Philip Winwood Part 27

She looked at him for a moment, with a slight curling of the lip; witnessed his recovery from the fear that she might throw herself upon his care; saw his comfort at being relieved of a possible burden he was not prepared to a.s.sume; and then said, very quietly:

"I think Mrs. Russell is coming. You had best go."

With a look of gallant adoration, he made to kiss her hand first. But she drew it away, and put her finger to her lip, as if to bid him depart unheard. When he had left the house, she fell upon the sofa and wept, but only for wounded vanity, for chagrin that she had exposed her heart to one of those gentry who will adore a woman until there is danger of her becoming an embarra.s.sment.

Before long, she arose, and dried her eyes, and went up-stairs to pack her trunks. Thus ended this very light affair of the heart; which had so heavy consequences for so many people.

But Captain Falconer's inward serenity was not to escape with this unexpectedly easy ordeal. When he reached his room, he found me awaiting him, as the representative of Tom Faringfield. I had, in obedience to my sense of duty, put forth a few conventional dissuasions against Tom's fighting the captain; and had presumed to hint that I was nearer to him in years and experience than Tom was.

But the boy replied with only a short, bitter laugh at the a.s.sured futility of my attempts. Plainly, if there was to be fighting over this matter, I ought not to seek a usurpation of Tom's right. And fighting there would be, I knew, whether I said yea or nay. Since Tom must have a second, that place was mine. And I felt, too, with a young man's foolish faith in poetic justice, that the right must win; that his adversary's superiority in age--and therefore undoubtedly in practice, Falconer being the man he was--would not avail against an honest lad avenging the probity of a sister. And so I yielded countenance to the affair, and went, as soon as my duty permitted, to wait upon Captain Falconer.

"Why," said he, when I had but half told my errand, "I was led to expect this. The young gentleman called me a harsh name, which I'm willing to overlook. But he finds himself aggrieved, and, knowing him as I do, I make no doubt he will not be content till we have a bout or two. If I refuse, he will dog me, I believe, and make trouble for both of us, till I grant him what he asks. So the sooner 'tis done, the better, I suppose. But lookye, Mr. Russell, 'tis sure to be an embarra.s.sing business. If one or other of us _should_ be hurt, there'd be the devil to pay, you know. I dare say the General would be quite obdurate, and go the whole length of the law. There's that to be thought of. Have a gla.s.s of wine, and think of it."

Tom and I had already thought of it. We had been longer in New York than the captain had, and we knew how the embarra.s.sment to which he alluded could be provided against.

"'Tis very simple," said I, letting him drink alone, which it was not easy to do, he was still so likeable a man. "We can go from Kingsbridge as if we meant to join Captain De Lancey in another of his raids. And we can find some spot outside the lines; and if any one is hurt, we can give it out as the work of rebel irregulars who attacked us."

He regarded me silently a moment, and then said the plan seemed a good one, and that he would name a second with whom I could arrange details. Whereupon, dismissing the subject with a civil expression of regret that Tom should think himself affronted, he went on to speak of the weather, as if a gentleman ought not to treat a mere duel as a matter of deep concern.

I came away wis.h.i.+ng it were not so hard to hate him. The second with whom I at length conferred--for our duties permitted not a prompt despatching of the affair, and moreover Captain Falconer's disposition was to conduct it with the gentlemanly leisure its pretended unimportance allowed--was Lieutenant Hugh Campbell, one of several officers of that name who served in the Highland regiment that had been stationed earlier at Valentine's Hill; he therefore knew the debatable country beyond Kingsbridge as well as I. He was a mere youth, a serious-minded Scot, and of a different sort from Captain Falconer: 'twas one of the elegant captain's ways, and evidence of his breadth of mind, to make friends of men of other kinds than his own.

Young Campbell and I, comparing our recollections of the country, found that we both knew of a little open hollow hidden by thickets, quite near the Kingsbridge tavern, which would serve the purpose.

Captain Falconer's duties made a daylight meeting difficult to contrive without exposing his movements to curiosity, and other considerations of secrecy likewise preferred a nocturnal affair. We therefore planned that the four of us, and an Irish surgeon named McLaughlin, should appear at the Kingsbridge tavern at ten o'clock on a certain night for which the almanac promised moonlight, and should repair to the meeting-place when the moon should be high enough to illumine the hollow. The weapons were to be rapiers. The preliminary appearance at the tavern was to save a useless cold wait in case one of the partic.i.p.ants should, by some freak of duty, be hindered from the appointment; in which event, or in that of a cloudy sky, the matter should be postponed to the next night, and so on.

