“WHOSOEVER SHALL SMITE THEE—”

Before the house next morning, in the dull gray dawn, the two antagonists met. It was bitterly cold and misty, with that wet frost, all shadow and shiver, that precedes the late wintry sun. Gerard drew his cloak around him as he saluted the Count. Under his arm he held a long green baize bag.

“You still wish it to be swords?” he asked.

Count Frechenfels waved his hand in haughty acknowledgment.

“Permit me to precede you,” said Gerard, gravely.

They walked away into the park with quick, ringing steps. Only once Gerard broke the silence. “Excuse me,” he began, looking round, “but I think we had better go some distance. The clash, you know.” The German repeated his gesture.

In silence, then, they reached the little clearing which Gerard had selected. Here he paused. As it happened, the place was the same where Ursula had fought her battle the day before. It was a natural halting-place for those who wandered in the wood.

The robin lay stiff and stark with upturned legs. Gerard kicked it aside.

Count Frechenfels looked to right and left. “Your doctor?” he said at last. “Where is your doctor? At least you have arranged for a medical man?”

“No, indeed; he would have warned the police,” replied Gerard. “What do we want a doctor for?”

The German hesitated. “But it is murder,” he said, half to himself. “No one does such things. Supposing one of us is badly wounded. Mynheer van Helmont, you know that not one man in ten would consent to meet you like this?”

“I don’t care about the other nine,” replied Gerard, inconsequentially. He threw down his bag. “Count Frechenfels,” he said, “you insulted the Dutch army in my person last night. There is nothing more to be said.”

The Count began to get ready. “So be it,” he answered. He took up one of the swords. “It is the Dutch army we fight on,” he said, significantly. “However this mad affair ends, that is clearly understood?”

“Of course,” replied Gerard, with some slight wonderment.

“Very well. I am ready, Mynheer. This is not a duel, but a fight!”

In another moment they were clashing at each other amid the surrounding stillness, their swords ringing in the constant concussion of the parry. The morning as yet was almost too dark for their object, especially here, under the white-rimmed trees; but as the metal shone and flashed in the haze, high over the combatants’ heads the intensity of the moment’s expectation seemed to clear away the mist. A sword duel, even when well ordered, is always disconcerting because of the noise; in this case, as the German had remarked, the combat, when it deepened, without umpire or timekeeper, was not a duel but a fight.

“I shall kill him,” thought Gerard, but at the same moment he felt that this would not be an easy thing to accomplish. It required the utmost vigilance on his part to ward off his enemy’s blows; he found but little opportunity for independent attack; he began uncomfortably to realize that the Count was the better swordsman. Also the Count was the taller of the two—a very great advantage. Gerard set his teeth hard in the continuous crash of the other’s onslaught. The whole wood seemed listening, holding its already bated breath.

Suddenly—in a flash of lightning, quicker than thought—the young Dutchman realized that his guard was gone, that his opponent’s sword was upon him, bearing straight down upon his unprotected head, with the certainty of terrible wounding, the possibility of death! With unthinkable swiftness he understood it and even found time—in that hundredth of a second—to await the inevitable end. In that hundredth of a second, also, he saw his antagonist swerve aside under the very force of sweeping downwards, swerve with a sudden slip of his footing, just enough to cause the aim to diverge, while exposing himself in his turn. In that hundredth of a second Gerard knew, as it passed, that he had the German in his power, that he, not the German, was become, by a twist of the wheel, the irresistible victor, that his sword, once more curling aloft, could descend where he chose. And he did choose—still in that immeasurable atom of existence—and struck his foeman, not through the skull, but, with a quick revulsion from murder, in a hideous long gash across the cheek.

It was over. The Count reeled and recovered himself as Gerard ran forward to support him. Then, his long passion grown suddenly cool, with his profusely bleeding victim beside him, Gerard felt there was nothing left but to avow himself tardily “an idiot.” He looked round desperately for the indispensable assistance he had previously scouted. He would have called out, but what was the use of calling? Even as he told himself that it would be utterly useless, he became aware that his sylvan solitude was not deserted. The figure of a woman, making towards him, became visible through the trees.

