[In which Paddy O’Connell of Glendalough, writes to his sister Clara a
full account of the duel between Henry Gastonard and the Captain
Bernard d’Alençon.]
Hôtel St. Paul, Paris,
June 7th, 1905.
Dear Clara,--You will have learned from the newspapers some of the
news I have to tell you, but this will not make you less anxious to
hear it a second time from a family pen.
I arrived in Paris early on the Saturday morning, and drove to the
Hôtel St. Paul; for, where else would I be driving at all on such a
day? The newspapers gave me a fine account of poor Henry as we went
along, and small hope had I of cheering him alive or talking to
anything better than a corpse. When I arrived at his hotel, they would
have shut the door in my face but for a way I have with them, and for
sure the journalists are here all day and would tear the very bandages
from Harry’s body to photograph the wounds.
Well, I made my way up to the sick man’s room at last, and there found
the poor fellow stretched upon his bed and looking by no means so
cheerful as I should have wished to see him. By his side there was a
little French girl, the one whom he wrote about last week, and a more
beautiful creature the Lord never created.
This, I confess, was some surprise to me. I am very well acquainted
with the ladies of Paris, and had made a picture of this particular
lady for myself. Clara, I was as far from the truth as Dublin from
Cork. This is a face that the man Greuze should have painted. And oh,
the airs and graces of her, the little winning ways, and the dignity!
He tells me that she came from the circus; but if he were not on his
back I’d call him a liar. Mimi the Simpleton for sure--why, she has
the sense of twenty in her head, and ’tis your own Paddy who grows red
in the face every time he argues with her.
Well, the child sprang up upon my entrance, and stood there glaring at
me like a wild cat out of the shows. What French I remember leads me
to the belief that her observations were neither flattering to my
appearance nor my manner--but, God forgive me, I may have
mistranslated it. As for Harry, he just stirred in his sleep and told
me to go away, which so tickled me that I laughed like a boy at the
pantomime.
“Go away!” says I, “Then ’tis yourself that must be putting me out,
for no other man in Paris can do it.”
“Why,” says he, “if it isn’t old Paddy.”
“My boy,” cried I, “my friend--the only one that ever I shall love in
all this world--oh, God forgive you, Harry, for this,” says I.
“Paddy,” says he, “I thought you were a journalist. They’ve been here
all day, Paddy.”
“Show me the man that will come here when I am by, and I will tell you
where to bury him.”
“The old Paddy, every bit of him. Spoiling for a fight, as ever he
was.”
“There is no more peaceable man in Paris,” says I; “but lucky that
your Captain has gone to the wilds! I’d have shot him, Harry, though
the Parliament itself had been there to prevent me.”
He laughed again at this, but I saw that he was in pain, or, to be
honest, the little Greuze girl did that same for me, and spoke words
of which I was content to be hearing poorly. ’Tis plain she worships
the ground he treads upon, though there is not much of that same just
now--while as for the boy himself, if there’s any woman in Europe he
cares a button about, ask Paddy O’Connell to drink cold water, and see
that he gets it.
“Why do you come here? Why do you make this noise?” she asked me--oh,
the impudence of it!--with her pretty eyes blazing like coals and her
cheeks so crimson that a Bishop might have kissed them. “Are you his
friend to do this? Oh, be ashamed of yourself,” says she, “and go away
immediately.”
’Twas a just rebuke, Clara, and Paddy not the man to be minding it.
Presently, when I had done penance before her, she permitted me to sit
in a chair at the bedside; and, every time I opened my mouth to speak,
she looked so tremendous that I gulped down my words and ate them for
very shame. By and by the doctor came in and asked Harry if I had been
talking, and “never a word” says I, which was the truth to be sure.
I should tell you that Harry was shot on the collar-bone, and devil a
shirt will he be putting on for a long while to come. ’Tis precious
hard luck, for he was leaving for England next week to get his living
as the Will wants him to do. What’s to come of it all now, God only
knows. If he’s not making five hundred a year by his own exertions
this time next year, he’ll lose his fortune, and that weedy old hack
of a curate in Suffolk come in for the whole of it but a paltry
hundred pounds a year. This must be talked over between us hereafter.
To-day, when the doctor was gone, and the little witch with the pretty
face sent out to do some shopping for him, he told me the story of the
fight, and sorry I am that Paddy O’Connell missed that entertainment.
For it was a fine affair entirely.
“Why did you go out with the man?” I asked him.
He answered me as shortly:
“Curiosity, Paddy.”
“The cause of half the mischief in the world. Was the woman sorry
about it?”
“The beautiful Lea? Oh, my dear Paddy, she went to church to pray that
I might shoot him.”
“There was nothing between you--your solemn word, Harry?”
“Paddy, am I the man----”
“I’d like to meet the one who’d tell me that you were.”
“I have done everything that men do in Paris--why should I have missed
this, Paddy?”
“Ye were not the man to miss it. Show me the one who says so, and I’m
ready for him.”
“I wanted to understand why people laugh at what they call an affair
of honour. They all do laugh in England, and yet there are worse ways
of putting a bit upon men’s tongues. When I chose pistols I hardly
knew what I was doing. But I said it and had to stick to it, Paddy.”
“Of course, ye did. Ye weren’t afraid of him, Harry.”
“Not as you would understand it--upon my word, no. But a man who has
been up all night in a reeking café, and then sees the sun rise over
Belleville and remembers an appointment for six o’clock in a garden
near Auteuil, that man would be a liar to say he liked it. There was
one mortal hour, Paddy, when I would have given half my fortune to
know what was going to happen. I remember thinking that most
Englishmen would have pooh-poohed the whole affair and fallen back
upon the national cant about scruples. Blame old Villefort, who dosed
me with half the filth they keep at the Taverne Royale--and that old
beggar, Oleander, who drank enough brandy to poison a regiment on the
score of it.
