'Leave the room,or go to hell!'shouted Captain N--;at the same time seizing the astounded waiter by the shoulder,he hurled him headlong into the passage,and flung the door to with a crash that shook the walls.'Sir,'continued he,addressing himself to O'Mara,'I did not hope to have met you until to-morrow.
Fortune has been kind to me--draw,and defend yourself.'
At the same time he drew his sword,and placed himself in an attitude of attack.
'I will not draw upon YOU,'said O'Mara.
'I have,indeed,wronged you.I have given you just cause for resentment;but against your life I will never lift my hand.'
'You are a coward,sir,'replied Captain N--,with almost frightful vehemence,'as every trickster and swindler IS.You are a contemptible dastard--a despicable,damned villain!Draw your sword,sir,and defend your life,or every post and pillar in this town shall tell your infamy.'
'Perhaps,'said his friend,with a sneer,'the gentleman can do better without his honour than without his wife.'
'Yes,'shouted the captain,'his wife--
a trull--a common--'
'Silence,sir!'cried O'Mara,all the fierceness of his nature roused by this last insult--'your object is gained;your blood be upon your own head.'At the same time he sprang across a bench which stood in his way,and pushing aside the table which supported the lights,in an instant their swords crossed,and they were engaged in close and deadly strife.
Captain N--was far the stronger of the two;but,on the other hand,O'Mara possessed far more skill in the use of the fatal weapon which they employed.But the narrowness of the room rendered this advantage hardly available.
Almost instantly O'Mara received a slight wound upon the forehead,which,though little more than a scratch,bled so fast as to obstruct his sight considerably.
Those who have used the foil can tell how slight a derangement of eye or of hand is sufficient to determine a contest of this kind;and this knowledge will prevent their being surprised when I say,that,spite of O'Mara's superior skill and practice,his adversary's sword passed twice through and through his body,and he fell heavily and helplessly upon the floor of the chamber.
Without saying a word,the successful combatant quitted the room along with his companion,leaving Dwyer to shift as best he might for his fallen comrade.
With the assistance of some of the wondering menials of the place,Dwyer succeeded in conveying the wounded man into an adjoining room,where he was laid upon a bed,in a state bordering upon insensibility--the blood flowing,I might say WELLING,from the wounds so fast as to show that unless the bleeding were speedily and effectually stopped,he could not live for half an hour.
Medical aid was,of course,instantly procured,and Colonel O'Mara,though at the time seriously indisposed,was urgently requested to attend without loss of time.
He did so;but human succour and support were all too late.The wound had been truly dealt--the tide of life had ebbed;and his father had not arrived five minutes when young O'Mara was a corpse.His body rests in the vaults of Christ Church,in Dublin,without a stone to mark the spot.
The counsels of the wicked are always dark,and their motives often beyond fathoming;and strange,unaccountable,incredible as it may seem,I do believe,and that upon evidence so clear as to amount almost to demonstration,that Heathcote's visit to Dublin--his betrayal of the secret--and the final and terrible catastrophe which laid O'Mara in the grave,were brought about by no other agent than Dwyer himself.
I have myself seen the letter which induced that visit.The handwriting is exactly what I have seen in other alleged specimens of Dwyer's penmanship.It is written with an affectation of honest alarm at O'Mara's conduct,and expresses a conviction that if some of Lady Emily's family be not informed of O'Mara's real situation,nothing could prevent his concluding with her an advantageous alliance,then upon the tapis,and altogether throwing off his allegiance to Ellen--a step which,as the writer candidly asserted,would finally conduce as inevitably to his own disgrace as it immediately would to her ruin and misery.
The production was formally signed with Dwyer's name,and the post contained a strict injunction of secrecy,asserting that if it were ascertained that such an epistle had been despatched from such a quarter,it would be attended with the total ruin of the writer.
It is true that Dwyer,many years after,when this letter came to light,alleged it to be a forgery,an assertion whose truth,even to his dying hour,and long after he had apparently ceased to feel the lash of public scorn,he continued obstinately to maintain.Indeed this matter is full of mystery,for,revenge alone excepted,which I believe,in such minds as Dwyer's,seldom overcomes the sense of interest,the only intelligible motive which could have prompted him to such an act was the hope that since he had,through young O'Mara's interest,procured from the colonel a lease of a small farm upon the terms which he had originally stipulated,he might prosecute his plan touching the property of Martin Heathcote,rendering his daughter's hand free by the removal of young O'Mara.This appears to me too complicated a plan of villany to have entered the mind even of such a man as Dwyer.I must,therefore,suppose his motives to have originated out of circumstances connected with this story which may not have come to my ear,and perhaps never will.
Colonel O'Mara felt the death of his son more deeply than I should have thought possible;but that son had been the last being who had continued to interest his cold heart.Perhaps the pride which he felt in his child had in it more of selfishness than of any generous feeling.