An Officer and a Lady (12 page)

Phillips picked up the banknotes, folded them and placed them in his pocket. Then, turning to Pierre, “There is one thing we have not considered,” he said. “What if I am wounded? Then the fraud would be discovered.”

Pierre’s face paled. “I had thought of that. But we must take our chances. And you—for God’s sake, shoot first, and shoot straight.”

“Monsieur Dumain,” said Phillips, “rest easy. When I aim at this Lamon, I shall hit him.”

But that night Pierre was unable to sleep. Whenever he closed his eyes he found himself looking into the muzzle of a revolver which, in size, bore a strong resemblance to a cannon. This was disquieting. Pierre sat up in bed and reached for a cigarette. “It’s absurd,” he said aloud. “I’m as shaky as though I were going to do it myself.”

At half-past four he rose, dressed, and finding the cab he had ordered at the door, proceeded through the silent, dim streets toward the Pont de Suresnes.

The rear of the Restaurant de la Tour d’Ivoire, which Pierre had selected as his place of retreat during the duel, overlooked the Seine at a point about a hundred yards up the river from this bridge. It was dilapidated, shabby, and disrespectable; which was exactly what Pierre desired. What with a garrulous
concierge
and a prying neighborhood, to have remained in his own rooms would have been hazardous; and the Restaurant de la Tour D’Ivoire, besides the advantages already named, possessed the further and greatest one of an old window with broken panes which looked out directly upon the scene of the duel.

The clock was hard on five as Pierre entered the restaurant and accosted the proprietor, who was dozing in a lump behind the little wooden desk. He awoke with a start and looked angrily at the intruder.

“What do you want?” he demanded.

“I desire a private dining room,” said Pierre.

The greasy old man looked angrier still. “The devil you do!” he shouted. “There isn’t any.” He settled back into his chair and immediately fell asleep. Pierre shrugged his shoulders, glanced around, and noticing a door in the opposite corner, passed through it into the room beyond.

This room was cold, dirty and filled with that particularly disagreeable odor which is the effect of stale tobacco smoke and poisoned breaths in a close atmosphere. Tables and chairs were piled in confusion at one end; a row of them extended along the farther wall; and the only light was that which came in through the window with broken panes overlooking the Pont de Surenes entrance, and its fellow directly opposite. Three or four men, sleeping with their heads nodding at various angles, were scattered here and there on the wooden chairs; another was seated at a table with a bottle before him reading a newspaper; and a drowsy and bedraggled waiter rose to his feet and stood blinking foolishly as Pierre entered.

Pierre, having seated himself and ordered a bottle of wine, looked up to meet the curious gaze of the man with the newspaper. It was sustained almost to the point of impertinence, and at once made Pierre uneasy. Was it possible he had been recognized? The fellow’s dress was very different from that of the ordinary habitué of holes such as the Restaurant de la Tour d’Ivoire; and though Pierre could find nothing familiar in either the face or figure, he became every minute more restless and suspicious; until, finally, he accosted the stranger.

“It is very cold,” he said, in as indifferent a tone as possible, glancing up at the broken window through which the damp river air found its way.

The stranger started and glanced up quickly. “Were you speaking to me, monsieur?”

“I did myself that honor,” said Pierre.

“And you said—”

“That it is very cold.”

“Yes. In fact, it is freezing.” The stranger shivered slightly and drew his cloak closer around his shoulders. “Do you play?” he asked.

“A little,” said Pierre, who felt somehow reassured by the mere fact that the other had spoken to him.

The waiter brought cards and another bottle of wine, and Pierre moved over to the other’s table.

For a half-hour the game proceeded, for the most part in silence. Once or twice Pierre glanced at his watch, then up at the window, which from his viewpoint disclosed only a glimpse of dark, gloomy sky and the upper framework of the Pont de Suresnes. Gradually, as the waiter continued to replace empty bottles with full ones, the stranger’s tongue was loosened.

“You’re lucky,” said he, eyeing the little heap of silver and small notes at Pierre’s elbow.

Pierre glanced again at his watch. “Let us hope so,” he muttered.

“And yet you are uneasy and agitated. That is wrong. Learn, my friend, the value of philosophy—of stoicism.” The stranger waved a hand in the air and grinned foolishly. “Learn to control your fate. For whatever happens today, or tomorrow, you are still a man.”

