A Gentleman's Gentleman/Chapter 19
CHAPTER XIX
SIR NICOLAS PLAYS A PART
There is no need for me to tell you all that followed this bitter little scene. It was just as though you had opened the windows of the ballroom and let in the falling snow. While not more than ten people had witnessed the mishap, the story of it was round the house before half an hour had passed. It broke up the ball like a death might have done. I saw Mme. Pouzatòv herself being led up to her bedroom. Her daughter still carried on defiantly with the count, but it was plain that she was scared and half sorry. The others made haste to call their carriages, or formed little groups to discuss the thing with gesture. The servants crept about like mutes at a funeral. We all knew that the night could end but in one way. The men must fight.
It was broad daylight that morning before any of us got to bed. As for myself, I don't believe I took my clothes off. Not that I cared a penny piece whether the general shot the count, or the count shot the general; but there was so much excitement and talk and running here and there, that sleep was far from my eyes. And so it was with my master. I went to his bedroom at eight o'clock, and found him still in his uniform, sitting at his writing-table and drinking coffee. Though he spoke careless enough, you could see that he was shaking to his finger-tips with excitement; and after I'd heard him out, I knew well where he came into it.
"Hildebrand," said he, "I'm to drive to Novgorod in an hour. The count has asked me to act for him."
"Then they are to meet, sir?" said I.
"Was any other course possible?" cried he. "’Tis not with bank-clerks or bishops that we're dealing, but with gentlemen that have gentlemen's means for their quarrels!"
"But the general is his superior officer; the count can't fight with him, sir—at least, that's the talk below."
"Which is nonsense, ye may tell them from me. 'Tis a case where we'll have to get permission from the authorities, and that will not be refused. Sure, the lady is likely to be looking for a husband when the week is gone."
"What about the count in that case, sir?"
He looked at me slyly, as he could sometimes.
"I doubt that she'll marry the count," said he, and that was all.
That was all, but if he thought that I did not read up the rest, he must have taken me for a fool. "Nicky," said I to myself, "you're playing for your own hand. She won't marry the general now, any way. If he shoots the count, you're alone in the field. And there's twenty thousand goes with her, so you might do worse than that."
It was a new idea to me entirely; and I must say that it stuck in my head all that morning, and was still there when he, and the two that had been with him, came home from Novgorod about six in the evening. The day had been a miserable one, wet and cold and chill; the house was quiet as the grave. Not once, the whole morning through, did I see Miss M&rya or her mother. The guests who had remained overnight went away after breakfast. The only conversation was the question whether the count would kill the general, or the general kill the count. And I, who had not cared a snap the day before, found myself as busy thinking about it as the rest of them. For if the count fell—Sir Nicolas would stay in Russia. I would have staked my life upon that. '
My master came home at six o'clock, as I have said; and his first words to me told what he had done.
"I have a case of pistols in my bag," said he, "and I would be glad to know if they're to be trusted. You may amuse yourself for ten minutes knocking the bark off the trees with them."
"Then it's pistols they've chosen, sir?"
"’Tis so, and the old Muscovite conditions—fifteen paces, and a line to come up to. You'll be ready to leave with me at dawn."
"Do you drive far, sir?"
"Four miles to the woods we passed in the carriage on the road here. The count goes with us. Whether he'll return, God only knows. I'm thinking that he won't."
I didn't say so to him, but I knew that if ever the wish was father to the thought, here was the time. Only let the count go down in the morning, and the field was open to him. What would happen if it turned out the other way, I could not think. But I had a suspicion that, even then, Sir Nicolas was the only one who would get any thing by the move; and I wasn't far wrong, as you will learn presently.
The meeting had been fixed for dawn, as you have heard; but the fact was kept close by those who took the lead, and I don't believe that Mme. Pouzatòv or her daughter knew a word about it. As for the count, he had spent the day in the house of the village priest; and I saw nothing of him until dinner was over, and I was out in the park trying the pistols which Sir Nicolas had given to me. At that time the other must have been coming up to our place to see his seconds, for I found him all at once standing beside me and watching my work curiously.
"Comment, mon ami," said he, "you have quarrelled with the trees, then?"
"That's it, sir," said I. "Let's hope there won't be more damage done to-morrow morning than there is to-night."
At this he laughed, rather savagely I thought, for he was most bitter to the general all through it, perhaps because he was a devil at heart, perhaps because he really did feel strong about the woman.
"Sacré nom d'un nom!" he went on presently, "that would not please me. He has smacked me with his glove. I will return it to him round a bullet. Let me have the pistol in my hand a moment."
He took it up, for I had loaded it, and aimed it at the nearest tree. I could have laughed when he did not even touch the bark.
"Halloa, sir!" said I, "that won't do in the morning. He's a big man, is the general; but he hasn't quite got the girth of that tree."
"The devil take him, no," said he; "but he will die, nevertheless"—and with this he turned on his heel and went swaggering off to the great house like the dirty swashbuckler he was,
"Go on, my man," said I; "but if it isn't your corpse I put in the carriage to-morrow morning, write me down a tenderfoot. He'll shoot you like a dog, and you deserve it too."
I must say that I could see no other end to it. The general was a notorious pistol-shot; this man did not appear able to hit a cow at ten yards. It occurred to me at the time that Nicky knew of this when he egged him on so hard to refuse an apology, as I heard afterward that he did. Be that as it may, I went to bed saying to myself that Count Fédor Uspensky was as good as a dead man; and I got up, half an hour before dawn, precisely of the same opinion.
It was a bitter morning, dark and cold and stormy. The east wind whistled through the pines in a way most dismal to hear. There was a shower of biting sleet just as we started which almost took pieces out of our faces. We all drank cups of steaming coffee and plenty of brandy with that, wrapping ourselves up just like men going out to sing carols. It had been agreed that, we should pick up the count as we drove through the village. Sir Nicolas and I were alone in the four-horse carriage which Mme. Pouzatòv had lent to us, on the understanding that we were driving into Novgorod to smooth down all the trouble. I felt like a man going to a funeral, and I don't think my master was much better,
"Well," said he, when we turned from the park out upon the bare and lonely high-road to Novgorod, "which of them, I wonder, will live to speak of this morning."
"Both, I hope, sir," said I, "Any way, they should do, if the general can't shoot any better than our man."
"’Tis not that at all," replied he, lighting a cigar, and shivering even in his thick coat—"’tis not that at all, but a very bloody business, this same Russian duelling. Ye'll understand that they fire when they please after the word is given, and that if either man takes a step forward toward the centre line, the other man must do the same. Bedad! it might be plain murder, aud nothing less."
"What if they both fire up in the air, sir?" said I.
"’T would be a miracle," cried he; and just then we drove up to the house of the priest, and the count got into the carriage.
He was wrapped up as we were, a heavy military coat covering nearly the whole of his uniform. I could see that he had been priming himself up with drink, and he spoke like a man acting a wild part. Indeed, to hear him you might have thought that there was no such dare-devil in all Europe; while what he said about the general wasn't fit for the ears of a dog. When we were sick of his boasting—and that was soon—he fell to singing snatches of French songs, bawling, "Nous, nous marierons dimanche," by which I took it that he really meant seriously by the girl who had brought all the trouble. And I was precious glad at last when the carriage turned from the high-road into the woods, and it was time for us to get out.