The duel was to occur upon a Wednesday night. On that afternoon I was in the town, having carried some despatches from our outpost to General De Lancey, and thence to General Knyphausen; and I was free for a few minutes to go home and see my mother.

"What do you think?" she began, handing me a cup of tea as soon as I had strode to the parlour fire-place.

"I think this hot tea is mighty welcome," said I, "and that my left ear is nigh frozen. What else?"

"Margaret has gone," she replied, beginning to rub my ear vigorously.

"Gone! Where?" I looked around as if to make sure there was no sign of her in the room.

"With Ned--on the _Phoebe_."

"The deuce! How could you let her do it--you, and her mother, and f.a.n.n.y?"

"We didn't know. I took some jelly over to old Miss Watts--she's very feeble--and Madge and Ned went while I was out; they had their trunks carted off at the same time. 'Twasn't for an hour or two I became curious why she kept her room, as I thought; and when I went up to see, the room was empty. There were two letters there from her, one to me and one to her mother. She said she left in that way, to save the pain of farewells, and to avoid our useless persuasions against her going. Isn't it terrible?--poor child! Why it seems only yesterday--"

And my good mother's lips drew suddenly down at the corners, and she began to sniff spasmodically.

"But is it too late?" I asked, in a suddenly quieted voice. That the brightness and beauty of Madge, which had been a part of my world since I could remember, should have gone from about us, all in a moment!--'twas a new thought, and a strange one. What a blank she left, what a dulness!

"Too late, heaven knows!" said my mother, drying her eyes with a handkerchief, and speaking brokenly. "As soon as Mrs. Faringfield read the letters, which I had taken over at once, f.a.n.n.y and Mr. Cornelius started running for the wharves. But when they got there, the _Phoebe_ wasn't in sight. It had sailed immediately their trunks were aboard, I suppose. Oh, to think of pretty Madge--what will become of her in that great, bad London?"

"She has made her plans, no doubt, and knows what she is doing," said I, with a little bitterness. "Poor Phil! Her father is much to blame."

When I told Tom, as soon as I reached the outpost, he gave a sudden, ghastly, startled look; then collected himself, and glanced at the sword with which he meant to fight that night.

"Why, I was afraid she would go," said he, in a strained voice; and that was all.

Whenever I saw him during the rest of the evening, he was silent, pale, a little shaky methought. He was not as I had been before my maiden duel: bl.u.s.tering and gay, in a trance-like recklessness; a.s.suming self-confidence so well as to deceive even myself and carry me buoyantly through. He seemed rather in suspense like that of a lover who has to beg a stern father for a daughter's hand. As a slight hurt will cause a man the greatest pain, and a severe injury produce no greater, so will the apprehensions of a trivial ordeal equal in effect those of a matter of life and death; there being a limit to possible sensation, beyond which nature leaves us happily numb.

Sometimes, upon occasion, Tom smiled, but with a stiffness of countenance; when he laughed, it was in a short, jerky, mechanical manner. As for me, I was in different mood from that preceding my own first trial of arms: I was now overcast in spirit, tremulous, full of misgivings.

The moon did not disappoint us as we set out for the tavern. There were but a few fleecy clouds, and these not of an opaqueness to darken its beams when they pa.s.sed across it. The snow was frozen hard in the fields, and worn down in the road. The frost in the air bit our nostrils, and we now and again worked our countenances into strange grimaces, to free them from the sensation of being frozen hard.

"'Tis a beautiful night," said Tom, speaking in more composure than he had shown during the early evening. The moonlight had a calming effect, as the clear air had a bracing one. His eyes roamed the sky, and then the moonlit, snow-clad earth--hillock and valley, wood and pond, solitary house bespeaking indoor comfort, and a glimpse of the dark river in the distance--and he added:

"What a fine world it is!"

When we entered the warm tap-room of the tavern--the house above Kingsbridge, outside the barriers where the pa.s.ses were examined and the people searched who were allowed entrance and departure; not Hyatt's tavern, South of the bridge--we found a number of subalterns there, some German, some British, some half-drunk, some playing cards.

Our Irish surgeon sat in a corner, reading a book--I think 'twas a Latin author--by the light of a tallow candle. He nodded to us indifferently, as if he had no engagement with us, and continued to read. Tom and I ordered a hot rum punch mixed for us, and stood at the bar to drink it.

"You look pale and shaky, you two," said the tavern-keeper, who himself waited upon us.

"'Tis the cold," said I. "We're not all of your const.i.tution, to walk around in s.h.i.+rt-sleeves this weather."

"Why," says the landlord, "I go by the almanac. 'Tis time for the January thaw, 'cordin' to that. Something afoot to-night, eh? One o'

them little trips up the river, or out East Chester way, with De Lancey's men, I reckon?"

