It is a popular error that a bully is always a coward. Certainly Horace was an exception to the rule, if such exists. Nothing could be more calmly insolent than his tone as he answered deliberately,

"How admirable to find Colonel Mohun in the character of the Censor! A Clodius come to judgment. I should hardly have expected it, from his past life, either."

The reply came from the depths of Ralph's chest, very distinct, but with a strange effect of distance and echo, as if the words had been spoken under the vault of some vast dome.

"You will leave my past life alone, if you are wise. I don't preach against immorality; it is only brutality that I find simply disgusting."

"Bah!" the other retorted; "it comes to the same thing. I should have thought Lady Caroline Mannering might have taught you to be less critical."

The Cuira.s.sier rose from his seat and strode a pace forward, the gray hair bristling round his savage face like a wild-boar's at bay.

"If you dare to breathe that name again, except with respect and honor, I'll cram the words down your throat, by the eternal G.o.d!"

Levinge crimsoned with pa.s.sion. The brutal blood of the dead prize-fighter, who, when he "crossed" a fight, lost it ever by a foul blow, was boiling in his descendant. He had been drinking too, and, as the French say--_avait le vin mauvais_--so he answered coolly and slowly, letting the syllables fall one by one, like drops of hail,

"I shall mention it just as often as it pleases me, and with just so much respect as is due to Mannering's cast-off wife and your--"

The foul word that was on his lips never left them, for Mohun's threat was literally fulfilled. His right hand shot out from the shoulder with a sudden impulse that seemed rather mechanical than an action of the will, and, catching the speaker full in the mouth, laid him on the carpet senseless and streaming with blood.

CHAPTER XXIV.

"Look doun, look doun now, ladye fair, On him ye lo'ed sae weel; A brawer man than yon blue corse Never drew sword of steel."

The dead silence that ensued was broken first by Guy Livingstone. "It was well done! I say it and maintain it; Mohun, I envy you that blow!"

He looked round as if to challenge contradiction; but evidently the general opinion was that Levinge had only got his deserts. By this time the fallen man had recovered his consciousness, and struggled up, first into a sitting posture, then to his feet; he stood leaning against a table, swaying to and fro, and staring about him with wild eyes half glazed. At last he spoke in a thick, faint voice, stanching all the while the gushing blood with his handkerchief.

"Will any one here be my second, or must I look for a friend elsewhere?"

There was a pause, and then from the circle stepped forth Camille de Rosny. He did not like Levinge, and thought in the present instance he had behaved infamously, but it was the fashion hereditary in his gallant house to back the losing side; so, when he saw every one else shrink from the appeal, he bowed gravely and said,

"I shall have that honor, if you will permit me. In an hour I shall be at the orders of M. le Colonel's second. Where shall I find him?"

"Here," replied Livingstone. "I think no one will contest my right to see my old friend through this quarrel."

Mohun grasped his hand. "I would have chosen you among a thousand. You understand me, and know what I wish."

"Then I shall expect you, De Rosny," Guy went on. The Frenchman a.s.sented courteously, and then, turning to his princ.i.p.al,

"Let us go," he said. "My _coupe_ is at your disposition, M. Levinge.

_Messieurs, au plaisir._"

Horace followed him with a step that was still faltering and uncertain; but at the door he turned, and, straightening himself up, faced his adversary with such a look as few human countenances have ever worn.

There was more in it than mortal hatred: it expressed a sort of devilish satisfaction and antic.i.p.ation, as if he knew that his revenge was secured.

Mohun read all this as plainly as if it had been written down in so many words; but he only smiled as he seated himself and lighted a cigar.

There was an end of lansquenet for that night. An ordinary quarrel would have made little impression on those reckless spirits, who had, most of them, at one time or another, "been out" themselves; but they felt that what they had witnessed now was the prologue to a certain tragedy; there was a savor of death in the air; so they dropped off one by one, leaving Guy and Ralph alone; not before the latter had expressed, with much politeness, "his desolation at having been compelled to interrupt a _partie_, which he trusted was only deferred till the morrow."

Before long De Rosny returned. The preliminaries were soon arranged.

Pistols were necessarily to be the weapons, for Levinge had seldom touched a foil; and, as the Frenchman said with a bow that made his objection a compliment, "Colonel Mohun's reputation as a swordsman was European." An early hour next morning was fixed for the _venue_, in the Pre aux Clercs of the nineteenth century--the Bois de Boulogne.

When they were alone again Guy turned gravely to his companion. "It is a bad business, I fear, though you could not have acted otherwise; but I would rather your adversary were any other than Levinge. It is a murderous, unscrupulous scoundrel as ever lived. He can shoot--that's nothing; so can you, better than most men--but, mark me, Ralph, he has been out twice, and hit his man each time, the last mortally; but on neither occasion was _his fire returned_. Men say he has an awkward knack of pulling the trigger half a second too soon. I don't know if this is true, but I do know that Seymour, who seconded him at Florence when he killed O'Neill, has been more than cool to him ever since."

