She did not know anyone was near her, and when I moved and my spurs clanked on the stones, she started, and turned her eyes slowly toward the shadow in which I sat.
During dinner they must have told her which one of us was to fight the duel, for when she recognized me she moved sharply away. I did not wish her to think I would intrude on her against her will, so I rose and walked toward the door, but before I had reached it she again turned and approached me.
"You are Captain Macklin?" she said.
I was so excited at the thought that she was about to speak to me, and so happy to hear her voice, that for an instant I could only whip off my hat and gaze at her stupidly.
"Captain Macklin," she repeated. "This afternoon I tried to stop the duel you are to fight with my brother, and I am told that I made a very serious blunder. I should like to try and correct it. When I spoke of my brother"s skill, I mean his skill with the pistol, I knew you were ignorant of it and I thought if you did know of it you would see the utter folly, the wickedness of this duel. But instead I am told that I only made it difficult for you not to meet him. I cannot in the least see that that follows. I wish to make it clear to you that it does not."
She paused, and I, as though I had been speaking, drew a long breath.
Had she been reading from a book her tone could not have been more impersonal. I might have been one of a cla.s.s of school-boys to whom she was expounding a problem. At the Point I have heard officers" wives use the same tone to the enlisted men. Its effect on them was to drive them into a surly silence.
But Miss Fiske did not seem conscious of her tone.
"After I had spoken," she went on evenly, "they told me of your reputation in this country, that you are known to be quite fearless.
They told me of your ordering your own men to shoot you, and of how you took a cannon with your hands. Well, I cannot see--since your reputation for bravery is so well established--that you need to prove it further, certainly not by engaging in a silly duel. You cannot add to it by fighting my brother, and if you should injure him, you would bring cruel distress to--to others."
"I a.s.sure you---" I began.
"Pardon me," she said, raising her hand, but still speaking in the same even tone. "Let me explain myself fully. Your own friends said in my hearing," she went on, "that they did not desire a fight. It is then my remark only which apparently makes it inevitable."
She drew herself up and her tone grew even more distant and disdainful.
"Now, it is not possible," she exclaimed, "that you and your friends are going to take advantage of my mistake, and make it the excuse for this meeting. Suppose any harm should come to my brother." For the first time her voice carried a touch of feeling. "It would be my fault. I would always have myself to blame. And I want to ask you not to fight him. I want to ask you to withdraw from this altogether."
I was completely confused. Never before had a young lady of a cla.s.s which I had so seldom met, spoken to me even in the words of everyday civility, and now this one, who was the most wonderful and beautiful woman I had ever seen, was asking me to grant an impossible favor, was speaking of my reputation for bravery as though it were a fact which everyone accepted, and was begging me not to make her suffer. What added to my perplexity was that she asked me to act only as I desired to act, but she asked it in such a manner that every nerve in me rebelled.
I could not understand how she could ask so great a favor of one she held in such evident contempt. It seemed to me that she should not have addressed me at all, or if she did ask me to stultify my honor and spare the life of her precious brother she should not have done so in the same tone with which she would have asked a tradesman for his bill. The fact that I knew, since I meant to fire in the air, that the duel was a farce, made it still more difficult for me to speak.
But I managed to say that what she asked was impossible.
"I do not know," I stammered, "that I ought to talk about it to you at all. But you don"t understand that your brother did not only insult me.
He insulted my regiment, and my general. It was that I resented, and that is why I am fighting."
"Then you refuse?" she said.
"I have no choice," I replied; "he has left me no choice."
She drew back, but still stood looking at me coldly. The dislike in her eyes wounded me inexpressively.
Before she spoke I had longed only for the chance to a.s.sure her of my regard, and had she appealed to me generously, in a manner suited to one so n.o.ble-looking, I was in a state of mind to swim rivers and climb mountains to serve her. I still would have fought the duel, but sooner than harm her brother I would have put my hand in the fire. Now, since she had spoken, I was filled only with pity and disappointment. It seemed so wrong that one so finely bred and wonderfully fair should feel so little consideration. No matter how greatly she had been prejudiced against me she had no cause to ignore my rights in the matter. To speak to me as though I had no honor of my own, no worthy motive, to treat me like a common brawler who, because his vanity was wounded, was trying to force an unoffending stranger to a fight.
My vanity was wounded, but I felt more sorry for her than for myself, and when she spoke again I listened eagerly, hoping she would say something which would soften what had gone before. But she did not make it easier for either of us.
"If I persuade my brother to apologize for what he said of your regiment," she continued, "will you accept his apology?" Her tone was one partly of interrogation, partly of command. "I do not think he is likely to do so," she added, "but if you will let that suffice, I shall see him at once, and ask him."
