“Why, Dick, he’s never killed ’em. Except once, when he hated the dem fellow. Then he slipped over to France—that was a year ago; Boney was at Elba—and stayed mum (that’s the new word) till the row blew over. But if you only wound your pigeon, and the pigeon don’t complain, the law won’t bother you. D’ye see? Jack lets the pigeon lose his head and fire first. Then Jack fires, and stars the kneecap.”
“Stay a moment, Jemmy. What do you mean by, ‘stars the kneecap’?”
Jemmy, uncrossing his long black legs so that the diamond buckle glittered, sat up straight.
“Damme, my boy, don’t you know anything about affairs with the pistol?”
“Nothing whatever. I hate the pistol.”
Jemmy looked faintly uncomfortable.
“It means,” he said, “to shoot you through the kneecap.” Jemmy shuddered. “That can’t possibly kill you. But, by jove, the pain! Curse me, it’s worse than a bullet anywhere else.” He shuddered again. “Knew a fellow; bold as a lion; in the breach at Badajoz; twice mentioned in the Gazette; shot through the kneecap in a duel (accident); heard him screaming all night.”
“I see.”
“Though I’m bound to warn you, Dick …”
“Yes?”
“It won’t be a smashed kneecap. Jack means business. He’s ordered a post chaise for Dover, and he can be aboard the afternoon packet for Calais.”
Darwent nodded, without expression. He walked over to the white marble mantelpiece, his back to Jemmy, and put his elbows on the top as though pondering.
“Of course,” murmured Jemmy, glancing at him under lowered eyelids, “you could write a note of public apology. Or you could run away; there’s still time; But I can’t say it’ll suit Jack. And if a thing don’t suit him … well, the other party’s got no choice. Damme, you should have heard him laugh when Sharpe mentioned sabers!”
Darwent remained motionless.
To an unprejudiced observer, in this dim, green drawing room, the figure of Jack Buckstone was as palpable as a third presence. He loomed like a giant, laughing and imperturbable: unbeaten and unbeatable.
Jemmy stirred on the sofa.
“’Fraid I must take my leave, old boy. What arrangements will you make for going away?”
“Stay a moment, Jemmy!” said Darwent.
And he turned round.
“Present my compliments to Major Sharpe,” he went on. “Tell him I withdraw my right to fight with the saber. Tell him I will meet Sir John Buckstone with pistols, and at any distance Buckstone likes.”
Jemmy sprang up from the sofa.
A smallish bit of crumpled newspaper, which had somehow become lodged under Jemmy’s black double-breasted coat with the pearl buttons, was dislodged now and fluttered down to the carpet. Jemmy did not see it.
“Dem careless of me!” he exclaimed. “Forgot to mention the distance!”
“I said the distance may be what you like.”
“No, dash it! Got to get your approval. It’s thirty-six feet. Thirty-six feet, not paces; though of course we pace it off. Satisfactory?”
“Entirely.”
“Got any pistols, old boy?”
“No.”
“Then Jack will bring his. Any objections?”
“None whatever.”
“We—ah—in your carriage,” said Jemmy, a faint babbling note under his tone, “clear roads; early morning; ought to drive to Wimbledon Common in less than an hour and a half.”
“Then meet me at Stephen’s Hotel, Bond Street, at half-past three. Is that all?”
“That’s all.”
“Good night, Jemmy;”
Jemmy bowed, took three steps toward the door, and whirled round.
“Don’t think I like this!” he babbled. “You got me into it!” His hand went up to his starched collar and cravat. “I’m a second: accessory before the fact. Might mean transportation for life, if you’re killed.”
Darwent walked past him to a green-and-white-striped chair, which stood under two framed silhouettes on the wall beside the door. On the chair lay Jemmy’s brocaded cocked hat. Darwent picked it up.
“Good night, Jemmy.”
“Wonderful fellows, the real ’uns,” said Jemmy. “Got to do what pleases ’em, ain’t I? Or they’d cut me.” This horrible possibility made him shiver. “Never be invited to a rout; no card for Almack’s.”
“Good night, Jemmy.”
“Ladies, too: that’s worse. Country houses. Never hear the Duke of Argyle say, ‘Ah, how do you do, Jemmy?’ Or Lady Jersey: ‘So pleased.’ No, damme! Rather be dead.”
