CHAPTER III.

SWORD-PLAY.

Full of conflicting thoughts Lewie Baronald, with a slower pace than usual, proceeded towards the residence of the Countess van Renslaer, and quitting the Lang Vourhout, he crossed the canal that encircles the whole Hague.

If compelled by his powerful uncle's eccentric opposition to act the laggard now, he might leave Dolores to be won by his rival Morganstjern! Such things have been, and may be again. His brain whirled and his heart sank at the thought; and even if he had the permission of the Director-General of Infantry accorded him, could he ask the brilliant Dolores to share his solitary room in the barracks--the _Oranje Caserne_--of the Scots Brigade?

The thought was full of folly and presumption. He was not quite aware of the full extent of the hostile--yet well-meant--design his uncle the General was forming, for an effectual separation between him and the object of his love. He had left her yesterday with the avowed intention of obtaining the sanction of the General, from whom he had a yearly allowance: and now that the sanction was withheld, he was in sore perplexity, for by the then rules of the Dutch service no officer could marry without the consent of his superior; and how was he to tell Dolores that this had been bluntly refused, and that even exile or foreign service menaced him?

While these thoughts were passing through his mind, he came suddenly upon Maurice Morganstjern; he was seated under one of the trees that bordered the canal near the Hooge Wal, and was leisurely polishing the blade of his rapier with his leather glove, while conversing with a friend.

He was rather a handsome but dissipated-looking young fellow, and had shifty eyes and a very sinister expression of face. He wore his sandy-coloured hair powdered and tied, a smart Nivernois hat (such hats were all the rage about 1780), small, and with the flaps fastened up to the brim with hooks and eyes; his costume was bright in colours and richly laced.

That of his companion was the reverse. He wore an old battered Khevenhüller hat; his shaggy hair was unpowdered; his ruffles were soiled and torn; his visage was bloated and his eyes bloodshot and watery, while a scar on his nose, covered by a piece of black court-plaster, did not add to the respectability of his appearance: and Lewie Baronald, who knew him to be the Heer van Schrekhorn, a noted bully, gamester, and frequenter of gambling-houses and estaminets, barely accorded him any recognition, though feeling himself compelled to present his hand to Maurice Morganstjern.

'How now, Mynheer--have you been fighting?' he inquired laughingly of the latter.

'No; only polishing some specks off my sword,' replied Morganstjern, with a smile on his thin lips, though there was none in his watery grey eyes; 'but apropos of fighting--do you affect that?'

'In a proper cause--yes,' replied Baronald, surprised by the question.

'And can cover yourself well?' continued Morganstjern, making a half-mock lunge which the other--with the quickness of lightning--parried by his sword which he instantly drew.

'I can cover myself, as you shall see,' he exclaimed; and they began to fence in jest apparently, while the Heer looked approvingly on, and said with a laugh and an oath:

'Now we shall see who is the better ruffler of the two.'

And the Heer, who bore Lewie no goodwill for the coldness of his demeanour and the general hauteur he manifested towards him, looked as if he would very much have relished to draw his old hanger and engage in the perilous sport too--for perilous it was, with keen-edged and sharply-pointed straight-bladed swords.

The Heer van Schrekhorn was everyway an odious fellow--a lover of the fair sex, of schiedam and cards; but one who always avowed openly that _liking_ for a woman was one thing, but love for her was another--and certes he knew nothing about it.

He loudly and bluntly applauded his friend's fencing.

'Appel now!' he exclaimed; 'quick--disengage to that side again! contract your arm--quick--dart a thrust right forward now!'

At that moment, as if in obedience to the suggestion, the point of Morganstjern's sword struck the gilded regimental gorget of Baronald, which was adorned with the Lion Rampant of the Netherlands.

'The devil!' he exclaimed; 'do you aim at my throat?'

'All a mistake,' said Morganstjern, beginning to pant as he was pressed on in turn and driven back.

