“He shall answer for it some day, drunk or sober,” I vowed; and then I stood my errand fairly upon its rightful feet. “That is what fetched me to Nyack to-day, Jack. There must be some accommodation brought about with Captain Seytoun. I am not made of sheepskin like a drumhead—to be beaten upon forever without breaking.”
“‘Accommodation’?” Jack queried, with a lip-curl that I did not like.
“Yes. You are near to Major Lee, who is your very good friend, Jack; a word from you to the major, and from the major to Captain Seytoun——”
Pettus never knew what it cost me to say this, or he would not have countered upon me so fiercely.
“Good heavens, Dick Page! Has it come to this?——are you asking me to go roundabout to Seytoun to cry ‘Enough!’ for you? Where is your Virginia breeding, man!—or have you lost it campaigning in this cursed country of the flat-footed Dutch?”
I smiled. This, you may notice, was my cool-blood Jack Pettus, who, but a moment earlier, had been telling me that the present was no time to be stirring up private quarrels. But my word was passed—as I knew only too well, and as he could not know.
“I can’t fight Captain Seytoun, Jack; but neither can I brook his endless tongue-lashing,” I said, moodily enough, no doubt.
“‘Can’t’ is no gentleman’s word, Dick,” he insisted, still fiercely emphatic upon the point of honor.
“But just now you said that private quarrels——”
“I was drunk then, on this vinegar stuff of Van Ditteraick’s; but I’m sober now. This thing that you propose is simply impossible, Dick. Can’t you see that it is?”