"I sha"n"t hurt the Barone," smiling faintly.
"Are you going to be a.s.s enough to pop your gun in the air?" indignantly.
Abbott shrugged; and the colonel cursed himself for the guiltiest scoundrel unhung.
Half an hour later the opponents stood at each end of the tennis-court.
Ellicott, the surgeon, had laid open his medical case. He was the most agitated of the five men. His fingers shook as he spread out the lints and bandages. The colonel and Courtlandt had solemnly gone through the formality of loading the weapons. The sun had not climbed over the eastern summits, but the snow on the western tops was rosy.
"At the word three, gentlemen, you will fire," said the colonel.
The two shots came simultaneously. Abbott had deliberately pointed his into the air. For a moment he stood perfectly still; then, his knees sagged, and he toppled forward on his face.
"Great G.o.d!" whispered the colonel; "you must have forgotten the ramrod!"
He, Courtlandt, and the surgeon rushed over to the fallen man. The Barone stood like stone. Suddenly, with a gesture of horror, he flung aside his smoking pistol and ran across the court.
"Gentlemen," he cried, "on my honor, I aimed three feet above his head."
He wrung his hands together in anxiety. "It is impossible! It is only that I wished to see if he were a brave man. I shoot well. It is impossible!"
he reiterated.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Suddenly he flung aside his smoking pistol.]
Rapidly the cunning hand of the surgeon ran over Abbott"s body. He finally shook his head. "Nothing has touched him. His heart gave under. Fainted."
When Abbott came to his senses, he smiled weakly. The Barone was one of the two who helped him to his feet.
"I feel like a fool," he said.
"Ah, let me apologize now," said the Barone. "What I did at the ball was wrong, and I should not have lost my temper. I had come to you to apologize then. But I am Italian. It is natural that I should lose my temper," navely.
"We"re both of us a pair of fools, Barone. There was always some one else.
A couple of fools."
"Yes," admitted the Barone eagerly.
"Considering," whispered the colonel in Courtlandt"s ear; "considering that neither of them knew they were shooting nothing more dangerous than wads, they"re pretty good specimens. Eh, what?"
CHAPTER XIX
COURTLANDT TELLS A STORY
The Colonel and his guests at luncheon had listened to Courtlandt without sound or movement beyond the occasional rasp of feet shifting under the table. He had begun with the old familiar phrase--"I"ve got a story."
"Tell it," had been the instant request.
At the beginning the men had been leaning at various negligent angles,--some with their elbows upon the table, some with their arms thrown across the backs of their chairs. The partridge had been excellent, the wine delicious, the tobacco irreproachable. Burma, the tinkle of bells in the temples, the strange pictures in the bazaars, long journeys over smooth and stormy seas; romance, moving and colorful, which began at Rangoon, had zigzagged around the world, and ended in Berlin.
"And so," concluded the teller of the tale, "that is the story. This man was perfectly innocent of any wrong, a victim of malice on the one hand and of injustice on the other."
"Is that the end of the yarn?" asked the colonel.
"Who in life knows what the end of anything is? This is not a story out of a book." Courtlandt accepted a fresh cigar from the box which Rao pa.s.sed to him, and dropped his dead weed into the ash-bowl.
"Has he given up?" asked Abbott, his voice strangely unfamiliar in his own ears.
"A man can struggle just so long against odds, then he wins or becomes broken. Women are not logical; generally they permit themselves to be guided by impulse rather than by reason. This man I am telling you about was proud; perhaps too proud. It is a shameful fact, but he ran away.
True, he wrote letter after letter, but all these were returned unopened.
Then he stopped."
"A woman would a good deal rather believe circ.u.mstantial evidence than not. Humph!" The colonel primed his pipe and relighted it. "She couldn"t have been worth much."
"Worth much!" cried Abbott. "What do you imply by that?"
"No man will really give up a woman who is really worth while, that is, of course, admitting that your man, Courtlandt, _is_ a man. Perhaps, though, it was his fault. He was not persistent enough, maybe a bit spineless. The fact that he gave up so quickly possibly convinced her that her impressions were correct. Why, I"d have followed her day in and day out, year after year; never would I have let up until I had proved to her that she had been wrong."
"The colonel is right," Abbott approved, never taking his eyes off Courtlandt, who was apparently absorbed in the contemplation of the bread crumbs under his fingers.
"And more, by hook or crook, I"d have dragged in the other woman by the hair and made her confess."
"I do not doubt it, Colonel," responded Courtlandt, with a dry laugh. "And that would really have been the end of the story. The heroine of this rambling tale would then have been absolutely certain of collusion between the two."
"That is like a woman," the Barone agreed, and he knew something about them. "And where is this man now?"
"Here," said Courtlandt, pushing back his chair and rising. "I am he." He turned his back upon them and sought the garden.
Tableau!
"Dash me!" cried the colonel, who, being the least interested personally, was first to recover his speech.
The Barone drew in his breath sharply. Then he looked at Abbott.
"I suspected it," replied Abbott to the mute question. Since the episode of that morning his philosophical outlook had broadened. He had fought a duel and had come out of it with flying colors. As long as he lived he was certain that the petty affairs of the day were never again going to disturb him.
"Let him be," was the colonel"s suggestion, adding a gesture in the direction of the cas.e.m.e.nt door through which Courtlandt had gone. "He"s as big a man as Nora is a woman. If he has returned with the determination of winning her, he will."
They did not see Courtlandt again. After a few minutes of restless to-and-froing, he proceeded down to the landing, helped himself to the colonel"s motor-boat, and returned to Bellaggio. At the hotel he asked for the duke, only to be told that the duke and madame had left that morning for Paris. Courtlandt saw that he had permitted one great opportunity to slip past. He gave up the battle. One more good look at her, and he would go away. The odds had been too strong for him, and he knew that he was broken.
When the motor-boat came back, Abbott and the Barone made use of it also.
They crossed in silence, heavy-hearted.
On landing Abbott said: "It is probable that I shall not see you again this year. I am leaving to-morrow for Paris. It"s a great world, isn"t it, where they toss us around like dice? Some throw sixes and others deuces.
And in this game you and I have lost two out of three."
"I shall return to Rome," replied the Barone. "My long leave of absence is near its end."