The Child Wife. Reid Mayne
ample apology. I leave you to take your choice. My friend, Mr Louis Lucas, will await your answer.
“Richard Swinton.”
“Will that do, think you?” asked the ex-guardsman, handing the sheet to his second.
“The very thing! Short, if not sweet. I like it all the better without the ‘obedient servant.’ It reads more defiant, and will be more likely to extract the apology. Where am I to take it? You have his card, if I mistake not. Does it tell the number of his room?”
“Twue – twue! I have his cawd. We shall see.”
Taking up his coat from the floor, where he had flung it; Swinton fished out the card. There was no number, only the name.
“No matter,” said the second, clutching at the bit of pasteboard. “Trust me to discover him. I’ll be back with his answer before you’ve smoked out that cigar.”
With this promise, Mr Lucas left the room.
As Mr Swinton sat smoking the cigar, and reflecting upon it, there was an expression upon his face that no man save himself could have interpreted. It was a sardonic smile worthy of Machiavelli.
The cigar was about half burned out, when Mr Lucas was heard hurrying back along the corridor.
In an instant after he burst into the room, his face showing him to be the bearer of some strange intelligence.
“Well?” inquired Swinton, in a tone of affected coolness. “What says our fellaw?”
“What says he? Nothing.”
“He has pwomised to send the answer by a fwend, I pwesume?”
“He has promised me nothing: for the simple reason that I haven’t seen him!”
“Haven’t seen him?”
“No – nor ain’t likely neither. The coward has ‘swartouted.’”
“Swawtuated?”
“Yes; G.T.T. – gone to Texas!”
“Ba Jawve! Mr Lucas; I don’t compwehend yaw?”
“You will, when I tell you that your antagonist has left Newport. Gone off by the evening boat.”
“Honaw bwight, Mr Lucas?” cried the Englishman, in feigned astonishment. “Shawley you must be jawking.”
“Not in the least, I assure you. The clerk tells me he paid his hotel bill, and was taken off in one of their hacks. Besides, I’ve seen the driver who took him, and who’s just returned. He says that he set Mr Maynard down, and helped to carry his baggage aboard the boat. There was another man, some foreign-looking fellow, along with him. Be sure, sir, he’s gone.”
“And left no message, no addwess, as to where I may find him?”
“Not a word, that I can hear of.”
“Ba Gawd?”
The man who had called forth this impassioned speech was at that moment upon the deck of the steamer, fast cleaving her track towards the ocean. He was standing by the after-guards, looking back upon the lights of Newport, that struggled against the twilight.
His eyes had become fixed on one that glimmered high up on the summit of the hill, and which he knew to proceed from a window in the southern end of the Ocean House.
He had little thought of the free use that was just then being made of his name in that swarming hive of beauty and fashion – else he might have repented the unceremonious haste of his departure.
Nor was he thinking of that which was carrying him away. His regrets were of a more tender kind: for he had such. Regrets that even his ardour in the sacred cause of Liberty did not prevent him from feeling.
Roseveldt, standing by his side, and observing the shadow on his face, easily divined its character.
“Come, Maynard!” said he, in a tone of banter, “I hope you won’t blame me for bringing you with me. I see that you’ve left something behind you!”
“Left something behind me!” returned Maynard, in astonishment, though half-conscious of what was meant.
“Of course you have,” jocularly rejoined the Count. “Where did you ever stay six days without leaving a sweetheart behind you? It’s true, you scapegrace!”
“You wrong me, Count. I assure you I have none – ”
“Well, well,” interrupted the revolutionist, “even if you have, banish the remembrance, and be a man! Let your sword now be your sweetheart. Think of the splendid prospect before you. The moment your foot touches European soil, you are to take command of the whole student army. The Directory have so decided. Fine fellows, I assure you, these German students: true sons of Liberty —à la Schiller, if you like. You may do what you please with them, so long as you lead them against despotism. I only wish I had your opportunity.”
As he listened to these stirring words, Maynard’s eyes were gradually turned away from Newport – his thoughts from Julia Girdwood.
“It may be all for the best,” reflected he, as he gazed down upon the phosphoric track. “Even could I have won her, which is doubtful, she’s not the sort for a wife; and that’s what I’m now wanting. Certain, I shall never see her again. Perhaps the old adage will still prove true,” he continued, as if the situation had suggested it: “‘Good fish in the sea as ever were caught.’ Scintillations ahead, yet unseen, brilliant as those we are leaving behind us!”
Chapter Seventeen.
“The Coward!”
The steamer that carried Captain Maynard and his fortunes out of the Narraganset Bay, had not rounded Point Judith before his name in the mouths of many became a scorned word. The gross insult he had put upon the English stranger had been witnessed by a score of gentlemen, and extensively canvassed by all who had heard of it. Of course there would be a “call out,” and some shooting. Nothing less could be expected after such an affront.
It was a surprise, when the discovery came, that the insulter had stolen off; for this was the interpretation put upon it.
To many it was a chagrin. Not much was known of Captain Maynard, beyond that public repute the newspapers had given to his name, in connection with the Mexican war.
This, however, proved him to have carried a commission in the American army; and as it soon became understood that his adversary was an officer in that of England, it was but natural there should be some national feeling called forth by the affair. “After all,” said they, “Maynard is not an American!” It was some palliation of his supposed poltroonery that he had stayed all day at the hotel, and that his adversary had not sent the challenge till after he was gone.
But the explanation of this appeared satisfactory enough; and Swinton had not been slow in making it known. Notwithstanding some shame to himself, he had taken pains to give it a thorough circulation; supposing that no one knew aught of the communication he had received from Roseveldt.
And as no one did appear to know of it, the universal verdict was, that the hero of C – , as some of the newspapers pronounced him, had fled from a field where fighting honours might be less ostentatiously obtained.
There were many, however, who did not attribute his departure to cowardice, and who believed or suspected that there must have been some other motive – though they could not conceive what.
It was altogether an inexplicable affair; and had he left Newport in the morning, instead of the evening, he would have been called by much harder names than those that were being bestowed upon him. His stay at the hotel for what might be considered a reasonable time, in part protected him from vituperation.
Still had he left the field to Mr Swinton, who was elevated into a sort of half-hero by his adversary’s disgraceful retreat.
The lord incognito carried his honours meekly as might be. He was not without apprehension that Maynard might return, or be met again in some other corner of the world – in either case to call him to