“Poor devil,” said Darwent, and extended the brocaded hat. “I know you can’t help it. Good night.”
Jemmy took the hat and went out. Darwent closed the door.
He stared thoughtfully at the floor, the first finger of his right hand curling as though round a trigger. His eye caught the scrap of crumpled newspaper, rather soiled, which had dropped from Jemmy’s coat; and he picked it up. It was torn from today’s Times, with datemark and a fragment of newsprint he did not trouble to read. Then a sense of animal nearness, a sense he had known so sharply with only two women, warned him to look round.
In the doorway stood Caroline, in a blue satin gown with white facings; her hair in ringlets, and round her neck a necklace of dark sapphires to match her eyes.
“Then this afternoon you arranged to meet Jack Buckstone,” she said.
“Did you hear what was said?”
“Only part of it.”
New apprehension seized Darwent. “You’ll not lodge a complaint with the magistrate? You’ll not have this prevented?”
“I would give a fortune to prevent it,” Caroline answered in a low voice, not looking at him. “But if you would have your way, my lord, then you must.”
“Thank you, Caroline. I am not permitted to see Dolly Spencer; and now I had best leave.”
“You called me by my first name!”
“Did I? Pray forgive me.”
From Caroline’s right hand hung a blue-and-silver fan. She opened it, not for coquettish purpose but at times to hide expression.
“You have not dined, my lord. Stay and dine with me. I,”—the fan came up—“I half-promised to accompany Will Alvanley to the Italian opera. But I won’t, if it’s your wish.” Then her voice vibrated. “If I ever speak sharp words, as I spoke this afternoon, then kill me!”
“If you speak any word of our marriage to Dolly, you shall have your wish.”
“On my word before God, I won’t tell her. Stay and dine.”
“Pardon me; I have too small an acquaintance with poisons. And I must be awake and ready at three-thirty in the morning. Good night.”
One anguished cry followed him out of the dim, green drawing room.
“Dick!”
But he paid no attention, walking stolidly down the stairs.
And so, as the night deepened, all over town there began to stir a furtive night life, as candle or lamp or even gas jet bloomed out, to drunken shouts or the pouring of coffee: in rooms big or little, in rooms painted or mean.
Darwent, partaking of a late dinner in the coffeeroom at Stephen’s, wrote and sealed a note to John Townsend, most celebrated of the Bow Street runners, and ordered it delivered by hand instead of by post. He also wrote a particular account of the afternoon’s and evening’s doings, addressing it to Hubert Mulberry, Esq., 11a Gray’s Inn.
At the Italian opera in the Haymarket, Caroline sat in Lord Alvanley’s private box, with the round-faced little peer beside her, listening to a new singer named Madame Vestris in Il Ratto di Proserpina. Except for a pit, this whole interior was nothing but a tall semicircle of private boxes, like a gaudy beehive. The only light, subdued and mysterious, threw a gauze from hidden lamps behind the scenes. When Lord Alvanley attempted gently to bite Caroline’s shoulder, he was amazed to be permitted this and even greater liberties, which argued success at no remote date. Caroline seemed angry, but not with him.
In his lodgings above the mews, young Tillotson Lewis danced for joy. At long last he would receive a generous sum from King, the moneylender, because he had expectations and his father was dying.
Harriette Wilson, a fair charmer who kept a salon-cum-bawdyhouse for the gentry, with suppers in a gilded room, had a number of guests tonight. Jemmy Fletcher absent-mindedly toyed with chicken and champagne as well as with Harriette’s sister.
Locked in his chambers.at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, with a solitary candle burning, Elias Crockit pored late over certain documents.
Sleeping peacefully, her yellow hair spread out on the pillow, Dolly Spencer lay in the Amber Room at Caroline’s house. At one side of the bed, which gleamed with Louis XV ornament, Mrs. Augustus Raleigh sat at needlework; on the other side, her cadaverous husband read Guy Mannering. Mr. Hereford, his plump chin in his hand, watched from one corner.