Pierre’s uneasiness returned. “You are drunk,” he said calmly. “But what do you mean?”

The other pointed a wavering finger at Pierre’s hand. “That’s what I mean. You tremble, you glance about, you are afraid. No doubt you have a reason; but look at that!” He held out his own hand, which shook like a leaf in the wind. “Observe my steadiness, my calm! And yet my whole future—my whole future is decided within the hour.”

“Come,” said Pierre, “you talk too much, my friend.”

“You are mistaken,” said the other with some dignity. “I do not talk too much. I never have talked too much.” He laid his cards on the table, picked up his glass and drained it. “Monsieur, I like you. I think I shall tell you a great secret.”

“I advise you to keep it to yourself,” said Pierre, who was beginning to be bored. He glanced again at his watch. It was a quarter to six.

“Right. Unquestionably right,” said the stranger. “The greatest of all virtues is caution.” He extended his arm as though to pluck a measure of that quality from the thick, damp air. “At the present moment I am a glowing example of the value of caution. It is the
sine qua non
of success. My motto is ‘In words bold, in action prudent.’ Caution! Prudence! I thank you, my friend.”

This, being somewhat at variance with Pierre’s theory of life, slightly aroused him. “But one cannot be an absolute coward,” he protested.

“
Eh, bien
,” returned the other, raising his brows in scorn at the bare suggestion, “one is expected to be a man. But what would you have? There are times—there is always one’s safety. Preservation is the first law of existence. Now I, for instance”—he leaned forward and finished in a confidential whisper—“would never think of blaming a man for obtaining a substitute to fight a duel for him. A mere matter of caution. Would you?”

Pierre felt a choking lump rise to his throat, and when he tried to speak found himself unable to open his mouth. All was known! He was lost! This drunken fellow—who probably was not drunk at all—who was he? Undoubtedly, Phillips had betrayed him. And then, as he sat stunned by surprise, the other continued:

“The truth is—you see, my friend, I trust you, and I want your opinion—that is exactly what I have done myself. It was to be at six o’clock,” he said. “And he—that fool of a Dumain—proposed for us to mask. That was what gave me the idea.”

A thought darted into Pierre’s brain like a leaping flame, and forced from him an unguarded exclamation: “Aha! Lamon!”

The other glanced up with quick suspicion. “How do you know that?” he demanded thickly.

But Pierre had had a second in which to recover his wits. “A man as famous as you?” he asked in a tone of surprise. “Everyone knows Lamon.”

The uneasiness on the other’s face gave way to a fatuous smile. “Perhaps,” he admitted.

Pierre’s brain, always nimble in an emergency, was working rapidly. He glanced at his watch: there still remained ten minutes before Phillips could be expected to arrive. As for this drunken Lamon, there was nothing to be feared from him. Then a new fear assailed him.

“But what if your substitute is wounded?”

Lamon’s lips, tightly compressed in an effort at control, relaxed in a knowing grin. “Impossible.” He fumbled in his vest pockets and finally drew forth a card, which he tossed on the table in front of Pierre. “You see, he’s an expert.”

Pierre, turning the card over, read it in a single glance:

ALBERT PHILLIPS

Professeur d’Escrime

Méthode Américaine

T
HE FACT THAT
M
RS.
C
OIT
kept her rooms full could be accounted for only by the Law of Chance. As a matter of free choice, no rational human being would ever have submitted to her sour tutelage. But situated as it was, on East Thirty-seventh Street, her house had inevitably attracted a certain portion of those poor unfortunates who find in that locality everything of home that New York can mean to them; and what Mrs. Coit got she usually kept. Her manner was so very forbidding that it seemed even to forbid their escape.

Perhaps the most unpopular of Mrs. Coit’s activities was the strict supervision of the movements of her men roomers. It came to be generally understood that coming in at eleven o’clock was barely safe, midnight required a thorough explanation, and one o’clock was unpardonable. From this you may judge of the rest.

The two who suffered most from this stern maternalism were the Boy and the Girl. It is unnecessary to give their names, since, being in love, they were undistinguishable from several million other boys and girls that the world has seen or read about. To confirm their title as members of this club, their course of true love did not run smooth. No doubt it is trying enough to be bothered by a particular mother, a strict father, or an inquisitive aunt; but all of these are as nothing to a prying landlady.

