Joseph Conrad - The Point Of Honor

J >> Joseph Conrad >> The Point Of Honor

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8

"I must draw his fire at the greatest possible range," said General
D'Hubert to himself.

At that moment he saw something white moving far off between the trees.
The shirt of his adversary. He stepped out at once between the trunks
exposing himself freely, then quick as lightning leaped back. It had
been a risky move, but it succeeded in its object. Almost simultaneously
with the pop of a shot a small piece of bark chipped off by the bullet
stung his ear painfully.

And now General Feraud, with one shot expended, was getting cautious.
Peeping round his sheltering tree, General D'Hubert could not see him
at all. This ignorance of his adversary's whereabouts carried with it a
sense of insecurity. General D'Hubert felt himself exposed on his flanks
and rear. Again something white fluttered in his sight. Ha! The enemy
was still on his front then. He had feared a turning movement. But,
apparently, General Feraud was not thinking of it. General D'Hubert saw
him pass without special haste from one tree to another in the straight
line of approach. With great firmness of mind General D'Hubert stayed
his hand. Too far yet. He knew he was no marksman. His must be a waiting
game--to kill.

He sank down to the ground wishing to take advantage of the greater
thickness of the trunk. Extended at full length, head on to his enemy,
he kept his person completely protected. Exposing himself would not
do now because the other was too near by this time. A conviction that
Feraud would presently do something rash was like balm to General
D'Hubert's soul. But to keep his chin raised off the ground was irksome,
and not much use either. He peeped round, exposing a fraction of his
head, with dread but really with little risk. His enemy, as a matter of
fact, did not expect to see anything of him so low down as that. General
D'Hubert caught a fleeting view of General Feraud shifting trees again
with deliberate caution. "He despises my shooting," he thought, with
that insight into the mind of his antagonist which is of such great help
in winning battles. It confirmed him in his tactics of immobility. "Ah!
if I only could watch my rear as well as my front!" he thought, longing
for the impossible.

It required some fortitude to lay his pistols down. But on a sudden
impulse General D'Hubert did this very gently--one on each side. He had
been always looked upon as a bit of a dandy, because he used to shave
and put on a clean shirt on the days of battle. As a matter of fact he
had been always very careful of his personal appearance. In a man of
nearly forty, in love with a young and charming girl, this praiseworthy
self-respect may run to such little weaknesses as, for instance, being
provided with an elegant leather folding case containing a small ivory
comb and fitted with a piece of looking-glass on the outside. General
D'Hubert, his hands being free, felt in his breeches pockets for that
implement of innocent vanity, excusable in the possessor of long silky
moustaches. He drew it out, and then, with the utmost coolness and
promptitude, turned himself over on his back. In this new attitude, his
head raised a little, holding the looking-glass in one hand just clear
of his tree, he squinted into it with one eye while the other kept a
direct watch on the rear of his position. Thus was proved Napoleon's
saying, that for a French soldier the word impossible does not exist. He
had the right tree nearly filling the field of his little mirror.

"If he moves from there," he said to himself exultingly, "I am bound to
see his legs. And in any case he can't come upon me unawares."

And sure enough he saw the boots of General Feraud flash in and out,
eclipsing for an instant everything else reflected in the little mirror.
He shifted its position accordingly. But having to form his judgment of
the change from that indirect view, he did not realise that his own
feet and a portion of his legs were now in plain and startling view of
General Feraud.

General Feraud had been getting gradually impressed by the amazing
closeness with which his enemy had been keeping cover. He had spotted
the right tree with bloodthirsty precision. He was absolutely certain of
it. And yet he had not been able to sight as much as the tip of an ear.
As he had been looking for it at the level of about five feet ten inches
it was no great wonder--but it seemed very wonderful to General Feraud.

The first view of these feet and legs determined a rush of blood to his
head. He literally staggered behind his tree, and had to steady himself
with his hand. The other was lying on the ground--on the ground!
Perfectly still, too! Exposed! What did it mean?... The notion that he
had knocked his adversary over at the first shot then entered General
Feraud's head. Once there, it grew with every second of
attentive gazing, overshadowing every other
supposition--irresistible--triumphant--ferocious.

"What an ass I was to think I could have missed him!" he said to
himself. "He was exposed _en plein_--the fool--for quite a couple of
seconds."

