The Convenient Marriage

reasonable enough. You don’t like his hat. That’s devilish neat, “pon my soul it is! Now you come to mention it, ecod, I don’t like it either!”

“No, I don’t like it!” declared the Viscount, rolling a fiery eye at the offending structure. “Pink roses, egad, above that complexion! Damme, it offends me, so it does!”

Mr Drelincourt’s bosom swelled. “Sirs, I take you all to witness that his lordship is in his cups!”

“Hanging back, are you?” said the Viscount, thrusting Mr Fox aside. “Well, you won’t wear that hat again!” With which he plucked the straw confection from Mr Drelincourt’s head and casting it on the floor ground his heel in it.

Mr Drelincourt, who had borne with tolerable composure the insult of a glass of wine thrown in his face, gave a shriek of rage, and clapped his hands to his head. “My wig! My hat! My God, it passes all bounds! You’ll meet me for this, my lord! I say you shall meet me for this!”

“Be sure I will!” promised the Viscount, rocking on the balls of his feet, his hands in his pockets. “When you like, where you like, swords or pistols!”

Mr Drelincourt, pale and shaking with fury, besought his lordship to name his friends. The Viscount cocked an eyebrow at Sir Roland Pommeroy. “Pom? Cheston?”

The two gentlemen indicated expressed their willingness to serve him.

Mr Drelincourt informed them that his seconds would wait upon them in the morning, and with a somewhat jerky bow withdrew from the room. The Viscount, his rage at the insult to Horatia slightly assuaged by the satisfactory outcome of the disturbance, returned to his table and continued there in the highest fettle until eight in the morning.

Somewhere about noon, when he was still in bed and asleep, Sir Roland Pommeroy visited his lodging in Pall Mall and, disregarding the valet’s expostulations, pushed his way into my lord’s room and rudely awakened him. The Viscount sat up, yawning, rolled a blear-eye upon his friend, and demanded to know what the devil was amiss.

“Nothing’s amiss,” replied Sir Roland, seating himself on the edge of the bed. “We have it all fixed, snug as you please.”

The Viscount pushed his nightcap to the back of his head and strove to collect his scattered wits. “What’s fixed?” he said thickly.

“Lord man, your meeting!” said Sir Roland, shocked.

“Meeting?” The Viscount brightened. “Have I called someone out? Well, by all that’s famous!”

Sir Roland, casting a dispassionate and expert eye over his principal, got up and went over to the wash-basin and dipped one of his lordship’s towels in cold water. This he wrung out and silently handed to the Viscount, who took it gratefully and bound it round his aching brow. It seemed to assist him to clear his brain, for presently he said: “Quarrelled with someone, did I? Damme, my head’s like to split! Devilish stuff, that burgundy.”

“More likely the brandy,” said Sir Roland gloomily. “You drank a deal of it.”

“Did I so? You know, there was something about a hat—a damned thing with pink roses. It’s coming back to me.” He clasped his head in his hands, while Sir Roland sat and picked his teeth in meditative patience. “By God, I have it! I’ve called Crosby out!” suddenly exclaimed the Viscount.

“No, you haven’t,” corrected Sir Roland. “He called you. You wiped your feet on his hat, Pel.”

“Ay, so I did, but that wasn’t it,” said the Viscount, his brow darkening.

Sir Roland removed the gold toothpick from his mouth, and said succinctly: “Tell you what, Pel, it had best be the hat.”

The Viscount nodded. “It’s the devil’s own business,” he said ruefully. “Ought to have stopped me.”

“Stop you!” echoed Sir Roland. “You flung a glass of wine in the fellow’s face before anyone knew what you was about.”

The Viscount brooded, and presently sat up again with a jerk. “By God, I’m glad I did it! You heard what he said, Pom?”

“Drunk, belike,” offered Sir Roland.

“There’s not a word of truth in it,” said the Viscount with grim meaning. “Not a word, Pom, d’you take me?”

