THE ASSAULT-AT-ARMS
/The/ letter was duly despatched, and in consideration of this fact
Sir Gervase might well have practised patience for the little while
that Don Pedro was likely to continue at Trevanion Chase. But young
men in love are notoriously impatient, and matters were not eased for
Gervase when he found the Lady Margaret rendered all but inaccessible
to him by the claims upon her of her prisoner.
Whenever Gervase sought her now, there was no chance of being private
with her for more than a moment. If she were not away, riding or
hawking with the courtly Spaniard, there were ever visitors at the
Chase and the Spaniard was invariably the centre of interest. Either
he entertained the company with amusing narratives out of his wide
experience, or else he charmed them with plaintive, passionate
Andalusian songs, and he was so skilled a performer on the lute that
he could wring from it an unsuspected power of melody.
That the Lady Margaret should remain indifferent to his undeniable
fascination was incredible, particularly to Sir Gervase. When the
witty, versatile, accomplished Don Pedro exerted himself to please,
there is no doubt he could be dangerous. And it was obvious to all
that he was exerting himself now. Those Cornish gallants who had paid
an assiduous court to the Lady Margaret until Sir Gervase had elbowed
them out of his way, looked on and smiled to see him thrust aside in
his turn by another. In Don Pedro they beheld their own avenger, which
in itself went far to dispose them in Don Pedro’s favour.
Lionel Tressilian made a simpering jest of it to his grim half-brother
Sir Oliver. But Sir Oliver did not laugh with him.
‘God’s light!’ he cried. ‘It’s a shameful thing that a pestilential
Spaniard who shelters himself behind a woman’s petticoat should be
fawned upon by a pack of unlicked English whelps. He should have been
handed over to the justices. Since my Lord Garth is too indolent to
oppose his daughter, if I were in Gervase Crosby’s place, I’d make
short work of this Don Pedro.’
Chancing on the morrow to meet Gervase in Smithwick, the elder
Tressilian spoke his mind freely and bluntly as was his habit. He
blamed Gervase’s weakness for accepting this comedy of Don Pedro’s
surrendering his sword to a lady and for suffering himself to be
thrust out of his proper place by such a man. The youth of the place
were making a jest of it; and it was high time Gervase showed them
that it is not only upon the seas that he could deal with Spaniards.
This supplied the drooping spirits of Gervase with the necessary spur,
and coming that afternoon to Trevanion Chase he decided to take
action, though not necessarily of the violent kind at which the
downright, uncompromising Sir Oliver had hinted. That were neither
just where the Spaniard was concerned, nor prudent towards Margaret.
But it was necessary that his own position should be properly defined.
Being informed by Martin that her ladyship was in the arbour with Don
Pedro, he decided to make a beginning with the Earl.
The Earl, who had shifted from philosophy to history, its proper
correlative, was poring over a colossal volume of Herodotus when Sir
Gervase invaded his privacy.
‘My lord,’ the young man announced, ‘I am come to talk to you of
Margaret.’
His lordship looked up peevishly. ‘Is it really necessary?’ he
wondered. ‘I suppose you are come to tell me once again that you want
to marry her. I don’t oppose it if she doesn’t. Marry her if she will
have you. Go and ask her. It concerns her, not me.’
If this was a subterfuge to be rid of his intruder, it failed.
‘She will not listen to reason these days,’ Sir Gervase complained.
‘Reason? Whoever made love in terms of reason with any hope of
success? I begin to understand your failure, sir.’
‘My failure is due to this damned Don Pedro.’ He smacked a peck of
dust from a tome that lay under his hand upon the table. ‘Until this
Spaniard was washed up here out of hell, I had every hope to be
married before Christmas.’
His lordship frowned. ‘What has Don Pedro to do with this?’
‘With submission, my lord, I say you spend too much time with books.’
‘I am glad you say it with submission. But it hardly answers my
question.’
‘It were well that you spared some leisure from your studies to keep
an eye upon your daughter, sir. She and this Spaniard are too much
alone together; much more than is befitting a lady of her station.’
The Earl smiled sourly. ‘You are endeavouring to tell me that Margaret
is a fool. My answer is that you’re a fool to think so.’
