At least, for those who were not privily concerned in it. Terpie felt the burn first. Disengaging without tenderness the moment the door slammed behind Flora, she dressed at speed with her face set, swearing under her breath. Her only farewell to Smith was a grimace, and a kind of savage, suppressing pat at the air in the direction where he lay groaning with his head under the pillow. Then she was hurrying through the snowy streets to the watch-room in Fort St George where Major Tomlinson would be sleeping off the port of the night before. She had read Flora’s face, and she was grimly confident that she had a disaster to out-run, and must wake her husband, and confess the news to him herself before anyone else could tell it him with laughter in their voice; and must abide his anger and humiliation, and try if she could see the way to call on him for the understanding he had promised her, toward the irregular ways of the stage, when he had been wooing her at the stage-door in Covent Garden as her last play failed. But that had been years ago; and they had followed his posting to America; and the promise had gathered dust unused, lapsing into a mere ghostly hypothesis of an indulgence, fading away to both their contentment. She had liked him, and his companionable ways, and his indifference to there being no prospect of children. A little shiver from men’s eyes on her, that had been enough. Until the boy, the damn’d boy, turned up. She took a deep breath when she reached the Fort, and did what she must.
Smith, meanwhile, decided to conduct his wretchedness in private, still under the illusion that he had no more to contend with than having driven off Tabitha again for sure just when she dared to reach for him.
He hid in his bed till a writhing dislike of his own nakedness drove him out of it. Then he found the letter. Then, putting together the contents of the letter, and particularly its praise of his patience, with a vivid viewing upon his inner eye of what Flora must have seen as he lay voluptuously smothered, he began helplessly to laugh, and presently to weep, and then to laugh and weep together. He washed his face, and dressed. But when he stood ready for the world, the very thought of having to rebuild a front of charm, and to carry it through an icy town containing the Lovells, made him feel abruptly too tired to keep his sore eyes open. He lay back down and pressed his cheek into the pillow as if it might open and admit him. He fell into sleep as into a cold river, full of glassy slow-twining currents. He shivered as he lay in the tangled sheets, and clutched his hands into his armpits, but clung to unconsciousness for as long as he could make it last, rolling himself back in, and under, sleep’s thick surface whenever the currents threatened to strand him on the brink of waking, and consequences. It was not until the winter dusk that he found himself irretrievably awake, and crept out, and drawn by an urge for refuge crept along Broad Way to Trinity for the evening service. He joined in wanly with the General Confession, but the words seemed remote to him and of no conceivable application, and when the choir sang the antiphon of the day, in praise of the divine wisdom ‘sweetly ordering all things’, he felt welling up again the earlier combination of laughter and tears, and must bite his sleeve till it went away: so that, altogether, his recourse to the comforts of religion could not be called successful. The Rector looked sharply at him as he departed, but he had his head down and did not mark it. Mrs Lee had her mouth open to speak to him when he returned to the house, but he swept obliviously past, and did not mark it.
He was not even immediately disabused in the Merchants at breakfast-time the next morning. The emptying-out of the city entailed a wider separation in the coffee-house between the remaining regulars, as they came in puffing and stamping and calling for refreshment. Though they may have glanced at Smith, and Quentin regarded him with cocked head and a bright speculative eye, none yet crossed the gulfs of empty table and chairs to speak; Smith, made imperceptive by unhappiness, ordered his usual rolls and coffee, and even made a spasmodic essay or two at the old game of bowling languages at Quentin to see if he could field ’em. Then Septimus came in, pale, swift and intent.
‘There you are; you idiot,’ he said.
‘I thought you’d gone!’ cried out Smith delightedly.
‘I nearly had. I was virtually on horseback, when I was called back to a staff meeting.’
‘Well, I am very glad to see you—’
‘Are you? I am not very glad to see you, because the meeting was convened on your account. There is something maddeningly predictable about the way you procure disaster, Richard. It is like someone winding a clock, as methodical as that, only this time instead of a key into clockwork, you stuck your cock into Terpie.’
