Chapter 1

Chapter 13,967 wordsPublic domain

Produced by David Widger

THE POINT OF HONOR

A MILITARY TALE

JOSEPH CONRAD

ILLUSTRATIONS BY DAN SAYRE GROESBECK

NEW YORK

THE MCCLURE COMPANY

MCMVIII

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

“You will fight no more duels now” Frontispiece

“Bowing before a sylph-like form reclining on a couch”

“The angry clash of arms filled that prim garden”

“You take the nearest brute, Colonel D'Hubert”

Napoleon the First, whose career had the quality of a duel against the whole of Europe, disliked duelling between the officers of his army. The great military emperor was not a swashbuckler, and had little respect for tradition.

Nevertheless, a story of duelling which became a legend in the army runs through the epic of imperial wars. To the surprise and admiration of their fellows, two officers, like insane artists trying to gild refined gold or paint the lily, pursued their private contest through the years of universal carnage. They were officers of cavalry, and their connection with the high-spirited but fanciful animal which carries men into battle seems particularly appropriate. It would be difficult to imagine for heroes of this legend two officers of infantry of the line, for example, whose fantasy is tamed by much walking exercise and whose valour necessarily must be of a more plodding kind. As to artillery, or engineers whose heads are kept cool on a diet of mathematics, it is simply unthinkable.

The names of the two officers were Feraud and D'Hubert, and they were both lieutenants in a regiment of hussars, but not in the same regiment.

Feraud was doing regimental work, but Lieutenant D'Hubert had the good fortune to be attached to the person of the general commanding the division, as _officier d'ordonnance_. It was in Strasbourg, and in this agreeable and important garrison, they were enjoying greatly a short interval of peace. They were enjoying it, though both intensely warlike, because it was a sword-sharpening, firelock-cleaning peace dear to a military heart and undamaging to military prestige inasmuch that no one believed in its sincerity or duration.

Under those historical circumstances so favourable to the proper appreciation of military leisure Lieutenant D'Hubert could have been seen one fine afternoon making his way along the street of a cheerful suburb towards Lieutenant Feraud's quarters, which were in a private house with a garden at the back, belonging to an old maiden lady.

His knock at the door was answered instantly by a young maid in Alsatian costume. Her fresh complexion and her long eyelashes, which she lowered modestly at the sight of the tall officer, caused Lieutenant D'Hubert, who was accessible to esthetic impressions, to relax the cold, on-duty expression of his face. At the same time he observed that the girl had over her arm a pair of hussar's breeches, red with a blue stripe.

“Lieutenant Feraud at home?” he inquired benevolently.

“Oh, no, sir. He went out at six this morning.”

And the little maid tried to close the door, but Lieutenant D'Hubert, opposing this move with gentle firmness, stepped into the anteroom jingling his spurs.

“Come, my dear. You don't mean to say he has not been home since six o'clock this morning?”

Saying these words, Lieutenant D'Hubert opened without ceremony the door of a room so comfortable and neatly ordered that only from internal evidence in the shape of boots, uniforms and military accoutrements, did he acquire the conviction that it was Lieutenant Feraud's room. And he saw also that Lieutenant Feraud was not at home. The truthful maid had followed him and looked up inquisitively.

“H'm,” said Lieutenant D'Hubert, greatly disappointed, for he had already visited all the haunts where a lieutenant of hussars could be found of a fine afternoon. “And do you happen to know, my dear, why he went out at six this morning?”

“No,” she answered readily. “He came home late at night and snored. I heard him when I got up at five. Then he dressed himself in his oldest uniform and went out. Service, I suppose.”

“Service? Not a bit of it!” cried Lieutenant D'Hubert. “Learn, my child, that he went out so early to fight a duel with a civilian.”

She heard the news without a quiver of her dark eyelashes. It was very obvious that the actions of Lieutenant Feraud were generally above criticism. She only looked up for a moment in mute surprise, and Lieutenant D'Hubert concluded from this absence of emotion that she must have seen Lieutenant Feraud since the morning. He looked around the room.

