G."
This left no doubt in Kate's mind.
"Now, first of all," said she, "what answer made you to this?"
"What answer should I make? I pledged my word to be at Bolton at nine of the clock."
"Oh, blind!" sighed Kate. "And I must be out of the room. What shall I do? My dear friend, forgive me: I am a wretched girl. I am to blame; I ought to have dismissed them both, or else decided between them. But who would have thought it would go this length? I did not think Griffith was brave enough. Have pity on me, and help me. Stop this fearful fighting." And now the young creature clung to the man of business, and prayed and prayed him earnestly to avert bloodshed.
Mr. Houseman was staggered by this passionate appeal from one who so rarely lost her self-command. He soothed her as well as he could, and said he would do his best; but added, which was very true, that he thought her interference would be more effective than his own. "What care these young bloods for an old attorney? I should fare ill, came I between their rapiers. To be sure I might bind them over to keep the peace. But Mistress Kate, now be frank with me; then I can serve you better. You love one of these two; that is clear. Which is the man? that I may know what I am about."
For all her agitation Kate was on her guard in some things.
"Nay," she faltered, "I love neither, not to say love them: but I pity him so."
"Which?"
"Both."
"Ay, mistress; but which do you pity most?" asked the shrewd lawyer.
"Whichever shall come to harm for my sake," replied the simple girl.
"You could not go to them to-night, and bring them to reason?" asked she, piteously. She went to the window to see what sort of a night it was; she drew the heavy crimson curtains and opened the window. In rushed a bitter blast laden with flying snow. The window ledges too were clogged with snow, and all the ground was white.
Houseman shuddered, and drew nearer to the blazing logs. Kate closed the window with a groan. "It is not to be thought of," said she; "at your age; and not a road to be seen for snow. What shall I do?"
"Wait till to-morrow," said Mr. Houseman. (Procrastination was his daily work, being an attorney.) "To-morrow!" cried Catherine. "Perhaps even now they have met, and he lies a corpse."
"Who?"
"Whichever it is, I shall end my days in a convent praying for his soul." She wrung her hands while she said this, and still there was no catching her.
Little did the lawyer think to rouse such a storm with his good news. And now he made a feeble and vain attempt to soothe her; and ended by promising to start the first thing in the morning and get both her testators bound over to keep the peace, by noon. With this resolution he went to bed early.
She was glad to be alone at all events.
Now, mind you, there were plenty of vain and vulgar, yet respectable girls, in Cumberland, who would have been delighted to be fought about, even though bloodshed were to be the result. But this young lady was not vain, but proud; she was sensitive too, and troubled with a conscience. It reproached her bitterly: it told her she had permitted the addresses of two gentlemen, and so mischief had somehow arisen—out of her levity. Now her life had been uneventful, and innocent: this was the very first time she had been connected with anything like a crime; and her remorse was great: so was her grief; but her fears were greater still. The terrible look Griffith had cast at his rival flashed back on her; so did his sinister words. She felt that if he and Neville met, nothing less than Neville's death or his own would separate them. Suppose that even now one of them lay a corpse! cold and ghastly as the snow that now covered Nature's face.
The agitation of her mind was such, that her body could not be still: now she walked the room in violent distress, wringing her hands; now she kneeled and prayed fervently for both those lives she had endangered: often she flew to the window and looked eagerly out, writhing and rebelling against the network of female custom that entangled her, and would not let her fly out of her cage even to do a good action; to avert a catastrophe by her prayers, or her tears, or her good sense.
And all ended in her realizing that she was a woman, a poor impotent being born to lie quiet and let things go: at that she wept helplessly.
So wore away the first night of agony this young creature ever knew.
Towards morning, exhausted by her inward struggles, she fell asleep upon a sofa.
But her trouble followed her. She dreamed she was on a horse, hurried along with prodigious rapidity, in a darkened atmosphere, a sort of dry fog: she knew somehow she was being taken to see some awful, mysterious thing. By-and-by the haze cleared, and she came out upon pleasant open sunny fields that almost dazzled her. She passed gates, and hedges too, all clear, distinct, and individual. Presently a voice by her side said "This way!" and her horse seemed to turn of his own accord through a gap, and in one moment she came on a group of gentlemen. It was Griffith Gaunt, and two strangers. Then she spoke, and said,
"But, Mr. Neville?"
No answer was made her; but the group opened in solemn silence, and there lay George Neville on the snow, stark and stiff, with blood issuing from his temple, and trickling along the snow.
She saw distinctly all his well-known features; but they were pinched and sharpened now. And his dark olive skin was turned to bluish white. It was his corpse. And now her horse thrust out his nose and snorted like a demon. She looked down, and ah! the blood was running at her prematurely fast along the snow. She screamed, her horse reared high, and she was falling on the blood-stained snow: she awoke screaming; and the sunlight seemed to rush in at the window.
Her joy that it was only a dream overpowered every other feeling at first. She kneeled and thanked God for that.
The next thing was, she thought it might be a revelation of what had actually occurred.
But this chilling fear did not affect her long. Nothing could shake her conviction that a duel was on foot—and indeed the intelligent of her sex do sometimes put this and that together, and spring to a just but obvious inference, in a way that looks to a slower and safer reasoner like divination—but then she knew that yesterday evening both parties were alive. Coupling this with Griffith's broad hint that after the funeral might be too late to make his will, she felt sure that it was this very day the combatants were to meet. Yes, and this very morning: for she knew that gentlemen always fought in the morning.
If her dream was false as to the past, it might be true as to what was at hand. Was it not a supernatural warning sent to her in mercy? The history of her church abounded in such dreams and visions; and indeed the time and place she lived in were rife with stories of the kind; one, in particular, of recent date.
This thought took hold of her, and grew on her, till it overpowered even the diffidence of her sex; and then up started her individual character; and now nothing could hold her. For, languid and dreamy in the common things of life, this Catherine Peyton was one of those who rise into rare ardor and activity in such great crises as seem to benumb the habitually brisk, and they turn tame and passive.
She had seen at a glance that Houseman was too slow and apathetic for such an emergency; she resolved to act herself. She washed her face and neck and arms and hands in cold water, and was refreshed and invigorated. She put on her riding habit and her little gold spur; Griffith Gaunt had given it her; and hurried into
