Katerfelto.

by G. J. Whyte-Melville.

CHAPTER I.

DEADMAN'S ALLEY.

On the last day of April, 1763, John Wilkes, refusing to enter into his recognisances to appear before the Court of Queen's Bench, was committed to the Tower by warrant of my Lords Egremont and Halifax, His Majesty's two princ.i.p.al Secretaries of State.

Defiance of const.i.tuted authority has never wanted sympathy from that British public which entertains, nevertheless, a profound respect for law. Mr. Wilkes became a hero in consequence; and while many a jug of beer was thereafter emptied, and many a bottle of wine cracked to his health, diverse street songs, more or less execrable, were composed in honour of the so-called patriot, whose personal popularity was incontestable, notwithstanding the unprepossessing exterior, that has pa.s.sed into a proverb.

Of these, none were perhaps so absurd as the following ditty, chanted by a chairman more than half drunk, under the windows of a tavern in Covent Garden, notwithstanding the protestations of some half-dozen gentlemen, who, seated at supper in an upper chamber, held that their tastes and opinions were equally outraged by the persistency of the singer below.

"King Nabuchodonosor," whined the chairman.

"Hold that cursed noise!" exclaimed one of the gentlemen from the window.

"King Nabuchodonosor," repeated the chairman in all the aggravating monotony of a minor key.

"You knave!" roared a second voice--"I'll come down and beat you to a jelly, if you speak another syllable!"

A volley of oaths succeeded this threat, but their object stood fire manfully under the discharge, and fixing his eyes on vacancy, proceeded with his song--

"'King Nabuchodonosor Lived in a golden palace; He fed from a golden dish, and drank His swipes from a golden chalice.

_But_ John Wilkes he was for Middles.e.x, And they chose him for knight of the shire; For he made a fool of Alderman Bull, And called Parson Tooke a liar!'

"Hurrah!" continued the vocalist, who had lost his hat, waving a scratch wig round his bare scalp with an abortive attempt to cheer. "King Nabu--Nabu--cho--donosor was a mighty man"--shaking his head with unimpaired solemnity--"a mighty man, no doubt,

'_But_ John Wilkes he was for Middles.e.x, And they chose him for knight of the shire.'

Hip, hip--Hurrah!"

A burst of laughter rang from the party in the tavern, and a gentleman in a laced waistcoat shut down the window after throwing out a crown-piece to the singer in the street.

Night was falling, the air felt chilly, though it was summer, and the party, who had drank several bottles of port, gathered round the fire over a steaming bowl of punch.

They were of all ages between twenty and fifty. One of them wore a wig, another powder, a third had brushed his luxuriant hair to the poll of his neck and tied it in a plain black bow. Their long-waisted coats were cut to an ample width at skirt and sleeves; their waistcoats heavily bound with lace. Knots of ribbon adorned the knees of their breeches, their shoes were fastened with buckles, and each man carried sword and snuff-box. To drink, to fence, to "lug out" as it was called, on slight provocation, to sing a good song, tell a broad story, and spill a deal of snuff in its recital, were, at this period, the necessary accomplishments of a gentleman.

The room in which these worthies had a.s.sembled seemed more comfortable than luxurious. Its bare floor was sanded, and the chairs, long-legged, high-backed and narrow-seated, were little suggestive of repose, but the mahogany table had been rubbed till it shone like gla.s.s, the wood-fire blazed and crackled, lighting up the crimson hangings that festooned the windows, and though the candles were but tallow, there flared enough of them to bring into relief a few pictures with which the unpapered walls were hung. These works of art, being without exception of a sporting tendency, were treated in a realistic style, and seemed indeed to have been painted by the same master:--A fighting-c.o.c.k, spurred, trimmed, and prepared for battle, standing on the very tip-toe of defiance. A horse with a preternaturally small head, and the shortest possible tail, galloping over Newmarket Heath, to win, as set forth in large print below, "a match or plate of the value of fifty guineas." The portrait of a celebrated prize-fighter, armed with a broadsword, of a noted boxer in position, stripped to the waist. Lastly, an ambitious composition, consisting of scarlet frocks, jack-boots, c.o.c.ked hats, tired horses and baying hounds, grouped round a central figure brandishing a dead fox, and labelled "The Victory of obtaining the Brush."

