Part 43 (1/2)

For she would have hidden their shame from all if she could! Even to say what she had to say to one, and though he already guessed the truth, cost her in pain and humiliation more than her brother had paid for aught in his selfish life. But it had to be said, and, after a pause, and with eyes averted, ”My brother is ill,” she faltered. ”He cannot meet--that man, this morning. It is--as you feared. And--what can we do?”

In another case Luke Asgill would have blessed the chance that linked him with her, that wrought a tie between them, and cast her on his help. But he had guessed, before she opened her mouth, what she had to say--nay, for hours he had lain sleepless on his bed, with eyes staring into the darkness, antic.i.p.ating it. He had been certain of the issue--he knew James McMurrough; and, being a man who loved Flavia indeed, but loved life also, he had foreseen, with the cold sweat on his brow, what he would be driven to do.

He made no haste to answer, therefore, and his tone, when he did answer, was dull and lifeless. ”Is it ill he is?” he said. ”It's a bad morning to be ill, and a meeting on hand.”

She did not answer.

”Is he too bad to stand?” he continued. He made no attempt to hide his comprehension or his scorn.

”I don't say that,” she faltered.

”Perhaps he told you,” Asgill said--and there was nothing of the lover in his tone--”to speak to me?”

She nodded.

”It is I am to--put it off, I suppose?”

”If it be possible,” she cried. ”Oh, if it be possible! Is it?”

He stood, thinking, with a gloomy face. From the first he had seen that there were two ways only of extricating The McMurrough. The one by a mild explanation, which would leave his honour in the mud. The other by an explanation after a different fas.h.i.+on, _vi et armis, vehementer_, with the word ”liar” ready to answer to the word ”coward.” But he who gave this last explanation must be willing and able to back the word with the deed, and stop cavilling with the sword-point.

Now, Asgill knew the Major's skill with the sword; none better. And under other circ.u.mstances the Justice--cold, selfish, scheming--would have gone many a mile about before he entered upon a quarrel with him.

None the less, love and much night-thinking had drawn him to contemplate this very thing. For surely, if he did this and lived, Flavia would smile on him. Surely, if he saved her brother's honour, or came as near to saving it as driving the foul word down his opponent's throat could bring him, she would be won. It was a forlorn, it was a desperate expedient. For no worldly fortune, for no other advantage, would Luke Asgill have faced the Major's sword-point. But, whatever he was, he loved. He loved! And for the face and the form beside him, and for the quality of soul within them that shone from the girl's eyes, and made her what she was, and to him different from all other women, he had made up his mind to run the risk.

It went for something in his decision that he believed that Flavia, if he failed her, would go to the one person in the house who had no cause to fear Payton--to Colonel Sullivan. If she did that, Asgill was sure that his own chance was at an end. This was his chance. It lay with him now, to-day, at this moment--to dare or to retire, to win her favour at the risk of his life, or to yield her to another. In the chill morning hour he had discovered that the choice lay before him, that he must risk all or lose all: and he had decided. That decision he now announced.

”I will make it possible,” he said slowly, questioning in his mind whether he could make terms with her--whether he dared make terms with her. ”I will make it possible,” he repeated, still more slowly, and with his eyes fixed on her face.

”If you could!” she cried, clasping her hands.

”I will!” he said, a sullen undertone in his voice. His eyes still dwelt darkly on her. ”If he raises an objection, I will fight him--myself!”

She shrank from him. ”Ah, but I can't ask that!” she cried, trembling.

”It is that or nothing.”

”That or----”

”There is no other way,” he said. He spoke with the same ungraciousness; for, try as he would, and though the habit and the education of a life cried to him to treat with her and make conditions, he could not; and he was enraged that he could not.

The more as her quivering lips, her wet eyes, her quick mounting colour, told of her grat.i.tude. In another moment she might, almost certainly she would, have said a word fit to unlock his lips. And he would have spoken; and she would have pledged herself. But fate, in the person of old Darby, intervened. Timely or untimely, the butler appeared in the distant doorway, cried ”Hist!” and, by a backward gesture, warned them of some approaching peril.

”I fear----” she began.

”Yes, go!” Asgill replied, almost roughly. ”He is coming, and he must not find us together.”

She fled swiftly, but the garden gate had barely closed on her skirts before Payton issued from the courtyard. The Englishman paused an instant in the gateway, his sword under his arm and a handkerchief in his hand. Thence he looked up and down the road with an air of scornful confidence that provoked Asgill beyond measure. The sun did not seem bright enough for him, nor the air scented to his liking. Finally he approached the Irishman, who, affecting to be engaged with his own thoughts, had kept his distance.

”Is he ready?” he asked, with a sneer.

With an effort Asgill controlled himself. ”He is not,” he said.