Basterga, too, thought it possible; but he smiled wickedly, in the pride of his resources. He struck the table sharply with his knife-haft.
"What?" he cried. "You don"t answer me, girl? You withstand me, do you?
To heel! To heel! Stand out in front of me, you jade, and answer me at once. There! Stand there! Do you hear?" With a mocking eye he indicated with his knife the spot that took his fancy.
She hesitated a moment, scarlet revolt in her face; she hesitated for a long moment; and the lad thought that surely the time had come. But then she obeyed. She obeyed! And at that Claude at last looked up; he could look up safely now for something, even as she obeyed, had put a bridle on his rage and given him control over it. That something was doubt. Why did she comply? Why obey, endure, suffer at this man"s hands that which it was a shame a woman should suffer at any man"s? What was his hold over her? What was his power? Was it possible, ah, was it possible that she had done anything to give him power? Was it possible----
"Stand there!" Basterga repeated, licking his lips. He was in a cruel temper: hara.s.sed himself, he would make some one suffer. "Remember who you are, wench, and where you are! And answer me! How long have you loved him?"
The face no longer burned: her blushes had sunk behind the mask of apathy, the pallid mask, hiding terror and the shame of her s.e.x, which her face had worn before, which had become habitual to her. "I have not loved him," she answered in a low voice.
"Louder!"
"I have not loved him."
"You do not love him?"
"No." She did not look at Claude, but dully, mechanically, she stared straight before her.
Grio laughed boisterously. "A dose for young Hopeful!" he cried. "Ho!
Ho! How do you feel now, Master Jackanapes?"
The big man smiled.
"Galle, quid insanis? inquit, Tua cura Lycoris Perque nives alium perque horrida castra secuta est!"
he murmured. He bowed ironically in Claude"s direction. "The gentleman pa.s.ses beyond the jurisdiction of the court," he said. "She will have none of him, it seems; nor we either! He is dismissed."
Claude, his eyes burning, shrugged his shoulders and did not budge. If they thought to rid themselves of him by this fooling they would learn their mistake. They wished him to go: the greater reason he should stay.
A little thing--the sight of a small brown hand twitching painfully, while her face and all the rest of her was still and impa.s.sive, had expelled his doubts for the time--had driven all but love and pity and burning indignation from his breast. All but these, and the memory of her lesson and her will. He had promised and he must suffer.
Whether Basterga was deceived by his inaction, or of set purpose was minded to try how far they could go with him, the big man turned again to his victim. "With you, my girl," he said, "it is otherwise. The soup was bad, and you are mutinous. Two faults that must be paid for. There was something of this, I remember, when Tissot--our good Tissot, who amused us so much--first came. And we tamed you then. You paid forfeit, I think. You kissed Tissot, I think; or Tissot kissed you."
"No, it was I kissed her," Gentilis said with a smirk. "She chose me."
"Under compulsion," Basterga retorted drily. "Will you ransom her again?"
"Willingly! But it should be two this time," Gentilis said grinning.
"Being for the second offence, a double----"
"Pain," quoth Basterga. "Very good. Do you hear, my girl? Go to Gentilis, and see you let him kiss you twice! And see we see and hear it. And have a care! Have a care! Or next time your modesty may not escape so easily! To him at once, and----"
"No!" The cry came from Claude. He was on his feet, his face on fire.
"No!" he repeated pa.s.sionately.
"No?"
"Not while I am here! Not under compulsion," the young man cried. "Shame on you!" He turned to the others, generous wrath in his face. "Shame on you to torture a woman so--a woman alone! And you three to one!"
Basterga"s face grew dark. "You are right! We are three," he muttered, his hand slowly seeking a weapon in the corner behind him. "You speak truth there, we are three--to one! And----"
"You maybe twenty, I will not suffer it!" the lad cried gallantly. "You may be a hundred----"
But on that word, in the full tide of speech he stopped. His voice died as suddenly as it had been raised, he stammered, his whole bearing changed. He had met her eyes: he had read in them reproach, warning, rebuke. Too late he had remembered his promise.
The big man leaned forward. "What may we be?" he asked. "You were going, I think, to say that we might be--that we might be----"
But Claude did not answer. He was pa.s.sing through a moment of such misery as he had never experienced. To give way to them now, to lower his flag before them after he had challenged them! To abandon her to them, to see her--oh, it was more than he could do, more than he could suffer! It was----
"Pray go on," Basterga sneered, "if you have not said your say. Do not think of us!"
