The Viscount ignored this helpful intervention, and, heedless of an anguished plea from Mr Ringwood, cast to the winds the guiding principle which had carried him scatheless through several years of intimacy with Lord Wrotham. “Name your friends, my lord!” he said fiercely.
“Sherry!” almost wailed Mr Fakenham. “Consider, dear boy! Not yourself! Can’t be in your senses! Put it down to the champagne! Pay no heed to him, George!”
Lord Wrotham, however, replied promptly: “With the greatest pleasure on earth! Gil, will you serve me?”
“You can’t have Gil!” exclaimed the Viscount hotly. “I’m going to have him myself!”
“Oh, no, you ain’t!” retorted George, abandoning his heroics. “You can have Ferdy.”
“I shall name both Ferdy and Gil,” said the Viscount loftily.
“Well, you won’t, because I’ve bespoke Gil already.”
“Dash it, you must have other friends besides Gil!” said Sherry.
“I have, but if you haven’t enough sense to keep this affair between the four of us, I have!” said George.
“Something in that, Sherry, dear old boy,” said Ferdy wisely. “Won’t do to spread it about George has been kissing your wife. If you must call him out — but, mind you, I’m not in favour of it, because you know what he is, and ten to one the whole thing is a hum! — I’ll act for you, and between us Gil and I will fix it up all right and tight. But mind this, George! If you choose pistols you’re not the man I thought you!”
“Well, I shall,” said George instantly.
“Let him choose what he likes: it makes no odds to me!” said Sherry grandly. “I shall send Mr Fakenham to wait on your second, my lord, and let me tell you that I consider it a curst mean trick of you to name Gil before I had a chance to do so myself!”
Chapter Thirteen
IT WAS LAID DOWN IN THE CODE OF HONOUR that the first duty of the seconds in an encounter was to do all that lay in their power to bring about a reconciliation between their principals, and never did seconds use greater endeavours in this direction than Mr Ringwood and the Honourable Ferdy Fakenham. Indeed, neither of these gentlemen confined his powers of persuasion to his own principaclass="underline" severally, and together, they exhorted and cajoled both would-be combatants. Their efforts met with no success, the Viscount stating bluntly that however innocent George’s intentions might have been he was not going to draw back from an engagement; and George taking up the attitude that since he was not the challenger it was useless to address any representations to him whatsoever.
“Dash it, George!” said the exasperated Mr Fakenham. “You can’t expect Sherry to take it back!”
“I don’t,” said George.
“No getting away from it,” said Mr Ringwood. “You’re in the wrong. Ought to own it. No business to kiss Sherry’s wife.”
“Sherry’s a dog in the manger!” said George, his eye kindling. “Why don’t he kiss her himself? Tell me that!”
“Nothing to do with the case,” replied Mr Ringwood. “What’s more, not your affair, George. I don’t say you’re wrong, but it don’t alter facts: you ought not to kiss her!”
“Very well! Let Sherry blow a hole in me — if he can!”
“I’m surprised at you, George!” Mr Ringwood said severely. “You know very well poor Sherry’s no match for you!”
“Yes, and there’s another thing!” interposed Ferdy. “It’s devilish shabby of you, so it is, George, to stand out for twenty-five yards!”
“George!” said Mr Ringwood, with all the earnestness at his command. “I tell you it won’t do! He may not choose to own it, but Sherry knows as well as I do there was nothing in it! Whole affair can be settled as easy as winking! Need only explain the circumstances to Sherry — feel persuaded he would meet you half way!”
“Do you expect me to draw back from an engagement?” demanded George.
“He’s in his airs again!” said Ferdy despairingly. “I never knew such a fellow, never!”
“I see no reason why you should not, George,” said Mr Ringwood. “If anyone ever knew anything about it, which they won’t, they wouldn’t think you was afraid to meet Sherry. The idea’s absurd!”
“That’s it: absurd!” corroborated Ferdy. “What’s more, if they did think it, they wouldn’t dare say so,” he added, naïvely. “If you ask me, it’s a pity no one does dare say a word you don’t like to you: do you good! It would really, old fellow! However, it’s no use worrying over that now!”
“Unless you can prevail upon Sherry to withdraw his cartel, I shall meet him at Westbourn Green tomorrow morning,” said George inexorably. “And if you think you can so prevail upon him, you don’t know Sherry!”
Upon this intransigent note he parted from his friends, leaving them in great perplexity. The trouble was, Ferdy said, that you never could tell, with George. Mr Ringwood agreed that when George was in his high ropes there was no knowing at all what mad act he would take it into his head to commit. Both gentlemen sat in gloomy silence for some minutes, meditating on all the grim possibilities of the approaching duel. Mr Ringwood could not but feel that the Honourable Ferdy had touched the very kernel of the matter when he raised his head and said that the devil of it was that George couldn’t miss. He drew a breath, and said: “Got to be stopped. Dash it, can’t let George kill poor Sherry! Tell you what, Ferdy: nothing for it but to talk to Lady Sherry.”
Mr Fakenham, always very nice in all matters of etiquette, looked shocked, but his scruples were overborne.
“I know it ain’t usual,” said Mr Ringwood, “but Kitten is mighty friendly with Miss Milborne, and if there’s anyone alive can stop George when he has the bit between his teeth it’s she!”
Mr Fakenham was moved to seize his friend by the hand, and to shake it fervently. “Gil, dear old boy, you’re right!” he said. “Always knew you had a head on your shoulders! Not but what it’s dashed irregular, you know! Ought never to mention such things to females!”
“Never mind that!” said Mr Ringwood impatiently. “Go round to Half Moon Street now, while Sherry’s safely out of the way!”
The two gentlemen accordingly set forth together, and were fortunate enough to find Hero at home, and alone. They were ushered upstairs into the drawing-room, and here Mr Ringwood bluntly informed his hostess of the nature of his errand.
Having already a very fair idea of what was toward, Hero did not, as Mr Fakenham had a horrid fear she might, faint, or go into strong hysterics. Her husband’s strictures on her conduct, delivered on their way home on the previous evening, had been so forceful that she had quailed under them, and barely found enough voice to enable her to explain to him that she had been attempting merely to comfort poor George, who was in such despair over Isabella’s cruelty. His wrath had cooled by that time, and he had no difficulty in believing her account of the affair; but the stern lecture of which he delivered himself on the impropriety of offering that particular kind of comfort to young bachelors would have done credit to the strictest duenna, and made his wife weep with penitence. The Viscount then unbent, dried her tears, told her that it was not her fault — at least, not entirely her fault — and that he should have known better than to have introduced such a hardened reprobate as George Wrotham to her. This she could by no means allow, and she explained, sniffing dolefully between sentences, that it was indeed her fault, and that George had kissed her in the most brotherly fashion, and without really considering what he was doing. The Viscount replied with some asperity that since she had no brothers she knew nothing of the matter; but being a gentleman of varied experience he was perfectly well able to appreciate the situation, and even — though this he kept to himself — to wish that he had not allowed his temper to get the better of him. But when Hero timidly expressed the hope that he had not quarrelled with George, the only answer she could get from him was an unconvincing assurance that there was no need for her to worry her head over him.