you shall do it.”
“You may insist all you like, but I sha’n’t.”
“General Granier, as the challenged party, has the privilege of
selecting weapons. I think it extremely likely that he will require
that you will use a weapon fired with the leg, as he can do.”
“Very well. I can fire just as well with my leg as I can with my arm,
but I don’t intend to fire at General Granier, nor to allow him to fire
at me.”
“Such language is most unbecoming the name you bear, and I wish to say
that, out of regard for the honour of our family, I shall take the
matter in my own hands and will act as your second and arrange the
details of the meeting,” replied Louis.
Monsieur de Latour turned over in bed and pulled the covers up so that
only the top of his nightcap was visible.
“Will you kindly draw the shade down,” he said, “and leave me in peace?
If General Granier wants to fight me, he will have to come into this
bedroom, for I have no intention of leaving it.”
“You do not appear to appreciate the seriousness of the situation,”
said Louis, “nor the point of honour involved.”
“Be careful to shut the door after you,” answered Monsieur de Latour,
“and don’t let them bother me with any breakfast. The bottom of my
stomach has dropped out completely and I can’t eat anything, but I
should like a little cognac and water at ten o’clock.”
Louis gazed at him meditatively.
“You might as well lie here and sleep,” he said. “Your hand seems to be
pretty shaky, anyhow. I am sorry the chances are so against you, not
being able to hold a weapon steady nor to see clearly.”
“That makes not the least difference,” said Monsieur de Latour, drawing
the covers up still higher. “I am not going to fight. Good morning.”
“At least,” Louis urged, “you will have to be at the place of meeting.
That I shall see to myself.”
“You must then provide a wheeled chair,” said Monsieur de Latour
coolly, “because you will never get me there any other way--likewise
handcuffs and leg irons.”
“You will be there,” said Louis determinedly, pulling down the shade
and closing the door after him.
Monsieur de Latour, left alone in silence and darkness, began to
revolve things in his mind. He had determined upon one thing, and that
was to discharge Julie. Fascinating though she was, that unfortunate
peculiarity of hers of always leaving out one word--small, it is true,
but vital, and always bringing about a catastrophe--made her not only
useless but exceedingly dangerous.
He had not mentioned to Louis the method of preventing the affair which
had promptly flashed into his mind. He would simply inform the police.
And then, turning over in bed, he slumbered peacefully until about
three o’clock, when he was again roused by Louis’s entrance.
“It is all settled,” said Louis cheerfully. “The meeting will take
place to-morrow morning, at seven o’clock, in the wood that skirts the
field a mile off by the side of the old windmill. And just as I knew,
General Granier has selected as weapons a gun to be fired with the
foot. Of course it will be very difficult for you, but I am familiar
with firearms, and I have rigged up a contrivance by which you can fire
a gun with your foot. You might practise a little this afternoon, but
my experience is that practice before a duel does no good, but simply
is a tax upon the nerves. And, as a matter of fact, I must say to you,
my dear Victor, that I don’t think you stand the least show of hitting
General Granier.”
“I quite agree with you,” replied Monsieur de Latour. “Nothing would
surprise me more.”
“And as for General Granier hitting you--well, I don’t think that he
means to kill you, but I fancy that he means to inflict a slight wound,
perhaps leaving a mark upon your scalp or taking the tip off your ear.
But one can never tell.” And here Louis shook his head dolefully.
Monsieur de Latour shivered a little at this; nevertheless he had his
own reasons for retaining his composure.
“At seven o’clock,” he repeated, “in the wood that skirts the field a
mile off by the side of the old windmill. Well, I sha’n’t be there.”
“You will be there,” answered Louis firmly, “if I have, as you say, to
provide a rolling-chair and leg irons and handcuffs; but be there you
will, because you are a De Latour.”
“Good afternoon,” remarked Monsieur de Latour, in the same voice in
which he had spoken in the morning. “Pull down the shade and shut the
door after you.”
Monsieur de Latour was able to eat the wing of a chicken that evening,
and a little boiled rice, brought up to him at dinner-time. Before
retiring for the night he had a couple of alarm clocks placed in his
room, set so as to go off at five o’clock, for Monsieur de Latour had
a scheme in his mind which he had worked out during those long hours
between sleeping and waking that he had spent in his room.
