‘I wonder now,’ muttered Jasper, as he brought his equipage at an easy swinging trot up the smooth road, ‘what is the peculiarity of yonder ugly animal, or why I, of all men, should be chosen out to ride her? The whole thing is a riddle. However, my father won’t so much object to my wearing the silk jacket once more, to oblige an old brother-officer.’
The captain alighted in excellent spirits. On his dressing-table, however, lay two or three letters, the sight of one of which, in its pale bluish envelope, checked the current of his complacency in full tide. A glance at the handwriting confirmed Jasper’s worst suspicions.
‘Wilkins it is!’ he said, taking it up between his finger and thumb, as a naturalist might handle a small snake the non-venomous character of which was as yet imperfectly ascertained.
Amongst the paraphernalia of Captain Denzil’s dressing-table, the ivory-backed brushes, the gold-stoppered jars and scent-bottles of red Bohemian glass, was a silver hunting-flask, the top of which being unscrewed became a silver drinking-cup. Jasper filled the cup twice and tossed off the cherry-brandy almost fiercely, as a hungry dog snaps up a morsel of meat. Then he opened the letter. This was short, and was signed ‘Enoch Wilkins, Solicitor.’ It is not, I am told, usual for solicitors-at-law to append ‘Solicitor’ to their names. But Mr Wilkins, whose clients were of a slippery and shifty sort, deemed it to his advantage to remind his correspondents of his profession.
The writer ‘begged to remind Captain Denzil’ that certain acceptances were now overdue, and could not, to the great regret of Mr Enoch Wilkins, be again renewed. This being the case, a prompt settlement of outstanding accounts became urgent; and Mr Wilkins, aware of the inconvenience and misunderstanding to which a correspondence by letter too often gave rise, desired a personal interview with Captain Jasper Denzil, and would therefore wait on him at Carbery Chase, or meet him, if preferred, at Pebworth or Exeter, on say July 28th, a day on which Mr Enoch Wilkins could absent himself from his London office. Finally, Mr Wilkins requested a reply from Captain Denzil as to the trysting-place that would best tally with the captain’s engagements.
‘July 28, eh?’ said Jasper thoughtfully. ‘Odd, isn’t it, that my legal friend should have chosen the very day of the steeplechase! Well! If Jack’s confidence is but justified by the result, I may come off victorious in one encounter, however I may do in the other.’
He then caught up a pen and proceeded to indite, painfully and slowly—as is the wont of so-called men of pleasure when compelled to write—an answer to the lawyer’s letter, wherein he declared his willingness to await Mr Wilkins at the De Vere Arms at Pebworth, at four in the afternoon of July 28.
Having sealed and addressed the envelope, Jasper tilted into the silver top of the flask what little of the cherry-brandy the latter still held, drank it off at a draught, and proceeded to dress for dinner; quite unaware that he was the unconscious instrument in the forging of another iron link in the dread chain from Fate’s own anvil.