"While I deliver your infamy. You urged and stimulated to do yourwork a fit agent, but one who in his nature--in the very essence ofhis being--is a traitor, and who has been false to you (despite thesympathy you two should have together) as he has been to allothers. With hints, and looks, and crafty words, which told againare nothing, you set on Gashford to this work--this work before usnow. With these same hints, and looks, and crafty words, whichtold again are nothing, you urged him on to gratify the deadlyhate he owes me--I have earned it, I thank Heaven--by the abductionand dishonour of my niece. You did. I see denial in your looks,"
he cried, abruptly pointing in his face, and stepping back, "anddenial is a lie!"
He had his hand upon his sword; but the knight, with a contemptuoussmile, replied to him as coldly as before.
"You will take notice, sir--if you can discriminate sufficiently-thatI have taken the trouble to deny nothing. Your discernment ishardly fine enough for the perusal of faces, not of a kind ascoarse as your speech; nor has it ever been, that I remember; or, in one face that I could name, you would have read indifference,not to say disgust, somewhat sooner than you did. I speak of along time ago,--but you understand me."
"Disguise it as you will, you mean denial. Denial explicit orreserved, expressed or left to be inferred, is still a lie. Yousay you don"t deny. Do you admit?"
"You yourself," returned Sir John, suffering the current of hisspeech to flow as smoothly as if it had been stemmed by no one wordof interruption, "publicly proclaimed the character of thegentleman in question (I think it was in Westminster Hall) in termswhich relieve me from the necessity of making any further allusionto him. You may have been warranted; you may not have been; Ican"t say. Assuming the gentleman to be what you described, andto have made to you or any other person any statements that mayhave happened to suggest themselves to him, for the sake of hisown security, or for the sake of money, or for his own amusement,or for any other consideration,--I have nothing to say of him,except that his extremely degrading situation appears to me to beshared with his employers. You are so very plain yourself, thatyou will excuse a little freedom in me, I am sure."
"Attend to me again, Sir John but once," cried Mr Haredale; "inyour every look, and word, and gesture, you tell me this was notyour act. I tell you that it was, and that you tampered with theman I speak of, and with your wretched son (whom God forgive!) todo this deed. You talk of degradation and character. You told meonce that you had purchased the absence of the poor idiot and hismother, when (as I have discovered since, and then suspected) youhad gone to tempt them, and had found them flown. To you I tracedthe insinuation that I alone reaped any harvest from my brother"sdeath; and all the foul attacks and whispered calumnies thatfollowed in its train. In every action of my life, from that firsthope which you converted into grief and desolation, you have stood,like an adverse fate, between me and peace. In all, you have everbeen the same cold-blooded, hollow, false, unworthy villain. Forthe second time, and for the last, I cast these charges in yourteeth, and spurn you from me as I would a faithless dog!"
With that he raised his arm, and struck him on the breast so thathe staggered. Sir John, the instant he recovered, drew his sword,threw away the scabbard and his hat, and running on his adversarymade a desperate lunge at his heart, which, but that his guard wasquick and true, would have stretched him dead upon the grass.
In the act of striking him, the torrent of his opponent"s rage hadreached a stop. He parried his rapid thrusts, without returningthem, and called to him, with a frantic kind of terror in his face,to keep back.
"Not to-night! not to-night!" he cried. "In God"s name, nottonight!"
Seeing that he lowered his weapon, and that he would not thrust inturn, Sir John lowered his.
"Not to-night!" his adversary cried. "Be warned in time!"
"You told me--it must have been in a sort of inspiration--" saidSir John, quite deliberately, though now he dropped his mask, andshowed his hatred in his face, "that this was the last time. Beassured it is! Did you believe our last meeting was forgotten?
Did you believe that your every word and look was not to beaccounted for, and was not well remembered? Do you believe that Ihave waited your time, or you mine? What kind of man is he whoentered, with all his sickening cant of honesty and truth, into abond with me to prevent a marriage he affected to dislike, and whenI had redeemed my part to the spirit and the letter, skulked from his, and brought the match about in his own time, to rid himself ofa burden he had grown tired of, and cast a spurious lustre on hishouse?"
"I have acted," cried Mr Haredale, "with honour and in good faith.
I do so now. Do not force me to renew this duel to-night!"
"You said my "wretched" son, I think?" said Sir John, with a smile.
"Poor fool! The dupe of such a shallow knave--trapped intomarriage by such an uncle and by such a niece--he well deservesyour pity. But he is no longer a son of mine: you are welcome tothe prize your craft has made, sir."
"Once more," cried his opponent, wildly stamping on the ground,"although you tear me from my better angel, I implore you not tocome within the reach of my sword to-night. Oh! why were you hereat all! Why have we met! To-morrow would have cast us far apartfor ever!"
"That being the case," returned Sir John, without the leastemotion, "it is very fortunate we have met to-night. Haredale, Ihave always despised you, as you know, but I have given you creditfor a species of brute courage. For the honour of my judgment, which I had thought a good one, I am sorry to find you a coward."
Not another word was spoken on either side. They crossed swords,though it was now quite dusk, and attacked each other fiercely.
They were well matched, and each was thoroughly skilled in themanagement of his weapon.
After a few seconds they grew hotter and more furious, and pressingon each other inflicted and received several slight wounds. It wasdirectly after receiving one of these in his arm, that Mr Haredale,making a keener thrust as he felt the warm blood spirting out,plunged his sword through his opponent"s body to the hilt.