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  ‘That might be a trifle awkward,’ said Sir Gavin, to whom the tragic situation seemed to be the merest commonplace. ‘I am only a guest in this house, you see. Let us settle it here and now!’

  Harry, who had a dim notion that the correct behaviour of a second was to seek a reconciliation between the principals, looked doubtful, but the prospective duellists emphatically applauded the suggestion.

  Sir Gavin, drawing out his snuff-box, flicked it open, and took a delicate pinch. ‘Since we, sir, have the choice, we shall elect to fight with pistols, at twenty-five yards, tomorrow, at an hour and a place which I shall ask you to suggest.’

  Deep trouble was in Harry’s face, for the longer range gave all the advantage to the better shot. Before he could speak, Jack said, quite insufferably, Tom considered: ‘I prefer to fight Mr Crawley at a range of twelve yards, sir.’

  ‘Well, I won’t fight you at twelve yards!’ retorted Tom furiously. ‘Twenty-five, and be damned to you!’

  ‘Tom, do, for God’s sake –! Now, listen, you crazy fools, this is nonsense! The quarrel can be composed in a trice!’ exclaimed Harry.

  They rounded on him, all their pent-up feelings finding expression in the loathing with which they commanded him to hold his tongue.

  So there was nothing for poor Harry to do but to appoint the time and the place, both of which Sir Gavin accepted with the utmost amiability.

  Then a paralysing thought occurred to all three young gentlemen.

  ‘The – the weapons?’ uttered Harry, exchanging an anguished glance with Tom.

  For a moment no one said anything. Sir Gavin’s lazy eyes were lowered to the contemplation of his charming snuff-box, and if his lips twitched it was so tiny a betrayal that it passed unnoticed. Bitter reflections on the ways of fathers, who kept under lock and key their duelling-pistols (if indeed they owned such things), possessed the minds of Jack and Tom. Anyone would have thought that a prudent parent would have given his son a good pair of Manton pistols instead of a pair of shot-guns, and would have taught him how to conduct himself in such a situation as this. Neither Sir John nor the Squire had made the least push to be of real service to their heirs; and intimate knowledge of both gentlemen could only lead those heirs to face the disagreeable fact that an appeal to them now would end in nothing but the summary end to their quarrel.

  Harry, anxious though he might be to stop the affair, was not going to allow the gentleman from London to suppose that his principal owned no duelling-pistols. He said that unfortunately Tom’s pistols had been sent back to the maker for a trifling repair. Jack was not going to be outdone by this sort of thing, and since he could not think of any reason that was not grossly plagiaristic for failing to produce a pair of pistols of his own, he said, with an odiously curling lip: ‘Strange that I should not have been permitted to see Mr Crawley’s weapons!’

  ‘You have none either, so be damned to that humbug!’ instantly replied Tom.

  ‘In that case,’ said Sir Gavin, restoring the snuff-box to his pocket, ‘I will be responsible for the weapons. And since the hour of the meeting is not far distant, may I suggest that you should both now retire from this party, and go home to get what sleep you can? Mr Frith, I shall call for you in my curricle at half-past five; Mr Denver, I should like a word with you before we part!’

  3

  IT WAS EASY to talk of sleeping if you were only the second in an encounter, Tom reflected bitterly. He had slipped away from Treen Hall, and had driven himself home by the light of a full moon. The chill air sweeping over the moors cooled his head, and, to a great extent, his rage. By the time he reached the Manor, and had stabled the cob, he was finding it increasingly difficult to look forward with any pleasure to the morrow – no, not the morrow: it was past midnight, he observed, as he entered the Manor, and saw the tall-case clock at the foot of the stairs.

  His mother had gone to bed, but as ill-luck would have it, the Squire was still up, and called to him from the library. ‘Is that you, Tom?’

  He was obliged to go into the room, and there was his father, and not alone either. He was playing chess with Sir John Frith. Tom regarded Sir John in the light of an uncle, and was much attached to him, but there was no one he wanted to see less tonight.

  ‘You are back very early,’ remarked the Squire, shooting a look up at him under his bushy brows.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he said, in a careless voice. ‘It was such a squeeze – and Harry and I mean to go out early, to fish the Brown Pool.’

  ‘Oh!’ said the Squire, his gaze bent again on the board. ‘You have me, John, I fancy.’

  ‘I think so,’ agreed his guest. ‘Jack going with you, Tom?’

  Tom knew the tell-tale colour was rising to his cheeks. ‘Yes – oh yes!’ he stammered, feeling like a Judas – only that it was more likely that it would be he, and not Jack, who would be brought home on a hurdle so few short hours ahead.

  ‘Glad to hear it!’ said Sir John. ‘Better than dangling after a petticoat at your age, pair of young fools that you are!’

  That was the way dotards of forty-five (and very likely even older) talked to one, so senile they had forgotten what it meant to be young, and in love! Tom said stiffly that he would go to bed.

  ‘Yes, you go,’ agreed his father. ‘Good night, my boy: don’t wake the whole household when you get up! The mistake I made, John, was in moving my queen’s bishop when I did.’

  Tom went away, quite unnoticed by the insensate old men, who were already playing their game all over again. The last thing he wanted was for either of them to suspect the truth, but somehow it made him feel ill-used and resentful that they didn’t even notice that something was amiss.

  When he got into bed he hoped that Harry would not oversleep. Harry was coming to fetch him in his gig, and it would be a dreadful thing if he were to be late on the ground, perhaps oversleeping himself. The gentleman from London would certainly bring his man punctually to the rendezvous.

  He soon found that there was no fear of his oversleeping. He could not sleep at all. He tossed and turned; threw off blankets; pulled them over him again; punched his pillows – all to no avail. He was wide awake, his mind so lively that his thoughts crowded in on it, jostling one another in a restless, worrying way he was not at all accustomed to.

  He was not, he thought, afraid – or, at any rate, not more afraid than one was before going out to bat at Eton; but he felt sorry for his father, who would in all probability come down to breakfast to be greeted with the pleasing intelligence that the hope of his house was either a lifeless corpse, or hideously wounded. His mother would never recover from the blow; and what a terrible thing it would be for Sir John and Lady Frith, with their heir obliged to fly the country, and all communication with the Manor severed from that hour! Poor, deluded Uncle John, asking so casually if Jack were going fishing too!

  Suddenly, as that thought flitted into his head, it was elbowed out by another: if only it had been true, and he and Jack were going to tramp off through the dewy early morning, sandwiches in their pockets, rods in their hands, creels on their backs, and nothing between them but the comfortable, idle chat of close friendship! No need for Harry on that expedition; in fact, better without Harry, though he might come if he chose, for he was a good sort of a fellow – a very faithful friend, really, though not to compare, of course, with Jack. He was apt to be a little in the way sometimes, as when he had gone with them when – Tom checked that thought quickly. Fatal to remember all the things he and Jack had done together, and the sport they had had, and the scrapes they had plunged into! That was all over; and even if their encounter did not end in the death of one of them, nothing would ever be the same again between them. But he couldn’t help remembering, and it didn’t seem to be of any use to dwell on Jack’s miserable double-dealing today, because whether Jack gave Marianne flowers behind his best friend’s back, or whether he behaved as impeccably as one had been so sure he would, he was still the friend who had shared one’s ev