And the general gazed at the motionless limbs, the last vestiges of
surprise fading before an unbounded admiration of his skill.

"Turned up his toes! By the god of war that was a shot!" he continued
mentally. "Got it through the head just where I aimed, staggered behind
that tree, rolled over on his back and died."

And he stared. He stared, forgetting to move, almost awed, almost sorry.
But for nothing in the world would he have had it undone. Such a shot!
Such a shot! Rolled over on his back, and died!

For it was this helpless position, lying on the back, that shouted its
sinister evidence at General Feraud. He could not possibly imagine
that it might have been deliberately assumed by a living man. It was
inconceivable. It was beyond the range of sane supposition. There was no
possibility to guess the reason for it. And it must be said that
General D'Hubert's turned-up feet looked thoroughly dead. General Feraud
expanded his lungs for a stentorian shout to his seconds, but from what
he felt to be an excessive scrupulousness, refrained for a while.

"I will just go and see first whether he breathes yet," he mumbled
to himself, stepping out from behind his tree. This was immediately
perceived by the resourceful General D'Hubert. He concluded it to be
another shift. When he lost the boots out of the field of the mirror, he
became uneasy. General Feraud had only stepped a little out of the line,
but his adversary could not possibly have supposed him walking up with
perfect unconcern. General D'Hubert, beginning to wonder where the other
had dodged to, was come upon so suddenly that the first warning he had
of his danger consisted in the long, early-morning shadow of his
enemy falling aslant on his outstretched legs. He had not even heard a
footfall on the soft ground between the trees!

It was too much even for his coolness. He jumped up instinctively,
leaving the pistols on the ground. The irresistible instinct of most
people (unless totally paralysed by discomfiture) would have been
to stoop--exposing themselves to the risk of being shot down in
that position. Instinct, of course, is irreflective. It is its very
definition. But it may be an inquiry worth pursuing, whether in
reflective mankind the mechanical promptings of instinct are not
affected by the customary mode of thought. Years ago, in his young
days, Armand D'Hubert, the reflective promising officer, had emitted the
opinion that in warfare one should "never cast back on the lines of
a mistake." This idea afterward restated, defended, developed in many
discussions, had settled into one of the stock notions of his brain,
became a part of his mental individuality. And whether it had gone so
inconceivably deep as to affect the dictates of his instinct, or simply
because, as he himself declared, he was "too scared to remember the
confounded pistols," the fact is that General D'Hubert never attempted
to stoop for them. Instead of going back on his mistake, he seized
the rough trunk with both hands and swung himself behind it with such
impetuosity that going right round in the very flash and report of a
pistol shot, he reappeared on the other side of the tree face to face
with General Feraud, who, completely unstrung by such a show of agility
on the part of a dead man, was trembling yet. A very faint mist of smoke
hung before his face which had an extraordinary aspect as if the lower
jaw had come unhinged.

"Not missed!" he croaked hoarsely from the depths of a dry throat.

This sinister sound loosened the spell which had fallen on General
D'Hubert's senses.

"Yes, missed--a _bout portant_" he heard himself saying exultingly
almost before he had recovered the full command of his faculties.
The revulsion of feeling was accompanied by a gust of homicidal fury
resuming in its violence the accumulated resentment of a lifetime.
For years General D'Hubert had been exasperated and humiliated by an
atrocious absurdity imposed upon him by that man's savage caprice.
Besides, General D'Hubert had been in this last instance too unwilling
to confront death for the reaction of his anguish not to take the shape
of a desire to kill.

"And I have my two shots to fire yet," he added pitilessly.

General Feraud snapped his teeth, and his face assumed an irate,
undaunted expression.

"Go on," he growled.

These would have been his last words on earth if General D'Hubert had
been holding the pistols in his hand. But the pistols were lying on the
ground at the foot of a tall pine. General D'Hubert had the second's
leisure necessary to remember that he had dreaded death not as a man but
as a lover, not as a danger but as a rival--not as a foe to life but
as an obstacle to marriage. And, behold, there was the rival defeated!
Miserably defeated-crushed--done for!

He picked up the weapons mechanically, and instead of firing them into
General Feraud's breast, gave expression to the thought uppermost in his
mind.

"You will fight no more duels now."

