Joseph Conrad - The Point Of Honor

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Lieutenant D'Hubert, his faculties concentrated upon defence, needed all
his skill and science of the sword to stop the rushes of his adversary.
Twice already he had had to break ground.

[Illustration: 028.jpg "The angry clash of arms filled that prim
garden"]

It bothered him to feel his foothold made insecure by the round dry
gravel of the path rolling under the hard soles of his boots. This was
most unsuitable ground, he thought, keeping a watchful, narrowed
gaze shaded by long eyelashes upon the fiery staring eyeballs of his
thick-set adversary. This absurd affair would ruin his reputation of a
sensible, steady, promising young officer. It would damage, at any rate,
his immediate prospects and lose him the good will of his general. These
worldly preoccupations were no doubt misplaced in view of the solemnity
of the moment. For a duel whether regarded as a ceremony in the cult of
honour or even when regrettably casual and reduced in its moral essence
to a distinguished form of manly sport, demands perfect singleness of
intention, a homicidal austerity of mood. On the other hand, this vivid
concern for the future in a man occupied in keeping sudden death at
sword's length from his breast, had not a bad effect, inasmuch as it
began to rouse the slow anger of Lieutenant D'Hubert. Some seventy
seconds had elapsed since they had crossed steel and Lieutenant D'Hubert
had to break ground again in order to avoid impaling his reckless
adversary like a beetle for a cabinet of specimens. The result was that,
misapprehending the motive, Lieutenant Feraud, giving vent to triumphant
snarls, pressed his attack with renewed vigour.

This enraged animal, thought D'Hubert, will have me against the wall
directly. He imagined himself much closer to the house than he was; and
he dared not turn his head, such an act under the circumstances being
equivalent to deliberate suicide. It seemed to him that he was
keeping his adversary off with his eyes much more than with his point.
Lieutenant Feraud crouched and bounded with a tigerish, ferocious
agility--enough to trouble the stoutest heart. But what was more
appalling than the fury of a wild beast accomplishing in all innocence
of heart a natural function, was the fixity of savage purpose man
alone is capable of displaying. Lieutenant D'Hubert in the midst of
his worldly preoccupations perceived it at last. It was an absurd and
damaging affair to be drawn into. But whatever silly intention the
fellow had started with, it was clear that by this time he meant to
kill--nothing else. He meant it with an intensity of will utterly beyond
the inferior faculties of a tiger.

As is the case with constitutionally brave men, the full view of the
danger interested Lieutenant D'Hubert. And directly he got properly
interested, the length of his arm and the coolness of his head told in
his favour. It was the turn of Lieutenant Feraud to recoil. He did this
with a blood-curdling grunt of baffled rage. He made a swift feint and
then rushed straight forward.

"Ah! you would, would you?" Lieutenant D'Hubert exclaimed mentally to
himself. The combat had lasted nearly two minutes, time enough for any
man to get embittered, apart from the merits of the quarrel. And all at
once it was over. Trying to close breast to breast under his adversary's
guard, Lieutenant Feraud received a slash on his shortened arm. He did
not feel it in the least, but it checked his rush, and his feet slipping
on the gravel, he fell backward with great violence. The shock
jarred his boiling brain into the perfect quietude of insensibility.
Simultaneously with his fall the pretty servant girl shrieked
piercingly; but the old maiden lady at the window ceased her scolding
and with great presence of mind began to cross herself.