In Tom Cribb’s public house, the Union Arms in Pa at on Street, the stout Champion of England smoked his long clay pipe in the snuggery, occasionally glancing toward Hubert Mulberry, who sat in a wooden booth and was more than half-fuddled with hot rum-and-cinnamon.
From the sparring saloon off the snuggery danced a whick-whack noise of light boxing gloves. They used the mawleys, of course, only in practice.
In the booth next to Mulberry’s, all unnoticed by each other, Jack Buckstone yawned over the advertisements of a three-days-old news-sheet. To him, presently, came sidling up a squat hoarse-voiced man who gave his name as Blazes, and said he had sent a letter to the gen’leman.
The steeple clocks clanged, the watchman cried out, through the wicked hours of the night. In his bedroom at Stephen’s, in darkness tempered only by a faint rushlight in a bowl, Darwent sat by the window, fully dressed, and looked down into Bond Street.
“Wimbledon Common, not far from the windmill. Five o’clock tomorrow morning.” A month ago, to the very night, they were going to hang him at five in the morning.
Chapter XI
Pistols at Daybreak
CRACK WENT THE DRIVER’S long whip, as he saw ahead of him a tunnel dimly open in the white world of mist. Bridles jingling, the two black horses of the red berline stretched from a canter into a gallop toward Wimbledon Common.
Darwent, wrapped up in a black ankle-length cloak, stared straight ahead and did not look round.
“Time?” he asked.
Jemmy Fletcher, also in a dark cloak, fumbled inside for his waistcoat pocket. He took out a gold repeater, with a long ornamented fob, and with trembling hands opened its case.
“Ten minutes to five, old boy,” he said. Despite himself Jemmy could not keep the quaver out of his voice.
“You were late.”
“Couldn’t help it, old boy. Positively exhausted. That dem woman … dash it! No names.”
Crack went the driver’s whip.
“You’re a man of sense, Jemmy. You take your pleasure whenever it’s offered.”
The white mist was more than impenetrable, except for its hollows along the white road between hedgerows. The mist was bitter cold; it clammily penetrated through clothing to skin; it fogged the throat; it deadened the noise of gallop and jolting carriage.
“You’re a cool one, Dick,” Jemmy said rather enviously. “Ain’t you afraid?”
“Of course I’m afraid.”
“Here!” muttered Jemmy, and squirmed, “Mustn’t say that.”
“My shirt is sticking to my back with sweat, in spite of this cold. I must take care to speak slowly. Still, if we apply the best outward test …”
With an effort Darwent removed his right hand from under the cloak, stretching out the arm and spreading the fingers. The hand was steady, even the fingers as motionless as a statue’s.
“That,” Darwent said dryly, “is how men gain a reputation for courage when they don’t deserve it.” Crack went the driver’s whip.
Jemmy swallowed hard. “Dick, old boy. The fact is …”
“Buckstone will kill me? With a bullet through the middle of the forehead?”
“Here, I didn’t say that!”
“He probably will.” Darwent turned his head toward Jemmy, and forced a smile. “But you’re a better man, I think. Will you accept a little wager on the result?”
Jemmy was shocked. “Damme, Dick, I can’t do that! You’re my principal. Besides …”
“How could you pocket the stakes from a dead man?”
“Now, dash it all!”
“Come, Jemmy, don’t be so correct! Shall we say a hundred? You can take it out of my pocket afterwards.”
“Well!” said Jemmy, after a pause during which be drew a breath of relief. “I must say, old boy, I hoped for something. Bit short, you know; funds locked up in the Controls. A hundred’ll take me to France with Jack. Even Paris. I say, d’ye know all the sights in the Palais Royal?”
Darwent looked at him again, and bent forward toward the driver.
“Patrick, can’t you drive faster? If they leave the field before we even arrive …!”
“It’s all right!” Jemmy reassured him. “I can see the dashed windmill now.”
The mist had lifted a good deal as they raced up a long gentle rise and moved again on fiat ground, the carriage turning left into a smaller road with no hedgerows.
Darwent had no idea of their position, except that they were somewhere in the country on the Surrey side.
“Pull up!” he said.
About twenty yards ahead of them, in the small road, stood a closed black carriage from which three gentlemen had alighted. All three wore cloaks, according to custom. One of them—Sir John Buckstone—moved apart from the others and sat down on a tree stump, yawning as he smoked a cigar.
