Chapter III

I have often wondered at the freshness, loquacity and altogether unreal tone of the duellists' rooms pending an encounter; and I can only liken it to the mind of an assiduous chess-player, which still even in dreams is tilting with ivory knights and banning with puppet bishops. Such fancies are accepted among duelling men as the real sentiments that move and govern society. To Lind Mason, who was naturally made of paste-board and stuffed with bran, they were the breath in his nostrils. He vapored of the family as if, instead of plain Brown, it had been born in the purple. Payne on his return had said, "The funk wanted to apologize," and that "Lind had a soft thing of it," chaffing his principal not a little over the prospects of his aunt's generosity.

"Ye-as," said Lind, negligently drawing the long silky moustache and beard through the hollow of his hand and letting the points drop. "Woodlawn. We talked it over. 'Marry, my boy,' said the old girl, 'and settle.' 'All right!' said I, 'aunty: I'll marry, and you settle.' Payne and I made out a liberal schedule of my liabilities for her lawyer last night. My motto is, be off at the tap if you can, or a wink before it, and come down the quarter under the whip. I consider my autograph on Aunt Fanny good for a thousand any day. T'other day I said to Payne I wanted the stick and two hoops ($100), and Aunt Fanny just said, 'Double it, and arrange with your cousin Sue.' Soon as this baggytell is over little Sue Brown jines the Masons.—Here's to her, gentlemen! and no heeltaps. No need to say fellows of this party are welcome to our table;" and he delicately tipped off the wine, saying "he had drunk better."

"Payne says the fellow will apologize," said one. "What will you do?"

"Well," drawled Mason, dipping a cracker in the fragrant sherry and munching, "a fellow that saw it all from Mill Springs to Appomattox doesn't care for these little things. If it was the first time, or even the second or third, I wouldn't stand it. But after that the thing loses its gloss and gets to be a confounded bore. You see it's getting up so early; and there's your man squatting on the grass like a hurt wild-duck, and all the fellows scared and ugly, and poking at you as if it was your fault. And the confounded police, and the bother of keeping out of the way, and maybe lose the spring meeting. It gets to be deuced low, fellows. No: if the little man will own up and quit annoying somebody—" with a lazy wink. "I drink to Sue Mason, née Brown, gentlemen. I don't care: he may get off whole. Of course a written apology."

"Apology," said Major Johnstone, whose impressible nature went with the extremists. "My God, sir! is a venerable lady of wealth and fashion—of the American peerage, by George, sir! American peerage—to be insulted in an assembly of her nearest relatives, and the base scullion to escape with a bare 'Sorry for it'? A pocket full of apologies and a back full of bruises, as Tom Marshall said, by George! Look at Rule 10, Tipperary Code," slapping Barrington's Sketches emphatically. "No, sir! Such an example would corrupt American youth."

"Bosh!" said another, who sat on the side of the bed and rocked his legs alternately as if for a wager. "That rot is past salting down. A lady's name involved! Our chivalrous principal is right. Honorably adjusted, satisfactory, etc., is the end of it."

"But a blow?" said the major, like a weathercock in contradictory flaws, and running over the leaves. "Here is Rule 5—"

"That's Payne," said one, interrupting the major unceremoniously at a step outside.

"Payne never walked that fast in his life," was the reply. "Payne was born tired. There's somebody with him."

The door opened, and Deane Lee in gray tweed, from foot to forage-cap the dashing soldier, saluted. "Honor to report from Captain Nettles," he said, touching his cap. Military titles prevail on such occasions.

"Will you join us?" said Payne, motioning to the refreshments, as Mason read the note.

"Don't care if I do. Plain: no cooked drinks for me," said the envoy briefly.

This struck the major as having a judicial bearing upon the coats of the stomach. He cocked his chin and began unconsciously to imitate the dashing stranger.

"An unfortunate affair," said Payne. He had thought it amusing, absurd, but something in this young fellow impressed him also, and he said it, and meant it.

"D—— unlucky!" said the other, in much the same tone as if he had said "lucky." "But my man is all right. He had to hunt me up, or I'd been in your lines before now." He took the ice from the tumbler, dashed off the moisture, and ate it like a salamander.

