I liked the thought so little that I hesitated. Yet it seemed too late to retreat. The Captain and the Lieutenant were waiting for me in a little open space fifty yards from the house, where a narrower path crossed the broad walk, down which I had first seen Mademoiselle and her sister pacing. The Captain had removed his doublet, and stood in his shirt leaning against the sundial, his head bare and his sinewy throat uncovered. He had drawn his rapier and stood pricking the ground impatiently. I marked his strong and nervous frame and his sanguine air: and twenty years earlier the sight might have damped me. But no thought of the kind entered my head now, and though I felt with each moment greater reluctance to engage, doubt of the issue had no place in my calculations.
I made ready slowly, and would gladly, to gain time, have found some fault with the place. But the sun was sufficiently high to give no advantage to either. The ground was good, the spot well chosen. I could find no excuse to put off the man, and I was about to salute him and fall to work when a thought crossed my mind.
'One moment!' I said. 'Supposing I kill you, M. le Capitaine, what becomes of your errand here?'
'Don't trouble yourself;' he answered with a sneer he had misread my slowness and hesitation. 'It will not happen, Monsieur. And in any case the thought need not harass you. I have a Lieutenant.'
'Yes, but what of my mission?' I replied bluntly. 'I have no lieutenant.'
'You should have thought of that before you interfered with my boots,' he retorted with contempt.
'True,' I said overlooking his manner. 'But better late than never. I am not sure, now I think of it, that my duty to Monseigneur will let me fight.'
'You will swallow the blow?' he cried, spitting on the ground offensively. 'DIABLE!' And the Lieutenant, standing on one side with his hands behind him and his shoulders squared, laughed grimly.
'I have not made up my mind,' I answered irresolutely.
'Well, NOM DE DIEU! make it up,' the Captain replied, with an ugly sneer. He took a swaggering step this way and that, playing his weapon. 'I am afraid, Lieutenant, that there will be no sport to-day,' he continued in a loud aside. 'Our cock has but a chicken heart.'
'Well, I said coolly,'I do not know what to do. Certainly it is a fine day, and a fair piece of ground. And the sun stands well.
But I have not much to gain by killing you, M. le Capitaine, and it might get me into an awkward fix. On the other hand, it would not hurt me to let you go.'
'Indeed!' he said contemptuously, looking at me as I should look at a lackey.
'No!' I replied. 'For if you were to say that you had struck Gil de Berault and left the ground with a whole skin, no one would believe you.'
'Gil de Berault!' he exclaimed frowning.
'Yes, Monsieur,' I replied suavely. 'At your service. You did not know my name?'
'I thought that your name was De Barthe,' he said. His voice sounded queerly; and he waited for the answer with parted lips, and a shadow in his eyes which I had seen in men's eyes before.
'No,' I said; 'that was my mother's name. I took it for this occasion only.'
His florid cheek lost a shade of its colour, and he bit his lips as he glanced at the Lieutenant, trouble in his eyes. I had seen these signs before, and knew them, and I might have cried 'Chicken-heart!' in my turn; but I had not made a way of escape for him--before I declared myself--for nothing, and I held to my purpose.
'I think you will allow now,' I said grimly, 'that it will not harm me even if I put up with a blow!'
'M. de Berault's courage is known,' he muttered.
'And with reason,' I said. 'That being so suppose that we say this day three months, M. le Capitaine? The postponement to be for my convenience.'
He caught the Lieutenant's eye and looked down sullenly, the conflict in his mind as plain as daylight. He had only to insist that I must fight; and if by luck or skill he could master me his fame as a duellist would run, like a ripple over water, through every garrison town in France and make him a name even in Paris.
On the other side were the imminent peril of death, the gleam of cold steel already in fancy at his breast, the loss of life and sunshine, and the possibility of a retreat with honour, if without glory. I read his face, and knew before he spoke what he would do.
'It appears to me that the burden is with you,' he said huskily;
'but for my part I am satisfied.'
'Very well,' I said, 'I take the burden. Permit me to apologise for having caused you to strip unnecessarily. Fortunately the sun is shining.'
'Yes,' he said gloomily. And he took his clothes from the sundial and began to put them on. He had expressed himself satisfied, but I knew that he was feeling very ill-satisfied, indeed, with himself; and I was not surprised when he presently said abruptly and almost rudely, 'There is one thing that I think we must settle here.'
'Yes?' I said. 'What is that?'
'Our positions,' he blurted out, 'Or we shall cross one another again within the hour.'
'Umph! I am not quite sure that I understand,' I said.
'That is precisely what I don't do--understand!' he retorted, in a tone of surly triumph. 'Before I came on this duty, I was told that there was a gentleman here, bearing sealed orders from the Cardinal to arrest M. de Cocheforet; and I was instructed to avoid collision with him so far as might be possible. At first I took you for the gentleman. But the plague take me if I understand the matter now.'
'Why not?' I said coldly.
'Because--well, the question is in a nutshell!' he answered impetuously. 'Are you here on behalf of Madame de Cocheforet, to shield her husband? Or are you here to arrest him? That is what I do not understand, M. de Berault.'
'If you mean, am I the Cardinal's agent--I am!' I answered sternly.
'To arrest M. de Cocheforet?'
'To arrest M. de Cocheforet.'
'Well--you surprise me,' he said.
Only that; but he spoke so drily that I felt the blood rush to my face.
'Take care, Monsieur,' I said severely. 'Do not presume too far on the inconvenience to which your death might put me.'
He shrugged his shoulders.
