THE DUEL IN THE AUBERGE GARDEN
Whoever it was that moved at the instigation of Madame on my behalf, he put speed into the business, for the very next day I was told my sous-lieutenancy was waiting at the headquarters of the regiment. A severance that seemed almost impossible to me before I learned from the lady's own lips that her heart was elsewhere engaged was now a thing to long for eagerly, and I felt that the sooner I was out of Dunkerque and employed about something more important than the tying of my hair and the teasing of my heart with thinking, the better for myself. Teasing my heart, I say, because Miss Walkinshaw had her own reasons for refusing to see me any more, and do what I might I could never manage to come face to face with her. Perhaps on the whole it was as well, for what in the world I was to say to the lady, supposing I were privileged, it beats me now to fancy. Anyhow, the opportunity never came my way, though, for the few days that elapsed before I departed from Dunkerque, I spent hours in the Rue de la Boucherie sipping sirops on the terrace of the Café Coignet opposite her lodging, or at night on the old game of humming ancient love-songs to her high and distant window. All I got for my pains were brief and tantalising glimpses of her shadow on the curtains; an attenuate kind of bliss it must be owned, and yet counted by Master Red-Shoes (who suffered from nostalgia, not from love, if he had had the sense to know it) a very delirium of delight.
One night there was an odd thing came to pass. But, first of all, I must tell that more than once of an evening, as I would be in the street and staring across at Miss Walkinshaw's windows, I saw his Royal Highness in the neighbourhood. His cloak might be voluminous, his hat dragged down upon the very nose of him, but still the step was unmistakable. If there had been the smallest doubt of it, there came one evening when he passed me so close in the light of an oil lamp that I saw the very blotches on his countenance. What was more, he saw and recognised me, though he passed without any other sign than the flash of an eye and a halfstep of hesitation.
“H'm,” thinks I, “here's Monsieur Albany looking as if he might, like myself, be trying to content himself with the mere shadows of things.”
He saw me more than once, and at last there came a night when a fellow in drink came staving down the street on the side I was on and jostled me in the by-going without a word of apology.
“Pardonnez, Monsieur!” said I in irony, with my hat off to give him a hint at his manners.
He lurched a second time against me and put up his hand to catch my chin, as if I were a wench, “Mon Dieu! Monsieur Blanc-bec, 'tis time you were home,” said he in French, and stuttered some ribaldry that made me smack his face with an open hand.
“I saw his Royal Highness in the neighbourhood—”
At once he sobered with suspicious suddenness if I had had the sense to reflect upon it, and gave me his name and direction as one George Bonnat, of the Marine. “Monsieur will do me the honour of a meeting behind the Auberge Cassard after petit dejeuner to-morrow,” said he, and named a friend. It was the first time I was ever challenged. It should have rung in the skull of me like an alarm, but I cannot recall at this date that my heart beat a stroke the faster, or that the invitation vexed me more than if it had been one to the share of a bottle of wine. “It seems a pretty ceremony about a cursed impertinence on the part of a man in liquor,” I said, “but I'm ready to meet you either before or after petit déjeuner, as it best suits you, and my name's Greig, by your leave.”
“Very well, Monsieur Greig,” said he; “except that you stupidly impede the pavement and talk French like a Spanish cow (comme une vache espagnole), you seem a gentleman of much accommodation. Eight o'clock then, behind the auberge,” and off went Sir Ruffler, singularly straight and business-like, with a profound congé for the unfortunate wretch he planned to thrust a spit through in the morning.
I went home at once, to find Thurot and Clancarty at lansquenet. They were as elate at my story as if I had been asked to dine with Louis.
“Gad, 'tis an Occasion!” cried my lord, and helped himself, as usual, with a charming sentiment: “A demain les affaires sérieuses; to-night we'll pledge our friend!”
Thurot evinced a flattering certainty of my ability to break down M. Bonnat's guard in little or no time. “A crab, this Bonnat,” said he. “Why he should pick a quarrel with you I cannot conceive, for 'tis well known the man is M. Albany's creature. But, no matter, we shall tickle his ribs, M. Paul. Ma foi! here's better gaming than your pestilent cards. I'd have every man in the kingdom find an affair for himself once a month to keep his spleen in order.”
“This one's like to put mine very much out of order with his iron,” I said, a little ruefully recalling my last affair.
“What!” cried Thurot, “after all my lessons! And this Bonnat a crab too! Fie! M. Paul. And what an he pricks a little? a man's the better for some iron in his system now and then. Come, come, pass down these foils, my lord, and I shall supple the arms of our Paul.”
