WHEN Cauthorne left La Rue place, he went directly to the hotel. He met Col. Vance, who was walking to and fro on the veranda, and immediately noticed that something had gone wrong with him. The Southerner's dark face was darker, and his eyes sterner, than usual. He carried himself stiffly erect, walking with something of a military strut. Taking Cauthorne's arm he said, —
"I desire a few words in private with you, sir."
"Certainly," replied Cauthorne: "come into my room."
They went into the hall, in the brick part of the hotel, turned down the first corridor to the left, and entered the second room on the left- hand side. This particularity of description is for the benefit of those who will visit Tallahassee, and stop at the old hotel. This room has a large window looking into the Capitol grounds. It has a small fireplace, and a queer little black wooden mantle. It has an inner door giving into another room north.
When they were seated, Cauthorne produced a box of cigars, and matches.
"Now," said he, "I am quite ready for your confidential communications."
He said this lightly, thinking Vance had some matters to put into print, or to keep out of print, touching his legislative schemes.
"Your friend Willard is no gentleman, is he?" began Vance.
Cauthorne was lighting a cigar. He dropped the match, and turned his astounded face full upon his companion, with a suddenness that exaggerated his apparent excitement.
"I do not mean to hurt your feelings," Vance added quickly, in a conciliatory tone, and leaning toward Cauthorne: "I want you to know that I esteem you as a gentleman in every way. But this man Willard" —
"Is your equal in every respect, socially, intellectually, morally, and pecuniarily," exclaimed Cauthorne in a dry, firm tone. "What do you desire to say of him?"
It was Vance's turn to be astounded. In the arrogance of his jealousy and wounded pride, he had taken it for granted that Cauthorne would understand at a glance how utterly, preposterously presumptuous Willard had been in daring to carry a sketch of Lucie La Rue to his room. He had never dreamed that any man would for a moment presume to do such a thing.
Out of such trivial affairs all the duels, or nearly all, in high life, used to come in the South. It had one good effect: it made men very careful in matters of love. Great circumspection was required to be used by the knightly youth who went courting a Southern maid, else he might get entangled in an affair of honor for nothing more heinous than a few delicate attentions. Even worse things than duels used to occur, — dreadful street-fights between young men of the first families, when knives and pistols would snap and flash, and blood and life flow out freely.
Vance did not speak immediately. He had not wished to wound Cauthorne. In fact, he very much desired to retain him as a friend. It was not ugly selfishness that prompted this feeling: it was a genuine esteem which had suddenly developed, due in a certain degree, no doubt, to Cauthorne's strenuous efforts in behalf of his political measures, but more largely owing to Cauthorne's gentle strength of character and ready comradeship, his great knowledge of men and things, and his forthright honesty in expressing his opinions.
"We need not go and have trouble with each other," Vance said at last "I like you: you have shown yourself a gentleman, sir, and a true friend. It was to avoid a falling-out with you that I sought this interview. I knew Willard was your friend" —
"Then you should have been more guarded in your language to me in speaking of him," said Cauthorne bluntly.
Vance bit his lip, and slowly rolled a cigar between his thumb and fingers.
"It is an awkward thing to talk about," he presently said. "I wanted to tell you that Willard and I cannot get on together."
Cauthorne well knew that here was a quarrel about a sweetheart, but he did not even dimly suspect the immediate excuse for the trouble.
"Well," he said, "what is the matter between you and Willard?"
Vance suddenly recognized the difficulty of making explanation. A man in love is a child, and usually a very silly child. Novelists and poets and dramatists have tried to elevate the lover to the level of the hero: the trial has been a failure. The thing cannot be done. The details of any genuine courtship would damn any novel, poem, or play. A honeymoon in print would be a sort of sugar-coated Mother Goose. If a man loves a girl, he will get mad and fight if another man loves her, especially if, in the first instance, he is a Southern man.
"Mr. Willard's treatment of Miss La Rue is — is — his manner is — he — damn it! I do not like the way he is doing! That's the whole of it," exclaimed Vance.
