Chapter 8

“I have no use for your forbearance,” muttered General Feraud savagely.

“Allow me to point out that this is no concern of mine,” said General D'Hubert, whose every word was dictated by a consummate delicacy of feeling. In anger, he could have killed that man, but in cold blood, he recoiled from humiliating this unreasonable being--a fellow soldier of the Grand Armée, his companion in the wonders and terrors of the military epic. “You don't set up the pretension of dictating to me what I am to do with what is my own.”

General Feraud looked startled. And the other continued:

“You've forced me on a point of honour to keep my life at your disposal, as it were, for fifteen years. Very well. Now that the matter is decided to my advantage, I am going to do what I like with your life on the same principle. You shall keep it at my disposal as long as I choose. Neither more nor less. You are on your honour.”

“I am! But _sacrebleu!_ This is an absurd position for a general of the empire to be placed in,” cried General Feraud, in the accents of profound and dismayed conviction. “It means for me to be sitting all the rest of my life with a loaded pistol in a drawer waiting for your word. It's... it's idiotic. I shall be an object of... of... derision.”

“Absurd?... Idiotic? Do you think so?” queried argumentatively General D'Hubert with sly gravity. “Perhaps. But I don't see how that can be helped. However, I am not likely to talk at large of this adventure. Nobody need ever know anything about it. Just as no one to this day, I believe, knows the origin of our quarrel.... Not a word more,” he added hastily. “I can't really discuss this question with a man who, as far as I am concerned, does not exist.”

When the duellists came out into the open, General Feraud walking a little behind and rather with the air of walking in a trance, the two seconds hurried towards them each from his station at the edge of the wood. General D'Hubert addressed them, speaking loud and distinctly:

“Messieurs! I make it a point of declaring to you solemnly in the presence of General Feraud that our difference is at last settled for good. You may inform all the world of that fact.”

“A reconciliation after all!” they exclaimed together.

“Reconciliation? Not that exactly. It is something much more binding. Is it not so, general?”

General Feraud only lowered his head in sign of assent. The two veterans looked at each other. Later in the day when they found themselves alone, out of their moody friend's earshot, the cuirassier remarked suddenly:

“Generally speaking, I can see with my one eye as far or even a little farther than most people. But this beats me. He won't say anything.”

“In this affair of honour I understand there has been from first to last always something that no one in the army could quite make out,” declared the chasseur with the imperfect nose. “In mystery it began, in mystery it went on, and in mystery it is to end apparently....”

General D'Hubert walked home with long, hasty strides, by no means uplifted by a sense of triumph. He had conquered, but it did not seem to him he had gained very much by his conquest. The night before he had grudged the risk of his life which appeared to him magnificent, worthy of preservation as an opportunity to win a girl's love. He had even moments when by a marvellous illusion this love seemed to him already his and his threatened life a still more magnificent opportunity of devotion. Now that his life was safe it had suddenly lost it special magnificence. It wore instead a specially alarming aspect as a snare for the exposure of unworthiness. As to the marvellous illusion of conquered love that had visited him for a moment in the agitated watches of the night which might have been his last on earth, he comprehended now its true nature. It had been merely a paroxysm of delirious conceit. Thus to this man sobered by the victorious issue of a duel, life appeared robbed of much of its charm simply because it was no longer menaced.

Approaching the house from the back through the orchard and the kitchen gardens, he could not notice the agitation which reigned in front. He never met a single soul. Only upstairs, while walking softly along the corridor, he became aware that the house was awake and much more noisy than usual. Names of servants were being called out down below in a confused noise of coming and going. He noticed with some concern that the door of his own room stood ajar, though the shutters had not been opened yet. He had hoped that his early excursion would have passed unperceived. He expected to find some servant just gone in; but the sunshine filtering through the usual cracks enabled him to see lying on the low divan something bulky which had the appearance of two women clasped in each other's arms. Tearful and consolatory murmurs issued mysteriously from that appearance. General D'Hubert pulled open the nearest pair of shutters violently. One of the women then jumped up. It was his sister. She stood for a moment with her hair hanging down and her arms raised straight up above her head, and then flung herself with a stifled cry into his arms. He returned her embrace, trying at the same time to disengage himself from it. The other woman had not risen. She seemed, on the contrary, to cling closer to the divan, hiding her face in the cushions. Her hair was also loose; it was admirably fair. General D'Hubert recognised it with staggering emotion. Mlle. de Valmassigue! Adèle! In distress!

