Welden spoke in English which Aquaviva did not understand and which Saraguine who was talking to Louradour did not hear.
Malakoff heard.
The remark, perfectly audible to him, equally intelligible, carried a significance of its own. He knew that Welden could ride, he took it for granted that he could shoot, that he could handle a sword was, he had thought, within the range of possibilities, but that he could fence had never occurred to him. It was for that reason he had chosen foils. A poke in the ribs and easily, in no time, he had fancied he would be done with him. These ideas aiding and fortified moreover by two good seconds, he had come to this meeting, as he had gone to others, without the shadow of a preoccupation, with the view merely to the transaction of an entirely formal and tiresome affair.
Now, however, at the remark and at the sight of the man bare-necked, bare-armed, supple and vigorous, looking very much alive and equally deadly, the ideas he had had evaporated, his rank fell from him like a cloak, his titles like bits of armour, and in that nakedness, he shivered. Before him surged the abrupt apparition of death.
For one moment, that apparition, the instruments, bands, compresses, antiseptics—enough for an ambulance—which Dr. Meyer and his colleague were taking from their bags, grotesquely but poignantly maintained.
Then at once, the cultivated sentiment of form came, asserted itself, rescued him. With that air which he could assume, that appearance of being surrounded by lackeys ready, at a gesture, to shut the door in anyone’s face, he took off his coat, undid his collar, rolled up his sleeves. That done, he looked again at Welden who was looking at him.
“I will see what he knows,” Welden was thinking. “Then, in two minutes, Bonjour!”
Concerning himself he had that entire absence of apprehension which comes to some men from confidence, to others from indifference. Both left him as much at ease as though he were about to play polo.
Aquaviva, meanwhile, who had unwillingly yielded to the objection which Le Hillel transmitted, but who had tossed with him for the choice of arms and place, approached now with the foils which he offered, first to Malakoff, whom he stationed fronting the arch of the entrance, and then to Welden who, in facing Malakoff, faced also the house. Yet, as there was no sun, the advantage to either was negligible.
“Are you ready?” Saraguine asked.
Welden felt the point of his steel. It was sharp as a needle. He advanced toward Malakoff and both fell into position.
“On guard!” the prince called. “Go!”
The foils, united for an instant at the ends by Le Hillel, now were seeking each other, crossing, clashing, functioning with light movements of the wrist.
Welden, taller than Malakoff, perfectly trained, perfectly tranquil, maintained the athlete’s easy poise and, while his wrist moved, looked pitilessly at his adversary. As yet however he attempted nothing decisive. His parries, effected always in the smallest possible circle, were as clean, rapid and precise as though, with a buttoned foil before him, he were on the boards, in an ordinary bout. But in parrying merely, he forced Malakoff to show his hand, to tell what he knew, to expose the varieties of his play.
These were of the school, classic but not brilliant, and Malakoff, at the sight of those circles, at the sight of that steel which, when not describing them, advanced and returned in a line almost geometrically straight, saw that he had to deal not only with a swordsman but with a swordsman of the very first class. On the part of an American he had counted on nothing of the kind. At the evidence of it his sense of nudity increased. He felt not only wholly naked but horribly insecure. The episode which he had regarded as an entirely formal and tiresome affair had rapidly assumed the proportions of an assassination.
“Halt!” cried Saraguine.
Malakoff was livid. Visibly he perspired, audibly he panted and on his forearm was a thin red line.
“You are touched,” the prince added.
The wound was examined. It was but a scratch and so slight that it did not require even to be staunched.
Welden, in an undertone, said with a smile to Le Hillel: “I know him now. In a moment I will pin a carnation in his shirt.”
Thoughtlessly while speaking, he had rested the point of the foil on the ground. Dr. Meyer approached and tenderly with a little sponge disinfected it.
“On guard!” Saraguine called and, as the two men fell into position again, again he called: “Go.”
The foils met as before. Malakoff, to hide the nakedness of his debility, masked himself behind the hilt, and parried only until after a counter-disengage from quarte to tierce, not finding Welden’s blade, he lunged. But the foil, maneuvered by another and surer hand than his, deflected. An unawaited riposte touched him on the breast and, as he backed from the prick, a return sudden and violent ran him through the throat.
Before him, the double doors, the blazoned arch, the high white wall, soared in the air. They came to him, fell on him, bore him down. From under him the earth slid gently. The savour of something acrid filled his mouth. Above him were peering faces and fluttering hands. These blankly fainted. In that early morning it was night.
Welden looked at the prostrate form and nodded at it. From the street beyond there floated a cry, trailing and musical, the call of an itinerant offering to repair broken porcelain. Otherwise in the silence of the fragrant garden there was all of nature’s unconcern for the idiot agitations of man.
Save Welden, everyone, Dr. Meyer included, had got about Malakoff. Welden, who could see of him now but the veneered sole of a shoe, stuck his foil under his arm and went, buttoning his shirt on the way, to the bench where he
