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<h2> CHAPTER XXVII — THE DUEL ON THE SANDS </h2> The Chamberlain stood near the door with his hand in the bosom of his coat, fingering the flageolet that was his constant companion even in the oddest circumstances, and Count Victor went up to him, the button concealed in his palm. "Well, you are for going?" said Simon, more like one who puts a question than states a position, for some hours of Count Victor's studied contempt created misgivings. "Il y a terme � tout! And possibly monsieur will do me the honour to accompany me so far as the avenue?" "Sir!" said the Chamberlain. "I have known men whose reputations were mainly a matter of clothes. Monsieur is the first I have met whose character hung upon a single button. Permit me to return your button with a million regards." He held the silver lozenge out upon his open hand. "There are many buttons alike," said the Chamberlain. Then he checked himself abruptly and—"Well, damn it! I'll allow it's mine," said he. "I should expect just this charming degree of manly frankness from monsieur. A button is a button, too, and a devilish serious thing when, say, off a foil." He still held out the accusation on his open hand, and bowed with his eyes on those of the other man. At that MacTaggart lightly struck up the hand, and the button rolled twinkling along the floor. Count Victor glanced quickly round him to see that no one noticed. The hall, but for some domestics, was left wholly to themselves. The ball was over, the company had long gone, and he had managed to stay his own departure by an interest feigned in the old armour that hung, with all its gallant use accomplished, on the walls, followed by a game at cards with three of the ducal entourage, two of whom had just departed. The melancholy of early morning in a banquet-room had settled down, and all the candles guttered in the draught of doors. "I fancy monsieur will agree that this is a business calling for the open air," said Count Victor, no way disturbed by the rudeness. "I abhor the stench of hot grease." "To-morrow—" began the Chamberlain, and Count Victor interrupted. "To-morrow," said he, "is for reflection; to-day is for deeds. Look! it will be totally clear in a little." "I'm the last man who would spoil the prospect of a ploy," said the Chamberlain, changing his Highland sword for one of the rapiers on the wall that was more in conformity with the Frenchman's weapon; "and yet this is scarcely the way to find your Drimdarroch." "Mais oui! Our Drimdarroch can afford to wait his turn. Drimdarroch is wholly my affair; this is partly Doom's, though I, it seems, was made the poor excuse for your inexplicable insolence." The Chamberlain slightly started, turned away, and smiled. "I was right," thought he. "Here's a fellow credits himself with being the cause of jealousy." "Very well!" he said aloud at last, "this way," and with the sword tucked under his arm he led, by a side-door in the turret-angle, into the garden. Count Victor followed, stepping gingerly, for the snow was ankle-deep upon the lawn, and his red-heeled dancing-shoes were thin. "We know we must all die," said he in a little, pausing with a shiver of cold, and a glance about that bleak grey garden—"We know we must all die, but I have a preference for dying in dry hose, if die I must. Cannot monsieur suggest a more comfortable quarter for our little affair?" "Monsieur is not so dirty particular," said the Chamberlain. "If I sink my own rheumatism, it is not too much for you to risk your hose." "The main avenue—" suggested Count Victor. "Is seen from every window of the ball-room, and the servants are still there. Here is a great to-do about nothing!" "But still, monsieur, I must protest on behalf of my poor hose," said Count Victor, always smiling. "By God! I could fight on my bare feet," cried the Chamberlain. "Doubtless, monsieur; but there is so much in custom, n'est ce pas? and my ancestors have always been used with boots." The Chamberlain overlooked the irony and glanced perplexed about him. There was, obviously, no place near that was not open to the objection urged. Everywhere the snow lay deep on grass and pathway; the trees were sheeted ghosts, the chill struck through his own Highland brogues. "Come!" said he at last, with a sudden thought; "the sand's the place, though it's a bit to go," and he led the way hurriedly towards the riverside. "One of us may go farther to-day and possibly fare worse," said Montaiglon with unwearied good-humour, stepping in his rear. It was the beginning of the dawn. Already there was enough of it to show the world of hill and wood in vast, vague, silent masses, to render wan the flaming windows of the castle towers behind them. In the east a sullen sky was all blotched with crimson, some pine-trees on the heights were struck against it, intensely black, intensely melancholy, perhaps because they led the mind to dwell on wild, remote, and solitary places, the savagery of old forests, the cruel destiny of man, who has come after and must go before the dead things of the wood. There was no wind; the landscape swooned in frost. "My faith! 