The Azure Rose Part 32

"We shall have to dispense with the formality of a surgeon," Don Ricardo was saying.

"It doesn't look as if one would be needed," Cartaret smiled; "and it doesn't look as if we were to have seconds, either."

The Basque turned sharply. "We are the only gentlemen within miles, and we cannot have servants for witnesses. Moreover, an Eskurola needs no seconds, either of his choosing to watch his safety, or of his enemy's to suspect his honor."

He pressed a spring, released a secret drawer in the desk and found what he was seeking: a box of polished mahogany. Opening the lid, he beckoned to Cartaret. There, on a purple velvet lining, lay a beautifully kept pair of dueling-pistols, muzzle-loaders of the Eighteenth Century pattern and of about .32 caliber, their long octagonal barrels of s.h.i.+ning dark blue steel, their curved b.u.t.ts of ivory handsomely inlaid with a Moorish design in gold.

"Listen," said Eskurola, "as we are to have no seconds, I shall write a line to exculpate you in case you survive me. Then"--his gray eyes shone; he seemed to take a satisfaction that was close to delight in arranging these lethal details--"also as we are to have no seconds to give a signal, we shall have but one true shot between us. Certainly.

Are we not men, we two? And we have proved ourselves marksmen. You cannot doubt me, but I have a man that speaks French, so that you shall see that I do not trick you, sir."

He went to the door and called into the court-yard. Presently there answered him a man whom Cartaret recognized as one of those who, the night before, held the dogs in leash.

"Murillo Gomez," said Eskurola, in a French more labored than his English, "in five minutes this gentleman and I shall want the terrace to ourselves. You will close the gate when we go out. You will remain on this side of it, and you will permit none to pa.s.s. Answer me in French."

The servant's face showed no surprise.

"_Oui, senor_," he said.

"Now you will take these pistols and bring them back without delay. In the armory you will load one with powder and shot, the other with powder only. Neither this gentleman nor I must know which is which.

You understand?"

The servant's face was still impa.s.sive.

"_Oui, senor._"

"Go then. Also see that the Dona Dolorez remains in her own apartments. And hurry."

The servant disappeared with the pistols. Eskurola, apologizing gravely, went to the desk and wrote--apparently the lines of which he had spoken. He sanded them, folded the paper, lit a candle and sealed the missive with an engraved jade ring that he wore on the little finger of his left hand.

"This is your first duel, sir?" he said to Cartaret. He said it much as an Englishman at luncheon might ask an American guest whether he had ever eaten turbot.

"Yes," said Cartaret.

"Well, you may have what the gamblers of London call 'beginner's luck.'"

The servant knocked at the door.

"Will you be so good as to take the pistols?" asked Don Ricardo in English of Cartaret. "It appears better if I do not speak with him.

Thank you. And please to tell him in French that he may have your mare and saddle-bags ready in the gateway within five minutes, in case you should want them."

Cartaret obeyed.

Eskurola again held the door for his guest to pa.s.s.

"After you, sir," he said.

They crossed the court-yard leisurely and shoulder to shoulder, for all the world as if they were two friends going out to enjoy the view.

Any one observing them from the windows, had there been any one, would have said that Don Ricardo was pointing out to Cartaret the beauties of the scene. In reality he was saying:

"With your agreement, we shall fix the distance at ten paces, and I shall step it. There is no choice for light, and the wind is at rest.

Therefore, there being no person to count for us, I shall ask you to toss a coin again, this time that I may call it: if I fail to do so, you fire first; if I succeed, I fire first. Permit me to advise you, sir, that, if you are unaccustomed to the hair-trigger, it is as well that you be careful lest you lose your shot."

Eskurola's manners were apparently never so polished as when he was about to kill or be killed. He measured off the ground and marked the stand for each, always asking Cartaret's opinion. He stood while Cartaret again tossed a glittering gold-piece in the air.

"Tails!" cried Don Ricardo. "I always prefer," he explained, "to see this king with his face in the dust. Let us look at him together, so that there will be no mistake."

The piece lay with its face to the terrace.

"I win," said Eskurola. "I shoot first. It is bad to begin well."

