Francezka Part 4

She gave a sidelong glance out of her eloquent eyes at Gaston Cheverny, that I would not have had her give me for the best horse in the king's stables. The young man did not relish it, and straightway undertook to make me responsible for his chagrin. He scowled at me when I made my bow to Mademoiselle Capello, and attempted to divide the honor with me of putting her in the coach, which, after all, old Peter did. The door slammed, the coach rattled off, with Peter upon the box, and Mademoiselle Capello sitting in offended majesty within.

CHAPTER IV

IN BEAUTY'S QUARREL

My young c.o.c.k-a-hoop and I being left facing each other on the pavement of the court, he said to me, with a terrific scowl in his handsome bright young face:

"Who are you, sir?"

"Babache," said I. "Captain of Uhlans in the body-guard of Count Saxe."

"Well, Babache," continues my young man, twirling his snuff-box as he had probably seen some older man do, "you were infernally in my way just now."

"Was I?" answered I. "Why did you not tell me at the time? I would have gone and jumped into the Seine--" and as I spoke, I flipped the snuff-box out of his hand. I never saw a youngster in a greater rage.

Like Mademoiselle Capello, a minute before, he hated to be treated like a child.

"Sir," said he, "you shall eat your words."

"Sir," I replied, "I have supped already; and besides, I never had any appet.i.te for that dish."

With that he whipped out his sword, and I said, holding up my hand:

"My lad, I am willing to fight, if that is what you are after; but being much older and wiser than you, I will tell you that our quarrel must not in any way relate to the young lady who has just been rescued from a very painful predicament. Suppose we quarrel about Count Saxe?"

"With all my heart," responds Gaston Cheverny.

"He is, as you know, the greatest man that ever lived," said I.

"Monsieur," replied my young game chick, very politely, "I thought him a great man up to this very moment and felt honored by his notice--for I know him--but since I hear he is a friend and patron of yours, I swear I think he is the veriest poltroon, the ugliest man, the stupidest oaf I ever saw."

"Thank you," said I. "Kindly name the place and hour where a meeting between us may be arranged."

"Why, here and now is the best time to arrange it. The garden of the Temple is retired enough. The moon is now rising--and with two good lanterns we can see to stick at each other--and we can each find an acquaintance within this very building."

I was astonished at the youth's temerity--but I saw it was not bloodthirstiness, but rather a youthful longing for a pickle-herring tragedy. It was my lady Francezka over again. Having scolded that young lady with the air of a patriarch, for her venturesomeness, Gaston Cheverny proceeded to hunt up adventures of his own. I saw that the notion of fighting by the light of flickering stable lanterns mightily tickled his fancy. So I said, looking at the great clock in the tower of the Temple:

"It is now ten o'clock. Shall we make it in an hour?"

"We can easily meet in half an hour."

"Certainly," I answered. "We must each find a friend and a lantern."

"Done," he cried--and turned off.

I was much more puzzled to find a friend and a lantern than I was at the prospect of crossing swords with young Cheverny. The only human being I could think of at hand was Jacques Haret--and I loathed the thought of having him in that capacity. Just then, Jacques Haret came out of the door and pa.s.sed through the courtyard. The time was short, so I stopped him, briefly stated the matter, and he accepted my cause, laughing uproariously the meanwhile. I had told him, of course, that Gaston Cheverny and I had quarreled about the greatness of Count Saxe.

"I know Cheverny well," he cried. "When I was a gentleman, I, too, had a place in Brabant. Old Peter, you must know, was a retainer of my family, and served with my father under Marshal Villars, and that is how, my estate being gone--bought by Regnard Cheverny, brother of Gaston--and Peter coming to Paris, he took service with Peggy Kirkpatrick. He had known the Capello family in Brabant."