Mrs. Coit was fat, forty, and unfair. No one knew the nature of her widowhood, whether simple or complex, voluntary or forced, but all were agreed that Mr. Coit was lucky to escape, through whatever medium. The Bookkeeper had once declared positively that Mrs. Coit was a
grass
widow, but, being pressed for an explanation, admitted that he had grounded his belief on no better foundation than the too evident presence of dry hay in the mattresses.

The roomers—that is, the seasoned ones—were little disturbed by her. Most of them had come to accept life as a dull and colorless routine, to which the impression of anything unusual came as a relief; and Mrs. Coit served as matter for continual amusement. They laughed at her and submitted to her minute censorship without complaint.

But in each of these dulled and sluggish hearts old Romance crouched, ever watchful for an opportunity to make its presence known. That opportunity arrived on the day that the Boy first met the Girl.

Within a week every roomer in the house was enlisted on the side of Cupid. It is true that Cupid needed no assistance, especially from these dried-up mortals whom he had long ago abandoned; but they
thought
they helped, and Cupid always was an ungrateful little wretch. The Boy was fair, the Girl was sweet, and it truly seemed that it would take much more than the grim visage of Mrs. Coit to frighten away that ever-welcome though sometimes painful visitor.

Mrs. Coit, however, was doing her best. After ten years of unchallenged tyranny, her subjects openly rebelled and resented her malicious activity. As I have said, for themselves they did not care—what mattered a little extra discomfort in lives long since devoted to the Prosaic? But when it came to the Boy and the Girl, and interference with the divine right of rings, they rallied round the flag and struck hard for the colors of Love.

As time passed and the general interest in the affair deepened, Mrs. Coit redoubled her vigilance and asperity. Her remarks to the Boy on the foolishness of marrying at his age and on his salary were repeated with emphasis, and to the Girl she talked so severely about the selfishness of hampering the Boy’s career that she left her in tears. This was unwise; it merely served as an excuse to the Boy for so many more kisses.

Many were the objections entered by Mrs. Coit, many were the petty trials and inconveniences she managed to inflict on the lovers; all, of course, in vain. The women declared that she was jealous of the Boy, which was manifestly absurd; the men, that she was naturally mean, which was somewhat ungallant. Anyway, they might have spared their abuses, since the Boy and the Girl had finally been steered through the shoals of criticism and the rocks of opposition to the sheltered harbor of a Definite Engagement. Mrs. Coit had settled down to a dull resentment; the roomers, to a calm and pleasurable expectation.

Mrs. Coit, on her daily round of dusting, was commenting to herself somewhat bitterly on the folly of youth and the general levity of mankind. In the Bookkeeper’s room she grew particularly resentful, since he had only the day before advised her to mind her own business, and jabbing the duster savagely at a corner of the mantel, she knocked to the floor a little plaster bust of Milton, which broke into a dozen pieces. Sobered by this unhousewifely incident, she proceeded to the Boy’s room, next door. She entered without knocking, and to her surprise found the Boy sitting on the edge of the bed with his face buried in his hands. Mrs. Coit regarded him silently, with increasing wrath. The Boy, not hearing her enter, remained motionless.

“Well!” said Mrs. Coit finally, “Ain’t you goin’ to work?”

The Boy looked up. “No.”

His eyes were swollen with sleeplessness and his face was pale, his hair uncombed, his whole figure dejected and forlorn.

Mrs. Coit noted each of these symptoms separately and carefully.

“Lose your job?” she asked, almost hopefully.

The Boy shook his head, and buried it again in his hands. Mrs. Coit, trying to maintain her attitude of severe disapproval, began to dust the Morris chair. Then, after discovering that she had gone over the same arm four times, she turned to the Boy again,

“Sick?” she demanded.

“No,” said the Boy, without moving. Evidently he was not looking for sympathy.

Mrs. Coit regarded him critically. No, he certainly wasn’t drunk. Not
him.
Then, glancing over the bed, her eye fell on a photograph in a little gilt frame. It showed the face of the Boy, smiling, happy.