CHAPTER XVIII
A DUEL BY MOONLIGHT
When Hamilton, after running some distance, saw that he was gaining upon Alice and would soon overtake her, it added fresh energy to his limbs. He had quickly realized the foolishness of what he had done in visiting the room of his prisoner at so late an hour in the night. What would his officers and men think? To let Alice escape would be extremely embarrassing, and to be seen chasing her would give good ground for ridicule on the part of his entire command. Therefore his first thought, after passing through the postern and realizing fully what sort of predicament threatened him, was to recapture her and return her to the prison room in the block-house without attracting attention. This now promised to be an easier task than he had at first feared; for in the moonlight, which on account of the dispersing clouds, was fast growing stronger, he saw her seem to falter and weaken. Certainly her flight was checked and took an eccentric turn, as if some obstruction had barred her way. He rushed on, not seeing that, as Alice swerved, a man intervened. Indeed he was within a few strides of laying his hand on her when he saw her make the strange movement. It was as if, springing suddenly aside, she had become two persons instead of one. But instantly the figures coincided again, and in becoming taller faced about and confronted him.
Hamilton stopped short in his tracks. The dark figure was about five paces from him. It was not Alice, and a sword flashed dimly but unmistakably in a ray of the moon. The motion visible was that of an expert swordsman placing himself firmly on his legs, with his weapon at guard.
Alice saw the man in her path just in time to avoid running against him. Lightly as a flying bird, when it whisks itself in a short semicircle past a tree or a bough, she sprang aside and swung around to the rear of him, where she could continue her course toward the town. But in passing she recognized him. It was Father Beret, and how grim he looked! The discovery was made in the twinkling of an eye, and its effect was instantaneous, not only checking the force of her flight, but stopping her and turning her about to gaze before she had gone five paces farther.
Hamilton's nerve held, startled as he was, when he realized that an armed man stood before him. Naturally he fell into the error of thinking that he had been running after this fellow all the way from the little gate, where, he supposed, Alice had somehow given him the slip. It was a mere flash of brain-light, so to call it, struck out by the surprise of this curious discovery. He felt his bellicose temper leap up furiously at being balked in a way so unexpected and withal so inexplicable. Of course he did not stand there reasoning it all out. The rush of impressions came, and at the same time he acted with promptness. Changing the rapier, which he held in his right hand, over into his left, he drew a small pistol from the breast of his coat and fired. The report was sharp and loud; but it caused no uneasiness or inquiry in the fort, owing to the fact that Indians invariably emptied their guns when coming into the town.
Hamilton's aim, although hasty, was not bad. The bullet from his weapon cut through Father Beret's clothes between his left arm and his body, slightly creasing the flesh on a rib. Beyond him it struck heavily and audibly. Alice fell limp and motionless to the soft wet ground, where cold puddles of water were splintered over with ice. She lay pitifully crumpled, one arm outstretched in the moonlight. Father Beret heard the bullet hit her, and turned in time to see her stagger backward with a hand convulsively pressed over her heart. Her face, slightly upturned as she reeled, gave the moon a pallid target for its strengthening rays. Sweet, beautiful, its rigid features flashed for a second and then half turned away from the light and went down.
Father Beret uttered a short, thin cry and moved as if to go to the fallen girl, but just then he saw Hamilton's sword pass over again into his right hand, and knew that there was no time for anything but death or fight. The good priest did not shirk what might have made the readiest of soldiers nervous. Hamilton was known to be a great swordsman and proud of the distinction. Father Beret had seen him fence with Farnsworth in remarkable form, touching him at will, and in ministering to the men in the fort he had heard them talk of the Governor's incomparable skill.
A priest is, in perhaps all cases but the last out of a thousand, a man of peace, not to be forced into a fight; but the exceptional one out of the ten hundred it is well not to stir up if you are looking for an easy victim. Hamilton was in the habit of considering every antagonist immediately conquerable. His domineering spirit could not, when opposed, reckon with any possibility of disaster. As he sprang toward Father Beret there was a mutual recognition and, we speak guardedly, something that sounded exactly like an exchange of furious execrations. As for Father Beret's words, they may have been a mere priestly formula of objurgation.
The moon was accommodating. With a beautiful white splendor it entered a space of cloudless sky, where it seemed to slip along the dusky blue surface among the stars, far over in the west.
"It's you, is it?" Hamilton exclaimed between teeth that almost crushed one another. "You prowling hypocrite of hell!"
Father Beret said something. It was not complimentary, and it sounded sulphurous, if not profane. Remember, however, that a priest can scarcely hope to be better than Peter, and Peter did actually make the Simon pure remark when hard pressed. At all events Father Beret said something with vigorous emphasis, and met Hamilton half way.
