By Right of Sword

by Arthur W. Marchmont

DANGER FROM A FRESH SOURCE.

I walked home with a feeling of rare exhilaration. Whatever happened, this was my own quarrel, and I had so acted as to secure the sympathy of all who knew the facts. The quarrel had been fixed on me in public in a manner peculiarly disgraceful to both my opponents, and if they killed me, it would be murder.

If on the other hand I could kill either or both, the world would be the sweeter and purer for their riddance. Moreover I had so arranged matters that I saw how I should have at least an equal chance of my life. I should have the choice of weapons and I would fight Devinsky with swords and the "butcher" with pistols.

I thought much about Durescq's skill. He had a huge reputation both as a swordsman and a shot; but I was very confident in my own skill with the sword, and inclined to doubt whether he could beat me even with that. In the end, however, I decided not to run that risk. The issue should be left to chance. The duel should be fought with pistols. One should be loaded, and one unloaded; and a toss should settle which each should have. We would then stand at arm's length, the barrel of one man's weapon touching the other's forehead. The man to whom Fortune gave the loaded weapon would thus be bound to blow the other's brains out, whether he had any skill or not. Both would stand equal before Fortune.

About an hour later, Essaieff came to me and told me that the whole regiment was in a state of excitement about the fight and that feeling against Devinsky had reached a positively dangerous pitch, especially when it was known that he had practically refused to meet me. That point was still unsettled, and Essaieff had come to get my final decision.

"My advice is, stand firm," he said. "You're in the right. There isn't an unprejudiced man in the whole army who wouldn't say you were acting well within your rights; just as, I must say, my dear fellow, you've acted splendidly throughout."

I told him what I had been thinking.

"It seems a ghastly thing to put a life in the spin of a coin," he commented.

"Better than to have it ended without a chance, by the thrust of a butcher's knife."

"That name will stick to Durescq for always," he said, with a slow smile. "It was splendid. Do you know you made me hold my breath while you were at him. Damn him, so he is a butcher!"

"Do you say Devinsky won't meet me?" I asked.

"No, not that he won't; but he raises the excuse that as Durescq's challenge was given first—as it was indeed—the order of the fight must follow the order of the challenges. But they arranged the challenges purposely in that order."

"I shan't hold to the point," I said, after a moment's consideration. "If they insist I shall give way and meet Durescq first. But this will only make it the more easy for us to insist on our plan of fighting. Don't give way on that. I am resolved that one of us shall fall: and chance shall settle which."

Essaieff tried to persuade me to insist on meeting Devinsky first; but I would not.

"No. He shan't carry back to St Petersburg the tale that we in Moscow are ready to bluster in words, and then daren't make them good in our acts."

"I hope he'll carry back no tale at all to St Petersburg," answered my friend, grimly: and then he left me.

I completed what few preparations I had to make in view of the very probably fatal issue of the fight: wrote a letter to Olga and enclosed one to Balestier as I had done before; and was just getting off to bed, when Essaieff came back to report.

My message had added to the already great excitement and there had been at first the most strenuous opposition to our plan of fighting. But he had forced his way, and the meetings—with the "butcher" first and, if I did not fall, with Devinsky afterwards—were fixed for eight o'clock. He promised to come for me half an hour before that time: and he urged me to get to bed and to have as much sleep as possible to steady my nerves.

They were steady enough already. I gloated over the affair; and I meant so to use it as to set the seal to my reputation as "that devil Alexis," whether I lived or died.

But after all I was baulked.

I slept soundly enough till Borlas called me early in the morning and told me strange news. A file of soldiers were in my room, and the sergeant had requested me to be called at once as he had an important message.

I called the man into my bedroom and asked him what he wanted.

"You are to consider yourself under arrest, Lieutenant," he said saluting, and drawing himself up stiffly. "And in my charge."

"What for?"

"I don't know, Lieutenant. I had my orders from the Colonel himself first thing; and, if you please, I am to prevent you leaving the house. You'll understand my position, sir. Will you give me your word not to attempt to leave?"

"Where are your written orders?" I knew the man well and he liked me.

"My orders are verbal, Lieutenant; but very strict and imperative."

"Privately, do you know anything of the cause of this?"

"You'll have a letter from the Colonel, I think, Lieutenant, within an hour, requiring you to go to him. Major Devinsky is also confined to his quarters, sir; and also, I think, Captain Durescq. We've heard in the regiment, sir, what happened at the officers' club last night." A certain look on his lined bearded face and in his eyes as he saluted me when he said this, told me much.

I chafed at the interference, and cursed the Colonel for having apparently taken a hand in the matter. This butcher would now be able to go back to St Petersburg with a lying garbled tale that we in Moscow got out of quarrels by clinging to the coat tails of our commanding officer; and it made me mad. I tried to persuade the sergeant to let me out to go to the place of meeting; promising to be back within an hour; but he was immovable.

