University of Virginia Library

20. CHAPTER XX.

If Tom fired intentionally, then it must
be that Frank looked to him about ten feet
high, for the ball went a yard or two over
the head of the latter, entering the wall
only a little below the ceiling.

Wilkins took the hint and dodged into
some invisible nook of safety. He was a
cool, brave man, and he was pretty well accustomed
to this sort of thing, but he had a
rational dislike to being shot for some one
else. General Johnson, that bland, yet heroic
habitué of duelling-grounds, advanced
speechifying through the half-darkness, but
fell over a pile of ropes and cords, with his
hands in his pockets, and lay for some seconds
helpless. The somnolent Jacocks did
not stir from his seat on Duffy's bed; and
Duffy, smiling straight whiskeys, remained
astride of his rocking-chair. The martial-eyed
Jobson hastily pushed the door to with
his loaded cane, and then intrenched himself
behind the projecting fireplace, remarking,
“This is cursed ugly.”

The hereditary enemies had a free field
to themselves for a fight in the dark.

“Where are you?” shouted Tom, so
completely bewildered by drink and the obscurity
that he turned his back upon the
foe, and fired a couple of barrels into Duffy's
dry-goods. Frank plunged toward the
flashes, wound his long arms around his
slender antagonist, pinioned him, disarmed
him, and threw the pistol over a counter.

“Let go of me,” shouted the struggling
Tom. “I say, who is that? Is it you,
McAlister? Let go of me.”

“Will you be quiet, you idiot?” demanded
Frank, who had forgotten that he
wanted to be shot, and fought instinctively
to keep a whole skin, as other men do.

“O, it 's you, is it?” returned Tom.
Then came a string of ferocious threats,
and of such abuse as cannot be written.
But it was useless for the madman to scold
and scuffle; he was thrown across a chair
with his face downward, and held there; he
was as helpless as a mouse in the iron grasp
of a trap. At this point Wilkins, judging
that the pistol-firing was over, came out of
his unknown hiding-place, and, throwing
open the door of the back room, let in light
upon the battle-field. General Johnson
now saw his way clear to disentangle himself
from the coils of rope on which he had
made shipwreck, and in so doing kicked a
loose bedcord within reach of the combatants.
Frank perceived it and instantly
grasped it.

“Will you give me your word of honor
to keep quiet?” he demanded.

“No, I won't,” gasped the captive, still
struggling. “Take your hands off me.”

“Then, by heavens! I 'll tie you,” exclaimed

Frank, beside himself with anger
for the first time in this history.

In half a minute more Tom was wound
from head to foot in the bedcord, like the
Laocoön in his serpents.

“Merciful God!” whispered General
Johnson to Wilkins. “Tie a gentleman!
I never heard of such a thing in the whole
course of my experience.”

“Let 's go out of here,” said the martial-eyed
Jobson, when he became aware of
what was going on. “Beaumont might hold
us responsible.”

And, raising a window, he leaped into
Duffy's back yard, followed the lead of a
scared cat, made his way into the street,
and hastened homeward with his face over
his shoulder. Meantime Jacocks, Duffy,
and Wilkins gathered behind the General,
and stared speechlessly at the pinioned
Beaumont, as much confounded at his plight
as if they beheld him paralyzed by the
wand of an enchanter. Probably the oldest
inhabitant of Hartland could not have remembered
seeing a “high-tone gentleman”
subjected to such treatment. But then the
inhabitants of Hartland, meaning those of
the masculine gender, rarely lived to be
old. A good many were carried off early
by whiskey, and a considerable number
“died in their boots.”

“I wish to prevent him from disgracing
himself,” said Frank, recovering somewhat
of his self-possession, as he remembered that
his captive was Kate's brother. “A rencontre
is not gentlemen's business.”

“Mr. McAlister, I approve of your sentiments,”
murmured General Johnson, growing
more cheerful as he saw a duel in
prospect. The honor of Hartland and the
chivalrous repute of its race of patricians
were dear to the noble old militia-man.

