The Virginians by William Makepeace Thackeray (top books to read txt) 📕

felt her first pang of remorse that she had told a fib, or rather, that she was found out in telling a fib, which is a far more cogent reason for repentance. Heaven help us! if some people were to do penance for telling lies, would they ever be out of sackcloth and ashes?

Arrived at Castlewood, Mr. Harry's good-humour was not increased. My lord was from home; the ladies also were away; the only member of the family whom Harry found, was Mr. Will, who returned from partridge-shooting just as the chaise and cavalcade reached the gate, and who turned very pale when he saw his cousin, and received a sulky scowl of recognition from the young Virginian.

Nevertheless, he thought to put a good face on the matter, and they met at supper, where, before my Lady Maria, their conversation was at first civil, but not lively. Mr. Will had been to some races? To several. He had been pretty successful in his bets? Mr. Warrington hopes. Pretty well. “And you have brought back my horse sound?” asked Mr. Warrington.

“Your horse! what horse?” asked Mr. Will.

“What horse? my horse!” says Mr. Harry, curtly.

“Protest I don't understand you,” says Will.

“The brown horse for which I played you, and which I won of you the night before you rode away upon it,” says Mr. Warrington, sternly. “You remember the horse, Mr. Esmond.”

“Mr. Warrington, I perfectly well remember playing you for a horse, which my servant handed over to you on the day of your departure.”

“The chaplain was present at our play. Mr. Sampson, will you be umpire between us?” Mr. Warrington said, with much gentleness.

“I am bound to decide that Mr. Warrington played for the brown horse,” says Mr. Sampson.

“Well, he got the other one,” said sulky Mr. Will, with a grin.

“And sold it for thirty shillings!” said Mr. Warrington, always preserving his calm tone.

Will was waggish. “Thirty shillings? and a devilish good price, too, for the broken-kneed old rip. Ha, ha!”

“Not a word more. 'Tis only a question about a bet, my dear Lady Maria. Shall I serve you some more chicken?” Nothing could be more studiously courteous and gay than Mr. Warrington was, so long as the lady remained in the room. When she rose to go, Harry followed her to the door, and closed it upon her with the most courtly bow of farewell. He stood at the closed door for a moment, and then he bade the servants retire. When those menials were gone, Mr. Warrington locked the heavy door before them, and pocketed the key.

As it clicked in the lock, Mr. Will, who had been sitting over his punch, looking now and then askance at his cousin, asked, with one of the oaths which commonly garnished his conversation, what the—Mr. Warrington meant by that?

“I guess there's going to be a quarrel,” said Mr. Warrington, blandly, “and there is no use in having these fellows look on at rows between their betters.”

“Who is going to quarrel here, I should like to know?” asked Will, looking very pale, and grasping a knife.

“Mr. Sampson, you were present when I played Mr. Will fifty guineas against his brown horse?”

“Against his horse!” bawls out Mr. Will.

“I am not such a something fool as you take me for,” says Mr. Warrington, “although I do come from Virginia!” And he repeated his question: “Mr. Sampson, you were here when I played the Honourable William Esmond, Esquire, fifty guineas against his brown horse?”

“I must own it, sir,” says the chaplain, with a deprecatory look towards his lord's brother.

“I don't own no such a thing,” says Mr. Will, with rather a forced laugh.

“No, sir: because it costs you no more pains to lie than to cheat,” said Mr. Warrington, walking up to his cousin. “Hands off, Mr. Chaplain, and see fair play! Because you are no better than a—ha!——”

No better than a what we can't say, and shall never know, for as Harry uttered the exclamation, his dear cousin flung a wine bottle at Mr. Warrington's head, who bobbed just in time, so that the missile flew across the room, and broke against the wainscot opposite, breaking the face of a pictured ancestor of the Esmond family, and then itself against the wall, whence it spirted a pint of good port wine over the chaplain's face and flowered wig. “Great heavens, gentlemen, I pray you to be quiet!” cried the parson, dripping with gore.

But gentlemen are not inclined at some moments to remember the commands of the Church. The bottle having failed, Mr. Esmond seized the large silver-handled knife and drove at his cousin. But Harry caught up the other's right hand with his left, as he had seen the boxers do at Marybone; and delivered a rapid blow upon Mr. Esmond's nose, which sent him reeling up against the oak panels, and I dare say caused him to see ten thousand illuminations. He dropped his knife in his retreat against the wall, which his rapid antagonist kicked under the table.

Now Will, too, had been at Marybone and Hockley-in-the-Hole, and after a gasp for breath and a glare over his bleeding nose at his enemy, he dashed forward his head as though it had been a battering-ram, intending to project it into Mr. Henry Warrington's stomach.

This manoeuvre Harry had seen, too, on his visit to Marybone, and amongst the negroes upon the maternal estate, who would meet in combat like two concutient cannon-balls, each harder than the other. But Harry had seen and marked the civilised practice of the white man. He skipped aside, and, saluting his advancing enemy with a tremendous blow on the right ear, felled him, so that he struck his head against the heavy oak table and sank lifeless to the ground.

“Chaplain, you will bear witness that it has been a fair fight!” said Mr. Warrington, still quivering with the excitement of the combat, but striving with all his might to restrain himself and look cool. And he drew the key from his pocket and opened the door in the lobby, behind which three or four servants were gathered. A crash of broken glass, a cry, a shout, an oath or two, had told them that some violent scene was occurring within, and they entered, and behold two victims bedabbled with red—the chaplain bleeding port wine, and the Honourable William Esmond, Esquire, stretched in his own gore.

“Mr. Sampson will bear witness that I struck fair, and that Mr. Esmond hit the first blow,” said Mr. Warrington. “Undo his neckcloth, somebody—he may be dead; and get a fleam, Gumbo, and bleed him. Stop! He is coming to himself! Lift him up, you, and tell a maid to wash the floor.”

Indeed, in a minute, Mr. Will did come to himself. First his eyes rolled about, or rather, I am ashamed to say, his eye, one having been closed by Mr. Warrington's first blow. First, then, his eye rolled about; then he gasped and uttered an inarticulate moan or two, then he began to swear and curse very freely and articulately.

“He is getting well,” said