“I don’t care about the other nine,” replied Gerard, inconsequentially. He threw down his bag. “Count Frechenfels,” he said, “you insulted the Dutch army in my person last night. There is nothing more to be said.”
The Count began to get ready. “So be it,” he answered. He took up one of the swords. “It is the Dutch army we fight on,” he said, significantly. “However this mad affair ends, that is clearly understood?”
“Of course,” replied Gerard, with some slight wonderment.
“Very well. I am ready, Mynheer. This is not a duel, but a fight!”
In another moment they were clashing at each other amid the surrounding stillness, their swords ringing in the constant concussion of the parry. The morning as yet was almost too dark for their object, especially here, under the white-rimmed trees; but as the metal shone and flashed in the haze, high over the combatants’ heads the intensity of the moment’s expectation seemed to clear away the mist. A sword duel, even when well ordered, is always disconcerting because of the noise; in this case, as the German had remarked, the combat, when it deepened, without umpire or timekeeper, was not a duel but a fight.
“I shall kill him,” thought Gerard, but at the same moment he felt that this would not be an easy thing to accomplish. It required the utmost vigilance on his part to ward off his enemy’s blows; he found but little opportunity for independent attack; he began uncomfortably to realize that the Count was the better swordsman. Also the Count was the taller of the two—a very great advantage. Gerard set his teeth hard in the continuous crash of the other’s onslaught. The whole wood seemed listening, holding its already bated breath.
Suddenly—in a flash of lightning, quicker than thought—the young Dutchman realized that his guard was gone, that his opponent’s sword was upon him, bearing straight down upon his unprotected head, with the certainty of terrible wounding, the possibility of death! With unthinkable swiftness he understood it and even found time—in that hundredth of a second—to await the inevitable end. In that hundredth of a second, also, he saw his antagonist swerve aside under the very force of sweeping downwards, swerve with a sudden slip of his footing, just enough to cause the aim to diverge, while exposing himself in his turn. In that hundredth of a second Gerard knew, as it passed, that he had the German in his power, that he, not the German, was become, by a twist of the wheel, the irresistible victor, that his sword, once more curling aloft, could descend where he chose. And he did choose—still in that immeasurable atom of existence—and struck his foeman, not through the skull, but, with a quick revulsion from murder, in a hideous long gash across the cheek.
It was over. The Count reeled and recovered himself as Gerard ran forward to support him. Then, his long passion grown suddenly cool, with his profusely bleeding victim beside him, Gerard felt there was nothing left but to avow himself tardily “an idiot.” He looked round desperately for the indispensable assistance he had previously scouted. He would have called out, but what was the use of calling? Even as he told himself that it would be utterly useless, he became aware that his sylvan solitude was not deserted. The figure of a woman, making towards him, became visible through the trees.
He recognized her with immense relief—only Hephzibah, his Aunt Louisa’s maid. Angular in every fold of her dark stuff gown and shawl, that cross-grained female approached the little group in the clearing.
“Help the gentleman to sit down, Jonker,” she said, without looking at Gerard. And she began deftly arranging a bandage with two spotless pocket-handkerchiefs which she produced from inner recesses. They were her Sunday handkerchiefs (ready for the morning’s devotional exercises). No cry of anguish broke from her as she calmly tore them into strips.