“I shall go now,” added Frank, after setting
Tom in a chair and giving him a last
knotting to fasten him in it. “When he
comes to his senses you will please explain
the matter to him. His pistol is behind the
counter. Mr. Duffy, I came in to purchase
something; but it does n't matter now.
Gentlemen, good evening.”

“Good evening, Mr. McAlister,” replied
the General, touching his seedy beaver,
while the other three simply bowed without
speaking, so fearful were they of drawing
upon themselves the wrath of the high and
mighty Beaumonts.

“Untie me, won't you?” roared Tom, as
his eyes followed Frank out of the street
door. “I tell you, by —! untie me.”

“Yes, yes,” assented the pacificatory
Wilkins, pretending to pick and pull at the
bedcord. But he was so judiciously slow
and bungling, that before he had half finished
the disentanglement the gallop of a
horse was heard outside; and when Tom at
last seized his pistol and rushed howling
into the street, no McAlister was in the
neighborhood.

“That 's just as right as can be,” observed
Wilkins, peering out cautiously.
“But it is n't, by gracious, any too right.
There 'll be a duel sure. Duffy, you 've
lost your hats.”

“Bet you, I have n't,” returned the imperturbably
idiotically smiling Duffy.

“O, you go to bed and sleep off your
quarter of a thimbleful of whiskey,” advised
Wilkins, as he marched homewards.

This adventure between Tom Beaumont
and Frank McAlister sent all Hartland
into fits of excitement. For three days
hardly any business was transacted in the
little borough. Duffy, who had seen a little
of the fight, told a great deal; and Jobson,
who had not seen “the first lick” of it,
told much more. General Johnson narrated
and lectured, and prophesied on every corner;
and, being invited into various bar-rooms
repeated himself until he grew
pathetic over “those two noble young men,
by gad, sir”; meanwhile leaning his shining
elbows for support on a sloppy counter
and letting his tears mingle with a thin
drizzle of tobacco-juice. The only spectator
of the “unpleasantness” who could not
be got to remember anything about it was
the sagacious Wilkins; blandly intent upon
saying nothing which should offend either
mighty Beaumont, or doughty McAlister,
and also pleased to go on with his trading
while others entertained the bummers;
whereby he got into temporary disfavor
with the chivalry of Hartland, a race scornful
of prudence and of finance.

If the village was thus excited, imagine
the tempest at the Beaumont place. It
must be understood that Tom got home
without breaking his neck, fell a slumbering
in a heap while unbuckling his spurs,
was found and put to bed by a helot accustomed
to such duties, and in the morning
related his mishap to his father, at least so
far as he could remember it. Such, by the
way, was the candid habit of the junior
Beaumonts; they always went to the head
of the family with the tale of their disagreements.
The father was proud of this
frankness, looked upon it as the behavior
of true-born gentlemen, and contrasted it
favorably with the managements of other
youngesters, who, as he said, sneaked into
their duels.

Peyton was utterly astounded by the
story of the tying, and could not bring himself
to believe it on Tom's unsupported
testimony, half suspecting the boy of delirium-tremens
or other lunacy. But the
insult being at least possible, he rode over
to the village in search of General Johnson,
and obtained a full, finished, and flowery

statement of what had happened at Duffy's.
When he got home he was in such a fit of
rage as nobody could be in but an old-time
Beaumont. He drank a pint of brandy
that forenoon without feeling it.

“Vincent, this is perfectly awful,” he
said, drawing a gasp of horror, as he thought
anew of the hitherto unheard-of indignity
which had been inflicted upon a Beaumont.
“I really don't know what to do, Vincent,”
he added almost pathetically.

“Tom will have to fight him, of course,”
replied the eldest son of the family, his face
perfectly calm over this terrible announcement.
“The old obligation is more than
cancelled.”

“Cancelled! Of course it is,” exclaimed
Beaumont senior. “An insult cancels any
obligation. Of course, Tom must fight. He
could n't stay in the State if he did n't.
But how? I never heard of such an outrage.
What sort of fighting will avenge it?
— Ah!”