He had inquired about Eugène de Contiac and had been told that the poor
young man was in the depths of physical and mental agony, and unable to
leave his bed.
Monsieur de Latour, having fixed upon his plan of procedure, thought
that he would sleep soundly, but found himself mistaken.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
VIII
MARS AND CUPID
No matter how fixed one’s determination may be not to fight, nor how
promptly one means to inform the police, in a case like Monsieur de
Latour’s there are few men who can sleep upon such a matter. Monsieur
de Latour was not one of them, and he lay awake and pitched and tossed
until five o’clock.
For the first time a suspicion began to steal upon him that he was,
perhaps, better off at Brionville, with his middle-class friends,
than at the Chateau of Montplaisir, with all of the smart people he
had got about him, and with a semi-royal duke among the chateau’s
visitors. Then came the thought of Mademoiselle Cheri, quiet,
middle-aged, middle-class, like himself, and the remembrance seemed
strangely attractive. It was chased away by the vision of the Comtesse
de Beauregard and her kittenish old age, of the wild set of untamed
octogenarians by which she was surrounded, and the prospect of leading
a life like that of the last week in Paris; and Monsieur de Latour fell
into a kind of panic.
“If I do get killed by that preposterous old scapegrace with his
outlandish leg,” thought Monsieur de Latour, “it will be the fault of
Madame de Beauregard. That woman will have been my murderess. However,
another week like the last in Paris I believe would kill me just as
quickly as a bullet from General Granier’s leg. Nevertheless, he won’t
get me to stand up and be shot at--he may be sure of that.”
Monsieur de Latour, having dressed himself noiselessly in the first
flush of the summer morning, crept downstairs with the quietness of a
burglar bent on murder and arson, and let himself out of a small side
door.
He struck out at a smart gait for the town, and making straight for the
police station, entered and demanded to see the commissary. He was
informed that the commissary was at home asleep, but the policeman on
duty very civilly offered to do what he could for Monsieur de Latour.
The policeman was a pleasant-faced fellow of about twenty-five years
of age, entirely too young, so Monsieur de Latour determined, to be
trusted with such a serious affair as the present. He at once plunged
into the matter.
“Monsieur,” he said, “I wish to have a person, probably known to you,
General Granier, arrested for making threats against my life.” And then
he poured out his story.
But either his mind had not yet recovered from the strain of his week
in Paris, or the policeman was stupid, for after Monsieur de Latour had
talked straight ahead for twenty minutes, rising and gesticulating, the
policeman appeared to be thoroughly confused.
“Do I understand, monsieur,” the policeman asked very politely, “that
you demand the arrest of General Granier without any proof of the
charges you make against him? That, you must know, is quite impossible.”
Monsieur de Latour sat down and mopped his forehead.
“Do you mean to say,” he asked, “that General Granier is to be allowed
to murder me in cold blood?”
“Not at all, monsieur, but I don’t quite understand the state of
affairs. You have sent a challenge, so you tell me, to General Granier.”
“I never told you any such thing,” bawled Monsieur de Latour, jumping
up from his seat and walking up and down excitedly. “It is General
Granier who insists upon fighting me--that is to say, murdering me in
cold blood, as I told you. Now, I don’t like the idea, and I don’t know
any other man who does, and I demand the assistance of the law.”
The policeman shook his head with a puzzled air, real or affected.
“If monsieur will return at nine o’clock, the commissary will be here,”
he said, “and will determine what to do.”
“But I am to be shot at seven!” cried Monsieur de Latour. “That nephew
of mine--my uncle, that is--” Here Monsieur de Latour struck his
forehead in agony and bewilderment. “Good Heavens! what a world this
is! When I call upon you to save the life of a French citizen who is
to be shot at seven you tell me to wait till nine, when the commissary
will come. If you were not a policeman I should call you a great fool.”
“Be careful,” replied the policeman angrily, “or you will find yourself
under arrest, monsieur, for abusing the police.”
“Will I?” shouted Monsieur de Latour joyfully. “Well, then, I wish to
tell you that I think you are the worst lot of rapscallions, thieves,
rogues, and liars on the face of the earth. Now, arrest me if you like.”
The policeman eyed Monsieur de Latour critically.
“I think,” he said, “you are a little off your head.”
“Then,” promptly responded Monsieur de Latour, “arrest me as a
dangerous lunatic.”
“I don’t think you are dangerous at all,” replied the policeman, with
the most exasperating calmness.
