XVI. THE COURAGE OF A COWARD
“Tell Mr. Quentin I cannot see him,” was Miss Garrison's response when his card was sent to her late that afternoon. The man who waited nervously in the hall was stunned by this brief, summary dismissal. If he was hurt, bewildered by the stinging rebuff, his wounds would have been healed instantly had he seen the sender of that cruel message. She sat, weak, pale and distressed, before her escritoire, striving to put her mind and her heart to the note she was writing to him whose card, by strange coincidence, had just come up. An hour ago he was in her thoughts so differently and he was in her heart, how deeply she had not realized, until there came the crash which shattered the ideal. He was a coward!
Prince Ugo had been out of her presence not more than ten minutes, leaving her stunned, horrified, crushed by the story he laughingly told, when Quentin was announced. What she heard from Ugo overwhelmed her. She had worshiped, unknown to herself, the very thing in Philip Quentin that had been destroyed almost before her eyes—his manliness, his courage, his strength. Ugo deliberately told of the duel in his rooms, of Savage's heroism in taking up the battles of his timorous friend, of his own challenge in the morning, and of Quentin's abject, cringing refusal to fight. How deliciously he painted the portrait of the coward without exposing his true motive in doing so, can only be appreciated when it is said that Dorothy Garrison came to despise the object of his ridicule.
She forgot his encounter with the porch visitor a fortnight previous; she forgot that the wound inflicted on that occasion was scarcely healed; she forgot all but his disgraceful behavior in the presence of that company of nobles and his cowardice when called to account by one brave man. And he an American, a man from her own land, from the side of the world on which, she had boasted, there lived none but the valorous. This man was the one to whom, a week ago, she had personally addressed an invitation to the wedding in St. Gudule—the envelope was doubtless in his pocket now, perhaps above his heart—and the writing of his name at that time had brought to her the deadly, sinking realization that he was more to her than she had thought.
“Tell Miss Garrison that, if it is at all possible, I must see her at once,” said Quentin to the bearer of the message. He was cold with apprehension, hot with humiliation.
“Miss Garrison cannot see you,” said the man, returning from his second visit to the room above. Even the servant spoke with a curtness that could not be mistaken. It meant dismissal, cold and decisive, with no explanation, no excuse.
He left the house with his ears burning, his nerves tingling, his brain whirling. What had caused this astonishing change? Why had she turned against him so suddenly, so strangely? Prince Ugo! The truth flashed into his mind with startling force, dispelling all uncertainty, all doubt. Her lover had forstalled him, had requested or demanded his banishment and she had acquiesced, with a heartlessness that was beyond belief. He had been mistaken as to the extent of her regard for him; he had misjudged the progress of his wooing; he awoke to the truth that her heart was impregnable and that he had not so much as approached the citadel of her love.
Dickey was pacing their rooms excitedly when Quentin entered. Turk stared gloomily from the open window, and there was a sort of savageness in his silent, sturdy back that bespoke volumes of restraint.
“Good Lord, Phil, everybody knows you have refused to fight the prince. The newspaper men have been here and they have tried to pump me dry. Turk says one of the men downstairs is telling everybody that you are afraid of Ravorelli. What are we going to do?” He stopped before the newcomer and there was reproach in his manner. Quentin dejectedly threw himself into a chair and stared at the floor in silence.