Chapter XXI

In a few brief sentences Jeff told of to-morrow’s crisis, of the challenge and his acceptance. Molly was pale when he came in, but that mere absence of her usual gay color was not to be compared with this stark, chalk whiteness in which her eyes now burned. At last she stopped him by her hand, icy and trembling, touching his.

“You can’t, you can’t, Jeff!” she told him, shaking her head and searching his eyes. “You must not do this thing! If you won’t stop on my account, you must remember your duty here, for America! Jeff, you must go away to-night.”

He smiled gravely at her zeal. “Molly, you wouldn’t have me run away! You couldn’t bear to have one of your countrymen show the white feather!”

“Oh, you can’t mean this.” Her hands groped again at his. “Don’t you see your life isn’t your own now, and you have no right to risk it? You have your work to do—to put through this big thing you were sent up here to do. You can’t betray that trust!”

His rounding eyes showed his amazement. “Molly, do you know my real purpose up here?”

“Of course. How could I keep from guessing it in these weeks we have been together. Jeff, you must escape from here to-night. I’ll find a way.”

“Molly, if there were a thousand ways of escape, I couldn’t take one of them. I can no more avoid that duel now, than I can avoid breathing. You don’t understand and I can’t make you understand, but just the same, the keeping of that contract with Karl is the first law of my life. It is a matter of honor more sacred to me than anything else in the world.”

“Oh, what do I care for your idea of honor? I only know you are walking up there deliberately to be killed by an assassin. You say yourself it was a trap—”

“A trap that I walked into, and can’t walk out of. Now I must see the thing through. Not only my honor—which you make light of—but my self-respect is at stake. Please don’t ask me not to go, Molly—I’ll have to go anyway. It won’t make it any easier.”

“I know you’ll go, well enough.” Her tone now had changed to one of profound bitterness. Suddenly she realized that her tears were wasted on him; and this was not a mere belief—otherwise she would kneel at his feet, if need be—but unqualified conviction: he would go to meet his man in spite of her. She could not change him. Though men are children in women’s hands in some things, in others—strange, witless things in woman’s eyes—they are like iron. “Men will always go to fight, no matter if their own babies plead with them to come back. What do you care for us—what does any man care for any woman, when she gets in the way of some wicked thing he wants to do! We’re just dust to step on!”

She looked up with blue eyes flashing with the light of her vision. He took her fluttering hand and held it in his.

“You don’t understand,” he told her. “I suppose woman never can understand about this. But you haven’t interpreted this thing right, Molly, though I suppose I can’t convince you. I came here to get your good wishes before I go into the night.”

“And I give ’em, with all my heart. But that won’t turn his bullets away from you.”

“You don’t know. I want you to be sure you forgive me, everything—”

“Yes, everything. Even going, Jeff, in spite of my prayers. We always forgive you—even when you are going to throw away a life that doesn’t belong to you.”

“But I’m not going to throw away my life.” His hand tightened on hers until she felt pain. “Molly, I’m going to come back. I’m going to win.”

Convinced that he was merely trying to cheer her with assurances which he knew to be false, she glanced dully into his eyes; but at the first glance her interest quickened. Then suddenly held a vivid, magnetic light she could not deny. Certainly he was bouyed up with new hope.

“You said—when you first came in—that probably you were going to your death—”

“But that was—when I first came in!” His brilliant smile flashed over his face. “A great deal has happened since then.”

“Nothing has happened. I just pleaded with you not to go—and you said you would go—anyway.” A gleam of hope flashed across her stark-white countenance.

“Yes, I’m going anyway—I have to go. Let’s not talk about that phase of it any more. Molly, something has happened—something that matters more than I ever dreamed. You’ve given me your good wishes.”

“Can that make any difference—to _you_!”

“Molly, when I came up here I had just tasted a more bitter drink than I ever dreamed was brewed on the earth. The name of that drink was loneliness. I felt that there was no one in the world who was really interested, except maybe regarding the furs, whether I came through that fight to-morrow, or whether I fell. I didn’t mind so much not having a second actually at the front with me, but I wanted—and I needed—a second somewhere behind the lines, praying for me to win. I’m not the man I thought I was, Molly. I can’t play a lone game. Once I thought I was independent of every living human being in the world, but I found out different to-night. When I came in here a few minutes ago I was already beaten and down. Somehow, my _hope_ seemed gone; and a man can’t fight without hope.”

