"I?" said Soane, staring at him in astonishment and some contempt. "My good man, what has it to do with me? You got my letter?"
"And the draft, Sir George!" Mr. Fishwick bowed low. "Certainly, certainly, sir. Too much honoured. Which, as I understood, put an end to any--I mean it not offensively, honoured sir--to any connection between us?"
Sir George nodded. "I have my own lawyers in London," he said stiffly.
"I thought I made it clear that I did not need your services further."
Mr. Fishwick rubbed his hands. "I have that from your own lips, Sir George," he said. "Mrs. Masterson, my good woman, you heard that?"
Sir George glowered at him. "Lord, man?" he said. "Why so much about nothing? What on earth has this woman to do with it?"
Mr. Fishwick trembled with excitement. "Mrs. Masterson, you will not answer," he stammered.
Sir George first stared, then cursed his impudence; then, remembering that after all this was not his business, or that on which he had come, and being one of those obstinates whom opposition but precipitates to their ends, "Hark ye, man, stand aside," he said. "I did not come here to talk to you. And do you, my good woman, attend to me a moment. I have a word to say about your daughter."
"Not a word! Mrs. Masterson," the attorney cried his eyes almost bursting from his head with excitement.
Sir George was thunderstruck. "Is the man an idiot?" he exclaimed, staring at him. And then, "I"ll tell you what it is, Mr. Fishwick, or whatever your name is--a little more of this, and I shall lay my cane across your back."
"I am in my duty," the attorney answered, dancing on his feet.
"Then you will suffer in it!" Sir George retorted. "With better men. So do not try me too far. I am here to say a word to this woman which I would rather say alone."
"Never," said the attorney, bubbling, "with my good will!"
Soane lost patience at that. "D--n you!" he cried. "Will you be quiet?"
And made a cut at him with his cane. Fortunately the lawyer evaded it with nimbleness; and having escaped to a safe distance hastened to cry, "No malice! I bear you no malice, sir!" with so little breath and so much good-nature that Sir George recovered his balance. "Confound you, man!" he continued. "Why am I not to speak? I came here to tell this good woman that if she has a care for this girl the sooner she takes her from where she is the better! And you cannot let me put a word in."
"You came for that, sir?"
"For what else, fool?"
"I was wrong," said the attorney humbly. "I did not understand. Allow me to say, sir, that I am entirely of your opinion. The young lady--I mean she shall be removed to-morrow. It--the whole arrangement is improper--highly improper."
"Why, you go as fast now as you went slowly before," Sir George said, observing him curiously.
Mr. Fishwick smiled after a sickly fashion. "I did not understand, sir,"
he said. "But it is most unsuitable, most unsuitable. She shall return to-morrow at the latest."
Sir George, who had said what he had to say, nodded, grunted, and went away; feeling that he had performed an unpleasant--and somewhat doubtful--duty under most adverse circ.u.mstances. He could not in the least comprehend the attorney"s strange behaviour; but after some contemptuous reflection, of which nothing came, he dismissed it as one of the low things to which he had exposed himself by venturing out of the charmed circle in which he lived. He hoped that the painful series was now at an end, stepped into his post-chaise, amid the reverent salaams of the Mitre, the landlord holding the door; and in a few minutes had rattled over Folly Bridge, and left Oxford behind him.
CHAPTER VII
ACHILLES AND BRISEIS
The honourable Mr. Dunborough"s collapse arising rather from loss of blood than from an injury to a vital part, he was sufficiently recovered even on the day after the meeting to appreciate his nurse"s presence.
Twice he was heard to chuckle without apparent cause; once he strove, but failed, to detain her hand; while the feeble winks which from time to time he bestowed on Mr. Thoma.s.son when her back was towards him were attributed by that gentleman, who should have known the patient, to reflections closely connected with her charms.
His rage was great, therefore, when three days after the duel, he awoke, missed her, and found in her place the senior bedmaker of Magdalen--a worthy woman, learned in simples and with hands of horn, but far from beautiful. This good person he saluted with a vigour which proved him already far on the road to recovery; and when he was tired of swearing, he wept and threw his nightcap at her. Finally, between one and the other, and neither availing to bring back his Briseis, he fell into a fever; which, as he was kept happed up in a box-bed, in a close room, with every window shut and every draught kept off by stuffy curtains--such was the fate of sick men then--bade fair to postpone his recovery to a very distant date.
