"The combatants will not be equal," suggested Major Topham. "I told Villiers that I will gladly take his place."
"No no, no!" screamed the old man turning round, and then, "Oh," cried he, and screwed up his face. And then the gout had him with such fury that he gripped the arms of his chair and flung back his head, displaying a ghastly countenance.
"I remember," champed old Foulks, "the dear Duke of Darlington insisted upon fighting Basil Verney (that's Verney's father, you know) with his left arm in splints, but as my Lord Marquis of Cranbroke, his Grace's second, remarked to me at the time——"
"Oh, spare us the Marquis!" interrupted Stafford brutally. "Let us keep to the business on hand, if you please. The whole thing is absurd, monstrous! Look here, Jasper, look here, Colonel, you two cannot fight to-day. How could you be equally matched even if we got another bath-chair for Jasper. We cannot give him the gout, man, and 'twould be too dashed unfair. Gad, Colonel you would shoot too well or too ill, 'twon't do! Come, come, gentlemen, let us make a good business out of a bad one. Why should you fight at all? Here's Jasper willing to apologise. (Yes you are, Jasper, hold your tongue and be sensible for once; you pulled off his wig, you know. Gad, it was not pretty behaviour, not at all pretty!) But then, Colonel, did not he think you had cut him out with his wife, and was not that a compliment? The neatest compliment you'll ever have this side the grave! He was jealous of you, Colonel; faith, I don't know another man in Bath that would do you so much honour, now-a-days."
"Oh, take me out of this," cried the Colonel, suddenly giving way to the physical anguish that he had been struggling against so valiantly. "Zounds, I will fight you all some day! Take me out of this. Where is that brimstone idiot, my servant? Take me out of this, you devils!"
Between them they wheeled his chair into the road and his screams and curses as he was lifted into the coach were terrible to hear.
"Lord, if he could but call out the gout!" cried Stafford. "Look at him, gentlemen! Ha, he has got his footman by the periwig! Oh, 'tis as good as a play, he is laying it on to the fellow like a Trojan! Why, the poor devil has escaped, but his wig is in the Colonel's hands. Ha, ha, he has sent it flying out of the coach! Off they go; what a voice the old boy has got, he is trumpeting like the elephant at the fair! Well, Jasper, what did I say? No duel to-day."
"Do not make so sure of that," said Sir Jasper. He was moving towards the curricle as he spoke, and turned a sinister face over his shoulder to his friend.
"Oh," cried the latter, and fell back upon Markham, "the fellow's look would turn a churn-full of cream! No, I will not drive back with ye, thankye, Sir Jasper; I will walk. Devil take it," said Stafford, "I don't mind a little jealousy in reason myself; but if I were to drive home in that company, I'd have no appetite for dinner. Come, gentlemen, 'tis a lovely day, let us walk."
So Sir Jasper rolled home alone, and, as his coachman observed a little later as he helped to unharness the sweating horses, "drove them cruel!"