‘Oh. You know about that.’
‘Everyone knows about that.’
‘I am afraid I have made a fool of myself,’ Smith said, with that species of self-condemnation which imminently expects to be comforted by a friend’s disagreement.
‘Do you think so? – I must say, I thought your tastes were subtler, your appetites less gross. For that matter, I thought your heart was given elsewhere.’
‘Don’t; that is the worst of it. That just when I was resigned to all that coming to nothing, and was, you know, indulging myself, thinking it did not matter—’
‘If you tell me your heart is broken on this particular morning, Richard, I will just say: what, again? Perhaps you should be more careful with it.’
‘She was very … pressing. Terpie, I mean.’
‘You poor dear. You poor defenceless darling.’
‘No; very well; no. She was there. And she seemed to be offering satisfaction without complication. And she was very tempting. Come on, Septimus. She is very tempting, if you are at all that way inclined.’
‘No she isn’t. She is like a caricature of a temptation, drawn with such mad hyperbole that anyone with any sense would know better than to act on it.’
‘Perhaps we are out of your domain of expertise,’ said Smith, puzzled yet picking up some heat by friction.
‘Well, I certainly don’t want to be having this conversation. Lord knows I would rather be picking my way through a frozen forest with an icicle depending from my nose. I would infinitely rather be safe on my way up the valley, with only wolves and wild Indians and delicate diplomacy to contend with, than be here talking to you about Terpie’s tits. I wish to God I had never listened to you and included her in the play.’
‘Septimus—’
‘But out of my expertise? Let us see: hmm, no. Because to be caught in flagrante with Terpie is not a strictly private problem. You have made a scandal, you idiot, to keep tongues wagging on the entire island till the spring thaw.’
‘You’ll excuse me if by now I don’t care very much for the flutterings of these people.’
‘These people are my occupation. And my neighbours. I rise and fall in their judgement. I live in their gaze. I don’t know how many times I have to explain this to you. You are not in London. You are not in London.’
Septimus was hissing at him across the table, a Toby-jug with a pressure of steam inside it.
‘You have explained quite sufficiently; I need no more explanations from you,’ Smith said, drawing back.
‘I will spell it out for you anyway. You have put horns on the head of Major Tomlinson. Therefore you have put ’em by implication on the head of the Governor and the whole administration of the colony. Everyone is laughing.’
‘I am not.’
‘Of no consequence – whether you are, or not. Of no consequence – what you meant by it. You have dishonoured us. You have made us ridiculous. You have given us a slight that must be answered. The Major cannot challenge you, or he would lose what little’s left him of his dignity, but the meeting was clear: you must be challenged.’
‘Well, I thank you for the warning,’ Smith said stiffly.
‘You misunderstand me. This is not a warning. This is the challenge.’ And Septimus reached across the table and slapped him hard across the face. The table lurched and the coffee-pot capsized, sending the dregs in black streams into his lap.
‘You will meet me tomo
rrow, early, on the Common, for a rencontre d’honneur,’ said Septimus ringingly, for the benefit of the whole room, ‘or stand convicted in all men’s eyes of a contemptible cowardice, as well as a contemptible incontinence, not worthy of the name of a gentleman.’
Smith gaped.
‘You should secure a second, and have him deliver a note of your reply, in writing, to the Fort.’
‘Who would I ask?’
‘Anyone who is laughing,’ cried Septimus. ‘You have pleased as many people as you have wounded. – Gods, you have me looking after you, even now; you have a hideous knack for it. Stop. Solve your own difficulties.’