Cartaret smiled. With such a marksman as this Basque to shoot at one, the speech became the merest pleasantry. There was only the question of the choice of the pistol, and as to that----

"If you will open the box, I shall choose," Eskurola was saying.

Evidently the choice was also to go to the winner of the toss.

Cartaret was certain this would not have been the case if the toss had gone otherwise. "I must touch neither until I have chosen, although the additional powder in the blank pistol tends toward making their weight equal."

Mechanically Cartaret opened the mahogany box. Don Ricardo scarcely glanced at the pair of beautiful and deadly weapons lying on the purple velvet: he took the one farther from him.

"Pray remember the hair-trigger," he continued: "you might easily wound yourself. Now, if you please: to our places."

Each man took off his hat and coat and stood at his post in his white s.h.i.+rt, his feet together, his right side fronting his enemy, his pistol pointing downwards from the hand against his right thigh.

"Are you ready, sir?" asked Eskurola.

For a flas.h.i.+ng instant Cartaret wanted to scream with hysterical laughter: the whole proceeding seemed so archaic, so grotesque, so useless. Then he thought of how little he had to lose and of whom he might serve in losing that little....

"Ready, senor," he said.

If only she could, for only that last moment, love him! That last moment, for he made no doubt of the end of this adventure. The Basque had been too punctilious in all his arrangements: from the first Cartaret had been sure that Don Ricardo and the French-speaking servant had played this tragic farce before, and that the master so arranged matters as easily to choose the one pistol that held death in its mouth. To convict him was impossible, and, were it possible, would be but to strike a fatal blow at the honor of that family which Vitoria held so dear. How false his vanity had played him! What was he that a G.o.ddess should not cease to love him when she chose? Enough and more that she had loved him once; an ultimate blessing could she love him a moment more. But once again, then: but that one instant! To see her pitiful eyes upon him, to hear her pure lips whisper the last good-by like music in his dying ears!

He saw the arm of his enemy slowly--slowly--rising, without speed and without hesitation, as the paw of a great cat rises to strike, but with a claw of s.h.i.+ning steel.

Cartaret would look his last on the scene that her eyes had known when she was a child, that her eyes would know long after his--so soon now!--were closed forever. It was mid-morning; the golden sun was half-way to the zenith. At Cartaret's left, above the walls, the turrets and towers of the Gothic castle, rose the sheer front of that sheer chalcedonous peak. Its top was crowned with the dazzling and eternal snow; its face was waxen, almost translucent; its outcroppings of crypto-crystalline quartz, multi-toned by the wind and rain of centuries, caught the sunlight and flamed in every gradation of blue and yellow, of onyx, carnelian and sard. To the right lay the wide and peaceful valley, ma.s.s after ma.s.s of foliage, silver-green and emerald, and, above that, the ridges of the vast, scabrous amphitheater: beetling peaks of gray, dark pectinated cones, fusiform apexes, dancing lancets and swords' points, a hundred beetling crags and darting spires under a turquoise sky.

(Eskurola's arm was rising ... rising....)

Her face came before his eyes; not the face of the woman that sent him from the tower-room, but the face of The Girl that had parted from him in his shabby studio: the frame of blue-black hair, the clear cheek touched with healthy pink, the red lips and white teeth, the level brows, the curling lashes and the frank violet eyes.... Into his own eyes came a mist; it blotted out the landscape.

He dragged his glance back to his executioner. He must meet death face forward. A horrid fear beset him that he had been tardy in this--had seemed ever so little to waver.

But Eskurola had observed no faltering, and had not faltered: his arm still crept upward. It must all have happened in the twinkling of an eye, then: that impulse toward mad laughter, that thought of what he had suffered, that realization of the landscape, even the memory of her face--the Lady of the Rose.

Don Ricardo's arm had just risen a trifle above his shoulder and then come back to its level.... It would come now--the flash, the quick pang that would outstrip and shut out the very sound of the explosion--come now and be over.

The man was taking an aim, careful, deadly....

But if everything else had been quick, this was an eternity. Cartaret could feel the Basque's eye, he could see that the leveled pistol-barrel covered his throat directly below the ear. He wanted to shout out to Eskurola to shoot; to say, "You've got me!" He ground his teeth to enforce his tongue to silence. And still he waited. Good G.o.d, would the man never fire?