“I am,” pleaded Monsieur de Latour, going up close to the policeman. “I
am exceedingly dangerous. Now, for all you know, at this meeting with
General Granier I may be determined to kill him.”
“What, with a rapier? You don’t look to me as if you would know a
rapier when you saw it.”
“No, no, no! We are to fight with guns fired with our legs.”
“Come, now,” said the policeman soothingly, “you sit here quietly and I
will telephone to the Chateau of Montplaisir, where you say you belong,
and get your uncle to come and fetch you.”
With that the policeman rang up the telephone.
“Don’t, don’t, for Heaven’s sake!” cried Monsieur de Latour. “He would
drag me off to the meeting-place and hold me up to be shot at.”
But it was too late. The hour being early, the policeman had got the
chateau immediately, and to Monsieur de Latour’s horror he heard the
policeman’s end of the conversation, something like this:
“Yes, he’s here, talks very wild, but seems to be harmless.... You
will be here immediately?... Thanks, monsieur.... Shall I order a
rolling-chair? Certainly; there is a place just across the street....
Keep him here if I can?... Oh, yes, he seems to be afraid to leave the
station!... That is all?... Good morning, monsieur.”
Monsieur de Latour knew well enough what all this meant. He sat down
and sighed, and got up again and groaned.
“Your uncle will be here in a few minutes,” said the policeman
encouragingly, “and says he has telephoned for a wheeled chair to be
here.”
Monsieur de Latour, in a state of indescribable anguish, determined to
make a last effort.
“See,” he said to the policeman, “I am a most desperate character.
I am the gentleman you probably read of in the newspapers last week
in Paris. I am the person who took the nineteen ballet-girls out
to the races, and we drank among us one hundred and twenty-seven
bottles of champagne--that is, I paid for one hundred and twenty-seven
bottles--and smashed a twenty-thousand-franc automobile, and lost
twelve thousand francs by betting on flies, and did a great many other
things that I don’t remember now. And I am determined to kill General
Granier!” Here Monsieur de Latour assumed an air of fierceness entirely
foreign to him, and shouted: “I intend to have General Granier’s blood!
Do you understand that? I mean to kill him!”
“Of course! of course!” replied the policeman soothingly. “You couldn’t
do better. Now, sit down quietly, and you can kill him a great deal
more comfortably when your uncle comes.”
“But I wish to kill him now,” shouted Monsieur de Latour, thinking his
ruse had succeeded. “I am to meet him at seven o’clock in the wood on
the edge of the field near the old windmill.”
With that Monsieur de Latour made a feint of going out of the door,
and cannoned against another policeman coming in to relieve the one
at the desk. A whispered conversation took place between the two,
and then Monsieur de Latour’s enemy, as he had begun to regard this
smart-looking young policeman, came out, and taking him by the arm,
said to him:
“Now, there is a wheeled chair at the door. Suppose you get in it, and
I will wheel you about the town a little.”
Monsieur de Latour hesitated for a moment and then joyfully consented.
General Granier could not possibly attack him under the wing of a
policeman. So, linking his arm in that of the policeman, they went
out of the door, where they found a wheeled chair and an attendant.
The policeman whispered a few words to the attendant, who went away
laughing, and then, Monsieur de Latour seating himself within the
wheeled chair, the policeman, with a grin almost as big as himself,
began to shove it along the street.
“I think,” said Monsieur de Latour, over his shoulder, “it will be
just as well for us to take a little tour around the town until about
eight o’clock. By that time General Granier and his second will be
tired of waiting, and then it will be quite safe for me to go back
to the Chateau of Montplaisir. You can arrange to have both of us
arrested, and I should prefer, myself, to be incarcerated. It is now
only half-past six o’clock, so we can take quite a pleasant jaunt. I am
certainly very much obliged to you for pushing me, and hope you don’t
find me too heavy?”
“Not in the least,” replied the policeman, to whom every proposition of
Monsieur de Latour seemed agreeable.
“And whatever you do,” added Monsieur de Latour impressively, “don’t
take me anywhere near that wood. You see, my nephew----”
“I thought you said he was your uncle?”
“Oh, well, it doesn’t make any difference--he will be there, and he
wants me to fight! He dragged me into this thing, and I don’t want to
be at that place at that hour.”