But Gervase would not be put off. ‘I say that all women are fools.’
His lordship sniffed. ‘I nothing doubt that your misogyny has its
roots in a wide experience.’ Seeing the blank look in the young man’s
eyes, he explained himself. ‘I mean that you’ll have known many
women.’
‘As many as I need to,’ quoth Gervase, non-committal.
‘Then it is high time you got yourself married. A God’s name what do
you stay for?’
‘I have already told your lordship. This infernal Spaniard stops the
way. Even now he sits at her feet in the arbour, thrumming his
pestilent lute and languishing his Malaga love-songs.’
At last his lordship appeared really scandalized. ‘And you tarry here
while this is doing? Away with you at once, and send her hither to me.
I’ll make an end of this. If I have any authority over her, she shall
marry you within the month. Thus at last I may have peace. Away with
you!’
Sir Gervase departed on that agreeable errand, whilst his lordship
returned to investigate the fortunes of Cyrus and Cambyses.
The tinkling of the lute, the rich melodious voice of the Spanish
Grande guided Sir Gervase to the arbour. Unceremoniously he
interrupted the song with his message.
‘Margaret, his lordship asks for you. He is in haste.’
She departed after some questions to which he returned equivocal
replies.
The two men were left alone together. Don Pedro having bowed to the
departing lady sat down again, and crossed his shapely legs that were
cased in shimmering black silk, a quality of hose almost unknown in
England, the very pair in which he had swum ashore. With the lute
lying idle in his lap, he made some attempts at polite conversation.
These were impolitely discouraged by the other’s monosyllabic answers.
At last Don Pedro ignored him and once more gave his attention
entirely to the instrument, a pretty thing out of Italy of ebony
inlaid with ivory. His fingers swept the chords. Very softly he began
to play a quick Sevillan dance measure.
Sir Gervase, in that state of irritation which distorts all things and
magnifies the distortion, chose to perceive in this a deliberate
affront, a subtle form of mockery. Perhaps the rippling character of
the measure added colour to the assumption. Anger surged up in him,
and, acting upon it suddenly, he dashed the lute from the thrummer’s
hands.
The Spaniard’s dark eyes looked at him in blank astonishment from out
of that handsome ivory-coloured face. Then, observing his aggressor’s
fiery countenance, he smiled a slow, faint smile inscrutable of
meaning.
‘You do not like music, eh, Sir Gervase?’ he inquired with quiet,
derisive courtesy.
‘Neither music nor musicians,’ said Gervase.
The Spaniard continued unruffled, regarding him now with a faintly
quickened interest.
‘I have heard that there are men like that,’ said he, implying that he
now looked for the first time upon a member of that species. ‘The
sentiment, or the lack of it, I can understand if I cannot admire it.
But the expression of it which you have chosen I do not understand at
all.’
Already Sir Gervase realized that he had done a stupid, boorish thing.
His anger with himself was increased by the utter failure of his
action to provoke Don Pedro out of his lightly scornful urbanity.
Almost he could admire the Spaniard’s easy impassivity, and he was
certainly made the more sensitive of his own loutishness by contrast.
This merely served to fan his rage.
‘I should have thought it plain enough,’ he answered.
‘Of course, if this onslaught upon the Lady Margaret’s unoffending
lute was merely an instance of rustic want of manners, let me assure
you that it was entirely unnecessary.’
‘You talk too much,’ said Gervase. ‘I meant no harm to the lute.’
The Spaniard uncrossed at last his graceful legs, and rose with a
sigh. His face wore now a look of weary melancholy. ‘Not to the lute?
To me, then, eh? The harm was for me? You desire to offer me an
affront? Am I to assume this?’
‘If it will not strain your capacity for assumption.’ Committed to it
now, Gervase could not draw back.
‘But it does. I assure you that it does. Being unconscious of having
given offence, or of ever having lacked for courtesy towards you…’
Sir Gervase broke in. ‘You are, yourself, the offence. I do not like
your face. That jewel in your ear savours the fop, and offends my
sense of niceness. And then your beard is odious, and, in short, you
are a Spaniard, and I hate all Spaniards.’