“Come,” he insisted, with confidential familiarity. “He's perhaps somewhere in the house now?”

She shook her head.

“So much the worse for him,” continued Lieutenant D'Hubert, in a tone of anxious conviction. “But he has been home this morning?”

This time the pretty maid nodded slightly.

“He has!” cried Lieutenant D'Hubert. “And went out again? What for? Couldn't he keep quietly indoors? What a lunatic! My dear child....”

Lieutenant D'Hubert's natural kindness of disposition and strong sense of comradeship helped his powers of observation, which generally were not remarkable. He changed his tone to a most insinuating softness; and gazing at the hussar's breeches hanging over the arm of the girl, he appealed to the interest she took in Lieutenant Feraud's comfort and happiness. He was pressing and persuasive. He used his eyes, which were large and fine, with excellent effect. His anxiety to get hold at once of Lieutenant Feraud, for Lieutenant Feraud's own good, seemed so genuine that at last it overcame the girl's discretion. Unluckily she had not much to tell. Lieutenant Feraud had returned home shortly before ten; had walked straight into his room and had thrown himself on his bed to resume his slumbers. She had heard him snore rather louder than before far into the afternoon. Then he got up, put on his best uniform and went out. That was all she knew.

She raised her candid eyes up to Lieutenant D'Hubert, who stared at her incredulously.

“It's incredible. Gone parading the town in his best uniform! My dear child, don't you know that he ran that civilian through this morning? Clean through as you spit a hare.”

She accepted this gruesome intelligence without any signs of distress. But she pressed her lips together thoughtfully.

“He isn't parading the town,” she remarked, in a low tone. “Far from it.”

“The civilian's family is making an awful row,” continued Lieutenant D'Hubert, pursuing his train of thought. “And the general is very angry. It's one of the best families in the town. Feraud ought to have kept close at least....”

“What will the general do to him?” inquired the girl anxiously.

“He won't have his head cut off, to be sure,” answered Lieutenant D'Hubert. “But his conduct is positively indecent. He's making no end of trouble for himself by this sort of bravado.”

“But he isn't parading the town,” the maid murmured again.

“Why, yes! Now I think of it. I haven't seen him anywhere. What on earth has he done with himself?”

“He's gone to pay a call,” suggested the maid, after a moment of silence.

Lieutenant D'Hubert was surprised. “A call! Do you mean a call on a lady? The cheek of the man. But how do you know this?”

Without concealing her woman's scorn for the denseness of the masculine mind, the pretty maid reminded him that Lieutenant Feraud had arrayed himself in his best uniform before going out. He had also put on his newest dolman, she added in a tone as if this conversation were getting on her nerves and turned away brusquely. Lieutenant D'Hubert, without questioning the accuracy of the implied deduction, did not see that it advanced him much on his official quest. For his quest after Lieutenant Feraud had an official character. He did not know any of the women this fellow who had run a man through in the morning was likely to call on in the afternoon. The two officers knew each other but slightly. He bit his gloved finger in perplexity.

“Call!” he exclaimed. “Call on the devil.” The girl, with her back to him and folding the hussar's breeches on a chair, said with a vexed little laugh:

“Oh, no! On Madame de Lionne.” Lieutenant D'Hubert whistled softly. Madame de Lionne, the wife of a high official, had a well-known salon and some pretensions to sensibility and elegance. The husband was a civilian and old, but the society of the salon was young and military for the greater part. Lieutenant D'Hubert had whistled, not because the idea of pursuing Lieutenant Feraud into that very salon was in the least distasteful to him, but because having but lately arrived in Strasbourg he had not the time as yet to get an introduction to Madame de Lionne. And what was that swashbuckler Feraud doing there? He did not seem the sort of man who...

“Are you certain of what you say?” asked Lieutenant D'Hubert.

The girl was perfectly certain. Without turning round to look at him she explained that the coachman of their next-door neighbours knew the _maitre-d'hôtel_ of Madame de Lionne. In this way she got her information. And she was perfectly certain. In giving this assurance she sighed. Lieutenant Feraud called there nearly every afternoon.