The major was possessed. He whispered behind his hand to his neighbors, "Never saw but one like him."

"Who?" asked several, for the easy, cool assurance of Bob Nettles's second affected them all.

The major shook his head and sighed grievously.

"Was he killed?" asked one eagerly.

"Kill him!" said the major in hollow emphasis of scorn: "no, sir."

"Died, then?" suggested another.

"No, sir," said the major: "his worst enemy could not say that of him. No, he didn't die."

"Drowned?" put in a third, venturing at the major's conundrum.

"No, sir," said the major gutturally. "Water couldn't drown him. It is not wet enough. Lost."

"Lost!" marvelled his auditors at this sphinx. "How?"

"Married," said the major in basso-profundo, husky with emotion.

Such an ornament lost to the chivalry of duelling accentuated their admiration of his after-type in Bob's second.

"When I last saw him," continued the major, in the tone of Griffith describing the last hours of Wolsey—

"Well?" ejaculated all in one voice.

"He was buying seed-corn."

Degradation could no lower go, and in the pause they could hear the blue fly buzz in the window-pane.

Mason had beckoned Payne aside. The two found that reply a hard nut to crack. Payne had regarded the duel as a huge hoax, and counted on easily bluffing the burgher's second. But bluffing those steely nerves yonder, that stood at ease with a suggestion of military accoutrements, was not to be thought of. Nor could his principal go out, under the pretext of controlling the associations of Walter Brown's family, without Walter Brown's approval.

"For proper reasons, no doubt," said Payne courteously, "your principal ignores what is, with us, the gravamen of his offence—his behavior in the house of Mr. Mason's relations."

Pretty well covered for Mr. Payne, but it would not do.

"Don't want to ignore anything," said Deane Lee. "Just don't want petticoats mixed up in it. My man does not pledge worth a—pyrotechnic." He had got it in at last, and with a step—a peremptory refusal to submit to dictation of any kind.

Payne felt outmanœuvred and crowded. He saw Bob Nettles was not to be bullied out of little Sue, and they must give up that point. "My principal is disposed to waive that part," said Payne haughtily, "rather than involve others."

"All right!" said Deane carelessly. "It's not in the regulations—but come to taps. We want this thing over before reveille. I've got an infernal mule-team to yank up and down these streets after that."

It was done with the easiest nonchalance, yet Wilde Payne felt he was bitted and spurred, and the butt of this ridiculous duel might prove to be the man who had brought it about.

"I don't know where he picked up Deane Lee," said he after his rival left; "but Deane will fight his man. It isn't going to be such a soft thing, after all."

"He is only a street-car conductor," said a callow Brown, who looked on, and thought all this very heroic and fine.

"I don't care," said the major, rising on his crutch, "but if that man drives a mule, it is a credit, sir—to the mule; and, gentlemen, I wish you well out of it—I do, by George!" and he stumped off and out of the room. The major's departure was as significant as the sinking of the mercury in the sealed tube: it indicated a stormy atmosphere outside, setting in favor of the other side.

But an incident just then, seeming to confirm some of Mason's vaporing, created a profound sensation, and so complicated and embarrassed the duel for that gentleman as to tax all his ingenuity and address to come out of it with anything like credit. It adds a lustre to his boast that he was "betting on a certainty" and "intended to put the saddle on the right horse." A servant presented a card on a tray, with "Lady in ladies' parlor C wishes to see Captain Mason."

Mason took it up, looked flushed, flattered, more pompous than ever. "Here, Payne," said he; and the two whispered.

"You'd better not," said Payne critically: "it will compromise you."

"But she knows I am here—meddlesome servant, etc." In fact, Mason was too flattered by the visit to deny the lady or himself.

"Poor girl!" was whispered about—"desperately attached."—"She needn't be uneasy: it's the other fellow ought to be looked after."

To explain who this mysterious visitor was we must go back a little.

