The golden light died out of the waning moon, and afar off in the east a long line of red clouds seemed to rise out of the sea. The air was still and calm and breathless. Even the sea seemed hushed as the yellow stars faded from the sky. Behind that bank of glowing clouds was the promise of the richer and fuller day. Amber was becoming golden, and pink purple, till through a very rainbow of coloring the sun's first rays shot across the chilled waters.
Lord St. Maurice had fallen asleep, with his head resting upon his arms, close to the open window. By his side, with the ink scarcely dry upon either, were his will, and his farewell letter to Adrienne. No one but himself would ever know the agony, the hopeless grief, which had rent his heart, as word after word, sentence after sentence of passionate leave-taking had found their way on to those closely-written sheets of paper. But it was over now—over and done with. When some faint sound from below, or a breath of the morning breeze from the bosom of the sea awoke him, and he commenced making a few preparations for the start, he was surprised to find how calm he was. The passion of his grief had spent itself. He thought of those hours before sleep had fallen upon him with horror, but they seemed to him very far away. He was face to face with death, but he felt only that he was about to make a journey into an undiscovered land. His imagination was dulled. He remembered only that he was going out to meet death, and it behoved him to meet it as an honorable English gentleman.
He plunged his head into a basin of cold water and made a careful toilette, not forgetting even the button-hole which Adrienne had fetched for him with her own fingers on the evening before. Then he quietly left the hotel, and walked slowly up and down the Marina until Signor Pruccio arrived.
CHAPTER X
A MARIONI'S OATH
Two men stood facing one another on a narrow belt of sand, stripped to the shirt, and with rapiers in their hands. One was the Sicilian, Leonardo di Marioni, the other the Englishman, Lord St. Maurice. Their attitude spoke for itself. They were about to fight for each other's life.
It was a fair spot which their two seconds had chosen to stain with bloodshed. Close almost to their feet, the blue waters of the Mediterranean, glistening in the early morning sunlight, broke in tiny, rippling waves upon the firm white sand. Inland was a semi-circle of steep cliffs, at the base of which there were great bowlders of rock, fern-covered and with hyacinths of many colors growing out of the crevices, and lending a sweet fragrance to the fresh morning air. It was a spot shut off from the world, for the towering cliffs ran out into the sea on either side, completely enclosing the little cove. There was only one possible approach to it, save by boat, and that a difficult and tedious one, and, looking upward from the shore, hard to discover. But on the northward side the cliffs suddenly dropped, and in the deft was a thick plantation of aloes, through which a winding path led down to the beach.
Perhaps of all the little group gathered down there to witness and take part in the coming tragedy, Signor Pruccio, Lord St. Maurice's second, was looking the most disturbed and anxious. His man, he knew, must fall, and an ugly sickening dread was in his heart. It was so like a murder. He pictured to himself that fair boyish face—and in the clear morning sunlight the young Englishman's face showed marvelously few signs of the night of agony through which he had passed—ghastly and livid, with the stamp of death upon the forehead, and the deep blue eyes glazed and dull. It was an awful thing, yet what could he do? What hope was there? Leonardo di Marioni he knew to be a famous swordsman; Lord St. Maurice had never fenced since he had left Eton, and scarcely remembered the positions. It was doubtful even whether he had ever held a rapier. But what Signor Pruccio feared most was the pale, unflinching hate in the Sicilian's white face. He loathed it, and yet it fascinated him. He knew, alas! how easily, by one swift turn of the wrist, he would be able to pass his sword through the Englishman's body, mocking at his unskilled defense. He fancied that he could see the arms thrown up to heaven, the fixed, wild eyes, the red blood spurting out from the wound and staining the virgin earth; almost he fancied that he could hear the death-cry break from those agonized white lips. Horrible effort of the imagination! What evil chance had made him offer his services to this young English lord, and dragged him into assisting at a duel which could be but a farce—worse than a farce, a murder? He would have given half his fortune for an earthquake to have come and swallowed up that merciless Sicilian.
A few yards away Martin Briscoe was standing with his second. He and Lord St. Maurice, at this tragical moment of their lives, had been nearer a quarrel than ever before. Briscoe, with some justice, had claimed priority with the Sicilian, and had maintained his right in the face of Lord St. Maurice's opposition. But the Sicilian had stepped in, and insisted upon his privilege to decide for himself whom he should first meet. The times had been distinctly stated, he reminded them, six o'clock by Lord St. Maurice's second, and half-past six by Mr. Briscoe's. He had arranged it so with a definite purpose, and he claimed that it should be carried out. There was no appeal from his decision. He was in the right, and Martin Briscoe, with a dull red glow of anger in his homely rugged cheeks, had been forced to retire and become a most unwilling spectator of what he feared could only be a butchery.