Both men, stimulated to the finger-tips by a draught of imperious passion, fairly plunged to the inevitable conflict. Ah, if Alice could have seen her beautiful weapons cross, if she could have heard the fine, far-reaching clink, clink, clink, while sparks leaped forth, dazzling even in the moonlight; if she could have noted the admirable, nay, the amazing, play, as the men, regaining coolness to some extent, gathered their forces and fell cautiously to the deadly work, it would have been enough to change the cold shimmer of her face to a flash of warm delight. For she would have understood every feint, longe, parry, and seen at a glance how Father Beret set the pace and led the race at the beginning. She would have understood; for Father Beret had taught her all she knew about the art of fencing.
Hamilton quickly felt, and with a sense of its strangeness, the priest's masterly command of his weapon. The surprise called up all his caution and cleverness. Before he could adjust himself to such an unexpected condition he came near being spitted outright by a pretty pass under his guard. The narrow escape, while it put him on his best mettle, sent a wave of superstition through his brain. He recalled what Barlow had jocularly said about the doings of the devil-priest or priest-devil at Roussillon place on that night when the patrol guard attempted to take Gaspard Roussillon. Was this, indeed, Father Beret, that gentle old man, now before him, or was it an avenging demon from the shades?
The thought flitted electrically across his mind, while he deftly parried, feinted, longed, giving his dark antagonist all he could do to meet the play. Priest or devil, he thought, he cared not which, he would reach its vitals presently. Yet there lingered with him a haunting half-fear, or tenuous awe, which may have aided, rather than hindered his excellent swordsmanship.
Under foot it was slushy with mud, water and ice, the consistency varying from a somewhat solid crust to puddles that half inundated Hamilton's boots and quite overflowed Father Beret's moccasins. An execrable field for the little matter in hand. They gradually shifted position. Now it was the Governor, then the priest, who had advantage as to the light. For some time Father Beret seemed quite the shiftier and surer fighter, but (was it his age telling on him?) he lost perceptibly in suppleness. Still Hamilton failed to touch him. There was a baffling something in the old man's escape now and again from what ought to have been an inevitable stroke. Was it luck? It seemed to Hamilton more than that--a sort of uncanny evasion. Or was it supreme mastery, the last and subtlest reach of the fencer's craft?
Youth forced age slowly backward in the struggle, which at times took on spurts so furious that the slender blades, becoming mere glints of acicular steel, split the moonlight back and forth, up and down, so that their meetings, following one another in a well- nigh continuous stroke, sent a jarring noise through the air. Father Beret lost inch by inch, until the fighting was almost over the body of Alice; and now for the first time Hamilton became aware of that motionless something with the white, luminous face in profile against the ground; but he did not let even that unsettle his fencing gaze, which followed the sunken and dusky eyes of his adversary. A perspiration suddenly flooded his body, however, and began to drip across his face. His arm was tiring. A doubt crept like a chill into his heart. Then the priest appeared to add a cubit to his stature and waver strangely in the soft light. Behind him, low against the sky, a wide winged owl shot noiselessly across just above the prairie.
The soul of a true priest is double: it is the soul of a saint and the soul of a worldly man. What is most beautiful in this duality is the supreme courage with which the saintly spirit attacks the worldly and so often heroically masters it. In the beginning of the fight Father Beret let a passion of the earthly body take him by storm. It was well for Governor Henry Hamilton that the priest was so wrought upon as to unsettle his nerves, otherwise there would have been an evil heart impaled midway of Father Beret's rapier. A little later the saintly spirit began to assert itself, feebly indeed, but surely. Then it was that Father Beret seemed to be losing agility for a while as he backstepped away from Hamilton's increasing energy of assault. In his heart the priest was saying: "I will not murder him. I must not do that. He deserves death, but vengeance is not mine. I will disarm him." Step by step he retreated, playing erratically to make an opening for a trick he meant to use.
It was singularly loose play, a sort of wavering, shifty, incomprehensible show of carelessness, that caused Hamilton to entertain a doubt, which was really a fear, as to what was going to happen; for, notwithstanding all this neglect of due precaution on the priest's part, to touch him seemed impossible, miraculously so, and every plan of attack dissolved into futility in the most maddening way.
"Priest, devil or ghost!" raged Hamilton, with a froth gathering around his mouth; "I'll kill you, or--"
He made a longe, when his adversary left an opening which appeared absolutely beyond defence. It was a quick, dextrous, vicious thrust. The blade leaped toward Father Beret's heart with a twinkle like lightning.