Sudie arose the morning after her garden-party flushed and feverish, with a strange consciousness of being unlike herself. She drifted from room to room; peeped into the parlor, with its fading garlands, in a little superstitious awe of her last night's vision, and then took to standing at the gate or looking from the west windows toward the city, as if she expected some one. But she did not: it was only that all her anxiety lay there. At 10 A.M. she took the pony carriage to town and hurried to Aunt Fanny, only to learn that the etiquette of the code had excluded the dowager's messenger, and that Her Majesty was so incensed thereat as to resolve to let matters take their course. This by no means satisfied Sudie. She thought it horrible, wicked. She would see papa—she had all a child's confidence in papa—and he could stop it. Passing the hotel, an impulse seized her to appeal to her cousin; for he was her cousin, Sudie repeated to herself to justify her resolution; and so, without any formed plan of appeal, she sent up her card. She was enough confused and embarrassed at her cousin's entrance to have deceived a wiser man than Lind Mason; but, luckily, he was better at reading the backs of his cards than a woman's face, and, to his credit, felt supremely silly.

"Cousin Lind," said the little girl, speaking the first thought in her mind, "I was going to see papa, and—" and she broke down.

"Hem! Mr. Brown is in the city, ha? Of course," blundered Mason, shy as an awkward girl to her first lover, and obstinately turning that eye away from her on which Bob Nettles had left his mark.

"And—and—" hesitated Sudie, with a little shuddering, nervous laugh, like a smothered cry, "have you and Mr. Nettles met this morning?"

To do Mason justice, he was too artificial and shallow to retain any resentments. He was only confused at his novel position, and before he could muster a reply Sudie went on: "Because I want you and him to be friends," with that tremulous laugh again; "and I should be so mad if—if he was to—to hurt you."

"By Joe!" thought Lind, "what am I to do if she proposes outright?" He was terribly scared: no one is so timid as one of these fast, horsey men in the presence of an innocent, pure-minded girl. The situation was trying: he thought it was his cue to put his arm about her and say something; but when he saw how she sat back in the chair, and had tested his own nerves, he felt he could not do it. Little Sue, therefore, had it all to herself, recovering courage by her own freedom, without any conception of what was troubling the thoughts of the great, handsome, awkward booby before her. "Aunt Fanny wants you to be friends," she continued, "and so do I."

Mason began to pluck up a little at this. The association of Aunt Fanny's name suggested that she had talked the matter over with her niece, as she had with him, and broken the ice for him. He looked over his shoulder to see if the parlor was clear. She was leaning forward now, holding out two plump little hands, like a child going to beg, and with a sly, roguish look too. He thought he could do it now: he would drop gracefully on one knee and—

And Sudie went on: "Somebody else will be mad too, you don't know." A half whisper from the roguish pucker of those dimpling lips: "Ma'amselle Hortense."

The blood rushed to that ensanguined face till it looked like a great romanete apple: "Hortense?"

"Yes," with a half-dozen mischievous, confidential little nods. "There! Now you go right straight and see Mr. Nettles, and tell him I sent you; and if he doesn't behave himself to you, just let me know." And, nodding intelligence, little Sue rose with a rustle and flutter of puffs and bows, in childish confidence of having done her whole duty and stopped that wicked, wicked business.

That skilful card-player Mason was as completely stumped as if some one had raked down the stakes on a pair of deuces against his exhibit of the four aces. Nothing but the most gracious condescension and chaste humility of salutation had passed between him and his aunt's French maid; yet shrewd little Sudie, with her intuitive woman's instinct, had shot her arrow in the dark and cloven the wand.

She went out in the innocent simplicity of her childlike faith, and it was hours before she came to realize how utterly she had failed in stopping the execution of that deadly purpose.

How often is it the case with her sex that, having no other coin than the affections, so dear to themselves, they over-value them for others, and only know from finding them soiled and trampled in the mud how little they are estimated in the hard and selfish dealings of man with man! But the little girl went off, happy in her delusion. God bless the rest of heart from apprehension that it gave her!

But Mason had to slip aside into the hotel bar and drink a mighty jorum of brandy before he could rejoin his friends. As he thought of all the confounded annoyances and embarrassments growing out of the little girl's discovery, including the loss of her hand and fortune, the terse and pithy brevity of his summing-up of the situation was an epitome of Spartan eloquence. It was, "D—— it!"

Will Wallace Harney.