AN AFFAIR OF HONOR
“Swords or pistols!” echoed Duncan, sufficiently aroused to sit up in
his chair. “What have swords and pistols to do with it?”
“They are the recognized weapons for settling affairs of honor. Perhaps
you were ignorant of the fact.” Shirley spoke with scornful dignity.
“This isn’t an affair of honor, it’s a mere difference of opinion,”
protested Duncan. “You wouldn’t fight over that, I hope.”
“I’d fight over insults!”
Duncan laughed aloud, reckless of the fact that his laugh added to the
affront.
“What good does fighting do? If you should wound me with a sword, it
wouldn’t make the truth of what I said any less true, and if I should
put a bullet into you, it wouldn’t drive out the insult. I say that
the man who fights duels is a barbarian. If I fight, I make myself a
barbarian.”
“Swords or pistols!” insisted Shirley, with a dogged indifference to
logic.
“Neither,” answered Peck.
“Then you are not a gentleman, and are a coward. You have my contempt.”
“Hold on there!” exclaimed Peck, dropping his smile and his air of
pleasantry. “Who’s calling names now?”
“They are names usually applied to a man who insults you and won’t give
you satisfaction.”
“If you think I owe you satisfaction for our difference of opinion, you
must owe me something for calling me a contemptible coward,” announced
Duncan, in serious tones. “I’ll propose--” he hesitated, and approached
a step nearer Shirley; “I’ll propose bowie-knives!”
Shirley recoiled. “I am not used to bowie-knives.”
“Nor I to swords and pistols,” said Duncan.
The fairness of this answer appealed to the man of honor. “Then we must
find some other way,” he said. “Insults can only be wiped out with
blood. We’ll play chess, and the one who’s beaten will commit suicide.”
At this proposition Duncan stared hard. For a moment he harbored the
suspicion that Shirley was chaffing him, not he Shirley. But the boy’s
solemn face and tragic manner immediately dispelled this illusion.
“I don’t play chess,” Duncan answered with plausible earnestness.
“Let’s make it golf, and leave to the one who’s defeated the option of
committing suicide or not. We can consider him dead anyway.”
“I don’t play golf.”
At this point Woods, seeing a chance to bring the deadly affair to a
bloodless conclusion, interrupted with a shrewd proposal.
“Why not run it off? Both of you can run. Make the course a certain
number of times round the wooden track, and let the fellow that’s
beaten set up fudges and stuff for the principals and seconds. I call
that a very honorable arrangement.”
“It isn’t quite regular,” remarked Shirley, doubtfully. “Properly there
ought to be some blood shed.”
“If I’m beaten, I’ll apologize,” said Duncan. “How does that strike
you? I suppose on a pinch I might produce a little blood. I don’t want
to neglect any formalities.”
“I think I can accept without that,” said Shirley, with magnanimity.
“The one that’s beaten sets up for the crowd; don’t forget that!” Woods
interposed. “Whose second am I going to be?”
“You can have him and I’ll get some one else, or I’ll take him and you
can have some one else.” Duncan was truly generous.
“I’ll take him,” said Shirley.
“Then, sir, I will send my second to wait upon yours and arrange for
the details of the combat. I have the honor, sir, to wish you good
afternoon. We shall meet again!” This grand peroration safely and
pompously delivered, Duncan stalked solemnly away.
So much time had been consumed in this highly interesting interview
with Shirley that Duncan postponed until after recitation the pleasure
of retailing the whole story to Bruce, and giving him the chance to
act as second. On the way home he remembered that Bruce was to be in
Boston the following day, but this did not dampen his spirits. Seconds
for such an occasion could be obtained by the squad. He flew upstairs
to his room chuckling and stumbling, nodded absently to Archer, who was
moping over a Greek lesson, and took up an algebra with the intention
of utilizing the fifteen minutes remaining to gain some idea of the
methods of the review chapter which was the lesson for the four-o’clock
flunkers’ class. Through the carelessness of inattention he ran on a
snag in the first explanation, and had to call on his room-mate to help
him off. Then he worked out two problems near the beginning and one
near the end of the exercise, threw the book on the table, looked at
his watch, rose, stretched, and burst into a hearty laugh.
“I never saw anything so funny as that in the algebra,” remarked Sam,
observing his merry room-mate over his reading glasses.
“It isn’t in the algebra, it isn’t in any book,” cried Duncan,
gleefully. “Nothing like it ever happens in a book. I’m engaged in an
affair of honor; I’m going to fight a duel!”
“A duel!” exclaimed Sam, aghast. “With whom?”
“Oh, a fellow you don’t know, in Odlin House.”