One of the party had taken on himself to ladle out the punch. Its effects soon became apparent in the heightened colour and increased volubility of the company. Voices rose, two or three at once. A song was demanded, a gla.s.s broken. In the natural course of events, somebody called a toast.

"Blue-Eyes!" shouted a handsome young fellow flushed with drink, waving his gla.s.s above his head.

"A fine!" objected the punch-ladler, judicially. "By the laws of our society, no member has leave to pledge a female toast. It leads to mischief. Gentlemen, we have decided to draw the line, and we draw it at beauty. Call something else!"

"Then here's John Wilkes!" laughed the first speaker. "He's ugly enough in all conscience. John Wilkes! His good health and deliverance--with three!"

"Hold!" exclaimed a beetle-browed, square-shouldered man of forty or more, turning down his gla.s.s; "I protest against the toast. John Wilkes ought still to be fast by the heels in the Tower of London. If he had his deserts John Wilkes would never have come out again, alive or dead, and n.o.body but a d--d Jacobite, and traitor to His Majesty King George, would venture to call such a toast in this worshipful company. I stand to what I say, John Garnet. It's you to play next!"

Each man looked at his neighbour. The punch-ladler half rose to interfere, but shortly plumped into his seat again, finding himself, it may be, not quite steady on his legs, while the young gentleman, thus offensively addressed, clenched his gla.s.s, as if to hurl it in the last speaker's face. Controlling himself, however, with obvious effort, he broke into a forced laugh, glanced at his rapier, standing in a corner of the room, and observed quietly, "If you desire to fasten a quarrel on me, Mr. Gale, this is neither a fitting time nor place."

"Quarrel!" exclaimed the man behind the punch-bowl; "no gentleman, drunk or sober, would be fain to quarrel on John Wilkes' behalf. Sure, he can take his own part with the best or worst of us, and Mr. Gale was only playing the ball back to your service, John Garnet. You began the jest, bad or good. Be reasonable, gentlemen. Fill your gla.s.ses, and let us wash away all unkindness. Here's to you both!"

Mr. Gale, though something of a bully, was not, in the main, an ill-natured man. He squared his shoulders, filled his gla.s.s, and pledged the person he had insulted with an indifference that almost amounted to additional provocation. Confident in his personal strength and skill with his weapon, Mr. Gale, to use his own phraseology, was accustomed to consider himself c.o.c.k of the Walk in every society he frequented. Nine men out of ten are willing to accept bl.u.s.ter for courage, and give the wall readily enough to him who a.s.sumes it as a right. The tenth is made of sterner stuff, resists the pretension, and exposes too often a white feather lurking under the fowl's wing, that crowed so l.u.s.tily and strutted with so defiant a gait.

All this pa.s.sed through the mind of John Garnet, completely sobered by his wrangle, while he sipped punch in silence, meditating reprisals before the night was past.

This young gentleman, whom nature and fortune seemed to have intended for better things, was at present wasting health and energy in a life of pleasure that failed egregiously to please, but that succeeded in draining the resources of a slender purse to their lowest ebb. He came of an old family, and indeed, but for the attainder that deprived his father of lands and t.i.tle, would have been the owner of large estates in the North, and addressed by tenantry or neighbours as Sir John--that father, devoted body and soul to the Stuarts, died at Rome, beggared and broken-hearted, leaving his son little besides his blessing, and an injunction never to abandon the good cause, but bequeathing to him the personal beauty and well-knit frame that Acts of Parliament were powerless to alienate. The young man's laughing eyes, rich colour, dark hair, and handsome features were in keeping with a light muscular figure, a stature slightly above the average, and an easy jaunty bearing, set off by a rich dress, particularly pleasing to feminine taste. Hence, while he repudiated the t.i.tle of which he had been deprived, it became a jest among his intimates to call him "plain John Garnet," a jest of which the point was perhaps more appreciated by the other s.e.x, than by his own.