*
To prepare for any duel is a melancholy business. Far from concentrating the mind – as it was observed, at about this time, that the expectation of being hanged on the morrow may do – it caused Mr Smith’s thoughts to skitter, without purchase on the grave matters at hand, like a kitten on a pane of glass; or, which would be more appropriate to the place and season, like a man flailing his arms as he endeavours not to fall, on an ice-slide. He could neither forget, for a single instant, what was coming, nor attend to it properly. He acquired a second for the duel, by the mere process of remaining dumb-struck in the Merchants once Septimus had swirled out. This was a gentleman attached in some way to the Assembly’s cause. In what way, was explained to him, yet he did not retain it, or even the gentleman’s name, although some time passed in the coffee-shop in notional conversation with him, during which it became clear that his supporter was hoping for payment in the coin of lubricious detail, of bedroom gossip. Smith did not provide it. At least, he thought he did not. At least, after a time, the gentleman was gone. In the same way, he began another letter to his father, to be opened in the event of this new New-York death, and discarded it scarcely begun, incapable of the fixity of purpose required to carry through an explanation. He discarded, without beginning at all, projects for letters of apology to Major Tomlinson – to Terpie – to Septimus. For a letter to Tabitha of persuasive reasoning on the subject of the poor synchronisation of hearts. No, for a letter of abject pleading. No, one of angry defiance. No. Skittering still, fizzing with inward anxiety, he made his way back to Broad Way, where he was thrown out of his lodging by Mrs Lee without particularly noticing it, she very probably making some choice remarks about respectable houses and those who abused them, he (of a certainty) making little response except a vague and distracted smile. He carried his trunk to a far more expensive and more grandiose room at the Black Horse, which he told himself the extra premium on his bill he had negotiated with Lovell would easily cover – unless he were dead tomorrow with the bill unpaid – this provoking a new skittering spiral of thoughts he could not complete, upon the subject of his errand, and his responsibilities, and the promises he might have broken by a contemptible incontinence. And whether he deserved the name of a gentleman. And whether he desired it. And what else he might call himself. And how afraid he was. And his father; and Tabitha; and Septimus. On and on, reeling dizzily through his head, in a whirl of fragmentary self-reproach, and worry, and disbelief, and annoyance, and renewed self-reproach. There may be persons in whom the possibility or certainty of approaching death induces a firm and vivacious grip on every remaining second as it passes. But Mr Smith was not one of these. For him, even the prospect that at a certain minute after dawn the next day he might cease to be, leaving the morning to go on without him, seemed to infect every passing instant in advance of the event, as if he were already part-dead, and hence already part-dislodged from the calendar. He was far less resigned than he had been in prison. Perhaps he had used his store of resignation up. Between the burgundy velvet curtains of his new bed he turned, and turned, and fretfully turned again. He might be killed, he might be injured, he might conceivably be able to defend himself to the point where Septimus judged that public opinion was satisfied. No terms had yet been mentioned for the duel: whether it would be to first blood, or à l’outrance. (Another technical term from the French, meaning till you turn up your toes.) He did not even consider the possibility that he might win. He had no desire to hurt Septimus. But it was more than that. He had, once upon a time, received some part of a gentleman’s training at sword-play, but it had never been used in earnest, and had been overlaid since by its flashing theatrical equivalent, good only for winning applause. He only really knew stage-fighting.
II
The part of the Common chosen for the duel was at the western end, away from the town, towards the pot-bank and the poor-house. The snow had melted back to a ring of scorched turf immediately around the kiln, but otherwise lay a foot deep, and where they were had been trampled to a compacted strip, dirty-white and crunching, bumped and socketed by the refrozen prints of boots going to and fro. It was a clear, cold dawn, with an intermittent icy breeze blowing, and a transparent flush of colour in the east, beyond the pale steeples of the snow-bound city. By this period of the winter a regular traffic of merchandise across the frozen East River had been established, and from the slight rise of the Common, black dots of humanity could already be seen out in the jumbled ice-field, slowly dragging sacks and boxes toward the city along a winding route where the going was smoothest. They seemed as remote as mites, and few other specimens of humanity were present. The cold and the hour had kept away most onlookers. Apart from the party assembled for the combat, a few curious paupers had come out from the poor-house gate and were standing in the snow in their foot-cloths, waiting to see what there might be to see, with Achilles near them, much better-dressed in the Governor’s livery, yet keeping the distance apt to his servile status. The nearest sentry had stepped over from the palisade to watch, with his arms hugged tight round him under his greatcoat, and clouds of exhaled breath steaming out of him around the thin trickle of smoke from his pipe.