"You need not do that!" I replied, quickly. "As I have said, it is not my affair. It concerns my--a great many people. I am sorry, but the meeting must take place."
For the first time Miss Fiske smiled, but it was the same smile of amus.e.m.e.nt with which she had regarded us when she first saw us in the plaza.
"I quite understand," she said, still smiling. "You need not a.s.sure me that it concerns a great many people." She turned away as though the interview was at an end, and then halted. She had stepped into the circle of the moonlight so that her beauty shone full upon me.
"I know that it concerns a great many people," she cried. "I know that it is all a part of the plot against my father!"
I gave a gasp of consternation which she misconstrued, for she continued, bitterly.
"Oh, I know everything," she said. "Mr. Graham has told me all that you mean to do. I was foolish to appeal to any one of you. You have set out to fight my father, and your friends will use any means to win. But I should have thought," she cried, her voice rising and ringing like an alarm, "that they would have stopped at a.s.sa.s.sinating his son."
I stepped back from her as though she had struck at me.
"Miss Fiske," I cried. What she had charged was so monstrous, so absurd that I could answer nothing in defence. My brain refused to believe that she had said it. I could not conceive that any creature so utterly lovely could be so unseeing, so bitter, and so unfair.
Her charge was ridiculous, but my disappointment in her was so keen that the tears came to my eyes.
I put my hat back on my head, saluted her and pa.s.sed her quickly.
"Captain Macklin," she cried. "What is it? What have I said?" She stretched out her hand toward me, but I did not stop.
"Captain Macklin!" she called after me in such a voice that I was forced to halt and turn.
"What are you going to do?" she demanded. "Oh, yes, I see," she exclaimed. "I see how it sounded to you. And you?" she cried. Her voice was trembling with concern. "Because I said that, you mean to punish me for it--through my brother? You mean to make him suffer. You will kill him!" Her voice rose to an accent of terror. "But I only said it because he is my brother, my own brother. Cannot you understand what that means to me? Cannot you understand why I said it?"
We stood facing each other, I, staring at her miserably, and she breathing quickly, and holding her hand to her side as though she had been running a long distance.
"No," I said in a low voice. It was very hard for me to speak at all.
"No, I cannot understand."
I pulled off my hat again, and stood before her crushing it in my hands.
"Why didn"t you trust me?" I said, bitterly. "How could you doubt what I would do? I trusted you. From the moment you came riding toward me, I thanked G.o.d for the sight of such a woman. For making anything so beautiful."
I stopped, for I saw I had again offended. At the words she drew back quickly, and her eyes shone with indignation. She looked at me as though I had tried to touch her with my hand. But I spoke on without heeding her. I repeated the words with which I had offended.
"Yes," I said, "I thanked G.o.d for anything so n.o.ble and so beautiful. To me, you could do no wrong. But you! You judged me before you even knew my name. You said I was a cad who went about armed to fight unarmed men. To you I was a coward who could be frightened off by a tale of bulls-eyes, and broken pipe-stems at a Paris fair. What do I care for your brother"s tricks. Let him see my score cards at West Point. He"ll find them framed on the walls. I was first a coward and a cad, and now I am a bully and a hired a.s.sa.s.sin. From the first, you and your brother have laughed at me and mine while all I asked of you was to be what you seemed to be, what I was happy to think you were. I wanted to believe in you. Why did you show me that you can be selfish and unfeeling? It is you who do not understand. You understand so little," I cried, "that I pity you from the bottom of my heart. I give you my word, I pity you."
"Stop," she commanded. I drew back and bowed, and we stood confronting each other in silence.
"And they call you a brave man," she said at last, speaking slowly and steadily, as though she were picking each word. "It is like a brave man to insult a woman, because she wants to save her brother"s life."
When I raised my face it was burning, as though she had thrown vitriol.
"If I have insulted you, Miss Fiske," I said, "if I have ever insulted any woman, I hope to G.o.d that to-morrow morning your brother will kill me."
When I turned and looked back at her from the door, she was leaning against one of the pillars with her face bent in her hands, and weeping bitterly.
I rode to the barracks and spent several hours in writing a long letter to Beatrice. I felt a great need to draw near to her. I was confused and sore and unhappy, and although nothing of this, nor of the duel appeared in my letter, I was comforted to think that I was writing it to her. It was good to remember that there was such a woman in the world, and when I compared her with the girl from whom I had just parted, I laughed out loud.
And yet I knew that had I put the case to Beatrice, she would have discovered something to present in favor of Miss Fiske.