Yet one of the two must fall. The great clock above my head, slowly telling out the hour of noon, beat the truth into my brain. For a moment I grew dizzy; the sun dazzled me, the trees reeled before me, the garden swam. The murmur of the crowd outside filled my ears. Then out of the mist Louis’ voice, unnaturally steady, gripped my attention, and my brain grew clear again.
“Have you any objection to this spot?” he said. “The grass is dry, and not slippery. They will fight in shadow, and the light is good.”
“It will do,” I muttered.
“Perhaps you will examine it? There is, I think, no trip or fault.”
I affected to do so. “I find none,” I said hoarsely.
“Then we had better place our men?”
“I think so.”
I had no knowledge of the skill of either combatant, but, as I turned to join Hugues, I was startled by the contrast which the two presented as they stood a little apart, their upper clothes removed. The Captain was the shorter by a head, and stiff and sturdy, with a clear eye and keen visage. M. le Marquis, on the other hand, was tall and lithe, and long in the arm, with a reach which threatened danger, and a smile almost as deadly. I thought that if his skill and coolness were on a par with his natural gifts, M. Hugues — But then again my head reeled. What did I wish?
“We are ready,” M. Louis said impatiently; and I noticed that he glanced past me towards the gate of the garden. “Will you measure the swords, M. le Vicomte?”
I complied, and was about to place my man, when M. le Capitaine indicated by a sign that he wished to speak to me, and, disregarding the frowns of the other side, I led him apart.
His face had lost the glow of passion which had animated it a few minutes before, and was pale and stern. “This is a fool’s trick,” he said curtly, and under his breath. “It will serve me right if that puppy goes through me. You will do me a favour, M. le Vicomte?”
I muttered that I would do him any in my power.
“I borrowed a thousand francs to fit myself out for this service,” he continued, avoiding my eye, “from a man in Paris whose name you will find in my valise at the inn. Should anything happen to me, I should be glad if you will send him what is left. That is all.”
“He shall be paid in full,” I said. “I will see to it.”
He wrung my hand, and went to his station; and Louis and I placed ourselves on either side of the two, ready, with our swords drawn, to interfere should need arise. The signal was given, the principals saluted, and fell on guard, and in a moment the grinding and clicking of the blades began, while the pigeons of the Cathedral flew in eddies above us, and in the middle of the garden a little fountain tinkled softly in the sunshine.
They had not made three passes before the great diversity of their styles became apparent. While Hugues played vigorously with his body, stooping, and moving, and stepping aside, but keeping his arm stiff, and using his wrist much, M. le Marquis held his body erect and still, but moved his arm, and, fencing with a school correctness, as if he held a foil, disdained all artifices save those of the weapon. It was clear that he was the better fencer, and that, of the two, the Captain must tire first, since he was never still, and the wrist is more quickly fatigued that the arm; but, in addition to this, I soon perceived that the Marquis was not putting forth his full strength, but, depending on his defence, was waiting to tire out his opponent. My eyes grew hot, my throat dry, as I watched breathlessly, waiting for the stroke that must finish all — waiting and flinching. And then, on a sudden, something happened. The Captain seemed to slip, yet did not slip, but in a moment, stooping almost prone, his left hand on the ground, was under the other’s guard. His point was at the Marquis’s breast, when the latter sprang back — sprang back, and just saved himself. Before the Captain could recover his footing, Louis dashed his sword aside.
“Foul play!” he cried passionately. “Foul play! A stroke dessous! It is not en règle.”
The Captain stood breathing quickly, his point to the ground. “But why not, Monsieur?” he said. Then he looked to me.
“I scarcely understand, M. de St. Alais,” I said stiffly. “The stroke — —”
“Is not allowed.”
“In the schools,” I said. “But this is a duel.”
“I have never seen it used in a duel,” he said.
“No matter,” I answered warmly. “To interfere on such provocation is absurd.”
“Monsieur!”
