Chapter 6 No.6

"I Warrant There's Vinegar and Pepper In't!"

A heavy rain was beating against the windows with intermittent bursts of fury. Dr. Morgan, sitting in front of the fire in the room in which Sydney and Bob had had their painful interview on the previous morning, heard a mandatory whoop from without. Thrusting his stockinged feet into his slippers, and laying down the Pickwick Papers with a sigh for the probability of his having to make a visit in such a storm, he opened the door. A blast of wind brought in a sheet of rain that dampened the ashes swept from the fireplace by the sudden draught.

"O-oh, Doctor!" came a voice from the rider on the other side of the fence.

"Hullo! Who are you?"

"Bud Yarebrough. Ah got a letter fo' you."

"Well, light, ye fool, and put yo' beast under the shack."

The Doctor slammed the door and shivered back into the range of the fire's glow.

"Come in," he shouted, when he heard Bud's stamping feet on the porch. "Come in and warm. Who's sick, Melissa or the baby?"

Bud unwound the scarf that protected his ears, shook the water from his jacket, and began to untie the strings that secured pieces of sacking to his feet.

"Ne'er one. M'lissy's tol'able, 'n the baby's right smart. Doctor, Ah don' know's Ah ever knew a baby 's was 's lively 's Sydney M'lissy."

"Common failing o' first babies," grunted the Doctor.

"Now mos' babies," pursued Bud, spreading out his scarf and the pieces of burlap to dry before the blaze,-"mos' babies ain' overly interestin', but Ah 'low Ah never saw a baby suck her thumb no prettier'n Sydney M'lissy!"

"Did you-all say something about a letter?"

The Doctor was torn between a desire to be hospitable and a yearning to return to Sam Weller.

"Yes, Ah got a letter fo' ye."

Bud began to hunt in the inner recesses of his apparel.

"'N Ah 'low he cain't be well."

"He? Who?"

The Doctor's hopes of picking up his book again, which had risen when he heard of the admirable physical state of Melissa and the baby, sank once more.

"Mr. Baron. He sho' mus' be crazy to go out in such weather's this, 'n what's mo', to expect me to."

"He seemed to know the right person to apply to."

"That's the trouble with me. Ah'm that lackin' in good sense Ah do anythin' anybody asts me to 'cos Ah'm flattered to be ast!"

"Does he say he's sick?"

"He don' say so, but he looks powerful res'-less 'n wild-like. He came over 'bout noon 'n ast me would Ah carry you this letter."

Here Bud's prolonged search resulted in the discovery of the letter's outline under his sweater, and he extracted it by way of the neck of that elastic garment.

"Ah said, no, Ah wa'n' no fool to go out in such weather, 'n then he cut loose 'n talked the most awful language. Ah couldn' understan' a word of hit; Ah reckon hit's his foreign words or somethin', but Ah never heard anythin' like hit befo'. 'N then he ast me again, mahty quiet like, wouldn' Ah take this letter to you-all fo' him, 'n Ah jus' natchelly thought Ah would!"

The boy grinned sheepishly. The Doctor nodded and ran his finger under the flap of the envelope.

"So you think he's sick."

"M'lissy does. When Ah was puttin' the saddle on the mule she come out to the stable with them bits o' crocus sack fo' mah feet, 'n she said Mr. Baron'd jus' gone, 'n she 'lowed he had a fever comin' on, he looked so bad."

Dr. Morgan was reading the letter for the second time, frowning heavily over it.

"What do you-all think yo'self?"

"Well, Ah don' see how he can be right to walk a mile to our house in this weather, not needin' to, 'n to in-sist on mah comin' here. Is they e'er an answer?"

The older man rose and put a log on the fire, while Bud gathered together his primitive panoply and began to arm himself against the elements.

"You tell him, Bud, that Ah'll attend to it when the mud dries after this rain. Ah get enough hauling round to do in the mud, without anything extra," he added.

Bud's curiosity was suffering.

"Ain' you-all goin' to see him?"

"You tell him what Ah say." The Doctor picked up his book with an air of dismissal. "Shut the do' tight," he called, and then read the same page three times over with unthinking mind, until he heard Bob's step coming down the stairs.

"Bob."

"Sir?"

The young man looked out of the window, wondering how soon the rain would stop enough for him to go to see Sydney.

"Read this."

Bob took the letter.

"The Baron," he said, studying the small, foreign hand.

"Read it aloud."

Bob began obediently:

"My Dear Sir,-It is now more than three weeks that you played upon me a trick most treacherous. What it was I will not relate, for it would be needless. This I do assert, and more, that when you tell me you do not know what I mean, as you told me yesterday, you say not the truth. When I demand that you give to me the satisfaction that a gentleman should offer to another under such circumstances, I feel that I am treating you with a courtesy which you do not deserve. I think a whipping would suit better your contemptibility. Still, nevertheless, I conceal my pride, and I beg that you will meet me at whatever place you may appoint, and that you will fight with me with any weapon that you may choose.

