by Neil Munro
CHAPTER XXVII -- THE DUEL ON THE SANDS
The Chamberlain stood near the door with his hand in the bosom of hiscoat, fingering the flageolet that was his constant companion even inthe oddest circumstances, and Count Victor went up to him, the buttonconcealed in his palm.
"Well, you are for going?" said Simon, more like one who puts a questionthan states a position, for some hours of Count Victor's studiedcontempt created misgivings.
"_Il y a terme a tout!_ And possibly monsieur will do me the honour toaccompany me so far as the avenue?"
"Sir!" said the Chamberlain.
"I have known men whose reputations were mainly a matter of clothes.Monsieur is the first I have met whose character hung upon a singlebutton. Permit me to return your button with a million regards."
He held the silver lozenge out upon his open hand.
"There are many buttons alike," said the Chamberlain. Then he checkedhimself abruptly and--"Well, damn it! I'll allow it's mine," said he.
"I should expect just this charming degree of manly frankness frommonsieur. A button is a button, too, and a devilish serious thing when,say, off a foil."
He still held out the accusation on his open hand, and bowed with hiseyes on those of the other man.
At that MacTaggart lightly struck up the hand, and the button rolledtwinkling along the floor.
Count Victor glanced quickly round him to see that no one noticed. Thehall, but for some domestics, was left wholly to themselves. The ballwas over, the company had long gone, and he had managed to stay his owndeparture by an interest feigned in the old armour that hung, with allits gallant use accomplished, on the walls, followed by a game at cardswith three of the ducal _entourage_, two of whom had just departed. Themelancholy of early morning in a banquet-room had settled down, and allthe candles guttered in the draught of doors.
"I fancy monsieur will agree that this is a business calling for theopen air," said Count Victor, no way disturbed by the rudeness. "I abhorthe stench of hot grease."
"To-morrow--" began the Chamberlain, and Count Victor interrupted.
"To-morrow," said he, "is for reflection; to-day is for deeds. Look! itwill be totally clear in a little."
"I'm the last man who would spoil the prospect of a ploy," said theChamberlain, changing his Highland sword for one of the rapiers on thewall that was more in conformity with the Frenchman's weapon; "and yetthis is scarcely the way to find your Drimdarroch."
"_Mais oui!_ Our Drimdarroch can afford to wait his turn. Drimdarrochis wholly my affair; this is partly Doom's, though I, it seems, was madethe poor excuse for your inexplicable insolence."
The Chamberlain slightly started, turned away, and smiled. "I wasright," thought he. "Here's a fellow credits himself with being thecause of jealousy."
"Very well!" he said aloud at last, "this way," and with the swordtucked under his arm he led, by a side-door in the turret-angle, intothe garden.
Count Victor followed, stepping gingerly, for the snow was ankle-deepupon the lawn, and his red-heeled dancing-shoes were thin.
"We know we must all die," said he in a little, pausing with a shiverof cold, and a glance about that bleak grey garden--"We know we mustall die, but I have a preference for dying in dry hose, if die I must.Cannot monsieur suggest a more comfortable quarter for our littleaffair?"
"Monsieur is not so dirty particular," said the Chamberlain. "If I sinkmy own rheumatism, it is not too much for you to risk your hose."
"The main avenue--" suggested Count Victor.
"Is seen from every window of the ball-room, and the servants are stillthere. Here is a great to-do about nothing!"
"But still, monsieur, I must protest on behalf of my poor hose," saidCount Victor, always smiling.
"By God! I could fight on my bare feet," cried the Chamberlain.
"Doubtless, monsieur; but there is so much in custom, _n'est ce pas?_and my ancestors have always been used with boots."
The Chamberlain overlooked the irony and glanced perplexed about him.There was, obviously, no place near that was not open to the objectionurged. Everywhere the snow lay deep on grass and pathway; the trees weresheeted ghosts, the chill struck through his own Highland brogues.
"Come!" said he at last, with a sudden thought; "the sand's the place,though it's a bit to go," and he led the way hurriedly towards theriverside.
"One of us may go farther to-day and possibly fare worse," saidMontaiglon with unwearied good-humour, stepping in his rear.
It was the beginning of the dawn. Already there was enough of it to showthe world of hill and wood in vast, vague, silent masses, to renderwan the flaming windows of the castle towers behind them. In the east asullen sky was all blotched with crimson, some pine-trees on the heightswere struck against it, intensely black, intensely melancholy, perhapsbecause they led the mind to dwell on wild, remote, and solitary places,the savagery of old forests, the cruel destiny of man, who has comeafter and must go before the dead things of the wood. There was no wind;the landscape swooned in frost.
