CHAPTER VII

Having satisfied herself on one point, the astute lady lost no time making an attempt to satisfy herself on another point quite as interesting: being convinced that Dick Sheridan had hurried away because he was in love with Miss Linley, she was anxious to learn if Miss Linley was in love with any one. The fact that Miss Linley was walking by the side of the man whom it was announced she had promised to marry, was not accepted by Mrs. Crewe as any indication of the direction in which she should look for an answer to the question. Nay, so astute an observer of life was this lady, that she made up her mind in an instant not to assume at the outset of her investigation that, because Betsy Linley had promised to marry Mr. Long, she was therefore in love with some one else. She could remember instances of young women being actually devoted to the men whom they had promised to marry. She had an excellent memory.

She turned her eyes upon Betsy coming up the garden walk, but the result of her observation was inconclusive; Mr. Long was at that instant making some remark to the girl, and she had her head slightly bent toward him, while she listened attentively—smilingly. Clearly she had not noticed the abrupt departure of Dick Sheridan. There was nothing in the attentive smile with which she was encouraging the remark of Mr. Long.

“He does not look a day over sixty,” said Mrs. Thrale.

“Nor a day under it,” responded Mrs. Cholmondeley. Garrick was quoting Shakespeare:

“Here comes the lady; O so light a foot
Will ne’er wear out the everlasting flint!”

And then Mr. Long and Miss Linley reached the group, and Betsy was responding with exquisite blushes to the patronising smiles of the ladies, who greeted her with effusion and Mr. Long with great self-possession.

Mr. Long was, however, the most self-possessed of the group. There was gravity as well as dignity in his acceptance of the congratulations of the party.

“I am the most fortunate of men, indeed,” he said, bowing low, and touching the grass of the border with the sweep of his hat.

“Nay, Mr. Long, do not depreciate your own worth by talking of fortune,” said Mrs. Thrale.

“There is philosophy in your suggestion, madam,” said he. “’Twas feeble of me to make the attempt to fall in with the general tone of the comments of my friends. Still, there is but one Miss Linley in the world.”

“And you are ungenerous enough, sir, to seek to deprive the world of that one,” cried Mrs. Thrale.

She had failed to perceive the tendency of his remark.

“What, Mrs. Thrale! is’t possible that you are weak enough to look for generosity in a lover?” said Garrick. “Good lud, madam! the very soul of true love is the most ungenerous essence on earth.”

“Ah, you see, madam, Mr. Garrick’s love is of the earth earthy; but we were talking of quite another kind of love, were we not?” said Mr. Long readily, but not in a tone of badinage.

“We are very well content to be terrestrial,” said Mrs. Crewe, lifting her chin an inch or so in the air.

“I am more ambitious; that is why I am by the side of Miss Linley,” said Mr. Long.

“Very prettily spoke, sir,” said Garrick. “Miss Linley I have always held to be celestial. Is not that so, Betsy?”

“Indeed, sir, you were good enough to offer me an engagement to sing at Drury Lane,” replied Betsy, with a smile.

Every one laughed, and Garrick gave a wonderful representation of a man who is completely discomfited by an antagonist.

Mr. Long seemed to think that the moment was a favourable one for resuming his stroll with Betsy; he had just taken her hand and was in the act of bowing to the three beautiful ladies who were laughing archly at Garrick, when a loud laugh that had no merriment in it sounded at the further side of a line of shrubs, and Mathews reappeared.

Betsy, with a look of apprehension, started and took a step closer to Mr. Long. Mr. Long’s face beamed with pride at that moment, for the girl’s movement suggested her confidence in his power to protect her. The ladies saw the expression that was on her face, and the glance that he cast upon her, and there was not one of them who did not envy her, although Mr. Long was sixty years old.

“Ha, Miss Linley! are you never to be found except in the company of your grandfather?” cried Mathews, while still a few paces away from the group. Then, pretending to become aware of the identity of Long at the same moment, he roared with laughter.

“I swear to you, madam, I thought that you were in the company of your grandfather,” he cried. “Sure, my error was a natural one! I ask you, Mrs. Thrale, if ’twas not natural that I should take this gentleman for Miss Linley’s grandfather?”

“Mr. Mathews,” said Mrs. Thrale, “I have no opinion on such matters, though I have my own idea of what constitutes a piece of impudence on the part of a man.”

“Ha, Grandfather Long, you hear that?” cried Mathews. “Mrs. Thrale says she knows what impudence is.”

“Then where is the need for you to give her examples of it, sir?” said Long.

