Sir Jasper glanced up and down the road. They had it to themselves, though at any moment a company might ride into view along the straggling route. It was a grave breach of discipline, this duel in the midst of warfare; and yet, somehow, he found it welcome. He turned to the aide-de-camp, glanced quietly at him.
“Mr. Johnstone,” he said, “you cannot be friendly to Lord Murray and myself—it’s too wide a gulf for young legs to jump—but I can trust you, by the look of you, to see fair play between us. I have no friend at hand, and it happens that this business must be settled quickly.”
They rode apart from the route, into a little wood where sycamores and oaks were bending to the keen, whipping gale. They found an open space, and got from horse, and took off their coats. To Lord Murray, a good swordsman, it was a chance to put out of action one who, in breed and temper, was too near akin to the Stuart and Lochiel. To Sir Jasper it was a call, clear, unhurried, to remove a traitor from the midst of honest men.
They faced each other in the little glade. Murray was mathematical, exact, secure in his gift of fence. Sir Jasper was as God made him—not reckoning up the odds, but trusting that honesty would win the day. Young Johnstone watched; and, despite himself, his heart ached for the older man who pitted Lancashire swordcraft against Murray’s practised steel.
The fight was quick and brief; and the unexpected happened, as it had done throughout this march of faith against surprising odds. Sir Jasper was not fighting for his own hand, but for the Prince’s; and his gift of fence—to himself, who knew how time had rusted his old bones—was a thing magical, as if a score of years or so had been lifted from his shoulders.
At the end of it he got clean through Murray’s guard; and it was now that the duel grew dull and tragic to him, robbed altogether of its speed, its pleasant fire. He had fought for this one moment; he had his chance to strike wherever he chose, to kill or lay aside the worst enemy Prince Charles had found, so far, in England. And yet, somehow, his temper was chilled, and the struggle with himself, short as the flicker of an eyelid, seemed long, because it was so sharp and bitter. With an effort that was palpable to young Johnstone, looking on, he drew back his blade, rested its point in the sodden turf, and stood looking at his adversary.
The action was so deliberate, so unexpected, that Murray let his own point fall; and even he was roused for the moment from his harshness. He knew that this Lancashire squire, with the uncompromising tongue and the old-fashioned view of loyalty, had given him his life just now—had given it with some sacrifice of inclination—knew that, in this wet and out-of-the-way corner of the world, he was face to face with a knightliness that he had thought dead long ago.
And then Sir Jasper grew ashamed, in some queer way, of the impulse that had bidden him let Murray go unscathed. He sheathed his sword, bowed stiffly, untethered his horse, and got to saddle.
“I give you good-day, Lord Murray,” he said curtly. “God bring you nearer to the Prince in days to come.”
Murray watched him ride through the glade, out toward the open road where wayfaring loyalists were on the march. And from his shame and trouble a quiet understanding grew. His starved soul was quickened. A gleam from the bigger life cut across his precision, his self-importance, his gospel of arithmetic.