“Is absurd!” I repeated firmly. “After such treatment I have no resource but to withdraw M. le Capitaine from the field.”
“Perhaps you will take his place,” some one behind me said with a sneer.
I turned sharply. One of the two persons whom we had found with St. Alais was the speaker. I saluted him. “The surgeon?” I said.
“No,” he answered angrily. “I am M. du Marc, and very much at your service.”
“But not a second,” I rejoined. “And, therefore, you have no right to be standing where you are, nor to be here. I must request you to withdraw.”
“I have at least as much right as those,” he answered, pointing to the roof of the Cathedral, over the battlements of which a number of heads could be seen peering down at us.
I stared.
“Our friends have at least as much right as yours,” he continued, taunting me.
“But they do not interfere,” I answered firmly. “Nor shall you. I request you to withdraw.”
He still refused, and even tried to bluster; but this proved too much for Louis’ stomach; he intervened sharply, and at a word from him the bully shrugged his shoulders and moved away. Then we four looked at one another.
“We had better proceed,” the Captain said bluntly. “If the stroke was irregular, this gentleman was right to interfere. If not — —”
“I am willing,” M. de St. Alais said. And in a moment the two fell on guard, and to it again; but more fiercely now, and with less caution, the Captain more than once using a rough, sweeping parry, in greater favour with practical fighters than in the fencing school. This, though it left him exposed to a riposte, seemed to disconcert M. le Marquis, who fenced, I thought, less skilfully than before, and more than once seemed to be flurried by the Captain’s attack. I began to feel doubtful of the result, my heart began to beat more quickly, the glitter of the blades as they slid up and down one another confused my sight. I looked for one moment across at Louis — and in that moment the end came. M. le Capitaine used again his sweeping parry, but this time the circle was too wide; St. Alais’ blade darted serpent-like under his. The Captain staggered back. His sword dropped from his hand.
Before he could fall I caught him in my arms, but blood was gushing already from a wound in the side of his neck. He just turned his eyes to my face, and tried once to speak. I caught the words, “You will — —” and then blood choked his voice, and his eyes slowly closed. He was dead, or as good as dead, before the surgeon could reach him, before I could lay him on the grass.
I knelt a moment beside him perfectly stunned by the suddenness of the catastrophe; watching in a kind of fascination the surgeon feeling pulse and heart, and striving with his thumb to stop the bleeding. For a moment or two my world was reduced to the sinking grey face, the quivering eyelids before me, and I saw nothing, heeded nothing, thought of nothing else. I could not believe that the valiant spirit had fled already; that the stout man who had so quickly yet insensibly won my liking was in this moment dead; dead and growing livid, while the pigeons still circled overhead, and the sparrows chirped, and the fountain tinkled in the sunshine.
I cried out in my agony. “Not dead?” I said. “Not dead so soon?”
“Yes, M. le Vicomte, it was bad luck,” the surgeon answered, letting the passive head fall on the stained grass. “With such a wound nothing can be done.”
He rose as he spoke; but I remained on my knees, wrapt and absorbed; staring at the glazing eyes that a few minutes before had been full of life and keenness. Then w
ith a shudder I turned my look on myself. His blood covered me; it was on my breast, my arm, my hands, soaking into my coat. From it my thoughts turned to St. Alais, and at the moment, as I looked instinctively round to see where he was, or if he had gone, I started. The deep boom of a heavy bell, tolled once, shook the air; while its solemn burden still hung mournfully on the ear, quick footsteps ran towards me, and I heard a harsh cry at my elbow. “But, mon Dieu! This is murder! They are murdering us!”
I looked behind me. The speaker was Du Marc, the bully who had vainly tried to provoke me. The two St. Alais and the surgeon were with him, and all four came from the direction of the door by which we had entered. They passed me with averted eyes, and hurried towards a little postern which flanked the old tower, and opened on the ramparts. As they went out of sight behind a buttress that intervened the bell boomed out again above my head, its dull note full of menace.