“Any fool could see that she had in her eye the case of an old man who makes love to a young woman,” said Mathews brutally.

“Only a fool would take my words in such a sense, Mr. Mathews,” said Mrs. Thrale.

“Nay, good madam, ’twas but my jest,” said Mathews.

“Then let me tell you, sir, ’twas a very sorry jest,” said Mrs. Thrale.

“I say ’twas a jest; at the same time, should any gentleman within earshot feel himself aggrieved by my humour, he will not find Captain Mathews slow to give him any satisfaction he may demand.”

The fellow pursed out his lips, and struck the ground with his cane.

Mr. Long turned his back upon the man and entered smilingly into conversation with Mrs. Cholmondeley. For a moment he was separated from Betsy, and Mathews took advantage of that moment to get beside her.

“You are never going to be fool enough to marry a man old enough to be your grandfather?” said he in a low voice.

She made a movement as if to get beside Mr. Long; but he adroitly prevented her from carrying out her intention.

“You think I am the man to stand tamely by and see you marry him or any one else?” he said, putting his face close to hers, his eyes glaring into her own (he was imitating the attitude and the language of one of the actors whom he had recently seen at the Bristol theatre).

"You think I am the man to stand tamely by..."

“You think I am the man to stand tamely by and see you marry him or any one else?”

[page 72 .

“Why should you be so chagrined, Captain Mathews?” she said. “There are many girls far more worthy than I am who would feel flattered by your attentions. I am sure you do not wish to persecute me.”

She was, woman-like, hoping by temporising with the man to prevent an open quarrel. He saw that he had succeeded in making her afraid of him.

“I set my heart on you, I set my soul on you, Betsy Linley, and you know that your father and mother favoured me; you, and you only, stood out against me.” He had put his face closer to hers, causing her to shrink back an inch or two. “But you will have me yet—you must—by the Lord, you shall!” he resumed. “I swear to you that I have set my soul upon you. Murder—what is murder to such a man as I have become through you—all through the curse of your beauty! Do you think that I would hold back my knife for the space of a second from the throat of any man who was going to take you away from me? I swear to you that I would kill him—kill him without mercy—and you—you too! My love is of that sort. I would account killing you the next best thing to wedding you. I’ll do either the one or the other—make up your mind to that—make up your mind to that! If you would save yourself—and him—and him, mind you—you will take me; ’tis your only chance.”

She was terrified, for she saw that he had reached that point in the madness of his jealousy which was reached by Othello when he cried:

“Blood, Iago—blood, blood!”

She had seen Garrick in the part, and had been thrilled by his awful delivery of the words. Even now, in spite of her terror, she did not fail to be struck with the marvellous accuracy of Garrick’s art. She was now face to face with the real thing—with the man in the clutch of an overwhelming passion; and yet she was not more terrified than she had been when Garrick’s voice had become hoarse while uttering those words of murder that had been put into the mouth of Othello by Shakespeare.

“What is this madness that has come to you?” she cried. “Oh, you must be quite mad! If you cared ever so little for me you would not overwhelm me with terror.”

“I don’t know which would be the sweeter—killing you or wedding you,” he said. He kept his eyes fixed upon hers for some seconds, and then he added in a lower tone that chilled her: “By heavens! I do know now—now!”

She gave a little cry. She had done her best to restrain it, for the dread of a quarrel taking place between the men was upon her, and in an instant Mr. Long had turned to her. Another instant and he had thrust himself between her and Mathews and had taken her hand. He was not looking at her, but straight into the face of Mathews.

“We must not be late, Miss Linley,” he said quietly, “and unless we hasten onward we shall not be in time to meet our friends at Bath-Easton. Stand aside, sir, if you please.”

Mathews instinctively took a couple of steps back, while Long, still holding Betsy’s hand, bent his head before the ladies and young Captain Horneck, of the Guards, who had just appeared by the side of his fiancée, Lord Albemarle’s daughter.

There was a pause in the conversation passing round that little group—an electric pause, it seemed; every one appeared to be waiting for a thunderbolt to fall, for Mathews had a reputation for being an element of the lurid in the atmosphere of Bath. For a few moments after Long and Betsy had gone, he seemed uncertain what course to adopt; but suddenly he appeared to have light granted to him. He bent his malacca cane until he made both ends meet; then, with an oath, he hurried after Long and Betsy.

He overtook them before they had gone twenty yards, but while he was still some way behind them he called out:

“A word with you, Mr. Long, if you please.”