Though the mist had somewhat lifted, it still clung higher than ankle deep to the grass, a white restless carpet with a smoky moving top. It hung in shreds among trees, and turned the prospect to gauze.
The red berline jingled to a stop. Before Darwent and Jemmy jumped down, there was dead silence in that unreal world. The sky was gray and heavy, threatening rain. Against it, some distance away, stood up the brownish motionless sails of a windmill.
Of the two cloaked gentlemen who had accompanied Buck-stone, one wore a black hat and carried a black case. The other wore a white busby with a scarlet plume; his hands were outside the cloak, holding a flattish rosewood box. They stood side by side, some thirty yards away.
The thud seemed very loud when first Darwent, then Jemmy, jumped down from the carriage.
Patrick, the driver, leaned down from the box. From an apparently inanimate object, Patrick became a thick-set man with a mole on his cheek.
“Good luck, my lord,” he said softly. “Shoot the bastard dead.”
If Jemmy Fletcher shuddered from head to foot, it was not so much because a servant had spoken out of place. Not now
“Thank you,” Darwent said gratefully to Patrick. “But I don’t want to kill him.”
All spoke in muttering voices, as though this rich summer expanse of grass and trees had been blighted to deadliness by mist and silence.
“You don’t want to kill him?” blurted an astounded Jemmy.
“No. I’ve never wished to do that. Come on.”
They moved toward those who waited, over what felt like rough grass under an impenetrable white blanket of mist halfway to the knees. Darwent’s heart began to pound thickly. What he intended to do was so dangerous that it bordered on lunacy.
The face of Major Sharpe, with its frosty brown eyes under reddish eyebrows and its side whiskers brushed out like reddish wires, swam closer and became tight-lipped.
“Good morning, my lord. Good morning, Mr. Fletcher. May I present the surgeon, Mr. Mowbray?”
Major Sharpe spoke quietly but briskly, as though on duty. The surgeon, a kindly-looking man with steel-rimmed spectacles, bowed awkwardly.
Then Major Sharpe glanced over his shoulder toward Buckstone, who still sat on the tree stump yawning over a cigar, and back
toward Darwent.
“I suppose there is no question of an apology?”
Neither of the contestants replied.
A slight smile crossed Buckstone’s face. That face was gorged with blood, but his eye looked wickedly patient, above the two lash weals dark on his cheeks.
“Very well,” said Major Sharpe, weighing the rosewood box in his hands. “It seemed to us that over there,” his nod indicated it, “would be a better place. There are no trees close at hand; the mist is lighter; the ground more level. With your permission …?”
He turned round and led the way. All followed him to what seemed a huge open space surrounded by an amphitheater of trees. Opening the rosewood box, he displayed two pistols, beautifully fashioned with mother-of-pearl along the stocks, and embedded in yellow velvet with a small ramrod embedded beneath each. An upper compartment contained powder flask and ball.
“I understand, Lord Darwent, you agree to the use of these pistols?”
“I do.”
“Then your second and I will proceed to load them. Or perhaps,” said Major Sharpe, with a quick penetrating look at Jemmy, “or perhaps I should load them, merely by right as senior second?”
“Yes!” blurted Jemmy.
It was done.
Powder, bullet, wadding torn from newspaper, were deftly rammed into each pistol. The percussion cap was fitted tightly over the firing nipple, hammer resting lightly on it.
Tension was growing, growing nearly to bursting point, during a loading which took perhaps something over a minute and seemed to take twenty. Buckstone and Darwent stood a long distance away from each other, affecting indifference.
But Mr. Mowbray, the surgeon, intercepted a glance between them. And Mr. Mowbray unobtrusively opened his black bag.
“This,” he thought, “will not be pleasant.”
In addition to knives and bandages, he carried probe, forceps, and a bottle containing a giant’s dose of diluted laudanum. A bullet seldom struck through with a clean wound like a sword; it mangled and shattered bone, amid a good deal of mess.
“Now, Mr. Fletcher!” said Major Sharpe, handing Jemmy one pistol. “You know your next duty, I trust?”
“Dash it, yes! But I—I had a bad night! I …”
The Bride of Newgate Page 13
