Chapter VI

After his victory over his aunt, Mason's spirits had been continually rising. That humorist Payne, who thought it such a hoax to pit two cocktails against each other and pull the strings of the puppets, writhed under his merciless chaff. Mason had called for candles, and, chipping balls of the spermaceti blacked in an æsthetic spirit with pencil-dust, had used them for practice with a parlor pistol, alleging that the leaden balls damaged the furniture. When Lee came to cast bullets, using the brazier's furnace in the room, Mason made him sit down, took the moulds and threw them in the Brown duelling pistol-case, and set himself to entertain the party and chaff Payne. He lolled back in his chair, his handsome figure showing to advantage, now rallying Payne on the prospect of figuring in a "ring-tailed gaberdine" as a victim of the dowager's anger, and now reciting marvellous horse-stories, mixed with anecdotes pertinent and impertinent. The party consisted of an editor, a surgeon, a German geologist prospecting that wonderful fossil bed of the Falls, and evidently looking on Mason as a miracle excelling anything dug up, and the seconds.

Mason rattled on with his racing and racy anecdotes: "Yes, sir, it was a perfectly white mare, sky-blue mane and tail. I put her in the racing-buggy on Aunt Fanny's round quarter-track, and she spun around so fast the off wheels never touched the turf from the quarter-post to the judges' stand. Fact, gentlemen! fastest trotting-time on record. Rather peculiar color too."

"Very," said the German in admiration of his host. "A remarkable peculiarity in the pigment granules. What became of this singular animal?"

"Singular, as you say," said Mason easily. "She took navicular and jolted off her pins: trotted ten miles an hour on the stubs after she cast her hoofs."

"Eggsdraordinary vitality!" ejaculated the German in deep gutturals, and looking around as if distrustful of Mason's rapid utterance. "How did you call it?"

"Skylight," said Mason carelessly. "Imp. Milky Way by dam Cerulean, as the stud-books rather profanely style it. Tremendous vitality, though!" passing a pair of moulds to Lee and winking to attract his attention, "I thought to preserve the hair and hide as a curiosity. Wouldn't do—wouldn't begin to do! Digestive function so strong action continued from the skin. Had to substitute brickdust and charcoal. Drop into my private museum some day. Happy to show you that and some other curiosities picked up in my rather remarkable adventures."

Lee was now busy casting bullets, and Mason's spirits seemed to rise with the operation. Some listened, others laughed, but Mason had a cool way of perking up his eyebrows and going on negligently, as much as to say, "If you deprive yourself of the satisfaction of believing, the fault lies with the listener." He seemed divided between a wish to distract Lee from careful observation of his employment and to chaff Payne. Once Payne started suddenly as if about to say something to Lee, but a look quenched him.

"Friend of my youth, this goblet sip," laughed Mason. "For what says the Psalmist?—'Let the galded jade wince, our wethers is unwrung.' But never be it said," rising and speaking with theatrical emotion—"Not while Reason holds her throne in this distracted globe—never, while Mason lives, shall his Damon, his caster, be cast in prison-bonds by a ravaging female she-aunt. Never shall penitential garb encase those manly limbs nor base turnkey's shears clip those auburn locks for which ripe beauty in melting accents is wont to plead in vain."

"You're devilish generous," growled Payne. "You know the old griffin doesn't propose to bag me unless you get hit."

"Is it possible," asked the German, catching a meaning in this raillery, "the second of an American duel is imprisoned if his principal is shot? I ask for information."

"You have come to the right shop now," said Lind. "He is, invariably. Some rather curious contretemps grow out of it. Duelling is very popular among us, very—especially with the fair sex," kissing his hand to an indefinite noun of multitude. "A great favorite being imprisoned for acting as second, the people took it up—elected him governor by an overwhelming majority. It was supposed, of course, he would pardon himself; but no: he was a Roman, the noblest Roman of them all. 'The prerogative of executive clemency,' he said, 'had already been grossly abused. It would ill repay the generous confidence of his constituents to exercise it in his own behalf and in order to escape the just penalty of the law.' He refused to pardon himself, and so served out his term in both offices."