Mr. Long turned round.

“I wish no words with you, sir,” he said.

“But I wish some with you, sir,” said Mathews, coming up to him, “I wish to give you a word of warning. I wish you to hear me swear that the day you wed Elizabeth Linley shall be your last on earth.”

Long smiled in his face, and then in the terrified face of the girl by his side.

“What a compliment Mr. Mathews pays to you, Miss Linley!” said he. “My last day on earth—true; for thenceforth I shall be in heaven. Thank you, Mr. Mathews.”

“In heaven? No, by the Lord, you will find yourself not in heaven, but——”

“You scoundrel! if you utter one more word I shall hand you over neck and crop to the hangman,” said Long. “You think that your braggadocio airs have weight with me? I have but to raise my finger and the handcuffs are about your wrists. I know more about your past life than you seem to imagine, my good fellow. Now, get out of my way, or I shall subject you to the humiliation of a public caning.”

He grasped his cane firmly, and there was upon his face a look of determination. Mathews took a step or two back. His jaw had fallen, and the ferocity of his expression had become tempered by the terror that appeared in his eyes. Mechanically he bowed, removing his hat while Long and Betsy walked on. Then he stood staring after them, failing to recover himself even though he could scarcely have avoided hearing the laugh that broke from one of the ladies in the group which he had just left. Some minutes had passed before he ceased gnawing the silver top of his cane and stalked off in a direction opposite to that which Miss Linley and Mr. Long had taken.

“A duel! oh no; there will be no duel,” cried Garrick in reply to a suggestion made by one of his group. “Oh no; I have studied men and their motives to small purpose these thirty years if I could bring myself to believe that Captain Mathews is the man to challenge Mr. Long to a duel in such circumstances.”

“What! Did not you see the way Mr. Long grasped his cane?” cried Mrs. Cholmondeley.

“To be sure I did, my dear lady; that is why I am convinced that there will be no duel,” replied Garrick. “We did not hear what Mr. Long said to the fellow, but we saw how he grasped his cane, and let me assure you, madam, that the language of cane-grasping is a good deal more intelligible than the English of our friend Dr. Johnson.”

“If there be no duel I am sorry for Mr. Long,” said Mrs. Thrale.

Her friends stared at her.

“I should rather be sorry for the elderly gentleman if he had to stand up before a man twenty-five years his junior, with pistol or small sword,” said Mrs. Crewe.

“Ah, my dear, one must take a less superficial view of men and their motives—an excellent phrase, Mr. Garrick—if one desire to arrive at a complete understanding of both,” said Mrs. Thrale. “I am sure that so excellent an observer as Mrs. Crewe will, upon reflection, perceive that the best chance an elderly gentleman has of captivating the heart of a young woman is by fighting for her. Mr. Long is clearly aware of this elementary truth. He is a brave man, and he is ready to risk his life in order that he may have a chance of winning his lady.”

“But he has won her already,” said Mrs. Crewe.

“Nay, she has only promised to marry him,” said Mrs. Thrale, with the smile of the sapient one.

“It will be time enough for him to think of winning her after he has married her,” remarked Mrs. Cholmondeley.

“I would not be so sure of that,” said Mrs. Thrale. “Procrastination in a lover can be carried too far. Is not that your opinion, Mr. Garrick?”

“Madam, I feel like the negro who was choked when endeavouring to swallow a diamond: I am so overwhelmed by the jewels of wisdom which you have flung before me that I am incapable of expressing any opinion,” said Garrick.

“You are far from being complimentary to Mrs. Thrale if you suggest that you have failed to assimilate her precious words, sir,” said Mrs. Cholmondeley.

“Nay, ’twas not the negro and the diamond that was in Mr. Garrick’s mind,” said Mrs. Crewe. “’Twas Macbeth and his ‘Amen.’ We have seen Macbeth’s ‘Amen’ stick in your throat more than once, Mr. Garrick, and I vow that when Mrs. Thrale asked you just now to say the word that would hall-mark her wisdom, as it were, the same expression was on your face.”

“Madam, I would scorn to contradict a lady unless I differed from her,” said Garrick; “but I repeat, there will be no duel.”

“Why, who was talking about duels, sir?” inquired Mrs. Crewe. “Lud! Mr. Garrick, duels was the topic of five minutes ago, and time at Bath is precious.”

“From duels to jewels is not a huge distance,” said Mrs. Cholmondeley, whose pronunciation was not quite free from the Irish brogue which increased the fascination of her sister, Mrs. Woffington.