'Is this folly or fury--do you really wish to quarrel?' asked Lewie Baronald; but the other made no reply, though his eyes became inflamed, his colour deepened, his teeth were set and his brows knit; and though he laughed, the sound of his laughter was strange and unnatural.

This game at sharps was certainly jest with Baronald, though he little liked his opponent; but he soon became aware that the eyes of the latter seemed to become more bloodshot, that his cheek paled, his grasp grew firmer on his hilt; that his thrusts came quickly and fiercely--in short, that beyond all doubt, under cover of a little pretended sword-play, he had--murder in his heart!

They were rivals for the love of Dolores, yet Morganstjern had not the courage to challenge Baronald to a regular mortal duel. His bearing now, and the perilous thrust arrested by his gorget, were a warning to the latter of that which Morganstjern was now capable--killing him by design, without peril to himself, while he would affect that it was done by mere chance in rough jest; and had Baronald been run through the body, the Heer would have been ready to affirm and swear that it was all done by the merest accident.

Baronald felt his blood getting warm; he knew that duelling was sternly discouraged by the Dutch authorities; and that to kill the cousin of Dolores, even in self-defence, would preclude all chance of possessing her favour.

But a strong measure was absolutely necessary. Darting forward he suddenly locked-in--seized his adversary's sword-arm, by twining his left arm round it, thus closing his parade hilt to hilt, and disarmed him by literally wrenching his sword from his grasp.

Pale as death now, panting, and with eyes flashing fire, Morganstjern stood before the victor, who, presenting the captured sword by the blade, said, with a kind of smile:

'This rough play is being carried too far--here let it end.'

Hissing out some execration, Morganstjern took his sword by the hilt, and in the blind excesss of his fury would have plunged it into the breast of Baronald, but at the moment it was struck up by another sword, as two officers of the Scots Brigade, Francis, Lord Lindores, and the Master of Dumbarton, threw themselves between them.

'We do but jest, gentlemen,' said Morganstjern, lifting his hat and sheathing his sword.

'Is this true, Baronald?' asked Lord Lindores.

'Jest assuredly, so far as I am concerned,' replied Lewie.

'I must confess that the work looked remarkably like earnest, so far as your adversary was concerned,' remarked the Master of Dumbarton, with a look at Morganstjern which there was no mistaking; but the latter simply bowed, and saying:

'Gentlemen--your servant. I have the honour to bid you good evening.'

Then, accompanied by the Heer van Schrekhorn, he hastened away; leaving Baronald to explain the matter as he chose to his two brother-officers, who had some difficulty in making him really aware of the deadly risk he had run.

'He is gone like a man who has lost an hour and runs as if to overtake it,' said Lord Lindores. 'Now how came you, Lewie Baronald, to be fencing, even in jest, with rufflers such as these?'

Baronald could not explain that one of them was the cousin of Dolores.

'At the Kanongietery we have just parted with Van Otterbeck, the Minister of State. It is as well he did not accompany us and see that piece of folly, Baronald; it might have gone hard with you, as the Brigade is not greatly in favour just now,' said the Master of Dumbarton, who was James Douglas, grandson of the loyal and gallant Earl of that title, who was Colonel of the Royal Scots, and followed James VII. into exile.

He was tall, had a straight nose, the bold dark eyes of the Douglas race, and sunny brown hair tied behind with a black ribbon and rosette.

'True,' added Lord Lindores; 'and I begin to think the Brigade has had enough and to spare of Holland during these two hundred years past, fighting to defend lazy boors and greedy merchants, in a land of frowsy fogs and muddy canals; as Butler has it in "Hudibras:"

'"A land that rides at anchor, and is moored; In which they do not live, but go aboard."'

These remarks referred to the growing discontent between the regiments of the Brigade and the States-General--matters to which we may have to refer elsewhere, and which led to the former abandoning the service of the latter for that of Great Britain.

And now Lewie Baronald, after thanking his friends for their intervention and advice, took the road to the residence of the Countess van Renslaer, whither, unknown to him, Morganstjern had preceded him, and was, at that very moment, engaged with Dolores.