Don Pedro sighed even as he smiled. ‘At last I understand. Indeed,
sir, you appear to have a very solid grievance. I am ashamed of myself
for having afforded it. Tell me, sir, what I may do to please you?’
‘You might die,’ said Gervase.
Don Pedro fingered his beard, ever suave and cool before the hot anger
of the other, which his every word, with its undercurrent of contempt
and mockery, was deliberately calculated to increase.
‘That is a deal to ask. Would it amuse you,’ he wondered almost
plaintively, ‘to attempt to kill me?’
‘Damnably,’ said Gervase.
Don Pedro bowed. ‘In that case, I must do what I can to oblige you. If
you will stay for me until I get my weapons, I will afford you the
gratifying opportunity.’
With a nod and a smile, he departed briskly, leaving Gervase in a fury
the half of which was directed against himself. He had behaved with an
outrageous clumsiness before that impeccable master of deportment. He
was ashamed of the boorish manner in which he had achieved his object
with one whose bearing throughout had been an education in the manner
in which these matters should be handled by men of birth. Deeds alone
could now make amends for the shortcomings of his words.
He said so in a minatory tone to the Don, as presently they made their
way together to a strip of lawn behind a quickset hedge where they
would be entirely screened and private.
‘If you ply your sword as keenly as your tongue, Don Pedro, you should
do fine things,’ he sneered.
‘Do not be alarmed,’ was the smooth answer.
‘I am not,’ snapped Sir Gervase.
‘There is not the need,’ Don Pedro assured him. ‘I shall not hurt
you.’
They had rounded the hedge by now, and Sir Gervase, in the act of
untrussing his points, fell roundly to swearing in answer to that
kindly promise.
‘You entirely misapprehend me,’ said Don Pedro. ‘Indeed, I think there
is a good deal in this that you do not apprehend. Have you considered,
for instance, that if you kill me, there will be none to question your
right to do so; but if I were to kill you, it is odds that these
barbarous compatriots of yours would hang me in spite of my rank?’
Gervase paused in the act of peeling off his doublet. Dismay
overspread his honest young face. ‘As God’s my life, I had not thought
of that. Look you, Don Pedro, I have no desire to place you at such a
disadvantage. This thing cannot go on.’
‘It cannot go back. It might be supposed that I pointed out the
delicacy of the situation so as to avoid the issue. And that, my
honour will not suffer. But, I repeat, sir, you have no cause for
alarm.’
The taunting confidence angered Sir Gervase anew. ‘You’re mighty sure
of yourself!’ said he.
‘Of course,’ the Don agreed. ‘Could I consent to meet you else? There
is so much that you overlook in your hot haste. Consider that, being
as I am a prisoner on parole, to permit myself to be killed would be
lacking in honour, since to die by an act in which I have a part were
tantamount to breaking prison. It follows that I must be very sure of
myself or I would not consent to engage.’
This was more than Gervase could endure. The Spaniard’s dignified
imperturbability he had admired. But this cold bombast disgusted him.
He flung aside his doublet in a rage and sat down to pull off his
boots.
‘Is so much necessary?’ quoth Don Pedro. ‘Myself I abhor damp feet.’
‘Each to his taste,’ he was curtly answered. ‘You may die dry-shod if
you prefer it.’
The Spaniard said no more. He unbuckled his sword-belt, and cast it
from him with the scabbard, retaining the naked rapier in his hand. He
had brought sword and dagger, the usual combination of duelling
weapons; but discovering that Sir Gervase, who had come unprepared for
this, was armed with rapier only, Don Pedro accommodated himself to
his opponent.
Lithe, graceful, and entirely composed he waited now, bending the long
supple steel like a whip in his two hands, whilst his opponent
completed his elaborate preparations.
At length they faced each other, and engaged.
Sir Gervase, as he had already proved upon more than one occasion, was
endowed with the courage of a mastiff; but his sword play was, like
his nature, downright, straightforward, and without subtleties. By
sheer strength of brawn he had earned himself among seamen something
of a reputation as a slashing swordsman, and he had come to conceive
that he was a match for most men with the weapon. This resulted, not
from self-sufficiency, but from ignorance. His education was far from
complete, as Margaret frequently and unkindly reminded him. Something
was to be added to it this afternoon.