Cauthorne laughed outright. He saw only the ludicrous side. Vance's situation did not touch his sympathy. As soon as he could leave off laughing, he said, —
"I have not heard Miss La Rue complaining. She seems very happy."
Vance leaped to his feet like a tiger. He was aflame with anger.
"What do you mean, sir?" he cried, his voice husky and thin.
"There is no doubt about my meaning," was the mild response. "Miss La Rue has the right to dismiss Willard from the house, and from her mind, if she chooses."
"But I" — began Vance.
"But you," interrupted Cauthorne, "have no right to make the first objection. Miss La Rue seems thoroughly capable of taking care of herself. If she prefers Willard to you" —
It was now Vance's turn to break in.
"But she doesn't," he exclaimed.
"Well, then, what are you going on so about?" said Cauthorne. "If she prefers you, Willard is the one who will suffer, not you."
"What right has he to be making portraits of her, and—and taking them away to his room? " cried Vance.
"Maybe she allowed him to. She didn't look very angry," said Cauthorne, recalling the little scene on the lawn. "She seemed in a charming good-humor."
Vance grabbed his long black mustache as if he would pull it out. He stared at the floor. He was very pale.
Cauthorne scratched a match, and lighted a cigar. It was Northern phlegm versus Southern egotism.
"And all this great anger of yours has no solider cause than that a Northern artist has dared to paint a Tallahassee girl!" continued Cauthorne, in his merciless matter-of-fact tone.
"He has taken advantage of the judge's hospitable kindness, and Miss La Rue's lack of worldly knowledge, and has been bewildering her with his infernal high-art nonsense," said Vance savagely; "and has finally secured her picture to put it on sale in some New York or Boston gallery."
"Well?" said Cauthorne, his face as quiet as that of a sphinx.
"No man shall live to do such a thing," Vance hissed.
"You will murder Willard, then?"
"I will fight him."
"But he will not fight. He is a peaceful artist, to whom the idea of spilling a man's life-blood would be hideous."
"I will make him fight," declared Vance with great emphasis.
"But you cannot," said Cauthorne, coolly puffing his cigar-smoke.
"I will show you," rejoined Vance imperiously.
"I will put it differently, then: you shall not," said Cauthorne; and, as he spoke, he rose to his feet, confronted his companion, and gazed steadily into his eyes.
"You call yourself a gentleman, and you are when you are free from this hereditary tendency to homicide," Cauthorne continued; "but you are no more a gentleman at this moment than a tiger is a gentleman. You are a brutal murderer just now, and you know you are. Do you suppose I'll let you go out of this room to kill my friend?"
"Stand out of my way, sir," said Vance, putting back his hand as if to get a pistol or a knife. It was the old Southern style.
Cauthorne sprang upon him like a lion, and in a second had disarmed him and dashed him forcibly into a chair.
"Sit there, colonel, until you have cooled off," he said, in a sort of growling way.
Vance strove with all his power; but that stalwart, determined two hundred pounds of bone and muscle proved too much for his slender frame to struggle against.
"I'm not in the least angry, colonel," muttered Cauthorne; "but I'll break every bone in your body if you don't come to your senses. If you force me to strike you, I'll give you what the boys in the English army used to term a 'beastly deadener.' Not another move, now!"
Cauthorne had not taken the cigar from his mouth, but was talking with it compressed between his teeth. He held Vance's pistol in his left hand.
Some one rapped at the door.
"You keep still now: there's a visitor, and I don't want this business made public, neither do you." Saying which, Cauthorne went and opened the door.
A messenger entered with a telegram. Cauthorne glanced at the superscription.
"It is for you," he said, handing it to Vance, who broke it open and hastily read it.
"My father is dying at Hot Springs, Ark.," he exclaimed. He hurriedly took out his watch. "I can barely make the train."
Cauthorne stepped aside to let him pass out of the room, and said, —
"Here is your pistol. Use it on birds," giving him the weapon.
Vance went away looking extremely haggard.
