The Master of the Ceremonies Part 44

"We shall want an excuse for going out so early, my lad. We can be going to bathe, and so be unnoticed, and there will be no fear of an interruption," said the Colonel grimly. "This is to be no play affair, d.i.c.k. An officer in His Majesty's service cannot submit to a horse-whipping from a civilian without trying to get ample satisfaction."

He looked at Richard with a grave air of pity in his countenance.

"Did you ever shoot a man?" said Richard, as they were walking briskly back.

"Do you mean wounded or killed?"

"The latter."

"Once, d.i.c.k."

The young man's countenance contracted, and he looked at his companion almost in horror.

"Yes," said the Colonel; "it is horrible, d.i.c.k, and the remembrance that the man was an utter scoundrel does not make the fact much less horrible after all these years."

They walked on for some distance in silence, before Richard Linnell broke in upon his companion's reverie.

"Was the duel about--a lady?"

The Colonel uttered a harsh laugh.

"It's an arrangement of nature, my dear Ulysses," he said. "If you see a couple of stags smashing their antlers, a couple of bulls goring each other, or two rams battering one another's heads, a brace of pheasants or barn-door c.o.c.ks pecking and spurring each other to death, what's it about? A lady. The same with mankind, d.i.c.k; a duel is almost invariably more or less directly about a lady."

Richard Linnell went on thoughtfully for a time, and then turned with a sad smile to the Colonel.

"So even you had to do battle once in such a cause?"

"Not exactly, d.i.c.k; it was upon another's behalf. An utter scoundrel, just such a fellow as Rockley, did my best friend a mortal wrong. One day, d.i.c.k, it was a happy, peaceful home that I used to visit, where as sweet-natured, true, and gentle a man as ever breathed lived in happy trust and faith in his sweet young wife; the next there was a stain--an indelible stain--upon that hearth-stone, and my poor friend lay stricken down by the shock, and nearly died of the brain fever that ensued."

Richard Linnell looked at him with a curious feeling of horror--he knew not why--troubling his breast.

"Do you want to know any more?" said the Colonel roughly.

"Yes; go on."

"I did not see either of them for two years: the young wife or the scoundrel I had introduced to the house as my friend. Then I had a letter from the lady--a piteous, appealing letter to me to help her.

She told me she was starving in London, d.i.c.k, and that the villain who had won her into leaving her home had forsaken her at the end of six months, and that, since then, she had been striving to get a living by teaching, but that now she was prostrate on a sick bed, helpless and alone."

There was a few moments' pause, and then the Colonel went on:

"I went to see her, d.i.c.k--poor, little, weak woman. Her good looks were gone, and she lay sick unto death for want of medical help and ordinary nutriment."

The Colonel stopped again, for his mouth seemed dry, and he pa.s.sed his tongue over his fevered lips before he went on.

"I did what was necessary, and went straight to the man who had done all this wrong. I told him everything, and that it was his duty to make some reparation at least by providing for the lady's needs, and ensuring that she should not want in the future."

"Well?" said Richard hoa.r.s.ely.

"He laughed at me. He refused so utterly that I lost my temper and called him villain and scoundrel. He retorted by insulting me with a vile charge as to the cause of my taking an interest in that poor woman, and he struck me, and then--"

"Well," said Richard, "and then?"

"I horsewhipped him, d.i.c.k, as you horsewhipped that man."

"And he challenged you, and you fought, and--"

"Yes, heaven forgive me," said Mellersh in a low voice, "I shot him dead!"

"You did this for the woman you did not love," said Richard Linnell, as if speaking to himself. "Yes, for the woman I did not love."

"What I did was for the woman I love with all my heart."

Volume Two, Chapter V.

A RETIRED SPOT FOR A BATHE.

It was a cold grey morning as Colonel Mellersh and Richard Linnell went out on to the parade, quite unaware that a pair of dark eyes were watching from behind an upper blind; but the fact that each man carried a towel in his hand disarmed suspicion, and the owner of the eyes went back to the couch in her room as the gentlemen pa.s.sed out of sight.

"I was afraid," she said to herself softly. "Perhaps there was no truth in it after all."

Meanwhile, the Colonel and Richard Linnell went briskly on past the pier, with no one yet astir upon the parade; but farther on there were boats putting out to sea, and fishermen carrying oars and baskets down to those lying on the shingle.

As they went on along the cliff, Fisherman d.i.c.k was down by his upturned boat, trying the pitch, to find out whether it was hardened, and hearing the voices, he looked up and saw the two men pa.s.s.

"Master Richard Linnell--the Colonel," he said to himself. "Bathing, eh? Well, it's lonesome enough out there."

The mist hung over the sea, and the waves came in with a mournful sound upon the sh.o.r.e, the pebbles rattling together as they were driven up and rolled back with the retiring waters, sounding in the distance as if they were whispering together about the meeting that was about to take place a mile or so onward, beyond the chalk bluff, where the land trended inward, and formed a little bay.

Fisherman d.i.c.k found the bottom of his boat rather sticky, but he did not seem to be thinking about it, but to be putting that and that together.

"Master Richard Linnell give that Major Rockley an out and out good welting yonder in the cornfield, and if he'd been with him instead of that tother one, I should say there was going to be a fight with pistols; but I suppose it means a bit of a swim, and--"

d.i.c.k Miggles bent down over his boat, and seemed to be paying not the least heed, for just then he saw four people coming down the cliff path on to the beach, and as they pa.s.sed he saw that they were Rockley, Sir Harry Payne, a gentleman he did not know, and the Major's dragoon servant, James Bell, carrying something under his military cloak.

"It's a fight," said d.i.c.k Miggles, as they pa.s.sed him, picking their way down over the shingle to the firmer ground, close to the water's edge, where there were long stretches of sand, and it was better walking.

"Now, what shall I do?" said Fisherman d.i.c.k; "go and tell the constables? They'd be abed, and it would take me an hour to get back with them, and the mischief would be done before then. Anyhow, I'll go and see what's going on."

By this time Mellersh and Linnell had pa.s.sed out of sight along the sh.o.r.e, and the second party were a hundred yards away.

Fisherman d.i.c.k did not hesitate, but, going back up the cliff path, he reached the top, and walked swiftly along eastward for some distance.

Then, throwing himself down, he crawled flat on the ground, taking off his hat and leaving it behind him.

In a few seconds he was at the edge of the cliff, where the soft sh.o.r.e turf ended, and the chalk was broken away, going sheer down perpendicularly to the shingle beach and rough rock debris that had fallen from time to time after undermining by the sea. As he expected, the two little parties were below.

"They're going to fight, sure enough," muttered the fisherman. "I may as well go and see fair. Where'll they do it?"

He lay still for a few moments thinking.