Essential Novelists - Maria Edgeworth. Maria Edgeworth
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said Honour, ‘that one who is compelled to fire her pistol with her left hand, though ever so good a shot naturally, is by no means on a footing with one who has the advantage of her light hand.’ Harriot rubbed my pistol with the sleeve of her coat, and I, recovering my wit with my hopes of being witty with impunity, answered, ‘Unquestionably, left-handed wisdom and left-handed courage are neither of them the very best of their kinds; but we must content ourselves with them if we can have no other.’ ‘That if,’ cried Honour O’Grady, ‘is not, like most of the family of the ifs, a peace-maker. My Lady Delacour, I was going to observe that my principal has met with an unfortunate accident, in the shape of a whitlow on the fore-finger of her right hand, which incapacitates her from drawing a trigger; but I am at your service, ladies, either of you, that can’t put up with a disappointment with good humour.’ I never, during the whole course of my existence, was more disposed to bear a disappointment with good humour, to prove that I was incapable of bearing malice; and to oblige the seconds, for form’s sake, I agreed that we should take our ground, and fire our pistols into the air. Mrs. Luttridge, with her left-handed wisdom, fired first; and I, with great magnanimity, followed her example. I must do my adversary’s second, Miss Honour O’Grady, the justice to observe, that in this whole affair she conducted herself not only with the spirit, but with the good-nature and generosity characteristic of her nation. We met enemies, and parted friends.
“Life is a tragicomedy! Though the critics will allow of no such thing in their books, it is a true representation of what passes in the world; and of all lives mine has been the most grotesque mixture, or alternation, I should say, of tragedy and comedy. All this is apropos to something I have not told you yet. This comic duel ended tragically for me. ‘How?’ you say. Why, ’tis clear that I was not shot through the head; but it would have been better, a hundred times better for me, if I had; I should have been spared, in this life at least, the torments of the damned. I was not used to priming and loading: my pistol was overcharged: when I fired, it recoiled, and I received a blow on my breast, the consequences of which you have seen.
“The pain was nothing at the moment compared with what I have since experienced: but I will not complain till I cannot avoid it. I had not, at the time I received the blow, much leisure for lamentation; for I had scarcely discharged my pistol when we heard a loud shout on the other side of the barn, and a crowd of town’s people, country people, and haymakers, came pouring down the lane towards us, with rakes and pitchforks in their hands. An English mob is really a formidable thing. Marriott had mismanaged her business most strangely: she had, indeed, spread a report of a duel — a female duel; but the untutored sense of propriety amongst these rustics was so shocked at the idea of a duel fought by women in men’s clothes, that I verily believe they would have thrown us into the river with all their hearts. Stupid blockheads! I am convinced that they would not have been half so much scandalized if we had boxed in petticoats. The want of these petticoats had nearly proved our destruction, or at least our disgrace: a peeress after being ducked, could never have held her head above water again with any grace. The mob had just closed round us, crying, ‘Shame! shame! shame! — duck ’em — duck ’em — gentle or simple — duck ’em — duck ’em’— when their attention was suddenly turned towards a person who was driving up the lane a large herd of squeaking, grunting pigs. The person was clad in splendid regimentals, and he was armed with a long pole, to the end of which hung a bladder, and his pigs were frightened, and they ran squeaking from one side of the road to the other; and the pig-driver in regimentals, in the midst of the noise, could not without difficulty make his voice heard; but at last he was understood to say, that a bet of a hundred guineas depended upon his being able to keep these pigs ahead of a flock of turkeys that were following them; and he begged the mob to give him and his pigs fair play. At the news of this wager, and at the sight of the gentleman turned pig-driver, the mob were in raptures; and at the sound of his voice, Harriot Freke immediately exclaimed, ‘Clarence Hervey! by all that’s lucky!’”
“Clarence Hervey!” interrupted Belinda. “Clarence Hervey, my dear,” said Lady Delacour, coolly: “he can do every thing, you know, even drive pigs, better than any body else! — but let me go on.
