He turned suddenly. “Excuse me one moment, gentlemen, and I will then see that you get your several carriages. Alec!—where's Alec?”
The old darky stepped out of the shadow. “I'm yere, sah.”
“Alec, go and tell Matthew to bring my gig to the front porch—and be sure you see that your young master's heavy driving-coat is put inside. Mr. Harry spends the night with me.”
CHAPTER VII
The secrecy enjoined upon everybody conversant with the happenings at Moorlands did not last many hours. At the club, across dinner tables, at tea, on the street, and in the libraries of Kennedy Square, each detail was gone over, each motive discussed. None of the facts were exaggerated, nor was the gravity of the situation lightly dismissed. Duels were not so common as to blunt the sensibilities. On the contrary, they had begun to be generally deplored and condemned, a fact largely due to the bitterness resulting from a famous encounter which had taken place a year or so before between young Mr. Cocheran, the son of a rich landowner, and Mr. May—the circumstances being somewhat similar, the misunderstanding having arisen at a ball in Washington over a reigning belle, during which Mr. May had thrown his card in Cocheran's face. In this instance all the requirements of the code were complied with. The duel was fought in an open space behind Nelson's Hotel, near the Capitol, Mr. Cocheran arriving at half-past five in the morning in a magnificent coach drawn by four white horses, his antagonist reaching the grounds in an ordinary conveyance, the seconds and the two surgeons on horseback. Both fired simultaneously, with the result that May escaped unhurt, while Cocheran was shot through the head and instantly killed.
Public opinion, indeed, around Kennedy Square, was, if the truth be told, undergoing many and serious changes. For not only the duel but some other of the traditional customs dear to the old regime were falling into disrepute—especially the open sideboards, synonymous with the lavish hospitality of the best houses. While most of the older heads, brought up on the finer and rarer wines, knew to a glass the limit of their endurance, the younger bloods were constantly losing control of themselves, a fact which was causing the greatest anxiety among the mothers of Kennedy Square.
This growing antipathy had been hastened and solidified by another tragedy quite as widely discussed as the Cocheran and May duel—more so, in fact, since this particular victim of too many toddies had been the heir of one of the oldest residents about Kennedy Square—a brilliant young surgeon, self-exiled because of his habits, who had been thrown from his horse on the Indian frontier—an Iowa town, really—shattering his leg and making its amputation necessary. There being but one other man in the rough camp who had ever seen a knife used—and he but a student—the wounded surgeon had directed the amputation himself, even to the tying of the arteries and the bandages and splints. Only then did he collapse. The hero—and he was a hero to every one who knew of his coolness and pluck, in spite of his recognized weakness—had returned to his father's house on Kennedy Square on crutches, there to consult some specialists, the leg still troubling him. As the cripple's bedroom was at the top of the first flight of stairs, the steps of which—it being summer—were covered with China matting, he was obliged to drag himself up its incline whenever he was in want of something he must fetch himself. One of these necessities was a certain squat bottle like those which had graced the old sideboards. Half a dozen times a day would he adjust his crutches, their steel points preventing his slipping, and mount the stairs to his room, one step at a time.
Some months after, when the matting was taken up, the mother took her youngest boy—he was then fifteen—to the steps:
“Do you see the dents of your brother's crutches?—count them. Every one was a nail in his coffin.” They were—for the invalid died that winter.