No one could doubt his earnestness. He spoke quietly, yet his tone rang like a bugle call. “Molly, I was afraid; I tasted fear at its worst. And now, just because I’ve come back to your friendship, all my fear is gone.”

“But just because a man is not afraid, it doesn’t mean he will win. Brave men die, the same as all the others.”

“Just the same, confidence of winning helps a man to win. At least, I’m not beaten at the start, as I was. Why shouldn’t I win, Molly? I’ve handled a pistol all my life. I used to clip off the head of a wild turkey with an old flintlock pistol of my fathers. I’m fighting on the right side, instead of the wrong, and that’s a factor too.”

Certainly some of his confidence passed to her. Her color once more glowed faintly in her cheeks, enhanced by the glamor of her flaxen hair. “You _must_ win, Jeff,” she told him with deep solemnity. “Now tell me—what were you going to ask me to do? You said you came to ask help—”

“I didn’t have any definite thing to ask. I just knew I needed help and I came here for it, and you have given it to me. New heart—that is what you’ve given me.”

“And you don’t mean any real material help?”

“You’ve given me just that thing.”

“I don’t know whether I have or not, but I’m going to, if such a thing is possible! Jeff, who are you going to ask to be your second?”

“I haven’t anybody. The way I feel now, I wouldn’t mind asking your uncle.”

“I don’t want you to ask Uncle Dave. He would do it gladly—but he’s a man himself, with man’s folly. He’ll be too absorbed in the game to watch like I want you to be watched. You know who is going to stand beside you to-morrow?”

“No. Who is?”

“Molly Forest!”

He stared at her to see if he was to take this literally; and he read his answer in the bright, intent beam that reached his eyes from hers. Molly meant exactly what she said.

Jeff knew in advance the folly of arguing against the girl’s stand; but it can be said of him that he made an earnest and determined effort to dissuade her. He explained that it might be a most terrible ordeal for her, that a dueling field was no place for a delicate woman; and in addition to this, such a thing was wholly unprecedented as far as he had ever heard. Dueling was a man’s game, he pointed out; and it was not playing quite fair to introduce into it a factor that might have a disturbing effect upon his opponent. He admired her courage, he said, admitting that her decision to second him in to-morrow’s fray was wholly in keeping with her positive, determined, spirited nature; but out of chivalry to her as well as respect for the rules of the game he could not let her carry out her intention.

She smiled throughout all his remarks; and he had the uncomfortable feeling that he was making no headway whatever. At last she summed up her position in a few words.

“I’m going, Jeff, whether you like it or not,” she told him simply but emphatically. “I don’t want you to fight this duel, but if you will anyway, I’m going to do all I can to help you. I’ll be on the scene to-morrow, whether or not you let me officiate as your second. You will say that I have no right, and I say to you a woman doesn’t have to have any right to do what her instincts bid her do. If we went by men’s rules of right and wrong this would be a far different place from what it is to-day.

“I only hope my presence _will_ have a disturbing influence on Baron Karl. The more I disturb him the better I will like it; if he thinks best, he can refuse to go on with the duel. I have no respect whatever for the precedents or the traditions of such a game as this. It isn’t a game—it’s a crime, that’s what it is. I have only hatred for the whole thing, and don’t admit that it’s an affair of honor; the thing was forced on you, and you say that yourself. Jeff, you can forget your chivalry in regard to me if it inclines you to try to keep me off the dueling field. I am not a child, and I can bear the sight of blood if I have to. Any place men go, women can follow if by so doing they can help. It’s part of woman’s destiny to endure more than man ever dreamed of.

“I’m going with you, my friend. I am going to stand beside you—just as real women have always had to stand beside men. I think you will have a better chance if you have at your side some one to uphold you as only a woman can uphold a man, and some one to watch over you—and that better chance is all I care about. Nothing else can influence me.

“We’ll fight this thing through together, man!” She stroked his lean hand. “My brave man!” Then, smiling wistfully, “my brave little boy.”