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The General hustled Lisa away, muttering oaths beneath his great white moustache. When Andrew Smallie picked himself up, Carl von Mendebach was standing over him. "Tell him," said Carl in German, "that that was my sister." I told Smallie. Then Carl von Mendebach slowly drew off his fur glove and boxed Smallie heavily on the ear so that he rolled over sideways.
Duelling with pistols is forbidden. It is never dreamt of among German students. "Ah all right!" said Carl. "If he wishes it." I at once wrote a note to Smallie, telling him that the thing was impossible. My messenger was sent back without an answer. I wrote, offering to fight Carl myself with the usual light sword or the sabre, in his name and for him. To this I received no answer.
I have been wounded I walk very lame. But I still hope to see Andrew Smallie perhaps in a country where I can hold him to his threat; if it is only for the remembrance of five minutes that I had with Lisa when I went back to Gottingen that cold winter morning. "Si je vis, c'est bien; si je meurs, c'est bien." "Ai-i-ieah," the people cried, as Juan Quereno passed the cry of the muleteers, in fact.
He lay quite still while I quickly loosened his coat. Then suddenly his breath caught. "Golossa-a-l!" he muttered. His eyes glazed. He was dead. I looked up and saw Smallie walking quickly away alone. The Einjahriger was kneeling beside me. I have never seen or heard of Andrew Smallie since. I am a grey- haired man now. I have had work to do in every war of my day.
"Come along my dear," Andrew Smallie went on. He reached out his hand, and, grasping her wrist, tried to drag her towards him. Then I went for him. I am, as I have confessed, a small man. But if a man on skates goes for another, he gathers a certain impetus. I gave it to him with my left, and Andrew Smallie slid along the ice after he had fallen.
We were absorbed in our attempts when I heard a voice I knew and hated. "Here, you, little girl in the fur jacket come and have a turn with me," it was saying in loud, rasping, intoxicated tones. I turned sharply. Smallie was standing in front of Lisa with a leer in his eyes. She was looking up at him puzzled, frightened not understanding English. The General was obesely dumfounded.
"Tell him," he said, "where he can procure fencing lessons." I gave Smallie the name of the best fencing-master in Gottingen. Then we called for beer and awaited the return of our messenger. The student came back looking grave and pale. "He accepts," he said. "But " "Well!" we both exclaimed. "He names pistols." "What?" I cried. Carl laughed suddenly. We had never thought of such a thing.
He had been shipped off to Gottingen, in the hope that he might there drink himself quietly to death. The Scotch do not keep their skeletons at home in a cupboard. They ship them abroad and give them facilities. Andrew Smallie soon heard that there was an English student in Gottingen, and, before long, procured an introduction. I disliked him at once.
I met the Von Mendebachs at the usual haunts the theatre, an occasional concert, the band on Sunday afternoon, and at the houses of some of the professors. It was Lisa who told me that another young Briton was coming to live in Gottingen not, however, as a student at the University. He turned out to be a Scotsman one Andrew Smallie, the dissolute offspring of a prim Edinburgh family.
I went round to his rooms and was refused admittance. The next morning at five before it was light Carl and I started off on foot for a little forest down by the river. At six o'clock Andrew Smallie arrived. He was accompanied by an Einjahriger a German who had lived in England before he came home to serve his year in the army. We did not know much about it. Carl laughed as I put him in position.
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