Feraud flash in and out,eclipsing for an instant everything else reflected in the little mirror.He shifted its position accordingly. But having to form his judgment ofthe change from that indirect view, he did not realise that his ownfeet and a portion of his legs were now in plain and startling view ofGeneral Feraud.
General Feraud had been getting gradually impressed by the amazingcloseness with which his enemy had been keeping cover. He had spottedthe right tree with bloodthirsty precision. He was absolutely certain ofit. And yet he had not been able to sight as much as the tip of an ear.As he had been looking for it at the level of about five feet ten inchesit was no great wonder--but it seemed very wonderful to General Feraud.
The first view of these feet and legs determined a rush of blood to hishead. He literally staggered behind his tree, and had to steady himselfwith his hand. The other was lying on the ground--on the ground!Perfectly still, too! Exposed! What did it mean?... The notion that hehad knocked his adversary over at the first shot then entered GeneralFeraud's head. Once there, it grew with every second ofattentive gazing, overshadowing every othersupposition--irresistible--triumphant--ferocious.
"What an ass I was to think I could have missed him!" he said tohimself. "He was exposed _en plein_--the fool--for quite a couple ofseconds."
And the general gazed at the motionless limbs, the last vestiges ofsurprise fading before an unbounded admiration of his skill.
"Turned up his toes! By the god of war that was a shot!" he continuedmentally. "Got it through the head just where I aimed, staggered behindthat tree, rolled over on his back and died."
And he stared. He stared, forgetting to move, almost awed, almost sorry.But for nothing in the world would he have had it undone. Such a shot!Such a shot! Rolled over on his back, and died!
For it was this helpless position, lying on the back, that shouted itssinister evidence at General Feraud. He could not possibly imaginethat it might have been deliberately assumed by a living man. It wasinconceivable. It was beyond the range of sane supposition. There was nopossibility to guess the reason for it. And it must be said thatGeneral D'Hubert's turned-up feet looked thoroughly dead. General Feraudexpanded his lungs for a stentorian shout to his seconds, but from whathe felt to be an excessive scrupulousness, refrained for a while.
"I will just go and see first whether he breathes yet," he mumbledto himself, stepping out from behind his tree. This was immediatelyperceived by the resourceful General D'Hubert. He concluded it to beanother shift. When he lost the boots out of the field of the mirror, hebecame uneasy. General Feraud had only stepped a little out of the line,but his adversary could not possibly have supposed him walking up withperfect unconcern. General D'Hubert, beginning to wonder where the otherhad dodged to, was come upon so suddenly that the first warning he hadof his danger consisted in the long, early-morning shadow of hisenemy falling aslant on his outstretched legs. He had not even heard afootfall on the soft ground between the trees!
It was too much even for his coolness. He jumped up instinctively,leaving the pistols on the ground. The irresistible instinct of mostpeople (unless totally paralysed by discomfiture) would have beento stoop--exposing themselves to the risk of being shot down inthat position. Instinct, of course, is irreflective. It is its verydefinition. But it may be an inquiry worth pursuing, whether inreflective mankind the mechanical promptings of instinct are notaffected by the customary mode of thought. Years ago, in his youngdays, Armand D'Hubert, the reflective promising officer, had emitted theopinion that in warfare one should "never cast back on the lines ofa mistake." This idea afterward restated, defended, developed in manydiscussions, had settled into one of the stock notions of his brain,became a part of his mental individuality. And whether it had gone soinconceivably deep as to affect the dictates of his instinct, or simplybecause, as he himself declared, he was "too scared to remember theconfounded pistols," the fact is that General D'Hubert never attemptedto stoop for them. Instead of going back on his mistake, he seizedthe rough trunk with both hands and swung himself behind it with suchimpetuosity that going right round in the very flash and report of apistol shot, he reappeared on the other side of the tree face to facewith General Feraud, who, completely unstrung by such a show of agilityon the part of a dead man, was trembling yet. A very faint mist of smokehung before his face which had an extraordinary aspect as if the lowerjaw had come unhinged.
"Not missed!" he croaked hoarsely from the depths of a dry throat.
This sinister sound loosened the spell which had fallen on GeneralD'Hubert's senses.
"Yes, missed--a _bout portant_" he heard himself saying exultinglyalmost before he had recovered the full command of his faculties.The revulsion of feeling was accompanied by a gust of homicidal furyresuming in its violence the accumulated resentment of a lifetime.For years General D'Hubert had been exasperated and humiliated by anatrocious absurdity imposed upon him by that man's savage caprice.Besides, General D'Hubert had been in this last instance too unwillingto confront death for the reaction of his anguish not to take the shapeof a desire to kill.
"And I have my two shots to fire yet," he added pitilessly.
General Feraud snapped his teeth, and his face assumed an irate,undaunted expression.
"Go on," he growled.
These would have been his last words on earth if General D'Hubert hadbeen holding the pistols in his hand. But the pistols were lying on theground at the foot of a tall pine. General D'Hubert had the second'sleisure necessary to remember that he had dreaded death not as a man butas a lover, not as a danger but as a rival--not as a foe to life butas an obstacle to marriage. And, behold, there was the rival defeated!Miserably defeated-crushed--done for!
He picked up the weapons mechanically, and instead of firing them intoGeneral Feraud's breast, gave expression to the thought uppermost in hismind.
"You will fight no more duels now."
frontispiece166.jpg "You will fight no more duels now."]
His tone of leisurely, ineffable satisfaction was too much for GeneralFeraud's stoicism.
"Don't dawdle then, damn you for a coldblooded staff-coxcomb!" he roaredout suddenly out of an impassive face held erect on a rigid body.
General D'Hubert uncocked the pistols carefully. This proceeding wasobserved with a sort of gloomy astonishment by the other general.
"You missed me twice," he began coolly, shifting both pistols to onehand. "The last time within a foot or so. By every rule of single combatyour life belongs to me. That does not mean that I want to take it now."
"I have no use for your forbearance," muttered General Feraud savagely.
"Allow me to point out that this is no concern of mine," said GeneralD'Hubert, whose every word was dictated by a consummate delicacy offeeling. In anger, he could have killed that man, but in cold blood, herecoiled from humiliating this unreasonable being--a fellow soldierof the Grand Armee, his companion in the wonders and terrors of themilitary epic. "You don't set up the pretension of dictating to me whatI 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 decidedto my advantage, I am going to do what I like with your life on the sameprinciple. You shall keep it at my disposal as long as I choose. Neithermore nor less. You are on your honour."
"I am! But _sacrebleu!_ This is an absurd position for a general ofthe empire to be placed in," cried General Feraud, in the accents ofprofound and dismayed conviction. "It means for me to be sitting all therest 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 GeneralD'Hubert with sly gravity. "Perhaps. But I don't see how that can behelped. 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, Ibelieve, knows the origi
n of our quarrel.... Not a word more," he addedhastily. "I can't really discuss this question with a man who, as far asI am concerned, does not exist."
When the duellists came out into the open, General Feraud walking alittle behind and rather with the air of walking in a trance, the twoseconds hurried towards them each from his station at the edge of thewood. General D'Hubert addressed them, speaking loud and distinctly:
"Messieurs! I make it a point of declaring to you solemnly in thepresence of General Feraud that our difference is at last settled forgood. You may inform all the world of that fact."
"A reconciliation after all!" they exclaimed together.
"Reconciliation? Not that exactly. It is