Copyright Oggbashan May 2016
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
This is a work of fiction. The events described here are imaginary; the settings and characters are fictitious and are not intended to represent specific places or living persons.
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At dawn, in a couple of hours from now, I have to fight a duel. Major Simon has chosen pistols and he's a deadly shot. I will die. He insulted my wife by calling her a whore. I challenged him to a duel. It would be easier and quicker to blow my own brains out.
It doesn't matter that my wife behaves like a whore. She does. But telling me to my face that she is one is a deadly insult for which I will die, defending her soiled honour.
At Manton's Major Simon often demonstrates his skill by shooting out a pip on a playing card. My best ever shot was a foot away from the card. He has survived half a dozen duels. I have never challenged anyone before and even with swords my skill is barely adequate. With pistols at ten paces? I might hit him if I threw the pistol.
I was only at the gentlemen's club because my wife had gone out again with her dubious friends to Vauxhall Gardens. I had tried to tell her that it isn't a suitable resort for a newly married lady, even if she went with her husband. She upbraided me for being an antique bore with odd ideas about a wife's place. That hurt. I'm only five years older than her.
When I courted her she seemed so demure. She is a daughter of one of my father's oldest friends and we had known each other since we were children. Although I'm a younger son with a minor title of nobility I own my country seat and London house and have a sufficient income to support a wife and family. When I sought her father's consent to court her he approved of my suit. She had seemed less enthusiastic but I had hoped she could grow to love me as much as I loved her.
I valued her independent intelligent mind. I wanted her for my life's companion and eventually the mother of my children. But once married her independence led her to some less respectable friendships. They claim to be blue stockings just wanting better opportunities for women. It seems that better opportunities mean defying Society's conventions and acting in a way that would make me ashamed of a brother, let alone a wife.
After dinner Emily had announced that she was going out with her female friends to Vauxhall Gardens. I objected strongly, forbidding her to go. She had laughed at me before making the antique bore remark. I could have stopped her physically, I suppose, but that would have really damaged our fragile relationship. I let her go hoping that she would learn sense in a few weeks time.
I won't have that few weeks. I'll be dead shortly after dawn because Major Simon saw Emily in a bower in Vauxhall Gardens, not just with her women friends but in male company as well -- men who weren't eligible for polite society.
I love Emily. I think she is being thoughtless and too inexperienced in London to know what is reasonable behaviour and what is not. She had been a country girl most of her life, only coming to London as a debutante already engaged to marry me.
I will never know whether Emily will learn to be more cautious in choosing her friends. I will never see her again because she had announced that she would breakfast with one of her friends and come home for luncheon. By then I will have been dead for hours. My second will come to collect me an hour before the due time. We will walk to the agreed duelling ground near the River Thames. After the duel the participants, principals and seconds, will leave by boat to avoid capture by the authorities. One of those leaving, me, will be a corpse to be delivered to Emily.
"Oh, Emily!" I say aloud. "I love you, Emily. I want you here, for one last kiss."
But there would be no last kiss, not even a loving word. Emily's last words to me, calling me an antique bore, still stick in my brain. Would she regret those words when I was dead? I'll never know.
Captain Arthur is here. I pick up my gloves and cane to leave with him. I'm not leaving a note for Emily. What's the point? Unkind people will tell her soon enough about my challenge and the result of the duel. Perhaps it might comfort her to know that I died defending her honour that she doesn't seem to value.
Our footsteps echo in the empty streets. Captain Arthur has sense enough to know that no words will help me. As soon as I asked him to be my second he knew that I would be going to my death. Nothing said now can change that. Major Simon has never accepted an apology, and I wouldn't give one. If I did I would admit that Emily IS a whore. She's not, and I would never say she is. I love her too much.
Captain Arthur isn't carrying pistols. Neither am I. I don't own any. We'll use Major Simon's well proven pair. The seconds will choose which pistol each of the principals is to fire, and a few seconds later the duel will be over.