Then I awoke and understood; understood that the noise which filled my ears was not the burden of the bell carried on from one deep stroke to another, but the roar of angry voices in the square, the babel of an approaching crowd crying: “A la lanterne! A la lanterne!” From the battlements of the Cathedral, from the louvres of the domes, from every window of the great gloomy structure that frowned above me, men were making signs, and pointing with their hands, and brandishing their fists — at me, I thought at first, or at the body at my feet. But then I heard footsteps again, and I turned and found the other four behind me, close to me; the two St. Alais pale and stern, with bright eyes, the bully pale, too, but with a look which shot furtively here and there, and white lips.
“Curse them, they are at that door, too!” he cried shrilly. “We are beset. We shall be murdered. By God, we shall be murdered, and by these canaille! By these — I call all here to witness that it was a fair fight! I call you to witness, M. le Vicomte, that — —”
“It will help us much,” St. Alais said with a sneer, “if he does. If I were once at home — —”
“Ay, but how are we to get there?” Du Marc cried. He could not hide his terror. “Do you understand,” he continued querulously, addressing me, “that we shall be murdered? Is there no other door? Speak, some one. Speak!”
His fears appealed to me in vain. I would scarcely have stirred a finger to save him. But the sight of the two St. Alais standing there pale and irresolute, while that roar of voices grew each moment louder and nearer, moved me. A moment, and the mob would break in; perhaps finding us by Hugues’ side, it might in its fury sacrifice all indifferently. It might; and then I heard, to give point to the thought, the crash of one of the doors of the garden as it gave way; and I cried out almost involuntarily that there was another door — another door, if it was open. I did not look to see if they followed, but, leaving the dead, I took the lead, and ran across the sward towards the wall of the Cathedral.
The crowd were already pouring into the garden, but a clump of shrubs hid us from them as we fled; and we gained unseen a little door, a low-browed postern in the wall of the apse, that led, I knew — for not long before I had conducted an English visitor over the Cathedral — to a sacristy connected with the crypt. My hope of finding the door open was slight; if I had stayed to weigh the chances I should have thought them desperate. But to my joy as I came up to it, closely followed by the others, it opened of itself, and a priest, showing his tonsured head in the aperture, beckoned to us to hasten. He had little need to do so; in a moment we had obeyed, were by his side, and panting, heard the bolts shoot home behind us. For the moment we were safe.
Then we breathed again. We stood in the twilight of a long narrow room with walls and roof of stone, and three loopholes for windows. Du Marc was the first to speak. “Mon Dieu, that was close,” he said, wiping his brow, which in the cold light wore an ugly pallor. “We are — —”
“Not out of the wood yet,” the surgeon answered gravely, “though we have good grounds for thanking M. le Vicomte. They have discovered us! Yes, they are coming!”
Probably the people on the roof had watched us enter and denounced our place of refuge; for as he spoke, we heard a rush of feet, the door shook under a storm of blows, and a score of grimy savage faces showed at the slender arrow-slits, and glaring down, howled and spat curses upon us. Luckily the door was of oak, studded and plated with iron, fashioned in old, rough days for such an emergency, and we stood comparatively safe. Yet it was terrible to hear the cries of the mob, to feel them so close, to gauge their hatred, and know while they beat on the stone as though they would tear the walls with their naked hands, what it would be to fall into their power!
We looked at one another, and — but it may have been the dim light — I saw no face that was not pale. Fortunately the pause was short. The Curé who had admitted us, unlocked as quickly as he could an inner door. “This way,” he said — but the snarling of the beasts outside almost drowned his voice— “if you will follow me, I will let you out by the south entrance. But, be quick, gentlemen, be quick,” he continued, pushing us out before him, “or they may guess what we are about, and be there before us.”
It may be imagined that after that we lost no time. We followed him as quickly as we could along a narrow subterranean passage, very dimly lit, at the end of which a flight of six steps brought us into a second passage. We almost ran along this, and though a locked door delayed us a moment — which seemed a minute, and a long one — the key was found and the door opened. We passed through it, and found ourselves in a long narrow room, the counterpart of that we had first entered. The curé opened the farther door of this; I looked out. The alley outside, the same which led beside the Cathedral to the Chapter House, was empty.
