University of Virginia Library

27. CHAPTER XXVII.

Lady Beverly and Elkington drove home from
the ball at Mr. de B—'s in no very amiable mood.
The inquiries which Lady Beverly had so pertinaciously
put to Claude respecting his family, had
been the result of a settled plan to embarrass and
disgrace him, and it perfectly well succeeded till his
last reply, which, with the dignity of truth, turned
the tables against them, carried conviction to every
heart, and rather created sympathy than the distrust
and derision intended. In proportion to their disappointment
at their failure, their detestation increased.
On reaching the hotel after the ball, instead of
retiring to bed, they sat up, engaged in a conversation
upon the state of their affairs, in which Claude
now began to play an important rôle.

“If ever two young fools on earth loved each
other,” said Lady Beverly, “they are mutually in
love. They both conceal it as far as they can;
but, in my opinion, they privately understand each
other, and have already formed a plan to break off
your engagement. Is it likely that they should be

together so much as they have been, with such feelings
as they evidently entertain for each other, without
a mutual explanation?”

“If I can drive on this affair with Carolan,” said
Elkington, “I shall have something to stand on till
the old man dies. I can keep Shooter quiet, and
arrange my other affairs till the event, which cannot
be far off, comes to relieve me. At the moment
of success, this detested coward steps between me
and my hopes. He slights and insult me with every
look. Before Ida knew him she was quite decided.
She would have married me at any moment.
But now she's shy—cool—timid. I find her sometimes
abstracted and melancholy — sometimes in
tears—and lately she has even frowned in a way
which I don't like. I'll marry her, whether she will
or not; that is in my power. She shall be my wife
if it break her heart; and if I could but blow this
scoundrel's brains out, and marry her afterward, I
would hasten back to London, pay my debts, hush
up those two cursed affairs, and in future conduct
operations a little more cautiously. As for this
Wyndham, he needn't think to escape me. I have
lived two-and-twenty years in the world, and very
possibly I have overlooked a favour, but, by —, I
never forget an injury or an insult.”

“But this man won't fight.”

“Won't?” said Elkington, starting from his seat,
and pacing the room with a hurried step. “He
can't avoid it. I'll make him. No man, be his
principles what they may, can escape it. Won't
fight? I have heard of this before; but I never yet
found the person whom, when I chose, I could not
force to it, and whom, when once there, I could not
teach the danger of crossing me with impunity.
Claude Wyndham has insulted, injured, and thwarted
me. I am not to be trampled on with impunity,
nor am I one of those who shrink from availing
themselves of means which every gentleman sanctions
and adopts.”

“But human life—my son,” said Lady Beverly,
“have you not already too much stained your
hands?”

“No. It is a prejudice. What is human life
more than other life? It was made to be extinguished
by a thousand chances. Men are but insects,
who are born by millions—who come and
go like gnats in the breeze. They perish in the
field of battle—in the wreck—by famine—by pestilence,
and their own excesses. They are like the
reptiles which lie across our path as we walk; we
cannot help treading on them. What avails one
more or less? Yet these cautious cowards would
have us believe that earth and heaven are moved
when a miserable creature like this Wyndham is
turned into his grave a few years before his time.”

“But your own life, my son.”

“I care not for my own life. What is life to me,
that I should value, or death, that I should fear it?
My youth is past, and with it all my hopes of pleasure.
I have quaffed the cup till sated with its cloying
sweets. What, after all, has life to offer me
but a few enjoyments; startling, because full of
danger; or sweet, only to sicken me the sooner? I
confess, on this miserable earth I find no great attraction.
Every real pleasure is forbidden by law,
by society, or by the narrow limits of our own natures.
We can't enjoy as we would. Internal diseases
follow every feast which is spread before the
eyes of poor mortals; and, as if the world had been
created by a fiend, a youth of pleasure is sure to be
followed by an age of pain. Already I begin to feel
the effects of plucking the fruit that hangs around
me, and of drinking the stream which flows at my
feet. Yet what is it there for, if not for us? No.
If I don't value the lives of others, neither do I my
own. I have nothing to regret—nothing to regret
me. When I die, it will be but the falling off of a
leaf unmourned, unmissed. If I have nothing to

regret in life, neither have I anything to fear in
death. I believe in no hereafter!”

