Kate Beaumont :: :: University of Virginia Library

While the girl, aided by her grandfather,
was resisting the demon of duels in the
Beaumont house, Mr. Frank McAlister was
maintaining an equally dubious contest with
the same monster under his paternal roof-tree.

We must hurry over the scene of his arrival
at home. There had been a pleasant
family drama; there had been warm welcome
for the returned wanderer. The deliberate
and solemn Judge was not the kind
of man to fly into a spasm of emotion, like
his excitable enemy, Peyt Beaumont; but
he had a calm sufficiency of the true parental
stuff in him, and he was proud of his
gigantic, handsome son, full of all the wisdom
of the East; he gave him a vigorous
hand-shaking, and looked for an instant
like kissing him. Mrs. McAlister, a tall,
pale, gray, mild, loving woman, took the
Titan to her arms as if he were still an infant.
Mary worshipped him, as girls are
apt to worship older brothers, at least when
they are big and handsome. Bruce, the
eldest son, was all that a South Carolina
gentleman should be on such an occasion.
Wallace at once gloried in Frank's grandeur
and beauty, and wilted wofully under a
sense of his own inferiority.

The story of the shipwreck was told to
affectionately breathless listeners; and then
came, almost by necessity, the saving of Miss
Beaumont from a watery grave.

“I have some hope,” added Frank, with
the blush of a man who feels far more than
he says, “that the incident may pave the
way to a reconciliation of the families.”

“Heaven grant it!” murmured Mrs. McAlister,
her face illuminated with hope of
peace and perhaps with foresight of love
and marriage.

“Amen!” responded the Judge in a perfunctory,
head-of-the-family, not to say beadle-like,
manner. One of those model men
who set an example, you know; one of
those saints who keep up appearances, even
at home.

“By George, it ought to,” muttered Wally,
conscience-stricken about his duel. “It
ought to bring about a reconciliation. But,
by George, there 's no telling.”

Then, at a proper moment, when only the

three brothers were together, came the story
of the quarrel with Vincent. It must be
understood that among the McAlisters duels
were not such common property, such subjects
of genial family conversation, as among
the Beaumonts. The McAlisters fought as
promptly as their rivals; but, Scotch-like
and Puritan-like, they treated fighting as a
matter not to be bragged of and gossiped
about; they drew a decorous veil over their
occasional excesses in the way of homicide.
When a McAlister boy got into an unpleasantness,
he never mentioned it to father,
mother, or sister, not even after the shots
had been exchanged. The Judge believed
that duelling was sometimes necessary; but
he did not want to have the air of encouraging
it: first, because he was a father and
cared for his sons' lives; second, because
he had a certain character to maintain in
the district. Mrs. McAlister, a religious
and tender-hearted woman, looked upon the
code of honor with steady horror. Mary
tormented her brothers by crying over their
perils, even when those perils had passed
and were become glories.

We can imagine Frank's disgust and grief
when he learned that there was to be another
Beaumont and McAlister duel. He
pleaded against it; he inveighed against it;
he sermonized against it.

“Frank, you make me think of converted
cannibals coming home to preach to their
tribe,” said Wallace, smiling amiably, but
unmoved and unconvinced.

“Who is your second?” asked Frank,
hoping to find more wisdom in that assistant
than in the principal.

“Bruce,” replied Wallace with a queer
grimace, somewhat in the way of an apology.

“Bruce! Your own brother?” exclaimed
the confounded Frank. “Why, that is horrible.
And is n't it something unheard of?
It strikes me as an awful scandal.”

“It is unusual,” admitted Wallace. “But
Vincent Beaumont makes no objection to it,
and, moreover, he has chosen his own connection,
Bent Armitage. Besides,” he added,
looking at his elder brother with an almost
touching confidence, “Bruce will fight me
better than any other man could.”

Bruce McAlister was a man of about six
feet, too slender and too lean to be handsome
in a gladiatorial sense, but singularly
graceful. Although not much above thirty,
his face was haggard and marked by an air
of lassitude. He was a consumptive. Perhaps
the disease had increased the charm of
his expression. His large hazel eyes, sunk
as they were in sombre hollows, had a melancholy
tenderness which was almost more
than human. His face was so gentle, so refined,
so gracious, that it charmed at first
sight. There was no resisting the sweet
smile, the flattering bow and petting address
of this man. He put strangers at ease in
an instant; he made them feel with a look
that they were his valued friends; he so
impressed them in a minute that they never
forgot him in all their lives. It would not
be easy to find another man who had such
an appearance of thinking altogether of others
and not at all of himself.

