“Certainly; ’tis very just and sensible; the very point I was going to put,” said the major, with a brisk approval, that strongly contrasted with the savage intensity of Jennings’ tone.
It was plain that the angry and mortal passions of combat were, in Jennings, at last thoroughly aroused. I heard him say to Major Gurney, once or twice, impatiently, “make haste,” and saw him dart one or two lowering glances at Chadleigh. The preliminaries for a second exchange of shots were completed in a few moments—the signal was given—and both fired so exactly together, that, from the report, one would have believed the explosion a single one. Jennings’ shot was well directed, though accident defeated its aim; it struck the trigger guard of Chadleigh’s pistol, which was nearly forced from his hand by the shock, and glancing off, the ball buried itself in the sod. Jennings, on the other hand, stood immovable, while one might slowly count three, then staggered a little, dropped his pistol, and fell suddenly to the ground. Chadleigh walked forward a few hesitating steps, checked himself, and, in an agitated voice, said to the surgeon who had accompanied him—
“You may be wanted here—by ⸻ he’s hurt! Fitzgerald, come away—come, I say.”
Meanwhile, amid a babel of conflicting and exciting suggestions, the surgeon, ordering the crowd to stand back, had the wounded man raised a little on the carriage cushions, and was proceeding to examine the injury, but Jennings said, faintly—
“Don’t—don’t—it’s all of no use.”
He invited me, with a glance and a slight gesture, to approach.
“One word,” he said, speaking with great difficulty. I stooped down, to bring my ear as near him as I could. “It’s all a lie—all that—the paper—see the man, and tell him I said so—poor Mary—I made him do it, but I could not help it—there’s no use in maintaining the cheat any longer—I’m dying. Keep him away,” he continued, faintly turning his gaze for a moment on the surgeon, who was approaching, and then on me, “he can do nothing for me—only listen to me—my last word—that paper is—is a lie—we were married—I can—I can scarcely speak—don’t—don’t-—are you going—hold me—oh God!”
I can never forget the look that Jennings fixed on me—the fearful, imploring gaze of his dilated eyes, filled with the wild, deep, awful meaning of death—the strangling effort to speak—the ghastly pallor—and then, the dropping of the jaw—the mouth, through which the breath of life was never more to stir, helplessly agape—the eyes, with the deep earnestness of their awful meaning, fixed forever—and the stern movelessness of the darkened brow. Was this the gay, vain, reckless Jennings? Was this mute but fearful monitor of death, propped-up before us, indeed the frivolous, lighthearted, sensual man of the world, among whose dreams and calculations the warning shadow of death had never glided?
“By ⸻ he is dead,” said one of the bystanders, breaking the breathless silence that had followed.
The surgeon kneeled down beside him, placed his hand over the dead man’s heart, raised his arm, and held his pulse for a moment—then replaced the hand by his side in silence. I remember seeing the grass that he had plucked, dropping from the stiffening fingers.
“Lift the body into the carriage, and drive to Kildare-street,” said the physician, addressing the servants.
Poor Mary Chadleigh was long held in ignorance of this, to her, overwhelming catastrophe. At length, however, it could be no longer concealed; and the revelation was followed by a brain-fever, which first threatened her life, and then her reason. She recovered, however, with a mind unimpaired, although with a shattered constitution. With her younger brother and her child, the youthful widow found an asylum for years in England, until the death of Sir Arthur put her in possession of the fortune which his will could not control.
One circumstance connected with the history of Jennings’ fate, however, never reached her ear. I had taken care to procure, though not without considerable difficulty at starting, the fullest evidence of the marriage—and afterwards learned, from the younger brother, whose return had, perhaps, precipitated the catastrophe, a circumstance which accounted for what had, for a time, appeared to me the gratuitous villany of Jennings, in himself denying, and suborning others to deny, a marriage, whose existence was necessary to protect Miss Chadleigh from the agonizing degradation, the appalling ruin, with which she had been so imminently, though unconsciously, threatened. Jennings, it seemed, had actually married a woman of very equivocal rank, and more than equivocal character, in India. There were circumstances, however, which made the validity of this marriage doubtful, and the woman herself had left him, and formed a vicious connection there; so that he had regarded the marriage as dissolved by mutual consent, and never reckoned upon the remote contingency of her turning up, by any accident. By a fatal coincidence, however, it happened, that, of the few individuals who knew of this connection, his intimate and confidential friend, Captain Chadleigh, had been one. His supposed death had, however, quieted those alarms, which would have precluded the moral possibility of Jennings’ hazarding the audacious step which ended so fatally for himself, and the unexpected and impending return of Chadleigh was the first event which recalled the reckless and unprincipled man to a sense of his actual position. How often is crime unavailing for its meditated purpose, and effective only for the ruin of him who plans it. While Jennings was stoutly denying his marriage with Mary Chadleigh, to avoid the fancied danger of a prosecution, the poor young lady’s brother was bringing with him tidings of the death (long previous to his marriage with Miss Chadleigh) of the profligate woman, whose claim upon his hand had driven him to the selfish and desperate expedient of denying his union with the too-confiding creature whom his ardent and impetuous pursuit had won to lifelong sorrow. Yet