Jacques Haret commonly told the truth about these things--and so I knew it to be true. He told me he had finally disposed of the children for the night, and proposed to get out of the way as quickly as possible. There was but little money in the theater, he said,--the cobbler's boy, his best actor, was so frightened at the adventures of the evening that he would never be worth anything as an actor again. Francezka would play no more; so he thought, on the whole, he had better cut the entire business, especially as it was possible the matter might come to Peggy Kirkpatrick's ears. Like myself, he regarded the meeting with Gaston Cheverny very lightly. I had my sword with me, and did not need to hire one as my adversary did, for he had on merely a dress sword, unfit for work. We could not lay hands on a surgeon, and I told Jacques Haret it mattered not--I would only be amusing myself with my young man, and he was only for saying that he crossed swords at a moment's warning, about a young lady--and no one was likely to be hurt. We required a lantern, however, and Jacques Haret proposing a wine shop as a place likely to have a lantern for hire, we went in search of one--and speedily found it. And we were also able to secure what I knew would please my young c.o.c.k mightily--one of those pieces of black cloth which old custom decrees shall be carried to throw over the corpse if either one of the combatants fall. It was no more likely to be used than a babe's swaddling clothes, but it looked tragic, and I saw that young Cheverny was bent upon being as tragic as possible, under the circ.u.mstances.

At the appointed time we were at the rendezvous. The Temple gardens were remote and retired, and at this hour of the night were perfectly deserted, not even a watchman being about.

I found my young friend with another cavalier, some years older than himself--a regular _pet.i.t-maitre_, Bellegarde by name, insipid beyond words, and very fretful because Gaston Cheverny had insisted on fighting at such a time.

Jacques Haret went through the affair with the most killing gravity.

Monsieur Bellegarde asked if an accommodation was possible. Jacques Haret replied no, except upon the admission that Count Saxe was the greatest man that ever lived. This Bellegarde earnestly besought Gaston Cheverny to agree to, alleging that he knew of several persons who were of that mind, and besides he was then due at a supper party.

Cheverny, however, persisted stoutly that Alexander the Great was a more considerable man, and the supper party must wait until after the meeting in question. Then Jacques Haret said there was no time to lose. I never saw a youngster so pleased as Gaston Cheverny was at that. He had come to Paris for adventures and here was one to his exact taste. I think the fighting by the lantern-light filled his boyish soul with rapture.

For myself, I knew I was a good and experienced swordsman; and I meant to use all my skill to give him the right sort and size of cut--not a mere scratch, which would never have satisfied him--but one of those cuts, trifling in themselves, but which produce a good deal of blood, and which enable a fellow to carry his arm in a sling, and so win the sympathy of the ladies. Just as I had loved the youth on first seeing him, so I looked into his soul, and fancied his delight, his swagger, his airs of consequence, at appearing in company with his arm in a sling; and although I felt perfectly sure that he would die rather than reveal the name of the young lady, or rather the child about whom we had fallen out, I felt a.s.sured he could not keep to himself that he had fought in beauty's quarrel. And the amus.e.m.e.nt Count Saxe would have out of it!

We stripped off our coats, our swords were put into our hands, and I went about to oblige my young friend. I found him a fairly good swordsman for his age, but I could have disarmed him at any moment.

However, that would have broken his heart. So I clashed away good-naturedly, making him think he was having a devil of a time, until, beginning to feel a little winded, I thought it time to give him the stroke he wanted.

I have a cut in tierce of which I have always had the mastery, and it was this cut I was giving Cheverny, when suddenly the lantern back of him went out. At the same moment his foot slipped; his guard gave way completely, and my sword's point went exactly where I had never meant it to go--into his left side. He dropped like a stone.

I was the first to reach him, and turned him over on his back.

Bellegarde, a silly popinjay, lost his head completely, and began to howl for one of those new-fangled screw tourniquets which had been invented by Jean Louis Pet.i.t, not so long before. But of course n.o.body had one, or could get one, or knew how to use it, had it dropped from heaven. Jacques Haret, as usual, kept his wits and disappeared in search of a doctor and a coach.