"My faith! 'tis an odd and dolorous world at six o'clock in themorning," thought Count Victor; "I wish I were asleep in Cammercy andall well."
A young fallow-deer stood under an oak-tree, lifting its head to gazewithout dismay, almost a phantom; every moment the dawn spread wider; atlast the sea showed, leaden in the bay, mists revealed themselves uponBen Ime. Of sound there was only the wearying plunge of the cascades andthe roll of the shallows like tumbril-wheels on causeway as the riverran below the arches.
"Far yet, monsieur?" cried Count Victor to the figure striding ahead,and his answer came in curt accents.
"We'll be there in ten minutes. You want a little patience."
"We shall be there, _par dieu!_ in time enough," cried out Count Victor."'Tis all one to me, but the march is pestilent dull."
"What! would ye have fiddlin' at a funeral?" asked the Chamberlain,still without turning or slowing his step; and then, as though he hadbeen inspired, he drew out the flageolet that was ever his bosom friend,and the astounded Frenchman heard the strains of a bagpipe march. It wasso incongruous in the circumstances that he must laugh.
"It were a thousand pities to kill so rare a personage," thought he,"and yet--and yet--'tis a villainous early morning."
They passed along the river-bank; they came upon the sea-beach; theChamberlain put his instrument into his pocket and still led the wayupon the sand that lay exposed far out by the low tide. He stopped at aspot clear of weed, flat and dry and firm almost as a table. It wasthe ideal floor for an engagement, but from the uncomfortable senseof espionage from the neighbourhood of a town that looked with all itswindows upon the place as it were upon a scene in a play-house. Thewhole front of the town was not two hundred yards away.
"We shall be disturbed here, monsieur," said Count Victor, hesitating asthe other put off his plaid and coat.
"No!" said Sim MacTaggart shortly, tugging at a belt, and yet CountVictor had his doubts. He made his preparations, it is true, but alwayswith an apprehensive look at that long line of sleeping houses, whoseshutters--with a hole in the centre of each--seemed to stare down uponthe sand. No smoke, no flames, no sign of human occupance was there:the sea-gull and the pigeon pecked together upon the door-steps or thewindow-sills, or perched upon the ridges of the high-pitched roofs, anda heron stalked at the outlet of a gutter that ran down the street. Thesea, quiet and dull, the east turned from crimson to grey; the mountainsstreaming with mist----
"Cammercy after all!" said Count Victor to himself; "I shall wake in amoment, but yet for a nightmare 'tis the most extraordinary I have everexperienced."
"I hope you are a good Christian," said the Chamberlain, ready first andwaiting, bending his borrowed weapon in malignant arcs above his head.
"Three-fourths of one at least," said Montaiglon; "for I try my best tobe a decent man," and he daintily and deliberately turned up his sleeveupon an arm as white as milk.
"I'm waiting," said the Chamberlain.<
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"So! _en garde!_" said his antagonist, throwing off his hat and puttingup his weapon.
There was a tinkle of steel like the sound of ice afloat in a glass.
The town but seemed to sleep wholly; as it happened, there was one awakein it who had, of all its inhabitants, the most vital interest in thisstern business out upon the sands. She had gone home from the ball rentwith vexation and disappointment; her husband snored, a mannikin ofparchment, jaundice-cheeked, scorched at the nose with snuff; and,shuddering with distaste of her cage and her companion, she sat longat the window, all her finery on, chasing dream with dream, and everydream, as she knew, alas! with the inevitable poignancy of waking to thetruth. For her the flaming east was hell's own vestibule, for her thegreying dawn was a pallor of the heart, the death of hope. She satturning and turning the marriage-ring upon her finger, sometimes allunconsciously essaying to slip it off, and tugging viciously at theknuckle-joint that prevented its removal, and her eyes, heavy for sleepand moist with sorrow, still could pierce the woods of Shira Glento their deep-most recesses and see her lover there. They roamed soeagerly, so hungrily into that far distance, that for a while she failedto see the figures on the nearer sand. They swam into her recognitionlike wraiths upsprung, as it were, from the sand itself or exhaled upona breath from the sea: at first she could not credit her vision.
It was not with her eyes--those tear-blurred eyes--she knew him; it wasby the inner sense, the nameless one that lovers know; she felt thetale in a thud of the heart and ran out with "Sim!" shrieked on her dumblips. Her gown trailed in the pools and flicked up the ooze of weed andsand; a shoulder bared itself; some of her hair took shame and coveredit with a veil of dull gold.