Calvert of Strathore

by Abbe Carter Goodloe

"'Tis no favor that I show Monsieur Calvert," she replied, smiling.
"'Tis a privilege to skate with so perfect a master of the art."

"I shall be most happy to take a lesson from Monsieur later in the afternoon," returned St. Aulaire, courteously, but with a disagreeable smile playing about his mouth. "In the meantime, if Monsieur will but resign you for a time—" He stopped and shrugged his shoulders slightly. Calvert moved from his place beside Madame de St. André.

As he made his way toward the shore, intending to remove his skates and find Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Morris, d'Azay and Beaufort came up and urged upon him to join them. Both were good skaters, but the young American excelled them in a certain lightness and grace, and the three friends, as they circled about, trying a dozen difficult and showy manoeuvres on the ice, attracted much attention. It was after half an hour of the vigorous exercise and as Mr. Calvert stopped for an instant to take breath and pay his respects to Madame de Flahaut, who had ventured upon the ice in a chair-sleigh surrounded by her admirers, that Monsieur de St. Aulaire again presented himself before him.

"I have come for my lesson, Monsieur," he said to Calvert, bowing after his incomparably graceful fashion, which Calvert (who had never before wasted thought upon such things) suddenly found himself envying, and with the disagreeable smile still upon his lips.

"I am no skating-master, Monsieur," returned the young man, quietly, and with as good grace as he was master of, "but I shall be happy to have a turn upon the ice with you," and with that he moved off, leaving St. Aulaire to stay or follow as he chose. He chose to follow and skated rapidly after Calvert with no very benevolent look on his handsome, dissipated face. Although he was by far the best skater among the French gentlemen who thronged the ice, and although it was little short of a marvel that he should be so active at his age, he was scarcely a match for the younger man either in lightness or quickness of movement. And although his splendid dress and jewels so overshadowed Mr. Calvert's quiet appearance, he was conscious of being excelled before the crowd of spectators by the agility and sure young strength of the American. Piqued and disgusted at the thought, the habitual half-mocking good-humor of his manner gave way to sullen, repressed irritation. Knowing his world so well, he was sure of the interest and curiosity Calvert's performance would arouse, and longed to convert his little triumph into a defeat. Being accustomed to doing everything he undertook a little better, a little more gracefully, with a little more éclat than anyone else, he suddenly began to hate this young man who had beaten him at his own game and for whom he had felt an aversion from the first moment of seeing him.

He tried to bethink himself of some plan of lowering his enemy's colors. In his younger days he had been a notable athlete, excelling in vaulting and jumping, and suddenly an idea occurred to him which he thought would result in mortification to Mr. Calvert and success to himself. So great was the interest in the skating of the two gentlemen that the greater part of the crowd had retired beyond a little ledge of roughened ice and snow which cut the improvised arena into two nearly equal parts from where they could conveniently see Monsieur de St. Aulaire and Mr. Calvert as they skated about. This rift in the smoothness of the ice was some fifteen feet wide and extended far out from the shore, so that those wishing to pass beyond it had to skate out around its end and so get to the other side. Monsieur de St. Aulaire came up close to it, and, as he did so, he suddenly called out to Calvert:

"Let us try the other side, Monsieur, and, as it is too far to go around this, suppose we jump it," and he laughed as he noted Calvert's look of surprise at his proposition.

"As you wish, Monsieur," assented Calvert, though somewhat dubiously, as he noted the breadth of the roughened surface, and mentally calculated that to miss the clear jump by a hair's-breadth would ensure a hard, perhaps dangerous, fall. 'Twas no easy jump under ordinary circumstances; weighted down by skates the difficulty would be vastly increased.

"Tis too wide for a standing jump, Monsieur," said St. Aulaire, looking alternately at Calvert and the rift of broken, jagged ice, and laughing recklessly. "We will have to run for it!" And without more words the two gentlemen skated rapidly back for twenty yards and then came forward with tremendous velocity, pari passu, and, both jumping at the same instant, landed on the far side of the ledge, scattering the applauding spectators right and left as they drove in among them, unable for an instant to stop the swiftness of their progress.

"Well done, Monsieur!" called out St. Aulaire, as he wheeled beside Calvert, who had succeeded in checking his impetus. He was smiling, but there was a dark look in his eyes. "Well done, but 'twas too easy—a very school-boy's trick! We must try something a little more difficult to test our agility upon the ice—unless, indeed, Monsieur has had enough?" and he looked at Calvert insultingly full in the face. "The eyes of the world are upon us—" and he waved his hand mockingly toward the throng of spectators on the terrace where the ladies were applauding with gloved hands and the men tapping the frozen ground with canes and swords. From where he stood Calvert could see Mr. Jefferson looking at him and Mr. Morris sitting beside Madame de Flahaut and Madame de St. André, who had left the ice and joined the onlookers.