Everyone wore a grave, somewhat church-going expression, even Smith’s improvised second, who seemed sobered into timidity by the reality of the occasion, now it had arrived. Lieutenant Lennox, acting for Septimus, was as grim as Cato as he checked that his principal’s blade and Smith’s sabre bought on credit were of a length, and secured the agreement of the parties that, on account of the cold, they would not strip to shirt-sleeves in the usual way, and might fight in their coats. Septimus’ face was as hard as china as well as as white; and a lizard would have seemed less impassive.
‘I take it that there is no possibility of compounding this with an apology?’ asked Lennox for the sake of form.
‘None,’ said Septimus instantly.
‘Very good,’ said Lennox. ‘Then the quarrel must be submitted to the arbitrament of arms. To first blood, or to the greater extremity?’
‘To satisfaction,’ said Septimus.
Smith, seeing in the obscurity of the term a faint glimmer, said at once, ‘I agree.’
‘Very well,’ said Lennox, after a fractional hesitation. ‘Gentlemen, step back; ready yourselves; commence at the fall of the handkerchief; break at the command “Break!”’
Smith stepped back, until perhaps twenty feet separated him from Septimus’ stare. The fervid confusions of the night had gone: he seemed to be breathing in clarity with the bitter air. His feet were cold, yet had fallen into the fencer’s position without him choosing it, ready for the dance. His friend unsheathed his sword: he unsheathed his, and held it before him, awaiting his cue. The kerchief dropped. They advanced.
Smith adopted the first guard, or guard of prime, with his hand pronated. Septimus, seeing this, struck fiercely at his unprotected head, which Smith countered, but barely, with a rattling move into tierce. Septimus disengaged with a rasp of steel, and lunged lower, in seconde. Smith replied in quarte. Quinte! Sixte! Prime! Seconde! – But really, this is useless, and no more enables the reader to see the battle, than if I shouted numbers at you; which, indeed, I appear to be doing. The truth is, that I am obliged to copy these names for sword-fighting out of a book, having no direct experience to call upon. I throw myself upon the reader�
��s mercy, or rather their sense of resignation. Having previously endured this tale’s treatment of the game of piquet, and of the act of love, they may with luck by now expect no great coherence in the reporting of a sword-fight. And yet it must be rendered somehow as Smith experienced it, panting, with blade skreeking against blade and the snow dragging at his feet; and the formal beauty of it too, for if you had had no stake in the outcome, and hovered just above, as disengaged as a seagull from the good or ill of the parties, you would have seen an order in the stepping, the leaping, the gathering, the falling-back, fit for the muses. Elegant, desperate, ridiculous, wilful spectacle of mortality! Come, we can do better than a stream of Gallic numerals.
The essence of stage-fighting is, to achieve a series of clashing parries, as noisy as possible; and though the parties usually co-operate in this, with their blades coming together in this place or that place in the air, by agreement; yet Smith, whisking his sword at what always seemed the last possible moment into the un-agreed path of Septimus’, at least had half the familiar task to execute. So long as he did not try to attack, but only countered, and countered, and countered, he found he could (just) keep off the whistling onslaught, at the price of being driven back, and back, and back. Soon they were off the trampled pathway selected as the ground, and Smith was backing into deeper snow toward the spot more or less where the great bonfire had burned, but where now a surface whipped to peaks like dirty egg-whites let through each foot into floundering softness. Smith was wading backward into it, slowed as if by molasses, his swordarm wavering with his balance; yet Septimus laboured under the same disability, and his attacks too were retarded and as it were thickened, both moving to a slower rhythm. Even so, the impetus was considerable, and they temporarily left the seconds and onlookers lagging behind. Smith, for the moment finding he still possessed fingers, limbs and head all intact, seized the chance of this peculiar privacy to say, or rather gasp: ‘Did it really. Have to be you?’
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