All that happened there hath been matter of public notoriety, and is recorded, for warning to lawless men, in the annals of our country. After being engaged for not more than a couple of minutes, as Harry Esmond thought (though being occupied at the time with his own adversary's point, which was active, he may not have taken a good note of time), a cry from the chairmen without, who were smoking their pipes, and leaning over the railings of the field as they watched the dim combat within, announced that some catastrophe had happened which caused Esmond [pg 160] to drop his sword and look round, at which moment his enemy wounded him in the right hand. But the young man did not heed this hurt much, and ran up to the place where he saw his dear master was down.
My Lord Mohun was standing over him.
“Are you much hurt, Frank?” he asked, in a hollow voice.
“I believe I'm a dead man,” my lord said from the ground.
“No, no, not so,” says the other; “and I call God to witness, Frank Esmond, that I would have asked your pardon, had you but given me a chance. In—in the first cause of our falling out, I swear that no one was to blame but me, and—and that my lady——”
“Hush!” says my poor lord viscount, lifting himself on his elbow, and speaking faintly. “'Twas a dispute about the cards—the cursed cards. Harry, my boy, are you wounded, too? God help thee! I loved thee, Harry, and thou must watch over my little Frank—and—and carry this little heart to my wife.”
And here my dear lord felt in his breast for a locket he wore there, and, in the act, fell back, fainting.
We were all at this terrified, thinking him dead; but Esmond and Colonel Westbury bade the chairmen to come into the field; and so my lord was carried to one Mr. Aimes, a surgeon, in Long Acre, who kept a bath, and there the house was wakened up, and the victim of this quarrel carried in.
My lord viscount was put to bed, and his wound looked to by the surgeon, who seemed both kind and skilful. When he had looked to my lord, he bandaged up Harry Esmond's hand (who, from loss of blood, had fainted too, in the house, and may have been some time unconscious); and when the young man came to himself, you may be sure he eagerly asked what news there were of his dear patron; on which the surgeon carried him to the room where the Lord Castlewood lay; who had already sent for a priest; and desired earnestly, they said, to speak with his kinsman. He was lying on a bed, very pale and ghastly, with that fixed, fatal look in his eyes, which betokens death; and faintly beckoning all the other persons away from him with his hand, and crying out “Only Harry Esmond”, the hand fell powerless down on the coverlet, as Harry came forward, and knelt down and kissed it.
“Thou art all but a priest, Harry,” my lord viscount [pg 161] gasped out, with a faint smile, and pressure of his cold hand. “Are they all gone? Let me make thee a death-bed confession.”