“Ah, bah!” exclaimed D'Hubert ironically. His opinion of Madame de Lionne went down several degrees. Lieutenant Feraud did not seem to him specially worthy of attention on the part of a woman with a reputation for sensibility and elegance. But there was no saying. At bottom they were all alike--very practical rather than idealistic. Lieutenant D'Hubert, however, did not allow his mind to dwell on these considerations. “By thunder!” he reflected aloud. “The general goes there sometimes. If he happens to find the fellow making eyes at the lady there will be the devil to pay. Our general is not a very accommodating person, I can tell you.”

“Go quickly then. Don't stand here now I've told you where he is,” cried the girl, colouring to the eyes.

“Thanks, my dear. I don't know what I would have done without you.”

After manifesting his gratitude in an aggressive way which at first was repulsed violently and then submitted to with a sudden and still more repellent indifference, Lieutenant D'Hubert took his departure.

He clanked and jingled along the streets with a martial swagger. To run a comrade to earth in a drawing-room where he was not known did not trouble him in the least. A uniform is a social passport. His position as _officier d'ordonnance_ of the general added to his assurance. Moreover, now he knew where to find Lieutenant Feraud, he had no option. It was a service matter.

Madame de Lionne's house had an excellent appearance. A man in livery opening the door of a large drawing-room with a waxed floor, shouted his name and stood aside to let him pass. It was a reception day. The ladies wearing hats surcharged with a profusion of feathers, sheathed in clinging white gowns from their armpits to the tips of their low satin shoes, looked sylphlike and cool in a great display of bare necks and arms. The men who talked with them, on the contrary, were arrayed heavily in ample, coloured garments with stiff collars up to their ears and thick sashes round their waists. Lieutenant D'Hubert made his unabashed way across the room, and bowing low before a sylphlike form reclining on a couch, offered his apologies for this intrusion, which nothing could excuse but the extreme urgency of the service order he had to communicate to his comrade Feraud. He proposed to himself to come presently in a more regular manner and beg forgiveness for interrupting this interesting conversation....

A bare arm was extended to him with gracious condescension even before he had finished speaking. He pressed the hand respectfully to his lips and made the mental remark that it was bony. Madame de Lionne was a blonde with too fine a skin and a long face.

“_C'est ça!_” she said, with an ethereal smile, disclosing a set of large teeth. “Come this evening to plead for your forgiveness.”

“I will not fail, madame.”

Meantime Lieutenant Feraud, splendid in his new dolman and the extremely polished boots of his calling, sat on a chair within a foot of the couch and, one hand propped on his thigh, with the other twirled his moustache to a point without uttering a sound. At a significant glance from D'Hubert he rose without alacrity and followed him into the recess of a window.

“What is it you want with me?” he asked in a tone of annoyance, which astonished not a little the other. Lieutenant D'Hubert could not imagine that in the innocence of his heart and simplicity of his conscience Lieutenant Feraud took a view of his duel in which neither remorse nor yet a rational apprehension of consequences had any place. Though Lieutenant Feraud had no clear recollection how the quarrel had originated (it was begun in an establishment where beer and wine are drunk late at night), he had not the slightest doubt of being himself the outraged party. He had secured two experienced friends or his seconds. Everything had been done according to the rules governing that sort of adventure. And a duel is obviously fought for the purpose of someone being at least hurt if not killed outright. The civilian got hurt. That also was in order. Lieutenant Feraud was perfectly tranquil. But Lieutenant D'Hubert mistook this simple attitude for affectation and spoke with some heat.

“I am directed by the general to give you the order to go at once to your quarters and remain there under close arrest.”

It was now the turn of Lieutenant Feraud to be astonished.

