A DUEL
Juba, setting candles upon a table in Haward’s bedroom, chanced
to spill melted wax upon his master’s hand, outstretched on the
board. “Damn you!” cried Haward, moved by sudden and uncontrollable
irritation. “Look what you are doing, sirrah!”
The negro gave a start of genuine surprise. Haward could punish,--Juba
had more than once felt the weight of his master’s cane,--but justice
had always been meted out with an equable voice and a fine impassivity
of countenance. “Don’t stand there staring at me!” now ordered the
master as irritably as before. “Go stir the fire, draw the curtains,
shut out the night! Ha, Angus, is that you?”
MacLean crossed the room to the fire upon the hearth, and stood with
his eyes upon the crackling logs. “You kindle too soon your winter
fire,” he said. “These forests, flaming red and yellow, should warm the
land.”
“Winter is at hand. The air strikes cold to-night,” answered Haward,
and, rising, began to pace the room, while MacLean watched him with
compressed lips and gloomy eyes. Finally he came to a stand before a
card table, set full in the ruddy light of the fire, and taking up the
cards ran them slowly through his fingers. “When the lotus was all
plucked and Lethe drained, then cards were born into the world,” he
said sententiously. “Come, my friend, let us forget awhile.”
They sat down, and Haward dealt.
“I came to the house landing before sunset,” began the storekeeper
slowly. “I found you gone.”
“Ay,” said Haward, gathering up his cards. “’Tis yours to play.”
“Juba told me that you had called for Mirza, and had ridden away to the
glebe house.”
“True,” answered the other. “And what then?”
There was a note of warning in his voice, but MacLean did not choose
to heed. “I rowed on down the river, past the mouth of the creek,” he
continued, with deliberation. “There was a mound of grass and a mass of
colored vines”--
“And a blood-red oak,” finished Haward coldly. “Shall we pay closer
regard to what we are doing? I play the king.”
“You were there!” exclaimed the Highlander. “You--not Jean
Hugon--searched for and found the poor maid’s hiding-place.” The red
came into his tanned cheek. “Now, by St. Andrew!” he began; then
checked himself.
Haward tapped with his finger the bit of painted pasteboard before him.
“I play the king,” he repeated, in an even voice; then struck a bell,
and when Juba appeared ordered the negro to bring wine and to stir the
fire. The flames, leaping up, lent strange animation to the face of the
lady above the mantelshelf, and a pristine brightness to the swords
crossed beneath the painting. The slave moved about the room, drawing
the curtains more closely, arranging all for the night. While he was
present the players gave their attention to the game, but with the
sound of the closing door MacLean laid down his cards.
“I must speak,” he said abruptly. “The girl’s face haunts me. You do
wrong. It is not the act of a gentleman.”
The silence that followed was broken by Haward, who spoke in the
smooth, slightly drawling tones which with him spelled irritation and
sudden, hardly controlled anger. “It is my home-coming,” he said. “I
am tired, and wish to-night to eat only of the lotus. Will you take up
your cards again?”
A less impetuous man than MacLean, noting the signs of weakness,
fatigue, and impatience, would have waited, and on the morrow have been
listened to with equanimity. But the Highlander, fired by his cause,
thought not of delay. “To forget!” he exclaimed. “That is the coward’s
part! I would have you remember: remember yourself, who are by nature
a gentleman and generous; remember how alone and helpless is the girl;
remember to cease from this pursuit!”
“We will leave the cards, and say good-night,” said Haward, with a
strong effort for self-control.
“Good-night with all my heart!” cried the other hotly,--“when you have
promised to lay no further snare for that maid at your gates, whose
name you have blasted, whose heart you have wrung, whose nature you
have darkened and distorted”--
“Have you done?” demanded Haward. “Once more, ’t were wise to say
good-night at once.”
“Not yet!” exclaimed the storekeeper, stretching out an eager hand.
“That girl hath so haunting a face. Haward, see her not again! God
wot, I think you have crushed the soul within her, and her name is
bandied from mouth to mouth. ’T were kind to leave her to forget and be
forgotten. Go to Westover: wed the lady there of whom you raved in your
fever. You are her declared suitor; ’tis said that she loves you”--
Haward drew his breath sharply and turned in his chair. Then, spent
with fatigue, irritable from recent illness, sore with the memory of
the meeting by the river, determined upon his course and yet deeply
perplexed, he narrowed his eyes and began to give poisoned arrow for
poisoned arrow.
“Was it in the service of the Pretender that you became a squire of
dames?” he asked. “’Gad, for a Jacobite you are particular!”
MacLean started as if struck, and drew himself up. “Have a care, sir! A
MacLean sits not to hear his king or his chief defamed. In future, pray
remember it.”