"Faith, I can well believe it," Mohun answered, quietly, "and it is very probable I may get hard hit to-morrow; but of killing him I feel morally certain. Do you believe in presentiments? I do. Before that drunken brute had half done speaking, I saw imminent death written in his face as plainly as if I had possessed the Highland second-sight. I think I could almost tell you how it will look _after my shot_. Well, we must talk of business. My arrangements won't take me long. I have very little to dispose of; it is almost all entailed property. I shall leave you the choice of any thing among my goods and chattels. You will find some arms that you may fancy. But if my pistols fail me to-morrow, so that Levinge lives over it, do me the favor to throw them into the Seine; they deserve nothing better. As for the ready-money I have with me, and some more at my banker's--" he hesitated, and then went on in a gentler voice, "I should like it to go to that poor child whom we met to-night.

If I live I will take care she is settled in England, where some one will be kind to her. Her father was a good soldier and a true-hearted gentleman. And, Guy, I am sorry that I sneered at you to-night; I hardly meant it when I said it."

This was a great concession from Mohun, and his hearer thought so as he wrung his hand hard and replied,

"Don't think of that again. I did you justice an hour ago."

There was this peculiarity about Ralph; he was not only insensible to danger, like other men, but he absolutely seemed to revel in it. The genial side of his character came out at the approach of deadly peril, just as some morose natures will soften and brighten temporarily under the influence of strong wine.

His mood seemed to change, however, suddenly; and when, after a long pause, he spoke again, it was in a low, broken voice, as if to himself.

"'Be sure your sin will find you out.' It is thirty years since I heard that text; I forgot it the same day, and never thought of it again till now. There may be truth in that. It hunted _her_ to her grave, and it will not leave her in peace even there. And yet she suffered enough to make atonement. She tried not to let me see how much, but I did see it; I watched her dying for a year and more. I am sure she is an angel now.

I like to think so, though I shall never see her again. I would not believe otherwise if a thousand priests said it and swore it; for I never moved from her side, after she was dead, till I saw the smile come on her face. She must have been happy then; do you not think so? They would hardly have gone on punishing her forever. It was all my fault, you know."

He gazed at Livingstone anxiously, almost timidly. Guy bowed his head in a.s.sent, but he could not find words to answer just then. There was something very terrible in that opening of the flood-gates when a life's pent-up remorse broke forth.

"I think you will end better than I have done," Mohun went on, "though you are going down-hill fast now. But I have no right even to warn you.

Only take care--" He broke off suddenly, and roused himself with an effort. "I shall go home and dress now, and get through what little I have to write, and then lie down for an hour or two. Nothing makes the hand shake like a sleepless night. I'll call for you in good time." So he went away.

Livingstone sat thinking, without ever closing his eyes, till Mohun returned. The latter looked fresh and alert; he had slept for the time he had allotted to himself quite calmly and comfortably; the old habits of picket-duty had taught him to watch or sleep at pleasure.

After Guy had made a careful toilette, at the special request of his princ.i.p.al they started, and in forty minutes were on the ground. Levinge and his second, with the surgeon, arrived almost immediately; the former stood somewhat apart, keeping the lower part of his face carefully m.u.f.fled.

It was a dull, chill morning; the sky of a steely-gray, without a promise of a gleam from the sun, which had risen _somewhere_, but was reserving himself for better times. There was a sort of desultory wind blowing, just strong enough at intervals to bring the moist brown leaves sullenly down.

After the pistols had been scientifically loaded, the seconds placed their men fifteen yards apart--with such known shots it was not worth while shortening the distance.

The sensations of ordinary mortals under such circ.u.mstances are somewhat curious. Very few are afraid, I think; but one has an impression that one's own proportions are becoming sensibly developed--"swelling wisibly," in fact, like the lady at the Pickwickian tea-fight--while those of our adversary diminish in a like ratio, so that he does not appear near so fair a mark as he did a few minutes ago. But, with all this, there is a quickening of the pulse not unpleasurable--something like the excitement of the "four to the seven" chance at hazard, when you are backing the In for a large stake.

I do not believe Mohun felt any thing of this sort. It was not his own life, but his adversary's death he was playing for; the other was busy, too, with still darker thoughts and purposes.

"Listen," Guy said in French; "M. de Rosny gives the signal, _un_, _deux_, _trois_; if either fires before the last is fully p.r.o.nounced, it is murder." He looked sharply at Levinge, but the latter seemed studiously to avoid meeting his eye. Guy felt very uncomfortable and very savage.

The men stood opposite to one another like black marble statues, neither showing a speck of color which might serve as a _point de mire_, each turning only a side-front to his opponent.

De Rosny p.r.o.nounced the two first words of the signal in a clear, deliberate voice; the last left his lips almost in a shriek, for, before it was half syllabled, his princ.i.p.al fired.

Quick as the movement was, it was antic.i.p.ated; as Levinge's hand stirred, Mohun made a half-face to the right, and looked his enemy straight between the eyes. That sudden change of position, or the consciousness of detection, probably unsettled the practiced aim, for the ball, that would have drilled Ralph through the heart, only scored a deep furrow in his side.

No one could have guessed that he was touched; he brought his pistol to the level just as coolly as he would have done in the shooting-gallery, and, after the discharge, dropped his hand with measured deliberation.

Before the smoke had curled a yard upward, Horace Levinge sprang into the air, and, with out-stretched arms, fell crashing down upon the gra.s.s--a bullet through his brain.