“I am not aware that there has been anything peculiar in my pronunciation of that name—or in my manner to Mrs. Disney,” said Mr. Crowther, looking at his boots, but with a malignant smile lurking at the corners of his heavy lips.
“Oh, but you are aware of both facts. You meant to be insolent, and meant other people to notice your insolence. It was your way of being even with me for defying you to shut up the wood yonder, and cut off the people’s favourite walk to church. You dared not attack me; but you thought you could wreak your petty spite upon my wife—and you thought I should be too dull to observe, or too much of a poltroon to resent your impertinence. That’s what you thought, Mr. Crowther: and I am here to undeceive you, and to tell you that you are a coward and a liar, and that if you don’t like those words you may send any friend you please to my friend, Captain Hulbert, to arrange a meeting in the nearest and most convenient place on the other side of the channel.”
Mr. Crowther turned very red, and then very pale. It was the first time he had been invited to venture his life in defence of his honour; and for the moment it seemed to him that honour was a small thing, a shadowy possession exaggerated into importance by the out-at-elbows and penniless among mankind, who had nothing else to boast of. As if a man who always kept fifty thousand pounds at his bankers, and who had money invested all over the world, would go and risk his life upon the sands of Blankenburgh against a soldier whose retiring allowance was something less than three hundred a year, and who was perhaps a dead shot. The idea was preposterous!
No, Mr. Crowther was not going to fight; and though he quailed before those steady eyes of Martin Disney’s, calm in their deep indignation, this explanation was not unwelcome to him. He had a dagger ready to plunge into his enemy’s heart, and he did not mean to hold his hand.
“I’m not a fighting man, Colonel Disney,” he said; “and if I were I should hardly care to fight for a grass widow who made herself common talk by her flirtation with a man of most notorious antecedents. We will say that it never was any more than a flirtation—in spite of Mrs. Disney’s mysterious disappearance after the Hunt Ball, which happened to correspond with Lord Lostwithiel’s sudden departure. The two events might have no connection—more especially as Mrs. Disney came back ten days after, and Lord Lostwithiel hasn’t come back yet.”
“I can answer for my wife’s conduct, sir, under all circumstances, and amidst all surroundings. You are the first person who has ever dared to cast a slur upon her, and it shall not be my fault if you are not the last. I tell you again, to your face, that you are a coward and a liar—a coward because you are insolent to a young and lovely woman, and a liar because you insinuate evil against her which you are not able to substantiate.”
“Ask your wife where she was at the end of December, the year before last—the year you were in India. Ask her what she had been doing in London when she came back to Fowey on the last day of the year, and travelled in the same train with my lawyer, Mr. MacAllister, who was struck by her appearance, first because she was so pretty, and next because she looked the picture of misery—got into conversation with her, and found out who she was. If you think that is a lie you can go to MacAllister, in the Old Jewry, and ask him to convince you that it is a fact.”
“There is no occasion. My wife has no secrets from me.”
“I am glad to hear it. Then there is really nothing to fight about except a good deal of vulgar abuse on your part, which I am willing to overlook. A man of your mature age, married to a beautiful girl, has some excuse for being jealous.”
“More excuse, perhaps, than a man of your age has for acting like a cad,” said the colonel, turning upon his heel, and leaving Mr. Crowther to his reflections.