In the first moment, seeing his adversary lying perfectly still, his
face to the sky and his toes turned up, Lieutenant D'Hubert thought he
had killed him outright. The impression of having slashed hard enough
to cut his man clean in two abode with him for awhile in an exaggerated
impression of the right good will he had put into the blow. He went down
on his knees by the side of the prostrate body. Discovering that not
even the arm was severed, a slight sense of disappointment mingled with
the feeling of relief. But, indeed, he did not want the death of that
sinner. The affair was ugly enough as it stood. Lieutenant D'Hubert
addressed himself at once to the task of stopping the bleeding. In this
task it was his fate to be ridiculously impeded by the pretty maid. The
girl, filling the garden with cries for help, flung herself upon his
defenceless back and, twining her fingers in his hair, tugged at his
head. Why she should choose to hinder him at this precise moment he
could not in the least understand. He did not try. It was all like
a very wicked and harassing dream. Twice, to save himself from being
pulled over, he had to rise and throw her off. He did this stoically,
without a word, kneeling down again at once to go on with his work. But
when the work was done he seized both her arms and held them down. Her
cap was half off, her face was red, her eyes glared with crazy boldness.
He looked mildly into them while she called him a wretch, a traitor and
a murderer many times in succession. This did not annoy him so much as
the conviction that in her scurries she had managed to scratch his face
abundantly. Ridicule would be added to the scandal of the story. He
imagined it making its way through the garrison, through the whole army,
with every possible distortion of motive and sentiment and circumstance,
spreading a doubt upon the sanity of his conduct and the distinction of
his taste even into the very bosom of his honourable family. It was all
very well for that fellow Feraud, who had no connections, no family
to speak of, and no quality but courage which, anyhow, was a matter
of course, and possessed by every single trooper in the whole mass of
French cavalry. Still holding the wrists of the girl in a strong grip,
Lieutenant D'Hubert looked over his shoulder. Lieutenant Feraud had
opened his eyes. He did not move. Like a man just waking from a deep
sleep he stared with a drowsy expression at the evening sky.

Lieutenant D'Hubert's urgent shouts to the old gardener produced no
effect--not so much as to make him shut his toothless mouth. Then
he remembered that the man was stone deaf. All that time the girl,
attempting to free her wrists, struggled, not with maidenly coyness but
like a sort of pretty dumb fury, not even refraining from kicking
his shins now and then. He continued to hold her as if in a vice, his
instinct telling him that were he to let her go she would fly at his
eyes. But he was greatly humiliated by his position. At last she gave
up, more exhausted than appeased, he feared. Nevertheless he attempted
to get out of this wicked dream by way of negotiation.

"Listen to me," he said as calmly as he could. "Will you promise to run
for a surgeon if I let you go?"

He was profoundly afflicted when, panting, sobbing, and choking, she
made it clear that she would do nothing of the kind. On the contrary,
her incoherent intentions were to remain in the garden and fight with
her nails and her teeth for the protection of the prostrate man. This
was horrible.

"My dear child," he cried in despair, "is it possible that you think me
capable of murdering a wounded adversary? Is it.... Be quiet, you little
wildcat, you," he added.

She struggled. A thick sleepy voice said behind him:

"What are you up to with that girl?"

Lieutenant Feraud had raised himself on his good arm. He was looking
sleepily at his other arm, at the mess of blood on his uniform, at a
small red pool on the ground, at his sabre lying a foot away on the
path. Then he laid himself down gently again to think it all out as far
as a thundering headache would permit of mental operations.

Lieutenant D'Hubert released the girl's wrists. She flew away down the
path and crouched wildly by the side of the vanquished warrior. The
shades of night were falling on the little trim garden with this
touching group whence proceeded low murmurs of sorrow and compassion
with other feeble sounds of a different character as if an imperfectly
awake invalid were trying to swear. Lieutenant D'Hubert went away, too
exasperated to care what would happen.

He passed through the silent house and congratulated himself upon the
dusk concealing his gory hands and scratched face from the passers-by.
But this story could by no means be concealed. He dreaded the discredit
and ridicule above everything, and was painfully aware of sneaking
through the back streets to his quarters. In one of these quiet side
streets the sounds of a flute coming out of the open window of a lighted
upstairs room in a modest house interrupted his dismal reflections. It
was being played with a deliberate, persevering virtuosity, and through
the _fioritures_ of the tune one could even hear the thump of the foot
beating time on the floor.

Lieutenant D'Hubert shouted a name which was that of an army surgeon
whom he knew fairly well. The sounds of the flute ceased and the
musician appeared at the window, his instrument still in his hand,
peering into the street.

"Who calls? You, D'Hubert! What brings you this way?"

He did not like to be disturbed when he was playing the flute. He was a
man whose hair had turned gray already in the thankless task of tying up
wounds on battlefields where others reaped advancement and glory.

"I want you to go at once and see Feraud. You know Lieutenant Feraud? He
lives down the second street. It's but a step from here."

"What's the matter with him?"

"Wounded."

"Are you sure?"

"Sure!" cried D'Hubert. "I come from there."

"That's amusing," said the elderly surgeon. Amusing was his favourite
word; but the expression of his face when he pronounced it never
corresponded. He was a stolid man. "Come in," he added. "I'll get ready
in a moment."

"Thanks. I will. I want to wash my hands in your room."

