Again he united the foils. Again he gave the command.
For a moment the weapons clashed.
Suddenly and excitedly Palencia cried: “My principal is touched.”
“Halt,” de Fresnoy, intervening with raised stick, commanded.
Verplank moved back. “Damn him,” he muttered, “I haven’t done with him yet.”
About Barouffski now, Palencia and the young man with the serious face had come. The latter was examining Barouffski’s right arm. On it a thin red line was visible. Very gravely the young man looked up.
“My client is disabled. Profound incision in the region of the flexor digitorum sublimis accompanied by a notable effusion of blood.”
The old surgeon chuckled. Confidentially as before he addressed Verplank. “I know that term. It means a scratch. Those ladies there, it must amuse even them.”
As he spoke he indicated a window at which Violet and Leilah had appeared, but from which now Leilah was retreating.
Verplank did not hear, did not see. The young surgeon, resuming, had announced himself as opposed to a continuation of the encounter. It was this that preoccupied Verplank.
Loudly and angrily he cried: “Let’s have pistols then. That man can use his left hand and I’ll do the same.”
“Cristi! La jolie dame!” the old surgeon muttered to himself.
In the doorway Leilah had come. Hurriedly she moved to Verplank. As she did so Barouffski tried to prevent her.
“Cara mia, I must beg of you—”
He had got in her way but she eluded him, while the other men looked curiously at this woman who now agitatedly was addressing Verplank.
“Don’t fight any more, don’t!”
Roughly Verplank answered: “I haven’t begun.”
“Sir,” cried Barouffski. “I can permit no conversation with this lady.”
Verplank ignoring Barouffski as utterly as he had ignored the surgeon, looked at Leilah.
“That story of yours is—”
But whatever he may have intended to say, Barouffski interrupted. He was shouting at Verplank, calling, too, at Leilah whom he had got by the arm and whom he would have drawn away, but this Verplank prevented. Shifting his foil to his left hand, with his right he seized Barouffski and with a twist which separated him from Leilah, shoved him aside.
“To your shambles!” he called at him.
But already the others were intervening. Tyszkiewicz with his eternal “Permit me,” got between the two men. Palencia held Barouffski by the shoulder. Silverstairs drew Verplank away, while de Fresnoy, viewing the situation as hopeless, declared the duel at an end.
The actions of all were practically so simultaneous that they were as one to Leilah who, bewildered by the confusion which she herself had caused, horrified by Verplank’s appearance and tortured by the riddle of his interrupted words, now, over the heads of the others, again called to him:
“You say that the story is—”
“At five!” Verplank threw back.
Barouffski, bursting with rage and impotence, shouted:
“I say this conversation must cease.”
The old surgeon, nudging his colleague, laughed:
“There is my specialty!”
Both surgeons then were occupied with their bags. De Fresnoy, overhearing the remark, could not but smile. To conceal it he turned to the gate where he was joined by Silverstairs and where at once, Palencia and Tyszkiewicz followed, leaving in the center of the garden Leilah and her two husbands, one of whom with a shrug which for an American was perhaps rather French, went to the bench where his coat lay.
In this instance again the actions of all so closely coincided that barely an instant intervened before Leilah was throwing after Verplank the two syllables he had thrown at her.
“At five!”
Later she was unconscious of having done so. But Barouffski heard and presently, when the others had gone and in this garden those two were alone, with angry suspicion he confronted her.
“Five! What is that? What does it mean?”
Leilah had turned to go. A bit unsteadily she moved on, reached the entrance, leaned there for support.
But Barouffski was at her heels.
“Five,” he repeated. “He said it, you said it, what does it mean?”
“It means that God willing some day I may have peace.”
She had half-turned. She turned again. In a moment she had gone.
Menacingly Barouffski’s eyes followed her. “That’s what five means, does it?”
Then he too turned. Nearby, on the marble chair, were his coat and waistcoat. Slowly, thoughtfully, he put them on. As he did so he noticed the dogs. It may have seemed to him then that they were his only friends. Longly he looked their way.
Suddenly, as though illumination had come, he touched a bell and looked up at Leilah’s window.
After a brief delay, Emmanuel appeared.
“Shut the gate,” Barouffski ordered.
“Perfectly, monsieur le comte,” the footman very deferentially replied and started to do as bidden.
Barouffski checked him. Indicating the lower window, he added:
“At five or thereabouts be in there. I will tell you then what to do. You hear me?”
“Perfectly, monsieur le comte.”
Again Barouffski glanced at the upper window. As he glanced he smiled.
“Cara mia, five may mean more things than you say, more even than you think.”
He was still smiling but it was not a pleasant smile to see.
Beneath his breath, Emmanuel, who was looking at him, muttered:
“Quelle gueule de maquereau!”
X
“Gracious!” Violet exclaimed. She had been smoking and now in putting a cigarette in a cendrier she had succeeded in overturning it. Undismayed she looked at a clock. “Gracious!” she repeated. “Since that stupid duel, I have sat here an hour.”
Leisurely the lady arose. She was a glowing object in this room which, filled with costly futilities and furnished in canary and black, otherwise was Empire and brilliant. The main entrance, hung with heavy portières of yellow damask had, opposite it, across the room, a tapestry panel which masked a spiral stairway that led below. To one side, at an elaborate table, which now the overturned cendrier had strewn with ashes, Leilah was seated. Behind her, through