This “Ah” was a whispered confession
of fearful pain. At that moment one of the
most dolorous of Peyton Beaumont's diseases
gave him a twinge which seemed as
if it would separate soul from body. He
straightened himself, threw his head slowly
backward, grasped the arms of his chair
with both hands, and remained silent for a
few seconds, his forehead beaded with perspiration,
and his eyes fixed in agony. As
the transport passed he drew another low
sigh, this time a deep breath of relief, and
resumed the conversation. Not a complaint,
not an explanation, not even a groan.
If the old fellow was something of a savage,
he at all events had the grit of a savage,
and he was for a moment sublime.

“Does it seem to you, Vincent,” he calmly
asked, “that Tom ought to insist upon any
peculiar terms? Fighting over a handkerchief,
for instance?”

“I don't see it,” put in Poinsett. “Tom's
own story is that he fired his revolver, and
that the other man did not fire. Tom has
already had his shot.”

“Suppose you have your shot on the
duelling-ground, and then your antagonist
rushes on you and pulls your nose?” returned
Vincent.

“Yes; there is your case,” said Beaumont
senior, turning upon Poinsett. “There is
McAlister's behavior. A most beastly business!
Just worthy of a nigger.”

“I beg your pardon, but I can't see it,”
declared the clear-headed Poinsett, educated
to law and logic. “There was no
duel here. Tom passed an insult and fired
a pistol, all without immediate provocation.
I don't excuse the tying, understand. After
McAlister had disarmed Tom, he was at
liberty to kill him, or to leave him. The
tying was superfluous and insulting. But at
least, a part of the wrong of it is removed
by the fact that Tom had taken the initiative
and forced the rencontre. I don't
believe that we should be justified in demanding
any unusual proceedings. A duel
simple is all we can ask.”

After a long argument Poinsett's judicial
mind prevailed over the fiery brains of the
other Beaumonts, and they decided to demand
only a duel simple.

Does the inhabitant of a more peaceful
district than Hartland find himself horror-stricken
and incredulous over this tremendous
family council? The Beaumonts were
not inhabitants of a peaceful district; they
were the most pugnacious brood of a peculiarly
pugnacious population; for generation
after generation they had had an education
of blood and iron. A Quaker, a New-Englander,
or even an ordinary Englishman
could not easily comprehend their excitable
nature. Two centuries, perhaps seven or
eight centuries, of high feeding, high breeding,
habits of dominion, and habits of fighting,
had made them unlike the mass of men.
They were of the nature of blood-horses;
they had the force, the courage, the nervousness,
the fiery temper, and the dangerousness;
they were admirable, and they
were terrible. There was not one of them,
old man or boys, not even the lazy Poinsett,
who would not have fought to the
death, rather than submit to what he
thought dishonorable. They had a morality
very different from the morality of the hardworking,
law-abiding bourgeois. It was
utterly different, and yet it governed as
strictly. They would no more have fallen
short of their ideas of honor than Neal Dow
would break the Maine liquor law, or
Charles Sumner would trade in niggers.
If we want to find a parallel to the Beaumonts
in some other land, we must, I think,
go to the Green Erin of one or two hundred
years ago, and resurrect the profuse,
reckless, quarrelsome, heroic O'Neills and
O'Learys and O'Sullivans.

Tom's challenge found our usually pacific
Frank McAlister in a pugnacious state of
mind. He was pale and haggard in these
days; he ate little and slept scarcely at all,
and fretted continually over his troubles;
the consequence was that his nerves were
shaky and his temper insurgent, and his
reason far from clear.

“Look at that,” he said, handing the cartel
to his brother, Robert Bruce. “Did you
ever hear of such an unreasonable, malignant
little beast? I disarmed him and tied
him to keep him from committing simple
murder and bringing himself to the gallows.
The young brute ought to thank me on his
knees. And here he wants to fight me.
By heavens, if it were not for one thing. I
don't know but I would; yes, I would — kill

him. But that is nonsense,” he added, after
a moment's pause. “I would do nothing
of the sort. I am not bound to fight him,
and I won't fight him.”

