The Point Of Honor | Page 5

Lieutenant Feraud, "to cut off your ears to teach you not to disturb me, orders or no orders, when I am talking to a lady."
A profound silence followed this mad declaration--and through the open window Lieutenant D'Hubert heard the little birds singing sanely in the garden. He said coldly:
"Why! If you take that tone, of course I will hold myself at your disposal whenever you are at liberty to attend to this affair. But I don't think you will cut off my ears."
"I am going to attend to it at once," declared Lieutenant Feraud, with extreme truculence. "If you are thinking of displaying your airs and graces to-night in Madame de Lionne's salon you are very much mistaken."
"Really," said Lieutenant D'Hubert, who was beginning to feel irritated, "you are an impracticable sort of fellow. The general's orders to me were to put you under arrest, not to carve you into small pieces. Good-morning." Turning his back on the little Gascon who, always sober in his potations, was as though born intoxicated, with the sunshine of his wine-ripening country, the northman, who could drink hard on occasion, but was born sober under the watery skies of Picardy, made calmly for the door. Hearing, however, the unmistakable sound, behind his back, of a sword drawn from the scabbard, he had no option but to stop.
"Devil take this mad Southerner," he thought, spinning round and surveying with composure the warlike posture of Lieutenant Feraud with the unsheathed sword in his hand.
"At once. At once," stuttered Feraud, beside himself.
"You had my answer," said the other, keeping his temper very well.
At first he had been only vexed and somewhat amused. But now his face got clouded. He was asking himself seriously how he could manage to get away. Obviously it was impossible to run from a man with a sword, and as to fighting him, it seemed completely out of the question.
He waited awhile, then said exactly what was in his heart:
"Drop this; I won't fight you now. I won't be made ridiculous."
"Ah, you won't!" hissed the Gascon. "I suppose you prefer to be made infamous. Do you hear what I say?... Infamous! Infamous! Infamous!" he shrieked, raising and falling on his toes and getting very red in the face. Lieutenant D'Hubert, on the contrary, became very pale at the sound of the unsavoury word, then flushed pink to the roots of his fair hair.
"But you can't go out to fight; you are under arrest, you lunatic," he objected, with angry scorn.
"There's the garden. It's big enough to lay out your long carcass in," spluttered out Lieutenant Feraud with such ardour that somehow the anger of the cooler man subsided.
"This is perfectly absurd," he said, glad enough to think he had found a way out of it for the moment. "We will never get any of our comrades to serve as seconds. It's preposterous."
"Seconds! Damn the seconds! We don't want any seconds. Don't you worry about any seconds. I will send word to your friends to come and bury you when I am done. This is no time for ceremonies. And if you want any witnesses, I'll send word to the old girl to put her head out of a window at the back. Stay! There's the gardener. He'll do. He's as deaf as a post, but he has two eyes in his head. Come along. I will teach you, my staff officer, that the carrying about of a general's orders is not always child's play."
While thus discoursing he had unbuckled his empty scabbard. He sent it flying under the bed, and, lowering the point of the sword, brushed past the perplexed Lieutenant D'Hubert, crying: "Follow me." Directly he had flung open the door a faint shriek was heard, and the pretty maid, who had been listening at the keyhole, staggered backward, putting the backs of her hands over her eyes. He didn't seem to see her, but as he was crossing the anteroom she ran after him and seized his left arm. He shook her off and then she rushed upon Lieutenant D'Hubert and clawed at the sleeve of his uniform.
"Wretched man," she sobbed despairingly. "Is this what you wanted to find him for?"
"Let me go," entreated Lieutenant D'Hubert, trying to disengage himself gently. "It's like being in a madhouse," he protested with exasperation. "Do let me go, I won't do him any harm."
A fiendish laugh from Lieutenant Feraud commented that assurance. "Come along," he cried impatiently, with a stamp of his foot.
And Lieutenant D'Hubert did follow. He could do nothing else. But in vindication of his sanity it must be recorded that as he passed out of the anteroom the notion of opening the street door and bolting out presented itself to this brave youth, only, of course, to be instantly dismissed: for