" And he bowed himself out, leaving
Edward Cossey in a curious condition of concentrated rage.
CHAPTER XXXIX
THE COLONEL GOES TO SLEEP
The state of mind is difficult to picture which could induce a
peaceable christian-natured individual, who had moreover in the course
of his career been mixed up with enough bloodshed to have acquired a
thorough horror of it, to offer to fight a duel. Yet this state had
been reached by Harold Quaritch.
Edward Cossey wisely enough declined to entertain the idea, but the
Colonel had been perfectly in earnest about it. Odd as it may appear
in the latter end of this nineteenth century, nothing would have given
him greater pleasure than to put his life against that of his unworthy
rival. Of course, it was foolish and wrong, but human nature is the
same in all ages, and in the last extremity we fall back by instinct
on those methods which men have from the beginning adopted to save
themselves from intolerable wrong and dishonour, or, be it admitted,
to bring the same upon others.
But Cossey utterly declined to fight. As he said, he had had enough of
being shot, and so there was an end of it. Indeed, in after days the
Colonel frequently looked back upon this episode in his career with
shame not unmingled with amusement, reflecting when he did so on the
strange potency of that passion which can bring men to seriously
entertain the idea of such extravagances.
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