I bound my mantle around Gaston Cheverny's body, told him to lie still, meanwhile examining him to see if he was about to die. I thought he was. His face was quite green, his extremities grew cold and he was deathly sick. But his eye retained its undimmed brightness; and while he was lying there on the ground, in this sad state, he burst out into a feeble laugh.

"Babache, you are so d.a.m.ned ugly," he whispered.

Was it strange I loved the boy who was so much himself in such circ.u.mstances, and would have given my right arm if that cursed lantern had not gone out? I said to him:

"If you open your mouth again, I swear to leave you lying here on the ground; and you will probably die of that hole I made in you."

His own sensations by that time must have shown him the seriousness of his wound. He lay still and silent and greenish-gray and sick and gasping; and I--I could not look at him for very anguish.

It was but half a quarter of an hour before Jacques Haret returned with a physician and one of those sedan chairs which can be made into a litter. The physician, an intelligent looking man, examined the rude bandage I had made for the wounded man, and then silently motioned us to lay him on the litter, which we did. His lodgings were close by, so Bellegarde told us--and we bore our gruesome burden through the street.

Gaston Cheverny's hurt was as much an accident as if it had been a lightning bolt, but no man ever suffered more than I at the thought that I had inflicted it. Arrived at his lodging--an excellent one in the quarter of the Temple--we carried him into his bedchamber, laid him on his bed, got his valet, and, except the valet, we were all ordered to leave by the physician. As I turned away from the bed, Gaston Cheverny managed to hold out his hand to me. I took it, and I am not ashamed to say that, for the second time that night, tears came into my eyes. Outside in the street I watched and waited. The night grew sharp, and the darkness grew dense, and the city's throbbing pulse grew still. I walked up and down the street, and only the watchman's distant cry and my own quiet foot-fall, broke the midnight silence. The inevitable thought came to me, whether, after all, there be any such thing as chance in the world--or, whether all is chance. I had paused that afternoon before the grille of an old garden, softly called to stop by the scent of the lilacs--and because I had ever loved the scent of lilacs a man might die that night.

No one came out of the house where Gaston Cheverny battled with death.

The lights burned steadily in the saloon which communicated with the bedchamber where we had carried the wounded man, and the room remained empty, so I knew Gaston Cheverny still lived. Some time after midnight the valet came out running. I ran after him to ask how his master fared.

"Very bad," replied the poor fellow. "I go for another physician now."

After an hour a coach rumbled up--it was then the first gray and ghastly moment of the dawn. Out of the coach got a court physician whom I knew by sight. He remained a long while within the house, and when he came out looked solemn. I asked him civilly how his patient did, and he gave me the same answer as the valet--"Very bad." He added, however, that the youth was young and strong, untainted by dissipation, and if he lived twenty-four hours, would probably survive. I was never one to give way to despair, and so I dwelt on these hopeful words. I am not ashamed to say I stepped into the church of the Temple, and made a prayer or two as well as I knew how for the young man. There are, as I heard Madame Riano say some years afterward, such things as praying rogues and swearing saints--but though I prayed, I was not a rogue.

It may be imagined that I went not far from Gaston Cheverny's lodgings during that twenty-four hours. I went to the Luxembourg once or twice, where Count Saxe was lodged by the king's order, and I, of course, next him, and asked if I was needed, but each time, Beauvais, the valet, who was a fair writer, told me nay; and leaving word where I was to be found, I returned to my vigil at Gaston Cheverny's door.

On the second sunrise after I had run him through, I heard the welcome news from the physician that the wound was healing with the first intention, that there was no fever, and that he had never known so serious a case progress so well. I returned to the Luxembourg, left word I was not to be called except by Count Saxe, and throwing myself on my bed, slept ten hours without waking. I had dreams in those hours--dreams of Mademoiselle Capello. It was on Friday night that I had come so near giving Gaston Cheverny his death wound--and it was on Sunday evening that I rose, after my sleep and my dreams, shaved, bathed, dressed, and went in search of Count Saxe.