Red Pottage | Page 7

agree to draw.
Nevertheless, he had drawn. And Hugh knew that, if it had to be done
again, he should again have been compelled to draw by the iron will
before which his was as straw. He could not have met the scorn of
those terrible half-closed eyes if he had refused.
"There was no help for it," said Hugh, half aloud. And yet to die by his
own hand within five months! It was incredible. It was preposterous.
"I never agreed to it," he said, passionately.
Nevertheless, he had drawn. The remembrance ever returned to lay its
cold hand upon his heart, and with it came the grim conviction that if
Lord Newhaven had drawn the short lighter he would have carried out
the agreement to the letter. Whether it was extravagant, unchristian,
whatever might have been truly said of that unholy compact, Lord
Newhaven would have stood by it.
"I suppose I must stand by it, too," said Hugh to himself, the cold sweat
breaking out on his forehead. "I suppose I am bound in honor to stand
by it, too."

He suffered his mind to regard the alternative.
To wrong a man as deeply as he had wronged Lord Newhaven; to
tacitly accept. That was where his mistake had been. Another man, that
mahogany-faced fellow with the colonial accent, would have refused to
draw, and would have knocked Lord Newhaven down and half killed
him, or would have been knocked down and half killed by him. But to
tacitly accept a means by which the injured man risked his life to
avenge his honor, and then afterwards to shirk the fate which a
perfectly even chance had thrown upon him instead of on his antagonist!
It was too mean, too despicable. Hugh's pale cheek burned.
"I am bound," he said slowly to himself over and over again. There was
no way of escape.
Yesterday evening, with some intuition of coming peril, he had said, "I
will get out." The way of retreat had been open behind him. Now, by
one slight movement, he was cut off from it forever.
"I can't get out," said the starling, the feathers on its breast worn away
with beating against the bars.
"I can't get out," said Hugh, coming for the first time in contact with the
bars which he was to know so well--the bars of the prison that he had
made with his own hands.
He looked into the future with blank eyes. He had no future now. He
stared vacantly in front of him like a man who looks through his
window at the wide expanse of meadow and waving wood and distant
hill which has met his eye every morning of his life and finds it--gone.
It was incredible. He turned giddy. His reeling mind, shrinking back
from the abyss, struck against a fixed point, and, clutching it, came
violently to a stand-still.
His mother!
His mother was a widow and he was her only son. If he died by his
own hand it would break her heart. Hugh groaned, and thrust the

thought from him. It was too sharp. He could not suffer it.
His sin, not worse than that of many another man, had found him out.
He had done wrong. He admitted it, but this monstrous judgment on
him was out of all proportion to his offence. And, like some malignant
infectious disease, retribution would fall, not on him alone, but on those
nearest him, on his innocent mother and sister. It was unjust, unjust,
unjust!
A very bitter look came into his face. Hugh had never so far hated any
one, but now something very like hatred welled up in his heart against
Lady Newhaven. She had lured him to his destruction. She had tempted
him. This was undoubtedly true, though not probably the view which
her guardian angel would take of the matter.
Among the letters which the servant had brought him he suddenly
recognized that the topmost was in Lady Newhaven's handwriting.
Anger and repulsion seized him. No doubt it was the first of a series.
"Why was he so altered? What had she done to offend him?" etc., etc.
He knew the contents beforehand, or thought he knew them. He got up
deliberately, threw the unopened note into the empty fireplace, and put
a match to it. He watched it burn.
It was his first overt act of rebellion against her yoke, the first step
along the nearest of the many well-worn paths that a man takes at
random to leave a woman. It did not occur to him that Lady Newhaven
might have written to him about his encounter with her husband. He
knew Lord Newhaven well enough to be absolutely certain that he
would mention the subject to no living