Bruce, meanwhile, his habitually thoughtful
and melancholy eyes fixed on the ground,
was considering the affair from the point of
view of the code. His conclusion was precisely
the same with that of the logical
Poinsett.

“You had a right to disarm him,” he said.
“And you had a right to kill him. But the
tying was an insult. The challenge is en
régle.”

“What!” exclaimed Frank, astonished
by the argument, and at the same time
beaten by it. “So, according to the code,
I owe a shot to the man whom I would not
let murder me? What barbarity!”

“If you had simply disarmed him, he
would not have had a foot left to stand
upon,” said Bruce. “I am sorry you tied
him.”

“It was an awful outrage!” returned
Frank with bitter irony. “I served him
right, and committed an outrage. It won't
answer among madmen to be rational.”

“What will you do?” asked the elder
brother, after a full minute of silence.

“Look here, Bruce,” Frank burst forth.
“I don't care one straw for your cursed
code of honor. Is is a beastly barbarity; I
hate it and despise it. But I want to be
shot. I want this very man to shoot me.
He saw me save his sister from death when
he had lost her. He is the very man to
shoot me; don't you think so? If I want
to be shot, — and I do with all my heart
and soul, — let him do it. You know what
is the matter with me, don't you? I love
his sister more than my life. I love her,
and I have lost her. No use. I stopped
this cursed quarrel for a while; I stopped it,
as I thought, forever; and here it is again.
It will never end in my time. I give up to
it. It has beaten me. Even she has joined
in it. I have dared to write to her, and
have got no answer. I never can marry
her; and even if I could, it would only be
to make her miserable; and I would rather
die than that. O my God, how I love her!
And she, — she won't give me one line, —
won't say that she does not hate me — like
the rest of her family. And for all that I
love her. Bruce, I wonder if you or any
one can understand it. I wonder if any
man ever so loved a woman before. I can
call up every expression of her face. I can
see her now as plainly as if she were here.
O my God, what a heaven I can make
around me! But it is a delusion. I am
like a spirit in hell, seeing paradise afar off.
There is a great gulf fixed. My father
fixed it. Her brother helps. All the power
of this damnable old feud goes to widen it.
There is no crossing. There is no hope at
all. Not the least. I wish I was dead. I
want to die. Yes, let him fight me; let
him shoot at me as much as he pleases; let
there be an end of it. I sha' n't fire back.
Understand that, Bruce. I sha' n't fire at
her brother. Not at Kate Beaumont's
brother.”

His voice broke here and his gigantic
frame shook with sobs; he did not try to
conceal his agony, for he was not ashamed
of it; indeed, he rather gloried in confessing
that he suffered for her; it was a strange
consolation, and it was his only one. Shall
we impute the force of his passion to him as
a weakness, and the greatness of his power
of suffering as a littleness? It would be an
error; the nobility of a soul is gauged as
much by its emotional, as by its intellectual
strength; the being who feels is as sublime
as the being who thinks.

Bruce could make no response to his
brother's outburst of anguish. There was
a silence similar in motive to that which
men often keep in the presence of those
who lament the dead. It was the speechlessness
of sympathy and awe, incapable of
giving help, and conscious that there is no
comfort.

Shall we who do not fight duels, condemn
the young man for accepting the challenge
to the field of honor? We must remember
the education of his childhood, the spirit of
the society in which he now lived, and the
irrationality of overmuch misery. But although
he would hazard his life in a way
which our reason and his own reason condemned,
he would go no further in the path
of bloodshed. He persisted in declaring
that he would receive Tom's fire, and that
he would not return it. On this point he
would not listen to argument.

“Then,” said Bruce, his own voice wavering
a little at last, — “then I will have
nothing more to do with it. You must seek
some other adviser.”

“I shall choose General Johnson,” replied
Frank.

“The old wretch is murderous,” remonstrated
Bruce. “He will get you both
killed, if possible. He will keep you standing
there all day to be shot at.”

“So much the better,” was the desperate
response of one of those rational men, who,
when they do go mad, outpace all others'
madness.

