He was too tired even to glance about the place. He stood before the fire and warmed himself. From his dark corner Don Luis inspected him closely. He saw with great satisfaction the look of fatigue and trouble on the countenance of the young man, and the fact that he now limped slightly as if his boots chafed him. He noted his long reach as Denis dragged a chair up to the chimney, and the style of his rapier. The disarming nick on the hilt did not escape him. A handsome young dog and one sufficiently difficult to deal with, he was forced to admit. At least she had had the good sense to choose a man. So this was the hero who had undertaken to provide an heir for the Marquis da Vincitata! Very quietly the possessor of that ancient title loosened his own sword in its scabbard. For something like eleven generations his family had known how, where, and when to draw. Don Luis was not going to be the exception. His cause was the best; the place was opportune.
But he was in no instant hurry. He had in fact hoped that Maria would have seen Denis from her window as he rode into the inn courtyard. In that case he had intended to tackle him on the stairs. But if that plan fell through, as it had, he intended to detain him at the inn and take his measure exactly as he was doing now. But there was something more than this. A certain element of the spider in Don Luis permitted him to enjoy vastly the opportunity of sitting back in his dark corner and watching the fly walk in. Thoroughly a Latin, he was not only an actor in, but an author-spectator of his own drama. Circumstances were now collaborating with him to his huge satis-faction.
The priest meanwhile noticed the haggard look upon the features of the newcomer. The young cure was already familiar with misery in all its various guises. He was aware that the young man across the fire from him was in great agony of soul. He longed to comfort him, but the inimical and secret presence of his recent guest effectually restrained him. Naturally sensitive, and by contact with the primal substratum of life unconsciously, if not preternaturally aware of the atmosphere attending emotion, the room to the good cure had suddenly become unbearably tense. He felt as if he were sitting waiting for an execution. So strong was this irrational feeling that he began to reason himself out of it.
Of all this Denis was totally oblivious. So far a reasonable hope had buoyed him up. But his mind and his body had now sunk temporarily into a lethargy. The comfortable warmth of the embers made his fatigue more apparent to himself, and yet relaxed him. Supper was long in coming. His eyelids began to droop despite the efforts of his will. To keep himself from being overtaken by oblivion he called for wine. There was set before him a clear glass decanter containing a liquid alleged to be burgundy. He removed the stopper and held the bottle up to the light suspiciously. Instantly he saw a red liquid sphere through which drifted, tumbling and eddying, shifting clouds of sediment. There was a certain hypnotic effect about thus gazing into those bloody depths which, tired as he was, his mind did not instantly overcome. For some seconds he continued to gaze with a blank expression. It was only for an instant or so but—
Through the wine a figure seemed to grow and advance upon him. An oval pot-shaped body began to shoot forth arms and legs that wriggled up and down the sides of the bottle. A face with a black horn below the mouth grinned at him. The grin expanded clear across the bottle in a devilishly implacable smile surrounded by familiar features. Denis turned with the speed of thought and dashed the contents of the bottle into the face of the man who had stolen upon him.
"Death for that," said the marquis. "You fool!"
For some seconds they stood facing each other. They heard the wine dripping onto the floor. The consternation on Denis' face faded into relieved joy. So they had not escaped him after all.
He laughed like a boy. "For that, monsieur? Are you sure?"
"Draw!" blazed Don Luis. His sword flashed.
As the steel flickered in the firelight there was a loud crash of crockery at the door and the falsetto voice of the innkeeper began to scream, "Not in the house, messieurs; messieurs, for the love of God, not in the house!" He ran back into the court crying for help where a babblement arose while the wreck of Denis' supper smoked on the threshold.
"For the love of God, not anywhere," cried the priest, rising up now and laying hold of Don Luis' sword arm. Thus beset and hindered, the marquis beside himself with rage stood choking. The wine trickled down his face and bubbled on his lips as he strove to speak.
"It is useless to try to interfere, father," said Denis in a calm dry tone. "You must have seen the insult which monsieur has just received from me."
"The edicts, the ordinance of 'twenty-three! Have a care, gentlemen!" cried the priest.
The marquis shook the man off with some difficulty. Had he not been a priest he would have hurled him into the fire.
"Come," said he to Denis, "we shall settle this in the court."
Protesting, the cure followed them to the door where he remained to look on with gloomy anticipation.
It had been comparatively dark in the long, low public room, but outside there still lingered the late, white European twilight. It was that hour when the sky reflects and completely suffuses the last western rays, when very small objects in nature such as men cast no shadow at all, when a certain eeriness as of the meads of the departed settles down over buildings and landscape. The sounds of life are subdued. To some melancholy temperaments it is the most tolerable hour of the day.
In this calm light the two men in their shirt sleeves stood facing each other a few paces apart on a short space of closely cropped green near the centre of the court. The litter which surrounded it marked off its limits in a roughly oval boundary. The servants and hangers-on about the inn had already crowded into the court at the cries of the landlord whose anxiety that his place would be closed for harbouring brawlers led him up until the last moment to beseech someone to interfere.
No one, however, had cared to intrude upon the two determined gentlemen who burst out of the door. The red wine upon Don Luis' face and clothes looked as if first blood had already been drawn. That more was to follow none could doubt. Doors, windows, wheelbarrows, dunghills, and other points of vantage were now at a premium.
"I think, monsieur the captain," said Don Luis in a low tone, "that under the circumstances we can omit all formalities." Denis nodded. "Since there are no seconds, do you give the word to draw, I shall simply count three and engage. The present distance is satisfactory? The end you understand ?"
"Draw," said Denis.
"Monsieur the cure," cried the marquis aloud, "I call on you to witness that all is fair and understood between us here."
They fell on guard.
"One, two, three!"
Their blades rasped and hissed together. The clash of steel, the stamp of feet, and the heavy breathing of the two men filled the courtyard. There was nearly a full minute of sword play in which no very earnest attacks were made while each tried to feel out the other's school of fence.
Denis' was a simple combination of the short sword fence at which any gentleman about the court was more or less an adept, and of the onslaught and melee taught in barracks for the heavier military rapier. It was simple but dangerous. But there was a lack of economy in his recoveries and a waste of motion in his attacks which betrayed to the marquis that the arm behind the point which now so persistently menaced him remembered the sabre. It was upon this that he counted.
So far Don Luis had in no way betrayed himself as a subtle swordsman. To Denis' riposte and remise his counter-riposte and reprise had followed, a trifle slow Denis thought. It was that upon which he counted. The marquis, however, although he was no believer in the bottes secrets of the old school of fence, had learned as a boy from an ancient Spaniard, one or the last of the "Captains of Complements" de la cienca de las armas, a mathematical pedant of the sword. Nor had the supple and baffling wrist movements of the Italian school been neglected by Don Luis in his later manhood in Tuscany.