Part 44 (1/2)

”I will,” Morty answered, genuinely distressed. ”But I'm asking, is there no other way?”

”There is none,” Asgill said. And he opened the gate.

Payton was waiting for him on the path under the yew-trees, with two of his troopers on guard in the background. He had removed his coat and vest, and stood, a not ungraceful figure, in the suns.h.i.+ne, bending his rapier and feeling its point with his thumb. He was doing this when his eyes surprised his opponent's entrance, and, without desisting from his employment, he smiled.

If the other's courage had begun to wane--but, with all his faults, Asgill was brave--that smile would have restored it. For it roused in him a stronger pa.s.sion than fear--the pa.s.sion of hatred. He saw in the man before him, the man with the cruel smile, who handled his weapon with a scornful ease, a demon--a demon who, in pure malice, without reason and without cause, would take his life, would rob him of joy and love and suns.h.i.+ne, and hurl him into the blackness of the gulf. And he was seized with a rage at once fierce and deliberate. This man, who would kill him, and whom he saw smiling before him, he would kill! He thirsted to set his foot upon his throat and squeeze, and squeeze the life out of him! These were the thoughts that pa.s.sed through his mind as he paused an instant at the gate to throw off the enc.u.mbering coat.

Then he advanced, drawing his weapon as he moved, and fixing his eyes on Payton; who, for his part, reading the other's thoughts in his face--for more than once he had seen that look--put himself on his guard without a word.

Asgill had no more than the rudimentary knowledge of the sword which was possessed in that day by all who wore it. He knew that, given time and the decent observances of the fencing-school, he would be a mere child in Payton's hands; that it would matter nothing whether the sun were on this side or that, or his sword the longer or the shorter by an inch. The moment he was within reach therefore, and his blade touched the other's he rushed in, lunging fiercely at his opponent's breast and trusting to the vigour of his attack and the circular sweep of his point to protect himself. Not seldom has a man skilled in the subtleties of the art found himself confused and overcome by this mode of attack. But Payton had met his man too often on the green to be taken by surprise. He parried the first thrust, the second he evaded by stepping adroitly aside. By the same movement he put the sun in Asgill's eyes.

Again the latter rushed in, striving to get within his opponent's guard; and again Payton stepped aside, and allowed the random thrust to pa.s.s wasted under his arm. Once more the same thing happened--Asgill rushed in, Payton parried or evaded with the ease and coolness of long-tried skill. By this time Asgill, forced to keep his blade in motion, was beginning to breathe quickly. The sweat stood on his brow, he struck more and more wildly, and with less and less strength or aim.

He was aware--it could be read in the glare of his eyes--that he was being reduced to the defensive; and he knew that to be fatal. An oath broke from his panting lips and he rushed in again, even more recklessly, more at random than before, his sole object now to kill the other, to stab him at close quarters, no matter what happened to himself.

Again Payton avoided the full force of the rush, but this time after a different fas.h.i.+on. He retreated a step. Then, with a flicker and a girding of steel on steel, Asgill's sword flew from his hand, and at the same instant--or so nearly at the same instant that the disarming and the thrust might have seemed to an untrained eye one motion--Payton turned his wrist and his sword buried itself in Asgill's body. The unfortunate man recoiled with a gasping cry, staggered and sank sideways to the ground.

”By the powers,” O'Beirne exclaimed, springing forward, ”a foul stroke!

By G--d, a foul stroke! He was disarmed. I----”

”Have a care what you say!” Payton answered slowly, and in a terrible tone. ”You'd do better to look to your friend--for he'll need it.”

”It's you that struck him after he was disarmed!” Morty cried, almost weeping with rage. ”Devil a bit of a chance did you give him! You----”

”Silence, I say!” Payton answered, in a fierce tone of authority. ”I know my duty; and if you know yours you'll look to him.”

He turned aside with that, and thrust the point of his sword twice and thrice into the sod before he sheathed the weapon. Meanwhile Morty had cast himself down beside the fallen man, who, speechless, and with his head hanging, continued to support himself on his hand. A patch of blood, bright-coloured, was growing slowly on his vest: and there was blood on his lips.

”Oh, whirra, whirra, what'll I do?” the Irishman exclaimed, helplessly wringing his hands. ”What'll I do for him? He's murdered entirely!”

Payton, aided by one of the troopers, was putting on his coat and vest.

He paused to bid the other help the gentleman. Then, with a cold look at the fallen man, for whom, though they had been friends, as friends go in the world, he seemed to have no feeling except one of contempt, he walked away in the direction of the rear of the house.

By the time he reached the back door the alarm was abroad, the maids were running to and fro and screaming, and on the threshold he encountered Flavia. Pale as the stricken man, she looked on Payton with an eye of horror, and, as he stood aside to let her pa.s.s, she drew--unconscious what she did--her skirts away, that they might not touch him.

He went on, with rage in his heart. ”Very good, my lady,” he muttered, ”very good! But I've not done with you yet. I know a way to pull your pride down. And I'll go about it!”

He might have moved less at ease, he might have spoken less confidently, had he, before he retired from the scene of the fight, cast one upward glance in the direction of the house, had he marked an opening high up in the wall of yew, and noticed through that opening a window, so placed that it alone of all the windows in the house commanded the scene of action. For then he would have discovered at that cas.e.m.e.nt a face he knew, and a pair of stern eyes that had followed the course of the struggle throughout, noted each separate attack, and judged the issue--and the man.

And he might have taken warning.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE PITCHER AT THE WELL

The surgeon of that day was better skilled in letting blood than in staunching it, in cupping than in curing. It was well for Luke Asgill, therefore, that none lived nearer than distant Tralee. It was still more fortunate for him that there was one in the house to whom the treatment of such a wound as his was an everyday matter, and who was guided in his practice less by the rules of the faculty than by those of experience and common sense.

Even under his care Asgill's life hung for many hours in the balance.

There was a time, when he was at his weakest, when his breath, in the old phrase, would not raise a feather, and those about his bed despaired of detaining the spirit fluttering to be free. The servants were ready to raise the ”keen,” the cook sought the salt for the death-plate. But Colonel John, mindful of many a man found living on the field hours after he should, by all the rules, have died, did not despair; and little by little, though the patient knew nothing of the battle which was maintained for his life, the Colonel's skill and patience prevailed. The breathing grew stronger and more regular; and, though it seemed likely that fever would follow and the end must remain uncertain, death, for the moment, was repelled.