They faced one another under the soft candlelight, two big men in whom rage, long concealed, burned with a steady strength too great to admit of vain flusterings. Neither seemed to be aware of the strangeness of the scene, here in the upper parlour of an inn, with below them, penetrating faintly to the quiet room, the hum of voices in the coffee-room. With deliberation they set the stage, with deliberation snuffed a candle that was guttering, and divested themselves of coats and boots. Yet in this quiet preparation was something deadly, too deadly to find relief in a noisy brawl.
The swords flashed in a brief salute, and engaged with a scrape of steel on steel. Each man was an experienced swordsman, but this was no affair of the fencing-master’s art, with its punctilious niceties, but a grim fight, dangerous in its hard swiftness. For each antagonist the world slid back. Nothing had reality but the other man’s blade, feinting, thrusting, parrying. Their eyes were on each other’s; the sound of their stockinged feet shifting on the boards was a soft thud; their breathing came quick and hard.
Lethbridge lunged forward on his right foot, delivering a lightning thrust in tierce, his arm high, the muscles standing out on it ribbed and hard. Rule caught forte on forte; the foible glanced along his arm, leaving a long red slash, and the blades disengaged.
Neither checked; this was no quarrel to be decided by a single hit. The blood dripped slowly from Rule’s forearm to the floor. Lethbridge leaped back on both feet and dropped his point. “Tie it!” he said curtly. “I’ve no mind to slip in your blood.”
Rule pulled a handkerchief from his breeches pocket, and twisted it round the cut, and dragged the knot tight with his teeth.
“On guard!”
The fight went on, relentless and untiring. Lethbridge attempted a flanconnade, opposing his left hand. His point barely grazed Rule’s side; the Earl countered in a flash. There was a scuffle of blades, and Lethbridge recovered his guard, panting a little.
It was he who was delivering the attack all the time, employing every wile known to his art to lure Rule into giving an opening. Time after time he tried to break through the guard; time after time his blade was caught in a swift parry, and turned aside. He was beginning to flag; the sweat was rolling in great drops off his forehead; he dared not use his left hand to dash it from his eyes lest in that second’s blindness Rule should thrust home. He thrust rather wildly in carte; the Ead parried it half-circle, and before Lethbridge could recover, sprang in, and seized the blade below the hilt. His own point touched the floor. “Wipe the sweat from your eyes!”
Lethbridge’s lips writhed in a queer, bitter smile.—“So—you are—quits?”
The Earl did not answer; he released the sword, and waited. Lethbridge passed his handkerchief across his brow and threw it aside.