第75章 THE GREAT NORTH ROAD(17)

Paradou -quick as beasts are quick,to translate silence -felt the insult through his blood;his inarticulate soul bellowed within him for revenge.He glanced about the shop.

He saw the two indifferent gentlemen deep in talk,and passed them over:his fancy flying not so high.There was but one other present,a country lout who stood swallowing his wine,equally unobserved by all and unobserving -to him he dealt a glance of murderous suspicion,and turned direct upon his wife.The wine-shop had lain hitherto,a space of shelter,the scene of a few ceremonial passages and some whispered conversation,in the howling river of the wind;the clock had not yet ticked a score of times since Paradou's appearance;and now,as he suddenly gave tongue,it seemed as though the mistral had entered at his heels.

'What ails you,woman?'he cried,smiting on the counter.

'Nothing ails me,'she replied.It was strange;but she spoke and stood at that moment like a lady of degree,drawn upward by her aspirations.

'You speak to me,by God,as though you scorned me!'cried the husband.

The man's passion was always formidable;she had often looked on upon its violence with a thrill,it had been one ingredient in her fascination;and she was now surprised to behold him,as from afar off,gesticulating but impotent.

His fury might be dangerous like a torrent or a gust of wind,but it was inhuman;it might be feared or braved,it should never be respected.And with that there came in her a sudden glow of courage and that readiness to die which attends so closely upon all strong passions.

'I do scorn you,'she said.

'What is that?'he cried.

'I scorn you,'she repeated,smiling.

'You love another man!'said he.

'With all my soul,'was her reply.

The wine-seller roared aloud so that the house rang and shook with it.

'Is this the -?'he cried,using a foul word,common in the South;and he seized the young countryman and dashed him to the ground.There he lay for the least interval of time insensible;thence fled from the house,the most terrified person in the county.The heavy measure had escaped from his hands,splashing the wine high upon the wall.Paradou caught it.'And you?'he roared to his wife,giving her the same name in the feminine,and he aimed at her the deadly missile.

She expected it,motionless,with radiant eyes.

But before it sped,Paradou was met by another adversary,and the unconscious rivals stood confronted.It was hard to say at that moment which appeared the more formidable.In Paradou,the whole muddy and truculent depths of the half-man were stirred to frenzy;the lust of destruction raged in him;there was not a feature in his face but it talked murder.

Balmile had dropped his cloak:he shone out at once in his finery,and stood to his full stature;girt in mind and body all his resources,all his temper,perfectly in command in his face the light of battle.Neither spoke;there was no blow nor threat of one;it was war reduced to its last element,the spiritual;and the huge wine-seller slowly lowered his weapon.Balmile was a noble,he a commoner;Balmile exulted in an honourable cause.Paradou already perhaps began to be ashamed of his violence.Of a sudden,at least,the tortured brute turned and fled from the shop in the footsteps of his former victim,to whose continued flight his reappearance added wings.

So soon as Balmile appeared between her husband and herself,Marie-Madeleine transferred to him her eyes.It might be her last moment,and she fed upon that face;reading there inimitable courage and illimitable valour to protect.And when the momentary peril was gone by,and the champion turned a little awkwardly towards her whom he had rescued,it was to meet,and quail before,a gaze of admiration more distinct than words.He bowed,he stammered,his words failed him;he who had crossed the floor a moment ago,like a young god,to smite,returned like one discomfited;got somehow to his place by the table,muffled himself again in his discarded cloak,and for a last touch of the ridiculous,seeking for anything to restore his countenance,drank of the wine before him,deep as a porter after a heavy lift.It was little wonder if Ballantrae,reading the scene with malevolent eyes,laughed out loud and brief,and drank with raised glass,'To the champion of the Fair.'

Marie-Madeleine stood in her old place within the counter;she disdained the mocking laughter;it fell on her ears,but it did not reach her spirit.For her,the world of living persons was all resumed again into one pair,as in the days of Eden;there was but the one end in life,the one hope before her,the one thing needful,the one thing possible -to be his.