“O, I forgot you were here. Well, don’t tell any one else. Norman is to fight a duel.”
“To fight a duel—and be killed?” gasped Mae.
“You have but a poor opinion of my powers,” laughed Norman, “although the German looked a veteran duellist from his scars. His face was fairly embroidered or fancy-worked with red lines. A sort of hem in his nose, and tucks and seams all over his cheeks. Notice my knowledge in this line, Miss Mae. You ought to be ashamed, Eric, to have spoken of it.”
“Isn’t it all a joke?” asked Mae, pushing her head out of the window again, to hide the sudden white terror in her face. “I didn’t suppose Americans fought duels when they were off pleasuring.” This sentence Mae meant to pass as a gay, light, easy speech, to prove that Norman Mann and a duel were not such a very dreadful combination to her feminine mind.
“NO, it is no joke, but dead earnest,” replied Eric. “I am to be his second, and you must keep it a great secret, Mae, till it is all over.”
“All over!”—a sudden vision of Norman lying white and motionless with a deep wound across his soft, brown temple. Mae closed her eyes. “I suppose I might as well tell you about it,” said Norman, “now that this stupid Eric has let out about the affair, although it may never come to anything. I was dining to-night at a little restaurant on the Felice, a quiet, homelike place, which a good many artists, and especially women, frequent. There is a queer, crazy little American, who thinks herself a painter, and is a harmless lunatic, who is a regular guest at this restaurant. Everybody smiles at her absurdities, but is ready enough to be kind to the poor old creature. To-night, however, I was hardly seated when in came a party of Germans, all in mask and Carnival costume. One of them was arrayed in exact imitation of this old lady. He had on a peaked bonnet and long, black gloves, with dangling fingers, such as she invariably wears. These he waved around mockingly and seating himself opposite her, he followed her every motion. The ladies at the same table rose and went away. Then up gets this big ruffian and sits down on the edge of the old lady’s chair. I could stand it no longer, but jumping in front of him, showered down all the heavy talk I knew in German, Italian and French, subsiding at last into my mother tongue, with her appropriate epithets. Having sense enough left to know that he could not reap the full benefit of English, I pulled out my card, wrote my address on it, and threw it on the table, and I rather think that was understood. There’s no country that I have heard of where men don’t know what ‘we’ll fight this out, means.’” Norman was striding up and down the room now almost as restlessly as Eric had done, but he seated himself again as Mae asked for the rest.
“The rest is very simple, Miss Mae—mere business. I turned to go away, and one of his friends approached me to ask for the name of my second. I gave Eric’s here. He bowed and said: ‘He shall hear from me this evening, and I came home. The evening has advanced to midnight, but not a word yet. No, it is not quite eleven, I see.”
“You’ll have the choice of weapons if they challenge you,” said Eric; “you’ll take pistols, I suppose? Just think of my living to really assist in a ‘pistols-and-coffee-for-two’ affair!”
“I daresay it will be coffee for two, served separately, and with no thought of pistols. I don’t really believe it will come to anything. There are ways of getting out of it,” said Norman, lighting a cigarette.
“Will you refuse to fight?” asked Mae, and her heart, which had been white with fear for Norman the second before, flashed now with quick, red scorn. Even the Huguenot maiden would, after all, have despised her lover if he had quietly allowed her to tie the white handkerchief to his arm. Believe it, she loved him far, far better as she clung to him, pressed closely to his warm, living heart, because she realized in an agony that his honor was strong enough to burst even the tender bonds of her dear love, and that he would break from her round arms to rush into that ghostly, ghastly death-embrace on the morrow, at the dreadful knell of St. Bartholomew bells.