“Alas! who can tell?” said Lady Beverly.

“I can, madam, My common sense tells me
that this is an idle dream—a folly of the nursery—
a tale of priests and poets—an impossibility. What!
live without life? be crushed by a piece of granite,
like a trodden fly, and yet exist, and breathe, and
see, and move? bah! It is ridiculous. It is a lie.
When we die, we die. Things to us are ended.
The spider that we tread on, and the man we kill—
once gone, are gone. It is all black—blank—void
—and who cares? What difference does it make
whether he or I go a day or two sooner or later?
Who watches over us—our fates—our actions?
Who will care if I kill him, or he me? Who sees
—who knows—who takes note of all the multifarious
incidents of mankind, age after age? No, no—
thank God!—if life has few charms for me, death
has fewer terrors. It is but a bullet—a flash—a
leap—and then—a sound sleep. The rest is a bugbear!”

A knock at the door interrupted him, and Scarlet
entered with a letter, which, he said, had been left
by a person enveloped in a cloak, so that his face
could not be seen. Elkington took the letter, dismissed
the servant, broke the seal, and read.

“For God sake, Edward, what is it?” said Lady
Beverly, as she watched his countenance. He made
no reply till he had finished perusing it; then he
struck his hand violently upon the table and said,

“It only wanted this. I'll tread that man beneath
my heel like an adder.”

“Edward, what does this mean?”

“Read, and tell me whether this is not enough to
sanction any step?”

She read aloud. It was Claude's letter to Count
Carolan, enclosing that from Denham. The two
had been sent by another hand in a third envelope.

“I will silence him,” said Elkington.

“But how?”

“He must meet me before another day is passed.”

“He will not.”

“He shall; he must be made to. I'll insult him.
I'll choose the most public scene to heap on him all
the odium he merits. I'll insult every lady who
walks with him. There is no provocation which
one man can offer another which I will not thrust
upon him. I'll ring in his ears, and in the ears of
all around him, that he is a coward and a villain.
I'll brand him aloud with every epithet of scorn.”

“Edward! Edward!” said Lady Beverly, following
him backward and forward through the room.

“And if,” said he, “he refuses to fight, I'll—”

The door was suddenly thrown open, and Scarlet
announced “Mr. Wyndham.”

“Mr. Wyndham?” cried Lady Beverly, with astonishment.
“It is certainly some mistake. Mr.
Wyndham?”

“You are a fool,” said Elkington. “Who is it?
what is it?”

“It is Mr. Wyndham, my lord, with another
person.”

“Great Heaven!” exclaimed Lady Beverly,
“what can this mean?”

“Admit them!” said Elkington, sternly, and with
a feeling at his heart which even he, wide as had
been his experience in human sensations, had never
known before.

At the word of the servant Claude entered, dragging
in with an iron grasp an individual who, although
he resisted, seemed scarcely to require an
effort of his athletic arm. Thrust into the middle
of the floor, he lifted a pale countenance, so much
altered that he was with difficulty recognised as the
complaisant and even amiable Carl. Claude advanced
to the table where Lady Beverly and Elkington
had been sitting. He was calm, and even courteous

in his demeanour, but his face, as eminently
formed to express sternness as gentleness, exhibited
determination which, for a minute, awed both the
persons whose midnight privacy he had so unexpectedly
and unceremoniously interrupted. Lady
Beverly leaned for support upon the table. Elkington
stood half stupified with indignation, yet, for the
moment, too thunderstruck to speak, but his eyes
glittered with a passion more terrible from its stillness.

