Chapter VIII

[In which Paddy O’Connell of Glendalough, writes to his sister Clara a full account of the duel between Henry Gastonard and the Captain Bernard d’Alençon.]

Hôtel St. Paul, Paris,
June 7th, 1905.

Dear Clara,--You will have learned from the newspapers some of the news I have to tell you, but this will not make you less anxious to hear it a second time from a family pen.

I arrived in Paris early on the Saturday morning, and drove to the Hôtel St. Paul; for, where else would I be driving at all on such a day? The newspapers gave me a fine account of poor Henry as we went along, and small hope had I of cheering him alive or talking to anything better than a corpse. When I arrived at his hotel, they would have shut the door in my face but for a way I have with them, and for sure the journalists are here all day and would tear the very bandages from Harry’s body to photograph the wounds.

Well, I made my way up to the sick man’s room at last, and there found the poor fellow stretched upon his bed and looking by no means so cheerful as I should have wished to see him. By his side there was a little French girl, the one whom he wrote about last week, and a more beautiful creature the Lord never created.

This, I confess, was some surprise to me. I am very well acquainted with the ladies of Paris, and had made a picture of this particular lady for myself. Clara, I was as far from the truth as Dublin from Cork. This is a face that the man Greuze should have painted. And oh, the airs and graces of her, the little winning ways, and the dignity! He tells me that she came from the circus; but if he were not on his back I’d call him a liar. Mimi the Simpleton for sure--why, she has the sense of twenty in her head, and ’tis your own Paddy who grows red in the face every time he argues with her.

Well, the child sprang up upon my entrance, and stood there glaring at me like a wild cat out of the shows. What French I remember leads me to the belief that her observations were neither flattering to my appearance nor my manner--but, God forgive me, I may have mistranslated it. As for Harry, he just stirred in his sleep and told me to go away, which so tickled me that I laughed like a boy at the pantomime.

“Go away!” says I, “Then ’tis yourself that must be putting me out, for no other man in Paris can do it.”

“Why,” says he, “if it isn’t old Paddy.”

“My boy,” cried I, “my friend--the only one that ever I shall love in all this world--oh, God forgive you, Harry, for this,” says I.

“Paddy,” says he, “I thought you were a journalist. They’ve been here all day, Paddy.”

“Show me the man that will come here when I am by, and I will tell you where to bury him.”

“The old Paddy, every bit of him. Spoiling for a fight, as ever he was.”

“There is no more peaceable man in Paris,” says I; “but lucky that your Captain has gone to the wilds! I’d have shot him, Harry, though the Parliament itself had been there to prevent me.”

He laughed again at this, but I saw that he was in pain, or, to be honest, the little Greuze girl did that same for me, and spoke words of which I was content to be hearing poorly. ’Tis plain she worships the ground he treads upon, though there is not much of that same just now--while as for the boy himself, if there’s any woman in Europe he cares a button about, ask Paddy O’Connell to drink cold water, and see that he gets it.

“Why do you come here? Why do you make this noise?” she asked me--oh, the impudence of it!--with her pretty eyes blazing like coals and her cheeks so crimson that a Bishop might have kissed them. “Are you his friend to do this? Oh, be ashamed of yourself,” says she, “and go away immediately.”

’Twas a just rebuke, Clara, and Paddy not the man to be minding it. Presently, when I had done penance before her, she permitted me to sit in a chair at the bedside; and, every time I opened my mouth to speak, she looked so tremendous that I gulped down my words and ate them for very shame. By and by the doctor came in and asked Harry if I had been talking, and “never a word” says I, which was the truth to be sure.

I should tell you that Harry was shot on the collar-bone, and devil a shirt will he be putting on for a long while to come. ’Tis precious hard luck, for he was leaving for England next week to get his living as the Will wants him to do. What’s to come of it all now, God only knows. If he’s not making five hundred a year by his own exertions this time next year, he’ll lose his fortune, and that weedy old hack of a curate in Suffolk come in for the whole of it but a paltry hundred pounds a year. This must be talked over between us hereafter. To-day, when the doctor was gone, and the little witch with the pretty face sent out to do some shopping for him, he told me the story of the fight, and sorry I am that Paddy O’Connell missed that entertainment. For it was a fine affair entirely.

“Why did you go out with the man?” I asked him.

He answered me as shortly:

“Curiosity, Paddy.”

“The cause of half the mischief in the world. Was the woman sorry about it?”

“The beautiful Lea? Oh, my dear Paddy, she went to church to pray that I might shoot him.”

“There was nothing between you--your solemn word, Harry?”

“Paddy, am I the man----”

“I’d like to meet the one who’d tell me that you were.”

“I have done everything that men do in Paris--why should I have missed this, Paddy?”

“Ye were not the man to miss it. Show me the one who says so, and I’m ready for him.”

“I wanted to understand why people laugh at what they call an affair of honour. They all do laugh in England, and yet there are worse ways of putting a bit upon men’s tongues. When I chose pistols I hardly knew what I was doing. But I said it and had to stick to it, Paddy.”

“Of course, ye did. Ye weren’t afraid of him, Harry.”

