The seconds stepped back, the word was given. My lord’s pistol hand jerked up swiftly; there was a flash and a report, followed almost instantly by an answering shot. Mr Quarles’s bullet buried itself in the wall beyond my lord, and Mr Quarles pitched forward on to his face.
The Marquis tossed his pistol to Mr Fox. ‘Give ’em to my man, Charles,’ he said, and turned away to pick up his snuff-box, and handkerchief.
‘Damn you, Vidal, I believe you have killed him!’ Rupert said angrily.
‘I’m very nearly sure of it, dear uncle,’ said the Marquis.
Mr Comyn, on his knees beside the fallen man, looked up. ‘A surgeon should be fetched,’ he said. ‘I do not think that life is extinct.’
‘I must be more drunk than I knew, then,’ remarked his lordship. ‘I’m sorry, Charles; I meant to make the place habitable for you.’
Lord Cholmondley started towards him. ‘Devil take you, Vidal, you’d best be gone. You’ve done enough for one night.’
‘I thought so, certainly,’ said the Marquis. ‘Mr Comyn apparently disagrees.’ He glanced at the clock. ‘Hell and damnation, it’s past five already!’
‘You’re surely not driving to Newmarket now?’ cried Captain Wraxall, appalled by his callousness.
‘Why not?’ said Vidal coolly.
Captain Wraxall sought for words, and found none. The Marquis turned on his heel and went out.
Five
It was only a little past noon on the following day when her Grace of Avon, accompanied most unwillingly by Lord Rupert, first called at Vidal’s home. The Marquis’s major-domo responded to his lordship’s anxious look with the smallest of bows. Lord Rupert heaved a sigh of relief. One never knew what might be found in Vidal’s apartments.
‘I want my son,’ her grace stated flatly.
But it appeared that the Marquis had not returned from Newmarket.
‘There, what did I tell you?’ said Rupert. ‘Leave a note for him, my dear. The devil alone knows when he’ll be back, eh, Fletcher?’
‘I have no precise knowledge myself, my lord.’
‘I shall come back again later,’ announced her grace.
‘But, Léonie –’
‘And again, and again, and again until he has returned,’ said her grace obstinately.
She kept her word, but on her last visit, in full ball dress at seven in the evening, she declared that she would enter the house and await her son there.
Lord Rupert followed her weakly into the hall. ‘Ay, but I’m on my way to Devereaux’s card party,’ he expostulated. ‘I can’t stay here all night!’
The Duchess flung out exasperated hands. ‘Well, go then!’ she said. ‘I find you fort ennuyant ! For me, I must see Dominique, and I do not need you at all.’
‘You always were an ungrateful chit,’ complained his lordship. ‘Here am I dancing attendance on you the whole day, and all you can say is that you don’t need me.’
Léonie’s irrepressible dimple peeped out. ‘But it is quite true, Rupert; I do not need you. When I have seen Dominique I shall take a chair to my party. It is very simple.’
‘No, you won’t,’ said Rupert. ‘Not with those diamonds on you.’ He followed her into the library, where a small fire burned, and struggled out of his greatcoat. ‘Where’s that fellow gone off to? Fletcher! What’s his lordship in the cellar that her grace would like?’
The suave Fletcher showed some small signs of perplexity at that. ‘I will endeavour, my lord…’
The Duchess had cast off her cloak, and seated herself by the fire. ‘Ah, bah, I do not want your ratafia, me. I will drink a glass of port with you, mon vieux.’
Lord Rupert scratched his head, tilting his wig slightly askew. ‘Oh, very well! But it’s not what I’d call a lady’s drink.’
‘Me, I am not a lady,’ announced her grace. ‘I have been very well educated, and I will drink port.’
Fletcher withdrew, quite impassive. His lordship remonstrated once more. ‘Y’know you mustn’t talk like that before servants, Léonie. ’Pon my soul –’
‘If you like,’ interrupted Léonie, ‘I will play piquet with you till Dominique comes.’
Dominic came an hour later. A sulky dashed up the street and stopped outside the house. Léonie flung down her cards, and ran to the window, pulling aside the heavy curtains, but was too late to catch a glimpse of her son. A groom was already driving the sulky away, and inside the house a door slammed, and Fletcher’s discreet voice sounded. A sharper one answered; a quick step trod in the hall, and Vidal came into the library.
