Pistols for Two Read online

  Miss Wyse was a plump little lady, just nineteen years old, with huge, soulful brown eyes, and a riot of dark curls. When she saw Carlington she let fall a very pretty muff of taffeta, and clasped her hands to her bosom. ‘You!’ she gasped, with a strong suggestion of loathing in her voice. ‘Carlington!’

  The Marquis grasped her wrist in a somewhat cavalier fashion, and said angrily: ‘Let me have no vapours, if you please! Come into the parlour!’

  Miss Wyse uttered a throbbing moan. ‘How could you, Granville? Oh, I wish I were dead!’

  The Marquis fairly dragged her into the parlour, and shut the door upon the landlord’s scarcely-veiled curiosity. ‘You do not waste much time, Fanny,’ he said. ‘Is this a sample of what I am to expect in the future? The very day our engagement is announced!’

  ‘Do not speak to me!’ shuddered Miss Wyse, who seemed to have a leaning towards the dramatic. ‘I am so mortified, so –’

  ‘I know, I know!’ he interrupted. ‘But you would have done better to have stayed at home.’

  Miss Wyse, who had tottered to the nearest chair, sprang up again at this, and said: ‘No! Never! Do you hear me, Carlington? Never!’

  ‘I hear you,’ he replied. ‘So, I imagine, can everyone else in the place. There is a great deal I must say to you, but this is not the moment. My whole object now is to avert a scandal. Explanations – oh yes, they will be hard enough to make! – can come later.’

  ‘I don’t care a fig for scandal!’ declared Miss Wyse stormily. ‘People may say what they please: it is nothing to me! But that I should find you here – that you should have – Oh, it is cruel of you, Carlington!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Fanny,’ he said. ‘You’ll find the truth hard to believe, but I promise you you shall hear the truth from me. I beg of you, be calm! I will myself escort you back to town –’

  ‘Do not touch me!’ said Miss Wyse, retreating. ‘You shan’t take me back! I won’t go with you!’

  ‘Don’t be such a little fool!’ said the Marquis, exasperated. ‘I warn you, this is no moment to play-act to me! I shall take you home, and there shall be no scandal, but help you to create a scene I will not!’

  Miss Wyse burst into tears. ‘I dare say you’re very angry with me,’ she sobbed, ‘and I know I have behaved badly, but indeed, indeed I couldn’t help it! I meant to be sensible – really, I did Carlington! – but I couldn’t bear it! Oh, you don’t understand! You’ve no s-sensibility at all!’

  Rather pale, he answered: ‘Don’t distress yourself, Fanny. Upon my soul, there is no need! This escapade means nothing: I will engage to give you no cause for complaint when we are married.’

  ‘I can’t!’ said Miss Wyse desperately. ‘You shan’t escort me home!’

  He regarded her with a kind of weary patience. ‘Then perhaps you will tell me what you do mean to do?’ he said.

  Miss Wyse lowered her handkerchief and looked boldly across at him. ‘I’m going to Gretna Green!’ she announced. ‘And nothing you can say will stop me!’

  ‘Have you taken leave of your senses?’ he demanded. ‘There’s no question of going to Gretna! And if there were what in the name of heaven could possess you to go there?’

  ‘I’m going to be married there!’ said Miss Wyse in a rapt voice.

  ‘Oh no, you are not!’ replied the Marquis forcibly. ‘Though it is just like you to do your best to turn everything to dramatic account! If you go to Gretna, you’ll go alone!’

  Miss Wyse gave a shriek at this. ‘Good God, what do you mean to do?’ she cried, running forward, and clasping her hands about his arm. ‘Granville, I implore you, have mercy!’

  The Marquis disengaged himself, looking down at her in the liveliest astonishment. Even supposing her to be on the verge of a fit of strong hysterics her behaviour seemed to him inexplicable. He was just about to inquire the reason for her last outburst when the door into the coffee-room was thrust open, and a young man in a bottle-green coat strode into the parlour, and checked on the threshold, staring in a challenging way at Carlington.

  His bearing, though not his dress, proclaimed the soldier. He was about five-and-twenty years old, with a fresh, pleasant countenance, and a curly crop of brown hair brushed into the Brutus style made fashionable by Mr Brummell.

  Carlington, turning his head to observe the newcomer, said somewhat irascibly: ‘This, my good sir, is a private room!’

