Part 23 (1/2)
He met Father Beret near Roussillon place, and feeling his ribs squirm at sight of the priest, he accosted him insolently, demanding information as to the whereabouts of the missing flag.
A priest may be good and true--Father Beret certainly was--and yet have the strongest characteristics of a worldly man. This thing of being bullied day after day, as had recently been the rule, generated nothing to aid in removing a refractory desire from the priest's heart--the worldly desire to repeat with great increment of force the punch against Famsworth's lower ribs.
”I order you, sir, to produce that rebel flag,” said Farnsworth. ”You will obey forthwith or take the consequences. I am no longer in the humor to be trifled with. Do you understand?”
”I might be forced to obey you, if I could,” said the priest, drawing his robe about him; ”but, as I have often told you, my son, I do not know where the flag is or who took it. I do not even suspect any person of taking it. All that I know about it is the simple fact that it is gone.”
Father Beret's manner and voice were very mild, but there must have been a hint of st.u.r.dy defiance somewhere in them. At all events Farnsworth was exasperated and fell into a white rage. Perhaps it was the liquor he had been drinking that made him suddenly desperate.
”You canting old fool!” he cried, ”don't lie to me any longer; I won't have it. Don't stand there grinning at me. Get that flag, or I'll make you.”
”What is impossible, my son, is possible to G.o.d alone. Apud homines hoc impossible est, apud Deum autem omnia possibilia sunt.”
”None of your Jesuit Latin or logic to me--I am not here to argue, but to command. Get that flag. Be in a hurry about it, sir.”
He whipped out his sword, and in his half drunken eyes there gathered the dull film of murderous pa.s.sion.
”Put up your weapon, Captain; you will not attack an unarmed priest.
You are a soldier, and will not dare strike an old, defenceless man.”
”But I will strike a black-robed and black-hearted French rebel. Get that flag, you grinning fool!”
The two men stood facing each other. Father Beret's eyes did not stir from their direct, fearless gaze. What Farnsworth had called a grin was a peculiar smile, not of merriment, a grayish flicker and a slight backward wrinkling of the cheeks. The old man's arms were loosely crossed upon his st.u.r.dy breast.
”Strike if you must,” he said very gently, very firmly. ”I never yet have seen the man that could make me afraid.” His speech was slightly sing-song in tone, as it would have been during a prayer or a blessing.
”Get the flag then!” raged Farnsworth, in whose veins the heat of liquor was aided by an unreasoning choler.
”I cannot,” said Father Beret.
”Then take the consequences!”
Farnsworth lifted his sword, not to thrust, but to strike with its flat side, and down it flashed with a noisy whack. Father Beret flung out an arm and deftly turned the blow aside. It was done so easily that Farnsworth sprang back glaring and surprised.
”You old fool!” he cried, leveling his weapon for a direct lunge. ”You devilish hypocrite!”
It was then that Father Beret turned deadly pale and swiftly crossed himself. His face looked as if he saw something startling just beyond his adversary. Possibly this sudden change of expression caused Farnsworth to hesitate for a mere point of time. Then there was the swish of a woman's skirts; a light step pattered on the frozen ground, and Alice sprang between the men, facing Farnsworth. As she did this something small and yellow,--the locket at her throat,--fell and rolled under her feet. n.o.body saw it.
In her hand she held an immense horse pistol, which she leveled in the Captain's face, its flaring, bugle-shaped muzzle gaping not a yard from his nose. The heavy tube was as steady as if in a vise.
”Drop that sword!”
That was all she said; but her finger was pressing the trigger, and the flint in the backward slanting hammer was ready to click against the steel. The leaden slugs were on the point of leaping forth.
”Drop that sword!”
The repet.i.tion seemed to close the opportunity for delay.
Farnsworth was on his guard in a twinkling. He set his jaw and uttered an ugly oath; then quick as lightning he struck sidewise at the pistol with his blade. It was a move which might have taken a less alert person than Alice unawares; but her training in sword-play was ready in her wrist and hand. An involuntary turn, the slightest imaginable, set the heavy barrel of her weapon strongly against the blow, partly stopping it, and then the gaping muzzle spat its load of b.a.l.l.s and slugs with a bellow that awoke the drowsy old village.