“I might offer an apology to Lady Beverly,” said
Claude, “for this abrupt and unseasonable visit, but
the occasion must be its own excuse.”

“Speak on, sir,” said Lady Beverly, for Elkington
seemed speechless with astonishment and rage.

“Passing accidentally your door but this instant,
I saw my servant approach it, muffled in a cloak—
hand a letter—and hastily retreat with signs of guilty
caution. I followed and seized him as he was
creeping stealthily back to his home. I demanded
whom he had been to see—what employment he
was charged with from other persons than myself—
whom else he served—what letter he had delivered
—and why this air of guilty secrecy. The boy is
a coward as well as a scoundrel, and, terrified at
being detected, he instantly made a confession so
singularly involving the honour of yourself, madam,
and Lord Elkington, that, as much from respect to
you as from justice to myself, I determined that
you should confront him on the instant and convict
him of the falsehood.”

“This insult—this outrage,” cried Lady Beverly.

“D—tion, sir!” said Elkington, reaching from a
bookcase at his side a pair of duelling pistols, and
laying them with a quaking hand and an ashy face
upon the table, “if you are not a scoundrel—”

“Repeat, sir,” said Claude to Carl, “what you
have just confessed to me.”

“I confess—” said Carl, in excellent English.

“How!” said Claude. “Do you speak English?”

“Yes, monsieur; pardon me—forgive me—do not
put me in prison. I will relate all, indeed, indeed
I will—”

“If you utter one word, you cowardly rascal, respecting
me or my affairs, I'll send this bullet through
your head,” said Elkington.

“Oh, mon Dieu!” said Carl, whining and crying,
“what shall I do, what shall I do?”

“He declares that for some time past he has
been in your pay; that you have promised to take
him with you to England in your employ; that
he has rendered you an account of my actions—
conversations—journals—and private letters and
papers—”

“He is an infamous liar!” said Elkington, “and
you are the same; and I will so proclaim you in public
wherever I meet you.”

“Your language, my lord, convinces me that, however
vile may be my servant, he has employers yet
more so.”

“Coward! you shall give me satisfaction for
this; you shall hear from me before you sleep, and
in a way which, if you are not dead to every feeling
of honour—”

“Of my honour, my lord,” said Claude, “I am
the guardian, and I believe you are not the judge.”

“Then I brand the words coward and liar upon
your forehead. I will thunder them in your ear—
I will write them beneath your name in all companies,
at all hours—I will never meet you in the
streets, in the ball, in the church even, without
pointing, and hissing, and proclaiming aloud, There
stands a coward!”

“If you can point your finger,” said Claude, with
perfect composure, “at one action of my life which
dishonours me, I shall feel annoyed by the terms
you make use of. Otherwise they pass by me `as
the idle wind,' and I shall avoid you as a madman,

or take measures to secure myself against you as a
ruffian. The words of a man like you can neither
awake my passion nor permanently injure my character.
As for the charge I make against you, I wish
I could believe it untrue.”

“It is untrue, I solemnly declare,” said Lady
Beverly.

“And I so pronounce it, on the faith of a gentleman
and a man of honour,” said Elkington; “and
let any one but an outcast like yourself, deny, nay,
doubt it, at his peril. The good name of a nobleman
and a lady are not to be destroyed by the raving
of a valet-de-chambre, nor the malignant plots of a
miserable impostor, without rank, fortune, or family;
a child of guilt and chance, whose father is probably
in a convict's cell—whose mother—”

Claude laid his hand on the pistol nearest him,
and Elkington, with a sneer of triumph and hate,
grasped his, and continued, “Whose mother, after a
life of pollution, has died, amid hisses and jeers,
on the scaffold.”