We had a little exercise, and then I went to bed. The two sat in my room, and smoked and talked till late in the night, while I pretended to be fast asleep. But so far from sleep was I, that I could hear their watches ticking in their fobs. Some savagery, some fearful want of soul in them, as evidenced by their conversation, horrified me. It was no great matter that I was to risk my life upon a drunkard's folly, but for the first time since I had come into the port of Dunkerque, and knew these men beside my bed, there intruded a fiery sense of alienation. It seemed a dream—a dreadful dream, that I should be lying in a foreign land, upon the eve, perhaps, of my own death or of another manslaughter, and in a correspondence with two such worldly men as those that sat there recalling combats innumerable with never a thought of the ultimate fearful retribution. Compared with this close room, where fumed the wine and weed, and men with never a tie domestic were paying away their lives in the small change of trivial pleasures, how noble and august seemed our old life upon the moors!
When they were gone I fell asleep and slept without a break till Thurot's fingers drummed reveille on my door. I jumped into the sunshine of a lovely day that streamed into the room, soused my head in water and in a little stood upon the street with my companion.
“Bon matin, Paul!” he cried cheerfully. “Faith, you sleep sur les deux oreilles, and we must be marching briskly to be at M. Bonnat's rendezvous at eight o'clock.”
We went through the town and out upon its edge at the Calais road. The sky was blue like another sea; the sea itself was all unvexed by wave; a sweeter day for slaughtering would pass the wit of man to fancy. Thurot hummed an air as he walked along the street, but I was busy thinking of another morning in Scotland, when I got a bitter lesson I now seemed scandalously soon to have forgotten. By-and-by we came to the inn. It stood by itself upon the roadside, with a couple of workmen sitting on a bench in front dipping their morning crusts in a common jug of wine. Thurot entered and made some inquiry; came out radiant. “Monsieur is not going to disappoint us, as I feared,” said he; and led me quickly behind the auberge. We passed through the yard, where a servant-girl scoured pots and pans and sang the while as if the world were wholly pleasant in that sunshine; we crossed a tiny rivulet upon a rotten plank and found ourselves in an orchard. Great old trees stood silent in the finest foggy grass, their boughs all bursting out into blossom, and the air scent-thick-ened; everywhere the birds were busy; it seemed a world of piping song. I thought to myself there could be no more incongruous place nor season for our duelling, and it was with half a gladness I looked around the orchard, finding no one there.
“Bah! our good Bonnat's gone!” cried Thurot, vastly chagrined and tugging at his watch. “That comes of being five minutes too late, and I cannot, by my faith, compliment the gentleman upon his eagerness to meet you.”
I was mistaken but for a second; then I spied my fiery friend of the previous evening lying on his back beneath the oldest of the trees, his hat tilted over his eyes, as if he had meant to snatch a little sleep in spite of the dazzling sunshine. He rose to his feet on our approach, swept off his hat courteously, and hailed Thurot by name.
“What, you, Antoine! I am ravished! For, look you, the devil's in all my friends that I can get none of them to move a step at this hour of the morning, and I have had to come to M. Greig without a second. Had I known his friend was Captain Thurot I should not have vexed myself. Doubtless M. Greig has no objection to my entrusting my interests as well as his own in the hands of M. le Capitaine?”
I bowed my assent. Captain Thurot cast a somewhat cold and unsatisfied eye upon the ruffler, protesting the thing was unusual.
Bonnat smiled and shrugged his shoulders, put off his coat with much deliberation, and took up his place upon the sward, where I soon followed him.
“Remember, it is no fool, this crab,” whispered Captain Thurot as he took my coat from me. “And 'tis two to one on him who prefers the parry to the attack.”
I had been reading Molière's “Bourgeois Gentilhomme” the previous morning, and as I faced my assailant I had the fencing-master's words as well as Captain Thurot's running in my ears: “To give and not receive is the secret of the sword.” It may appear incredible, but it seemed physically a trivial affair I was engaged upon until I saw the man Bonnat's eye. He wore a smile, but his eye had the steely glint of murder! It was as unmistakable as if his tongue confessed it, and for a second I trembled at the possibilities of the situation. He looked an unhealthy dog; sallow exceedingly on the neck, which had the sinews so tight they might have twanged like wire, and on his cheeks, that he seemed to suck in with a gluttonous exultation such as a gross man shows in front of a fine meal.
“Are you ready, gentlemen?” said Thurot; and we nodded. “Then in guard!” said he.
We saluted, fell into position and thrust simultaneously in tierce, parrying alike, then opened more seriously.
In Thurot's teaching of me there was one lesson he most unweariedly insisted on, whose object was to keep my point in a straight line and parry in the smallest possible circles. I had every mind of it now, but the cursed thing was that this Bonnat knew it too. He fenced, like an Italian, wholly from the wrist, and, crouched upon his knees, husbanded every ounce of energy by the infrequency and the brevity of his thrusts. His lips drew back from his teeth, giving him a most villainous aspect, and he began to press in the lower lines.
In a side-glance hazarded I saw the anxiety of Thurot's eye and realised his apprehension. I broke ground, and still, I think, was the bravo's match but for the alarm of Thurot's eye. It confused me so much that I parried widely and gave an opening for a thrust that caught me slightly on the arm, and dyed my shirt-sleeve crimson in a moment.
“Halt!” cried Thurot, and put up his arm.
