[F7] "The Bread Crust Papers, Part Second. The Duel at Camden. III. The Challenge. The Night Before the Duel," Spirit of the Times, March 31, 1842
THE BREAD CRUST PAPERS.
By Eric Iterbil.
Part Second.
THE DUEL AT CAMDEN.
III. The Challenge. The Night Before the Duel.
Again did the taper burn in Bread Crust's room, and beside the washstand on which it stood, was seated Henry Bread Crust, with his figure enveloped in a dingy morning gown, one elbow resting upon the washstand, while his grey eyes were fixed upon a figure, which, placed in the other chair in the room, was moving its lips, shaking its arms, and giving other tokens of being in a state of positive existence.
This figure tall and slim, dressed in dainty black velvet coat, with a pretty flowered neckerchief around its neck, and a small, inexpressive face, with smooth even features, nicely relieved by lanky masses of dark brown hair, surmounting the neckerchief, was none other than Clarendon Crust, Esq., a very superior fellow, and a brother of the Bread Crust.
"How did he look when you gave him my note?" said Crust in his feminine voice, without the slightest smack of his usual affectation, "Did you mark him closely?"
"Why y-a-s,"—replied Clarendon, in a voice more manly than his brother's, but more strongly tinctured with the Chestnut street 'lithp.' "He took the note, read it, lit his segar with it, and then asked me what kind of a day it was. He was quite impudent; he was in-deed. I've never saw s-u-ch complete nonchalance since I was in the naval service on the South American station at Rio Janeiro. There on a bright morning a very dirty Spaniard—indeed I may say a filthy Spaniard asked me, whether I'd take a dirk or a segar. He did in-d-eed. I cut the fellow. He was so low. I had an extensive notion to pistol him but—I say Harry, which is the whitest, that sheet or your face?"
"He accepted the challenge!" said Crust abstractedly.
"Why, Harry, what a fellow you are!" replied Clarendon. "There's his reply at your elbow. Time—five o'clock to-morrow morning—place, the grove in the Woodlands over at Camden,—weapons, pair of Colt's patent pistols. He's particular indeed, very particular in specifying the smallest minuti of the small affair. And, now Harry, good night. I will meet you at half past three at Walnut street wharf. Good night."
Clarendon Crust was gone.
Harry arose, and with an abstracted manner went to the closet of his room, drew two large sperm candles from its depths, and then displacing the wash-bowl, soap and pitcher from the washstand, he stuck one of the candles in a porter bottle, and the other he placed in a tin candlestick, covered with grease, not more than an inch thick. With the same abstracted manner, he tore a blank leaf from a volume of his own poems on the mantle, and twisting it up he applied it to the light and then lighted the candle in the porter bottle. He extended his hand to the other candle, and the lighted paper touched the wick, when the State-house clock began to strike the hour of nine. He started back with an involuntary shudder, and the lighted paper fell from his hands.
Where will I be this time to-morrow night?" was the thought that flashed like a lightning-stroke across his mind.
"—two, three, four, five,"—rang the bell.
"I may be dead—A cold, clammy corse. U-g-h." Crust shivered.
"—five, six, seven, eight"—
"Is there another world? What"—He trembled.
"—nine—"
"—will become of me?" Crust sat down and was wrapt in thought.
It was a half hour ere he recovered himself. Then drawing writing materials from the closet, he wrote a letter to his mother, one to his father, one to each of his brothers, and one to his faithless merino shawl, Miss Smivers. Having written "to be opened in case of my decease," on the back of each letter—he deposited them on the mantle, and then wondered what time it was?
His wonder was presently solved. The watchman cried, "aa-oh, pa-oh, twel' o'clock," under his window. The idea of sleeping did not enter the head of Crust, and so he proceeded to dress herself [sic].
Having placed a broken bit of looking glass on the washstand, he arrayed himself in his green frock coat, clean white pantaloons, light buff vest with metal buttons, neat flowered neckerchief, clean collar (it was borrowed) and a new pair of boots, (he had sponged them.)
It was now three o'clock.
"Hey! What's that?" cried Crust, as he listened to a pattering sound outside of the window. He looked out. The heavens were as black as a dark closet, and the rain came down in torrents.
"It really seems as if all the young angels were pouring down the whole lot of cistern tubs in heaven," observed Crust, as he smiled. His smile was ghastly. He concluded it would be better to drop all jesting about the next world, at present, because there was no knowing how soon he might be called thither himself.
IV. The Journey to the Woodlands.
It was now a quarter past three, and having taken one fond, peculiar gaze at his room, Harry blew out the light, shut the door, ran down stairs, and found himself in the street. He had forgotten his umbrella—or rather he had forgotten to borrow one. There was no help for it now. Go he must, and so wrapping his cloak around him and drawing his cap over his eyes, he started amid all the storm and rain down Chestnut street. Having plunged knee deep into about half a dozen gutters, and 'tilted' twice the number of loose bricks, he arrived at Walnut street wharf and found Clarendon in the Coffee House at the corner.
"I say, H-a-rry, how dev'lish cold the wind blows, and don't it rain! However, all's right. The ferry b-o-a-t don't cross for an hour yet; so I've got a boat, and a crusty old boatman. Very crusty. All's right. Pistols and every other little matter. Come along Harry."
"I think I'll take a cock-tail first," said Crust, "I say, let me have a stiff one."
A stiff one was made for Crust and his brother, gulped down, and in a minute the parties were insconced in the boat, with a big, stout, broad shouldered boatman in front of them.
"My G-d how it blows!" cried Clarendon as his umbrella was turned inside out, "I say f-r-iend," continued he, addressing the boatman, "did you ew-ah see such a night?"
"I can't say," replied the boatman pulling the thick collar of his shaggy over-coat up over his ears, as he struck out his oars, and propelled the boat from among the shipping, out into the stream. "I can't say, but I think that I remember just such a night some fifteen years ago. The Delaware boiled like a pot; just as it does now. How pale the poor devil looked when he was brought back; he bled a bucket full, if he bled a drop!"
"Eh?" cried Crust, "bled? Why did he bleed?"
"Why, H-a-rry, how your teeth chatters!" exclaimed Clarendon, "I decla-re you shake through your coat."
"Why did he bleed? He was shot in a duel over at Camden. The fellow who shot him put for New York, and the seconds went the Lord knows where. Trim boat!"
"D-n it, there goes my umbrella!" cried Clarendon as he eyed the unfortunate article of wearing apparel, spinning away before the wind at some hundred yards distance. "I'll sweah, but I don't recollect such a night since I was on the South American station! Ind-e-ed I don't."
So Clarendon relapsed into dead silence. Crust's teeth chattered too much for all talking purposes, and the boatman had enough to do to keep his boat from careening.
After three quarters of an hour's hard buffeting, weary, drenched from top to toe with rain, and about as much dead as alive, Crust and his brother jumped on the railroad wharf at Camden just as the day began to scatter a dim and uncertain light over the creation of clouds and rain.
Having taken the pistol case carefully out of the boat, and wrapped them under his cloak, Clarendon proposed another cocktail. The beverage was taken and they struck into the railroad, on their way to the Grove in the Woodlands.
"Well, if this ain't foine!" said Clarendon, "sough goes my foot into the mud at every step; what a night for shoe leather. Eh? Ha-rry?"
Harry assented to the proposition, and they travelled on in silence until they arrived at the Grove.
(Concluded to-morrow)