By Right of Sword

by Arthur W. Marchmont

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.