Somebody must have rebuttoned Mr. Montjoy's collar for him and readjusted his necktie. Somebody else of equally uncertain identity must have salvaged his glasses and restored them to their customary place on the bridge of his slender nose. True, he preserved no memory of these details. But when, half an hour after the encounter, a hired hack deposited him at his yard gate and when Mr. Barnhill, who it would appear dimly and almost as a figment from a troubled dream, accompanied him on the ride, had dismounted and had volunteered to help him alight from the vehicle, meanwhile offering words intended to be sympathetic, Mr. Montjoy found collar, necktie and glasses all properly bestowed.
Within the sanctified and solitary precincts of his library, beneath the grim, limned eyes of his ancestor, Mr. Montjoy re-attained a measure of outward calm and of consecutive thought; coincidently with these a tremendous resolution began to harden inside of him. Presently as he walked the floor, alternately clenching and unclenching his hands, the telephone bell sounded. Answering the call, he heard coming across the line the familiar voice of one, who, in the temporary absence of her husband from the city, now undertook to offer advice. It would seem that Mrs. Maydew had but heard of the brutal assault perpetrated upon her friend; she was properly indignant and more than properly desirous that a just vengeance be exacted. It would seem in this connection she had certain vigorous suggestions to offer. And finally it would seem she had just seen the evening paper and desired to know whether Mr. Montjoy had seen his copy?
Mr. Montjoy had not. After a short interchange of views, when, from intensity of feeling, the lady fairly made the wire sibilate and sing as her words sped over it, she rang off and Mr. Montjoy summoned his butler. His was the only roof in town which harboured a butler beneath it. Other families had male servants—of colour—who performed duties similar to those performed by Mr. Mont joy's man but they didn't call these functionaries butlers and Mr. Montjoy did. He sent the butler out into the yard to get the paper, which a boy had flung over the fence palings in a twisted wisp. And when the butler brought it to him he opened, to read, not the Daily Evening News highly impartial account of the affair at the boat store corner—that could come later—but to read first off a card signed Veritas which was printed at the bottom of the second column of the second inside page, immediately following the editorial comment of the day. It was this card to which young Mrs. Maydew had particularly directed his attention.
He bent his head and he read. The individual who chose to hide behind the nom de plume of Veritas wrote briefly and to the point. At the outset he confessed himself as one who harboured old-fashioned ideals. Therefore he abhorred the personal altercations which in these latter and degenerate days so often marred the course of public discussions between gentlemen entertaining opposite views upon public problems or private matters. And still more did he deplore the common street brawls, not unmarked by the use of lethal weapons and sometimes by tragically fatal results to one or the other of the parties engaged, which had been known before now to eventuate from the giving and taking of the offensive word, or blow. Hardly need the writer add that he had in mind the unfortunate affray of even date in a certain populous quarter of our city. Without mentioning names, he, Veritas, took that deplorable occurrence for his present text. It had inspired him to utter these words of protest against the vulgarity, the coarseness and the crassness of the methods employed for the appeasing of individual and personal wrongs. How much more dignified, how much more in keeping with the traditions of the soil, and the very history of this proud old commonwealth, was the system formerly in vogue among gentlemen for the adjudication of their private misunderstandings! Truly enough the law no longer sanctioned the employment of the code duello; indeed for the matter of that, the law of the land had never openly sanctioned it; but once upon a time a jealous regard for his own outraged honour had been deemed sufficient to lift a Southern gentleman to extremes above the mere written letter of the statutes. “O tempora, O mores! Oh, for the good old days!” And then came the signature.
Barely had Mr. Montjoy concluded the reading and the re-reading of this, when Mr. Calhoun Tabscott was announced and promptly entered to proffer his hand and something more, besides. Mr. Tabscott carried with him a copy of the Daily Evening News opened at the inside page. His nostrils expanded with emotion, his form shook with it.
In ten words these two—Mr. Montjoy as the person aggrieved and Mr. Tabscott as his next friend—found themselves in perfect accord as to the course which now should be pursued. At once then, Montjoy sat down at his mahogany writing desk and Mr. Tabscott sat down behind him where he could look over the other's shoulder and together they engaged in the labours of literary composition.
But just before he seated himself Mr. Montjoy pointed a quivering finger at the desk and, in a voice which shook with restrained determination, he said impressively, in fact, dramatically:
“Calhoun Tabscott, that desk belonged to my grandfather, the old General. He used it all his life—in Virginia first and then out here. At this moment, Calhoun Tabscott, I can almost feel him hovering above me, waiting to guide my pen.”
And Mr. Tabscott said he felt that way about it, himself.