Plain John Garnet looked somewhat preoccupied now, sitting moodily over his punch, and the influence of his demeanour seemed to steal upon the company in general. Mr. Gale, indeed, held forth loudly on horse-racing, c.o.c.k-fighting, and such congenial topics, but spent his breath for an inattentive audience, not to be interested even by a dissertation on West-country wrestling in all its branches--the Cornish hug, the Devonshire shoulder-grip, and the West Somerset "rough-and-tumble catch where you can."

At an earlier hour than usual the reckoning was called, and the guests, not very steady, a.s.sumed their swords and hats to pa.s.s downstairs into the street. Mr. Gale by accident, John Garnet by design, were the last to leave the room.

The latter placed himself before the door, observing in a quiet tone, that the other's reckoning was not yet wholly paid up. "How so?" asked Gale, in his loud, authoritative voice. "The oldest member has taken my half-guinea, and entered it in due course. Will you satisfy yourself, my young friend, by calling the landlord to produce his club-books? Pooh, pooh! young sir: the punch is strong, and you have drunk too much!

Stand aside, I say, and let me pa.s.s!"

He did not like the set look of John Garnet's mouth; he liked less the low firm tones in which that gentleman repeated his a.s.sertion.

"You may or may not be in debt to the club--it is their affair. You owe an apology to one of the members--that is mine."

"Apology!" stormed the other. "Apology! what do you mean, sir? This is insolence. Don't attempt to bully _me_, sir! Again I say, at your peril, let me pa.s.s!"

"Do you refuse it?" asked John Garnet, in a low voice, setting his lips tighter while he spoke.

"I do!" was the angry reply. "And what then?"

"Nothing unusual," said the other, while he moved out of the way.

"Drawer! Please to show us an empty room."

A frightened waiter, with a face as white as his napkin, opened the door of an adjoining chamber, set a candle on the chimney-piece, and motioned the gentlemen in.

Garnet bowed profoundly, making way for his senior to pa.s.s. The other looked about him in uncertainty, and felt his heart sink, while he heard the voices of their departing companions, already in the street.

He had little inclination to his task. For one moment the burly, square-shouldered man wished himself safe at home; the next, that intermittent courage which comes to most of us, in proportion as it is wanted, braced his nerves for the inevitable encounter and its result.

He grasped his rapier, ready to draw at a moment's notice, while the other coolly locked the door.

The waiter, fresh on the town, and unused to such brawls, ran down to summon his master, who was busy over the house accounts in a small parlour below. Till the landlord had added up one column and carried its balance to the next, he paid no attention, though his astonished servant stood pale and trembling before him, with a corkscrew in his mouth and a bottle under his arm. Then both rushed upstairs in a prodigious hurry, just too late to prevent mischief.

While yet in the pa.s.sage they could hear a scuffle of feet, a clink of steel, a smothered oath, and a groan; but as they reached the door it was opened from inside, and John Garnet stood before them, panting, excited, his waistcoat torn, his dress awry, with the candle in his hand.

"There is a gentleman badly hurt in that room," said he. "Better send for a surgeon at once, and get a coach to take him home." Then he blew out the candle, slipped downstairs in the dark, and so into the street.

The gentleman was indeed so badly hurt that all the energies of the household were concentrated on the sufferer. n.o.body had a thought to spare for the a.s.sailant till long after pursuit would have been too late. Mr. Gale was wounded in the fore-arm, and had received a sword-thrust through the lungs. With the landlord's a.s.sistance he made shift to walk into a bedchamber, where they undressed and laid him carefully down; but before a surgeon could arrive there was obviously no hope, and he only lived long enough to a.s.sure the doctor, in the presence of two witnesses, that the quarrel had been of his own making, and was fought out according to the usual rules of fair-play.

"I was a fool not to close with him," murmured the dying man, reflecting ruefully on the personal strength he had misapplied. "But the rogue is a pretty swordsman; quick, well-taught, supple as an eel, and--I forgive him!"