This struck the German as something heroic.

"True, sir, true," said Lind: "rather inconvenient, however. When the legislature met, as it necessarily did, in the penitentiary, you could not tell a member from a convict. Rather awkward, you see, if the wrong body adjourned itself by mistake."

The party broke up late, and Mason, throwing off his coat, called for Webster's Quarto and Watson's Poetical Quotations, saying he would address his aunt in such an Orphic strain as would make her wig curl and ma'amselle's rouge-pot chalky. Watson's Poetical Quotations was not in the hotel; but with the big Quarto before him, arms akimbo, his legs spread out under the table, Mason went at his task, pausing to shout a passage at Payne, and swear it would liquefy the crystal of his aunt's frigid humor like a hot collar in July, or to scratch his head over some fickle-vowelled monosyllable that defied orthography; and the soft dark night deepened to the gray, lustreless morning.

An early marketer from Jeffersonville spread a rumor that R. Nettles was shot through the lungs, and poor little Sue read it in the paper an hour later. An eager reporter recognized the hotel-van from over the river, with a tarpaulin thrown over its contents. "Anything of Captain Mason's party?" he asked.

"Stout, rosy man, good deal o' gas?" asked the porter.

"Yes! yes! what of him?"

"Nothing: I guess he won't gas no more," motioning toward the tarpaulin. "Them's his'n. Do you know where his aunt lives?"

Anybody knows; the van drives off; the rumor flies—both parties slain.

Let us follow the van. At Aunt Fanny's the tarpaulin is thrown off, and reveals nothing worse than a trunk, gun-case, etc., but the man's story confirms the worst. He has a letter for the dowager, and it is sent up. The dowager calls ma'amselle to read, which she does with strong emotion and French accent:

"My Dear and Venerated Aunt—"

"Hand me the vinaigrette, and don't read so loud: I am not deaf," said the dowager.

The poor maid subdued her tones as she best could, and read:

"Now is the hour when churchyards yawn and graves give up their dead. It is midnight's holy hour. I hear the rush of the Falls like a mill-sluice, and it recalls 'the happy, happy hours of childhood.' But ere another day I may ride upon the Styx, and hear the dam loud roaring no more."

"Ride upon a stick, and hear what?" ejaculated the dowager at poor Lind's rhetoric.

"Mais oui, madame," translates the French maid, "c'est la fleuve de l'enfer et les cris des âmes perdues."

"Oh, the Styx!" said the dowager, taking snuff.—"Use your handkerchief, Hortense, and go on."

She obeys:

"Ere my venerated aunt peruses this calligraphy an eagle soaring in its pride of place will be by a mousing Nettles hawked at and killed."

"Poor boy!" said his aunt. "I must have a black grenadine, trimmed with bugles and flounced very deep, for mourning.—Don't forget it, Hortense."

"My last thoughts," continued the reader, "are with my revered relative; for who forgave the boyish trick, and fed me on a candy-stick, and nursed me when it made me sick?—My aunt. Who taught me to back a colt or make a book? Who entered me for the purse with Cousin Fanny Alison, but the filly bolted with Bob Ascot?—My aunt."

"Patience alive!" cried the dowager: "what does the man mean, with his doggerel poetry and slang of the stables at such a time?"

"Oh, madame! it is noble," said the poor maid with streaming eyes, and then continued:

"She besought me with the salt rheum in her optical organs to suppress my fury; but who can restrain the wrath of a Brown? She denied me the spondulics—a Latin word for cash—to carry out my nefarious purpose, though it grieved her generous heart."

"That's well thought of," said the dowager. "People talk so. We must get it to those newspaper-men. Poor Lind!"

"To those who assert a mercenary motive I triumphantly respond, 'She paid up my little bills, and has doubtless destroyed the evidences of them.'"