He recognized her with immense relief—only Hephzibah, his Aunt Louisa’s maid. Angular in every fold of her dark stuff gown and shawl, that cross-grained female approached the little group in the clearing.

“Help the gentleman to sit down, Jonker,” she said, without looking at Gerard. And she began deftly arranging a bandage with two spotless pocket-handkerchiefs which she produced from inner recesses. They were her Sunday handkerchiefs (ready for the morning’s devotional exercises). No cry of anguish broke from her as she calmly tore them into strips.

Count Frechenfels watched her skill with evident satisfaction. After all, why should he let himself be comfortably killed in contradiction to all the correct rules of carving? He was contented with himself: he had behaved with great magnanimity, like the “grand seigneur” he was.

“I will go fetch a carriage from the stables,” said Gerard.

The woman nodded, engrossed in her work; when she had finished, she stood waiting, erect by the wounded man, like a soldier on guard.

It seemed a long time before Gerard returned with the brougham which he had got ready unaided. As Hephzibah established the Count in the carriage, the Jonker turned for one last look at the scene of the combat, wondering whether he could account for that sudden slip of his adversary’s to which he felt that he owed his life. Something black in the hard snow caught his eye. He stooped quickly and took up a woman’s dark glove, half imbedded and trodden down. The Count’s foot must have slid on the soft kid. Gerard thrust the glove into his pocket. One of Hephzibah’s squint eyes, at any rate, was fixed on the Count.

A few minutes later the little brougham stopped before the doctor’s house in the village street. The village street was empty, blinded, and asleep, yet Gerard, on the box, as he sat amid the jingle of the harness, felt that the dead walls were Argus-eyed, and that his secret was become the world’s.

“Good gracious!” squeaked the doctor from his window, in a red nightcap. “Good gracious, Jonker, what has occurred?”

“Nothing of importance,” replied the Jonker’s loudest tones. “Come down, and I’ll tell you.”

Curiosity accelerated Dr. Lapperpap’s enrobing. Soon he was examining the patient by the light of hastily raised blinds.

“And how did this happen?” asked Dr. Lapperpap.

“I did it,” replied Gerard, promptly. “Sword exercise.”

The doctor cast a quick glance from his twinkly black eyes. “H’m,” he said; “an accident. Of course.”

His tone rendered further discussion superfluous. It was arranged that, for the present, the Prussian should remain where he was. Gerard drove Hephzibah back to the Manor House; the good woman despised all pomps and vanities, yet she was by no means insensible to the honors of her position. The Count had presented her with one florin.

Near the avenue she applied the carriage-whistle.

“I will get out here, Jonker, please,” she cried; and then, standing in the early snow: “On Christmas morning!” she said, while her whole figure grew heavy with reproach.

“Hephzibah, however did you come to be out in the wood?” asked the Jonker, hastily.

“In their affliction they shall seek me early,” replied Hephzibah.

The quotation was inappropriate, for her omnifulgent eyes had watched the gentlemen leave the house, but the sacredness of the words staggered Gerard. He held out a gold piece.

“No, Jonker,” said the waiting-woman. “Not from you. Not for this. It would be blood-money.” And she marched away, gaunt and grim, down the lines of grim, gaunt elms.

As Gerard came up from the stables to the house he caught sight of Ursula walking on the carriage sweep. For one moment a great impulse came over him to go and ask her why she, as well as Helena, seemed so anxious to have him out of the way. He could understand Helena’s feelings—or, at any rate, he thought he could. Well, he had spoiled the German’s fine countenance for the remainder of his stay. Count Frechenfels would carry away with him a memento of his visit to the Lowlands.

But what would be the use of worrying Ursula? Gerard hated to make a woman uncomfortable. He had done it already, yesterday—after a full year’s hesitation. And she had taught him a lesson he would never forget. How greatly he had wronged this purest among women! Generous natures always own an immense debt of gratitude to those they have wronged.

