Then Sir George, his left forearm under the other's chin, flung him three paces away; and shifting his sword into his right hand--hitherto he had been unable to change it--he stopped Dunborough's savage rush with the point, and beat him off and kept him off--parrying his lunges, and doing his utmost the while to avoid dealing him a fatal wound. Soane was so much the better swordsman--as was immediately apparent to all the onlookers--that he no longer feared for himself; all his fears were for his opponent, the fire and fury of whose attacks he could not explain to himself, until he found them flagging; and flagging so fast that he sought a reason. Then Dunborough's point beginning to waver, and his feet to slip, Sir George's eyes were opened; he discerned a crimson patch spread and spread on the other's side--where unnoticed Dunborough had kept his hand--and with a cry for help he sprang forward in time to catch the falling man in his arms.
As the others ran in, the surgeons quickly and silently, Lord Almeric more slowly, and with exclamations, Sir George lowered his burden gently to the ground. The instant it was done, Morris touched his arm and signed to him to stand back. 'You can do no good, Sir George,' he urged. 'He is in skilful hands. He would have it; it was his own fault. I can bear witness that you did your best not to touch him.'
'I did not touch him,' Soane muttered.
The second looked his astonishment. 'How?' he said. 'You don't mean to say that he is not wounded? See there!' And he pointed to the blood which dyed the shirt. They were cutting the linen away.
'It was the pistol,' Sir George answered.
Major Morris's face fell, and he groaned. 'Good G--d!' he said, staring before him. 'What a position I am in! I suppose--I suppose, sir, his pistol was not primed?'
'I am afraid not,' Soane answered.
He was still in his shirt, and bareheaded; but as he spoke one of several onlookers, whom the clatter of steel had drawn to the spot, brought his coat and waistcoat, and held them while he put them on. Another handed his hat and wig, a third brought his shoes and knelt and buckled them; a fourth his kerchief. All these services he accepted freely, and was unconscious of them--as unconscious as he was of the eager deference, the morbid interest, with which they waited on him, eyed him, and stared at him. His own thoughts, eyes, attention, were fixed on the group about the fallen man; and when the elder surgeon glanced over his shoulder, as wanting help, he strode to them.
'If we had a chair here, and could move him at once,' the smug gentleman whispered, 'I think we might do.'
'I have a chair. It is at the gate,' his colleague answered.
'Have you? A good thought of yours!'
'The credit should lie--with my employer,' the younger man answered in a low voice. 'It was his thought; here it comes. Sir George, will you be good enough--' But then, seeing the baronet's look of mute anxiety, he broke off. 'It is dangerous, but there is hope--fair hope,' he answered. 'Do you, my dear sir, go to your inn, and I will send thither when he is safely housed. You can do no good here, and your presence may excite him when he recovers from the swoon.'
Sir George, seeing the wisdom of the advice, nodded assent; and remarking for the first time the sensation of which he was the centre, was glad to make the best of his way towards the gates. He had barely reached them--without shaking off a knot of the more curious, who still hung on his footsteps--when Lord Almeric, breathless and agitated, came up with him.
'You are for France, I suppose?' his lordship panted. And then, without waiting for an answer: 'What would you advise me to do?' he babbled. 'Eh? What do you think? It will be the devil and all for me, you know.'
Sir George looked askance at him, contempt in his eye. 'I cannot advise you,' he said. 'For my part, my lord, I remain here.'
His lordship was quite taken aback. 'No, you don't?' he said. 'Remain here!--You don't mean it,'
'I usually mean--what I say,' Soane answered in a tone that he thought must close the conversation.
But Lord Almeric kept up with him. 'Ay, but will you?' he babbled in vacuous admiration. 'Will you really stay here? Now that is uncommon bold of you! I should not have thought of that--of staying here, I mean. I should go to France till the thing blew over. I don't know that I shall not do so now. Don't you think I should be wise, Sir George? My position, you know. It is uncommon low, is a trial, and--'
Sir George halted so abruptly that will-he, nill-he, the other went on a few paces. 'My lord, you should know your own affairs best,' he said in a freezing tone. 'And, as I desire to be alone, I wish your lordship a very good day.'
My lord had never been so much astonished in his life. 'Oh, good morning,' he said, staring vacantly, 'good morning!' but by the time he had framed the words, Sir George was a dozen paces away.
It was an age when great ladies wept out of wounded vanity or for a loss at cards--yet made a show of their children lying in state; when men entertained the wits and made their wills in company, before they bowed a graceful exit from the room and life. Doubtless people felt, feared, hoped, and perspired as they do now, and had their ambitions apart from Pam and the loo table. Nay, Rousseau was printing. But the 'Nouvelle Hlose,' though it was beginning to be read, had not yet set the mode of sensibility, or sent those to rave of nature who all their lives had known nothing but art. The suppression of feeling, or rather the cultivation of no feeling, was still the mark of a gentleman; his maxim; honoured alike at Medmenham and Marly, to enjoy--to enjoy, be the cost to others what it might.
Bred in such a school, Sir George should have viewed what had happened with polite indifference, and put himself out no further than was courteous, or might serve to set him right with a jury, if the worst came to the worst. But, whether because he was of a kindlier stuff than the common sort of fashionables, or was too young to be quite spoiled, he took the thing that had occurred with unexpected heaviness; and, reaching his inn, hastened to his room to escape alike the curiosity that dogged him and the sympathy that, for a fine gentleman, is never far to seek. To do him justice, his anxiety was not for himself, or the consequences to himself, which at the worst were not likely to exceed a nominal verdict of manslaughter, and at the best would be an acquittal; the former had been Lord Byron's lot, the latter Mr. Brown's, and each had killed his man. Sir George had more _savoir faire_ than to trouble himself about this; but about his opponent and his fate he felt a haunting--and, as Lord Almeric would have said, a low--concern that would let him neither rest nor sit. In particular, when he remembered the trifle from which all had arisen, he felt remorse and sorrow; which grew to the point of horror when he recalled the last look which Dunborough, swooning and helpless, had cast in his face.
In one of these paroxysms he was walking the room when the elder surgeon, who had attended his opponent to the field, was announced. Soane still retained so much of his life habit as to show an unmoved front; the man of the scalpel thought him hard and felt himself repelled; and though he had come from the sick-room hot-foot and laden with good news, descended to a profound apology for the intrusion.
'But I thought that you might like to hear, sir,' he continued, nursing his hat, and speaking as if the matter were of little moment, 'that Mr. Dunborough is as--as well as can be expected. A serious case--I might call it a most serious case,' he continued, puffing out his cheeks. 'But with care--with care I think we may restore him. I cannot say more than that.'
'Has the ball been extracted?'
'It has, and so far well. And the chair being on the spot, Sir George, so that he was moved without a moment's delay--for which I believe we have to thank Mr.--Mr.--'
'Fishwick,' Soane suggested.
'To be sure--_that_ is so much gained. Which reminds me,' the smug gentleman continued, 'that Mr. Attorney begged me to convey his duty and inform you that