Lieutenant D'Hubert found the surgeon occupied in unscrewing his flute
and packing the pieces methodically in a velvet-lined case. He turned
his head.

"Water there--in the corner. Your hands do want washing."

"I've stopped the bleeding," said Lieutenant D'Hubert. "But you had
better make haste. It's rather more than ten minutes ago, you know."

The surgeon did not hurry his movements.

"What's the matter? Dressing came off? That's amusing. I've been busy
in the hospital all day, but somebody has told me that he hadn't a
scratch."

"Not the same duel probably," growled moodily Lieutenant D'Hubert,
wiping his hands on a coarse towel.

"Not the same.... What? Another? It would take the very devil to make
me go out twice in one day." He looked narrowly at Lieutenant
D'Hubert. "How did you come by that scratched face? Both sides too--and
symmetrical. It's amusing."

"Very," snarled Lieutenant D'Hubert. "And you will find his slashed arm
amusing too. It will keep both of you amused for quite a long time."

The doctor was mystified and impressed by the brusque bitterness of
Lieutenant D'Hubert's tone. They left the house together, and in the
street he was still more mystified by his conduct.

"Aren't you coming with me?" he asked.

"No," said Lieutenant D'Hubert. "You can find the house by yourself. The
front door will be open very likely."

"All right. Where's his room?"

"Ground floor. But you had better go right through and look in the
garden first."

This astonishing piece of information made the surgeon go off without
further parley. Lieutenant D'Hubert regained his quarters nursing a hot
and uneasy indignation. He dreaded the chaff of his comrades almost
as much as the anger of his superiors. He felt as though he had been
entrapped into a damaging exposure. The truth was confoundedly grotesque
and embarrassing to justify; putting aside the irregularity of the
combat itself which made it come dangerously near a criminal offence.
Like all men without much imagination, which is such a help in the
processes of reflective thought, Lieutenant D'Hubert became frightfully
harassed by the obvious aspects of his predicament. He was certainly
glad that he had not killed Lieutenant Feraud outside all rules and
without the regular witnesses proper to such a transaction. Uncommonly
glad. At the same time he felt as though he would have liked to wring
his neck for him without ceremony.

He was still under the sway of these contradictory sentiments when the
surgeon amateur of the flute came to see him. More than three days had
elapsed. Lieutenant D'Hubert was no longer _officier d'ordonnance_
to the general commanding the division. He had been sent back to his
regiment. And he was resuming his connection with the soldiers' military
family, by being shut up in close confinement not at his own quarters
in town, but in a room in the barracks. Owing to the gravity of the
incident, he was allowed to see no one. He did not know what had
happened, what was being said or what was being thought. The arrival
of the surgeon was a most unexpected event to the worried captive. The
amateur of the flute began by explaining that he was there only by a
special favour of the colonel who had thought fit to relax the general
isolation order for this one occasion.

"I represented to him that it would be only fair to give you authentic
news of your adversary," he continued. "You'll be glad to hear he's
getting better fast."

Lieutenant D'Hubert's face exhibited no conventional signs of gladness.
He continued to walk the floor of the dusty bare room.

"Take this chair, doctor," he mumbled.

The doctor sat down.

"This affair is variously appreciated in town and in the army. In fact
the diversity of opinions is amusing."

"Is it?" mumbled Lieutenant D'Hubert, tramping steadily from wall to
wall. But within himself he marvelled that there could be two opinions
on the matter. The surgeon continued:

"Of course as the real facts are not known--"

"I should have thought," interrupted D'Hubert, "that the fellow would
have put you in possession of the facts."

"He did say something," admitted the other, "the first time I saw him.
And, by-the-bye, I did find him in the garden. The thump on the back of
his head had made him a little incoherent then. Afterwards he was rather
reticent than otherwise."

"Didn't think he would have the grace to be ashamed," grunted D'Hubert,
who had stood still for a moment. He resumed his pacing while the doctor
murmured.

"It's very amusing. Ashamed? Shame was not exactly his frame of mind.
However, you may look at the matter otherwise----"

"What are you talking about? What matter?" asked D'Hubert with a
sidelong look at the heavy-faced, gray-haired figure seated on a wooden
chair.

"Whatever it is," said the surgeon, "I wouldn't pronounce an opinion on
your conduct...."

"By heavens, you had better not," burst out D'Hubert.