At that moment, although warily alert and hopeful that his opportunity was at hand, Father Beret came near losing his life; for as he side-stepped and easily parried Hamilton's thrust, which he had invited, thinking to entangle his blade and disarm him, he caught his foot in Alice's skirt and stumbled, nearly falling across her. It would have been easy for Hamilton to run him through, had he instantly followed up the advantage. But the moonlight on Alice's face struck his eyes, and by that indirect ray of vision which is often strangely effective, he recognized her lying there. It was a disconcerting thing for him, but he rallied instantly and sprang aside, taking a new position just in time to face Father Beret again. A chill crept up his back. The horror which he could not shake off enraged him beyond measure. Gathering fresh energy, he renewed the assault with desperate steadiness the highest product of absolutely molten fury.
Father Beret felt the dangerous access of power in his antagonist's arm, and knew that a crisis had arrived. He could not be careless now. Here was a swordsman of the best school calling upon him for all the skill and strength and cunning that he could command. Again the saintly element was near being thrown aside by the worldly in the old man's breast. Alice lying there seemed mutely demanding that he avenge her. A riotous something in his blood clamored for a quick and certain act in this drama by moonlight--a tragic close by a stroke of terrible yet perfectly fitting justice.
There was but the space of a breath for the conflict in the priest's heart, yet during that little time he reasoned the case and quoted scripture to himself.
"Domine, percutimus in gladio?" rang through his mind. "Lord, shall we smite with the sword?"
Hamilton seemed to make answer to this with a dazzling display of skill. The rapiers sang a strange song above the sleeping girl, a lullaby with coruscations of death in every keen note.
Father Beret was thinking of Alice. His brain, playing double, calculated with lightning swiftness the chances and movements of that whirlwind rush of fight, while at the same time it swept through a retrospect of all the years since Alice came into his life. How he had watched her grow and bloom; how he had taught her, trained her mind and soul and body to high things, loved her with a fatherly passion unbounded, guarded her from the coarse and lawless influences of her surroundings. Like the tolling of an infinitely melancholy bell, all this went through his breast and brain, and, blending with a furious current of whatever passions were deadly dangerous in his nature, swept as a storm bearing its awful force into his sword-arm.
The Englishman was a lion, the priest a gladiator. The stars aloft in the vague, dark, yet splendid, amphitheater were the audience. It was a question. Would the thumbs go down or up? Life and death held the chances even; but it was at the will of Heaven, not of the stars. "Hoc habet" must follow the stroke ordered from beyond the astral clusters and the dusky blue.
Hamilton pressed, nay rushed, the fight with a weight and at a pace which could not last. But Father Beret withstood him so firmly that he made no farther headway; he even lost some ground a moment later.
"You damned Jesuit hypocrite!" he snarled; "you lowest of a vile brotherhood of liars!"
Then he rushed again, making a magnificent show of strength, quickness and accuracy. The sparks hissed and crackled from the rasping and ringing blades.
Father Beret was, in truth, a Jesuit, and as such a zealot; but he was not a liar or a hypocrite. Being human, he resented an insult. The saintly spirit in him was strong, yet not strong enough to breast the indignation which now dashed against it. For a moment it went down.
"Liar and scoundrel yourself!" he retorted, hoarsely forcing the words out of his throat. "Spawn of a beastly breed!"
Hamilton saw and felt a change pass over the spirit of the old priest's movements. Instantly the sword leaping against his own seemed endowed with subtle cunning and malignant treachery. Before this it had been difficult enough to meet the fine play and hold fairly even; now he was startled and confused; but he rose to the emergency with admirable will power and cleverness.
"Murderer of a poor orphan girl!" Father Beret added with a hot concentrated accent; "death is too good for you."
Hamilton felt nearer his grave than ever before in all his wild experience, for somehow doom, shadowy and formless, like the atmosphere of an awful dream, enmisted those words; but he was no weakling to quit at the height of desperate conflict. He was strong, expert, and game to the middle of his heart.
"I'll add a traitor Jesuit to my list of dead," he panted forth, rising yet again to the extremest tension of his power.
As he did this Father Beret settled himself as you have seen a mighty horse do in the home stretch of a race. Both men knew that the moment had arrived for the final act in their impromptu play. It was short, a duel condensed and crowded into fifteen seconds of time, and it was rapid beyond the power of words to describe. A bystander, had there been one, could not have seen what was finally done or how it was done. Father Beret's sword seemed to be revolving--it was a halo in front of Hamilton for a mere point of time. The old priest seemed to crouch and then make a quick motion as if about to leap backward. A wrench and a snip, as of something violently jerked from a fastening, were followed by a semicircular flight of Hamilton's rapier over Father Beret's head to stick in the ground ten feet behind him. The duel was over, and the whole terrible struggle had occupied less than three minutes.
