Alice of Old Vincennes Part 11

"There isn't any difference between them that I know of," she said, and then added archly; "but you will feel better at last, when all is over and the sting of defeat tingles through you, if you are conscious of having used every sensible precaution."

He looked straight into her eyes, trying to catch what was in her mind, but there was a bewildering glamour playing across those gray, opal-tinted wells of mystery, from which he could draw only a mischievous smile-glint, direct, daring, irresistible.

"Well," he said, taking one of the foils, "what do you really mean? Is it a challenge without room for honorable retreat?"

"The time for parley is past," she replied, "follow me to the battle-ground."

She led the way to a pleasant little court in the rear of the cabin's yard, a s.p.a.ce between two wings and a vine-covered trellis, beyond which lay a well kept vineyard and vegetable garden. Here she turned about and faced him, poising her foil with a fine grace.

"Are you ready?" she inquired.

He tried again to force a way into the depths of her eyes with his; but he might as well have attacked the sun; so he stood in a confusion of not very well defined feelings, undecided, hesitating, half expecting that there would be some laughable turn to end the affair.

"Are you afraid, Monsieur Beverley?" she demanded after a short waiting in silence.

He laughed now and whipped the air with his foil.

"You certainly are not in earnest?" he said interrogatively. "Do you really mean that you want to fence with me?"

"If you think because I'm only a girl you can easily beat me, try it,"

she tauntingly replied making a level thrust toward his breast.

Quick as a flash he parried, and then a merry clinking and twinkling of steel blades kept time to their swift movements. Instantly, by the sure sense which is half sight, half feeling--the sense that guides the expert fencer's hand and wrist--Beverley knew that he had probably more than his match, and in ten seconds his attack was met by a time thrust in opposition which touched him sharply.

Alice sprang far back, lowered her point and laughed.

"Je vous salue, Monsieur Beverley!" she cried, with childlike show of delight. "Did you feel the b.u.t.ton?"

"Yes, I felt it," he said with frank acknowledgment in his voice, "it was cleverly done. Now give me a chance to redeem myself."

He began more carefully and found that she, too, was on her best mettle; but it was a short bout, as before. Alice seemed to give him an easy opening and he accepted it with a thrust; then something happened that he did not understand. The point of his foil was somehow caught under his opponent's hilt-guard while her blade seemed to twist around his; at the same time there was a wring and a jerk, the like of which he had never before felt, and he was disarmed, his wrist and fingers aching with the wrench they had received.

Of course the thing was not new; he had been disarmed before; but her trick of doing it was quite a mystery to him, altogether different from any that he had ever seen.

"Vous me pardonnerez, Monsieur," she mockingly exclaimed, picking up his weapon and offering the hilt to him. "Here is your sword!"

"Keep it," he said, folding his arms and trying to look unconcerned, "you have captured it fairly. I am at your mercy; be kind to me."

Madame Roussillon and Jean, the hunchback, hearing the racket of the foils had come out to see and were standing agape.

"You ought to be ashamed, Alice," said the dame in scolding approval of what she had done; "girls do not fence with gentlemen."

"This girl does," said Alice.

"And with extreme disaster to this gentleman," said Beverley, laughing in a tone of discomfiture and resignation.

"Ah, Mo'sieu', there's nothing but disaster where she goes," complained Madame Roussillon, "she is a destroyer of everything. Only yesterday she dropped my pink bowl and broke it, the only one I had."

"And just to think," said Beverley, "what would have been the condition of my heart had we been using rapiers instead of leather-b.u.t.toned foils! She would have spitted it through the very center."

"Like enough," replied the dame indifferently. "She wouldn't wince, either,--not she."

Alice ran into the house with the foils and Beverley followed.

"We must try it over again some day soon," he said; "I find that you can show me a few points. Where did you learn to fence so admirably? Is Monsieur Roussillon your master?"

"Indeed he isn't," she quickly replied, "he is but a bungling swordsman. My master--but I am not at liberty to tell you who has taught me the little I know."

"Well, whoever he is I should be glad to have lessons from him."

"But you'll never get them."

"Why?"

"Because."

"A woman's ultimatum."

"As good as a man's!" she bridled prettily; "and sometimes better--at the foils for example. Vous--comprenez, n'est ce pas?"

He laughed heartily.

"Yes, your point reaches me," he said, "but sperat et in saeva victus gladiatur arena, as the old Latin poet wisely remarks." The quotation was meant to tease her.

"Yes, Montaigne translated that or something in his book," she commented with prompt erudition. "I understand it."

Beverley looked amazed.

"What do you know about Montaigne?" he demanded with a blunt brevity amounting to something like gruffness.

"Sh', Monsieur, not too loud," she softly protested, looking around to see that neither Madame Roussillon nor Jean had followed them into the main room. "It is not permitted that I read that old book; but they do not hide it from me, because they think I can't make out its dreadful spelling."

She smiled so that her cheeks drew their dimples deep into the delicately tinted pink-and-brown, where wind and sun and wholesome exercise had set the seal of absolute health, and took from a niche in the logs of the wall a stained and dog-eared volume. He looked, and it was, indeed, the old saint and sinner, Montaigne.

Involuntarily he ran his eyes over the girl from head to foot, comparing her show of knowledge with the outward badges of abject rusticity, and even wildness, with which she was covered.

"Well," he said, "you are a mystery."

"You think it surprising that I can read a book! Frankly I can't understand half of this one. I read it because--well just because they want me to read about nothing but sickly old saints and woe-begone penitents. I like something lively. What do I care for all that uninteresting religious stuff?"

"Montaigne IS decidedly lively in spots," Beverley remarked. "I shouldn't think a girl--I shouldn't think you'd particularly enjoy his humors."

"I don't care for the book at all," she said, flushing quickly, "only I seem to learn about the world from it. Sometimes it seems as if it lifted me up high above all this wild, lonely and tiresome country, so that I can see far off where things are different and beautiful. It is the same with the novels; and they don't permit me to read them either; but all the same I do."

When Beverley, taking his leave, pa.s.sed through the gate at Roussillon place, he met Rene de Ronville going in. It was a notable coincidence that each young man felt something troublesome rise in his throat as he looked into the other's eyes.

A week of dreamy autumn weather came on, during which Beverley managed to be with Alice a great deal, mostly sitting on the Roussillon gallery, where the fading vine leaves made fairy whispering, and where the tempered breeze blew deliciously cool from over the distant multi-colored woods. The men of Vincennes were gathering their Indian corn early to dry it on the cob for grating into winter meal. Many women made wine from the native grapes and from the sweeter and richer fruit of imported vines. Madame Roussillon and Alice stained their hands a deep purple during the pressing season, and Beverley found himself engaged in helping them handle the juicy crop, while around the overflowing earthen pots the wild bees, wasps and hornets hummed with an incessant, jarring monotony.

Jean, the hunchback, gathered ample stores of hickory nuts, walnuts, hazel-nuts and pin-oak acorns. Indeed, the whole population of the village made a great spurt of industry just before the falling of winter; and presently, when every preparation had been completed for the dreaded cold season, M. Roussillon carried out his long-cherished plan, and gave a great party at the river house. After the most successful trading experience of all his life he felt irrepressibly liberal.