"I would, if I dared, Lieutenant; but I dare not. I'm not the man to stop a fair fight, and I hate this work. But duty's duty."

When Essaieff came, he threw new light on the matter. The affair had caused a huge commotion. In the early hours of the morning he had been summoned to the Colonel, who had in some way got wind of the matter; a very ugly version having been told him. My friend had had to tell the plain truth and there had been the devil to pay. The wires to St Petersburg had been kept going through the night; the whole thing had been laid before Head-Quarters at the Ministry for War; and the arrest of the three principals had been ordered from the capital.

Soon afterwards a peremptory summons came for me from the Colonel and when I got to him I found both Devinsky and Durescq there, together with two or three of the highest officers then stationed in Moscow. A sort of informal examination took place, out of which I am bound to say both the other men came very badly; and in the end we were all three ordered off to stay in our quarters under arrest. I found that not only were we not allowed to go out—sentries being posted in my rooms all the time—but no one was permitted to enter: nor could I communicate with a single individual for two days.

At the end of that time the order came for me to resume duty; and as soon as the morning's drill was over, the Colonel sent for me and told me what had happened. The military authorities at St Petersburg had taken the harshest view of the conduct of my two antagonists. It was regarded as a deliberate plot to kill. Devinsky had been cashiered; and only Durescq's great influence had prevented him from sharing the same fate. As it was, he had had all his seniority struck off, been reduced to the rank of a subaltern, and sent off there and then under quasi arrest with heavy military escort, to a regiment stationed right away on the most southern Turkestan frontier.

"As for Devinsky, the regiment's well rid of him," said the Colonel, with such emphasis and earnestness that I saw his own personal animosity had had quite as much to do with the man's overthrow as the latter's own conduct. But it pleased the old man to put it all down to me, and when we were parting, he shook hands cordially and said:—"The Regiment owes you a vote of thanks, my boy; and I'll see that it's paid in full."

"One question I should like to ask," said I. "How did you get to hear of it all?"

"The news was everybody's property, lad, and—don't ask questions," he replied with dry inconsequence. And would say no more.

But I was soon to learn, and the news surprised me as much as any part of the whole strange incident.

The first use I made of my liberty was to go and see Olga and explain my absence and all that had happened. She had heard a somewhat garbled account of it in which the part I played had been greatly exaggerated, and she received me with the greatest tenderness and sympathy; and tears of what seemed pleasure, but she explained as cold, glistened in her eyes. We had a long and closely confidential chat; and she made me feel more by her trustful manner and gentle attitude than by her actual words, how much she had missed me during the days of our separation and how thankful she was to be free of Devinsky for good, and how much she felt she owed to me on that account.

For myself I was sorry when I had to leave her. She was the only person in Moscow to whom I could speak without restraint; a fact that made our interviews so welcome that I was loath to end this one.

It was getting dusk when I left and as I walked home I was thoughtful and preoccupied. The question of Olga's safety was pressing very hardly on me and made me extremely anxious. The more I saw of her the more eager I was to get her out of harm's way; and the consciousness that she must share the consequences of any disaster that might happen to me, were I discovered, was pressing upon me with increasing severity. I was beginning to anticipate more vividly, moreover, the coming of some such disaster. The time was passing very quickly. It was getting on for nearly three weeks since the Nihilist meeting, and I knew that my Nihilist "allies" would be growing anxious for a sign of my zeal. They were probably well aware that I was doing nothing to redeem my pledge.

There was also the undeniable danger inseparably connected with the distasteful intrigue with Paula Tueski. I had so neglected her in my character of lover that I was hourly expecting some proof of her indignation. I had only seen her twice in the three weeks; and each time in public; and though Olga and she had interchanged visits, I knew perfectly well that she was not the woman to take neglect passively.

I blamed myself warmly, too, for my own inactivity. My whole policy had been so to try and gain time, and yet I had made no use of it, except to get into broils which had increased the already bewildering complications.

That this would be the effect of my quarrel with Devinsky and Durescq, I could not doubt when I came to think the matter over in cool blood. I had been the means of both of them being ruined; and naturally every friend they had in Russia would take part against me. I knew that Durescq had friends among the most powerful circles in Russia, and I had nothing to oppose to their anger save the poor position of a lieutenant in a marching regiment and a past that was full of blackguardism and evil repute. Personally this was all nothing to me; but when I thought of the indirect results it might have for Olga it troubled and worried me deeply.

Everything pointed to one conclusion—that Olga should leave Russia while she could do so in safety. I was meditating on these things when a girl stopped me suddenly, asking if I were Lieutenant Petrovitch. She then gave me a scrap of paper; and I glanced at and read it.

"The old rendezvous, at once. Urgent. P.T."

I questioned the girl as to who gave it to her, and where the person was; but getting no satisfactory account, dismissed her with a few kopecks.

It beat me. Obviously it was from Paula Tueski. Equally obviously it was an appointment at which she had apparently something to say of importance. But where the deuce the "old rendezvous" was I knew no more than the wind.