[Illustration: frontispiece166.jpg "You will fight no more duels now."]

His tone of leisurely, ineffable satisfaction was too much for General
Feraud's stoicism.

"Don't dawdle then, damn you for a coldblooded staff-coxcomb!" he roared
out suddenly out of an impassive face held erect on a rigid body.

General D'Hubert uncocked the pistols carefully. This proceeding was
observed with a sort of gloomy astonishment by the other general.

"You missed me twice," he began coolly, shifting both pistols to one
hand. "The last time within a foot or so. By every rule of single combat
your life belongs to me. That does not mean that I want to take it now."

"I have no use for your forbearance," muttered General Feraud savagely.

"Allow me to point out that this is no concern of mine," said General
D'Hubert, whose every word was dictated by a consummate delicacy of
feeling. In anger, he could have killed that man, but in cold blood, he
recoiled from humiliating this unreasonable being--a fellow soldier
of the Grand Armee, his companion in the wonders and terrors of the
military epic. "You don't set up the pretension of dictating to me what
I am to do with what is my own."

General Feraud looked startled. And the other continued:

"You've forced me on a point of honour to keep my life at your disposal,
as it were, for fifteen years. Very well. Now that the matter is decided
to my advantage, I am going to do what I like with your life on the same
principle. You shall keep it at my disposal as long as I choose. Neither
more nor less. You are on your honour."

"I am! But _sacrebleu!_ This is an absurd position for a general of
the empire to be placed in," cried General Feraud, in the accents of
profound and dismayed conviction. "It means for me to be sitting all the
rest of my life with a loaded pistol in a drawer waiting for your word.
It's... it's idiotic. I shall be an object of... of... derision."

"Absurd?... Idiotic? Do you think so?" queried argumentatively General
D'Hubert with sly gravity. "Perhaps. But I don't see how that can be
helped. However, I am not likely to talk at large of this adventure.
Nobody need ever know anything about it. Just as no one to this day, I
believe, knows the origin of our quarrel.... Not a word more," he added
hastily. "I can't really discuss this question with a man who, as far as
I am concerned, does not exist."

When the duellists came out into the open, General Feraud walking a
little behind and rather with the air of walking in a trance, the two
seconds hurried towards them each from his station at the edge of the
wood. General D'Hubert addressed them, speaking loud and distinctly:

"Messieurs! I make it a point of declaring to you solemnly in the
presence of General Feraud that our difference is at last settled for
good. You may inform all the world of that fact."

"A reconciliation after all!" they exclaimed together.

"Reconciliation? Not that exactly. It is something much more binding. Is
it not so, general?"

General Feraud only lowered his head in sign of assent. The two veterans
looked at each other. Later in the day when they found themselves alone,
out of their moody friend's earshot, the cuirassier remarked suddenly:

"Generally speaking, I can see with my one eye as far or even a little
farther than most people. But this beats me. He won't say anything."

"In this affair of honour I understand there has been from first to last
always something that no one in the army could quite make out," declared
the chasseur with the imperfect nose. "In mystery it began, in mystery
it went on, and in mystery it is to end apparently...."

General D'Hubert walked home with long, hasty strides, by no means
uplifted by a sense of triumph. He had conquered, but it did not seem
to him he had gained very much by his conquest. The night before he had
grudged the risk of his life which appeared to him magnificent, worthy
of preservation as an opportunity to win a girl's love. He had even
moments when by a marvellous illusion this love seemed to him already
his and his threatened life a still more magnificent opportunity of
devotion. Now that his life was safe it had suddenly lost it special
magnificence. It wore instead a specially alarming aspect as a snare for
the exposure of unworthiness. As to the marvellous illusion of conquered
love that had visited him for a moment in the agitated watches of the
night which might have been his last on earth, he comprehended now its
true nature. It had been merely a paroxysm of delirious conceit. Thus to
this man sobered by the victorious issue of a duel, life appeared robbed
of much of its charm simply because it was no longer menaced.