It was obvious that this coarse language was the
mode by which Elkington hoped to taunt and lash
his foe to desperation; for he knew in his heart
that he was no coward, and that he had only to give
passion one moment an ascendancy over that calm
reason and high principle which inspired his life,
and shed a kind of divine protection around him, to
push him into a duel, and quench the hate which
had now taken possession of his soul to a fearful extent.
It is not certain that Claude, thus goaded beyond
example and almost beyond bearing, might not
have consented to arrangements for an immediate
meeting; but he remembered his promise given to
Madame Wharton, and laid down the deadly weapon.
At the same moment he perceived something
which again reminded him that he was dealing with
a man beneath his notice.

“You deny, then, that you have had any private
communication with my servant?” asked Claude.

“Most positively,” said Elkington, “and I pronounce
him—”

“Spare your invectives, my lord,” said Claude.
“That he who could be base enough to do such a
thing, would be mean enough to deny it, does not
surprise me; but I am astonished that such a skilful
practitioner as Lord Elkington should make the denial
without at least first dropping from his hand
the evidence of his guilt.”

Elkington looked down, and beheld the letter
which Claude had written to Carolan, and which, in
his confusion, he had retained in his hand. It was
open, and the signature, “Claude Wyndham,” was
conspicuously visible. The letter from Denham
was also lying open on the table.

“You will excuse my resuming my own property,”
said Claude, reaching forward and taking the
two letters.

Elkington's eyes absolutely flashed with fury as
Claude moved to take the letter from his hand, and
he cocked the pistol and raised it, his face whitening
with his dreadful purpose. But the act of deliberately
shooting an unarmed man, of sending
headlong into eternity the human being who stands
erect before him, in all the loveliness of life, requires
a nerve which can scarcely be the gift but of
madness, and which even this reckless villain had
not yet become sufficiently frantic to acquire. Besides,
there are consequences. The law is awakened
when such a deed is openly done. There is no
hushing it up; and a vision of a dungeon and a crowded
court—of a felon's chain and a felon's fate—
formed a restraint upon the hand of Elkington which
neither generosity nor religion would have excited.

He muttered in a voice choked and husky with
rage,

“Wyndham, you shall hear from me to-morrow.
You shall not carry it off in this manner.”

“No, my lord, your message will be useless.

You may murder me if you will, and take the consequences.
My life, like that of every other man,
is exposed to the attempt of an assassin. Your
threats I despise—your calumnies I defy. A
peaceful conscience will secure me from the one,
and a pure life from the other. For my courage,
my lord, you may think and speak of it as you
please; but I shall expose your baseness without
hesitation or fear, and perhaps call upon the law of
our common country to protect me against the falsehood
of so unprincipled a slanderer. Should you
dare to direct against an unarmed man the blind fury
of an assassin, I leave those laws to punish you as
a murderer merits.”

“Cautious coward!” said Elkington, and again
raised his arm. The demon in his soul whispered
him to fire, and thus plunge with so mortal an enemy
down the chasm of death. It is possible that,
had his foe shown any symptom of fear or retreat,
he might so far have lost his reason as to have accomplished
his dark intention; but Claude was a
man of strong nerve as well as of perfect courage,
and he really feared death as little and much less
than his rival. To him life was now bereft of its
charm, and perhaps secretly he was scarce displeased
at the thought of a sudden blow, which
would terminate an existence doomed to such sad
despair. This real indifference to death shed
around him a calm grandeur. He stood firm and
cool—the very smile on his lips unchanged—and the
sternness of his brow softening into something of derision
and contempt, while his clear, searching eye
bent on his antagonist a gaze that pierced and cowed
his soul; and his unprotected breast lay so unshrinkingly
open to the blow, that, in addition to the
idea of a gibbet, a sentiment of shame touched the
villain's heart and caused him to lower his weapon.

Lady Beverly, after an ineffectual attempt to arrest
his arm, fell back fainting on the sofa.

“We shall meet again,” said Elkington. “There
will be a time!”

Claude withdrew without haste. Again he found
himself alone in the cool, silent night. His eye
was cast again over the tranquil streets and up to
the starry sky. One motion of Elkington's finger,
and he would have never gazed on these fair objects
more.