"There! There! Don't be so quick in flourishing the sword. It doesn't
pay in the long run. Understand once for all that I would not carve any
of you youngsters except with the tools of my trade. But my advice is
good. Moderate your temper. If you go on like this you will make for
yourself an ugly reputation."

"Go on like what?" demanded Lieutenant D'Hubert, stopping short,
quite startled. "I! I! make for myself a reputation.... What do you
imagine----"

"I told you I don't wish to judge of the rights and wrongs of this
incident. It's not my business. Nevertheless...."

"What on earth has he been telling you?" interrupted Lieutenant D'Hubert
in a sort of awed scare.

"I told, you already that at first when I picked him up in the garden
he was incoherent. Afterwards he was naturally reticent. But I gather at
least that he could not help himself...."

"He couldn't?" shouted Lieutenant D'Hubert. Then lowering his voice,
"And what about me? Could I help myself?"

The surgeon rose. His thoughts were running upon the flute, his constant
companion, with a consoling voice. In the vicinity of field ambulances,
after twenty-four hours' hard work, he had been known to trouble with
its sweet sounds the horrible stillness of battlefields given over
to silence and the dead. The solacing hour of his daily life was
approaching and in peace time he held on to the minutes as a miser to
his hoard.

"Of course! Of course!" he said perfunctorily. "You would think so. It's
amusing. However, being perfectly neutral and friendly to you both,
I have consented to deliver his message. Say that I am humouring an
invalid if you like. He says that this affair is by no means at an
end. He intends to send you his seconds directly he has regained his
strength--providing, of course, the army is not in the field at that
time."

"He intends--does he? Why certainly," spluttered Lieutenant D'Hubert
passionately. The secret of this exasperation was not apparent to the
visitor; but this passion confirmed him in the belief which was gaining
ground outside that some very serious difference had arisen between
these two young men. Something serious enough to wear an air of mystery.
Some fact of the utmost gravity. To settle their urgent difference
those two young men had risked being broken and disgraced at the outset,
almost, of their career. And he feared that the forthcoming inquiry
would fail to satisfy the public curiosity. They would not take the
public into their confidence as to that something which had passed
between them of a nature so outrageous as to make them face a charge of
murder--neither more nor less. But what could it be?

The surgeon was not very curious by temperament; but that question,
haunting his mind, caused him twice that evening to hold the instrument
off his lips and sit silent for a whole minute--right in the middle of a
tune--trying to form a plausible conjecture.

II

He succeeded in this object no better than the rest of the garrison and
the whole of society. The two young officers, of no especial consequence
till then, became distinguished by the universal curiosity as to the
origin of their quarrel. Madame de Lionne's salon was the centre of
ingenious surmises; that lady herself was for a time assailed with
inquiries as the last person known to have spoken to these unhappy and
reckless young men before they went out together from her house to
a savage encounter with swords, at dusk, in a private garden. She
protested she had noticed nothing unusual in their demeanour. Lieutenant
Feraud had been visibly annoyed at being called away. That was natural
enough; no man likes to be disturbed in a conversation with a lady
famed for her elegance and sensibility" But, in truth, the subject
bored Madame de Lionne since her personality could by no stretch of
imagination be connected with this affair. And it irritated her to hear
it advanced that there might have been some woman in the case. This
irritation arose, not from her elegance or sensibility, but from a more
instinctive side of her nature. It became so great at last that she
peremptorily forbade the subject to be mentioned under her roof. Near
her couch the prohibition was obeyed, but farther off in the salon
the pall of the imposed silence continued to be lifted more or less. A
diplomatic personage with a long pale face resembling the countenance
of a sheep, opined, shaking his head, that it was a quarrel of long
standing envenomed by time. It was objected to him that the men
themselves were too young for such a theory to fit their proceedings.
They belonged also to different and distant parts of France. A
subcommissary of the Intendence, an agreeable and cultivated bachelor
in keysermere breeches, Hessian boots and a blue coat embroidered with
silver lace, who affected to believe in the transmigration of souls,
suggested that the two had met perhaps in some previous existence.
The feud was in the forgotten past. It might have been something quite
inconceivable in the present state of their being; but their souls
remembered the animosity and manifested an instinctive antagonism. He
developed his theme jocularly. Yet the affair was so absurd from the
worldly, the military, the honourable, or the prudential point of view,
that this weird explanation seemed rather more reasonable than any
other.

