“’Tis dedicated to Hymen or Hades; it rests with you to determine which,” said he, with one of his wicked leers. He was very like one of the marble satyrs, she perceived—a Marsyas without his music. She longed for an Apollo skilled in flaying.
Flogged the fellow as never horse had been flogged.
[page [243].
The ceremony over, congratulatory smiles were sent flying around the listeners, and there was a general movement toward the house, full of spontaneity.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” came a voice from one side, and the movement was arrested. People looked over their shoulders. O lud! was the dulness of the day to be increased by speeches? they enquired.
“Ladies and gentlemen, you were grossly insulted just now by a wretch who is a master of the arts of the brigand, though he meant his poisoned knife for me alone. This is the blackguard, and I treat him as such.”
Before any one was aware of the fact that it was Mr. Long who was speaking, he had his hand upon the collar of Captain Mathews, and had swung him round by a certain jerk well known to wrestlers of the old school. Forcing him, staggering, backward with one hand, with a postillion’s short whip, which he held in the other, he flogged the fellow as never horse had been flogged. He cut strips off his garments as neatly as if his weapon had been a pair of shears; a cut of the lash made the blood spurt from one of his calves, another took a slice off his small-clothes just above the knee—ludicrous but effective. His coat parted at the back seams in the stress of the struggle, and a few more cuts at the opening made shreds of his shirt and let free, as it seemed, all the blood in his body. There was the shriek of females, and this brought the men to their senses. They hastened to interpose. Mr. Long sent his victim staggering against two or three of them. Mathews trod on their toes, and they cursed him unaware, Mr. Long belabouring away with a deftness that lacked neither style nor finish; and all the time his knuckles were digging into Mathew’s throat, until the wretch’s face became purple.
Half a dozen gentlemen launched themselves upon Mr. Long. He stepped adroitly to one side, and let them have Mathews. They fell on him in a heap, crushing out of his body whatever trifle of breath he retained.
Mr. Long politely assisted them to rise, affecting to wipe from their garments the result of their contact with the grass. He was breathing heavily, and his wig had become disordered.