  Miss Wyse released Carlington’s arm, and sped towards the intruder, upon whose manly bosom she seemed more than half inclined to swoon. ‘Henry!’ she cried. ‘This is Carlington himself!’

  Henry said in a grave, rather conscious voice: ‘I apprehended that it could be none other. I beg of you, however, not to be alarmed. My lord, I must request the favour of a few words with you alone.’

  ‘Oh no, he will kill you!’ quavered Miss Wyse, grasping the lapels of his coat.

  The Marquis put a hand to his brow. ‘Who the devil are you?’ he demanded.

  ‘I do not expect my name to be known to your lordship, but it is Dobell – Henry Dobell, Captain in the –th Foot, and at present on furlough from the Peninsula. I am aware that my action must appear to you desperate; of the impropriety of it I am, alas, miserably aware. Yet, my lord, I believe that when it is explained any man of sensibility must inevitably –’

  The Marquis checked this flow of eloquence with an upflung hand. ‘Captain Dobell, have you ever been badly foxed?’ he said sternly.

  ‘Foxed, sir?’ repeated the Captain, quite taken aback.

  ‘Yes, foxed!’ snapped the Marquis.

  The Captain gave a cough, and replied: ‘Well, sir, well – ! I must suppose that every man at some time or another –’

  ‘Have you?’ interrupted the Marquis.

  ‘Yes, sir, I have!’

  ‘Then you must know what it is to have a head like mine this morning, and I beg you’ll spare me any more long-winded speeches, and tell me in plain words what you’re doing here!’ said Carlington.

  Miss Wyse, finding herself out of the picture, thought it proper at this moment to interject: ‘I love him!’

  ‘You need not hang upon his neck if you do,’ replied the Marquis unsympathetically. ‘Is he a relative of yours whom you have dragged into this affair?’

  ‘Relative! No!’ said Miss Wyse, affronted. ‘He is the man I love!’

  ‘The man you –?’ The Marquis stopped short. ‘Good God, is this an elopement?’ he demanded.

  ‘But – but you know it is!’ stammered Miss Wyse.

  The Marquis, who had almost reeled under the shock, recovered himself, and came towards them. ‘No, no, I’d not the least idea of it!’ he said. ‘I thought – well, it’s no matter what I thought. You must allow me to offer you my most sincere felicitations! Are you on your way to Gretna Green? Let me advise you to lose no time! In fact, I think you should set forward again at once. You may be pursued, you know.’

  ‘But did you not come in pursuit of us, sir?’ asked the astonished Captain.

  ‘No, no, nothing of the sort!’ replied the Marquis, grasping his hand, and wringing it fervently. ‘You have nothing in the world to fear from me, my dear fellow. I wish you every imaginable happiness!’

  ‘Every imaginable happiness?’ cried Miss Wyse indignantly. ‘Have you forgot that I am engaged to you, Carlington?’

  ‘You will be much happier with Henry,’ the Marquis assured her.

  ‘The advertisement will be in today’s Gazette!’

  ‘Don’t let that weigh with you! Is a mere advertisement to stand in the path of true love?’ said the Marquis. ‘I’ll repudiate it immediately. Leave everything to me!’

  ‘Don’t you want to marry me?’ gasped Miss Wyse.

  ‘Not in the – Not when your heart is given to another!’ said his lordship, with aplomb.<
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  ‘But Mama said – and your Mama too – and everybody – that I must accept you because you were desperately in love with me, and it had been understood for so many years! Only when I had done it I knew all at once I couldn’t bear it, and I sent for Henry, and –’

  ‘Very right and proper,’ approved his lordship. ‘I could wish, of course, that you had sent for Henry before I wrote the advertisement for the Gazette, but never mind that now. The thing is for you to waste no time upon this journey.’

  The Captain, who had been gazing upon his lordship in a bemused way, said in a much-moved voice: ‘Sir, your generosity does you honour! An explanation of conduct which you must deem treacherous indeed is due to you.’

  ‘No, no, pray don’t explain anything to me!’ begged the Marquis. ‘My head is none too clear, you know. Let me take you out to your chaise!’

  The Captain, finding himself propelled towards the door, hung back, and said: ‘We stopped here to partake of breakfast, sir!’

