he said at last, “before heaven I fear it is too late, but what man can do, that will I do.”
He came in and shook hands with me. “I’ll say good-bye, Montagu. ’Tis possible I’ll see you but once more in this world. Yet I will do my best. Don’t hope too much, but don’t despair.”
There was unconscious prophecy in his words. I was to see him but the once more, and then the proud, gallant gentleman, now so full of energy, was lying on his deathbed struck out of life by a foul blow.
Chapter XVIII
The Shadow Falls
It would appear that Sir Robert went direct from the prison to the club room at White’s. He was observed to be gloomy, preoccupied, his manner not a little perturbed. The usual light smile was completely clouded under a gravity foreign to his nature. One may guess that he was in no humour to carry coals. In a distant corner of the room he seated himself and fell to frowning at the table on which his elbow rested. At no time was he a man upon whom one would be likely to foist his company undesired, for he had at command on occasion a hauteur and an aloofness that challenged respect even from the most inconsiderate.
We must suppose that he was moved out of his usual indifference, that some long-dormant spring of nobility was quickened to a renewed life, that a girl’s truth and purity, refining his selfish passion, had bitten deep into the man’s callous worldliness. For long he sat in a sombre silence with his head leaning on his hand, his keen mind busy with the problem—so I shall always believe—as to how he might even yet save me from the gallows.
By some strange hap it chanced that Sir James Craven, excited with drink, the bile of his saturnine temper stirred to malignity by heavy losses at cards, alighted from his four in hand at White’s shortly after Volney. Craven’s affairs had gone from bad to worse very rapidly of late. He had been playing the races heavily and ruin stared the man in the face. More than suspected of dubious play at cards, it had been scarce a week since the stewards of a leading racetrack had expelled him for running crosses. Any day a debtor’s prison might close on him. Within the hour, as was afterward learned, his former companion Frederick Prince of Wales had given him the cut direct on the Mall. Plainly his star was on the decline, and he raged in a futile passion of hatred against the world. Need it be said that of all men he most hated his supplanter in the Prince of Wales’ good-will, Sir Robert Volney.
To Volney then, sitting gloomily in his distant solitude, came Craven with murder in his heart and a bitter jest on his lips. At the other side of the table he found a seat and glared across at his rival out of a passion-contorted face. Sir Robert looked past him coldly, negligently, as if he had not been there, and rising from his seat moved to the other side of the room. In the manner of his doing it there was something indescribably insulting; so it seemed to Topham Beauclerc, who retailed to me the story later.
Craven’s evil glance followed Volney, rage in his bloodshot eyes. If a look could kill, the elegant macaroni had been a dead man then. It is to be guessed that Craven struggled with his temper and found himself not strong enough to put a curb upon it; that his heady stress of passion swept away his fear of Volney’s sword. At all events there he sat glowering blackly on the man at whose charge he chose to lay all his misfortunes, what time he gulped down like water glass after glass of brandy. Presently he got to his feet and followed Sir Robert, still dallying no doubt with the fascinating temptation of fixing a quarrel upon his rival and killing him. To do him justice Volney endeavoured to avoid an open rupture with the man. He appeared buried in the paper he was reading.
“What news?” asked Craven abruptly.
For answer the other laid down the paper, so that Sir James could pick it up if he chose.
“I see your old rival Montagu is to dance on air to-morrow. ’Gad, you’ll have it all your own way with the wench then,” continued Craven boisterously, the liquor fast mounting to his head.
Volney’s eyes grew steelly. He would have left, but the burly 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