"My unfriended condition in this country makes it not possible that I should be accompanied by a person who shall be suitable to be my second. But I entreat that my poverty in this respect will not deter you from bringing a friend with you.

"I am, sir,

"Yours with faithfulness,

"Friedrich Johann Ludwig V. Rittenheim."

Bob whistled,-a long sibilation of amazement,-and then laughed and laughed again.

"What have you-all been doing to the old fellow?"

"Ah haven't any idea."

"He says you talked it over yesterday."

"You hardly could say we discussed it," said the Doctor, dryly. "He insisted that Ah knew the drift o' his remarks, which Ah didn't, and rung in something about a man on a white horse."

"Who was he?"

"Blamed if Ah know. Ah begin to think, like Bud, the man's sick. He certainly was angry over something, and he used pretty strong language."

"Swearing?"

"No. Told me Ah lied."

Bob whistled again.

"That warmed you under the collar, I suspect?"

"It did wilt mah linen a trifle. However, Ah took it that, being a foreigner, he didn't know just how strong a word he was employing, so Ah drove off and left him."

"I reckon from this," holding up the letter, "he did know, and meant just what he said. It looks as if you'd been too lenient. You ought to have given him a biff or two on the spot."

"Maybe Ah had oughter."

Morgan pulled his beard thoughtfully.

Bob read the letter through once more.

"Quaint English, isn't it? The idea of a regular challenge gets me. I don't know when I've come across anything funnier."

"The notion ain't so novel to me, but duels are scarce nowadays. The State ain't so overly encouraging to them. Hand me down those Statutes and let me see exactly how they fix us."

Bob took the book from the shelf against the wall, and the Doctor turned over the pages.

"Here it is, in the Constitution. 'Article XIV., Section 2. Penalty for fighting a duel. No person who shall hereafter fight a duel, or assist in the same as a second, or send, accept, or knowingly carry a challenge therefor, or agree to go out of the State to fight a duel, shall hold any office in this State.' H'm," sniffed the Doctor. "Strikes me that won't prevent a lot of people from fighting. It discriminates against the would-be office-holder, but not against me, who wouldn't swallow an office if you put it in mah mouth."

"Or von Rittenheim, who wouldn't know one if he saw it! Perhaps it's a delicate tribute to the desire of all North Carolinians to serve their State."

"What disturbs me," said Dr. Morgan, shutting the book, "is that Ah like the fellow, and Ah don't want to shoot him all up fo' nothing. And, as Ah said befo', Ah sho' do think the fever's coming on him."

"What are you going to do?"

"Blest if Ah know!"

"What answer did you send?"

"Ah told Bud to tell him Ah'd attend to it when the mud dried."

"Good. That'll give you two or three days to find out what's the matter with him. Oh, what a joke, what a joke!"

Bob subsided into a chair, overcome with joy at the idea of his father as a participant in a formal duel.

"Let me know how it comes on, won't you, sir? May I be your second?"

"No," returned the Doctor, hunting his place in the discarded novel. "Ah'm laying off to have you governor some day, and Ah don't want to have you disqualified this early!"

Bob grinned appreciatively, and again explored the clouds.

"I'm going to see Sydney. May I show her this?"

Bob took his father's "H'm" for an assent, and went out to saddle his horse.

Von Rittenheim, sitting before the fire with Wallenstein's Lager on his knee, but with eyes bent upon the flames that burst with tiny explosions from the logs, and with mind wandering far from thoughts of Schiller,-von Rittenheim was waiting with what patience he could command for Bud's return.

With the falling of the wind at dusk the rain ceased. Friedrich lighted his lamp and opened his door to look up the road, a view not commanded by his single window.

He prepared his evening meal of coffee and bread and the batter-cakes that he had learned to like and then to make in this land of the frying-pan. Still Bud did not come. At eleven o'clock he went to bed, for he knew that no countryman, unless he were going for the doctor, would be abroad at that hour, with such mud under foot.

The next day's noon brought no news of the recreant messenger, and von Rittenheim went to the Yarebroughs' cabin in search of him.

"He ain' home," Melissa said, in the raised voice that she felt to be necessary to the German's understanding of her English. "He's gone to shoot cotton-tails. Ah 'low Ah'll make you-all a pie, 'f ye like," she added, offering this practical sympathy to the suffering that she saw written on his face.

"A pie of cotton-tails! Delightful! It will give me pleasure," said von Rittenheim, politely, with vague notions of birds floating through his brain. "Did he-Bud-br-ring no message for me yesterday in the afternoon?"

"No. He said the Doctor 'lowed he'd 'tend to hit-what yo' letter was about-when the mud dried, 'n Bud reckoned that wasn' no message, 'n hit wasn' no use goin' over to tell you jus' that."

"When the mud dried," repeated Friedrich. "Remarkable! Good-morning, Mrs. Yarebrough. Most remarkable!" he kept repeating to himself as he walked home. "He is not afraid, of that I am certain. Why, then, does he delay? Remarkable!"