“It is an unusual step, Frank,” said
Bruce, in a mellow, deep, and yet weak
voice. “It was of course not ventured upon
without the full consent of the other party.
I accepted the position solely with the hope
of diminishing Wallace's danger.”

“Well!” assented Frank with a groan.
“And now, Bruce, tell me the whole thing.
What is the exact value of the provocation?”

In a quiet tone and without a sign of indignation
Bruce related the story of the
difficulty.

“Beaumont's manner and words were
irritatingly sarcastic,” he concluded. “Wallace
naturally resented it.”

“Still, all that he said was — was parliamentary,”
urged Frank. “Wallace, I don't
want to judge you; but it does seem to me
that you might have spared your reply; it
was terribly severe. Could n't you apologize?
If I were in your place, I would. I
would, indeed.”

Wallace stared, rubbed his head meditatively,
and then shook it decidedly.

“And for this you mean to fight?” pursued
Frank. “Actually mean to draw a
pistol on your fellow-man? The whole
thing — I mean the code duello — is a barbarity.
I was brought up to reverence it.
From this time I abjure it.”

“Fight? Well, yes,” returned Wallace,
again rubbing his prematurely bald crown;
not quite bald, either; simply downy. “Of
course I will fight. Not that I admire
fighting. It 's the reasoning of beasts, sir.
And as for the duello, well, I look on it as
you do; I consider it out of date, barbarous.
But society — our society, I mean — demands
it. If society says a gentleman must
— noblesse oblige — why, that settles it. If
it says a gentleman should wear a beaver,”
lifting his hat and gesturing with it, “why,
he must get one. Disagreeable thing; ugly
and uncomfortable; just look at it. Look
at my head, too. Bald at twenty-eight!
That 's the work of a black, hot beaver.
But since it 's the distinguishing topknot of
a gentleman, I submit to it. Just so with
the duello. I think it 's blasted nonsense,
and yet I can't ignore it. As for the Beaumonts,
I don't want to be shooting at Beaumonts.
Just as willing to let them alone as
to let anybody else alone. But when a
Beaumont ruffles me, and society says, `Let 's
see how he takes it,' why I take it with pistols.
Very sorry to do it, but don't see how I

can help it. I suppose my position is a weak
one. Logic don't support it, and God won't
approve it. Know all that. Not going to
fool myself with trying to prove that I don't
know it. And, by George, I wish I could
make my reason and practice agree. Wish
I could, and know I can't.”

“Would you mind leaving this matter to
our elders?” asked Frank, the idea of a
family council occurring to him as it had occurred
to Colonel Kershaw.

“O Lord! don't!” begged Wallace.
“You could n't beat me out of it, but you 'd
bother me awfully. You 'd have mother on
your side, sure, and she 's an army. Yes,
by George, she 's one of those armies that
are marshalled by the Lord of hosts,” declared
Wallace, stopping to meditate upon
the perfections of his mother. “She is a
peacemaker,” he resumed. “I 've heard her
say that she almost regretted having a boy;
if her children were only all girls, this feud
might have died out. By George, I would
n't mind being one of the girls. I might
have been handsomer. I might have kept
my hair, too; not being obliged to wear a
beaver.” Here he rubbed the “fuzzy”
summit of his head with rueful humor.
“By heavens! bald at twenty-eight! It 's
an ugly defect.”

He was so cheerful and resolute, notwithstanding
the shadow of death which lay
across his to-morrow, that Frank was in
despair.

At this hopeless stage of the conversation
a negro brought in word that “Mars
Bent Armitage wanted to see Mars Bruce.”

Bruce went to another room, received
Armitage with an almost affectionate courtesy,
talked with him for a few moments in a
low tone, and waited on him to his horse as
tenderly as if he were a lady. When he
returned to his two brothers there was in
his usually melancholy eyes something like
a smile of pleasure.

“I am the bearer of remarkable news,”
he said calmly. “The duel can now be
honorably avoided.”

“How?” demanded the eager Frank.

“What!” exclaimed the astonished Wallace.

“Hear this,” continued Bruce, opening a
letter. “`On behalf of my principal, Mr.
Vincent Beaumont, I withdraw the challenge
sent to Mr Wallace McAlister. The
sole motive of this withdrawal is the sense
of obligation on the part of Mr. Beaumont
and his family toward Mr. Frank McAlister
for saving the life of Miss Catherine Beaumont.'
Signed, Bentley Armitage.”