With his wrist strained and his fingers almost broken, Hamilton stumbled forward and would have impaled himself had not Father Beret turned the point of his weapon aside as he lowered it.
"Surrender, or die!"
That was a strange order for a priest to make, but there could be no mistaking its authority or the power behind it. Hamilton regained his footing and looked dazed, wheezing and puffing like a porpoise, but he clearly understood what was demanded of him.
"If you call out I'll run you through," Father Beret added, seeing him move his lips as if to shout for help.
The level rapier now reinforced the words. Hamilton let the breath go noiselessly from his mouth and waved his hand in token of enforced submission.
"Well, what do you want me to do?" he demanded after a short pause. "You seem to have me at your mercy. What are your terms?"
Father Beret hesitated. It was a question difficult to answer.
"Give me your word as a British officer that you will never again try to harm any person, not an open, armed enemy, in this town."
Hamilton's gorge rose perversely. He erected himself with lofty reserve and folded his arms. The dignity of a Lieutenant Governor leaped into him and took control. Father Beret correctly interpreted what he saw.
"My people have borne much," he said, "and the killing of that poor child there will be awfully avenged if I but say the word. Besides, I can turn every Indian in this wilderness against you in a single day. You are indeed at my mercy, and I will be merciful if you will satisfy my demand."
He was trembling with emotion while he spoke and the desire to kill the man before him was making a frightful struggle with his priestly conscience; but conscience had the upper hand. Hamilton stood gazing fixedly, pale as a ghost, his thoughts becoming more and more clear and logical. He was in a bad situation. Every word that Father Beret had spoken was true and went home with force. There was no time for parley or subterfuge; the sword looked as if, eager to find his heart, it could not be held back another moment. But the wan, cold face of the girl had more power than the rapier's hungry point. It made an abject coward of him.
"I am willing to give you my word," he presently said. "And let me tell you," he went on more rapidly, "I did not shoot at her. She was behind you,"
"Your word as a British officer?"
Hamilton again stiffened and hesitated, but only for the briefest space, then said:
"Yes, my word as a British officer."
Father Beret waved his hand with impatience.
"Go, then, back to your place in the fort and disturb, my people no more. The soul of this poor little girl will haunt you forever. Go!"
Hamilton stood a little while gazing at the face of Alice with the horrible wistfulness of remorse. What would he not have given to rub his eyes and find it all a dream?
He turned away; a cloud scudded across the moon; here and yonder in the dim town cocks crowed with a lonesome, desultory effect.
Father Beret plucked up the rapier that he had wrenched from Hamilton's hand. It suggested something.
"Hold!" he called out, "give me the scabbard of this sword." Hamilton, who was striding vigorously in the direction of the fort, turned about as the priest hastened to him.
"Give me the scabbard of this rapier; I want it. Take it off."
The command was not gently voiced. A hoarse, half-whisper winged every word with an imperious threat.
Hamilton obeyed. His hands were not firm; his fingers fumbled nervously; but he hurried, and Father Beret soon had the rapier sheathed and secured at his belt beside its mate.
A good and true priest is a burden-bearer. His motto is: Alter alterius onera portate; bear ye one another's burdens. His soul is enriched with the cast-off sorrows of those whom he relieves. Father Beret scarcely felt the weight of Alice's body when he lifted it from the ground, so heavy was the pressure of his grief. All that her death meant, not only to him, but to every person who knew her, came into his heart as the place of refuge consecrated for the indwelling of pain. He lifted her and bore her as far toward Roussillon place as he could; but his strength fell short just in front of the little Bourcier cottage, and half dead he staggered across the veranda to the door, where he sank exhausted.
After a breathing spell he knocked. The household, fast asleep, did not hear; but he persisted until the door was opened to him and his burden.
Captain Farnsworth unclosed his bloodshot eyes, at about eight o'clock in the morning, quite confused as to his place and surroundings. He looked about drowsily with a sheepish half- knowledge of having been very drunk. A purring in his head and a dull ache reminded him of an abused stomach. He yawned and stretched himself, then sat up, running a hand through his tousled hair. Father Beret was on his knees before the cross, still as a statue, his clasped hands extended upward.
Farnsworth's face lighted with recognition, and he smiled rather bitterly. He recalled everything and felt ashamed, humiliated, self-debased. He had outraged even a priest's hospitality with his brutish appetite, and he hated himself for it. Disgust nauseated his soul apace with the physical sinking and squirming that grew upon him.