We said nothing, but wisely looked significant, and the host grinned.

"More like 'tis a matter of wenches," put in a half-drunken ensign standing beside us at the bar. "That's the only business to bring a gentleman out such a cursed night. d.a.m.n such a vile country, cold as h.e.l.l in winter, and hot as h.e.l.l in summer! d.a.m.n it and sink it! and fill up my gla.s.s, landlord. Roast me dead if _I_ stick _my_ nose outdoors to-night!"

"A braw, fine nicht, the nicht, gentlemen," said a sober, ruddy-faced Scot, very gravely, with a lofty contempt for the other's remarks.

"Guid, hamelike weather."

But the feelings and thoughts prevailing in the tap-room were not in tune with those agitating our hearts, and as soon as Captain Falconer and his friend came in, we took our leave, exchanging a purposely careless greeting with the newcomers. We turned in silence from the road, crossed a little spa.r.s.ely wooded hill, and arrived in the thicket-screened hollow.

'Twas in silence we had come. I had felt there was much I would like, and ought, to say, but something in Tom's mood or mine, or in the situation, benumbed my thoughts so they would not come forth, or jumbled them so I knew not where to begin. Arrived upon the ground with a palpitating sense of the nearness of the event, we found ourselves still less fit for utterance of the things deepest in our minds.

"There'll be some danger of slipping on the frozen snow," said I, trying to a.s.sume a natural, even a cheerful, tone.

"'Tis an even danger to both of us," said Tom, speaking quickly to maintain a steadiness of voice, as a drunken man walks fast to avoid a crookedness of gait.

While we were tramping about to keep warm, the Irish surgeon came to us through the bushes, vowing 'twas "the divvle's own weather, shure enough, barrin' the hivvenly moonlight." Opening his capacious greatcoat, he brought from concealment a small case, which Tom eyed askance, and I regarded ominously, though it had but a mere professional aspect to its owner.

We soon heard the tread, and the low but easy voices, of Captain Falconer and Lieutenant Campbell; who joined us with salutations, graceful on Falconer's part, and naturally awkward on that of Campbell. How I admired the unconcerned, leisurely manner in which Falconer, having gone a little aloof from Tom and me, removed his overcoat, laced coat, and waistcoat, giving a playful s.h.i.+ver, purposely exaggerated, as he stood in his ruffled s.h.i.+rt and well-fitting boots and breeches. I was awkward in helping Tom off with his outer clothes. The moonlight, making everything in the hollow well-nigh as visible as by day, showed Tom's face to be white, his eyes wide-open and darkly radiant; while in Falconer's case it revealed a countenance as pleasant and gracious as ever, eyes neither set nor restless.

Campbell and I perfunctorily compared the swords, gave them a bend or two, and handed them to the princ.i.p.als. We then stood back. Doctor McLaughlin looked on with a mild interest. There was a low cry, a ring of steel, and the two men were at it.

I recall the moons.h.i.+ne upon their faces, the swift dartings of their faintly luminous blades, their strangely altering shadows on the snow as they moved, the steady attention of us who looked on, the moan of the wind among the trees upon the neighbouring heights, the sound of the men's tramping on the crusted snow, the clear clink of their weapons, sometimes the noise of their breathing. They eyed each other steadfastly, seeming to grudge the momentary winks enforced by nature.

Falconer's purpose, I began to see, was but to defend himself and disarm his opponent. But Tom gave him much to do, making lightning thrusts with a suddenness and persistence that began at length to try the elder man. So they kept it up till I should have thought they were tired out.

Suddenly Tom made a powerful lunge that seemed to find the captain unready. But the latter, with a sharp involuntary cry, got his blade up in time to divert the point, by pure accident, with the guard of his hilt. His own point was thus turned straight toward his antagonist; and Tom, throwing his weight after his weapon, impaled himself upon the captain's. For an infinitesimal point of time, till the sword was drawn out, the lad seemed to stand upon his toes, leaning forward, looking toward the sky with a strange surprise upon his face, eyes and mouth alike open. And then he collapsed as if his legs and body were but empty rags; and fell in a huddle upon the snow: with a convulsive movement he stretched himself back to the shape of a man; and lay perfectly still.

The captain bent over him with astonishment. The surgeon ran to him, and turned him flat upon his back. I was by this time kneeling opposite the surgeon, who tore open Tom's s.h.i.+rts and examined his body.

"Bedad, gentlemen," said the Irishman sadly, in a moment, "he's beyont the need of my profession. 'Tis well ye had that sthory ready, in case of accident."

I stared incredulously at the surgeon, and then buried my face upon the dear body of the dead, mingling my wild tears with his blood.