Chapter 2 - Page 2

staff officer. Lying in bed he
raved to himself in his mind or aloud to the pretty maid who ministered
to his needs with devotion and listened to his horrible imprecations
with alarm. That Lieutenant D'Hubert should be made to "pay for it,"
whatever it was, seemed to her just and natural. Her principal concern
was that Lieutenant Feraud should not excite himself. He appeared so
wholly admirable and fascinating to the humility of her heart that her
only concern was to see him get well quickly even if it were only to
resume his visits to Madame de Lionne's salon.

Lieutenant D'Hubert kept silent for the immediate reason that there was
no one except a stupid young soldier servant to speak to. But he was not
anxious for the opportunities of which his severe arrest deprived him.
He would have been uncommunicative from dread of ridicule. He was aware
that the episode, so grave professionally, had its comic side. When
reflecting upon it he still felt that he would like to wring Lieutenant
Feraud's neck for him. But this formula was figurative rather than
precise, and expressed more a state of mind than an actual physical
impulse. At the same time there was in that young man a feeling of
comradeship and kindness which made him unwilling to make the position
of Lieutenant Feraud worse than it was.

He did not want to talk at large about this wretched affair. At the
inquiry he would have, of course, to speak the truth in self-defence.
This prospect vexed him.

But no inquiry took place. The army took the field instead. Lieutenant
D'Hubert, liberated without remark, returned to his regimental duties,
and Lieutenant Feraud, his arm still in a sling, rode unquestioned with
his squadron to complete his convalescence in the smoke of battlefields
and the fresh air of night bivouacs. This bracing treatment suited his
case so well that at the first rumour of an armistice being signed he
could turn without misgivings to the prosecution of his private warfare.

This time it was to be regular warfare. He dispatched two friends to
Lieutenant D'Hubert, whose regiment was stationed only a few miles away.
Those friends had asked no questions of their principal. "I must pay him
off, that pretty staff officer," he had said grimly, and they went
away quite contentedly on their mission. Lieutenant D'Hubert had no
difficulty in finding two friends equally discreet and devoted to their
principal. "There's a sort of crazy fellow to whom I must give another
lesson," he had curtly declared, and they asked for no better reasons.

On these grounds an encounter with duelling swords was arranged one
early morning in a convenient field. At the third set-to, Lieutenant
D'Hubert found himself lying on