The honourable Mr. Dunborough's collapse arising rather from loss of
blood than from an injury to a vital part, he was sufficiently recovered
even on the day after the meeting to appreciate his nurse's presence.
Twice he was heard to chuckle without apparent cause; once he strove,
but failed, to detain her hand; while the feeble winks which from time
to time he bestowed on Mr. Thomasson when her back was towards him were
attributed by that gentleman, who should have known the patient, to
reflections closely connected with her charms.
His rage was great, therefore, when three days after the duel, he awoke,
missed her, and found in her place the senior bedmaker of Magdalen--a
worthy woman, learned in simples and with hands of horn, but far from
beautiful. This good person he saluted with a vigour which proved him
already far on the road to recovery; and when he was tired of swearing,
he wept and threw his nightcap at her. Finally, between one and the
other, and neither availing to bring back his Briseis, he fell into a
fever; which, as he was kept happed up in a box-bed, in a close room,
with every window shut and every draught kept off by stuffy
curtains--such was the fate of sick men then--bade fair to postpone his
recovery to a very distant date.
In this plight he sent one day for Mr. Thomasson, who had the nominal
care of the young gentleman; and the tutor being brought from the club
tavern in the Corn Market which he occasionally condescended to
frequent, the invalid broke to him his resolution.
'See here, Tommy,' he said in a voice weak but vicious. 'You have got to
get her back. I will not be poisoned by this musty old witch
any longer.' 'But if she will not come?' said Mr. Thomasson sadly.
'The little fool threw up the sponge when she came before,' the patient
answered, tossing restlessly. 'And she will come again, with a little
pressure. Lord, I know the women! So should you.'
'She came before because--well, I do not quite know why she came,' Mr.
Thomasson confessed.
'Any way, you have got to get her back.' The tutor remonstrated, 'My dear good man,' he said unctuously, 'you
don't think of my position. I am a man of the world, I know--'
'All of it, my Macaroni!' 'But I cannot be--be mixed up in such a matter as this, my dear sir.'
'All the same, you have got to get her,' was the stubborn answer. 'Or I
write to my lady and tell her you kept mum about my wound. And you will
not like that, my tulip.' On that point he was right; for if there was a person in the world of
whom Mr. Thomasson stood in especial awe, it was of Lady Dunborough. My
lord, the author of 'Pomaria Britannica' and 'The Elegant Art of
Pomiculture as applied to Landscape Gardening,' was a quantity he could
safely neglect. Beyond his yew-walks and his orchards his lordship was a
cipher. He had proved too respectable even for the peerage; and of late
had cheerfully resigned all his affairs into the hands of his wife,
formerly the Lady Michal M'Intosh, a penniless beauty, with the pride of
a Scotchwoman and the temper of a Hervey. Her enemies said that my lady
had tripped in the merry days of George the Second, and now made up for
past easiness by present hardness. Her friends--but it must be confessed
her ladyship had no friends.