The Road to Paris: A Story of Adventure

by Robert Neilson Stephens

"And I take your offer," cried Dick instantly. "I've no scruples about difference in rank, and I'm willing to fight anybody, high or low,—even a hired lickspittle that takes up gentlemen's quarrels for pay! Lord Alderby can tell you where I lodge; he knows where he can find that out!"

Lord Alderby indeed found that out,—not from Miss Mallby, but through his valet, who knew Lord George Winston's. And next day, to Bond Street, came Captain Delahenty's challenge in regular form. Lord George, who never concerned himself about his rank, or let it affect his doings, readily consented to serve Dick in the business; and so, on the following morning, at dawn, Dick found himself in Hyde Park, about to undertake his first duel.

He had chosen to fight with swords, the blade being the weapon in whose use he most desired practice. In his shirt-sleeves, with that acquired serenity which comes of the mind's forcing itself not to contemplate the peril at hand, he stood under a tree at one end of a clear space, while his antagonist, seconded by an old faded beau, emerged from a hackney coach and got himself ready. The men fought in the centre of the clear space. Dick began defensively, but he had not parried more than three of the captain's thrusts, till he perceived that the enemy was shaky with liquor. Dick therefore waited only until the other's panting indicated failing wind. Then he suddenly pressed matters, with such accuracy and persistence that the whole thing was over in a minute,—Dick putting on his waistcoat and frock, with Lord George's assistance, and Captain Delahenty on the ground with a wounded shoulder that the surgeon was pronouncing likely to heal in a month or six weeks. Dick drove back to Bond Street in great elation, eager for more duels.

Lord Alderby's state of mind towards Dick was not sweetened by this occurrence, as was shown by his lordship's ill-sustained pretence of ignoring Dick's presence when next the two were in the same company. This happened to be in a clubhouse in St. James's Street, Dick's name having been written down there by Lord George, to whom he had satisfactorily accounted for his ignorance of London and of London society. Chance brought Lord Alderby and Dick to the same card table, and not as partners. His lordship soon had his revenge, and a far greater one than he thought it to be, for Dick, playing on after first losses, in the confidence that fortune would serve him as usually, lost his every guinea. He would have staked the few loose shillings he still had left, but that the largeness of the bets would have made such a proposition ridiculous. He went home to Bond Street in a kind of consternation, faced by the reality that he was a pauper in London, and that luck had turned against him. Now that he had tasted the life of pleasure, poverty seemed not again endurable. Yet he braced himself to consider what was to be done.

Now that he had no money worth mentioning, the hospitality he received from Lord George was to Dick nothing else than charity. To continue accepting it would make his situation soon insupportable. He quickly took his resolution. He must fall back to a lower sphere, where a shilling was worth something, and recoup himself; that done, he would emerge again into the world to which Lord George had introduced him.

So, the next morning, pretending he had found at a lawyer's office in Chancery Lane a letter from his people, Dick told Lord George he must leave London immediately. Then, having sent for a hackney coach and taken a very friendly farewell of his lordship, he was driven to the starting-place of the Manchester stage. Being set down there, he hastened afoot, with his baggage, in search of cheap lodgings. These he presently found at a widow's house in George Street, which ran from the Strand towards the Thames. He engaged a room at sixteen shillings a week.

The widow had a grown-up son employed by a mercer in the Strand, and from him Dick learned where to dispose of clothes most profitably, the son giving the name of a salesman in Monmouth Street, and adding, "Be sure, tell him 'twas I recommended you to him." Dick parted first with the new black suit he had so recently bought, and so found himself comparatively well in fund for his present station.

Not finding his landlady's son a companion to his taste, and not making any acquaintances in the various coffee-houses, taverns, and eating-houses that he now frequented in and about Fleet Street and the Strand, he became afflicted with loneliness. A mere unnoticed mite among thousands, and utterly ignored by the hastening multitude, he sent his thoughts from the vast and crowded city, back to the bleak Maine wilderness, and he had a kind of homesick longing for the hearty comradeship of the time of freezing and starving there.

One evening, determined to enliven himself and have another fling at pleasure at any cost, he went to Westminster Bridge afoot, and thence by boat up the Thames, to Vauxhall. He had no sooner paid his shilling, on entering the garden, than his spirits began to rise. The sound of the orchestra and of singers, heard while he passed by the little groves and the statues, brought back his zest for gay life, and this was redoubled as he came into the brilliantly lighted space around the orchestra, where the small boxes on either side were filled with people who sat eating or drinking at the tables, and where the walks were thronged with pleasure-seekers of every rank. He sat down on an empty bench in one of the boxes, thinking to drink a bottle of wine and listen to the music.

Before the waiter had brought the wine, a gaily dressed young woman, handsome enough in her powder and paint, came with almost a rush to the vacant place at his side, and said, with a bold smile, "My dear sir, I can't endure to see so pretty a gentleman drink alone! I'm going to keep you company."