“When?”
“To-morrow, on the running track behind the gym. Will you be my second?”
The invitation was due to a momentary impulse of friendliness. Archer
was a track expert and a decent fellow; why not let him in?
Duncan stood with hands in trousers pockets, smiling roguishly and
watching the expression on Archer’s face. Appalled by the grim picture
called up by the word “duel,” and puzzled to reconcile this conception
with Peck’s evident gayety, Sam knew not whether to accept or refuse.
Then there recurred to his mind the serious incident of the last term,
when Kendrick had sprung instantly to his help, and he answered in
Kendrick’s own words, “Sure I will!”
“That’s right,” said Peck. “There’ll be no end of sport. You see--oh,
hang that bell!--I’ll tell you all about it after class.”
At half-past two the next afternoon, when the outskirts of the
gymnasium were clear of idlers, the duel was fought. It was agreed
that Archer should be starter and Woods judge at the finish; the course
was three times round the track. Shirley took the lead at the start,
running in quick, short steps, with Peck pounding away in eager strides
behind him. Shirley tripped past the judge on the first lap, ten yards
ahead of his pursuer, and went pattering around the curve and up the
back stretch as if his legs were driven by a gasoline engine. At the
lower end, however, his pace began to tell upon him; the pat-pat of the
striking soles became slower, the steps shorter. Duncan perceived that
the time for his spurt had come, but he was twelve yards behind when he
crossed the line the second time.
The third lap proved fierce beyond all expectation. Shirley, game to
the last, clenched his fists and lashed himself on. Duncan, stung by
the fear of an ignominious end to his adventure, plying his legs to
the limit of his strength, with dry mouth and dizzy head panted after
his rival. He gained but slowly. On the back stretch he was still five
yards behind. As they came down toward the finish line, two wobbly,
tottering figures with set eyes and strained, twisted features, one
close to the shoulder of the other, Sam, seized with the fear that
both would drop before the finish, reached forward eagerly to catch
Duncan as he touched the line. Duncan, keeping his feet to the end,
plunged helplessly into Sam’s arms. At the same time Woods received
the quivering, gasping Shirley, who lay upon him for a few seconds, an
inert dead weight. Presently Shirley opened his eyes and looked up.
“Who--won?” he breathed rather than spoke.
“I’m blest if I know!” answered Woods. “I forgot to see. Who got it,
Archer?”
“I didn’t notice,” said Sam. “It wasn’t my business to judge the
finish. I was getting ready to catch this fellow.”
“They were right together anyway. We’ll have to call it a tie,” decided
the judge.
“That means we don’t get anything,” observed Archer.
“We’ll run it--over again--” panted Shirley, over his shoulder, as
Woods led him away to the gymnasium.
“No, we won’t!” whispered Duncan in a broken undertone into his
second’s ear. “I’d rather take my chances with swords or pistols. Catch
me running any more races without training. I’ll bet we made a new
record.”
It developed in the course of the afternoon that there had been unseen
witnesses of the spectacle, and these witnesses not only spread highly
colored versions of what they had seen, but also asked rude, saucy
questions of the actors. The fellows in Odlin House cleverly pried
certain admissions out of Shirley, guessed at what they did not know,
and put in circulation a tale which was received with greedy ears and
grinning faces. Duncan bounced into 7 Hale in the middle of the evening
and planted himself, an outraged victim of treachery, before Archer’s
chair.
“What did you want to go and blab all this thing for?” he began,
glowering fiercely at his room-mate’s startled face.
“I didn’t,” replied Sam, quickly. “I haven’t said a word about it.”
“It’s all over school. Some one’s been giving it away. They say it was
you.”
Sam tossed his book upon the table with a spiteful jerk. “They lie,
then. I haven’t even told who won the race. I’ve referred every single
fellow to you.”
Duncan’s wrath gave way to gloom. “Some one’s done it, anyway. They’re
all joshing me about it.”
“I can’t help that,” said Sam. “What do you care? Laugh it off.”
“I’ve been laughing it off. I’ve laughed till my face aches, but that
doesn’t make me any happier. Do you know, I could have sworn I was
ahead of that fellow at the finish. Why didn’t you keep your eyes open?”
“I was thinking of you, not of the race. You looked as if you were all
in, ten feet before you got to me. I expected to see you drop.”
Sam waited for Peck to reply, but Peck offered no comment.
“As a matter of fact,” continued Sam, frankly, “the last time I _did_
notice your positions, Shirley was a good yard ahead.”
“I’m dead sure I beat him at the finish,” said Duncan, obstinately. “I
wish I’d had Bruce there!”