I lowered my weapon, thinking the bout over, and again saw murder in Bonnat's eye. He lunged furiously at my chest, missing by a miracle.
“Scélérat!” cried Thurot, and, in an uncontrollable fury at the action, threw himself upon Bonnat and disarmed him.
They glared at each other for a minute, and Thurot finally cast the other's weapon over a hedge. “So much for M. Bonnat!” said he. “This is our valiant gentleman, is it? To stab like an assassin!”
“Oh, malédiction!” said the other, little abashed, and shrugging his shoulders as he lifted his coat to put it on. “Talking of assassination, I but did the duty of the executioner in his absence, and proposed to kill the man who meditated the same upon the Prince.”
“The Prince!” cried Thurot. “Why 'tis the Prince's friend, and saved his life!”
“I know nothing about that,” said Bonnat; “but do you think I'd be out here at such a cursed early hour fencing if any other than M. Albany had sent me? Pardieu! the whole of you are in the farce, but I always counted you the Prince's friend, and here you must meddle when I do as I am told to do!”
“And you tell me, Jean Bonnat, that you take out my friend to murder him by M. Albany's command?” cried Thurot incredulous.
“What the devil else?” replied the bravo. “'Tis true M. Albany only mentioned that M. des Souliers Rouges was an obstruction in the Rue de la Boucherie and asked me to clear him out of Dunkerque, but 'twere a tidier job to clear him altogether. And here is a great pother about an English hog!”
I was too busily stanching my wound, that was scarce so serious as it appeared, to join in this dispute, but the allusion to the Prince and the Rue de la Boucherie extremely puzzled me. I turned to Bonnat with a cry for an explanation.
“What!” I says, “does his Royal Highness claim any prerogative to the Rue de la Boucherie? I'm unconscious that I ever did either you or him the smallest harm, and if my service—innocent enough as it was—with the priest Hamilton was something to resent, his Highness has already condoned the offence.”
“For the sake of my old friend M. le Capitaine here I shall give you one word of advice,” said Bonnat, “and that is, to evacuate Dunkerque as sharply as you may. M. Albany may owe you some obligement, as I've heard him hint himself, but nevertheless your steps will be safer elsewhere than in the Rue de la Boucherie.”
“There is far too much of the Rue de la Boucherie about this,” I said, “and I hope no insult is intended to certain friends I have or had there.”
At this they looked at one another. The bravo (for so I think I may at this time call him) whistled curiously and winked at the other, and, in spite of himself, Captain Thurot was bound to laugh.
“And has M. Paul been haunting the Rue de la Boucherie, too?” said he. “That, indeed, is to put another face on the business. 'Tis, ma foi! to expect too much of M. Albany's complaisance. After that there is nothing for us but to go home. And, harkee! M. Bonnat, no more Venetian work, or, by St. Denys, I shall throw you into the harbour.”
“You must ever have your joke, my noble M. le Capitaine,” said Bonnat brazenly, and tucked his hat on the side of the head. “M. Blanc-bec there handles arme blanche rather prettily, thanks, no doubt, to the gallant commander of the Roi Rouge, but if he has a mother let me suggest the wisdom of his going back to her.” And with that and a congé he left us to enter the auberge.
Thurot and I went into the town. He was silent most of the way, ruminating upon this affair, which it was plain he could unravel better than I could, yet he refused to give me a hint at the cause of it. I pled with him vainly for an explanation of the Prince's objection to my person. “I thought he had quite forgiven my innocent part in the Hamilton affair,” I said.
“And so he had,” said Thurot. “I have his own assurances.”
“'Tis scarcely like it when he sets a hired assassin on my track to lure me into a duel.”
“My dear boy,” said Thurot, “you owe him all—your escape from Bicêtre, which could easily have been frustrated; and the very prospect of the lieutenancy in the Regiment d'Auvergne.”
“What! he has a hand in this?” I cried.
“Who else?” said he. “'Tis not the fashion in France to throw unschooled Scots into such positions out of hand, and only princes may manage it. It seems, then, that we have our Prince in two moods, which is not uncommon with the same gentleman. He would favour you for the one reason, and for the other he would cut your throat. M. Tête-de-fer is my eternal puzzle. And the deuce is that he has, unless I am much mistaken, the same reason for favouring and hating you.”
“And what might that be?” said I.
“Who, rather?” said Thurot, and we were walking down the Rue de la Boucherie. “Why, then, if you must have pointed out to you what is under your very nose, 'tis the lady who lives here. She is the god from the machine in half a hundred affairs no less mysterious, and I wish she were anywhere else than in Dunkerque. But, anyway, she sent you with Hamilton, and she has secured the favour of the Prince for you, and now—though she may not have attempted it—she has gained you the same person's enmity.”
I stopped in the street and turned to him. “All this is confused enough to madden me,” I said, “and rather than be longer in the mist I shall brave her displeasure, compel an audience, and ask her for an explanation.”
“Please yourself,” said Thurot, and seeing I meant what I said he left me.