The Grey Cloak Part 54

"Well," truculently, "if you were young?"

The marquis's bold and fearless eyes sparkled with fire. "I am an old man; vain wishes are useless. You are a coward, Monsieur; one of the coa.r.s.er breed; and I say to you if my son had not challenged you or had accepted an apology, I would disown him indeed. As you will not fight him, and as apologies are out of the question . . . Here, Monsieur; there is equal light, and we are alone."

"I do not kill old men."

"Then listen: I apply to you the term De Leviston applied to my son."

"Monsieur, retract that!"

Their shoulders brushed and glowing eyes looked into glowing eyes.

"Bah! In my fifties I killed more men of your kidney than I am proud of. Retract? I never retract;" and the marquis snapped his fingers under D'Herouville's nose.

D'Herouville slapped the marquis in the face. "Your age, Monsieur, will not save you. No man shall address me in this fas.h.i.+on!"

"Not even my son, eh, Monsieur? There is still blood in your muddy veins, then? Come to my room, Monsieur; no one will see us there. And you will not be subjected to the evils of the night air and the dew;"

and the calm old man waved a hand toward the lights which shone from the windows of his room above.

"You have brought this upon yourself," said D'Herouville, cold with fury, forgetting his newly healed wound.

"What worried me most was the fear that you might not understand me.

Permit me to show you the way, Monsieur."

The marquis was the calmer of the two. A strange and springing new life seemed to have entered his watery veins. A flare of the old-time fire rose up within him: he was again the prince of a hundred duels.

On reaching the room, he lit all the candles and arranged them so as to leave no shadows. Next he poured out a gla.s.s of wine and drank it, drew his rapier, and bared his arm.

At the sight of that arm, thin and white, D'Herouville felt all his ire ooze from his pores. He could not measure swords with this old man, who stood near enough to his grave without being sent into it offhand.

"Monsieur, forgive me for striking an old man, who is visibly my inferior in strength and youth. My anger got the better of me. Your courage compels my admiration. I can not fight you."

The marquis spat upon the floor. "On guard, Monsieur!"

"If you insist;" and D'Herouville stepped forward carelessly.

The blades came together. Then followed a sight for the paladins. For it took D'Herouville but a moment to learn why the marquis had been called the prince of a hundred duels. Only twice in his life had he met such a master.

"I am old, eh, Monsieur?" said the marquis, making an a.s.sault which D'Herouville, had his blade swerved the breadth of a hair, would never have neutralized.

Back, step by step, he was forced, till he felt his shoulders touch the wall. He was beginning to suffer cruelly. A warmth on his side told him that his old wound had opened and was bleeding. Good G.o.d! and if this old man at whom he had laughed should kill him! With a desperate return he succeeded in regaining the open. He tried the offensive, it was too late. The marquis, describing a circle, toppled over a candle, which rolled across the floor and was snuffed in its own melting wax.

The marquis's eyes burned like carbuncles; his blade was like living light. He spoke.

"I am old; beware of old dogs that have teeth."

Round and round they circled, back and forth. D'Herouville was fighting for his life. His own wonderful mastery, and this alone, kept the life in his body. Sometimes it seemed that he must be in a dream, the victim of some terrible nightmare. For the marquis's face did not look human, animated as it was with the l.u.s.t to kill.

"G.o.d!" burst from the count's cracked lips. His sword was rolling at his feet. It was the end. He shut his eyes.

The marquis drew back his arm to send the blade home, and there came a change. At the very moment when victory must have been his, he staggered, a black mist filming his eyes. The magic blade slipped from his grasp and clanged to the floor. He tried to save himself, but he could not. He fell by the side of his sword and lay there silent. His strength, had been superhuman, the last flare of a burnt-out fire.

"Good G.o.d, and I never touched him!" gasped, D'Herouville. He was covered with a cold sweat. "A moment more and I had been a dead man!"

He brushed his eyes, and his hand shook with a transient palsy.

There was a tableau: the aged n.o.ble stretched out beside his rapier, D'Herouville leaning against the wall and wild-eyed . . . and a black-robed figure standing in the doorway.

"Have you killed him?" asked the black-robed figure, stepping into the room.

D'Herouville gazed at him, incapable of speaking.

"Have you killed him, I say?" repeated Brother Jacques.