"I'm a shabby, worthless dog!" he muttered, with petulant accent; "why don't you kick me out, Father?"
The priest turned a collapsed and bloodless gray face upon him, smiled in a tired, perfunctory way, crossed himself absently and said:
"You have rested well, my son. Hard as the bed is, you have done it a compliment in the way of sleeping. You young soldiers understand how to get the most out of things."
"You are too generous, Father, and I can't appreciate it. I know what I deserve, and you know it, too. Tell me what a brute and fool I am; it will do me good. Punch me a solid jolt in the ribs, like the one you gave me not long ago."
"Qui sine peccato est, primus lapidem mittat" said the priest. "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone."
He had gone to the hearth and was taking from the embers an earthen saucer, or shallow bowl, in which some fragrant broth simmered and steamed.
"A man who has slept as long as you have, my son, usually has a somewhat delicate appetite. Now, here is a soup, not especially satisfying to the taste of a gourmet like yourself, but possessing the soothing quality that is good for one just aroused from an unusual nap. I offer it, my son, propter stomachum tuum, et frequentes tuas infirmitates (on account of thy stomach, and thine often infirmities). This soup will go to the right spot."
While speaking he brought the hot bowl to Farnsworth and set it on the bedcover before him, then fetched a big horn spoon.
The fragrance of pungent roots and herbs, blent with a savory waft of buffalo meat, greeted the Captain's sense, and the anticipation itself cheered his aching throat. It made him feel greedy and in a hurry. The first spoonful, a trifle bitter, was not so pleasant at the beginning, but a moment after he swallowed it a hot prickling set in and seemed to dart through him from extremity to extremity.
Slowly, as he ate, the taste grew more agreeable, and all the effects of his debauch disappeared. It was like magic; his blood warmed and glowed, as if touched with mysterious fire.
"What is this in this soup, Father Beret, that makes it so searching and refreshing?" he demanded, when the bowl was empty.
Father Beret shook his head and smiled drolly.
"That I cannot divulge, my son, owing to a promise I had to make to the aged Indian who gave me the secret. It is the elixir of the Miamis. Only their consecrated medicine men hold the recipe. The stimulation is but temporary."
Just then someone knocked on the door. Father Beret opened it to one of Hamilton's aides,
"Your pardon, Father, but hearing Captain Farnsworth's voice I made bold to knock."
"What is it, Bobby?" Farnsworth called out.
"Nothing, only the Governor has been having you looked for in every nook and corner of the fort and town. You'd better report at once, or hell be having us drag the river for your body."
"All right, Lieutenant, go back and keep mum, that's a dear boy, and I'll shuffle into Colonel Hamilton's august presence before many minutes."
The aide laughed and went his way whistling a merry tune.
"Now I am sure to get what I deserve, with usury at forty per cent in advance," said Farnsworth dryly, shrugging his shoulders with undissembled dread of Hamilton's wrath. But the anticipation was not realized. The Governor received Farnsworth stiffly enough, yet in a way that suggested a suppressed desire to avoid explanations on the Captain's part and a reprimand on his own. In fact, Hamilton was hoping that something would turn up to shield him from the effect of his terrible midnight adventure, which seemed the darker the more he thought of it. He had a slow, numb conscience, lying deep where it was hard to reach, and when a qualm somehow entered it he endured in secret what most men would have cast off or confessed. He was haunted, if not with remorse, at least by a dread of something most disagreeable in connection with what he had done. Alice's white face had impressed itself indelibly on his memory, so that it met his inner vision at every turn. He was afraid to converse with Farnsworth lest she should come up for discussion; consequently their interview was curt and formal.
It was soon discovered that Alice had escaped from the stockade, and some show of search was made for her by Hamilton's order, but Farnsworth looked to it that the order was not carried out. He thought he saw at once that his chief knew where she was. The mystery perplexed and pained the young man, and caused him to fear all sorts of evil; but there was a chance that Alice had found a safe retreat and he knew that nothing but ill could befall her if she were discovered and brought back to the fort. Therefore his search for her became his own secret and for his own heart's ease. And doubtless he would have found her; for even handicapped and distorted love like his is lynx-eyed and sure on the track of its object; but a great event intervened and swept away his opportunity.
Hamilton's uneasiness, which was that of a strong, misguided nature trying to justify itself amid a confusion of unmanageable doubts and misgivings, now vented itself in a resumption of the repairs he had been making at certain points in the fort. These he completed just in time for the coming of Clark.