THE PRESUMPTION OF A BEARDLESS CHEVALIER
ANDRÉ rode at a walking pace down the slope to the village, for he
wanted to think. He had always prided himself on his knowledge of
women; he had imagined he knew Denise as well as himself. She was of
his class, lovely, high-spirited, proud, patriotic, and best of all a
true woman. Hence it was a sore and surprising blow to his pride to
discover that she should reject his love because he had lived the life
of his and her class. He had gone to the château to confess everything,
to swear that from this day onwards no other woman, be she beautiful
as the dawn, as enchanting as Circe, could ever occupy five minutes
of his thoughts. And he meant it. Those others, the shattered idols
of a vanished past, had simply satisfied vanity, ambition, a physical
craving. But Denise he really loved. She inspired a devotion, a passion
which gripped and satisfied body, soul, and spirit; she was that
without which life seemed unmeaning, empty, poor, despicable. But why
could not she see this--the difference between a fleeting desire and
the sincere homage of manhood to an ideal, between the gallant and
the lover? What more had a wife a right to expect than the love of a
husband, brave, loyal, faithful? It was unreasonable, for men were men
and women were women. Yet here was a woman who did.
But he would--must--win her. That was the adamantine resolution in his
breast, all the stronger because she had scorned and defied him. Yet he
would win her in his way, not hers. Yes, he would conquer her against
herself. For him life now meant simply Denise--the heart and the soul
and the spirit of Denise--the conquest of a woman’s will. The hot
pulses of health and strength, of manhood, his noble blood and ambition
throbbed responsive to the resolution. He thanked God that he was young
and a soldier, that there was war and a prize to be won. Yet he also
felt that this love meant something new, that it had transformed him
into something that he had never dreamed of as possible. And victory
would complete the change. So as he rode the fierce thoughts tumbled
over each other in a foam of passion, in the sublime intoxication of
a vision of a new heaven and a new earth--from which he was rudely
awakened.
He had halted for the moment at the door of the village inn. In the
dingy parlour sat the Chevalier, one leg thrown over the table, a
beaker in his hand resting on his thigh, while his other hand was
stroking the chin of the waiting wench, a strapping, tawdry slut.
André kicked the door open. “Am I disturbing you?” he said, pitching
his hat off as if the parlour were his own.
“Not in the least,” the Chevalier replied without stirring, though the
girl began to giggle with an affectation of alarmed modesty. “My wine
is just done”; he drained off the glass. “I will leave Toinette to
you, Vicomte, for,” he put on his hat, “it is time I returned to the
château.”
This studied insolence was exactly what André required. “I thank you,”
he said, freezingly, “but before I take your place, you and I, Monsieur
le Chevalier, will have a word first.”
“As you please, my dear Vicomte,” said the young man, swinging
comfortably on to the table and peering at him from under his saucy
plumes. “You will have much to say, I doubt not, for you must have said
so little at the château. Run away, my child,” he added to the wench,
who was now staring at them both with genuine alarm in her coarse eyes,
“run away.”
André closed the door. “You will not return to the château,” he said
quietly.
“My dear Vicomte, you suffer from the strangest hallucinations, stupid
phantoms of the mind, if you----”
“Perhaps,” was the cold reply, “but the point of a sword is a reality
which exorcises any and every phantom.”
The Chevalier laughed softly.
“Yes,” André continued, “I say it with infinite regret, because you
are young, you will not return to the château, for I am going to kill
you, unless----”
“Unless?” The Chevalier slowly swung off the table.
“Unless you will give me your word of honour now that you will leave
France to-morrow and never return.”
The young man reflectively put back one of his dainty love curls. “Ah,
my dear Vicomte,” he answered, “I say it too with infinite regret, but
that I cannot promise. So you must kill me I fear. Alas!” he added with
dilatory derision, “alas! what have I done?”
“Very good”--André fastened his cloak--“in three days we will meet in
Paris.”
“In Paris? Why not kill me here?”
“Here?” André stared at him in astonishment.
“Here and at once.” He walked to the door. “Two torches,” he called,
“two torches.”
When he had lit them the Chevalier marched out. “This way,” he said
politely; “permit me to show you, with infinite regret, where you can
kill me.”
Half expecting a trick or foul play André followed him cautiously until
he stopped in a deserted stable yard, paved and clean, and completely
shut in by high walls. The young man gravely placed one torch in a ring
on the north wall and the other on the wall opposite.
“That,” he said, in the pleasantest manner possible, “will make the
lights fair. You”--he pointed to the west--“will stand there, or here,
if you prefer, to the east. You will agree, doubtless, that to a man
who is to be killed it is a trifle where he stands.”
The torches flared smokily in the April dusk. He was mad, this boyish
fool, stark, raving mad. But how prettily and elegantly he played the
part.
“See,” the Chevalier said lightly, “there is no one to interrupt--the
murder. Toinette knows neither my name nor yours; she will hold her
tongue for money and in half an hour you will be gone--and I”--he
shrugged his shoulders--“well, it is clean lying here, cleaner, anyway,
than under the grass in that dirty churchyard.”