In this plight he sent one day for Mr. Thoma.s.son, who had the nominal care of the young gentleman; and the tutor being brought from the club tavern in the Corn Market which he occasionally condescended to frequent, the invalid broke to him his resolution.
"See here, Tommy," he said in a voice weak but vicious. "You have got to get her back. I will not be poisoned by this musty old witch any longer."
"But if she will not come?" said Mr. Thoma.s.son sadly.
"The little fool threw up the sponge when she came before," the patient answered, tossing restlessly. "And she will come again, with a little pressure. Lord, I know the women! So should you."
"She came before because--well, I do not quite know why she came," Mr.
Thoma.s.son confessed.
"Any way, you have got to get her back."
The tutor remonstrated, "My dear good man," he said unctuously, "you don"t think of my position. I am a man of the world, I know--"
"All of it, my Macaroni!"
"But I cannot be--be mixed up in such a matter as this, my dear sir."
"All the same, you have got to get her," was the stubborn answer. "Or I write to my lady and tell her you kept mum about my wound. And you will not like that, my tulip."
On that point he was right; for if there was a person in the world of whom Mr. Thoma.s.son stood in especial awe, it was of Lady Dunborough. My lord, the author of "Pomaria Britannica" and "The Elegant Art of Pomiculture as applied to Landscape Gardening," was a quant.i.ty he could safely neglect. Beyond his yew-walks and his orchards his lordship was a cipher. He had proved too respectable even for the peerage; and of late had cheerfully resigned all his affairs into the hands of his wife, formerly the Lady Michal M"Intosh, a penniless beauty, with the pride of a Scotchwoman and the temper of a Hervey. Her enemies said that my lady had tripped in the merry days of George the Second, and now made up for past easiness by present hardness. Her friends--but it must be confessed her ladyship had no friends.
Be that as it might, Mr. Thoma.s.son had refrained from summoning her to her son"s bedside; partly because the surgeons had quickly p.r.o.nounced the wound a trifle, much more because the little he had seen of her ladyship had left him no taste to see more. He knew, however, that the omission would weigh heavily against him were it known; and as he had hopes from my lady"s aristocratic connections, and need in certain difficulties of all the aid he could muster, he found the threat not one to be sneezed at. His laugh betrayed this.
However, he tried to put the best face on the matter. "You won"t do that," he said. "She would spoil sport, my friend. Her ladyship is no fool, and would not suffer your little amus.e.m.e.nts."
"She is no fool," Mr. Dunborough replied with emphasis. "As you will find, Tommy, if she comes to Oxford, and learns certain things. It will be farewell to your chance of having that milksop of a Marquis for a pupil!"
Now, it was one of Mr. Thoma.s.son"s highest ambitions at this time to have the young Marquis of Carmarthen entrusted to him; and Lady Dunborough was connected with the family, and, it was said, had interest there. He was silent.
"You see," Mr. Dunborough continued, marking with a chuckle the effect his words had produced, "you have got to get her."
Mr. Thoma.s.son did not admit that that was so, but he writhed in his chair; and presently he took his leave and went away, his plump pale face gloomy and the crow"s feet showing plain at the corners of his eyes. He had given no promise; but that evening a messenger from the college requested Mrs. Masterson to attend at his rooms on the following morning.
She did not go. At the appointed hour, however, there came a knock on the tutor"s door, and that gentleman, who had sent his servant out of the way, found Mr. Fishwick on the landing. "Tut-tut!" said the don with some brusqueness, his hand still on the door; "do you want me?" He had seen the attorney after the duel, and in the confusion attendant on the injured man"s removal; and knew him by sight, but no farther.
"I--hem--I think you wished to see Mrs. Masterson?" was Mr. Fishwick"s answer, and the lawyer, but with all humility, made as if he would enter.
The tutor, however, barred the way. "I wished to see Mrs. Masterson," he said drily, and with his coldest air of authority. "But who are you?"
"I am here on her behalf," Mr. Fishwick answered, meekly pressing his hat in his hands.
"On her behalf?" said Mr. Thoma.s.son stiffly. "Is she ill?"
"No, sir, I do not know that she is ill."