“We came down from the Butte singing ‘Brunette aux Yeux Doux’ with all
our lungs. I sha’n’t tell you a lie and say that I thought Paris
looked beautiful, or anything of the kind, for it just isn’t, Paddy.
Everything seemed as cold as a November fog. The sun shone
sardonically--I remember seeing maids about the doors of the houses,
and envying them their occupation. A cabby who chaffed us was little
better than an irritating blackguard, who should have been whipped.
“When we arrived at Count Louvier’s house--you know we fought in his
garden--I remember hearing the bell ring about five hundred times
before they let us in. If anyone had spoken, if someone had made a
joke, I would have been grateful to him then, Paddy--but we just
entered the hall of the house in silence, walked straight through to
the garden, went on down toward the river, and took up our positions
on the borders of a little thicket of fir, without as much as a
monosyllable from any one of them. I didn’t like that--you wouldn’t
have liked it yourself, Paddy.”
“Ye should have whistled an air,” said I, “laughed and joked yourself.
That puts the iron into them. I remember that I was whistling
‘Finnigan’s Wake’ when I knocked down Peter Morley, that had me up at
the police-court afterwards. Ye should have whistled, Harry!”
He smiled at the idea of it, and for some while he would not talk
again. When he had rested himself and taken a drink of the stuff the
doctor man gave him--God send me good whisky in such a plight!--he
told me the rest of it.
“They put a pistol into my hand, Paddy, and it felt just like an iron
bar. When I saw d’Alençon I wasn’t angry with him, but the devil on
two sticks could not have cut an uglier figure than he did. The man
was shooting fire already from his eyes--he couldn’t stand still a
minute, was here and there and everywhere, but always turning back to
look at me, as though he would tear my heart out----”
“Ye weren’t behind in that, Harry?” asks I. “Ye didn’t wish him the
top of the morning, or anything of that kind?”
“No, Paddy--but I was sorry to see him so angry. I had done him no
injury--what he has suffered--for I know Lea’s story--is in a measure,
his own fault. Perhaps I had been wiser never to see her at all--I
used to swear I would cut it every time I left her. If Paris were not
the smallest city in the world when you want to avoid anybody, I would
have kept my word. But I think she used to wait for me--hide where she
knew I would come, and make a fool of herself all the time. That’s why
the Captain looked like a human devil when he stood opposite to me
that morning. If he hadn’t hit me with his bullet, I believe he would
have used the butt.”
“Ay, and a man’s game, too, Harry. ’Tis one I would have had a hand in
myself--but you shouldn’t have missed him, boy--you used to be handy
with a pistol, and you shouldn’t have missed him.”
He sighed a bit at this, and I saw that I had wounded his vanity.
Presently he said:--
“I could have shot him dead, Paddy, if I had wished--but, you see, I
had Lea in my mind all the while, and I couldn’t be angry about it. It
is difficult to make you understand it, but when the Chevalier placed
us on the ground and put the pistol into my hand, I was half afraid to
look at my man at all, his eyes were so queer. I could think of
nothing else, Paddy. I didn’t remember that he might hit me; I forgot
the man altogether; the fight was between me and the ugliest pair of
eyes I have ever seen. When the word came to fire, I turned very
slowly and raised my pistol with a child’s arm--I couldn’t look the
Captain in the face, Paddy.”
“And ye didn’t try to hit him at all, Harry? Will ye tell me that ye
let the blackguard go empty?”
“I fired when the Chevalier spoke, but I took no aim, Paddy. The
Captain hung back and looked at me for some minutes before he shot me.
I remember that there is a little wall running at an angle behind the
corner of the wood, and over this I could see the river and a barge. A
woman was steering a great lumber boat, and crying out something to a
man on the towing path--and I kept asking myself when she would
disappear from my sight; if it would be instantly in a sudden
darkness; or slowly, as a picture fades from a sheet. When the crash
came it was just as though a man had hit me with a hammer and then put
a branding iron upon my shoulder. I forgot all about d’Alençon’s
trouble then, and if I had held another pistol in my hand I would have
shot him, rule or no rule. That’s the truth, Paddy; the pain maddened
me--I could have crushed his head in my hands, stamped him under
foot--I no longer cared--I was sorry that there had been no reason for
his challenge.”
“Shame on you for that. Please God, I’ll shoot him before the week is
out.”
“No, no, Paddy--I absolutely forbid you to do anything at all.”
“I tell ye I’ll shoot him--right or wrong, I’ll have a bang at him.”
He laughed--just the same boyish Harry Gastonard that won my love
twelve years ago at Charterhouse.
“He’ll choose swords if you challenge him, Paddy.”
“Then let him choose ’em and be hanged to him.”
He was about to reply when the little witch that Greuze should have
painted came into the room again--and God forgive me, I told her that
he had not opened his lips since she went out. It was now almost time
for him to have his food--so I went up to my own room to write this
letter.
Be easy, Clara. The Captain is not in Paris, and there’ll be no
fighting--unless he should return--but of that you shall be the first
to have the news.
Would my sister have me stand by when my oldest friend is on his back
and the whole French nation dancing for joy of it?
I’ll do no such thing--shame upon any O’Connell who would. So God
bless you, Clara--and more will I write when next I have a letter for
you.--Your affectionate brother,
Paddy.