They were then on the outskirts of the town, and Monsieur de Latour,
who was not very familiar with the locality, pleased himself with the
notion that they were going farther and farther away from the dreaded
spot near the windmill. The policeman, who was not very expert with
wheeled chairs, bumped Monsieur de Latour up and down considerably, and
once nearly jolted him out.
“Look here, my friend,” said Monsieur de Latour, turning around and
eyeing the fellow, who seemed to be enjoying the situation immensely,
“I had just as soon be shot by General Granier as to be thrown out of
this chair and have my neck broken.”
“You see, monsieur,” replied the policeman suavely, “I am not used to
playing nursemaid for elderly gentlemen, but I am doing the best I can.”
Presently they came to a pleasant country road which Monsieur de Latour
remembered to have seen in his drives about the place, but what was his
horror suddenly to find looming up before him in the vivid light of the
early morning a huge windmill.
“Take me away from here!” he cried to the policeman.
But the policeman, suddenly putting on a spurt, started the chair
off at a dead run, jolting Monsieur de Latour most unmercifully and
making it quite impossible for him to get out. His screams to stop
were unheeded, and in about five minutes’ time he found himself in the
appointed place in the wood just on the edge of the field. And, horror
of horrors! there was General Granier, with a very fierce-looking
gentleman in attendance, another gentleman with a sinister box which
revealed his profession as a surgeon, and Louis de Latour. As soon
as Louis caught sight of the wheeled chair, which the policeman was
trundling along the road at a furious rate of speed, he rushed forward
and, clasping Monsieur de Latour in his arms, cried:
“I knew, my dear nephew, you would not disgrace the name you bear, and,
like a true De Latour, you would be on the spot to defend your honour.”
Monsieur de Latour, panting and exhausted, was still more agitated by
the thought that he had escaped a broken neck at the policeman’s hands,
only to become a target for General Granier’s leg. He held on firmly,
however, to the sides of the chair, feeling himself safer there than
standing on his feet.
“I told General Granier,” continued Louis, “that I felt sure some
accident had occurred which would merely delay your arrival. I went to
your room before six o’clock and was puzzled by your disappearance, but
soon I was called up over the telephone and discovered where you were.
I thought it useless to come to the police station after you, knowing
that nothing would detain you from this place at this hour.”
Every man has in him some species of courage, and Monsieur de Latour
had enough moral courage to own up to a lack of physical courage.
“My dear Louis,” he said, recovering himself, “we may as well
understand each other. I never had the slightest idea of standing up to
be shot at by General Granier. If he chooses to murder an innocent man
sitting here in a wheeled chair, he may do it--I am at his mercy--but
as for taking part in a duel, nothing was further from my intention,
and I said so all the time!”
Louis gazed at him meditatively.
“I think the presence of this policeman has something to do with what
you say,” he remarked, “but I believe we can easily stop his mouth.”
Louis came up to the policeman and looked meaningly into his face,
at which the policeman, upon whose countenance a stupendous grin was
fixed, said:
“I sha’n’t make any trouble, monsieur; but I think it only fair to
tell you that this is the most bloodthirsty old gentleman I ever came
across in my life. He swore that he would have General Granier’s blood
and meant to kill him at all costs. I never saw a man in all my days so
bent on murder as this one is.”
“You are an infernal----”
Monsieur de Latour was going to say liar, but it suddenly occurred to
him that the policeman had some justification for what he said.
“Very well,” he continued, tucking his feet under him, “it makes no
difference what I said--perhaps I had a motive in it. But I don’t mean
to fight--I have said that from the beginning, and I am not a man to
say one thing one day and another the next.”
At that the fierce-looking person whom Louis addressed as Major Le
Gallian, advanced and said freezingly to Louis:
“Monsieur, now that you have your principal on the ground, is it not as
well to begin work?”
“No,” promptly replied Monsieur de Latour. “You may not have heard
what I said, so I will repeat it for your benefit. I never agreed to
fight General Granier; I have no grudge against him, and if he has one
against me I am willing to apologise. That is final.”
Major Le Gallian stood at attention and looked at Louis, as much as to
say, “The next move is yours.”
General Granier, some distance off, was making mysterious gyrations,
with his right leg lifted at an angle that would have destroyed the
equilibrium of most men, but which he maintained with perfect ease.
