Carew, indeed, had the virtue of being an excellent gossip. I had at one time deemed it his only quality, but I learned better then. Both the gentlemen, each in his own fashion, displayed a certain emotion at seeing me again, in which pleasure at the fact of my being still in the land of the living, and likely to remain so, was qualified by the painful impression produced by my altered appearance.
Sir John, the boy, sat himself down on the edge of my bed and squeezed my hand in silence, with something like tears in his eyes. Carew, the roué, was very deliberate in his choice of a chair, took snuff with a vast deal of elegant gesture, and fired off, with it might be an excess of merriment, such jocularities as he had gathered ready against the occasion. Both of them seemed to deem it incumbent upon them to avoid any reference to the duel. I, however, very promptly brought up the subject.
“Now, for God’s sake,” I said, “let a poor man who has been kept like a child with a cross nurse—take your pap, go to sleep, ask no questions—learn at last a little about himself. In the first place, where am I? In the second, what has become of the red devil who brought me to this pass?”
“In the first place, Jennico,” said Carew, “you are at the house of Lady Beddoes, mother to our friend here, a very pleasing little residence situate on Richmond Hill. Secondly, that red devil, as you call him, that most damnable villain, has fled the country, as well he might, for if ever a knave deserved stringing up as high as Haman—but of that anon. There is a good deal to tell you if you think you can bear the excitement.
“Well,” he pursued, upon my somewhat pettish asseveration, “I myself think a little pleasant conversation will do you more good than harm. To begin with, you are doubtless not aware that you are a dead man.”
“How?” cried I, a little startled, for my nerve was yet none of the strongest.
“Nay, nay, dash you, Carew,” interposed Sir John, “don’t ye make those jokes. Gruesome, I call ’em: it makes me creep! No, Basil, lad, thou art alive, and wilt live to set that Chevalier, whoever he may be, swinging for it yet.” And here in his eager partisanship he broke into a volley of execrations which would have run my poor great-uncle’s performances pretty close.
“Why,” said I impatiently, “‘tis enigma to me still why I am here; why I am dead; why the Chevalier should hang. I think you have all sworn to drive me mad among you.”