"They are in the steel casket," said the dowager. "Burn them. But he never would have paid."

"When she honors my sight draft," read ma'amselle, "for two-fifty to settle up my present expenses in this business, she will pay the last debt of him who has paid the last debt of Nature. For if the knave do cut but deep enough, I'll pay it instantly with all my heart. (Shakespeare.)

L. Brown Mason."

"Give me the cheque-book, and let the man come up," said the dowager.

The man was questioned, and had but little to tell. He was told Captain Mason had been shot, and to bring the letter. After he was dismissed the dowager said, "Let Fanny bring the chocolate. I hope the cream is better: it curdled yesterday. Poor Lind! He had a good heart."

About the time his aunt was cashing his last draft, and reckoning that that little enterprise of marrying Sue Brown to Captain Mason had cost her a thousand dollars for failure, Captain Mason, with a party in the carriage, stood on Mrs. Walter Brown's front steps explaining to her that at a little expense in cutting down her ornamental trees and grubbing up her rare exotic shrubbery the front lawn could be converted into a beautiful quarter-track, and offering his services to effect the desirable change. Then advancing, he graciously held out his hand to poor, pale, red-eyed little Sudie, still hysterical over that dreadful paragraph.

"No," said Sue tartly. "Mamma may shelter you from the police, but you ought to be hung. There! And I won't shake a murderer's hand. There! I won't! I won't! I won't! There!"

Mason's jolly face looked queer. "I see," said he. "'Twas ever thus from childhood's hour. I never bucked a card or colt, but what some fellow held the bower or else that horse was sure to bolt. When, at pensive evening's hour, I stroll among the tombs, I read the virtues of the—erra—clammy, the clammy. As I read the testimony of the rocks, of the rocks, it strikes me the wicked never die, and I long to be—erra—wicked. There is no raising that card," wagging his head solemnly at little Sue, who stared in spite of herself, "until Gable—I believe his name is Gable—turns trump. But I have brought you all that is mortal of the late R. Nettles."

He turned to the door as he spoke, while the shocked, terrified girl hid her face, thinking of the vision in that very parlor under the white seals of death.

But Bob Nettles's cheery, commonplace tones interrupted: "How'd do, Miss Sue? how'd do, Mrs. Brown? Captain Mason said he'd break it to you, and I thought—"

But Sue had turned her face to the wall in a corner, and stood shaking her plump shoulders and stamping her little feet like a pettish child, as she said, "Go 'way from me, Bob Nettles! I'll never speak to you again as long as I live; and as for Cousin Lind," with a shake and a stamp, "I hate him!"

"See what it is to lose the virtues of the clammy," said Mason, pulling his beard and grinning at Bob's blank looks. "But I must go to my aunt. By a shocking oversight we forgot to settle the hotel-bill at Jeffersonville, and I am afraid the greedy landlord has forwarded a note to have been delivered to her in case of accident, and a draft. It is humiliating to think she has paid it, and honor requires I should promptly settle it with an I.O.U. As for Payne—"

"Dry that up," said Payne.

"Well, I'll only say the next duel I fight may Payne load the pistols!" added the captain.

What that meant is the unsolved mystery of the duel. Deane Lee insists that it was a fair, honest, stand-up fight. True, he had used the wrong moulds the night before in casting bullets, but he had seen Payne load the famous Brown duelling-pistols.

But Mason's old comrades wink at the story of the wax bullets blacked with pencil-dust by Mason to represent the real thing, and say Payne was so cowed by the dowager's threat and Mason's chaff that no power could have made him charge with dangerous missiles. Mason himself says that neither he nor Nettles could have hit a barn-door; but a mere index of the veracious stories of that famous duel, as told by Mason, would fill a book. As his debts were paid and the dowager keeps him in feather, and as Bob and Sue were married, that game-bird is right in declaring it the only duel that was ever "satisfactorily adjusted honorably to all parties."

Will Wallace Harney.