Pistols for Two Read Free Page A

when – Tom checked that thought quickly. Fatal to remember all the things he and Jack had done together, and the sport they had had, and the scrapes they had plunged into! That was all over; and even if their encounter did not end in the death of one of them, nothing would ever be the same again between them. But he couldn’t help remembering, and it didn’t seem to be of any use to dwell on Jack’s miserable double-dealing today, because whether Jack gave Marianne flowers behind his best friend’s back, or whether he behaved as impeccably as one had been so sure he would, he was still the friend who had shared one’s every thought, helped one out of tight corners, called on one for instant aid himself, so that one would as readily have doubted Father’s loyalty as his.
    And it was all because of freckled little Marianne Treen, who was a shocking flirt, when one came to consider the matter dispassionately, and probably didn’t care a rap for either of them! One dance each – and only country dances at that! – had she granted them tonight, but she had waltzed twice with Sir Gavin Kilham, and had engaged herself to another town-buck for the quadrille. When one thought of the time one had wasted, trying to fix her interest – yes, wasted was the word! All these summer months, when he and Jack might have been so much better employed, squandered on toadying a chit who had never been anything but a dead bore to either of them!
    The more one thought of it the less vivid grew Marianne’s present image, the clearer the memory of a tiresome little girl with freckles, spoiling one’s sport by insisting on accompanying one, and then falling into the brook, or complaining that she was tired, or dared not cross a field with cows grazing in it. The idea that he and Jack – Jack! – should stand up to shoot at one another for the sake of Marianne Treen would have been a grand jest if it had not been so tragic. And just suppose that by some quirk of fortune it was not Jack’s bullet that found its mark, but his? Why, if that happened he would blow out his own brains, because there would be nothing left in all the world for Jack’s friend to do!
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    When his thoughts had slid into unquiet dreams he did not know, but he must have dozed a little, for he opened his eyes to find that the moonlight was no longer sliding between the chinks of the blinds, but a disagreeable morning-light instead. His watch informed him that it was after five o’clock, so he sprang out of his tumbled bed in a hurry. By the time he heard stealthy footsteps on the gravel-walk below his window, he was dressed, and he leaned out to tell Harry so. Harry had been about to throw a handful of pebbles up, but he dropped them, and made signs indicating that it was time to be off.
    Tom stole downstairs, and slipped out of the house by a side door. No one was stirring. He and Harry went in silence down the drive to where Harry had left his gig.
    Harry said, unhitching the reins from the gate-post: ‘You know, I don’t like this above half, old fellow.’
    One could not draw back from an encounter, particularly when it was one’s first, and one had never had the chance to prove one’s mettle. ‘Do you imagine I am going to cry off?’ demanded Tom.
    ‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Harry, climbing up beside him into the gig. ‘After all, you and Jack – !’
    ‘Don’t waste your breath on me!’ recommended Tom. ‘Try what Jack will say to you! If I know him you’ll have a short answer!’
    ‘You couldn’t expect Jack to draw back,’ said Harry.
    ‘I don’t!’
    ‘No, but I mean it wasn’t his challenge! You were foxed, Tom – you know you were!’
    ‘No, I was not,’ said Tom.
    ‘Dash it, to call a man out only because he jostles you in a doorway, without in the least meaning to –’
    ‘It wasn’t that,’ answered Tom. ‘And it’s no use to prose at me: I shan’t listen!’
    So Harry said no more, and the rest of the drive was