Approaching the house from the back through the orchard and the kitchen
gardens, he could not notice the agitation which reigned in front. He
never met a single soul. Only upstairs, while walking softly along the
corridor, he became aware that the house was awake and much more noisy
than usual. Names of servants were being called out down below in a
confused noise of coming and going. He noticed with some concern that
the door of his own room stood ajar, though the shutters had not been
opened yet. He had hoped that his early excursion would have passed
unperceived. He expected to find some servant just gone in; but the
sunshine filtering through the usual cracks enabled him to see lying
on the low divan something bulky which had the appearance of two women
clasped in each other's arms. Tearful and consolatory murmurs issued
mysteriously from that appearance. General D'Hubert pulled open the
nearest pair of shutters violently. One of the women then jumped up. It
was his sister. She stood for a moment with her hair hanging down and
her arms raised straight up above her head, and then flung herself with
a stifled cry into his arms. He returned her embrace, trying at the same
time to disengage himself from it. The other woman had not risen. She
seemed, on the contrary, to cling closer to the divan, hiding her face
in the cushions. Her hair was also loose; it was admirably fair. General
D'Hubert recognised it with staggering emotion. Mlle. de Valmassigue!
Adele! In distress!

He became greatly alarmed and got rid of his sister's hug definitely.
Madame Leonie then extended her shapely bare arm out of her peignoir,
pointing dramatically at the divan:

"This poor terrified child has rushed here two miles from home on
foot--running all the way."

"What on earth has happened?" asked General D'Hubert in a low, agitated
voice. But Madame Leonie was speaking loudly.

"She rang the great bell at the gate and roused all the household--we
were all asleep yet. You may imagine what a terrible shock.... Adele, my
dear child, sit up."

General D'Hubert's expression was not that of a man who imagines
with facility. He did, however, fish out of chaos the notion that his
prospective mother-in-law had died suddenly, but only to dismiss it at
once. He could not conceive the nature of the event, of the catastrophe
which could induce Mlle, de Valmassigue living in a house full of
servants, to bring the news over the fields herself, two miles, running
all the way.

"But why are you in this room?" he whispered, full of awe.

"Of course I ran up to see and this child... I did not notice it--she
followed me. It's that absurd Chevalier," went on Madame Leonie, looking
towards the divan.... "Her hair's come down. You may imagine she did not
stop to call her maid to dress it before she started.... Adele, my
dear, sit up.... He blurted it all out to her at half-past four in the
morning. She woke up early, and opened her shutters, to breathe the
fresh air, and saw him sitting collapsed on a garden bench at the end of
the great alley. At that hour--you may imagine! And the evening before
he had declared himself indisposed. She just hurried on some clothes and
flew down to him. One would be anxious for less. He loves her, but not
very intelligently. He had been up all night, fully dressed, the poor
old man, perfectly exhausted! He wasn't in a state to invent a plausible
story.... What a confidant you chose there!... My husband was furious!
He said: 'We can't interfere now.' So we sat down to wait. It was awful.
And this poor child running over here publicly with her hair loose.
She has been seen by people in the fields. She has roused the whole
household, too. It's awkward for her. Luckily you are to be married next
week.... Adele, sit up. He has come home on his own legs, thank God....
We expected you to come back on a stretcher perhaps--what do I know? Go
and see if the carriage is ready. I must take this child to her mother
at once. It isn't proper for her to stay here a minute longer."

General D'Hubert did not move. It was as though he had heard nothing.
Madame Leonie changed her mind.

"I will go and see to it myself," she said. "I want also to get my
cloak... Adele..." she began, but did not say "sit up." She went out
saying in a loud, cheerful tone: "I leave the door open."

General D'Hubert made a movement towards the divan, but then Adele
sat up and that checked him dead. He thought, "I haven't washed this
morning. I must look like an old tramp. There's earth on the back of
my coat, and pine needles in my hair." It occurred to him that the
situation required a good deal of circumspection on his part.

"I am greatly concerned, mademoiselle," he began timidly, and abandoned
that line. She was sitting up on the divan with her cheeks
unusually pink, and her hair brilliantly fair, falling all over her
shoulders--which was a very novel sight to the general. He walked away
up the room and, looking out of the window for safety, said: "I fear you
must think I behaved like a madman," in accents of sincere despair....
Then he spun round and noticed that she had followed him with her eyes.
They were not cast down on meeting his glance. And the expression of her
face was novel to him also. It was, one might have said, reversed. Her
eyes looked at him with grave thoughtfulness, while the exquisite lines
of her mouth seemed to suggest a restrained smile. This change made her
transcendental beauty much less mysterious, much more accessible to a
man's comprehension. An amazing ease of mind came to the general--and
even some ease of manner. He walked down the room with as much
pleasurable excitement as he would have found in walking up to a battery
vomiting death, fire, and smoke, then stood looking down with smiling
eyes at the girl whose marriage with him (next week) had been so
carefully arranged by the wise, the good, the admirable Leonie.