The two officers had confided nothing definite to any one. Resentment,
humiliation at having been worsted arms in hand, and an uneasy feeling
of having been involved into a scrape by the injustice of fate, kept
Lieutenant Feraud savagely dumb. He mistrusted the sympathy of mankind.
That would of course go to that dandified staff officer. Lying in bed he
raved to himself in his mind or aloud to the pretty maid who ministered
to his needs with devotion and listened to his horrible imprecations
with alarm. That Lieutenant D'Hubert should be made to "pay for it,"
whatever it was, seemed to her just and natural. Her principal concern
was that Lieutenant Feraud should not excite himself. He appeared so
wholly admirable and fascinating to the humility of her heart that her
only concern was to see him get well quickly even if it were only to
resume his visits to Madame de Lionne's salon.

Lieutenant D'Hubert kept silent for the immediate reason that there was
no one except a stupid young soldier servant to speak to. But he was not
anxious for the opportunities of which his severe arrest deprived him.
He would have been uncommunicative from dread of ridicule. He was aware
that the episode, so grave professionally, had its comic side. When
reflecting upon it he still felt that he would like to wring Lieutenant
Feraud's neck for him. But this formula was figurative rather than
precise, and expressed more a state of mind than an actual physical
impulse. At the same time there was in that young man a feeling of
comradeship and kindness which made him unwilling to make the position
of Lieutenant Feraud worse than it was.

He did not want to talk at large about this wretched affair. At the
inquiry he would have, of course, to speak the truth in self-defence.
This prospect vexed him.

But no inquiry took place. The army took the field instead. Lieutenant
D'Hubert, liberated without remark, returned to his regimental duties,
and Lieutenant Feraud, his arm still in a sling, rode unquestioned with
his squadron to complete his convalescence in the smoke of battlefields
and the fresh air of night bivouacs. This bracing treatment suited his
case so well that at the first rumour of an armistice being signed he
could turn without misgivings to the prosecution of his private warfare.

This time it was to be regular warfare. He dispatched two friends to
Lieutenant D'Hubert, whose regiment was stationed only a few miles away.
Those friends had asked no questions of their principal. "I must pay him
off, that pretty staff officer," he had said grimly, and they went
away quite contentedly on their mission. Lieutenant D'Hubert had no
difficulty in finding two friends equally discreet and devoted to their
principal. "There's a sort of crazy fellow to whom I must give another
lesson," he had curtly declared, and they asked for no better reasons.

On these grounds an encounter with duelling swords was arranged one
early morning in a convenient field. At the third set-to, Lieutenant
D'Hubert found himself lying on his back on the dewy grass, with a hole
in his side. A serene sun, rising over a German landscape of meadows
and wooded hills, hung on his left. A surgeon--not the flute-player but
another--was bending over him, feeling around the wound.

"Narrow squeak. But it will be nothing," he pronounced.

Lieutenant D'Hubert heard these words with pleasure. One of his
seconds--the one who, sitting on the wet grass, was sustaining his head
on his lap-said:

"The fortune of war, _mon pauvre vieux_. What will you have? You had
better make it up, like two good fellows. Do!"

"You don't know what you ask," murmured Lieutenant D'Hubert in a feeble
voice. "However, if he..."

In another part of the meadow the seconds of Lieutenant Feraud were
urging him to go over and shake hands with his adversary.

"You have paid him off now--_que diable_. It's the proper thing to do.
This D'Hubert is a decent fellow."

"I know the decency of these generals' pets," muttered Lieutenant Feraud
through his teeth for all answer. The sombre expression of his face
discouraged further efforts at reconciliation. The seconds, bowing from
a distance, took their men off the field. In the afternoon, Lieutenant
D'Hubert, very popular as a good comrade uniting great bravery with
a frank and equable temper, had many visitors. It was remarked that
Lieutenant Feraud did not, as customary, show himself much abroad to
receive the felicitations of his friends. They would not have failed
him, because he, too, was liked for the exuberance of his southern
nature and the simplicity of his character. In all the places where
officers were in the habit of assembling at the end of the day the
duel of the morning was talked over from every point of view. Though
Lieutenant D'Hubert had got worsted this time, his sword-play was
commended. No one could deny that it was very close, very scientific.
If he got touched, some said, it was because he wished to spare his
adversary. But by many the vigour and dash of Lieutenant Feraud's attack
were pronounced irresistible.

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