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!
4
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.