He was pale, and his eyes were frowning and tired. Mud had generously splashed his breeches and plain buff coat, and his neck-cloth was crumpled and limp. ‘Ma mère! ’ he said, surprise in his voice.
Léonie momentarily forgot her mission. She went to him, grasping the lapels of his coat. ‘Oh, you have not killed yourself ! But tell me, Dominique, at once, did you get there in the time?’
His hands covered hers with a gesture rather mechanical. ‘Yes, of course. But what are you doing here? Rupert, too? Is anything amiss?’
‘Anything amiss,’ exploded Rupert. ‘That’s rich! ’Pon my soul, that’s rich! Oh, there’s naught amiss, never fear! You’ve only killed that fellow Quarles and set the whole town in a roar.’
‘Dead, is he?’ said his lordship. He put Léonie from him, and walked to the table. ‘Well, I thought as much.’
‘No, no, he is not dead!’ Léonie said vehemently. ‘You shan’t say so, Rupert!’
‘It don’t matter what I say,’ responded my lord. ‘If he ain’t dead now he will be in a day’s time. You fool, Vidal.’
The Marquis had poured himself out a glass of wine, but was looking down at the red liquid instead of drinking it. ‘Runners after me?’
‘They will be,’ his uncle said grimly.
A heavy frown was gathering. The Marquis’s lips tightened. ‘Damnation!’ His glance flickered to Léonie’s troubled face. ‘Don’t let it disturb you, madame, I beg.’
‘Dominique, did you – did you, in effect, mean to kill him?’ she asked, her eyes on his face.
He shrugged. ‘Oh, since I fought at all, yes.’
‘I do not mind you killing people when you have reason, you know, but – but – was there a reason, mon enfant ?’ said her grace.
‘The fellow was drunk, and you knew it, Vidal!’ Rupert said.
‘Perfectly.’ The Marquis sipped his wine. ‘But so was I drunk.’ Again he looked towards Léonie. What he saw in her face made him say with a kind of suppressed violence: ‘Why do you look at me like that? You know what I am, do you not? Do you not?’
‘Here, Dominic!’ his uncle said, in a voice of protest. ‘You’re talking to your mother, boy.’
Léonie raised an admonishing finger. ‘Enough, Rupert. Yes, I know, my little one, and I am very unhappy for you.’ She blinked away a tear. ‘You are too much my son.’
‘Fiddle!’ said Vidal roughly. He put down his glass, the wine in it unfinished. The clock on the mantelpiece chimed the hour, and he looked quickly around at it. ‘I must go. Why did you come? To tell me Quarles is as good as dead? I knew it.’
‘No, not for that,’ Léonie replied. ‘I think – I think there is a billet for you from Monseigneur.’
The Marquis’s laugh held a note of recklessness. ‘Be sure. I have it in my pocket. Inform him, madame, that I shall wait upon him in the morning.’
There was real trouble in Léonie’s face. ‘Dominique, you do not seem to me to understand at all. Monseigneur is enraged. He says you must leave the country, and, oh, my dear one, I beg you not to anger him any more! You should wait on him at once.’
‘Who told him?’ Vidal answered. ‘You, Rupert?’
‘Fiend seize you, d
o you take me for a tale-bearer? You young fool, he saw it!’
The frowning eyes stared at him. ‘What the devil do you mean?’
‘You’d no sooner got clear of the place – and a pretty turmoil you left behind you, I can tell you – than in walks Avon with Hugh Davenant.’ Lord Rupert, apparently overcome by the recollection, mopped his brow with his fine lace handkerchief.
‘What, at five o’clock in the morning?’ demanded the Marquis.
‘It wasn’t as much as that, not but what I thought myself ’twas the wine got into my head when I clapped eyes on him. He’d been at Old White’s all night, d’ye see, playing pharaoh, and the devil put it into his head to call in at Timothy’s, to see what sort of a hell it was that his precious son had honoured with his patronage. “And I perceive,” said he, “that it is indeed something beyond the common.” Now I put it to you, Vidal, isn’t it Avon all over to walk in pat like that?’
The frown was lifting. A gleam shone in the Marquis’s eyes. ‘Of course it was inevitable. Tell me it all.’