“You mean it?” André asked slowly.
The Chevalier took off his saucy hat and fine coat, hung them upon one
of the rusty rings in the wall, and turned back his lace ruffles. A
flash--his sword had cut a rainbow through the dusk across the yellow
flare of the torches. “I am at your service, Vicomte,” he said with a
low bow. “And I shall return to the château when and how I please, and
I shall be welcome, eh?”
“By God!” André ripped out. “By God! I will kill you.”
He too had flung off his coat and cloak and took the position by the
east wall. A strange duel this, assuredly not the first in which the
Vicomte de Nérac had fought for a woman’s sake, but the strangest,
maddest that man’s wit or a boy’s folly could have devised. André
was as cold as ice now, and he calmly surveyed his opponent as he
tried the steel of his blade. How young and supple and insolently gay
the beardless popinjay was; but he had the fencer’s figure, and the
handling of his weapon revealed to the trained eye that this would be
no affair of six passes and a _coup de maître_. Yet never did André
feel so calmly confident of his own famed skill and rich experience.
No, he would not kill him, but he would teach him a lesson that he
would not forget.
For a brief minute both scanned the ground carefully, testing it with
their feet, and marking the falling of the lights from those smoking
torches, the flickering of the shadows in the raw chill of eve. All
around was deathly still. Not so much as the cluck of a hen to break
the misty silence.
“On guard!”
The Chevalier was about eight paces off. He now came slowly forward,
eagerly watching for the right moment to engage. A swift movement as of
a strong spring unbound--a flash--and steel clashed on steel. Yes, the
young man could fence. The true swordsman’s wrist could be felt in his
blade, the swordsman’s eye in his point, and his passes came with the
ease of that mastery of style, swiftness, and precision that the fencer
can feel but not describe. For a couple of minutes both played with the
greatest caution, for they were both in the deadliest earnest. True,
this was idle flummery at present; each had still to know the ground,
to learn the secrets of those cruelly baffling lights, to get the
measure of the other’s powers. A false step, a misjudged lunge, a gust
of wind, a foolish contempt might mean death. And for one, at least,
the issue was Denise.
So André, who had always relied on his fire and quickness to
disconcert, flurry, and tempt, kept himself sternly in hand, offering
no openings and disregarding all. The moment would come presently, the
divine moment, and then!
They were both shifting ground slowly, and in their caution they
gradually edged and wheeled until the Chevalier almost stood where
André had started.
“Bah!” the young man cried, “this is tedious,” and he suddenly changed
his tactics. He was now attacking with a fiery swiftness which made
André’s blood warm, and stirred his admiration, but he noted with joy
how reckless his opponent was growing. Twice the lad only saved himself
by the most dexterous reversing of his lunges.
“Fool!” André muttered to himself, “that is not the game to play with
me; in three minutes he will be mine,” and he, too, began to press his
attack. Ah!--ah!--only by the swiftest convolutions of that supple
body had the Chevalier saved himself. André began to nerve himself for
a final assault. Should he give him the point in his sword arm--his
shoulder, or his lungs? And then the torch light flared right into his
face.
In a second he saw what it all meant. By those superb reversed lunges
he had been lured on till he had been manœuvred into a place where both
torches fell in his eyes and that young devil had the lights behind
him. He--he, André de Nérac, had been outplayed by this beardless
youth! And now he was in a corner of this damned court-yard with the
cursed flicker from the walls making lightning on the crossed steel.
“_Diable!_” he growled, “you would!” and he flung himself on his
opponent in the madness of despair and wrath. It was now almost a
_mêlée corps à corps_, but the Chevalier would not give way. He had
penned André to the place he desired and he meant to keep him there.
“_Holà! Je touche!_” he cried.
How had it happened? One of the torches had gone out in a puff of air,
André’s sword was on the stones and the Chevalier had his foot on it.
By an infernal Italian trick he had dropped on one knee, the lunge that
should have gone through his heart had passed over his head and by some
superhuman secret he had twisted the weapon from his opponent’s grasp.
Yes, André had lost Denise and death was upon him.
With a quick gesture the Chevalier pitched the sword over the wall and
stood sword in hand facing the defenceless André. The breeze stirred
his dainty love locks.
“Monsieur le Vicomte,” he said cheerfully, “will perhaps permit me now
to return to the château. I have had my lesson.” André clenched his
fists sullenly. “Toinette,” the young man called, dropping his point,
“Toinette, bring another torch, and assist Monsieur le Vicomte with his
coat. You are a good wench, Toinette, and a discreet, is it not so?”
“Curse your Italian tricks,” André growled, “curse you and your Italian
tricks.”
“Yes, it was a trick, learned in Italy from a great master in the art.
But all is fair in war--and in love! I did not wish to be killed and
you are too good a swordsman for any one to beat in half an hour, and
that is all I had. Come, Vicomte, we have had our little encounter. Can
we not be friends?” He offered his hand.
André stared sulkily, yet feeling somewhat ashamed.
