The Point Of Honor: A Military Tale

by Joseph Conrad

were apparent because he was notcapable of artifice.

  "The very devil, lieutenant!" he blurted out in the innocence of hisheart, "is that I have declared my intention to get to the bottom ofthis affair. And when a colonel says something... you see..."

  Lieutenant D'Hubert broke in earnestly.

  "Let me entreat you, colonel, to be satisfied with taking my word ofhonour that I was put into a damnable position where I had no option.I had no choice whatever consistent with my dignity as a man and anofficer.... After all, colonel, this fact is the very bottom of thisaffair. Here you've got it. The rest is a mere detail...."

  The colonel stopped short. The reputation of Lieutenant D'Hubert forgood sense and good temper weighed in the balance. A cool head, a warmheart, open as the day. Always correct in his behaviour. One had totrust him. The colonel repressed manfully an immense curiosity.

  "H'm! You affirm that as a man and an officer.... No option? Eh?"

  "As an officer, an officer of the Fourth Hussars, too," repeatedLieutenant D'Hubert, "I had not. And that is the bottom of the affair,colonel."

  "Yes. But still I don't see why to one's colonel... A colonel is afather--_que diable_."

  Lieutenant D'Hubert ought not to have been allowed out as yet. Hewas becoming aware of his physical insufficiency with humiliation anddespair--but the morbid obstinacy of an invalid possessed him--and atthe same time he felt, with dismay, his eyes filling with water. Thistrouble seemed too big to handle. A tear fell down the thin, pale cheekof Lieutenant D'Hubert. The colonel turned his back on him hastily. Youcould have heard a pin drop.

  "This is some silly woman story--is it not?"

  The chief spun round to seize the truth, which is not a beautiful shapeliving in a well but a shy bird best caught by stratagem. This wasthe last move of the colonel's diplomacy, and he saw the truth shiningunmistakably in the gesture of Lieutenant D'Hubert, raising his weakarms and his eyes to heaven in supreme protest.

  "Not a woman affair--eh?" growled the colonel, staring hard. "I don'task you who or where. All I want to know is whether there is a woman init?"

  Lieutenant D'Hubert's arms dropped and his weak voice was patheticallybroken.

  "Nothing of the kind, mon colonel."

  "On your honour?" insisted the old warrior.

  "On my honour."

  "Very well," said the colonel thoughtfully, and bit his lip. Thearguments of Lieutenant D'Hubert, helped by his liking for the person,had convinced him. Yet it was highly improper that his intervention, ofwhich he had made no secret, should produce no visible effect. He keptLieutenant D'Hubert a little longer and dismissed him kindly.

  "Take a few days more in bed, lieutenant. What the devil does thesurgeon mean by reporting you fit for duty?"

  On coming out of the colonel's quarters, Lieutenant D'Hubert saidnothing to the friend who was waiting outside to take him home. He saidnothing to anybody. Lieutenant D'Hubert made no confidences. But in theevening of that day the colonel, strolling under the elms growing nearhis quarters in the company of his second in command opened his lips.

  "I've got to the bottom of this affair," he remarked.

  The lieutenant-colonel, a dry brown chip of a man with shortside-whiskers, pricked up his ears without letting a sound of curiosityescape him.

  "It's no trifle," added the colonel oracularly. The other waited for along while before he murmured:

  "Indeed, sir!"

  "No trifle," repeated the colonel, looking straight before him. "I've,however, forbidden D'Hubert either to send to or receive a challengefrom Feraud for the next twelve months."

  He had imagined this prohibition to save the prestige a colonel shouldhave. The result of it was to give an official seal to the mysterysurrounding this deadly quarrel. Lieutenant D'Hubert repelled by animpassive silence all attempts to worm the truth out of him. LieutenantFeraud, secretly uneasy at first, regained his assurance as time wenton. He disguised his ignorance of the meaning of the imposed truce bylittle sardonic laughs as though he were amused by what he intended tokeep to himself. "But what will you do?" his chums used to ask him. Hecontented himself by replying, "_Qui vivra verra_," with a truculentair. And everybody admired his discretion.

