“Tell me about the rest of it,” responded Archer, “and then I shall have some questions to ask you.”
“Well, as to the rest of it, you have only to look at the facts. Years ago the Virginia Legislature went through the solemn process of enacting that no person should be eligible to a seat in either house of our law making body, who had been in any way concerned in a duel, either as principal or second, since a date fixed by the statute. If that meant anything it meant that in the opinion of the Legislature of Virginia no duellist ought to be permitted to become a lawgiver. It was a statute prescribing for those who have committed the crime of duelling precisely the same penalty of disfranchisement that the law applies to those who have committed other felonies. But there was this difference. The laws forbidding other felonies, left open an opportunity to prove them and to convict men of committing them, while the law against duelling carefully made it impossible to convict anybody of its violation. To cover that point, the Legislature enacted that every man elected to either house of that body, should solemnly make oath that he had not been in any wise engaged in duelling since the date named in the statute. Again the lawgivers were not in earnest, for every year since that time men who have been concerned in duelling within the prohibited period have been elected to the Legislature; and every year the Legislature’s first act has been to bring forward the date of the prohibition and admit to seats in the law making body all the men elected to it who have deliberately defied and broken the law. It deals in no such fashion with men disfranchised for the commission of any other crime. Is not all this in effect an annual declaration by the Legislature that its laws in condemnation of duelling do not mean what they say? Is it not a case in which a law is enacted to satisfy one phase of public sentiment and deliberately nullified by legislative act in obedience to public sentiment of an opposite character?”
“It certainly seems so. And yet I do not see what is to be done. You said just now that perhaps it would be best to legalize duelling. Would not that be legalizing crime?”
“Not at all. Duelling is simply private, personal war. It is a crime only by circumstance and statute. Under certain conditions such war is as legitimate as any other, and the right to wage it rests upon precisely the same ethical grounds as those upon which we justify public, national war. In a state of society in which the law does not afford protection to the individual and redress of wrongs inflicted upon him, I conceive that he has an indisputable right to wage war in his own defence, just as a nation has. But we live in a state of society quite different from that. If Madison Peyton or any other man had inflicted hurt of any kind upon me, I could go into court with the certainty of securing redress. I have no right, therefore, to make personal war upon him by way of securing the redress which the courts stand ready to give me peaceably. So I say we should forbid duelling by laws that can be enforced, and public sentiment should imperatively require their enforcement. Till we are ready to do that, we should legalize duelling and quit pretending.”
“After all, now that I think of it,” said young Bannister, “most of the duels of late years in Virginia have had their origin in cowardice, pure and simple. They have been born of some mere personal affront, and the principals on either side have fought not to redress wrongs but merely because they were afraid of being called cowards. You at least can never be under any necessity of proving that you are not a coward. The people of Virginia have not forgotten your work at Norfolk. But I’m glad Peyton apologized. For even an open quarrel between you and him, and especially one concerning Dorothy, would have been peculiarly embarrassing and it would have given rise to scandal of an unusual sort.”
“But why, Archer? Why should a quarrel between him and me be more productive of scandal than one between any other pair of men? I do not understand.”
“And I cannot explain,” answered the other. “I can only tell you the fact. I must go now. I have a long ride to a bad bed at the Court House, with tedious jury duty to do tomorrow. So, good night.”
XXIII
DOROTHY’S REBELLION
THE conversation reported in the last preceding chapter of this record, occurred on the evening before Edmonia Bannister’s letter was written. The letter, therefore, when Arthur received it at noon of the next day, supplemented and in some measure explained what Archer had said with respect to the peculiar inconvenience of a quarrel between Dr. Brent and Madison Peyton.
Yet it left him in greater bewilderment than ever concerning Dorothy’s case. That is why he mounted Gimlet and rode away to think.