(1) Thousands of years before, the ancient and forgotten race, drowned now in the mists of time, which had set up in those parts the long ranks of menhirs on the lande, had raised in the forest, over the remains of some dead chieftain, a great dolmen of granite. The death-chamber had long ago been rifled of bones and treasure, but it still stood, no different from what it had been for the last few hundred years, with ferns growing out of the cracks, and one of its supports prone, and an aged oak, immeasurably younger than itself, watching over it. And to this spot the two men, with passions no less primitive in their hearts, made their way; for on one side of the Moulin-aux-Fées, as the peasants called it, there was a little clearing.
It was true that M. de Kersaint had said, when pistols were named, that they must go further than this. But when they beheld the clearing, so inviting in the cold light that flooded it from a moon well over the tree tops, its suitability to the work they had in hand struck both of them so strongly that they agreed it was not necessary to go on. They had already put a considerable distance between them and the Clos-aux-Grives, and the little wind that walked the forest to-night had its light feet set in the opposite direction. They would risk the sound of a shot carrying back to the farm.
So, under the impassive gaze of the moon, which alone made their culpable proceedings possible at this hour, they measured out ten paces, first one of them, then the other, and set each a bit of dead branch to mark their respective positions. When this was done to their satisfaction they found themselves standing at the Comte’s mark examining their pistols for the last time.
“I shall not cock mine until you have fired, Monsieur,” announced the Marquis. “If there were to be an accident—such things have happened—you might think I had broken our compact.”
“I have no fear, Monsieur, of an accident of that kind,” returned de Brencourt, buttoning his coat up to the throat as he spoke. “However, as you please—But you are surely going to take off that white scarf of yours?” And as the Marquis looked down a little doubtfully at the white scarf of leadership round his waist, his opponent added hotly, “Good God, man, do you think I am going to stand up and fire at you unless you do? It would be murder! And your sword—the hilt catches the moonlight.” His own lay already at his feet.
“Very well,” agreed the Marquis, and began, almost, it seemed reluctantly, to detach the scarf. Having unwound it he paused with it in his hand.
“I have a request to make of you, Comte, before I go to my place,” he said, not altogether in the tone of one making a request. “The disagreement between us being a purely personal matter, I should be glad to have your word that you intend to respect my secret, whatever the result of our encounter?”
De Brencourt looked at him. It was some satisfaction to have him begging for terms—no, begging was certainly not the word for one who spoke like that.
“Yes, I promise you that,” he answered. “Whatever the result of our encounter, I will keep your secret as far as in me lies.”
“Thank you,” returned his adversary. And, throwing the white scarf from him, he turned and walked to his place.
Artus de Brencourt waited a second or two, his pistol by his side. This was the moment he had hoped and schemed for, and it was sweet. Yet now that it had come, it suddenly seemed incredible that they two should be facing each other like this. A few months ago, who would have predicted it? . . . No use to think of that now, nor, since he was a gentleman, with his enemy’s life in his hands, did he desire to keep that enemy in mortal suspense longer than was needful. Best be as quick about the business as possible. He was a notoriously good shot. . . .
“Are you ready?” he called out.
And the Marquis de Kersaint, standing like a dark statue in the moonlight, his face merely a pale blur, his arms folded on his breast, silently nodded.
The Comte de Brencourt drew a deep breath, raised his pistol, and took a long and steady aim for the statue’s heart.
Yet when he had got the barrel on the mark his hand began to shake. He bit his lip. If only de Kersaint had his own weapon cocked, were not standing there defenceless to be shot at by the man who had insulted him. It took some courage to do that! And he had called him a coward. . . . Had it not been an affair of honour it had felt a little too much like murder for his taste after all. Yet he intended to kill Valentine’s husband. And the iron sanction of the code which kept the other there as a mere target for his bullet kept him there too, determined to complete his work.
. . . But—could he complete it? The Comte had no idea how deceptive even the most brilliant moonlight can be, for now, at a short ten paces’ distance, he found to his mortification that he could not really distinguish the outline of de Kersaint’s body, though he could see it as a mass. That scarf would have been useful, yet it did not occur to him to regret it. Bending all his will anew to the task he succeeded in steadying his hand, and his forefinger began to close round the trigger. In another second or two. . . . Would the Marquis spin round, as a man sometimes did when shot through the heart, or would he fall forward on his face? . . . Odd that he should think, at such a moment, of the execution of Charette three years ago at Nantes, when, as the tale went, the indomitable spirit that dwelt in the riddled body of the Royalist chief had held him upright for a moment in death, with six balls in him. De Kersaint would have but one—sent there by a comrade. He, Artus de Brencourt, was doing the Directory’s work for them! . . . No, he was doing Valentine’s! One vision of her as he had seen her in her homely dress at Mirabel, one fleeting thought of those years of neglect before the storm, of the life she had led since, and those half regrets were swept aside like gnats before a gale. The baffling moonlight paralysed him no longer. He corrected his aim for the second time, set his teeth, and pressed the trigger.
