Charles Lever - The Daltons; Or, Three Roads In Life. Volume II

“Well, my Lord, are we to pass the day here,” said Count Trouville, the second of the opposite party, as Norwood returned from a fruitless search of George Onslow, “or are we to understand that this is the English mode of settling such matters?”

“I am perfectly ready, Monsieur le Comte, to prove the contrary, so far as my own poor abilities extend,” said Norwood, calmly.

“But your friend has disappeared, sir. You are left alone here.”

“Which is, perhaps, the reason of your having dared to insult me,” rejoined the other; “that being, perhaps, the French custom in such affairs.”

“Come, come, gentlemen,” interposed an old cavalry officer, who acted as second friend to Guilmard, “you must both see that all discussion of this kind is irregular and unseemly. We have come here this morning for one specific purpose, – to obtain reparation for a great injury. The gentleman who should have offered us the amende has suddenly withdrawn himself. I offer no opinion on the fact that he came out accompanied by only one friend; we might, perhaps, have devised means to obviate this difficulty. For his own absence we have no remedy. I would therefore ask what you have to propose to us in this emergency?”

“A little patience, – nothing more. My friend must have lost his way; some accident or other has detained him, and I expect to see him here every instant.”

“Shall we say half an hour longer, my Lord?” rejoined the other, taking out his watch. “That will bring us to eight o’clock.”

“Which, considering that our time was named ‘sharp six,’” interposed Trouville, “is a very reasonable ‘grace.’”

“Your expression is an impertinence, Monsieur,” said Norwood, fiercely.

“And yet I don’t intend to apologize for it,” said the other, smiling.

“I ‘m glad of it, sir. It’s the only thing you have said to-day with either good sense or spirit.”

“Enough, quite enough, my Lord,” replied the Frenchman, gayly. “‘Dans la bonne société, on ne dit jamais de trop.’ Where shall it be, and when?”

“Here, and now,” said Norwood, “if I can only find any one who will act for me.”

“Pray, my Lord, don’t go in search of him,” said Trouville, “or we shall despair of seeing you here again.”

“I will give a bail for my reappearance, sir, that you cannot doubt of,” cried Norwood, advancing towards the other with his cane elevated.

A perfect burst of horror broke from the Frenchmen at this threat, and three or four immediately threw themselves between the contending parties.

“But for this, my Lord,” said the old officer, “I should have offered you my services.”

“And I should have declined them, sir,” said Norwood, promptly. “The first peasant I meet with will suffice;” and, so saying, he hurried from the spot, his heart almost bursting with passion. With many a malediction of George – with curses deep and cutting on every one whose misconduct had served to place him in his present position – he took his way towards the high-road.

“What could have happened?” muttered he; “what confounded fit of poltroonery has seized him? a fellow that never wanted pluck in his life! Is it possible that he can have failed now? And this to occur at the very moment they are beggared! Had they been rich, as they were a few months back, I’d have made the thing pay. Ay, by Jove! I ‘d have ‘coined my blood,’ as the fellow says in the play, and written a swingeing check with red ink! And now I have had a bad quarrel, and nothing to come of it! And so to walk the high-roads in search of some one who can load a pistol.”

A stray peasant or two, jogging along to Florence, a postilion with return horses, a shabbily dressed curate, or a friar with a sack behind him, were all that he saw for miles of distance, and he returned once more to interrogate the calessino driver as to the stranger who accompanied him from the city.

Any one whose misfortune it may have been to make inquiries from an Italian vetturino of any fact, no matter how insignificant or unimportant, will sympathize with Norwood’s impatience at the evasive and distrustful replies that now met his questions. Although the fact could have no possible concern or interest for him, he prevaricated and contradicted himself half-a-dozen times over, as to the stranger’s age, country, and appearance, so that, utterly baffled and provoked, the Viscount turned away and entered the park.

“I, too, shall be reported missing, I suppose,” said he, bitterly, as he walked along a little path that skirted a piece of ornamental water. “By Jupiter! this is a pleasant morning’s work, and must have its reparation one day or other.”

A hearty sneeze suddenly startled him as he spoke; he turned hastily about, but could see no one, and yet his hearing was not to be deceived! He searched the spot eagerly; he examined the little boat-shed, the copse, the underwood, – everything, in fact, – but not a trace of living being was to be seen; at last a slight rustling sound seemed to issue from a piece of rustic shell-work, representing a river god reclining on his urn, and, on approaching, he distinctly detected the glitter of a pair of eyes within the sockets of the figure.

“Here goes for a brace of balls into him,” cried Norwood, adjusting a cap on his pistol. “A piece of stonework that sneezes is far too like a man to be trusted.”

Scarcely was the threat uttered, when a tremulous scream issued from within, and a voice, broken with terror, called out, —

“D-don’t fire, my Lord. You’ll m-m-murder me. I’m Purvis – Sc-Sc-Scroope Purvis.”

“How did you come to be there, then?” asked Norwood, half angrily.

“I ‘ll tell you when I g-get out!” was the answer; and he disappeared from the loophole at which he carried on the conversation for some seconds. Norwood began to fancy that the whole was some mystification of his brain, for no trace of him was to be had; when he emerged from the boat-house with his hat stripped of the brim, and his clothes in tatters, his scratched face and hands attesting that his transit had not been of the easiest. “It’s like a r-r-rat-hole,” cried he, puffing for breath.

“And what the devil brought you there?” asked Norwood, rudely.

“I ca-came out to see the fight!” cried he; “and when you’re inside there you have a view of the whole park, and are quite safe, too.”

“Then it was you who drove out in the calessino meant for the doctor?” said Norwood, with the air of a man who would not brook an equivocation.

“Yes; that was a d-d-dodge of mine to get out here,” said he, chuckling.

“Well, Master Purvis,” said Norwood, drawing his arm within his own, “if you can’t be the ‘doctor,’ you shall at least be the ‘second.’ This is a dodge of mine; so come along, and no more about it.”

“But I ca-can’t; I never was – I never could be a se-se-second.”

“You shall begin to-day, then, or my name’s not Norwood. You’ve been the cause of a whole series of mishaps and misfortunes; and, by Jove! if the penalty were a heavier one, you should pay it.”

“I tell you, I n-never saw a duel; I – I never f-fought one; I never will fight one; I don’t even know how they g-go about it.”

“You shall learn, sir, that ‘s all,” said Norwood, as he hastened along, dragging the miserable Purvis at his side.

“But for you, sir,” continued he, in a voice thick with passion, – “but for you, sir, and your inveterate taste for prying into what does not concern you, we should have experienced no delay nor disappointment this morning. The consequences are, that I shall have to stand where another ought to have stood, and take to myself a quarrel in which I have had no share.”