purple-faced baronet cut off his retreat.
“Damme, will you drink with me, or will you play with me, Volney?”
“Thanks, but I never drink nor play at this time of day, Sir James. If it will not inconvenience you to let me pass——”
With a foolish laugh, beside himself with rage and drink, Craven flung him back into his chair. “’Sdeath, don’t be in such a hurry! I want to talk to you about— Devil take it, what is it I want to talk about?— Oh, yes! That pink and white baggage of yours. Stap me, the one look ravished me! Pity you let a slip of a lad like Montagu oust you.”
“That subject is one which we will not discuss, Sir James,” said Volney quietly. “It is not to be mentioned in my presence.”
“The devil it isn’t. I’m not in the habit of asking what I may talk about. As for this mistress of yours——”
Sir Robert rose and stood very straight. “I have the honour to inform you that you are talking of a lady who is as pure as the driven snow.”
Buck Craven stared. “After Sir Robert Volney has pursued her a year?” he asked with venomous spleen, his noisy laugh echoing through the room.
I can imagine how the fellow said it, with what a devilish concentration of malice. He had the most irritating manner of any man in England; I never heard him speak without wanting to dash my fist in his sneering face.
“That is what I tell you. I repeat that the subject is not a matter for discussion between us.”
Craven might have read a warning in the studied gentleness of Volney’s cold manner, but he was by this time far beyond reck. By common consent the eyes of every man in the room were turned on these two, and Craven’s vanity sunned itself at holding once more the centre of the stage.
“And after the trull has gadded about the country with young Montagu in all manner of disguises?” he continued.
“You lie, you hound!”
Sir James sputtered in a speechless paroxysm of passion, found words at last and poured them out in a turbid torrent of invective. He let fall the word baggage again, and presently, growing more plain, a word that is not to be spoken of an honest woman. Volney, eyeing him disdainfully, the man’s coarse bulk, his purple cheeks and fishy eyes, played with his wine goblet, white fingers twisting at the stem; then, when the measure of the fellow’s offense was full, put a period to his foul eloquence.
Full in the mouth the goblet struck him. Blood spurted from his lips, and a shower of broken glass shivered to the ground. Craven leaped across the table at his enemy in a blind fury; restrained by the united efforts of half a dozen club members, the struggling madman still foamed to get at his rival’s throat—that rival whose disdainful eyes seemed to count him but a mad dog impotent to bite.
“You would not drink with me; you would not play with me; but, by God, you will have to fight with me,” he cried at last.
“When you please.”
“Always I have hated you, wanted always to kill you, now I shall do it,” he screamed.
Volney turned on his heel and beckoned to Beauclerc.
“Will you act for me, Topham?” he asked; and when the other assented, added: “Arrange the affair to come off as soon as possible. I want to have done with the thing at once.”
They fought within the hour in the Field of the Forty Footsteps. The one was like fire, the other ice. They were both fine swordsmen, but there was no man in England could stand against Volney at his best, and those who were present have put it on record that Sir Robert’s skill was this day at high water mark. He fought quite without passion, watching with cool alertness for his chance to kill. His opponent’s breath came short, his thrusts grew wild, the mad rage of the man began to give way to a no less mad despair. Every feint he found anticipated, every stroke parried; and still his enemy held to the defensive with a deadly cold watchfulness that struck chill to the heart of the fearful bully. We are to conceive that Craven tasted the bitterness of death, that in the cold passionless face opposite to him he read his doom, and that in the horrible agony of terror that sweated him he forgot the traditions of his class and the training of a lifetime. He stumbled, and when Sir Robert held his hand, waiting point groundward with splendid carelessness for his opponent to rise, Craven flung himself forward on his knees and thrust low at him. The blade went home through the lower vitals.
Volney stood looking at him a moment with a face of infinite contempt, than sank back into the arms of Beauclerc.
While the surgeon was examining the wound Craven stole forward guiltily to the outskirts of the little group which surrounded the wounded man. His horror-stricken eyes peered out of a face like chalk. The man’s own second had just turned his back on him, and he was already realizing that the foul stroke had written on his forehead the brand of Cain, had made him an outcast and a pariah on the face of the earth.
The eyes of Volney and his murderer met, those of the dying man full of scorn. Craven’s glance fell before that steady look. He muttered a hope that the wound was but slight; then, in torture, burst out: “’Twas a slip. By Heaven, it was, Volney! I would to God it were undone.”
“‘To every coward safety, and afterward his evil hour,’” quoted Volney with cold disdain.
The murderer turned away with a sobbing oath, mounted his horse and rode for the coast to begin his lifetime of exile, penury, and execration.
“Do I get my passport?” asked Sir Robert of the surgeon.
The latter began to talk a jargon of medical terms, but Volney cut him short.
“Enough! I understand,” he said quietly. “Get me to my rooms and send at once for the Prince of Wales. Beauclerc, may I trouble you to call on Cumberland and get from him an order to bring young Montagu to my place from the prison? And will you send my man Watkins for a lawyer? Oh, and one more commission—a messenger to beg of Miss Macleod her attendance. In case she demurs, make it plain to her that I am a dying man. Faith, Topham, you’ll be glad I do not die often. I fear I am an unconscionable nuisance at it.”
Topham Beauclerc drove straight to the residence of the Duke of Cumberland. He found the Duke at home, explained the situation in a few words, and presently the pair of them called on the Duke of Newcastle and secured his counter-signature for taking me temporarily from the New Prison. Dusk was falling when Beauclerc and the prison guards led me to Volney’s bedroom. At the first glance I saw plainly that he was not long for this world. He lay propped on an attendant’s arm, the beautiful eyes serene, an inscrutable smile on the colourless lips. Beside him sat Aileen, her hand in his, and on the other side of the bed the Duke of Cumberland and Malcolm. When he saw me his eyes brightened.
“On time, Kenneth. Thanks for coming.”
Beauclerc had told me the story, and I went forward with misty eyes. He looked at me smiling.
“On my soul I believe you are sorry, Montagu. Yes, I have my quietus. The fellow struck foul. My own fault! I always knew him for a scoundrel. I had him beaten; but ’tis better so perhaps. After all I shall cross the river before you, Kenneth.” Then abruptly to an attendant who entered the room, “Has the Prince come yet?”
“But this moment, sir.”
The Prince of Wales