"Ah, mademoiselle," he said in a tone of courtly deference. "If I could
be certain that you did not come here this morning only from a sense of
duty to your mother!"

He waited for an answer, imperturbable but inwardly elated. It came in a
demure murmur, eyelashes lowered with fascinating effect.

"You mustn't be _mechant_ as well as mad."

And then General D'Hubert made an aggressive movement towards the divan
which nothing could check. This piece of furniture was not exactly in
the line of the open door. But Madame Leonie, coming back wrapped up in
a light cloak and carrying a lace shawl on her arm for Adele to hide
her incriminating hair under, had a vague impression of her brother
getting-up from his knees.

"Come along, my dear child," she cried from the doorway.

The general, now himself again in the fullest sense, showed the
readiness of a resourceful cavalry officer and the peremptoriness of a
leader of men.

"You don't expect her to walk to the carriage," he protested. "She isn't
fit. I will carry her downstairs."

This he did slowly, followed by his awed and respectful sister. But he
rushed back like a whirlwind to wash away all the signs of the night of
anguish and the morning of war, and to put on the festive garments of a
conqueror before hurrying over to the other house. Had it not been for
that, General D'Hubert felt capable of mounting a horse and pursuing his
late adversary in order simply to embrace him from excess of happiness.
"I owe this piece of luck to that stupid brute," he thought. "This duel
has made plain in one morning what might have taken me years to find
out--for I am a timid fool. No self-confidence whatever. Perfect coward.
And the Chevalier! Dear old man!" General D'Hubert longed to embrace
him, too.

The Chevalier was in bed. For several days he was much indisposed. The
men of the empire, and the post-revolution young ladies, were too much
for him. He got up the day before the wedding, and being curious by
nature, took his niece aside for a quiet talk. He advised her to find
out from her husband the true story of the affair of honour, whose claim
so imperative and so persistent had led her to within an ace of tragedy.
"It is very proper that his wife should know. And next month or so
will be your time to learn from him anything you ought to know, my dear
child."

Later on when the married couple came on a visit to the mother of the
bride, Madame la Generale D'Hubert made no difficulty in communicating
to her beloved old uncle what she had learned without any difficulty
from her husband. The Chevalier listened with profound attention to the
end, then took a pinch of snuff, shook the grains of tobacco off the
frilled front of his shirt, and said calmly: "And that's all what it
was."

"Yes, uncle," said Madame la Generale, opening her pretty eyes very
wide. "Isn't it funny? _C'est insense_--to think what men are capable
of."

"H'm," commented the old _emigre_. "It depends what sort of men. That
Bonaparte's soldiers were savages. As a wife, my dear, it is proper for
you to believe implicitly what your husband says."

But to Leonie's husband the Chevalier confided his true opinion.
"If that's the tale the fellow made up for his wife, and during the
honeymoon, too, you may depend on it no one will ever know the secret of
this affair."

Considerably later still, General D'Hubert judged the time come, and the
opportunity propitious to write a conciliatory letter to General Feraud.
"I have never," protested the General Baron D'Hubert, "wished for your
death during all the time of our deplorable quarrel. Allow me to give
you back in all form your forfeited life. We two, who have been partners
in so much military glory, should be friendly to each other publicly."

The same letter contained also an item of domestic information. It was
alluding to this last that General Feraud answered from a little village
on the banks of the Garonne:

"If one of your boy's names had been Napoleon, or Joseph, or even
Joachim, I could congratulate you with a better heart. As you have
thought proper to name him Charles Henri Armand I am confirmed in my
conviction that you never loved the emperor. The thought of that sublime
hero chained to a rock in the middle of a savage ocean makes life of so
little value that I would receive with positive joy your instructions to
blow my brains out. From suicide I consider myself in honour debarred.
But I keep a loaded pistol in my drawer."

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8