D'Herouville choked, and presently found his voice. "I have not even touched him. G.o.d is witness! He has been stricken by a vapor, or he is dead."

"It is well for you, Monsieur, that your sword did not touch him. You had better go."

The count's hand shook so that he could hardly put his rapier into the scabbard. With a dazed glance at the marquis, who had not yet stirred, with another glance at the priest, he pa.s.sed out, holding the flat of his hand against his side.

Immediately Brother Jacques bent over the fallen man.

"He lives; that is well. So I must go on to the end."

He poured out some wine and bathed the marquis's temples and wrists.

Next he lifted the old man in his arms and carried him to the bed, undressed him, and covered him over. He drew a chair to the side of the bed and sat down, waiting and watching. Occasionally his glance wandered, to the sinking candles, to the moon outside, from the marbled face on the pillow to the empty wine-gla.s.s on the small table. Once he recollected seeing an envelope within a hand's span of the gla.s.s.

A duel! This palsied old man pressing youth and vigor to the wall! It seemed incredible. What must this man have been in his prime? Age vanquis.h.i.+ng youth! A s.h.i.+ver ran across Brother Jacques's spine, a s.h.i.+ver of admiration and wonder. He touched the withered hand which had but a few moments since been endowed with marvelous skill and cunning and strength: it was icy and damp.

He filled the gla.s.s of wine, ready for the marquis's awakening, and again found his gaze entrapped by the envelope. His hand reached out for it absently and without purpose. He read the address indifferently--"To Monsieur le Marquis de Perigny, to be delivered into his hands at my death." The marquis, then, had lost some friend? He put back the letter, placing a book upon it to prevent its being swept to the floor.

There was a sound. The marquis had recovered his senses. He looked blankly around, at the candles, at Brother Jacques, at the sheets which covered his strangely deadened limbs.

"Ah! I have had only a bad dream, then? Pour me a gla.s.s of wine, and I shall sleep."

CHAPTER XXIV

SISTER BENIE AND A DISSERTATION ON CHARITY

Three days pa.s.sed. At Orleans the settlers had had two or three brushes with marauding Mohawks. A letter from Father Chaumonot at the mission in Onondaga reported favorable progress. D'Herouville was again out of hospital; and De Leviston had stolen quietly away to Montreal, where he was shortly to succ.u.mb to the plague. Only three persons knew of the remarkable conflict between the marquis and D'Herouville: the son, Brother Jacques, and the Vicomte d'Halluys, who possessed that mysterious faculty of finding out many things of which the majority were unaware. As for the marquis, Brother Jacques fostered the belief that it had been only a wild dream.

Each morning Madame de Brissac watched with growing eagerness the lading of the good s.h.i.+p Henri IV. It seemed impossible to her that the deception in regard to the Chevalier could continue much longer. Where was the denouement on which she had builded so fondly? She had put it off so many times that perhaps it was now too late. Sooner or later Victor would slip, and the mask would be at an end. And why not? Why not have done with a comedy which had grown stale? Why not tell Monsieur du Cevennes that she was Gabrielle Diane de Montbazon, she whose miniature he had crushed beneath the heel of his riding boot?

Rather would she tell him than leave it to the offices of D'Herouville or the vicomte. Surely her purpose had been to bring him to his knees and then laugh! Relent? Not while her cup still held a drop of pride.

She had been mad indeed. To have come here to Quebec with purpose and impulse undefined! Daily she mocked her weakness. Truly she was the daughter of her mother, extravagant, unbalanced, blown hither and thither by caprice as a leaf is blown by an autumn wind.

The thought of him stirred her as nothing had ever before stirred her.

It was hate, it was wounded pride crying out for vengeance, it was the barb of scorn urging her to give back in kind. And, heaven above! he had been on his knees, and she had dallied with the moment of revenge even as a cat dallies with a mouse. Diane! She detested the name.

Fool! And yet, why was he here? What was this sudden veil of mystery which hid him from her secret eyes? Victor knew, and yet his love for her was not so great that he could tell her another's secret. And the governor knew, D'Herouville, and the vicomte; and they were as silent as stone. Love? A fillip of her finger for love! Happy indeed was she to learn that neither the marquis nor the Chevalier would return to France on the Henri IV. Such a way have the women.