'tis an odd and dolorous world at six o'clock in the morning," thought Count Victor; "I wish I were asleep in Cammercy and all well." A young fallow-deer stood under an oak-tree, lifting its head to gaze without dismay, almost a phantom; every moment the dawn spread wider; at last the sea showed, leaden in the bay, mists revealed themselves upon Ben Ime. Of sound there was only the wearying plunge of the cascades and the roll of the shallows like tumbril-wheels on causeway as the river ran below the arches. "Far yet, monsieur?" cried Count Victor to the figure striding ahead, and his answer came in curt accents. "We'll be there in ten minutes. You want a little patience." "We shall be there, par dieu! in time enough," cried out Count Victor. "'Tis all one to me, but the march is pestilent dull." "What! would ye have fiddlin' at a funeral?" asked the Chamberlain, still without turning or slowing his step; and then, as though he had been inspired, he drew out the flageolet that was ever his bosom friend, and the astounded Frenchman heard the strains of a bagpipe march. It was so incongruous in the circumstances that he must laugh. "It were a thousand pities to kill so rare a personage," thought he, "and yet—and yet—'tis a villainous early morning." They passed along the river-bank; they came upon the sea-beach; the Chamberlain put his instrument into his pocket and still led the way upon the sand that lay exposed far out by the low tide. He stopped at a spot clear of weed, flat and dry and firm almost as a table. It was the ideal floor for an engagement, but from the uncomfortable sense of espionage from the neighbourhood of a town that looked with all its windows upon the place as it were upon a scene in a play-house. The whole front of the town was not two hundred yards away. "We shall be disturbed here, monsieur," said Count Victor, hesitating as the other put off his plaid and coat. "No!" said Sim MacTaggart shortly, tugging at a belt, and yet Count Victor had his doubts. He made his preparations, it is true, but always with an apprehensive look at that long line of sleeping houses, whose shutters—with a hole in the centre of each—seemed to stare down upon the sand. No smoke, no flames, no sign of human occupance was there: the sea-gull and the pigeon pecked together upon the door-steps or the window-sills, or perched upon the ridges of the high-pitched roofs, and a heron stalked at the outlet of a gutter that ran down the street. The sea, quiet and dull, the east turned from crimson to grey; the mountains streaming with mist—— "Cammercy after all!" said Count Victor to himself; "I shall wake in a moment, but yet for a nightmare 'tis the most extraordinary I have ever experienced." "I hope you are a good Christian," said the Chamberlain, ready first and waiting, bending his borrowed weapon in malignant arcs above his head. "Three-fourths of one at least," said Montaiglon; "for I try my best to be a decent man," and he daintily and deliberately turned up his sleeve upon an arm as white as milk. "I'm waiting," said the Chamberlain. "So! en garde!" said his antagonist, throwing off his hat and putting up his weapon. There was a tinkle of steel like the sound of ice afloat in a glass. The town but seemed to sleep wholly; as it happened, there was one awake in it who had, of all its inhabitants, the most vital interest in this stern business out upon the sands. She had gone home from the ball rent with vexation and disappointment; her husband snored, a mannikin of parchment, jaundice-cheeked, scorched at the nose with snuff; and, shuddering with distaste of her cage and her companion, she sat long at the window, all her finery on, chasing dream with dream, and every dream, as she knew, alas! with the inevitable poignancy of waking to the truth. For her the flaming east was hell's own vestibule, for her the greying dawn was a pallor of the heart, the death of hope. She sat turning and turning the marriage-ring upon her finger, sometimes all unconsciously essaying to slip it off, and tugging viciously at the knuckle-joint that prevented its removal, and her eyes, heavy for sleep and moist with sorrow, still could pierce the woods of Shira Glen to their deep-most recesses and see her lover there. They roamed so eagerly, so hungrily into that far distance, that for a while she failed to see the figures on the nearer sand. They swam into her recognition like wraiths upsprung, as it were, from the sand itself or exhaled upon a breath from the sea: at first she could not credit her vision. It was not with her eyes—those tear-blurred eyes—she knew him; it was by the inner sense, the nameless one that lovers know; she felt the tale in a thud of the heart and ran out with "Sim!" shrieked on her dumb lips. Her gown trailed in the pools and flicked up the ooze of weed and sand; a shoulder bared itself; some of her hair took shame and covered it with a veil of dull gold. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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