I am not one to waste time over the impossible; and as I certainly could not go to a place I did not know of, I tore the letter into shreds and went on home.

I let myself in and found that my servant was out—a most unusual thing at that time of the day; but I had begun to fear that the man was below rather than above the average of Russian servants and was already contemplating his dismissal. I did not attach much importance to his present absence, however; and throwing myself into a chair sat and thought or tried to think of some scheme by which I could induce Olga to leave the country, and some means by which her departure could be safely arranged. She must go at once. She had promised me to go when I could tell her it was necessary for my safety; and I could truthfully say that now. If she would go, I would have a dash for liberty myself.

While I was thinking in this strain someone knocked at my outer door, and when I opened it, to my surprise, Paula Tueski rushed in quickly.

A glance at her face shewed me she was in an exceedingly ill temper; as indeed it appeared to me she generally was.

"Where is your servant?" was her first question hurriedly asked.

"I really don't know. Out somewhere; but——"

"His absence means danger, Alexis. Why didn't you come to me when I sent a message to you just now. You read it, questioned the girl, and then tore it up and threw it in the gutter; and all this as unconcernedly as if you did not know full well that from our window you must be in full view of me. Are you always going to scorn me?"

I took care to shew no surprise; but it was clear I had blundered badly, and that the "rendezvous" was close to the spot where the paper had been given to me.

"I could not come. I had to hurry home. I——"

"Bah! Don't trifle with me like that. Haven't you had enough of your prison during the last two days?"

"You know the news, then?" said I, following her gladly off the track.

"It is you who do not know the news. Ah, Alexis, you are giving me more trouble in this new character of yours than ever you did in the old one—much as you harassed me then. But I do not mind if only...." She stopped and looked at me with beaming eyes. "You have not kissed me; and here I am risking all again and even venturing right here into your rooms."

"What do you mean about new character?" I asked. Her phrase had startled me.

"I like it better than the old. Fifty thousand times better 'That devil Alexis,' than 'That roué Petrovitch.' But whenever I think of the change, I can't understand it—I don't understand you. I could almost swear, sometimes, you are not the same man"—she came close up to me and putting her hands on my shoulders, stared long and earnestly right into my eyes—"and then I wonder how I can have been so blind as not to have seen all that lay hidden in you: all that was noble and brave and daring. But I love you, Alexis, twenty thousand times more than ever; and to have saved your life now is a thought of infinite sweetness to me. Kiss me, sweetheart."

I started back as if she had stung me.

"Do you mean you had anything to do with..." I stopped, but she knew what I meant. She smiled and in a voice exquisitely sweet and tender, though hateful to me, she answered:

"Your life is mine, Alexis? Do you think I would let that butcher from St Petersburg take it? Let him keep to his own shambles. Yes, I set the wires in motion, and I did not stop until the one man was utterly ruined and the other degraded in the eyes of all Russia. Your life is mine, Alexis"—she seemed to revel in this hateful phrase—"and those who would strike at you, must reckon with me as well. We are destined for each other, you and I; and we live or die together."

"You have done me a foul wrong, then," I cried hotly. "You have disgraced me; made me out for a braggart that provokes a fight and then shirks it by screening myself behind the law. Do you suppose I thank you for that?" I spoke as sternly as I felt. But she only smiled as she answered,

"I did not think of your feelings. This man would have killed you. His hands are bloody to the armpits. Do you think I would let him find another victim in you when I could stop him and save you? Did you not reproach me, too when I did not interfere before, and tell me my love was cold? Would I suffer such a reproach again, think you? No, no. Your life is mine, I repeat, and for the future I will protect it whether you will or no. That is how I love; and so it shall be always. I have come now to warn you. Hush! What is that?"

I listened and heard someone moving in the lobby of my rooms.

"It is Borlas returned," I said, and opening the door called him. Getting no answer I called again loudly; and then my visitor whispered to me to come back into the room. But I paid no heed to her, and went forward a few steps to go into my servant's room. As I did so, a desperate rush was made and three men disguised, dashed at me violently. They had gained an entrance somehow and were no doubt making their way to attack me in my room or were going to lay in wait for me, when my quick ears heard them and thus spoiled their plans.

I was unarmed, and saw instantly the foolishness of attempting to fight three men, probably armed, while I had not so much as a stick. Making a feint of an attack upon the nearest, therefore, I jumped aside and darted back into the room I had just left, closing the door instantly behind me, while my companion and I held it shut until I had secured it.

Then I turned to her for an explanation.

"They are my husband's agents," she whispered. "He suspects us, as you know; and he arranged this attack, thinking that if you were killed, the act just at this juncture would be set down to Devinsky's revenge. I came on purpose to warn you. If they catch me here now, we are both ruined beyond hope."

"Then they shan't catch us," I replied. "Or if they do, shan't live to carry the tale outside the door:" and I proceeded to put in execution a plan which had already occurred to me.