He became greatly alarmed and got rid of his sister's hug definitely. Madame Léonie then extended her shapely bare arm out of her peignoir, pointing dramatically at the divan:

“This poor terrified child has rushed here two miles from home on foot--running all the way.”

“What on earth has happened?” asked General D'Hubert in a low, agitated voice. But Madame Léonie was speaking loudly.

“She rang the great bell at the gate and roused all the household--we were all asleep yet. You may imagine what a terrible shock.... Adèle, my dear child, sit up.”

General D'Hubert's expression was not that of a man who imagines with facility. He did, however, fish out of chaos the notion that his prospective mother-in-law had died suddenly, but only to dismiss it at once. He could not conceive the nature of the event, of the catastrophe which could induce Mlle, de Valmassigue living in a house full of servants, to bring the news over the fields herself, two miles, running all the way.

“But why are you in this room?” he whispered, full of awe.

“Of course I ran up to see and this child... I did not notice it--she followed me. It's that absurd Chevalier,” went on Madame Léonie, looking towards the divan.... “Her hair's come down. You may imagine she did not stop to call her maid to dress it before she started.... Adèle, my dear, sit up.... He blurted it all out to her at half-past four in the morning. She woke up early, and opened her shutters, to breathe the fresh air, and saw him sitting collapsed on a garden bench at the end of the great alley. At that hour--you may imagine! And the evening before he had declared himself indisposed. She just hurried on some clothes and flew down to him. One would be anxious for less. He loves her, but not very intelligently. He had been up all night, fully dressed, the poor old man, perfectly exhausted! He wasn't in a state to invent a plausible story.... What a confidant you chose there!... My husband was furious! He said: 'We can't interfere now.' So we sat down to wait. It was awful. And this poor child running over here publicly with her hair loose. She has been seen by people in the fields. She has roused the whole household, too. It's awkward for her. Luckily you are to be married next week.... Adèle, sit up. He has come home on his own legs, thank God.... We expected you to come back on a stretcher perhaps--what do I know? Go and see if the carriage is ready. I must take this child to her mother at once. It isn't proper for her to stay here a minute longer.”

General D'Hubert did not move. It was as though he had heard nothing. Madame Léonie changed her mind.

“I will go and see to it myself,” she said. “I want also to get my cloak... Adèle...” she began, but did not say “sit up.” She went out saying in a loud, cheerful tone: “I leave the door open.”

General D'Hubert made a movement towards the divan, but then Adèle sat up and that checked him dead. He thought, “I haven't washed this morning. I must look like an old tramp. There's earth on the back of my coat, and pine needles in my hair.” It occurred to him that the situation required a good deal of circumspection on his part.

“I am greatly concerned, mademoiselle,” he began timidly, and abandoned that line. She was sitting up on the divan with her cheeks unusually pink, and her hair brilliantly fair, falling all over her shoulders--which was a very novel sight to the general. He walked away up the room and, looking out of the window for safety, said: “I fear you must think I behaved like a madman,” in accents of sincere despair.... Then he spun round and noticed that she had followed him with her eyes. They were not cast down on meeting his glance. And the expression of her face was novel to him also. It was, one might have said, reversed. Her eyes looked at him with grave thoughtfulness, while the exquisite lines of her mouth seemed to suggest a restrained smile. This change made her transcendental beauty much less mysterious, much more accessible to a man's comprehension. An amazing ease of mind came to the general--and even some ease of manner. He walked down the room with as much pleasurable excitement as he would have found in walking up to a battery vomiting death, fire, and smoke, then stood looking down with smiling eyes at the girl whose marriage with him (next week) had been so carefully arranged by the wise, the good, the admirable Léonie.

“Ah, mademoiselle,” he said in a tone of courtly deference. “If I could be certain that you did not come here this morning only from a sense of duty to your mother!”

He waited for an answer, imperturbable but inwardly elated. It came in a demure murmur, eyelashes lowered with fascinating effect.

