Tom Burke Of "Ours", Volume II. Lever Charles James

Jumping backward, I recovered my feet; but before I could raise my pistol he made a spring at me, and we both rolled together on the floor. On the pistol both our hands met, and the struggle was for the weapon.

      Twice was it pointed at my heart; but my hand held the lock, and not all his efforts could unclasp it. At last I freed my right hand from the sword-knot of my sabre, and striking him with my clenched knuckles on the forehead, threw him back. His grasp relaxed at the instant, and I wrenched the pistol from his fingers, and placed the muzzle against his chest.

      Another second and he would have rolled a corpse before me, when, to my horror and amazement, I saw in my antagonist my once friend, Henri de Beauvais. I flung the weapon from me, as I cried out, “De Beauvais, forgive me! forgive me!”

      A deathly paleness came over his features; his eyes grew glazed and filmy, and with a low groan he fell fainting on the floor. I bathed his temples with water; I moistened his pale lips; I rubbed his clammy fingers. But it was long before he rallied; and when he did come to himself and looked up, he closed his eyes again, as though the sight of me was worse than death itself.

      “Come, Henri!” said I, “a cup of wine, my friend, and you will be better presently. Thank God, this has not ended as it might.”

      He raised his eyes towards me, but with a look of proud and unforgiving sternness, while he uttered not a word.

      “It is unfair to blame me, De Beauvais, for this,” said I. “Once more I say, forgive me!”

      His lips moved, and some sounds came forth, but I could not hear the words.

      “There, there,” cried I; “it’s past and over now. Here is my hand.”

      “You struck me with that hand,” said he, in a deep, distinct voice, as though every word came from the very bottom of his chest.

      “And if I did, Henri, my own life was on the blow.”

      “Oh that you had taken mine with it!” said he, with a bitterness I can never forget. “I am the first of my name that ever received a blow; would I were to be the last!”

      “You forget, De Beauvais – ”

      “No, sir; I forget nothing. Be assured, too, I never shall forget this night. With any other than yourself I should not despair of that atonement for an injury which alone can wash out such a stain; but you, – I know you well, —you will not give me this.”

      “You are right, De Beauvais; I will not,” said I, calmly. “Sorry am I that even an accident should have brought us into collision. It is a mischance I feel deeply, and shall for many a day.”

      “And I, sir,” cried he, as, starting up, his eyes flashed with passion and his cheek grew scarlet, – “and I, sir! – what are to be my feelings? Think you, that because I am an exile and an outcast, – forced by misfortune to wear the livery of one who is not my rightful sovereign, – that my sense of personal honor is the less, and that the mark of an insult is not as blood-stained on my conscience as ever it was?”

      “Nothing but passion could blind you to the fact that there can be no insult where no intention could exist.”

      “Spare me your casuistry, sir,” replied he, with an insolent wave of his hand, while he sank into a chair, and laid his head upon the table.

      For an instant my temper, provoked beyond endurance, was about to give way, when I perceived that a handkerchief was bound tightly around his leg above the knee, where a great stain of blood marked his trouser. The thought of his being wounded banished every particle of resentment, and laying my hand on his shoulder, I said, —

      “De Beauvais, I know not one but yourself to whom I would three times say, forgive me. But we were friends once, when we were both happier. For the sake of him who is no more, – poor Charles de Meudon – ”

      “A traitor, sir, – a base traitor to the king of his fathers!”

      “This I will not endure!” said I, passionately. “No one shall dare – ”

      “Dare!”

      “Ay, dare, sir! – such was the word. To asperse the memory of one like him is to dare that which no man can, with truth and honor.”

      “Come, sir, I’m ready,” said Be Beauvais, rising, and pointing to the door, “Sortons!”

      No one who has not heard that one word pronounced by the lips of a Frenchman can conceive how much of savage enmity and deadly purpose it implies. It is the challenge which, if unaccepted, stamps cowardice forever on the man who declines it: from that hour all equality ceases between those whom a combat had placed on the same footing.

      “Sortons!” The word rang in my ears, and tingled through my very heart, while a host of different impulses swayed me, – shame, sorrow, wounded pride, all struggling for the mastery: but above them all, a better and a higher spirit, – the firm resolve, come what would, to suffer no provocation De Beauvais could offer, to make me stand opposite to him as an enemy.

      “What am I to think, sir?” said he, with a voice scarcely articulate from passion, – “what am I to think of your hesitation? or why do you stand inactive here? Is it that you are meditating what new insult can be added to those you have heaped on me?”

      “No, sir,” I replied, firmly; “so far from thinking of offence, I am but too sorry for the words I have already spoken. I should have remembered, and remembering, should have made allowance for, the strength of partisan feelings, which have their origin in a noble, but, as I believe, a mistaken source.”

      “Indeed!” interrupted he, in mockery. “Is it, then, come to this? Am I, a Frenchman born, to be lectured on my loyalty and allegiance by a foreign mercenary?”

      “Not even that taunt, De Beauvais, shall avail you anything. I am firm in my resolve.”

      “Pardieu! then,” cried he, with savage energy, “there remains but this!”

      As he spoke, he leaped from his chair, and sprang towards me. In so doing, however, his knee struck the table, and with a groan of agony, he reeled back and fell on the floor, while from his reopened wound a torrent of blood gushed out and deluged the room.

      For a second or two he motioned me away with his hand; but as his weakness increased, he lay passive and unresisting, and suffered me to arrest the bleeding by such means as I was able to practise.

      It was a long time ere I could stanch the gaping orifice, which had been inflicted by a sabre, and cut clean through the high boot and deep into the thigh. Fortunately for his recovery, he had himself succeeded in getting off the boot before, and the wound lay open to my surgical skill. Lifting him cautiously in my arms, I laid him on the bed, and moistened his lips with a little wine. Still the debility continued, – no signs of returning strength were there; but his features, pale and fallen, were glazed with a cold sweat that hung in heavy drops upon his brow and forehead.

      Never was agony like mine. I saw his life was ebbing fast; the respiration was growing fainter and more irregular; his pulse could scarce be felt; yet dare I not leave my post to seek for assistance. A hundred thoughts whirled through my puzzled brain, and among the rest, the self-accusing one that I was the cause of his death. “Yes,” thought I, “better far to have stood before his pistol, at all the hazard of my life, than see him thus.”

      In an instant all his angry speeches and his insulting gestures were forgotten. He looked so like what I once knew him, that my mind was wandering back again to former scenes and times, and all resentment was lost in the flood of memory. Poor fellow! what a sad destiny was his! fighting against the arms of his country, – a mourner over the triumphs of his native land! Alien that I was, this pang at least was spared me.

      As these thoughts crossed my mind, I felt him press my hand. Overjoyed, I knelt down and whispered some words in his ear.

      “No, no,” muttered he, in a low, plaintive tone; “not all lost, – not all! La Vendee yet remains!” He was dreaming.

      CHAPTER VII. THE ARMISTICE

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