“What the devil are you telling me there?” he murmured faintly, and fell into such profound wonder that he could only follow mechanically the motions of Lieutenant D'Hubert. The two officers--one tall, with an interesting face and a moustache the colour of ripe corn, the other short and sturdy, with a hooked nose and a thick crop of black, curly hair--approached the mistress of the house to take their leave. Madame de Lionne, a woman of eclectic taste, smiled upon these armed young men with impartial sensibility and an equal share of interest. Madame de Lionne took her delight in the infinite variety of the human species. All the eyes in the drawing-room followed the departing officers, one strutting, the other striding, with curiosity. When the door had closed after them one or two men who had already heard of the duel imparted the information to the sylphlike ladies, who received it with little shrieks of humane concern.

Meantime the two hussars walked side by side, Lieutenant Feraud trying to fathom the hidden reason of things which in this instance eluded the grasp of his intellect; Lieutenant D'Hubert feeling bored by the part he had to play; because the general's instructions were that he should see personally that Lieutenant Feraud carried out his orders to the letter and at once.

“The chief seems to know this animal,” he thought, eyeing his companion, whose round face, the round eyes and even the twisted-up jet black little moustache seemed animated by his mental exasperation before the incomprehensible. And aloud he observed rather reproachfully, “The general is in a devilish fury with you.”

Lieutenant Feraud stopped short on the edge of the pavement and cried in the accents of unmistakable sincerity: “What on earth for?” The innocence of the fiery Gascon soul was depicted in the manner in which he seized his head in both his hands as if to prevent it bursting with perplexity.

“For the duel,” said Lieutenant D'Hubert curtly. He was annoyed greatly by this sort of perverse fooling.

“The duel! The...”

Lieutenant Feraud passed from one paroxysm of astonishment into another. He dropped his hands and walked on slowly trying to reconcile this information with the state of his own feelings. It was impossible. He burst out indignantly:

“Was I to let that sauerkraut-eating civilian wipe his boots on the uniform of the Seventh Hussars?”

Lieutenant D'Hubert could not be altogether unsympathetic toward that sentiment. This little fellow is a lunatic, he thought to himself, but there is something in what he says.

“Of course, I don't know how far you were justified,” he said soothingly. “And the general himself may not be exactly informed. A lot of people have been deafening him with their lamentations.”

“Ah, he is not exactly informed,” mumbled Lieutenant Feraud, walking faster and faster as his choler at the injustice of his fate began to rise. “He is not exactly.... And he orders me under close arrest with God knows what afterward.”

“Don't excite yourself like this,” remonstrated the other. “That young man's people are very influential, you know, and it looks bad enough on the face of it. The general had to take notice of their complaint at once. I don't think he means to be over-severe with you. It is best for you to be kept out of sight for a while.”

“I am very much obliged to the general,” muttered Lieutenant Feraud through his teeth.

“And perhaps you would say I ought to be grateful to you too for the trouble you have taken to hunt me up in the drawing-room of a lady who...”

“Frankly,” interrupted Lieutenant D'Hubert, with an innocent laugh, “I think you ought to be. I had no end of trouble to find out where you were. It wasn't exactly the place for you to disport yourself in under the circumstances. If the general had caught you there making eyes at the goddess of the temple.... Oh, my word!... He hates to be bothered with complaints against his officers, you know. And it looked uncommonly like sheer bravado.”

The two officers had arrived now at the street door of Lieutenant Feraud's lodgings. The latter turned toward his companion. “Lieutenant D'Hubert,” he said, “I have something to say to you which can't be said very well in the street. You can't refuse to come in.”

The pretty maid had opened the door. Lieutenant Feraud brushed past her brusquely and she raised her scared, questioning eyes to Lieutenant D'Hubert, who could do nothing but shrug his shoulders slightly as he followed with marked reluctance.

In his room Lieutenant Feraud unhooked the clasp, flung his new dolman on the bed, and folding his arms across his chest, turned to the other hussar.

“Do you imagine I am a man to submit tamely to injustice?” he inquired in a boisterous voice.

“Oh, do be reasonable,” remonstrated Lieutenant D'Hubert.

“I am reasonable. I am perfectly reasonable,” retorted the other, ominously lowering his voice. “I can't call the general to account for his behaviour, but you are going to answer to me for yours.”

“I can't listen to this nonsense,” murmured Lieutenant D'Hubert, making a slightly contemptuous grimace.

“You call that nonsense. It seems to me perfectly clear. Unless you don't understand French.”

“What on earth do you mean?”

“I mean,” screamed suddenly Lieutenant Feraud, “to cut off your ears to teach you not to disturb me, orders or no orders, when I am talking to a lady.”

A profound silence followed this mad declaration--and through the open window Lieutenant D'Hubert heard the little birds singing sanely in the garden. He said coldly:

“Why! If you take that tone, of course I will hold myself at your disposal whenever you are at liberty to attend to this affair. But I don't think you will cut off my ears.”

“I am going to attend to it at once,” declared Lieutenant Feraud, with extreme truculence. “If you are thinking of displaying your airs and graces to-night in Madame de Lionne's salon you are very much mistaken.”

“Really,” said Lieutenant D'Hubert, who was beginning to feel irritated, “you are an impracticable sort of fellow. The general's orders to me were to put you under arrest, not to carve you into small pieces. Good-morning.” Turning his back on the little Gascon who, always sober in his potations, was as though born intoxicated, with the sunshine of his wine-ripening country, the northman, who could drink hard on occasion, but was born sober under the watery skies of Picardy, made calmly for the door. Hearing, however, the unmistakable sound, behind his back, of a sword drawn from the scabbard, he had no option but to stop.

“Devil take this mad Southerner,” he thought, spinning round and surveying with composure the warlike posture of Lieutenant Feraud with the unsheathed sword in his hand.

“At once. At once,” stuttered Feraud, beside himself.

“You had my answer,” said the other, keeping his temper very well.

At first he had been only vexed and somewhat amused. But now his face got clouded. He was asking himself seriously how he could manage to get away. Obviously it was impossible to run from a man with a sword, and as to fighting him, it seemed completely out of the question.

He waited awhile, then said exactly what was in his heart:

“Drop this; I won't fight you now. I won't be made ridiculous.”

“Ah, you won't!” hissed the Gascon. “I suppose you prefer to be made infamous. Do you hear what I say?... Infamous! Infamous! Infamous!” he shrieked, raising and falling on his toes and getting very red in the face. Lieutenant D'Hubert, on the contrary, became very pale at the sound of the unsavoury word, then flushed pink to the roots of his fair hair.

“But you can't go out to fight; you are under arrest, you lunatic,” he objected, with angry scorn.

“There's the garden. It's big enough to lay out your long carcass in,” spluttered out Lieutenant Feraud with such ardour that somehow the anger of the cooler man subsided.

“This is perfectly absurd,” he said, glad enough to think he had found a way out of it for the moment. “We will never get any of our comrades to serve as seconds. It's preposterous.”

“Seconds! Damn the seconds! We don't want any seconds. Don't you worry about any seconds. I will send word to your friends to come and bury you when I am done. This is no time for ceremonies. And if you want any witnesses, I'll send word to the old girl to put her head out of a window at the back. Stay! There's the gardener. He'll do. He's as deaf as a post, but he has two eyes in his head. Come along. I will teach you, my staff officer, that the carrying about of a general's orders is not always child's play.”

While thus discoursing he had unbuckled his empty scabbard. He sent it flying under the bed, and, lowering the point of the sword, brushed past the perplexed Lieutenant D'Hubert, crying: “Follow me.” Directly he had flung open the door a faint shriek was heard, and the pretty maid, who had been listening at the keyhole, staggered backward, putting the backs of her hands over her eyes. He didn't seem to see her, but as he was crossing the anteroom she ran after him and seized his left arm. He shook her off and then she rushed upon Lieutenant D'Hubert and clawed at the sleeve of his uniform.

“Wretched man,” she sobbed despairingly. “Is this what you wanted to find him for?”

“Let me go,” entreated Lieutenant D'Hubert, trying to disengage himself gently. “It's like being in a madhouse,” he protested with exasperation. “Do let me go, I won't do him any harm.”

A fiendish laugh from Lieutenant Feraud commented that assurance. “Come along,” he cried impatiently, with a stamp of his foot.