The sight of him at that very moment was most terrifying to Monsieur
de Latour. Louis, with an air of great perturbation, turned again to
Monsieur de Latour and began to speak, but the latter, waving his hand,
cut him short.
“Not a word, not a word, my dear boy--my mind is made up and has been
all the time.”
“Do you mean to say,” asked Louis sternly, “that you do not intend to
live up to the courageous traditions of the house of De Latour?”
“That is precisely what I don’t mean to do,” promptly answered Monsieur
de Latour. “And to be perfectly frank with you, I would rather be a
live soap-boiler than a dead head of the house of De Latour.”
“Then I shall be obliged to disown you as my nephew.”
“I wish you would. It has bothered me almost to death ever since the
unlucky mistake was made by that pretty little rogue in petticoats,
Julie de Brésac--that is if it was a mistake at all.”
To have a principal on the ground who positively refuses to fight would
be an embarrassing situation for most men; but Louis, with the air of
a man who supposes that no one has heard what has passed, turned to
Major Le Gallian.
“I think,” he said, “that we may as well begin measuring off the
ground.”
This took them off a little distance, and if Monsieur de Latour had
been experienced in such matters he would have noticed that their heads
were uncommonly close together for gentlemen engaged in such grim work,
and that both of them carefully avoided letting their faces be seen.
Monsieur de Latour dived down in his pockets, and, producing four
twenty-franc pieces, held them up to the policeman and nodded
anxiously. The policeman’s grin grew broader, if possible, and he
nodded back, and then, with a whirl that almost pitched Monsieur de
Latour head foremost out of the wheeled chair, the policeman started
him off down the road at a gait that would have put a professional
sprinter to his trumps.
Both Louis de Latour and Major Le Gallian were keeping their backs to
their principals, so that the policeman got a good start of them before
they found that the bird had flown. But General Granier had seen the
whole proceeding and, shouting, “Stop him! stop him!” started off in
chase. However, his right leg, which was an excellent weapon, was by
no means sufficient as a motor, and very much impeded his progress.
And by some strange fortuity neither Louis de Latour nor Major Le
Gallian could be made to heed the general’s shouts and efforts to catch
the rapidly retreating wheeled chair. When at last General Granier
succeeded in attracting their attention, and pointed down the road, the
wheeled chair had just turned the corner of a thicket some distance
off, and both Louis and Major Le Gallian, looking in an entirely
opposite direction, declared they saw no sign of Monsieur de Latour,
and could not imagine in what quarter he had vanished. This infuriated
General Granier, who, shaking his fist in the faces of Major Le Gallian
and Louis de Latour, shrieked:
“You have tricked me and played with me. Was ever a gentleman so
treated before? I demand satisfaction of both of you.”
Louis and Major Le Gallian were profuse in apologies, and Louis
undertook to explain and apologise for Monsieur de Latour’s conduct.
“You see, my dear general,” he said, “after all, my nephew is but a
soap-boiler, and how absurd it is to expect a soap-boiler to have a
sense of _noblesse oblige_. I apologise for him, and if you insist on
fighting, I will cheerfully take my nephew’s place.”
“I do insist on fighting,” screamed General Granier, snapping his false
teeth viciously.
But here Major Le Gallian interfered.
“I can’t permit this,” he protested. “The proceedings this morning have
been so irregular that it is impossible they can be taken seriously,
and they cannot be carried further.”
“At all events,” said Louis, with a bow to General Granier, “the
gallantry shown by you, monsieur, is worthy of your name and military
rank. I shall have great pleasure in testifying to it, particularly in
the presence of my nephew, whose conduct I deplore, and in that of the
Comtesse de Beauregard, who, as you know, is a great admirer of spirit
in a man. I am inclined to think that my nephew has lost whatever
chance he had of winning Madame de Beauregard’s hand.”
A sudden change came over General Granier’s wizened old face.
“Do you think so?” asked he, stroking his mustache.
“I certainly do,” responded Louis. “And I may say to you that there
are other gentlemen whom I might name that come much nearer Madame
de Beauregard’s ideas of a man than my nephew, worthy as he is, and
admirable in his own province of soap-boiling. I hope, monsieur, that
matters may be arranged so that our former pleasant relations may be
resumed, and that I may have the pleasure of seeing you at the Chateau
of Montplaisir, especially during Madame de Beauregard’s stay there.”
General Granier, smiling like a May morning, replied: