VI

VI

At sixteen years of age Hector-Marie-Aymont-von Widinitz Dunoisse fought his first duel, with a fellow-student of the Royal School of Technical Military Instruction, Rue de la Vallée Ste. Gabrielle.

The quarrel occurred after one of the weekly inspections by the General-Commandant, when Hector, accoutered with the black shiny sword-belt and cartridge-belt; armed with the sword, bayonet, and the heavy little brass-mounted, muzzle-loading musket, commonly displayed, when not in use, with two hundred and ninety-nine similar weapons in the long gallery running above the class-rooms—when Hector with his fellow-pupils of the First Division had performed a series of military evolutions in the presence of Miss Harriet Smithwick, admitted with other persons standing in the parental and protective relation to the young neophytes of the School, to the dusty patch of tree-shaded grass at the lower end of the smaller exercise-ground, where Messieurs the hundred-and-fifty pupils of the two companies of the Junior Corps—the great boys of the Senior possessing a parade-ground to themselves—commonly mustered for drill.

On other days, visitors and friends were received in a small entrance-yard, dank and moist in wet weather, baking and gritty in hot; inhospitable and uninviting at all times; in which enclosure M. and Madame Cornu werepermitted by the authorities to purvey fruit and sweets, and a greasy kind ofgalette, with ices of dubious complexion in June and July; and syrups ofgroseilleandgrenadine, served hot—and rendered, if possible, even stickier and more vapidly cloying beverages by being thus served,—in the bitter winter months.

The good Smithwick would have enjoyed herself better if permitted to ascend to the department on the floor above the Infirmary, where Madame Gaubert presided, in an atmosphere strongly flavored with soft-soap, over long rows of shelves divided into regulation pigeon-holes, containing within an officially-appointed space of one foot ten inches square the linen of young Hector and his companions. It would have satisfied a burning curiosity from which the poor little lady had long suffered, had she been permitted to observe for herself the process of lavation that deprived her ex-pupil’s shirts of every button, while leaving the dirt untouched; and to gauge with her own eyes the holes of the rats and mice that ate such prodigious mouthfuls, not only in the garments named, but in the sheets and bolster-covers, towels and napkins, which, by the amiable dispensation of a paternal Government, the boy was permitted to bring from home.

Instead, the poor fluttered spinster occupied a small share of one of the green benches set beneath the shade of the semicircle of lime-trees at the lower end of the exercise-ground; her neighbors on the right and left being the venerable Duchesse de Moulny of the Faubourg St-Honoré and Mademoiselle Pasbas of the Grand Opera Ballet. Pédelaborde, inventor of an Elixir for the preservation of the teeth to extreme old age, who in fact enjoyed a Government contract for attending to the dental requirements of the young gentlemen of the School, weighed down the bench at its farther end; and M. Bougon, principal physician of the body to His Majesty King Louis-Philippe, balanced his meager and wizened anatomy upon the other extremity. Nor was there the lack of sympathy between the occupants of the bench that might have been expected. The Duchesse had a grandson—Bougon a son—Pédelaborde a nephew—the opera-dancer a youngprotégé(in whom, for the sake of an early friend, an officer of Cuirassiers, Mademoiselle took a tender interest)—little Miss Smithwick the adored offspring of a revered employer,to observe blandly, and discreetly manifest interest in, and secretly throb and glow and tremble for; so simple and common and ordinary is Nature beneath all the mass of pretenses we pile upon her, so homespun are the cords of love, and sympathy, and interest, that move the human heart.

When the General-Commandant—for this was an ordinary informal inspection of young gentlemen in the School undress of belted blouse and brass-badged, numberedképi, not the terrific bi-monthly reviewen grande tenueof the entire strength of the establishment, when General, Colonel, Captains, Adjutants, the four Sergeants-Major, the six drummers, and all the pupils of the Junior and Senior Corps, wearing the little cocked hat with the white plume and gold lace trimming; the black leather stock, the blue frocked coat faced with red, trimmed and adorned with gilt buttons and gold braid, must pass under the awful eye of a Field-Marshal, assisted by a Colonel of the Staff, a Major of Artillery, and a fearful array of Civil Professors—when the General, addressing Alai-Joseph-Henri-Jules de Moulny, briefly remarked:

“Pupil No. 127, you have the neck of a pig and the finger-nails of a gorilla! Another offense against that cleanliness which should adorn the person of a Soldier of France, and thegalonof Corporal, which you disgrace, will be transferred to the sleeve of one more worthy to wear it.”

You beheld the immense bonnet of the venerable aristocrat, its great circular sweep of frontage filled with quillings of costly lace and chastely tinted cambric blossoms, its crown adorned with nodding plumes, awful as those upon the helmet of the Statue of the Commendatore, condescendingly bending towards the flamboyant headgear of the Pasbas—as the Duchesse begged to be informed, her lamentable infirmity of deafness depriving her of the happiness of hearing the commendations bestowed by his Chief upon her young relative,—what Monsieur the General had actually said?

“I myself, Madame, failed to catch the expression of approval actually employed. But,” explained Mademoiselle Pasbas, as she lowered herlorgnetteand turned a candid look of angelic sweetness upon the dignified oldlady, “Madame may rely upon it that they were thoroughly merited by the young gentleman upon whom they were bestowed.”

“I thank you, Mademoiselle.” The bonnet of the Duchesse bent in gracious acknowledgment. “It is incumbent upon the members of my family to set an example. Nor do we fail of our duty, as a rule.”

Perhaps the roguish dimples of Mademoiselle Pasbas were a trifle more in evidence; possibly the humorous creases of enjoyment deepened in the stout Pédelaborde’s triple chin; it may be that the sardonic twinkle behind the narrow gold-rimmed spectacles of M. Bougon took on extra significance; but all three were as demure as pussycats, not even exchanging a glance behind the overwhelming patrician headgear with the stupendous feathers;—to see one another over it would have been impossible without standing on the bench. This is the simple truth, without a particle of exaggeration. My Aunt Julietta at this date purchased from a fashionable milliner in the West End of London——But my Aunt Julietta has no business on the Calais side of the English Channel!—let her and her bonnets wait!

The General’s salute closed the review. The pupils presented arms, a superb effect of a hundred and fifty muskets, not infrequently thrilling parents to the bestowal of five-franc pieces; the six drummers beat the disperse as one overgrown hobbledehoy; the orderly ranks broke up. Discipline gave place to disorder. Boys ran, chasing one another and yelling, boys skylarked, punching and wrestling, boys argued in gesticulatory groups, or whispered in knots of two or three together.... The spectators on the painted benches behind the railing had risen. Now they filed out by a door in the high-spiked wall behind the dusty lime-trees, in whose yellow-green blossoms the brown bees had been humming and droning all through the hot, bright day of June. The bees were also dusty, and the spectators were liberally powdered with dust, for the clumping, wooden-heeled, iron toe-capped School regulation shoes of the young gentlemen had raised clouds which would have done credit to the evolutions of a battery of horse. And the yearning desires of Hector Dunoisse were turning in the direction of a cooling draught of Madame Cornu’sgrenadine, or of the thin, vinegary, red ration-wine;when to him says Alain-Joseph-Henri-Jules de Moulny:

“Tell me, Redskin, didst thou twig my respected grand-mamma perched in the front row between a variegated she-cockatoo and a molting old female fowl, who held her head on one side, and cried into a clean starched pocket-hand-kerchief?”

“She did not cry!” warmly contradicted the young gentleman thus assailed. “It is her cold-in-the-head that never gets well until she goes back to England for her holiday once a year; and then she hasmigraineinstead. All the Smithwick family are like that, Miss Smithwick says; it is an inherited delicacy of the constitution.”

“‘Smizzique ... Mees Smeezveek.’ ... There’s a name to go to bed with!...” pursued de Moulny, his thick lips, that were nearly always chapped, curling back and upwards in his good-natured schoolboy’s grin. “And how old is she?—your Sm——. I cannot say it again!... And why does she wear a bonnet that was raked off the top of an ash-barrel, and a shawl that came off a hook at the Morgue?”