The true art of fence was in its infancy. Lately born in that fair
land of Italy, which has mothered all the arts, it had as yet made
comparatively little progress in the rest of Europe. True, there was a
skilled Italian, a Messer Saviolo, in London, who gave instruction to
a few choice pupils, and similarly there were masters sprouting up in
France and Spain and Holland. But in the main your gallant, and your
soldier in particular, depended upon his strength to bear down an
opponent’s blade and hack a way to his heart. To this he added
sometimes certain questionable tricks of fighting, which were of less
than no avail should he chance--as Sir Gervase chanced to-day--to be
opposed to one of those few swordsmen who had made a study of this new
art and mastered its principles.
You conceive the disconcerting astonishment of Sir Gervase when he
found the slashing cuts, which he aimed at the lithe Don Pedro with
all the weight of his brawn behind them, spending themselves upon the
empty air, rendered harmless and powerless as they were met by closely
played deflecting blade. It was like witchcraft to the uninitiated, as
if the Spaniard’s sword were a magic rod, which at contact robbed his
own, and his arm with it, of all strength. Then he grew angry, and his
play became wilder. Don Pedro might have killed him twenty times
without exertion. It was, indeed, this lack of exertion on the
Spaniard’s part that infuriated the sturdy young seaman. Don Pedro
scarcely stirred. He kept his arm shortened and used his forearm
sparingly, depending chiefly upon the quick play of his wrist to be
everywhere at once with the very greatest economy of time and action.
Thus in a manner that to Gervase seemed increasingly uncanny, the
forte of that blade was ever presented to the foible of his own,
sending every cut and every thrust irresistibly yet effortlessly awry.
Gervase, already breathing heavily and beginning to perspire, broke
ground so as to attack in another quarter. But he had his labour for
nothing. The Spaniard merely pivoted to face him and to reëngage as
before. Once Gervase made as if to hurl himself forward, so as to come
to grips with his opponent: but he was checked by the Spaniard’s
point, flicked upwards to the line of his throat. If he advanced he
must impale himself upon it.
Baffled and winded, Sir Gervase fell back to breathe. The Spaniard
made no attempt to follow and attack. He merely lowered his point, to
ease his arm, whilst waiting for the other to resume.
‘You become heated, I fear,’ he said. He showed no sign of heat
himself and was breathing easily. ‘That is because you use the edge
too much, and therefore labour with your arm. You should learn to
depend more upon the point; keep the elbow closer to the body, and let
your wrist do the work.’
‘Sdeath!’ roared Gervase, in fury. ‘Do you give me lessons?’
‘But do you not begin to perceive that you need them?’ quoth the
affable Don Pedro.
Sir Gervase leapt at him, and then things happened quickly. Quite how
they happened he never understood. The Spaniard’s sword deflected his
fierce lunge, but less widely than hitherto, and now blade ran on
blade until the hilts crashed together. Then quite suddenly Don
Pedro’s left hand shot out and closed upon Sir Gervase’s sword-wrist.
The rest was done with the speed of thought. The Spaniard dropped his
sword. His now empty right seized Gervase’s rapier by the quillons and
wrenched it from his grasp before the design was so much as suspected.
Thus Sir Gervase found himself disarmed by seizure, his weapon now in
his opponent’s hand. Enraged, hot, and perspiring he stood, whilst the
Spaniard, smiling quietly, now bowed to him as if to signify that he
had done his part and the affair was at an end.
And then, as if this measure of humiliation were not in itself
sufficient, he suddenly became aware of Margaret’s presence. She was
standing by the corner of the quickset hedge, wide-eyed, white-faced,
her lips parted, her left hand pressed to her breast.
How long she had been there he did not know; but in any case long
enough to have witnessed his discomfiture. In that bitter moment Sir
Gervase accounted it no mercy that Don Pedro had not run him through
the heart.
Sick and foolish, oddly pale now under his tan despite the heat in
which the combat had put him, he watched her swift, angry approach.
‘What is this?’ she demanded; turning first to one and then to the
other and withering each with her glance.