‘Lord, I was so rattled, I don’t know what happened. There was young Comyn holding a napkin to the wound you’d blown through Quarles’s chest, and someone splashing water about, and Wraxall shouting for the porter to run for a surgeon, and the rest of us in the devil of a fluster, and all at once I saw Avon standing in the doorway with his glass held up to his eye, and Davenant gaping beside him. Well, you know how it is when your father is about. There was an end to the noise; everyone was watching Avon, save Comyn – I’d say that lad is a cool hand – who went on staunching the blood as calm as you please. If you ask me, Avon saw the whole at a glance, but he chose to look all round, mighty bland, and then down at Quarles. Then he says to Davenant: “I was informed, my dear Hugh, that Timothy’s was unlike other hells. And I perceive,” says he – but I told you that bit. Of course, if I’d had my wits about me, I’d have left by the window, but I don’t deny I had a deal of champagne in me. Well, your father turned his infernal quizzing-glass towards me. I was waiting for that. “I suppose,” says he, “I need not ask where is my son.”’ Lord Rupert shook his head wisely. ‘Y’know, he’s devilish acute, Vidal; you must grant him that.’
‘I do,’ said his lordship, with the ghost of a laugh. ‘Go on, what next? I wish I had seen all this.’
‘Do you, begad?’ said his uncle. ‘You might have had my place for the asking. Well, I said you’d gone. Young Comyn took it up in that finicky voice of his. ‘I apprehend, sir,’ says he, ‘that his lordship is by now upon the road to Newmarket.’ Avon turns his glass on him at that. ‘Indeed!’ says he, devilish polite. ‘I fear my son has untidy habits. This gentleman’ – and he points his quizzing-glass at Quarles – ‘this gentleman – I think unknown to me – is no doubt his latest victim?’ I can’t give you his tone, but you know how he says things like that, Vidal.’
‘None better. Oh, but I make him my compliments. He comes off with the honours. Did he make my apologies?’
‘Well, now you mention it, I believe he did,’ said Rupert. ‘But he divided the honours with that Comyn lad. We’d all lost our tongues. But Comyn says – which I thought handsome of him – “As to that, sir, the late affair was in a sort forced upon his lordship. I believe, sir, no man could swallow what was said, though I am bound to confess that neither of the principals was sober.” And I thought to myself, well, you must be damned sober, my lad, to get all that out without so much as a stammer.’
The Marquis’s face showed his interest. ‘Said that, did he? Mighty kind of him.’ He shrugged, half smiling. ‘Or mighty clever.’
Léonie, who had been gazing into the fire, raised her head at that. ‘Why was it clever?’
‘Madame, I spoke a thought aloud.’ He looked at the clock again. ‘I can’t stay longer. Tell my father I will wait on him in the morning. To-night I have an engagement I can’t break.’
‘Dominique, don’t you understand that if that man dies, you must not be in England?’ Léonie cried. ‘Monseigneur says that this time there will be trouble. It has happened too often.’
‘So I’m to make off like a scared mongrel, eh? I think not!’ He bent over her hand for a moment. ‘Pray do not show that anxious face to the world, maman; it accords very ill with our dignity.’
In another moment he was gone. Léonie looked dolefully at Lord Rupert. ‘Do you suppose it is that bourgeoise, Rupert?’
‘Devil a doubt!’ said his lordship glumly. ‘But I’ll tell you what, Léonie; if we can pack him off to France there’ll be an end to that affair.’
It was as well for his peace of mind that he did not follow his nephew that evening. The Marquis stayed only to change his mud-stained garments, and was off again within twenty minutes, bound for the Theatre Royal. The play was more than half over, and in one of the boxes Sophia Challoner displayed a pouting countenance. Eliza Matcham had been twitting her the whole evening on the non-appearance of her fine beau, and she was in no very good humour. Her sister, with Cousin Joshua assiduously at her elbow, said tranquilly that the Marquis could hardly be expected to come after the happenings of the night before.