  ‘Not to be thought of!’ said Carlington firmly. ‘At any moment you may be overtaken, and Fanny wrested from your arms. You must make all possible speed to Gretna.’

  The mere thought of being wrested from the Captain’s arms caused Miss Wyse to add her entreaties to his lordship’s. Captain Dobell, still faintly protesting, was swept out of the inn, informed that this was no time to be thinking of food and drink, and pushed up into his chaise. He made a second attempt to explain his elopement to Carlington, but at a sign from the Marquis the post-boys whipped up their horses, and the chaise bowled off down the street, with the Captain hanging out of the window and shouting a final message to the Marquis, the only words of which to reach him were ‘everlasting gratitude’ and ‘eternally obliged’.

  The Marquis turned back into the inn, and strode across the coffee-room to the parlour. Miss Morland had emerged from the cupboard, and was standing by the table, trying hard not to laugh. The Marquis said: ‘Did you hear, Helen?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes. I couldn’t help hearing,’ she answered, a slight quaver in her otherwise solemn voice.

  ‘We must go back to London at once,’ said the Marquis.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Miss Morland.

  ‘For one thing,’ said the Marquis, ‘I want a change of clothes and for another this Gretna scheme was a piece of nonsense. I am not going to be married in company with that pair. We must have a special licence.’

  ‘But we are not going to be married,’ said Miss Morland. ‘It was all a jest. I was mad – I never meant to come with you!’

  ‘You had to come with me,’ retorted the Marquis. ‘I won you and you’re mine.’

  Miss Morland was trembling a little. ‘But –’

  ‘I have been in love with you for months, and you know it!’ said the Marquis.

  ‘Oh!’ said Miss Morland on the oddest little sob. ‘I did think sometimes that you were not – not indifferent to me, but indeed, indeed this is impossible!’

  ‘Is it?’ said the Marquis grimly. ‘We’ll see!’

  It seemed to Miss Morland that he swooped on her. Certainly she had no time to escape. She was nipped into a crushing embrace, and kissed so hard and so often that she had no breath left to expostulate. The Marquis did at last stop kissing her, but he showed not the least inclination to let her go, but looked down into her eyes, and said in an awe-inspiring voice: ‘Well? Are you going to marry me?’

  Miss Morland, quite cowed by such treatment, meekly nodded her head.

  Snowdrift

  A thin covering of snow already lay on the ground when the Bath and Bristol Light Post Coach set out from Holborn at two o’clock in the afternoon of a bleak December day. Only two hardy gentlemen ventured to ride on the roof; and the inside passengers consisted only of a pessimistic man in a muffler, a stout lady with several bandboxes, a thickset young man with small eyes, and a jowl, a scarlet-coated young lady and a raw-boned countrywoman, who appeared to be her maid.

  The scarlet-coated lady and the young man sat opposite each other, and occasionally exchanged glances of acute dislike. Upon their initial encounter in the yard of the White Horse Inn, the gentleman had uttered: ‘You going to Bath? Much good may it do you!’ and the lady had retorted: ‘You travelling upon the stage, Joseph? I had thought you would have gone post!’

  ‘I am not one to waste my substance,’ had pronounced the gentleman heavily.

  Since then they had indulged in no conversation.

  The coach was making bad time. At Maidenhead Thicket the snowflakes were swirling dizzily, and the temperature had dropped to an uncomfortably low degree. The young man wrapped himself in a rug; the young lady hummed a defiant tune: she had not provided herself with a rug.

  Slower and slower went the coach. At Reading the fat woman got down, and her place was taken by a farmer, who said that he disremembered when there had been such another hard winter, and prophesied that the roads would be six foot under snow by Christmas. The pessimist said that he had known at the outset that they would never reach their destination.

  The coach laboured on, but past Theale actually picked up its pace a little, and for perhaps ten minutes encouraged the passengers to suppose that the weather was clearing. Then the snow began to fall more thickly still, the coachman lost his bearings, and the whole equipage lurched off the road into a deep drift.

  It was thrown on to its side with some violence. The two outside passengers were hurled over the hedge into a field, and those inside landed in a heap on the near-side door.

  The thickset young man was first to extricate himself, and to force open the off-side door. He scrambled through it, rudely thrusting the pessimist out of the way, floundered into deep snow, and fell upon his face, a circumstance which afforded the pessimist a sour pleasure.