It was of course Don Pedro, who, never for a moment losing his
composure, afforded her an answer. ‘Why, nothing. A little sword-play
for the instruction of Sir Gervase. I was demonstrating for him the
art of the new Italian school of fence.’
He proffered the sword to Sir Gervase, hilt foremost. ‘Enough for
to-day,’ he said with his courteous smile. ‘To-morrow, perhaps, I
shall show you how the _estramaçon_ is to be met and turned aside.’
By his infernal subtlety the man invested what he said with an air
which conveyed quite plainly the very thing he pretended to conceal:
how generously he had spared his opponent.
Her ladyship considered him a moment in haughty dignity. ‘Pray give me
leave apart with Sir Gervase,’ she commanded frostily.
The Spaniard bowed, took up his rapier from the ground and then his
sword-belt, and obediently departed.
‘Gervase,’ she said peremptorily, ‘the truth! What passed between
you?’
He gave her truthfully enough the details by which he knew himself to
be shamed.
She listened patiently, her face white, her lip at moments trembling.
When he had done and stood hang-dog before her, it was some moments
before she spoke, as if she were at pains to choose her words.
‘You were bent, it seems, upon saving me the trouble of disobeying my
father’s wishes?’ she said at last between question and assertion.
He was in no doubt of her meaning. But the heart was all gone out of
him. He continued to contemplate the trampled turf. He perceived how
fitting it was that she should refuse to marry such an oaf as himself,
clumsy in all things. He had no courage left to defend himself or
plead his cause.
‘Well?’ she demanded. ‘Why don’t you answer me? Or have you talked
yourself dumb with Don Pedro?’
‘Perhaps I have,’ he answered miserably.
‘Perhaps you have!’ she mocked him. ‘Good lack! Would it have helped
you to have got yourself killed?’
In reply he set her a question which he might well have set himself,
ay, and found the answer to it in her present angry agitation.
‘Since you would not have cared, why all this heat and bother?’
Excitement betrayed her. ‘Who says I would not?’ she snapped, and
almost bit out her tongue when the words were sped.
They had a transfiguring effect upon the man before her. He stared at
her, and fell to trembling. ‘Margaret!’ he cried in a voice that rang
out. ‘Wouldst have cared, Margaret?’
She took refuge in feminine dissimulation. She shrugged. ‘Is it not
plain? Do we want the justices here to know how you met your death,
and a scandal about our heads that may send an echo as far as London?’
He gulped and lapsed back into his dejection. ‘Was that all you meant?
Was that all?’
‘What else could you suppose I meant? Get you dressed, man. My father
is asking for you.’ She began to turn away. ‘Where did you say you
left my lute? If you’ve broken it I’ll not forgive you easily.’
‘Margaret!’ he called to her as she was departing.
By the quickset hedge she paused, and looked at him over her shoulder.
‘I’ve been an oaf,’ he pleaded miserably.
‘Upon that particular at least we can agree. Aught else?’
‘If you’ll forgive me…’ He broke off, and moved towards her. ‘It was
all for you, Margaret. I was maddened to see this Spaniard ever in
your company. I can’t endure it. We were so happy until he came…’
‘Myself, I’ve not been unhappy since.’
He swore between his teeth. ‘It’s that! It’s that!’
‘It’s what?’
‘My cursed jealousy. I love you, Margaret. I’d give my life for love
of you, Margaret dear.’
‘Faith, I believe you,’ she taunted him, ‘since I found you engaged in
the attempt.’ She moved away a pace or two, then paused again. ‘Get
you dressed,’ she repeated, ‘and in Heaven’s name get sense,’ she
added, and was gone.
But as he was gloomily trussing his points, she was back again.
‘Gervase,’ she said, very grave and demure now. ‘If my forgiveness
matters, you’ll promise me that we shall have no more of this.’
‘Ay,’ he answered bitterly, ‘I promise.’
‘You swear it,’ she insisted, and for all that he swore it readily
enough, he had not the wit, it seems, to fathom the reason of her
concern. A little coxcombry would have helped him here. But there was
no coxcombry in Sir Gervase Crosby’s composition.