He bore down upon me furiously, his point coming straight for my throat. I took the blade on the cane; then, as he disengaged and came at me lower, I made counter-parry, and pursuing the circle after I had caught his steel, I carried it out of his hand. It whirled an instant, a shimmering wheel of light, then it clattered against the marble balustrade half a dozen yards away. With his sword it seemed that his courage, too, departed, and he stood at my mercy, a curious picture of foolishness, surprise, and fear.
Now the Chevalier de Saint-Eustache was a young man, and in the young we can forgive much. But to forgive such an act as he had been guilty of – that of drawing his sword upon a man who carried no weapons – would have been not only a ridiculous toleration, but an utter neglect of duty. As an older man it behoved me to read the Chevalier a lesson in manners and gentlemanly feeling. So, quite dispassionately, and purely for his own future good, I went about the task, and administered him a thrashing that for thoroughness it would be hard to better. I was not discriminating. I brought my cane down with a rhythmical precision, and whether it took him on the head, the back, or the shoulders, I held to be more his affair than mine. I had a moral to inculcate, and the injuries he might receive in the course of it were inconsiderable details so that the lesson was borne in upon his soul. Two or three times he sought to close with me, but I eluded him; I had no mind to descend to a vulgar exchange of blows. My object was not to brawl, but to administer chastisement, and this object I may claim to have accomplished with a fair degree of success.
At last Roxalanne interfered; but only when one blow a little more violent, perhaps, than its precursors resulted in the sudden snapping of the cane and Monsieur de Eustache’s utter collapse into a moaning heap.
“I deplore, mademoiselle, to have offended your sight with such a spectacle, but unless these lessons are administered upon the instant their effect is not half so salutary.”
“He deserved it, monsieur,” said she, with a note almost of fierceness in her voice. And of such poor mettle are we that her resentment against that groaning mass of fopperies and wheals sent a thrill of pleasure through me. I walked over to the spot where his sword had fallen, and picked it up.
“Monsieur de Saint-Eustache,” said I, “you have so dishonoured this blade that I do not think you would care to wear it again.” Saying which, I snapped it across my knee, and flung it far out into the river, for all that the hilt was a costly one, richly wrought in bronze and gold.
He raised his livid countenance, and his eyes blazed impotent fury.
“Par la mort Dieu!” he cried hoarsely, “you shall give me satisfaction for this!”
“If you account yourself still unsatisfied, I am at your service when you will,” said I courteously.
Then, before more could be said, I saw Monsieur de Lavedan and the Vicomtesse approaching hurriedly across the parterre. The Vicomte’s brow was black with what might have appeared anger, but which I rightly construed into apprehension.
“What has taken place? What have you done?” he asked of me.
“He has brutally assaulted the Chevalier,” cried Madame shrilly, her eyes malevolently set upon me. “He is only a child, this poor Saint-Eustache,” she reproached me. “I saw it all from my window, Monsieur de Lesperon. It was brutal; it was cowardly. So to beat a boy! Shame! If you had a quarrel with him, are there not prescribed methods for their adjustment between gentlemen? Pardieu, could you not have given him proper satisfaction?”
“If madame will give herself the trouble of attentively examining this poor Saint-Eustache,” said I, with a sarcasm which her virulence prompted, “you will agree, I think, that I have given him very proper and very thorough satisfaction. I would have met him sword in hand, but the Chevalier has the fault of the very young – he is precipitate; he was in too great a haste, and he could not wait until I got a sword. So I was forced to do what I could with a cane.”
“But you provoked him,” she flashed back.
“Whoever told you so has misinformed you, madame. On the contrary, he provoked me. He gave me the lie. I struck him – could I do less? – and he drew. I defended myself, and I supplemented my defence by a caning, so that this poor Saint-Eustache might realize the unworthiness of what he had done. That is all, madame.”
But she was not so easily to be appeased, not even when Mademoiselle and the Vicomte joined their voices to mine in extenuation of my conduct. It was like Lavedan. For all that he was full of dread of the result and of the vengeance Saint-Eustache might wreak – boy though he was – he expressed himself freely touching the Chevalier’s behaviour and the fittingness of the punishment that had overtaken him.
The Vicomtesse stood in small awe of her husband, but his judgment upon a point of honour was a matter that she would not dare contest. She was ministering to the still prostrate Chevalier who, I think, remained prostrate now that he might continue to make appeal to her sympathy – when suddenly she cut in upon Roxalanne’s defence of me.
“Where have you been?” she demanded suddenly.
“When, my mother?”
“This afternoon,” answered the Vicomtesse impatiently. “The Chevalier was waiting two hours for you.”
Roxalanne coloured to the roots of her hair. The Vicomte frowned.
“Waiting for me, my mother? But why for me?”
“Answer my question – where have you been?”
“I was with Monsieur de Lesperon,” she answered simply.
“Alone?” the Vicomtesse almost shrieked.
“But yes.” The poor child’s tones were laden with wonder at this catechism.
“God’s death!” she snapped. “It seems that my daughter is no better than–”
Heaven knows what may have been coming, for she had the most virulent, scandalous tongue that I have ever known in a woman’s head – which is much for one who has lived at Court to say. But the Vicomte, sharing my fears, perhaps, and wishing to spare the child’s ears, interposed quickly “Come, madame, what airs are these? What sudden assumption of graces that we do not affect? We are not in Paris. This is not the Luxembourg. En province comme en province, and here we are simple folk–”
“Simple folk?” she interrupted, gasping. “By God, am I married to a ploughman? Am I Vicomtesse of Lavedan, or the wife of a boor of the countryside? And is the honour of your daughter a matter–”
“The honour of my daughter is not in question, madame,” he interrupted in his turn, and with a sudden sternness that spent the fire of her indignation as a spark that is trampled underfoot. Then, in a calm, level voice: “Ah, here are the servants,” said he.
“Permit them, madame, to take charge of Monsieur de Saint-Eustache. Anatole, you had better order the carriage for Monsieur le Chevalier. I do not think that he will be able to ride home.”
Anatole peered at the pale young gentleman on the ground, then he turned his little wizened face upon me, and grinned in a singularly solemn fashion. Monsieur de Saint-Eustache was little loved, it seemed.
Leaning heavily upon the arm of one of the lacqueys, the Chevalier moved painfully towards the courtyard, where the carriage was being prepared for him. At the last moment he turned and beckoned the Vicomte to his side.
“As God lives, Monsieur de Lavedan,” he swore, breathing heavily in the fury that beset him, “you shall bitterly regret having taken sides to-day with that Gascon bully. Remember me, both of you, when you are journeying to Toulouse.”
The Vicomte stood beside him, impassive and unmoved by that grim threat, for all that to him it must have sounded like a death-sentence.
“Adieu, monsieur – a speedy recovery,” was all he answered.
But I stepped up to them. “Do you not think, Vicomte, that it were better to detain him?” I asked.
“Pshaw!” he ejaculated. “Let him go.”
The Chevalier’s eyes met mine in a look of terror. Perhaps already that young man repented him of his menace, and he realized the folly of threatening one in whose power he still chanced to be.
“Bethink you, monsieur,” I cried. “Yours is a noble and useful life. Mine is not without value, either. Shall we suffer these lives – aye, and the happiness of your wife and daughter – to be destroyed by this vermin?”
“Let him go, monsieur; let him go. I am not afraid.”
I bowed and stepped back, motioning to the lacquey to take the fellow away, much as I should have motioned him to remove some uncleanness from before me.