Old and shaky as General Johnson was,
he no more quailed before the task of seeing
Frank through his “difficulty” than a
fashionable dowager shrinks from matronizing
a young belle through a party. One
result of this strange choice of a second was
that Tom Beaumont made a still more singular
one.

Our sociable friend Major Lawson, riding

over to the Beaumont place with news of
Kershaw and Kate, heard with horror of the
projected encounter. The humane, sentimental,
friendly creature went through
instantaneous, terrible exercises of spirit,
and thought like a mill-race. How should
he stop the duel, save the life of Frank
McAlister, close up once more the abyss of
the feud, and bring to a happy ending his
poem of Romeo and Juliet? Should he
apply for aid to Kershaw or to Kate?
Alas, the old man was but just convalescing
from a perilous illness, and the shock of
such news as this might sweep him back to
the borders of the grave! As for the girl,
she was worn out with watching; moreover
she had received mysterious letters which
paled her young cheeks; she had written
answers, and then had torn them up suddenly,
as if under a sense of duty; she was
evidently wretched and evidently ailing.
Clearly she was in no fit condition to wrestle
with fresh troubles, and it would be both
cowardly and wicked to drag her into an
arena of gladiators. Next the Major had
thoughts of appealing to Frank, and begging
him to prevent the duel by an apology.
But the Beaumonts were obviously infuriated
to that degree that no act of satisfaction
would serve which was not a degradation.
Thus baffled wheresoever he looked
for aid, our peacemaker took a desperate
leap into the darkness of the untried, and
resolved to offer himself as Tom's second,
with the hope of effecting an arrangement.
Knowing nothing of duels except by report,
and his whole humane, peaceable nature
shrinking from participation in them, his
impulse was an inspiration of true heroism.

“My God, my dear Tom!” said the
Major, drawing that warlike youngster to
one side, and speaking with such earnestness
that he forgot to play his usual vocal
variations. “This is a dreadful business;
more dreadful than I had expected. I knew
of the political misunderstanding. I knew
that the Judge had been unwise enough to
reopen the quarrel with your excellent
father. But I did hope that things might
get on without bloodshed. Excuse me. I
mean no reflections. My remarks have no
personal bearing. I was simply speaking
from general considerations of humanity.
But allow me. Permit me a friendly question
or two. I feel deeply interested in
your welfare,” protested the Major, who in
reality wished that Tom would drop down
dead. “May I ask who is to be your second?”

“I wanted Vincent,” said Tom, with
abominable frankness and calmness. “I
thought McAlister would take his brother
Bruce; then I could have had Vincent,
who knows these things like a book. But
he has chosen old Johnson; and that knocks
me out of Vincent, of course; and, in fact, I
suppose I ought to pick out some other old
cock. That 's what fellows would call the
correct thing.”

“Take me,” begged Lawson, turning
pale as he made his great plunge. “My
dear young friend, I am quite at your service.
Take me.”

We must do Tom Beaumont justice.
When he was in liquor he was a brute; but
when he was sober he was a gentleman at
all hazards; that is, as he understood gentility.
Knowing full well that Lawson was
no fit man to take charge of a duel, and profoundly
astonished at his audacity in proposing
so to do, he instantly and politely
accepted his offer. In five minutes more,
still trembling from head to foot with
excitement, the Major was off to discuss the
terms of the meeting with General Johnson.

“What!” exclaimed Vincent, when Tom
informed him of his choice of a second.
“That old imbecile! He does n't know
anything about it.”

“How could I help taking him when he
offered?” answered the heroic young roister.

“I don't know,” admitted the puzzled
Vincent, after long consideration.

Peyton Beaumont was equally amazed
and displeased when he heard who was to
manage for his son on the field of honor.
But on learning that Lawson had himself
proposed the arrangement, his mouth was
stopped at once; and though he had seen
Tom at the brink of death through the
Major's inability to load pistols, he would
not have opened it. It must be admitted
that these Beaumonts, domineering and
uncomfortable as they were, had their admirable
points.