And now it was clear day. The lime-washed walls of the town gleamed in
sunshine, and the shadows of the men at war upon the sand stretched far
back from their feet toward the white land. Birds twittered, and shook
the snow from the shrubbery of the Duke's garden; the river cried below
the arches, but not loud enough to drown the sound of stumbling steps,
and Montaiglon threw a glance in the direction whence they came, even at
the risk of being spitted on his opponent's weapon.
He parried a thrust in quarte and cried, “Stop! stop! _Remettez-vous,
monsieur!_ Here comes a woman.”
The Chamberlain looked at the dishevelled figure running awkwardly over
the rough stones and slimy weeds, muttered an oath, and put his point up
again.
“Come on,” said he; “we'll have the whole town about our lugs in ten
minutes.”
“But the lady?” said Count Victor, guarding under protest.
“It's only Kate,” said the Chamberlain, and aimed a furious thrust
in tierce. Montaiglon parried by a beat of the edge of his forte, and
forced the blade upwards. He could have disarmed by the simplest trick
of Girard, but missed the opportunity from an insane desire to save his
opponent's feelings in the presence of a spectator. Yet the leniency
cost them dear.
“Sim! Sim!” cried out the woman in a voice full of horror and entreaty,
panting towards the combatants. Her call confused her lover: in a
mingling of anger and impatience he lunged wildly, and Count Victor's
weapon took him in the chest.
“Zut!” cried the Frenchman, withdrawing the sword and flicking the blood
from the point with a ludicrous movement.
The Chamberlain writhed at his feet, muttered something fierce in
Gaelic, and a great repugnance took possession of the other. He looked
at his work; he quite forgot the hurrying woman until she ran past him
and threw herself beside the wounded man.
“Oh, Sim! Sim!” she wailed, in an utterance the most distressing. Her
lover turned upon his back and smiled sardonically at her out of a face
of paper. “I wish ye had been a little later, Kate,” he said, “or that I
had begun with a hale arm. Good God! I've swallowed a hot cinder. I love
you, my dear; I love you, my dear. Oh, where the de'il's my flageolet?”
And then his head fell back.
With frantic hands she unloosed his cravat, sought and staunched the
wound with her handkerchief, and wept the while with no sound, though
her bosom, white like the spray of seas, seemed bound to burst above her
corsage.
Count Victor sheathed his weapon, and “Madame,” said he with
preposterous inadequacy, “this--this--is distressing; this--this--” he
desired to offer some assistance, but baulked at the fury of the eyes
she turned on him.
“Oh, you!--you!--you!” she gasped, choking to say even so little. “It is
enough, is it not, that you have murdered him, without staying to see me
tortured?”
To this he could, of course, make no reply. His quandary was immense.
Two hundred yards away was that white phantom town shining in the
morning sun that rose enormous over the eastern hills beyond the little
lapping silver waves. A phantom town, with phantom citizens doubtless
prying through the staring eyes of those closed shutters. A phantom
town--town of fairy tale, with grotesque roofs, odd _corbeau_-stepped
gables, smokeless chimneys, all white with snow, and wild birds on its
terrace, preening in the blessed light of the sun. He stood with his
back to the pair upon the sand. “My God! 'tis a dream,” said he. “I
shall laugh in a moment.” He seemed to himself to stand thus an age, and
yet in truth it was only a pause of minutes when the Chamberlain spoke
with the tone of sleep and insensibility as from another world.
“I love you, my dear; I love you, my dear--Olivia.”
Mrs. Petullo gave a cry of pain and staggered to her feet. She turned
upon Count Victor a face distraught and eyes that were wild with the
wretchedness of the disillusioned. Her fingers were playing nervously at
her lips; her shoulders were roughened and discoloured by the cold; her
hair falling round her neck gave her the aspect of a slattern. She, too,
looked at the façade of the town and saw her husband's windows shuttered
and indifferent to her grief.
“I do not know whether you have killed him or not,” she said at last.
“It does not matter--oh! it matters all--no, no, it does not matter--Oh!
could you not--could you not kill me too?”
For his life he could not have answered: he but looked at her in mortal
pity, and at that she ground her teeth and struck him on the lips.
“Awake, decidedly awake!” he said, and shrugged his shoulders; and then
for the first time he saw that she was shivering.
“Madame,” he said, “you will die of cold: permit me,” and he stooped and
picked up his coat from the sand and placed it without resistance on her
shoulders, like a cloak. She drew it, indeed, about her with trembling
fingers as if her senses craved the comfort though her detestation
of the man who gave it was great. But in truth she was demented now,
forgetting even the bleeding lover. She gave little paces on the sand,
with one of her shoes gone from her feet, and wrung her hands and sobbed
miserably.
Count Victor bent to the wounded man and found him regaining
consciousness. He did what he could, though that of necessity was
little, to hasten his restoration, and relinquished the office only when
approaching footsteps on the shore made him look up to see a group of
workmen hastening to the spot where the Chamberlain lay on the edge of
the tide and the lady and the foreigner beside him.
“This man killed him,” cried Mrs. Petullo, pointing an accusing finger.
“I hope I have not killed him,” said he, “and in any case it was an
honourable engagement; but that matters little at this moment when the
first thing to do is to have him removed home. So far as I am concerned,
I promise you I shall be quite ready to go with you and see him safely
lodged.”
As the wounded man was borne through the lodge gate with Count Victor,
coatless, in attendance, the latter looked back and saw Mrs. Petullo,
again bare-shouldered, standing before her husband's door and gazing
after them.
Her temper had come back; she had thrown his laced coat into the
approaching sea!