“By George!” exclaimed Wallace, and
continued to say by George for a considerable
time. “I owe him an apology,” he presently
broke out. “If I don't owe him one,
I 'll give him one. Bruce, write me an
apology, won't you? By heavens, I never
thought a Beaumont could be so human.
Anything, Bruce; I 'll sign anything. This
is new times, something like the millennium.
What would our ancestors say? Frank, by
George, this is your work, and it 's a big
job. In saving the girl's life you have
saved mine, perhaps, and Vincent's. Three
lives at one haul! How like the Devil — I
mean how like an angel — you do come
down on us! By George, old fellow, I 'm
amazingly obliged to you. I am, indeed.
Is that thing ready, Bruce? Let 's have it.
There! Now, Bruce, if you 'll be kind
enough to transmit that in your very best
manner — By the way, old fellow, I 'm very
much obliged to you for standing by me.
I 'm devilish lucky in brothers.”

“I do hope that this is the beginning of
the ending of the family feud,” was the
next thing heard from Frank.

“Well, I don't mind,” agreed Wallace.

“You ought to say more than that,”
urged Frank. “One friendly step deserves
another. You have been fairly beaten so
far in the race of humanity by this Beaumont.”

“Yes, he has got the lead,” conceded
Wallace. “For once I knock under to a
Beaumont. The fact confounds me; it fairly
takes the breath out of me. But will he
last? Can the blasted catamounts become
friendly?”

“Try them,” said Frank. “I propose a
call on them.”

“Wallace has apologized,” observed
Bruce. “The next advance should come
from the Beaumont side.”

“We ought to give more than we receive,”
lectured Frank. “It is the part of true
gentlemen, as the word is understood in our
times, or should be understood.”

“It is worth considering,” admitted Bruce;
“it is worth while to suggest the idea to our
father.”

“And mother,” was Frank's energetic
amendment, to which Bruce did not think
it best to reply. The honor of the family
was very dear to him, and he did not believe
that women were qualified to judge
its demands, much as he respected the
special good sense of his mother.

Back to the Beaumonts one must now
hasten, to learn how they received the
apology. Vincent glanced through Wallace's
letter without changing expression, nodded
as a man nods over a compromise which is
only half satisfactory, read it aloud to his
father and brothers (with a sister listening
in the next room), and then filed it away
among his valuable papers, all without a
word of comment. Beaumont senior was
gratified, and then suddenly enraged, and
then gratified again, and so on.

“Why, Kershaw, the fellow has some
streaks of gentility in him,” he admitted,
with a smile of wonder and satisfaction,
walking up and down with the pacific,
manageable air of a kindly, led horse. But
presently he gave a start and a glare, like a
tiger who hears hunters, and broke out in a
snarl: “Why the deuce did n't he say all
this at first? He ought to have apologized
at once. The scoundrel!!”

After some further thought, he added in a
mild growl: “Well, it might have been
worse. After all, the blockhead has made
it clear that he does n't mean to take advantage
of Vincent's magnanimity. Yes,
magnanimity!” he trumpeted, looking about
for somebody to dispute it. “By heavens,
Vincent, you have been as magnanimous as
a duke, by heavens!”

Here the magician who had wrought
thus much of peace into the woof of hate
came smiling and glowing into the room,
slipped her arm through that of her eldest
brother, and whispered: “So it has ended
well, Vincent. I am so much obliged to
you! I am so happy!”

Next she glided over to her father and
possessed herself of his hairy hand, saying,
“Come, your man-business has gone all
right; come and show me where to put my
flower-beds.”

She was bent, — the audacious young
thing, it seemed incredible when you looked
at her sweet, girlish face, — but she was
bent upon taming these fine, fighting panthers;
and she was bringing to bear upon
the work a beautiful combination of tenderness,
of patient management and gentle
imperiousness; she was inspired to attempt
a labor far beyond her years. The trying
circumstances which surrounded her had
matured her with miraculous rapidity, and
brought into bloom at once all her nobler
moral and stronger mental qualities. She
was like those youthful generals who have
performed prodigies because they were
called upon to perform prodigies, and did
not yet know that prodigies were humanly
impossible. No doubt it was well for the
girl that Heaven had given her so much
beauty and such an imposingly sweet expression
of dignity and purity. A plainer
daughter and sister, no matter how good
and wise and resolute, might not have accomplished
such wonders.

We will not follow her and her father
into the garden; we will simply say that
her flower-beds bore great fruit, and that
shortly.

For on the following day two horsemen
left the mansion of the Beaumonts and rode
towards the mansion of the McAlisters.
They rode mainly at a walk, the reason
being that one of them was over eighty
years old, while the other, although not
above fifty-five, was shaky with pains and
diseases. Several times during the transit
of four miles the younger suddenly checked
his horse and turned his nose homeward,
saying, “By heavens, I can't do it, Kershaw.
No, by heavens!”