For the tale of the duel had spread like wildfire, so that the backwash of the sea of rumour had already reached Miss Challoner’s ears. It had also reached those of Cousin Joshua, who was not slow to say what he thought of the profligate Marquis. Sophia told him sharply that it was presumption in him to judge one so far above him, and by the time he had thought out a suitable retort, she had turned her white shoulder, and was talking with great vivacity to Mr Matcham. Cousin Joshua addressed the rest of his homily to Miss Challoner, who listened in silence. Her gaze was so abstracted that he was beginning to suspect her of inattention. Then he observed a change in her expression. She stiffened, and her eyes grew intent and widened a little. Even Joshua could not suppose that this sudden interest was caused by his discourse, and he turned his head to see what had caught her eye.
‘Upon my soul!’ he said, puffing out his cheeks. ‘Shameless! If he has the effrontery to approach Sophia I shall know how to act.’
The Marquis of Vidal was standing in the pit, raking the boxes with his quizzing-glass.
A laugh trembled on Miss Challoner’s lips. Shameless? Of course he was shameless, but he was sublimely unconscious of it, unconscious too of the notice he was attracting from all who recognised him.
Mary looked at her cousin at last. ‘That is just as well, Joshua,’ she said, ‘for I think he is going to approach her now.’
Mr Simpkins saw the Marquis elbowing his way through the crowd in the pit, and tugged at Sophia’s sleeve. ‘Cousin!’ said he, ‘I cannot but consider myself responsible for you, and I forbid you to speak with that profligate.’
This had not quite the desired effect. Sophia’s pout turned to an expression of sparkling eagerness. ‘Oh, is he here? Where? I do not see him. I knew he would never fail me. How I shall scold him for being so late!’
The Marquis had disappeared from the floor of the house by this time, and in a few minutes his knock fell on the door of the box, and he entered.
Sophia greeted him with a smile that reproached and yet beckoned. ‘Why, is it you indeed, my lord? I vow I had given you up. La, we have been hearing such tales of you! I declare I am half afraid of you.’
‘Are you? Why?’ inquired his lordship, kissing her hand. ‘Do you think I would hurt anything half so pretty as you?’
‘Oh, lord, I don’t know what you might not do if I angered you,’ laughed Sophia.
‘Then don’t anger me,’ advised the Marquis. ‘Walk with me in the corridor instead. The curtain won’t go up for a few minutes yet.’
‘No, but do you know this is the fifth act? Positively, you have only come in time to hear the end of the play, and the farce.’
‘Well, you had better instruct me in what it is all about,’ said his lordsh
ip coolly.
‘You don’t deserve that I should,’ Sophia said, getting up from her chair. ‘Well, if I do walk with you outside, it will only be for a moment.’
Mr Simpkins cleared his throat portentously, attracting the Marquis’s somewhat bored notice. ‘You spoke, sir?’ Vidal said with so much haughtiness that Mr Simpkins became flustered, and stammered something quite inaudible.
The Marquis smiled a little, and was just about to leave the box, with Sophia on his arm, when he caught sight of Miss Challoner’s flushed countenance. His brows lifted slightly. What the devil was the girl blushing for? She looked up as though she felt his gaze upon her, and her eyes met his steadily for a moment. He read disdain in them, and was amused, and asked Sophia as soon as they were out of the box what he had done to offend her sister.
She shrugged up her pretty shoulders. ‘Oh, sister doesn’t approve of your dreadful wicked ways, my lord.’
He suffered from a moment’s surprise. Nothing in Sophia, or her mamma and cousins had led him to suspect that her sister was likely to be strait-laced. Mrs Challoner he wrote down an elderly harpy; the Matchams were frankly vulgar. He laid his right hand on Sophia’s, lying on his arm. ‘Strait-laced, is she? Are you so, too?’
She raised her eyes to his, and saw them gleaming with some light that both frightened and excited her. Her colour fluctuated deliciously. The Marquis shot a quick look up and down the deserted corridor, and caught Sophia hard against his breast. ‘One kiss!’ he said in a voice made suddenly husky with passion, and took it. She made a half-hearted struggle to break free. ‘Oh, my lord!’ she protested. ‘Oh, no, you must not!’ He had her fast round the waist, and with his free hand he cupped her chin, holding her head up so that he might look into her face. ‘You can’t keep me at arm’s length for ever, you little beauty. I want you. Will you come to me?’
The direct attack flustered her. She began to say: ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ but he interrupted her: ‘Everything of the most dishonourable. Remember that, my pretty dear, for I don’t cheat, at love or cards.’