  The farmer and the young lady were too much occupied with the abigail, who had fallen awkwardly, to notice this interlude. The abigail said in a faint voice: ‘I’ve broke my leg, Miss Sophy.’

  ‘Oh, Sarah, do not say so!’ besought her mistress.

  ‘Well, it’s just what she has done,’ said the farmer frankly. ‘We’ll have to get her out of this, missie.’ He hauled himself up to look out through the open door, and shouted: ‘Hi, you! Come and lend a hand with the poor wench here! Lively, now!’

  Thus adjured, the thickset young man came back to the coach, asking rather ungraciously what was wanted. He seemed disinclined to lend his aid, and the scarlet-coated young lady, who had been trying unavailingly to move her henchwoman into an easier position, raised a flushed face in which two large gray eyes sparkled with wrath, and uttered: ‘You are the most odious wretch alive, Joseph! Help to lift Sarah out this instant, or I shall tell my grandfather how disobliging you have been!’

  ‘You may tell him what you choose – if you reach Bath, which you are not now very likely to do, my dear cousin!’ retorted Joseph.

  ‘You hold your gab, and do what I tell you!’ interposed the farmer. ‘Jump out first, missie: you’ll only be in my way here!’

  Miss Trent, pausing only to pick up her cousin’s abandoned rug, allowed herself to be hoisted through the door. Joseph received her from the farmer, and lost no time in setting her down. Her feet sank above the ankles in the snow, but the pessimistic man helped her to reach the road. By the time she had spread the rug out on the snow Sarah had been extricated from the coach, and the coachman was helping the guard to unharness one of the leaders.

  Sarah was laid on the rug; Miss Trent, her bonnet fast whitening under the gathering flakes, knelt beside her; and the coachman informed the assembled company that there was no need for anyone to worry, since the guard would ride on at once to Woolhampton, and get some kind of a vehicle to fetch them all in.

  This speech greatly incensed the pessimistic man, who demanded to be told when the next coach to Bath was due. The coachman said: �
�Lor’ bless you, sir, we’ll be snowbound a week, I dessay! Nothing won’t get beyond Reading, not if this weather holds!’

  There was a general outcry at this; Miss Trent exclaimed: ‘Snowbound a week! But I must reach Bath tomorrow!’

  ‘Can one hire a chaise in Woolhampton?’ asked Joseph suddenly.

  ‘Well, you might be able to,’ acknowledged the coachman.

  ‘I’ll ride in with the guard!’ Joseph decided.

  Miss Trent started. Stretching up a hand, she grasped a fold of his coat, saying sharply: ‘Joseph, if you mean to go on by chaise you’ll take me with you?’

  ‘No, by God!’ he retorted. ‘I didn’t ask you to come to Bath, and I shan’t help you to get there! You may hire a chaise for yourself!’

  ‘You know I haven’t enough money!’ she said, in a low, trembling voice.

  ‘Well, it’s no concern of mine,’ he said sulkily. ‘A pretty fool I should be to take you along with me! Besides, you can’t go without your woman.’

  Miss Trent’s eyes were bright with tears, but she would not let them fall. She said passionately: ‘I’ll get to Bath if I have to trudge there, Joseph – and then we shall see!’

  He responded to this merely with a jeering laugh, and moved away to confer with the guard. Miss Trent made no further attempt to detain him, and in a very few minutes he had ridden off with the guard in the direction of Woolhampton.

  With the departure of the guard a new and more fearful mood descended upon the coachman. He became obsessed by the idea that highwaymen would descend upon the wrecked coach, grasped his blunderbuss nervously, started at shadows, and ended by firing the weapon at the mere sound of muffled hoofbeats.

  The sound of horses plunging and snorting was almost immediately followed by the appearance round the bend in the road of a curricle and pair, which drew up alongside the coach. A wrathful voice demanded: ‘What in hell’s name do you mean by firing at me you fat-witted, cow-handed ensign-bearer?’

  The coachman, reassured by this form of address, lowered his weapon, and said that he was sure he begged pardon. The gentleman in the curricle, having by this time taken in the group by the wayside, briefly commanded the groom beside him to go to the horses’ heads, and himself jumped down from the curricle, and approached Miss Trent, still kneeling beside her stricken attendant. ‘Can I be of assistance, ma’am?’ he asked. ‘How is she hurt?’