“We are in time,” I said, with a sigh of relief; it was pleasant to breathe the fresh air again. And I turned, still panting with the haste we had made, to thank the good Curé who had saved us.
M. de St. Alais, who followed me, and had kept silence throughout, thanked him also. Then M. le Marquis stood hesitating on the threshold, while I looked to see him hurry away. At last he turned to me. “M. de Saux,” he said, speaking with less aplomb than was usual with him — but we were all agitated— “I should thank you also. But perhaps the situation in which we stand towards one another — —”
“I think nothing of that,” I answered harshly. “But that in which we have just stood — —”
“Ah,” he rejoined, shrugging his shoulders, “if you take it that way — —”
“I do take it that way,” I answered — the Captain’s blood was not yet dry on the man’s sword, and he spoke to me! “I do take it that way. And I warn you, M. le Marquis,” I continued sternly, “that if you pursue your plan further, a plan that has already cost one brave man his life, it will recoil on yourselves, and that most terribly.”
“At least I shall not ask you to shield me,” he answered proudly. And he walked carelessly away, sheathing his sword as he went. The passage was still empty. There was no one to stop him.
Louis followed him; Du Marc and the surgeon had already disappeared. I fancied that as Louis passed me he hung a moment on his heel; and that he would have spoken to me, would have caught my eye, would have taken my hand, had I given him an opening. But I saw before me Hugues’ dead face and sunken eyes, and I set my own face like a stone, and turned away.
CHAPTER XIII.
A LA LANTERNE.
For, of all the things that had happened since I left the Committee Room, the Captain’s death remained the one most real and most deeply bitten into my mind. He had shared with me the walk from the inn to the garden, and the petty annoyances that had then filled my thoughts. He had faced them with me, and bravely; and this late association, and the picture of him as he walked beside me, full of life and coarse wrath, rose up now and cried out against his death; cried out that it was impossible. So that it seemed horrible to me, and I shook with fear, and loathed the man whose hand had done it.
Nor was that all. I had known Hugues barely forty-eight hours,
my liking for him was only an hour born; but I had his story. I could follow him going about to borrow the small sum of money he had possessed. I could trace the hopes he had built on it. I could see him coming here full of honest courage, believing that he had found an opening; a man strong, confident, looking forward, full of plans. And then of all, this was the end! He had hoped, he had purposed; and on the other side of the Cathedral, he lay stark — stark and dead on the grass.
It seemed so sad and pitiful, I had the man so vividly in my mind, that I scarcely gave a thought to the St. Alais’ danger and escape; that, and our hasty flight, had passed like a dream. I was content to listen a moment beside the church door; and then satisfied that the murmur of the crowd was dying in the distance, and that the city was quiet, I thanked the Vicar again, and warmly, and, taking leave of him, in my turn walked up the passage.
It was so still that it echoed my footsteps; and presently I began to think the silence odd. I began to wonder why the mob, which a few minutes before had shown itself so vindictive, had not found its way round; why the neighbourhood had become on a sudden so quiet. A few paces would show, however; I hastened on, and in a moment stood in the market-place.
To my astonishment it lay sunny, tranquil, utterly deserted; a dog ran here and there with tail high, nosing among the garbage; a few old women were at the stalls on the farther side; about as many people were busy, putting up shutters and closing shops. But the crowd which had filled the place so short a time before, the queue about the corn measures, the white cockades, all were gone; I stood astonished.
For a moment only, however. Then, in place of the silence which had prevailed between the high walls of the passage, a dull sound, distant and heavy, began to speak to me; a sullen roar, as of breakers falling on the beach. I started and listened. A moment more, and I was across the Square, and at the door of the inn. I darted into the passage, and up the stairs, my heart beating fast.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 220