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

“You mean to say, 'Not guilty?' God bless thee, my boy!” cries the General. “I told thee so, Jack.” And he rubbed his hand across his eyes, and blushed, and wrung George's hand with all his might.

“Not guilty of what, in heaven's name?” asks Mr. Warrington.

“Nay,” said the General, “Mr. Jack, here, brought the story. Let him tell it. I believe 'tis a ——— lie, with all my heart.” And uttering this wicked expression, the General fairly walked out of the room.

The Rev. J. Lambert looked uncommonly foolish.

“And what is this—this d——d lie, sir, that somebody has been telling of me?” asked George, grinning at the young clergyman.

“To question the courage of any man is always an offence to him,” says Mr. Lambert, “and I rejoice that yours has been belied.”

“Who told the falsehood, sir, which you repeated?” bawls out Mr. Warrington. “I insist on the man's name!”

“You forget you are bound over to keep the peace,” says Jack.

“Curse the peace, sir! We can go and fight in Holland. Tell me the man's name, I say!”

“Fair and softly, Mr. Warrington!” cries the young parson; “my hearing is perfectly good. It was not a man who told me the story which, I confess, I imparted to my father.”

“What?” asks George, the truth suddenly occurring. “Was it that artful, wicked little vixen in Bloomsbury Square?”

“Vixen is not the word to apply to any young lady, George Warrington!” exclaims Lambert, “much less to the charming Miss Lydia. She artful—the most innocent of Heaven's creatures! She wicked—that angel! With unfeigned delight that the quarrel should be over—with devout gratitude to think that blood consanguineous should not be shed—she spoke in terms of the highest praise of you for declining this quarrel, and of the deepest sympathy with you for taking the painful but only method of averting it.”

“What method?” demands George, stamping his foot.

“Why, of laying an information, to be sure!” says Mr. Jack; on which George burst forth into language much too violent for us to repeat here, and highly uncomplimentary to Miss Lydia.

“Don't utter such words, sir!” cried the parson, who, as it seemed, now took his turn to be angry. “Do not insult, in my hearing, the most charming, the most innocent of her sex! If she has been mistaken in her information regarding you, and doubted your willingness to commit what, after all, is a crime—for a crime homicide is, and of the most awful description—you, sir, have no right to blacken that angel's character with foul words: and, innocent yourself, should respect the most innocent as she is the most lovely of women! Oh, George, are you to be my brother?”

“I hope to have that honour,” answered George, smiling. He began to perceive the other's drift.

“What, then, what—though 'tis too much bliss to be hoped for by sinful man—what, if she should one day be your sister? Who could see her charms without being subjugated by them? I own that I am a slave. I own that those Latin Sapphics in the September number of the Gentleman's Magazine, beginning Lydicae quondam cecinit venustae (with an English version by my friend Hickson of Corpus), were mine. I have told my mother what hath passed between us, and Mrs. Lambert also thinks that the most lovely of her sex has deigned to look favourably on me. I have composed a letter—she another. She proposes to wait on Miss Lydia's grandpapa this very day, and to bring me the answer, which shall make me the happiest or the most wretched of men! It was in the unrestrained intercourse of family conversation that I chanced to impart to my father the sentiments which my dear girl had uttered. Perhaps I spoke slightingly of your courage, which I don't doubt—by Heaven, I don't doubt: it may be, she has erred, too, regarding you. It may be that the fiend jealousy has been gnawing at my bosom, and—horrible suspicion!—that I thought my sister's lover found too much favour with her I would have all my own. Ah, dear George, who knows his faults? I am as one distracted with passion. Confound it, sir! What right have you to laugh at me? I would have you to know that risu inepto.”

“What, have you two boys made it up?” cries the General, entering at this moment, in the midst of a roar of laughter from George.

“I was giving my opinion to Mr. Warrington upon laughter, and upon his laughter in particular,” says Jack Lambert, in a fume.

“George is bound over to keep the peace, Jack! Thou canst not fight him for two years; and between now and then, let us trust you will have made up your quarrel. Here is dinner, boys! We will drink absent friends, and an end to the war, and no fighting out of the profession!”

George pleaded an engagement, as a reason for running away early from his dinner; and Jack must have speedily followed him, for when the former, after transacting some brief business at his own lodgings, came to Mr. Van den Bosch's door, in Bloomsbury Square, he found the young parson already in parley with a servant there. “His master and mistress had left town yesterday,” the servant said.

“Poor Jack! And you had the decisive letter in your pocket?” George asked of his future brother-in-law.

“Well, yes,”—Jack owned he had the document—“and my mother has ordered a chair, and was coming to wait on Miss Lyddy,” he whispered piteously, as the young men lingered on the steps.

George had a note, too, in his pocket for the young lady, which he had not cared to mention to Jack. In truth, his business at home had been to write a smart note to Miss Lyddy, with a message for the gentleman who had brought her that funny story of his giving information regarding the duel! The family being absent, George, too, did not choose to leave his note. “If cousin Will has been the slander-bearer, I will go and make him recant,” thought George. “Will the family soon be back?” he blandly asked.

“They are gone to visit the quality,” the servant replied. “Here is the address on this paper;” and George read, in Miss Lydia's hand, “The box from Madam Hocquet's to be sent by the Farnham Flying Coach; addressed to Miss Van den Bosch, at the Right Honourable the Earl of Castlewood's, Castlewood, Hants.”

“Where?” cried poor Jack, aghast.

“His lordship and their ladyships have been here often,” the servant said, with much importance. “The families is quite intimate.”

This was very strange; for, in the course of their conversation, Lyddy had owned but to one single visit from Lady Castlewood.

“And they must be a-going to stay there some time, for Miss have took a power of boxes and gowns with her!” the man added. And the young men walked away, each crumpling his letter in his pocket.

“What was that remark you made?” asks George of Jack, at some exclamation of the latter. “I think you said——”