“You mustn't be _méchant_ as well as mad.”

And then General D'Hubert made an aggressive movement towards the divan which nothing could check. This piece of furniture was not exactly in the line of the open door. But Madame Léonie, coming back wrapped up in a light cloak and carrying a lace shawl on her arm for Adèle to hide her incriminating hair under, had a vague impression of her brother getting-up from his knees.

“Come along, my dear child,” she cried from the doorway.

The general, now himself again in the fullest sense, showed the readiness of a resourceful cavalry officer and the peremptoriness of a leader of men.

“You don't expect her to walk to the carriage,” he protested. “She isn't fit. I will carry her downstairs.”

This he did slowly, followed by his awed and respectful sister. But he rushed back like a whirlwind to wash away all the signs of the night of anguish and the morning of war, and to put on the festive garments of a conqueror before hurrying over to the other house. Had it not been for that, General D'Hubert felt capable of mounting a horse and pursuing his late adversary in order simply to embrace him from excess of happiness. “I owe this piece of luck to that stupid brute,” he thought. “This duel has made plain in one morning what might have taken me years to find out--for I am a timid fool. No self-confidence whatever. Perfect coward. And the Chevalier! Dear old man!” General D'Hubert longed to embrace him, too.

The Chevalier was in bed. For several days he was much indisposed. The men of the empire, and the post-revolution young ladies, were too much for him. He got up the day before the wedding, and being curious by nature, took his niece aside for a quiet talk. He advised her to find out from her husband the true story of the affair of honour, whose claim so imperative and so persistent had led her to within an ace of tragedy. “It is very proper that his wife should know. And next month or so will be your time to learn from him anything you ought to know, my dear child.”

Later on when the married couple came on a visit to the mother of the bride, Madame la Générale D'Hubert made no difficulty in communicating to her beloved old uncle what she had learned without any difficulty from her husband. The Chevalier listened with profound attention to the end, then took a pinch of snuff, shook the grains of tobacco off the frilled front of his shirt, and said calmly: “And that's all what it was.”

“Yes, uncle,” said Madame la Générale, opening her pretty eyes very wide. “Isn't it funny? _C'est insensé_--to think what men are capable of.”

“H'm,” commented the old _émigré_. “It depends what sort of men. That Bonaparte's soldiers were savages. As a wife, my dear, it is proper for you to believe implicitly what your husband says.”

But to Léonie's husband the Chevalier confided his true opinion. “If that's the tale the fellow made up for his wife, and during the honeymoon, too, you may depend on it no one will ever know the secret of this affair.”

Considerably later still, General D'Hubert judged the time come, and the opportunity propitious to write a conciliatory letter to General Feraud. “I have never,” protested the General Baron D'Hubert, “wished for your death during all the time of our deplorable quarrel. Allow me to give you back in all form your forfeited life. We two, who have been partners in so much military glory, should be friendly to each other publicly.”

The same letter contained also an item of domestic information. It was alluding to this last that General Feraud answered from a little village on the banks of the Garonne:

“If one of your boy's names had been Napoleon, or Joseph, or even Joachim, I could congratulate you with a better heart. As you have thought proper to name him Charles Henri Armand I am confirmed in my conviction that you never loved the emperor. The thought of that sublime hero chained to a rock in the middle of a savage ocean makes life of so little value that I would receive with positive joy your instructions to blow my brains out. From suicide I consider myself in honour debarred. But I keep a loaded pistol in my drawer.”

Madame la Générale D'Hubert lifted up her hands in horror after perusing that letter.

“You see? He won't be reconciled,” said her husband. “We must take care that he never, by any chance, learns where the money he lives on comes from. It would be simply appalling.”

“You are a _brave homme_, Armand,” said Madame la Générale appreciatively.

“My dear, I had the right to blow his brains out--strictly speaking. But as I did not we can't let him starve. He has been deprived of his pension for 'breach of military discipline' when he broke bounds to fight his last duel with me. He's crippled with rheumatism. We are bound to take care of him to the end of his days. And, after all, I am indebted to him for the radiant discovery that you loved me a little--you sly person. Ha! Ha! Two miles, running all the way!... It is extraordinary how all through this affair that man has managed to engage my deeper feelings.”

THE END