“She should not have been there,” said Von Ritter, stolidly. “It was most irregular.”
“Fiske tried the high and mighty, brotherly act with her,” Miller continued, “but she shook him up like a charge of rack-a-rock. She told him that a duel was unmanly and un-American, and that he would be a murderer. She said his honor didn’t require him to risk his life for every cad who went about armed, insulting unarmed people—”
“What did she say?” I cried. “Say that again.”
Von Ritter tossed up his arms and groaned, but Miller shook his fist at me.
“Now, don’t you go and get wrathy,” he roared. “We’ll not stand it. We’ve been abused by everybody else on your account to-day, and we won’t take it from you. It doesn’t matter what the girl said. They probably told her you began the fight, and—”
“She said I was a cad,” I repeated, “and that I struck an unarmed man. Didn’t her brother tell her that he first insulted me, and struck me with his whip, and that I only used my fists. Didn’t any of you tell her?”
“No!” roared Miller; “what the devil has that got to do with it? She was trying to prevent the duel. We were trying to prevent the duel. That’s all that’s important. And if she hadn’t made the mistake of thinking you might back out of it, we could have prevented it. Now we can’t.”
I began to wonder if the opinion the Fiske family had formed of me, on so slight an acquaintance, was not more severe than I deserved, but I did not let the men see how sorely the news had hurt me. I only asked: “What other mistake did the young lady make?”
“She meant it all right,” said Miller, “but it was a woman’s idea of a bluff, and it didn’t go. She told us that before we urged her brother on to fight, we should have found out that he has spent the last five years in Paris, and that he’s the gilt-edged pistol-shot of the salle d’armes in the Rue Scribe, that he can hit a scarf-pin at twenty paces. Of course that ended it. The Baron spoke up in his best style and said that in the face of this information it would be now quite impossible for our man to accept an apology without being considered a coward, and that a meeting must take place. Then the girl ran to her brother and said, ‘What have I done?’ and he put his arm around her and walked her out of the room. Then we arranged the details in peace and came on here.”
“Good,” I said, “you did exactly right. I’ll meet you at dinner at the hotel.”