The shot went echoing with startling effect in the silver silence; it seemed to reverberate even from the empty dolmen. A scuttling of some frightened creature took place in the undergrowth, and, as the light smoke cleared away, rising ghostlike towards the moon, the Comte saw that M. de Kersaint was staggering a little. He took a step backwards, threw out his left arm and regained his balance somewhat abruptly, while the uncocked pistol slid with a rustle and a thud into the bracken at his feet. Either to recover it, or because he could not help himself, he sank to one knee and appeared to be groping for it with his left hand; then, abandoning the attempt, he got rather unsteadily to his feet again, and stood a moment with his head bent, and his right arm still across his breast, where he had kept it all the time.
“You are hit, Monsieur? Can you not return my fire?” called out de Brencourt, still standing ready to receive it.
M. de Kersaint shook his head, then, turning his back on him, walked to the nearest tree and stood leaning against it, always holding his right arm to his breast, but now supporting it with the other. A doubtless annoyed owl sailed out of the branches above him with a hoot.
And, after all, his adversary never even paused to ask himself whether he were sorry he had not succeeded. . . . In a moment he was at his side.
“Where are you hit, Monsieur le Marquis?”
“In my right arm,” said his opponent briefly. “You have disabled me. I cannot return your fire.”
“I am sorry for that,” said the Comte rather stiffly. “Are you sure you cannot—with your left hand?”
“I am sorry too,” said the Marquis de Kersaint, lifting his head. “Believe me, I should not have done you the poor compliment of firing in the air! But it would be a farce—my left hand. I am extremely right-handed; so of what use to risk the noise of another shot. I fancy my arm is broken. Let us get back.” He did not seem to know that, even as he spoke, the blood, very dark in the moonlight, was running through the fingers of the hand which held his wounded arm pressed up to his body.
“But first,” interposed the Comte quickly, “we must stop this bleeding, however roughly. It is not from the artery, I trust?—no, I think not. Can you take your coat off . . . I’d better slit up the sleeve, in any case. Sit down on this stone, de Kersaint; that will be easier for both of us.”
And, supporting him under his left arm, he guided his wounded enemy to the fallen block of the dolmen.
The Marquis sat down obediently, and lent his head for a moment on his left hand. It was evident, though not a sound passed his lips, that he was in a good deal of pain.
“No, don’t do that, Comte!” he said suddenly, as de Brencourt, kneeling by him in the fern, began to take out a knife. “One doesn’t want to make more . . . parade . . . about this business than one can avoid. Help me out of the coat instead.” And he began to unbutton it.
“Much better let me slit the sleeve,” objected de Brencourt with reason. However, seeing that the Marquis was determined, he unfastened his swordbelt, and as carefully as he could, stripped off the long uniform coat.
“I suppose you don’t wish to preserve this?” he remarked, and, ripping up the drenched shirt-sleeve, examined the injury. In the outer side of the Marquis de Kersaint’s forearm, midway between wrist and elbow, was a small round aperture, from which the blood was welling in a stream so steady as to suggest that it would never cease.
“The ball is still there, of course,” observed its sender, absorbed in his examination. “Otherwise——” He came to an abrupt pause, suddenly realising by how very little his messenger of death had fallen short of its goal.
“Otherwise it would be in my heart, you were going to say,” finished the Marquis with composure.
“Perhaps it was stopped by one of the bones,” muttered de Brencourt, avoiding his eye. “I expect there is a breakage, as you say. . . . However, I had best tie it up as quickly as possible. I shall need your handkerchief as well as mine—perhaps your scarf too. It is bleeding like a fountain.”
Carefully as a surgeon, and with something of a surgeon’s dispassionate interest, he staunched and bandaged the injury which he himself had made—no bad exemplar, at that moment, of what there was gallant and chivalrous in a practice which had little enough to commend it.
“So there was only one shot after all,” observed M. de Kersaint presently. “Did you mean to kill me, Comte?”
M. de Brencourt, tightening the last knot, looked at him with an odd expression. “Yes,&............