“Not as you would understand it--upon my word, no. But a man who has been up all night in a reeking café, and then sees the sun rise over Belleville and remembers an appointment for six o’clock in a garden near Auteuil, that man would be a liar to say he liked it. There was one mortal hour, Paddy, when I would have given half my fortune to know what was going to happen. I remember thinking that most Englishmen would have pooh-poohed the whole affair and fallen back upon the national cant about scruples. Blame old Villefort, who dosed me with half the filth they keep at the Taverne Royale--and that old beggar, Oleander, who drank enough brandy to poison a regiment on the score of it.

“We came down from the Butte singing ‘Brunette aux Yeux Doux’ with all our lungs. I sha’n’t tell you a lie and say that I thought Paris looked beautiful, or anything of the kind, for it just isn’t, Paddy. Everything seemed as cold as a November fog. The sun shone sardonically--I remember seeing maids about the doors of the houses, and envying them their occupation. A cabby who chaffed us was little better than an irritating blackguard, who should have been whipped.

“When we arrived at Count Louvier’s house--you know we fought in his garden--I remember hearing the bell ring about five hundred times before they let us in. If anyone had spoken, if someone had made a joke, I would have been grateful to him then, Paddy--but we just entered the hall of the house in silence, walked straight through to the garden, went on down toward the river, and took up our positions on the borders of a little thicket of fir, without as much as a monosyllable from any one of them. I didn’t like that--you wouldn’t have liked it yourself, Paddy.”

“Ye should have whistled an air,” said I, “laughed and joked yourself. That puts the iron into them. I remember that I was whistling ‘Finnigan’s Wake’ when I knocked down Peter Morley, that had me up at the police-court afterwards. Ye should have whistled, Harry!”

He smiled at the idea of it, and for some while he would not talk again. When he had rested himself and taken a drink of the stuff the doctor man gave him--God send me good whisky in such a plight!--he told me the rest of it.

“They put a pistol into my hand, Paddy, and it felt just like an iron bar. When I saw d’Alençon I wasn’t angry with him, but the devil on two sticks could not have cut an uglier figure than he did. The man was shooting fire already from his eyes--he couldn’t stand still a minute, was here and there and everywhere, but always turning back to look at me, as though he would tear my heart out----”

“Ye weren’t behind in that, Harry?” asks I. “Ye didn’t wish him the top of the morning, or anything of that kind?”

“No, Paddy--but I was sorry to see him so angry. I had done him no injury--what he has suffered--for I know Lea’s story--is in a measure, his own fault. Perhaps I had been wiser never to see her at all--I used to swear I would cut it every time I left her. If Paris were not the smallest city in the world when you want to avoid anybody, I would have kept my word. But I think she used to wait for me--hide where she knew I would come, and make a fool of herself all the time. That’s why the Captain looked like a human devil when he stood opposite to me that morning. If he hadn’t hit me with his bullet, I believe he would have used the butt.”

“Ay, and a man’s game, too, Harry. ’Tis one I would have had a hand in myself--but you shouldn’t have missed him, boy--you used to be handy with a pistol, and you shouldn’t have missed him.”

He sighed a bit at this, and I saw that I had wounded his vanity. Presently he said:--

“I could have shot him dead, Paddy, if I had wished--but, you see, I had Lea in my mind all the while, and I couldn’t be angry about it. It is difficult to make you understand it, but when the Chevalier placed us on the ground and put the pistol into my hand, I was half afraid to look at my man at all, his eyes were so queer. I could think of nothing else, Paddy. I didn’t remember that he might hit me; I forgot the man altogether; the fight was between me and the ugliest pair of eyes I have ever seen. When the word came to fire, I turned very slowly and raised my pistol with a child’s arm--I couldn’t look the Captain in the face, Paddy.”

“And ye didn’t try to hit him at all, Harry? Will ye tell me that ye let the blackguard go empty?”

“I fired when the Chevalier spoke, but I took no aim, Paddy. The Captain hung back and looked at me for some minutes before he shot me. I remember that there is a little wall running at an angle behind the corner of the wood, and over this I could see the river and a barge. A woman was steering a great lumber boat, and crying out something to a man on the towing path--and I kept asking myself when she would disappear from my sight; if it would be instantly in a sudden darkness; or slowly, as a picture fades from a sheet. When the crash came it was just as though a man had hit me with a hammer and then put a branding iron upon my shoulder. I forgot all about d’Alençon’s trouble then, and if I had held another pistol in my hand I would have shot him, rule or no rule. That’s the truth, Paddy; the pain maddened me--I could have crushed his head in my hands, stamped him under foot--I no longer cared--I was sorry that there had been no reason for his challenge.”

“Shame on you for that. Please God, I’ll shoot him before the week is out.”

“No, no, Paddy--I absolutely forbid you to do anything at all.”

“I tell ye I’ll shoot him--right or wrong, I’ll have a bang at him.”

He laughed--just the same boyish Harry Gastonard that won my love twelve years ago at Charterhouse.

“He’ll choose swords if you challenge him, Paddy.”

“Then let him choose ’em and be hanged to him.”

He was about to reply when the little witch that Greuze should have painted came into the room again--and God forgive me, I told her that he had not opened his lips since she went out. It was now almost time for him to have his food--so I went up to my own room to write this letter.

Be easy, Clara. The Captain is not in Paris, and there’ll be no fighting--unless he should return--but of that you shall be the first to have the news.

Would my sister have me stand by when my oldest friend is on his back and the whole French nation dancing for joy of it?

I’ll do no such thing--shame upon any O’Connell who would. So God bless you, Clara--and more will I write when next I have a letter for you.--Your affectionate brother,

Paddy.