“Lord, Pel, no one ever thought there was! Ain’t one fight enough for you?”

The Viscount grinned rather sheepishly and leaned back against the bed-head. “What’s it to be? Swords or pistols?”

“Swords,” replied Sir Roland. “We don’t want to make it a killing matter. Fixed it all up for you out at Barn Elms, Monday at six.”

The Viscount nodded, but seemed a trifle abstracted. He discarded the wet towel and looked wisely across at his friend. “I was drunk, Pom, that’s the tale.”

Sir Roland, who had resumed the use of his toothpick, let it fall in his surprise, and gasped: “You’re never going to back out of it, Pel?”

“Back out of it?” said the Viscount. “Back out of a fight? Burn it, if I didn’t know you for a fool, Pom, I’d thrust that down your gullet, so I would!”

Sir Roland accepted this shamefacedly, and begged pardon.

“I was drunk,” said the Viscount, “and I took a dislike to Crosby’s hat—Damn it, what’s he want with pink roses in his hat? Answer me that!”

“Just what I said myself,” agreed Sir Roland. “Fellow can wear a hat at Almack’s if he likes. Do it myself sometimes. But pink roses—no.”

“Well, that’s all there is to it,” said the Viscount with finality. “You put it about I was in my cups. That’s the tale.”

Sir Roland agreed that ought certainly to be the tale and picked up his hat and cane. The Viscount prepared to resume his interrupted slumber, but upon Sir Roland’s opening the door, opened one eye and adjured him on no account to forget to order breakfast at Barn Elms.

Monday dawned very fair, a cool lifting mist giving promise of a fine day to come. Mr Drelincourt, accompanied in a coach by his seconds, Mr Francis Puckleton and Captain Forde, arrived at Barn Elms some time before six, this excessive punctuality being accounted for by the irregularity of the

Captain’s watch. “But it’s no matter,” said the Captain. “Drink a bumper of cognac and take a look at the ground, hey, Crosby?”

Mr Drelincourt assented with rather a wan smile.

It was his first fight, for though he delighted in the delivery of waspish speeches he had never until that fatal Friday felt the least desire to cross swords with anyone. When he had seen the Viscount stalking towards him at Almack’s he had been quite aghast, and would have been perfectly willing to eat the rash words that had caused all the bother had not the Viscount committed that shocking rape upon his hat and wig. Mr Drelincourt was so much in the habit of considering his appearance above anything else that this brutal action had roused him to a really heroic rage. At that moment he had quite genuinely wanted to spit the Viscount on the end of a small-sword, and if only they could have engaged there and then he had no doubt that he would have acquitted himself very well. Unfortunately etiquette did not permit of so irregular a proceeding, and he had been forced to kick his heels for two interminable days. When his rage had died down it must be confessed that he began to look forward with apprehension to Monday’s meeting. He spent a great deal of the weekend perusing Angelo’s Ecole d’Armes, a work that made his blood run quite cold. He had, of course, learned the art of fencing, but he had a shrewd notion that a buttoned foil presented a very different appearance from a naked duelling sword. Captain Forde congratulated him on having hit upon a worthy opponent in the Viscount, who, he said, though he was perhaps a trifle reckless, was no mean swordsman. He had already fought two duels, but one had been with pistols, with which weapon he was considered to be very dangerous. Mr Drelincourt could only be thankful that Sir Roland had chosen swords.

Captain Forde, who seemed to take a gruesome delight in the affair, recommended his principal to go early to bed on Sunday night and on no account to drink deep. Mr Drelincourt obeyed him implicitly, but passed an indifferent night. As he tossed and turned, wild ideas of inducing his seconds to settle for him crossed his brain. He wondered how the Viscount was spending the night and entertained a desperate hope that he might be drinking himself under the table. If only some accident or illness would befall him! Or perhaps ioo he himself could be smitten by a sudden indisposition? But in the cold light of dawn he was forced to abandon this scheme. He was not a very brave man, but he had his pride: one could not draw back from an engagement.