The epithets were delivered in a breath by Major Rockley and Sir Matthew Bray, just as Lord Carboro’ approached, walking by Lady Drelincourt’s bath-chair.
It was an opportunity for showing how an insolent drunken private should be treated; and as several loungers of society were coming up, the two officers accompanied their words with a couple of blows from their whips.
It is dangerous to play with edged tools, is proverbially said; and, in his then frame of mind, Fred Denville felt no longer that he was James Bell, the disciplined, kept-down servant and private. He felt as a man smarting from the blows he had received. The service, the penalty for striking an officer, were as nothing to him then; he saw only the big, pompous, insolent bully of his regiment, Sir Matthew Bray, and the man who had insulted him a thousand times, which he could have forgiven, and his sister again and again, which he could not forgive.
With one bound he was upon Sir Matthew Bray, whom he struck full in the chest, so that he staggered back, tripped his heels on the front wheel of Lady Drelincourt’s bath-chair, and fell heavily into the road.
With another bound he was upon Rockley, who had followed and struck him again a sharp, stinging cut.
There was a momentary struggle, and then the whip was twisted out of Rockley’s hand, his wrist half dislocated, and for a couple of minutes the thin scourge hissed and whistled through the air as, half mad with rage, Fred lashed the Major across shoulders, back, and legs, and finally dashed him down with a parting cut across the face.
“That for you, you horsewhipped cur and scoundrel! You disgrace the uniform you wear!”
There was a little crowd gathering, but only one man dared to seize upon the fierce-looking dragoon, and that one was Lord Carboro’.
“Loose my arm,” roared Fred, turning upon him with uplifted whip; but, as he saw who held him, and that Bray and Payne were holding aloof, and helping Rockley to rise, he lowered his whip. “Loose my arm, my lord; you’re an old man, I can’t strive with you.”
“You rascal! You have struck your superior officers.”