“Gerard,” cried Ursula, “I have dropped a glove. I feel sure I came out with a pair.” She held up one for him to see. Gerard had a disastrous weakness for blurting out the very thing he wanted to keep back.

“Not unless you have been in the wood already,” he said, producing the missing article, which Ursula, of course, had dropped, not now, but the day before. Then he put it back. “I want you to let me keep this,” he added.

Her eyes grew troubled. “Oh, no—no,” she protested. “Give it back to me at once!”

“But it can have no real value for you. Whereas, for me”—his voice trembled with the memory of his terrible escape—“let me keep it,” he said.

Ursula knew not what to say or think. Slowly she dropped the remaining glove on the ground at her brother-in-law’s feet; slowly she raised her faithful eyes to the level of his own. In that moment, quite unexpectedly, as by a revelation, he saw how very beautiful she was. He stood before her dismayed, his heart full of yesterday’s conversation, of this morning’s experiences. “Ursula,” he stammered, “I—I am going to Acheen—at once!”

“I thank God,” she said, with solemn bitterness, and left him.

Meanwhile the wretched husband shrank back behind his dressing-room curtains. It was true that he had begun to spy on his wife. He hated himself for doing it. He despised himself for believing the clear testimony of his eyes.

He went down to breakfast; somebody said he was looking ill. “It is the worry at the close of the year,” he told his mother; “this time I can certainly not make both ends meet.” Mopius had a business-man’s suspicion of financial complications. Under the influence of the sacred season and the baronial splendor around him, he offered his “nephew Otto,” just before going to church, a considerable loan, free of interest. The Baron courteously declined it. “If Mopius were but a gentleman!” he reflected, with a sigh.

So the DominÉ preached his festival sermon to various inattentive ears. Gerard had disappeared, suddenly recalled to Drum; Helena was wondering what had become of Count Frechenfels. Willie would have been fast asleep but for Aunt Louisa’s persistent pokes; the Dowager was trying to remember whether it was in ’42 or ’43 that her husband had broken his arm out shooting three days before Christmas. “Note,” said the DominÉ, “that the message of peace is brought by the hosts, that is, armies, of heaven. It is always so in the history of the Church, as of each individual Christian. Nowhere is this truth made more consistently manifest: Si vis pacem, para bellum.” That was what the peasants of Horstwyk admired most in their pastor. He quoted the New Testament at them in the original Hebrew.

When the service was over, Otto remained behind to speak to his father-in-law. The preacher’s last words still hovered about the deserted pulpit: “Not till the city has surrendered does Emmanuel issue his proclamation of peace and good-will.” Otto went into the vestry where the DominÉ was resting in his arm-chair, the Cross showing bright on his ample black gown.

“I can’t bear it any longer!” exclaimed Otto. “I must speak of it to some one. I must speak of it to you.”

“What is your trouble, my son?” said the DominÉ, gently. “If we confess our sins to each other, it often helps us to confess them to God.”

Otto started back. “How do you know that it is a sin?” he asked.

“Our troubles usually are, are they not?” said the DominÉ, simply.

“It is a sin, and it is not a sin. I cannot resist it. It is stronger than I.”

“I will help you all I can.” The DominÉ’s face grew very pitiful. “In most of our troubles men can help, God in all.”

“But I have proof,” cried Otto, hastily. “So much proof—too much proof. Only listen, father.”

He began speaking of his doubts, and the old man shrouded his face with one hand—his only one—white and transparent.

When Otto ceased speaking, a long silence ensued. At last the DominÉ removed his hand, and Otto stared in horrified amazement. The minister’s clear face had become dark purple; veins stood out on his forehead which Otto had never perceived before. He began speaking, in a very low voice, but that voice also was new to the hearer:

“Go,” he said, “I have nothing to answer you.”

“But, father,” cried Otto, “speak to me. Pity me! For pity’s sake, don’t let me lose the only friend I have!”

The DominÉ rose to his full height, in his long robes, pointing to the door.

“Go,” he repeated. “God forgive you. I cannot. Not at this moment. My Ursula! Go!”

And Otto, stalwart and sunburned, crouched to slink away.