“You know, Kitten,” he said, outside her chamber door, “if anything were to happen to me at any time — mind you, I don’t say anything will, but you never know! — well, what I mean is, I’ve made all the proper provisions, and — and no strings tied to ’em, so that you’ll be able to marry again, if you choose.”
“I never, never should!” Hero said, holding his hand very tightly.
“No reason why you shouldn’t. Only don’t have George, brat! He wouldn’t suit you at all!”
“Sherry, don’t!” she begged. “Nothing will happen to you!”
“No, I dare say not, but I thought I might just mention the matter,” he said carelessly. “And if it did, I wouldn’t wish you to fret about it, you know.”
“No, no, I won’t!” she promised. “Only don’t talk in that way, Sherry, for even though I know nothing will happen to you I do not like it!”
“Silly little puss!” he said, pinching her nose. “Did you enjoy the play?”
“Oh, I did!”
“Well, I’m glad of that, at all events,” he said, and on this altruistic thought took himself upstairs to bed.
His cousin Ferdy called at the house for him at a chill, slightly misty hour on the following morning. The Viscount was quite ready for him, and except that he looked a trifle more serious than was customary, he seemed to be in good spirits. He jumped up into the tilbury beside Ferdy, his many-caped greatcoat buttoned up to his throat, and asked briskly: “Got the pistols?”
“Gil has,” replied Ferdy. He added: “Thought we had best engage a surgeon too, just in case .... Still, I dare say he won’t be needed.”
“You never know,” said the Viscount. “Mist’s lifting nicely. Couldn’t have had a better morning for it!”
They arrived at the appointed meeting-place to find George and Mr Ringwood already upon the ground. The two principals exchanged formal bows. The seconds, inspecting the deadly weapons, held a short, whispered colloquy.
“George said anything to you?” asked Ferdy.
“No. Putting on airs to be interesting,” replied Mr Ringwood, with brutal candour.
“Dash it, he can’t mean to blow a hole through Sherry!”
“Just what I think myself. Queer I didn’t hear from Lady Sherry, though.”
While this dialogue was in progress, Sherry had cast off his drab driving coat, and buttoned the plain, dark coat he wore under it up to his chin, so that it completely hid his white shirt. He had been careful to choose a coat with small, dark buttons, so that he should afford his adversary no unnecessary mark; and he noticed, with some annoyance, that Lord Wrotham, as though in open contempt of his marksmanship, was wearing the blue and yellow striped waistcoat of the Four Horse Club, and a coat with gleaming silver buttons.
The paces were measured; the principals took up their positions, the duelling pistols, with their ten-inch barrels and hair-triggers set at half cock, pointing earthwards; the seconds retreated eight paces; the doctor turned his back upon the proceedings; and Mr Ringwood took out a handkerchief, and held it up. As it fell, George jerked up his right hand, and deloped. A second later the Viscount’s bullet buried itself in a tree trunk quite three feet to the left of his opponent. The next instant he had lowered his pistol, and said furiously: “Damn you, George, will you stop being noble?”
“Good God, Sherry!” George said, disgustedly surveying the wounded tree, “you can do better than that, dash it, man!”
“Better than that? I meant to hit it!” retorted Sherry, much incensed.
“Who’s being noble now?” demanded George, strolling across the ground to give his pistol up to Mr Ringwood. “You must have been practising. Here you are, Gil!”
Mr Ringwood, too relieved for speech, took the weapon, held out his hand for Sherry’s and restored both to their case. The late antagonists looked at one another measuringly.
“What I’ve a dashed good mind to do,” said Sherry, “is to take my coat off to you, George, and see if I can’t draw your claret! It’s what I ought to have done in the first place!”
“No, my God, not before we’ve had breakfast!” replied George. His reluctant grin dawned; he thrust out his hand. “I’m sorry, Sherry! Never meant to do it, you know, and really there wasn’t a mite of harm in it.”
“Oh, go to the devil!” responded Sherry, gripping his hand. “If ever I met such a fellow! Here, did you think to order breakfast, Ferdy?”
Chapter Fourteen
THE LAST SHREDS OF ANIMOSITY VANISHED over the substantial breakfast provided by the landlord of an adjacent inn; and so mellowing was the effect of the ale with which the four young gentlemen washed down vast quantities of beef, ham, and pigeon pie, that Sherry had no hesitation in allowing his friends to share the jest of his having actually gone to the lengths of drawing up his Will on the previous day. George shouted with laughter when he heard about this, and said that if he had known that Sherry could hit a tree when he aimed at it he would very likely have drawn up his own Will. This naturally put Sherry on his mettle, and he at once challenged George to a shooting contest, to be held at Manton’s Gallery. Mr Ringwood and Mr Fakenham, always ready for a side bet, objected that unless George were to be suitably handicapped no one in his senses would bet against him, and the rest of the meal passed in arguing over all the more impossible forms of handicap which suggested themselves to four gentlemen in the sort of high spirits into which sudden relief from twenty-four hours of anxiety had plunged them. When they finally left the inn, Ferdy and Mr Ringwood went off together in Ferdy’s tilbury, and George took up Sherry in his phaeton, promising to set him down in Half Moon Street.
“Kitten will be wanting to be assured of your safety,” he grinned.
“Oh, she don’t know anything about it!” replied Sherry.
George made no remark upon this for a moment or two, but when he had thought the matter over he decided to be open with Sherry. He said frankly: “Yes, she does. Wasn’t going to tell you, but now I come to think of it your coachman knows, and ten to one if you heard of it through him you’d be wanting to cut my liver out again. It was Gil’s fault. Ferdy’s too. The silly gudgeons thought I meant to kill you. They must think I’m a rum ’un! What must they do but go off to tell Kitten the whole! The lord knows what they thought she could do, for even Ferdy can’t have supposed you’d rat, and they can’t either of them have meant that she should come to see me — which is what she did do.”
“What?” gasped Sherry.
George nodded. “Yesterday morning. You know, Sherry, you ought to keep an eye on your Kitten. Not my business, but she’s such a baby there’s no knowing what she’ll do next. Came to beg me not to meet you.”
“If that isn’t like Kitten!” exclaimed Sherry. “You know, George, there’s no keeping pace with her at all! How was I to guess I ought to have warned her to take a hackney, if she meant to call at a man’s lodgings?”
George looked a trifle startled, and said: “The point is she ought not to call at a fellow’s lodgings, old boy.”
“No, by Jove, she ought not!” agreed Sherry. “Devil of a business being married, George! You’ve no notion! Never thought I should be kept so busy, but what with the Royal Saloon, the Peerless Pool — yes, I was only in the very nick of time to stop her going off there! — Bartholomew Fair, and now this, not to mention a few other starts — dash it, I don’t have a quiet moment!”