“I am not going to the château,” the Chevalier added quietly. “I, too,
am going to the war with my master and yours, the King. If it will
satisfy you, I will promise not to speak to Mademoiselle the Marquise
de Beau Séjour until we both return.”
“You can do as you please with regard to Mademoiselle la Marquise,”
André said sharply.
“And will you do me a favour?” the young man pleaded. “I beg you that
for the future you will not speak of our meeting here to any one.”
“Why?”
“Simply because I regret now that I prevented myself from being killed
by a low trick. Life to the young is sweet--it is my sole excuse to a
better swordsman than myself.”
“Very well,” André answered, touched to the quick by the faultless
delicacy with which the compliment was paid.
“I thank you. Perhaps now you will give me your hand?”
“With the greatest pleasure.”
The Chevalier had for the moment stormed his heart with the same superb
grace that he had robbed him of his sword.
“Adieu!”
And then in the sorest dudgeon André strode out in search of his sword.
To his surprise the wall of the court where they had fought backed on
to the churchyard, and a few minutes’ groping revealed his sword by
the strangest accident lying in the damp, matted grass that sprawled
over the tombstone of the little Marquise Marie. Yes, at that bitter
moment he could have shed tears of shame as he recalled the defeat
and the humiliation inflicted on him by that beardless boy, on him, a
Capitaine-Lieutenant of the Chevau-légers de la Garde, on him who had
never been vanquished yet. And he had sworn to win Denise! Why was he
not lying under the sod, forgotten and dead to the pain of the world,
like little Marie?
A figure was creeping past him in the dark--a woman!
“Who is that?” he cried sharply, plucking at her hood.
“Monseigneur, it is me--me, Monseigneur.”
“Yvonne!” He let the hood go as if he had been stabbed.
“But yes, Monseigneur, Yvonne of the Spotted Cow.” She kissed his hand,
humbly.
“Yvonne,” he gasped. “What do you here?”
“I was born in this village,” she answered, “my mother, she lives here.
She is old, my mother.”
“You--born here?”
“Surely, Monseigneur. It is the truth.”
André shivered. Half an hour ago how near his mother, who was old too,
had been to praying for the soul of her only son. And she had been
spared that pain by the courtesy of a beardless chevalier.
“And what do you now in the churchyard?” he asked.
“I come to say my prayers for the little Marquise Marie. She is in the
bosom of the good God, is our little Marquise, but I say a prayer for
her soul when I am happy.”
“And why do you pray for the Marquise Marie?” he asked.
“Because surely she is our Marquise. That other”--she waved a hand at
the twinkling lights of the noble château--“the King gave to us, but
there is only one Marquise for us here, the little lady Marie, who is
dead. _Dieu Le Vengeur! Dieu Le Vengeur!_” she whispered softly below
her breath.
“Peace, girl, peace,” he said, half sadly, half angrily.
“Monseigneur,” Yvonne whispered, “Monseigneur loves the Marquise
Denise----”
“Who told you that?” he demanded so fiercely that Yvonne shrank back.
“It was the wise woman,” she answered, “the wise woman of ‘The Cock
with the Spurs of Gold,’ who knows everything. Ah! if Monseigneur would
go to the wise woman she would tell him how he might win the Marquise
Denise. Did she not give me back my lover, did she not tell me where to
find again my spotted cow, did she not tell me that Monseigneur would
be here to-day?”
“She told you that?” he gasped.
“Yes, Monseigneur.”
André sat down on the tombstone in the supremest amazement and
confusion. What did it, could it mean?
“I will pray,” Yvonne went on in her innocent, soft voice, “to our
little Marquise that Monseigneur may marry the Marquise Denise.”
“Why?” André asked.
“Because then Monseigneur will be our lord and we will be his serfs.”
“You would like to be my serf, Yvonne?” he demanded, putting his hand
on her shoulder, and he could feel her tremble.
“Surely, surely,” she answered.
“Then you shall--some day you shall, I swear it.”
A gust of hot passion swept over him. She was not pretty, this peasant
wench, but she had a noble figure, and the comfort of a woman’s caress
in that hour of abasement appealed with an irresistible sweetness to
his wounded spirit. Something, however, checked his arm that was about
to slip round her--as if Yvonne herself by a mysterious power paralysed
his passion. Yet she made no effort to escape, and under his hand on
her plump shoulder he could feel that she, too, was in the grip of
strong emotion.
His arm dropped to his side.
“Monseigneur will go to the wise soothsayer,” she said very quietly,
“for she can help him better than any peasant wench.”
And then André laughed. The gaiety of yesterday had suddenly remastered
him. He forgot the shamed sword, the Chevalier, and that infernal court
with its smoking torches. Denise should yet be his, and this strange
girl his serf.
“Why, then, I will seek this wise woman,” he answered lightly, “before
I go to the war. I promise, Yvonne.”
And so he left her to her prayers at the tomb of the child who should
have been her lord. But she did not pray very long. Indeed, had André
cared he might have seen her wrapped in her coarse cloak walking
swiftly towards the twinkling lights of the great château, and she sang
as she had sung on the back of her spotted cow.