“Harriot Freke shouted in a stentorian voice, which actually made your pig-driver start: she explained to him in French our distress, and the cause of it, Clarence was, as I suppose you have discovered long ago, ‘that cleverest young man in England who had written on the propriety and necessity of female duelling.’ He answered Harriot in French —‘To attempt your rescue by force would be vain; but I will do better, I will make a diversion in your favour.’ Immediately our hero, addressing himself to the sturdy fellow who held me in custody, exclaimed, ‘Huzza, my boys! Old England for ever! Yonder comes a Frenchman with a flock of turkeys. My pigs will beat them, for a hundred guineas. Old England for ever, huzza!’
“As he spoke, the French officer, with whom Clarence Hervey had laid the wager, appeared at the turn of the lane — his turkeys half flying — half hobbling up the road before him. The Frenchman waved a red streamer over the heads of his flock — Clarence shook a pole, from the top of which hung a bladder full of beans. The pigs grunted, the turkeys gobbled, and the mob shouted: eager for the fame of Old England, the crowd followed Clarence with loud acclamations. The French officer was followed with groans and hisses. So great was the confusion, and so great the zeal of the patriots, that even the pleasure of ducking the female duellists was forgotten in the general enthusiasm. All eyes and all hearts were intent upon the race; and now the turkeys got foremost, and now the pigs. But when we came within sight of the horsepond, I heard one man cry, ‘Don’t forget the ducking.’ How I trembled! but our knight shouted to his followers —‘For the love of Old England, my brave boys, keep between my pigs and the pond:— if our pigs see the water, they’ll run to it, and England’s undone.’
“The whole fury of the mob was by this speech conducted away from us. ‘On, on, my boys, into town, to the market-place: whoever gains the market-place first wins the day.’ Our general shook the rattling bladder in triumph over the heads of ‘the swinish multitude,’ and we followed in perfect security in his train into the town.
“Men, women, and children, crowded to the windows and doors. ‘Retreat into the first place you can,’ whispered Clarence to us: we were close to him. Harriot Freke pushed her way into a milliner’s shop: I could not get in after her, for a frightened pig turned back suddenly, and almost threw me down. Clarence Hervey caught me, and favoured my retreat into the shop. But poor Clarence lost his bet by his gallantry. Whilst he was manoeuvring in my favour, the turkeys got several yards ahead of the pigs, and reaching the market-place first, won the race.
“The French officer found great difficulty in getting safe out of the town; but Clarence represented to the mob that he was a prisoner on his parole, and that it would be unlike Englishmen to insult a prisoner. So he got off without being pelted, and they both returned in safety to the house of General Y— — where they were to dine, and where they entertained a large party of officers with the account of this adventure.
“Mrs. Freke and I rejoiced in our escape, and we thought that the whole business was now over; but in this we were mistaken. The news of our duel, which had spread in the town, raised such an uproar as had never been heard, even at the noisiest election. Would you believe it? — The fate of the election turned upon this duel. The common people, one and all, declared that they would not vote either for Mr. Luttridge or Mr. Freke, because as how— but I need not repeat all the platitudes that they said. In short, neither ribands nor brandy could bring them to reason. With true English pig-headedness, they went every man of them and polled for an independent candidate of their own choosing, whose wife, forsooth, was a proper behaved woman.
“The only thing I had to console me for all this was Clarence Hervey’s opinion that I looked better in man’s clothes than my friend Harriot Freke. Clarence was charmed with my spirit and grace; but he had not leisure at that time to attach himself seriously to me, or to any thing. He was then about nineteen or twenty: he was all vivacity, presumption, and paradox; he was enthusiastic in support of his opinions; but he was at the same time the most candid man in the world, for there was no set of tenets which could be called exclusively his: he adopted in liberal rotation every possible absurdity; and, to do him justice, defended each in its turn