Silverstairs pulled at his moustache. “Then tell her to stay and she’ll go.”
But such strategy was needless. Aurelia had no intention of loitering among these men, not one of whom interested her remotely. With a glimpse of her pretty teeth to Verplank and a nod at the others, she passed, followed by Buttercups, through the gate which the footman held open.
Meanwhile the dogs were barking and, from the house beyond, Barouffski appeared. With him were friends of his, Palencia, Tyszkiewicz; also a young man with a serious face who, like the old man, had with him a case which gingerly he put on the ground.
Verplank glanced at them, went to the bench and began removing his coat.
The night before he had dreamed pleasurably, as the great beasts of the jungles dream, of blood and the joy of killing. He had dreamed also and less agreeably that Leilah’s story was true. However he had denied it, he did not know but that it might be. None the less he doubted. He doubted it for the most human of reasons, because he wanted to. He doubted it for another and a better reason, because his intuitions so prompted. He had yet another reason, one less valid perhaps but cogent, the dissimilarity between Leilah and himself. The contrast was so marked that they might have come of alien races, from different zones.
On leaving her house other differences had occurred to him, differences not physical but moral. It is ridiculous, he had told himself. None the less he dreamed that the story was true.
Meanwhile the parliamentaries had not been entirely successful. The note dispatched from Voisins had resulted that evening in a conference between Verplank’s seconds and Barouffski’s. These latter, Tyszkiewicz and Palencia, had begun by insisting that it was their principal who was aggrieved, that Verplank, in attempting to address a lady whom he knew did not wish to speak to him, had been wholly at fault and was deprived in consequence of the choice of weapons.
To this de Fresnoy had objected that Verplank knew nothing of the kind, that in addressing or in attempting to address the lady, he had acted in accordance with the usages of the world: moreover assuming him to have been in error in thinking that the lady did not object to being addressed, her slightest indication to the contrary would have been super-sufficient to make him desist, the result being that Barouffski’s intervention reflected on his good-breeding and was therefore an insult.
This view of the matter Barouffski’s seconds refused to accept. They represented that it were difficult for the lady to have more punctiliously informed Verplank of her disinclination to be addressed by him than she had already done in obtaining a divorce.
At the easy logic de Fresnoy laughed. According to him, all that was beside the issue. He declared that many divorced couples were better friends afterward than they had found it possible to be before. In support of the statement he cited history: he cited the case of Henri IV and the Reine Margot. He did more than cite, he quoted the chronicles of Pierre l’Estoile, and he insisted that if his view were not accepted the conference must dissolve and an arbiter be convened.
In face of these arguments advanced to provincials by a Parisian, advanced too with that tone of authority which only a man sure of his ground or of his assurance may maintain and advanced, moreover, to men not over sure of their own, the latter hesitated.
Then, as though to demonstrate the truth of the paradox of which de Fresnoy had delivered himself at Voisins, the quip that a man is rarely killed except by his seconds, Silverstairs who, thus far throughout the conference, had smoked in placid silence, suddenly stuck his oar in.
“Why not toss for it?”
Tyszkiewicz and Palencia, hesitating still, agreed. A coin was flipped, heads for Verplank, tails for Barouffski. Tails it was. Barouffski was accorded the choice of arms, foils were designated by his seconds and the meeting was arranged to be held in his garden, at two the next day.
Verplank would have preferred pistols. But, informed of the result, he dreamed pleasurably. The encounter was the main thing. Presently sleep sank him deeper. Life and death ceased to be. He became part of the inchoate and primordial. Then, from the voids in which he lay, lightly, delicately, imperceptibly, an artery reached and drew him. But his scattered selves, the objective, subjective, superjective, satisfied with their temporary decentralisation, resisted. In the subtle struggle a memory, catalogued Leilah, was aroused. The syllables of the name resounded remotely, like a damp drum beaten obscurely behind the shelves of thought. They conveyed no meaning and, before they could suggest any, they passed, drifted by the currents of unconsciousness. But at once, those currents, barred by assembling ideas, broke to the murmur of the vocables—Leilah! Leilah! Other memories, incidents, possibilities eddied among them and the sleeper, awakening, found himself confronted by the tragic mystery which the name revived.
Immediately the picture that had formed itself before him at Voisins returned. From it the Why had gone but the obstacle remained, and, as he got from the bed, he promised himself to demolish it.
Now, in the hostile enclosure, as the dogs barked and Barouffski appeared, Verplank removed his coat, undid his collar, rolled up his sleeves.
Beside him, bending over a case, the old man mumbled. He was a surgeon. The hour was not to his liking. He believed in duels, they were a source of revenue to him, but he believed in fighting on an empty stomach and, in the afternoon, who had that?
He looked up at Verplank. “Monsieur, you are young, you are brave, I doubt not you are also adroit. But had I been you, when your seconds asked, as I may suppose they asked: ‘Which shall it be, the pistol at twenty paces or the sword?’ I would have said to them: ‘Give me the sword