“For my part,” said the other, “I would have Mr. MacLean remember”--
The intonation carried his meaning. MacLean, flushing deeply, rose
from the table. “That is unworthy of you,” he said. “But since before
to-night servants have rebuked masters, I spare not to tell you that
you do most wrongly. ’Tis sad for the girl she died not in that
wilderness where you found her.”
“Ads my life!” cried Haward. “Leave my affairs alone!”
Both men were upon their feet. “I took you for a gentleman,” said the
Highlander, breathing hard. “I said to myself: ‘Duart is overseas where
I cannot serve him. I will take this other for my chief’”--
“That is for a Highland cateran and traitor,” interrupted Haward,
pleased to find another dart, but scarcely aware of how deadly an
insult he was dealing.
In a flash the blow was struck. Juba, in the next room, hearing the
noise of the overturned table, appeared at the door. “Set the table to
rights and light the candles again,” said his master calmly. “No, let
the cards lie. Now begone to the quarters! ’Twas I that stumbled and
overset the table.”
Following the slave to the door he locked it upon him; then turned
again to the room, and to MacLean standing waiting in the centre of it.
“Under the circumstances, we may, I think, dispense with preliminaries.
You will give me satisfaction here and now?”
“Do you take it at my hands?” asked the other proudly. “Just now you
reminded me that I was your servant. But find me a sword”--
Haward went to a carved chest; drew from it two rapiers, measured the
blades, and laid one upon the table. MacLean took it up, and slowly
passed the gleaming steel between his fingers. Presently he began to
speak, in a low, controlled, monotonous voice: “Why did you not leave
me as I was? Six months ago I was alone, quiet, dead. A star had set
for me; as the lights fail behind Ben More, it was lost and gone.
You, long hated, long looked for, came, and the star arose again. You
touched my scars, and suddenly I esteemed them honorable. You called me
friend, and I turned from my enmity and clasped your hand. Now my soul
goes back to its realm of solitude and hate; now you are my foe again.”
He broke off to bend the steel within his hands almost to the meeting
of hilt and point. “A hated master,” he ended, with bitter mirth, “yet
one that I must thank for grace extended. Forty stripes is, I believe,
the proper penalty.”
Haward, who had seated himself at his escritoire and was writing,
turned his head. “For my reference to your imprisonment in Virginia I
apologize. I demand the reparation due from one gentleman to another
for the indignity of a blow. Pardon me for another moment, when I shall
be at your service.”
He threw sand upon a sheet of gilt-edged paper, folded and superscribed
it; then took from his breast a thicker document. “The Solebay,
man-of-war, lying off Jamestown, sails at sunrise. The captain--Captain
Meade--is my friend. Who knows the fortunes of war? If by chance I
should fall to-night, take a boat at the landing, hasten upstream, and
hail the Solebay. When you are aboard give Meade--who has reason to
oblige me--this letter. He will carry you down the coast to Charleston,
where, if you change your name and lurk for a while, you may pass for
a buccaneer and be safe enough. For this other paper”--He hesitated,
then spoke on with some constraint: “It is your release from servitude
in Virginia,--in effect, your pardon. I have interest both here and at
home--it hath been many years since Preston--the paper was not hard
to obtain. I had meant to give it to you before we parted to-night. I
regret that, should you prove the better swordsman, it may be of little
service to you.”
He laid the papers on the table, and began to divest himself of his
coat, waistcoat, and long, curled periwig. MacLean took up the pardon
and held it to a candle. It caught, but before the flame could reach
the writing Haward had dashed down the other’s hand and beaten out
the blaze. “’Slife, Angus, what would you do!” he cried, and, taken
unawares, there was angry concern in his voice. “Why, man, ’t is
liberty!”
“I may not accept it,” said MacLean, with dry lips. “That letter, also,
is useless to me. I would you were all villain.”
“Your scruple is fantastic!” retorted the other, and as he spoke he put
both papers upon the escritoire, weighting them with the sandbox. “You
shall take them hence when our score is settled,--ay, and use them as
best you may! Now, sir, are you ready?”
“You are weak from illness,” said MacLean hoarsely, “Let the quarrel
rest until you have recovered strength.”
Haward laughed. “I was not strong yesterday,” he said. “But Mr. Everard
is pinked in the side, and Mr. Travis, who would fight with pistols,
hath a ball through his shoulder.”
The storekeeper started. “I have heard of those gentlemen! You fought
them both upon the day when you left your sickroom?”
“Assuredly,” answered the other, with a slight lift of his brows. “Will
you be so good as to move the table to one side? So. On guard, sir!”