“Come on, my dear Beaumont,” mildly
begged the venerable Colonel. “You will
never regret it. It is the noblest chance
you ever had to be magnanimous.”

“Do you think so, Kershaw? Well,
magnanimity is a gentlemanly thing. By
heavens, that was a devilish fine thing that
Vincent did. It put a feather in his cap as
high as the plume of the Prince of Wales.
Moral courage and dignity! By heavens,
I am proud of the boy.”

“So am I,” said Kershaw.

“Are you?” grinned the delighted Beaumont.
“By heavens, I 'm delighted to hear
you say so. I was afraid you did n't appreciate
Vincent. But I ought to have known
better; every gentleman would appreciate
him. The man who now does n't appreciate
Vincent, he 's — he 's an ass and a
scoundrel,” declared Beaumont, beginning
to tremble with rage at the thought of encountering
and chastising such a miscreant.
“Well, Kershaw,” he added, “let us go
on.”

After a little he added in a tone of
apology, “Some people might say that this
errand is the business of a younger man.
But my sons are not related to Kate as you
and I are. The girl springs directly from
your veins and mine; and consequently we
are the proper persons to thank the man
who saved her life. Don't you think so,
Kershaw?”

“Certainly,” replied the patient Colonel,
who had already advocated that view with
all his eloquence.

Presently they discovered the McAlister
house, and here Beaumont came to another
halt. This time his resistance was more
obstinate than before; it was like the struggle
of an ox when he smells the blood of
the slaughter-block.

“Kershaw, I can't go to that house,”
he said, his face and air full of tragic dignity.
“That house is the abode of the
enemies of my race. There is a man in
that house who has my brother's blood on
his hands. I can't go there; no, Kershaw,
by God!”

His voice trembled; it was full of anguish
and anger; it was a groan and a menace.

The Colonel made no remonstrance and
no spoken reply. He took off his hat and
bared his long white hair to the sun, as if in
respect to Beaumont's emotion. In this
attitude he waited silently for the storm of
feeling to rage itself out.

“My father never would have entered

[ILLUSTRATION]

"Kershaw, I can't go to that house," he said.—Page 52.

[Description: 456EAF. Image of two men riding horses along a tree-lined path. One man is doffing his hat, while the other is raising a clenched fist in horror.]

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that house,” continued Beaumont. “No
McAlister ever crossed my threshold. There
has been nothing but hate and blood between
us. It has always been so, and it must
always be so. I am too old to learn new
ways.”

Still the Colonel sat silent and uncovered,
with his long silver hair shining under the
hot sun. The sight of this humility and
patience seemed to trouble Beaumont.

“You can't feel as I do, Kershaw,” he
said. “Of course you can't.”

“Let us try to make the future unlike the
past,” returned the Colonel, in a tone which
was like that of prayer.

Beaumont shook his head more in sadness
than in anger.

“This young man, Frank McAlister, has
already begun the work,” continued the
Colonel. “Shall Kate's father and grandfather
foil him?”

Beaumont began to tremble in every
limb; he was weak with his diseases, and
this struggle of emotions was too much for
him; he held on to his saddle-bow to keep
himself from growing dizzy.

“I don't feel that I can do it, Kershaw,”
he said, in a voice which had one or two
embryo sobs in it. How, indeed, weakened
as he was by maladies, could he choose between
all the family feelings of his past and
the totally new duty now before him, without
being shaken?

“Beaumont,” was the closing appeal of
the Colonel, “you will, I hope, allow me to
go on alone and return thanks for the life
of my granddaughter.”

“No, by heavens!” exclaimed the father,
turning his back at once on all his bygone
life, its emotions, its beliefs, its acts, and
traditions. “No. If you must go, I go with
you.”

“God bless you, my dear Beaumont!”
said Kershaw, his voice, too, perhaps a little
unsteady.

After some further riding Beaumont
added: “But we will see the boy alone.
Not the Judge. I won't see the Judge.
If I meet that old fox, I shall quarrel with
him. I can't stand a fox when he 's as
big as an elephant and as savage as a
hyena.”

A little later he asked: “You 're sure
Lawson thinks well of this step?”

“He approves of it thoroughly,” declared
the Colonel. “He considers it the only
thing we can do, since the apology has been
made.”

“Well, Lawson ought to know what 's
gentlemanly,” said Beaumont. “Lawson
has always been a habitué of our society.
By heavens! if Lawson does n't know what 's
gentlemanly, he 's an ass.”

And so at last they were at the door of
the McAlister mansion.