He waited for a while. 'But I am otherwise. I dare to lie when the occasion promises. I have desired Honoria since the first moment wherein I saw her. I may tell you now. I think that you do not remember. We gathered cherries. I ate two of them which had just lain upon her knee-'
His hands had clenched each other, and his lips were drawn back so that you saw his exquisite teeth, which were ground together. He stood thus for a little, silent.
Then Ufford began again: 'I planned all this. I plotted this with Umfraville. I wrote you such a letter as would inevitably draw you to your death. I wished your death. For Honoria would then be freed of you. I would condole with her. She is readily comforted, impatient of sorrow, incapable of it, I dare say. She would have married me… Why must I tell you this? Oh, I am Fate's buffoon! For I have won, I have won! and there is that in me which will not accept the stake I cheated for.'
'And you,' said Calverley-'this thing is you!'
'A helpless reptile now,' said Ufford. 'I have not the power to check Lord Umfraville in his vengeance. You must be publicly disgraced, and must, I think, be hanged even now when it will not benefit me at all. It may be I shall weep for that some day! Or else Honoria must die, because an archangel could not persuade her to desert you in your peril. For she loves you-loves you to the full extent of her merry and shallow nature. Oh, I know that, as you will never know it. I shall have killed Honoria! I shall not weep when Honoria dies. Harkee, Robin! they are dancing yonder. It is odd to think that I shall never dance again.'
'Horace-!' the younger man said, like a person of two minds. He seemed to choke. He gave a frantic gesture. 'Oh, I have loved you. I have loved nothing as I have loved you.'
'And yet you chatter of your passion for Honoria!' Lord Ufford returned, with a snarl. 'I ask what proof is there of this?-Why, that you have surrendered your well-being in this world through love of her. But I gave what is vital. I was an honorable gentleman without any act in all my life for which I had need to blush. I loved you as I loved no other being in the universe.' He spread his hands, which now twitched horribly. 'You will never understand. It does not matter. I desired Honoria. To-day through my desire of her, I am that monstrous thing which you alone know me to be. I think I gave up much.
'You have given more than I would dare to give,' said Calverley. He shuddered.
'And to no end!' cried Ufford. 'Ah, fate, the devil and that code I mocked are all in league to cheat me!'
Said Calverley: 'The man whom I loved most is dead. Oh, had the world been searched between the sunrise and the sunsetting there had not been found his equal. And now, poor fool, I know that there was never any man like this!'
'Nay, there was such a man,' the poet said, 'in an old time which I almost forget. To-day he is quite dead. There is only a poor wretch who has been faithless in all things, who has not even served the devil faithfully.'
'Why, then, you lackey with a lackey's soul, attend to what I say. Can you make any terms with Umfraville?'
'I can do nothing,' Ufford replied. 'You have robbed him-as me-of what he most desired. You have made him the laughing-stock of England. He does not pardon any more than I would pardon.'
'And as God lives and reigns, I do not greatly blame him,' said young Calverley. 'This man at least was wronged. Concerning you I do not speak, because of a false dream I had once very long ago. Yet Umfraville was treated infamously. I dare concede what I could not permit another man to say and live, now that I drink a toast which I must drink alone. For I drink to the honor of the Calverleys. I have not ever lied to any person in this world, and so I may not drink with you.'
'Oh, but you drink because you know your death to be the one event which can insure her happiness,' cried Ufford. 'We are not much unlike. And I dare say it is only an imaginary Honoria we love, after all. Yet, look, my fellow-Ixion! for to the eye at least is she not perfect?'
The two men gazed for a long while. Amid that coterie of exquisites, wherein allusion to whatever might be ugly in the world was tacitly allowed to be unmentionable, Lady Honoria glitteringly went about the moment's mirthful business with lovely ardor. You saw now unmistakably that 'Light Queen of Elfdom, dead Titania's heir' of whom Ufford writes in the fourth Satire. Honoria's prettiness, rouged, frail, and modishly enhanced, allured the eye from all less elfin brilliancies; and as she laughed among so many other relishers of life her charms became the more instant, just as a painting quickens in every tint when set in an appropriate frame.
'There is no other way,' her husband said. He drank and toasted what was dearest in the world, smiling to think how death came to him in that wine's familiar taste. 'I drink to the most lovely of created ladies! and to her happiness!'
He snapped the stem of the glass and tossed it joyously aside.
'Assuredly, there is no other way,' said Ufford. 'And armored by that knowledge, even I may drink as honorable people do. Pro honoria!' Then this man also broke his emptied glass.
'How long have I to live?' said Calverley, and took snuff.
'Why, thirty years, I think, unless you duel too immoderately,' replied Lord Ufford,-'since while you looked at Honoria I changed our glasses. No! no! a thing done has an end. Besides, it is not unworthy of me. So go boldly to the Earl of Bute and tell him all. You are my cousin and my successor. Yes, very soon you, too, will be a peer of England and as safe from molestation as is Lord Pevensey. I am the first to tender my congratulations. Now I make certain that they are not premature.'
The poet laughed at this moment as a man may laugh in hell. He reeled. His lean face momentarily contorted, and afterward the poet died.
'I am Lord Ufford,' said Calverley aloud. 'The person of a peer is inviolable-' He presently looked downward from rapt gazing at his wife.
Fresh from this horrible half-hour, he faced a future so alluring as by its beauty to intimidate him. Youth, love, long years of happiness, and (by this capricious turn) now even opulence, were the ingredients of a captivating vista. And yet he needs must pause a while to think of the dear comrade he had lost-of that loved boy, his pattern in the time of their common youthfulness which gleamed in memory as bright and misty as a legend, and of the perfect chevalier who had been like a touchstone to Robert Calverley a bare half-hour ago. He knelt, touched lightly the fallen jaw, and lightly kissed the cheek of this poor wreckage; and was aware that the caress was given with more tenderness than Robert Calverley had shown in the same act a bare half-hour ago.
Meanwhile the music of a country dance urged the new Earl of Ufford to come and frolic where every one was laughing; and to partake with gusto of the benefits which chance had provided; and to be forthwith as merry as was decorous in a peer of England.
THE IRRESISTIBLE OGLE
'But after SHERIDAN had risen to a commanding position in the gay life of London, he rather disliked to be known as a playwright or a poet, and preferred to be regarded as a statesman and a man of fashion who 'set the pace' in all pastimes of the opulent and idle. Yet, whatever he really thought of his own writings, and whether or not he did them, as Stevenson used to say, 'just for fun,' the fact remains that he was easily the most distinguished and brilliant dramatist of an age which produced in SHERIDAN'S solemn vagaries one of its most characteristic products.'