Young Hector had been conscious of the antiquated silk bonnet, in hue the faded maroon of pickling-cabbage, sadly bent as to its supporting framework of stiffened gauze and whalebone, by the repeated tumbles of the bonnet-box containing it off the high top-corner of the walnut wardrobe in Miss Smithwick’s fourth-floor sleeping-apartment at home in the Rue de la Chaussée-d’Antin. It had been eating into him like a blister all through the General’s inspection, that venerable wintry headgear, with its limp veil like a sooty cellar-cobweb, depending from its lopsided rim. To say nothing of the shawl, a venerable yellow cashmere atrocity, with long straggling white fringes, missing here and there, where the tooth of Time had nibbled them away. But though these articles of apparel made good Smithwick’s ex-pupil feel sick and hot with shame, they were not to be held up to ridicule. That was perfectly clear....

Hector could not have told you why the thing was so clear; even as he thrust a challenging elbow into the big de Moulny’s fleshy ribs, turning pale under the red Egyptian granite tint of skin that had earned him hisnickname from these boys, his comrades—who like other boys all the world over, had recently fallen under Fenimore Cooper’s spell—and said, with a dangerous glitter in his black-diamond eyes:

“I do not know how old she is—it is not possible for a gentleman to ask a lady her age. But she is a lady!” he added, neatly intercepting the contradiction before it could be uttered. “Une femme de bon ton, une femme comme il faut.Also she dresses as a lady should ... appropriately, gracefully, elegantly....” He added grandiloquently, tapping the brass hilt of his little School hanger: “I will teach you with this, M. de Moulny, to admire that bonnet and that shawl!”

“Nom d’un petit bonhomme!” spluttered the astonished de Moulny. But there was no relenting in Hector’s hard young face, though he was secretly sick at the pit of his stomach and cold at heart.

“I will fight you!” he repeated.

De Moulny, always slow to wrath, began to lose his temper. The outspoken compliments of Monsieur the General had stung, and here was a more insufferable smart. Also, it was a bosom friend who challenged. One may be angry with an enemy; it is the friend become foe who drives us to frenzied rage.

He said, pouting his fleshy lips, sticking out his obstinate chin, staring at the changed unfriendly face, with eyes grown hard as blue stones:

“I do not know that I can oblige you by giving you the opportunity of learning how quickly boasters are cured of brag. For one thing, I have my stripe,” he added, holding up his head and looking arrogantly down his nose.

“Since yesterday,” agreed Hector, pointedly. “And after to-day you will not have it. The squad-paper will hang beside another fellow’s bed,—M. the Commandant will have reduced you to the ranks for uncleanliness on parade. So we will fight to-morrow.”

“Possibly!” acquiesced de Moulny, his heavy cheeks quivering with anger, his thick hands opening and shutting over the tucked-in thumbs. “Possibly!” he repeated. His sluggish temperament once fairly set alight, burned with the fierce roaring flame and the incandescent heat of a fire of cocoanut-shell. And it was in his power to be so well revenged! He went on, speaking through his nose:

“As it is only since yesterday that you became legitimately entitled to carry the name you bear, you may be admitted to know something of what happened yesterday.” He added: “But of what will happen to-morrow, do not make too sure, for I may decline to do you the honor of correcting you. It is possible, that!” he added, as Hector stared at him aghast. “A gentleman may be a bastard—I have no objection to a bar-sinister.... But you are not only your father’s son—you are also your mother’s! We de Moulnys are ultra-Catholic——” This was excellent from Alain-Joseph-Henri-Jules, whose chaplet of beads lay rolling in the dust at the bottom of the kitlocker at his bed-foot, and who was scourged to Communion by the family Chaplain at Christmas and Easter, and at the Fête-Dieu. “Ultra-Catholic. And your mother was a Carmelite nun!”

“My mother assumed the Veil of Profession when I was eight years old. With my father’s consent and the approval of her Director,” said Hector, narrowing his eyelids and speaking between his small white teeth. “Therefore I may be pardoned for saying that the permission of the family of de Moulny was not indispensable, or required.”

Retorted de Moulny—and it was strange how the rough, uncultured intonations, the slipshod grammar, the slang of the exercise-yard and the schoolroom, had been instinctively replaced in the mouths of these boys by the phraseology of the outer world of men:

“You are accurate, M. Hector Dunoisse, in saying that your mother was received into the Carmel when you were eight years old. What you do not admit, or do not know, is that she was a professed Carmelite when you were born.” He added, with a pout of disgust: “It is an infamy, a thing like that!”

“The infamy is yours who slander her!” cried out Hector in the quavering staccato squeak of fury. “You lie!—do you hear?—You lie!” And struck de Moulny in the face.

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