_Which Essays the High Epic Note_
The day on which Mr. Quilliam O’Flaherty Macloughlin Myre got his
freedom in the divorce-courts of France, he received a challenge from a
hot young blood called Solignac, first cousin to Gabrielle.
Gaston Latour entered the room, grimly solemn in the conventional
frock-coat and trim dress of the man of fashion, and holding a shining
silk hat in his hand. He was very careful of the silk hat--he had
borrowed it. It had the flattest brim he could find in Paris.
He was followed by another solemn youth. They marched in, clicked
their heels together, bowed, and presented the letter that held the
invitation to face death at daybreak. It was all done with a charm of
manner devoid of all offence, and a desire to be referred to two of Mr.
Myre’s “friends.”
Mr. Myre read the letter; and, as he read, his face became more like
the hue of badly-made paste.
He was a long time reading it, Gaston Latour’s sleepy eyes never
leaving him.
He burst into a harsh laugh, and flung the letter into the air:
“A challenge, eh? ... ha-ha! ho-ho-ho!... Tell your cousin, Monsieur
Latour, that the duel is relegated to the limbo of opera-bouffe.
Ho-ho-ho! We do not do these things in England.”
He prepared himself for a flight of oratory.
Gaston Latour nudged the other youth--they bowed solemnly and withdrew.
“Ho-ho! ha-ha-ha!” laughed Quogge Myre.
The following morning Mr. Quilliam O’Flaherty Macloughlin Myre’s name
was posted in every club in Paris, and struck from the list of those to
which he had belonged; so it came about that he had to live his day at
cafés.
And it was as he stood at a table, giving authoritative utterance with
loud yawing voice to a group of youths that sat about him, vowing that
he had determined to shake the dust of Paris from off his splay feet
and to start a great renaissance of the English drama, when a handsome
young woman, sister to Gaston Latour, entered the place, walked
straight up to Mr. Myre, and struck him a sounding buffet on the ear
that sent his hat flying from his head.
Quilliam O’Flaherty stooping down in confusion to search for the hat,
she kicked him violently behind.
There was a roar of laughter from the students seated round about, and
they tapped the handles of their knives upon the tables, singing:
“Opera-bouffe, bouffe, bouffe! Opera-bouffe, bouffe, bouffe!
Hey-hey-hey! bouffe-bouffe-bouffe!”
Then the girl flogged Quilliam with a horse-whip, thrice:
Once for France.
Once for womanhood.
And once because she liked it.
The whip whistled.
It was said that he had been seen to strike at her--but she parried the
blow with her left, and countered between his eyes with the butt-end of
the whip--which was loaded.
He fell.
It was homeric.
It was at this stage, so the scandal went, that he scrambled under a
table; but she lugged at his collar to get him out; and as he clung
to the leg of the table she gripped him by the moustache so that she
pulled off one side of it.
But she herself owned this to be as inartistic as it was unintentional,
stamping her foot with annoyance at the mischance. Indeed, she
apologized most handsomely; for, said she, pathetically, when she had
got it she did not know what to do with it.
It was an anticlimax.
She threw down the whip and said he might now go home.
He now went home.
There is little reason to doubt that the horsewhipping by Gaston
Latour’s sister hastened Mr. Myre’s desire to start the great
renaissance of the English drama.
As he stood before the mirror in his rooms at his hotel and shaved
off the remains of his drooping moustache by the candle’s light, and
soothed the aching bumps that were risen upon his face, he sniffed
loudly through a swollen nose--he had very tender places--and decided
to go to Rouen until the hair grew.