Oh, bitter! But he remembered how the scalding liquor had fallen on the tender skin. "I have said it," he muttered hoa.r.s.ely. "I have said it,"
and by a movement of his hand, pathetic enough had any understood it, he seemed to withdraw himself and his opposition.
But when, obedient to Basterga"s eye, the girl moved to Gentilis" side and bent her cheek--which flamed, not by reason of Gentilis or the coming kisses, but of Claude"s presence and his cry for her--he could not bear it. He could not stay and see it, though to go was to abandon her perhaps to worse treatment. He rose with a cry and s.n.a.t.c.hed his cap, and tore open the door. With rage in his heart and their laughter, their mocking, triumphant laughter, in his ears, he sprang down the steps.
A coward! That was what he must seem to them. A coward"s part, that was the part they had seen him play. Into the darkness, into the night, what mattered whither, when such fierce anger boiled within him? Such self-contempt. What mattered whither when he knew how he had failed! Ay, failed and played the Tissot! The Tissot and the weakling!
CHAPTER VIII.
ON THE THRESHOLD.
He hurried along the ramparts in a rage with those whom he had left, in a still greater rage with himself. He had played the Tissot with a vengeance. He had flown at them in weak pa.s.sion, he had recoiled as weakly, he had left them to call him coward. Now, even now, he was fleeing from them, and they were jeering at him. Ay, jeering at him; their laughter followed him, and burned his ears.
The rain that beat on his fevered face, the moist wind from the Rhone Valley below, could not wipe out _that_--the defeat and the shame. The darkness through which he hurried could not hide it from his eyes. Thus had Tissot begun, flying out at them, fleeing from them, a thing of mingled fury and weakness. He knew how they had regarded Tissot. So they now regarded him.
And the girl? What shame lay on his manhood who had abandoned her, who had left her to be their sport! His rage boiled over as he thought of her, and with the rain-laden wind buffeting his brow he halted and made as if he would return. But to what end if she would not have his aid, to what end if she would not suffer him? With a furious gesture, he hurried on afresh, only to be arrested, by-and-by, at the corner of the ramparts near the Bourg du Four, by a dreadful thought. What if he had deceived himself? What if he had given back before them, not because she had willed it, not because she had looked at him, not in compliance with her wishes; but in face of the odds against him, and by virtue of some streak of cowardice latent in his nature? The more he thought of it, the more he doubted if she had looked at him; the more likely it seemed that the look had been a straw, at which his craven soul had grasped!
The thought maddened him. But it was too late to return, too late to undo his act. He must have left them a full half-hour. The town was growing quiet, the sound of the evening psalms was ceasing. The rustle of the wind among the branches covered the tread of the sentries as they walked the wall between the Porte Neuve and the Mint tower; only their harsh voices as they met midway and challenged came at intervals to his ears. It must be hard on ten o"clock. Or, no, there was the bell of St.
Peter"s proclaiming the half-hour after nine.
He was ashamed to return to the house, yet he must return; and by-and-by, reluctantly and doggedly, he set his face that way. The wind and rain had cooled his brow, but not his brain, and he was still in a fever of resentment and shame when his lagging feet brought him to the house. He pa.s.sed it irresolutely once, unable to make up his mind to enter and face them. Then, cursing himself for a poltroon, he turned again and made for the door.
He was within half a dozen strides of it when a dark figure detached itself from the doorway, and stumbled down the steps. Its aim seemed to be to escape, and leaping to the conclusion that it was Gentilis, and that some trick was being prepared for him, Claude sprang forward. His hand shot out, he grasped the other"s neck. His wrath blazed up.
"You rogue!" he said. "I"ll teach you to lie in wait for me!" And shifting his grasp from the man"s neck to his shoulder, he turned him round regardless of his struggles. As he did so the man"s hat fell off.
With amazement Claude recognised the features of the Syndic Blondel.
The young man"s arm fell, and he stared, open-mouthed and aghast, the pa.s.sion with which he had seized the stranger whelmed in astonishment.
The Syndic, on the other hand, behaved with a strange composure.
Breathing rather quickly, but vouchsafing no word of explanation, he straightened the crumpled linen about his neck, and set right his coat.
He was proceeding, still in silence, to pick up his hat, when Claude, antic.i.p.ating the action, secured the hat and restored it to him.
"Thank you," he said. And then, stiffly, "Come with me," he continued.
He turned as he spoke and led the way to a spot at some distance from the house, yet within sight of the door; there he wheeled about. "I was coming to see you," he said, steadfastly confronting Claude. "Why have you not called upon me, young man, in accordance with the invitation I gave you?"