  Before the end of the truce, Lieutenant D'Hubert got his promotion. Itwas well earned, but somehow no one seemed to expect the event. WhenLieutenant Feraud heard of it at a gathering of officers, he mutteredthrough his teeth, "Is that so?" Unhooking his sword from a peg near thedoor, he buckled it on carefully and left the company without anotherword. He walked home with measured steps, struck a light with his flintand steel, and lit his tallow candle. Then, snatching an unlucky glasstumbler off the mantelpiece, he dashed it violently on the floor.

  Now that D'Hubert was an officer of a rank superior to his own, therecould be no question of a duel. Neither could send nor receive achallenge without rendering himself amenable to a court-martial. Itwas not to be thought of. Lieutenant Feraud, who for many days now hadexperienced no real desire to meet Lieutenant D'Hubert arms in hand,chafed at the systematic injustice of fate. "Does he think he willescape me in that way?" he thought indignantly. He saw in it anintrigue, a conspiracy, a cowardly manoeuvre. That colonel knew what hewas doing. He had hastened to recommend his pet for promotion. It wasoutrageous that a man should be able to avoid the consequences of hisacts in such a dark and tortuous manner.

  Of a happy-go-lucky disposition, of a temperament more pugnacious thanmilitary, Lieutenant Feraud had been content to give and receive blowsfor sheer love of armed strife and without much thought of advancement.But after this disgusting experience an urgent desire of promotionsprang up in his breast. This fighter by vocation resolved in his mindto seize showy occasions and to court the favourable opinion of hischiefs like a mere worldling. He knew he was as brave as any oneand never doubted his personal charm. It would be easy, he thought.Nevertheless, neither the bravery nor the charm seemed to work veryswiftly. Lieutenant Feraud's engaging, careless truculence of a "_beausabreur_" underwent a change. He began to make bitter allusions to"clever fellows who stick at nothing to get on." The army was full ofthem, he would say, you had only to look round. And all the time he hadin view one person only, his adversary D'Hubert. Once he confided to anappreciative friend: "You see I don't know how to fawn on the right sortof people. It isn't in me."

  He did not get his step till a week after Austerlitz. The light cavalryof the _Grande Armee_ had its hands very full of interesting work for alittle while. But directly the pressure of professional occupation hadbeen eased by the armistice, Captain Feraud took measures to arrange ameeting without loss of time. "I know his tricks," he observed grimly."If I don't look sharp he will take care to get himself promoted overthe heads of a dozen better men than himself. He's got the knack of thatsort of thing." This duel was fought in Silesia. If not fought out toa finish, it was at any rate fought to a standstill. The weapon wasthe cavalry sabre, and the skill, the science, the vigour, and thedetermination displayed by the adversaries compelled the outspokenadmiration of the beholders. It became the subject of talk on bothshores of the Danube, and as far south as the garrisons of Gratzand Laybach. They crossed blades seven times. Both had many slightcuts--mere scratches which bled profusely. Both refused to have thecombat stopped, time after time, with what appeared the most deadlyanimosity. This appearance was caused on the part of Captain D'Hubert bya rational desire to be done once for all with this worry; on the partof Feraud by a tremendous exaltation of his pugnacious instincts andthe rage of wounded vanity. At last, dishevelled, their shirts in rags,covered with gore and hardly able to stand, they were carried forciblyoff the field by their marvelling and horrified seconds. Later on,besieged by comrades avid of details, these gentlemen declared that theycould not have allowed that sort of hacking to go on. Asked whether thequarrel was settled this time, they gave it out as their conviction thatit was a difference which could only be settled by one of the partiesremaining lifeless on the ground. The sensation spread from army to armycorp
s, and penetrated at last to the smallest detachments of the troopscantoned between the Rhine and the Save. In the cafes in Vienna wherethe masters of Europe took their ease it was generally estimated fromdetails to hand that the adversaries would be able to meet again inthree weeks' time, on the outside. Something really transcendental inthe way of duelling was expected.

  These expectations were brought to naught by the necessities of theservice which separated the two officers. No official notice had beentaken of their quarrel. It was now the property of the army, and notto be meddled with lightly. But the story of the duel, or rather theirduelling propensities, must have stood