The man who had been ill unto death and the man who for many years had
worn no sword acquitted themselves well. Had the room been a field
behind Montagu House, had there been present seconds, a physician,
gaping chairmen, the interest would have been breathless. As it was,
the lady upon the wall smiled on, with her eyes forever upon the
blossoms in her hand, and the river without, when it could be heard
through the clashing of steel, made but a listless and dreamy sound.
Each swordsman knew that he had provoked a friend to whom his debt was
great, but each, according to his godless creed, must strive as though
that friend were his dearest foe. The Englishman fought coolly, the
Gael with fervor. The latter had an unguarded moment. Haward’s blade
leaped to meet it, and on the other’s shirt appeared a bright red stain.
In the moment that he was touched the Highlander let fall his sword.
Haward, not understanding, lowered his point, and with a gesture bade
his antagonist recover the weapon. But the storekeeper folded his arms.
“Where blood has been drawn there is satisfaction,” he said. “I have
given it to you, and now, by the bones of Gillean-na-Tuaidhe, I will
not fight you longer!”
For a minute or more Haward stood with his eyes upon the ground and his
hand yet closely clasping the rapier hilt; then, drawing a long breath,
he took up the velvet scabbard and slowly sheathed his blade. “I am
content,” he said. “Your wound, I hope, is slight?”
MacLean thrust a handkerchief into his bosom to stanch the bleeding. “A
pin prick,” he said indifferently.
His late antagonist held out his hand. “It is well over. Come! We are
not young hotheads, but men who have lived and suffered, and should
know the vanity and the pity of such strife. Let us forget this hour,
call each other friends again”--
“Tell me first,” demanded MacLean, his arm rigid at his side,--“tell me
first why you fought Mr. Everard and Mr. Travis.”
Gray eyes and dark blue met. “I fought them,” said Haward, “because, on
a time, they offered insult to the woman whom I intend to make my wife.”
So quiet was it in the room when he had spoken that the wash of the
river, the tapping of walnut branches outside the window, the dropping
of coals upon the hearth, became loud and insistent sounds. Then,
“Darden’s Audrey?” said MacLean in a whisper.
“Not Darden’s Audrey, but mine,” answered Haward,--“the only woman I
have ever loved or shall love.”
He walked to the window and looked out into the darkness. “To-night
there is no light,” he said to himself, beneath his breath. “By and
by we shall stand here together, listening to the river, marking the
wind in the trees.” As upon paper heat of fire may cause to appear
characters before invisible, so, when he turned, the flame of a great
passion had brought all that was highest in this gentleman’s nature
into his countenance, softening and ennobling it. “Whatever my thoughts
before,” he said simply, “I have never, since I awoke from my fever and
remembered that night at the Palace, meant other than this.” Coming
back to MacLean he laid a hand upon his shoulder. “Who made us knows
we all do need forgiveness! Am I no more to you, Angus, than Ewin Mor
Mackinnon?”
An hour later, those who were to be lifetime friends went together
down the echoing stair and through the empty house to the outer door.
When it was opened, they saw that upon the stone step without, in
the square of light thrown by the candles behind them, lay an Indian
arrow. MacLean picked it up. “’Twas placed athwart the door,” he said
doubtingly. “Is it in the nature of a challenge?”
Haward took the dart, and examined it curiously. “The trader grows
troublesome,” he remarked. “He must back to the woods and to the foes
of his own class.” As he spoke he broke the arrow in two, and flung the
pieces from him.
It was a night of many stars and a keen wind. Moved each in his degree
by its beauty, Haward and MacLean stood regarding it before they should
go, the one back to his solitary chamber, the other to the store which
was to be his charge no longer than the morrow. “I feel the air that
blows from the hills,” said the Highlander. “It comes over the heather;
it hath swept the lochs, and I hear it in the sound of torrents.” He
lifted his face to the wind. “The breath of freedom! I shall have
dreams to-night.”
When he was gone, Haward, left alone, looked for a while upon the
heights of stars. “I too shall dream to-night,” he breathed to himself.
“To-morrow all will be well.” His gaze falling from the splendor of the
skies to the swaying trees, gaunt, bare, and murmuring of their loss
to the hurrying river, sadness and vague fear took sudden possession
of his soul. He spoke her name over and over; he left the house and
went into the garden. It was the garden of the dying year, and the
change that in the morning he had smiled to see now appalled him. He
would have had it June again. Now, when on the morrow he and Audrey
should pass through the garden, it must be down dank and leaf-strewn
paths, past yellow and broken stalks, with here and there wan ghosts of
flowers.
He came to the dial, and, bending, pressed his lips against the carven
words that, so often as they had stood there together, she had traced
with her finger. “Love! thou mighty alchemist!” he breathed. “Life!
that may now be gold, now iron, but never again dull lead! Death”--He
paused; then, “There shall be no death,” he said, and left the withered
garden for the lonely, echoing house.