Artus de Brencourt waited a second or two, his pistol by his side. This was the moment he had hoped and schemed for, and it was sweet. Yet now that it had come, it suddenly seemed incredible that they two should be facing each other like this. A few months ago, who would have predicted it? . . . No use to think of that now, nor, since he was a gentleman, with his enemy’s life in his hands, did he desire to keep that enemy in mortal suspense longer than was needful. Best be as quick about the business as possible. He was a notoriously good shot. . . .
“Are you ready?” he called out.
And the Marquis de Kersaint, standing like a dark statue in the moonlight, his face merely a pale blur, his arms folded on his breast, silently nodded.
The Comte de Brencourt drew a deep breath, raised his pistol, and took a long and steady aim for the statue’s heart.
Yet when he had got the barrel on the mark his hand began to shake. He bit his lip. If only de Kersaint had his own weapon cocked, were not standing there defenceless to be shot at by the man who had insulted him. It took some courage to do that! And he had called him a coward. . . . Had it not been an affair of honour it had felt a little too much like murder for his taste after all. Yet he intended to kill Valentine’s husband. And the iron sanction of the code which kept the other there as a mere target for his bullet kept him there too, determined to complete his work.
. . . But—could he complete it? The Comte had no idea how deceptive even the most brilliant moonlight can be, for now, at a short ten paces’ distance, he found to his mortification that he could not really distinguish the outline of de Kersaint’s body, though he could see it as a mass. That scarf would have been useful, yet it did not occur to him to regret it. Bending all his will anew to the task he succeeded in steadying his hand, and his forefinger began to close round the trigger. In another second or two. . . . Would the Marquis spin round, as a man sometimes did when shot through the heart, or would he fall forward on his face? . . . Odd that he should think, at such a moment, of the execution of Charette three years ago at Nantes, when, as the tale went, the indomitable spirit that dwelt in the riddled body of the Royalist chief had held him upright for a moment in death, with six balls in him. De Kersaint would have but one—sent there by a comrade. He, Artus de Brencourt, was doing the Directory’s work for them! . . . No, he was doing Valentine’s! One vision of her as he had seen her in her homely dress at Mirabel, one fleeting thought of those years of neglect before the storm, of the life she had led since, and those half regrets were swept aside like gnats before a gale. The baffling moonlight paralysed him no longer. He corrected his aim for the second time, set his teeth, and pressed the trigger.
The shot went echoing with startling effect in the silver silence; it seemed to reverberate even from the empty dolmen. A scuttling of some frightened creature took place in the undergrowth, and, as the light smoke cleared away, rising ghostlike towards the moon, the Comte saw that M. de Kersaint was staggering a little. He took a step backwards, threw out his left arm and regained his balance somewhat abruptly, while the uncocked pistol slid with a rustle and a thud into the bracken at his feet. Either to recover it, or because he could not help himself, he sank to one knee and appeared to be groping for it with his left hand; then, abandoning the attempt, he got rather unsteadily to his feet again, and stood a moment with his head bent, and his right arm still across his breast, where he had kept it all the time.
“You are hit, Monsieur? Can you not return my fire?” called out de Brencourt, still standing ready to receive it.
M. de Kersaint shook his head, then, turning his back on him, walked to the nearest tree and stood leaning against it, always holding his right arm to his breast, but now supporting it with the other. A doubtless annoyed owl sailed out of the branches above him with a hoot.