, so sensitive, so yielding, Sir Ma.s.singberd would find, if it should be necessary, not only a foe, resolute herself, but as firm as steel for him whom she had dowered with her love. What Marmaduke's nature wanted, hers would supply. The keen lawyer foresaw for that unhappy family, whose interests he and his had had in keeping so many scores of years, a future such as had never been promised before. It was an admission painful to me enough at that time, but which I could not conceal from myself, that the real obstacle which prevented the open recognition of attachment between these two young people was Marmaduke himself. No girl more modest or less forward than Lucy Gerard ever breathed, but I knew--ah, how well I knew!--that a word from him would have brought the love-light to her eyes, which now lay waiting but for it in the careful keeping of her maiden heart. But that word had not been spoken. Perfect love, Marmaduke did not yet feel, for he had not quite cast out fear. How can a man offer heart and hand to a woman whom he does not feel certain that he can protect? It is for this reason that marriage among slaves must for ever be a mockery. There was, of course, no danger to Lucy Gerard in her marrying with Marmaduke, although his uncle should storm ”No” a thousand times; but the young man felt that he was unworthy of her, while he entertained any terror of him. It was wearing away; it was weakening day by day, through genial influences, and the absence of all things which reminded him of Fairburn and its master, but it was not dead yet. If by these words, I lead any of my readers to suppose that Marmaduke Heath had the least resemblance to that thing which is called a Coward, I have done my friend a grievous wrong. Let me do away with the possibility of this most mistaken notion, at once and for ever, by the recital of an event which, although it does not come within the scope of the present narrative, nearly concerns one of its most important characters.
After the peace in 1815, there were more officers--English and French--killed in single combat in Paris than in any one of the most b.l.o.o.d.y battles of the late war. This desire to exterminate individual Englishmen extended over the whole of France. A certain gentleman of my acquaintance, then a very young man, chanced to be pa.s.sing through a town in Normandy, where an a.s.semblage was collected outside the office of the mayor. This arose from the very uncommon circ.u.mstance that that functionary had been appealed to by a post-captain in the English navy to punish a bullying Frenchman, who had striven to fasten a quarrel upon him, although entirely unprovoked on his part. Now-a-days, the captain would have been held to have behaved rightly enough, perhaps, but in those fire-eating times an honest man's life was at the mercy of every worthless ruffian who chose to run an equal risk with him from powder and bullet. The decision, wonderful to relate, was given by the mayor against his compatriot, and the crowd were correspondingly enraged. My friend, whose nationality was apparent, was hustled and ill-treated, and one person, well-dressed, and evidently of good position, knocked his hat off, observing at the same time: ”You will complain of me to the mayor for that.”
”Certainly not,” returned the young Englishman quietly, picking his hat up, all broken and muddy, from the trampled ground: ”I shall treat you very differently.”
”You will fight, will you? Come--I challenge you. Let us fight to-morrow morning,” exclaimed the bully, who was, as it turned out, a notorious provincial duellist.
”Not to-morrow, but now,” rejoined my friend; ”I have no time to wait here, for I must be in Paris on Tuesday.”
”Then it will be in Pere la Chaise,” responded the other brutally.
There was no difficulty in procuring seconds, which were even more plentiful in those parts than princ.i.p.als, and the whole party immediately left the town for a wood outside its suburbs. The choice of weapons of course lay with the Englishman.
”Which do you prefer,” asked the Frenchman who acted as his friend upon the occasion--”the pistol or the sword?”
”I have never fired a pistol in my life,” replied the Englishman, ”nor handled a sword.”
”Heavens!” cried his second, ”what a barbarous education, what a stupendous ignorance! You are as good as dead, I fear. I know not which to recommend you. It is, however, at least sooner over with the pistol.”
”The pistol be it then,” said the Englishman coolly. ”I elect that only one shall be loaded; and that we fire within four paces of one another.
We shall then have an equal chance.”
The duellist turned pale as the death that threatened him, but he did not venture to make any objection. It was manifest no other proposal would have been fair. The seconds went apart, and placed powder and ball in one weapon, powder only in the other. The combatants drew lots for choice. The Frenchman won. The pistols were lying on a log of wood; he advanced towards them, took one up in his hand, and retired with it, then once more came back, and exchanged it for the other. He fancied that the weapon was lighter than it should have been if it had a ball within it. My friend's second objected strongly to this course; he called it even unfair and shameful; he protested that the pistol taken first ought to be retained. But the young Englishman, who was leaning carelessly against a tree, exclaimed, ”Let the gentleman have which he likes. Whether he is right or not will be decided in a few seconds.” So the combatants were placed opposite to one another, and advanced to within four paces. They raised their weapons; the word was given to fire, and the Frenchman fell, pierced through the heart.
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