The doctor shut his teeth with a snap, as though he had caught a rabbit. “Look here, Bristow,” he said hotly, “I’ve never cared a hang what your opinions of Valiant were after that duel. I’ll keep my own.”
“Oh, all right,” rejoined the major. “But let’s be honest with ourselves. If you could split a silver dollar nine times out of ten at fifteen paces, would you exchange shots with a man who was beside himself with liquor?”
“If Valiant was a dead shot, the better for him,” said the doctor grimly. “If Sassoon was drunk, so much the worse for Sassoon. His condition was the affair of his seconds. Valiant was no more responsible for it than for the quarrel. Neither was of his making. Just because a man is a crack shot and stays sober, is he to bear any insult—stand up to be shot at into the bargain—and take no hand in the game himself? Answer me that?”
“It didn’t touch his honor, of course,” replied the major. “We could all agree on that. He was within his rights. But it wasn’t like a Valiant.”
They were at the parting now and the major held out his hand. “Oh, well,” he said, “it’s long enough ago, and there’s nothing against his son. I like the young chap, Southall. He’s his father all over again, eh?”
“When I first saw him,” said the doctor huskily, “I thought I had slid back thirty years and that our old Beauty Valiant was lying there before me. I loved him, Bristow, and somehow—whatever happened that day at the Hemlocks—it couldn’t make a damned bit of difference to me!”